South Africa: IEC to release 2021 Municipal Election results today

President Cyril Ramaphosa will later today attend the announcement of the final results of the 2021 Municipal Elections.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will make the announcement after South Africans headed to the polls to elect a new municipal political leadership on Monday. Special votes were cast on 30 and 31 October.

By 8:19am on Thursday, vote counting had received 97%.

These elections were the sixth local government elections held in South Africa, since the end of apartheid in 1994.

The final results will be revealed at the Results Operations Centre at the Tshwane Events Centre, Pretoria.

According to the IEC website, all had reached 95% and above of vote counting. Leading the charge was the Free State with all votes accounted for in the province. Hot on its heels was the North West, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal at 99%. A percent behind was Gauteng and the Northern Cape at 98%. Not far off was Limpopo and the Eastern Cape at 97%. The Western Cape lagged behind at 89%.

A breakdown of the figures sees the ANC, with the 45.94% of the votes, securing the control of 114 of the 155 councils where it had a majority vote. The DA comes in second with 21.15% of the vote. The party will control 11 of the 23 councils it had a secure percentage. Hung municipalities will require coalition governments between parties represented in the respective councils. The third largest party was the EFF, with 10.38% of the vote. However, the party controls no councils nor does it have a majority lead in any of the countrys 257 councils.

The third party with most councils was the IFP, controlling eight of the 13 councils it had majority votes.

A total 64 councils were hung, which was a significant increase from the 29 in the 2016 Local Government Elections.

The announcement ceremony, which will be broadcast live, commences at 6pm.

The Presidency said President Ramaphosa, in his capacity as President of the Republic, will deliver brief remarks during the ceremony.

The Presidency said: These elections enabled voters to exercise their democratic right and civic duty to elect new leadership and influence service delivery where they live.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: SA distributes close to 160 000 COVID-19 vaccines on Wednesday

South Africa administered 158 787 COVID-19 vaccines in the past 24 hours, bringing the total doses to 22 799 682.

The Department of Healths latest data shows that of the jabs administered on Wednesday, 145 828 were given to adults, while 12 959 were received by children aged between 12 and 17.

In addition, the country is now home to 12 620 892 or 31.4% fully vaccinated adults out of the 40 million government is targeting.

Meanwhile, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), recorded 344 new COVID-19 infections, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 922 735.

The majority of new cases were logged in Gauteng after 140 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus.

In addition, 44 were reported in the Western Cape, 41 in KwaZulu-Natal, 35 in Free State, 28 in the North West and 22 in the Eastern Cape, while the rest of the provinces recorded less than 20 cases each.

This increase represents a 1.3% positivity rate, the NICD explained, adding that the seven-day moving average daily number of cases have decreased.

Meanwhile, a further 23 patients succumbed to the respiratory disease, which means the death toll now stands at 89 220 to date.

The NICD said the hospital admission has increased by 37.

The information is based on the 18 606 274 tests, of which 27 392 were conducted since the last reporting cycle.

The institute is once again encouraging people to adhere to preventative measures to help limit the risk of contracting and spreading the virus.

This includes vaccinating, wearing a mask, avoiding unnecessary gatherings, keeping a social distance of one metre and washing hands regularly.

Global view

From 25 to 31 October 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded a slight upward trend of a 3% increase in new weekly cases, with just over three million infections reported.

Apart from the European region, which reported a 6% peak in new weekly cases, other regions registered declines or stable trends.

The biggest drop was reported in the Eastern Mediterranean region (12%), followed by South-East Asia and African regions (both 9%).

In addition, the new weekly deaths went up by 8% as compared with the previous week, with over 50 000 new fatalities.

These figures were mainly driven by the South-East Asia region, which reported the largest increase (50%), followed by the European region (12%) and the Western Pacific region (10%).

As of 31 October, the WHO said there were over 246 million confirmed cases and nearly five million deaths have been reported.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States (528 455 new cases, 7% increase), the United Kingdom (285 028 new cases, 14% decrease), Russia (272 147 new cases, 9% increase), Turkey (182 027 new cases, 8% decrease), and Ukraine (152 897 new cases, 14% increase).

In Africa, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from Ethiopia (3 313 new cases, a 14% increase), South Africa (2 554 new cases, a 19% decrease), and Cameroon (2 210 new cases, a 17% increase).  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: Poultry imports banned

The Centre for Food Safety today suspended the import of poultry meat, poultry products and eggs from Noord-Holland Province in the Netherlands and Slagelse Municipality in Denmark.

It issued the ban in response to a World Organisation for Animal Health notification about the outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 and H5 avian influenza in the two places.

The centre has contacted the Dutch and Danish authorities over the issues and will monitor information from the organisation and the relevant authorities on the outbreaks.

In the first nine months of this year, about 730 tonnes of frozen poultry meat were imported from the Netherlands while about 1,060 tonnes of frozen poultry meat and about 1.85 million poultry eggs were imported from Denmark.

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South Africa: 3 in every 5 people aged 50 and above now vaccinated in SA

Three out of every five people aged over 50 in South Africa have now received a COVID-19 vaccine, as government races to inoculate as many citizens before the end of 2021.

Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, announced this during a media briefing on the outcomes of the Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

According to the Minister, this means one-third of the over 50s are now jabbed.

Cabinet has applauded South Africans who have chosen to protect themselves and their loved ones by vaccinating against the Coronavirus pandemic.

South Africa has already administered over 22 million vaccine doses.

We need to get to five out of five in this age group by the end of the year to kill the power of the anticipated third wave, he stressed.

He also announced that the countrys next Vooma Vaccination Weekend will be held on 14 November in all provinces.

This is an opportunity for unvaccinated people to join our nation's fight against COVID-19 by taking the free vaccines at any of the vaccination sites across the country.

Cabinet reminded people to ensure that they take the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine to be fully protected.

Vaccines help prevent serious illness; hospitalisation or death from COVID-19, he added.

According to the Department of Healths latest data, South Africa has distributed 22 799 682 vaccine doses.

In addition, the country is now home to 12 620 892 or 31.4% fully vaccinated adults out of the 40 million government is targeting.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Cabinet thanks voters for making their mark

Cabinet has thanked all the eligible voters who cast their ballot in Mondays 2021 Local Government Elections.

Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, relayed the message during a media briefing on the outcomes of the Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

These elections mark the 21st anniversary of the establishment of a democratic local government in South Africa, Minister Gungubele explained.

The Executive has also commended the voters tolerance, dignity and patience throughout Election Day.

The smooth way in which the political parties contested the local election and the emergence of young candidates, especially women, is testament to our vibrant and functioning democracy, he added.

Gungubele also applauded the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), all political party members, society, and law enforcement agencies for their collective efforts to ensure peaceful elections.

Cabinet also commended media for the important role in providing voters with relevant information to assist them in exercising their democratic rights to choose the local government leaders.

He called on all South Africans to strengthen the countrys democracy by actively participating in forums and institutions, which holds the elected to account.

We call for the newly elected officials to keep true to their electoral pledges and to serve all people equally and fairly, he added.

President Cyril Ramaphosa will later today attend the announcement of the final results of the 2021 Municipal Elections.

By 8:30am on Thursday, vote counting had received 98.5%, while 99.9% of the results are already in the system awaiting scanning and auditing.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: SA gears up for 16 Days of Activism

Government will participate in the 16 Days of Activism of No Violence against Women and Children campaign from 25 November to 10 December 2021.

According to the Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, who was addressing the media on outcomes of the Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, the United Nations campaign will heighten awareness of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in the country.

The 16 Days campaign forms the centre point of governments comprehensive 365 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the global 16 Days campaign.

Cabinet has welcomed the triple life sentence handed down to rapist and murderer Mfanasibili Cornelius Mnisi, 29, by the Mpumalanga Division of the High Court in Mbombela recently.

This harsh sentence demonstrates the zero-tolerance approach against GBVF by the criminal justice system, Gungubele said.

By working together with the police and other law-enforcement agencies, Cabinet believes it will make South Africas communities safer for all.

Gungubele called on every citizen to be vigilant and report all GBVF-related incidents to the police or call the National GBVF Command Centre on 0800 428 428 or Stop Gender Violence Helpline on 0800 150 150/*120*7867#.

Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill of 2021

In addition, Cabinet approved the submission of the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill of 2021 to Parliament for processing.

According to the Minister, the proposed amendments provide for the mechanism to enforce the taking of buccal samples from cells on the inside of the persons cheek from people convicted under Schedule 8 offences.

The Schedule 8 offences include sexual offences, robbery, human trafficking and culpable homicide.

The collected buccal samples will facilitate future prosecutions for re-offenders, said Gungubele.

Meanwhile, the Bill will also enable the establishment of a comprehensive forensic DNA database to strengthen the fight against crime by capacitating the police with evidence to investigate and solve serious crimes, the Minister said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Public Enterprises working with Eskom to limit load shedding

Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, says the Department of Public Enterprises is working closely with the Board of Eskom and management to ensure that it limits the daily duration of load shedding and the period for which this intervention will be required.

The Minister announced this on Thursday during a media briefing on the outcomes of the Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

Cabinet acknowledges the disruptions and inconvenience of intermittent load shedding experienced by South Africans in recent days.

Meanwhile, according to the Minister, National Treasury has been roped in to grant Eskom appropriate exemptions to acquire the spare parts needed for repairs and maintenance.

In addition, the State-owned power utility is also making progress in re-employing skilled personnel  including plant managers.

This will help the power utility make headway at individual power stations and across various operations of the business, Gungubele explained.

Over the medium term, Gungubele said, government was implementing several interventions to resolve the energy challenges.

We are making every effort to bring new power generation capacity online in the shortest possible time, he added.

According to the Minister, who spoke on behalf of the Cabinet, there are several interventions in place to salvage the situation.

These include lifting the threshold for companies to produce their electricity without a licence to 100 megawatts (MW) and the recent announcement of 11 successful bidders for the risk mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.

Also, Energy and Minerals Minister Gwede Mantashe recently announced the Bid Window Five of the renewable energy programme to procure 2 600 MW of new generation capacity from wind and solar photovoltaic projects.

While Cabinet is aware that the current energy challenges are frustrating and counterproductive to economic growth, it is confident that the practical actions government is taking to restructure and strengthen our electricity system will eventually improve the countrys energy capacity.

Investment

Shifting the focus to investment, he said the country continues to perform as an investment destination of choice, attracting some of the worlds top businesses to expand their operations in the country.

He highlighted the new R2.6 billion Toyota South Africa production plant in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, which will manufacture the first generation of commercial-scale hybrid electric vehicles locally.

This is part of the auto industry masterplan commitments by the company to increase its levels of investment.

In addition, the Swedish multinational food packaging and processing company, Tetra Pak, recently committed to pumping in R500 million to upgrade its production capacity in Durban.

Aspen Pharmacare opened its new anaesthetic line producing Diprivan locally as part of the R3.2-billion investment in creating world-class sterile production facilities, and turning the site in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape into the most advanced pharmaceutical precinct on the African continent.

According to the Minister, the anaesthetic used in a range of standard medical procedures and operations in South African hospitals was previously imported.

The product is also used to treat COVID-19 patients on ventilators in intensive-care wards.

Cabinet has also welcomed the recent investment by Isuzu Motors, which launched the production facility at Struandale in Gqeberha.

The Minister said Isuzu is investing R1.2 billion into its next-generation bakkie programme for the South African and Sub-Saharan Africa markets and will create 1 000 direct jobs and about 25 000 at hundreds of suppliers across the country.

All these three investments will advance the localisation programme announced in the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan launched by His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa in October 2020, he said.

They will add billions of rand of annual production to South Africas gross domestic product.

Meanwhile, he told the media that two of the investments had been pledged at the previous South Africa Investment Conference and that companies have now commenced with production, creating a significant number of new jobs.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: Opportunities for HK immense: SJ

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng

The Belt & Road Initiative is a grand vision to build a community with a shared future for mankind, which is the world's largest platform for open and inclusive international co-operation. Over the past eight years, co-operation agreements were signed with 140 countries (Note 1) under the Belt & Road Initiative.

The Belt & Road Initiative is compatible with the principles of the United Nations Charter, in particular in affirming the equal rights of all nations. The spirit behind the Belt & Road Initiative can be encapsulated as follows: the promotion of win-win co-operation, common development and prosperity, peace and co-operation, openness and inclusiveness, and mutual understanding and trust. These are the very aim of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda), providing a shared blueprint for mankind to achieving a better and more sustainable future. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the 2030 Agenda aim to address global challenges and their implementation requires active co-operation among different stakeholders in the global, regional and national levels. China has taken a proactive role in integrating the implementation of SDGs with its own national development strategy, translating each target of the 17 SDGs into action plans with the overarching approach of "innovative, co-ordinated, green, open and shared development".

The SDGs are interconnected with the rule of law being a pillar for its successful implementation. In particular, Goal 16 aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

In response to the 2030 Agenda, especially Goal 16, the Department of Justice officially launched a 10-year visionary initiative, Vision 2030 for Rule of Law (Vision 2030) in 2020, aiming to build and maintain a fair and rule-based society underpinned by the rule of law through collaboration with stakeholders towards sustainable development for all. "2030" is referred to in the initiative to demonstrate our support for the 2030 Agenda. Under Vision 2030, there have been various capacity building events for the international and local community covering a wide array of topics, including today's conference. Besides, there will be a Rule of Law Signature Engagement Event entitled "A Journey of Transformation for a Sustainable Future" tomorrow, which will introduce Vision 2030's initiatives that aim to facilitate study on the proper understanding of how the rule of law is practised and how to bring into play the uniqueness of different jurisdictions: including culture, socio-economic elements and legal traditions. Please do join us and participate in the discussions tomorrow.

I. Belt & Road Initiative as the driving force for post-COVID recovery

COVID-19 brought tremendous challenges to us. Fortunately, global economic recovery is now gaining momentum. As President Xi remarked, "The right approach to tackling global crises and realising long-term development is through greater connectivity, openness, and inclusiveness (Note 2)." The Belt & Road Initiative is an all-inclusive initiative driving the world to recover amidst COVID-19. In the first half of 2020, China-Europe freight trips rose 36%, transporting 3.67 million pieces of anti-pandemic materials to European countries. Overseas Chinese workers are also working with their local counterparts to expedite the construction of worldwide landmark projects. The Belt & Road Initiative is also crucial in combating the pandemic and stabilising global supply and industrial chains.

The Digital Silk Road is a key facet to the Belt & Road Initiative in facilitating global recovery, which aims to improve access to high-speed Internet, lower market barriers to international e-commerce, and minimise the digital divide, all of which are gaining importance in the post-COVID era. In May 2020, Premier Li promised to accelerate the construction of 5G networks and data centres. China has also taken a leading role with 6G's patent applications, accounting for 40.3% of the world total, outweighing the US and Japan (Note 3).

II. Belt & Road Initiative as the driving force in creating a fair, rule-based and harmonious international order

The Belt & Road Initiative facilitates the international promotion of the rule of law as well as peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. We hope that Vision 2030, which aims to reach out to both the local and international communities, striving to contribute to the sustainable development of inclusive, sustainable and fair societies, will be able to complement this national policy.

Since its inception, the Belt & Road Initiative has always followed the principle of "extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits", which provides a platform for international co-operation characterised by equality, mutual benefit, openness, inclusiveness and transparency; paving the way for international legal co-operation.

Efforts had been actively made by different stakeholders of the Belt & Road Initiative to effectively resolve trade and investment disputes, with an aim to build a sound, fair and inclusive business environment for the Belt & Road in accordance with the rule of law.

III. The unique role of Hong Kong

Both the 14th Five-Year Plan and the Greater Bay Area (Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area) Outline Development Plan explicitly support Hong Kong as the centre for international legal and dispute resolution services in the Asia-Pacific region, demonstrating staunch support from the Central People's Government.

This is complemented by Hong Kong's mature and robust legal system and legal infrastructure, together with its independent judiciary, a strong culture of rule of law as well as its legal and dispute resolution talents. Hong Kong is the only common law jurisdiction within China. Hong Kong's common law system has a history of 150 years with ample legal precedents. And our cases are frequently cited in overseas jurisprudence, demonstrating the quality of our judiciary and legal system.

Hong Kong has been continuously ranked among the top five preferred seats for arbitration globally since 2015 according to the International Arbitration Surveys conducted by Queen Mary University of London. This year, Hong Kong is ranked as the third most preferred seat for arbitration, surpassing Paris.

Hong Kong is also the world's leading dealmaking hub, being ranked as the world's top IPO (initial public offering) venue in seven of the past 12 years. In the securities market, the average daily turnover for the first six months of 2021 was $188.2 billion, representing an increase of 60% when compared with $117.5 billion for the same period in 2020. Additionally, there has been a steady rise in total deposits in our banking system, which had reached $14.86 trillion by the end of May 2021.

The pandemic has caused significant disruptions to the international supply chain and the loss of business due to social distancing and other anti-epidemic measures. When face-to-face dispute resolution has been rendered almost impossible under the pandemic, there is a pressing need for businesses, especially micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, to have their disputes resolved in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner.

eBRAM Centre was established in Hong Kong in 2018 to develop a platform for online dispute resolution, ODR, and dealmaking, leveraging on the latest technologies including artificial intelligence, blockchain etc, aiming to provide a one-stop platform for international commercial parties. eBRAM Centre recently launched the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Online Dispute Resolution procedural rules tailor-made for the APEC Collaborative Framework for ODR of Cross Border Business-to-Business Disputes, which aims to provide a fast and affordable resort to commercial disputes among the APEC economies to micro, small, and medium enterprises through the use of electronic communications and other information technology. eBRAM Centre will seek to become an ODR service provider for APEC economies under the APEC ODR Framework.

Recently, the Inclusive Global Legal Innovation Platform on ODR, iGLIP on ODR, which brings together experts from around the world, was set up in the Hong Kong Legal Hub to facilitate studies on ODR-related issues. It is expected to see a rise of future co-operations in promoting, raising awareness and capacity-building in ODR. Indeed, the pandemic acts as a catalyst in speeding up the development of reliable, efficient and cost-effective ODR platforms.

IV. Immense business opportunities

Under the principle of "one country, two systems" and the Belt & Road Initiative, as an international legal, dealmaking and dispute resolution hub, there are immense opportunities for Hong Kong.

The bay area is significant for the Belt & Road Initiative, the inaugural GBA Legal Professional Examination was successfully held in July 2021. After passing the examination and obtaining the relevant practice certificate, eligible Hong Kong legal practitioners would be allowed to provide legal services in the nine Mainland municipalities in the bay area on specified civil and commercial matters to which the Mainland laws apply. These legal practitioners will be able to provide comprehensive legal services to enterprises investing in the bay area.

Besides, the initiative which allows wholly owned Hong Kong enterprises, WOKEs, to adopt Hong Kong law had received a major breakthrough in Qianhai. Since October 2020, over 11,000 WOKEs and other foreign-owned enterprises registered in Qianhai can choose Hong Kong law as the governing law when entering into civil and commercial contracts in the absence of "foreign-related elements". With the expansion of Qianhai, more WOKEs can opt for Hong Kong law. The department is actively seeking the Central People's Government's support in extending the measure to Shenzhen and hopefully the entire bay area.

With the Central People's Government's support, four instruments were recently concluded. One being the tripartite memorandum of co-operation amongst the State-owned Assets Supervision & Administration Commission of the State Council, SASAC in short, and the Ministry of Commerce. It establishes an exchange platform in the form of roundtable discussions amongst members of the department's Standing Panel of Legal Experts and representatives of state-owned enterprises and major private enterprises in the Mainland to discuss in-depth different legal issues including those related to the Belt & Road Initiative, thereby exporting our legal services to facilitate Mainland enterprises' trade and investment abroad.

There are also two specific arrangements worthy of mention. In the area of insolvency and debt restructuring, the arrangement concerning mutual recognition of and assistance to insolvency proceedings between the courts of Mainland and Hong Kong allows Hong Kong liquidators and provisional liquidators to apply to designated courts in the Mainland for recognition and assistance. Likewise, the Mainland's bankruptcy administrators may apply to Hong Kong's High Court for recognition of the Mainland's bankruptcy proceedings according to common law principles.

In the interim measures arrangement signed with the Mainland in 2019, parties to arbitral proceedings seated in Hong Kong and administered by one of the six arbitral institutions would be able to apply to the Mainland courts for interim measures. Hong Kong is the first and only jurisdiction in the world outside the Mainland where this is possible.

Note 1: www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/23/c_1310024161.htm

Note 2: Written message from President Xi Jinping to the High-level Video Conference on Belt & Road International Cooperation, June 18, 2020.

Note 3: global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202109/17/WS6144094fa310e0e3a6822499.html

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng gave these remarks at the Law Society of Hong Kong's fourth Belt & Road Conference "Global Recovery and Harmony through the Belt & Road Initiative" under Hong Kong Legal Week 2021 on November 4.

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Bold action needed in decarbonising energy systems

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on world leaders to take bold action in accelerating decarbonisation of energy systems.

The President made the call in a message he delivered vitually at the COP26 Energy Session on Thursday.

In his message, the President acknowledged that climate change undoubtedly presented a critical and urgent threat to humanity.

This is so because it will have devastating consequences for our economies and societies if we do not take action now.

There is no longer any doubt that climate change presents a critical and urgent threat to humanity.

Accelerating decarbonisation of energy systems, he said, would involve harnessing new technologies to reduce the worlds dependence on high-emission fossil fuels, including unabated coal power.

It requires that we move to more sustainable and cost-effective energy sources.

While the energy transition is necessary for reducing global carbon emissions, this transition must also be fair and just, he said.

President Ramaphosa said for many developing economies this required massive investment in alternative energy sources and other infrastructure.

It requires substantial support for workers and communities throughout the coal value chain who stand to lose their jobs as well as their livelihoods.

A just transition requires finance and support from wealthier nations to enable low- and medium-income countries to protect employment and to promote development.

He said South Africa has committed to ambitious emission reduction targets.

Achieving these targets, he said, would require the transformation of its energy system at an unprecedented speed and scale.

He said this would include the decommissioning, repowering and repurposing of coal-fired power stations and the roll-out of renewable energy.

But our ability to do so will be determined by the extent of support that we receive from developed economies.

The Political Declaration that we announced this week with the governments of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union, represents an important breakthrough in this effort, he said.

Through this partnership, an initial amount of $8.5 billion was to be mobilised over the next three to five years to support the countrys just transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient future.

He said this would enable South Africa to implement its ambitious goals and to develop a model for a just transition that was hoped can be used elsewhere.

We are entering a brave new world bound together by our common destiny as humanity. We owe this to ourselves, to one another and to the future generations, he said.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: New initiatives set to boost fintech

Secretary for Innovation & Technology Alfred Sit

As one of the worlds leading financial centres, Hong Kong has evolved into a prime location for the fast-growing fintech sector in just a few years. In 2017, we had only 180 fintech companies and some 2,200 startups. Today, we are home to more than 600 fintech companies and over 3,700 startups. We also witnessed the birth of 12 unicorns. The consumer fintech adoption rate in Hong Kong reached 67%, which is one of the highest in the world. I am delighted to learn that KPMG ranks Hong Kong amongst the worlds top 10 technology innovation hubs outside Silicon Valley over the next four years.

In taking stock of our rapid development of fintech, I shall express my appreciation to the tremendous efforts made by our two I&T (innovation and technology) flagships, Cyberport and Science Park in nurturing our local fintech community. Cyberport, as the local I&T landmark, hosts the biggest fintech community in Hong Kong. To date, its fintech cluster comprises nearly 400 fintech companies specialising in blockchain, mobile payment, programme trading, etc, and it helped incubate two fintech unicorns. Cyberport is not just a venue for new joiners. Last year, Cyberport was entrusted by the Government to implement the Financial Practitioners FinTech Training Programme, providing fintech-related training to over 1,200 practitioners from the banking, insurance and securities sectors.

We understand one of the major challenges to startups is to obtain sufficient funding to transform innovative ideas into real business. To drive further fintech adoption, we have just announced to support the launch of the Monetary Authoritys (HKMA) Fintech Supervisory Sandbox 3.0 through the Public Sector Trial Scheme. We will provide a maximum of $1 million in funding to local technology firms for each eligible project supported by the HKMA. Eligible local technology firms may apply for funding if the trial projects are assessed to have the potential to support the HKMAs regulatory and supervisory work in areas such as regtech and cybersecurity, or related to and can enhance the HKMAs infrastructure projects under the Fintech 2025 strategy. In addition to the financial support to local firms provided by the Government, Cyberport has also launched a number of funding schemes to offer assistance to fintech startups to cater for their needs at different stages of development over the years. For example, Cyberport launched its Creative Micro Fund in 2009 to provide a seed funding of $100,000 to each individual project to convert innovative concepts into prototypes. Earlier this year, an additional $200 million was injected into the fund to enable more promising startups, including fintech startups, to prosper. On the other hand, since its implementation in 2005, the Cyberport Incubation Programme provides comprehensive financial, technical and business advisory support to technological startups. All these efforts have helped catalyse the phenomenal growth of our fintech community.

In addition, the Science Park also accommodates some 80 companies engaging in the R&D (research and development) of various fintech solutions, covering regtech which uses information technology to enhance regulatory processes, investment and wealth management and e-commerce. To help capitalise on new growth opportunities and cross-industry innovation, the FinTech Centre of the Science Park was officially opened in January this year at the InnoCentre. Since then, the FinTech Centre has served as a focal point for all stakeholders to co-create projects for the financial sector with advanced technologies. Another major initiative was the launch of the Banking, Financial Services & Insurance Accelerator, in January, which helps bridge financial companies and technology ventures in the Science Park to develop fintech solutions and create a wide range of new business opportunities in the world of banking, financial services and insurance. I believe we will soon witness many eye-opening business solutions in the market.

Talent is another key to I&T development. On one hand, we are attracting talent from all over the world to Hong Kong via our Global STEM Professorship Scheme and Technology Talent Admission Scheme. On the other hand, we are eager to train up our next-generation I&T talent from primary schooling all the way to tertiary education. We launched the Knowing More About IT Programme in primary schools and the IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Programme to cultivate students interest in I&T through various extracurricular activities related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), whereas university students can experience I&T-related work and explore career opportunities during their studies under the STEM Internship Scheme. Over 4,000 students have benefitted from this scheme since its inception in 2020. Incidentally, this year marks the seventh anniversary for the Cyberport University Partnership Programme. Since its launch in 2015, over 300 youth entrepreneurs received fintech focused entrepreneurship training from renowned overseas universities, and 68 teams successfully obtained seed funding from the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund.

To sustain our university graduates interest to join the I&T industry, we have also launched different schemes to encourage them to pursue a career in I&T upon graduation. For instance, we launched the Research Talent Hub programme with 5,400 research positions offered to university graduates over the past four years. This is not the finishing line but we are striving to create a fervid I&T environment in the community. We have just organised the first-ever City I&T Grand Challenge competition, which attracted more than 740 submissions under the two topics of environmental sustainability and social connectivity from over 1,200 local and non-local contestants on an individual or team basis. We will conduct trials of some of the winning solutions at government departments or public organisations where appropriate. We will certainly keep our momentum in nurturing, attracting and retaining talent.

Our efforts in driving fintech development are definitely not limited to what I have just shared with you. The countrys 14th Five-Year Plan has firmly expressed the central governments clear support for Hong Kongs development into an international I&T hub. In response, the Chief Executive has earlier announced a series of forward-looking I&T initiatives in her 2021 Policy Address, which include the earmarking of a number of sites for I&T development, promotion of R&D and pooling tech talent, and provision of support for startups in gaining a foothold in the Greater Bay Area. All these new initiatives will give our I&T ecosystem, including our fintech cluster, another big boost.

Secretary for Innovation & Technology Alfred Sit gave these remarks at Hong Kong FinTech Week 2021 on November 4.

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Time to respond to communities' needs says Zikalala

With the Electoral Commission due to release the final results of the 2021 Local Government Elections tonight, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala says real electoral victory will gain meaning when political parties address the commitments and expectations of all communities, even those who did not vote for them.

Now that the elections are decided, it is time to respond to the needs of the communities. Voting is the beginning of the long and arduous journey to grow KwaZulu-Natal and indeed South Africa. This is the time to translate all the manifestos into workable plans of action and tangible delivery to our communities, Zikalala said.

Receiving the final electoral outcome of the 2021 Local Government elections on Thursday, Zikalala said the communities of the province have articulated clearly how they wish their wards and municipalities to be governed.

He commended the Electoral Commission (IEC) for its agility to fulfil its obligation following a directive from the Constitutional Court and for having performed an almost impossible task, given the shortened turnaround time required.

We thank IEC officials and [the] entire team for their dedication. The IEC has not only delivered a credible election, but it has done this with a high level of efficiency and elegance, even though there were few glitches on the way, Zikalala said.

The Premier also commended all political parties that were part of the election exercise, noting that the contestation, dialogue and campaigning were all vibrant.

Worryingly, there were however isolated incidents that marred this election such as the shooting of innocent women in Inanda, the brutal killing of candidate councillors, acts of intolerance and the assault on senior leaders especially the Secretary-General of the National Freedom Party. These should never be allowed in our democracy.

We are however pleased to note that political parties generally conducted their campaigns peacefully and in accordance with the Electoral Code of Conduct. This conduct is a clear insurance and commitment that we are committed to taking our democracy to new heights, the Premier said.

He further thanked the security agencies who remained on full alert, responded swiftly, and worked very hard to ensure that an environment of peace prevailed, before and during the voting process.

The security agencies especially the South African Police Service, South African National Defence Force and intelligence services spent long hours and sacrificed sleep in order to ensure that voting takes place peacefully and the Constitutional right of citizens to vote is not infringed. We say thank you for the sterling work you have done, and we hope this work ethic is an example that we can continue to emulate.

To the South African media and all journalists in our province, we wish to pay a special tribute to you for going the extra mile in informing the voters about the various campaigns, dissecting and analysing the manifestos, and in ensuring that the elections were held in a transparent manner. The role of the media should be applauded.

We thank the local and international observer missions whose work has contributed to the consolidation of our democracy and through their role they have shined a positive spotlight on the resilience of our democracy, said the Premier.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Municipal Elections another milestone in the advancement of democracy

The 2021 Local Government Elections have proved that multi-party politics is flourishing in South Africa and that everyone has an equal chance and opportunity to run for public office, President Cyril Ramaphosa says.

The sixth Local Government Election was contested by a record 325 political parties and nearly 95 000 candidates, of whom over 1 500 were independent candidates.

The President said that this enriches the country in many ways, advances openness and transparency and affirms the principle that leaders must be chosen by the people and be accountable to the people.

The statesman was speaking at the National Results Operations Centre (ROC) in Pretoria on Thursday, during the release of the 2021 Local Government Election results.

Tonight we mark another milestone in the advancement of our democracy. In the run-up to Election Day we have seen images of parties and candidates everywhere, on billboards, on street posters and on social media, all making a case for why they should get our vote. This affirms that we are a diverse and tolerant society, the President said.

President Ramaphosa went on to thank the 12 million South Africans who cast their ballots in this election.

By performing this important civic duty you have contributed to strengthening and consolidating democracy. I want to congratulate all South Africans for holding an election that was peaceful, free and fair, he said.

He said the people have spoken and the elected councillors now need to get down to work.

The President said that over the past few weeks, officials have all spent time with South Africans from all walks of life and they expressed their frustration with service delivery while others spoke about the good work that municipalities, supported by dedicated councillors are doing in their communities.

Listening to them I was reminded how important it is that those in positions of responsibility enjoy the confidence of the South African people. They want their lives improved. They want better services.

They want their representatives to be responsive and accountable. They want to live in a better South Africa with equal opportunity, where their rights are realised, and where they are treated with dignity and respect, the President said.

While calling on leaders to put their differences aside and work together, the President said that local government must be a force for good, for development and for progress.

If we are to make this a new and better era, we, as leaders, must put aside our differences and work together in a spirit of partnership and common purpose.

We need to strengthen the trust between citizens and elected representatives through competence, integrity, performance and delivery. Public representatives need to be more visible and active in our communities, he said.

The President called on elected leaders to listen to the communities they serve and focus on implementation and make the people partners in development.

Thank you for a successful election

President Ramaphosa extended his gratitude to all those people who have contributed to the success of the 2021 Local Government Elections.

I want to thank the commissioners, leadership and staff of the Independent Electoral Commission, who have once again conducted themselves with professionalism and impartiality. I want to thank the South African Police Service and the South African National Defence Force for ensuring the safety of voters and the integrity of the election process. I want to thank the staff of the Department of Home Affairs for processing voters and enabling them to have the correct documentation on voting day, he said.

Extending his gratitude to the media, the President said the media did a great job by keeping South Africans informed throughout the duration of these elections.

He further thanked all the political parties and candidates who stood in this election for their conduct, their discipline and their commitment to the people.

Through their efforts, he said they have proven that our democracy is enduring and strong.

We owe it to the millions of young South Africans who dream of a better South Africa, to do no less than our very best. We owe it to the millions of South Africans who voted in this election to bring about the change they are asking for.

President Ramaphosa encouraged all leaders to turn the promises that were made on the campaign trail into reality.

Let us unite for the common purpose of recovery and rebuilding. Let us work as one for a South Africa of equality, freedom and shared prosperity. Let us keep moving forward, he said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: 2021 Local Government Elections declared free and fair

Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) Chairperson Glen Mashinini has officially declared the 2021 Local Government Elections concluded as free and fair.

This as the IEC announced the final results of the elections at the National Results Operations Centre in Pretoria on Thursday.

More than 12 million South Africans cast their ballots over the past weekend and on Monday, to vote for candidates who they prefer to represent them in the countrys 257 municipal councils.

We are satisfied that, bar a few incidents, for which we apologise, that we have delivered quality elections. We are proud to proclaim to the world that we are still flying high the banner of electoral integrity, excellence and free and fair elections.

Through these elections, we have sent a resounding message to the world at large that we South Africans remain a beacon of pre-eminence in the conduct of electoral democracy. It is then my singular honour to hereby declare the 2021 Municipal Elections concluded as free and fair, he said.

Mashinini announced that throughout the country, the African National Congress (ANC) clinched the majority seats in 161 municipal councils, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 13 municipalities which is closely followed by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) which now holds majority seats in 10 municipal councils.

Mashinini added that at least 66 municipal councils are hung  meaning that no party gained an outright majority in those councils.

He announced the following results for the countrys tightly contested eight metropolitan municipalities:

Buffalo City: the ANC is in the majority with 59%, followed by the DA with 19.52% and the EFF with 12.06%.

City of Cape Town: the DA won that council with 58.22%, the ANC won 18.63% of the vote and the EFF won 4.13%.

Ekurhuleni was won by the ANC with 38.19%, in second was the DA with 28.72% and the EFF with 13.57% of the vote.

In Ethekwini in KwaZulu Natal, the ANC won 42.2%, followed by the Democratic Alliance with 25.6% and the EFF with 10.49%.

In the City of Johannesburg, the ANC won 33.60%, the DA won 26.47% and Action SA won 16.05% of the votes.

In Mangaung, the ANC won the majority of seats after receiving 50.63% of the votes, followed by the DA with 25.73% and the EFF with 11.31%.

The ANC and the DA won exactly the same amount of council seats in the Nelson Mandela Bay council after receiving about 39% of the vote each, the EFF came in third with 6.4% of the support.

The City of Tshwane has shown that the ANC won 34.31% of the votes, closely followed by the DA with 32.34% and the EFF came in third with 10.62% of the vote.

The IEC Chairperson implored the newly chosen councillors-elect to improve the lives of those communities they now serve.

We congratulate the 10 461 councillors who have won the right to serve our people. We urge them to go out and make the lives of our people better. Go out and ensure that our communities develop and live in peace. Go out and, through your honest and ethical work, guarantee the future of our children, Mashinini said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Biden steps up pressure for workers to get jabs

President Joe Biden's administration on Thursday set a January 4 deadline for enforcement of strict rules intended to push tens of millions of American workers into getting Covid-19 vaccines.

The mandates targeting businesses with more than 100 employees, as well as health care workers and federal contractors, represent the most aggressive steps Washington has taken against the virus and its Delta variant, which has hobbled economic recovery.

"Vaccination is the single best pathway out of this pandemic. And while I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good," Biden said in a statement.

"I'm calling on employers to act. Businesses have more power than ever before to accelerate our path out of this pandemic, save lives, and protect our economic recovery."

Under the regulations, workers at private firms will have to receive their second shot by January 4, 2022, or wear a mask in the workplace and undergo weekly testing.

Employers will be required to provide paid time off for workers to get vaccinated.

The rules will require the majority of American health care workers to receive vaccines, while regulations for federal contractors will depend on their workplace, the White House said.

The regulations will affect more than two-thirds of the country's workforce, according to the Biden administration, and join mandates announced by major employers in the country as well as some states.

Biden debuted the mandates in September amid growing concern over the country's flagging vaccination rate, leaving federal agencies to finalize their implementation.

The Republican opposition has decried them as an overreach and some business groups warn they would be disruptive.

The world's largest Covid-19 outbreak is among issues that have weighed down Biden's presidency in recent months.

His Democratic party suffered a humiliating defeat in Virginia's governorship election this week, while lawmakers in Congress have yet to reach an agreement on two spending bills Biden has put at the center of his policies.

Economic growth soared and millions went back to work after Biden took office in January just as Covid-19 vaccines became widely available.

But third-quarter growth slumped and September's hiring was the weakest of the year as the Delta wave sent infections soaring and made businesses cautious.

The president on Tuesday hailed a Food and Drug Administration decision to allow children aged 5-11 to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as a "turning point."

Convincing reluctant adults to get widely available and free vaccines is another matter.

While some businesses including major air carriers have imposed their own vaccine requirements, Republican lawmakers compare the mandate to a "dictatorship," and state attorney generals from the party have already sued over the rules.

The governor of Texas went as far as to put a ban on Covid-19 vaccine mandates, including private companies.

The White House said the "new rules preempt any inconsistent state or local laws, including laws that ban or limit an employer's authority to require vaccination, masks, or testing."

Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda meanwhile said the government "will consider whether to extend the rule to smaller companies."

Workers who choose not to follow the regulations will not be exempt from disciplinary action by their company, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Jim Fredrick said, adding that his agency could assess penalties of up to US$136,000 against rule-breakers.

Industry reacted with unease to the requirements, with the Society for Human Resource Management releasing a poll last month saying 90 percent of employers surveyed would find it difficult to implement the mandate.

They asked the government to seek public comment before rolling out the regulations.

David French, of the National Retail Federation, warned "the Biden administration has chosen to declare an 'emergency' and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season." (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2021-11-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Abandoned Cambodian aircraft fate unresolved after 14 years

The fate of a seriously deteriorated Cambodian aircraft that has been abandoned at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport for 14 years remains unresolved.













The Cambodian aircraft has been abandoned at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport for 14 years.



The Boeing 727-200 was left at Noi Bai Airport by Cambodias Royal Khmer Airlines in May 2007 following a technical malfunction. Royal Khmer Airlines also ceased operations in 2007.



In November 2014, the Cambodian State Secretariat of Civil Aviation notified Vietnams aviation authorities that the Royal Khmer Airlines operator's certificate had been revoked. The ill-fated Boeing B727-200 had it's aircraft registration removed in October 2008 by Cambodian authorities.



The Cambodian State Secretariat of Civil Aviation said Vietnam could deal with the abandoned aeroplane.













Technical checks by the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam showed that the aeroplane had been seriously damaged.



In 2017, the Ministry of Transport was assigned to organise the auction for the aircraft. However, to date, the auction has attracted no participants as they said the aircraft now couldnt operate and could only be used for display and as a coffee shop.



Noi Bai Airport has proposed to use the aircraft for fire and counter-terrorism drills. Meanwhile, another company has also proposed to buy the aircraft at VND3 billion which would be paid for by goods and it would be turned into a coffee shop. All these proposals were rejected.



The Vietnam Aviation Academy has also proposed to the Ministry of Transport to use the passenger jet for its training activities but their proposal has also been left pending for over half a year.
Guling in Fujian leverages legacy of international exchanges, eyes spot as global tourist destination

People's Daily Online) 17:14, November 03, 2021

With a long history of friendly exchanges with the outside world and beautiful scenery, Guling in Fuzhou city, southeast Chinas Fujian province, aims to build itself into an international tourist destination.

Previously known in the West as Kuliang, Guling may be a place that most Chinese people have never heard of. But for Milton Gardner, who had once served as a professor of physics at the University of California in the United States, this place in the eastern suburbs of Fuzhou is where he spent about 10 happy years of his childhood.

Photo shows Yixia Villa in Guling, Fuzhou city, southeast Chinas Fujian province. (Photo courtesy of Fuzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism)

In 1901, Gardner came to Fuzhou with his parents when he was a baby. The family returned to California in 1911. In the ensuing decades, Gardner longed to revisit his childhood hometown in China, but he was never able to realize his dream. Regrettably, he reportedly kept uttering the words Kuliang, Kuliang in his final hours.

After he passed away, his wife made several trips to China to try to find the place, but her efforts ended in vain. Things began to look up when Mrs. Gardner discovered 11 faded stamps with Kuliang, Fuzhou written in the postmarks. With the help of a Chinese student studying in the US, she finally figured out that Kuliang was actually Guling in Fuzhou.

On April 8, 1992, an article entitled Ah! Guling about the touching story of the American couple was published on Peoples Daily, which moved many readers.

Photo shows an article entitled Ah! Guling about the touching story of the American couples journey to find Guling, which was published by Peoples Daily on April 8, 1992.

Among the readers touched by the story was Xi Jinping, who was then Secretary of the Communist Party of China Fuzhou Municipal Committee. After reading the article, Xi immediately had government officials contact Mrs. Gardner and invite her to Guling.

Later that same year, Mrs. Gardner arrived in Fuzhou and visited Guling. She finally saw for herself the beauty of Guling and the warmth of local people. She thanked her friends in Fuzhou for their hospitality and everyone who had helped to make her husbands dream come true, saying that she would take the sincere friendship of the people of Fuzhou back to the US.

This widely told story has become yet another chapter in the history of friendly exchanges between China and the US.

Photo shows the Guling Post Office in Guling, Fuzhou city, southeast Chinas Fujian province. (Photo courtesy of Fuzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism)

Gardner was one among a number of foreign residents living in Guling in the early 1900s. Back then, Western missionaries, scholars and merchants built a multicultural community in Guling, with over 300 villas of diversified styles, along with other buildings such as churches, clinics, and public welfare halls, turning it into a popular summer resort for them to escape the extreme heat in Fuzhou. Some of these buildings have been well preserved down to this day, such as the Yixia Villa and Guling Post Office, embodying the legacy of cultural exchanges between China and the West.

By taking advantage of this legacy, Fujian has attached great importance to the development of the Guling scenic spot in recent years. In January 2018, the scenic spot was upgraded to become a national-level tourist resort. Last year, Guling received 6 million tourists.

To realize the goal of building itself into a global tourist destination, Guling will further explore the history and culture of the scenic area, enhance ecological protection and improve its transportation conditions, according to the administrative committee of the Guling scenic spot.

Photo shows the Masion Castel in Guling, Fuzhou city, southeast Chinas Fujian province. (Photo courtesy of Fuzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
20 years after WTO entry, China delivers global dividends

Xinhua) 08:08, November 04, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 has become a watershed event in China's development, not just in terms of the phenomenal changes happening within China, but also its interaction with the rest of the world, in particular the global spillovers of its economic expansion.

Contributing nearly 30 percent on average to world economic growth over the past 20 years, China now boasts the largest middle-income population in the world and is a major trade partner for over 120 countries and regions, and the largest trade partner of the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

With openness as the hallmark of its development, China has seen its economy increasingly intertwined with its partners. Its trade with the United States is a good example. Despite trade frictions over the past few years and constant calls from some U.S. officials for "decoupling with China," the two nations' economic ties have taken on more features defined as "mutually dependent."

In the first eight months of this year, Chinese exports to the United States, rather than falling, expanded 22.7 percent year on year, official data shows.

Meanwhile, Forbes magazine revealed that imports from China accounted for 19 percent of all U.S. goods imports in 2020, the highest of any trading partners of the United States, while four out of 10 of the fastest-growing imports into the country came from China.

The benefits of growing Sino-U.S. trade to American households are also tangible. The Ministry of Commerce said that each U.S. family could save 850 dollars per year from the trade. From lamps to birthday candles, from flip-flops to mouse traps, "Made in China" goods have long become an indispensable part of the everyday life of many U.S. households.

Back in November 2019, when the U.S.-initiated tariff battles with China raised concerns about unilateralism and protectionism, more than 190 U.S. enterprises attended the second China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, taking up the largest exhibition area of any participating country. Among the delegation were big names such as General Electric Company and Qualcomm.

Last year, up to 70 percent of the world's top 500 companies and industry leaders that participated in the first two expos were seen in the third CIIE, including global industry leaders Ford, Louis Dreyfus and Roche.

This year, the total exhibition area of the fourth CIIE, which is due to open on Thursday, has been further expanded to 366,000 square meters. The number of exhibitors from countries like the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom will be greater or the same as in previous expos, as will their total booth areas.

Some 90 enterprises from 33 least-developed countries are expected to participate, displaying a large number of their specialty goods and tapping into China's market.

Back in 2001, few people could have imagined China hosting the world's first import expo at the national level to share its development dividends with the world and seek ways out to boost global economic growth.

China's growing appeal and weight is actually justified by its track record as a trustworthy member of the WTO and its consistent stance of championing globalization and inclusive development.

OVER-FULFILLING WTO COMMITMENTS

China has over-fulfilled the commitments it made upon accession to the WTO, a fact that has been praised by several WTO director-generals and recognized by most WTO members.

China has fulfilled its pledge of lowering the import tariff for goods to 9.8 percent from 15.3 percent when it joined the WTO 20 years ago. At present, its overall import tax stands at 7.4 percent, lower than the average level of developing members of the WTO and is approaching the level of developed members of the organization.

The country has also significantly reduced non-tariff barriers for international trade, removing non-tariff measures covering 424 tariff categories by January 2005.

In terms of trade in services, China pledged to open the market for 100 subsectors in nine business categories by 2007. It actually opened nearly 120 subsectors, around 20 percent more than it promised.

In the meantime, the ranking of China's annual flow of outbound direct investment has risen to the third place from 26th at its accession to the WTO. The investment has accelerated technological progress in host countries, promoted their economic development and improved local people's livelihood by creating a large number of job opportunities.

Since it joined the WTO, China has played a major role in the production of consumer goods, with its advantages in skilled labor, infrastructure and manufacturing systems. Its exports have provided enterprises and people worldwide with high-quality goods at a low price.

China's actions have demonstrated its resolve in supporting developing countries. In recent years, it has remained the largest export market for the least developed countries, absorbing one fifth of the exports from those countries.

REACHING OUT FOR SHARED PROSPERITY

While walking the talk, China is also willing to embrace the world with open arms and provide public goods to boost global development.

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, for instance, has grown into the world's largest international cooperation platform and the most popular public good over the past eight years, with over 200 cooperation agreements inked between China and over 170 countries and international organizations.

Defying trade protectionist headwinds, China has been active in building open cooperation platforms. The establishment and hosting of a series of open platforms, including the China International Fair for Trade in Services, the China International Consumer Products Expo, as well as the upcoming CIIE, has facilitated the unimpeded flow of trade and provided a much-need boost to the global economy.

China means business in opening its doors wider and making its market more accessible. It has pledged to extend tax incentives for overseas investors, introduced the first negative list for services trade, and further expanded the catalog of industries that encourage foreign investment.

Foreign-funded companies have benefited from their presence in China and cast a vote of confidence with bigger bets. Tesla, for example, has decided this year to make the gigafactory in Shanghai its primary vehicle export hub after the company broke ground on its first overseas plant two years ago.

The road ahead, however, won't be all rosy. Rising de-globalization, the persistent pandemic and looming climate change pose challenges that have put the world at a development inflection point.

At the just-concluded G20 Rome summit, China has, in response to these common challenges, stressed efforts to practice true multilateralism, step up macroeconomic policy coordination and adopt responsible macroeconomic policies to avoid negative spillovers on developing countries.

In pursuit of a path of green, low-carbon and sustainable development, it has reiterated the goals of peaking its CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, calling on the developed countries to honor their funding commitments to developing countries to help them cope with climate change.

Much has been realized and achieved in the past two decades despite all the twists and turns. For China, a global growth driver and advocate of multilateralism, there is always more to be expected.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Xi presents China's top science award to aircraft designer, nuclear expert

Xinhua) 08:09, November 04, 2021

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and other Party and state leaders, including Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng, pose for group photos with representatives of the winners before an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Wednesday presented China's top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, awarded the medals and certificates at an annual ceremony held in Beijing to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements.

Xi shook hands with the two scientists and expressed his congratulations.

Xi and other Party and state leaders, including Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng, together with the two winners of the top science award, presented certificates to other award recipients.

Gu Songfen is an aircraft designer at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Ltd., the nation's leading aircraft maker. Born in 1930, Gu is an academician at both the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Wang Dazhong, born in 1935, is an internationally reputed nuclear scientist.

A CAS academician and former president of Tsinghua University, he has dedicated himself to the research and development of advanced nuclear energy technologies.

Wednesday's ceremony was attended by approximately 3,000 people and honored 264 projects, with 46 winning the State Natural Science Award, 61 the State Technological Invention Award, and 157 the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award.

Eight foreign experts and one international organization won the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award for their collaboration with Chinese scientists.

Prior to the ceremony, Xi and other leaders gathered to take group photos with the representatives of the winners.

On behalf of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang extended congratulations to the award recipients and thanked foreign experts for their participation in and support of China's science and technology development.

Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said that the Party attaches great importance to sci-tech development, and respects and cares for sci-tech workers.

He noted that sci-tech workers have made brilliant achievements since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and protecting people's lives and health.

As China has started a new journey toward building a modern socialist country in all aspects, Li noted that innovation's central role in China's modernization drive must be upheld to raise the country's sci-tech innovation capacity, unleash its society's creative potential, and shape new development advantages.

Li called on the sci-tech workers to focus on the major strategic needs of the country, accelerate breakthroughs in key and core technologies, and promote major sci-tech projects.

An open competition mechanism to select the best candidates for important sci-tech programs shall be promoted to give opportunities to those who are willing to innovate, dare to innovate, and are able to innovate.

He said the country shall continue to strengthen its basic research, respect the laws of science, combine free exploration with problem-orientated research, strengthen long-term and stable support, encourage enterprises and private capital to increase input for basic research, deepen basic education reform and strengthen basic disciplines in universities.

The premier added that a sound scientific research ecosystem shall be fostered to encourage innovation and tolerate failure, and to support researchers to make more original achievements.

He highlighted the leading role of enterprises in innovation, more inclusive policies to encourage innovation, the concentration of innovation resources in enterprises, and the deeper integration of enterprises, universities and research institutes.

Li also pledged to promote integrated innovation among all enterprises despite their scale or position on the industrial chain. He also pledged to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and accelerate the application of sci-tech achievements.

He called for more efforts to overcome the obstacles that hamper innovation and creativity, and urged further efforts to deepen sci-tech mechanism reform and effectively ease the burden on researchers.

Li also said China will deepen international cooperation in science and technology and achieve win-win results through greater opening-up.

Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the ceremony.

Han said he expects sci-tech workers to follow the examples set by the award recipients, carry forward the glorious tradition of serving the country through science and technology, shoulder historical responsibility, and help the country achieve a high level of self-reliance in science and technology at an accelerated pace.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Country to 'honor its word' on climate

China Daily) 08:14, November 04, 2021

China's special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said that Beijing will "honor its word" and peak emissions before 2030, as he encouraged other nations to back up climate targets with detailed action plans.

Speaking to media at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 26, in Glasgow on Tuesday, Xie said that China is already taking concrete action to achieve its ultimate aim to reach net zero emissions before 2060.

"We not only make promises, we honor our word," Xie said. "We have already released an action plan for peaking emissions."

In response to calls from some stakeholders for the Paris Agreement to change the global warming limit to 1.5 Cinstead of its current range of 2 to 1.5 CXie said he did not support any plan which could jeopardize previous progress.

"If we are to only focus on 1.5 C, it means we are destroying this consensus between all parties," Xie said. "And maybe countries will demand a reopening of negotiations if we are to change the target to only 1.5 degrees, and that will be a long process."

Xie also called on developed nations to make good on the promise of $100 billion in annual climate financing for the developing world, a goal that was missed last year.

"Developed countries have largely failed to honor their commitment for climate finance, which has a negative impact on mutual trust between developed and developing countries."

At the World Leaders Summit at COP 26 on Monday, United States President Joe Biden expressed his regret that his predecessor, Donald Trump, had taken the US out of the Paris Agreement.

"I guess I shouldn't apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States, in the last administration, pulled out of the Paris accord and put us sort of behind the eight ball," he said. "We will demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but, hopefully, leading by the power of our example."

Participants were eager to hear from India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his country entered the conference without an updated pledge on emissions' reductions.

Xie Zhenhua, China's special climate envoy, attends COP 26 in Glasgow on Monday. [Photo/Xinhua]

"By 2070, India will achieve the target of net-zero emissions," Modi said, adding that India is aiming to meet half of its energy needs from renewable power by 2030.

In a written statement sent to the leaders summit, President Xi Jinping reiterated the country's commitment to reducing emissions.

"We will foster a green, low-carbon and circular economic system at a faster pace, press ahead with industrial structure adjustment, and rein in the irrational development of energy-intensive and high-emission projects," he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his frustration at the lack of progress made on climate change. According to new UN projections, current emissions' reductions pledges from COP members, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, will miss the 2 to 1.5 C target by a wide margin.

Guterres said that as things stand the NDCs will "condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7 degree increase".

"We are still careening toward climate catastrophe," Guterres said. "We are digging our own graves."

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is the host of COP 26, likened global warming to a doomsday device, counting down toward disaster.

"It's one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock and we need to act now," he said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
How developed nations shift blame on climate change

(Global Times) 08:20, November 04, 2021

Though they have the world's highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions and transfer polluting companies to less developed regions, in terms of confronting climate change, developed countries continue to shift the blame to developing countries, and have failed to fulfill their obligations. The familiar scene could have resurfaced and caused tensions at the 26th United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.

Xie Zhenhua, China Special Envoy for Climate Change, noted on Tuesday in Glasgow that "rich nations made a significant pledge to channel $100 billion a year to less wealthy nations by 2020 twelve years ago, and this hasn't been fulfilled."

He underlined the significance of putting the Paris agreement into practice, saying it is important to translate the political will of countries into action, CGTN reported.

Why COP26 matters - Global disasters caused by climate change. Graphic: GT

As the COP26 summit continued, Western media reported that Chinese and Russian leaders were absent from the meeting, which they said "raised questions" on the countries' commitment to lower emissions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping participated in the summitthrough a written statement on Monday, reaffirming China's goals and measures, and called on stronger global actions on climate change. Last year, the country announced its goals to achieve a carbon peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.

Instead of reflecting on what they have done to the global climate, some Western politicians and activists have been pressuring developing countries.

US President Joe Biden expressed his disappointment by claiming China and Russia "basically didn't show up" on the issue during the G20 summit in Rome.

"Why should the UK be making changes when China is still polluting?" climate activist Greta Thunberg told BBC on Sunday.

Observers noted that Western politicians are always busy peddling this narrative in an attempt to shift the responsibility of climate change, turning a blind eye to the fact that developed countries, even today, are the main culprits of CO2 emissions.

Developed countries have been "polluting, managing, then transferring [the pollution to other regions]." But developing countries such as China and India, will not follow them in damaging the environment of the planet, a Chinese top environmental researcher told the Global Times.

"The practice of politicizing the climate issue is not conducive to global climate cooperation," he said.

Too many to record

Accusing China and other developing countries in terms of greenhouse gas emissions is a common trick for some Westerners, who, after enjoying the benefits at the cost of polluting the environment for decades, now start to blame other countries for "emitting too much greenhouse gases."

World Bank data released by the World Bank in March show the per-capita carbon emissions of China was 6.4 metric tons per citizen, 15th in the world, much fewer than major developed countries including the US (17.6), Canada (15.7), Australia (14.9) and South Korea (13.3). In 2018, the average CO2 emissions of high-income countries and regions was 10.3 metric tons per capita, while for China was 7.4.

A previous study of two Stanford University scientists found that the US, Japan and many Western European nations managed to "'outsource' more than half of their CO2 emissions and evade responsibility for their share of the climate-altering pollution," by exporting their production needs to developing countries.

Looking back at the last half century, developed countries led by the US contributed the overwhelming majority of emissions in their industrialization. World Bank statistics show that the US' CO2 emissions stayed more than 18 metric tons per capita between 1966 and 2008, with a high of 22.5 in 1973.

Aside from domestic emissions, the US-led Western world started setting up factories in developing countries, including China and India, under pressure from environmentalists. Pollution-intensive companies accounted for 29.12 percent of all companies built in China by foreign investors in 1991, and 39 percent of foreign-invested companies in China were "highly polluting," Chinese media reported.

The US outsourced about 11 percent of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world, according to the study, "Consumption-Based Accounting of CO2 Emissions," published in 2010.

Of the CO2 emissions linked to goods and services consumed in many European countries, more than a third "actually occurred elsewhere," the report said.

On the other hand, as the "world's factory," 29 percent of China's emissions were attributed to products shipped to developed countries, an article released on the Chinese carbon emissions website tanpaifang.com in 2014 said.

For decades, the US' overseas factories have polluted developing nations, some of which even led to deadly incidents. On December 3, 1984, residents in Bhopal, India were poisoned by 40 tons of toxic gas from a factory owned by Union Carbide. The poison gas leak killed 15,000 more in the succeeding weeks, and "hundreds of thousands still suffer from the effects of exposure and contamination of land and water," the Guardian reported in an article in memory of the disaster's 25th anniversary.

Developed countries first enjoyed rapid development, and then transferred pollution after the ecosystem was destroyed and the environment was polluted, while developing countries only take over polluting industries to defeat poverty, Li Haisheng, president of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, told the Global Times.

But the world has a shared future for life on earth. He quoted Friedrich Engels as saying, "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves much on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us."

Broken promise

During the United Nations climate summit in 2009 in Copenhagen, developed countries promised to channel $100 billion a year to developing countries by 2020 to help them confront climate change, but the promise was not fulfilled, making it another example of how developing countries failing to act.

Funding has become a focus in Glasgow, which, according to a Nature report in late October, has increased tensions between different parties before COP26.

The report quoted Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development, as saying that "By the time we get to Glasgow, if they haven't given us another $100 billion [for 2021], then they are completely unable to meet their obligations."

Developed countries claimed that they contributed $80 billion in climate finance to developing countries in 2019, and $78 billion in 2018.

Developed and developing countries also differ on what finance means.

"To developing countries, the financing are public funds used for aid, but for the developed countries, they talk about the money to 'mobilize,'" Wang Mou from the research center of urban and environment studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who is also a member of the Chinese delegation to COP26, said during a recent online conference.

Even the funds developed countries claim to have given are inflated. For instance, they even count the travel fees of some experts. The Nature report also pointed out that road construction projects were counted as climate aid.

"Funding is not a donation or aid, but an obligation of developed countries," noted an officer from the Chinese delegation on Monday.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Nepal receives 1.6 mln doses of China-donated COVID-19 vaccine

Xinhua) 08:52, November 04, 2021

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi (L), and Birodh Khatiwada, Minister for Health and Population in Nepal, are seen at a vaccine handover ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal on Nov. 3, 2021. Nepal on Wednesday received a fresh shipment of 1.6 million Vero Cell vaccine doses granted by the Chinese government to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior official from the Nepali Ministry of Health and Population said. (Photo by Hari Maharjan/Xinhua)

KATHMANDU, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Nepal on Wednesday received a fresh shipment of 1.6 million Vero Cell vaccine jabs granted by the Chinese government to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior official from the Nepali Ministry of Health and Population said.

"China-donated 1.6 million doses of Vero Cell vaccine arrived in the country on Wednesday afternoon," Upendra Dhungana, chief of the Logistic Management Section under the Department of Health Services, told Xinhua.

China has become the largest source of vaccines for Nepal by providing to its southern neighbor nearly 15 million doses of the Vero Cell vaccine developed by the Chinese Sinopharm company through the grant, commercial purchase and the COVAX mechanism, and the efficacy and efficiency of the vaccine has been widely accepted by the Nepalese, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi said at the handover ceremony held at the Health Ministry.

Hou voiced China's readiness to work with Nepal to implement initiatives relating to cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines and green development under the Belt and Road Initiative by forging a closer partnership.

"As we are seeking to vaccinate all the population against COVID-19 by mid-April next year, cooperation and facilitation from China in delivering the vaccine are very helpful in achieving the target," said Birodh Khatiwada, Minister for Health and Population in Nepal.

Nepali health officials said the new Chinese vaccine shots would soon be dispatched to various districts for vaccinating more of the population.

"The District COVID-19 Crisis Management Centers have been authorized to determine who should be vaccinated with the newly-arrived vaccine shots," Sagar Dahal, chief of the National Immunization Programme under the Ministry of Health and Population, told Xinhua.

Nepal, battered now by two waves of the coronavirus, started its vaccination campaign in late January, and 8.71 million of the 30 million population have received the first dose by Wednesday, while 7.38 million have been fully vaccinated.

Of them, 5.82 million have been administered first shot with the Chinese vaccine, and 4.16 million with two doses of the Chinese jab, according to the health ministry.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Top Chinese political advisor meets Republic of Congo senate president

Xinhua) 08:57, November 04, 2021

Wang Yang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, meets with President of the Senate of the Republic of the Congo Pierre Ngolo via video link in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Gao Jie)

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisor Wang Yang on Wednesday met with President of the Senate of the Republic of Congo Pierre Ngolo via video link.

Noting that China and the Republic of Congo boast a long-standing friendship, Wang, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, said the two sides should deepen political mutual trust, expand pragmatic cooperation, strengthen coordination and cooperation in international and regional affairs, and push for the in-depth development of their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

The CPPCC is ready to enhance friendly exchanges with the Senate of the Republic of Congo and aim for more outcomes in China-Republic of Congo cooperation and China-Africa cooperation, Wang added.

Ngolo thanked China for providing invaluable support to fight the pandemic and aid economic and social development in the Republic of Congo. He said the Congolese side will continue to give firm support to issues concerning China's major core interests, and the Congolese Senate is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with the CPPCC to continuously consolidate the political, social and public support for the development of bilateral relations.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China urges U.S. to rectify mistakes over China Telecom Americas

Xinhua) 09:19, November 04, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- China firmly opposes the U.S. order revoking and terminating China Telecom Americas' business operation in the United States, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Wednesday.

The MIIT has urged the U.S. side to reverse the decision and treat Chinese telecom companies in a just and non-discriminatory manner.

The U.S. side should stop the wrong practices of abusing the concept of national security and politicizing economic issues, said the MIIT in a statement, calling on the United States to foster a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies investing and operating in the country.

China Telecom Americas has been operating in the United States for nearly 20 years, always abiding by local laws and regulations and complying with U.S. oversight, said the MIIT, adding that the company has provided high-quality services to many customers in accordance with commercial principles.

The ministry said the U.S. side discontinued China Telecom Americas' section 214 authority based on conjecture and suspicion without listing specific "illegal" facts, which does not conform to the United States' image of being a market economy and undermines the legitimate rights and interests of global consumers including U.S. users.

In recent years, the United States has continued to sanction Chinese companies in disregard of facts and truths, citing national security concerns.

The MIIT noted that the United States has seriously violated international economic and trade rules by abusing its state power to suppress Chinese companies unjustifiably.

Necessary measures will be taken to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese companies, the ministry added.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Two scientists win China's top science award

Xinhua) 09:20, November 04, 2021

Photo taken on Dec. 1, 2020 shows a portrait of Gu Songfen. Gu Songfen, winner of China's top science award, is an aircraft designer at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Ltd. (AVIC), the nation's leading aircraft maker. Born in 1930, Gu is an academician at both the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Leading the development of China's J-8 and J-8 II fighter jets, Gu has made contributions to the country's advancement in aviation weaponry and equipment. (Xinhua)

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two Chinese scientists, aircraft designer Gu Songfen and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong, won China's top science award Wednesday for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

Gu is a leading scientist at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Ltd., the nation's leading aircraft maker. Born in 1930, Gu is an academician at both the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Leading the development of China's J-8 and J-8 II fighter jets, Gu has made contributions to the country's advancement in aviation weaponry and equipment.

Wang Dazhong, born in 1935, is an internationally reputed nuclear scientist.

A CAS academician and former president of Tsinghua University, he has dedicated himself to the research and development of advanced nuclear energy technologies.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Booster shot of COVID-19 vaccines to be available in Hong Kong

Xinhua) 09:35, November 04, 2021

HONG KONG, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- A booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccines will be available to eligible groups in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) government said on Wednesday.

People with weak immunity and high risks of infection with the virus are able to receive their third doses starting from Nov. 11.

Since the launch of the government inoculation program in late February, around 4.63 million people, or 68.7 percent of the eligible population, have taken at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccines, while around 65.8 percent of them have been fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection (CHP) reported three new imported cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, taking the total tally to 12,352.

The newly reported cases are imported cases with mutant strains, involving patients arriving in Hong Kong from the United States and Britain.

A total of 48 cases have been reported in the past 14 days and all were imported, according to the CHP.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Discover five highlights of the 4th CIIE

People's Daily Online) 10:06, November 04, 2021

The exterior of the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai), a main venue for the fourth China International Import Expo. (People's Daily Online/Yan Daming)

The upcoming 4th China International Import Expo (CIIE), which is scheduled to be held in Shanghai from Nov. 5 to 10, is expected to achieve renewed success in terms of the total exhibition area, level of participants, and the expo's setup, among other advancements.

Expanded exhibition scale

The total exhibition area for this year's CIIE will be further expanded to 366,000 square meters, compared with the 360,000 square meters for last years event.

This year's CIIE, similar to the previously held expo, will feature six business exhibition areas  namely, food and agricultural products, automobiles, intelligent industry and information technology, consumer goods, medical equipment and healthcare products, and trade in services.

The platform will be available not only for developed countries, but also developing ones, including countries along the Belt and Road as well as least developed countries.

This year, overseas enterprises are much more willing to participate in the CIIE, which reflects their interest and confidence in seizing new opportunities in the Chinese market, said Sun Chenghai, deputy director of the CIIE Bureau.

Participants of a higher level

Over 80 percent of Fortune Global 500 and industrial leaders who participated in the exhibition last year will return for the 4th CIIE.

The worlds three major auction companies, three leading high-end consumer goods companies, four top food dealers, as well as the top 10 automobile groups, and the top 10 enterprises in industrial electrics, medical equipment and cosmetics, respectively, are expected to launch new products at the expo.

Meanwhile, the exhibition areas have been designed to be more cutting-edge and specialized. Specifically, 13 themed zones focusing on low-carbon energy and environmental technologies, among others, will be set up at this year's expo.

The expo will also offer a platform for communication between enterprises and the government by setting up 14 special committees, including those concerning smart transportation and new energy.

Online country exhibition launched for the first time

Due to recent Covid-19 flare-ups, the 4th CIIE will launch an online country exhibition for the first time, supported by 3D modelling, virtual programs and other new technologies. Visitors can skim through content and access product information by clicking the relevant links.

This new feature also enables more countries, including the Congo, Kiribati, Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, and Palestine to join as newcomers in attending the country exhibition. The expo aims to provide a platform for developed, developing and the least developed countries.

Strong purchasing demand

Domestic and foreign buyers have actively signed up for the expo, and a total of 39 trading groups and 599 sub-groups will enter the venue to engage in on-site communication and purchases.

Among all registered buyers from home and abroad, enterprises account for 82.6 percent. As for domestic companies, private firms account for 64 percent, while small- and medium-sized enterprises make up 70.5 percent of the total  both being at a relatively high level.

In terms of industries, there is expected to be more professional visitors from manufacturing, wholesale and retail industries, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the total, which is largely in line with the expo's setup.

Hongqiao Forum

The Hongqiao International Economic Forum, as a key part of the CIIE this year, will have the theme of "World economy amidst profound changes: Global economic cooperation in post-COVID era."

The forum will be held both online and offline, gathering participants from governments, industries and academic institutions to share their wisdom in twelve parallel sessions focusing on cutting-edge issues such as green development and the digital economy.

A highlight of the forum will be a special session on win-win cooperation among countries, as this December marks 20 years since China joined the World Trade Organization, with a special activity showcasing the progress and achievements in China's opening-up over the past two decades.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
US doomed to fail in playing Taiwan card to contain China

10:43, November 04, 2021 By Yu Xiao ( People's Daily Online

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinkens recent clamor for Taiwans meaningful participation throughout the United Nations system has severely violated the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, breaking the previous promises Washington has made and constituting a gross breach of international norms. It also sent a wrong signal to the separatist forces of Taiwan independence on the island and exposed the Cold War mentality of the US along with its sinister scheming to use Taiwan as a means to contain China.

There is only one China in the world and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. A total of 180 countries, including the US, have established diplomatic ties with China on the basis of adhering to the one-China principle. This principle has formed into a global consensus and is one of the universally recognized basic norms governing international relations, brooking no provocation and distortion.

The UN is an inter-governmental organization composed of sovereign states, and Taiwan, as part of China, is not qualified to join the UN. In regards to issues such as Taiwans participation in international organizations, it has always remained a clear and consistent position that such issues should be handled in line with the one-China principle. Five decades ago, the 26th Session of the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758, which resolved the issue of Chinas UN representation in political, legal and procedural terms once and for all. UN mechanisms, specialized agencies and the UN Secretariat must uphold the one-China policy and Resolution 2758 in handling issues related to Taiwan.

Certain US politicians have claimed that they support the one-China principle and oppose Taiwan independence, and yet on the other hand, they have meanwhile touted and whitewashed Taiwans so-called democracy and contributions, while at the same time throwing their support behind Taiwan, engaging in sophistry and misleading public opinion. Having unreasonably challenged the one-China principle by misconstruing it as an issue about values, the conduct and deeds of these US politicians regarding Taiwan represents nothing more than an attempt to contain the development of China by playing the Taiwan card.

The Taiwan authorities have obstinately stuck to the Taiwan independence separatist position, refusing to recognize the 1992 Consensus and going all out to expand its so-called international space, going further down the separatist path of Taiwan independence. This has posed the greatest real threat to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and is the fundamental reason why Taiwan has not been able to participate in the activities of multilateral organizations, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). While making unreasonable remarks in reference to Taiwans representation and international space, the Taiwan authorities in fact are actually steering the island towards independence.

Recently, in a blatant affront to the one-China principle, some US politicians have made use of every possible occasion to hype up the Taiwan question in helping Taiwan take part in UN activities and in supporting the expansion of its international space. The essence of such acts is to create one China, one Taiwan, brazenly challenging the one-China principle. Fifty years ago, the US failed in its attempt to create two Chinas or one China, one Taiwan at the UN. If the US continues to backpedal, it will find itself standing on the opposite side of 1.4 billion Chinese people and the overwhelming majority of countries around the world, a course that is bound to fail.

The Taiwan question is a matter that belongs to Chinas domestic affairs and allows for no external interference. No one should underestimate the strong determination, will and capacity of the Chinese people when it comes to safeguarding the countrys sovereignty and territorial integrity. For some time now, the US has continued to err in both word and deed over the Taiwan question, with China having remained resolute in responding as necessary. If the US continues to play the Taiwan card, it will inevitably pose enormous risks to China-US relations, seriously undermining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and seriously harming the interests of the US itself.

China urges the US side to honor its commitments, including earnestly following the one-China principle and abiding by the three China-US joint communiques as well as Resolution 2758 of the UN General Assembly. The US must refrain from making irresponsible and erroneous remarks, stop helping Taiwan to expand its so-called international space, avoid sending erroneous signals to the forces of Taiwan independence, and safeguard the political foundations of China-US relations through concrete actions.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
China's Zhejiang launches system to help SMEs optimize digital transformation

Xinhua) 11:03, November 04, 2021

HANGZHOU, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- A new service system has been put into use to optimize the process of digital transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The system was co-launched by the School of Management of Zhejiang University and Inclution, a digital transformation service provider based in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.

As the country's industrial enterprises proceed with intelligent transformation, SMEs are confronted with a series of challenges, such as the lack of funds, talent and methods.

"Some enterprises may lose confidence in digital transformation because mistakes are costly," said Wang Kefei, CEO of Inclution.

The system can help enterprises quantify and score the digitalization level, dynamically evaluate the management status, before generating management upgrade reports, according to Wu Xiaobo, a professor with Zhejiang University.

The reports of the previous day will be automatically sent to enterprises via the system, giving suggestions for enterprise management upgrade and improvement, added Wu.

With the help of the system, the overall cost of running businesses will be reduced, said Wang.

Founded in 2018, Inclution has grown into one of the largest professional MES (Manufacturing Execution System) service providers for SMEs in the manufacturing sector in China.

China is speeding up digitalization in the manufacturing sector. As outlined in the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives through the Year 2035, China will promote the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, and empower the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, so as to spur economic growth.

The company will introduce industrial software to manufacturing enterprises in poor mountainous areas, and invest in more digital resources and technological services there, according to Wang.

"SMEs' demand for digital transformation is very urgent," Wang said. "We're working with these companies to search for areas that can be optimized, especially to tackle common problems in production, procurement, inventory and error-prone piecework."

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Three Great Transitions in the Chinese economy

15:58, November 04, 2021 By Elias Jabbour ( People's Daily Online

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 11, 2020 shows a view of downtown Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)

Interesting sign of the times. Anyone who reads the economics section of a Western newspaper for a moment will have the impression that the Chinese economy is on the verge of collapse. This time, the signs are coming from the Chinese GDP growth forecasts for 2021, which according to Goldman Sachs, have dropped from the initial projection of 8.2 percent to 7.8 percent. It is worth mentioning that no capitalist economy in the developed world will grow above 5.7 percent.

Western analysts have not learnt from their own mistakes. For nearly thirty years, they have been repeatedly predicting the collapse of the Chinese model in one way or another. As for themselves, liberal democracy and economic development are two sides of the same coin. It's like a religion, or a worse version of what Karl Marx called vulgar economics.

In the Chinese case, the reasons for this new imminent collapse are related either to the recent energy problems the country has faced or due to a lack of confidence regarding the implementation of the common prosperity program advanced by Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is likely that the United States has launched an international campaign for the right to inequality in the face of the real threat to capitalism that China poses if the goals around common prosperity are achieved.

In the political struggle there are no coincidences. What we are facing is a semiotic storm embraced by organic intellectuals of US imperialism spread all around the world. Their aim is not just to defame the Chinese experience, as they did in the past with the Soviet Union, but to criminalize intellectuals who show any sympathy for the recent achievements of the Chinese revolution, by closing spaces for those intellectuals to freely exchange their opinions both within the universities and in the press  including the very individual who is writing this article. How to explain the clear invisibility imposed on the great Chinese achievement of eradicating extreme poverty, which, in my opinion, is one of the greatest achievements in human history?

So, what might be really happening to the Chinese economy? What I've been pointing out is that the contradictions that China has faced in its recent development trajectory are related to what I denominate as the three great transitions the country is facing at the moment. This notion of three great transitions has very clear theoretical and historical assumptions, which are related to the fact that the development process is characterized by leaps from one tipping point to another. Given this intrinsic characteristic, which is natural to any historical process, long-term development processes are marked by cyclical launches of institutional innovations, which by turn are capable of mediating and overcoming the contradictions generated by the development process itself, thus setting in motion a new development cycle.

Furthermore, the development process is also characterized by a sequence of historically conditioned transitions. In the Chinese case, its successful development process since 1978 lies precisely in the State's capabilities to provide immediate solutions to the contradictions that emerged throughout the process. But what differentiates the current moment from the previous ones is that China is going through a moment when three transitions are taking place in the country simultaneously. This has required the maximum concentration of Chinese governance energies in an external environment of imperialist pressure and large internal issues.

Aerial photo taken on July 20, 2021 shows a view of a forest area in Shangyang Village of Taihuyuan Township in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)

The goal of common prosperity is actually the synthesis of the great solutions put forward by the Communist Party of China to stand up to the challenges brought by the three great transitions. From a more historical and strategic point of view, we are facing what Friedrich Engels called the birth pangs of the birth of a new society. Socialism is an ever-changing qualitative reality in China, and is still in its childhood.

The first transition is related to the challenge of reducing carbon emissions in an economy that is heavily dependent on this form of energy generation, which requires better and necessary coordination between the goals outlined by the Chinese government with the demands of the real economy.

The second transition is also very challenging, as it is related to a cycle of institutional innovations, characterized by profound changes in the countrys ownership schemes. Let me explore this a bit further. In some of my recent articles published in Brazil and abroad, I have stated that the economic reforms started in 1978 made room for the emergence in China of a new class of economic-social formation  namely, the emergence of market socialism. One of the fundamental characteristics of this new economic and social formation is the coexistence of different forms of property, with public property being the dominant one.

Over the last forty years, the continuity of the Chinese development process was guaranteed by waves of institutional innovations that reorganized successively the role of the State and other forms of property. In my research efforts, I noticed that, on the one hand, the role of the State was amplified from a qualitative point of view, that is, it has increased its capacity to intervene in reality. On the other hand, the private sector has increased its role from a quantitative point of view. In other words, a powerful public sector in the Chinese economy has emerged over the last few decades alongside a gigantic private sector.

In the current stage of development reached by China, those waves of institutional innovations can no longer deliver the same positive effects as they did in previous moments. The Chinese government itself has realized this and has resorted to a cycle of institutional innovations of a new type, aiming for a leap in the quality of the country's property schemes. And this is not a smooth process.

In other words, the replacement of private property in some sectors (education, health and real estate) by public property and/or regulation is not an easy process given the novelty that this type of transition entails. It is a very different thing to socialize the means of production in an environment of economic ruin (for example, Russia in 1917 and China in 1949) compared to an economy where there are huge private players at the scale of Evergrande, a huge real estate group.

The third great transition is what I have called the productivity challenge. The country is in a transition towards new and higher forms of accumulation and economic planning, with the clear objectives of achieving both an increase in labor productivity and technological sovereignty. This challenge has a non-trivial political component: the firm and violent opposition imposed by US imperialism over China and its possibility of having access to technologies around the so-called microchips.

It is from the perspective of these Three Great Transitions that I believe we should interpret the recent behavior of the Chinese economy.

The author is a Brazilian economist and professor at the School of Economics, State University of Rio de Janeiro. He can be reached on Twitter: @eliasjabbour

This article does not necessarily reflect the views of People's Daily Online.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
French writer launches online petition for objective view of China

(Global Times) 16:02, November 04, 2021

French writer Maxime Vivas

"We have the right to speak differently about China!" Maxime Vivas, French writer and journalist, started on Tuesday a petition on the world's largest petition platform, change.org, to share his stories of being insulted and attacked for his objective views on China and called on all sectors of society to have an objective view of China.

"Respect China like we respect ourselves!" said the petition letter released on Tuesday. In the letter Vivas told how he was insulted and smeared as an "agent" of China after he published books that have told the true stories of China.

Vivas, who went to Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region twice, published a book, Uygurs, to put an end to the fake news, in December 2020. In his book, Vivas described his observations of Xinjiang's counter-terrorism efforts and the region's development, and analyzed the relations the US National Endowment for Democracy has with the secessionist World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and some NGOs like Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The petition noted that an avalanche of insults have fallen on Vivas for his views on Xinjiang. Some French media called him a "useful idiot," or "conspirator" bought by China. These "biased attacks" are made under flimsy criticism of his books.

Vivas told the Global Times that so far, more than 150 people from different fields globally signed the petition.

These signatories, including journalists, a former ambassador, and a TV host, let us cease the war drums of imperialism intended to silence us in a "high intensity conflict." "Respect China like we respect ourselves!" the letter said.

This is a petition launched by ordinary people such as scholars and journalists, and I hope it can become a significant event supported by the international community, Zheng Ruolin, a senior Chinese media professional and European studies expert who lived in France for several years, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

As one of the participants in the online petition, Zheng said as a friend of Vivas, he has been supporting his position on China-related matters,for example, on Xinjiang. "He has been telling the truth about China not for fame or profit. There's no selfishness in it, all for the truth," Zheng said.

There is a bias in China-related stories published in French media. Zheng said many media outlets in France are also controlled by capital, and their stances have been influenced by the capitalists behind them. Sometimes, they are manipulated by capital from the US.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
A divided America casts a shadow on global response to climate change

16:11, November 04, 2021 By Dennis Meng ( People's Daily Online

Climate hypocrite Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Even at the very height of climate emergencies, when US coastal cities were battered by furious hurricanes, when California was set ablaze by months-long infernos, and when an unprecedented snowstorm left millions of Texans out of power, there still existed two realities in the US: one where climate prophets cried out for drastic changes in an almost dogmatic manner, while in the other concurrent reality, climate change was being branded as nothing more than a hoax.

Americas schizophrenic attitude on climate change, which is manifested in its seasonal flip-flopping on policy-making, reckless pulling in and out of international agreements, and dissonance in actions among states, has been troublesome and worrying. A defector who has retreated from a joint battle and remains partially skeptical about his mission. Can he ever be trusted or relied upon to lead? many may ask.

Facts illustrate that the international community can put their trust in the USoccasionally or periodically. Whether or not the world should rely upon the US to curtail its Greenhouse Gases (GHG), this is a matter that primarily depends on who is in the White House.

Photo taken on Sept. 3, 2021 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

The narrow defeat of Al Gore, former US vice president and a long-time climate change activist, in the 2000 American presidential election basically set the tone for the countrys two-decades-long self-contradiction on the climate affair.

Soon after George W. Bush assumed office in 2001, he started to adopt his doctrine of indifference by excluding the US from the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that took aim at containing GHG emissions. Citing potential economic setbacks, the Bush administration did not only work to hamstring state efforts on emissions reductions, it also allowed energy companies like Exxon to hold sway over energy policies, meanwhile constraining scientists from discussing such issues as global warming and climate change.

The advent of Barack Obamas presidency did bring about a flicker of hope. When he delivered an ambitious speech at the UN Climate Change Summit in 2014 and declaimed that, Theres one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate, the world took what he said as a late awakening, one that foretold the superpowers resolution to change. Change did not come, unfortunately. With most of his second term overshadowed by a congressional cul-de-sac, Obama had only limp power to carry out his climate plans.

A demonstration is held to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement outside the White House in Washington D.C., June 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Yan Liang)

During the 2016 US presidential election, the mounting discontent among Americans, who often associated climate policies with job cuts and lower wages, in red states, especially in the countrys Rust Belt area, helped Donald Trump rise to power. And Trump later did answer their call, by scrapping his predecessors Climate Action Plan and withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement, a global framework agreed to avoid dangerous climate change, on his first day as the US president. Under Trump, Americas climate efforts had nearly stalled, if not backtracked towards the pre-Obama era. In a matter of two years, the US relapsed into its old bad habits, as the Trump administration rolled back the Clean Power Plan , Obamas signature environmental policy to reduce the countrys carbon emissions, while invalidating restrictions on methane emissions flaring, and delisting climate change from its national security threats.

Thats what Joe Biden has inheriteda policy shambles, in which Obamas climate legacy, if there was any, was all but crippled by his predecessor. Worse still, in pushing forward his climate agenda, Biden needs to confront not only a looming congressional impasse which in the past had sent Obamas climate dreams down the drain, but also political infighting within his own partytwo Democratic senators have cast their doubts on Bidens 1.75 trillion social spending and climate bill and with one still reluctant to vote.

But beyond the formidable task of repairing Americas fractured climate policies, the ultimate headache for Joe Biden in his bid to carry out his climate policies is the cold reality that some states just do not align with federal policies and their voters wont budge an inch on the issues.

Just take a look at Texas. One month after a devastating snowstorm pounded Texas, which was interpreted by many as a climate change warning presaging the future, the states legislators advanced two energy bills to shield fossil fuels from climate initiatives. Oil and gas is the lifeblood of the Texas economy, said Phil King, an elected member of the Texas House of Representatives, in defense of such climate-unfriendly bills. Similar legislative bills have also been passed in Kansas, Minnesota and Ohio, among other US states, casting a cloud over Bidens climate agenda.

Photo taken on Oct. 31, 2021 shows a general view of the opening ceremony for COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Kingdom. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

At the Glasgow Climate Change Conference that started last week, world leaderssome attending the conference in person while others virtuallyhave offered their respective roadmaps to address climate change. Bidens version is to ramp up investments into clean energy and shore up weaknesses in infrastructure. Glass Cow [Glasgow] must be the kick off of a decade of ambition and innovation to prepare our shared future, he said.

That declaration sounded familiar right? Remember when last time his running mate had made a similarly encouraging bid in Copenhagen in 2009, the outcome turned out to be a deceptive disappointment. Given Americas one-step-forward-two-steps-back climate policy and American states entrenched divisions in substantiating those policies, a more rational response is to take Bidens promise with a grain of salt.

(Web editor: Meng Bin, Bianji)
China witnesses surging demand in roadside assistance due to exploding vehicle population

17:59, November 04, 2021 By Han Xin ( People's Daily

China is seeing a rising demand for roadside assistance as the country's motor vehicle population expands rapidly, hitting 297 million by September this year.

Yang Zhi, a roadside service specialist of Chinese electric carmaker Nio, charges a car with a mobile charging vehicle. (People's Daily Online/ Han Xin)

According to statistics, a total of 92.4 million events of roadside assistance were handled across the country last year, and over 200,000 people are currently working in the industry.

Yang Zhi is a roadside service specialist of Chinese electric carmaker Nio. At 9 pm one day, he received an assistance order from a Nio user on his mobile phone. After confirming the location and demand of the user, Yang went for him on a roadside assistance vehicle.

Unlike traditional roadside assistance events, which often happen on expressways, this time, the vehicle needing assistance was in an underground parking lot of an office building.

"The owner of the vehicle said he'd have a long trip by the vehicle tomorrow, but he had no time to charge it. So he invited us to help him, and the whole assistance must be completed within two hours," Yang said.

Trucks are being assembled at a factory of Chinese car manufacturer BYD in Huaian, east China's Jiangsu province, Aug. 10, 2021. (People's Daily Online/ Zhao Qirui)

After arriving at the designated location, he inspected both the exterior and interior of the vehicle and then uploaded a video of the inspection. Simultaneously, the inspection system, based on the battery life and available charging facilities near the location, generated an optimal solution - battery swapping and then charging.

Yang looked at his watch after completing all operations and commented, "We're half an hour earlier."

A moment later, Yang's mobile phone rang. "A user's power battery got only 10 percent left, and he's stuck. We must go to him with our mobile charging vehicle," Yang said.

After a dozen minutes' drive, Yang pulled over in front of the vehicle that needed assistance. He opened the tailgate of his charging vehicle, and two fully charged battery packs were inside.

"They look clumsy, but they charge faster than fixed charging poles," Yang explained, plugging a cable into the charge point, and soon the user's vehicle "revived."

Technicians with the local power supply department check the conditions of charging poles in Liuzhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Aug. 24, 2021. (People's Daily/Li Hanchi)

"To help the users overcome their range anxiety is also a kind of assistance, and we'll reach them wherever they are as long as they need us," Yang told People's Daily. The man traveled over 3,000 kilometers during this year's National Day holiday to offer roadside services for Nio users. "I finished over a dozen orders one day, and there was no time left for me to sleep," he said.

"I've visited almost all tourist sites around Beijing since I started working two years ago," Yang told People's Daily.

"Look, though I need only a phone, a toolbox, and a working suit for my profession, it's never simple. All devices are digital. If you are blind to coding, you'll never get the hang of it. The operation also has standards, and even the torques are set when you turn the screws," he said.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Online Chinese training program offered for South African tour guides

18:05, November 04, 2021 By Wang Lei ( People's Daily Online

The 2021 "Chinese+South Africa Tour Guide" training organized by the Department of Tourism South Africa and hosted by the Confucius Classroom of the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics resumed Nov. 2 in South Africa.

Dr. Xiong Jia, the lecturer from the Department of Tourism, School of Business Administration of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, was invited to give a speech with the theme of "Chinese Outbound Tourists to South Africa: A Supply and Demand perspective", with the participants from China and South Africa exchanging their opinions online after the speech.

Xiong Jia introduced developments related to Chinese outbound tourism, using a range of data that illustrated the strengthening of comprehensive strategic cooperation between China and South Africa, and with more and more Chinese tourists visiting South Africa, showing that the Chinese tourism market deserves more attention from South Africa.

Xiong Jia also shared the latest research findings of China. Potential and actual Chinese tourists have a positive perception of South Africa as a tourist destination and are interested in visiting or revisiting South Africa.

To help South African tour guides better understand Chinese tourists, Xiong Jia also introduced the most prominent and recognizable behavioral preferences of Chinese outbound travelers, and suggested that tourism services should further focus on the young middle class, the main force for Chinese outbound tourism.

South African tour guide participants and the students in China actively discussed and interacted with each other. The Chinese students were curious about the food and festivals in South Africa, wanting to get more tips on traveling to South Africa, while moreover expressing their wish to learn more about how the South African people view Chinese tourists. The South African tour guides answered earnestly and expressed their welcoming attitude for travel to South Africa after the epidemic, expressing their strong desire to expand cooperation between China and South Africa in more fields of tourism.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
We Are China

China supports equitable distribution of critical medical supplies globally: Xi

Xinhua) 20:49, November 04, 2021

BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- China supports the equitable distribution and smooth trading of critical medical supplies, including vaccines, around the world, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday.

Xi made the remarks while addressing the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo via video.

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)
BEIJING, Nov. 4 -- Recently, a pontoon bridge element of an engineering and chemical defense brigade under the PLA 73rd Group Army mobilized over 100 vehicles and equipment to carry out drills under the scenario of "a bridge was destructed by enemy fire strike and thus the adjacent troops were blocked" in unfamiliar waters off southern Fujian Province, southeast China. This exercise aimed to improve the troops support capability during river crossing operations. The element managed to avoid obstacles and artillery blockades in various formations, and succeeded in laying a pontoon bridge with camouflage, across which more than 20 vehicles and equipment passed at a time.
By Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, Deputy Director General of the Information Office of the Ministry of National Defense (MND) and Spokesperson for the MND



Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense (MND) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), answers reporters' questions at a regular press conference on October 28, 2021. (Photo: mod.gov.cn)

(The following English text of the press conference is for reference. In case of any divergence of interpretation, the Chinese text shall prevail.)

First of all, I would like to announce a piece of news.

The PLA Army Engineering University will host the 8th International Army Cadets Week (IACW) in Nanjing from November 9 to 11. Under the theme of Capabilities of Army Officers in Joint Operations and Their Cultivation, this years IACW will be held both online and offline and will include keynote speeches, guest forums, seminars, tabletop exercise of simulated UN peacekeeping operations, and introduction to traditional Chinese culture. Cadets from army academies in countries including the US, Britain, Japan, Pakistan, Australia, Brazil and South Africa will be invited to participate online, while cadets from twelve PLA Army academies will come to the main venue in Nanjing. This event aims to provide an international exchange platform for young army officers and cadets around the world and promote mutual understanding and learning.

Question: President Xi Jinping attended a commemorative meeting marking the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the Peoples Republic of Chinas lawful seat in the United Nations (UN) and delivered an important speech on October 25. China has been praised by the UN as a key force in UN peacekeeping operations (UNPKOs) for its active participation. Please tell us more about the Chinese militarys contribution to international peacekeeping.

Answer: At the commemorative meeting marking the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the Peoples Republic of Chinas lawful seat in the UN, President Xi Jinping said that the past five decades hadwitnessed Chinas peaceful development and its commitment and dedication to the welfare of all humanity. In the past 50 years, the Chinese people have upheld the authority and sanctity of the UN and practiced multilateralism, and the cooperation between China and the UN has deepened steadily. China has faithfully fulfilled its responsibility and mission as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC), stayed true to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and upheld the central role of the UN in international affairs.

China takes an active part in UNPKOs. It is the largest troop-contributing country and the second largest financial contributor to peacekeeping operations among the permanent members of the UNSC. In the past 30-odd years, the Chinese military has sent around 50,000 peacekeepers to participate in 25 UNPKOs. The Chinese Blue Helmets have defied difficulties and dangers and earnestly fulfilled their duties. In the mission areas, they have made great efforts to supervise ceasefires, protect civilians, stabilize local situations, save lives, and spread the seeds of hope. Their positive contributions to promoting the peaceful resolution of disputes, maintaining security and stability, and accelerating economic and social development in relevant countries have been highly commended by various parties.

In the new era, the Chinese military has comprehensively implemented the pledges announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN Peacekeeping Summit. We have built an 8,000-strong standby peacekeeping force and strengthened support for UNPKOs. Currently, more than 2,200 Chinese peacekeepers are deployed in the UN Headquarters and seven mission areas, namely South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali, Lebanon, Abyei, Western Sahara and the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). This year, the Chinese military organized the Shared Destiny-2021 UN peacekeeping field training exercise and the Shared Mission-2021 command post exercise. We held a series of online activities including experience-sharing meetings, a reception on the International Day of UN Peacekeepers, and a peacekeeping exhibition. We also released some promotional videos on peacekeeping. These events demonstrate Chinas firm resolve to safeguard the UN-centered international system.

As President Xi quoted, Green hills immerse in the same cloud and rain. The same moon lights up towns however far away. No matter how the international landscape evolves, the Chinese military will stay committed to the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, abide by the basic principles of the UN Charter and peacekeeping operations, and honor its solemn pledge of safeguarding peace. We will actively respond to the UNs Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, continue to support and participate in UNPKOs and make new contributions to the UN peacekeeping cause.

Question: It is reported that the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gave a so-called speech on October 10, claiming that the two sides across the Taiwan Strait should not be subordinate to each other and that Taiwan will continue to beef up its military strength, showcase its resolve of defense, and go all out to stop any unilateral change of the status quo. Do you have any comment on that?

Answer: President Xi recently delivered an important speech at the commemorative meeting marking the 110th anniversary of the Revolution of 1911. He reiterated Chinas commitment to the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus, denounced the Taiwan independence separatist activities, and reaffirmed Chinas firm resolve and will to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity. He also pointed out that Chinas reunification and national rejuvenation is a historical trend and charted the future direction of the cross-strait relations.

Essentially a force seeking Taiwan independence, the DPP authorities have been instigating hostility and clamoring confrontation in disregard of the interests of the Chinese nation and the welfare of people in Taiwan. They are trying to hijack the public opinions in Taiwan in the name of a so-called consensus and colluding with overseas forces to pursue independence. Their despicable act of forgetting their heritage, betraying their motherland, and splitting the country once again proves that secessionist activities aimed at Taiwan independence are the greatest obstacle to Chinas national reunification and a grave danger to national rejuvenation.

The Chinese nation has an honorable tradition of opposing separatism and safeguarding unity. Resolving the Taiwan question and realizing complete national reunification concerns the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation and is an inevitable requirement for achieving national rejuvenation. It is the sacred mission of the PLA to resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and thwart the interference of external forces and the secessionist actions for Taiwan independence. National reunification is the trend of history and the right cause. When the PLA defends, it is immovable like a mountain. When it strikes, it will fall like a thunderbolt. Bearing firmly in mind its missions and duties, the PLA will stay highly alert and always be ready to fight and win whenever needed by the Party and the people.

QuestionState Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe recently had a video call with Argentinas Defense Minister . Please brief us on the call and comment on the mil-to-mil relations between China and Latin American countries in recent years.

Answer: General Wei Fenghe, State Councilor and Defense Minister of China, had a video conference with Argentine Defense Minister Jorge Taiana on October 21. They exchanged views on relations between the two countries and the two militaries, and other issues of mutual interests. Minister Wei said China and Argentina are trustworthy friends and partners. He said the Chinese military is willing to make joint efforts with the Argentine military to expand cooperation in high-level exchanges, personnel training, military health, and international peacekeeping, so as to push the relationship between the two militaries to a new level.

In recent years, the Chinese military has carried out fruitful cooperation with counterparts from Latin American countries in areas such as mutual visits, professional exchanges, personnel training, equipment and technology, and joint exercise and training.

First, the Chinese military has maintained high-level communication with defense leaders in Latin America. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Minister Wei Fenghe has kept strategic communication with the defense leaders of multiple Latin American countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Peru, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela via video link or letters. These communications help China and Latin American countries deepen mutual trust and friendship.

Second, we have cooperated in fighting the pandemic and build a China-Latin America community with a shared future. After COVID-19 first broke out in China last year, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago was the first foreign country to provide medical supplies to the Chinese military. When the pandemic later spread to the whole world, the Chinese military also provided vaccines and medical supplies to the militaries of various Latin American countries, including Argentina, Cuba, Peru, and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. China and Latin American countries are working together to build a China-Latin America community with a shared future.

Third, we have made positive progress in building multilateral platforms for China-Latin America military exchanges. In recent years, the Chinese military has established exchange platforms and mechanisms with the militaries of Latin American countries on multiple levels and through such channels as the China-Latin America Defense Forum, seminar for senior Latin American military officers, and the seminar on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. In late July this year, the first China-Latin America peacekeeping video webinar was successfully held. More than 50 peacekeeping officials and experts from China and ten Latin American countries attended the webinar, marking a new achievement in building multilateral platforms for military exchanges between the two sides in time of the pandemic.

Question: At the end of September, officials from Chinese and American defense authorities co-hosted the 16th Defense Policy Coordination Talks (DPCT) via video. The two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on the relations between the two countries and the two militaries, and on issues of mutual interest. According to news released on the website of the US Department of Defense, the meeting is an important component of the Biden Administrations ongoing effort to maintain open communication channels with China and responsibly manage the competition between the US and China. Please comment on the current relationship between the two militaries.

Answer: The China-US military-to-military relationship is an important part of the state-to-state relations. Chinas attitude toward developing the mil-to-mil relationship with the US has been consistent, clear, positive and sincere. At the end of September, a leader of the Office for International Military Cooperation of Chinas Central Military Commission (CMC) and a deputy assistant secretary of defense of the US Department of Defense co-chaired the 16th China-US DPCT via video, which was the first institutional dialogue between the two militaries after the new US administration came into office.

The two sides had pragmatic and in-depth discussions on the mil-to-mil relationship and other issues of mutual interest, and achieved some important outcomes. First, the two sides exchanged views on their current defense relations and the future arrangements for military exchanges. They agreed that maintaining a stable relationship between the two militaries serves the interests of both sides. Second, the two sides had constructive discussions on strengthening crisis management, confidence building and cooperation between the two militaries. Third, the two sides exchanged views on policy issues affecting the mil-to-mil relationship. The Chinese side reiterated its major concerns on relevant issues and reaffirmed its commitment to safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests.

China and the US are two major countries of great influence in the world. The Chinese side believes that maintaining strategic communication and strengthening exchange and cooperation between the two militaries is beneficial to the two sides and in line with the general expectations of the international community. China-US relationship has gone through a journey of ups and downs in the past 40-odd years since the establishment of diplomatic ties. The past has proved that dialogue and cooperation lead to a brighter future while conflict and confrontation a dead end. Justice and reason must be upheld in handling the relationship. With all the difficulties and challenges in todays world, we hope the US side can have a correct perception of China, adopt a rational and practical China policy, work with China in the same direction, and take concrete actions to promote a stable and sound mil-to-mil relationship. On that basis, the two sides can jointly answer the question of the century, which is, how to develop the China-US relations in the new era.

Question: Recently, China and Russia held the Joint Sea-2021 military exercise and conducted a joint maritime patrol for the first time. The two events have captured extensive attention in the world. Could you please introduce the highlights and outcomes of the events?

Answer: From October 14 to 23, the Chinese and Russian navies successfully held the Joint Sea-2021 military exercise and the first joint maritime patrol. The two activities further improved the two navies capabilities of jointly dealing with maritime security threats and preserving regional peace and stability, and added new connotations to the relations between the two countries and the two militaries. The activities are in the annual China-Russia military cooperation plan and are not targeted at any third party.

There are four points I want to mention for the joint exercise and the first joint maritime patrol. First, we made breakthroughs in the equipment used and in force operations. For the Chinese side, multiple platforms including the 10,000-ton class Type 055 destroyer and Y-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft participated in the exercise for the first time. The Russian side sent large anti-submarine vessels and new type frigates. The participating forces conducted sea drills in the mission area under complex meteorological conditions and operated jointly. Second, directing for unplanned scenario was emphasized in organizing and commanding. Commanding officers from the two sides have strengthened interoperability through the exercise. Third, the training subjects were designed to be closer to actual combat and more confrontational. Fourth, the joint exercise and the joint patrol were carried out in close succession. After the joint exercise, naval ships of the two sides continued to carry out a joint patrol in the Sea of Japan, the West Pacific, and the East China Sea. It was the first joint maritime patrol between Chinese and Russian navies.

Unity creates strength, and true friendship lasts. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation. China stands ready to work with the Russian side to consolidate bilateral friendship for generations to come, implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, and deepen the relationship between the two militaries. The Chinese side will strengthen strategic coordination and practical cooperation with the Russian side in all areas and on different levels to make greater contributions to the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era and safeguarding international and regional strategic stability.

Question: The COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading across the world with new outbreaks in many countries. Could you please brief us on the efforts of the Chinese military in international anti-pandemic cooperation?

Answer: Since the COVID-19 broke out, the Chinese military, while conducting rigorous pandemic prevention and control itself, has actively planned and participated in international cooperation in battling against the pandemic, taking concrete actions to fulfill its international responsibilities as the military of a major country and implement the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Since last year, leaders of the Central Military Commission have held talks or exchanged letters with the defense and military leaders of many countries to discuss pandemic prevention and control. The Chinese military has had anti-pandemic cooperation with the militaries of more than 50 countries by providing medical supplies, sending military medical expert teams, and holding video conferences to exchange experience in pandemic prevention and control.

Since February this year, as part of its efforts to implement President Xi Jinping's important pledge of making China's COVID-19 vaccine a global public good, the Chinese military has provided 36 batches of vaccine assistance to the militaries of 28 countries, including Pakistan, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

The history of human civilization is also the history of man fighting and defeating plagues. Upholding the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, the Chinese military will stand side by side with its foreign counterparts through the hard times and keep deepening and broadening international anti-pandemic cooperation, so as to make new and greater contributions to building a global community of health for all.

Question: It is reported that the Chinese military held a workshop for political education innovation in Beijing from October 11 to 12. Please brief us on the PLA's efforts in building a political education system in the new era.

Answer: This year, the military has been studying and implementing a series of important instructions and requirements of President Xi on strengthening and improving political education. Following the spirit of the militarys political education work conference, we organized a workshop on innovative political education which focused on improving the quality and efficiency of inculcation teaching. Solid progress has been made in building a political education system in the new era in the campaign of studying Party history. There are four main characteristics:

Firstly, taking Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military as the mainstay of teaching, the military has given full play to the role of classroom education as the main channel and made good use of the textbooks for political education in the new era to promote Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military among its rank and file. Secondly, we have underlined the political responsibility of leading officials in setting examples and taken measures to improve their studying and teaching styles so that they can educate soldiers with dedication . Thirdly, we have pushed forward the transformation of teaching. We will increase the accuracy of inculcation teaching, generate new driving forces for self-education, make use of information technology and network, and cultivate soldiers with the culture of building a strong military. Fourthly, we have strengthened the supervision system to strengthen the quality and efficiency of political education. We will improve the system of supervision by the Party committees, pioneer the path of regional coordination in political education, strengthen the training of political teachers, and enhance the binding force of supervision to build a pattern of political education with the Party committees exercising overall planning and supervision.

Question: It is reported that the result of the selection of the first National Textbook Development Award was announced a few days ago. 38 projects recommended by the military won awards. The award-winning textbooks are all urgently needed by the troops for improving combat readiness. Please introduce the development of military training textbooks of the Chinese military.

Answer: The military training textbooks constitute an important base and support of military training and talent cultivation. Since the start of the selection of the first National Textbook Development Award, the military have attached great importance and followed the procedure to organize selection, evaluation and application from bottom to top. Six military-recommended textbooks won the first prize of excellent textbooks and 26 won the second prize. Two military units won the Advanced Groups Award and four military personnel won the Advanced Individuals Award.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the military has implemented a series of important instructions of President Xi on military training and textbook development in a thorough way. We aim to build a military training textbook system in line with the doctrines and training guidelines, compatible with the development of the organizational structure, and weapons and equipment, and suitable for the transformation of the achievements in combat tactics and training methods. At present, the PLA has about 26,000 textbooks for military training, institutional education and continuing education, which has played an important role in improving the troops training level, the quality of institutional education, and the ability and quality of officers and soldiers.

There are four main characteristics. Firstly, we follow the right direction. Following Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military and the military strategic guideline for the new era, the military stays committed to cultivating talents with great moral character and strong war fighting competence, and has pushed the integration of the Partys innovative theoretical achievements into military training textbooks.

Secondly, we focus on real-combat training. Taking generating and improving combat capabilities as the fundamental purpose, the military has built a new-type military knowledge system, which is more relevant and practical. More than 4,000 new textbooks matching the military training guidelines have been successively delivered to the troops.

Thirdly, we emphasize building the system. The military has scientifically designed the composition of the textbook system and the arrangement of the projects, issued suggestions on the development of textbooks, published technical specification for compiling textbooks, pooled efforts to address difficulties of compilation and revision, and promoted the systematic and coordinated development of the military training textbook system at all levels and in all fields.

Fourthly, we give priority to quality. By laying emphasis on meeting the demands from battlefield, troops, and the future, the military has reviewed the experience of military training, borrowed ideas from the latest achievements in military theories, improved the standard for excellent textbooks, built quality textbook projects and continued to make textbooks more scientific, professional and standardized.

QuestionIt is reported that the Beijing Xiangshan Forum Webinar 2021 was held in Beijing recently. Experts from all over the world discussed hotspot international security issues, conducted in-depth exchanges and shared their wisdom. Please provide more information about this webinar.

Answer: From October 25th to 26th, the Beijing Xiangshan Forum Webinar 2021 was successfully held in Beijing. More than 50 well-known experts and scholars from over 20 countries and international organizations met via video link. They had discussions and in-depth exchanges under the theme of Pursue Win-win Cooperation, Advance Global Security Governance. The webinar achieved the goals of building consensus, enhancing mutual trust and strengthening cooperation.

This years webinar has three features. First, the subjects are highly relevant. The webinar include six sessions, namely major power relations and Asia-Pacific security, multilateralism and international system, roles of small and middle powers in international security, the situation in Afghanistan and its implications for regional security, strategic stability: impasse and way out, and international security cooperation in the context of COVID-19. The subjects cover the latest hotspot issues and changes concerning international security. Second, participants are widely representative. Well-known scholars, think-tank experts and former government officials from countries including the US, Russia, India and Vietnam and international organizations including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross attended the webinar and had open and in-depth exchanges with Chinese experts. Third, many consensuses and outcomes have been achieved. Experts and scholars had heated discussions on a number of important issues. They fully recognized the role and contribution of China and the Chinese military in building a community with a shared future for mankind, promoting international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic and maintaining regional peace and stability.

As President Xi pointed out, plants with strong roots grow well, and efforts with the right focus will ensure success. The Beijing Xiangshan Forum will adhere to the concept of equality, openness, inclusiveness and mutual learning, continue to be a high-level cooperation and exchange platform and play an important and active role in helping experts from all parties to discuss security problems, find solutions and promote cooperation.

Question: It is reported that a recently released strategic guidance of the US Navy claimed that the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has radically expanded both its size and capabilities, growing to become the worlds largest fleet, and that the Peoples Republic of China represents the pacing challenge. The US Secretary of the Navy stressed to maintain the strength of the US Navy in the future and strengthen its combat readiness. Some analysts believe that this is the first time the US has admitted that American and Chinese navies are already equally powerful. What's your comment on this, please?

Answer: Out of their ulterior motives, some people in the US are trying to exaggerate and hype up the China military threat through excessive praise. China is only a pretext for them to expand military power and increase defense spending to maintain global military hegemony. We are firmly opposed to that.

The world has long suffered from hegemony. Backed by its superior military power, the US started wars and caused confrontation and separation many times in disregard of the international law and the basic norms governing international relations. Its hegemonic and bullying acts are evident to the international community. For some time, the US has been wrongfully viewing China as the biggest competitor and a systematic challenge. It has taken the so-called maximum pressure approach towards China. Those who are obsessed with winning by force will eventually hurt themselves. This kind of bullying and forceful approach is very risky. It will increase the risk of confrontation between the two countries and the two militaries and threaten regional and world peace and stability. In fact, this approach hurts everyone involved, including the US itself. The recent collision accident involving a US nuclear-powered submarine is a clear proof. We hereby once again urge the US side to take the concerns of other countries seriously, take a responsible attitude, give a detailed explanation on the accident as soon as possible, and provide the international community and regional countries with a satisfactory explanation.

As President Xi said, "Standing at a new historical starting point, China will stay committed to the path of peaceful development and always be a builder of world peace. China will stay committed to the path of reform and opening-up and always be a contributor to global development. China will stay committed to the path of multilateralism and always be a defender of the international order." China firmly upholds a national defense policy that is defensive in nature and will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony. The Chinese military is always a staunch force for maintaining world peace and stability and building a community with a shared future for mankind.

If you stick with the old engine of the Cold War era, you will never catch up with the pace of the new journey for world peace and development. We urge the US side to abandon the outdated Cold War mentality and zero-sum game concept, take a more objective and rational view of Chinas defense and military development, and play a constructive role in maintaining international and regional peace and stability.

Question: According to media reports, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida mentioned during a recent interview that Japan plans to modify its National Security Strategy (NSS) and consider the possibility to develop preemptive attack ability against enemy missile bases. Earlier this month, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) carried out the verification of takeoff and landing of the F-35B aircraft on the helicopter carrier Izumo. What's your comment on this?

Answer: We have noted relevant reports. Japans Asian neighbors and the international community are closely following Japan's military and security developments because of historical and realistic reasons. Japans attempt to seek military expansion through hyping up the so-called external threats is against its commitment to the exclusively defense-oriented policy. It is a very wrong and dangerous move. We urge the Japanese side to earnestly reflect on its history of aggression, learn lessons from history, take prudent actions in military and security fields and do more things conducive to promoting regional peace and development.

Question: Recently, Chinese and Russian foreign ministers made a joint statement on strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and pointed out that the lack of transparency of the US biological militarization activities at home and abroad has caused great concerns and queries among the international community. Whats your comment, please?

Answer: Recently, foreign ministers of China and Russia made a joint statement on strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The statement pointed out that the biological militarization activities conducted by the United States and its allies at home and abroad have aroused global concerns and queries on their compliance with the BWC. Those activities also caused serious risks to the national security of China and Russia, and threatened the security of relevant regions.

As everyone knows, the US is the only country blocking the negotiations for a protocol that includes a verification regime to strengthen the BWC. Its bio-militarization activities have aroused great concerns of the international community. Even US media called the Fort Detrick biological base the center of the US governments darkest experiment. Many American people and the international community have long worried that the opaque activities in the base might be illegal and insecure. Lack of transparency of the activities in more than 200 American bio-labs outside the US territory has also caused widespread queries and protests. Moreover, the US has rejected to restart negotiations for the protocol, opposed the establishment of a verification regime and stubbornly stood on the opposite side of the international community in the past two decades, which only caused greater suspicions and concerns of other parties.

Biological militarization activities are crucial issues to international peace, security and national interests of all nations. We urge the US side to adopt an open, transparent and responsible attitude, make a serious response to the concerns of the international community, earnestly fulfill the obligations of a state party to the BWC and make comprehensive clarifications on its bio-militarization activities conducted both at home and abroad.

Question: It is reported that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities have repeatedly hyped up Taiwan's military ties with the US, and Taiwans so-called Army Commander led a delegation to visit the US recently. During the visit, the delegation attended the annual meeting of the Association of the US Army and met representatives from the US defense department and the military. Whats your comment on this, please?

Answer: We have taken note of relevant reports. The Chinese side has expressed our serious concern and lodged solemn representations to the US side and urged the US side to make clarifications. The one-China principle is the political foundation of China-US relations. China strongly opposes any official contacts and military ties between the US and Chinas Taiwan region. For some time, some people in the US have been going against the political commitment of one-China and keep playing the Taiwan card. These actions have sent extremely wrong signals to the Taiwan independence separatist forces and led to significant negative impact on the relations between the two countries and two militaries, as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. If the US continues to stubbornly hold to the illusion of using Taiwan to contain China, and attempts to substantially improve its military ties with Taiwan with the salami-slicing approach, China will resolutely take countermeasures and respond.

The historical task of complete reunification of our country must be and will be realized. Any attempt to obstruct national reunification and rejuvenation by soliciting and depending on foreign support is doomed to failure. The PLA will take all necessary measures to stop the interference by external forces and separatist actions by the Taiwan independence forces, and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.


The US deliberate concealment of the truth about its nuclear-powered submarine USS Connecticuts collision incident courts criticism and questions in the international community. The photo shows the submarine berthing at a port. (File photo)

Recently, the US, Britain and Japan held a joint maritime exercise in sea areas near Okinawa, and the US also held the Phase II of Malabar Exercise 2021 with Japan, India and Australia in the Bay of Bengal. Analysts said these operations signified the enhancing momentum of the Biden administrations integrated deterrence strategy.

The concept of integrated deterrence initiated by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin emphasizes using existing capabilities, and building new ones, and deploying them all in new and networked ways to forge reliable, flexible and powerful deterrence. It also calls for more input in the R&D of cutting-edge technologies, the development of new combat concepts, and closer cooperation with allies. According to the US side, integrated deterrence has now been identified as the cornerstone of US national defense and central to the development of its forthcoming 2022 National Defense Strategy, in order to effectively cope with major-country competition and defend its hegemony. The connotations of this concept will be more clearly demonstrated through time, but its implementation will face multiple obstacles and objections from both inside the outside the country.

Restricted defense budget. The top three priorities of the Biden administration are combating the pandemic, recovering the economy, and bridging the rifts between the Democrats and the Republicans, in the society, and between the US with its allies. Therefore, a lot of money has to be poured into battling the pandemic and rebooting the economy. With a fixed amount of defense budget, the US military is torn between buying weapons and equipment and developing military technologies. The Fiscal Year 2022 defense budget request made earlier on allocated USD 112 billion to R&D, a 5.1% increase from the granted amount in FY2021, whereas the appropriation for weapon and equipment purchase was reduced by 5.6% year-on-year. But this request was modified by the House of Representatives by decreasing the R&D allocation and increasing the budget for equipment purchase. In pushing its integrated deterrence, the US military will face mounting pressure from Congress and the military complexes.

Divisions among allies. For political, economic, security and many other considerations, Americas allies are not totally on the same page with the US on China and Russia-related issues, so its not easy to have their full support on the integrated deterrence. In Europe, although the 2021 NATO Summit was instigated by the US to designate China as a power that poses systemic challenges, France and Germany have repeatedly emphasized that China is not an enemy and their attitude and stance on global affairs differ from the US too. In the Indo-Pacific region, although Japan, India and Australia have strengthened cooperation with the US under the QUAD regime, they are obviously more concerned with their own security interests than paying for what the US does.

Uncertainty in R&D of cutting-edge technologies. The uncertainty in the development and application effect of futuristic technologies has brought uncertainty to Americas integrated deterrence too. AI and 5G are key areas of the Pentagons future R&D, but how they will be used in the military field and what impacts they will generate remains unclear and requires more efforts to find out, during which detours and mistakes may be inevitable.

(The author is from the PLA Academy of Military Sciences)
The Environment Ministry is fining Mercedes-Benz W77.6 billion for illegally tampering with emissions tests, the biggest fine ever for a carmaker here (US$1=W1,225).

The ministry on Wednesday said Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Porsche tampered with the emissions of around 40,000 diesel cars sold in Korea.

Mercedes-Benz issued a statement defending its data and said it has "justifiable technical and legal grounds" for them and refused to comply with the ministry's orders.

But the ministry found that the emissions data of 37,154 Mercedes-Benz diesel cars, including the C200d sedan and another 11 models, 2,293 Nissan Qashqai SUVs, and 934 Porsche Macan S diesel SUVs manufactured from 2012 to 2018 had been tampered with.

They were found to emit excessive amounts of nitrogen oxide, which is a toxic air pollutant. The selective catalytic reduction devices installed in the cars effectively reduced the nitrogen oxide during testing but operated at lower rates during actual driving.

The ministry accused the automakers of installing "illegal tampering software."
Renault Samsung is likely to return to profitability thanks to the popularity of its new small SUV XM3.

The automaker has exported over 50,000 units of the vehicle in just five months since sales in Europe took off. If the brisk performance continues, it could see its fortunes turn around and earn W300 billion to W400 billion in annual profit (US$1=W1,182).

Renault Samsung said on Wednesday that 50,840 XM3s have been exported so far this year, mainly to Europe, where the SUV sells under the name of Arkana -- 19,737 to France, 6,245 to Spain, 5,785 to Germany, 4,275 to Italy, 4,268 to Poland, 1,884 to the U.K. and 1,254 to Belgium.
Press Release

November 4, 2021 De Lima: Comelec's contract with F2 Logistics a clear disregard of a conflict of interest case Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima criticized the Commission on Election's (Comelec's) signing of contract with F2 Logistics, a firm linked to businessman Dennis Uy, a close associate of Mr. Duterte. De Lima maintained that the Comelec award to F2 Logistics is a clear disregard of a conflict of interest case, saying that Uy represents Duterte's interests. "Handing over the contract on the delivery of 2022 election paraphernalia, including counting machines, to Duterte crony Dennis Uy is basically asking the wolf to guard the sheep. No 'ifs' or 'buts' about it," she said in her Dispatch from Crame No. 1167. Despite being questioned for conflict of interest because Uy is a close ally of Duterte, Comelec still signed the ?535.99-million contract with F2 Logistics for the distribution of ballots, vote-counting machines, and other election paraphernalia for the 2022 elections. The contract was reportedly signed by Comelec Commissioner Sheriff Abas and F2 Logistics president Efren Uy on Oct. 29. The lady Senator from Bicol said Uy is not any ordinary campaign donor because like Michael Yang, he is Duterte's most favored crony, proof of which is the grant of major government contracts to the businessman's companies, including the Malampaya oil and gas field contract. "Before Duterte became president, Dennis Uy was a minor player in big business, if not a total non-entity in major government projects. After Duterte became president, Dennis Uy has dominated not only in government contracts, but in Philippine big business in general," she said. "There is therefore reason to believe that Dennis Uy's interests are also Duterte's. The two are most likely business partners, or worse, Dennis Uy is Duterte's dummy in the plunder of public funds through the irregular acquisition of government contracts. This is crony capitalism at its worst," she added. De Lima stressed that Comelec should have done more, and not merely relied on the absence of a law prohibiting campaign donors from bidding in election contracts. "This goes to the most fundamental, most elementary and even the most commonly understood meaning of the word 'fair' in the phrase 'fair elections.' The Comelec crying about an 'absence of law' is a Comelec that has either forgotten or forsaken its mandate under the Constitution," she added.
Lacson: Life Imprisonment, Penal Reforms Better Alternatives to Death Penalty

More at: https://pinglacson.net/article/lacson-life-imprisonment-penal-reforms-better-alternatives-to-death-penalty

Better to spare the life of a criminal than to wrongly execute an innocent person.

On this note, Sen. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson changed his stance on the death penalty for heinous crimes, even as he pushed for life imprisonment and penal reforms as a better alternative.

"Mas matimbang ang ma-save ang buhay ng wrongly convicted. So nagbago ang aking pananaw, iwi-withdraw ko ang aking na-file na bill (It is more important to save the life of a wrongly convicted person. That said, I will withdraw the bill I filed on death penalty)," Lacson said at the first LACSON-SOTTO media forum on Thursday.

Lacson said that after giving the matter long thought - especially after watching the program "The Life of David Gale," he decided that there are better solutions than execution even of those convicted of heinous crimes like drug-related offenses.

He supported Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III's suggestion to confine drug lords in a "super max" penitentiary, with no means of communication with the outside world.

"Napakaganda ng suggestion ni Senate President Sotto. Magdurusa habang buhay at walang gagawin kundi magsisi. Kung habang buhay hanggang mamatay sa kulungan (Senate President Sotto's suggestion is very good. Let the convicts be imprisoned for life, nothing to do but to regret their crimes for the rest of their lives)," Lacson said.

But Lacson also said it is important to reform the penitentiary system, to prevent a repeat of favors being granted to moneyed convicts.

"Ireporma ang penitentiary system... Mas mainam na ang guilty ikulong habang buhay sa halip na inosente ma-execute dahil sa pagkakamali (We should reform the penitentiary system. Better that the guilty be imprisoned for life than to have innocents executed because of a wrong judgment)," he said.
Nuclear talks between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the world powers will resume on Nov. 29, Teheran and the European Union (EU) have announced.

The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will convene in a physical format on 29 November in Vienna, said the EUs European External Action Service in a statement.

The unions deputy foreign affairs envoy Enrique Mora will chair the talks that had been suspended for several months.

Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia will also attend the talks, the EU confirmed. Participants will continue the discussions on the prospect of a possible return of the United States to the JCPOA and how to ensure the full and effective implementation of the agreement by all sides, it said.

The U.S which pulled out of the negotiations in 2018 and willing to return said an agreement was possible if Iran was serious, Daily Sabah reports.

Irans top negotiator and deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri on Wednesday tweeted he agreed on the date with Mora.

We agreed to start the negotiations aiming at removal of unlawful & inhumane sanctions on 29 November in Vienna.

Former US leader Donald Trump tore up the agreement and piled up new sanction of Iran.
According to information published by the Daily Sabbah on November 4, 2021, the Eastern Mediterranean 2021 drills hosted by Turkey and organized by the Turkish Naval Forces Command started.

Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

Bayraktar-class tank landing ship TCG Bayraktar (Picture source: Anadolu Agency)

The drills will be monitored by 11 observers from Iraq, Bahrain, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Oman, and Ukraine.

The Bayraktar class is a class of landing ship tanks (LSTs) built in Turkey. The two amphibious vessels of the class were built for the Turkish Navy by Anadolu Shipyard. The LSTs will satisfy the current and future operational requirements of the Turkish Naval Forces Command.

The LSTs are primarily intended for amphibious missions and transportation of troops and equipment, while their secondary missions include humanitarian aid, disaster relief, medical assistance and transportation.

Each vessel has an overall length of 138.75 metres (455 ft 3 in), a beam of 19.60 metres (64 ft 4 in) and a draught of less than 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) forward and less than 5 metres (16 ft 5 in) aft when fully loaded. The displacement of the vessel is 7,125 long tons (7,239 t) and the load-carrying capacity is 1,180 long tons (1,200 t), including a mix of vehicles or cargo on open decks.

The Turkish LSTs are armed with two OTO Melara 40 mm Fast Forty single naval gun mounts, two Mk 15 Phalanx close-in weapon systems (CIWS), and two machine guns on remotely controlled stabilised mounts. The amphibious ships feature a Smart Mk2 3D air/surface search radar, AselFLIR 300D EO director, torpedo countermeasures systems and a laser warning receiver. The sensors and weapons aboard the vessel will be controlled by Genesis CMS.
Emory students, alumni, faculty and staff will come together Saturday, Nov. 13, for the annual Emory Cares Day. Project opportunities are available in Georgia, across the country and around the world. Here, Emory volunteers help on a Trees Atlanta project in 2019.

Members of the Emory community will show their dedication to serving others by volunteering together in Atlanta and beyond for Emory Cares Day on Saturday, Nov. 13.

At its heart, Emory Cares Day is about putting Emorys mission to serve humanity into practice: a chance to nourish relationships within the Emory family, increase Emorys visibility, strengthen partnerships with civic and community organizations and improve communities worldwide.

The effort was founded in 2003 by Renelda Mack 83C, a former Emory Alumni Board president, and has become a popular annual tradition jointly organized by the Emory Alumni Association and Volunteer Emory.

Students, alumni, faculty and staff, as well as their families and friends, can sign up for a variety of service projects being organized in metro Atlanta and around the world. The opportunities address a wide range of needs, which makes it easy to find a project of interest.

Here are just a few examples of Atlanta-area projects for 2021:

Help with outdoor clean-up at Chastain Horse Park or the Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve

Play bingo with residents of Wesley Woods Senior Living

Write notes of encouragement to Emory students, educators or Emory Healthcare heroes

Donate blood at Red Cross blood drives across metro Atlanta

See the full list of in-person and virtual opportunities for Emory Cares Day 2021 (register by Sunday, Nov. 7 to participate).

Emory student projects

Volunteer Emory, a program of the Center for Civic and Community Engagement in Campus Life that connects students with opportunities to engage with community partners, organizes student participation. Students on Emorys Atlanta campus can sign up for Emory Cares on this page of The Hubs event portal to receive further registration info in the coming days.

Transportation will be provided for students who register for a Volunteer Emory project. Meet at McDonough Plaza at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 13, for the Emory Cares Day kickoff (the kickoff will be moved to the Emory Student Center multipurpose rooms 4-6 if it rains).

Oxford College students will continue their tradition of supporting the Newton County Department of Family and Children Services for Emory Cares Day. Participants will meet in the Oxford Student Center at 10 a.m. to fill care boxes with toiletries, school supplies and small gift items for children and teens in the Newton County Foster Care Program.Visit the Emory Cares project page and filter by "Cause served" and "Emory community" to register. Anyone can participate by helping pack boxes or by purchasing and donating items from Oxford Colleges Emory Cares Amazon Wishlist.

Alumni projects beyond Georgia

In addition to multiple projects in the Atlanta area, Emory alumni have organized a variety of volunteer opportunities in other cities across the U.S. and internationally.

Projects range from helping with playground beautification in San Francisco and packing weekend backpacks for food insecure children in Boca Raton, Florida, to delivering food and toiletry baskets to families in the Tetuan neighborhood of Madrid, Spain.

Register for a service project outside of Georgia by clicking the region filter on the Emory Cares website.

Ongoing opportunities for support

Anyone who is unable to physically participate in Emory Cares Day can support Emory students through funds that fill specific needs. Contributions at any level and at any time are always appreciated.

Student support through high need opportunities: Emory's recently-launched campaign, 2O36, is about investing in people for the benefit of people and reimagining our future. Students are Emorys future, and supporting student flourishing is a key priority of the campaign. This means helping students learn to be thinkers and doers, strengthen values, develop skills, realize their potential and prepare for careers with opportunities to change hearts, minds and the world. Opportunities include mentorship, job shadowing, offering advice or career guidance, giving to scholarships and more. Learn more about student support.

Office for Racial and Cultural Engagement: Emorys Office for Racial and Cultural Engagement empowers students to examine the construction of racial identities and create active learning communities that enhance opportunities for cultural engagement. Gifts help support belonging and community building events for undergraduate and graduate students of color through peer mentoring, heritage month events and student-led programs for the Emory community. Learn more.

The Food Security Fund: Some Emory students lack consistent, dependable access to food (especially during school breaks). Gifts to the Food Security Fund help fight food insecurity directly within the Emory student community by allowing students to purchase their own food while living on or off campus. Learn more.

There are many different ways to give back in-person or virtually at varying commitment levels. Adjust the filters on the registration page to find an opportunity supporting your interests, preferences and/or region.
Lawyer and journalist Dahlia Lithwick will deliver the 2021 Rothschild Memorial Lecture during an online program Thursday, Nov. 11. She will speak on The Demand for Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Jewish Tradition. Ginsburg photo via U.S. Supreme Court.

2021 Rothschild Memorial Lecture Dahlia Lithwick on The Demand for Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Jewish Tradition Thursday, Nov. 11 7:30 p.m. The online lecture is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Having watched coverage of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg slip into hagiography, especially since her death in September 2020, lawyer and journalist Dahlia Lithwick wants to frame her career more accurately. The fruits of that project will be evident in The Demand for Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Jewish Tradition  this years Jacob M. Rothschild Memorial Lecture  which Lithwick will deliver virtually Thursday, Nov. 11, at 7:30 p.m. under the auspices of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies.

The mugs, tote bags and dissent collars flying off the shelves risk thinning the narrative around who Justice Ginsburg was, what she did and why she mattered, says Lithwick. Senior editor at Slate, senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institutes Kogod Research Center and a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law, Lithwick warns that the mythmaking makes us miss the much deeper, more important part of her story.

So, how should we understand the larger-than-life justice many now familiarly call RBG? According to Lithwick, Ginsburg is emblematic of an American, Jewish, midcentury liberal  one who believed the law is best used to effectuate social justice and equality.

Ginsburg, who grew up in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, was aware of the perils for those of her faith. Refugees from the Holocaust lived nearby. Driving with her parents, she saw signs that said, No dogs, no Jews.

Gender also made Ginsburg an outsider. Notes Lithwick, Justice Ginsburg had to fight her way into college and law school. She couldnt get a clerkship or legal position when she graduated. In a lot of ways, the Jewish American success story eluded her.

But that outsider status conferred compassion. Ginsburg, for example, understood what it felt like for women who wanted to be educated at the Virginia Military Institute and had been told no. Lithwick will chart Ginsburgs pathbreaking advocacy for gender equality, a topic especially relevant as womens reproductive rights have reemerged on the Supreme Courts docket.

The day of the 100 emails

For years, Ginsburg was part of Lithwicks beat. She recalls when she learned it was a two-way street. A reporter asked Ginsburg whose work she enjoyed. Her answer? I have this person I read at Slate. She is spicy. Lithwicks inbox exploded.

In what Lithwick describes as the biggest honor of my life, Ginsburg agreed to be part of a Slate series on the eight other women who were part of Ginsburgs Harvard Law class of 1959. Lithwick secured one of the last audio interviews with Ginsburg, whose health was in decline by early 2020. Nonetheless, Ginsburg readily assented because she loved the idea of giving her classmates the attention she thought they deserved, says Lithwick.

There is more than one lady justice

Lithwick is putting the finishing touches to a book, Lady Justice, that she laughingly describes as both about, and not about, Justice Ginsburg. It profiles women lawyers who took actions such as suing on behalf of those harmed by the Trump administrations executive orders limiting travel from several predominantly Muslim countries and the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Not everybody gets famous or remembered by history, observes Lithwick, but these women were the spine supporting some big legal victories.

In addition to the Tam Institute, co-sponsors of the event include Emorys Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry; Center for Ethics; Center for Women; Departments of German Studies, History, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, and Religion; Office of Spiritual and Religious Life; and School of Law.
The Emory community will gather on the Quad on Nov. 11 to honor veterans and their contributions. The event includes a flag ceremony with Emory veterans and ROTC cadets, as well as a guest speaker and moment of silence.

Emory Veterans Day Ceremony Thursday, Nov. 11, at 11 a.m. Emory University Quadrangle

All faculty, staff, students and alumni are invited to Emorys annual Veterans Day commemoration on Thursday, Nov. 11, at 11 a.m. on the Emory Quadrangle.

The event will include a flag ceremony with Emory veterans and ROTC cadets. The guest speaker this year is Max Hilsman, a U.S. Army veteran who is the executive director and private wealth management regional manager at Morgan Stanley. Hilsman, who also leads veteran recruiting for Morgan Stanley in Atlanta, has a history of mentoring veterans during the transition from soldier to civilian.

Jeff Rosensweig, Goizueta Business School associate professor of finance, will return for the fifth year as master of ceremonies. The program will start with a salute to the flag during the National Anthem. Then, at 11:11 a.m. there will be a moment of silence for Armistice Day, which marks the end of World War I hostilities at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th month. The ceremony will close with the Armed Forces Medley followed by refreshments.

For me, [Veterans Day is a day] to reflect upon my service, but more importantly all those who I have had the privilege to serve with, says Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, associate dean of leadership development and senior lecturer of leadership in Goizueta.

Keen came to Emory in 2013 after 38 years of service in the U.S. Army. He has given his time to veteran support initiatives on campus and beyond.

Emory University and Goizueta Business School have been instrumental in my transition to civilian life, notes Keen, who also advises the Goizueta Veterans Association. Most impactful for me has been the opportunity to continue to serve others and especially work with young people aspiring to lead and create a positive impact on business and society.

One of those leaders is Isaac Olsen, who served as an Army officer for 10 years. Olsen, who grew up near the Canadian border in Presque Isle, Maine, joined the military after graduating from Liberty University in Virginia. He enrolled in the MBA program last year and says he found a place to belong in the Goizueta Veterans Association, where hes currently president.

Were making a hard transition from a somewhat insulated world, and the Veterans Association establishes support and community, says Olsen, who also serves as the Veterans Day ceremony coordinator. Having people I can connect with as I grow and evolve is important to me.

Emorys support for veterans

There are initiatives for veterans across campus and through Emory Healthcare.

Through the Yellow Ribbon program, Emory provides funding to help post-9/11 veterans pay for educational expenses beyond what is covered by the G.I. Bill. Learn more about veterans education benefits at Emory.

Undergraduate students planning military careers can participate in Army or Air Force ROTC through a cross-enrollment agreement with Georgia Tech. Students complete their undergraduate degrees at Emory and military training at Tech.

The Emory Healthcare Veterans Program, part of the Emory Brain Health Center, provides expert, collaborative care for post-9/11 veterans and service members dealing with a variety of mental health concerns, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, military sexual trauma, depression and anxiety. Treatment options include traditional outpatient and intensive outpatient programs that integrate care in multiple areas including psychiatry, neurology, sleep, rehabilitative medicine, wellness and family support.

Emorys Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing is one of 18 nursing schools nationwide selected for the elite Veteran Affairs Nursing Academic Partnership (VANAP) through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Undergraduate and graduate nursing students selected for the program gain valuable training in providing quality care for our nations veterans.

The Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans provides pro bono legal services for veterans, assisting them and their families with legal issues including disability claims before the Veterans Administration and subsequent appellate proceedings, estate work and discharge upgrades before the Department of Defense.
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[November 04, 2021] Robotic Assistance Devices Releases RAD Device Placement System (DPS) Smart Phone App Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions (News - Alert) , Inc., (OTCPK:AITX), today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Robotic Assistance Devices Inc. (RAD) has released its Device Placement System (DPS) smart phone application, now available for both Apple (News - Alert) iOS and Android mobile devices. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005481/en/ RAD DPS (Device Placement System), an augmented reality application, allows for the virtual placement of RAD security devices at any location. (Photo: Business Wire) "This is the first time an application like this has been released for security and facility planning purposes. I expect it will assist dealers and end users to quickly work through the sales process as it allows precise visualization of future RAD device location, and thereby system coverage," said Steve Reinharz, CEO of AITX and RAD. "Releasing new unique tools is just one of the many ways we are working to transform the $100 billion security and facility industries. Furthermore, to acknowledge the strength of the AITX supporter community, we've added gamification elements that may provide rewards for lead generation and social sharing." RAD DPS, an augmented reality application, allows for the virtual placement of RAD security devices at any location. Users have the ability to position their phone's camera at the desired location, select the preferred RAD device, then fine tune the positioning details. One click snaps a picture of what the virtual device looks like in the actual location. Augmented reality is a technology in which a computer-generated image is superimposed onto the user's vision of the real world, giving the user additional information generated from the simulated model. A study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group shows that more than 80 million people engage with AR on a monthly basis, in the U.S alone. The app, now available on Apple Store and Google (News - Alert) Play, provides for near-precision placement of RAD's entire 3.0 product offering, including AVA, ROSA, ROSA 270, SCOT, Wally and ROAMEO. "What's even more exciting is that we've built into RAD DPS the ability to share these virtual placements on all social media platforms, and with RAD as a sales opportunity," Reinharz added. "We frequentl receive quality sales leads from the AITX investor community, and now with the RAD DPS we are able to see exactly who needs the RAD device, and where it could go."

Registered users of the app accumulate points for each image shared on social media or with RAD. Each month, RAD will announce the top point recipients and will earn premium AITX and RAD merchandise. "We know that our investor base loves merchandise. RAD DPS is a fun, easy way for the community to actively participate, spread the word, and collect some cool merch," Reinharz concluded. Follow Steve Reinharz on Twitter (News - Alert) @SteveReinharz for future RAD and AITX updates. Robotic Assistance Devices (RAD) is a high-tech start-up that delivers robotics and artificial intelligence-based solutions that empower organizations to gain new insight, solve complex security challenges, and fuel new business ideas at reduced costs. RAD developed its advanced security robot technology from the ground up including circuit board design, and base code development. This allows RAD to have complete control over all design elements, performance, quality and the user's experience of all security robots whether SCOT, ROSA180, Wally, Wally HSO, AVA, or ROAMEO, plus award-winning software tools including RAD Light My Way, and the RAD DPS (Device Placement System) App. Read about how RAD is reinventing the security services industry by downloading the Autonomous Remote Services Industry Manifesto. CAUTIONARY DISCLOSURE ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements in this news release other than statements of historical fact are "forward-looking statements" that are based on current expectations and assumptions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements, including, but not limited to, the following: the ability of Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions to provide for its obligations, to provide working capital needs from operating revenues, to obtain additional financing needed for any future acquisitions, to meet competitive challenges and technological changes, to meet business and financial goals including projections and forecasts, and other risks. Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement(s) and/or to confirm the statement(s) to actual results or changes in Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions expectations. About Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions (AITX): AITX is an innovator in the delivery of artificial intelligence-based solutions that empower organizations to gain new insight, solve complex challenges and fuel new business ideas. Through its next-generation robotic product offerings, AITX's RAD, RAD-M and RAD-G companies help organizations streamline operations, increase ROI, and strengthen business. AITX technology improves the simplicity and economics of patrolling and guard services and allows experienced personnel to focus on more strategic tasks. Customers augment the capabilities of existing staffs and gain higher levels of situational awareness, all at drastically reduced cost. AITX solutions are well suited for use in multiple industries such as enterprises, government, transportation, critical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. To learn more, visit www.aitx.ai, www.roboticassistancedevices.com and www.radlightmyway.com, or follow Steve Reinharz on Twitter @SteveReinharz. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005481/en/

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Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin's Regular Press Conference on November 4, 2021

2021/11/04

Hubei Media Group: The UNGA First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) approved the draft resolution "Promoting International Cooperation on Peaceful Uses in the Context of International Security" put forward by China. Could you give more insight into this as well as China's position?

Wang Wenbin: On November 3 Beijing time, the 76th session of the UNGA First Committee approved China's draft resolution "Promoting International Cooperation on Peaceful Uses in the Context of International Security".

The resolution emphasizes "the significant role of international cooperation on materials, equipment and technology for peaceful purposes in facilitating the economic and social development" and urges "all Member States, without prejudice to their non-proliferation obligations", to lift undue restrictions on developing countries' peaceful uses. It decides to include in the provisional agenda of the 77th session an item entitled "Promoting international cooperation on peaceful uses in the context of international security" and requests the Secretary-General to seek the views and recommendations of all Member States on all aspects concerned and to submit a report to the General Assembly at its 77th session next year.

It is a long-term, comprehensive and global task to coordinate security and development considerations and find the right balance between non-proliferation and peaceful uses. The approval of this resolution marks the beginning of an open, inclusive and just dialogue process under the UNGA framework. It is of great significance to upholding the legitimate rights and interests of all countries in peaceful uses of technology, ensuring that technological dividends are widely shared to the benefit of all, and properly dealing with the security challenge that comes with technological progress.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the lawful seat of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations. The resolution is a concrete step China has taken to uphold multilateralism, safeguard world peace and promote common development. It also embodies the shared position of a vast number of developing countries and serves the common interests of the entire international community. China will continue to work together with all sides to advance the dialogue process under the UNGA framework.

Global Times: The European External Action Service announced today that participants of the JCPOA and the US will restart negotiations on resumption of compliance in Vienna on November 29. Does China have any comment? What's your expectation for the prospects of the negotiations?

Wang Wenbin: China welcomes the resumption of negotiations at the end of November in Vienna. The political and diplomatic resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue now faces new opportunities. It is China's hope that relevant parties seize the opportunity, follow the correct negotiating logic, fully respect all sides' legitimate concerns regarding their interests, adopt pragmatic and flexible negotiating tactics, seek creative solutions to outstanding issues, and strive to reach agreement on compliance resumption at an early date to safeguard the international non-proliferation regime and regional peace and stability.

China has all along been actively facilitating talks on the Iranian nuclear issue. Recently we have held intensive communication and coordination with various parties and played an active role in promoting the resumption of negotiations. Going forward, we will continue to take part in negotiations in a constructive manner and contribute to bringing the JCPOA back onto the right track.

MASTV: The US Defense Department released its latest report on "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China" on Wednesday. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: The Defense Department report, just like similar reports in the past, disregards facts and is filled with bias. The US is using this report to hype up the "China nuclear threat" theory. But this trick of manipulating rhetoric to confuse public opinion is seen through by the international community.

As a matter of fact, the top source of nuclear threat in the world is no other but the US itself. According to statistics of relevant international think tanks, by the beginning of 2021, the US actually owned 5,550 nuclear warheads. Despite possessing the world's largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal, the US is still investing trillions of dollars to upgrade its "nuclear triad", developing low-yield nuclear weapons and lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. In addition, the US has withdrawn from legal instruments in arms control such as the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, kept advancing the deployment of anti-missile systems around the world, resumed research and development and tests of intermediate-range land-based missiles and sought to deploy them in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and formed a small clique with strong Cold War undertones through the AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation. These US moves gravely undermine global strategic stability and international peace and security. China urges the US to earnestly assume its special and primary responsibilities toward nuclear disarmament, and drastically and substantively reduce its nuclear stockpile in a verifiable, irreversible and legally-binding manner to uphold global strategic equilibrium and stability.

I want to stress that China stays firmly committed to a self-defensive nuclear strategy, actively advocates the ultimate complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, and keeps its nuclear force at the minimum level required for national security. China abides by the policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances and undertakes unequivocally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally. No country will be threatened by China's nuclear weapons so long as it does not use nuclear weapons against China.

CCTV: According to reports, the French ambassador to Australia and relevant French officials said that Australian Prime Minister Morrison lied about the nuclear submarine cooperation of the US, the UK and Australia, and criticized the Australian side for leaking French President Emmanuel Macron's text message to the media, calling it very inelegant. Several former Australian politicians also criticized the Morrison government for damaging Australia's reputation. What is your comment on that?

Wang Wenbin: I have noted relevant reports. I want to stress that the AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation is not just a diplomatic spat between a few countries, but a serious matter that will create risks of nuclear proliferation and undermine regional peace and stability. It is extremely irresponsible for the Australian government to ignore its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations and the serious concerns of regional countries and the international community in pursuit of its own interests. The Australian government should correct its mistakes, abandon the Cold War mentality, conscientiously fulfill its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations, earnestly safeguard regional peace and stability and give a responsible answer to the international community.

Xinhua News Agency: According to reports, Cambodia has achieved remarkable outcomes in COVID-19 prevention and control with assistance from China, and boasts the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate among ASEAN countries. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced the other day that local restrictions would be lifted gradually from November 1 and production and work will be fully resumed. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: We applaud Cambodia's COVID-19 response and congratulate it on the remarkable outcomes.

China and Cambodia are ironclad friends. We have jointly built an impregnable line of defense against COVID-19 and set an example of solidarity against the pandemic for the international community. We will continue to support Cambodia in this fight, and our assistance will not stop until the virus is finally defeated. We stand ready to work with our Cambodian brothers and sisters to further deepen practical cooperation in various sectors, help Cambodia revitalize the economy and improve people's livelihood and make our friendship harder than iron and stronger than steel.

Kyodo News Agency: It is reported that the leader of the Taiwan region Tsai Ing-wen met with members of a European Parliament delegation today. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: China strongly deplores and firmly opposes the visit to Taiwan by certain members of the European Parliament and has lodged solemn representation to the European side. As a universally recognized norm governing international relations and the consensus of the international community, the one-China principle is the political foundation for the establishment of China-EU diplomatic relations and development of ties. No official interaction with the Taiwan authorities in any form is an inherent requirement of the one-China principle. The European Parliament is an important official organ of the EU. It follows naturally that its members should fully recognize the complex and sensitive nature of the Taiwan question, stay true to the commitment made by the EU, prudently and properly handle Taiwan-related issues and keep the political foundation for China-EU relations intact. China urges the European side to redress its mistake and avoid sending wrong signals to "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, lest it should cause a serious impact on China-Europe relations.

I would also like to point out that the DPP authorities in Taiwan tend to whitewash their "Taiwan independence" separatist acts under the disguise of democracy and human rights. But however hard they try to cover it, their true agenda of seeking independence is laid bare. Nor will they make a dent in the indisputable fact that Taiwan is part of China. The clumsy show of a few people won't shake in the slightest the international community's universal and firm commitment to the one-China principle or the inevitable trend of reunification of China. Their plot is doomed to fail.

AFP: The US Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley said yesterday that the United States military absolutely has the ability to defend Taiwan from a potential attack from China. Do you have any response to this comment?

Wang Wenbin: For some time, the US has been acting with negative and erroneous words and deeds on Taiwan, which has emboldened the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces and heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwan question bears on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and concerns China's core interests. No one should underestimate China's firm determination and will to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We will never allow anyone or any force to separate Taiwan from the motherland in any way.

The US should pursue a real one-China policy, instead of a fake one; fulfill its commitments to China faithfully rather than treacherously; truly implement the one-China policy and put it into action, instead of saying one thing and doing the opposite. We urge the US to fully recognize the highly sensitive nature of the Taiwan question, abide by the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-US joint communiques, prudently and properly handle Taiwan-related issues, and avoid sending any wrong signal to "Taiwan-independence" separatist forces to prevent seriously hurting China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

The Paper: According to Japanese media reports, Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority said on November 2 that marine monitoring in waters near the Fukushima nuclear power plant during the past year had been conducted with a mistakenly set threshold of radioactive substances. The error occurred because the monitoring standards had not been correctly conveyed when a new monitoring agency took over in May 2020. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: China is deeply concerned about the problem mentioned in the report. Many recent media reports have exposed the chaotic management at TEPCO, the company in charge of the disposal of the nuclear-contaminated water and the inadequate supervision and management by the Japanese government. Is the error mentioned in the report an exception or the tip of the iceberg? Is the data of nuclear-contaminated water released by the Japanese side reliable and trustworthy? Stakeholders including neighboring countries have the right to the truth.

This error is also a reminder to the international community that the disposal of the Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water is by no means Japan's private matter. It must be handled with the greatest prudence and stringent supervision. We urge Japan to revoke the erroneous decision to discharge the nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean. It mustn't recklessly start the ocean discharge before reaching consensus through full consultation with stakeholders and relevant international agencies.

Bloomberg: A Chinese company's shipments of solar products were detained by the US Customs as part of a crackdown by Washington over alleged human rights abuses. My question is, will China take any retaliatory action? And if so, what might that look like?

Wang Wenbin: The so-called "forced labor" in Xinjiang is an out-and-out lie. Citing this preposterous lie as an excuse, the US side has wantonly detained Chinese solar products. This again exposes the US side's malicious intention to undermine Xinjiang's development. It will also disrupt and undercut the stability of international industrial and supply chains and global cooperation on climate change. We deplore and reject the unjustified move and extend sympathy to the affected companies.

We urge the US to immediately redress its mistake, stop suppression of Chinese companies, and provide necessary conditions for our two countries to achieve steady development of relations and work together to tackle climate change. China will take all necessary measures to firmly defend the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.

Shenzhen TV: It is reported that the US Air Force Inspector General said on November 3 that an investigation concluded that the US strike in August that killed ten Afghan civilians in Kabul was an honest mistake and did not violate any laws, including the Law of War. He said there was not a person to be blamed for the error. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: The result of the US investigation is the most callous and ruthless "verdict" for the more than 32 million Afghan people who suffered so much from the scourge of war. People cannot help but ask: Is it right that the ten civilians killed by the US drone strike should have died for nothing? Is it right that the lives, human rights and freedom of the Afghan people should be treated with such contempt? This investigation once again reveals the arrogance, hypocrisy and double standard of the US on human rights issues.

Afghan lives matter. We urge the US side to respect the lives and human rights of the Afghan people, disclose the truth of the incident to the public, bring perpetrators to justice and offer compensations to the family members of the victims.

In the past 20 years, US military operations including the war in Afghanistan have resulted in over 800,000 deaths, of which about 335,000 were civilians. The international community has yet to see any investigation or accountability in the US. This is an indelible stain in the history of international human rights. The US should stop its wanton interference in other countries' internal affairs in the name of democracy and human rights, earnestly respect and protect human rights, especially those of people in developing countries and prevent recurring human rights violations.
Deposits of dark silicate glass are strewn across a 75-kilometer corridor in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. New research shows that those glasses were likely formed by the heat of an ancient comet exploding above the surface. CREDIT P.H. Schultz/Brown University

Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass.

Now, a research team studying the distribution and composition of those glasses has come to a conclusion about what caused the inferno.

In a study published in the journal Geology, researchers show that samples of the desert glass contain tiny fragments with minerals often found in rocks of extraterrestrial origin. Those minerals closely match the composition of material returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission, which sampled the particles from a comet called Wild 2. The team concludes that those mineral assemblages are likely the remains of an extraterrestrial object -- most likely a comet with a composition similar to Wild 2 -- that streamed down after the explosion that melted the sandy surface below.

"This is the first time we have clear evidence of glasses on Earth that were created by the thermal radiation and winds from a fireball exploding just above the surface," said Pete Schultz, a professor emeritus in Brown University's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. "To have such a dramatic effect on such a large area, this was a truly massive explosion. Lots of us have seen bolide fireballs streaking across the sky, but those are tiny blips compared to this."

The glasses are concentrated in patches across the Atacama Desert east of Pampa del Tamarugal, a plateau in northern Chile nestled between the Andes Mountains to the east and the Chilean Coastal Range to the west. Fields of dark green or black glass occur within a corridor stretching about 75 kilometers. There's no evidence that the glasses could have been created by volcanic activity, Schultz says, so their origin has been a mystery.

Some researchers have posited that the glass resulted from ancient grass fires, as the region wasn't always desert. During the Pleistocene epoch, there were oases with trees and grassy wetlands created by rivers extending from mountains to the east, and it's been suggested that widespread fires may have burned hot enough to melt the sandy soil into large glassy slabs.

But the amount of glass present along with several key physical characteristics make simple fires an impossible formation mechanism, the new research found. The glasses show evidence of having been twisted, folded, rolled and even thrown while still in molten form. That's consistent with a large incoming meteor and airburst explosion, which would have been accompanied by tornado-force winds. The mineralogy of the glass casts further serious doubt on the grassfire idea, Schultz says. Along with researchers from the Fernbank Science Center in Georgia, Chile's Universidad Santo Tomas and the Chilean Geology and Mining Service, Schultz and colleagues performed a detailed chemical analysis of dozens of samples taken from glass deposits across the region.

The analysis found minerals called zircons that had thermally decomposed to form baddeleyite. That mineral transition typically happens in temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit -- far hotter than what could be generated by grass fires, Schultz says.

The analysis also turned up assemblages of exotic minerals only found in meteorites and other extraterrestrial rocks, the researchers say. Specific minerals like cubanite, troilite and calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions matched mineral signatures from comet samples retrieved from NASA's Stardust mission.

"Those minerals are what tell us that this object has all the markings of a comet," said Scott Harris, a planetary geologist at the Fernbank Science Center and study co-author. "To have the same mineralogy we saw in the Stardust samples entrained in these glasses is really powerful evidence that what we're seeing is the result of a cometary airburst."

More work needs to be done to establish the exact ages of the glass, which would determine exactly when the event took place, Schultz says. But the tentative dating puts the impact right around time that large mammals disappeared from the region.

"It's too soon to say if there was a causal connection or not, but what we can say is that this event did happen around the same time as when we think the megafauna disappeared, which is intriguing," Schultz said. "There's also a chance that this was actually witnessed by early inhabitants, who had just arrived in the region. It would have been quite a show."

Schultz and his team hope that further research may help to constrain the timing and shed light on the size of the impactor. For now, Schultz hopes this study may help researchers identify similar blast sites elsewhere and reveal the potential risk posed by such events.

"There may be lots of these blast scars out there, but until now we haven't had enough evidence to make us believe they were truly related to airburst events," Schultz said. "I think this site provides a template to help refine our impact models and will help to identify similar sites elsewhere."

Other authors of the study were Sebastian Perroud, Nicolas Blanco and Andrew Tomlinson.



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Locations of four centennial-resolved terrestrial and marine records CREDIT SUN et al.

Abundant geological evidence demonstrates that Earth's climate has experienced millennial-scale variability superimposed on glacial-interglacial fluctuations through the Pleistocene.

The magnitude of millennial climate variability has been linked to glacial cycles over the past 800 thousand years (kyr).

For the period before the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, when global glaciations were less pronounced but more frequent, scientists had been unable to identify the linkage between abrupt climate changes and ice-age cycles.

Recently, however, scientists from China, the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland found that the magnitude of millennial climate variability was persistently influenced by variations in the precession and obliquity of the Earth through the Pleistocene.

Their study was published in Nature Geoscience on Nov. 1.

The researchers compared four climate-sensitive elemental ratios from two marine cores (U1308 in the North Atlantic and U1385 on the Iberian Margin) and two continental sedimentary records (Lake Ohrid on the Balkan Peninsula and Gulang loess on the western Chinese Loess Plateau).

"We selected these four records because of their high sedimentation rates, long duration, availability of centennial-resolution proxy datasets, and high sensitivity of elemental ratios to abrupt climate changes," said Prof. SUN Youbin from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEECAS), the first author of the study.

By synchronizing these four proxy records to Chinese speleotheom 18O records and the North Atlantic ice-rafted debris events, the researchers evaluated how millennial climate variability evolved over the last 1.5 million years (Myr).

"Combination of these four proxies into a new millennial climate variability stack offers a credible reference for further assessing the dynamical interactions between orbital and millennial climate variability," said Prof. SUN.

The land-ocean synthesis of these four climate-sensitive proxy records not only demonstrates the persistent and pervasive nature of millennial climate variability over the past 1.5 Myr but also highlights the differing influences of ice sheets and orbital geometry on the magnitude of abrupt climate events through the Pleistocene.

Before the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, the magnitude of abrupt climate changes was influenced mainly by changes in the orbital parameters of obliquity and precession, whereas after the Mid-Pleistocene Transition both the extent of global glaciation and orbital configurations had great potential for amplifying abrupt climate changes.

A modeling study published at the same time suggests that orbital-induced changes in both high- and low-latitude processes might amplify the magnitude of millennial climate variability.

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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Left: A schematic of the magnet system designed by Sanavandi and Guo. Right: Contour plot of the trapping energy of a water sample placed in the proposed magnet, which shows the size and the shape of the region where the gravity is one percent of the Earths gravity. CREDIT Courtesy of Wei Guo/FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

As humanity continues its exploration of the universe, the low-gravity environment of space presents unusual challenges for scientists and engineers.

Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have developed a new tool to help meet that challenge -- a novel design for a low-gravity simulator that promises to break new ground for future space research and habitation.

Their new design for a magnetic levitation-based low-gravity simulator can create an area of low gravity with a volume about 1,000 times larger than existing simulators of the same type. The work was published in the journal npj Microgravity.

"Low gravity has a profound effect on the behaviors of biological systems and also affects many physical processes from the dynamics and heat transfer of fluids to the growth and self-organization of materials," said Wei Guo, associate professor in mechanical engineering and lead scientist on the study. "However, spaceflight experiments are often limited by the high cost and the small payload size and mass. Therefore, developing ground-based low-gravity simulators is important."

Existing simulators, such as drop towers and parabolic aircraft, use free fall to generate near-zero gravity. But these facilities typically have short low-gravity durations, i.e., several seconds to a few minutes, which makes them unsuitable for experiments that require long observation times. On the other hand, magnetic levitation-based simulators (MLS) can offer unique advantages, including low cost, easy accessibility, adjustable gravity, and practically unlimited operation time.

But a conventional MLS can only create a small volume of low gravity. When a typical simulator mimics an environment that is about 1 percent of Earth's gravity, the functional volume is only a few micro-liters, too small for practical space research and applications.

In order to increase the functional volume of an MLS, the researchers needed a magnet that would allow a uniform levitation force to be generated that would balance the gravitational force in a large volume. They found that they could achieve this by integrating a superconducting magnet with a gradient Maxwell coil -- a coil configuration that was first proposed in the 1800s by physicist James Clark Maxwell.

"Our analysis shows that an unprecedented functional volume of over 4,000 micro-liters can be achieved in a compact coil with a diameter of only eight centimeters," said doctoral student Hamid Sanavandi, a co-author of the paper. "When the current in the MLS is reduced to emulate the gravity on Mars, the functional volume can exceed 20,000 micro-liters, or about 20 cubic centimeters."

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The researchers also showed how the MLS can be made using existing high-temperature superconducting materials, which allows it to operate with minimal energy consumption.

This work could prove especially useful in the preparation for future space missions aimed at long-term habitation of the moon and Mars.

"The fact that our MLS design offers a functional volume about three orders of magnitude larger than that for conventional solenoid MLSs makes it a potential game-changer in the low-gravity research field," Guo said. "When this MLS design is used to emulate reduced gravities in extraterrestrial environments, such as on the moon or the Mars, the resulted functional volume is large enough to accommodate even small plants, making this an exciting tool for medical and biology research."

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CBET-1801780. The work was conducted at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, which is supported by National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. DMR-1644779 and the State of Florida.

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By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

The total production at Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) block of fields amounted to 126 million barrels in the first three quarters of 2021, BP Azerbaijan has said in its report.

During the reported period, the total production on the block of fields amounted to 461,000 barrels per day. Of this, the Chirag field accounted for 29,000 b/d, Central Azeri for 109,000 b/d, West Azeri for 115,000 b/d, East Azeri for 77,000 b/d, Deepwater Gunashli for 87,000 b/d and West Chirag for 44,000 b/d.

On September 18, 2021, the ACG field reached 4 billion barrels of total oil production since the start of its operations.

At the end of the third quarter, 136 wells were producing oil, while 30 wells were used for water and eight for gas injection. In addition, ACG completed seven oil producer and three injector wells.

Moreover, during the reported period, ACG delivered 2.2 billion cubic meters, or an average of 8 million cubic meters per day of ACG-associated gas to SOCAR, primarily at the Sangachal Terminal, and to SOCARs Oil Rocks facility. The remaining associated gas produced was re-injected for reservoir pressure maintenance.

As part of the ACG annual work program, two planned maintenance programs (turnaround - TAR) were successfully implemented on the ACG platforms this year  on West Azeri in the second quarter and on Chirag in the third quarter.

The company spent more than $398 million in operating expenditure and about $1.2 billion in capital expenditure on the ACG activities, in the first six quarters of the year.

Furthermore, in January-September 2021, the Shah Deniz field produced around 16 billion cubic meters of gas and 3 million tonnes of condensate.

The existing Shah Deniz facilities production capacity is currently about 70 million standard cubic meters of gas per day.

It was noted that during the reported period, the Shah Deniz field continued to provide deliveries of gas to markets in Azerbaijan (to Azerkontrakt), Georgia (to GOGC), Turkey (to BOTAS), and to BTC Company in multiple locations.

Likewise, in the first three quarters of the year, more than $1.5 billion were spent in operating expenditure and around $524 million in capital expenditure, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz 2 project.

During the reported period, the Shah Deniz 2 project reached full production rates from the East South flank following its safe start-up in the second quarter of the year. As a result of the production ramp-up from the East South flank, in July 2021, the daily production rates of the Shah Deniz Bravo platform reached the Shah Deniz Alpha rates for the first time.

It should be noted that this year, Shah Deniz celebrates its 25th anniversary since the signing of the Shah Deniz Production Sharing Agreement (PSA).

BP opened its first office in Baku in June 1992 and has since then contributed to Azerbaijans oil and gas sector through operating projects such as Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), Shah Deniz, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP).

The contract for the development of the ACG oil fields was signed on September 20, 1994, and entered force in December. The contract for the development of the ACG block was extended to 2050 in September 2017.

The shareholders in the ACG project are BP (operator, 30.37 percent), SOCAR (25 percent), MOL (9.57 percent), INPEX (9.31 percent), Equinor (7.27 percent), ExxonMobil (6.79 percent), TPAO (5.73 percent), ITOCHU (3.65 percent), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.31 percent).

The contract on the development of the Shah Deniz gas field was signed in 1996. Shareholders of Shah Deniz project are: BP (operator, 28.8 percent), TPAO (19 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), PETRONAS (15.5 percent), LUKOIL (10 percent) and NICO (10 percent).
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that takes Azerbaijani oil to Europe via Turkey exported over 19.6 million tons of crude oil in the first three quarters of 2021, the pipelines operator BP Azerbaijan has said in its recent report.

The oil was exported from Turkeys Ceyhan terminal loaded on 204 tankers.

During the reported period, over $96 million was spent in operating expenditure and over $22 million in capital expenditure on the BTC project.

Overall, BTC exported over 495 million tons of crude oil loaded on 4,863 tankers to the world markets since the pipeline became operational in June 2006 till the end of the third quarter of 2021.

The BTC pipeline currently carries mainly the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli crude oil and the Shah Deniz condensate from Azerbaijan. Other volumes of crude oil and condensate also continue to be transported via BTC, including volumes from Turkmenistan, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

Furthermore, in January-September 2021, the Sangachal terminal exported about 172 million barrels of oil and condensate to world markets. This includes about 148 million barrels through BTC and around 24 million barrels through the Western Route Export Pipeline.

In addition, about 58 million cubic meters of Shah Deniz gas were exported from the terminal daily in the first three quarters of 2021.

It was noted that the daily capacity of the terminals processing systems is currently 1.2 million barrels of crude oil and condensate, and around 100 million cubic meters of gas, including 81 million cubic meters for Shah Deniz gas.

Gas from Azerbaijan is exported via the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), the South Caucasus Pipeline expansion system, and via SOCAR gas pipelines connecting the terminals gas processing facilities with the Azerigas national grid system.

Likewise, the daily average throughput of the South Caucasus Pipeline was 46.8 million cubic meters of gas during the first three quarters of the year. In addition, during the reported period, the South Caucasus Pipeline spent around $39 million in operating expenditure and around $8 million in capital expenditure.

The South Caucasus Pipeline was built to export Shah Deniz gas from Azerbaijan to Georgia and Turkey. The pipeline starts from the Sangachal terminal near Baku. It follows the route of the BTC crude oil pipeline through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey, where it is linked to the Turkish gas distribution system. The pipeline has been operational since late 2006 transporting gas to Azerbaijan and Georgia and starting from July 2007 to Turkey from Shah Deniz Stage 1.

The BTC pipeline is a transport line for Azerbaijani oil from the Caspian Sea to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey, and then to European markets via the Mediterranean Sea. The official opening ceremony of the BTC oil pipeline took place in Turkey in July 2006. The total length of the pipeline is 1,768 km, of which 443 km pass through the territory of Azerbaijan; 249 km to Georgia; 1076 km to Turkey. The projected capacity is 50 million tonnes of oil per year or one million barrels per day. Light oil produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field is transported via BTC.

The Sangachal terminal is an oil and gas terminal that receives, processes, stores, and exports crude oil and gas produced from all currently operated BP assets in the Caspian basin and has room for expansion. The terminal includes oil and gas processing facilities, the first pump station for the BTC oil pipeline, and South Caucasus gas pipeline (SCP) compressor, and other facilities.
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

After a long break, Azerbaijan's State Opera and Ballet Theater has finally opened its doors to opera and ballet enthusiasts.

The theater remained closed for a while amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The State Opera and Ballet Theater successfully prepared for its grand return in October.

In his interview with Azernews, the principal conductor of the Opera and Ballet Theater, Honored Artist Ayyub Guliyev, detailed the theater's main activities and future plans.

"We have already got ready for the theater's reopening. In September, Uzeyir Hajibayli's 'Leyli and Majnun' and Giuseppe Verdi's opera 'La Traviata' were presented at the theater as part of the 13th Uzeyir Hajibayli International Music Festival. Both productions were a great success. At that time, we felt how much the audience missed the opera house," said Ayyub Guliyev.

Opera and Ballet Theater's grand return

After a break, the theater delighted its audience with a premier. Alexander Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances" were presented in the theater for the first time.

Polovtsian Dances is a ballet fragment from the opera "Prince Igor". For almost 18 years, Borodin worked on his opera. However, he would present the work to the public as it remained incomplete following Borodin's death. The opera was completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov.

"The preparation work was a difficult process since the theater was closed for a certain time due to the pandemic. The Opera and Ballet Theater opened with a premier- 'Polovtsian Dances' staged by Honored Artist Samir Samadov. Along with 'Polovtsian Dances', we also managed to show our mugham performances, classical productions, including Giuseppe Verdi's opera 'Aida', which is a masterpiece of the opera art," said Guliyev.

"Meanwhile, this year the opera marks its 150th anniversary since its premiere. The opera brought together People's Artists Avaz Abdullayev, Fidan Hajiyeva, Ali Asgarov, Akram Poladov, Honored Artist Azar Rzazade. The main part of the opera was performed by the soloist of the Belarusian Bolshoi Theater Tatiana Tretyak," he added.

"We also didn't forget about the Azerbaijani classics, which have a special place in our repertoire. In October, we staged Fikrat Amirov's 'Sevil' and 'One Thousand and One Nights'. The theater also pleased its little guests with the production 'Great Storyteller' to the music of Franz Schubert. At the same time, the audience enjoyed Astor Piazzolla's 'Tango of Love' ballet," the conductor said.

Restoration at theater

Built in 1910, the theater's building is considered one of the most beautiful ones in Baku.

The first reconstruction was carried out in 1938, and then in 1982. However, due to a fierce fire at the beginning of 1985, the work was completed only in 1987.

The Opera and Ballet Theater is being restored by the Austrian company "Erich Pummer".

"Full-scale restoration work began in August. The process of restoring the facade of the building is in progress. The theater's hall, foyer, balcony, and the hall will also be renovated. This is a truly grand event that we have been looking forward to for a long time," said Guliyev.

Cloth Peddler in China

Uzeyir Hajibayli's operetta "The Cloth Peddler" (Arshin Mal Alan) was successfully presented at China's Tianjin Grand Theater on September 16.

The event was timed to Azerbaijani National Music Day celebrated annually on September 18.

"The Cloth Peddler is one of the favorite performances not only in Azerbaijan but also in the U.S, Europe and Asia. In May, the Azerbaijani embassy in China invited me to take part in the event. Then I met Silk Road Cultural Association President Claudia Young. With the support of the embassy and the Azerbaijani Culture Ministry, a semi-stage version of the operetta was presented in China. The soloists, orchestra, and choir of the Tianjin Grand Theater performed in the operetta. The full-length performance will be premiered in the near future," said Guliyev.

As a coordinator, Ayyub Guliyev made everything possible to assist the preparations. Thanks to the joint work of the conductor, talented musicians and many others, the event was spectacular.

Speaking about that night, Guliyev praised the talent, diligence and sincerity of everyone who participated in the project.

The operetta was previously shown in China in 1959 and in 2010. Interestingly, one of the soloists who previously performed in the operetta staged in China long ago was also invited to this year's production.

Symphony concert in Poland

In October, Guliyev took part in a marvelous symphony concert in Poland.

The concert was dedicated to the 880th anniversary of the birth of Azerbaijani genius poet and thinker Nizami Ganjavi.

"The year 2021 has been declared the year of Nizami Ganjavi in Azerbaijan. This significant date is celebrated by many cultural figures with a series of events. When I was invited to perform at the Polish city of Kalisz, I proposed to devote a part of the concert to Nizami's legacy. The audience highly appreciated the concert that featured excerpts from Fikrat Amirov's ballet 'Nizami', Gara Garayev's 'Seven Beauties', Ernest Bloch's suite, Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile and Symphony No. 6. For the first time in history, excerpts from the Azerbaijani ballets 'Nizami' and 'Seven Beauties' were presented in Poland," said Guliyev.

Before the concert, the famous Polish musicologist Witold Paprocki told the audience in detail about music pieces included in the concert program.

Azerbaijani ambassador to Poland Nargiz Gurbanova spoke about Azerbaijan's rich music and culture.

The Kalisz Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and acclaimed violist, associate professor of the Music Academy in Gdansk Christoph Tymendorf performed at the concert under the baton of Ayyub Guliyev.

International Festival of Vocalists

The Second Azerbaijan International Festival of Vocalists was held in Baku on October 15-20. Ayyub Guliyev took part in the festival's opening and closing ceremonies.

The Festival of Vocalists aims to develop and promote classical music in Azerbaijan. The project also focuses on the formation of good musical taste among young people.

Unlike the first festival, this year the project has an international status.

Initiated by the director of the Heydar Aliyev Palace, Honored Artist Ramil Gasimov, the festival has expanded its borders and gathered world-famous musicians.

The Festival of Vocalists opened with a concert of baroque music. During the concert, the audience enjoyed fascinating baroque music performed by People's Artists Samir Jafarova, Gulnaz Ismayilova, Honored Artists Ramil Gasimov, Farida Mamedova, Inara Babayeva, Sabina Asadova, and Ilham Nazarov.

Speaking about the concert, the conductor praised the virtuosity of musicians.

World Opera Day

The festival's closing ceremony was even more spectacular and marked World Opera Day, celebrated annually on October 25.

Culture Minister Anar Karimov, Opera Vision director Luke O'Shaughness attended the event.

Speaking about World Opera Day, Guliyev expressed his pleasure to participate in such a large-scale cultural event.

"For the first time in history, the World Opera Day was celebrated in Azerbaijan. This day is held under the auspices of Opera Europe and Opera Vision. I proposed to organize a similar project in our country. This year Azerbaijan was the first country that marks World Opera Day. Moreover, it became the first country in the region to celebrate Opera Day. Millions of people could watch the gala concert and left positive feedback," the conductor said.

Cultural program for November

The State Opera and Ballet Theater revealed its program for November.

The principal conductor of the State Opera and Ballet Theater told Azernews about the theater's upcoming productions.

The State Opera and Ballet Theater will celebrate Azerbaijan's victory gained in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Ramiz Mustafayev's opera "Vagif" will be presented to the audience on November 8 (Victory Day).

"The staging of the opera is very symbolic since Vagif is the personification of the Karabakh intelligentsia. This character is inextricably linked with the Karabakh culture. Honored Artist Ramil Gasimov will perform in the opera," said Guliyev.

Sardar Farajev's ballet "Javadkhan" will be presented to the audience on November 10.

The State Opera and Ballet Theater is also getting ready for Nizami Ganjavi Week scheduled for November 14-20.

Gara Garayev's "Seven Beauties" will be staged on November 16. Moreover, Fikrat Amirov's ballet "Nizami" will be shown at the theater on November 20.

At the end of the month, opera fans will see Uzeyir Hajibayli's "Koroghlu" on November 27 and Pietro Mascagni's "Rural Honor" on November 28.

In conclusion, Ayyub Guliyev stressed that the theater will surprise opera and ballet fans with new productions.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

The 5th DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival has opened in Baku. The ceremony took place at the Stone Chronicle Museum.

The main topic of this years festival is "Senses ", and most of the films presented are devoted to the peoples inner and outer metamorphoses, their search for themselves, and the meaning of their existence.

People's Artist, director Ogtay Mirgasimov, artist, film director, Ph.D. Teymur Daimi, head of the YARAT Cultural Programs Department Ulviya Akhundova as well as foreign guests - producer Alla Kargina and director Anastasia Sarycheva (Russia), film director Maya Blofield (Finland), film critic , professor at the Sorbonne Christian Feigelson (France) Christian Feigelson (France) attended the event.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, the festival's director Imam Hasanov stressed that DokuBaku is the largest documentary film festival held in Azerbaijan over the past years.

The selection committee has been evaluating films that will be presented to the audience and the jury for three months.

The program includes 50 films, which were selected from more than 200 applicants. In total, films from 30 countries will be shown to the audience.

The international jury will the winners in categories Best Feature, Best Short, and Best Azerbaijani Film.

Winners in each category will be awarded with a diploma and handmade statuette - iHuman. Also, the hosts of the festival have two special prizes and - iCyborg, which will be awarded to outstanding representatives of Azerbaijani cinematography for their special merit.

In addition, a retrospective of the Azerbaijani documentary films will be arranged as part of the event.

The retrospective will be dedicated to the memory of the late Azerbaijani screenwriter and director Chingiz Rasulzade.

The out-of-competition films about living during a pandemic will also be screened.

This year festival is organized with the support of the Goethe Institute, Free Art and BARZA Art Bureau.

The festival's partners include Azerbaijan Culture Ministry, Baku Media Center, YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Colibri Arts and Institut Francais d'Azerbaidjan.

The screening venues include YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, Cine House, Kapellhaus, Nizami Cinema Centre, Stone Chronicle Museum.

The 5th DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival will run until November 7.

The tickets are available at iticket.az. Full program is available at www.dokubaku.az

Facebook: facebook.com/ IDFFDokuBaku

Instagram: @idffdokubaku

Media support is provided by Azernews.az, Trend.az, Day.az and Milli.az.
By Trend





The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasizes the need to launch the process of delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border as soon as possible, Spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports.

Zakharova added that the work on the implementation of trilateral statements on the Karabakh region is underway in all spheres.

"The upcoming anniversary of the adoption of a statement on the complete ceasefire and all hostilities in the Karabakh conflict zone by the leaders was discussed during phone conversations between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his colleagues from Armenia on November 1, and his counterpart from Azerbaijan on November 2, the spokesperson said.

The ministers were unanimous in their assessments that over the past year the situation in the region has stabilized, the ceasefire regime is generally observed, the spokesperson added.

Zakharova said that the role of the Russian peacekeepers is highly valued in Baku and Yerevan.

The certain incidents will be resolved through interaction from both sides, the spokesperson said.

The efforts are also being made to restore the ties in the transport sector, Zakharova said. We also see a comprehensive solution to the problem in the soonest beginning of the process of delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border with its further demarcation."
The Azerbaijani Army launched a counter-offensive operation, later called the "Iron Fist", on September 27, 2020, in response to the large-scale provocation of the Armenian armed forces along the frontline, Trend reports.

The erupted 44-day second Karabakh war ended with the liberation of Azerbaijans territories from nearly 30-year Armenian occupation and the restoration of territorial integrity.

Chronicle of the 39th day of the Second Karabakh War:

- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev shared on his official Twitter page that the Azerbaijani Army liberated several villages in Jabrayil, Zangilan and Gubadli districts.

- President Aliyev gave an interview to the Italian la Repubblica newspaper.

- The Armenian armed forces were forced to retreat by suffering losses.

- The list of destroyed military equipment of the Armenian armed forces has been announced.

- The Armenian armed forces fired on Tartar and Aghjabadi districts.

- Armenia violated the ceasefire regime in the direction of the Tovuz and Agstafa districts

- A video footage of the destruction of Armenia's anti-aircraft gun has been released.

- Captain of the Armenian armed forces Ando Grigoryan was killed while driving UAZ.

- The Armenian armed forces fired on Tartar district.

- The Armenian armed forces sabotage attempt against the Azerbaijani positions in the direction of Zangilan district from the Armenian territory was prevented.
By Trend

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva visited Ismayilli and Shamakhi districts on November 1.

A number of facilities opened in Ismayilli and Shamakhi as part of the trip. President Aliyev and the First Lady met with public representatives of the districts.

The rapid development of the districts is one of the first issues in the plans of the country's leadership.

"The visit of the president to these districts, the participation in the opening ceremony of a number of social facilities during the trip, the meeting with public representatives, show that President Aliyev controls the development of all districts of the country, gives consistent instructions for the implementation of extensive restoration and construction work," Azerbaijani MP Sevinj Huseynova told Trend on Nov. 3.

The MP stressed that President Aliyev constantly pays great attention to the development of the districts.

"The state programs for the socio-economic development of districts, which have improved the living conditions of people, increased the economic potential of the country, have been implemented since 2004 upon the decree of President Aliyev," Huseynova added.

"This model of economic development, chosen by President Aliyev, turned out to be the most effective and successful one," the MP said. "Economic development is ensured in all Azerbaijani districts, any infrastructure or social project is not postponed, but is consistently implemented."

"The special state attention is paid to all districts," Azerbaijani MP Elshan Musayev told Trend .

The MP said that all cities and districts are developing, attention is paid to all districts.

"The presidents trips to the districts, in particular, the recent visit to Shamakhi, gives reason to say that improvement and construction work is underway everywhere, the country is doing everything to improve the social status of the population for new jobs to be created," Musayev said.

The MP said that this is a strategy.

"In all his speeches, President Aliyev emphasizes that every district and area of Azerbaijan is significant to us," Musayev said. "Construction work is being rapidly carried out. Frankly speaking, many people will agree that reconstruction work in Karabakh region and Eastern Zangazur is a priority today, but nevertheless, attention is also paid to other districts too."

The MP stressed that the idea of Azerbaijanism, the foundation of which was laid by great leader Heydar Aliyev, the country's economic strategy and purposeful policy are being successfully continued by President Aliyev.

"This is Azerbaijan that national leader Heydar Aliyev wanted to see," Musayev said. "Thanks to victorious Supreme Commander of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, President Ilham Aliyev, and our valiant army, we liberated our historical lands from occupation. Today we are going to celebrate Victory Day. This is a truly significant event."
Members of the board and founders of the Egypt-Azerbaijan Friendship Society sent a congratulatory letter to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.




By Trend

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appealed to the participants of the VIII Global Baku Forum, organized by Nizami Ganjavi International Center, Trend reports.

The appeal was read by Former Prime Minister of Turkey, former Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), MP Binali Yildirim.

Under the auspices of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and with the organization of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, the VIII Global Baku Forum titled "The World after COVID-19" began its work in the capital of Azerbaijan on November 4 and will last until November 6.

The eighth Baku Forum brings together high-level representatives from more than 40 countries of the world, former heads of state and government, representatives of international and non-governmental organizations, as well as other guests to discuss issues of global importance.
By Trend

WHO's goal is to vaccinate at least 40 percent of the world's population against coronavirus (COVID-19) by the end of this year, the head of the organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said in his video address to the participants of VIII Global Baku Forum "The World after COVID-19" on Nov. 4, Trend reports.

According to Ghebreyesus, even the most developed countries arent insured against a pandemic.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that health issues should always be given special attention. We must increase funding for healthcare in general," he said.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva and Head of the European Councils Directorate General of Programs Verena Taylor have considered expanding cooperation between the two institutions, the ombudsmans office reported on November 2.

The rights commissioner briefed the guest about the reforms implemented in the human rights protection sphere, the ombudspersons mandate and competencies and the multifaceted activity carried out by the institution in this direction.

The two officials focused on gender equality, the protection of womens rights, and combating domestic violence (DV), and the importance of awareness-raising activities in the said areas.

Aliyeva stressed the need for joint cooperation in providing material, moral and psychological assistance to families affected by domestic violence, studying and applying international experience in combating this case, and developing relevant teaching aids in this area.

It was noted that members of the ombudsman's office are also involved in regular training on these topics organized within the framework of the Partnership for Good Governance II (PGGII) program of the European Union and the Council of Europe.

During the meeting, the sides discussed a number of other issues of common interest. The meeting was also attended by the head of the European Councils Baku office, Zoltan Hernyes.
By Trend





Turkish academician and politician, ex-Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu expressed hope on the sidelines of the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19 for former refugees to be able to return to the Azerbaijani territories liberated from the Armenian occupation soon, Trend reports.

The ex-Secretary General also expressed hope for the rapid elimination of the consequences of the occupation and long-term peace in the region.

Organized by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center under the patronage of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19 has today kicked off.

The 8th Global Baku Forum brings together high-level representatives, including former heads of state and government, officials of international and non-governmental organizations from more than 40 countries, as well as other distinguished guests, to discuss issues of global importance.

About 300 guests are participating in the event, organized in a hybrid format, live and online.
By Trend





The representatives of the Albanian-Udi Christian religious community of Azerbaijan, which is the successor to the Albanian Independent Apostolic Church, visited Chinarli village of Azerbaijans Khojavand district, Trends Karabakh bureau reports on Nov. 4.

Members of the religious community visited an ancient Albanian temple in the village - the Aghach church.

The trip was organized through the support of the Spiritual Values Promotion Foundation under the Azerbaijani State Committee on Work with Religious Structures.
Prime Minister and Chairman of the Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen sent a congratulatory letter to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of November 8 - Victory Day.

His Excellency Mr. Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Your Excellency,

On behalf of the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) and on my own behalf, I would like convey to Your Excellency, and through you to the people of Azerbaijan, my heartfelt congratulations on the auspicious occasion of 8 November, the Victory Day of Azerbaijan.

Under Your Excellencys wise and far-sighted leadership, I am confident, that the New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) and Azerbaijan will continue to prosper and to enjoy sustained peace and good cooperation with neighboring countries in the years to come.

I am pleased to witness the long-lasting relations between the YAP and the CPP particularly within the frameworks of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) and the Centrist Democrats International (CDI) as well as close cooperation between the governments of our two countries which have been continuously flourished recently.

I am also convinced that with our joint efforts and commitment the bond of friendship and good cooperation between our two parties and nations will be further strengthened and deepened for the benefits of our two peoples as well as for peace and shared prosperity of our region and beyond.

Please accept, Your Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration and my best wishes for your good health and greater success in your noble endeavors.

Hun Sen

President of the Cambodian Peoples Party

Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia
By Azernews





By Vafa Ismayilova

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov has urged the fair global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, Trend reported on November 4.

He made the remarks at the Emerging Post-COVID-19 Global Order panel within the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19".

It is necessary to ensure the fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in the world, Bayramov said.

The foreign minister added that Azerbaijan is effectively fighting the COVID-19 pandemic both domestically and globally.

The whole world must unite efforts in this sphere. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev voiced important appeals on this issue to the international community, he added.

Speaking about the fulfilment of four UN resolutions on the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan, which Yerevan failed to implement during the three-decade occupation, Bayramov said that this undermined the UN credibility.

He recalled that the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions on the unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian troops from the Azerbaijani territories, but this did not happen.

"Sometimes UN resolutions are implemented quickly. But the resolutions related to the conflict [between Armenia and Azerbaijan] have not been implemented for 30 years, which undermines the credibility of the UN," he stressed.

Organized by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center under the patronage of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19 kicked off in Baku on November 4.

The 8th Global Baku Forum brings together high-level representatives, including former heads of state and government, officials of international and non-governmental organizations from more than 40 countries, as well as other distinguished guests, to discuss issues of global importance.

As part of Azerbaijan's contribution to consolidating global efforts against the COVID-19 pandemic as the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), President Ilham Aliyev initiated the NAM Online Summit at the level of heads of state and government in May 2020.

As a practical outcome of the summit, a database encompassing the basic humanitarian and medical needs of NAM Member States was created. The WHO uses the database as a reference point for identifying the existing needs of NAM member states in addressing the pandemic.

Further to the presidents suggestion, the special session of the UN General Assembly in response to COVID-19 at the level of heads of state and government was held in December 2020.

Azerbaijan made voluntary financial contributions to the WHO in the amount of $10 million, direct financial and humanitarian assistance to more than 30 countries over COVID-19 and donation of more than 150,000 doses of the vaccine to four countries free of charge.

In March 2021, with the initiative of Azerbaijan, as the chair of the NAM, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously adopted a resolution on equitable and universal access to vaccines.
By Trend

Having witnessed the development that Azerbaijan has gone through over the past 15 years, I don't doubt that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs plans on the reconstruction of the liberated territories will be fully implemented, former Prime Minister of Romania Petre Roman said on the sidelines of the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19, Trend reports on Nov. 4.

The second Karabakh war successfully ended [for Azerbaijan] for a number of reasons, Roman added. Firstly, Azerbaijan fought within the international law and the UN Security Councils conventions, and secondly, Azerbaijan has always followed the path of justice.

Roman also stressed that the public saw the terrible destruction in the previously occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Organized by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center under the patronage of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19 has today kicked off.

The 8th Global Baku Forum brings together high-level representatives, including former heads of state and government, officials of international and non-governmental organizations from more than 40 countries, as well as other distinguished guests, to discuss issues of global importance.
By Trend





The image of an influential politician in the world and the leadership qualities of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev became the determining factors when choosing a venue for the Global Forum, US analyst, writer, and columnist Paul Goble told Day.Az, Trend reports.

Goble said that taking into account Azerbaijans growing prestige in the international arena, the leading place, and the role of the country in resolving international issues, the choice was made in favor of Baku.

The prestige of the 8th Global Baku Forum is growing not only in the region but throughout the world, the US analyst added.

The COVID-19 situation in the world is gradually improving, however, as we have witnessed earlier, positive trends may be reversed, Goble said.

The analyst said that the opening ceremony of the 8th Global Baku Forum, on the one hand, stipulates that the world is beginning to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the other hand, the forum is important from the point of view of ensuring the life safety of people worldwide, Goble added.

Organized by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center under the patronage of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the 8th Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19 has today kicked off.

The 8th Global Baku Forum brings together high-level representatives, including former heads of state and government, officials of international and non-governmental organizations from more than 40 countries, as well as other distinguished guests, to discuss issues of global importance.

About 300 guests are participating in the event, organized in a hybrid format, live and online.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

The former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga has praised Bakus development, local media reported on November 4.

Vike-Freiberga made the remark at the VIII Global Baku Forum titled the World after COVID-19.

She stressed that the Azerbaijani capital Baku looks amazing and the city is developing and improving, despite the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organized by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center under the patronage of President Ilham Aliyev, the next Global Baku Forum under the motto "The world after COVID-19 kicked off in Baku on November 4.

The 8th Global Baku Forum brings together high-level representatives, including former heads of state and government, officials of international and non-governmental organizations from more than 40 countries, as well as other distinguished guests to discuss issues of global importance.

The Forum will feature panel discussions on such topics as "New world order after COVID-19", "New world economy", "In a new era: peace, security and human rights", "Combating climate change and meeting global energy demand", "Health care and vaccination", "Promoting food security", "Eastern Partnership and its opportunities", including the situation in the EU, the Balkans, and the South Caucasus.

The forum will last until November 6.
By Trend

Armenia tried to Armenianize Albanian churches, Chairman of the Albanian-Udi Christian religious community of Azerbaijan Robert Mobili told Trends Karabakh bureau during his visit to the Albanian churches in the Chinarli village of the Khojavand district.

According to Mobili, the village has a very rich Albanian cultural heritage.

"The district has two Albanian churches. The largest of them is located in the village of Chinarli, which is part of the administrative territory of Hadrut, and today we visited it. This territory was under Armenian occupation for about 30 years and has been liberated for a year already. Hadrut is a holy place for us, it has several ancient Albanian churches, one of which is in Chinarli," Mobili said.

Armenia tried to present them as their own, but the elements of the Albanian church remained on the churches. Thanks to our martyrs and ghazis, today we can safely visit our temples. We will pray for our martyrs, whom we will never forget. Armenia occupied not only our lands but also destroyed most of the monuments of cultural heritage. Our main task today is to restore the Albanian Christian heritage in these territories, he added.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Turkeys Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank has said that 3.5 billion liras ($360m) will be invested in the domestic car (TOGG) production by late 2021, Yeni Shafak newspaper has reported.

Varank made the remarks while presenting the ministry's 2022 budget at the parliamentary plan and budget commission, the report added.

Some 2.5 billion liras ($257m) have been invested so far and the first vehicle will be off the production line by the end of 2022, he said.

Varank stressed that Turkey had also made significant progress in the production of batteries, the heart of electric vehicles.

TOGG and Farasis will soon start their 20 GWh battery investment in Gemlik. We are also in talks with other global battery manufacturers, he said.

Varank underlined that the government is working on the modernization and transformation of the energy-intensive industrial sectors in line with the Green Deal requirements. He added that Organized Industrial Zones (OIZ) will be transformed into green and sustainable production areas by implementing the Green OIZ Certification System.

We will lay the foundation of the Informatics Valley Izmir before the end of the year. We are taking decisive steps for sustainable development and green transformation in the industry, he emphasized.

Varank said that under the Working and Producing Youth Program, the government had set up 170 factory buildings in 32 provinces and gave them to investors.

The financial aid worth over 600 million liras ($62m) will be spent to employ 60,000 young people, he stressed.

Speaking about the hybrid rocket engine production, Varank said that 25 billion liras ($258m) had been allocated for the project under the 2022 budget.

We have reached the final stage in the liquid fuel Ramjet Project. In 2022 we will reveal a Ramjet engine prototype operating at supersonic speeds. We are preparing our country for the space race with the National Space Program, he underlined.

Furthermore, Turkey's Automobile Joint Venture Group (TOGG) shared new details about the production and assembly process of cars in a video on its media social media account.

The company announced that its smart SUV device, of which electronic and mechanical system productions had been completed in Turkey, received confirmation on the preliminary eligibility.

The TOGG engineers made the vehicle, which can gain 100 -km/h-speed in 4.8 seconds, from the scratch and the vehicle was tested on the Istanbul Park track, the company noted.

Turkey's Automobile Joint Venture Group Inc. (TOGG) is an automotive company founded as a joint venture in 2018. Anadolu Group, BMC Turkey, Kok Group, Turkcell, and Zorlu Holding are major stakeholders under the umbrella institution TOBB. In the joint venture, TOBB has a 5-percent share and other companies own 19-percent shares for each.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

The head of the Collective Against Racism and Islamophobia Abdelaziz Chaambi has criticized the growing Islamophobia in France, Yeni Shafak reported on November 1.

Chaambi said that their organisation was defending the rights of those who were expelled from schools or fired for going to the mosque and wearing headscarves. However, the organisation was closed with the pretext of inciting hatred, Chaambi said

He stressed that they are going to sue Frances Interior Minister Darmanin for closing their organisation.

We will appeal this decision. We want this decision to be revoked. If we are not successful somehow, we will take the case to the European Commission of Human Rights, Chaambi emphasized.

Chaambi noted that their organisation was the last target in France, where the oppression against Muslims is increasing on a daily basis.

France is currently fighting directly against Islam and Muslims. Both Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and racist Marine Le Pen say that they need to be even tougher in their fight against Islam, he underlined.

Chaambi condemned the decision on closing the organisation that adopted by the Council of Ministers on October 20, describing it as a lie and fabrication.

They also said that we provoked the people against the security forces. However, there is no such a situation where we provoke anyone against the security forces. On the contrary, we are trying to defend the rights of the oppressed, the rights of people, the rights of immigrants and Muslims, he stressed.

Chaambi underlined that it is impossible for women to get a driving license, since they cannot take photos with headscarves

He added that women are expelled from restaurants for wearing headscarves or being fired for the same reason.

We will continue to fight the oppressors by defending the rights of the oppressed. We contacted the lawyers in Paris to file a lawsuit against the Minister of the Interior Darmanin, he stressed.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Turkeys Yeni Shafak newspaper has criticized the U.S. double standards on exempting India from sanctions for purchasing Russian S-400 air defence systems.

The newspaper reports that the U.S.Senate is enacting a law to exclude India (which is as Turkey, bought the S-400 air defence system from Russia) from the Countering America's Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

It was stressed that Washington imposed sanctions on its NATO ally Turkey for purchasing the S-400 systems while ignoring India for its security relationship with China.

A bill has been submitted to the U.S. Senate to prevent India from being sanctioned under CAATSA, which came into effect in 2017, for its S-400 purchase, the report added.

The Washington administration's effort to exempt India from sanctions was interpreted as double standards and hypocrisy.

Using the Quadruple Security Dialogue (QUAD) alliance as a shield, U.S. senators submitted legislation to the Senate to prevent QUAD members Australia, Japan and India from being exposed to CAATSA sanctions due to their defence agreements with China and Russia.

Submitted by the Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Todd Young, and Roger Marshall, the CRUCIAL Act (Circumspectly Reducing Unintended Consequences Impairing Alliances and Leadership Act of 2021) would for 10 years exempt three members of the Quad - Australia, Japan, and India - from U.S. sanctions.

The CRUCIAL law will prevent the imposition of sanctions against our closest regional allies in the Indo-Pacific. India is a critical part of the security architecture that converged against China during the Trump administration. Now, imposing these sanctions by President Joe Biden, aimed at deterring Russia, would be to undo all this progress, Cruz said pointing out that the U.S. and India have strong allied relations.

The newspaper writes that such attitude towards India by the U.S. Congress, which forced the administration to impose sanctions on NATO member Turkey for buying S-400, is not understandable.

Turkey is subject to sanctions in many sectors within the scope of CAATSA sanctions. Due to the S-400 conflict, Turkey was excluded from the fifth-generation fighter jet F-35 program, of which it was a project partner, produced more than 100 parts and invested millions of dollars.
Covid-19 has transformed the world in two years. Apart from the unprecedented hardship and suffering it has visited on millions, it has also reshaped behaviour and attitudes in profound ways.

The spectacular rise of digital technology has been one of the most transformative changes. McKinsey & Co recently estimated that the digitization of customer and supplier interaction has accelerated by 3-4 years and the share of digitally enabled products by seven years. Customer behaviour has switched to favour flexible distance purchases.

Never let a good crisis go to waste is one of Sir Winston Churchills many memorable quips. Identifying opportunities for change is of particular importance in the Gulf where an economic paradigm shift was recognised as a priority long before the pandemic. The erstwhile comforts of secure margins underpinned by rising government spending, population growth, and input subsidies have been challenged by slower trend growth, labor market disruptions, and fiscal consolidation. Covid has highlighted the risks of the long-standing preference of investors for low-productivity activities reliant on low-cost labor: retail trade, cafes and restaurants, construction, and basic services. All of these were disrupted by restrictions on mobility but also longer-running structural changes such as the rise of e-commerce.

Covid-19 has forced companies confronted by unprecedented uncertainty to ask question and think ahead. The increased interest in technology has pushed businesses away from their traditional low-cost labor-bias and helped trigger broader reviews of business models. Embracing this global trend is critical to safeguarding the competitiveness of local businesses. Many other opportunities for change exist: digitization, automation, energy efficiency, renewables, consolidation, partnerships, new distribution channels, exports, etc. All these can boost productivity  improve the top line and better manage the cost base. The result will be stronger, more dynamic businesses that can contribute to growth through increased value addition and quality job creation.

More generally, traditional assumption about capital allocation are coming into question as investors seek alternatives for the safe bets of yesteryear, such retail SMEs and real estate investments. Successful company creation will be increasingly about addressing relevant economic problems (which are more numerous than ever in the wake of the pandemic) and pooling resources through multiple founders.

Value will come from technology adoption, scalable business models, innovation, and better governance. With change the new global norm globally, business competitiveness will hinge on agility and adaptability as technology continues to reshape the global economy. But the financial sector will also have to innovate to better cater to these new needs and opportunities. The good news is that unleashing the power of productivity possesses considerable potential for substantially accelerating economic growth and delivering higher living standards.
King Salman Energy Park (Spark) has signed up a Saudi Aramco Power Company (Sapco) to manage the power infrastructure and services at the integrated global energy and industrial hub located in Dammam.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Sapco was established in 2016 to oversee all activities in the power and utilities sector of state oil giants operations.

As per the deal awarded by Spark Utilities, a subsidiary company of the energy park, Sapco will provide the operation and maintenance services for Spark and deliver power services to investors, , said the company in a statement.

Spark Utilities was mainly set up for distribution of power, water and gas within the city and management of the utilities infrastructure as per international standards.

Spark President and CEO Saif S. Al Qahtani, underlining the significance of the moment, said: "In taking a step closer to the energisation of the city, we give further proof that we can satisfy our investors requirements and work together with them to fulfil Saudi Arabias 2030 Vision of enabling a thriving economy and a robust energy cluster in the kingdom." "Our plug-and-play concept reassures investors that Sparks ecosystem gives them all they need to do business here," he noted. Sparks value proposition targets investors and partners of all sizes, said the statement. During the past two years, it has signed investment agreements with over 30 major energy and technology companies to invest in the energy park, with an additional 15 companies in the pipeline. It is expected that foreign direct investment in the park will exceed $2.4 billion in the years ahead once investors complete construction of their facilities, it added.

Spark Utilities Company CEO Einas Al Ashgar said: "Our partnership with Sapco is a key milestone in the progress we are making to provide a sustainable platform with a world-class infrastructure and services for our investors."

"Convenient and reliable access to power is an essential factor for investors seeking to base themselves at the heart of the regional energy sector and allows them to benefit from the all-inclusive, full-service environment available at Spark," he added.

Sapco CEO Abdulaziz Al Naim lauded Spark Utilities for its expert supervision of the power infrastructure and services at the top industrial city.

"The Smart Grid System introduced as part of the Spark energy hub allows investors to confidently expect full and reliable power access right from the very first moment they start operations. The smart grid system provides increased access to real-time data on power consumption and usage and ensures business continuity and smart power usage," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabian Amiantit Company, a key manufacturer of construction materials and pipe systems, said it has completed the restructuring of all bank obligations, including the total repayment of some banks and the rescheduling of the remaining bank loans, amounting to SR1.1 billion ($292 million), over a period of 10 years, including a grace period of two years.

These agreements will contribute to improving the company's cash flows, enhancing its working capital and reducing the expenses of the bank interests that it was previously paying, said Aminatit in its filing to the Saudi bourse Tadawul.

On October 28, Amiantit signed an agreement with Alinma Bank to reschedule the Islamic banking facilities, amounting to SR525.3 million, while on October 4, it inked a similar deal with Saudi National Bank (SNB) for SR330 million, said the statement.

In mid-2021, the Saudi group had signed the pact with Bank Albilad to reschedule the Islamic banking facility, amounting to SR268 million, it added.
The current woes stress testing international supply chains will be over early next year, according to Mohsen Ahmed, CEO-Logistics, Dubai South.

Addressing Hypermotion Lab  one of three unparalleled industry conferences at Hypermotion Dubai, the Middle East edition of the German-initiated industry convex which reimagines the transportation and logistics industries  Ahmed defined 2021 as the independence day for the logistics industry.

Consigning current global logistics dilemmas to pandemic-induced disruption in labour forces, container shortfalls and equipment shortages, Ahmed said; We are now moving. The current supply chain disruption is a short-term scenario. In 2022 things will normalise and will ease up in transportation across the globe.

Dubai, said Ahmed, was able to largely side-step the logistics problems largely due to the agility of Emirates Airline which quickly converted some of its passenger capacity to cargo at the outbreak of Covid-19.

Other companies which emerged largely unscathed, he said, were those who had embraced digitalisation pre-pandemic: They stood out for their quick response providing good visibility on inventory and transportation, he added.

Hypermotion Lab, which runs within Hypermotion Dubai at the spectacular new Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo 2020 until November 4, has unveiled a blueprint for the future logistics and urban transportation industries with experts proffering a range of innovations currently being progressed.

Harj Dhaliwal, Managing Director, Middle East & India of Virgin Hyperloop disclosed the company is currently working with DP World to move into the cargo and logistics sectors alongside passenger transport.

The pandemic exacerbated consumer behaviour where we want things now to be delivered in hours, not days or weeks, which has supercharged the e-commerce sector. There is a need to grow express freight and we are looking at how we can translate this into opportunity using technology like ours and we are working with DP World to see how we can move now into cargo and logistics, he explained.

He added: Eight to 10 years from now autonomous vehicles will drive efficiencies because they will connect trunk lines and integrate into the overall satellite system to be able to handle routing.

Florian Lennert, Head of Mobility for NEOM  Saudi Arabias new future linear city  said multi-modal passenger and freight systems would define the future and help control traffic and emissions in an age of pressing sustainability demand.

There are problems emerging from the rise in e-commerce and an immediate demand in that too many trucks can be delivering too little too often. We have to bundle this in some way. We have to advance mobility to build liveable cities, which will mean looking at the urban design side to deliver cities with 10-minute access and use of urban air mobility technology including drones, he said.

Meanwhile Ghaith Al Darmaki, Chief of Technology of the Asyad Group  the Omani integrated logistics solutions provider  revealed that his company is piloting blockchain technology requiring all our partner communities to work together in one network.

Technology is the backbone of Asyad and enabled us to weather the pandemic by adopting new business models which made us resistant, he disclosed. In addition, because of our geographic position, we were in a better position to mitigate the risks of disruption besetting China and the US.

Dubai Souths CEO said the industry had lessons to learn from the pandemic  including the ending of reliance on single nation suppliers and the building of local and regional manufacturing hubs. Companies are now looking at sourcing around the world. This began pre-pandemic, but the pandemic taught many the cost of having all their eggs in one basket. Risk discussion is now taking place at boardroom level, he maintained.

Hypermotion Dubai, which is organised by Messe Frankfurt Middle East, is a thriving hub of technology game-changers revolutionising four of the Middle Easts key economic sectors  transport, logistics, mobility, and materials handling via its co-located Materials Handling Middle East 2021 trade show.

Hypermotion Lab runs alongside two other conferences  Smart Mobility and Scalex  which together feature over 150 change-makers addressing autonomous transport, urban air mobility, next-generation connectivity, the reshaping of the mass transit industry as well as supply chain and logistics excellence including last-mile delivery.-- TradeArabia News Service
Omantel and Ericsson will support startups and innovators in the Oman within technology areas including Big Data, Customer Experience Technology, Cybersecurity, 5G, and Internet of Things (IoT).

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by Omantel with Ericsson to foster thought leadership and technology innovation initiatives through the Omantel Innovation Labs.

Announced in July 2021, the Omantel Innovation Labs leverages Omantels expertise, partnerships, reach, and access to technology to contribute to Omans Vision 2040 and promote innovation and entrepreneurship in new and emerging technologies. Located in a 1100 sq m facility at Omantel headquarters in Muscat, the key focus of the Omantel Labs is to cultivate entrepreneurial skills among the youth and accelerate the growth of relevant Oman-based technology startups across five technological verticals: 5G, Internet of Things, Cybersecurity, Customer Experience Technology, and Big Data.

Based on a shared vision to engage the entrepreneurial community to contribute to Vision 2040, the MoU will see Omantel and Ericsson work together to support digital transformation and innovation in the country by expanding the enterprise markets capabilities through 5G and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Using the Omantel Innovation Labs as a platform, Ericssons regional innovation hub, local, regional, and international experts will provide thought-leadership to start-ups and innovators in Oman. Ericsson and Omantel will also host multiple activities to bring together innovators to develop technology solutions in line with Oman Vision 2040.

Talal Said Al Mamari, Chief Executive Officer of Omantel says: We are committed to equipping Omani entrepreneurs with the right tools to develop meaningful solutions and are delighted to be partnering with Ericsson to add more value to the local startup ecosystem. We believe that the collaboration with Ericsson will open new doors to technology innovators and entrepreneurs across the sultanate and will be focusing on several technology areas to drive the value of 5G and innovation in the country and contribute to Oman Vision 2040.

Abdullah Al-Balushi, Country Manager of Ericsson Oman says: Our collaboration with Omantel will support in accelerating their digital transformation journey. Supporting Omantel in nurturing innovators and entrepreneurs through our expertise in 5G presents the vast talent in Oman with an opportunity to build on skills to bring to life Oman Vision 2040. We have many activities lined up and are looking forward to working together and bringing innovation to fruition.-- TradeArabia News Service
Emirates has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Seychelles Tourism Board at Expo 2020. The agreement reaffirms the airline's commitment to the island-nation and outlines joint initiatives to promote trade and tourism to the country.

The MoU was signed by Ahmed Khoory, Emirates' SVP Commercial West Asia & Indian Ocean, and Sherin Francis, Principal Secretary Tourism Department, Tourism Seychelles, in the presence of Minister for Foreign Affairs & Tourism Sylvestre Radegonde and Emirates' Chief Commercial Officer Adnan Kazim.

Khoory said: "Emirates has shared strong ties with Seychelles since 2005 and the island nation remains an important market for us. The agreement is a testament to our commitment and support to the island-nation. We thank our partners for their support and we look forward to continue growing our partnership."

Radegonde said: "Emirates airline has been constant and steadfast with their support towards Seychelles and we are indeed grateful for that. Therefore, we would like to express our support for the coming year with the hope that it will be a better year for both Seychelles and the airline."

The agreement outlines mutually beneficial activities to boost trade and tourism to the country, including trade shows, trade familiarisation trips, exhibitions, and workshops.

Emirates launched operations to Seychelles in 2005 and the airline currently operates daily flights to the island-nation, utilising its wide-body Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. Emirates was the first international airline to resume passenger services to Seychelles in August 2020, coinciding with the country's re-opening to international tourists.

Since January 2021, Emirates has carried close to 43,500 passengers to the island-nation, from more than 90 destinations.-TradeArabia News Service
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The region is developing a 10-year action plan to "strengthen" the fight for the environment. It focuses on 13 issues including energy, the food chain and migration. But the economy remains tied to crude oil, with increased demand from the Asian continent. Record revenues in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - A ten-year action programme to "strengthen" collaboration in the Middle East in the fight against climate change, to be approved at a meeting between countries in the area, including Israel, scheduled for next February.

As the Cop26 climate conference continues in Glasgow between those present and distinguished absentees - China and Russia - regional leaders are preparing to ratify by fall 2022 the Eastern Mediterranean&Middle East Climate Change Initiative (Emme-Cci) plan, launched in 2019 in Cyprus. The project focuses around 13 primary themes, ranging from energy to agroforestry, from the food chain to the marine environment, education, migration and tourism.

This ambitious project, aims - at least on paper - to provide implementation plans for an environmental crisis that affects the Middle East as much as and more than other areas in the world, to teh point of rendering it "unlivable". Jihad Alsawair, consultant of the Jordanian Ministry of Environment, stresses that "we must act collectively, decisively and based on scientific knowledge". Fatima Driouech, from Mediterranean Experts on Climate and Environmental Change, points the finger at the rising seas and the disappearance of half of the region's wetlands.

Speaking to The Times of Israel, Ambassador Gideon Behar, Israel's special envoy for climate change and sustainability, points out that "the effects of climate change in the Middle East are so dramatic and severe that only through regional cooperation can we survive and prosper. The Middle East is warming faster than the world average. It is suffering from desertification and is the most water-scarce region on the planet, he said. By 2050, the amount of water per person (also taking population growth into account) will be half of what it is today. We are seeing rivers drying up and people rioting over water shortages.

In spite of the announcements and good interactions, the region - and its economy - remain closely linked to oil revenues, relying on Asian markets as new buyers. Major industry leaders such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait are experiencing growth in demand for crude oil from Asia, while the United States, Europe and Africa are declining.

According to data provided by Refinitiv Oil Research, the import share from Asia grew 61.6% in October, up further from 59.1% in September. In contrast, the share of crude oil destined for the West, which includes the Americas and Europe, fell 19% last month, the lowest of the year and down steadily from 28% in February. Exports to Africa were also down, falling 8.4% in October.

Among producer countries, in Iraq oil exports in October 2021 grew to 3.12 million barrels per day; the previous month the figure was 3.08 million barrels. Only from Basra terminals, in the south, 3.01 million barrels left last month, while from Kirkuk 98 thousand barrels left towards Turkey and 10 thousand towards Jordan. In October Baghdad cashed 7.68 billion dollars, with an average price per barrel of 79.3 dollars.

Finally, Saudi Arabia: in the third quarter Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, recorded revenues for 30.4 billion dollars, thanks to the increase in demand for the gradual easing of the containment measures of Covid-19 in the world. The company's net income more than doubled from last year's .8 billion. Aramco CEO Amin Nasser speaks of "exceptional" results linked to increased "economic activity in key markets and a rebound in energy demand."

Riyadh has joined more than 100 countries in reducing carbon emissions by 2060, but does not intend to give up its role as a global leader in oil and gas production even in the face of growing pressure to invest in renewables. Moreover, despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) efforts to diversify the economy with his Vision 2030 plan, the kingdom depends on oil exports to sustain public spending.
by Shafique Khokhar

At least nine people are wounded, three hospitalised in critical conditions. The attackers have not been arrested. In Trikhani, Christian families have repeatedly refused to sell the lands given to their ancestors by missionaries.

Burewala (AsiaNews)  A group of Muslims attacked and fired at Christians in order to seize their lands in Trikhani, a village near the city of Burewala, Vehari district (Punjab). At least nine people were wounded, three hospitalised in critical condition.

On 29 October, Muslims started shooting at Christians as they watered their fields. After the latter filed a First Information Report (FIR) with police, the attackers, who had obtained pre-arrest bail, continued to threaten the Christians, demanding they drop the FIR.

"They wanted to kill us, said Raja Masih. They fired straight at us, so I got a bullet that almost hit me in the heart".

Kamran Masih, a resident of the village and an eyewitness to the incident, explained that Muslim landowners demanded local Christians to sell their land. Uttering threats, they told them if they refused, they would face serious consequences".

This is not new. Local Christians have already resisted selling their land in the past because they are the history and legacy of our ancestors" and allow families to earn a living.

The village was originally founded by missionaries and farmland was donated to the poorest families, who handed it down through the generations.

In any case, the Muslim offers do not reflect the real market value of the fields," Masih told AsiaNews.

Human rights activist Saleem Iqbal, who visited the injured in hospital in Sahiwal, expressed his regret over the affair. It is sad to see how Muslim landowners use their influence to target Christians.

Ashiknaz Khokhar, also an activist for the Christian minority, noted that this is the second attack of this kind in Sahiwal. In the village of Okara, two brothers were killed and several Christians wounded from gunshots over irrigation.

It is frustrating, he added, to see, on the one hand, Christians fighting for their survival and, on the other, the culprits on the loose, pre-released on bail without being arrested.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov's latest literary effort exalts the country's independence. In reality the population is obliged to buy and read it. Officially, proceeds from "recommended" sales are destined to Islamic charities.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov has presented his new book in Parliamentd, dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of the country's independence. The book is titled "Independence is our happiness", and will be distributed among the population with a pressing campaign, starting with civil servants and students who will in fact be obliged to buy it, read it and propose it in turn to their fellow citizens.

The leaders of the various regions are in turn charged with organizing book launches and events to promote "state happiness" and motivate the population, which at the moment, in the grip of an increasingly unstoppable economic crisis, would appear insufficiently aligned with the presidential message.

Radio Azatlyk correspondents report that in the velayat (province) of Lebap, cultural representatives have announced a competition to compose a musical work celebrating Berdymuhamedov's new endeavor. The winners will be awarded a medal, to be presented next year on the next Independence Day anniversary. Also in Lebap, high school students have promised to learn the new book by heart. To support the meritorious effort, those who can demonstrate perfect knowledge of "happiness" have been promised a reward of 100 manat (about 25 euros).

According to the official press, the president's book has been released in three languages: Turkmen, English and Russian. The text is dedicated to the many achievements of the country in this thirty-year post-Soviet period. It is the second book signed by Berdymuhamedov in 2021; in May, "The White City of Ashgabat" was published, a text dedicated to the 140th anniversary of the capital's foundation.

In 15 years of his presidency, the Turkmen leader has penned more than 60 volumes, on various topics, whose editions follow each other with systematic deadlines, especially in connection with state holidays and major events of national life.

For example, in December 2020, the nation celebrated the quarter-century anniversary of political neutrality with the book "Turkmenistan, Homeland of Neutrality," which followed the 2015 book (20th anniversary) entitled "Neutral Turkmenistan." Last year Berdymuhamedov presented and "proposed" for everyone's reading the text "The Spiritual World of Turkmen".

Many presidential books are dedicated to the breeding of dogs and horses, to the many Turkmen folk and cultural traditions, such as carpets, tea and medicinal plants, the latter considered by the president as decisive to preserve the country from Covid-19.

The strong man of Ashgabat does not tire of reiterating that all proceeds from "recommended" sales (with compulsory levies on civil servants) are committed to Islamic ritual sacrifices (sadaka), in which it is planned to feed the poorest with the third part of the food and goods of the family.

Along with books, charitable sacrifices are also supported by the retail sale of presidential images (paintings, banners, postcards, T-shirts), which are renewed several times a year.

Precisely in the worst phases of the food crisis of these months (and also of the officially denied spread of the coronavirus), the images of the president are added to the products on sale, in order to promote their diffusion and alleviate their economic burden.
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The View

Buffalo as a climate refuge? Lets start planning for it, UB expert says

Buffalo is among the Great Lakes communities that have been mentioned as possible destinations for climate migrants and climate refugees. Photo: Douglas Levere

By TESSIE MAR

Undergraduate environmental studies/earth systems science major

The larger Buffalo region needs to investigate this issue and think through the potential implications. The conversation is all about bringing people here, but what will we do to support them when theyre actually here? 

In recent years, Buffalo has gained national attention from researchers and the media as a possible destination for both climate migrants and climate refugees.

These are people who have either relocated due to climate-related stressors, or who have been displaced by environmental disasters caused by climate change. Drought, hurricanes, flooding, sea level rise and wildfires are all extreme events associated with a warming planet.

Nicholas Rajkovich, associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, breaks down some misconceptions related to Western New York as a climate refuge. The city and region have more work to do before they can claim that title, he says.

The larger Buffalo region needs to investigate this issue and think through the potential implications, Rajkovich says. The conversation is all about bringing people here, but what will we do to support them when theyre actually here?

Rajkovich leads the Resilient Buildings Lab at UB, where he studies the impact of climate change on cities and buildings. His expertise is centered around greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation to climate change, with a focus on Great Lakes communities.

Places like Buffalo have been labeled potential climate refuges due to the abundant supply of freshwater, a temperate climate, available land and a relatively low cost of living.

Some Great Lakes cities, like Duluth, Minnesota, have started to discuss climate migration, tying this planning to other initiatives that address existing problems. Cities like Buffalo have the ability to do the same, and should engage in such planning, Rajkovich says.

As of now, Rajkovich is concerned that Western New York does not yet fit the description of a climate refuge and cautions against promoting this image. For example, the city of Buffalo lacks a formal plan to adapt to climate change and to build resilience in neighborhoods, he says.

He highlights some areas of concern:

Planning in legacy cities

Buffalo is a legacy city, an older industrial city that has experienced sustained job and population loss over several decades. These historical trends explain the abundance of available housing, but Rajkovich says many homes are not energy efficient, or have other problems like knob-and-tube wiring and lead paint. The U.S. Census has estimated that the housing stock in Buffalo is the oldest in the United States, Rajkovich says, and the region needs a plan to address such concerns. We need to think about programs like weatherization as not just an opportunity to reduce energy bills, but as a way to improve the quality of life for our current and future residents. Steps like this will enable Western New York to better withstand climate impacts.

Impact on vulnerable populations

Climate change could still impact Western New York in the form of temperature extremes, changes in precipitation patterns and other extreme events, Rajkovich says. He notes that vulnerable populations, including low-income and minority communities, are likely to be disproportionately impacted. This may exacerbate conditions like poverty and food insecurity, he says. Other cities in the Great Lakes region, like Cleveland, Ohio, have already invested time and money to respond to these climate-related vulnerabilities, he says.

Self-reliance on locally grown products

Buffalos reliance on imported foods, goods and services prevents the city from being independent from climate impacts in other parts of the world, Rajkovich says. For example, much of Buffalos food is imported from faraway places such as California. In addition, not enough land is allocated locally for farmers to grow the amount of fruits and vegetables required for Buffalo to be self-sufficient, according to a sustainable food report prepared by the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab in the School of Architecture and Planning.

Water access

Rajkovich stresses that water access is another crucial factor that the region needs to consider. Will climate migration compromise the availability and quality of drinking water for residents? These are possibilities that need to be taken into account, he says. Though the Great Lakes system holds around 20% of the worlds surface freshwater, water insecurity is still an issue in the region. As examples, Rajkovich points to water quality problems in Flint, Michigan, harmful algal blooms in Toledo, Ohio, and the situation impacting the Tuscarora Reservation in Western New York, where families have been relying on bottled water because of contamination of their groundwater.

Water-related industry

Another question surrounding water is the possibility of water-intensive companies becoming interested in the Lower Great Lakes region because of the freshwater supply. In order for water-intensive companies to open up facilities here, we need to think through water as an equity issue first, Rajkovich says. He notes that in Northeast Ohio, a public-private partnership is paving the way for water-centered economic growth.
India condemned the "horrendous terrorist attack" at the Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital in Kabul and underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors accountable.

Taking to Twitter, the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, New York on Thursday said that the attack, which was claimed by Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), an entity affiliated with Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), resulted in dozens killed and injured.

"The members of the Security Council expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims, and they wished a speedy and full recovery to those who were injured, " India at UN, NY said in a statement.

According to the statement, the members of the Security Council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. Deliberately targeting hospitals and medical personnel is especially abhorrent and must be condemned.

"The members of the Security Council underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice. They urged all States, in accordance with their obligations under international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, to cooperate actively with all relevant authorities in this regard," read the statement said.

The members of the Security Council reiterated that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed.

"They reaffirmed the need for all States to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and other obligations under international law, including international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts," the statement added.

At least 19 people were killed and 43 injured following twin blasts in the capital city of Afghanistan, Al Jazeera reported. The gunshots were also heard near the Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan military hospital in Kabul.

Meanwhile, the attack on Kabul hospital was reportedly staged by the Islamic State.

(ANI)

Also Read: Worried Afghan women athletes ask Taliban to continue sports
After several weeks of clashes with banned Islamist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Imran Khan government on last Sunday reached an agreement.

The announcement followed more than two weeks of chaos due to TLP's violent demonstrations, mainly in various cities in Pakistan's Punjab, and deadly clashes with the provincial police force.

But the agreement raises many concerns. "Is government-TLP agreement a deal for peace or an instrument of surrender?" questioned Geo News.

The agreement between the TLP and the government -- held up as an important breakthrough between the parties -- was announced in a sombre news conference attended by representatives from both the government and the TLP.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, who represented the government's negotiating team, and Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman (formerly of Ruet-i-Hilal committee fame), who represented the TLP, were among those present.

"An agreement for peace and betterment has been reached," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the nation.

Mufti Muneeb described it as "a victory for Islam and Pakistan".

Both declined to shed light on the terms reached. Since then, the secret deal remains a mystery for the masses, but everyone has something to say about it, reported Geo News.

While some PTI ministers have cautiously defended the agreement, the impact and spectacle of yet another round of violent protests have left many surprised why an agreement was made yet again with a proscribed group.

Journalist Zarrar Khuhro shared a brief video recording of the brother of a policeman who was alleged killed and dumped by TLP workers, and the ordeal he and his family had to suffer.

"They [TLP activists] didn't leave anything of my brother's. They destroyed everything. This is all the government's fault," he said, adding that Prime Minister Imran Khan and Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar are to blame for the exploitation of law enforcers during clashes with TLP.

"This is a stain on Islam's name. Islam doesn't preach killing your own brothers," he said. He sought justice from the government, reported Geo News.

Journalist Azaz Syed, too, took to Twitter to call out the government for striking an agreement with the proscribed group.

He said the "real culprits" behind the martyrdom of a police officer he had shared a picture of were "all the government officials" who supported a contract with TLP.

Another Twitter user, Sheharyar Jaffri (@sheharyaralii), shared a graphic video showing beaten and bloodied policemen being forced to chant "Labbaik Ya RasulAllah".

Other Twitter users criticised the government, with one user saying that "shameless opportunism is the only ideology of manufactured governments".

(ANI)

Also Read: Pakistan staring at rationing Liquified Natural Gas due to depleting gas reserves
And so the process that were going after here is how do we more rapidly acquire new and innovative technology so that we can, we can innovate, so we can solve these problems really ahead of adversaries and position ourselves to be more resilient, you know, and to be better off from a national security perspective.
For the many parents who have been speculating when the shots would be ready for their elementary school-age children, having the vaccine available this week is encouraging, especially as many of the students who have returned to fully reopened classrooms this fall were previously too young to be vaccinated.
I think people learned not to take hospitality for granted in that time we didnt have restaurants, Oliver Poilevey later said. He didnt internalize it till he closed West Loop sibling bistro La Sardine for good, mid-pandemic. I saw this outpouring from people who loved that place  they, like, cried in front of me, he said. It reinforced things I really believe in, that restaurants really are important, and that its hard to make a great community without restaurants that are full of people who love giving service.
Its heartbreaking, because I told Rudy it would end like this if he didnt change the people he was around, he said. He didnt let the music save him. He still wanted to be in the neighborhood. He cared about people and he took care of people. He loved too many people, and his loyalty is probably what got him killed.
In the two lawsuits  filed against Newsmax in Delaware and against One America News in Washington, D.C.  Smartmatic says that the networks aired dozens of reports accusing the company of participating in a conspiracy to rig the election against Trump. Those accusations came even though Smartmatic provided its services only in Los Angeles County, and nowhere else, in the 2020 election.
McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to sexually abusing five children while he was a priest at St. Agathas parish, has since registered as a sex offender with the Illinois State Police and is listed as living in Chicagos Near North neighborhood, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Tena Guwor, who went to DePaul with Kontein and graduated the same year, is charged with managing the ground searches. He is planning a second search over the weekend and getting expert opinions on the most efficient and useful way to conduct them. Guwor said his friend was a warm, friendly person who loved to play pool and meditate on the beach.
They victimized Michael Craig twice, Oppenheimer said. He called for help. He was the victim of domestic violence and instead of going to help him, they ended up shooting him twice, killing him.
Benowitz said Rukstales followed a crowd into the Capitol through an open door and did not act in a violent or aggressive manner, characterizing the chair heave this way: Chairs were being thrown down the stairs by others, and as Mr. Rukstales reached the bottom of the stairs, he picked up a chair that was in front of him and tossed it to the side as he walked forward.
She imagined the moment in her head over and over again. When Zoya Shaik, a high school sophomore at Lisle Senior High School, decided to start wearing her hijab for the first time, she mentally prepared for the mixed reactions she would get. Even though Shaik has known most of her classmates since preschool, she knew she would stand out. After all, she would be the only student in her entire school to wear a hijab.
Today that extra hour of daylight in the afternoon will mean chiefly that you and your family will have that much more time to be out-of-doors. Tomorrow it will mean, in addition to the extra hour outside, if you so desire, that you will leave work while there is plenty of light and fewer hazards in the evening traffic rush. Your children will have an extra hour for play when they have left their school classrooms. You will use less light during the evening hours, turning the lights on an hour later.
Claypool was referring to a federal statute for the murder of a U.S. national on foreign soil, but Mack was not charged under that statute, experts said, and she was charged under a federal murder conspiracy law that does not contain that language. And while much of the conduct laid out in the five-page indictment allegedly occurred overseas, one count does allege that her then-boyfriend Tommy Schafer was still in Chicago conspiring with Mack before he met them in Bali a day before the slaying.
Today, five of the innocent were exonerated and I dont want to take away the very special feeling that those five men have  were very, very happy for them, Tepfer said. That said, we have 55 other clients who have been literally waiting for their justice for 15 to 20 years and since this review (of Watts cases) has started many have waited for two, three or four years.
Anything that undermines public confidence in what happens here is very important, Schroeder said. Its important for this town. Its important for this country to have people have confidence in the result of this trial. Whatever it is  and I dont care what it is  but people have to be confident.
Chicago women of Czechoslovakia ancestry in native costumes to protest meeting. About 65,000 gathered for the affair on Sept. 25, 1938. "Sixty-five thousand persons gathered in and near the Chicago Stadium yesterday to cheer predictions that Czechoslovakia will not fall victim to Nazi aggression," wrote the Tribune on Sept. 26, 1938. "The meeting, arranged by several Czecho-slovak societies of Chicago, was preceded by three parades in which several thousand, many in native costumes, participated," (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
Anthony Gay should be lifted up by progressive-minded people in the state of Illinois, and by people throughout the country and the world. His story of being sent to prison after being involved in a fight and accused of stealing a hat and one dollar led to his spending 22 years in solitary. We should applaud him for doing everything possible to resist the constant assaults on his humanity, including self-injury and the use of his bodily excretions to fight back. It is a miracle that he survived  and is now alive, free and passionately working to save those he left behind.
But is the TSA the right agency to enforce the mandate? The short answer is no, but its not that simple. Its important to fully understand and appreciate the spectrum of security responsibilities already placed on the TSA before adding to it. It also requires one to look more closely at the profile of face-covering violators.
Not until the night before Election Day did Trump appear to pump up the base with a brief cameo telephone call billed as a tele-rally, in which he called Youngkin a fantastic guy, his equivalent of a four-star recommendation. And his supporters clearly headed to the polls. Other Republican candidates for future office now will be wondering if they can thread that tricky needle in the same, clearly effective way. This might be the beginning of the only post-Trump strategy that will work for the GOP.
Its not my intention to run for anything statewide. I think theres probably less of that chatter. At the beginning, I heard people speculate that I was taking the positions I was taking to set myself up to run statewide. And Ill tell you, people who speculate that dont know me. And, I would even argue that they probably dont know something about politics if you think I can get through a primary pretty easily, Kinzinger said at the time.
Clearly, what were stating here is that were going to try and play beat the clock on getting around a state constitution, Morrison said. Why were rushing this through given the fact that our state Supreme Court ruled against it is to me, just, I dont understand it.
Inter-Tribal Council reiterates support of effective criminal justice operations

Members of the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes unanimously passed a resolution commending the diligent work of our law enforcement and criminal justice professionals.

Each of the Five Tribes criminal justice duties expanded after a series of court rulings that affirmed the reservations of the Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole nations.

To meet these expanded responsibilities, each of the governments of the Five Tribes enhanced its police, prosecutor, and court systems. Tribal governments have also endeavored to deepen their productive and cooperative relations with non-tribal law enforcement agencies.

The Council resolution states, the work of our Nations law enforcement and criminal justice professionals is an exercise of each Nations sovereignty and is instrumental to our ability to protect the publics safety while we provide effective law enforcement for our citizens, the communities of our Reservation, and the general public.

Governor Bill Anoatubby said each of the Five Tribes had a longstanding commitment to public safety.

Since the reaffirmation of each Nations reservation, Five Tribe law enforcement and criminal justice professionals have brought charges in 6,965 felony and misdemeanor cases, as of September 30, 2021.

We have always taken seriously our responsibility to protect public safety and serve the citizens and communities within our reservation, Gov. Anoatubby said. We have a long history of intergovernmental cooperation on which we can now build as we work to protect public safety and provide effective law enforcement.

At the Chickasaw Nation, its Lighthorse Police officers have fielded 73,144 dispatch contacts, handled 3,903 incidents, and made 1,361 arrests. Tribal prosecutors are filing nearly 50 new criminal cases in tribal court each week. The Chickasaw Nation now has seven adult detention and one juvenile detention facility agreements, each of which enables the Chickasaw Nation to responsibly house its inmate population.

Deepening its network of intergovernmental agreements, the Chickasaw Nation has cross-deputization agreements with more than 70 non-tribal jurisdictions, including 39 of the 43 incorporated communities within the reservation that have a police force.

The work of our police and prosecutors tells a compelling story of robust intergovernmental work, Chickasaw Nation Senior Counsel Stephen Greetham said. A full 80% of charges developed by our Lighthorse Police are referred to non-tribal prosecutors, whether it is a local district attorney or a federal office, while 60% of the criminal cases our tribal prosecutors have filed in Chickasaw courts were referred to us by non-tribal police. These numbers alone tell a story of agencies working together to provide for the publics safety. We still have work to do in addressing certain challenges, but we are getting it done.

Gov. Anoatubby reiterated the importance of proper law enforcement within the reservation boundaries.

Tribes are getting the job done when it comes to public safety and criminal justice, Gov. Anoatubby.

Referencing a recent poll reported on by the Oklahoman, Gov. Anoatubby added that despite an effort to exaggerate the results of this Supreme Court ruling, a large majority of Oklahomans see other issues as more important to the future of the state. This helps confirm our belief that most Oklahomans have seen very little change in their daily life as a result of this ruling.

We have established many effective partnerships with agencies across the state and which benefit all Oklahomans. We will continue our work to provide for effective law enforcement in a responsible manner, Gov. Anoatubby said.
Jingdezhen, a small city in East China's Jiangxi province, has long been associated with the creation of quality ceramics. Often called the "porcelain capital" for its important role in the domestic and international ceramic industry, it has been dedicated to the craft for more than 1,800 years. Due to its role as a royal kiln, it developed porcelain-making techniques that placed it in a league of its own.

Even today, a wide variety of porcelain products are still being exported to the world from Jingdezhen. Thousands of artists and lovers of ceramics visit the city each year for a glimpse of the world's best china.

It currently boasts more than 8,300 ceramic enterprises and more than 9,800 self-employed ceramic practitioners, while about 10 percent of its population is engaged in related businesses.

Here generations of ceramic artisans have enacted a profound interpretation of the spirit of craftsmanship: diligence, perfection and innovation, the secret to the production of the fine quality ceramics made in the city. A handful of clay undergoes a process requiring dozens of steps before it can be called Jingdezhen porcelain.

Experience and skill are essential. Hu Jiawang has a unique trick of "spitting". He judges the temperature in the kiln by the speed at which his spit evaporates from it, a method that is often more accurate than the thermometer. And this is just the start. There are many more mysteries to be unpacked before one can fully understand the craft of the kiln.

"A piece of real art is created through an attitude of excellence, inner peace, full-heartedness and precise skill," says Xiang Yuanhua, an inheritor of the imperial kiln techniques and methods, whose company restores ancient porcelain items, some of which are displayed in the palace museums of Beijing and Taipei.

Jingdezhen's collection of porcelain, preserved both above ground and underground, is second to none in the world. "Its name didn't come from anyone but it is recognized by the world," says Xiang. "Its porcelain has a strict standard and embodies the values of the Chinese people and Chinese aesthetics, and that has been passed down well."

Potters in Jingdezhen never cease to innovate, while at the same time preserving long-held traditions.

According to Yu Jihua, head of the Jingdezhen ceramic artists' association, ceramic artists in the city have been open-minded. "They're willing to share their own experience and skills, which have been passed down over thousands of years, and accept new ideas."

There are some 30,000 nonlocal artists in the city, of whom about 5,000 are foreign artists. They are constantly injecting new blood and inspiration into the creation of Jingdezhen porcelain.

Su Hui, a master of arts and crafts in Shaanxi province, came to the city two years ago for some inspiration. "I've met many artists and friends over the past two years, and I feel that my creative ability has been improved," he says. "It is a city that hails artistic creation, where porcelain making is mature in all respects. For young artists, they can start chasing their dreams at a low cost."

Among the foreign visitors is French artist Camille Kami. On her first trip to Jingdezhen, she marveled at the city "where an industry had been going on wholeheartedly for over a thousand years".

With such an illustrious history, such a wealth of talent and skill, and so much interest from new generations, the future of the city seems secure. After thousands of years, the fire in the famous kiln is still burning brightly.
China's central bank governor Yi Gang on Wednesday called for the promotion of fairer data use on the premise of protecting personal data.



Addressing Hong Kong FinTech Week 2021 via video, Yi said the issue of personal data protection has come to the fore amid the rapid development of fintech.

Some big tech firms have either collected data without permission or misused it, and there are also cases of customer data leakage, Yi said. "It is urgent that we strengthen personal data protection."

The governor said personal data protection is high on the agenda of the People's Bank of China (PBOC). Since 2005, the PBOC has introduced data protection regulations in the areas of anti-money laundering, consumer protection and credit information.

The PBOC has recently focused on cracking down on the excessive collection of consumer data, urging financial institutions to collect, use and store information for legitimate purposes and in strict accordance with the principles of lawfulness and minimum necessity, according to Yi.

He also said that international coordination in fields such as anti-trust, data and consumer protection should be enhanced, calling for "joined hands" to set standards for personal data protection.

"Going forward, we will continue to improve the legal framework for personal data protection in the financial sector, and strengthen regulations accordingly," Yi said.
The fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE), scheduled from Nov. 5 to 10 in Shanghai, east China, will significantly contribute to boosting international trade and multilateralism amid the COVID-19 pandemic, said Cambodian officials and businesspersons.

Government chief spokesman Phay Siphan said the expo will be a "golden opportunity" for foreign companies to explore the Chinese market and for Chinese consumers to access imported products from all over the world.

"International exhibitors will be able to exhibit their products, services and investment projects, not only to Chinese consumers, but also to other foreign buyers and exhibitors," he told Xinhua.

"I would say that it truly shows China's unwavering commitment to promoting global trade and multilateralism and to opening the Chinese market broader to the world despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

"We have the best rice and tropical fruits such as yellow bananas and mangos, and they are very popular," Siphan said. "I hope China will increase imports of Cambodian agricultural products, helping push forward Cambodia's industrialization and its economic transformation."

The annual CIIE is the first dedicated import exhibition in the world and has seen fruitful outcomes from the past three editions.

Ministry of Commerce Secretary of State and Spokesman Seang Thay said CIIE is a large-scale trade event with the participants from multiple countries around the world.

"The 4th CIIE will be a platform for international investors and businesspersons to seek new business partners," he told Xinhua.

Thay added that the expo is also crucial to help further promote trade and investment volumes between Cambodia and China.

Despite the impact of COVID-19, trade volume between Cambodia and China saw rise during the first nine months of 2021, over the same period last year, according to a Cambodian Ministry of Commerce's report on Tuesday.

Song Saran, president of the Cambodia Rice Federation, praised China for organizing such an international event amid the pandemic, saying that the fourth CIIE would inject a new impetus into global trade.

"It truly reflects China's commitment to free trade, and there's no doubt that the expo will help broaden trade and investment ties between China and the world," he said.

The last three expos had significantly contributed to boosting Cambodian rice export to China, Saran said, adding that the Southeast Asian nation exported more rice to China during the first nine months of 2021.

"China is the only market that we see a rise in our rice export this year, as our export to other destinations has declined due to the pandemic," he said.

Chran Ponny, chief executive officer of Angkor Harvest, a mango processing factory for export to international markets, said the fourth CIIE is vital to help boost trade and investment relations between China and the world.

"It's a win-win situation and all participants will benefit from this large trade event," she said.
A United Nations official has underlined China's proactive role in improving global governance and contributing to the goals of the U.N. 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

China is preparing to move fast to address the development gap between rural and urban areas, boost its social security system and reverse climate change, said Siddharth Chatterjee, the U.N. Resident Coordinator in China, during a symposium on Tuesday in Beijing.

Chatterjee reviewed the progress China has made in poverty alleviation, public health, education and economic growth over the past 50 years since the country's lawful seat in the United Nations was restored in 1971. He further emphasized the collaboration between the U.N. and China to deliver tangible development results to people.

"The role of the U.N. in China has shifted from a traditional donor to that of a partner providing technical expertise and support both within and beyond its national boundaries, including in its activities under the framework of the South-South cooperation," he said.

Given the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and imminent crisis brought about by climate change, Chatterjee highly recognized China's new development paradigm, which is a model of green, equitable, sustainable growth that aims to achieve common prosperity for all people.

China has long been working to bridge the development gap between different regions across the country. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, the term "common prosperity"  which refers to affluence shared by everyone, both in material and cultural terms  has been given greater prominence in multiple national development strategies.

With China's success in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, it is taking more solid steps toward the U.N. 2030 Agenda. For example, China has increased per capita government subsidies for basic public health services, established pilot zones for high-quality education reform and easing students' academic burden, improved per capita water availability, and promoted clean energy to some 28 million households in the country's northern region, to name a few.

In addition, a report released during the Sustainable Development Forum 2021 also recognized the promising prospects of China's carbon emission goals. According to the report, the natural carbon sink capacity in China and the global ecosystem both showed a significant increase in the past 10 years.

The country has now become the world's largest market for renewable energy, with renewable power accounting for 29.5% of total electricity consumption. China's energy consumption per unit of GDP also decreased by 28.7% between 2011 and 2020, which is one of the most rapid reductions anywhere in the world.

"We are pleased to see that China is preparing to move fast to address these challenges," Chatterjee said. "We and the United Nations stand ready to work with the Chinese government to realize this ambitious plan, such as rural revitalization, peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060."
China's leading pulmonologists affirmed the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots and warned that elderly people should pay more attention to disease prevention, as many of them have not yet been vaccinated.

Zhong Nanshan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a leading expert in China's respiratory disease research, told China Daily on Wednesday that the Delta variant is highly contagious.

"Although it has not resulted in a significant increase in the death toll, we should prevent the disease from causing more cases with severe symptoms, especially among the elderly," he said.

"We hope at least 80 percent of people in China will receive a full course of vaccinations by the end of this year. Elderly people, in particular, should get a booster shot," Zhong said.

China has been expanding vaccine inoculations to combat COVID-19 and build an immunity barrier as the novel coronavirus continues to spread worldwide. Booster shotsadditional jabs offered after a full primary vaccinationare being recommended in particular.

Some Chinese cities, including Xi'an in Shaanxi province, Guangzhou in Guangdong province and Beijing, have launched a campaign to administer COVID-19 booster shots for those age 18 and older who were fully vaccinated at least six months ago.

The Chinese mainland recorded 109 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Tuesday93 local transmissions and 16 from overseasdata from the National Health Commission showed on Wednesday.

Of the new local cases: 35 were reported in Heilongjiang province; 14 in Hebei province; another 14 in Gansu province; nine in Beijing; six in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region; four each in Chongqing and Qinghai province; two each in Jiangxi and Yunnan provinces and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region; and one in Sichuan province, the commission reported.

The recent resurgence of COVID-19 has hit 16 provincial regions, with three high-risk areasone in Beijing, one in Inner Mongolia and one in Heilongjiangand 46 medium-risk areas.

From 12 pm Tuesday to 2 pm Wednesday, Beijing reported five new locally transmitted cases. All are in the city's north Changping district.

"Beijing is still facing a complicated epidemic control situation, and safety precautions on all forms of transportation need to be strengthened to reduce infection risks," Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference.

The city government continues to ask its residents not to leave Beijing unless absolutely necessary. Residents are not encouraged to have weddings or gatherings of family and friends at present.

"Many of those confirmed cases had adopted some measures to prevent the virus from further spreading when they knew that they might very likely be infected," Pang said.

"The virus is the enemy for each one of us. We should shoulder our responsibility to combat it and report to local health departments as soon as possible when we are at risk of infection."

In Ruili, a border city in Southwest China's Yunnan province, efforts from the local health department and residents have been made to curb imported cases.

To strengthen prevention and control efforts, police, health workers and villagers are on call 24 hours a day to clamp down on illegal migration and to promote health guidance and vaccination.

"Our village has been under quarantine since March this year. From March until now, home quarantine was lifted for only a month," said Yu Ying, a local resident. She said her son was sent to her family members living in a neighboring city. "We hope to see an end to the pandemic as soon as possible."

So far, a growing number of regions, including Beijing and the provinces of Hubei and Liaoning, have expanded their COVID-19 vaccination programs to cover children from the age of 3, rather than limiting inoculations to those age 12 and above, as was previously the case.

On Wednesday, Zhong, the academician, also expressed confidence that sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks in China's northwestern and northeastern regions can be effectively controlled in about a month with government efforts.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi is back in Europe. The trip comes roughly one year after his first European tour during the pandemic, when he visited Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. He made an additional stop to Italy and flew to Greece, Albania, and Serbia this time. The new visit demonstrates China's willingness to develop strong relations with several European states.



Italy and Greece are both EU and NATO member states, Albania is only a NATO member state, and Serbia does not belong to the EU or NATO. These characteristics generate different frameworks in which bilateral relations with China are evolving. Italy and Greece, for instance, have not received Chinese vaccines in the fight against COVID-19, whereas Albania and Serbia are recipients. Furthermore, Italy and Greece are aligning their economic policies with the so-called screening mechanism of the EU vis-a-vis investments from foreign countries, which is not an obligation for Albania and Serbia.

Different frameworks, however, do not limit the appetite of the four countries in strengthening ties with the second biggest economy in the world. The investment of COSCO Shipping in the Piraeus Port functions as a flagship project for the Belt and Road Initiative. In his joint press conference with Wang Yi, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said that he was looking forward to the new investment project at the largest port in the Mediterranean, one of the largest in the world, perhaps the most historic one, and the expansion of economic activity that benefits the local society. A few weeks ago, the Greek Parliament approved the transfer of a 16% stake of the Piraeus Port Authority to COSCO Shipping.

Italy, for its part, the first G7 state to endorse the Belt and Road Initiative in March 2019, is currently seeing its relations with China through the prism of its G20 presidency. In this respect, China's role might be crucial in securing cooperation against the pandemic and better coordination of major powers in the hope of stabilizing Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American troops in August. Moreover, Milan will take the baton from Beijing in organizing the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.

As far as Albania and Serbia are concerned, they both envisage becoming EU members, and the former is some steps ahead. However, a recent European summit provided no firm timeline. Although the EU remains a commitment to the economic development of all countries belonging to Western Balkans, including Albania and Serbia, they are continuously looking to other players  not only China, but also Russia and Turkey  for development initiatives and infrastructure works. For example, Albanian President Ilir Meta spoke about the "great potential" of cooperation between Tirana and Beijing. President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic sent a similarly positive message.

Looking towards the future, China will take stock of Wang Yi's European tour results, which did not include only the countries mentioned above but some other meetings in Rome on the sidelines of the G20 summit. His meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is characteristic. The Chinese government is not ignoring the new geopolitical environment and wants to preserve good Sino-European relations.

As for stability, an analysis of regional parameters is necessary. Beyond themes of Sino-European relations themselves, Beijing is carefully looking into ongoing tensions in the Balkans. The apparent animosity between Albania and Serbia because of their severe disagreements over Kosovo falls into this category. A new wave of rivalry in the Balkan Peninsula will impact the 16+1 Initiative, where Albania and Serbia participate, and trade connectivity at the regional level.

George N. Tzogopoulos is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/GeorgeNTzogopoulos.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn.
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An An-12 cargo plane crashed in Russia's Irkutsk region on Wednesday, killing all seven crew members on board.

The aircraft en route from Yakutsk to Irkutsk disappeared from radars before it was confirmed crashing near the Irkutsk airport, TASS news agency reported.

Two Russians, two Ukrainians and three Belarusians were on board the plane that belongs to the Belarusian Grodno airlines.

The crash of the An-12, which has been in operation since 1968, caused a fire on the ground and the fire has been put out.

Bad weather conditions, a human error and a technical malfunction, including an engine failure due to a collision with birds, are being considered as the possible reasons for the tragedy.
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China and Zambia have pledged to further their cooperation in education, a release seen on Wednesday said.

The pledge was made when Chinese Ambassador to Zambia Li Jie met Zambia's Education Minister Douglas Syakalima.

Li said China was carrying out various education projects in Zambia which have enabled young citizens to acquire the education and skills needed for work and their careers.

The Chinese envoy said the embassy has been sponsoring academically outstanding students of vulnerable backgrounds in Zambian universities through the Ambassador's Scholarship, adding that China has become the most popular destination for Zambian students to study abroad.

The Chinese envoy underscored the bilateral ties that have existed between the two countries which he said have been growing from strength to strength and have produced practical fruitful outcomes.

On his part, the Zambian minister appreciated the support that China has been giving for a long time.

He further thanked China's support in talents training, skills training and academic exchanges, adding that Zambia was willing to deepen educational cooperation with China.
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Nepal on Wednesday received a fresh shipment of 1.6 million Vero Cell vaccine jabs granted by the Chinese government to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior official from the Nepali Ministry of Health and Population said.

"China-donated 1.6 million doses of Vero Cell vaccine arrived in the country on Wednesday afternoon," Upendra Dhungana, chief of the Logistic Management Section under the Department of Health Services, said.

China has become the largest source of vaccines for Nepal by providing to its southern neighbor nearly 15 million doses of the Vero Cell vaccine developed by the Chinese Sinopharm company through the grant, commercial purchase and the COVAX mechanism, and the efficacy and efficiency of the vaccine has been widely accepted by the Nepalese, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi said at the handover ceremony held at the Health Ministry.

Hou voiced China's readiness to work with Nepal to implement initiatives relating to cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines and green development under the Belt and Road Initiative by forging a closer partnership.

"As we are seeking to vaccinate all the population against COVID-19 by mid-April next year, cooperation and facilitation from China in delivering the vaccine are very helpful in achieving the target," said Birodh Khatiwada, Minister for Health and Population in Nepal.

Nepali health officials said the new Chinese vaccine shots would soon be dispatched to various districts for vaccinating more of the population.

"The District COVID-19 Crisis Management Centers have been authorized to determine who should be vaccinated with the newly-arrived vaccine shots," Sagar Dahal, chief of the National Immunization Programme under the Ministry of Health and Population, told Xinhua.

Nepal, battered now by two waves of the coronavirus, started its vaccination campaign in late January, and 8.71 million of the 30 million population have received the first dose by Wednesday, while 7.38 million have been fully vaccinated.

Of them, 5.82 million have been administered first shot with the Chinese vaccine, and 4.16 million with two doses of the Chinese jab, according to the health ministry.
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At least two Taliban security force members and four civilians were killed and nine people wounded in two separate explosions in Afghanistan on Wednesday, multiple sources confirmed.

In eastern Nangarhar province, two Taliban soldiers were killed and three Taliban soldiers and a passing by school teacher were wounded after a roadside bomb struck a Taliban pickup truck in Police District 8 of the provincial capital of Jalalabad at mid-day, a health official from a regional hospital told Xinhua.

"The wounded were admitted to Nangarhar Regional Hospital as they were receiving treatment in an intensive care unit in the facility," the source said on condition of anonymity.

No group has claimed responsibly for the explosion so far. The Islamic State (IS)-affiliated militants have presence in the mountainous region. The IS group opposing the Taliban government has claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks since Taliban's takeover in August.

In northern Kunduz province, four members of a family were killed and five others wounded when an unexploded ordnance was detonated accidently inside a house in Mano locality of provincial capital of Kunduz on Wednesday morning, local resident Mohammad Nabi told Xinhua.

According to Nabi, a member of the family had brought the explosive device to home from a nearby abandoned security checkpoint for sale.

Qari Yousuf from Kunduz Regional Hospital confirmed the incident, saying some of the wounded were in critical condition.
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Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran's senior nuclear negotiator, said on Wednesday that the Vienna nuclear talks for the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will resume on Nov. 29.

"In a phone call with Enrique Mora, we agreed to start the negotiations aiming at the removal of unlawful and inhumane sanctions on Nov. 29 in Vienna," Bagheri Kani tweeted.

After meetings between Bagheri Kani and Mora, deputy secretary-general of the European External Action Service, in Tehran and Brussels, Iran and the European Union had agreed on the resumption of talks in November.

Iran has said the issue of lifting sanctions and the related parties' full implementation of obligations to the JCPOA will be the main agenda of the talks which has been suspended since June following a shift in Iran's administration.
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A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Wednesday urged developed countries to intensify their efforts to fulfill their commitments to developing countries on climate change, to make due contributions to climate change response and global climate governance.

Noting that developed countries are the main parties responsible for climate change and historical carbon emissions, spokesperson Wang Wenbin said it is their unshakable moral duty and international obligation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement to provide finance to developing countries to help with their response to climate change.

"Finance is the key to solving the climate change problem, and developed countries fulfilling financial commitments represents a major concern for developing countries," Wang said, adding that at the Copenhagen and Cancun summits developed countries pledged to jointly mobilize 100 billion U.S. dollars every year by 2020.

However, Wang said that over the past decade and more, developed countries have failed to earnestly fulfill the commitment, and the effective finance provided by these developed countries was, in reality, far below their official statistics.

Noting that China attaches great importance to climate change response, Wang said that China, as the largest developing country in the world, has stuck to a green and low-carbon development path and applied coordinated governance on pollution and carbon reduction, thus making concrete contributions to promoting global climate governance and climate change response.

He also noted China's accumulate appropriation of 1.1 billion yuan in recent years for South-South cooperation on climate change response, and offering training to nearly 1,500 officials and technical personnel in the field of climate change from 120 developing countries.

In the face of the common challenge posed by climate change, Wang said the international community should be united in seeking harmonious co-existence between man and nature, urging developed countries to show genuine sincerity, fulfilling their relevant commitments by intensifying efforts and improving quality, in order to make due contributions to climate change response and global climate governance.
NEWS PROVIDED BY

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

Nov. 3, 2021



NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ -- Catholic League president Bill Donohue reexamines the meeting last week between the pope and the president:

Many Catholics were dismayed, if not furious, with news reports indicating that Pope Francis told President Biden on October 29 that he was "a good Catholic" and "should keep receiving Communion." The Vatican has neither confirmed nor denied this account. As I said when the news broke, we have good reasons to be skeptical of Biden's rendition.

After taking another look at this issue, examining the exact words used by Bidennot relying on media interpretations of what he saidmy skepticism is growing. The president was asked about this matter at two press conferences: one on October 29, and the other on October 31.

On October 29, Biden was asked, "Mr. President, did the issue of abortion come up at all?" The first words out of his mouth were, "No, it didn't." Then he contradicted himself saying, "It came up." So which account is true?

After Biden said, "It came up," he then said what the media widely reported. "We just talked about the fact that he was happy I was a good Catholic and I should keep receiving Communion."

If the first version is rightabortion never came up for discussionthen it seems peculiar, to say the least, for the pope to tell him he should "keep receiving Communion." What would be the context for such a statement, if not abortion? After all, the entire controversy is about Biden's pro-abortion record, so it is hard to imagine the pope imploring him to "keep receiving Communion" absent any discussion of abortion. Are we to believe he said this out of the blue?

If abortion did come up, what did the pope say to him about it? Just recently Pope Francis said that "abortion is murder. Those who carry out abortions kill." Such an unequivocal remark suggests it is unlikely that the pope would discuss abortion without talking about it in such graphic terms. That would surely have made Biden uneasy, yet he did not appear to be that way when he spoke.

At the same press conference, Biden was asked, "Did you discuss the U.S. Conference of Bishops?" He answered, "That's a private conversation." This begs the question: Why would a discussion of the bishops' conference be considered a private matter but not one that affects him personally, namely his suitability to receive Communion?

It is entirely possible that Biden is lying.

After admitting that abortion never came up, he quickly pivoted. Why? Because he saw an opening, an opportunity to report to the press the most important thing he wanted from the popea chance to undercut those U.S. bishops who are deeply troubled about his pro-abortion record (they will be meeting in less than two weeks to discuss this subject). Having been denied the photo-op the White House desperately wanted, he had to come away with something that served his interest. The Communion issue had to be in the forefront of his mind.

At the October 31st press conference, Biden was asked, "For these Catholics back home, what did it mean for you to hear Pope Francis, in the wake of thisin the middle of this debate, call you a good Catholic? And what did he tell youshould that put this debate to rest?"

"Look, I'mI'm not going toa lot of this is just personal," Biden said.

But it wasn't personal just two day earlier. In fact, he showed no hesitancy in getting the word out that the pope regarded him as such a good Catholic that he allegedly encouraged him to "keep receiving Communion." What changed? Could it be that the Vatican contacted the Biden team and asked them to quash this issue, knowing that Biden's account was not accurate?

Our incurious media are not asking these questions. That's because they want to protect the pope and the president, both of whom they like.

There are too many unanswered questions to put this matter to rest. The unwillingness of the Vatican to confirm or deny Biden's account, and Biden's inconsistent and implausible responsesonly adds to the problem. This doesn't make either side look good.
Just this past month, Brian Tamaki, a leader of the Apostolic churches known as Destiny Church, organised something called a freedom march. Basically, he and other Christian leaders, notably Peter Mortlock from City Impact Church, led a giant gathering of over a thousand people in the inner-city for a rally.

This was in response to the governments Covid-19 restrictions that have forced those of us in the largest city of Auckland, to stay home for 10 weeks now.

I like many other Christians was left angry and frustrated that the leading figures of this demonstration were Christians. I like many of Aucklanders have obeyed government laws, giving up my own personal liberties, to comply and keep our city safe.

Brian Tamaki, Peter Mortlock, and many other Christian leaders are adamant that apocalyptic persecution is occurring right now for churches and society, rather than a necessary societal response to a once-in-a-century pandemic.

This has made me realise something: us Christians can be annoying. So, for your amusement and my need to vent, here are some tips for you on how not to be an annoying Christian. If you do any of these things, simply, stop. Its not reflective of the hope you have in Jesus. It's just plain annoying.

Relax with the doomsday predictions

Some of the leading proponents of conspiracy theories are religious people. Which is so sad, but also not totally surprising? Christians profess to have faith, a trust in a God who is invisible. This element of trust, is not necessarily grounded on scientific fact or logic (although I do not want to dismiss these as foundations to faithfor many they are!)

No, the trust is indeed, as the famous Michael Card once sang: to hear with my heart, to see with my soul, to be guided by a hand I cannot hold, to trust in a way that I cannot seethats what faith must be.

And it is this trust that can lead us to trust other things as well, namely, conspiracy theories. Governments seeking to persecute us and remove our rights (particularly in the West). Secret societies trying to take over society. Covid-19 and its source (was it made in a lab?), 5G frequency waves, and more lately vaccinations (how can we trust whats in them?)

Now, to some reading this, these things are valid points. Some would probably be offended that I am dismissing these concerns.

The question I ask these people is: even if these things are true, which I highly doubt, what good is there for you and those around you to believe in them and trust them to be true? Is more harm than good a result? Do you trust more on Jesus and less on your own judgements as a result?

Please, stop being annoying. You do not have some esoteric knowledge that the rest of us unenlightened do not have. Check and verify the websites you read. Dont just like and subscribe to every YouTube clip or Instagram post that the algorithm spits out at you. Think. Discern. Use wisdom.

Talk with others especially those who do not believe the same as you (hopefully you are a part of a church community where these people exist if notrun!) All in all, please, rethink your latest whacky hearsay conspiracy theory.

Think beyond your own rights as in individual

Back to the original introduction of this article. Those who marched in the Freedom Marches did so where Covid is actively spreading in our local communities despite government restrictions.

This virus targets those that are disproportionately poor and brown. This event is a potential super-spreader event. Ethically, no Christian can justify this action. Plenty who went said they went for freedom. But the reality is, there actions have caused harm to those who did not gowhether they like it or not.

Much of this sadly can be attributed to the very American concept of freedom. Freedom, to be able to express oneself and your opinion. Freedom to not be controlled by oppressive governments.

Sadly, this is a foreign value based more on a colonising worldview than on any other. In our country, us Christians could learn a lot from my Maori people.

In a Maori worldview, values we have such as whanaungatanga (family), manaakitanga (hospitality), aroha (love), awhina (support) all undergird our collective responsibility to support each other. In fact, look again and you see such christian values as koinonia (fellowship), mutual love, serving the other, and looking out for the most vulnerable.

This stands in complete opposition to what the so-callled Freedom Marchers did. There actions were misguided but also selfish. To be frank, they did not portray Christ and His Spirit. Please, whatever you do, dont be like this.
It never ceases to amaze me how God can reveal himself in the most unexpected places and situations. How he can come to you through the most unexpected person and how he continues to show up when you least expect it.

Ive found myself straying from God this past year or so, as I navigated a deeply personal journey of grief, loss, leaving behind my new family and babies and young ones who had become home to me, arriving back to New Zealand just for a pandemic to lock me down in my house alone (working as an essential worker but only part time).

As Ive navigated lost friendships, visiting places for the first time after losing a loved one, more Covid restrictions, surgery, more grief and learning to be the authentic version of myself I found and came to love in my time abroad, its been a long season and journey. One thing that never changes though is God continues to be consistent and good and reveal himself in the times and places I least expect it.

Finding God at my local pharmacy

Im a fan of my local pharmacy and its no secret, when I started working for the company I currently work for in 2016, I got to see the amazing work this pharmacy do for the vulnerable in our community and I immediately started using them in my personal life too. The wealth of knowledge, kindness and wellness options they give to our community is an incredible blessing.

One thing I didnt count on was finding God in the pharmacy, but over the years hes paved that road for me to see him, and for him to be present in that space with me.

My incredible pharmacist who I consider a friend, mentor and aunty like figure in my life continues to amaze me with how God just speaks through her and how faithful she is in those promptings.

Yesterday I sat in conversation with her, a conversation I wasnt expecting but which I walked away grateful for. I tell you the minute she started speaking her questions of genuine interest in how my life is going was God speaking through her so much.

Every question she asked from the first one off her tongue to the last one was relevant to questions and thoughts Ive been asking myself lately and I was in awe of how present and good God is even when Im not drawing near, he draws himself to me in unexpected ways.

God has paved a way for our paths to cross, for me to find this little pharmacy, to find a better sense of health and my body, different treatment options and constantly smiling beautiful hearted people in my life who reveal God through them.

Hes allowed me to build relationships where I can be authentic and vulnerable, be asked the tough and awkward questions and where I feel safe enough to voice things I otherwise wouldnt.

What other weird places have I found God?

As I lay reflecting on how Gods revealed himself to me in the pharmacy of all places, I wondered and looked back on all the other places Ive found God mysteriously and unexpectedly.

In a closed check-in line at Albuquerque International Airport late one night where I had my 5 bags and heavy yet happy heart to be returning to Africa. I met some incredible and friendly ladies who shared about their trip they were taking to remote Nepal to share in womans health and give these woman products to help them.

We shared our stories with one another as we awaited our flights to JFK, and then after a brief nap in a corner in JFK I found them again and joined them for a little while where they even mentioned theyd be looking for me before we all boarded our next flight to Doha where we would wave goodbye as we boarded our flights in different directions. God was in that conversation and that journey for all of us.

God was in the tender of the cruise ship that I took ashore on my first day of my Greek Isles cruise where he united me with a group of Americans and a South African they had adopted the night before. For 6 days on our cruise they became like family. We celebrated, explored and did life together like we had known each other forever.

And three years later I got to have lunch with that amazing South African woman as I served in her city. And where I get to watch another from afar as she ministers in her life back in the USA.

God was in my car when I crashed unrestrained at 100km/h and was able to drive away from the scene unscathed yet shaken but not only that, he was there in that moment by providing me with a calm and kind gentleman who I had hit in a country known for its violence.

God was there as I couldnt control my tears as I walked through OR Tambo in Joburg after saying goodbye to my new family, and my kiddos who I didnt know if Id ever see again.

He gave me a beautiful hearted woman with a soft Afrikaans accent who sat in front of me on my flight and as she boarded and saw me she crying hugged me and told me it would be okay; I still cried for another two hours, but thats okay too!

Ive seen him at the checkout of multiple South African supermarkets as strangers offered to pay for basic groceries and buy treats for the kids I had in tow. One woman buying the baby food, milk, toilet paper and more I had stopped to buy on the weekend with 6 kids in tow because our babies had run out of food.

Another buying the kiddos chocolate after engaging in a conversation about where we were from who I bumped into 6 months later at our local farmyard zoo where she told me shes been delivering groceries monthly since that day our paths just hadnt crossed on the farm when she had been there.

Gods shown up in the most unexpected places and people in my life and having reflected upon it after one simple yet meaningful conversation this week Im left again in awe of his goodness and grace in my life and in our world!

Maybe this will get you thinking about what weird and wonderful places youve found God that you can share with others to give them hope.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine called me in search of solace and concern. She knows that she is a very tender-hearted and sensitive person. So, without currently facing the possibility of it, the concept of being disfellowshipped as a form of church discipline had her on edge.

To reassure her, I went to scripture that I figured she was referencing. Even though I knew it off the top of my head, I wanted to read it straight from my bible so I could give her the correct context. When I had it in front of me, I realised it was my memory that needed correcting.

The difference you makes

1 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 1-2: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his fathers wife. And you are proud!

For some reason, I always thought the verse said that he was proud. I had conjectured a scenario in my head of a deeply depraved man who not only committed incest with his own (step) mother but was twisted and sick enough to brag about it. The reason Paul was scolding the church in Corinth was because they allowed this brazenly perverse man to go about in their midst, riding on a high horse in his utter delusion.

But now that I realised that Paul wrote said you (i.e., the church) are was proud, it makes a huge difference in the meaning of the verse.

Why on earth would a church be proud of that? Its one thing to be tolerant, to grit your teeth and begrudgingly accept that perversion as someones modus operandi. Its another thing to wilfully turn a blind eye. But to be proud is beyond comprehension.

Then this thought occurred to me: they were proud of the man, and not necessarily the act of sleeping with his fathers wife.

Bad Habit

We have a bad habit of reducing people  complex, nuanced, multifaceted human beings - to a singular element or trait based on how we feel about them.

Adolf Hitler was a persuasive orator.

Ghandi supported the prejudiced caste system.

But if were honest, thats not what comes to mind when we think of either of these men.

Likewise, this unnamed man at the church at Corinth could have been or done a range of other things in addition to sleeping with his fathers wife.

Maybe he was brilliant, charming, talented, or handsome.

Maybe he had tremendous wealth, a star-studded social circle, a highflying career, or multiple degrees.

There are plenty of other aspects of this man that could have made the Corinthians proud of him.

In its wisdom, the Bible never provides that information, which makes it even more relevant to us today.

Corinth Today

If we are being honest with ourselves, we can and sometimes are guilty of the same thing as the Corinthians.

Ravi Zacharias had a powerful ministry that spanned decades. He authored insightful books, gave riveting presentations and personally engaged numerous world leaders. Christian apologists around the world were extremely proud of him. After he died, the sexually immoral and criminal atrocities he committed surfaced to our horror and shock  but not to that of at least a handful of people in Ravi Zacharias social circles.

Someone must have turned a blind eye to his sexual debauchery.

Somewhere along the way, he had friends, colleagues or admirers who were too enamored by his eloquence and wit to stop from before

Lopsided

Ravi Zacharias did not stand (or fall) alone.

In any given church or small group, people are guilty of prioritising others performance over their spiritual growth and maturity.

We dont rebuke the arrogant businessman in our congregation because he generously funds all our missions trips.

We dont tell the promiscuous youth leader to step down from ministry because he has recruited more teenagers to ministry than any other church in our city.

Compromising and overlooking others sins (sexual and otherwise) to highlight only their strengths is not only lopsided but an injustice to all involved.

To the holiness of the God whom we are called to imitate.

To the person who will continue to trivialise the devastation sin will wreak on their soul.

To new or younger believers who are deceived by the poor example being paraded in front of them as one to emulate.

To the entire body of Christ since weakness in one part is detrimental to the whole.

Justice is not blind

Justice never turns its eyes away for selfish gain. It is not blind to sin or partial to human preferences and biases.

Justice judges each person and their actions by the relative weight of their importance to that of Gods standards.

May God give us eyes to see things from His perspective.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent of Australia for thousands of years and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australian soil by a European was in 1606.

In 1603, Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queiros, sailing under the banner of the Spanish King and on his second voyage into the Pacific, was looking for the great continent most explorers believed must be somewhere in the southern oceans to balance the world.

Australis del Espiritu Santo

De Queiros didnt find the continent but assumed it was there and, being a devout Christian intent on bringing Christianity to the heathens, named it Australis del Espiritu Santo which has been translated as, The Great Southland of the Holy Spirit.

Although he was unaware of his actual location, he was in what was the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu.

The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon is believed to be the first European to actually set foot on Australian soil, he landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and he charted about 300 km of coastline.

His ship was the Duyfken.

Later the same year, Spanish explorer Luis Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated the Torres Strait islands.

Hartogs pewter dish

Australias oldest European maritime relic is a Dutch pewter dish which was nailed to a timber post in 1616 on remote Dirk Hartog Island in Shark Bay (off Western Australia) by the captain (Dirk Hartog) and crew of the Eendracht to record their visit to the South Land.

Interestingly, in 1623, Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon retraced Duyfkens 1606 route into the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Peraand Arnhem, and recorded meeting an Aborigine who had a piece of metal he assumed came from Duyfken.

Abel Tasman

In 1642, the Council of the Indies dispatched another explorer and merchant, Abel Janzoon Tasman on a voyage of exploration to little-charted areas east of the Cape of Good Hope, west of Staten Land (near Cape Horn, South America) and south of the Solomon Islands.

The main object of the exploration was to obtain knowledge of all the totally unknown Provinces of Beach.

This was a purported yet non-existent landmass said to have plentiful gold, which had appeared on European maps since the 15th century, as a result of an error in some editions of Marco Polo's works.

The expedition was to use two small ships, Heemskerck and Zeehaen.

Tasman sailed to Mauritius, stayed for four weeks then caught the Roaring Forties to sail east as fast as possible. Four weeks later snow and hail influenced the ship's council to alter course to a more north-easterly direction, expecting to arrive one day at the Solomon Islands.

Three weeks later, November 24, 1642, Tasman reached and sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour. He named his discovery Van Diemen's Land, after Antonio van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

Unsuccessful landings

His ships skirted around the south coast of Tasmania and he tried then to land in Adventure Bay, southern Bruny Island, but was blown out to sea by a storm  which is how Storm Bay at the mouth of the Derwent River was named.

Two days later, he landed two boats in Blackmans Bay on the Forrestier Peninsular where they gathered some edible greens for rations.

The next day, an attempt was made to land in North Bay. However, because the sea was too rough, the carpenter swam through the surf and planted the Dutch flag. Tasman then claimed formal possession of the land, on December 3, 1642.

Bass Straight

He sailed for two more days north along the coast but when entering what he thought was a bay, his ships were hit by the Roaring Forties which pushed him east in what was a terrible trip until, eight days later, he reached the north-west of the South Island of New Zealand.

Tasman then returned to Batavia via the Cook Islands, Fiji and several other islands.

Tasmans second trip starting in January 1644 with three ships, was supposed to take him through Torres Strait to the eastern side of New Holland however he sailed too far south and struck the western side of Cape York.

He continued south then west and around the Top End. He mapped the north coast of Australia as far south as the middle of Western Australia and returned to Batavia in August.

1770

For over a century, until the era of James Cook, Tasmania and New Zealand were not visited by Europeans  mainland Australia was visited, but only by accident.

The east coast of New Holland was claimed by British Captain James Cook in 1770 who renamed the land New South Wales. In due course, this led to the First Fleet landing at Botany Bay in 1888 and the establishment of a settlement at what is now Sydney.

So what has become of this Great Southland of the Holy Spirit, now a country of six states and two territories, home of almost 25 million people who have come from all parts of the world, and home of the famous ANZAC Spirit.

No other country has been blessed with the name De Queiros bestowed on Australia, a name to rejoice with and a name to be proud of.

Today I see many followers of Jesus, many people blessed by the Holy Spirit but I also see a country in need a real reformation, a country and a people which needs to turn again to Jesus and to allow the Holy Spirit to bless us all.
The wellbeing and mental health of our youth is a critical issue in Australia today. Increasing numbers of children and adolescents are struggling to navigate a world which puts constant demands on them.

These issues have increased with the current Covid lockdowns, with rising numbers of youth accessing helplines and presenting with symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to self-harm and suicidal thoughts.

Mental health helps

In an innovative attempt to address this trend the Centre for Theology & Psychology (CTP), part of the Melbourne School of Theology (MST), conducted a free webinar exploring the topic.

This webinar series, marking World Mental Health Day on 10 October 2021, was for practitioners who interact with children and adolescents. The Webinar brought together Christian speakers from a host of partnering Bible Colleges (MST, Eastern, Morling, & Stirling) and organisations (Australian Institute of Family Counselling & Christian Counsellors Association of Australia).

Toolkit topics

Gathering these experts on one webinar was aimed to create a youth mental toolkit to help practitioners working in the field.

Lyn Worsley set the challenge to consider What if parents, during Covid, focused on connecting with their children? What if Covid kids showed justice and mercy, walked humbly and compassionately led the new world?

Worsley explored ways to increase resilience in youth such as being pro-active with these strategies rather than passive and reactive to the negatives. She said the current Covid pandemic could provide a powerful way our next generation could grow resilience and lead.

It highlighted the need to approach challenges from a position of opportunity rather than a position of deficit. A practical resilience tip is seen in the attached photo of our Resilience Doughnut. For positive change to occur at least three of the seven relationship factors must be met.

For example, if you are facing a challenge, you are more likely to grow through that challenge if you have a strong connection with your parents (factor one), with peers (factor two), and connected with your school (three factors).

Some of the other topics explored included Dr. Julie Morsillo outlining a program creating hope for youth. For example, she explained a circle of security that offers parents strategies to support and build trusting relationships.

The idea

The idea is that by providing comfort and supporting courage in children you help nurture strong stages of psychosocial development. Parents are providing a secure base for child development and a safe haven for growth.

Max Schneider explained support strategies practitioners could use for youth. For example, teaching youth a theology of suffering. Christian youth need a boarder perspective of suffering to include the way God uses suffering to bring about greater things.

This helps present a light for youth in the depth of their own darkness as they see examples of times, such as Jesus death and resurrection, God has used suffering to bring about great things.

A valuable highlight from Dr. Katherine Thompson was her research and workshops developed around the area of Christian prayer, meditation, and Christian mindfulness.

Throughout each session the speakers provided practical tips for practitioners to handle not only youth mental health strategies but also how these apply to the current Covid mental health strategies.

It was encouraging to hear Worsley point to some research suggesting that many youths will not only bounce back from the current covid mental health challenges but actually grow in their resilience because of the pandemic.

Future resources available soon from the CTP include a Christian leadership program and Christian mindfulness. Other resources and further study are available at the partnering Bible Colleges and organizations.
HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China National Silk Museum recently organized the second Biennale of Natural Dyes (BoND) held from October 22 to 26 in Hangzhou, featuring exhibitions, symposiums and workshops. The event themed, Reproducing Color Palette of the Past, attracted around 100 participants covering a broad spectrum. On the morning of October 22, audiences visited a contemporary BoND art exhibition which showcases 80 pieces of artwork mostly made from natural dyes, in Fashion Gallery of China National Silk Museum. This exhibition highlights the mixture of tradition and innovation- all artworks were produced based on traditional dyeing and printing techniques by artists and artisans, while the artistic exp! ression o f the objects is full of modern tastes. An international symposium with the same theme was held the following day. Thirteen Chinese speakers gave fascinating presentations on natural dyes from several perspectives, including history, art, ethnology and industrialization. Five international speakers from India, UK, Japan, Australia and Nigeria gave their presentations over video link due to the pandemic. Dr. Zhao Feng, the Director of China National Silk Museum remarked in closing: "I am highly impressed by those presentations combining multi-dimensional visions. They made great use of textile objects in the museum that inspire us to properly utilize natural dyes in various distinctive fields." Natural dyeing and printing workshops have increasingly gained attention since the last BoND. Three workshops, clamp-resist dyeing, block-printing, and patchwork, were all packed out events during the weekend. All trainees adored the workshops, particularly a patchwork workshop which successfully combined needlework with the Qianlong Color Palette (a series of colors reproduced according to Qing Dynasty archives, has been shown in a historical exhibition in Textile Conservation Gallery since the last month). A participating film and television stylist showed off her work a a coin-patterned ornament a and proudly commented: "Our team joined all three workshops and got quite a lot of information about ancient colors and motifs that will be extremely helpful for our designs in costume dramas." The next BoND will be held in autumn of 2023, which is expected to have even more domestic and oversea participants participating. The search for a theme for the event is already in progress. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1677951/image_1.jpg
- New Sustainable Tourism Global Center (STGC) signals tourism's commitment to achieving net-zero emissions - Global sector figures join the STGC conversation at COP26 a from former state presidents to leading institutions - STGC aims for greater collaboration between public and private tourism sectors to help reach net-zero, protect nature and support communities GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new coalition will accelerate tourism's transition to net zero, audiences at COP26 heard today. Ministers from major tourism destinations and leaders from international organizations have voiced their support to achieve a sustainable travel and tourism industry, through the Sustainable Tourism Global Center (STGC). The STGC is a multi-country, multi-stakeholder coalitionaestablished to lead, accelerate, and track the tourism industry's transition to net-zero emissions, as well as drive action to protect nature and support communities. The tourism industry is highly fragmented, with developing countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) being most reliant on tourism for their economies. More than 40 million tourism businesses a or 80 percent of the whole industry a are small or medium sized. The STGC aims to support people and the planet by reforming tourism's contribution to climate change, in a bid to protect the environment and support those who need it most. At a special session on the future of the STGC at COP26, His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia, was joined by former President of Mexico and Chair of New Climate Economy, and the World Resources Institute, Felipe Calderon; David Livingston, Senior Advisor, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and other leaders. The Center's strategy will be shaped by a coalition of governments, international organizations, academia, multilateral and financing institutions and industry associations. The countries invited to be part of this important coalition in phase one, are the UK, USA, France, Japan, Germany, Kenya, Jamaica, Morocco, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. These countries have prioritized climate, tourism and SMEs which will allow for synergies for this important initiative The top organizations that will help to shape the center and provide the services in phase one are WRI (World Resource Institute), UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), ICC (International Chamber of Commerce), WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council), World Bank, and SYSTEMIQ. In addition to Harvard University, which will provide support to the STGC through research and capacity-building, while the UNFCCC will guide the Center to accelerate industry action on climate neutrality. The Center will deliver services and products across three core pillars, including knowledge creation and sharing, measurement and monitoring, and industry enablement. Across these pillars, the STGC will focus on at least in nine areas of industry support, including developing standards and resource provision for the tourism sector, capability building, and project funding and investment. The Center will be headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and plans to open regional offices in other countries, with a strong multilingual online presence.A Other countries and organizations will be invited to join in phase two. In addition, a group of global experts in tourism and climate is being assembled to support this important effort. His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism, Saudi Arabia, said: "The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world the interconnectedness of humanity and nature, and the fragility of communities dependent on tourism to external shocks. We must act now to make the industry and local communities far more resilient and to help solve the challenge of climate change. That requires engaging with business, governments, and international organizations to accelerate action. Saudi Arabia is committed to contributing to this critical effort." President Felipe Calderon, Former President of Mexico and Chairman, World Resources Institute, said: "We share this initiative with global leaders who joined our mission to make tourism a lever toward achieving the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. There is a window of opportunity for business and governments to come together to drive these critical objectives, and the STGC will serve as a 'north star' to achieve this mission." Hon. Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism of Jamaica, said: "The Government of Jamaica, as a Small Island Developing State and vulnerable economy, remains committed to resilience building for sustainable development, including through sustainable tourism. In this regard, Jamaica welcomes the opportunity to partner with the Sustainable Tourism Global Center to contribute to and benefit from this collaborative effort to secure a better planet for future generations." Janet Rogan. United Kingdom COP Regional Ambassador for Middle East and Africa, said: "We are proud to be hosting COP26. Humanity has run down the clock on climate change. It is now time to take action. Tourism is a key sector that supports jobs and growth and we are pleased to be part of this important new initiative to accelerate the sector's transition to net zero." Her Excellency Fatim-Zahra Ammor, Minister of Tourism, Handicrafts and Social Economy Morocco said: "Under the guidance of his Majesty King Mohammed VI, may God bless him, The Kingdom of Morocco made sustainability one of the main pillars of its former sectorial strategies as well as its new development model. During the last two years, the whole world has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and tourism is one of the most affected sectors. It is crucial to join our efforts to build and co-design a sustainable recovery plan related to travel and tourism activities. The Sustainable Tourism Global Center is an important step towards this goal." Hon. Najib Balala, Cabinet Secretary of Tourism and Wildlife, Kenya said: "As one of Africa's most popular destinations for international visitors, Kenya has felt the full impact of the global tourism downturn as a result of the pandemic. We therefore agree that there is an urgent need for a new sustainable approach to global tourism. Along with our recently launched Wildlife Strategy 2030 which will ensure a thriving natural ecosystem under pressure from climate change, we are strong supporters of the Sustainable Tourism Global Center." Her Excellency Maria Reyes Maroto, Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Spain said: "COP26 provides an ideal setting to confirm our commitment to help tourism contributing to the global challenge of climate change. As a world leader in tourism, Spain is promoting initiatives in sustainable tourism aiming to preserve the natural environment, to improve energy efficiency in the sector and to adopt the principles of the circular economy. This will accelerate the contribution of tourism to the green transition drawn by the European Green Deal. Spain is an active member in international initiatives such as Planet's Sustainable Tourism Programme, and it will remain an active partner working at a global level with other countries, in particular developing countries, as well as with international institutions and business representatives."A Julia Simpson, World Travel & Tourism Council President and CEO, said: "At a time where leadership is most needed to address the climate emergency, we commend Saudi Arabia's initiative that will support the sector to achieve the global goals and ensure a sustainable future. WTTC is delighted to contribute to the Center through its unique data, research and expertise from businesses across the globe." John W. H. Denton AO, International Chamber of Commerce Secretary General, said: "I applaud the a multi-country and multi-stakeholder effort a to accelerate sustainability within the global tourism sector. Given the impacts of COVID-19 on the strength of the sector, partnerships will be vital to ensure small tourism operators can genuinely build back better a and become a powerful force for local communities and our planet. "The International Chamber of Commerce a as the institutional representative of more than 45 million companies in over 100 countries and as official UNFCCC Focal Point for Business and Industry a looks forward to supporting the development of the Hub in the coming months a and to connecting its work with our global business network, in particular the millions of small businesses in the tourism sector." Gloria Guevara, Chief Special Advisor to HE Ahmed Al Khateeb, said:A "The tourism sector has been through so much throughout this pandemic and combined with the urgency of a response to climate change, it needs a global solution. SMEs in our sector a like a travel agency or tour operator a might not know their carbon footprint and how to contribute to the race to zero. Every time we go on holiday, we create jobs and reduce poverty, it would be great if we reach a point that the more, we go on holiday, the better it is for the planet. The multi-country, multi-stakeholder coalition will bring tourism's fragmented stakeholders together and provide knowledge to drive action now." Dr. Ramon Sanchez, Principal Investigator, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University, said: "To create a truly sustainable global tourism industry, all community, business, and government stakeholders require the tools, frameworks, and best practices necessary to contribute to reaching this objective. The team at Harvard is excited to collaborate with the STGC on research that will play a critical role in building the foundation and driving the industry toward net-zero". Jeremy Oppenheim, founder, SYSTEMIQ, a global advisory and investment firm which specialises in Paris Agreement-aligned sectoral transformations and is supporting the STGC, said: "The STGC aims to bring together the many tourism-related sectors - aviation, hospitality, transport and catering services a into a world-class, multi-stakeholder coalition that can help transform the industry especially SMEs, from one that generates 8% of global greenhouse emissions to one that is a driver of a net-zero, regenerative world." Niclas Svenningsen, Manager for Global Climate Action - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change "Tourism is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change and one of the sectors that has most to contribute with to the 2030 sustainable development agenda. Climate action offers a win-win opportunity to recover economies, communities and countries in a sustainable and climate friendly fashion." Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678329/STGC_1.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678330/STGC_2.jpg
- Report based on interviews with 200 digital native media in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia provides key lessons for growing sectorA A - More than 85% have contributed to 'significant political and societal changes'; more than half have won journalism awardsA - More than 60% reported making less than $50,000 in total revenue in 2019; more than half subjected to online attacks LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital media entrepreneurs are producing ground-breaking journalism and achieving significant impact on their societies, in spite of often tiny budgets and constant online threats and attacks, a new global report revealed today.A The Inflection Point International report, published by SembraMedia, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurial journalists, in partnership with the global philanthropic organisation Luminate, is based on interviews with 201 independent digital native media organizations across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.A Coming a month after the announcement of journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov as 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the report found that more than 85 percent of the media outlets interviewed had produced journalism that had led to significant political and societal changes.A "This report shines a light on a new generation of creative and courageous media entjrepreneurs, who, like Nobel Laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, are having a real impact on their societies, strengthening the workings of democracy and holding power to account," said Stephen King, CEO of Luminate.A The top three ways media outlets reported having achieved impact were: Contributed to increased civil engagement (76%)A

Inspired audience members to participate in protest demonstrations in person or through online activism (42%)A

Contributed to a change in laws or the legal system (38%)A Download the full report The full report is available on the Inflection Point International website, and can be downloaded inA English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Executive Summary is available in 12 other languages, including French, Thai, and Filipino Janine Warner, co-founder of SembraMedia said the 2021 findings built on those of the first Inflection Point report, which focused only on Latin America and was released in 2017.A "While there are differences across the three regions, what struck us most as we reviewed the data were the similarities that emerged among these news organizations as they strive to cover their communities and build sustainable business models," she said. "Our goal with this report is to draw lessons from the innovative media organizations we studied so others can learn how to build stronger and more sustainable organizations without compromising their journalistic ethics." Grant funding offers media lifeline through pandemic crash While 60 per cent of the digital news outlets interviewed made less than US$50,000 in revenue, they suffered less from the 'pandemic crash' than traditional media as they were less reliant on advertising revenue.A Grant funding, notably from international philanthropic organizations and corporations, was their largest source of income, growing from 16 per cent in the 2017 study, to 28 per cent in 2019, and 31 per cent in 2020. It was highest in Latin America. Beyond grants and advertising, media organizations also earned income from consultancy services, content production and reader revenue.A Stephen King of Luminate said: "This report demonstrates the vital role that grant funding is playing in supporting digital media organizations through this pivotal moment of change. This is not about funding without end - it's about helping a vibrant new generation of media entrepreneurs to evolve their business models so they can build pathways to sustainability while continuing to produce important journalism in the public interest." In spite of their impact, the report found many digital native outlets still operate under an unthinkable barrage of threats and attacks, especially those reporting on hot-button issues such as human rights, corruption and abortion. Across all three regions, 51 per cent of the media organizations in this study said they were the victim of digital attacks, and 40 per cent said they had been threatened for their work - often weekly if not daily. About SembraMedia SembraMedia's mission is to empower diverse voices in media to publish news and information with independence, journalistic integrity, and a positive impact on the communities they serve. We help digital media entrepreneurs build more sustainable, independent news organizations by offering business and technical training, market intelligence, networking opportunities, specialized consulting, and direct financial support. Our work is driven by an international team of journalists, entrepreneurs, consultants, and academics with deep knowledge of global political, economic, and media markets. We are guided and supported by a distinguished Advisory Board whose members contribute their expertise as journalists, media executives, professors, and consultants. To learn more, visit Sembramedia.org.A About Luminate Luminate is a global philanthropic organization focused on empowering people and institutions to work together to build just and fair societies. We support innovative and courageous organizations and entrepreneurs around the world, and we advocate for the policies and actions that will drive change across four impact areas: Civic Empowerment, Data & Digital Rights, Financial Transparency, and Independent Media. We work with our partners to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in and to shape the issues affecting their societies, and to make those in positions of power more responsive and accountable. Luminate was established in 2018 by philanthropists Pierre and Pam Omidyar. The organization was founded by The Omidyar Group. www.luminategroup.com A
PARIS, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On 14 October 2021, just before its prestige Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, Sotheby's calculated the estimated value of the canvas I'll Have What She's Having (2020) by Flora Yukhnovich at $80,000 - $110,000. But the work finally sold for over $3 million. Nothing justifies this result 30 times higher than the estimates, if not pure competition between bidders of course, fuelled by a wave of current art market enthusiasm for young creativity. In reality, the 31-year-old artist has far too few results for Artprice and Sotheby's to be able to explain the logic of such a result. A thierry Ehrmann, CEO and Founder of Artmarket.com and of its Artprice department: "Art is usually considered a low volatility investment the value of which evolves over the long term with a gradual change in tastes and preferences. But in recent years, this theory has been shaken by the 'red-chip' phenomenon: collectors have become very enthusiastic about the very latest stars of the Art Market, to the point of rapidly raising the price of their works from a few thousand to several milli! on dollar s." Buying before they are known...

If you don't yet know Flora Yukhnovich (1990) or JadA Fadojutimi (1993), that's normal! In fact, it appears to be precisely one of the reasons their works are so expensive today...and it could well be that as soon as you know them, they will be a little less fashionable. It might sound counter-intuitive, but it would appear that what makes these artists so instantly valuable is that they are not on the books of the most prestigious Contemporary art galleries. Works by these young artists are therefore offered in sales at Phillips, Sotheby's and Christie's without any points of reference. In fact, since it was painted in 2020 (less than two years ago), the canvas I'll Have What She's Having has already been sold by the Parafin Gallery and resold at Sotheby's in London. The Artsy online platform presents the young English painter (31 years old) as a blue-chip artist, because Flora Yukhnovich is "represented by internationally recognized galleries." However Artprice considers her more like a 'red-chip' artist, a notion coined by journalist Scott Reyburn (The Art Newspaper) in January 2021, in reference to a number of very young artists who have suddenly emerged on the international art scene. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/01/08/blue-chip-artists-move-over-here-come-the-red-chips Very recent works on the secondary market

With the health crisis, the auction houses have pushed back the limits of the secondary market to which they have been historically dedicated. Today, six- or seven-digit amounts sometimes seem easier to achieve for super-fresh works (created less than two years before resale) than for Modern classics and the major auctioneers are increasingly getting involved in the flipping game, i.e. the very rapid resale of works fresh out of the studios of young fashionable artists. This practice is regularly criticized by galleries and artists themselves, in whose eyes overly rapid price evolutions destabilize the fragile balance between supply and demand. Last year, the painter Amoako Boafo (of Ghanaian origin) confided to Bloomberg his fears and disapproval regarding the highly speculative resale of his paintings at auction. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-12/hot-new-artist-laments-that-his-work-is-being-flipped-for-profit A new strategy...

In H1 2021, auction houses took a further step by selling NFTs by Beeple, Larva Labs, PAK, Mad Dog Jones, etc. none of whom are as yet represented by major galleries. The auction houses collaborated directly with these artists, but also with specialized platforms (like Nifty Gateways or Opensea) to benefit from all of the available technological support. However, as the NFT market had no history, the estimates provided by the auction houses were somewhat arbitrary: the starting price for Beeple's 5,000 days was set at $100, but the work fetched nearly $70 million!

Of course this is not the first time auction houses have entered the primary market. They regularly offer fresh pieces during charity sales where artists donate one or two 'unseen' works to a good cause. There have also been a number of special cases, such as Damien Hirst's and Sotheby's Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale in 2008. With NFTs, auction houses have been able to inject into the market works that by-pass galleries, but for which an immense demand already exists and has even been bottled up for too long. This paradigm shift fits in perfectly with a broader strategy by the auction majors of presenting works capable of attracting new buyers towards works whose prices can rocket. In fact, the 'NFT' and the 'red-chip' phenomena can be seen as a materialisation of this new strategy. Images:

[https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/11/image1-artists-under-35.png]

[https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/11/image2-artprice-2021-contemporary-art-market-report.jpg] Copyright 1987-2021 thierry Ehrmann www.artprice.comA - www.artmarket.com Don't hesitate to contact our Econometrics Department A for your requirementsA regardingA statistics and personalized studies: econometrics@artprice.com

A for your requirementsA regardingA statistics and personalized studies: econometrics@artprice.com Try our services (free demo): https://www.artprice.com/demo

Subscribe to our services: https://www.artprice.com/subscription About Artmarket:

Artmarket.com is listed on Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF. Discover Artmarket and its Artprice department on video: www.artprice.com/video Artmarket and its Artprice department was founded in 1997 by its CEO, thierry Ehrmann. Artmarket and its Artprice department is controlled by Groupe Serveur, created in 1987. See certified biography in Who's who A:

https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/06/Biographie_nov2020_WhosWho_thierryEhrmann.pdf Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 770,000 artists. Artprice ImagesA allows unlimited access to the largest Art Market image bank in the world: no less than 180 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians. Artmarket with its Artprice department accumulates data on a permanent basis from 6300 Auction Houses and produces key Art Market information for the main press and media agencies (7,200 publications). Its 5.4 million ('members log in'+social media) users have access to ads posted by other members, a network that today represents the leading Global Standardized MarketplaceA to buy and sell artworks at a fixed or bid price (auctions regulated by paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 321.3 of France's Commercial Code). Artmarket with its Artprice department, has been awarded the State label "Innovative Company" by the Public Investment Bank (BPI) (for the second time in November 2018 for a new period of 3 years) which is supporting the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the market art. Artprice's 2020/21 Contemporary Art Market Report by Artmarket.com:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2021 Artprice by Artmarket's 2020 Global Art Market Report published in March 2021:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2020 Index of press releases posted by Artmarket with its Artprice department:

serveur.serveur.com/press_release/pressreleaseen.htm Follow all the Art Market news in real time with Artmarket and its Artprice department on Facebook and Twitter: www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom/A (over 5A million followers) twitter.com/artmarketdotcom twitter.com/artpricedotcom Discover the alchemy and universe of Artmarket and its artprice department https://www.artprice.com/videoA headquartered at the famous Organe Contemporary Art Museum "The Abode of Chaos" (dixit The New York Times): https://issuu.com/demeureduchaos/docs/demeureduchaos-abodeofchaos-opus-ix-1999-2013 L'Obs - The Museum of the Future: https://youtu.be/29LXBPJrs-o www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999 (4.4A million followers) https://vimeo.com/124643720 Contact Artmarket.com and its Artprice department - Contact: ir@artmarket.com Contact: thierry Ehrmann, ir@artmarket.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678428/image1_artists_under_35.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678429/image2_artprice_2021_contemporary_art_market_report.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1009603/Art_Market_logo.jpg A
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Amagi, a global leader in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV, today announced that AccuWeather, the world's most accurate weather source, has partnered with Amagi to launch its 24/7 linear channel, AccuWeather NOW, and create a differentiated offering of the channel for distribution to The Roku Channel in the United States. AccuWeather is a proven leader in weather forecast data and delivery on a wide range of media platforms. It serves more than 1.5 billion people daily in the U.S. and globally to help them plan their lives and get more out of their day through digital media properties, such as AccuWeather.com and mobile, as well as radio, television, newspapers, digital out of home, and the 24/7 AccuWeather Network channel and, most recently, the AccuWeather NOW streaming service. The new live linear channel leverages Amagi CLOUDPORT cloud playout service with advanced graphics capabilities and powerful HTML5 graphics rendering. In addition, Amagi supports AccuWeather with 24/7 live playout and monitoring; ad masking in accordance with The Roku Channel's requirements; managing delivery, EPG, and playlist, and server-side ad insertion. "For AccuWeather NOW, it was important that we created a unique brand and graphics presentation," said Sarah Katt, General Manager, AccuWeather Network.A "We also needed to adapt our content to meet the requirements of The Roku Channel and other FAST platforms. Amagi not only delivered flawlessly on both counts but did so on a very tight timeline. As more and more FAST platforms jump to get onboard with AccuWeather, we are now well positioned to deliver the channel to other FAST platforms in the coming months." Amagi is also distributing AccuWeather NOW to other FAST platforms such as XUMO and Plex, with more in the pipeline. AccuWeather NOW features a new HTML5 ticker with real-time weather information for dozens of U.S. cities, powered by AccuWeather's proprietary weather data API.A "This is a marquee example of Amagi's ability to deliver custom HTML5 graphics integrated with an API solution to relay real-time external data," said Srinivasan KA, co-founder, Amagi. "We were able to support AccuWeather in launching their channel in strict adherence to The Roku Channel's ad load, delivery and EPG requirements, and monetize content through targeted ad insertions." Amagi provides a complete suite of solutions for content creation, distribution, and monetization. The company also has a state-of-the-art cloud broadcast operations center that can support 1000+ live linear channels. Amagi clients include ABS-CBN, A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, CuriosityStream, Discovery Networks, Fox Networks, Fremantle, NBCUniversal, Tastemade, Tegna, USA Today, Vice Media, and Warner Media, among others. For more information about Amagi and its streaming TV solutions, visit A www.amagi.com . About AccuWeather AccuWeather, recognized and documented as the most accurate source of weather forecasts and warnings in the world, has saved tens of thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of injuries and tens of billions of dollars in property damage. With global headquarters in State College, PA and other offices around the world, AccuWeather serves more than 1.5 billion people daily to help them plan their lives and get more out of their day through digital media properties, such as AccuWeather.com and mobile, as well as radio, television, newspapers, and the 24/7 AccuWeather Network channel and AccuWeather NOW streaming service. AccuWeather serves more than half of Fortune 500 companies and thousands of businesses globally. Additionally, AccuWeather produces and distributes news, weather content, and video for more than 180,000 third-party websites. Among AccuWeather's many innovative and award-winning features available free to the public are MinuteCastA forecasts with Minute by MinuteA updates and Superior Accuracy a, the patented AccuWeather RealFeel TemperatureA current conditions, and AccuWeather RealImpacta scale for Hurricanes.A Dr. Joel N. Myers, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, established AccuWeather in 1962 and is considered the "father of mod! ern comme rcial meteorology." Dr. Myers, a leading creative thinker and visionary, has been named "the most accurate man in weather" by The New York Times and one of the top entrepreneurs in American history by Entrepreneur's Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs. About Amagi Amagi A is a next-generation media technology company that provides cloud broadcast and targeted advertising solutions to broadcast TV and streaming TV platforms. Amagi enables content owners to launch, distribute and monetize live linear channels on Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV and video services platforms. Amagi also offers 24x7 cloud managed services bringing simplicity, advanced automation, and transparency to the entire broadcast operations. Overall, Amagi supports 500+ content brands, 800+ playout chains and over 2000 channel deliveries on its platform in over 40 countries. Amagi has presence in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Paris, Singapore, broadcast operations in New Delhi, and an innovation center in Bangalore. AccuWeather Press Contact: Bill Bagley

Manager, Public Relations

Email: pr@accuweather.com Amagi Contact: Sanjay Kirimanjeshwar

Head of Global Marketing

Email: sanjay@amagi.com

BOCA Communications

Email: amagi@bocacommunications.com
The XF-108 Rapier is considered one of the most future-forward fighters proposed for the US Air force but only made it on paper. Had it been built, it would have been one of the fastest planes at Mach 3.

Maybe the problem was it had innovations that no other plane would have had in the 1950s when it was supposed to block and destroy Soviet bombers.

It would have been a fighter to reckon with if it did make production, though changes caused it to be canceled even before it flew.

The Mac3 XF-108 Rapier aircraft

The XF-108 Rapier was supposed to be a fighter that would give the Americans a way to take out Soviet bombers during the Cold War, but a shift way nukes would be delivered, which became its death knell.

In the '50s, the USSR had developed ICBMs to attack targets and the Vietnam War that it was not suited for.

But, it was so intense in the elements added to its system that it included a rotary launcher to pack more missiles in its internal weapons bay, reported 19Forty Five.

The Rapier would have excelled in various missions. The XF-108 had more pluses than negatives that would have made it an excellent choice if the environment favored it. Made to reach Mach 3 and made to be a pure high-speed interceptor, but the circumstances never saw it become a working prototype.

The XF-108 Rapier is equipped with General Electric J93 turbojets with afterburners to speed up to 2,000 miles per hour or more. It is supposed to deploy speedily to get on far-flung intercept courses at speed.

Read Also: Concorde 2.0 X-59 Will Fly as Fast as 925 MPH Without Producing Loud Sonic Boom Breaking the Speed of Sound

One of its missions is to escort the B-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber, cited by the Drive. Detecting targets would be done by a pulse-Doppler advanced radar system plus infrared search, also trafficking to look for targets. Next, the launcher will fire three GAR-9 Falcon missiles that will travel at Mach 6 and out to 115 miles as its range.

The XF-108 Rapier program was too expensive

When it cost the USAF about $36bn in today's money, it was called in and discontinued the rising expenses. Many military experts have mistakenly thought the Soviets could reach the US, which dialed down the need to build the Rapier. Russian design was not up to par as the US then, which killed a good plane.

There was no way fighters could stop ICBMs, which made its design useless as missiles menaced the US. There is a need to have something else designed to stop it. The Rapier got officially canceled in 1959. It was not very agile and would have made it a sitting duck to air defenses during the Vietnam war, but its features were used by the A-5 Vigilante that went on to serve with distinction, noted the Military Factory.

The XF-108 Rapier was a product of overestimation and fear of getting run over by Moscow during the Cold War. It would have been an odd man out. Other weapon systems were available that proved effective, and Russian MiGs were deadly enemies for US pilots. Some have even suggested different roles, but it was too much a square page.

Related Article: SR-71 Blackbird Legacy: Can the SR-72 'Darkstar' Find its Niche as the Fastest 6th Generation Plane?

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Nigel Farage hammered Joe Biden after speaking about climate goals and imposing his leadership in the COP26. The ex-Brexit leader has been critical of the Democrat president trying to allegedly salvage the international reputation of his administration, fraught with too many missteps.

Since the fall of Afghanistan and losing its capital, leaving billions worth of military hardware, and leaving its citizens; is only the start of the alleged failure of his foreign policy. Ironically, he should state climate goals when in the US. It is a struggle even to pass a bill related to that in his party.

Ex-Brexit leader says Kabul's fall tarnished US' reputation

Farage went on the offensive with what he called a misplaced perception of the US leader regarding his impeccable credibility on his pro-climate stance. Its been several months after the Kabul debacle, reported the Express UK.

Previously, the ex-Brexit leader brutally tore down the president for his alleged mishandling of the pullout. On the Fox News program, not talking to the US allies about how everything progressed had tarnished the US.

He added the failure in Kabul is not giving the president any push but pulling him down. Doubting if any of the world leaders will listen to him seriously at the global climate summit, his detractors call his appearance at COP26 ineffective at home.

Farage spoke out that the Afghan withdrawal is a stigma how it went the wrong way, even if he does consult allies now; it is a fact the US image is down the tubes. It won't go away that easily, with the AUKUS deal that broke the back of Paris and the EU affected by another incident. Seeing Joe Biden hammered by Nigel Farage for what is described as making himself look big.

Read Also: Former Brexit Leader Nigel Farage Critiques Joe Biden in Scathing Rant Referring to the US President's Missteps in Kabul

Farage stated that Joe Biden is not doing well on the world stage, only reverse of it. He added that UK PM Boris Johnson is happy that Joe is there, all because the green agenda is his thrust, for now, cited the Diverse Bulletin.

Mentioning what is happening at the climate summit is senseless and won't help the immediate problem while fuel bills rise due to the energy shortage. If India, China, and Russia are not going to decide on climate goals, then what's the point.

Climate activist stressed COP 26 is leading us nowhere

Climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a little speech during the first summit day for a large crowd outside Glasgow park.

She told the tree-hugging activists that national leaders are doing less than they should fight global warming.

Straight to the bullseye, the girl said the COP 26 is like all others. That is going nowhere and pointless. Also, remarked the leaders inside who are in power are not true but deceiving everyone.

Next, Thunberg rattles off some other points which do not deserve any attention. Swearing at the COP 26 summit leaders.

Biden urged leaders to commit to climate goals

President Joe Biden mentioned to his fellow leaders that they could do less methane of 30% in the year 2030 better and asked for a commitment to that goal.

Next, he shot out that 100 nations were joining the US. He indicated it was half of the methane emissions. It must be noted that Nigel Farage slammed Biden saying that COP26 was an alleged act with no credibility.

Related Article: Joe Biden Cancels Holiday As Liberal Media Turned on Him for Poor Performance Amid Taliban Rise in Power

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US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the Democrats' losses in Tuesday's elections highlight the need for the party to "deliver for the American people," but he dismissed the idea that the off-year election results were a referendum on his presidency.

Biden said it didn't matter that he couldn't get a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and a $1.75 trillion package of social and climate measures passed before the election.

In a state that Biden carried by ten percentage points a year earlier, Democrat Terry McAuliffe fell to first-time Republican contender Glenn Youngkin in the governor's race in Virginia.

Biden claims Virginia race wasn't a blowback against him

Biden made the remarks to reporters after speaking about a "great day" in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, when children aged five to eleven were eligible to get the preventive vaccination. In a state that Biden carried by ten percentage points a year earlier, Democrat Terry McAuliffe fell to first-time Republican contender Glenn Youngkin in the governor's race in Virginia, Global News reported.

Biden made the remarks to reporters after speaking about a "great day" in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, when children aged five to eleven were eligible to get the preventive vaccination.

It was welcome news for Biden, who arrived in Washington from Europe early Wednesday to learn that McAuliffe had been narrowly beaten by Youngkin, a first-time candidate, and former executive with the private equity company Carlyle Group. And in New Jersey, which Biden won by 16 percentage points, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was caught in an unexpectedly close reelection race.

In recent years while Virginia has shifted to the Democratic Party, the current president's party has lost the governor's race in 11 of the last 12 elections there, according to White House officials.

Before departing Glasgow on Tuesday, Biden said that "the off year is always unexpected" and that he had seen no indication that whether "my agenda passes or not will have any significant influence on winning or losing" the two governorship races, as per The Star.

Biden's poll numbers have dropped in recent weeks, which he attributes to coronavirus weariness among Americans. At the same time, growing costs and supply difficulties affect American consumers and politics.

Read Also: Nancy Pelosi Dodges on Question if She Will Run for Speaker Again; Says Tax on Wealthy Assets Would Pay for Only 10% of The Spending Bill

The president diagnoses election losses in Virginia

But, if Democrats join together on his program, those stumbling blocks might be in the rearview mirror far before the midterm elections a year from now, according to the president.

Per Daily Mail, President Joe Biden blamed Democrat Terry McAuliffe's devastating defeat in the Virginia governor's election on Donald Trump voters, conservative folk, and Americans concerned over COVID-19 and gasoline costs, according to Biden.

He said that his multi-trillion spending proposal should have been authorized before Tuesday's election. Still, he doubted that it would have persuaded Trump followers to vote for Republican Glenn Youngkin.

While the Democrats fought about what went wrong - with progressives suggesting the party should go further left - and faced a gloomy position going up to the 2022 midterm elections, Biden outlined his reasons for the defeat.

When he enumerated the reasons for the poor outcome, including COVID-19, doubts about going back to school, and growing prices, the president left out one of the fundamental problems that spurred Youngkin's victory - parental control over education.

Even while Youngkin predicted a spike in support from white women, the suburbs, and Latinos in 2020, he blamed Trump supporters and conservatives. By bringing up Trump, Biden was at least partially agreeing with his predecessor, who instantly claimed credit for Youngkin's victory, claiming MAGA forces were responsible - in a race when Youngkin took some noticeable moves to separate himself from the former president.

Related Article: Joe Biden Unveils Crackdown on Methane Leaks Targeting Oil and Gas Industry in COP26 Climate Summit

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President Vladimir Putin of the Kremlin tests Joe Biden's resolve by throwing the gauntlet and selling Russian arms to China and India. Recently, the White House warned China over its threat to reclaim Taiwan, to which Beijing reacted sharply.

NATO allies are concerned over the move, which signals the spread of high-tech weapons which China and India could have, except for certain premium systems not in these countries' arsenals.

It was not immediate, but when they are in hand, that will create a security problem for NATO countries in the future.

Russia sells high tech systems curtailing US Forces

The military-industrial bosses in Moscow will decide these new arms export deals. One such system is the next-gen S-500 missile launcher which India and China might buy, reported the Express UK.

A Russian representative, Dmitry Shugaev, director for Military-Technical Cooperation, priority for Moscow defense forces, cited News 7 Trends.

He added when the army had gotten its required volume and deliveries, what will follow are units for export.

Furthermore, countries like India and even China, with all states that have been partners, may avail the armament for their armed forces.

According to President Vladimir Putin, most of the initial S-500 anti-aircraft launchers are strictly earmarked for their troop in the coming years. He realizes it would take a lot to update all the military's weapons, taking into account the US in particular.

When Moscow said the S-500 is the best weapon due to its ability to track fast-moving jets and take them out. Based on the Kremlin testing Joe Biden's resolve, how he'd react to these new weapons if they got into China's and India's possession.

Read Also: Ukraine Fears Russian Reprisal After Drone Attack; Putin Deploys Armored Units To Protect Cities Close to Shared Border.

Also, the system might even be capable of tracking and intercepting hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) close to a low earth orbit.

Learning of this, Washington panicked and put penalties on nations that would get the earlier S-400. This was something the USA could not afford to proliferate.

Even if it was a NATO member, it cost Turkey a lot and got booted from American procurement programs when it purchased the launcher.

According to General Tod Wolster, of the US and NATO commander, one of the reasons for locking out Ankara said it would expose the weaknesses of the F-35. Adding that if the S-400 radar analyzes the F-35, it will be a sitting duck.

New weapons of the Kremlin makes Washington shudder

A month back, the Kremlin touted another hypersonic nuclear weapon that could destroy US cities. He added that another weapon with speeds of Mach 5+ has been developed already and is faster than any US weapon. Revealing in an energy forum that nowhere is under threat is a hyper-fast Ballistic missile to boot!

Putin explained that it is indeed a lethal weapon in his country's arsenal, and there are more as well. Adding these missiles is on standby alert in Russian, saying their forces are not to be trifled with.

Furthermore, explaining nothing was out of the ordinary and describing armies who can have these modern systems will have it. Shortly it will be in hand. But the Russian leader stressed that they will use it with restraint and coerce other states with it.

Moscow days earlier tested the new Zircon hypersonic missile from submarine silo the first time, noted Reuters. All these are the Kremlin testing Joe Biden's resolve on the world stage as a silent challenge.

Related Article: Movement of Russian Armor and Troops to the North Ukraine Border A Reminder to NATO Putin is not Playing Games

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According to a Pentagon estimate, China wants to double its nuclear stockpile by 2030, indicating a change in Chinese strategy with significant ramifications for the balance of military power.

China Could Increase Its Nuclear Missile Count

In a recently published article in Newsweek, Beijing's development might be a bid to equal or perhaps exceed the United States' worldwide military might. According to the Pentagon, China might grow its nuclear missile count to 700 in six years, with 1,000 possible by 2030.

Consequently, China may be aiming to build a nuclear triad consisting of missiles launched from land, sea, and air. The Pentagon states that the PLA's developing skills and conceptions continue to improve China's capacity to 'fight and win battles against a strong opponent, which is most likely a euphemism for the US.

On the other hand, the US is making little success in countering China's development. The Biden administration is anticipated to stick to its plan to increase Australia's military footprint, which includes providing the country with nuclear-powered submarines, according to a published report in CNN News.

Read Also: China Denies Testing Hypersonic Nuclear Missile; Beijing Claims It Is Spacecraft Technology

Latest Report of Pentagon

According to the Pentagon's newest China military power assessment, Beijing is boosting the amount of land, sea, and air-based nuclear delivery systems and building the infrastructure to support this substantial expansion of its nuclear weapons.

The warning comes weeks after the Financial Times reports that China had tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley subsequently described as "extremely near" to a "Sputnik moment," alluding to the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the first artificial satellite.

Additionally, the revelation comes as tensions between the United States and China remain high, fearing a conflict over Taiwan. Some military strategists and specialists in the United States are worried that China is beefing up its nuclear arsenal to restrict American alternatives in the event of a fight.

China Could Take Military Action Against Taiwan in 2027

In a recently published article in CNBC News, according to the Pentagon, China's military is trying to improve key capabilities by 2027 in order to "present Beijing with more credible military choices in the event of a Taiwan situation."

In March, Admiral Philip Davidson, then-head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, predicted that China would attack Taiwan by 2027. However, other analysts remain skeptical. Meanwhile, Milley stated at the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday that he does not believe China would take military action against Taiwan in the "near future" - within the next two years - but that Beijing is building the capacity.

Moreover, China has likewise concentrated on developing a "lean and effective nuclear force," but their present buildup is "far beyond where they've been previously," according to the US. China has established a "nascent" nuclear triad of air-launched ballistic missiles and surface and sea-launched missiles, akin to the US triad.

This week, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) released a study concerning three suspected silo fields being built quickly in western China. According to the authors of the FAS research, Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen, the silo fields are still years away from being operational, but they might someday be capable of firing long-range nuclear missiles.

Related Article: China Expands Its Nuclear Missiles; US Pentagon Raises Concern

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Democratic lawmakers have put back paid family and medical leave into their party's sweeping domestic policy bill after it was removed due to heavy opposition. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed the decision was at the urging of members of the House Democratic caucus.

On Wednesday, Pelosi wrote a letter to colleagues about the re-inclusion of the paid leave into the policy bill. The decision comes a day after GOP members were able to gain ground during Tuesday's elections, including among suburban voters and women in states such as Virginia.

Paid Family and Medical Leave

In a statement, the house speaker said she expected changes to the legislation to be discussed in the House Rules Committee on Wednesday that could potentially schedule a vote later this week. One of the issues that will be debated regarding the bill is a proposal to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for senior citizens, with Democrats announcing a deal on Tuesday.

House Democrats are working on legislation that includes a four-week paid leave program for United States residents. The program would consist of all types of leave and cater to new parents and a broader audience. It is scheduled to start in 2024 and be a permanent program to assist Americans, NPR reported.

The entire policy bill has a price tag of $1.75 trillion and is one of United States President Joe Biden's priorities. The re-inclusion of the paid family and medical leave into the bill signals Democrats' push to finish negotiations and start voting after losing much of their power in the government.

Read Also: James Savage Files Lawsuit Against Donald Trump For Slandering Him During Months-Long Effort To Overturn 2020 Election Result

On Wednesday, the House Rules Committee convened to discuss the revised legislation, which is an essential step ahead of initial House votes, which could come as early as Thursday. Democrats are rushing to deliver many of Biden's proposals after many Republicans won the election in Virginia.

Many Virginia voters revealed that their vote heavily considered the drawn-out negotiations in Washington over the U.S. president's governing agenda. Capitol Hill took the brunt of the blame due to Democrats spending many months failing to deliver legislation, PBS reported.

Opposition to the Legislation

Previously, the paid family and medical leave provision was nearly abandoned altogether by Democrats after opposition from a crucial centrist swing vote, West Virginia's Sen. Joe Manchin III. On Wednesday, however, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, the biggest champion in the Senate in support of the provision, cautioned that Manchin had assured he was still open to negotiations.

Additionally, the provision was initially intended only to be available for new parents, not sicknesses or other family emergencies. Manchin's opposition was found to be the primary reason that the provision was being considered to be dropped despite heavy support from Democrats and outside advocacy groups due to its potentially positive effects on the American people.

"I'm looking at everything. But to put this into a reconciliation bill - it's a major policy - is not the place to do it," Manchin said on Wednesday regarding his continued opposition to U.S. President Joe Biden's paid leave provision, the New York Times reported.

Related Article: Joe Biden Expresses Confidence That Joe Manchin Will Finally Support Spending Bill; Senator Says He Is in No Rush as Package Needs More "Input"

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Some of President Joe Biden's original Build Back Better proposal's top goals for voters were removed from the trillion-dollar spending plan.

Most Important Components that were Removed in the Huge Spending Plan

In a recently published article in Newsweek, according to a recent survey from Politico/Morning Consult, free community college, medicare expansions, and drug price reform were among the top five most critical components of the original $3.5 trillion plan.

For 41 percent of respondents questioned, adding dental and vision insurance to medicare was one of the most important components of the original proposal while enabling medicare to negotiate prescription pricing was a major issue for 34 percent.

Moreover, paid family leave was also removed from the most recent edition of the social services package. The initial proposal included paid family and medical leave for 12 weeks. Negotiators were discussing a four-week program at one time, but the White House removed it from the revised framework as well, according to a report published in The New York Times.

Read Also: House Ways and Means Committee Includes 5-Year Extension of Child Tax Credit in the $3.5 Social Spending Plan

The New Focus of the Spending Plan

All of these elements are absent from the most current Build Back Better legislative framework. After months of negotiations, the White House unveiled a $1.75 trillion framework last week in the hopes of gaining the support of the full Democratic caucus.

Meanwhile, the new, more limited approach emphasizes childcare and early childhood education. It offers free universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds across the nation. Biden's increased Child Tax Credit is also extended for another year in the plan, according to a report published in The Washington Post.

$555 billion in additional expenditure to solve the climate catastrophe is also included, including incentives for renewable energy transitions and investments to combat severe weather occurrences. Furthermore, Biden's current framework only achieved the goal of enabling the healthcare program to cover the cost of hearing aids, which was cited as a top-five most critical component by 25 percent of voters.

Biden Goes to the Capitol To Lobby His Social Spending Plan

"We desperately need a vote," President Biden told Democrats in private as he traveled to the Capitol to urge for a reworked social spending and climate package. Several significant suggestions, such as paid family leave and cheaper prescription prices, are absent from the plan.

On Thursday last week, President Biden pleaded with House Democrats to support his "framework" for a $1.85 trillion economic and environmental bill, saying that its fate would determine his presidency and his party's hold on Congress and that its success would restore the country's standing on the world stage, according to a report published in CBS News.

The president's plea, though, seemed to have failed to break the Democratic deadlock. The bill's key features remained a work in progress, and progressives announced that they would not succumb to pressure to hastily endorse a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that had already cleared the Senate.

Furthermore, House leaders have canceled preparations for a vote on the public works law, and the chamber has accepted a short-term extension of transportation programs until early December, indicating that passage of both the infrastructure bill and the domestic policy plan is still a long way off.

Related Article: Democrats Eyeing To Pass Social Spending and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill on Tuesday



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The European Union accuses Vladimir Putin of shutting gas deliveries and cutting supplies drastically, viewed as a sinister move by energy-hungry nations.

Once again, Russia is accused of making a big move against Europe via gas and non-renewable energy supplies before these demands to increase energy reserves were put down. Even US President Joe Biden felt the crunch when he asked OPEC nations to help increase the supplies.

But Russia and the APEC block it controls snubbed Washington; and said that more gas would be piped in, only until interested parties renegotiated the contracts.

Gas supply in Europe got so bad over the weekend

On Saturday, Gazprom, a state-owned Russian firm that trades natural gas, ceased its supply to Germany via the Yamal pipeline in Poland.

Last Sunday, it got so bad that it sent half of the required supply through Ukraine to Austria, South Germany, reported the Express UK.

As the gas volume is beginning to reach critical levels for German and other European customers, not getting better will make natural gas more expensive.

The comparison portal called 'Check24' remarked that 98 gas supply firms have increased or let customers pay more in the energy crunch with double the price, cited News in 24.

Most of those paying for gas will have a 17.3 percent spike up in price, and this would include 560,000 homes as well.

The gas deliveries were halted in Serbia, which will lead to the stoppage of a gas-fired power plant that provides power for Novi Sad, with 300,000 people living there. It would be chilly with no heating for winter or hot water available.

Read Also: Moldova Can Get Cheaper Gas If It Delays Restrictive EU Rules in the Energy Market, Russian Gas Company Says

In Sarajevo, the Bosnia capital was forced to stop powerplants because residents used fewer gas supplies partially.

Russia halts gas deliveries as an attack on Europe

Sources point outs the cause as an unknown explosion in Bulgaria, caused by a part of the Balkan Stream segment of Gazprom's older pipelines. Last Tuesday, repairs on the tube were begun.

Due to the explosion, Gazprom's deliveries to Europe via Ukraine had to be only 52 percent of the agreed amounts of the contracts. Before this, the gas firm had increased its supplies to Europe.

The decrease of gas pumped due to the damaged section has caused pressure to lessen on the pipeline system, resulting in an unstable Ukraine pipe section.

Andrij Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential advisor, cautioned about the collapse of the Ukrainian gas network that supplies Europe. The reason the low pressure caused by the explosion noted the Diverse Bulletin.

An expert suggests that because of the critique of Russia's disregard of the COP 26 meeting by certain personalities in the summit. President Putin is flexing to silence their comments over his policies.

Professor Alan Riley, an expert who weighed in, said that Moscow answered to the Green Deal. The Kremlin leader said the change to green could only be done on their terms, no one else. He added that the Kremlin has a plan to export natural gas and coal, and oil. It is proof that the Kremlin is in a better position than ever.

President Putin said that Gazprom is not controlling gas supplies because it follows its contracts, which its clients must abide by.

Related Article: Vladimir Putin Says To Increase Fuel Supply to the EU if Contracts are Renegotiated With Gazprom

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Police sources claim a young man enraged by his mother's boyfriend's continuous beatings and fatally shot him in their Queens apartment Tuesday night. Around 7:20 pm, cops arrived at the Pomonok Houses on Parsons Blvd. and 65th Ave.

In a fourth-floor flat, police discovered a 47-year-old male who had been shot in the head and chest. He was taken to New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital by medics, but he was unable to be rescued, Daily News reported.

Suspect remains at large

According to the downstairs neighbor, the mother requires the use of a walker to go around. Police sources said the woman's 21-year-old son is still on the run.

Cops attended to a previous domestic disturbance between the mother and her boyfriend in 2018. It's unclear if the son shot the guy to stop an assault on his mother or because he'd had enough of the violence. The identities of the victim and the alleged gunman were not immediately released by police.

Meanwhile, a woman in New York City was shot in the eye while peering through a peephole in her apartment on Monday. A 37-year-old woman heard a knock on the door of her Upper West Side apartment at 7:40 pm Monday night, according to the New York City Police Department.

When she peeked through the peephole, she was shot in the left eye. According to authorities, the assault occurred at the Frederick Douglass Houses on Columbus Avenue.

The woman was taken to Saint Luke's Hospital following the incident and is in stable condition. The victim had lived in the building for 18 years, according to an anonymous neighbor, who added that "nothing like this has ever happened" before, as per PEOPLE via MSN.

Read Also: New Autopsy Result Rejects Louisiana Police Claim That a Man Dies Due To Car Crash; Probe Shows Other Factors

New York homicide, gunshot occurrences decreased

The New York Police Department is promoting freshly revealed crime figures for October, which indicate that homicide and gunshot occurrences are down from last year. According to the NYPD's newest CompStat numbers, the totals on Staten Island follow a similar pattern.

The number of homicides dropped from 41 to 37, a 9.8% decrease. There were 129 shooting occurrences this year, down from 135, a minor reduction of 4.4 percent.

Robberies are down 16 percent, burglaries are down 28 percent, and rapes are down roughly 20 percent on Staten Island.

Shooting occurrences declined somewhat from this time last year, from 33 to 30. The total number of major offenses on Staten Island decreased by 2.5 percent, but grand larceny and grand larceny auto increased by 10.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

According to NYPD figures, overall crime is up 1.3 percent in the city compared to this time last year. Robberies grew by 15.8% in the city, while felonious assaults increased by 13.8%.

According to the NYPD, there were 382 gun arrests last month, increasing the total number of gun arrests in 2021 to 3,808, up 13.9 percent from 3,343 year-to-date in 2020.

In a statement, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea stated, "The men and women of the NYPD have never wavered in their dedication to the collective public safety of all New Yorkers - as proven by this continuous, decreasing trend in violence," SILIVE reported.

Related Article: New York Trooper Charged After 11-Year-Old Girl Died When He Intentionally Rammed His Cruiser into Her Dad's Car



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International leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States have expressed their desire to have civilian rule back in Sudan after a military coup put the country into chaos, threatening the region's ties with Israel.

Previously, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two Arab states that had close ties with Sudan's ruling military, previously prioritized stability in the region. In a joint statement released on Wednesday released by the U.S. Department of State, the four nations said they were calling for the full and immediate restoration of Sudan's civilian-led transitional government and institutions.

Sudan's Military Coup

The letter added that international leaders were encouraging the military responsible for the coup to release all of the detained individuals related to recent events and to have the state of emergency in the region lifted. They noted that violence was not welcome in the new Sudan, instead urging for effective dialogue between all parties involved.

The United States government has led the condemnation of the Sudan military's recent takeover of the region that occurred on Oct. 25. The events resulted in the interruption of a fragile transition to democracy, in which power was shared with a civilian government that Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok led, Aljazeera reported.

The situation comes as an Israeli delegation reportedly visited Sudan in recent days, talking to military leaders that were responsible for the coup in the region. The visit allegedly aimed to gain a better impression of the volatile situation in the African country and how recent events could impact efforts to finalize an agreement to normalize diplomatic ties between the two nations.

Read Also: Joe Biden Blames Trump Voters for Democrats' Loss in Virginia, Rejects the Idea That Election Defeat is Due to His Presidency

The Israeli delegation, which most likely included representatives from the Mossad spy agency, met with a prominent general in the Rapid Support Forces, Abdel Rahim Hamdan Dagalo. The group is a Sudanese paramilitary force that was involved in the coup.

Several weeks prior to the military coup, Dagalo was part of a Sudanese military delegation that traveled to Israel, where they met with members of the National Security Council and other officials from the Prime Minister's Office, the Times of Israel reported.

Effects of the Military Government

The military coup in Sudan was led by incumbent President Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who is also the head of the civilian-military Sovereign Council that was formed to oversee the transition of democratic elections. Hamdok was later placed under house arrest, along with Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi and several other top administration officials.

Military forces quickly spread throughout the region's capital, Khartoum, and placed roadblocks surrounding the area. In the ensuing riot, it was reported that at least seven protesters were killed in the chaos and roughly 140 were left injured while many others were arrested and detained.

The coup also resulted in the temporary shut down of the region's internet services with Burhan issuing a series of proclamations, including the dissolution of the government and the establishment of a new government of technocrats. The official also announced in an address that it would remain in control of the nation's government until elections in 2023, the Jerusalem Post reported.



Related Article: Former Brexit Leader Slams Joe Biden on Climate Goals in COP26, Doubts America's Reputation After Kabul's Fall

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China and Russia have approached the United Nations with a request aiming to eliminate crucial sanctions against North Korea.

The restrictions should be relaxed "with the goal of strengthening the livelihood of North Korea's civilian population," according to the resolution. It also favors the resumption of diplomatic talks between North Korea and the United States. The sanctions have been in effect since 2006 and have gradually gotten more severe over time.

China, Russia plead with UNSC

The draft resolution builds on a resolution offered by China and Russia in 2019; but due to Western resistance, it was never fully introduced for a vote. Diplomats who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity said this one might suffer a similar fate.

The new resolution urges the United Nations to take action. Member countries would supply "goods, materials, technology, and financial services required by North Korea to defeat COVID-19, improve lives, and grow the economy."

Air conditioners, bolts, iron, culinary utensils, agricultural equipment, vacuum cleaners, radiators, and fire extinguishers are among the items exempted from fines, according to the resolution.

China and Russia are also pleading to the UN Security Council to lift sanctions that include a restriction on seafood and textile exports, a limit on refined petroleum product imports, and a ban on North Korean residents working abroad and bringing their profits home.

After North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, the Security Council adopted sanctions, which were gradually tightened in response to subsequent nuclear tests and a more advanced ballistic missile program. Former United Nations (UN) representative Ambassador Nikki Haley stated in 2018 that the sanctions have cut off all North Korean exports and 90% of its commerce, as well as disbanding the pool of laborers sent abroad to earn hard cash, as per Newsweek.

Read Also: US Strengthens Ties with Taiwan Amid China Scare as Beijing Reiterates Firm Opposition to America's Military Contact

UN's long-time sanctions with North Korea

The draft resolution builds on a resolution circulated by Russia and China in December of this year. When it was debated, it was met with hostility from Western countries, and it was never formally brought for a vote at the council, as per the Washington Times.

Several United Nations (UN) agencies have been involved in the case. Diplomats, commenting on the condition of anonymity because the document has not been made public, said it would face a similarly tough battle today, citing North Korea's continued breaches of United Nations resolutions.

The United Nations is a global organization. North Korea was originally sanctioned in 2006 for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which have grown more powerful with each test Pyongyang conducts in defiance of the international community and despite its deteriorating economic circumstances.

The easing of sanctions "underscores the imperative of respecting the DPRK's legitimate security concerns, and ensuring the welfare, inherent dignity, and rights of people in the DPRK," according to the draft resolution.

The resolution builds on one proposed by China and Russia in 2019 but never implemented owing to objections from the US and other Western countries, VOA reported.

Related Article: Russia Holds Black Sea Navy Drill as US Warships Enter the Region; Vladimir Putin Looks to Shore Up Defense System

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For a virtual speech at the United Nations climate summit, Queen Elizabeth II wore a bright green frock and a brooch with a hidden meaning.

According to Harper's Bazaar, the 95-year-old queen wore a butterfly-shaped diamond and ruby brooch that was a wedding present from the Dowager Countess of Onslow. On November 20, 1947, Elizabeth married the late Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey.

Her Majesty most likely wore the brooch in memory of her husband, who died on April 9 at the age of 99. The Queen noted in her speech that fighting climate change is "a duty I am especially glad to perform, given the influence of the environment on human development was a topic dear to the heart of my loving late husband, Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh," Business Insider reported.

Queen Elizabeth says she is proud of Prince Charles and Prince William

She went on to say that seeing her son Prince Charles and grandson Prince William carry on the job that Philip started was "a source of great pride." At the conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, and the Duchess of Cambridge were there to see Her Majesty's address.

Her Majesty's desk has a framed portrait of Prince Philip surrounded by butterflies. The photograph was shot in Mexico in 1988 and is from the Queen's personal collection. The queen also spoke out on her two heirs, Prince Charles and Prince William, in an unusual turn of events.

According to a royal expert, Prince Harry would feel snubbed when the Queen forgot to name him in her address to world leaders at the COP26 climate meeting. Her Majesty said she couldn't be "more proud" of her son Prince Charles and grandson Prince William, who are spearheading the fight against climate change, in a video address to those attending the summit.

Despite his frequent comments on environmental problems, Prince Harry was absent from the Queen's address, as per MIRROR. Angela Levin, a royal expert and author who has published a book about Prince Harry, says she doesn't see why he would be included, especially because he is no longer a working member of the royal family. She told OK!: "I imagine he could well feel snubbed."

Read Also: Prince Andrew's Legal Team Exposes Virginia Giuffre's Past in Blistering Response to Sexual Abuse Lawsuit

Prince Harry could feel disregarded despite frequent involvement on environmental issues

Since the Queen's call for leaders to work together to combat climate change at COP26, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have unveiled their own climate change promise, declaring that their Archewell Foundation would be net-zero by 2030.

The organization has promised to reduce its carbon emissions over the next three years, inspired by Prince Harry and Meghan's "long-standing devotion to the Earth, both together and before to their union."

Next week, the Duke of Sussex will speak out against the "internet lie machine" at an event hosted by Wired magazine. Prince Harry who stepped down from royal duties last year and now lives in a $14 million estate in California, will speak at the Re:Wired event on November 9.

Per Daily Mail, the pay for the Duke's visit is unknown; analysts projected last year that he and Meghan might make more than $1.39 million each time they give a speech after joining up with an elite agency.

The event will feature three speakers, including Prince Harry, who will be introduced as a co-founder of Archewell, as well as Renee DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, and Rashad Robinson, co-chair of the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder and president of Color Of Change.

Related Article: Prince Harry Reportedly Panics Over Queen Elizabeth's Health, Urges Lilibet To Meet the Monarch to Make Amends

@YouTube

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The US Department of Defense (DOD) announced Wednesday that service personnel who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19 may lose their eligibility for veterans' benefits.

The U.S. Troops Not To Receive Benefits If They Refuse To Get Vaccinated

In a recently published article in Newsweek, troops who reject the vaccination will not be afforded any particular safeguards when it comes to their expulsion from the service. The Navy stated on Thursday that it would begin isolating sailors who refuse to get vaccinated.

Refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is beginning to have repercussions for military personnel. The penalties vary from a reprimand to dismissal from the armed services and loss of benefits in the Navy's instance.

Those who are discharged will get a general discharge under honorable circumstances, according to the military, which might preclude them from receiving veterans' benefits.

Individual commanders of local stations will now have to decide whether or not to grant soldiers an other-than-honorable or dishonorable discharge. "Any favorable assessments for veterans' benefits eligibility" were not to be given by the commanders, according to a published report in The New York Times.

Read Also: US Military Officials to Require Vaccination Among Staff by September 15

Lawmakers are Pushing for the Removal of the Benefits

Republicans in Congress have lately advocated for the withdrawal of benefits to make it easier for those who refuse to take the vaccination. In September, the House approved a bill prohibiting the military from granting dishonorable discharges to persons in that group while it is currently being debated in the Senate.

Gil Cisneros, Department of Defense undersecretary for personnel, testified to the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, saying, "We see the vaccine as a readiness issue. Any discharge decision is up to the individual service as to how they proceed with that," as per Air Force Times.

Furthermore, nearly 8,500 personnel of the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force missed the recent November 2 vaccination deadline. The other branches have deadlines for the shoot coming up in the coming weeks as well.

Additionally, VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy stated that when determining benefits, military members discharged for vaccine refusal will be evaluated in the same way as all other discharges to see if there were "mitigating or extenuating circumstances, performance, and accomplishments during their service, the nature of the infraction, and the character of their service at the time of their discharge."

Commanders Ordered To Identify Those Who Refused To Get Vaccinated

Within 30 days, commanding officers must identify individuals who refused the immunization, provide medical advice, and report those who refuse. Senior leaders will get a notification from the Navy requiring them to begin the vaccination procedure within five days or seek an exemption, or they will be relieved.

In a published article in Federal News Network, unless exempted, commanders will not enable sailors who refuse the vaccination to progress, reenlist, or execute instructions. The Navy will also be able to strip unvaccinated sailors of their fighting credentials and other specializations.

Related Article: Pentagon's Vaccine Mandate Deadline Nears But Hundreds of Thousands of the US Service Remain Unvaccinated



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Elections across the United States have either finished or are close to wrapping up, and some of the results of key races are unprecedented, with others going to opposing party members while some have won re-elections.

One of the most notable elections was the Virginia gubernatorial race between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The projected win of the race was given to the GOP members despite McAuliffe's massive support from the likes of United States President Joe Biden and former U.S. President Barack Obama, Fox News reported.

American Election Results 2021

Youngkin's win makes him the first Republican to become governor in Virginia since the 2009 elections. Additionally, the Republican's achievement puts pressure on Democrats that they could potentially lose the majority of the House and Senate if GOP members continue to win key races in the country.

After more than four decades, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has become the first Democratic governor of the state to win re-election based on projections on Wednesday. On the other hand, it was projected that Democrat Eric Adams will become the New York City mayor while Democrat Michelle Wu will make history to become Boston's new mayor, CNN reported.

Murphy's win comes amid widespread opposition from the rivaling party due to his 264th executive order that requires children aged two and older who are at daycare centers to wear facial coverings. The decision comes six weeks after the Democrat announced that grade-school students in the state were once again mandated to wear masks in schools.

Read Also: Joe Biden Blames Trump Voters for Democrats' Loss in Virginia, Rejects the Idea That Election Defeat is Due to His Presidency

The issue was the main point of discussion for Murphy's rival in the elections, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who immediately expressed his disagreement with the executive order. In a fund-raising email sent by Ciattarelli and his running mate, Diane Allen, said that Murphy's order was "unconstitutional, un-American, and has no scientific backing."

The electoral race in New Jersey and Virginia are seen by many as a sign of voter sentiment in the United States. Leonard Lance, a New Jersey Republican who was a former congressman that lost in the 2018 midterms questioned whether or not they were competitive enough, the New York Times reported.

Internet Users React to Elction Results

The continuous results of key races nationwide have garnered various reactions from Twitter users due to how surprising some turnouts have been. While the majority have either congratulated or criticized the projected winners, there have been some posts that have made fun of or ridiculed the results of the elections.

One user posted an image of a drawing showing one protester holding a sign with the words, "Defund the police!" in front of what seems to be a representative for the Democratic National Committee. The latter is shown saying, "The best we can do is a Black ex-cop mayor of NYC."

The Twitter user, @Doodlesmarkus, made the post after a former police officer, Eric Adams, won the New York mayoral race. On the other hand, another user, @KtecherBx, said that Murphy's win at New Jersey's gubernatorial race spoke a lot about the state of politics in the state.

Phil Murphy Wins Tight New Jersey Governor Race - WSJ. Honestly this says A LOT about the state of politics in Jersey though #NewJersey #GovernorPhilMurphy #Election https://t.co/F2c1ggSiks  Miss A. (@KteacherBx) November 4, 2021



Related Article: Youngkin Wins Virginia Gubernatorial Race After Heated Battle Against McAuliffe, Strengthening Republican Power in the Government

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China has started to prepare for the winter season, with Beijing shoppers seen stocking up on cabbage, rice, and flour on Wednesday, after the government urged citizens to have enough stocks of basic goods in case of emergencies amid an outbreak of the coronavirus and the power crisis.

On Monday, the country's Ministry of Commerce published a seasonal notice that encouraged officials to ensure that food supplies were stable ahead of the winter season. The statement came after a recent surge in the prices of vegetables and a growing number of coronavirus infections.

Preparation for Winter

However, the ministry's advice to residents to stock up on regular necessities in the event of emergencies has caused widespread confusion. The recommendations have caused many citizens to rush to supermarkets to buy additional supplies of cooking oil and rice.

China's domestic edible oil futures and Malaysian palm oil prices have also gone up due to the instructions. "It's going to be a cold winter, we want to make sure we have enough to eat," said a woman who was loading rice onto her bicycle outside of a central Beijing supermarket, NBC News reported.

The recent coronavirus outbreak in China has already spread to 19 of its 31 provinces, more than half of the nation. Reports of infections began being sent in mid-October, said the National Health Commission (NHC).

Read Also: Joe Biden Blames Trump Voters for Democrats' Loss in Virginia, Rejects the Idea That Election Defeat is Due to His Presidency

The agency reported 93 new symptomatic cases on Wednesday, which is recorded as the highest daily infection in the last three months. Nationwide, roughly 500 cases have been recorded since the beginning of the latest outbreak.

While the number of infections recorded seems small compared to infections seen in other countries in the West, it is a massive outbreak to the nation that has committed to its "zero-COVID" approach. Chinese officials implemented protocols such as tight border controls and lengthy quarantines for international arrivals, CNN reported.

China's Power Crisis

The situation comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping has received widespread criticism after he failed to physically attend the recent COP26 summit. The incident put into question Beijing's commitment to its promises of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

China is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world that has pledged to reduce that output by the deadline. Beijing also aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, which is a goal that many consider being ambitious.

The Asian country's power crisis is fueled by a coal shortage and is considered to be the worst the nation has experienced in years. Analysts said that China was unlikely to reverse an unofficial ban on Australian coal imports anytime soon.

The decisions come as reports suggest that Beijing was releasing small quantities of Australian coal that have been stuck at the nation's ports for several months. "Reports that small quantities of Australian coal were allowed to clear customs in China have increased speculation that Chinese authorities will look to relax the import ban on Australian coal, said mining and energy commodities analyst Vivek Dhar of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in relation to the recent incident, CNBC reported.



Related Article: China, Russia Urge UN Security Council To Lift Economic Sanctions on North Korea

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At least eight Republicans accused of attending the Jan. 6 Capitol riot won in the recent elections.

According to reports, most of the eight Republicans that won denied their participation in the recent insurrection. However, they all participated in the various demonstrations leading up to the attacks.

The Huffington Post claimed that the eight Republicans' win is a cause for concern among Americans. Even though the Republican Party is one of the biggest political groups in the United States, they still played a crucial role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that killed some people.

Several Republicans have been elected into office this week

Republicans Dave LaRock and John McGuire were re-elected to the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday. LaRock previously received criticisms after he seemingly threw shade at people of color. He later apologized for his comments.

On the other hand, McGuire was previously photographed standing beside men in paramilitary gear at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Even though he attended the gathering, McGuire said that he only found out about the violence that took place after he got home.

Marie March, who was present at the Stop the Steal rally days before the riot, won a seat at the Virginia House of Delegates. Other Republicans that won a seat include Natalie Jangula from Nampa, Idaho, Christine Ed from Watchung, New Jersey.

Charles Ausburger won a seat on the town council of Mansfield, Connecticut. And Susan Soloway, who helped organize the bus transport to the Capitol, was re-elected to the Hunterdon County, New Jersey Board of Directors.

Matthew Lynch, who was photographed outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, won a seat on the local school committee in Massachusetts.

Two other attendees of the Capitol riot have yet to know their fates. Monica Manthey, who admitted to attending the Stop the Steal rally, is awaiting results in her race to join the Annapolis, Maryland city council.

Read Also: Virginia GOP Candidate Glenn Youngkin Slams Donald Trump Supporters for Pledging Allegiance to a Flag at the Capitol During the Jan. 6 Rally

At least five Republicans lost their bid

Meanwhile, at least five Republicans were defeated during the recent election. Maureen Brody and Philip Hamilton lost their bids to join the House of Delegates.

Steve Lynch didn't also win his campaign for county executive in Northampton County, Pennsylvania.

Republicans won at least 50 House seats in Virginia

Reports also revealed that Republicans won at least 50 House seats in Virginia alone. Glenn Youngkin defeated Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Winsome Sears won the lieutenant governor's race, and Jason Miyares won the attorney general's seat.

According to ABC 8 News, the Republicans' win in Virginia is seen as a referendum on the various progressive reforms that Democrats have enacted in the last two years.

Some of these progressive reforms include the legalization of marijuana, the repeal of the death penalty, and the loosening and abortion restrictions in the state.

Joe Biden was one of the Democratic leaders that campaigned for McAuliffe. And following the latter's loss to Youngkin, the POTUS said that people are upset and uncertain about a lot of things, according to Reuters.

He also said that the people want his administration to get things done. So, he will continue to push hard for his agenda.

Related Article: Glenn Youngkin's Supporters Reportedly Preparing Election Fraud Allegations If He Loses to Gov. Terry McAuliffe

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The United States' top military general, Gen. Mark Milley, said that the American forces were prepared to support Taiwan in the event that China decides to enforce military aggression on the sovereign island nation.

Milley, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, said that despite the U.S. military being ready to defend Taiwan, it was highly unlikely that Beijing would attempt to seize the island using military forces in the next 24 months. However, he argued that if the incident did happen, the U.S. forces "absolutely have the capability" to support Taipei, Yahoo News reported.

Tension Between US and China

The general added that China was "clearly and unambiguously building the capability to provide those options to the national leadership if they so choose at some point in the future." During an interview, Milley said it was possible in the near future although highly unlikely.

In the last few months, China has continued to conduct provocations against Taiwan that it believes should be a part of the mainland. Beijing has sent military planes into the latter's air identification zone (ADIZ) roughly 150 times over about four days in early October, The Hill reported.

Read Also: Joe Biden Blames Trump Voters for Democrats' Loss in Virginia, Rejects the Idea That Election Defeat is Due to His Presidency

Milley has become one of the frontrunners in the tension between the United States and China in relation to Taiwan and its sovereignty. The general said that the U.S. government had to be very careful in regards to how it should deal with China in the future.

Due to agreements and communique, only a dozen or so minor countries have formally recognized Taiwan. The situation comes after Beijing's long-running and systematic campaign to exert diplomatic and economic pressure to isolate the island and its democratic government.

Supporting Taiwan's Defenses

Previously, American policymakers bolstered Taiwan's defenses and did not declare what action they would take in the case of China opting to use military force to retake the territory. The U.S. government employed a "strategic ambiguity" that was used to deter Beijing from attacking.

But in recent months, that stance has slowly shifted due to the growing brazenness in acknowledging the forms of military support that the American government has provided Taiwan. In a recent situation, U.S. Marine Corps and special operations trainers were in the island's territory and reported to have conducted training exercises. Additional reports have revealed that Taiwanese troops have also received instruction from U.S. military installations on Guam.

It was previously estimated that China may have sufficient resources and military capabilities to attempt to retake the island nation within six years. However, Taiwanese officials have revised the timeline after Beijing's recent acts of aggression. Many have also questioned whether or not Beijing was prepared to face economic isolation if it chooses to go to war with Taiwan.

"For Taiwan and the U.S., the most important thing is to remain sober and rational. Don't lead themselves into a political misunderstanding or ever a dead end because of their bravado and short-term operations," said an editor of the English-language Global Times, which has been considered a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, US News reported.



Related Article: Members of US Military Troops, Veterans Barred From ReceivingTheir Benefits if They Remain Unvaccinated

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A doctor from Houston had just been fined $500 for promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine to help treat COVID-19.

Stella Immanuel went viral due to her unorthodox thoughts on diseases. She also claimed to have treated hundreds of patients with hydroxychloroquine.

But the Houston doctor was reprimanded and fined for causing more harm than good to her patients. Immanuel also needs to submit proof of consent from patients after explaining the risk of her treatments using hydroxychloroquine.

Hydroxychloroquine does not treat COVID-19

The Food and Drug Administration previously cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine because it doesn't help decrease the likelihood of death, nor does it speed up a patient's recovery.

Instead, hydroxychloroquine has some severe side effects, including severe heart rhythm problems, blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver failure, according to the NY Daily News.

According to KHOU 11, Immanuel also made headlines in the past after she suggested that doctors use alien DNA to create some medicines. The doctor also alleged that some women suffer from health issues due to their intimate fantasies about demons.

Read Also: WHO, Others Warn Using Ivermectin as Treatment to COVID-19

Donald Trump believed Stella Immanuel's bizarre claims

In July, Donald Trump seemingly showed his support for Immanuel's theories about COVID-19. The physician previously claimed face masks aren't necessary to stop the spread of the deadly virus.

After Immanuel uploaded her video talking about COVID-19 on social media, Trump reposted the clip and said that it was a must-watch.

According to The Daily Beast, Trump and his team should've conducted their own research about Immanuel. And if they did, they would've found out that Immanuel has a history of making bizarre claims about important medical topics and other controversial issues.

Immanuel alleged that scientists were creating a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. She also said that the government is not being run by humans but by reptilians and other aliens.

Stella Immanuel headlined a right-wing summit

The physician also served as a speaker at the White Coat Summit, a gathering of a handful of doctors who consider themselves front liners. The event was reportedly organized by the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots.

It was at this event that Immanuel claimed to have treated hundreds of her patients with hydroxychloroquine. She has never treated Trump, but the publication revealed that the POTUS had taken the drug at one point.

Facebook, Twitter ban the controversial physician

Shortly after the event, hydroxychloroquine trended on social media, especially after Trump's supporters posted Immanuel's clips. However, they were later deleted because they promoted COVID-19 disinformation.

Immanuel became furious after learning that Facebook deleted her videos from the site. So, she claimed that Jesus Christ would destroy Facebook's servers if they didn't re-upload her clips.

"Hello, Facebook put back my profile page and videos up, or your computers with start crashing till you do. You are not bigger than God. I promise you. If my page is not back up Facebook will be down in Jesus' name," she tweeted.

At the time, Immanuel claimed that a networking group for women physicians was the ones fighting to have her medical license revoked. But she still insisted that hydroxychloroquine can be used to treat COVID-19 and other illnesses.

Related Article: Antiseptic Throat Spray, Malaria Drug Cut COVID-19 Infection Risk, According to Researchers

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Ethereum value is now at $541 billion in Market Cap.

Buying and mining Ethereum, a fast-expanding cryptocurrency, is both exciting and rewarding. Ether can only be used to pay for things on the Ethereum network right now.

However, users can't use Ether to put down a deposit on a house or pay for school fees just yet.

This means that if you want to buy something outside of the Ethereum network with your Etherum assets, you'll need to know how to cash out Ethereum.

Ethereum may be readily cashed out using a crypto exchange. You can also use peer-to-peer networks.

Is Ethereum a Cashable Asset?

As reported by Coin Metro, you can definitely cash out Ethereum.

Using a crypto exchange is the most typical way to cash out Ethereum. You can trade one coin for another on a cryptocurrency exchange.

When you cash out Ethereum, you are exchanging your cryptocurrency for fiat currency, most commonly dollars or euros.

The value of your Ether tokens is determined by how much cash you can trade it for. The conversion rate between Ether and your fiat currency of choice determines this.

You can cash out Ethereum if you know how to convert Ether into fiat currency.

Read Also: Dogecoin Mining Profitability, Hashrate: How Long Does It Take to Mine? Is It Worth It?

How to Cash Ethereum

The most frequent way to pay out Ethereum is to sell it on a cryptocurrency exchange for cash.

Here's how to go about it, according to Slit:

Choose a crypto exchange - users are advised to go with one that's based in your country and trades Ether. After that, you must create an account on the exchange platform. Make sure you do your research and select a trustworthy exchange platform. This will not only help you avoid scammers, but it will also help you avoid hidden fees and exorbitant commission rates. Connect an existing bank account - In order to sell, you must connect an existing bank account and supply further information, such as your date of birth, country of residence, and phone number. Transfer your Ethereum to the crypto exchange - this is only required if you obtained your coin from a separate source. Wallet services are available on almost all major exchanges. Simply transfer the needed amount of Ether from the old wallet to the new one. The transfer will take place in a matter of seconds. Transfer your mining rewards to the crypto exchange- When you join a mining pool, you give the pool an address to which the pool will send your mining winnings. Many exchanges advise against transferring mining rewards to an exchange-based wallet because the public address can change at any time. This does not rule out the possibility of selling Ether earned as a result of mining. Setting up a local wallet to receive mining rewards and then transferring your tokens from there to your exchange's wallet is one option. Sell your Ethereum for a preferred currency - Ethereum may be exchanged on an exchange just like any other cryptocurrency by placing an order. On most exchanges, you can either place an order and wait for someone to accept it, or you can look for an order that has already been placed and fulfill it. In most cases, the exchange platform calculates the exchange rate automatically. Withdraw money from your bank account - Once the transaction is completed, the funds will show in your account. The monies will then be available for withdrawal into your bank account. Depending on your bank, this process could take several business days. Pay the withdrawal costs - there are fees associated with withdrawing fiat currency. These fees range substantially depending on the trading platform, so keep that in mind while selecting the best exchange.

Related Article: Ethereum Price Prediction: Can ETH Value Reach $50000?
Zhang Yiming, the 38-year-old billionaire founder of ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, has resigned from the board of directors, reigniting speculation over how much control he will keep over the world's most valuable unicorn.

However, when Zhang relinquished his chairmanship was not immediately announced to the public.

The New CEO

As reported by Reuters, the former TikTok founder Zhang has handed over his board seat on Caymans-registered ByteDance to new CEO Liang Rubo, his university roommate and long-time collaborator.

ByteDance is a private Chinese company that founded video-sharing social networking services and apps TikTok and Douyin.

Furthermore, the company declined to respond because it is a private firm with no responsibility to publicly report changes to its board of directors.

TikTok, China's first globally successful social media company, has faced repeated questions from the US over who controls the operations of its enormously popular short video platform.

Read Also: TikTok Live Gifts: How Can TikTokers Earn Diamonds, Exchange It For Money?

TikTok Founder Resigns

Michael Beckerman, TikTok's manager of public policy for the Americas, told a US congressional hearing last week that the company does not share American user data with the Chinese government.

Beckerman said TikTok has "no affiliation" with ByteDance when questioned by Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

ByteDance quietly removed information about its corporate structure and board of directors from its website earlier this year, which revealed that the company had five board members, including Zhang, Sequoia Capital's Neil Shen, Coatue Management's Philippe Laffont, Susquehanna International Group's Arthur Dantchik, and General Atlantic's William Ford.

However, speculative rumors were going around that Susquehanna is looking to sell its share. The most recent information about ByteDance's board composition is not publicly available.

According to Forbes, TikTok made $34.3 Billion in revenue last year, when it became mainstream.

Although stepping down from the board, Zhang, who has a net worth of close to US$60 billion according to Forbes, will continue to be a key decision-maker behind the scenes when it comes to strategic problems, according to one source familiar with the situation.

Zhang Yiming

Zhang is still involved in internal group conversations and offering his thoughts on ByteDance's development.

The exec's departure from the spotlight comes as ByteDance announced a sweeping business restructure this week, separating TikTok as a stand-alone business unit.

In addition, Liang will supervise ByteDance's finances, allowing Singapore-based Chew Shou Zi to focus on his role as TikTok's CEO rather than his post as chief financial officer.

Zhang, who founded ByteDance in a Beijing apartment almost a decade ago, has kept a low profile in comparison to TikTok, which announced in September that it had surpassed 1 billion global monthly users.

Meanwhile its China-only sibling app Douyin has more than 600 million daily active users.

Zhang's final public appearance was in late June when he donated 500 million yuan (US$77 million) to establish an education fund in Longyan, China's eastern Fujian province. He was seen visiting his high school, which was publicized by the local education agency, according to South China Morning Post.

Related Article: 'Squid Game' Theory: Viral TikTok Video Reveals Possible Way Workers, Players Were Selected
Scientists have detected signs of water in a galaxy far away using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array telescope.

Studying the first galaxies to form in the universe helps scientists to better understand the birth, growth, and evolution of the universe and everything in it, including the solar system and Earth.

ALMA Detected Water

With the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), water has been identified in the most massive galaxy in the early cosmos.

H20, as well as carbon monoxide, were discovered in galaxy SPT0311-58, which is located roughly 12.88 billion light years from Earth. The abundance of these two molecules suggests that the molecular cosmos was active soon after the elements were formed in early stars.

This recent study is the most comprehensive examination of a galaxy's molecular gas concentration in the early cosmos to date, as well as the most distant observation of H20 in a normal star-forming galaxy.

SPT0311-58 is composed of two galaxies and was discovered by ALMA scientists in 2017 at its Epoch of Reionization location, or time.

This cosmos was just 780 million years old at the start of this epoch, which ks roughly 5% of its present age and when the first stars and galaxies were forming.

Researchers believe the two galaxies are merging, and that their rapid star production is not only depleting their gas, or star-forming fuel, but also evolving them into gigantic elliptical galaxies like those seen in the Local universe.

According to Joe Pesce from Phys.org, astronomer and ALMA Program Director at the National Science Foundation said, "This exciting result, which shows the power of ALMA, adds to a growing collection of observations of the early universe."

In addition, he also noted that these molecules, which are critical to life on Earth, are developing as quickly as they can, and their study is providing insight into the fundamental processes of a world vastly different from our own.

What is ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) ?

According to the European Southern Observatory, ALMA is the world's most powerful telescope for studying the cold Universe, which is made up of molecular gas and dust.

The ALMA Radio Telescope investigates the fundamental elements of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and life.

It allows astronomers to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our cosmic origins by providing detailed images of stars and planets forming in gas clouds near our Solar System, and detecting distant galaxies forming at the edge of the observable Universe, which we see as they were roughly ten billion years ago.

Although ALMA was officially launched in 2013, the first scientific observations with a partial array were made in 2011.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is operating the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) a state-of-the-art telescope to investigate light from some of the Universe's coldest objects high on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes with its international partners.

Millimetre and submillimetre radiation refers to light with wavelengths of roughly a millimetre, which falls in between infrared light and radio waves.

Read Also: NASA Hubble Telescope Pictures and Videos: Major Glitch Stops Operations, But Still Takes Photo of Mysterious Superbubble

ALMA's components and Capabilities

ALMA is a single, ground-breaking telescope made up of 66 high-precision antennas that operate at wavelengths ranging from 0.32 to 3.6 mm.

Its main 12-metre array consists of fifty antennas, each measuring 12 meters in diameter, that work together as a single interferometer. This is supplemented with a compact array of four 12-meter and twelve 7-meter antennae.

ALMA's 66 antennas may be deployed in various configurations, with maximum distances between antennas ranging from 150 meters to 16 kilometers, giving it a tremendous variable "zoom" capability.

With a vision up to ten times clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope and complementing images acquired with the VLT Interferometer, it can investigate the universe at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.

Related Article: NASA Hubble Images: Space Telescope Captures Stunning Photo of Spiral Starburst Galaxy
The month of November will bear witness to some awesome celestial events again, and those who love to do some skywatching are surely in for a treat. After all, the Moon gliding, Jupiter and Saturn dating, as well as the Winter stars returning are all in play.

Lucky for everyone, NASA has released a guide to let skywatchers know exactly where to look and when!

NASA Skywatching Guide for November 2021

NASA has released a skywatching guide for the month of November, which highlights a partial lunar eclipse, return of the Winter stars and the Sunset planets.

November 6 up to November 11: Skywatchers must watch the Moon glide over the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn after the sunset in the south or southwest from November 6 to 11. For instance, if skywatchers look outside on November 7, the four-day-old crescent Moon will appear just about two degrees away from the planet Venus.

November 4 up to early December: The planets Saturn and Jupiter will be moving closer to Venus each night. This only means that people should look in the skies every night to witness the movements of these planets.

November 18 and 19: When the Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth for a few hours, a partial lunar eclipse will occur, which is also something to look forward to on the stated dates. In addition to this, the said eclipse will be visible from any location where the Moon appears above the horizon during the eclipse. NASA added that the partial lunar eclipse will occur earlier or later in the evening, depending on the time zone.

Moreover, the countries that will be able to observe the said eclipse includes North and South America, Eastern Asia, Australia and the Pacific Region.

For U.S. East Coast eclipse watchers, they should start looking at the skies starting at 2 a.m. reaching the maximum time of 4 a.m. While for those on the West Coast, a partial lunar eclipse will peak shortly after 11 p.m. until the maximum time of 1 a.m. However, people should still check the timing of its visibility for their area.

Read Also: Where Is Magic Eraser in Pixel 6? Here's What to Do If You Can't Find New Google Tool

Return of the Winter Stars

Aside from the partial lunar eclipse that is part of the NASA skywatching guide, it is also worth noting that the Northern winter stars have returned, rising late at night which appears in the south before sunrise.

For those who are not familiar with the Northern winter stars, it composes of the constellations Auriga, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Carina, Eridanus, Gemini, Monoceros, Orion and Taurus, per Constellation Guide.

Moreover, the Pleiades star cluster, which leads the constellations Taurus and Orion, is followed by Sirius, which is known as the brightest star in the sky. These stars are returning for the long winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere.

In addition to the Pleiades star, this star is the location of the eight asteroids that NASA's Lucy expedition will visit. To give clarification to NASA Lucy's mission to Trojan asteroids, Lucy will be able to prove some theories about the early solar system. Apart from proving theories, Lucy is claimed to be the first spacecraft to explore the collection of asteroids.

Related Article: NASA SpaceX Crew-3 Mission Launch Time, Date, Astronauts: Where to Watch Rocket Takeoff After Big Delay
2022 Mazda cars have the capabilities to put the vehicle in full stop when the driver is experiencing health problems, such as stroke or heart attack.

Mazda cars can already park themselves, alert drowsy drivers, re-enter in the correct lane, and suggest map routes to destinations. The company now has automobiles in the works for next year in Japan that can detect whether a motorist is having a stroke or a heart attack.

How Do Mazda Cars Detect Stroke and Heart Attack?

According to the Japanese carmaker, by 2025, cars will be able to detect when drivers are likely to experience a sudden health problem and would alert them.

As reported by ABC News, the vehicles will interpret data from inside the car's cameras and will be use the laser sensors or other intrusive equipment within the vehicle.

Not only will it be available in affordable models, but it will also be available in luxury models.

The technology has the potential to benefit one of the world's most sophisticated aging cultures.

For Mazda's stroke detection feature, Mazda recently told reporters that the company has been researching the acquired image data with medical specialists, including Tsukuba University Hospital, to figure out what a healthy driver looks like, as a contrast to an unconscious driver slumped forward over the steering wheel.

When the Co-Pilot Concept, which has yet to be given an official name, detects a problem, it will bring the vehicle to a safe halt as soon as feasible.

The automobile will honk and flash its blinker and hazard lights, although the specific warning signals are still unknown.

Furthermore, a call to the ambulance and police will be relayed as well.

When it comes to Mazda's heart attack detection feature, the said procedures will also take place assuring safeguard the people inside the vehicle.

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2022 Mazda Cars

Several big manufacturers, such as Volkswagen of Germany and Toyota Motor Corp. of Japan, are developing similar technology.

As stated by CTV News, after Japan, Mazda intends to offer the technology in Europe.

Mazda is holding off on launching it in the United States because it believes there are still unanswered problems about its social acceptance, despite the fact that rivals are already delivering similar vehicle-stopping systems.

The company clarified that the personal data gathered does not leave the automobile, which a lot of users are concerned about its privacy protection.

Mazda's chief engineer, Takahiro Tochioka, said the company is researching techniques to foresee a health concern that may arise, even if the driver is unaware of it.

According to him, the car will look for minute changes in people's vision, head swaying, minor deviations in driving patterns, and other such things.

He boasted to reporters, "And it will warn drivers even before actual symptoms appear... But understanding and cooperation from the drivers around that car are crucial for this technology to work."

Mazda is expecting that when the Japanese public sees a driver in distress, they will come to their aid because Japan is known for its extensive public generosity.

Tochioka expressed that the technology will enable people to continue driving throughout their lives while also assuring families and friends that they need not be concerned.

The car maker would also be able to collect input from real-world users by offering Co-Pilot, he said.

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Actors Yoon Kye-sang, right, and Park Yong-woo in a scene from the film, "Spiritwalker" / Courtesy of Megabox Plus M



By Kwak Yeon-soo



Actor Yoon Kye-sang plays multiple characters with very different personalities in director Yoon Jae-keun's fantasy action film, "Spiritwalker."



The movie is about a man named I-an (Yoon), who loses his memory after a car accident and subsequently wakes up in a different body every 12 hours with no memory. As he attempts to find his true self and make his way back to his own body, I-an realizes that he is being chased by a spy agency.



The director explained that he came up with the movie idea a decade ago, while he was writing a screenplay in a public library. "I was writing the script for another film. One day, I felt as if everything was so mundane and boring. I wished I could wake up the next time as somebody else, and then thought that it would be fun to make a movie based on that premise," he said during a press conference for the film, Thursday.



Actor Yoon, who is reuniting with the "The Outlaws" production team again after four years, said that he liked how the action weaves in with the story.



"The concept of waking up in different bodies was interesting, and I liked the action-packed story. Any male actor would love to do it. I personally like spy movies, so I had no reason to decline the role," he said



"It looks as if I'm the one taking on the biggest workload, by playing seven different characters, but other actors also play two roles. Because they swap bodies and minds with me, we had a lot of discussion about making that switch happen."





From left, actors Yoon Kye-sang, Park Yong-woo, Lim Ji-yeon, Park Ji-hwan and director Yoon Jae-keun attend an online press conference for the film, "Spiritwalker," Thursday. Courtesy of Megabox Plus M
The "Ghost Fashion" series by Ahn Chang-hong. From left, "2021'1," "2021'8" and "2021'18" / Courtesy of the artist and Savina Museum



By Park Han-sol



In celebration of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and Ecuador in 2022, a special exhibition of Korean artist Ahn Chang-hong's work will open its doors to viewers in Ecuador's capital, Quito.



The show, scheduled for Nov. 4 to Dec. 14, is Korea's first "reciprocal exhibition" of its own artist in the South American country, following "National Painter of Ecuador: Oswaldo Guayasamin," which was held earlier this year at the Savina Museum of Contemporary Art in northwestern Seoul.



Ahn's 60 pieces, from oil paintings to large-scale installations, will adorn the walls of Casa Museo Guayasamin  the legendary painter's residence-turned-museum  as well as La Capilla del Hombre ("The Chapel of Man"), alongside the permanent collection of Guayasamin's own artworks.



This opportunity is the first time for La Capilla del Hombre  a cultural complex conceived and designed by Guayasamin in tribute to the peoples of Latin America against the struggles of European colonization  to invite the works of a Korean artist into its gallery space.



For more than four decades, Ahn has told stories of the alienation and marginalization of the nameless population within fast-paced, modern Korea, overshadowed by the histories of war, authoritarian regimes and capitalism, through striking  sometimes explicit  paintings and sculptures.



His latest works to be unveiled in Casa Museo Guayasamin are 20 oil paintings from his "Ghost Fashion" series  a recreation of his earlier pieces born from the tip of a digital stylus pen on his smart device screen  that visualizes the disappearing notion of what it means to be human in the face of capitalist civilization.



"During the very late evening or early in the morning, the city streets, devoid of swarming pedestrians, feel utterly empty. Like an alley of ghosts, humans are gone and the only thing filling the streets are gaudily decorated outfits," the 68-year-old artist wrote in his notes, recalling a moment of inspiration for the series.





Ahn's sculpture, "Blindness, 2016-3" / Courtesy of the artist and Savina Museum
A Joseon-era royal court folding screen of "morando," or peony blossom painting / Courtesy of the Insa Traditional Culture Preservation Association



By Park Han-sol



After witnessing the streak of success achieved by local art fairs held recently  the latest by the Korea International Art Fair (KIAF) Seoul, which saw a record turnout and sales of 65 billion won ($55 million) in October  Insa-dong in central Seoul is gearing up for its own art events this month.



As a neighborhood best-known for antiques, traditional crafts and galleries, it will play host to two art fairs with a mix of traditional Korean and contemporary art.



From Nov. 10 to 14, the Insa-dong Antiques & Art Fair will take place in the alleys filled with shops and teahouses, as well as the region's main cultural complex, Anyoung Insadong.



Previously called the Insa-dong Traditional Culture Festival for the last 33 years, the five-day event has transformed into a fair this year, inviting nearly 20 galleries and boutiques. With a focus on antiques, the participating shops will present classic masterpieces, crafts and traditional tea and snacks.



The event's special exhibition is themed around Korean color paintings, specifically royal court paintings and "minhwa," or folk paintings that donned the walls of the houses of the working class throughout the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom as auspicious symbols of prestige, wealth, peace and longevity.



Among the 60 relics to be showcased, some pieces include: a court painter's "hwajodo" (flower and bird painting); "morando" (peony blossom painting) used in royal weddings, funerals and ancestral rituals; and "Geobukseon Haejindo," or a folding screen depicting the lineup of the iconic turtle-shaped ships led by Admiral Yi Sun-shin (1545-98) in preparation for the impending naval battle of the Imjin War.



"We will continue to preserve the identity of Insa-dong through art fairs that center on antiques and classic masterpieces," Shin So-yoon, the president of the event's organizing institution, the Insa Traditional Culture Preservation Association, said at a recent press conference.





Kang Kuk-jin's "Rhythm 85" (1985) / Courtesy of AHAF Committee
Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung, second from right, talks with representatives from BlackRock, APG Asset Management and Legal & General Investment Management, during the Finance Day event of the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Wednesday (local time). Courtesy of Shinhan Financial Group



Strategies to reach carbon neutrality discussed with BlackRock, APG, LGIM



By Park Jae-hyuk



Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung became Asia's first private sector financial leader to deliver a speech at the U.N. Climate Change Conference.



The chairman spoke in a session about the financial sector's low-carbon transition, alongside representatives from BlackRock, APG Asset Management and Legal & General Investment Management, during the Finance Day event of the COP26 in Glasgow, Wednesday (local time).



He introduced Shinhan's "Zero Carbon Drive," the first declaration on carbon neutrality by an East Asian financial company, to the attendees, including U.N. envoys and top executives from Allianz, HSBC and AXA.



"I'm happy to say we motivated other major financial companies in Korea to follow suit this year," he said. "We will communicate through existing channels in countries where Shinhan has a presence, like Vietnam, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, India, Japan and China, so that we may serve as an Asian benchmark in the finance industry."



Cho explained that his company applied the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials' (PCAF) methods to determine that its six assets worth $21 billion have emitted 42 million tons of carbon a year and used the Science Based Target initiative's (SBTi) methods to reduce the emissions by 38.6 percent by 2030 and 69.7 percent by 2040.



He mentioned power generation, iron, steel, oil, chemicals and cement as sectors Shinhan should focus on for its reduction efforts.



"Shinhan plans to concentrate on the top 100 companies with high carbon intensity and emission levels for our engagement strategy which involves revealing information and establishing reduction goals," he said. "While it won't be easy to change from a high-emission, manufacturing-based economy to a low-carbon one, companies like POSCO, Samsung, SK, LG and Hyundai are already competing to get an early lead."



Based on his belief that the role of finance is to help such companies' transition to eco-friendly operations, the chairman unveiled Shinhan's plan to provide $30 billion in green finance by 2030.



He also emphasized that Shinhan's corporate governance led by its board of directors and CEOs of its affiliates has provided momentum for its net-zero strategies.



"I firmly believe that we can make the great transition to net-zero carbon sooner than expected," he said.



Cho will also introduce the Korean financial sector's carbon neutrality efforts to stakeholders worldwide by delivering a separate speech at another session of the conference, which will be held next Tuesday by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a Seoul-headquartered intergovernmental organization dedicated to promoting sustainable economic growth.



"We will send our Deputy President Park Sung-hyun to an event held by the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) on Thursday (local time)," a Shinhan official said.





Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung promotes the group's "Zero Carbon, Zero Fuel" project, after holding an online meeting with CEOs of the group's affiliates at Shinhan headquarters in Seoul in this May 20 file photo. Courtesy of Shinhan Financial Group



This is not the first time for Shinhan to support the U.N.'s efforts to make a greener world.



In April, the financial group became one of the founding signatories to the U.N.-led establishment of the NZBA, with an aim of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. For this goal, Shinhan launched the "Zero Carbon, Zero Fuel" project in May, which features a plan to switch 62,843 vehicles owned by the group to electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.



The Shinhan chairman also previously announced the principles for responsible banking, during the U.N. Environment Program Finance Initiative's global roundtable event in Paris in November 2018.





Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung, fourth from left, speaks at the U.N. Environment Program Finance Initiative's global roundtable event in Paris in this November 2018 file photo. Courtesy of Shinhan Financial Group
People wait in line to buy 'diesel exhaust fluid' (DEF) in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, Thursday, Yonhap



Little efficacy expected from gov't move to allow sharing of key transport agent in stock for industrial use



By Lee Kyung-min



An executive order prohibiting hoarding of "diesel exhaust fluid" (DEF) solution, a critical agent needed to reduce air pollution from diesel vehicles, will take effect next week, the government said Thursday. Locally termed "urea water," it is a nontoxic solution of 67.5 percent purified water and 32.5 percent ultra-pure automotive grade urea.



The government seeks to bring under control a recent rush of attempts to sell the fluid additive at up to 20 times the buying price, in what it deems a criminal manipulation of the market.



A taskforce set up by the environment ministry, the Fair Trade Commission, the National Tax Service and Korea Customs Service will monitor and clamp down on any irregularities and draw up measures to help stabilize the domestic supply.



The hastily arranged measure is part of efforts to forestall a transportation crisis brought on by up to 2 million freight diesel vehicles which will be unable to operate with the key agent running in short supply due to sudden export curbs from China. Some of the newest diesel vehicles cannot start without the agent.



China began conducting a pre-export inspection on goods produced within its borders Oct. 15, a key part of its export curbs imposed amid a trade conflict with Australia. The dispute came after China refused to import coal, from which urea is extracted, produced in Australia which faulted China for the COVID-19 pandemic.



Most large local DEF manufacturers shut down around 2013 and Korea has since relied almost exclusively on China for the cheap material. A whopping 97.6 percent of Korea's imports of the agent permitted for industrial use came from China in the first nine months of this year.



Gov't measures



First Vice Finance Minister Lee Eog-weon said the government will enact and implement an executive order next week to prohibit the sale of the agent, as authorized by relevant laws governing the stability of prices.






gettyimagesbank



Nearly 90 small cities and counties that are in danger of extinction due to population decrease have been designated as "depopulation areas" for intensive support from the central government, the interior ministry said Monday.



The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said that it has designated 89 cities, counties and wards across the country as depopulation areas and a relevant public notice is to take effect Tuesday.



The government plans to provide intensive administrative and financial support to help the concerned areas escape from their crisis of extinction, the ministry said.



It is the first time for the nation to declare specific regions in danger of becoming extinct due to population decline. South Korea has been struggling with a steady decline in childbirths and the overcrowded capital region, which have left many non-capital regions struggling to overcome depopulation.





What's behind Sejong City's high birthrate? Over 42% of Koreans in their 30s unmarried Korea in search of solutions for looming ultra-low childbirth, aging population The designation of depopulation areas came after the Special Act on Balanced National Development was revised late last year and its enforcement decree was amended in June.



The government-designated depopulation areas include 16 cities and counties each from the southwestern province of South Jeolla and the southeastern province of North Gyeongsang.



The list also includes 12 from northeastern Gangwon Province, 11 from southeastern South Gyeongsang Province, 10 from southwestern North Jeolla, nine from central South Chungcheong Province and six from central North Chungcheong Province.



In the capital region, four counties  Gapyeong, Yeoncheon, Ganghwa and Ongjin  were included. Three wards in Busan and two wards in Daegu were also listed.



"The designation of depopulation areas is a new starting point for the government's efforts to solve the problem of population decline," Minister of the Interior and Safety Jeon Hae-cheol said.



The ministry said it will help the depopulation areas establish and implement customized policies to escape their population crisis.




Ghanaian Ambassador to South Korea Charis Margaretha Obetsebi-Lamptey Zwennes poses near a table showcasing cultural products of her country which will be sold during Seoul International Women's Association's online bazaar to be held at siwakorea.com from Nov. 8 to 21. Courtesy of Nora Gyuris









By Kang Hyun-kyung







Bottles of baobab oil, shea butter in plastic containers, chocolate bars and pieces of colorful fabric are placed on a small table in a corner of the Azaleas Room of the brand-new Fairmont Ambassador Hotel on Yeouido, Seoul.







Also placed behind them are three oil paintings created by Ghanaian artist Nsiah.







One after another, Ghanaian diplomat Isabella Sauponey was putting items in place attentively and trying to make room for another item she had brought from her embassy in Seoul.







"These are $150 each," she said, pointing to one of the oil paintings. "The artist used real sand here as a material. Try it and you can feel the rough texture."







The Ghanaian second secretary then showed a colorful yellow fabric to this reporter. "This is Kent cloth. Kent is a particular style of woven fabric which originates from Ghana. Kent is associated with the Ashanti tribe and their culture," she said.







Items on the table are to be sold during the forthcoming bazaar to be held online from Nov. 8 to 21. It's the biggest annual charity event prepared by Seoul International Women's Association (SIWA) in collaboration with the diplomatic community in Seoul.







The small table featuring iconic Ghanaian cultural items was set up there as a reminder to participants of the 59th SIWA and Diplomatic Community online bazaar opening ceremony that the charity event is just around the corner, so be prepared.







Representing their countries, embassies are blending charity with cultural diplomacy.







The Embassy of Hungary, which also showcased in advance some of its donations at a booth, prepared a small table featuring Hungarian wine also to be sold during the upcoming online bazaar.







Sun-mi Nam, the Korean wife of Hungary's ambassador to South Korea, said Hungarian wine is world-class but lesser-known among Korean consumers. "This white Tokaji wine is a favorite of female consumers. It's a great dessert wine," she said in praise of the country's wine.







In a congratulatory speech at the opening ceremony on Tuesday, Song Hyeon-ok, the wife of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, expressed her gratitude to the dedicated SIWA members who prepared for this year's event, despite the pandemic. Song said she was touched by the international women's association's six decades of unwavering dedication to helping disadvantaged Koreans.







Song Hyeon-ok, center, the wife of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, and SIWA President Veronica Koon, fifth from left, cut the ribbon during the opening ceremony for the 59th SIWA and Diplomatic Community online bazaar held at Fairmont Ambassador Hotel on Yeouido, Seoul, Tuesday. From left are SIWA Special Events Chair Eunice Go; Fairmont Ambassador Hotel in Seoul Sales & Marketing Director Jason Kim; Seoul Foreign School Assistant Head Dawn Stark; Song; Koon; Konnul Teymurov, the wife of Azerbaijan ambassador to South Korea; and SIWA Fundraising Vice President Lee Bock-hee. Courtesy of Nora Gyuris





The opening ceremony was held on Tuesday, days before the start of the online bazaar in order to inform the Korean public of the event, so they can join the group's cause-driven activities.







"The bazaar was held online last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the first time to host the event online since the creation of SIWA and we learned a lot. With fewer donors participating and fewer people that knew about our online event, last year's event was not as successful as it had been in the past," said Lee Bock-hee, vice president of fundraising. "So, this year, SIWA board members agreed to beat the drum earlier by holding an opening ceremony and actively engaging with media to promote the annual event."







The lingering pandemic is a stumbling block to SIWA's annual bazaar which had been held in person for decades.







"The bazaar is all about gathering. To be successful, people need to come to the event. Due to the pandemic, however, we were unable to hold the event in person," Lee said. "Our decision to hold the bazaar online means a lot to us. This indicates our will and uncompromising spirit that the show must go on despite the pandemic, because it has been held for 58 years."







SIWA President Veronica Koon said there was a consensus among SIWA board members about the need to continue its six-decades-long mission to help those in need through the charity event.







"SIWA has not stopped charity and philanthropy work since 1962 and the pandemic wouldn't stop us, either," she said. "Over the years, SIWA and the embassies that supported us have developed trust and support on the issues we presented since my presidential term started in 2019. Going forward, SIWA would like to be in a role that embraces and supports international women and those in need in Korea."







Koon said this year's event will feature a "gourmet" theme, as SIWA members learned from last year's event that food and beverages were especially popular. Under her leadership, there has been a meaningful membership change in SIWA. The Chinese Embassy has joined the international women's group's charity event.







Lee noted the SIWA bazaar is much more than a platform for buying and selling products to raise money to help others. "Some of the visitors come all the way up to Seoul from Busan for the bazaar. There's something that makes them keep visiting. Each embassy's booth has its own, unique cultural products. If you go to the booth run by the French Embassy, you'll meet French-speaking people and get a glimpse of their culture, too. SIWA bazaar is a rare place where you can meet the world," she said.







This year, 21 embassies will join the online bazaar. The participating embassies are Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Ghana, Georgia, France, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Latvia, Thailand, Tunisia and Turkmenistan.







SIWA will sell the donated products on its website and have them delivered to buyers.







All revenues earned from the sales of the products will go directly to underprivileged people, including single mothers, the disabled and children in need, according to Sunghwa Han, a Korean American who chairs SIWA's welfare committee.







The bazaar is one of the two big annual charity events hosted by the organization. The other is the SIWA Gala held in the first half of year.







Launched in 1962 by several female leaders, SIWA has responded to the changing needs of Korean society through money raised for charity.







In the 1960s when the nation was mired in poverty, the international women's group prioritized feeding hungry children. In the 1970s and 1980s, SIWA provided scholarships for children who were unable to continue their studies due to poverty. Single mothers, the disabled and children from working-class families who cannot afford to attend after-school programs have benefited from SIWA's charity events.







The focus of the international women's group has changed since its founding.







SIWA was initially established as a multicultural group where women from Korea and other countries could socialize to help adjust to Korean culture and develop ties.







Soon the organization became a high-profile platform for gatherings and cultural interactions between like-minded Korean and foreign women. First ladies and wives of Cabinet members and Seoul mayors have participated in the opening ceremonies of SIWA's annual bazaars.







Its membership is largely composed of spouses of foreign executives and ambassadors and Korean women who are educated abroad, as well as those who are interested in cross-cultural exchanges. The group currently has nearly 300 members, about 30 percent of whom are Korean citizens.






Rev. Lee Hong-jeong speaks during a news conference at National Council of Churches in Seoul on Thursday. Yonhap



NCCK leader draws the ire of progressive church members for his remarks justifying the late president



By Kang Hyun-kyung



Rev. Lee Hong-jeong, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), apologized on Thursday to the victims killed during the May 18 Uprising and their families for his participation and remarks during the state funeral of the late President Roh Tae-woo.



He said his attendance at the state funeral of the military general-turned-president was a grave mistake.



"I initially planned to deliver a meaningful message to society at the funeral by taking advantage of the opportunity that was given to me," he said during a press conference held at the National Council of Churches in Seoul. "Regardless of my purposes, however, I came to realize that my participation in the funeral itself is self-contradictory and therefore I hereby apologize."



Lee took part in the state funeral of Roh held on Oct. 30 at Olympic Park in southeastern Seoul. He delivered a eulogy for the late president on behalf of Protestant church leaders.



Reading a prepared statement, he said he hoped Roh's family members can bear in mind that Roh felt regrets about Korea's tragic modern history, including the government's violent suppression of the May 18 Uprising in 1980, and encouraged Roh's family members to play a role to realize democracy and peace on the Korean Peninsula.



The May 18 Uprising was a pro-democracy protest in the southwestern city of Gwangju in 1980, while the nation was in turmoil following the assassination of President Park Chung-hee on Oct. 26, 1979, and an ensuing military coup starting Dec. 12 of that year, led by Chun Doo-hwan, then a military general. Chun's authoritarian government brutally cracked down on the democracy protesters. Roh, who later took power through a presidential election, was Chun's friend and also a military general who played a role in the coup.



Rev. Lee's eulogy at Roh's funeral backfired after it was made known to the public.



In a joint statement released after the state funeral, the Ecumenical Youth Council in Korea and two other Protestant church groups criticized Rev. Lee for his remarks about the late president's apology regarding the massacre that took the lives of hundreds of Gwangju citizens.



"General Secretary Lee said the late president was rueful about the incident, but what he said was not based on fact," it read.



Their statement went on to say that Roh, after retiring from the presidency, said that May 18 Uprising was nothing compared to China's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. "His attitude toward the popular protest has not changed and in his memoir he even tried to justify the government's crackdown on the democracy protests," it read.



Other Protestant church groups joined the attacks on Rev. Lee, saying he was trying to seek reconciliation between the late president and the massacre victims and their families without consent from the latter groups.



In response to their criticism, Rev. Lee said his participation in the funeral and what he said there were all inappropriate.



"My deepest apologies go out to the victims killed in the May 18 Uprising and their families, if my words hurt them," he said.



After being elected general secretary of the progressive NCCK in 2017, Lee has been vocal on human rights issues, such as the proposal of an anti-discrimination bill and the acceptance of LGBTQ people in churches.






North Korea called Thursday for thorough preventive measures against COVID-19 for the winter season.







The Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North's Workers' Party, highlighted the importance of remaining vigilant against the pandemic, saying the virus can be transmitted even through falling snow.







"In the winter season, it is important to be aware as ever to make thorough anti-virus measures," it said.







The newspaper described virus control and prevention steps during the winter as an "important political" project to determine whether progress would be made in the first year of the North's five-year economic plan.







At the country's eighth party congress in January, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un unveiled a new development scheme focusing on self-reliance amid strict border controls against the virus and global sanctions on its economy.







The reclusive regime has claimed to be coronavirus-free and has so far reported no COVID-19 cases to the World Health Organization. (Yonhap)


The Munch Museum in Norway, dedicated to Edvard Munch, opened its new building in Oslo's seaside Bjorvika neighborhood, Oct. 22. Courtesy of Munch Museum



Plans for another Munch exhibit in Korea



By Kwon Mee-yoo





Stein Olav Henrichsen, director of Munch Museum / Courtesy of Munch Museum

The Munch Museum, or MUNCH, in Oslo, Norway, opened its highly-anticipated new building to the public last month, and it lived up to expectations.



The museum, home to some 27,000 works of art by the Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944), originally opened in Toyen, Oslo. It recently moved to the 13-story building dedicated to the artist in the neighborhood of Bjorvika.



Frode Solberg, Norwegian Ambassador to Korea, spoke about the significance of Munch to Norway as well as to the world.



"As Norwegians, we find this very important, of course, but I think also as global citizens. I think Edvard Munch belongs to the greatest, not only the greatest Norwegians, perhaps also among the greatest artists. His works, as you probably know, are among the most valuable and highly-priced artworks out there," Solberg said as he introduced the Munch Museum director to the Korean media, Nov. 1.



The ambassador also mentioned how the Munch Museum is changing the cityscape.



"It's changing the seaside and into a very exciting area. When I was a kid, it was always containers and ships there. Now it's a very nice neighborhood where I think the Munch Museum will be an important additive to the architectural design, turning Oslo into one of the most exciting design and architectural cities in Europe," Solberg said.



The new museum, designed and built using sustainable and environmentally-friendly methods by Spanish architecture studio Estudio Herreros, is contributing to changing the cityscape, especially in the port city of Oslo.



"With this new building, we think that we can be in the center of society and we want the city and all our visitors to enjoy our museum and to participate in developing our programming and our activities," Stein Olav Henrichsen, director of the Munch Museum, said during the meeting with the media.



"We are also looking forward to having visitors from other countries. We know there is a lot of interest (in Munch) in South Korea. We had an exhibition in South Korea a few years back that was very well attended. And in fact, we are also looking into the possibility of doing an exhibition in Seoul again with Edvard Munch."





Edvard Munch produced several versions of "The Scream" and at least one of them will be on view at the new Munch Museum on a rotation basis. Courtesy of Munch Museum



The new museum's 11 gallery spaces will allow more of Munch's work to be on display, along with contemporary artworks that reflect his legacy and influence.



"We are going to show a lot more from Edvard Munch works. We have almost 27,000 artworks in our museum that is two thirds of his total production, which is almost 40,000. So we can do a lot of exhibitions at the same time to show more from our collection, like a collection presentation," the director said.



Munch is best known for "The Scream" and "Madonna," but the museum has much more to offer about the Norwegian artist.



"We know his scream, we know his melancholy vampire and all kinds of difficult aspects of life. But Edvard Munch was also very much concerned with brighter sides of life. So you really have to visit our museum to get an insight into the depth and breadth of Edvard Munch's collection," Henrichsen said.



"But we cannot show all these 27,000 artworks in one go, so we are continuously changing our exhibitions and our collection presentations as well. But I think that in our museum, you can see a very wide part of his works."





"Edvard Munch: Monumental" exhibition features some of the largest paintings created by Edvard Munch including "The Sun" and "The Researchers." Courtesy of Munch Museum



Munch was an artist for more than 65 years and produced a large body of work in various mediums including drawings, paintings, sculptures, watercolors, prints, photographs and film.



"He was dealing with all kinds of aspects connected to existential questions of human beings. ... He was dealing with all kinds of possibilities to communicate his insight and his knowledge and his art to the viewer and to the public. So this new building gives us the possibility to do that," Henrichsen said.



For the opening program of the new building, five Munch shows exploring different parts of the artist's oeuvre are on show  "Infinite," "Monumental," "Shadows," "Up Close" and "All Is Life."



In "The Loneliness of the Soul," British artist Tracey Emin's works are shown alongside pieces by Munch, showing his influence on the leading contemporary artist.



The upcoming exhibition, "The Savage Eye," focuses on the relationship between surrealism and symbolist artists including Munch, while another future exhibit, "Satyricon and Munch," will explore the connection between metal music and visual art through Norwegian black metal band Satyricon.



"But we also want to emphasize contemporary art in our museum. So a lot of the space will be used for contemporary artists, not only local artists, but also artists from the rest of the world that can come and bring their reflection and their art and their knowledge into our community and our society," Henrichsen noted.





"The Lonelyness of Soul" explores Edvard Munch's influence on British artist Tracy Emin's artistic career. Emin's painting, sculpture and neon text works are on display alongside 16 Munch works, handpicked by Emin. Courtesy of Munch Museum
President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with his Hungarian counterpart Janos Ader after a joint press conference at the latter's residence in Budapest, Wednesday (local time). Yonhap



President Moon faces self-contradiction during nuclear tech sales to European countries



By Nam Hyun-woo



President Moon Jae-in's policy to phase out nuclear power from Korea's energy mix is facing a self-contradiction, as he apparently recognizes the necessity of nuclear power during his sales pitch to export domestic reactors to central European countries.



During a joint press conference with President Janos Ader after a summit, Wednesday (local time), the Hungarian head of state said the two had reaffirmed each other's promise to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, adding "it is the shared intention of the two countries that carbon neutrality cannot be achieved without nuclear energy."



Ader's remark contrasted with Moon's policy to phase out nuclear energy in Korea. The government has been pursuing a plan of replacing domestic nuclear power plants with renewable energy and some remaining coal-fired power plants by 2079, despite experts' concerns on potential power shortages and the necessity of nuclear power for cutting emissions.



According to the plan, the country's nuclear reactors will be decommissioned when they reach the end of their respective design life, so the number will decline from the current 24 to 18 in 2031 and 9 in 2050.









So far, the Moon administration has been dismissing concerns that the country's nuclear power industry may collapse due to the policy, saying the industry can sustain itself by exporting technologies and developing a reactor decommissioning business. This, however, also raises doubts as it faces the paradox of Korea selling its nuclear technology to other countries while it exits the sector.





A computer rendering of a power plant using Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power's (KHNP) APR 1400 nuclear reactor. Courtesy of KHNP




A Seoul court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for the owner of an asset management firm at the center of an urban development corruption scandal over allegations his firm received business favors in exchange for bribes.







Kim Man-bae, owner of Hwacheon Daeyu Asset Management, is facing charges of breach of trust and bribery in connection with a 2015 project to develop the Daejang-dong district in Seongnam, south of Seoul, into apartment complexes.







Prosecutors have been looking into suspicions over how the previously unheard-of asset management company and its seven affiliates were chosen as private partners for the lucrative project and reaped astronomical profits.







The Seoul Central District Court decided Thursday to issue an arrest warrant for Kim after holding a hearing Wednesday. The court ruled that Kim posed a flight risk and could destroy evidence.







Prosecutors believe Kim colluded with Yoo Dong-gyu, former acting president of Seongnam Development Corp., in manipulating the public bidding procedure in favor of Hwacheon Daeyu to eventually have it picked as the private partner and allow it to reap profits of 65.1 billion won ($55.1 million).







Kim has denied all charges against him, claiming that his firm joined the project in accordance with relevant policies set by Seongnam City.







The court also issued an arrest warrant for Nam Wook, a lawyer and a private partner in the project, suspected of participating in the collusion. The court, however, refused to issue an arrest warrant for Chung Min-yong, who prosecutors believe is a co-conspirator.







The scandal has received intense media coverage amid questions about its potential impact on next year's presidential election, as the project was launched when the ruling Democratic Party's presidential nominee, Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung, was mayor of Seongnam.







The main opposition People Power Party has claimed Lee was behind the whole scheme.







Lee has apologized for what he described as "appointing the wrong people" but has rejected all allegations raised against him. (Yonhap)


gettyimagesbank



By Yoon Ja-young



A man was handed down a jail term for getting tattoos all over his body to avoid Korea's compulsory military service.



According to the Suwon District Court Wednesday, the man, in his 20s, was sentenced to one year in prison for violating the military service act.



The man underwent a physical examination for military conscription in March of 2019 and received a grade of 3, due to the tattoos he already had. In Korea all able-bodied men must serve in the military for 18 to 21 months. While those receiving grades of 1, 2 or 3 must serve in the military, those who receive a grade of 4 are assigned to less physically-demanding, public service positions.



After receiving a grade of 3, he got additional tattoos  from his elbow to his wrist on both arms, on his right calf and on his belly  in an apparent attempt to avoid serving in the military.



Four days after official commencement of service in July 2020, he was asked to return home and be reexamined, in which he was assessed as grade 4 and was assigned to the alternative service.



The man claimed that he had gradually gotten a number of tattoos on his body as he became fascinated with tattoos, and that he had no intention of evading military service.



The court, however, dismissed his claim.



The man had been given a grade of 4 in the physical examination back in 2015, citing a neuropsychiatric disease. It was found, however, that he had deceived the examiners, so he was sentenced to a one-year prison term in June 2018. He was released on parole in February 2019.



The prosecution concluded that he intentionally got more tattoos so as to evade military duty, even though he had previously been told that he could face prosecution if he were to get additional tattoos to avoid military service.



The judge noted in the ruling that those who "undermine the fundamentals of the military service system" deserve stern punishment, when considering the fact that the majority of young men obediently complete their military duty.



Due to the decreasing pool of conscriptees, following the demographic changes caused by Korea's low birthrate and rapidly aging society, the Military Manpower Administration started applying new criteria in the physical examination this year. Even those with tattoos must serve in the military. The conscription agency said that it made that decision because the negative social perception of tattoos has decreased.


gettyimagesbank





By Lee Hae-rin







The husband of a Dutch diplomat to Korea is under investigation for allegedly hitting a Korean man with his car following a quarrel, police said Thursday.







According to the Yongsan Police Station, it is looking into the allegation that the diplomat's husband hit the Korean man in his 30s, while they were bickering over a parking issue near the Grand Hyatt Seoul around 1 p.m. Monday.







Police added that they have secured dashcam footage showing the diplomat's husband hitting the victim with the driver's side front fender, causing a minor injury.







The victim claimed the driver swore at him and made an insulting finger gesture at him, citing his diplomatic immunity.







The police plan to summon the man for questioning, an official at the Yongsan Police Station told The Korea Times.







This is not the first time a foreign diplomat's family member has been involved in a dispute with a Korean national. Previously in April, the former Belgian Ambassador Peter Lescouhier's wife was investigated for assaulting salespersons at a clothing shop in Seoul. She left the country in July.







Under the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, diplomats and their family members hold diplomatic immunity, meaning they are not usually subject to lawsuits or prosecution by local courts of the host country.







In an official statement, Wednesday, the Dutch Embassy in Korea said it was fully aware of the incident and planned to cooperate with the police investigation.


In this 2018 March file photo, kids engage in outdoor activities at Sejong City. Korea Times file



In Sejong, stable jobs, childcare leave encourage couples to have more babies



By Yoon Ja-young



SEJONG  It is no news that Korea's birthrate has been falling to a new record low every year. Last year, 272,300 babies were born, a 10 percent drop from the previous year. Korea's total birthrate, or the number of babies a woman chooses to have, recorded 0.84, which is by far the lowest in the world. Korea is the only member of the OECD  a group of mostly high-income economies with low birthrates  that has a figure below 1. This year alone, the government has been pouring in 36 trillion won to pull up the rate, but to no avail. Few believe the trend of Koreans having fewer babies will turn around anytime soon.



If there is one exception in the country, it would be Sejong. The newly built administrative city centered on central government ministries relocated from Seoul, the capital, recorded a total fertility rate of 1.28 last year, which is twice as high as the 0.64 rate of Seoul.



"The total fertility rate of Sejong is closer to the OECD average. It is largely because teachers and government workers can take three years of childcare leave, which would be difficult at private firms," former Rep. Yoo Seong-min, a presidential contender of the main opposition People Power Party, said in a recent debate, pledging a combined six years of childcare leave for parents if he becomes president.



It is true that the government officials are relatively free to take childcare leave. They can take three years of leave per child on top of the maternity leave. There are some cases of government officials or school teachers being on leave for nearly 10 years as they add up the leave time accrued when having three kids. Their jobs are guaranteed for when they come back to work. This situation contrasts with the private sector, where workers still refrain from taking longer periods of childcare leave due to concerns about facing possible disadvantages in the workplace from their management.



Stable jobs also help them have more babies. According to 2016 data by former Rep. Shin Sang-jin, 32.7 babies were born per 1,000 government officials, which is more than twice the number of babies born per 1,000 ordinary citizens with similar ages in the same year, 14.5.



Good infrastructure for childcare





Not everyone in Sejong, however, works for the government. Those working as government employees in various professions  from social welfare to administrative positions  took up only 18.1 percent of the city's total working population as of the second quarter of last year, so there is clearly more behind Sejong's relatively high birthrate.



Jeon, a housewife who moved from Pyeongchon, Gyeonggi Province, gave birth to her third child after moving to Sejong. As of 2018, 11.2 percent of families with kids had three kids or more in Sejong, which compares with Seoul's 7.4 percent.






A university campus in Seoul is livened up with students, Tuesday, as the country adopted the "Living with COVID-19" scheme the previous day, allowing in-person lectures again. Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



Although the country has begun its "Living with COVID-19" strategy, meant to phase out virus restrictions gradually, many universities are struggling to resume in-person lectures.



Starting with Seoul National University last month, many universities in the capital have been resuming in-person lectures gradually, but some schools have decided to maintain their current teaching methods for the remaining portion of the semester, fearing a possible spike in COVID-19 infections.



The fall semester has already passed the halfway mark, and students living outside Seoul and taking online classes have faced sudden problems finding housing in order to attend classes in Seoul.



As of Oct. 1, 25.2 percent of universities were conducting in-person lectures, while 30.2 percent had chosen hybrid courses, a mixture of in-person classes and remote teaching, and the biggest proportion, 44.6 percent, were providing remote classes.



The proportion of in-person classes increased by 4.1 percentage points from early September, but remote teaching has continued as well, after being practiced for nearly two years.



On Oct. 8, when the nation's vaccination rate passed 70 percent, the Ministry of Education sent an official letter to universities across the country requesting cooperation in expanding in-person classes.



Accordingly, Seoul National University moved some of its online lectures back to in-person, and many universities in Seoul, including Korea University and Yonsei University, have allowed in-person classes for courses with small enrollments of less than 50 students.



Since these universities have expanded face-to-face classes only for courses with small numbers of students, they believe they can control the spread of infection among students by abiding by social distancing measures.



However, some universities have decided to provide only remote lectures for the fall semester, due to concerns about a possible increase in coronavirus infections on campus, as social distancing restrictions are eased in line with the government's "Living with COVID-19" scheme.



Officials at universities in Seoul that are sticking with remote classes this semester say that students living in provincial areas will inevitably experience major inconveniences if lectures are switched to in-person in the middle of the semester.



"There will be no additional expansion of in-person courses other than those that were decided at the beginning of the semester, because many students would then go through the inconvenience of having to move near the university," said an official of Konkuk University.



He said that if the university were to switch from remote to in-person classes in the middle of the semester, students in provincial areas won't be able to continue their attendance, as they are not living in housing near the university, such as dormitories or rental housing.



One of the reasons that they decided not to expand in-person classes was the university's location in a busy part of Seoul with a large floating population of people coming in each day, the Konkuk University official said.



Hongik University, located in another busy and often crowded part of Mapo District, has decided not to offer in-person teaching for similar reasons.



The school is wary of the spread of infection to the extent at which it has assigned only one student to each double room in its dormitories. Therefore, it would be impossible to expand face-to-face classes suddenly.



"The academic calendar set at the beginning of the semester is also a promise between professors and students, so it's difficult to change in the middle of the semester," a Hongik University official said.



"As it is something that requires agreement with the students, it cannot be changed easily just because the education ministry issued guidelines. We cannot tell students living in the provinces to come up in the middle of the semester while concerns of infections are still lingering," he said.






By Mark Leonard





BERLIN  The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) now underway in Glasgow might conclude with a big international agreement. But whatever tactical successes are achieved at COP26, the results are likely to mark a strategic setback for humanity  at least when compared to the hopes of climate activists.



The world is missing target after target. This should not be surprising: While a growing number of countries have set net-zero targets, for example, very few have credible plans to meet them. And even if we did meet existing targets, that would not be enough to achieve the 2015 Paris climate agreement's main goal: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.



In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report warns that the planet is likely to reach the 1.5 C limit in the early 2030s. As long as multilateral engagement is defined by nationalism, power politics, and emotion, rather than solidarity, law, and science, our future will continue to grow bleaker.



At the height of the Cold War, the American television series "The Outer Limits" told the story of an idealistic group of scientists staging a fake alien invasion of Earth, in the misguided hope that they could avert nuclear Armageddon by giving the world a common enemy against which to unite. When faced with the prospect of extinction, the logic went, the Soviet Union and the United States would turn their attention from competition to shared survival.



Today, nobody needs to contrive a common cause. Climate change poses as great a threat as any alien invasion. But, far from shocking national leaders out of their petty competition, it is being wielded as a weapon in a many-sided propaganda war. From Brazil and Australia to China and the U.S., countries are trying to game climate negotiations in order to shift the costs of adaptation onto others.



For example, the Brazilian government is trying to get the world to pay it to stop destroying the Amazon rainforest. Chinese President Xi Jinping will participate in COP26 only by video link, and Russian President Vladimir Putin might not attend at all.



Meanwhile, the advanced economies  including those that proudly claim to be committed to climate action  have broken their promise to provide $100 billion annually to support the climate transition in the Global South. And even if they did deliver, it wouldn't be enough.



Developed economies are finding increasingly coercive ways of shaping other countries' behavior. Commitments by most of the Western and multilateral development banks to stop financing coal (now joined by China) restrict options for grid expansion in developing countries where demand for power is growing rapidly.



Influential countries have also urged the International Monetary Fund to attach green conditions to debt relief for poor countries, as well as to its new allocation of special drawing rights (the IMF's reserve asset).



And the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism  a non-trade barrier intended to force exporters to Europe to shift to green production  disproportionately hurts small emitters in Africa and Eastern Europe with a lot to lose.



This is not to disparage coal bans, green financing, and carbon pricing. On the contrary, these tools have a crucial role to play in changing how the global economy works. But that doesn't mean we can disregard the (very serious) consequences for developing economies. Instead, we need to create a new grand bargain focused on supporting adaptation in the developing world.



More broadly, we must ensure that any multilateral agreement for tackling climate change is governed by international law, rather than dependent on the will of individual countries. And decision-making should be driven by scientific truths, not political slogans.



The Paris climate agreement's predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, was broadly in line with this approach: It was a multilateral treaty, with legally binding international targets determined by the world's best scientists. But the protocol also had many flaws, and it didn't end up going far.



The Paris accord took a very different tack. It was hailed as a triumph, because hopes for any agreement were so low. But it entailed a major compromise: It was based on non-binding commitments known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).



Countries could simply pursue the energy policies on which they had already decided, while pretending they were working together to tackle climate change. Not surprisingly, current NDCs are wholly inadequate to achieve the agreement's stated goals.



To be sure, climate-change COPs have often made important  if often procedural, boring, and technical  contributions to the climate fight. But showboating and power politics have stood in the way of real progress. And the media and civil-society circus that surrounds the conferences  intended to enforce accountability and transparency  has often impeded negotiators' ability to get things done.



More fundamentally, COPs have failed to produce a model of global governance that can tame power politics, let alone forge a sense of shared destiny among countries. And there is little reason to believe this time will be different.



Of course, the problem extends beyond U.N. Climate Change Conferences. While economic globalization has lifted millions out of poverty, it has fueled increasing concentration of wealth. In this context, efforts to advance shared interests can become less appealing, because they produce asymmetrical rewards.



Add to that the psychology of envy unleashed by social media, and it becomes all the more difficult to shift people's focus from their relative position in the global pecking order to the common good. These trends have undermined faith in the power of government, and fueled pessimism about the possibility that any solution will emerge.



The result is what social scientists call a collective action problem. Leaders and citizens alike conclude that the most rational short-term strategy is to pay lip service to the cause and hope others will solve the crisis. Meanwhile, the planet burns.





Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "The Age of Unpeace" (Bantam Press, 2021). His article was distributed by Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).


By Kaushik Basu





ITHACA  Both anxiety and hope are increasing in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. There is anxiety because, barring a handful of the willfully blind, we can all see the damage we are doing to the planet.



Fires, floods, and rising sea levels are creating havoc around the world, while environmental destruction and the resulting conflict are triggering large-scale refugee movements that evoke biblical images.



But there is also hope, because some  not least the climate activist Greta Thunberg, with her longstanding and heartening call for more ambitious action  recognize the scale of the challenge facing humanity. In that spirit, the European Union has launched the European Green Deal, which aims to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050.



The United States also aims to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, and recently announced that it would double its financial contribution to help developing countries tackle the climate crisis, to $11.4 billion per year. Some U.S. lawmakers, notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, have proposed a Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to redesign the U.S. economy and eventually eliminate all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.



Yet, despite these efforts, the fact is that we started out late in combating climate change and now need to accelerate corrective action if humans are not to go the way of the dinosaurs. The climate crisis is a global issue and requires action from all countries, but many developing economies, including some of the most climate-vulnerable ones, lack the financial wherewithal to do enough on their own. Some emerging economies, including South Africa and much of South and Southeast Asia, are hugely reliant on coal, and will have to undergo a disruptive green transition.



We therefore need a collective commitment to design support systems  financial and scientific  to help all countries do their part. The 2015 Paris climate agreement was a diplomatic success, marshaling the support of almost 200 countries. But the world is falling woefully short of meeting the target  limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, relative to pre-industrial levels  that was agreed in Paris.



Will the gathering in Glasgow catalyze genuine action? Thunberg recently warned that "the leaders will say we'll do this and we'll do this,  and then they will do nothing." And the widespread frustration at leaders' insufficient climate ambition is not limited to young people. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II expressed a similar sentiment, saying that "it's really irritating when they talk, but they don't do."



Such despair is natural. When we see climate action trail so far behind rhetoric, we inevitably wonder if all the talk is just hypocrisy. But it need not be.



If we want to bequeath a livable planet to future generations, it is crucial to understand why there may be a disjuncture between what each person intends to do and what the group actually delivers. Iconic games like the prisoner's dilemma have shown this to be the case in the domain of selfish decision-making. Mobilizing the determination and commitment needed to address the climate crisis is a problem for the social sciences and moral philosophy as much as it is for politicians.



Contrary to what neoclassical economics would have us believe, the modern economy does not operate as a series of impersonal markets driven purely by the aspirations of individual actors. Rather, as Mariana Mazzucato notes in her book "Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism," markets are "embedded in rules, norms, and contracts affecting organizational behavior, interactions, and institutional designs."



It is therefore a mistake to equate collective action with the sum of individual intentions. When people say they want to do everything to avert climate disaster but do little, this may not be hypocrisy. They may be in the grip of what I have described in a recent paper as "Greta's Dilemma."



In this game, a group of people initially pursue their own interests, with no concern for how the environmental damage caused by their actions will harm future generations. If people then become environmentally conscious and take corrective action, traditional economic models would predict that such a shift will lead to improvements in future generations' welfare.



But in the complex, strategically connected world that we inhabit today, the outcome may be different. Greta's Dilemma illustrates the paradoxical result whereby individuals who become environmentally conscious collectively do greater damage to the environment. Akin to one of those paradoxical paintings by M.C. Escher, it is the intertwining of small individual steps that lead the group to a destination they did not seek. Far from helping future generations, they end up hurting them.



Admittedly, this game is crafted deliberately to highlight the paradox. But it shows that, in today's complex global economy, we need to devote much greater attention to the strategic foundations of human interaction in order to design policies that can help us turn away from the brink of climate disaster.



This may sound like a narrow academic argument, but it is not. If we are to realize Thunberg's ambition, which I believe many people  including many leaders  genuinely share, we need to use Greta's Dilemma as a basis for designing the policies and institutions we need.



So, although we are right to fret that leaders may not do enough at COP26, we also have to be aware that there is a scientific problem here. On climate change and other issues, we need to understand the social and economic game we are playing, and try to alter its rules so that our individual moral intentions are reflected better in collective outcomes.





Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank and chief economic adviser to the government of India, is professor of Economics at Cornell University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His article was distributed by Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).


Until when should taxpayers make up for deficits?



Pension reform is an old and difficult task, and most politicians, conservative and liberal, agree on the need for this. However, few dare to tie the bell on the cat, risking election defeat. The National Assembly Budget Office's financial outlook report for 2021-30 makes one realize once again that pension reform is not an option but a necessity. Especially urgent is the reform of the civil service and military pensions.



According to the report, the government employees' pension fund deficit will grow from 4.3 trillion won ($3.6 billion) this year to 9.6 trillion won in 2030. During the same period, the shortfall of the veterans' pension fund swells from 2.8 trillion won to 4.1 trillion won. It predicted the public officials' and soldiers' pension would incur deficits of 61 trillion won and 30 trillion won respectively during the decade. These are debts that every Korean will have to bear. The two pension funds' reserves dried up a long time ago, and the government has made up for this with taxpayers' money since 2001 and 1973, respectively.



Due to the increase in the number of civil servants and overall population aging, the number of retired government employees will grow further, increasing the public's burden. What is more serious is its structure that will inevitably increase the load on future generations. That also explains why the country should not put off pension reform any further. The Moon Jae-in administration can hardly avoid responsibility. Previous governments tried to tackle pension reform, but the incumbent hasn't even pretended to do so. The issue also does not appear to be a concern of the candidates from the ruling and opposition parties who want to become Korea's next president.



The average monthly payment by the National Pension Service is 370,000 won for each retired company worker. In comparison, a retired civil servant receives 2.4 million won a month on average. There is, of course, a difference in their contribution rates, but the gap is wide enough to make the public feel disenfranchised. It's rather strange that retired company employees don't complain that they receive so little compared to retired public officials and veterans. How long do they have to pour their tax money into a bottomless pit?


Focus on confirming alleged breach of trust



Prosecutors need to focus on proving breach-of-trust charges raised against a former ranking official of the Seongnam Development Corp. (SDC), to get to the bottom of a corruption scandal surrounding a 2015 urban development project in Seongnam City, south of Seoul. They should also conduct a thorough investigation in order to confirm the allegation that Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), might have played a role in the scandal.



On Thursday, the prosecution arrested two key suspects in the corruption case. One is Kim Man-bae, owner of Hwacheon Daeyu Asset Management  one of the major private partners of the development project in Seongnam's Daejang-dong. He faces charges of breach of trust and bribery. Kim allegedly colluded with Yoo Dong-gyu, former acting president of the SDC, in manipulating the public bidding procedure to have his firm selected as the private partner for the project. Kim is suspected of causing at least 65.1 billion won ($55.1 million) in losses to the municipal government by illegally reaping excessive profits.



In the process, Kim allegedly offered a huge sum of bribes to Yoo in return for business favors. Another key suspect is Nam Wook, a lawyer and private partner in the project. He is suspected of colluding with Yoo and Kim in deleting a clause in a contract with SDC which calls for a fair distribution of additional profits between the city-run firm and private developers.



The deletion made it possible for Hwacheon Daeyu and its seven affiliates to reap an estimated profit of 850 billion won, almost 1,000 times their initial investments. This, however, means that SDC sustained a huge loss. The prosecution initially estimated the loss at about 110 billion won, but it corrected the amount to a minimum of 65.1 billion won due to difficulties assessing the exact figure, opening the possibility of raising the sum afterwards.



Against this backdrop, SDC President Yoon Jeong-su made public a report Monday that Yoo and other SDC officials caused 179.3 billion won in losses to the development corporation in collusion with Kim and other private partners. This sum is much higher than the prosecution estimated. The report, based on the SDC's internal probe into the project, implies that breach-of-trust charges can be applied to Yoo and other suspects. As such, it can provide a clue that might prove DPK candidate Lee's alleged involvement in the case.



Lee, former Gyeonggi Province governor and Seongnam mayor, dismissed the report as groundless. But it is hard to accept his dismissal because he was the top decision-maker approving the development project. During a National Assembly audit of the provincial government last month, Lee said that he turned down a suggestion that an additional profit-sharing clause be included in the contract. He argued that no private companies would participate in such a project if they had to return additional profits to city coffers.



But we beg to differ. If Lee had included such a clause, the municipal authorities could have recovered a large portion of the excess profits arising from the project. He should realize that owners of the land and buyers of the new apartments also had to suffer considerable losses because of corrupt ties between city officials and the private firms. That's why the prosecution should go all-out to confirm Lee's suspected involvement.


Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, center, speaks during the Global Vaccine Hub Preparatory Committee's meeting in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap



Songdo to become biotech production base



By Baek Byung-yeul



Korea is on course to become a global hub for vaccine production and distribution as the government has vowed to strengthen support for bio firms while local biotech companies promised to invest 6.29 trillion won ($5.3 billion) between now and 2024.



The government held a meeting of the Global Vaccine Hub Preparatory Committee, presided over by Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, Tuesday. The meeting was the preparatory committee's second gathering following its first meeting presided over by President Moon Jae-in on Aug. 5.



Featuring a total of 27 officials from the government and private sectors, the government discussed providing funds to build production facilities for vaccine and raw materials companies and 6.29 trillion won worth of private facility investment support to foster competitive companies in the sector.



Also, the government is working on attracting investments from overseas companies, announcing that German-based pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier Sartorius AG decided to increase its investment in Songdo to $300 million from its previous plan of $100 million.



As the vaccine hub strategy takes shape, the prime minister said Korea will be able to close in on "vaccine sovereignty" at a time when the country is working on improving the COVID-19 vaccination rate here.



"We will fully support the realization of vaccine sovereignty by commercializing the first domestic COVID-19 vaccine by the first half of next year," the prime minister said during the meeting in Seoul.



"The government will help companies undergoing Phase 1 or Phase 2 clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine to quickly enter Phase 3 trials. In particular, the government will pre-purchase vaccines made by companies that have entered Phase 3 trials. We will also operate a pan-government intensive support system, such as shortening the approval period," he said.



In order to bring vaccine and bio-related raw material businesses up to the status of the country's core industry  like semiconductors  the committee said the government will support private companies to invest in establishing facilities.



Under the plan, Samsung Biologics, the global leading drug manufacturer, will invest a total of 4.24 trillion won between now and 2024. Samsung's investment plan includes spending 1.74 trillion won to build its fourth production facility in Songdo District in Incheon by 2022 and 2.5 trillion won for its fifth and sixth plants there until 2024.



Celltrion will invest 1.5 trillion won to build a production facility and research center, SK Bioscience will invest 270 billion won to open a vaccine research center and Prestige Biologics will pour 226 billion won into adding another production base. In total, 15 private companies will invest 6.29 trillion won.



To help private firms carry out their planned expansions, the government will try to create conducive environment for the local vaccine industry and abolish unreasonable regulations.



The government will provide subsidies for firms that lack financial capability. It will provide 18 billion won secured from this year's supplementary budget to 14 companies by the end of 2021 so that vaccine and raw material companies that have investment plans but lack funding can entrust and produce vaccines independently.



To truly become a hub for vaccine production, the government is pushing for to take part in the World Health Organization's plan to create a hub to nurture human resources in the biotechnology sector.



The WHO is pushing ahead with this project to expand the vaccination capacity for middle and low-income families, and Korea hopes to participate in the field of training to contribute to developing manpower for overcoming the global infectious disease crisis and resolving vaccine inequality.


Oriental Brewery Marketing Vice President Alexander Lambrecht talks during an interview with The Korea Times at Belgian restaurant Frites Artois in Hannam, Seoul, on Nov. 1. Courtesy of OB



By Kim Jae-heun



COVID-19 has impacted various economic sectors, and the beer market is definitely one that has been affected severely, as restaurants, bars and nightclubs were all forced to close down at night for almost the last two years.



The country's largest beer-maker, Oriental Brewery (OB), came up with a number of countermeasures to cope with the pandemic. It expanded domestic market sales targeting consumers who enjoy a drink alone at home, while diversifying the variety of alcoholic beverages to satisfy different preferences.



At the forefront of this scheme, OB Marketing Vice President Alexander Lambrecht said no major changes in marketing are scheduled for the near future and his company will continue doing what it is doing now.



"The marketing process is always the same. It is only the solution that is different. AB InBev (parent company of OB) has been moving towards carrying out experience-based marketing here by collaborating on our premium beer with local restaurants. Meanwhile, we also introduced the Korean lager beer Hanmac, which is made of rice that goes well with Korean cuisine," Lambrecht said during an interview with The Korea Times at Frites Artois in Seoul, on Nov. 1.



The vice president said what OB is doing now had all been planned out before the pandemic began. As the beer market develops in each country, breweries have to offer a variety of alcoholic beverage options that fit individual tastes.





Belgian restaurant Frites Artois in Hannam, Seoul / Courtesy of OB
Harim's new facility in Iksan, North Jeolla Province / Korea Times file



By Kim Jae-heun



Big food companies like Harim, Paldo and Dongwon are striving to expand their product portfolios to balance out risks as competition intensifies.



Harim, the country's top poultry firm, has diversified its business portfolio and grown into a general food company. It has built three factories in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, to manufacture instant noodles and home meal replacement (HMR) kits. The factories opened in January and started producing new items such as ready-made soup and stews as well as precooked rice.



Last month, the poultry firm introduced its first-ever premium instant noodle, "The Misik," which means delicacy, challenging top noodle makers such as Nongshim and Ottogi.



The main reason why Harim entered such a competitive market was increasing demand. Consumers will keep purchasing food regardless of economic trends. The stable market attracts small and medium-sized companies and the steady demand minimizes risks.



"Population growth has stagnated here due to a decreasing number of people giving birth, but competition between food firms has become more intense. Companies like Harim have no option but to introduce new food items that can give fresh impetus to consumers," an industry source said.





Harim's premium instant noodle product "The Misik" / Courtesy of Harim
Korea and a group of Arab countries have agreed to push for the resumption of their free trade talks that have been suspended for a decade in a move to forge deeper economic ties, Seoul's industry ministry said Wednesday.







The announcement was made during the meeting between Korea's Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)'s Secretary General Nayef Falah M. Al-Hajraf held in Riyadh earlier in the day, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.







The GCC has six member nations  the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.







Korea and the GCC agreed to push for a free trade agreement (FTA) in 2007 and had three rounds of talks between 2008 and 2009. But the negotiations have since stalled after the council announced the suspension in 2010.







"The Gulf region is a crucial market for Korea given its population, income and growth potential. The agreement for the resumption of FTA talks is expected to serve as a chance to boost trade, investment and overall cooperation with the six nations," the ministry said in a release.







Trade volume between the two came to $46.6 billion in 2020.







Yeo also held separate talks with Saudi Arabia's Commerce Minister Majid bin Abdullah Al Qasabi, during which the two sides vowed to expand bilateral industry cooperation to create new business opportunities.







The trade minister is in Saudi Arabia for a five-day overseas trip, which will later take him to Britain, his office said. (Yonhap)






By Kim Jae-heun







LS C&S expects to supply more submarine cables







LS Cable & System (C&S) said on Nov. 3 that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for cooperation in the domestic offshore wind power business with Northland Power, a Canadian new and renewable energy developer.







"With this MOU, we will comply with the government's new and renewable energy policy and contribute to job creation," LS C&S President and CEO Myung Roe-hyun said.







The two companies prescribed their respective roles and various matters necessary for offshore wind power generation, and agreed to cooperate in engineering, procurement and construction (EPC).







Northland Power has been active in Europe, building and operating new and renewable energy infrastructure such as wind power and photovoltaics, since its establishment in Toronto in 1987. It has recently been making full-fledged efforts to advance into Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan.







LS C&S has continued to build cooperative relations. For example, it was recently selected as a priority supplier of submarine cables for Northland Power's 1GW Hai Long Wind Farm Project in Taiwan.







Northland Power is also expanding its business in Korea. LS C&S expects to see its sales grow with the 1.3 GW Dado Ocean Wind Power Project in South Jeolla Province.







"Cooperation with LS Cable & System laid the foundation for the smooth operation of the offshore wind power business in Korea," said Seung-soo Han, CEO of Northland Power Korea. "We will take the lead in supplying environmentally friendly renewable energy."


Apple Korea General Manager Brandon Yoon answers questions from lawmakers during his attendance at this year's National Assembly audit of the Korea Communications Commission, the country's top telecom regulator, Oct. 21. Yonhap



By Kim Yoo-chul



The chief of Apple Korea is said to have offered to resign from the post, a few months after the country passed a bill banning Apple from requiring developers to use its in-app purchasing systems.



On Thursday, industry officials said Apple Korea General Manager Yoon Koo, or Brandon Yoon, tendered his resignation recently. Apple Korea officials were unavailable for comment.



Yoon, a former Samsung Electronics executive, joined Apple's Korean branch in 2018 as general manager. Before working at Samsung, Yoon had worked for Microsoft from 2003 to 2015.



Questions surround what made Yoon leave the company just as its new phone  the iPhone 13  has begun to receive positive reviews, and the recently introduced Apple TV+ platform looks set to make an impact on the local pay TV market.



At the time of Yoon's joining Apple Korea, it opened its official store in Seoul's affluent district of Gangnam. He was the top contributor in terms of helping Apple increase its presence in Korea. Plus, LG Electronics' departure from the mobile market is set to boost its mobile sales, according to industry officials.



But Apple has become the prime target of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), as the country's top telecom regulator is poised to investigate the iPhone producer's regulatory compliance.



The bill is mostly intended to ban Apple's App Store, as well as its rival Google's Play Store, from "unfairly exploiting" their market positions in Korea to "force a provider of mobile content to use a specific payment method."



The passage of the bill also means Apple will no longer be able to limit app developers in Korea to use its in-app purchasing system exclusively, which helped Apple Korea collect commissions of between 15 percent and 30 percent for all purchases processed. The country's antitrust regulator had also been considering imposing penalties for alleged unfair business practices of Apple Korea on the basis of local carriers' insistence that Apple Korea demanded they pay ad fees and the costs for repairs of any defects in its phones.



Apple recently submitted specifics on how it plans to meet compliance requirements, but the telecom regulator asked Apple to resubmit its updates.



"Yoon just wanted to move to another company," another industry official said.


Chanel's Classic flap bag / Korea Times file



By Yoon Ja-young



French luxury brand Chanel raised its prices again. Now all of the Chanel bags in the "Classic Bag" category each come with a more than 10-million-won ($8,500) price tag.



Chanel raised the price of the small size "Chanel Classic Bag" by 17.8 percent to 10.52 million won, the medium size by 15.8 percent to 11.24 million won, and the large size bag by 15.3 percent to 12.1 million won, starting from Nov. 3. Chanel's Classic line is especially popular here as a gift for brides.



It is Chanel's third price hike this year, following hikes of between 2 and 5 percent in February and around 12 percent in July. With the hike in July, the price of the large size bag has surpassed the 10 million won mark for the first time, as its price was raised to 10.49 million won from 9.24 million won. Now, all bags in the Classic line cost more than 10 million won, except for the mini size ones, which are about as small as a wallet.



As there had already been rumors of a price hike, hundreds of shoppers had been lining up in the Chanel stores of major department stores from early morning to get the bag before the price increase was to take effect.



Chanel Korea said that it is a regular price change taking into account the cost of production and materials, as well as exchange rates.



There have been complaints in online forums that Chanel considers Korean consumers pushovers who continue to purchase the company's luxury goods. Chanel even started restricting the number of bags each customer can buy here, allowing only one bag per year for each customer, in the case of some popular items.



"They are controlling the supply. There is overheated demand here since consumers can't get a bag even if they have the money," said Lee Eun-hee, a professor of the Consumer Science Department of Inha University.



COVID-19 has aggravated the situation. "Previously, there were diverse channels for consumers to acquire luxury bags, but now they can only get them at luxury stores in the country," she said.



She also pointed to the broader customer base. "In the past, luxury brands were usually for older people. They would get just one or two items for their lifetimes, but now, the younger MZ generations are also consuming luxury brands," she said. The MZ Generation refers to both Millennials and Generation Z, those born between 1981 and 2005, who are approximately in their 20s and 30s at the present time.



While the MZ Generation are interested in luxury goods, it doesn't necessarily mean that all of them are wealthy.



"They also consider it an investment. They purchase, own and enjoy the luxury goods, but they also think they can sell them on the secondhand market if they need money. Even if they don't have much money, they can enjoy them as investments," she said.


A health worker administers a dose of Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine at a health center in Garia, South 24 Pargana district, India, Oct. 21. The World Health Organization has granted an emergency use license to a coronavirus vaccine developed in India, offering reassurance for a shot that was authorized by the country's regulators long before advanced testing was completed to prove it was safe and effective. AP-Yonhap



The World Health Organization granted an emergency use license Wednesday to a coronavirus vaccine developed in India, offering reassurance for a shot the country's regulators allowed long before advanced safety and efficacy testing was completed.



The U.N. health agency said in a statement that it had authorized Covaxin, made by India's Bharat Biotech. The action makes Covaxin the eighth COVID-19 vaccine to receive WHO's green light.



''This emergency use listing expands the availability of vaccines, the most effective medical tools we have to end the pandemic,'' said Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO's assistant director-general for access to medicines.



Covaxin was developed by Bharat Biotech in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research, the government's apex research body. The vaccine is made using a killed coronavirus to prompt an immune response and is given in two doses.



WHO said the vaccine was found to be about 78 percent effective in preventing severe COVID-19 and was ''extremely suitable'' for poor countries due to its much easier storage requirements.



An expert group convened by WHO said there was insufficient data about the vaccine's safety and efficacy in pregnant women; studies are being planned to address those questions.





Residents queue to register for a second dose of the Covaxin vaccine against COVID-19 during a vaccination drive at a multipurpose hall in Hyderabad, July 30. AFP-Yonhap




A top Taiwan security official told lawmakers on Thursday that China had internally debated whether to attack Taiwan's Pratas Islands but will not do so before 2024, the year President Tsai Ing-wen's term ends.







National Security Bureau Director-General Chen Ming-tong did not say how he knew that such a move had been debated or why it would not happen during the next few years.







China's defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.







Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by Beijing, has complained for over a year of repeated sorties by China's air force, often in the southwestern part of its air defense zone near the Taiwan-controlled but lightly defended Pratas Islands.







Lying roughly between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance - more than 400 km (250 miles) - from mainland Taiwan.





China has

, and its most important international supporter the United States, for the simmering tensions across the Taiwan Strait.







"Attacking and capturing the Pratas Islands - this scenario where war is being used to force (Taiwan into) talks - our assessment is that this will not happen during President Tsai's tenure," Chen told a parliamentary meeting.







Chen was responding to a question from a lawmaker in Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, on whether China would attack before 2024, when Tsai's second term is set to end.







"Frankly speaking, they have internally debated this before," Chen said, referring to China but without elaborating or mentioning when such a discussion occurred. "We obviously have some understanding," he said.







Taiwan's presidential office referred questions on the matter to the National Security Bureau, which did not immediately comment out of office hours.





One scenario

is that China could capture the Pratas Islands in a drastic escalation of tensions that could lead to a war, officials have said previously.



Taiwan has repeatedly said it wants to maintain the status quo with China, but vows to defend its freedom and democracy.







Chen told lawmakers that while the situation is more tense than in the past, it had not reached the point of an actual attack on Taiwan.







"In the next one, two, three years, within President Tsai's tenure, it won't happen," he said.







In Washington on Wednesday, General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said China was unlikely to try to militarily seize Taiwan in the next couple of years, even as its military develops capabilities that would enable forcibly retaking the island. (Reuters)


People walk through Waterloo station during morning rush hour in London, Nov. 3. Reuters-Yonhap



As the devastating Delta variant surge eases in many regions of the world, scientists are charting when, and where, COVID-19 will transition to an endemic disease in 2022 and beyond, according to Reuters interviews with over a dozen leading disease experts.



They expect that the first countries to emerge from the pandemic will have had some combination of high rates of vaccination and natural immunity among people who were infected with the coronavirus, such as the United States, the UK, Portugal and India. But they warn that SARS-CoV-2 remains an unpredictable virus that is mutating as it spreads through unvaccinated populations.



None would completely rule out what some called a "doomsday scenario," in which the virus mutates to the point that it evades hard-won immunity. Yet they expressed increasing confidence that many countries will have put the worst of the pandemic behind them in the coming year.





A New York police officer keeps an eye on revelers while they take part in the NYC Halloween Parade as the event returns to the streets of Lower Manhattan for the first time since the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in New York City, Oct. 31. Reuters-Yonhap



"We think between now and the end of 2022, this is the point where we get control over this virus ... where we can significantly reduce severe disease and death," Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist leading the World Health Organization's (WHO) COVID-19 response, told Reuters.



The agency's view is based on work with disease experts who are mapping out the probable course of the pandemic over the next 18 months. By the end of 2022, the WHO aims for 70 percent of the world's population to be vaccinated.



"If we reach that target, we will be in a very, very different situation epidemiologically," Van Kerkhove said.



In the meantime, she worries about countries lifting COVID precautions prematurely. "It's amazing to me to be seeing, you know, people out on the streets, as if everything is over."



COVID-19 cases and deaths have been declining since August in nearly all regions of the world, according to the WHO's report on Oct. 26.





Police officers check documents of visiting citizens at the Red Square during coronavirus pandemic in Moscow, Oct. 3. Russian President Putin approved a non-working week from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7 in Russia to curb fast spreading coronavirus infection. EPA-Yonhap



Europe has been an exception, with Delta wreaking new havoc in countries with low vaccination coverage such as Russia and Romania, as well as places that have lifted mask-wearing requirements. The variant has also contributed to rising infections in countries such as Singapore and China, which have high rates of vaccination but little natural immunity due to much stricter lockdown measures.



"The transition is going to be different in each place because it's going to be driven by the amount of immunity in the population from natural infection and of course, vaccine distribution, which is variable ... from county by county to country by country," said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.



Several experts said they expect the U.S. Delta wave will wrap up this month, and represent the last major COVID-19 surge.



"We're transitioning from the pandemic phase to the more endemic phase of this virus, where this virus just becomes a persistent menace here in the United States," former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said.









Chris Murray, a leading disease forecaster at the University of Washington, likewise sees the U.S. Delta surge ending in November.



"We'll go into a very modest winter increase" in COVID-19 cases, he said. "If there's no major new variants, then COVID starts to really wind down in April."



Even where cases are spiking as countries drop pandemic restrictions, as in the UK, vaccines appear to be keeping people out of the hospital.



Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said that for the UK, the "bulk of the pandemic as an emergency is behind us."





People line up to get a booster shot of the COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine in a tent set up outside a shopping mall in Beijing, Nov. 1. AFP-Yonhap



'A gradual evolution'



COVID-19 is still expected to remain a major contributor to illness and death for years to come, much like other endemic illnesses such as malaria.



"Endemic does not mean benign," Van Kerkhove said.



Some experts say the virus will eventually behave more like measles, which still causes outbreaks in populations where vaccination coverage is low.



Others see COVID-19 becoming more a seasonal respiratory disease such as influenza. Or, the virus could become less of a killer, affecting mostly children, but that could take decades, some said. Imperial College's Ferguson expects above-average deaths in the UK from respiratory disease due to COVID-19 for the next two-to-five years, but said it is unlikely to overwhelm health systems or require social distancing be reimposed.



"It's going to be a gradual evolution," Ferguson said. "We're going to be dealing with this as a more persistent virus."





People line up for vaccination injections in front of at the vaccination center in Berlin, Nov. 3. AP-Yonhap


Lineworker 3 City of Orrville The City of Orrville Department of Utilities is seeking applicants for an immediate opening. A Lineworker 3 is the senior lineman engaged in performing journey level work and lead line installation and maintenance work. A Lineworker 3 constructs and maintains all transmission, distribution and telecommunication systems and performs all phases of primary, secondary, overhead, and underground work. $29.78-$37.23 plus benefits. Qualifications: High school diploma or equivalent, must have significant, special training/experience in linework including verifiable training in climbing, valid Ohio Drivers License, must obtain CDL within 6 months of hire. Military preference with DD-214. Position will require passing scores on both a written and practical exam. The exam is open to all U.S. citizens and those who have legally declared their intentions of becoming citizens. The City of Orrville will not consider for employment nor hire any individual who smokes or uses any form of tobacco products.

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Cuando se trata de salir adelante y tienes la voluntad de ganar, vamos a llamarlo gran potencial de carrera! Imagine being able to get answers to your health plan questions from someone who speaks the same language as you do. Or, the opposite, not being able to get the answers. At UnitedHealth Group, we want our customers to get those answers by speaking to one of our Bilingual Representatives. If you're fluent in English and Spanish, we can show you how to put all of your skills, your passions and your energy to work in a fast - growing environment If you are located within the state of Kentucky, you will have the flexibility to telecommute* (work from home) as you take on some tough challenges. Welcome to one of the toughest and most fulfilling ways to help people, including yourself. We offer the latest tools, most intensive training program in the industry and nearly limitless opportunities for advancement. Join us and start doing your life's best work.SM Even if you have no prior experience, we have training classes starting soon to help you build the successful career that you want - apply today! Turn on the news on any night of the week and youre likely to hear about the changes that are sweeping through our health care system. Its dramatic. Its positive. And its being led by companies like UnitedHealth Group. Now, you can take advantage of some of the best training and tools in the world to help serve our existing and new customers. Youll take as many as 50-70 calls per day from customers who have questions about their health benefits. As their advocate, youll use your personality and our tools to help them through the health care benefits available to them, including helping them enroll in a new plan. This is no small opportunity. This position is full-time (40 hours/week) Monday - Friday. Employees are required to have flexibility to work any of our 8-hour shift schedules during our normal business hours of 8:00am - 8:00pm. It may be necessary, given the business need, to work occasional overtime. *All Telecommuters will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Groups Telecommuter Policy. Primary Responsibilities: Respond to and resolve, on the first call, customer service inquires and issues by identifying the topic and type of assistance the caller needs such as benefits, eligibility and claims, financial spending accounts and correspondence

Help guide and educate customers about the fundamentals and benefits of consumer-driven health care topics to select the best benefit plan options, maximize the value of their health plan benefits and choose a quality care provider

Contact care providers (doctors offices) on behalf of the customer to assist with appointment scheduling or connections with internal specialists for assistance

Assist customers in navigating myuhc.com and other UnitedHealth Group websites and encourage and reassure them to become self-sufficient This role is equally challenging and rewarding. Youll be called on to research complex issues pertaining to the callers health, status and potential plan options. To do this, youll need to navigate across multiple databases which requires fluency in computer navigation and toggling while confidently and compassionately engaging with the caller. Youll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in. Required Qualifications: High School Diploma / GED (or higher) OR equivalent work experience

Minimum of 3+ years of combined education, work and/or volunteer experience

Bilingual fluency in English and Spanish Preferred Qualifications: Health Care/Insurance environment (familiarity with medical terminology, health plan documents, or benefit plan design)

Social work, behavioral health, disease prevention, health promotion and behavior change (working with vulnerable populations)

Sales or account management experience

Customer Service Experience Telecommuting Requirements: Reside within the state of Kentucky

Required to have a dedicated work area established that is separated from other living areas and provides information privacy

Ability to keep all company sensitive documents secure (if applicable)

Must live in a location that can receive a UnitedHealth Group approved high-speed internet connection or leverage an existing high-speed internet service UnitedHealth Group requires all new hires and employees to report their COVID-19 vaccination status. Military & Veterans find your next mission: We know your background and experience is different and we like that. UnitedHealth Group values the skills, experience and dedication that serving in the military demands. In fact, many of the values defined in the service mirror what the UnitedHealth Group culture holds true: Integrity, Compassion, Relationships, Innovation and Performance. Whether you are looking to transition from active duty to a civilian career, or are an experienced veteran or spouse, we want to help guide your career journey. Learn more at https://uhg.hr/transitioning-military Learn how Teresa, a Senior Quality Analyst, works with military veterans and ensures they receive the best benefits and experience possible. https://uhg.hr/vet Careers with UnitedHealthcare. Let's talk about opportunity. Start with a Fortune 5 organization that's serving more than 85 million people already and building the industry's singular reputation for bold ideas and impeccable execution. Now, add your energy, your passion for excellence, your near - obsession with driving change for the better. Get the picture? UnitedHealthcare is serving employers and individuals, states and communities, Military families and Veterans wherever they're found across the globe. We bring them the resources of an industry leader and a commitment to improve their lives that's second to none. This is no small opportunity. It's where you can do your lifes best work.SM Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. UnitedHealth Group is a drug - free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment Keywords: customer service representative, customer service, CSR, UnitedHealth Group, call center, UnitedHealthcare, health care, office, phone support, training class, work at home, work from home, WAH, WFH, remote, telecommute, hiring immediately, #RPO




Description

Seeking a Bilingual Spanish/English speaker. This position is to work locally in the Sacramento / Rocklin area. 5k Sign On Bonus for new candidates that have an active P&C or active Life license OR are unlicensed with 2+ years sales experience! *To qualify for the Sign-On Bonus, Applicants must be new (not applied in the past 6 months) and apply from 08/09/21 to 12/31/21 and started by 2/1/2022 to qualify. Bonus will be scheduled on day 30 for next period pay out date. There is a 1 year payback clause if your employment is terminated prior to your first year anniversary. Do you want to join a Fortune 100 company where youll be rewarded for developing new clients, discovering new markets and providing customers with the products they need? As a Liberty Mutual field sales representative, youll enjoy a diverse, supportive environment, along with a competitive compensation program, including base salary, uncapped commissions and a bonus structure, and comprehensive benefits. In this full-time role, youll also stay ahead of the curve with industry-leading, paid sales training and mentorships with successful colleagues. We encourage you to apply and bring your expertise if youre a: Passionate salesperson: Youll use your knowledge and enthusiastic work ethic to generate prospects and sell Auto, Home and Life Insurance products within an assigned territory

Competitive go-getter: Ready to earn uncapped commissions and bonuses? Youll have your chance while engaging in friendly (and rewarding!) competitions with your sales team and the opportunity to win recognition awards

People person: Using your interpersonal skills and market insight, youll identify and cultivate prospective clients, and tailor products and services to meet the needs of existing customers

Relationship builder: Youll play the long game, building strong relationships within local community and organizations, and maintaining open lines of communication for future sales opportunities Experience Previous employment in sales where you have successfully turned prospects into customers

A state insurance licenseor willingness to earn one with Liberty Mutuals training and supportin Property & Casualty, Life, and Accident & Health Skills Effective written, oral communication and presentation skills

Well-developed persuasion and negotiation skills

Great interpersonal skills and a proven ability to build rapport with prospective and existing customers

Effective time management and organizational skills Knowledge Ability to learn insurance coverage and underwriting guidelines

Familiarity with finding, building and growing leads and customer base Education A Bachelors degree or equivalent At Liberty Mutual, our purpose is to help people embrace today and confidently pursue tomorrow. Thats why we provide an environment focused on openness, inclusion, trust and respect. Here, youll discover our expansive range of roles, and a workplace where we aim to help turn your passion into a rewarding profession. Liberty Mutual has proudly been recognized as a Great Place to Work by Great Place to Work US for the past several years. We were also named by Forbes as one of Americas Best Employers for Women and one of Americas Best Employers for New Graduatesas well as one of Americas Best Employers for Diversity. To learn more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion please visit: https://jobs.libertymutualgroup.com/diversity-inclusion We value your hard work, integrity and commitment to make things better, and we put people first by offering you benefits that support your life and well-being. To learn more about our benefit offerings please visit: https://LMI.co/Benefits Liberty Mutual is an equal opportunity employer. We will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, disability, veterans status, pregnancy, genetic information or on any basis prohibited by federal, state or local law.



Requirements

See job description.






Description



System ID 747092

Category General Management

Relocation Type No

Employment Status Full-Time

Unit Description

Sodexo is seeking a Manager 2, Regional Operations Support for Caritas Good Samaritan Hospital. The Manager 2, Regional Operations Support (ROSI) has overall responsibility, or a portion of an on-sight operations area (ie Food, ES, Clinical, Culinary, Facilities, CTM) as assigned by the Client executive. In this role, the manager has direct accountability for executing Sodexo systems, programs, resources, tools, and talent management that drives operational excellence and our service commitments that are: Predictable, Reliable, and Repeatable. We are looking for candidates who will: have oversight of day-to-day operations;

deliver high quality food service and ES;

achieve company and client financial targets and goals;

develop and maintain client and customer relationships;

develop strategic plans;

create a positive environment; and

ensure Sodexo Standards are met. The ideal candidate: has a work history demonstrating strong leadership skills, as well as previous supervisory experience and the ability to work collaboratively;

has culinary production experience and a strong background in safety and sanitation compliance;

has the ability to manage multiple priorities, demonstrate professional communication skills, and a passion for a high level of customer service;

can demonstrate the ability to prioritize tasks and exhibit flexibility to take on additional responsibilities as needed; and

can demonstrate working knowledge of Sodexo Food Management Systems (FMS) and The Market Connection (TMC), and is proficient in computer skills and report management experience. Not the job for you? At Sodexo, we offer Food Service Management positions in a variety of business segments, including Corporate, Schools, Universities, Government and Agencies, Healthcare, Senior Living and Sports and Leisure locations across the United States. Continue your search for Food Service Management jobs.

Position Summary

The Manager II, Regional Operations Support (ROSI) has overall responsibility, or a portion of an on-sight operations area (ie Food, ES, Clinical, Culinary, Facilities, CTM) as assigned by the Client executive. In this role, the ROSI has direct accountability for executing Sodexo systems, programs, resources, tools, and talent management that drives operational excellence and our service commitments that are: Predictable, Reliable, and Repeatable Primary Responsibilities: Client / Customer Service - 20% Navigates the client organization through effective communication while influencing and persuading at multiple levels. Seeks to collaborate for win-win outcomes.

Provide effective communication for clients and customers to ensure excellent customer service.

Effectively partners with client and Sodexo employees to drive successful outcomes.

Complies with all client policies and procedures. Operational Excellence - 40% Owns, drives, and measures operational excellence outcomes of Sodexo and client.

Effectively deploys, embeds and ensures Sodexo standardized processes are in place.

Creates a continuous quality improvement culture that drives operational efficiencies.

Drives change and creates a culture where change is embraced and operationalized.

Utilizes all operational processes to drive continuous improvement and celebrate successes. Analysis & Decision Making - 20% Utilizes tools within Sodexo Healthcare to drive and manage middle of the page (Labor Expense, Raw Materials) to deliver positive outcomes.

Accountable for effective utilization of labor resources.

Analyses data to engage in data driven decision making using data, logic, benchmarking, and leading practices in decision making to determine best solutions for the business.

Effective risk management by ensuring consistent regulatory and legal compliance.

Compliance with supply chain management requirements.

Understands and effectively manages unit finances in the Sodexo budgets.

Sets operational goals with key metrics and ensures quick analysis of variances to ensure a prompt resolution and mitigate adverse impact on our clients or our performance.

Delivers predictable top and bottom-line results at the site, relentless focus on driving efficiency, and makes difficult decisions.

Effectively delegates operational responsibilities to appropriate individuals / positions.

Follows best practices in decision making to determine best solutions for the business. Safety - 10% Ensures that individuals performing service-related tasks have the competence to do so without putting the health and safety of themselves or others at risk.

Behaviors include: Working as a team for safety

Communicating Effectively for Safety

Managing Safety Risks

Optimizing Human and Environmental Factors

Recognizing, respond and reporting incidents

Adherence to all operational safety practices and protocols

Drives a safety culture throughout the team Talent - 10% Ability to effectively manage aspects of Human Resources (ie. Leadership, People Management, Employee Relations, etc) to support individual and team development and drive operational outcomes.

Creates a culture of continuous learning and development for self and those within the unit assigned.

Qualifications & Requirements

Basic Education Requirement - Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience Basic Management Experience - 3 years Basic Functional Experience - 3 years work experience in facilities (e.g., maintenance, plant operations, engineering services, grounds, custodial/environmental, or transportation) or food (e.g., food services or operations, concessions, retail sales, store operations, or vending) services, CTM, or Clinical Nutrition Sodexo is an EEO/AA/Minority/Female/Disability/Veteran employer.



Requirements

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written in 1997 links.net - fuck.com When I first started the Domain Name Game in 1994, securing fuck.com seemed a distinct possibility. If christian.org had been secured by out and out blasphemers, why couldn't I get a simple swear word? Since then the Internet has grown by literally hundreds of thousands of percentage points, people have been busted big time for online obscenity - folks at InterNIC have become more cautious. I exchanged a few letters over the legal implications of the registration, and finally spoke to someone over the issue. In June 1995, I served on a think tank/panel with Jon Postel, the guy responsible for withholding the domain, at the time. He wasn't a suit, he had longish gray frizzed hair, and a bushy santa-beard. He wore jeans and acted like an academic computer dude. He noted that his authority to hand out domains is tenuous as it is, if he was responsible for doling out the controversial, some government beaurocracy might take over his job. He asked me, which would I prefer? Since the Internic started charging for domains I'm not clear who has what authority these days, if I am now allowed to buy myself fuck dot com. Finding bigtits.com , and Procter and Gamble's diarrhea.com made me feel pretty righteous though. What do they think I am, some kinda porno publisher? Then Sam Weiler mailed me this: CAKE Publications, Inc. (FUCKER-DOM) FUCKER.COM Congressional Censors (FUCKEDUP-DOM) FUCKEDUP.COM Fighting Censor-happy Congress-heads (FUCKHEAD-DOM) FUCKHEAD.COM For UnLawful Cardinal Knowledge Education Division (FUCKED-DOM) FUCKED.COM Fragging Inc. (FUCKOFF-DOM) FUCKOFF.COM Plastic Surgery International (FUCKFACE-DOM) FUCKFACE.COM Sex on the Beach (FUCKING-DOM) FUCKING.COM No match for "FUCK.COM" CyberWorks (SHITSNGIGGLES-DOM) SHITSNGIGGLES.COM Pigs in Shit Club (SHIT2-DOM) SHIT.COM Smear's Enterprises of Happy (SHIT-SMEAR-DOM) SHIT-SMEAR.COM This clinched it, on April 10, I reregistered through Cyborganic: As Yer Mama Net Productions expands its publishing purview, fuck characterizes a good deal of its publishing. fuck is a powerful word, we intend to use it as a web domain for a powerful press. These were the exchanges between InterNIC officials and I prior to our f2f meeting. Date: 21 Dec 1994 Jon - Still no answer on this. >Justin:

>

>One concern about your name request has to do with possible

>litagation arising. Do you agree to pay all costs of the IANA

>and the InterNIC that might arise due to the registration of this

>domain name?

>

>Suppose some district attorney in Podunk Georgia decided to haul

>us all into court for violating some obsenity law in his county?

>Will you pay all our costs? I agree to take responsibility for litigation resulting from the use of the domain name "fuck.com" Anything else you need me to say? I am willing to take any responsibility for this off your hands - how I use it and what comes of it will be my concern. Thanks Jon,

Justin Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 18:03:22 -0700

From: postel@ISI.EDU (Jon Postel)

To: justin@cyborgasmic

Subject: re: domain fuck.com

Cc: iana@ISI.EDU Justin: One concern about your name request has to do with possible litagation arising. Do you agree to pay all costs of the IANA and the InterNIC that might arise due to the registration of this domain name? Suppose some district attorney in Podunk Georgia decided to haul us all into court for violating some obsenity law in his county? Will you pay all our costs? The disclaimer below is now being attached to all domain name request materials, and to all completed assignments. --jon. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DISCLAIMER By the registration of your name on the Internet, the IANA, the InterNIC, Network Solutions Inc., the University of Southern California, and the National Science Foundation are accepting in good faith that you have the right to the use the name. The IANA and InterNIC/Network Solutions' function in registering names on the Internet is to assure that the name does not conflict with any other name in the name space requested. The user by its registration and use on the name and/or their continued use of an existing name agrees, as part of their request for name registration, to indemnify and hold harmless from any and all costs, fees, expenses arising from litigation involving trademark, trade name, service mark, and any other name infringements, or other reasons, the IANA, the InterNIC, Network Solutions Inc., the University of Southern California, and the National Science Foundation. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: Domain Registration Role Account <domreg@internic.net>

Subject: Re: Domain; fuck.com

To: justin@wired.com (Justin Hall)

Date: Thu, 20 Oct 1994 15:45:59 -0400 (EDT) I wouldn't count on an answer anytime soon... There is going to be a general over-haul of domain registratons policy... I believe the IANA is working on that now. Until that happens, requests like yours will remain in limbo. Sorry, Duane

InterNIC Domain Registration email domreg@internic.net

voice (703) 742-4777

fax (703) 742-4811 Duane - Thanks for taking the time to review my domain request individually. I understand your problem with the domain name, and so I wanted to write back to allay your fears. I have set up a small publishing company online and I would like to use this domain to point to a machine where I will be keeping the materials related to this company. This domain name fits in with my vision of the company perfectly. I don't disgree with you that fuck is a powerful word - that's why I would like to use it as a domain name for powerful press. The way the net/www works, people won't see it unless someone makes a link to it, which makes that someone the first line of determining propriety. Plus, people can operate on the www with transparent URLs, never having to see the address behind the link. Finally, someone writing us e-mail at that address is doing so by their choice, and wouldn't have the word foisted on them. With the ever expanding growth of the net, it was inevitable that someone would choose this name. I believe you can trust me to put it to appropriate use. Let me know what other concerns you might have,

Justin From: Domain Registration Role Account <domreg@internic.net>

Subject: Re: Domain; fuck.com

Date: Thu, 8 Sep 94 10:18:20 EDT

Cc: scottw@rs.internic.net (Scott Williamson), iana@isi.edu Justin, my friend - is this domain really necessary? or are you just pushing the envelope?? Perhaps the purpose of this domain could be realized as a third-level domain under either of your cyberogasmic domains??? We're not in the business of censoring names, but by the same token we are the stewards of the name space. There are undoubtedly a large number of people who would be offended by public display of this name. Seems to me there are already standards in place in other areas that could be applied here. For example, if you wanted to obtain a customized car license plate with various "4-letter" words, would your state issue one to you???? For the time being, I am denying your application. By this message, I am asking for any comment that the project manager or IANA may have on the subject. I will update your email address and phone number in the InterNIC database. Regards, Duane

InterNIC Domain Registration email domreg@internic.net

voice (703) 742-4777

fax (703) 742-4811 =========================================================================== <<templates/domain-templates.txt> [ 07/94 ] >To establish a domain, the following information must be sent to the InterNIC Registration Services (HOSTMASTER@INTERNIC.NET). Either this template, or the "short form" following this template may be used. >(1) The name of the top-level domain to join (EDU, GOV, COM, NET, ORG). >1. Top-level domain:COM >(2) The name of the domain (up to 24 characters). This is the name that will be used in tables and lists associating the domain with the domain servers addresses. While domain names can be quite long, the use of shorter, more user-friendly names is recommended. >2. Complete Domain Name:fuck.com >(3) The name and address of the organization for which the domain iis being established. >3a. Organization name:Yer Mama Net Productions >3b. Organization address: East Lakeshore

> Chicago, IL 60611 >(4) The date you expect the domain to be fully operational. >4. Date operational: 1 September 1994 >NOTE: The key people must have electronic mailboxes (even if in the domain being registered) and "handles" (unique InterNIC database identifiers). If you have access to "WHOIS", please check to see if the contacts are registered and if so, include only the handle and changes (if any) that need to be made in the entry. If you do not have access to "WHOIS", please provide all the information indicated and a handle will be assigned. >(5) The handle of the administrative head of the organization in (3) above or this person's name, postal address, phone number, organization, and network emailbox. This is the contact point for administrative and policy questions about the domain. >Administrative Contact >5a. Handle (if known):Justin

>5b. Name (Last, First):Justin Hall

>5c. Organization:Yer Mama Net Productions

>5f. Net Mailbox:justin@cyborgasmic >(6) The handle of the technical contact for the domain or this person's name, mailing address, phone number, organization, and network mailbox. This is the contact point for problems and updates regarding the domain or zone. >Technical and Zone Contact >6a. Handle (if known):Justin

>6b. Name (Last, First):Justin Hall

>6c. Organization:Yer Mama Net Productions

>6f. Net Mailbox:justin@cyborgasmic >NOTE: Domains must provide at least two independent servers for translating names to addresses for hosts in the domain. The servers should be in physically separate locations and on different networks if possible. The servers should be active and responsive to DNS queries BEFORE this application is submitted. Incomplete information in sections 7 and 8 or inactive servers will result in delay of the registration. >(7) The primary server information. >7a. Primary Server Hostname: ramona.cyborganic.com

>7b. Primary Server Netaddress:

>7c. Primary Server Hardware:

>7d. Primary Server Software: >(8) The secondary server information. >8a. Secondary Server Hostname: hyperreal.com

>8b. Secondary Server Netaddress:

>8c. Secondary Server Hardware:

>8d. Secondary Server Software: >(9) Please briefly describe the organization for which this domain is being registered. If the domain is for an organization that already has a domain registered, please describe the purpose of this domain. >Yer Mama Net Productions, on the forefront of web wide view provision, is registering this domain name to use for a web site and e-mail addresses related to the nature of this domain. >For further information contact InterNIC Registration Services: >Via electronic mail: HOSTMASTER@INTERNIC.NET

>Via telephone: (703) 742-4777

>Via facsimile: (703) 742-4811

>Via postal mail: Network Solutions

>InterNIC Registration Services

>505 Huntmar Park Drive

>Herndon, VA 22070


Dr. Fang Liangzhou, Vice President and CMO of Huawei Digital Power, spoke at COP26 . At the session System Change and Climate Innovation in the Technology Industry hosted by the UNFCCC Global Innovation Hub, Fang virtually delivered a keynote address on Building a Low-Carbon Smart Society.

Fang described how Huawei Digital Power integrates digital and power electronics technologies to help industries save energy and reduce emissions from both power generation and consumption. Digitalization of power can cut waste in energy consumption, sharply boost power generation from renewables, and make transportation and cities green. Fang called for joint efforts to build a low carbon smart society together.

Fang Liangzhou, Vice President and CMO of Huawei Digital Power, delivered a speech at COP26

Fang said, Carbon neutrality has become a shared mission of the world. Technology innovation will play a central role in tackling climate change and achieving carbon reduction goals. Huawei Digital Power integrates digital and power electronics technologies, develops clean power, and enables energy digitalization to drive energy revolution for a better, greener future. We focus on converging and innovating on technologies to accelerate the digitalization of energy and enable various industries to upgrade. We aim to accelerate clean power generation, build green transportation, sites, and data centers, and work with industry partners to build a low-carbon smart society.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the main sources of global carbon emissions are electricity, industry, and transportation. The electricity and transportation sectors account for 40% and 21% of carbon emissions respectively. The ICT sector consumes 4% of global electricity. To achieve carbon neutrality, low-carbon electricity production and electric energy consumption are a must. Huawei Digital Power works with partners to continuously innovate on energy production and consumption to achieve green and low-carbon outcomes:

In smart PV, Huawei develops a clean power system that focuses on renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, and energy storage. In the Middle East, Huawei is helping Saudi Arabias Red Sea Energy Storage Project supply power to the entire city. This project will use the 400 MW PV + 1.3 GWh energy storage system, going to meet the energy requirements of millions of people in the future. Once the project is rolled out, the city will be the first in the world to be powered with 100% clean energy of PV and storage.

In energy digitalization, Huawei leverages a combination of digital and power electronics technologies to reduce consumption during energy conversion, storage, and use, thereby improving energy efficiency. Huawei, together with China Southern Power Grid, uses AI technologies to automatically identify typical risky scenarios and defects on transmission lines. Thanks to the new preventive maintenance approach based on intelligent analysis and manual judgment, the time for completing onsite work is shortened from 20 days to 2 hours, improving the efficiency by 80 times.

In site power facility, Huawei uses cabinets instead of rooms and poles instead of cabinets to simplify sites, and have launched a series of off-grid fuel-removal power supply solutions to help carriers accelerate network carbon neutrality and bridge the energy divide. For example, the carrier in Zhejiang, China used Huawei Site Power high-density eMIMO technology to replace six cabinets with one cabinet, reducing the footprint from 5 m2 to 1 m2 and improving the site energy efficiency from 85% to 96%. They also adopted Huaweis green power solution where the unique iPV technology helps generate 20% more electricity, enabling PV to become the main power supply for green ICT networks and reducing carbon emissions by 8 tons per site each year.

In data center facility, prefabrication, modularization, and intelligent technologies are used to build simplified, green, intelligent, and secure next-generation data centers. For example, Huaweis prefabricated modular data center solution helped Wuhan quickly build an AI computing center. The center was built in 120 days and put into use in 180 days, shortening the rollout time by more than 50%. In addition, AI energy conservation technology is adopted to decrease the PUE to 1.25, which represents a saving of more than 3.4 million kWh of electricity each year. In addition, carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by approximately 42,000 tons over the course of the lifecycle.

In mPower, Huawei provides power domain solutions and charging infrastructure to accelerate the process of transportation electrification. For example, Huaweis DriveONE powertrain system helped SERES build the worlds first mass-produced, high-performance electric coupe SUV with a cruising range of more than 1000 km, achieving 050 km/h acceleration in 1.99 seconds.

Huawei adheres to the green pledge of Tech for a Better Planet and has continued to invest in reducing carbon emissions, promoting renewable energy, contributing to a circular economy, and conserving nature with technology. As of September 30, 2021, Huawei Digital Power has helped customers generate 443.5 billion kWh of green power, save 13.6 billion kWh of electricity, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 210 million tons, which was equivalent to planting 290 million trees.

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Merck Foundation (Merck-Foundation.com), the philanthropic arm of Merck KGaA Germany announced the call for applications for medical training scholarships for healthcare providers in critical and underserved specialities for medical graduates from Africa and developing countries.

Senator, Dr. Rasha Kelej, CEO of Merck Foundation explained, We strongly believe that building professional healthcare capacity and train healthcare providers is the right strategy to transform patient care in the public sector in Africa and developing countries. I am happy to announce the call for applications for scholarships for young local doctors in many critical underserved medical specialties. Our aim is to provide access to quality and equitable healthcare solutions by building professional capacity. I feel beyond proud that 1200 doctors from 44 countries have already benefitted from Merck Foundation scholarships in various critical and underserved fields such as Oncology, Diabetes, Preventative Cardiovascular Medicine, Endocrinology, Sexual and Reproductive Medicine, Acute Medicine, Respiratory Medicine, Embryology & Fertility specialty, Rheumatology, Gastroenterology, Dermatology, Psychiatry, Emergency and Resuscitation Medicine, Critical Care, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Neonatal Medicine, Advanced Surgical Practice, Pain Management, Urology, General Surgery, Clinical Microbiology and infectious diseases, Ophthalmology, Internal Medicine, Trauma & Orthopedics, Neuroimaging for research Biotechnology in ART and more.

Merck Foundation has announced Call for Applications for the following online courses:

No. Degree and Duration Online Course Name 1 PG Diploma (1 year) Diabetes 2 PG Diploma (1 Year) Preventative Cardiovascular Medicine 3 PG Diploma (1 Year) Sexual and Reproductive Medicine 4 PG Diploma (1 Year) Endocrinology 5 PG Diploma (1 Year) Respiratory Medicine 6 PG Diploma (1 Year) Acute Medicine 7 PG Diploma (1 Year) Rheumatology 8 PG Diploma (1 Year) Gastroenterology 9 PG Diploma (1 Year) Dermatology in Clinical Practice 10 PG Diploma (1 Year) Clinical Psychiatry 11 MSc (15 Months) Biotechnology of Human Assisted Reproduction and Embryology 12 PG Diploma (18 months) Cancer and Clinical Oncology 13 PG Diploma (18 months) Endocrinology and Diabetes 14 PG Diploma (21 months) Emergency and Resuscitation Medicine 15 PG Diploma (21 Months) Laparoscopic Surgical Skills 16 MSc (3 years) Psychiatry 17 MSc (2 years) Critical Care 18 MSc (2 years) Advanced Surgical Practice 19 PG Diploma (2 years) Neonatal Medicine 20 MSc (2 years) Pain Management 21 PG Diploma (2 years) Pediatric Emergency Medicine 22 ChM (Urology) (2 Years) Urology 23 ChM (General Surgery) (2 Years) General Surgery 24 ChM (Trauma and Orthopedics) (2 years) Trauma and orthopedics 25 PG Diploma (2 Years) Clinical Microbiology and infectious diseases 26 PG Diploma (2 years) Primary Care Ophthalmology 27 PG Diploma (2 Years) Internal Medicine 28 MSc (3 Years) Neuroimaging for Research

Applications are to be submitted to: https://bit.ly/3BFtbye

Last Date to apply:

31st December 2021

Scholarship Eligibility Criteria

All Merck Foundation scholarships are provided to nationals of African Countries, Developing countries, and underserved communities as per the World Human Development Index list of Developing countries. Refer to the link: https://bit.ly/2Y974Cu

Merck Foundation Scientific Committee and Scientific Committee of Academic Partners will focus on African countries with a special focus on French-speaking and Portuguese speaking and SIDS (Small Islands Developing State), with the aim to build healthcare capacity and transform patient care in the public sector which is under pressure due to its limited resources. Therefore, requests from Ministries of Health (MOH) or Medical Societies are preferable. In case of individual requests, a recommendation letter from MOH or Medical Societies of these countries will be required to indicate your countrys gap in the specific specialty and the objective of improving access to equitable and quality patient care in your community is identified and fulfilled.

Moreover, Merck Foundation Scientific Committee will take into consideration in the selection process the following factors when it is needed: The Human Development Index, Population and number of eligible applications received from each country and number of scholarships that have been already provided to each country in such specialties.

Moreover, Merck Foundation plans to offer English courses to candidates applied from French and Portuguese speaking African countries and also to Latin American countries, to give them an equal opportunity to benefit from the online specialty training which is provided only in English (List of Online courses given above).

In case of in-campus Clinical Training Scholarship provided in India, such as Fertility and Embryology Training and Oncology Fellowship, interpreters will be provided to non-English speaking scholars throughout their training program.

Ministries of Health and Medical Societies of African and Developing countries can submit requests to: info@merck-foundation.com

Merck Foundation may require a Financial statement to prove the monthly income  One-month Salary/ Payslip or Salary Statement or 3 months Bank statement, for official purposes.

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International

China has likely considered Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Seychelles for military bases

NEW DELHI, NOV 4 (IANS) | Publish Date: 11/4/2021 11:21:22 AM IST

China has likely considered a number of countries including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Seychelles as locations for Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) facilities.

China is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances.

Beyond its base in Djibouti, the PRC is pursuing additional military facilities to support naval, air, ground, cyber, and space power projection. The PRC has likely considered a number of countries, including Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan, as locations for PLA facilities. The PRC has probably already made overtures to Namibia.

A global PLA military logistics network and PLA military facilities could both interfere with US military operations and support offensive operations against the United States as the PRCs global military objectives evolve, a US Defence Department report said.

China is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances. Beijing may assess that a mixture of military logistics models, including preferred access to commercial infrastructure abroad, exclusive PLA logistics facilities with prepositioned supplies colocated with commercial infrastructure, and bases with stationed forces, most closely aligns with the PRCs overseas military logistics needs.

Currently, the PRC uses commercial infrastructure to support all of its military operations abroad, including the PLAs presence in other countries territories, such as at its base in Djibouti.

Some of the PRCs OBOR projects could create potential military advantages, such as PLA access to selected foreign ports to pre-position the necessary logistics support to sustain naval deployments in waters as distant as the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Atlantic Ocean to protect its growing interests.

As a means of creating numerous options, the PRC is attempting to develop access in multiple African countries on the continents Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Mediterranean coasts.

PRC military academics assert that bases abroad can enable forward deployment of PLA forces and support military conflict, diplomatic signaling, political change, bilateral and multilateral cooperation, and training. They also suggest that a military logistics network could enable intelligence monitoring of the US military, the report said.

Beyond its base in Djibouti, China is very likely already considering and planning for additional military bases and logistics facilities to support naval, air, and ground forces projection. The PLAs approach likely includes consideration of many different sites and outreach to many countries, but only some will advance to negotiations for an infrastructure agreement, status of forces or visiting forces agreement, and/or basing agreement.

Critical organizations involved in planning and negotiating for military logistics facilities are the Central Military Commission (CMC) Joint Staff Department, CMC Logistic Support Department, and service headquarters. The PRCs overseas military basing will be constrained by the willingness of potential host nations to support a PLA presence.
Business

Jute bags of 46 lakh bales required to pack foodgrains: Govt

Kolkata, Nov 4 (PTI) | Publish Date: 11/4/2021 1:36:30 PM IST

The government estimate that jute bags of 46 lakh bales would be required to pack foodgrains in the next crop season of 2022-23 but the jute industry will fall short in meeting the demand due to inadequate supply of raw jute, industry officials claimed.

In a recent meeting by the Union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ministry with the stakeholders to ascertain jute bag demand, an overview of the requirement of jute bags to the tune of around 46 lakh bales in the year 2022-23 but the low commitment of new jute bags by jute mills is creating a severe shortage situation, they said. The meeting also discussed that the Indian Jute Mills Association had reduced their commitment for the season 2022-23.

The meeting pushed the blame of shortage of packaging material to low manufacturing capacity of jute mills, non modernization of jute mills and non increase in production. But, no governments are taking sincere effort to increase raw jute production which is the root cause of the situation, a senior IJMA official said.

The Centre had fixed raw jute trading at Rs 6,500 per quintal causing raw jute shortage for the mills, the official said.

Either government has to ensure steady supply of raw jute or increase the bag rates... , the mill owners claimed.

The immediate issue faced by department of food is for arranging jute bags in Kharif season 2021-22 for which 25 lakh bales are required, of which the commitment of supply by IJMA is of 18 lakh bales and which has been further reduced by them to 16 lakh bales, officials said.
Coos County Democrat Lancaster's Wilder-Holton House chosen as one of Seven to Save

by Tara Giles

Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter write the author

The Wilder-Holton House is pictured here in modern times. The home was recently added to the seven to save list in NH. (Courtesy Photo) (click for larger version) LANCASTER  The Wilder Holton House, located on the corner of Bridge Street and Main Street in Lancaster, was recently chosen as one of seven to save historical sites in New Hampshire. Essentially the seven to save list puts any property on it, higher up in priority for grants and further upkeep.



A recent trip to the Wilder-Holton House was magical. The home, fittingly, houses the Lancaster Historical Society and has since 1964. The house is filled with old relics from Lancaster's past, including documents, letters, clothes, old books, toys, furniture, newspapers. It truly is endless and a jack pot for any history lover.



The house is famous for being the first two story home constructed in Lancaster, built in 1780. It is the oldest surviving house in Coos County.



When it was first built, the upstairs was one big room, with a bench that encircled all four walls. At the time, there was no church in town, so Lancaster residents would gather here to worship and hold town meetings. Part of that bench is still preserved in one of the closets in an upstairs bedroom.



The home has been used as a farmhouse, with out buildings that burned in a fire in 1917. It's been utilized as a meeting house, boarding house, tourist home and private residence.



In the 1780's, the house was home to one of Lancaster's most notable citizens, built by Major Jonas Wilder. Construction ceased for one day on May 19, 1780 for what is known as the 'Dark Day'. Smoke from Canadian fires caused the skies to darken.



Wilder was born in Lyme, Conn. in 1732 and lived in Templeton, Mass. until he heard about the rich land located in Upper Coos. During the summer of 1775, he and his son, who was a student at Dartmouth College, visited Lancaster. Wilder bought land from Indian Brook to the Israel River and borrowed the money from Holton. Wilder moved to Lancaster with his wife and ten children.



The home sits at what we think is an odd angle, however the reason for this, is that it was built to stand square with the points of the compass, with the original main entrance facing the south side. That original door facing south, is now two windows. For many years, the home had a fireplace with a chimney in the center of the downstairs which was opened on all sides.



The Holton family later acquired the home in 1807 with five generations living there, including Lucius Holton, who was born in the home. History tells us that Timothy Holton of Ellington, Conn. was Lucius's great, great, great, grandfather. He was a wealthy man, who would take farms for security as banks were few at that time.



In 1810, the property was deeded to Timothy Holton's son Joseph. Joseph and his wife lived there for 12 years, until he grew tired of the area, and of farming. His wife stayed behind to raise their eight children, and ended up making a good amount of money off the farm, and boarders. Most of the boarders came to town when court was in session.



Later the house then was passed down to Horace Holton, the son of Joseph and Mary Fiske Holton. After Horace's death, his son Frederick and his wife Sallie took over until 1917 when the barns were destroyed by fire.



Legend also says that this house was part of the underground railroad, and that a tunnel ran from it to the riverbank, where slaves were then carried up the river via boat. With that said, there is no evidence of any break in the cellar walls. It is known that Horace Fiske Holton was one of the early abolitionists in the area and may have assisted slaves in some way.



Last we knew, original to the house is a wooden mess board that was painted by a prisoner, and given to Horace. A stone yeast jar that was brought from Connecticut to Lancaster by Mary Fiske still sits in the living room.



During the summer of 2018, with grant support from the Preservation Alliance, the Historical Society hired Alba Architects of North Woodstock and HEB Engineers of North Conway to conduct a Building Conditions Assessment of the house. They discovered that severe moisture infiltration and high humidity levels have compromised the floors and overall structure of the building.



Some rooms cannot be used due to safety concerns. The sills and support beams of both the house and the shed need replacement. A moisture barrier and proper foundation drainage have been recommended, as is attic ventilation. The clapboard siding, windows, interior plaster walls and ceilings all need attention.



In a statement, The Lancaster Historical Society said, "We know our challenges are considerable, but we plan to complete work in phases, fund-raising as we go. Our goals are to preserve the Wilder-Holton House so it can continue to serve the community, educate all ages, welcome citizens and visitors for free tours, and be a safe repository for the items that tell the story of Lancaster's past." LANCASTER  The Wilder Holton House, located on the corner of Bridge Street and Main Street in Lancaster, was recently chosen as one of seven to save historical sites in New Hampshire. Essentially the seven to save list puts any property on it, higher up in priority for grants and further upkeep.A recent trip to the Wilder-Holton House was magical. The home, fittingly, houses the Lancaster Historical Society and has since 1964. The house is filled with old relics from Lancaster's past, including documents, letters, clothes, old books, toys, furniture, newspapers. It truly is endless and a jack pot for any history lover.The house is famous for being the first two story home constructed in Lancaster, built in 1780. It is the oldest surviving house in Coos County.When it was first built, the upstairs was one big room, with a bench that encircled all four walls. At the time, there was no church in town, so Lancaster residents would gather here to worship and hold town meetings. Part of that bench is still preserved in one of the closets in an upstairs bedroom.The home has been used as a farmhouse, with out buildings that burned in a fire in 1917. It's been utilized as a meeting house, boarding house, tourist home and private residence.In the 1780's, the house was home to one of Lancaster's most notable citizens, built by Major Jonas Wilder. Construction ceased for one day on May 19, 1780 for what is known as the 'Dark Day'. Smoke from Canadian fires caused the skies to darken.Wilder was born in Lyme, Conn. in 1732 and lived in Templeton, Mass. until he heard about the rich land located in Upper Coos. During the summer of 1775, he and his son, who was a student at Dartmouth College, visited Lancaster. Wilder bought land from Indian Brook to the Israel River and borrowed the money from Holton. Wilder moved to Lancaster with his wife and ten children.The home sits at what we think is an odd angle, however the reason for this, is that it was built to stand square with the points of the compass, with the original main entrance facing the south side. That original door facing south, is now two windows. For many years, the home had a fireplace with a chimney in the center of the downstairs which was opened on all sides.The Holton family later acquired the home in 1807 with five generations living there, including Lucius Holton, who was born in the home. History tells us that Timothy Holton of Ellington, Conn. was Lucius's great, great, great, grandfather. He was a wealthy man, who would take farms for security as banks were few at that time.In 1810, the property was deeded to Timothy Holton's son Joseph. Joseph and his wife lived there for 12 years, until he grew tired of the area, and of farming. His wife stayed behind to raise their eight children, and ended up making a good amount of money off the farm, and boarders. Most of the boarders came to town when court was in session.Later the house then was passed down to Horace Holton, the son of Joseph and Mary Fiske Holton. After Horace's death, his son Frederick and his wife Sallie took over until 1917 when the barns were destroyed by fire.Legend also says that this house was part of the underground railroad, and that a tunnel ran from it to the riverbank, where slaves were then carried up the river via boat. With that said, there is no evidence of any break in the cellar walls. It is known that Horace Fiske Holton was one of the early abolitionists in the area and may have assisted slaves in some way.Last we knew, original to the house is a wooden mess board that was painted by a prisoner, and given to Horace. A stone yeast jar that was brought from Connecticut to Lancaster by Mary Fiske still sits in the living room.During the summer of 2018, with grant support from the Preservation Alliance, the Historical Society hired Alba Architects of North Woodstock and HEB Engineers of North Conway to conduct a Building Conditions Assessment of the house. They discovered that severe moisture infiltration and high humidity levels have compromised the floors and overall structure of the building.Some rooms cannot be used due to safety concerns. The sills and support beams of both the house and the shed need replacement. A moisture barrier and proper foundation drainage have been recommended, as is attic ventilation. The clapboard siding, windows, interior plaster walls and ceilings all need attention.In a statement, The Lancaster Historical Society said, "We know our challenges are considerable, but we plan to complete work in phases, fund-raising as we go. Our goals are to preserve the Wilder-Holton House so it can continue to serve the community, educate all ages, welcome citizens and visitors for free tours, and be a safe repository for the items that tell the story of Lancaster's past."

Coos County Democrat Large turnout for children at WMRHS vaccine clinic Local ski resorts kick off snow making Recent Tara Giles Shaheen visits Berlin to discuss COVID spike

2021-Nov-18 Witnesses testify at Zhukovskyy trial

2021-Nov-18 Large turnout for children at WMRHS vaccine clinic

2021-Nov-18 Local ski resorts kick off snow making

2021-Nov-18 School District voters approve use of unanticipated adequacy aid

2021-Nov-18 City Council votes on resolution for Route 110 expansion

2021-Nov-11 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Coos County Democrat Introducing Odin

by Tara Giles

Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter write the author LITTLETON  Odin Paul Pond, was born early on the morning of Aug. 21 to his parents, Madeline (20) and Andrew (23) Pond. Odin's journey is quite remarkable, and the strength of he and his young parents is nothing short of inspiring. Andrew is a 2016 graduate of White Mountains Regional High School, and Madeline is a 2018 graduate of Littleton High School.



Having suffered a terrible loss the previous year, the Ponds were nervous to navigate another pregnancy, however moved forward with optimism.



Odin was born with a rare genetic condition called Cornelia De Lang Syndrome (CdLS). The disorder is present from birth and is typically not inherited. The disorder occurs due to an acquired change in one of seven crucial developmental genes at or shortly after conception. CdLS causes a broad range of potential physical, cognitive and medical challenges. The occurrence of CdLS is estimated to be one in 10,000 live births.



CdLS typically affects growth, with smaller body and head size; skeletal system, with smaller hands and feet or missing forearms and fingers; development, with delayed development, intellectual disability or learning disabilities; behavior, with ADHD, anxiety or autistic features; and internal body organs including the GI, cardiac, genitourinary and neurologic body systems.



Madeline began to tell her story: "Everyone gets an anatomy scan at 20 weeks just to make sure the baby is growing and healthy, but I just had a feeling that something wasn't right, I even called my father because I was so concerned."



The young mother continued, "We went in for that ultrasound, and everything seemed to be going really well. But I noticed the ultrasound tech was hovering over his arms and his heart for a long time. After that we were waiting, and the doctor came in which is very unusual."



She added, "He sat us down and just looked at us and told us the baby has some serious heart and limb issues, and said he's not sure if he's compatible with life. Naturally, I lost it."



"I thought I would have to deliver another still born baby," said Madeline.



The next day, the Ponds traveled to Dartmouth where they were told the heart issue was operable, however were still being asked questions about the baby's quality of life. Mom and Dad were told that Odin was missing a bone in his right arm and multiple fingers on both sides, and was very small. Genetic testing at this point showed no signs of any disorders.



"I knew we would have challenges with his heart issues, and limb issues, but thought he would still have a 'normal' life, it was all just cosmetic," said Madeline.



At 28 weeks, news of Odin's genetic testing changed, and Cornelia de Lange Syndrome was discussed as a possibility.



"Odin already had a full head of hair at 28 weeks, and had long, long eyelashes, they also noticed that his lip was really long, and his head was small, with a small jaw," explained Madeline.



All very distinct features of CdLS, combined with the heart and limb issues.



Although it was yet to be confirmed, the Ponds educated themselves on the condition to prepare.



"I told myself, whatever was intended for me, whatever child was meant to come into our lives, I would make the best of it, but I was really sad and scared," said Madeline.



The stress caused Madeline to have a severe spike in her blood pressure.



"During my last appointment, the doctor came in and told me that my blood pressure was too high, and that I would have a stroke or a seizure if they didn't take the baby," explained Madeline.



Odin was finally born via c-section weighing just four pounds.



"He was born completely purple and not breathing. They had to resuscitate him, and finally he started to cry. I was terrified, but all of a sudden, we hear this little teeny tiny crack in his voice, and he began to cry. That was the best thing I have ever heard in my life, and made everything worth it," said Madeline.



"I knew the second I saw him, what he had, and the doctors did too. From the moment I saw him I couldn't imagine ever having a different baby," said Madeline.



Andrew and Madeline explained how hard it was being so far from family during this time, as no visitors were allowed on a regular basis.



Days later, Odin was intubated as he began to decline. He suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage and was bleeding through his breathing tube. Little Odin made it through, and was stable once more, but not for long. His oxygen levels began to drop while he was in Dartmouth. Madeline knew something wasn't right and insisted he be brought back to Boston. In Boston, doctors confirmed her mother's intuition and Odin received an emergency operation where he received four stints. Had he not undergone that surgery in time, he would not have made it according to doctors in Boston.



Odin again became stable, then shortly after began to suffer liver issues; however, as of Oct. 31, he was stable once more, and even dressed up for Halloween with his parents at the hospital.



Currently, Odin still needs to have open heart surgery, and may have to have one more when he turns 18. He is being fed through what is called a G tube, because is jaw is too small to eat. When Odin is finally able to come home, Andrew and Madeline will have to continue to feed him via G tube.



"We will have a mini medical center in our home with everything he will need, I will become his full time nurse," said Madeline.



During his first two and a half months of life, the Ponds have traveled almost daily back and forth to Boston, after money for a hotel stay close to the hospital ran out. The hotel stays and bills racked up and any savings and donations were used up swiftly.



"Now we can only go down on weekends, because gas is just too expensive. They do give you a $10 parking voucher, but it costs anywhere from $45 to $50 just to park overnight. Andrew needs to work because we lost so much time and money. We have struggled with our bills, our rent, but are doing the best we can," said Madeline.



"It's been hard to bond with him because we are so far away," she added.



"We are so appreciative of what the community has done for us so far. It's always hard to accept help, but we finally had to cry uncle," said Madeline.



An account for Odin has been set up at Passumpsic Bank in Littleton for anyone wishing to donate. Employees of the bank advise all who wish to donate to simply say "it's for Odin."



Further, a fundraiser is taking place on Nov. 7 with psychic medium Josh Simonds. Simonds will host a gallery reading at the VFW in Littleton. Information can be found at eventbrite.com.



As for being a young mother with a special needs newborn, Madeline said, "I do think being young makes it easier for me to be more open about things. He has already helped us change and grow so much. I don't think anyone understands what it's like to have a disability or love someone with one until it actually happens, and I've never seen a bond like I have when Andrew is holding him and they are just staring at each other."



Every second of every day, things continue to change for little Odin. Right now, he is still in Boston, and is stable. His open heart surgery is slated to take place in another two months if all goes well.



"For a baby who is just two and a half months old, to go through everything he has gone through, well he's just the strongest person I've ever met, he inspires me," said Madeline. LITTLETON  Odin Paul Pond, was born early on the morning of Aug. 21 to his parents, Madeline (20) and Andrew (23) Pond. Odin's journey is quite remarkable, and the strength of he and his young parents is nothing short of inspiring. Andrew is a 2016 graduate of White Mountains Regional High School, and Madeline is a 2018 graduate of Littleton High School.Having suffered a terrible loss the previous year, the Ponds were nervous to navigate another pregnancy, however moved forward with optimism.Odin was born with a rare genetic condition called Cornelia De Lang Syndrome (CdLS). The disorder is present from birth and is typically not inherited. The disorder occurs due to an acquired change in one of seven crucial developmental genes at or shortly after conception. CdLS causes a broad range of potential physical, cognitive and medical challenges. The occurrence of CdLS is estimated to be one in 10,000 live births.CdLS typically affects growth, with smaller body and head size; skeletal system, with smaller hands and feet or missing forearms and fingers; development, with delayed development, intellectual disability or learning disabilities; behavior, with ADHD, anxiety or autistic features; and internal body organs including the GI, cardiac, genitourinary and neurologic body systems.Madeline began to tell her story: "Everyone gets an anatomy scan at 20 weeks just to make sure the baby is growing and healthy, but I just had a feeling that something wasn't right, I even called my father because I was so concerned."The young mother continued, "We went in for that ultrasound, and everything seemed to be going really well. But I noticed the ultrasound tech was hovering over his arms and his heart for a long time. After that we were waiting, and the doctor came in which is very unusual."She added, "He sat us down and just looked at us and told us the baby has some serious heart and limb issues, and said he's not sure if he's compatible with life. Naturally, I lost it.""I thought I would have to deliver another still born baby," said Madeline.The next day, the Ponds traveled to Dartmouth where they were told the heart issue was operable, however were still being asked questions about the baby's quality of life. Mom and Dad were told that Odin was missing a bone in his right arm and multiple fingers on both sides, and was very small. Genetic testing at this point showed no signs of any disorders."I knew we would have challenges with his heart issues, and limb issues, but thought he would still have a 'normal' life, it was all just cosmetic," said Madeline.At 28 weeks, news of Odin's genetic testing changed, and Cornelia de Lange Syndrome was discussed as a possibility."Odin already had a full head of hair at 28 weeks, and had long, long eyelashes, they also noticed that his lip was really long, and his head was small, with a small jaw," explained Madeline.All very distinct features of CdLS, combined with the heart and limb issues.Although it was yet to be confirmed, the Ponds educated themselves on the condition to prepare."I told myself, whatever was intended for me, whatever child was meant to come into our lives, I would make the best of it, but I was really sad and scared," said Madeline.The stress caused Madeline to have a severe spike in her blood pressure."During my last appointment, the doctor came in and told me that my blood pressure was too high, and that I would have a stroke or a seizure if they didn't take the baby," explained Madeline.Odin was finally born via c-section weighing just four pounds."He was born completely purple and not breathing. They had to resuscitate him, and finally he started to cry. I was terrified, but all of a sudden, we hear this little teeny tiny crack in his voice, and he began to cry. That was the best thing I have ever heard in my life, and made everything worth it," said Madeline."I knew the second I saw him, what he had, and the doctors did too. From the moment I saw him I couldn't imagine ever having a different baby," said Madeline.Andrew and Madeline explained how hard it was being so far from family during this time, as no visitors were allowed on a regular basis.Days later, Odin was intubated as he began to decline. He suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage and was bleeding through his breathing tube. Little Odin made it through, and was stable once more, but not for long. His oxygen levels began to drop while he was in Dartmouth. Madeline knew something wasn't right and insisted he be brought back to Boston. In Boston, doctors confirmed her mother's intuition and Odin received an emergency operation where he received four stints. Had he not undergone that surgery in time, he would not have made it according to doctors in Boston.Odin again became stable, then shortly after began to suffer liver issues; however, as of Oct. 31, he was stable once more, and even dressed up for Halloween with his parents at the hospital.Currently, Odin still needs to have open heart surgery, and may have to have one more when he turns 18. He is being fed through what is called a G tube, because is jaw is too small to eat. When Odin is finally able to come home, Andrew and Madeline will have to continue to feed him via G tube."We will have a mini medical center in our home with everything he will need, I will become his full time nurse," said Madeline.During his first two and a half months of life, the Ponds have traveled almost daily back and forth to Boston, after money for a hotel stay close to the hospital ran out. The hotel stays and bills racked up and any savings and donations were used up swiftly."Now we can only go down on weekends, because gas is just too expensive. They do give you a $10 parking voucher, but it costs anywhere from $45 to $50 just to park overnight. Andrew needs to work because we lost so much time and money. We have struggled with our bills, our rent, but are doing the best we can," said Madeline."It's been hard to bond with him because we are so far away," she added."We are so appreciative of what the community has done for us so far. It's always hard to accept help, but we finally had to cry uncle," said Madeline.An account for Odin has been set up at Passumpsic Bank in Littleton for anyone wishing to donate. Employees of the bank advise all who wish to donate to simply say "it's for Odin."Further, a fundraiser is taking place on Nov. 7 with psychic medium Josh Simonds. Simonds will host a gallery reading at the VFW in Littleton. Information can be found at eventbrite.com.As for being a young mother with a special needs newborn, Madeline said, "I do think being young makes it easier for me to be more open about things. He has already helped us change and grow so much. I don't think anyone understands what it's like to have a disability or love someone with one until it actually happens, and I've never seen a bond like I have when Andrew is holding him and they are just staring at each other."Every second of every day, things continue to change for little Odin. Right now, he is still in Boston, and is stable. His open heart surgery is slated to take place in another two months if all goes well."For a baby who is just two and a half months old, to go through everything he has gone through, well he's just the strongest person I've ever met, he inspires me," said Madeline.

Coos County Democrat Large turnout for children at WMRHS vaccine clinic Local ski resorts kick off snow making Recent Tara Giles Shaheen visits Berlin to discuss COVID spike

2021-Nov-18 Witnesses testify at Zhukovskyy trial

2021-Nov-18 Large turnout for children at WMRHS vaccine clinic

2021-Nov-18 Local ski resorts kick off snow making

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2021-Nov-18 City Council votes on resolution for Route 110 expansion

2021-Nov-11 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Littleton Courier Choose Love Movement visits Lakeway Elementary

by Angel Larcom

Choose Love founder Scarlett Lewis (left) visited Littleton's Lakeway Elementary School last week as part of her statewide social-emotional curriculum bus tour. (Photo by Angel Larcom) (click for larger version) LITTLETON  As part of its statewide bus tour, the Choose Love Movement visited Littleton's Lakeway Elementary School on Oct. 25. Local firefighters and police officers also participated in the day-long event.



Scarlett Lewis founded the organization in 2013 after her six-year-old son Jesse was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. Lewis spent the day spreading messages of courage, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion alongside New Hampshire Program Director and Choose Love Ambassador Shannon Desilets.



Lewis developed a free social-emotional curriculum that teaches individuals to manage emotions and choose love over anger. Since its inception, the program has been incorporated into more than 10,000 schools in 112 different countries.



"When I came home, I found that Jesse had written a message on our chalkboard before he died that said nurturing, healing, love. I knew that if the shooter had been able to give and receive nurturing, healing and love, the tragedy would never have happened. I realized that it would be my mission in life to get this message into schools, homes and communities. So I worked with educators, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, early childhood development specialists and doctoral professors to create this program. New Hampshire has surpassed any state in the nation for what they've accomplished in social and emotional character development," said Lewis.



Lewis also noted the program's growing success in prison systems, foster parent education and governmental agencies. Desilets was appointed to the Choose Love Enrichment Program Manager position by Governor Sununu in 2018. She said Sununu's decision made him the first in the nation to make the program a statewide initiative.



"New Hampshire's a local-control state, so we couldn't mandate it. But it has spread organically. Schools have really grasped onto it, and we've had about 544 various schools access the Choose Love program. We now work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Division for Children, Youth and Families. We just became the first state to launch Choose Love for Caregivers, which is a part of foster parent training, and our Department of Corrections just became the first in the nation to do Choose Love for Corrections. It's a simple concept that applies to everyone," stated Desilets.



"We're enabling the kids to practice this formula that enables them to thoughtfully respond with love in any situation, circumstance or interaction and take your personal power back. The fact of the matter is, we can't always choose what's happening to us. But we can choose how we respond. And when we respond with love, we make the world a safer, more peaceful and loving place. These are essential life skills, like learning how to have healthy relationships, learning coping skills, emotional management, how to make responsible decisions, how to learn from, grow through and be strengthened by the difficulty that they face in their lives," added Lewis.



New Hampshire's Kid Governor Charlie Olsen of Auburn also attended the event alongside his parents. Olsen was elected to the position in January 2021 on a platform of mental health and childhood depression. He's advocated for mentoring systems and positive social networks in schools across the state throughout the year.



"By spreading my message and sharing what I've gone through, people can relate. It's really cool that what I'm doing is making a difference," said the fifth-grader. LITTLETON  As part of its statewide bus tour, the Choose Love Movement visited Littleton's Lakeway Elementary School on Oct. 25. Local firefighters and police officers also participated in the day-long event.Scarlett Lewis founded the organization in 2013 after her six-year-old son Jesse was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. Lewis spent the day spreading messages of courage, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion alongside New Hampshire Program Director and Choose Love Ambassador Shannon Desilets.Lewis developed a free social-emotional curriculum that teaches individuals to manage emotions and choose love over anger. Since its inception, the program has been incorporated into more than 10,000 schools in 112 different countries."When I came home, I found that Jesse had written a message on our chalkboard before he died that said nurturing, healing, love. I knew that if the shooter had been able to give and receive nurturing, healing and love, the tragedy would never have happened. I realized that it would be my mission in life to get this message into schools, homes and communities. So I worked with educators, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, early childhood development specialists and doctoral professors to create this program. New Hampshire has surpassed any state in the nation for what they've accomplished in social and emotional character development," said Lewis.Lewis also noted the program's growing success in prison systems, foster parent education and governmental agencies. Desilets was appointed to the Choose Love Enrichment Program Manager position by Governor Sununu in 2018. She said Sununu's decision made him the first in the nation to make the program a statewide initiative."New Hampshire's a local-control state, so we couldn't mandate it. But it has spread organically. Schools have really grasped onto it, and we've had about 544 various schools access the Choose Love program. We now work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Division for Children, Youth and Families. We just became the first state to launch Choose Love for Caregivers, which is a part of foster parent training, and our Department of Corrections just became the first in the nation to do Choose Love for Corrections. It's a simple concept that applies to everyone," stated Desilets."We're enabling the kids to practice this formula that enables them to thoughtfully respond with love in any situation, circumstance or interaction and take your personal power back. The fact of the matter is, we can't always choose what's happening to us. But we can choose how we respond. And when we respond with love, we make the world a safer, more peaceful and loving place. These are essential life skills, like learning how to have healthy relationships, learning coping skills, emotional management, how to make responsible decisions, how to learn from, grow through and be strengthened by the difficulty that they face in their lives," added Lewis.New Hampshire's Kid Governor Charlie Olsen of Auburn also attended the event alongside his parents. Olsen was elected to the position in January 2021 on a platform of mental health and childhood depression. He's advocated for mentoring systems and positive social networks in schools across the state throughout the year."By spreading my message and sharing what I've gone through, people can relate. It's really cool that what I'm doing is making a difference," said the fifth-grader.

Littleton Courier Littleton School Board decides against mask mandate at emergency meeting County broadband project secures funding, faces opposition Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Littleton Courier Demonstrators pressure Kenney in Lyman

by Angel Larcom LYMAN  Several North Country residents informed Executive Councilor Joe Kenney of their displeasure over recent funding decisions during a Department of Transportation meeting at the Lyman Town Hall on Oct. 25. The Northern Grafton County Democrats co-organized the peaceful protest with the Women's Political Action group, which drew more than 20 taxpayers.



NGCD representative Deb Bassett said the visibility event was orchestrated to respond to Kenney's recent votes against women's reproductive health and $27 million in federal COVID relief funds.



'We've been upset about what's happening and the lack of focus and support for women's health care. The defunding of Planned Parenthood and the implementation of a budget that placed more restrictions on women's reproductive rights is a rollback. I'm glad we were able to go to the meeting and protest respectfully, in contrast with some other events that we've seen recently. We're not trying to interrupt meetings or push an agenda. We wanted to have a conversation, but we also wanted Councilor Kenney to know that we're upset about this stuff because it's really important. What's going on with COVID affects the whole state," noted Bassett.



Attendees displayed various signs for the duration of the hour-long meeting. Some placards addressed Kenney's vote on reproductive health, while others expressed angry statements about the Executive Council's rejection of federal vaccination funds. At the end of the hour-long DOT meeting, Kenney approached the group for a brief discussion.



While the Republican Councilor avoided the topic of women's reproductive freedom and the right to make decisions about their bodies, he explained the reasoning behind his party-line vote against the $27 million, despite Governor Sununu's urging to accept it.



"There were really three concerns; one was the mandated language, which was the concern of all four Councilors. Another concern that has just come up is that the Governor supports the legislature coming in with an opt-in provision for vaccine registry. And lastly, it has to do with CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) and OSHA's mandated requirements that all employees over 100 and all healthcare workers would have to get the vaccine. If it moves forward in its entirety, we have local manufacturers that will not be able to maintain the workforce," stated Kenney.



The Councilor also noted that approximately 15,000 New Hampshire citizens have not nor would ever willingly get the vaccine, and that number was growing daily. He said, "I've been counting the number of people in the state who really feel that their vaccine choice is being taken away from them."



Bassett said it seemed like the state's leadership was kowtowing to and reinforcing people's bad behavior by giving them their way.



She stated, "If you get a small percentage of people that feel they can disrupt all different kinds of meetings from school boards on up and they get rewarded for that behavior, that's problematic for our society. We don't want NH to become the Texas of New England."



While last week's meeting focused on the DOT's 10-year highway plan, one protester called for increased employment opportunities for minorities, women and the underserved within the department itself.



Ronnie Sandler of Sugar Hill said, "I have worked for the past 47 years as a consultant with Departments of Transportation around the country. When we talk about infrastructure, we always talk about the Jobs Act. However, what we find is that these jobs are mainly for white males. Since 1992, there have been goals and timetables to increase the number of women and minorities working in federally funded jobs. It's been 40 some odd years since the regulations came into effect, and I know New Hampshire has not met those goals."



NHDOT Director Victoria Sheehan responded, "We have hit our goals with respect to the federal highway and the GDP targets. We have not fallen short. On the workforce side, we also have continued to put out contracts and partner with the construction industry to diversify the entire workforce, and we've been hitting those targets as well. With respect to our own workforce as a department, we have significantly increased the number of women and minorities at the department. We do have a very high vacancy rate of 18 percent, and we continue to recruit in every arena possible to make sure that the workforce reflects the communities that we serve." LYMAN  Several North Country residents informed Executive Councilor Joe Kenney of their displeasure over recent funding decisions during a Department of Transportation meeting at the Lyman Town Hall on Oct. 25. The Northern Grafton County Democrats co-organized the peaceful protest with the Women's Political Action group, which drew more than 20 taxpayers.NGCD representative Deb Bassett said the visibility event was orchestrated to respond to Kenney's recent votes against women's reproductive health and $27 million in federal COVID relief funds.'We've been upset about what's happening and the lack of focus and support for women's health care. The defunding of Planned Parenthood and the implementation of a budget that placed more restrictions on women's reproductive rights is a rollback. I'm glad we were able to go to the meeting and protest respectfully, in contrast with some other events that we've seen recently. We're not trying to interrupt meetings or push an agenda. We wanted to have a conversation, but we also wanted Councilor Kenney to know that we're upset about this stuff because it's really important. What's going on with COVID affects the whole state," noted Bassett.Attendees displayed various signs for the duration of the hour-long meeting. Some placards addressed Kenney's vote on reproductive health, while others expressed angry statements about the Executive Council's rejection of federal vaccination funds. At the end of the hour-long DOT meeting, Kenney approached the group for a brief discussion.While the Republican Councilor avoided the topic of women's reproductive freedom and the right to make decisions about their bodies, he explained the reasoning behind his party-line vote against the $27 million, despite Governor Sununu's urging to accept it."There were really three concerns; one was the mandated language, which was the concern of all four Councilors. Another concern that has just come up is that the Governor supports the legislature coming in with an opt-in provision for vaccine registry. And lastly, it has to do with CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) and OSHA's mandated requirements that all employees over 100 and all healthcare workers would have to get the vaccine. If it moves forward in its entirety, we have local manufacturers that will not be able to maintain the workforce," stated Kenney.The Councilor also noted that approximately 15,000 New Hampshire citizens have not nor would ever willingly get the vaccine, and that number was growing daily. He said, "I've been counting the number of people in the state who really feel that their vaccine choice is being taken away from them."Bassett said it seemed like the state's leadership was kowtowing to and reinforcing people's bad behavior by giving them their way.She stated, "If you get a small percentage of people that feel they can disrupt all different kinds of meetings from school boards on up and they get rewarded for that behavior, that's problematic for our society. We don't want NH to become the Texas of New England."While last week's meeting focused on the DOT's 10-year highway plan, one protester called for increased employment opportunities for minorities, women and the underserved within the department itself.Ronnie Sandler of Sugar Hill said, "I have worked for the past 47 years as a consultant with Departments of Transportation around the country. When we talk about infrastructure, we always talk about the Jobs Act. However, what we find is that these jobs are mainly for white males. Since 1992, there have been goals and timetables to increase the number of women and minorities working in federally funded jobs. It's been 40 some odd years since the regulations came into effect, and I know New Hampshire has not met those goals."NHDOT Director Victoria Sheehan responded, "We have hit our goals with respect to the federal highway and the GDP targets. We have not fallen short. On the workforce side, we also have continued to put out contracts and partner with the construction industry to diversify the entire workforce, and we've been hitting those targets as well. With respect to our own workforce as a department, we have significantly increased the number of women and minorities at the department. We do have a very high vacancy rate of 18 percent, and we continue to recruit in every arena possible to make sure that the workforce reflects the communities that we serve."

Littleton Courier Littleton School Board decides against mask mandate at emergency meeting County broadband project secures funding, faces opposition Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Newfound Landing Community creates moving tribute to Hazel Roy

by Donna Rhodes

On Halloween night Peter (PJ) Roy, wife Charleen and their little girl Elodie posed before a massive display of pumpkins that arrived in downtown Bristol in honor of their daughter Hazel. Besides filling the bleachers, pumpkins also lined the sidewalks on the eastern portion of Central Square and were enjoyed by all the trick-or-treaters as they made their way through town.(Photo by Donna Rhodes) (click for larger version) BRISTOL  Halloween in downtown Bristol was an extra special event this year, with scarecrows, dancing witches, candy dropped from the fire department's ladder truck, a haunted house at the Masonic Lodge and, new this year, more than 200 pumpkins lining the town green in honor of young Hazel Roy of Bristol, who passed away in August at the age of four.



Hazel was a bright light in the world who loved costumes, dancing, Peppa the Pig and the movie "Frozen." Her parents, mom Charleen and dad Peter (PJ), didn't want to see that light snuffed out however so they started on a mission to have pumpkins light up downtown Bristol on Halloween in honor of their fun-loving young daughter.



"She really did light up the room wherever she went," said her grandfather Rich Roy.



The Town of Bristol's Events Committee heard of their idea to have pumpkins in the square and worked with town officials and the Highway Dept. to have bleachers placed on the town green for the pumpkins. While mom Charleen expected perhaps fifty pumpkins to be in place Sunday afternoon, she arrived downtown that day to find the bleachers already filling up.



"It's overwhelming! I'm very grateful," was all she could say at the time.



The Newfound community and even beyond was not done yet, however. Word had spread about Hazel's Light, as the event was being called, and a steady stream of pumpkins continued to arrive from towns throughout central New Hampshire. The Roy family, their extended family and friends, soon lost count after nearly 190 pumpkins were dropped off by 4 p.m., and the final estimate showed more than 200 pumpkins not only filling the bleachers, but lining sidewalks throughout the square.



The outpouring of support from those who came out to honor her granddaughter also overwhelmed both Charleen's mom, Annette Roberge, and PJ's mom, Cheryl Levesque.



"It's heartwarming to see a community come together like this," Levesque said.



Roberge, Levesque, Rich Roy and other family members also found support for Hazel's Light from their hometowns in the Concord and Hooksett regions. The businesses they work for even allowed pumpkin carving time for their employees and friends contributed special carved pumpkins, too, all in Hazel's honor.



Among the multitude of pumpkins were many with Hazel's name. Others were carved with hearts, butterflies, bunny rabbits, angels and even Elsa and Peppa Pig, two of Hazel's favorite characters.



Looking over the multitude of pumpkins glowing in the dark, dad PJ tried to decide which ones he enjoyed the most but it was a really tough call.



"There's just so many of them. It's hard to say which I like best," he said. "I really do like seeing all the Peppa Pig pumpkins though. She had his voice down so well, right down to the British accent."



Carvings of a little girl with angels, bunny rabbits and butterflies really touched his heart however and he appreciated each of them just as much.



"I can't believe how creative these all are. They're amazing! I also can't believe the community we have here and I can't thank everyone enough for doing this," PJ said.



Besides the event being a tribute to Hazel, there were also pumpkins honoring other children who died far too young. Among them was a pumpkin for a child named Adalyn whose mom now makes bunny rabbits for grieving parents like the Roy family. Adalyn's pumpkin was appropriately carved with a bunny. Others acknowledged through brightly lit jack-o-lanterns were Izzy, Jessica, Noah, Fox and Kyara.



With scarecrows spread across the green in front of the massive pumpkin display, the scene was so attention-getting that it quickly became a popular stop for photos of little ones along with "selfies" by the older crowd.



At the end of the night, Charleen, PJ, their parents and friends each selected pumpkins that were especially meaningful to them, while the rest were loaded into pick-up trucks to help feed local farm animals.



The entire family also wished to extend their gratitude to the Town of Bristol and all who took part in making Hazel's Light shine bright this Halloween. BRISTOL  Halloween in downtown Bristol was an extra special event this year, with scarecrows, dancing witches, candy dropped from the fire department's ladder truck, a haunted house at the Masonic Lodge and, new this year, more than 200 pumpkins lining the town green in honor of young Hazel Roy of Bristol, who passed away in August at the age of four.Hazel was a bright light in the world who loved costumes, dancing, Peppa the Pig and the movie "Frozen." Her parents, mom Charleen and dad Peter (PJ), didn't want to see that light snuffed out however so they started on a mission to have pumpkins light up downtown Bristol on Halloween in honor of their fun-loving young daughter."She really did light up the room wherever she went," said her grandfather Rich Roy.The Town of Bristol's Events Committee heard of their idea to have pumpkins in the square and worked with town officials and the Highway Dept. to have bleachers placed on the town green for the pumpkins. While mom Charleen expected perhaps fifty pumpkins to be in place Sunday afternoon, she arrived downtown that day to find the bleachers already filling up."It's overwhelming! I'm very grateful," was all she could say at the time.The Newfound community and even beyond was not done yet, however. Word had spread about Hazel's Light, as the event was being called, and a steady stream of pumpkins continued to arrive from towns throughout central New Hampshire. The Roy family, their extended family and friends, soon lost count after nearly 190 pumpkins were dropped off by 4 p.m., and the final estimate showed more than 200 pumpkins not only filling the bleachers, but lining sidewalks throughout the square.The outpouring of support from those who came out to honor her granddaughter also overwhelmed both Charleen's mom, Annette Roberge, and PJ's mom, Cheryl Levesque."It's heartwarming to see a community come together like this," Levesque said.Roberge, Levesque, Rich Roy and other family members also found support for Hazel's Light from their hometowns in the Concord and Hooksett regions. The businesses they work for even allowed pumpkin carving time for their employees and friends contributed special carved pumpkins, too, all in Hazel's honor.Among the multitude of pumpkins were many with Hazel's name. Others were carved with hearts, butterflies, bunny rabbits, angels and even Elsa and Peppa Pig, two of Hazel's favorite characters.Looking over the multitude of pumpkins glowing in the dark, dad PJ tried to decide which ones he enjoyed the most but it was a really tough call."There's just so many of them. It's hard to say which I like best," he said. "I really do like seeing all the Peppa Pig pumpkins though. She had his voice down so well, right down to the British accent."Carvings of a little girl with angels, bunny rabbits and butterflies really touched his heart however and he appreciated each of them just as much."I can't believe how creative these all are. They're amazing! I also can't believe the community we have here and I can't thank everyone enough for doing this," PJ said.Besides the event being a tribute to Hazel, there were also pumpkins honoring other children who died far too young. Among them was a pumpkin for a child named Adalyn whose mom now makes bunny rabbits for grieving parents like the Roy family. Adalyn's pumpkin was appropriately carved with a bunny. Others acknowledged through brightly lit jack-o-lanterns were Izzy, Jessica, Noah, Fox and Kyara.With scarecrows spread across the green in front of the massive pumpkin display, the scene was so attention-getting that it quickly became a popular stop for photos of little ones along with "selfies" by the older crowd.At the end of the night, Charleen, PJ, their parents and friends each selected pumpkins that were especially meaningful to them, while the rest were loaded into pick-up trucks to help feed local farm animals.The entire family also wished to extend their gratitude to the Town of Bristol and all who took part in making Hazel's Light shine bright this Halloween.

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-03 20:18:29|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Nov. 3, 2021 shows the site of a terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. The recent terrorist attacks, reportedly conducted by the affiliates of the Islamic States (IS) in Afghanistan, are spreading fear among Afghans believing that peace has returned following the change of regime in the war-torn country. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- The recent terrorist attacks reportedly conducted by the affiliates of Islamic States (IS) in Afghanistan have spread fear among Afghans who believed that peace had returned following a change of regime in the war-torn country.

"I was very happy after Taliban's August takeover as I had believed that suicide attacks and bomb blasts would not occur any more. But my hopes and wishes for peace shattered as we had witnessed a series of bomb blasts, killings and disappearances in recent weeks," Kabul resident Sayyed Hashmat told Xinhua.

Earlier on Wednesday, the IS terrorist group has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on the country's largest military hospital in the capital of Kabul, according to a statement from the group cited in multiple reports.

The attack took place on Tuesday when five IS members armed with guns and suicide bomb jackets stormed the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital in a diplomatic district, killing seven people, including three women, a child and three Taliban members, spokesman of Taliban Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed on social media.

At least two attackers detonated their suicide jackets at the gate and in the premise of the hospital.

Those among the killed was Maulvi Hamdullah, a key Taliban member who led the counter-attack, according to multiple sources.

Hamdullah was the first Taliban high-ranking figure to enter the Afghan presidential palace after the Taliban's takeover on Aug. 15 when former administration officials left the country.

At least 20 people were wounded in the blast and gunfight, according to an Italian-run emergency hospital in Kabul.

"Now we are in fears of Daesh or IS militants' terrorist attacks. Everywhere, every location and every place could be the target of the IS bombings as we witness they attacked airport and mosques as well as Taliban vehicles in big cities in recent weeks," said resident Hashmat, who runs a small business in Kabul.

"After the change of regime, the business and economy is collapsing," he said.

The IS group has claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks across the country since mid-August.

On Aug. 26, the group claimed a deadly suicide attack at a gate of Kabul International Airport that killed at about 180 people, including 13 U.S. soldiers, and wounded over 200 others when a U.S.-led evacuation operation was ongoing.

The group also staged three suicide bombings against mosques in Kabul, northern Kunduz and southern Kandahar provinces, killing more than 100 people and injuring nearly 250 others, besides bomb blasts against Taliban vehicles in Kabul, Jalalabad city and eastern Kunar province.

Also on Tuesday, Hijratullah Khogianiwal, a civil society activist, and his brother were killed after gunmen riding a vehicle fired on them in Jalalabad, according to local media reports.

Local residents found two bodies after they were executed and hanged in trees in Nangarhar's Chaparhar district early Tuesday morning. No details about the killings were available.

Meantime, another Kabul resident and a government employee, Naqibullah Haidari, told Xinhua that "the IS militants were not only attacking innocent people nowadays but they have also killed scores of people during the past government."

"I don't know what is happening in my country. We are fed up with the persistent killings and explosions. All groups claim they are doing well and working for Islam. But they are killing mostly innocents," daily wager Baktash said.

"Attacking civilians, worshippers in mosques, and public facilities like hospitals is immoral and has no justification," he said.

Local media reported that members of previous administration's security forces had joined the IS outfit, while the Taliban spokesman has rejected such reports as baseless.

Mujahid said Taliban security forces were capable enough of smashing any terrorist group and will not allow any Afghan soil to be used against any country.

Senior Taliban officials, Afghan politicians and the UN mission in Afghanistan strongly condemned the Tuesday's attack. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 13:52:58|Editor: huaxia

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Agapito Mba Mokuy, chairperson of the Executive Board of UNESCO, addresses a reception held by China's permanent delegation to the UNESCO marking the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the lawful seat of the People's Republic of China in UNESCO in Paris, France, Nov. 3, 2021. Officials and ambassadors of UNESCO member states on Wednesday commended China's role since the restoration of its lawful seat in the United Nations 50 years ago. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

PARIS, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Officials and ambassadors of member states to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Wednesday commended China's role since the restoration of its lawful seat 50 years ago in the United Nations.

China's achievements "can only be described as a historic breakthrough with deep and strong implications for the whole world," said Altay Cengizer, President of the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference, adding that China has alleviated extreme poverty and greatly raised people's living standards.

He made the remarks while addressing the reception held by China's permanent delegation to UNESCO marking the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the lawful seat of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations.

For his part, Agapito Mba Mokuy, chairperson of the Executive Board of UNESCO, said that UNESCO is the first specialized agency of the UN system to recognize the government of the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China to UNESCO 50 years ago.

He said that the international community can "enumerate countless areas" where China works "closely and effectively" with the United Nations and with UNESCO.

Hailing China as "one of the pillars" of UNESCO, Mba Mokuy stressed the constructive role China played during Executive Board sessions.

"China is a special and highly valued ally of UNESCO thanks to your support and involvement in a number of different activities of UNESCO in all domains," Firmin Matoko, assistant director-general of the Africa department of UNESCO, on behalf of UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, told China's permanent delegation to UNESCO.

UNESCO is "very grateful" to China for the importance it has given to the protection and promotion of world heritage sites, he said, adding that China has also played a key role in strengthening South-South cooperation at UNESCO.

Ethiopian Ambassador to France Henok Teferra Shawl said that his country appreciates China's strong commitment to African countries in terms of education, science and culture within the UNESCO .

Tebogo Seokolo, South Africa's Ambassador to France and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, said that over the last 50 years, China has made positive contributions to implementing the principles that UNESCO stands for. "China has been exemplary in doing so." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 15:42:22|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Nov. 4, 2020 shows an exterior view of the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai), the main venue for the third China International Import Expo (CIIE), in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)

BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping will deliver a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) and the Hongqiao International Economic Forum.

At previous CIIEs and forums, Xi has introduced a slew of opening-up policies and talked about economic globalization in the past three years. The following are some highlights of his quotes:

-- Answering to the changing circumstances and new requirements, we have set out to foster a new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other. What we envision is not a development loop behind closed doors, but more open domestic and international circulations. We will do so not only to meet China's own development needs but also for the greater benefit of people in all countries.

-- Our aim is to turn the China market into a market for the world, a market shared by all, and a market accessible to all. This way, we will be able to bring more positive energy to the global community.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, together with foreign leaders who are attending the second China International Import Expo (CIIE), tour the exhibitions after an opening ceremony of the CIIE in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 5, 2019. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

-- Economic globalization represents the trend of history. Like the world's great rivers, the Yangtze, the Nile, the Amazon and the Danube -- they all surge forward in relentless flow, and nothing can stop their mighty movement, not the current of undertows or hidden shoals or rocks beneath the water.

-- We need to "join hands" with each other instead of "letting go" of each other's hands. We need to "tear down walls," not to "erect walls." We need to stand firm against protectionism and unilateralism. We need to continually bring down trade barriers, optimize global value and supply chains, and jointly foster market demand.

-- Efforts to reduce tariff barriers and open wider will lead to inter-connectivity in economic cooperation and global trade, while the practices of beggaring thy neighbor, isolation and seclusion will only result in trade stagnation and an unhealthy world economy.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 5, 2018.(Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

-- China will remain a strong advocate of openness at the global level, and will continue to act as a stable engine of global growth, a big market with enormous opportunities and an active supporter of global governance reform.

-- China's initiative to expand imports is not a choice of expediency. It is a future-oriented step taken to embrace the world and promote common development. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 18:42:56|Editor: huaxia

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People visit a solar panel booth at an energy industry exhibition in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 3, 2021. The 30th edition of Egypt's largest energy industry exhibition concluded late on Wednesday in the capital Cairo. Dubbed "Egypt Energy," the three-day exhibition, organized by Egypt's Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, hosted 60 domestic and global companies in the energy sector. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

CAIRO, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The 30th edition of Egypt's largest energy industry exhibition concluded late on Wednesday in the capital Cairo.

Dubbed "Egypt Energy," the three-day exhibition, organized by Egypt's Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, hosted 60 domestic and global companies in the energy sector.

The expo aims at bringing together manufacturers and suppliers to showcase new technologies and innovative solutions to the entire energy value chain, including power generators, energy management systems, energy transmission and distribution, solar panels, and green energy.

This year's edition was hosted with measures against COVID-19 pandemic.

"The expo is a great hub to establish and reinforce connections and experience the full benefit of face-to-face networking," Mohammed Bassyouni, an engineer with a leading Egyptian company working in the solar energy sector, told Xinhua.

He noted that the exhibition has provided a golden opportunity for his company to market products and explore businesses in local and foreign markets, referring to the signing of preliminary agreements with many customers during the three-day event.

The energy expo has been an essential annual event for the past 30 years to help leading power industry professionals and companies find new customers, strengthen relations with existing clients, and expand businesses in Egypt and Africa.

For customers, the exhibition brings together a large number of companies in one place with the latest energy technologies and products. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 19:55:31|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The trilateral security and defense deal that enables Australia to boost its military capacity by acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is "highly problematic" and "heightens risks for nuclear proliferation" in the Pacific region, a watchdog has warned.

"Security and defense pacts today are about the Pacific Ocean -- which is our home -- but it has never been with Pacific people, let alone our governments," Maureen Penjueli, coordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation, a regional watchdog promoting Pacific peoples' right to be self-determining, said recently in a statement.

Australia, Britain and the United States in mid September announced the security partnership, in which Britain and the United States will share highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology with Australia.

Penjueli criticized Australia for breaking its promise as a party to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, the region's principal nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament agreement, as well as Camberra's disregard for the security concerns of people in the region.

"We see Australia playing a key, often unilateral role, taking decisions around peace and security which is not aligned with Pacific peoples' immediate priorities around security, in particular human security," Penjueli said, noting that AUKUS "raises serious concerns over Australia's intentions for its island neighbours."

"Pacific Island governments and civil society have been at the forefront in advocating for a nuclear free and independent Pacific," the coordinator added.

In the statement, she also mentioned that AUKUS is not the only cause for nuclear anxiety in the region, as Japan planned to dump radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea.

The plan has also "set the alarm bells ringing" and "infuriated regional governments and activist groups," Penjueli said.

"The Pacific Ocean is not a dumping ground for nuclear materials nor is it a highway for nuclear submarine," she added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 21:12:32|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Nov. 4, 2021 shows an exterior view of the National Exhibition and Convention Center, the main venue for the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE), in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Zhang Haofu)

From pursuing creative ways to grow foreign trade, to improving its business environment and seeking deeper bilateral, multilateral and regional cooperation, China has walked the talk in sharing its development opportunities and building an open global economy.

SHANGHAI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE), scheduled for Nov. 5-10, is set to open in China's coastal city of Shanghai.

As an icon of China's opening-up and international cooperation, the expo, which has been held every year since 2018, has promoted global development and prosperity, and contributed to shaping a brighter future for China and the world.

Bringing together global business opportunities, which have become much more valuable since the COVID-19 outbreak, the CIIE has grown into a one-stop platform for participants to showcase their products, look for partners and explore new markets.

That is why the event has enjoyed worldwide popularity and yielded fruitful results.

The previous three editions of the CIIE saw about 201.6 billion U.S. dollars' worth of deals reached for intended purchases of goods and services. This year, the total exhibition area has been expanded to 366,000 square meters, with nearly 3,000 businesses from 127 countries and regions attending the event.

A woman promotes Scottish products via live streaming during a preview banquet held in east China's Shanghai, Nov. 2, 2021. (Xinhua/Ren Long)

More than 80 percent of Fortune Global 500 and industry-leading companies from last year's CIIE are returning for this latest edition, according to official data.

Meanwhile, openness and inclusiveness are distinct features of the CIIE. Since its debut, it has been a chorus of the whole world, instead of China's solo show.

Both cutting-edge technologies from developed countries and agricultural goods produced by the developing world are welcome at the expo. Both big name multinationals and small start-ups can reap the benefits of participating in the event.

This year, more Belt and Road countries, Central and Eastern Europe countries and the most underdeveloped countries, as well as an increasing number of small-and-medium enterprises will take part in the expo.

These facts are a strong testament to China's determination to open its door wider, even facing the fierce headwinds of anti-globalization. China has always stood on the right side of history and the side of human progress, and endeavored to make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.

The first "Jinbo" China-Europe freight train is seen upon its arrival in Shanghai, east China, Oct. 29, 2021. (Xinhua/Ding Ting)

From pursuing creative ways to grow foreign trade, to improving its business environment and seeking deeper bilateral, multilateral and regional cooperation, China has walked the talk in sharing its development opportunities and building an open global economy.

Moreover, the CIIE has played a vital role in promoting global innovation and replacing old growth drivers for world development with new ones.

In addition to helping the participants grasp the latest innovation trend with novel products, the expo has also shown China's enormous demand for high-quality merchandise.

With a population of 1.4 billion and a middle-income group that exceeds 400 million, China is the most promising market in the world. Total import into China is estimated to top 22 trillion dollars in the coming decade.

Photo taken on Oct. 21, 2021 shows bags of coffee beans to be exported to China at a warehouse of Kerchanshe Trading Private Limited Company in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde)

As the country is pursuing a new development pattern and trying to achieve carbon peaking and neutrality goals, the tremendous purchasing power of its large market has turned into a driving force for global companies to keep innovating to meet Chinese customers' upgraded needs.

China's active promotion of the transition to a modern green economy offers development opportunities for multinationals, said Yin Zheng, executive vice president of French multinational Schneider Electric.

The CIIE is living proof of China's commitments to making the pie of the global market even bigger, strengthening the global mechanisms for benefits sharing and exploring new ways of international cooperation.

It is hoped that through the CIIE, the world can better understand China's openness, inclusiveness and innovativeness. China, together with other countries, can create a more prosperous and brighter shared future. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-05 00:30:51|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo held in east China's Shanghai on Nov. 4, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Amid the weakening of global consensus on opening up, President Xi Jinping made fresh pledges Thursday to open the Chinese market wider as the country has fully delivered on its accession commitments to World Trade Organization (WTO).

Noting that globalization is facing headwinds, Xi expressed concern over the decline of an index on world openness in the past decade while addressing the opening ceremony of the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE).

"We must stay on top of the prevailing trend of economic globalization, and support countries around the world in opening up wider while rejecting unilateralism and protectionism. This is significantly important if we are to take humanity to a better future," Xi said.

NEW PLEDGES

"Opening up is the hallmark of contemporary China," Xi told officials, business leaders and entrepreneurs participating in this year's CIIE.

As part of the country's efforts to safeguard true multilateralism, Xi said China will uphold the position of the multilateral trading regime as the main channel for international rules-setting, and safeguard the stability of global industrial and supply chains.

China will also take an active and open attitude in negotiations on issues such as the digital economy, trade and the environment, industrial subsidies and state-owned enterprises, he said.

With a population of 1.4 billion and over 400 million middle-incomers, China will share market opportunities with the rest of the world via measures such as opening more demonstration zones for creative promotion of import trade and promoting Silk Road e-commerce, Xi said.

To firmly promote high-standard opening up, China will further shorten the negative list for foreign investment, and expand the opening of telecommunication, healthcare and other services in an orderly fashion, according to the president.

"China will firmly uphold the common interests of the world," he said, pledging to actively join in global efforts to tackle climate change and safeguard food and energy security, and provide more assistance to fellow developing countries within the framework of South-South cooperation.

UNCHANGED RESOLVE

The year of 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of China's accession to the WTO. Over the last two decades, the country's continuous efforts in widening opening-up have brought its development to a new stage and injected fresh impetus into the world economy, Xi noted.

"China has fully delivered on its accession commitments," Xi said.

China's overall tariff rate has been cut from 15.3 percent to 7.4 percent, lower than the 9.8 percent accession commitment, delivering dividends to its trade partners all over the world.

In the past 20 years, China's global ranking of trade in goods has risen from the sixth to the first, while that of its trade in services has jumped from the 11th to the second.

The country's development and progress since it entered the WTO is the result of much hard work and great tenacity of the Chinese people under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China and the country's proactive steps to strengthen international cooperation and work for win-win outcomes, Xi said.

"As for China, we will not change our resolve to open wider at a high standard; we will not change our determination to share development opportunities with the rest of the world; and we will not change our commitment to an economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all," Xi said.

As the world's first import-themed national-level expo, China's CIIE has offered a platform for entrepreneurs and traders worldwide. This year's CIIE draws nearly 3,000 businesses from 127 countries and regions, higher than its last edition.

"As a European company in China for over 30 years, we have witnessed China's continuous efforts to deepen opening up and improve the business environment since its accession to the WTO. We have full confidence in China's development and future," said Tony Wei, Managing Director of Business Services and Managing Director of Swarovski Crystal Business, Greater China. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-05 04:39:15|Editor: huaxia

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko



"By carrying out these sectoral integration programmes, Russia and Belarus can create an equal and unified business environment," Putin said.



MOSCOW, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko have signed an integration decree of the Union State, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

The document, which sets forth the Guidelines for Implementing the Provisions of the Treaty Establishing the Union State in 2021-2023, was signed during the online meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State, according to the Kremlin.

"This document covers 28 sectoral Union programmes designed to promote a coordinated macroeconomic strategy, introduce unified taxation principles, which is extremely important, implement a common policy in the credit and financial and banking sectors, in industry and agriculture, harmonise regulations for the unified oil, gas and electric power markets and for transport services," Putin said during the meeting.

"By carrying out these sectoral integration programmes, Russia and Belarus can create an equal and unified business environment," he added.

Lukashenko called it "another important step on the path of the union building." 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 09:58:45|Editor: huaxia

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WINDHOEK, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Namibia has embraced the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and aims to meet concrete targets that reduce land degradation, an official said Wednesday at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland.

Namibia has put in place several multi-sectoral policies aimed at reinforcing LDN at various levels, said Minister of Environment and Tourism Pohamba Shifeta, according to a statment reaching here.

At the same time, Namibia pledges to contribute to the achievement of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change objectives, he said.

"The most important ones are Vision 2030, which includes goals related to water resources, agriculture production and forest management; and the third National Action Program for Namibia to implement the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (NAP3) 2014-2022, with its six LDN targets," he said.

"Namibia has also taken a drastic step to ensure that the three Rio Conventions are adequately addressed in the climate change plan under the Paris agreement," he added.

The three Rio conventions are the three UN conventions formed during the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, also known as the Rio Earth Summit.

According to Shifeta, this is the agenda that Namibia is advocating in terms of implementing initiatives that are in line with the Call to Action on Living Lands that have multiple benefits towards achieving the three Rio Conventions.

"We are very much optimistic that the Call for Action on Living Lands and ultimately the implementation of the three Rio Conventions in Namibia will be a success moving forward," he added.

Namibia's environment is highly fragile and vulnerable owing to its geographical characteristics. Over 90 percent of the country is characterized by semi-arid, arid and hyper-arid conditions. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 12:37:09|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Armed bandits had been killed in two airstrikes carried out by the military in northwest Nigeria's Kaduna State, an official said on Wednesday.

Samuel Aruwan, the commissioner for the internal security and home affairs in the Kaduna state, said in a statement that the troops launched airstrikes on some camps of the bandits earlier in the day, killing "an unspecified number of bandits."

The locations were identified as bandit hideouts after thorough checks and analysis of various intelligence reports, Aruwan said.

The northern region of the most populous African country has been troubled by bandit attacks. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 21:54:10|Editor: huaxia

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ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian House of People's Representatives (HoPR) on Thursday ratified a six-month sate of emergency rule amid expanding conflict in the northern part of the country.

On Tuesday, the Ethiopian Council of Ministers had announced the state of emergency rule pending endorsement by the HoPR, the lower house of the Ethiopian parliament.

The move came as the conflict that erupted a year ago in the Tigray region between the Ethiopian federal government and forces loyal to the rebel group expanded to neighboring Amhara and Afar regions.

On Tuesday, authorities in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa announced they have started a two-day weapons registration drive.

Amid intensifying conflict over northern parts of the East African country, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had on Sunday called on all able Ethiopians to participate in the ongoing fighting against the rebel group.

Since the early hours of Nov. 4, 2020, the Ethiopian government has been undertaking military operations against the TPLF.

However, the government in late June announced a unilateral ceasefire in the country's conflict-affected northernmost Tigray regional state. Forces loyal to the TPLF soon took control of much of the area in the region, including the regional capital. The conflict has since then expanded to the Amhara and Afar regions, neighboring Tigray.

The HoPR, the lower house of the Ethiopian parliament, had previously designated the TPLF as a "terrorist" organization. The Ethiopian government had previously assigned an interim administration in Tigray after the ouster of the TPLF. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 22:33:21|Editor: huaxia

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JUBA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-three people lost their lives following fierce clashes between rival communities in the northern Warrap state of South Sudan, officials said on Thursday.

John Deng Kok, Tonj East commissioner revealed that 36 people were nursing injuries from the fighting that was an act of vengeance. The deaths occurred after fighting among communities between October 29 and 31 in Tonj East County.

Kok said that armed youth from the Thiik community on October 29 set ablaze property in Romich market, Gokloch, Turagot, Malek and Piokjiak which provoked and forced those from Luachjang to retaliate.

"All wounded victims are not getting proper medical attention, we have tried contacting the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) but have not received any response," Kok told Xinhua by phone from Tonj.

He blamed politicians for inciting communities to take up arms and urged both the state and national government to deploy the military to help pacify the conflict hotspots.

Similar clashes in early October in Tonj East left 37 people dead, and 48 injured. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 23:15:54|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Kenya plans to put in place a livestock tracing system that uses electronic ear tags and microchips to boost exports, a government official said on Thursday.

Lawrence Omuhaka, chief administrative secretary of Kenya's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives, said that the traceability system will be achieved by capturing data along the animal value chains including feedlots, quarantine facilities, slaughter facilities, processing facilities and markets.

"The objective is to give assurance to overseas buyers that the Kenyan livestock is free from diseases," Omuhaka said.

According to the ministry of agriculture, Kenya's traceability system will use the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)'s guidelines. The Kenyan government will subsidize the cost of acquisition of the tracing system in order to enhance access amongst livestock breeders.

He added that the country's key export markets such as the European Union and the Middle East require that all exported livestock products are produced under traceability systems in order to guarantee food safety. The lack of a tracing system has curtailed Kenya's push to grow exports of livestock and products to international markets.

Omuhaka revealed that the livestock sector plays an important role in the national economy of Kenya with a direct contribution of about 12 percent to the national gross domestic product. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-05 00:02:07|Editor: huaxia

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LUSAKA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday donated 3,099 tons of maize to Zambia meant for people facing food shortages following the poor farming season of 2018/2019.

Chinese Ambassador to Zambia Li Jie handed over the maize to Finance and National Planning Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane during a ceremony.

The maize will be distributed to vulnerable families by the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU).

The Chinese envoy said his government was happy for having responded to Zambia's request for food aid following the food shortage caused by the poor rainy season.

He said despite Zambia experiencing good crop harvests in the 2019/2020 farming season, people in some parts of the country still need food assistance.

According to him, global climate change has led to frequent extreme weather and that Zambia has suffered extreme climate disasters such as floods and drought, adding that the spread of the COVID-19 has caused a large number of people to face food shortages.

The donation, he said, demonstrates the cordial relations that have existed between the two countries over the years.

"As an all-weather friend, China understands the need and generously responded to the demands of Zambia, and quickly made a decision to provide humanitarian emergency food aid," he said.

On his part, the Zambian minister thanked China for the donation, saying the Asian nation has demonstrated its generosity during times of adversity.

"The government of China has continuously shown that they are a friend that can be relied upon when Zambia needs a shoulder to lean on," he said.

The donation, he said, was a further gesture of friendship between the two countries and further signifies the cordial bilateral ties enjoyed over the years.

China, he said, has in the recent past been actively involved in Zambia's disaster risk reduction programs including response to disaster-prone areas.

According to him, a total of 296,438 people or 49,406 households from 18 districts needs food aid for a period of six months from October 2021 to March 2022.

Joshua Kamanya, DMMU acting National Coordinator, said the farming season from 2018 to 2020 which was characterized by drought in some areas and flooding in others as well as the emergency of armyworms and locusts left many families food insecure.

He expressed happiness that China was among countries that responded to food assistance, adding that the donation of the maize will help the vulnerable families. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-05 00:43:59|Editor: huaxia

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YAOUNDE, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon will reinforce security along its border with Nigeria to curb arms smuggling and abductions, a government official said on Thursday.

Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of the country's English-speaking region of Southwest where a separatist armed conflict is in progress, said that separatist fighters were using the sea in Ndian division of the region to smuggle weapons into the country.

"We are the gateway into our country through the sea and the exit. This entry and exit point should not become a boulevard for criminals who are carrying weapons, munitions and other military items into our country," Bilai told reporters while officially installing the new prefect of Ndian division which shares a long and porous border with Nigeria.

The division is notorious for regular clashes between government forces and separatist fighters.

In June, gunmen kidnapped five senior government officials in the division and crossed over to Nigeria. One was killed and the four others are still missing.

"I'm calling on the population to protect civil servants who are coming to serve here. I cannot understand how in a place where people know each other, five divisional delegates are missing and one is killed. We must put an end to that situation," Bilai added.

Separatist fighters who want to create an independent nation in Cameroon's two Anglophone regions have been clashing with government forces since 2017. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-05 05:13:15|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday strongly condemned the attack by members of the presidential guard of the Central African Republic (CAR) which wounded 10 peacekeepers.

Through a statement attributable to his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief "emphasizes that attacks against United Nations peacekeepers may constitute a war crime. He calls on the Central African authorities to spare no effort in investigating and promptly holding accountable the perpetrators of this unacceptable attack."

"The secretary-general wishes a speedy and full recovery to the wounded peacekeepers and civilians, and reiterates his gratitude to the people and the Government of Egypt for their contribution to peace and stability in the Central African Republic. The secretary-general also expresses his deep condolences to the bereaved family of the Central African civilian who was killed during the incident," it said.

"The secretary-general reaffirms the solidarity and continued support of the United Nations to the Central African Republic," it added.

The presidential guard shot at peacekeepers of the mission, known as MINUSCA, in Bangui on Monday. The police officers from Egypt landed at Bangui's airport earlier in the day. They are part of the periodic rotation and deployment of troops in the country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 11:31:05|Editor: huaxia

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SEOUL, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- South Korea has decided to donate an additional 290,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.

South Korea provided 1.1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines for Vietnam and 470,000 doses of the vaccines for Thailand on Oct. 12, while donating 1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines to Iran on Oct. 25.

The Seoul ministry said in a statement that the additional donation would contribute to the improved friendly ties between South Korea and Vietnam and the global efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

It came as South Korea's full vaccination rate topped 70 percent of the population, a major precondition set by the government to ease antivirus measures.

In the latest tally, the country administered COVID-19 vaccines to 80.5 percent of the population, with 75.9 percent being fully vaccinated. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 12:09:07|Editor: huaxia

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BOGOTA, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano on Wednesday condemned an attack with explosives against an army patrol unit, which killed three soldiers and a civilian, and injured four others in the town of Paz de Ariporo in the east-central Department of Casanare.

"The killing with an explosive device of Corporal Edison Buitrago, soldier Diner Inocencio de Dios, soldier Brayan Esteban Morales, the other three wounded soldiers, as well as the deceased civilian and another wounded civilian, pains us to the core... A demented terrorist attack in Paz de Ariporo, Casanare," Molano said.

He sent a message of condolence to the families of the uniformed men who lost their lives, pledging permanent support for the military.

Molano also sent "a message to all the soldiers and policemen of Colombia: We continue on the offensive, relentlessly, to dismantle those criminal structures and illegal armed groups that seek to attack Colombians."

Army troops were at the scene of the blast to investigate who were responsible for the attack.

The 28th Front, a dissident group of the now disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was continuing its rebel activity against the government in the region, Oscar Gomez, Casanare's government secretary, told local media.

But he did not rule out the possibility that the attack could have been carried out by a different guerrilla group. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 14:00:14|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan on Wednesday reported 580 new COVID-19 cases and 19 more deaths, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Thursday.

The NCOC, a department leading the campaign against the pandemic, said that the country has conducted 20,966,900 tests so far, confirming 1,275,158 cases, including 1,224,085 recoveries.

There are 22,577 active cases under treatment across the country, including 1,247 in critical condition.

According to the NCOC, the pandemic killed 19 people on Wednesday, increasing the death toll to 28,496.

Pakistan's southern Sindh province is the most-affected region of the country with 470,978 infections, followed by the eastern Punjab province which has reported 440,678 infections.

Pakistan has administered a total of 106,984,156 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 41,902,093 people have been fully vaccinated.

However, Special Assistant to the Pakistani Prime Minister on Health Faisal Sultan expressed dissatisfaction over the vaccination program, fearing the country might face another wave of the pandemic if the vaccination campaign is not sped up.

"We have achieved vaccination targets to some extent but millions in the country still need to be vaccinated," Sultan told local media on Wednesday, adding that the country has 150 million people eligible for vaccination. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 17:28:36|Editor: huaxia

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PHNOM PENH, Nov. 4 (Xinhua ) -- The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) represents a triumph of multilateralism and free trade, and it will become a driving force for regional and global economic growth, Cambodian officials and scholars said.

Signed on Nov. 15, 2020, the RCEP is a mega trade deal between 10 ASEAN member states (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) and its FTA partners of China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

The trade deal is expected to enter into force on Jan. 1, 2022.

"This regional trade deal is a victory of multilateralism and free trade," government chief spokesperson Phay Siphan told Xinhua. "It will become the core foundation for trade and investment in the region, further expand regional value chains and create more employment and market opportunities for peoples and businesses in the region."

For Cambodia, he said the kingdom has projected that RCEP will boost its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2 percent, exports by 7.3 percent and investment by 23.4 percent.

"We have no doubt that the pact will help support our economic growth by stimulating new private investments and providing greater market access to Cambodian products," Siphan said.

Covering a region with a combined GDP of 26.2 trillion U.S. dollars, or about 30 percent of global GDP, the RCEP agreement is an unprecedented, modern, comprehensive, high-quality and reciprocal mega-regional trading arrangement that accommodates the broadest possible interests, conditions and priorities of different countries.

Once in effect, the deal will eliminate tariffs on as much as 90 percent of goods traded between its signatories over the next 20 years.

Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said RCEP will play a very important role in regional and global economic recovery.

"RCEP countries will greatly benefit from this important trade deal and can diversify their productions and markets," he told Xinhua. "RCEP will be a driving force of foreign direct investment to all RCEP countries, and the world's economy will also be positively impacted by this agreement."

Joseph Matthews, a senior professor at the BELTEI International University in Phnom Penh, said there is no doubt that RCEP is the world's largest free trade agreement and will be a driving force in the post-COVID-19 era.

"RCEP is a victory for multilateralism and defeat of unilateralism," he said.

Matthews said the pact will create huge opportunities for countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam to market their products and commodities in such a big market and multiply their profits and gains.

Thong Mengdavid, a research fellow at the Phnom Penh-based Asian Vision Institute, said RCEP enables the reduction of 90 percent of regional trade tariff and non-tariff barriers, which greatly enhance the flows of goods and services and deepen economic links and increase regional competitiveness.

"RCEP offers opportunities for regional countries to defend trade liberalization and promote economic cooperation, which are crucial to the post-COVID-19 recovery, and it is a strategic accomplishment for ASEAN Economic Community," he told Xinhua.

"The success story of RCEP could serve as a model and be a hope for cross-regional economic cooperation and connectivity in the post-COVID-19 era," Mengdavid said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 17:40:13|Editor: huaxia

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TALUQAN, Afghanistan, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Police have arrested six persons on charge of involvement in theft and robbery in northern Takhar province, provincial government official Ansarullah Inami said Thursday.

"Six criminals who disguised themselves as Taliban and were involved in criminal activities including theft and robbery in Takhar province have been arrested," Inami said.

All the arrested men are from Takhar province and have been referred to concerned authorities for further investigation.

The Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has vowed to crackdown on criminals and ensures law and order across the war-torn country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 23:34:15|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The alert level in the Philippine capital region will be eased further to 2 on a scale of 5 starting Friday as COVID-19 infections slows and vaccination rate increases, Philippine presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Thursday.

The downgrading of the alert level in Metro Manila will remain until Nov. 21, Roque said in a brief statement, adding that starting Dec. 1, the alert level assignments will be determined every 15th and 30th of each month.

"Escalations, on the other hand, may be done at any time in the middle of the implementation period as warranted, while de-escalations can only be done at the end of the two-week assessment period," he said.

On Thursday, the Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 1,766 COVID-19 infections, pushing the number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,795,642.

The DOH has reported less than 2,000 daily cases for two days since Wednesday when 1,591 cases were recorded, the lowest since Feb. 24. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-04 21:53:39|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- A recent survey by the Pew Research Center showed rising disillusionment with the state of U.S. democracy, with 72 percent of Americans and 57 percent of interviewees worldwide viewing it as a poor example of a political system.

The results have once again shown that the United States as the so-called "beacon of democracy" is collapsing not only among Americans, but also those around the world.

Such disappointment in U.S. democracy is nothing new. Among a group of outspoken scholars, Robert Kagan, U.S. author and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said in a Washington Post op-ed in September that the United States is already in "a constitutional crisis," and critical steps are happening that could lead to "the destruction of democracy."

The old Greek-derived term "democracy" means rule by the people. However, America's politics today has been reduced to a game played by the rich in which money equals power.

As Kishore Mahbubani, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, pointed out, "America is becoming functionally less and less of a democracy, where all citizens have an equal voice. Instead, it looks more and more like a plutocracy, where a few rich poeple are disproportionately powerful."

American democracy has already been kidnapped by business elites and all kinds of organized interests. The government can hardly serve the welfare of the general public.

America's super rich -- the top one percent of American earners, held 27 percent of national wealth as of June, for the first time higher than what the U.S. middle class earns as a whole, Bloomberg cited Federal Reserve data as showing.

Washington's botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the democratic deficits of the country. So far, more than 750,000 American lives have been lost in the outbreak and the body count is rising. America's handling of the disease has been a human rights catastrophe.

And early this year, the U.S. state of Texas was hit hard by a terrifying blizzard. Millions of residents had to struggle with not only outages of power and water, but also a slow-moving local government. As Texans shivered in the cold and were desperate for water and food, a Senator from the Lone Star State Ted Cruz flew to Mexico for holidays.

Nevertheless, even if the public's appeals are heard, America's increasingly polarized partisan politics is also preventing Democrats and Republicans from reaching a viable consensus on key issus concerning the country's long-term interests. Moreover, some projects heavily invested in by one administration can be tossed aside by a successor from the other political party.

While social inequality is widening and racial discrimination intensifying, American democracy has been falling apart.

The Capitol riots in January, described by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier as "the result of lies and more lies, of divisiveness and contempt for democracy," completely tore apart the mask of the "presumptuous preacher."

Across the globe, Washington's attempts to export its own democratic system and values has also run into the ground. The atrocities and bloodshed brought about by the United States in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere stand as irrefutable proof of the ridiculous democratic experiment launched by America and its Western allies.

"Here ends the west's grotesque delusion that it could use its military might to turn Afghanistan into a stable democracy," said British journalist Polly Toynbee on the U.S. army's final withdrawal from Afghanistan in an opinion piece in The Guardian newspaper.

Indeed, an end to the blind faith in U.S. democracy is long overdue. For those obsessed with preaching Western democracy across the world, a diminishing U.S. democracy has taught us a lesson: There is no such thing as a one-size-fits all political system. Every country should have the right to choose its own development path.

An effective political system is only possible when it answers the needs of its people. America would be wise to remember that merely holding elections while failing to serve the wider public do not make a democracy. Enditem


PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday bragged that he had made a major breakthrough in his re-engagement efforts with leaders of hostile Western nations, some of which have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, adding that most of them appeared remorseful after he confronted them at the just-ended the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Addressing ruling Zanu PF party supporters soon after landing at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, Mnangagwa braggingly said he met several influential leaders at the COP26 summit, among them United States President Joe Biden during a banquet organised by the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

He claimed that the United Kingdom, which imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, had invited him to the summit after realising that his government was progressing well even without their input, saying this confirmed Londons new drive to re-engage with Harare after Brexit.

Mngangagwa told his supporters that he also had occasion to meet with heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth IIs son, who failed to engage meaningfully with him in genuine political dialogue.

Last year, there was a global summit in Britain, but Zimbabwe was not invited and we told them to build their own country and we build ours, he said.

But this year, they decided to re-engage us. They then realised that whether they invited us or not, we are progressing well here. When I met him (British Prime Minister Boris Johnson), I vowed that I would not extend my greeting first. He did extend his hand first and he smiled and smiled. Later on, there was a party that was hosted by Queen Elizabeth II and attended by heads of State only. I was invited. I went there with my friend Uhuru Kenyata.

The Queen was not feeling well but she sent her son Prince Charles and grandson Prince William. I introduced myself to Prince Charles and asked him why he hadnt visited Zimbabwe 40 years after he lowered the Union Jack to see the progress we have achieved. I then realised that he could not talk genuine politics, and I decided to engage on issues to do with hunting.

Mnangagwa said Biden took the initiative to introduce himself when they met at the queens banquet.

I asked him what wrong we had done to his people. I questioned him over what kind of democracy his country was exhibiting when they put people on trial without meeting them. He then summoned his staffer, whom he tasked to schedule a meeting with me later. I then told him, You have done right, and you may go.

He said when he met European Union Council president Charles Michel, he told him in the face that the EU had been incited by the British to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Mnangagwas spokesperson George Charamba claimed on his @Jamwanda2 Twitter handle that the West had come to terms with the fact that the land reform programme was irreversible.

What adds to the rousing welcome is the fact that this is the first time a Zimbabwean leader steps on UK soil ever since the standoff between Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom and the West over recovery of the Zimbabwe heritage through the iconic land reform programme, he tweeted.

Zimbabwe stood steadfast, maintaining its heritage was non-negotiable. Seeing the resolve and determination, even amidst crippling illegal sanctions, countries of the West, the UK included, are beginning to accept that the land reform programme is irrevocable, with its reversal being made a precondition for re-engagement and normalisation of relations.

In July 2020, government inked a US3,5 billion compensation deal with white former commercial farmers for improvements on the land they lost during the 2000 land reform programme.

But observers yesterday rubbished Mnangagwas so-called fruitful re-engagement with Western leaders, saying all those efforts would come to naught as long as the Zanu PF leader failed to implement genuine political and economic reforms necessary to end the countrys international isolation.

Political analyst Eldred Masunungure said Mnangagwa could not measure success of his engagement efforts using the occasion of the meeting he had, but with the results which included lifting of sanctions.

Mnangagwa has so much to produce as evidence of engagement which is pictures of him shaking hands with powerful leaders, but real evidence of the success of his engagement is yet to be seen, he said.

For Mnangagwa and his government, the measure of success is the occasion of him meeting the presidents, but if there were no tangible results from the meeting, then it was a waste of time. Ending Zimbabwes isolation on the international arena depends on a number of issues. It depends on whether Mnangagwa is really committed to implement the reforms that will improve foreign relations.

Another political analyst Rashweat Mukundu said the climate change summit was a talk show and there was no great achievement in attending such a meeting, but it had enabled Mnangagwa to meet leaders who matter the most.

Although the COP26 gave Mnangagwa an opportunity to meet leaders who matter for the progress of the Zimbabwe welfare, it does not necessarily correspond with the expenditure, Mukundu said.

If the President is really committed to turn around the economy, he should reform first on the use of resources. Zambia had similar engagements at the summit, but at a smaller cost to Zimbabwe by far. The President might have successfully engaged other influential leaders, but the question is: will it lead to change of his behaviour on issues of governance? Are we going to have credible elections that will warrant removal of sanctions and end the frosty relations between Zimbabwe and other Western countries?

Mnangagwas trip to the UK has been marred by wide public criticism over his US$1 million flight on an Azerbaijan airbus and taking with him over 100 delegates to Scotland.

But Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development programmes manager John Maketo said although the expenditure was unjustified, it was necessary for the President to attend the summit.

It was necessary for President Emmerson Mnangagwa to attend the COP26 summit because the country is battling the effects of climate change, he said.

We need solutions on adapting to climate and for him to attend such a high level event, it is a success. However, there is need for justification of the delegation he travelled with, at a time when the resources are not enough to cater for public services. There is need for government to implement cost-cutting measures on its expenditure. The excess expenditure on the Scotland trip becomes an issue of concern when we compare it with other countries, Zambia for instance. Newsday
ZIMBABWES foreign currency earnings are poised to hit record high since 2010, spurred by mineral exports and diaspora remittances, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) said.

As of October 2021, the country had recorded a total of US$7,2 billion in foreign currency receipts resulting in a positive current account balance of around $1,7 billion.

Export earnings increased by 54,5 percent to US$4,5 billion for the period January to mid-October, compared to US$2,9 billion realised in 2020, the central bank said.

Mining exports generate about 85 percent of Zimbabwes foreign currency earnings. International remittances, encompassing diaspora inflows and non-Governmental organisations, funds jumped to US$1,7 billion from US$1,1 billion, RBZ said.

Loan proceeds rose to US$728 million from US$673 million. Addressing delegates at a conference held in Victoria Falls recently RBZ deputy governor, Dr Khuphukile Mlambo acknowledged that this years external sectors performance was inspiring and could reach the highest level over a decade.

As of now we are standing at US$7,145 billion in terms of foreign currency inflows. If you compare that to outflows that have taken place since January, which is about US$5 billion in terms of foreign currency payments outside, we are sitting on about $1, 7 billion dollars.

Therefore, we expect that this year we are going to get the highest foreign currency inflows since 2010, meaning we are on a growth trajectory.

The external factor is doing very well, we are expecting a positive current account balance, driven mainly by a recovery in the global economy, performance of exports, diaspora remittances, and moderation of inflows, said Dr Mlambo.

He said he was confused by the volatility in the parallel market exchange rate given the amount of foreign currency in the countrys coffers.

We are in a good situation, it puzzles me sometimes when the black-market rate is running the way it is running because it is evident that it is something else, that is not driven by fundamentals, said Dr Mlambo.Zim forex inflows to hit record high

He attributed the relatively stable economic conditions witnessed in 2021 to favourable climatic conditions, which spurred the agriculture sector performance and worthy policy framework which was crafted during the year.

Dr Mlambo pointed out that the two inputs (favorable climatic conditions and policy framework) had been complementary in attaining better economic conditions compared to the two previous years.

You can have good rains but if you have bad policies it does not help, so the major contributor that sustained economic progress in the country in 2021 was the policy environment that we are creating and the policies that we have introduced, he added. Herald
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Iranian woman Soraya Motaharnia nominated for Global Teacher Prize 2021

11/04/21

Soraya Motaharnia, an Iranian teacher, has been placed among the top 10 nominees for the Global Teacher Prize 2021. Motaharnia, an outstanding teacher of mathematics, Persian language, art, science, and theology, has been praised in Iran for helping the most vulnerable students in rural parts of the country. She helps students in need of medical treatment and multiple special surgeries and provides financial assistance to hundreds of poor students.

The Global Teacher Prize, now in its seventh year and organized by the Varkey Foundation in partnership with UNESCO, aims to recognize outstanding teachers around the world and has attracted for the current year more than 8,000 nominations and nominations from 121 countries, with a prize of $1 million.

The Prize was set up to recognize one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession as well as to shine a spotlight on the important role teachers play in society.

More about Soraya Motaharnia

Source: Global Teacher Prize

14th Khordad Foundation Elementary School

Taz Abad Village, Bijar, Iran

Soraya Motaharnia Math, Persian language, art, science and theology teacher Soraya Motaharnia has been hailed in her native Iran for funding students in need of medical treatment and multiple special surgical procedures, and providing financial assistance to hundreds of indigent students. She says three major forces have pushed her forward throughout her life: studying, taking care of the weak, and the desire to play a role in promoting her society. As soon as she graduated from university she was assigned a teaching post at a remote village in the deprived province of Sanandaj, capital of Kurdistan Province. Here she was moved by the plight of a young girl with facial scarring from a housefire and a young boy with complex ankle injuries that prevented him walking. These were the first youngsters she took under her wing and paid for medical treatment their parents could not afford. She paid for the education of another young girl, persuading her parents not to push her into an early arranged marriage.

Her own parents' encouragement motivated her to establish a charity, helping 1,100 students who had medical and educational problems, and providing jobs for women with marriage difficulties and divorce. Her caring crusade has extended to collecting money for earthquake victims in Kermanshah province and flood-stricken people in Lorestan province.

After for a short time at that first village assignment, she realized students suffered from several problems including a dilapidated school and lack of facilities, severe educational weaknesses, a high drop-out rate because of poverty and early arranged marriages, illness and malnutrition. Soraya's job was not just teaching, sometimes she had to act as school principal and even classroom cleaner. Involving the villagers and education officials she was able to turn her dilapidated school building into a high quality and modern facility. She researched new teaching methods, constantly updating her teaching knowledge and techniques. Even with two children of her own to look after, she continued her educational and community building efforts, throwing open her own home in summer to hold classes for her students.

Teaching in other remote and deprived locations around Iran she has developed innovative teaching methods including dictation tips to improve the writing ability of students, combining subjects such as maths and physical exercise to improve student participation and motivation, teaching science through fun activities, encouraging her students to paint from nature in her art classes and other forms of game-centred teaching, brainstorming and personal lesson plans based on individual student needs. Using Internet resources she has created animation, motion graphics and amusing educational videos for students, arranged camping trips to visit historic cities, along with museums and science centres to help students understand the outside world.

The result of these efforts over nearly 30 years have been seen in her students' educational achievements, many of them going on to specialized jobs and careers after college graduation. She believes her biggest achievement was decreasing the number of school dropouts to near zero. A string of awards, including being declared the best teacher in Iran for two consecutive years, have followed the acclaim for all her efforts.
Human Search For Resources: Special exhibit featuring Iranian, German studies on ancient mining opens in Tehran

11/04/21

Source: Tehran Times

TEHRAN - On Wednesday, a special exhibition featuring Iranian and German studies on ancient mining and relevant objects was officially inaugurated at the National Museum of Iran. "Highlights of Ancient Mining from Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum", and "Death by Salt" will be running from November 3 to January 14, 2022, at the major museum, which is located in downtown Tehran.



Human Search For Resources

See The Virtual Tour by National Museum of Iran

The exhibit puts the spotlight on the appropriation of humans to mineral resources and the development of the history of human experiences and achievements in mining, which led to the development of technologies, the formation of professions, trade, and specialization of industries. p>

The event showcases arrays of personal objects, tools, and corpses once belonging to the famed Iranian salt mummies discovered in the Chehrabad Salt Mine of Zanjan province.

According to Jebrael Nokandeh, the director of the National Museum, the museum and the German Mining Museum in Bochum have made considerable cooperation in line with an agreement they signed in 2017, based on which the two institutions are set to hold exhibitions of each other's historical and cultural artifacts related to the subject of ancient mining.

It is worth mentioning that similar loan exhibitions featuring ancient mining and relevant documents were already staged in Iran and Germany.

Last year, a team of experts from the two countries started a project for purifying, cleansing, and restoring garments and personal belongings of the mummies which were first found in the salt mine in 1993.

What was a catastrophe for the ancient miners has become a sensation for science. Sporting a long white beard, iron knives, and a single gold earring, the first salt mummy was discovered in 1993. He is estimated to be trapped in the mine in ca. 300 CE. In 2004 another mummy was discovered only 50 feet away, followed by another in 2005 and a "teenage" boy mummy later that year.

In 1993, miners in the Douzlakh Salt Mine, near Hamzehli and Chehrabad villages, accidentally came across a mummified head. The head was very well preserved, to the extent that his pierced ear was still holding the gold earring. The hair, beard, and mustaches were reddish, and his impressive leather boot still contained parts of his leg and foot, according to Ancient History Encyclopedia.

The first mummy, dubbed the "Saltman", is on display in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran. He still looks very impressive. The third, fourth, and fifth "saltmen" were also carbon dated. The third body was dated and placed in 2337 BP, the fourth body in 2301 BP, and the fifth mummy was dated to 2286 BP, placing them all in the Achaemenid period.

The isotopic analysis of the human remains revealed where these miners were from. Some of them were from the Tehran-Qazvin plain, which is relatively local to the mine's locality, while others were from north-eastern Iran and the coastal areas around the Caspian Sea, and a few from as far away as Central Asia.

Furthermore, the archaeozoological finds, such as animal bones found within the context of the saltmen, showed that the miners might have eaten sheep, goats, and probably pigs and cattle, as well. The archaeobotanical finds recorded showed different cultivated plants were eaten, indicating an agricultural establishment in the vicinity of the mine.

The wealth of fabric and other organic material (leather) worn by the saltmen have allowed a thorough analysis to be undertaken, detailing the resources used to make the fabrics, the processing, the dyes used to color the fibers of the garments, and not least they offer an excellent overview of the changes in cloth types, patterns of weaving, and the changes of the fibers through time.

Saltman No. 5 had tapeworm eggs from the Taenia sp. genus in his system. These were identified during the study of his remains. The find indicates the consumption of raw or undercooked meat, and this is the first case of this parasite in ancient Iran and the earliest evidence of ancient intestinal parasites in the area. The best preserved and probably the most harrowing of the saltmen is Saltman No. 4. A sixteen-year-old miner, caught in the moment of death, crushed by a cave-in.

The oldest-known mine on archaeological record is believed to be the Ngwenya Mine in Eswatini (Swaziland), which radiocarbon dating shows to be about 43,000 years old. At this site, Paleolithic humans mined hematite to make the red pigment ochre. Moreover, mines of a similar age in Hungary are believed to be sites where Neanderthals may have mined flint for weapons and tools.
1. Previous These provisions determine the general terms and conditions of contract of the service owned by the merchant CUSTOMER CARE TECHNOLOGIES S.L. (Tax ID: B66546425), hereinafter Populetic, with registered office at Calle Rambla Iberia, 97 CP: 08205 Sabadell (Barcelona), and registered in the Mercantile Register of Barcelona, in volume 44875, folio 129, sheet number B-470060.

2. Agreement: 2.1 When the Customer signs the authorization document, the Customer automatically and simultaneously accepts these terms and conditions. 2.2 An agreement will be established only if Populetic agrees to process the customer's claim. Populetic has the right to waive the processing of any claim for any reason. In case of resignation, Populetic will notify the customer. 2.3 By establishing an agreement with Populetic, you warrant that you are authorized and have legal capacity to establish the agreement. 2.4 The Customer warrants that the claim has not been assigned to third parties and that there is no pending or anticipated legal dispute between the Customer and the Company over the same matter. Once the authorization document is signed, the customer will not be able to hire any third party to continue the claim or assign the case to any third party. Any existing agreement or assignment, if any, must be cancelled before signing the assignment of rights form or authorization document. 2.5 If the Customer receives a direct payment or any other compensation from the airline after formalizing the authorization document, the Customer is obliged to inform Populetic immediately. Such payments shall be considered as compensation for the incident of the flight. Once signed the transfer of rights form or authorization document, the customer will be obliged to cease any negotiation with the airline and to direct any communication from the airline to Populetic in order to achieve the best possible result. 2.6 The agreement ends: 1) When compensation has been accepted by Populetic, payment from the airline has been received by Populetic and transferred to the customer after deducting the applicable fees.

2) When Populetic states that it would be worthless to continue the claim after analyzing the feasibility of the case and warned the customer that the claim will not be continued.

3. Service Description 3.1 Populetic will handle the claim extrajudicial and judicial in order to obtain financial compensation for the customer in accordance with the current legislation applicable to the carriage of passengers and baggage by air. 3.2 Flight data and information must be sent to Populetic via the website, email, telephone or other populetic compatible electronic or software solutions. Upon receipt of the application, Populetic will verify the viability of the claim. 3.3 In order to proceed with the customer's claim successfully, Populetic needs the authorization document or mandate signed by the customer, which can be sent via the website, email or postal service. Once the authorization has been completed, Populetic will file the claim against the airline as soon as possible and take care of the entire process. 3.4 Populetic will try to reach a satisfactory agreement for the customer on the basis of their experience, but if within a reasonable period of time it does not receive a response from the airline or the airline is unsatisfactory, it will pass the file to one of its lawyers for legal action. 3.5 In the event that a legal representative is appointed to initiate legal action, the client will allow Populetic to grant access to it of all data provided to Populetic and will allow the legal representative to transfer the information relating to the procedure to Populetic. If additional documentation is required, such as a proxy, affidavit, authorization, transfer of rights or any other documentation relevant to the court, the customer agrees to sign and pay for such additional documentation. 3.6 If the contracted legal representative concludes that there is little chance of success, the client will be informed of this and Populetic will not proceed with the claim. 3.7 If Populetic or the contracted legal representative brings legal action to process the claim, Populetic will cover any costs arising from such proceedings in the event of loss of the dispute. In the event that the dispute is won or an agreement is concluded between the airline and Populetic, Populetic will charge the agreed fees. 3.8 The customer approves that it is only Populetic who can accept any proposal offered by the airline or its representatives. Therefore, the customer authorizes Populetic to accept or reject any offer based on their experience.

4. Fees and commissions 4.1 Populetic will manage the client's claim without any initial cost but will charge for its services in case of success. If Populetic gets compensation for the customer, Populetic will be entitled to charge a service fee of 25% of the compensation obtained plus the I.V.A. correspondent. In the event that Populetic would have needed to take legal action to obtain compensation, Populetic will charge an additional commission for legal actions of 8% of the compensation obtained + VAT, which will be deducted from the client's compensation together with the service commission. 4.2 If the client receives the financial compensation directly from the airline or the Court, the latter is obliged to inform Populetic and pay the agreed fees. In the event that the client does not inform Populetic of the income received, it will be understood that he has acted in bad faith and negligence and, equally, he will have to pay the corresponding fees. 4.3 The client can cancel his claim at any time as long as the service has not been executed, although he will have to pay Populetic the services actually performed, which are valued at 50 EUR until the filing of the lawsuit or 25% of the requested amount from filing lawsuit. Likewise, the indicated amounts will be paid if there is duplication of claims or negligence on the part of the CLIENT. 4.4 The judicial process will be understood as initiated from the moment that Populetic has presented the judicial demand. In most cases, it will not be necessary to hold a hearing, so there will be no extraordinary expenses of the Attorney or Notary. It will only be necessary to hold a hearing if the airline or the Judge requests that it be held. In this sense, the client agrees to go to the hearing and/or to grant, if necessary, power of attorney for lawsuits or apud acta (the client must go to court). If, for whatever reason, the client is unable to attend, Populetic may represent the client through a Procurator with expenses that may be passed on to the client, although he will not be obliged to do so. The client's unwarranted failure to appear at the hearing entitles Populetic to claim his fees based on the amount of the amount claimed. If, due to the client's failure to appear at the hearing, the airline obtained a favorable court order, the client would bear the legal costs of the process. 4.5 In case of reaching an agreement with the air carrier in which, in addition to the payment of the claimed amount, the payment of legal fees and / or other expenses is agreed, the client gives Populetic the credit that has been generated in his favor by these concepts. 4.6 In case of obtaining an estimated judgment in which, in addition to the payment of the amount claimed, the company is ordered to pay interest and procedural costs, the client assigns to Populetic the decision to liquidate them and the credit that has been generated in his favor. for this concept. On the contrary, if the claim were unsuccessful and the company achieved an order in costs, Populetic would assume the expenses, so that the client does not have to pay anything. 4.7 From the signing of the authorization and/or mandate document, the client agrees to assume the costs of the claim as well as the agreed fees, even when he accepts any compensation offered by the airline, either with or without the intervention of Populetic and/or against his advice. 4.8 If the client provides insufficient or erroneous information necessary for the payment of compensation, Populetic has the right to deduct external costs imposed, in addition to the agreed commission. If after successive reminders and reasonable efforts on the part of Populetic to contact the client, the latter does not respond or does not provide the information required for the payment of the agreed part of the compensation, Populetic will have the right to reserve the part of the compensation that in other circumstances would have been transferred to the client. Populetic will make at least three attempts to contact the Client at the email address or telephone number provided. After this period, the total claimed amount will become Populetic's property. 4.9 When Populetic, the airline or the Court, have made the payment of the compensation to the client, Populetic will no longer be responsible for: 1) Checks, prepaid debit cards, credit cards or similar.

2) No effect derived from the client giving wrong bank information or address, including but not limiting, the compensation paid to a wrong recipient. Therefore, if the compensation has been paid to another recipient due to the client's error, Populetic is not obliged to actively claim it. 4.10 No interest can be claimed for the period between the entry and exit of the payment. Populetic reserves the right to withhold any interest that has been recovered from the airline. 4.11 No invoice will be provided by default for the service provided and commission charged, but it can be requested and sent by email. 4.12 Populetic will not be responsible for any amount of compensation, damages or the like, if it has an impediment to transfer the payment to the client due to an event beyond its control, including without limitation, strike, closure, labor dispute, cause of force majeure, war, riot, social unrest, willful harm, compliance with a government law or order, rule, regulation or guideline, accident, damage to plant or machinery, fire, flood or storm.

5. Data protection Populetic will only use the personal data provided by the client for the purpose of processing the claim in accordance with the legislation in force in Spain and the European Union, in particular with Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, concerning the protection of natural persons in the area of concerning the processing of personal data and the free movement of such data and its implementing regulations. The customer provides Populetic with the explicit permission to process the data provided and for the use thereof in the context of the contractual relationship. Populetic will only transfer personal data to third parties under the following conditions: 1) If it is for a purpose directly related to the original purpose for which the data were collected;

(2) If necessary for the preparation, negotiation and performance of a contract with the client;

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(4) If it is required for the establishment or protection of legal claims in respect of legal actions;

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7. Withdrawal Policy The CLIENT has a period of 14 days to exercise his right of withdrawal without any cost and without the need to specify any reason. POPULETIC puts at your disposal a downloadable model on their website. 7.2 To exercise his right to revoke his consent, the customer must state unequivocally that he wishes to cancel the claim. The communication should be addressed to CUSTOMER CARE TECHNOLOGIES S.L., Calle Rambla Iberia, 97 CP: 08205 Sabadell (Barcelona), e-mail info.en@populetic.com or fax 0034 933 969 865. 7.3 The Customer may not revoke the acceptance of the agreement if the carrier has informed Populetic of the acceptance of the claim, as in that case the service requested would have been completed.
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CNN, November 2, 2021

By Anna Coren, Jessie Yeung and Abdul Basir Bina

(CNN)Parwana Malik, a 9-year-old girl with dark eyes and rosy cheeks, giggles with her friends as they play jump rope in a dusty clearing.

But Parwana's laughter disappears as she returns home, a small hut with dirt walls, where she's reminded of her fate: she's being sold to a stranger as a child bride.

The man who wants to buy Parwana says he's 55, but to her, he's "an old man" with white eyebrows and a thick white beard, she told CNN on October 22. She worries he will beat her and force her to work in his house.

But her parents say they have no choice.For four years, her family have lived in an Afghan displacement camp in northwestern Badghis province, surviving on humanitarian aid and menial work earning a few dollars a day. But life has only gotten harder since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan on August 15.As international aid dries up and the country's economy collapses, they're unable to afford basic necessities like food. Her father already sold her 12-year-old sister several months ago.

Parwana is one of many young Afghan girls sold into marriage as the country's humanitarian crisis deepens. Hunger has pushed some families to make heartbreaking decisions, especially as the brutal winter approaches.

The parents gave CNN full access and permission to speak to the children and show their faces, because they say they cannot change the practice themselves.

"Day by day, the numbers are increasing of families selling their children," said Mohammad Naiem Nazem, a human rights activist in Badghis. "Lack of food, lack of work, the families feel they have to do this."

An impossible choice

Abdul Malik, Parwana's father, can't sleep at night. Ahead of the sale, he told CNN he's "broken" with guilt, shame and worry.

He had tried to avoid selling her -- he traveled to the provincial capital city Qala-e-Naw to search unsuccessfully for work, even borrowing "lots of money" from relatives, and his wife resorted to begging other camp residents for food.But he felt he had no choice if he wants to feed his family.

"We are eight family members," he told CNN. "I have to sell to keep other family members alive."

The money from Parwana's sale will only sustain the family for a few months, before Malik has to find another solution, he said.Parwana said she hoped to change her parents' minds -- she had dreams of becoming a teacher, and didn't want to give up her education. But her pleas were futile.

On October 24, Qorban, the buyer, who only has one name, arrived at her home and handed 200,000 Afghanis (about $2,200) in the form of sheep, land and cash to Parwana's father.

Qorban didn't describe the sale as a marriage, saying he already had a wife who would look after Parwana as if she were one of their own children."(Parwana) was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money," Qorban said. "She will be working in my home. I won't beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind."Parwana, dressed in a black head covering with a colorful floral garland around her neck, hid her face and whimpered as her weeping father told Qorban: "This is your bride. Please take care of her -- you are responsible for her now, please don't beat her."

Qorban agreed, then gripped Parwana's arm and led her out the door. As they left, her father watching by the doorway, Parwana dug her feet into the dirt and tried to pull away -- but it was no use. She was dragged to the waiting car, which slowly pulled away.

'Absolutely cataclysmic'

Since the Taliban's takeover, stories like Parwana's have been on the rise.Though marrying off children under 15 is illegal nationwide, it has been commonly practiced for years, especially in more rural parts of Afghanistan. And it has only spread since August, driven by widespread hunger and desperation.More than half the population is facing acute food insecurity, according to a United Nations report released this week. And more than 3 million children under age 5 face acute malnutrition in the coming months. All the while, food prices are soaring, banks are running out of money and workers are going unpaid.

Nearly 677,000 people have been displaced this year due to fighting, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Many of them live in tents and huts in internal displacement camps like Parwana's family.

"It's absolutely cataclysmic," said Heather Barr, associate director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch. "We don't have months or weeks to stem this emergency ... we are in the emergency already."The problem is particularly acute for Afghan girls, who have stayed home and watched their brothers return to secondary school since the Taliban takeover. The Taliban said it is working on a plan to allow girls to return too, but have not said when that could happen or what conditions may be imposed.

The uncertainty combined with rising poverty has pushed many girls into the marriage market.

"As long as a girl is in school, her family is invested in her future," said Barr, from Human Rights Watch. "As soon as a girl falls out of education, then suddenly it becomes much more likely that she's going to be married off."And once a girl is sold as a bride, her chances of continuing an education or pursuing an independent path are close to zero.

Instead, she faces a much darker future. Without access to contraception or reproductive health services, nearly 10% of Afghan girls aged 15 to 19 give birth every year, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

Many are too young to be able to consent to sex and face complications in childbirth due to their underdeveloped bodies -- pregnancy-related mortality rates for girls aged 15 to 19 are more than double the rate for women aged 20 to 24, according to UNFPA.

'I don't want to leave my parents'

Magul, a 10-year-old girl in neighboring Ghor province, cries every day as she prepares to be sold to a 70-year-old man to settle her family's debts. Her parents had borrowed 200,000 Afghanis ($2,200) from a neighbor in their village -- but without a job or savings, they have no way of returning the money.

The buyer had dragged Magul's father, Ibrahim, to a Taliban prison and threatened to have him jailed for failing to repay his debt. Ibrahim, who only goes by one name, said he promised the buyer he would pay in a month. But now time is up."I don't know what to do," Ibrahim said. "Even if I don't give him my daughters, he will take them."

Magul's mother, Gul Afroz, feels just as helpless. "I'm praying to God these bad days pass," she said.Like Qorban, the buyer claimed he would not mistreat Magul and that she would simply help with cooking and cleaning at his home. But the reassurances ring hollow in the face of his threats against Magul's family.

"I really don't want him. If they make me go, I will kill myself," Magul said, sobbing as she sat on the floor of her home. "I don't want to leave my parents."It's a similar situation for a nine-member family in Ghor province that is selling two daughters aged 4 and 9. The father has no job, like most in the displacement camp -- but he faces even tougher odds with a disability.

He is prepared to sell the girls for 100,000 Afghanis (about $1,100) each. Zaiton, the 4-year-old, with wispy bangs and large brown eyes, said she knows why this is happening: "Because we are a poor family and we don't have food to eat."Their grandmother, Rokhshana, is distraught."If we have food and there is someone to help us, we would never do this," Rokhshana said through tears. "We don't have any choice."

International funding dried up

Local Taliban leaders in Badghis say they plan to distribute food to stop families selling their daughters. "Once we implement this plan, if they continue to sell their kids we will put them in jail," said Mawlawai Jalaludin, a spokesperson from the Taliban's Justice Department, without elaborating.

But the problem stretches beyond just Badghis. And as winter approaches, both the Taliban and humanitarian groups are pleading for more aid, hoping it could stem the rise in child marriages.The Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan as the United States and its allies withdrew prompted the international community to halt development assistance -- money that had been vital in propping up the country's economy and key services.

Countries and multilateral institutions have been reluctant to renew pledges for fear of appearing to legitimize the Taliban as Afghanistan's leaders.With the country's economy close to collapse, UN donors pledged more than $1 billion in humanitarian aid in September, of which $606 million would meet Afghans' most pressing needs. But less than half those pledged funds have been received, with some member states who have not yet paid, according to a UNOCHA spokesperson.Several of the families and experts CNN spoke with expressed frustration at the shortage of aid during the country's direst hour.

Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, head of office at UNOCHA, emphasized that humanitarian aid workers were still on the ground, providing relief and supporting hospitals -- but it's not enough."By not releasing the (development) funds that they are holding from the Taliban government, it's the vulnerable, it's the poor, it's these young girls who are suffering," Carlsen said.Barr and Carlsen acknowledged the need for world leaders to hold the Taliban accountable for human rights violations -- but they warned the longer Afghanistan goes without development assistance or injected liquidity, the more families face death by starvation, and the more girls are likely to be sold.

The Taliban has also appealed for aid. "The Taliban is asking aid agencies to come back to Afghanistan and help these people," said one Taliban director of an internal displacement camp in Ghor province. "I'm requesting the international community and aid agencies, before the winter comes, to please come and help."

Back in the Afghan displacement camp in Badghis province, Malik is under no illusions about what the sale means for his daughter -- or what the grim situation means for his family's future.Qorban said he will use his daughter as a worker not a bride, but Malik knows he has no control over what happens to her now.

"The old man told me, 'I'm paying for the girl. It's none of your business what I'm doing with her ... that's my business,'" Malik told CNN.The ominous warning weighs heavily on him as he considers the bleak days ahead. The cold is creeping in, and snow has already begun coating parts of the country. When the money from Parwana's sale runs out, he will be back at square one -- with three daughters and a son still at home to support.

"As I can see, we don't have a future -- our future is destroyed," he said. "I will have to sell another daughter if my financial situation doesn't improve -- probably the 2-year-old."
Independent Persian (Translated by RAWA), November 3, 2021

Relatives of a woman activist say that corpses of their daughter and three other girls are found in a pit near the Khalid ibn al-Walid town in Mazar-e-Sharif.

One of the victims is Forouzan Safi, a 30-year-old woman. Forouzan was active in civil and advocacy activities for women and taught at a private university in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Engineer Abdul Rahman Safi, Forouzan Safi's father, told to reporter of the Independent Persian that his daughter left home at 2pm on Wednesday, October 27, after receiving a call to take her travel documents along. She told her family members that she was going to go abroad with the help of a human rights organization. "Two hours after Forouzan left the house, her connection with us was cut off," said Abdul Rahman Safi. "During the search and search for her, we went to the city's central hospital and found her dead body, which showed signs of multiple bullets on her body, in the hospital morgue."

Abdul Rahman Safi did not elaborate on the details due to the threats his family faces. He added that it was still unclear who or what group was responsible for the crime.

"My wife, Forouzan Safi, and three girls who were civil activists in Mazar-e-Sharif were shot dead on suspicion," Mohammad Saber Bator, Forouzan Safi's fiancee, who fled to Iran after the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif to the Taliban, told The Independent. . "No one is responsible for this crime and no institution is listening to us."

The identities of the other three victims have not yet been determined, and no local Taliban officials in Mazar-e-Sharif have commented.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
It is Diwali, and the entire country is busy celebrating the festival of lights, except for a small village in Andhra Pradesh. Just like for the past nearly 200 years this year too, there are no Diwali celebrations in Ponnanapalem village of Srikakulam.

According to village elders some two hundred years ago a baby died of snakebite and two oxen also lost their lives on the day of Nagula Chavithi.

Thinking that the celebration of Nagula Chavithi and Diwali caused the death, the then village heads imposed a ban on the two celebrations.

And through the generations it still continues.
Page Content

On Monday, November 1, the Constitutional Court did not support the request filed by the Ombudsman of Sint Maarten on April 26, concerning the three temporary national ordinances to cut the employment benefits of civil servants, (semi) public sector workers and political authorities. The three contested national ordinances were issued by the government of Sint Maarten on July 1, 2020, and passed in Parliament on February 3, 2021.





During Mondays ruling, the Constitutional Court stated, The Court is fully aware that the measures laid down in the national ordinances are far-reaching and have unexpected and serious consequences for many. No government would like to take such measures, but the Government and the Parliament of St. Maarten were in a major dilemma. To keep the country going, a lot of money was needed that simply was not there. That money could only be borrowed from the Netherlands under certain conditions - now detailed in the contested regulations. After all, in crisis situations such as the present, Parliament and the Government have to act within the limits of their powers as laid down in the Constitution. In the opinion of the Constitutional Court, Government has done so, and has not acted unconstitutionally.





The government of Sint Maarten has done all that it could to avoid cutting into the basic salaries of its civil servants. Other cost-cutting measures were also sought and implemented which included the reduction of phone call and data usage, the introduction of gas cards instead of gas bons, reduction in travel expenditure as well as the reduction in redundancy pay for political authorities. As such, We will be meeting with civil servants, this week and the unions the following week to discuss what this means for the civil servants who are affected and for the implementation of the new national ordinances. As strongly emphasized by the Court this government will continue to consider the human dimension when making decisions on the next steps forward, stated Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs.
The following excerpts adapted from Athens: City of Wisdom published in the UK by Head of Zeus

by Bruce Clark

When students in the Western world are introduced to global history, they are often told that civilization owes a particular debt to events which unfolded on two stony citadels in different parts of the eastern Mediterranean. At least physically, the two places have something in common. Both these natural formations surge dramatically out of the ground, rising to outcrops which are naturally flattish and can be made flatter still. Both have been defensive strongholds, blessed with secure water supplies, though neither in the end proved unassailable. Despite these common features, their significance has been understood in very different ways.

One is Jerusalems Temple Mount, seen as the home of monotheism, and the other is the Acropolis of Athens, whose monuments are revered as a testament to human reason, skill and freedom. This book will be about one of those citadels, and the civilization that arose around it, although currents flowing from the two places did eventually swirl together.

The plaza which dominates the Old City of Jerusalem is revered, of course, for its spiritual history, as a locus of carefully orchestrated encounter between man and a single Deity. The other citadel is associated by most modern admirers with a different story, one that focuses more on earthly achievement. The shimmering marble structures which crown the Acropolis are admired as the most tangible survival of a society where mankind, so to speak, stood on its own feet. In todays understanding of things, ancient Athens compels respect as a cradle of humanism.

This was a society, it seems, where instead of bowing meekly before one or more gods, brilliant minds engaged in deliberation whose outcome was genuinely open. A community where weighty matters of war and peace, as well as routine daily administration, were tackled through the interplay of well-trained intellects that knew how to assess arguments and draw conclusions. With approval, modern historians note what seems like an emerging, secular sophistication in the Athenians understanding of their own collective story: not as a capricious game acted out by divine powers, but rather as an interplay of human motives which may be complex but can ultimately be dissected and described. Contemporary admirers also love the fact that Athens had well-crafted laws and institutions whose very purpose was to transcend the personal vicissitudes of clever, ambitious individuals, and the whims of jealous deities, and instead serve the broad public interest in a consistent way. Days before handing over the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016, Barack Obama visited the Acropolis and observed warmly that it was here twenty-five centuries ago, in the rocky hills of this city, that a new idea emerged. The name of that idea, he enthused, was demokratia in other words a system where kratos, the power to rule, came from the demos, the people.





As a description of the Athenian golden age and its ideals, all that is more true than false. But it also leaves out an important aspect of the citys legacy: ancient Athens never ceased to be an intensely spiritual place, a space where the transcendental seemed ever-present. True enough, the modern mind fixates on the human achievements of ancient Athens. It marvels at the logistical and practical skill that was required to haul so much shining marble up a steep hill and then fashion the glistening white rock into structures that enchant us with a false appearance of symmetry. Like medieval cathedrals, these monuments required a huge input of human brain-power, applied to engineering, geometry and the properties of stone. But just as the modern mind finds it hard to imagine the spiritual ideals which underpinned those cathedrals, it also underestimates the spiritual aspect of the Acropolis.

In fact, neither ancient Athens as a whole, nor its greatest monuments, was a secular space in the sense we now understand. The finest monument of all, the Parthenon, was not a parliament building but a temple, in the particular sense that the ancient Greeks gave the word: not a place to pray or sacrifice (that happened outdoors, nearby) but a building that housed a sacred statue whose creation and installation was in itself an act of piety.

The whole complex erected on the Acropolis was a giant statement of homage and thanks to Athena, the citys protectress, and to other deities. It was not just the structures on top of the citadel that were invested with holiness. The geological formation was known as the Hiera Brakhos, the sacred rock. Democratic debates happened not on the Acropolis but on a nearby hill, the Pnyx, which attracts too few visitors. Moreover, a remarkably high proportion of the democratic assemblys business consisted of micromanaging public religious practices: which sacrifices should be made to which gods and where.

Whatever their penchant for rational investigation, the ancient Athenians resembled and often outdid their fellow Hellenes in having an intense feeling for the numinous. That is what makes their story so interesting and elusive. For them it came naturally to think of certain features of the natural world, from springs to entire mountains, as liminal spots, locations where mankind stood at the boundary between everyday reality and some transcendent world. The best Athenian citizens certainly did have powerful, reasoning, self-critical minds, but they also had a highly charged sense of the spiritual.

It is not hard to see why the Acropolis was always perceived as one intensely liminal place, by virtue of its form and location. It overlooks a well-watered plain, surrounded by four great mountains as well as smaller hills. In ancient times, all these peaks abounded in beautiful vegetation. Mount Hymettus, to the east, was prized for its honey, Mount Pentelikon for its exceptionally pure marble. The sea sparkles at a safe distance: close enough to be convenient, but far enough away to avoid the city becoming a sitting target for maritime invaders. A series of natural, defensible harbours can be made out on the horizon. It seems entirely natural to give thanks for the very existence of a such a magnificent place.

But the way in which holiness, including the sanctity of certain locations, was understood by the ancient Greeks seems like the very opposite of monotheistic. For them, human destinies were guided not by a single, almighty Power but by a perpetual negotiation between human beings and an array of deities. The most important were twelve in number, but the list could easily be lengthened, and each deity had multiple manifestations, linked to particular places, communities or aspects of a turbulent personality. The gods were powerful and immortal, but very human in their passions and failings. The establishment of new cults was a creative, almost entrepreneurial, business. Ancient Greek religion, like ancient Greek politics, was irrepressibly prolix.

The Athenian Acropolis, including its underbelly and its inspiring surroundings, offered plenty of scope for ingenuity in the establishment of cults and focal points for religious energy, places that served to hold society together in common moments of ecstasy. The fortress itself was a honeycomb of caves and springs, and there are perfectly good geological reasons for this. The top layer of the Acropolis consists of limestone, formed more than 100 million years ago by the decaying shells of crustaceans from a long-vanished sea. Beneath there is marl and sandstone, which was formed 30 million years later. Vast tectonic forces, pushing Africa closer to Europe and Asia, forced the limestone above the marl. This limestone, although very hard, is also porous. With its faintly acidic content, rainwater can find places to seep through, until it reaches the impenetrable bedrock below. As a result, the whole rock is latticed with caves, fissures and springs. These have served practical purposes as well as firing the spiritual imagination of countless generations.

We do not know much about the religious practices of  or indeed anything much at all about  the first people who explored this rock and its cavities. But one of the oldest objects discovered in the vicinity of the Acropolis is a plump female figure, dating from before 4000 BCE, which hints at an agricultural society where fertility and reproduction were particularly revered. Almost all the societies that occupied the place in later eras gave greater weight to sky-gods or mountain-gods with masculine characteristics, or else to goddesses who had rather male qualities. Whole theories of religion have been built around this contrast, although it is dangerous to read too much into a single archaeological find.

One thing we do know about those Neolithic people is that they knew where to find and extract water. Some twenty-two shallow wells, dating from 3500 BCE to 3000 BCE, have been identified on the north-western edge of the Acropolis. The societies that dug these wells vanished in the subsequent millennium, but human settlement reappears in the Middle Bronze Age, from 2000 BCE; and sometime between 1400 BCE and 1300 BCE, Athens began playing its part in the great Mycenaean civilization which burst forth in the form of royal courts dotted across the Greek world.

The fortified palace on the Athens Acropolis was not the greatest of these courts, but by 1250 BCE it boasted impressive walls, up to 10 metres tall and 5 metres thick, parts of which can still be seen. These immense piles of stone are known as the Cyclopean walls because later generations felt they could only have been heaved into place by a mythical colossus, like the one-eyed giant or Cyclops described in Homers epic poetry. Artists impressions of the palace suggest a magnificent, multi-floored complex where a king was in command of a busy bureaucracy and all kinds of merchandise were imported, processed and exported. But these are all guesses, based on the discovery of the defences as well as the foundations of an impressive edifice.

In all probability, the ruler of Mycenaean Athens did not hold sway even over the surrounding region of Attica, where several different fiefdoms, each with its own burial practices, have been identified. Some of these neighbouring micro-kingdoms grew rich from exporting silver and lead from the mines at Laurion in southern Attica. To judge by the paucity of its artefacts and burial sites, however, Mycenaean Athens did not enjoy such prosperity.

There is one particularly impressive well on the north-western side of the Acropolis, known as the Mycenaean spring. It lay at the bottom of a dizzying 35-metre cleft which had opened up when a piece of rock detached itself from the surface. About 1200 BCE, eight flights of steps, some wooden and some stone, were built to provide access for anyone intrepid enough to climb down. It seems to have been used for a mere twenty-five years before the shaft collapsed.

Over the following century, the entire Mycenaean world implodes inexplicably, ushering in what posterity calls a Dark Age. Only about 3,000 years later, when young Greek resistance fighters were looking for a way to challenge the Nazis who had just occupied Athens, did this extraordinary, vertiginous hole in the Rock regain its strategic importance.

Whatever was happening on the surface of the Rock, it is a fair bet that people never stopped exploring caves or wondering about the divinities or half-divine city founders with which these cavities might be connected. Through those caves, early Athenians found ways to understand how their own lives intersected with those of the gods and demigods.

Now, as in ancient times, there is a path called the Peripatos, which simply means a walkway, that encircles part of the Rock and gives a good view of the principal openings. One, called Cave B, was regarded as the place where Apollo, god of light and prophecy, forced himself on Kreousa, a young mortal woman whose father was the city founder, King Erechtheus. The product of this union was a young man called Ion, the forefather of the Ionian Greeks to whom the Athenians felt connected, although most lived on the other side of the Aegean.

The neighbouring Cave C was a dwelling-place for the greatest of sky-gods, Zeus, the hurler of thunderbolts. So vast was his reach that his presence could be felt deep underground as well as hurtling through the heavens. An adjoining cavity, rediscovered only a century ago, has an association with quite specific events in classical Greek history. It was dedicated to Pan, the sensual, cloven-hoofed goat-god, by grateful Athenians who credited him with sowing confusion in the ranks of their Persian invaders in 490 BCE.

Walk a bit further and there is a cave associated with Aphrodite, goddess of love, and her son Eros. At the eastern end of the Rock, beyond easy reach for a walker, is the largest cave of all, 14 metres wide. This one is dedicated to yet another figure from the citys foundation pageant: Aglaurus, a daughter of King Kekrops, who jumped off the Rock to her death in order to save the city. As we shall see, the mythology of early Athens includes several stories of a king (depicted as a half-snake or with snakes) with two or three daughters who jump off the Acropolis to their deaths, saving the city.

The association with the snakes was a way of expressing the Athenians belief that they had emerged from the earth, that they were native to the city and had never lived anywhere else. Snakiness is a characteristic ascribed to kings named as Kekrops, or else Erechtheus or Erichthonius.1 Kekrops is sometimes presented as a forebear of Erechtheus, and Erechtheus as the grandfather of Erichthonius. But in truth they may all be variants on the same shadowy tradition.

Athenians remembered another early king whom they regarded as a real-life figure even though he surpassed other mortals in his strength and ingenuity. Theseus was a kind of superman, whose importance as an Athenian ancestor seemed to increase as the city itself grew in confidence. The story of Theseus is in some ways a grotesque tale of fatherson competition in which the heros mother is relegated to the background.

It starts with Aegeus, an Athenian king who confesses while visiting a fellow monarch, Pittheus of Troezen, that he is unhappy at being childless. Pittheus duly offers the visiting sovereign his daughter Aethra, who soon becomes pregnant, although it is possible that the child she is carrying has been fathered by the sea-god, Poseidon. Aegeus then returns to Athens, having carefully left open the possibility that a son and heir might emerge from his brief liaison. He buries his sandals and a sword under a rock and tells Aethra that when their son grows up, he should move the rock and take the tokens for himself as evidence of his royal parentage. Theseus is raised in Troezen and when he grows up, he duly uncovers the precious objects and heads to Athens to claim his throne. On his journey, he performs six heroic labours, including killing a giant sow and pitching into the sea a bully who made people wash his feet. In the holy city of Eleusis, Theseus sees off a local king who liked to wrestle visitors to the ground and then kill them. But when he arrives in Athens, his father is unimpressed by his feats and fails to recognize him. However, Aegeus wife Medea does recognize Theseus and in order to prevent him from being acknowledged as heir and assuming the kingdom in place of her own son, she tries to poison him.....

CLICK HERE TO BUY YOUR COPY OF THIS BOOK

About the Book: Athens: City of Wisdom tells the tale of a city that occupies a unique place in the cultural memory of the West. Each of the book's twenty-one chapters focuses on a critical 'moment' in the city's long history, from the reforms of the lawmaker Solon in the sixth century BCE to the travails of early twenty-first-century Athens, as a rapidly expanding city struggles with the legacy of a global economic crisis. Bruce Clark has a rich and revealing sequence of stories to tell  not only of the familiar golden age of Classical Athens, of the removal from the Acropolis of the Parthenon marbles by agents of the 7th Earl of Elgin in the early nineteenth century, or of the holding of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896; but also of the less feted later years of antiquity, when St Paul preached on the Areopagus and neo Platonists refounded the Academy that Sulla's legions had desecrated. He also delves into Athens' forgotten medieval centuries, unearthing jewels gleaming in the Byzantine twilight, and tales of Christian fortitude and erratic Turkish governance from the four centuries of Ottoman rule that followed. Few places have enjoyed a history so rich in artistic creativity and the making of ideas as Athens; or one so curiously patterned by alternating cycles of turbulence and quietness. Writing with scholarly rigour and undisguised affection, Bruce Clark brings three thousand years of Athenian history vividly to life.

Copyright  Bruce Clark, 2021
There is a chance we can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but world leaders must hold businesses accountable and listen to Indigenous communities.

by Reynard Loki

It would be an understatement to say that there is a lot riding on COP26, the international climate talks currently being held in Glasgow, Scotland. Officially, the gathering marks the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the third meeting of the parties to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, preferably limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Since 1995, the countries that have signed onto the UNFCCC have met every single year (except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), attempting to come up with an action plan to stem the climate crisis. But still, every year, the worlds greenhouse gas emissions keep going up. And for a fortnight that started on October 31, world leaders will try to come up with an action plan yet again. More than 100 heads of government and some 30,000 delegates are now gathered and deliberating in Glasgow in the most recent international attempt to implement the Paris agreement goals. CNBC called the summit humanitys last and best chance to secure a livable future amid dramatic climate change.

We face a stark choice: Either we stop it or it stops us, said United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his opening remarks at the start of the World Leaders Summit of the COP26. Its time to say enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves We need maximum ambition from all countries on all fronts to make Glasgow a success.

The summit comes just a few months after the August release of a grim report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found that climate change was unequivocally caused by human activity, and that within two decades, rising temperatures will cause the planet to reach a significant turning point in global warming. The reports authorsa group of the worlds top climate scientists convened by the United Nationspredict that by 2040, average global temperatures will be warmer than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, causing more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts and extreme weather events. Guterres called the bleak findings a code red for humanity.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the summit, likened the race to stop climate change to a spy thriller, warning that a red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it. He added, The tragedy is this is not a movie, and the doomsday device is real.

The dire assessment of the state of the planets climate was not lost on U.S. President Joe Biden, who called on world leaders to take aggressive action immediately to stave off the climate crisis in his remarks at the summits opening day. Theres no more time to hang back or sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves, he said. This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, the existential threat to human existence as we know it. And every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases.

But despite all the troubling data and dire warnings, the summit has had a fairly inauspicious start. On October 30, the day before COP26 opened, leaders of the G20 nations19 countries and the European Union, which together are responsible for 80 percent of the worlds emissionssought to bolster international leadership on climate change as they concluded their own meeting in Rome just before the summit in Glasgow. But their deliberations ended with a whimper: a mere reaffirmation of the Paris agreement goals. During the G20 summit, Johnson said that all the world leaders pledges without action were starting to sound hollow, and he criticized the commitments as drops in a rapidly warming ocean. Adding to the disappointment was the fact that the summit was not attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping, even as both Russia and China are among the worlds biggest polluters: Russia and China are respectively responsible for 5 percent and 28 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, respectively. Those two nations have pushed the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 ahead to 2060.

A failure in Glasgow could have grave, cascading consequences. On October 26, the UN Environment Program released a worrying report warning that with climate change intensifying humanity is running out of time due to the climate promises that have been made but have not yet been delivered. Failure to stem the climate crisis would mean less food, so probably a crisis in food security. It would leave a lot more people vulnerable to terrible situations, terrorist groups and violent groups, said UNFCCC executive secretary Patricia Espinosa. It would mean a lot of sources of instability [t]he catastrophic scenario would indicate that we would have massive flows of displaced people.

Were really talking about preserving the stability of countries, preserving the institutions that we have built over so many years, preserving the best goals that our countries have put together, said Espinosa, who took on the UN climate role in 2016. A former minister of foreign affairs of Mexico, Espinosa shares responsibility for the talks with UK cabinet minister Alok Sharma, who serves as the COP26 president. What we need to get at Glasgow are messages from leaders that they are determined to drive this transformation, to make these changes, to look at ways of increasing their ambition, Espinosa said.

In a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology, a group of international scientists found that if the world continues business-as-usual emissions, the impacts of the climate crisis could triple across 45 different life zonesdistinct regions representing broad ecosystem typesacross the planet. The likely future changes in the worlds life zones is likely to have a substantial impact on [peoples] livelihoods and biodiversity, said Dr. Paul Elsen, a climate adaptation scientist at Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and lead author of the study. Large areas of the world are getting hotter and drier and this is already impacting the earths life zones, added Elsen. The researchers predict that more than 42 percent of the planets land area will ultimately be affected if emissions are not significantly reduced. Dr. Hedley Grantham, director of conservation planning at WCS and a co-author of the study, said, COP26 is our best chance of countries committing to reducing emissions and putting us on a better future pathway for climate change and its impacts.

There have, however, been a few bright spots in the early days of the summit. On November 2, world leaders announced new plans to reduce the emissions of methane, a powerful global warming gas that has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. President Biden welcomed the methane agreement, calling it a game-changing commitment, while also announcing that for the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was going to enforce limits on the methane released by existing oil and gas rigs across the United States.

The Biden administration said that the governments vast spending bill would mark the largest effort to combat climate change in American history. But with this critical climate legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, Bidens aggressive target of reducing the United States greenhouse gas emissions by about half of its 2005 levels by the end of this decade will likely have to be pursued through executive actions such as regulations.

And on November 2, more than 100 nations, which together are responsible for about 85 percent of the worlds forests, agreed to a landmark $19 billion plan to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. Prime Minister Johnson said that it is critical for the success of COP26 that we act now and we end the role of humanity as natures conqueror, and instead become natures custodian, adding that [w]e have to stop the devastating loss of our forests, these great teeming ecosystemsthree-trillion-pillared cathedrals of naturethat are the lungs of our planet.

In other welcome news, 14 nations including the United States, working on the sidelines of COP26, backed a Denmark-led initiative to reduce global maritime emissions to zero by 2050. With around 90 percent of world trade transported by sea, global shipping accounts for nearly 3 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to Reuters.

Indeed, non-state actors, i.e., businesses, are key participants in the worlds climate goals. UN chief Guterres said that the private sector has a critical role to play in this fightand the UN will judge the performance of businesses pledges to achieve net-zero emissions. I will establish a group of experts to propose clear standards to measure and analyze net-zero commitments from non-state actors, which will go beyond mechanisms that have been established by the Paris climate accord, he said.

In the U.S., businesses are trying to influence Bidens massive spending plan. Across industries, business groups successfully pushed lawmakers to make significant changes to key sections of the original $3.5 trillion bill. Their lobbying efforts revolved around Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who ultimately sided with the business community on several issues The White House plan does not raise tax rates on corporationskeeping a central part of the GOPs 2017 tax cuts intactin a stunning win for business interests, stated an article in the Hill.

This growing call for action cant be underestimated, writes EFL contributor Patti Lynn, executive director of Corporate Accountability, a consumer advocacy group, in Truthout, referring to the surge in climate activism across the world in recent years. But she also offered a caveat: We need great social and economic change to fully and justly solve the climate crisis, and no change on this scale happens without public engagement fueling the political will to create such changes. But we also must be clear-eyed about what stands in the way of achieving such transformative change. She added that for the world to move from visions to actual policies that are just and effective, we must address the largest obstacle that lies between todays status quo and a livable future for all: the influence of the fossil fuel industry on climate policy.

Rainforest Action Network, a nonprofit environmental group, also trained their sights on the private sector, tweeting, World leaders must meet the climate crisis by holding brands and banks accountable to end fossil fuel expansion and deforestation. But the COP26 homepage suggests a different story: Unilever, Scottish Power, Sainsburys, National Grid, Microsoft, Hitachi and GSK are some of the many corporations that COP26 thanks as principal partners.

And while many private firms, including several of the COP26 partners, have made significant climate commitments, they are often met with criticisms of greenwashingappearing that they are climate-friendly when in fact, the promises are often not regulated by governments and actually not making a dent. Businesses are the big polluters, said Kristian Ronn, CEO and co-founder of Normative, a Swedish startup that has launched a carbon emissions tracker that he says can help end corporate greenwashing. The private sector is responsible for two-thirds of the total emissions, he said. So they need to account for the footprint and mitigate that footprint, because essentially what gets measured gets managed. He added, There are no mechanisms in place to ensure the completeness of the information.

COP26 partner Microsoft, for example, has formed Transform to Net Zero, a new initiative with several other companies, including Nike and Starbucks, to help the private sector achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But as Emily Pontecorvo reports in Grist, Theres one gaping hole that persists in Microsofts climate action, one that the company has been repeatedly criticized for: How can it expect to pull more carbon out of the air than it puts in if its actively helping fossil fuel companies find and pull more oil and gas out of the ground?

As world leaders attempt to hammer out a path to achieve the Paris climate accord goals, they would do well to listen to the worlds Indigenous people, who have been successful caretakers of their ecosystems for many generationsincluding 80 percent of the worlds biodiversity, though they represent just 5 percent of the global populationbut who are suffering on the front lines of the climate fights, from deforestation to rising seas.

Nemonte Nenquimo, leader of the Waorani tribe in the Ecuadorian Amazon, co-founder of the Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance, and an EFL contributor, wrote an open letter to world leaders in 2020 that is even more important today. When you say that the oil companies have marvelous new technologies that can sip the oil from beneath our lands like hummingbirds sip nectar from a flower, we know that you are lying because we live downriver from the spills, writes Nenquimo, who was named one of Times 100 most influential people in the world. When you say that the Amazon is not burning, we do not need satellite images to prove you wrong; we are choking on the smoke of the fruit orchards that our ancestors planted centuries ago. When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuys Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, CounterPunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.
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Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdeb10a40)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdeac30b8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdeb10a40)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdeac30b8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdeb3a950)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdeac30b8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdeac30b8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fde1b5060)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fde1b4b50)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fde1b4b50)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
Canadian special event

Look for special event station VX3INSULIN from Kingston, ON, Canada, to be active between December 1-31st.

Activity is to mark the 100th anniversary of a Canadian team at the University of Toronto's discovery of insulin in the summer of 1921.

Operations will be primarily digital, with FT8 and FT4 being the dominant modes of use.

Other digital modes will be used as conditions permit.

QSL via VE3NOO, direct, by the Bureau or eQSL

OPDX


Pearl Harbor Day Memorial special event

With operating authorization from the Navy's 3rd Fleet Spectrum Manager, the Battleship IOWA Amateur Radio Association (BIARA), Inc. and the IOWA's Innovation and Engineering Team will activate the ship's legacy Navy callsign, NEPM, on December 7th, 2021, in memory of Pearl Harbor Day.

Operation will be between 1600-2359 UTC. NEPM will TRANSMIT on 14781.5 kHz using J3E USB and listen on 14343.0 kHz J3E USB.

Amateurs are reminded that they may NOT transmit on 14781.5 kHz. If there is traffic on 14343.0 kHz, the NEPM operator will advise of an alternate frequency where he is listening.

QSLs will be available if a SASE is provided. NEPM, NI6BB or NE6PM are all listed on QRZ.com and any route

will get your request to the QSL manager.

Please visit BIARA's Web site at (https://biara.org) for more information about radio operations aboard the Battleship IOWA soon to be the home of the National Museum of the Surface Navy

OPDX
US 6th Graders talk to students in England via ham radio Estes Park Trail Gazette report about students at a US school, who recently got their amateur radio licenses and contacted students at a STEAMettes club in Ramsgate, Kent



The Colorado newspaper says:



Three 6th grade students, Carter Gooch KF0FYO, Carrie Leivestad KF0FYS, and Cora Cousineau KF0FYR, along with their teacher Ravi Davis KF0FYL received their ham radio licenses this past summer.



Said Ravi, This was the first out of country contact weve made! We contacted a group of middle school students from the county of Kent in England. We hope to establish a regular pen pal relationship between their STEM students and our STEAM students to share and collaborate in ongoing global challenges and investigations throughout the year, truly connecting ourselves to the rest of the world!



The contact was made possible by the Estes Valley Amateur Radio Club (EVARC) using their Digital Mobile Radios. Last summer a group of students from a middle school in England gave a program for an online ham radio conference.



They demonstrated the sending and receiving of Morse code using electronic devices they built in class. After the program one of our hams got in touch with their teacher, John Hislop G7OHO, and introduced him to EP 6th grade science teacher Ravi Davis. Thus the collaboration began, and a student-to-student radio contact was arranged for October 29th.



The students shared information about what life is like in each of their communities and the similarities and differences between their schools. They discussed the STEAM electronics projects they are doing, some of which are very similar. EVARC really enjoyed this project and hopes to facilitate future contacts between these and other student groups via ham radio.



Source Estes Park Trail

https://www.eptrail.com/2021/11/02/estes-park-6th-graders-talk-to-students-in-england-via-ham-radio/

The STEAMettes

https://www.facebook.com/groups/593638854451664

What is Amateur Radio?

http://www.essexham.co.uk/what-is-amateur-radio



Free UK amateur radio Online Training course

https://essexham.co.uk/train/foundation-online/ What is Amateur Radio?Free UK amateur radio Online Training course
New York (UN), Nov 04, 2021 (SPS) - The Frente POLISARIO Representative at UN and Coordinator with MINURSO, Dr. Sidi Mohamed Omar, confirmed the words spoken yesterday by the representative of the occupying State of Morocco before the UN Commission on Special Policy and Decolonization (Fourth Commission) in its current session are nothing more than pure fabrication..

" Moroccan State ambassador to UN once again resorted to false allegations the decolonization of Western Sahara was completed with the" signing of the Madrid Agreement on November 14, 1975 "and that continuing to address the issue as a matter of decolonization "contradicts the provisions of UN resolutions, especially General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV)."

In statements to SP, Sahrawi diplomat reaffirmed the statement is simply nonsense and, therefore, unfounded for a series of reasons, the first of the which is that the Madrid Agreement (Declaration of Principles of Madrid) signed between Spain, Mauritania and Morocco on November 14, 1975 is a null and void agreement because it violates a binding norm of public international law, the right of colonized peoples to self-determination. In addition, the Agreement also contravenes the historic ruling of the International Court of Justice, the main judicial organ of UN, issued on October 16, 1975, which categorically held that the material and information presented to it do not establish any link of sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco (paragraph 162). SPS

125/090/TRA
Throughout his tenure as president, Macron has said that the key to an ecological future depends on nuclear power.

by Vijay Prashad

On July 28, French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Tahiti and said that France owed a debt to French Polynesia. The debt was related to approximately 200 nuclear tests France conducted in the 118 islands and atolls that comprise this part of the central South Pacific, which France has controlled since 1842. These tests were conducted between 1966 and 1996. Macron did not apologize for the environmental and human damage caused by these tests. He remained stoic, acknowledging that the tests were not clean. I think its true that we wouldnt have done these same tests in the Creuse or in Brittany, he said, referring to parts of territorial France. We did it here because it was farther away, because it was lost in the middle of the Pacific.

EDF's Chooz nuclear power plant in north-eastern France (Image: EDF)

Of course, the people of these islands and atolls are not farther away from the sites where these nuclear tests were conducted. They live there and have suffered from the consequences of these tests. In 2006, Florent de Vathaire, a research director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), looked at the records from Polynesia and found direct evidence ofamong other mattersthyroid cancer due to the nuclear explosions carried out by France. Unutea Hirshon, then president of the commission of inquiry of the French Polynesia Assembly, called upon the French government for transparency. France, she said in 2006, has knowingly concealed the importance and extent of the radioactive fallout following the nuclear tests at Muroroa and Fangataufa. Compensation has been minimal; justice has been absent.

Climate Change and Nuclear Power

Throughout his tenure as president, Macron has said that the key to an ecological future depends on nuclear power. A few days before the opening of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Macron was asked to reflect on Europes crisis over rising natural gas prices (mostly sourced from Russias Gazprom). Its not about whether we are too dependent on a company or not, Macron replied. Its about how to create alternatives. The only alternatives are to have European renewable energies and, of course, European nuclear power.

Germany has to legally phase out nuclear power by 2022. But about half of the countries in the European Union (13 out of 27) continue to have a nuclear energy program. Of them, France generates half the nuclear electricity produced in all of Europe. The European Union does not set policy for nuclear energy beyond the European Atomic Energy Community treaty (Euratom), which was signed in March 1957 to allow for the peaceful development of atomic energy. There is little appetite in most of these nuclear energy states in the EU to decommission reactors. In fact, there is an increasing appetite for them to say that the transition from carbon-based fuel to green fuel should include nuclear power.

There is no uranium in France, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise, a democratic socialist party in France, said to me. We import it mainly from Niger and Kazakhstan. One of every three lightbulbs in France is lit by the yellow-cake uranium from Niger, with the major chunk of the uranium ore coming from the mining sites in Arlit, which is around five hours north of Nigers capital of Agadez. The town is a fortress of European mining companies, from Nigers own government company to a series of French firms, most prominently Areva. The road out of Arlit is known as Uranium Highway. Frances armies have garrisoned the Sahel, from Mauritania at one end to Chad at the other, with Frances Operation Barkhane, which is its counterterrorism military operation (launched in 2014), headquartered in Chads capital of NDjamena. War is what turns on the lights in France.

There is increasingly an echo between the nuclear tests conducted by France at Mururoa and Fangataufa between 1966 and 1996 and the military operations in Niger.

Getting Out of Nuclear Power

Melenchon will run in the presidential election against Macron in April 2022. Part of his campaign is to fight against nuclear power. The energy is not cheaper, he tells me. The current price of nuclear electricity is already higher than many renewables, he says. The cost of disposal and of water to cool reactors is immense and often maintained as externalities by power companies. Nuclear power, Melenchon says, is, like fossil fuels, an energy of the past.

There are three methods to turn the tide, Melenchon says: energy sobriety, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Wind and wave power, as well as solar energy, are necessary options. Getting out of nuclear power is not a technical but a political issue, Melenchon tells me. It is a necessity. The alarming scientific forecasts on climate and on the nuclear threat demand it. We must start right away. No one invented electricity by trying to improve the candle. Radioactivity without danger does not exist any more than the candle without the flame.

If Macron had taken the people of French Polynesia seriously, he might have learned that lesson.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.
Our assessment is loud and clear! Is there a difference between the use of child soldiers by LTTE terrorists to achieve their fascist goals and the exploitation of infants by LTTE sympathizers abroad for their political ends? No.

Editorial

A picture of a small child forced to attend a protest against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa organised by quislings of the vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorist group was published on social media. We think it is important to pay attention to this photo for several reasons. This little girl has no idea about politics and why she was brought to this place. She has no real understanding of the flag she was holding, the flag that symbolizes the LTTE fascism, brutalism, barbarianism and the extermination of other ethnicities. She, unfortunately, is a tool used to please the minds of these cynics who are surrounding her pure soul. She is a tragic victim of these criminals and pseudo activists.

There is a beautiful world to which these little children belong. They must be guided to live freely in their world. That is the conscientious duty of elders. There is no greater sin than using such children for various political purposes.

This is how a gang of murderous pursued by lunatic behaviours abducted the children of innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka and turned them into child soldiers while claiming that they would liberate the Tamil people. A few months ago, a short film named, Truth Behind Dare, was released revealing the crimes committed by the LTTE not only against children but also against animals living in the North and East. No one who knows the truth about the crimes committed by the LTTE against the Tamil people can stand tall for them per their conscience. Almost all the Tamils who wrote and spoke about the criminality of LTTE have been eliminated by the LTTE. Commentary is not required to explain the genocidal crimes committed by the LTTE terrorists. That is the factual truth.

RELATED LINK: WATCH HERE - Truth Behind Dare: Unearthing systematically suppressed plight of humanity ended in 2009

Anyone can use their financial and political power to deceive the world. Also, for their cheap political survival, a British or Canadian or another foreign politician can gain political advantage by presenting his views against Sri Lanka and innocents Tamils who suffered from LTTE for decades by making blatant mendacities. But the people of the North and East know the truth of the land. They are aware of the destruction caused by the LTTE terrorists and Tamil politicians by systematically evaporating their rights. Consequently, caste-based discrimination and other forms of inhuman practices in North and East continue greater than anywhere in the country. But the majority of the Tamil people have a correct understanding of the role of these opportunists who have killed innocent lives.

Children under the LTTE in North and East in Sri Lanka before May 2009. Parents were forced to hand over their kids to LTTE

True liberators carry out revolutions to give people a new dignified life, not to satisfy their cravings through human corpses. It is no secret that the LTTE received mammoth funding to destroy the lives of innocent Tamils in the name of liberation. Those who have been used LTTE terrorists as a tool were well aware that the conflict in Sri Lanka can be used for political gain. Such social unrest and conflicts are essential for them to justify their asylum. This drama continues.

Some time ago, a woman launched a so-called Fast unto Death, urging that she would die if the UK authorities did not take action against Sri Lanka. But no one cared about her fake acting. A mistress of a slain LTTE cadre later went into hiding exposing her hypocrisy and falsehood. It is a true behavioural image of these so-called Tamil Diaspora gangs who make every effort to deceive foreigners. Truth is that this tiny gang of LTTE sympathizers who introduced themselves as Tamil Diaspora is vehemently rejected even by ordinary Tamils living abroad. These terrorist sympathizers are nothing but quislings who are plotting to destroy the Tamils within.

It is not surprising that these gangs are still using the false information generated and propagated by the murderous LTTE terrorist group for their livelihood. That is for their dependence. They do not hesitate to manipulate and brainwash even their young kids. They have no ambition or plan to improve the lives of the innocent Tamils in this country. Ironically, the LTTE was vanquished with the full support of the Tamils living in the country. So, instead of ruining the lives of children in the North and East by hanging cyanide capsules and guns, they were able to pave the way to school. They were allowed to see a new world. In such a scenario, many of these teenagers carrying the used flag of the mentally retarded LTTE terrorists and shouting do not even have a general understanding of Sri Lanka and the Tamils living in this country.

Our assessment is loud and clear! Is there a difference between the use of child soldiers by LTTE terrorists to achieve their fascist goals and the exploitation of infants by LTTE sympathizers abroad for their political ends? No. All they do is play tragically with the lives of children. All they are doing is abusing the lives of young children. Aren't you ashamed to lie and manipulate these beautiful souls like flower buds?
The Big 5 Construct Kenya is set to welcome over 100 exhibitors from Germany, Italy, Finland, Egypt, the UAE even as the nation has in the pipeline more than $50 billion of known planned and unawarded projects.

The timely event returns as Projects Data and Intelligence Partner, MEED Projects, reveal Kenya to be one of the most vibrant and diverse projects markets in Africa. The report highlights more than $2 billion worth of major projects currently out to bid in the country across different sectors and counties despite Covid-19 impact, led by the nine main packages on the Isiolo to Mandera road package.

Heavyweights signed up to exhibit include Liebherr, Wilo, Gamma, CGM, Elematic, Mapei, Sika, Rockal, Cleopatra Group and more. The show is on track to take place in person from November 24 to 26, 2021 at the Sarit Expo Centre, Nairobi, announce organisers dmg events.

In addition, the event will offer 20 exclusive and free-to-attend CPD-certified Talks presenting a unique opportunity for the construction community to stay up to date on trends in the sector.

Representatives from industry associations PMI Kenya, BIM Africa and KGBS will be speaking across key themes including Sustainability, Architecture & Design, Technology and Project Management.

Vital trading opportunities alongside educational seminars make The Big 5 Construct Kenya an unmissable business event for the construction sector in the wake of Covid-19 disruption.

Muhammed Kazi, Vice President at dmg events reports the future pipeline in Kenya and foresees powerful face-to-face connections as being key for the sectors continued development.-- TradeArabia News Service
The World Logistics Passport (WLP) continues to expand its global footprint by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Azerbaijan Investment Holding (AIH). This will provide the opportunity to Azerbaijan to benefit from the global freight loyalty programme as a perspective Gateway Country.

The WLP is a global, private sector-led, initiative designed to smooth the flow of world trade. It operates as an incentive-based loyalty programme that rewards traders and freight forwarders for high levels of trade by unlocking market access to new and existing trading routes.

Participation in the WLP will offer Azerbaijani traders and freight forwarders the opportunity to access a global network of benefits for more cost-effective and efficient cargo trade. Direct benefits include fast-tracking of cargo movement, reducing administrative costs, advancing cargo information, and facilitating trade across borders.

Furthermore, traders will be able to enjoy access to international trading routes, as well as benefit from the sharing of knowledge with state-of-the-art trade and logistics capabilities, as provided by other global WLP Partners. With the WLPs global network, Azerbaijani traders can expect to have greater access to markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The MoU was signed by Ruslan Alikhanov, Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Management Board of AIH and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World. Mikayil Jabbarov, Minister of Economy of the Republic of Azerbaijan and other high-level representatives from both countries attended the signing.

Bin Sulayem said: The advantages for Azerbaijan of being part of the WLP global network include an increase in and diversification of trade through the development of new international trade routes, while the strengthened connection with Dubai will help deepen the rapidly growing Emirati-Azeri trading relationship.

Alikhanov said: Signing of this MoU will open up new opportunities in the field of transport, transit and logistics, revealing the entire transit potential of the country. This partnership will expand Azerbaijans multi-modal transportation opportunities and AIH as a coordinating partner will support local traders to easily access global business markets.

AIH is a public legal entity that was established according to the Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan dated August 7, 2020. AIHs aim is to improve the management system and operation of state-owned companies and enterprises, as well as business entities with a share of state capital, given under its governance based on common principles, improving performance, as well as increasing transparency and economic efficiency of their investment programmes, assuring their competitiveness, improving their financial health and standing.-- TradeArabia News Service
Mena Cargo, a new cargo airline with Bahrain as its hub and planned operational expansion to Saudi Arabia and South East Asia, started commercial operations from November 1.

The key strategic objective will be serving markets throughout Mena Cargos global network together with support from global cargo integrators, cargo freight agents, cargo charter requests and logistic suppliers.

Mena Cargo aims to complement the other large air cargo operators in the region, working with them rather than against them as direct competitors.

Weve looked at the regional markets; where is the growth, where are the gates to the global markets. The growth weve seen is mainly in the Gulf area, Africa and SE Asia. So, our thought process was, lets try to link these markets and lets serve these markets, said Dr Mohammed Juman, Mena Aerospace Enterprises Founder and Managing Director.

Brian Hogan, Board Member of Mena Aerospace Enterprises WLL and MAE Aircraft Management WLL, and Business Development Independent Director, said: Clearly, we are in the right place at the right time. Cargo is going through the roof if we had more planes now we think we could fly them continuously 24 hours a day.

We think well have the opportunity to partner with a lot of operators out there with their passenger aircraft in the meantime as a bridge [until more aircraft are added to the fleet].

The strategy is simple but complicated: we can use Bahrain as our hub, have 3-4 aircraft here, move into Saudi, and then move into South East Asia. We havent decided yet, but the hub in SE Asia could be Thailand, Singapore or Malaysia, said Hogan.

Peter Hewett, General Manager of MAE Aircraft Management WLL, said: The vision is very clear. We are a new entrant into the Bahrain market as a cargo carrier, but we are not a new entrant to the industry, because we have a vast amount of experience within the team.

Were going to take that experience and expand it through different stages of our growth; which will include our IT development, the business development, and also the expansion across the network. The three hubs that were looking at across the network actually link together, so it makes this a seamless business model.

Key trade lanes identified for maximising air cargo carrier connectivity include:

 Nigeria for West Africa;

 Hong Kong for Asia;

 East Coast USA; and

 Mainly Saudi Arabia for Middle East.

THE FLEET

All aircraft are on operating leases. Mena Cargo has not ruled out purchasing aircraft in the future.

Mena Cargo currently has one Boeing 737-300 converted freighter, with a payload capacity of up to 17,000 kgs, in its fleet. It is in final discussions to secure a second within a year.

As part of its strategic partnership, the airline has entered into a one-year charter agreement with Euro Atlantic for a Boeing 777-200ER which is P2F type aircraft, with the likelihood of more aircraft being added soon.

Additionally it has access to a 767-300ER is currently being used on an ad hoc basis, but Mena Cargo is looking at options to take this on for a longer period of time.

Furthermore, negotiations have begun for an additional Boeing 737 NG cargo aircraft, which would offer an increased payload with an extended operating range.

To serve the Bahrain market, a Boeing 737-8F with a capacity of up to 22 tonnes will be added by January. A further two aircraft of this type are expected to be added to the fleet in the second and third quarters next year.

The makeup of the fleet will be continually adapted to best serve demand and emerging opportunities. In particular, additional aircraft will be added in the medium term in order to service the Saudi Arabian and South East Asian markets and capitalise on the huge growth of e-commerce occurring throughout the world.-- TradeArabia News Service
The Nuclear Regulatory Council of Turkey has given the go-ahead for the construction of a fourth reactor at the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Mersin Province in the country's southeast.

The unit will be built by Akkuyu Nuclear, a subsidiary of Russian nuclear engineer Rosatom, and will be the final phase of the $20 billion project, reported GCR.

Rosatom ranks third worldwide in terms of nuclear power generation, and holds the worlds largest portfolio of foreign construction projects.

Russia is responsible for financing, designing, building, maintaining and operating the plant, and will also decommission it at the end of its 60 year service life.

Preparatory work, including engineering surveys and excavation of over 650 sq m, have already been carried out on the basis of a limited construction permit issued in June.

"By the end of this year," Rosatom said, "the construction of the concrete base of the foundation slabs of the reactor and turbine buildings is expected to start. The foundation slabs will then be reinforced."

The plant will then be ready for the official start of construction, which is the pouring of first safety-related concrete, the foundation slab.

With the construction of unit 4, Akkuyu will become the largest nuclear construction site in the world, Rosatom said, with four large reactors under construction at the same time.

The agreement to build a nuclear plant at Akkuyu, signed in May 2010, envisaged four VVER-1200 reactors with a total capacity of 4.8GW, equal to about 10% of Turkeys average demand. Work on the third unit began in March,

The approval process required 120 licences and permits from Turkish government agencies. These include the environmental impact assessment, the electricity generation licence and a number of power unit construction licences.
DoubleTree by Hilton Sharjah Waterfront Hotel and Residences has announced its leadership team in light of its opening on October 26.

The multi-national team, led by General Manager Vikram Jamwal, features a broad range of industry talent with strong female representation, from countries spanning Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, and Russia.

With women accounting for 60% of the leadership team, some noteworthy appointments include Fatuma Abdul as the first female Head of Security at Hilton in the UAE; Amna Alraeesi as the first Emirati Sales Lead at Hilton in the UAE; and Nadia Kaser heading up a 100% female commercial team.

Jamwal, a German national of Indian origin, has a wealth of industry experience across the European, African, Asian and Middle Eastern markets  most recently he served as General Manager at Hilton Durban, South Africa.

Katia Kosynska, Front Office Manager, previously worked at Waldorf Astoria Ras Al Khaimah and Hilton Doha before joining Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort & Spa.

Kaser, Commercial Manager, has worked across three continents for various brands over the last decade. Liana Julius, Executive Housekeeper, previously worked at Hilton Durban, South Africaand Natalia Krutova, F&B Manager, has over 11 years of experience in the food and beverage sector. Collectively, the leadership team brings more than 65 years of hospitality experience.

The DoubleTree by Hilton Sharjah Waterfront Hotel and Residences team is truly multi-national, with the wider hotel team hailing from over 30 countries and speaking an impressive 20 languages. With the opening just having taken place last week, the team are excited to welcome their first guests to the stylish property. - TradeArabia News Service
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has used WTM London to tell the trade it is ready to welcome international tourists.

Saudi Tourism Authority CEO Fahd Hamidaddin told a packed audience at the WTM Global Stage: Our ambitions are high. We are seeing far.

He said the destination is aiming to achieve 100 million visits by the end of 2030.

In a session entitled 'Saudi Arabia: A Destination of the Future  Putting Sustainability First', Hamidaddin issued a challenge to other destinations, saying: We are trying to build a leading destination framed with sustainability. Everybody talks about sustainability. Very few actually do something about it.

He also called for a Tourism 20  style delegation of world leaders, similar to the G20, which was hosted by Saudi Arabia in 2020.

Hamidaddin said: At the G20, it was very clear tourism was missing in the room. Theres no Tourism 20.

Underlining the countrys commitment to sustainability, Amr AlMadani, CEO of The Royal Commission for AlUla, one of the oldest cities in the Arabian Peninsula and home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra, said: Going green for us and being sustainable is not a choice, its the way forward.

John Pagano, CEO of The Red Sea Development Authority, a tourism project on an archipelago of more than 90 islands, which will open its first resort of 16 hotels and 3,000 rooms next year, proclaimed: Saudi Arabia is taking very bold steps. We are going to be the largest tourism destination in the world, powered 100 per cent by renewable energy, he said, inviting other tourism companies to follow this lead.

The tech exists. All thats lacking is the will. Lets restore nature, he said.

Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been instrumental in helping shape the plan for the sustainable tourism destination the country wants to be, said Jerry Inzerillo, CEO of Diriyah Gate Development Authority, a $20 billion tourism project that will showcase the countrys history through a mix of heritage, hospitality, education, retail and dining experiences.

It is expected to have a population of more than 100,000 and attract 25 million visitors a year.

Inzerillo said the Crown Princes approach was to seek the best Saudi talent and match it with international talent.

While Saudi Arabia is a relatively unknown destination compared to other parts of the world, Hamidaddin said visitors would be impressed with what they found. He explained that 70% of the population is below the age of 35 and women play an important part in shaping the Saudi Arabia of the future.

Our Assistant Minister of Tourism is female, 43% of our total organisation are women and the average age is 32. This is what the new Saudi Arabia is, he said.

A key market for Saudi Arabia is the growing cruise sector and Fawaz Farooqui, Managing Director of Cruise Saudi, said the region is proving to be very interesting for cruise lines that are always looking for new ports of call.

During a session entitled 'Expanding the Saudi Tourism Ecosystem', Farooqui said Saudi Arabia is uniquely positioned on the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf.

The Red Sea and Arabian Gulf are very attractive for cruise lines, which are always looking for new destinations.

There are currently four cruise ports in the country, with plans to increase the number to six by 2025.

European passengers, including Italian, British, French and German, are just starting to experience the destination and Farooqui said he has had huge interest from operators in South Africa, Australia and Canada during WTM London.

Ive seen a lot of interest during WTM. I want Saudi Arabia to be on the list of every cruise passenger, he added.

Husameddin AlMadini, CEO of Soudah Development Company, a new entity that will lead the development of a mountain destination in the Asir region, said he plans to speak to tour operators and hospitality operators from around the world.

He said: The international market is such an important segment.-TradeArabia News Service
A new coalition will accelerate tourisms transition to net zero, audiences at COP26 heard. Ministers from major tourism destinations and leaders from international organisations have voiced their support to achieve a sustainable travel and tourism industry, through the Sustainable Tourism Global Center (STGC).

The STGC is a multi-country, multi-stakeholder coalition established to lead, accelerate, and track the tourism industrys transition to net-zero emissions, as well as drive action to protect nature and support communities.

The tourism industry is highly fragmented, with developing countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) being most reliant on tourism for their economies. More than 40 million tourism businesses  or 80 per cent of the whole industry  are small- or medium-sized.

The STGC aims to support people and the planet by reforming tourisms contribution to climate change, in a bid to protect the environment and support those who need it most, according to a statement from the organisers.

At a special session on the future of the STGC at COP26, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al Khateeb was joined by former Mexico president and Chair of New Climate Economy, and the World Resources Institute, Felipe Calderon; David Livingston, Senior Advisor, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and other leaders.

The centres strategy will be shaped by a coalition of governments, international organisations, academia, multilateral and financing institutions and industry associations.

The countries invited to be part of this coalition in phase one, are the UK, USA, France, Japan, Germany, Kenya, Jamaica, Morocco, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. These countries have prioritised climate, tourism and SMEs which will allow for synergies for this initiative.

The top organizations that will help to shape the centre and provide the services in phase one are WRI (World Resource Institute), UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), ICC (International Chamber of Commerce), WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council), World Bank, and SYSTEMIQ in addition to Harvard University, which will provide support to the STGC through research and capacity-building.

The centre will deliver services and products across three core pillars, including knowledge creation and sharing, measurement and monitoring, and industry enablement. Across these pillars, the STGC will focus on at least nine areas of industry support, including developing standards and resource provision for the tourism sector, capability building, and project funding and investment.

The centre will be headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and plans to open regional offices in other countries, with a strong multilingual online presence.

Other countries and organisations will be invited to join in phase two. In addition, a group of global experts in tourism and climate is being assembled to support this effort.

Al Khateeb said: The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the world the interconnectedness of humanity and nature, and the fragility of communities dependent on tourism to external shocks. We must act now to make the industry and local communities far more resilient and to help solve the challenge of climate change.

"That requires engaging with business, governments, and international organisations to accelerate action. Saudi Arabia is committed to contributing to this critical effort.

Calderon said: We share this initiative with global leaders who joined our mission to make tourism a lever toward achieving the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. There is a window of opportunity for business and governments to come together to drive these objectives, and the STGC will serve as a north star to achieve this mission.

Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said: The Government of Jamaica, as a Small Island Developing State and vulnerable economy, remains committed to resilience building for sustainable development, including through sustainable tourism. In this regard, Jamaica welcomes the opportunity to partner with the Sustainable Tourism Global Center to contribute to and benefit from this collaborative effort to secure a better planet for future generations.

United Kingdom COP Regional Ambassador for Middle East and Africa Janet Rogan said: We are proud to be hosting COP26. Humanity has run down the clock on climate change. It is now time to take action. Tourism is a key sector that supports jobs and growth and we are pleased to be part of this new initiative to accelerate the sectors transition to net zero.

Morocco Minister of Tourism, Handicrafts and Social Economy Fatim-Zahra Ammor said: Under the guidance of King Mohammed VI, Morocco made sustainability one of the main pillars of its former sectorial strategies as well as its new development model.

"During the last two years, the whole world has been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and tourism is one of the most affected sectors. It is crucial to join our efforts to build and co-design a sustainable recovery plan related to travel and tourism activities. The Sustainable Tourism Global Center is an important step towards this goal.

World Travel & Tourism Council President and CEO Julia Simpson said: At a time where leadership is most needed to address the climate emergency, we commend Saudi Arabias initiative that will support the sector to achieve the global goals and ensure a sustainable future. WTTC is delighted to contribute to the centre through its data, research and expertise from businesses across the globe.

Gloria Guevara, Chief Special Advisor to Al Khateeb, said: The tourism sector has been through so much throughout this pandemic and combined with the urgency of a response to climate change, it needs a global solution. SMEs in our sector  like a travel agency or tour operator  might not know their carbon footprint and how to contribute to the race to zero.

"Every time we go on holiday, we create jobs and reduce poverty, it would be great if we reach a point that the more we go on holiday, the better it is for the planet. The multi-country, multi-stakeholder coalition will bring tourisms fragmented stakeholders together and provide knowledge to drive action now.

Harvard University Department of Environmental Health Principal Investigator Dr. Ramon Sanchez, said: "To create a sustainable global tourism industry, all community, business, and government stakeholders require the tools, frameworks, and best practices necessary to contribute to reaching this objective.

"The team at Harvard is excited to collaborate with the STGC on research that will play a critical role in building the foundation and driving the industry toward net-zero".

UNFCCC Manager for Global Climate Action Niclas Svenningsen said: Tourism is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change and one of the sectors that has most to contribute to the 2030 sustainable development agenda. Climate action offers a win-win opportunity to recover economies, communities and countries in a sustainable and climate friendly fashion.-TradeArabia News Service
Oman Air, the national carrier of Oman, will resume flights between Muscat and Bangkok from November 11. The flights will operate twice weekly on Thursday and Saturday.

The Thursday flight will depart Muscat at 22:00 local time and arrive in Bangkok at 06:45 local time on Friday. The flight from Bangkok will depart at 09:15 local time on Friday and arrive in Muscat at 12:35 local time on Friday. The Saturday flight will depart Muscat at 09:00 local time and arrive in Bangkok at 17:45 local time. The Saturday flight from Bangkok will depart at 20:05 local time and arrive in Muscat at 23:25 local time. All flights are scheduled to operate with Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Oman Air will maintain its comprehensive safety programme throughout all elements of the travel journey to ensure that guests fly confidently. Masks are required when guests are on board the aircraft and in Oman's airports. Distancing is maintained while guests board and exit the aircraft, which are carefully cleaned after each flight and at the end of every day. Meal service has been modified to further ensure safety, and a number of other measures have been implemented to ensure that the airline's guests and crew are safe at all times, the airline said.

Guests who are planning to travel to Muscat should visit the Civil Aviation Authority website, caa.gov.om, to ensure they are prepared to comply with requirements to enter the Sultanate, it said.

Guests travelling to Thailand should ensure they are aware of official requirements to enter or transit through the country.

Guests departing from Oman should also ensure that they are aware of all pre-departure requirements and requirements during their flights, which are provided at omanair.com. -TradeArabia News Service
The governmental delegation of Turkmenistan headed by Deputy Prime Minister Serdar Berdimuhamedov took part in the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Speaking at the forum, the head of the Turkmen delegation noted that Ashgabat set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in key sectors of the national economy. According to him, Turkmenistan at the national level pays special attention to reducing methane emissions to achieve goals under climate change agenda.

He also noted that Turkmenistan makes a significant contribution to achieving climate neutrality by improving the national legal framework. For example, Turkmenistan adopted the National Strategy on Climate Change, the National Strategy for Development of Renewable Energy until 2030 and new law On Renewable Energy Sources.

 TURKMENISTAN.RU, 2021
Jammu, Nov 4 (UNI) Calling the Army personnel as the suraksha kawach of Maa Bharti, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that it is only because of them the countrymen sleep peacefully and happily enjoy every festival.

The Prime Minister was addressing the soldiers at Naushera in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir where he arrived this morning to celebrate the festival of Diwali.

Our soldiers are the suraksha kawach of Maa Bharti and it is because of you all, the people of our country can sleep peacefully and there is happiness during festivals, said the Prime Minister.

I havent come as a Prime Minister but as your family member, he said. I have the same feeling on arriving here, the way you all feel on meeting your families, said the Prime Minister adding that he will take along new energy, zeal and trust.

Every Indian will tonight lighten a diya (earthen lamp) and extend Diwali greetings to all of you, he said, wishing Army personnel on the occasion.

The jawans, who were filled with josh amidst the presence of the Prime Minister, were enthusiastic about meeting him and chanted Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogan that echoed in the air.

Lauding the Naushera Brigade for its role during the surgical strike, the Prime Minister said that every Indian is filled with pride on the role of this brigade during the surgical strike.

He said that every year he spends Diwali with the soldiers guarding borders but this time, he has visited soldiers with the blessing from Indians citizens for them.

After surgical strike, attempts were being made to disrupt peace and are still on but, our jawans have foiled all nefarious designs by giving a befitting reply every time, said the Prime Minister.

Modi said that it is believed that Pandavas during their 14 years of agyatwas (period of exile) had spend some time in this area, adding, I am feeling connected with the energy today by being a part of celebrations with you (soldiers).

He also said that it used to take years earlier to procure defence equipment but the commitment to self-reliance in the defence sector is the the only way to change old methods and added, the improved connectivity in border areas has helped us enhance our deployment capability - be it from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, Jaisalmer to Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

He also highlighted the role of women in the Armed Forces stating that they are being given permanent commission now.

The Prime Minister also honoured and interacted with veterans and later paid tributes to soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty.

Continuing the tradition of celebrating the festival of Diwali with jawans every year since 2014, the Prime Minister on Thursday arrived at Naushera sector of Rajouri district to celebrate the 'Festival of Lights' with troops and uplift the 'josh'.

The Prime Minister this morning reached Jammu technical airport from where he left for Naushera.

The Prime Minister also distributed sweets and fruits among the soldiers.

He also took a review of the security situation during a briefing by the top Army Commanders.

Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane reached Rajouri on Wednesday and reviewed the security situation along the Line of Control.

Earlier in 2019 also, the Prime Minister celebrated Diwali with jawans in Rajouri.

Notably, the counter insurgency operation in Bhatadurian forested area of Mendhar in Poonch has entered the 25th day on Thursday in which nine Army personnel have so far lost their lives.



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Washington, Nov 4 (UNI) The US Defense Department in a new report says that China may have already established a nuclear triad, which includes the ability to launch nuclear-capable missiles from the air, ground and sea.

The report also says that the accelerated pace of advancements in Beijings nuclear capability may enable China to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027.

Its China Military Power Report provides background on China's national strategy, foreign policy goals, economic plans and military development.
Former PoK 'president' Masood Khan to be next Pak ambassador to US

Islamabad, Nov 4 (UNI) Former Pakistan occupied Kashmir's (PoK) so-called 'president' Masood Khan will be appointed as the next ambassador to the US.

Citing sources, Geo TV reported Khan will be replacing Dr Asad Majeed Khan, who is currently heading the countrys mission to Washington since 2019 and will soon complete his tenure.

Masood has earlier served as the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before becoming Pakistans Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and International Organisations in Geneva, Switzerland, from 2005 to 2008.
Washington, Nov 4 (UNI) The Pentagon, in a new report on China, has dwelt in detail on the clashes between the Chinese and Indian forces on the Line of Actual Control in the eastern Ladakh sector, and said that Beijing is seeking to prevent the border tensions from causing India to partner more closely with the US.

The report also says that despite the ongoing diplomatic and military dialogue between the two sides to reduce border tensions, China has continued taking incremental and tactical actions to press its claims at the LAC.

It also says that in 2020, the Peoples Republic of China built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the PRCs Tibet Autonomous Region and Indias Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC. These and other infrastructure development efforts along the India-China have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media.
Casper Entrepreneur Turns Passion Into a Creative Startup

Dr. Angie OHearn, who runs The Visiting Vet -- a mobile veterinary services business in Casper -- gives a treat to Boggie, a 5-year-old pit bull. To determine legal requirements to start the business, OHearn consulted with the Wyoming Small Business Development Center Network, which is housed at UW. (The Visiting Vet Photo)

Anyone who has had the daunting experience of trying to get an injured and frightened 80-pound dog or a nervous cat into a vehicle for a trip to the vet should be overjoyed about Dr. Angie OHearns new visiting veterinary services business -- The Visiting Vet -- in Casper.

To get her business up and running, OHearn first contacted Cindy Unger at the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network, which is housed at the University of Wyoming, to ask about legal requirements to start her own business. That conversation expanded, and Unger assisted OHearn in creating a business plan, which resulted in a startup bank loan and the realization of her dream.

I never thought I would want to be my own boss and have to deal with that aspect of veterinary medicine, OHearn says. Cindy was great in helping with the research, giving me contact information and encouraging me through the process.

OHearns early interest in science and love of animals made the decision to become a veterinarian a natural choice. She vividly remembers the moment when her dad called from the vets office to tell her the family dog was not doing well. She quizzed him on all of the details, prognosis and treatment. That was the moment when she decided to pursue veterinary medicine.

Since graduating from Colorado State University in 2009, OHearn has worked in several local veterinary clinics. Last spring, she decided to start her mobile veterinary practice because she felt there was a compelling need in the community for this service.

Since starting her business, OHearn says she most frequently works with dogs and cats, providing wellness exams, vaccines, blood work and treatment for infections. One important service that she performs is palliative care and in-home euthanasia. OHearn makes the end of the journey a less stressful experience for both pet and owner.

My goal is to provide comfort until the very end for each pet, OHearn says.

OHearn also is very interested in pain management and is certified in pet acupuncture. She uses this procedure to help animals manage arthritis and neurologic conditions.

Looking ahead, OHearn will continue to strengthen relationships with current clients and to grow her business to help new clients. The Wyoming SBDC Network will continue to serve as a business partner for OHearn in these next stages.

For more information about The Visiting Vet, go to www.casperpetvet.com. Those interested in starting or growing a business of their own also can reach out to the Wyoming SBDC Network for no-cost, confidential assistance at www.wyomingsbdc.org.

The Wyoming SBDC Network offers no-cost advising and technical assistance to help Wyoming entrepreneurs think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their business. In 2020 alone, the Wyoming SBDC Network helped Wyoming entrepreneurs start 95 new businesses, support 6,964 jobs and bring a capital impact of $18 million to the state.

The Wyoming SBDC Network is hosted by UW with state funds from the Wyoming Business Council and funded, in part, through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration.
UW School of Pharmacy Establishes Continuing Education Advisory Board

The University of Wyoming School of Pharmacy has established an advisory board for its continuing education program.

In addition to overseeing multitiered programs within the schools main continuing education program, the advisory board will advance the schools mission to develop, conduct and evaluate educational programs to meet the continuing professional development needs, tools and resources for pharmacy professionals and pharmacy technicians to better care for the patients and communities they serve.

The School of Pharmacy is thankful to the members of the inaugural Continuing Professional Education Pharmacy Advisory Board, who are providing their time and expertise to help guide us in providing meaningful continuing educational programs for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians throughout the region, says Kem Krueger, dean of the UW School of Pharmacy.

Jen Paintin, program coordinator with the schools Master of Science in Health Services Administration degree program, says one of the advisory boards goals is to continue to advance the schools continuing education initiative to provide required service hours to pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and other pharmacy professionals.

We will look to the Continuing Professional Education Pharmacy Advisory Board to ensure that we offer programs across the breadth of practice in the state, Paintin says. Board members insights will guide us to not only meet the needs of our learners, but also assist with the communications they have with patients across the state.

We are excited at the opportunity to work with the inaugural advisory board, says Elliott Sogol, director of postgraduate and continuing education. Wyoming State Board of Pharmacy regulations state that all pharmacists must complete and report 12 contact hours of approved continuing education obtained during the previous license period in order to renew their licenses to practice pharmacy, and we look forward to providing opportunities to pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to meet these educational needs.

The inaugural members of the Continuing Professional Education Pharmacy Advisory Board, listed by hometown, are:

Cheyenne -- Melinda Carroll, pharmacy manager of King Soopers Pharmacy; Matthew Martineau, executive director, Wyoming State Board of Pharmacy; and Leena Myran, a clinical associate professor of the UW Family Medicine Residency Program and the UW School of Pharmacy.

Greybull -- Jessica Hunt, medical science liaison at Fresenius Kabi.

Wheatland -- Jennifer Nevins, Platte County Memorial Hospital, retired.

For more information on the UW School of Pharmacys continuing professional education program, visit www.uwyo.edu/pharmacy/resources/continuing-education.html.


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The Directors General of Customs of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) met on 27 and 28 October 2021, via videoconference. The Meeting was chaired by Mr. Carlos Benguela, Director General of Customs of Sao Tome and Principe.

Representatives of the Communitys eight member countries shared their Administrations experiences in the areas of managing international transit, conducting WCO Time Release Studies and implementing the World Trade Organizations Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). Each presentation was followed by an exchange of views.

The Permanent Secretariat of the CPLP gave several reports, notably on the implementation of the Communitys Customs Strategic Plan and on the activities carried out under the Technical Assistance and Cooperation Integrated Programme (PICAT) established to enhance supportive actions among CPLP members.

The Meeting was opened by Mr. Engracio S. Soares Da Graca, Sao Tome and Principes Minister of Planning, Finance and Blue Economy, who highlighted the role of Customs in the socio-economic development of any economy, as well as the need to implement the measures set out in the CPLP Strategic Plan. On behalf of the CPLP countries, he asked the WCO Secretariat and its representative, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, to continue to provide technical assistance. He concluded by congratulating the Meeting organizers on the relevance of the topics which had been placed on the Agenda, and emphasizing the need for close co-operation between all the partners at international level so that the CPLP could achieve its objectives.

WCO Secretary General Dr. Kunio Mikuriya then took the floor, to present the various initiatives taken by the WCO and its Secretariat in December 2020 to guide Customs administrations in their efforts to combat the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic effectively. He pointed out that Customs had a role to play in ensuring the resilience of the supply chain  an endeavour which required recourse to technology and digital tools, as well as the adoption of a data-driven culture and decision-making system. A set of strategies and measures which were particularly relevant in this context had been brought together in a publication entitled WCO Guidance on Disaster Management and Supply Chain Continuity. Finally, the Secretary General recalled that the WCO had adopted new procedures and new tools to ensure the continuity of its activities, and said that the Secretariat would continue, albeit remotely, to support Customs administrations which requested its assistance.
On 4 November 2021, the WCO Secretary General, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, spoke at a Ministerial Meeting of Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) themed Towards sustainable, resilient COVID-19 recovery: Bridging the LLDCs trade gap. The meeting was convened by the Government of Mongolia and Coordinator of the LLDC Group in Geneva, represented by its Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Global Chair of LLDCs, represented by its Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS) with the objective to prepare the LLDC Groups input into the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference.

The Ministerial Meeting discussed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on LLDCs and the examples of best practice for promoting international trade, trade facilitation and connectivity, as well as the path towards a resilient COVID-19 recovery.

Secretary General Mikuriya highlighted the WCOs contribution to the implementation of the Vienna Programme of Action for LLDCs and the support provided to LLDCs in a number of areas, such as setting standards for transit and other modern border procedures, deployment of technology as well as human resource development. Dr. Mikuriya noted the steady increase in LLDCs accessions to the WCO Revised Kyoto Convention with 70% of LLDCs now being Contracting Parties to this important international convention. He provided information on LLDCs best practices in transit and trade facilitation and elaborated on the lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the importance of automation of Customs processes towards a truly paperless Customs environment and contactless clearance and the need to facilitate and secure e-commerce.

Concluding his intervention, Dr. Mikuriya said, I would like to reiterate our commitment to work with LLDCs by mobilizing our tools and expertise to ensure recovery from the pandemic in a sustainable and resilient manner by reinforcing collaboration, harnessing technology and putting people at the centre of the transformation process.

The Meeting adopted a Ministerial Declaration focusing on key issues of trade for LLDCs, as well as the international support mechanisms needed to address trade-related challenges.
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

Considerable cloudiness. Occasional rain showers in the afternoon. High near 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Thunder is possible early. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
" " Journalists walk the footpath of "el Caminito del Rey," a narrow walkway carved on the steep walls of a pass in Ardales near Malaga, Spain in 2015. The path was closed between 2001 and 2015 after five hikers fell to their deaths. JORGE GUERRERO/AFP/Getty Images

The sight is arresting. And rather alarming. Small knots of people inch along narrow boardwalks bolted to the sides of sheer cliff faces, as the opaque, green Guadalhorce River roars more than 300 feet (100 meters) below. I'm staring at photos of el Caminito del Rey, a unique pathway about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Malaga in southern Spain.

Once considered one of the world's most dangerous trails, the rebuilt passage is a major international tourist attraction today, drawing hundreds of thousands of intrepid souls annually. I am determined to be one of them, despite my fear of heights.

" " El Caminito Rey is 3 feet wide, 5 miles long and has a 325-foot drop. Melanie McManus

But what will happen once I am suspended hundreds of feet above the ground on one of those tiny boardwalks? Will I have a panic attack? Have to crawl the entire way? Faint? There is only one way to find out. So I score some tickets and head to Spain.

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Fit for a King

El Caminito was built between 1901 and 1905 to allow maintenance workers access to the region's new hydroelectric power plant infrastructure, which zigzagged through the impressive limestone Gaitanes gorge. Soon local villagers and children began using the path, too, as it was a faster route to school and the neighboring communities than walking around the mountain.

In 1921, Spain's King Alfonso XIII hiked along the trail during its official opening, causing someone to dub the path "El Caminito del Rey," or "The King's Little Pathway." The nickname stuck.

Time passed, and el Caminito del Rey became obsolete. Untended, its metal railings fell away and large chunks of the concrete flooring crumbled, leaving just the support beams. Adrenaline junkies and rock climbers who frequented the gorge, a climbing hotspot, were intrigued by the curious, dilapidated path and began trekking along it. But due to its deteriorating condition, more than a few suffered injuries  and some, even death. After five people met their demise on el Caminito between 1999 and 2000, the Spanish government shut it down, demolishing its access points.

The video below shows an intrepid hiker taking on the dangerous path before it was restored.

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Rebirth for Tourism

Eventually, government officials realized the alluring path's potential as a tourist attraction. And so in 2015, el Caminito del Rey was reopened after a major reconstruction, which included guardrails along the path and wooden slats replacing the concrete. The restoration won the Europa Nostra Award for heritage conservation.

Today's el Caminito del Rey is a hiking route stretching nearly 5 miles (7.7 kilometers). It consists of access paths and two boardwalk segments linked by a forest trail. The boardwalks, built just above the original, are often suspended more than 325 feet (100 meters) above the Guadalhorce River, and unspool a total of about 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) along the gorge's rugged, limestone cliffs. About 3 feet wide (1 meter) in most places, they sport railings and security fencing on their exposed side.

It takes the average person three to four hours to complete el Caminito del Rey. During this time, you may spot Spanish ibex, European vultures, Aleppo pines and eucalyptus, among other flora and fauna. You can also see the remains of some of the old homes and bridges once used by the workers, and the original dam. Near the trail's end, the path leads across a swaying suspension bridge linking both sides of the gorge.

" " Tourists hike el Caminito del Rey in 2019. All hikers are required to wear hard hats. Melanie McManus

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Not So Scary Anymore? Well....

My trek begins by hiking along a dirt access road, which is decidedly not scary. At the entrance gate near the reservoir, everyone receives a construction-type helmet and is placed into groups according to the entrance time on your ticket. Every 15 to 30 minutes, another group is allowed to head out. Soon our group of a dozen or so people are released onto the path, and we're off.

The water rushes from the reservoir and down a steep, rocky slope in a deafening roar as I begin walking along the boardwalk, a towering wall of limestone to my right. But the boardwalk is so sturdy and firm, I'm not nervous at all. Curiously, this brings both relief and a tiny ping of disappointment.

My nerves do start jangling when I get a good look at the previous path, which often curves into view when looking ahead or behind. It appears to be a scant 18 inches (45 centimeters) wide with a slim handrail and no side rails. No wonder some thrill-seekers pitched to their deaths. One misplaced step is all it would have taken.

About two hours into the hike, I reach the suspension bridge leading to the final section of boardwalk. My palms begin to sweat as I contemplate the slender, airy structure. My head knows it's as safe as the boardwalk, even with several people on it at once. But it's bobbing up and down, and there is no rock wall on one side to cling to.

I pull out my phone and get the camera ready so I don't have to spend any more time on the span than necessary. Then I carefully step on and begin to walk across. The bridge sways and lurches with each footstep. More unnerving, though, are the wind gusts that suddenly buffet me. We'd been so protected edging along the cliff walls, I hadn't noticed even the slightest breeze.

I know I should be enjoying the unobstructed views of the river far below, and the sight of the people still on the boardwalk behind me, who look like tiny specks moving along the cliff face. Instead, I fix my gaze on the solid rock wall in front of me and keep moving forward. Halfway across the span, I pause for a quick peek at the view, and to snap the requisite photo, then scurry across to the opposite side. The bridge crossing probably took a scant two or three minutes, but it seemed much longer.

About 45 minutes later, I'm off the cliff and back on solid ground near the El Chorro train station, the path's official ending point. Removing my helmet, I mentally cross another adventure off my bucket list and automatically begin contemplating another.

Interested in experiencing el Caminito for yourself? Be aware that due to safety and environmental constraints, annual traffic is capped at 300,000 visitors. This figure is easily reached every year, with tickets selling out well in advance. But any hassle involved with scoring tickets is well worth it. For there aren't many trails in this world that are this crazy, or that offer such incredible views.

Note: The path is open every day of the week except Mondays and a few days during Christmas week. The website recommends that you be reasonably fit if you're going to undertake this.

Now That's Interesting Don't confuse el Caminito del Rey with el Camino de Santiago, Spain's most famous walking path.El Camino is an ancient pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela, a city in northwestern Spain that is said to be the burial spot of the apostle St. James. In 2018, more than 325,000 people received Camino completion certificates.
opinion

The mantra today is that the worst democracy is still better than the most benevolent dictatorship.

Africa is at a crossroad again and it will require firm resolutions of the African Union and United Nations to isolate countries involved in unpopular and authoritarian changes of government, while treating associated rebellious leaders with contempt. But it goes beyond condemnation only. Such countries and leaders should be sanctioned and deprived of aides and foreign direct investment, if any.

Africa is once again going through a turbulent time in the form of violent overthrow of governments. However, unlike the decades after independence when such enterprises were greeted with enthusiasm, people are now generally coup weary. Military incursion into the civil space is so derided now that whenever it happens, the actors have the world to contend with and their country treated as a pariah state.

According to a BBC report, which quoted two U.S. researchers, Jonathan Powel and Clayton Thyne, there have been 200 coup attempts in Africa since the late 1950s, half of them successful. And just when we thought Africa had come of age, and ready to put its ugly past behind her in 21st century, there has been the resurgence of coups; mainly engendered by endemic poverty, corruption and bad governance. In slightly over a year, there have been five coups and attempted coups in Africa -- two military takeovers in Mali, a failed one in Niger Republic, that of Guinea and now Sudan. Burkina Faso has had the most successful coups, with seven takeovers and one failed attempt.

In April this year, there was a semi successful coup in Chad, when Idriss Deby was killed in controversial circumstances, but his supporters rallied round his son, a military man, and installed him in the father's stead. Sudan has had 18 coups and attempted coups, of which five were successful. Nigeria has had eight, Burundi 11, Sierra Leone eight, while Ghana has also had eighth. The political instability arising from uprisings, rebellions and the frequent change of government are some of the factors holding the continent down. Unfortunately for Africa, the incessant coups have not engendered the development of the continent. Instead, government institutions have suffered retrogression, while some individuals have become powerful and wealthy at the expense of the state.

However, notwithstanding the military's foray into politics again, authoritarian rule is no longer fashionable and the excuses for this are no longer tenable, because the question of starting a revolution does not even arise, as most of such ideals ended in the dustbin of history and ignominy. The dichotomy between capitalism/communism and the bipolar war between the West and the former USSR, as represented by Russia, have all fizzled out; the world has become largely unipolar and the line between both worlds have become thin. The world still fights but today's wars are no longer based on ideologies; that is, if there was ever any. Support from Russia and Cuba to African countries and would-be coup makers are also no longer available. Russia itself now tries hard to ape the Western type of capitalism.

Here lies the bane of Africa -- the "strongman syndrome". The notion that only one man can solve a nation's problems, even without visible progress, and when that strongman abdicates power, dies or is removed, there are always challenges of how and where to start from. Examples can be found with the situaitons in Egypt, Cote d'voire and Sudan, which recently experienced another coup.

Besides the death of ideologies and dearth of ideologists, records of previous military regimes were even more abysmal than those they sought to supplant. The mantra today is that the worst democracy is still better than the most benevolent dictatorship. So, any ambitious military politician wishing to get into government through the barrel of the gun would have to do a thorough job of it, to avoid a backlash.

Sadly, civilian governments have not fared any better as most are preoccupied with self-perpetuation plans, even under the guise of democracy. Cameroon strongman, Paul Biya has been in government since November 6, 1982. He is 88 years. Biya who initially subscribed to a "more open, more tolerant and more democratic political society", is today the most reclusive and isolated African leader. Bereft of any democratic codes, he has amended his country's constitution specifically to eliminate presidential term limits, while Cameroon battles insolvent economy, endemic corruption, and oppression of the Anglophone side of the country. With people like Paul Biya, many might wish for a populist intervention, which can become another trap.

Such was the case with Uganda. Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 after a military rebellion. Touted as a revolutionary and liberator, he was part of the gang that toppled Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Sadly, he did not leave the scene when the ovation was loudest and has since turned into a military democrat, having amended the constitution to make him life president, standing for election six times and winning all to sit-tight as president for the past 35 years, and still counting. Meanwhile, the situation in Uganda neither inspires confidence in the military, nor their form of democratic regime. Other than the monarchical arrangement in the Middle East and some parts of Asia, any government that ignores or removes term limits for its leaders cannot be said to mean well for them; such as the case of Museveni. His friend and advisor, 82-year-old John Nagenda, has had this to say about Museveni: "he was prepared to die for Uganda. I would say that we are very lucky to have him".

Here lies the bane of Africa -- the "strongman syndrome". The notion that only one man can solve a nation's problems, even without visible progress, and when that strongman abdicates power, dies or is removed, there are always challenges of how and where to start from. Examples can be found with the situaitons in Egypt, Cote d'voire and Sudan, which recently experienced another coup. Two years ago, Omar al-Bashir, after 33 years in office, was toppled by the Sudanese army, after a series of protests. The country began a power-sharing formula between the military and civilians, which threw up Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and General Abdel Fattah Burhan as head of the power-sharing transition deal to steer Sudan towards civilian rule, before it was again truncated last week. Egypt had this kind of military-civilian deal but it broke down and the military took over the mantle of leadership again. In fact, Sudan appears to be a playground for coup making, as there have been many attempts in the last two years and even before Al-Bashir was toppled.

In September, the military struck in Guinea after 11 years of Alpha Conde's rule, another sad commentary on Africa. Colonel Mamady Daumbouya, the coup leader, accused Conde's government of corruption and mismanagement. These are old tactics and excuses for coups, but Conde, after a controversial third-term victory at the polls and at age 88, must have done himself in...

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When a country is badly run, the people wish for a change in whatever form. So was Guinea, a classic example of people's wish, in contrast to democratic norms. In September, the military struck in Guinea after 11 years of Alpha Conde's rule, another sad commentary on Africa. Colonel Mamady Daumbouya, the coup leader, accused Conde's government of corruption and mismanagement. These are old tactics and excuses for coups, but Conde, after a controversial third-term victory at the polls and at age 88, must have done himself in, as activists and opposition viewed his austere outlook as a just dessert for his infractions. But whatever may be his faults, the authoritarian regime is no replacement for a democratically elected civilian government.

Coming after Guinea's post-independence leader, Ahmadu Sekou Toure's long tenure from 1958 to his death in 1984, Guinea's democratic credentials have not been enviable. Already, the junta leaders have told the African Union to stop interfering in the affairs of Guinea and have established what they called "constitutional charter", comprising of 81 members, headed by a civilian Prime Minister and a transition council, to act as president. The next few months or years would unravel the true intents of the khaki men in Guinea.

Africa is at a crossroad again and it will require firm resolutions of the African Union and United Nations to isolate countries involved in unpopular and authoritarian changes of government, while treating associated rebellious leaders with contempt. But it goes beyond condemnation only. Such countries and leaders should be sanctioned and deprived of aides and foreign direct investment, if any.

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"I lost some of my colleagues and pupils to attacks. While some of us moved to Maiduguri, others ran to Bosso in Niger Republic," a teacher, Mr Bukar, narrates.

Hanatu Abubakar was full of hope when she gained admission to the Federal Government Girls College (FGGC), Monguno, Borno State, in 2009. According to her uncle, Garuba Ashru, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Hanatu wanted to become a healthcare worker.

But in 2020, she died without fulfilling that dream, leaving behind a son, who is now under two-year-old.

"In fact, she died of the same unfortunate circumstance she had aspired to join hands to address," Mr Ashru told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview in September, in Maiduguri.

According to the don, Hanatu became disoriented after Boko Haram terrorists attacked her school in 2011, raping and killing some of her schoolmates.

The attack, which occurred when she was in junior secondary school 3, made her and many other survivors leave their ancestral home.

"When she came back from Monguno, we were faced with difficulty of where to really fix her because of the trauma she was going through. Schools were also shut for about two years and things became very difficult for her and for all of us in the family.

"When we subsequently enrolled her in another school in Maiduguri here, she had already lost the 'fire' burning in her. This was somebody who lost her friends, so adjusting in a new school was not easy," Mr Ashru narrated.

According to him, when Hanatu completed secondary school, her result was not good. "Soon, social pressure began to impinge on her because the delay made her to be older by the time she finished secondary school."

After she got married, she enrolled for a remedial programme at UNIMAID and was eventually admitted as a full-time student in the department of Physical and Health Education (PHE).

But shortly after she was delivered of a baby in 2020, complications set in. "She was already a 300-level student when she died" from the complications, the professor said.

Bukar's story

In the afternoon of Thursday, September 2, this reporter met Kala Bukar, a former assistant head teacher at Doro Primary School in Abadam Local Government Area of Borno State, in a tiny makeshift office at the Mohammed Goni College of Legal and Islamic Studies (MOGCOLIS), Maiduguri alongside his colleagues and fellow IDPs camp mates. The office also serves as their living room, bedroom and prayer room.

He said since 2014 when the local government was sacked by the insurgents, residents were yet to return home. He said the insurgents destroyed the 20 primary schools, three junior secondary schools and two senior secondary schools in the area.

"I lost some of my colleagues and pupils to the attacks. While some of us moved to Maiduguri, others ran to Bosso in Niger Republic and have remained there till date," Mr Bukar said.

After Governor Babagana Zulum returned the IDPs home, the camp at MOGCOLIS was relocated to Auno in Konduga Local Government Area of the state where Mr Bukar is now the head teacher.

"It is difficult leaving Maiduguri for Auno, but we have no choice since the government insisted that it is part of the process to resettle us in our villages," Mr Bukar, who now shuttles between Auno and Maiduguri, said.

A head teacher's ordeal

Goni Kale was the head teacher at Arge primary school, also in Abadam Local Government Area of the state. He witnessed the attacks on his school and communities in the area, including the murder of the education secretary of the local government, Usuwar Umara, by the terrorists in October 2014.

"He was killed while offering his prayers. They killed him because he was the one in charge of education in the local government. In the local government area, we were more than 300 teachers that were displaced. In fact, till date, some come to teach at the IDPs camp for two weeks and return to their families in Niger Republic to spend another two weeks. Some are not even coming back at all," Mr Kale, who also teaches at Auno IDPs camp, said.

The situation at the Muna Garage IDPs camp in Maiduguri was depressing when our reporter visited in September. School-aged children roamed about the densely populated camp aimlessly, the makeshift schools built by development partners in the camp being of no interest to them.

Clinics in the camp also struggled to contain cases of malnutrition. According to Yakaka Babagana, 752 cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) were presented at one of the clinics between January and August 31.

At the second clinic in the camp, 722 patients were on admission within the same period.

Mrs Babagana, a community manager of SAM, said residents of the camp are more concerned by hunger than schooling. The children were clad in dirty clothes. When the reporter approached them for conversation, they ran away.

Grim statistics

In an interview with our reporter, the Chief of Maiduguri Field Office for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Phuong Nguyen, said the terrorists destroyed 1,400 schools, forced more than one million children out of school, and killed 2,295 teachers between 2009 and 2020.

According to Ms Nguyen, the conflict forced all schools in Borno State to close from December 2013 to June 2015. In Yobe and Adamawa states, schools were closed for shorter periods on an ad hoc basis.

"The Education-in-Emergency Working Group Nigeria Joint Education Needs Assessment (JENA), November 2019 found that conflict continues to affect the ability of schools to remain open and provide lessons across north-east Nigeria. The JENA 2019 also reports that most schools assessed in Adamawa and Borno states had stopped functioning at some point since 2012 due to the emergency (71 per cent and 68 per cent respectively), as had 43 per cent of schools in Yobe.

"In the first half of 2021, Borno faced a drastic reduction in humanitarian access with an escalation of actions of Non State Armed Groups (NSAGs) targeting teachers and threatening those who support educational activities," Ms Nguyen said.

Like North-east like North-west

Nigeria's North-east region has been most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency. However, schools in other parts of the country, particularly the North-west, North-central and South-east, are also under attack.

In its recent statement as part of activities to mark the second anniversary of the International Day to Protect Education from Attacks, the Save the Children International, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), said more than 1,000 students have been abducted from Nigerian schools in 2021 alone.

The country director of Save the Children International Nigeria, Mercy Gichuhi, who signed the statement, said a recently released report by Save the Children, titled: "Build Forward Better," revealed that education systems in Nigeria and other countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Mali, and Libya are at 'extreme risk,' worse than Syria and Yemen.

"In Nigeria, the number of out-of-school children, according to UNICEF, was at 10.5 million before the effects of the conflict, humanitarian crisis and COVID-19 pandemic were felt. With the total or partial closure of schools in Zamfara, Katsina, Adamawa, Kaduna, Niger and other states due to kidnapping and abduction of school children, the number of children that would be prevented from accessing education in Nigeria could be on the increase."

In Kaduna State for instance, the commissioner for education, Shehu Makarfi, said the third term for the 2020/2021 session could not be held as a result of violent attacks on schools.

Mr Makarfi, while speaking with PREMIUM TIMES in September, said schools would not open in five local government areas - Birni Gwari, Kajuru, Sambo, Giwa, and another.

"We shut down the schools because we don't have enough personnel to provide security for all of them. We have 512 public secondary schools in Kaduna State, 4,260 public primary schools, and we have over 5,000 private primary schools and more than 1,000 private secondary schools. If you put them together and you want to provide four or three policemen per school, they will not go round. We just have a little above 10,000 policemen in the state so we don't have enough," Mr Makarfi said.

The situation is similar in Zamfara, Katsina and Niger states, where scores of students have been abducted in the past few months.

The North-central states of Benue, Plateau and even Kogi have also recorded violent attacks on schools.

Different stories from southwestern, southeastern schools

At Iwoye-Ketu in Yewa area of Ogun State, South-west Nigeria, the perennial herders-farmers' crisis has forced teachers and pupils to abandon schools.

Joel Ademola, the traditional ruler of Iwoye-Ketu, said cattle sometimes take over classrooms in his domain.

The monarch, who spoke with our reporter at Imeko, the headquarters of Imeko-Afon Local Government Area of Ogun State, said schools were sometimes attacked by herders during their crises with communities.

"Sometimes, we close schools for weeks because even if we don't, no parent would allow their children to attend schools in such an atmosphere of violence," Mr Ademola said.

The situation is the same at Eggua in Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State. A palace chief, Adeyanju Adegbenro, said clashes between farmers and herders started more than 10 years ago but escalated in 2020 due to "the growing culture of impunity on the part of the herders."

He said in 2021 alone, at least 50 people were killed in the Ketu-Yewa axis of Ogun State.

"Those of us left in the community are talking in hushed tones out of fear. More than 70 per cent of residents have fled. This is an ancient community that is fast turning into a ghost town," Mr Adegbenro told our reporter at Eggua palace.

The police spokesperson in the state, Abimbola Oyeyemi, a deputy superintendent of police (DSP), could not give the number of the victims of the crisis but said as of February 25 when our reporter visited him in Abeokuta, the state capital, 13 deaths had been reported.

The situation is similar in Igangan, a rural community in Oyo State, where frequent farmers-herders' clashes have claimed many lives with properties worth millions of naira destroyed.

In March, 2016, three students from Babington Macaulay Seminary School, a model private missionary secondary school in Ikorodu area of Lagos, were abducted by kidnappers.

The incident was followed by another attack on the Turkish International School, located within the borderline of Lagos and Ogun State around Isheri Area of Lagos State, and in May 2017, six students of the Lagos Model College, Igbonla, Epe, were also abducted.

Separatists on the rampage in South-east

In September, while students of Comprehensive Secondary School, Nkume, in Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, were writing their West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), gunmen allegedly enforcing the sit-at-home order of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) set the school ablaze.

Apart from stopping the students from writing their English Language examination that day, the attackers also set ablaze the motorcycles they found on the school's premises.

The secessionists have declared Mondays a sit-at-home day with gunmen violently enforcing the order.

Consequences

It is unclear what the current figure of the out-of-school-children is in Nigeria, as the last statistics of 10.5 million provided by UNICEF predated the latest escalation of attacks on schools.

However, there is now a reluctance by many parents to send children to schools far away from home.

For instance, during the entrance examination into the 104 federal government colleges in Nigeria, many parents who spoke to our reporter at a centre in Abuja, the federal capital territory, said their wards were participating in the examination only to test their ability as they would not allow them to attend schools outside their vicinity.

A pupil, Naheema Adisa, was offered admission to the Federal Government College in Bwari, FCT, but her father, an information technology expert, Olawale Adisa, who also resides in Abuja, said she would not take the offer.

"We have the admission letter already but she is not going. My landlord's child schools there and not long ago he, alongside other parents, received distress calls that the school was being targeted for attacks. He rushed to the school to pick his child. Though there was nothing at the end of the day, since then, his mind has always been there," Mr Adisa said.

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A teacher at Kings' College, Lagos, who does not want to be quoted, said everyone now wants to attend the school because it is located in the heart of the city, "where people believe their children are safe."

"This year alone, more than 4,000 applied to our school but we cannot admit more than 350. That is why people are insinuating that their children's slots are being taken by some people. It is a lie. The fact is that to gain admission here is like a camel passing through the eye of a needle," the teacher said.

The head of data desk for the National Examinations Council, Abdulrashid Abdulrazak, said he could not provide details of how applications to schools in the hinterland may have been affected by the attacks. He, however, said statistics do not show a decline in enrolment for the common entrance examination.

Stakeholders react

The registrar and chief executive officer of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Olusegun Ajiboye, said the government was working with individuals and organisations to protect schools.

Mr Ajiboye, who spoke at a virtual lecture to mark the 2021 annual World Teachers' Day, said the government was introducing many measures not only to encourage engagement of quality teachers but to also protect them against all forms of hazards.

"We have witnessed continued attacks on schools and while the government is working through the various security operatives to nip the problem in the bud, we are also working round the clock to ensure that protection is provided for our schools," Mr Ajiboye said.

But the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Emmanuel Osodeke, does not attach seriousness to official statements like those of Mr Ajiboye.

The university lecturer said the best way to judge a government about its commitment to the future of the younger ones is by the investment it makes in education and health.

He said nothing has shown that President Muhammadu Buhari prioritises education in his agenda.

According to the professor, since his emergence as President in 2015, Mr Buhari has not devoted up to eight per cent of national budget to education, saying the bulk of the paltry allocation to education "even goes to recurrent expenditure."

The special adviser to Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on education, Tokunbo Wahab, urged the authorities to convene a national education summit on the best ways to tackle insecurity in schools.

According to Mr Wahab, beyond the violent attacks by bandits and insurgents, are also the challenges of violent cultism at all levels of education, flooding of classrooms and encroachment of school lands to build properties.

"Schools must be safe for learning to take place and it cannot be restricted to one region. As long as Nigeria is still together, we must ensure that every child is protected and is allowed to get quality education in a conducive atmosphere. Anything short of that is like sitting on a keg of gunpowder. That is what is happening currently," Mr Wahab said.

"This report was facilitated by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under its Regulators Monitoring Programme."
LOCAL contractors in Rukwa Region have been urged to strictly adhere to work discipline and integrity while executing road projects supervised by the Tanzania Rural and Urban Agency (TARURA) in a bid to have quality, standards and sustainable projects.

Rukwa Regional Commissioner (RC) Joseph Mkirikiri made the call during the signing ceremony of roads construction and maintenance contract under TARURA held on Tuesday in the municipality.

The signing event which was chaired by the RC who is the chairman of Regional Road Board (RRB) attracted several local contractors undertaking road projects under the supervision of TARURA.

Equally, Mkirikiti warned local contractors to refrain from behavior of not taking road projects as their first priorities while the initiatives are spending millions of taxpayers' money.

"Work discipline for contractors is paramount important because the fund disbursed by the government through TARURA must be utilized properly with due diligence hence bringing positive results over our road projects.

"I want to see in this region, local contractors working in the region honour contractual agreements they have signed.

"Equally I urge the contractors entrusted with the task of executing the road projects to ensure they are timely completed to alleviate the suffering of the citizens they may experience during the expected forthcoming rainy season.

"Definitely these projects will address the challenges faced by citizens such as impassable roads " emphasized the RC.

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Mkirikiti told the gathering that the government has dished out 12bn /- for implementation of road projects in all four councils under the supervision of TARURA during 2020/21.

Administratively Rukwa region has four councils including Sumbawanga Municipal Council, Nkasi, Kalambo and Sumbawanga District Councils.

"However, I'm using this platform to warn TARURA 's engineers based in all four councils to refrain from awarding contracts to unqualified contractors to carry out the projects. This malpractice will reverse and paralyze the efforts of the government to improve roads in rural areas to ease movement of citizens and cargo" warned the RC.

Earlier Rukwa Regional TARURA Coordinator, Engineer Seth Mwakyembe said 16 contracts worth over 4.5 bn/- will be signed after being meticulously vetted.

Eng Mwakyembe expressed his optimism that the contractors will implement projects to the required quality standards and that value for money set aside for such projects would be realized.

"TARURA is highly lauded by President Samia Suluhu Hassan for upgrading rural road projects.

"We won't let our President down as we will closely supervise the implementation of the projects which will definitely reflect the value for money spent" added Eng Mwakyembe.

Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) Rukwa Regional Commander, Daniel Ntera called upon local contractors in the region to strictly adhere to contracts they have signed and refrain from engaging in corruption practices.

Ntera warned that the officers from anti-corruption watchdog bureau are closely monitoring road projects undertaken in the region in efforts to curb all loopholes which will weaken the implementation of the projects.
Nairobi  A 35-year-old man from Turkana South sub-county has killed his two-year-old son following a disagreement with his wife.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), in a statement on Tuesday, said prior to the incident, the suspect had disagreed with his wife over her intentions to take their son to hospital since he was sick insisting that his wife should instead look after his goats.

"Before the incident which occurred at around 1pm in Lopur village, Eyenae Ekwom, 35, had quarreled his wife over her intentions to take the 2-year-old to hospital, since the baby was feeling unwell. Instead, he wanted his wife to tend to his goats oblivious of the state of his sick child," the DCI said.

The detectives stated that the man proceeded to attack his wife and child after she defied him.

"When his wife became defiant and insisted on taking the baby to the local dispensary for treatment, the man descended on them with blows and kicks leaving the baby unconscious after he hit him with a stick," the agency stated.

The DCI said that the baby was later pronounced dead on arrival at a local dispensary as the suspect went into hiding. The Monday incident also left the victim's mother with injuries on her face and legs.

"Concerned villagers rushed mother and baby to Lopur dispensary, where the baby was confirmed dead on arrival," the agency stated.

The DCI said that its agents had launched a manhunt for the 35-year-old suspect.

Cases of violence and assault among couples have been on the rise in the country in what has been linked to the increasing stress levels on people compounded by harsh economic times and the adverse effects brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
A close ally of Somali president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo is now claiming his campaign manager has been deported from Kismayo.

In a statement, president Farmaajo's election advisor Abdi Ali Rage said his campaign manager was detained before he was deported from Kismayo.

"It is unfortunate that an innocent person is deported from his home and only targeted for his political affiliation," rage said.

"There will be possible no fair election in Kismayo if he is being deported," Rage added.

The development comes months after Rage who has been serving as election advisor to Farmaajo since mid-2020 was rejected permission to land at Kismayo Airport.

Rage who pledged Farmaajo count on him is seeking a parliamentary seat in Jubaland.

Prior to his appointment by Farmaajo, Rage worked with Jubaland President Ahmed Mohamed Islam (Ahmed Madobe) as one of his advisors. He was fired on 11 April 2019.
The Central Supervisory Committee for the Operations to renew the executives of the basic organs of the CPDM and its specialised organisations has taken note of the results.

Jean Nkuete, Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM) and Chairperson of the Central Supervisory Committee for the operations to renew the executives of the CPDM, WCPDM and YCPDM basic organs and its specialised organisations on October 27, 2021 gave specific instructions to the new Section Presidents. This was in the release he signed after chairing the meeting of the Central Supervisory Committee for the Operations to renew the executives of the basic organs of the CPDM that held at the party's General Secretariat in Yaounde.

In the instructions intended to address the unity and cohesion challenges following some isolated but reprehensible outbursts during the operation that lasted from August 7, 2021 to September 30, 2021 he was clear. "Continuing in the same line as the National President, the Secretary General of the Central Committee requests the newly-elected officials, especially Presidents of the CPDM Section executives, to immediately get down to work in a spirit of unity and cohesion in order to dispel the misunderstandings that arose during the elections and to rebuild the indispensable synergy of action around the ideals of the party," Jean Nkuete stated in the release. He further said that they, "must count on the fair play of candidates who did not benefit from the votes of their comrades, by reassuring them of their total and constant belonging to the great CPDM family."

The electoral atmosphere in some sections of the party was tense with acts of violence recorded in places such as Nde-North Section (Bangante) and Bengbis. Standoff was also recorded in some localities such as Kribi II Section and Mfoundi III Section (Yaounde III). In others there were many candidates that contested for the position of Section Presidents. This obviously left many disappointed and politically wounded. The wounds have to be healed in the interest of the party and a new chapter opened.

The new Section Presidents in this focus state their main challenges and how they intend to surmount them.
Tunis/Tunisia  The criminal division of the Court of Appeal of Nabeul, on Tuesday, upheld the judgment rendered in first instance against MP Maher Zid, sentenced to 4 years in prison, announced Moncef Hamdi, first deputy prosecutor of Nabeul and spokesperson for the Court.

The Court has made a final judgment in this case despite the absence of the accused and his lawyer, he said.

"The accused should begin to serve his sentence within 10 days of the pronouncement of the sentence," he said, adding, however, that his right to appeal remains guaranteed without suspending the sentence.

Maher Zid was brought before the indictment division of the Court of Appeal of Tunis by the Court of First Instance of Tunis for facts dating back to 2014.

He is prosecuted over embezzlement and removal or alteration of evidence, documents of criminal proceedings or other documents, records, contracts and items deposited in an archive safe or in a court secretariat.
Tunis/Tunisia  Eight more coronavirus infection cases have been detected in the governorate of Sidi Bouzid in the last 24 hours. This takes to 29,709 the number of COVID-19 cases in the region, since the spread of the pandemic.

The new infection cases were reported in Regueb (1 case), West Sidi Bouzid (2 cases) and Sidi Ali Ben Aoun (5 cases), deputy director of basic health care in Sidi Bouzid Bechir Saidi told TAP Wednesday.

In addition, 7 patients have recovered from the infection, bringing total recoveries in the region to 29,612, since the emergence of the virus, while the number of deaths from COVID-19 remains stable at 911.

According to the same source, 163 thousand citizens in the governorate of Sidi Bouzid have received COVID-19 vaccines so far. The number of those fully vaccinated stands at 101,000.
Tunis/Tunisia  Tunisia has fullfilled about 50% of its commitments to the 2019 Nairobi Summit, mainly in the areas of population and development, academic Mansour Nejah said at a workshop organised by the Health Ministry and the Ministry of Economy and Planning Wednesday.

The Nairobi Summit sought to follow up on the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (CIPD). During that event, Tunisia voiced 27 clear and concrete commitments in a bid to back the objectives of the ICPD and guarantee the rights and dignity to all, necessary for the achievement of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.

The national commitments focused on five main areas, namely universal access to sexual and reproductive health as part of health coverage; guarantee the right to sexual and reproductive health care during humanitarian crises; combat violence against women and harmful practices against children; mobilise necessary funding to complete the ICPD Programme of Action, and finally leverage demographic diversity so as to boost economic growth.

According to Nejah, Tunisia is doing its best in meeting its commitments, whose full completion is set by 2030, despite the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic and political instability in the country.

Director of the United Nations Population Fund in Tunisia (UNFPA Tunisia) Rim Fayala said that the promises of the 179 countries participating in the Nairobi Summit have made it possible to put women at the centre of local and international strategies so as to improve several indicators, particularly those related to reproductive health.

Fulfilling these promises will, in the long term, make it possible to fight against poverty and ensure security and prosperity for all nations.

The official pointed out that despite the achievements made in Tunisia, several shortcomings have been recorded in recent years. The use of contraceptives fell from 62% in 2012 to 50% in 2018, which reflects a relaxation in reproductive and sexual health, she underlined.

This workshop, which was chaired by Health Minister Ali Mrabet, was held in partnership with UNFPA Tunisia and the organisation Partners in Population and Development (French: PPD).
Members of Parliament have tasked the Minister of Local Government to provide a report on how local government officials who were responsible for the illegal recruitment and placement of workers in district positions have been sanctioned.

The parliamentarians also asked the minister to show measures that have been instituted to completely address such public service issues.

It was during the Plenary Sitting of the Chamber of Deputies held virtually on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, in which Minister Jean Marie Vianney Gatabazi was summoned to respond to the cases of illegal recruitment reported in districts and the City of Kigali.

On March 24, the Plenary Sitting of the Parliament's Lower Chamber made a resolution to summon the Minister of Local Government to respond to the cases of illegal public service recruitment in the decentralised administrative entities that were recurrent in the National Public Service Commission's annual reports for three fiscal years between 2017 and 2020.

Most of the issues that were exposed by the Commission's reports include changing marks for candidates with the aim to favor some at the expense of others, and candidates falling short of the requirements including qualifications and experience.

For instance, through the Commission's post-recruitment audit for the fiscal year 2018/2019, it said it was realised that 21 public institutions complied with the recruitment and employee placement legislation, while 14 ignored it, the Commission said.

In that regard, it assessed 177 petitions by dissatisfied candidates and found that 59 of them had valid grounds.

Districts accounted for more petitions as 30 of the 59 petitions - were from districts, followed by government institutions, and higher learning institutions.

MP Odette Uwamariya, Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs said that for instance, in 2018/2019, in Kayonza District, four candidates for sector finance and administration officer got their marks fraudulently increased, which made them be placed in the positions - in different sectors of the district - that they did not deserve.

As a result, she said, those who deserved the places because they scored the required grades were denied their rights.

Minister Gatabazi replied that some of the candidates were not placed though they were added marks.

For a candidate who had scored 18 out of 50 in written exam, but her marks were changed to 37 out 50 and was wrongly awarded the place, Minister Gatabazi said that this candidate was removed from the position by the district through a letter it wrote to her in 2020.

He said that the same applies to a candidate who was given 14 out 50 scores in written exam, but that was changed to 36 out 50, indicating that she was also removed from the position in 2020.

MP Jeanne Henriette Mukabikino wondered why districts did not implement the recommendations of the Commission to remove the illegitimately placed workers and waited for the resolutions of the Plenary Sitting of the Chamber of Deputies.

"There are employees who were placed in positions after being fraudulently given more marks, but they were paid salaries before being suspended. This implies that they got undue remunerations because they were not deserving that," she said, suggesting that those who employed them should recover such misappropriated public funds.

There are cases such as in Nyamagabe District, where exam results were canceled after realising that there was lack of transparency in the recruitment process.

MP Gloriose Uwanyirigira said that such a practice implies that there are people who subsequently became victims yet they were deserving the positions they were placed in.

"Such a situation means that there is an injustice committed against those people who were already working, yet they lost jobs because recruitment results were canceled. Can't that have consequences to the Government when those people take it to court over injustice they were done?" she asked.

Accountability

Talking about accountability, Gatabazi said that the cases of those who were responsible for the malpractices were taken to Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) so that they are held accountable in compliance with the law, referring to the cases in Kayonza District.

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He said that some of the officials from the district and Rwanda Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA) who were found responsible for such cases were dismissed.

RALGA is in charge of giving and marking recruitment exams for districts and.

However, MPs expressed concern that though responsible officials were held accountable in some districts and were taken to RIB for investigation and subsequent legal action, they were somehow let off with just caution or reprimand in other districts.

They called for equal treatment to ensure that the culprits get the penalties they deserve.

Gatabazi said that the recruitment and placement of people in public service should ensure justice for all candidates, and the best ones should be awarded jobs for the public interest.

"We are making efforts to ensure that the local government recruitment process is transparent," he said, citing heavy penalties against the staffing malpractices.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) officially launched its Accelerated Transformation of the Academic Programme (ATAP) initiative in mid-October. The event took place virtually and saw various UCT staff members, including Vice-Chancellor (VC) Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, speak about the potential the programme could unlock in the students involved.

Aimed at developing and supporting a cohort of high-performing black South African postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows with an interest in pursuing academic careers, the ATAP is intended to widen the pool of black South African candidates available for academic positions at UCT and other institutions.

The programme, which has been piloted in 2021, is funded through the office of the deputy vice-chancellor: transformation. It represents an initial investment of R44 million into a seven-year initiative that will run from January 2022 to December 2026.

Executive Director: Research Dr Linda Mtwisha, highlighted the purpose and importance of the initiative, both for UCT and the African continent. "This programme is about enhancing opportunity for young and outstanding scholars. It is aimed at strengthening career pathing (for) the next generation, while also contributing to the transformation of academia.

"We are in a unique position to make this the African century; to build the Africa of our dreams. For this, I believe we need socially conscious, capable and visionary leaders. We need thinkers and doers - people who are both critical and creative.

"In this regard, universities and most importantly, our academics play a vital role in mentoring and producing the scholars who will be the instruments of change towards the Africa we envision for ourselves," she noted.

By instituting this programme, UCT is providing a nurturing environment in which top academics can flourish, Mtwisha added. "I believe that at the core of delivering on these aspirations is a truly diverse and inclusive community of academics who will drive a more parental approach to research and pedagogy."

"It is not just about providing scholarships and fellowships. It is about nurturing and producing a critical mass of the next generation of black South African academics," she said.

The genesis of the programme

Professor Phakeng echoed the sentiments of Dr Mtwisha, pointing out that although the programme has been in place since the first semester of 2021, such a momentous initiative deserved an official kicking off.

"The initiative emanates from UCT's transformation vision; in particular, from the perspective of accelerating the transformation of academia. We at UCT have long recognised the importance of capacity-building and training with a view to transforming the current and future academic sector.

"We needed a more formal action with regard to growing the future ranks of academia".

"That is why we have a number of initiatives that focus on the next generation of academic practitioners, for example, the Next Generation of Academic Practitioners and the Next Generation and Future Professoriate Programme. However, we needed a more formal action with regard to growing the future ranks of academia," she said.

While she acknowledged the various initiatives that are already in place, Phakeng emphasised the need to further invest in and accelerate the transformation of the academic programme at UCT.

"In 2020, a Department of Higher Education (DHE) report on the progression of black South African academics painted a less than favourable picture of us. Of course, we had arguments in response about how many programmes we are running, but this report was not about how many programmes, but how much progress we were seeing on the ground."

While the DHE's report was suboptimal and not what the VC had wanted to hear, it served as the catalyst for the development of the ATAP.

"I decided to call meetings with black South African professors and associate professors to talk about what we can do and how we can get to where we need to be. We spoke about the stumbling blocks and how they got to where they are despite those stumbling blocks. That was the genesis of this programme," she explained.

Excellence, transformation and sustainability

Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation Professor Sue Harrison noted that academics should be thought of as working individuals who are able to make immeasurable contributions to society.

"The next generation of academics and, indeed, all academics must be thought about as working people who have a strong drive to share knowledge, to learn, to teach and to contribute to new knowledge. What's more, we must concentrate on nurturing all of these factors in balance with each other."

In line with this, Professor Harrison believes that the academics taking part in the ATAP should look to tackle difficult problems and build knowledge, not only to make a positive impact but also to ensure readiness for academic careers.

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"I think this phase of the project is firmly focused on supporting you to build your academic profiles and your academic careers through postgraduate and postdoctoral research. I wish to emphasise that this is not only about building your resume, but also building your expertise and your experience and your skills to tackle difficult problems efficiently.

"What this means is that we should be concentrating on building knowledge and making a positive impact on society and the environment. As an academic programme, the ATAP is designed to enable a rigorous, yet short route from postgraduate study into being ready for academic careers," she said.

In addition to furthering the careers of black South African academics, the programme has an important role in ensuring that UCT is able to achieve the goals set by the university's Vision 2030.

"The importance of today's launch for recognising this programme and its first cohort is a significant milestone towards not only the practical wraparound support and mentoring of black South African masters, PhD and post-doctorate fellows, but also in terms of UCT's Vision 2030, which is anchored in three pillars: excellence, transformation and sustainability," she concluded.
Abuja  The Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its weekly meeting yesterday approved contracts worth N47 billion for various projects in the ministries of Works and Housing, Aviation and some departments and agencies.

Other parastatals to benefit from the awarded contracts included the Nigeria Customs Service, the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, Abuja and the University of Abuja.

Briefing newsmen at the end of the virtual FEC meeting presided over by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, at the State House, Abuja, Aviation Minister, Senator Hadi Sirika, said Council approved the three memoranda presented by his ministry, including the one for the award of a contract for direct procurement, installation and commissioning of the total radar coverage modernization for the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), at the cost of 14,428,218.17, which is equivalent to N28,039,080,799.40.

According to him, two other contracts including the one for the supply and installation of baggage handling system at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos worth N3, 615,265,710.69.

The third Aviation contract approved was for the manufacture, supply, installation and operating training of disabled aircraft recovery system at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja at the cost of N2,209,593,428.08.

Sirika said: "Today, council received three memoranda from aviation and they were all approved consequently. Memo number one is for approval for a contract for the supply and installation of baggage handling system at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos and the total contract sum is N3, 615,265,710.69, inclusive of the 7.5 per cent VAT, with the completion period of 12 months.

"The contractor is Messrs. Gulf of Africa International Limited, who are exclusive representatives of the original equipment manufacturer. The OEM is Messrs. UVS Systems Company, a company that is located in Istanbul, Turkey. The funding was found and appropriated and Council consequently approved.

"The second memo from us in Aviation is approval for the award of contract for the manufacture, supply, installation and operating training of disabled aircraft recovery system at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.

"This system is to be applied in the event that there is an aircraft that is occupying the runway or any area of operations that we have, so the special equipment will be used to remove that aircraft from that place and free it for our own operations. Contract sum is N2, 209,593,428.08, inclusive of 7.5% VAT.

"This was issued to Messrs. Globsley Project Limited. The OEM representatives are Messrs. AMS Aircraft Recovery Limited.

"The third memo is approval is approval for the award of contract for direct procurement, installation and commissioning of the total radar coverage modernization for the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency and this contract is in two parts and the total is 14,428,218.17 Euros, which is equivalent to N28, 039,080,799.40.

"The contractors are Messrs. Talas, who had been on the project and supported by Intelligent Transportation Systems Limited and Messrs. Softnet Systems Nigeria Limited and the OEMs are Messrs. Talas Systems of France and Messrs. HM Global of Germany".

Also briefing newsmen, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, said FEC approved the procurement of 46 vehicles for operational use by Customs at the cost of N1, 554,200,000.

"Today, Council approved the procurement of 46 units of vehicles, these is for operational and administrative use by the Nigerian Customs Service. This was awarded to Messrs. Elizade Nigeria Limited at a total cost of N1, 554,200,000 and this amount is inclusive of a 7.5 per cent VAT.

"Recall that the last set of procurement of vehicles that was done for customs was 2017 and 2020, and in 2020 we did see a whole lot of huge seizures that were made by the Nigerian Customs and also the performance in terms of revenue. Even with 2021, up till August, they have over performed the prorated rate of the target that they were given.

"So, Council believes that by provision of these additional vehicles, it will also help in enhancing, not only their effectiveness, but their efficiency and more revenues will be generated."

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On his part, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, who spoke on the memoranda approved for other ministries, revealed that FEC approved a contract for the construction and furnishing of new Senate Building and 1,000 Capacity Conference Centre by the University of Abuja.

The contract approved for award to Messrs Hilkam Engineering Consultancy Ltd, is at the cost of N2, 354,247,466.76

He further said: "There was also an approval of another memo presented by the Minister of Power for the award of 400kw pv power plant at Federal Medical Center (FMC), Jabi, Abuja at the cost of N768,906,174.71 to Stallion Trading and Construction Company Ltd.

"There was also an approval for the Minister of Works and Housing for the award of contract for the rehabilitation of Sokoto - Ilela (Nigeria) Birnin Konin (Niger Republic) Road in Sokoto State at the sum of N8,450,829,974.95 to Messrs Amirco Universal Concept Ltd".
As the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) moves both personnel and materials to Anambra State in readiness for the governorship election yesterday, INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, has said the commission would do everything in its powers to ensure only eligible voters determine the next governor of the South-east state. Yakubu stated this on Wednesday in Awka during a pre-election stakeholders meeting with the political parties, religious leaders, traditional rulers, and civil society groups.

But the commission was quick to add, "We are also determined to prosecute perpetrators of electoral malpractice, including any election duty staff found to be complicit. The choice of the next governor of Anambra State is in the hands of the eligible voters and their will must prevail."

Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Usman Baba, issued a stern warning on the general conduct of people during the election. Baba said the police were determined to guarantee a peaceful election in the state. He explained that the heavy deployment of security personnel to the state was not to scare away voters, but to protect everyone.

Also yesterday, the Chairman of THISDAY/ARISE Media Group, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, thanked the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, and the Director General of the Department of State Security, DSS, Mr. Yusuf Magaji Bichi, for providing solid security during the ARISE News and Enough is Enough group jointly organised governorship debate in Awka, the Anambra state capital on Monday. He explained that other media houses pulled out of participating in the debate because of security concerns, "essentially, other media houses had pulled out of the debate; some wanted it done in Abuja, owing to security fears, but Arise News Channel refused, insisting that we can't run away from any part of the country. The CDS assured of security and he lived up to his word." Obaigbena urged the security forces to provide the same security so that voters will come to go and cast their vote for candidate of their choice and "we are urging them to extend same security for the election to encourage people to vote."

Also reacting, Tthe Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), on its part, asked INEC and all the security personnel deployed for the governorship election to ensure the process was credible, fair, and transparent.

Accordingly, the United States warned that anyone, who interfered with the lawful conduct of the election or instigated violence, would face visa restrictions along with their families.

Yakubu, speaking at a stakeholders' meeting, said some of the sensitive materials had been secured at the Anambra State branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in Awka.

The INEC chairman said as a usual practice on the eve of major elections, INEC would invite political parties, civil society organisations, and the media to the CBN on Thursday to inspect the sensitive materials and witness their movement to the various local government areas under security escort.

By the same arrangement, Yakubu said the materials would be delivered to the Registration Areas or Wards on Friday to facilitate the opening of Polling Units at 8.30am on Election Day.

He assured voters in the state that in designing the sensitive materials for the election, the commission had introduced additional visible and invisible security features, including different colour codes. He said election materials had also been customised according to local government areas and polling units, warning those who may attempt to compromise the process that INEC has put in place sufficient security features to detect counterfeits.

The INEC chairman stated, "On Saturday, 6th November 2021, Anambra State will make history as the first governorship election in Nigeria in which the commission will deploy the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device. This new device replaces the Smart Card Reader (SCR) used in previous elections since 2015.

"We are satisfied with the pilot deployment of the BVAS in the Isoko South I State Constituency bye-election in Delta State on 11th September 2021. The BVAS has the dual capacity for fingerprint and facial authentication of voters. This is to guard against voting by identity theft, where one person uses another person's Permanent Voter's Card (PVC) to vote using the incident form.

"With this development, the use of the incident form is abolished. No voter without genuine PVC will vote. No voter, who has not been successfully accredited electronically, using the BVAS, will vote.

"At the same time, the BVAS is also equipped with a camera. Therefore, it has the capacity to snap Polling Unit level result and upload same to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal, so that citizens can view results as election is concluded in each Polling Unit.

"Therefore, there is no need for the Z-Pad since its functions have been embedded in the BVAS. I am glad to report that all the BVAS required for the election on Saturday have been configured and delivered to Anambra State. Election duty staff have also been trained on the use of the device and we have sufficient technical staff to respond to any glitches that may occur."

Yakubu acknowledged concerns expressed about the availability of PVCs for new registrants in the state.

He said, "At the end of the recent Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, a total of 138,802 citizens completed the registration. After cleaning up the data, the commission identified and archived 62,698 multiple registrants. Consequently, the number of valid registrants is 76,104.

"This figure has been added to 5,674 requests for transfer, update of voter information and replacement of lost or damaged PVCs, bringing the total of valid registrations to 81,774. I am glad to report that the PVCs have been printed and delivered to all the local government areas for collection by voters.

"We have also contacted the voters by text messages and email addresses and informed them of the exact locations to collect their cards. Through the media, we have also been sensitising them to the availability of the cards for collection. Many of them have done so already. Let me, therefore, once again appeal to those that have not done so that their cards are available for collection."

On the issue of voters' distribution by polling units, Yakubu stated, "About four weeks ago, the commission published the register of voters for the election on 7th October 2021 i.e. 30 days to the election as required by law. Each of the 18 political parties was given a soft copy of the register here in Awka. In addition to meeting, the requirement of the law, the presentation of the register is significant for another reason.

"The Anambra governorship election is the first time that voting is taking place in polling units since the recent successful conversion of voting points arising from the expansion of voter access to polling units in Nigeria.

"An additional 1,112 polling units were established in Anambra State in addition to the existing 4,608 locations. This brings the total number of polling units in the state to 5,720. Voters were encouraged to seize the opportunity of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise to transfer to the new polling units most convenient for them. Many did not do so.

"This can be partly attributed to the security situation in the state, which has affected the commission's pre-election outdoor activities, including voter education and sensitisation. Understandably, the voters have also been cautious."

Yakubu explained that out of the 5,720 polling units in the state, 86 (1.5%) had no voters. He said the commission would not deploy personnel and materials to these polling units. "Furthermore, 894 (15.6%) of the polling units have between one and 49 voters. Election will hold in these polling units. We will continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure that all Polling Units have voters allotted to them ahead of the 2023 general election," he said.

IG Issues Stern Warning, Says Deployment Not to Scare Anyone

Inspector General of Police (IGP) Usman Baba, yesterday, read the riot act to troublemakers ahead of the Anambra State governorship election. Baba said at a meeting with political parties, religious leaders, and traditional rulers that the police were determined to ensure a peaceful election.

However, he allayed fears and concerns about the heavy security deployment in the state, saying it is not meant to scare away voters, but to reassure them of their security and safety.

The IGP said, "It is to be additionally emphasised that aside these sets of guidelines, which fall under the provisions of the Electoral Act, any person that violates any components of the criminal laws, including being in possession of weapons of violence of any description, either on the streets or around the polling units, engages in any violent act, attacks critical national assets, engages in corrupt inducement of the electorate, or threatens public peace in any manner before, during and after the election, shall be apprehended and dealt with in accordance with the requisite criminal law.

"I, therefore, call on all the political parties to embrace the virtues of democracy by seeing elections as a call to service by the people and not 'a-do or die' affair."

Baba implored parents and guardians to discourage their children and wards from being used to foment trouble or subvert the election process, warning, "Such will be forcefully resisted by the Nigeria Police, the military and other security agencies."

The IGP said residents and voters should be guided by the following rules, as contained in the Electoral Act, on the election day.

According to him, "No one is allowed to wear any cloth, emblem or colour signifying any political party to the polling units.

"No person is allowed to move around with security details around the polling units. Indeed, appropriate directives have been given for the withdrawal or scaling down of such security details around politically exposed persons and other personalities in the state until after the elections.

"Everyone is enjoined to vote and return to their respective houses or remain peacefully within approved perimeters of the polling centres. No one is allowed to move about from one polling unit to another, as there shall be restriction of movements on the day of the election.

"Only INEC accredited Election Monitors/observers are allowed to move around for the purpose of election monitoring and they must all wear their INEC accreditation tags. Only accredited journalists are allowed to cover the election. All such journalists must carry their accreditation tags."

He explained that the massive deployment of security was "not designed to intimidate the law-abiding, as being insinuated in some quarters. In the contrary, it is to re-assure them of adequate protection by deterring misguided political elements as well as non-state actors that might be bent on threatening the elections through acts of armed violence or other conducts that violate the provisions of the Electoral Act.

"It is to also serve as a strong warning that the government is determined to bring such subversive characters to justice should they advance their ignoble, undemocratic and unpatriotic intents. The overriding objective of our operational action plan is to ensure an environment that is peaceful enough to encourage the law-abiding people of Anambra State to exercise their electoral franchise.

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IPAC Demands Fairness, Transparency from INEC, Security Agencies

Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC) asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and all the security personnel deployed for the election in Anambra State to ensure a credible, fair and transparent electoral process. It urged the youth in the state to eschew violence and "shun political buccaneers masquerading as democrats, whose stock in trade is to use them for electoral thuggery, ballot snatching and rigging to thwart the people's mandate".

IPAC said it had received assurances from relevant quarters that the result of the election would be transmitted electronically.

Addressing journalists on Wednesday in Abuja, National Chairman of IPAC, Mr. Leonard Nzenwa, who is also National Chairman, African Action Congress (AAC), said it was important for INEC and the security agencies to commit to fairness and transparency during the election, and not compromise their integrity.

Nzenwa stated, "INEC should provide a level playing field to all political parties and their candidates participating in the election and ensure electoral materials are provided, and that voting starts as scheduled in all polling units in the state.

"The neutrality of INEC in this election will determine the survival of democracy in Nigeria. All eyes are on the commission and its officials as they discharge this onerous civic responsibility. Security agents should also discharge their duties professionally and ensure adequate protection of lives and property during the exercise."

US Threatens Visa Restriction on Violence Instigators

The United States warned that visa restrictions would be imposed anyone who interfered with the lawful conduct of the Anambra election or instigated violence. A statement on Wednesday from the US Embassy said the American government looked forward to a peaceful and transparent governorship election whose results would accurately reflect the will of the people of the state.

The statement said, "We will be paying close attention to actions of individuals, who interfere with the democratic process or instigate violence against civilian populations before, during, or after the elections.

"We will not hesitate to consider consequences, including visa restrictions, for those found to be responsible for election-related violence or undermining the democratic process."

The statement further explained, "Under US immigration law, certain violations also may lead to restrictions on family members."

It called on citizens, electoral officials, party members, and security force personnel to do their part in ensuring a credible and secure electoral process.
Katsina  The Katsina State Police Command has apprehended one Jamilu Idris for allegedly abducting his four-year-old cousin brother, Umar Farouk Kabir.

The 39-year-old suspected kidnapper, who hails from Sabon-Fegi in Yankara village, Faskari Local Government Area of the state, was nabbed on October 9, 2021.

Idris, who is said to have no fewer than 41 Islamic pupils under his tutelage, learning Qur'an, lured the kidnapped teenager after drugging him.

The Command's Public Relations Officer, Gambo Isah, who paraded the suspect alongside 13 other suspected criminals yesterday evening, said the suspect later demanded for N5,000,000 ransom.

Isah, a superintendent of police, added that the suspect abducted the victim at his father's residence in Funtua Local Government Area of the state and took him to Dutsen-Alhaji in Abuja.

He said: "On October 25, 2021 at about 1100hrs, the Command succeeded in arresting one Jamilu Idris, aged 39 years of Sabon-Fegi, Yankara village, Faskari LGA of the state, an Islamic cleric, who masterminded the kidnapping of his causing, one Umar Farouk Kabir, aged 4years of the same address.

"In the course of investigation, suspect confessed that on 09/10/2021, at about 1430hrs, he went to the house of his uncle, one Kabir Abdullahi at Funtua, who was not at home and when his son Umar Farouk Kabir came out to see who was asking after his father, he recognised the suspect, who later deceptively gave the little boy a Viju drink and abducted him to Dutsen-Alhaji, Abuja.

"Subsequently, the suspect called the father (his uncle) through his GSM, changed his voice so that he couldn't recognize him and threatened that he had kidnapped his son".

Isah added: "He (Idris) further confessed to have demanded the payment of N5,000,000:00 ransom but the father said he can only afford to pay him the sum of N500,000:00".
Kampala, Uganda  The Health Minister, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng has listed 10 challenges that she said bedevils the healthcare system in Uganda calling for increased funding to streamline the sector.

In a presentation meant to enlist Parliament's support in solving the healthcare problems facing the country, Aceng said increased financial allocation to the Ministry of Health will solve most of the sector's problems.

Aceng listed shortages of "critical cadres such as specialists, anaesthetic officers, dispensers, pharmacists and theatre staff", and "inadequate financing to the sector," as the core issues that need urgent attention.

Other issues include the rising number of local governments that also increase pressure on already established health facilities requiring further investment in construction of new healthcare units, dilapidated health infrastructure that requires refurbishment and re-equipping and inadequate medical equipment at many health care units.

Aceng said lack of state of the art imaging equipment, no hospitals in many constituencies, inadequate staffing and a weak community health workers extension system are the issues that scream for immediate attention.

With the funding problems, the Ministry's capacity to deal with epidemics is seriously impaired, always requiring running back to Parliament for more funds as opposed to having a financial plan to tackle such occurrences.

"The major challenge afflicting control of epidemics is lack of a dedicated budget line. All epidemics are managed through requests for supplementary funding which has a lengthy process and impairs timely planning," she said, calling for the establishment of a specially dedicated fund to finance response to epidemics.

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MP Ronald Evans Kanyike of Bukoto County East, said since the solution to the problems lies in increased funding, Parliament should allocate more to the sector.

"The solution is that there must be goodwill as far as budget allocation is concerned," he said.

MP Santa Okot of Aruu North, said because of funding inadequacies, several districts in Northern Uganda continue to suffer the plague of nodding syndrome, a disease affecting children, and is characterized by persistent nodding and neuro-breakdown of victims.

To date, there hasn't been a clear diagnosis of what the disease is and its causes.

"We have got about 5,000 children in Pader, Kitgum and possibly Omoro, who are going to perish because of that disease," she said.

To MP Charity Bainababo (UPDF), army hospitals should be supported because they are an integral part of the healthcare system always serving the neighboring civilians, which in turn stress facilities originally meant for the soldiers.

"I wish to request the Ministry of Health that UPDF be given the status of a health district so that we get support [since we aid the civilian population as well]," she said.
Justice Toyin Oyekan-Abdullahi, of the Lagos State High Court sitting at Osborne, Ikoyi yesterday, warned bank executives of the consequences of snubbing court orders. She has therefore, threatened to send to jail any bank CEO who failed to disclose the amount to the credit of Imagine Global Holding Company Limited, Imagine Global Solutions Limited, Mr. Bamise Samson Ajetunmobi and his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Anuoluwapo Ajetunmobi.

The claimants/applicants are aggrieved Nigerians who invested their funds in Imagine Global and according to their motion, the N11.795 billion is the outstanding investments and return on investments accruing to them from the defendants.

Justice Oyekan-Abdullahi, who gave the warning, noted that some banks are yet to comply with the order of the court made on October 24, 2021 in favour of the investors.

The order restrained commercial banks in Nigeria from releasing funds up to N11,795,090,000 to the two firms and the Ajetunmobi Couple.

The order also directed the banks to, among others, file and serve on the claimants/applicants' counsel, Adetunji Adedoyin-Adeniyi, within seven days of service of the order on them, an affidavit disclosing the balance on the defendants' accounts.

The orders followed a Motion on Notice for a Mareva Injunction filed ex parte by the Claimants/Applicants on October 15, 2021 in suit LD/579CM/2021.

At the resumed hearing of the matter yesterday, Justice Oyekan-Abdullahi expressed displeasure with some of the banks that failed to strictly comply with the Order of Court.

She warned that besides sanctioning any defaulting bank executive, she said any legal practitioner that act contrary to the said order would also be sanctioned.

She stated that "the court will not allow the citizens of this country to keep weeping because of the absconding investors."

The court heard that one of those affected by the conduct of the defendants was Wema Bank which allegedly gave loan to Imagine Global in September, 2021, after accepting the defendants' properties as collateral, as contained in the application filed by Wema Bank seeking to discharge the Order of court as an interested party.

But Adedoyin-Adeniyi opposed the application on the ground that Wema Bank is equally a victim as much as the claimants, by virtue of the personal guarantees the defendants executed in favour of the claimants as far back as January, 2020.

Also, the firm of Babalakin & Co equally filed and application on behalf of a firm known as Mainstreet Capital Limited, which also invested in the defendants, as contained in an application filed through the law firm seeking to join as co-claimant in the suit.

Adedoyin-Adeniyi also opposed the application, arguing that many organisations which lacked courage to go after the couple due to the sensitive nature of the matter, now wanted to piggyback on the claimants who had approached the court for Mareva orders.He argued that the claimants should not be compelled to allow other parties to join the case, rather, anyone with grievances against the couple "should file his own case."

Adedoyin-Adeniyi equally alleged that N17 billion had passed through Imagine Global's account with Wema Bank between May 2020 and May, 2021 and the Bank is yet to place before the court the detailed statement of account of Imagine Global Ltd.

Justice Oyekan-Abdullahi has adjourned till November 11, 2021 for the banks to show cause in compliance with the order of court.

Part of the court's orders includes barring the four defendants from accessing funds up to N11,795,090,000 in their accounts with the banks, pending the hearing and determination of a Motion on Notice for a Mareva Injunction.

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The court also barred the banks - in the interim - from dealing with all monies and/or whatsoever assets due to the defendants from any account maintained by the 1st - 4th defendants and also all accounts with BVN: 22168443525 (3rd Defendant) and BVN:22141952749 (4th Defendant), up to the N11,795,090,000

It further restrained the defendants from selling, transferring, assigning and/or dealing with the following properties: Apartment 7, Oakwood Residences, 23, Cooper Street, Ikoyi, Lagos and B4, Gate 3, Lafiaji Road, Victoria Crescent Estate, Olugborogon, Chevron, Lekki, Lagos or any other properties/assets of the 1st, 2nd 3rd and 4th Defendants that can be traced and located by Claimants/ Applicants during the pendency of the suit.
Michael Olugbode in Maiduguri

One of the major roads linking the North East part of Nigeria to Cameroon and by extension other countries in the Central African region, was reopened by the Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum with the military authorities, nine years after it was closed as a result of the Boko Haram crisis.

The road, Bama-Banki, 65 kilometers long, leads Kanuri commercial and historical town of Bama to border town Banki, which shares border with neighbouring Cameroon Republic in Central Africa.

Until the invasion and capture of Bama by insurgents about nine years ago, which led to the closure of the road, the route was of immense economic value to the country as goods were transported from Nigeria to Cameroon, as well as many other countries in the Central African region.

Though Bama has been recaptured from the insurgents about eight years ago, the level of its destruction made reconstruction inevitable before it could be inhabitable and allow for commercial activities.

The road was reopened at a ceremony organised by the Borno State Government, where the governor, alongside the Theatre Commander, 'Operation Hadin Kai', Major General Musa Christopher, traveled to the border town from Maiduguri.

Unveiling the road at Banki Junction on the outskirts of Bama town, Zulum appreciated the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigerian military for the gains being recorded in peace-building and stability of the North East region.

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"I am very much impressed to witness the official reopening of this very important international road. This road has remained inaccessible to people since 2012, due to activities of Boko Haram, but with the coming of President Muhammadu Buhari, our gallant security agencies have worked towards today's reopening of this road," he said.

The Governor, who subsequently released 10 surveillance vehicles to the Nigerian Army to enhance their security operations along the reopened road, warned security officials to desist from extorting motorists and passengers while plying the road.

His words: "As we were coming here today, I sighted some immigration personnel busy extorting our motorists along the Maiduguri-Bama-Banki junction, which is unacceptable. I want to strongly sound a warning, especially, to immigration personnel and other sister agencies to desist from extorting motorists and passengers.

"I have given a matching order to the military to arrest anybody engaged in smuggling of goods, especially, diverting the main road to the bush with food items."

Earlier, Christopher, thanked Zulum for supporting the army in the fight against insurgents and promised to do their best to end terrorism in the region.

Christopher said reopening of roads and resettlement of IDPs by the present administration signified the end of Boko Haram, which would be some of the achievements to be measured during his stay in the theatre.

After reopening the road, Zulum paid an unscheduled visit to Umar Ibn Ibrahim College of Education (UICEST) Bama, where he directed his Commissioner for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RRR), Mustapha Gubio, to immediately provide buses for students and ceiling fans to all classrooms/lecture theaters.
Namibians attached to the country's embassy in Ethiopia are safe and sound amid armed conflict and civil unrest rocking the East African nation.

Ethiopia plunged into political crisis this week after the government declared a national state of emergency as rival Tigray forces threaten to move on the capital.

International relations minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah yesterday said she has spoken to Namibia's ambassador to Ethiopia, Emilia Mkusa who informed her staff members are for now "safe and sound".

"I will speak to her later today and give you an update," Nandi-Ndaitwah said. The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government for a year, has claimed significant territorial gains in recent days, along with its ally the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA).

In November last year, Ahmed sent troops into the northern region to detain and disarm TPLF, whom he accused of attacking army camps.

According to international reports, Odaa Tarbii, spokesman for OLA, which has also claimed recent advances in Amhara and in the Oromia region surrounding Addis Ababa, said his group intended to topple Abiy's government, calling his removal "a foregone conclusion".

"If things continue in the current trajectory, then we are talking about a matter of months if not weeks," he said, referring to OLA's move on Addis Ababa.

In a statement released yesterday, Abiy accused the rebel alliance of trying to turn Ethiopia into Libya and Syria, adding: "They are set to destroy a country - not to build it."

He also urged citizens to support the war effort, saying: "Victory over the threat posed by our enemies is unattainable if we do not work together."
DANGOTE Cement Tanzania is planning to increase output by over 30 per cent next year to capitalise on the expansion of Mtwara port.

The Mtwara-base plant said the plan is to up cement production from the current 1.8 million tonnes per year to 2.4 million tonnes banking on using the modernising port to transport its consignment by linking with Dar es Salaam port.

The plant has installed capacity of producing 3.0 million tonnes of cement a year.

The Dangote Tanzania Chief Executive Officer, Mr Abdullahi Baba, made the revelation here saying the increase of production was set to ensure stable supply of the products to Dar es Salaam and other regions in the country.

Mr Baba made the revelation before Mtwara Regional Commissioner, Brigadier General Marco Gaguti who had paid a visit at the plant to see the progress of the cement production.

The RC commended the Dangote management for the plans of increasing production in order to use Mtwara port in transportation of products to various parts in the country.

"I commend Dangote for dedicating resources and efforts in ensuring huge investment in production of cement vital for building our infrastructures and also using Mtwara port in transportation of the products to various regions in our country," he said.

The RC said use of the port in transporting the cement to other regions in the country would help avail price competition in the market.

Brig Gen Gaguti also asked the management Dangote to expand cement market produced in Mtwara to outside the country taking advantage of Mtwara port.

Currently, Dangote is using Dar port on shipping cement to Zanzibar and Comoro.

The plant in Mtwara - about 400km from Dar es Salaam - was commissioned in late 2015 and is the largest cement factory in the country.

With about 500 million tonnes of limestone reserves, enough for 149 years, the plant is capable of producing large amounts of high-quality 32.5 and 42.5 grade cements to meet local market needs at competitive prices, as well as surrounding export markets by sea.

Tanzania's per-capita cement consumption is around 50kilogramme per annum well below the global average and low even for Africa.
THE United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the Prevention and Combating Corruption Bureau (PCCB), on Wednesday launched Anti-Corruption Initiative to tackle the vice in health sector dubbed; 'Tech Tools for Combating Corruption in the Health Sector (TTCCHC).

UNDP Resident Representative, Ms Christine Musisi, said the project aims to address the persisting challenges of corruption in the health sector.

She said the project is designed to equip PCCB with relevant capacities and tools on data analytics for assessing corruption and fraud risks, to enhance the agency's ability to extract meaningful data through analysis, tools and various techniques.

"This is expected to transform how PCCB uses data analytics to test the effectiveness of internal controls and compliance procedures. Data analytics will also be integrated into risk assessments for effective prevention of corruption" she said

Adding: "This project is a unique pilot instrument. It is the result of active and constructive dialogue with and between different stakeholders, namely PCCB, Sikika and all other partners involved in the fight against corruption in the health sector".

She said the project has been designed in such a way that it is based on three principles, cooperation, coordination, and country ownership.

Ms Musisi said UNDP's next generation of Anti-Corruption programming aims at strengthening the role of oversight and anti-corruption institutions for sustainable development, promoting social accountability and the role of civil society.

Moreover, she said it would focus on strengthening business integrity and harnessing the benefits of technology and innovation to enhance transparency and openness.

She said both parties must continue to push for more technological solutions and greater transparency in ensuring proper management of funds.

The UNDP intends to support PCCB in designing and implementing a secure digitalized system for effective tracing, detection, prevention and combating of corruption in health and eventually other essential sectors in the country.

She was optimistic that the project would be a well-targeted, concrete and up scaled innovative intervention to support the country's ambition in prevention and combating corruption, enhancing knowledge and understanding of the emerging corruption practices and new approaches to address them.

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"I am pleased to say that in Tanzania, the fight against corruption is a priority agenda of the government. Such a huge battle will be won by collaborative efforts of a wide range of partners in government, civil society, private sector and the community. Nonetheless, the government alone will not be able to successfully eradicate corruption. We are delighted to see the strong partnerships that PCCB is building in this noble cause" she commended

In her remarks, PCCB Deputy Director General, Ms Neema Mwakalyelye thanked UNDP for their valuable work and support to the government's efforts to intensify the fight against corruption.

"In Tanzania, tackling corruption focuses on unlocking economic potentials and improving service delivery. Therefore, to us the launching of this Anti-Corruption Project remains a great milestone on our aspiration and efforts to prevent and combat corruption using a technology-based platform for tracking and analyzing intelligence information" she said

The move will enable investigators to track the flow of expenditures and training investigators on e-financial investigations.

As a pilot project, they will commence working in the health sector and later replicate in other sectors, especially those related to social services.
SPEAKER of National Assembly, Mr Job Ndugai will today inaugurate the sub-office of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA) in an endeavour to facilitate and stimulate industrialization growth and development in the next five years.

The President of TCCIA, Mr Paul Koyi, said the inauguration of the new office in the country's capital city was a testimony that the chamber was heartedly supporting government efforts to transform the economy into industrial base.

"We at TCCIA have so long started implementing the government's ambitious plan of turning the economy into industrial base by 2025," Mr Koyi told journalists yesterday shortly after the Chamber's internal meeting.

He said that for Speaker Ndugai to officially inaugurate the office, has meant a lot for the chamber and its members since it would open a new chapter of cooperation and that members of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry and Trade will also attend the important function today.

"Opening a sub-office in Dodoma was one of the Chamber's desired plans of transforming its services and increase efficiency," he said.

Mr Koyi said that since its establishment, TCCIA has been fulfilling her duties professionally yet working closely with all partners in both private and public sectors in addressing challenges frustrating the growth of the chamber.

"We are in all regions and it is now high time for Tanzanians to wake up," he said.

Earlier, TCCIA Acting Executive Director, Mr Nebart Mwapwele said the office which is situated at Mazengo Street in the city would play key role for serving more business people and consolidate regional offices in Central Zone.

"They will also have an opportunity to mingle with members of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry and Trade," Mr Mwapele said.

TCCIA is an organisation accomplished to a countrywide network and in 2007 the Chamber won Best Africa Award for having a well-established network in Africa.
THE Zanzibar government has expressed hope over possible hike in number of tourists visited the Isles during last month as compared to September when it recorded 25,817 tourists.

This is according to the Office of the Chief Government Statistician (OCGS).

The OCGS said the trend was impressive as they continued compiling data of tourists for last month.

Ms Raya Mohammed Mahfoudh, a statistician with the OCGS, told journalists during a monthly media briefing on tourist statistics that there were signs of tourist increase due to eased restrictions over the Covid-19 globally.

Giving September statistics, she said a total of 15,263 visitors entered the country from Europe (equivalent to 59.1 percent of all visitors, followed by tourists from the African continent which brought in a total of 4,537 visitors, equivalent to 17.6 percent, 2021.

"The leading country to bring in tourists was France, with a total of 3,586 tourists (or 13.9 percent of all tourists) followed by Poland with 3,058 (equivalent to 11.8 percent) ," she said, adding that advertisements to attract tourists into the country should continue.

According to Ms Mahfoudh, during September 2021, a total of 22,232 tourists, equivalent to 86.1 percent of all tourists who entered Zanzibar through airports and 3,585 tourists, equivalent to 13.9 percent, who entered through the seaport.

Explaining the purpose of foreign trips to Zanzibar, she said 99.3 percent of all the tourists and visitors came to the country for holiday, 0.5 percent came to visit relatives and friends and 0.2 percent came to the country for other reasons.

The Immigration Department Liaison Officer and Assistant Superintendent of Immigration Zanzibar, Mr Bakari Sharif Bakari said the influx of visitors, including tourists was going on well, "This is also due to simplified process to access visas and existing security and peace in the country."

The Marketing Officer for Tourism Commission, Mr Amour Mtumwa Ali, said the increase in the number of tourists in the country is likely due to the country's peace, security, favorable investment climate, and controlled Coronavirus pandemic.
The US Government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has promised to continue supporting the fight against malaria.

Speaking in Kigoma on Tuesday during a 'Mothers Meet Up' event, the USAID Tanzania Mission Director, Ms Kate Somvongsiri said her government has been supporting Tanzania in the fight against malaria in many ways, including the distribution of treated mosquito nets.

In addition, USAID through the project of USAID Tulonge Afya has been hosting 'Mothers Meet Up' events which bring together mothers of children below the age of 5 in conversations about health issues that matter to them, their families, and the welfare of their children.

"The US government is committed on safeguarding the wellbeing of these mothers and their babies by investing in the health and livelihoods of Tanzanians by providing significant support to Tanzania's health sector, investing in infrastructure development, health policy reforms, capacity building and social behavior change,' said Somvongsiri.

In addition, Somvongsiri said that USAID will also continue providing support to maternal, newborn and child health interventions, family planning, HIV/Aids prevention, care and treatment.

Speaking about the 'Mothers Meet Up Events', Project Coordinator, Ms Rose Kanango said the events are supported by the USAID, under USAID Tulonge Afya - a five-year project that seeks to catalyze opportunities for Tanzanians to improve their health status by transforming socio-cultural norms and supporting the adoption of healthier behaviors.

Mother Meet Up Events are managed under Tulonge Afya's NAWEZA platform.

They are designed to bring together mums of children below the age of 5 in conversations about the health issues that matter to them, their families, and the welfare of their children, said Kanango.

She added that the events are modeled after 'kitchen parties', a sort of sendoff for soon-to-be-married women, replete with the expectations of looming motherhood such moments tend to trigger.
Bishop Matthew Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto State, has advised the people of Anambra to come out and exercise their franchise during Saturday's Governorship election.

Kukah gave the advice in an interview with newsmen during the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stakeholders' meeting on the state election in Awka.

He advised voters in the state not to be afraid to exercise their political right, saying whether you vote or not you have made a decision that you will live with the consequences.

"If you decide not to vote, it then means that the candidate you don't want to win may probably be the one to win the election.

"And you have to live with the consequences, to a very little extent, except you say that our lives are in the hands of God.

"I do not think that any citizen of Nigeria should feel so afraid of their lives that they will be afraid to live up to their political responsibility.

"Whatever reservations anybody may have, this is a family affair.

"It is not that we are in the military which somebody has been imposed on the people of Anambra, you are choosing from among themselves," Kukah said.

The religious leader said he was in the state in company of the chairman of INEC to encourage the people of Anambra people to allow free, fair and credible elections.

Kukah advised the people to realize how privileged they were in politics and economic development of Nigeria.

He said that the state had produced great Nigerians, including former President Nnamdi Azikiwe; former Vice President, Alex Ekweme; former Senate President, Chuba Okadigbo; former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Kenneth Dike, and "Cardinal Arinze who would have been a Pope."

"Anambra has no business being hesitant on issues of our democracy. This country is ours to fix and Anambra has the manpower.

"Each of the people contesting this election is literally qualified to contest for the presidency of Nigeria," Kukah said.

Also in an interview with newsmen, the Director of Programs, YIAGA Africa, Cynthia Mbamalu, expressed fear that there maybe voter apathy on Saturday, given the security situation and number of people yet to collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

Mbamalu said the focus in the next two day should be inspiring the people of the state to come out to vote on Saturday.

"The confidence is dependent on two factors, security agencies being able to secure the place and guarantees safety of personnel and voter materials.

"The other is also the work of INEC in the next couple of days.

"If these factors are met, I believe that you can see a reasonable number of people coming out," she said.

Mbamalu advised security agencies to leverage on the media to instill confidence in the people of the state that the number of security deployed for the election was to safeguard them.

She, however, advised against over concentration of the security personnel in one location, rather, they should ensure a balanced spread.

Mbamalu also advised the security in their engagement to be professional and civil.

Ezenwa Nwagwu, a Board Member of YIAGA Africa, advised the people of Anambra to turn out en masse on Saturday to reverse history of voters apathy in the state.

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"Like I did say, no governor of the state has been elected with 500,000 votes. Incidentally, even the outgoing governor was elected with less than 200,000 votes.

"In 2017, it was 22 per cent turn out in good time out of about two million people," he said.

He said that Nigerians are waiting to see the success of INEC's new technology, Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) developed for the election.

Nwagwu said that he is also looking out to see the level of professionalism that security agencies would bring to bear during the state election.

"I am also looking out for how we are going to manage fake news, how people are going to do sensitive reporting," he said. (NAN)

Vanguard News Nigeria
THE criss rocking the Lagos State University, LASU, branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, may soon be resolved following the readiness of the contending parties to shift ground on some of the issues involved, checks by Vanguard have revealed.

This is just as the committee set up by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, is done with the collation of memoranda by interested parties and may start sitting any moment.

The union was polarised into two following the sack of the majority of the executive members during the tenure of Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, SAN, as the VC and the emergence of another set of executive members.

The first executive is led by Dr I.O Oyewunmi, and the second led by Prof. A.O Bakare. Prof. Olatunji-Bello recently set up the reconciliation committee headed by Prof. Dapo Asaju.

"The membership of the committee are as follows: Prof. Dapo Folorunsho Ashaju, Department of Religions & Peace Studies, Chairman; Prof. Joseph Abayomi Olagunju, Dean, Postgraduate School, member, Prof. Comfort Adejoke Ibidapo, Department of Zoology & Environmental Biology, member; Prof. Tayo Julius Ajayi, Dean, Faculty of Arts, member; and Mr. Musliu Olakunle Ahmed, Senior Assistant Registrar (Registrar's Office), as the secretary.

"The terms of reference of the committee are: To mediate between members of ASUU-LASU led by Dr. I. Oyewunmi and that led by Prof. A.O. Bakare, to find possible ways of resolving the impasse between the two sets of members of ASUU-LASU in order to ensure the unity of the union; and to make any other recommendations as appropriate on the matter.

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"Pursuant to the above, the committee hereby calls for submission of memoranda from interested members of the union and generality of the university community on how to resolve the issue.

"The memorandum should be submitted in hard and soft copies. While hard copies should be submitted to the Secretary in the Registrar's Office, 5th floor, Babajide Raji Fashola Senate Building, the soft copies should be forwarded to asuu [email protected]

"Deadline for submission is two (2) weeks from the date of publication, that is, Monday, 25th October, 2021. "Sequel to the reception of submitted memoranda, the committee will consider all submissions at its subsequent meetings and thereafter, invite stakeholders for interactions.

"There shall be two venues for the interactive sessions; Lagos State University, Ojo Campus and Lagos State University College of Medicine, Ikeja. Interested stakeholders shall have the privilege to choose between any of the venues for the interactive sessions and communicate same to the committee at the appropriate time.

"The committee hereby solicit for prayer, cooperation and support from all members of the university community in ensuring a successful delivery of its mandate," the statement setting up the committee read in part.

"With the reconciliation committee in place, there may be an agreement to share the positions in the executive among the two groups."

Vanguard News Nigeria
President Mnangagwa has said his cordial engagements with US President Joe Biden left him stunned at the way the US Embassy in Harare conducted itself.

He said this in an interview with journalists at the end of visit in Scotland yesterday.

"I had an opportunity to chat with President Joe Biden and the spirit, which he has towards Zimbabwe is totally different from what we see from the US Embassy in Harare.

"In fact, he called a staffer and said 'please make sure that I have a chat with the President (referring to President Mnangagwa)'," he said.

The US Embassy has been criticised by many rational Zimbabweans for behaving like an opposition party that always parrots opposition sentiments.

The embassy's social media platforms now writes even in the vernacular, criticising Government and extolling the virtues of the opposition MDC-Alliance.

Beyond the engagements with President Biden, President Mnangagwa said he also spoke about three times with PM Boris Johnson.

On another note, the President is hopeful that the engagements with Prime Minister Johnson will help improve relations between Zimbabwe and the UK.

Prior to President Mnangagwa's visit this week, no Zimbabwean leader had set foot in the UK due to frosty relations that followed the land reform programme, which sought to right colonial land ownership imbalances.

The President said he was happy with the warm reception he got from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

President Mnangagwa also engaged UK's Minister of State for Africa, Vicky Ford. Minister Ford is scheduled to visit Zimbabwe on a date that is yet to be ascertained. The visit is likely going to trigger improved relations between Zimbabwe and the UK.

President Mnangagwa said he spoke with Prince Charles, the one who lowered the Union Jack, as a sign of the end of colonisation in Zimbabwe.

President Mnangagwa said he asked Prince Charles why he had not come back to see the development that has taken place since then. He felt it was a warm gesture from me, said the President.

On his engagement with Prince William, President Mnangagwa said the Prince told him to convey a message to Marvellous Nakamba that the Prince was his ardent follower.

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Nakamba, a vital cog in the Warriors midfield, plays for Premier League side Aston Villa.

European Council President Charles Michel also had a conversation with President Mnangagwa with the former expressing his keenness to see a resuscitation of normal relations between Zimbabwe and the EU.

The President also had an interesting chat with Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whom he asked "what wrong have the people of Canada done to Zimbabwe, and vice versa".

Prime Minister Trudeau promised to send a minister to Zimbabwe to reboot relations between the two countries.

Secretary of State for the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who is the top Catholic diplomat, told President Mnangagwa that the Vatican was unhappy with the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe.

The President then asked him to convey a message to Pope Francis that he should condemn the illegal sanctions.

"I am pleased that the narratives that were misleading (about Zimbabwe) have been corrected. All the leaders that I spoke with were happy to grow relations with Zimbabwe."

Zimbabwe has embarked on a re-engagement drive that seeks to mend broken relations with all nations of the world guided by the mantra, "Friend to all and enemy to none".

The visit to Scotland presented Zimbabwe with an opportunity to meet global leaders to tell the correct story, which is contrary to the one sold by the country's detractors.
THE State wants to engage Twitter as part of investigations against former Zanu PF Youth League commissar, Godfrey Tsenengamu, that he allegedly posted a tweet inciting people to participate in an unsanctioned demonstration in March last year.

Mr Lancelot Mutsokoti, appearing for the State, said yesterday there was need to clarify certain issues on the cyber forensic report from the police before his trial opened.

He was responding to Tsenengamu's application for refusal for further remand.

Tsenengamu is arguing that he has been attending court for a long period without being furnished with a trial date.

Through his lawyer, Mr Garikayi Mhishi, he told the court that the State was failing to complete investigations in time and applied that he be removed from remand pending completion of the investigations.

Mr Stanford Mambanje is expected to make a ruling tomorrow.

It is the State's case that on March 1 last year, Tsenengamu posted a video and audio messages on social media, inciting people across the country to participate in the flopped July 31 illegal demonstration.

He is alleged to have said: "From 31 July and beyond, you must know that people will die as never previously witnessed in this country. Masses will be beaten heavily; thievery and corruption will increase to unprecedented levels.

"Boys and girls who are in the diaspora with parents in the country, encourage your parents to attend the protests in their numbers and fight for themselves, fight for you and fight for the country as you are being oppressed in the diaspora where you are based so that you will be able to come to them."

The State also alleges that Tsenengamu incited the public using his Twitter handle @GodfreyTsenaz in which he posted: "I am not sure about the results of this approach. Anyway Zimbabwe must win. The Green Revolution is saying corruption and looting must fall on July 31."
Invictus Energy, the Australian firm exploring for oil and gas in Zimbabwe, has wrapped up its 2D (2 dimension) seismic programme in Muzarabani, Mashonaland Central Province.

The company said the data gathered had already started providing insights into the oil and gas potential of the Cabora Bassa Basin of Zimbabwe.

Seismic, an exploration process of gathering subsurface vibrations using advanced technology to determine the existence of hydro-carbons, will enable Invictus to choose precise locations for its oil or gas exploration wells.

This comes as the oil and gas exploration junior expects to commence its high impact basin drilling within the first quarter of next year.

The Australian firm awarded the contract for the seismic campaign to Canadian firm Polaris Natural Resources, which has extensive experience in the area in Africa.

The company acquired 839km of high resolution 2D seismic data, 402km in its Special Grant 4571 licence and another 437km of contiguous data in an existing application area.

This is well in excess of Invictus Energy's minimum work programme obligations of 300km of 2D seismic for the current licence period, which runs to June 2024.

"The completion of the CB21 seismic survey is a significant milestone for the company in our exploration programme in the Cabora Bassa Basin," Invictus Energy managing director Scott Macmillan said.

"The quality of the high-resolution seismic data we have acquired is excellent and provides great insights into the petroleum potential of the basin."

He added that processing and interpretation of the seismic data was ongoing and is expected to enable the company to identify and mature additional prospects and leads.

"The better imaging over the giant Muzarabani structure is very encouraging and once the interpretation of the full dataset is completed, we expect to refine the location for the basin opening Muzarabani-1 well which is scheduled to be drilled in 1H 2022," Macmillan explained.

The Muzarabani prospect is considered to be the largest undrilled conventional oil and gas prospect onshore Africa and could host prospective resources of about 9,25 trillion cubic feet of gas and 294 million barrels of condensate.

Invictus has already signed a Petroleum Exploration Development and Production Agreement (PEDPA) with the Government of Zimbabwe.

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The PEDPA provides the framework for the progression of the Cabora Bassa project through exploration, appraisal, development and production phases of the project, as well as the rights and obligations of each party over the project life cycle.

President Mnangagwa, the guest of honour at the signing of the PEDPA, said the agreement represented major strides in Zimbabwe's efforts to tap into its oil and gas deposits, which is a new territory in the country's mining sector.

He added that other potential benefits of an oil and gas discovery included electricity generation, production of liquid petroleum, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), fertiliser production and petrochemicals.

President Mnangagwa said the signing of the PEDPA with Geo-Associates, (Invictus' 80 percent owned subsidiary, which owns the Muzarabani prospect), was testimony to the Government's commitment to open up the economy to investment as well as engage and re-engage the global community to do business in Zimbabwe.
Prison officers must shun all forms of corruption and exhibit high levels of discipline and integrity in the organisation, Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) Commissioner General Moses Chihobvu has said.

Corruption is a threat to governance and it undermines the legitimacy of Government and democratic values, and it weakens the state as it undermines its credibility and damages people's trust in state institutions.

"Please shun corruption in whatever form it appears," said Comm-Gen Chihobvu while speaking at the graduation ceremony of prison officers attending the management and leadership development course in Chikurubi.

"It does not only tarnish individuals' social standings, but also negates the country's socio-economic growth and development. Corruption has become cancerous and has grown to be the greatest ill among society."

Comm-Gen Chihobvu noted that Government has taken a swift stance on dealing with corruption courtesy of President Mnangagwa's continuous call for saying no to corruption and zero tolerance to the vice.

He urged the officers to remain disciplined, exemplary and be the dependable tools to fight corruption.

Government has said plans are under way to introduce anti-corruption curricula from ECD to tertiary education as the nation steps up its fight against corruption.

Speaking during a virtual commemoration of the 5th African Anti-Corruption Day recently, President Mnangagwa said his administration will not shy away from taking corruption by the horns as the scourge has debilitating effects of retarding economic growth and development.

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Zimbabwe has taken concrete steps to tackle corruption by strengthening institutions such as the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.

Many people, including some Government ministers, have been arrested and prosecuted for corruption since the coming in of the Second Republic.

Some of the culprits are already serving jail terms after being convicted

Zimbabwe will be setting up integrity committees at public institutions as an effective tool to prevent corruption and promote good governance at institutional level.

It is estimated that Zimbabwe loses about US$1,8 billion a year due to corruption and other illegal financial activities

ZACC also came up with an Anti-Corruption Strategy which was launched by President Mnangagwa in July this year.
President Mnangagwa is making full use of the COP26 Summit in Scotland to not just press Zimbabwe's commitment to arresting climate change and seeking the resources required to do this more quickly, but also to press hard on Zimbabwe's diplomatic front of restoring and strengthening relations.

In many ways, the re-engagement has grabbed the headlines, with several important interactions, including with United States President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but the two purposes of climate change and friendship offensive are linked, as the President explained in his intervention at the summit.

Zimbabwe is already one of those countries on the receiving end of global warming, with Southern Africa, never an overwatered region, already getting drier and set to get drier still as global temperatures rise.

Ten of our last 20 years have seen drought, and while the extra cyclones, with frequency and intensity rising as sea temperatures rise, can bring water, this is dumped over a few hours and causes serious destruction of its own.

So to mitigate the effects of the global warming, and Zimbabwe is not a net contributor since our forests and orchards still absorb more carbon than we emit, a lot of resources are needed, and more resources still are required so that our economic development is pursued with negligible net emissions of carbon.

So, the problem of financial sanctions needed to be raised as well.

The damage has been well-documented already with the latest investigation by UN Special Rapporteur Professor Alena Douhan in her 10-day visit at the end of last month simply confirming the damage and quantifying it as even worse than previously estimated.

Already, the Second Republic is not sitting back, wringing its hands and saying it cannot do anything because of sanctions. We are spending a lot of money, our own money, and putting in a lot of our own scientific and technological expertise into mitigating the effects of the growing intensity and frequency of drought and making sure we can handle the unpredictable strikes by cyclones.

We have changed, over a couple of seasons, the whole way most of our farmers grow their crops so that whatever rain does fall goes a lot further.

We have a major dam building programme in place so that more and more of that diminishing rain is stored and is available for irrigation, either full irrigation or, more probably for many farmers, supplementary irrigation to start planting earlier and get through dry periods in a rainy season.

But this is not cheap and with access to more resources we can obviously speed up the programmes, both of dam building and putting in the piping and other equipment so that farmers can use the stored water.

A lot of other measures, even solar water heating and solar cells on all houses and flat blocks, both in urban and rural areas, will require huge investments. Our rich are already leading the way, but we have very few rich and a lot of poor so all sorts of financial assistance and programmes are needed. So the sanctions that limit seriously our access to global capital, both institutional and private investment, are serious. With full access, we could not only speed up our own already-impressive infrastructure development, but with faster economic growth many of our households could make larger contributions to what they need.

And if both internal and external investors were able to mobilise for funding they could make larger contributions to manufacturing what is required right here in Zimbabwe.

Fortunately, there appears to be greater willingness to accept President Mnangagwa at his word, and COP26 has already seen important discussions.

Zimbabwe is not setting any conditions, or sitting on some high horse.

The President is ready to meet anyone and simply listen to their concerns and speak on what Zimbabwe is doing and how it wants to be reintegrated into global systems. And he does this whether it is a brief get acquainted meeting or a detailed discussion.

The European Union generally has in recent times being moving reasonably fast towards a far more normal set of relationships.

This will be accelerated now with the comments made by Council of Europe President Charles Michel after meeting the President showing at least a willingness by this critical agenda-setting body to move forward.

The council does not make legislative or executive decisions, but it groups all EU leaders in a process that helps outline policy directions, and pressing on with the shift to normalising at least financial and trade relations with Zimbabwe, in practice as well as theory, will be helpful, in fact critically important..

Zimbabwe wants to rejoin the Commonwealth. There are advantages in belonging to this body, directly through better access to technology and development programmes and indirectly to having excellent relations with other members. So, the meeting with Commonwealth Secretary General Baroness Scotland was a good sign that our application is not covered with dust in someone's in-tray.

And a half-hour private discussion counts as serious, where real issues rather than grandstanding can be dealt with.

Britain, along with the US, was, and in many ways still is, a leader in the sanctions drive. Again there are signs of at least better contact.

There was a detailed, and again private, set of talks with British Minister of State for Africa Vicky Ford. This minister has real influence in how British foreign affairs with Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular move forward, and while no one is pretending relations are going to be wonderful this week, a lot can be achieved when people do sit down and talk. Even COP26 host and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at least treated President Mnangagwa civilly and normally, rather than trying to ignore him, a symbolic step.

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And hopefully there can be something more substantive during the visit. Basically, President Mnangagwa is offering his own record since he won elections and came into office. He, and the experts he brought into Government, have been cleaning up the economy and have managed to switch more than a third of our taxes into capital development, so we are paying our own way.

Systems have been put in place to stop corruption, and those suspected of past corruption are being wheeled before the courts.

The Government has signed a deal with the farmers who lost land in land reform, so they are paid out for the development they did.

These reforms are driven by the needs and expectations of Zimbabweans, not foreign pressure.

So, when we move on our friendship offensive we are showing a well-managed country that simply wants to be on good terms with everyone. We listen, we explain. We do not lecture. And that friendship offensive, done in that manner, is at least getting us into serious discussions, and the President is being treated seriously in these discussions, generating the goodwill that we all hope will translate into practical deals and action.
analysis

How decades of tenacious advocacy, political will and a smart legal strategy finally ended capital punishment.

On 23 July 2021, Sierra Leone made history as it joined a growing number of countries to reject the death penalty. Following decades of tenacious advocacy, the government under President Julius Maada Bio finally showed the political will to abolish the cruel punishment and become the 23rd African country to do so.

The road to this was far from smooth. For nearly two decades, subsequent governments had failed to act on recommendations to end the death penalty. And just five years ago, the then Minister of Internal Affairs declared his support for capital punishment by symbolically ordering the gallows at a maximum security prison to be cleaned.

So how did Sierra Leone finally manage to abolish the death penalty? And what could other countries learn from its experience?

How we got here

Sierra Leone maintained and institutionalised the death penalty when it gained independence in 1961 and adopted English common law. For decades following, capital punishment was the ultimate sentence for murder, treason, mutiny, and robbery with aggression. It was also used as a political tool to terminate political opponents.

From the 1970s, there were persistent civil society campaigns calling for its abolition. But a new constitution drafted in 1991, just before the start of the 11-year civil war, retained the death penalty. In 1998, at the height of the conflict, 24 soldiers were publicly executed by firing squad.

Those were to be Sierra Leone's last executions and, following the end of war, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2004 recommended the abolition of capital punishment. In 2007, the government imposed a moratorium on executions.

Despite this, however, the death sentence remained "mandatory" for crimes such as murder, robbery with aggression and treason. And with their hands tied, judges continued to hand down the punishment. This resulted in immeasurable suffering and injustice, especially since people sentenced to death tend to come from marginalised backgrounds and struggle to obtain quality legal representation. In 2009, for instance, 17-year-old Aminata was arrested for stabbing and killing her abusive partner during a struggle while he was beating her. She was sentenced to death for murder and feared each day that she would be executed. It was only a decade later that she was acquitted by the Court of Appeal following intervention by AdvocAid.

In 2011, there was a fresh glimmer of hope when then president Ernest Bai Koroma commuted the sentences of all people on death row to mark Sierra Leone's 50th anniversary of independence. Then, in 2016, the Constitutional Review Committee made the abolition of the death penalty one of its priority recommendations. Yet death sentences continued to be issued.

In 2018, Maada Bio came to power promising criminal justice reform. Although the new government had not vowed to end the death penalty, this aspiration became part of a broader agenda, informed by civil society advocacy, pressure from international development partners, and the president's Catholic faith. The framework created through decades of advocacy had suddenly made it possible to turn political will into action.

What could other countries learn?

There is a lot to note from Sierra Leone's experience. The first is the tenacity of civil society despite the lack of funding and support of donors who tend to work in short cycles and have ever-changing priorities. Over several decades, Sierra Leonean advocacy groups have campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty using a variety of strategies including litigation, government engagement, and publicising the stories of people on death row.

Another factor to note is the legal strategy utilised. Many countries, such as Ghana, have seen abolition movements stall due to the complications of amending the constitution and a lack of political will. Sierra Leone's approach of amending the laws which provide for the death penalty offered a more flexible approach. Here, the government established a ministerial task force to discuss legal reforms while simultaneously using its slim majority in parliament to amend the law. This meant that once cabinet had approved it, the Attorney General's task was simple: remove and replace the death penalty in all existing laws, avoiding what could have ended up in an expensive referendum exercise.

The Sierra Leone case finally makes it clear that when a country's political leadership is intentional about transforming its laws and advancing human rights, change can happen quickly. And having removed the death penalty, the country has not collapsed into chaos. Despite what supporters of the death penalty argue, its removal has not opened a floodgate of criminality. Indeed, there is no data or credible research that supports the claim that the death penalty serves as deterrent against serious crimes.

Way forward?

When Sierra Leone's parliamentarians removed the death penalty, they voted to replace it with a maximum term of life imprisonment rather than a mandatory sentence. This enables greater judicial discretion and is an important example of progressive legal reform.

Going forwards, sentencing guidelines are now needed to ensure judges consider extenuating factors - such as such as poverty, abuse, and mental health - when sentencing. In Sierra Leone, like many other countries, there is no legal provision for a history of abuse to be considered and courts do not have the appropriate guidance on how to take gender-based violence into account.

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More funding and prioritisation for legal aid and legal empowerment services are also needed. As are alternatives to incarceration to reduce the high number of people held in pre-trial detention. There is still significant work to be done in terms of criminal justice reform in Sierra Leone.

Prior to the abolition in July 2021, there were over 90 people on death row, according to information provided by the Correctional Service. Those people should have their sentences commuted and their cases reviewed. For now, however, we should take time to celebrate this milestone with the myriad people, organisations, and people formerly on death row that led to this historic moment.

Makmid Kamara is a Sierra Leonean human rights activist and researcher. He is the Director of the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund and formerly worked for Amnesty International and Oxfam. Sabrina Mahtani is a Zambian-British lawyer. She co-founded AdvocAid, an NGO that provides access to justice for women in detention in Sierra Leone. The organisation has freed six women on death row. Sabrina formerly worked for Amnesty International and The Elders and currently curates Women Beyond Walls.
A key player in the Fishrot bribery scandal yesterday claimed a horse-mackerel quota of 18 800 metric tonnes was allocated to the ruling party for an election campaign in 2017.

Proceeds from the quota, which translated to about N$44 million, were paid into the accounts of two law firms, according to former National Fishing Corporation of Namibia (Fishcor) CEO Mike Nghipunya.

"We received the fishing quota allocation in 2018 and explained to auditors that it will be paid directly to beneficiaries. We received orders from [then fisheries] minister [Bernard Esau] that we must implement it as such - and for [the] sake of sensitivity, we must call it government objectives," said Nghipunya, who was testifying under oath during the second day of his formal bail application, lodged by him and five of his co-accused.

"There was a quota for Swapo as a third party, but it was not handled by the National Fishing Corporation of Namibia. Over 18 000 metric tonnes were allocated and proceeds were paid directly to Swapo for the 2018 and 2019 campaigns."

However, Swapo vice president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah yesterday denied the ruling party receiving any money through the alleged corrupt scheme.

When asked by Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) leader McHenry Venaani yesterday as to whether Swapo has received N$44 million from the Fishrot proceedings to finance her party's political campaign, Nandi-Ndaitwah said, "I want to make it clear that to the best of my knowledge and to the record that is in the hands of the Swapo secretariat, we have no record of anything to say that our party has received the so-called Fishrot money. Therefore, whoever is having such evidence, our books are there to be investigated".

Nghipunya estimated the quota was worth around N$44 million, and denies that funds disappeared from Fishcor. The prosecution opposes Nghipunya's offer of N$200 000 bail. The once-struggling actor said governmental objective fishing quotas are geared towards socio-economic, cultural and other objectives but it is a very broad provision.

"These objectives are determined by the ministry of fisheries. "Nghipunya, in testimony for his bail application following his arrest a year ago, informed High Court Judge Shafimana Ueitele that N$5 million was paid to Sisa Namandje's law firm in 2017 - and the first payment of N$14 million was paid to De Klerk, Horn and Coetzee law firm.

The value of the quota at N$2 500 per metric tonne stands at around N$44 million. Nghipunya on Tuesday told Ueitele he has no reason to run away, as he has done nothing wrong. Yesterday, he said the allegations against him are "unfounded" and based on a misunderstanding of the workings of such quotas. Nghipunya was fired from Fishcor in November 2020.

Denial

This was not the first time Swapo denied unduly benefitting from the scheme that saw two Cabinet ministers resign in 2019 and spent almost two years in jail, awaiting trial. In July, during a press briefing at the party's headquarters, President Hage Geingob denied the ruling party received funds from the Fishrot scandal.

Swapo party did not get any direct contribution from whatever is in its audited books, he said. At the same event, secretary general Sophia Shaningwa said, "Every year, Swapo party books are audited by professional, registered, recognised international and national auditors".

A year earlier, they also denied after senior Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigator Willem Olivier said N$15 million and N$2.5 million were paid into Namandje's trust account under the reference "governmental objectives".

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"This was flagged as suspicious. Part of this money was used for vehicles, personal loans and other items. And as far as investigations found, monies were used for the Swapo campaign," testified Olivier.

Nghipunya and his co-accused: Esau, Sacky Shanghala, Tamson and James Hatuikulipi, Pius Mwatelulo and Ricardo Gustavo stand accused of corruptly receiving payments, including charges ranging from racketeering to fraud and money laundering to give a competitive advantage to Icelandic fishing company Samherji in securing access to horse mackerel quotas in Namibia.

Also on the list of people added to the charges is lawyer Maren de Klerk. The State is yet to extradite De Klerk from South Africa and Icelandic nationals Ingvar Juliusson, Egill Helgi Arnason and Aalsteinn Helgason.
It is the first time the local unit of Johannesburg-based MTN Group will welcome subscription from the public roughly two and a half years after it debuted on the NGX.

MTN Nigeria Communications Plc will open a public offering for its shares and a bid from institutional investors in a transaction totalling 575 million units, the telecom heavyweight said Thursday.

The corporate action marks the first time the local unit of Johannesburg-based MTN Group will welcome subscription from the public roughly two and a half years after it debuted on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) by way of introduction.

The offer window closes in December.

"This is the first step in MTN Group's previously communicated statement of intent to sell down approximately 14 per cent of its shareholding in MTN Nigeria," the wireless carrier told the NGX in a note seen by PREMIUM TIMES.

MTN Nigeria shares, listed in Lagos, have returned 19.46 per cent in the last one year as of 09:54 WAT on Thursday.

More details later...
Seriki Adinoyi in Jos

The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Alkali Baba, has ordered the immediate posting of Mr. Bartholomew Nnamdi Onyeka to Plateau State Command as the new Commissioner of Police.

According to Force spokesperson, CP Frank Mba, the posting, which took immediate effect, followed the redeployment of CP Edward Egbuka to the Force Headquarters for other national engagements.

It may not, however, be unconnected with the current leadership crisis in the state House of Assembly.

Meanwhile, the House of Assembly complex has been takenover by the Police as two factions of the lawmakers continued to lay claim to the speakership of the assembly.

Since the week began, developments at the assembly have been deteriorating.

The embattled Speaker, Mr. Abok Ayuba, who was purportedly impeached on October 27,by eight out of the 24 members of the Assembly, led a faction of the lawmakers loyal to him to hold a session outside the Assembly complex same day he was impeached, and suspended the lawmakers that impeached him, saying he remained the authentic speaker.

Earlier in the week, Ayuba and loyal lawmakers, gained access to his office and were holding an executive session preparatory for a sitting, when heavy security was deployed to the Assembly complex led by the state Commissioner of Police, Edward Egbuka.

The CP evacuated Ayuba with lawmakers loyal to him from the complex, and gave way to Yakubu Sanda, a new Speaker and those loyal to him.

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Sanda held a brief sitting with his faction and also declared himself the authentic Speaker. He further declared that he would continue to lead the Assembly, but that did not happen as the Police have now taken over the assembly, preventing any group from sitting.

Meanwhile, the immediate past Governor of the state, Senator Jonah Jang has threatened to lead a protest of Plateau people against the illegality that was perpetrated at the Assembly.

In a statement signed by his media consultant, Mr. Clinton Garuba, the former governor accused Governor Simon Lalong of complicity.

"We are indeed witnesses to the drama, which has engulfed the State Assembly simply, because a section of the government wants the Speaker out at all costs. While it is unfortunate that these individuals have put their primordial sentiments above reason, and would do anything including making a mockery of the Constitution just to achieve their selfish ends, we cannot fold our arms as the efforts the Plateau people have put to sustain the fragile peace is made nonsense of.

"The removal of a Speaker or change of leadership in legislative houses might not be new, but when the process is abused and goes against the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the people must work together to ensure the stability of the House which, in any case, is made up of those they voted to represent them and work for their welfare and in their best interests," he stated.
The government must tread with caution

Governor Babagana Zulum is convinced that Borno State, the foremost outpost of insurgency in the North-east, is now safe for him to close the camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri. By Zulum's assessment, "a reasonable degree of peace" has come to his state and that it is unnecessary to keep the internally displaced persons in the camps. He reasons that the threat posed to the people in many of the communities by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists has abated. Thrown into his plan is the repatriation of IDPs taking refuge in neighbouring Niger Republic by 27th November.

While Zulum's statement is enough for every IDP in Maiduguri camps to weep for joy that their nightmare is over and that they can now reset their lives to normal mode, there are still unanswered questions about what influenced the governor's optimism and resolve to disband the camps. There are reports that terrorists still roam freely in most of the communities the governor is talking about. Indeed, there are insinuations that the governor may be under some sort of political pressure to return the IDPs to their 'ancestral homes' after his recent meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.

It is particularly curious that Zulum is heeding the call to send back IDP residents based on a newfound trust in the Nigerian Army that he once lamented "does not have the lethal weapons, fighter helicopter and numerical strength to fight aggressors." So, the question that remains to be answered is whether the governor intends to close the IDP camps in Maiduguri and repatriate displaced Nigerians in Niger Republic just to prove the point that peace has returned to his state.

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Instructively, Mallam Fatori, where Zulum plans to repatriate IDPs in different provinces of Niger Republic to, is a local government headquarters in the northern part of Borno where a "growing number of ISWAP" operates. The governor said, "But somehow, we don't have human population in this local government area because of the insurgency. Now that we have achieved a reasonable degree of peace, government decided to resettle Mallam Fatori communities."

We understand the position of Zulum who said recently that it is no longer sustainable for people living in IDP camps and host communities to receive food and non-food items from donor partners. "People must earn their livelihood if we want this insurgency to come to an end," he said recently while urging the military to create the enabling environment for farmers to go and cultivate their lands.

We align with the call on federal authorities to realise that a government that cannot guarantee the security of life and property for citizens and residents in a country has failed. With the maimed, the orphans, the widows, widowers, and the tides of refugees in IDPs camps practically left to their own devices, we also understand why Zulum may want the people back to their communities so they could engage in productive activities and fend for themselves. However, he should not gamble with innocent lives.

The governor must consult with the military, village and town heads and other stakeholders before sending the residents of displaced persons' camps back to the unknown. Only people that are alive can farm.
Gombe  The Gombe State Government has said that it is gradually addressing bottlenecks hampering the domestication of child right law in the state.

The State Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs. Naomi JJ Awak, gave the indication yesterday at the stakeholders meeting on strengthening the implementation of strategies that would end child marriage in Gombe State.

The meeting was sponsored by Girls Strand Catalyst, United States of America, in collaboration with Save the Children International (SCI).

The Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and faith based organisations were among the stakeholders that were advocating and mounting pressure on the Gombe State Government to domesticate the child right's law following daily increase in the abuse of the rights of children.

This is coming in the wake of the domestication of the CRA in Katsina State and some northern states where girl child marriage has become a menace, thus, infringing on the rights of the girl child from attaining her full potentials.

However, Awak told the stakeholders during the meeting that there is the political will and support by the Governor of Gombe State, Mr. Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya, to see to the domestication of the law.

She said that the state governor had taken the bill to the State House of Assembly, but some "stumbling blocks" are not allowing it to see the light of the day.

She, however, expressed optimism that by the grace of God, in no distant future, the Child Right Act (CRA) would be a reality considering the passion the state governor and his wife have been following the bill.

"This is because in 2019 when I presented the matter to the State Executive Council, the governor immediately took interest in it. The effort is not by physical strength, the government is on our side. Education is key and the governor has made it his priority. If Katsina could domesticate the CRA, why not Gombe?" she queried.

She described child marriage as a menace, saying, girls must not be withdrawn from schools for the sake of marriage. "It is not possible for a girl child to give birth to a child and be raised by a child," she decried.

Earlier, giving an overview of child marriage in Gombe State, the CSI's Interim Project Manager, Towards Ending Child Marriage in Nigeria (TECM), Mr. Akpan Effiong, said that the Gombe State's Strategic Plan to End Child Marriage (SPECM) in the state by 2030 is a giant effort towards curtailing the multifaceted sociocultural endemic practice of child marriage.

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He said that child marriage as practiced in Gombe State is considered to be a formal union whereby victims did not either attain full maturity or consent to marriage.

While arguing that child marriage has remained one of the developmental challenges affecting children in Gombe State, Akpan said that its successful elimination would require multi-sectorial and coordinated approach and legislation that would be strongly enforced without fear or favour.

He stressed that the role of the State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in achieving the strategy could not be over stated. All the law enforcement agencies of the government should ensure strict compliance to the proposed law that would prohibit child marriage and address gender inequality.

Several CSO's spoke extensively, giving suggestions and expressing dismay at the long delay in domesticating the CRA, which would address the challenges affecting children especially the issue of child marriage and rape of minors in the state.
The Australia Workers Union hopes more Australians will go into farm work after a historic victory at the Fair Work Commission, which ordered that every farm worker in the country was entitled to the minimum casual pay rate of $25.41 per hour rather than rates as low as $3 an hour.

The commission found against the current piece-rate pay arrangements, whereby workers are paid based only on the amount of fruit or vegetables they harvest. The AWU hopes higher wages could entice more Australians to join the farm labour workforce, which is dominated by migrants.

The Australian Workers Union has claimed a significant victory for fruit pickers. Louie Douvis

The piece rate arrangement was not fit for purpose and unfair, the commission said, finding that employers had engaged in widespread exploitation of workers.

The totality of the evidence presents a picture of significant underpayment of pieceworkers in the horticulture industry when compared to the minimum award hourly rate, the commissions ruling said.

Depending on the quality of annual crops each year, there are between 100,000 to 130,000 workers covered by the Horticulture Award. The ruling imposes a minimum floor price that growers must pay to workers, which can be complemented with additional piece rates to reward hard work.

AWU national secretary Daniel Walton said fruit pickers in Australia have been routinely and systemically exploited and underpaid.

I believe this decision ranks among the great victories of our unions 135-year history, Mr Walton said. I could retire a happy man today.

There are widespread reports of workers effectively being paid just $3 an hour, Mr Walton said, and the new minimum wage could bring a lot more young Australians into this industry in places like Bundaberg with high unemployment and lots of horticulture.

Employer representative groups argued to keep piece rates, including the Australian Fresh Produce Alliance, the National Farmers Federation and peak employer representative Australian Industry Group.

Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said he respected the commissions role as the independent umpire and he would make an assessment of the ruling in the near future.

Its not a government decision. But theres still a process that allows stakeholders a varying view and theyve got until November 26 to challenge the decision, Mr Littleproud said.

National Farmers Federation president Tony Mahar said an overwhelming number of farmers pay fair wages and the new minimum wage could eat into growers profit margins and prevent them from rewarding productive workers with high piece rates.

The increase in wage costs, most farms largest input, threatens to make the most productive workers unaffordable.

A report based on a five-year investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman found in 2018 that 56 per cent of the 8000 horticulture farms with employees had underpaid 2503 workers by a total of $1 million, a figure which the Ombudsman said was a conservative estimate.

A joint study by the universities of Adelaide and Sydney, Towards a Durable Future, found in 2019 that while some workers earned high wages on piece rates in certain circumstances, it was common to find extremely low piece rates based on an inflated assumption of the competency of the average worker.

The reports lead author, Adelaide University academic Joanna Howe, welcomed the commissions decision, which she said would help the mostly migrant workforce that travelled to Australia on working visas.

But she warned it would be hard to enforce for an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 undocumented workers, who are in Australia illegally with many working on farms around the country.

The Blue Harvest report on blueberry farms on the NSW Coffs Coast by the McKell Institute, commissioned by the AWU, said the lack of a minimum floor price in the horticulture award allowed employers to manipulate the piece rates offered to pickers to minimise their wages.

The ability of employers to reset piece rates each working day enables some employers to sustain low rates of pay for employees, irrespective of the fruit condition, while citing market rates as a justification, the report said.

Mr Walton said the minimum casual rate for fruit pickers would help migrant workers, who often lack good English language skills, to check their pay packet to understand if theyre being ripped off.

From now on if youre making less than $25 an hour fruit picking in Australia your boss is breaking the law and stealing from you.
?? "China se ha convertido en el primer socio comercial del Peru y uno de nuestros principales inversionistas", presidente @PedroCastilloTe durante su mensaje por el 50. aniversario del establecimiento de relaciones diplomaticas entre ambos paises.

???????? #CooperacionPeruChina pic.twitter.com/9PKleqcNQH
According to Article 130 of the Constitution, the presentation of the Ministerial Cabinet must take place within 30 days after having been sworn in to office.

El #PlenoDelCongreso, junto a los ministros de Estado, guardo un minuto de silencio en memoria de las victimas de la masacre en Barrios Altos, ocurrida hace 30 anos. pic.twitter.com/ywkwySmo7Q
Presidenta del Consejo de Ministros, @MirtyVas, junto al Gabinete en pleno, ya se encuentra en el @congresoperu para continuar con su presentacion ante el Parlamento. "Esperamos que el Congreso tome la mejor decision para el pais pensando en la gobernabilidad". #VotoDeConfianza pic.twitter.com/Gc2o4pMH38
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. The government of Russia approved the 2022-2027 interregional cooperation plan with the government of Armenia, TASS reports.

The government approved the Russian economic development ministrys proposal which has been discussed with the ministry of foreign affairs and other concerned agencies of the executive power.

The ministry of economic development has been tasked to sign that cooperation plan with Armenia on behalf of the Russian government.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Armenia will be consistent in the issue of restoring and protecting the rights of the people of Artsakh and will make effort for guaranteeing their right to live safely and with dignity in their homeland, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Vahe Gevorgyan said at a joint session of parliamentary committees on the 2022 state budget.

He said that in relation to the Azeri aggression against Artsakh in 2020 and Bakus aspirations against sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia, the Armenian foreign policy priority directions remain ensuring the security of Armenia and Artsakh, the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, as well as establishment of regional peace and stability, and unblocking.

Armenias principled position regarding the Artsakh conflict has been numerously expressed, that is  a comprehensive and lasting resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict can be achieved under the auspices of the only internationally mandated format  the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship, based on the well-known principles and elements, which implies the determination of the final status of Artsakh taking into account the realization of the unbreakable right to self-determination of the Armenians of Artsakh, Gevorgyan said.

In this phase, he prioritized the re-launching of the peace process under the OSCE MG Co-chairmanship, as well as the solution of priority humanitarian issues, including the repatriation of PoWs, the determination of the fates of those missing or who are victims of forced disappearances, and the preservation of Armenian cultural heritage.

Armenia will be consistent in the issue of restoring and protecting the rights of the people of Artsakh and will make effort to guarantee their right to live safely and with dignity in their homeland.

The international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is also among the priorities of the Armenian foreign policy. Gevorgyan reaffirmed that Armenia will continue to actively contribute to the international communitys efforts for preventing genocides and other crimes against humanity.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vahe Gevorgyan said that soon new meetings will take place between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship and new conditions will be created for the full re-launch of the peaceful resolution process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Asked by Hayastan faction MP Anna Grigoryan to comment on what steps the foreign ministry has done in direction of activating the work of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, the Deputy FM noted the September 23-24 New York meetings of the Armenian foreign minister with the OSCE MG Co-Chairs and the Azeri FM.

After the meeting the Co-chairs issued a statement reiterating that they are working within the framework of their mandate, which is the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. I think in this phase this is a very important record. We will continue our efforts in this direction, and I believe that soon there will be new meetings and conditions for the full resumption of the peace process will be created, he said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. The delegation of Georgia led by President of the Constitutional Court Merab Turava arrived in Armenia on an official visit at the invitation of the President of the Constitutional Court Arman Dilanyan.

The visit aims at giving a qualitatively new impetus to the further development of the bilateral relations, as well as contributing to the deepening of inter-court cooperation in bilateral and multilateral formats.

The Presidents of the Constitutional Courts of Armenia and Georgia will hold a private meeting which will be followed by extended-format talks.

Meetings are scheduled with Armenias Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Royal Marines have put the seal on desert exercises with an intensive five-day battle in California alongside allies across one of the largest military training areas in the world.

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The conclusion of the exercises, known as Green Dagger, was five days of gruelling warfighting which saw allied forces  from the US, Canada, United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and UK  join forces to take on a highly-equipped US Marine Corps adversary (Picture source: Royal Marines)

Commandos have spent the last two months in the Mojave Desert preparing for deployments next year as part of the newly-formed Littoral Response Group (South), which is one of two new Royal Navy task groups centred on commando forces set up to respond to world events. Experts from across 3 Commando Brigade came together to form the LRG  with Taunton-based 40 Commando at its heart  at the vast US Marine Corps training facility at Twentynine Palms in California.

The conclusion of the exercises, known as Green Dagger, was five days of gruelling warfighting which saw allied forces  from the US, Canada, United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and UK  join forces to take on a highly-equipped US Marine Corps adversary. The exercise focused around three urban sprawls which were defended by allied forces, the largest of which consisting of 1,200 buildings purpose built for militaries to test themselves among.

The LRG won decisive battles early on and gained ground from their enemy, but, with the US Marines pushing into allied territory, Royal Marines and their allies carried out raids behind enemy lines to stop further counterattacks.

Our success has proved the new commando force concept is more lethal and sophisticated than ever before and I am immensely proud of every member of the LRG and their vital contributions, said Lieutenant Colonel Andy Dow, Commanding Officer of 40 Commando.

Operating alongside our partners from the USA, Netherlands, Canada and the UAE gives us a fantastic opportunity to test, integrate and continue to push our capabilities in new and innovative directions.

Throughout this deployment our focus has been on integrating game-changing capabilities from across the commando force to deliver disproportional effect in the face of a free-thinking peer adversary.

The commandos took advantage of one of the best military training areas in the world to experiment with new tactics and share knowledge with allies (Picture source: Royal Marines)

The exercise concluded with a last-minute enemy assault which was repelled, leaving allied forces in control of over two thirds of the entire battlefield. The commandos took advantage of one of the best military training areas in the world to experiment with new tactics and share knowledge with allies.

This deployment has ultimately readied the commando element of LRG(S) for operations next year, joining its sister task group, Littoral Response Group (North), ready to react to unfolding events around the world.

The LRG North has already deployed to the Baltic this year and has a focus on events across Europe, while LRG South will operate east of the Suez Canal. LRG South is expected to be functional next year with the addition of amphibious ships and aircraft.

Commandos have spent the last two months in the Mojave Desert preparing for deployments next year as part of the newly-formed Littoral Response Group (South), which is one of two new Royal Navy task groups centred on commando forces set up to respond to world events (Picture source: Royal Marines)
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vahe Gevorgyan said that soon new meetings will take place between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship and new conditions will be created for the full re-launch of the peaceful resolution process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

November 4, 2021, 11:25 New meeting between Armenian, Azerbaijani foreign ministers could take place soon  Deputy FM

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 4, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: Asked by Hayastan faction MP Anna Grigoryan to comment on what steps the foreign ministry has done in direction of activating the work of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, the Deputy FM noted the September 23-24 New York meetings of the Armenian foreign minister with the OSCE MG Co-Chairs and the Azeri FM.

After the meeting the Co-chairs issued a statement reiterating that they are working within the framework of their mandate, which is the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. I think in this phase this is a very important record. We will continue our efforts in this direction, and I believe that soon there will be new meetings and conditions for the full resumption of the peace process will be created, he said.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vahe Gevorgyan says Armenia is attaching importance to the resumption of the peace process of the Artsakh conflict.

November 4, 2021, 12:20 Armenias efforts directed at resumption of peace process of Artsakh conflict  Armenian Deputy FM

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 4, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: There is a need to resume the peace process of the Artsakh conflict, he told reporters in parliament. And our efforts are first of all directed at reaching this goal. All other issues, including the issue of the status of Artsakh, will be discussed within the framework of the peace process. This is why now we need the resumption of the peace process within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship.

Asked to comment which maps will be beneficial for Armenia during the talks, the deputy FM said its too early for this question. He added that in order to speak about this there should be negotiations on delimitation.

As long as there are no delimitation negotiations, it is very early to speak about what maps and documents we are guided with. We will address these questions when the negotiations will happen, he said.
(Reuters) - Belarus declared the Poland-based Belsat news channel an "extremist" organisation on Wednesday, meaning its employees and viewers can face up to seven years in prison.

President Alexander Lukashenko's government has targeted activists, protesters and journalists in a violent crackdown on dissent since a disputed election last year that the opposition says was blatantly rigged to extend his rule since 1994.

Belsat, a Warsaw-based satellite channel that provides Belarusians an alternative to Belarusian state media, has been in the government's crosshairs and two of its journalists were jailed in February for filming a protest.

Its content was declared "extremist" in an earlier move in July, meaning anyone caught disseminating it risked being detained for 30 days. The channel is banned in Belarus though viewers access it on the internet on virtual private networks.

"Groups of citizens united through the Internet resources 'BELSAT' are recognised as an extremist formation and their activities are prohibited on the territory of the Republic of Belarus," the interior ministry said in a statement.

Belsat's deputy director, Alyaksei Dzikavitski, called the move "absurd" and a vain attempt to stifle the flow of free and uncensored information.

"It's like punishing people for gathering around a bookshelf in a library," he said in a video statement.

"Naturally, it is impossible to recognise the millions of Belarusians who watch us or read on social networks as extremists. This is the same as recognising the entire population as extremists. Because the overwhelming majority of Belarusians trust independent mass media, including Belsat."

The move follows a similar clamp-down last week on three Poland-based social media channels with a large following inside Belarus.

Tens of thousands of people have been detained since the crackdown began last year and rights groups say more than 800 people are now in jail as political prisoners.

Story continues

The crackdown prompted the United States, European Union and Britain to impose new sanctions on Minsk, but Lukashenko has remained in power, buttressed by money and diplomatic support from traditional ally Russia.

"For the first time in history, the regime labelled the whole TV channel - @Belsat_TV - an extremist group," Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, wrote on Twitter.

"The label extends to both viewers & journalists. 940k people in total. On the one hand - it's a threatening tool, on the other - it's proof of the channel's success."

Since the crackdown, Lukashenko has also been at loggerheads with neighbouring EU countries which accuse his government of instigating a migrant crisis on their shared border as a form of hybrid warfare. Lukashenko denies doing so.

Poland on Wednesday accused Belarus of staging an armed cross-border intrusion and summoned the Belarusian charge d'affaires to protest what it sees as a deliberate escalation of the migrant crisis at the frontier.

(Additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Nick Macfie)
A Queensland Health campaign encouraging people to masturbate and "give yourself a hand" is going viral.

The post shared to the Queensland Health Facebook page, which seeks to "normalising sex-positive messages", has caused a stir among followers attracting thousands of hilarious comments since it was posted on Thursday.

A Queensland Health campaign is encouraging people to masturbate. Photo: Facebook

"Masturbation is a normal and healthy part of a persons sexual experience and a great way to discover what you are comfortable with," the post reads.

"The best part is, its for everyone  and also offers a wealth of health and sexual health benefits!

"Its important for us all to work towards normalising sex-positive messages about masturbation to reduce associated feelings of shame and fear, and improve overall sexual health and literacy."

RELATED:

The post also included a link to an article which addresses stigmas and provides recommendations for parents and carers to consider before talking to their children about masturbation.

The post seeks to "normalise sex-positive messages". Photo: Getty

Despite the importance of the message, of course plenty of people couldn't resist joking around in the comments.

"Just brilliant! I wonder when all the funny comments will reach a climax?" one person quipped.

"In these hard times we need to all pull together," one person joked, while another wrote: "Old Happy Harold never told me about this."

Plenty of others also thanked QLD Health for the "important" post.

"This is such an important topic!! Teaching our children to explore their bodies and get to know what is enjoyable, whats not and to understand what is healthy has been a taboo topic for far too long! Thank you Queensland Health for this post!

It attracted thousands of comments online. Photo: Facebook

Health benefits of masturbating regularly

There is no shortage of health benefits to be had from masturbating. As an expert from sex toy retailer Wild Secrets explained to Yahoo Lifestyle previously, self-pleasure releases a whole wave of endorphins and hormones that work together to boost your mood and can even relieve pain from headaches, muscle soreness, and menstrual cramps.

Story continues

A bit of self-loving for vagina-having people can also help keep your vagina healthy, our expert says, as it can increase the pH levels to prevent yeast infections and promote healthy flora, and she says, post-climax urination can also reduce the risk of developing a urinary tract infection.

Masturbating before bed can help you drift off with those same lovely calming and stress-relieving endorphins rushing through your body to help you get a better nights sleep.

There are so many health benefits to masturbation. Photo: Getty

Beyond the physical effects, masturbation can also help your relationship with yourself. Think about it: youre the only person whos with you forever.

Its important to take care of yourself, and that includes how you feel and think about yourself. Being intimate with yourself can really help you discover what you enjoy and what makes you feel the most pleasure which is so vitally important for building your sexual confidence.

Finding out what you enjoy alone can help you communicate what you enjoy with a partner, and that can only make things better.

While doing things the old-fashioned way can work for you, there are so many new toys to help bring your experience of self-pleasure to a climax.

Gone are the days of the sad plain coloured vibrator that you buried under books and other assorted mess in your bedside table  these days, the range of tools to help you experience your best orgasm is amazing, and doesnt just focus on penetration to get things going.

Additional reporting by Alex Anastassiou.

Never miss a thing. Sign up to Yahoo Lifestyles daily newsletter.

Or if you have a story idea, email us at lifestyle.tips@yahooinc.com.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- ThunderSoft, Chinas leading provider of operating system technologies, released an announcement stating the companys plan to set up a joint intelligent driving firm with Beijing Jiacheng Hehua Technology Co., Ltd (Jiacheng Hehua).

Photo credit: ThunderSoft



The registered capital of the new company will be RMB200 million ($31.28 million). Thundersoft will own 95% of the joint ventures equity for RMB190 million ($29.71 million), and Jiacheng Hehua will invest RMB10 million ($1.56 million) for a 5% stake.

According to the announcement, the new companys business scopes include R&D for high-level ADAS and autonomous driving electronic control unit, consulting service for relevant parts, software, and technologies, as well as wholesale, retail, and export for the said products.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Beijing, ThunderSoft is one of the biggest software developers in China. The company provides products and solutions in the mobile, IoT, automotive, and enterprise aspects.

ThunderSoft has established joint ventures with Qualcomm, Arm, and Intel. Meanwhile, the company operates joint laboratories with Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft, Arm, Samsung, and Sony, among many others.

The autonomous driving platform company will help ThunderSoft enter into the intelligent driving and auto computing market. The two companies aim to set up an open and comprehensive ecosystem for autonomous driving technologies.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese megacity Shanghai is ambitious to significantly boost the development of fuel cell vehicle (FCV) industry by offering generous incentives.



Maxus EUNIQ 7; photo credit: SAIC Maxus



By 2025, automakers, who have FCVs put into pilot operation in Shanghai and obtain credits by going through a national-level evaluation, will be given subsidies of 200,000 yuan ($31,280) per credit, according to a document co-issued by departments like Shanghai Municipal Development & Reform Commission and Shanghai Finance Bureau on Nov. 3.

Per the document, companies, who produce core auto parts like fuel cell stack, membrane electrodes, bipolar plates, catalysts, carbon papers, air compressors, hydrogen circulation system, and hydrogen storage cylinder valves, will be offered governmental grant of 30,000 yuan ($4,690) per credit if those components are used in FCVs running on roads in FCV demonstration pilot city clusters in China.

The government will encourage the pilot application of fuel cell buses in eligible regions with a volume no fewer than 50 vehicles. It will subsidize the cost for operating the additional FCVs in accordance with the standard designed for the operation of comparable diesel vehicles.

Besides, operators, who have completed the construction of hydrogen filling stations and are licensed to start business by 2025, will be awarded money equivalent to 30% of the approved investment in station building. For those who have received the operational permit in 2022, 2023, and 2024-2025, the amount of subsidies per station should not exceed 5 million yuan ($782,000), 4 million yuan ($625,600), and 3 million yuan ($469,200) respectively.



Policies in the document will be effective from Nov. 1, 2021 to Dec. 31, 2025.
In coordination with federal and state agencies, the Coconino County Board of Supervisors approved a new quarantine and vaccination effort this week for the City of Flagstaff and several surrounding areas.

But rather than being aimed at the coronavirus, this effort is designed to tackle the spread of rabies, which has been found in several small critters in recent weeks.

According to the Coconino County Department of Health, since Sept. 9 as many as 12 animals have been found to have rabies within the Flagstaff area. Those included nine skunks, two bats and one ringtail cat.

A few cases of rabies were also found earlier this year, but county health officials said they believe those cases to be largely unrelated to the more recent trend that has made the quarantine necessary.

The quarantine lasts for about 90 days and impacts the City of Flagstaff as well as several nearby areas of the county, including Fort Tuthill, Flagstaff Ranch Road, Creekside Drive, Quintana Drive and Mt. Elden Lookout Road, said Coconino County animal manager Sabrina Kelley during a meeting earlier this week.

In the past, county officials have requested residents keep animals indoors during a quarantine period, but that does not appear to be the case this time around. Officials, however, do recommend residents keep pets on leashes and make sure their vaccinations are current.

In approving the quarantine, the board gives officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Arizona Game and Fish the ability to begin trapping animals throughout the impacted area. Without that permission, state and federal partners would have to go house to house and ask residents for permission to place traps in the vicinity, Kelley told the board.

Within the 90-day quarantine period, animals caught by licensed trappers will either be euthanized or vaccinated and then released.

Prior to the quarantine declaration, nuisance animals that were trapped were euthanized and then tested for the rabies virus in order to better understand the scale of the issue and prevent its spread, Kelley told the board.

Game and Fish has already put this into motion -- the reason being is that we dont want to be relocating any animal that potentially could be sick with rabies, Kelley said.

Although the official trap, vaccinate and release effort is for a limited time only, Kelley said the Department of Agriculture does plan to keep a staff member in Flagstaff for the next year to check and vaccinate any additional skunks caught by licensed trappers.

This is not the first time the county has issued a quarantine due to rabies, but Kelley told the board that within Coconino County, the issue is largely limited to the Flagstaff area. Rabies is able to spread much easier within the more dense urban animal populations.

In 2001, the county saw an outbreak of the virus that impacted 19 skunks and seven bats that were caught and euthanized.

Then in 2008, the county issued yet another rabies quarantine after several foxes tested positive for the virus. That quarantine impacted the city of Flagstaff and a 20-mile area around the city.

By the time it ended, 14 foxes, six skunks, and one ringtail cat were all captured and euthanized. At that time, one of those infected foxes chased several residents before it could be caught.

Pet owners were also asked to keep their animals indoors as the county worked with the U.S. Departments of Agricultures Wildlife Division to vaccinate wild animals against rabies by dropping small packets throughout the region that animals would then consume and be immunized.

Rabies is a virus spread by the bite of an infected animal or direct contact with the saliva of an infected animal.

In Arizona, bats, skunks and foxes are the main animal sources of rabies. Rabies causes severe damage to the central nervous system and usually leads to death once symptoms appear. Effects of the virus, however, are preventable if proper medical treatment is obtained within a certain time frame.

City and county officials ask that residents who observe unusual wildlife behavior report it to City of Flagstaff Police Department at 928-774-1414. Outside of city limits, residents should contact the Coconino County Health and Human Services Animal Management Program at 928-679-8756.

Interactions with a bat, or a bat found in the home, should also be reported.

Adrian Skabelund can be reached by phone at (928) 556-2261, by email at askabelund@azdailysun.com or on Twitter at @AdrianSkabelund.

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Sunday, Oct. 31

On this date in 1890, Harrison Morton Lavender, mining engineer and Vice President and General Manager of Phelps Dodge Corp. for whom the Lavender Pit at Bisbee is named, was born.

On this date in 1909, Navajo Chief Hashkeneinii, meaning Angry Warrior, died after living in the Monument Valley area for years.

On this date in 1918, the Arizona State Fair was canceled because of an epidemic of Spanish Influenza.

On this date in 1929, a suit was filed in U.S. Federal Court in Phoenix on behalf of the Hualapai Indians to regain their rights to the water at Peach Springs from the Santa Fe railroad.

On this date in 1931, the survey of a site for the proposed Glen Canyon Dam was completed.

Monday, Nov. 1

On this date in 1867, Tucson became the capital of the Territory of Arizona.

On this date in 1893, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act caused much suffering in Arizona as the price of silver dropped from $1.25 to as low as $.25 an ounce and many mines closed.

Tuesday, Nov. 2

On this date in 1889, Sheriff Glen Reynolds and Sheriff W.A. Hunkydory Holmes of Globe were killed by the Apache Kid and seven other Apache prisoners whom they were escorting to the penitentiary.

On this date in 1907, a knife-wielding robber held up guests in four different Prescott hotels in one night, killing one of the victims.

On this date in 1919, 16 of 37 autos which left El Paso for a race to Phoenix arrived in Bisbee. Only six of them finally finished the race in Phoenix.

Wednesday, Nov. 3

On this date in 1852, Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves reached Fort Yuma after completing his survey of the Zuni, Little Colorado, and Colorado Rivers.

On this date in 1868, the first United States Land Office in Arizona was opened in Phoenix.

On this date in 1988, for the first time in American history, the top five state-elected offices are held by women.

On this date in 1992, Arizona voters pass Proposition 300, making Martin Luther King Jr. Day the only voter-approved King holiday in a state.

Thursday, Nov. 4

On this date in 1775, because it was San Carlos Day, Father Francisco Garces gave the San Carlos River its name.

On this date in 1929, a truck carrying a load of roofing nails from Tucson to Florence leaked its load along 65 miles of highway, leaving dozens of motorists stranded in its wake with flat tires.

On this date in 1935, Maricopa County opened a drive to raise money for a Will Rogers Memorial.

On this date in 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis began as militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. For some of the hostages, it was the start of 444 days of captivity.

On this date in 2001, the Arizona Diamondbacks rally to beat the New York Yankees 3-2 in Game 7 of the World Series and snag their first title.

On this date in 2008, Sen. John McCain of Arizona loses his bid for the U.S. presidency to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Obama received 365 electoral votes while McCain received 173.

Friday, Nov. 5

On this date in 1912, Arizona held a general election and returned the recall of the judiciary to the State Constitution.

On this date in 1915, aviatrix Katherine Stinson dropped Arizonas first official air mail letters near the Tucson Post Office.

On this date in 1922, 119000 acres (482 square kilometers) of Arizona land was ordered open for settlement by veterans.

On this date in 1924, the Catholic Church of Santa Cruz in Tucson was seriously damaged by the explosion of a bomb.

On this date in 1932, outlaws robbed the bank in Clemenceau (in Verde Valley, Yavapai County) and got away with $7,000.

On this date in 1935, the proposal to divide Cochise County failed when petitions for a special election fell 300 short of sufficient signatures.

Saturday, Nov. 6

On this date in 1906, Arizona voted overwhelmingly against joint statehood with New Mexico. The measure was defeated by a vote of 16,265 to 3,141.

On this date in 1914, the Nogales Daily Herald was established.

On this date in 1915, a fire of unknown origin destroyed the Arizona Copper Companys new concentrator system at Clifton.

On this date in 1936, the forerunner of the Rodeo Cowboys Association, the Cowboys Turtle Association, was formed by 61 cowboys. Everett Bowlan, then of Hillside, Arizona, was named the first President.

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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP)  Costs to clean up a massive nuclear weapons complex in Washington state are usually expressed in the hundreds of billions of dollars and involve decades of work.

But one project on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is progressing at a much lower price.

The federal government is moving forward with the cocooning of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage to allow radiation inside to dissipate over a period of decades, until they can be dismantled and buried.

Its relatively non-expensive, Mark French, a manager for the U.S. Department of Energy, said of cocooning. The cost of trying to dismantle the reactor and demolish the reactor core would be extremely expensive and put workers at risk.

The federal government built nine nuclear reactors at Hanford to make plutonium for atomic bombs during World War II and the Cold War. The site along the Columbia River contains America's largest quantity of radioactive waste.

The reactors are now shut down and sit like cement fortresses near the southeastern Washington city of Richland. Six have already been cocooned for long-term storage, and two more are headed in that direction. The ninth reactor was turned into a museum as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

While World War II ended in 1945 and the Cold War ended in 1989, the United States is still paying billions of dollars per year for the disposal of the nuclear waste produced by the atomic weapons that played a big role in ending those conflicts. The biggest expense is dealing with a massive volume of liquid wastes left over from the production of plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

While the liquid wastes stored in 177 underground tanks will take decades of work and hundreds of billions of dollars to clean, efforts to secure the nine plutonium reactors are much closer to completion.

The last two reactors, shut down in 1970 and 1971, are about to enter the cocooning stage, when they are covered with steel and cement to prevent radioactivity from escaping into the environment, French said.

The cocoons are expected to last about 75 years, by which time the radioactivity inside will have dramatically decreased and there presumably will be a plan for final disposition of the remaining parts, French said.

Every five years, workers enter the reactor building to make sure there are no leaks or rodent or bird infestations, he said.

Cleanup of Hanford, which has about 11,000 employees and is half the size of Rhode Island, started in the late 1980s, and now costs about $2.5 billion per year. The work has been slowed by technical issues, lack of funding, lawsuits from state regulators, worker exposure to radiation and turnover of contractors on the complex job.

But the handling of the old reactors is a bright spot.

The nine reactors  called B Reactor, C Reactor, D Reactor, DR Reactor, F Reactor, H Reactor, K-East Reactor, K-West Reactor, and N Reactor  were built from 1943 through 1965.

They were constructed next to the Columbia River because of the abundance of hydropower and cooling water needed by the reactors during operation.

All have been cocooned except K-East and K-West. Work on cocooning the K-East reactor has already started and should be finished by 2023, French said. Work on the K-West reactor is scheduled for completion in 2026.

The cocoon plan for K-East and K-West is to basically construct steel buildings around them. Each building is 158 feet (48.2 meters) long, 151 feet (46 meters) wide and 123 feet (37.5 meters) tall, French said. The two steel buildings will cost less than $10 million each.

The government also operated five plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina during the Cold War. All of those are also shut down, although three of the reactor buildings are being used to store radioactive materials Two of the reactors at Savannah River are closed but under a different procedure than the Hanford reactors, said Amy Boyette, a spokeswoman for Savannah River.

Future generations will decide the final disposition of the eight Hanford reactors, French said. They will likely be dismantled and buried in the central area of the Hanford site, away from the river.

Robots may be deployed in the future for that work, French said.

Hanford watchdogs generally agree with this process, said Tom Carpenter, director of the Seattle-based watchdog group Hanford Challenge.

Nobody is raising any concerns about cocooning, Carpenter said. Were all worried about the tank waste that needs immediate and urgent attention.

The bigger question is whether future generations will be willing to pay the massive costs of Hanford cleanup, he said.

Carpenter said the estimated cost to completely clean up just the tank wastes at the Hanford site is around $660 billion.

Its rather grim. Its multigenerational, he said.

This will cost more than anyone thought possible, Carpenter said of the tank wastes and other wastes that were dumped into the ground at Hanford. It's a hidden cost of the (nuclear) buildup.

By then, there might be bigger budget concerns such as dealing with the effects of climate change, Carpenter said.

The most intriguing of the old reactors is the B Reactor, the first one built during World War II. It will not be cocooned, and can be visited by tourists at the national historical park. B Reactor, which shut down in 1968, was cleaned up enough to allow some 10,000 tourists to visit each year and learn the history of Hanford. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Plutonium from Hanfords B Reactor was used in the testing of the worlds first atomic bomb in July 1945. Called the Trinity Test, the bomb was blown up in the New Mexico desert. Hanford plutonium was also used for the bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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McALLEN, Texas (AP)  For about four months before President Joe Biden took office, advisers engaged in intense internal debate about how quickly they should undo his predecessors hardline border policies.

The answer, almost always, was not soon enough. Immigration advocates on the transition team shot down a detailed memo circulated among top aides that called for turning back some migrants who cross illegally by making them seek protection in other countries. They pushed back against estimates of soaring migration flows if Donald Trumps policies were dismantled.

In the end, Biden recognized predictions that more migrants could come but was firm that policies instituted by Trump were inhumane and had to be jettisoned.

Almost immediately, the numbers exceeded expectations.

Children traveling alone shattered previous highs in March. The Border Patrol encountered migrants in South Texas more often than ever in June and July.

In September, about 15,000 mostly Haitian refugees were camped under a bridge in the border town of Del Rio, Texas. For days, migrants waded back and forth across a river for supplies and slept in squalor. Images of agents on horseback corralling refugees went viral.

The administration veered between permissive and restrictive responses, leaving it politically isolated and underscoring consequences of not having a new asylum system in place when it rescinded Trumps policies.

Some developments could not have been predicted, and pre-dating Biden was immigration courts taking nearly four years on average to decide a case of someone not in custody.

But a close review of the last year  based on internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas and dozens of interviews with current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, among others  shows how an administration stacked with immigration advocates was unprepared for the huge increase in people seeking refuge at the border. Many interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized or comfortable discussing private deliberations.

The White House defended its record when presented with specifics of the reconstruction.

After four years of the Trump administrations chaos, cruelty and misplaced priorities, the work to build a fair, orderly and humane immigration system will take time and wont happen overnight, said spokesman Vedant Patel. In a short period of time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress delivering on its plan.

From the start, Biden was adamant about reversing Trumps Remain in Mexico policy, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, under which about 70,000 asylum-seekers were made to wait outside the country for hearings in U.S. immigration court. He wanted to admit those already subject to the policy into the United States to pursue their claims. Despite daunting logistical challenges and early technical hiccups, thousands returned.

Mexico popped a surprise that severely undermined Title 42, which had been the biggest victory for enforcement-minded aides who fought during the transition to temporarily maintain it. Advocacy groups have repeatedly called to end the public health measure, which was invoked on grounds of preventing the coronavirus from spreading.

There was great frustration and irritation at the administrations highest levels when authorities in the state of Tamaulipas resisted taking expelled Central American families, according to one person with direct knowledge of discussions with Mexican officials. The change was linked to a child welfare law that took effect in January.

U.S. officials asked Mexico to delay it but got nowhere. They concluded Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca was trying to stymie President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a political rival.

Biden had exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42 after a court authorized immediate expulsion. As a father and grandfather, he couldnt go forward with it.

Title 42 became largely a tool for removing single adults.

By midsummer, the pendulum swung to enforcement as patience wore thin in Biden's inner circle. Dramatic increases in migration flows bucked a pattern of declines during summer heat. The number of unaccompanied children reached a new high in July, breaking the previous record in March, when more than 4,500 mostly unaccompanied children were crammed into a holding facility built for 250 under COVID-19 guidelines.

The Rio Grande Valley came alive each night with inflatable rafts carrying families across the river.

The Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector stopped more than 20,000 migrants for the first week ever from July 18-24.

Brian Hastings, who heads the sector, wrote senior Border Patrol officials on July 26 that Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley was full and could no longer provide temporary shelter to migrants, which forced the agency to release thousands at a McAllen, Texas, bus station.

In September, the chaotic scene emerged in Del Rio, Texas, as thousands of mostly Haitian migrants converged in a makeshift encampment.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said their arrival was unusually swift, but people with direct knowledge say Colombia provided intelligence that large numbers were moving toward Panama on their way to the U.S. border.

The U.S. flew about 8,000 Haitian migrants back to strife-ridden Haiti since Sept. 19, one of its swiftest, large-scale expulsions of refugees or migrants in decades. Thousands of others were allowed to remain in the U.S.

The uneven response after months of rising arrivals sparked sharp criticism from both the right and left.

The administration has taken modest steps to reform border policies, such as establishing a rocket docket for asylum-seeking families at the border and restoring an Obama-era program for unaccompanied children to apply in Central America to join their parents in the U.S. Its most ambitious proposal  adapted from the Migration Policy Institute think tank  is to assign asylum officers to the border to more quickly decide cases than immigration judges. Seemingly technical, it may have impact.

Despite that proposal, published in August, the administration has yet to release detailed plans of the humane asylum system that Biden promised during his campaign.

This report is a collaboration between The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas, publisher of The (McAllen) Monitor and other newspapers. Spagat, a San Diego correspondent, leads APs U.S. immigration team. Gonzalez is an investigative reporter for The Monitor.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
McALLEN, Texas (AP)  For about four months before President Joe Biden took office, advisers engaged in intense internal debate about how quickly they should undo his predecessor's hardline border policies.

The answer, almost always, was that Donald Trump's mark couldn't be erased soon enough.

Immigration advocates on the transition team defiantly shot down a detailed memo circulated among top aides that called for turning back some migrants who cross illegally by making them seek protection in other countries. They pushed back against estimates of soaring migration flows if Trumps policies were dismantled.

In the end, Biden recognized predictions that more migrants might come to the border, but he was firm that policies instituted by Trump were cruel and inhumane and had to be jettisoned.

Biden took office on Jan. 20. Almost immediately, numbers of migrants exceeded expectations. Plans outlined in a December document to fully resume asylum processing at land crossings were soon overtaken by events.

Children traveling alone shattered previous highs in March, making up most of the more than 4,500 people housed in temporary tents that were designed for 250 under COVID-19 standards. The Border Patrol encountered migrants in South Texas more often than ever in June and July, dashing expectations for a common summer slowdown.

In September, about 15,000 mostly Haitian refugees were camped under a bridge in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas. The chaotic scene stretched on for days as migrants waded back and forth across a river for supplies and families slept in squalor. Images of agents on horseback corralling refugees went viral.

The administration began a massive expulsion of Haitians while allowing thousands to remain in the U.S. Its uneven response after months of rising arrivals sparked sharp criticism from both the right and left, illustrating the consequences of scrapping Trump's policies without a new asylum system in place.

Some key developments could not have been predicted by any administration, and predating Biden was a major structural problem of immigration courts taking nearly four years on average to decide cases of immigrants not in custody.

But a close review of the last year  based on internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas and dozens of interviews with current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, migrants, shelter managers, advocates and others  shows how an administration stacked with seasoned immigration advocates was unprepared for the huge increase in people seeking refuge at the border. Many interviewed for this reconstruction spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized or comfortable discussing private deliberations.

When presented with specifics of the reconstruction, the White House defended its record.

After four years of the Trump administrations chaos, cruelty and misplaced priorities, the work to build a fair, orderly and humane immigration system will take time and wont happen overnight," said spokesman Vedant Patel. "In a short period of time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress delivering on its plan.

BROKEN ASYLUM SYSTEM

While the Biden administration would work to undo policies put in place during and after a 2019 spike in arrivals at the border, it inherited an asylum system that has been broken for years. It sorely tested Bidens immediate predecessors.

In the summer of 2014, large numbers of unaccompanied children from Central Americas Northern Triangle countries  Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras  showed up along the Texas border in the Rio Grande Valley, a profound demographic shift from predominantly Mexican men that created what then-President Barack Obama called a humanitarian crisis and left a deep impression on more enforcement-minded aides who went on to serve in the Biden administration. Spikes have since occurred periodically.

Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras accounted for about two of every three border arrests and people who came in families made up more than half in the governments 2019 fiscal year, both all-time highs. In a throwback to earlier times, encounters with single adults soared during Trumps final year in office after the launch of Title 42 authority, which allowed migrants to be expelled without a chance to seek asylum on the basis of coronavirus. They also faced no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts.

Against that daunting backdrop, Biden took office surrounded by immigration experts steeped with advocacy backgrounds. Esther Olavarria, an immigration attorney who worked for former Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Obama administration but spent much of her career as a Miami-based organizer, took a top spot on the White House Domestic Policy Council with Tyler Moran, who was then executive director of The Immigration Hub, a group of pro-immigration strategists.

Influential, more enforcement-minded voices included David Shahoulian, who resigned last month for personal reasons as assistant Homeland Security secretary for border security and immigration, and Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and career diplomat in Latin America who agreed to serve 100 days on the National Security Council as coordinator for the Southwest border.

REMAIN IN MEXICO WINDS DOWN

Despite concerns, Biden was adamant about his campaign promise to start reversing Trumps border policies by ending Remain in Mexico, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, under which about 70,000 asylum-seekers were made to wait outside the country for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

Crossings fell sharply after Trump expanded the policy in 2019, but migrants were forced to wait in dangerous and unfamiliar Mexican border cities where finding steady work was difficult and finding attorneys was nearly impossible. Human Rights First, an advocacy group, documented 1,544 examples of violent assaults, including murder, rape, torture and kidnapping.

During the transition, advocates pushed for the policys immediate reversal, but consensus emerged for a more gradual winding down.

The complicated logistics of allowing up to 26,000 asylum-seekers with active cases to return to the United States and remain free while their cases wound through the courts was a high priority in the administrations first weeks.

All records were on paper, with few working phone numbers or addresses listed, posing a challenge on how to get the word out. U.S. authorities, working closely with United Nations organizations, worried about a rush to the border exacerbating public health and security concerns  and at the same time, sending a message to asylum-seekers who had returned to Central America to make the dangerous journey back north.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights website for asylum-seekers with active cases went live Feb. 12 and was overwhelmed with technical glitches. Multiple dropdown boxes created confusion and led to a site redesign.

Despite the early hiccups, more than 11,000 asylum-seekers had returned to the United States by June 1, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas officially declared the policy was over after a review found it yielded only mixed effectiveness on border security. Others whose asylum cases were dismissed or denied under Trump were allowed in starting in late June.

As border crossings soared beyond expectations, Amy Pope joined the White House staff in March after having advised Biden on immigration during the campaign and working closely with him in 2014 when he was tasked by Obama with the unaccompanied children on the Texas border. Her mandate was to bridge internal rifts between advocacy- and more enforcement-minded aides while her nomination to the second-highest position at the International Organization for Migration awaited approval from other member nations at the U.N. agency.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS

Some White House and Homeland Security officials were frustrated by how woefully unprepared the Department of Health and Human Services was to handle unaccompanied children. As required by law, it was supposed to take custody within 72 hours and then place them in a home, usually with a parent or close relative.

Participants in early interdepartmental meetings said Health and Human Services officials raised few warnings. On Feb. 7, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened a large complex of white tents in the Rio Grande Valley, cramming more than 500 children into spaces designed for 32 under COVID-19 guidelines. Thick plastic curtains replaced chain-link fences used as barriers in the Obama and Trump administrations, but massive overcrowding was the same or worse.

If (Health and Human Services) were able to take these kids off our hands, then it would be better for everybody, Oscar Escamilla, acting executive officer of the Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector, said during a media tour of the Donna, Texas, facility on March 30. At the time, unaccompanied children were being held an average of 61 hours over the 72-hour limit and as long as 20 days. Were forced into the (child detention) business because we cant turn them over to anybody.

Health and Human Services belatedly sprang into action, aided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It opened about a dozen emergency holding centers within about a month to process unaccompanied children, renting space at a San Antonio concert venue and at military bases and convention centers in Dallas, San Diego and Long Beach, California.

By late April, the department had more than 22,000 children in its custody, but even more arrived as others were released to family in the United States during asylum proceedings. July broke Marchs record number of unaccompanied children.

On March 19, the Border Patrol for the first time ever began releasing families with notices to report to an immigration office within 60 days, instead of releasing them with more time-consuming notices to appear in immigration court. With processing taking up about 40% of Border Patrol resources, the agency concluded it had no choice. Troy Miller, the acting CBP commissioner, said in congressional testimony that the change cuts the paperwork in half.

As of Sept. 10, CBP had released 107,817 people without formal notices to appear in court, according to an internal document. Of those, 29,863, or 28%, did not report to ICE by their deadlines.

SUMMER INCREASE IN CROSSINGS

Once in office, Biden attended weekly meetings to discuss the border. However, the high-level gatherings became less frequent as COVID-19 travel restrictions eased and arrivals of unaccompanied children fell after March. Any sense of relief evaporated when the Border Patrols daily reports showed dramatic increases in migration flows in late June, bucking a pattern of declines during the summer heat.

The Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector stopped more than 20,000 migrants for the first week ever from July 18-24, smashing previous highs. Four of its five busiest weeks on record were in late June and July, the other one coming in March.

Brian Hastings, who heads the sector, wrote senior Border Patrol officials on July 26 that Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley was full and could no longer provide temporary shelter to migrants, which forced the agency to release thousands at a McAllen, Texas, bus station. He also said Health and Human Services was prioritizing children who would be easiest to place in homes over those who had been in Border Patrol custody the longest, specifically older teens and pregnant girls.

I know that you are overwhelmed there, but we need to get (unaccompanied children) moving, the Border Patrols deputy chief of operations wrote the same day. This issue is reaching the top level of this Administration again. Just want to make sure we are full court press on (unaccompanied children). (I get it ... along with everything else.)

MEXICO SURPRISE

The Biden administration underestimated migration flows, but Mexico popped a surprise that severely undermined Title 42, which had been the most significant victory for enforcement-minded aides who fought during the transition to temporarily maintain it. Advocacy groups have repeatedly called to end the public health measure, which was invoked on grounds of preventing the coronavirus from spreading.

On Jan. 23, U.S. authorities were taken aback when Mexican officials in the state of Tamaulipas said they would no longer accept Central American families expelled from the United States.

Mexican officials in other border states continued taking expelled families, but Tamaulipas borders most of South Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings by far. It resulted in crossings being even more concentrated in South Texas. The Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio sectors accounted for more than half of all migrant encounters in August, compared with less than one-third a year earlier.

There was great frustration and irritation with Mexico at the administrations highest levels, according to one person with direct knowledge of discussions with high-ranking officials. Border Patrol officials who work with Mexican authorities on more routine operational issues also pressed for change in long, daily conversations. U.S. authorities had trouble getting on the phone with Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca.

Mexican diplomats were sympathetic but said the change was linked to a child welfare law that took effect in January. The law prohibited its immigration agency from detaining children and required state officials to determine in each case what was in a childs best interest.

U.S. officials asked Mexico to delay implementation and consider adding more shelters for child migrants to meet its detention ban. When their pleas went unheeded, U.S. officials concluded Garcia Cabeza de Vaca was trying to stymie President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a political rival.

Hastings, a career Border Patrol official, contacted other sector chiefs about sending families to them. On a Sunday in early March, he secured twice-daily flights to El Paso, Texas, for families to be expelled to the adjoining Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. But that number was cut back within days because Mexican authorities there said they could take only 100 people a day. Once-daily charter flights continued from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso and to San Diego, where families were sent across the border to Tijuana, Mexico.

Tamaulipas authorities quickly relented by agreeing to accept families with children 7 years or older, but the impact was limited. In July, only 12% of the more than 83,000 family encounters on the border resulted in expulsion under Title 42 authority.

TOUGH TALK BUT INCREASED ARRIVALS

On Jan. 29, a federal appeals court authorized immediate expulsion of unaccompanied children under Title 42. As a father and grandfather, Biden couldnt go forward with it, unable to bear sending minors to dangerous Mexican border cities without their parents, even while recognizing the vast majority were 15 to 17 years old.

Mexicos reluctance to take families and Bidens exemption of unaccompanied children largely turned Title 42 into a tool for removing single adults.

The Rio Grande Valley, a citrus-growing delta of 1.3 million people, came alive each night with inflatable rafts carrying families across the meandering river.

Smugglers lifted families into knee-deep water  some spanning three generations and with infants and toddlers  careful not to step on U.S. soil where Border Patrol agents could arrest them. Agents watched rafts go back and forth between patches of sand on gnarly riverbanks, then escorted passengers to vans that carried them to an international bridge in Hidalgo, Texas, to await processing.

If there were no agents, migrants walked under cool, moonlit skies on dirt paths amid thick brush with scorpions and snakes, looking to surrender.

Biden and senior officials talked tough  Do not come, Vice President Kamala Harris warned on a June visit to Guatemala, repeating herself for emphasis  but migrants who kept coming spoke of the change in presidential administrations and stories from friends and relatives who were quickly released in the United States.

Jenny Clemente, a 29-year-old Salvadoran mother, said she left home Aug. 1 after seeing TV reports showing lots of families entering the United States. Maria Serrano, a 40-year-old Salvadoran mother departed her hometown with a 10-year-old daughter on July 18 after she was told Biden would let families cross with minors. Another mother from El Salvador, who preferred not to share her name for safety reasons, packed up and left a week later with her 12-year-old daughter after hearing a neighbor was allowed into the U.S. with her child.

All of them would end up expelled to Mexico by Aug. 21, struggling to determine their next steps.

ENFORCEMENT INCREASED

By midsummer, the pendulum swung to enforcement as patience wore thin in the presidents inner circle. The White House regularly consulted with pro-immigration groups, but relations deteriorated to the point that advocates abruptly ended an off-the-record call with Olavarria on a Saturday morning in October.

In August, the U.S. began flying Central Americans deep into Mexico to hand them off to Mexican authorities who, in turn, deported them to Guatemala. U.S. authorities initially decided on 24 such flights a month, but Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flights, tallied 36 in August and 44 in September.

The administration then faced the arrival of nearly 15,000 migrants, mostly Haitians in Texas. Mexico refuses to take back anyone who is not from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, giving rise to growing numbers from other countries. Ecuadorians surpassed El Salvadorans as the fourth-largest nationality arriving at the border in July.

Mayorkas said the Haitians arrivals was unusually swift, but people with direct knowledge say Colombia provided intelligence that large numbers were moving on to Panama on their way to the U.S. border. One U.S. official said the Border Patrols acting chief in Del Rio, Robert Garcia, asked headquarters for reinforcements 2 weeks before the Haitian crowd peaked on Sept. 18.

The U.S. has flown about 8,000 Haitian migrants back to Haiti since Sept. 19, one of its swiftest, large-scale expulsions of refugees or migrants in decades. The mass expulsions, along with treatment of some migrants at the border, led to sharp criticism of the Biden administration, even from fellow Democrats.

WHAT BORDER REFORM?

Immigration doesnt command the attention with Biden that it did with Trump, and there is no parallel to Stephen Miller, Trumps powerful aide whose relentless focus on immigration prompted him to call career officials several times a day for updates. Pope, a close Biden confidante, left in July for her post at the U.N. migration agency in Geneva.

A December 2020 internal document estimated the authorities could process 3,000 asylum-seekers a month at land crossings with Mexico and 12,000 a month within 180 days. It never happened.

The administration has taken modest steps, such as establishing a rocket docket for asylum-seeking families at the border and restoring an Obama-era program for unaccompanied children to apply in Central America to join their parents in the U.S. instead of making the perilous journey to the border. Its most ambitious proposal  adapted from the Migration Policy Institute think tank  is to assign asylum officers to the border to more quickly decide cases than immigration judges. Seemingly technical, it may have impact.

Despite that proposal, which wasnt published until August, the administration has yet to release detailed plans of the humane asylum system that Biden promised during his campaign.

This report is a collaboration between The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas, publisher of The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, and other newspapers. Spagat, a San Diego correspondent, is the AP's U.S. immigration beat team leader. Gonzalez is an investigative reporter for The Monitor.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Wild geese and swans are seen at the Hongjiannao Wetland Reserve in Shenmu, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Nov. 3, 2021. Flocks of wintering wild geese and swans have arrived at the Hongjiannao Wetland Reserve on their route of migration. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)




Many of the allegations in Lincoln were against the Rev. James Benton, an elderly priest who only retired in 2017 even though church leaders had known about abuse accusations against him for at least 15 years.

Benton's nephew, Lincoln chiropractor Stan Schulte, said his uncle molested him at a rectory sleepover in the early 1990s when he was a boy.

Another Lincoln man, Jeffrey Hoover, reported a similar experience with Benton during a camping trip in the early 1980s while he and the priest slept in the same bed. Schulte has said he probably never would have been molested if church officials had handled Hoover's allegations against Benton properly.

Schulte, who attended Thursday's news conference and has pushed for accountability in the church, said he doesn't believe the church's current leaders have done enough to protect the public and that they should be removed from their posts. He said one credibly accused priest has been allowed to live in the Bonacum House in Lincoln, a home for retired priests that's a short walk from both a public and a private elementary school.

He said another credibly accused priest was assigned to a home in Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska, next to a Boy Scout camp, and that the church isn't monitoring him and didn't tell the public.
Arntzen spoke at Monday's meeting, but had left the auditorium before the comment was made.

These types of comments serve no purpose in championing parent voice in our public education arena, Arntzen said in the statement.

She first learned of the comment from an article in the Helena Independent Record on Tuesday, she said.

I have reached out to specific superintendents in the Missoula area to express my disdain for these comments made at an event in which I was the first speaker, Arntzen said.

At the meeting, MCPS Trustee Mike Gehl called on Rhoades to stand up from his chair in the audience and asked him to recall a conversation they had at a similar meeting in late August.

What is it you said about what to do with these two superintendents? Gehl asked Rhoades. He did not specify which two superintendents he was speaking about, though MCPS Superintendent Rob Watson was being discussed directly before Gehls exchange with Rhoades.

Shoot em? Rhoades replied, prompting laughter from the audience.
A Yellowstone National Park treasure hunter will have to pay for his helicopter rescue, a Colorado appeals court has ruled.

On Aug. 2, 2018, Mark Lantis set off on a hike to 10,336-foot tall Mount Holmes in the northwest corner of the park in search of the Forrest Fenn treasure. Before reaching his destination Lantis decided to turn back, but left the trail after seeing bear scat.

When he ran out of daylight Lantis phoned to let his sister know he would be spending the night wet, cold [and] scared, according to court documents.

The next day Lantis mother phoned park officials concerned about her son. A park ranger contacted the overdue hiker and had him call 911 so they could locate him in the rugged, high elevation terrain. The ranger gave Lantis directions, but he was unable to hike out on his own and said he needed help.

Due to the late hour, a helicopter rescue was launched. Upon retrieval, Lantis was cited for disorderly conduct for recklessly creating a risk. At trial in the Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, court, Lantis was found guilty, sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation, banned from the park for five years and was ordered to pay $2,880 for the helicopter rescue.
A recent uptick in precipitation has helped stabilize drought in the state, though poor conditions persist throughout much of central and western North Dakota.

The situation has prompted Gov. Doug Burgum to ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take measures to help ensure boat access to Lake Sakakawea next spring.

There is little change this week in the U.S. Drought Monitor map, which is released every Thursday. No areas of the state are in exceptional drought, the worst category, and less than 10% is in extreme drought, the second-worst -- the northwest corner and a pocket in Golden Valley County in the southwest. Most of the rest of western and central North Dakota remains in severe or moderate drought. Much of eastern North Dakota is rated only "abnormally dry" or not in any category.

As a comparison, three months ago during the height of summer, all of the state was in some form of drought, with nearly two-thirds in extreme or exceptional drought.

"Across the western Dakotas ... drought indicators have continued to improve due to many locations receiving over 200% of normal precipitation since the beginning of October," wrote National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Meteorologist Adam Hartman. "Soil moisture and short-term rainfall deficits are much improved for most areas."

October climate statistics from the National Weather Service show that precipitation for the month was above normal in Bismarck, Dickinson, Minot and Jamestown. Bismarck received 3.35 inches. That was nearly 2 inches above normal and marked the seventh-wettest October on record for the city. Records date to 1874.

Soil moisture supplies statewide were mostly unchanged from last week. The weekly crop report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service rates topsoil moisture 42% short or very short, and subsoil supplies 64% in those categories. However, the percentages have improved greatly from midsummer. on Aug. 1, for example, they were 91% and 86%, respectively.

"However, while ground reports corroborate the improved soil conditions, they also indicate that rangeland conditions are slow to recover and stock ponds remain below normal with poor water quality, indicative of longer-term hydrologic deficits," Hartman said.

Stock water supplies this week are rated 75% poor or very poor, and 77% of pasture and rangelands are in those categories, according to the crop report.

The U.S. Drought Monitor is a partnership of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Boat ramps

Burgum this week released an Oct. 28 letter he sent to Col. Mark Himes, commander of the the Corps of Engineers Omaha District, asking the Corps to help ensure boater access on Lake Sakakawea, a popular recreation destination and one of the premier fisheries in the region.

The long-range forecast for Lake Sakakaweas elevation next spring is approximately 1,827 feet. At that level, the main boat ramps at 20 of North Dakotas 36 recreation sites on the lake would be unusable, Burgum said in the letter. Combined with known siltation issues at seven main ramp locations, access to the lake is expected to be significantly constrained.

Burgum told Himes state Commerce Department data shows that visitors to counties bordering the Missouri River reservoir spent more than $290 million in 2020, supporting more than 3,000 jobs -- many of them provided by private concessionaries who operate in partnership with the Corps on public lands.

Burgum wants the Corps to take various measures, including helping build primitive roads to low-water boat ramp sites. He offered state assistance so contractors can begin addressing access issues immediately after ice-out in the spring.

The Corps had not responded to the governor's office as of midday Thursday, according to Burgum spokesman Mike Nowatzki. The Corps did not respond to a Tribune request for comment.

More information

North Dakota farmers and ranchers can find details on available drought resources at https://www.nd.gov/ndda/drought-resources. Producers can access the federal Agriculture Department's Disaster Assistance Discovery Tool or Disaster-at-a-Glance fact sheet at www.farmers.gov.

Burning restrictions remain in place in many western and central counties including Morton, but not Burleigh. The fire risk across the state Thursday was rated low to moderate. Information on current fire danger indexes and county burn bans is available at https://ndresponse.gov/burn-ban-restrictions-fire-danger-maps. Fire restrictions on the Dakota Prairie Grasslands are at https://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/dpg/alerts-notices.

There have been about 2,400 wildfires in North Dakota burning about 125,500 acres this year, according to the North Dakota Forest Service. The number of fires is more than 2  times the number all of last year, and the scorched acres are more than 10 times what burned in all of 2020.

The National Weather Service forecast calls for no significant precipitation through the weekend. However, the agency's 6-10-day outlook shows the potential for above-normal precipitation across all of North Dakota except the far west. That includes the possibility of snow.

While the forecast for that time period is still uncertain, "Prepare for the possibility of winter weather," the weather service said. Winter weather tips can be found at https://www.weather.gov/bis/winter_weather_awareness_main.

Reach Blake Nicholson at 701-250-8266 or blake.nicholson@bismarcktribune.com.

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A Bismarck man who police say trafficked thousands of oxycodone pills into Bismarck between August and October has been charged with four felonies, including leading a criminal organization.

Layne Johs was arrested Wednesday following an investigation by Metro Area Narcotics Task Force officers, according to an affidavit. Authorities allege Johs is the kingpin of an ongoing drug trafficking and money laundering organization that has a network of users, traffickers, distributors, and a supplier outside of North Dakota.

Johs allegedly admitted to agents that he was involved in bringing more than 3,000 oxycodone pills to Bismarck from Phoenix since August, the affidavit states.

He was arrested after he drove nearly 50 mph through residential areas and almost struck an officer and the officers vehicle, police say.

Johs made his initial court appearance Thursday. He is charged with intent to deliver drugs while in possession of a firearm, conspiracy to deliver drugs, leading a criminal organization and reckless endangerment, court documents show. The charge of possession with intent to deliver could send him to prison for 20 years if hes convicted.

No attorney is listed for him in court records.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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North Dakota's Health Department on Friday will host a virtual town hall to provide information on the recently approved COVID-19 vaccine for young children.

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have endorsed Pfizer's vaccine for children ages 5-11. Doses for the age group are about one-third of the amount given to adolescents and adults.

There are about 82,000 children in that age group in North Dakota, according to the Health Department -- nearly 11% of the state's population. The agency has received 18,000 initial pediatric Pfizer COVID-19 doses from the federal government and is distributing them to providers around the state, according to Immunization Program Director Molly Howell.

She is one of the scheduled speakers during Friday's 1:30 p.m. town hall about the recent federal approval of the child vaccine and of vaccine boosters for adults. Others are University of North Dakota Center for Family Medicine Pediatrician Joan Connell, Sanford Health Infectious Disease Specialist Avish Nagpal, and Grace Njau, director of the Health Department's Special Projects and Health Analytics division.

Brenton Nesemeier, director of the department's Field Services division, also will be available to answer questions. People can ask questions during the live event but also can submit them in advance via direct message on the departments Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages.

The event will be via Microsoft Teams at https://health.nd.gov/covidtownhall.

Sanford Health Bismarck has begun scheduling and administering the child vaccine, CHI St. Alexius Health plans to in the coming weeks, and Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health has announced a drive-thru child vaccine clinic at the Bismarck Event Center on Tuesday from 3:30-6 p.m. For more information, go to sanfordhealth.org, CHIStAlexiusHealth.org and https://bit.ly/3wdsdrS.

Daily data

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in children ages 5-11 account for about 6% of North Dakota's overall 150,467 confirmed cases during the pandemic that began in March 2020. Hospitalizations in that age range make up less than half a percent of the state pandemic total of 6,005.

The Health Department's coronavirus dashboard on Thursday showed a total of 608 newly confirmed virus cases in all age ranges, and 3,627 active cases, including 683 in Burleigh-Morton counties. There were five more virus-related deaths documented, raising the pandemic total to 1,784 and October's total to 156. Death records can be filed up to 10 days from the date of death under state law, so October's total might not yet be final. It's already the fourth-deadliest pandemic month for North Dakota.

The Health Department no longer publicly reports the county, sex and age range of newly confirmed deaths. The dashboard death total for Morton County increased by one Thursday, to 119; Burleigh County's total was unchanged, at 243.

COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations all have risen in recent months due to the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Hospitalizations on Thursday were down 20 from Monday, to 150, but hospital capacity remained a concern, with about 8% of staffed inpatient beds available statewide and about 3% of intensive care unit beds available. The most recent state data indicated no available beds in either category at Bismarck's two hospitals.

More information

The state's vaccine dashboard shows 55.7% of eligible North Dakota adults and 33.7% of adolescents in the 12-18 age group are considered fully vaccinated. North Dakota has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S., according to the CDC. People can go to https://www.ndvax.org or call 866-207-2880 to see where COVID-19 vaccine is available near them.

The coronavirus transmission risk is considered high in all of North Dakota's 53 counties except Logan, according to the CDC's COVID-19 data tracker website. The CDC recommends people in that risk category wear masks in public indoor settings. The transmission risk in the Bismarck-Mandan region is considered high.

A list of free COVID-19 testing offered by local public health units is at health.nd.gov/covidtesting. For more detailed information on coronavirus in North Dakota, go to www.health.nd.gov/coronavirus. For more information on coronavirus variants, go to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/transmission/variant.html.
We are entering the most thankful and generous time of year between sharing gifts with those we love, traditional year-end giving, Giving Tuesday (Nov. 30), giving trees, meal donations, toy drives, resolutions and more.

Because of this, this is often the time that people think about nonprofits or charities to determine where they want to give and volunteer. It behooves those of us who work in nonprofits to be present and available right now to connect with each person who values our mission. Many wouldnt make it throughout the rest of the year without this influx of support.

That said, I encourage anyone thinking of giving a gift this year to reconsider how your donation can make a difference.

Its no secret that when we give, it makes us feel great to know that our donation directly and immediately supports the cause we care about. For example, I love getting the text message my blood donation has been used. I love picking up a giving tree tag and thinking about the child who asked for that specific present, imagining them opening it during the holidays. I get to see this through my job, too, with how donors who adopted a wish react when the wish comes true.

Theres nothing wrong with this. Its gratifying and motivating.

But not every gift can do this. Thats where the reconsideration needs to start.

Its a nice thought that every gift or even 90% of gifts create public-facing results. Its also naive. Public-facing results dont come from one-time donations, no matter how large or small, or one seasons campaign drive no matter how successful. Results -- especially the really good results that actually solve the issue a nonprofit aims to solve -- come from the culmination of quality research, well-trained team members, effective strategy, the right tools and high expectations. What else might that be called? Overhead.

It can be such a dirty word in the world of nonprofits, but why? I get that something like a database isnt directly ending poverty, but that good database can drive a small but mighty team of employees to raise two to three times the amount of money they did before. That can end poverty. Or at least put a major dent in it. Without that database, the small but mighty teams efforts would be stagnant.

Low overhead can make a nonprofit look great at a glance. Tight budgets can even bring out the best in our creativity. And yet, low overhead is a death knell when it prevents us from helping people.

When we buy our iPhones, we know that the machinery in our hand doesnt cost $1,000 to put together. It costs that much for Apple to have excellent engineers, researchers, designers and creators so what you just bought works well, is an advance from your previous version, is pleasing and gives you what you want.

We give that courtesy to a technology company, yet we dont for those clothing children or helping people with disabilities. The reality is that for nonprofits to accomplish their mission, they need those internal investments just as much as any for-profit.

We want for-profit companies to operate with empathy, ethics and the greater good in mind. And even when they dont, we still end up giving them our money. Meanwhile there is a whole industry of nonprofits already operating with these ideals, and were critical of their overhead.

Nonprofit guru Dan Pallotta says it like this: Ever wonder why charities arent changing the world the way we had hoped? Its because thats not what we asked them to do. We asked them to keep their overhead and salaries low. So guess what they did?

This isnt to say, of course, that many nonprofits, including where I proudly work, arent making important and meaningful progress. They are! But imagine a world where were allowed to unleash and truly drive our missions forward.

People should feel good about their giving. Nonprofits should be held to the highest standards because their missions are of the highest importance. I only ask you to reconsider the interpretation of those standards. Allow nonprofit staff members to have updated computers. Agree that its OK if their offices are pleasant. Accept that it might take more staff to accomplish everything involved. Cheer when a someone dedicated to the good of others gets a raise. Be patient with public-facing results because those results can far exceed anything done in a rush.

If you are considering giving financially this season, thank you. If you are willing to reconsider your perception of giving to a nonprofit, thank you even more. We cant change the world without you.

When not living it up as a wife and mom of three, Amanda Godfread is regional director of Make-A-Wish North Dakota and a co-host of the podcast, "Welcome to Our Box."

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Website traffic represents the volume of users visiting your site. Higher is better because more people visiting your site means more opportunities for advertising, engagement, and eventual conversion.

Ideally, you want to steadily increase website traffic, or at least keep it stable over time. But what happens if your traffic starts to drop? Whether its slow or sudden, the results are the same: A smaller pool of users who are seeing your content and potentially generating revenue for your brand. Even more worrisome for site admins is that traffic drops may not have an obvious cause. With multiple traffic sources and factors that influence your site ranking and accessibility, even small drops may be the result of several independent or codependent conditions.

While theres no quick fix for these drops, weve got you covered with actionable tips to pinpoint, diagnose and address falling traffic.

Why is my website traffic down?

To boost traffic levels, site owners must first discover why traffic is down. With multiple traffic sources such as email, social media, organic, and referral, its not enough to simply know that traffic is falling  you need to identify the source of the drop itself and then take steps to specifically address the problem.

There are several ways to determine which traffic source is driving your numbers down. Let's take a look at those next.

How To Identify the Source of Traffic Drops

HubSpot Sources

If youre using HubSpots CMS, you can leverage HubSpot Sources to determine where your traffic is coming from. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

Step 1: First, you need to install the HubSpot tracking code on your site. Head to your HubSpot account and click the Settings icon in the main navigation bar.

Step 2: Next, head to Tracking & Analytics and then Tracking Code on the left sidebar.

Step 3: Now you should see the tracking code.

Copy the code and then paste it before the </body> tag in the HTML code on each page of your site you want to track.

Step 4: Once thats done, head to the Reports section of your account and then Analytics Tools.

Step 5: Next, select Traffic Analytics.

Here, youll see the Sources tab, which displays total sessions as a line chart broken out into different colors by traffic type including referrals, social media, email marketing and direct traffic.This gives you a visual representation of where your traffic is coming from and how its changed over a specific period of time.

Google Analytics Acquisition Channels

You can also identify traffic sources using Google Analytics.

Step 1: Start by logging into your Google Analytics account and selecting the Acquisition tab.

Step 2: Then, select All Traffic followed by Source/Medium.

This will provide you with a list of traffic sources to your website along with the number of users theyve brought.

Diagnosing Traffic Drops

Once youve determined the source of your traffic drops, you need to diagnose the problem in-depth: What conditions or actions are causing traffic to fall?

Lets take a look at some common traffic categories and some questions you can ask to determine whats going on.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic refers to visitors who land on your site after conducting a web search and clicking on links from the search engine results page (SERP). Its called organic traffic because it doesnt come from paid advertising or marketing but instead occurs naturally  or organically  as a result of search queries.

If you notice that your organic traffic is down, ask yourself:

Where is my site in the search rankings?

The higher you rank on the SERP, the more likely youll earn organic traffic. Do a quick search for your sites primary keyword and see what comes up. If youre not on the first page of the search results, then your site is struggling to get visibility in the SERP.

How is my SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so search engines will find it and rank it highly against similar sites. If each of your webpages isn't strategically targeting keywords related to your business, you could be missing opportunities to bring traffic to your site.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic arrives at your site after typing in the name of your site directly, navigating to it through a bookmark or clicking on a direct email link. If you see direct traffic taking a dive, consider:

What do my URLs look like?

Your URLs should be as simple, clean and concise as possible. If you have pages with long and convoluted URLs, users may be attempting to reach your page but find a 404 error instead because they typed your website address into the web browser incorrectly.

Have I recently updated pages?

If youre recently updated webpages, look for any changes in URLs. If youve made changes without properly redirecting the old links to the new ones, visitors may be seeing error pages which will result in traffic drops.

Referral Traffic

Referral traffic typically comes from other sources such as site lists or blogs. This type of traffic is often part of link building campaigns. For example, you might draft and submit a guest blog to a popular website and include a link back to your site at the end.

If you suddenly see a dropoff in previously consistent referral traffic, ask yourself:

Are backlink sites ranking well?

Blogs and site lists can drive referral traffic, but only if theyre getting visitors as well. If youre seeing a drop, search for your referral sites and see how they rank.

Do my links point to the right page?

Just like the in direct traffic example above, make sure your links are pointing visitors to the right page. If youve made recent URL updates, contact blog or site list owners to have them amended.

Paid Search Traffic

Paid search traffic is exactly what it sounds like: Paid ads within the search engines that display advertisements for your website in search results. The more you spend, the more often your ad will appear and the closer it will be to the top of search results.

If you see paid traffic stalling, ask yourself:

Are my ads in the right place?

Ads only work if theyre targeting the right audience. If you own a window-washing company, then it's not a good idea to display ads on fashion advice blogs because the quantity and quality of traffic probably wont match your expectations.

Email Traffic

Email traffic comes from links in emails you send to current and prospective customers. These might be newsletters, sales flyers, or targeted advertisements based on customer preferences. If your email traffic starts to decline, consider these questions:

Do I have the right market?

Effective email campaigns target the right market. You need to know who your customers are, how they prefer to interact with brands, and how much theyre willing to spend to create effective emails. If your target market is loosely defined  or absent  start with email marketing tools to help identify your ideal customers.

Are current emails effective?

Not all emails are created equal. Information alone isnt enough to capture consumer interest  brands must also include actionable next steps that encourage users to click through. To help boost email efficacy consider A/B testing: Create two versions of a marketing email and see which one produces better results, then repeat the process to refine as necessary.

Social Media Traffic

Social media traffic comes from sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram when customers click through on one of your posts and arrive at your website. If your social traffic starts sliding, ask yourself:

Do my social media posts drive action?

Social media posts need to do more than get users to stop scrolling  they must provide enough information to get users interested but leave enough left unsaid to prompt action. In practice, this means creating optimized social posts that convince customers to click through and see what you have to offer.

Am I using the right platform?

Image-driven platforms such as Instagram are great for brands that use images to highlight popular products. Service-based brands, on the other hand, often see better performance from sites such as Facebook. Drilling down to see which platforms are driving your traffic can help pinpoint ideal marketing channels.

How to Fix Traffic Drops Run traffic reports to identify recent changes. Be better than the competition. Keep your site healthy.

While theres no single way to fix traffic drops, there are general steps that site owners can take to help remedy these issues:

1. Run traffic reports to identify recent changes.

In most cases, traffic drops are the result of multiple factors that combine to lower the number of unique visitors that arrive on your site. Your best bet in this situation is to look at any recent changes to your website, linking strategy or advertising goals.

For example, if youve just done a site-wide update to improve the overall design and user experience (UX) and traffic has dropped as a result, run reports to see where your traffic is coming from and if there are specific sources and mediums that have seen a sudden drop. If you notice that direct and referral traffic are down, this may be an indication that URLs are no longer pointing to the right pages.

In order to keep your traffic up, you'll want to make sound decisions on this data. If you notice one source or medium, in particular, is contributing to the drop, take a look at your processes and workflows there for any gaps that are causing your site to perform poorly.

2. Be better than the competition.

Sometimes its not your site thats the issue. If your competition has managed to corner the SEO market for your industry or have changed their marketing techniques to better target shared customer segments, you may see a drop in traffic.

To determine if this is the case, start by searching for your sites primary keywords across popular search engines and see what comes up. If you notice competitor sites have pushed yours down the list, they may be outperforming your search optimization. Its also worth checking your sources to see if social media traffic is down  if so, your competition may be doing a better job driving organic interest across social platforms

To fix this problem, you'll need to write content and design webpages that are better than every website ranking above yours. This means targeting a specific buyer persona with each page and having clear calls to action.

3. Keep your site healthy.

Site conditions have an impact on how your website is indexed and ranked by search engines. If you see traffic sliding, take a look at current conditions and how they may impact users.

For example, if your site is slow to load because of large image or video files, users wont stick around and search engines will penalize your ranking. Issues around layout and functionality are also problematic. Broken links or content thats all fluff and no function may be increasing the number of users who arrive at your site and immediately leave, in turn dropping your site in search rankings.

Using a content delivery network (CDN) can help videos and images load faster while a tool like Ahrefs' SEO toolbar can spot broken links on a page so you can fix them quickly.

For even more tips on how to boost traffic to your site, check out HubSpots free website optimization course.

Tackling Traffic Slowdowns

Traffic drops may be slow-and-steady or sudden and substantive. In either case, however, they have the same result: Fewer visitors on your site and fewer opportunities for customer conversion.

To address these traffic issues, start by identifying the likely source, then consider potential issues tied to specific traffic mediums. Finally, take action to address common traffic concerns  with any luck, youll soon be back up to speed.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Billionaire Charles Munger is giving $200 million to the University of California on the condition that it's used to build a huge student dormitory to his personal specifications. It's been likened to a prison and the lack of windows in the tiny, tomblike rooms is a particular point of controversy. But Munger is standing by his dream and the University of California is running with his money. He even suggests that artificial light is better than the real thing. From the linked Q&A:

almost every student would be in a windowless room. No, that's not true. Every student is in a house and suite system, and the house has lots of windows and a big common living space and dining space and kitchen space and so on. And so they're not living in windowless space. But their bedrooms  are windowless. The bedrooms have artificial windows instead of real ones, but they've got perfect ventilation.  If you go on a Disney cruise ship and pay $20,000 a week for a fancy stateroom, it uses an artificial window instead of a real one.  You can turn a knob and change the sunlight to brighten it up or down. So if you're a romantic, you can tamp it down. If you want more bright light and so forth, you can turn the sunlight up just by twisting a knob. In many respects, these things are actually better than real windows.

This project is a poster child for why the most wealthy Americans should pay taxes instead of justifying themselves with these wannabe-Carnegie donations.

I like how he repeatedly compares the habitat to $20,000-a-week staterooms on Disney cruise ships. There are so many things you could do to sell high-CRI artificial light to Gen Z, so many truly interesting images of luxury and high-tech living, Dwell Magazine spreads, retro Japanese capsule hotels, cyberpunk guerilla marketing, and so on. But no. His go-to-reference for selling this? The most expensive cabin on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Tour of Texas.
A middle school teacher in Ventura, California is spreading her Q-nut delusions in class  and getting away with it.

Recorded by an uncomfortable 8th grader, the so-called history teacher, whose name hasn't been released, infected her students with QAnon conspiracy nonsense, caught in a 7-minute recording (part can be heard in video below), including the popular fiction that ex-Reality Show host Donald Trump is still our president.

Other lies she told the children: "Hunter Biden, for example, is doing deals with China and Ukraine where he was funneling money illegally. He also had child pornography on his laptop. He was having sexual intercourse with his own niece."

And "If you have a baby in the hospital, they don't want to give it back if you're not vaccinated. This is a complete power control threat."

The boy who recorded his teacher then became angry with his parents. "I'm never getting vaccinated. I'm never getting anymore shots of any kind," he told them after school. "Did you know Trump's still president?"

From CBS:

For Sarah Silikula, the parent of the eighth grader who recorded the comments, it was a lesson she wasn't expecting her son to hear.  "I trusted her to teach him the facts about history and she went off on this rant like a preacher on a pulpit," Silikula said. It was a moment that Silikula said damaged her relationship with her son because he believes his teacher. "when he first got in the car and said, 'Dad, teachers know everything. She's right, dad. You're wrong.' He's damaged. He's hurt. He's scared. He doesn't trust his parents now. He thinks we lied to him," Silikula said of her son. CBSLA has chosen not to release the name of the teacher involved in the incident, as she has not been charged with a crime. The teacher, at last report, was still at the school and had accepted responsibility for her error in judgment.
All other interesting parts of this Vice article aside, who really thought that r/AmItheAsshole was a great dataset for teaching WOPR when to start the thermonuclear fucking war?

Vice:

Ask Delphi, a piece of machine learning software that algorithmically generates answers to any ethical question you ask it and that had a brief moment of internet fame last month, shows us exactly why we shouldn't want artificial intelligence handling any ethical dilemmas. Is it OK to rob a bank if you're poor? It's wrong, according to Ask Delphi. Are men better than women? They're equal, according to Ask Delphi. Are women better than men? According to the AI, "it's expected." So far, not too bad. But Ask Delphi also thought that being straight was more morally acceptable than being gay, that aborting a baby was murder, and that being a white man was more morally acceptable than being a black woman.

Now I widely accept internet forums as the source of all truth, but come on.

Delphi is based on a machine learning model called Unicorn that is pre-trained to perform "common sense" reasoning, such as choosing the most plausible ending to a string of text. Delphi was further trained on what the researchers call the "Commonsense Norm Bank," which is a compilation of 1.7 million examples of people's ethical judgments from datasets pulled from sources like Reddit's Am I the Asshole? subreddit. To benchmark the model's performance on adhering to the moral scruples of the average redditor, the researchers employ Mechanical Turk workers who view the AI's decision on a topic and decide if they agree. Each AI decision goes to three different workers who then decide if the AI is correct. Majority rules.

Alternatively:
Having been sentenced to 60 days in jail, Capitol rioter Jenna Ryan is no longer so certain that her good job, white skin, and blonde hair will keep her out of prison.

The Daily Beast:

A Texas real estate agent who swore she wouldn't be jailed over her role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was sentenced to 60 days in prison.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Thursday also slapped convicted rioter Jenna Ryan with $500 in restitution after she was charged with a single count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

At the hearing, Cooper told Ryan that he believed her punishment would tell Americans "something about the courts and about how our country responded to what happened, and I think the sentence should tell them that we take it seriously."

According to a sentencing memo that chronicled her appearance at the Capitol and her boastful commentary in the aftermath of the attack, Ryan in March had declared on Twitter that she would not face consequences for the insurrectionbecause she's white.

"Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail," she wrote. "Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong."
That all changed after the stunning upset knocked him off the ballot and forced him into a desperate write-in bid.

During the general election campaign, Brown successfully changed Waltons first name to radical and her middle name to socialist. While she talked about what she would do, he talked about what he had done and painted a frightening  often distorted  picture of the change she would usher in.

Bringing in far-left downstate supporters like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams also may have backfired on Walton, University at Buffalo political scientist Shawn Donahue said in a conference call Wednesday with journalists, noting that Buffalo is not Brooklyn.

It no doubt contributed to the scary portrait Brown tried to paint.

+3 Walton doesn't expect to catch Brown, but write-in votes won't be awarded for weeks Election officials will not begin examining the actual write-in votes until Nov. 16 when all absentee and military ballots are returned to the Board of Elections.

That strategy apparently worked in most of the city, given the logical assumption that the vast majority of the write-in votes will go to the mayor. In the South District, home to many city workers most eager to preserve what they have, early results showed 7,225 write-in votes to just 1,395 for Walton, with margins of 2-1 in both the North and Lovejoy districts. While the differences were less dramatic elsewhere, there were more write-in votes than Walton votes in six of the nine Council districts.
A 40th anniversary screening of Fear No Evil, considered the first horror film made in Western New York, is one of the many highlights of the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival, running Nov. 5-11 at the Dipson Eastern Hills Cinema.

This is the eighth year for Buffalo Dreams and 11th year festival co-directors Gregory Lamberson and Chris Scioli have programmed a genre festival in Buffalo. More than 90 films will be shown ranging from shorts (7 minutes or less) up to feature-length (75 minutes or longer) and in a variety of genres including sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, documentary and animation.

The festival also includes filmmaker Q&A sessions. Sound mixer Adam Bloch will receive the Local Hero Award for his contributions to the local film community during the Dreamer Awards ceremony at 6:15 p.m. Nov. 7 in the WBBZ-TV studio in the Eastern Hills Mall.

The 1981 Fear No Evil, directed by Frank LaLoggia mostly in his hometown Rochester as well as at Boldt Castle in the Thousand Islands, is about a student (played by Stefan Arngrim) who learns he is the antichrist. It will be shown at 7 p.m. Nov. 5.
Americans love turkey so much we buy over 40 million for Thanksgiving every year. This means that one out of every three American households serves a beautifully roasted whole turkey, most likely with all the fixings, proving that the nearly 80-year-old iconic Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving feast image, Freedom From Want, still resonates today.

Here are 10 practical tips to ensure your turkey not only looks as pretty as a picture, but tastes amazing, too.

1. Choose the best bird

Whether you plan to purchase a fresh or frozen turkey breast or an organic heritage bird, it helps to plan in advance. Keep in mind your budget and guest list. Many organic and heritage breed turkey farms require orders well in advance. As a general rule, based on a whole turkey, estimate purchasing one pound of uncooked turkey per person; that will give you enough for the meal, plus leftovers the following day.

2. Menu matters

A great number of recipes including this weeks provided by White Oak Pastures and the USDAs recommend roasting a turkey at 325F. Will the oven accommodate the turkey and the other desired side dishes for the menu? Do they all bake at the same temperature as the turkey? Perhaps the sides can bake at a higher temperature while the turkey rests? Or maybe this year consider smoking or deep-frying the bird to make room in the oven. It helps to keep your oven capacity in mind when choosing the rest of the menu.

3. Pan Perfect

Once you've purchased the bird you want to roast, make sure you have a roasting pan large enough to hold the turkey and then some. The pan should have enough space around the sides to allow heat to circulate around the bird so that it doesnt steam. A roasting rack is ideal to lift the turkey off from the bottom of the pan, but aromatic vegetables, such as quartered onions, carrots and celery, do the trick as well, and they will season the drippings for the gravy.

4. Dont forget the other supplies

To truly know when the turkey is done, the best tool is an accurate thermometer. The pop-up thermometer included with some store-bought birds are not 100% reliable. An instant-read thermometer is recommended to easily test both the breast and thigh temperatures. A programmable digital probe thermometer is another excellent option. Additional wares to have at the ready are an extra-large cutting board, sharp carving knife and serving platter.

5. Thaw the bird well in advance

Give yourself plenty of time to thaw the turkey in the refrigerator. Never defrost it at room temperature; the safest method is in the refrigerator. Allow yourself 24 hours for every 4 to 5 pounds of frozen turkey. Remember, once thawed, it can remain in the refrigerator 2 more days. So, for the average 16 pound frozen turkey, begin the thawing process the Friday before Thanksgiving. Place it in its roasting pan on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator to ensure water nor juices drip onto food below.

6. Prep school

Getting the bird ready to roast can be a time-consuming process. Consider prepping the turkey first thing in the morning. Remove the neck and giblets from the turkeys cavity and pat the inside and outside well with paper towels. It is unnecessary to rinse the turkey, and the USDA does not recommend it as the process can easily spread bacteria in and around the sink.

Place the turkey, breast side up, on its rack or over vegetables in a large roasting pan. To flavor pan juices, fill the cavity with herbs and more aromatics or halves of lemon. For a nice appearance, tie the drumsticks together with kitchen string; tuck the wingtips under the turkeys back so they say in place and dont overbrown in the oven. If you plan to fill the cavity with a bread or rice stuffing, do so just before roasting. Wrap the turkey well in plastic wrap and refrigerate until later.

7. Trim off some time

Take the turkey out of the refrigerator an hour before you plan to roast. Remove the plastic wrap to allow the skin to dry out a touch which helps it become crisp while it bakes. If youd like, brush the turkey with oil or melted butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. This step will take the chill off the turkey and reduce the roasting time.

8. Keep tabs on temperature

The USDA recommends roasting a turkey at 325F or above, as lower oven temperatures can promote bacteria growth. Roasting time will vary depending on ones oven or the cooking method, the size of the turkey, the depth and color of the roasting pan and whether the turkey is stuffed. Plan on 12 to 15 minutes per pound of turkey. Start checking for doneness 30 minutes before the recipe suggests.

9. Is it done?

Check for doneness by inserting the thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh without touching bone or pockets of fat as both will render higher temperatures than the meat.

To keep the turkeys juices intact, try to avoid poking the bird too frequently or cutting into the thigh to see if its done. If the breast is becoming too dark towards the end of roasting, place a foil tent loosely on top to protect it. Remove the turkey from the oven once the thighs internal temperature reaches 160F. A turkeys stuffing must reach 165F.

10. Let it rest

Once the turkey is out of the oven, transfer the turkey to a large carving board or platter. Allow it to rest 20 to 30 minutes. The internal temperature will rise 5 degrees thanks to the turkeys residual heat, and the juices will be reabsorbed and distributed throughout the entire bird. This is the perfect time to prepare the gravy.

Once you carve into the turkey, if the meat near the thigh or breastbone has a rosy tinge, it is likely from nitrates in the birds feed or water supply, or oven gases may react chemically with the meat turning it pink. If the internal temperature registers safe and juices run clear, the meat is perfectly safe to eat. If the meat has a raw, gelatinous appearance, then it is underdone, and requires additional roasting.

Bonus Tips: Its always easiest to remove any leftover meat from the bones while it is still warm or at room temperature. If you are lucky enough to have leftovers, turkey and the trimmings can keep three to four days in the refrigerator. Make sure they are reheated to 165F. And dont discard the carcass. Cover it with cold water, heat to boiling, then simmer for several hours. Strain it to create a rich turkey broth incorporating any small bits of turkey meat that may remain for any favorite fall soup.
There really was like this feeling of magic in the room. And what we were really surprised about was that a lot of brands were really interested to come and meet our community, Ferguson said.

Over the years, mommy bloggers have evolved into Instagram influencers. Carefully curated images accompany posts with tips on how to get a baby to sleep or teach them to feed themselves. Often, influencers advertise products they say moms might find helpful.

The trend was started mostly by white women and the brands that sought them out. Ferguson says the landscape is much more diverse now, and brands are more intentional about reaching a diverse range of parents.

But a problem persists. Marketing budgets are much more limited for multicultural targets than for general advertising, Ferguson said. Traditionally, white women have been paid to market to general audiences. That means a white mom could earn much more money marketing to an audience of all ethnicities and races than a woman who markets specifically to, say, Latina moms.

Its still that archaic way of looking at marketing, Ferguson said. The brands and the agencies that understand (the need to diversify) are making progress. The issue is that theres still so many that are behind.
One proposal would have altered the states once-a-decade redistricting process in such a way as to gut any remaining role of Republicans to have some limited say in how state legislative and congressional district boundaries are drawn.

Another would have led to a path to permit New York State to permit residents to register to vote as late as Election Day. And a third would have introduced a no excuses system for residents to vote via absentee ballots.

Critics said the plans were all about building up even more of an advantage for Democratic candidates, and would leave the state open to voting abuses.

Those three plans lost, in part, because of New York City voters failure to flip over their ballots and make a selection on the constitutional amendment proposals. Upstate voters did not make that mistake.

In upstate counties, small percentages  sometimes 1% or 2%  of residents who voted on races Tuesday then ended up failing to vote on the proposal. In many of those counties, the no votes led the way against yes votes on the three ballot proposals.

But in New York City, it was a far different story.
ALBANY  Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin becomes, constitutionally speaking, the acting governor later today when Gov. Kathy Hochul leaves the state to attend an annual, post-election gathering in Puerto Rico, which is attended by a whos who of Democratic Party leaders, union officials, lawmakers and lobbyists.

Will Hochul, who can vividly recall the limited legal powers of the lieutenant governors office, actually leave anything official-sounding for Benjamin to do?

If history is a guide, Benjamins duties will be of the light variety.

Hochul herself took note of the supreme powers temporarily handed her way in 2015 when then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who resigned in August in disgrace under the weight of various scandals, came up with a list of things she would do in her short stint that early April as acting governor.

Some of the short-lived legacies of her temporary leadership: declaring Buffalo chicken wings the official state food for just a few days, anyway, and making Buffalos Dyngus Day parade the states official state parade. They were, at the time, considered acting governor jokes, the kinds lieutenant governors are allowed to make.
"He did a masterful job," Higgins said.

Scanlon organized a team of more than 200 volunteers to knock doors and call and text on behalf of the mayor. As a result, the write-in line got more votes in the South District than it did in any other part of the city.

In other words, Scanlon did for Brown just what his father, John Scanlon, did for four-term Mayor James D. Griffin.

"I had one heck of a teacher," Scanlon said.

But Brown also had one heck of a message for conservatives: that Walton's call to cut police funding would make the city less safe.

That message resonated not only in South Buffalo, but also in Lovejoy just to the north, as well as the North District, said local Democratic analyst Ken Kruly. Those two districts voted for the write-in line by margins of nearly 2 to 1.

"The voters there tend to be a more conservative group of Democrats," said Kruly, a native of the Lovejoy District, which borders Cheektowaga. "They certainly leaned into that message about the Police Department and what might happen to it if Walton came into office."

That's true as well in the North District, a fast-changing melting pot with large numbers of working-class whites and refugees.

Analysis: Walton failed to broaden support beyond her primary base Some political pros said the seeds of Walton's disappointing performance were those she sowed on primary night and in the weeks afterwards, when she failed to broaden her base of support beyond the most progressive of progressives.
Mohr confirmed that the elections inspector admitted to stamping the ballot with the mayor's name.

One of the inspectors who also serves as an interpreter admitted stamping the ballot of at least one voter  we dont know how many  at the check-in table," Mohr said.

Allison, who is a Walton supporter, said it appeared the election inspector might have made a mistake. She said she perceived no ill-intent from the woman.

It didnt strike me as anything covert or malicious," she said. "She was very open about it. I got the sense that she did what she thought she was supposed to do.

Byron Brown claims victory in Buffalo mayor's race; write-in ballots swamp India Walton "The people chose four more years of the Brown administration," Brown said in his speech. "The people chose one of the greatest comeback stories in our history."

The total number of prestamped ballots given to voters could not be higher than 50, Mohr said. That's how many ballots had been cast at that polling site when the Board of Elections was alerted to the problem.

Still, Mohr said elections inspectors at the Belle Center on Maryland Street erred in allowing stamps created for Brown's write-in campaign to be placed at the check-in tables of the polling place.
"By improving small businesses and amenities that provide tourists additional places to discover throughout the city, visitor spending will have more of an impact in the City of Niagara Falls, and in the process would also contribute to the quality of life for the residents already there," the agency said in a statement to The Buffalo News.

ESD sought proposals earlier this year, and 44 people submitted a total of 65 ideas, according to figures presented during last week's online event.

In the last two months, the agency has trimmed the field and held 21 "listening sessions" with those who made submissions, Tronolone said. Some of those 21 people may have more than one possible business idea, an agency spokeswoman said.

The names of the projects are still secret, but they will be disclosed, probably by the end of the year, said Amanda Mays, regional director of Empire State Development.

Most of the suggestions discarded were dropped because they weren't in the preferred geographical areas.

"ESD has to review this program internally and with the Governors Office before projects can be awarded," the ESD statement said.

The state agency has yet to decide on program rules, such as whether matching local investments would be required.
Analysis: Walton failed to broaden support beyond her primary base Some political pros said the seeds of Walton's disappointing performance were those she sowed on primary night and in the weeks afterwards, when she failed to broaden her base of support beyond the most progressive of progressives.

"There's an overwhelming majority of people in the City of Buffalo who believe you can't rule through a bullhorn," said North Councilmember Joseph Golombek Jr., a Brown supporter who referred to Walton's familiar image while leading last year's protests against the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. "People were angry about George Floyd, but that was an issue that happened elsewhere."

Those protests first propelled Walton into the spotlight, and Buffalo liberals and national figures eventually rallied to her campaign. She gained backing from progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, while groups like the Working Families Party supplied tactical and financial support. Walton never veered from the party's left wing during the general election, and touted her philosophy despite the failure of other socialists to win a major American mayoral contest in more than six decades.

Working Families Director Sochie Nnaemeka late Tuesday attached an optimistic view to Walton's effort.

No matter the final results, its clear that Buffalo is undergoing a major transformation," she said. "India Walton has shown whats possible when working people come together and challenge the political status quo."
Deere executives said Wednesday that the company wouldn't return to the bargaining table with striking workers because it wouldn't offer a better contract than one they rejected that included immediate 10% raises.

Marc Howze, the chief administrative officer of Deere & Co., said the deal the United Auto Workers union rejected on Tuesday represented the most it could offer and still keep its costs competitive.

Howze declined to discuss how much the ongoing strike is costing Deere, which will release its next earnings report later this month. The disputed contract would cover more than 10,000 Deere workers at 12 facilities in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas, who make the companys iconic John Deere green tractors and other equipment.

The company plans to reach out to employees directly now to stress the virtues of its offer while it tries to keep its plants running with salaried employees and other workers to meet customer commitments. Other Deere plants globally are also working to pick up the slack.
The non-union candidates received funding from business groups including NAIOP the Commercial Real Estate Development Association and the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. The races are nonpartisan and dont have primaries.

"The board of education should be the kids union, said Republican Courtney Jackson, a stay-at-home mom and school PTA leader.

Jackson said teacher interests are important, but was incensed by school board meetings this spring that downplayed student needs and delayed school reopenings. "Their interests were not brought up once, even after the state government said it was safe to go back to school.

Business groups played a large role in helping candidates like Jackson campaign, while state GOP involvement was minimal. Democrat Danielle Gonzales, a nonprofit manager, relied on the same groups. So did Crystal Tapia-Romero, a child care center owner who isnt registered with a political party.

NAIOP has been wonderful with me. The teachers union, not so much, said Tapia-Romero. But I look forward to working with them.
The administration veered between permissive and restrictive responses, leaving it politically isolated and underscoring consequences of not having a new asylum system in place when it rescinded Trump's policies.

Some developments could not have been predicted, and pre-dating Biden was immigration courts taking nearly four years on average to decide a case of someone not in custody.

But a close review of the last year  based on internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas and dozens of interviews with current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, among others  shows how an administration stacked with immigration advocates was unprepared for the huge increase in people seeking refuge at the border. Many interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized or comfortable discussing private deliberations.

The White House defended its record when presented with specifics of the reconstruction.

"After four years of the Trump administration's chaos, cruelty and misplaced priorities, the work to build a fair, orderly and humane immigration system will take time and won't happen overnight," said spokesman Vedant Patel. "In a short period of time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress delivering on its plan."
Here's a roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. Here are the facts.
NEW YORK (AP)  The spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians was staying overnight in a New York City hospital after having a stent placement Wednesday afternoon at the conclusion of his U.S. visit, according to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, 81, of Constantinople underwent the procedure at Mount Sinai Hospital following an angiogram that determined the need for the stent, according to the archdiocese. A stent is a tube placed in a clogged blood vessel to increase blood flow.

He was expected to be released Thursday, it said. Further details were not immediately released.

The hospital treatment delayed Bartholomew's return home to Turkey, which had been scheduled for Wednesday at the conclusion of a busy 12-day U.S. itinerary.

The trip, his first to this country in several years, also began with an overnight hospital stay in Washington when he felt unwell a day after his arrival, church officials said.
We are very confident that there will be 52 Republicans seated when the House convenes in January, Shipley said.

House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn acknowledged that the results were not what Democrats were hoping for but said there are still several tight races that will determine the majority as votes continue to be counted. The state Department of Elections has said that ballots postmarked by Nov. 2 will be counted through noon on Friday.

We are going to make sure every Virginians voice is heard and every vote is counted, Filler-Corn said in a statement.

Democrats held a 55-45 majority heading into Tuesdays election, but Republicans waged an aggressive campaign to flip up to 13 seats held by Democrats whom they considered vulnerable. The GOP needs to flip at least six seats to regain the majority the party lost in 2019. Democrats still hold a slim 21-19 majority over Republicans in the Senate. Senators are not up for reelection until 2023.

Republicans had controlled the House since 2000, but Democrats won back 15 GOP-held seats in 2017, helped by voter hostility toward then-President Donald Trump. In 2019, Democrats took full control of the legislature by wiping out slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Fishing is a tiny industry economically for both countries but with outsized political importance, and the dispute has mushroomed into an important test for Britains relations with the European Union after Brexit.

France has threatened to close its ports to some British boats and to impose strict checks on boats and trucks carrying U.K. goods, if more licenses are not granted. Paris also at one point suggested it might restrict energy supplies to the Channel Islands, which are heavily dependent on French electricity.

The French government originally said it would impose the sanctions if no resolution on the license dispute emerged by Tuesday. It pushed back the deadline, and then said Wednesday that the measures were on hold at least through Friday, while talks involving French, British and EU officials continue.

Britain says a blockade would breach the Brexit withdrawal agreement and that the issue behind the dispute is is a technical one related to some French boats lack of paperwork to prove they have traditionally fished in the areas where they want to keep working.

But France sees it as a matter of principle, and has accused Britain of breaching its legally binding divorce deal with the European Union, which sets the rules for fishing in the post-Brexit era..
The European Union, Iran and the U.S. all said late Wednesday that the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri, said in a tweet that talks aimed for the removal unlawful and inhumane" sanctions. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Iran continued to take provocative nuclear steps" and that this window of opportunity will not be open forever.

The officials spoke to AP after Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Iran's assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

It's a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran." He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.
Buffalo Bills fans who refuse to get vaccinated are being turned away from Highmark Stadium in significant numbers. Meanwhile, court challenges to state vaccine mandates in New York and Maine that dont allow for religious exemptions were turned back.

In both cases, the cause of trying to contain the coronavirus through vaccine requirements is holding up against those whose actions would only prolong the pandemic in the name of a false definition of liberty. That augurs well for new federal rules that kick in for private employers on Jan. 4. Its details were announced on Thursday.

The Bills home games are played outdoors, but any gathering of 60,000 people has the potential to become a superspreader event in the age of coronavirus. Erie Countys decision to require vaccination for attendees was smart. It served both public health and public safety.

Sanitarians from the countys Health Department turned away 258 fans from last Sundays game against Miami because they could not document that they had been fully vaccinated. Fans entering the stadium are first screened at the gate by Bills staff members. There were 1,128 people referred to health sanitarians for secondary vetting.
Iannazzi at work on a C/O Vase for Civilian Objects. Courtesy of Andrew Iannazzi Studio

Despite using one of the oldest artistic mediums, Andrew Iannazzis hand-blown glass creations feel undeniably fresh. The Cambridge, Massachusettsbased glass artist fuses centuries-old craft techniques with of-the-moment design elements to create objects that are equal parts retro and contemporary. I look to traditional forms, methods and techniques and interpret them in a modern way, he tells Business of Home. There is an element of nostalgia and familiarity that I want people to feel.

Iannazzi was first introduced to glassblowing while studying at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, where he majored in the subject. After graduating, he began assisting other glassmakers in their studios while balancing a job as a bartender, before officially opening his own design firm in 2015. My first collection was a series of two-toned Tiki mugs that was informed by my work as a bartender, he explains. It was a great stepping stone into drinkware, and the collection remains one of my most popular to date.

Iannazzi prepares to mold a glass vase inside his Cambridge, Massachusetts studio. Courtesy of Andrew Iannazzi Studio

Form and function both play key roles in Iannazzis designs. Along with an assortment of hand-blown drinkware, ranging from vibrantly colored whiskey glasses to stackable pineapple-shaped cups, he crafts pretty yet practical housewares, including chamberstick-style candle holders and multicolored bowls with built-in pouring spouts. I try to be as exacting as possible with what I make, he says. Subtle curves in something as simple as a water glass give my work nuance.

Recently, Iannazzi collaborated with New Yorkbased home goods retail platform Civilian Objects on a glass vessel inspired by the multidisciplinary fervor of the Vienna Secession movement. Designed using traditional Venetian techniques in blue glass, the trumpet-shaped top of the C/O Vase 01 allows for sprawling flower arrangements. We use the mold near the beginning of the process to create ribs in the glass, which later soften into the subtle optics you see in the finished design, he explains.

C/O Vase 01 by Andrew Iannazzi at Civilian Objects Brian W. Ferry

While all artistic mediums come with challenges, Iannazzi says glassblowing offers a unique set of obstacles. We still use traditional processes that have changed little over the course of hundreds of years, he explains. Everything I make I make by hand, so the physicality of the work and the strain put on my body over time can take its toll.

Looking ahead, the glassblower plans to release a collection of lighting based on the glow of a lighthouse and the heavy textures of its beacon's Fresnal lens. My upcoming works are heavily inspired by the coast in and around the Boston area, he says.

Iannazzi also hopes to eventually expand his studio space into a full-blown cooperative, where he can collaborate with other glass artists on upcoming projects. Glassblowing is seldom done alone, so it's great to have great teams of people to work and problem solve with. I would like to create a community based around skilled glassworkers that have similar ideals and desires to continue designing great work.

To learn more about Andrew Iannazzi, visit his website or follow him on Instagram.

Homepage photo: Spouted glass Pouring bowls in large and small by Andrew Iannazzi | Courtesy of Andrew Iannazzi Studio
Indigenous Beauty Brands to Keep on Your Radar

pradosbeauty/Instagram, cheekbonebeauty/Instagram, skwalwenbotanicals/Instagram, sistersky_/Instagram

Indigenous-founded beauty brands don't get the recognition and shelf space they deserve. And often times, Native American rituals and remedies are commercialized in the wellness and beauty space without crediting the tribes they've originated from.

But Indigenous entrepreneurs are reclaiming their culture and tribes' stories through the creation of their brands. With a focus on natural ingredients and sustainable packaging, their products are built around natural herbs, like sage and lavender, that have been utilized by their communities for decades. Many of the founders have used their brands as a means to create jobs for their communities, from gathering ingredients in nature to selling the products at farmer's markets and storefronts.

From long-wear lipstick to beautiful bars of soap, here are 10 products to try from Indigenous-owned beauty and wellness brands, along with their origin stories.

RELATED: Cheekbone Beauty Is Confronting the Beauty Industry's Waste Problem

1. Cheekbone Beauty

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

Courtesy

Anishinaabe-Canadian Jennifer Harper launched Cheekbone Beauty in 2016. With a focus on cruelty-free sustainable ingredients and packaging, the makeup brand has become known for its Sustain Lipstick. The velvety satin formula comes in packaging made with biodegrable materials and can be recycled after use. Along with the lipstick, all of the products in the line are named after the land where its ingredients originated. Recently, Cheekbone launched its first lengthening and volumizng mascara. The brand also gives back to the Indigenous community through monetary and project-based donations.

To shop: $27 each; cheekbonebeauty.com

2. Prados Beauty

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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Prados Beauty was created by Xicana-Arizonian Cece Meadows. The line includes makeup brushes, lashes, and accessories, such as makeup bags, infused with her culture. Created for Prados' collaboration with Indigenous artist Steven Paul Judd, The Matriarch Palette includes 30 high-pigment matte and shimmer shades to create a wide range of looks.

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To shop: $45; pradosbeauty.com

3. Skwalwen Botanicals

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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This luxury skincare brand bases its formulas around traditional Skwxwu7mesh (Squamish) plant knowledge. Founder Leigh Joseph ensures each ingredient is responsibly harvested and gives each product a Squamish name based on where the plant in its formula came from. The Tewin'xw Cranberry Rose Facial Serum (too-ay-nooh is a Squamish for berry), includes a blend of cold-pressed berry oils, botanically derived hyaluronic acid, and coenzyme Q, to brighten and nourish the skin, plus minimize fine lines and wrinkles.

To shop: $62; skwalwen.com

4. Ah-Shi Beauty

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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Ahsaki Baa LaFrance-Chachere grew up Navajo Reservation in Arizona, where her luxury skincare and makeup brand Ah-Shi Beauty is based. The Hi Def Foundation has become a fan-favorite for its dewy medium coverage, inclusive shade range, and anti-aging benefits.

To shop: $48; ahshibeauty.com

5. Sister Sky

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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Sisters Marina TurningRobe and Monica Simeon created Sister Sky to honor their heritage. The products are made with traditional herbs their ancestors used for health and wellness. Along with body care and wellness the line includes haircare essentials, like the Sweetgrass Shampoo.

To shop: $13; sistersky.com

VIDEO: What Exactly Are Parabens Anyways?

6. Blended Girl Cosmetics

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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While founder Shi-Fawn Chee fell in love with makeup in her early 20s, she wasn't happy with the lack of representation on the shelves. So she created Blended Girl Cosmetics with the goal of creating products for Indigenous people that didn't have Pendleton/Aztec designs on them. The brand is known for its false lashes, named after prominent Native American women.

To shop: $6; blendedgirl.com

7. Niawen Wisdom Birch/Chaga Cream

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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Mohawk Tara-Tekahentakhwa created Niawen after beating cancer. The line gets its name from the Mohawk word for "thank you", and is a way for the founder to acknowledge her second chance at life. Niawen's products are powered by both nature and science, and honors the traditional healing rituals of her tribe. This rich cream moisturizes, firms, and purifies skin, while minimizing inflammation.

To shop: $72; naiwen.com

8. Sequoia Soaps

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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Inspired by native legends and ingredients, Sequoina Soaps is founded and operated by Indigenous women. Michaelee Lazore, Kanien'keha:ka (Mohawk) from Akwesahsne and Northern Paiute from Nevada, launched the brand in 2002, and the design, production, and packaging is all done locally. Along with soaps and candles, the brand makes decadent scrubs, such as this blackberry sage one.

To shop: $38; sequoiasoaps.com

9. Satya Organic Skin Care

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

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Satya Organic Skin Care is based in Northern Vancouver, and founded by Patrice Mousseau, Anishinaabe member of the Fort William First Nation. Mousseau was inspired to create a natural alternative to steroid creams when her young daughter developed eczema. Rooted in traditional medicine and science, the products are made with plant-based ingredients to help heal and provide instant relief. Take the Calendula Oat Bath, for example.

To shop: $25/2; satya.ca

10. Yukon Soap Company

Indigenous-Owned Beauty Brands

Courtesy

The Yukon Soap Company's bar soaps are almost too pretty to use. Along with body cleanser, the brand makes essential oil blends, boy oils, and men's grooming products. Founder Joella Hogan has built a community behind the brand, enlisting members to help gather ingredients and sell products at local farmer's markets.

To shop: $9; yukonsoaps.com
WALTHAM, Mass. --News Direct-- National Grid

WALTHAM, Mass., November 4, 2021 /3BL Media/ - In a year since launching its Net Zero Plan, National Grid has made strides in its efforts to improve energy efficiency, integrate clean energy resources and reduce carbon emissions across the companys footprint.

The details were documented in the first annual National Grid Net Zero Plan Update report issued today. The report describes the companys emission profile for their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, focuses on fairness, affordability, and equity, and goes into details of how the company plans to progress through the critical decade of the 2020s. The report also outlines steps the company has taken to date to achieve reductions. Major highlights include plans to collaborate on the buildout of transmission lines that will connect 1,000 megawatts of clean energy to the New York grid.

In just one year since the launch of our Net Zero Plan, we have rolled up our sleeves and made real progress on cutting emissions, said Badar Khan, President, National Grid, US. We have a long way to go, but the next decade will require that we move quickly. We are keeping our customers updated every step of the way, releasing annual updates. Im proud of the work weve done so far and look forward to picking up speed on the race to net zero.

The Companys Net Zero Plan identifies key pillars of focus, including:

Reducing demand through energy efficiency and demand response;

Decarbonizing the gas network through the use of renewable natural gas and hydrogen;

Reducing methane emissions from our own gas network;

Integrating innovative technologies to decarbonize heat;

Interconnecting large scale renewables with a 21 st- century grid;

Enabling and optimizing distributed generation;

Advancing clean transportation; and more.

The company has set forth specific targets and commitments for each of these pillars. Some examples of these commitments efforts to date include:

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As of October 2021, the company has installed 3,283 electric vehicle charging ports in New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island with nearly half located within environmental justice and disadvantaged communities.

The companys aggressive replacement work of leak-prone gas pipes led to a 15 percent reduction in emissions in its gas distribution mains over five years by replacing 400 miles of pipe per year.

The company established a goal of having 5 percent of its gas sold in 2030 be renewable natural gas.

The company has partnered with the New York Power Authority to build the Smart Path Connect project, a $1 billion transmission upgrade that will enable the integration of 1 GW of renewable energy to the grid. In addition, National Grid has proposed nearly $700 million in short-term transmission upgrades in upstate New York that would unlock roughly 2.6 GW of clean energy resources.

The company, along with two other utilities, issued a request for proposals for 1.6 GW of offshore wind energy for Massachusetts  energy that will power more than 750,000 homes.

As of September 2021, we have interconnected approximately 23,200 renewable distributed generation projects totaling approximately 900 MW in New York, approximately 67,000 projects totaling over 1,500 MW in Massachusetts, and 11,800 projects totaling 382 MW in Rhode Island. Across our three service territories, we have interconnected the 2nd largest amount of large-scale, non-residential solar of any utility in the U.S.

Throughout this critical decade, the company will continue to grow and expand many of these initiatives, and launch new ones intended to cut emissions, integrate renewables, decarbonize heat and electrify transportation. Already, the company has reduced its direct emissions by 71 percent from its levels from 1990.

The company will continue to release annual progress reports as it seeks to dramatically reduce carbon emissions.

National Grid is a lead sponsor of COP 26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place from October 31-November 12 in Glasgow, Scotland. As one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world, National Grid plays a vital role at the heart of building a clean, fair and affordable energy future.

Learn more about National Grids US Net Zero progress at: https://www.nationalgridus.com/net-zero

About National Grid

About National Grid: National Grid (NYSE: NGG) is an electricity, natural gas, and clean energy delivery company serving more than 20 million people through our networks in New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. National Grid is transforming our electricity and natural gas networks with smarter, cleaner, and more resilient energy solutions to meet the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For more information, please visit our website, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, friend us on Facebook, and find our photos on Instagram.

CONTACT: Media Relations  781-907-3980

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from National Grid on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/national-grid-connects-renewables-installs-ev-charging-ports-as-part-of-comprehensive-effort-to-reduce-emissions-203885699
Rejecting concerns about continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, Wisconsin utility regulators have approved plans for a $370 million natural gas storage project in southeastern Wisconsin designed to provide fuel when demand spikes.

We Energies and Wisconsin Gas say the dual facilities in Jefferson and Walworth counties are needed to improve reliability and resilience in light of anticipated growth in demand. They estimate the cost will be at least $224 million less than the alternatives.

The Public Service Commission approved the projects despite opposition from some local residents and the Sierra Club, which argued the utilities growth projections are overblown and irreconcilable with state and national carbon reduction commitments. The group argued it would be more cost-effective to reduce demand.

Compliance with the Paris climate agreement  an effort to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change  will require a reduction in gas use, and the groups note that Gov. Tony Evers climate task force recommended against building any new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Commissioners largely rejected those arguments, taking a narrower view of their mandate of ensuring safe, reliable and affordable energy service.

Chair Rebecca Valcq, an Evers appointee, said theres no evidence that demand reduction is a viable alternative and that fossil fuels will continue to be part of the states energy mix  at least for now.

I dont see natural gas going away, Valcq said. Our obligation is to the residents of this state to ensure they have reliable power. It is not appropriate for us to sit back and wait and see if something materializes.

Commissioner Ellen Nowak, appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker, accused the Sierra Club of presenting false choices.

We need to have all available types of energy generation at our hands, Nowak said. I do not believe we should ever be eliminating any type of resources.

The project consists of two storage facilities in Ixonia and Bluff Creek where natural gas would be chilled to minus-260 degrees to reduce its volume. Each system would hold a billion cubic feet of gas for times of high demand, when it would be heated and vaporized.

The utilities say the facility will eliminate the need to contract additional pipeline capacity that would only be needed a few days a year or to pay a premium when demand is high, as it was during a cold snap last winter that caused spot prices to jump by up to 10,000%.

Wisconsins geology does not allow for underground storage, and the utilities underground storage site in Michigan is dependent on pipeline capacity for delivery.

The project is expected to raise revenue requirements by 4.4% to 4.5% once the facilities are completed by 2024, but the utilities said rate increases will be offset by the savings they produce.

Commissioner Tyler Huebner supported the Ixonia facility, which would serve Wisconsin Gas customers in Milwaukee, but said the value of the We Energies project was questionable.

Huebner, another Evers appointee, said he wants to see more data from utilities, such as how many electric heat pumps would need to be installed to reduce demand.

Is there some other solution? I want to see that from our applicants going forward  a portfolio of options ... as opposed to a facility thats one size, Huebner said. Once its there, its there. Its in the rate base.

WEC spokesperson Brendan Conway said the decision will allow us to keep our customers warm on the coldest days of the year with a safe, affordable and reliable heating supply while saving ratepayers money in the long run.

Opponents panned the decision, saying any new investments should reduce carbon emissions.

Investing hundreds of millions of dollars into fossil fuels will only harm our planet and worsen conditions for those on the front lines of the climate crisis here in Wisconsin, said Marco Marquez, state program manager with Action for the Climate Emergency.

The approval comes days after the utilities parent company, WEC Energy Group, announced it would stop burning coal by 2035, converting the states largest coal-fired power plant to burn natural gas, a move that drew mixed reviews from environmental and consumer advocates.

Today is again another recognition that natural gas is here to stay, Nowak said. We need it.

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Wisconsin moved another step closer to ending its reliance on coal this week, but environmental advocates warn continued dependence on fossil fuels remains a threat to the climate.

WEC Energy Group, parent company of the states largest utilities, announced Tuesday that it would stop burning coal by 2035, transitioning its remaining fossil fuel plants to natural gas.

That will also mean the end of coal-fired power for Madison Gas and Electric, which owns a small share of WECs 1,400-megawatt Elm Road Generating Station, the states newest and largest power plant.

MGE president and CEO Jeff Keebler said the decision moves the utility one step closer to its goal of producing carbon-neutral electricity by 2050.

Our continued transition away from coal and our significant investments in renewable energy represent our ongoing commitment to a cost-effective clean energy transition that benefits all MGE customers and maintains MGEs top-ranked electric reliability, Keebler said in a statement announcing the plan.

It has been a decade since MGE stopped burning coal at the Blount Generating Station, the utilitys only solely owned coal plant. That plant now burns gas.

Earlier this year, Alliant Energy announced plans to retire the states second-largest coal plant, the Columbia Energy Center near Portage, by 2025. MGE owns a small portion of that plant as well.

WECs announcement leaves just one coal-fired power plant not slated for retirement or fuel switching: Dairyland Power Cooperatives 42-year-old JP Madgett Power Station, a relatively small 387-megawatt plant on the Mississippi River in Alma.

Utilities say natural gas is needed to enable the clean energy transition, providing on-demand power when the wind isnt blowing and the sun isnt shining. But while gas releases less carbon dioxide when burned, the production and transportation releases far more potent greenhouse gases.

Nationally, natural gas supplanted coal as the primary fuel in 2016.

While coal remains the primary source of Wisconsins electricity supply, its share has declined over the past decade thanks to cheap natural gas, according to Energy Information Administration data.

In 2013, more than 60% of the states electricity was generated by coal; last year it was just 39%. Meanwhile, natural gas has risen from less than 13% to nearly 35% of the total.

Ongoing review

WEC chairman Gale Klappa announced the companys plans during a conference call with investors Tuesday, where company officials estimated it would cost about $150 million to fully convert the Elm Road plant. The company expects to operate the plant on up to 30% gas this decade.

Chief operating officer Scott Lauber said the company plans to add another 700 megawatts of solar generation and 500 megawatts of battery storage to its portfolio.

Company officials did not directly address plans for the 945-megawatt Weston coal-fired plant near Wausau, which is jointly owned by Dairyland Power and WEC subsidiary Wisconsin Public Service Corp.

Lauber said the company is evaluating the potential for burning gas at the plants newer unit.

So well be evaluating that as an option as we go through the next several years here, Lauber said. But we do realize that its a very critical part of the state and we want to make sure we have the reliability at that location. Were going to continue to evaluate it.

Others respond

Reaction to the news was mixed.

Clean Wisconsin called the move a critical step in the fight against climate change, but called for a more aggressive timeline for a plant that last year pumped more than 7 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and was built well after scientists had come to understand the impact to the climate.

After decades of inaction on climate change, we cant afford to postpone any longer, said Chelsea Chandler, climate solutions director for Clean Wisconsin. We need to pick up the pace for the health of our climate and communities.

The Clean Power Coalition of Southeast Wisconsin lauded the decision to stop burning coal, but said gas is not an acceptable replacement.

The transition to gas makes the move a half step, not the full stride toward renewables that the climate crisis demands, said member Tom Rutkowski. The resources directed toward retrofitting coal plants to burn gas instead would be better spent in a transition to renewable energy and battery storage.

The Sierra Club, which has led a campaign to end the use of coal, blasted the move as short sighted.

Were glad WEC has seen the writing on the wall: the era of coal is over, said state director Elizabeth Ward. But we cannot replace one expensive and climate destroying fossil fuel with another.

Don Wichert, part of an MGE shareholders group that has pushed for more clean energy sources, said the switch appears to be a reasonable step to reduce emissions and cost, but noted the environmental problems with gas.

Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, questioned whether ratepayers should be on the hook for $345 million worth of pollution controls installed within the last decade at the Weston plant, as well as the economic benefits of modifying the 10-year-old Elm Road plant.

It raises the question of was the fuel choice correct or should it have been natural gas all along, which was CUBs position when the Oak Creek plant was approved, Content said. The prospect of additional investment ... is something well need to evaluate.

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The University of Wisconsin Systems small branch campuses continue to hemorrhage students with enrollment declining 42% since a restructuring four years ago that was designed to keep them afloat by merging with nearby four-year schools.

Altogether, the System had 1,786 fewer students enroll this fall compared with 2020, or about a 1% decrease, according to preliminary figures released Thursday. Thats a smaller drop than the 2.3% decline reported nationally. And freshman enrollment was up nearly 4%, compared with a 3% decline nationally.

Clearly, were doing something right, interim System President Tommy Thompson told the UW Board of Regents at a meeting on the UW-Madison campus Thursday.

But the data present a dire picture at some of the small branch campuses, most of which are located in smaller towns with declining populations that draw students from the area.

At UW-Platteville Richland, enrollment has dropped to 75 students this fall, down from 366 students when the restructuring took effect in 2018. Its parent campus, UW-Platteville, reported a 10% decline, the biggest drop among four-year schools.

University spokesperson Paul Erickson said the numbers were largely anticipated, noting the declining number of high school students in southwest Wisconsin.

In 1980, the UW Board of Regents discussed closing the Richland Center campus when enrollment was almost 250 students but ultimately decided against the idea. Erickson said Thursday that closure is not being discussed.

We have to look at some creative solutions for that campus, he said.

Administrators are aligning academic programs to match student interests with business needs, increasing marketing efforts and partnering more closely with local high schools, Erickson said.

The much less lively and far fewer campus tours that were offered last school year also played a role in this years data, he said. Faculty normally chat with prospective students and ask them about their interests. But with most classes online, there were fewer opportunities for high schoolers to get a feel for what UW-Platteville is like.

Streamlining the number of UW campuses within the System has come up time and again.

But as the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum pointed out in a report published last winter, closing the small campuses would provide limited financial relief to the Systems budget. The 13 branch campuses in 2019 received 2.1% of the $2.6 billion the System pulled in from tuition and state taxpayer money.

Thompson has called for a commission to study how the state delivers higher education. He has also floated the idea of merging some branch campuses that are located near a technical college, which hasnt been embraced by the state Technical College System.

Enrollment increased at just three of the 13 branch campuses, all affiliated with UW-Green Bay.

One way in which UW-Green Bay has grown its branch campus enrollment is through the Rising Phoenix program, which allows students to pursue an associate degree while still in high school, Provost Kate Burns said. Depending on the high school, the dual enrollment program is funded either through the local school district or with a grant.

Because Rising Phoenix is only in its second year this fall, Burns said its too early to tell where the roughly 500 students participating in the two-year program go on to college. The hope is they will continue their education at Green Bay, Manitowoc, Marinette or Sheboygan.

UW-Green Bay also has created bachelors degree programs at its branch campuses, which was not an option before the merger. The additional programs really seem to have resonated in the area, she said.

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Homegrown fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) seeks to cash in on the fast-growing bubble tea market through a multimillion-dollar acquisition of a majority stake in Taiwan's Milkshop International Co. Ltd.

The country's largest restaurant operator bared Thursday its plan to secure 51% ownership in Milkshop, also known as Milksha. It is a popular Taiwanese bubble tea brand that boasts more than 250 outlets, 19 of which are scattered across Hong Kong, Melbourne, Vancouver and Singapore.

The transaction is expected to reach $12.8 million, JFC said in a filing to the local bourse. It noted the final purchase price will be disclosed after closing.

Acquiring a controlling stake in a known bubble tea brand would allow JFC to tap the multibillion-dollar industry and further expand the Milksha brand in more international markets.

JFC also noted that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Milkshop still booked system-wide sales of $74.7 million in 2020, proving the industry's solid traction across markets.

In June of this year, JFCwith its subsidiaries Fresh N' Famous Foods, Inc. and Mang Inasalsealed a licensing agreement with Milkshop, an exclusive right allowing the group to sell and market the Taiwanese company's products in their stores.

JFC said Milksha products will "soon" be offered in Chowking stores.

JFC has the largest foodservice network in the Philippines, with 3,202 restaurant outlets as of end-September.
(CNN)  Two years after her Oscar-nominated performance in the musical "A Star is Born," Lady Gaga is set to return once more to the silver screen. This time she'll be playing the socialite Patrizia Reggiani  who arranged the murder of her ex-husband, fashion house head Maurizio Gucci  in Ridley Scott's retelling of one of the most high-profile crimes of the 1990s.

In the cover story for British Vogue's December issue, Gaga revealed she stayed in character for much of the production period, and doing so brought her to the brink of her sanity.

"I lived as (Reggiani) for a year and a half," she is quoted as saying. "And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that. Off camera, I never broke. I stayed with her. It was nearly impossible for me to speak in the accent as a blonde. I instantly had to dye my hair, and I started to live in a way whereby anything that I looked at, anything that I touched, I started to take notice of where and when I could see money."

During long stretches of filming, Gaga said the only two environments she occupied were her hotel room and the "House of Gucci" set; by the time the movie wrapped, she had "some psychological difficulty," she explained, alluding to how intensely she'd immersed herself in the story.

"I remember I went out into Italy one day with a hat on to take a walk. I hadn't taken a walk in about two months and I panicked," she recalled. "I thought I was on a movie set."

Despite her commitment to method acting, Gaga is yet to meet the real-life Patrizia Reggiani in person.

Reggiani, who was released from prison in 2016, told an Italian news agency in March she was "quite annoyed" Gaga had failed to reach out, calling their estrangement a lack of "foresight and sensitivity" on the superstar's part.

But Lady Gaga remained firm on her decision, insisting in the interview that the degree of separation was integral to her artistic interpretation of events. "Nobody was going to tell me who Patrizia Gucci was," she said. "Not even Patrizia Gucci."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Presidential aspirant Senator Manny Pacquiao wants a shift to a federal system of government, a campaign promise abandoned by President Rodrigo Duterte.

The senator, however, said he will push for a hybrid form instead of full federalism if elected to the top government post.

Ako gusto ko ng federalism [I want federalism], he said on Thursday during a virtual forum with members of the Rotary Club of Manila.

Gusto kong i-implement yang federalism sa bansa natin, pero hybrid lang siya kasi...hindi pa maka-adapt yung bansa natin sa full implementation [I want to implement federalism in the country, but only a hybrid version because we cant adapt yet to full implementation], he continued.

This initiative  which would create autonomous regional governments in the country  gained traction early into Duterte's governance.

Federalism, the President argued, would pave the way for a more equitable distribution of wealth and political power among the regions, as well as bring lasting peace in Mindanao.

In November 2018, he created a task force that would raise awareness on federalism and constitutional reform. However, in June of the following year, Duterte admitted the shift may not happen under his watch as Filipinos do not support it.

End contractualization

The proposed federal government is not the only major 2016 campaign promise by Duterte which Pacquiao said he plans to tackle if he wins in next years elections.

The Presidents former ally also vowed to prioritize workers rights, as he said he supports calls to abolish illegal contractualization.

"Pag-aaralan nating mabuti 'yung endo, 'yung pinupush nila [We will carefully review the anti-end of contract that they're pushing for]," Pacquiao said.

Sisiguraduhin natin ang kapakanan ng ating kababayan... Agree ako diyan sa pag-end ng contractualization at masuportahan natin yung mga workers natin," he added.

[Translation: We will ensure the welfare of our countrymen. I agree that contractualization should end and that our workers should be supported.]

Duterte previously certified as urgent the bill seeking to eradicate the highly contested labor practice. However, he rejected this measure in 2018 due to its sweeping expansion of the definition of labor-only contracting, which he said comes at the expense of employers.

Malacanang earlier this year maintained that ending illegal contractualization remains an administration priority. It said it will continue to work with Congress in coming up with a bill that would be "acceptable" to all stakeholders.

"Endo" or "end of contract" is the practice of hiring works for not more than five months so employers don't need to regularize them on the sixth month as mandated by the Labor Code. It strips millions of workers of benefits granted by law to regular employees.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  The Philippine National Police is investigating the reported "harassment" of a trade union by Quezon City police officers.

Police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar on Thursday said he has ordered the Quezon City Police District to look into the issue and provide an explanation after the PNP received the complaint of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP).

"An investigation is now being conducted relating to this and I assure we will take the necessary action against the concerned policemen if there [was] an infraction committed by our men on this matter," Eleazar said in a statement.

The labor group reported that six armed policemen - some in uniform and some in plain clothes - entered its labor center compound in Diliman, Quezon City early Tuesday afternoon "without permission or even a courtesy request."

The policemen - who were on board a vehicle with plate number SKM 714 from QC-78 - also allegedly took photos of the center's attendance list and interrogated the staff, all without carrying a warrant.

"The TUCP will not countenance or tolerate any legal short-cuts, specially by our supposed law enforcers," the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

The union added that it has been the fifth time that police have intruded into its premises, adding similar incidents were also reported in the TUCP's affiliates in Mindanao.

"We feel that the pattern to scare off legitimate labor groups is patently clear," the TUCP said. "What they are doing to TUCP is deeply alarming in this time of profiling and ideological-tagging of labor groups."
A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.  President John F. Kennedy

America is the greatest country in the world because our Constitution recognizes God-given human rights and protects individual liberties. Our Republic has endured for nearly two-and-a-half centuries due to the blood, sweat, and sacrifice of our military veterans. Veterans Day is an opportunity for Nebraskans to thank the veterans whove heeded the call of duty to protect our way of life. There are around 127,000 veterans living in Nebraska. Theyve served America in every corner of the globe.

Our goal is to make Nebraska the best state in America for our veterans and military families. Just this year, weve made major strides toward this goal. On May 25, I signed Legislative Bill (LB) 387 into law. It exempts 100% of military retirement benefits from state income taxation. This bill is a big deal for our workforce. Veterans can retire as early as age 38. At this age, theyre looking to contribute the skills theyve gained in a second career or through volunteer work. We want to create a tax-friendly environment so these veterans choose Nebraska as their home.

While weve created a more competitive tax structure to recruit and retain veterans, the State has also launched the SkillBridge program to smooth the transition from military service to civilian employment. Overseen by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, SkillBridge connects servicemembers in their last 180 days of military service with Nebraska businesses. This allows veterans to explore post-military career opportunities and gives Nebraska employers the inside track to hiring great leaders.

The State has also stepped up to help military spouses find job opportunities. Military families make tremendous sacrifices in service to our country, including having to move 2-3 times more often than civilian families. This year, I worked with the Unicameral to pass legislation making it quicker and easier for military spouses to gain certification to teach after moving to Nebraska. This adds to the previous work weve done to help them gain licenses/permits to work in Nebraska as realtors, nurses, or in occupations regulated by the Uniform Credentialing Act.

Additionally, the Nebraska Department of Administrative Services launched the Military Spouse Transition Program in April as part of the States ongoing effort to become a leading employer for military families. The initiative helps military spouses moving to Nebraska find jobs in state government. The program delivers career services, such as resume building, and helps military spouses network with State agencies.

State Senators also took action in 2020 and 2021 to increase the educational benefits available to our soldiers and airmen. LB 450, which took effect Jan. 1, expands the tuition assistance available to members of the National Guard. The bill increases the tuition credit for a baccalaureate degree from 75% of resident tuition to 100% of resident tuition. The bill also creates a tuition credit of 50% of resident tuition for graduate and professional degrees. LB 4, which I signed into law this March, raises the undergraduate tuition credit from 50% to 75% for Reservists serving in units based in Nebraska.

The Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs (NDVA) is continuously looking to enhance veterans benefits and make it easier to access them. In 2020, NDVA upgraded the veterans.nebraska.gov website. It now has a Nebraska Veterans Gateway to Employment to assist veterans searching for a job or starting a business. The redesigned website also features a Benefits Expert tool to help users quickly determine exactly which benefits they need and are eligible to receive. Additionally, veterans can use the websites live chat to talk to an accredited state service officer. The chat provides the same assistance available during an in-person visit. The live chat helped protect veterans during the pandemic, allowing them to get assistance without having to risk exposure to the virus. This August, the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals honored NDVA with a dotCOMM Gold Award in recognition of its website enhancements. Winning a dotCOMM award signifies that NDVAs digital work ranks among the best of any state government.

In 2020, Nebraska had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation among veterans. Last November, SmartAsset ranked us #7 in the nation for veterans. While thats a strong ranking, were determined to climb all the way to the top spot!

If you have ideas for how Nebraska can better support military families and veterans, please share them with me at pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov or by calling 402-471-2244.

As Veterans Day approaches, I encourage Nebraskans to attend a celebration to honor the men and women whove given so much to protect our freedoms. Here are just a few of the upcoming opportunities:

 Remembering Our Fallen Memorial Exhibit, Spencer Community Hall, SPENCER, Nov. 6-10, Times Vary

 Veterans Parade, Downtown, BELLEVUE, Saturday, Nov. 6, 10 AM CT

 Veterans Parade, 4th Street & Hastings Avenue, HASTINGS, Saturday, Nov. 6, 10 AM CT

 Veterans Parade, 21st & K Street, LINCOLN, Sunday, Nov. 7, 2 PM CT

 Veterans Memorial Dedication, Holdrege Veterans Memorial Park, HOLDREGE, Thursday, Nov. 11, 10 AM CT

 VFW Parade, 19th Avenue & East Overland, SCOTTSBLUFF, Thursday, Nov. 11, 11 AM MT

 Veterans Day Ceremony, Siouxland Freedom Park, SOUTH SIOUX CITY, Thursday, Nov. 11, 11 AM CT

 Central Nebraska Veterans Memorial Dedication, Central Nebraska Veterans Home, KEARNEY, Thursday, Nov. 11, 2 PM CT

May God bless our military families, may God bless our veterans, and may God continue to bless the great state of Nebraska!

Pete Ricketts is the governor of Nebraska.

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On a chilly Oct. 26 morning, kids in the Dual Language program at the Schuyler Community Schools district office got a look at their new playground during a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The event also signaled to the community the start of the districts plans to renovate its office, 120 W. 20th St. The building is a former nursing home purchased a couple of years ago. Current plans include renovating two wings to establish a total of six classrooms for the Dual Language program.

SCS Superintendent Dan Hoesing said that Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III funds and additional state money the district received this year will fund the project. The district is eligible for a total of $4.3 million in ESSER III dollars with a portion of that money going towards the renovation. Those funds will also be used to update the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system at that building and a portion of Schuyler Central High School, among other improvements.

Everything that we do here, it will not be tax dollars that renovates this building so thats really a pretty awesome way for us to move this property forward, Hoesing said.

Schuyler Mayor Jon Knutson noted during the ribbon-cutting that city officials had been worried about the future of the former nursing home until SCS acquired the property for its district office.

We couldnt be happier that the school was able to secure this property and invest in Schuyler, Knutson said. I've been interviewed probably six or seven times about whats going on in Schuyler and I think Ive said every time that the school has been innovative, the school has been progressive, the school is investing in Schuyler, and this is certainly a tribute to you guys, to our entire school board and school administration and staff.

Dual Language Principal Heather Bebout said the program is in its fourth year.

We started with two kindergarten classes here (district office); out at Richland (School) it continues with first, second, third and fourth grade, Bebout said. Right now we have 77 students, I think, involved in the Dual Language program. They learn a half day in English and a half day in Spanish, all curriculum.

Hoesing said that Richland School will keep open despite the programs growth elsewhere.

We should have about 100 kids in (the district office), he said. Grades second through fifth well keep over 100 kids out at Richland. Well look at what the board wants to do with (grades) sixth, seventh, eighth  whether theyll go to Fishers (School) at that point if theyre not in the Dual Language program.

The majority of Schuyler population is Hispanic and, according to Hoesing, there is a benefit to students being able to understand more than one language.

We also see the benefit in kids being biliterate; being able to read, write and speak in two languages. It does something to stimulate the part of the brain that is problem solving, Hoesing said.

In the first phase of the renovation, the east wing of the district office will be remodeled to create four classrooms for kindergarten and first grade. The second phase includes remodeling a second portion of the building to establish two classrooms for second grade.

The classrooms are in different portions of the building so that the district wouldnt need to remodel a space thats already been renovated, Hoesing noted. Because the building served as a nursing home, he said, the building is broken up into fire zones and it would cost more to break those envelopes.

We tried to preserve all the stuff that wasnt necessary and put all of our money into where we thought it was best used, Hoesing said.

The project is being done in phases because school districts must first spend the money before being reimbursed for COVID dollars.

We can get this part of it done, pay those bills, send them in, try to get our reimbursement and keep moving forward so that we dont have to dig into our own cash for the school district, he added.

Additionally, the district received preliminary approval from the Nebraska Department of Transportation to cut a curb on Highway 15 to create a more ideal drop off area for kids.

We think with the number of kids we have here and a bus, well be able to move traffic fairly good out of there, Hoesing said. We dont want the bottleneck that we used to have at the elementary and occasionally have at the elementary.

A potential third phase of renovation could be the chapel and cafeteria areas, though that would be later on if the school board decides to do so.

Hoesing noted that school board members should be thanked for the projects progress.

Without a great board, we cant do anything, he said. Theyre the ones with final say in this. And then I have an innovative principal who heads this program.

Hannah Schrodt is the news editor of the Schuyler Sun. Reach her via email at hannah.schrodt@lee.net.

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When it comes to Nebraska, Platte Institute Chief Strategy Officer Jim Smith said Columbus had numerous facilities that would help grow the states overall income, job and population growth.

Smith talked about these features to Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, City of Columbus and Platte County officials, as well as other members of the community Nov. 2 at the Ramada Hotel & Rivers Edge Convention Center, 263 33rd Ave.

Smith is the president of the Blueprint Nebraska economic initiative, a former state senator from Papillion and previously served as chair of the Nebraska Legislatures Revenue Committee.

Smith outlined the Blueprint Nebraska tax modernization framework, which is one of 15 economic initiatives developed by Blueprint. Smith said there are five goals found within the initiatives -- job growth, quality of life, population growth, income growth and research and development.

The Blueprint Nebraska plan is being promoted by Platte Institute as a way to grow the state economy by attracting and boosting business investment. Meanwhile, Platte Institute is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to advance policies that get rid of obstacles that inhibit growth and opportunity in the state, according to its website.

Smith said the Blueprint Nebraska initiative isnt legislation but rather a framework relating to tax modernization. He added other such frameworks are being discussed as well.

The Blueprint Nebraska plan advises lowering state income tax rates and completing removing state income taxes on earnings up to $50,000 to $100,000 for married couples filing together. Additionally, the plan proposes increasing property tax relief by an added $2 billion over the next 10 years and eliminating Nebraskas inheritance tax. The changes would be paid for by eliminating several sales tax exemptions, income tax deductions and corporate tax credits, Smith said.

Additionally, the current sales tax rate would remain the same while the sales tax exemption for unprepared food and most medical services would remain in place, Smith said.

The elimination of Nebraskas inheritance tax received some hesitance from the Platte County Board of Supervisors in attendance. District 6 Supervisor Jerry Engdahl said inheritance tax proved its worth in 2019 as the funds helped residents following the 2019 historic flood.

After the floods of 19, we would have raised the levy taxes, Engdahl said. When they call it a slush fund, I call it a rainy day fund which we really took advantage of. It would have been an automatic tax increase but instead we reduced our levy by 7% this year.

Smith said while he understands that concern, inheritance tax can be an issue for retirees.

An inheritance tax is paid by an individual who inherits money or property from someone who has died.

Smith said the elimination of inheritance tax comes down to Nebraska being one of five states to have it. And out of the five states, Nebraska has the highest, he added.

From a retirees perspective, thats a problem, Smith said. We understand that some counties depend on the inheritance tax. We would recommend filling that gap at the local level with what we are gaining in revenues. For the most part, counties would be kept whole on this but we would remove inheritance tax.

Smith also noted Blueprint Nebraska structural changes proposed to prevent tax pyramiding by avoiding tax on business inputs. Under a corporate income tax, it would be important to eliminate both refundable and non-refundable tax credits, he added.

Additional structural changes include providing offsetting revenues for property tax relief and programs for the high-skilled, high-demand workforce, Smith said.

Smith added targeting 18- to 34-year-olds to move to the state is a key focus area. Although growing Nebraskas population overall is important, creating the economy of the future comes down to the lifeblood of the economy which is the aforementioned age range, he said.

Smith said it is also vital to not bring people into the state but to retain them as well.

Weve got to make this an attractive state to hold onto that population, Smith said.

The jobs that would be targeted toward trades and manufacturing jobs similar to ones found in Columbus, Smith said. One way to do that is to have loan forgiveness for jobs in the trades field, he added.

Andrew Kiser is a reporter for The Columbus Telegram. Reach him via email at andrew.kiser@lee.net.

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Five miles north of Rogers in Colfax County sits a hidden gem of Northeast Nebraska  Maple Creek Canyon.

Former Columbus businessman Paul Ehernberger purchased the land  comprised of 135 acres of private wilderness  16 years ago.

He started a record shop called Good Music in 1979, which quickly expanded as a consumer electronics store. After closing Good Music about 10 years later due to the economy, Ehernberger worked as the marketing director for a Christian radio station in Columbus before traveling and pursuing other ventures.

Ehernberger and his wife, Valerie, moved onto Maple Creek Canyon about five years ago. They married at Maple Creek Canyon and were on the land looking for the wedding site when, Ehernberger said, he joked that their dog would love to live there. Ehernberger said his then soon-to-be wife agreed.

Since then Paul has been building trails throughout the property, of which people can now take advantage of. Maple Creek Canyon is available for tours, fire pit rentals, retreats and hiking/jogging/walking memberships.

Ehernberger said hes built the trails himself using assistance only from a few pieces of equipment.

Its a nice lifestyle to live out here and be out here with a chainsaw, a dog and a tractor, and with nature, he said.

It started as a smaller project when his wife mentioned that she wanted some walking trails on the property.

Valerie said she wanted to have a trail to go for walks on, so I started cutting away trees and cutting back so she could walk around here, Ehernberger said. Its a nice narrow trail. And then the farther I got  and I havent stopped.

Ehernberger noted the trails are called the Behind the Barns Trail because it starts behind barns located on the property and the only way to access it is by traveling behind said barns.

The trail runs 1.5 miles along the canyon.

We call it a canyon because two-thirds of the creek water in Colfax County converges and flows through here and its gouged out really deep; a deep, wide canyon for water to flow through, Ehernberger said.

Outside of the maintained trail, the rest of the property is rugged terrain. There are more secluded areas that visitors can explore if they are more of the hardy type, he added.

There are accesses into the canyon, which visitors can locate by looking for fire rings around the property. There are foot trails located down in the canyon itself, as well as an area for target practice.

Maple Creek Canyon features scenic views and peaceful areas in which to enjoy nature and relax, Ehernberger showed during a Friday afternoon tour.

Additionally, there is a former machine shed on the property that the couples friends and family helped decorate for their wedding.

The shed has been used to house a flea market, during which Ehernberger said he ran into some old customers of his who were buying some now antique equipment from his old business.

The building is planned to be a future event center.

Ehernberger said he also hopes for Maple Creek Canyon to be used as a religious retreat.

Ive always thought that God is surely having me do this so that people could learn more about Him, he added. My dreams are that there might be Christian retreats out here and teaching about the creator in the creation.

Schuyler Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Audra Jedlicka noted that Ehernberger has been a part of the Schuyler community for several years.

He is definitely a giver; that is what I see Maple Creek as, Jedlicka said. They loved it but then then knew that everybody in the community and beyond could truly benefit from the nature and what all of that has to offer. And what a benefit for our community have hiking trails, just a small area to go and actually spend time in, instead of going outside of Schuyler and finding something similar right here.

Recently Ehernberger listed Maple Creek Canyon in a recreational marketing service and has already gotten interest outside of Nebraska, he said.

But no matter what plans someone might make, he noted, its all up to God. Sometimes a person will plot out their life for something to come up and completely derail that plan, Ehernberger added.

It hits home that our plans are really up to God, he said. As Jesus said, we must store up our treasures in heaven  so rather than putting all of our energy into physical plans, even how we eat  He provides, we seek Him for purpose in His word, ask Him to teach us His ways and if we do that often, we can really fulfill His plans.

For more information on Maple Creek Canyon, contact Ehernberger at 402-860-0719.

Hannah Schrodt is the news editor of The Columbus Telegram. Reach her via email at hannah.schrodt@lee.net.

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Organizers of the Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project briefly covered parts of Carlisles Veterans Courtyard Tuesday as they tested their plans for an upcoming event.

Volunteers used about a dozen of the 200 blankets they expect to receive to test logistics and spacing for the Dec. 21 event that will see the entire courtyard covered with blankets.

Working out the details on a project this big is exactly what we need to do, said event organizer and Charles Bruce Foundation board member Lani Anacan.

Anacan said the test also looked at ways to protect the blankets from dirt, water and other elements during the December event.

The Cumberland County Historical Society has volunteered to help with cleaning the square of any dirt and debris, she said.

At the event on Dec. 21, the longest night of the year, the donated blankets will be attached at the corners to create Pennsylvanias largest afghan dedicated to raising awareness about homelessness and those who live and die on the street.

The community can visit the blanket starting at 5 p.m. Dec. 21 and receive a free meal. Kings Gap General Store is donating soup and Project SHARE will donate rolls and crackers.

Agencies that assist the homeless will be set up on the lawn of St. Johns Episcopal Church on the Square. Participating organizations like Safe Harbour, Community CARES, Sadler Health Center and the Salvation Army will distribute information about what they do and how the community can help.

After the event, the blankets will be separated and distributed to area agencies to give to people in need.

Email Tammie at tgitt@cumberlink.com. Follow her on Twitter @TammieGitt.

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According to the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, at least one quarter of all COVID cases occur in children.

With the emergency approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine earlier this week for children 5 to 11, Pennsylvania officials hope parents will schedule vaccination appointments for their children.

By the end of this week Pennsylvania vaccine providers, including pediatricians, primary care physicians, family doctors, pharmacies, federally qualified health centers and grocery stores, will have more than 414,000 doses of the pediatric vaccine, acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said. The CDC tells us they will be ramping up deliveries directly to the providers in the coming days and weeks.

The pandemic has taken a toll not only on the physical health of children, but also on their social, developmental and emotional health, said Dr. Trude Haecker, president of the state chapter of AAP. Thankfully, this vaccine will move us closer to a return to normalcy for our children, and ensure that they can remain in school safely. I encourage all parents and caregivers to reach out to their pediatrician or primary care provider with questions and to schedule their childs vaccination.

In addition to health systems, some local businesses have announced vaccination plans for children.

CVS announced Wednesday that select pharmacy locations will offer a two-dose primary series of the Pfizer pediatric vaccine starting Sunday.

Appointments can be made online at CVS.com, and as of Thursday, appointments were available  depending on the day  at the Carlisle location on South West Street, Silver Spring Township location in the Target store and at the Hampden Township location off South Sporting Hill Road.

Parental or legal guardian consent is required for this age group, and children must be accompanied by an adult to receive the vaccine.

We know many parents have been waiting for the opportunity to vaccinate their young children and are looking for convenient access to a trusted resource for vaccinations, said Troyen Brennan, chief medical officer of CVS Health. Our immunizers have been preparing for this important role, and stand ready to help answer parents questions, guide them and their children through the process, and administer the vaccines safely, with kindness and caring.

Weis Markets also announced Wednesday evening that some of its pharmacies will be ready to begin immunizing children on Friday, with the the rest of the pharmacies being able to take on children starting Tuesday.

The only Weis pharmacy in the county that will have childrens appointments ready on Friday is the Weis in Mechanicsburg.

Appointments at Weis can be made online by visiting their website at weismarkets.com/pharmacy-services.

Children ages 5 to 11 will receive two 10-micogram doses, or one-third of the amount given to those who are 12 and older.

Email Naomi Creason at ncreason@cumberlink.com or follow her on Twitter @SentinelCreason

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The state Department of Health reported 100 new cases of COVID-19 and one death for Cumberland County Thursday.

The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 decreased to 81 in Thursday's report, down eight from Wednesday. There are 17 adults in intensive care (down two from Wednesday) and 18 on ventilators (up one from Wednesday). Nine adult ICU beds remain open of the 104 currently staffed across the county, and 35 of 95 ventilators in the county are in use.

Thursday's report included 252 test results, with 39 probable cases. Comparing just the number of negative tests (152) and confirmed positive tests (61), the county saw 28.6% of its tests come back positive.

Franklin County reported 57 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Thursday (up three from Wednesday), with five of 26 currently staffed ICU beds available in the county and 12 of 35 available ventilators in use. There are nine adults in intensive care and seven on ventilators.

Dauphin County reported 107 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Thursday (up one from Wednesday), with 26 of 198 currently staffed ICU beds available in the county and 81 of 177 available ventilators in use. There are 33 adults in intensive care and 22 on ventilators.

School-age children

In its weekly update for the eighth week of the school year, the department reported 72 cases among children aged 5-18 in Cumberland County during the week of Oct. 20-26, a decrease of 46 from the 118 cases reported last week. That brings the total number of cases in Cumberland County for this school year to 1,261.

Statewide, the number of cases among 5- to 18-year-olds decreased for the fifth week in a row with 5,238 cases reported. The state said the total number of cases in that age group for the school year is 59,743.

Early Warning Dashboard

Cumberland County saw a decrease in its in percent positivity and its incidence rate per 100,000 people in the Health Department's weekly update to its Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard Friday. Its percent positivity decreased to 8.5% for the week of Oct. 22-28, down from 10.6% the previous week. The incidence rate per 100,000 people decreased to 123.9, down from 156.7 the previous week.

Philadelphia County, which includes the city of Philadelphia, had the lowest percent positivity in the state for the week of Oct. 22-28 at 3.3% and the lowest incidence rate per 100,000 people at 63.9.

Montgomery, Philadelphia and Sullivan counties dropped out of high transmission status for COVID. All three are listed as substantial spread.

Penn State Health update (Nov. 3)

Penn State Health lists a COVID-19 dashboard on its website tracking cases at each of its acute care hospitals  Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State Health Holy Spirit Medical Center, Hampden Medical Center and Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center. The dashboard will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Wednesday's update shows 86 total cases (81 adults, 5 pediatrics) in the health system's four hospitals  12 are fully vaccinated (14.8%) with five in an ICU and two on a ventilator, 64 are nonvaccinated (74%) with 19 adults in an ICU and 9 adults on a ventilator, and 10 are unknown status patients. Three of five children hospitalized are unvaccinated (two are unknown status), with no one in an ICU and no one on a ventilator.

Holy Spirit Medical Center in Camp Hill has 15 COVID patients. Four are fully vaccinated adults (one in ICU and one on a ventilator) and 11 unvaccinated adults (one in an ICU and one on a ventilator).

Hampden Medical Center has six COVID patients. Five are not fully vaccinated (one in an ICU, no one on a ventilator) and one is fully vaccinated (one in an ICU).

Vaccinations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labels Cumberland County as having "high" transmission of the virus  the highest level, which is the transmission level for every county in the state except Montgomery, Sullivan and Philadelphia counties which have dropped to "substantial," the next highest level. Community transmission is determined by the number of new cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days and the positivity rate over the last seven days, so the classification could vary from day to day based on those numbers.

In data updated Wednesday evening, the CDC says Cumberland County has seen 63% of its total population of 253,370 become fully vaccinated. For the county's vaccine eligible population of people ages 12 and older, 72.7% have been fully vaccinated.

County numbers in the southcentral region (for Nov. 4):

Adams County (pop. 103,009): 44 new cases; 13,526 total cases (11,044 confirmed, 2,482 probable); 44,211 negatives; 230 deaths (+1); 50.2% of county population vaccinated

44 new cases; 13,526 total cases (11,044 confirmed, 2,482 probable); 44,211 negatives; 230 deaths (+1); 50.2% of county population vaccinated Bedford County (pop. 47,888): 41 new cases; 6,951 total cases (4,731 confirmed, 2,220 probable); 12,500 negatives; 175 deaths; 34.9% of county population vaccinated

41 new cases; 6,951 total cases (4,731 confirmed, 2,220 probable); 12,500 negatives; 175 deaths; 34.9% of county population vaccinated Blair County (pop. 121,829): 79 new cases; 17,937 total cases (14,128 confirmed, 3,809 probable); 47,264 negatives; 396 deaths (+1); 46.3% of county population vaccinated

79 new cases; 17,937 total cases (14,128 confirmed, 3,809 probable); 47,264 negatives; 396 deaths (+1); 46.3% of county population vaccinated Cumberland County (pop. 253,370): 100 new cases; 28,548 total cases (22,290 confirmed, 6,258 probable); 102,319 negatives; 634 deaths (+1); 63% of county population vaccinated

100 new cases; 28,548 total cases (22,290 confirmed, 6,258 probable); 102,319 negatives; 634 deaths (+1); 63% of county population vaccinated Dauphin County (pop. 278,299): 97 new cases; 35,254 total cases (30,231 confirmed, 5,023 probable); 128,685 negatives; 656 deaths; 58.9% of county population vaccinated

97 new cases; 35,254 total cases (30,231 confirmed, 5,023 probable); 128,685 negatives; 656 deaths; 58.9% of county population vaccinated Franklin County (pop. 155,027): 63 new cases; 22,117 total cases (17,972 confirmed, 4,145 probable); 64,522 negatives; 465 deaths; 45.8% of county population vaccinated

63 new cases; 22,117 total cases (17,972 confirmed, 4,145 probable); 64,522 negatives; 465 deaths; 45.8% of county population vaccinated Fulton County (pop. 14,530): 12 new cases; 2,305 total cases (1,137 confirmed, 1,168 probable); 5,029 negatives; 32 deaths; 31.5% of county population vaccinated

12 new cases; 2,305 total cases (1,137 confirmed, 1,168 probable); 5,029 negatives; 32 deaths; 31.5% of county population vaccinated Huntingdon County (pop. 45,144): 18 new cases; 6,936 total cases (5,695 confirmed, 1,241 probable); 20,863 negatives; 164 deaths (+2); 47.1% of county population vaccinated

18 new cases; 6,936 total cases (5,695 confirmed, 1,241 probable); 20,863 negatives; 164 deaths (+2); 47.1% of county population vaccinated Juniata County (pop. 24,763): 19 new cases; 2,960 total cases (2,698 confirmed, 262 probable); 6,687 negatives; 116 deaths; 40.3% of county population vaccinated

19 new cases; 2,960 total cases (2,698 confirmed, 262 probable); 6,687 negatives; 116 deaths; 40.3% of county population vaccinated Lebanon County (pop. 141,793): 71 new cases; 20,899 total cases (17,872 confirmed, 3,027 probable); 63,296 negatives; 339 deaths; 51% of county population vaccinated

71 new cases; 20,899 total cases (17,872 confirmed, 3,027 probable); 63,296 negatives; 339 deaths; 51% of county population vaccinated Mifflin County (pop. 46,138): 28 new cases; 7,402 total cases (7,002 confirmed, 400 probable); 17,628 negatives; 202 deaths; 49.2% of county population vaccinated

28 new cases; 7,402 total cases (7,002 confirmed, 400 probable); 17,628 negatives; 202 deaths; 49.2% of county population vaccinated Perry County (pop. 46,272): 21 new cases; 5,381 total cases (4,143 confirmed, 1,238 probable); 13,341 negatives; 126 deaths; 47.3% of county population vaccinated

21 new cases; 5,381 total cases (4,143 confirmed, 1,238 probable); 13,341 negatives; 126 deaths; 47.3% of county population vaccinated York County (pop. 449,058): 275 new cases; 63,629 total cases (51,741 confirmed; 11,888 probable); 194,699 negatives; 993 deaths (+3); 55.5% of county population vaccinated

ZIP code-level counts (updated Nov. 4):

17013: 3,421 positives, 15,863 negatives - +45 since Oct. 29

17015: 2,042 positives, 7,739 negatives - +20 since Oct. 29

17050: 3,246 positives, 16,174 negatives - +40 since Oct. 29

17055: 3,653 positives, 18,340 negatives - +47 since Oct. 29

17011: 3,358 positives, 15,369 negatives - +28 since Oct. 29

17007: 485 positives, 1,971 negatives - +4 since Oct. 29

17065: 348 positives, 1,371 negatives - +1 since Oct. 29

17324: 399 positives, 1,417 negatives - +10 since Oct. 29

17241: 917 positives, 3,448 negatives - +10 since Oct. 29

17257: 2,351 positives, 7,799 negatives - +25 since Oct. 29

17240: 227 positives, 701 negatives - +6 since Oct. 29

17025: 1,557 positives, 6,248 negatives - +15 since Oct. 29

17070: 1,450 positives, 5,931 negatives - +16 since Oct. 29

17043: 496 positives, 2,247 negatives - +4 since Oct. 29

17019: 1,720 positives, 6,043 negatives - +27 since Oct. 29

17266: 28 positives, 136 negatives - +0 since Oct. 29

School district and college case counts (updated Oct. 29)

The Sentinel's case counts for Cumberland County school districts and colleges or universities are updated Fridays. The policy for each school districts reporting is noted in the list below.

Big Spring School District (reports active cases in past 14 days with school exposure): 17 student cases and 3 staff cases being monitored as of the sites last update on Oct. 27.

(reports active cases in past 14 days with school exposure): 17 student cases and 3 staff cases being monitored as of the sites last update on Oct. 27. Camp Hill School District (posts chart that includes total case count): 1 new student case and 1 new staff case since Oct. 22; 62 student cases and 8 staff cases this school year (started Aug. 25.)

(posts chart that includes total case count): 1 new student case and 1 new staff case since Oct. 22; 62 student cases and 8 staff cases this school year (started Aug. 25.) Carlisle Area School District (reports cases as they occur and updates a chart): 10 new cases since Oct. 22; 164 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) according to the charts last update on Oct. 27

(reports cases as they occur and updates a chart): 10 new cases since Oct. 22; 164 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) according to the charts last update on Oct. 27 Cumberland Valley School District (reports weekly and total number of cases with school exposure): 14 cases since Oct. 22; 194 cases this school year (started Aug. 31.)

(reports weekly and total number of cases with school exposure): 14 cases since Oct. 22; 194 cases this school year (started Aug. 31.) Mechanicsburg Area School District (chart lists total cases actively being monitored, updated Tuesday and Friday): 6 positive and presumed positive cases being monitored as of Oct. 29.

(chart lists total cases actively being monitored, updated Tuesday and Friday): 6 positive and presumed positive cases being monitored as of Oct. 29. Shippensburg Area School District (reports weekly and total confirmed case counts involving school exposure): 2 new cases since Oct. 22; 147 cases this school year (started Aug. 19) as of the charts last update on Oct. 27.

(reports weekly and total confirmed case counts involving school exposure): 2 new cases since Oct. 22; 147 cases this school year (started Aug. 19) as of the charts last update on Oct. 27. South Middleton School District (posts notices as cases occur, updates table of case counts weekly on Fridays): 4 new casts since Oct. 15; 72 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) as of the charts last update on Oct. 22.

(posts notices as cases occur, updates table of case counts weekly on Fridays): 4 new casts since Oct. 15; 72 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) as of the charts last update on Oct. 22. West Shore School District (reports active cases with school exposure within past 14 days): 53 student cases and 6 staff cases being monitored as of Oct. 29.

(reports active cases with school exposure within past 14 days): 53 student cases and 6 staff cases being monitored as of Oct. 29. Dickinson College : 2 student cases and 1 employee cases since Oct. 22; 34 student cases and 24 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 30.)

: 2 student cases and 1 employee cases since Oct. 22; 34 student cases and 24 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 30.) Messiah University : 8 new student cases and 6 new staff cases since Oct. 22; 58 student cases and 24 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 7.)

: 8 new student cases and 6 new staff cases since Oct. 22; 58 student cases and 24 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 7.) Shippensburg University: 13 new student cases and 4 new staff cases since Oct. 22; 163 student cases and 21 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 1.)

(Counties with a percent positivity above 5% in a week go on the Department of Health's watch list)

Pennsylvania: Percent Positivity - 8.8% last 7 days (9.1% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 159.5 (175.4 previous 7 days)

Adams County: Percent Positivity - 15.2% last 7 days (16.0% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 192.2 (236.9 previous 7 days)

Cumberland County: Percent Positivity - 8.5% last 7 days (10.6% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 123.9 (156.7 previous 7 days)

Dauphin County: Percent Positivity - 11.9% last 7 days (12.5% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 168.9 (197.3 previous 7 days)

Franklin County: Percent Positivity - 11.7% last 7 days (12.5% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 149.7 (169.0 previous 7 days)

Lebanon County: Percent Positivity - 11.7% last 7 days (12.9% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 174.2 (201.0 previous 7 days)

Perry County: Percent Positivity - 15.2% last 7 days (15.5% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 175.1 (164.2 previous 7 days)

York County:

Percent Positivity - 15.4% last 7 days (14.7% previous 7 days)

last 7 days (14.7% previous 7 days)

Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 245.2 (258.1 previous 7 days)

Email Jeff at jpratt@cumberlink.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelPratt.

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If all goes according to plan, South Middleton School Board could hire an assistant to the superintendent who could start working for the school district on July 1, 2022.

Superintendent James Estep outlined a plan Monday that would enable him to mentor the assistant through the 2022-23 school year with the possibility of that person taking over as chief executive as early as July 1, 2023.

Estep rolled out his central office restructuring plan the day before voters hit the polls to decide the fate of five seats on the nine-member board.

Preliminary results from the election Tuesday show that incumbent Brad Group and four newcomers will take office in early December. Group, a retired teacher, was appointed to the board in early August to replace Edith Rob who died in a July 2 traffic accident.

In early September, the board hired Estep to serve as district superintendent for up to three years from Sept. 11, 2021, through Sept. 10, 2024. He replaced Matthew Strine who stepped down on Aug. 30.

When I was hired, part of my job was to look at the organizational structure to come up with some options for a structure of the future that seemed most sensible to deal with the things that are in front of us, Estep said Monday. I was also asked to try and help the board develop a degree of continuity by creating a succession plan.

His plan calls for merging all the job responsibilities of the director of curriculum and instruction into the newly approved job description of assistant to the superintendent. As a result, the director position, currently occupied by Melanie Shaver-Durham, would be abolished effective July 1, 2022.

When he was asked Monday about the future of Shaver-Durham in the district, Estep said that she would have the option of applying for the position of assistant to the superintendent.

Time of the essence

Estep rolled out the plan Monday because he wanted an early start on the search for applicants. He asked board members for input on two search options.

One option would post the position on statewide online job sites that serve school districts. The other option would involve having Estep reach out to professional contacts he has made during his career.

My preference is that you post it on the job sites, board member Stacey Knavel told Estep. To not do so would limit the pool of applicants with the new board. You can certainly reach out to people.

I thought it was fair to both boards, Estep said. Its fair that this board gets it established, so that I can get the posting out and the recruitment started. Its fair to the incoming board that they would have full ability to vet the applicants and eventually name who that person will be. They will have full authority.

Time is of the essence, board member Bethanne Sellers said. Not only are we experiencing substitute shortages, but were experiencing teacher and administrative shortages.

Thats going to become increasingly problematic for all school districts, Estep said. There are 70% fewer people choosing to enter teacher preparation programs than there were five years ago. Its already having an effect on the availability of teachers and substitutes.

It has an effect all the way up the chain, he said. You cant be a principal without first being a teacher and you cant be a superintendent without first being a principal.

Earlier in the meeting Monday, the board accepted the resignation of Jessica White as supervisor of special education. The resulting vacancy means two top-level administrative jobs are open.

The distinction

The supervisor vacancy has already been posted internally and externally, Estep said. He needed guidance from the board Monday before posting the assistant position. During the meeting Monday, Estep clarified the difference between the terms assistant to the superintendent and assistant superintendent.

If you title this position assistant superintendent, it becomes a position like mine, he said. Im a commissioned officer of the state of Pennsylvania. Under the rules for a commissioned officer, you must be given a contract of a minimum of three years and a maximum of five years. The same holds true for an assistant superintendent.

However, if the board titles the position assistant to the superintendent, there is no requirement for a contract and the person would fall under the Act 93 compensation plan for district administrators, Estep said. This approach would give both the applicant and the new board greater flexibility, he said.

Youre not tied to giving them a contact that you have to ride out, Estep said. You are protecting yourself and them if they are not the right fit to be the next superintendent.

Posting the position in November opens the possibility that applicants could be interviewed as early as January. It is conceivable that an assistant could be hired as early as March, giving that person time to give enough notice to their current employer.

In a perfect world, the new person could step into my role on July 1, 2023, Estep said. My contract is until 2024, but if I can retire in 2023, Im going to if I can.

Estep, 55, of Mount Union, Huntingdon County, has been an educator for about 33 years. Though he retired in July after 11 years as superintendent of the Mifflin County School District (a move he announced last November), Estep said he heard of the need in South Middleton and offered his services.

Email Joseph Cress at jcress@cumberlink.com.

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Moderna is scaling back expectations for the number of COVID-19 vaccine deliveries it expects to make this year and the revenue it will record from them.

Issues including longer delivery lead times for exports and a temporary impact from expanding the company's capacity to fill vials with vaccine and package them for shipping, which may shift some deliveries to early 2022, the drugmaker said Thursday. The company now expects full-year, 2021 product sales of between $15 billion and $18 billion.

Thats down from a prediction for $20 billion in sales that it made in August.

CEO Stephane Bancel told analysts on Thursday that his companys issues stemmed from scaling up production so quickly. He also said the problems are short-term and can be fixed.

Our supply chain became more complex with increased deliveries to countries around the world, Bancel said.

Modernas work on expanding its capacity is complete and it should see a positive impact from that soon, Bancel said.

The company now expects to deliver between 700 million to 800 million doses this year, down from a previous forecast for 800 million to 1 billion.

Modernas COVID-19 vaccine is the drugmaker's only product on the market. It's also developing and testing several other vaccines including a combination that protects against both COVID-19 and the flu.

The COVID-19 vaccine brought in $4.81 billion in sales during Moderna's third quarter, which fell well short of analyst expectations overall.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company earned $3.3 billion on about $5 billion in total revenue, which includes some grants and collaboration revenue. Earnings per share totaled $7.70.

Analysts expected $9.09 per share on $6.2 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

Company shares tumbled 19% to $280.14 Thursday afternoon, still two and a half times higher than the stock's price at the start of the year.

Moderna Inc. makes one of three COVID-19 vaccines currently being used in the United States to fight the pandemic. The others are made by Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson.

Next year, Moderna expects to pick up production and will be able to make 3 billion doses of its vaccine if needed, Bancel said.

The company expect 2022 revenue to range between $17 billion and $22 billion, with the market for COVID-19 booster shots in the U.S. next fall totaling up to $2 billion.

Analysts expect, on average, about $21.38 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

Moderna has an emergency use authorization for the vaccine in adults but is still waiting for U.S. regulators to grant a similar authorization for 12- to 17-year olds. Regulators are studying the rare risk of a heart inflammation that has shown up in some people who have received the shots.

The company said recently that review could last until January.

An analyst asked Moderna executives on Thursday why regulators seem more concerned about this risk from their vaccine in younger age groups than from Pfizer's shot, which is already authorized for adolescents.

Moderna President Dr. Stephen Hoge said it was mostly a matter of timing.

Hoge noted that Pfizers vaccine was authorized before there was any substantial discussion of the condition as a risk. He added that Modernas shots have already been approved for that age group in several countries, and their global database of 1.5 million people below age 18 who have received their vaccination does not show an increased risk of the issue.

We think over time the substantial benefits of our vaccine will ultimately win out, Hoge said.



Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thpmurphy

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WASHINGTON (AP)  A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was arrested Thursday on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information, among them a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton.

The case against Igor Danchenko is part of special counsel John Durham's ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI's probe into whether Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year's presidential campaign.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought by Durham and the second in a two-month span, is likely to boost complaints from Trump allies that well-connected Democrats worked behind the scenes to advance suspicions about Trump and Russia that contributed to the FBIs election-year investigation.

The case does not undercut investigators findings that the Kremlin aided the Trump campaign  conclusions that were not based on the dossier, which was barely mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller's report. But the indictment does endorse a longstanding concern about the Russia probe: that opposition research the FBI relied on as it surveilled a Trump campaign adviser was marred by unsupported, uncorroborated claims.

The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was financed by Democrats.

Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russian who'd specialized in Russian and Eurasian matters as an analyst at Brookings Institution, was a significant source for Steele as Steele compiled his dossier of research. That dossier, the target of intense derision from Trump, was ultimately provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

According to the indictment, Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI about his sources of information. Prosecutors say that deception mattered because the FBI devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate" the dossier's allegations and had relied in large part on that research in obtaining the surveillance warrants.

A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.

The indictment says Danchenko misled the FBI by denying that he had discussed any allegations in the dossier with a contact of his who was a public relations executive and longtime Democratic operative who volunteered for the campaign of Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent.

In fact, the indictment says, Danchenko had sourced one or more allegations in the dossier anonymously to that Clinton associate. As the FBI worked to corroborate the dossier's allegations, it would have been important to know the Democrat's role in feeding information for it because it bore upon his reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source," according to the indictment.

The individual is not named in court papers, but his lawyer confirmed his identity as Charles Dolan Jr., a former executive director of the Democratic Governors Association who advised Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and volunteered for her 2016 campaign. The lawyer, Ralph Drury Martin, declined to comment further on the ongoing investigation.

The charging documents also refer to salacious and unsupported sexual allegations involving Trump's behavior at a Moscow hotel that were included in the dossier but that Trump has vigorously disputed, including in private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey.

The indictment says Danchenko told the FBI he had collected information about Trump's activities at the hotel from multiple sources but didn't himself know if the sexual allegations were true.

According to the indictment, Dolan stayed in June 2016 at the same Moscow hotel and received a tour of the presidential suite. A hotel staff member revealed that Trump had stayed there, but Dolan and another unidentified person said the staff member didnt mention any sexual or salacious activity.

The indictment says that since Dolan was present at places and events where Danchenko collected information for the dossier, Danchenko's deception about his relationship with Dolan was highly material to the FBI's investigation of these matters.

The indictment also accuses Danchenko of lying to the FBI about a July 2016 phone call he claimed he received from someone he believed to be the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. That person, according to the dossier and Danchenko's account to the FBI, told him about a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between the Trump campaign and Russia  an assertion that prosecutors say would ultimately underpin the surveillance warrant applications.

The indictment says Danchenko fabricated his account and never actually received such a phone call.

Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged.

Trumps Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt. Trump pointed to the dossier, much of which the indictment says the FBI was unable to corroborate, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.

But the dossier had no part in launching the Trump-Russia investigation, though a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report raised significant questions about the accuracy of the information and the FBI's reliance on it. Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to charge a conspiracy to sway the election. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.

The indictment is the third criminal action from Durham.

Cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was charged in September with lying to the FBI during a 2016 conversation in which he relayed concerns about potentially suspicious cyber contacts between a Trump Organization server and the server of a Russian bank. Durham's team says he concealed from the FBI that he was passing on the concerns in his capacity as a lawyer for the Clinton campaign. He has pleaded not guilty.

Last year, Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer, admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of Page and was given probation.



Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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What we believe makes this latest stunt even more revolting is the civil trial taking place right now in Charlottesville against the organizers of the Unite the Right rally by the victims from both of the August 2017 days. The victims are having to relive the worst days of their lives on the stand and in public, facing those they believe are responsible for the violence against them, and yet an outside organization thought it was a great idea to grab some torches and head to that city to make a political point.

Of course, this isnt the first time Charlottesville has been used to make a political point for someone. While running for president against Mr. Trump, Joe Biden invoked the C word in speeches when he had never even visited the city.

Charlottesville is not a prop. Its more than a hashtag. There are more than 40,000 residents in the city and more than a 100,000 in surrounding Albemarle County. Many of the residents who live in Greene work in Charlottesville. All of these people are humans with real lives who all suffered from the trauma of that weekend in 2017 and every time its used in a debate, a political advertisement on television, online to make a point or a stunt like we witnessed last week, we all again hurt.
Anti-Semitism and its ties to white nationalism and the Unite the Right rally was the focus of Wednesdays hearing, even as some defendants attempted to downplay the Holocaust.

So far the federal Sines v. Kessler lawsuit has largely focused on the impact of the rallies on the plaintiffs  nine Charlottesville area residents who were adversely impacted by the Aug. 12, 2017 Unite the Right rally and preceding University of Virginia torch grounds.

Wednesday offered somewhat of a change of pace, as counsel for the plaintiffs called Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar and anti-Semitism expert from Emory University.

Lipstadt, who is not a party to the lawsuit, testified to her expertise, which has seen her write various books on anti-Semitism, its roots and how it manifests in modern society.

Simply put, I would say [anti-Semitism is] Jew hatred; hatred of someone not because of what they do or who they are, but because they are a Jew, she said. You know theyre a Jew and you despise them and you maybe want to do them harm just because they are a Jew.

Over the course of her testimony, Lipstadt was asked to identify various phrases and symbols used in Discord channels by organizers of the rallies both before and during the events of 2017.
'Looping in' AG

Miyares said Thursday that former attorneys general told him that because of the sensitive nature of a parole board decision, the attorney general's office should have always been looped in on releases. He said he wants to find out internally if the attorney general's office was properly looped in when the misconduct happened, and also look at why the parole board itself didn't follow the rules.

"There's so much we do not know," he said. "I dont want future members of the parole board to make these mistakes again, because it led to such tragic consequences."

The five members of the parole board are appointed by the governor. Virginia abolished parole in 1995 but among the board's duties is considering parole for people convicted before that.

"We will replace the entire parole board on day one," Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin said in his victory speech Tuesday. Miyares said he would concur with such a move by the new governor.

Transition team

Miyares also announced his initial transition team, which is headed by former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, who is now an attorney and lobbyist with the firm Cozen O'Connor.
Country

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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
Leadership

Biden administration picks former Microsoft exec for VA CIO

Kurt DelBene, a former senior executive at Microsoft and an instrumental figure in the effort to repair the HealthCare.gov website during the Obama administration, is being tapped to serve as CIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

VA is one of the few agencies with a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed CIO. The full title of the post is assistant secretary for information and technology and CIO. The technology unit at VA has its own appropriations line and manages the technology portfolio, cybersecurity and more for the major divisions at VA, including Veterans Health Administration and the Veterans Benefits Administration.

The job is frequently filled with career officials in an acting role. Since 2009, there have been just three Senate-confirmed occupants of the VA CIO post. The job is currently being filled by Neil Evans, a VA physician who heads the Office of Connected Care in the Veterans Health Administration.

VA is seeking a $4.8 billion appropriation for the Office of Information and Technology for fiscal year 2022. OI&T is also playing in increasingly important role in the ongoing $21 billion-plus Electronic Health Care Record Modernization (EHRM) program.

A longtime Microsoft executive, DelBene took leave from the company in late 2013 to replace Jeffrey Zients as the lead of the team working to stabilize and improve the HealthCare.gov website, the front door for citizens to obtain health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The website famously failed at launch and required an intensive effort to scale the site and improve its performance.

DelBene's career at Microsoft included stints as executive vice president of corporate strategy, core services engineering and operations as well as president of Microsoft's Office division. He retired from the company in September 2021. He has also served as a member of the Defense Innovation Board.

DelBene is married to Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) who was first elected in 2012 and serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. Her district includes Microsoft's Redmond headquarters.

This article first appeared on FCW. Photo credit: Kurt DelBene speaks at a March 2020 meeting of the Defense Innovation Board in Austin, Texas; DOD photo by EJ Hersom.
Here are some local events taking place today:

Academy for Lifelong Learning, 1:30 p.m., online. Scott Baker, professor of fisheries and wildlife at Oregon State Universitys Hatfield Marine Science Center, will present Whales Return to South Georgia Island, the Former Center of Whaling. Registration: 541-737-9405.

Book-signing, 6 to 8 p.m., Gallery Calapooia, 222 W. First Ave., Albany. Melissa Babcock Saylor will be on hand to sign copies of the children's books Spacely and Also an Animal, written by Lynn Parrish Sutton and illustrated by Saylor. Information: 541-231-2136.

Author event, 7 p.m., online. Grass Roots Books & Music will present Jeff Fearnside speaking about his book A Husband and Wife Are One Satan, exploring the lives of ordinary people in Kazakhstan as they face the challenges of post-Soviet transition in the early 21st century. Registration: 541-754-7668.

For more information, visit https://www.gazettetimes.com/events, https://democratherald.com/events or https://lebanon-express.com/events.

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The Linn County Board of Commissioners is looking to join forces with other area counties who benefit from  and suffer under, depending on whom you ask and when  federal timber policy.

Counties in Western Oregon want better representation in Washington, D.C. and are banding together to pay for lobbyists and try to improve the federal government's forest management and wildfire response.

The move came Tuesday, Nov. 2 morning, with all the commissioners voting unanimously to enter into an agreement with other counties in western Oregon. So far, Klamath and Linn counties have made the commitment, with Marion County set to make a decision this week.

Several more counties on this side of the Cascades are expected to take up the vote soon. Benton County is not on the list of potential signatories and officials there said they are not part of the coalition at this time.

Linn County commissioners first broached the subject last week during a robust conversation in which some expressed doubts they could get more action out of Congress and the White House.

Still, they say there is a dire need for better forest management of federal lands.

A year ago we had the most catastrophic natural disaster in the history of this state. It was due in large part to forestry practices on federal lands, Commissioner Roger Nyquist said. If a private landowner had conducted himself the way the federal government has in letting those fuels build up and lead to a wildfire that killed people,  they could very well be prosecuted today for negligence.

The counties will each pay dues to the newly formed Oregon Timber Counties Coalition. Linn and other counties agree to pay $7,500, while Klamath and Douglas counties would pay $15,000 for their membership because their counties host more acreage of federal timber.

Each member county gets one representative on the board, each with a single vote for motions, Linn County Commissioner Will Tucker said.

The proceeds from these dues will go toward a lobbying firm in D.C., the agreement states. The firm is Jamison & Sullivan, which already lobbies on behalf of other states on federal forestry issues.

Jay Sullivan is known for his work on timber issues, Tucker said. For the amount were willing to pay for him, hes willing to take up our issues. Were paying him to tell us about issues and to get us access (in Washington).

The move was envisioned as a way for the county to move off of an existing policy advocacy board and form one that will more closely align with the issues facing Linn County, Tucker said.

For years, Linn County has been a part of the Federal Lands Commission, a subcommittee represented by the Association of Oregon Counties. However, that committee deals with federal lands issues that can vary greatly depending on which half of the state you live in.

Their issues are a lot different than ours, Tucker said of counties in Central and Eastern Oregon, where concerns about federal lands don't necessarily align with coastal and Willamette Valley counties.

In Eastern Oregon, for example, most of their federal lands deal with grazing agreements, not protected forests.

The agreement the county entered into on Tuesday establishes the committee through an inter-county agreement, which expires in June. The coalition would then need a new approval to continue beyond that date.

The next step, should enough counties choose to join, is to establish the bylaws of the committee.

In other business Tuesday, the commissioners:

 Approved the purchase of a new $340,000 bus for the Sweet Home Senior Citizens groups bus service thats run through Linn County Special Transportation Services. The agreement states that 80% of that will come from state funds, while the seniors group will pay the remainder.

 Approved the purchase of four new Ford F350 pickup trucks for the Roads Department, valued at a little more than $200,000.

 Approved an agreement with Oregon State University for the sheriff's office to provide law enforcement services as needed at sporting events.

Troy Shinn covers healthcare, natural resources and Linn County government. He can be reached at 541-812-6114 or troy.shinn@lee.net. He can be found on Twitter at @troydshinn.

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Warning that Colorado's health system is "in jeopardy of being overwhelmed," state hospitals escalated their joint efforts to transfer patients Wednesday amid an ongoing spike in hospitalizations officials say likely won't abate before the end of November.

That escalation gives the hospitals involved the ability to move patients around on a statewide basis, rather than regionally or between individual hospitals. It creates "a single point of contact for any hospital in the state that needs to transfer patients due to capacity concerns," the Colorado Hospital Association wrote in a statement Wednesday. Sicker patients can be sent to more specialized facilities, while recovering Coloradans can be moved to hospitals with more available space.

The Combined Hospital Transfer Center was launched by the state's hospitals almost exactly a year ago so patients could be moved between facilities as beds filled and space grew more limited. It was deactivated earlier this year then fired up again in August as cases rose. It's now been elevated to its highest tier, the hospital association said, because of the "monumental strain" the current COVID-19 surge has placed on the state's health care system.

But even last year, when COVID-19 hospitalizations ran higher than they do now, the transfer system was never elevated to tier three status, said Cara Welch, the spokeswoman for the hospital hospital association. Under tier one, a large health system would have a smaller, often rural partner. The smaller facility could call its larger partner and ask to move a patient. If the larger hospital couldn't take him or her, they would ask another large system.

Now, Welch said, transfer coordinators from every large system will meet twice a day every weekday to facilitate transfer. It's an "unprecedented" move, she said.

This is an extraordinary step taken by the states hospitals and health systems, Darlene Tad-y, the vice president of clinical affairs for the hospital association, said in a statement. Even when under immense pressure, the states health care system continues to work collaboratively with each other and our partners at the state to ensure the best care possible is available to every Coloradan that needs it. However, activating Tier 3 of the (transfer center) should send a clear message to Coloradans: our health care system is in jeopardy of being overwhelmed."

Hospital and state officials have said a number of things are contributing to the strain on hospitals. COVID-19's latest surge is playing a prominent role, but so, too, is a lack of staffing across the health care system. The shortage of providers exacerbates capacity issues, officials said: The space may be there, but there aren't workers to cover it. What's more, there's been a spike in more routine care; hospital officials say patients delaying care for the first year of the pandemic has sent many to the hospitals in worse shape than they would have been had they been treated earlier or more regularly.

Gov. Jared Polis has taken several steps in recent days in an effort to alleviate the strain of hospitals without instituting population-level orders like masking. One of those steps fell last weekend, when the governor issued an executive order centralizing the transfer system and allowing patients to be moved without their prior consent.

He's also emphasized the use of monoclonal antibody treatments, which have been shown to be effective at blocking hospitalization if given quickly to newly symptomatic patients. The state has also blocked nonessential cosmetic procedures, reactivated its crisis standards of care to help hospitals navigate staffing shortages and requested personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

State officials have given increasingly grim updates on the pandemic situation in Colorado in recent weeks. State officials said Tuesday that Colorado has the fifth-highest rate of COVID-19 spread in the country; according to the New York Times, it's rate has grown more in the past two weeks than the other four states in the top five. Hospitalizations have hit their worst stressed moment since the late 2020 surge and have surpassed the first pandemic wave of spring 2020.

What's more, the situation does not appear likely to abate soon. Polis and Rachel Herlihy, the state's epidemiologist, said Tuesday that the peak will likely not come until the end of November and that it could match the crisis from a year ago.

The state has not yet activated the crisis standards of care that would allow hospitals to begin rationing care, if space becomes critically limited. An expert told the Gazette he would be surprised if that happened but that some hospitals were already so stressed that they were keeping intensive care patients in emergency departments. Welch said hospitals still have a number of moves to make before care rationing would need to be implemented. But she said with the current trajectory of hospitalizations, the state was moving toward its worst-case scenarios.

Banner Health, which has a heavy presence in Northern Colorado, has been running over capacity consistently for weeks. The system's internal projections indicate it may not hit its own peak until Dec. 18.

"The hospitals  we have reached a level of stress in which we need support," Angela Mills, the chief medical officer for Banner North Colorado Medical Center, told the Gazette last week. "That's a fact. We need support."
The Colorado Judicial Department on Wednesday announced it had signed a pair of contracts for independent investigations into allegations of widespread misconduct across the branch that included a quid-pro-quo deal to a former high-ranking official who threatened a sex-discrimination lawsuit that would reveal it all.
Airtel Africa, the provider of telecommunications and mobile money services in Africa, and UNICEF have announced a new five-year pan-African partnership to help accelerate the roll-out of digital learning through connecting schools to the internet and ensuring free access to learning platforms across 13 countries.

Airtel Africa is the first African private sector partner to make a multimillion-dollar commitment to Reimagine Education, a global initiative launched by UNICEF in 2020 calling for public and private sector investment in digital learning as an essential service for every child and young person across the globe.

Reimagine Education is a global initiative launched by UNICEF in 2020, calling for public and private sector investment in digital learning as an essential service for every child and young person across the globe.

The telecom company will commit $57 million to the partnership over five years up until 2027. The program will provide technology and expertise and direct financial support to connect schools and communities to the Internet, enabling free access to online educational content for learners.

The partnership will benefit learners in Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

Hundreds of millions of children in Africa have seen their education disrupted or put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. By championing digital education for children in Africa, this partnership with Airtel Africa will help put childrens learning back on track.

Digital learning is the gateway to equipping young people with the right skills - skills that will support them to transition from learning to earning. We are delighted that Airtel Nigeria shares in this vision, and is helping to drive the process of scaling up internet connectivity for school children in Nigeria, said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Nigeria Representative.
Despite the Ukraine government announcing grand plans in November 2020 to enable the commercial launch of 5G mobile services by the end of 2021 (including a spectrum auction slated for October), there has been remarkably little evidence of any progress being made towards putting those plans into action.

That includes near-radio silence on the details of the supposed forthcoming tender. Growth in the mobile sector is likely to remain stagnant for more time to come, while the market waits for the regulator and the three dominant MNOs to crawl towards making faster and more powerful services available for public consumption.

Most of the action with Ukraines telecom market has instead taken place behind the lines, with a range of M&A activity resulting in more consolidation or, in the case of Vodafone Ukraine, a role-reversal.

First up was telecommunications service provider Datagroup, which completed its acquisition of cableco Volia in June 2021. The combined entity now operates one of the largest fibre networks in the country, with a reach of more than four million households. Then in August 2021, Vodafone Ukraine reversed its position from 2015 when it had sold its fixed internet and fixed telephony operations in Odessa and Kyiv to Vega. The mobile operator instead acquired 99.9% of Vega, as well as the cableco Cable TV-Finance. In doing so, Vodafone Ukraine broadcast a clear intention to become a quadruple-play provider rather than solely one of the countrys three major MNOs.

This report includes the regulator's market data reports and telcos' financial and operating data updates to June 2021, Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, an assessment of the global impact of Covid-19 on the telecoms sector, and other recent market developments.

Key developments:

The Ukrainian telecoms regulator NCCR reduced the MTR from UAH0.12 per minute to UAH0.08 per minute, effective from October 2020.

Kyivstar and Huawei trialled LTE using tri-band Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology in the 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 2600MHz bands, achieving data speeds over 800Mb/s.

Vodafone Ukraine launched NB-IoT services in partnership with Danube Freight Company, Liana, and BTK-Tsent Komplekt.

All three MNOs (Lifecell, Kyivstar, and Vodafone Ukraine) joined together in an infrastructure sharing agreement to accelerate the deployment of LTE networks into rural areas. All three MNOs are expanding their LTE networks using newly available 900MHz spectrum.

Intertelecom has started closing down its CDMA-based wireless services due to its inability to meet the cost of LTE license fees required to proceed with a nationwide deployment.

Datagroup announced a $20 million network modernisation program in partnership with Cisco.

Get a Full Copy of this Report

Developing Telecoms market report summaries are produced in partnership with BuddeComm, the worlds largest continually updated online telecommunications research service.

The above article is a summary of the following BuddeComm report:

Report title: Ukraine - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Edition: September 2021

Lead Analyst: Henry Lancaster

Number of pages: 153

Companies mentioned in this report: Ukrtelecom, Kyivstar, Vodafone Ukraine, Lifecell, Intertelecom, Datagroup, Eurotranstelecom, Vega, Volia Cable, TriMob, Triolan, PEOPLEnet.

Single User PDF Licence Price: US$1390

For more information or to purchase a copy of the full report please use the following link: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Ukraine-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?r=83
A share sell-off is on the way for MTN Nigeria, according to an announcement from the MTN Group, which expects to kick off the process this month.

In its quarterly update for the period ended 30 September 2021, the telecoms giant announced its intention to proceed with a public offer for sale of up to 575 million shares in MTN Nigeria.

It said: The offer is anticipated to open in November 2021 with a bookbuild to institutional investors, after which a fixed price is expected to be announced for retail investors, also in November 2021.

The aim is that the offer will close in December 2021.

As the company points out, this sale has been expected and is in line with MTNs intention intent to sell down approximately 14 percent of MTN Groups current shareholding in MTN Nigeria. This isnt a first either. MTN has already reduced its stakes in places like Uganda and Zambia. It is also busy separating its fintech and fibre assets.

As Reuters points out, MTN listed its Nigerian business in Lagos two years ago to become the second-largest stock by market capitalisation. So how is MTN Nigeria looking?

The quarterly update refers to another strong performance in the period, notwithstanding a decline in subscribers due to the ongoing implementation of SIM registration regulations. Service revenue was up and data continued to drive revenue growth, supported by fintech and digital services and also by the lower base of voice revenue in the comparative 2020 period as a result of lockdowns.

The enterprise business remains solid and 4G site rollout appears to be going well, although naira depreciation and Covid-19-related expenditure both caused a rise in operating expenses.

All in all, however, MTN Nigeria appears to be in a reasonable state, despite Covid, NIN-SIM linkage and currency value issues  but no doubt investors will have their own thoughts on the health of the Nigerian telecoms giant.
Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has called for the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reverse its decision to revoke the operating licence of China Telecom Americas.

The ministry published a statement in Chinese daily Global Times accusing the US of politicising economic issues and calling for a fair, non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies to invest and operate in the US.

China Telecom Americas is a subsidiary of China Telecom, which is backed by the Chinese government. The FCC has blocked a number of Chinese firms from operating in the United States over national security concerns  in particular, the fear that sensitive data could be handed over to Chinese authorities.

Any companies that operate in China are obliged to turn over such information to the government upon request. Yesterday, US-based Yahoo announced that it would exit the Chinese market; the firm drew criticism from US lawmakers after complying with this legislation in 2007 by supplying data that led to the arrest of two Chinese dissidents.

Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE have been particular targets of the US campaign, along with the state operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
The New Zealand-headquartered Hawaiki Submarine Cable Limited Partnership is back in the news with the announcement of the launch of the Hawaiki Nui submarine cable system, which it calls the first and largest spatial division multiplexing (SDM) cable linking South-east Asia, Australasia and North America.

Construction of the estimated 22,000 km Hawaiki Nui system is due to start in 2022, with an expected cable ready-for-service date in 2025.

Hawaiki Nui will have a design capacity of 240 Tbps and provide end-to-end connectivity between the three main hubs of the Pacific region: Singapore, Sydney and Los Angeles.

Landings are also planned in the Indonesian capital Jakarta and in Batam, the largest city in the province of Riau Islands. Thus Hawaiki Nui will be the first subsea cable to deliver Indonesia triple connectivity to Singapore, Australia and the US.

Hawaiki has selected leading operator PT Mora Telematika Indonesia (Moratelindo) as its strategic partner for Indonesia. Under the partnership agreement, Moratelindo will act as the Indonesian landing party and acquire all corresponding permits and authorisations in Indonesia for the Hawaiki Nui project. It will also play a key role in the system design and deployment, from the definition of the optimal subsea route and landings in Indonesia to the provision of local terrestrial infrastructures for landing the subsea cable.

Moratelindo is one of the largest telecommunications infrastructure service providers in Indonesia. It has deployed a fibre optic cable network of more than 48,515 km with 18,360 Gpbs capacity, including both terrestrial and subsea links.

Since its establishment in 2000, Moratelindo has been developing the countrys digital ecosystem, providing domestic and international connectivity services as well as data centre services to the Indonesian market.
Minster Coveney welcomes decision by Swedish Government to reopen Dublin Embassy in 2022

Press release

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and for Defence, Simon Coveney, T.D., has warmly welcomed the decision of the Swedish Government to reopen its Embassy in Dublin in 2022.

The Minister said, I was delighted to receive this good news in a call from my friend and colleague, Foreign Minister Ann Linde today. Ireland and Sweden have traditionally enjoyed warm and friendly relations with shared values; strong advocacy for the role of the United Nations and we enjoy a close partnership and shared perspectives as members of the European Union. The re-establishment of the Embassy means that by the end of 2022, all other 26 EU Member States will be represented by resident Ambassadors in Dublin. This is testament to the strong bilateral relations that Ireland enjoys with its EU partners and enables close engagement with them on key EU priorities such as EU-UK relations, Climate Change, the Single Market and the Digital Single Market.

The Minister also recalled that the Government launched the Nordic Strategy earlier this year and noted that the reopening of the Swedish Embassy in Dublin will further strengthen our bilateral links and more broadly with the Nordic region as we seek to deliver the ambitious goals set out in our Nordic Strategy.

ENDS

Press Office

3 November 2021

Notes for Editors The Swedish Embassy in Dublin was closed in 2010 along with a number of other Swedish missions in the European Union. Since then, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Ireland has been based at the Foreign Ministry HQ in Stockholm while Swedish consular affairs in Ireland have been overseen by an Honorary Consul in Dublin.

The reopening of the resident Embassy in Dublin was announced by the Swedish Government today.

The Nordic Strategy is an ambitious whole of Government Strategy which seeks to deepen our engagement with the Nordic Region by 2025.





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Were all rolling on up toward the holidays, and I want everyone who has any connection to me, either positive or negative, to have a good one. Theres been a ton of research coming out this last couple of weeks that many of the COVID-19 ritualistic class would find upsetting. But in the spi
Cast members include Kodibeth Bates as Dallas, Riley Rivers as Monty Louise, Victoria Kelly as Rachel, Luci Sloan as Laurie Laurie, Caroline King as Pheenie, and overall understudy Melanie Canada.

The play will be directed by Brooke West Carr, and shell be assisted by her husband, Chipola College Theatre Director Raines Carr.

Mrs. Carr has starred in a full-out production the show before; this will be her first time directing it or any other. The work, she said, has lingered in her memory since she took on the role of Pheenie years ago. She said part of its special appeal is is its unique and interesting language.

A staged reading of it, with scripts in hand, gives the actors involved a number of advantages, she says.

This kind of presentation is very common in New York and California theater, so this show will give them an experience they might need as they further explore opportunities on stage outside of college, she said.

It also give the language a chance to be a more focal point for both the actors and their audience, and the guest director said shes certain theyll be in for a rich experience because of that.

Her husband said that from the start he wanted a woman at the helm of this all-female play.
I interpreted that 40% as probably not going to vote for Kasim Reed, but they just werent sure about who they were going to vote for, said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University. She said it appears that pool of undecided voters largely split their support between Moore and Dickens.

First elected to the City Council in 1997 and elevated to council president by voters citywide in 2017, Moore is leaning on her nearly 25-year record in city leadership. She said rising crime in Atlanta pushed her to enter the race even before Bottoms got out. She has also pushed a message of ethics, transparency and accountability.

She has also focused on city services, saying the city needs to reinvest in its people and facilities to make sure taxpayers get what they pay for, amid complaints about faltering services such as yard debris pickup.

Her strategy will likely differ considerably depending on who she faces in the runoff election. Moore has long been a critic of Reed, and he would likely make an easier foil for her in the runoff, Gillespie said.

During an Oct. 12 debate, Moore said Reed led the most corrupt administration in Atlanta history.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  The trial hasnt even started and yet issues of race are dominating the case in which three white men are charged with murder for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery.

The 25-year-old Black man's slaying has become part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the U.S. legal system. Greg and Travis McMichael, a father and son, and their neighbor William Roddie Bryan werent charged for more than two months until a cellphone video of the shooting leaked online.

And Arberys family and their supporters had their faith rattled after 2 1/2 weeks of jury selection ended Wednesday with the judge agreeing to seat a panel of 11 whites and one Black man.

Its probably clearer than before that race is going to be at the forefront of this case and will probably even play a big role in jury deliberations at the end of the trial, said Page Pate, a Georgia criminal defense attorney who isnt involved in the case.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley plans to have the jury sworn in Friday to hear opening statements from lawyers on both sides. He intends to seat 15 total panelists: a main jury of 12 plus three alternates.
Wind turbines in the province of Bac Lieu, southern Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyet Nhi

Orsted, the global leader in offshore wind power, wants to build a 3,900-MW plant in the northern city of Hai Phong at a cost of $11.9-13.6 billion.

City authorities had met on Oct. 2 with a delegation from the Danish embassy in Vietnam to discuss the proposal by the Denmark-based company.

According to the proposal, the turbines, each with a capacity of some 20 MW, will be installed on pillars 150-200-m tall.

The plant will be built in three phases.

In July a representative of Orsted in Vietnam had said the company wanted to develop an offshore wind power farm in Hai Phong.

At that time it was focusing on constructing a 4,600-MW wind power plant in the central province of Binh Thuan.

Nguyen Duc Tho, deputy chairman of the Hai Phong Peoples Committee, said the city would create favorable conditions for Orsted to invest, and has asked it for details about investment and location of the proposed plant and turbines.

Earlier this year the Vietnam Energy Association said it wanted wind power generation to be increased sevenfold in the next decade from the Ministry of Industry and Trades current proposal of 2,000-3,000 MW.

Some foreign entities have also called for increasing Vietnams planned offshore wind power capacity.

The Global Wind Energy Council has proposed an increase to 10,000 MW by 2030, saying only large projects would attract foreign investors.
The activities of Chinese vessels within the territory of the Union Banks atoll are severe violations of the sovereignty of Vietnam over these waters, go against the decisions and provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the spirit of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), Pham Thu Hang, deputy spokeswoman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said at a press meet Thursday.

She was responding to a question regarding information that nearly 150 ships suspected to belong to Chinese militia were present in Vietnam's Union Banks atoll in Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands, several months after dispersing to surrounding entities.

Vietnam has affirmed numerous times that it has sufficient legal grounds and historical evidence to assert its sovereignty over the Spratlys in line with international law. The country also has sufficient historical evidence and legal grounds to assert its sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction over its waters under UNCLOS.

Vietnam will remain resolute and steadfast, taking suitable measures in line with international law to protect its lawful and legitimate rights and interests, Hang said.

"Vietnam asks China to withdraw its vessels from this area and respect Vietnam sovereignty over these waters," she said.

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently published a satellite image taken in mid-October, showing the Chinese fleet returning to the Union Banks.

They are believed to be vessels that had illegally anchored in the Whitsun Reef in the Spratlys since early March this year. The vessels kept their lights on overnight, but have not engaged in any fishing activities despite the convenient weather.

In late March, after facing a fierce reaction from Vietnam as well as the international community, the Chinese fleet left the reef, dispersing to other features in the Spratly Islands.

The AMTI said that from the beginning of August, about 40 Chinese vessels began to return to the north of the Union Banks, including the Whitsun Reef. By September, the number of vessels increased to more than 100 and 150 a month later.

Given that Chinese vessels have been scattered in the northern area of the Union Banks, with some returning to anchor in the Whitsun Reef, the AMTI said it believed that the Chinese militia had no intention of leaving the Spratly Islands.
Two financing agreements were signed by Bertrand Walckenaer, Deputy General Director of the French Development Agency (AFD) and Dinh Toan Thang, Ambassador of Vietnam to France, in Paris on the occasion of Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh's official visit.

The support includes a loan of 24.65 million euros from AFD for infrastructure development and a 1.5 million euro grant (non-refundable aid) for technical assistance through the Water and Natural Resources Management Facility (WARM) funded by the EU, according to a press release from the French Embassy in Hanoi.

"It will help address challenges and support the resilience of this city of 150,000 inhabitants," the release said.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and associated flooding in the town in Dien Bien Province, which is frequently exposed to flooding from the Nam Rom River in spate.
France has promised to donate a further 1.37 million Covid vaccines to Vietnam to take the total number to more than two million doses.

The announcement was made during talks between French Prime Minister Jean Castex and his Vietnamese counterpart, Pham Minh Chinh, in Paris on Wednesday, the first event in the visiting leaders schedule in France, according to a statement by Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The additional pledge includes 970,000 doses through Covax and 400,000 doses through the bilateral channel.

In September Vietnam had received 1.48 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from France.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (L) and French PM Jean Castex at their meeting in Paris on November 3. Photo by Vietnam News Agency

The Vietnamese leader thanked the French government for its assistance for Vietnam in the fight against Covid, and hoped France would continue to help train human resources in healthcare, transfer vaccine technology and share its experiences in coping with the pandemic.

Vietnam's strategy is to speed up vaccination and strengthen measures to revive the economy, he said.

At the recent COP26 hosted by the U.K., Vietnam had committed to implement various programs, including under the Paris Agreement, to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and hoped to receive assistance from developed countries like France in this effort, he said.

Referring to international issues like the East Sea dispute, the two leaders emphasized that countries need to contribute to maintaining peace, stability and prosperity, ensuring security, safety, freedom of navigation and overflight, and peacefully settling international disputes on the basis of compliance with international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982.

Castex thanked Vietnam for its support to France for becoming ASEAN's development partner.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently visited three countries in the Black Sea region, Georgia, Ukraine, and Romania.

He praised the strong security partnerships and values the countries share with the United States; recognized the sacrifices Georgia and Romania made as part of the coalition of forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan; and reiterated U.S. support for the three countries sovereignty and territorial integrity, as they continue to face pressure from the Russian governments malign activity.

It goes without saying that the region is vulnerable to Russian aggression, and we have seen evidence of that by ongoing actions in eastern Ukraine, occupation of parts of Georgia, militarization of the Black Sea, and provocative actions in the air and at sea, Secretary Austin said. Russias destabilizing activitiesreflect its ambitions to regain a dominant position in the region and to prevent the realization of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace.

Secretary Austin told reporters that the United States treasure[s] the tremendous partnership and cooperation that we receive from our partners in the region, and he noted that the U.S. will continue to provide assistance to enhance the maritime capabilities of Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, as well as Bulgaria, in support of efforts to deter and defend against Russias malign activities.

Secretary Austins visit to the three countries also underscored NATOs interest in Black Sea security  Romania as a key NATO ally, and Ukraine and Georgia as partner states which aspire to NATO membership.

The Defense Secretary called Romania an important example for Allied commitment on sharing responsibility, defense modernization, and contributing to NATO missions in Europe and beyond. He also praised Romania for being one of the handful of NATO allies that hosts a significant number of U.S. rotational forces.

In Georgia and Ukraine, Secretary Austin made clear that strengthening democratic institutions is also a bulwark against corruption and aggression, and he encouraged both governments to follow through on reforms that will advance their Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

Security and stability of the Black Sea are in the U.S. national interest and are critical to the security of NATOs Eastern Flank, Secretary Austin said. We will stay focused on it, and we will continue to work with our partners in the region.
On a recent trip to Ecuador, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined three areas in which the U.S. will partner with countries in the hemisphere to strengthen democracies ability to deliver for their people.

The first challenge is corruption, said Secretary Blinken:

Corruption is estimated to cost up to 5 percent of global GDP. It stifles growth, it discourages investment, it deepens inequities. But maybe its greatest toll is on citizens trust in government.

So, the United States is focusing on how we can more effectively fight corruption, explained Secretary Blinken. Were cracking down on illicit financing, seizing and freezing stolen assets, making it harder for those who steal to hide behind anonymity.

The second challenge is civilian security.

To improve outcomes, the U.S. is shifting its focus to the root causes of the violence, said Secretary Blinken:

Were doing more to expand economic opportunity, especially for underserved populations who might be drawn into illicit activity because they feel they have no other choice. Were increasing our investment in substance abuse prevention, treatment, recovery for those struggling with addiction  both to reduce the profound harm that illicit drugs inflict on our communities, and to reduce the demand in the United States fueling so much violence and criminal activity.

The United States also continues to invest in shoring up the rule of law by training prosecutors and judges who are crucial to investigating and prosecuting corruption cases.

The third challenge is focusing our democracies on tackling the economic and social challenges that are facing our people, said Secretary Blinken. This includes bolstering labor standards, expanding access to adequate education and healthcare, and providing more inclusive opportunities.

Since 2020, the United States has invested more than $10 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean through the International Development Finance Corporation. In turn, billions more can be leveraged in private sector investment.

Theres no threat that. . .more democracy cannot fix, said Secretary Blinken. And as long as our societies make it possible for people. . .to improve the system from within, we can be sure that democracy will not only persevere, it will prevail.
Spain yet to tap EU Solidarity Fund

Spain has a maximum of twelve weeks from the start of the Cumbre Vieja eruption on La Palma to request that the European Union activate a Solidarity Fund created to intervene in the event of serious natural disasters. Six and a half weeks after the eruption, Pedro Sanchezs government has not yet been in touch with the EU despite pledging various aid packages to the beleaguered Canary Island.

If Spain does not act within the given timeframe, it will lose the option of the Solidarity Fund being set in motion, said the director of the Representation office of the European Commission in Spain, Maria Angeles Benitez, who pointed out that there could be nuances as to when the catastrophe began - whether it was when the volcano erupted on September 19 or when the lava began to flow, for example.

To activate the solidarity mechanism, the Spanish authorities must submit an application and demonstrate that the total direct damage caused by the disaster exceeds 1.5% of the average Gross Domestic Product of the affected region.

In the case of non-mainland regions such as the Canary Islands, applications for resources can be filed when the damage amounts to 1% of GDP, which in the case of the archipelago represents 457 million.

Photo by Jorge GUERRERO / AFP
For the first time since the global coronavirus pandemic began a pill has been authorized as a treatment for covid-19 patients. The United Kingdoms health regulator has given the green light to an antiviral drug known as Lagevrio (molnupiravir), which was developed by US pharmaceutical firms Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

An "historic day" in the fight against covid-19

The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said in a statement on Thursday that Lagevrio is safe and effective at reducing the risk of hospitalisation and death in people with mild to moderate covid-19 who are at increased risk of developing severe disease. British Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid lauded the news as an historic day for the UK, stating that the achievement made it the first country in the world to approve an antiviral that can be taken at home for covid-19.

According to the MHRA, molnupiravir reduces the risk of serious illness or death from covid-19 by approximately 50%. Javid added that despite the breakthrough, the most important factor is to step up protection measures against contacting covid-19 and called on the British public to continue to take advantage of the governments vaccination program. Lagevrio was approved following a a rigorous review of its safety, quality and effectiveness, by the MHRA and an independent expert scientific advisory body, the Commission on Human Medicines.

Antiviral should not be used "as a substitute for vaccination"

However, the antiviral should not be used as a substitute for vaccination, warned researcher Munir Pirmohamed of the Commission on Human Medicines. Clinical trials have shown that Lagevrio is most effective when administered during the early stages of infection, and as such has been recommended for use as soon as possible following a positive covid-19 test and within five days of symptoms onset.

The phase III clinical trials were undertaken by 775 patients who had recently been infected with covid-19. Of this group, only 7.3% were hospitalized, compared to 14.1% of the control group who received a placebo. The drug has also displayed sustained effectiveness against the Delta, Gamma and Mu variants.

We are working at pace across the government and with the NHS to set out plans to deploy molnupiravir to patients through a national study as soon as possible, Javid said.
A factory in Binh Duong Province (Photo: Trinh Binh)

During a conference on reviving the Vietnamese labour market on November 3, NDO quoted the sayings of Dung that some localities had recorded work resumption rates of up to 90%.

He spoke highly of local authorities proactiveness in introducing various policies to support those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dung underlined that such prompt and effective policies have helped retain workers and ensure their normal lives.

According to Minister Dung, the labour market could be restored to pre-outbreak levels by the end of the first quarter or early in the second quarter of 2022 if the current situation is maintained and vaccination is accelerated.

70-75% of enterprises and their employees return to work one month after social distancing

(Source: laodong.vn)

At the conference, he asked local authorities to accept workers returning home and introduce appropriate policies to create jobs for those who want to remain.

He also suggested that enterprises should carry out sound policies to retain workers by keeping frequent contact with them and providing support for those whose jobs are still suspended.

On-time performance rate of Vietnamese airlines reaches 94.5 percent

The on-time performance rate of Vietnamese airlines reached 94.5 percent in the first 10 months of this year, equivalent to 103,186 flights, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).

Passengers stand at check-in kiosks at Tan Son Nhat airport (Photo: VNA)

VNA reported that in the period, Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet Air, Bamboo Airways, Pacific Airlines, Vasco and Vietravel Airlines reported 6,060 delayed flights, accounting for 5.5 percent of the total flights. Meanwhile, 2,224 flights were canceled.

In the reviewed period, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines had conducted 41,717 flights, Vietjet Air 35,979, Bamboo Airways 21,024, and Pacific Airlines 6,490.

The Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO) and the recently-launched Vietravel conducted 2,749 and 1,287 flights, respectively.

The CAAV said that bad weather conditions were the major reason behind the delays and cancellations, along with other reasons such as late arrivals and technical issues.

Vietnam wins big at Online World Martial Arts

Vietnam won big at the Online World Martial Arts which wrapped up on November 2.

Vietnam wins big at the Online World Martial Arts which wrapped up on November 2.

(Photo: Facebook)

The country earned five gold, seven silver and four bronze medals in the five-day virtual competition that saw over 3,300 athletes from all over the world competing in ten categories.

Vietnam took part in three categories  Kurash, Judo and traditional martial arts. The Vietnamese Kurash team brought home four gold and one silver medals, Judo grabbed one gold and three medals while the traditional martial arts team won three silver and four bronze medals.

Removing bottlenecks to attract FDI inflows from Europe

Vietnam must strive to remove hurdles and deploy synchronous measures aimed at creating a healthy business climate to attract high-quality foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, including those from Europe, according to industry insiders.

Germany's Schaeffler group is developing a production hub in Vietnam

(Photo:congthuong.vn)

According to VOV, European investors have so far invested over US$22 billion in numerous FDI projects in Vietnam, including several of high quality, a factor which has significantly contributed to sustainable development in the country over recent times, said Vu Van Chung, deputy director of the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA).

FIA statistics show FDI inflows into Vietnam during the initial 10 months of the year reached US$23.74 billion, of which nearly US$1 billion came from the EU, despite the complex nature of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He noted that Vietnams strong commitment to promoting transparency and openness in the business climate has lured high-quality investment capital from the developed EU nations, which have benefited business communities of both sides.

Nguyen Hai Minh, vice president of the European Business Association in Vietnam, pointed out that Vietnam enjoys numerous advantages in terms of FDI attraction, especially in the current trend of shifting FDI inflows, noting that despite various COVID-19 challenges, European investors have chosen not to withdraw their capital from the country.

Minh emphasised that European enterprises tend to inject money into high-added value projects and move some research & development centres to Vietnam. Seaports, road traffic, and energy make up key industries that have captured attention of European businesses.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Xuan Thang, managing director of Schaeffler Vietnam, said the group has chosen Dong Nai to build its largest factory, with a total investment in the first phase reaching EUR45 million due to the countrys advantages in human resources, investment incentives, and involvement in the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).

Thang went on to reveal that the group will begin construction of the second phase of the factory, which is expected to act as a global production hub for a wide range of industrial products.

To woo quality investment projects from Europe, Nguyen Thi Huong, general director of the General Statistics Office (GSO), suggested that Vietnam pay closer attention to investors requirements in terms of openness, stability, and transparency in the legal system as a way of protecting the legitimate rights and interests of financiers.

In addition, she said Vietnam should prioritise strategic investors involved in global production chains, with a primary focus on high-tech and technology transfer projects./.
The agreement is founded on from the existing 10-billion-USD cooperation between the two sides. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, his French counterpart Jean Castex, and high-ranking officials of the two countries.

Vietjet and French technology firm Safran set up long-term strategic partnership (Photo: VNA)

Building on both sides existing cooperation in aircraft engine and engine services through CFM International worth approximately 10 billion USD, Vietjet and Safran will extend their cooperation to a long-term strategic partnership to cover more aircraft engine deals and a variety of other aspects such as aircraft seats and interiors supply.

Safran will provide Vietjet with training programmes including management and technical training whilst also supporting the airline to establish MRO capabilities in Vietnam.

Vietjet and Safran Electronics & Defence will accelerate cooperation to enable Vietjet to achieve best-in-class Flight Data Analysis solution for its whole airlines fleet.

Alexandre Ziegler, Safran Senior Executive Vice President said We are very pleased to be an integral part of Vietjets growth strategy.

This agreement reflects the relationship of mutual trust between the airline and Safran and their recognition of our expertise and experience. he added.

Safran is an international high-technology group, operating in the aviation (propulsion, equipment, and interiors), defence and space markets. Safran has a global presence, with 76,000 employees and sales of 16.5 billion EUR.

Vietjet Air - Vietnams largest airline in terms of the total number of passengers transported domestically, operates a fleet of 90 aircraft. With its comprehensive network in Vietnam and Asia Pacific, the airline looks to further expand across continents thanks to its new and modern fleet in the near future./.
Economic daily "La Tribune" reports the official visit to France by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

From November 3-5, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is paying an official visit to the French Republic. The visit has attracted attention and coverage from many major French newspapers, especially emphasizing that Vietnam can become a bridge between Asia and Europe both politically and economically, and that the two sides hold great potential on bilateral economic cooperation.

"Vietnam wants to assert its intermediary role in the Indo-Pacific region" is the title of an article in the major daily newspaper "l'Humanite" (Humanitarianism) of the French Communist Party. According to the article, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh's visit on the one hand conveys the message that Vietnam is ready to reopen its economy after the COVID-19 pandemic, on the other hand, choosing France for the first official visit shows Vietnam's policy of political and economic "balance. In Paris, the Vietnamese Prime Minister is meeting with leading French economic companies and groups during the visit which is to last3 only about 48 hours.

According to "l'Humanite" newspaper, based on the strategic partnership with France as well as active membership in the "Francophone Community", Vietnam can receive the support of France to become a member of the French-speaking world to become an intermediary pillar in the relationship between Asia and Europe in the context of increasingly complex geopolitical competition in the Indo-Pacific region.

Economic daily "La Tribune" said that, despite the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, the turnover between France and Vietnam reached an encouraging figure of EUR6.3 billion in 2020. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh will open up great opportunities for trade, with many major contracts likely to be signed in Paris in the fields of aerospace, infrastructure, renewable energy, climate change prevention and high technology. Large French corporations such as Airbus, Thales, EDF, Total or Air Liquide with their commitments to participate in investment projects in Vietnam will be major beneficiaries of this policy of Vietnam.

Meanwhile, strengthening economic cooperation with France will help Vietnam gain deeper access to the European market, especially for agricultural and fishery products such as rice, coffee and shrimp. The "La Tribune" newspaper said that the value of trade between the two countries will return to the level before the COVID-19 pandemic this year, or even exceed it.

Vietnam is increasingly asserting its position in the international arena, following the direction of multilateralization and diversification, according to the online newspaper "Triloguenews". The proof is that Vietnam has built relationships with many major and strategic partners, including France and the European Union, and signed many important agreements such as the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)./.
Former U.S. Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore speaks at the opening event of China Corporate Pavilion at the ongoing 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Kingdom on Nov. 2, 2021. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

GLASGOW, Britain, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Political mutual trust between the wealthier and low income countries is essential for global cooperation on climate change, former U.S. Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore said Tuesday, urging developed countries to deliver their promises and provide more assistance to low income countries as soon as possible.

Speaking to Xinhua during the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, Gore said every nation should be doing much more in tackling climate change.

He warned that "we are taking unacceptably high risks with the future of humanity" because filling up the atmosphere with green house gas pollution is already causing "incredibly harmful damages to nations all over the world."

Gore said every nation, rich or poor, has an important role to play in dealing with climate change, while holding that countries that benefited from early industrialization processes have a responsibility to do more in solving the problems coming along with the heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

The 73-year-old former politician, now one of the world's most prominent climate activists, attended the opening event of China Corporate Pavilion at COP26 on Tuesday.

Gore said he has been following closely China's proposals and efforts on climate change, environment protection and green transition and saving the world's climate balance can be a way for China and the United States to cooperate once again to benefit the entire world.
SEOUL, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- South Korea has decided to donate an additional 290,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam, Seoul's foreign ministry said Thursday.

South Korea provided 1.1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines for Vietnam and 470,000 doses of the vaccines for Thailand on Oct. 12, while donating 1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines to Iran on Oct. 25.

The Seoul ministry said in a statement that the additional donation would contribute to the improved friendly ties between South Korea and Vietnam and the global efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

It came as South Korea's full vaccination rate topped 70 percent of the population, a major precondition set by the government to ease antivirus measures.

In the latest tally, the country administered COVID-19 vaccines to 80.5 percent of the population, with 75.9 percent being fully vaccinated.

Editor: WPY
At the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow, more than 40 countries agreed to phase out their use of coal-fired power, the Guardian reported, citing the British government.

The world's largest economies should phase out coal-fired generation by 2030, and smaller ones by 2040.

This initiative, in particular, was joined by countries such as Canada, Poland, Vietnam, Chile, as well as Ukraine, where coal generation, which is considered the most "dirty" type of power production, takes a significant share in the power mix.

At the same time, the largest countries in terms of coal generation  China, Australia, India, the United States  did not support this initiative.

The agreement also provides for the abandonment of investments in coal-fired power both domestically and abroad, along with the cessation of construction of new coal-fired power plants.

In addition, more than 100 financial institutions and organizations are reported to have also agreed to stop funding coal projects.

"The end of coal is in sight," Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK's business secretary, said.

He said the world is heading in the right direction with a willingness to decide the fate of coal and reap the environmental and economic benefits of building a clean power future.

The goal of "consigning coal to history" has been a key focus for the UK as host of the Cop26 summit, which aims to put the world on track to limit global heating to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The share of coal-fired generation in the global power amounted to 37% in 2019.

The COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow aims to tackle climate change. This year, for the first time, the summit will summarize the preliminary results of what has been done to overcome the crisis since the signing of the Paris Agreement  an international treaty adopted in 2015, the main task of which is to keep the increase in the global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and the desire to limit this increase to 1.5 degrees.

COP26 started in Glasgow on October 31st and will run until November 12. Representatives from nearly 200 countries are expected to attend.
A Ukrainian serviceman was wounded in Donbas over the past day, six violations of the ceasefire were recorded. Since the beginning of the current day, the ceasefire has been observed, the press center of the JFO headquarters said.

"Over the past 24 hours, on November 3, in the area of the Joint Force Operation, Russian-occupation forces recorded six ceasefire violations, two of which with the use of weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements [...]. As a result of hostile actions, one soldier was wounded. He was evacuated to a medical facility. His health condition is satisfactory," the headquarters said in the morning report on Facebook page on Thursday.

The enemy opened fire from heavy anti-tank grenade launchers near the village of Lobacheve.

Near Pivdenne, Russian-occupation forces fired on JFO positions twice, using heavy anti-tank grenade launchers and 120-mm mortars.

Not far from Novooleksandrivka, shelling from anti-tank and under-barrel grenade launchers, as well as heavy machine guns, was recorded.

At Zolote-3, the enemy fired from 82-mm mortars.

In the Novozvinka area, Russian-occupation forces opened fire from small arms.

"As of 07.00, November 4, no ceasefire violations were recorded," the JFO said.
Reznikov does not intend to take part in further work of TCG

First deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas and the still acting Deputy Prime Minister for the Temporarily Occupied Territories Oleksiy Reznikov said that he probably would not continue to work in the TCG.

"I think that I probably will no longer take part in the Trilateral Contact Group as a member of the delegation. There is a head of the delegation - Leonid Kravchuk and deputy head of the delegation Oleksandr Merezhko. They will continue," Reznikov said, answering the question of the MP at the plenary session on Wednesday.

Earlier, speaker of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG Oleksiy Arestovych told Interfax-Ukraine that Reznikov may leave the TCG. He also said that Deputy Head of the Delegation Oleksandr Merezhko would replace Reznikov.

Reznikov has been the first deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG since May 5, 2020. Since June 2021, he has been replacing the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Leonid Kravchuk, who is undergoing rehabilitation after a heart operation.

As reported, on November 1, Reznikov submitted his resignation from the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.

On November 3, the Verkhovna Rada supported his resignation. 329 MPs voted for the corresponding decision at a plenary session on Wednesday.

Reznikov is a possible candidate for appointment to the post of Minister of Defense of Ukraine, and the candidacy of MP from Servant of the People Iryna Vereshchuk is being considered for the post of Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has supported the candidacy of Oleksiy Reznikov for the post of Defense Minister of Ukraine.

Some 273 MPs voted for Reznikov's candidacy proposed by the president at a plenary session on Thursday.

Oleksiy Reznikov (born in 1966) has served as Deputy of Kyiv City Council of the sixth convocation in 2008 to 2014; as Deputy of Kyiv City Council of the seventh convocation from June 2014.

On June 19, 2014, he was elected deputy mayor, secretary of Kyiv City Council; since April 2016 as Deputy Head of Kyiv City State Administration for the production of self-governing powers.

He has been holding the post of First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) since May 5, 2020. Since June 2021, he has been replacing Head of the Ukrainian delegation Leonid Kravchuk, who is undergoing rehabilitation after a heart operation.

Since March 4, 2020 he has served as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine; since March 19 as Member of the National Security and Defense Council.

On November 1, 2021, Reznikov submitted his resignation from the post of Deputy Prime Minister. He later said that he probably would not continue to work at TCG.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried is on a visit to Kyiv, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine has said.

"U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Dr. Karen Donfried is visiting Kyiv today to reaffirm our strategic partnership, the U.S. commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and cooperation to advance Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration," the embassy said on the page in Twitter on Thursday.
U.S. Embassy calls on Ukrainian authorities to hold accountable all those behind attack on Handziuk

On the anniversary of the death of Kherson activist Kateryna Handziuk, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine calls on the authorities to bring those behind the attack on her accountable.

"On the third anniversary of her death, we remember civil rights and anti-corruption activist Kateryna Handziuk. We honor her courage and dedication, and we urge authorities to bring to justice all those behind the attack that took her life," the embassy said in a statement on Facebook.

As reported, on July 31, 2018 in Kherson, an unknown person doused activist Handziuk with concentrated sulfuric acid near her house. The victim with burns was taken to a local hospital, but was soon transferred to a medical facility in Kyiv. Handziuk passed away on November 4.
Ombudsman for the protection of the state language Taras Kremin calls on local authorities to bring the names of a number of settlements in line with the spelling and standards of the state language.

"Today I have signed several dozen appeals to the heads of local government bodies with a request to bring the names of settlements in line with the spelling, standards of the state language and the requirements of Article 41 of the Law," Kremin said on the air of the Ukrainian Radio, the press service of the language ombudsman reported.

Kremin recalled that in accordance with the language law, geographical names, as well as the names of squares, boulevards, streets, lanes, slopes, driveways, avenues, squares, embankments, bridges and other toponyms of settlements are performed in the state language.

"I have received numerous appeals and messages from citizens who complain that the names of a number of settlements are Russian-speaking and do not correspond to the rules and norms of Ukrainian spelling. These are such settlements as Arbuzynka, Severodonetsk, Yuzhnoukrainsk, Yuzhne, Spokoistviye, Nadezhdovka , Perevodchikovo, Luch, Pervomayskoye, Pervomaisk and many others. Many had wonderful historical names, like Siversky Donets, Harbuzynka or Bohopol and were unfairly renamed during the communist regime," said Kremin.

The Language Ombudsman also recalled that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine noted that the Ukrainian language is an inseparable attribute of the Ukrainian state, along with the state flag of Ukraine, the state emblem of Ukraine and the national anthem of Ukraine.

"In this regard, all necessary measures should be taken to bring geographical names in line with the spelling, standards of the state language and the requirements of Article 41 of the law. This will contribute to ensuring the functioning of the state language as a tool for uniting Ukrainian society, a means of strengthening state unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine, independent statehood and national security," the commissioner stressed.
Kyiv protests in connection with Putin's next visit to temporarily occupied Crimea not coordinated with Ukraine

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses a "strong protest" in connection with the next, uncoordinated with Ukraine, visit of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

The corresponding statement of the Foreign Ministry was made public on Thursday.

"This trip is taking place in spite of the repeated warnings of Ukraine. We consider this visit, as well as other trips of Russian officials to the temporarily occupied Crimean peninsula that have not been agreed with the Ukrainian side, as a gross violation by Russia of Ukraine's sovereignty, the norms of international law, resolutions of the UN General Assembly, Russia's obligations under treaties, the parties of which are Ukraine and the Russian Federation," the statement reads.

It notes that the Russian side must return to the fulfillment of its international legal obligations.

"The Russian Federation, as an occupying state, has the opportunity to demonstrate real concern for the residents of the temporarily occupied Crimea: to stop unprecedented human rights violations, in particular political repression, abductions and conflict to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders," the Foreign Ministry said.
The Supreme Court returns the British investor's case for damages for retrial in the court of appeal

Kyiv, November 4, 2021: The Commercial Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court of Ukraine partially satisfied the cassation appeal of the Ukrainian company "Kyiv-Terminal" LLC, owned by a British investor in Ukraine, Mr. Tamaz Somkhishvili, overturning the appellate court's decision regarding the refusal to compensate the companys losses caused by the termination of the investment agreement for the reconstruction of the Kharkiv Square. The Supreme Court pointed out the mistakes made by the Court of Appeal and decided to remand the case for a new examination to the Court of Appeal.

According to the court's decision, "[] the Court of Appeal came to an erroneous conclusion about the refusal to satisfy the claim of "Kiev-Terminal" on the basis of the latter's omission of the statute of limitations.

The appellate court did not take into account that the dispute over damages did not arise from the moment of termination of the Investment Agreement, but from the moment when the Department of Economics and Investments of the Kyiv City State Administration did not approve the amount of losses indicated in the report of the appraisal firm. Due to the Department's objections regarding the amount of losses, the parties were unable to conclude an agreement to resolve issues related to termination of the Investment Agreement, which would determine the procedure, timing and method of losses compensation.

During the new trial, the courts should take into account the above, define the actual amount of damages to the plaintiff, the beginning of the statute of limitations, taking into account the circumstances of the plaintiff's right to sue and make a lawful and reasoned decision".

In the course of a new trial, the court should take into account the above, determine the actual amount of the plaintiff's losses and define the beginning of the limitation period, taking into account the circumstances of the plaintiff's right to file a claim, and make a lawful and reasoned decision".

"Kyiv-Terminal" LLC welcomes the professional approach of the judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, which was demonstrated in a detailed study of all case materials and the examination of aspects that relate to both the investor and the behavior of the state bodies.

"The decision of the Supreme Court gives us a chance to continue the fight to protect our legal right to compensation for losses, and also inspires hope that the appellate court will correct the mistakes pointed out by the Supreme Court and deliver a fair decision on the case. However, returning the case to the appellate court also means loss of time again - only the last appellate trial in the case took a year and a half, and efforts to protect our rights.

Our experience shows that foreign investors planning to do business in Ukraine have to be prepared for the fact that here they may face injustice and unfair behavior even on the part of the state bodies, which is particularly disappointing. Also, investors should be prepared for the fact they will have to spend millions of hryvnias and years to defend their legal rights, the protection of which, however, is not guaranteed in the realities of Ukrainian legislation",  said Tamaz Somkhishvili, a British investor and beneficial owner of "Kyiv-Terminal".

Taras Dumych, a partner at Wolf Theiss Law Firm, which is Mr. Somkhishvili's legal adviser, added: "As a result of the consolidated position of the Kyiv authorities, which was demonstrated at the Supreme Court hearings and consisted in refusal to take any responsibility for the investor's losses and shifting responsibility between these authorities, the case turned from an investor protection case into a more serious case of public policy. We are glad that the Supreme Court did not tolerate this practice, otherwise Ukraine would risk becoming an "anti-investment" country. However, since the struggle for violated investors rights is still ahead, we hope not only for the fulfillment of its obligations by the state and protection of the legal rights of investors in Ukrainian courts, but also for a civilized and bona fide behavior of Kyiv city authorities in resolving the dispute, that arose as a result of their own actions".

The first hearing in the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal in this case has already been scheduled for December 6, 2021.

For more information, please contact Maria Bukhtoiarova, a representative of CFC Big Ideas, which is a communications advisor to Tamaz Somkhishvili, by email at: mb@cfcbigideas.com or by phone: +380 99 317 93 46.
Joining Robert Downey Jr is Matt Damon in Nolan's Oppenheimer (Photo : REUTERS )

Hollywood stars Robert Downey Jr and Matt Damon are to star in Christopher Nolan's World War II epic Oppenheimer. The film is a retelling of the Manhattan Project and specialist Robert Oppenheimer's start of the atomic weapon. Robert Downey Jr. likewise, Matt Damon's jobs in the film are yet obscure.



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Cillian Murphy plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his better half Katherine is played by Emily Blunt. Nolan is collecting an elite player cast. Oppenheimer, a physicist who had a critical influence in the Manhattan Project, is known as the 'Father of the Atomic Bomb'.



The story should portray the improvement of the nuclear weapon; however, plot particulars have been kept stowed away. Oppenheimer will be delivered in venues on July 21, 2023. Nolan will adjust the content from Kai Bird and Martin J. The film's screenplay is adjusted from Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer'. Creation will begin in mid-2022.



In Nolan's latest film, Tenet, COVID created significant setbacks. Cillian Murphy has been given a role as the lead part, and Emily Blunt is supposed to converse with Katherine 'Kitty' Oppenheimer, his better half and an individual researcher.

They concentrated on the impacts of radiation. Damon will play Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the top of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during World War II.



The Iron Man entertainer will play Lewis Strauss, the director of the Atomic Energy Commission. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the latter scrutinized Oppenheimer's nationalism and eventually had his special status repudiated.

Oppenheimer, portrayed by Universal Pictures as an epic experience that drives crowds into the situation of the subtle man who should chance to demolish the world to protect it, is being conveyed by the studio.



A $100 million financial plan has been saved for the film's creation.



Downey Jr. just said his last farewells as Iron Man in Disney and Marvel's hero blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, which broke virtually every film industry record at any point set. He followed up his most significant hit with Universal's family-accommodating experience, Dolittle, a film industry disaster. Damon's latest film jobs incorporate Tom McCarthy's criminal spine-chiller Stillwater and Ridley Scott's period dramatization The Last Duel, which he co-composed with Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener. The blending of Downey Jr. what's more, Damon was at first announced by Deadline Hollywood.


A rebel march on Ethiopia's capital would worsen the country's severe humanitarian crisis, already fanned by "egregious" government obstruction, a senior US official said on Thursday.

The warning came after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rebel group announced late Wednesday it had reached the town of Kemissie in Ethiopia's Amhara region, some 325 kilometres (200 miles) northeast of Addis Ababa.

Spokesman Getachew Reda said the TPLF was working in the area alongside the Oromo Liberation Army rebel group, which this week predicted Addis Ababa could fall in a matter of weeks.

"We can only assume that any march towards Addis would spread increased displacement, increased need and increased suffering for the Ethiopian people," said the senior official from Washington's humanitarian arm USAID.

"It would certainly increase the need for humanitarian assistance while also complicating the ability to provide that assistance," the official said.

The US has called on all parties to cease hostilities, and its top envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive in Addis Ababa Thursday for two days of talks promoting peace and dialogue.

The US embassy announced Thursday it was authorising the voluntary departure of most staff and their families, although no one is obligated to leave at this stage.

"Travel to Ethiopia is unsafe at this time due to the ongoing armed conflict. Incidents of civil unrest and ethnic violence may occur without warning," said an advisory posted on the embassy's website.

"Further escalation is likely, and may cause supply chain shortages, communications blackouts and travel disruptions."

Washington has been among the most vocal critics of Ethiopia's conduct of the year-long war in the country's north.

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Lebanon's prime minister on Thursday again urged the information minister to 'do what needs to be done', an apparent appeal for him step down over an unprecedented diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia.

The spat has threatened to destabilize the new Lebanese government and escalate the country's economic tailspin.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati cannot dismiss the minister without approval of at least two-thirds of the Cabinet and Lebanon's president. The information minister George Kordahi had refused to apologize or resign_ a position that was supported by Hezbollah and allies in the Cabinet.

Mikati said he had agreed with Lebanese President Michel Aoun on a way out of the crisis that is threatening to split his government, sworn in less than two months ago. He called Kordahi's decision would be a 'priority and the natural road map to get out of the crisis', and preserve relations with the Gulf.

But in a sign that there was no letting up to the crisis, Hezbollah on Thursday said in a brief statement that it rejects and condemns what it called 'foreign dictation to the way the government works' - indirectly reiterating its continued support for Kordahi.

Beirut-based TV station al-Mayadeen quoted Kordahi saying that he will not resign.

Mikati also had stern words for his partners in government _ the militant Hezbollah group and its allies.

The spat was triggered by Kordahi's remarks aired last week about the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Lebanese officials have said that Kordahi's remarks do not represent official government views.

Riyadh has withdrawn its ambassador from Beirut and asked the Lebanese envoy to leave the kingdom. It has also banned Lebanese imports.

Gulf Arab countries have joined Saudi Arabia in pulling out their diplomats from Lebanon.

'The country can't be managed with the language of challenge and obstinacy', said Mikati, who returned to Beirut on Wednesday night from the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. 'We must unite behind one word to work on saving our country'.

Lebanon had sought French and U.S. mediation with Saudi Arabia.

Mikati's message appears to be directed mostly at his government partners from the Iran-allied Hezbollah. Local media said some ministers allied with Hezbollah have threatened to resign if Kordahi goes.

Kordahi was named to the government by a Hezbollah-allied party.

The row has tested Mikati's new government, sworn in after more than a year of deadlock among Lebanese politicians over the composition of the government.

The Cabinet has not been able to convene for weeks, mostly over a separate crisis, triggered when Hezbollah protested the course of the investigation into the Beirut Port explosion last year.

Hezbollah has criticized the judge leading the investigation, saying his probe was politicized and called on the government to ensure he is removed.

In the latest challenge to face the probe, an appeals court has accepted a lawsuit by a former minister - a defendant in the case - asking to remove judge Tarek Bitar. That automatically suspends the investigation until a decision is reached. Similar temporary suspensions have plagued the course of the probe over the past weeks but previous cases to remove the judge have been turned down.

But in a sign that the suspension may be prolonged, the court asked Bitar to hand over the details of the case to enable it to review the lawsuit, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press.

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The supreme leader of the Taliban warned Thursday against the danger of turncoats and infiltrators in the movement that has taken charge of Afghanistan.

Reflecting the seriousness of the threat, the reclusive Haibatullah Akhundzada issued a rare written public statement to urge Taliban commanders to purge their ranks.

In it he says "all those elders of their groups must look inside their ranks and see if there is any unknown entity working against the will of the government, which must be eradicated as soon as possible.

"Whatever wrong happens, the elder will be responsible for the consequences of the actions in this world and in the afterlife," he warned, in a statement tweeted out by multiple Taliban accounts.

The Islamist militant movement seized power in August after overrunning the capital and ousting the collapsing US-backed government, declaring a new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

But after 20-years of guerrilla warfare, the Taliban has been forced to expand their ranks rapidly by recruiting former foes, allied Islamist militants and young madrassa students.

Now that it is the government, the movement faces attacks in its turn from hardline factions like the Islamic group-Khorasan.

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Pope Francis appointed a woman Thursday to head up the governorate of the Vatican, as he forges ahead with a mission to achieve greater gender equality in the Church.

The pontiff appointed Franciscan sister Raffaella Petrini as the new secretary general of the governorate, making her the first woman to ever hold the post.

Petrini, 52, who will be responsible for overseeing administrative operations, including the Vatican museums, post office and police, becomes the highest-ranking woman in the world's smallest state.

The National Catholic Reporter online newspaper said the role is traditionally held by a bishop.

Francis, 84, has repeatedly said he wants women to play a greater role in the Roman Catholic Church.

In January he changed the law to allow them to serve as readers at liturgies, altar servers and distributors of communion -- but stopped short of saying the change could one day open the door to female priests.

In February he broke with Catholic tradition to appoint a woman as an undersecretary of the synod of bishops, the first to hold the post with voting rights in a body that studies major questions of doctrine.

The pope created a commission in 2016 into the history of female deacons in the early year of the Catholic Church, in a move reformers hope could open the door to women taking up the role today.

After their findings were said by the pope to be inconclusive, he set up a fresh commission to look into the issue last year.

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Egypts Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat launched on Thursday a cooperation programme with Switzerland for 2021-2024 that will focus on Egypts transition towards a green economy and adaption to climate change.

The launch took place on the sidelines of the high-level Swiss delegations visit to Egypt that started on Monday and is expected to conclude on Friday.

Swiss State Secretary of Economic Affairs Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch, expressed her pride in the long-term cooperation between Egypt and Switzerland, applauding the results achieved so far and expressing her aspiration to further cooperation in the pursuit of common goals through the new programme.

Director General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Ambassador Patricia Danzi stated that the cooperation with Egypt comes within the priorities of Switzerlands strategy for international cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa 2021-2024, adding that Egypt plays a pivotal role in the region and is Switzerlands key partner in the southern Mediterranean.

Ambassador Paravicini noted that within the framework of the new programme, Switzerland works to support the government of Egypt in its transition towards a green economy and adaption to climate change through providing innovative contributions across sectors of clean energy, green financing, supporting macro reforms in Egypts economy, and achieving development and improving the business environment.

For her part, Al-Mashat expounded that the new cooperation programme with Switzerland comes within the governments unremitting efforts to implement inclusive economic and social reforms with the aim of scaling up the Egyptian economys competitiveness, achieving sustainable development, and leading the region in the transition towards a green economy, as well as in combating climate change.

During its visit to Egypt, the Swiss delegation met with several Egyptian officials and visited a score of projects that Switzerland has helped finance, including in infrastructure and solid waste management sectors.

The delegation is headed by the Director General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Ambassador Patricia Danzi, Head of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairss Economic Cooperation and Development Division Ambassador Dominique Paravicini, the new Ambassador of Switzerland to Egypt, Yvonne Baumann.

The partnership between Egypt and Switzerland extends for more than 40 years, during which the Swiss side has contributed more than 700 million Swiss francs to finance the implementation of more than 200 projects in various sectors in Egypt.

The ongoing development cooperation portfolio between the two countries amounts to $58 million to finance seven projects in industry, urban development, water, housing, waste management, communications and health sectors.

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Hesham El-Askary is a professor and director of Computational and Data Science Graduate Programmes at the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University in the US, with a focus on global climate change, Earth systems, remote sensing, aerosols, natural disasters, and marine habitats.

In 2015, he was the recipient of Chapman Universitys elite Senior Wang-Fradkin Professorship award, and he has published over 100 refereed research publications and book chapters, with studies including An Assessment of the Filling Process of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam [GERD] and its Impact on the Downstream Countries.

The study, to which 10 researchers from different universities worldwide contributed, was published this year in the prestigious US journal Remote Sensing. Negotiations on the GERD and its effects on the downstream countries have been taking place for 10 years. Ethiopia insists that the dam on the Blue Nile is crucial to its economic development and will provide power to its population.

Egypt considers the GERD to be a threat to its share of the Niles water, and Sudan is concerned about the safety of the dam and its impact on its own dams. In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, El-Askary said he had worked on his paper on the GERD out of his conviction of the justice of the Egyptian cause and the balanced stance the country has adopted in the face of Ethiopian intransigence and misguided claims on the right to development and energy generation.

In Egypt, population is a major issue, rendering the need to provide water sources vital, according to El-Askary. Desalination plants and schemes to recycle agricultural wastewater and other wastewater, in addition to underground water and rain, can only provide three per cent of Egypts water needs. For the remaining 97 per cent, Egypt depends on transboundary Nile water coming from Ethiopia, he explained.

Egypt does not object to Ethiopian efforts for development purposes and for improving livelihoods, prosperity, and energy generation, but it is not acceptable to sacrifice the lives of 110 million people under the pretext of the development and prosperity of the Ethiopian nation, El-Askary said.

He was determined to work on the issue when Ethiopia insisted on the first filling of the dam without consulting Egypt and Sudan or even acknowledging their right to be consulted according to the 2015 Declaration of Principles on the GERD.

He and his team started to think something was not right when Ethiopia said it had attained its second-year target for filling the GERD. Based on the satellite images we got, this was entirely untrue. Ethiopia had not completed the construction of the dam and could not have possibly attained its filling target, he said.

The team began to review the data and past and present satellite images, which confirmed that the water rates in the second filling were less than Ethiopia claimed. River-flow data showed that during the GERDs second filling the rain was heavy, yet Ethiopia could not attain its target primarily because construction on the dam was not advancing as scheduled, and this was confirmed by the research team during its study.

Also confirmed was the previous suggestion that there was a defect in the dams structure preventing the acceleration of the storing of water.

El-Askary points out that the GERD is in fact two dams. The first is made of concrete, and its task is to lock up water along 2km of the Niles course. The second is made of a rocky cumulus. By reviewing the dimensions of the two dams, the team became certain that while they are huge structures, they are not suitable to hold the huge quantities of water planned to be stored behind them.

This was proven by the teams work on satellite images, which not only depend on the electromagnetic spectrum from the sun, but also have the ability to send rays that detect what is beneath the surface of the Earth. We sent time-series flashes of rays and obtained images that we studied to identify the Earths crust where the two dams are located and to calculate the differences in the ground, be they negative and positive, and when there is an uplift or subsidence, El-Askary said.

The team also worked on different sectors of the two dams using radar to determine vertical differences with an accuracy of up to 1cm and to monitor ground displacements and subsidence in the concrete dam with a high degree of accuracy. To ensure optimal accuracy, the team referred to satellite images after 2016, thus collecting five-year data to pinpoint the differences that had been occurring in the two structures of the two dams and the Earths crust.

We focused on the sides of the concrete dam, which were fully constructed, and we found subsidence in the eastern and western parts. The bigger problem is that the subsidence in both areas is not balanced  there is a clear slope  and the subsidence did not occur at the same rate, which indicates the lack of homogeneity in the subsidence. The subsidence became crystal clear with the first filling of the GERD and the increase in water levels in the concrete dam, which is a matter of grave concern, El-Askary said.

According to data and satellite images, there is not a drop of water in the cumulus dam. For water to be stored there, some 18.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of water has to be stored behind the concrete dam before reaching the cumulus dam and fully filling the 74 bcm reservoir.

The question was what kind of pressure was causing subsidence in the cumulus dam. After studying the regions geological characteristics, rifts and weak areas were discovered in the Earths crust below the dam, allowing the team to identify subsidence.

If there is subsidence under the cumulus dam that has not yet stored a cubic metre of water, what is it going to be like when it stores anything between 10 bcm and 74 bcm? Will the cumulus dam be able to take all that pressure, El-Askary asked. If Ethiopia were to store 74 bcm of water in the GERD reservoir, Sudan would be removed from the face of the earth if a tsunami hit the Ethiopian highlands or the dam collapsed, he added.

He questioned the validity of studies undertaken by the company building the GERD and the Ethiopian government and wondered how the Ethiopian peoples money was being spent on building this mega-dam without conducting the proper geological studies.

Moreover, the team conducted another study on the hydrogen cycle, especially given the effects of El Nino, or the thermal difference between the oceans and the atmosphere that controls the river flow of the Blue Nile. The study concluded that a dry spell would hit the Ethiopian highlands at some point, when the rain will become scarce, and this will also affect the GERDs storage capacities.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 4 November, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The government has raised the price of natural gas for the industrial sector by 28 per cent effective 1 November, putting manufacturers before yet another challenge to their businesses.

The decision will result in an increase in the final cost of products in which natural gas is used.

The price of natural gas now stands at $5.75 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) for the industries that heavily consume gas like steel, petrochemicals and fertilisers, and $4.75 per MMBtu for other sectors.

The governments decision brings to an end the support it provided to the industrial sector with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic when it had set the price of natural gas at $4.5 per MMBtu in an attempt to increase exports.

Global gas prices have been increasing this year amid the rising demand and a shortage in supply. Gas prices in Europe, including in the UK, reached record highs in the past months, while the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) future contracts have doubled, reaching their highest levels since late 2008.

Ahmed Khalifa, deputy chairman of Evergrow, a leading company in the production of potassium fertilisers in the Middle East, said that the majority of the companys production will see price increases ranging from $6 to $10 due to the decision.

Gas price hikes will also add more chips on the shoulders of companies that want to venture into new foreign markets, Khalifa said, explaining that freight costs have also doubled. This will directly result in a drastic drop in the profits of exporters who had signed contracts with the importing parties before the increase in shipping and gas costs.

Khalifa noted that electricity prices may also increase, which means that production cost will hike further.

Khaled Abul-Makarem, chairman of the Chemical Industries Export Council, said that petrochemicals and fertilisers are among the most affected sectors by natural gas price rises. Gas is a main component in some fertilisers, essentially making up to 80 per cent of the product. The scarcity of natural gas globally will increase demand on Egyptian products, but since exporters had already signed contracts based on cheaper prices, they will either have to cancel the old contracts, and hence lose their customers, or export their products and shoulder the losses, he added.

The margin of losses depends on how much gas is used in the manufacturing of the product, Abul-Makarem said, pointing out that it is a right decision at the wrong time. The increase in the price of natural gas should have happened later to factor it in the exporters contracts.

Some countries have the leverage to compete against Egyptian products, he stated. Petroleum-producing Arab countries can provide natural gas at cheaper prices, therefore their products will cost less than Egyptians, especially in the petrochemicals field. Moroccan fertilisers can also compete with Egypts, he added.

A number of companies in the building materials sector that are listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange reported the effect of natural gas price rise on several industries.

Alexandrias Ezz Dekheila Steel said that natural gas is one of the main elements in the production of iron as a raw material. Its price increase will indeed affect the cost of manufacturing, the company said, adding that it is flexible enough to change the amount of raw materials used in the production process.

The South Valley Cement Company expects the cost of production to rise from between 30 per cent to 50 per cent as a result of the recent increase in gas prices, while Qenas Misr Cement Company said it relies on coal as the main source of energy.

Mohamed Hanafi, head of the Metal Industries Chamber at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, anticipates the heaviest toll will fall on glass, fertilisers, and petrochemicals.

Hanafi stressed that the effect of the increase in the price of natural gas on metal industries will be limited and that factory owners can cope with the increase without raising the price of the final product.

The bigger problem, however, will be the effect of the rising price of natural gas on power stations.

Tamer Abu Bakr, head of the Energy Committee at the federation, said that the industries that heavily use natural gas will raise their prices, but their products will remain cheaper than those imported because gas prices increased abroad at higher rates than in Egypt.

Industries with heavy gas consumption will raise the price of the final product by between 15 per cent and 20 per cent, whereas the sectors that use natural gas only as a source of energy will increase their prices by five per cent or 10 per cent, Abu Bakr noted.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 4 November, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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According to Hossam Awadallah, chair of the House of Representatives Energy Committee, the governments recent decision to raise the price of natural gas for some industries in Egypt is the result of unusual circumstances in the global economy.

In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Awadallah said that the price hike set by the government was suitable for different industries, whether they used gas as a fuel source or as a component in production. It would not lead to a major increase in prices, he said, adding that prices will increase by only one to 1.5 per cent.

The government raised the price of natural gas for iron and steel factories, as well as for cement, fertilisers, petrochemicals, and other industries, by between $0.25 and $1.25 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). Manufacturers of cement, iron and steel, fertilisers, and petrochemicals will be receiving gas at $5.57 per MMBtu, or according to the pricing formula in their contracts. Meanwhile, the price for all other industrial activities is set at $4.75 per MMBtu.

In March 2020, the government slashed the price of natural gas for the industrial sector to $4.5 per MMBtu in an attempt to increase exports and assist the sector in defraying the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the reduction, cement companies paid $6 per MMBtu, while metal and ceramic manufacturers paid $5.5.

At the beginning of this week, the price of natural gas on stock markets around the world dropped from $5.782 per MMBtu to $5.559. Before the decision to raise prices in Egypt, which came into force on 1 November, factories were calling for a reduction in the cost of energy, including natural gas, from $4.5 per MMBtu to between $3.5 and $4 per MMBtu.

Awadallah explained that the price of gas in Egypt is not dependent on the rising costs of imports and transportation, but rather due to the rising costs of extraction and services. Drilling for gas could cost more than $200,000 a day, he pointed out.

Egypt is planning for natural gas production in the country to reach 7.2 billion cubic feet (bcf) per day this year, nine per cent more than the 6.6 bcf indicated last year in a statement by the Ministry of Petroleum. In 2019-20, Egypts natural gas production reached 6.55 bcf daily.

Egypt has seen a boom in gas production in recent years, thanks to the Zohr Field in the Mediterranean Sea and new discoveries north of Alexandria and the Nile Delta. Oil discoveries in Egypt are continuing, and the price of gas is set according to a pricing formula that takes into consideration the ebb and flow of global demand and not how much you own or discover, Awadallah said.

There are plans to invest $1.4 billion in the oil sector in the current fiscal year, according to figures from the Ministry of Planning. Awadallah said that his committee would review around 10 petroleum agreements, whether new ones or those combined with others, to reap the most benefit for the Egyptian economy when partnering with international oil companies.

He admitted that there has been no discussion so far about the changing price of electricity supplied to factories by the ministry of electricity. The House of Representatives is at the beginning of its new session, but Minister of Electricity Mohamed Shaker will be invited soon to discuss the issue, he said.

Awadallah said that the recent price hike would not impact the governments goal of increasing exports and the competitiveness of Egyptian products on global markets due to increases in the prices of energy worldwide. The country wants to reach $100 billion in exports in the next five years. Egyptian exports during the first half of 2021 grew by 22 per cent to reach $17.7 billion compared to $14.55 billion during the same period in 2020.

The higher global price of natural gas will also not impact the countrys strategy of expanding gas services to residential areas or converting cars to natural gas, Awadallah said. This strategy aims to cut foreign-currency expenditures on various petroleum fuels, including gasoline, and replace them with natural gas.

The Ministry of Petroleum plans to extend natural gas services to 1.2 billion residential units, according to Awadallah. He added that the presidential Decent Life initiative aims to extend natural gas services to every corner of the country.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 4 November, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Arab Gulf countries are stepping up the pressure on Lebanon after comments by a Lebanese minister about the Saudi involvement in the Yemen War.

In the latest escalation of disputes between the Gulf states and Lebanon, the UAE called on its citizens to immediately return home this week, updating its travel guidance for UAE nationals not to visit the country.

The move came a day after the UAE had recalled its diplomats from Beirut over a Lebanese ministers remarks on the war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia also condemned the remarks by the Lebanese information minister, who described the war as an aggression by outside countries. Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador in Beirut and asked the Lebanese ambassador in Riyadh to leave. The UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait then followed in Saudi footsteps.

Qatar condemned the Lebanese ministers remarks but did not sever diplomatic relations with Beirut.

The only member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to take a neutral position was Oman. The Omani Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its deep regret over the strained relations between a number of Arab countries and the Republic of Lebanon.

The Sultanate also calls on all countries to exercise restraint and work to avoid escalation and address differences through dialogue and understanding in a manner that preserves the supreme interests of countries and their people and security, stability and cooperation based on mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs, it said.

In an interview recorded in August and aired this week, Lebanese Information Minister George Kordahi said Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen were defending themselves against an external aggression, sparking a diplomatic row between Beirut and the Arab Gulf states.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry said it had moved after the insulting remarks on the Yemen War and the influence of Lebanons Iran-backed Shiite movement Hizbullah in causing them. The moves made by the GCC countries also come against the backdrop of the remarks about Yemen.

Irans influence in both Lebanon and Yemen is a major concern for the GCC, especially now that there is a possibility of rehabilitating Tehran internationally.

Last week, Iranian negotiators had a positive meeting with the European countries that signed the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. The aim is to resume Iranian-US negotiations meant to bring Washington back to the deal, from which former president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.

The move coincided with a lull in the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement that has been the talk of media reports over recent weeks. The Iranian news agency IRNA reported this week that Iranian officials see Saudi Arabias response in bilateral meetings as very slow, and Tehran has asked Riyadh to speed up the resumption of diplomatic relations, though it seems that the Saudis are reluctant.

According to one Gulf analyst who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly, Saudi Arabia considers that the resumption of relations would be a reward for Iran. He said that Iran is still following its aggressive policy of supporting terrorist groups in the region like the Houthi militia in Yemen and Hizbullah in Lebanon Resuming diplomatic relation would be like you give them something and they give nothing back. Unless they show a change of policy, stop meddling in the region, and refrain from supporting these proxies, you would not expect normal relations.

A Western diplomat who has spent time in the Gulf said that the rift with Lebanon was mainly because efforts to combat Iranian influence in the country had not paid off. Gulf aid to Lebanon stopped years ago, and that led to a dire economic crisis that Hizbullah tried to alleviate by drafting in Iranian support. The current financial crisis has stirred popular anger at the Gulf countries in Lebanon more than it has at Hizbullah and its allies, he told the Weekly.

The Gulf countries seem to have abandoned Lebanon years ago, but they have not ignored the Iranian influence in the country through Hizbullah. Gulf aid to Lebanon has dried up, and Gulf investments and deposits in Lebanese banks are no longer coming in. But the countries have maintained relations and some support so as not to leave the country entirely under Iranian influence. As the region is being reshaped, all the players are playing their crucial cards.

In a briefing to journalists in Dubai some years ago, an Emirati minister said that his countrys stance on Lebanon was close to indifference. He said that all attempts to find a credible partner in the country had come to nothing. It was clear that there was frustration in the UAE about the direction of politics in Lebanon and its lack of alignment with Gulf strategy, especially in the conflict with Iran.

The alliance between Lebanese President Michel Aouns party and Hizbullah has clearly sidelined other political parties having close relations with the Gulf countries. Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Al-Hariri and the coalition comprising forces opposing the Aoun-Hizbullah alliance have always been favoured by the Gulf. But recent developments in Lebanon have proved that the coalition is not capable of changing the facts on the ground.

Except for Oman, and to some extent Qatar, the GCC countries are determined to exert maximum pressure on Irans proxy groups in the region. With the resumption of negotiations between Tehran and Washington, probably soon, the escalation in Yemen and Lebanon might increase.

Some expect this to be the climax of tensions before a settlement of some sort is reached. The other scenario is a regional war in which Israel is involved, though the US is keen to avoid this. For the time being, the situation is a wait and see game testing the resolve of all the parties concerned.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 4 November, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Last week the fifth El Gouna Film Festival (GIFF, 14-22 October) wrapped up its activities in the beautiful little town that has it all. Disaster had nearly struck some 36 hours before its opening ceremony when a fire ripped through the main open-air auditorium, but the Sinai governorates intervention was spot-on, and the firefighters managed to put out the fire overnight.

Despite the ongoing pandemic, the festival took the plunge and committed to a large-scale physical event with a focus on presenting new talent to global visitors with a selection of exceptional films. Thanks to the work of its director Intishal Al Timimi, Co-Founder-COO Bushra Rozza and artistic director Amir Ramses  three indefatigable and brilliant figures  over the years GFF has become a premieres filmmakers hub and an important platform for narrative, documentary and short films alike. Disaster struck again when Rozza had a car accident she thankfully survived, but by the end of the round Ramses had tendered his resignation. Since its inception in 2017, the festival has managed to secure the participation of the best and most important Arab productions, as well as hosting the MENA premieres of films first seen at Cannes, Venice or Toronto. This year was especially impressive. The festival honoured Egypts best-known action film star Ahmed Al-Sakka as well as the great Palestinian actor Mohmed Al-Bakry, who was sadly denied entry at the airport. Red carpet shenanigans aside, Darren Aronofskys masterclass was a major highlight. Attended by a huge audience, it drew in celebrities like actresses Youssra, Elham Shahin and Laila Elwy and directors Marianne Khoury and Inas Al-Degheidy.

Due to health concerns, despite my love of cinema, my own viewing had to be restricted to open-air screenings, but I also had the chance to attend the launch of the Noura initiative: Investing in Girls for the Bright Future of Egypt, a project undertaken by the National Council for Women (NCW), the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), the Dutch Embassy and the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development. The reception  the first public discussion of Noura  brought together Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala Al-Said, Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat, MCW President Maya Morsy, NCCM President Sahar Al-Sonbaty, diplomat Nabila Makram and UNFPA Egypt representative Frederika Meijer. They discussed different aspects of the future of Egypts nearly nine million teenage girls, from providing medical care to preventing gender-based violence.

I also happily attended Cinema in Concert, the orchestral event conducted by Ahmed Al-Saidi featuring the scores of such classic films as Amadeas and The Pianist and Platoon. Along with filmmakers from all over the world, many from South Africa, I was invited on Samih Sawiriss boat to go dolphin watching, a cruise that also included a marine life and environmental talk focusing on the Hurghada Red Sea by award-winning marine biologist Angela Zikler. Indeed the fifth round of GFF marks the introduction of El Gouna Green Star Award which focuses on inspirational films that raise awareness on issues related to the environment, ecology or wildlife and sustainability.

As for the films themselves, I personally thought Omar Al-Zoheiris Feathers  which, having won the Cannes Critics Week Grand Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize, caused the biggest controversy here at home  was a beautiful art work despite the intensity with which it presented a social critique involving the plight of women in a conservative, patriarchal environment of great poverty. Some scenes prompted actors and filmmakers to walk out of the screening, and it was later publicly claimed that the film tarnished the image of Egypt abroad. But, as critic Tarek Al-Shinnawi put it, does making art about the poor offend Egypt? The films producer Mohamed Hefzy said he had known the film would be divisive, though in my view it makes such a strong case for the poor womans plight that the NCW should organise its own biggest possible screening. The films potential difficulty is rather that it uses amateur actors and an innovative style. I was pleased to see it win the GFFs Best Arab Narrative Film.

Other winners worth mentioning include Mounira Akes Costa Brava (Lebanon), which won the Green Star; Teemie Nikkis The Blind Man (Finland), which won the Golden Star (Nikki famously refused to see Titanic); Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoops Ostrov Lost Island (Sweden), which won the Cinema for Humanity qward; and the young director Sarah Al-Shazlys Black Home (Egypt), which won the best short film award.

GIFF is committed to championing rising filmmakers and providing them with opportunities through its industry arm the CineGouna Platform, judged by some of the most accomplished filmmakers, film critics and industry professionals, this year including the Egyptian actress Menna Shalaby the first Arab actress on the jury. It is not only artists and enthusiasts who invest in the cinema. Beginning in the 1920s, nationalist entrepreneurs led by Talaat Harb, the founder of the Misr Bank, worked to develop an independent national industry. The foundation of the Egyptian film industry was laid in 1934-35 when Misr Bank established Studio Mirs, through which the industry rapidly grew. By 1948 six further studios had been built and a total of 345 full-length features produced. In the years after World War II, cinema was the most profitable industrial sector after textiles. The reasons why Egypt alone in the Arab world managed to establish a national film industry are various. Egypt has a dynamic multicultural life in which Egyptians always played an important role, and which remained relatively undisturbed by the colonial authorities. Particularly after the 1919 revolution, native Egyptians developed a stronger interest in the medium. At the same time, Studio Misr sent young Egyptians on scholarships to Europe; directors Ahmed Badrakhan and Niyazi Mustafa were among that programmes beneficiaries.

Reviving this kind of practice, GFF is on a mission to support emerging talents and it has helped shape Egypts modern film industry. Enabling and giving voice to young and exceptional filmmakers, as Rozza said, will always be more important than the red carpet. As GFF executive director Amal Al-Masry says, by encouraging cultural activity, creating world-class international events, the Sawiris brothers have been able to transform tragedy into triumph.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 4 November, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first visit to Egypt by emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil.

The occasion was historic, not only because it represented the first trip by a Brazilian head of state to the Middle East, but also because it provided Brazilians with a first-hand perception of Egypt in the 19th century, raising widespread interest in its vast cultural heritage.

In fact, Pedro II was the first head of state from the Americas to explore Egypt. The emperor developed a life-long passion for Egypt and the Arab world, which led him to undertake a second voyage to the region in 1876. He then cruised the Nile, taking notes in his diary as he experienced the many treasures and landscapes all the way south to modern-day Sudan.

Pedro II ruled Brazil for nearly half a century, from 1840 to 1889. As his biographer, J M Carvalho states: "Given the long duration of his government and the transformations which took place in Brazil during his rule, no other head of state has left a stronger imprint on Brazilian History."

The emperor helped to consolidate the integrity of the vast Brazilian territory, abolished slavery, and established the basis for a representative system of government, with regular elections and freedom of the press.

A man of culture, familiar with several languages including an advanced understanding of Arabic, Pedro II was particularly interested in photography and its aesthetic possibilities. He collected more than 20,000 photographs on various topics. Indeed, his was considered the largest collection of photographs owned by a 19th-century ruler. When in Egypt, he acquired hundreds of images and became acquainted with some of the best photographers of the time. Noteworthy is the iconic picture of the emperor and his wife by the Sphinx, taken by Pascal Sebah.

With the advent of the republic in 1889, Pedro II went into exile in Europe and donated his private collection to the Brazilian National Library, with the request that it be named after empress Thereza Christina Maria. The collection is now preserved at the Fundacao Biblioteca Nacional (FBN) in Rio de Janeiro.

The exhibition "Back to Egypt: A Brazilian Collection of Photographs" is running from 3 to 30 November at the Gezira Art Center in Zamalek. It includes more than 90 high-resolution copies of these photographs, as well as a sample of the diary entries by the emperor during his travels. It is a partnership between the Embassy of Brazil and the Ministry of Culture of Egypt, cooperating to promote art and culture.

I am pleased and honoured to present this exhibition to the Egyptian public. It is a reminder of how Egypt has fascinated every corner of the world throughout different periods of its unique history. It is also an incentive for Brazilians and Egyptians to continue joining forces in the promotion of culture, for the benefit not only of our societies but also of a wider international audience.

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A resident of Kunming, in southwest China's Yunnan Province, observes black-headed gulls flying into the city on Nov. 3, 2021. [Photo: CNSPHOTO]

A crowd welcomes the arrival of black-headed gulls on Nov. 3, 2021, in Kunming, the provincial capital of southwest China's Yunnan. [Photo: CNSPHOTO]

A crowd welcomes the arrival of black-headed gulls on Nov. 3, 2021, in Kunming, the provincial capital of southwest China's Yunnan. [Photo: CNSPHOTO]
In this Aug. 25, 2020, file photo, Kyle Rittenhouse carries a weapon as he walks along Sheridan Road in Kenosha, Wis., during a night of unrest following the weekend police shooting of Jacob Blake. [File photo: Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via AP]

Wendy Rittenhouse, left, talks to her son Kyle Rittenhouse, before the start of his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. [Photo: Mark Hertzberg/Pool Photo via AP]

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger points to a video screen as he questions Koerri Washington during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. [Photo: Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool]

The jury at Kyle Rittenhouse's murder trial over a string of shootings on the streets of Kenosha watched one of the central pieces of video evidence Wednesday  footage of a man chasing Rittenhouse and throwing a plastic bag at him just before the man was gunned down.

Someone is heard yelling F--- you!, followed by the sounds of the four shots Rittenhouse fired, killing Joseph Rosenbaum, though the shooting itself is not clearly seen on camera. Rosenbaum was the first of three men Rittenhouse shot that night, two of them fatally.

Oh, he shot him! He shot him, man. He shot him. He shot him, man. He laid him out," the person making the video can be heard saying.

Footage shown to the jury also depicted Rosenbaum lying on the ground as frantic bystanders surrounded him to help. He had a wound to his head, and a bystander placed a shirt on it to apply pressure.

The scenes were part of a wealth of video played in court that captured the chaos and the repeated sound of gunfire on the night the 17-year-old aspiring police officer fired an assault-style rifle during a tumultuous demonstration against police brutality in the summer of 2020.

In the courtroom, Rittenhouse  seated in the jurors' line of sight  kept his eyes fixed on a desktop screen and showed no emotion as video depicted him walking down a street with his rifle and shooting at protesters, people scattering and screaming.

Many of the videos played in court were found by police on social media sites, where lots of footage was streamed live or promptly posted after the bloodshed, and many of the scenes were familiar to those following the case.

Rittenhouse, now 18, could get life in prison if convicted in the politically polarizing case that has stirred furious debate over self-defense, vigilantism, the right to bear arms, and the racial unrest that erupted around the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other cases like it.

The young man traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois after violent protests broke out over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse said he went there to protect property after two nights in which rioters set fires and ransacked businesses.

Prosecutors have portrayed him as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer argued that he acted in self-defense after Rosenbaum tried to grab his gun and others in the crowd kicked him in the face and hit him in the head with a skateboard.

A Kenosha detective who took the stand detailed injuries Rittenhouse suffered that night, all seemingly minor: a half-inch scratch above his eyebrow, a small cut inside his lower lip, a 2-inch scratch below his collarbone, a 2-inch scratch on his forearm, a scratch on his back and two bumps the size of pennies on his head.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 2, 2021 - 22:37 | All, Coronavirus, Japan

Japan is planning to shorten the COVID-19 quarantine period for vaccinated businesspeople from overseas upon their arrival in the country to three days, possibly from next week, government officials said Tuesday.

The eased quarantine rules will apply to short-term business travelers upon their entry into or return to the country amid a continued fall in coronavirus infections nationwide, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Currently, travelers inoculated with approved vaccines are required to undergo a 10-day quarantine period upon entering the country, while a 14-day quarantine period applies to other arrivals.

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi has said the government will "review in stages" the nation's virus-related entry restrictions, as the county's vaccine rollout has progressed steadily and business circles have requested a relaxation of border controls to help the tourism sector.

Those inoculated with the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. or AstraZeneca Plc, which have been approved by the government, will be eligible for the shorter quarantine period.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a press conference Tuesday that the government will consider whether to extend eligibility for the shorter quarantine period to people who have received other vaccines.

"We will take account of accumulated knowledge concerning the effectiveness of vaccines and border control steps in other nations," Matsuno said.

The entry of foreign students and technical trainees is also expected to resume. Schools and firms planning to accept them will be required to report in advance their planned movements in Japan and how they will be supervised to prevent the virus from spreading, the sources said.

Following an explosive virus resurgence and the spread of highly contagious variants, the government in January suspended the entry of foreigners including businesspeople in principle, only accepting individuals under "special circumstances," such as on humanitarian grounds or in the public interest.
KYODO NEWS - Nov 4, 2021 - 22:21 | World, All

President Tsai Ing-wen held talks Thursday with a European Parliament delegation making a historic first visit to Taiwan, much to the consternation of China which claims the democratic, self-ruled island as part of its territory.

With a purported disinformation campaign by China aimed at polarizing Taiwanese society in mind, Tsai stressed the need for a "democratic alliance against disinformation," such as by stepping up cooperation with Europe.

Raphael Glucksmann, a French member of the parliament who heads the delegation, called for increased cooperation at "the most senior levels" between the European Union and what he called a "key like-minded partner and democratic ally."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Thursday that China "strongly deplores and firmly opposes" the visit of the delegation.

"The one-China principle is the political foundation for the establishment of China-EU diplomatic relations and development of ties," Wang said, alluding the principle that the mainland and Taiwan are both part of a single nation.

"No official interaction with the Taiwan authorities in any form is an inherent requirement of the one-China principle," he added.

Wang urged the European side "to redress its mistake and avoid sending wrong signals to 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces, lest it should cause a serious impact on China-Europe relations."

The EU delegation's visit comes at a time when the Tsai government is seeking to strengthen ties with Europe against the backdrop of intensifying pressure for unification from Beijing, which considers Taiwan to be a renegade province.

In her opening remarks, which were streamed online, Tsai said she understood that the delegation had come to learn more about how Taiwan handles disinformation.

"Taiwan is also willing to share its experience in combating disinformation with our European friends. This will deepen our partnership and help safeguard the free and democratic way of life we enjoy," she added.

Glucksmann, for his part, said, "We came here with a very simple, very clear message. You are not alone. Europe is standing with you."

Claiming that the EU is facing large-scale actions "orchestrated by authoritarian regimes" that are aimed at deepening polarization and weakening democracies, he added that the delegation hopes to learn from Taiwan about its "capacity to fight interference."

China is said to be directing sustained cyberattacks and disinformation efforts against Taiwan. Taiwan's government says the island faces 30 million cyberattacks each month.

Among other issues that were likely taken up at the talks were the response to the coronavirus pandemic and strengthening economic ties between the EU and Taiwan, including over semiconductors.

Glucksmann has been the subject of retaliatory sanctions by China due to his criticism of alleged human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the far-western Xinjiang region.

The European Parliament in October adopted with an overwhelming majority a report recommending that EU-Taiwan relations be strengthened.

Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu, visited Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Belgium during the same month.

The 13-member delegation, including seven EU parliamentarians, arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday for a three-day visit. The group met with Premier Su Tseng-chang later that day.

Related coverage:

European Parliament delegation arrives in Taiwan amid China tension

U.S. envoy says Washington committed to Taiwan's self-defense

Taiwan leader confirms presence of U.S. troops on island: CNN
New Delhi:

Unidentified gunmen shot at two Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) workers on Wednesday in Jammu and Kashmiras Shopian. The injured were abducted from a chemist shop in Zanapora area of Shopian. The injured were identified as Irfan Ahmad Lone, 28, son of Abdul Hameed Lone of Zainapora and Muzafar Ahmad Bhat, 30, son of Ghulam Mohmmad Bhat of Zainapora. Police have registered a case and started investigation.



Taking to micro blogging website Twitter, PDP president and former Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti wrote, "Condemn the dastardly attack on PDP workers in Shopian. My heart goes out to these two bravehearts and I pray for their speedy recover. Only barbarians would kill innocents & cause bloodshed during the holy month of Ramzan. Their warped version of Islam has no place in our society (sic)," Mehbooba tweeted.

Condemn the dastardly attack on PDP workers in Shopian. My heart goes out to these two bravehearts & I pray for their speedy recover. Only barbarians would kill innocents & cause bloodshed during the holy month of Ramzan. Their warped version of Islam has no place in our society. a Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) May 8, 2019

Earlier, three terrorists were killed inA south Kashmir's Shopian district. Security forces had launched a cordon and search operation in Adkhara area of Imam Sahib of Shopian district this morning following information about the presence of militants.

The Indian Army has gunned down 41 terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir since Pulwama attack which claimed lives of 40 CRPF personnel, said Indian Army Lieutenant General KJS Dhillon on Wednesday. Out of those killed, 25 terrorists belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed and 13 of them were Pakistanis.A A





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Shanghai:

The sound of doctors boring through his skull to feed electrodes deep into his brain made Yan tremble.

The drill was like bzzzzzzz, he later recalled. The moment of drilling is the most terrible. Yan is a methamphetamine addict. The hope is that technology will extinguish his addiction quite literally, with the flip of a switch.

The treatment deep brain stimulation has long been used for movement disorders like Parkinsons. Now, the first clinical trial of DBS for methamphetamine addiction is being conducted at Shanghais Ruijin Hospital, along with trials for opioid addicts. Yan is the studys first patient; for fear of losing his job, he asked that only his surname be published.

Western attempts to push forward with human trials of deep brain stimulation for drug addiction have foundered, even as China has emerged as a hub for this kind of research.

But the vast suffering wrought by the US opioid epidemic may be changing the risk-reward calculus for doctors and regulators. Now, the experimental surgery Yan underwent is coming to America. In February, the US Food and Drug Administration greenlighted a clinical trial in West Virginia of DBS for opioid addicts.

Until now, complex ethical, social and scientific questions made it hard to push forward with such experiments in the United States, where the devices can cost $100,000 to implant. Scientists in Europe have struggled to recruit patients for their DBS addiction studies.

Globally, there are eight registered DBS clinical trials for drug addiction, according to a U.S. National Institutes of Health database. Six are in China.

China has a long, troubled history of using brain surgery to treat addiction. Doctors destroyed small clumps of tissue in the brains of heroin addicts, garnering huge profits and leaving behind a trail of patients with mood disorders, lost memories and altered sex drives.

In 2004, Chinas Ministry of Health ordered a halt to the practice at most hospitals. Nine years later, a military hospital in Xian reported that roughly half of 1,167 addicts who had their brains lesioned stayed off drugs for at least five years.

DBS builds on that history. The surgery involves implanting a device that acts as a kind of pacemaker for the brain, electrically stimulating targeted areas. Instead of irreversibly killing brain cells, the devices allow interventions that are in theory reversible. The technology has opened a fresh field of human experimentation globally.

For many other psychiatric disorders, for example, anorexia schizophrenia, OCD, theres no way to use the animal to be like a model, said Dr. Sun Bomin, director of the functional neurosurgery center at Ruijin Hospital. For these kinds of special psychiatric disorders we have to use human patients. Some believe such human experiments on drug addicts should not be allowed.

Critics argue that they are premature, and will not address the complex biological, social and psychological factors that drive addiction. Scientists dont fully understand how DBS works and there is still debate about where electrodes should be placed to treat addiction.

There is also skepticism in the global scientific community about the general quality and ethical rigor of clinical trials done in China.

It would be fantastic if there were something where we could flip a switch, but its probably fanciful at this stage, said Adrian Carter, who heads the neuroscience and society group at Monash University in Melbourne. Theres a lot of risks that go with promoting that idea.

Meanwhile, the body count from addiction is rising. More than 500,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the decade ending in 2017, adding urgency to the search for new, more effective treatments.

But research for DBS as an addiction treatment funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health has focused on animals, not people. And at least two U.S. laboratories dropped clinical trials of DBS for treating alcoholism over concerns about study design and preliminary results that didnt seem to justify the risks, investigators who led the studies told The Associated Press.

The lack of scientific clarity, the important but strict regulatory regime, along with the high cost and risk of surgery make clinical trials of DBS for addiction in the U.S. difficult at the present time, said Dr. Emad Eskandar, chairman of neurological surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Chinas studies have offered mixed results. Sun and his colleagues have published one case study, describing a heroin addict who fatally overdosed after getting DBS. But a separate pilot study published in January by doctors at a military hospital in Xian showed that five of eight heroin addicts stayed off drugs for two years after DBS surgery.

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New Delhi:

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday clarified on her 'salp of democracy' remark, saying that she never sais she will slap the prime minister, and her remark meant "people's mandate".

"He (Modi) is saying that I have said I will slap him. Arrey that's the slap of democracy. Try to understand the language," Banerjee said, while speaking at a rally at Simulia in Purulia district.

"Why should I be slapping you (the PM). I am not that kind of a person. What I understand is democracy. Slap of democracy means that the mandate people will give by casting their votes," the Trinamool Congress chief said.

Mamata's statement came after PM Narendra Modi retorted to her "slap of democracy" remark saying that her slap would be a blessing for him as he considers her his sister.

On Tuesday, the West Bengal CM had said that PM Modi should get a "tight slap of democracy" and asserted that he will not get a second term in office as he failed to bring in 'acche din' that he had promised in 2014.

The prime minister said "I am told Didi has said she wants to slap me. I call you Didi, I respect you. Your slap will be a blessing for me."

He also said Mamata is insulting the Constitution by saying that she is not ready to accept him as the prime minister of the country.

Banerjee had said in a rally that she does not accept Narendra Modi as the prime minister of the country describing him as the "expiry PM" and that she will talk to the new prime minister after the election results.

"She did not take calls from me during the cyclone. The Central government wanted to sit with officers of the state to discuss the situation, but Didi did not allow that too," Modi said.

"She is not interested in the betterment of the state, but in that of her family, nephew and tolabaj (extortionists) of her party," the PM said.


New Delhi:

Trinamool Congress leader and popular Bengali actress Nusrat Jahan had a lucky escape on Wednesday when a stage collapsed after people stormed there to get a selfie with her during a rally of the ruling celebrity candidate in Jhargram in West Bengal. According to NDTV, Jahan had visited the area to campaign for Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha elections candidate Birbaha Soren.

No one got injured in the incident since the stage was not very high. In a video, Jahan, 29, is seen talking to the area lawmaker and several people flock around her, taking selfies, the NDTV report added. As soon as the stage crashed, Jahan took the mic and told the gathering "everyone's fine, no one is hurt".

Nusrat was named as the TMC candidate from the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat in North 24 Parganas district along with fellow actress Mimi Chakraborty, who has been fielded by the party from the Jadavpur constituency.

However, the announcement of their names was followed by a barrage of distasteful comments on social media. Memes, jokes - both crude and witty - comments and the like have flooded Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
New Delhi:

Congress president Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law Robert Vadra on Wednesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to focus on glaring issues such as poverty, unemployment and the empowerment of women instead of talking about him. He also wondered "what did he want to achieve by invoking my name, again and again".

Vadra took to Facebook and wrote a post to the Prime Minister after Modi referred to alleged corruption in land deals while addressing a rally in Haryana's Kurukshetra.

"This chowkidar has brought the corrupt who looted farmers' land in Delhi and Haryana to the gates of jails. Those who behaved as if they were kings have been made to run around the ED and the courts. With your blessings, justice will be done to the farmers and the corrupt will be put behind bars," the prime minister said at the rally, without naming anyone.

Vadra said he "suffered harassment" at the hands of the Modi government in the last five years and that the prime minister was insulting the judiciary with his remarks that he will send him to jail.

"Please stop these personal attacks on me. By passing such remarks, you insult our honourable judicial system. I have full faith in the Indian judiciary and the truth shall prevail. God save the country," Vadra tweeted.

Vadra  in the Facebook post said, "I am shocked to hear my name again in your rally. There are glaring issues such as poverty, joblessness, women empowerment, etc which are staring right at you, but you chose to talk about me, out of everything else."

"I have been at the receiving end for the last 5 years of complete harassment, by your government. Relentless notices from various agencies, courts and tax departments, to simply mentally pressurise me. 11 times being summoned to depose each of 8 to 11 hours with the Enforcement Directorate, in different parts of the country, Court depositions, and related orders, etc. BUT NOT ONE allegation has been proven (sic)," he said.

"Simply the nation knows my name is repeatedly used in elections to digress from the failures of your government and their own misdeeds," Vadra alleged.
New Delhi:

Sacked IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt's wife, who had contested against the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2012 Assembly elections on a Congress ticket, Wednesday approached the high court, seeking police protection.

Shweta Bhatt sought the Gujarat HC's direction to the respondents (the government) to provide her and her family with "armed police protection at the cost of the state", claiming there was a threat to her life.

Sanjiv Bhatt, is currently in judicial custody in a case of allegedly planting drugs to frame a person.

Justice Sonia Gokani, acting on her petition, issued notices to the Gujarat director general of police and the Ahmedabad Police commissioner and posted the matter for next hearing on May 10.

Security provided to Sanjiv Bhatt by the state government was withdrawn in July 2018.

Two months later on September 5, 2018, he was arrested in connection with the 1996 case of allegedly planting drugs to frame a person.

Sanjiv Bhatt had approached the Supreme Court after his security cover was withdrawn. The apex court, in turn, had directed him to approach the high court.

After his arrest, the "threat perception" against her and her family members has increased, she said in her petition.

Shweta Bhatt said her contesting the Assembly election against Modi had "enraged many".

She said certain incidents after the arrest of her husband has caused her to worry about the safety and security of herself and her family members.

Her car had met with an accident when a truck hit it in Ahmedabad. Unidentified persons were seen loitering around her house, and she was also followed by unknown people, she claimed in her petition.

Even Gujarat Police personnel follow her in plainclothes, making it hard for her to distinguish between police and unidentified persons, she claimed.

Shweta Bhatt said that a part of their house was demolished by the civic body recently and it has become vulnerable.

The demolished portion was deemed illegal by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

Sanjiv Bhatt was suspended in 2011 on charges of remaining absent from duty without permission and misuse of official vehicle.

The Gujarat cadre IPS officer was eventually sacked by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in August 2015.

He had crossed swords with Modi, the then chief minister, on several occasions over the 2002 post-Godhra riots.

Shweta Bhatt had unsuccessfully contested against Modi from the Maninagar Assembly constituency here in 2012.

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New Delhi:

The owner of a semi-built plot, where two workers died while cleaning a septic tank, was arrested for alleged negligence, police said on Wednesday. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met the family members of the victims in the evening and promised a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the kin of the deceased.

The BJP accused the Aam Aadmi Party dispensation of negligence, while the National Human Rights Commission sought a report from the Delhi government, the police and chief secretary.

Earlier on Tuesday, two contractual workers died and three others were hospitalised after apparently inhaling toxic gas when they entered a septic tank of the plot at Bhagya Vihar area of Prem Nagar in Rohini.

"Gulam Mustafa, the owner of the semi-built plot, has been arrested late on Tuesday night," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) S D Mishra said.

The plot has a 10-foot-deep septic tank, in which Mustafa and a mason named Rambir allegedly asked two labourers to go inside for cleaning on Tuesday. The labourers refused to clean the tank since they were not trained, but they were forced to enter after being blackmailed with not getting paid three days of wages, the police had said.

"The chief minister met us on Wednesday at around 6 pm and assured that the family of the deceased persons would get Rs 10 lakh and jobs," said Jaya Vardha, elder sister of one of the deceased.

Vardha added Kejriwal told them that the injured persons would get free treatment and the government would bear there expenses.

The NHRC issued notices to the chief secretary, Delhi government and the police commissioner, asking for a detailed report within six weeks.

The commission has also asked the Delhi government to inform whether it had issued any guidelines prohibiting unauthorised construction and cleaning of septic tanks and, if so, why its strict compliance was not being ensured. It has directed the Delhi government to chalk out appropriate instructions to deal with the issue and inform.

"The death of two workers due to inhaling poisonous gas during the cleaning of sewer in Prem Nagar area of Outer Delhi was due to the negligence of the Delhi government," Vijender Gupta, the leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, said at a press conference.

Gupta said that the AAP was "insensitive" to the plight of the sanitation workers, saying the latest incident proved the allegation.

"These workers are from poor families, but their tragic death due to poisonous gas has again made it clear that the Delhi government is not serious about saving lives of manual scavengers from these accidents, their rehabilitation and improving the condition of working," he added.

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Washington:

Levels of harmful airborne pollutants in nail salons are similar to that of an oil refinery or an auto garage, putting employees at increased risk of developing cancers, respiratory difficulties and skin irritation, a study warns. The research, which monitored volatile organic compound (VOC) levels in six nail salons, is among the first to illustrate the serious health risks prevalent in the industry.

According to a team from the University of Colorado Boulder in the US, nail salon employees face increased health risks due to high levels of indoor airborne pollutants such as formaldehyde and benzene. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that long-term exposure to carcinogenic compounds significantly raises the chances of developing cancers such as leukemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"The study provides some of the first hard evidence that these environments are dangerous for workers and that better policies need to be enacted to protect them," said Lupita Montoya, lead author of the research. Montoya's interest in researching airborne hazards in nail salons dates back nearly a decade. She recalls visiting a salon years ago and being struck by the pungent smell of open chemicals used in gel and acrylic nail applications.

The air quality could not be very good in such a confined space with poor ventilation, she suspected, drawing on her background as a mechanical engineer. However, while many of the VOCs from nail products had already been identified, no scientific studies had looked at the long-term health impacts for workers exposed to them day in and day out.

Montoya tried to get field tests started, but securing a location proved difficult. Nail salons in the US are small businesses, employing a predominantly minority workforce and lacking the resources to adequately address worker health and safety. Fearing consequences, many declined to participate, Montoya said.

In 2017, four undergraduate students working with Montoya used personal connections to help secure access to six salons for a monitoring test over the course of 18 months. The salons agreed to participate on the condition of anonymity. The researchers set up equipment to monitor known VOCs such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX, collectively) along with formaldehyde.

While formaldehyde levels were similar to those measured in other settings, the study turned up higher-than-expected concentrations of harmful benzene, which has been linked to leukemia, in all six salons.

The team asked employees to fill out questionnaires about employment practices, safety practices and health symptoms. Technicians reported working an average of 52.5 hours per week, with some ranging as high as 80 hours per week.

Seventy per cent of workers reported experiencing at least one adverse symptom, with common responses including headaches, skin irritation and eye irritation. The study found that for workers in some salons, lifetime cancer risk was up to 100 times higher than baseline EPA-issued levels.

The researchers stressed that salon customers, however, face significantly fewer risks. The observed levels of air pollution observed are unlikely to have any negative health effects on all but the most vulnerable, such as those who are pregnant or have serious asthma.

The team is also working on ways to reduce VOC concentrations passively using low-cost, absorbent materials like heat-treated coal or wood with strong affinity for organic molecules like BTEX compounds.

These activated carbon materials can remove harmful VOCs through passive diffusion. Researchers used activated carbon-based materials to create gallery-worthy artwork. The pieces could hang on the wall in a nail salon, pleasing to the eye while quietly cleaning the air. However, this method takes a long time.

Air jets that direct polluted air toward the absorbent material with greater flow provide far more efficient removal. In an ideal real-world setting, small jets would sit at the end of each table, fanning the chemical fumes directly toward the charcoal artwork, efficiently eliminating lingering VOCs.
New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday warned the Amrapali Group that they can be thrown out from their 15 prime residential properties and may transfer "lock, stock and barrel" the ownership rights to Noida and Greater Noida Authorities. Observing that it would protect the rights of thousands of home buyers and push the Amrapali Group out of the projects, the court said the Noida and Greater Noida authorities can be asked to engage any builder or developer to finish the stalled projects and sell the properties under their supervision.

The court was hearing a batch of pleas of 42,000 home buyers against the Amrapali Group which has defaulted in giving the possession of their flats.

"We see that entire Amrapali Group has failed to discharge its duties towards home buyers, authorities (Noida and Greater Noida) and banks. You (Amrapali Group) have neither completed any projects nor invested any money in the projects. We think, you are the one who should be thrown out of these properties. We will vest the rights of these properties with the Noida and Greater Noida," said a bench of justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit.

"We may throw you out from these properties and transfer its lock, stock and barrel to Noida and Greater Noida. The loans which have been secured by Amrapali Group by mortgaging the lands to the banks can be collected by the financial institutions from the directors of the company or the corporate guarantors."

The court further said it will ensure that banks do not enter the premises of these properties and home buyers get the first charge on the properties.

It said that Amrapali Group by its own admission took Rs 11,652 crore from home buyers and invested only Rs 10,630 crore from it for construction of the residential projects.

The court also questioned how Amrapali Group could mortgage the entire projects and secure loan worth thousands of crores of rupees from banks when it was only an agent to develop the property.

It asked the counsel for Noida and Greater Noida authorities to compile all necessary data as how much money has been paid by Amrapali Group till now, what is the principal lease amount and interest component project wise and how much was the land given to the group.

Senior advocate Gaurav Bhatia, appearing for Amrapali, said an amount of Rs 11,652 crore were collected from the home buyers and that Rs 10,630 crore was used for construction of various projects besides paying Rs 998 crore to the authorities as lease amount.

The bench asked Bhatia to explain the income taxes paid by a Group company--Stunning Construction Pvt Ltd-- of CMD Anil Kumar Sharma and other directors, saying that tax liability of directors cannot be cleared from company's fund.

Bhatia claimed that Sharma has returned Rs 5.5 crore which was paid for his income tax from the accounts of Stunning Construction while the other director Shiva Priya has said that Rs 4.3 crore tax liability paid was later adjusted towards his salary dues from the Amrapali Group.

"You file an affidavit and give us each and every detail when was your income tax paid for which assessment year and when was that money paid back. Show us the transaction. Give all details of the salary or emoluments given to the directors of the company. If any facts and figures are wrong, we will severely haul them up," the bench warned.

It posted the matter for further hearing on May 10.

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North Korea's Ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, has called for the dismantlement of the US-led UN Command (UNC) on the Korean Peninsula, claiming that it only serves Washington's political and military interests.

According to reports, the envoy made the remarks at the UN General Assembly's 76th Session's fourth committee meeting in New York on October 27, accusing the US of using the command for the "occupation" of South Korea and exerting influence in the region.

"My delegation believes that immediate action should be taken to disband the UNC in South Korea, which is abusing the UN's name," he said. The UNC was established in 1950 under a UN mandate in response to North Korea's military provocations, and it has served as the enforcer of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1950-53.

Pyongyang has remained unresponsive to Washington's overtures for dialogue, demanding that the US first withdraw what it calls its "hostile policy" against North Korea. Denuclearization talks have been stalled since the February 2019 Hanoi summit between the US and North Korea failed to produce a deal.

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In the first three months of the current fiscal year, silver imports in Nepal stood around 126,000 kilograms. In the same period, the Department of Customs says roughly 7,200 kilograms were exported out of the country in the shape of dishes, decorative items and jewelry.

There are only a few people who sell silver in Nepal. They say that, on average, they sell around 200 kg silver a day. Thanks to Covid-19, that number is decreasing every day, says the Federation of Nepal Gold And Silver Dealers Association.

If you take that into consideration, only 18,000 kg should have been consumed in Nepal in the past three months along with the extra 7,200 that was exported. However, what happened to the remaining 101,000 kg silver is a question plaguing everyone.

Silver worth Rs 11.99 billion entered Nepal in the past three months, which is a lot compared to the import in the same period last year (silver worth Rs 495 million). This is 27 times more than what Nepal imported last year as Nepal is importing around 1,400 kg silver every day.

If you do that maths, import, export and consumption of silver in Nepal do not match. But, in the fiscal year 2020/21 also, silver worth Rs 9.88 billion was imported whereas the metal worth Rs 225 million was exported, creating a massive discrepancy.

The Federation says even if they assume that 200 kg silver was consumed every day, it still does not account for around 46,500 kg silver.

Where did the silver go? Its a question plaguing everyone, says the federations general secretary Dharma Sundar Bajracharya.

This discrepancy has been almost every year. In the fiscal year 2019/20, Nepal imported 144,000 kg silver while it exported only 3,668 kg of it. A similar case can be seen almost every year, which is puzzling both government officials and the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association.

They think the answer is that Nepal has turned into a hub for silver smuggling, controlling which requires a lot of effort.

Where does it go?

File: Silver ornaments confiscated by police from alleged smugglers

The Department of Customs only allows decorative items made from silver to be exported as it has banned the export of raw silver altogether. With the books not balancing and silver not being consumed in Nepal, experts believe it is surely a case of silver smuggling.

The Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association and Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal say they believe that silver is being embezzled in high quantity. The Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association says it has informed the Finance Ministry and the central bank about the problem of silver smuggling six months ago.

Silver imports going up makes little to no sense at a time when businesses have suffered so much. The handicraft market is down due to Covid-19 as are sales of ornaments. The government should know who is hoarding or embezzling silvers, but it seems the Finance Ministry and the Nepal Rastra Bank 9the central bank) are accomplices in this, says an official at the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association.

The Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal says even the banks, who give out letters of credit to buy silver, are at fault along with the central bank and the Finance Ministry.

Weve written to the Rastra Bank about the increase in the import of silver. But, they didnt respond. The more time the government wastes, the worse this situation will get, says Manik Ratna Shaka, the president of the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association.

Embezzlement possible: Finance Ministry

The government seems to have accepted that there is something going behind the scene when it comes to the silver trade in Nepal. On October 5, the government amended the customs on silver. After the amendment, the price of silver became more expensive than in India.

We had to do that as we saw that the import was more than the demand. We want to control that, says Ritesh Shakya, the spokesperson of the Finance Ministry.

After the decision, customs of 10 gm silver has increased by Rs 22.

The central bank says it realised irregularities in the silver trade in the first month of the current fiscal year. An official at the bank says it has already informed the Finance Ministry about possible silver smuggling and embezzlement after the officials realised that too much silver was being imported.

The amount of silver brought into the country made no sense. We dont know since when this has been going on because anyone could import it. We had to control it at one point, says a customs officer.

The Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association and Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal are the only two organisations in Nepal that can trade silver in high quantity. But, anyone can import a small amount.

We need to make sure that silver trade is made transparent because whats going on right now is wrong, says Bajracharya from the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association.

Silver smuggling across the border

File: A man has been nabbed on the Nepal-India border on the charge of silver smuggling.

Silver smuggling has been taking place along the border for a few years now. On October 27, Nepal Police caught Dharmendra Sharma from Rutuwamai municipality in Morang with 1.1 kg silver. A month earlier, police also caught Bidya Nanda Sah Sonar from Gaur municipality in Rautahat with 40 kg silver worth nearly Rs 4 million. Police also caught Sonu Kumar Sonar in Parsa with silver ornaments worth Rs 179,000 in August.

Indian police have also been arresting people who have been trying to smuggle silver in and out of the country. On October 16, Indian Sashastrra Seema Bal (SSB) personnel caught a Nepali national from Bajhang who had silver utensils worth in excess of Rs 400,000 from a border point in far-west Nepal.

Organised silver smuggling has also been reported in recent times. On October 6, Indias Directorate of Revenue Intelligence confiscated around 260 kg silver worth Rs 17 million. It believes the silver was brought into India via Nepal.

Investigations needed

In Birgunj, a city in southern Nepal near the Indian border, the only silver that one will find are ornaments and utensils as silver dealers do not produce anything there. Utensils are brought in from Kathmandu while ornaments are brought from Janakpur. Those who are doing this legally have not been facing any problems.

As silver is a decorative item, the private sector is free to import silver by fulfilling due process from a bank. The silver can be sold to any silver firm.

Niraj Sarraf, a former president of the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association in Parsa, says the government should not start looking into who brought how much silver and how it was used.

No one can import silver without the help of banks so the government should ask the banks who are the ones who are bringing so much silver and where it is being used. Was it given to a firm or a person these things need to be checked, says Sarraf. We need to investigate why a person who cant even trade silver worth Rs 1 million is bringing in silver worth Rs 2 million. The government has to investigate.

Some silver traders in Birgunj say that banks, distributors, firms and importers are involved in silver smuggling and illicit trade in Nepal.

Silver distributors and importers are setting up firms in the name of their families and selling silver as their please. They dont have a shop. Where does the silver go? My bet is its traded illegally to India, says an official from Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association Parsa.

Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers Association Parsas vice president Shiva Sarraf says a quota needs to be set on the amount of silver that can be imported.

Economist Achyut Wagle says that as these silver are traded illegally, it will have a detrimental affect on Nepals foreign exchange reserve.

Precious metals are like money. The illicit trade will encourage informal economy, increase the number of people not paying taxes and also encourage crime oriented economy, says Wagle who says people might be gathering silver for money laundering purposes.
Kathmandu, November 3

The main opposition CPN-UML says it will not invite the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led CPN-Unified Sociality to its 10th national general convention scheduled to be held in Chitwan later this month.

Nepal was the chief of the CPN-UML for around 15 years and he was one of the top three leaders of the party before he parted his ways to form the CPN-Unified Socialist in August this year. Interestingly enough, the man to announce that Nepal would not be invited was Yogesh Bhattarai, who was considered close to him before he refused to join the new party.

Speaking in a press meet organised in Kathmandu on Wednesday, Bhattarai, as the chief of the partys publicity department, said the Unified Socialist was an illegal party.

All other major political parties would be invited, according to Bhattarai.

Since the Unified Socialists establishment, the UML has been claiming that the Election Commission gave legal recognition to the new party by accepting the signatures of lawmakers already removed by the UML.

The UML is organising its 10th general convention on November 10-12. The event will elect the new leadership of the party, but it is almost certain that current Chairman KP Sharma Oli will be reelected.
" " Bob Marley performs live at the Rainbow Theatre in England in 1977. Vincent McEvoy/Redferns/Getty Images

He's been called many things: a reggae ambassador, a Third World prophet, and one of the world's richest dead celebrities. Here are some lesser-known facts about this Jamaican superstar.

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1. He Once Was a Lab Assistant at DuPont

During a lean early period in Jamaica, Bob Marley decided to move to America and earn some money. His mother had moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and sent her son a plane ticket. During an eight-month period in 1966, he worked on the Chrysler assembly line and also as a lab assistant at DuPont. But his heart wasn't in either job and when his visa ran out, he moved back to Jamaica to continue with music. One legacy of that brief time is that Wilmington holds a People's Festival every summer in Marley's honor. It's organized by a man named Ibis Pitts who befriended Marley during the future reggae star's time there.

2. The Wailers Had a Complicated Family Connection

Marley was born in 1945 to Cedella Booker, a 19-year-old black woman and Norval Marley, a 60-year-old white Englishman, in the rural parish of St. Ann, Jamaica. Bob's mixed race heritage was a source of discomfort, and people in his community disparaged him. "Them call me half-caste, or whatever. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white, who give me this talent, he said in 1975.

Norval Marley rarely saw his son and wife and, after Norval's death, Bob and his mother moved to Trench Town, an impoverished area in the Jamaican capital Kingston. There, Cedella lived with Thaddeus Livingston and his son Bunny, who as Bunny Wailer, became a founding member of the group that later became known as the Wailers (and eventually Bob Marley and the Wailers). Cedella and Thaddeus also had a daughter together, named Claudette.

" " An early shot of Bob Marley and the Wailers (L-R Peter McIntosh 'Tosh', Aston 'Family Man' Barrett, Bob Marley, Earl 'Wire' Lindo, Carlton 'Carly' Barrett and Neville 'Bunny' Livingston) in 1973 Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

3. The Zimbabwe Concert Truly "Set the Captives Free"

One very memorable performance for Marley and the Wailers took place during celebrations for Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, which came after a bitter civil war against an apartheid government. Marley was personally invited to perform at the ceremonies because his songs had been an inspiration to the guerilla forces. But then a riot broke out. "After the third tune, there was total confusion, people running from everywhere ... There was tear gas over the walls of the stadium," remembered Tommy Cowan, who was MC at the concert. "We realized that when he played 'I Shot the Sheriff,'  there was prisoner of war camp a few chains away, and ... 7,000 of them broke jail intending on coming into the stadium, so they threw tear gas at them ... The guys broke down the gate, they came in and sat down. They got a standing ovation because these were the guys who [had] actually fought [for freedom]."

4. The "Is This Love" Video Features a Very Young Naomi Campbell

This video was shot at the Keskidee Community Centre, a black arts center in London in 1978. Marley chose the site and the video shows him singing and playing with kids recruited from various stage schools, including a young Naomi Campbell, the future supermodel. "I was just seven, and didn't know what it would involve. I didn't realise Bob Marley would be standing right next to me, tucking me under a blanket. He was the most handsome man, with beautiful bone structure; mellow, too, and soft-spoken, with a strong Jamaican accent, the kind I already knew from home," she said in an article in The Guardian.

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5. He Died a Christian

Marley was synonymous with the Rastafarian religion, which originated in Jamaica. Among its beliefs: The former emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, is part of the Trinity; ganja (marijuana) is a sacred herb that can bring one closer to Jah (God); and the comb and scissors are tools of Babylon (corrupt Western society), which gave rise to the dreadlocks style  co-opted by many non-Rastas.

While Marley vigorously promoted the Rasta faith in many songs, there is evidence that he changed beliefs before he died. Haile Selassie was distressed to learn that people were worshipping him as a god and sent a representative from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to Jamaica to try and convert the Rasta faithful to Christianity. A year before his death from cancer, the archbishop of the local Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abuna Yesehaq, baptized Marley and gave him the name Berhane Selassie (Light of the Trinity). Yesehaq presided over his state funeral in Jamaica where Marley was buried with a guitar, a Bible and a stem of ganja in his casket.

Now That's Interesting Bob Marley was a famous proponent of marijuana use, and the Marley family has gotten on the cannabis bandwagon launching a line of herb-related products.

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Originally Published: Feb 3, 2017
Democracy has always been and continues to be challenged both in the United States and around the world. As former Secretary of Homeland Security, General Counsel of the Department of Defense and a distinguished Attorney, Secretary Johnson has been deeply involved in the challenges to democracy in the United States. Globally, democratic values and principles are always at risk. As U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Under Secretary of the Army and Professor of Politics Science, Dr. Westphal has been engaged in addressing these risks.

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(Compares with estimates, adds details from earnings call)

By Sanjana Shivdas

Nov 3 (Reuters) - Booking Holdings Inc topped market expectations for quarterly profit and revenue on Wednesday, but said a COVID-19 resurgence in Europe had cast uncertainty over year-end demand.

The company benefited in the third quarter from a rebound in leisure travel and the United States' decision to reopen its borders to fully vaccinated international visitors from Nov. 8.

Its shares rose 3.7% in extended trading as gross travel bookings surged 77% from a year earlier to $23.7 billion. Room nights - a measure of occupancy at any property - rose 44%.

But the online travel agent, owner of travel website Kayak, said a recent spike in COVID-19 cases in countries including Germany, Russia and Italy had hit room nights in Europe towards October end.

"Looking forward to November and December, the rising case counts across many important Western European countries and much of Eastern Europe ... creates unpredictability," Chief Financial Officer David Goulden said on an earnings call.

Trends were improving in Asia, where higher vaccination rates and easing travel curbs boosted domestic travel, it said.

The company has also recorded more gross bookings for the Christmas and New Year period in the United States compared with pre-pandemic 2019.

Total revenue rose 77% to $4.68 billion in the third quarter to beat expectations of $4.30 billion.

The company earned $37.70 per share on an adjusted basis, compared with analysts' average estimate of $32.9, according to Refintiv data. (Reporting by Nathan Gomes and Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
The successful capital raise follows the 6 billion raised for the firm's complementary Direct Lending Fund

LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arcmont Asset Management ("Arcmont"), a leading European private debt asset management firm, today announces the successful completion of the fundraising of its Senior Loan Fund II and associated vehicles, attracting total investable capital of 5 billion.

Arcmont Asset Management Logo

The 5 billion raised exceeded Arcmont's initial target, with the success of the fundraise reflecting the strong support received from both new and existing investors globally, including public and private pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and family offices. More than half of the commitments were from investors in Arcmont's prior funds, with strong participation from Europe, the United States and Asia Pacific.

To date, Senior Loan Fund II has already committed c. 60% of its capital, making a substantial contribution to the firm's record deployment over the last year of c. 5 billion.

Arcmont's Senior Loan strategy provides senior loans to upper mid-market European companies, with a focus on defensive industries and sectors that exhibit steady, stable and cash generative characteristics. The strategy aims to generate strong cash yields and attractive risk-adjusted returns, with an emphasis on preservation of capital through conservative deal structuring and downside protection.

Since Arcmont was founded in 2011 the firm has grown rapidly, having raised c. 18 billion of assets with over 15 billion deployed across more than 190 transactions. The successful fundraise of Senior Loan Fund II brings Arcmont's current investable capital across its Senior Loan, Direct Lending and Capital Solutions strategies to over 11 billion. Arcmont's size, pan-European presence, diversity of products and long-standing reputation in the market as a founder of the European Private Debt industry, enables it to offer loans in excess of 1 billion in a wide range of financing solutions across geographies, industries and capital structures.

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Anthony Fobel, CEO of Arcmont Asset Management, said: "We are very grateful for the support our latest fund has received from both new and existing institutional investors globally, which we believe reflects the many years we have devoted to building one of Europe's leading private credit platforms.

This year, we have deployed record amounts of capital to support strong and growing European companies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the robustness of our portfolios reflects the resilience of the asset class and the increasingly vital role that private debt plays in Europe's financial ecosystem. Our ability to deploy significant amounts of capital in bespoke structures, tailored to meet companies' needs, has enabled Arcmont to become a lender of choice and partner for many of Europe's leading private equity sponsors and blue-chip companies."

Notes to Editors

For more information contact:

Prosek Partners

Georgia Brown / Ryan Smith, rsmith@prosek.com, +44 785 475 0943

Pro-Arcmont@prosek.com

Arcmont Asset Management: Contact@arcmont.com

About Arcmont Asset Management

Arcmont is a market-leading Private Debt asset management firm, providing flexible capital solutions to a wide range of European businesses. Established in 2011 and previously part of BlueBay Asset Management, Arcmont is now an independent, employee-owned firm, with minority backing by Dyal Capital Partners IV, managed by Blue Owl Capital. Arcmont has raised over 18 billion of assets to date and provides capital to a diverse range of European companies and aims to deliver bespoke, flexible and innovative financing solutions across the entire capital structure.

Arcmont currently has over 70 employees, spread throughout its 5 European offices.

Arcmont Asset Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with Firm Reference Number 845535.

For more information, please visit www.arcmont.com

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Available now in Hong Kong, the Clean Air System ensures a cleaner, healthier, and safer space for customers

HONG KONG, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Ass Fans (BAF), an industry-leading airflow mechanical and industrial engineering company, launched its new powerful airflow system, the Big Ass Fans Clean Air System, at the International Property Management and Procurement Expo in Hong Kong today.

Poor air ventilation has been proven to play a role in spreading viruses in indoor environments, and the World Health Organization (WHO) also recognises biological and chemical indoor air pollution as public health risks. In Hong Kong, offices and public places must meet specific indoor air quality (IAQ) targets, which have been increased for some venues due to the pandemic. For example, catering business operators and restaurateurs are required to conduct a minimum of 6 air changes per hour or install air purifiers that meet specified specifications.

The BAF Clean Air System was introduced to enhance cleaner air circulation. It comes in a suite of products equipped with two types of technologies  Ion and ultraviolet (UV-C). Both leverage the power of airflow to make proven air treatment methods more effective, reducing harmful viruses, bacteria, and pathogens to create safer, healthier spaces. Verified through independent third-party laboratory tests, the fans' airflow and integrated air treatment technology significantly reduce the number of viruses, bacteria, and other airborne pathogens in minutes.

The UV-C specific fans, such as Haiku, can generate powerful airflow to circulate air into an upper-room UV zone and recirculate it back to the space quietly and efficiently, ensuring maximum comfort for occupants in commercial and residential spaces.

The ion-specific fans are integrated and retrofitted with BAF proprietary bipolar ioniser technology to deliver elevated ion concentrations to occupied spaces in industrial and commercial locations. The fans' airflow moves massive amounts of ion-enriched air, significantly reducing viruses, bacteria, and pathogens in minutes.

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To strengthen its offerings in Hong Kong, BAF has appointed Top Goal Engineering Co., Ltd., as its local authorised distributor for BAF products across the different segment and industries.

"With Hong Kong working towards achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, more businesses are looking at ways to become more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Aligned with our sustainability efforts, our High Volume Low Speed (HVLS) fans and Haikus will provide commercial and residential customers access to more eco-friendly cooling options, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of the latest technology while consuming only a fraction of the energy of a typical HVAC system. Big Ass Fans launching of the new Clean Air System using UV-C and ion technology will strive to provide a safer and cleaner environment for everyone," said Kevin Yap, Sales Director, Asia at Big Ass Fans.

BAF started in the United States over two decades ago. Since then, it has been designing and building fans that are unparalleled in quality, unmatched in durability, and unrivalled in performance. The company now has offices in Singapore, Australia, and Canada, and its fans are installed in warehouses, factories, commercial spaces, and homes all around the world, including Hong Kong.

One of BAF's first few projects in Hong Kong was with the country's first zero-emission building, Zero Carbon Building (ZCB). BAF installed Big Ass Fans 11 Essence, one PowerfoilX and six Haiku fans to further improve ventilation, localise cooling, and distribute conditioned air. The system is much more efficient than standard air conditioning, helping ZCB maintain optimum ventilation while strengthening its status as the premier eco-building in Hong Kong.

BAF products are designed to supplement or replace energy-intensive means of cooling, such as air conditioning. The fan motors are energy-efficient, and the airfoils are designed to be aerodynamic, providing plenty of air movement for large industrial spaces and year-round energy savings. By incorporating BAF fans into building automation systems and using controls, energy savings become easy and automated.

Additionally, BAF SpecLab software provides customers with a data-backed airflow solution that clearly showcases product performance. For new projects, the team will construct a detailed 3D layout of a facility's interior and recommend airflow solutions with precision and accuracy using computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

BAF's products also meet safety standards worldwide. They come with BAF patented Airfoil Restraint System, which features durable nylon straps that extend from hub to winglet, suspending the fan's airfoils in the event of severe impact damage. The Airfoil Restraint System keeps people, products, and property out of harm's way.

The International Property Management and Procurement Expo is happening from today until 6 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. BAF's booth located at Hall 1D, Booth #J-1 is showcasing a range of products including Black Jack, Aireye and Powerfoil D, all with ion technology, as well as Yellow Jacket and Sidekick.

About Big Ass Fans:

Starting in 1999, Big Ass Fans pioneered the high-volume, low-speed (HVLS) fan industry by introducing large industrial fans to agricultural spaces. Recognising the fans' versatility, our customers began to install them in warehouses, factories, commercial spaces, and homes. With each new application, our engineers set out to design the perfect solution to meet our customers' needs. Our dedication to innovation has led us to develop the industry's first silent motor technology, smart fan controls and automation, and air disinfection technologies. For more information about Big Ass Fans, visit bigassfans.com and cleanairsystem.com.

SOURCE Big Ass Fans
LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE IS DECEMBER 22, 2021

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP announces that a federal securities class action lawsuit has been filed against BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. ("BioMarin" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: BMRN) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired BioMarin securities between January 13, 2020 and September 3, 2021, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period").

(PRNewsfoto/Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman )

All investors who purchased BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. and incurred losses are urged to contact the firm immediately at classmember@whafh.com or (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774. You may obtain additional information concerning the action or join the case on our website, www.whafh.com.

If you have incurred losses in the shares of BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., you may, no later than December 22, 2021, request that the Court appoint you lead plaintiff of the proposed class. Please contact Wolf Haldenstein to learn more about your rights as an investor in BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.,

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE CASE

BioMarin develops and commercializes therapies for people with serious and life-threatening rare diseases and medical conditions. The Company is developing, among other product candidates, BMN 307, an AAV5 mediated gene therapy, which is in a phase 1/2 clinical trial to normalize blood phenylalanine concentration levels in patients with phenylketonuria ("PKU"). The Company's Phearless Phase 1/2 study is evaluating BMN 307 in adults with PKU.

On November 7, 2018, BioMarin shared pre-clinical data of BMN 307, which demonstrated lifetime Phe corrections in mouse models, and announced that the Company was planning to file an investigational new drug application ("IND") for BMN 307 with the United States Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") in the second half of 2019. On January 13, 2020, the Company announced that the FDA granted IND status for BMN 307 for the treatment of PKU. On September 24, 2020, the Company announced that it had dosed the first human participant in the global Phearless Phase 1/2 study of BMN 307.

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On September 5, 2021, BioMarin issued a press release announcing, "that the [FDA] placed a clinical hold on the BMN 307 Phearless Phase 1/2 study", which "is evaluating BMN 307, an investigational AAV5-phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) gene therapy, in adults with [PKU]." BioMarin advised investors that "[t]he FDA's clinical hold was based on interim safety findings from a pre-clinical, non-GLP pharmacology study."

On this news, BioMarin's stock price fell $7.14 per share, or 8.4%, to close at $77.81 per share on September 7, 2021, the next trading day.

Wolf Haldenstein has extensive experience in the prosecution of securities class actions and derivative litigation in state and federal trial and appellate courts across the country. The firm has attorneys in various practice areas; and offices in New York, Chicago and San Diego. The reputation and expertise of this firm in shareholder and other class litigation has been repeatedly recognized by the courts, which have appointed it to major positions in complex securities multi-district and consolidated litigation.

If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions regarding your rights and interests in this case, please immediately contact Wolf Haldenstein by telephone at (800) 575-0735, via e-mail at classmember@whafh.com, or visit our website at www.whafh.com.

Contact:

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP

Patrick Donovan, Esq.

Gregory Stone, Director of Case and Financial Analysis

Email: gstone@whafh.com, donovan@whafh.com or classmember@whafh.com

Tel: (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

Cision

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SOURCE Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP
--Topline results from Part A of the Phase 3 ATTRibute-CM trial of TTR stabilizer for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) expected by end of 2021

--Meaningful progress in RAS cancer portfolio with discovery of next-generation KRAS G12C dual inhibitors and novel PI3ka:RAS breakers

--Advancements in gene therapy pipeline with first patient dosed in Canavan disease trial and newly announced program targeting classic galactosemia (severe GALT deficiency)

--Company repurchased $148.4 million in BridgeBio common stock under 2021 Share Repurchase Program, demonstrating the Company's confidence in the long-term prospects of its pipeline

--Ended quarter with $599.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (Nasdaq: BBIO) (BridgeBio or the Company), a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on genetic diseases and cancers, today reported its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021 and provided an update on the Company's operations.

BridgeBio has more than 30 programs in its pipeline for patients living with genetic diseases and cancers and 20 ongoing clinical trials underway across more than 450 sites around the world. Earlier this year BridgeBio received its first two U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug approvals and has successfully filed 15 Investigational New Drug (IND) applications since the Company's founding in 2015.

BridgeBio's four core value drivers:

Acoramidis (AG10)  Transthyretin (TTR) stabilizer for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM): Topline results from Part A of the Phase 3 ATTRibute-CM trial are expected in late 2021 and from Part B in 2023. The primary endpoint at Part A is the change from baseline in a 6-minute walk distance (6MWD) in trial participants receiving acoramidis or placebo after 12 months. If the change from baseline in 6MWD in Part A is highly statistically significant, BridgeBio expects to submit an application for regulatory approval of acoramidis in 2022 to the FDA. The study enrolled more than 600 subjects with either wild-type or variant TTR across more than 80 sites in 18 countries. ATTR-CM is a rare heart condition with a progressive and debilitating impact on quality of life likely affecting more than 400,000 patients worldwide.

Encaleret  Calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) inhibitor for autosomal dominant hypocalcemia type 1 (ADH1): BridgeBio presented updated Phase 2b data for encaleret in an oral presentation at the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) 2021 Annual Meeting in October. Within five days of individualized dose titration in 13 participants, encaleret normalized mean blood calcium levels and 24-hour urine calcium excretion. Achieving simultaneous blood and urine calcium normalization is a challenge for patients with ADH1 due to the limitations of current standard-of-care. If approved, encaleret could be the first therapy on the market for ADH1, a condition caused by gain of function variants in the calcium-sensing receptor ( CASR ) gene estimated to be carried by 12,000 individuals in the United States alone. BridgeBio plans to initiate a Phase 3 registrational trial of encaleret in patients with ADH1 in 2022.

Low-dose infigratinib  FGFR1-3 inhibitor for achondroplasia: Initial data from the ongoing Phase 2 dose ranging study are expected in the first half of 2022. Achondroplasia is the most common form of genetic short stature and one of the most common genetic diseases, with a prevalence of greater than 55,000 cases in the United States and European Union. Low-dose infigratinib is the only known product candidate in clinical development for achondroplasia that is designed to target the disease at its genetic source and the only orally administered product candidate in clinical-stage development.

BBP-631  AAV5 gene therapy candidate for congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH): Received Fast Track designation from the FDA in May 2021. IND cleared by the FDA and site activation for initiation of a first-in-human Phase 1/2 study is ongoing, with initial data anticipated in mid-2022. CAH is one of the most prevalent genetic diseases potentially addressable with AAV gene therapy, with more than 75,000 cases estimated in the United States and European Union. The disease is caused by deleterious mutations in the gene encoding an enzyme called 21-hydroxylase, leading to lack of endogenous cortisol production. BridgeBio's AAV5 gene therapy candidate is designed to provide a functional copy of the 21-hydroxylase-encoding gene (CYP21A2) and potentially address many aspects of the disease course.

Recent pipeline progress and corporate updates:

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Stock repurchases: BridgeBio repurchased $148.4 million in BridgeBio common stock under its 2021 Share Repurchase Program, demonstrating the Company's confidence in the long-term prospects of its pipeline.

LianBio IPO and partnership: China-based partner LianBio raised $325 million in its initial public offering on November 1. BridgeBio is estimated to own approximately 4.7% post-IPO. BridgeBio and LianBio announced in August that the first patient was treated in a Phase 2a trial of infigratinib in patients with gastric cancer and other advanced solid tumors. LianBio in-licensed rights from BridgeBio for infigratinib for development and commercialization in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

RAS cancer portfolio: BridgeBio announced the discovery of its next-generation KRAS G12C dual inhibitors, the first-known compounds that directly bind and inhibit KRAS in both its active (GTP bound) and inactive (GDP bound) conformations, and PI3ka:RAS breakers, small molecules that block RAS driven PI3Ka activation  a novel approach with the potential to inhibit oncogenic PI3Ka signaling without adverse effects on glucose metabolism. RAS is one of the most well-known oncogenic drivers with approximately 30% of all cancers being driven by RAS mutations, including large proportions of lung, colorectal and pancreatic tumors. BridgeBio expects to select a RAS development candidate in 2022.

BBP-812  AAV9 gene therapy candidate for Canavan disease: BridgeBio announced that the first patient was dosed in its Phase 1/2 trial of BBP-812 for Canavan disease. If successful, BridgeBio's gene therapy could be the first approved therapeutic option for children born with Canavan disease, a devastating and life-threatening condition. An initial Phase 1/2 data readout is expected in 2022.

BBP-818  AAV gene therapy candidate for classic galactosemia (severe GALT deficiency): BridgeBio announced a new gene therapy program for classic galactosemia, which is caused by a severe deficiency of the enzyme galactose-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase (GALT), affecting approximately 7,000 patients in the United States and the European Union. Preclinical studies in a mouse model of classic galactosemia have shown that BridgeBio's BBP-818 therapy restored up to 72% of wild-type levels of GALT enzyme in the brain following a single dose.

BBP-398  SHP2 inhibitor : First publication of preclinical data for BridgeBio's potentially best-in-class SHP2 inhibitor designed for the treatment of resistant cancer. Data demonstrated activity in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) driven by RAS or other MAPK-pathway activating mutations. The results were featured in a poster presentation shared at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in October.

BBP-418  Glycosylation substrate for limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2i (LGMD2i): Fast Track designation granted by the FDA . The Phase 2 trial was initiated in patients with LGMD2i in the first quarter of 2021. If successful, BBP-418 could be the first approved therapy for patients with LGMD2i. With approximately 7,000 patients with potentially treatable mutations, LGMD2i is an inherited recessive muscular dystrophy caused by mutation of fukutin-related protein. A Phase 2 data readout is expected in 2022.

BBP-711  Glycolate oxidase (GO) inhibitor for hyperoxaluria: BridgeBio announced preliminary Phase 1 data in which BBP-711 was well-tolerated and resulted in maximal increases in plasma glycolate exceeding those achieved by any GO-targeting agents reported in healthy adult volunteers. BBP-711 is being developed for the treatment of primary hyperoxaluria type 1 (PH1) and hyperoxaluria caused by hepatic overproduction of oxalate in recurrent kidney stone formers. A full readout of Phase 1 data in healthy adult volunteers is expected in 2022, to be followed by initiation of a Phase 2/3 trial in PH1 and a Phase 2 proof-of-concept trial in recurrent kidney stone formers.

TRUSELTIQ (infigratinib) : Health Canada approved TRUSELTIQ (infigratinib), a small molecule kinase inhibitor that targets fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR), under the Notice of Compliance with Conditions (NOC/c) policy, for the treatment of adults with previously treated, unresectable locally advanced or metastatic cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) with a FGFR2 fusion or other rearrangement. BridgeBio's partner Helsinn Group has exclusive commercial rights for TRUSELTIQ in Canada with BridgeBio eligible for tiered royalties as a percentage of net sales as part of the global collaboration and license agreement entered into between the two companies in March 2021.

BridgeBio Pharma R&D Day: Held a virtual R&D Day on October 12, 2021. Presentation replay can be found on BridgeBio's investor website here.

Four new independent directors added to BridgeBio's board:

Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results:

Cash, Cash Equivalents and Marketable Securities

Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, excluding restricted cash, totaled $599.6 million as of September 30, 2021, compared to $607.1 million as of December 31, 2020. Over the past three quarters, the Company repurchased $148.4 million in BridgeBio common stock under its 2021 Share Repurchase Program and $50.0 million in BridgeBio common stock in conjunction with its issuance of the 2029 convertible notes, paid $61.3 million for capped call options related to the issuance of its 2029 convertible notes and $35.0 million of regulatory-related milestone payments in connection with its approved products. Earlier during the year, BridgeBio paid $21.3 million to Eidos shareholders who elected for cash settlement in exchange for their Eidos shares and $63.8 million of direct transaction costs arising from the merger with Eidos. These were offset by cash receipts of $731.4 million in net proceeds from the issuance of BridgeBio's 2029 convertible notes, $65.1 million from collaboration partner, Helsinn Group, and $25.0 million in net proceeds from Hercules Capital, Inc. under an amended loan agreement. The remaining change primarily related to payments of interest and operating costs and expenses.

Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, excluding restricted cash decreased by $298.8 million when compared to balance as of June 30, 2021, which was $898.4 million. During the quarter, the Company repurchased $143.1 million of BridgeBio common stock and paid $35.0 million of regulatory-related milestone payments in connection with its approved products.

Operating Costs and Expenses

Operating costs and expenses for the quarter increased by $23.7 million to $151.8 million in the current quarter as compared to $128.1 million for the same period in the prior year. The increase in operating costs and expenses was due to an increase in personnel and external costs to support the progression in BridgeBio's research and development programs and staged buildout of its commercial organization as part of commercial launch readiness activities. This increase in personnel and external costs was offset by $12.2 million in reimbursement of expenses from the cost sharing arrangement recognized under BridgeBio's License and Collaboration Agreement with Helsinn Group. Stock-based compensation for the quarter was $16.1 million as compared to $17.7 million for the same period in the prior year.

The Company's research and development expenses have not been significantly impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic for the periods presented. While BridgeBio experienced some delays in certain of its clinical enrollment and trial commencement activities, it continues to adapt in this unprecedented time to enable alternative site, telehealth and home visits, at-home drug delivery, as well as mitigation strategies with its contract manufacturing organizations. The longer-term impact, if any, of COVID-19 on BridgeBio's operating costs and expenses is currently unknown.

BRIDGEBIO PHARMA, INC. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (in thousands, except shares and per share amounts)



Three Months Ended September 30,



Nine Months Ended September 30,



2021



2020



2021



2020



(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)

Revenue $ 2,344



$ 8,127



$ 56,830



$ 8,127

Operating costs and expenses:





















Research, development and others

105,759





92,050





330,387





246,873

Selling, general and administrative

46,084





36,016





137,461





108,247

Total operating costs and expenses

151,843





128,066





467,848





355,120

Loss from operations

(149,499)





(119,939)





(411,018)





(346,993)

Other income (expense), net:





















Interest income

234





692





951





3,567

Interest expense

(11,067)





(10,929)





(31,644)





(25,693)

Other income

(684)





9





7,539





(1,344)

Total other income (expense), net

(11,517)





(10,228)





(23,154)





(23,470)

Net loss

(161,016)





(130,167)





(434,172)





(370,463)

Net loss attributable to redeemable convertible

noncontrolling interests and noncontrolling

interests

5,081





14,308





18,810





41,720

Net loss attributable to common stockholders

of BridgeBio $ (155,935)



$ (115,859)



$ (415,362)



$ (328,743)

Net loss per share, basic and diluted $ (1.06)



$ (0.98)



$ (2.88)



$ (2.79)

Weighted-average shares used in computing net

loss per share, basic and diluted

146,662,756





118,168,063





144,044,360





117,663,038



BRIDGEBIO PHARMA, INC. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (In thousands)





September 30,



December 31,







2021



2020

Assets



(Unaudited)



(1)

Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities



$ 599,611



$ 607,093

Receivable from licensing and collaboration agreements





7,710







Receivable from a related party





462







Prepaid expenses and other current assets





31,927





35,731

Investment in equity securities





17,707







Property and equipment, net





27,741





20,325

Operating lease right-of-use assets





17,108





16,508

Intangible assets, net





46,204







Other assets





33,054





23,931

Total assets



$ 781,524



$ 703,588

Liabilities, Redeemable Convertible

Noncontrolling Interests and

Stockholders' Equity (Deficit)













Accounts payable



$ 12,035



$ 8,945

Accrued liabilities





78,789





75,900

LEO call option liability











5,550

Operating lease liabilities





23,682





18,472

Term loans, current portion











1,458

2029 Notes





732,659







2027 Notes





539,517





383,436

Term loans, net of current portion





103,138





92,421

Other long-term liabilities





27,578





9,520

Redeemable convertible noncontrolling interests





2,967





1,630

Total BridgeBio stockholders' equity (deficit)





(743,397)





57,906

Noncontrolling interests





4,556





48,350

Total liabilities, redeemable convertible

noncontrolling interests and stockholders'

equity (deficit)



$ 781,524



$ 703,588



























(1) The condensed consolidated financial statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2020 are derived from the audited consolidated financial statements as of that date.

About BridgeBio Pharma, Inc.

BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (BridgeBio) is a biopharmaceutical company founded to discover, create, test and deliver transformative medicines to treat patients who suffer from genetic diseases and cancers with clear genetic drivers. BridgeBio's pipeline of over 30 development programs ranges from early science to advanced clinical trials and its commercial organization is focused on delivering the company's two approved therapies. BridgeBio was founded in 2015 and its team of experienced drug discoverers, developers and innovators are committed to applying advances in genetic medicine to help patients as quickly as possible. For more information visit bridgebio.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Statements in this press release may include statements that are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), which are usually identified by the use of words such as "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "may," "plans," "projects," "seeks," "should," "will," and variations of such words or similar expressions. We intend these forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. These forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the clinical and therapeutic potential of our programs and product candidates, including our four core value drivers, the availability and success of topline results from Part A and Part B of our Phase 3 ATTRibute-CM trial of acoramidis, our plans to submit an application for regulatory approval of acoramidis, the availability and success of additional data from our ongoing study of encaleret for ADH1, the timing and success of additional trials of encaleret for ADH1, the availability and success of initial data from our ongoing Phase 2 study of low-dose infigratinib for achondroplasia and our ongoing Phase 1/2 study of BBP-631 for CAH, our faith in the long-term prospects of our pipeline, the success of our continuing partnership with LianBio, the timing of our selection of a RAS development candidate, the timing and success of our Phase 1/2 trial of BBP-812 for Canavan disease, the ability of BBP-812 to be the first approved therapeutic option for children born with Canavan disease, the ability of BBP-418 to be the first approved therapy for patients with LGMD2i, the timing and success of the Phase 2 trial of BBP-418 in patients with LGMD2i, the availability and success of final data from our ongoing Phase 1 study of BBP-711 for the treatment of PH1, the timing and success of additional clinical trials of BBP-711 in PH1 and in recurrent kidney stone formers, our eligibility to receive future royalty payments under our strategic collaboration with the Helsinn Group and the timing of these events, as well as our anticipated cash runway, reflect our current views about our plans, intentions, expectations and strategies, which are based on the information currently available to us and on assumptions we have made. Although we believe that our plans, intentions, expectations and strategies as reflected in or suggested by those forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that the plans, intentions, expectations or strategies will be attained or achieved. Furthermore, actual results may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements and will be affected by a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, but not limited to, initial and ongoing data from our preclinical studies and clinical trials not being indicative of final data, the potential size of the target patient populations our product candidates are designed to treat not being as large as anticipated, the design and success of ongoing and planned clinical trials, future regulatory filings, approvals and/or sales, despite having ongoing and future interactions with the FDA or other regulatory agencies to discuss potential paths to registration for our product candidates, the FDA or such other regulatory agencies not agreeing with our regulatory approval strategies, components of our filings, such as clinical trial designs, conduct and methodologies, or the sufficiency of data submitted, the continuing success of our collaborations, potential volatility in our share price and its impact on our 2021 Share Repurchase Program, potential adverse impacts due to the global COVID-19 pandemic such as delays in regulatory review, manufacturing and supply chain interruptions, adverse effects on healthcare systems and disruption of the global economy, as well as those risks set forth in the Risk Factors section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and our other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment in which new risks emerge from time to time. These forward-looking statements are based upon the current expectations and beliefs of our management as of the date of this press release, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable law, we assume no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

BridgeBio Media Contact:

Grace Rauh

Grace.rauh@bridgebio.com

(917) 232-5478

BridgeBio Investor Contact:

Katherine Yau

katherine.yau@bridgebio.com

(516) 554-5989

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SOURCE BridgeBio
Conservative Texas legislators have long sought to permanently end abortion access in their state. This year, through a clever manipulation of enforcement rules, it appeared that they had succeeded. But this week two conservative Supreme Court justices, both of whom had originally granted the law a stay, signaled that they have doubts.

The Supreme Court heard Texass defense of the controversial law, SB8, this Monday in two suits, one brought by abortion providers and the other by the Department of Justice.

The law, which went into effect in September, would ban all abortions in Texas six weeks after conception, even in cases of rape and incest, and allow private citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortionor aids someone in procuring onefor at least $10,000.

In the past, six-week bans in other states have all eventually been found unconstitutional as theyve risen through the legal system. This legal hack appears to be a way to get around that.

Typically, governmental agencies shut down or challenge abortion clinics accused of breaking the law, and the clinics then have a way to challenge the constitutionality of the state law through the courts. By deputizing Americans to sue on their own, clinics and doctors can no longer employ that method.

An organization like Planned Parenthood would normally go to court and sue Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton before the bill was enacted, but because Paxton is not the one enforcing the law, it has to instead wait to be sued itself.

In October, the Supreme Court ruled that the law would stay in effect temporarily. But at Monday's hearing, conservative justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh expressed doubts around the law.

The justices worried that the same methods Texas used to get around Americans constitutional right to an abortion, as decided in Roe v. Wade, could be applied to laws around the First and Second Amendments.

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The threat here is to the supremacy of federal law, said Elizabeth Prelogar, who was confirmed last week as the Biden administrations solicitor general. That's accomplished by trying to cut off the channels of judicial review that Congress recognized...would be vital to vindicating federal rights, whether that be Second Amendment rights or rights to religious liberty or here the right to abortion.

The premise of the law, she argued, meant that no constitutional right was safe, and that no prior Supreme Court decisions held legal weight. Our constitutional guarantees, she said, cannot be that fragile.

It appeared that the majority of justices agreed with her argument.

While its unclear when a decision in the case is expected, some predict it could be as early as December.

On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court will hear another abortion rights case that challenges a Mississippi law that bans all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.

More politics coverage from Fortune:

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
The SAP program is a collaborative platform to showcase cutting-edge initiatives, research, and thought leadership

CRANBURY, N.J., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CURE Media Group, the industry-leading multimedia platform devoted to cancer updates, research and education that reaches over 1 million patients, survivors and caregivers, is excited to announce the addition of nine new partners to its Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program.

CURE Media Group is the industry-leading multimedia platform devoted to cancer updates and research that reaches more than 1 million patients, survivors and caregivers. (PRNewsfoto/CURE Media Group)

"We are honored to welcome nine prominent organizations to our SAP program," said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences, parent company of CURE Media Group. "These new alliances will lead to outstanding collaborative efforts and positive results that will help us optimize patient care."

The new partners are:

The SAP program brings together advocacy organizations, medical associations and institutions, and community cancer centers with national reach and visibility. By utilizing the MJH Life Sciences oncology communications platform, they are able to showcase cutting-edge initiatives, content, research and thought leadership. The SAP program fosters collaboration and an open exchange of information among trusted peers for the benefit of patients and their families. As part of this joint effort, CURE Media Group will work with these partners to share information and highlight the different cancer communities they support.

For a full list of CURE Media Group's SAP partners, click here.

About CURE Media Group

CURE Media Group is the leading resource for cancer updates, research and education. It combines a full suite of media products, including its industry-leading website curetoday.com ; innovative video programs, such as "CURE Connections"; a series of widely attended events; and CURE magazine, which reaches more than 1 million readers. CURE Media Group is a brand of MJH Life Sciences , the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America, dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels.

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Media Contact

Alyssa Scarpaci, 609-716-7777

ascarpaci@mjhlifesciences.com

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SOURCE CURE Media Group
(Reuters) - Delta Air Lines has seen a 450% surge in international bookings in the six weeks since Sept. 20 when the United States said it would reopen for fully vaccinated visitors.

The White House had said the country would reopen in November to air travelers from 33 countries, including China, India, Brazil and most of Europe. On Oct. 15, it said the curbs will be lifted from Nov. 8.

The U.S. carrier said that international flights were expected to operate in full capacity on Nov. 8, with high passenger volume throughout the following weeks.

It would operate 139 flights from 55 international destinations in 38 countries landing in the United States, offering more than 25,000 seats.

"The strong demand is reflected across both leisure and business travelers to popular destinations such as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston and Orlando," Delta said in a statement.

(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
During the first two opening days of COP26 in Scotland, over 25 African leaders took center stage to demand climate justice and greater support from richer nations.

African leaders demanded wealthy countries make good on their pledge to deliver $100 billion a year in climate finance to developing countries  a commitment made at the UN climate talks in 2009. A report recently announced they would not be able to meet this target until 2023. Between 2016 and 2018, only 25% of the money promised to developing nations went to Africa.

While the continent is responsible for just 3% of global emissions, it remains the most vulnerable region to global warming. For example, Madagascar has been hit by one of the modern worlds first climate change-induced famines, yet the island country produces a little more than 0.01% of the worlds annual carbon dioxide emissions.

With over 120 world leaders in attendance, the continent was well represented with statements from Angola, Central African Republic, Congo, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eswatini, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea-Bisseau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The world should fulfill their promises

We are naturally very disappointed by the failure of wealthy nations to honor their commitments, said Nana Akufo-Addo, the president of Ghana. We must find a solution that recognizes the historical imbalances between the high emitters and low emitters.

A recent report showed lower income countries spend five times more on debt to rich nations than coping with the impact of climate change. Several African leaders lamented high debt payments which are hindering adaptation efforts.

Due to high debt servicing, we lack the fiscal space to scale up investment in climate change action, said Julius Maada Bio, the president of Sierra Leone. He added that Africa has access to less than 5% of global climate financing streams, while Moeketsi Majoro, Lesothos president said access to global climate finance mechanisms remain effectively shut.

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Several stressed finances should come in the form of grants and not loans, and should be directed towards adaption  not mitigation.

Richer nations must reduce their emissions

Africas leaders painted a grim picture of the continents plight in the face of climate change. A rise in extreme weather events is damaging economies reliant on agriculture and natural resources. Climate change is exacerbating already high levels of poverty, while the economic shock of covid-19 has further weakened capacity to manage climate threats.

Recognizing Africas minimal contribution to the climate crisis, leaders urged rich nations to urgently reduce their emissions in line with a 1.5C temperature rise.

It is most unfortunate that the impact of climate change is disproportionately borne by the vulnerable communities which have contributed the least to the current stock of atmospheric carbon, added Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, the president of Zimbabwe. The expectation is that major emitters will scale up mitigation action.

Africas leaders are hoping the outcomes at COP26 could save the continent from further impacts of climate change. The African Union Commission warned that up to 118 million extremely poor people will be exposed to drought, floods, and extreme heat in Africa by 2030. Climate change could further lower GDP in sub-Saharan Africa by up to 3% by 2050.

If we as developing countries have shown leadership, why are large emitting countries lagging behind? said Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president of Tanzania. If the world will not act accordingly, countries like ours have no option but to brace for devastating impacts.

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BizVibe has made available 1,000+ company profiles for the art services category on its B2B platform. Companies listed in this category are primarily engaged in providing various types of art services (such as art licensing, art restoration, art direction services, etc.).

Snapshot of BizVibe's art services company profiles and categories.

Get Free Access to These 1,000+ Profiles

Each profile is free to view and packed with high-quality insights, providing businesses with detailed company information. Users can take advantage of these insights to identify, target, and connect with the right companies who provide art services. This company information includes employee insights, company competitors, the impact of emerging trends and challenges, the latest news, and more.

Free Insights Included for all Art Services Company Profiles:

List of product and service category offerings and primary operating industries

Risk of doing business score across four different metrics

List of key executives and their roles within the company

Company financials and general organizational information

Global, national, and regional competitors

List of key clients

Top trends and challenges within operating industry and expected influence on business impact

Latest company news with the ability to sign up for timely news alerts

Get Started to View Free Company Insights

Art Services Companies on BizVibe

BizVibe's platform contains 30M+ company profiles, spanning across 200+ countries, categorized into 40,000+ products and services. There are 1,000+ company profiles related to art services on BizVibe, covering 5+ related categories. Each company profile contains detailed insights dedicated to helping procurement and sales teams find trusted suppliers and target sales prospects.

Examples of art services profiles that can be discovered on BizVibe include companies that specialize in:

Art creation services

Art direction services

Art licensing services

Art restoration services

Art gallery services

Get Free Company Profile Access for all Categories

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Company Profiles for Buyers and Sellers

BizVibe's modern B2B platform is designed to help both global buyers and sellers. Powered by the latest best-in-class solutions, BizVibe provides outstanding product features for both category managers and sales professionals.

Features for Buyers:

Quickly discover the right suppliers

Create short lists and custom alerts

Mitigate supplier risk and evaluate suppliers

Send RFIs/RFPs

Learn how BizVibe helps buyers: https://www.bizvibe.com/find-suppliers

Features for Sellers:

Target the right sales prospects

Qualify leads

Analyze buyer potential

API integration and data enrichment

Learn how BizVibe helps sellers: https://www.bizvibe.com/sellers

About BizVibe

BizVibe has been conceptualized and built by a team based out of Toronto, Bangalore, and London. We are a branch of Infiniti Research and have dedicated units in all three locations. BizVibe helps buyers find the most relevant suppliers from around the world and help sellers target prospects who need their products and/or services. For more information, please visit www.bizvibe.com and start for free today.

Contact

BizVibe

Jesse Maida

Email: jesse@bizvibe.com

+1 855-897-5880

Website: https://www.bizvibe.com/

BizVibe (PRNewsfoto/BizVibe)

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SOURCE BizVibe
By Marcelo Teixeira and Maytaal Angel

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Commodities traders including Louis Dreyfus, Olam and Volcafe are pursuing legal action against hundreds of Brazilian coffee farmers whose failure to deliver on pre-agreed sales has left the merchants exposed to losses, according to sources and documents seen by Reuters.

Arabica coffee prices have rallied some 60% this year due to climate turmoil in Brazil. The price surge has tempted farmers to default on sales, tightening supply in a commodity that, like many others, has been affected by shipping delays and reduced availability of labor.

All three of the world's largest arabica producers - Brazil, Colombia, and Ethiopia - are experiencing increased rates of default, where farmers fail to deliver coffee at agreed-upon prices so they can attempt to re-sell at current higher prices.

Lawyers told Reuters this is the first time in decades that scores of coffee farmers are defaulting in Brazil, which grows about half the world's arabica beans. Defaults have spiked in other commodities like soybeans, where merchants have resorted to using satellites and deployed lawyers to go after farmers who tried to resell already guaranteed crops, as prices in that market, too, spiked.

Many court proceedings in Brazil are not public.

Volcafe, the coffee trading arm of ED&F Man, one of the world's largest commodity trading firms, has had problems with about 5% of its contracts in Brazil, according to the company's North and South America director, Nicolas Rueda.

"We managed to negotiate and find a solution in most cases. Only in cases when talks ceased we resorted to the courts," he said, without identifying the number of cases the firm was working on.

Olam confirmed cases of non-compliance and legal action but said they are not widespread. Louis Dreyfus did not return a request for comment.

Farmers are also defaulting in Colombia and Ethiopia, the world's second and third largest arabica producers. With Brazil, the three countries account for more than two-thirds of global arabica output.

"The incentive to default has never been higher (and) these guys are not just defaulting on one (season's) crop. You're looking at the tip of an iceberg here. It will get worse over next 12 months or longer," said a Europe-based trader at one of the world's largest coffee traders, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

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Forward sales volumes in Brazil have plunged due to both defaults and severe shipping backlogs, said two other global traders, exacerbating already tight global coffee supplies.

The high rate of defaults could push futures, already near seven-year peaks, up further as the market depends on forward selling from Brazil to temper price rises, said a second Europe-based trader at a global merchant.

"There should be a continuous flow of (sales) from Brazil but everything's shut down. Its scary how quiet it is. We can't buy coffee. Our middleman can't get his coffee," he said.

"Put together with (shipping) issues, the defaults mean the availability of coffee in the U.S., Europe and Japan is getting more and more tenuous," he said.

Evidence of the tightness can already be seen in ICE exchange stocks, which have fallen some 11% over the past month alone. The stocks are a cheap and reliable supply source relative to the physical market.

Law firm Santos Neto Advogados is working on about 30 lawsuits related to coffee defaults, said Fernando Bilotti Ferreira, a partner at the firm. He said he is acting on behalf of four trading houses but declined to name them.

The size of the defaults vary from 500 bags to as high as 4,500 bags. At current market prices, a contract for 4,500 bags would be worth around 5.8 million reais ($1.03 million).

Many traders involved in court cases have been accepting farmers' requests to postpone deliveries into 2022, said Cristiano Zauli, a lawyer working in Minas Gerais, Brazil's largest coffee producing state. He has been involved in around 100 court cases in coffee this year and acted as a mediator in hundreds more pre-trial talks, he said.

Zauli declined to identify his clients.

FINDING COFFEE

Buyers who filed court cases are seeking legal orders allowing them to get their coffee from farms with the help of law enforcement officers, according to court documents in the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais.

In one case, trader Olam had to go to two different locations to find the 750 bags it had bought from a farmer in Alfenas, Minas Gerais.

In another, Louis Dreyfus was trying to find 1,000 bags it bought from a farmer in Patrocinio, another Minas Gerais municipality. The trader's lawyer told the judge that the farmer re-sold the coffee to a local merchant, where it was delivered, according to the legal filings.

Two local Brazilian coffee brokers told Reuters defaults have hit practically all market participants, including coffee co-op Cooxupe, the country's top exporter.

Cooxupe said it normally negotiates with farmers facing problems but added it cannot "treat associated farmers differently," meaning the rules apply to all.

($1 = 5.6146 reais)

(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is seeking a solution to access encrypted data for investigation purposes

OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

The Government of Canada is looking for innovative ways to help Canadian small businesses succeed.

Today, Innovative Solutions Canada launched a new challenge led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Along with other Canadian law enforcement agencies, the RCMP is facing challenges in accessing encrypted data seized during the course of criminal investigations. Individuals engaging in illegal behaviours have been using sophisticated encryption techniques to bypass legal prosecution. The RCMP is looking for an artificial intelligence decryption system that can process the seized data files and generate specific word lists to try and access the encrypted material.

Quick facts

Small businesses will have until December 16 to apply to the challenge.

Through the Innovative Solutions Canada program, government departments are inviting small businesses to come up with a new innovative product, service or solution that answers a specific challenge they face. Winning small businesses may receive up to $150,000 to refine their research and development and, if accepted into phase 2, receive up to $1 million to develop a working prototype. The government can then act as a first customer, helping these businesses commercialize their innovations, scale up their business and create good middle-class jobs across Canada.

Innovative Solutions Canada is a key component of the government's Innovation and Skills Plan, a multi-year plan to make Canada a global innovation leader and prepare Canadians to succeed in tomorrow's economy.

There are hundreds of programs and services that offer everything from funding to expert advice in order to help businesses innovate, create jobs and grow Canada's economy. Using a simple, story-based user interface, the Innovation Canada platform can match businesses with the most fitting programs and services in about two minutes.

Associated links

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Stay connected

Find more services and information at Canada.ca/ISED.

Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on social media.

Twitter: @ISED_CA, Facebook: CanadianInnovation, Instagram: @cdninnovation and LinkedIn

SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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OAKLAND, Calif. and TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Harborside Inc. ("Harborside" or the "Company") (CSE: HBOR) (OTCQX: HBORF), a California-focused, vertically integrated cannabis enterprise, today announced that, following the recommendation of the audit committee and in anticipation of the transition to domestic issuer status in the United States, the Company's board of directors have accepted the resignation of MNP LLP as the auditor of the Company effective October 26, 2021 and approved the appointment of Armanino LLP as successor auditor effective October 27, 2021.

Harborside Inc. Logo (CNW Group/Harborside Inc.)

In accordance with National Instrument 51-102  Continuous Disclosure Obligations ("NI 51-102"), the Company has filed a Notice of Change of Auditor, together with response letters from MNP LLP and Armanino LLP on SEDAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There were no "reportable events," as such term is defined in NI 51-102.

About Harborside:

Harborside Inc., a vertically integrated enterprise with cannabis licenses covering retail, distribution, cultivation, nursery, and manufacturing, is one of the oldest and most respected cannabis companies in the world. Founded in California in 2006, Harborside was awarded one of the first six medical cannabis licenses granted in the United States. Today, the company operates three major dispensaries in the San Francisco Bay Area, a dispensary in the Palm Springs area outfitted with Southern California's only cannabis drive-thru window, a dispensary in Oregon and an integrated cultivation/production facility in Salinas, California. Harborside continues to play an instrumental role in making cannabis safe and accessible to a broad and diverse community of California and Oregon consumers. Harborside is a publicly listed company, trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") under the ticker symbol "HBOR" and the OTCQX under the ticker symbol "HBORF". Additional information regarding Harborside is available under Harborside's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

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Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward- looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates, and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements include statements with respect to obtaining domestic issuer status in the United States.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Company's operations; fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; expectations regarding the size of the cannabis markets where the Company operates; changing consumer habits; the ability of the Company to successfully achieve its business objectives; plans for expansion; political and social uncertainties; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; employee relations and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on cultivation, production, distribution, and sale of cannabis and cannabis-related products in the markets where the Company operates. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

The Company, through several of its subsidiaries, is indirectly involved in the manufacture, possession, use, sale, and distribution of cannabis in the recreational and medicinal cannabis marketplace in the United States. Local state laws where the Company operates permit such activities however, these activities are currently illegal under United States federal law. Additional information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's business are contained under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Listing Statement dated May 30, 2019, and in the Company's management's discussion and analysis for the period ended September 30, 2020, filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

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SOURCE Harborside Inc.
Reaffirms Project's Excellent Leverage To Rising Gold Prices

Increased 13.6 Million Ounce Resource Solidifies Standing As Largest

Independent Gold-Only Resource in North America

Annual Average Production of 306,200 Ounces per Year Over 21 Year Mine Life

Significantly De-Risks Project and Forms Solid Foundation To Advance Project Forward

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. ("ITH" or the "Company") (TSX: ITH) (NYSE-MKT: THM) today announced the results of the Pre-Feasibility Study (the "PFS") for its Livengood Gold Project (the "Project") located near Fairbanks, Alaska. The PFS details a project that would process 65,000 tons per day and produce 6.4 million ounces of gold over 21 years from a gold resource estimated at 13.6 million ounces at 0.60 g/tonne. The PFS utilized a third-party review by Whittle Consulting and BBA Inc. to integrate new interpretations based on an expanded geological database, improved geological modelling, new resource estimation methodology, an optimized mine plan and production schedule, additional detailed metallurgical work at various gold grades and grind sizes, changes in the target grind for the mill, new engineering estimates, and updated cost inputs, all of which significantly de-risk the Project. The PFS has estimated the capital costs of the Project ("CAPEX") at US$1.93 billion, the total cost per ton milled ("OPEX") at US$13.12, the all-in sustaining costs ("AISC") at US$1,171 per ounce, and an after-tax NPV(5%) of US$400 million at $1,800/oz, US$975 million at US$2,000/oz, and US$2.3 billion at $US2,500/oz.

"This PFS confirms that the Livengood Gold Project is the one of the largest, highly leveraged gold projects in North America. This study is the culmination of years of work and greatly enhances our understanding of the deposit. We have now thoroughly evaluated, optimized, and de-risked all major elements of the Project and have an excellent foundation on which to build shareholder value. International Tower Hill's estimated 13.6 million ounces, together with our favorable jurisdiction and proximity to infrastructure, offers our investors great leverage to the gold price," said Karl Hanneman, CEO.

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The Company invites you to attend a conference call and webcast hosted by CEO Karl Hanneman to discuss the Company and this news release.

Conference Call & Webcast Details:

Date: November 5, 2021 at 12:00 pm ET Webcast: https://services.choruscall.com/links/thm211105.html North American callers: 1-877-270-2148 International callers: 1-412-902-6510

Pre-Feasibility Study Overview

The Project configuration evaluated in the PFS is a conventional, owner-operated surface mine that will utilize large-scale mining equipment in a blast/load/haul operation. Mill feed would be processed in a 65,000 tons per day comminution circuit consisting of primary and secondary crushing, wet grinding in a single semi-autogenous (SAG) mill and single ball mill followed by a gravity gold circuit and a conventional carbon in leach (CIL) circuit.

Whittle Enterprise Optimization

Prior to beginning the PFS, the Company retained Whittle Engineering and BBA Engineering to collaborate on an enterprise optimization study (the "Whittle and BBA Study") to review various technologies and project configurations and to recommend the optimum configuration for the PFS. The Whittle and BBA Study reviewed secondary crushing with SAG and ball mill, tertiary crushing with ball mill, gravity/CIL at P 80 of 90 micron to 250 micron, stand-alone and auxiliary heap leach configurations, gravity only gold recovery, gravity/flotation with pressure oxidation and CIL of flotation concentrate. These configurations were evaluated at various combinations of project ramp up strategy, annual throughput, primary, secondary, and tertiary grind size, as well as mining fleet size and stockpile management strategies. Tailings technologies reviewed included conventional tailings and pressure filtered tailings.

The Whittle and BBA Study determined that the gravity/CIL plant at P 80 250 micron with conventional tailings provided the highest NPV, which is the configuration detailed in the PFS.

Pre-Feasibility Study Summary

The PFS was prepared by independent third-party consultants and provides information on the optimized Project with higher throughput, an updated resource estimate, and capital and operating cost estimates as compared to the project evaluated in the National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") April 2017 Technical Report (the "2017 Report"). The final version of the NI 43-101 technical report containing the PFS will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days. As a result of the changes to the Project as evaluated in the PFS, including differences in the mineral resource estimation methodology and changes to the economic parameters applied to the geologic block model (gold price, recovery, CAPEX, and OPEX), all of which resulted in a change in the mineral resources, the Project as evaluated in the 2017 Report is no longer considered current and the 2017 Report should therefore not be relied upon by investors.

The Company cautions that the PFS is preliminary in nature, and is based on technical and economic assumptions which would be further refined and evaluated in a full feasibility study. The PFS is based on an updated Project mineral resource estimate effective as of August 20, 2021 using a different mineral resource model than what was used in the 2017 Report.

The following is a summary of the material aspects and assumptions of the PFS. Investors are urged to review the complete NI 43-101 report following its filing on SEDAR for complete details of the PFS.

The engineering design to estimate capital costs used in the PFS are within a -20%/+25% accuracy.

Project Location

The Project is connected by an existing paved highway to the city of Fairbanks, 70 miles to the southwest in central Alaska. The Project is located in an active mining district that has been mined for gold since 1914. The State of Alaska land use plan designates mining as the primary surface land use for the area in which the Project is located. Employees would be bussed daily to the site from Fairbanks.

Infrastructure

The Project would include a lined tailings management facility, an administration office/shop/warehouse complex, and would also include construction of a 50-mile 230kV electrical transmission line to the mine site from the existing grid power near Fairbanks, Alaska.

Environmental and Community Relations

Twelve continuous years of baseline environmental work continues to indicate that all aspects of the Project can be successfully and safely managed. The design of the tailings facility incorporates best practices including a lined rock fill structure with a lined tailings basin. The Project development team has considerable experience working with Alaska's large mine permitting process and has a proven and respected track record of developing mining projects safely and in an environmentally sound manner. The Project has already and will continue to provide local economic opportunities with local access to a highly skilled and available work force. The Company is also working to seek early input on the Project and to explore ways to maximize economic benefits to the local communities.

Summary of Results of the 65,000 Tons Per Day PFS



OPERATING METRICS 2021 PFS



Mill Throughput 65,000 tons/day

Head Grade  Year 1-5(1) 0.79 g/tonne

Head Grade  LOM(1) 0.65 g/tonne

Gold Recovery  LOM 71.4 %

Mine Life 21 years

Total Ounces Produced 6,430,178 Troy ounces

Average Annual Production  Year 1-5 388,600 Troy ounces

Average Annual Production  LOM 306,200 Troy ounces

Total Ore Processed 474 Million tons

Total Waste(2) 547 Million tons

Annual Mining Rate 52 Million tons

Waste Rock to Mill Ore (ton) Ratio  LOM during production 0.98:1 Waste to Ore

Waste Rock to Mill Ore (ton) Ratio  LOM 1.15:1 Waste to Ore

Low Grade Stockpile  Total Placed/Maximum Size 105/88 Million tons (1) Diluted grade

(2) Includes 84 million tons pre-production



FINANCIAL METRICS 2021 PFS US$

CAPEX  Initial 1.93 $Billion

CAPEX  Sustaining 658 $Million

Reclamation & Closure 322 $Million

OPEX  Mining 2.05 $/ton mined

OPEX  Processing 7.72 $/ton ore

OPEX  General &Administrative (G&A) 1.35 $/ton ore

OPEX - Operating Cost  Year 1-5 887 $/Ounce

OPEX - Operating Cost  LOM 1,068 $/Ounce

All-In Sustaining Cost of Production  Year 1-5 1,038 $/Ounce

All-In Sustaining Cost of Production  LOM 1,171 $/Ounce









Gold Price Sensitivity Analysis

The following table shows the average annual free cash flow and EBIDTA generated by the Project at various gold prices.

(US$M) FREE CASH FLOW EBIDTA Gold Price

($/Oz) Average Annual

(Year 1-5) Average Annual

(LOM) Average Annual

(Year 1-5) Average Annual

(LOM) $1,500 $159 $108 $229 $142 $1,680 PFS

Base Case $225 $154 $296 $197 $1,800 $269 $184 $342 $234 $2,000 $332 $232 $417 $295 $2,500 $482 $349 $605 $449

The following table shows the after-tax economics at various gold prices.

Gold Price ($/Oz) AFTER TAX

NPV 0% ($M) AFTER TAX

NPV 5% ($M) IRR (%) Payback (Years) $1,500 $202 ($512) 1.00% 16.2 $1,680 (PFS Base

Case) $1,137 $45 5.30% 10.4 $1,800 $1,741 $400 7.70% 8.2 $2,000 $2,729 $975 11.20% 6.3 $2,500 $5,102 $2,351 18.50% 3.9

Capital Costs



Key capital expenditures for initial and sustaining capital requirements are identified in the following table.



US$ Million Description Initial Sustaining Process Facilities $433

Infrastructure Facilities 459 $514 Power Supply 87

Mine Equipment 200 139 Mine Development 230

Owners Costs 296 5 Contingency 220

Total $1,925 $658

Rounding of some figures may lead to minor discrepancies in totals.

All-in Sustaining Costs

The table below highlights the all-in sustaining costs and the all-in cost over the life of the Project:









Year 1-5 LOM



US$/Ounce US$ Million US$/Ounce US$ Million

Operating Costs $887 $1,724 $1,068 $6,870

Sustaining Capital Expenditures 151 292 102 658

All-In Sustaining Costs(1) $1,038 $2,016 $1,171 $7,529

Capital Expenditures (2) (3) 0 0 299 1,925

Funding of Reclamation Trust Fund (4) 30 58 42 268

All-In Costs(1) $1,068 $2,075 $1,512 $9,722 Rounding of some figures may lead to minor discrepancies in totals.

















(1) All-In Sustaining Costs and All-In-Costs are non-IFRS

measures. See reference to "Non-IFRS Measures" below. (3) Excludes US$40 million of recoverable initial stores

inventory. (2) Includes initial capital expenditures only. (4) Total US$322 million estimated costs.

Annual Gold Production

The chart below highlights the anticipated production schedule. Total life-of-mine production is anticipated to be 6,430,178 ounces. Mill feed will consist of reclaimed ore from the low-grade stockpile during Years 18 through 21.

Year Mill Feed Grade (g/tonne) Ounces Produced (000) 1 0.76 321 2 0.69 388 3 0.93 482 4 0.93 437 5 0.61 314 6 0.61 328 7 0.64 340 8 0.64 329 9 0.69 357 10 0.58 306 11 0.61 296 12 0.72 336 13 0.77 339 14 0.77 322 15 0.71 308 16 0.73 316 17 0.65 293 18 0.36 188 19 0.36 188 20 0.36 188 21 0.37 54 LOM 0.65 6,430 Rounding of some figures may lead to minor discrepancies in totals.

Project Mineral Reserves

The table below presents the Mineral Reserve estimate for the Project (effective as of October 22, 2021). These Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves formed the basis of the economic evaluation of the Project and are based on a gold price of US$1,680 per ounce. The economic assumptions and parameters used for the calculation of reserves are the same as those used for the PFS financial model. Note that tonnages presented are in the metric system.

Livengood Gold Project Mineral Reserve Estimate

Classification Tonnes (Mt) Au (g/tonne) Contained Au

(000's) Proven 411.5 0.64 8,492 Probable 18.5 0.86 512 Total P & P 430.1 0.65 9,004

(1) Mineral Reserves are reported using the 2014 CIM Definition Standards and are estimated in accordance with 2019 CIM Best Practices Guidelines.

(2) Mineral Reserves are estimated using a gold price of US$1,680 per ounce, and consider a 3% royalty, 1.80/oz for smelting, refining, and transportation costs, and a gold payable of 99.9%

(3) Metallurgical recovery curves were developed for each rock type, with the Mineral Reserves having the following tonnage weighted averages; 83.3%, for Rocktype 4, 79.8% for Rocktype 5, 73.5% for Rocktype 6, 66.4% for Rocktype 7, 58.7% for Rocktype 8 and 57.1% for Rocktype 9, including 22% for massive stibnite mineralization.

(4) As a result of the complex metallurgical recovery equations, it is difficult to determine specific cut-off grades. The following presents the lowest gold grades for each rocktype that are processed in the life of mine plan; 0.26 g/t for Rocktype 4, 0.28 g/t for Rocktype 5, 0.31 g/t for Rocktype 6, 0.31 g/t for Rocktype 7 and 0.42 g/t for Rocktype 8 and 0.42 g/t for Rocktype 9.

(5) The strip ratio for the open pit is 1.2 to 1.

(6) The Mineral Reserves are inclusive of mining dilution and ore loss.

(7) The reference point for the Mineral Reserves is the primary crusher.

(8) Totals may not add due to rounding.

(9) The foregoing mineral reserves are based upon and are included within the current mineral resource estimate for the Project.

Project Mineral Resources



The mineral resource estimates set forth in the PFS ("2021 MRE") have been prepared by Resource Development Associates Inc. ("RDA"). Compared to the mineral resource estimates in the 2017 Report, the 2021 MRE included spatial modelling of the occurrence of antimony throughout the deposit as well as modelling of the locations of massive stibnite veins within the deposit. These details add valuable contributions to the reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction of gold for the Project. Gold mineralization has been interpolated into 10 x 10 x 10-meter blocks using inverse distance cubed (ID3) estimation techniques, believed to more conservatively support future production schedules as compared to the 2017 Report, which was based on Multiple Indicator Kriging of 15 x 15 x 10-meter blocks parceled into 7.5 x 7.5 x 10-meter selective mining units.

Table 1 Mineral Resource Estimate  Open Pit Constrained  Economic Parameters at Gold Selling Price of US$1,650 per Troy Ounce. Resources Estimated at Variable Au Cutoff Grades  as described in Table 2

(Qualified Person: Scott Wilson CPG; Effective August 20, 2021)

Classification Tonnes

(Mt) Au (g/t) Contained

Au

(000's) Measured 646.0 0.60 12,482 Indicated 58.5 0.61 1,142 Total M & I 704.5 0.60 13,624 Inferred 16.0 0.40 207

Mineral resources for the Project were determined based upon a combination of 776 reverse circulation and diamond drillholes comprising 147,658 assays of which 125,450 assays measured detectable Au mineralization. High grade Au outliers were capped prior to compositing. Assays were composited to nominal ten-meter lengths, yielding 20,806 individual samples which were used for the estimation of mineralization. Mineralization was determined using inverse distance cubed estimation techniques, adhering to geological constraints throughout the mineral deposit.

In order to define the quantities of Au with "reasonable prospects for economic extraction" by open pit methods, RDA determined pit constraining limits using the Lerchs-Grossman economic algorithm which constructs lists of related blocks that should or should not be mined. The final list defines a surface pit shell that has the highest possible total value, while honoring the required surface mine slope and economic parameters. Mineral resources were determined at a gold selling price of US$1,650.

The parameters listed in Table 2 define a realistic basis to estimate the mineral resources for the Project and are based on the extensive scientific, metallurgical and engineering based analyses that have been completed by Tower Hill Mines since 2006. Mineral resources for the Project have been limited to mineralized material that occurs within the pit shells and which could be scheduled to be processed based on the defined cut-off grades. All other material within the constraining pit, which was not classified according to CIM Definition Standards, was characterized as non-mineralized material.

Table 2 Pit Constraining Parameters

Parameter Unit Rock

Type 4 Rock

Type 5 Rock

Type 6 Rock

Type 7 Rock

Type 8 Rock

Type 9 Mining Cost

Unprocessed

Rock US$/tonne 1.76 1.74 1.74 1.68 1.76 1.76 Processing

Cost US$/

process

tonne 9.27 9.15 9.17 9.50 9.71 9.71 G & A US$/process

tonne 1.55 1.55 1.55 1.55 1.55 1.55 Au Recovery Avg %1 84 80 71 67 55 56 Royalty % 3 3 3 3 3 3 Au Selling

Price US$/oz 1,650 1,650 1,650 1,650 1,650 1,650 Au Cut-Off g/tonne 0.21 0.20 0.25 0.25 0.33 0.33 Overall Slope

Angle Degrees 45 45 45 45 45 45

1 Average % Au Recovery includes massive stibnite at 22% recovery

Grade and Tonnage Sensitivity to Cutoff Grade

Mineral resources at Livengood are sensitive to the selection of the reporting cutoff grade. To illustrate this sensitivity, the block model quantities and grade estimates within the constraining pit are presented in Table 3 at linear increases in the cutoff grades for measured, indicated and inferred mineral resources at Livengood. The same results are presented graphically in Figure 1. Mineralization is constrained to the pit using the parameters in Table 2. The numbers presented in Table 3 should not be misconstrued with a mineral resource statement. The figures are only presented to show the sensitivity of block model estimates to the selection of a cutoff grade. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.

Table 3 Sensitivity of Mineral Resources to cutoff used.

Effective Date: August 20, 2021.

QP Scott Wilson CPG







Measured Indicated Measured & Indicated Inferred Cutoff

Au g/t Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) 0.2 816,569 0.53 13,914 73,263 0.53 1,248 889,832 0.53 15,162 20,423 0.37 243 0.3 626,843 0.61 12,293 55,069 0.63 1,115 681,912 0.61 13,409 13,359 0.43 185 0.4 464,710 0.71 10,608 37,347 0.76 913 502,057 0.71 11,520 6,017 0.52 101 0.5 332,891 0.81 8,669 25,437 0.91 744 358,328 0.82 9,413 2,142 0.65 45 0.6 234,524 0.92 6,937 17,976 1.06 613 252,500 0.93 7,549 1,079 0.75 26 0.7 164,938 1.03 5,462 13,645 1.19 522 178,583 1.04 5,984 614 0.84 17 0.8 117,098 1.15 4,329 10,648 1.31 448 127,746 1.16 4,778 335 0.92 10 0.9 83,825 1.26 3,396 8,372 1.44 388 92,197 1.28 3,783 180 0.98 6 1.0 61,474 1.38 2,727 6,479 1.58 329 67,953 1.40 3,057 59 1.04 2

























































Figure 1 Sensitivity of Mineral Resources to cutoff used. Effective Date: August 20, 2021. QP Scott Wilson CPG (CNW Group/International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.)

Sensitivity of Mineralization to Gold Price

The sensitivity of the Livengood Project mineralization to the gold price was performed at selling prices of US$1,320/oz (- 20%),US $1,650/oz (the 2021 MRE selling price) and US$1,980/oz (+ 20%). The input technical parameters, defined in Table 2, were used in the analysis.

Table 4 Sensitivity of Pit-Constrained Mineralization Inventory at Gold Prices +/- 20% of US$1,650

WhittleTM

Pit Gold

Price Classification Tonnes

(Mt) Au

(g/t) Contained

Au (000's) US$1,320 Measured 423.84 0.70 9,496.30 Indicated 24.35 0.85 666.13 Total M & I 448.19 0.71 10,162.43 Inferred 2.02 0.11 7.15 US$1,650 Measured 646.00 0.60 12,482.49 Indicated 58.51 0.61 1,141.61 Total M & I 704.51 0.60 13,624.10 Inferred 15.98 0.40 206.98 US$1,980 Measured 845.60 0.54 14,668.81 Indicated 108.98 0.49 1,717.27 Total M & I 954.58 0.53 16,386.08 Inferred 31.97 0.37 377.99

The mineral resource estimate for the Project is inclusive of the mineral reserves for the Project. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral resource estimates do not account for mineability, selectivity, mining loss and dilution. These mineral resource estimates include inferred mineral resources that are normally considered too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves. There is also no certainty that these inferred mineral resources will be converted to measured and indicated categories through further drilling, or into mineral reserves, once economic considerations are applied.

Metallurgy Recovery by Rock Type

The Company has completed extensive metallurgical test work on the rock types that comprise the current estimated mineral resource. Recovery rates by rock type using gravity and carbon-in-leach recovery of gravity tail are shown in the table below:

Rock Type Gold Recovery %1 RT4 Cambrian 83.3 RT5 Sunshine Upper Sediments 79.8 RT6 Upper Sediments 73.5 RT7 Lower Sediments 66.4 RT8 Volcanics-Sunshine Zone 58.7 RT9 Volcanics-Core Zone 57.1

1- Weighted average recovery within reserve pit at p80 250 micron based on Au grade/geologic domain/Sb concentration/massive stibnite occurrence.

Detailed Report

A NI 43-101 compliant technical report that summarizes the results of the PFS will be filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com within 45 days of this news release and will be available on the Company's website www.ithmines.com at that time.

Qualified Persons

The PFS was prepared by the following Qualified Persons (as defined under NI 43-101), each of whom is independent of the Company under NI 43-101, and each of whom has reviewed, verified, and approved the scientific and technical data for which they have responsibility contained in this news release pertaining to the PFS. No limitations were imposed on the verification process.

Qualified Person Company Scope of Responsibility Colin Hardie, P. Eng (Ontario APEO No.

90512500) BBA Inc. Financial model, Process

Plant and Infrastructure

CAPEX, G&A OPEX,

Environmental Studies

and Permitting, Overall

NI 43-101 Integration Jeffrey Cassoff, P. Eng. (Quebec OIQ No.

5002252) BBA Inc. Mineral Reserves Melanie Turgeon, Eng. (Quebec OIQ No.

5028478) BBA Inc. Process Engineering and

Process Plant OPEX,

Mineral Processing and

Metallurgical Testing Ryan T. Baker. (Nevada No. 11172) NewFields Companies, LLC Geotechnical Engineering,

Waste Rock and Water

Management, TMF

CAPEX Mike Levy, P.E. (Colorado No. 40268) JDS Energy and Mining Inc. Mine Slope Stability Scott Wilson, CPG #10965 Resource Development

Associates Inc. Geology, Drilling,

Resource Estimation

Mr. Colin Hardie is a Senior Process Engineer and the Director of Non-Ferrous Metal Markets at BBA. He joined the BBA team in 2008 and has over 20 years of experience as an operations metallurgist, engineering consultant and in process research and development. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Geological and Mineral Engineering (1996). Mr. Hardie also has a Master of Engineering degree in Metallurgy from McGill University (1999) as well as a Master Degree in Business Administration from HEC Montreal (2008). He is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario, Canada. He has acted as a Qualified Person and lead study integrator for numerous North American gold, base metal and industrial mineral projects.

Mr. Jeffrey Cassoff is a Senior Mining Engineer and the Team Leader for Mining Engineering at BBA. Mr. Cassoff has over 20 years of experience in the mining industry working for both mining operations and as a consultant. Mr. Cassoff is a graduate of McGill University with a Bachelor of Mining Engineering (1999). Mr. Cassoff is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of Quebec, Canada. He has acted as a Qualified Person for numerous gold projects.

Mrs. Melanie Turgeon is a Process Engineer at BBA and has worked in consulting engineering since 2013. She is a graduate of the Universite de Sherbrooke with a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (2011) and a registered Engineer in the province of Quebec, Canada. She has been involved in the development of metallurgical testwork campaigns and in the writing of technical reports in accordance with standards governing NI 43-101.

Mr. Ryan T. Baker is a Principal Engineer with NewFields Mining Design & Technical Services, LLC, located in Lone Tree, CO. He is a graduate of Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering (1993) and a registered Professional Engineer in Nevada (#13947), Alaska (#11172), Idaho (#10226), Colorado (#36988), Missouri (PE2008000049), and New Mexico (#22110). He is also a Registered Member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME, #4204584) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, #307827) with relevant experience pertaining to heap leach, tailings and mine overburden storage facilities, and mine surface infrastructure design and inspection since 1994.

Mr. Michael Levy is Geotechnical Manager with JDS Energy & Mining Inc. in Denver, CO. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and a Master of Science degree in Civil-Geotechnical Engineering. He is a registered Professional Engineer with the states of Colorado (#40268) and a current member of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Mike has practiced for 22 years and has undertaken numerous mining and civil geotechnical projects ranging from conceptual through feasibility design levels, mine construction and operations support. He is skilled in both soil and rock mechanics engineering and specializes in the design and management of underground and open pit mine excavations.

Mr. Scott E. Wilson, CPG (10965), Registered Member of SME (4025107) and President of Resource Development Associates Inc., is an independent consulting geologist specializing in mineral reserve and resource calculation reporting, mining project analysis and due diligence evaluations. He is acting as the Qualified Person, as defined in NI 43-101, and is an author of the technical report which will be filed by the Company for the mineral resource estimate and has reviewed and approved the mineral resource estimate and the PFS summarized in this news release. Mr. Wilson has over 32 years of experience in surface mining, resource estimation and strategic mine planning. Mr. Wilson is independent of the Company under NI 43-101.

On behalf of

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

(signed) Karl Hanneman

Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements with respect to the mine plan, economic analysis (including capital expenditures, operating expenditures, all-in-sustaining costs and all-in costs) and production and design details described in the PFS; the potential to convert mineral resources to mineral reserves; additional optimization and exploration efforts and the results thereof; the ability of the Company to satisfy the derivative liability and the consequences of any failure to do so; the ability of the Company to potentially include refined and updated results in a subsequent full feasibility study; the ability of the Company to advance environmental baseline work in support of future permitting; the ability of the Company to advance the Livengood Project either as projected or at all; the potential for the Company to make a construction decision, whether when warranted by market conditions or at all; the potential for market conditions to be such that they warrant the making of a production decision; the potential development of any mine at the Livengood Project; business and financing plans and business trends are forward-looking statements. Information concerning mineral reserve/resource estimates and the economic analysis thereof contained in the PFS also may be deemed to be forward-looking statements in that it reflects a prediction of the mineralization that would be encountered, and the results of mining it, if a mineral deposit were developed and mined. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, proposed, planned, potential and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the inability of the Company to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital (including, as required, to satisfy the derivative liability) or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's Annual Information Form filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), and other information released by the Company and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and its United States public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sec.gov, and readers are urged to review these materials, including the 2017 Report and the technical report to be filed with respect to the Company's Livengood property within 45 days hereof.

Non-IFRS Measures

The Company has included certain non-IFRS measures in this news release, as discussed below. The Company believes that these measures, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, provides investors with an improved ability to evaluate the underlying performance of the Company. These non-IFRS measures are intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. These measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and therefore may not be comparable to other issuers.

All-In Sustaining Costs ("AISC") and AISC/oz

AISC is a performance measure that reflects the expenditures that are required to produce an ounce of gold from current operations. While there is no standardized meaning of the measure across the industry, the Company's definition is derived from the definition, as set out by the World Gold Council in its guidance dated June 27, 2013 and November 16, 2018, respectively. The World Gold Council is a non-regulatory, non-profit organization established in 1987 whose members include global senior mining companies. The Company believes that this measure is useful to external users in assessing operating performance and the ability to generate free cash flow from operations. The Company defines AISC as the sum of total cash costs, sustaining capital (capital required to maintain current operations at existing production levels), capital lease repayments, exploration expenditures designed to increase resource confidence at producing mines, amortization of asset retirement costs and rehabilitation accretion related to current operations. AISC excludes general corporate and administrative costs incurred at the non-project level, capital expenditures for significant improvements at existing operations deemed to be expansionary in nature, exploration and evaluation related to resource growth, rehabilitation accretion not related to current operations, financing costs, debt repayments, and taxes. Total AISC is divided by gold ounces sold to arrive at a per ounce figure.

All-In Costs ("AIC") and All-In-Costs/oz

The Company defines AIC as the sum of AISC costs plus initial capital expenditures. Total AIC is divided by gold ounces sold to arrive at a per ounce figure.

Cautionary Note Regarding References to Resources and Reserves

National Instrument 43101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators which establishes standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. Unless otherwise indicated, all resource and reserve estimates contained in or incorporated by reference in this news release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (the "CIM") Standards on Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the CIM Council on May 10, 2014 (the "CIM Standards") as they may be amended from time to time by the CIM.

Accordingly, information in this press release providing descriptions of the Company's mineral deposits in accordance with NI 43-101 may not be comparable to similar information made public by other U.S. companies subject to the United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.

Pursuant to CIM Definition Standards, "Inferred mineral resources" are that part of a mineral resource for which quantity and grade or quality are estimated on the basis of limited geological evidence and sampling. Such geological evidence is sufficient to imply but not verify geological and grade or quality continuity. An inferred mineral resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to an indicated mineral resource and must not be converted to a mineral reserve. However, it is reasonably expected that the majority of inferred mineral resources could be upgraded to indicated mineral resources with continued exploration. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, except in rare cases. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource is economically or legally mineable. Disclosure of "contained ounces" in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures.

Effective February 25, 2019, the SEC adopted new mining disclosure rules under subpart 1300 of Regulation S-K of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "SEC Modernization Rules"), with compliance required for the first fiscal year beginning on or after January 1, 2021. The SEC Modernization Rules replace the historical property disclosure requirements included in SEC Industry Guide 7. As a result of the adoption of the SEC Modernization Rules, the SEC now recognizes estimates of "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources". In addition, the SEC has amended its definitions of "Proven Mineral Reserves" and "Probable Mineral Reserves" to be substantially similar to corresponding definitions under the CIM Definition Standards. While the SEC Modernization Rules are purported to be "substantially similar" to the CIM Definition Standards, readers are cautioned that there are differences between the SEC Modernization Rules and the CIM Definitions Standards. Accordingly, there is no assurance any mineral reserves or mineral resources that the Company may report as "proven mineral reserves", "probable mineral reserves", "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "inferred mineral resources" under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the reserve or resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules.

This news release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.

Cision

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SOURCE International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.
Program represents a major milestone in Ithaca's Green New Deal promise for carbon neutrality

Building decarbonization expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% and create 400 new jobs

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WEB SUMMIT 2021  BlocPower , a Brooklyn-based climate tech startup focused on greening aging urban buildings, today announced that the City of Ithaca, NY has voted to electrify and decarbonize its building stock. The contract represents the first large-scale, city-wide electrification initiative in the U.S., and a major step forward in Ithaca's plan to become carbon-neutral by 2030.

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Last night, Ithaca's Common Council voted to empower Mayor Svante L. Myrick to negotiate a contract with BlocPower, which the city's Planning & Economic Development Committee unanimously approved to manage the project after ratifying the results from its Energy Efficiency Retrofitting and Thermal Load Electrification RFP on October 20.

Building electrification is a major part of Ithaca's Green New Deal , one of the most aggressive decarbonization programs in New York State. The program will benefit Ithaca residents through job creation, lower energy costs, reduced pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and more energy-efficient homes and buildings.

BlocPower's proposal estimates that the installation of air source heat pumps paired with supporting energy efficiency upgrades and other building improvements will cut Ithaca's 400,000 tons of CO2 by 40% and create 400 new green economy construction, technology and management jobs. At the same time, it will make financing green energy upgrades affordable by providing low-cost loans to building owners, which they will pay back through the significant energy cost savings received.

"We applaud the City of Ithaca's bold vision and progressive plan to reduce fossil fuel dependency, improve the health and quality of life for its residents, embrace environmental social justice issues and fight the effects of climate change today to build a better tomorrow," said Donnel Baird, CEO and co-founder of BlocPower. "Mayor Myrick, Ithaca's Common Council and Planning & Economic Development Committee members have all demonstrated incredible leadership on this issue, and their hard work has laid the groundwork for other cities across the U.S. to follow."

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"At the same time COP26 takes place in Glasgow, the City of Ithaca demonstrates its commitment to fight climate change by taking this very important step towards fully decarbonizing our building stock. Through this program, the City expects to eliminate most emissions from energy use in existing residential and commercial buildings, which today account for almost 40% of the total emissions in our city," said Savante Myrick, Mayor of Ithaca, NY.

About BlocPower

BlocPower is a Brooklyn-based climate technology startup that is making American cities greener, smarter and healthier. Since its founding in 2014, the company has retrofitted more than 1,200 buildings in disadvantaged communities in New York City, with projects underway in 26 cities, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Oakland and more. BlocPower uses proprietary software for analysis, leasing, project management, and monitoring of clean energy projects that save customers between 20-70 percent on annual energy costs. For more information please visit https://blocpower.io .

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SOURCE BlocPower
HSINCHU, Taiwan, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor manufacturers moving into the 2 nm process are facing challenges in accurately measuring the dimensions of key components, such as transistor structure, size, and film thickness. Based on industry's demand for state-of-the-art measurements for in-vehicle electronics and a new generation of semiconductors, the Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has coordinated with the British Office Taipei in jointly promoting cooperation between ITRI and Oxford Instruments. The parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Oct. 28 for a joint laboratory of leading-edge metrology and inspection technology used in semiconductor measurements. The signatories intend to integrate the joint R&D capabilities of ITRI and Oxford Instruments, laying the foundation for next-generation semiconductor measurement capacities.

ITRI and Oxford Instruments signed an MoU to establish a joint laboratory for leading-edge semiconductor metrology and inspection technology.

(PRNewsfoto/Industrial Technology Research Institute)

According to statistics tabulated in a market poll by Mordor Intelligence, the size of the market for semiconductor measurement and testing equipment in 2020 was US$4.1647 billion, and it is expected to reach US$5.3734 billion by 2026, highlighting the enormous potential for development. The DoIT stressed that based on Taiwan's cutting edge in its complete semiconductor industry chain and 2 nm manufacturing technology, the collaboration between ITRI and Oxford Instrument constitutes a milestone in the advanced measurement of semiconductors and will accelerate the development of inspection technologies. Oxford Instruments is a world-renowned multinational instrument and equipment manufacturer, providing advanced products and service around the world, while ITRI possesses world's leading semiconductor measurement technology.

ITRI Executive Vice President Alex Y.M. Peng stated that ITRI has been dedicated to R&D projects spanning across semiconductor and optoelectronic industry chains. Presently, it has developed excellent technical inspection capabilities in the scale-down to 2-3 nm wafer manufacturing. ITRI and Oxford Instruments commenced technology cooperation in 2017 in the development of semiconductor optoelectronic components and equipment. The two sides forged a strong cooperative relationship and leveraged the strengths of each other, he added, which set the basis for a new round of cooperation. "This time we will work on cutting-edge measurement technology for advanced manufacturing processes and key tools in monitoring yields in mass production. We hope that the cooperation between Taiwan and the UK will accelerate the technological progress of both sides and open new horizons for the semiconductor industry," he said.

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John Dennis, Representative of British Office Taipei, said, "I welcome the signing of this MoU with great excitement. The importance of semiconductors has now become abundantly clear to people around the world. The UK has several world-leading semiconductor companies ranging from ultra-low-power IC design to Compound Semiconductor design and production. Furthermore, we have important specialist companies like Oxford Instruments providing high tech equipment and services to the world's leading industrial companies and scientific research communities such as ITRI in Taiwan. Taiwan is already well known as a world leader in semiconductors, having both the world's most advanced processes and the majority of the world's semiconductor foundry production capacity. And ITRI is playing an instrumental role in developing Taiwanese semiconductor industry. I look forward to seeing this collaboration leading to ever increasing innovation and partnership."

Oxford Instruments Director of Product Christian Lang remarked that it is vital to have insight into development opportunities in the industry. The development of semiconductor technology is focused on miniaturization, high performance, and low power consumption. In particular, 3D chip stacking design has been a profound breakthrough. By relying on the well-established inspection capabilities of ITRI, Oxford Instruments will continue to develop state-of-the-art technology for the next generation of semiconductor materials, he said. Mr. Lang hopes this cooperation will further generate semiconductor-related innovations to address the future challenges of industry.

Besides the signing of the cooperative MoU, Oxford Instruments will also move its Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to the joint laboratory at ITRI for more applications. The AFM can speed up key dimension inspections of semiconductor wafer structures by up to 10 times, can be applied to the measurement of semiconductor 3D structures.

Amid the ever-changing development of semiconductor technology, advanced measurement technology will be seen as a key to success in semiconductor manufacturing. The cooperation between ITRI and Oxford Instruments will highlight the role of measurement technology in system integration and cross-field innovation, further assisting industry in transition and upgrading.

About ITRI

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the world's leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan's industries from labor-intensive into innovation-driven. To address market needs and global trends, it has launched its 2030 Technology Strategy & Roadmap and focuses on innovation development in Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment. It also strives to strengthen Intelligentization Enabling Technology to support diversified applications.

Over the years, ITRI has been dedicated to incubating startups and spinoffs, including well-known names such as UMC and TSMC. In addition to its headquarters in Taiwan, ITRI has branch offices in the U.S., Europe, and Japan in an effort to extend its R&D scope and promote international cooperation across the globe. For more information, please visit https://www.itri.org/eng.

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SOURCE Industrial Technology Research Institute
LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE IS NOVEMBER 8, 2021

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP reminds investors that a federal securities class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired loanDepot, Inc. ("loanDepot" or the "Company") (NYSE: LDI) shares pursuant and/or traceable to the registration statement and prospectus (collectively, the "Registration Statement") issued in connection with loanDepot's February 16, 2021 initial public offering ("IPO").

(PRNewsfoto/Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman )

All investors who purchased loanDepot, Inc. and incurred losses are urged to contact the firm immediately at classmember@whafh.com or (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774. You may obtain additional information concerning the action or join the case on our website, www.whafh.com.

If you have incurred losses in the shares of loanDepot, Inc., you may, no later than November 8, 2021, request that the Court appoint you lead plaintiff of the proposed class. Please contact Wolf Haldenstein to learn more about your rights as an investor in loanDepot, Inc.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO JOIN CASE

In February 2021, loanDepot completed its initial public offering ("IPO"), selling 3.85 million shares of Class A common stock at $14.00 per share.

By August 17, 2021, loanDepot's stock price fell 42% below the IPO price after the Company had disclosed disappointing second quarter 2021 financial results and provided significantly lower guidance for its business.

Wolf Haldenstein has extensive experience in the prosecution of securities class actions and derivative litigation in state and federal trial and appellate courts across the country. The firm has attorneys in various practice areas; and offices in New York, Chicago and San Diego. The reputation and expertise of this firm in shareholder and other class litigation has been repeatedly recognized by the courts, which have appointed it to major positions in complex securities multi-district and consolidated litigation.

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If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions regarding your rights and interests in this case, please immediately contact Wolf Haldenstein by telephone at (800) 575-0735, via e-mail at classmember@whafh.com, or visit our website at www.whafh.com.

Contact:

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP

Patrick Donovan, Esq.

Gregory Stone, Director of Case and Financial Analysis

Email: gstone@whafh.com, donovan@whafh.com or classmember@whafh.com

Tel: (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

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SOURCE Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP
- Statistically significant and clinically important reductions in proteinuria were achieved for the primary endpoint for patients with C3G(1)

- Additionally, statistically significant reduction in C3 protein deposits were achieved in the same study in a cohort of patients whose C3G recurred following kidney transplantation(1)

- No current approved treatments exist for C3G - a rare and often progressive disease that often affects adolescents and young adults and frequently progresses to kidney failure(2-4)

- Novartis is rapidly advancing clinical development of iptacopan to potentially address several complement-driven renal diseases (CDRDs) with high unmet need, as part of our wider commitment to cardiovascular, renal and metabolic disease; pivotal Phase III APPEAR-C3G study is actively recruiting

EAST HANOVER, N.J., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis today announced that a Phase II study of investigational iptacopan (LNP023)  a first-in-class, oral, selective factor B inhibitor  in patients with C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) met primary endpoints in both patient cohorts1. The data were presented at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2021 Annual Meeting.

In the final analysis from the open-label, two-cohort Phase II study (NCT03832114), patients were treated with 200mg of iptacopan twice daily for 12 weeks, in addition to background therapy1. Patients in cohort A (16 with C3G, but who have not had a kidney transplant [native C3G]) showed a significant 45% reduction in proteinuria (protein in urine) compared to baseline, as measured by 24-hour urinary protein to creatine ratio (UPCR 24h; P=0.0003)1. Patients in cohort B (7* whose C3G had returned following a kidney transplant) showed significantly reduced C3 protein deposits compared to baseline, as measured by C3 deposit score (based on immunofluorescence microscopy) from kidney biopsy (P=0.0313)1.

"The data presented at ASN provide a detailed picture of the potential of iptacopan for the treatment of patients with C3G and, for the first time, in patients whose C3G had returned following kidney transplantation," said lead study investigator Edwin Wong, Consultant Nephrologist at the National Renal Complement Therapeutics Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle University, UK. "These results are important for patients with C3G because proteinuria is a key risk predictor for kidney disease progression, and deposits of C3 protein ultimately cause inflammation and kidney damage."

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Additionally, both cohorts of this Phase II study showed strong and sustained inhibition of alternative complement pathway activity and normalization of serum C3 levels over 12 weeks1. In combined data from both cohorts, kidney function remained stable after 12 weeks, as assessed by estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR, average increase of 1.04 mL/min compared to baseline)1. Previously presented data from the long-term extension study (NCT03955445) showed kidney function was maintained in the seven patients that were treated for a total of six months at that time, suggesting extended iptacopan treatment may prolong the time to, or even potentially prevent, the development of kidney failure5,6.

Iptacopan showed a favorable safety and tolerability profile in the Phase II final analysis, with no serious adverse events suspected to be related to iptacopan1.

"C3G is a devastating disease where people can end up facing life-altering and often exhausting kidney dialysis or transplantation at a time when they might otherwise be focused on building their lives, careers, and families. With currently no approved treatments, there is a major unmet need for therapies that can delay progression to kidney failure," said John Tsai, Head of Global Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer at Novartis. "These data demonstrate the ability of iptacopan to strongly and specifically inhibit the key driver for C3G  the alternative complement pathway. The results also show the potential for iptacopan to provide the first targeted treatment for people living with C3G, and we are actively recruiting for our pivotal Phase III APPEAR-C3G study."

*11 patients were recruited into cohort B, but only 7 patients had data to analyze for the C3 protein deposits primary endpoint.

About the study

NCT03832114 is a Phase II, open-label, two cohort, non-randomized study evaluating the efficacy, safety and pharmacokinetics of iptacopan in patients with C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) (cohort A) and patients who have undergone kidney transplantation and have subsequent C3G recurrence in the transplanted organ (cohort B)1,7. The primary endpoint for cohort A was reduction in proteinuria (as measured by UPCR 24h) from baseline to week 121,7. The primary endpoint for cohort B was change in C3 deposit score (based on immunofluorescence microscopy) from kidney biopsy from baseline to week 121,7. On completion of the study, all patients had the option to receive ongoing iptacopan in a long-term extension study (NCT03955445)1.

About iptacopan

Iptacopan is an investigational, first-in-class, orally administered factor B inhibitor of the alternative complement pathway, targeting one of the key drivers of CDRDs8-10. It is the most advanced asset in the Novartis nephrology pipeline and has the potential to become the first targeted therapy to delay progression to dialysis in C3G9. Discovered at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, iptacopan is currently in development for a number of CDRDs where significant unmet needs exist, including C3G, IgA nephropathy (IgAN), atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS), and idiopathic membranous nephropathy (iMN), as well as the blood disorder paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH).

Phase III studies in IgAN (APPLAUSE-IgAN) and aHUS (APPELHUS), and a Phase II study in iMN, are actively recruiting. Two Phase III studies in PNH (APPLY-PNH and APPOINT-PNH) are also actively recruiting. Based on disease prevalence and positive data from Phase II studies, iptacopan has received EMA PRIME designation for C3G, orphan drug designations from the FDA and EMA in C3G and PNH, EMA orphan drug designation in IgAN, and FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation in PNH.

While Novartis has a 35-year history in kidney transplantation treatments, iptacopan is the first treatment in the nephrology pipeline addressing CDRDs. Our aim is to transform treatment by targeting one of the key drivers of these rare and often progressive diseases and, in doing so, potentially extend dialysis-free life for people with CDRDs8-10.

About C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) and complement-driven renal diseases (CDRDs)

In C3G, an overly-active alternative complement pathway  part of the innate immune system  causes deposits of C3 protein to build up in kidney glomeruli (a network of blood vessels that filter waste and remove extra fluids from the blood)2,4,11-13. This triggers inflammation and glomerular damage that results in proteinuria (protein in urine), hematuria (blood in urine) and reduced kidney function2,4,11-13. Approximately 50% of C3G patients progress to kidney failure within 10 years of diagnosis2,3,13,14. Among patients who have undergone kidney transplantation, disease recurrence is not uncommon, with one study seeing an estimated 30% and 70% risk of transplant loss at 5 and 10 years, respectively2,13,14-16.

Each year, there are approximately 1-2 new cases of C3G per million people worldwide17. People with C3G have reported that their symptoms limit their physical and functional ability to perform day-to-day activities and also cause emotional stress18.

CDRDs, which include C3G, are thought to arise from an overactivation of the alternative complement pathway, which creates inflammation and leads to tissue and kidney damage9,19-21. CDRDs mainly affect teenagers and young adults and can progress to kidney failure, which requires dialysis or transplantation and can lead to premature death2-4,19-21.

There is a need for effective and well-tolerated, targeted therapies for C3G that can delay disease progression.

Disclaimer

This media update contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "may," "could," "would," "expect," "anticipate," "seek," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this media update, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this media update will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this media update as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this media update as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Located in East Hanover, NJ Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation  an affiliate of Novartis  is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis employs nearly 15,000 people in the United States. For more information, please visit https://www.novartis.us.

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References

Wong E, Nester C, Cavero T, et al. Iptacopan, a novel oral complement alternative pathway Factor B inhibitor, significantly reduces urinary protein excretion and C3 Deposit Scores in native and transplanted kidneys in patients with C3 glomerulopathy. Presented at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2021 Annual Meeting. Smith RJH, Appel GB, Blom AM, et al. C3 glomerulopathy - understanding a rare complement-driven renal disease. Nat Rev Nephrol. 2019;15(3):129-143. Nester CM, Smith RJ. Treatment options for C3 glomerulopathy. Curr Opin Nephrol Hypertens. 2013;22(2):231237. Ravindran A, et al. C3 glomerulopathy associated with monoclonal Ig is a distinct subtype. Kidney Int. 2018;94:17886. Wong E, Praga M, Nester C, et al. Iptacopan (LNP023): a novel oral complement alternative pathway factor B inhibitor safely and effectively stabilises eGFR in C3 glomerulopathy. Presented at the ERA-EDTA 2021 congress. Wong, E et al. LNP023, a novel, oral complement alternative pathway Factor B inhibitor, safely and effectively reduces proteinuria in C3 glomerulopathy. Presented at the American Society of Nephrology Annual Meeting 2020. Clinicaltrials.gov. Study on Efficacy and Safety of LNP023 in C3 Glomerulopathy Patients Transplanted and Not Transplanted. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03832114. Accessed October 2021. Merle NS, et al. Complement System Part II: Role in Immunity. Front Immunol. 2015;6:257. Schubart A, et al. Small-molecule factor B inhibitor for the treatment of complement-mediated diseases. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019;116(16):79267931. Harris CL. Expanding horizons in complement drug discovery: challenges and emerging strategies. Semin Immunopathol. 2018;40(1):125140. Caravaca-Fontan F, et al. Update on C3 Glomerulopathy: A Complement-Mediated Disease. Nephron. 2020;144:27280. Schena F, et al. A Narrative Review on C3 Glomerulopathy: A Rare Renal Disease. Int J Mol Sci. 2020;21:525. Medjeral-Thomas N, et al. C3 glomerulopathy: clinicopathologic features and predictors of outcome. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014;9:4653. Goodship THJ, Cook HT, Fakhouri F, et al. Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome and C3 glomerulopathy: conclusions from a "Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes" (KDIGO) Controversies Conference. Kidney Int. 2017;91(3):539-551. Regunathan-Shenk R, et al. Kidney transplantation in C3 glomerulopathy: a case series. Am J Kidney Dis. 2018:73:31623. Zand L, et al. Clinical Findings, Pathology, and Outcomes of C3GN after Kidney Transplantation. J Am Soc Nephrol 2014;25:11107. Estimated by Decision Resources Group Epidemiology. National Kidney Foundation. Voice of patient C3G report. August 2019. ukawska E, Polcyn-Adamczak M, Niemir ZI. The role of the alternative pathway of complement activation in glomerular diseases. Clin Exp Med. 2018;18(3):297318. Koscielska-Kasprzak K, Bartoszek D, Myszka M, Zabinska M, Klinger M. The complement cascade and renal disease. Arch Immunol Ther Exp (Warsz). 2014;62(1):4757. De Vriese AS, Sethi S, Van Praet J, Nath KA, Fervenza FC. Kidney disease caused by dysregulation of the complement alternative pathway: An etiologic approach. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2015;26(12):29172929.

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SOURCE Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
The ranking members of Americas political establishment are nothing if not time-tested.

President Joe Biden, already the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, will turn 79 in just a few weeks. In Congress, much of the senior leadership is, well, quite senior: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 81, and Mitch McConnell, the Senates top Republican, is 79. Meanwhile, there have been calls on the left for 83-year-old Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to step down (while theres a Democrat in the White House to appoint his replacement). Should a Republican win the 2024 presidential election, its likely Clarence Thomas, currently 73 years old, will hear similar grumblings from conservatives.

Indeed, many of the countrys top decision makers are septuagenarians and octogenariansand according to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), thats a real problem. At some point, and statistically its in the eighties, you begin a more rapid decline, the 64-year-old, who is also a gastroenterologist, told Axios last month. It's usually noticeable. So anybody in a position of responsibility who may potentially be on that slope, that is of concern. And I'm saying this as a doctor."

The solution, according to Cassidy, lies in cognition tests for those of all three branches of government. Would it be reasonable to havean annual sort of evaluation in which they would have to establish, Yes, Im doing okay? Cassidy asked. I think thats actually a reasonable plan.

Though Cassidy was careful not to name-check anyone in particular, its easy to find anecdotes to substantiate his concerns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), 88, faced allegations of cognitive decline. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), 81, was hospitalized earlier this year, sending Democrats into a panic given their razor-thin Senate majority. Republicans have also been quick to point to any video of Biden stumbling over his words or appearing to doze off during events as evidence of the president's senility. Democrats employed a similar tactic when Trump was in the White House. (Should Trump run again in 2024at which point he would be 77that line of attack is likely to return.)

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The age issue exists in the court system too: According to a 2010 ProPublica survey, 12% of the roughly 1,200 sitting federal district and circuit judges are 80 or older. Federal judges make life or death decisions, said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit group that seeks reform in the federal court system. They can impact civil rights, financial markets, health care, voting. I think every citizen has the right to expect that a judge has the mental acuity to adjudicate the case fairly and is up to the task.

The age question isnt just an issue of senility, but also representation. The national median age in the U.S. is about 38, per the latest Census data; the average age in Congress, on the other hand, is roughly 61. Such a disparity can cause the government to ignore the issues that younger constituents really care about, like climate change legislation or free community collegewhich have been respectively scaled back and cut from the reconciliation bill.

At every level of government, older folks are running the show, said Amanda Litman, the cofounder of Run for Something, which helps young progressives to run for state and local office. That's not to say that they don't have wisdom and experience and knowledge that benefits us, but it is to the detriment of young people whose voices are left out of the space.

A proposal like Cassidys to require cognitive tests has some precedent. As Times Charlotte Alter pointed out, many states require anyone over 70 to take additional tests in order to meet drivers license renewal requirements. But when it comes to government, no such exam exists. The Founders set minimum ages for serving in Congress and the White House, not maximum. (While theres been no movement on legislation to implement cognition tests for members of Congress or the White House, a 2018 bill to require such tests for federal judges did pass the House Judiciary Committee, though it never made it to the House floor.)

So what might a cognition test for the U.S.s political and judicial leaders actually look like? For starters, policymakers could check out the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), which quickly assesses a persons ability to follow instructions, maintain attention, and learn and retain new details. The MMSE isnt meant to be administered just one time; rather, its intended to be taken repeatedly, as a means of showing longer-term changes in reasoning and retention.

It's not a diagnostic exam, where it's positive or negative. It's more like, here's your trajectory over time, said Jeremy Samuel Faust, a doctor at Brigham and Womens Hospital emergency-medicine department. It's really about a pattern and less about one instance or one outcome.

In the case of a Trump vs. Biden rematch, regular MMSE testing could give constituents some peace of mind and settle, for both men, rumors of any mental decline.

The more public our public figures becomebecause there's cameras always onthe more likely we are to be exposed to these situations, he said. We have to make sense of them.

More politics coverage from Fortune:

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
SAN JOSE, Calif, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - TPCO Holding Corp . ("The Parent Company" or the "Company") (NEO: GRAM.U) (OTCQX: GRAMF), today announced it will report financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, on Monday, November 15, 2021, after market close. The Company will host a conference call to discuss the results at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

TPCO Logo (CNW Group/The Parent Company)

CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS DATE: Monday, November 15, 2021 TIME: 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time WEBCAST: Click Here DIAL-IN NUMBER: 1-(800) 437-2398 CONFERENCE ID: 8862639 REPLAY: 1 (888) 203-1112 or 1 (647)-436-0148

Available until 12:00 midnight Eastern Time Monday, November 22, 2021 Replay Code: 8862639

About The Parent Company:

Formed in January 2021, The Parent Company is a leading vertically integrated California cannabis company. The company's three manufacturing facilities guarantee unparalleled access to high-quality, low-cost cannabis, while its vast wholesale distribution network of more than 450 California dispensaries, a direct-to-consumer omnichannel platform, six consumer delivery hubs and eleven omni-channel retail locations, currently service approximately 80% of the largest legal cannabis market in the country. The Company's curated product portfolio includes eight of the most valuable and scalable brands in cannabis, including Monogram by Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter, Caliva, Deli, Fun Uncle, and Mirayo, which sets the tone for The Parent Company's industry leadership in California and beyond.

In addition to its vast manufacturing infrastructure, consumer reach and cultural influence, The Parent Company is committed to using its resources and status to play a significant role in molding a more equitable cannabis industry. Its social equity ventures initiative, established by Chief Visionary Officer Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter, was created to break down the systematic barriers Black and other minority entrepreneurs face as they endeavor to secure meaningful participation, growth and leadership in the multibillion-dollar legal cannabis industry.

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Shares of The Parent Company common stock are traded on NEO Exchange under the ticker symbol "GRAM.U" and on the OTCQX under the ticker symbol "GRAMF".

For the latest news, activities, and media coverage, please visit www.theparent.co or connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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SOURCE The Parent Company
Whether youre celebrating Thanksgiving by hosting the whole family or just want a low-key dinner for two, if you dont want to do all or even any of the cooking, the Seacoast has many options. Dine in at your favorite restaurant or order your full meal to take home right down to the pies.

Heres a list of dine-in and takeout options for Thanksgiving which we will update as we near Nov. 25. If you have anything to add to this list, do email me at RachelForrest1@gmail.com. And restaurateurs, if I didnt see any info for this year on your website or social media, I left it out until I can get more info so do send it along. I will add you to the list. Have a happy holiday!

Restaurants and businesses around the Seacoast are now taking your orders and reservations for Thanksgiving dinner.

Roundabout Diner, Portsmouth

The Thanksgiving dinners for both dine-in and takeout are very popular. Dine in on Thursday, Nov. 25 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a family-style dinner (instead of their usual buffet) and enjoy slow-roasted turkey and ham, cornbread stuffing, classic sides, dinner rolls and homemade pies. Dinner is $27.95 for adults and $14.95 for kids under 12. For takeout, enjoy all the classics in two sizes. Meal 1 serves 6 to 8 for $179.99 and Meal 2 serves 10 to 12 at $229.99. You can also get a la carte sides, pies and roasted turkey breast. Pickups are available Wed., Nov. 24 or on Thanksgiving Day until 2 p.m. Visit roundaboutdiner.com.

The Library Restaurant, Portsmouth

Dine in from noon to 8 p.m. on a selection of appetizers, steaks and chops and other entrees from their regular menu, but also a traditional roast turkey dinner with all the fixings for $38 for adults or $22 for the childs serving. See the full menu at libraryrestaurant.com.

Clipper Tavern, Portsmouth

Dine in from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. for the a la carte Thanksgiving menu which includes fried pickles and Buffalo cauliflower to start and entrees like a full turkey dinner with all the fixins at just $16. Lobster pot pie and roasted vegetable Napoleon are other choices. For dessert, go for pumpkin pie and deep-fried Oreos. Reservations are required for dining and the bar is open until closing time where walk-ins are welcome with COVID-19 regulations being followed. Table service is limited to a 1 and 1/2-hour timeframe. Choosing entrees when making reservations is recommended. Visit clippertavernportsmouth.com.

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The Galley Hatch, Hampton

Pre-orders begin Nov. 1 and end Nov. 18 for individual turkey dinners and sides. Individual dinner is $17.99 and includes turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, cranberry sauce and gravy. Sides come in two sizes, pints for 2 to 3 people and quarts for 4 to 6. Choices include garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, rolls, mashed sweet potatoes and more. Their bakery selection is available for pre-order now as well. Youll be able to order at galleyhatchmarket.com. Deadlines are the same for Popovers cakes and pies.

Gravy, Somersworth

Its not holiday tradition without comfort food and its not comfort food without Gravy. Order by Friday, Nov. 19 at 3 p.m. for Wednesday, Nov. 24 pickup. The full dinner feeds 6 to 8 and is $149. Get herb roasted turkey, turducken gravy, cranberry sauce, Ds buttermilk biscuits, low country sausage stuffing, candied yams with mini marshmallows, green bean casserole, creamy smashed red potatoes, ginger glazed carrots and spiced pumpkin bread with toffee caramel. Desserts are available as well as Gravy pints and quarts, and the regular menu. Visit gravynh.com.

CRs the Restaurant, Hampton

CRs is now accepting holiday reservations for dining in on Thanksgiving Day from noon to the last seating at 5 p.m. Enjoy their popular dinner entrees as well as Thanksgiving specials, including a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Visit crstherestaurant.com.

Tailgate Tavern, Stratham

Get a heat and serve take away Thanksgiving dinner from Tailgate Tavern. While meal packages come in two sizes, serving 4-6 people for $125 and 8-10 people for $250. Order by Friday, Nov. 19 for pick-up on Wed. Nov. 24 between 2-6 p.m. Choices are Roast Turkey with dark meat, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and cranberry relish or baked pineapple ham with mac 'n' cheese. Both meals include rolls and butter and your choice of one salad (garden or Caesar) and choice of one vegetable (maple brown sugar carrots or green beans almondine). Add apple crisp for dessert (4-6 people $11.99, 8-10 people for $21.99). Call 580-2294 to order and press 1. Visit http://www.tailgatetavernNH.com/

Victoria's Kitchen, Hampton

Find full Thanksgiving dinners to go for 3-4 people ($129.99) or 6-8 people ($189.99). Order by Nov. 21 for pick up on Wednesday, Nov. 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or Thursday, Nov. 25 from 7 to 11 a.m. Dishes include roasted turkey breast with house-made sage gravy and sausage stuffing with apples and pears, roasted spiral ham with black cherry and grilled pineapple chutney or herb-rubbed roast beef tenderloin with Burgundy mushroom sauce. You'll get a choice of sides as well. Order appetizers like petite crab cakes and jumbo shrimp cocktail. Pies and cheesecakes are available, too. Visit thevictoriainn.com/victorias-kitchen-cafe-catering-meals-to-go.

The Old Salt, Hampton

Pre-order meals by Sunday, Nov. 21 for pickup on Wednesday, Nov. 24 from noon to 6 p.m. Options include individual turkey dinner with fixings or baked Virginia ham dinner for $21.99 each with family style that serves 4-6 for $125. The slow-roasted prime rib au us with sides for the individual dinner is $26.99, family-style $149. Pies include apple, pumpkin and pecan $9 per slice and $30 to $32 for whole pie. Visit oldsaltnh.com.

Good Eats, Hampton

Bring Good Eats home for Thanksgiving with its a la carte menu. All-white meat turkey breast serves 3-4 ($45) or 6-8 ($90). Sides include stuffing, mashed potatoes, Butternut squash, honey roasted carrots, green beans, corn, gravy and cranberry sauce in pint and quart sizes as well as rolls with butter. Prices for sides vary. Order by Wednesday, Nov. 17 for pickup on Nov. 24 between 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. See the full menu and ordering instructions at Visit goodeatshampton.com/thanksgiving-2021.

Tuscan Market, Portsmouth

Thanksgiving menu for takeout includes a whole roasted turkey dinner which feeds 6 to 8 people for $175. It includes a carved turkey, maple roasted sweet potato, Brussels sprouts with smoked pancetta and aged balsamic vinegar, Mascarpone whipped potatoes, heirloom cranberry and marsala wine compote and more. You can also get everything a la carte and theres a large list of sides to choose from. Other options include boneless prime rib, roasted salmon and a porchetta roast. Pick-up is Wed., Nov. 24. Visit tuscanbrands.com.

SALT at the Wentworth by the Sea Hotel and Spa, New Castle

There are a few options here including the holiday buffet in the Wentworth Ballroom starting at 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at $79.95 per person for adults, $26.95 per child ages 2-12, plus tax and tip. Raw bar, farm fresh salads, carving stations, crepes, pasta, roasted fish and wild salmon and plenty of desserts. Or, have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in SALT, the hotels reimagined dining room and in the Grand Dining Room served 1 to 9 p.m. at $64.95 per adult and $19.95 for kids 12 and under. the same pricing. The three-course Thanksgiving Dinner in SALT Kitchen + Bar includes a choice of maple brined sous vide turkey, pan-seared halibut and more all served with sides and traditional Thanksgiving desserts. Find out more at Visit saltkitchenandbar.com/thanksgiving.

Bobs Broiled Chicken, Portsmouth

Bob's will have Thanksgiving dinners, pies and sides in addition to their delicious chicken dinners. Each meal includes roast turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, cornbread, any two side orders plus a slice of pie for $15.99 suggested cost, but any or even no amount is accepted. Please pay if you wish when you pick up or upon your free delivery from noon to 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day only. You can order up to four dinners using their order form but just use multiple forms if you need more. Visit bobschicken.com.

Epoch Gastropub at the Exeter Inn, Exeter

Enjoy a Thanksgiving buffet from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in this cozy, historic setting. Visit epochrestaurant.com.

The Shanty, Portsmouth

Enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner with a full menu available, too. Start with some apps and go on to the main event and pies. You can dine in or take out. Visit theshanty.com.

Three Chimneys Inn, Durham

The Ffrost Sawyer Tavern and dining rooms will be closed Thanksgiving Day, but you can get your Thanksgiving feast with curbside pick-up on Wed. Nov. 24 between noon and 4 p.m. Order by Nov. 17. Order for 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12 with a price range of $85 to $470. Dinner includes butternut squash apple bisque, mixed greens salad, roasted turkey, sage and onion stuffing, roasted carrots and green beans and choice of mashed potatoes or sweet potato. Choice of pie as well. See the full menu and order form at Visit threechimneysinn.com.

Sofia on Lafayette, Hampton

Sofia on Lafayette is now accepting preorders for Thanksgiving "grab and go" dinners. Each dinner is $15.95 and can be picked up the day before Thanksgiving. They also offer a wide variety of desserts, Italian dishes and their regular 25-30 dinner options at $9.45 each. Follow their Facebook page for updates and pictures. 822 Lafayette Rd. 926-7426. Visit https://sofiaonlafayette.com/

Mezzanine Catering, Dover

Order full Thanksgiving meals and Thanksgiving add-ons from Mezzanine which also offers a weekly meal program. The Thanksgiving meal feeds 4 people and includes roasted white meat with a dark meat roulade, mashed potatoes, challah and herb stuffing, house gravy, brioche rolls and butter and house cranberry sauce. You also get a choice of two sides and a full 9-inch pie. The meal is $195 and both local delivery and pick-up available on Nov. 24 (4 to 5 p.m.) Nov. 25 (10 a.m.-noon). Thanksgiving add-ons include sides and pies. Go to https://mezzaninecatering.square.site/s/shop to order.

Free meal for seniors, Congdon's, Wells, Maine

For more than three decades, eighth graders at the Wells Junior High School have been serving turkey dinners to seniors in the Wells/Ogunquit area. However, due to COVID-19, the event could not be held in a venue. Instead, as was the case last year, senior citizens will be able to pick up their meals at the Congdons Doughnuts drive-thru, at 1090 Post Road in Wells, from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16. Anyone who is interested must call ahead to reserve a meal. Call Wells Junior High School at (207) 646-5142 by Monday, Nov. 14 at 3 p.m. to reserve a meal. Meals include turkey, mashed potato, vegetables, gravy, and cranberry sauce. Turkeys donated by Wells Super IGA Food Market.

Tulsi Restaurant, Kittery, Maine

Open from 2:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. for dine in or to-go meals on Thanksgiving day. If you are strapped for funds this year, pay what you can or nothing at all. All proceeds go to the local Kittery food pantry. They are also looking for volunteers to help on that day. Call Christine at (978) 884-6283 to arrange. Find out more on their Facebook page.

Ore Nells Barbeque, Kittery, Maine

Takeout orders are now being accepted through Nov. 21 for Ore Nells Thanksgiving package to pick up on Wednesday, Nov. 24 from 4 to 9 p.m. or the morning of Thanksgiving between 9 a.m. and noon. Packages feed 6 to 8 people for $149 plus tax and include oak smoked turkey, Yukon gold mashed potatoes, smoked green bean casserole, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, cranberry BBQ sauce, gravy, Hawaiian rolls and blackberry crisp. Add on anything from their catering platter, too. Order and find out more at Visit orenellsbbq.com/thanksgiving-package-2021.

Jonathans, Ogunquit, Maine

Thanksgiving dinner includes Jonathans famous relish tray and a la carte starters, soups, salads and entrees which come with sides. Choose a Maine lobster, Steak Diane or wild mushroom pappardelle or go more traditional with roast Tom turkey with pan gravy roasted lamb shoulder or roast tenderloin of pork. Heck get all three of those roasts on a combo. See the full menu at jonathansogunquit.com/thanksgiving-dinner.

Shearwater at the Stage Neck Inn, York Harbor, Maine

Enjoy Thanksgiving dinner and two wonderful nights lodging on the Atlantic. In order to book the Thanksgiving dinner buffet, you need to stay a minimum of two nights, but you may bring in four outside guests. Visit stageneckinn.com. Dine in only. The buffet is from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. and includes a carving station with turkey, prime rib and Virginia ham, a raw bar and many other main dishes and sides as well as a dessert display. Cost is $99.95 for adults and $39.95 for kids. See the full menu at stageneckinn.com/events/thanksgiving-2021.

York Harbor Inn, York Harbor, Maine

Dine in or order Thanksgiving to go this year at York Harbor Inn. Serving 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for dine-in with a three-course plated meal in either the main dining room or Ships Cellar Pub. Cost is $49.95 for adults and theres a kids menu at $19.95. See the full menu here. For heat and serve at home menu, order by Thurs., Nov. 18 at 4 p.m. for pick-up on Nov. 24 from 1 to 5 p.m. The dinner serves 4 to 6 and there is a choice of roast breast of turkey with fixings ($275) or prime rib ($375) with many add-on options. See the full menu at yorkharborinn.com.

The Tiller at Cliff House Maine, Cape Neddick, Maine

A wonderful setting for a special meal. Offering Thanksgiving brunch, dinner and to-go, too. Find brunch specials like Thanksgiving hash and brined turkey with apple mushroom dressing roulade, dinner offerings like Autumn farro risotto and that brined turkey roulade with sides like brown butter haricot verts with truffle cream and whipped Kennebec potatoes and table shares including sweet potato gnocchi and shaved Brussels sprouts with pumpkin panna cotta for dessert. The to-go meal includes a whole roasted 12-`14 pound turkey with Butternut squash bisque to start and a la carte options like standing rib roast, sweet potato gnocchi and Tiller's lobster and corn chowder. To see the full menus and pricing, visit here and scroll down to Special Events.

Clay Hill Farm, Ogunquit, Maine

Serving a three-course meal with choices in each course. Starters include lobster bisque, baked Brie en croute and shrimp cocktail. Entrees include thyme roasted turkey, prime rib au jus and seafood stuffed haddock or vegetarian Wellington, all with sides. Choose from an array of desserts. Prices for the three-course meal vary with entree choice and kids menu is $21. See the full menu at clayhillfarm.com/copy-of-live-music-1.

Earth at Hidden Pond, Kennebunkport, Maine

Serving a family-style Thanksgiving menu from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for $80 per adult and $45 for kids 12 and under. Info at earthathiddenpond.com.

Walkers Maine, Cape Neddick, Maine

Options this year include The Night Before Thanksgiving  pick up Wed. Nov. 24 from 4 to 6 p.m. and cost is $32 per person for roasted turkey, sourdough-butternut squash stuffing, mashed potatoes, haricots vert, pan gravy, cranberry chutney and apple crisp. Just heat up the next day. The second option is Thanksgiving Day  pick up the day of from 1 to 3 p.m. With this option its all hot and ready to serve and if you order for four or more, you get whole birds. Price per person is $65 for slow-roasted all-natural, heritage turkey, Maine mashed potatoes, sourdough bread stuffing with herbs and wild mushrooms, kale with bacon and shallots, whole roasted Long Island Cheese pumpkins/winter squash with Johnson Farm maple syrup, pan gravy, cranberry chutney, pumpkin pie and apple tarte tartin with creme fraiche ice cream. Go to walkersmaine.com to order

Ocean Restaurant, Kennebunkport, Maine

Ocean, the award-winning restaurant at Cape Arundel Inn & Resort in Kennebunkport, offers a three-course Thanksgiving meal with choices in each course for $85 with an optional wine pairing for $50. Choices include starters like lobster bisque and venison loin or caviar ($50 supplement), an then extra chefs course of house made capellini with Burgundy white truffle, Parmesan and black peppercorn beurre fondie (+$15). Mains include Green Circle turkey breast, Colorado strip loin and wild caught salmon all with accompanying vegetables and sauces. Add Burgundy white truffles and/or seared duck foie gras (+$15 each). Then of course, lovely dessert. See the full menu at capearundelinn.com/dining.

The White Barn Inn, Auberge Resorts Collection, Kennebunk, Maine

This iconic and newly renovated White Barn Inn, Auberge Resorts Collection property in Kennebunk is serving a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with a twist and a Thanksgiving Bounty lunch. Visit aubergeresorts.com/whitebarninn/holidays.

Ingredients, treats and wine

South Street and Vine, Portsmouth

This neighborhood wine shop offers recommendations for which wines to pair with whatever is on your Thanksgiving table so stop in for their great list and pick up some bottles. Find cheeses and charcuterie, too. Visit southstreetandvine.com.

Three River Farmers Alliance

Enjoy an entirely local Thanksgiving by ordering boxes from this collaborative farm. They have turkeys, a Veggie Box in two sizes, Pie Kit and a Charcuterie Plate along with all of the other produce and meats they carry regularly. Delivery or you can pick up. See the full lineup at Visit threeriverfa.com.

Find turkeys also at Happy Hippie Chickens, Hurd Farm Turkeys, Vernon Family Farms, Carls Meat Market, Joes Meat and Maine MEat, to name just a few.

Red Rover Creamery, Portsmouth

Youll want to a la mode your pies this Thanksgiving so do pre-order for the holiday with seasonal ice cream flavors and baked goods for your dessert for takeout. Visit redrovercreamery.com.

Fire and Spice Bistro, Newfields

Get your holiday pies at this new eatery in Newfields. Order for pick-up on Nov. 23 from choices like pumpkin, apple, pecan, chocolate cream and even a tourtiere French meat pie. Take-and-bake muffins available, too. Visit fireandspicebistro.com.

Lils, Kittery, Maine

Lils will be open on Thanksgiving morning for crullers, coffee and treats to enjoy before the big meal, during or after. Visit lilscafe.com.

Beach Pea Baking Co., Kittery, Maine

The Thanksgiving treat menu at Beach Pea includes pumpkin cheesecake with a gluten-free pecan crust, and a vegan version, cranberry streusel tart, chocolate tart, tiramisu, country apple galette, chocolate and salted caramel cake, eclairs and tiramisu puffs. Various sizes are available. Orders must be placed by Sunday, Nov. 21. They are also taking orders on Fougasse and wheat-free loaf (chickpea and oat). Call (207) 439-3555 or email beachpeabaking@gmail.com to place an order. Check out the menu at beachpeabaking.com.

Ceres Street Bakery, Portsmouth

Thanksgiving specials to order and pick up include pies, cranberry tart, pumpkin cheesecake and sweet breads like orange cranberry and pumpkin. Check out ceresbakery.com/sweets/holiday-specials.

Harveys Bakery, Dover

Freshly baked pies come in 8-inch and 10-inch sizes and run from $11.95 to $18.95. They also have pork and chicken pie and dinner or sandwich rolls. Visit harveysbakery.com.

Rachel Forrest

Rachel Forrest is a former restaurant owner, reviewer and Seacoast resident, who now lives in Belize.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Thanksgiving meals Seacoast 2021: NH, ME restaurants, farms, bakeries
NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Lightning eMotors Inc. ("Lightning eMotors" or the "Company") (NYSE: ZEV). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at newaction@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980.

Fighting for victims of securities fraud for more than 85 years (PRNewsfoto/Pomerantz LLP)

The investigation concerns whether Lightning eMotors and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

Lightning eMotors' stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 7, 2021 following a de-SPAC transaction with GigCapital3. Then, on August 16, 2021, Lightning eMotors announced the Company's financial results for the second quarter of 2021, including a net loss per share of $0.79 compared to a loss of $0.10 in the second quarter of 2020. The Company also pulled its full year financial guidance for the remainder of 2021, just days after announcing a multi-year agreement with Forest River, a Berkshire Hathaway company.

On this news, Lightning eMotors' stock price fell $1.63 per share, or 16.93%, to close at $8.00 per share on August 17, 2021.

Pomerantz LLP, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tel Aviv, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, Pomerantz pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 85 years later, Pomerantz continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomlaw.com.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

rswilloughby@pomlaw.com

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SOURCE Pomerantz LLP
TSX: SVM

NYSE AMERICAN: SVM

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Silvercorp Metals Inc. ("Silvercorp" or the "Company") (TSX: SVM) (NYSE American: SVM) reported its financial and operating results for the second quarter ended September 30, 2021 ("Q2 Fiscal 2022). All amounts are expressed in US Dollars, and figures may not add due to rounding.

Silvercorp Metals Inc. (CNW Group/Silvercorp Metals Inc)

Q2 FISCAL 2022 HIGHLIGHTS

Mined 292,468 tonnes of ore and milled 271,816 tonnes of ore, up 9% and 3% compared to the prior year quarter.

Sold approximately 1.7 million ounces of silver, 800 ounces of gold, 17.3 million pounds of lead, and 7.6 million pounds of zinc, representing decreases of 1%, 64%, and 7% in silver, gold and lead sold, and an increase of 3% in zinc sold, compared to the prior year quarter.

Revenue of $58.4 million, up 4% compared to $56.4 million in the prior year quarter.

Net income attributable to equity shareholders of $9.4 million, or $0.05 per share, compared to $15.5 million, or $0.09 per share in the prior year quarter. The decrease was mainly due to an unrealized loss of $4.1 million on investments in the current quarter compared to a gain of $2.8 million in the prior year quarter.

Adjusted earnings attributable to equity shareholders of $13.6 million, or $0.08 per share, compared to $15.4 million, or $0.09 per share in the prior year quarter. The adjustments were made to remove impacts from non-recurring items, share-based compensation, foreign exchange gain/loss, gain/loss on investments, and the share of associates' operating results.

Cash flow from operations of $30.9 million, up 4% or $1.3 million compared to $29.6 million in the prior year quarter.

Cash cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, of negative $1.65 compared to negative $2.09 in the prior year quarter.

All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, of $7.35, compared to $6.99 in the prior year quarter.

Strong balance sheet with $221.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments, up $6.7 million or 3% compared to $214.4 million as at June 30, 2021 and up $22.0 million or 11% compared to $199.1 million as at March 31, 2021. This does not include the investments in associates and equity investment in other companies, having a total market value of $172.8 million as at September 30, 2021 ($243.2 million as at June 30, 2021).

CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL RESULTS

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Three months ended September 30,

Six months ended September 30,

2021 2020 Changes

2021 2020 Changes Financial













Revenue (in thousands of $) $ 58,435 $ 56,372 4%

$ 117,254 $ 103,077 14% Mine operating earnings (in thousands of $) 23,612 26,672 -11%

49,116 45,957 7% Net income attributable to equity shareholders 9,393 15,472 -39%

21,605 30,963 -30% Earnings per share - basic ($/share) 0.05 0.09 -44%

0.12 0.18 -33% Adjusted earnings attributable to equity shareholders 13,609 15,385 -12%

29,380 24,951 18% Adjusted earning per share - basic ($/share) 0.08 0.09 -11%

0.17 0.14 21% Net cash generated from operating activities (in thousands of $) 30,854 29,601 4%

67,306 59,743 13% Capitalized expenditures (in thousands of $) 14,151 11,098 28%

25,323 21,318 19% Cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments (in thousands of $) 221,050 200,056 10%

221,050 200,056 10% Working capital (in thousands of $) 193,306 169,336 14%

193,306 169,336 14% Metals sold













Silver (in thousands of ounces) 1,729 1,740 -1%

3,371 3,612 -7% Gold (in thousands of ounces) 0.8 2.2 -64%

1.8 3.3 -45% Lead (in thousands of pounds) 17,319 18,551 -7%

34,129 39,436 -13% Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 7,626 7,411 3%

14,881 14,369 4% Average Selling Price, Net of Value Added Tax and Smelter Charges













Silver ($/ounce) 18.97 18.99 0%

19.82 16.40 21% Gold ($/ounce) 1,483 1,371 8%

1,497 1,362 10% Lead ($/pound) 0.89 0.78 14%

0.87 0.73 19% Zinc ($/pound) 1.03 0.71 45%

1.02 0.65 57%

Net income attributable to equity shareholders of the Company in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $9.4 million or $0.05 per share, compared to $15.5 million or $0.09 per share in the three months ended September 30, 2020 ("Q2 Fiscal 2021").

Adjusted earnings attributable to equity shareholders of the Company in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $13.6 million, or $0.08 per share, compared to $15.4 million, or $0.09 per share Q2 Fiscal 2021. The adjustments were made to remove the impacts from non-cash and unusual items, including elimination of share-based compensation, foreign exchange loss, share of loss in associates, gain or loss on investments, and one-time items.

Compared to Q2 Fiscal 2021, the Company's consolidated financial results in the current quarter were mainly impacted by i) an increase of 8%, 14%, and 45%, respectively, in the realized selling prices for gold, lead and zinc; offset by ii) a decrease of 1%, 64%, and 7%, respectively, in silver, gold, and lead sold; iii) a loss of $4.1 million on investments reported in profit; iv) an average 8% appreciation of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar, resulting in higher costs presented in US dollar; v) an overall 14.5% increase in mining contractors' fee rate at the Ying Mining District as previously reported in the Company's news release on May 20, 2021; and vi) an average 7% increase in employees' pay rate and the contribution rate to employees' social welfare funds in China returned to the normal rate from a reduced rate granted by the Chinese government in Fiscal 2021 due to Covid-19.

Revenue in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $58.4 million, up 4% or $2.0 million compared to $56.4 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. The increase was mainly due to an increase of $4.7 million arising from the increase in the gold, lead and zinc net realized selling metal prices; offset by a decrease of $3.3 million arising from the decrease in the quantities of silver, gold, and lead sold. Revenues from silver, gold, and base metal were $32.8 million, $1.2 million, and $24.4 million, respectively, compared to $33.0 million, $3.0 million, and $20.3 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Revenue from the Ying Mining District was $47.1 million, up 3%, compared to $45.7 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Revenue from the GC Mine was $11.3 million, up 24%, compared to $9.2 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Revenue from the BYP Mine was $nil, compared to $1.5 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021 as the Company sold all remaining gold concentrate inventories produced by the mine before it was placed on care and maintenance in 2014 in prior year quarter.

Income from mine operations in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $23.6 million, down 11% compared to $26.7 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Income from mine operations at the Ying Mining District was $19.3 million, down 16% compared to $23.1 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Income from mine operations at the GC Mine was $4.5 million, up 55% compared to $2.9 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021.

Cash flow provided by operating activities in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $30.9 million, up 4% or $1.3 million, compared to $29.6 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021.

The Company ended the quarter with $221.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, up $6.7 million or 3% compared to $214.4 million as at June 30, 2021 and up 11% or $22.0 million, compared to $199.1 million as at March 31, 2021.

Working capital as at September 30, 2021 was $193.3 million, up 5% or $9.3 million, compared to $184.0 million as at March 31, 2021.

CONSOLIDATED OPERATIONAL RESULTS



Three months ended September 30,

Six months ended September 30,

2021 2020 Changes

2021 2020 Changes Ore Production (tonne)













Ore mined 292,468 267,853 9%

523,703 522,408 0% Ore milled 271,816 263,933 3%

514,893 526,259 -2% Metal Production













Silver (in thousands of ounces) 1,696 1,707 -1%

3,169 3,459 -8% Gold (in thousands of ounces) 0.8 1.1 -27%

1.8 2.2 -18% Lead (in thousands of pounds) 17,613 19,086 -8%

33,491 39,163 -14% Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 7,483 7,133 5%

14,681 14,666 0% Cash Costs













Cash cost per ounce of Silver, net of by-product credits($) (1.65) (2.09) 21%

(1.54) (1.77) 13% All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits ($) 7.35 6.99 5%

7.41 6.28 18% Cash production cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 84.75 69.82 21%

81.60 68.47 19% All-in sustaining cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 135.76 124.24 9%

133.90 118.46 13%

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, on a consolidated basis, the Company mined 292,468 tonnes of ore, up 9% or 24,615 tonnes, compared to 267,853 tonnes in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Ore milled in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was 271,816 tonnes, up 3% or 7,883 tonnes, compared to 263,933 tonnes in Q2 Fiscal 2021, but 20,832 tonnes lower than mined as a result of transportation interruptions caused by lengthy heavy rains at Ying Mining District in Q2 Fiscal 2022.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, the Company sold approximately 1.7 million ounces of silver, 800 ounces of gold, 17.3 million pounds of lead, and 7.6 million pounds of zinc, representing decreases of 1%, 64%, and 7% in silver, gold and lead sold, respectively, and an increase of 3% in zinc sold, compared to approximately 1.7 million ounces of silver, 2,200 ounces of gold, 18.6 million pounds of lead, and 7.4 million pounds of zinc sold in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Gold sold in Q2 Fiscal 2021 included 1,200 ounces from the BYP Mine.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, the consolidated cash production costs per tonne of ore processed was $84.75, up 21% compared to $69.82 in Q2 Fiscal 2021. The consolidated all-in sustaining production cost per tonne of ore processed was $135.76, up 9%, compared to $124.24 in Q2 Fiscal 2021, but within the Company's current annual cost guidance.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, the consolidated cash cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, was negative $1.65, compared to negative $2.09 in the prior year quarter. The increase was mainly due to the increase in per tonne cash production costs, offset by an increase of $1.42 in by-product credits per ounce of silver. Sales from lead and zinc in Q2 Fiscal 2022 amounted to $23.2 million, up $3.6 million, compared to $19.6 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021.

The consolidated all-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, was $7.35, compared to $6.99 in Q2 Fiscal 2021. The increase was mainly due to the increase of cash cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, offset by a decrease of $2.0 million in sustaining capital expenditures, mainly resulting from less tunneling development.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, on a consolidated basis, a total of 124,544 metres or $6.2 million worth of diamond drilling were completed (Q2 Fiscal 2021  71,274 metres or $2.5 million), of which approximately 91,970 metres or $2.4 million worth of underground drilling were expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  71,274 metres or $2.5 million) and approximately 32,574 metres or $3.8 million worth of drilling were capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  nil). In addition, approximately 9,953 metres or $3.4 million worth of preparation tunnelling were completed and expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  7,693 metres or $1.9 million), and approximately 20,501 metres or $8.3 million worth of tunnels, raises, ramps and declines were completed and capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  25,678 metres or $8.5 million).

INDIVIDUAL MINE OPERATING PERFORMANCE

Ying Mining District Q2 2022 Q1 2022 Q4 2021 Q3 2021 Q2 2021

Six months ended September 30,

September 30, 2021 June 30, 2021 March 31, 2021 December 31, 2020 September 30, 2020

2021 2020 Ore Production (tonne)















Ore mined 206,933 142,907 112,561 182,268 181,020

349,840 355,196 Ore milled 182,173 155,407 131,725 162,905 179,083

337,580 356,772 Head grades















Silver (gram/tonne) 283 279 280 297 288

281 290 Lead (%) 4.0 4.2 3.9 4.3 4.4

4.1 4.5 Zinc (%) 0.7 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.7

0.8 0.8 Recovery rates















Silver (%) 95.4 94.7 93.7 93.9 94.4

95.1 94.6 Lead (%) 95.5 95.7 95.1 96.4 96.1

95.6 96.1 Zinc (%) 56.0 59.7 65.0 63.3 57.9

57.8 60.9 Cash Costs















Cash cost per ounce of Silver, net of by-product credits($) 0.71 0.80 1.20 (1.12) (0.14)

0.75 (0.52) All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits ($) 6.88 6.54 10.00 5.24 6.63

6.71 5.34 Cash production cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 96.59 92.79 98.13 83.09 80.06

95.10 78.18 All-in sustaining cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 141.26 138.55 155.14 133.07 132.36

140.27 124.74 Metal Production















Silver (in thousands of ounces) 1,517 1,283 1,083 1,464 1,525

2,800 3,068 Gold (in thousands of ounces) 0.8 1.0 0.3 0.9 1.1

1.8 2.2 Lead (in thousands of pounds) 14,671 13,278 10,504 14,361 16,080

27,949 33,021 Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 1,584 1,519 1,496 1,857 1,643

3,103 3,563

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, a total of 102,905 metres or $5.0 million worth of diamond drilling were completed (Q2 Fiscal 2021  59,540 metres or $2.0 million) at the Ying Mining District, of which approximately 72,844 metres or $2.2 million worth of underground drilling were expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  59,540 metres or $2.0 million) and approximately 30,061 metres or $2.8 million worth of drilling were capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  nil). In addition, approximately 7,528 metres or $2.9 million worth of preparation tunnelling were completed and expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  5,316 metres or $1.6 million), and approximately 16,676 metres or $7.1 million worth of horizontal tunnels, raises, ramps, and declines were completed and capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  21,278 metres or $7.5 million).

GC Mine Q2 2022 Q1 2021 Q4 2021 Q3 2021 Q2 2021

Six months ended September 30,

September 30, 2021 June 30, 2021 March 31, 2021 December 31, 2020 September 30, 2020

2021 2020 Ore Production (tonne)















Ore mined 85,535 88,328 50,511 97,177 86,833

173,863 167,212 Ore milled 89,643 87,670 48,949 97,743 84,850

177,313 169,487 Head grades















Silver (gram/tonne) 73 80 87 82 81

77 87 Lead (%) 1.7 1.5 1.7 1.4 1.8

1.6 1.8 Zinc (%) 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.5 3.4

3.3 3.4 Recovery rates















Silver (%) 84.4 84.1 81.9 82.6 82.5

84.2 82.7 Lead (%) 89.5 89.3 89.7 89.6 89.2

89.4 89.5 Zinc (%) 89.6 89.3 88.2 89.7 87.3

89.5 87.3 Cash Costs















Cash cost per ounce of Silver, net of by-product credits($) (22.51) (17.96) (12.80) (14.43) (12.70)

(20.12) (9.52) All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits ($) (11.61) (7.98) 0.52 (1.05) (1.78)

(9.70) 0.40 Cash production cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 55.81 52.90 58.56 54.07 48.47

54.33 47.80 All-in sustaining cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 73.76 71.67 87.69 78.63 69.07

72.69 67.49 Metal Production















Silver (in thousands of ounces) 179 190 112 212 182

369 384 Lead (in thousands of pounds) 2,942 2,600 1,652 2,750 3,006

5,542 6,072 Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 5,899 5,679 3,176 6,816 5,490

11,578 10,948

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, approximately 19,126 metres or $0.7 million worth of underground diamond drilling (Q2 Fiscal 2021  11,734 metres or $0.5 million) and 2,425 metres or $0.4 million of tunnelling (Q2 Fiscal 2021  2,377 metres or $0.3 million) were completed and expensed as mining preparation costs at the GC Mine. In addition, approximately 3,825 metres or $1.2 million of horizontal tunnels, raises, and declines were completed and capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  4,400 metres or $1.0 million).

Updates

In October 2021, the SGX Mine at the Ying Mining District suspended production temporarily as a precautionary measure due to the heavy rainfall experienced in the Yellow River region. The water level at the nearby reservoir that discharges into the Yellow River reached an all time high, causing the operations at the SGX Mine to be suspended for ten days, impacting production and ore head grades. Despite this interruption, the Company expects to maintain a similar mining production rate as achieved in Q2 Fiscal 2022 and increase the milling tonnage at the Ying Mining District in the third quarter of Fiscal 2022.

As announced on October 13, 2021, the Company, through a 100% owned subsidiary of Henan Found, won an online auction to acquire the Kuanping Project for a total of $13.5 million (RMB86.8 million) (the "Consideration"). The acquisition is not subject to the national security clearance as Henan Found's subsidiary is considered as a domestic company in China. The Company paid the consideration in October 2021 and expects to complete the acquisition in November 2021.

CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS

A conference call to discuss these results will be held tomorrow, Friday, November 5, at 9:00 am PDT (12:00 pm EDT). To participate in the conference call, please dial the numbers below.

Canada/USA TF: 888-664-6383

International Toll: 416-764-8650

Conference ID: 03881964

Participants should dial-in 10  15 minutes prior to the start time. A replay of the conference call and transcript will be available on the Company's website at www.silvercorp.ca.

Mr. Guoliang Ma, P.Geo., Manager of Exploration and Resources of the Company, is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") and has reviewed and consented to the technical information contained in this news release.

This earnings release should be read in conjunction with the Company's Management Discussion & Analysis ("MD&A"), Financial Statements and Notes to Financial Statements for the three and six months ended September 30, 2021, which have been posted on SEDAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and are also available on the Company's website at www.silvercorp.ca under the Investor section. This earnings release refers to various alternative performance (non-IFRS) measures, such as adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share, cash cost and all-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, cash production cost and all-in sustaining production cost per tonne of ore processed and working capital. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have standardized meanings under IFRS as an indicator of performance and may differ from methods used by other companies with similar description. The detailed description and reconciliation of these alternative performance (non-IFRS) measures have been incorporated by reference and can be found on page 24, section 11  Alternative Performance (Non-IFRS) Measures in the MD&A for the three and six months ended September 30, 2021.

About Silvercorp

Silvercorp is a profitable Canadian mining company producing silver, lead and zinc metals in concentrates from mines in China. The Company's goal is to continuously create healthy returns to shareholders through efficient management, organic growth, and the acquisition of profitable projects. Silvercorp balances profitability, social and environmental relationships, employees' wellbeing, and sustainable development. For more information, please visit our website at www.silvercorp.ca.

CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER - FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain of the statements and information in this news release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian provincial securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Any statements or information that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects", "is expected", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "projects", "estimates", "assumes", "intends", "strategies", "targets", "goals", "forecasts", "objectives", "budgets", "schedules", "potential" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to, among other things: the price of silver and other metals; the accuracy of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates at the Company's material properties; the sufficiency of the Company's capital to finance the Company's operations; estimates of the Company's revenues and capital expenditures; estimated production from the Company's mines in the Ying Mining District and the GC Mine; timing of receipt of permits and regulatory approvals; availability of funds from production to finance the Company's operations; and access to and availability of funding for future construction, use of proceeds from any financing and development of the Company's properties.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks relating to: global economic and social impact of COVID-19; fluctuating commodity prices; calculation of resources, reserves and mineralization and precious and base metal recovery; interpretations and assumptions of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates; exploration and development programs; feasibility and engineering reports; permits and licences; title to properties; property interests; joint venture partners; acquisition of commercially mineable mineral rights; financing; recent market events and conditions; economic factors affecting the Company; timing, estimated amount, capital and operating expenditures and economic returns of future production; integration of future acquisitions into the Company's existing operations; competition; operations and political conditions; regulatory environment in China and Canada; environmental risks; foreign exchange rate fluctuations; insurance; risks and hazards of mining operations; key personnel; conflicts of interest; dependence on management; internal control over financial reporting; and bringing actions and enforcing judgments under U.S. securities laws.

This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements about the future and are inherently uncertain, and actual achievements of the Company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation, those referred to in the Company's Annual Information Form under the heading "Risk Factors". Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, described or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

The Company's forward-looking statements are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management as of the date of this news release, and other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's assumptions, beliefs, expectations or opinions should change, or changes in any other events affecting such statements. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Cision

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SOURCE Silvercorp Metals Inc

Cision

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Venture Global set to become America's top LNG exporter to China

ARLINGTON, Va., Nov. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Venture Global LNG and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) announced the signing of two 20-year Sales and Purchase Agreements (SPA) for the supply of a total of 4 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG from Venture Global's Plaquemines LNG export facility, in Plaquemines Parish Louisiana. In addition, UNIPEC, a Sinopec subsidiary has agreed to purchase 3.5 million tonnes (MT) of LNG from Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass LNG facility for a shorter duration. This represents the largest single LNG supply deal ever signed by a US company and will double imports of US LNG to China.

Venture Global and Sinopec Announce Historic LNG Sales and Purchase Agreements

"Venture Global is proud to enter into this new and exciting long-term partnership with Sinopec, and soon become the largest US LNG exporter to China," said Mike Sabel, Chief Executive Officer of Venture Global LNG. "Today's announcement will accelerate our combined efforts to lower carbon emissions and provide a low-cost, reliable and secure energy supply to China. From day one, Venture Global has been on a mission to drive fuel switching around the world from coal to natural gas, and we are thrilled to equip Sinopec with a large supply of US LNG to do that and assist China in its energy transition."

"Sinopec has been pursuing low-carbon, green, safe, responsible and sustainable development, seeking high quality growth of its natural gas business," said Ma Yongsheng, President of Sinopec Corp. "We are committed to building capacity in providing clean energy and meeting peoples aspiration for better life. The signing of this LNG SPA reflects the shared mission of Sinopec and Venture Global in promoting the global energy transition and is of significance in achieving carbon emission peak and neutrality goals."

CLICK HERE to view a video of speech and signing ceremony.

About Venture Global LNG

Story continues

Venture Global is a long-term, low-cost provider of U.S. LNG to be sourced from resource rich North American natural gas basins. Venture Global is currently constructing or developing multiple export facilities in Louisiana to provide clean, affordable energy to the world.

About Sinopec

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "Sinopec Corp.") is a listed company on Chinese and international stock exchanges with integrated upstream, midstream and downstream operations along the oil and gas business value chain. Its controlling shareholder, China Petrochemical Corporation ("Sinopec Group") is the world's largest oil refiner and second largest chemical company and has been among the top 5 the Fortune 500 Company over the past years. Through its 30,000 gas stations, Sinopec reaches to 20 million customers every day.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1679096/Venture_Global_LNG_Sinopec_Agreement.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/825434/VENTURE_GLOBAL_LNG_INC___Logo.jpg

SOURCE Venture Global LNG
ALBANY, N.Y., November 04, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wright Electric, Inc., a leader in net-zero propulsion and aircraft design, announced the launch of a new addition to their family of zero-emissions aircraft for the commercial market. The announcement is being made today in conjunction with COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The Wright Spirit will incorporate Wrights megawatt-class electric propulsion system and serve the 100-passenger market for one-hour flights.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006403/en/

The Wright Spirit (Photo: Business Wire)

The Wright Spirit aircraft design builds on the BAe 146 platform - a 100 passenger, 4-engine aircraft known for its operation out of noise-sensitive airports. "Aviation has committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but Wright is committed to a 100% reduction in all emissions starting in 2026," said Jeff Engler, CEO of Wright. "Because we built the world's largest aerospace propulsive powertrain, we can build the world's largest zero-emissions retrofit directly serving the world's busiest routes."

The path was set in early 2020 with Wrights announcement and development of their megawatt propulsion system for an all-electric commercial aircraft. Throughout the last two years, the company has been proving key components of the system including a high-efficiency, high-power density inverter and a 2 MW (2,700 HP) motor. The existing hydrocarbon-based propulsion system will be replaced with Wrights all-electric, emissions-free propulsion system.

By focusing on one-hour flights, the Wright Spirit addresses the worlds busiest city pairs, such as Seoul-Jeju (worlds busiest route, 14 million passengers annually), London-Paris, Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo, and San Francisco-Los Angeles. "We can make a significant impact on global emissions by targeting this high-demand segment of the market," says Jeff.

Story continues

Juan Carlos Zuazua, CEO from Viva Aerobus said, "Viva Aerobus is excited to support the development of the Wright Spirit as a member of the advisory board. As the Greenest Airline in Mexico, we are focused on aviation's commitment to greenhouse gas reductions. We look forward to collaborating with Wright to analyze the integration of a zero-emissions 100-passenger aircraft into airline operations."

David Morgan, Director of Flight Operations at easyJet added, "We believe zero emissions aircraft are key to addressing aviations environmental impact and so we fully support Wright Electric in their ambition to bring a zero-emissions aircraft to market. Wright have come a long way since we first started working with them in 2017 and we welcome this announcement as another important step on their journey."

To develop the integrated propulsion system, Wright has assembled an innovative team of companies with expertise in generation, energy storage and propulsion design. The program now proceeds with on-going ground testing and final selection of the propulsion system. In 2023, the aircraft will begin flight testing with one all-electric propulsor. The development program will then accelerate towards flight testing with two all-electric propulsors by 2024 leading to the full-electric aircraft by 2026.

For additional information about Wright and the advanced technology driving these developments, please contact Emily Hickmott at emily.hickmott@weflywright.com.

About Wright Electric

Wright Electric, Inc. (Wright) is a U.S.-based company developing the worlds first family of zero-emissions commercial aircraft. The company was founded in 2016 by a team of aerospace engineers, powertrain experts, and battery chemists. By focusing its resources on the technological and component challenges to electrification, Wright Electric is establishing the path towards a carbon-free aviation footprint. Wright's flagship airplane under development is the Wright 1, a 186-seat airliner with an 800-mile range, targeting entry into service in 2030. Wright works with airlines such as easyJet and VivaAerobus, and has development contracts with NASA and the U.S. Department of Energys ARPA-E. Wright has been funded through Y Combinator, the Clean Energy Trust, venture funds, and family offices.

About Viva Aerobus

Viva Aerobus is Mexico's ultra-low-cost airline. It started operations in 2006 and today it operates the youngest fleet in Mexico and the 2nd youngest fleet in all North America with 50 Airbus: 40 Airbus A320 and 10 Airbus A321. With a clear vision to give all people the opportunity to fly, Viva Aerobus democratized the airline industry with the lowest fares in Mexico and the lowest costs in Latin America.

About easyJet

easyJet is Europes leading airline offering a unique and winning combination of the best route network connecting Europe's primary airports, with great value fares and friendly service. easyJet flies on more of Europes most popular routes than any other airline and carried more than 96 million passengers in 2019  more than 16 million travelling for business. The airline has over 300 aircraft on nearly 1000 routes to more than 150 airports across 35 countries. Over 300 million Europeans live within one hour's drive of an easyJet airport.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006403/en/

Contacts

Emily Hickmott

emily.hickmott@weflywright.com
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / ZEUUS Inc. (OTC PINK:ZUUS), ("ZEUUS" or the "Company"), a diversified data centric company, announced that it has filed an Offering Statement on Form 1-A pursuant to Regulation A with the SEC seeking to raise up to $75,000,000.

Mr. Bassam Al Mutawa, Chief Executive Officer and President of ZEUUS, commented:

"We believe that our success to date is just the catalyst for further growth. We believe that the Regulation A Offering Statement filed with the SEC, if qualified, can assist the company on its next planned leg of expansion and growth. One behalf of my board of directors, we welcome your support".

If the Company's planned Regulation A Offering is successful, the Company plans to use the funds raised therein as follows:

(i) the acquisition and refurbishment of 3 data centers,

(ii) the construction of new data centers,

(iii) acquisition and/or construction of a new manufacturing facility for our Wind Turbine technology;

(iv) possible strategic acquisition of green technology opportunities, and

(v) working capital and general corporate purposes. agreements.

About ZEUUS Inc.

ZEUUS has 4 key divisions intended to synergistically address key market opportunities, which are as follows:

ZEUUS Data Centers , a division focused on building and operating hyperscale and edge data centers in many countries to provide customers with access to latest technologies in data centers and related data center services such as co-location, cloud hosting, and blockchain services, including crypto mining.

ZEUUS Energy, a division dedicated for the development of wind energy products. We are seeking to commercialize 2 unique Patent Pending technologies that offer an innovative solution for powering the home, right up to data centers with green energy.

ZEUUS Cyber Security, a division focused on cybersecurity and securing customer data hosted in Zeuus data centers ensuring customers can securely access their hosted data that are fully protected in Zeuus data centers. ZEUUS Cyber Security delivers scalable cloud identity management services, blockchain services to protect data and a comprehensive set of integrated security devices to protect customers data at their own premises: filtering, virtual private networks (VPN), security email, content management, firewall, IDS and IPS services.

ZEUUS SOLAAS, a division specialized in digital services and enabling customers to enjoy turnkey solutions for cloud-based applications.

By combining the power of its four division ZEUUS believes that it can delivery cost effective sustainable solutions with ongoing growth.

Story continues

For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.zeuus.com Information on our website does not constitute a part of this press release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this press release contains forward-looking statements and information. The words "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "may," "plans," "projects," "will," "should," "could," "predicts," "potential," "continue," "would" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Actual results or events could differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements that we make.

The forward-looking statements are applicable only as of the date on which they are made, and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements in this document are made based on our current expectations, forecasts, estimates and assumptions, and involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause results or events to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. In evaluating these statements, you should specifically consider various factors, uncertainties and risks that could affect our future results or operations.

These factors, uncertainties and risks may cause our actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement set forth in the reports we file with or furnish to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). You should carefully consider these risk and uncertainties described and other information contained in the reports we file with or furnish to the SEC before making any investment decision with respect to our securities. All forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

Legal Notice

No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response, will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement is qualified by the SEC, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of its acceptance given after the qualification date. A person's indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. The Form 1-A is available to be viewed at the folowing link:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1687926/000146970921000070/0001469709-21-000070-index.htm.

Contact

For further information please contact:

Mr. Bassam Al Mutawa

ZEUUS Inc.

Email: info@zeuus.com

SOURCE: ZEUUS INC.





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Theyre among an estimated 42,000 veterans in the Fredericksburg area, according to Congressman Rob Wittman, R1st District, keynote speaker for Thursdays event. Across Virginia, 8.5 percent of the population has served in the armed forces, Wittman said, and more than half of the states 800,000 veterans are 60 and older.

They need this health care facility, they need the specialists that are going to be here, he told about 50 people who gathered under a white tent at the construction site. The great thing about it is they wont have to travel to Richmond or up to Northern Virginia. They can get that care right here.

Each speaker noted the assortment of medical offerings: primary care, mental health treatment, outpatient surgery, radiology, MRIs, CT scans and almost every specialty you can think of, Johnson said. The only thing the center wont have is inpatient beds, meaning those who need to be hospitalized will have to travel to the VA facility in Richmond or to other hospitals in the community.

Johnson hopes the center can work with the Department of Defense to provide an urgent care clinic on site as well.

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Speakers also praised the partnerships that brought the new center to Spotsylvania.
Although McAuliffe had an early advantage in the polls, Youngkin managed to close the gap. His campaign then used McAuliffes words in an ad campaign that Farnsworth says helped the Republican pull ahead in the neck-and-neck race.

Youngkin was very effective capitalizing on that, said Farnsworth, He found an issue that really resonated with a lot of voters and McAuliffe wasnt very quick or very aggressive in the response to his own debate misstep about parents and schools.

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Youngkin managed to win over former President Donald Trumps base while still appealing to the suburban voters who helped Democrat Joe Biden take Virginia by 10 points en route to the White House last November.

A large part of that was Youngkins use of education as a cornerstone issue, along with a number of campaign promises with wide appeal, including exempting a percentage of military pensions from taxes, improving the economy, creating more jobs, lowering taxes and improving transportation.

But Farnsworth said Youngkin may have some challenges delivering on some of those promises.

Many of the [items] on the governor-elects agenda are going to require at least some Democratic buy-in within the legislature, said Farnsworth.
Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged. Trump's Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt and pointed to the dossier, some of which remains uncorroborated or has been discredited, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.

But the dossier had no role in the launching of the Trump-Russia investigation. Special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.

The Justice Department's inspector general has faulted the FBI and the Justice Department for their handling of the dossier. Danchenko  who was not identified by name in the watchdog report  had told FBI investigators during a 2017 interview about the dossier's origins and veracity that there were "potentially serious problems with Steele's descriptions of information in his reports."

But those qualms from Danchenko were omitted from the final three surveillance applications, making the dossier appear more credible than even one of its own sources thought it was, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
VIRGINIA was purple before purple became a political adjective.

Tuesday nights victory by Republican Glenn Youngkin in the gubernatorial race, along with wins by Winsome Sears as lieutenant governor and Jason Miyares as attorney general and the GOPs apparent recovery of its majority in the House of Delegates, is the latest power shift in Richmond. It likely wont be the last.

It had been 12 years since a Republican won a statewide election in the commonwealth, but what goes around comes around.

Since 1990, the GOP has controlled the House 20 years to 10 for the Democrats (they shared it two years), while Democrats have occupied the governors mansion 20 of the last 32 years. Neither party has held the governorship for more than three terms in a row since the late, great Linwood Holton wrested perennial control from the Dems in 1969, back when state Republicans were, relatively speaking, the liberal party.

In the past 30 years, there have been only eight years in which either party has won the trifectacontrol of the House and Senate and the governorship.

Maybe its because we are a moderate state, not prone to excesses. Maybe its because power tends to make you complacent, ripe for the picking.
Jean Wellborn didnt hang her acrylic portraits on a gallery wall in 2015.

Nor did she put them on a wall in her home.

Instead, she hung her paintings on fence posts in Holt County as a way to honor her outdoorsman grandfather, Raymond Dobias, who had died in 2014. Each portrait features the face of a tough country person.

The artwork remained outdoors for more than 500 days.

Later shed write: I wanted the same land, weather and environment that had shaped the lives of the people living there to dictate the paintings fate as well.

Was it disrespectful to leave them outside?

It didnt take long before I realized, it is a privilege to age and grow in the country, and like my grandfather, there was no place else theyd rather be, she wrote.

This month, the public can see Wellborns paintings in an exhibit called 500 Days at Gallery 92 West in downtown Fremont. An artists reception is set from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, at 92 W. Sixth St. Admission is free. The exhibit is in the Hinds Gallery of the FAAA building.

Guests also may view works in Katie Petersens Snapshots exhibit in the Dugan Gallery.

Wellborns portraits are displayed in a circle  just as they were on a Holt County ranch. Her photographs and other artwork grace gallery walls surrounding the circle. Paragraphs of Wellborns story are displayed in frames in between artworks on the wall.

A small town kid, Wellborn later married her high school sweetheart and they moved to a big city. They returned for her grandfathers funeral.

Dobias was a veteran and a talented mechanic and carpenter. He was a quiet man, who ran the farm into his 80s.

He was responsible for decades of harvests, brought up seven kids, and had truly made a difference to others, she wrote.

Back home, Wellborn readily saw the contrast between small-town life and big city living.

The small town where she grew up had no stop lights. People knew the names of everyone they met in the grocery store and offered the same friendly finger wave while driving past each other.

After months of thinking about her grandfather and how much being in the country had defined him, she set out to paint 12 portraits  A clock face of lives and stories ready to take a stand against time.

The portraits, placed on posts in a secluded area of an uncles farm, also are meant to honor the culture of rural Nebraska.

Wellborn and her husband made many trips back home to visit family and check on the paintings.

She found that the lavenders and pastels in one painting shone brightly amid purple-colored flowers that bloomed in the spring. A man in red basked in warm autumn shadows.

There were no two times that I visited that were the same, she wrote. Paintings that were withdrawn in one season stood out in the next.

The 500 days passed. The paintings were taken down in June 2017  655 days after theyd been put into place.

Wellborn learned many lessons.

She not only spent time checking on the paintings, but more importantly spent time with people she loves.

I learned about light and seasons and priorities, shed write. I was able to observe Nebraska in all of its unique and powerful beauty and see it directly transferred onto the faces of people lucky enough, and tough enough, to live here.

Wellborn appreciates the opportunity to display her work in the FAAA building.

Im really proud to show 500 Days at Gallery 92, Wellborn told the Fremont Tribune. I hope people come to experience my vision of recreating the outdoor installation in this wonderful gallery space.

Wellborn invites the public to see the exhibit.

I think people will benefit from this show by stepping back from the noise of today and immersing themselves in this experience with me, Wellborn said. It was very personal, but also so universal. I think many viewers will recognize a familiar face in the cast. 500 Days honors aging, changes, and the beauty of Nebraska. I cant wait to share it with the viewers.

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The focus was on the possibility of financial federal assistance during the Dodge County Board of Supervisors Wednesday.

Because of the effects of the pandemic, the State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Fiscal Recovery, Infrastructure and Disaster Relief Flexibility Act (S. 3011 and H.R. 5735) was established and allocates more than $65 billion in aid to counties all over the country.

The aid is to be used for infrastructure, transportation and government needs in response to the pandemics effect on the economy and communities.

It is projected that Dodge County would receive $7 million in funds under the bill. The board voted to pass a consideration to send a letter to Nebraska Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, asking him to vote yes on the bill citing its usefulness for the county and its citizens.

I dont think anyone in this room can deny the positive impact this would have on our county and our state as a whole, said Chairman of the Board Bob Missel.

This bill has seen bipartisan support from both democrats and republicans but has yet to be passed.

In other action, the board passed a resolution establishing supervisor districts following the 2020 census. The census, which takes place every 10 years, takes into account population changes to reshape districts. Minor changes were made to all Dodge County districts in terms of inclusion, exclusion, or population amount.

It also passed a consideration for an interlocal agreement between Douglas and Dodge counties concerning the replacement of a broadcast tower in Omaha for the purpose of using the tower to increase radio coverage for the Dodge County Sheriffs Judicial Center and County Courthouse.

The board tabled a consideration concerning an area of land that is being considered a wetland reserve in collaboration with a neighboring county. The board decided this based on a lack of any information about the plan. It was also tabled on the basis that the motion is passed anyway if ignored for 60 days. Some members of the board even joked about the motion.

Nobody wants the county dumping water on them, now these guys want two counties to dump on them, said Bob Bendig of District 1.

The meeting was also joined by students from Bergan High School, who were touring the county courthouse and learning more about governmental processes as part of County Government Day.

The meeting was adjourned following a closed session involving pending litigation against the county.

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Last month, Methodist Fremont Health reached a milestone as it provided its 500th monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 patients.

"Giving this many doses to the community prevented some hospitalizations, and we already have problems with the surge of patients at this time and over this whole period of time," Dr. Angela Sukstorf said. "So it really lowered the pressure on the hospital and also prevented complications, deaths and hospitalizations with COVID."

Since November 2020, the Fremont hospital has given 528 doses, said Sukstorf, an infectious disease specialist and medical director of quality.

"These doses include some treatment of not only the Fremont area, but also into the Omaha area as well," she said. "When they were not available, we gave doses to those folks as well, even some from Council Bluffs."

The treatment, which involves giving COVID patients monoclonal antibodies, or mAbs, is meant to prevent advancement of the disease by blocking the virus from replicating and causing organ damage.

"Most of the time they're unvaccinated, but later on in the protocol, we gave it to vaccinated folks as well that were symptomatic and had positive tests," Sukstorf said. "They are all outpatients, so they haven't been admitted to the hospital, and it's meant to prevent hospitalization."

Sukstorf said those who received the treatment either came to the emergency department or were referred from primary care offices if they were found to be at a higher risk.

Dr. Monty Sellon, family physician at Methodist Physicians Clinic Prairie Fields, said when one of his patients tests positive for COVID, he notifies his nurse care managers.

"We have a normal follow-up protocol where they call them up to every day for a couple of weeks, depending on how sick they are," he said. "So they do an interview with them, find out how sick they are."

If the criteria determines that the patient is ill enough to potentially be admitted to the hospital, Sellon said they are sent to the emergency room.

"If they're not, then we go through the criteria of who is eligible to have monoclonal antibody therapy," he said. "If they're eligible, then they ask me if I'm OK to approve that therapy, which I have every time they've asked me."

Some of these factors include age and conditions like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung diseases.

"We were giving it to very high-risk people at first, and we continued to do that," Sukstorf said. "But then the regulations loosened a little bit and we were able to give it to more people that were younger."

After getting a time scheduled, the patient is then given a peripheral IV infusion in the hospital's outpatient services department.

"Then they have to wait and make sure they didn't have any reaction to that," Sukstorf said. "So the whole process is a little over two hours, and the patient, since they are positive for COVID and they're starting to have symptoms, they are placed in a negative airflow room."

Although the hospital only provided six treatments in November 2020, the number grew, peaking at 90 last January. After hitting a low in June, the treatments increased again, with 114 each in September and October.

Since offering the treatment, MFH has seen a massive success rate with its patients, Sukstorf said.

"It's hard to tell how many admissions we prevented, but only occasionally was there a patient that came to the hospital after that infusion and still needed hospital care," she said.

Having worked with approximately 100 patients who have received antibodies, Sellon said they've been "extremely pleased" with the treatment.

"It's been very positive," he said. "I haven't had anybody that's received it in the first seven to 10 days that has ever ended up in the hospital."

Additionally, Sellon said he's seen no severe reactions and that the clinic would continue to be aggressive with the treatment as long as there's evidence it's safe and effective.

"With 70% relative risk reduction of 500 people that have received it, you would say that there would have been 200 or 300 more people in the hospital potentially if you hadnt given it to people if you use the national average on the effectiveness of these three different treatments," he said.

Sukstorf said MFH has a strong, organized group of providers in the Methodist Health System's outpatient services, with experienced nurses willing to step up and provide care.

"Since we were able to do that and already had a good system set up, we expanded it when we could and made it even more efficient," she said.

For example, Sukstorf said when the patients needed to be moved to the COVID unit to use the negative airflow rooms after treatment, she said one nurse was able to work two rooms.

"We also found we were getting the medication very easily from the pharmacy," she said. "It was just a good process that I hope that we've been able to duplicate in the other affiliates."

Although Sellon lost 16 patients to COVID prior to the vaccine and treatment, he said that number has dropped to zero since then.

"That can't be a coincidence," he said. "If the vaccine and/or the monoclonal antibody therapy was ineffective, I should have just as many dead people over the last nine months as I had the first nine months of this."

Despite the treatment being available for COVID-positive patients, Sukstorf said the best way to decrease the morbidity and mortality of the virus is to get vaccinated.

"We just haven't had as many patients with vaccination that have severe disease, with probably 5% of our admissions being patients that have already been vaccinated," she said. "But those are patients that usually have severe COVID morbidities that put them at a higher risk of a vaccine either not working or having complications from COVID."

In continuing to refer patients to mAbs treatment, Sellon said it's the only outpatient treatment proven to be effective, despite theories promoting ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and antibiotics.

"We'd like it to work, it'd be great if some pill worked, it just doesn't," he said. "So this is the only thing that we have as an outpatient to try to help mitigate the possibility of being admitted to the hospital in vaccinated or unvaccinated patients."
Work with your past self, create paradoxes to use to your advantage, and defeat an evil wizard (easy, right?)
A U.S. drone strike that killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan in the final days of the U.S. withdrawal from the country was a tragic mistake but did not violate any laws, a Pentagon inspector-general said on November 3 after an investigation.



The drone strike on August 29 killed Zemerai Ahmadi, a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organization, and nine family members, including seven children.



The investigation by the Air Force inspector-general said the strike was caused by execution errors, communication breakdowns, and "confirmation bias" -- a tendency to make decisions on what one expects to see.



Lieutenant General Sami Said told reporters at the Pentagon on November 3 that the people directly involved in the strike, which took place during the U.S.-led evacuation of tens of thousands of people after the Taliban seized control of the country, genuinely believed "that they were targeting an imminent strike."



But the interpretation of intelligence and the observations of the targeted car and its occupants over eight hours were "regrettably inaccurate," it said.



"It's a regrettable mistake. It was an honest mistake," Said said.



Steven Kwon, co-founder and president of Nutrition and Education International, the humanitarian organization that employed Ahmadi, said the investigation was "deeply disappointing and inadequate."



"According to the inspector-general, there was a mistake, but no one acted wrongly, and Im left wondering, how can that be?" Kwon said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

After a preliminary investigation, the Pentagon admitted on September 17 that the incident had been a "tragic mistake" and pledged to provide compensation to the surviving family members and potentially get them out of Afghanistan.



Saids review said the drone strike must be considered in the context of the moment. It took place as U.S. forces were being flooded by information about threats to troops and civilians at the Kabul airport and just days after a deadly suicide bombing left 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans dead.



The U.S. military at the time had intelligence that Islamic State militants were planning a fresh attack on the evacuation operations.



Said did not recommend disciplinary action but said it would be up to commanders to make a decision on whether someone should be punished.



The investigation found that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the bombing, but in the end may not have prevented it.



The report made several recommendations that have been passed on to U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
Life has become a nightmare of despair for 22-year-old Maryam Rezaei since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan less than three months ago.

In early August, before the Taliban stormed into her neighborhood in the western city of Herat, Rezaei was among more than 10,000 women who were studying at Herat University.

She also earned money as a journalist at a local radio station.

But now, despite Taliban promises to let women receive an education, there is still no word about when she might be allowed to go back to her university studies.

Confined to her home under the Talibans strict rules for women, Rezaei has given up hope of ever working again.

She told RFE/RLs Radio Azadi that she feels the onset of extreme depression and often thinks about committing suicide to escape her plight.

"It is really hard for me when I think about the fact that I have no freedom, no security, and no basic rights, Rezaei says.

I have lost everything that I have worked for and all of my goals, she says. It makes me lose my temper. I feel like an empty shell of a human being. I am in captivity and I am just waiting for my death."

After toppling the internationally recognized government in Kabul, the Taliban promised to show more moderation than during its brutal rule from 1996 to 2001, when girls were barred from attending school and women were prevented from working outside their homes.

But Afghan women accuse the new, all-male Taliban-led government of breaking its promises. The militants have banned many girls from attending secondary school. The vast majority of women have been ordered not to return to work. And Afghan women protesting their plight have been attacked or detained by Taliban fighters.

Many Afghan women say the return of Taliban rule feels like being sentenced to a life in prison.

Shayestah, a former employee of an Afghan government agency in Kabul, says she is also suffering from extreme depression.

The Talibans repressive rules have left many Afghan women unemployed. For Shayestah, the loss of her job has wreaked havoc on her familys income in the midst of a worsening economic crisis.

Most disheartening, Shayesteh explains, is the feeling that she has lost all of her dreams about the future along with the values that she cherished.

Our outlook has been destroyed, Shayesteh tells RFE/RL. I have lost my job and I am worried about my future. My spirit is in a very bad way."

"Most Afghan women have been fired and their duties are unknown at the moment, she says. Since our future remains unclear, it has negatively affected our thoughts and emotions.

Good Old Days?

Rezaei says she now looks back at the years before the Talibans return to power as the good old days.

But studies on mental health issues in Afghanistan during the past two decades suggest such feelings are only relative to the current plight of Afghan women.

Researchers note that improvements in the freedoms, rights, and quality of life for Afghan women were painfully gradual under previous governments.

They conclude that although there were positive developments for women's rights and empowerment, progress was often constrained by socio-cultural impediments and conservative Islamic views about the role of women in Afghan society.

Meanwhile, ongoing war and poverty intensified depression and anxiety disorders among the highly traumatized population.

A study published last June as part of a mental health initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that nearly half of all Afghans suffer from psychological stress and are impaired by mental health problems.

That national survey, led by McGill University psychiatry professor Viviane Kovess-Masfety, found that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is Afghanistans most prevalent mental health issue.

It also found that PTSD risk was higher for Afghan women than men, and that Afghan women who suffer from PTSD are nine times more at risk of suffering from depression.

Curiously, PTSD diagnosis was not familiar to psychiatrists in Afghanistan, Kovess-Masfety said. When we were conducting our validity studies on cases, the [Afghan] psychiatrists did not find any PTSD cases in their outpatient clientele, whether depressed, anxious, or cases with substance-use disorders.

Kovess-Masfety concluded that trauma has been so common among Afghans for so long that having symptoms of PTSD did not cause mental health consultation, whereas sadness, loss of pleasure, and the other depressive symptoms were considered as abnormal.

Her survey found that only 12 percent of Afghans mentioned the consequences of trauma events to describe why they sought help for mental health problems.

That compared to 65 percent who have sought help in recent years because of sadness and 27 percent because of anxiety.

Now, since the Talibans return to power, Afghan psychiatrists say they are seeing an increase in the number of women who seek help for depression.

"Most of our patients lately are women -- women's rights activists, former government employees, journalists, and women who were actively employed under the previous Afghan government but have now lost their jobs, says Wahid Nourzad, head of the mental health department at Herat District Hospital.

These days, we really have many patients, Nourzad told RFE/RL. "Some of them are suffering from poverty and unemployment. There also has been an increase in domestic violence against women and children.

Kabul-based psychiatrist Walid Hussainkheil says he thinks the main causes of increased depression among Afghan women are poverty, unemployment, and isolation under the Talibans new rules.

"Their social connections are broken, he explained. They move away from social gatherings and they think of suicide, which is very dangerous."

Suicidal Tendencies

Even before the Talibans return to power, nearly 2 million Afghan women had been diagnosed with severe depression.

Studies based on the records of the previous governments Health Ministry confirm that major depressive disorder (MDD) and domestic violence were the main causes of attempted suicide by Afghan women.

Ayesha Ahmad, an expert on global mental health at St. Georges University in London, notes that Afghanistan has long been the only place in the world where the suicide rate for women is higher than for men.

In a 2017 essay based on her research into a nationwide trend of Afghan women committing suicide by setting themselves on fire, Ahmad warned that 80 percent of the countrys estimated 3,000 suicides each year were women.

She noted that the rate of domestic violence against women and girls in Afghanistan was among the highest in the world.

Eighty percent of marriages take place without the consent of the bride, who is often a child, Ahmad said. An estimated 10 percent of all marriages are a result of baad practice, an Afghan tribal custom where a girl or woman from a convicted criminals family is given as compensation to the victims relatives as a servant or a bride.

Ahmad found that Afghan women who attempted suicide and survived were often abandoned by their families because of the taboo that suicide carries.

She also found that socio-cultural beliefs and taboos have created a barrier that prevents many Afghan women from disclosing their mental health issues to medical professionals and seeking help.

Afghan women would not be setting themselves alight unless the pain they have inside is more than the pain of flames, Ahmad said. The lack of space for a womans narrative, and limited modes of written and spoken expression, mean that a womans suffering or sadness is confined to her body and mind.

The flames are a symbol of the fire she is experiencing within herself and her home, Ahmad concluded. The vivid sacrifice of life through self-immolation is, ultimately, the only form of defense she holds. Her only agency is her decisions around her death.

Psychiatrists say patients who suffer from extreme depression often respond positively to changes in their environment, recreation, and travel.

Kovess-Masfetys study concluded last June that education also was an effective choice of intervention for clinically depressed Afghan women.

But those treatment options have vanished under the restrictions imposed on women by Afghanistans new Taliban-led government.

That has Afghan psychiatrists bracing for further increases in the number of women with depressive disorders -- including those who attempt suicide.

Written and reported by Ron Synovitz with reporting by RFE/RLs Radio Azadi.
During its 20-year insurgency, the Taliban employed suicide bombers as a lethal tool to kill foreign and Afghan government troops and terrorize the civilian population.



Even now, as the Taliban attempts to transform from an insurgency into a government, its contingent of trained suicide bombers remains central to its military and political strategy, experts say.



In a victory parade after retaking power, the Taliban displayed its suicide bombers and arsenal of explosives-laden suicide vests. The parade triggered outrage among many Afghans who said Taliban suicide attacks had killed hundreds of civilians over the years.



The militants also announced the formation of a new martyrdom brigade made up of suicide bombers, in a move that experts say is an attempt to rebrand its suicide bombers as elite fighters ready to protect the new government.

The current Taliban leadership seeks to retroactively take ownership of suicide bombing in all its forms and to give it a new meaning that will help it transform a decentralized insurgency into a unified government, says David Edwards, a professor of anthropology at Williams College.



He says the new suicide bomber brigade is intended to confer legitimacy on the Taliban leadership as it attempts to turn itself into a semblance of a government with regular troops under its command and not just covert agents of violence.



Edwards also noted that the Talibans would-be suicide bombers were members of elite cadres who parade in regimental order wearing colorful uniforms that showcase the different types of suicide bomber and their function.



In October, the Taliban announced that it was deploying its martyrdom brigade along the border with Tajikistan. The move came amid tensions between the Taliban-led government and Dushanbe, which accused the group of monopolizing power.

Abdul Basit Badar, the head of the brigade, told RFE/RLs Radio Azadi in October that the suicide bombers were ready to defend our country at any cost.



This brigade is ready to be deployed to our borders whenever there is fighting or a threat on our borders, he said, adding that his unit was equipped with U.S. and Russian-made weapons.

'Ideological Messaging'



The Taliban's acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, held a gathering for the families of suicide bombers at a luxury hotel in Kabul last month. During the gathering, he lauded suicide bombers for their sacrifice and promised their families land and money.



Haqqani is head of the notorious Haqqani network, the lethal arm of the Taliban. The network is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and Haqqani is among the FBI's most-wanted fugitives.

I want to do something for the families of our martyrs that reverberates with the entire nation, said Haqqani, according to an audio recording of his October 18 speech obtained by RFE/RL. I would like to give them a plot of land and a special card that identifies them as members of the families of our martyrs so that their status is even higher than ours.



Haqqani sought to defend the Talibans use of suicide bombers, saying that without fighters seeking martyrdom, we will not be able to fight the infidels, in reference to foreign forces and the former Afghan government.



Haqqani also revealed the religious justification that the Taliban has used to carry out suicide bombings.



Recalling how the Taliban conducted the January 2018 suicide attack on the Intercontinental Hotel that killed 40 people, Haqqani said the commander leading the assault greeted me and swore that Prophet Muhammad is personally leading their operation.

In response, some in the audience wept and many shouted Allahu Akbar, or "God is great."



Edwards says the Taliban has turned the tactic of suicide bombing into the centerpiece of its ideological messaging and the suicide vest itself into its central symbol.



Glorifying Suicide Bombings



Sami Yousafzai, a veteran journalist who has reported on the Taliban since its emergence in the 1990s, says by praising suicide bombers the Taliban is alienating both the Afghans it hopes to rule and the international community it needs to fend off an economic and humanitarian crisis.



Instead of trying to unite Afghans with a narrative of peace after claiming to have won the war, they want to bask in what they view as their glory and celebrate tactics such as suicide bombings that killed and maimed many Afghan civilians, he says.



But Yousafzai says the Taliban is not united in using suicide bombers as a pillar of its political strategy.



Glorifying suicide bombings is something even sane voices within the Taliban were keen to avoid because it is preventing them from gaining support at home and legitimacy abroad, he says.



The Taliban's all-male government is dominated by hard-line veterans and loyalists, many of whom are under UN and U.S. sanctions for their ties to terrorism. The Taliban-led government, which is almost exclusively made up of Pashtun clerics, has not been recognized by any country.



There has been infighting between Taliban hard-liners and more moderate figures, who are keen to gain international recognition and local legitimacy.

The Taliban is not the only group employing suicide bombers.



The rival Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-K) extremist group, which has been waging an intensifying war with the Taliban, has conducted a series of deadly suicide bombings targeting the Shiite minority and the new government.



Afghans who had hoped that the Taliban takeover would spell an end to decades of war are now bracing for more violence, including suicide bombings.



On November 2, at least 19 people were killed, including a Taliban commander, and dozens more wounded in a gun and bomb assault on a military hospital in Kabul. IS militants claimed responsibility for the attack.



We still have to live in fear of these attacks, said Nasima, a former government worker.
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Police arrested two men suspected of robbing six businesses in Colorado Springs last month, law enforcement said.

Officers arrested 21-year-old Damion Daniels and 20-year-old Tani Hurt in the 3800 block of Radiant Drive two weeks ago on Oct. 21, police said.

Throughout October, the pair robbed multiple Circle Ks on Maizeland Road and Austin Bluffs Parkway as well as G&R Liquors on Maizeland Road, Dutch Bros. Coffee on Source Center Point, and a Diamond Shamrock on North Academy Boulevard, police said. Officers allege that the suspects would display a weapon and often lead victims around the store while making demands.

Police arrested Daniels on suspicion of three counts of kidnapping and six counts of aggravated robbery, while Hurt was arrested on suspicion of one count of kidnapping and two counts of aggravated robbery.

Police booked both men into the El Paso County jail.
As a 30-year veteran in the education field, Brenda Krage, the 2022 Colorado Superintendent of the Year, understands that the right choice is not always a comfortable one.

I try really hard to do whats best for kids, and not necessarily whats easy, Krage said.

When she took over as superintendent of Fremont School District RE-2 in 2018, it was clear Krage had her work cut out for her. The rural districts middle and high schools were at priority improvement, the third lowest of four possible performance ratings.

It was clear we had some work to do, primarily at the secondary level, said Krage, who previously served as superintendent of Platte Canyon School District. We knew we could do better.

Krage and her staff began by reconfiguring the rural districts school system. They closed the middle school campus, added preschool and sixth grade to their two elementary schools, and added seventh and eight grade to Florence High School, making it a junior/senior high school.

Krage then went to work on improving the teaching and learning culture in the district, building upon its career and technical education programs and creating preschool programs.

"It was a lot of work," Krage said. "But it was worth it."

The 1,400-student district is still technically at priority improvement because the Colorado Department of Education instituted a freeze on performance ratings due to COVID-19. But Krage said her efforts have had a tangible effect on the district.

Judging from our internal information, and the data points we have access to, were very confident that those ratings would improve, she said.

The Colorado Association of School Executives appears to agree. A selection committee of superintendents and former award winners unanimously selected Krage as the 2022 Colorado Superintendent of the Year.

Dr. Krage is highly regarded among her peers regionally and across the state for her work as a superintendent and for her service to the profession, said Platte Valley School District superintendent Glenn McClain, who led the interview and selection process. The committee was inspired by the way she has transformed Fremont Re-2 and the exceptional work to benefit students.

Krage is the fifth honoree from a rural school district in the last 22 years, according to a news release from the Colorado Association of School Executives. She will be recognized in February at the American Association of School Administrators national conference in February  where the national Superintendent of the Year will be announced  as well as at the annual CASE Awards reception in the spring.

Im really excited to share this with my staff, Krage said of the award. I think its as much a recognition of their work as mine.
The longtime mystery of a missing hiker at Rocky Mountain National Park appears to have been solved.

Skeletal remains found in Rocky Mountain National Park in August 2020 are thought to belong to Rudi Moder, a man from West Germany who disappeared in the park more than 38 years ago, a news release from the park said Thursday.

Moder, a 27-year-old man living in Fort Collins in 1983, was an "experienced mountaineer" headed to Cameron Pass on Feb. 13 of that year for a two- or three-night ski and mountaineering trip over Thunder Pass in Rocky Mountain National Park, the release said.

Moder's roommate reported him missing Feb. 19 after he was overdue to return, officials said.

Search teams scoured the area, but a foot of snow that fell in the Never Summer Mountains impeded the mission, the release said. Rescuers searched on skis, snowshoes, by air and with avalanche dogs for four days. They found a snow cave with Moder's sleeping bag, gear and food stockpile.

Numerous searches conducted through spring and summer of 1983 and periodically in following years did not recover Moder's remains, the release said.

Then, in August of 2020, a hiker found skeletal remains in Skeleton Gulch near avalanche debris in the same area as the initial search, officials said. Rangers started an investigation, but the Cameron Peak fire, followed by early snowfall, stifled its progress.

During the summer of 2021, rangers continued to search the area and found skis, poles boots and a bag all believed to belong to Moder.

The Grand County Coroner's Office tried to identify the remains using dental records, but the results were inconclusive, according to the release.

Officials worked with the German government for repatriation, family notification and dental record analysis, the release noted.

The recovery of the remains ends a four-decade-long cold case.
The stepmother of Gannon Stauch was arrested Monday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on suspicion of first-degree murder, as a five-week search for the Colorado Springs-area 11-year-old pivoted from a missing persons case to a murder prosecution.

Authorities said Monday the boy's remains haven't been found and they declined to say how they connected Letecia Stauch to the boy's apparent death. Her arrest affidavit was sealed.

I never thought I would be standing here  its a nightmare," the boy's mother, Landen Hiott, said between sobs at an El Paso County Sheriff's Office news conference announcing the arrest.

Letecia Stauch, 36, was arrested without incident at about 6 a.m. Mountain Time on Monday, El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder said. She is to be held without bond at the Horry County, South Carolina, jail until her extradition to Colorado Springs, officials said at the news conference.

- VIDEO ARCHIVE: KKTV's full interview with Letecia Stauch.

- Letecia Stauch slams El Paso County Sheriff's Office.

In addition to first-degree murder, Letecia Stauch was arrested on suspicion of child abuse resulting in death, tampering with a deceased human body and tampering with physical evidence, all felonies, law enforcement officials said. Court records show the El Paso County Sheriff's Office issued a warrant for her arrest on Friday.

Hiott  who, overcome with emotion, sometimes struggled to remain standing during the news conference  held hands with the boy's father, Al Stauch, as authorities announced the arrest. Although Gannon's remains haven't been found, authorities have information expected to "narrow the search," El Paso County Sheriff's Office Lt. Mitch Mihalko said.

"Today I got the worst news and the best news," Hiott said at the news conference. "Obviously we know what the worst news is. The best news is, is that justice will be served and Ill make sure that justice is served, because my boy did not deserve any of this that has happened to him.

Hiott said she hoped Gannons stepmother, whom she trusted, would pay 100% for this heinous thing that shes done.

If convicted, Letecia Stauch faces life in prison without parole.

In a statement read by a spokeswoman, Gannon's father said although he was mourning that his "little boy is not coming home," he couldn't question God for "bringing Gannon home to him."

Monday's arrest and the presumption Gannon was dead meant "we will never play Nintendo again, no more Taco Tuesdays," Al Stauch said.

The person who committed this heinous, horrible crime is one that I gave more to than anyone else on this planet, and I will carry that burden for a very long time. But the God I believe in is the owner and decider of justice and vengeance, and only he can repay."

The Sheriffs Office will continue to work closely with the 4th Judicial District Attorneys Office, the FBI and other agencies to investigate the boys death, Mihalko said.

Focus on Finding Remains

Prosecutor Michael Allen from the district attorney's office said efforts will focus on finding Gannon's remains and prosecuting Letecia Stauch.

One, we still want to bring Gannon home so that he can have a proper burial and his family can achieve the closure that they need," Allen said at the Monday news conference. "But we also want to hold the person that we are charging ... accountable for what she did in this case."

Sheriff's Office officials declined to answer questions at the press conference.

Gannon was last seen five weeks ago by Letecia Stauch, who told investigators that the boy had walked to a friend's home nearby and didn't return. No information has been released on whether the boy made it to the friend's house.

Gannon's disappearance was initially treated as a runaway. After two days, sheriff's officials referred to him as a missing and endangered child, which allowed them to call on the resources of the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In the weeks since, the search moved north of the El Paso County border to southern Douglas County. Crews were seen in videotaped footage throwing snow against a sifter, as if searching for small items.

Searchers most recently probed an area near Colorado 105 and Colorado 83, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.

Never Worked for Peyton School District

While a LinkedIn profile appearing to belong to Letecia Stauch stating that she is employed as a curriculum developer at School District 49, she does not and has never worked for it, the Peyton-based district spokesman David Nancarrow said Monday.

Whatever shes posted is not correct, he said. We have no motivations for what that is.

Letecia Stauch received a Colorado license to teach elementary school, special education and secondary social studies in March 2019, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Letecia Stauch has prior addresses in Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet and Mount Pleasant, all in South Carolina, and in Lumberton and Pembroke, North Carolina, according to public records. She has also used the last names Hardin and Hunt.

In South Carolina, Letecia Stauch was cited with domestic violence-first offense, a misdemeanor, in November 2010, but the case was dismissed.

In North Carolina, she was placed on probation in 2001 and 2002, after being cited with communicating threats in February 2001, simple assault in April 2001, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle in June 2001, according to North Carolina state prison records. Details of those crimes, including where they were committed, werent available.

She accused Hiott of contributing to what she called harassment and retaliation when she worked for seven days as a middle school social studies teachers in Marion County School District in South Carolina. The South Carolina Board of Education suspended her educator certification to teach in May 2016 for breach of contract in abandoning her teaching duties with the district.

Letecia Stauch had signed an annual contract with the Marion County School District on June 24, 2015, and had also signed a contract to teach in Charleston, South Carolina, for the same time period, according to court documents. She indicated she left because she experienced harassment and retaliation at requesting to be released from her contract due to a pending military move, which she said was denied.

She alleged the harassment and retaliation were because the district superintendents niece was her husbands ex-wife, Hiott. Leticia Stauch threatened to file an equal-opportunity complaint unless she was released from her contract.

The harassment and retaliation claim was investigated and remains unsubstantiated, the order of suspension concluded. The suspension was for six months; there is no evidence it was reinstated.

Gazette reporters Lance Benzel and Debbie Kelley contributed to this report.
Air Force Academy alumni Christian Paasch is affliated with the Virginia Executive Committee and the National Parents Organization.
While Colorado conservatives took their lumps on the home front in this year's election, losing bids to lower property tax rates and increase oversight of the process of spending taxpayer money (as well as a higher pot tax going down), they had signs of hope by looking east.
Campaign manager Kyle Blakely is surrounded by supporters of Ballot Issue 2C to increase sales taxes for trails, open space and parks as early results showed the issue losing Tuesday night during a watch party at Patty Jewett Bar & Grill. El Paso County voters also turned down a measure that would have retained taxes for roads and parks.
Widowed at 36, Christine Kuppinger started a new career and a new life in Chicago. This would be her second new beginning, having arrived in the United States at age 12 from Germany with her parents.

Married in 1894 to John Kuppinger he died 13 years later.

After Johns death Christine enrolled in the Chicago training school for city home and foreign missions, graduating with the class of 1910.

In October 1910, she was consecrated a deaconess, and she then had a full time vocation of justice and service in the Methodist Church. Following the 1910 Rock River annual conference she received her first assignment.

Christines first assignment was at the Midnight Mission that was organized by the Chicago City Missionary Society. In 1915, she was appointed to the Chicago Womens Shelter as the assistant superintendent, later becoming the superintendent. The shelter provided services to homeless women and children until their homes could be re-established. Families and single working women were also accepted at the shelter for temporary care.

In one year, the shelter cared for 64 mothers, 119 children, 125 single women and 74 women in their homes. It served 22,844 meals and gave 8,727 days of 24-hour care.

Christine served at the shelter numerous years until her failing health necessitated her retirement.

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Background & Initial Attempt

Initial Quant Improvement -

Lessons / Takeaways

1. I regret starting my study off with the . In hindsight, I would have been a lot more efficient and better prepared going with from the beginning. All things considered, the service is very affordable, and it raised my competency to a level in which I was able to consistently score in the mid to high 40s.

2. One note on the course, be aware that that the website will hide chapters based on the mastery level you select when signing up. I had selected the 2nd highest mastery level (up to Q47) and was unaware that as a result, there were a handful of advanced chapters which were not shown to me. Annoyingly, I discovered this fact after my first test attempt and one of the hidden chapters was pertinent to a question that I was dealt in the exam and consequently missed.

Practice CAT 1  650 (Q47, V33)

Practice CAT 2  680 (Q46, V37)

Practice CAT 3  710 (Q45, V41)

First GMAT Attempt  VUE Test Center - 630 (Q47, V31, IR8)

Some Lessons / Takeaways

1. I cannot emphasize this enough  TEST THE PENS that the test center issues you! I read this countless times before my first attempt, and upon receiving my pad drew a feeble 1 cm line on the cover with each pen and assumed that both were fine. As I started to write out the equations for question one, the first pen was completely useless and felt like I was rubbing a dry, sticky eraser over a sheet of plastic. The second pen was not much better but at least I could faintly mark out my workings with it. Really test the pens out when they are issued to you. This really threw me off at the start of the test and added an unnecessary issue for me to have to manage.

2. Be wise with your mid-test snacks and try not to deviate from your regular routine too much. I am a big coffee drinker, consuming 2  3 pints of coffee per day. I tried to limit my caffeine the week of my test, and on the test day itself, and found myself a bit less alert, and slightly more mentally fatigued than usual. Granted, it may have just been a result of all the added stress imposed by the test environment, however I definitely felt a bit less focused after tackling the quant section. Three hours is a long time to maintain deep focused concentration, so I certainly recommend putting some thought into refueling during the small breaks.

Strategies to Improve.

Quant

1. I was pretty happy with my quant performance on test day, so I decided to stay sharp by continuing to do custom tests most night after work. I understand a considerable amount of time and effort is needed to progress from Q47 to 49-50, time which I decided was better spent elsewhere.



2. Additionally, I purchased a copy of the GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book  this is an IMMENSELY Useful resource, a true Game Changer that I wish I knew existed sooner. I set up an excel spreadsheet and listed out the questions and answers, then used this to jumble the order and create five mock tests consisting of 30 problems each. This exposure to the harder GMAT questions not only helped me strengthen my understanding of more complex quant concepts, but also provided me with a better feel for that special nuanced style of questioning that GMAC employs.



3. MathRevolution provides a series of videos on YouTube.

I found these to be very helpful, especially when facing convoluted data sufficiency problems. The videos cover a number of advanced concepts and added a couple of extra tools and tricks to my repertoire.

Reading Comprehension

1. As a native English speaker, I was confident in my ability to read and understand long and complex passages. Many of the uncommon big words GMAT likes to throw into these questions to confuse test takers I was already familiar with; Some of the more frequent words I encountered and recommend learning include, analogous, ambivalent, presupposes, dichotomy, derivative, derogatory, paradoxical, purports, hubris, immutable....



2. I deduced that my main issue with RC seemed to be maintaining interest in the passage to properly take in the content. Also, I was not always picking-up on exactly what the author was trying to say after each paragraph.



3.By far, the most useful resource in improving my Reading Comprehension was this technique by Mr Phillip aka The Tested Tutor on Youtube.

This method absolutely works and is completely gimmick free - I cannot thank Mr Phillip enough for his videos and his detailed approach (he has a excess of useful and carefully explained GMAT content on his channel, including a full run-through of a practice CAT in which he score 780 whilst casually explaining his reasoning as he goes  very impressive).

Using this method, I attempted all 50 of the Reading Comprehension problems in the GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book , under timed test-like conditions, and only got 4 wrong. I cannot recommend this approach enough  read slow  answer fast  no note taking.

Sentence Correction

1. gave me a good foundation on Sentence correction theory, however, my confidence was still relatively low when attempting questions and I wasnt noticing any improvement. I found that running through lots of questions in wasnt helping me improve.



2. I decided to try something different and stumbled upon the Thursdays With Ron Workshop Videos - Available on Youtube.

These were a huge help and I cannot recommend these videos enough to anyone struggling with sentence correction. The videos cover numerous good examples of questions on all key topics, and do so in a very pragmatic and methodical approach. This really helped me solidify my understanding of the key grammar rules which I could reliably use to eliminate incorrect answer choices. Furthermore, while I am partial to the idea that sentence correction questions have an intended meaning, they must certainly have a logical meaning, which is something that I often overlooked in my answer selections (especially once Id narrowed down the answer choices to 2 remaining options). This is something I encourage to place some additional emphasis on in their otherwise stellar SC course.



3. I watched 2-3 Thursdays with Ron webinars per day (at 1.75x speed  Ron speaks very slowly) then attempted a mock test every other day consisting of questions from the GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book .

Two weeks out from my test date, I refrained from attempting any unofficial SC practice problems and only focused on Official GMAT SC problems.

Critical Reasoning

1. The course did a very good job in preparing me for CR question content and variations, so I felt my knowledge in this area was already well rounded.



2. To sharpen my proficiencies, I worked through the questions in the GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book . As I did for Quant, I made up practice tests consisting of 30 questions at a time from this book, and ran through them under timed conditions. This was immensely helpful as some of the questions in this book are insanely challenging and require a very high level of thinking (a very critical level of reasoning!). Once I could reason my way to answering these problems, the lower level test problems were a joke, and the correct answers seemed almost blatantly obvious.



3. To further finesse my Critical Reasoning skillset, I also utilized the Thursdays With Ron Workshop Videos - Available on Youtube.

Again, these are an excellent resource and I highly recommend them to anyone struggling to fortify the key CR concepts in their mind.

Practice Cat 4  750 (Q50, V40)

Second GMAT Attempt  Online - 750 (Q47, V46, IR8)

Hi all, I wanted to share my GMAT journey with the forum members here in the hope that my experiences can aid and inspire those of you who are facing similar challenges that I struggled through. Also, it feels somewhat cathartic to reflect on the previous four months of my life, in which I ate, slept, and breathed GMAT. This forum has been incredibly valuable to me during this process, so I hope my story serves as some guidance for others.My first mistake in this whole process was underestimating the enormity of the challenge I was about to undertake. As an accomplished mechanical engineer, who graduated with first class honors and has spoken English his entire life (well, Australian English, but close enough), I assumed my math and English skills were at a high enough level that the GMAT would be a fairly simple undertaking. How hard can it be, right?.... A bit of high school Maths and English...... Well, I couldnt have been more wrong.I made the decision to commence GMAT preparations on the 4th of July 2021. I work in the construction industry as a Field Engineering manager, a role that demands long working hours - 60 to 70 hour weeks - and very early starts  5 am  so I made a plan to complete most of my study on Sundays with light review in the evenings after work. Having graduated from university 10 years ago, my math was a little rusty, so I purchased some used copies of the Quant and Verbal Guides and went through each, cover to cover, taking notes as I went. Surprisingly, I found the content fairly interesting, and it was nice to rehash a lot of the concepts I had long forgotten from my academic days. After finishing up both books in mid-August, I believed I was ready to tackle a practice test so I signed up to the GMAT Club Forum and planned to start working through practice questions. Fortunately, the following Sunday it was Indias Independence Day (Aug 15th), therefore GMAT Club was offering free CAT tests. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to gauge my progress and see if I was ready to book-in a test date.I attempted both Quant and Verbal sections, and scored a miserable 33 and 31 respectively, equivalent to an aggregate score of 580. I barely made it through 20 questions on each and ended up guessing long strings of questions at the end just to finish in-time.It was obvious that, despite my study, I still was nowhere near ready  my timing was off, I made numerous careless errors, and I felt like I was missing knowledge and understand of a large chunk of the content that GMAT tests (especially in the Quant Sections).After reading the recommendations on this forum, I decided to give a go, and signed up for their $1 seven-day trial. Glancing over the course content, it became immediately apparent to me that the I initially studied, while providing a good basic overview, lacked a substantial amount of intermediate and advanced GMAT specific material that I knew I was missing. I signed up for a month of and worked through the courses, loosely following the study guide (as I already covered some of the content with the ), taking notes as I went. The course was very comprehensive, and I immediately noticed significant improvements in my accuracy and speed in solving quant problems. I was able to recognize and understand problem types/variations quicker and employ the correct strategies to arrive at a solution. The question bank was especially helpful, and I made a commitment to do a 30 question quant test everyday in the evening, consisting of Medium and Hard problems under timed conditions. After another month of study, I attempted my first full Official GMAT practice test.I didnt score too badly on my first attempt, however realized that my verbal score still completely sucked. Fortunately, I realized also had a verbal section, so I poured over the Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning Sections of the courses, taking notes as I went. Two weeks later I was approximately halfway through the verbal content and decided to take my next Official Practice test to gauge my progress.I definitely felt I performed better on the verbal section this time, and felt reassured that the verbal course was helping me improve. I was still a little bit slow and didnt finish the section in time (had to guess the last 4 questions), however I wasnt using my ear to solve sentence correction problems anymore, and was, more often than not, able to methodically eliminate incorrect answer choices. I continued through the remainder of the verbal courses and finished all chapters. To attempt to improve my speed, I committed to doing a 30-question test after work each evening, using the custom test feature. I took a few days off work five days prior to my real GMAT test appointment (October 4th) to hone my final preparations and on the first of these five days, I undertook Official Practice 3.This attempt felt really good. I only just finished the verbal section in-time but felt very competent selecting answer choices. My Quant section suffered a little, as I got 3 of the first 10 questions wrong (due to really silly mistakes on my part), causing the CAT algorithm to feed me lower-level questions for the majority of the latter part of the test. However, I took this as a lesson to remind myself to slow down a bit, and be a bit more methodical at the start of the quant section in the real test.To be honest I was absolutely gutted after seeing my score flash on the screen. I immediately cancelled my score and berated myself for the entire drive home.I chose a section order of Quant  Verbal  IW & AWA.Quant went pretty well, I finished the entire section on time and only had to guess 4 questions, (2 completely stumped me so I quickly moved-on, and the other 2 I exhausted my allotted time to solve them).To this day, I still dont know how I went so wrong on the verbal side of the test. I felt like I didnt do too bad as I was taking it, however I panicked on a couple of the early sentence correction problems that were very pronoun heavy, and I ultimately ran out of time at the end of the section. Also, I stupidly misjudged the number of question and somehow thought Q35/36 was the last question. I spent my last few seconds answering this question, only to be surprised when Q36 flashed on the screen with less than 2 seconds to go. Unfortunately, I dont have mad gamer-level mouse skills and I was not fast enough to select an answer and press submit. I considered purchasing an enhanced score report, however since my score was so unrepresentative of my recent practice attempts, I decided not to bother  all areas of Verbal needed work.After taking a week off to process my results and get over the disappointment of my initial attempt, I decided not to give-up and formulated the following 3-week plan to strengthen my Quant and Verbal abilities and attempt the test again.The week before my retest I completed my last official GMAT practice test.Practice test went really smoothly. I only just finished the verbal section in-time (had to really rush the last 4 questions) but came away with only 5 errors and scored 40. I felt a lot more deliberate and decisive in eliminating answer choices, and after working my way through so many challenging SC and CR problems in the GMAT Official Advanced Questions Book, many of the early questions seemed really easy.Furthermore, as a consequence of all the advanced quant questions I completed, my Quant score improved drastically. I finished the section with 5 minutes to spare and absolutely nailed the test content  only 3 questions wrong, all of which were just silly mistakes.Because of limited availability at the test centers in my local area, I decided to take my retest online. I was a bit apprehensive about this as I had read some horror stories on the forums, however I tried to focus on the positive aspects  familiar setting, familiar whiteboard, reliable pens, no traveling required, etc.I switched up the section order and decided to do verbal first, with the thought being that I will be at my most mentally sharp state (least fatigued) at the beginning of the test. I dont regret this choice!The online test experience was far from perfect. I was interrupted twice during my verbal section by the proctor, once for reading a bit too loudly and once more because I was leaning-in too close to the screen and the proctor was unable to see my full face. Furthermore, about 5 questions in, the secured browser began to lag, and I had to click on my answer choice multiple times before it would register my selection. The same issue sporadically occurred when I went to click Next to move onto the next question. All-up I probably lost 1  2 minutes of test time due to these distractions and issues. Nevertheless, I felt very confident with my answer selections in the verbal section, and for the first time, I finished the section on-time (I had just 3 minutes to complete the last 2 questions, but I was able to power-read through the question stems and deduced my answers in time, making confident and deliberate selections).In the quant section I experienced similar issues to those encountered in the verbal section. Button selections were laggy and I was stopped twice by the proctor as he couldnt see my full face when I was writing on my whiteboard; I had to tilt my laptop screen down to accommodate, putting the viewing angle at a slightly uncomfortable position. I screwed up a couple of the earlier questions by rushing through reading of the question stem (i.e. missing a number when computing an average - dammit), and as a result I started to fall behind in time. Compounded with the delays due to the laggy browser and proctor interruptions, I ended up having to make swift educated guesses on the last 2 questions of the section. I felt that I didnt do too bad, however the test certainly didnt go as smoothly as my practice Cat 4 and my attempt was a little off my best.The AWA section was by far the worst section to complete online. The input box was very laggy and slow. After every couple of words the display would freeze, and I would have to wait for it to respond again before the words that I typed showed up on the screen. Nevertheless, I managed to hammer out a decent essay attempt (well I hope - yet to be scored).When I saw my overall score on the screen, I was ecstatic and felt a huge wave of relief  All those long hour and sacrifices were worth it! Unfortunately, I received one final kick in the teeth from the online exam the following day - an email stating that my test has been flagged for administrative review. I will be devastated if my exam is voided for some trivial technical issue, however I did everything right by the test rules and followed all instructions given to me by the proctor, so I am remaining optimistic in the hope that nothing unfavorable will come of this.Reflecting on the entire process I think the main contributor to my success was that I consistently strived for continual improvement. My practice test scores reflected this trend, starting at 580 and progressing through 650 to 680 to 710 to 750. The resources on this forum were invaluable to me during my journey, and I hope the tools and resources that helped me  that I listed above  are also helpful to others facing similar challenges.
More money is flowing to a North Main Street project and competition that trains entrepreneurs.

The River District Association recently announced a $240,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. The money comes from a pool of about $4.4 million to invest in 33 communities across Virginia, a news release reported.

The North Main Street Business District Revitalization project will receive $150,000. The River District Association is partnering with the Danville Regional Foundation and the city of Danville Office of Economic Development to expand the districts footprint. The money will help businesses, provide marketing services and give facade improvements.

This expansion should lay the groundwork for future infrastructure improvement, the association said. That will increase access to capital, loans, grants and training for businesses interested in opening in the North Main Street business district.

A $90,000 Community Business Launch grant be used to broaden the Dream Launch Bootcamp and Pitch Competition. In its three years of operation, the program has trained more than 200 entrepreneurs and awarded startup or expansion funds to 12 businesses in the district, a release stated.
I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon, McGinniss said.

Ryan Balch, a former Army infantryman who carried an AR-style rifle that night and walked around patrolling the streets with Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum was hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner, including trying to set fires and throwing rocks.

Balch said he got between Rosenbaum and another man while Rosenbaum was trying to start a fire, and Rosenbaum got angry, shouting, If I catch any of you guys alone tonight Im going to f- kill you!

Balch said that Rittenhouse was within earshot and that he believed the threat was aimed at both of them.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

The killing of Rosenbaum, 36, has emerged as one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video.
LAST TIME OUT

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE SERIES

WAKE FOREST:

VIRGINIA TECH:

SCOUTING THE OPPONENTS

WAKE FOREST:

VIRGINIA TECH:

COLE RANKS AMONG THE BEST

OWOKONIAN JOINS 1,000-KILL CLUB

SPIKE OUT CANCER

GAME DAY INFORMATION

UP NEXT

The Duke volleyball team welcomes Wake Forest (12-11, 3-9 ACC) and Virginia Tech (10-14, 1-11 ACC) for two matches this weekend at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils will face the Demon Deacons Friday at 6:30 p.m., before a 1 p.m., Sunday match against the Hokies. Both contests will be broadcast on ACCNX.Duke went 1-1 over the weekend, defeating Notre Dame (3-2) before falling to No. 2 Louisville (3-1). Seniorled the Blue Devils offensively with 32 kills as she reached the 1,000-kill plateau for her career while liberopicked up 49 digs. Setterdished 71 assists, including a career-high 40 in Duke's win against Notre Dame.Duke and Wake Forest meet for the 77th time in program history as the Blue Devils hold a 57-19 lead. The Blue Devils have won 11 of the last 13 meetings but the Demon Deacons have captured two of the last four. Duke is 29-4 against Wake Forest at home.The Blue Devils own a commanding 33-5 lead in the series history. The two squads met twice in the fall of 2020 and split the weekend in Cameron Indoor Stadium. Duke is 20-1 at home against Virginia Tech.Wake Forest (12-11, 3-9 ACC) is coming off a sweep against Virginia and will play Virginia Tech on Thursday night. In addition to Duke, the Demon Deacons were just the third unranked team this year to win a set against No. 2 Louisville. Offensively, Wake Forest is led by Kamryn Maloy with 291 kills to rank eighth in the ACC while Ashley Slater owns 241 kills as the team is hitting .239 percent. Setter Andrea Fuentes has dished 814 assists to rank fifth in the conference while five different players own 100+ digs. At the net, Delaney McSweeney and Olivia Franke have combined for 162 blocks this season.The Hokies enter the weekend 10-14 overall and 1-11 in conference play. Griere Hughes leads the team with 210 kills, followed by Marisa Cerchio (160) and Cera Powell (152). Three different setters have accumulated 200+ assists, led by Brie Postema (352). Virginia Tech ranks seventh in the conference in blocks (211.5) and is led by Angel Robinson with 96.0.Senior liberois ranked 29th on the NCAA active career leaders list with 1,581 career digs to date. She needs 177 to move into the top 20. She is also currently tabbed sixth on the Duke all-time charts and needs 56 to move to fifth.Cole has been one of Duke's top defensive specialists during her time in Durham and has 21 games with 20-plus digs. She has registered a career-high 29 digs twice (North Carolina: Nov. 17, 2018 & Notre Dame: Oct. 29, 2021). She also owns 119 service aces, becoming the 18th player in Duke history to reach the milestone. Cole became the 12th person in Duke history with 1,000 digs and 100 aces. This season, she owns 344 digs for a 4.3 digs/set average to lead the ACC and helps the team to rank sixth.Senior outside hitterbecame the 27th Blue Devil to reach the 1,000-kill plateau in Duke's 3-2 victory over Notre Dame on Oct. 29, 2021. This season, she leads the team with 232 kills for a .226 hitting percentage. Her 23 against Notre Dame was her most since Oct. 18, 2019. For her career, Owokoniran has played in 95 matches for 342 sets with 1,030 kills and a .208 clip. She needs 33 to break into the Duke top 25.The Duke volleyball team is excited to continue its partnership with the Duke Cancer Institute's Teen and Young Adult Oncology Program this season with the Spike Out Cancer initiative. The Blue Devils will dedicate their games against North Carolina (Oct. 22 and Nov. 26) to help raise awareness about and support for teen and young adult cancer. With your support, every spike made by the Blue Devils during these two matches will raise funds for the Duke Cancer Institute's TYAO Program.In February of 2019, former Duke volleyball player Jessi Bartholomew ('19) was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma shortly after finishing her senior season. She completed six months of chemotherapy as well as two weeks of radiation and is currently in remission. To pledge any amount per spike, or make a one-time donation, please click here. This year, First Citizens Bank will double your gift to support this cause.For more information on health and safety guidelines, as well as general game day information, please visit here.Duke travels to Chestnut Hill, Mass., to take on Boston College Saturday, Nov. 13.For more information on Duke volleyball, follow the Blue Devils on Twitter Facebook and Instagram by searching for "DukeVB".
RALEIGH  The General Assembly has completed redistricting maps for the next decade, carving boundaries that would likely give Republicans at least two more U.S. House seats and help the GOP retain its state legislative majorities.

The House and Senate voted along party lines for districts drawn on the basis of 2020 census figures. Each of the three maps  for the House, Senate and congressional delegation  had already passed one chamber by Wednesday.

Gov. Roy Coopers veto stamp cant block redistricting plans, leaving Democrats and their allies with lawsuits as their remaining tool to fight them. In the 2010s, they successfully challenged GOP maps as illegal partisan and racial gerrymanders  problems they believe exist now. One lawsuit already has been initiated.

Is it going to come down to litigation being filed? Yes  and what the courts have to say about it, said state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri of Wake County, the Democrats' No. 2 leader.

If the maps are upheld, they would get first use for the March 8 primary.
My, how quickly things can change with the right message and the right messenger.

Glen Youngkins impressive victory over Democratic retread Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia governor ought to be a reminder that kindness wins over name-calling and that issues are more important than personality.

Parents in Virginia saw the curtain pulled back on the indoctrination of values counter to their own in public schools. McAuliffe denied critical race theory (CRT) was being taught in public schools, but a visit to the Virginia Department of Education web page shows three different instances in which it was promoted, including back in 2015 when McAuliffe was governor. The site also uses the term white fragility and references a presentation that encourages teachers to embrace Critical Race Theory in order to re-engineer attitudes and belief systems. The constant focus on race, class and division is wearing thin and it would appear, at least in Virginia, that many voters have tired of it.

Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins wrote its time for Democrats to retire the white sheets. Can we move on from divide and conquer in favor of promoting togetherness as Americans? In his victory speech that is what Youngkin did, speaking less about himself and more about his fellow Virginians and fellow Americans. Donald Trump take note.
Ever more importantly, what would Jesus do?

Dick Foster

Greensboro

Some thoughts

When there are those who, looking back to defend an imagined past, wish to prevent us reading of such subjects in our libraries, maybe those are just the subjects we should make sure are studied to ground our future.

(And when an inspiration to share such a thought comes on, maybe it also would be good for this paper not to be making it necessary to dig through old issues to find how and where to send a letter to the editor  just saying.)

Pete Campbell

Greensboro

Mythmakers

Fox is broadcasting a Tucker Carlson special called Patriot Purge. Its about the Jan. 6 attack on our nations Capitol being a false flag operation.

The program alleges that the Capitol riot was organized by the FBI. It suggests that it was part of governments attack on American citizens in a new war on terror. Right ...
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The co-chair of the leadership of the Kurdistan Community Union, Camil Bayik, affirmed that the solution they propose and find correct in Syria is not the presence of the United States, but rather depends on the reconciliation of the Autonomous Administration with Damascus.

In a related context, a member of the Co-chair of the Democratic Union Party, Aldar Khalil, confirmed in previous statements that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Democratic Union Party are ready for direct dialogue with Damascus, and noted that the administration is an important democratic project for all of Syria. .

Valuable and special statements

Commenting on these statements, Ose, head of the Syrian Kurdish National Initiative, spoke to our agency, saying: "We have followed Mr. Aldar Khalil's statements about their readiness to negotiate with the Damascus government. These statements were valuable, distinctive, and timely, in light of the looming and serious dangers from Turkey to all of Syria."

Ose explained: "Mr. Aldar Khalil's talk about the legitimacy of the Damascus government is realistic, in addition to his talk about the priority of dialogue in Damascus and not in Geneva and elsewhere, and we saw that with our own eyes, as I was in the government delegation and saw how the so-called Syrian opposition served the interests of the Turkish state and was accompanying these are officers from the Turkish MIT and unfortunately they had Kurdish personalities with them. Here, I am asking them to withdraw from the coalition because it has turned into a pawn and a Turkish tool par excellence."

Camil Bayek's statements push the dialogue process forward

Regarding Bayek's statements, Osei said: "Mr. Bayek is an expert in Syria and the Middle East and lived in it. His statements about the solution being reconciliation between the administration and Damascus are an important talk that indicates a high experience of the fighter Bayek, and the Damascus government immediately seized it. These statements give a moral motive. the dialogue process between Damascus and the Autonomous Administration.

Ose added, "Mr. Jamil Bayek confirmed that there is no organizational relationship between the PKK, the Democratic Union Party and the Autonomous Administration, and this refutes the Turkish allegations, which even see the Syrian army as a threat to its national security." important and valuable statements that come from the thought of leader Abdullah Ocalan."

We presented an initiative to Damascus and the Autonomous Administration, and we sought a positive response from the latter

The head of the National Initiative for the Syrian Kurds, Omar Ossi, revealed earlier a draft document to resolve the differences between the Autonomous Administration and the Syrian government of Damascus with the aim of joint coordination to repel any Turkish aggression.

Al-Watan newspaper quoted Ossi as saying that the document includes several items, as the Kurdish issue is a Syrian national issue par excellence, and its solution is in Damascus and not in any other capital, and this national solution comes on the basis of recognition of the legitimate rights of the Syrian Kurds, and with constitutional guarantees within the framework of unity and sovereignty. Syrian National Geographic.

Ossi explained that "the document refers to the adoption of the decentralization system in governing the country, and also includes the necessity of implementing Local Administration Law No. 107."

He stressed, "The Local Administration Law can be approached with the Autonomous Administration Law enforced by the Syrian Democratic Council, and in addition to this, it includes the development of areas east of the Euphrates and the Syrian Jazira within the framework of balanced development and the return of the Syrian state's political, military, security and administrative institutions to all areas that are outside the control of the government in the region." Euphrates, the Syrian island and other areas.

Aussi said: "No one assigned us to announce the document of the national initiative, neither the government side nor the Autonomous Administration, but it is a national project in which the national initiative of the Syrian Kurds met with the National Intellectuals Forum in Qamishli and national personalities (doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges, former members of the People's Assembly, clan heads and national figures) from All components are Arab, Christian Kurds, Circassians, and the rest of the components are in the east of the Euphrates, the Syrian island and the Aleppo countryside."

He explained, "It is still a draft and will take into account the observations of both the Autonomous Administration and the Damascus government. We have not announced it yet, and when we take the green light from both sides, we will announce it during a press conference in Qamishli."

He added, "We submitted this document to the two sides, and we sought positivity from the Autonomous Administration, through the statements of some of its officials, including Mr. Aldar Khalil. We believe that the central system has many disadvantages, and the solution is to implement decentralization based on understanding between the two sides."

The agreement between Damascus and the Autonomous Administration will strengthen the Syrian state

On the possibility of understanding between the two sides, Ossi said: "There are no major problems between the two parties, but rather a political dispute over the fate of the Autonomous Administration and the role of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which we hope will resolve these differences during the talks that seem to be launched in the next few days, and we hope that both sides will stop Media campaigns that may disrupt these conversations.

Ossi demanded that "the dialogue includes all Kurdish forces, the opposition, the loyalists, and the rest of the components, and I call for the establishment of a joint military operations room for the Syrian army, SDF, Russian forces and other allies to repel any possible Turkish aggression."

Aussi concluded his speech by saying: "We had hoped that an agreement would be reached between the two sides years ago, but it is better to arrive late than not. This agreement, if it happens, will strengthen the Syrian state as a state, and those affected by that are the enemies of Syria, led by Turkey, which aspires to carve out new Syrian lands."

A

ANHA
" " Doctors often threaten to charge patients who are late or no-shows. Should patients ask for compensation if they have to wait? Caiaimage/Robert Daly/Getty Images

We've all been left twiddling our thumbs in the doctor's office long after appointment time has come and gone. Some wait it out to varying degrees of annoyance, while others leave in an angry huff. Often, the same docs either post a sign or require patients to initial a form stating that the appointment can be canceled, or a fee applied to the account if the patient is late. So why do doctors get a "free" pass, while patients pay a penalty? Are they implying that their time is more valuable than that of their patients?

Not really. Many doctors say the underlying cause of lateness is the patients who came before you. First, there are patients who arrive late, but still within the acceptable 15-minute grace period. The doctor's office has to be accommodating to a reasonable extent due to extenuating circumstances like traffic, especially if the patient is actively sick or exhibiting symptoms. Also, plenty of patients blow off the request to arrive 15 minutes early to update insurance and fill out paperwork. So, even if they arrive technically on time, taking care of these tedious, but necessary, steps will push the entire schedule back.

Then, there's the actual seeing of the patients. Although it varies by practice, many general practitioners schedule patients in increments of 15 or 20 minutes. For a basic and easy to diagnose complaint, that's totally doable. However, a patient presenting with a complicated history, multiple issues and new symptoms can quickly cause a backlog, particularly if they didn't disclose when scheduling the appointment that they have numerous concerns, or if an unexpected issue pops up during the visit.

"Because of the nature of health, there is no ability to say  'come back tomorrow so that I can initiate the treatment for the heart murmur I just found,'" emails Elizabeth Woodcock, an Atlanta-based expert in medical practice operations efficiency, who regularly advises doctors on ways to improve patient flow and scheduling optimization, adding, "Delaying care is very different [from] delaying a mortgage closing, sweater purchase, meal reservation, etc., so this means that a single patient can result in a delay for everyone scheduled that day."

Most practices take steps to minimize wait times, but there's currently no magic equation. "We try to make a schedule that will accommodate complicated or demanding patients, but what if half the patients that day take more time than expected?" says Dr. Barbara Bergin, an orthopedic surgeon in Austin, Texas. "If I really want to be certain that no one waits, then maybe I only see five patients in a morning. Then I can't afford to keep the lights on."

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Who Pays for Tardiness?

But is it always the patients' fault? The statistics website fivethirtyeight.com looked at a study on patient timeliness which found that just 7.7 percent of patients arrived late to appointments at one pain clinic (late was defined as being one minute past the appointment time). Almost 91 percent of patients arrived on time or early. Of course, just because the patients were on time, doesn't mean that there weren't complications during the visits which threw off the appointment schedule.

The website also reported on a separate paper looking at data from 9,945 patients at 44 outpatient clinics. It found that on average patients waited for 38 minutes: 23 in the waiting room and another 15 minutes in the exam room. The longer patients waited, the lower the satisfaction levels they reported.

Woodcock says she's never heard of a doctor reimbursing a patient for their lost time, nor would she recommend it. But on the other hand, she says, practices rarely follow through on their threat of charging fees for no-show or late arrivals, assuming they have such a policy. Typical enforcement would require invoking a collection agency, just to collect a relatively nominal fee. Most of the time, such policies, are "not even acted upon, particularly on the first offense," she says.

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Patient Interaction

Another reason for delays might be something patients often want more of: evidence that their doctor cares about them. Dr. Nicole Rochester is a professional patient advocate, who used to work as a primary care pediatrician. "The thing I hated the MOST while practicing primary care medicine was regularly apologizing to my patients for being late," she says in an email interview. Although factors were often out of her control, she does acknowledge in a blog post on her site Your GPS Doc, that chatting with patients was a contributing reason.

"There is a price to pay for engaging with your patients and their families, and that price is efficiency," she writes, adding, "I'd like to think the time and attention I gave my patients made up for my being late, but I'm sure there were some who would disagree. When you add the complexities of an electronic medical record, efficiency can really suffer."

So, the next time you have an appointment, do your part to arrive early and hope everyone else does the same. And don't forget one day, it could be you who needs the extra time.

"Most patients understand that their doctor is trying their best to see them on time. They understand that circumstances are sometimes out of the doc's control," Dr. Bergin says. "And my patients also know, that when it's their turn, they will get the attention they need, even if they run over their allotted time."

Now That's a Good Tip When scheduling your appointment, inquire about what the busiest times of day are, as well as the average wait time. This will help you select a spot that could minimize your wait.
Dune: Part One

At Cinemark and on HBO-Max

(PG-13)

Grade: B+

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

And so begins Frank Herberts Dune.

Dune is not about a giant worm, writhing beneath the desert sands.

Dune is not an epic battle for control of mind-altering cinnamon-flavored spices that enhance the mind and lengthen life.

Dune is about facing and conquering fear.

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me."

Dune finds a Messianic boy reluctantly accepting his destiny. Young Paul boldly sets forth on his Zen Buddhist quest to lean into fear -- and into Coriolis sandstorms -- to save his planet.

Echoes of Star Wars? Yes, but Paul came first on his dragonfly plane. Han Solo followed in his Millennium Falcon.

To lead them to paradise Paul/ Muad'Dib must avoid being slain by warriors or swallowed by worms.

Dune was published in 1965 and is now regarded as a science fiction classic on a par with Isaac Asimovs Foundation.

From the outset, Dune was deemed unfilmable both because of its scope and because of its philosophical soul. Herbert, master of cerebral dialogue, would be a challenging adaptation.

The genius of Herbert seemed best left inside his pages.

David Lynch tried, and failed in 1984. Alejandro Jodorowskys 14-hour vision never even got made.

So now we have Denis Villeneuves first installment of his two-part Dune. Warner Brothers just gave the greenlight to Part Two, tentatively set for October 2023.

Villeneuves Dune is reverent towards its source, majestic in its visuals  and even has Frank Herberts son in support.

But, still, Dune somehow falls short of Frank Herberts vision. Perhaps, Part Two will fill some holes.

The script tries to slide Herbert into the script via voice-overs.

We hear that dreams are messages from the deep and, of course, we are treated to Herberts ponderings about fear.

The mind killer passage is prominent, ending with our heros pledge to lean into fear.

And when fear has passed, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Currently living peacefully in the years that bring the philosophic mind, I was hoping that Dune would not become yet another Marvel-ous visual creation that short-changed a brilliant author.

My fear is that Timothee Chalamet seems more brooding action figure than introspective rising king.

And so, overall, I am slightly disappointed in Dune.

However, I will confess that this smorgasbord did offer nuggets that periodically quenched my hunger for uncompromised science fiction.

Dune is the portrait of the Messiah as a young man, accepting his calling as a spiritual and ecological leader. Metaphorically, we might say he seeks to bring water to the desert.

Every so often, when Paul stops to shake sand out of his slippers, and we hear more lines from Herbert.

We must join it. We must flow with it.

The most compelling character is not Paul, but Chani, a member of the Fremen on Arrakis.

When Paul must fight to the death against Jamis, Chani offers soft encouragement:

Jamis is a good fighter, she says. He wont let you suffer.

Fremen flirtation, I gather.

Predictably, our hero lives to accept the offer to remain on Arrakis. Paul now feels the irresistible pull of destinys gravity.

And so we learn what we already knew: That Dune is the prequel to the showdown in Dune 2.

Chani, apostle of the obvious, presents the first commercial for Part Two.

This is only the beginning, she says, offering us an early invitation.

Chani has a depth that Paul lacks, perhaps because actress Zendaya seems more mystical, mysterious.

Im eager for the conclusion, and will, again, be hoping for more Herbert and fewer special effects.

Villeneuve is being very respectful of Herbert, but he knows that $165 million in production costs will require Marvel and DC fans to pack the theater.

And Marvels minions expect a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds.

Villeneuve will soften that expectation a bit, Im sure, but I suspect he still will need to apologize to the ghost of Frank Herbert when the sand finally settles.

Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low, says Chani. You can see spice in the air.

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The Lewis and Clark County Board of Commissioners is opposing proposed congressional redistricting plans that would split the county into two districts, saying such action defies logic.

Please do not divide Lewis and Clark County, the three commissioners wrote in a Nov. 2 letter to Montanas Districting and Apportionment Commission, which is now reviewing proposals and faces a Nov. 14 deadline.

The state Districting and Apportionment Commission is scheduled to meet at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, in state Capitol Room 317 and on Zoom.

Montana got a second congressional district for the first time in 30 years as a result of the 2020 census.

Four maps are being considered for the two districts. One of those proposals, Congressional Proposal 13, proposed by Commission Democrats, puts Helena in the west district if the rest of the county must go to the east district. The proposal called for dividing Gallatin and Lewis and Clark counties, with Bozeman and Helena going to the west district in the hopes of creating a more politically competitive district.

Since most of the people who live in the Helena Valley, work in the City of Helena, we cannot imagine the logic that would prevent thousands of our Lewis and Clark County residents from voting in a Congressional district where they spend half of their waking hours, Commissioners Andy Hunthausen, Jim McCormick and Tom Rolfe wrote. The idea certainly must violate the principle of common interest.

The Lewis and Clark County commissioners say former Democratic Sen. Max Baucus and former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot and former GOP Secretary of State Bob Brown have also written letters opposing such a proposal.

In an Oct. 29 email, Racicot and Baucus urged commissioners to keep counties whole.

It is in the best interest of voters to not divide counties, they wrote.

A hearing was held Saturday in which Helena and Lewis and Clark County residents spoke against placing Helena in the west district. There were also union representatives who said severing Helena from the west district would water down the union vote.

Written public comments may be submitted through the webform at https://mtredistricting.gov/contact/, by email at districting@mt.gov, or by mailing the comments to Montana Districting and Apportionment Commission, P.O. Box 201706, Helena, MT 59620.

Assistant editor Phil Drake can be reached at 406-231-9021.

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O'FALLON, Mo.  A federal lawsuit accuses the National Rifle Association of violating campaign finance laws by using shell companies to illegally funnel up to $35 million to Republican candidates, including former President Donald Trump, Montana's U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and others.

The Campaign Legal Center filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Washington on behalf of Giffords, a gun control nonprofit founded by former Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords. It accuses the NRA of practices dating to 2014 "to evade campaign finance regulations by using a series of shell corporations to illegally but surreptitiously coordinate advertising with at least seven candidates for federal office."

The lawsuit names as defendants Hawley and Rosendale, but the text of the lawsuit also accuses the NRA of "excessive and unreported in-kind contributions" to the campaigns of Trump and Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and former Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. The contributions to Rosendale were during his unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign, according to the lawsuit.

Trump's 2016 campaign received up to $25 million as part of the scheme, the lawsuit states.

Two NRA affiliates  National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund and National Rifle Association of America Institute for Legislative Action  are accused of coordinating with GOP candidates to use the same personnel and vendors for campaign ads.

"Campaign finance law prohibits groups like the NRA from buying influence over elected officials by coordinating spending with those candidates' campaigns," Campaign Legal Center attorney Molly Danahy said in a news release. "When special interests like the NRA secretly collude with candidates, this illegal coordination corrupts our election process and deprives voters of their right to know who is spending to influence their vote."

The NRA responded Thursday with a statement calling the lawsuit "another premeditated abuse of the public by our adversaries  who will stop at nothing in their pursuit of their anti-freedom agenda. This latest action is as misguided as it is transparent. Suffice it to say, the NRA has full confidence in its political activities and remains eager to set the record straight."

Email messages left with the offices of Trump, Hawley, Rosendale and others cited in the lawsuit were not immediately returned.

Giffords represented the 8th District of Arizona from 2007 to 2012, when she resigned after suffering a brain injury during a 2011 mass shooting in her district that killed six people.

Campaign Legal Center said the Giffords organization first brought the allegations against the NRA to light in 2018 when it filed a series of complaints to the Federal Election Commission. The center said Giffords sued after the FEC failed to take action.

The lawsuit seeks an order preventing the NRA from similar violations in future elections and asks the court to require the NRA to pay a penalty matching the amount that was allegedly spent illegally  up to $35 million.

The lawsuit accuses the NRA of illegally funneling funds to aid the Tillis, Cotton and Gardner campaigns in the 2014 election, the Johnson and Trump campaigns in 2016, and the Hawley and Rosendale campaigns in 2018.

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Montana could join other states in allowing hunters to take snow and Rosss geese in the springtime under a proposal currently before the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission.

A conservation order is a special management action thats needed to control certain migratory bird populations when traditional management programs are unsuccessful in preventing an overabundance of the population, the traditional management action here being normal hunting, Ken McDonald, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Wildlife Division administrator, told the commission recently.

Because the Migratory Bird Treaty Act limits traditional hunting seasons to 107 days, describing the take of geese under the light goose conservation order sometimes requires some verbal gymnastics as state and federal officials avoid use of terms such as hunt or hunting season that have specific legal meanings.

But for those outside of the regulatory framework, for practical purposes Montanas commission is considering a spring season from March 1 to May 15 in the Central Flyway covering roughly the eastern half of the state. The Pacific Flyway to the west does not have a conservation order in place.

The proposal calls for some liberalized regulations from traditional hunting seasons including no bag limits; shotguns need not be plugged to limit hunters to three shots; and hunting could occur from a half hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset. Hunters would need to obtain a free light goose conservation order license but state and federal licenses or waterfowl stamps are not required. Electronic calls, baiting and lead shot would still be prohibited.

Bob Sanders is the manager of Montana conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited and said the conservation order has been on his organizations radar for a number of years. The Arctic is critical nesting grounds for not only snow geese but many bird species. It is also a fragile environment susceptible to damage at that time of year.

Because of modern agriculture, snow goose populations have gone up quite a bit, he said. So as the populations have gotten bigger and bigger these spring seasons have become a common way to increase harvest and try to bring them back to sustainable levels. DU as a whole has been very supportive of the (spring) snow goose management seasons. Its definitely something we think will be beneficial for the long term for the habitat and to have a healthy population.

Despite the regulation changes, limited numbers of geese in the spring and a state law banning electronic calls could make the hunt particularly challenging.

They can be extremely tough to hunt, so youre talking very large decoy spreads as they get more and more educated migrating up from the south through other states with these management seasons, Sanders said.

North Dakota, which falls entirely in the Central Flyway, has offered hunting under the conservation order for two decades. Mike Szymanksi, migratory bird management supervisor for North Dakota Game and Fish, said participation and success in his state can vary from year-to-year based on conditions that affect the northern migration.

It depends a little bit on the spring on how successful it is per se, he said. Sometimes we have years where its pretty dry and the geese move through pretty fast, and some years theyre around quite a while, and some years its just too wet to get around.

In good years North Dakota may see 1,000 hunters but average is closer to 800, Szymanksi said. He agreed that big decoy spreads are important but noted that his state allows electronic calls that aid significantly in hunter success. Some hunters also have luck pass shooting during bad weather with high winds, he added.

Id just say for Montana that it takes people a couple of years to get things figured out, so I wouldnt judge what happens based on the first year, Syzmanski said. Springs vary so much with the migration.

Tom Kuglin is the deputy editor for the Lee Newspapers State Bureau. His coverage focuses on outdoors, recreation and natural resources.

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SPRINGFIELD  Prospective students applying to any of Illinois' 12 public universities can now use the Common Application. That includes students considering Illinois State University in Normal and Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

Both schools are also maintaining their own internal application systems. However, the Common App allows students to apply to multiple schools with a single application, although some schools may require supplemental materials as well.

The only Illinois public university still not in the system is Northeastern Illinois University, which plans to join later this fall, according to a Thursday press release from Gov. J.B. Pritzker's office.

The Common App allows students to request fee waivers from their application portal. Free assistance is available through the Illinois Student Assistance Commission through the ISACorps.

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Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

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DECATUR  Dwayne Bryant warned his audience at the Peace Summit on Wednesday that he doesn't mince words or sugar-coat anything.

Then he proceeded to prove it.

If we can't deal with the truth, we can't solve the problem, he said.

Emotions and opinions are not facts, he said, and until people face the facts and address them, and talk to each other without letting emotion get the best of them, nothing will change.

One example is that 90 percent of Black homicides are committed by other Blacks, and 83.5 percent of white homicides are committed by other whites, he said, citing the Federal Bureau of Investigation's crime statistics report. Police killings of Blacks account for only .005 percent of Black deaths by violence, but get 80 percent of the media coverage. The advent of social media contributes to the perception that it happens far more often than it actually does, he said.

The Peace Summit is the second of a series in an effort to form a Peace Hub in Decatur, said Keyria Rodgers, director of Millikin Universitys Criminal Justice Department, instructor of criminal justice, director of the Teen Justice Diversion Program, grant administrator for Adult Redeploy Illinois, and a member of several boards including Court-Appointed Special Advocates and the Boys and Girls Club of Decatur.

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A Peace Hub is a place that is relative to every community that wants one, Rodgers said. A Peace Hub is where people would be comfortable going to get any kind of help and resources they need, but also having that space to have these conversations and really do some assessment in terms of, maybe they haven't had the opportunity to go somewhere and get some restorative circles or something like that. It's more than just walking into a hospital or a community center. It's a place where there are a wide array of services available.

It doesn't have to be in a single location, she said, and every problem doesn't need to go to the court system. Often, a Peace Hub, restorative justice and people just sitting down and talking together can solve problems. There should be a leadership circle of people who communicate with each other and share information about needs they've seen in their area of expertise.

That's what's not happening, she said. We're too silo-ed (separated into individual areas and not cooperating).

A website is under development and will be live soon, she said, www.grjp.org for the Global Restorative Justice Partnership. The response to the first two Peace Summits show that there is great interest in moving forward, she said, and three more are planned: Feb. 2, with the theme of A Deeper Dive, looking at community resources and existing support networks; May 4, Where are we now? with a focus on youth and community; and Aug. 3, What's next? the first community-wide restorative justice meeting.

Datrice Weathers, who works at Old King's Orchard Community Center, said one of the problems is that people don't take advantage of the community resources already available. Another issue is that often, no one is willing to address the root of an issue. An example she gave was student misbehavior. Fixing the misbehavior without seeking the reasons behind it doesn't fix anything.

We're not digging into what's going on in their lives, she said.

If a child comes from a chaotic home and has no adult there with whom to build a supportive relationship, someone at school, church or a place like Old Kings Orchard could provide that, she said.

We've got to look in the mirror and start getting back to 'it starts in the home,' said Reggie Anderson.

The only people who benefit when police aren't working with the community are criminals, Bryant said. If we don't get anything else from this conversation, we need to learn that we need each other.

Contact Valerie Wells at (217) 421-7982. Follow her on Twitter: @modgirlreporter

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SPRINGFIELD  State Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, announced Thursday that he will seek reelection next year in the redrawn 54th District.

I am committed, now more than ever, to standing up for our communities against the radical liberal agenda that is driving the chaos across Illinois," McClure said in a news release.

McClure, 37, who lives on the far west side of Springfield and was first elected in 2018, is running in a district that covers significantly different ground than the one he currently represents, which stretches across west-central Illinois from Sangamon County to the Mississippi River.

The new district, drawn as part of the legislative redistricting map proposed by legislative Democrats and signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker earlier this year, covers all or parts of 14 mostly-rural Central Illinois counties. It stretches from Petersburg in the northwest to Staunton in the southwest to Effingham in the southeast to Moultrie County in the northeast.

The district includes most of the southern portion of Macon County, including Macon and Mount Zion. It also takes in a small slice of southwest Decatur near the South Side Country Club.

McClure, a Springfield native, initially ran for the Illinois Senate as a primary challenger to incumbent state Sen. Sam McCann, R-Plainview.

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But when McCann opted to run for governor as a third party candidate, McClure was unopposed in the primary. He then won the general election unopposed in the heavily Republican district.

McClure is is a graduate of Arizona State University, the University of Illinois Springfield and Valparaiso University. He received a law degree from the latter.

Prior to serving in the legislature, McClure was a Sangamon County assistant state's attorney for six years.

McClure was appointed assistant minority leader of the Illinois Senate GOP caucus earlier this year.

McClure is a conservative, especially on issues of public safety and law enforcement, though has broken from his party on occasion, most notably when he voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2019.

Given the significant new territory McClure's district covers, he may face a competitive primary challenge.

Former state Rep. Wayne Rosenthal, R-Morrisonville, has expressed an interest in running for the seat, according to news reports.

Rosenthal served in the Illinois House from 2011 to 2015 and was later appointed director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources by former Gov. Bruce Rauner. He currently serves on the Lincoln Land Community College Board of Trustees.

McClure had about $68,000 on hand as of Oct. 1, according to campaign finance reports. Rosenthal has not yet started campaign committee.

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DECATUR  Corey Walker said he always knew that if he ever owned a building in Decatur he would use the space to bring attention to local African American idols and inspirations.

Now, having co-founded the Inc. Spot  the first minority-owned business incubator in the region  over a year ago, Walker said he plans to honor his late uncle and the first African American sheriff elected in the state of Illinois, Roger E. Walker Jr., with a mural on the side of the building.

I think that people want to see this and were in a position now with the Inc. Spot in an amazing location and to be able to use out own discretion to put one of our very own on our building, said Walker, who is president of the Black Chamber of Commerce of Illinois.

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Tamara Fuller, president of the Greater Decatur Black Chamber of Commerce and co-founder of the Inc. Spot, said the mural will be commissioned by Antonio Burton, who was born and raised in Decatur and now works at Hogan Prep Middle School in Kansas City, Mo., as a behavior interventionist, in addition to his art.

Hes done additional work at the Boys and Girls Club and hes really big on advocating artistry and promoting different artists, Fuller said. We wanted to use somebody whos from Decatur and who has the skillset to do the mural.

Roger E. Walker Jr. started at the county sheriffs office as a patrol officer and worked his way up the ranks until he was elected county sheriff in 1998, making him the first Black sheriff elected in Illinois.

He went on to become director of the Illinois Department of Corrections from May 2003 to May 2009 and served on the states Prisoner Review Board until November 2010, when his health kept him from working.

He died in 2012 at the age of 63 in a Springfield hospital after battling a series of illnesses over several years.

Already having helped get his uncle into the Decatur Hall of Fame and memorialize Illinois 48 as Sheriff Roger E. Walker Jr. Memorial Road, Walker said he believes this new mural will become a historical site and that people will travel to see it.

Walker said the mural will require about $4,000 to commission the painting, prep the area, buy materials and install the proper lighting.

I think thats a minimum investment for the major contribution that Uncle Roger has contributed to this community and for us to be graced to have the historical perspective of the first African American sheriff in the state of Illinois in our midst in this community, Walker said.

The mural is still in the process of being planned but Walker said it should be unveiled soon.

To learn more about donating money for this mural, people should call the Inc. Spot at 217-706-5074.

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A federal judge has ordered Bristol Compressors International to pay former employees it terminated in 2018 more than $1.3 million.

The company, which terminated employees and closed its facility in Bristol in the summer of 2018, had violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as the WARN Act, U.S. District Judge James Jones said in an order filed in Abingdon.

Bristol Compressors, which operated in the Bristol-Washington County Industrial Park between Bristol and Abingdon for more than 40 years, announced in August 2018 that it was closing, due largely to the loss of business in the Middle East. The closing last fall resulted in the loss of 470 jobs.

After terminating employees, more than 40 people filed suit against the company, citing that it had failed to provide proper notice of termination.

More than 50 employees were terminated on July 31, Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 without cause, the employees suit states. Many of the terminated employees said they were not provided with all the defined benefits they were due.

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The company later claimed it was exempted from giving employees a 60 days notice, which is required under the WARN Act.
Still, when they first played Bristol and Rhythm & Roots in 2003 and again in 2004, fans knew well of Gaelic Storm. Credit goes to Titanic in large measure. Memorable as those visits were, the band left a stamp of another kind in Bristol.

Our RV broke down in Bristol one time, Lacey said. We went on, but it stayed there for about three months.

Then as now, mainstream radio does not touch Celtic music. Consequently, Gaelic Storm flies well outside the realm of pop cultures seething mass.

To compensate, Gaelic Storms live shows have earned shades of notoriety. Theyre a party band, as reflected in their newly recorded song, The Night Pat Murphy Died.

Wind them up onstage, and they become infectiously hyperactive.

We bring a party to the room, Lacey said. We try to incorporate the crowd. We tell stories, get people up and party.

The more nuts the audience, the more bonkers the band. Attend the show and go wild. Gaelic Storm will feed off you.

Big time, Lacey said. Thats what we do.
Im extremely hopeful, Eads said after the presentation. Based on the discussions I had with folks from Bridgeton, Missouri, they had the very same issues as what were having. It took them 10 years to get any sort of resolution on their landfill, and the city of Bristol, once we recognized we had an issue, we jumped on it quickly to try to resolve it. We know its taken longer than we want, but based on that conversation, I feel like were moving in the right direction.

A contractor recently completed drilling 21 new gas wells in the city landfill and another firm is slated to begin work today linking those wells together and ultimately tying them into the gas collection system, Eads said.

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Plans call for connecting two or three wells at a time into the collection system. At the same time, they are installing pumps to remove excess water from the landfill. That work is expected to be completed in late December with additional steps starting in January.

Responding to a question, Eads said residents should begin to experience some decrease in odors as the current work evolves over the next 50 days.

Jeff Hurst, regional director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said that agency approves of the steps the city is taking.
BRISTOL, Va.  Bristol, Virginia school officials plan to look into easing COVID-19 mitigations, including masking requirements, in the wake of declining cases.

Superintendent Keith Perrigan briefed the city School Board Monday about the intent to plan changes while documenting the divisions current status and then issued a statement Wednesday.

In the last month, we have had only 10 new cases, which is significantly less than the peak of the delta spread where we had 18 cases in one week. Last week, over half of our staff received the vaccine booster, Perrigan said in the statement. During that same week, Bristol Tennessee City Schools lifted their mask mandate and experienced remarkable success.

As a result of the downward trend in positive cases, the uptake of the booster by our staff, the success of BTCS, and the availability of the vaccine for almost every student in our division, we are ready to begin planning for our transition out of indoor masking requirements. For clarity, we are not ending an indoor mask mandate, we are beginning to plan to transition back to normal, Perrigan said.

The state currently mandates mask-wearing in all school settings.
The 4th Circuit panel didn't explain its decision to uphold U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander's Oct. 12 ruling that St. Michaels, also known as Church Militant, is likely to succeed on its claims that the city discriminated against it on the basis of its political views and violated its First Amendment free speech rights.

Hollander said city officials could not prohibit the pavilions manager from contracting with St. Michael's, but she refused to set any court-ordered contractual terms.

The waterfront pavilion is across from a hotel where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is scheduled to hold its national meeting from Nov. 15 to Nov. 18. St. Michaels said it deliberately picked the date and location for its rally to coincide with the bishops meeting. The group also said it held a peaceful, city-permitted rally at the same site during the bishops national meeting in 2018.

In 2017, a confidant of Pope Francis specifically mentioned ChurchMilitant.com in an article condemning the way some American evangelicals and Roman Catholics mix religion and politics. The Rev. Antonio Spadaros article in a Vatican-approved magazine said the media outlet framed the 2016 presidential election as a spiritual war and Trumps ascent to the presidency as a divine election.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The CVCF board advises the Catawba Valley Community Endowment to support local needs. The competitive grants program is held annually. Advisory board members in live and work in the Catawba Valley, positioning them to strategically leverage resources, meet local needs and access opportunities.

In addition to Kirby, board members include: Beth Rogers (secretary), Suzan Anderson, Tamara Coley, Becky R. Gibbons, Gary Herman, Mandy Pitts-Hildebrand, Brice Melton, Ralph Prestwood, Lilly Skok Bunch, Angie Story, John Teeter, and Jamie Treadaway.

The Catawba Valley Community Foundation, through the NCCF, makes it easy to become a philanthropist, whatever your means or charitable goals. You can open an endowment for your favorite cause at any time  or contribute to an existing fund in any amount. Tax-deductible contributions, made payable to the Catawba Valley Community Foundation, can be mailed to the North Carolina Community Foundation, 3737 Glenwood Ave. Suite 460, Raleigh, NC 27612. Contributions can also be made online at nccommunityfoundation.org.

The North Carolina Community Foundation is the single statewide community foundation serving North Carolina and has administered more than $217 million in grants since its inception in 1988. With more than $400 million in assets, NCCF sustains more than 1,200 endowments established to provide long-term support of a broad range of community needs, nonprofit organizations, institutions and scholarships. The NCCF partners with a network of affiliate foundations to provide local resource allocation and community assistance across the state. An important component of NCCFs mission is to ensure that rural philanthropy has a voice at local, regional and national levels.
Catawba County Public Health is encouraging parents to get children vaccinated.

Doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are available for children 5 to 11 years old in Catawba County, according to a news release from public health. The doses are a third of the amount given to people over 12. The vaccine was approved for the younger age group by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after being tested and evaluated by advisory groups.

The vaccine is available for anyone over 5 from Catawba County Public Health, pediatricians and retail pharmacies in Catawba County, public health said.

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The vaccine is important for young children because the original COVID-19 strain can still get children sick, public health said. The delta variant infected younger children at a higher rate.

During the peak last winter, Catawba County had 144 cases among children in a 10-day period. During the delta surge there were 222 cases in a 10-day period, public health said.
Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, meanwhile, flooded the airwaves with ads portraying Youngkin as a Trump acolyte, reminding Republicans that he was one of them.

Thank you, Terry McAuliffe, for spending the money to help me get out our vote in massive numbers, Fredericks said. He got our vote out. We didn't have to."

Beyond Trump, Youngkin tapped into an issue set that appealed both to rural voters in deeply Republican swaths of southwestern Virginia as well as those in the suburbs who agreed with Trump on the economy and other kitchen table issues but were turned off by his tone. He presented himself in chipper campaign ads as a genial, suburban dad in a sweater vest who could appeal to parents.

In particular, he seized on frustrations of parents, many of whom grew incensed over their childrens schools refusal to resume in-person classes during the pandemic, and subsequent mask mandates and attendance policies.

But as he promised to increase teacher pay and school budgets, Youngkin also didnt shy away from the culture war issues that Trump heralded in an effort to portray Democrats as out of the mainstream.
Senator Ted Cruz must have slept through his ethics classes at Harvard Law or been permanently warped by the treatment he received from Trump in the 2016 primary when Trump made negative comments about his wife and insinuations that his father was somehow linked to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Maybe the recent tweet printed in the Hickory Daily Record is reflective of who he has always been. To refresh your memory the tweet said: The Biden DOJ has embraced Critical Race Theory. AG Garlands son-in-law makes big money from a company involved in teaching CRT. So I asked if he sought an ethics opinion. He refused to answer my question. Apparently ethics arent a high priority in the Biden admin.

Cruz took something he probably heard on Fox who took something they picked up from some right-wing blog and ran with it without fact checking.

Attorney General Garlands son-in-law does have ownership in a company that sells educational support products to schools, but CRT is not on the list of products and services. The company is Panorama Education based in Boston if you desire to check for yourself.

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At local time October 24th in Kenya, through this ZhuzhouNanshaMombasa train route, eighty six containers of food that will be used to alleviate hunger in Africa had arrived in Mombasa. Since in September 15th this route was first in service, three loads of shipment has been carried to Nansha Port Guangzhou. As more foreign trades are happening between Hunan and African countries, more diverse goods, such as tea, auto parts, chemicals and so on, are included in the shipping list.

Zhuzhou is the initial loading station of this route, and Hengyang is the second one. This route goes through Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Goods loaded in Hunan are directly carried to Nansha Port without any extra stops, and they will be shipped to Africa from Nansha Port afterward. Now through this arrangement, the delivery time has been lessened ten days.

In September 15th, the opening ceremony of this ZhuzhouNanshaMombasa train route.

Goods are first carried to Nansha Port Guangzhou by train and will be shipped by ocean-going vessels.

On Nansha Port, goods are carried by Cosco Yingkou ocean-going vessel.

Cosco Yingkou ocean-going vessel is now on the sea.

After a half of month, goods has safely arrived Mombasa Port Kenya.

Goods are unloading from the vessel.
The flood of Western tech companies exiting China has continued, as Yahoo, LinkedIn and Epic Games joined the chorus of companies citing challenging operating conditions as they scale back or stop operating in the country altogether.

From 1 November, users were informed that Yahoos suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China due to an increasingly challenging business and legal environment that had driven the shutdown of Yahoos remaining weather, news and finance services, as well as Yahoo-owned media properties like AOL and TechCrunch.

Yahoo had already all but pulled out of China, having long ago shut down its Chinese email, web and music services as well as closing its Beijing R&D centre in 2015.

The move came just days after Microsoft announced that it would sunset its current Chinese LinkedIn app and limit its local presence to a soon-to-be-launched jobs app called InJobs that lacks a social feed and the ability to share posts or articles.

Such self-publishing features have recently come under the increasing scrutiny of Chinese authorities that see Western platforms social media functionality as a threat to state censorship and control.

We recognise that operating a localised version of LinkedIn in China would mean adherence to requirements of the Chinese government on Internet platforms, Microsoft wrote in explaining its decision to change strategies after seven years of operating LinkedIn in China.

While we strongly support freedom of expression, we took this approach in order to create value for our members in China and around the world. Were facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.

Coming after previous government crackdowns on Facebook, Twitter, and Google, the latest departures leave Chinas 926.8 million-strong social media market to domestic tech giants like Baidu, WeChat, and Weibo  which are accustomed to operating within the legislation and, unlike Western rivals, face no operational or ideological conflicts with international mores.

Even video-game giant Epic Games has dialled back its Chinese operations, announcing this week that it will shut down Fortress Night, the Chinese version of its popular Fortnite game, in the wake of a government crackdown that included limiting children to 3 hours of gaming per week.

People who need PIPL

For Western tech giants, the straw that broke the camels back was the 1 November implementation of Chinas new Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL)  a far-reaching new law that imposes a range of obligations on companies utilising sensitive personal information, defined as personal information whose leakage or illegal use could infringe the dignity of a natural person or cause harm to personal safety and property security.

Borrowing heavily from the European Unions general data protection regulation (GDPR) yet still significantly different, Chinas PIPL is based around principles of lawfulness, legitimacy, necessity, and good faith; clear and reasonable purposes for processing personal information; and transparency, accuracy, and security obligations around companies use of personal data.

PIPL also requires personal information processing entities (PIPEs) to adhere to a raft of guidelines including forcing processors of personal information to store their data in Chinese data centres; puts the burden of proof on tech companies accused of breaching personal information protections; and creates new pathways for civil liability and class actions by consumer groups and government authorities.

PIPL extends its control to the foreign activities of companies providing services intended to facilitate the conducting of business in China or the evaluating the behaviour of Chinese individuals.

Penalties of up to 5 per cent of annual revenues may be applied in grave violations of PIPLs requirements, with personal liability provided for those responsible.

It is important for companies and financial buyers that process personal information in multiple jurisdictions to re-examine their data privacy policies and practices, law firm White & Case advises, with a view to harmonising the procedures for different regulatory authorities requirements.
Kirk Douglas, in his late 30s at the time of the alleged assault, was known for such films as "Spartacus," "The Bad and the Beautiful" and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral." He also was one of the first major actors to form his own production company and a prominent liberal activist who has been widely credited with helping to break the Cold War blacklist against suspected Communists when he hired Dalton Trumbo to write "Spartacus" and listed him by name for the 1960 release. Douglas and his second wife, Anne, donated millions of dollars through the Douglas Foundation they co-founded in 1964 with a mission to "helping those who might not otherwise be able to help themselves."

Douglas received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981 and the Legion of Honor from France in 1985. He was given an honorary Oscar in 1996, when the film academy praised him as "a creative and moral force."

Douglas himself acknowledged that he was a womanizer and an unfaithful husband. Speaking to The Associated Press about Douglas in December 2016, less than a year before the #MeToo movement caught on, the actress and dancer Neile Adams lightheartedly said of her friend, "You could not sit beside him without his hand crawling up your leg."
"Personally, the things that get me excited are being able to see that influence. Test scores are great, but they are not what we are here for. I am not going to see a kid in 20 years and say, 'Remember when you had a really good grade on that state test?' It is not going to happen," said Principal of the year Dr. Adam Auerbach.
Biden looked at the results and suggested no reset was necessary for his White House.

He spoke with certitude of the many factors grinding on Americans  the lingering pandemic, rising costs at the gas pump, uncertainty about the economy  as problems that would go away if he could just get his agenda passed.

If Im able to pass, sign into law my Build Back Better initiative, Im in a position where youre going to see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly, the president said.

While not exactly congruous, the moment harks back to 2010 when Democrats took what President Barack Obama called a shellacking in the midterm election. The party lost 63 seats in the House, while Republicans also netted six gubernatorial seats and flipped control of 20 state legislative chambers.

At the time, the economy was improving after the Great Recession. But for many Americans, it was not fast enough even though the Obama administration had pushed through more than $800 billion in stimulus. Obama had also managed to get his signature health care legislation passed into law.
RALEIGH  State lawmakers voted unanimously Wednesday to block an automatic tax increase on employers. Senate Bill 311 would maintain the state's current tax for funding unemployment insurance.

A 45-0 vote in the state Senate came 90 minutes after the House approved the measure, 110-0. The unemployment insurance provision was added to another bill already in negotiation between the two legislative chambers.

Legislative rules will require a final vote on a separate day. Final votes could take place Thursday.

"North Carolina is the best place in the country to start a business because of low-tax, low-spending Republican policies," said Sen. Kevin Corbin, R-Macon, in a news release. "This bill to maintain the current low unemployment insurance tax rate is yet another example of the pro-business, pro-economy Republican philosophy."

S.B. 311 freezes the 1.9% employer base contribution rate to the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund for 2022. Without legislative action, that rate would rise automatically.

"(T)he tax on employers would have jumped because of an automatic formula that triggers tax rate changes based on the balance in the unemployment insurance reserve," according to Corbin's release.
Health care is a number one priority, especially during this pandemic. Yet 12% of Rowan County residents, and 11% across the state, do not have health insurance. This could be remedied by North Carolina participating in Medicaid Expansion, provided through the Affordable Care Act. This would cost North Carolina nothing for the first 2 years, and only 10% after that. Hospitals want this program, which would especially in underserved rural areas.

The draft budget proposals the General Assembly and Governor are negotiating do not include Medicaid Expansion. Why should North Carolina refuse this Federal-funded opportunity to provide health care to 600,000 North Carolinians, including many essential workers?

The General Assembly says they cant afford to give our communities what we need to thrive  expansion of health care, fully funded public education, affordable housing and increases in unemployment compensation. Yet they propose eliminating corporate taxes. Meanwhile, there is $8.6 billion dollars just sitting in the bank, undesignated -- our money, our tax dollars. This money should be used to meet the dire needs of our residents, not give more tax breaks to wealthy corporations who come here to avoid paying a livable wage to their workers.
That included sales from its European Innerwear business that Hanesbrands put up for sale in February, as well as exiting the C9 Champion mass retail program and the DKNY intimate apparel license.

The average earnings forecast was 47 cents by five analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research. Analysts typically do not include one-time gains and charges in their forecasts.

Hanesbrands opened the curtain in May on Full Potential, which is focused on its core strengths: its globally recognized basic apparel brands; domestic, Central and Latin America and Asian supply chain; deep consumer loyalty; broad channel distribution; and global footprint.

The manufacturer projects generating an additional $1.2 billion in revenue by fiscal 2025. That would put Hanesbrands at $7.4 billion in annual revenue, up from $6.2 billion projected for fiscal 2021.

Another part of Full Potential is divestiture efforts that include putting its European Innerwear business up for sale in February, as well as exiting the C9 Champion mass retail program and the DKNY intimate apparel license.

Hanesbrands said Thursday that it has reached an agreement to sell the European Innerwear business to an affiliate of Regent LP for just one Euro, or $1.16. The deal is projected to close in the first quarter.
Family gatherings, particularly with older relatives, were additional motivation for getting Mela her first dose, according to her mom.

It makes us feel a lot more comfortable gathering with some of our older relatives that we havent seen for a really long time, Jessica Palakshappa said. We dont want to expose them to unnecessary risk.

Knowing she is going to be protected is a huge relief. Its going to be a good holiday season.

Although Mela was too shy to speak, her parents said she has been encouraging her friends to get vaccinated when they have the chance so they can learn and play without having to wear a mask.

We know that many families have been looking forward to this day for a long time, said Alisa Starbuck, president of Brenner Childrens Hospital.

We are so pleased to be the first to offer the vaccine to children, both locally and throughout our region, bringing us another step closer to ending this pandemic.

Vaccination scheduling

Baptist, along with Novant Health Inc. and Forsyth Department of Public Health, have set their initial plans for vaccination appointments for the age group.
Using low-income housing tax credits from the North Carolina Finance Agency, $126 million in new development is expected over five phases of work stretching forward over six years.

Relocation plans

A key part of the plan is the ability to relocate some Cleveland Avenue Homes residents into the new housing on the Brown School site, so that they dont have to move multiple times.

Even so, some 35 apartments in Cleveland Avenue Homes will have to be vacated before the first phase of the new housing on the Brown site is finished, Cheshire said, because of the timetable for beginning the demolition at Cleveland Avenue Homes.

Meanwhile, HAWS held community meetings with residents in the neighborhood around the old school so that the change in plans could be explained.

One woman, who asked that her name not be used, said she was among residents who were in opposition when she found out that senior housing was no longer planned for the site.

I went to the meetings and got first-hand information about the guidelines they will follow, and if they keep to that I think it will be fine, the woman said. It will bring the neighborhood up.
Professor Michael Bitzer no doubt had better things to do with his time than take a phone call from someone asking questions with obvious answers.

Yet within 30 minutes of finishing teaching class for the day recently  and with a stack of papers and quizzes to grade staring back at him  the veteran political scientist at Catawba College picked up his cellphone and was more than generous with his time.

Why?

Because the topic, as wonky as it sounds (and is)  the once per decade redrawing of district maps for Congress and the state House and Senatematters.

The balance of power in Washington in next years midterms may well be decided by the result. Closer to home, in Raleigh, the honorables drawing maps today likely will be the same ones determining, among other things, tax rates, whether to expand Medicaid, legalizing weed and naming an official state indoor plant. The last two arent necessarily connected.

Maps matter. Bitzer knows it, studies the issue and then spends a good chunk of time trying to educate others about it. Besides, grading undergraduate papers can be ... tedious.
Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russian who'd specialized in Russian and Eurasian matters as an analyst at Brookings Institution, was a significant source for Steele as Steele compiled his dossier of research. That dossier, the target of intense derision from Trump, was ultimately provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

According to the indictment, Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI about his sources of information. Prosecutors say that deception mattered because the FBI devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate" the dossier's allegations and had relied in large part on that research in obtaining the surveillance warrants.

A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.

The indictment says Danchenko misled the FBI by denying that he had discussed any allegations in the dossier with a contact of his who was a public relations executive and longtime Democratic operative who volunteered for the campaign of Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent.
Two places, two men, two different stories as seen by two relatives. But strip away the ideologies, says John Horgan, a researcher of violent extremism, and look at the psychological processes, the roots, the experiences.

All of those things, Horgan says, tend to look far more similar than they are different.

THE AMERICAN

America met Doug Jensen, 42, via a widely circulated video that exposed the mob mentality inside the Capitol. Jensen's the man in a dark cap and black Trust the Plan" shirt, leading a crowd chasing a Capitol Police officer up the stairs.

William Routh of Clarksville, Arkansas, had an unsettled feeling even before the riot. I said, if you go down there and you're going to do a peaceful thing, then that's fine. But I said keep your head down and dont be doing something stupid.

In interviews with the AP days and months after his younger brothers arrest, Routh painted Jensen, a Des Moines father of three whod worked as a union mason laborer, as a man who enjoyed the trappings of a conventional American existence.

This was a shock to me more than anything, because I would not have thought this from my brother Doug, because he's a very good, hardworking family man and he has good values.
Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules that took effect Thursday.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said companies that fail to comply could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The new requirements, which were first previewed by President Joe Biden in September, will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing and will need to be vaccinated.

It was unclear how OSHA planned to enforce the rules. A senior administration official said the agency would target companies if it gets complaints.

Read the full story plus key takeaways here:

***

IN OTHER CORONAVIRUS NEWS:

***

Associated Press Writer Stacey Plaisance-Jenkins in Picayune, Mississippi, contributed to this report.
I do not believe that just anything should be published or taught in a classroom and we do need to understand proper borders  but in referring to people as filth or using language of Nazi Germany to refer to U.S. officials, Robinson delegitimizes his own role and position. He removes the chance to have a meaningful discussion about proper approaches that can allow for him to do the very things I have heard him say he wants, which is to create a safe and secure environment for all who live in our state.

I am not a policymaker but I am a person who cares about how we refer to one another, especially the elected and appointed officials of our state and federal governments. When leaders use such language, it only gives license to the rest of the population to speak in cruel and hate-filled ways. It is from those kinds of words that marginalized and othered communities are sought after for attack. I, as a Jew and as someone with members of the LGBTQ community in my family and community, am forever on guard and watching to protect myself and my loved ones.

In the Book of Genesis, we read very clearly that God has created humanity in the Divine Image, inspiring us to recognize all of humanity as a part of the Creation and deserving of our support and love, not hatred or insult.
That means it would likely be early next year before any tracks can apply for licenses.

All six existing horse tracks in the state, including the Lincoln Race Course, have announced plans to build casinos. There also have been proposals announced for new tracks in Bellevue, Gering, Kimball, Norfolk, North Platte and York, all of which are likely to seek casino licenses as well.

A $220 million WarHorse Casino is planned in Lincoln. The proposal includes more than 1,200 gaming stations, a 196-room hotel, event space, five or six restaurants and other amenities such as a spa. Construction of that is likely to take 18-24 months, and the Lincoln Race Course plans to open a temporary casino with 305 slot machine stations once it obtains a license.

It's not clear whether the proposed regulations would favor existing tracks or take geography into account when deciding whether to grant licenses.

Also on Wednesday, the commission approved dates for live horse racing at the state's existing tracks next year.
So now, in Lincoln, anyone in possession of a loose catalytic converter had better have a permit.

Residents can submit applications for a permit  which costs $5 and is good for a year  online, though they have to provide a photo ID and their fingerprint at LPD headquarters before one will be issued, Jackson said.

Additionally, the ordinance requires local scrapyards and other legitimate catalytic converter buyers to report each purchase directly to the police department, identifying what the make of car the part belongs to.

The ordinance comes with certain limitations, too, preventing anyone who has previously been convicted of a number of theft-related crimes from obtaining a permit, Jackson said.

"Once you possess that permit, you're lawfully able to possess an uninstalled catalytic converter," Jackson said. "You can sell it, you can frame it  you can do whatever you would like with your catalytic converter."
A Lincoln woman who in February was caught on Interstate 80 with nearly 3 pounds of meth was sentenced Wednesday on two federal drug charges that netted her more than eight years in prison.

Kelly Jablonski, 42, was convicted of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine mixture and will serve eight years and one month in prison, U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard ruled.

Upon her release, Jablonski will spend three years on supervised release, according to the Department of Justice. There is no parole in the federal system.

Jablonski was caught with 2.8 pounds of meth after a multi-month investigation of her suspected narcotics dealing, according to a Department of Justice news release.

A confidential informant working with the Lincoln Police Department bought 58 grams of meth from Jablonski through a third person in January, according to the news release.
Right now, we are held to what the requirements are, he said, adding the college planned to bring amended language to the board to address the concerns raised by opponents.

Thursday evening, the state college system issued new policy language that identifies gender identity discrimination as involving "unfavorable treatment because of a person's gender identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics."

The Nebraska Family Alliance and the Nebraska Catholic Conference also said they oppose policy language allowing employees to designate the name and gender identity they go by in certain state college information and communication systems.

The proposed policy says an employees chosen name and gender identity can and should be used whenever possible in the workplace, but isnt absolute nor is it mandatory.

Employees are still required to provide their full legal name when they apply for a job or benefits and may be required to use their biological sex at birth in certain information systems.

Turman said the policy change for employees follows the approval of an identical policy for students adopted by the Board of Trustees in July.
Sen. John Stinner of Gering, chairman of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee, pointed Wednesday to water resource and tourism development, workforce initiatives and rural broadband development as potential beneficiaries of federal pandemic recovery funding that will be allocated by state government next year.

"I'm 100 percent behind mental health improved access and affordability," Stinner said during a webinar question-and-answer session hosted by OpenSky Policy Institute.

Stinner said the University of Nebraska has offered "some proposals that have merit" for funding with the flow of federal stimulus dollars into state government as well as proposed initiatives promoted by community colleges.

State government will receive more than $1 billion in federal recovery funding for distribution by the Legislature.

Stinner said the Legislature will need to be careful to meet federal criteria associated with infusion of those federal dollars.

"It needs to be a one-time spend," he noted during a conversation with Renee Fry, executive director of OpenSky.

A proposed new state prison to replace the aging State Penitentiary in Lincoln was also part of the discussion.
Often newcomers just need a little guidance to find the right job. By providing job search assistance, ESL classes and more flexible licensing arrangements, the U.S. can greatly increase the number of immigrants able to work in their professional fields. This is especially important given the 65,000 Afghan refugees the United States began to welcome this summer. Many of them trained with the American military or have degrees that will benefit local job markets. But more likely, theyll end up in low-wage survival jobs. Why would we want to waste their talents?

Eventually, through resourcefulness and luck, I found work that used my skills and education. After volunteering to translate for my friends at their doctor appointments, I was hired as a medical interpreter. I returned to school, essentially having to start over, as my bachelors was not equivalent to a U.S. degree. It took several years but in 2017, I graduated from University of Nebraska at Omaha with a masters in ESL teaching.

Today, I work as an interpreter at the local company LanguageLinc, teaching ESL online through Southeast Community College, and Im a doctoral student of education at Doane University, all while raising four boys, ages 5 to 17. To give back to my community, I advise immigrant women who have similar stories to mine. I want them to feel confident in their educational journeys and have the support I never did.

By allowing newcomers to thrive in America, we all benefit. Our communities need skilled workers right now, and every immigrant I know wants to help. But they must be allowed to put their talents to work.

Maysoon Shaheen is an interpreter at LanguageLinc in Lincoln and a doctoral student of education at Doane University. She is a mom to four boys.

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Who knows, maybe the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department will surprise us by lifting the mask ban when it expires right before the Thanksgiving turkey gets carved.

Until then, though, people will go about their business as they have for what will soon be the last two calendar years. They'll shop with their mouths and noses covered, they'll walk into restaurants and bars with masks on and quickly discard them when they sit down.

That's where this mandate takes on a hard-to-follow direction. Why is it that restaurant and bar patrons, fully masked as they enter an establishment, are allowed to take off their masks once they're seated?

It's that way in office setting, too, where workers are not required to wear masks at their desks, but are required to mask up again when walking around the office.

The questions we broach are not new. The only sensible answer is that doing whatever it takes to keep the population safe should be the primary objective for those making the decisions on the mandate.

We've trusted them from the start on this topic, and they've yet to steer us wrong. That said, we'll continue to practice patience and optimistically believe that there is an end to this -- sometime soon.
YORKVILLE  The $199 million county budget passed by a unanimous 18-0 vote at the County Board meeting on Tuesday night.

The countys 2022 budget includes financial planning for American Rescue Plan Act funds, essential workers, simulation software, youth summer jobs, and parks and roads.

The budget was first proposed to the County Board last month by County Executive Jonathan Delagrave. The amendments to the budget approved Tuesday included two changes.

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The first was an adjustment to the amount of workers compensation that was originally set for the Racine County Sheriffs Office; the money was shifted to reserves. The other was a correction in the public health department budget; revenue was noted as coming from the tax levy when its actually coming from the human resources budget.

Theres no impact on the levy, said District 11 Supervisor Robert Miller.

Im proud to say this has been the most transparent and inclusive budget process in the history of Racine County, Delagrave said. The residents of Racine County should be extremely proud  this county values public service over politics.

We are collaborative, not divisive, Delagrave said in a statement to The Journal Times.

Budget details

The county government was awarded more than $38 million from the American Rescue Plan Act.

These dollars will help the county overcome the budget gaps caused by the pandemic and invest in the long-term health of citizens while tackling issues caused by COVID-19, Delagrave said during his budget address Oct. 5.

The county made a nearly $2.75 million investment in essential workers  correctional officers, 911 dispatchers, health and behavioral services staff and others.

There were the always challenging numbers, such as paying our dedicated staff for the excellent work they do every day, balanced by the need to keep taxes reasonable for our citizens and businesses, Miller said at the meeting. We are fortunate in Racine County because our review of the budget shows a solid, responsible proposal to meet the needs of the people in a responsible way.

County of Racine Essential Workers is an initiative that pairs mental health professionals with law enforcement to better serve the community and respond to individuals in crisis. CREW will help guide residents to the appropriate services they need, Delagrave said last month.

The county experienced ongoing staffing shortages, especially among correctional staffers. However, this budget is not leaving a structural deficit. This budget puts $1.7 million back into the structural deficit.

The Sheriffs Office and jail will be awarded the tools needed to serve the community. Funds were allocated for simulation software that will better prepare law enforcement officers, and provide necessary vehicle and equipment upgrades.

Racine Countys new Youth Development and Care Center will receive $40 million in state funding and $750,000 in additional youth aids each year.

The county was recently awarded a Youth Justice Innovation grant to help reduce referrals to the youth justice system. This grant will help the Human Services Department improve interventions by providing training, support protocols and diversion tools to school programs among community stakeholders.

The countys Youth Summer Jobs program will expand with an investment of $200,000 annually for four years.

The Central Racine County Health Department will additionally integrate its public-health services underneath Racine Countys umbrella.

A recent Community Health Improvement Plan has outlined several areas of importance for the Health Department, and the county budgeted for the addition of two new public health nurses to improve staffing levels and assist in reaching these goals.

This budget also invests in staff tasked with managing county parks through the addition of six new park technician positions.

The county committed $8.1 million in this years budget for the advancement of new highway projects, additional vehicles, staff and equipment.

Projects include repaving Highway P in Burlington, Highway K in the Town of Norway and reinforcing the breakwater along Lake Michigan.

This $199,244,351  excellent job done, everyone, said District 6 Supervisor Q.A. Shakoor II. Well done, well done, in particular our leader, County Executive Delagrave.

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BURLINGTON  A man wanted in the fatal stabbing of his mother in northern Wisconsin has been captured here, police said Thursday.

Police in the City of Antigo in Langlade County had been searching for Derek Goplin, 38, since his mother was found dead Monday morning.

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According to the Burlington Police Department, Goplin was taken into custody after police learned that he was in the city at 7:14 p.m. Wednesday. He was arrested near the Aurora Medical Center Burlington, 252 McHenry St.

Officers located Derek, established his identity, and confirmed he had a warrant for his arrest, Burlington Police Sgt. Robert Jones said in a release.

Police did not specify the exact location where Goplin was taken into custody, saying only that he had been dropped off in the area of the medical center.

The Waterford Police Department reported that Waterford officers responded to a call about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday that led them to the Tichigan Boat Launch on Bridge Drive in the Town of Waterford.

A caller had told Racine County dispatchers that he was transporting an unknown subject to Aurora Medical Center Burlington and that the subjects vehicle would be left at the boat launch.

When officers arrived on the scene, they recognized the red vehicle as the vehicle associated with Antigos homicide suspect.

Waterford Police Sgt. William Jeschke stated that Goplin was taken into custody after being released from the medical center in Burlington.

This is another great example of law enforcement throughout the state cooperating with each other and the community, to bring a violent criminal to justice, Jeschke said.

Antigo police had alerted law enforcement agencies statewide that Goplin was being sought in connection with the homicide case. Court records show that he has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide.

Goplin was being held Thursday in the Racine County Jail pending his return to Langlade County.

Police in Antigo say that Goplins mother, Susan Reese, 63, was found stabbed to death about 9:20 a.m. Monday at a residence in Antigo.

Starting Monday, police broadcast that Goplin was wanted, and they also announced the type of vehicle he was believed to have been driving, along with a license plate number.

Antigo Police Capt. Dan Duley said his department received assistance from Burlington and elsewhere in getting Goplin into police custody.

Everybodys been a wonderful help, Duley said. Its a big relief for our department and the whole community.

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KENOSHA  The actions of a husband and wife moments prior to and immediately after the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings are at the center of the ongoing trial.

Kelly and Joshua Ziminski, whose address is listed in Caledonia, were in Kenosha the night of Aug. 25, 2020, the third night of protests and rioting after Jacob Blake was shot by a Kenosha police officer.

According to testimony, court documents and video, Joshua Ziminski fired a handgun into the air from about 100 feet away (and thus well within earshot) from where Joseph Rosenbaum was running at Rittenhouse.

According to court documents, Joshua Ziminski told police he had fired a warning shot. By the time he was interviewed by police in October 2020, Ziminski said the gun had been stolen, documents show.

About 3 seconds after the warning shot, Rittenhouse fatally shot Rosenbaum four times.

There remains dispute about Rosenbaums actions in his final moments. The defense argues that Rosenbaum lunged at Rittenhouse and tried to take the teenagers AR-15; the prosecution has been arguing that Rosenbaum, unarmed but clearly enraged, did not pose a threat to the heavily armed Rittenhouse.

The Ziminskis had been seen with Rosenbaum several times that night, but its unclear how well they knew each other, including in Rosenbaums final minutes.

The shot fired by Joshua Ziminski, the defense is arguing, would have made Rittenhouse feel more like he was under attack, advancing the defenses claims that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

After Rosenbaum was shot and bystanders ran to render aid, Rittenhouse fled on foot. He called a friend  telling him I shot somebody! I shot somebody! and then hanging up, according to testimony  and ran north on Sheridan Road toward police.

As he ran, Kelly Ziminski was taking video. In video played in court Tuesday, a woman identified as Kelly Ziminski can be heard screaming He (expletive) shot him. He (expletive) shot him. He (expletive) shot him  Get his (expeletive).

Later, someone identified as Joshua Ziminski is heard saying: That dude shot him. That (expletive) just shot that dude. Crazy on that boy, he just shot a man.

She and others identified Rittenhouse as the one who shot Rosenbaum, egging on a crowd to give chase.

Cranium that boy! one person can be heard yelling.

Some ran after Rittenhouse and caught up quickly.

The first to reach Rittenhouse, according to video, is someone identified in court as Jump Kick Man  since his identity remains unknown to authorities  who leaped into the air and kicked the teenager, forcing him to the ground.

Following that, 26-year-old Anthony Huber of Silver Lake, Illinois, swung his skateboard at Rittenhouse and then was shot, dying almost immediately. Gaige Grosskreutz, who described himself a medic and was armed with a handgun, was then shot in the arm; video from the moments before Huber was killed includes someone identified as Grosskreutz yelling Hey, stop him, while chasing Rittenhouse.

For their actions that night, the Ziminskis were criminally charged.

Jury selection for Joshua Ziminiski is scheduled for Jan. 31. He has been charged with felony arson of property other than a building (for setting the contents of a dumpster on fire), misdemeanor disorderly conduct with use of a dangerous weapon and obstructing an officer.

Rittenhouses lead defense attorney, Racines Mark Richards, described Rosenbaum as a friend or associate of Joshua Ziminski, in opening statements Tuesday. Richards said Rosenbaum and the Ziminskis started the dumpster fire together.

Joshua Ziminski plays a central role in this scenario on Aug. 25, Richards said. One, creating chaos and havoc with Mr. Rosenbaum, and two, more importantly, when we finally get to Car Source ... Mr. Ziminski is the individual who fires the first shot that evening, behind Kyle Rittenhouse as hes being chased by Mr. Rosenbaum.

Kelly Ziminski had been charged with multiple misdemeanors, including for having thrown lighter fluid on the dumpster fire, but those charges have since been dropped and details of the case are no longer publicly available via online court records.

Reached by email for comment, attorney Michael Robert Barth said regarding Joshua Ziminskis case and actions: Im sorry, but I cant comment on those issues at this point or can I provide any contact information for Mr. Ziminski at this time.

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On Wednesday, with a Kenosha Police detective on the stand, prosecutors played more than a dozen videos that showed the shootings and their aftermath for a jury. The sounds of panicked people at the scene rang out in the courtroom as the videos played on two large monitors for the jury, with two more on the prosecution and defense tables.

Rittenhouse, 18, watched as well from his seat at the defense table, sometimes looking down at the desk.

Rittenhouse, 17 at the time of the shootings, shot three men the night of Aug. 25, 2020, during rioting and civil unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha Police officer on Aug. 23, killing Anthony Huber of Silver Lake and Joseph Rosenbaum of Kenosha and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz of West Allis.

Rittenhouse faces two homicide counts and one count of attempted homicide, along with charges of reckless endangering safety and illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18, but hes pleaded not guilty. Rittenhouse and his attorneys claim he acted in self defense in a trial thats become a political lightning rod around the country.

Oh (expletive), oh (expletive), people are getting shot all around us, people are getting shot, you guys, one of the people filming shouted as gunfire rang on on the screen at Kenosha County Courthouse on Wednesday.

Detective Martin Howard testified that he and fellow detective Ben Antaramian were assigned to investigate the shootings at about 12:30 a.m., about a half-hour after the shooting occurred on Aug. 25, 2020. Howard testified that he began looking for video and found it on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, taken by journalists and people on the scene before, during and after the shootings.

Howard said the detectives also received information about an hour later that Rittenhouse had turned himself in to the Antioch Police Station.

Video evidence has become more and more common in criminal trials because of both social media and the increasing use of business and home security cameras. Because of the high number of journalists and live streamers on the street during the unrest in Kenosha following the shooting of Blake, there are dozens of videos of the hours before the shootings by Rittenhouse, including interviews with Rittenhouse just hours before the shootings.

There is also video of an agitated Rosenbaum arguing with armed men at a car lot, video of Rittenhouse running toward the Car Source lot on Sheridan Road and 63rd Street where the shooting occurred and video of the shootings that followed.

Scene plays in court

In court Wednesday, jurors watched intently as panicked bystanders were shown on video attempting to treat Rosenbaums wounds after he was shot, carrying him to an SUV to bring him to a hospital. Another video showed people trying to tie a tourniquet around Grosskreutzs arm.

Howard testified that Rittenhouse fired his AR-15 eight times that night, saying his first four shots all hit Rosenbaum, those shots fired 1.5 seconds after another man, Joshua Ziminski, fired a gunshot into the air nearby.

Howard said Rittenhouse fired his fifth and sixth shots at a man who jumped at him, apparently trying to kick him, after Rittenhouse had fallen to the ground while running away from the scene of the Rosenbaum shooting. Rittenhouse them fired his seventh shot at Huber, striking him in the chest and killing him, after Huber hit him with a skateboard and attempted to grab his gun.

The eighth shot hit Grosskreutz in the arm.

Rittenhouse has maintained since the shootings that he was acting in self defense. His attorneys have argued at trial that Rosenbaum was attacking him and trying to steal Rittenhouses gun, and that when Rittenhouse shot the other men, he was protecting himself from a mob.

In his cross examination of Howard, defense attorney Mark Richards asked the detective about one of the videos showing the moments before the Rosenbaum shooting. In the video, someone can be heard yelling, Friendly, friendly, friendly, which Richards said is Rittenhouse.

Howard said the video shows Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse.

It appears Mr. Rosenbaum is gradually gaining ground on Mr. Rittenhouse, Howard said.

Richards said Rittenhouse turns around and shows his AR-15.

That didnt dissuade Mr. Rosenbaum, he continued to attack my client, correct? Richards asks.

Correct, Howard said.

Rittenhouses defense must convince the jury that Rittenhouse reasonably believed that he was in danger of death or great bodily harm at the time he shot the three men. Rosenbaum and Huber were unarmed, although Richards has characterized the skateboard Huber struck Rittenhouse with as a weapon.

Howard said during his questioning by the prosecution that he checked Rittenhouse for injuries when he spoke to him at the Antioch Police Department. He said he had small scratches, a small cut inside his lip and two dime-sized bumps on his head.

During the trial Wednesday, as attorneys argued over evidence being admitted when jurors were out of the room, Judge Bruce Schroeder spoke about the impact of the case, which has become highly politicized outside the courtroom.

It is important for this town, it is important for this country, that people have confidence in the outcome of this trial, no matter what it is, Schroeder said.

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RACINE COUNTY  Sheriff Christopher Schmaling is recommending five members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, three appointed by Democrats and two by Republicans, be criminally charged for having waived the law requiring the use of Special Voting Deputies during elections in 2020, he announced in a Wednesday afternoon news release.

Schmaling, a Republican, criticized Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, in the news release for not having launched a statewide investigation following the Racine County Sheriffs Office Oct. 28 disclosure of allegations of election fraud having occurred at Mount Pleasants Ridgewood Care Center after SVDs were not sent in.

Ridgewood staff collected the residents votes, which typically isnt allowed, but the WEC voted to make a statewide exception due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based upon the failure of Attorney General Josh Kaul to initiate a statewide investigation, I have forwarded charging recommendations to the Racine County District Attorneys Office for their review, states a release signed by Schmaling and Sgt. Michael Luell, who led the investigation into Ridgewood and also is the RCSOs public information officer. The recommended charges are for Commissioners Margaret Bostelmann, Julie Glancey, Ann Jacobs, Dean Knudson and Mark Thomsen.

Charges were not recommended against Commissioner Bob Spindell, a Republican appointee who repeatedly voted against waiving the SVD law after he initially voted in favor.

According to reporting from WISN-TV, the Sheriffs Officer said: Commissioner Spindell did vote to give the illegal advice on March 12, 2020. However, he voted against giving the illegal advice on June 24, 2020, September 25, 2020, and January 15, 2021. Therefore, the Sheriffs Office did not feel it was appropriate to referrer (sic) a charging recommendation on Commissioner Spindell.

Kaul fired back Wednesday afternoon, saying in a statement This disgraceful publicity stunt shows an appalling lack of judgment. This is a transparently political effort and an abuse of authority.

During the Oct. 28 news conference, Schmaling said repeatedly that he was not yet recommending charges, but that he might do so later. Schmaling also repeatedly said he was not trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and that his staff has no idea how the eight Ridgewood voters at the center of the investigation  whom the investigators allege did not have the mental capacity to vote  voted.

The WEC and other elections officials, including Dane County Elections Management Specialist Rachel Rodriguez and Wisconsin's former top elections official Kevin Kennedy, have asserted that the Racine County Sheriffs Offices conclusions are wrong and that no crimes were committed. They argued that, under Wisconsin law, SVDs are not always necessary to be sent into nursing homes to execute the vote. Under the law, SVDs must make two attempts to execute the vote at nursing homes, and after that those living at nursing homes  regardless of their mental status  can mail in their ballots.

As such, the WEC argued that the law was still followed since it was deemed not possible to both have SVDs go into nursing homes while also following health and safety protocols in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe was not mentioned in Wednesdays release as someone to be charged.

Riley Vetterkind, spokesman for the WEC, said in an email Wednesday afternoon that he did not have a comment at this time. He referred back to a statement signed by Bostelmann, Glancey, Jacobs, Knudson and Thomsen that argued the Sheriffs Offices conclusions were incorrect. Those commissioners have repeatedly asserted that their votes were done in public and that ignoring the SVD law was necessary to preserve the right to vote.

We knew that for the protection of residents, only essential workers  which did not include SVDs  were being allowed into facilities across the state, Glancey said in a statement. As such, we knew it was essential to preserve the right to vote for those residents, so rather than require the absurdity of sending SVDs to knock on a locked door, we pivoted to the absentee voting process.

The Journal Times has reached out to the District Attorneys Office and state Department of Justice, which is headed by Kaul, for comment.

The charges laid out by the Sheriffs Office would be:

Misconduct in public office (felony)

Election fraud as an election official assisting with violations (felony)

Party to the Crime of Election Fraud  Receive Ballot Non-Election Official (misdemeanor)

Party to the crime of election fraud-solicit assistance in violation of Wisconsin statute (misdemeanor)

The Racine County investigation of Ridgewood is not connected to the state probe ordered by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. However, Vos said he, as well as Racine County County Executive Jonathan Delagrave, were made aware of the local investigation in its early days. The Sheriffs Offices investigation lasted nearly a year, Luell said.

It is not uncommon for the RCSO to make public announcements when certain charges are referred to the District Attorneys Office.

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The latest on U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains government has claimed that the end of coal is in sight after 18 countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile committed for the first time to phase out and not build or invest in new coal power.

The statement, issued late Wednesday during the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, said more than 40 nations are committing to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, as well as rapidly scale up clean power generation. Participating nations also commit to phasing out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for smaller economies.

Separately, the statement also said that Chile and Singapore have joined a U.K.-led alliance on phasing out coal that includes over 150 countries and businesses such as HSBC and NatWest bank.

U.K. business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it was a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change.

But Ed Miliband, the opposition Labour Partys business spokesman, said there were glaring gaps such as a lack of commitment from China and other large emitters to stop increasing coal at home. There was also nothing on the phasing out of oil and gas, he said.



LOS ANGELES  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is on a trip to the U.N. climate conference in Scotland, tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, his office said.

He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated, the mayor's office said in a posting on Garcetti's official Twitter account.

The office did not immediately release any additional information.



GENEVA  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, nearly three dozen large corporations including Apple and Amazon, and the World Economic Forum are launching an alliance to build a market for technologies that generate low levels of carbon dioxide.

The First Movers Coalition announced on Wednesday aims to help companies set their purchasing plans in a way that will create new market demand for low-carbon technologies, the World Economic Forum said.

Technology has given us the tools to reduce our emissions and build a stronger and more inclusive economy of the future, forum President Borge Brende said. For innovators and investors to play their part in tackling the climate crisis, they need clear market demand.

Brende was on hand for the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow known as COP26. Among the other companies involved in the coalition are aerospace company Boeing, cement company Holcim, and vehicle makers Volvo and Scania.

The World Economic Forum, a think tank best known for hosting an annual gathering of elites in Davos, Switzerland, says businesses need to send clearer signals to their suppliers to reach the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050.

The first phase of the project will focus on emissions-heavy industries like aviation, shipping, steel and trucking. Operators of trucks, planes, cargo vessels and others would, among other things commit to using more sustainable fuels that have lower CO2 emissions.



MOSCOW -- The Kremlin has rejected U.S. President Joe Biden's criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for not attending the U.N. climate conference.

His tundra is burning  literally, the tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems, and he is mum on willingness to do anything, Biden said Tuesday of Putin and the wildfires that scorched Siberia this summer.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Moscow does not agree with Biden's characterization. He said the Russian delegation at COP26 actively participated in the summit.

Russias climate action dont have the goal of being pegged to an event, Peskov said. Of course, we are not belittling the significance of the event in Glasgow, but Russias actions are consistent, serious and well-thought-through.

The tundra indeed is burning, Peskov continued. But lets not forget that forests are burning in California, and in Turkey, and in other countries. These are the consequences of climate change were facing, and Russia, to some extent, is facing more serious challenges.

Moscow is taking a very responsible stance when it comes to tackling climate change, the Kremlin spokesman stressed, and has concrete work plans.

Most likely, all this was not reported to the president of the U.S. when he spoke about the non-participation of Russia, Peskov concluded.



GLASGOW, Scotland  U.S. special envoy for climate John Kerry said Wednesday that the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow have more energy and focus than previous rounds of climate negotiations in particular because of the strong presence and support of the private sector.

I think we are going to have the greatest increase in ambition weve ever had, we probably do in these first 36 hours, and the real issue is going to be follow-up, working with them, Kerry told a gathering of mayors from around the globe involved in climate initiatives at a local level.

His comments came as Britain called for the worlds financial industry to channel vast funds towards greener investments to ensure that global efforts to curb global warming succeed.



GLASGOW, Scotland  Britain has called for the worlds financial industry to channel its vast funds toward greener investments to ensure that efforts to curb global warming succeed.

Treasury chief Rishi Sunak said that the U.K. government is providing new funds to help poor countries cope with climate change. But he said that public investment alone isnt enough.

Sunak called for a historic wall of capital for the net zero transition around the world.

But poor countries are angry that after Britain and other wealthy countries failed to meet their commitment to provide $100 billion a year to finance climate-related projects in the developing world by 2020.



SHYAMNAGAR, Bangladesh  The impact of climate change from more frequent cyclones to tidal flooding is devastating Bangladesh where an estimated 30 million people in the country may be displaced from the coast.

Countries like Bangladesh, which contributes a fraction of the worlds emissions, are pressing for more financing support to cope with these problems at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.

A decade-old deal for rich countries to give poor nations $100 billion each year to switch to clean energy and adapt to climate change hasnt been fulfilled. And the little that has been given is spread too thin to make a difference on the ground.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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The final proposal for Wisconsins next political maps from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers redistricting commission would narrow, but still maintain, Republican legislative and congressional majorities in the state.

Evers said his Peoples Maps Commissions proposal for the next decades legislative boundaries, unveiled at the state Capitol Tuesday, stand in stark contrast to Republican-drawn maps that were revealed last month and will be voted on in committee Thursday.

The GOP proposal focused on a least change methodology to maintain the core of existing district boundaries, which have been regarded as some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation and have afforded Republicans strong majorities in both chambers for the last decade.

Wisconsinites wont stand for gerrymandering 2.0 and neither will I, so I want to be clear today if the Republican maps come to my desk as they are currently drafted I will veto them, Evers said. Its just as simple as that.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The mapmaking process can allow a party in power, even without statewide majority support, to create or increase a legislative majority based on how district lines are drawn. Republicans often have downplayed concerns about such a practice  known as gerrymandering, after an early 19th century political cartoon  saying the GOPs success is the result of strong candidates and Democrats being clustered in cities.

The GOP-led Legislature could take up a vote on Republican-drawn maps as early as next week. Evers said he may call lawmakers into a special session to take up the commissions proposed maps, but such efforts have been largely ignored by Republicans in the past.

With a GOP-backed lawsuit filed with the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court and a similar lawsuit brought by Democrats in federal court, its highly likely the states next 10-year maps will be decided in court.

We are sure the litigation process will consider all the options and we will continue to demand the final result be a map that fairly and accurately reflects the will of Wisconsin voters  our democracy demands no less, Fair Elections Project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said in an email the commission prioritized partisan gerrymandering over core constitutional protections. Republicans have decried the commission maps for splitting more counties and municipalities than the GOP maps, though they split slightly fewer than the current maps the GOP drew in 2011.

A previous draft created by Evers commission received criticism that the proposal didnt have enough majority-minority districts. On Tuesday, commission chair Christopher Ford said the final proposal will perform well for communities of interest and also minority-majority districts.

We wanted to make changes where we saw fit to make the opportunities better for the people of the state of Wisconsin, and so although there is some temporary disenfranchisement, we want to fight against permanent disenfranchisement for those individuals, Ford said.

An analysis by national academic group Princeton Gerrymandering Project found that maps proposed by both the commission and Republicans would maintain the same number of majority-minority districts  one congressional district, three in the Senate and nine in the Assembly  as current boundaries.

The office of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Vos and LeMahieu were the only two to speak in favor of the GOP-drawn maps during a nearly 10-hour-long meeting last week.

Comparing maps

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave the Republican proposal for Assembly, Senate and congressional maps an F grade for partisan fairness, noting that all three provide a significant Republican advantage, while the congressional proposal also advantages incumbents.

The project gave the commissions three maps an A for partisan fairness. It also gave Senate and Assembly maps from both the commission and Republicans a C for competitiveness, noting that the maps are similarly competitive relative to other maps that could have been drawn. The GOP-drawn congressional map received an F for competitiveness, while the commissions proposal received a C.

All told, the commissions Assembly boundaries would create 42 GOP-leaning districts and 34 Democratic-leaning districts, and 23 districts would fall in the 45-55% competitive range, according to Daves Redistricting, an organization that provides publicly available mapping software based on census data. In the Senate, 14 districts would lean Republican, eight would lean Democrat and 11 would be competitive.

GOP-drawn maps for the Assembly would create 51 GOP-leaning districts, 35 Democratic-leaning districts and 13 competitive districts, according to a Princeton Gerrymandering Project analysis using past election results. In the Senate, 15 districts would lean Republican, 10 would lean Democratic and eight would be considered competitive.

Current maps include 47 Republican-leaning Assembly districts, 32 that lean Democratic and 20 that are considered competitive, according to Daves Redistricting. In the Senate, current boundaries provide 16 GOP-leaning districts, nine that lean Democratic and eight that are competitive.

Durable skew

Ruth Greenwood, director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, said she doesnt believe the commissions maps are fair for Democratic voters, adding that predicted efficiency gaps show a large and durable skew in favor of Republican voters for both the Assembly and Senate map proposals.

PlanScore, a program that predicts precinct-level votes for districts based on past election results and U.S. Census data led by the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for nonpartisan maps, found that under the commissions proposal Democratic candidates would take 35% of state Senate seats and 39% of Assembly seats with a near 50-50 Democratic and Republican vote share.

Greenwood said this may be due to the commissions prioritization of compactness over partisan fairness. Greenwood noted that the first priority Evers listed in his original executive order creating the commission was that maps shall, whenever possible, be free from partisan bias and partisan advantage.

That is not reflected in the resulting plans, Greenwood said.

Greenwood said last month Republicans proposal essentially bakes in almost the same level of partisan advantage as current districts.

Republicans currently hold a 61-38 majority in the Assembly and a 21-12 majority in the Senate. Five of the states eight congressional districts are held by Republicans.

Other outcomes

The commissions Senate map would split 35 counties and 60 cities, compared with 42 counties and 28 municipalities in the GOP-drawn map. For the Assembly, the commissions proposal would split 48 counties and 104 cities, compared with 53 split counties and 48 split municipalities in the Republican map.

Congressional boundaries proposed by the commission and Republicans would split 10 counties, while the commission proposal would split 33 municipalities and the GOP map would split 24 municipalities.

According to the Legislative Reference Bureau, the proposed GOP-drawn maps would see six incumbent Republicans in the 99-member Assembly facing off in newly drawn districts.

Reps. Joe Sanfelippo and Mike Kuglitsch, both of New Berlin, would compete in the new 15th District; Ken Skowronski, of Franklin, and Chuck Wichgers, of Muskego, would both run in the new 82nd District; and Shannon Zimmerman, of River Falls, and Warren Petryk, of the town of Washington, would face off in the new 93rd District.

Tatyana Warrick, spokesperson for the state Department of Administration, said the commission did not take into consideration where incumbents lived when drawing maps and information on incumbent pairings was not available Tuesday.

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Lee Enterprises will be carrying a live blog of events in the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. Opening statements and first witnesses were heard Tuesday.

Lee Enterprises/Kenosha News reporter Deneen Smith is reporting from inside the Kenosha County Courthouse, with reporting on this page augmented by remote staff.

More coverage:

4:45 p.m. Prosecutor Thomas Binger advises that the judge had informed attorneys about a joke that a juror attempted to make to a deputy. Binger does not repeat the joke, but says it provides cause to strike the juror.

Judge Bruce Schroeder says he was told about the incident but had yet to question the juror about it. Schroeder says the court will revisit the issue in the morning and adjourns court for the day.

4:30 p.m. Jurors are dismissed, while attorneys continue to discuss an objection that arose during the most recent testimony.

4 p.m. The jury at Kyle Rittenhouse's murder trial over a string of shootings on the streets of Kenosha watched one of the central pieces of video evidence Wednesday  footage of a man chasing Rittenhouse and throwing a plastic bag at him just before the man was gunned down.

Someone is heard yelling F--- you!, followed by the sounds of the four shots Rittenhouse fired, killing Joseph Rosenbaum, though the shooting itself is not clearly seen on camera. Rosenbaum was the first of three men Rittenhouse shot that night, two of them fatally.

Oh, he shot him! He shot him, man. He shot him. He shot him, man. He laid him out," the person making the video can be heard saying.

Footage shown to the jury also showed Rosenbaum lying on the ground as frantic bystanders surrounded him to help. He had a wound to his head, and a bystander placed a shirt on it to apply pressure.

The scenes were part of wealth of video played for the jury that captured the chaos and repeated sound of gunfire on the night the 17-year-old aspiring police officer fired an assault-style rifle during a tumultuous demonstration against police brutality in the summer of 2020.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger drove home the point that Rosenbaum was apparently unarmed, asking Kenosha Detective Martin Howard if any of the videos shown in court indicated Rosenbaum had a weapon of any kind. Howard replied no.

Other video played for the jury showed Rittenhouse saying before the shootings that he was there to protect property and provide medical care to anyone who was hurt.

An interviewer mentioned non-lethal weapons and Rittenhouse responded: We dont have non-lethal. The man filming the video then asked if Rittenhouse was full-on ready to defend the property and he replied, Yes, we are.

In another video, Rittenhouse can be seen running through the frame, carrying a fire extinguisher. Shortly afterward, the video captures the sound of one gunshot, which was fired into the air by someone in the crowd other than Rittenhouse, according to authorities. The defense has said that that shot made Rittenhouse think he was under attack.  Associated Press

2:55 p.m.: Taking a break for "something technical," Binger says. Judge had just a few minutes ago he wanted a break to be taken soon.

2:51 p.m.: Howard confirms the plastic bag Rosenbaum appears to have thrown at Rittenhouse was never recovered.

Prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Binger, now focusing questioning on the bag.

2:40 p.m.: After lengthy showing of livestream videos, Howard notes upon questioning that Rosenbaum in the moments prior to being shot didn't appear in videos to have a weapon such as a gun or club. Howard says all he saw Rosenbaum carrying was a plastic bag.

Howard says, upon responding to scene of the shootings of Gaige Grosskreutz and Anthony Huber, officers were concerned there may still be an active threat and so responded "with a show of force" with multiple armored vehicles and officers telling bystanders to leave the area.

1:40 p.m.: In widely seen video of law enforcement officer telling armed group that included Rittenhouse "we appreciate you guys, we really do," Investigator Martin Howard says he doesn't know what department that officer was with, other than it being a sheriff's office; the officer was not with the Kenosha Police Department.

1:35 p.m.: Break is over. Judge has returned to his chair. Jury being called back in.

1:10 p.m.: Going to a break as arguments over video audio continue.

From an early afternoon pool report:

Rittenhouse took notes when prosecutors displayed video him speaking into a camera last year while standing in a car lot before the shooting. A several points Wednesday as the video played, he leaned over to say something to one of his lawyers.

Some jurors nodded as the judge turned to them to explain why audio on the video had to be turned down when the person shooting it commented about what he was seeing. Later, the judge sent jurors out of the room when he addressed the issue further with attorneys.

12:52 p.m.: Judge Schroeder is complaining again about what he feels is unfair treatment by "the media" regarding the 2008 case of Mark Jensen, which has been appealed and overturned  and he still asserts he was 100% correct on  as prosecution and defense argue about audio in a livestream video with commentary being played in court.

Prosecutor says the commentary should stay in, since what the person filming is describing could contribute to Rittenhouse's "state of mind" the night of the shooting.

Defense says that the person filming is not there to be questioned, and so his statements cannot be made in court.

Prosecutor fires back saying that what Rosenbaum did that night has been talked about extensively and has been used to "attack the character of a deceased individual." The video, prosecutor says, that Rittenhouse is witnessing the things shown in video since he was "10 feet away" from the camera.

"I don't see why the commentary by the videographer" would be relevant to Rittenhouse's state of mind, Schroeder says.

"This narrator is going to prove my client's state of mind?" Defense Attorney Mark Richards says later, attempting to paint prosecution's desire to show video with audio as ridiculous.

Schroeder then complains about the media "again," in his words. He noted that someone on TV two days ago talked about how "divisive" the Rittenhouse case is. He says there are members of the media on "reputable sites" saying things that are "bizarre," but doesn't expound on what he's referring to.

Schroeder says prosecution is "mixing rules up" regarding hearsay as it relates to a defendant like Rittenhouse and to Rosenbaum.

Prosecutor says he doesn't want to respond to the media, saying he hasn't heard what Jeffrey Toobin has said on CNN, and sounds confused about why it's coming up.

12:32 p.m.: During an explanation on hearsay for the sake of the jury, the judge expounds on how hearsay came up in the Bible relating to Saint Paul going on trial  a story from nearly two millennia prior to the United States being founded. "Where are the witnesses against me?" Judge Bruce Schroeder quotes Paul as saying in the Bible story Schroeder says is an example of the ancient Roman antecedent to the current law.

12:21 p.m.: Howard says that Rittenhouse's identity was learned via social media and then was confirmed when Rittenhouse turned himself in near his home in Antioch, Illinois.

Howard went down to Antioch to interview Rittenhouse. There he examined Rittenhouse for injuries. He told the jury about the following: "Half-inch scratch above his left eyebrow (and) a small cut on his lower lip ... An approximately 2-inch scratch under his left collar bone. There was some redness to the right side ... of his belly button." Redness was described on several parts of Rittenhouse's body, a scratch on his back and "two bumps" on the back of his head "above the left ear."

Two bullet casings were found in the Car Source parking lot.

12:20 p.m.: Lunch break appears to be over. Judge and others have returned to courtroom.

11:23 a.m.: An early lunch break. Lunch was delivered earlier than expected, judge says.

11:16 a.m.: Washington's testimony ends. An Kenosha Police Department investigator, Martin Howard, is called to the stand. He's been a detective for about three years and was a patrol officer before then.

During riots, he said he was doing "surveillance" in unmarked squad cars and ensuring gas stations had their pumps shut off, fearing that arsonists would use gas to set further fires.

"Every 911 call we get, we have to check out," Howard says, noting that many 911 calls coming in that night were "unfounded."

Howard says his assignment that night changed upon the shootings. Initially the reports were four homicide victims, although two people are only known to have died  Huber and Rosenbaum.

Howard maintains his primary partner is and was Detective Ben Antaramian.

After the shootings, they spent time saving videos shared on Twitter and on Facebook, including Washington's livestream. Private citizens also shared videos that weren't online, Howard said.

11 a.m.: Live again.

10:34 a.m.: Break.

10:30 a.m.: "He seemed like he was young and didn't know what was going," Washington says of the impression Rittenhouse left on him prior to the shootings. Rittenhouse was chain smoking cigarettes with gloves on, Washington said, and appeared "nervous in the situation ... A lot of people were nervous." However, he didn't appear "malicious."

Rosenbaum's behavior was described as erratic, but also acting similarly to others who were there.

10:20 a.m.: Attorneys ask Washington about how one would use a skateboard to hit someone, questions the witness struggles to answer as he says he'd never do that and never thought about using a skateboard to cause harm. "I just ride it like it's designed for."

Pool report:

Jurors began the day watching two monitors just outside the jury box as prosecutors seek to enter extensive video they say will support their case. Walking into court, jurors appeared more relaxed than the day before, some talking to each other, smiling and laughing.

Just before the trial started, Rittenhouse's mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, walked over to her son at the defense table to speak with him and a lawyer. Rittenhouse, in a blue suit and tie, hunched forward at the defense table to watch the same video as jurors on a desktop screen.

9:45 a.m.: The prosecution is breaking down video Washington has from the moments of the shootings.

9:20 a.m.: Koerri Elijah Washington, who livestreamed nights of the rioting, is back on the witness stand.

9:16 a.m.: Jury called into the room to begin trial for the day.

To begin at 9 a.m. Testimony continues today in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, where jurors heard opening statements on Tuesday that cast the defendant in sharply different lights.

For prosecutors, Rittenhouse was the problem  triggering a confrontation with one man that set in motion the bloodshed that followed. Rittenhouse's attorneys portrayed him as someone out of options who had to use deadly force to defend himself.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger described the unrest in Kenosha as two of the roughest nights that our community has ever seen and said outsiders were drawn to the city like moths to a flame.

Yet Binger repeatedly stressed that amid the hundreds of people in Kenosha and the anger and chaos in the streets, the only person who killed anyone is the defendant, Kyle Rittenhouse.

When we consider the reasonableness of the defendants actions, I ask you to keep this in mind, Binger said, after explaining to the jury that a claim of self-defense can be valid only if Rittenhouse reasonably believed he was using deadly force to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.

Rittenhouse attorney Mark Richards countered that his client was a victim, pointing to evidence that one man tried to grab his gun and others kicked the teen in the face and clubbed him in the head with a skateboard.

You as jurors will end up looking at it from the standpoint of a 17-year-old under the circumstances as they existed, Richards said.

Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with killing two men and wounding a third during the summer of 2020 with an assault-style rifle. The one-time police youth cadet could get life in prison if convicted.

The teenager traveled to Kenosha from his home in Antioch, Illinois, just across the Wisconsin state line, after protests broke out over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse said he went there to protect property after two nights in which rioters set fires and ransacked businesses.  Associated Press

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Starting Dec. 6, all Wisconsin prisoners will only receive photocopies of their personal mail  not the originals  because of a new policy aimed at curbing the infiltration of paper laced with a dangerous drug.

The policy was implemented as a pilot at Fox Lake Correctional Institution in April, but is now being expanded to the entire state prison system because of its success in reducing overdoses and violent behavior associated with K2, or "spice," a mind-altering synthetic cannabinoid. Paper can be laced with K2 and then smoked, which is how the drug was getting through the mail.

During the pilot, Fox Lake prisoners said they saw months-long delays in receiving mail, educational materials denied, missing pages and the margins of letters cut off with no way to get the missing material back, the Wisconsin State Journal reported in September. But the Department of Corrections said it has hired an outside company to process the photocopying, which should fix the problems inmates saw with the pilot.

"Hiring a group that specializes in this type of work should minimize any issues with the photocopies," DOC Division of Adult Institutions Administrator Sarah Cooper said.

The Department of Corrections has seen issues with K2 across many facilities, with 182 negative "incidents" related to the drug during the month of September, including 16 medical emergencies. Incidents can also include violent behavior and the discovery of drug paraphernalia.

K2 can cause symptoms of psychosis, suicidal thoughts, violent behavior, seizures, kidney damage, a reduced supply of blood to the heart, toxic reactions and sometimes death, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"By stopping the original pieces of paper from entering the institutions, we can greatly reduce the amount of drugs coming in and create a safer environment," Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr said, noting that safety concerns are what drove the policy change.

The Department of Corrections is contracting with TextBehind, a mail management service based in Phoenix that already provides mail photocopying for the corrections agency in North Carolina. For the pilot, DOC staff handled all the photocopying, a process that Fox Lake inmates said led to problems.

Under the new policy, inmates' friends and family will have to send all mail to TextBehind, which will open and photocopy the mail and send the copies back to Wisconsin's prison facilities. Photos and drawings are to be copied in color. The photocopying process is supposed to be completed within 24 hours.

Legal, medical and other "protected mail" are exempt from the new policy and should still be sent to the institutions, the DOC said.

To address any problems, TextBehind will hold the original mail for 30 days. Inmates will have 14 days after they receive their mail to file a complaint.
BEIRUT (AP)  Lebanons prime minister on Thursday again urged the information minister to do what needs to be done, an apparent appeal for him step down over an unprecedented diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia.

The spat has threatened to destabilize the new Lebanese government and escalate the country's economic tailspin.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati cannot dismiss the minister without approval of at least two-thirds of the Cabinet and Lebanon's president. The information minister George Kordahi had refused to apologize or resign a position that was supported by Hezbollah and allies in the Cabinet.

Mikati said he had agreed with Lebanese President Michel Aoun on a way out of the crisis that is threatening to split his government, sworn in less than two months ago. He called Kordahis decision would be a priority and the natural road map to get out of the crisis, and preserve relations with the Gulf.

But in a sign that there was no letting up to the crisis, Hezbollah on Thursday said in a brief statement that it rejects and condemns what it called foreign dictation to the way the government works - indirectly reiterating its continued support for Kordahi.

Beirut-based TV station al-Mayadeen quoted Kordahi saying that he will not resign.

On the eve of Mikati's speech, the deputy leader of Hezbollah Naim Qassim also said that it was Saudi Arabia that must apologize to Lebanon for its unjustified attack."

Mikati also had stern words for his partners in government  the militant Hezbollah group and its allies.

The spat was triggered by Kordahi's remarks aired last week about the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Lebanese officials have said that Kordahi's remarks do not represent official government views.

Riyadh has withdrawn its ambassador from Beirut and asked the Lebanese envoy to leave the kingdom. It has also banned Lebanese imports, undermining the small nations foreign trade and depriving it of millions of dollars even as it struggles amid an economic meltdown.

The country cant be managed with the language of challenge and obstinacy," said Mikati, who returned to Beirut on Wednesday night from the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. We must unite behind one word to work on saving our country.

Lebanon had sought French and U.S. mediation with Saudi Arabia.

Mikatis message appears to be directed mostly at his government partners from the Iran-allied Hezbollah. Local media said some ministers allied with Hezbollah have threatened to resign if Kordahi goes.

Kordahi was named to the government by a Hezbollah-allied party. Hezbollah members have called the Saudi campaign extortion.

Kordahi has refused to resign, insisting Yemens Houthis have the right to defend themselves and saying that he did not mean to offend with his comments, which were recorded before he became minister.

Gulf Arab countries have joined Saudi Arabia in pulling out their diplomats from Lebanon, deepening the diplomatic spat.

The row has tested Mikati's new government, sworn in after more than a year of deadlock among Lebanese politicians over the composition of the government.

The Cabinet has not been able to convene for weeks, mostly over a separate crisis, triggered when Hezbollah protested the course of the investigation into the Beirut Port explosion last year.

Hezbollah has criticized the judge leading the investigation, saying his probe was politicized and called on the government to ensure he is removed.

In the latest challenge to face the probe, an appeals court has accepted a lawsuit by a former minister - a defendant in the case - asking to remove judge Tarek Bitar. That automatically suspends the investigation until a decision is reached. Similar temporary suspensions have plagued the course of the probe over the past weeks but previous cases to remove the judge have been turned down.

But in a sign that the suspension may be prolonged, the court, this time headed by a known critic of Bitar, asked Bitar to hand over the details of the case to enable it to review the lawsuit, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press.

The Beirut-based right group Legal Agenda warned that the court's request to see the full content of the investigation violates the secrecy of the probe. The group also said the head of the court's known opinions critical of Bitar may constitute bias.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Copperas Cove, TX (76522)

Today

A few showers this morning with mostly cloudy conditions during the afternoon hours. High 69F. WSW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. Low 42F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
1. Yes. Council members appear to have taken time to review each section carefully.

2. Yes. The council has set up town halls and a public hearing to inform the residents.

3. No. The council should have set up a charter review committee, including residents.

4. No. Some of the items proposed so far benefit the council more than the community.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say until after the public has had more opportunities to weigh in.

Vote

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Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements are the Biden administrations boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months  or face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.
The congressman's attorney, John Littrell of Los Angeles, had earlier signaled his intention to file the motion to dismiss the case in California because of a lack of venue in Los Angeles.

Contacts involved in the case were made in the District of Columbia and Nebraska, Littrell had earlier said.

The $30,000 in illegal campaign contributions from a foreign source were collected at a fundraising event in Los Angeles.

"The congressman will ultimately be victorious in this case," said Jim Morrell of Washington, a spokesman for Fortenberry. "He did not lie to the FBI and in fact was trying to help them."

At issue is $30,000 in cash from a Nigerian-born billionaire named Gilbert Chagoury that was contributed to Fortenberry's campaign through other individuals who attended the fundraiser in Los Angeles.

"The government does not allege that Congressman Fortenberry knew about Chagoury's scheme to funnel foreign donations to his campaign in 2016," the motion to dismiss stated.

"He didn't," it said. "The indictment should be dismissed."
CHICAGO (AP)  The Rev. Jesse Jackson was hospitalized Monday in Washington, D.C. after falling and hitting his head while helping Howard University students who are protesting living conditions on campus, according to a spokesman.

The 80-year-old Chicago civil rights leader was entering a campus building when he fell and hit his head, according to Jackson spokesman Frank Watkins.

Jackson's staff took him to Howard University Hospital for various tests including a CT scan which came back normal. Watkins said Jackson would be kept at the hospital overnight for observation.

"Family, he's resting comfortably and doing well," Santita Jackson, one of Jackson's daughters, posted on Twitter along with a story from The Grio about his fall.

Jackson was attending a meeting with Howard President Wayne A.I. Frederick and the students, who were discussing their complaints about living conditions, according to Watkins.

Jackson, who has Parkinson's disease, has already been hospitalized twice this year. He checked into a Chicago hospital for a breakthrough COVID-19 infection in August and required weeks of physical therapy as COVID affected his Parkinson's and his ability to walk and talk. He also underwent gallbladder surgery earlier in the year.
October 2021 has been a busy month for the Tomah Knights of Columbus Council 4125 as it continues its mission of community service and charitable contributions and living up to the four pillars of the core beliefs of the Knights of Columbus: charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism.

Knight and Family

of the MonthThe Knight of the month for October 2021 is John Ollendick. John has been a KC member for over 30 years and is a member of St. Michaels Indian Creek Parish. He is active in all phases of parish life and was instrumental in the recent renovation of the interior of St. Michaels Church.

The Family of the Month for October 2021 is Al and Sandy Janeczko. Al and Sandy are very involved members of St. Marys Church. They serve as volunteers at the Tomah VA and head the annual Packer Raffle. Al was also past Grand Knight and district deputy.

Clergy Appreciation DinnerThe annual Clergy Appreciation Dinner, hosted by the Tomah Father Heindl Assembly 1902, was held on Monday, Oct. 18 at the KC Hall. The 2021 honoree was Monsignor David Kunz, pastor of the Tomah Queen of the Apostles Parish. Special guest was Monsignor Joseph Hirsch, Director of the Diocesan Mission at Casa Hogar in Peru. Monsignor Hirsch is a Sparta native and was visiting his home area of western Wisconsin.

Trunk or TreatIt was sweet treats for all the little goblins of the Queen of Apostles Elementary school on Oct. 29 on the playground of St. Marys Catholic School. The Tomah KCs was one of 25 Trunk or Treat vehicles and groups furnishing a good time for nearly 100 students, grades 4K-5th.

State Charity RaffleThe annual KC State Council Charity Raffle is under way. First prize is a 2022 Ford F150 XLT Super Cab or $50,000. Second prize is a Harley-Davidson Motorcycle or $25,000. There are 98 (third through 100th prizes) of $500 each. Proceeds from this raffle allow the state to pay out a half million dollars for charity work. Forty percent of the gross sales are returned to the local council to help local victims of accident, illness and fire. The $5 tickets can be purchased from any KC member or contact Brother Tom Baumgarten, the chair of the state raffle, at 608-372-5614.

Men of the

Cross conferenceSeveral KC members attended the Men of the Cross Conference at the Diocesan Center in La Crosse on Saturday, Oct. 23. Two outstanding speakers were featured: Jon Leonetti, national author, radio host and parish mission leader; and Monsignor Joseph Hirsch, director of the Diocesan mission at Casa Hogar, Peru. Those in attendance from Tomah were Tomah Grand Knight Jon Burbach and his son, Alex; Dr. Paul Skofronick and his son, Jerry; Dr. Kyle Thomas; Steve Arttus; Jason Weber; and Larry Scheckel.

BloodmobileThe Knights of Columbus donated the use of the KC Hall to the Red Cross Bloodmobile on four occasions in 2021. The latest was Oct. 28, when 40 pints were collected. KC Supreme Headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, urges all Knights to be blood donors, as charity is one of the core beliefs of the Knights of Columbus.

Packers ticket raffleTomah Council 4125 is again running the popular Packers ticket raffle for two seats on the 40-yard line. Its the Packers vs. Bears game at Lambeau Field, Green Bay, on Sunday, Dec. 12. Game time is 7:20 p m. A limited number of raffle tickets were printed. Cost is $10 per ticket. Call Al Janeckzo, 608-377-4674, or Larry Scheckel, 608-372-3362, to get your winning ticket and a chance to see Aaron Rodgers and the Pack in action!

Family PromiseThe Queen of the Apostles Parish is one of a number of area church groups that host Family Promise, a national nonprofit organization. Family Promise primarily serves families with children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness with the mission of helping homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence through a community-based response. The KC Hall in Tomah will host families for four weeks in 2022: Feb. 13-20, May 15-22, Aug. 14-21, and Nov. 6-13.

Spaghetti supper

and bingoTomah Council 4125 resumed the popular monthly bingo and spaghetti supper on Saturday, Oct. 2. Brother Knight Doug Semrau chairs this event. The spaghetti supper is served from 5-6:30 p.m. For only $6, diners receive a generous portion of spaghetti with garlic bread and a beverage. Desserts are also available. Bingo begins at 7 p.m., and 21 games of bingo are played. You can play bingo all night for as little as $1 for a chance to win cash prizes. A 50/50 raffle is also conducted during the evening. The spaghetti supper and bingo is held on the first Saturday of every month.

Join the KCsIf you are 18, a practicing Catholic and interested in becoming a member of the Knights of Columbus, which is dedicated to community service, contact Grand Knight Jon Burbach at 608-315-2099. The Knights of Columbus monthly meeting is held at the KC Hall on the first Monday of the month at 7 p.m.

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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the economy, the Tomah Health Community Foundation is helping people struggling with hunger in Monroe County.

Foundation officials donated $3,000 to the Second Harvest Foodbanks FoodShare Wisconsin program during a socially distanced presentation at Tomah Health Oct. 21.

One of the key initiatives of the Tomah Health Community Foundation is supporting nonprofits that make a difference in the lives of families and children, and Second Harvest Foodbank meets that by providing good quality meals to children and families, foundation president Peter Reichardt said of the donation.

Formerly known as food stamps, Second Harvest Foodbanks FoodShare program allows eligible residents to receive a debit card called the QUEST card that is loaded with FoodShare benefits that can be used at most grocery stores and many farmers markets. The QUEST card can also be used to participate in a Community Supported Agriculture program or to pay for Meals on Wheels.

This $3,000 will go a long way to help make contacts with people in Monroe County, said Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin FoodShare outreach specialist Brian Larson. We really appreciate the Tomah Health Foundation. Its fantastic.

Reichardt said due to the generosity of the Tomah community, which supports the foundation, the organization is able to help groups like Second Harvest.

Through our fundraising efforts we are able to put it back into the community and that is important not only for the people who help to support us but also the Foundation to distribute those funds directly back and impact our community, Reichardt said.

The foundation has donated to Second Harvest the last eight years.

Larson said the FoodShare program continues to play a huge role, especially as the pandemic continues.

There have been a lot of people who were either laid off or lost their job or were not able to work, Larson said.

He referred to a story of an area family where the husband and wife both lost their job and learned that they were eligible to take part in the FoodShare program.

It helped get them through until their jobs came back, so its helpful all the time but especially during the pandemicits really beneficial, Larson said.

Larson said while the FoodShare program helps ensure potentially eligible participants learn how to obtain benefits, it also meets community needs.

Not only does it benefit the family that has the QUEST Card, it will benefit the community because every $5 spent on the QUEST card generates $9 back to the community, Larson said. The card also takes pressure off the local food pantries, like Tomahs Neighbor of Neighbor, which gets extremely busy, and they might not have to go to the food pantry as often because they are using the Quest Card in the grocery stores.

From July 2020 through June 2021, Second Harvest assisted with the submission of 49 FoodShare Wisconsin applications in Monroe County, which created $78,648 in FoodShare benefits for residents to purchase food at local grocers and generated 27,693 meals for food-insecure Monroe County residents. The program also created $121,118 in economic impact in Monroe County. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that every $5 spent in FoodShare benefits generates nearly $9 in local economic activity.

Second Harvest reports that over 125,000 residents in southwestern Wisconsin were already struggling with hunger before COVID-19 with most relying on low-wage jobs as their primary source of income. Last year, 100,000 residents were struggling.

Second Harvest serves residents in Adams, Columbia, Crawford, Dane, Dodge, Grant, Green, Iowa, Jefferson, Juneau, Lafayette, Monroe, Richland, Rock, Sauk and Vernon counties. Officials say residents can learn if they are eligible for the program by visiting GetAQuestCard.org or call the FoodShare Help Line at 1-877-366-3635.

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The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has re-certified Tomah Health as a Level IV Trauma Care facility.

Originally certified in 2009 as a Level IV facility, Tomah Health provides stabilization and advanced trauma life support in the event a patient needs to be transferred to a Level I or II Trauma Care facility under the statewide trauma care system.

It should make the public feel confident that if they or their family members need to come to our facility after a traumatic injury that our staff is well prepared and highly trained to care for them, Tomah Health emergency services director Suzanne Downing, DNP, RN said of the new three-year certification.

The certification was the result of an Aug. 3 visit to Tomah Health by Department of Health officials.

Downing said the certification is also satisfying in light of record patient numbers in the hospitals emergency department over the past several months.

Despite record numbers of patients being cared for in our emergency department, our staff has been outstanding in the critical care provided during a really stressful time, Downing said.

She attributed the patient volume to a number of factors, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic delays in health care maintenance coupled with access issues and people seeking treatment for a variety of injuries and illnesses.

According to the DHS Trauma Care System website, Wisconsin has 124 of 126 potential hospitals participating in its trauma system, with 9% of them being American College of Surgeons verified Level I or II and the remaining 91% being a Level III or IV trauma care facility designated by the state. Participation in the state designation program is voluntary, and it plays a significant role in reducing death and disability resulting from traumatic injury by providing a comprehensive and integrated system of care to trauma patients and their families.

Downing said that without the statewide trauma care system, care could vary greatly among similarly sized facilities throughout Wisconsin.

Our staff continually strives to provide high-quality care during traumatic situations. This recertification validates our efforts, Downing added.

Wisconsins trauma system is closely aligned with the efforts and activities in the Emergency Medical Services program, Emergency Medical Services for Children program and health preparedness.

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The Vernon County Censor

Nov. 9, 1921

100 years ago

On Monday morning a new proprietor took charge of the Sweger & Fleming grocery, those two affable gentlemen disposing of their interest in the same to J.P. Vigdahl.

Elvin O. Anderson proprietor of the Optimo, has disposed of his interest in the popular refreshment place to Marcellus Nelson and Elmer Parr.

Vernon County Board of Supervisors convene at the Court House in Viroqua next Tuesday morning.The Censor hopes that this session of the board will thoroughly investigate the proposition of oiled roads, and make provision for general oiling of our highways. In no other way can Vernon county hope to have any considerable mileage of good roads at a cost within reason.

Ten dollars reward will be paid for any information leading to the arrest of the parties who broke into the Catholic church on Halloween night. John Devlin.

We will grind buckwheat Nov. 21st to 26th inclusive. Only one run this year. ATWOOD & HAGGERTY, Gays Mills.

LAFARGE ENTERPRISE  The new cement bridge at the corner of Penn. St. is completed. It is a fine pleasing structure to our citizens in the East part of the city.

Last week we installed our electric heater in our linotype and we now have as near an electrically equipped shop as any in the land.

COON VALLEY JOURNALS  A new glass front at the Colonial restaurant recently put in makes the place look a great deal better and more cosmopolitan.

WESTBY TIMES  We are told that a bootlegger came into Westby the other day with fourteen gallons of moonshine and very rtadily [sic] disposed of it at the rate of $35 per gallon. Who says money was tight in Westby?

The Vernon County Censor

Nov. 7, 1946

75 years ago

Voters of both Vernon County and Viroqua turned out in unexpected numbers, taking advantage of the perfect fall weather, to chalk up over six thousand votes for their favored candidates, thus following the national and state Republican trend in their sanction. Highest local vote getter was the sheriff-elect Morris Moon, who is credited with 6,062 tallies.

A group of representatives from several different churches of the western part of Vernon County met with their pastors last Monday night in the church parlors of the Methodist church in Viroqua for the purpose of considering the project of a modern hospital, to be backed by the members of all churches in the western part of the county. After the question and answer period was over, it was unanimously decided by the group to proceed further.

The Syverson-Funk Post 155 of the American Legion have completed plans for the Armistice Day Program which will be held on Monday, Nov. 11, at the Westby Memorial Park. Irvin Sheldon, Seventh District Commander, will be the speaker. The events of the day will begin with the parade assembling at the Westby High School as follows: the colors, color guard, firing squad, school band, members of the armed forces, veterans of WWI and II, floats, and other participating organizations.

The Vernon County

Broadcaster-Censor

Nov. 4, 1971

50 years ago

Southwestern Wisconsin for years has been called the Driftless Area because supposedly it escaped the glacier that covered much of the state. Doubt about this escape has been raised in recent years. Dr. Brian McKnight, assistant professor of geology at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, has been awarded a research grant to initiate a long-range study of the Kickapoo Valley. The first part of the research will attempt to answer the question whether this area really has been unglaciated since the Pleistocene glaciation periods. The second part of the study is to examine the present sedimentology of the Kickapoo River. Data are being gathered to determine the structure of the sedimentology and groundwater characteristics of the region before the dam is completed, in order to recognize changes.

Deaths: Olive M. (Buswell) Hornby, 80; Anna Theolene (Hooverson) Berg, 84; Martha Tracy (Domke) Berg, 92; Florence Alte (Mullen} Wise, 75; Nettie (Hughes) McDaniel, 83.

White Pigeon and Cherry Grove Schools will be sold on November 13th according to Loren Gronning of Monroe Finance. The sale is scheduled for 1 p.m. at White Pigeon

School on State 56 west of Viroqua. Both Schools will be open for inspection the morning of the sale. The sales include almost an acre of land at each sale site.

The Vernon County Broadcaster

Nov. 7, 1996

25 years ago

Viroqua-born guitar virtuoso comes home to play his one-man show at the Common Ground Cafe on Friday, Nov. 8. Jerry Way was born in Viroqua and raised on the Three Chimney Farm and the Halcyon Heights Farm, each between Viroqua and Westby. Primarily a jazz musician, Way says he considers himself to be equal parts composer/performer/teacher. He currently teaches music at the elementary school in Chippewa Falls. He is married and has three children and lives in Chippewa Falls.

The Viroqua Blackhawks ended their playoff drive to a familiar foe, falling to the Westby Norsemen 16-0 Saturday. Unfortunately the Hawks couldnt overcome five second-half turnovers, which resulted in three Norsemen scores.

Abby Barstad of Westby will be one of 11 Outstanding High School Representatives attending the Coulee Region YWCAs 14th annual Tribute to Outstanding Women on Nov. 11. The program will be held at the UW-LaCrosse. The program honors women and high school students who have an impact in the Coulee Region.

Education a priority for retired teacher Dorothy Krause. For Dorothy retirement has been only the beginning of a continuing career in volunteer service. For 45 years she taught at rural schools in Vernon, Jefferson and La Crosse counties before retiring to volunteer work in 1980. Currently Dorothy is the president of the Vernon County Historical Society and also belongs to the Coulee Region Literacy Council, where she volunteers to teach adults to read. She has a very long list of additional accomplishments one of which is providing the animals for the live nativity scene at Our Saviors Lutheran Church in Westby.

The Vernon County Broadcaster

Nov. 3, 2011

10 years ago

Fifty years after Troop C of the 105th Reconnaissance Unit was called to active duty due to the Berlin Crisis, members of the unit gathered at the Viroqua American Legion, Saturday and talked about the 10 months they spent together in 1961 and 1962, training to go to a war that, thankfully, never broke out.

On Nov. 10-12, the Viroqua High School Music Department will present the Rodgers and Hammersteins production of Cinderella.

After eight weeks of practice, the Willy Wonka cast at Westby Area High School is set to take the stage, helping celebrate 40 years of Wonka magic.

The De Soto High School Drama Department will present Bye Bye Birdie in the De Soto gymnasium.

Jerry Wileman of Viroqua is the 2011 Volunteer of the Year for the Vernon County Humane Society.

The Hillsboro girls volleyball team is state-bound once again, after shutting out Cochrane-Fountain City and River Ridge in three games each during sectional action last week.

Vernon County Historical Society  by Bonnie Sterling, Donna Halverson, Peg ORourke, Linda Zube and Denise Kirchoff

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Sheriff John Spears reports the following ongoing activities for the year and narrative excerpts from the week ending Nov. 1.

10/25 Jerrod Loging, West Salem, was traveling southbound on County Road K in the town of Hamburg. As Loging rounded a slight corner, there was a cow in the middle of the road, and they collided. Loging received minor injuries, and the vehicle had functional damage. The cow did not survive, and the owner, Nicholas Midtlien, was notified.

10/29 Logan Turnmire, Viola, was traveling southbound on County Road S in the town of Liberty. Turnmire stated a deer jumped into the road, so he swerved to avoid striking the deer. The vehicle traveled off the left side of the road, went down an embankment, stuck a power pole, and overturned twice. Turnmire did not report any injuries. The vehicle was towed due to disabling damage.

10/31 Nathaniel Leonard, De Soto, was traveling southbound on State Highway 35 in the town of Genoa. Leonard stated he swerved to miss a deer. The vehicle went down an embankment and struck a tree and shrubs. Leonard failed to notify law enforcement of the accident. Leonard was cited with Operating while Revoked, Failure to Notify Police of an Accident, Operate Motor Vehicle without Insurance, and Non-Registration of Auto.

10/31 Angela Beitlich, Stoddard, was traveling east on Prokosch Coulee Road in the town of Bergen. Beitlich was traveling down a slight decline and stated a deer crossed the road. The vehicle went onto the left shoulder of the road, which dropped off at a steep descent. The vehicle came to a rest in the ditch on its side. Beitlich and her minor passenger did not report any injuries. The vehicle was towed due to disabling damage.

Car/deer accidents (5): Daniel Brown, La Crosse, on N Ridge Road, town of Coon; Vernon County Sheriffs Office Investigator Egge on State Highway 56, town of Liberty; Terri Menne, Richland Center, on US Highway 14, town of Viroqua; Martine Fezler, Greenwood, SC, on US Highway 14, town of Kickapoo; Amanda Williams, Fox Lake, on State Highway 35, town of Bergen.

Sheriff urges all drivers to be extra alert and cautious as the start of rut is in full force.

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The final proposal for Wisconsins next political maps from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers redistricting commission would narrow, but still maintain, Republican legislative and congressional majorities in the state.

Evers said his Peoples Maps Commissions proposal for the next decades legislative boundaries, unveiled at the state Capitol Tuesday, stand in stark contrast to Republican-drawn maps that were revealed last month and will be voted on in committee Thursday.

The GOP proposal focused on a least change methodology to maintain the core of existing district boundaries, which have been regarded as some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation and have afforded Republicans strong majorities in both chambers for the last decade.

Wisconsinites wont stand for gerrymandering 2.0 and neither will I, so I want to be clear today if the Republican maps come to my desk as they are currently drafted I will veto them, Evers said. Its just as simple as that.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The mapmaking process can allow a party in power, even without statewide majority support, to create or increase a legislative majority based on how district lines are drawn. Republicans often have downplayed concerns about such a practice  known as gerrymandering, after an early 19th century political cartoon  saying the GOPs success is the result of strong candidates and Democrats being clustered in cities.

The GOP-led Legislature could take up a vote on Republican-drawn maps as early as next week. Evers said he may call lawmakers into a special session to take up the commissions proposed maps, but such efforts have been largely ignored by Republicans in the past.

With a GOP-backed lawsuit filed with the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court and a similar lawsuit brought by Democrats in federal court, its highly likely the states next 10-year maps will be decided in court.

We are sure the litigation process will consider all the options and we will continue to demand the final result be a map that fairly and accurately reflects the will of Wisconsin voters  our democracy demands no less, Fair Elections Project director Sachin Chheda said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said in an email the commission prioritized partisan gerrymandering over core constitutional protections. Republicans have decried the commission maps for splitting more counties and municipalities than the GOP maps, though they split slightly fewer than the current maps the GOP drew in 2011.

A previous draft created by Evers commission received criticism that the proposal didnt have enough majority-minority districts. On Tuesday, commission chair Christopher Ford said the final proposal will perform well for communities of interest and also minority-majority districts.

We wanted to make changes where we saw fit to make the opportunities better for the people of the state of Wisconsin, and so although there is some temporary disenfranchisement, we want to fight against permanent disenfranchisement for those individuals, Ford said.

An analysis by national academic group Princeton Gerrymandering Project found that maps proposed by both the commission and Republicans would maintain the same number of majority-minority districts  one congressional district, three in the Senate and nine in the Assembly  as current boundaries.

The office of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Vos and LeMahieu were the only two to speak in favor of the GOP-drawn maps during a nearly 10-hour-long meeting last week.

Comparing maps

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave the Republican proposal for Assembly, Senate and congressional maps an F grade for partisan fairness, noting that all three provide a significant Republican advantage, while the congressional proposal also advantages incumbents.

The project gave the commissions three maps an A for partisan fairness. It also gave Senate and Assembly maps from both the commission and Republicans a C for competitiveness, noting that the maps are similarly competitive relative to other maps that could have been drawn. The GOP-drawn congressional map received an F for competitiveness, while the commissions proposal received a C.

All told, the commissions Assembly boundaries would create 42 GOP-leaning districts and 34 Democratic-leaning districts, and 23 districts would fall in the 45-55% competitive range, according to Daves Redistricting, an organization that provides publicly available mapping software based on census data. In the Senate, 14 districts would lean Republican, eight would lean Democrat and 11 would be competitive.

GOP-drawn maps for the Assembly would create 51 GOP-leaning districts, 35 Democratic-leaning districts and 13 competitive districts, according to a Princeton Gerrymandering Project analysis using past election results. In the Senate, 15 districts would lean Republican, 10 would lean Democratic and eight would be considered competitive.

Current maps include 47 Republican-leaning Assembly districts, 32 that lean Democratic and 20 that are considered competitive, according to Daves Redistricting. In the Senate, current boundaries provide 16 GOP-leaning districts, nine that lean Democratic and eight that are competitive.

Durable skew

Ruth Greenwood, director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, said she doesnt believe the commissions maps are fair for Democratic voters, adding that predicted efficiency gaps show a large and durable skew in favor of Republican voters for both the Assembly and Senate map proposals.

PlanScore, a program that predicts precinct-level votes for districts based on past election results and U.S. Census data led by the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for nonpartisan maps, found that under the commissions proposal Democratic candidates would take 35% of state Senate seats and 39% of Assembly seats with a near 50-50 Democratic and Republican vote share.

Greenwood said this may be due to the commissions prioritization of compactness over partisan fairness. Greenwood noted that the first priority Evers listed in his original executive order creating the commission was that maps shall, whenever possible, be free from partisan bias and partisan advantage.

That is not reflected in the resulting plans, Greenwood said.

Greenwood said last month Republicans proposal essentially bakes in almost the same level of partisan advantage as current districts.

Republicans currently hold a 61-38 majority in the Assembly and a 21-12 majority in the Senate. Five of the states eight congressional districts are held by Republicans.

Other outcomes

The commissions Senate map would split 35 counties and 60 cities, compared with 42 counties and 28 municipalities in the GOP-drawn map. For the Assembly, the commissions proposal would split 48 counties and 104 cities, compared with 53 split counties and 48 split municipalities in the Republican map.

Congressional boundaries proposed by the commission and Republicans would split 10 counties, while the commission proposal would split 33 municipalities and the GOP map would split 24 municipalities.

According to the Legislative Reference Bureau, the proposed GOP-drawn maps would see six incumbent Republicans in the 99-member Assembly facing off in newly drawn districts.

Reps. Joe Sanfelippo and Mike Kuglitsch, both of New Berlin, would compete in the new 15th District; Ken Skowronski, of Franklin, and Chuck Wichgers, of Muskego, would both run in the new 82nd District; and Shannon Zimmerman, of River Falls, and Warren Petryk, of the town of Washington, would face off in the new 93rd District.

Tatyana Warrick, spokesperson for the state Department of Administration, said the commission did not take into consideration where incumbents lived when drawing maps and information on incumbent pairings was not available Tuesday.

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A judge says attorneys for a former suburban Minneapolis police officer on trial for fatally shooting a Black motorist can call a witness at trial to testify about behavior errors.

Defense attorneys have said they plan to call forensic and police psychologist Laurence Miller to discuss slip and capture errors, which they believe caused Potter to mistakenly fire her handgun instead of her Taser.

Prosecutors had filed a motion to exclude or limit Millers testimony, arguing that it was not relevant and would not be helpful to the jury. However, Hennepin County District Judge Regina Chu issued an order earlier this week rejecting the motion, the Star Tribune reported.

Minnesota courts have routinely admitted expert testimony on psychological phenomena such as battered-woman syndrome, counterintuitive post-rape conduct, and post-traumatic stress disorder, Chu wrote, noting that courts usually limit such testimony to describing the syndrome and its characteristics.

Chu said Miller can explain action error and slip-and-capture error but cannot say whether he believes Potter suffered from the condition.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Star Tribune.

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The video above is live only when court is in session and the judge allows video/audio to be broadcast.

Lee Enterprises will be carrying a live blog of events in the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, which began with jury selection Monday and opening statements Tuesday.

Rittenhouse, 18, shot two people and wounded a third during a night of unrest in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020. His attorneys contend he acted in self-defense, while prosecutors have portrayed him as an instigator.

Lee Enterprises/Kenosha News reporter Deneen Smith is reporting from inside the Kenosha County Courthouse, with reporting on this page augmented by remote staff.

More coverage:

4:44 p.m.: Balch's testimony concludes. Court done for the day.

4:39 p.m.: Binger begins redirect.

Binger is attempting to bring Balch's trustworthiness into question by pointing out that what Balch told the FBI does not align with what Balch said under oath regarding what Balch found inside the bag Rosenbaum threw at Rittenhouse. Balch is now saying he found nothing other than hygiene supplies in the bag, but told the FBI days after the riots he found chemicals in the bag that could've been used to make a Molotov cocktail, which is now being said was untrue.

4:31 p.m.: Defense Attorney Mark Richards begins cross-examination.

Richards has Balch confirm that law enforcement never told the armed individuals they couldn't be out there.

4:02 p.m.: Break over; Balch answering questions again

At the time of the shootings, Balch says "I had no idea what was going on." He said he was too far away to witness them.

Balch says he's been around shootings before when asked, after Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger notes Balch's time as a U.S. Army infantryman.

Balch says he'd heard gunshots prior in the evening, but never saw any shootings. Many times that night prior to the shootings, fireworks had gone off and the crowd or police would run from that area but then return.

Balch testifies that he was fired upon. While hiding between a car, the car was hit by bullets.

Binger presses Balch on why he lied to livestreamers, concealing he actually did know Rittenhouse. Balch said he did it for his safety. He said he also gave a false name.

When Binger asks if Balch went to police to share information, Balch replies "No."

3:46 p.m.: Partway through an objection regarding a line of questioning, Judge Schroeder calls a break before actually ruling on the objection.

2:20 p.m.: Ryan Balch, a military veteran who was one of the armed men in the group Rittenhouse was with that night, now testifying.

"We were more there to be a deterrence than anything," Balch said. When asked what they planned to do, Balch said "We were going to tell them to stop." Balch said he hoped the presence of the armed men would be a deterrent to rioting, and claims that worked. "(We) figured being there was enough."

"If being there was enough, why did you bring along an AR-15, handgun and body armor?" prosecutor asks.

Balch replies that, if he's going to be shot, he wanted to be wearing body armor and be able "to defend myself."

Balch says he wasn't planning to use gun to defend property, only himself and as a deterrent.

Prosecutor notes that no people were living in gas station and Car Source armed men were guarding. When prosecutor asks if either building burned down if anyone would be hurt, Balch replied that could happen if fire spread to nearby homes.

"He seemed like a young and impressionable kid," Balch said of Rittenhouse. "He had as much of a right to be there as anyone else."

Balch noted Rittenhouse seemed "underequipped" for being there; Balch said he was told Rittenhouse was 19 but believed he was younger.

Balch described the area as looking "like a warzone."

Balch recounts someone yelling "F*** you!" at Rittenhouse, to which Rittenhouse yelled back "I love you too, ma'am!"

Prosecutor and Balch discussing bullets in different firearms. Balch says he "usually runs with" full metal jacket bullets in his AR-15 and hollow-point ammunition in a Glock; Balch says "absolutely" hollow-point ammo in a handgun is the better choice for self-defense.

Balch notes that full metal jacket rounds will often go through their target's body and continue onward, posing a danger to whatever is behind. With hollow-point, they are more likely to lose all momentum upon expanding after entering a target.

Balch describes Rosenbaum as "hyper aggressive," never saw him hit anyone, and often saw Rosenbaum having to be restrained.

When Rosenbaum confronted Balch, Rosenbaum yelled "If I catch any of you alone tonight, I'm going to (expletive) kill you!" when Rittenhouse was nearby, Balch testifies.

Of the attitude of protesters toward armed people, Balch said "most seemed indifferent."

Balch says that Rosenbaum was throwing rocks in the direction of armed men, but never came close to hitting them.

Balch says that after he was hit by some sort of "gas bomb," Rittenhouse rendered aid by giving him water.

1:55 p.m.: McGinniss concludes his testimony. Break.

1 p.m.: Attorney Mark Richards begins cross-examination of McGinniss.

In the moments around the shooting, McGinniss says he was most concerned about the armed people on the roofs than anyone else.

McGinniss said that Rittenhouse was "unaware ... of how pissed off" the protesters/rioters were in regard to Rittenhouse. McGinniss said he noticed multiple people gave him obvious negative looks that Rittenhouse never seemed to pick up on.

McGinniss testifies that, of all the protests and riots he's covered, he saw the most guns in Seattle and then second place was Kenosha.

McGinniss said being around Rittenhouse and other guns that he was "fearful" because there was so many guns and it was "chaotic," but wasn't "specifically fearful" of Rittenhouse himself.

12:37 p.m.: Lunch break over. Court to resume.

McGinniss shares a fear that he could have been hurt as Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum confronted each other.

"Did you feel that the defendant's actions of turning around and pointing the gun put you in danger?" prosecutor asks.

"Certainly I was in danger, yes," McGinniss replies.

McGinniss is asked if he ever saw Rosenbaum touch Rittenhouse's gun. McGinniss says he can't say for sure, but that the two were "very close" to each other, and that if Rosenbaum did touch the gun he didn't "alter (its) trajectory."

As video of McGinniss, who said he was raised by an ER doctor, trying to save Rosenbaum's life plays in court, McGinniss is visibly upset and struggles to watch; prosecutor apologizes for necessity of playing the video in front of McGinniss and bringing back that trauma.

McGinniss said that, in the back of a truck taking Rosenbaum to the hospital, McGinniss was telling Rosenbaum "We're going to have a beer together after all this."

Prosecutor asks McGinniss if Rosenbaum was ever "responsive." McGinniss said he "likes to think that he could hear me," but couldn't tell; he appeared alive, with his eye moving around, sometimes looking at McGinniss and sometimes rolling back into his head, but never spoke.

McGinniss said at the hospital he saw Gaige Grosskreutz arrive soon after.

"It was just surreal," McGinniss said of how he felt at the time.

McGinniss says he wishes his phone had been recording the shooting of Rosenbaum itself, not the moments that followed.

11:45 a.m.: After more questioning of McGinniss, including in comments he made during a TV interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, lunch break.

10:26 a.m.: Taking a break.

9:54 a.m.: Richie McGinniss, video director for the right-wing news website founded by Tucker Carlson, now on the stand for the state. He was livestreaming night of shootings and walked with Rittenhouse for several minutes.

Video McGinniss took shows Rittenhouse calling himself a medic/EMT.

McGinnis said of all the protests he's covered (and he's covered many across the country) that Rittenhouse was the only one who proclaimed himself to be a medic while also being armed with an AR-15; only one other person who called themself a medic said they were armed and that was with a handgun, McGinniss said.

9:20 a.m. A juror has been dismissed after making a joke to a deputy related to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha last year.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger asked that the man be removed from the jury. Judge Bruce Schroeder brought the juror into the courtroom to hear his side of the story. The juror  a retired white man  declined to repeat the joke.

The man appeared ill-at-ease, fumbling to hold a portable mic and speaking through a multi-colored face mask. "It had nothing to do with the case," he told the judge about the joke. After the judge said he had no choice but to let him go, the man backed up his scooter and steered out through a courtroom door.

Schroeder dismissed the juror, emphasizing the need for the public to have confidence in the outcome of the trial.

It is clear that the appearance of bias is present and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case, Schroder said.

Testimony continues with defense attorney Mark Richards continuing to question Kenosha Police Detective Martin Howard, who first took the witness stand on Wednesday.

9 a.m. Testimony is set to continue today in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Video took center stage Wednesday in the Illinois man's trial in the shootings of three men  two fatally  after Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha in August 2020 with a medical kit and a rifle in what he says was an effort to safeguard property from damaging riots.

Jurors peered at infrared video made by an FBI surveillance plane from almost 9,000 feet above the spot where Rittenhouse shot 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum. With colored circles superimposed on the video identifying the movements of the two men far below, Kenosha Police Detective Martin Howard agreed with defense attorney Mark Richards that Rittenhouse had repeatedly shouted Friendly! as he was being chased  and that Rosenbaum appeared to be gaining ground on Rittenhouse.

Richards also described how Rosenbaum had come out from behind a car to meet Rittenhouse before the shooting, saying to the detective: Correct me if Im wrong, but this looks like the classic ambush.

After prosecutors objected, Richards said: Mr. Rosenbaum is in hiding as my client arrives, correct?

It appears so, yes, Howard responded.

Rittenhouse, now 18, could get life in prison if convicted in the politically polarizing case that has stirred furious debate over self-defense, vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the racial unrest that erupted around the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other cases like it.

The young man traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois after violent protests broke out over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse said he went there to protect property after two nights in which rioters set fires and ransacked businesses.

Prosecutors have portrayed him as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer argued that he acted in self-defense after Rosenbaum tried to grab his gun and others in the crowd kicked him in the face and hit him in the head with a skateboard.

In one video, footage shows a man  Rosenbaum  chasing Rittenhouse and throwing a plastic bag at him just before the man was gunned down. Someone is heard yelling F--- you!, followed by the sounds of the four shots Rittenhouse fired, though the shooting itself is not clearly seen on camera.

Footage shown to the jury also depicted Rosenbaum lying on the ground as frantic bystanders surrounded him to help. He had a wound to his head, and a bystander placed a shirt on it to apply pressure.

Many of the videos played in court were found by police on social media sites, where lots of footage was streamed live or promptly posted after the bloodshed, and many of the scenes were familiar to those following the case.

Howard, the detective, detailed injuries Rittenhouse suffered that night, all seemingly minor: A half-inch scratch above his eyebrow, a small cut inside his lower lip, a 2-inch scratch below his collarbone, a 2-inch scratch on his forearm, a scratch on his back and two bumps the size of pennies on his head.

Prosecutor Thomas Binger drove home the point that Rosenbaum was apparently unarmed, asking Howard if any of the videos shown in court indicated Rosenbaum had a weapon of any kind. Howard replied no.

No gun? Binger asked.

I can only see a plastic bag hes carrying, Howard said.

So no gun? Binger asked.

No, replied Howard, who repeated the answer when Binger also asked him whether Rosenbaum carried a knife, bat or club.  Associated Press

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PPL Electric Utilities has tried for years to encourage more of its customers to shop for cheaper sources of electricity, which the state has allowed customers to do since 2010.

Maybe more will be motivated to look around now.

PPL is raising its residential rate by 26.0% effective Dec. 1, the company has quietly disclosed. The new price of 9.502 cents per kilowatt hour, up from 7.544 cents per kWh, nearly ties its high point over the past 10 years, according to LNP | LancasterOnline files.

Its commercial rate for businesses will leap much more  by 36.4% -- to 10.285 cents per kWh from 7.541 cents per kWh.

Electricity rates are soaring largely because of higher prices for natural gas, the fuel that powers many electricity-generating stations, due to demand rising as the economy gradually continues to recover from the pandemic-induced recession. Overall inflation is a factor too, according to PPL.

Higher electricity rates could be especially painful for the 71,000 households in Lancaster County who are heavy users of the energy source because they use it to heat their homes.

That translates as 34.5% of all housing units in the county, making electricity the most common source of home heating fuel. Its a bit more popular than natural gas, the runner-up at 33.7%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But as always, residential customers have an abundance of cheaper choices than PPL, per the state Public Utility Commissions rate-tracking website, papowerswitch.com. The website shows 20 lower fixed-rate offers than PPLs upcoming rate of 9.502 cents per kWh.

The lowest as of Wednesday afternoon was Star Energy Partners at 7.490 cents per kWh.

Since the state deregulated the electricity market in 2010, utilities have urged their customers to take advantage of their newfound freedom to save money.

Some customers have stayed with their utility out of loyalty. But whether a customer finds an alternative source for electricity or continues to use the utility as his or her supplier has no impact on a utilitys business, since utilities must re-sell the power to customers at the same price the utilities paid to obtain it.

(Utilities make their profit on the price they charge to deliver that power over its system of wires, transformers and substations to customers, much like UPS or FedEx makes its profit on delivering packages.)

Consumers have been tough to persuade to shop, though. A mere 34.7% of residential PPL customers buy their supply from an alternative source, according to the PUC.

And, believe it or not, thats a strong level of participation in what used to be promoted as the states Electric Choice program, comparatively speaking. Of 11 electric utilities in the state, only Pike County Light & Power has more residential customers who shop. It has 44.0%, per the state.

But if that one-third participation by PPL customers is ever going to rise, the upcoming PPL rate -- which will be at that level for at least six months  might do the trick. The new rate has been seldom seen by the Allentown-based companys more than 1 million residential customers across Lancaster County and 28 other counties.

Over the past decade, the upcoming rate was topped just once, at 9.559 cents per kWh in spring 2015, according to LNP | LancasterOnline files.

These rates are quoted in the so-called price to compare format, as required by the PUC. It includes the cost to procure the power and move it over high-voltage transmission lines, but not the cost to deliver that power the final distance from a substation to a home or business.

While the imminent rate is rare, the way that PPL disseminated news of its pending arrival is different. PPL used to announce its latest price-to-compare rates via press releases to the media as well as direct communications with customers. PPL stopped alerting the media of them this year without notice.

A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request from LNP | LancasterOnline for an explanation of the change in procedure. A PUC spokesman said a utility must notify customers of its new rates by putting the information on bills and must post the information on the utilitys website but does not have to inform the media.
John Bright Sr. and his two sons, Eric and John Jr., left Tuesday afternoon for a cabin in Potter County where they plan to hunt and relax for several weeks, a getaway that leaves no one to run the familys namesake restaurant.

But thats according to plan, since for the first time in 55 years, theres no restaurant to run.

Known for broasted chicken, homemade soups, and town gossip, Brights Restaurant closed permanently Sunday, leaving a big empty space in the weekly routines of many longtime customers.

Its going to be different, said Todd Moyer, 56, of Ephrata Township. Like, I dont know what to do in the mornings now.

The decision to close the diner at 1025 S. State St. in Ephrata Borough came because John and Eric Bright couldnt find enough help to run it and were forced to do most of the work themselves, according to John Bright Sr., who started the restaurant in 1966 but has been mostly retired for about the last 10 years.

Ever since the pandemic theyve been working their butts off, really with a lack of help. Theyre just burned out. Its that simple, said Bright Sr., who owns the restaurant and had been leasing it to his sons. The 3-acre restaurant property also includes JEC Storage, a self-storage business he owns.

While he said he understands his sons choice to close the restaurant, Bright Sr. said he was disappointed and a little surprised by it. He said hes not sure what will happen next, although hes not interested in selling the entire property but would be open to having someone else lease the restaurant space.

Bright Sr. declined to have his sons speak about their decision, saying he was acting as a spokesperson for the family and that they would say the same thing about why they closed.

The current hunting getaway, he said, could provide some clarity about the future for both him and his sons.

Well talk it over, said Bright Sr. This kind of took me by surprise too.

An Ephrata tradition

John Bright Sr. opened Brights Restaurant in 1966 after helping his own dad, Edward, with the Sugar Bowl in Millersville and the former Eds Diner in Ephrata. Brights Restaurant was initially a drive-in featuring pizza and sandwiches but was subsequently renovated into a roughly 100-seat family restaurant that included a deck, and at one time sold ice cream.

Recently, Brights Restaurant was popular for its traditional breakfast and was especially known for its broasted chicken. A $9.99 prime rib special on Saturdays was also a big draw right up until the end.

Apart from the food, Brights Restaurant earned a reputation as a gathering place for locals, with Moyer saying a mid-afternoon shoot-the-breeze session around the counter could be especially entertaining.

There were days I would arrange my schedule so I could go, said Moyer, who used to teach math at Ephrata High School and now teaches at Towson University. Of all the places that I have gone to eat, I have not seen a place that had a camaraderie among regulars like Brights did.

Pushed to the limit

Nina Wink, 66, of Denver, worked on and off at the restaurant for about 40 years, and came back during the pandemic to help out. She was there during what turned out to be an emotional last weekend.

Saturday was a lot of hugging and tears and all that kind of stuff, Wink said.

Having worked closely with the younger Brights recently, Wink said she saw how much they were struggling to keep things going and understood why they needed to call it quits.

They made it through the pandemic with both of them, and then afterwards they couldnt get anyone to work because everyone was getting unemployment, Wink said, focusing on the $300 weekly federal unemployment bonus  which lapsed in September  as a key deterrent for would-be workers.

Tania Kreider, who first worked at Brights Restaurant as a teenager, said she considers the place a second family, saying customers became friends and owners were supportive. They took care of their employees and paid them well, she said.

Kreider, who was also working the last weekend, said she too saw how the Brights pushed themselves to the limit to maintain the restaurant, which opened at 5:30 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m.

The pandemic really took a toll on both the boys, said Kreider, 42, whose full-time job is as a second-grade teacher at Akron Elementary School. They were working seven days a week, 12-to-13-hour days with the shortage of help. They were just burned out. You could see it.  They were ready to have normalcy.
November's First Friday in Lancaster County is filled to the brim with activities, ranging from art exhibit openings to a kids' night out.

Below are 16 First Friday events happening in the county.

Altana

This month, the gallery on Altana's second floor will include works from artists Steven Georges, Stew Bradley, Jazmine Gabriel, Ira Steele, Joe Montalbano, Thomas Valentine, Megan Nelson, Jain Coble and Mike Finch.

More information: Altana, 26 E. King St., Lancaster | Hours: 5-9 p.m. | More info

David Lyall Home & Design

The work of landscape oil painter Richard Redmond will be featured at David Lyall Home & Design this month. He is known for his rural landscapes, and often draws inspiration from the countryside near his studios in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. The exhibit will run through Nov. 27.

More information: David Lyall Home & Design, 241 N. Prince St., Lancaster | Hours: 5-8 p.m. | More info

First Reformed Church

The First Reformed Church will feature resident organist Larry Hershey, who will play the organ alongside pianist Debbie Botham for their "Abundant Blessings" 30-minute concert. Some of the songs featured will be "Kum Ba Yah," "The Heavens Are Telling" and "Now Thank We All Our God."

More information: First Reformed Church, 40 E. Orange St., Lancaster | Hours: 8-8:30 p.m. | More info

Historic Preservation Trust

The Historic Preservation Trust will host several artists from the Echo Valley Art Group as part of a pop-up show for First Friday. Artists on display will be Scott Cantrell, Ann DeLaurentis, Carol Toner Shane, Richard Ressel, Susan Gottlieb, Claire Giblin and Rob Evans. There will be snacks and hot cider for guests.

More information: Sehner-Ellicott-von Hess House, 123 N. Prince St., Lancaster | Hours: 5-9 p.m. | More info

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

The Holy Trinity Lutheran Church will host theatre organist Don Kinnier, who will play the organ alongside 1926 silent movie "The Great K & A Train Robbery," featuring Tom Mix and Dorothy Dwan.

More information: Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 31 S. Duke St., Lancaster | Hours: 7-8:30 p.m | More info

Lancaster Public Library

The Lancaster Public Library will host a "Baubles and Bling Sale" on First Friday. Costume jewelry, handbags and other accessories will be on sale, with proceeds benefiting the library. Masks will be required. Cash, checks and credit cards accepted.

More information: Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St., Lancaster | Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. | More info

Lancaster Science Factory

The Lancaster Science Factory will offer free admission on First Friday from 5-7 p.m.

More information: Lancaster Science Factory, 454 New Holland Avenue, Lancaster | Hours: 5-7 p.m. | More info

MH Art Gallery & Studio

MH Art Gallery & Studio's first day open will be this Friday, and it will kick off with works from plein air artist Marita Hines, who is also a member of Marietta Art Alive.

More information: MH Art Gallery & Studio, 42 W. Market St., Marietta | Hours: 4-7 p.m. | More info

Mulberry Art Studios

Lancaster artist Candace Greenberg-Thompson will show her collection of work, titled "Emerging from the Shadows," at Mulberry Art Studios for the entirety of November. Her works are black and white and focus on light and its relationships to the objects in the works.

West Reading artist B. Emerson will also show her works at Mulberry Art Studios, with an exhibit titled "Dark Grain." She focuses on using graphite and paper and uses complex shapes patterns to tell a story in each work.

More information: Mulberry Art Studios, 19-21 N. Mulberry St., Lancaster | Hours: 5-9 p.m. | More info

The Parrot Gallery

Works from Lancaster resident Bob Ibold will be featured at the Parrot Gallery at Community Mennonite Church. His exhibit is called "80 years of Drawing" and focuses on pieces made with graphite on paper. Ibold's most recent works are dedicated to his late wife. This exhibit will run through Dec. 31.

More information: The Parrot Gallery at Community Mennonite Church, 328 W. Orange St., Lancaster | Hours: 5-8 p.m. | More info

Penn Square

The Swing Station and Jazz Collective Lancaster will host a swing dancing event in Penn Square. The Hot Club of Baltimore will play live jazz during the event.

More information: Penn Square, King and Queen streets | Hours: 6-9 p.m. | More info

Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen

The PGC will host glass artist Ilene Schenkel, who creates glass beads using a propane torch and a steel rod. There will also be a display from the PGC's Haverford Chapter.

More information: Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen's Center of American Craft, 335 N. Queen St., Lancaster | Hours: 5-8 p.m. | More info

Tiny Town

Tiny Town will host a "Kids Night Out," where a parent can drop their 3- to 10-year-old potty-trained kid off for a night of pizza, fun and games. Masks are required for kids 3 and older.

More information: Tiny Town, 533 Janet Ave., Lancaster | Hours: 5:30-8:30 p.m. | Cost: $25 per child | More info

United Zion Art Gallery

United Zion's Art Gallery will host works from photographer John Schmidt through November. Schmidt's exhibit is called "National Parks of the West" and features photos of the US national parks.

More information: United Zion Art Gallery at the United Zion Retirement Community, 722 Furnace Hills Pike, Lititz | Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. | More info

The Ware Center

The Ware Center will feature a "Photo Jam LIVE with Molly Schlachter" for First Friday. It's an interactive event where photographers can share their photos with other enthusiasts and get feedback on their works.

In addition, Michelle Johnsen and Josh Graupera will kick off and show their photography exhibit, "Stoop Sessions: A Look at Local Families During Covid." Funds raised from the photography sessions directly went to nonprofits like Crispus Attucks Community Center, the Lancaster LGBTQ+ Coalition, Meals on Wheels and more.

More information: Ware Center, 42 N. Prince St., Lancaster | Hours: Photo Jam starts at 6:30 p.m.; exhibit reception goes from 6-8 p.m. | More info

Zoetropolis Cinema Stillhouse

November's First Friday Fright Night film will be "The Fog," a ghost story film from the early '80s featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins and more. Attendees are required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination at the door.

More information: Zoetropolis Cinema Stillhouse, 112 N. Water St., Lancaster | Starting time: 9 p.m. | Cost: $11 | More info
Five-year-old Evvie Solosko cried and buried her head in her mothers pink sweatshirt, afraid the COVID-19 shot would hurt.

A quick prick, though, and it was over.

And then, Evvie went to the toy shelf at the Lititz Apothecary and picked out her prize: a PAW Patrol paint set.

At her 4-year-old visit she got four shots, so, since then I think shes a little needle phobic, said Evvies mom, Dr. Alexandra Solosko, of East Hempfield Township. I think she was more anxious than anything.

Solosko, a pediatric hospitalist employed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who practices at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital, has treated children with COVID-19.

Evvie  who has been homeschooled during the pandemic, but looks forward to returning to the classroom  was among 10 children who rolled up their sleeves for the kid-sized shot late Wednesday afternoon.

The first pediatric COVID-19 vaccines were administered in Lancaster County on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cleared the way for emergency authorization for children 5 to 11 years old.

There are nearly 50,000 children in this age group in Lancaster County, according to a 2019 estimate by the Pennsylvania State Data Center.

Local hospitals and pharmacies are expected to follow later this week as the pediatric rollout gains momentum.

Health officials dont expect a crush of pediatric patients seeking COVID-19 vaccines as seen earlier this year when demand out-stripped supply. But they also caution appointments may initially be limited for this age group, which will receive roughly a third of the dose of adolescents and adults.

Were already seeing a high demand, so please be patient, Jeanette Gibbs, senior vice president for ambulatory care at Penn State Health, said during a virtual press conference Wednesday.

Excluding Philadelphia County, which is its own vaccine jurisdiction, Pennsylvania is expected to receive about 414,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine between Nov. 1 and 8.

Some vaccine providers have already received shipments of the pediatric vaccine, Mark ONeill, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said in an email to LNP | LancasterOnline.

At present, children aged 5 through 17 may only receive a Pfizer vaccine.

Children 12 to 17 have been able to receive a COVID-19 vaccine since mid-May.

The Moderna and Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccines have not yet received emergency authorization for minors.

In a statement Wednesday following the CDCs announcement, Gov. Tom Wolf said the pediatric vaccine should comfort parents and teachers concerned about the safety of the classroom.

Vaccinating children against COVID-19 is the best way to keep families and communities healthy and schools safe, Pennsylvanias Acting Physician General Dr. Denise Johnson said in the joint statement.

Nearly 60,000 children 18 and younger in Pennsylvania  2,851 in Lancaster County  have contracted COVID-19 since Aug. 16, according to the latest state infection data.

And 145 children across Pennsylvania have been diagnosed with Multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a condition that inflames different body parts that include, among others, the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain and gastrointestinal organs. MIS-C is a condition associated with exposure to COVID-19.

Weve taken care of children throughout this pandemic, said Dr. Patrick Gavigan, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Penn State Health Children's Hospital. I think having this tool available for a greater proportion of our children is a great step forward in our ability to kind of fight COVID in the pediatric population.

To find the COVID-19 vaccine provider nearest you, visit www.Vaccines.gov.
Columbia Borough police

DISORDERLY CONDUCT

COLUMBIA: Justin Seth Ingraham, 25, of New Holland, was charged with disorderly conduct after becoming aggressive toward other patrons at a business in the 100 block of South 4th Street at 11:10 p.m. on Oct. 13, police said. Ingraham, who refused to talk to officers, became unconscious as he was led into a police car and was taken away in an ambulance, police said.

THEFT

COLUMBIA: A $150 boys Huffy bicycle was stolen from a yard in the 200 block of South 5th Street at 7:54 p.m. on Oct. 30, police said. Two juvenile boys were seen loitering and prowling in the area and stole the bike, police said.

East Lampeter Township police

THEFT

EAST LAMPETER TWP.: An unidentified woman was seen stealing more than $550 worth of merchandise from a Weis Market at 1603 Lincoln Highway East by concealing items in reusable store bags around 3:10 p.m. on Oct. 9, police said. The woman was accompanied by three children who helped her load the stolen items before leaving in a sedan, police said.

EAST LAMPETER TWP.: More than $200 worth of Red Bull energy drinks were stolen from a Weis Market at 1603 Lincoln Highway East around 1:50 p.m. on Oct. 18, police said. An unidentified man was seen leaving with the Red Bull as the passenger in a Toyota sedan, police said.

EAST LAMPETER TWP.: Twelve pairs of sunglasses valued at a combined $3,900 were stolen by an unidentified thief from a Sunglass Hut store in Tanger Outlets between 3:30 p.m. and 3:40 p.m. on Oct. 24, police said.

VANDALISM

EAST LAMPETER TWP.: Four unidentified men created a disturbance, then threw a bottle of wine against the floor, causing it to shatter, inside a Sheetz at 2425 Old Philadelphia Pike around 2:40 a.m. on Sept. 19, police said. Wine and shards of glass were spread across the store, police said.

Lititz Borough police

CRASH

LITITZ: A 15-year-old bicyclist struck a moving car after failing to yield the right-of-way to traffic at a West Orange Street and Campus Drive at 7:46 a.m. on Oct. 25, police said. The bicyclist was evaluated at the scene but was not transported to a hospital, and the driver of the vehicle was uninjured, police said.

DISTURBANCE

LITITZ: A window on the first floor of a residence in the 100 block of Forney Drive was shot with air rifle around 7 p.m. on Oct. 22, police said. The resident heard a loud noise at that time, but did not realize the window had been shot until 10:36 a.m. on Oct. 30, police said. A second resident nearby in the 500 block of Kissell Hill Road also discovered their window had been shot with an air rifle at 8:06 a.m. on Nov. 2, police said.

DUI

LITITZ: Amanda L. Tokar, 32, of New Holland , was charged with driving under the influence after crashing in the first block of Arrowhead Drive at 10:34 p.m. on Nov. 1, police said. Tokar, who had a BAC of 0.196%, left the lane of travel and struck an unoccupied parked car, then rolled over, causing both vehicles to be towed from the scene, police said.

Manheim Township police

ASSAULT

LANCASTER TWP.: Anye C. Bonner-Brown, 18, and Aaliyah L. Davis, 18, both of Lancaster, were charged with simple assault after striking a person in the head with an empty glass bottle, injuring their face, neck and head, during a domestic dispute at a residence in the 600 block of Wyncroft Lane at 5:45 a.m. on Oct. 26, police said.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

LANCASTER TWP.: A piece of concrete was thrown at a window in the 1200 block of Clark Street, causing it to shatter and causing $150 in damage at 6:50 p.m. on Oct. 31, police said.

DISORDERLY CONDUCT

LANCASTER TWP.: Samantha L. Bell, 29, of Lancaster, was charged with disorderly conduct and public drunkenness after she was seen shouting and yelling obscenities after being told to stop at House of Pasta at 1110 Millersville Pike at 12:46 a.m. on Oct. 18, police said. Bell was drunk at the time, police said.

DUI

MANHEIM TWP.: Charles W. Russell, 53, of Sinking Spring, was charged with driving under the influence after crashing at Route 222 North near mile marker 32.2 at 10:28 p.m. on Oct. 26, police said. Russell had a BAC of 0.219% at the time, police said.

MANHEIM TWP.: Igor V. Georgievskiy, 42, of Jermyn, was charged with driving under the influence after crashing in the 200 block of Eden Road at 12:59 a.m. on Oct. 30, police said. Georgievskiy had a BAC of 0.141% at the time, police said.

HARASSMENT

MANHEIM TWP.: Jair C. Ellis, 18, of Conestoga, was charged with harassment after touching another person with both of his hands, causing them to feel uncomfortable, at a Target at 1589 Fruitville Pike at 3:50 p.m. on Oct. 14, police said.

THEFT

MANHEIM TWP.: Credit and debit cards were stolen from the inside of an unlocked vehicle in the 300 block of Bracken Drive sometime between 9:45 p.m. on Oct. 20 and 2:59 a.m. on Oct. 21, police said. An unidentified man was later seen on surveillance footage using one of the stolen debit cards to make a fraudulent purchase at a Turkey Hill store at 2:59 a.m. the same day, police said.

LANCASTER TWP.: Mariana Estrella Santiago, 35, of Lancaster, was charged with retail theft after stealing $547.87 worth of merchandise from a Weis Market at 1204 Millersville Pike at 4:17 p.m. on Oct. 25, police said.

MANHEIM TWP.: Two fire extinguishers worth a combined $670 were stolen from Shoppers at Bloomfield at 245 Bloomfield Drive sometime between Oct. 29 and Oct. 30, police said. One of the fire extinguishers was discharged before the thief left, causing damage to the business, police said.

Manor Township police

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

MANOR TWP.: Davyn Terrero, 22, no fixed address, was charged with criminal mischief after smashing a pumpkin and an alligator planter at a residence in the 2600 block of Valley Drive sometime on Oct. 19, police said.

DUI

MANOR TWP.: Chandler Elliot Horn, 23, of Millersville, was charged with two counts of driving under the influence and two summary traffic violations after striking another vehicle in the 300 block of Knollwood Road, then continuing without stopping, at 3:41 a.m. on Oct. 16, police said. Horn, who had a BAC of 0.20%, was found in the 100 block of Knollwood Road after officers followed an oil trail from the crash, police said.

FIREARMS VIOLATION

MANOR TWP.: Teakesha Ginnail Kabani, 43, of Virginia, was charged with firearm not to be carried without a license after she was found with a 9mm handgun in the cupholder of her vehicle during a traffic stop at Columbia and Yale avenues at 12:32 a.m. on Oct. 16, police said. Kabani does not have a concealed carry license, police said.

RECEIVING STOLEN PROPERTY

MANOR TWP.: Aaron S. Wacker, 46, of Lancaster, was charged with receiving stolen property, driving under the influence, driving without insurance and two other traffic violations after admitting to purchasing a stolen 2004 Honda at Millersville Rad and West Ridge Drive at 6:39 a.m. on Oct. 12, police said. Wacker told officers he had purchased the vehicle but did not make a proper title transfer, left the registration plates on the vehicle when he bought it, was driving with a suspended license and could not provide proof of insurance, police said.

TRESPASS

MANOR TWP.: Steele Christian Wiedrich, 31, who is homeless, was charged with defiant trespass after refusing to leave a residence in the 100 block of Pheasant Ridge Circle, where he had previously been told to leave, at 7:35 a.m. on Oct. 11, police said.

Northern Lancaster County Regional police

CRASH

PENN TWP.: Donald Eugene Greiner III, 36, of Lititz, was charged with accidents involving damage to attended vehicle or property after crashing with another vehicle in the 1000 block of Mountain Road and then fleeing the scene at 2:07 p.m. on Oct. 27, police said.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

WARWICK TWP.: A window to a 2006 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 was smashed in front of a residence in the 600 block of Woodcrest Avenue at 7:35 a.m. on Nov. 1, police said. Glass was found along the residences driveway and inside the vehicle, police said.

DISTURBANCE

EAST PETERSBURG: Loud Christian worship music was heard coming from the backyard of a residence in the 5800 block of Lemon Street at 10:21 p.m. on Oct. 30, disturbing neighbors, police said. The homeowners told officers they were hosting a youth group worship session and were singing music, police said.

FORGERY

PENN TWP.: Katlynn Nicole Bush, 19, address unknown, was charged with forgery after she was found with counterfeit currency, drugs and drug paraphernalia insider her vehicle during a traffic stop in the first block of Fairview Road at 11:41 a.m. on Oct. 28, police said. Bush, who was initially stopped for a vehicle code violation, was also found to have outstanding warrants, police said.

FRAUD

EAST PETERBURG: A caller convinced a resident in the 2000 block of Edgemont Drive to purchase 33 $500 Target gift cards and provide him with the numbers on the cards to be protected from international computer hackers at 8:43 p.m. on Oct. 31, police said. The resident was scammed out of $16,500, police said.

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

PENN TWP.: A resident in the 400 block of South Main Street received numerous calls from Facebook Messenger from an unknown person with a foreign accent pretending to be her friend Richard on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31, police said. The calls came through the Facebook Messenger application on her phone, police said.

THEFT

CLAY TWP.: A pocketknife and cash were stolen from a vehicle in the first block of Clay School Road around 9:06 p.m. on Oct. 31, police said.

Pennsylvania State police

BURGLARY

SALISBURY TWP.: A $369 rifle and ammunition were stolen from a residence on Pequea Avenue sometime between 9:09 p.m. on Oct. 10 and 8:21 p.m. on Oct. 24, police said. The residence showed signs of forced entry, police said.
If it wasnt apparent that conservatives in Lancaster County are fed up with the way schools are run, it certainly is now.

Republicans vying to alter the status quo won big on Tuesday night in contested school board races across the county, including contentious races in Elizabethtown Area and Manheim Township school districts.

The victories, to many, are the fruit of anger and concern felt by Republicans who believed their school boards had lost touch with their communities.

The intense interest in school boards affected other races in this years municipal election and drove turnout, county political leaders said.

Nearly 32% of registered voters in Lancaster County cast a ballot in Tuesdays election, County Commissioner Ray DAgostino, a Republican, said. This is record turnout for an off-year election following a presidential election, with turnout in odd-year elections historically dropping to around 20% in Lancaster County. For comparison, 22.5% of voters turned out in the 2017 municipal election, and 16.7% of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2013 general election, according to county data. Even 2019s high turnout  27.3%  was surpassed on Tuesday.

This was an election where parents came out for the school boards, said Kirk Radanovic, the chair of the Republican Committee of Lancaster County.

Voters in Tuesdays election declared that school boards should be a reflection of what parents -- not teachers unions -- want, Radonovic said.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started and the debate over health precautions such as mask mandates ensued, many Lancaster County parents began to take a more active role at school board meetings. First, it was opposition to masks. Then it was critical race theory and transgender student-athletes. Many expressed frustration over their school boards not taking their complaints seriously.

That prompted some parents to take their advocacy a step further and run for school board.

Elizabethtown

In Elizabethtown, a slate of four conservative Republicans won the four open school board seats on Tuesday. The winners campaigned against government mandates in schools, such as Gov. Tom Wolfs mask mandate for all K-12 students.

People are concerned for their health, no doubt, but theyre also concerned about their freedoms, said Stephen Lindemuth, one of the GOP winners elected in Elizabethtown. Were not anti-vax, were just pro-choice and pro-freedom, and that message resonated with people.

Since the start of the pandemic, Lindemuth said members of the Elizabethtown community began waking up from their political slumber.

Voting isnt enough, he added. They want to get involved. They're seeing some of the things that are happening in our country and our world, and they want to be more activated. And that happens at the local level.

His wife and fellow school board member-elect, Danielle Lindemuth, echoed the notion that national issues are motivating voters, though she would not say what those issues are.

The Lindemuths were endorsed by Free PA, a self-described group of like-minded patriots that emerged in 2020 out of the ReOpen PA movement to end COVID-19 restrictions. Free PA and its county chapters have become an organizing force at school board meetings, calling parents to action to oppose any COVID-19 prevention measures and critical race theory teachings in schools.

The content students are taught in the classroom is also of top concern to voters in Elizabethtown, Stephen Lindemuth said.

[Parents] are concerned about their children, and what theyre being taught, he said. That turns into political turnout in a year like this.

The Lindemuths became active participants in school board meetings this year, vocalizing their opposition to critical race theory teachings, as well as mask and vaccine mandates.

Voters in our area are ready to see a change, and have seen that we have stood up for them even without being a part of the board, Danielle Lindemuth said.

One of those voters was Greg Fouse, 61, who voted for E-towns Republican candidates at the Lifegate Church polling site.

Ive been paying attention to whats been going on in school board meetings across the country and I am totally against critical race theory being taught in our schools, Fouse said Tuesday. Im totally against the government thinking they have a better idea how to teach our children than we do.

Fouse has one grandchild in private school while the rest attend public school. However, if he could afford it, every single one of his grandchildren would be in private school.

I am really disgusted with what our public schools are doing with our children today, he said.

Kristy Moore, one of three Democrats who went up against the Lindemuths and the other two GOP winners, said she was saddened that national issues that arent relevant in Elizabethtown are being used to attract votes at the local level.

I think this national narrative that includes things like critical race theory and transgender athletes -- I think that it just took over, which is sad, because they are things that arent even real issues, said Moore, who is also district leader for the E-town Democrats. The media people consume at the national level made everyone afraid of something that didnt exist.

Manheim Township

These same issues were of concern to voters in Manheim Township, too.

Township resident Rafael Mirabal said he supported all of the Republican candidates down ballot on Tuesday, who he said share his Christian values. But it was the school board race -- namely, concerns about implementing critical race theory -- that drove him to vote, he said.

To Courtney Morton, the Manheim Township Democrats district director, these hot-button issues were all propaganda fed to voters from the national level.

Things that had nothing to do with our school system were brought in and convinced people of something that didnt exist, Morton said.

Republicans regained control of the Manheim Township school board for the first time since 2017. Four Republicans -- Erin Hoffman, Keith Krueger, Michael Landis and Kim Romano -- and one Democrat -- incumbent and current school board President Nikki Rivera -- notched victories Tuesday night, according to unofficial returns (120 mail-in ballots still need to be tallied, election officials said Wednesday, enough to potentially reverse Riveras 25-vote margin). Other incumbents in the race -- current board Vice President Joyce Stephens and John Smith -- lost their seats.

People simply wanted to be heard, and thats what the Republican slate brought to the table, Hoffman said.

People want to feel they are being heard and represented. A lot of people didnt feel that way, she said. In this election a light went off that the best way to have their voices heard was voting.

Stephens said when she voted to require masks in school in August, she knew she might lose support in the election. She doesnt regret her stand on masking, she said.

The world came out to vote, and obviously people felt passionately, she said.

Its sad, she said, that local races like school boards have become so divisive over issues like masks and critical race theory when the focus should be on providing a high quality education to children.

I do feel that sometimes weve lost what the purpose of public schools was, and its to educate all children, she said. Its not necessarily meant to cater to every individual interest.

Carter Walker and Ashley Stalnecker contributed reporting.
AMMAN, Jordan (AP)  A Jordanian prince who was put under house arrest by his half-brother, King Abdullah II, in the spring is still not free, his mother alleged, drawing new attention to a scandal that exposed the typically guarded royal family to rare public scrutiny.

The rift between Abdullah and Prince Hamzah erupted in April, when the king confined the popular younger royal to his home, alleging he had conspired with others to destabilize the kingdom. Hamzah denied the claims and alleged corruption at the highest levels.

Hamzah hasn't been seen in public for months. The king has said the matter is being dealt with by the family, and that Hamzah is under his care. Separately, Hamzah's purported co-conspiratorsa former head of the royal court and a distant relative of the king  were convicted of sedition by Jordan's state security court this summer and each sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Late Wednesday, Hamzah's mother Noor, a former queen, made a rare public comment about the scandal in a tweet marking the birthday of her granddaughter Zein. Inshallah, her father will be justly freed ASAP, and able to provide a natural, hopeful and uplifting and genuine Jordanian upbringing for her and all the family," Noor wrote.

She did not provide details about Hamzah's situation.

Noor was the fourth wife of the late King Hussein, Abdullah's father. She has lived outside Jordan for years, mostly in the United States, She briefly commented on her son's detention in the spring.

The royal court declined comment Thursday.

Hamzah's role in the royal rift has been at the center of clashing narratives. He is either a popular champion of ordinary Jordanians suffering from economic mismanagement and corruption, or a disgruntled royal who never forgave Abdullah for taking away his title of crown prince in 2004.

The scandal provided a rare glimpse at the inner workings of Jordan's ruling family, which has typically been guarded and private. Criticism of the king and his family are considered a red line in public discourse that Jordanians must not cross.
In the Oct. 21 article Protests, pandemic tested Sorace in her first term, LNP | LancasterOnline reported that City of Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace believes the citys finances remain unstable.

A growing imbalance between how much money the city raises and its overall expenses, combined with a dwindling cash reserve, is threatening to send the city toward municipal bankruptcy in the next few years if it is not addressed, the article stated.

The solution, Sorace said, lies with property tax reform and giving cities another way to raise funds.

While I am a supporter of property tax reform, let me attempt to explain why I am troubled by the mayors argument.

On Jan. 1, 2015, the Lancaster city general fund had a fund balance of about $10 million; these are the resources the city has available to offset any deficit that year.

For 2015 and the following five years, the city predicted deficits totaling almost $12 million, or about $2 million each year.

If these $12 million in losses had occurred, the city would have had wiped out its $10 million fund balance and ended up $2 million in the hole at the end of 2020.

But those predicted deficits were incorrect. Instead of a $12 million loss, there was an overall increase of $5 million in those years. So, as of Jan. 1, 2021, the citys fund balance was $15 million  the original $10 million plus the additional $5 million.

Simply put, its misleading to claim that a structural deficit exists or that there are diminishing fund balances.

The city administration, headed by the mayor, with input from all the city departments, has assembled these budgets and submitted them to Lancaster City Council for approval. Each year, the costs include 100% for all staff positions in the budget, even though not all positions will be filled for the entire year.

In presenting the 2021 budget to City Council, the city administration projected underspending the 2020 salary level by $2 million. Similar, substantial savings can be expected in ensuing years.

This overbudgeting of salary expenses is one of the main reasons that projected deficits do not occur. The city knows this, and thus its use of the term structural deficit is misleading.

There is a good case to be made for real estate tax reform in Pennsylvania. But this is not it.

I wish the city, LNP | LancasterOnline and the Hourglass Foundation, as they make the case for tax reform in Pennsylvania, would be more accurate in how they depict the current financial circumstances existing in Lancaster city. The residents of the city deserve to know the true financial picture.

As stated earlier, I certainly understand the need for some form of state tax reform that would enable the city to increase its earned income tax revenue and reduce its reliance on real estate taxes. Most residents of the city, including me, would welcome this.

However, the justification should not be based on overstated dire economic circumstances facing the city, but rather on the desire to reduce the real estate tax burden on city properties.

Arthur Morris was the City of Lancasters mayor from 1980 to 1990.
THE ISSUE

As LNP | LancasterOnlines Dan Nephin reported Tuesday, two former Lancaster city police officers who were fired last month for submitting falsified COVID-19 vaccination cards may have violated federal law, according to warnings issued by the FBI this year. If you did not receive the vaccine, do not buy fake vaccine cards, do not make your own vaccine cards, and do not fill-in blank vaccination record cards with false information, the FBI and Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General warned earlier this year. Thats exactly what Heather Schaeffer and Benjamin Lapp did, according to documents related to their firing, which LNP | LancasterOnline obtained through a Right-to-Know Law request. The Lancaster County District Attorneys Office opened a criminal investigation Sept. 29.

Here are some facts in the case of former police officers Schaeffer, who according to Nephin was sworn in March 17, 2017, and fired Oct. 20, and Lapp, who was sworn in Aug. 10, 2016, and fired Oct. 18.

 They swore an oath to discharge their duties with fidelity.

 Instead, they squandered their jobs, which paid Schaeffer a base salary of more than $72,000 and Lapp a base salary of more than $79,000, over falsified vaccination cards.

 The COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe, effective and free.

 Lancaster city employees arent even required to get vaccinated against COVID-19, though they must disclose their vaccination status to their supervisors. We believe that COVID-19 vaccination should be mandatory, that the police credo of protect and serve ought to extend to protecting public health, especially as police officers often find themselves in close proximity to other people. But police unions across the nation have resisted mandatory vaccination. Lancaster city only strongly encourages COVID-19 vaccination, requiring the unvaccinated to wear masks in city buildings and in city vehicles if theyre not riding alone. Thats a pretty low bar to have to clear.

 And then theres this obvious fact: Police officers are supposed to enforce laws, not break them. Those who arent willing to follow laws  such as those prohibiting forgery and fraud, for instance  shouldnt be in the business of enforcing them.

The actions of Schaeffer and Lapp, as recounted in their termination documents, defy reason and understanding.

As Nephin reported, Schaeffer got a blank vaccination card from her cousin, who is in the military and involved in vaccination efforts. She then made a copy and sold it to Lapp for $20, according to the documents. Fake vaccine information was filled out on the cards.

So Lapp paid $20 for an illegally procured vaccination card instead of getting vaccinated for free.

The experience of reading Lapps and Schaeffers termination documents is akin to watching a car crash happen in slow motion and hoping someone will slam on the brakes to avert disaster.

According to those documents, Schaeffer filled out Lapps card for him, so it would not look like his handwriting. And she used his wifes vaccination information to fill in the card. Schaeffer admitted to using her aunts vaccination information on her own forged card.

Lapp admitted during an interview with investigators that he was aware Officer Schaeffer had other fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards and was possibly selling them, but nevertheless failed to notify a supervisor. He also admitted that he approached two other officers and told them he knew someone who could get them blank vaccination cards, but those officers  wisely, honorably  did not take Lapp up on his offer.

According to the termination documents, Schaeffer used her own cousin  who clearly ought to face consequences, too  so she could perpetrate a scam on her employer. And then Schaeffer and Lapp were foolish enough to be heard openly speaking about having fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards.

They also failed to appear at their due process hearings, submitting written statements instead that said they had nothing further to add.

This was not merely conduct unbecoming an officer, and unethical conduct that rendered Schaeffer and Lapp unfit to serve as police officers, as their termination documents stated, it was incredibly reckless.

They have a right to appeal, but we hope the police union takes the loss on this one. The firing of Schaeffer and Lapp seems entirely fair. They have burned their credibility; the union shouldnt throw its credibility into the bonfire, too.

No criminal charges yet have been filed, but we hope the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office and FBI take this matter seriously. Civilians need to see that police officers who are accused of break laws arent given special treatment.

And, as Nephin reported, cases targeting fake and stolen vaccine cards have been filed and prosecuted in the months since the COVID-19 vaccine became widely available.

A Michigan nurse was arrested and charged by federal authorities for allegedly stealing or embezzling COVID-19 vaccination cards from a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, along with vaccine lot numbers necessary to make the cards appear legitimate  and then reselling those cards and information to individuals within the metro Detroit community for $150 to $200 each, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Eastern District of Michigan. (We feel compelled to mention yet again that COVID-19 vaccination is free.)

A Chicago pharmacist was arrested in August on charges he sold 125 authentic vaccination cards for about $10 each, Nephin reported.

And the FBI is investigating accusations that three Vermont state troopers were involved in a scheme to create fraudulent vaccination cards; those troopers resigned in August and September, Nephin noted.

The case of Schaeffer and Lapp raises questions that go beyond legality. We continue to be saddened by those who wont get vaccinated against a virus that has killed more than 750,000 Americans. We understand that, tragically, vaccination has been turned into a weapon of the culture wars.

But more than 425 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Volumes of data show that the vaccines are safe.

What is not safe: Falsely claiming to have been vaccinated, potentially putting others at risk of contracting a highly transmissible, dangerous virus. That is selfish and irresponsible.

Election workers

We would like to extend our great thanks to the Lancaster County residents who worked the polls on Election Day. The job isnt glamorous, but its essential. Democracy wouldnt work without you.

We encourage younger county residents to consider working the polls next year. The work lasts all of Election Day and requires training, but youll be paid for your efforts. The seniors who have served election after election, year after year, could use some relief. See vote.pa.gov for more details.
WITF reporter Brett Sholtis spent the last year and a half shining a light on people with mental health issues and how their encounters with police and the judicial system often result in incarceration rather than necessary treatment.

That reporting included the story of a young woman with severe mental illness whose condition deteriorated as she sat in a Bucks County jail. As a result of the story, she was transferred to a state hospital.

That is just one example of how high-impact, local journalism can help a community assess its problems and look at ways to solve them, says Scott Blanchard, senior editor of WITF news and StateImpact Pennsylvania, a collaborative reporting effort covering the states energy economy.

I think we know, and there have been studies that show us, how important it is to have strong, independent local journalism in communities, he says. When that is present, civic participation increases, accountability of public officials and elected officials increases, and those are the kinds of things that are part of healthy communities.

Unfortunately, a growing number of communities across the United States are losing their source of independent local journalism. With the closing of some 1,800 newspapers since 2004, some two-thirds of American counties lack a local newspaper and many others have ghost newspapers that lack routine reporting on news such as local government meetings, leaving residents in the dark about proposed tax hikes or important policy issues.

The Lancaster County Local Journalism Fund, an initiative seeded with a $500,000 contribution from the Steinman Foundation, is dedicated to ensuring Lancaster County does not suffer the same fate.

Begun last year in partnership with the Lancaster County Community Foundation, the fund has a mission of supporting, protecting and expanding independent local journalism by awarding grants to local organizations engaged in investigative and public interest journalism and media literacy.

The fund is administered by an independent board of managers composed of community leaders and journalists, says board member Susan Eckert, a former president of the United Way of Lancaster County.

The need to support local journalism is greater now than ever before, says board member Stephen Medvic, an F&M government professor who has taught a course on Media and Politics for the past quarter century.

Local journalism is under assault, he says. The kind of market pressures are such that were really losing local journalism around the country, and its a terrible loss.

Lancaster is blest to have LNP, says Bob Bee general manager of abc27. There are counties all over the United States that dont have local journalists dedicated to serving that community, and thats just tragic.

Bee says numerous factors are challenging the health of local journalism, including the publics growing reliance on social media platforms, which often offer biased information without the rigorous fact-checking and regulations required of professional journalists, or the consequences for publishing falsehoods.

It is important to help people recognize that there is something called fake news, Eckert says. Outlets like social media have no journalistic standards to provide facts and accuracy. We really need to help people understand the difference between objective journalism and opinion.

A recent Pew Research study finds that Americans are far more trusting of their local news sources than of national news or social media. Add the fact that what happens in city, county and state government affects peoples daily lives more than anything on the national level, Medvic says, and the health of local journalism becomes even more important.

You have the big guys, the networks, the CNNs, but local journalism is what builds that local community, says Enelly Betancourt, a staff writer with LNP | LancasterOnline for 27 years and editor of LaVoz Lancaster, which focuses on the Hispanic community. How else would people have conversations about affordable housing, or the rate of crime in the Lancaster County community or whats going on in our schools? A community that doesnt have that is a community that does not grow.

Sometimes that impact on our daily lives is very simple.

Through LaVoz, Betancourt has not only delivered the news, but also important information on basic topics such as housing and public health in a language most familiar to readers who are trying to adapt to a new life in a new country.

Sometimes, a simple call to a newspaper or TV station can have a big impact on just one life.

Kendra Nichols, an abc27 investigative reporter, recently reported on an area family whose above-ground pool collapsed, sending thousands of gallons of water into their basement. When their insurance company refused to cover the damage, they reached out to abc27 for help. After the stations investigation, the insurance company reversed its decision.

Local journalists, on a day-to-day basis, help their local residents traverse the very complex waters of contracts and government, and that is a benefit, Bee says.

As much as the public benefits from local journalism, it can also play a role in enhancing it, Eckert says. The Local Journalism Fund board plans to create opportunities for people to share what they feel are important issues facing their communities. The public can also donate to the Local Journalism Fund during this years Extraordinary Give on Nov. 19 or by visiting lancfound.org/fund/localjournalism.

Bee would add one more suggestion:

Teach your children to read the paper, watch the news, learn about where they live every day, he says. Theres nothing more important for our democracy.

The fund is open to anyone involved in local journalism. To inquire about grant opportunities, email Lauren Frick at lfrick@steinmancommunications.com.
91 % of Californians Voted by Mail in Gov. Recall Election

California Secretary of state Shirley N. Weber has certified the votes from the Sept. 14, 2021, California Gubernatorial Recall Election. The election marked the second time since 1913 that a recall petition made it to the polls in California.

The results for the question on the ballot asking whether Gov. Gavin Newsom should be recalled were: 4,894,473 yes votes and 7,944,092 nos.

California election law requires results for each replacement candidate to be tabulated and recorded. They can be found here.

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The leading replacement candidate was Larry Elder who garnered 3,563,867 votes. His tally counted for 48.4% of all votes for replacement candidates. Almost 5.5 million voters left their response blank for who they believed the replacement candidate should be.

Despite the ongoing uncertainties of the pandemic, I am encouraged that millions of Californians were still committed to participating in the California Gubernatorial Recall Election  nearly 3.5 million more than participated in the 2003 recall election, Secretary Weber said after announcing the certification of the vote. As Ive said before, democracy matters to Californians and giving them the option to participate early by mail, at secure drop-off locations or safely in person has clearly reinforced their commitment to making their voices heard.

In total, there were 22,057,154 registered voters (as of August 30, 2021), a state record for California. A total of 12,892,578 votes were cast  3,479,084 more votes than were cast in the last statewide gubernatorial recall election in 2003.

The California Secretary of States office made a substantial effort to conduct the election as smoothly and effectively as possible considering the unprecedented challenges pandemic safety restrictions presented. An online system for tracking mail-in ballots in real time was just one of a number of innovations implemented to give voters confidence that their voices would be heard.

91 % of all votes cast in the recall election were submitted via the mail-in option. Voting by mail in the United States started in the late 1800s. But in a first-in-the-nation execution, California mailed ballots to every registered voter in the state, a move voting rights advocates praised for setting new standards for expanding enfranchisement.

I also want to commend the states elections officials and poll workers for stepping up to ensure the recall ran so smoothly, Webber said. The short timeline and the logistics of providing voter information, ensuring access to the election, securing the ballots and protecting the health and safety of voters were a challenging endeavor. Their effectiveness at delivering an accessible, fair and secure election under these conditions deserves our respect. I am proud to serve with them in the administration of our democracy.

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The only successful California gubernatorial recall election was held in 2003 when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced Gov. Gray Davis after winning 48.6 %of the vote.

Every California governor since 1960 has faced some form of a recall attempt. Newsoms detractors cited his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as the basis for this most recent attempt.

Since surviving the recall, Newsom has signed 92 % of the bills that have come to his desk into law. Among notable measures are sentencing reform for convicts and increasing commercial real estate taxes to fund affordable housing initiatives and fight homelessness.

Traditionally, we have governors who have been more centrist than Newsom, said Bill Whalen, a policy fellow at the Hoover Institution, in an interview with Newsweek. The Hoover Institution is a conservative think tank at Stanford University in Palo Alto. With the recall now gone, this is a governor who is really not threatened in any way.
A Sword Shall Pierce The Earth

Simeon, (who had tarried in the temple waiting and praying for the coming Messiah told Mary, And a sword shall pierce through your soul also (Luke2:35.) The prophetess, Anna was also there. She too had been waiting with fasting and prayers. Figuratively, a sword is represented in the bible as authority and power and sometimes war. Much of what we believe may not be researched information, nor factual. But, I believe the Bible. And I use it tirelessly for research of the truth. Much of what we believe is what is the perception. If we are not involved or are not a part of the worst which may be happening, it is sometimes unimaginable of how it would be if we were involved in it or a part of it. Right now, it may be inconceivable that we cannot experience a dire famine. Thats because we have never experienced a dire famine of food. Presently, we are experiencing a work force famine. People arent going to work and many less people there are to hire. When you hear from different networks there is a backlog of container ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (major ports in Southern California)

being the worst its ever been and they keep piling up, that means that whatever is in those cargo ships and containers waiting to unload, that the goods are not making it through. If last month there were 97 cargo containers and ships and previously the highest number was about 17 pre-pandemic, that tells us a lot right there. These two ports account for about 40% of all shipping containers entering the U.S. I heard that they were trying to find where to move some of these containers because of the backlog. Previously, we experienced drought. However, if it is not really bad enough, we live through it painlessly, and dont realize its happening. You remember going to the restaurant and the server would only give you water if you asked. We lived through it without much pain. We have and yet have the experience of the worldwide pandemic with millions dying. We felt that strain and we are still feeling it. There are millions of hungry people all over the world. The worlds 10 hungriest countries in 2021: Central African Republic; Chad. Democratic Republic of Congo; Madagascar, Liberia; Haiti; TimorLeste. Sierra Leone. Yemen; Somalia. Between 720 and 811 million people in the world went hungry in 2020, according to the (UN report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.) Looking at the middle of the projected range (768 million), around 118 million more people were facing chronic hunger in 2020 than in 2019.Oct 21, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has set back progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. Current predictions show that the world as a whole  and 47 countries in particular  will fail to achieve even low hunger within the next nine years. COVID isnt the only factor here. Recent reports have shown that undernourishment and hunger were on the rise even before last years global pandemic. Climate crises continues to effect hunger deficiency, but Conflict continues to be the primary driver of hunger  especially within already-vulnerable populations. Conflict devastates food systems, drives up undernourishment and child mortality rates, destabilizes agricultural production, prevents economic investment, and forcibly displaces entire communities. (This report Produced annually by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe.) In North Korea According to the UN World Food Program, around 40 percent of the total North Korean population is estimated to be undernourished. The RFA further reported that North Korea has been short of food this year by about 860,000 tons, which is about two months worth of food for the nation. Referencing the famine in 1994, the North Korean leader urged the officials with directives and strategies. Afghanistan ISLAMABADAfghanistans neighbors have closed their land borders to people trying to flee its new Taliban rulers, trapping tens of thousands of people who are eligible (Im not sure what eligible really means.. what are the requirements in light of the fact that innumerable people are already being let into the United States. Are they eligible?) to resettle in the U.S. and other countries but were unable to enter the airport in Kabul before the international airlift ended. None of Afghanistans airports are currently open, though Qatar has begun efforts to restore flight operations in Kabul.

Thanks for reading! Jeanette Grattan Parker is Founder-Superintendent Todays Fresh Start Charter School 4514 Crenshaw Boulevard, LA 90043 323-293-9826 www.todaysfreshstart.org (Ask Dr. Jeanette TM) [email protected] Inquiring Minds Want To Know-All articles are copyright. All rights reserved. www.todaysfreshstart.org 323-293-9826. 4514 Crenshaw BL, LA 90043 reference ConcernUSA.org (Hopefully, I have not made errors. Tell me if you think I did.)

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Bethany Baptist and Kedren Vaccines Host Mobile Clinic for Baldwin Village Community

People of color representing every hue in the rainbow descended upon the campus of Bethany Baptist Church of West Los Angeles on October 29 to receive COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shoots.

The afternoon fair, hosted by Bethany Baptist, Baldwin Bethany Community Development Corporation and Kedren Vaccines, also offered blood pressure, diabetes and glucose screenings as well as non-perishable food boxes, Visa gift cards, and refreshments courtesy of Earles Grill on Crenshaw Boulevard.

We wanted to help our community here in Baldwin Village and the Crenshaw area by utilizing our facilities to sponsor a vaccination clinic, said Rodman Miles, director of Baldwin Bethany CDC, who was appointed to oversee the event by Bethany Pastor L.A. Kessee.

After hearing Dr. [Jerry] Abraham speak about taking Kedren mobile units out into locations such as ours, I invited Kedren and they invited Charles Drew (School of Medicine), so were forming a partnership to aid the Crenshaw community and we want to continue doing this into 2022, noted Miles, who added that attendees also enjoyed hot dogs, fries and beverages from Earles.

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And everything is free because whatever we need to do to give folks incentive to get the vaccine, thats what well do, he said.

The clinic provided another opportunity for Abraham, director of Kedren Vaccines, and his staff to fulfill their self-described mission of inoculating every community of color in L.A. To that end, the Kedren team presented those who came out with the choice of the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines and booster shot.

Since the vaccines became available, Abraham have partnered with houses of worship and community groups to sponsor clinics throughout the city. In his opinion, no place is off-limits when it comes to distributing the shot to stop the pandemic.

This is how we get the job done the Kedren way  you meet people where they are. We meet people where we live, work, worship, play and where we go to school. We go and we vaccinate the homebound. Thats how you get the job done, insisted Abraham.

You dont sit around and wait in an ivory tower or in some medical mecca and hope and twiddle our thumbs hoping it will all work out. When we expect things to work out like that, people die. The pandemic happened the way it did and were not going to allow that to happen again, he asserted.

So, from now on, were going to democratize health care and take it outside of the four walls of hospitals and clinics. Thats how were going to make our community healthier, happier, live their best life, their highest quality life. Thats ultimately all were trying to do  marching along to the herd immunity that we need in order to end this pandemic.

And even though COVID-19 infections and death rates are decreasing, Abraham is still urging vaccinations because the cases in the African Americans and Latino communities remain higher than in other ethnicities.

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Were asking you to get vaccinated  not only for yourself, not only for your family and your loved ones and community  but because we know this is the best way to be protected and for all of us to be safe, said Abraham.

Dr. Tracey Veal of L.A. County Department of Public Health echoed Abrahams plea, saying, We really need to get the Black community vaccinated. Were at 56% vaccination rates and everybody else is at 70% and 80%. Weve got to get it done for the Black and Brown people before the surge.

The Rev. Dawnesha K. Beaver, Kedren Vaccines program manager, characterized the vaccination campaign by plainly stating, The systematic impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color will only worsen if we do not ensure that every eligible youth and adult has access to these life-saving medications.
Bishop T.D. Jakes and Van Jones Honor Formerly Incarcerated Reentering Society

This Saturday, Nov. 6, Bishop T.D. Jakes, global leader and senior pastor of The Potters House, and Van Jones, CNN contributor, host of the Van Jones Show and The Redemption Project; will honor 125 graduates of the Texas Offender Reentry Initiative (T.O.R.I.) at The Potters House. Jones will deliver the commencement address to the T.O.R.I. graduates, which will be aired on The Potters House Official YouTube Channel at 5 p.m. PST.

T.O.R.I., which is celebrating its 16th anniversary this year, has become a nationally revered and trusted knowledge partner with a proven successful model of rehabilitative and recuperative justice that has directly impacted the lives of some 300,000 men, women and their families.

The White House, the Department of Justice, Canadas House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safe and National Security, AT&T and Wal-Mart are a few of the government and corporate entities that have either consulted with T.O.R.I. or have collaborated to glean major learnings from the Dallas-based initiative. T.O.R.I. is uniquely poised to align with key partners looking for programming and curriculum that distinctively speaks to the ever-growing needs and inequality realities facing many families across the United States.

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American prisons are built on the idea of retributive justice, where the primary goal is to punish and seek vengeance, said Jones. Its a model that aims to incapacitate people who commit crimes and create powerful, painful incentives for them to act right in the future. This system hurts prisoners, their families and the victims of crime. This is a destructive cycle that must change. Restoration brings healing to all. T.O.R.I. is one of the leading programs helping to bring healing and restoration.

With more than 700,000 prisoners reentering society each year, there is an increasingly critical need for programs like T.O.R.I. across the country.

T.O.R.I. is about helping a person become whole again and shifting the narrative on those formerly incarcerated, not just about giving someone a job or housing, said Jakes. We must all rally around changing the system so families can be healed and revived. We need more individuals, corporations and foundations to get engaged so we can serve more people and end the cycle of incarceration indefinitely.

T.O.R.I. is an intensive 12-month case management program that offers six critical services that the majority of formerly incarcerated clients need and which have proven successful in the rehabilitation process, including: employment, housing, education, family reunification, health care and spiritual guidance. The program aims to reduce the rate of recidivism, diminish the negative perception of ex-offenders and their families, and ensure a safer and healthier family and environment for future generations.
Brazilians Observe Mes da Consciencia Negra  Brazils Black History Month

The Brazilian state of Bahia kicked off Black Consciousness Month with a promise of educating the community about the trials, tribulations, and accomplishments of Black people throughout South and Latin America.

During November, many in the northeastern state have vowed to recognize Black history and cultural awareness ahead of the nationwide observance of Black Consciousness Day on November 20.

Mes da Consciencia Negra [Brazils Black History Month] is related to the commemoration of the death of Zumbi of Palmares on November 20, 1695, a holiday in many Brazilian cities, tweeted historian and Howard University Professor Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo.

Born free in 1655, Zumbi dos Palmares counted among the last military leaders of the Quilombo  or warrior village.

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According to historians, the Quilombo dos Palmares was a free society, an old South American republic, which included the present-day Brazilian coastal state of Alagoas, Brazil.

Today, Zumbi is known as one of the great historical leaders of Brazil, the historians wrote.

The historians continued:

At approximately six years old, the Portuguese captured Zumbi from the Palmares region and given as a slave to a Portuguese priest, Antonio Melo.

Baptized Francisco, Zumbi was taught Latin, the Portuguese religion and language, and served the Catholic mass. In 1670, at 15 years old, Zumbi escaped and returned to his birthplace. He soon became known as a Capoerae/Capoiera master in the roda (wheel or circle) of Palmares practitioners of this African martial art.

By his early twenties, he became a respected military strategist. Zumbi eluded the Portuguese and continued the Quilombo resistance. Its believed that someone betrayed Zumbi, which led to the Portuguese destroying the Palmares compound. Zumbi was captured and killed on November 20, 1695.

Today, the entire month is a celebration of Black Brazilian history, Dr. Araujo wrote.

Brazils Black communitys progress includes a nearly two-decade-old law that requires the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history and culture in schools.

The text of the law states that every school in the nation should teach the History of Africa and Africans, the struggle of black people in Brazil, Afro-Brazilian culture, and the contributions of black people in forming national society, including social, economic, and political areas relevant to the History of Brazil.

According to the Middlebury Institute Network, with Brazils academic reputation and its growing racial divide, many policymakers believe that the law, known as The Status Quota Law, is the only way out.

Gisele Alves, a Brazilian native with African ancestry who lives in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Rio de Janerio, told the Middlebury Institute Network that she probably would not have gone to college without help from the state.

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I thought I was going to finish school, find work in a little shop, get married and pregnant, and that would be it, she stated.

Because of the law, Gisele received acceptance to the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Many students like Gisele will also get accepted thanks to this new law, officials wrote. Even though [the law] will be discontinued in 10 years, this law is the next step for Brazil in guaranteeing equal access to education and a better future for all Brazilians.
Cal DOJ: Look Out for Illegal Cannabis Edibles Mimicking Popular Snacks, Candy

Last week California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a consumer alert warning Californians that cannabis-infused edibles are being packaged and sold as copycat versions of popular food and candy products.

The California Department of Justice is advising consumers that illegal and unregulated edibles may contain dangerously high levels of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in Cannabis, and they are available in packaging nearly identical to those of popular brands like Cheetos, Fruity Pebbles, and Sour Patch Kids.

Bonta is urging Californians not to consume these dangerous knockoffs and to report the products if they encounter them.

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While cannabis-infused edibles packaged to look like our favorite brands may seem harmless and fun, the dangers of consuming unregulated and untested cannabis products are high, particularly for children and teens, Bonta said. The fact is: here in California, we have a safe, regulated, and legal cannabis market. But if a product is being marketed to children, mimicking a well-known consumer brand, and advertising sky-high levels of THC  its not likely to be a part of it.

Cannabis-infused edibles describes any food or drink containing marijuana or any of its active ingredients, most often THC and cannabidiol (CBD), according to the Recovery Village Drug and Alcohol Rehab (RVDAR), a California drug rehabilitation and substance abuse treatment program.

Generally, the edible product is infused with cannabis extract. Marijuana is heated in an oil-based liquid to obtain the extract, RVDAR explains.

Compared to other ways of consuming marijuana, edibles are known for producing a delayed high. Further, they may be more discreetly consumed than marijuana from a blunt, vape pen or bong, according to RVDAR.

The California cannabis industry is regulated by the states Business and Professions Code and is covered by the Medicinal and Adult Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA).

According to Bonta, the edible products sold by unlicensed operators, often contain levels of THC that exceed the legal limit, and are advertised to youth in violation of MAUCRSA, which sets up a basic framework for product licensing, oversight and enforcement.

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Cannabis businesses have to follow the same rules that other businesses in California follow. For example, there are rules in the statutes about waste disposal, protecting the environment, vehicle registration and paying taxes.

Bontas office makes the following recommendations:

IDENTIFY LOOKALIKE PRODUCTS:

Californians should look for copycat packaging with language that indicates that the product contains cannabis  such as medicated, THC, CBD, keep out of reach of children and animals, and/or an image of a cannabis leaf.

In California, legal cannabis products must be affixed with the universal symbol that includes an encircled triangle with a marijuana leaf and exclamation mark in it. It letters CA are imprinted below it. If you see indications of copycat packaging or do not see the universal symbol, the product is illicit  and may be dangerous.

KNOW THE HEALTH RISKS:

Illegal cannabis products present a risk to public health and safety. Children can experience a variety of delayed symptoms upon ingesting cannabis edibles, including, but not limited to difficulty breathing, lethargy, dizziness, nausea, and loss of coordination.

Illegal products made with synthetic cannabinoids may pose additional health risks. Synthetic cannabinoids can be highly toxic and are illegal in the state of California. Side effects of consuming synthetic cannabinoids include rapid heart rate, agitation, vomiting, trouble breathing, psychosis, among others.

In recent years, California has seen a surge in pediatric exposure and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) visits related to cannabis edibles, as well as an increase in children as young as 12 who are intentionally using cannabis products.

In 2020, there were 1,173 calls to the Poison Control Center for services related to children aged 0-19 ingesting cannabis products. This is up from 404 calls in 2016, with the biggest increase for children aged 0-5.

California has also seen a rise in emergency room visits related to cannabis poisoning among young children. In 2016, there were approximately 21 visits per one million Californians aged 0-5. In 2020, there were approximately 113 visits.

Bontas office insists that if a child has accidentally consumed these illicit products, monitor them for symptoms of intoxication. Californias Poison Control System has a 24-hour hotline available for immediate assistance.

The toll-free phone number is (800) 222-1222. Language interpreter services are offered in over 200 different languages and calls are kept confidential.

Upon encountering lookalike cannabis-infused edible products, Bonta is asking the public to file a complaint with the Department of Justice and with the Department of Cannabis Control.
CD-9 Welcomes Residents Applying for BIG:LEAP Program

The field office of Councilmember Curren Price, Jr. (CD 9) proved popular to South L.A. residents, who lined up to apply for the BIG:LEAP  the Basic Income Guaranteed: Los Angeles Economic Assistance Program.

Through BIG:LEAP, 3,000 qualified recipients will get $1,000 per month starting the end of January 2022. The payments will be issued for 12 months with no-strings-attached or conditions on how the funds must be spent.

The only requirements are that applicants must live in the city of Los Angeles, be over 18-years-old, have at least one dependent, have income at or below 100% of the federal poverty line, and experienced economic and/or medical hardship due to COVID-19. Judging from the number of folks in line, many people meet the stipulations.

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The district I represent has high rates of poverty and high rates of homelessness. I wanted to identify a program that we could utilize to try to alleviate some of that. We know the program has been successful in other communities on a much smaller scale. I said I want to make that same kind of commitment in my district, said Price.

Initially, Councilman Price designated $6 million from his public safety fund with the plan of providing 500 families with $1,000 per month. However, Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson (CD 8) and Council President Nury Martinez (CD 6) contributed funds along with Mayor Eric Garcetti, who allocated $30 million, making BIG:LEAP a citywide program endowed with a total of $40 million to aid families living in poverty.

According to Price, BIG:LEAP is an important opportunity to see how effective this kind of program can be. It will certainly benefit the individuals that are involved and their families, but it also will provide good data for the City as we reconfigure programs, figure out how we can assistance programs more effective, more innovative and more appropriate.

Two local residents anticipated that the program would relieve some of their financial worries if they were deemed eligible to participate. Shamane Draper noted that the extra money would help her provide for her four-year-old son and two grandchildren.

I would take care of my family and take care of bills. Because of COVID-19, its been a hardship for me and my family, so I would be really thankful if I am selected, said Draper.

Lisa Lampkins shared comparable remarks, stating, Im the mother of five and it would really help us. I could catch up on my bills and be able to provide more for my family. Interested persons have until November Sunday, 7 to apply for BIG:LEAP. Applications can be submitted online at bigleap.lacity.org or in person at Prices field office, 4301 S. Central Avenue in Los Angeles. The office hours during the application period are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. The weekend hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Other sites in CD 9, including All Peoples Community Center, L.A. Trade-Tech College and Ascot, Junipero Serra, and Vermont Square Branch Libraries, will also accept applications. The locations will offer computers, Wi-Fi, and language support.

For more information about BIG:LEAP, call (323) 846-2651.
COVID-19: As Winter Approaches, Gov. Newsom Focuses on Waning Immunity

On Oct. 27, Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference after receiving a Moderna booster shot to augment the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine he took in April.

The governor said he deliberately opted for a different vaccine as a booster to emphasize the Centers of Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance that it is safe for people to mix and match vaccines.

The governor encouraged eligible Californians to get their booster shots as well, warning that initial COVID-19 shots required to be designated fully vaccinated might not be enough to inoculate individuals who are at a higher risk of getting the disease.

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Any state vision has to be realized at the local level. Localism is determinative, Gov. Newsom said, thanking Alameda County public health officials and workers, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan and Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Oakland) for their leadership in spearheading the vaccination of 84 % of all people in their county. Newsom was speaking at Asian Health Services, a community clinic in Oakland.

The governor also thanked Bonta for working to make sure the state is supporting these efforts not only advance the cause of getting more of the unvaccinated vaccinated, but now the cause that unites us here today, and that is encouraging more boosters so that we can address the legitimate concerns of waning immunity, Newsom said.

The governor pointed out that he is not just promoting boosters. He is also pushing a message of caution because of what he anticipates might happen this winter based on a spike in COVID cases around this same time last year.

On the 24th of October, we had about six thousand cases. One month later, we had 18,000 cases. A month after that, we had 54,000 cases  basically a tripling of cases every month. That was last year, he said. And we all remember what occurred last winter in December and January.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, immunity against COVID-19 drops to as low as 20% four months after the second vaccine dose.

On Oct. 21, the CDC expanded eligibility for the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots for those 65 years and older, 18 years and older who live in long-term care settings, 18 years and older who have underlying medical conditions, and 18 years and older who work or live in high-risk settings.

The California Health and Human Services Agency echoed the governors push for booster shots on Twitter.

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Get boosted, CA! #COVID19 vaccine boosters will help keep our immunities strong and our families safer. Find out if youre eligible & get yours today, the tweet read.

Newsom offered words of encouragement to Californians who he says might be weary of living with COVID restrictions.

Well get through this. Were making progress. Were turning the corner but lets get these boosters, lets continue to be vigilant, lets continue to reach out to those maybe on the fence, maybe hesitant about getting a vaccine, and encourage them to get a vaccine, Newsom said.

More than 80 % of Californians who are eligible to take the COVID vaccine have received at least one shot, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Bonta, who replaced her husband Attorney General Rob Bonta in the California Legislature, is a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus. She took a booster shot with the governor.

When we talk about being a resilient community, it requires resilient action, said Bonta. The simplest thing we can do right now is to go to our trusted providers to ensure we are getting our boosters. As we consider taking care of our communities, it requires every individual to act with resilience.

To check eligibility or make an appointment for a COVID shot, visit MyTurn.CA.gov

California Black Medias coverage of COVID-19 is supported by the California Health Care Foundation.
COVID-19 Cases Rise Slightly, Cases Among Healthcare Workers Have Decreased

There is urgency for those unvaccinated to get vaccinated, and for those eligible for an additional dose because of their age, underlying health conditions, or occupation, to get their booster, said Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, Director of Public Health.

She continued, We saw last year how damaging the virus can be and how colder weather and increased intermingling leads to more transmission. We are lucky that this year we have powerful vaccines that can effectively blunt transmission. However, there is only a small window of time still available to improve vaccination coverage across the county before the holiday season takes off.

COVID-19 cases have decreased nationally among healthcare workers from 257 at the beginning of October to 166 towards the end of the month. Out of the more recent cases, 78 cases were reported among vaccinated healthcare workers and 88 among unvaccinated workers.

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At the beginning of the pandemic, 46,376 healthcare workers and first responders tested positive for COVID-19. Most of the deaths among healthcare workers happened between July 2020 and February 2021 with 300 passing away to date. Since October 2, seven healthcare workers have passed away from COVID-19.

Public Health reported skilled nursing facilities are 95% fully vaccinated. Healthcare workers are required to be fully vaccinated and those with medical or religious exemption needing to be tested once or twice a week. Most hospitals and healthcare providers are reporting relatively high rates of vaccination among their employees.

On Monday, November 1, The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) reported 7 new deaths and stated 990 new cases of COVID-19. There were 672 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 with 15% of nearly 9,070,000 individuals testing positive with symptoms.

Public Health identified 1,494,119 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of L.A. County and a total of 26,644 deaths. Cases across the Southland: Los Angeles County shows 1,415,444 cases, Long Beach with 65,141 cases and Pasadena with 13,534 cases.

According to race and ethnicity, COVID-19 statistics show: American Indian/Alaska Native with 2,420; Asian with 67,706; Black with 68,130; Hispanic/Latino with 729,049; Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander with 5,216; White with 175,547; those of other race and ethnicity with 119,785 and 247,591 under investigation.

Lets do everything possible to make sure scores of people dont spend the holidays away from those they love because they are sick or hospitalized with the virus, said Ferrer.

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For more detailed information on COVID-19 vaccination plans in L.A. County and to sign up for a vaccination newsletter, visit: www.VaccinateLACounty.com

For more information and statistics on COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, please visit http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/

Always check with trusted sources for the latest accurate information about novel coronavirus:

*Los Angeles County Department of Public Health http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/

*California Department of Public Health https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/ncov2019.aspx

*Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019- ncov/index.html Spanish https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index-sp.html

*World Health Organization https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus

*LA County residents can also call 2-1-1
COVID-19 scams target Blacks, other people of color FTC report reveals new and continuing financial fraud

Just as the annual holiday season of shopping and celebrating nears, a major federal financial regulator released new research detailing how communities of color not only are targeted by well-known types of predatory lenders, but new forms of fraud seek to exploit consumers in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Serving Communities of Color summarizes the agencys five-year effort focused on the financial ills imposed upon communities of color. Since 2016, FTC filed more than 25 actions alleging conduct that either targeted or disproportionately impacted communities of color. Cases challenged unlawful practices by auto sellers, for-profit schools, money-making opportunities, student debt relief schemes, and more.

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Beyond these financial transactions, the report also notes that many of the payment methods used by Black and Latino consumers provide fewer fraud protections, such as debit cards, cash, and money orders. Although credit card payments afford greater consumer protections, very few complaints filed with FTC by people of color involved this type of payment.

What has become abundantly clear based on research and experience is that fraud, as well as certain other business practices, have a disproportionately negative impact on communities of color, as compared to White communities, states the report. An examination of 23 FTC cases shows that predominantly Black communities are overrepresented in the pool of consumers who lost money.

For example, this June, FTC and the State of Arkansas jointly filed a lawsuit against a scam operation that explicitly appealed to Black applicants who were suffering financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit alleged that the Blessings in No Time program was in fact a pyramid scheme that falsely promised members investment returns as high as 800%. The alleged scams minimum investment required $1,400, but some members paid as much as $67,700. The Texas-based defendants also falsely assured participants they wouldnt lose money and could withdraw at any time with a full refund.

More recently, the FTC on October 15 stopped a prison calling scheme that deceived family and friends of incarcerated individuals with marketing and advertising that promised unlimited minutes on call plans to keep in touch with loved ones while in-person visits were suspended due to COVID-19. Instead, no call time was ever provided. The defendants, inmatecall.com and inmatecallsolutions.com, posed as companies authorized to provide calling services to prisons and jails to bolster the credibility of their false claim. A federal court order now requires that all duped consumers be notified and bans the defendants from future activities.

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When these financial losses are combined with the effects of a national racial wealth gap that found Blacks have only 22 cents for every dollar of wealth held by whites, it becomes disturbingly clear how deceptive and predatory lending significantly diminishes the ability of Black consumers to effectively manage their financial lives. Just as redlining limited where Black people could live, todays predatory lending, like fringe financial services, restricts the ability of Black communities to build wealth.

For example, approximately twice as many consumers in predominantly Black communities, compared to that of white consumers, purchased student debt relief programs and payday loans. But the two top complaints filed by Black consumers with FTC were credit bureaus (21%) and impersonator scams (12.5%). In 2020 alone, the FTC filed or resolved seven debt collection cases against 39 defendants and obtained $26 million in judgments for harmed consumers.

Other types of predatory and deceptive lending include debt collection, bank lending, and auto sales and financing. The agency also found evidence of fraud in health care, identity theft, as well as alleged jobs and money-making opportunities.

For many consumers, car purchases and financing represent the second-largest consumer transaction  after housing costs. Ample evidence of blatant discrimination against Black, Latino, and Native American car buyers included false information on the applications and contracts, and deceptive ads in Spanish.

Research indicates that consumers of color experience discrimination in the sale and financing of cars, and often pay higher prices as a result, states the report.

During the past five years, FTC has brought multiple enforcement actions against auto dealers for deceptive tactics that include advertised prices that were never available to prospective buyers, falsifying financial information in sales, false and/or misleading information, and unfair practices.

Identity theft was discovered in cases where scammers often gain credibility by posing as someone official. For example, one defendant marketed prepaid cards to Black and Latino customers, allegedly saying their cards were like Visa or MasterCard. Instead, consumers either could not use the cards or lost all the money they loaded onto them.

For consumer advocates, these and other recent findings on financial abuses confronting consumers of color deserve even more aggressive enforcement, particularly at the federal level.

Never in United States history have Black and other families of color experienced a fair financial playing field, testified the Center for Responsible Lendings Ashley Harrington before the House Financial Services Committee this spring. And the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated existing disparities. In fact, in many cases, white families will have 5.5 times more savings than Black families to financially withstand the pandemic.

The evidence of financial abuses is ample. The nation needs a new reckoning to correct the wrongs.

###

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at [email protected]
DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM: A HISTORY, A MOVEMENT, A CELEBRATION

Former ballerina, Judy Tyrus, visited Los Angeles to promote her book, DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM: A HISTORY, A MOVEMENT, A CELEBRATION, a book co-written by Tyrus, a longtime company member, and Paul Novosel, a music accompanist for the company and school. The two both shared a love for archiving the history of the organization.

According to the press release, the book looks at the African American history of ballet. With hundreds of sensational photographs, first-hand accounts, archival materials, and well-researched narrative, the book traces the Black dance company from its origins in a Harlem basement to its activism and innovations in virtual performances throughout 2020 and the global pandemic. Its a celebration of the performances, community engagement, and arts education through which the company continues to carry forward the Dance Theatre of Harlems message of empowerment through the arts for all.

The book also places Dance Theatre of Harlem in a historical context with the events happening in the wider world; from the civil rights movement to the companys groundbreaking and sometimes dangerous tours to apartheid South Africa, the Soviet Union, and China. It also tackles the segregation and racism that have troubled the companysand countryshistory, as well the social and political impact it made simply by being Black ballet dancers.

Tyrus wanted to expand her visit to include promoting the book in diverse communities. She stopped in Eso Won Books in the Leimert Park Village, an Afrocentric cultural and creative hub of South L.A. for a book signing and tour of the historical bookstore. Im very happy she stopped in today and signed. This is one of those books that people are going to love. Theyve seen the theatre [company] over the years, and now to have an autographed book, I cant be happier, said James Fugate, founder of Eso Won Books.

As she signed books, Tyrus reflected. Seven years of love went into this. All the images  it was so hard selecting them for the book. There were 450 photos that we originally presented to the publisher. It was a labor of love all the way, she said. Of Eso Won. I love everything about this place. I am coming back! she said.

Tyrus was a principal dancer with DTH for twenty-two years. She made it a point to stop by local dance schools, Debbie Allen Dance Academy (DADA), and Lula Washington Dance Theatre, where ballet is taught to young people of color every day.

The book is meaningful because of its historical value; it brings back to life so many performances and influential works of our friend, Arthur Mitchell, and the wonderful dancers he trained, motivated, and loved, said Lula Washington, Co-founder and artistic director of LWDT. Its paramount that Black dancers and choreographers of today know this history and to see themselves in the historical triumphs of such legendary dancers, said Tamica Washington-Miller, associate director of LWDT.

When asked why Trus and Novosel decided to write the book, Tyrus replied, A single book about the history of Dance Theatre of Harlem has never been written. Someone reading this book will take away with it an appreciation for ballet and that it is for everyone. They will understand more about travel and dance; that it takes a village, that DTH is going strong, that Arthur Mitchells vision of bringing multicultural ballet to the world was realized, and that one should never give up on your dreams.

When asked how the book has been received, Tyrus replied, The reactions have been excited, happy, congratulatory, celebratory, and supportive. Her last thoughts about the book, she reflected, Art elevates the world. We were part of a movement to change the way the world views classical ballet.

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When asked about the mission of the book. Progress has been made in cultural acceptance, but not nearly enough. Through periods of survival, Dance Theatre of Harlem called on the strength of its people, and their belief in its mission, to rise and rise again. DTHs determination to offer representation and opportunity to new generations will carry it into the future. It is our hope that the world will follow its lead.  Judy Tyrus and Paul Novosel.

You can find the book at Eso Won Books https://www.esowonbookstore.com, Barnes and Noble, and at www.kensingtonbooks.com
Defendants in Ahmaud Arbery Case Say Slavery-Era Law Enabled Them to Arrest, Shoot Black Man

In Georgia, defense attorneys are making the case that the three White men involved in killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, were justified by a Civil War-era law instituted to catch runaway slaves.

Travis McMichael, 35, his father, Gregory McMichael, 65, and their neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, 52, plans to defend their actions by claiming they were making a citizens arrest that went awry only after Arbery resisted. When the trio killed Arbery on February 23, 2020, Georgia law allowed almost anyone to arrest another citizen if they had reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion that a suspect had committed a felony.

The state overturned the statute after Arberys murder. Lawmakers introduced and passed the original code in 1863 to capture slaves who had escaped from plantations in the South. They are going to use this law because it wasnt repealed until after Ahmaud Arbery was killed by the McMichael family, and I am not sure were going to have the justice that we should, said Shirley James, publisher of the Savannah Tribune in Georgia.

James said Georgia also employs the Stand-Your-Ground law that allows citizens to use deadly force when confronted with life-or-death situations. The thing that happens a lot, even with George Floyd and a lot of our African Americans who have been unjustly murdered, the victim becomes the criminal, James remarked. They are looking at Arberys life and hes deceased and cant defend himself.

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She added that very few people of color are among the 1,000 prospective jurors, and Glynn County, where the trial will occur, counts as a mostly White area.

I dont think in that county that you will find the kind of objectivity that you need, James demurred. When you think of the mindset of the things going on now with people so free to speak out in reference to their discriminatory attitudes, they have about us 

Recent reports suggest that many U.S. states still have laws that allow for citizens to make arrests. Chris Slobogin, a law professor at Tennessees Vanderbilt University, told Reuters News Service that citizens arrest laws put dangerous powers in untrained hands. Things can get out of control quickly, he said.

Roddy Bryans lawyer, Kevin Gough, told reporters earlier this month that the Citizens arrest is a big part of our case, a big part. Ira Robbins, a law professor at American University in Washington, wrote in an academic paper that many states citizens arrest laws are broad.

In California, for example, someone can arrest an individual for a felony if the person has probable cause to believe it was committed. While recruiting citizens to aid in eradicating crime is a noble idea, Robbins wrote, according to Reuters, strict safeguards are needed to prevent the law being abused.

New York state has the strictest law, holding residents liable for false arrest if no crime was committed, even if they had a reasonable belief, leaving no room for mistakes, Robbins continued.

When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp repealed the law, he said Arbery was the victim of vigilante-style violence that has no place in Georgia and that the statute was ripe for abuse.

The ACLUs Georgia chapter said, the old law was an example of systemic racism and empowered mobs that lynched Black people in more than 500 recorded cases in Georgia between 1882 and 1968.

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The trial of the McMichael family and Bryan is scheduled to begin on February 7, 2022.
Federal Regulators Approve Pfizer Vaccine for Children; Ages 5 to 11 Immediately Eligible for Shots

Children ages 5 to 11 can now receive vaccination against COVID-19. On Tuesday, November 2, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky signed off on a recommendation from the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Dr. Walenskys authorization allows healthcare providers, pharmacies, and clinicians to commence coronavirus vaccine shots to children ages 5 to 11. Officials said shots would become available as early as Wednesday.

The Food and Drug Administration had previously authorized the two-shot regimen. Each vaccine dose for the 5 to 11 age group contains one-third of that used for adolescents and adults.

White House officials have determined that theres enough of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for all 28 million children in America who are between the age of 5 and 11. Pfizer officials said they placed orders for the doses last month, and theyve already begun the process of preparing and packing the vaccines.

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Dr. Walensky had urged regulators to consider all variables. We have been asking when we will be able to expand this protection to our younger children, Dr. Walensky stated during the committee meeting.

As you review the data today, it will be key to keep in mind the specific risks to children from this virus and the pandemic, and to put that risk into the context of other vaccine-preventable diseases, she said.

Dr. Walensky added that committee members should recognize that children have historically received vaccinations against diseases like chickenpox, which reportedly kill far fewer children and put far fewer of them into the hospital than COVID-19.

As you will all be aware, in this most recent Delta [variant] wave, we saw pediatric admission rates higher than they had in any previous wave of the pandemic, reaching a rate of 25 hospitalizations per 100,000 per year in children between the ages of 5 to 11, Dr. Walensky asserted.
Fighting the Cycle of Violence with Stipends and Mentorships

More than 117,000 people are shot in America annually, and gun homicides disproportionately are concentrated in urban areas, particularly in impoverished and underserved communities of color.

According to officials at Advance Peace, a program that provides mentoring, job training, and a $1,000 per month stipend to participants, such neighborhoods often are plagued by homicide rates on par with warzones.

Frequently, both public and community-based systems of care fall short in their efforts to provide responsive opportunities and resources to those most involved with and affected by urban gun violence, officials at the program wrote.

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Because those who are suspected of gun crimes in urban communities have often already been failed by the available systems of care, those who need the services most are least likely to trust the systems that provide them.

A recent example of how the program works centered on 17-year-old Devrick Hill, arrested for allegedly firing multiple weapons out of a car in a fight with gang members.

Advance Peace change agents recruited Hill for the program to help to turn his life around.

The program seeks to steer vulnerable individuals like Hill away from violence.

It provides participants as much as $1,000 each month to meet anti-violence goals like completing classes or acquiring a job.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Advance Peaces fellowship program is now running or set to launch soon in nine cities, including Rochester, N.Y.; Fort Worth, Texas; and Fresno and Sacramento, Calif. Another 18 cities are using elements of the program, according to Advance Peace and law-enforcement officials.

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I know a lot of people who got allowances growing up. I know a lot of people who got a little extra dough when they did well in school, DeVone Boggan, chief executive of Advance Peace, told the newspaper.

These guys havent had a childhood.

The publication reported that Boggan founded the program more than a decade ago in the Bay Area city of Richmond, Calif., to address a growing murder rate.

He hired former gang members and ex-cons to identify and mentor young men who had spent time behind bars for shootings, had been shot themselves, or suspected in recent shootings, the reports author wrote.

In the first five years of the program, 94 percent of the 68 fellows were alive, 79 percent hadnt been arrested or on gun-related charges, and 60 percent had received monetary incentives, according to an evaluation by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a nonprofit research group.

Jason Corburn, a University of California, Berkeley professor who has evaluated the groups work in Sacramento and Stockton, Calif., noted in the article that throughout an 18-month Advance Peace fellowship, less than $20,000 is typically spent on a cohort of 30 to 50 individuals and an average of 20 to 50 shootings are prevented.

If you were an economist, youd say thats a great return on investment, he said.

Advance Peace officials noted that its program interrupts gun violence in American urban neighborhoods by providing transformational opportunities to young men involved in lethal firearm offenses and placing them in a high-touch, personalized fellowship  the Peacemaker Fellowship.

Officials wrote that Advance Peace bridges the gap between anti-violence programming by working with and supporting a targeted group of individuals at the core of gun hostilities.

They also work with a hard-to-reach population at the center of violence in urban areas, thus breaking the cycle of gun hostilities and altering the trajectory of these mens lives.

Advance Peace works with public and community-based stakeholders to establish responsive community-driven strategies that achieve high-impact outcomes for those caught in the cycle of urban gun violence.

Julius Thibodeaux, program manager of Advance Peace Sacramento, and his team of neighborhood change agents co-authored a blog detailing the importance of Advance Peace.

What we used to hear, and our young boys today hear too often, is: Be a man, you little punk. Quit crying and be a man. Wipe those tears and shut up before I give you something to cry for, Thibodeaux asserted.

Yet hes only four years old. Even if he can afford to go to the doctor when he gets older, he probably wont. Weve been conditioned to be tough. To suppress our pain and hide our emotions. All this combines to damage our immune system and our brains ability to make healthy choices. Its no wonder we are suffering from dual epidemics: gun violence and coronavirus, he explained.

The group of change agents led by Thibodeaux insisted that the goal remains to offer real nutrition to the community, which they define as daily doses of love, caring, and support.

We work to boost the immune systems of those traumatized and at the center of gun violence through healthy food and housing, but also through stable mentorship, the agents declared.

We are breaking the cycle of a response to trauma that says, I dont give a [damn] to a healing approach that treats our most vulnerable to get to a place where they say, Maybe I do.

No juvenile has lost life because of gun violence in Sacramento over the past two years that the program has operated there.

We have a long way to go to stop our young people from continuing to solve their problems by pointing a gun at someone who looks just like them and squeezing the trigger, Thibodeaux wrote.

This pandemic hasnt changed much since its still just another day in the hood, and interrupting death is needed more than ever.
Karly Katona Appointed Caretaker of the 10th Council District

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomass Chief of Staff selected to oversee the business of the district

Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez appointed the chief of staff for Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas as the caretaker for the 10th Council District on Monday, November 1, 2021.

In a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Sentinel from Council President Nury Martinez to suspended Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomass Chief of Staff Karly Katona, the council president wrote, In accordance with past practices to address interim vacancies on the City Council, I am designating you as the Caretaker for the Tenth Council District pending seating of a councilmember to fill the vacancy or should Mr. Ridley-Thomas be reinstated. This designation is effective immediately. Your duties and responsibilities are enumerated on the attached instruction. Martinez letter went on to state, This action and instructions are intended to assure the residents of the Tenth Council District that they will not be without an individual they can turn to until they are once again directly represented by a Councilmember.

Katona was designated caretaker following the councils decision last month to suspend Mark Ridley-Thomas of his duties. Many 10th District residence has raised serious concerns about this appointment given that Katona will not be a council member or have any voting powers.

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The 10th Council seat is considered the third African American district on the Los Angeles City Council and has been represented by an African American male since Tom Bradley defeated Joe E. Hollingsworth on April 15, 1963. Since that time, the 10th District has been represented by David Cunningham, Nate Holden, Martin Ludlow, Herb Wesson, and now Mark Ridley-Thomas. With redistricting at the forefront of the city councils agenda, many are concerned that without true representation on the city council and a voice to loudly advocate for the district, this could be an opportunity to break up what has historically been a Black seat in a predominantly Black voting district.

On October 20, the Los Angeles City Council voted to suspend Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas by a vote of 11-3 after federal prosecutors allege that Ridley-Thomas, while serving on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, conspired with Marilyn Louise-Flynn, the former dean of USCs School of Social Work, by steering county contracts to the university. Both Ridley-Thomas and Louise-Flynn have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Katona has worked for Ridley-Thomas since 2008 when he was a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and she has held the position as chief of staff since Ridley-Thomas won the 10th Council District seat in November 2020. Many who reside within the 10th District praise Katona as a wonderful person and an excellent chief of staff. But other residents have been outraged by the appointment. Caretaker? That reminds me too much of the overseer, someone who was put in place to watch over the slaves. With no authority to vote and no way to introduce thoughts, ideas or legislation, or fight for our district during this redistricting process, citizens of the 10th still have no representation, which is unfair and might even be illegal, stated Ingrid Hutt, a lifelong resident of the 10th Council District.

In a statement sent to the Los Angeles Sentinel, Karly Katona stated, The Tenth District team is committed to serving the residents of the district  we will continue addressing the diverse needs of constituents and advancing an equity-based agenda that reimagines public safety and community wellbeing across the district.

We remain acutely focused on our top priorities: revitalizing Leimert Park Village and Marlton Square, advancing numerous park and library improvements, developing thousands of housing units, partnering with homeless service providers and civic agencies, and linking more unhoused individuals across the district to suitable housing and services. There is much work to do  and we are dedicated to getting it done.
Los Angeles Urban League and UCLA Medical Assistant Program Celebrate Students Graduating with National Certifications

As many non-profit organizations search for ways to manage the ongoing disruptions caused by COVID-19, the Los Angeles Urban League (LAUL) continues its immense commitments to help its constituents transform their lives. Recently, one of LAULs programs, which was established in collaboration with UCLA Medical Assistant Program, graduated two students. Kennedi Harris and Shavon Gray, the two women who graduated from the yearlong program, offered words of encouragement to the incoming class of students present at the reception. Both of the young women will start working as national Medical Assistant 3 and Lobotomy Technicians this month. Working with UCLAs patients and staff in their clinics afforded Miss Harris and Miss Gray the opportunity to get hired immediately after their graduation from the yearlong program.

We are here to honor our graduates who today are receiving their national certifications. Here at the Los Angeles Urban League, we take pride in offering our services to the constituents we serve. This Medical Assistant Program is one of several opportunities we offer the community to engage with us, said Jamecca Marshall, Director of Programs, Los Angeles Urban League. We thank UCLA, Nakia Guillory-Flores, Director of the UCLA Medical Assistant Program and Adisa Cartwright, Associate Dean of UCLA Medical Assistant Program for collaborating with us.

The Los Angeles Urban League and UCLA Medical Assistant Program are intentional on advocating and advancing health equality. The programs goal is not only to graduate students to work in healthcare, but also to give them a voice to speak on behalf of patients, especially those who look like them. Diversity and advocacy are important and are part of the training the students receive in the program. The importance of MA 3 graduates to confidently speak on behalf of patients is one of the services they provide to the community. Many alumni from the program have gone on to do exciting things in healthcare.

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The reason why this is important is usually some level of experience is needed to get a position as a MA 3. Our hands-on training is rigorous; the students get the opportunity to receive instructions for up to 150 to 200 hours of training in our clinics. So, for someone to come out of nowhere and graduate from our program, its outstanding, said Adisa Cartwright. We are here to support you. If you keep showing up and doing your best, youll make it. Its worth it at the end.

I am exciting to have you all here this morning. I hope that Kennedi and Shavon can inspire you to graduate from the program. The program is rigorous, but after the training you receive from us, we can

attest you will pass the certification examination and obtain your medical assistant 3 certifications, remarked Nakia Guillory-Flores. I am happy to learn that several of our new students are from local schools. We are here to advocate for everyone, especially for those who look like us. We thank the Los Angeles Urban League for allowing our students this opportunity and collaborating with us.

I can attest how the Urban League helped me and the community. This is something I have always aspire to do. I know that I will go further and obtain my Registered Nurse degree, and I promised to stay in touch with everyone. I am truly grateful for this opportunity. said Shavon Gray. I want to thank Miss Nakia for working with me. Even when I wanted to give up, she inspired me to continue working diligently. I completed the class, remarked Kennedi Harris. I say to the new class dont give up, its worth it in the end. I also thank my parents. They are my support system. They always believe in me.

Leo Hill 111, Job Developer, The Brotherhood Crusade, made the following remarks, we make sure young people succeed in school and in life. We have a plethora of opportunities thats offered to young people. One such program is Hire LA where we offer paid internship. You get up to 150 hours of paid internship and training at a work site of your choice. We break through barriers to make sure you succeed.

I am so happy for all of you who are gathered here to learn what the Los Angeles Urban League family is. It is going to be a long-lasting family for the next 100 years. Our hope is that after you are successful in your careers, youll come back and share your expertise and mentor those in the community who are coming behind you. I would like to see more faces of people who look like us in clinics and healthcare companies, said Maiesha Kif, Community Relations Manager, Los Angeles Urban League. We are building a pipeline so that our students get to where they need to be. Our goal is to make certain you complete this program successfully. This is a steppingstone for you to gain livable wages and enjoy a sustainable life.

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For more information about the Medical Assistant Program visit Laul.Org/MedAssistant
Meditating on the Meaning of Struggle: Valuing Our Inward and Outward Striving

Those of us who still wage righteous and relentless struggle inwardly and outwardly to live a liberated, good and meaningful life will continuously find invaluable sources for grounding and growth in the enduringly relevant and deeply insightful sacred teachings of our ancestors found in the Odu Ifa. For it is about our natural and needed striving and struggle to be good, live good lives, and bring and share good in the world. I stress both inward and outward struggle, for the outward struggle in relations, society and the world requires a simultaneous inward striving for a disciplined and constantly developing heart and mind. Indeed, without discipline, development is less focused, less founded and less fruitful.

In Kawaida, struggle is posed as one of the defining features of what it means to be human. Indeed, the whole of our lives from birth to transition into the afterlife, we are compelled to struggle and, in that struggle, we define and develop ourselves. In a word, we struggle to come into being; thats called birth. We struggle to make the most out of our being; thats called life. And we struggle not to go out of being; thats called the quest for immortality. Thus, Odu 10:6 teaches, We are constantly struggling all of us. We are constantly struggling. For also we are not perfect, do not always choose rightly, always make the best choice, always live a disciplined life or always live up to our highest potential. So we are continuously struggling, all of us.

Also, Odu Ifa 245:1 tells us that If we are given birth, we should/must bring ourselves into being again. Our parents give us the gift of birth, but even then, we must struggle to come out into the world to live the life given us. And then, we must bring ourselves into being again, that is to say, struggle to realize our potential and promise and come into the fullness of ourselves. And we must struggle to leave a legacy worthy of remembrance, a legacy of good work, service and struggle which is also a message and model for those who come after us.

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Moreover, Odu Ifa teaches us that even if we are disadvantaged physically or socially or are about to die, we should still struggle to live as best and as long as we can. Thus, Odu 43:1 says, Even if we are going to die, we must wage a life and death struggle. We should still struggle hard. This was directed especially to those confronted with the possibility or certainty of death, and for the physically disadvantaged, the lame, the blind. But in a larger sense, it is a call and challenge to all who are disadvantaged, disabled by physical, psychological or social conditions or threatened with death. Indeed, its a call and challenge not to be defeated internally, so that externally we can wage a strong, disciplined and victorious struggle with the capacities we have and the resources and relations to which we have access. Here Molefi Asantes call for a victorious consciousness is key and compelling. This is the meaning of Odu 19:2 in its advising and cautioning against interior deterioration, the unraveling of values and relations that are our anchor and indispensable means of orientation and assistance in any struggle we wage externally. Thus, this verse speaks of those who would go to the battlefield not knowing that It is at home that the war is lost even before reaching the battlefield.

Interrelated with this verse is Odu 59:1 which says that a constant soldier is never unready, not even once. This verse tells us we must be constantly prepared and preparing. It means continuously measuring strengths and weaknesses, and as Amilcar Cabral teaches, always struggling to turn our weaknesses into strengths. Indeed, he says, Thats what struggle means, turning weakness into strength; transforming what is or could be a liability in life and struggle into an asset. And it means reaching inside of ourselves for the known and unknown potential and promise of growth, development and righteous change, righteous change in our views, values and practice and in the ways we relate to each other and engage the world. Especially, Odu Ifa 33:1 instructs us, we must constantly strive and struggle to speak truth, do justice, be kind and  not do evil and to bring good in the world.

It is this moral core at the heart and center of our struggle, internally and externally, that must always be in the forefront of all we do. Indeed, this relates to Odu 78:1s affirmation: Lets do things we joy. Humans have been divinely chosen to bring good in the world and this is the fundamental mission and meaning of human life. Given this essential and overarching ethical imperative, we must wage struggle in righteous and dignity-affirming ways and be a model of the good we struggle for. Thus, Odu Ifa calls for a commitment that the battle we fight, the struggles we wage, always add to our honor. Odu 152:2 says, May the battle I fight (the struggle I wage) always add to my honor. We are struggling to bring, increase and sustain good in the world, and we must not emulate our oppressor or opponent and use evil means that undermine our cause, aims and identity.

The Yoruba word for honor (iyi) in the text also means great respect, nobleness, integrity and value. Like its synonym ola, it suggests in this verse added honor, gained for greatly respected and valued thought and practice, or behavior. The example of such an honor-bringing struggle used in the Odu is that of the lion. It is what we call in Kawaida, being simba-hearted, lion hearted, i.e., noble in conduct; courageous in combat and uncompromisingly committed to victory. Here I use noble in the moral sense as the Yoruba words iyi and ola suggest. This follows the Hon. Marcus Garveys teaching that in the struggle to liberate Africa, nobility and aristocracy must be based on service to the people and the struggle, not on hereditary class and status.

The Odu then teaches us to wage righteous struggle in the interest of human good and the well-being of the world. This struggle for good in the world, Odu 78:1 says, must include as its essential goals: full and effective knowledge for all; happiness everywhere; peace within and with others; harmony with nature; health and wholeness; resilient strength to meet crisis; and the end of poverty and misery in the world. And the sacred text tells us that to achieve victory in this outward struggle, we need also to wage righteous and continuous struggle inwardly, developing virtues and strengths of adequate wisdom, especially wisdom to rightfully engage each other and the world; willingness to sacrifice; good character; the love of doing good, especially for the needy and vulnerable; and the eagerness and struggle to increase good in the world and not let any good be lost.

Odu Ifa (33:2) also tells us in terms of ensuring the well-being of the world that we should take responsibility for the world and do good for the world. And Odu 10:5 it teaches us that humans should stop making sacrifices for wealth and instead make sacrifices that will protect the earth from its enemies, i.e., plunder, pollution and depletion, and of course, the corporate and personal interests that drive these. For in this way we will live and thrive.

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Finally, Odu Ifa 11:1 tells us we must, in our most earnest struggle, also model fire without its destructiveness, but with its capacity to make a way for itself. It says, Wherever fire emerges, it will make a way for itself. Its head will clear a way for it. Therefore, anyone who wants to achieve anything, that person should practice sacrifice, so that a way can be opened for them as it is opened for fire. The point here is that in our striving and struggle, we must be like beneficial fire, way-openers, using our head and heart in the most constructive ways. And we must be way-openers not only for our personal selves, but also for our collective selves, our people. This is the message and model of our ancestors, the lifters up of the light that lasts, who opened the way for all of us and brought life-giving and uplifting light and warm to the world.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, The Message and Meaning of Kwanzaa: Bringing Good Into the World and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org; www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

01-27-19
No Leads in Fatal Shooting of Compton Pastor

Another murder with no leads is the status so far in the fatal shooting of Pastor Reggie Moore, an associate minister at God of Christ Church in Compton.

Moore was killed by a gunshot wound to his chest at about 11:50 a.m. on Sunday, October 24. His family said the 67-year-old minister had just finished a Bible Study class and was going to his car when the attack occurred in the 1100 block of Compton Boulevard near Dwight Avenue.

With no suspects and no known motive, his daughter, Danae Moore, said through tears, I dont understand it. I still dont and I wont be able to. His cousin, Christine Peggese, was equally distraught, insisting, I just know I love him and Im gonna miss him.

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Compton Mayor Emma Sharif extended condolences to the family while also stating her disappointment that slayings such as Moores continue to plague the city. Its always a tragedy when a life is lost as a result of violence. I extend my sympathies to the family and strongly urge the Sheriffs Department to use every resource possible to solve this murder.

The Rev. Dr. Michael J. Fisher expressed frustration about the increasing number of shootings in Compton combined with the rapid decline of civility and appreciation for members of the older generation.

Pastor Reggie Moores murder, I believe, is an indication of the need for our community to come together to begin to promote the need for respect  not only for life but for our elders, senior statesmen and for those who care about the community, said Fisher, the senior pastor of Greater Zion Church Family, which was the first African American church in Compton.

We cannot sit idly by and allow this to become the new norm. Pastor Moores life meant more than just to his children, but also to the community that he served. Its important that we all rally together in this moment and in this time to combat this evil and make sure our community does not live in a place of fear, he stressed.

Inviting citizens to join the fight against gun violence, Fisher added that local ministers will assemble at Compton City Hall on Sunday, November 14, at 1 p.m. Thats what we plan to do  come together as clergy to pray and ask for a cease-fire within the city of Compton, California, he said.

Family and community members held a vigil for Moore last week and remembered him as a man of God, a grandfather, and an all-around good guy, said Peggese. Danae Moore added, He wanted to make sure we were safe  coming to church. He was doing what a dad is supposed to do.

Evidence and eyewitnesses are sorely lacking in Moores death, according to L.A. Sheriffs Department investigators. In a report on NBCLA News, Lt. Chuck Calderaro said that theres very little to go on at this point, no suspect or vehicle description. However, LASD believes Moore was targeted, even though he was not robbed.

Anyone with information about the homicide should call LASD Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500 or Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.
This Week Marks the 25th Anniversary of Californias Ban on Affirmative Action

Since California banned affirmative action 25 years ago, experts say data shows significant drops in the numbers of Blacks and other minorities attending universities and securing government contracts in the state.

In education, for example, Ed Trust West, an Oakland-based nonprofit and research organization focused on equity, says the repealing of affirmative action in California has negatively impacted African Americans both at public schools and colleges across the state.

Californias statewide ban on affirmative action has had lasting, devastating impacts on our K-12 and higher education system. Students, families, and educators of color have always found themselves shut out from opportunity, from a lack of additional funding to decreased college access, said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, Director of P-16 Education Policy at Ed Trust West.

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According to Ed Trust West, the numbers of Black and Latino students enrolling at California State Universities, has not kept pace with the racial makeup of high school graduating seniors.

Ed Trust West reports that more than half of Californias K-12 schools do not have a single Black teacher. And even though children of color make up 77% of all K-12 students in the state, only 35% of teachers are people of color.

Unfortunately, solutions focused on socioeconomic status alone have proven insufficient to close those gaps. Instead, to combat the systemic racism and structural inequality facing Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native students, we must address the unique challenges and needs of each student group directly, said Wheatfall-Lum continued.

Nonetheless, plenty of powerful strategies to advance racial justice are still perfectly legal; without affirmative action, its even more important that school districts and higher education institutions leverage any and all at their disposal, she said.
Tupac Shakurs life, legacy to be subject of massive exhibit

Tupac Shakurs handwritten lyrics from classic songs such as California Love and Dear Mama along with galleries that pay homage to his upbringing and late mother are among the features in a massive touring museum exhibit.

The Shakur Estate announced Tuesday that the  Tupac Shakur. Wake Me When Im Free  will open Jan. 21 in Los Angeles. The exhibit is described as a fully immersive, thought-provoking museum experience that explores the life and legacy of the late rapper.

Shakur, one of the most prolific figures in hip-hop, died in 1996 from gunshot wounds. He was 25.

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The exhibit is expected to spend six months in Los Angeles with the hopes of touring other cities.

There are thousands of pieces of paper, handwritten pieces of paper  which is everything from his lyrics to all of the songs and poetry that you know down to a grocery list for a birthday party, said Arron Saxe, president of Kinfolk Management + Media, who is working with Shakurs estate. Saxe has worked with estates for other iconic music artists including Otis Redding and Donny Hathaway.

The whole point of this exhibit was to not only show the kaleidoscopic nature of Tupac, but also show how he is relatable, Saxe continued. There are incredible pieces of clothing. This exhibit is also a mix of contemporary art and technology too. Many of the artifacts have never been seen before.

The 20,000-square foot exhibit will showcase Shakurs music, poetry, wardrobe, activism journey and other items in galleries.

One of the galleries will be dedicated to the rappers late mother, Afeni Shakur, the former Black Panther who inspired the work of her son. She died in 2016.

Saxe said Shakurs mother is the guiding light of the exhibition.

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Afeni was the baddest Black woman to walk the planet, said Jamal Joseph, the rappers godfather and special advisor to the estate, in a statement. She raised awareness and shifted the atmosphere wherever she went. Tupacs brilliance shined brighter than the sun. He lived and moved with creative  revolutionary  fearless-passion fueled speed of a comet. Afeni and Pac challenged, re-imagined, and transformed history.

Shakurs estate-sanctioned museum experience is produced in partnership with Universal Music Group, CAA, Round Room Live and Kinfolk Management + Media.

Tupac Shakur was my Malcolm; he was my Martin, and to build an experience that honors such a prolific man, cannot be summed up in words, said Jeremy Hodges, whose firm, Project Art Collective, is working with The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the creative portion of the exhibit. We wanted to create a memorable experience that will inspire you to be better than when you walked in, all while leaving you with the knowledge that he was a true revolutionary spirit.
U.N. Climate Summit: Black Caucus Member Isaac Bryan Is Representing California in Scotland

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) is the only Black member of the California Legislature attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland this week.

Gov. Newsom is not present at the summit as he abruptly opted out last week, citing personal reasons.

Due to family obligations, Governor Newsom will no longer be traveling to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and will instead be participating virtually, focusing on Californias landmark climate change policies, Newsoms spokesperson Erin Mellon said Oct. 29.

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Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis is attending the conference in Newsoms place.

The conference began Sunday, Oct. 31 and will last through Friday, Nov. 12. It is co-hosted by the United Kingdom and Italy.

Bryan, who represents Californias 54th district and serves as the Assemblys Assistant Majority Whip, joins 22 government officials attending the conference. He is also a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC).

Bryan, who was elected to his Assembly seat in May is mainly known for his work on social justice issues.

But, he has received praised for the multifocal approach he takes to standing up for environmental justice.

During his campaign for the Assembly, Bryan received an endorsement from California Environmental Voters (EnviroVoters). The Sierra Club California also gave Bryan a score of 100 % on its 2021 Legislative Report Card.

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Isaac Bryan is a bold, visionary leader whose intersectional approach to policy is much needed in the California legislature, said EnviroVoters CEO Mary Creasman.

We do not have time to waste when it comes to climate justice, and California needs leaders who are willing to stand up to big oil and polluters. Isaac has proven that he will lead the charge and do what is right at this critical point. Assembly District 54 needs an Assemblymember who will take bold action on the community values of racial, criminal, economic, and environmental justice, and Isaac Bryan is clearly that candidate. EnviroVoters is excited to endorse Isaac Bryan for Assembly District 54, Creasman continued.

Bryan responded to this endorsement and another one from Equality California (EQCA) in a statement.

This is our moment. The support of these two frontrunners for progress is an important call to protect our vulnerable communities, prioritizing the needs of our LGBTQ+ and BIPOC neighbors; ensure clean air and water for all; and lift people out of poverty by preparing for jobs in emerging technologies, Bryan stated.


Because if we truly want to deliver change, we need every one of us shaping our future. Thank you for placing your trust in me to serve as the next mayor of Boston.

That is Michelle Wu, a 36-year-old Taiwanese American, who will be Bostons next mayor. She is the northeastern citys first woman and first Asian American leader.

Wu was the citys first Asian American city council member. She defeated Annissa Essaibi George, who is Arab and Polish.

In the southern Ohio city of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, whose parents are Tibetan and Indian, will be the new leader.

He said some Democratic Party leaders did not think he would be able to win the mayoral election because his name would not look good on election materials for voters in a mostly white part of Ohio.

When youre Asian, when you have an ethnic name, its just harder. Youve got to be creative, youve got to work harder, youve got to knock on more doors, he told the Associated Press.

Celebrating his victory over a former United States law maker on Tuesday night, Pureval told his supporters: Tonight, we made history.  Cincinnati is a place where no matter what you look like, where youre from, or how much money you have, if you come here and work hard you can achieve your dreams.

The Asian American victories are notable in the U.S. In the last two years, there has been an increase in crimes against Asian Americans.

In Seattle, Washington, the mayoral race is not yet decided. Bruce Harrell has a small lead over Lorena Gonzalez. Harrell is Japanese American and Black.

The Associated Press notes that in the past, Asian American political candidates have been successful in places with large Asian populations such as Hawaii and California. But success in cities like Boston and Cincinnati shows that Asian American voters are spread throughout the U.S. and feeling empowered to have a voice in politics.

Pureval said his win in an Ohio city without many Asian Americans shows people of Asian ancestry can run and win anywhere.

In Dearborn, Michigan, a city close to Detroit, Abdullah Hammoud became the first Arab American mayor. Dearborn has about 100,000 residents and one of the largest Arab American populations in the U.S.

Varun Nikore is president of the Asian American Pacific Islander Victory Fund, an organization that raises money for political candidates. He called the wins in Boston and Cincinnati a new day in America at the local level.

He said Asian American leaders in big cities can cause a ripple effect that lasts  in some cases  decades.

James Lai is a professor at Santa Clara University in California. He studies Asian Americans and their work in city politics.

Lai said the mayoral victories are a good example of how Asian Americans are gaining in U.S. politics. Beyond city leaders, he said, Asian Americans are winning jobs in smaller cities and towns.

Nikore said the victories will push aside the idea that Asian Americans do not belong in the U.S.

During the campaign, Pureval used humor to make voters more comfortable about his differences. He called himself a brown dude with a funny name.

If more Asian Americans become political leaders, he said, he hopes future candidates wont have to think through that.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on a report by Terry Tang of The Associated Press. Susan Shand was the editor.

How do you think the new Asian American leaders will make a difference in their cities? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

creative  adj. using the ability to make or think of new things : involving the process by which new ideas, stories, etc., are created

knock  v. to hit something (such as a door) with the knuckles of your hand or with a hard object (such as a knocker) in order to get people's attention

achieve  v. to get or reach (something) by working hard

empower  v. to give power to (someone)

ripple effect  n. a situation in which one event causes a series of other events to happen

decade  n. a period of 10 years

dude  n. a man  used especially by young people
Facebook says it is ending its facial recognition system that automatically identifies users in pictures and videos.

The companys Vice President of Artificial Intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, announced the change this week in a statement on the companys corporate website.

Pesenti said the decision to end the system was part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products. The facial recognition system on Facebook is to be ended in the coming weeks.

The move comes as the social media service faces accusations that it failed to take action to protect users even though its own research suggested its products can be harmful. In the past, Facebook has also faced widespread criticism for not doing enough to protect the privacy of its users.

The decision also followed a company announcement that it was changing its name from Facebook to Meta. Industry experts have said the name change appeared to be an attempt to move attention away from unfavorable media attention in recent months.

This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technologys history, Pesenti said in his statement. As a result, more than a billion peoples individual facial recognition templates will be removed, the statement added.

Meta has said that more than a third of Facebooks daily active users have given their permission to have their faces recognized by the social networks system. That represents about 640 million people worldwide.

Facebook first started offering facial recognition about 10 years ago. But over time, it has made it easier for users to opt out of the system as it faced more pressure from courts and government officials.

Pesenti said the company still sees facial recognition technology as a powerful tool. But he noted that the situations where it can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about this technology as a whole.

He said examples of acceptable uses of the technology would be to confirm a persons identity or prevent fraudulent activities. He added that Meta will continue working on facial recognition for such uses and would seek out the opinions of outside experts before deciding on how it will use the technology in the future.

Kristen Martin is a professor of technology ethics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She told The Associated Press that Facebook's decision to shut down the system is a good example of trying to make product decisions that are good for the user and the company. She added that the move also demonstrates the power of public and regulatory pressure, since the facial recognition system has long been the subject of strong criticism.

Facial recognition technology has been used by other industries as well, such as retail businesses, security companies and by some law enforcement agencies. But critics say such systems have a high failure rate, especially when attempting to identify members of some minority groups. Facial recognition technology has also led to major concerns over privacy and ethics issues.

Several American cities have passed bans on the use of facial recognition systems. And major technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google, have stopped selling facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.

Adam Schwartz is a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He told the Reuters news agency that Facebook's action comes after moves by other tech companies. Still, he said, it could mark a "notable moment in the national turning-away from face recognition.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English based on reports from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Facebook. Ashley Thompson the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz - Facebook Shuts Down Facial Recognition System Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

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Words in This Story

automatic  adj. something controlled using machines and not people

shift  n. a change in something

template  n. a system that helps organize information on a computer screen

opt out  phr v. to choose not to be part of an activity or to stop being involved in it

fraudulent  adj. dishonest and illegal

ethics  n. ideas and beliefs about what kind of behavior is morally right or wrong

regulatory  adj. controlling an activity or process, especially by using rules

retail  n. the activity of selling products to the public in shops and on the internet
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, is one of the world's largest chipmakers. It announced plans in October to build a new plant in Japan. Experts say the move may help bring new life to Japan's chipmaking industry and strengthen its economic security.

The new plant is planned to begin operation in 2024, said company head C.C. Wei.

The move comes as Japanese manufacturers and others watch for Chinas policy goals for Taiwan, where most TSMC plants are located. Any interference with TSMC production could badly damage the worldwide supply chain.

Wei said chip buyers and the Japanese government support the project. The Japanese government is planning to pay for about half of TSMC's $8-billion project, the website TechTaiwan reports.

TSMC's worldwide expansion includes building a $12 billion facility in the southwestern American state of Arizona. Production there should also begin in 2024.

Less dependence on China

TSMC's expansion into Japan will strengthen that countrys chipmaking industry. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, "We expect our country's semiconductor industry to become more indispensable and self-reliant.

Ruay-Shiung Chang is chancellor of Taipei University of Commerce. He told VOA Mandarin, "The world is rebuilding the supply chain to break away from dependence on China.

Chang added, "Whether TSMC enters Japan or not, the semiconductor industry ties between Japan and China are a big problem, and there is currently no solution."

Effect on other chipmaking countries

Nikkei Asia reported that if TSMC accepted financing from the Japanese government, South Korea and other countries could ask the World Trade Organization (WTO) to block the deal. They could lose their own business of exporting semiconductors to subsidized plants in Japan.

Chang noted that South Korea supports its own chipmakers with subsidies  money paid by a government to keep the price of a product or service low. The South Korean government said in May that it plans to offer $453 billion in support to its countrys chipmakers. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, reports that the governments aim is to make South Korea a world leader in chip production.

Chang said that because TSMC is building a factory in Arizona, the U.S. would likely not support South Korea's action against Japan at the WTO. He noted Chinas large subsidies of its own semiconductor industry. The U.S. and European Union were not able to stop that through action in the WTO.

Im Jill Robbins.

Olivia Liao reported on this story for VOA News. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

________________________________________

Words in This Story

semiconductor  n. a material or object that allows some electricity or heat to move through it and that is used especially in electronic devices

indispensable  adj. extremely important and necessary

self-reliant  adj. confident in your own abilities and able to do things for yourself; not needing help from other people

subsidy  n. money that is paid usually by a government to keep the price of a product or service low or to help a business or organization to continue to function

What do you think of TSMCs move to build semiconductors in Japan? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.
Linn County is wading into another timber lawsuit, this one related to sales of burned trees in the Santiam State Forest.
Families are invited to get healthy and shop for the holidays at several events at Dawson County YMCAs on Saturday, Nov. 20.

The Orthman Community YMCA in Lexington (1207 N. Grant) will host its 6th annual Turkey Trot on Nov. 20. Participants will race through town to complete a 5K while picking up the fixings for a Thanksgiving meal at various stops. YMCA gift cards will also be given randomly. Registrations for the race are due by November 10. The fee is $35 for members and $45 for non-members and includes a Turkey Trot t-shirt. Businesses may register a team of five participants for $150. Check-in time for the race is at 8:45 a.m. on Nov. 20 with a start time of 9 a.m.

The YMCA in Lexington will also host its annual Craft & Vendor show on November 20 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. in the YMCA gym. Vendor registrations are due Nov. 10. The craft show is free for the public to attend.
Cal Fire officials on Tuesday were continuing to investigate the cause of a Nipomo house fire on Monday that killed a 17-year-old girl who they have yet to name.

The girl died and two others were injured as a result of the fire that was reported 1:42 a.m. at a residence in the 1400 block of West Tefft Street, near the intersection of Calico Court, according to Cal Fire Capt. Adan Orozco.

Additionally, two dogs died in the fire.

Two fire investigators from the San Luis Obispo Cal Fire office, who are also sworn law enforcement officers, are looking into the cause of the blaze, a process that could take as long as "three days or three weeks," according to Orozco.

The captain cited the ongoing investigation as the reason officials have yet to publicly identify the victim.

While her name wasn't released, she was identified by Nipomo High School officials as a recent graduate. Principal John Denno released a statement Monday expressing condolences to the girl's family and asking for privacy.

In addition, Denno added that counselors are available to talk with students and staff.

+4 House fire kills 17-year-old Nipomo High School graduate, injures 2 others A 17-year-old and two family dogs were killed, and two people were injured, in a residential fire that broke out on Tefft Street in Nipomo early Tuesday morning.

At least 10 fire units responded to the scene, including personnel from the Santa Maria Fire Department and Five Cities Fire Authority.

The first Cal Fire unit from nearby Station 20 was on scene within eight minutes and upon arrival, located a two-story home with flames throughout the inside of the structure, according to Orozco, adding crews contained the fire after about an hour using fire hoses and chainsaws.

The two other people injured in the fire were transported to a local hospital for treatment.
Santa Barbara County Planning Commission voted 3-2 recently to recommend the Board of Supervisors deny ExxonMobils plan to truck oil from its Las Flores Canyon processing facility to Santa Maria first and later to Kern County until a new pipeline is in service.

Chairman and 4th District Commissioner Larry Ferini and 5th District Commissioner Dan Blough dissented in the Nov. 3 vote, as they did Sept. 29 when the commission rejected staffs initial findings that supported approval and directed staff to prepare findings for denial.

Ferini and Blough did not agree with the three new findings requested by the commission majority.

Those were that the benefits of the project did not outweigh its detrimental impacts, that the streets and highways to be used were not adequate for the traffic the project would generate and that the project would be detrimental to the comfort, convenience, general welfare, health and safety of the neighborhood.

I dont see anything in the findings that would change my previous vote, Ferini said Nov. 3.

Fifteen members of the public addressed the commission, with 12  mostly from environmental organizations  supporting the findings for denial and three  all from the same Cuyama Valley family  in favor of the project.

Blough specifically questioned denying the project because it would be unsafe to transport oil by truck.

Do we now set a precedent where we cant approve any gas stations or any kind of an operation where we transport any kind of a hazardous material? Blough asked. I mean, if youre concerned about the spill from an oil truck, are we concerned about the spill of a gasoline truck or a nitrogen truck or other chemicals or pesticides?

I mean, do we not allow any trucking inside Santa Barbara County at all now because there might be an accident?

Errin Briggs, supervisor of permitting and compliance for the Planning and Development Departments Energy, Minerals and Compliance Division, said each project is unique and evaluated separately.

Briggs said it is unlikely any other project would add 78 trucks traveling from the Gaviota Coast to Kern County on Highway 166, so the staff didnt believe the finding would set that kind of precedent.

Blough said he was concerned that not allowing oil extraction from the county was somehow creating a sense of environmental superiority.

Rather than stating what the reason is for denial, were inventing a denial that has to do with trucking when no evidence was presented at the [Sept. 29] hearing that we have that kind of hazard, Blough said.

But John Zorovich, division manager, said Highway 166 has a higher-than-average number of crashes and the commission majority was concerned about additional traffic and the effects of an oil spill on water and biological resources.

Zorovich said those issues were addressed in the environmental impact report, so I dont think were making up facts.

Second District Commissioner Laura Bridley said her opposition to the project was initially based on neighborhood compatibility, and she had reservations about making truck traffic on the highway a primary reason for denial.

We cant control our state highway system or even our public roadway system, Bridley said. But the convenience of the neighborhood is something we can weigh in on.

Brian Anderson, asset manager of ExxonMobils Santa Ynez Unit, was critical of the determination the project would be detrimental to the community and its benefits didnt outweigh its impacts.

The commission completely ignored the Planning Department recommendation, detailed analysis in the [supplemental EIR], the traffic analysis, and discounted all the environmental and economic benefits of the project, Anderson said.

He said conditions placed on the project would make it one of the most highly regulated trucking operations in the world and the commission should consider a petition supporting the project that was signed by people who live adjacent to the highway in Cuyama Valley.

But Commissioner John Parke, whose 3rd District includes the Las Flores Canyon facility, said unavoidable significant impacts identified in the SEIR could not be outweighed by the projects 0.7 of 1% contribution to the California-produced oil supply.

He also said when the Las Flores facility was previously in operation, its steam generator was responsible for 40% of the countys greenhouse gas emissions, so putting it back in operation would result in a 70% increase in current emissions.

Blough countered that denying the project would actually increase greenhouse gas emissions from tankers bringing in oil from Saudi Arabia and Russia, which he said are the largest source of pollution in the county.

However, Parke, Bridley and 1st District Commissioner Michael Cooney were not swayed and again voted to recommend denial of the project.
Council also votes on housing ordinance, gets updates

In other business, the Lompoc City Council:

 Adopted, without council discussion, the inclusionary housing ordinance which allows developers to pay in-lieu fees or build off-site rather than include affordable housing units in their projects within the Old Town Redevelopment Project, Amendment No. 2 area.

What youre passing creates pockets of poverty and enclaves of wealth, said resident Steve Bridge. If you pass this, youre eliminating 19 affordable houses. Lompoc could use those. This is a gift of about $2 million to the developer.

 Heard a presentation by Pale Blue Dot Ventures regarding the proposed California Earth & Space Academy (CALSPACE). Project representative Steve Franck requested a minimum of $300,000 investment by the city in the center which he said would include a hotel, theme park, educational/entertainment facility along the lines of Monterey Bay Aquarium and a 50,000-square-foot industrial manufacturing facility.

 Heard a presentation on the official 2020 census data for consideration as the city continues moving forward on its redistricting effort as required by law. The city will hold public hearing on the proposed district maps Feb. 2 and 16 and is expected to vote on its final adoption March 1. The maps must be adopted by April 17.

 Heard a presentation by Lompoc Police Chief Joseph Mariani on the state of Lompoc Police Department which continues to respond to about 60,000 calls for service per year. He said the department appears on paper to be nearly up to staff, but of the 45 filled positions, 11 officers are off the streets having either not completed their training, on disability or on administrative leave. He has prioritized in his ARPA funding request $1.5 million dispatch and radio upgrade. We get parts on eBay for our radios, he said. He also called for funding for body cameras and updating the vehicle fleet.

 Accepted, without council comment, a bequest of 10% of the estate of Mary Ellen C. Knapp to the Lompoc Public Library.
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Sanchez said she usually stocks tortilla chips, but was out.

The addition of chunks of jalapeno along with tomatoes and onions elevated Patricias guacamole. Its balanced, said my friend. Its got heat, but its not too hot.

Also excellent was a steak burrito ($7.95) with plenty of flavorful meat, plus lettuce, tomato, avocado, cheese and sour cream. There were a few pinto beans, but no rice.

I made the mistake of asking for cecina, or thin, salted steak, for one of my three tacos. The taco was generously stuffed with ribbons of lean meat, but it was extremely tough. My friend didnt mind it, however, and wound up finishing it. He declared it meaty.

A chicken taco was bland and forgettable. Best was the third taco, filled with chorizo. The tacos come on double corn tortillas and are topped with either onion and cilantro or lettuce and tomato.

We were a day late for the $1.99 taco Tuesday, so ours were $2.95, with the exception of the more expensive cecina (54 cents extra).

The enormous torta Cubana ($12.95) was our main regret because it included a thin piece of breaded beef that was impenetrable and had to be removed.
I dont see natural gas going away, Valcq said. Our obligation is to the residents of this state to ensure they have reliable power. It is not appropriate for us to sit back and wait and see if something materializes.

Commissioner Ellen Nowak, appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker, accused the Sierra Club of presenting false choices.

We need to have all available types of energy generation at our hands, Nowak said. I do not believe we should ever be eliminating any type of resources.

The project consists of two storage facilities in Ixonia and Bluff Creek where natural gas would be chilled to minus-260 degrees to reduce its volume. Each system would hold a billion cubic feet of gas for times of high demand, when it would be heated and vaporized.

The utilities say the facility will eliminate the need to contract additional pipeline capacity that would only be needed a few days a year or to pay a premium when demand is high, as it was during a cold snap last winter that caused spot prices to jump by up to 10,000%.

Wisconsins geology does not allow for underground storage, and the utilities underground storage site in Michigan is dependent on pipeline capacity for delivery.
Tamara Thomsen and Mallory Dragt thought they would take a spin under Lake Mendota on a couple of underwater scooters, motorized gadgets that scuba divers use to propel themselves through the water.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in June, and the duo, who work at Diversions Scuba, debated whether they had just seen a log sticking out of the bottom of the 9,781-acre lake or something extremely rare.

The discovery, on a slope in 27 feet of water near Shorewood Hills, has turned out to be about as historic as it gets.

After a bit of investigation, it turns out that Thomsen, who is also a maritime archaeologist for the Wisconsin Historical Society, was right in judging that it was more than just a log: It was a dugout canoe. A few weeks later, carbon-14 dating showed that the 15-foot-long vessel was an estimated 1,200 years old, the oldest intact boat ever found in Wisconsin waters.

On a brisk Tuesday, amid a chop of waves and 50-degree water, the canoe was brought to shore by teams of divers who shared fist bumps and hugs to applause from residents of the Spring Harbor neighborhood who had gathered at the beach to witness the canoes return to shore.
This article provides information for educational purposes. NerdWallet does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend specific investments, including stocks, securities or cryptocurrencies.

For years, the U.S. tax code has given high earners a way to get around income restrictions placed on tax-advantaged retirement accounts. The so-called backdoor Roth, or Roth conversion, is an established method of moving money into investments that can grow tax-free.

But that back door may soon slam shut. One proposal released this week would put an end to backdoor Roths as part of a massive Democratic domestic policy bill. The change would take effect next year.

The increased attention comes amid high-profile examples of how wealthy people have used retirement provisions to create staggering gains. A ProPublica report in June, for example, described how tech magnate Peter Thiel converted $2,000 into $5 billion that could become tax-free with the help of a Roth IRA.

When those things start to come out, you have to take some of those threats by Congress seriously, says Malik S. Lee, managing principal at Felton & Peel Wealth Management in Atlanta.

Lee, a certified financial planner, says it wouldnt be wise to make decisions based on a draft of legislation that remains under intense negotiation in Washington. But its never too soon to think about alternatives.

These worries of the backdoor going away have been around for years. This is not something new, Lee says.

If backdoor Roth IRAs were eliminated or faced stricter limits, financial planners say, wealthy investors may want to consider alternatives, including health savings accounts, life insurance policies and more traditional investment or retirement accounts.

What are backdoor Roths?

There arent many retirement savings options that carry the same tax benefits for high earners as the backdoor Roth because it provides access to savings that were originally targeted toward the middle class.

Unlike with traditional IRAs, contributions to Roths are in after-tax dollars. But the money in the account can appreciate tax-free, and it can be cashed out tax-free once the account holder reaches age 59 1/2.

The original laws governing Roths closed them off to high earners. This year, for example, non-backdoor Roth IRA contributions are limited, for single taxpayers, to those making $140,000 or less.

But a change that became effective a decade ago made an exception: People who put money into traditional retirement accounts, then convert them into Roths, (often incurring a big tax bill in the process) can do so without any income limits.

If this opportunity ends, then youve got fewer strategies available to you, says Greg Geisler, a clinical accounting professor at Indiana Universitys Kelley School of Business.

Alternatives to backdoor Roths

If Congress makes changes that put backdoor Roth IRAs out of reach, there are a handful of ideas that personal finance pros present that could replicate some of the benefits. But each has its drawbacks when compared with the current system.

Health savings accounts

For people who have high-deductible health care plans, health savings accounts, or HSAs, are a way to put tax-free money aside to pay for medical expenses not covered by their insurance. And these accounts are some of the most tax-advantaged options available anywhere, experts say.

I dont think the average American is really utilizing the benefits of the health savings account like they could be, says Ashton Lawrence, a certified financial planner and partner with Goldfinch Wealth Management in Greenville, S.C.

Pros:

Unlike with Roth IRAs, people can make before-tax contributions to health savings accounts. But like with Roths, the money can grow tax free, and it can be withdrawn tax-free  though in this case only for qualified expenses related to care.

Employers often match contributions to health savings accounts.

Though there is a 20% additional tax penalty for withdrawals for purposes other than health care, that cost is waived for account holders who become disabled or are over 65.

Cons:

The maximum that an employee and employer together can contribute to a health savings account this year is $3,600 for an individual and $7,200 for a family.

Account holders must have high-deductible health plans, which arent offered by all employers and may not be right for everyone.

Cash-value life insurance

Permanent life insurance policies have a savings component that can be valuable to their owners even while theyre still alive. And some of the benefits mirror those offered by the Roth IRA.

But Lee cautions that theres a reason so many people turn to Roths. These life insurance policies are much more complex.

Pros:

The money in a permanent life insurance policy can grow tax-deferred.

Holders can also take out loans against the value of their policy, and the proceeds of those loans are also not taxable.

Cons:

Cash-value life insurance policies are not built as retirement savings vehicles. Because of their relatively complex structure, Lee says, costs can be higher.

Policyholders who take out loans against their policies must repay them if they want to maintain their expected death benefit. Lee says anyone looking to make such a transaction should carefully consult their insurer about what it means for the sustainability of their policy.

Other options, conventional and exotic

There are other backdoor Roth IRA alternatives that could work for some people. Lawrence suggests people who own businesses might want to consider a cash balance retirement plan on top of a 401(k). Such an arrangement can allow much higher contributions than traditional IRAs.

But he says the utility of such a plan is heavily dependent on the specifics of a company, its ownership, its cash flow and its workforce.

Another option is to see whether youre contributing the maximum amount allowed under retirement savings plans offered through your employer.

And if your primary goal is to grow your money long-term, traditional investment accounts can still provide attractive returns. Even if these investments are subject to capital gains and other taxes, there are strategies to limit your tax burden.

The most important piece for everyone is just going to be being diligent about saving, Lawrence says.

Andy Rosen writes for NerdWallet. Email: arosen@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @https://twitter.com/andyrosen.

The article Congress Is Targeting Backdoor Roths. Here Are Some Alternatives originally appeared on NerdWallet.

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TWIN FALLS  Residents in eastern Twin Falls and Kimberly have reported an increasing number of mountain lion sightings in the last two weeks, according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

As of Thursday, four goats have died as confirmed lion kills. A llama was also killed recently, but Fish and Game spokesperson Terry Thompson said the kill was listed as suspected and could not be confirmed because the animal was buried.

Residents near the Falls Avenue and Hankins Road intersection captured a lion on a doorbell camera. Another sighting occurred when a lion ran out in front of a car. A third sighting was reported in Kimberly. Some of the reports include daylight activity, which is not typical behavior.

Fish and Game is not sure if this is all one animal or multiple.

Understandably, local residents are concerned, Thompson wrote in a website post. Fish and Game managers share this concern and are actively working to provide safety tips and suggestions to those who live in areas where mountain lions frequent.

Residents who spot a mountain lion should call the the Fish and Games Magic Valley Regional Office at 208-324-4359. Residents can also report sightings to the Twin Falls County Sheriff at 208-736-4040.

Fish and Game placed a trap on Monday but hasnt caught anything yet. When the agency notices repeated livestock kills, they will try to take action to remove the animal, Thompson said.

Its not uncommon, but its uncommon enough that people arent reminded very often that we do have lions that are very close to town, he said.

In April 2020, a Kimberly resident captured a video recording of a mountain lion moving through an alley. The police searched the town and never found the animal.

If you see a mountain lion, never run away or turn your back, Thompson said. Face the animal while making yourself look bigger by reaching your arms above your head. It is OK to yell, but do not scream. Slowly back away while maintaining eye contact with the animal.

Lions are not going to typically prey on people, Thompson said.

To keep pets safe, Fish and Game recommends owners take the following actions:

Keep your pets on a leash.

Do not feed pets outside or leave food dishes outside. Although mountain lions will not typically be attracted to the food, it could attract other wildlife that are considered prey by a lion.

Before letting pets outside, turn on lights and make loud noises. A privacy fence will not stop a mountain lion from entering a yard.

If possible, stay outside with your pet.

Homeowner safety tips also include using lights to discourage wildlife from entering properties and making sure household garbage is secured.

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BOISE  The Idaho State Board of Education on Tuesday approved a decision joining a federal lawsuit to block contractor requirements in President Joe Bidens executive orders that include COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but colleges and universities will meanwhile abide by the order.

The board voted unanimously to ratify the decision to join the lawsuit filed Friday. In the same vote, the board gave colleges and universities the OK to begin actions necessary to comply with Bidens order.

The board on Tuesday cited unknowns in how long the lawsuit could go on, potentially jeopardizing nearly $90 million in federal research contracts and agreements that typically involve subcontractors on research efforts. Federal research grants arent affected. Those grants can help students go to school and faculty conduct research.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Georgia requests an injunction blocking Bidens order while the case plays out. Its not clear when a ruling on an injunction might be made.

Given that uncertainty, Board President Kurt Liebich said, we would be wise to begin the process of complying with that executive order.

Its not clear how many workers in Idaho would be affected by the order.

The lawsuit also includes the state of Idaho, Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and other entities within those states. The Idaho State Board of Education appears as a plaintiff in its capacity as regents of the University of Idaho, and board of trustees of Boise State University, Idaho State University and Lewis-Clark State College.

The states in the lawsuit are asking a federal judge to block Bidens requirement that all employees of federal contractors be vaccinated against the coronavirus by Dec. 8, arguing that the mandate violates federal procurement law and is an overreach of federal power.

Bidens executive order is astonishing  not only for its tremendous breadth and unworkably short deadline, but also because so little care has been given to how it will work in the real world, the lawsuit said.

The sweeping vaccine mandates put forward by Biden in August affect 100 million Americans, requiring that employers with more than 100 workers require workers to be vaccinated or tested weekly for the virus.

Workers at health facilities who receive federal Medicare or Medicaid will have to be fully vaccinated, affecting more than 17 million health care workers, the White House said.

Employees of the executive branch and contractors that do business with the federal government are also required to be vaccinated with no option to test out. That covers several million more workers.

The requirement for large companies to mandate vaccinations or weekly testing for employees will be enacted through a forthcoming rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that carries penalties of $14,000 per violation.

Idaho lawmakers plan to convene Nov. 15 at the Statehouse to pass laws also aimed at thwarting Bidens COVID-19 mandates.
BURNS, Ore. (AP)  Another rural, conservative county in Oregon has expressed interest in becoming part of Idaho.

The OregonianLive reports that voters in Harney County on Tuesday approved a ballot measure which requires local officials to hold meetings about moving the county into Idaho. The measure passed with more than 63% of the vote. The unofficial results were: 1,567 for and 917 against.

Harney became the eighth of Oregons 36 counties to vote for considering adjusting Oregons border to put much of rural eastern and southern Oregon in Idaho.

Rural Oregon is declaring as loudly as it can that it does not consent to being misgoverned by Oregons leadership and chooses to be governed as part of a state that understands rural Oregons values and way of making a living, said Mike McCarter, who heads Move Oregons Border for a Greater Idaho, which is behind the initiatives.

These ballot initiatives are non-binding; the point of them, McCarter says, is to force Idahos and Oregons legislatures to take up the issue, which is highly unlikely.

If Idaho and Oregon were to negotiate a border adjustment, the U.S. Congress would have to sign off on it.

The other counties that have voted for a Move Oregons Border-backed initiative in the last two years: Baker, Grant, Jefferson, Lake, Malheur, Sherman and Union. Two small counties have voted against the border-moving idea.

Douglas and Klamath counties likely will be next to vote.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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BOISE  The rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations and newly confirmed coronavirus cases has been dropping in Idaho, but the numbers are still high enough to leave hospitals overtaxed, Idaho Division of Public Health Administrator Elke Shaw-Tulloch said Tuesday.

That means hospitals will remain under a crisis standards of care designation for now, giving them the ability to ration health care as needed to deal with high numbers of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units and hospital beds.

The states positivity rate of new cases is still more than double the 5% goal set by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Shaw-Tulloch said. More than 1,000 new cases were reported to the state on Monday, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. More than 3,570 Idaho residents have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

But for some parents, hope was on the horizon Tuesday as a CDC advisory committee unanimously voted to recommend that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine be approved for use in 5- to 11-year-old children. More than 23,000 child-size vaccine doses have already been shipped by the vaccine manufacturers to Idaho, said Sarah Leeds, manager of the Idaho Immunization Program, and more than 11,000 doses were delivered to the state on Tuesday.

If the CDCs director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, gives final approval to the kid-size doses as expected, Leeds said, health care providers in Idaho could begin putting shots in arms as soon as later this week or early next.

This is a significant step forward in our ability to prevent COVID-19 illness in children, Leeds said.

Roughly 55% of the eligible residents ages 12 and older have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 so far, according to the state, but vaccination rates are much higher in older age groups and lower in younger age groups. About 33% of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated in Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

The number of new pediatric COVID-19 cases has also dropped since reaching a peak of about 1,700 new cases in one week in late September. Still, they remain high overall, with just under 1,000 new pediatric cases tallied during the last week of October. Thats close to the level of child COVID-19 cases the state saw during last winters surge.

While children generally experience milder coronavirus illness than older adults, they are not without risk, said Dr. Lisa Barker, a pediatrician.

Its really important to know that kids are not spared from the harm of COVID-19, although severe disease is less common in this age group, Barker said.

In the U.S., there have been more than 8,300 hospitalizations of kids ages 5 to 11, about a third requiring intensive care, according to government data. At least 94 children have died nationwide, according to CDC data.

Some children develop a rare but serious inflammatory disease about four weeks after their COVID-19 infection, Barker said. Multisystem Inflammatory System in Children, also called MIS-C, causes inflammation in several organ systems, and can result in kids requiring hospitalization and even intensive care, Barker said.

One 6-year-old child she cared for had a very mild coronavirus case but came back to her office about a month later with just sort of head-to-toe symptoms, including a rash, prolonged fever, and evidence of inflamed internal organs, Barker said. The child required extensive hospitalization.

Its important to recognize that the viral illness itself is not the only danger to these little guys, she said.
TWIN FALLS  Two principals in town credit their staff for the state honors they recently received.

It takes a combined effort, Magic Valley High School Principal Roger Keller said. One person cant run the school.

But Kellers wife has more to say about her husband being named Idahos Outstanding Principal of the Year Award by the Idaho Association of School Administrators.

Kristin Keller teaches physical education at Kimberly Middle School, where her husband was the principal more than 20 years ago.

I see the hours of work and attention to detail so Im super proud he gets to be recognized for such outstanding work, she told the Times-News. He is very thankful for the award and gives credit to those around him for making him great.

Magic Valley High School, an alternative school on Main Avenue North in Twin Falls, began in the late 1980s in the basement of the Presbyterian Church as a school for pregnant students. It has now grown to include 13 teachers and a fluid student population of 170 students.

Keller is extremely passionate about getting things done correctly and making positive connections with students, helping them to strive to be the best they can be, Kristin Keller said.

Several miles away in the northwest corner of Twin Falls, Rock Creek Elementary Schools principal Shari Cowger, received the Idaho Gem Service Award for her outstanding leadership and contribution to public education from the Idaho Association of School Administrators.

Cowger was chosen to receive the award by the Idaho Association Elementary School Principals, a group that Cowger led in the past.

She is also the president of the Idaho Association of School Administrators and is on the Twin Falls School District Education Foundation board. She is in her 12th year as an elementary principal and 14th year in administration.

Cowger, too, gave credit to her staff for the award honoring her distinguished service.

I was extremely honored to be recognized for an award that I feel is truly a team effort, Cowger said. When you surround yourself with amazing people who share your vision, great things happen.

Keller likes the structure of his school because we are able to get to know the students, he said. Students know we want them to succeed  thats where the reward comes for us.

As a principal, Keller values the students at his alternative high school. Many of the students have seen more than their share of lifes struggles, he said.

We have a lot of respect for the students, based on the situations they have come from, he said. These students have a lot of grit. They are fighters.

Many have told Keller they are proud to be a student at the high school.

What a comfort to know that we have their support, Keller said.

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Idahoans across the Magic Valley went local this week, casting votes for a variety of city/town officials and local issues that will impact your family, your neighbors and your lives for years to come. As a former lifetime Republican, I have always cast my vote for the Prosperity Party. While that used to be the GOP, its now the Idaho Democratic Party and Idaho Democratic values. Granted, local elections in Idaho are non-partisan  meaning you dont know what party youre voting for when you go to the polls  but you can usually tell whos on the side of creating prosperous Idaho families and whos not from their web sites. There are pro-Idahoans who champion better schools, lower property taxes and preserving public lands (Idaho Democrats) and then there are pro-Californians who want to give your tax dollars away to out-of-state corporations and trumpet some nonsense about civility while taking dark-money contributions from some very uncivil East Coast organizations (not Idaho Democrats).

In addition, there are the pro-prosperity ballot issues which are made necessary by the anti-prosperity forces controlling our state  namely school levies/bonds. The very reason you have to vote on school levies is because your elected state leaders wont fund your schools. That leaves Idahoans to make hard local decisions about their kids education. Its a paradox. We all know education can make our children more money, and yet the state leaders youve been electing consistently pass legislation to make Idaho families poorer while making you foot the bill in the form of higher taxes.

Lets review. Idahos schools are severely under-funded on the state level which is a big reason why your property taxes are out of control. In order to keep your schools going, you are forced to pass local measures to keep the lights on at your local elementary, middle and high schools. Of course, this doesnt always happen. As a result, the lack of education investments contributes to higher crime rates and drug abuse in your neighborhoods. Numerous studies show that kids with a better educational foundation are less likely to commit crimes and do drugs. They are also more likely to prosper in their communities. In other words, a vote for your local school bond levies in the City of Buhl, or Minidoka, Cassia, Jerome and Lincoln Counties (all received majority approval) is also a vote for law and order and prosperity in your communities.

But it shouldnt have to come to that.

Some of you flat out cant afford to pay for those levies. I get it. Those levies wind up on your property taxes which are spiraling out of control. Ive met a lot of people like you who simply cant afford their homes anymore. Your state leaders have put you in an impossible situation. You must fight for the survival of your local schools, while battling against state leaders who are content to see your communities fail. Like I said, its a paradox.

This is something you should keep in mind come 2022. The people who inflate your property taxes, contribute to crime and chase Idahoans out of Idaho are the very people you have been voting for all these years. Whether you realize it or not, your vote has contributed to the very problems your family is suffering from now. That being said, you have the power to change that. Consider this weeks votes to be a warm-up for the bigger battle for Idaho next year. Do you want prosperity to come back to Idaho? How about your children? You can do that one vote at a time. Switching political parties is no easy thing. It takes a lot of strength to admit youve been wrong for the better part of three decades. I decided to be a Republican when I was 13-years-old and it took about 35 years for me to change course. To this very day, I always vote for the Prosperity Party and Prosperity values. In 2022, that means voting for Idaho Democrats and Idaho Democratic values.

Its not too late for you to do the same.

Jeremy J. Gugino is a Democratic communications volunteer.

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Some fishing adventures are not for the faint of heart. And a trek into the Salmon River wilderness in search of big, anadromous salmon and steelhead certainly ranks high for degree of difficulty.

But when it comes to fishing, Im always up for a challenge.

On this particular trip, I got to join my buddy Wade and his family at their secret hole deep in the backcountry. I made the same trek several years ago and was rewarded with my first steelhead in Idaho. Steelhead remained our target this year, but we were also intrigued by a rare fall Chinook run.

It was zero-dark-thirty when we arrived at the end of a janky dirt road and saddled up with our packs. A long hike awaited us as we packed in full camping gear and led Wades two young kids. Fortunately, nothing makes a journey pass more quickly than the possibility of big fish at the end of it.

Before the sun crested the mountains, we arrived at steelhead camp, where Wades dad, brother and nephews had set up the day before. As usual, the strategy was backtrolling with crankbaits and side planers, nifty devices that keep your bait wobbling in the current indefinitely. With eight anglers, our spread of side planers was impressive.

They wont be able to get through without hitting one of these, chuckled Wades dad, Dale, who has been fishing this river since long before Wade and I were born.

Fishing for salmon and steelhead usually requires a lot of patience and resolve. On a good day, an angler will get a handful of bites. On an average day, it might only be one or two. The morning hours were relatively slow, although we did hook a couple A-run steelhead that the kids got to reel in.

Shortly after lunchtime, one of my planers took off downstream. I felt the thrash of a big, powerful fish and chased after it. Dale was on my heels with the net, and we got eyes on a big Chinook salmon as I slowly gained line. Five minutes in, with the fish just 10 feet from shore, my lure came dislodgedheartbreaking, but one of the hazards of fishing with barbless hooks.

I was bummed, but not deterred. I reset my gear and waitedand waited and waited. A couple more steelhead came in, including a big, wild B-run fish landed by Wade and his son, Edwin. But as the shadows lengthened, things got quiet.

With dusk setting in, we noticed one of the side planers out of formation, apparently tangled up in another line. I shed some light on the situation with my trusty Third Eye Headlamp and held onto the line while Dale untangled things. With the line in my hands, I felt a telltale tugso I tugged back. ZING!!! A fish took off downstream, swimming through two more side planers.

Using my headlamp to navigate the rocky shoreline, we quickly but carefully worked the problem. Dale got one planer unhooked and then grabbed the net. Wades brother, Brad, was able to free the second planer. Somehow, the fish stayed attached, and as it raced away from us, I gave chase, turning my head every couple seconds to give Dale some light.

We wound up 100 yards downstream, where an open beach area provided an ideal landing spot. As the fish came in, I spotlighted it with the lamp and Dale scooped it up. It was a nice Chinook, and a legal keeper, too! We high-fived and smiled as we caught our breath.

Landing that fish was a wild, lucky, eleventh-hour victory. But when youre slugging it out with stubborn salmon and steelhead, youll take them however they come. Tight lines!

Jordan Rodriguez has been fishing Idaho waters since he was a teen. Share your fish stories, adventures and questions with him at tightlinesboise@gmail.com, or visit tightlines208.com for the latest local fishing reports and upcoming class offerings.

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What I would encourage parents to do is work with their child to come up with a plan, she says.

That might mean deciding to bring comforting or distracting items, like a favorite television show on a tablet or a favorite stuffed animal.

Validate the childs feelings

Dont say its just a shot or tell kids not to cry.

Medical experts say nervousness is a natural reaction to needles and injections, and adults can acknowledge discomfort from the vaccine.

Feelings are for feeling, not for fixing, Mitsos says. Crying is OK. Its communication. Its OK to share how you feel.

Reaffirm that youll be there for your child during the injection, and youll get through it together, she says.

Making it clear that theyre not going to have to go through it alone is important for kids of any age, Mitsos says.

Ott added that praising a child afterward with statements like you did it or Im so proud of you for doing it can also help.

Offer choices
"That opened up the school choice issue for us in a way we could have never been able to do in our messaging, with all the money in the world," he said.

Republicans also are likely to revisit some laws pushed through by the Democratic-controlled legislature in the past two years - in efforts to adjust the regulatory framework for legalizing marijuana, restore a photo-ID requirement for voting and address the accelerated phase-out of fossil fuels under the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

Control of House

But first, Gilbert said, they have to secure their apparent 52-48 advantage against vote shifts in close House contests as mailed absentee ballots are counted through Friday.

House Republicans also have to choose between Gilbert, who led them back to power, and Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, who chaired the victorious House campaign effort, as the next speaker.

"That is a different election with a very small constituency," Gilbert said of the caucus vote for speaker.
Lesley Stephen. Credit: Lesley Stephen

Clinicians and the wider research community involved in treating advanced breast cancer (ABC) need to do more to help and encourage patients to join clinical trials, according to a patient advocate who is leading a study that shows only 14 percent of ABC patients in the UK have been recruited to a trial.

Reporting on the study that involved collaboration between patients, clinicians and researchers, Lesley Stephen told the virtual meeting of the Advanced Breast Cancer Sixth International Consensus Conference (ABC 6): "Clinicians and the wider research community, including the pharmaceutical industry, need to work better together to enable patients with metastatic breast cancer to be included in clinical trials."

It is well known that patients tend to do better if they are included in clinical trials, regardless of what treatment they receive. Yet despite this, Ms. Stephen discovered that many patients with advanced, metastatic breast cancer (cancer that has spread beyond the site of the primary tumor) had never discussed clinical trials with their doctors. So she decided to carry out the current study.

"I have been on a clinical trial for almost six years, and it has given me six years of life I never expected to have. Since my diagnosis and after talking with other advanced breast cancer patients, I realized that most had never had a conversation with their clinician about a clinical trial. I wanted to understand why this was."

She teamed up with Professor Carlo Palmieri, a consultant in medical oncology at The Clatterbridge Cancer Center, and University of Liverpool, UK, Professor Janet Dunn, head of the Warwick Clinical Trials unit at the University of Warwick, UK, and Dr. Ellen Copson, associate professor of medical oncology at the University of Southampton, UK, to conduct a UK-wide survey.

The online study was launched in May 2021. By 23 August 627 responses had been received (626 women, 1 man). The survey remains open, but Stephen and her colleagues do not expect the key messages to change. Analysis continues and further data will be available in early 2022.

Analysis of the responses so far show that 77 percent of patients had never been asked about joining a clinical trial (466 of 627), and 69 percent (433) had not asked their clinician about trials. Only 14 percent (90) had been recruited to a trial; of these 80 percent (72) found it a positive experience. The 31 percent of patients (189) who inquired about trials received a variety of responses, which ranged from positive and supportive to "vague and dismissive."

Patients gave the following comments to the survey:

"Still waiting for a response. Talking to my oncologist is like shouting into a cave. All I get back is my own voice"

"I was told that I'd be informed if there was an appropriate trial"

"oncologist very unsupportive. She said most trials fail and should only ever be a last resort"

"I wasn't aware I could travel to another hospital to access a trial, I thought I would need to participate locally."

When asked about traveling for studies, 56 percent (350) were willing to travel, 37 percent (211) for up to two hours to another UK center and 43 percent (248) were willing to travel worldwide. When asked about funding travel, the amount patients could afford varied from nothing to over 100, with 25 percent (138) willing to pay over 100 per month to travel. If travel costs were covered, the proportion willing to travel to participate in a trial increased to 61 percent (381).

When asked about the benefits of participation in clinical trials, 93 percent (586) felt it would give early access to potential new treatments and 90 percent (565) felt it would be beneficial to future patients. However, 63 percent (392) were concerned about the possible side effects of treatment on a trial and 43 percent (268) were unsure of its potential benefits. Thirty-one percent (192) of patients worried that they wouldn't know what the trial was about, and 8 percent (48) had other worries, such as that they would be given a placebo or that a trial was a last resort.

The majority of patients (78 percent) preferred getting information about clinical trials from trusted healthcare professionals, and 90 percent (535) would search a database if it was patient friendly. Of those that searched for information about trials (13), 57 percent (78) could not find the information they were looking for.

"Our survey has several key findings: Patients with advanced breast cancer lack opportunities to participate in clinical trials; clinicians are important in providing information about clinical trials; patient-friendly databases are needed urgently; and many patients are willing to travel to take part in a trial and financial support would help them to do this," said Stephen. "Clinicians act as gatekeepers, and this study shows that they often don't mention or discuss trials, and if they do, they tend to look only for local trials and don't ask their patients if they are willing and able to travel. They hold a lot of the power in the relationship and we need to encourage them to discuss trials as a treatment option with their patients. However, clinicians can't do this alone; we need the pharmaceutical industry, which funds clinical trials, to work with us, as well. We also need to educate patients about trials and empower them to be proactive and ask their oncologist about them. In addition, patients often think that a trial is a 'last resort' or that they will be given a placebo. This demonstrates the need for more education of patients about the importance of trials as a potential 'extra' treatment option."

Chair of the ABC 6 conference, Dr. Fatima Cardoso, director of the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Clinical Center in Lisbon, Portugal, who was not involved with the research, said: "This study raises some important questions about access to clinical trials for patients with advanced breast cancer. Clinical trials are the only way to advance knowledge on how to treat cancer and to prove the value of new therapies. All of usclinicians, researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, academic groups and fundersneed to work together to reverse this situation. This is not just a problem in the UK; it is difficult in most countries for patients with advanced breast cancer to join clinical trials and, in some countries, it is impossible. This needs to change urgently in order to find new therapies and provide better care for these patients."

Explore further More than half of cancer patients willing to enroll in clinical trials

Provided by Associacao Advanced Breast Cancer Global Alliance
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The damage caused by COVID-19 to the lungs' smallest blood vessels has been intricately captured using high-energy X-rays emitted by a special type of particle accelerator.

Scientists from UCL and the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) used a new revolutionary imaging technology called Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT), to scan donated human organs, including lungs from a COVID-19 donor.

HiP-CT enables 3D mapping across a range of scales, allowing clinicians to view the whole organ as never before by imaging it as a whole and then zooming down to cellular level.

The technique uses X-rays supplied by the European Synchrotron (a particle accelerator) in Grenoble, France, which following its recent Extremely Brilliant Source upgrade (ESRF-EBS), now provides the brightest source of X-rays in the world at 100 billion times brighter than a hospital X-ray.

Due to this intense brilliance, researchers can view blood vessels five microns in diameter (a tenth of the diameter of a hair) in an intact human lung. A clinical CT scan only resolves blood vessels that are about 100 times larger, around 1mm in diameter.

Dr. Claire Walsh (UCL Mechanical Engineering) said that "the ability to see organs across scales like this will really be revolutionary for medical imaging. As we start to link our HiP-CT images to clinical images through AI techniques, we willfor the first timebe able to highly accurately validate ambiguous findings in clinical images. For understanding human anatomy this is also a very exciting technique, being able to see tiny organ structures in 3D in their correct spatial context is key to understanding how our bodies are structured and how they therefore function."

Using HiP-CT, the research team, which includes clinicians in Germany and France, have seen how severe COVID-19 infection 'shunts' blood between the two separate systemsthe capillaries which oxygenate the blood and those which feed the lung tissue itself. Such cross-linking stops the patient's blood from being properly oxygenated, which was previously hypothesized but not proven.

Maximilian Ackermann MD (University Medical Center Mainz), clinical user of the technique, said: "Shortly after the beginning of the global pandemic we demonstrated that COVID-19 is a systemic vascular disease using histopathological (optical imaging of tissue) and molecular methods. However, these techniques did not adequately address the extent of the changes and clotting in fine blood vessels of whole lungs."

Danny Jonigk, Professor of Thoracic Pathology, (Hannover Medical School, Germany) said "By combining our molecular methods with the HiP-CT multiscale imaging in lungs affected by COVID-19 pneumonia, we gained a new understanding how shunting between blood vessels in a lung's two vascular systems occurs in COVID-19 injured lungs, and the impact it has on oxygen levels in our circulatory system."

Dr. Paul Tafforeau, lead scientist at ESRF, said: "The idea to develop this new HiP-CT technique came after the beginning of the global pandemic, by combining several techniques that were used at the ESRF to image large fossils, and using the increased sensitivity of the new Extremely Brilliant Source at the ESRF, ESRF-EBS. This allows us to see in 3D the incredibly small vessels within a complete human organ, enabling us to distinguish in 3D a blood vessel from the surrounding tissue, and even to observe some specific cells.

"This is a real breakthrough, as human organs have low contrast and so are very difficult to image in detail with the current available techniques. ESRF-EBS has allowed us to go from deciphering the secrets of fossils to seeing the human body as never before."

Using HiP-CT to create the Human Organ Atlas

With support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the UCL-led team are using HiP-CT to produce a Human Organ Atlas, launching today. This will display six donated control organs: brain, lung, heart, two kidneys and a spleen, and the lung of a patient who died of COVID-19. There will also be a control lung biopsy and a COVID-19 lung biopsy. The Atlas will be available online for surgeons, clinicians and the interested public.

Project lead Professor Peter Lee (UCL Mechanical Engineering) said: "The Atlas spans a previously poorly explored scale in our understanding of human anatomy, which is the centimeter to micron scale in intact organs. Clinical CT and MRI scans can resolve down to just below a millimeter, whilst histology (studying cells / biopsy slices under a microscope), electron microscopy (which uses an electron beam to generate images) and other similar techniques resolve structures with sub-micron accuracy, but only on small biopsies of tissue from an organ. HiP-CT bridges these scales in 3D, imaging whole organs to provide new insights into our biological makeup."

Insights for other diseases and conditions

The researchers are confident that the scale-bridging imaging from whole organ down to cellular level could provide additional insights into many diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer's Disease.

Clinician Willi Wagner, Radiologist at University Hospital in Heidelberg said that "HiP-CT is filling a vast imaging gap in human medicine: clinical imaging provides 3D data of the body and organs but is limited to a gross scale; histopathology on the other hand provides detailed images of tissues and cells derived from small pieces of organs. It is generally limited to a small field and two dimensions. HiP-CT is bridging the organ to tissue scale, tightly linking the clinical disciplines of radiology and pathology and providing never before seen structural data of 3D tissue architecture and disease patterns."

The authors hope the Human Organ Atlas will eventually contain a library of diseases that affect organs on a range of scales, from 1 to 100s of microns to entire organs, helping clinicians as they diagnose and treat a wide range of diseases.

The team also hope to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to calibrate clinical CT and MRI scans, enhancing the understanding of clinical imaging and enabling faster and more accurate diagnosis.

The research was published in Nature Methods.

Explore further New method enables 3D microscopy of human organs

More information: C. L. Walsh et al, Imaging intact human organs with local resolution of cellular structures using hierarchical phase-contrast tomography, Nature Methods (2021). Journal information: Nature Methods C. L. Walsh et al, Imaging intact human organs with local resolution of cellular structures using hierarchical phase-contrast tomography,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41592-021-01317-x
Beyond the administration of stem cells to patients with cancer and selected immunological conditions, there is cautious optimism around the prospect of treating various other diseases and injuries with stem cell treatments and other regenerative medicine products, says Leigh Turner, Ph.D., corresponding author and professor of health, society and behavior in the UCI Program in Public Health. Stem cell therapy is still in its early stages and faces years of clinical trials and approvals to expand the list of approved, evidence-based therapy.. Credit: Steve Zylius / UCI

More than four times as many businesses and clinics than were identified in 2016 are selling stem cell products not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and lack convincing evidence of safety and efficacy, according to a five-year study conducted by University of California, Irvine Program in Public Health professor of health, society and behavior Leigh Turner. The analysis appears online in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Using tools such as Google Search and Google Maps, Turner found 1,480 U.S. businesses and 2,754 clinics selling purported stem cell treatments compared to a study conducted five years ago that found 351 businesses and 570 clinicsa four-fold growth in the number of businesses operating in this space. The U.S. now has more documented facilities selling such putative stem cell treatments than any other country, including nations that were once leading destinations for "stem cell tourism." California, Texas and Florida lead the nation with 347, 333, and 310 clinics respectively.

"One of the most troubling features of this marketplace is that businesses selling unproven and non-FDA-approved stem cell products often use marketing misrepresentations and aggressive sales tactics to exploit the hope, suffering, fear or desperation of patients," said Turner, corresponding author and a member of the UCI Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center.

Stem cell therapy, or regenerative medicine, has resulted in life-saving treatment of patients with certain types of cancer and blood-related diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. However, most stem cell products are, at present, investigational in nature, and their safety and efficacy continue to need testing in well-designed and rigorously conducted clinical trials.

Turner's analysis found that the types of purported treatment being offered range from claims to alleviate pain (85%+), orthopedic diseases and injuries (46%+) and sports-related injuries (22%+) all the way to hair loss and anti-aging. Some even claim to boost the immune system as a way to protect against the SARS CoV-2 virus.

"Many of these 'clinics' are promoting unlicensed and unproven stem cell products and claim their interventions do not require FDA approval," Turner said, who is also the ethics leader for UCI's Institute for Clinical & Translational Science. "However, that couldn't be further from the truth. I found that there is widespread promotion of products that do, in fact, require premarketing authorization by the FDA. In many cases, these clinics are using misleading advertising and predatory marketing techniques."

Additional findings show that patients are spending thousands of dollars on these unproven products. Out-of-pocket costs range anywhere from $1,200 to $28,000 with an average price tag of roughly $5,100. Some patients report suffering substantial financial losses after purchasing stem cell interventions that were allegedly promoted with misleading claims. Even more alarming is that unproven and unapproved stem cell products pose numerous risks to patients and have caused some individuals serious harm. According to the FDA, adverse events resulting from the administration of unlicensed stem cell products are likely underreported to the agency.

Turner argues that the industry has grown to a point where regulators are unable to provide adequate oversight of this marketplace. He fears that this trend seems likely to continue unless there are substantial increases in enforcement activity by the FDA, the Federal Trade Commission, and other regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies.

"This marketplace also poses threats to the collective good by undermining public health, the advancement of scientific knowledge, trust in public institutions and the public understanding needed for citizens to be able to distinguish evidence-based stem cell interventions from products unsupported by convincing safety and efficacy data," Turner said.

More information: Leigh Turner & colleauges, The American Stem Cell Sell in 2021: U.S. Businesses Selling Unlicensed and Unproven Stem Cell Interventions, Cell Stem Cell (2021). www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fu  1934-5909(21)00420-3 Journal information: Cell Stem Cell Leigh Turner & colleauges, The American Stem Cell Sell in 2021: U.S. Businesses Selling Unlicensed and Unproven Stem Cell Interventions,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2021.10.008
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Any decision to vaccinate all children under 12 years of age against COVID-19 must be done with due caution, considering in detail the risk and benefits, according to a new review by international pediatric vaccine experts.

The review, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and the University of Fribourg, doesn't argue for or against vaccinating children against COVID-19 but rather highlighted the points to consider and the complexity of policy decisions around vaccination of this age group.

MCRI and University of Melbourne Professor Nigel Curtis said the review, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, stated that although mass COVID-19 vaccination of all ages may become the standard approach globally, it was important to scrutinize all the arguments around vaccination of young children.

"Whether all children less than 12 years of age should be vaccinated against COVID-19 remains an open scientific question," he said. The balance of risks and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination in children is more complex than in adults, as the relative harms from vaccination and disease are less well established in this age bracket."

University of Fribourg Dr. Petra Zimmermann said that aside from preventing the small minority of children who become severely unwell with COVID-19, the key arguments for vaccinating healthy children were to protect them from long-term consequences such as long COVID and rare instances of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, as well as reducing community transmission and helping prevent school closures and the indirect harms of lockdowns.

"Vaccinating adults and adolescents are already decreasing community transmission and consequently reducing severe cases and the risk of new virus variants emerging," she said. "Vaccinating young children might also help to further reduce the indirect harms caused by quarantine, lockdowns, repeat testing and school closures."

The review also pointed out that if COVID-19 remained a generally mild disease in children it may not be necessary to vaccinate all those aged under 12 years, which would reduce exposure to rare vaccine side effects, help improve the global vaccine supply and prevent any impact on routine immunization schedules.

"Routine immunization programs for children and adolescents worldwide have been disrupted by the pandemic," Dr. Zimmermann said. Implementing a universal COVID-19 vaccine program for these age groups risks causing further delays by using up existing delivery resources and personnel. However, if COVID-19 vaccination is combined with the administration of other routine vaccines, this problem might be reduced."

Professor Curtis said it was important to consider vaccine decisions for infants, young children and adolescents separately and for data on the effectiveness and adverse effects to be continually reviewed.

"Further data is needed to confirm that the benefits of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19 disease in children under 12 years of age outweighs any potential risks," he said.

"Constant monitoring of COVID-19 disease severity across all age groups is crucial. If a variant of concern emerges with increased severity in children this would alter the riskbenefit equation.

"In low- and middle-income countries where COVID-19 disease is more severe in children due to underlying health conditions, there may be a lower threshold for vaccinating children. A one-dose or a reduced-dose vaccine might be an option for this age group, which might also lower the small risk of myocarditis experienced after a second dose of a mRNA vaccine."

A phase two trial in 2500 children, aged 512 years, recently reported that a mRNA vaccine was safe, well tolerated and produced robust neutralizing antibodies. Results from the same trial in children under five years of age are expected by the end of 2021.

The US Food and Drug Administration recently recommended Pfizer vaccines for children aged 5-11 years. The Therapeutic Goods Administration has indicated that young children in Australia could be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of November, but long-term, real-world safety data will likely be required by Australian authorities before approving vaccines for this age group.

Explore further COVID-19 vaccination plan for kids 5 to 11

More information: Petra Zimmermann et al, Should children be vaccinated against COVID-19?, Archives of Disease in Childhood (2021). Journal information: Archives of Disease in Childhood Petra Zimmermann et al, Should children be vaccinated against COVID-19?,(2021). DOI: 10.1136/archdischild-2021-323040
(HealthDay)The word went out late last month throughout Utahif you've got a spare set of aluminum crutches lying around, you should donate them to your local hospital.

An international shortage of aluminum has caused delays in shipments of crutches and walkers, so Utah hospitals banded together for #LeanOnUtaha community drive to collect gently used durable medical supplies.

No patients have yet gone without the crutches and walkers they need, but health care leaders saw potential trouble ahead and have acted to head it off, said Glen Beeby, spokesman for Intermountain Healthcare, a Utah-based not-for-profit system of 24 hospitals.

"Due to the uncertainty in the supply chain we wanted to make sure we were prepared as we went into the busiest part of the year for orthopedic surgeries," Beeby said. "We knew Utahns would want to step up to help their neighbors."

Global supply chain shortages are affecting U.S. health care in often unexpected ways, as doctors and hospitals find themselves scrounging for medical supplies and pharmaceuticals that wind up in short supply for a number of different reasons.

Virtually all U.S. hospitals and health care systems (99%) have reported challenges in procuring needed supplies, including shortages of key items and significant price increases, according to the health care consulting firm Kaufman Hall.

About 8 out of 10 said they suffered supply shortages and had to seek new vendors for supplies during the pandemic, a recent Kaufman Hall report found.

Shortages in raw materials and components hamper the production of both drugs and sophisticated medical devices. Manufacturing facilities struggle to keep up as COVID-19 sweeps through worker ranks. Labor shortages prevent medical products from being transported to the places where they're needed most.

And an upcoming holiday season combined with pent-up consumer demand is likely to ensure that supply chain problems continue, as parts needed for medical monitors are instead put into video game systems and fancy 4K televisions, said Mike Schiller, director of supply chain at the Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management.

"If you're not going to work, there's extra money in the family coffers. I have a $225 monthly train fare that I haven't had to pay for 20 months, right?" Schiller said. "If you look at basic consumer spending, and now you're coming into the holiday months, that type of consumer spending has been turbocharged as a result of everybody being sequestered for such an extended period of time. I want that new 80-inch OLED TV or the new PlayStation 5 or whatever it is."

Drug shortages are nothing new. There are 109 drugs currently residing on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration list of ongoing shortages, and 195 on a list maintained by the American Society of Health System Pharmacists.

Small snags, big disruptions

And not everything on the list are true shortages, said Andrew Mulcahy, a senior policy researcher for health care at the RAND Corp.

"There are a couple of charts I've seen in papers showing this huge upswing in the number of shortages over the past decade, say, and it's mostly a growth in these kinds of what we call 'technical shortages,'" Mulcahy said. "The one particular box they wanted to buy was a little tricky to get, but patients were still able to get their drugs. It was hard for the pharmacists to get a specific size carton of something that they typically order, but they were able to find a substitute that was pretty close."

But the COVID-19 pandemic has created snags and disruptions in the global supply chain that ripple outward, much as the flapping of a butterfly's wings might contribute to a storm system on the other side of the world.

"Drugs used in the U.S. involve inputs from all over the world," Mulcahy said, referring to raw materials. "A lot of those chemical inputs are manufactured in India and China, and they're shipped to the U.S. That gets tied up in all of the disruptions around shipping that are affecting all industries right now."

Shortages in aluminum, semiconductors, wood and paper pulp, and resin are disrupting supplies of medical devices, and these are often caused by different business sectors competing for the same raw materials, Schiller said.

Those shortages have led to uneven supplies of medical monitors, CT scan devices, packaging for medical supplies and gloves, Schiller said.

On top of that, energy shortages and high COVID infection rates among employees have caused manufacturing slowdowns at different facilities around the world, Schiller added.

Transportation also has caused kinks in the supply chain for needed medical supplies, said Nancy Foster, the American Hospital Association's vice president of quality and patient safety policy.

"Over the last couple of months, we've also seen shortages in oxygen as hospitals that were experiencing a surge were using an extraordinary amount of oxygen compared to their normal usage," Foster said.

"The challenge there was not actually in the availability of the oxygen, but was rather in the transportation of the oxygen to the hospitals," Foster said. "That would require a hazardous material license for the driver," and there are labor shortages of qualified truck drivers.

Shortages among pharmaceuticals tend to mostly affect sterile injectable drugs, and usually drugs that are older and less profitable, Mulcahy said.

Widely used drugs largely unaffected

"They tend to be drugs that are manufactured in and around the U.S., where companies maybe over time didn't find it as profitable to make these older injectable drugs and they kind of got out of the business, to the point where there's just one manufacturer left," Mulcahy said. "Some disruption happens there, and then the supply really does dry up."

On the other hand, supplies of widely used pills have remained surprisingly stable throughout the pandemic, Mulcahy said.

"For a lot of the more traditional prescription drugs, they are manufactured in very big batches and companies buy an awful lot of those inputs at one time and they typically have some months of stocks to work with before they run out," Mulcahy said.

Most of the time, there are workarounds and substitutes for drugs, so that patients aren't left in the lurch, Mulcahy said.

But in some cases, the substitutes just aren't there.

One example is leucovorin, a medication typically given in combination with chemotherapy drugs, Mulcahy said.

"The go-to substitute is a close riff on the same molecule that was also having supply chain issues at about the same time," Mulcahy said.

The good news is that both industry and government are adapting to help resolve these problems quickly and protect patients, experts said.

"If there's a silver lining that's come out of COVID, it's the collaboration across the health care field," Schiller said. "You're seeing a lot of local and community businesses step up and retool their manufacturing facilities to make supplies to help the hospitals."

Government also has been playing a role in helping direct supplies to the manufacturers and health providers that need them most, Mulcahy said.

"The government's in a unique position to facilitate some of that," Mulcahy said. "Another role is stockpiling and making sure there's enough drugs and PPE. That's another way that government can buffer some of this, when a disruption happens, to buy a little time and give industry and other parts of the government time to step in and try to fix things."

And finally, each community can pitch in and lend a hand, as happened in Utah.

"The funny thing is, I was in my closet and I saw a pair of crutches tucked away in the corner, aluminum crutches," Schiller said, discussing the Utah shortage. "I'm like, 'interesting, I wonder if I should see if anybody needs those.'"

Explore further Public health researchers call for new measures to protect pharmaceutical supply chain

More information: The American Society of Health System Pharmacists has more about The American Society of Health System Pharmacists has more about how drug shortages are managed

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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Croatia recorded its highest coronavirus infection rate in a single day Thursday, as officials in the country with some of Europe's lowest inoculation rates urged the public to get vaccinated.

A total of 6,310 people tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, official figures showed.

The surge in infections in Croatia comes as the virus has hammered large swathes of Europe, with the World Health Organization warning that the continent could see another half a million deaths by early next year.

Croatia's Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic took aim at the country's unvaccinated majority, pinning the blame for the jump in cases on their reluctance to get the jab.

"The unvaccinated determine the dynamics of the epidemiological situation," he said.

Just around 44 percent of the country's 4.2 million people have been fully vaccinated since the shots were introduced late last year, according to AFP data.

Within the EU, only Bulgaria and Romania have lower vaccination rates.

"This is an extremely delicate moment... We are begging the nation to get vaccinated," Health Minister Vili Beros told reporters.

"I'm begging the nation to trust scientists and professionals."

To boost vaccination rates, the government has begun targeting those who refuse to comply with protocols introduced last month.

Four unvaccinated people employed at a social welfare centre were fired on Tuesday after they refused obligatory testing for COVID-19.

Since the start of the pandemic, the virus has claimed more than 9,300 lives in Croatia.

Explore further Spiraling infections grip low-vaccination parts of Europe

 2021 AFP
(HealthDay)The discovery that up to 80% of white-tailed deer in Iowa may be infected with COVID-19 has scientists worried that the animals could become a reservoir for variants that could come back to haunt humans.

In the new study, samples were collected lymph node samples from hundreds of dead deer across the state from April 2020 through January 2021. The researchers believe it's likely that the virus is rapidly spreading among the deer, The New York Times reported.

There's no evidence of deer-to-human infection, but the Penn State University authors and Iowa wildlife officials are warning deer hunters and others who have contact with deer to take precautions.

The veterinary microbiologists who led the study, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, said they were shocked to find such widespread infection in deer.

"It was effectively showing up in all parts of the state," researcher Suresh Kuchipudi told the Times. "We were dumbfounded."

"There is no reason to believe that the same thing isn't happening in other states where deer are present," researcher Vivek Kapur said.

If the virus were to become widespread in deer and other wild animals, there's a chance it could eventually morph into a new variant that could be passed back to people and is resistant to existing vaccines, experts warned.

"If deer can transmit the virus to humans, it's a game-changer," Tony Goldberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinarian who studies the evolution of infectious diseases as they move between animals and people, told the Times.

"To have a wildlife species become a reservoir after transmission from humans is very rare and unlucky, as if we needed more bad luck," added Goldberg, who wasn't involved in the study.

Earlier studies have found a number of other animals are susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They include ferrets and primates that have been intentionally infected in lab experiments, zoo animals that caught the virus from their handlers, and captive mink that were sickened after being exposed to the pathogen by farm workers.

In the case of mink, Denmark slaughtered its entire population of 17 million farmed mink after scientists discovered they could pass the virus back to people. The virus had also picked up mutations after infecting the mink, but officials said none were troubling.

Explore further Coronavirus cases detected in farmed mink in Poland

More information: Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on COVID infections in animals Suresh V. Kuchipudi et al, Multiple spillovers and onward transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in free-living and captive White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), (2021). DOI: 10.1101/2021.10.31.466677

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Vibhu Parcha, M.D., and Pankaj Arora, M.D. Credit: University of Alabama at Birmingham

A recent study published in Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine found that using genetic information to prescribe medications following a stent's being placed after a heart attack reduces the risk of fatal outcomes in the future. The findings from the University of Alabama at Birmingham support the growing trend of using a patient's genetic information to guide common prescription medications for safe and effective treatment.

Patients with coronary artery disease who receive a stent to open blocked arteries in the heart often receive medications to prevent the occurrence of a deadly cardiovascular event such as heart attack, stroke or death. However, Vibhu Parcha, M.D., a clinical research fellow in the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Division of Cardiovascular Disease, says that, depending on an individual's genetics, these medications could become less effective.

"Some of us carry a natural variation in our DNA that impairs our ability to metabolize clot-preventing medication," said Parcha, first author of the study. "This can sometimes cause these lifesaving medicines to become less effective. Therefore, an approach of using genetic information to prescribe proper medications after placing a stent has been proposed and recently assessed in an international, multicenter randomized clinical trial."

For this study, the researchers used the data from the TAILOR-PCI trial, which was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The trial was conducted in over 5,300 patients to determine whether using the genetic information when prescribing clot-preventing medications reduces the risk of developing any major cardiovascular event compared with the routine approach. The researchers combined the evidence from this study with information from previously conducted investigations.

"Based on the evidence from all randomized clinical trials to date combined with the latest evidence from TAILOR-PCI trial, we found that using the genetic information to guide clot-preventing antiplatelet medications further reduces the risk of developing potentially fatal future cardiovascular events," Parcha said.

Through their research, authors of this study found that patients who were treated with a genotype-based approach had a 99 percent lower chance of having a future stroke, heart attack, a blockage of stents and bleeding episodes compared to those who were treated with a routine clinical approach.

"Clopidogrel is a generic affordable medication that is widely prescribed, especially in the southeast United States, among patients getting a heart stent," said senior author Pankaj Arora, M.D., a physician-scientist in UAB's Division of Cardiovascular Disease. "We can now modify our treatment approach right after getting a heart stent or even later based on the genetic information to ensure that the risk of someone's developing a potentially fatal cardiac event is very small."

Arora adds that the current study provides evidence supporting the use of easy and quick genetic testing when someone is getting a stent. This course of treatment will ensure that patients get a precise and tailored medication regimen to prevent any future cardiac events.

"Currently, we are seeing a surge of genomics integrated into routine clinical therapy," Arora said. "This is a prime example of using precision medicine principles for a tailored evidence-based medication regimen for every patient."

Explore further Cardiology trial shows potential benefit of genetic testing when selecting blood thinners

More information: Vibhu Parcha et al, Genotype-Guided P2Y 12 Inhibitor Therapy After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: A Bayesian Analysis, Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine (2021). Vibhu Parcha et al, Genotype-Guided P2Y 12 Inhibitor Therapy After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: A Bayesian Analysis,(2021). DOI: 10.1161/CIRCGEN.121.003353
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Mitochondrial disorders affect around 1 in 4300 people and cause progressive, incurable diseases. They are amongst the most common inherited diseases but are difficult for clinicians to diagnose, not least because they can affect many different organs and resemble many other conditions.

Current genetic testing regimes fail to diagnose around 40% of patients, with major implications for patients, their families and the health services they use.

A new study, published today in the BMJ, offers hope to families with no diagnosis, and endorses plans for the UK to establish a national diagnostic program based on whole genome sequencing (WGS) to make more diagnoses faster.

While previous studies based on small, highly selected cohorts have suggested that WGS can identify mitochondrial disorders, this is the first to examine its effectiveness in a national healthcare systemthe NHS.

The study, led by researchers from the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit and Departments of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Genetics at the University of Cambridge, involved 319 families with suspected mitochondrial disease recruited through the 100,000 Genomes Project which was set up to embed genomic testing in the NHS, discover new disease genes and make genetic diagnosis available for more patients.

In total, 345 participantsaged 0 to 92 with a median age of 25 yearshad their whole genome sequenced. Through different analyses, the researchers found that they could make a definite or probable genetic diagnosis for 98 families (31%). Standard tests, which are often more invasive, failed to reach these diagnoses. Six possible diagnoses (2% of the 98 families) were made. A total of 95 different genes were implicated.

Surprisingly, 62.5% of the diagnoses were actually non-mitochondrial disorders, with some having specific treatments. This happened because so many different diseases resemble mitochondrial disorders, making it very difficult to know which are which.

Professor Patrick Chinnery from the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit and the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge, said:

"We recommend that whole genome sequencing should be offered early and before invasive tests such as a muscle biopsy. All that patients would need to do is have a blood test, meaning that this could be offered across the whole country in an equitable way. People wouldn't need to travel long distances to multiple appointments, and they would get their diagnosis much faster."

Dr. Katherine Schon from the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit and the Departments of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Genetics, said:

"A definitive genetic diagnosis can really help patients and their families, giving them access to tailored information about prognosis and treatment, genetic counseling and reproductive options including preimplantation genetic diagnosis or prenatal diagnosis."

The researchers made 37.5% of their diagnoses in genes known to cause mitochondrial disease. These diagnoses were nearly all unique to a particular participant family, reflecting the genetic diversity found in these disorders. The impairment of mitochondrial function tends to affect tissues with high energy demand such as the brain, the peripheral nerves, the eye, the heart and the peripheral muscles. The study offers a valuable new resource for the discovery of future mitochondrial disease genes.

The majority of the team's diagnoses (62.5%) were, however, of non-mitochondrial disorders which had features resembling mitochondrial diseases. These disorders would have been missed if the participants had only been investigated for mitochondrial disorders through muscle biopsy and/or a specific mitochondrial gene panel. These participants were living with a range of conditions including developmental disorders with intellectual disability, severe epileptic conditions and metabolic disorders, as well as heart and neurological diseases.

Chinnery said: "These patients were referred because of a suspected mitochondrial disease and the conventional diagnostic tests are specifically for mitochondrial diseases. Unless you consider these other possibilities, you won't diagnose them. Whole genome sequencing isn't restricted by that bias."

A small number of newly diagnosed participants are already receiving treatments as a result. The team identified potentially treatable disorders in six participants with a mitochondrial disorder and nine with a non-mitochondrial disorder, but the impact of the treatments has yet to be determined.

Chinnery said: "Diagnostic services are fragmented and unevenly distributed across the UK, and that creates major challenges for people with rare diseases and their families. By delivering a national program based on this genome-wide approach, you can offer the same level of service to everyone.

Schon said: "If we can create a national platform of families with rare diseases, we can give them the opportunity to engage in clinical trials so we can get definitive evidence that new treatments work."

The study points out that the relatively high number of patients with probable or possible diagnoses reflects the need for greater investment into the analysis of functional effects of new genetic variants which could be the cause of disease, but it is not certain at present.

It also argues that rapid trio whole genome sequencing should be offered to all acutely unwell individuals with suspected mitochondrial disorders, so that results can help guide clinical management. Currently in the UK, this is only available for acutely unwell children.

Dr. Ellen Thomas, Clinical Director and Director of Quality at Genomics England, said: "We are very pleased to see significant research like this being enabled by data generously donated by participants of the 100,000 Genomes Project. It is clear from these results how their contributions to a rich and, importantly, secure dataset is critical in facilitating the genomic research that leads to insights like these that then have the potential to return value to the NHS and their patients. We look forward to seeing how these findings could support future care for patients with suspected mitochondrial disorders."

Explore further Researchers develop tools to measure skeletal muscle function in patients with mitochondrial disease

More information: K. R. Schon et al., "Use of whole genome sequencing to determine the genetic basis of suspected mitochondrial disorders: a cohort study," BMJ (2021). DOI: 10.1136/ bmj-2021-066288 Journal information: British Medical Journal (BMJ) K. R. Schon et al., "Use of whole genome sequencing to determine the genetic basis of suspected mitochondrial disorders: a cohort study,"(2021). DOI: 10.1136/ bmj-2021-066288
When 4-year-old McCoy Tittsworth met his sister, Molly, hours after she was born, he held her swaddled body and kissed her on the cheek. She was the little sister he'd prayed to have.

A day later, while she was waiting to be discharged from the hospital in Wichita, Kansas, her oxygen levels started to slowly drop. She developed a barely perceptible whistle when breathing.

A nurse told Molly's parents, Janelle and Ryan, she was taking the newborn for more testing. Soon, a cardiologist told them Molly had been born with a congenital heart defect. A passageway for blood in her heart wasn't formed enough to do its job. It's called an interrupted aortic arch, and it required specialized treatment at another hospital.

Molly was airlifted to a Kansas City hospital a three-hour drive away.

McCoy had been expecting to welcome his sister home that day. Instead, Janelle kneeled to meet his eyes and said, "Your baby sister is with the doctors."

She and Ryan then took McCoy to preschool, not knowing how long it would be before they saw their son again or even if they would return with his sister.

As soon as they left him, Janelle collapsed into tears.

At the new hospital, about 30 people treated Mollyin part because they'd discovered more problems.

Molly also had a hole in her heart. And she had aortic stenosis, restricting the blood flow in her heart. Because of her age, doctors performed a temporary fix. When she was a week old, they placed a stent in her heart.

Molly stayed in the pediatric ICU until she was 4 weeks old. When she came home, McCoy kissed her and held her for several minutes. Janelle sobbed with joy as she watched a moment she'd feared might not happen.

Molly was able to return home because of a smartphone app the hospital used for monitoring.

"We monitored her every detail and had to record every bottle, diaper, weight, oxygen levels, color, etc., as well as taking videos," Janelle said.

By the time Molly was 8 months old, she was ready for a permanent fix.

Surgeons reconstructed and patched her aortic arch, then repaired the hole in her heart. She was in the hospital for five weeks.

"The doctor said that it was one of the riskiest surgeries he'd ever done," Janelle said. "That just made my heart drop."

Now 4, Molly will need at least two more open-heart surgeries before she's done growing.

"People ask me if the next surgery will be easier," Ryan said. "Maybe it will be medically, but emotionally it's only going to get harder on all of us because she can talk now and is more her own person."

Life during the COVID-19 pandemic has been more challenging, especially when McCoy, now 9, contracted the virus after he returned to school this fall.

"We're over-the-top careful with Molly," Janelle said. "Even strep and the flu is a concern. But we can either put her in a bubble or let her live. We do our best."

Meanwhile, McCoy is enjoying his little sister.

"It's so fun to watch them," Janelle said. "They still fight like siblings, but he looks out for her and takes care of her. He truly is her biggest fan."

The family participated in this year's American Heart Association Heart Walk in Wichita, and their team was the top fundraiser.

"This whole thing has consumed our lives for so long, and now we're ready to give back," Janelle said. "We have a huge support system from our friends, family and colleagues. They've been so generous and supportive during Molly's journey."

The couple also have leaned into their faith for support and felt blessed by the many prayers Molly has received.

For now, Molly is not aware of any limitations nor is she self-conscious about the scar from her surgery.

"If you saw her, you'd never know anything was wrong on the inside, until you see her scar," Ryan said. "She tries to keep up with McCoy, but can't always. We want her to decide how far to push herself. The only person that can put limitations on Molly is Molly."

Explore further Baby girl born from embryo frozen for 27 years

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In this Oct. 21, 2020, file photo, an Exam Corp Lab employee, right, wears a mask as she talks with a patient lined up for COVID-19 testing in Niles, Ill. Millions of U.S. workers now have a Jan. 4 deadline to get a COVID vaccine. The federal government on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 announced new vaccine requirements for workers at companies with more than 100 employees as well as workers at health care facilities that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients. Credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File

Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements are the Biden administration's boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for monthsor face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.

Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people working in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testingthey will need to be vaccinated.

Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds.

The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors.

Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic.

"While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good," he said Thursday in a statement.

Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now.

Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases.

In this Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, photograph, a sign notifies customers that COVID-19 vaccinations are available at a pharmacy in a grocery store in Monument, Colo. Millions of U.S. workers now have a Jan. 4 deadline to get a COVID vaccine. The federal government on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 announced new vaccine requirements for workers at companies with more than 100 employees as well as workers at health care facilities that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients. Credit: AP Photo/David Zalubowski

OSHA said companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The agency will face enforcement challenges. Even counting help from states, OSHA has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. An administration official said the agency will respond to whistleblower complaints and make limited spot checks.

The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others.

OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months.

The rules set up potential legal battles along partisan lines between states and the federal government. Several states and Republican governors threatened to sue, contending that the administration lacks the power to make such sweeping mandates under emergency authority.

OSHA's parent agency, the Labor Department, says it is on sound legal footing. The department's top legal official, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that bar employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or face masks.

Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail.

The rules will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees testing positive must be removed from the workplace.

Companies won't be required to provide or pay for tests for unvaccinated workers, but they must give paid time off for employees to get the shots and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. Requirements for masks and paid time off for shots take effect Dec. 5.

Employers covered by the requirements must verify their workers' vaccination status by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards or records from doctors or pharmacies.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a separate rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates96% or higherwithout widespread resignations.

A previously announced requirement for federal contractors to make sure workers are vaccinated was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but the administration delayed that measure until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers. Already, more than a dozen states have sued to block the mandate on contractors.

In this Sept. 14, 2021, file photo, a syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic at the Reading Area Community College in Reading, Pa. Millions of U.S. workers now have a Jan. 4 deadline to get a COVID vaccine. The federal government on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 announced new vaccine requirements for workers at companies with more than 100 employees as well as workers at health care facilities that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients.. Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted businesses that announced their own vaccine requirements and urged others to follow their lead.

Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70% of adults fully vaccinated.

Workplace vaccine mandates have become more common recently, with hospitals, state and local governments and some major corporations requiring COVID-19 shots for employees. The mandates have led to overwhelming compliancein some cases 99% of workersalthough a small but vocal number have faced dismissal, filed lawsuits or sought exemptions.

United Airlines required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 are seeking exemptions.

In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. On Thursday, the company said more than 96% of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement.

Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and managers who travel within the United States to be vaccinated by Oct. 4. The retailer stopped short of requiring shots for frontline workers, however.

However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in an already-tight labor market.

Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups worried the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions.

The National Retail Federation suggested the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September.

"Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an 'emergency' and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season," said David French, a senior vice president for the trade group.

The number of new infections in the U.S. is still falling from a summer surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant, but the rate of decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6% from two weeks ago, at more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day.

The earlier mandate on federal contractors led to demonstrations by opponents, including workers at a NASA rocket engine test site in Mississippi. Some said they are immune because they contracted COVID-19. Others said vaccines violated their religious beliefs and constitutional rights.

"No one should be forced to take a medical treatment just to keep their job," said engineer Nyla Trumbach. "There's years and years of experience and skill out here, and I just want anyone who's watching to see what we stand to lose here if these people don't keep their jobs."

Explore further Employer vaccine mandates convert some workers, but not all

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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The use of non-invasive breathing support, commonly known as CPAP or HFNO, to treat moderate to severe COVID-19 infection, isn't linked to a heightened infection risk, as currently thought, suggest the findings of two studies, published online in the journal Thorax.

Both assisted breathing methods produced little measurable air or surface viral contamination, and not more than simple oxygen therapy, while coughing produced far more aerosol than either method, the studies show.

The findings prompt the researchers to call for a thorough reassessment of the infection control measures deployed for these respiratory support methods, both of which have been categorized as 'aerosol generating procedures' that expose healthcare staff and other patients to a heightened infection risk.

Continuous positive airways pressure, or CPAP for short, delivers a steady level of pressurized air and oxygen through a hose and mask to assist breathing; high-flow nasal oxygen, or HFNO for short, pumps oxygen at a high flow rate through two small tubes in the nose.

Unlike mechanical ventilation, which requires intubation and sedation, CPAP and HFNO aren't invasive. But they are thought to generate viral particles capable of contaminating the air and surfaces nearby, necessitating additional infection control precautions.

These include segregating patients and the use of high grade FFP3 masks for healthcare workers to curb the risk of aerosol transmission, both of which have implications for costs and capacity.

UK data from 2020 estimate that 17% of all emergency COVID-19 hospital admissions required non-invasive respiratory support or mechanical ventilation.

Environmental contamination with SARS-CoV2 has been widely found in several studies. But very few have specifically evaluated the impact of CPAP and/or HFNO in moderate to severe COVID-19, or have found viable (infectious) virus, confirming a transmission risk to healthcare workers. And other aerosol generation studies have mainly used patient simulators or healthy volunteers.

The researchers therefore wanted to compare the amount of air and surface environmental contamination with SARS-CoV2, the virus responsible for COVID-19 infection, produced by the use of CPAP, HFNO, and simple oxygen therapy, known as supplemental oxygen, in COVID-19 patients.

Thirty hospital patients with moderately severe COVID-19, none of whom required mechanical ventilation, were divided into three groups of 10 and given either supplemental oxygen, CPAP, or HFNO.

Each patient was swabbed for SARS-CoV2, and had three air and three surface samples collected from the immediate vicinity. Positive samples and those suspected of being positive were then cultured for biological viability.

Overall, 21 (70%) patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by PCR swab. But only 4 out of 90 (4%) air samples were PCR positive.

Clinical surfaces were more contaminated than the air samples, and nearly half (14;47%) of the patients had at least one positive or suspected-positive sample for viral particles from one or more of the three surface samples collected.

In total, 6 out of 90 (7%) surface swabs tested positive for the virus: 5 out of 30 (17%) floor samples (another four suspected); no table surface samples (another three suspected) and only one high-object surface sample (three more suspected).

Neither the use of CPAP nor HFNO nor coughing were associated with significantly more environmental contamination than supplemental oxygen use. Of the total of 51 PCR positive or suspected positive samples, only one from the nose and throat of an HFNO patient was biologically viable in cell culture.

The researchers acknowledge that their study included just 30 patients, and larger studies will be needed to reliably inform pragmatic infection prevention control measures around the use of CPAP/ HFNO, they say.

Nevertheless, they conclude: "The evolving evidence from hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and the risks of occupational/nosocomial exposure should prompt an evidence-based reassessment of infection prevention and control measures for non-invasive respiratory support treatments that are currently considered 'aerosol generating procedures."

In a linked editorial, accepted for publication in the journal, researchers from the University of Bristol and North Bristol NHS Trust, point out: "This study adds to the mounting evidence that [the aerosol generating procedure] classification is unhelpful in defining risks of transmission.

"It has resulted in over cautious measures for certain settings, mandating full PPE for all intubations and preventing relatives visiting the sickest patients, whilst underplaying risk in others, such as coughing patients with early infection in admissions units or on general wards.

A second study published in the journal also questions whether CPAP and HFNO merit categorisation as aerosol generating procedures.

It compared aerosol production from different oxygen delivery systems among 25 healthy volunteers and 8 hospital patients with COVID-19 infection. Aerosol production was measured while breathing, speaking, and coughing room air and then again while receiving CPAP and HFNO in an ultra-clean operating theatre.

The amount of aerosol produced was highest while coughing; a single cough generated at least 10 times more aerosol than speaking or breathing. Aerosol production wasn't increased in those receiving CPAP and any aerosols generated during HFNO came from the machine rather than the individual concerned.

The researchers of this study conclude: "In summary, our data...suggest that risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection is not due to CPAP or HFNO generating infective aerosols. This has implications for infection and prevention control policy since aerosol generation appears greatest from patients with COVID-19 who are coughing."

More information: SARS-CoV-2 environmental contamination from hospitalised patients with COVID-19 receiving aerosol-generating procedures, Thorax (2021). Journal information: Thorax SARS-CoV-2 environmental contamination from hospitalised patients with COVID-19 receiving aerosol-generating procedures,(2021). DOI: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2021-218035
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The World Health Organization expressed "grave concern" Thursday over the rising pace of coronavirus infections in Europe, as Germany registered its biggest daily increase since the start of the pandemic.

"We are, once again, at the epicentre," WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told a press conference.

He warned that according to "one reliable projection" the current trajectory would mean "another half a million COVID-19 deaths" by February.

Alarm bells were ringing especially in Germany, the European Union's most populous country, where the number of new cases over the past 24 hours soared to almost 34,000 on Thursdayan all-time high, according to the Robert Koch Institute health agency.

Meanwhile Britain on Thursday became the first country in the world to approve the use of Merck's anti-COVID pill to treat patients suffering from mild to moderate coronavirus infections.

Health minister Sajid Javid called the molnupiravir antiviral "a game-changer for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed".

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday that the country of 83 million people was facing a "massive" pandemic among the unvaccinated and that intensive care beds were starting to run out in some regions.

"Corona is once again raging with full force, the fourth wave is hitting us hard," the top-selling Bild daily wrote.

The WHO's Europe regionwhich spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asiahas now recorded 78 million cases since COVID-19 first emerged in China in late 2019.

Five million deaths

The cumulative figure exceeds that of South East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean region, the Western Pacific, and Africa combined, the organisation said.

The "current pace of transmission" across the European region "is of grave concern", Kluge said.

The WHO blamed a combination of insufficient vaccination rates and a relaxation of preventative measures like mask-wearing and social distancing.

Hospital admission rates were higher in countries where fewer people are vaccinated, Kluge added.

The number of new daily cases has been rising for nearly six consecutive weeks in Europe and the number of new deaths per day has been rising for just over seven consecutive weeks, with about 250,000 cases and 3,600 deaths per day, according to official national data compiled by AFP.

Over the past seven days, Russiaa country with strong vaccine hesitancyhas led the rise with 8,162 deaths, followed by Ukraine with 3,819 deaths and Romania with 3,100 deaths, according to the data.

Globally, the virus has killed more than five million people, while the overall caseload has topped 248 million.

The WHO estimates however that the pandemic's real toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to COVID-19.

Although Germany was initially praised for its handling of the pandemic, the rapid uptick in cases and sluggish uptake in vaccinations among adults has led to mounting concern.

Despite vaccines being widely available, just 66.9 percent of the German population was fully inoculated as of Thursday, according to official figures.

The COVID surge comes as Germany is in political limbo following a September general election, with the winning Social Democrats hoping to have a new coalition government in place by early December.

Curbs on unvaccinated

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel has called Germany's coronavirus trend "very worrying" and signalled that she is in favour of tougher curbs targeting the unvaccinated.

Health Minister Spahn too has called for stricter measures, including more thorough checks at establishments and events where people need to show proof of vaccination, recovery from COVID or a recent negative test before entering.

He has also urged all vaccinated Germans to get booster shots after six months.

Under Germany's federal system, regional states have significant powers to decide their own COVID approach, at times leading to a confusing patchwork of regulations.

The health ministers of all 16 states were holding crisis talks on Thursday and Friday to discuss the next steps.

The states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Saxony and Bavaria have already agreed or introduced harsher restrictions, including rules excluding the unvaccinated from bars or nightclubs.

 2021 AFP
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

College students who misuse prescription drugs do so more often during the week and when they are alone at home, according to a recent study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

The longitudinal study, "College-based social and situational predictors of real-time prescription drug misuse in daily life," surveyed college students at a large university in the midwestern United States. The participants were asked about their prescription drug use and whether they used the medications in any way the doctor did not intend, such as changing the allowed dosage and frequency of when the medication was taken, or using someone else's prescription medication.

The findings shed new light on how and when college students misuse prescriptions. SMU (Southern Methodist University) associate professor Chrystyna D. Kouros, director of the Family Health & Development Lab in SMU's Department of Psychology, said the study she co-authored revealed potential differences in the way college students misuse prescription drugs when compared to studies of how college students use other substances.

"Whereas other studies have shown that alcohol use, and to some extent marijuana use, is most likely to occur in social situations with peers and on the weekends, we found that the context of prescription drug misuse appears to be different," Kouros said. "In our study, college students were more likely to endorse misusing prescription medication in moments when they were alone and at home. They were also more likely to misuse prescription medications during the week versus the weekend, and earlier in the day instead of the evening," Kouros added.

For the purposes of the study, the researchers focused on four classes of prescription drugs: Pain relievers, stimulants, sedatives and tranquilizers. Researchers used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to query the participating 297 students to record their behavior in daily life. EMA requires repeated sampling of subjects' current behaviors and experiences in real time, in the participants' natural environments. Students used an iPod Touch that prompted them four times a day to answer a brief survey. Students could also initiate a report if they were about to misuse a prescription.

The study suggests there might be different motivating factors underlying misuse of prescription drugs compared to other substances, Kouros said.

"Current college-based prevention and intervention programs, thus, may need to be tailored or revised to also capture prescription drug misuse," she added.

The study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The principal investigator was Lauren M. Papp, associate dean for research and the Vaughan Bascom Professor in Women, Family and Community at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Papp is also director of the UW Couples Lab at Wisconsin-Madison.

"It is our hope these findings about prescription drug misuse among college students help better inform colleges and universities in their important outreach and support efforts for students who might be struggling with problematic prescription behaviors," Papp said.

Other co-authors are Brian C. Kelly, professor of sociology at Purdue University; and, Shari Blumenstock, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University's Kinsey Institute.

Explore further Misuse of stimulants linked to other drug abuse

More information: Chrystyna D. Kouros et al, College-based social and situational predictors of real-time prescription drug misuse in daily life, Drug and Alcohol Dependence (2021). Journal information: Drug and Alcohol Dependence Chrystyna D. Kouros et al, College-based social and situational predictors of real-time prescription drug misuse in daily life,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2021.108969
Fluorescence microscopy image of a tumor sample where elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide have been discovered. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT chemical engineers have developed a way of swiftly screening compounds to determine their therapeutic potential for certain kinds of cancers. With a genetically engineered sensor and high-throughput technology, their method probes for changes in cellular concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ), a specialized molecule known as an oxidant.

"The regulatory pathways of some tumors depend on elevated levels of H 2 O 2 ," says Hadley Sikes, associate professor and Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. "But further increases in concentrations of this oxidant can lead to programmed cell death." In the researchers' screens of 600 small-molecule compounds, they were able to identify those that selectively boosted H 2 O 2 .

Other research efforts have used probes that respond indiscriminately to different kinds of oxidants, making it difficult to determine precisely which compounds make the greatest impact on these specialized molecules. The MIT screen is the first to zero in on a single oxidant. This enabled the team to characterize the cellular responses to potential drugs and to demonstrate that some of these compounds activated H 2 O 2 -mediated toxicity in susceptible cancer cell lines.

Their research appears in Cell Chemical Biology. Yining Hao and Troy F. Langford are first co-authors. The other contributors are Sun Jin Moon, a graduate student in chemical engineering, Kristen A. Eller, who worked on the project while an undergraduate, and Sikes.

"Our work helps pave the way for highly targeted, oxidant-based oxidant," says Hao, who is completing her doctorate in chemical engineering. "These studies move us in the right direction for effectively utilizing drugs to treat different patientsthe idea behind personalized medicine," adds Langford, now a biotechnology associate for Cowen, Inc.

Programmed cell death

Hydrogen peroxide belongs to a family of molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are involved in metabolizing oxygen. "They're known as 'Jekyll-and-Hyde' molecules," says Sikes. "They are part of all the things we need to livetaking oxygen from the air, reducing it to water, generating energy for the cellsbut uncontrolled concentrations of ROS for too long can have negative effects, such as interfering with the signaling pathways inside cells."

When genetic mutations kick-start cancers, sometimes oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide increase dramatically, throwing cell functions out of gear. As levels of hydrogen peroxide rise, cancer cells unleash antioxidants to keep them in check. It is a difficult metabolic balance to maintain, and it is this weakness that researchers hope to exploit as they seek new cancer therapies.

"The idea is if we selectively boost hydrogen peroxide, these stressed cancer cells will die first," says Hao.

"We are looking for molecular vulnerabilities that will have a greater impact on cancer than on the healthy tissues that surround it," adds Sikes.

Drugs have emerged for the anti-cancer arsenal that aim to act on these hydrogen peroxide mechanisms, either by directly elevating cellular levels of the oxidant, or by undermining antioxidant systems. But they do not uniformly deliver. Without a sure-fire method for detecting hydrogen peroxide in cancer cells before and after drug treatment, precision therapeutics remains out of reach.

The biosensor Langford and Sikes devised in 2018 addressed this problem. It uses an enzyme called peroxiredoxin-2, which can register changes in hydrogen peroxide levels. Langford engineered the sensor so that when it reacts with hydrogen peroxide, it fluoresces.

"We wanted to use this sensor in a practical manner, and we thought, 'What better way to do that than a high-throughput screen, using a library of anti-cancer compounds right next door at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research?'" says Langford. "We took these small molecules from their collection and systematically added each one to cancer cells that contained our sensor."

Sikes made the deliberate decision to take compounds that were "already FDA-approved and safe in humans," she says, including some that had previously been investigated as anti-cancer drugs. The question was which, if any, could be effective in elevating concentrations of hydrogen peroxide in the human cancer cell lines the team had assembled.

Lighting up

As they ran their screens, researchers looked for the red fluorescing of the probe that signaled an increase in hydrogen peroxide levels after the drugs interacted with the cells. There were indeed such hits, but in data analysis, Hao found that "a lot of these signals were weirdly high, outside of the sensor's range."

The researchers ran a second round, to make sure the signals actually reflected hydrogen peroxide level changes. After running through the library of drug candidates, the researchers not only pinpointed compounds that modulated hydrogen peroxide in specific cancer cells, but also linked some of those compounds to the death of cells.

There were surprises. One drug, SMER3, an antifungal, ramped up hydrogen peroxide levels. "This was the most exciting one we came across," says Sikes. "It kills yeast and it turned out to be effective killing a subset of cancers."

Another headline from their study: A major anti-cancer drug with a reputation for boosting oxidant levels was a bust in their screen. "Cisplatin did not induce hydrogen peroxide," says Sikes. "Maybe it induces other oxidants, but not this one that drives death response pathways in a subset of cancers."

Their work has already catalyzed new enterprises. Sikes is partnering with a Boston clinician who specializes in cancers known to be vulnerable to ROS defects, such as colon cancer. As part of his dissertation research, Langford tested SMER3 on colon cancer cells. "It kills certain cell lines very efficiently," Hao says, "and we'd like to understand it better, to learn if it's safe, and what cell pathways it targets exactly."

Next steps involve moving on to animal models bearing patient-derived cancers, says Sikes, and eventually on to patient populations.

Beyond hydrogen peroxide, Sikes envisions taking up other molecules that fulfill critical functions in cells, and that might also serve as potent anti-cancer targets. "There are reactive nitrogen and sulfur species that are also likely equally important and worthy of exploration."

Explore further Hydrogen peroxide-sensing molecule reveals whether chemotherapy drugs are having their intended effects

More information: Yining Hao et al, Screening compound libraries for H2O2-mediated cancer therapeutics using a peroxiredoxin-based sensor, Cell Chemical Biology (2021). Journal information: Cell Chemical Biology Yining Hao et al, Screening compound libraries for H2O2-mediated cancer therapeutics using a peroxiredoxin-based sensor,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2021.09.003
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Austrian capital Vienna said Thursday it would tighten coronavirus restrictions to only allow those vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 to enter restaurants, go to hairdressers and attend bigger gatherings.

The new rules come as the daily surge in cases nationwide hit a record high for 2021, at almost 8,600 infections.

"The situation in all of Austria is serious," Vienna mayor Michael Ludwig told a press conference as he announced the stricter rules for the capital.

From the end of next week negative COVID tests will no longer be sufficient to enter restaurants, for services with close contact such as at hairdressers and for gatherings of 25 people or more, he said.

Austria's vaccination rate has stagnated at 64 percent of its almost nine million people, below the EU-wide average of almost 67 percent.

Two provinces have launched lotterieswith cars as prizes in the state of Burgenlandas part of their vaccination campaigns.

So far, more than 11,400 people infected with the new coronavirus have died in the Alpine EU member.

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

 2021 AFP
Neal Ambrose-Smith doesnt believe you can create from scratch.

Its gotta come from somewhere, and I have no problem with that, he said.

Ambrose-Smiths work seems to pull ideas and images from everywhere across art history and pop culture. Things that come to mind when hes creating or talking about art include The Simpsons, the Rolling Stones, Barbara Kruger, high-quality fonts, clip art, graphic design, iPad drawings, Darth Vader, Coyote trickster stories, and his mother, the widely-celebrated artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

Ambrose-Smith, an art professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, visited Missoula last week to work on a residency with the Matrix Press at the University of Montana and for his exhibition at Missoula Art Museum, which includes a Salish and English title, c cen u kes xuyi (Where Are You Going?)

Everything comes from somewhere. Nothing comes from nothing. You cant make artwork in a vacuum, he said. Youre always influenced by the world around you and the research that you do.

Where Are You Going?

The pieces are on view in the museums Frost Gallery, which is dedicated exclusively to contemporary Indigenous art. Ambrose-Smith is Flathead Salish, Metis, and Cree, and a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation.

The show includes mixed media prints, paintings and a floor-to-ceiling neon installation and draws on abstract painting, text, found imagery, and pop culture. They address a sense of confusion and entrance into unknown territory, sometimes with direct references to Star Trek.

You see a lot of the same repeated imagery, said Brandon Reintjes, the MAMs senior curator. He thinks the show has the feel of an aggregator website, with information from hundreds of sources.

The exhibition works were all made after the 2016 election and reflect his disappointment. After two terms under Obama, he "really was shocked by it.

The title piece, c cen u kes xuyi (Where Are You Going?) stretches floor to ceiling, 10 feet tall and 15 feet wide. Its like an abstract drawing transferred into neon  four lines in red, yellow, green and purple loop around a wooden backdrop. Set to a timer, they brighten and dim in sequence, eventually leaving only green.

Ive been practicing my scribbling like crazy, because I love to scribble, he said. As he worked on it, he began to see its content as cultures and separation.

Like these are Mobius strips, continuous loops with each color connected to itself and not really mixing so much with anything else, he said. And the idea that theres no escape. In this country, we cant escape each other, we have to deal with each other, so why cant we deal with each other?

While neon at close range might seem overwhelming, hes happy that the effect is pleasant and somewhat hypnotic. Its a piece that draws you to want to sit on the bench and soak it in.

Its really soothing. That changing light is like the sun coming through the leaves and the trees, how it moves through the sky  things are always changing, he said.

Paintings

The prints and paintings are united by repeated motifs. Lewis Carrolls Alice has in some cases seemingly merged into a Rabbit character as well. He does love scribbling, too. The squiggles in the neon sculpture are also in the paintings. Its sometimes difficult to tell whether imagery is appropriated or only feels that way, said John Calsbeek, the MAMs senior curator. Theres a sense that he's throwing in everything he knows and everything hes learned about.

In one of the larger paintings, Get in the Relief Pod, (7 feet by 8 feet) the Starship Enterprise hurtles through a vortex of imagery  abstract brushwork, a mesh of what could be Spirograph drawings, all swirling around in zero gravity with what looks like vintage imagery of a headdress, vintage trailers, clothing irons, a clown face and more.

The edges of the canvases are covered with text hes culled from SkyMall magazine, alternating light and dark in a long run-on sentence  all art is fake, the politics of instability, resculpt lands, high brightness means high impact, "get in the relief pod," and on and on.

Blacklight paint and 3D goggles arent that common at the MAM, but Ambrose-Smith wanted to add an element of excitement for kids who visit through the museums Fifth-Grade Art Experience, and when the lights are dimmed you see even more imagery loaded onto the canvas.

In one of the shows large-scale prints, The Story Teller, a hand-drawn Coyote is seated in a chair, dressed in a suit, legs crossed, pipe in hand. Appropriated images of trailer houses, headdresses, clothes irons, a clown and more orbit him like an asteroid belt. Throw on the glasses and it all seems to hover over the bright galactic background.

The smaller-format paintings have more thickly rendered characters and hand lettering. If I Have to Listen to the News One More Time, centers on a Coyote/trickster with circles in its pupils, like a character in a cartoon whos been hypnotized. The bewildered creature appears submerged to its neck in a white and red pool. Chaotic red brushwork looms above like ominous weather. (For context and speculations sake, the piece is from 2019.)

Always creating

Ambrose-Smiths mother is Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a member of the CSKT from the Flathead Reservation. She broke ground for Indigenous artists and women artists starting in the 1970s, not only through her own work but curation. Shes also the first Native painter whose canvas was purchased by the National Gallery of Art.

Ambrose-Smith said that when his mother was finishing her bachelors degree, they couldnt afford child care, so he went to art classes with her and followed along. I took ceramics, I was in painting, I was in drawing, and you know, I just sat there and did what everyone else was doing, he said.

He also worked with her on her archives and in her studio. Their house was a stopover for innovative artists like Joe Feddersen (Colville) and more, and her work has influenced his thinking and imagery as well.

All last week, Ambrose-Smith was at UM working on prints. The crew included printmaking professor James Bailey and Jason Clark, a 2D technician and adjunct printmaking professor, and a team of UM students, who will all share the portfolio of prints when they're done.

The visit was paid for with a grant from the Warhol Foundation for Matrix and the museum to fund projects like this. Prior visiting artists through the grant include Sara Siestreem, Lillian Pitt, Molly Murphy-Adams, Melanie Yazzie, John Hitchcock, Duane Slick and more.

The title in one of the new prints represents dialogue the viewer can imagine, that the Coyote is telling Batman: So, your grandmother is a Cherokee princess, no kidding?

So its funny, right, but it tells a story, it talks about something, he said.

He likes that it has content and conflict but humor, which makes it more open.

The best stories are about the way we work together, he said.

Another is straightforward in the joke. Coyote tells Darth Vader, Search your feelings. Whos your daddy?

One piece has images by all three non-student artists  Algonquin images by Clark, a whirlpool by Bailey, while Ambrose drew a Coyote version of Rat Fink in a canoe instead of a race car. The first pass felt too busy, so they decided to try it again, which is easier with a whole crew.

In my own studio, I spend a lot of time fixing things all the time. Because nothing ever works out. All the best-laid plans, forget it. The titles gone. The initial idea? Gone, out the window. Things dont always work out Ive planned, he said.

One print sets a black and white Coyote coughing up clip art designs against a washy background of tangerine and yellow washes, drips and runs that the students came up with.

He loves using well-made appropriated images and placing them in new contexts to tell a story. The crisply designed clip art comes from Crap Hound magazine, an artist resource that compiles vintage imagery. One piece has the Coyote holding a mask bearing the goofy visage of Alfred E. Neuman, the what, we worry? mascot of Mad Magazine. Ambrose-Smith points out that this image itself was appropriated from an old dental ad.

In a different take on the theme, Coyotes mask bears a parted mouth. He saw it on the wall of the UM print studio  at first he thought it might be from the Rocky Horror Show, but its not. It almost could be, though. Or it might call to mind the Rolling Stones lips logo.

He's not sure where it came from, only that he liked the way it looked on the print.

There has to be a bit of fearlessness when youre making work, and so working here with the students is really great because they  could see it in action, like how it happens, he said.

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The Missoula City-County Health Department, as well as the city of Missoula, healthcare providers, and school districts is gearing up to vaccinate those aged 5 to 11 against COVID.

In a Thursday news release, the health department said several health care providers in Missoula County are planning to administer shots in that age group starting on Monday.

Kids are definitely at risk for COVID-19, said Shaina Rogers, a pediatrician with Providence Montana, in the release. I feel like its been a really rough year, especially for our children. I think we all want to move forward and put this chapter behind us. The best way to do that is to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The health department and Community Medical Center will begin offering clinics for kids next week, and Missoula County Public Schools is also planning to offer the shots in partnership with Granite Pharmacy and Western Montana Clinic. The University of Montana is providing childhood vaccinations through Curry Health Center.

Information for parents about childhood vaccination, as well as other general COVID information, can be found at covid19.missoula.co.

For those wishing to get the vaccine for their children through the health department, appointments can be made online at missoulainfo.com starting in the afternoon on Saturday, Nov. 6. Appointments are required. Clinic hours are 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Mondays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends.

Community Medical Center is offering its children's clinic at Community FirstCare at 2230 N. Reserve Street from 5 to 7 p.m. Nov. 9-12. Appointments are required and are only available online at CommunityFirstCare.com.

Missoula County Public Schools parents should be receiving an email from Granite Pharmacy on how to make an appoint for a clinic that will run 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 12 and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 13. That clinic will take place at the district's administration building at 909 South Ave. W.

Curry Health Center is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and walk-ins are welcome, with no appointment required. It is open to everyone  an affiliation with the University of Montana is not needed.

The health department said several other local providers are working to plan vaccination clinics for the 5 to 11 age group.

Those wishing to consult a physician about getting their child vaccinated are encouraged to do so, the release said. People who do not have access to a primary care physician can call Partnership Health Center at 406-258-4789 to learn more about those services, regardless of the ability to pay.

These decisions can be challenging, Dr. Emma Wright, a family physician with PHC, said in the release. I really want to encourage patients and parents to talk to their physicians and other health care providers about their concerns. Were here to help and to be open and supportive.

Jordan Hansen covers news and local government for the Missoulian. Shout at him on Twitter @jordyhansen or send him an email at Jordan.Hansen@Missoulian.com

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A man accused of raping a woman at a downtown hotel in October pleaded not guilty to the charge Thursday afternoon.

Zabihullah Mohmand, 19, was arraigned in Missoula County District Court. He is charged with one count of sexual intercourse without consent, a felony.

Missoula County District Court Judge Shane Vannatta presided. Mohmand communicated through a registered Farsi interpreter appearing via Zoom.

A woman reported to Missoula police that Mohmand allegedly raped her at the Residence Inn on Oct. 17. He invited the woman back to his hotel room, where he sexually assaulted her and wouldn't let her leave, charging documents said.

Mohmand told police he was visiting Missoula on a worldwide trip. He confirmed he had met the woman and her friends downtown. At Thursday's hearing, Mohmand communicated through the interpreter that he did have sexual intercourse with the woman but said it was consensual. He added that if he was guilty, he would say so.

Mohmand is a humanitarian parolee from Afghanistan. In an email to the Missoulian on Oct. 21, Jon Ebelt, a spokesman for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, confirmed Mohmand is part of the federal Afghan Placement and Assistance Program. He is one of 20 Afghan evacuees currently in Montana.

He is not part of the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for individuals who have worked for the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan as translators. The SIV program is separate from the humanitarian parolee program.

In October, Montana lawmakers called on President Biden to halt the resettlement of Afghan refugees and evacuees after they found out about Mohmand's case. Both U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte called on the Biden administration to give answers about the vetting process being used for Afghan refugees resettling in Montana.

"We remain steadfast that the circumstances and alleged actions of one individual are not reflective of refugee or immigrant communities. For decades we have welcomed immigrant families and have watched them thrive and contribute to their communities and the nation," a statement from the International Rescue Committee said in response.

A hearing for Mohmand is set for Dec. 9 at 1:30 p.m. He is held at the Missoula jail on a $50,000 bond. His public defender, Stephanie McKnight, requested that a bond hearing be set for a later date.

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Mackenzie Cole could hardly believe his eyes when he read the email he got from his property management company at 10 p.m. on Saturday, May 1, 2021.

Ominously, the subject of the email read, Rent increase.

The email stated that in 30 days, the rent on his downtown Missoula apartment was going up to $1,100.

Cole had been paying $590 per month on the two-bedroom place, so that was an 86% increase in just one month. He was shocked, because hed been living there for eight years and knew that he was now at the mercy of Missoulas sky-high rental market.

Of course, the rent increase was in line with what a two-bedroom downtown apartment would go for on the open market. New tenants who were willing to pay the price soon moved in.

Cole had been insulated from Missoulas escalating rent prices for eight years because his elderly property owner had kept prices low. That owner passed away, though, and the new owners realized they needed to spend $30,000 on a new roof.

For Cole, it felt like being uprooted.

I got pretty emotional about it, he said. I think of myself as someone who helps out in the community whenever I can. So I went from someone who was able to save enough money every month to donate to some good causes out there to just wondering how I was going to stay in Missoula where my job is.

A quick search of available rentals showed Cole that he was facing a tough market, with very few apartments for rent and prices that shocked him.

He recalled complaining to Veritas Property Management that the roof was leaking.

The company responded with the rent increase soon after.

Due to current circumstances, unfortunately, rents on the property are going through a rehab, stated the letter from Veritas. With the continued need for maintenance on an older building, such as this one, and costs such as taxes, which continue to rise, the new owners have no choice but to raise rent.

Records show that taxes on the property have gone up from $6,529 per year in 2017 to $9,004 in 2021. The complex houses multiple apartment units in two separate buildings.

Cole would have been fine with a modest increase in rent, but he had complained many times about maintenance that needed to be done and had to fix a few things by himself, he said. He also would have appreciated more than 30 days notice.

Some sort of rental increase would have been understandable, he said. Also, I had no real notice to prepare for it. I feel like they were not straight up with me throughout the whole process.

Jeremy Milyard of Veritas Property Management said the previous owner had been subsidizing the rental rates at the complex because he owned it free and clear.

He tried to warn Cole after the original owner died two years ago that the rent Cole was paying was not going to last because the new owner would have to pay for expensive repairs, he said.

We didnt get any response from him, Milyard said. He had been paying way under market. I told him this is not going to be lasting. But the new owner has a heavy mortgage and had an inspection done and theres a ton of maintenance that needs to be done."

Cole disputes that Milyard or his office warned him in advance.

Milyard noted that taxes, insurance and maintenance costs have all surged recently.

"Materials have tripled in costs, labor has doubled, and property taxes are a significant chunk," he said.

The new owner is already losing money because of the $30,000 roof, even with rent increases, Milyard said.

We all live here, too, Milyard said. We feel awful about raising rates and we all hate seeing costs like this. Locals are being displaced. I hate the term out-of-staters, but people with more money are coming here from different geographical locations and working online with California wages. They have so much more money compared to us.

The rental vacancy rate in Missoula fell from about 6% in early 2019 to .38% in the second quarter of 2021, according to Sterling Commercial Real Estate Advisors. In that same time period, the average rent increased from $862 to $1,098, an increase of over 27%.

The median home sales price in the Missoula urban area in September of 2021 was $489,950, an 83% increase from September of 2017, according to the Missoula Organization of Realtors.

Coles situation is not unique, as a report on the housing landscape released by the citys Office of Community Planning and Innovation found that many low-income residents are paying a huge share of their paychecks to landlords.

Rental affordability remains a critical issue facing the community and is a problem that disproportionately impacts residents with the lowest incomes, the report found.

There are nearly 8,000 households in Missoula that earn less than $50,000 a year that are paying more than 30% of their income toward housing. And 82% of those households earn less than $35,000 a year.

Cole eventually found a place to live in Missoula, although he said it took a lot of luck.

"And so having secure housing was a bigger deal than I realized when it just disappeared out from under me," he said.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  A new West Virginia circuit judge has been appointed to serve Lincoln and Boone counties.

Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday announced his appointment of Stacy Lynn Nowicki-Eldridge of Alum Creek to the seat left open by the resignation of Judge William S. Thompson.

Nowicki-Eldridge is deputy general counsel for the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security and has practiced law in the state for 20 years, Justice's office said. She has also been assistant attorney general and general counsel for the West Virginia Division of Corrections.

She has also served as a judicial clerk, an assistant prosecutor in Hancock County and an assistant public defender in Wheeling.

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Republican state officials reacted with swift rebukes Thursday to President Joe Biden's newly detailed mandate for private employers to require workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, threatening a wave of lawsuits and other actions to thwart a requirement they see as a stark example of government overreach.

At least two conservative groups moved quickly to file lawsuits against the workplace safety mandate, and a growing roster of GOP governors and attorneys general said more lawsuits were on the way as soon as Friday. Some Republican-led states had already passed laws or executive orders intended to protect employers that may not want to comply.

This rule is garbage, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, said Thursday through a spokesperson. Its unconstitutional and we will fight it. His state's governor, Republican Henry McMaster, said he is planning to issue an executive order keeping state agencies from enforcing the rule.

States have been preparing for the requirement since Biden previewed it in September. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements released Thursday call for companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Failure to comply could result in penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation. Federal officials also left open the possibility of expanding the mandate to smaller employers.

The White House said the administration has the authority to take actions designed to protect workers and expects the rule to withstand legal challenges.

Republican governors or attorneys general in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and South Dakota said Thursday they would file lawsuits against the mandate. The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, filed a challenge in federal court on Thursday. So did companies in Michigan and Ohio represented by a conservative advocacy law firm.

Robert Alt, a lawyer representing the Midwest companies suing manufacturer Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company and packaging firm Sixarp  said both companies are already facing staffing shortages amid the pandemic. The mandate will make things worse, he said.

It adds insult to injury and forces them potentially to fire trained employees," said Alt, president and CEO of The Buckeye Institute, a conservative advocacy group.

States say they are focusing on the role of the federal government in the lawsuits they're preparing.

"While I agree that the vaccine is the tool that will best protect against COVID-19, this federal government approach is unprecedented and will bring about harmful, unintended consequences in the supply chain and the workforce, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a statement.

At a news conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized what he called an executive fiat for the private sector. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds characterized the mandate as an imposition on personal choice, saying people should be able to make their own health care decisions. She recently signed a bill guaranteeing that people who are fired for refusing a vaccine can qualify for unemployment benefits.

At least 19 Republican-led states previously sued the Biden administration over a separate mandate requiring vaccines for employees who work for federal contractors. Several more filed similar lawsuits Thursday.

Biden, in a statement Thursday, dismissed the argument from many GOP governors and lawmakers that a mandate for employers will hurt businesses' ability to keep workers on the job.

There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements, he said. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support.

The administration has been encouraging widespread vaccinations as the quickest way out of the pandemic. A White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, said during a briefing Thursday that the mandate was intended to halt the spread of a disease that has claimed more than 750,000 lives in the U.S.

So you know, the question that we always have and that we ask to the Republicans is, why are they getting in the way?" Jean-Pierre said. Why are they getting in the way of trying to protect and save lives? Thats all were trying to do.

Challenges to the workplace mandate from Republicans and conservative groups are expected to be broad-based and quick, reflecting yet another aspect of the COVID-19 response  from mask requirements to social-distancing guidelines  that has fallen into a partisan divide. Democratic governors and attorneys general were relatively quiet after the OSHA rules were announced on Thursday. From California, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a simple Twitter message: The right move. Another Democrat, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, defended mandates in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor in Republican-dominated Kansas, was trying to walk a fine line on the new workplace rules. She said after a chamber of commerce event Thursday that federal mandates tend not to work and that she wanted a Kansas-focused way to meet, them but did not give details.

All 26 Republican state attorneys general have previously said they would fight the requirements, and most of them signed a letter to Biden saying as much.

Key to their objection is whether OSHA has the legal authority to require vaccines or virus testing.

In the letter to Biden, the top state government lawyers argued that the agency can regulate only health risks that are specific to jobs  not ones that are in the world generally. Seema Nanda, the top legal official for the U.S. Department of Labor, which includes OSHA, says established legal precedent allows rules that keep workplaces safe and that those rules pre-empt state laws.

That hasn't stopped state lawmakers and governors for taking a variety of actions aimed at undercutting federal mandates.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month issued an executive order prohibiting private companies or any other entity from requiring vaccines. An Ohio lawmaker has proposed a bill barring schools and colleges from expelling students who refuse vaccines and preventing employers from firing workers who do so.

Arkansas has adopted a law creating a vaccine-mandate exemption for workers who can prove they have COVID-19 antibodies, although a broader measure banning employers from asking about vaccination status failed in the Legislature. The OSHA rule does include a religious exemption, as well as one for people who work exclusively outdoors or away from others  such as from home.

Lawmakers or governors in states including Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming have called for special legislative sessions to counter vaccine mandates. In Nebraska, not enough state lawmakers agreed to a special session to get one on the calendar, but Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican in a GOP-dominated state, has been pushing them to keep trying.

In Ohio, factory owner Ross McGregor said he will follow the rules as he would any federal workplace mandate, but not because he agrees with them. McGregor, who said he is vaccinated, is opposed to the new requirement, just as he has publicly opposed efforts by Ohio Republican lawmakers to prevent him from mandating the coronavirus vaccine for his workers.

At the end of the day, every employer, and every employment situation, dictates what is best, said McGregor, a former Republican state lawmaker and owner of axle and brake component manufacturer Pentaflex, where he estimates that about half the 115 or so employees are vaccinated. Having either a ban on mandates or an imposition of mandates goes against that



This version corrects new paragraph six to say it is the The Daily Wire, not Daily Caller, that filed a lawsuit, and to remove a reference to a lawsuit filed by Indiana, Louisiana and Mississippi. That suit filed Thursday addresses a separate, narrower mandate for federal contractors.



Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Tom Davies in Indianapolis; Heather Hollingsworth in Lake Quivira, Kansas; Alexandra Jaffe in Washington, D.C.; and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report, along with other AP reporters from around the U.S.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Energy ministers from around the world will gather in Pittsburgh next year, the U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday, as nations meet to collaborate on ways to advance clean energy and fight climate change.

The 31 nations involved in the three-day Clean Energy Ministerial and the ministerial for Mission Innovation next Sept. 21-23 in Pittsburgh emit the lions share of the worlds greenhouse gases.

The meetings represent an opportunity to lock in climate commitments through big bets on innovation that empower an energy transition by 2050  averting the worst effects of climate change and supercharging economic opportunities for the global workforce, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

The Pittsburgh area is still home to some of the steel mills that built it, but it also is a hub for natural gas production, as well as robotics, energy research and self-driving cars.

Granholm said Pittsburgh exemplifies how a legacy energy and industrial-dependent economy can be transformed into a technology and innovation powerhouse.

The last two meetings were held virtually, this year's hosted by Chile and last year's hosted by Saudi Arabia.

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The latest on the U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  Environmental campaigners have awarded their Fossil of the Day award to the Polish government for giving  and then apparently backtracking on  a pledge to speed up its phaseout of coal power.

Climate Action Network, an umbrella group representing hundreds of non-governmental organizations, blasted Poland Thursday for committing at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow to end coal use, but then declaring itself a poor country and sticking to its previous deadline of 2049.

The little-coveted award went to the United States on Wednesday, for what climate activists say was a new measure that benefits mainly industrial agriculture companies rather than ordinary farmers.

The U.S. shared the prize with France for its efforts to get natural gas and nuclear power plants classified as sustainable forms of energy by the European Union, and with the International Emissions Trading Association for representing oil majors such as Chevron and Shell at the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 talks.



GENEVA  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says a new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden, in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power, amounts to a big transformation.

The First Movers Coalition, spearheaded by the U.S. government and the World Economic Forum, aims to help meet an increasingly difficult target laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So far, almost three dozen global companies in many sectors have committed to changing their purchasing practices to favor development of zero-emission technologies by 2030.

Designers of the project say half of the emissions reduction projected between now and 2030 will stem from innovations  like capturing carbon out of the air  that arent operating at a large scale.

Its a big deal, Kerry told many corporate leaders behind the project in Glasgow on Thursday.



GLASGOW, Scotland  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has joined the tens of thousands of attendees whove been humbled by tough entry procedures at the U.N. climate summit.

Kerry apologized Thursday for appearing about 20 minutes late for a renewable energy event at the United States pavilion inside the summit site.

Kerry said he had been off-campus visiting a venue outside the summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

As you all know, getting back in is not easy, he told the crowd. Even for those of us who thought it might be.

The summits organizers have imposed firm rules for accreditation badges, masks and proof of daily negative results on tests for COVID-19. Lines to get in lasted well beyond an hour early this week, but have shrunk noticeably since.



GLASGOW, Scotland  The British government says pledges of new or earlier deadlines for ending coal use have come from more than 20 countries including Ukraine, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and Chile.

Meanwhile, Poland, the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, appeared to backtrack on any ambitious new commitments within hours of the announcement at the ongoing U.N. climate conference.

Energy security and the assurances of jobs is a priority for us, Anna Moskwa, Polands minister for climate and environment, said in a tweet, citing the governments existing plan which provides for a departure from hard coal by 2049.

Earlier in the day, it had seemed that Poland might bring that deadline forward by at least a decade.

Campaigners reacted angrily to the apparent U-turn.

Moskwa has underscored that her government cannot be trusted to sign a postcard, let alone a responsible climate pledge, said Kathrin Gutmann, campaign director of the group Europe Beyond Coal.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Denmark and several other nations signed a different pledge to prioritize funding clean energy over fossil fuel projects abroad.



HELSINKI  Finland's capital city says it will no longer serve meat dishes at seminars, staff meetings, receptions and other events to reduce Helsinki's carbon footprint.

Instead, the city government plans to offer vegetarian food and sustainable local fish.

Liisa Kivela, Helsinki's communications director, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the change takes effect in January and excludes school and workplace cafeterias run by the city of about 650,000 residents.

Kivela said the the policy adopted by the City Council also allows deviations for certain high-level visits or similar events organized by Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen or the citys senior managers.

The policy also stipulates that coffee, tea and items like bananas offered at events will have to be sourced from fair trade producers. In addition, oat milk will replace regular milk, and snacks and refreshments no longer can be served in single-use containers.

The local government said in a statement that the measure is part of a broader effort which aims to reduce the climate impact of food and reduce the amount of natural resources used by the city.

The mayor, who assumed Helsinkis top post in August, said he was glad the city retains the option of serving meat on some occasions.

For example, should the king of Sweden arrive for a visit, then domestic game can be offered. Or some group for whom it would be natural to offer meat, then there must be discretion and common sense, Vartiainen told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.



PARIS  French astronaut Thomas Pesquet used a video call from space to describe the view from the International Space Station of global warming's repercussions.

Pesquet told French President Emmanuel Macron during the call on Thursday that the space station's portholes revealed the haunting fragility of humanitys only home.

We see the pollution of rivers, atmospheric pollution, things like that," the astronaut said. "What really shocked me on this mission were extreme weather or climate phenomena.

We saw entire regions burning from the space station, in Canada, in California, he continued. We saw all of California covered by a cloud of smoke and flames with the naked eye from 400 kilometers (250 miles) up.

This is Pesquets second mission to the space station. He also spent 197 days in orbit in 2016-2017. The destructive effects of human activity have become increasingly visible in the interim, he said.

Macron said the goal for negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Scotland must be to speed up humanitys response.

There is still a huge job ahead of us, and I think we are all aware of that, the French leader said.



GLASGOW, Scotland Several major coal-using nations announced steps to wean themselves off of the heavily polluting fossil fuel, although for some the weaning will happen slowly.

The pledges on Thursday to phase out coal come on top of other promises made at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The head of an international energy organization said the earlier commitments trimmed a few tenths of a degree from projections of future warming.

But outside experts termed that comment  only in a tweet, not a rigorous report  optimistic.

Optimism also abounded in relation to the promises on coal, which has the dirtiest carbon footprint of the major fuels and is a significant source of planet-warming emissions.

Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight, said Alok Sharma, who is chairing the conference of nearly 200 nations, known as COP26.

Forecasters with a more skeptical view noted that several major economies still have not set a date for ending their dependence on the fuel, including the United States, China, India and Japan.

Outside the COP26 venue, protestors clad as animated characters blasted Japans continued coal use.



COPENHAGEN, Denmark  The Danish government said Thursday it will donate 100 million kroner ($15.6 million) to efforts to purchase and decommission coal power plants and invest in new energy sources.

As part of our comprehensive climate efforts, the Danish government is working to phase out coal while also investing massively in new green energy sources, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a statement.

Minister for Climate and Energy Dan Joergensen said the money will help coal-intensive countries reduce their coal consumption and create new income opportunities in local communities, which is absolutely vital to accelerating the energy transition.

Denmark's money will go to the Climate Investment Funds new Accelerating Coal Transition program, and the primary focus will initially be on South Africa, India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Danish government said the program includes efforts supporting alternative employment of the local population in impacted areas.



SOULAINES-DHUYS, France  Nuclear power is a central sticking point as negotiators plot out the worlds future energy strategy at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Critics decry its mammoth price tag, the disproportionate damage caused by nuclear accidents, and the radioactive waste left behind.

But a growing camp of vocal and powerful proponents - some climate scientists and environmental experts among them  argue that nuclear power is the worlds best hope of keeping climate change under contro.

They note that it emits few planet-damaging emissions and is safer on average than nearly any other energy source. They argue that nuclear accidents are scary but exceedingly rare, while pollution from coal and other fossil fuels causes death and illness every day.

Many governments are pushing to enshrine nuclear energy in climate plans being hashed out at the conference in Glasgow, known as COP26.

The European Union, meanwhile, is debating whether to label nuclear energy as officially green  a decision that will steer billions of euros of investment for years to come. That has implications worldwide, as the EU policy could set a standard that other economies follow.

But nuclear waste remains a major problem, with the most radioactive material still toxic for tens of thousands of years.

 GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains government has claimed that the end of coal is in sight after 18 countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile committed for the first time to phase out and not build or invest in new coal power.

The statement, issued late Wednesday during the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, said more than 40 nations are committing to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, as well as rapidly scale up clean power generation. Participating nations also commit to phasing out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for smaller economies.

Separately, the statement also said that Chile and Singapore have joined a U.K.-led alliance on phasing out coal that includes over 150 countries and businesses such as HSBC and NatWest bank.

U.K. business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it was a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change.

But Ed Miliband, the opposition Labour Partys business spokesman, said there were glaring gaps such as a lack of commitment from China and other large emitters to stop increasing coal at home. There was also nothing on the phasing out of oil and gas, he said.

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Montanas ban on workplace vaccine mandates notwithstanding, a pair of new federal regulations released Thursday will force large employers throughout the state to get their workers immunized against COVID-19 by Jan. 4, although most employees who refuse can opt for weekly testing instead.

President Joe Bidens administration had announced the regulations in September.

One issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires vaccinations or regular testing for employees at all businesses with 100 or more employees. It counts businesses as having 100 employees even if those workers are spread out at multiple company locations.

In the rule, OSHA said it is focusing on employers with more than 100 employees because it is "confident" those companies have the administrative capacity to follow the new rule, but is less confident that smaller employers could. The rule does not require employers pay for testing, though that could be required by other laws, regulations or collective bargaining agreements.

The other, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), states that all health care facilities must require vaccinations for all their staff in order to continue receiving payments through the two federal programs. For many large health care providers, that represents a majority of their revenue.

Billings Clinic is the states biggest hospital and fourth-largest employer, according to the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. While noting that its management was still digesting the more than 200-page CMS regulation on Thursday, Chief Human Resources Officer Jonathan McDermott said the hospital plans to begin implementing the vaccination requirements for its roughly 4,750 employees soon.

The CMS rule gives health care facilities until Dec. 5 to get at least the first COVID-19 shot in employees arms, while also requiring that affected organizations have a plan in place by then to meet the ultimate Jan. 4 deadline. Existing vaccination exemptions for medical or religious reasons are still recognized under the new rule.

Billings Clinic believes that being vaccinated is the most helpful way to help us get through this pandemic as quickly as possible, but we would also comply with the law, McDermott said Thursday.

One of the three approved COVID vaccines has received full federal approval, while the other two have been approved under emergency use authorizations.

Benefis Health, the states second-largest hospital, also plans to move forward with staff vaccine requirements under the new CMS rule. A spokeswoman for the Great Falls hospital told the Montana State News Bureau last month that regardless of Montanas law prohibiting most vaccine mandates, hospital management recognized the federal requirements as trumping those at the state level.

Montana prohibits most private businesses from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations among their staff. The state law, signed earlier this year by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, bars such mandates for public, non-profit and private workplaces alike. It exempts nursing homes in the event that CMS requires it  which the agency has done under a separate rule  but not hospitals or other health care providers. It also applies to all vaccines, not just those for preventing the spread of COVID-19. The law is already facing legal challenges.

Conflicting state laws are addressed in an FAQ also published by CMS on Thursday: Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, this regulation pre-empts any state law to the contrary. The OSHA rule was published with similar guidance.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen on Thursday reiterated his intention to challenge the new OSHA requirement in court. In a press release, Knudsen, a Republican, said the regulation would apply to 142,000 workers in Montana, citing the state Department of Labor and Industry.

President Bidens illegal mandate is an egregious overreach and sets the country down a dangerous path. Forcing these injections on Montanans at the threat of losing their jobs infringes on the rights of our state, individuals, and businesses, Knudsen stated in a press release. Weve been preparing for this. Ill be filing a lawsuit tomorrow to stop this lawless order in its tracks.

There is concern within the business community that vaccine mandates could prompt a wave of workers to quit in search of jobs that don't require the COVID-19 shot. McDermott, with Billings Clinic, said he hasn't heard much pushback from hospital workers in the two months since the federal mandates were announced, but also indicated that could be due to assumptions that the state's vaccine law would prevent them from being effective in Montana.

"Our employees really do have a mission, and their mission is to care for patients," he said, adding he hopes "to see a much lower impact than maybe other places."

Knudsen last week also joined several other states in a lawsuit challenging a separate rule from the Biden administration, which will require COVID vaccinations for workers employed by federal contractors. But he has stayed silent on whether the federal vaccine mandates going forward would trump the state's vaccine law. A spokesman for his office did not immediately respond Thursday to a message asking whether the attorney general would also challenge the CMS rule.

Montanas junior U.S. senator, Republican Steve Daines, said Thursday hed join other members of his caucus in an attempt to overturn the OSHA regulation through a vote under the Procedural Review Act. Majority Democrats in the Senate wouldnt be able to block the vote, but the resolution would likely be vetoed by Biden if it receives the simple majorities needed to pass in the House and Senate. Overriding the veto would then require a two-thirds vote in both chambers, The Hill previously reported.

Roy Loewenstein, a spokesman for Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, declined to say Thursday whether Tester would support such a resolution.

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A Yellowstone National Park treasure hunter will have to pay for his helicopter rescue, a Colorado appeals court has ruled.

On Aug. 2, 2018, Mark Lantis set off on a hike to 10,336-foot tall Mount Holmes in the northwest corner of the park in search of the Forrest Fenn treasure. Before reaching his destination Lantis decided to turn back, but left the trail after seeing bear scat.

When he ran out of daylight Lantis phoned to let his sister know he would be spending the night wet, cold [and] scared, according to court documents.

The next day Lantis mother phoned park officials concerned about her son. A park ranger contacted the overdue hiker and had him call 911 so they could locate him in the rugged, high elevation terrain. The ranger gave Lantis directions, but he was unable to hike out on his own and said he needed help.

Due to the late hour, a helicopter rescue was launched. Upon retrieval, Lantis was cited for disorderly conduct for recklessly creating a risk. At trial in the Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, court, Lantis was found guilty, sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation, banned from the park for five years and was ordered to pay $2,880 for the helicopter rescue.

Lantis appealed the sentence to district court and lost before taking his case to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. On Nov. 2, three of the judges upheld the lower court rulings.

Lantis had argued that the lower court had erred by applying the incorrect legal standard for recklessness, according to court documents.

The Wyoming judge had noted Lantis had started late in the day on one of Yellowstones most formidable day hikes and later went off trail traveling into remote mountainous terrain  ensuring he would be lost in the dark in an area of the park with a substantial grizzly bear population without adequate clothing, food, or water in wet and cold conditions.

Based on the situation, the judge called Lantis decision to leave the trail recklessness of the highest magnitude.

Lantis argued that the judges listing of such objective facts failed to apply the subjective portion of the recklessness standard. The appeals court disagreed.

The Forrest Fenn treasure, hidden in 2010, was discovered in southwestern Wyoming in 2020. In that decade, numerous hunters of the chest  which was said to contain an estimated $2 million in gold coins, jewels and historic artifacts  were charged for illegal searches inside Yellowstone National Park. These included a man who dug in a historic cemetery and another who illegally rappelled into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in winter. In 2017 an Illinois man fell to his death while searching for the treasure in the park.

In Wyoming south of the park, a Virginia man was rescued three times in three years while searching for the Fenn treasure.

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PARIS (AP)  British and French negotiators looking to untangle a post-Brexit spat over fishing licenses expect to continue talking into next week after resuming discussions Thursday in Paris.

Although fishing is a tiny industry economically for both Britain and France, the issue of boats' access to waters that divide the two maritime powers has flared into a major irritant.

French President Emmanuel Macron faces reelection in 2022, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a backer of Brexit, has championed British independence from the European Union, so neither wants to look soft by giving in.

Britain and its former EU partners are also still figuring out how to work together in the wake of their divorce, which is also why fishing has mushroomed into an early test of their new relationship.

The talks Thursday were closed door and low key, possibly signaling a desire on both sides to dial back the tensions that flared in recent weeks over access to English Channel waters.

The French negotiator, Clement Beaune, posted a photo on Twitter of him and British counterpart David Frost smiling as they shook hands.

Beaune's ministry had no immediate comment after the talks. A short British government statement said both sides set out their positions and concerns.

It added that Beaune and Frost expect to talk again early next week, after Frost meets Friday with EU officials in Brussels.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran's powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard troops on Oct. 24 took control of the MV Southys, a vessel that analysts suspect of trying to transfer sanctioned Iranian crude oil to Asia, at gunpoint. U.S. forces had monitored the seizure, but ultimately didn't take action as the vessel sailed into Iranian waters.

Iran celebrated its capture of the vessel in dramatic footage aired on state television, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Officials at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ship-tracking data analyzed by the AP from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessel still off Iran's southern port of Bandar Abbas on Tuesday. A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. also showed the vessel off Bandar Abbas in recent days.

The two U.S. officials on Wednesday spoke on condition of anonymity as the information had yet to be made public amid ongoing attempts to restart talks over Iran's tattered 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Negotiations have stalled in Vienna since the election of hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi in June, allowing Iran to press ahead with its nuclear program and raising alarm in Western capitals.

The European Union, Iran and the U.S. all said late Wednesday that the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri, said in a tweet that talks aimed for the removal unlawful and inhumane" sanctions. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Iran continued to take provocative nuclear steps" and that this window of opportunity will not be open forever.

The officials spoke to AP after Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Iran's assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

It's a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran." He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.

Kirby said Iran's boarding and seizing of the vessel constituted a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.

Tehran also did not provide the ships name, or other details, nor any explanation of why the Navy might target it. Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iranian officials heralded the ship's impoundment as a heroic act, with Raisi lauding the Revolutionary Guard on Twitter. The country's oil minister, Javad Owji, thanked the Guard for rescuing the Iranian oil tanker from American pirates."

State TV released footage showing an Iranian surveillance drone monitoring a hulking red tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Heavily armed Iranian commandos then rappelled onto the boat from a helicopter as small speedboats surrounded the vessel and an Iranian catamaran ship patrolled the waters.

The video appeared to show Iranian Guard troops pointing uncovered deck-mounted machine guns at the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Photos released by the U.S. military show The Sullivans recently in the Arabian Sea near the Gulf of Oman.

The status and makeup of the Sothys' crew wasn't immediately known. A shipping database showed the vessel's last registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. On Thursday, a worker at the office acknowledged an incident involving the Southys but referred questions to another employee who wasn't there. That employee did not immediately return a request for comment.

However, the Southys had been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long suspicious of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated Oct. 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Southy received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.

The U.S. Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. That Iranian oil ends up being sold into East Asia, the Treasury alleged, without identifying a specific country.

Iran's seizure of the Southys would be the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil the Gulf of Oman, which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members earlier this year. Just a few months ago, Iranian hijackers stormed and briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the region's volatile waters since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Irans nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.



Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington and Hau Dinh in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  In the fight to curb climate change, several major coal-using nations announced steps Thursday to wean themselves  at times slowly  off of the heavily polluting fossil fuel.

The pledges to phase out coal come on top of other promises made at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that the head of an international energy organization said trimmed a few tenths of a degree from projections of future warming. But outside experts termed that comment  only in a tweet, not a rigorous report  optimistic.

Optimism also abounded in relation to the promises on coal, which has the dirtiest carbon footprint of the major fuels and is a significant source of planet-warming emissions.

"Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight," said Alok Sharma, who is chairing the conference of nearly 200 nations, known as COP26.

But that vision is obscured in smoke, critics say, because several major economies still have not set a date for ending their dependence on the fuel, including the United States, China, India and Japan.

Outside the venue where negotiators were meeting Thursday, protestors clad as animated characters blasted Japans continued coal use.

What nations have promised varies. Some have pledged to quit coal completely at some future time, while others say they'll stop building new plants, and even more, including China, are talking about just stopping financing of new coal plants abroad.

The British government said pledges of new or earlier deadlines for ending coal use came from countries including Poland, Ukraine, Vietnam and Chile. Further details about which countries were doing what were to be announced later in the day.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Denmark and several other nations signed a pledge to prioritize funding clean energy over fossil fuel projects abroad.

While not completely ruling out financial support for coal-fired power plants, the countries said they would refrain from any new direct public support" for coal except in limited circumstances.

That move was seen as a significant step by environmental campaigners, who said that it could push international lenders to stop providing loans for new fossil fuel projects.

Denmark announced a 100 million-kroner ($15.6 million) contribution for the coal phase-out, including money for efforts to purchase and decommission coal power plants and invest in new energy sources.

United Kingdom Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng called the agreements a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change." But the opposition Labour Partys business spokesman, Ed Miliband, said there were glaring gaps such as the lack of commitment from large emitters to stop increasing coal domestically.

And despite the talk, coal emissions increased dramatically in 2021, not just from pandemic-struck 2020 levels, but above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to a new analysis by scientists at Global Carbon Project, which tracks annual carbon pollution. The world spewed 14.7 billion metric tons (16.2 billion tons) of carbon dioxide from coal burning, 5.7% more than last year, the analysis said.

That was mostly spurred by dramatic increase in pollution from coal burning in China, which hit a new peak of coal emissions this year of 7.6 billion metric tons (8.4 billion tons) of carbon dioxide, more than half the globe's coal emissions, the report said.

Miliband, of the U.K. Labour Party, also noted that there were no new commitments on phasing out of oil and gas, the other major fossil fuels.

Still, experts said the announcement and others made so far at the summit showed the growing momentum to ditch coal.

Todays commitments will help to shift whole continents on their journey to phase out coal," said Dave Jones of the energy think tank Ember.

Poland is the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, which is set to phase it out as early as 2030. While the Polish government had previously agreed to end coal use by 2049, the new pledge would bring this deadline forward by at least a decade.

Finally the Polish government has accepted what is a no brainer: The time of coal has ended, said Joanna Flisowska, a climate expert with Greenpeace Poland, while adding that this was only the first step.

Ukraine, the third-biggest coal consumer in Europe, is also bringing forward its coal deadline, from 2050 to 2035.

The progress on coal being shown at COP26 demonstrates that the conditions are ripe for a global coal exit, said Leo Roberts, a senior researcher at the environmental think tank E3G.

We now need to see the incoming massive scale-up in clean energy finance made available quickly to ensure all countries can confidently move from coal to clean, he added.

But some environmental activists said the commitments didn't go far enough.

Emissions from oil and gas already far outstrip coal and are booming, while coal is already entering a terminal decline, said Murray Worthy of the campaign group Global Witness. "This is a small step forwards when what was needed was a giant leap.

The agreements on coal are not part of the formal negotiations at the U.N. talks in Glasgow. But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose country is hosting the conference, had said he wanted to see deals on coal, cars, trees and cash.

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, on Thursday tweeted that a new analysis shows that fully achieving all net zero pledges & the Global Methane Pledge by those who signed it would limit global warming to 1.8 C.

The goal that countries set at a previous conference in Paris is to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels. A United Nations analysis showed that before Glasgow the world was heading to a 2.7-degree Celsius (4.9-degree Fahrenheit) increase while other analyses showed warming in the mid- to upper-2-degree range also.

Niklas Hohne, of the New Climate Institute and Climate Action Tracker, called Birol's figure optimistic and based on countries achieving net-zero pledges when they have not implemented any actions that would get them there.



Associated Press writers Sylvia Hui in London and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed.



Follow AP's coverage of the climate conference at http://apnews.com/hub/climate.

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HANOI, Vietnam (AP)  Vietnam was seeking more information Thursday about a Vietnamese oil tanker that was seized at gunpoint last month by Iranian soldiers in the Gulf of Oman, while vowing to ensure the safety and humane treatment of the ship's crew members.

Irans powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard troops on Oct. 24 took control of the MV Sothys, a vessel that analysts suspect of trying to transfer sanctioned Iranian crude oil to Asia. U.S. forces had monitored the seizure but ultimately didnt take action as the vessel sailed into Iranian waters.

The episode was the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehrans nuclear program.

Vietnamese officials "continue to closely follow the developments and work closely with Iranian authorities to resolve this issue in accordance with the law and enact necessary measures to safeguard the rights and interests of Vietnamese nationals, Pham Thu Hang, deputy spokesperson in Vietnams Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Thursday.

The captain of the MV Sothys told the Vietnamese Embassy in Iran that all 26 crew members were being treated well and were in normal health, Hang told reporters at a scheduled briefing.

Iran celebrated its capture of the vessel in dramatic footage aired on state television Wednesday, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Ship-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessel still off Irans southern port of Bandar Abbas on Tuesday. A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. also showed the vessel off Bandar Abbas in recent days.

Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navys Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Irans assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

Its a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran. He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.

Kirby said Irans boarding and seizing of the vessel constituted a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.

Tehran also did not provide the ships name, or other details, nor any explanation of why the Navy might target it. Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

State TV released footage showing an Iranian surveillance drone monitoring a hulking red tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Heavily armed Iranian commandos then rappelled onto the boat from a helicopter as small speedboats surrounded the vessel and an Iranian catamaran ship patrolled the waters.

The video appeared to show Iranian Guard troops pointing uncovered deck-mounted machine guns at the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Photos released by the U.S. military show The Sullivans recently in the Arabian Sea near the Gulf of Oman.

A shipping database showed the Sothys' last registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. On Thursday, a worker at the office acknowledged an incident involving the Sothys but referred questions to another employee who wasnt there. That employee did not immediately return a request for comment.

However, the Sothys had been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long suspicious of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated Oct. 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Sothys received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.

The U.S. Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Guards expeditionary Quds Force. That Iranian oil ends up being sold into East Asia, the Treasury alleged, without identifying a specific country.

Irans seizure of the Sothys would be the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil the Gulf of Oman, which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members earlier this year. Just a few months ago, Iranian hijackers stormed and briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the regions volatile waters since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Irans nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.



This story corrects the name of the ship to MV Sothys instead of Southys.



Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

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A military watchdog has claimed that there was no misconduct or negligence in the botched US drone strike against a target in Kabul that killed 10 innocent civilians, including seven children.

The independent Pentagon review doesnt recommend that any disciplinary action be taken. The inspector general of the Air Force, Lieutenant General Sami Said, led the review process and found that there were breakdowns in communications as well as in the process of finding and confirming the target for the airstrike. But he also added that the mistake occurred despite that measures were taken to prevent civilian casualties.

I found that given the information they had and the analysis that they did  I understand they reached the wrong conclusion, but ... was it reasonable to conclude what they concluded based on what they had? It was not unreasonable. It just turned out to be incorrect, Lt Gen Said said. Hes considered to be independent as he has no connection to the operations in Afghanistan.

The inspector general said the botched strike must be considered in context  stressed US forces were working under heavy pressure just days after a suicide bombing that had killed hundreds of Afghans and 13 US service members on 26 August.

They received large amounts of information about threats to the airport as they worked feverishly to facilitate the international airlift of Afghan allies, refugees, and international citizens. Afghans in the thousands surrounded the airport as they tried to get away from the Taliban.

Lt Gen Said said that better communications between those deciding whether to launch the strike and other personnel may have prompted more doubts to be raised but may not have prevented the strike.

The airstrike took place on 29 August, hitting the white Toyota Corolla sedan of 37-year-old Zemerai Ahmadi, an employee of a US humanitarian organisation. The inaccurate intelligence came days after an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 Americans and 169 Afghans at the airport.

Story continues

Lt Gen Said said US forces believed the car posed a threat and that they needed to strike it before it got to the airport.

They all have a genuine belief based on the information they had and the interpretation, that that was a threat to US forces, an imminent threat to US forces, he said during a briefing at the Pentagon. Thats a mistake. Its a regrettable mistake. Its an honest mistake. I understand the consequences, but its not criminal conduct, random conduct, negligence.

He added that two minutes before the strike, there was evidence of a child being in the strike zone, but that the deciding forces didnt see the child.

Im just saying it is 100 per cent not obvious, he said. You have to be like, no kidding, looking for it. But when youre looking for it, certainly after the fact, if you ask me, was there evidence of the presence? Yes, there was.

Steven Kwon, the president of Mr Ahmadis employer Nutrition and Education International, said: According to the Inspector General, there was a mistake but no one acted wrongly, and Im left wondering, how can that be?

Clearly, good military intentions are not enough when the outcome is 10 precious Afghan civilian lives lost and reputations ruined, he added in the statement.

The review from the inspector general suggests that more be done to prevent confirmation bias  that forces making the decision to launch the strike were too quick to decide that what they were seeing on the ground matched their intelligence of an impending terror attack and confirmed their decision to strike what was later revealed to be the wrong vehicle.

Pentagon officials claimed for days after the strike that the drone attack had been correct despite an increasing number of reports that it had targeted innocent civilians.

While the inspector general hasnt recommended any disciplinary actions, Lt Gen Said said that commanders could look at the review and learn that there was subpar performance and decide to decredential, retrain, or fire some staff.

You should not perceive the fact that I didnt call any individual out with accountability that it does not mean that the chain of command wont, he said.

The US is currently working to pay reparations to the family and to possibly get them out of the country.

A review by US Central Command found that US forces tracked the vehicle for around eight hours and decided to strike in an earnest belief that the car was carrying explosives and that it was a threat to troops at the airport.

The US troop presence ended just days later, with the Taliban now in power of the country.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Need a vaccine?

Clinic at St. Charles

WHAT: First, second, third and booster doses of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines

WHEN: Wednesday through Friday from 3-7 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. starting Saturday, Nov. 6 through Dec. 18

WHERE: St. Charles Catholic Church, 728 W. Union St. in Morganton

HOW: Walk-ins welcome, but appointments preferred and can be made at https://bit.ly/3BJxwAA

INTERPRETERS: Spanish, American Sign Language and Hmong interpreters all will be present

Clinics at the health department

WHAT: First, second, third and booster doses of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines

WHEN: Nov. 23 and Nov. 30 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

WHERE: Burke County Health Department, 700 E. Parker Road in Morganton

HOW: Walk-ins welcome, but appointments are preferred and can be made by calling 828-764-9150
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  With Republicans on the cusp of sweeping statewide judicial races in Pennsylvania, the GOP is finding more reasons to smile a year away from a high-stakes election in which the state's voters will pick a new governor and a new U.S. senator.

Republicans could be considered favored in both contests next year. The party of the president almost always loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, and a Republican has always replaced an outgoing Democratic governor in Pennsylvanias modern political era.

On Tuesday, Republicans delivered historic vote counts for court candidates.

One Republican campaign strategist, Christopher Nicholas, pointed to a slate of countywide victories in Bucks County, a political bellwether north of Philadelphia, as well as other pickups in Philadelphias suburbs where Democrats thrived while former President Donald Trump was in office.

You cant say, as goes the Bucks County controllers race, so goes the state, Nicholas said. But, when you look at that, it bodes well.

Pennsylvanias race for U.S. Senate is expected to be among the nations most competitive next year.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection Wednesday, eking out a victory that spared Democrats the loss of a second gubernatorial seat.

Hes the states first Democratic governor to get a second straight term in 44 years, defeating Republican former Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli.

AP called the race Wednesday evening when a new batch of votes from Republican-leaning Monmouth County increased Murphys lead and closed the door to a Ciattarelli comeback.

Ballots remaining to be counted included a significant number of votes from predominantly Democratic Essex County, along with mail-in votes spread across other counties. Murphy has won the mail-in vote by a wide margin even in Republican leaning counties like Monmouth.

Ciattarelli spokesperson Stami Williams disputed the call because of the close margin, calling it irresponsible.

Murphy delivered a brief speech in Asbury Park's boardwalk convention hall, nodding to the race's narrow margin by saying he would work for both those who voted for and against him. But there was no trace he planned to scale back the left-leaning positions he's taken during his first term.
As Montana struggles to attract and retain health care workers, Gov. Greg Gianforte announced Tuesday a health care workforce recruitment program that would cover relocation costs for providers who commit to moving to the state.

The incentive would pay up to $12,500 in relocation expenses plus 35% to cover taxes. To qualify, health care workers must commit to permanently relocating to Montana and be employed at a health care facility for at least 12 consecutive months.

The program is expected to launch by the end of November, Gianforte said.

Prior to the press conference at Billings Clinic, Gianforte toured the hospital's intensive care unit where the 47 patients being treated put the ICU at 160% of capacity.

"It's just heart breaking to see...once you're in the ICU, unfortunately there aren't many victories. This is the tragic consequence of this virus," Gianforte said as he thanked health care workers across the state for their heroic actions throughout the pandemic.

Gianforte staunchly held his position against mandating vaccinations in Montana, but added that vaccines prevent severe COVID illness.

"While we're not going to mandate vaccinations, I want to say that hearing from (Billings Clinic ICU staff), you don't see vaccinated people in the ICU. Eighty-five percent of people, approximately, since April that have ended up in the hospital have been unvaccinated," Gianforte said.

As sky rocketing hospitalizations due to COVID-19 contribute to burn out among nurses, Gianforte said the best way to relieve and retain existing staff is to bring in more workers.

Billings Clinic has brought in more than 1,000 traveling healthcare workers during the last 18 months and turnover of exiting staff has been increasing, according to Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr. Michelle Pierson.

A retention strategy as well as a recruitment strategy will be very important moving forward, Pierson said.

The funds for the recruitment incentive are left over from the return-to-work bonus program that offered one-time bonuses for Montanans who returned to the workforce, according to previous reporting done by Montana State News Bureau reporter Sam Wilson.

The return-to-work program was launched in May 2021 and ended Oct. 31.

Lawmakers and administration officials voted unanimously on Oct. 27, 2021 to recommend the $4.3 million the state received through the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) be put toward the new program.

For too long, Montana has struggled to recruit and retain health care workers. This shortage has been felt in our largest communities but also in our frontier and rural communities especially where access to doctors and specialists has long posed a challenge, even before the pandemic. Over the last 19 months however recruiting and retaining health care workers has become an even greater challenge," Gianforte said. With this innovative new program, were inviting qualified doctors, nurses, and other health care providers to move to Montana, serve in our communities, alleviate some of the burden on existing workers, and help us build capacity so Montanans have greater access to care.

The governor added that he encourages all Montanans to talk to their doctor about getting vaccinated.

"I did that. I got vaccinated. And I would encourage others to do it as well," Gianforte said.

St. Vincent Healthcare Chief Operation Officer, Krikor Jansezian provided the following statement after the press conference:

We appreciate and applaud the focus Gov. Gianforte is placing on the acute-care workforce shortage that healthcare facilities throughout Montana are currently experiencing. The initiatives announced today are certainly a step in the right direction and will bring additional resources to our state that we hope will help ease the current labor shortage challenges.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  A court in Belarus on Wednesday handed prison sentences to two human rights activists, part of an ongoing crackdown on nongovernmental organizations and independent media in the ex-Soviet country.

The court in the eastern city of Homiel sentenced 55-year-old Leanid Sudalenka to three years in prison and gave a 2 1/2-year sentence to 43-year-old Tatsiana Lasitsa on charges of organizing and financing actions violating the public order. Both have been in custody since their arrest more than nine months ago.

Sudalenko has written from prison that the charges hinged on him meeting a colleague released from jail and helping a low-income farmer family to buy firewood  actions that investigators interpreted as organizing and funding protests.

Sudalenka and Lasitsa worked for the Viasna human rights center, the countrys leading rights group. Another five leading members of Viasna, including its head Ales Bialiatski, are in custody awaiting trial.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups urged Belarusian authorities to immediately annul Wednesday's sentence and strongly denounced politically motivated prosecutions of Viasna members and volunteers (that) are part of the purge of Belarusian civil society" by President Alexander Lukashenko's government.

"Belarusian authorities targeting of Viasna in particular is no doubt designed to punish the organization for its outstanding and courageous human rights work over the course of 25 years, they said.

Lukashenko faced months of protests triggered by his re-election to a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the opposition and the West saw as rigged. He responded to the demonstrations with a massive crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police.

Belarusian authorities have methodically ramped up the pressure against nongovernmental organizations and independent media, conducting hundreds of raids of offices and apartments of activists and journalists, and arresting scores.

On Wednesday, Belarus' Interior Ministry said that the online resources of Belsat, an independent Belarusian TV channel based in Poland, have been designated as extremist  a decision that follows July's court ruling which already outlawed the TV channel as extremist. The moves have exposed its employees and viewers to prison terms.

The authorities are methodically cleansing Belarus information space, and the absurdity of the situation is that they assign the extremist designation several times, said Andrei Bastunets, the head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. Officials apply the label of extremism to the media they cant reach.

Even before the move, Iryna Slaunikava, a Belsat journalist, was sentenced to 15 days in jail on Monday for reposting Belsats content on her Facebook page. Slaunikavas husband, Ales Loyka was also handed a 15-day sentence for reposting Belsats materials dating back several years.

They were arrested on Saturday after returning from a trip to Egypt.

In February, Belsat journalists Daria Chultsova and Katsiaryna Andreyeva were convicted of violating public order and sentenced to two years in prison after they covered a protest.



Uliana Pavlova in Moscow contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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When asked for his reaction, LaRue said, Im a little surprised that (McCarter) wasnt re-elected, but I think the parents of Muscatine decided they wanted change. I know theres going to be a gathering where well go over the responsibilities of the school board as they bring us on board, so Im excited for that.

LaRue added that he is looking forward to finding out more about things happening in Muscatine schools and becoming informed enough to separate rumors from facts.

Phillips said she is looking forward to working with the board. The superintendent has already reached out to get started with conversations and orientation to get us ready to go for the first meeting, and so Im excited for the first step and the opportunity to ask questions, find out some of those inside details, and just get started.

The Journal was unable to reach candidate Conard for comment.

Although he may have lost this re-election, McCarter stated that he was feeling good about it, being more thrilled about the turnout and involvement of this years school elections than anything else. He said that he was also thankful for the opportunity to serve as well as humbled for his four years on the school board.
She said farm ground on the site would not be included in the EWP-FPE program and the LCCB would continue to rent that land to a local farmer. If the LCCB eventually finalizes an agreement, an easement would be provided to the federal government.

The easement would prohibit some land uses, but Hammond pointed out most of those uses were already not allowed because the property had been purchased with Iowa Wildlife Habitat Stamp funds.

Griffin, who formerly served on the LCCB, reminded the other supervisors the countys participation in the EWP-FPE program would not alter the management of the area, but expressed displeasure over the federal governments involvement.

I dont quite like the fact that the federal government has a say in how we manage (Indian Slough), but thats okay, because its not going to be managed any other way anyhow, he said.

He also questioned why the federal government program was even available to the LCCB, especially since the management of the land would not change.

Hammond acknowledged there were many government programs the LCCB was locked out of, but the EWP-FPE was not one of them.

This is one we can, she said.
Its very humbling, Lewis said. When I first started thinking of running I was watching what was going on at the local level and there were some things where I was like OK you are supposed to be representing all of us.

She says as a council member she would take everyone in Muscatine into account to make her decisions. She feels it is a great opportunity to be able to serve the community.

Brackett feels the voters made their decision for a council member and he wishes Lewis the best in her role as council member. He hopes she carries on the tradition of offering regular access to the people of Muscatine to reach out to her and he hopes to see her active in the community.

A lot of good things have been going on for the last few years and I would like to see that continue,: he said.

In the race to fill council member Osmond Malcolms Ward 2 seat, Jeff Osborne won the election with 189 votes, beating Josiah Anderson who got 143 votes and Alyson Glynn, 130.

Im very happy with the outcome, Osborne said. I had got a lot of great advice. I dont know if I attribute the win to it, but it made me a better candidate. The other candidates were on their game and I had to step up my game and we all rose to the occasion.
You did? Well, maybe she didnt get it, Kauffman said after hearing that news.

A notice of the water shutdown had also been posted to the community Facebook page, Columbus Junction Deputy City Clerk Jodi Edwards told Kaufman, who said he had not seen that because he did not have a Facebook account.

Officials agreed the incident pointed to a greater need for communication and Kauffman said he would provide his email address to Columbus Junctions staff as an additional safeguard.

In a separate discussion from the water shutoff issue, Kauffman asked the Columbus Junction officials if they could provide daily readings from the new radio-read meter to Columbus City.

We have no way to read that meter, (so) would it be possible to get that number every day? he wondered.

Salazar said even though the new meter was a radio-read model, a cover could still be lifted on it and the meter reading would be illuminated and could be read.

Kauffman said he would alert his meter reading team about the new device.

In other Columbus Junction City Council meeting action, Mayor Mark Huston administered the oath of office to new city police officer Brett Samuels.
Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder told the man that he had been informed that when a sheriffs deputy had been escorting the man to his vehicle after court earlier in the week that the juror had told the deputy a joke.

Are you comfortable repeating what the joke was or do you want to leave it alone? Schroeder asked.

The man, his face covered by a cloth mask, looked uncomfortable. He shook his head.

Before Juror 7 came into the courtroom, Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said the "joke" was about the shooting of Jacob Blake: "Do you know why the Kenosha Police shot Jacob Blake seven times? Because they ran out of bullets."

Anyone who thinks that joke is funny ... Binger said, his word trailing off before he continued. It suggests some sort of racial bias which I think comes into play in this case.

The issue first came to light at the end of the day Wednesday after the jurors had been dismissed for the day and were out of the courtroom. Binger said on the record that Schroeder had informed the attorneys that the deputy had informed the court of the jurors joke. Binger asked then that the juror be removed, but Schroeder and defense attorneys wanted to hear from the juror himself before the judge took action.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  The head of a European Parliament delegation on its first official visit to Taiwan said Thursday that its high time for the European Union to step up cooperation with the self-ruled island, which is also claimed by China.

Seven lawmakers from the Parliaments committee on foreign interference in democratic processes met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on the second day of their three-day visit.

We came here with a very simple, very clear message. You are not alone, said Raphael Glucksmann, the French chair of the committee. Europe is standing with you, by you, in the defense of freedom and the defense of rule of law and human dignity.

It is high time for the European Union to step up its cooperation with Taiwan, he said.

Tsai kept her welcome remarks short, calling the visit highly significant and saying Taiwan was willing to share its experience in combating disinformation and that it wants to build a democratic alliance against disinformation.
In October, Lozoya was photographed dining out carefree at a luxury restaurant in Mexico City, drawing criticism.

I believe it is legal, but is immoral that these things happen. It is imprudent, at the very least, Lopez Obrador said in October. That is why there is so much indignation at him eating at a luxury restaurant. Even though he can legally do so, he is a witness to acts of corruption that damaged Mexico a lot.

Lozoya fled to Spain, was arrested there and extradited back to Mexico in 2020.

Once back in Mexico, Lozoya alleged that Pena Nieto and his right-hand man, then treasury secretary Luis Videgaray, directed him to bribe lawmakers, including five senators, to support controversial energy and other structural reforms in 2013 and 2014.

Lozoya also faces corruption charges related to Pemexs overvalued purchase of a fertilizer plant and to millions in dollars of bribes paid by Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. He has said Pena Nieto and Videgaray told him to use $4 million from Odebrecht to pay foreign campaign consultants for work on Pena Nietos 2012 election campaign.
US rolls out Covid-19 vaccine for young children, ending long wait for some parents
MTN Group Ltd. plans to sell shares in the carriers Nigeria unit worth about 101 billion naira ($244 million), continuing a plan to dispose of assets and pay down debt.

Africas largest mobile-phone operator will offer 575 million shares in MTN Nigeria Communications Plc, which listed in Lagos in 2019, according to a statement on Thursday.

The move is part of a broader plan to sell about 14% of the parent companys holding in its largest and most profitable unit, the group said.

MTN shares rose as much as 3.6% in Johannesburg, the most in almost a month.

The stock has surged 138% this year, the best performer on the FTSE/JSE Africa Top40 Index, as investors cheer various cash-raising exercises.

The Nigeria sale comes as MTN looks to finalize a sale-and-lease back of its South African telecom-mast portfolio and list shares in the Uganda operation in Kampala.

The company also netted some proceeds from the initial public offering of towers firm IHS Holding Ltd. in New York last month.

MTN said third-quarter service revenue gained by 19%, driven by data and fintech sales.

Now read: Elon Musk now three times richer than Warren Buffett
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Cryptocurrency has gained traction in recent years because it is typically not controlled by a central authority. This means it is almost impossible for it to be interfered with by governments or manipulated by third parties.

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Earlier this year, Rolling Stone Magazine reported that paid music streaming subscriptions in the US experienced their biggest year-on-year jump in 2020.

Some 15 million people signed up for various platforms for the first time, bringing the total number of paying North American subscribers to more than 75 million people.

This astronomical rise of interest in music streaming isnt unique to the US. In South Africa, leading market and consumer data provider Statista projects that the local music streaming segment will be worth US$55 million in 2021.

That revenue is expected to grow by almost 13% every year, resulting in a projected market volume, says Statista, of US$89 million by the year 2025.

By then, music streaming users in South Africa are expected to number over 7 million people.

One platform that is seeing ever-increasing interest from people and usage around the world is HUAWEI Music.

Available on HUAWEI AppGallery, as well as pre-installed on most Huawei devices, this music streaming service is used by over 160 million people worldwide every month.

Its library is huge, boasting over 50 million tracks and 1.2 million albums  the equivalent of more than 300 years of non-stop music.

South African users are treated to the best local and global hits and artists, Couple this with crystal clear audio and a very easy to navigate user interface, its no surprise that HUAWEI Music is gaining in popularity.

Looking back

While music streaming dates to the emergence of Napster in 1999, its grip really started to take hold in the mid to late 2000s.

By the early 2010s, a number of todays most prominent platforms already existed and were starting to differentiate their offerings for, and secure their grip on, an international market hungry for easy access to an infinite variety of music.

Before too long, labels and artists had no choice but to make their music available on as many platforms as possible  doing so became a critical business move.

Those who failed to keep up with the times, quickly fell away. CDs (but not vinyl records) sat, and continue to sit, on the shelves of music stores, unsold.

The shift hasnt been without its controversies. Over the years, artists have complained that they earn too little for their work, with streaming platforms taking significant cuts.

The model has also been accused of favouring major artists and big labels over smaller acts and independent labels, even if the latter are listened to frequently.

This is not the case with HUAWEI Music, which proudly boasts not only international artists but up-and-coming talent as well.

Listeners have challenges too. South African music lovers wanting to stream their favourite artists continue to be hamstrung by the high costs of data.

While almost 25 million South Africans currently own a smartphone, the costs involved in streaming music and in having a streaming subscription often prevent them from enjoying the full advantages of their devices.

Looking ahead

Challenges, however, are often just opportunities for change. As technology evolves, and the demands of both artists and listeners shift, its likely that music streaming will adapt too.

The music platform of global technology giant, HUAWEI, has already started to address some of these issues.

For example, when it was launched in 2018, HUAWEI Music decided to prioritise and support local music, with 80% of its content coming from South African artists.

A substantial portion of this music is available for free with additional content available through a paid portal, which wont dent users wallets at all.

To address data concerns, HUAWEI makes its music available in several different sound qualities, from low to super (super sound quality, however, can only be accessed through the subscription option).

Playing songs in low or standard quality will help to limit the amount of data required, ensuring that users data wont be gone after they have listened to just a couple of tracks.

Listeners can also choose to download songs they love when they have a reliable internet connection, and listen to them offline.

As we look to the future of streaming services, platforms that meet the needs of artists and listeners alike will certainly come out tops.

To take advantage of HUAWEI Musics vast array of benefits, start exploring the platform today! Download it from HUAWEI AppGallery by clicking here.
Uber Technologies Inc. is poised to record a loss of more than $3 billion (R45.8 billion) on its stake in Didi Global Inc., wiping out the $1.4 billion it made after the Chinese ride-hailing giant went public in June.

Since pulling off one of the biggest U.S. stock market debuts of the past decade, Didis U.S.-traded shares have plummeted 41% since Chinese regulators ordered the app to be removed from online stores in its home market, citing privacy and security risks.

The tumult has whittled the value of Ubers roughly 12% stake in its former rival down to about $4 billion at the end of the third quarter from $7.3 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Didi is still the most valuable equity stake in Ubers portfolio of investments, which was valued at nearly $15 billion at the end of the second quarter. It also wasnt the last to go public.

In July, online food delivery startup Zomato Ltd. listed its shares in India, fetching a valuation of 910 million rupees ($12.2 billion). The IPO increased the value of Ubers 9% stake to $1 billion from $100 million at the end of the second quarter.

Though the fluctuations in Didi and Zomato are only paper gains and losses, Ubers other stakes, including Grab Holdings Inc., Aurora and Joby Aviation LLC, have also taken steps to go public and could spell more volatility for Ubers finances.

Investors may shrug off the large Didi writedown and focus instead on Ubers business prospects when the San Francisco-based company reports financial results on Thursday.

Theres going to be more intrigue about driver supply and relative growth rate of ridership, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Brad Erickson.

Ride-hailing was among the hardest-hit sectors during the pandemic as people shunned activities that involved coming in close proximity with strangers. But rising vaccination rates and the economys reopening are re-igniting rider demand.

Lyft Inc. reported its financial results earlier this week, posting a 73% increase in revenue in the third quarter. The company said it was seeing a rise in airport rides and weekend and evening trips  a sign that customers are resuming their pre-pandemic habits.

At Uber, gross bookings are expected to reach $23.3 billion in the third quarter, with ride-hailing increasing to $10.1 billion, narrowing the gap with bookings from food delivery orders, which overtook ride sales at the onset of the pandemic.

Revenue is projected to be $4.4 billion, according to an average of analysts estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Analysts are predicting $2.1 billion of revenue from rides and $1.9 billion from delivery, which includes Uber Eats. If Uber meets expectations, it will be the first time since the start of Covid-19 that ride-share comprises the majority of its overall revenue.

Uber is still losing money on delivery orders, and a rebound in the higher-margin ride-hailing segment would help it get closer to achieving profitability.

Analysts expect a loss before interest, tax and other expenses of $15.4 million. The company raised its forecast in September, signaling adjusted profits would range from a loss of $25 million to a profit of $25 million.

However, even at the high end of its estimate, Uber still trails Lyft, which reported an adjusted profit of $67.3 million on Tuesday.

Now read: Elon Musk reveals Hertz deal not signed
Napa County on Wednesday announced a rollout of coronavirus vaccines for about 11,000 children ages 5 to 11 who are newly eligible for inoculation, on the same day county health officials confirmed the deaths of two elderly residents from COVID-19 last month.

Meanwhile, two vaccination clinics for younger children were announced for the Upvalley, with the first set for Friday.

Local doctors along with pharmacies and community organizations will begin providing smaller-size doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine following federal approval of the kid-size dose, Napa County's interim spokesperson Leah Greenbaum said in a statement. The county's program of free public vaccination clinics also will extend to separate sessions for 5- to 11-year-olds starting the week of Nov. 18, she announced.

Families can visit countyofnapa.org and click on the vaccine calendar to find an upcoming clinic.

Vaccinating as much of our community as possible  including our children  is one of the most important ways to put this pandemic behind us, said Dr. Karen Relucio, the county public health officer, said in the statement. As the holiday season approaches, expanded eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines means we can safely celebrate with extended family and friends  something that wasnt a safe option last year.

Earlier, the St. Helena Hospital Foundation announced two Upvalley clinics to provide the COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, following federal approval this week of a lower-dose Pfizer vaccine for younger patients.

Clinics have been scheduled for 3 to 5 p.m. Friday at St. Helena Primary School, 1701 Grayson Ave., and from 3 to 6 p.m. Nov. 12 in Calistoga at a location to be announced.

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The Pfizer vaccine will be the first offered in Napa County to children younger than 12. All minors will be required to have a parent present to be inoculated, and all people must wear face masks and practice social distancing. No appointment or insurance is required.

In addition to COVID-19 vaccines, the St. Helena Hospital Foundation Mobile Health Unit provides free flu shots to anyone 2 or older at its vaccine clinics. The most up-to-date schedule for vaccine clinics is available at shhfoundation.org or on the St. Helena Hospital Foundation Facebook page.

The announcement of vaccination clinics for kids came on the same day California said it is immediately rolling out doses across the state, with about 500 organizations receiving their shipments through Monday. The state was allotted 1.2 million childrens doses from the federal government, with a sufficient supply for all newly eligible children expected to become available at more than 4,000 locations in the coming weeks, the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Kid-sized doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine cleared two final hurdles Tuesday  a recommendation from CDC advisers, followed by a green light from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vaccine  one-third the dose given to older children and adults and administered with kid-sized needles  requires two doses three weeks apart, plus two more weeks for full protection. That means children who get vaccinated before Thanksgiving will be covered by Christmas.

Pooled testing would keep COVID from spreading in schools Communities and school districts must take proactive measures, like pool testing, to keep COVID transmission low and kids in school, says infectious disease specialist Dr. Karen Smith.

Earlier Wednesday, Napa County reported that two more residents died last month after contracting the coronavirus, raising the local death toll to 104 during the pandemic.

One patient was a woman who lived in the city of Napa but died Oct. 21 outside the county, while the other patient was a Yountville man who died within county boundaries Saturday, according to Leah Greenbaum, the countys emergency services coordinator. Both patients were fully vaccinated and over the age of 85, she said.

Napa County authorities were not notified about the cause of the womans death until the release of an out-of-county death certificate listing COVID-19 as the cause, Greenbaum said Wednesday afternoon.

Napa Countys four previous deaths due to COVID-19 occurred on Oct. 11.

Meanwhile, the county reported 18 new cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday and eight more Wednesday. (The county Health and Human Services agencys COVID-19 informational website failed to update Tuesday because of a technical problem, according to Greenbaum.) As of Wednesday afternoon, eight people in Napa County were hospitalized with the virus, and 78% of local intensive-care beds were available.

Also Wednesday, Curative Inc. of San Dimas announced the opening of two new COVID-19 testing sites in Napa County. Residents can be tested at the Napa Valley Unified School Districts Education Center at 2425 Jefferson St. in Napa, or at a kiosk at Napa Junction Elementary School, 300 Napa Junction Road in American Canyon.

Both sites will offer shallow nasal PCR testing and will be open to all visitors at no out-of-pocket cost. Walk-up testing is available and appointments can be made in advance at curative.com, the company announced.

The Napa County Office of Education plans to host English and Spanish-language forums for parents to ask questions about pediatric COVID-19 vaccines from Napa County Public Health and local pediatricians during the week of Nov. 15, said Greenbaum, the county spokesperson. Residents can check napacoe.org for more information as the forums are scheduled.

Those who need help finding an appointment, connecting to free transportation to and from a vaccination site, or scheduling a home visit if they are homebound, or who have any questions about vaccination access may contact the Napa County public information line at 707-253-4540 or email coronavirus@countyofnapa.org.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

You can reach Howard Yune at 530-763-2266 or hyune@napanews.com

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Jon Huttinger looks at the pavement in his rural Monticello Park neighborhood east of the city of Napa and sees what is hardly a rare sight in Napa County  roads that need repair.

There are just so many cracks in the streets that I think the streets are going to have to be rebuilt, he said.

Lorraine Drive, Ross Circle, Arroyo Sarco, Hestia Way, and other streets in Monticello Park have pavement problems. Hettinger said theres been a lack of maintenance.

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I think the homes are really expensive, the tax base is high and I think we should be getting more for our money than we are, he said.

Napa County and its communities have an aggregate pavement condition score of 56, in the "at risk" category, according to a new Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) report. The Bay Area as a whole has a 67, in the "fair" category.

The score is for 2020 and is a three-year moving average. The scale is one to 100, with 100 being a newly paved road.

Napa County Supervisor and MTC Chairperson Alfredo Pedroza addressed the pothole issue in an MTC press release.

Some of the pavement work scheduled for the last year was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Pedroza said. But the new scores illustrate how big a challenge it is to bring our roads  not just in Napa County, but all around the Bay Area  to a state of good repair.

The Bay Area-wide score has been 67 for five consecutive years. Pedroza said the goal is to raise the regions score into the mid-80s.

Among the aggregate county/city scores for the nine Bay Area counties, San Francisco County's 74 is best. Napa Countys 56 is eighth and compares to a 57 in 2019 and 58 in 2018.

Besides the county/city aggregate scores, MTC provided individual pavement scores for 109 Bay Area cities and counties. At the top is Cupertino with 85, Dublin with 84, and Palo Alto with 84.

The best Napa County community is Yountville with 74, followed by the city of Napa at 69, American Canyon at 62, Calistoga at 61, St. Helena at 54, and the unincorporated county at 45.

Local scores for the most part have remained flat or have fallen over the past three years. Calistoga is the exception, with its score rising from 55 in 2018 to 61 in 2020.

All of this comes despite the countys Measure T half-cent sales tax for pavement repair that took effect in 2018. So far, Measure T hasn't spurred a roadway renaissance.

Local elected officials from Napa County and its cities addressed the issue at a Sept. 13 Napa Valley Transportation Authority (NVTA) retreat.

Measure T provides about $20 million annually that goes to the county and its cities and town to repair local roads. Communities also receive state Senate Bill One money, general fund money, and local developer fees to fill potholes.

But these combined sources are barely enough to maintain current road conditions. Most jurisdictions are still catching up on years of deferred maintenance, NVTA Executive Director Kate Miller said.

As things stand, Miller sees local pavement scores going down over the next few decades. That has a lot to do with the value of money declining and project costs rising over the life of Measure T, she said.

NVTA is suggesting a Measure T change to help address this situation. This involves bonding against future revenues, in effect taking out loans.

Bonding would bring the funds forward and allow the jurisdictions to do road treatments when they are needed, she said.

It would also mean paying interest. But NVTA officials said the amount saved by increasing buying power would allow for more street maintenance projects.

Voters would have to make the change. The NVTA is considering a ballot measure for November 2024, with the idea that a presidential election would provide the best chance for passage.

The Napa County Taxpayers Association is questioning the bonding idea. Leon Brauning of the association spoke during public comments at the NVTA retreat.

Bonding means borrowing. Borrowing means you bring things from the future back to now. But the problem with road repairs is they keep being needed at the same amount. So who is going to pay for the road repairs when the bonded money is already used and spent by the agency? Brauning said.

Meanwhile, in Monticello Park, the roads at least for now remain cracked.

You drive down the street every day and they dont get any better, they get worse, Huttinger said.

You can reach Barry Eberling at 256-2253 or beberling@napanews.com.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was indicted Thursday on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information.

The case against Igor Danchenko is part of special counsel John Durham's ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI's probe into whether Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year's presidential campaign.

The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russia analyst, of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, the former British spy who was paid by Democrats to investigate connections between Trump and Russia.

Danchenko functioned as a source for Steele, whose dossier of research was provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting a former Trump campaign aide.

The indictment says Danchenko misled the FBI by denying a relationship with a public relations executive and longtime Democratic operative and supporter of Trump's 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, when he had in fact anonymously sourced one of his allegations to that person. He also is accused of fabricating details of a phone conversation with someone who, he said, had described a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation" between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged. Trump's Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt and pointed to the dossier, some of which remains uncorroborated or has been discredited, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.

But the dossier had no role in the launching of the Trump-Russia investigation. Special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.

The Justice Department's inspector general has faulted the FBI and the Justice Department for their handling of the dossier. Danchenko  who was not identified by name in the watchdog report  had told FBI investigators during a 2017 interview about the dossier's origins and veracity that there were "potentially serious problems with Steele's descriptions of information in his reports."

But those qualms from Danchenko were omitted from the final three surveillance applications, making the dossier appear more credible than even one of its own sources thought it was, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Danchenko, who previously worked for the Brookings Institution, has himself suggested that the information he offered to Steele was not meant to be portrayed as indisputable fact.

"Even raw intelligence from credible sources, I take it with a grain of salt," Danchenko told The New York Times last year. "Who knows, what if it's not particularly accurate? Is it just a rumor or is there more to it?"

It was not immediately clear what charges Danchenko might face. But it would be the third criminal action brought by Durham, following the September indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer accused of making a false statement to the FBI during a 2016 meeting, and a guilty plea last year from an FBI lawyer who admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of the Trump aide, Carter Page.

Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle confirmed Danchenko's arrest. A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.

***
Dont count on Gov. Gavin Newsom or President Joe Biden to clear up supply chain problems this holiday season.

In the short term theres not a lot politicians can do, said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst at Global Insights, a market advisory firm.

Both Democrats announced plans in the past few weeks to speed up the movement of cargo in California ports.

Newsom issued a detailed executive order last month aimed at unclogging ports and getting supplies moving again. Biden also acted last month to keep the ports working around the clock. Both men took steps to get different government agencies to pursue new approaches to ease the backlog.

This week, the number of ships waiting at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, which handle 40% of the nations imports, remains high. Truckers continue to cite labor and storage problems.

The underlying problems causing the supply chain disruptions, like labor shortages and high shipping container costs, cant be fixed with an executive order from the governor, said Sanjay Varshney, a professor of finance at California State University, Sacramento.

This could just be making sure that, as the head of the largest state they probably want to make sure theyre at the table somewhere, Varshney said, describing Newsoms recent executive order.

The key solutions will take time. One of the more ambitious programs has the state and federal government implementing a plan for Washington to provide California with low interest loans that could serve a wide variety of purposes.

Alex Stack, a Newsom spokesman, cited incremental progress that should help this holiday season.

The state is doing everything it can, and its making a real difference  but theres no overnight solution to this, he said.

In the short term, merchants are concerned that spot shortages of popular products will be appearing throughout the holiday season. Thats likely to be a major topic Wednesday when the Legislatures Ports and Goods Movement committees will hold a hearing.

What can Newsom do?

A big reason the executives cant quickly make supply chains smoother is that theres no simple solution to a mess thats taken months to develop.

Even if the ships can be unloaded more quickly, the goods still need to get to consumers and stores.

Newsom acknowledged the challenges in his executive order, telling several different state agencies to develop both short- and long-term plans. His administration launched a Supply Chain Working Group in March 2020, the month COVID-19 began to spread. Some of Newsoms actions last month accelerated their recommendations.

He told transportation agencies to work with industry officials to identify by the end of this month freight routes that might need a temporary exemption to weight limits so they can move goods more freely.

Newsom also ordered his Office of Business and Economic Development to find sites that could be used for short-term storage needs. He told the Department of General Services to finish a review by December 15 of state-owned property near ports that could handle storage.

After the Newsom order, the city of Long Beach has taken steps to ease shortages by allowing more stacking of shipping containers, one way to ease the problem of storing them.

Clogged supply chains

Bidens Oct. 13 order focused on the ports, describing a new effort to keep them running around the clock. Companies such as Walmart, Target, UPS, and FedEx pledged cooperation,

But ships continue to wait. On Monday, Captain Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, reported 159 total ships in port at anchor or loitering at Los Angeles and Long Beach, six more than Friday. Of the 159, 102 were container ships. Loitering ships are those nearby waiting to dock.

And once theyre unloaded, there have been problems getting their goods to stores and customers. Starting Monday, the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports began imposing fines on shipping firms if they take too long to move the containers.

You need more people to drive the trucks, to work the docks, said Tim Murphy, chief executive officer of the Sacramento Regional Builders Exchange. Its more complicated than just hiring people.

Drivers have to get a license. They may need sophisticated training. They may want more money than the employer is willing to pay. The ports need to get rid of empty containers that are taking up space.

Ideally, additional space on dock should allow terminals to receive empties to free up chassis for more import movement off dock, said Matt Schrap, chief executive officer of the Harbor Trucking Association. Chassis is the metal frame that truckers use to transport a container to the shipper.

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The other complication involves problems with raw materials and components. The shipping containers are full of finished products. But to make those products, companies need computer chips and other materials whose production is scattered in different countries, often countries where COVID-19 forced cutbacks.

American politicians cant simply build a chip facility overnight. It can cost billions and take two to four years, said Abuelsamid. Theres nothing you can do to speed up that process.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Armenia stands for full resumption of the process of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This is what Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan said in an interview with Nouvelles d'Armenie after asked what geopolitical situation Armenia is in almost a year after the 44-day war.

The aggression that Azerbaijan unleashed against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) had severe consequences for the Armenian people and led to the emergence of new challenges in the context of regional security and stability. Although the hostilities were stopped with the trilateral statement of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan, the situation remains fragile due to Azerbaijans failure to fulfill certain commitments assumed under the statement (distorting certain provisions and continuing to keep prisoners of war and civilians as hostages, etc.) Azerbaijans provocations have an impact on not only Armenia, but also other countries of the region. Nevertheless, Armenia continues its efforts to establish lasting stability in the region, he said.

Asked whether the meeting of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in New York (with the participation of the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group) means that the peace process has resumed and what prospects there are for this, Mirzoyan said the following: In spite of the claims of the top leadership of Azerbaijan that Nagorno-Karabakh and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict dont exist, the co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, as well as several other countries share the Armenian sides position that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved and that there needs to be a comprehensive settlement through peaceful negotiations under the mandate of the Co-Chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenia stands for full resumption of the process of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In this regard, we consider the meetings in New York important; they first and foremost create the opportunity to discuss and seek solutions to urgent humanitarian issues such as the repatriation of all Armenian prisoners of war and civilian hostages, future clarification of the fate of missing servicemen and civilians and preservation of the Armenian cultural and religious heritage in the territories of Artsakh that are currently under Azerbaijans control.

The solution to these primary humanitarian issues will help create the necessary conditions to launch substantive talks for a lasting and comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, under the mandate of the Co-Chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group, based on the known principles and elements, including the right of nations to self-determination, Mirzoyan mentioned.
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Newspaper: Armenia opposition is forming large-scale resistance network

Armenia President visits National University of Singapore

Gia, wanted by French law-enforcement authorities, found at Armenia's Bagratashen checkpoint

Leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia agree to meet in Brussels

European Council: Pashinyan and Aliyev agreed to establish direct communication line at level of defense ministers

Armenia's Representative to OSCE speaks about Azerbaijan's recent attack at Permanent Council's session

Armenia serviceman Meruzhan Harutyunyan, killed in Syunik Province, was buried at Yerablur Military Pantheon

Armenian News-NEWS.am's special report: Drive from Kapan to Tchakatashen is 150 km instead of previous 8 km

3 Armenian servicemen killed during Nov. 16 Azerbaijani attack posthumously awarded presidential medals

Left-wing trade unions hold protest against Turkey's Erdogan in Izmir

Armenia FM presents situation following Azerbaijani attack during meeting with Lithuanian Seimas Vice-President

Armenia delegation covers Azerbaijan's Nov. 16 attack during online meeting of CSTO PA Permanent Commissions

Armenia PM receives delegation led by Vice President of Lithuanian Seimas

Lavrov, Cavusoglu discuss bilateral ties and regional issues

Karabakh: Azerbaijani side, in Shushi, transfers bodies of 3 Armenian soldiers killed on Nov. 16

NEWS.am daily digest: 19.11.21

Armenian Embassy in Russia: Armenia citizens - mother and child - evacuated from Afghanistan

Georgia refuses to be a part of '3+3' format with regard to South Caucasus

The occupied Hadrut of our days (PHOTOS)

Arabologist: Photo of map of Turkic world shown by Erdogan and Bahceli is simply a gift for Armenian diplomacy

Situation is tense in Armenia's Kasakh, residents protesting against acting village head (LIVE)

Opposition With Honor legislature faction MP: No one knows if Armenia petitioned to Russia for military assistance

Armenia opposition MP: There is a threat that Baku will always get what it wants through use of force

Lavrov is certain that the Russia-Armenia-Azerbaijan summit will take place

Ann Linde: OSCE working very closely with Russia to resolve Karabakh conflict

Karabakh FM congratulates newly appointed Abkhazia counterpart

Dollar relatively stable in Armenia

Armenia parliament majority members do not deny possibility of exchange of territories with Azerbaijan

Armenia ruling party MP: Public and competent authorities need to know circumstances behind captures of soldiers

Armenia ruling party MP assures that situation on the border is currently stable

Armenia ruling party MP: Confidentiality of process of preparing for demarcation is strictly necessary

Armenia PM: Citizens of EEU countries will be able to receive loans in all territories of member states

Armenian serviceman, 19, dies in Georgia's Akhalkalaki

Armenia legislature majority faction lawmaker: Russia military intervention is not end in itself

High commissioner: Diaspora is considering ways to help hundreds of Ethiopia Armenians

Opposition With Honor parliament faction: Armenia authorities trying to push territorial losses issue to backburner

Legislature majority faction MP: Armenia authorities do not make any demands on Russia

Opposition Armenia Faction in parliament: Authorities are unable to distinguish between priority and secondary issues

3 more die of coronavirus in Artsakh

Bruno Retailleau: France must support Armenia more firmly against aggressions by Azerbaijan

Armenia parliament majority faction: Border delimitation preparation process will start from point zero

PM: Armenia exports to other EEU countries increased by 27.8%

Armenias Pashinyan: Azerbaijan provocations are aimed at disrupting arrangements reached by trilateral statements

California Armenian couple accused of fraud flee leaving their 3 children behind

799 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Katherine Clark: Azerbaijan must acknowledge and respect Armenian sovereignty

Eurasian Intergovernmental Council enlarged meeting underway in Yerevan

Russia peacekeepers patrol along Karabakh border delimitation line

MOD: According to current data Armenia has 6 military casualties as result of Tuesdays attack by Azerbaijan

Turkish Islamic preachers organization denies reports of his death

Newspaper: What happened to missing Armenia soldiers during recent hostilities?

Armenia MOD dismisses reports about not allowing officers with higher rank than major to go up to combat positions

US virtually completes development of new tactical nuclear gravity bomb B61-12

Newspaper: Officers with higher rank than major not allowed to combat positions during recent hostilities in Syunik

Opposition MP: Granting corridor to Azerbaijan through Syunik Province will be gravest crime against Armenia

US Department of State representative says why Azerbaijan is not invited to Summit for Democracy

Armenian human rights activists to submit letters to ECHR regarding soldiers captured and considered missing

Armenia FM stresses importance of addressable response to Azerbaijan's actions during talk with Greek counterpart

Ex-ruling party official: Armenia authorities found reason for MOD's resignation after his visit to Karabakh

Republican Party of Armenia spokesperson: Nikol Pashinyan gave a confessional testimony in parliament yesterday

Armenia President talks about states' collective responsibility at Bloomberg New Economy Forum

Turkish website reports poisoning of Fetullah Gulen

Armenia FM holds phone talks with Cypriot counterpart, presents situation created after Azerbaijani attack

Mirzoyan, Zas discuss CSTO's possible actions to stabilize situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border, if necessary

Mothers of deceased servicemen demand Armenia PM's resignation

Azerbaijani Armed Forces open fire at tractor in Armenia's Verin Shorzha village

Putin: Events unfolding on Armenia-Azerbaijan border attest to fact that situation has not calmed down in the region

Lithuania supports Armenia's territorial integrity

NEWS.am daily digest: 18.11.21

Ex-ruling party official: Incumbent authorities created deliberately organized chaos in Armenia
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 04.11.21:

The European Court of Human Rights announced the decisions on the cases of Mamikon Khojoyan and Karen Petrosyan, who were captured and tortured in Azerbaijan in 2014.

The ECHR acknowledged that Baku has violated the right of the Armenian captives to life, as well as the rights to abstain from tortures and discrimination and to freedom and personal immunity. The ECHR also obliged Baku to pay EUR 40,000 under each case.

Baku transferred the body of Karen Petrosyan to the Armenian side in October 2014 in an attempt to conceal the traces of violence.

The president of Azerbaijan complained about the absence of a response by Armenia to the matter of delimitation of the borders.

Ilham Aliyev expressed his dissatisfaction in this regard during his address at the opening of the Global Baku Forum, entitled The World after COVID-19.

"Azerbaijan has proposed Armenia to start work on a peace agreement. We [i.e., Azerbaijan] want to talk not about war, but about peace. We have proposed to start the work of delimitation and demarcation of borders [with Armenia]. But, unfortunately, no response was received [from Armenia]," Aliyev said.

According to him, Azerbaijan is showing maximum constructiveness.

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross today visited Armenians who were captured or taken hostage in Azerbaijan.

They learned about the conditions for keeping them and helped them contact their families.

The Committees representatives regularly visit all the persons whose captivity is officially confirmed. Currently, Baku confirms the fact that there are 40 captives in Azerbaijan.

The persons were provided with the opportunity to exchange information and news related to their families, letters, video messages and phone calls of the Red Cross were used.

The Zangezur corridor will benefit all countries in the region, Former Turkish prime minister, parliament ex-speaker, and MP Binali Yildirim told about told reporters on the margins of the VIII Global Baku Forum.

According to him, the opening of the aforementioned "corridor" will contribute to the expansion of ties between all countries in the region.

To note, the "Zangezur corridor" implies a road through the territory of Armenia. Yerevan states that it is ready to discuss the issue of unblocking communications in the region, but it is not about any "corridors."

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan spoke about the tense COVID-19 situation in the country.

The healthcare system is extremely overloaded, he noted adding that if there is a person waiting at home, it means that there is no space in the hospitals.

"Consequently, people are dying, there are reports every day, we are witnessing many tragic recordings every day," he noted.

Also, he stated that people should be saved from COVID-19 and that there is a way to save them from this pandemic.

As of Thursday morning, 2,330 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 315,004 in the country.

Also, 41 more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 6,532 cases.

Meanwhile, China detected 109 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, of which 93 were local.

From the press release posted on the official website of the Committee on Wednesday it follows that China detected 16 imported and 93 local cases of COVID-19 infection. Most of the local cases were detected in the northern state bordering Russia (35 cases), RIA Novosti reports.

China detected 71 cases of COVID-19 on Monday, of which 54 were local.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, China has detected a total of 97,423 confirmed cases, and 4,636 people have died.
During todays session, the Government of Armenia adopted a decision on ensuring full implementation of the law on making amendments to the Law on Refugees and Shelter.

Based on the decision, it is proposed to establish that a foreign citizen or stateless person who has trespassed the state border of the Republic of Armenia, or who is criminally prosecuted in the territory of the Republic of Armenia, or who is subject to transfer to the foreign state, starting from the moment criminal prosecution is initiated, he or she is deprived of liberty or his or her freedom is restricted in another way, shall immediately, but no later than within 24 hours, have the right to receive, through a notice, clarification about the right to receive shelter or obtain the status of refugee and the right to submit an application to receive shelter or obtain the status of refugee within 15 days from the moment of notification about that right.

A police officer shall ensure exercise of the right by forwarding to the authorized body the application for receipt of shelter in the Republic of Armenia.
Head of the opposition With Honor faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Artur Vanetsyan and the factions secretary Hayk Mamijanyan today met with co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of obligations and commitments by Armenia Kimmo Kiljunen and Boriana Aberg, as reported the Public Relations and Communication Department of the National Assembly.

Artur Vanetsyan spoke about the 44-day war unleashed by Azerbaijan. The head of the faction called attention to the fact that Turkey also took part in the war. Artur Vanetsyan considered urgent the issue of the immediate return of the Armenian captives being held in Azerbaijan, which was recorded in the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020. In this context, the support of all international colleagues to force Azerbaijan to return the captives, was highlighted.

Touching upon security issues, the parliamentarians expressed concern about the aspirations and use of force by Azerbaijan against the sovereign territories of Armenia and the anti-Armenian propaganda, which do not promote the establishment of peace in the region.

The MPs expressed their positions on the ongoing processes in domestic politics following the snap parliamentary elections. It was noted that two opposition deputies are in prison, and criminal cases are launched against a considerable number of deputies from the two opposition factions of the National Assembly. According to Artur Vanetsyan, the authorities are trying to silence the political adversaries with criminal cases, as well as restrict those deputies freedom of movement.

At the guests request, Artur Vanetsyan and Hayk Mamijanyan touched upon the issues regarding the electoral reforms in Armenia, the judiciary, the independence of the mass media and the troubling restrictions on freedom of speech.
The L.A. City Council on Wednesday approved a $14-million settlement with Andrew Wilson, whose murder conviction was thrown out by a judge in 2017. Above, Wilson leaving jail, holding hands with his daughters. (Nick Ut / Associated Press)

The Los Angeles City Council approved a $14-million settlement Wednesday for Andrew Wilson, who spent more than three decades behind bars for a murder conviction vacated in 2017.

Wilson was convicted of the 1984 robbery and murder of 21-year-old Christopher Hanson but always maintained his innocence.

His case was taken up by Loyola Law School's innocence project, which raised questions about the methods used by a Los Angeles police detective to have a witness identify Wilson as the suspect.

The conviction was vacated by a Los Angeles County judge and Wilson was released after 32 years behind bars. He was later found to be factually innocent of the crime.

The settlement, approved in an 11-0 vote, stems from a 2018 civil rights lawsuit filed by Wilson against the city, Los Angeles County and Richard Marks, the LAPD detective who oversaw the case, regarding the methods used to identify Wilson as a suspect.

The county settled with Wilson for $1.5 million in 2020.

In a confidential memo to the City Council reviewed by The Times, the city's lawyers expressed doubts about their ability to win at trial, warning that a verdict against the city could result in a monetary reward as high as $32 million.

The settlement is equivalent to around $440,000 per year of incarceration, an amount similar to payments approved by the council in other wrongful conviction cases, the lawyers said in the memo.

The settlement now requires the mayor's approval.

Wilson's case demonstrates that investigative procedures regarding witnesses' identification of suspects need to be reformed, his attorneys said Wednesday,

"This case highlights that until cities and counties institute independent identification procedures, where the investigating officers aren't involved in the ID process itself, we will continue to have wrongful convictions like this one and government entities will continue to face substantial liability," said Kevin LaHue, an attorney with McLane, Bednarski & Litt.

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Wilson's conviction was thrown out in part due to alleged practices of witness manipulation and witness leading brought to light by the innocence project. Erika Jerez, a deputy district attorney in 2017, conceded that cumulative errors had deprived Wilson of his constitutional right to a fair trial.

The lawsuit alleged that Marks had directed a witness to a photo of Wilson when shown a photo lineup of potential suspects. The witness had already identified two other men who were quickly ruled out as suspects by police.

"What about him?" Marks asked the witness, referring to Wilson's photo.

The witness then identified Wilson.

The practice has come under fire by both prosecutors and defense attorneys.

You took 32 years of my life, Wilson said in a 2018 interview. You cant give that back to me.

Last week, a federal jury awarded $17 million in damages to the family of a mentally disabled man who was fatally shot by an off-duty Los Angeles police officer inside a Costco in Corona.

Last summer, the city awarded Gabriel Abikzer $23 million after he was struck by a city employee driving a truck, resulting in the amputation of both of his legs.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
So far 19 people with Tennessee connections have been arrested on charges related to the U.S. Capitol riot in Washington, D.C.

In order of the most recent arrested, here are the 19 who stand accused in the Jan. 6 attack when a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Five people died, and a sweeping federal investigation is underway.

Joshua John Portlock

Joshua John Portlock of Smyrna, Tennessee, was arrested Nov. 3 in connection with the Capitol riot. A court document alleged that Portlock pressed past barriers, assaulted officers and joined a "heave-ho" push in a tunnel as he and other rioters attempted to breach the Capitol.

He faces seven charges:

Assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers

Civil disorder

Entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds

Disorderly and disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds

Engaging in Physical Violence in a Restricted Building or Grounds

Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building

Act of Physical Violence in the Capitol Grounds or Buildings

Court records show he is set to make an initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather on Nov. 9.

Christopher Michael Cunningham

Christopher Michael Cunningham of Nashville was arrested Aug. 31 after admitting to the Metro Nashville Police Department he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, an FBI warrant shows.

Investigators sifted through Cunningham's social media after witnesses alerted the FBI to posts an account in his name made on Jan. 6, U.S. District Court documents show.

The criminal complaint includes screenshots of Cunningham apparently taking a selfie inside the building.

In addition, court documents continue, on Feb. 23, Cunningham called the Metro Nashville Police Department to report that a pressure washer was stolen from his front porch.

The interaction between Cunningham and the police officer was audio and video recorded on the officers body-worn camera which the FBI reviewed.

"During the interaction with the MNPD officer, Cunningham identified himself and stated that he entered the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. 2021," the complaint continues.

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Court records show Cunningham was free on bond Thursday.

Ronald Colton McAbee

Ronald Colton McAbee, 27, of Unionville was arrested on Aug. 17 on eight separate federal charges related to the riot. Some of the charges against McAbee include entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon and engaging in violence on the Capitol grounds.

McAbee was the seventh person indicted in connection with the assault of multiple D.C. police officers who were stationed at the front of the Capitol building during the riot.

The group is charged with dragging a Metropolitan Police Department officer to the ground and repeatedly striking him in the head and body.

Clifford Meteer

Clifford Meteer, 66, is accused of climbing the stone handrailing of a staircase and entering the building carrying a sign that read "STOP THE STEAL" on one side and "SAVE THE REPUBLIC" on the other.

The Knoxville man was arrested Aug. 10.

In the days after the riot, Meteer sent friends private Facebook messages such as "I was in the capital ;)" and "I was one of those idiots scaling the wall ;)," the complaint states.

Meteer faces charges of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; entering and remaining on the floor of Congress; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

He appeared in U.S. District Court in Knoxville after his arrest and was appointed a public defender, court records show. Meteer was released under certain conditions and ordered to appear in federal court in D.C. on Aug. 17.

Stewart Parks

Matthew Baggott was arrested by the FBI on May 30 in Murfreesboro. Stewart Parks, also of Middle Tennessee, was arrested June 3 in Columbia, the U.S. Attorney's Office reports.

The pair were charged in the same complaint after investigators say they entered the building together. Each faces charges of entering or remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct and violent entry on capitol grounds.

Parks faces an additional charge of theft of government property. He allegedly picked up and walked out of the building with a hand-held metal detector wand from a table near an entrance, the complaint says.

Both were released under supervisory conditions, according to online court records.

Matthew Baggott

Matthew Baggott was arrested by the FBI on May 30 in Murfreesboro. Stewart Parks, also of Middle Tennessee was arrested June 3 in Columbia, the U.S. Attorney's Office reports.

The pair were charged in the same complaint after investigators say they entered the building together. Each faces charges of entering or remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct and violent entry on capitol grounds.

Both were released under supervisory conditions, according to online court records.

Nicholas James Brockhoff

A Covington, Kentucky, man, Nicholas James Brockhoff, 20, was arrested by the FBI in Tennessee on May 27.

Brockhoff stands accused of spraying officers with a fire extinguisher at about 1 p.m. from scaffolding set up for President Joe Biden's inauguration on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol, according to a U.S. Department of Justice release, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

A federal judge on June 3 ordered Brockhoff to remain in custody. No information on the next hearing in the case was immediately available.

Albuquerque Cosper Head

Albuquerque Cosper Head, 41, of Kingsport, was arrested April 14 in Johnson City.

Head was charged in connection with two other men, Iowan Kyle Young, 37, and Thomas Sibick, 35, of Buffalo, New York.

Prosecutors say Young was among the mob supporting Trump who dragged Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone into a crowd during the attack, shocked him with a stun gun and stole his badge, radio and ammunition. Young is accused of trying to take Fanone's service weapon.

Head faces several charges including assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and use of a deadly or dangerous weapon. A D.C. judge on May 6 granted the government's motion to detain Head while court proceedings continue.

The next status hearing in the case is set for Aug. 3. The defendant has entered a plea of not guilty on all counts.

Michael Timbrook

Michael Timbrook, 56, of Cookeville was arrested April 20 by FBI agents on five misdemeanor charges related to his alleged entrance into the capitol building that day, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Investigators identified Timbrook in videos and four photographs that showed a person depicted as a white male wearing an orange beanie and black leather jacket inside the Capitl, charging documents show.

On Feb, 9, an FBI agent interviewed a tipster regarding the photos who said Timbrook had been at the capital during the riot. The tipster also identified Timbrook as the man in the photos.

When FBI agents visited Timbrook, he told them he was "Ready to take the penalty for what he did Jan. 6." He also admitted to agents he was the person in the photograph, court documents show.

Timbrook was released under supervisory conditions in April.

The defendant has entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. A status hearing in the case is scheduled for July 29 in federal court.

Michael Lee Roche

Michael Lee Roche, 26, was arrested at his Murfreesboro home April 13, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. He appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alistair Newbern in Nashville that afternoon and was released from custody.

He is charged with seven misdemeanor counts related to his alleged entrance into the capitol building that day. Investigators report footage that appears to show Roche and several others praying inside the Senate chamber.

Roche was scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Middle Tennessee April 21 and an initial appearance in Washington the following Monday.

Online court records indicate Roche planned to waive a preliminary hearing in late April, at which point he was released from custody.

An April 27 document detailing the conditions for Roche's release indicates a status hearing in the case is scheduled for June 25 in D.C.

Ronnie B. Presley

Ronnie B. Presley, 42, of Bethpage, Tennessee, was arrested in Old Hickory on March 6 and charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Presley's charges include obstruction of justice, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, entering and remaining on restricted grounds, violent entry and disorderly conduct for his alleged actions during the riot.

Presley remained in custody June 5 after repeatedly waiving detention hearings ahead of proceedings in Washington, D.C.

A status hearing in the case is set for June 11.

The defendant has entered a plea of not guilty on all counts.

Bryan Wayne Ivey

Bryan Wayne Ivey, 28, was arrested on March 4 in Cookeville, Tennessee, on charges connected with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, officials said.

Ivey is from Crossville, Tennessee, and is set to make an initial appearance in court in Nashville on March 4, said U.S. Attorneys Office of Middle Tennessee spokesman David Boling.

Boling shared photos that show a man authorities have identified as Ivey outside the Capitol as rioters broke windows, and inside after the building was breached.

Ivey was released under supervisory conditions in March.

Ivey admitted to knowingly entering restricted areas of the Capitol in a videoconference plea hearing June 22.

Ivey pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing inside Capitol grounds. On top of possible prison time, a fine or probation, Ivey agreed to pay $500 in restitution to the United States. His sentencing has been set for late September.

The remaining three charges were dismissed as part of the plea deal.

Joseph Lino Padilla

Joseph Lino Padilla, 40, of Cleveland was arrested Feb. 23 in East Tennessee on several charges related to the riot. He remained in federal custody on Wednesday afternoon, according to online court records.

Padilla is accused of having altercations with police officers at a barricade outside the Capitol building and later throwing a flag pole at a group of law enforcement, according to federal court records.

Padilla had an initial court appearance Feb. 23 in Chattanooga. He filed documents indicating he wishes to have a hearing on his release handled in the District of Columbia federal court. His attorney, Lee Davis, declined comment to the Associated Press on Feb. 24.

A Washington, D.C., judge on May 4 denied a Tennessee man's request to go home before trial in his U.S. Capitol riot case, citing the decision in the case of Eric Munchel.

"This Court is hard-pressed to believe that its orders would deter future acts of violence by Padilla when he was undeterred  and seemingly invigorated by  what he says transpired on January 6," Judge John D. Bates, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia, wrote.

A status hearing in the case is set for June 11.

The defendant has entered a plea of not guilty on all counts.

Eric Chase Torrens

Eric Chase Torrens, 28, of Gallatin, was arrested Feb. 1, by FBI Agents on charges of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

Torrens, who previously lived in Florida, was released from custody that same day after an initial appearance before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Nashville.

Video shows Torrens among a group of rioters who invaded the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop certification regarding the result of the presidential election, according to a criminal complaint filed on Jan. 27 in D.C. federal court.

RELATED: 'Stop the steal!' Local news, tip leads FBI to second Gallatin man arrested in Capitol riot

According to the court documents, some of the video shows another Tennessee man, identified by FBI agents as 36-year-old Matthew Bledsoe, enter the Capitol illegally. FBI agents said they received an online tip that the person seen with Bledsoe wearing a fleece-lined white and gray hat, was Torrens.

Torrens, Blake Austin Reed, Jack Jesse Griffith and Matthew Bledsoe are being tried together. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. A status hearing in the case has been scheduled for July 16.

Torrens was released on supervisory conditions on March 12. Griffith was sentenced to three years probation on Oct. 28, including 90 days of home detention.

Blake A. Reed

FBI agents arrested Blake A. Reed, 35, on Jan. 17. He is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to a criminal complaint from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Blake Austin Reed

FBI agents received a tip that included a photo of two men that appeared to have been taken inside the Capitol, according to the statement of facts in the case. They identified one of the men as Reed and the other as Matthew Bledsoe, a Memphis man who was arrested Jan. 15 in connection with the riot.

The U.S. Attorney's office shared a screenshot of a Facebook post on Reed's account that includes photos of crowds of people, pro-Trump hashtags and a message.

"We the people took the capitol!" the post stated.

Agents used the photos and Facebook post to identify Reed based on the ski goggles and respirator he was wearing.

Reed was released from custody Jan. 19 under supervisory conditions.

Torrens, Reed, Jack Jesse Griffith and Matthew Bledsoe are being tried together. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. A status hearing in the case has been scheduled for July 16.

Jack Jesse Griffith

Jack Jesse Griffith

Jack Jesse Griffith, 26, of Gallatin, was arrested Jan. 16. He faces charging including knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and knowingly and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in any restricted building or grounds.

Griffith, also known as Juan Bibiano, was arrested in Gallatin, according to Elizabeth Webb, an FBI spokeswoman.

He was identified by an informant through pictures and social media posts related to the riot under the name Juan Bibiano, according to the Department of Justice.

One post includes a message from Bibiano that states: I even helped stormed [sic] the capitol today, but it only made things worse.

Griffith was released from custody Jan. 28 under supervisory conditions. Griffith was sentenced to three years probation on Oct. 28, including 90 days of home detention.

Torrens, Reed, Griffith and Matthew Bledsoe are being tried together.

Lisa Marie Eisenhart

Lisa Marie Eisenhart, 56, of Woodstock, Georgia, was taken into custody by FBI agents in Nashville on Jan. 16. Authorities believe her son, a Nashville resident, is the man dubbed on social media the "zip tie guy." He was arrested earlier in the month.

A photograph authorities believe is Lisa Eisenhart with son Eric Munchel on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.

Her charges include conspiring with her son, Eric Munchel, to violate federal statutes, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.

BUILDING THE CASE: Mother of Nashville man accused of carrying zip ties during Capitol riot says pair had no 'nefarious' intent

Authorities believe Eisenhart and Munchel "knowingly and willfully joined a mob of individuals to forcibly enter the U.S. Capitol with the intent to cause a civil disturbance," an arrest warrant states.

Authorities believe a video shows Eisenhart and Munchel in the U.S. Capitol together in the vicinity of a mob that attacked two police officers, according to an arrest warrant.

On Jan. 25, Tennessee District Court Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Frensley ordered Eisenhart released from custody under strict conditions. On Jan. 26, Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington ordered her detained. She remained in federal custody in Kentucky pending further proceedings in the District of Columbia.

After her transport to D.C., a blanket protective order meant she was housed in essentially solitary conditions at a jail facility.

She and her son Eric Munchel filed a joint motion in D.C. on Feb. 4 asking the court to review their detention orders. A federal appeals court in March sent the detention question back to the district court. At that time, the government withdrew their motion to detain the pair.

Eisenhart was released pending trial on March 29.

A status hearing in the case is set for June 23.

The defendant in February entered a plea of not guilty on the first three of four counts and waived a formal reading of the remaining. A federal grand jury on June 2 indicted the pair each on eight superseding counts, including four new charges adding conspiracy and aiding and abetting enhancements to the charges.

The defendant had not entered a plea to the new indictment as of June 5.

Matthew Bledsoe

Matthew Bledsoe, 36, of Memphis was arrested Jan. 15. He was charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, along with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to a criminal complaint from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Western District of Tennessee.

Matthew Bledsoe of Tennessee shot video of himself walking through the outer door of the Capitol on January 6, according to the FBI. That video helped the agency to identify him in other photos, including this one distributed by the Department of Justice.

According to the complaint, FBI Agents received a tip Bledsoe had been part of the group that entered the Capitol illegally.

Bledsoe, the apparent owner of Primetime Movers in Memphis, posted multiple images of himself on Instagram that show him walking inside of the Capitol among hundreds of Pro-Trump rioters on Wednesday.

CAPITOL RIOT ARRESTS: See who's been charged across the U.S.

Bledsoe's Instagram showed him walking down a street with dozens of others carrying Trump merchandise.

"We're coming. This is just the beginning," Bledsoe said, while looking into his phone's camera. Bledsoe is sporting a "Trump 2020" hat and an American flag-patterned kerchief tied around his neck.

Bledsoe was released from custody in January under supervisory conditions.

Bledsoe, Reed, Griffith and Torrens are being tried together.

The defendant has entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. A status hearing in the case has been scheduled for July 16.

Eric Munchel

Eric Munchel, 30, of Nashville, was arrested Jan. 10.

Eric Munchel

The FBI reported photos of a person believed to be Munchel carrying plastic restraints, an item in a holster on his right hip and a cellphone mounted on his chest with the camera facing outward among the "crowd of individuals who forcibly entered the U.S. Capitol and impeded, disrupted, and disturbed the orderly conduct of business by the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate."

"Law enforcement interviewed Munchel and identified that he was carrying a black and yellow 'Taser Pulse' taser that emits electrical shock," FBI Special Agent Carlos D Fontanez wrote in the affidavit supporting Munchel's arrest.

SEARCH CONTINUES: Social media led FBI to identify Eric Munchel of Nashville as man carrying zip ties during Capitol riot

Munchel, the affidavit continues, told agents he had the Taser for self-protection as he had participated in the pro-Trump rally.

The person carrying the restraints had been nicknamed "zip tie guy" on social media because of the resemblance between the restraints and the common plastic fasteners.

Although Middle Tennessee District Court Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Frensley on Jan. 22 determined Munchel met requirements to be released from custody under strict conditions, the judge allowed federal prosecutors a brief stay to let the Washington court review the case.

Two days later, Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to transport him across the country pending further proceedings in the case.

He and his mother Lisa Eisenhart filed a joint motion in D.C. on Feb. 4 asking the court to review their detention orders.

A federal appeals court in March sent the detention question back to the district court. At that time, the government withdrew their motion to detain the pair.

Munchel was released pending trial on March 29.

The defendant in February entered a plea of not guilty on the first three of four counts and waived a formal reading of the remaining. A federal grand jury on June 2 indicted the pair each on eight superseding counts, including four new charges adding conspiracy and aiding and abetting enhancements to the charges.

The defendant had not entered a plea to the new indictment as of June 5.

Adam Friedman, Micaela Watts and Rachel Wegner contributed to this report. Natalie Neysa Alund is based in Nashville at The Tennessean and covers breaking news across the south for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at nalund@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: These 19 arrests from Tennessee were in connection to US Capitol riot
Oxygen

The brutal murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1959 has finally been solved, marking an end to one of Washington states oldest cold cases. Candice Candy Rogers disappeared while selling Camp Fire Mints  a fundraiser for the Camp Fire Girls, a Girl Scout-like organization  in her Spokane neighborhood on March 6, 1959, according to a press release issued by the Spokane City Police Department. Searchers found boxes of mints strewn along the street; it was the only indication of which direction s
Afghan women protested outside the former ministry of women affairs which has been replaced by the ministry of virtue and vice in Kabul, Afghanistan-September 19, 2021. Haroon Sabawoon/Getty Images

All 24 women senators are urging Biden to take steps to preserve the rights of Afghan women and girls.

The Taliban has barred many women and girls from school and the workforce.

The senators said the Taliban is violating commitments to treat women well under the new government.

A bipartisan letter signed by all 24 women senators was sent to President Joe Biden on Thursday, urging him to do more to protect Afghan women and girls with the Taliban firmly back in control of Afghanistan.

"In the wake of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, we write to urge your Administration to develop an interagency plan to preserve the political, economic, social, and basic human rights of Afghan women and girls. This plan should also address how the United States will lead international organizations, such as the United Nations, in holding the Taliban accountable," the bipartisan group of senators wrote.

"American disengagement from Afghanistan puts at risk hard-won gains for Afghan women and girls," the letter added. "You have committed to press the Taliban to uphold the rights of women and girls, and you have stated that America will maintain an enduring partnership with the people of Afghanistan resisting Taliban rule. We will advise, support, and enable those efforts through legislation and engagement with your Administration. Afghan women and girls need our action now."

A spokesperson for the National Security Council told Insider that, "No society can succeed if half of its population is left out, and Afghanistan can have neither security nor prosperity if its women and girls are not afforded opportunities to be fully included in society."

"The United States will continue to support Afghan women and girls," the spokesperson added. "We, along with the world, will make clear that any nation that wants international legitimacy or connection to the rest of the world - and that does not want to be deemed a pariah state - must not interfere with the universal human rights or fundamental freedoms of its people, and should demonstrate respect for and inclusion of women and girls, in all their diversity, including supporting their education and employment opportunities.

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"We are closely watching the Taliban's actions across the country, and will work with Congress and with our allies and partners to support women and girls, and promote accountability for the perpetrators of human rights abuses and violations."

When the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in mid-August amid the final days of the US pullout, it immediately sparked fears that the militant Islamist group would return the country to the dark days of the late 1990s.

There were especially strong concerns about the implications for women and girls. During the Taliban's first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, they imposed strict rules based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. The laws were upheld in a brutal fashion, including public executions. Women were prohibited from receiving an education or appearing in public without a male chaperone and full body coverings.

Since taking over in August, the Taliban has allowed some girls in certain provinces to return to school, but hundreds of thousands have not been able to resume their studies. The Taliban in most districts has barred girls aged 12 through 17 from going back to school.

The militant group has also taken steps to block women from the workforce, while cracking down on women-led protests.

The Taliban has sought to present a more moderate face now that it controls the country again, but the wider world remains deeply skeptical amid reports of human rights abuses and oppressive behavior toward women in particular.

"Lacking a legitimate Afghan government and military forces to protect them, women and girls are now suffering the predations of a Taliban regime with a track record of brutalizing, isolating, and denying them life and liberty," the senators wrote to Biden in the letter on Thursday.

"Taliban leaders who promised that women would be treated well under the new government are not upholding those commitments," the letter went on to say. "Women have been the victims of targeted beatings and killings and are banned from leaving home without a male guardian. Afghanistan's former government, while flawed, was bound by a constitution that promoted human rights, and freedom of speech and assembly for both women and men."

The senators called for the Biden administration to provide a briefing on its plan to help protect the rights of Afghan women and girls.

Biden has faced bipartisan criticism over his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which coincided with the Taliban takeover. The last US troops departed Afghanistan in late August after a chaotic evacuation process, during which an ISIS-K attack killed 13 US service members and around 170 Afghans. Biden has defended the pullout by pointing to the fact the Trump administration set the stage for the withdrawal by making a deal with the Taliban, and by contending that it was long past time for the US war in Afghanistan to end.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Mike Gann has buried two brothers who had a form of dementia.

Steven was 35.

Tony was 44.

"You have a hole in your heart, especially because they were so young," Mike Gann said.

He has not escaped genetics. The 53-year-old Alexandria man faces his own battle with a form of dementia which impairs the ability to remember, think or make decisions, even if everyday activities.

He is, though, taking steps to find a cure, vying to maintain his spot as the top fundraiser for the annual Rutherford County Walk to End Alzheimers, set for 8 a.m. Nov. 6 at Gateway Island in Murfreesboro.

Meeting Gann, youd never know his silent struggle. As family liaison for Stones River Manor senior living facility in Murfreesboro, he is the first to greet prospective residents with an infectious smile and congenial wit.

Mike Gann has raised over $200,000 for the Alzheimer's Association since he started 22 years ago.

People say, You dont have dementia. Your memory is sharp as a tack. said Gann, wearing a purple Walk to End Alzheimer's shirt.

"But Im on medication that helps me survive.

Gann has made it one of his lifes missions to bolster efforts of the Alzheimers Association to find a cure.

For the past 22 years, hes been involved with the Walk to End Alzheimers, raising upwards of $200,000. Hes sure the campaign will surpass $12,000 this year, likely garnering him top Rutherford County fundraiser for the 20th consecutive year.

If youre lucky enough, youll get one of Ganns famous carrot cakes he bakes for some who donate to his fundraising campaign for the Walk to End Alzheimers. This year alone, hes baked 160. And

Over the span of two decades, hes made at least 2,000 of these made-from-scratch cakes.

Its my therapy, said Gann, whose recipe was passed down from his wifes grandmother, who died with Alzheimer's disease.

His efforts are not unnoticed. Purple medals, engraved plaques and a wall filled with certificates from the Alzheimers Association dominate the decor in his office at Stones River Manor. Theres a proud collection of purple T-shirts emblazoned with the Alzheimers Association logo.

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He's not one to toot his own horn, however. "He's one of the Top 100 fundraisers in the whole United States. That's pretty impressive," said Emily Pegg, a fellow Walk to End Alzheimer's fundraiser whose mother died from the disease.

Pegg said Gann is someone who continues to inspire her own efforts to raise money.

Gann's success comes through dollars that have gone into research and development of medications to slow the progression of dementia-related diseases.

While his medical struggles are held at bay, the pain Alzheimers and dementia causes to residents and their families is heartbreaking.

Who knows when well be able to find a cure, Gann said, but we never give up hope.

How you can walk or help

The annual Walk to End Alzheimer's is Nov. 6 at Gateway Island and Recreation Center, 1875 W. College St. in Murfreesboro. Registration starts at 8 a.m., the ceremony is 8:30 a.m., followed by the walk.

Register online or donate at act.alz.org.

For more information, contact Kristina West at kbwest@alz.org or call 615-622-4177, ext. 1770.

Reach reporter Nancy DeGennaro at degennaro@dnj.com. Keep up with restaurant news by joining Good Eats in the 'Boro (and beyond) on Facebook and follow Murfreesboro Eats on TikTok.

This article originally appeared on Murfreesboro Daily News Journal: Man with dementia walking to end Alzheimer's, one step at a time
Last year, Alphabets DeepMind announced its AlphaFold 2 AI showed it could predict how certain proteins would fold in a way that was competitive with experimental data. The news was met with enthusiasm by the scientific community, but it wasnt clear at the time what the breakthrough would mean in practical terms. Now we have a better idea with Alphabet announcing the creation of a new subsidiary called Isomorphic Labs .

The company states its goal is to reimagine the process of developing new drugs with an AI-first approach. We believe that the foundational use of cutting edge computational and AI methods can help scientists take their work to the next level, and massively accelerate the drug discovery process, Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of Isomorphic Labs said. Hassabis, whos also the CEO of DeepMind, will serve as the chief executive of the startup while it builds out and hires additional employees.
Speaker of the House Mac McCutcheon holds a discussion during the special session at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday November 4, 2021.

Gov. Kay Ivey signed bills Friday that would require businesses to allow employees exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine and allow the Alabama attorney general to enforce a law on parental consent for COVID-19 vaccines.

The bills, part of a broader GOP attack on a federal vaccine plan intended to prevent future surges of the disease, passed the Legislature on Thursday after hours of negotiations that often left legislators confused about what had been agreed to; after a House parliamentary procedure that left a key amendment off the passed bill, and near the end of a session that was intended to focus on redistricting.

More legislative action: Alabama Legislature works during redistricting special session

"How did we get to this point?" Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, asked Rep. Mike Jones, R-Andalusia, who handled the bill in the House.

"I often ask myself that question," Jones said. "But were here."

Vaccine status in business settings

Legislators also made major changes to SB 15, sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur. The legislation went into conference committee Thursday evening as legislation that would allow the attorney general of Alabama to seek injunctions against businesses or agencies that make vaccination status a requirement of services.

It came out with those provisions dropped, and instead authorized the attorney general to enforce provisions preventing minors from getting COVID vaccinations without parental consent, and preventing schools from asking about the COVID vaccination status of minors.

"Politics is a strange thing," Orr said at the start of a conference committee on the legislation.

Previously: Alabama COVID-19 vaccine exemption bill in position for final passage

The Senate approved the conference committee report on the parental consent bill on a 25 to 1 vote, and the exemption bill on a 23 to 2 vote. The House approved the parental consent bill on a 59 to 19 vote, and the exemption bill on a 75 to 27 vote.

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Ivey said in a statement Friday that the bills were "another step in the fight" against the federal vaccine plan, which she called an "un-American, outrageous overreach."

"Alabamians  including those like myself who are pro-vaccine  are adamantly against this weaponization of the federal government, which is why we simply must fight this any way we know how," the statement said.

Exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines for employees

Most of the focus in the Legislature went to SB 9, sponsored by Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Fairhope. The bill would require employers to provide exemptions to COVID vaccinations for employees who claim religious or medical reasons for not taking the vaccine. Businesses would not be able to fire an employee for refusing to take the vaccine if the employee has filled out an exemption form.

"We are saying you cannot fire an employee based on their COVID-19 vaccination status," Elliott said during the debate.

The legislation applies to all businesses in Alabama, regardless of size, as well as health care providers.

By the numbers: Alabama COVID hospitalizations increased slightly last week, data shows

The bill put Republican legislators between two hard places: activists opposed to the Biden vaccine plan and fearful of losing their jobs for not being vaccinated, and business groups that have been a major component of the Alabama GOP coalition. The Business Council of Alabama (BCA) opposes Elliott's bill, saying it prevents employers from making choices about their workforces.

"This version continues to put employers and particularly federal contractors in a no-win situation between existing federal rules and conflicting proposed state laws," BCA said in a statement Thursday evening. "Non-compliance with the federal mandate could result in the loss of current and future contracts and jobs for their companies and communities."

Democrats criticized the legislation as anti-business and potentially harmful to the population.

Sen. Chris Elliott during the special session at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday November 4, 2021.

A long day and calls for job protection, increased vigilance alike

The conflicts led to a legislative day measured by lurches. Republican leaders held two lengthy recesses after coming in after 10 a.m. to work through issues with the legislation. A 90-minute House GOP caucus meeting broke up early Thursday morning with most members saying they were uncertain about what was coming. The House then took another long recess to discuss changes to the legislation.

Elliott said Thursday evening the major issues surrounded Alabama's at-will employment status. A bill preventing employers from firing unvaccinated employees would represent a significant departure.

"This is a place where the Republican legislature is understandably uncomfortable trying to work within employment law and the exception for that within the Biden mandate, to try to provide at least some temporary relief for employees," Elliott said.

Lawsuit: Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey joins lawsuit against Biden vaccine plan

The final bill, handled by Jones in the House, would require a licensed health care provider to sign off on a broad medical exemption option on the form, but not for those who claim specific reasons, including allergic reactions to vaccines; bleeding disorders; monoclonal antibody treatment, and those who are immunocompromised. Later changes to the bill gave employees seven days to appeal an adverse ruling, and require the law to expire on May 1, 2023.

Jones' bill also made it clear that employers could still fire an exempt employee for any other reason besides their COVID vaccination status.

Rep. Mike Jones, left, and Speaker of the House McCutcheon have a discussion during a recess at the special session at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday November 4, 2021.

"This is a job protection type of bill," Jones said. "Its to protect individual employees, to protect their jobs."

Rep. Louise Alexander, D-Bessemer, said she had attended many funerals of people who had died from COVID, and knew families that had lost up to six members from COVID.

"This is something we should not play with," she said.

Alabama has one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, about 54.7% of Alabamians over age 12 have gotten one COVID-19 dose, while 45% have been fully vaccinated. Nationally, 67% of Americans have gotten at least one shot, and 58% have been fully vaccinated.

The low vaccination rate was a major contributor to a summer surge in COVID-19 cases that strained Alabama's intensive care units and led to federal teams being deployed to hospitals in south Alabama to help with the workload.

The Alabama Department of Public Health said as of Thursday that 15,734 people have died in Alabama during the pandemic. The majority of those deaths  8,545 (54%)  occurred this year, at a time when the vaccine was widely available.

Sen. Arthur Orr during the special session at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday November 4, 2021.

"Alabamians are asking for a choice," said Senate Majority Leader Greg Reed, R-Jasper, "They've asked for the opportunity to make their own decisions, and we feel like we need to support them in that."

President Biden's vaccine plan trickles down  or not

The Biden vaccine plan would require businesses with more than 100 employees to have workers vaccinated or submit to regular tests. It would also require federal contractors to vaccinate all their workers. The University of Alabama and Auburn University, both of which are considered federal contractors, are requiring their employees to get vaccinated.

The White House has cited the success of private businesses with mandates, such as Tyson Foods, in driving up vaccination rates.

Alabama Republicans have joined a broader GOP attack on the vaccine plan, saying the proposal amounts to federal overreach. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed an executive order last week prohibiting state agencies from cooperating with the plan, though the impact of that is not clear. Ivey and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall have joined a multi-state lawsuit against Biden's proposal.

Jones, who has received the vaccine, said he believed there was confusion about it.

Rep. Arnold Mooney and Rep. Mike Jones talk during a recess in the special session at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday November 4, 2021.

"They are truly afraid of the vaccine," he said. "They are fearful of it. I dont take it for granted. I believe their choice is based on their fear."

Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, was skeptical of the assertion that the state plan would protect jobs.

"Isnt that what the (federal) mandate does, protecting jobs?" Jackson says. "People dont get sick? Jobs stay open?"

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, said the bill would create "red tape" for employers and potentially lead to job losses, particularly for federal contractors in his district.

"This is a job killer," he said. "I am sick and tired of this. This right here is really going to cause a lot of problems for all of us."

Republicans in the House clotured debate over the bill prior to Rep. Prince Chestnut, D-Selma, offering what members said was an agreed-upon amendment adding causes of action to the bill. The change had to go into the bill in the conference committee.

Who voted for what

A full list of the Senate votes on the parental consent bill bill was not immediately available on Thursday evening.

In the Montgomery County Senate delegation, Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, voted for the conference committee reports on the exemption bill. Sen. Kirk Hatcher, D-Montgomery, was not listed as voting.

In the House delegation, Reps. Reed Ingram, R-Pike Road, and Chris Sells, R-Greenville, voted for the report on the parental consent bill; Reps. Kelvin Lawrence, D-Hayneville, and Tashina Morris, D-Montgomery, voted against it. Reps. Kenyatte Hassel, D-Montgomery and Charlotte Meadows, R-Montgomery, were not listed as voting. On the exemption bill -- in which Democrats did not invoke a rule requiring members to vote their own machines -- Ingram, Meadows and Sells were listed as voting for the conference report; Hassell, Lawrence and Morris were listed as voting against.

In the Autauga and Elmore county delegations, Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, and Reps. Will Dismukes, R-Prattville, and Mike Holmes, R-Wetumpka, voted for the exemption bill. Dismukes and Holmes voted for the parental consent bill.

In the Tuscaloosa County Senate delegation, Sens. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa, and Senate Majority Leader Greg Reed, R-Jasper, voted for the exemption bill . Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greenboro, voted against it.

In the Tuscaloosa County House delegation, Reps. Cynthia Almond, R-Tuscaloosa; Kyle South, R-Fayette, and Rich Wingo, R-Tuscaloosa, voted for the conference committee report on the parental consent bill; Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, voted against it. Reps. A.J. McCampbell, D-Linden, and Rodney Sullivan, R-Northport, were not listed as voting. On the exemption bill -- in which Democrats did not invoke a rule requiring members to vote their own machines -- Almond; South, Sullivan and Wingo were listed as voting for it, and England and McCampbell were listed as voting against it.

In the Etowah County delegation, Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre and Reps. Gil Isbell, R-Gadsden, and Craig Lipscomb, R-Rainbow City, voted for the conference committee reports on employee exemptions. Isbell and Lipscomb voted for the parental consent bills.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Ivey signs law allowing employee exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines
Harney County has become the eighth rural county in Oregon to express interest in the idea of seceding and joining Idaho. USDA/Jon G. Fuller/VW PICS/Universal Images Group/Francis Dean/Corbis via Getty Images/Insider

Harney County became the eighth Oregon county to express interest in the "Greater Idaho" movement.

The movement seeks to move rural, conservative counties from Oregon to Idaho.

The effort is led by a group that says Idaho's values align better with rural Oregon.

Harney County became the latest Oregon county to express interest in joining the "Greater Idaho" movement, an effort to secede from Democratic-leaning Oregon and join conservative Idaho.

On Tuesday, a measure that would require local officials to hold meetings about the idea passed, with 63% of the vote in favor, according to the early results.

Seven other Oregon counties have previously voted in favor of exploring the move: Lake, Grant, Baker, Malheur, Union, Sherman, and Jefferson.

"Rural Oregon is declaring as loudly as it can that it does not consent to being misgoverned by Oregon's leadership and chooses to be governed as part of a state that understands rural Oregon's values and way of making a living," Mike McCarter, president of the group behind the Greater Idaho movement, said Wednesday in a statement provided to Insider. "We call on the Oregon Legislature to not dare to hold these counties captive."

Organizers behind the movement say Oregon's government does not represent the conservative values of much of the state and that none of the Democrats in the state Legislature represent a rural area.

"Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms because normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon. Not in Idaho," the group's website reads.

President Joe Biden won Oregon in the 2020 election, largely driven by heavily populated counties near Portland, Eugene, and Bend. Of the state's 36 counties, 26 voted for President Donald Trump, including the eight counties that are now exploring seceding from the state. Many of the counties that voted for Trump are sparsely populated, altogether making up around 30% of the state's population.

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Meanwhile, neighboring Idaho was a decisive victory for Trump, who won 64% of votes in the state.

Greater Idaho organizers argued the proposal would be a win for all parties, including liberal counties in Oregon that would "be free of 'low-income, Trump-voting counties,'" and Idaho which would no longer be land-locked.

The Greater Idaho movement is a longshot but not impossible, experts previously told Insider. It would require the approval of both Oregon and Idaho state legislatures, as well as the US Congress.

Have a news tip? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A new PAC focused on electing conservative candidates to public school boards  by raising fears about how racism is taught  won three-fourths of its 58 races across seven states on Tuesday.

Why it matters: Those wins for the 1776 Project PAC, and Glenn Youngkin's gubernatorial victory in Virginia, underscore the political potency of culture wars and COVID-related issues in schools this year  and how GOP candidates are seeking to ride the trend to new majorities.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Founder Ryan Girdusky told Axios: "My PAC is campaigning on behalf of everyday moms and dads who want to have better access to their children's education."

But, but, but: School officials are concerned there's been intense hype and misinformation around the U.S. about what's actually being taught in most schools.

They also worry politicization of school boards is sometimes translating to violence against teachers, and poorly informed decision-making.

By the numbers: Thirteen Pennsylvania school board candidates backed by the group won their races, along with 11 in Colorado, nine in Kansas, four in New Jersey, three in Virginia and two each in Ohio and Minnesota.

They're not just winning in Republican areas; several candidates won in solid blue counties: Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; Passaic County, New Jersey; and Johnson County, Kansas.

Between the lines: Critical race theory is an academic movement focused on systemic racism, especially in U.S. law. It's largely remained in graduate school settings as opposed to public secondary schools.

But "CRT" has become a potent political buzzword among conservative politicians and parents upset about schools introducing new lessons about racism and the history of slavery in the U.S.

What to watch: Expect more Republican candidates up and down the ballot to pick up CRT along with the rest of Youngkin's political playbook.

The education issue "seems to be trending in our direction, whether it's school lockdowns, curriculum or critical race theory," one national GOP strategist told Axios.

More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free
MEMPHIS  The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Horn Lake, Mississippi, in federal court, alleging the city and its board of aldermen discriminated against two Muslim men on the basis of religion in denying approval of a mosque site plan.

The lawsuit argues the government officials violated the First Amendment rights of the men who want to develop the mosque, Maher Abuirshaid and Riyadh Elkhayyat. It also argues that city officials violated a federal law that gives heightened legal protections in land-use decisions to people groups that face discrimination.

The lawsuit asks a judge to nullify the Horn Lake officials decisions and to order the city to grant the land-use request for the mosque.

A mosque is to Muslims what a church is to Christians or a synagogue is to Jewish people," said Joshua Tom, legal director at the ACLU of Mississippi. "Without a mosque, Muslims like Mr. Elkhayyat and Mr. Abuirshaid and their families cannot practice their religion as they would like and they cannot practice it fully.

Horn Lake is in DeSoto County, which is just south of Memphis, Tennessee. Abuirshaid and Elkhayyat are DeSoto County residents and want to develop a mosque so their families and other Muslim families in DeSoto County will have a place to worship without having to drive a half-hour or more to Memphis.

A local mosque is critical for my family and the Muslim community in DeSoto County to practice our religion, Abuirshaid said in a news release.

The suit is being filed by the ACLU, the ACLU of Mississippi and New York City-based Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.

In April, Horn Lake's board of aldermen voted 5-1 to uphold the citys planning commissions decision to deny approval of the site plan. Aldermen cited insufficient water mains for fire sprinklers, the fear that the building would break the noise ordinance and that it would be a traffic hazard as reasons for opposing the application.

The denial was made even though the mosque site plan met or exceeded all requirements to be built and although the piece of property was zoned for a house of worship.

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USA TODAY Opinion: I never discriminated against anyone. Still, I was fired: Former Black fire chief

Concept art shows the front entry for Abraham House of God, a mosque proposed for Horn Lake.

The Boards unsubstantiated reasons for denial of the site plan were pretextual," reads the lawsuit. "The Boards decision was based on an anti-Muslim animus and discrimination.

Latimer, the mayor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Violations of the law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (known as RLUIPA) have resulted in lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice and sometimes settlements of millions of dollars.

The law states: No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution, unless the government can demonstrate that it has a compelling governmental interest in the regulation and there is no less-burdensome method of meeting that interest.

Each of those four prongs were violated by the city of Horn Lake in denying the permit to build the mosque," said Jonathan Youngwood, an attorney with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. "What should have been an uncomplicated approval of the site plan for Abraham House of God foundered with historic anti-Muslim bias."

In May, several experts on the law told The Commercial Appeal, part of the USA TODAY Network, that Horn Lake's rejection of the mosque was likely a violation of that federal law.

More: ACLU calls for reforms after police handcuffed, arrested a disabled 10-year-old Black girl

Here, denying a permit to build a mosque because of explicit and thinly veiled anti-Muslim bias is a clear violation of RLUIPA," Tom said. "Also treating a mosque differently from the tens of other churches in Horn Lake and over 100 of other churches in DeSoto County is also a violation of RLUIPA, because it treats a mosque differently than churches.

It also violates the First Amendment since "they clearly denied this permit because the permit is to build a mosque," Tom said.

In an interview with The Commercial Appeal in May, former alderman John Jones Jr. said: I dont care what they say, their religion says they can lie or do anything to the Jews or gentiles because were not Muslims.

And in a meeting, he said, "If you let them build it, they will come. I think we need to stop it before it gets here.

Riyadh Elkhayyat and Maher Abuirshaid are the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city of Horn Lake after the city denied an application for a mosque the two men had hoped to build.

According to the lawsuit, one resident wrote in a Facebook group in which an alderman was a member, This is wrong on so many levels. They are supposed to assimilate to our country, not us to theirs. Another resident responded: They will never assimilate. Their religion is to take over and kill the infidel. Thats us.

And, in a Board of Aldermen meeting, one speaker said, they are not subject to our laws, theyre subject to their laws.

Not having a mosque in the area means the plaintiffs and their families are not able to practice their religion fully, unable to teach their children about Islam, unable to attend Friday prayers and unable to fully participate in observances of Islamic holidays, Tom said.

Particularly in Mississippi, where Islam is not as prevalent as in other parts of the country and certainly not as prevalent as Christianity, a mosque is the equivalent of a church for a Christian and equally important for the practice of Islam," Tom said.

Elkhayyat, who has been a resident of DeSoto County, Mississippi, for over 20 years, has raised his six children in the county and wants to build it for them.

Related: Is banning critical race theory in schools unconstitutional? Lawsuit in Oklahoma seeks to prove it.

American Civil Liberties Union client Riyadh Elkhayyat, who also goes by Ray Elk, address media in Horn Lake on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.

I think its a duty for us to try to establish that mosque because our kids need a place to have their prayers, practice their faith," he said. "I am disappointed at the rejection we got from the city and I just wish that this project could get approved so we could go on with building the mosque.

Having to travel to Tennessee to worship makes it difficult to fully practice their faith, said Abuirshaid, who has lived in Mississippi for over 15 years and has raised his three children there. Sometimes they cannot attend Friday prayers and they are unable to fully practice Islamic holy days, including Ramadan.

"A local mosque is important for my childrens education too, and sense of belonging. In addition to teaching them about their faith and how to read Arabic and Quran, having a mosque nearby is important to keeping children on the correct path and teaching them to be a better Muslim, better citizens and better people," Aburshaid said.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow Katherine Burgess on Twitter @kathsburgess.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: ACLU files lawsuit against Mississippi city over blocking mosque site
To many they are just filthy-looking jumbo bags bursting at the seams with recyclable waste wheeled along the streets of South Africa's largest city. But now graffiti artists are giving them a makeover, spray-painting them with bold and bright designs to encourage bystanders to look up and notice the unsung work of the impoverished workers who pull them.
Eleven SHS seniors received academic letter jackets from Arvest Bank during halftime of the recent SHS football game. The seniors and those congratulating them on the field are (from left) Shawnee Board of Education Member Bobby Canty, Nick Whited, Isabel West, Shawnee Board of Education Member Larry Walker, Landen Terrell, Karsen Conaway, Arvest Community Bank President Brian Nave, Brecken Self, Superintendent Dr. April Grace, Lacie Moon, Abigail Looper, SHS Principal Matt Johnson, Dylan Haddad, Teegan Franklin, Lillian Davis and Kaitlyn Atwood.

Marking its 37th year of sponsorship, Arvest Bank presented 11 Shawnee High School seniors with academic letter jackets during halftime of the past SHS varsity football home game. These seniors represent the top 5 percent of the Class of 2022.

"We at Arvest appreciate the importance of academic excellence and the hard work required of the students, as well as the support from parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors and the administration," said Brian Nave, Community Bank president. "This event allows Arvest Bank, as well as the entire community, to recognize the achievements of these outstanding students."

Academic letter jacket recipients are as follows:

Kaitlyn Atwood is daughter of Nick Atwood and Haley Coates. Her future plans are to attend college and pursue a career in medicine.

Karsen Conaway is the son of Keith Conaway and Kelli Schock. His future plans are to attend Hendrix College and continue his football career while preparing academically to attend medical school.

Lillian Davis is the daughter of Allison Leone. Her future plans are to attend the University of Oklahoma to prepare for medical school where she plans to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology.

Teegan Franklin is the daughter of Ryan and Angie Franklin. Her future plans after high school are to attend college and study pre-med.

Dylan Haddad is the son of Rita and John Haddad. His future plans include obtaining a successful career that will allow him to pursue his other passions.

Abigail Looper is the daughter of Aaron and Magan Looper. Her future plans include attending college where she will become a pre-med student.

Lacie Moon is the daughter of Laurie Moon and Tommy Shadix. Her future plans are to attend OU Medical School and to become a nurse practitioner.

Brecken Self is the son of Patricia Martin. His future plans are to go to Oklahoma State University and live a very happy life.

Landen Terrell is the son of Brady Terrell and Melissa Boyer. His future plans are to attend college.

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Isabel West is the daughter of Aaron and Rebecca West. Her future plans are to go to college and become a biomedical engineer.

Nick Whited is the son of Dave Whited. His future plans are to attend college.

This article originally appeared on The Shawnee News-Star: 11 Shawnee High School seniors receive academic letter jackets
French screen legend turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was on Thursday fined 20,000 euros ($23,000) by a court on France's Indian Ocean island of La Reunion over a 2019 diatribe where she described its inhabitants as "savages".

Bardot, 87, launched the rambling attack against the inhabitants of La Reunion, one of France's overseas territories spread across the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, in response to what she saw as their mistreatment of animals.

Her spokesman Bruno Jacquelin was also fined by the court in the main town of Saint-Denis de la Reunion 4,000 euros for his role in sending the statement to several media outlets at her request.

"The natives have kept their savage genes," the animal rights campaigner wrote in an open letter attacking the islanders for their treatment of animals, describing locals as "degenerate savages".

She took aim at the island's Hindu Tamil population for sacrificing goats, evoking the "cannibalism of past centuries" as she lashed "a degenerate population still soaked in barbarous ancestral traditions".

Bardot, who shot to fame in the 1956 film "...And God Created Woman", has become a controversial figure, and has also been convicted in the past over her comments about Muslims.

France's then overseas territories minister Annick Girardin told her in a letter at the time after her comments on Le Reunion "that racism is not an opinion, it's an offence".

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IPAs rule at many of Rhode Island's craft breweries. The hops are the top sellers. But there's plenty of room for malty and dessert beers, and sours, too.

Marshmallow Small Joys is a favorite at Long Live Beerworks in Providence. Brewer Armando DeDona likes sharing pastry stout beers this time of year.

Here are the beers you need to try before the year ends, because they are the favorites at these 20 tasting rooms and brew pubs.

If you doubted the cleverness of the local brewers, check out these names inspired by everything from the military (Torpedo Station) to local references (Musik Express, Cranston Thug Life). There's plenty of whimsy, too (Full Body Wag, Liquid Hugs).

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RI's best beers

Bristol

Twelve Guns Brewing, 549 Metacom Ave. (401) 396-9009, twelvegunsbrewing.com.

Torpedo Station, a New England IPA that is soft on the palate with tropical fruit aromas, is their most popular brew, but the Peach Cobbler Pastry Sour is also a crowd favorite. (Bonus: They have a hard seltzer brand, too, called Cannon & Anchor.

Torpedo Station, a New England IPA, is the favorite beer at Twelve Guns Brewing in Bristol.

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Burrillville

Bravo Brewing Company, 75 Pascoag Main St., Pascoag, (401) 710-4242, bravobrewingcompany.com.

Mayday is the popular New England IPA at this brewery owned by veteran Chris Mishoe, who supports veterans' causes with a percentage of the profits. Also not to be missed is their Zero Dark Thirty, a coffee milk stout.

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Cranston

Buttonwoods Brewery, 530 Wellington Ave., #22, (401) 563-8451 buttonwoodsbrewery.com.

The fav here is Dream of Flowers Grand Cru, described as "a beautiful, complex farmhouse ale that really shows off what our barrel-aged program is about," according to owner/brewer Morgan Snyder.

Exeter

Tilted Barn, 1 Hemsley Place. (401) 500-6765, tiltedbarnbrewery.com.

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Don't miss their new IPA, Grow, made with new hops and signature house yeast. Chosen One is the most popular Double IPA, and Lawn Boy, a barn lager, is their most popular draft.

Middletown

Taproot Brewing Company, 909 East Main Rd. (Route 138), (401) 848-5161, ext. 3, newportvineyards.com/Taproot-Brewing.

The F-Bomb, a juicy and hazy New England IPA, is the bestseller here.

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The F-Bomb is a New England IPA that rules at Taproot Brewing at Newport Vineyards.

Rejects Beer Co., 124 Aquidneck Ave., (401) 619-8200, rejectsbeerco.com.

Open less than a year, right on Easton's Pond, Rejects Beer acknowledges the large New England IPA drinking crowd with their Sunday Special New England IPA. But they acknowledge that Peralta Pilsner is popular with beer drinkers who gravitate away from haze and hops. Their Festbier Oktoberfest style has also been a crowd-pleaser, as has their Czech Dark Lager. What to watch for later this fall? Brewer Justin Tisdale's Japanese lager.

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Czech Dark Lager at Rejects Beer Co. is a big hit, even with those who don't think they like darker beers.

Newport

Newport Craft Brewing and Distilling, 293 JT Connell Highway, (401) 849-5232, Newportcraft.com.

Newport Craft's Rhode Trip is their popular New England IPA. This is also where they brew the line of Radiant Pig beers. Save the Robots is their New England IPA.

Radiant Pig beers are also on the must try list at Newport Craft Beer. This is Save the Robots.

North Kingstown

West Passage Brewing Company, 7835 Post Rd., North Kingstown, (401) 661-9662, westpassagebrewing.com.

Since they opened this summer, there are big favorites. One is Full Body Wag, a pub-style beer, very light in color with Amarillo hops for a hint of bitterness. Drunken Horseman is their popular Cascadian IPA, which is dark on the IPA scale. Sarcastic Charlie is what they call "a hoppy amber" and a favorite of the owner/brewer.

West Passage Brewing Company in North Kingstown has been open less than a year but has some favorites clearly established.

Pawtucket

Crooked Current, 560 Mineral Spring Ave., (401) 473-8312, crookedcurrentbrewery.com.

This place makes its name with unique beers. Their Oatmeal Raisin Stout goes great with cookies for a dessert beer, and Neapolitan Ale is a top seller, with tastes of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. Hawaiian Robust Porter rounds out the top three.

The Guild, 461 Main St., posts whats available on Facebook@theguildri or @guildri on Instagram. Email info@TheGuildRI.com.

Top beers here are Isle of White, a white IPA; Observatory, an American pale ale; and Slater, an American lager.

Smug Brewing Company, 100 Carver St., smugbrewing.com, (401) 642-5701.

The favorite here is the Cobra Chai, a rich, dark sweet stout brewed with blackstrap molasses, clove, ginger, cinnamon and cardamom, with a velvety mouthfeel of freshly ground warming spices that make you feel warm and cozy.

Portsmouth

Ragged Island Brewing Company, 54 Bristol Ferry Rd., Portsmouth, (401) 318-2991, Raggedislandbrewing.com.

You gotta love Liquid Hugs for the name alone. It's a Double IPA, all Citra hopped, New England style.

Providence

Narragansett Beer, 271 Tockwotton St., (401) 437-8970, narragansettbeer.com/providence-brewery

Nostalgia has put the Musik Express IPA, named after the Musik Express ride at the long-gone Rocky Point Park, at the top of the favorites list at this new brewery. It's a medium-bodied IPA with notes of grapefruit and pine.

Musik Express is named after a popular ride at the now-gone Rocky Point Park. It's the bestseller at Narragansett Beer.

Long Live Beerworks, 40R Sprague St., longlivebeerworks.com.

Though Armando DeDona doesn't like to play favorites, his go-to choices on the current tap list are the hoppy Through These Eyes, a Double IPA; and Marshmallow Small Joys, a pastry stout that is dark and sweet.

Through These Eyes is a double IPA at Long Live Beerworks in Providence.

Union Station Brewery, 36 Exchange Terrace, (401) 274-2739, unionstationpvd.com.

Their flagship beer, the colorfully named Cranston Thug Life, is their popular New England IPA. Always on draft, for the first time in 28 years, they canned it with Buttonwoods Brewery. The King is Dead is their Double IPA, also in cans and on draft, while Cumberland Crime Wave, another New England IPA, is draft only for now.

South Kingstown

Whalers Brewing Co., 1174 Kingstown Rd., (401) 552-0002, whalers.com.

Rise, an American Pale Ale is the beer they raise their cheers to at Whalers.

Josh Dunlap and Wes Staschke, co-owners of Whalers Brewing in South Kingstown, raise some cans of Rise APA.

Warren

The Guild Warren, 99 Water St., (401) 252-4275, theguildri.com and facebook.com/theguildwarren.

The East Bay outpost of the Pawtucket brewery is on the water and a gastropub as well. The Warren G, a Double IPA, has taken the tasting room by storm.

The Guild in Warren has 16 taps and beers brewed for the site.

Warwick

Proclamation Ale Company, 298 Kilvert St., proclamation ale.com.

Owner Lori Witham says their beer not to miss is Stalk, a Double IPA.

https://www.shaidzonbeer.com/Apponaug Brewing Company, 334 Knight St., (401) 681-4321, apponaugbrewing.com

This brew pub brings out the big guns, said co-owner Tamara McKenney, with their Highflyer, a triple-hopped Double IPA, a medley of citrus and tropic fruit with a piney finish. Their American IPA, Cohesive, offers a burst of tangerine and clementine citrus with a honeydew melon finish. Also on their bestseller list is the Pawtuxet Pils, a German Pilsner, and Kilter, an Oatmeal stout that's served on nitro.

Westerly

Grey Sail Brewing, 63 Canal St., (401) 212-7592, greysailbrewing.com.

The Oktoberfest-style Autumn Winds Fest Beer is the favorite of owner Jen Brinton. Head brewer Michelle Clark favors Flagship, a Cream Ale. But the bestseller here is Captains Daughter, their Double IPA.

West Kingston

Shaidzon Beer Co. 141 Fairgrounds Rd., (401) 314-8730, shaidzonbeer.com.

Don't miss their flagship Buffalo Czech, a pilsner-style beer derived from Plzen in the Czech Republic. The beer is light with a noble hoppiness and was the first recipe brewed at Shaidzon in 2017.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI beers you need to try at 20 taprooms and brewpubs before 2021 ends
Mary MacCarthy and her daughter Moira (Mary MacCarthy)

A mother and her 10-year-old daughter were stopped by officials at Denver International Airport in October, after an airline attendant reported a possible human-trafficking incident.

Mary MacCarthy said the suspicion was based on a racist assumption as she is white and her daughter is biracial

The pair boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from San Jose, California, on 22 October, after Ms MacCarthy got the sudden news that her brother had died. The pair were travelling to attend his funeral.

Upon arriving in Denver, she and her daughter were surrounded by two armed police officers and a member of Southwest staff on the jet bridge, and were questioned separately.

According to the police report, the crew member said it was suspicious that Ms MacCarthy and her daughter Moira were the last to board the plane and Ms MacCarthy had asked other passengers to move so they could sit together. During the flight, the mother and daughter had not been very communicative, the report outlined.

Ms MacCarthy told The Independent that she boarded last because thats what her tickets said to do. They were in the last boarding group, and there was no assigned seating on the flight. She asked the flight attendants if they could sit together, but was told to directly ask passengers to switch. This was our only interaction with flight crew, said Ms MacCarthy who explained that people were happy to move seats so she and her daughter could sit together.

My brother had died less than 12 hours before, Im a single mother and he was like a father figure to my daughter ... so we were in shock, said Ms MacCarthy of the pair travelling. She was trying to catch up on sleep during the flight and her daughter was listening to book on her phone.

Mary MacCarthy and her daughter Moira (Mary MacCarthy)

The police report says I wouldnt give any information, but I have a three-minute video, Ms MacCarthy said. The Independent has viewed the footage. Ms MacCarthy can clearly be heard explaining exatly why she was travelling. Im very forthcoming with information. You can hear my daughter sobbing throughout the video. I tell them the reason she is so upset is because weve just suffered a death and shes biracial and shes experienced, unfortunately, bad things with police, so shes extra nervous.

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Ms MacCarthy explained that she always carries a copy of her daughters birth certificate when travelling, but was never asked for it on 22 October. Im educated enough to know that people make these assumptions about mixed-race families, she said.

Moira MacCarthy (Mary MacCarthy)

The family is requesting an apology from the airline. The whole thing is based on what I believe to be a racist assumption about a mixed-race family, Ms MacCarthy said.

The Denver Police didnt drop it, they called me 10 days later to follow up, she continued. Things like this happen to mixed-race families all the time, this is a thing that we are afraid of ... I feel an obligation towards my daughter and other mixed-race families to speak out, she said of making the story public.

Southwest Airlines responded to The Independents request for comment. We were disheartened to learn of this mothers account when travelling with her daughter. We are conducting a review of the situation internally, and we will be reaching out to the customer to address her concerns and offer our apologies for her experience travelling with us.

Our Employees undergo robust training on Human Trafficking. Above all, Southwest Airlines prides itself on providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for the millions of Customers who travel with us each year, it added in an emailed statement.

As of 4 November, when The Independent spoke to MacCarthy, she had not yet been personally contacted by the airline, she had only received an automated response. Its been over 10 days since this trauma and I have yet to be contacted by Southwest Airlines, she said. At this point, I believe they should be held accountable for having racially profiled my family, and for having traumatised my 10-year-old daughter on a day she was already processing the sudden death of an uncle who was like a father figure to her. Ms MacCarthy is now working with an attorney in regards to the incident.

I wish that Southwest and other airlines would not judge people by their race, she said. If [staff] had chatted to my daughter and I, any reasonable person would understand that were family ... if they are going to be trained in things like looking out for human trafficking, they should also be taught not to engage in ignorant racial profiling.

Biracial families have frequently been falsely reported as potential human traffickers when travelling in recent years.

Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Republican Senator John McCain, apologised for wrongly accusing a family at Phoenix airport in 2019. Ms McCain reported a toddler and woman to the authorities because something didnt click. Ms McCain is a campaigner against human trafficking and has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.

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Rural communities and underserved areas of Wisconsin cities both need affordable, reliable high-speed internet service, but far too often, they dont have it.

We'll explore that important issue at noon on Tuesday, Nov. 9, in a virtual live event on our Facebook and YouTube channels. The event is free.

Join the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and the OBrien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University for a lively discussion aimed at solutions. Rick Barrett of the Journal Sentinel and an O'Brien Fellow is the host.

Panelists will include: Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCAThe Rural Broadband Association; Keith Gabbard, CEO of Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative (McKee, KY.); Barry Orton, professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jim Paine, mayor of the City of Superior; Vickie Robinson, general manager for Microsoft Corp.s Airband Initiative; Jim Tuckwell, chairman of the Vilas County Economic Development Corp.; and Rebecca Cameron Valcq, chairperson of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

What questions do you want host Rick Barrett to ask?

Send them in advance to: rick.barrett@jrn.com

Or log onto our Facebook page during the event and ask them there.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Broadband for everyone: What will it take? A live event on Tuesday.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Burundi is experiencing a rise in torture and enforced disappearances in "a clear pattern of abuses that undermines limited rights improvements under President Evariste Ndayishimiye, according to a group of independent researchers.

Members of the national intelligence service as well as the police are accused of torture, killings and enforced disappearances, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, an independent project that monitors rights abuses in the central African country, said in a new report Thursday.

Perpetrators are free "to track down any suspected opponents they view as a threat and do with them as they please, the report said.

Since mid-2021, Burundis approach to human rights has taken a concerning turn for the worse," the report said. Following a series of armed attacks and ambushes between April and September 2021, government officials accused political opponents of collaborating with armed groups and abducted or arrested dozens of them.

Abuses are taking place despite the governments diplomatic language of peace and security, including assurances by Ndayishimiye that the rights situation in his country was improving, the report said.

Ndayishimiye was elected president in May 2020 following the death of former leader Pierre Nkurunziza. Human rights groups have urged him to leave the repressive ways of his predecessor behind.

Government spokesman Prosper Ntahorwamiye didnt answer calls seeking comment.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in September, Ndayishimiye asserted that his government has focused on the protection of human rights, respect for democratic principles, freedoms of expression and opinion.

But some disagree.

Aime Magera, a Burundian opposition politician exiled in Brussels, called the president's speech an aberration, charging that opponents are killed, tortured to disappear, arbitrary arrested and imprisoned" by agents of the state.

The report by the Burundi Human Rights Initiative said abuses appear to have increased in recent months, with more than 20 publicly reported disappearances since July.

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Detainees often ended up at the intelligence headquarters in Bujumbura, the largest city, where some were tortured until the pain was so intense that they said anything to make it stop.

While some detainees were eventually released, others have not been heard from again," the report said.

Others have raised similar alarms.

A recent report by SOS Medias Burundi, an independent collective of journalists working inside the country, said it had counted more than 60 bodies by the Rusizi River separating Burundi from Congo since January.

Most had been beheaded or had limbs amputated, it said.
Eddy County residents chose the first Board of Trustees for the Southeast New Mexico College on Tuesday.

Mark Cage won the District 1 seat with 493 votes  the most votes cast for any of the candidates of the board. Cage, who also serves as Eddy County's elected Sheriff, ran against Doris Carlton who received 115 votes out of the 608 votes cast in the race.

"I feel extremely blessed to see how many folks who feel that I am the one they want to represent them on the college board," Cage said as the results came in. "Congrats to everyone who stepped up to run in this very important local election. We all win when we have this much passion and participation in our local issues."

Replay: Southeast New Mexico Community College board candidates forum

Cage also thanked Carleton for running.

Eddy County Sheriff Mark Cage encourages parents to talk with their kids about the dangers of fentanyl.

"I told her at the candidate forum that I felt confident the board would be in good hands whichever one of us won the election," he said.

Tiffany Frintz won District 3 with 264 out of the 448 votes cast in the race. David Rogers received 136 votes and Joy Foster received 48 votes, losing the contest seat to Frintz.

Foster suspended her campaign in September but was not able to officially withdraw from the race in time for the deadline

Frintz thanked her supporters including her husband Bart.

Cherry Tiffany Frintz, candidate for the Southeast New Mexico College school board for district 3.

"I would like to share my sincerest appreciation to our amazing community, and for everyone who came out to vote," Frintz said. "I am humbled by this opportunity and am going to do my best to serve our hometown. Thank you to all the candidates for a great campaign. We are blessed to have such qualified people willing to serve."

Ned Elkins won the race for District 5 with 370 of 794 votes cast in the race. His opponent Fran McCarthy garnered 301 votes and Norbert Rempe received 123 votes.

I will give it everything Ive got, Elkins said. If I am going to be a part of something its going to get the very best Ive got so all my efforts will go to make this successful.

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Elkins said the board has a lot of work ahead of them and said they cannot underestimate some of the challenges they will face such as managing financial systems and setting up communicational links between the staff and administration.

Bill Murrill, District 2, and Sarah Jo Bowman, District 4, were unopposed. Murrill received 180 votes. Bowman received 214 votes.

Sarah Bowman, candidate for the Southeast New Mexico College school board for district 4

"I have and will continue to advocate for staff, faculty, and students as we begin to lay the foundation for SENM College," Bowman said.

Voters cast 4,406 ballots in the nonpartisan local election. Members of the board will serve a term of six years, but first these candidates will have staggered terms of 2 and 4 years as the first elected board.

All results are non-official until Eddy County can perform a canvass of the election.

Electing the Board of Trustees was the next step for New Mexico State University Carlsbad's to transition to an independent college. The transition is the result of an effort to regain local control of the college organized by the Carlsbad Mayor's Higher Education Task Force.

Eddy County voters get ready to cast ballots during the Nov. 2, 2021 local elections in Carlsbad,

The board will be responsible for making decisions for SENMC and providing oversight. It will also be responsible for hiring a college president and managing an at least $40 million budget.

More Education News: Higher Learning Commission discusses transition to SENMC

Claudia Silva is a reporter from the UNM Local Reporting Fellowship. She can be reached at csilva2@currentargus.com, by phone at 575-628-5506 or on Twitter @thewatchpup.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Hundreds of votes cast to elect Board of Trustees for new college
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bontas office has opened an independent investigation into the July shooting of a 53-year-old man by Los Angeles police officers in Pico-Union, the office said Wednesday.

The investigation was spurred by the death of the man, Samuel Soto, on Tuesday from injuries suffered in the summer shooting, Bonta's office said.

Soto was initially shot while holding a knife by the first officers who arrived on scene. Those officers took the knife away from him, and he was then shot again by newly arriving officers while holding a cellphone, according to body-camera video from the encounter.

The July 26 incident is the second LAPD shooting that Bonta has launched an investigation into since his office was afforded the power to investigate police shootings across California under a state law that took effect July 1.

The first was the fatal shooting of 48-year-old Matthew Sova on Hollywood Boulevard in July, after officers received calls about him threatening people with a gun, ran up and shot him as he lifted what they thought was a gun in his direction. Police have since said that Sova had a knife and a butane lighter with a pistol-like handle in his hand, but no gun.

Bonta's office has also launched investigations into five other shootings by agencies around the state.

Both Sova's shooting and Soto's shooting also remain under investigation by the LAPD's Force Investigation Division, and the actions of the officers involved will ultimately go before the civilian Police Commission for review and a vote on whether they were justified.

The Times reported in August that an initial LAPD description of Soto's shooting  that he had been found holding a knife and was shot after failing to comply with orders to drop it  did not tell the whole story.

Police said officers had received a call about 10:50 p.m. for a man with a knife, and found Soto with the knife near the intersection of Union Avenue and Pico Boulevard.

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Body-camera video showed the first two officers to arrive jumped out of their vehicle, as one said, Hey, let me see your hands, bro!

Soto then charged toward one of the officers with the knife in hand and was shot multiple times, the video showed. After, one of the officers said, "I got the blade right here, bro," indicating to his partner that Soto was no longer armed.

Soto then grunted and got back to his feet as the officers backed away and screamed at him to stop moving. A second pair of officers then pulled up and drew their weapons.

No, no, no, he doesnt have the knife! the officer who previously took the weapon said. He doesnt have the knife!

As Soto then turned to move toward the newly arrived officers, he was shot once more.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
(Bloomberg) -- Canadas banks will be able to resume buying back shares and increasing their dividends after regulators removed restrictions put in place to protect the financial system during the pandemic.

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Banks may immediately begin increasing regular dividends and executive compensation, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions said in a statement Thursday. Subject to approval by the superintendent, the firms may once again repurchase their stock as well, OSFI said.

Canadas federally regulated financial institutions have weathered the shocks of the pandemic quite well in 2020 and 2021, Peter Routledge, head of OSFI, said during a virtual event Thursday. As such, we do not believe that lifting these expectations -- which were always intended to be temporary -- will detract from financial institutions ability to support the economic recovery or from public confidence in the Canadian financial system.

The decision was made after banks began to release provisions for loan losses in recent quarters and Canadians returned to making mortgage payments after their six-month deferrals ended without a wave of defaults, Routledge said during a later media briefing. The banks continued solid financial performance during an increase in Covid-19 cases over the summer and into the fall also contributed to the decision, he said.

The pandemic now appears to be more of an endemic issue that Canadas economy can withstand, and the dividend and buyback restrictions arent likely to be reinstated except in the event of another unusual economic and financial shock, Routledge said.

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The move, which comes months after the Federal Reserve lifted similar constraints on U.S. firms, lets Canadas banks start releasing the stockpile of capital they amassed to protect against a wave of pandemic-induced defaults that never occurred. Canadas six largest banks could return a combined C$47 billion ($38 billion) in cash to shareholders and still exceed regulators capital requirements, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence.

Canadian bank stocks pared their losses for the day on the announcement. The S&P/TSX Commercial Banks Index, which includes Canadas eight largest banks, ended Thursday little changed after earlier falling as much as 0.5%.

Bank of Montreal and National Bank of Canada may be the biggest beneficiaries of the restrictions being lifted, Barclays Plc analyst John Aiken said in a note to clients Thursday. National Bank has the capacity to boost its dividend by about 50%, while Bank of Montreal could increase its payout 46%, he said.

The average common equity tier 1 capital ratio for Canadas six largest banks has crept up from 11.7% in the fiscal quarter ended January 2020, before the pandemic took hold in North America, to 13.3% at the end of July. That means the banks are currently holding about C$57 billion in capital beyond what regulators require, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Even returning C$47 billion to shareholders would leave them with a C$10 billion cushion beyond whats required.

The banks typically target a CET1 ratio of 11%, higher than the 10.5% regulatory minimum, and they have about C$47 billion in surplus capital above that higher level, Bloomberg Intelligence said.

The Federal Reserve allowed U.S. banks to resume buybacks in December 2020 and let lenders that cleared its stress tests restart dividend increases in June.

OSFIs Routledge said that the regulator acted out of an abundance of caution in maintaining its restrictions as long as it did.

If I were going to get criticized as superintendent, Id rather be criticized for being a little too careful rather than a little bit too reckless, he said. Ill wear the criticisms with a badge of pride.

(Updates with superintendents and analysts comments starting in third paragraph.)

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Dir: Paul Schrader. Starring: Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe, Alexander Babara, Bobby C King. 15, 112 minutes.

Oscar Isaac has a stare that could burn right through the door of a bank vault. Its put to frighteningly good use in The Card Counter  hollowed out of that usual, seductive allure, and stripped of its humanity. Those dark irises become, instead, a portal to the absolute depths of hopelessness. Weve seen him deliver this kind of performance before, most notably in 2014s A Most Violent Year, but the shock of how quickly and wordlessly he can shift his demeanour never lessens.

In fact, those eyes alone speak with greater fluency on the soullessness of America than the rest of The Card Counter. Thats despite it having been written and directed by Paul Schrader, the man who so famously conjured Travis Bickle out of the grungiest recesses of his psyche. The film casts Isaac as William Tillich  who goes by the alias William Tell  a former soldier who spent eight years in prison for the torture of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He spent that time learning to count cards. Now he drifts through the countrys hotels and casinos, never betting too high so that he doesnt draw the attention of others (card counting may not be illegal, but it certainly isnt popular either).

Tillich dresses impeccably  a real Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid, with a soft streak of grey in his hair. But the casinos are ugly, filled with sweaty-faced, grunting men parading their fragile little egos. The motels he stays in are as grotty as they come, and he has an odd habit of wrapping each piece of furniture in a white sheet, as if hes already called a time of death on the place. These are all just rituals, futile attempts to find some sense of purity and control over that which has been poisoned beyond repair  the central theme to all of Schraders work.

A small spark of possible redemption comes in the form of Cirk (Tye Sheridan), whose father was dishonourably discharged for his part in torture at Abu Ghraib. Tillich and Cirks father were the fall guys, while men who trained them  like Major John Gordon (Willem Dafoe)  now live cosy lives of conferences and speaking engagements. Cirk wants revenge. His father died by suicide. He knows he wont find peace in the system, so hes willing to get blood on his hands. Tillich tries desperately to yank Cirk off that path to self-destruction, knowing full well that no victory lies at its end.

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Tiffany Haddish  a little too warm and grounded for this film  turns up as a love interest for Tillich (Focus Features)

Schraders upbringing in a strict Dutch Calvinist household has always informed his work to some degree  sometimes explicitly, as in his last film, First Reformed, about a priest losing his faith in the face of irreversible environmental damage. Here, theres a touch of predestination to how Tillich views his world. He is one of those who God has damned to eternal suffering, and so his existence now is just a prelude to hell, a placeholder before death.

But theres something in the shade of Schraders cynicism recently, here and in First Reformed, that Ive struggled with. A slight tilt in the perspective, Id say. As hes tried to adapt his voice to suit a more apocalyptic world  his last film featured eco-terrorists with suicide vests; here he flashes back to American war crimes by using the fish-eye lens to create a nightmarish tapestry  his characters have become a little stiff and narrow-focused in their self-flagellation.

If were meant to be trapped inside Tillichs guilt, is it not telling that Schrader never lets us really see the faces or know the names of his victims? Meanwhile, Tiffany Haddish  a little too warm and grounded for this film  turns up as a love interest for Tillich. But, much like the pregnant congregant played by Amanda Seyfried in First Reformed, shes a particularly hollow rendition of feminine innocence and salvation. The Card Counter is claustrophobic, certainly  but not always in the right ways.

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Catalent's Bloomington campus.

Drug maker Catalent has bought three parcels of land just south of its Bloomington plant for nearly $1.2 million.

The company declined to provide details about its plans for the property. A spokeswoman told The Herald-Times only that the company continues to invest in our world-class operations in Bloomington to expand capabilities.

Property transfer records show that Catalent bought the parcels on Oct. 20 from Irvin Materials Inc. IMI, a concrete producer that serves five states including Indiana, did not reply to repeated phone messages.

The Bloomington planning department did not have any plans on file that would indicate what Catalent might do with the property. Planning staff told The Herald-Times that the parcels are zoned mixed-use employment. The designation is intended to provide a mixture of office-related uses and medium-scale multifamily residential uses that provide significant employment opportunities for the community and the surrounding region.

Catalent careers: Bloomington facility wants to hire 500-600 more employees this year

Catalent announced recently that it plans to hire between 500 and 600 more employees in Bloomington through the end of the year as it was seeing rising demand for its products, which include COVID-19 vaccines.

An executive had told The Herald-Times the company was looking primarily for entry-level manufacturing and warehousing employees. Hourly wages start at $18. A spokeswoman said while the company was seeing growth across the globe  as of late August it had 17,300 employees at 56 facilities on four continents  Bloomington was the fastest-growing site.

The Catalent facility on South Patterson Drive covers about 1 million square feet, and parts of it remain vacant or are being used for warehousing, the spokeswoman said. As demand for products increases, the company renovates the warehousing spaces to turn them into production areas.

The pharmaceutical company last year also spent $14 million to buy a 23,000-square-foot manufacturing facility from AB BioTechnologies Inc. at 3770 W. Jonathan Drive.

Boris Ladwig is the city government reporter for The Herald-Times. Contact him at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Pharmaceutical company Catalent buys Bloomington properties
Nov. 3Karen Flores has been celebrating Dia de los Muertos since she can remember with her large family with a five-day program.

"For those celebrations they all would get together and it was a warm environment," said Flores, 44, who is Mexican. "My 11 uncles, cousins and a lot of families always had a very different and a mystical presence around those days."

In light of the global spiritual holiday, Latinos en Spokane, of which Flores is a member, hosted a five-day celebration to acknowledge Dia de los Muertos, a tradition that mourns family and friends who have died.

Flores and other volunteers created the event with extreme precision and intention, including the aroma of marigold flowers to guide the ancestors back to the altars created in their honor, and bringing bowls of water to nourish the spirits' thirst after their long journeys.

"The candles are important because they guide and provide light to their travels and give them their favorite drink," she said. "They're so many things and symbols, maybe a guitar because that was an instrument they loved to play, their favorite sombrero, their favorite hat to wear. And it's a celebration."

Though the holiday starts on Oct. 31, heavy Catholic influence has extended the event to All Saints Day and All Souls Day, Catholic holidays on Nov. 1 and 2. Instead of celebrating Halloween, Latinos en Spokane focused on Dia de Los Muertos festivities with face painting and sharing stories of urban legends of spirits and souls. Candy and sweet bread were offered to children.

Jennyfer Mesa, a co-founder of Latinos en Spokane, specified that the altars were more of a spiritual celebration instead of religious, which helps widen the audience of those who want to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. Though of Colombian origin, Mesa celebrates the holiday to honor her son's paternal Mexican heritage.

"This is all spiritual, not religion," Mesa said. "(The spiritual use) of candles and sharing stories of our loved ones, sharing bread, is about sharing with our community and having a moment to be together and admiring and sharing stories about the life of our loved ones."

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To celebrate their memory, volunteers decided that one altar would be inside the office and one outside. People could drive up and pay their respects in light of COVID restrictions. Each altar has seven tiers.

"Each tier is an opportunity for the soul to come back and go to step in the 'Micdlaina,' which is an opportunity to get their eternal rest," Flores said. "Both altars will be the same; the one indoors we're using to just hold workshops."

Latinos en Spokane celebrated from Oct. 27 to Tuesday. Each day honored a different group of loved ones. On Oct. 27, community members left tributes to their "four-legged loved ones." On Oct. 28, participants gave respect to those who died suddenly. Someone brought trinkets dedicated to Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant who, along with daughter Gigi Bryant and seven others, was killed in a plane crash in February 2020. They dedicated Nov. 1 to deceased children. Tuesday night, Latinos en Spokane welcomed the arrival of all the departed saints for the final day of celebration.

"It was an example, but people were bringing pictures in and were able to say goodbye, storytelling, sharing and honoring their lives," Mesa said.

Latinos en Spokane dedicated Saturday to "forgotten souls," something that was critical to the community at large. COVID is still halting families across the world from reuniting and celebrating those who have passed throughout the pandemic.

Dia de los Muertos gives those mourning friends and family lost to COVID complications a chance to mourn as a spiritual collective. In the United States, the Latinx and Hispanic community have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. They are two and three times more likely to die from complications related to COVID.

"We're trying to continue the tradition during this time of such uncertainty and loss with COVID," Mesa said. "We're feeling (the disproportionate impact) because we can't be close to our families and can't go home because COVID restrictions and citizenship statuses. With borders shut down, we all have family members that we haven't been able to say farewell to."

Hailing from the Mexican city of Guadalajara, former teacher Margarita Plascencia-Janes makes sure the children understand the holiday's cultural significance. On the final night, she brought in a children's book about a boy spiritually reconnecting with his grandfather.

"It's so important for the children to see the dead in another way," She said. "So they can understand and continue loving the people they've lost."

Family and friends brought pictures and items for their loved ones that died. A projector played a video titled "Cuento infantil El dia de Muertos de Ivar Da Coll." Plascencia-Janes fought through tears for her lost ones.

"This is all so hard but it is such a beautiful tradition," She said about the final touches. "It's nothing to be sad about but a day to celebrate because we know that they are coming to us."

Amber D. Dodd's work as the Carl Maxey Racial and Social Inequity reporter for Eastern Washington and North Idaho primarily appears in both The Spokesman-Review and The Black Lens newspapers, and is funded in part by the Michael Conley Charitable Fund, the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, the Innovia Foundation and other local donors from across our community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Sixteen-year-old Ben Doyle often feels "pervasive guilt." It creeps up when he leaves the water running a little too long while brushing his teeth, or when he drinks from a single-use plastic bottle.

In those moments, he says, "I really feel like Im only hurting myself and acting against my interests and the interests of everybody around me."

Doyle, a student at Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said he experienced "hopelessness" when the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2020.

Ben Doyle, 16, of Greenland, New Hampshire, struggles with the feeling of emotional distress stemming from the environmental crisis.

The term "climate anxiety" immediately strikes a chord with him  the phenomenon of emotional distress stemming from the planet's environmental crisis. Around the world, members of Generation Z  currently 9-24 years old  are experiencing it acutely, according to new data. And many people in their child-bearing years are torn between the future that awaits and their personal desire to have kids.

Climate change, racism and social justice: Concerns affecting Gen Z's physical and mental health

A first-of-its-kind global survey published in September, led by academics from the University of Bath in the U.K. and the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, showed the psychological toll the climate crisis is taking on young people. Among high percentages thinking the future is frightening, or that humanity is doomed, many of the 10,000 respondents  ages 16-25 from 10 countries  also said the perceived inadequate government response is associated with feelings of betrayal.

Forty-five percent of young people surveyed said their feelings about climate change negatively affect their daily life and functioning.

From left, Portsmouth High School classmates Ben Doyle and Lucia Hillman both deal with uncertainty and anxiety around climate change and the environmental crisis.

Therapists specialize in 'climate awareness'

Addressing this rise in personal suffering over the climate crisis, a new brand of psychological research and practice has emerged. People looking to ease their anguish can now see "climate-aware" therapists  therapists who "recognize the current climate crisis both as a globe-spanning challenge to the sustainability of human and non-human life on Earth and as a deeply personal challenge with many psychological impacts," according to the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.

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Kelsey Hudson, a climate-aware therapist who works at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, said climate "distress"  the term she prefers to use because it encapsulates a wider range of emotions  shouldn't be viewed as a diagnosis, but rather a normal and rational response to an existential crisis.

"We don't want to challenge people to reframe or change how theyre thinking, because its invalidating to say, 'Youre anxious about the climate crisis? Thats catastrophizing.' Its really not, its adaptive."

Kelsey Hudson is a "climate-aware" therapist who works at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hudson, who lives in Cambridge, also runs a private practice specifically dedicated to young people and adults with climate distress. Her clients  a lot of whom are activists  are experiencing overwhelm, traumatic stress, grief, sadness and anger, she said.

"Many of my clients are angry with the focus on individual action, versus the need for societal action," Hudson said. "And many are distressed how climate change is an inequality multiplier, how the impacts will not be felt equitably amongst people."

From not having kids to battling anxiety:Climate change is shaping life choices and affecting mental health

Because people of color are inequitably touched by climate change, research has shown they care more about it, too.

A 2020 Yale University study found that Hispanics/Latinos (69%) and African-Americans (57%) are more likely to be alarmed or concerned about global warming than whites (49%). They're also more likely, the study showed, to join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action.

'I wish I had been wrong'

On a spring morning in 2014, Kate Schapira, a poet who teaches at Brown University, set up a table and stool in a downtown Providence, Rhode Island park and put a hand-painted sign out in front. It read: CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING 5. THE DOCTOR IS IN.

Part public art installation and part serious effort to stimulate conversation around a subject that was consuming her, Schapiras act, with its tongue-in-cheek nod to Lucys psychiatric booth in the Peanuts comic strip, drew international media attention.

What seemed a novelty then, appears prescient now. Schapiras expression of her worries over the warming planet came before the words climate anxiety or climate grief entered the popular lexicon.

Starting in 2014, Kate Schapira set up a Peanuts' Lucy-style "doctor-is-in" booth at Burnside Park in Providence, Rhode Island's Kennedy Plaza, where she talked to people about climate change anxiety. [The Providence Journal/Kathy Borchers]

I wish I had been wrong, she said recently. I wish that was a turning point for the damage that all of us are caught up in.

Schapira is not a trained therapist. She came up with the idea for counseling sessions after talking with friends who all believed that climate change was happening but didnt feel the same type of angst. She wanted to sit down with strangers to understand if they felt differently.

As it turned out, there were other things of more pressing concern to many of them  housing uncertainty, health problems, domestic abuse. To Schapira, the problems appeared to lead back to the same economic systems and power structures that gave rise to the fossil fuel industry and climate change.

Costs of climate change: What are the effects of climate change costing consumers, on average?

It spurred her to community action, getting involved, for example, in the successful fight against a proposed natural gas-burning power plant in northwest Rhode Island. And she encouraged others to do the same, giving them the names of social justice and environmental groups.

What I was trying to do was connect people with each other and with their own strength and potential, she said.

Schapira kept up the sessions summer after summer, setting up in farmers markets, art fairs and other community events. Before going on hiatus last year because of the pandemic, she had talked to more than 1,200 people.

Now, shes putting together a pitch for a book that would be based on those conversations.

Climate change impacting decisions on whether to have children

Schapira feels better for the work, but her fears about the climate have hardly eased. A few years ago, she and her husband decided not to have children, a choice made in response to a combination of environmental and political concerns. In part, Schapira feels that having a baby would shift her focus from activism, she said in an essay for the website Catapult.

The couple is not alone in questioning whether to bring children into an uncertain world. Four of every 10 young people are hesitant about having children, according to the results of the global survey released in September.

Lucia Hillman is a junior at Portsmouth High School in New Hampshire, and with Doyle participates in the school's Eco Club. She started listening to a podcast on climate change that said deciding to forgo having children is the best thing someone can do to ease the crisis.

"I think I would want to have kids one day, but whether I raise a climate activist or not, how will that help the planet?" Hillman said. "And then I think, by then, will it even be safe?"

Lucia Hillman, a high school student, is already thinking about whether she'll have children one day, because she's worried about climate change.

Seven years ago, when Meghan Kallman, an activist and academic in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, met Josephine Ferorelli, a Chicago-based writer, they had an immediate connection and got around to sharing similarly conflicting thoughts around having children.

The exchange helped expose what they saw as a gap at the time between the talk around climate change and how people believed it would affect their lives. And it spurred them to create Conceivable Future, a global forum for people to air their concerns about reproduction in the age of climate change.

I had this feeling that these are the type of conversations we want people to be having, Ferorelli said of that first meeting with Kallman. These judgment-free conversations that permit people to feel into the experience theyre having, instead of imagining a glacier or a polar bear, but understanding that the crisis is here as well and we wont get anywhere until we understand the stakes of it.

The group's website has dozens of testimonies of people grappling with questions about their carbon footprint and more severe climate impacts.

Every time a family member or friend announces they are expecting a baby, I am overwhelmed with sadness and helplessness, a person identified as Kate wrote.

But while the site and the house parties organized by Conceivable Future are designed to facilitate discussion, Kallman and Ferorelli  neither of whom have decided whether to have children  hope that their work can also lead to action.

For us, the only right thing is to fix our system so that we emit less and we create fair jobs, opportunities, lives, access to healthcare. Its the only moral position that were taking, said Kallman, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston who was elected to the Rhode Island Senate last year.

'The kids are not alright'

Olivia Chatfield found herself driving towards Alewife station this summer without sight of the Boston skyline  smoke coming from the western wildfires blanketed Massachusetts and much of New England.

Her summer school students noticed it, too, as they readied to go outside for playground time. "These are 5- and 6-year-olds, and they were asking questions about it, asking whats going on," she said.

Wildfire in Santa Barbara County, Calif., on Oct. 12, 2021.

Looking back, Chatfield  who lives in Somerville and is a member of Sunrise Movement Boston  wishes she'd educated them with stories on how Indigenous people have historically used fires to take care of ecosystems, paired with modern-day fire safety information. Helping them relate the problem to something tangible, she said, is important. Otherwise, they just have fear.

Being a young person herself and spending her working life with even younger people as a fifth-grade teacher in Revere, Chatfield said the climate crisis paired with an overall feeling of instability is "really heavy." Many of her students are also low-income and of color, meaning they're historically more exposed to climate change impacts.

'By design or neglect': Flood, climate hazards threaten MA's redlined neighborhoods

"The kids are not alright," said Chatfield. "The most tangible way we can get the kids alright is actually changing things, on a big scale. If we want to improve youth mental health, we also have to make a better place for them to be kids."

That large-scale change is what keeps Vickash Mohanka up at night  the fact that politicians have proven so far they're unwilling to take those steps. Over the last few years, he said, he's struggled to find optimism.

"We all feel like we're left out to hang, while nothing is happening to help regular people."

Mohanka, a Westborough resident, previously worked for the Massachusetts state Legislature writing energy legislation, but ultimately chose to leave for climate activism work. He found working in politics frustrating, vexing.

COP26 summit: Biden arrives in Glasgow with leaders under pressure to turn climate pledges into action

"We spend all this time accurately describing problems, and then we come up with solutions that are nowhere near the scale of the problem," he said.

Christina Wertz joined members of the climate advocacy group 350 Central MA at the White City Shopping Center to protest state lawmakers' failure to agree on a climate bill on Jan. 2

'The power of talking'

Remaining hopeful and empowered is the theme of several recently published books, including Saving Us: A Climate Scientists Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World," All the Feelings Under the Sun" and "How to Talk to Your Kids about Climate Change: Turning Angst Into Action."

A popular online newsletter called Gen Dread focuses on "staying sane in the climate and wider ecological crisis."

People can languish in their climate distress, or they can turn it on its head and use it for good.

Hillman, 16, believes strongly in local displays of collective action. She cited a recent climate strike in her downtown that drew 40 people.

"I think these small but very significant representations of fight for climate action, those really empower others," she said. "The more people that act and show care, its signs of hope for change."

Pictured are demonstrators at the Youth Climate Strike in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Sept. 24, who demonstrated in solidarity with more than 1,000 strike events across the globe.

Hudson agrees that young people talking to each other is perhaps one of the most powerful mechanisms for combatting climate distress  in lieu of systemic change by governments and industries.

"One thing I come back to over and over again is that there is pretty much nothing as powerful as peer messengers," Hudson said. "The power of talking about your feelings to friends, families, teachers cannot be overstated. And that is something I talk with a lot of my child and teen clients about. No, you cant vote, but you could talk with several of your friends and have a great deal of influence."

The idea of focusing on solutions is also at the center of a training program on climate change communication that Jennifer West leads in Rhode Island. Hundreds of people with state and federal agencies, environmental organizations, land trusts and political groups have gone through the sessions, says West, a coordinator with the Narragansett Bay Research Reserve.

For scientists and other environmental officials who work every day on issues related to climate change, a feeling of beleaguerment can set in. How does a wetlands expert not get down knowing that salt marshes, which are vital habitats for fish and birds, are being flooded by rising seas?

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: WHOI scientists investigate climate change link to red tide expansion into Arctic

Wests response: There are places where marshes have been elevated by adding sand on top of them and then planting grasses in the new material.

Thats what were taught to do, she said. If we dont give people some hope and give people the tools to effectively communicate to give others hope, then were kind of doomed.

And similar to what Conceivable Future and others are doing, the aim is more than just having a conversation.

The communities that are most resilient are the ones with the highest social cohesion. Its all about getting with other people and talking about this, West said. Hope promotes dialogue and dialogue promotes action.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Climate anxiety impacting lives of Gen Z and others. Here's how.
By Nelson Bocanegra

TUNJA, Colombia (Reuters) - A Colombian exporter of long-horned beetles, a popular pet for Japanese children, has created its own cryptocurrency to avoid high commissions on international sales.

"It's an alternative to be able to export the beetles to Japan or any other part of the world and be able to use it as a method of payment," said Carmelo Campos, chief programmer of Tierra Viva, based in the central Andean city of Tunja.

The company exports Hercules, Neptunus and elephant beetle species which can fetch up to $300 a pair in Tokyo. The sales commission can reach as high as 10% of export value, motivating Tierra Viva to create the currency.

The Kmushicoin, named after the long-horned beetle Kabutomushi in Japanese, is accepted as payment by some 220 businesses in Tunja, including restaurants, clothing stores, cafes and hardware shops.

Tierra Viva uses a percentage of all its sales to buy back the coinage, Campos said.

Kmushicoin was worth 0.30 cents when it was created in 2019. It traded at $1.84 on Tuesday.

"Our objective is to be able to use it as a method of payment at the national level," Campos said, adding an electricity provider has asked whether its customers could pay their bill with Kmushicoin.

The beetles, which can grow to the size of an adult's hand and live up to 17 months, are fed vegetable and fruit scraps as larvae, producing a fertilizer which Tierra Viva also sells.

The beetles have long been favored as pets for Japanese children, as well as good luck amulets.

"In total, including all the stages of metamorphosis, we can have more than 50,000 beetles playing their part in our operations," said Tierra Viva founder German Viasus, as two beetles crawled up his shirt.

(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Richard Chang)
NY Daily News

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said what many were thinking after a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges on Friday. This is America, Kerr said Friday before his team played the Pistons. Were treading down a dangerous path. It wasnt a shocking verdict, but one that poses great risk going forward if we continue to go down this path. ... States determining that people can just ...
Comedian Nikki Glaser

Comedian Nikki Glaser likes to talk about sex, from diaphragms and tampons to dating and relationships.

A producer-host of MTV and Comedy Central shows and The Nikki Glaser Podcast, the Cincinnati native often tests taboos.

After doing Bangin, her first Netflix stand-up special in 2019, and hosting Blind Date, a Bravo dating show, Glaser is hosting FBOY Island," a new HBO Max dating reality-TV series.

Glaser spoke by phone from her home in St. Louis ahead of her appearance Nov. 12 at the Southern Theatre.

Q: Whats your approach to standup?

Glaser: Just talking honestly onstage about things I feel are important. I speak from my life as a 37-year-old woman who is single, tired, overworked and under-loved, pretty anxious, depressed and trying to survive ... a very relatable state of mind.

Q: As a Cincinnati native, whats it like performing in Ohio?

Glaser: I enjoy Midwest values. My family is from Ohio so its like performing at home. Columbus has some of the best crowds. They get it. I dont have to dumb down anything. Ive done the Funny Bone, so this is quite an upgrade.

More: Everyone is ready to laugh again, and 23 comedians are on their way to Columbus to help

Q: What new subjects will you address?

Glaser: My act now is all new. ... Im going into the psychology of dating, relationships, attachment, the male fear of commitment and even my fear of commitment.

Q: Youve been hailed for your no-holds-barred style, which includes profanity. How does that work?

Glaser: It works for me because it comes from an honest place. Im not trying to be anyone Im not. I dont like that were so uptight about sex and subjects like depression, suicide, racism and sexism. I think its ridiculous that you can lose your career if you even touch on those things. That makes me want to talk about it.

Q: Why do you discuss sex so much?

Glaser: I keep getting pegged as a sex comic  and I use "pegged" pun-intended.

People write me off as a one-note performer, or say thats all female comics do. But maybe were smarter than that, and are onto something.

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People made me feel ashamed about asking about those things. ... (Discussing) air travel or politics doesn't interest me, but Im fascinated by how weird it is that we get naked, (have sex), and then get dressed and dont talk about it.

Q: Why do you host a reality-dating series?

Glaser: Ive always wanted to work in the reality space, my favorite type of show. FBoy Island is awesome, with a sense of humor from its title. They wanted a comedic voice representing people invested in these over-the-top, pressure-cooker situations. Contestants take it seriously, but I also appeal to those making fun of it from their couch at home.

Q: What was it like doing the first season, filmed from February to April on the Cayman Islands, during the pandemic?

Glaser: Fboy Island was an escape from the world. They had no cases, so it felt like it was back in 2019 before COVID. ... I got to be myself while also getting to watch a show Id normally be glued to.

Q: Did the pandemic change your comedy?

Glaser: Everything has shifted. My act has changed because Im sick of going onstage and just making fun of things. Ive done that for 17 years of my career; now Im trying to use comedy to make people feel better about themselves. After going through what seemed to be the end of the world, I come at it from a less nihilistic perspective.

Q: Was the lockdown difficult?

Glaser: I got depressed and had to move back in with my parents in St. Louis. Through the lockdown, I was forced to look at my coping mechanisms, like marijuana, a mild eating disorder, and other behaviors keeping me from intimacy. Most comedians are deeply insecure and dont feel we deserve love. Any comedian who doesnt admit that is lying.

Q: You quit smoking tobacco in 2009 and quit drinking in 2011. Was that hard?

Glaser: I quit after reading Allen Carrs Easy Way to Quit... books. Not drinking alcohol has been the best thing that ever happened to me. I can work a lot harder and its made my comedy sharper because Im not hung over.

If you did a chart of my success, everything started happening right when I quit drinking. It freed me up from the hangovers. ... A lot of comedians need alcohol to get bravery to go onstage, but then they get sloppy.

Q: How can comedy help during dark times?

Glaser: Everyones gone through really low lows. Now that were finally coming out of the pandemic, people are willing to admit how bad it was, and talk about that with some perspective. The comedians job is to say things everyone is thinking but too scared to say, or hadnt even thought about. The best comedians take relatable experiences and highlight the absurdity, hypocrisy or frustrations of it.

My goal is to say what everyone is thinking or saying so that everyone can laugh about it.

mgrossberg1@gmail.com

@mgrossberg1

At a glance

The Columbus Association for the Performing Arts will present One Night with Nikki Glaser at 7 p.m. Nov. 12, at the Southern Theatre, 21 E. Main St. Tickets cost $38.50 at CBUSArts Ticket Center (614-469-0939, www.cbusarts.com)

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Cincinnati native Nikki Glaser to make a stop in Columbus Nov. 12
When winter arrives, shoppers still will have the opportunity to buy products grown and raised in Ohio.

The Common Greens Winter Market will be 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays from Dec. 4 through April 16 on the plaza level inside the Ohio History Center, 800 E. 17th Ave., Columbus. The market will not be held Christmas Day or New Year's Day.

Common Greens, a Columbus-based nonprofit, will hold a winter farmers market from 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays from Dec. 4 through April 16. The market will be closed Christmas and New Year's Day.

"Winter markets allow producers to bring in more income for their families, farms and businesses," said Michelle White, executive director of Common Greens, which operates summer farmers markets in Bexley, Clintonville and Upper Arlington. "Having a steady revenue stream enables them to make necessary improvements to infrastructure and equipment.

"For farmers, it allows them to maintain their soil and land instead of having to find work off the farm. Winter markets are also great for consumers wanting to support these businesses and eat fresh, local food all year."

Last winter, Common Greens operated a pre-order, drive-thru market during the winter. The nonprofit organization has not held a winter market since 2014.

The partnership with the Ohio History Center was forged for the winter market after the Clintonville Farmers Market was moved to its parking lot in April 2020 because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

"When they heard we were looking for an indoor space for a winter market, they offered up their plaza level as a potential location, which we jumped for," White said.

White said customers can expect to find a marketplace filled with produce, meats, dairy, eggs, baked goods and a variety of artisanal food products. She said farmers also will have winter squash, potatoes, root vegetables, onions and fresh greens.

Additionally, she said, guests to the Ohio History Center will be asked to "pay what you want" for museum admission during market hours, which "means everyone will be able to access their educational resources regardless of income."

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Admission to the Ohio History Center typically is $13 for adults, $11 for ages 60 and older, $7 for ages 4 to 12 and free for age 3 and younger.

Were excited to provide a unique backdrop and experience for this winter market, said Jen Cassidy, director of the Ohio History Center and Ohio Village. In addition to locally grown foods and artisan goods, our team is eager to help guests take home a bit of Ohios rich natural and cultural history."

Like the Common Greens summer markets, the winter market provides a $1-for-$1 match of up to $25 per market for SNAP and P-EBT shoppers as part of the Produce Perks Midwest network. According to White, Common Greens markets have redeemed more than $80,000 in fresh food incentives in 2021.

Customers also may pre-order items through a centralized e-commerce platform at commongreensohio.org.

The online market store will be open 10 a.m. Tuesdays through 5 p.m. Thursdays.

The availability of winter markets means I can keep areas of the farm fertile and productive, which translates into less loss of biodiversity in the soil systems," said Dan Woods, owner of 9N Farm in Greenfield. It also means a steadier income flow throughout the year instead of having to plan for part-time work off the farm over the winter."

Likewise, Don Jones, who operates Kingdom Fish with his wife, Lisa, in Rushsylvania, said he hopes the market will help him boost winter sales of tilapia and perch raised at their farm.

"The primary motivation for taking part in the winter farmers market is to sell fish," Jones said. "After the summer farmers market season is over, our revenue stream is cut down quite a bit.

"It's the freshest fish you can buy in central Ohio. I harvest them Friday afternoon, the day before, and then we take them right into the processing room and fillet them."

White said she is pleased there will be more to the market than shopping.

"The market will be a consistent weekly outlet for purchasing local food over the winter," White said. "We plan to augment the shopping experience with regularly scheduled live music and kids activities.

"Families will be welcome to explore the Ohio History Center museum's exhibits, as well. I think the market will be a community asset, where people can look forward to accessing high-quality food, making connections with local producers and enjoying a morning out with friends or family."

nellis@thisweeknews.com

@ThisWeekNate

This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Common Greens to bring winter farmers market to Ohio History Center
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After suffering unspeakable abuses and deprivation at the hands of their parents, the Turpin siblings -- it seemed -- were on the path to a new life: a future with the resources needed to start fresh, to make up for the years they were locked away from the world. Nearly four years ago, after authorities rescued the 13 Turpin siblings from their family home in Perris, California, where they were subjected to brutal violence and deprived of food, sleep, hygiene, education, and health care, advocates and county leaders assured the siblings -- and a concerned public -- that help was on the way. "We are confident, given what they've been through and how resilient they are, that they're going to be really successful," said Jack Osborn, a court-appointed attorney for the seven adult children, after their parents' sentencing in 2019.
(Bloomberg) -- More than 20 countries have pledged to stop funding foreign fossil fuel projects, though the impact of the deal is undermined by the absence of key countries.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The pact, whose signatories include Canada and the U.S., isnt binding but aims to stop foreign fossil-fuel funding by the end of 2022. U.K. energy minister Greg Hands said it has the potential to shift more than $15 billion annually of public finance.

But the holdouts undermine the impact. China, Japan, South Korea and Spain havent signed on and those countries together -- in the two years through 2020 -- funneled some $32 billion to fossil fuel projects, according to analysis by Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth.

In some last-minute drama, Italy, which is co-hosting COP, joined the accord on Thursday morning. Rome had told the U.K. on Wednesday night it wouldnt sign, according to people familiar with the situation. A spokeswoman for Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani said negotiators had been working to the deadline.

The agreement applies to new, direct public support for unabated fossil fuel energy projects. It has exceptions in limited and clearly defined circumstances. Some of the signatories are on the list as potential recipients of cash rather than funders.

Greenpeace and CAFOD were among non-government organizations to welcoming the pact -- with reservations.

This statement is a start, but we urgently need more countries on board. Public finance shouldnt be anywhere near fossil fuels if we want any chance of keeping within 1.5 degrees C, said Robin Mace-Snaith, policy lead for climate at CAFOD.

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Read: COP Aims to End Coal, But the World Is Still Addicted

The U.K. also announced a separate pledge by dozens of institutions and countries to phase out coal power, including 18 nations, such as Vietnam, Poland and Chile, making such a commitment for the first time. The U.S. and China arent on the list and the plan falls short of the U.K. hosts initial COP ambition to consign coal to history.

Under the pact, nations aim to stop the use of coal-fired power generation in the 2030s and 2040s, and agreed to end investments in the sector both domestically and overseas.

Read: HSBC, NatWest and Lloyds Among Lenders Ending New Coal Financing

Both the Group of Seven and G-20 have already agreed to stop financing overseas coal projects. The U.K., U.S. and the European Union have announced restrictions on foreign fossil fuel finance.

In 2020, G-20 nations alone contributed nearly $600 billion to oil, gas and coal projects, according to BloombergNEF estimates. Activists hope to use the joint statement to help pressure financiers and countries that didnt sign the pledge and are still devoting tens of billions to foreign fossil projects annually.

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Now that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for use in children ages 5 through 11, there's concern that some will develop myocarditis, a swelling of the heart muscle.

But it's not clear how many  and millions of children will have to be vaccinated before it is known.

Trials in younger children have been too small to show the rare side effect, just as trials in adults did not reveal myocarditis as a possible side effect of the shots.

While acknowledging that some children probably will suffer the chest pain, shortness of breath or fluttering heartbeat of myocarditis, two panels of vaccine and immunology experts decided over the past two weeks that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh this risk.

None of the 3,000 children ages 5 to 11 who participated in the Pfizer clinical trial developed myocarditis. No other serious side effects turned up in large numbers in the group or in the more than 200 million American adults and teenagers who have gotten COVID-19 vaccines since late last year.

Vaccine side effects mainly include short-term sore arms, headache, muscle pain and fatigue.

Children ages 5 to 11 will receive a dose one-third as large as given to adolescents and adults to minimize side effects. Studies show that their immune reaction is similar, despite the lower dose, and that the vaccine is more than 90% effective at preventing coronavirus infections in the age group.

An expert in myocarditis who spoke before two federal advisory panels said the low risk for the condition should not keep people from vaccinating their children against COVID-19.

"Getting COVID I think is much riskier to the heart than getting this vaccine, no matter what age and sex you are," Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist with Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta, told an advisory committee Tuesday. "The risk of having some sort of bad heart involvement is much higher if you get COVID than if you get this vaccine."

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Oster said children ages 5 to 11 are generally less likely than teens to develop myocarditis, and he expects rates in children after vaccination will be lower, too.

"I believe it is less likely that the 5- to 11-year-olds will have myocarditis (after vaccination), although we will watch and see for sure," he said. "I don't think it will be nearly to the extent that the older adolescents and young adults have."

Since early in the pandemic, it has been clear that an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, like many other pathogens, can trigger myocarditis.

Vaccine experts were surprised earlier this year when surveillance systems began suggesting that a number of people were developing the condition within a month of their second shot.

The risk for myocarditis after vaccination varies with age and sex. Older adolescent males are at highest risk.

Among the vaccinated, r oughly 69 out every 1 million 16-and 17-year-old males have developed the condition, compared with just 8 out of every 1 million females of the same age, government data shows. By the mid- to late-20s, the rate falls to about 11 out of every 1 million males and 1 in 1 million females.

A large database outside the government found even lower rates of myocarditis in recently vaccinated people.

Overall, 19 people per 1 million experience myocarditis after getting the COVID-19 vaccine  pretty much the same as the general population, according to data from the Epic Health Research Network, which includes a large database of electronic medical records.

Leah Lefkove, 9, shows off her vaccination sticker just before being the first child to be vaccinated at the Viral Solutions vaccination and testing site in Decatur, Ga., on the first day COVID-19 vaccinations were available for children from 5 to 11 on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.

Epic researchers examined records of 15 million people vaccinated between Dec. 11, 2020, and June 9, 2021. While specific cases of myocarditis among the vaccinated get a lot of attention, "when you look at the big numbers, it's just not that different from the normal baseline rate," Dr. Christopher Alban, vice president of clinical informatics at Epic, said in an interview Wednesday.

"The unique thing about this is it's a very large data set," said his colleague Dr. Howard Bregman, director of clinical informatics. "We were able to compare apples to apples by saying the rate as we calculated it was compared to a rate before COVID. In that context, it was close to baseline."

Government data also suggests that there are different types of myocarditis, Oster told both advisory panels.

He described three manifestations of myocarditis. The first, which doctors have long been familiar with and which Oster called "classic myocarditis," follows infection with viruses, bacteria, protozoa or parasites. It can also be caused by drug sensitivities, toxins and autoimmune diseases.

Of those with classic myocarditis, more than two-thirds are males, and the risk is highest in the first year of life, probably because of genetic causes, Oster said, and in the late-teens and early 20s, which has been linked to high levels of the hormone testosterone.

November 2, 2021: An eight year old child receives the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine for 5-11 year old kids at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. An expert panel unanimously recommended Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid vaccine for five- to 11-year-olds on Nov. 2, the penultimate step in the process that will allow injections in young children to begin this week in the United States.

The second form of myocarditis follows a condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome, seen in both children and adults after a COVID-19 infection. Eight percent to 9% of people with the syndrome develop myocarditis, according to data Oster presented.

The third, seemingly distinct version, follows vaccination and appears to be milder and shorter-lasting, Oster said.

Classic myocarditis after infection can lead to serious, lingering effects and even death, Oster told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel Tuesday. "We don't think this vaccine-induced myocarditis has nearly the same acute outcomes."

Of 1,640 possible cases reported to a government reporting system, 877 have so far met the CDC case definition of myocarditis, and more are still to be investigated. Of those, Oster said, 34 didn't require hospitalization, and more than three-quarters of those who did were released within a few days. No deaths were linked to this vaccine-associated myocarditis.

Of 16 adolescents who developed myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, most of them this summer, 31% were considered fully recovered and did not need to take medication or restrict their exercise. One-quarter still had symptoms and 13% were still taking medication. (The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the only one authorized for use in minors.)

Of 14 adults ages 18 to 39 who developed myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 43% were considered fully recovered and 29% were still taking medication. Of 18 adults who developed myocarditis after receiving the Moderna vaccine, half were considered fully recovered and 39% were still on medication, according to data Oster presented.

Shelbyville Central's Cayden Puckett (12) warms up before a game against Tullahoma at Shelbyville Central High School in Shelbyville, Tenn., Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021. Puckett returned to the field for the first time on Thursday, eight months after being diagnosed with COVID-19, and about seven months after learning he had myocarditis.

It's not clear whether any of these people will have long-term complications, Oster said, but 91% of cardiologists or health care providers interviewed about their patients with vaccine-induced myocarditis indicated that the person was "fully" or "probably" recovered.

The American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology suggest that anyone who has myocarditis avoid strenuous physical activity, including competitive sports.

Oster also said he has not seen an increased risk for myocarditis among people with congenital heart disease. He said he tells families of children with heart disease "I am much more worried about what would happen to their child if they got COVID than I am if they were to get this vaccine."

Contact Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Side effects of COVID vaccine in kids: Myocarditis is rare
Jo Dalton, a pediatric nurse working at Hamilton County Public Health, shows toys and devices that will be used to help children feel safe and comfortable while they get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Young Cincinnati-area children can now roll up their sleeves for a COVID-19 vaccine but they might be wincing when they do it.

Jo Dalton, a pediatric nurse working for Hamilton County Public Health, has seen it a lot during her 20-year career: "They manifest this anxiety even before they arrive," she said.

Dalton says she has a mission to end, or at least diminish, the fears. She's been teaching Hamilton County Public Health nurses how to administer inoculation with fewer shrieks and tears. She has advice for parents, too.

The lessons could become important soon, as an independent group of experts advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children 5 to 11.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices committee Tuesday voted 14-0 in favor, recommending the vaccine for U.S. children in the age group under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization.

Later in the day, the CDCs director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, agreed with the panel. The CDC approval creates the first opportunity for Americans under 12 to get the powerful protection of any COVID-19 vaccine.

Questions about COVID-19 vaccine for kids 5-11? Cincinnati Children's expert gives answers

Ohio Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff lauded the decision.

"The authorization of this COVID-19 vaccine for younger Ohioans is yet another crucial turning point in this pandemic," he said in a statement, "allowing us to better protect young children from severe complications from COVID-19."

Nearly 206,000 Ohio children age 17 or younger have been infected with the novel coronavirus. The CDC's action will make nearly a million Ohioans ages 5 to 11 eligible for vaccination.

Hamilton County Public Health has received the syringes for children's vaccines, and on Tuesday received 1,200 pediatric doses of Pfizer BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for young children, said spokesman Mike Samet.

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Thanks to Dalton, the clinics will have stretchy and squeezable toys that kids can play with while they're being inoculated. Dalton even brought "buzzy bees," vibrating devices that stick to the child's arm and distract from the pain sensation while an injection is given.

The vaccine, ordered from the Ohio Health Department, was shipped directly from Pfizer, Samet said. It comes in an orange-capped vial, as opposed to the purple-capped vials that are for people 12 and older. It's the same vaccine at a third of the dosage given to those 12 and older.

COVID-19 Pfizer BioNTech vaccine doses for children ages 5 to 11 arrive Tuesday at Hamilton County Public Health department. There were 1,200 doses in this package, officials said.

How can I help my child stay calm?

If your plan for getting your child vaccinated doesn't include Hamilton County Public Health, you can still help your child de-stress, Dalton said.

"Children take their cues from their parents," she said, and she recommends that adults ask their questions in advance of their child's inoculation and remain calm.

Try to make the visit "a little fun," Dalton suggested. Allow your child to bring a comforting toy. Be sure to answer your child's questions sincerely, but honestly, and if possible, hold your child as they get vaccinated, she said.

Nurse Jo Dalton shows toys and devices that will be used to help children feel safe and comfortable while getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

"When they hold their child, it reduces the child's stress and it helps the nurse  do a procedure," Dalton said.

How can I find a vaccination site for my child?

Parents or guardians must be with their children during a vaccination. Samet suggested looking for a vaccination location through the Health Collaborative's vaccine web page, Test and Protect. There you can click on a button for vaccines for children 5 to 11, and get to a list of public pediatric providers.

Cincinnati City Health Department has vaccines available, and asks that once the approval for the 5- to 11-year-olds is given, parents secure a spot for vaccination online through ArmorVax.com.

Appointments are encouraged for first doses, said Maryse Amin, assistant health commissioner. A parent is required to make an account for a minor to schedule an appointment, she said. Anyone who does not have access to the webpage may call 513-357-7462 to schedule.

Where should my child go in Northern Kentucky?

St. Elizabeth Healthcare has ordered vaccines for all of its primary care and pediatric physician practices, said spokesman Guy Karrick. Families are encouraged to schedule an appointment for children's vaccines with their pediatrician or primary care doctor through MyChart or call their doctor's office.

"The thought is to give people an opportunity to have that one-on-one conversation with their doctor regarding anything related to the vaccine  mainly, is it safe for my kid?" Karrick said.

Northern Kentuckians who do not have a St. Elizabeth physician may want to check the Northern Kentucky Health Department's vaccine information for vaccine availability. The health department will vaccinate children 5 and older a day or so after approval is given, said spokeswoman Robin Feltner.

Residents may also check with local pharmacies and their children's pediatricians for vaccine availability.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children, being labeled and packaged at a European manufacturing facility.

Will Cincinnati Children's administer the vaccines?

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center began providing the vaccines Wednesday at its Avondale campus and will offer the vaccine at other locations, including the Liberty Campus in Butler County, Green Township outpatient center, Hopple Street Health Center and Cincinnati Childrens primary care offices.

Appointments are preferred, hospital officials said. On Tuesday evening, the medical center updated its COVID-19 vaccine scheduling page on its website.

The Cincinnati Children's Gamble Vaccine Research Center has been involved in clinical trials for 11 COVID-19 vaccines, including the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

Clermont County Public Health is also preparing to administer vaccines to the youngest group so far to be approved for a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

"We received our initial shipment of the childhood COVID vaccine this morning," said Keith Robinson, spokesman for Clermont County Public Health.

He said the department will likely be able to start vaccines next week.

He suggested that parents check the health department website's COVID-19 vaccine page periodically for appointment availability and other information and noted many pediatricians will be providing the vaccine to children.

The latest vaccine information was not updated as of Tuesday afternoon on all of the region's vaccine providers' websites, but officials said they anticipated providing any new information soon.

Associated Press contributed.

COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 12: What you need to know about the shots and children

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: COVID-19 vaccines for 5-11 ready, how to relieve childrens' anxiety
New cases of Covid in Europe are nearing record levels (AFP via Getty Images)

The current rate of Covid-19 transmission in Europe is of "grave concern", the World Health Organisation's Europe head, Hans Kluge, told a media briefing on Thursday.

"The current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region, is of grave concern," Mr Kluge said, adding that new cases were nearing record levels, exacerbated by the more transmissible Delta variant of the virus.

Belgium on Thursday reported a steep rise in Covid-19 infections and hospitalisations back to levels last experienced in October 2020, three days after the United States advised its citizens against travelling to the country that hosts the EU and NATO headquarters.

Data from Belgium's Sciensano health institute showed 6,728 daily new cases on average in the last 14 days, up 36 per cent from the previous week. An average of 164 patients with Covid-19 were admitted to hospitals daily in the last seven days, a 31 per cent increase, and 343 patients were in intensive care.

Belgium went into its second coronavirus lockdown in October 2020, a few days after recording similar hospitalisation numbers.

On Monday, the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) added Belgium to its highest risk level, discouraging international travel there for those not fully vaccinated.

"Because of the current situation in Belgium, even fully vaccinated travellers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants," it said.

There are nine other European countries on the US maximum Covid risk level including Britain, Austria, Croatia, Greece and the Baltic countries.

More than 8.6 million people in Belgium have been fully vaccinated, 74 per cent of its population. But the country has eased face mask requirements in recent months and is now facing a fresh spike in infections as winter nears.

So far in the nearly two years of the pandemic, Belgium has had one of the world's highest per capita mortality rates, mostly due to deaths in care homes in the first wave.

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Reuters

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What is Plan B for tackling Covid in the UK this winter?

Bring back mandatory masks to defend against a winter Covid outbreak

Holidaymakers may need three jabs to travel abroad next summer
Attorneys for Ira Kleiman and W&K Info Defense Research began to paint an unflattering portrait of Craig Wright, his business practices and interpersonal dealings in a Miami court on Tuesday and Wednesday.

These two days of testimony formed part of the plaintiffs suit against Wright, revolving around his business dealings with the Kleimans late brother, David Kleiman. The crypto community has been watching this case closely because much of the financials at the heart of the case revolve around bitcoin wallets that have been linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

Read more: Kleiman v. Wright: Bitcoins Trial of the Century Kicks Off in Miami

Tuesdays witnesses included former Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen, who testified that Wright  the Australian computer scientist best known for his much-debated claim to be Nakamoto  bamboozled him.

In a prerecorded video deposition shown in court Tuesday, Andresen testified that he began to doubt Wrights claim after Wright notoriously failed to deliver cryptographic proof that he had access to Satoshis private keys.

In a prerecorded video deposition shown in court Tuesday, Andresen testified that he began to doubt Wrights claim after Wright notoriously failed to deliver cryptographic proof that he had access to Nakamotos private keys.

Im starting to doubt myself, and imagining the clever ways you could have tricked me, Andresen wrote to Wright on May 3, 2016, in an email presented in court.

The gobbledygook proof he published was certainly a deception, if not an outright lie, Andresen told attorneys for Kleiman. He bamboozled me, there.

Andresens testimony was just a taste of what was to come on days two and three of the Kleiman vs. Wright trial, which is being closely watched because of Wrights history of claiming to be the inventor of Bitcoin but failing to conclusively prove it.

If the plaintiffs win, Wright could be ordered to give them a portion of intellectual property rights and a share of up to 1.1 million bitcoins, worth $68 billion, that the plaintiffs claim Wright controls. Many in the crypto community, however, have called into question the existence of those coins and, if they do exist, whether Wright in fact controls them  and even if he does, whether the court will be able to force him to abide by the jurys decision.

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I never got a cent

Jamie Wilson, director of the Australian cybersecurity company Cryptoloc, testified via pre-taped video deposition about his former business relationship with Wright.

Wilson told the plaintiffs attorneys that he met Wright in 2012 after learning about bitcoin in 2011, and accepted a director role in several of Wrights companies, including Hotwire and Coin Exchange.

On Oct. 23, 2013, Wilson sent Wright an email resigning from his positions at four of Wrights companies.

I wasnt feeling comfortable, Wilson told the attorneys when they asked him his reason for resigning. I didnt like the way he went about business, his ethics and morals, the way he treated people.

Wilson said he became suspicious of Wright when he noticed a lot of bitcoin and money that originated in the United States on company balance sheets. Concerned that the money was the result of a U.S. government contract he was unaware of, Wilson said, he took his concerns to Wright, who told him the money was from unspecified research and development activities.

When Wilson dug deeper into company records, he told attorneys, he found that the money originated at W&K  the entity plaintiffs say represented a business agreement between Dave Kleiman and Wright to mine bitcoin and develop intellectual property relating to blockchain technology.

Wilson said his suspicion was increased by Wrights change in behavior and lifestyle after Dave Kleinmans death in April 2013. Before Kleinman died, Wilson described Wright as driving a very cheap car, living in rental properties and wearing hoodies.

After Dave Kleinmans death, Wilson described Wrights newfound interest in watches, flashy suits ... a massive change in lifestyle.

His arrogance, believing he had to change himself, it just caused a lot of problems, Wilson testified.

Wilson also said Wright never paid him  or any other employees at Hotwire  during the time period of Wilsons employment.

I did not receive one cent, Wilson said. He added that he was never reimbursed for travel expenses or the down payment on a rental property for an office, and that Wrights other employees were forced to borrow money from friends and family to stay afloat.

Wilson testified that he wasnt expecting to receive a salary, however, and found out about his supposed $150,000 per year salary only when the Australian Tax Office (ATO) informed him he needed to pay taxes on it, because Wright had reported the payment.

I never got a cent, anyway, Wilson reiterated.

Ira Kleiman takes the stand

David Kleimans brother Ira, the personal representative of the Kleiman estate and plaintiff in this case, took the stand on Wednesday.

Ira Kleiman told the jury that he first met Wright in February 2014, about a year after his brothers death, when Dave Kleimans friend Patrick Paige forwarded Ira an email from Wright (dated Feb. 12, 2014) discussing their alleged partnership to mine bitcoin.

A day after receiving Paiges email, Ira reached out to Wright asking for more information about his brothers purported involvement in the creation of bitcoin:

Can I ask you if Dave played a part in writing the original PDF under the Asian alias? Ira Kleiman wrote to Wright, in an apparent reference to Nakamotos seminal bitcoin white paper. I have no interest in public attention from it. I just think that it would be cool if David played a part in creating something so incredible.

The court then heard about two months of communication between Ira Kleiman and Wright, where the two discussed the role Wright claimed he and Dave played in the bitcoins creation.

I had math skills and some coding that frankly was crud (better than some, but really), Wright told Ira Kleiman in an email dated March 7, 2014. Dave could edit his way through hell and back. I am not a team player. I am a terrible boss and a slave driver, but with Dave I was far more ... Satoshi was a team.

Growing mistrust

But in April 2014, the relationship between Ira Kleinman and Wright appears to have begun to sour.

Ira Kleiman showed the jury an email he received on April 15, 2014, from Andrew Miller, an employee of the Australian Tax Office, about Dave Kleimans estate.

Ira Kleinman told the jury that, through Millers email, he learned for the first time that Wright had sued W&K in an Australian court and that Wright told Australian authorities he had paid Dave Kleinmans estate 40 million Australian dollars to fund the projects of W&K.

In the email, Miller asked Ira Kleiman a series of questions about W&K, including whether he was aware that Wright had taken legal action against the company in Australia, or that Dave Kleinmans estate had purportedly received a bond worth 40 million Australian dollars from Wright to fund W&Ks projects.

Millers email also said there was a settlement agreement for the transfer of property from W&K to an entity owned by Wright, and that a then-21-year-old Vietnamese woman named Uyen Nguyen had been appointed director of W&K. Miller asked Kleiman if he had instructed Nguyen to accept the settlement agreement.

Kleiman told the jury that, at the time of Millers email, he was not aware of W&K and had never met or heard of Nguyen. He also said that the estate had received no money from Wright or any related entities.

On April 23, 2014, Kleiman reached out to Wright by email for answers. I feel like there are discrepancies in the contracts between you and W&K, such as Daves signature, his resignation, transfer of all accountable value, Uyens role of director, BAA projects, etc...I do believe we need to remedy the lopsided contractual exchange, Kleiman wrote.

From these documents, it appears clear to see a systematic transfer of assets out of W&K back to you. Up until April 15, I was a complete believer in what you were telling me, Kleiman wrote in another email to Wright. But you never mentioned any of the actions you were taking against W&K prior to contacting us.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs showed the jury a contract allegedly signed by Dave Kleiman on April 2, 2013  24 days before his death  that gave Wright control of W&Ks assets.

The signature shown to the jury  crisp and slanted  differed vastly from prior signatures of Dave Kleimans, such as the one shown from his will, where he signed with a large, looping D followed by a scribble.

Thats not my brothers signature, Ira Kleiman told the jury, referring to the signature on the contract.

Later that month, on April 29, 2014, Miller wrote another email to Kleiman, asking him to confirm the veracity of a contract from March 2014 filed with the ATO by Wright.

It suggests that you acquired $10,500,000 worth of shares in an Australian company Coin Exch Pty Ltd. Were you aware of this, and if so, in what form did you pay this share of capital?

Kleiman told the jury he never bought shares of Coin Exchange.

Former nChain lawyer speaks

Jimmy Nguyen, a former attorney for nChain, the London-based company where Wright is chief scientist, also gave testimony about the nature of Wrights involvement at nChain and his claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

Nguyen testified that Wright told him that he and Dave Kleiman both posted from Satoshis accounts.

He also testified that, in 2014, Wright claimed he had more money than Rwanda.

Wright is set to take the stand on Thursday.

UPDATE: Background information about the case was added to the first paragraph.
Just over half of eligible D.C. families received child tax credit payments between July and September, according to an analysis by the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis.

And with the deadline fast approaching for non-tax filers to receive the payments this year, local organizations, such as Marys Center and the Mothers Outreach Network, are helping additional families enroll.

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Why it matters: The Biden administration has laid out a plan to extend the child tax credit an additional year before it sunsets in December. According to the IRS, 93,000 D.C. children are eligible.

The Social Policy Institutes analysis shows that the tax credit has been used by D.C. families to pay bills, purchase food and clothing, and pay for school expenses.

According to the analysis, low-to-middle income families were more likely to use the money to pay down debt, while high-income families were more likely to spend or save it.

What's happening: Last month, Marys Center  a community health center that serves around 60,000 people in D.C., including a large Latino population  hired Yudith Portillo as the centers temporary child tax outreach worker to help eligible families sign up for the tax credit.

Some families, she says, may not have received theirs because they didn't file their taxes while others may not have individual taxpayer identification numbers.

Part of her job is not just ensuring that families have the necessary numbers and documents to access the credit, but also the time to contact the IRS  a difficult task when many families work 9-5.

Its not just about families that dont have numbers. I had one family that filed last year  they had six children and they never got the money, Portillo said. We create an account and contact the IRS. [On Monday], they received the money.

Many of the families she works with are Spanish-speaking, she says. The White House began offering the non-filer tool in Spanish in July, but the IRS Child Tax Credit portal, which allows families to update information and check on the status of their payments, wont be available in Spanish until later this month.

Last month, the Mothers Outreach Network launched tax workshops with D.C. tax attorneys to help mothers in D.C. receive the child tax credit and other benefits.

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Melody Webb, the executive director and founder of the Mothers Outreach Network, says she often works with vulnerable mothers who may have misconceptions about the credit or be unaware of it altogether.

The biggest myth weve had to dispel is that people who are currently receiving safety net benefits arent actually eligible, Webb says.

For parents such as Fabiana Machado, a medical assistant at Marys Center, the child tax credit is catch-up money for bills, food, and housing costs.

The single mother has a four-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 16-year-old, making her eligible for an $800 monthly credit.

The child tax credit is helping more than I was hoping, Machado says. It helps make ends meet, I guess.

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Associated Press

A difficult political atmosphere for President Joe Biden may have become even more treacherous with the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. Biden was already facing sliding poll numbers with an electorate worn down by the coronavirus pandemic and increasing inflation. Now, the president finds himself caught between outraged Democrats  some of whom were already stewing over Bidens inability to land police reform and voting rights legislation  and Republicans looking to use the Rittenhouse case to exploit the national divide over matters of grievance and race.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos Getty Images

Last year, America saw some of the largest police reform protests in its history. These demonstrations called attention to real abuses and helped provide the political capital necessary for reforms from coast to coast.

But alongside demands for reform, there were also calls to go much further. The defund the police movement was born, which called for shifting resources away from police departments and towards other government functions. Unlike the broader police reform movement that came before it, this movement focused not so much on reforming police as the idea that policing itself needed to be rolled back or even abolished. The problem wasnt just quality, it was quantity.

But during this weeks elections, this more radical movement suffered a series of setbacks, suggesting that its progenitors werent aligned with voters facing an historic surge in homicides.

In Seattle, where Mayor Jenny Durkan chose not to run for re-election after her summer of love last year including the short-lived "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" in Seattle, voters favored former Council member Bruce Harrell, whos praised to hire more officers and improve response times (Make no mistake about it: Im not defunding the police) over M. Lorena Gonzalez, the council speaker who cut police funding by nearly 20% after backing a pledge to cut it in half. And in the race for city attorney, votes went with a Republican over a self-proclaimed police abolitionist with a history of incendiary, pro-rioting tweets. Neither contest was close.

This City Went From Defund to Planning a Massive New Police Fantasyland

In Buffalo, it momentarily appeared as though the activists had broken through when India Walton, a young socialist activist who marched in anti-police demonstrations in 2020, won the Democratic primary for mayor, defeating the four-term mayor Byron Brown. But Brown refused to bow out of the race, choosing instead to continue running through the general election despite the fact that his name wouldnt appear on the ballot.

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Rather than run away from policing, Brown capitalized on the fact that Waltonwho self-describes as a police abolitionistproposed cutting millions of dollars from the police budget. He ran an ad featuring local police decrying the cuts, warning that theyd lead to the firings of officers and a reduction in the force. His write-in campaign ended up succeeding, as he defeated Walton by double digits.

India Walton wants to cut $7.5 million from the Police Department. That means cutting 100 officers, mostly women and people of color. India Walton is too risky. pic.twitter.com/poOcYjOF6Q  Mayor Byron W. Brown (@byronwbrown) September 15, 2021

Elsewhere in the state, New York City voters chose former NYPD police officer Eric Adams, a Democrat, over Republican Curtis Sliwa, most famously known as the founder of the crime prevention nonprofit Guardian Angels.

Upon his victory in that contest, Adams spoke eloquently about how rising violent crime was on the minds of voters. When Im on the ground in Philadelphia, New York, Newark, it doesnt matter, families want their children educated, they want to be safe in their cities when we were talking in some parts of the country of disbanding police departments or family members were listening to gunshots and not alarm clocks that was just really out of step with what people wanted on the ground and I knew that, he told Chuck Todd.

But perhaps the biggest blow to the defund-the-police movement came in Minneapolis, the city that arguably set it off in the first place. Minneapolis voters handily defeated Question 2, which wouldve dismantled the police department and replaced it with a new department of public safety. Although its not clear exactly what the new department wouldve looked like, the referendum was broadly seen as an attempt to defund or even eliminate the police.

A glance at the map of the vote quickly reveals that much of north Minneapolis, a heavily African American area, failed to support Question 2.

This Liberal City Defunded the Police. Now Its Paying Cops to Stay.

Indeed, recent Pew polling finds that just 15 percent of American nationwide think spending on their local police should be reduced; it also found that black and Hispanic Democrats were more likely than white Democrats to support increased police funding.

That doesnt mean there werent a few bright spots for police critics on election night. Proposition A, which wouldve shifted additional funding to the police, failed in Austin, Texas; I produced a short documentary about this vote for Fox News. My takeaway from that experience is that while many residents worried about increased violent crime, they remained unconvinced that increasing police funding would tackle it, especially if it came at the expense of other parts of the city budget. While defunding police is unpopular, greatly increasing their resources can also be a difficult sell.

Boston also elected Michelle Wu, a progressive, as mayor. Wu is a proponent of police reforms and had, as a member of the city council, advocated for cuts to the police budget.

But the overall message voters sent on Tuesday night was that when it comes to policing, voters prefer mending it to ending it. While most people support reforms, they do not support large cuts to police budgets or staffing.

If the movement to defund the police wants to remain politically relevant, it needs to acknowledge peoples legitimate desire for public safety and consider that the main problem with policing is about quality, not quantity.

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WASHINGTON  Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey this week saw a surge in support from white women voters, made major inroads in Democratic-leaning suburbs and turned rural counties even redder, leading to a disastrous election night for Democrats

The voting trends signal trouble for President Joe Biden and Democrats before next year's 2022 midterm elections, when they already faced an uphill fight historically to keep control of the House and Senate.

Democrats will face challenges because of geography and redistricting, said Jennifer Lawless, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "But they can actually take a big lesson out of Tuesday and pass (the infrastructure and reconciliation) bills," she told USA TODAY, pointing to Biden's two pieces of legislation still being debated in Congress.

They need to demonstrate that unified control in Washington, in fact, does deliver to voters across the country, she added. They weren't able to do that this time.

Here's a breakdown of the voting patterns that produced a big night for Republicans and a major setback for Democrats.

Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin speaks at an election night party in Chantilly, Va., early Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, after he defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) ORG XMIT: VAAH333

Big GOP gains among white women and in suburbs

Helping drive Republican Glenn Youngkins victory in Virginia was a demographic that helped Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump last year: white women.

Youngkin saw a 15-point swing among white women voters over Trumps performance in the state in the 2020 presidential election, according to NBC exit polls, propelling Youngkin to an unofficial 2-point win in a state Biden carried by 10 percentage points.

His win came as public education  most notably debates over how race and racism are taught in the classroom, as well as clashes over mask and vaccine mandates  played prominently in the governors race.

More: 5 election takeaways: Race in education key in Virginia; a historic night for candidates of color

Biden won white women voters in Virginia over Trump by a 50%-49% margin, exit polls show. But those numbers shifted dramatically Tuesday. Youngkin carried the states white women voters over Democrat Terry McAuliffe by a sizable 57%-43% spread, according to NBC exit polls.

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White women made up 38% of Virginias electorate.

Their shift toward Republicans helped Youngkin expand margins in rural conservative counties and make major inroads in Virginias suburban Democratic strongholds outside Washington D.C., according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections.

Youngkin lost suburban Loudoun County by 11 percentage points, narrowing the margin considerably form Bidens 25-percentage-point victory there in 2020. While Biden won Fairfax County by 32 percentage points, McAuliffe won by 30 points. Youngkin trimmed the margin in Prince William County to 14 percentage points after Trump lost by 27 points.

Over the past decade, independents in Virginia's northern suburbs voted more Democratic, helping turn the state blue. That trend was upended Tuesday, with Youngkin carrying independents 54%-45, exit polls found.

Lawless noted that independent voters have shown they are willing to swing back and forth, which hurt Democrats during Tuesday's election.

"We saw them swing pretty substantially toward Biden in 2020," Lawless said. "But they swung away in 2021 because the Democrats didn't deliver on their promise."

Education polarization widens

Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties are home to the largest share of Virginias college-educated voters, who turned on Trump in overwhelming numbers to back Biden in 2020. Yet Youngkin did not improve over Trump among voters with college degrees, including women. Instead, he performed better than Trump among women who did not attend college.

McAuliffe won 62% of Virginias college-educated white women voters, topping Bidens 58% for this demographic, according to NBC exit polls. But McAuliffe carried only 25% of Virginias white women without college degrees after Biden won support of 44% of Virginias non-college-educated women.

More: 'Almost impossible': As education divide deepens, Democrats fear a demographic problem for future power

Among all non-college-educated voters in Virginia  regardless of race or gender Youngkin won 60%-40% over McAuliffe, exit polls show, while Biden won this voting block 53%-46% in Virginia. Meanwhile, McAuliffe narrowly improved among all college-educated voters, regardless of race or gender, winning 58%, compared to Bidens 57%.

Increasingly, U.S. electoral politics has been defined by widening education polarization between the two major parties. It showed signs of widening further Tuesday. That's a troublesome trend for Democrats, particularly as college enrollment is on the decline. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that spring college enrollment this year dropped 3.5%, the most in a decade.

Republicans overperformed Trump in Trump country

For years, Republicans have built massive electoral advantages in rural, predominantly white counties. These GOP strongholds Tuesday shifted even further to the right in Virginia, reflecting an enthused Republican base.

Youngkin improved in several southwest Virginia counties where Trump won more than 80% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election. These are counties with large shares of non-college-educated voters  at least 75% of the county  that shifted even further away from Democrats.

A few examples in southwest Virginia, according to the state's unofficial results: Youngkin won 87% of the vote in Virginias Scott County, besting Trumps 83%. Youngkin carried Lee County with 88%, topping Trumps 84%. And in Wise County, Youngkin improved 4 percentage points as well: 84% to Trumps 80%.

In central Virginia, Youngkin carried Appomattox County with 80% of the vote, while Trump won the county with 72%. The trend was statewide: Youngkin expanded margins in Republican-heavy counties where the Trump base is the strongest  and this was without Trump campaigning in the state for Youngkin.

And it wasnt just in Virginia.

In New Jersey, Republican stronghold Ocean County voted for Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli, 68% to 31% over Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy, a USA TODAY analysis of Associated Press and New Jersey Secretary of State data shows. Trump won Ocean County with a smaller 63% in 2020. Ciattarelli won 60% of the vote in New Jerseys Monmouth County, which Trump carried with 51%. Ciattarelli won Cape May County, on the southern tip of Jersey shore, with 63%, topping Trumps 57%. These counties include a mix of suburbs and towns.

For anyone who thought Trump country couldn't get any redder, Tuesday proved them wrong.

Democratic candidates for governor underperformed in general

Turnout in Virginia and New Jersey revealed an enthusiasm gap between the two parties, with Democrats struggling to ignite their bases like Republicans in races for governor.

McAuliffe was an especially unpopular candidate at the top of the ticket for the Democrats. Preliminary, unofficial returns from the Virginia Secretary of State show that McAuliffe received fewer votes (a total of 1,583,501) than the Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor (a total of 1,591,231) and attorney general (a total of 1,605,104).

That means there were thousands of voters who chose the unsuccessful Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor or attorney general but either chose a third-party candidate for governor, voted for Republican Youngkin, or did not cast a vote for governor.

In New Jersey, Murphy received roughly as many votes in the five-way 2021 race for governor as he did in the seven-way 2017 race, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Associated Press and Secretary of State data. He especially underperformed in counties with the highest Black populations. In Essex County, home to Newark, he received 17,999 fewer votes in 2021 than 2017. In Hudson County, home to Jersey City, he received 7,158 fewer votes in 2021 than in 2017.

Slight decrease of Black voters in Virginia

Ahead of Tuesdays general election, Democrats and pundits expressed concern over whether there was enough enthusiasm among Black voters in Virginia for McAuliffe to win.

While Black voters, who were instrumental in getting Biden elected in 2020, voted overwhelmingly for McAuliffe, the key blocs turnout dipped slightly from previous years.

Voter turnout among Black voters decreased to 16% in 2021 from 20% in 2017, the last time Virginia voted for governor, according to exit polls. According to the 2021 Virginia exit polls from NBC, 86% of Black voters supported McAuliffe, while 13% backed Youngkin. Those numbers are on par with exit polls from 2017.

However, Biden saw slightly higher margins of support during the 2020 election. Eighty-nine percent of Black voters backed Biden in 2020, compared to 10% who supported former President Donald Trump.

However, its unclear whether the small decrease contributed to McAuliffes loss.

Lawless, of UVA, said that while a marginal change in turnout could have hurt Democrats, Tuesday's election was really about the increase of white voters who turned out for the Republican.

"Even a couple of points of movement in opposite directions can be enough to affect an outcome," she said, adding that McAuliffe still got the majority of support from Black and Latino voters, according to some exit polls. "The Youngkin victory is really a white person victory."

Unclear who Latinos backed

Latino voters were a key voting bloc during the 2020 election, with Trump making inroads with support among Latino men.

However, it's unclear what Latinos voting patterns in the Old Dominion were in this election.

Two separate exit polls each showed a different story on how Latinos voted.

According to exit polls from NBC, 66% of Latinos supported McAuliffe compared to the 32% who backed Youngkin. That number is similar to 2017, where 67% supported Northam and 32% supported Gillespie.

But the Associated Press'VoteCast showed Youngkin received 55% of the Latino vote, compared to McAuliffe at 43%.

Overall, Latinos made up 5% of the vote Tuesday, down 1 percentage point from 2017, according to NBC exit polls. Latinos make up nearly 10% of the states overall population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Comparing the NBC exit polls to the 2020 election, McAuliffe saw more support from Latino voters than Biden. According to 2020 Virginia exit polls, 61% of Latinos supported Biden while 36% voted for Trump.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What 2021 elections in New Jersey and Virginia mean for Democrats
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks with reporters in the Senate subway on Tuesday. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Democrats are struggling to come to agreement on how to lift a Trump-era tax deduction cap that has hit many Californians hard, one of the final unresolved issues in their social spending and climate bill.

Democrats are expected to provide some relief from the $10,000 annual cap placed on state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal returns. The so-called SALT cap was enacted in the 2017 Republican tax bill.

But progressive Democrats in the House and Senate are in conflict about how to do so.

The final proposal, which probably won't be completed until the end of the month, could have a significant effect on Californians and residents of other high-tax states, including New York and New Jersey. Because of the importance of the policy to lawmakers in those states, many Democrats believe the bill won't be able to get through the House without some form of SALT relief.

Dueling proposals released Wednesday underscore the fraught negotiations surrounding the social spending bill, even as House Democratic leaders try to schedule a vote by week's end.

Democrats in the House, led by Reps. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey  perhaps the state hit hardest by the cap  and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), would lift the cap to $72,500 through 2031.

Porter calls this a deficit-neutral proposal that would reverse the harshest consequences of the Trump tax law by ensuring people dont get hit by the cap because of where they live.

The $72,500 figure was chosen because under the complex way that Congress calculates the cost of its bill, the policy would not cost the federal government anything. That's because under current law, the Trump-era cap is slated to end in 2025. This plan would keep a cap in place longer, but at a higher threshold.

But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized the plan, saying it would cost over $50 billion per year and provide 37% of its benefits to the top 1% ... giving the wealthiest people in the country a tax break.

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There are other Senate critics as well. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said the House plan cuts taxes for millionaires and billionaires on the backs of low-income and middle-income families. We should fix this in the Senate.

Sanders and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) released an alternative plan that would eliminate the cap for families making less than about $400,000 a year.

We still gotta do a little more tweaking here on the income level, Sanders said. But it will not be for millionaires or billionaires.

Porter criticized that proposal because she said it would still benefit wealthy hedge fund managers and entrepreneurs who find ways to avoid reporting annual income.

I don't think  with great respect for Sen. Sanders commitment to making sure that big corporations and the super wealthy pay their fair share  I don't think his proposal does what he thinks it does," she said.

Whatever tax relief the House passes in its social spending will still be subject to change in the Senate in the coming weeks.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Steve Reese casts a vote Tuesday at the Towpath Trail YMCA polling station in Navarre. Officials say Stark County's new Dominion voting machines performed well.

Stark elections officials say the initial deployment of the county's new roughly 1,400 Dominion ImageCast X voting machines went better than expected in Tuesday's general election.

Related: Board of Elections: New Dominion voting machines tested and ready for Nov. 2

"We had mostly positive responses to (the machines) because the screen is bigger and the brighter. And the voter-verified voter trail (the printout showing voter's choices) lights up so people can see it," said Regine Johnson, the deputy director of the Stark County Board of Elections, a Democrat.

More: See who won the school board races for Marlington, Canton Local, Plain, and North Canton

More: Election 2021 results: Canton Treasurer Kim Perez wins re-election

"It's fairly similar to the previous (TSX voting machine) so it's a newer generation. So it wasn't a big change for most of the voters."

The controversial purchase of the machines became a political tug-of-war in 2021 between the Stark County elections board and county commissioners, resulting in a lawsuit and an Ohio Supreme Court ruling ordering commissioners to buy them.

Johnson said voters did not seem to experience much of the learning curve she thought might be required.

"We didn't get a whole bunch of phone calls. And we thought we would because they were brand new," Johnson said.

Stark County Board of Elections Chairman Samuel Ferruccio, a Democrat, said the reports he heard were positive.

"I think they worked really well and the staff did a great job in getting those machines ready for use," he said. "There may be some tweaks that we want to do. But all in all, it was a great election. It went very smooth."

Travis Secrest, the Republican administrative assistant of the Stark County Board of Elections, said a few poll workers had some difficulty inserting paper properly into the machines, which allow voters to verify their choices before submitting their ballots. In a some other instances, the power cables for the printers weren't properly connected.

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Secrest said the poll workers were able to resolve the issues by calling the Board of Elections office or a technician fixed it. Secrest said he could not say specifically which polling locations had these situations, which he said are common in every election. He said in those few cases, voters simply used another machine.

"After we get those initial calls (from poll workers reporting issues) we get in the morning, the phones were pretty quiet most of the day .... which is a good sign," said Secrest.

Stark County changes pickup process

In the past, Johnson said, workers had to bring the voting machines to one of four drop-off locations after polls closed to make it easier and faster for a moving company to scoop them up and bring back to the Board of Elections warehouse. Otherwise, the company would have needed more time to visit all 111 polling locations. And the poll workers would be unable to leave the polling location for hours until the pickup.

This election, the poll workers left the machines at the polling locations in locked security cages. The movers then picked up machines directly from the polling locations. Johnson said this new procedures saves the cost of having to provide staff, lighting and security at the four drop-off locations.

Meanwhile, after the polls had closed, a Republican and Democratic poll worker drove the USB drives in a locked case with each machine's voting results and any paper ballots cast at that polling location in sealed envelopes back to the Board of Elections office. They are not permitted to make any stops along the journey, even for a restroom break, said Johnson. Elections staff opened the cases, removed the USB drives or memory cards and loaded them into a server to quickly upload the results.

The number of votes from the USB drives and the paper ballots, including provisional ballots, can be reconciled with the records and the electronic pollbooks and records kept by the poll workers, Johnson said.

She said the entire process took place seamlessly and no USB drives turned up missing.

"Everything we expected to come back came back," she said.

Election Day hiccups

However, Election Day was not free of snags.

Mary Carey, of Plain Township, said she and her husband went to Grace United Methodist Church on Schneider Street NW shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Poll workers were unable to use the tablet electronic poll books to verify voter registrations and encode voters' plastic cards needed to call up the correct ballot on the voting machine. She said they gave the couple the choice of returning later or voting on a provisional paper ballot. They chose to vote provisionally.

"It was disconcerting," said Carey, a retired librarian, who added that the poll workers were abashed about the issues. "Frankly, I trust paper more than I do electronic voting. But the place wasn't really set up for people to sit down and do that (mark votes on a paper ballot). The lighting was bad. I had to go down and stand up under a light."

She said she and her husband used the church's musical stands to mark their ballots.

Johnson and Secrest said they did not know specifically what happened at Carey's polling location. Board of Elections staff would try to determine the circumstances and causes.

Johnson said no serious problems were brought to her attention.

Workers at a Jackson Township polling location reported difficulties encoding the plastic cards, said. But it turned out they had inserted the wrong end into the card reader. And the poll workers quickly corrected their error.

The Stark County Board of Elections acquired the voting machines after a legal battle with the Stark County commissioners who accused the board of failing to sufficiently seek lower price quotes on voting machines by Dominion's competitors.

The Ohio Supreme Court in May ordered the commissioners to fund the purchase, which cost the county about $1.48 million and the state $3.27 million for the machines, four ballot scanners, memory cards, tabulation servers and other voting equipment. That doesn't include more than $331,550 a year in maintenance and software support costs.

Reach Robert at (330) 580-8327 or robert.wang@cantonrep.com.

OnTwitter: @rwangREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Board of Elections: No major issues reported with voting machines
(Bloomberg) -- E-mobility company Bedeo has agreed to buy U.K. startup Protean Electric from China Evergrande Groups automotive unit.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The divestment by China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd. was announced in a Thursday statement from Bedeo that confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report.

The deal helps Europe-focused Bedeo, which supplies light commercial vehicles and technology for zero emissions transport, expand into Asia and the U.S. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Protean makes in-wheel motor technology used in electric cars, self-driving vehicles and commercial vans. The company has about 150 employees spread between the U.K., China and the U.S. and has been issued more than 200 patents. Its led by Chief Executive Officer Andrew Whitehead, a former designer of Formula One racing engines for Honda Motor Co., its website shows.

Shares in Evergrande NEV, which has a market value of about HK$35 billion ($4.5 billion), rose as much as 3.1% in Hong Kong trading on Thursday.

Evergrande bought Protean in 2019 for $58 million, part of a series of deals made by the Chinese property developer as it pushed into electric vehicles, according to its annual report that year. It spent billions of dollars on such acquisitions, including the takeover of remnants salvaged from the bankrupt Saab Automobile.

Green Push

The Chinese group still has yet to deliver a single vehicle, despite billionaire founder Hui Ka Yans ambitions to take on industry giants like Tesla Inc. More recently, Evergrande is trying to shed assets in a bid to avert default as it grapples with more than $300 billion of liabilities. Its been seeking a buyer for its property management arm and sold off holdings in other companies including a Chinese bank.

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Bedeo, founded by Turkish engineer Osman Boyner, has developed powertrains for electric automobiles and is seeking to expand the use of its technology in the marine and aviation sectors. In 2019, it signed a contract to supply drivetrain solutions to light commercial vehicles made by PSA Group, now known as Stellantis NV, according to its website. It has also worked with customers including express delivery company FedEx Corp. and British online grocer Ocado Group Plc.

The London-based firm received a growth capital investment from Ludgate Investments Ltd., a European sustainability focused investment manager, in April.

Protean is the first acquisition under Bedeos expansive growth strategy, Boyner said in a statement. The company retains a strong balance sheet and continues to explore attractive strategic and synergic acquisition opportunities in the electrification space.

Investors imagination has been captured by the boom in electric vehicles, with Teslas market valuation surging past $1 trillion this year and a slew of fresh challengers securing listings via blank-check companies. Rivian Automotive Inc., an electric truck maker backed by Amazon.com Inc., is seeking to raise as much as $8.4 billion in a U.S. initial public offering and has attracted commitments from cornerstone buyers including Blackstone Inc.

Other industries are also attempting to capitalize on the shift to greener autos. This week, the chemicals group DuPont Inc. announced it would buy engineering materials maker Rogers Corp. for about $5.2 billion to tap into the rapid growth of electric vehicles and advanced auto electronics.

The call to move beyond fossil fuels has become more urgent as global leaders gather in Glasgow, Scotland, for climate talks this week. A number of top polluting countries vowed to zero out their carbon emissions in the coming decades, and finance industry executives have pledged to support the transition to a greener economy.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
By Marcelo Teixeira and Maytaal Angel

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Commodities traders including Louis Dreyfus, Olam and Volcafe are pursuing legal action against hundreds of Brazilian coffee farmers whose failure to deliver on pre-agreed sales has left the merchants exposed to losses, according to sources and documents seen by Reuters.

Arabica coffee prices have rallied some 60% this year due to climate turmoil in Brazil. The price surge has tempted farmers to default on sales, tightening supply in a commodity that, like many others, has been affected by shipping delays and reduced availability of labor.

All three of the world's largest arabica producers - Brazil, Colombia, and Ethiopia - are experiencing increased rates of default, where farmers fail to deliver coffee at agreed-upon prices so they can attempt to re-sell at current higher prices.

Lawyers told Reuters this is the first time in decades that scores of coffee farmers are defaulting in Brazil, which grows about half the world's arabica beans. Defaults have spiked in other commodities like soybeans, where merchants have resorted to using satellites and deployed lawyers to go after farmers who tried to resell already guaranteed crops, as prices in that market, too, spiked.

Many court proceedings in Brazil are not public.

Volcafe, the coffee trading arm of ED&F Man, one of the world's largest commodity trading firms, has had problems with about 5% of its contracts in Brazil, according to the company's North and South America director, Nicolas Rueda.

"We managed to negotiate and find a solution in most cases. Only in cases when talks ceased we resorted to the courts," he said, without identifying the number of cases the firm was working on.

Olam confirmed cases of non-compliance and legal action but said they are not widespread. Louis Dreyfus did not return a request for comment.

Farmers are also defaulting in Colombia and Ethiopia, the world's second and third largest arabica producers. With Brazil, the three countries account for more than two-thirds of global arabica output.

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"The incentive to default has never been higher (and) these guys are not just defaulting on one (season's) crop. You're looking at the tip of an iceberg here. It will get worse over next 12 months or longer," said a Europe-based trader at one of the world's largest coffee traders, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Forward sales volumes in Brazil have plunged due to both defaults and severe shipping backlogs, said two other global traders, exacerbating already tight global coffee supplies.

The high rate of defaults could push futures, already near seven-year peaks, up further as the market depends on forward selling from Brazil to temper price rises, said a second Europe-based trader at a global merchant.

"There should be a continuous flow of (sales) from Brazil but everything's shut down. Its scary how quiet it is. We can't buy coffee. Our middleman can't get his coffee," he said.

"Put together with (shipping) issues, the defaults mean the availability of coffee in the U.S., Europe and Japan is getting more and more tenuous," he said.

Evidence of the tightness can already be seen in ICE exchange stocks, which have fallen some 11% over the past month alone. The stocks are a cheap and reliable supply source relative to the physical market.

Law firm Santos Neto Advogados is working on about 30 lawsuits related to coffee defaults, said Fernando Bilotti Ferreira, a partner at the firm. He said he is acting on behalf of four trading houses but declined to name them.

The size of the defaults vary from 500 bags to as high as 4,500 bags. At current market prices, a contract for 4,500 bags would be worth around 5.8 million reais ($1.03 million).

Many traders involved in court cases have been accepting farmers' requests to postpone deliveries into 2022, said Cristiano Zauli, a lawyer working in Minas Gerais, Brazil's largest coffee producing state. He has been involved in around 100 court cases in coffee this year and acted as a mediator in hundreds more pre-trial talks, he said.

Zauli declined to identify his clients.

FINDING COFFEE

Buyers who filed court cases are seeking legal orders allowing them to get their coffee from farms with the help of law enforcement officers, according to court documents in the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais.

In one case, trader Olam had to go to two different locations to find the 750 bags it had bought from a farmer in Alfenas, Minas Gerais.

In another, Louis Dreyfus was trying to find 1,000 bags it bought from a farmer in Patrocinio, another Minas Gerais municipality. The trader's lawyer told the judge that the farmer re-sold the coffee to a local merchant, where it was delivered, according to the legal filings.

Two local Brazilian coffee brokers told Reuters defaults have hit practically all market participants, including coffee co-op Cooxupe, the country's top exporter.

Cooxupe said it normally negotiates with farmers facing problems but added it cannot "treat associated farmers differently," meaning the rules apply to all.

($1 = 5.6146 reais)

(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
BANGKOK (AP)  A top executive of Myanmars military-linked telecommunications company was fatally shot Thursday near his home in Yangon, the countrys commercial capital, in an apparent assassination linked to the country's violent political unrest.

Thein Aung, chief finance officer of Mytel Telecommunications Co., was shot by three men on bicycles at 7:30 a.m. while walking with his wife near their home in Mayangone township, ward administrator Ye Win Aung said. His wife, Theint Aung Thu, was wounded and taken to a hospital.

The militarys information office confirmed the attack on the 56-year-old executive, who was a former naval officer. It said no one had claimed responsibility.

Mytel, Myanmars fourth-largest telecoms operator, is a joint venture between the Myanmar military and Vietnams Defense Ministry and was launched in 2018.

The shooting was apparently carried out by militant opponents of Myanmars military-installed government, which took power in February when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mytel, as an enterprise that provides revenue to the government, is a major target of the governments foes. It is the focus of a consumer boycott, and local media have reported more than 80 of its cellphone towers have been destroyed by sabotage. Videos of some being damaged have been posted on social media.

Militants have carried out frequent targeted killings, sabotage, arson and small bombings in recent months. If their involvement is confirmed, Thein Aung would be their highest-profile victim.

Those usually targeted for killing are people believed to be informers or collaborators with the government. Often they are local officials. Many have quit their posts in response to threats.

The government also employs violence on a larger scale, with the military using artillery to attack villages believed to harbor armed opponents. An investigation published last week by The Associated Press provided credible accounts of torture carried out by the security forces, which have also been accused of disappearing activists.

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The violent resistance is an outgrowth of a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that was launched shortly after the military takeover. When security forces began using lethal force to quash demonstrations, some protesters responded with homemade weapons such as slingshots and firebombs.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, security forces have killed more than 1,200 civilians.

Violence escalated as the positions of both sides hardened.

In addition to the consumer boycott of Mytel, activists have urged foreign investors and suppliers to shun the company.

A Mytel director reached by phone Thursday declined to comment on the attack or on criticisms of the company. Calls to a spokeswoman's phone went unanswered.

The government said last month that there were 986 terror attacks, 2,344 bomb attacks and 312 arson attacks from February to late October.

Due to their terrorist attacks, 1,155 civilians died and 765 people were injured. Moreover, a total of 182 persons including 75 military personnel, 93 police personnel and 14 civil servants died, while 602 were injured," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "A total of 251 schools and education buildings were torched and bombed by the terrorists. They destroyed roads and railways for 536 times and 76 bridges were also damaged.

The governments claims, like those of the opposition, could not be independently checked.
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Thanks for reading First Nations, the Great Falls Tribune's newsletter dedicated to tribal news. To receive stories like this in your inbox, sign up here.

This newsletter is the last installment of an ongoing series that aims to better understand the role of Facebook in tribal communities. You can read past editions on how tribal communities use Facebook for news and activism.

When I think of issues with Facebook, I immediately think of privacy concerns. Facebook has consistently violated the privacy of its users, and many news outlets have covered this topic at length.

I use Facebook for my job because Native communities use Facebook to disseminate news. From my outsider perspective, it seems like Native people  and their communities  share a lot of information on the platform. I see photos of people's families, vulnerable posts about losing a loved one and heartbreaking videos of injustice. I wondered if this public sharing of information might pose a risk to Native people's privacy.

I was so wrong about this, and I can't wait to tell you about it.

Marisa Duarte, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe who researches information, knowledge and technology in Native American contexts, said definitions of privacy differ depending on cultural context.

The mainstream American idea of privacy, she said, is customizable and individualistic.

"It hinges on civil rights," she added.

But in Native contexts, Duarte said, the sense of privacy is "much greater," as it's generally extended beyond an individual to include the community.

"There's a sense that yes, you can gossip about people and you might know everybody's business, but outsiders do not know the business of the tribe," she said. "Facebook is super interesting because of what's not there."

While the sense of privacy in Native communities may be larger, Duarte said it's still exclusive in some ways, as Native people may protect information from predators.

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"It could be the priest coming to convert people in a kind of creepy way, the social worker that's asking too many questions, the anthropologist who's just a little bit too nosey, down to an auntie's new boyfriend who wants to get tribal benefits. I grew up knowing ... that person is not one of us; don't say anything," she said.

Duarte and other experts told me that when it comes to Native communities and Facebook use, privacy is not the greatest threat. Instead, they said sex trafficking on the platform is a critical challenge for Native communities. (You can read more about that here.)

Connection to culture

When asked about the benefits of Facebook, many Native people told me the platform helps them connect and engage with culture.

Katherine Gray, whose Facebook name is Katherine Stacie, is an admin for the Crow Tribe Apsaalooke Nation Facebook group. The group, which has more than 7,000 members, is typically used to share historical knowledge and community news.

"We use it to uplift ourselves as a people, share our accomplishments or as a resource. It's brought back a lot of community pride and reminds people who we are and that we are a proud people. It keeps us connected, whether we live on the rez or not," she said.

Duarte echoed this sentiment, saying understanding Facebook as a tool comes down to understanding how important it is for Native people to connect.

"In urban Indian places, as soon as you leave a space of being around other Indians, you go into a store, you walk down the street, there are all these subtle reminders not to communicate who you are, not to speak your language. You're gonna stick out, or you might be followed by the police, you might get your kids taken from you, you might be judged, grabbed or hurt," she said.

"So the sudden availability of this communication tool, it allows Native folks who are in diaspora, if you will, to communicate in spite of these everyday hostilities."

Thanks for reading my series on Native communities and Facebook. In case you missed some stories, here are some takeaways:

Facebook as a platform is easy to use. It requires low bandwidth and elders generally know how to navigate it.

News outlets have consistently misrepresented, stereotyped and ignored Native people in their coverage. As a result, Native communities often rely on themselves, and by extension Facebook, for news.

Tribal leaders run Facebook pages. In this way, the platform allows the public to communicate directly with leaders, and leaders are able to publicly dispel rumors.

Indigenous people often use Facebook to expose injustice and organize social movements. And it's effective. Indigenous social movements often reach transnational audiences.

Experts said a big threat Facebook poses to Native communities is sex trafficking.

But experts said a benefit to Facebook is that it allows Native people to connect with their community and culture.

Definitions of privacy vary depending on cultural context. While it seems like Native communities share a lot of information on Facebook, one expert told me the platform is "super interesting because of what's not there."

News this week ...

Twelve teepees have been raised at the Great Falls Public Schools Administration Building, at 1100 4th Street South, for Native American Heritage Month, which is the month of November. The twelve teepees represent the 12 tribes in Montana.

12 teepees honor tribes

Report: federal agencies fail to address crisis of missing Indigenous women

On Afro-Indigenous identity

Halloween costumes from the show "Reservation Dogs" are amazing

Nora Mabie

Indigenous Communities Reporter, nmabie@greatfallstribune.com

If you'd like to see this sort of thing in your inbox every Friday, subscribe to this newsletter! You can also support my work by sharing this newsletter with friends or by subscribing to the Great Falls Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Facebook and different definitions of privacy
FARMINGTON  San Juan Regional Medical Center will receive 70 additional caregivers through federal and state assistance as it treats 88 COVID-19 patients while expecting that number to grow.

The hospital on Nov. 3 enacted crisis standards of care to help manage its resources as more than half of all patients at the hospital tested positive for COVID-19.

San Juan County reported more positive COVID-19 cases in October than the previous four months combined, creating the second highest monthly case count since the coronavirus pandemic started.

There were 88 COVID-19 patients being treated at the hospital on Nov. 3, a number that has been steadily climbing for weeks but exploded between Oct. 27 and Nov. 3.

The high COVID-19 patient count led to a public health alert on Nov. 3 being pushed to cell phones, stating the hospital is being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

A public health alert pushed to cell phones on Nov. 3 urges San Juan County residents to get a COVID-19 vaccination as the hospital fills up with COVID-19 patients.

San Juan Regional had 66 COVID-19 patients on Oct. 27, 65 on Oct. 20, 64 on Oct. 13, 43 on Oct. 6 and 37 patients on Sept. 29, according to hospital data.

More: San Juan County COVID-19 vaccine tracker: 54% of people fully vaccinated

Enacting this protocol will allow the New Mexico Department of Health to send 34 caregivers to the hospital to provide much needed assistance and staffing, according to the news release.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System has deployed a Disaster Medical Assistance Team, which will provide a 36-person team to the hospital.

The 70 additional caregivers will help provide much needed care for the community as the hospital tries to support inpatient and outpatient care for both COVID-19 and non-COVID patients.

The hospital called on the community to help reduce the enormous strain on our healthcare system by continuing to wear a mask, social distance and above all, get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Its so important for us as a community to depoliticize all the rhetoric in our country, our state and our community around this pandemic, San Juan Regional Medical Center President and CEO Jeff Bourgeois said in a statement. The best way to prevent contracting the disease, prevent hospitalization, prevent an ICU admission, and ultimately prevent mortality related to COVID-19 is to seek a vaccination.

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San Juan Regional Medical Center President and CEO Jeff Bourgeois

San Juan Regional specifically called out Zip Codes in Aztec, Bloomfield and Farmington, which have increasing COVID-19 spread due to "significantly low vaccine rates," which are creating a large COVID-19 patient count at the hospital.

The 87410 zip code in Aztec had 40.8 percent vaccination rate for those 12-years-old and older who are fully vaccinated, according to the San Juan County public health office.

Residents in the 87413 Zip Code in Bloomfield had 50.1 percent vaccination rate along with 54.4 percent rate in 87401 Zip Code and 62.7 percent in the 87402 Zip Code in Farmington.

More: San Juan County reported 924 new COVID-19 cases last week; New Mexico cases surge 23%

October case count larger than previous four months combined

San Juan County just experienced one of the busiest months for COVID-19 cases since the global pandemic started.

San Juan County has 3,657 positive COVID-19 cases from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1, according to New Mexico Department of Health data.

The county reported 3,015 COVID-19 cases from June 1 through Sept. 30.

The only month that had a higher case count was December, when San Juan County clocked in 4,000 cases, according to state health department data.

November 2020 had 2,185 cases and January had 2,290 cases, per the state health department data.

September has 1,394 cases along with 1,106 cases in August and 333 cases for July, according to The Daily Times archives.

San Juan Countys level of community transmission for Oct. 19 through Nov. 1 was the second highest total daily new case count per 100,000 people in the state with 104.5 new cases per day or 1,845 cases in the two-week period.

The county had a two-week test positivity rate of 14.95 percent, according to the state health department.

Joshua Kellogg covers breaking news for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4627 or via email at jkellogg@daily-times.com.

Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Farmington hospital enacts crisis standards of care due to COVID-19
Nov. 4Sunday is Retired Educators Day in Georgia, and "it's important to say thank you and recognize the people who have given so much to their students and communities," said Sandra Derrick, who spent three decades in Whitfield County Schools and is president of the Dalton Whitfield Murray Retired Educators Association.

"I don't think educators get as much recognition sometimes as they should, because so much of their time is spent planning and doing things to prepare" while not strictly on the clock, said Sally Little, who taught for nearly a quarter-century, including 13 years in Dalton Public Schools. Teachers "do so much extra," but they do it "because they enjoy what they're doing."

Many retired educators continue to give back to schools in voluntary capacities after they officially retire, too, said Twinkle Chitwood, who was a long-term substitute and "filled in at media centers" after she concluded her 34-year teaching career in Dalton Public Schools. "A lot of the good things these people still do could be missed if there wasn't" a day set aside specifically for them.

"More than 140,000 retired educators have devoted their time and talents" to teaching in Georgia, influencing "the lives of generations of young people," Gov. Brian Kemp noted in his proclamation.

"Retired educators possess valuable knowledge and are able to use their vast experience and skill to enrich the education process in varied settings, often continuing to be a major source of insight and direction in education for our state and nation."

During her decades of elementary education in Dalton, Chitwood "taught a lot of wonderful kids who went on to be leaders in the community," she said. "It's very rewarding to see them continue to make our community better."

Little focused primarily on special education, while her husband Rick was principal of City Park School, and both were dedicated to giving students as many opportunities as possible, which was especially pivotal for those from impoverished and/or unsupportive households.

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"We got to know kids personally, and some of (their) home situations were not good, (so) we tried to provide as much as we could, but we only had them eight hours a day," Sally Little said. "I wish we had them 24 hours" a day.

After she retired, Little continued to substitute at Roan School, mostly with special education students, as "I really missed the kids, and I like Roan," she said. "It's a 'neighborhood school,' and parents were as wonderful as could be."

Sara Davis and Rachel Lord both taught at Pleasant Grove Elementary School for decades and are as positive about that school as Little is about Roan.

It was a "very supportive" environment, from teachers, staff and administrators to students and families, said Davis, who taught in Whitfield County Schools for 31 years before retiring in 2007. "Anything you needed, just ask, and the (Parent Teacher Association) would make it happen, (which was) wonderful."

"The parents were great" and modeled exemplary behavior for their children, said Lord, who taught in Whitfield County Schools for 34 years. "The kids were nice, positive and respectful."

Davis "taught third grade, and they still love their teacher at that age," she said. "I still stay in touch with some" former students.

Richard Rogers taught physical education for 24 years at Chatsworth Elementary School and Coker Elementary School, and he brought a health-and-wellness component to his classes because "I wanted them to be well-rounded," he said. Students of his as young as kindergarten "could tell you the names of muscles, bones, things like that, and I loved it."

"We didn't just play games," he said. "I tried to integrate a health" piece, and "it was great."

Ray Broadrick "loved teaching, I loved the kids, and I loved what I taught," said the 33-year veteran of Dalton Public Schools who retired in 1996. "Earth science is the best thing in the world to teach, and (students) liked earth science."

While he placed plenty of pressure on himself daily to be the best instructor he could be for students, "I loved the kids," said Broadrick, who taught at Dalton High School for a few years but spent most of his career at the junior high school level, where he also coached football.

"My favorite part was every day."
ORLANDO, Fla.  Gov. Ron DeSantis embraced a viral chant meant as a vulgar insult of President Joe Biden and vowed to push for more election law changes next year during an official event that turned into a campaign rally at the West Palm Beach airport Wednesday.

DeSantis called for a new law enforcement agency to probe election irregularities and suggested he would ban ballot drop boxes, despite having signed a law two years ago supporting them.

The governor referred to Biden as Brandon, a reference to the viral Lets Go, Brandon chant popularized in conservative media. The chant is code for F--- Joe Biden, and stems from a reporter at a NASCAR event saying during a TV interview with driver Brandon Brown that the F--- Joe Biden chant heard in the background was the crowd saying, Lets Go, Brandon.

Since then, the chant has been popularized in songs, posters and signs and has recently been adopted by Republican officeholders.

DeSantis affiliated political committee, Friends of DeSantis, hinted that the governor would reference the chant on Tuesday, when it sent a campaign email titled, LGB!

It called the chant Americas latest cheer-craze, said it needled Biden, and proceeded to refer to Biden as Brandon for the rest of the email.

DeSantis reference prompted a Lets Go, Brandon chant by the crowd at the Hilton Palm Beach Airport, where the governor has previously held what amounted to raucous rallies attended by supporters.

DeSantis smiled as the crowd chanted, and then went into a detailed explanation of the chant.

Did you know how that started? DeSantis said. And you have the media, theyre hand wringing over this. But you know, there was a NASCAR race, and theyre doing an interview with a driver, I guess his name was Brandon. And the crowd starts chanting very colorful language about Joe Biden. And it was obvious that they were doing and, you know, it is what it is.

He also claimed they said way worse about Trump for four years, though he offered no example of Democratic officials embracing any similar vulgar catchphrase about the former president.

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The official focus of Wednesdays event was DeSantis call for more changes to the states elections laws. The announcement comes after the controversial restrictions already made earlier this year to limit ballot drop boxes and restrict voter canvassing.

DeSantis called for a new law enforcement agency to investigate elections violations and for making ballot harvesting, already illegal, a third-degree felony instead of a misdemeanor.

DeSantis also echoed Trump and other Republicans in attacking drop boxes for mail-in ballots, which had previously been an uncontroversial part of the states election system.

DeSantis signed a Republican bill expanding the use of drop boxes in 2019, but Trump has made drop-box conspiracies a key part of his false claims of election fraud in 2020.

While boxes used to be available 24/7 at elections offices and early voting sites and monitored by cameras, the 2021 Florida elections bill restricted 24/7 drop boxes to elections offices, where they need to be fully guarded by a person at all times. Boxes at early voting sites are now only open during voting hours.

DeSantis and some Republicans had originally called for restricting drop boxes even more, and it appeared DeSantis might go even further this time.

First of all, I dont think we should even have drop boxes, DeSantis said, saying elections offices would put them in all kinds of crazy locations. So we made reforms in the bill last year, but I think there need to be more reforms on this.

The Florida director of All Voting is Local, a voting rights advocacy group, blasted the governors new proposals.

Taxpayer dollars will now be used to fund an office specifically designed to perpetuate and give credence to a never-ending stream of lies about our elections, said Brad Ashwell in a statement. Lets be clear: DeSantis and his cronies are only concerned about limiting peoples right to vote. State lawmakers should focus instead on expanding early voting options, increasing drop-box accessibility, improving transparency, and ensuring our election operations are fully funded.

All 67 of the states county elections officials released letters last month urging officials not to push falsehoods and defended the accuracy of the 2020 vote count.


The SpaceX Crew-3 Commercial Crew originally scheduled for a Halloween launch but delayed twice is expected now to be on its way at 11:36 p.m. Saturday.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is still set to launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program is a partnership with Boeing and SpaceX designed to fly astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station.

Astronauts arrive in Florida: NASA, ESA astronauts arrive ahead of SpaceX Crew-3 launch on Halloween

Rocket launch schedule: Upcoming Florida launches and landings

What to know: NASA, SpaceX Crew-3 launch to International Space Station

The Falcon 9 rocket is carrying the SpaceX Crew Dragon autonomous spacecraft. The rocket and capsule initially completed rollout to pad 39A on the afternoon of Oct. 27. (See photos of the uber-excited astronauts here!) And the Crew-3 Dragon Endurance is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station about 12:10 a.m. Monday, Nov. 1.

If all goes according to plan with SpaceX's Crew-3 mission, it will be the second rocket launch to lift off from the Space Coast on the spookiest holidays of them all.

At 12:13 p.m. Oct. 31, 2015, United Launch Alliance's 19-story Atlas V rocket thundered from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into blue sky and climbed to the northeast, fulfilling the "launchoween" hashtag popular in social media posts during the countdown.

Retro Halloween treat for Space Coast of Florida: Atlas V delivers GPS satellite to orbit on Oct. 31

Launch weather outlook: Despite storms, weather looks good for SpaceX and NASA launch of astronauts from Florida

This will be the first scheduled SpaceX launch on Halloween. In SpaceX's history of 129 launches, there has been only one other launch close to the holiday. SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from KSC pad 39A at 7:34 p.m. Oct. 30, 2017.

How to watch #Launchoween on your tablet or computer

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When and where: FLORIDA TODAY's Space Team will host an interactive live chat with video and updates for the Crew-3 launch. You can chat with veteran space reporter Emre Kelly on his blog.Check back with us at 1 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 31, at floridatoday.com/space.

When and where: At 11 p.m. EST Saturday, NASA's website will carry the YouTube livestream, youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision.

How to watch SpaceX Crew-3 rocket launch from your phone

When and where: Full coverage of the launch, including a live webcast with live tweets and updates, kicks off about 1 a.m. Sunday at floridatoday.com/space (you can type this on your browser on your phone) and will feature in-depth coverage. Ask our space team reporter Emre Kelly questions and strike up a conversation. You also can watch coverage via the FLORIDA TODAY app, which is available in the App Store or Google Play. FLORIDA TODAY is part of the USA TODAY Network.

 Click here to download FLORIDA TODAY app on App Store

 Click here to download FLORIDA TODAY app on Google Play

How to watch NASA SpaceX Crew-3 launch on YouTube

The SpaceX Crew Dragon launch to the ISS will stream on YouTube beginning at 11 p.m. Nov. 6. Note: This is pre-coverage of the Crew-3 launch. When it's closer to the launch window, YouTube will provide live coverage. Check back for updates on this story.

NASA will also air prelaunch coverage, launch activities, and docking on NASA Television, the NASA app and the agency's website. NASA Television coverage will also include the hatch opening and a welcome ceremony.

Boeing Starliner: Launch pushed into 2022 as teams investigate valve issue

NASA's Lucy mission: Bridging the gap between Africa and Jupiter asteroids

LAUNCH UPDATE: @NASA's @SpaceX #Crew3 mission is now targeted to launch no earlier than 11:36pm ET on Saturday, Nov. 6 due to a minor medical issue involving one of its crew members.



More details: https://t.co/Wwjb9U8G9G pic.twitter.com/PCiUhYD2bN  NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) November 1, 2021

How to watch Crew-3 launch coverage on Twitter

Twitter is all in with space coverage. The SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon capsule astronauts will take questions from their crew quarters ahead of their Halloween launch. Click on the tweet to add your questions.

When it's closer to the launch window, Twitter will provide live coverage. Check back for updates on this story.

LAUNCH UPDATE: NASA's @SpaceX #Crew3 mission is now targeted to launch no earlier than 11:36pm ET on Saturday, Nov. 6. More details: https://t.co/Er24kxqlK5 pic.twitter.com/CLcPxBafbc  NASA (@NASA) November 1, 2021

How to watch #launchoween from Roku, Amazon Fire

For viewers who have a Roku box or Amazon Fire TV Stick, select the YouTube app, search for the NASA channel and click on the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission video. When it's closer to the launch window, YouTube will provide live coverage. Check back for updates on this story.

How to watch on Facebook

To watch the livestream on Facebook, visit NASA's official page at facebook.com/nasa. When it's closer to the launch window, Facebook will provide live coverage. Check back for updates on this story.

Watch and engage on social media

Stay connected with the mission on social using the hashtag #Crew3. Follow and tag these accounts:

Twitter

@NASA

@SpaceX

@Commercial_Crew

@Space_Station

@Florida_Today

@SpaceTeam

@emrekelly, FLORIDA TODAY space reporter Emre Kelly

@cbphoto1, FLORIDA TODAY visuals journalist Craig Bailey

@malcolmdenemark, FLORIDA TODAY visuals journalist Malcolm Denemark

@shortttimothy, FLORIDA TODAY visuals journalist Tim Shortt

Facebook

Instagram

@NASA

@ISS

@crbphoto1, FLORIDA TODAY visuals journalist Craig Bailey

For NASA's launch blog and more information about the mission, visit nasa.gov/commercialcrew or floridatoday.com/space.

Rocket launch schedule: Upcoming Florida launches and landings

Contributing: Emre Kelly

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA SpaceX launch delay: Watch on phone, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook
Ford will mandate COVID-19 vaccines for most of its 32,000 salaried workers in the U.S., CNBC first reported Wednesday.

The big picture: Ford is the first major American automaker to require employees to be vaccinated against the virus, CNN notes.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

The policy for staff to be fully inoculated by Dec. 8 is in line with a Biden administration vaccination deadline for federal contractors that have contracts with the government.

Details: Ford spokesperson Marisa Bradley said in a statement to the Detroit News that workers who refuse to get vaccinated could be placed on unpaid leave. Those who can't get vaccinated for religious or medical reasons may be eligible for an exemption, she noted.

"The health and safety of our workforce remains our top priority and we have been very encouraged by the support of our employees to comply with our protocols, including the more than 84% of U.S. salaried employees who are already vaccinated," Bradley added.

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By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Thursday it could still act with its partners against Iran at an upcoming meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's board after Tehran said it would return to nuclear talks with world powers at the end of November.

Western powers scrapped plans in September for a resolution criticising Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency after Tehran agreed to prolong monitoring of some nuclear activities and invited IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Tehran for talks on key outstanding issues.

The decision by the United States, France, Britain and Germany not to push for a resolution by the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors avoided an escalation with Iran that could have killed hopes of resuming wider talks in Vienna on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran and the European Union, which coordinates those negotiations, said on Wednesday that all sides had agreed to return to the Austrian capital on Nov. 29.

Western states have increasingly become frustrated that Iran has failed to fully honour a monitoring agreement with the IAEA, continues to breach its 2015 accord, and has yet to allow Grossi to come to Tehran for high-level talks that had been promised in September. It has also not properly addressed outstanding questions on past nuclear activities.

"Iran must resume dialogue and cooperation with the agency without delay to make progress on outstanding issues," French Foreign ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre told reporters in a daily briefing.

When asked whether Iran's decision to return to the nuclear talks would make it unlikely that Western powers rebuke Tehran when the IAEA board holds it next quarterly meeting from Nov. 18, Legendre said Paris remained extremely concerned about Iran's breaches of its obligations and commitments, including those made in September.

"Together with our partners, we remain very attentive to ensuring that Iran respects its commitments, and we remain in close consultation on the response to be provided on this," she said.

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Alison Williams and Giles Elgood)
PARIS (Reuters) -France and Britain moved to defuse their dispute over fishing on Thursday, with sanctions off the table for now but all options still possible should talks fail, French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said.

Beaune was speaking after meeting British Brexit minister David Frost in Paris after France and Britain came to the brink of a cross-Channel trade war over fishing.

At the heart of the dispute is the number of licences London allocated to French boats after leaving the European Union. France says many are missing, while London says it is respecting the deal.

Thursday's meeting was "useful and positive", with more talks due next week, Beaune said, welcoming a new "state of mind" and adding that he had agreed with Frost to intensify talks on the licences.

France had threatened to step up checks on trucks and produce from Britain and to bar British trawlers from French ports. But it pulled back on Monday to allow a fresh attempt to negotiate a solution.

"All options are still on the table," Beaune said, adding: "as long as dialogue seems possible ... we are giving it a chance, with no naivety ... and with a requirement to see results."

France will take stock of the situation next week, he said. "There is still a lot of work to do," he said, and France was still missing about 200 fishing licences.

Britain echoed some of Beaune's comments, with both sides saying the ministers would talk again early next week.

"The French government have been clear they are not looking to proceed with those threats ... in the coming days," Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said. "I think both sides are keen to have further discussions."

After meeting for about an hour and a half, Beaune and Frost shook hands on the steps of the ministry, smiling and chatting in front of the cameras. Beaune posted a picture of them shaking hands in front of British, French and EU flags.

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"Both sides set out their positions and concerns," a British government spokesperson said.

Frost will meet European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic in Brussels on Friday, the UK spokesperson said.

Britain and France have argued for decades over the fishing grounds around their Channel coasts, an issue which also dogged years of Brexit negotiations before Britain completed its withdrawal at the end of 2020.

The latest dispute erupted in September over the number of post-Brexit fishing licences. France seized a British scallop dredger, which has since been released.

Reasserting British control over its fishing grounds was a central plank of the case for Brexit that Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented to voters. The issue is also sensitive for French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of next year's presidential election.

(Reporting by Noemie Olive, Sudip Kar-Gupta, John Irish, Ingrid Melander in Paris and Michael Holden and Kylie MacLellan in London, writing by Ingrid Melander, Editing by Mark Heinrich, Catherine Evans and Giles Elgood)
NASHVILLE  A federal jury on Wednesday convicted Gangster Disciples member Brandon Durell Hardison of racketeering conspiracy offenses that plagued the Clarksville area with murders and other violence for more than a decade.

Hardison, 35, of Nashville, also known as Creep and Creeper da Reeper, faced a two-week trial before the jury reached a verdict, according to a press release from David W. Boling, a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Justice Office.

Hardison is the last of 12 defendants to proceed to trial. All were indicted by a grand jury and have been sentenced or when sentenced, face lengthy prison terms.

Todays verdict marks the end of a decade of violence and lawlessness inflicted upon our communities by ruthless gang members, said Acting U.S. Attorney Mary Jane Stewart for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Sentencing for Hardison will be scheduled at a later date. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for racketeering conspiracy, causing death through the use of a firearm and killing to prevent a witness communication to a law enforcement official regarding a federal offense.

Hardison also faces a mandatory minimum of life in prison for murder in aid of racketeering and an additional 20 years of incarceration for the assault causing serious bodily injury in aid of racketeering offense.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Hardison operated with a Gangster Disciples set called the "Clarksville deck," committing numerous crimes on behalf of the gang, including shootings, attempted murders and murders.

Also referred to as "Brothers in the Struggle," Gangster Disciples is a violent criminal gang founded in Chicago and now active in numerous U.S. states, including Tennessee.

Evidence presented at trial showed that on January 6, 2012, Hardison murdered a Gangster Disciples associate for failing to repay a drug debt. He then shot and killed the associates girlfriend, who was a witness to the murder, to prevent her from talking to law enforcement.

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Hardison enlisted other Gangster Disciples members to dispose of the murder weapon. Following these murders, Hardison increased his status by being appointed to various positions of authority, including as a regional chief enforcer and a member of a notorious hitman group called the Blackout Squad.

Hardison and his co-conspirators planned and carried out shootings and assaults targeting members of the rival Bloods gang.

Numerous local and state law enforcement agencies participated in the decade-long investigation.

This article originally appeared on Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle: Federal jury convicts Gangster Disciples enforcer of murder
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany reported 33,949 new COVID-19 infections, the highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic last year, ahead of a two-day meeting of state health ministers starting on Thursday.

Countries across Europe have been reporting rises in coronavirus infections, prompting debate over whether to reintroduce restrictions and how to persuade more people to get vaccinated.

The daily number of cases was likely inflated by a public holiday in parts of Germany on Monday that led to a delay in data-gathering. The previous record was on Dec. 18, with 33,777 cases.

Helge Braun, chief of staff to acting Chancellor Angela Merkel, said that German states needed to make faster progress in giving older people booster shots.

"That should have happened long ago," he told broadcaster ZDF on Thursday.

As of Wednesday, only 6.7% of people over 60 in Germany had received a booster shot, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

Older people were also more likely to be hospitalised with COVID-19. The number of infected people in hospital stood at 3.62 per 100,000 on Wednesday - up from 1.65 in early October - but at 8.27 per 100,000 for those over 60.

(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Nick Macfie)
WASHINGTON  Given his come-from-behind victory in a Democratic-leaning state, Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin is being touted as a new model for Republican candidates in the Donald Trump post-presidential era.

Or at least for some Republicans in some states.

Political experts said they expect many GOP candidates in closely contested states to follow Youngkin's footsteps in 2022 by embracing Trump's base and talking up his right-leaning populist issues while keeping a noticeable distance from the volatile former president himself.

Republicans who want the party to break free of Trump's grip said Youngkin's victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe was a sign the GOP can find a more united footing.

"Do I feel more optimistic about 2022? Hell, yeah," GOP consultant Jean Card, a speechwriter in President George W. Bush's administration, told USA TODAY.

"Because of the Youngkin model, I know now that my party can run a race, and win without making out with Donald Trump. Hallelujah!"

Youngkin defeats McAuliffe: Virginia governor's race deals Democrats a setback

More: Virginia election was opening salvo for 2022 midterms. What's next for Biden, American politics?

But that strategy is one that will likely be used in closely divided purple states or confined to more Democratic-leaning congressional districts. In some cases, Republicans will be only too happy to run as Trump acolytes.

Full-on Donald Trump

Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, are taking credit for Youngkin's win as a sign that the "Make America Great Again" crowd is a lasting cornerstone of the GOP and are emphasizing that other Republicans should be full-on Trump in the 2022 elections.

That strategy, some Republicans said, risks more party disunity and would undercut their chances of winning control of Congress and big state governor's offices.

Melania and Donald Trump prior to Game 4 of the World Series.

Strongly Republican states and congressional districts "are going to have fringe candidates who dominate the primaries," said conservative political analyst Rick Tyler. "And that is going to continue to complicate messaging for the Republicans until and unless the party imposes discipline top to bottom."

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At the very least, Tyler said, Youngkin's victory in Virginia proves that "a Trump-less GOP is how you win in a blue state."

What Glenn Youngkin did right

Youngkin, a former chief executive of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group running in his first political race, leaned into parents' anger over classroom curricula during the final weeks of the campaign.

The 54-year-old businessman and his team zeroed in on September debate comments by McAuliffe, who said, "I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

Throughout the campaign, Youngkin did not criticize Trump but embraced Trumpian themes like tax cuts and opposition to COVID-19 mask and vaccination mandates and critical race theory. He never appeared with Trump in person.

Critical race theory is a framework that factors historical racial discrimination into discussions of race, beyond the decisions of any particular individual. The theory is not part of the K-12 curriculum in Virginia public schools.

But Card said Youngkin "nailed it" with conservative-leaning voters in the suburbs. She said Youngkin's warmer personality also helped draw white women in those areas back to the GOP.

Exit polling by NBC News, for instance, showed white women in Virginia without a college degree swung heavily to Youngkin by roughly 20 percentage points more compared with Trump the year before.

White women with a college education, however, favored McAuliffe over Youngkin 62% to 38%, similar to their voting pattern in 2020 when they supported Biden over Trump 58% to 41% in 2020.

"Youngkin really threaded that needle of showing that it's OK to embrace Trump's policies and it's OK to accept Trump's endorsements, but it's also OK to not embrace him," Card said.

Katie Paris, founder of Red, Wine and Blue, a liberal-leaning grassroots group led by suburban women, said Democrats underestimated how Virginia's pursuit of other equity policies in education galvanized conservative suburban parents.

"Saying that critical race theory is a boogeyman and brushing it off or largely ignoring it does not take the steering wheel back," she said. "It left the narrative in Youngkin's hands. We have to play offense for our values, and I think Democrats miscalculated this one."

Trump did phone in to at least two Republican rallies in Virginia, though Youngkin himself did not attend either event.

While keeping his distance from Youngkin, Trump repeatedly trumpeted his support for Youngkin in interviews and written statements  and quickly took credit for his victory.

Mocking the Democratic candidate for constantly comparing Youngkin to him, Trump said that "all McAuliffe did was talk Trump, Trump, Trump and he lost! What does that tell you, Fake News? I guess people running for office as Democrats wont be doing that too much longer."

Donald Trump in 2022

One way or another, Trump will be involved in future elections.

The former president already has endorsed a slew of like-minded allies who are challenging establishment Republican officeholders in GOP primaries next year.

Related: New Jersey governor, Ohio special elections: Here are the other races to watch on Election Day

More: 5 things that could decide Virginia election (and 2022): Biden, Trump, culture wars and more

Trump's target list includes some of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, certain to be a major issue throughout the 2022 campaign.

If Trump-endorsed candidates  such as U.S. Senate contender Ted Budd in North Carolina  win their primaries, they will not be shunning Trump a la Youngkin during fall campaigns against Democrats.

If Trump targets, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, survive primaries, they may well be tempted to follow Youngkin's lead.

Along the way, Trump and his aides have all but issued warnings to GOP candidates: Support me publicly, or else.

In the wake of the Virginia election, the Trump team also publicized a statement from conservative Virginia talk show host John Fredericks: "If there were no Trump in this election, there would be no Glenn Youngkin."

'Not conspiracy theories and lies'

Some Republicans begged to differ.

They said too close an association with Trump will hurt Republicans in competitive states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who is being challenged by a Trump supporter in a Republican primary in Wyoming, congratulated Youngkin by citing the non-Trump aspects of his campaign.

"Winning back suburban moms and independent voters, he demonstrated Republican values and competence, not conspiracy theories and lies, win elections," Cheney tweeted.

It might not be that easy for some Republicans to shun Trump the way Youngkin did, analysts said. For one thing, the wealthy businessman financed his own campaign; he could afford to ignore Trump.

'Voters spoke loudly and clearly in Virginia'

Other Republicans will be only too happy to embrace Trump.

During a congressional hearing Wednesday, House Republicans who support Trump cited the Virginia election as proof of intense voter opposition to vaccine mandates and "woke" school board policies

House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., sought to tiefederal law enforcement officials to a controversial Oct. 4 memorandum by Attorney General Merrick Garland asking federal authorities to investigate potential increases in threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff due to such frustrations.

The American people are deeply concerned about the politicization of domestic terrorism, Stefanik said, later adding: "And obviously, voters spoke loudly and clearly in Virginia last night to reject such investigations.

Despite the loss in Virginia, Democrats are expected to continue to make Trump an issue in next year's elections  or at least the Trump agenda.

Paris, the liberal suburban organizer, said Virginia will be the GOP blueprint in 2022, but Democrats and progressive activists continue to call them out for their continued ties to Trump.

"I mean, it's one thing to say, 'Oh, he's just like Trump,' but you have to show that he is as well," Paris said. "And if you are skirting the issues that reveal their extremist extremism, it's impossible to do that."

"Trump or not, Republicans are going to have to answer for their unified opposition to tax cuts for middle-class families while protecting their billions in tax giveaways to the wealthiest and corporations," said Ammar Moussa, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.

Some Republicans said GOP candidates would be wise to follow Youngkin's issues-oriented approach without the Trump-like histrionics.

"Make America boring again," said Republican strategist Scott Jennings. "Run on an actual issue platform. It seems to work!"

Contributing: Josh Meyer

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Virginia governor's race: Youngkin won while keeping away from Trump
By Heekyong Yang

SEOUL (Reuters) -Alphabet's Google said on Thursday it plans to allow third-party payment systems in South Korea to comply with a new law, marking the first time the U.S. tech giant has amended its payment policy for a specific country.

Google's announcement comes after a Korea Communications Commission's (KCC) request https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-google-asked-turn-skorea-compliance-plans-by-mid-october-2021-09-29 for Google and Apple Inc to come up with compliance plans for the new law, which bans major app store operators from forcing software developers to use their payments systems. Most of the new law went into effect in mid-September.

The curb is the first such move by a major economy on the likes of Apple and Google, which face global criticism for requiring the use of proprietary payment systems that charge commissions of up to 30%.

In late August, parliament passed an amendment to South Korea's Telecommunications Business Act - dubbed the "anti-Google law" https://www.reuters.com/technology/skoreas-parliament-passes-bill-curb-google-apple-commission-dominance-2021-08-31 - banning big app store operators, such as Google and Apple Inc from forcing developers to use their payment systems, effectively stopping them from charging commission on in-app purchases.

"We respect the decision of the National Assembly, and we are sharing some changes to respond to this new law, including giving developers that sell in-app digital goods and services the option to add an alternative in-app billing system alongside Google Play's billing system for their users in South Korea," Google said in a statement.

Google, which charges developers a 15% service fee for distributing apps, said it would reduce this to 11% when users choose an alternative billing system, recognising that developers will incur costs to support their own billing system.

It was unclear how beneficial that would be for developers.

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Google added that alternative billing systems may not offer the same protection or payment options and features of Google Play's billing system.

The KCC said Google's plans would be implemented this year and would only apply to South Korea.

"We were able to confirm Google's determination to comply with the law, and I hope (Google) will implement this policy change in a way to reflect the legislative purpose of the revised law," said KCC Chairman Han Sang-hyuk.

In October, Apple told the South Korean government https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-targets-apple-over-new-app-store-regulation-2021-10-15 that it was already in compliance with the new law and did not need to change its app store policy.

The KCC said it would ask Apple's South Korean unit for a new policy allowing greater autonomy in payment methods. If Apple failed to comply, it would consider measures such as a fact-finding investigation as a precursor to possible fines or other penalties.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Paresh Dave; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Richard Pullin)
Governor Kristi Noem speaks at a press conference on Friday, July 23, 2021 at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

Gov. Kristi Noem is being sued by a group of newcomers to South Dakota, who moved here to escape burdensome COVID-19 restrictions in other states.

Blue State Refugees, an unofficial organization composed of people who recently came to the state from other parts of the United States where lockdowns and mask mandates were part of COVID-19 mitigation protocols, filed a lawsuit against the governor and her Bureau of Administration for denying a permit to demonstrate at the Capitol in Pierre next week.

Blue State Refugees sought to rally in support of proposed legislation to ensure private and public organizations are honoring religion and medical exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine mandates Nov. 8 and 9, when lawmakers are in Pierre for special sessions on redistricting and the potential impeachment of Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg.

More: State Democrats find ally in Gov. Noem in tackling daycare shortages in South Dakota

The state, though, says it has banned all political demonstrations from the capitol grounds in November and December to accommodate the annual holiday and Christmas displays and decorations at the Capitol, according to the lawsuit.

The Noem administration is restricting First Amendment rights and blaming it on Christmas. It doesnt take two months to decorate, and it doesnt require banning rallies across the entire capitol grounds, said Alan Gura, Institute for Free Speech Vice President for Litigation.

More: Nepotism probe into Gov. Noem, South Dakota labor office leaves questions unanswered

Gov. Kristi Noem announced in April she'd received the COVID-19 vaccine in a social media post accompanied with this photograph.

Institute for Free Speech, a non-partisan First Amendment advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Blue State Refugees and argues that Noem and several other state officials are violating the groups First Amendment right to rally outside the Capitol at an upcoming session of the legislature.

The lawsuit argues the denial impedes Blue State Refugees ability to voice support for a third special session being called for by members of both the South Dakota House and Senate to bolster religious and medical exemptions. Right now, the call for a third special session does not have the two-thirds support from both chambers, a requirement that must be met before any legislation regarding COVID-19 vaccines can be considered.

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Luke Robertson, one of about 40 members of the Black Hills-area Blue State Refugees, said he and other members were told in multiple emails from the Bureau of Administration that the dates the group requested a permit for occur during a portion of the year when permitting is not allowed.

But Noem and governor's office pushed back Thursday, saying the administration continues to work with the organization to allow a demonstration to take place.

During an unrelated press conference in Sioux Falls, Noem said that the group would be able to gather in protest next week, and she denied the capitol has a blanket ban on demonstrations at any point during the year.

"Nobody is being denied their free speech rights. They will be accommodated," she said. "There was no policy that I'm aware of that's causing the issue. It's more communication and the amount of events that are happening."

More: Judges ask for more information on allegations of nepotism, misuse of state-owned airplanes by Gov. Noem

Gura and Robertson told the Argus Leader the group was informed of the policy that demonstrations are off limits during the two-month period in which the decorations are up by the Bureau of Administration, which amounts to a legal denial.

"The government can't change its mind every time there's a lawsuit," he said. "We need to have some kind of assurance that they will not be enforcing this policy, not just now but into the future."

Noem has used executive orders to bar any governmental entity in the state from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for employees or otherwise, and to exempt state employees from federal vaccine mandates.

She's also voiced opposition to efforts to prohibit private employers from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for employees and customers, but indicated last month that she's interested in legislation to bolster a private employee's right to obtain a medical or religious exemption.

Gura emphasized that the lawsuit filed by the Institute for Free Speech is based on First Amendment principles and the organization is not taking a position on COVID-19 vaccinations.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Gov. Noem sued by 'Blue State Refugees' pushing for ban on vaccine mandates
The Greenville County Sheriffs Office has charged 29-year-old Zachary David Hughes with murder in the death of Christina Larain Parcell, who was found stabbed in her Canebrake subdivision home in Greer in October.

Hughes has been accused of murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, according to warrants from the Greenville County Sheriffs Office.

Parcell, 41, died of "multiple sharp force injuries," according to the Greenville County Coroner's Office.

Sheriff Hobart Lewis told reporters during a press conference Thursday that investigators are still trying to determine a motive. Lewis did say that Parcell was targeted.

"We don't know why. We don't know what his motive really was," Lewis said. "We will take this case as far as it goes."

Hughes is a professional concert pianist who traveled the country to perform, according to the sheriff and a website promoting Hughes' work.

The website describes Hughes' background.

"Digging fencepost holes and wrestling rams was as familiar a daily experience for him as dissecting Bach Fugues and scaling Beethoven sonatas, and to this day he values the early connection he formed with nature and hard work," the website says. "Being homeschooled afforded him ample practice time, and his early love of piano was only rivaled by an infatuation with J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings. Free time not spent practicing piano was employed crafting wooden replica swords from the LOTR books and movies and taking them into the Appalachian woods to do battle with the forces of darkness."

Lewis said physical evidence and surveillance video has implicated Hughes in Parcell's death.

With his attorney alongside him, Hughes turned himself in to authorities late Wednesday, Lewis said. Hughes is being held in the Greenville County Detention Center, according to the Sheriff's Office.

He has no prior criminal record in South Carolina.

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"It doesn't look like he has any criminal history," Lewis said.

Initial: 41-year-old woman found dead inside Greer home identified, death ruled a homicide

The Sheriff's Office said they are unaware of the nature of the relationship between Hughes and Parcell.

Parcell has a young daughter who's safe and being taken care of, Lewis said.

"I'm sure there will be a lot of court issues come up and her father trying to get custody of her," Lewis said.

John Joey Mello, indicated as the child's father in court records, was arrested Oct. 25 and charged with violating a custody order, transporting a child under age 16 and not returning her within 72 hours, according to an arrest warrant.

Tamia Boyd is a Michigan native who covers breaking news in Greenville. Email her at tboyd@gannett.com, and follow her on Twitter @tamiamb.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Professional pianist charged in death of Greer woman killed in home
Denver voters may have vetoed Mayor Michael Hancock's plans for a new arena at the National Western Center  but he's far from finished with fighting for the pricey project.

State of play: Following 2Es defeat on Tuesday, Hancock's administration will go "back to the drawing board" to find another way forward," the mayor's chief of staff, Alan Salazar, tells Axios Denver.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Context: Local voters in 2015 approved a ballot measure to fund a massive overhaul of the National Western Stock Show complex with tourism tax dollars, the first two phases of which are underway.

But after a pandemic-induced nosedive in Denver's tourism revenue, development plans that included the arena were put on hold.

Hancock had hoped that if voters approved 2E, the projects left in the backlog, including the center, could be paid for in the near term.

But now his administration will need to find new funding sources to bring the arena to fruition.

What else: The Denver City Council plans to look at numerous "ballot reform" issues in 2022 to ensure voters aren't met with "unnecessarily confusing" questions at the polls, at-large Councilperson Robin Kniech tells Axios.

The move is a reaction to referendums with "reverse wording" intended to repeal council ordinances, such as ballot measure 2F, which aimed to overturn the citys group living amendment.

Editors note: This story has been corrected to show Mayor Hancock plans to continue pursuing a new arena following 2Es defeat (not 2Fs defeat), and to clarify the purpose of the City Councils planned ballot reforms.

Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free.
Nov. 4Hawaii's four-member congressional delegation asked the Department of Defense on Wednesday to examine the Navy's handling of fuel leaks at its Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a World War II-era tank farm situated 100 feet above Oahu's primary drinking water aquifer.

In a letter to Acting Inspector General Sean O'Donnell, U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz and U.S. Reps. Ed Case and Kai Kahele asked him to determine whether Navy officials properly addressed recent fuel releases in a timely manner, or rather delayed investigation or notification of state health officials while seeking an extension of their state operating permit for Red Hill.

Referencing recent news reports in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Honolulu Civil Beat, the letter sought an independent investigation of the Navy's actions following a fuel leak into Pearl Harbor in March 2020.

It asked the department to examine whether, in anticipation of a permit hearing in February before the state Department of Health, Navy officials "covered up evidence or intentionally delayed concluding the leak."

Also, it sought to learn whether, "in order to avoid jeopardizing the approval of Red Hill's operating permit, " Navy officials were deficient or negligent in failing to conclude the leak was coming from an active pipeline and not a historical plume, and whether they "intentionally misled the Department of Health and /or the Red Hill operating permit hearing officer " by not disclosing the leak during the February permit hearing.

In May, approximately 7, 100 gallons of fuel were recovered from the site.

On Monday, the Hawaii delegation wrote the secretary of the Navy expressing concerns about the March leak and a May 6 release of 1, 618 gallons of fuel from a Red Hill pipeline.

The Red Hill facility has been under heightened public scrutiny since a spill of 27, 000 gallons of fuel in 2014.

A community group, the Wai Ola Alliance, announced Monday its intent to bring a "citizen suit " against the Navy in federal court for allegedly violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in its management of Red Hill.
The Fayetteville City Council voted 7-2 Monday night to approve the redistricting map they intend to adopt at a regular meeting later this month.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect a motion that was originally seconded by Kinston.

Fayetteville City Council members are one step closer to having new districts after approving a redrawn map they favor. They will take a final vote on it at an upcoming meeting.

The districts have to change because of population changes revealed in the 2020 Census.

During a special meeting Monday night, council members voted 7-2 to select the map they favored out of six options.

Mayor Mitch Colvin, Councilmen Johnny Dawkins and Larry Wright, Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Jensen and Councilwomen Yvonne Kinston, Tisha Waddell and Shakeyla Ingram reached a consensus on the map they supported.

Councilman D.J. Haire and Councilwoman Courtney Banks-McLaughlin opposed the map, and Councilman Christopher Davis abstained from voting.

Jensen originally made a motion to adopt a different map version known as A2 that proposed changes to Dawkins and Davis districts near Hope Mills Road.

Kinston seconded Jensen's motion, but withdrew her second after council members realized the full version of the proposed map changes were shown at Monday night's meetings.

More: Census shows growth in Cumberland County, Fayetteville and Hope Mills, decline in Spring Lake

During a discussion on the six options, Ingram said she was concerned that councilmembers could not see all of the changes made to the maps as discussed at an Oct. 13 special meeting, with Districts 9 and 4 being the focus of concerns at that meeting.

Haire represents District 4, and Kinston represents District 9.

Colvin and Waddell agreed with Ingrams concern about not seeing the full version of the map.

Ingram said the citys interactive redistricting website online did depict the changes.

The A6 version of the map that the majority of councilmembers supported Monday shows changes in Haires and Kinstons districts.

Haire said he is not in favor of the proposed maps because his neighborhood near E.E. Smith High School and the Broadell subdivision is split into two separate council districts along Seabrook Road.

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None of ... my options for consideration were accepted by council, Haire said. So that hasn't really changed today.

Davis said its his understanding from the citys consultant who drew the maps that census blocks cant be crossed, which is why Haires concern isnt depicted because moving the split neighborhood into one district with split the census block.

Census blocks are boundaries based on Census data.

Banks-McLaughlin did not say why she voted against the motion.

During the councils Sept. 27 meeting, the citys redistricting consultant told council members all of the map proposals take into account that Districts 1, 6 and 8 have the largest populations, while Districts 4,5, and 7 have the lowest.

Each proposal aims to keep an average population of about 23,100 residents per district.

More: What Fayetteville City Council district will you be in? How new districts could be drawn

Haire said while he has concerns about his district being split, he is OK with Kinstons district changing to include part of Cliffdale Road and a corner section of Morganton and Reilly Roads.

That change was reflected in the A6 map option that the majority of the council said they favored Monday night.

Davis said he didnt have a problem with that option, but his concern was the same as Ingrams concern about the council not seeing the full version of the maps Monday night.

We dont have all the information, so I got heartburn with that, Davis said.

Kinston said option A6 on the citys interactive website depicted her request.

Waddell made the motion to support that option, and Kinston seconded it.

City Manager Doug Hewett said a resolution with the full map will be presented during an upcoming meeting and then conveyed to the board of elections.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com of 910-486-3528.

Support local journalism with a subscription to The Fayetteville Observer. Click the "subscribe'' link at the top of this article.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: The Fayetteville City Council is one step closer to redistricting.
Months after a spate of separate shootings left five Austin-East Magnet High School students dead, two of those cases remain unsolved, one led to a guilty plea and two others prompted charges that are still working their way through the court system.

Here's where each case stands:

Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor, 15, died after being shot in the back the night of Jan. 27. The Knoxville Police Department quickly arrested another teenager in connection to Taylor's death.

Knox News is not naming the arrested teen because he was 17 at the time of the crime, and court records indicate he did not intend to shoot Taylor.

The teen was transferred from juvenile court to adult court, where he quietly pleaded guilty in March to one count of reckless homicide and one count of unlawful possession of a weapon. Records show the teen bought the gun for $400 even though, as a 17-year-old, it was illegal for him to own one in Tennessee.

Cousins of Justin Taylor, a 15-year-old Austin-East student who was killed in a shooting in January, are comforted while talking about their cousin at a Move in Love march around East Knoxville, Tenn. on Saturday, April 17, 2021. Community members gathered at Walter Hardy Park and marched through the streets of East Knoxville to call for an end to the gun violence that has killed five Austin-East students this year.

According to court records, the teen was sitting in the back seat of a car and had taken the magazine out of the gun. He was pulling on the slide of the gun when his finger hit the trigger. A bullet in the chamber fired, hitting Taylor, who was sitting in the front seat.

The teen, who's now 18, pleaded guilty and received four years of supervised probation in April. He is on judicial diversion, meaning his record will be wiped clean if he successfully completes his probation.

Stanley Freeman Jr.

Stanley Freeman Jr., 16, was driving home from Austin-East on Feb. 12 when police say two teenage boys shot at his car from another vehicle. Freeman was hit, then crashed on Wilson Avenue. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Knoxville police arrested two boys who were 14 and 16 at the time of the shooting. Prosecutors announced on March 15 that they were being charged with first-degree murder in Freeman's killing. The teens also face attempted murder charges in two other, nonfatal shootings.

Stanley Freeman Jr. posing in his car. Jasama Tyson, his cousin, told Knox News he enjoyed fixing cars and learned from his father.

Knox News is not naming the two teenagers because it typically does not identify juveniles accused of crimes.

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The teens were being held at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Detention Center. Prosecutors are seeking to have their cases transferred from juvenile court to adult court. The difference could mean decades of prison time for the teens if they're convicted of first-degree murder as adults.

The court proceeding to determine whether the teens can be tried as adults, called a transfer hearing, has been pushed back and is now scheduled for November.

Janaria Muhammad

On Feb. 16, Janaria Muhammad's father found her shot and bleeding badly outside the family's home on Selma Avenue. Janaria Muhammad, 15, died at the hospital.

Muhammad's family members previously said they believed police had identified two persons of interest in the case, a catch-all police term that can refer to anyone who might have knowledge about the case.

A demonstrator holds a poster with photos of Janaria Muhammad, a 15-year-old Austin-East student who was killed in a shooting in February, during a Move in Love march around East Knoxville, Tenn. on Saturday, April 17, 2021. Community members gathered at Walter Hardy Park and marched through the streets of East Knoxville to call for an end to the gun violence that has killed five Austin-East students this year.

But police have said little about what happened and why. They haven't announced any arrests, publicly identified any suspects or offered any possible motives for the crime.

Last week, Knoxville Police Department spokesperson Scott Erland said what he's said from the beginning: Investigators are working hard on the case and are making progress but have no new information that can be shared at this time.

Jamarion Gillette

Late the night of March 9, a passer-by found 15-year-old Jamarion Gillette wounded on the road leading to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Gillette had been shot, and he died after being taken to the hospital.

Knoxville police have not announced any arrests, publicly identified any suspects or offered any possible motives in the case.

Police still haven't said where in the city the shooting occurred. There were multiple shooting calls at different locations on March 9. Investigators said previously they were awaiting forensic test results to confirm the place where Gillette was shot.

Anthony Thompson Jr.

A Knoxville Police Department officer fatally shot Anthony Thompson Jr., a 17-year-old junior, inside a bathroom at Austin-East Magnet High School on April 12. The shooting occurred after officers went to the school to arrest the teen on a domestic assault charge and found him holed up in the bathroom with a gun.

Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen presented police body camera footage and showed some of the evidence at a press conference on April 21. Allen said she determined the shooting was legally justifiable, and that none of the four officers involved would face criminal charges.

A memorial for Anthony Thompson Jr. on the sidewalk in front of Austin-East Magnet High School on Monday, April 19, 2021.

Kelvon Foster, 21, was arrested on May 14 in connection to the case. He's accused of lying to buy a Glock Model 45 handgun for Thompson, then giving it to the teen for some cash and a bag of weed. Thompson had the gun in his hoodie pocket shortly before he was fatally shot by police.

Foster faces federal and state charges and is scheduled to appear in Knox County General Sessions Court on Wednesday.

Erland, the police spokesperson, has said the department will conduct an internal investigation after it receives the full investigative file from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Last week, he said that still hadn't happened. The department has investigated what it can internally without having the file, he said.

Sean McDermott, a spokesperson for Allen's office, declined to comment.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: What is happening in the Austin-East student shootings cases
Westerville City Council will retain its most senior member with incumbent Michael Heyeck winning his eighth term in the Nov. 2 general election.

Joining him will be Megan Czako Reamsnyder, Dennis Blair and Coutanya Coombs, according to unofficial results from the Franklin County and Delaware boards of election.

Michael Heyeck is a candidate for Westerville City Council.

In Franklin County, Heyeck was the top vote-getter in a field of seven candidates with 4,097 votes, followed by Czako Reamsnyder with 3,210, Blair with 3,158, Mark Faubel with 2,557, Coombs with 2,556, Jean Gebert Powell with 2,207 and Douglas Rankin with 1,641.

Delaware County made the difference for Coombs. With all precincts counted, the results show Heyeck with 1,347 votes, Czako Reamsnyder with 1,025, Blair with 1,009, Coombs with 832, Faubel with 788, Gebert Powell with 720 and Rankin with 544.

With the combined totals in Franklin and Delaware county, Coombs defeated Faubel 3,388 to 3,345, with a 43-vote difference for the fourth available seat on council.

Heyeck, 67, is founder of The Grid Group LLC, where he currently works.

With his eighth term on council Jan. 1, he'll be the longest-serving council member in history.

Heyeck said hes not about setting records, but no one has gone beyond six terms.

I love public service, and I love Westerville, he said. Im so happy the citizenship elected me again.

Since starting as a council member in 1993, he hasnt respond to roll calls with a "here" or "present.

Instead, Heyeck gives his signature, "glad to be here."

He said he would continue to advocate for Westerville, a city that's fueled by economic development, and work to continue the citys excellent services by police, fire and EMS, award-winning parks, trails and recreation and all city services.

He said addressing areas that need redevelopment is very important.

The future of Westerville depends on the redevelopment, not just the development occurring, he said. Our first responders are top notch, and I want to continue to support them. I want to keep Westerville Westerville and keep supporting them.

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Czako Reamsnyder, 34, said shes so humbled to be elected.

The response has been amazing since I launched the campaign, she said. People really responded to a mother raising two kids. Ive got to meet so many people, and Im floored by the amount of people Ive got to talked to.

Megan Czako Reamsnyder

Czako Reamsnyder said shes excited to continue to be a voice for the residents.

The lifelong Westerville resident has served as a community volunteer in a variety of roles, including being a board member of Uptown Westerville Inc, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the vibrancy and economic stability of the Uptown District, merchants and community.

Shes also a Rotarian, school volunteer and PTA member and sat on the 2020 charter-review commission.

Theres a lot of great progress happening, and Im excited to see that move forward, Czako Reamsnyder said. Im so honored; this is amazing.

Blair, 61, is owner of Blair IT.

He couldnt be reached for comment after the election.

Blair Dennis

Blair provided candidate information to ThisWeek prior to the election, saying he wanted to continue serving the community however he could.

I have a strong interest in planning and economic development, as well as a desire to continue the good stewardship of the current and previous council members, he said. I work well in collaborative environments and look forward to furthering the citys goals and projects with creativity and in partnership with others.

He has spent over a decade serving the community on many boards and commissions.

In information Blair provided for The Columbus Dispatch's voters guide, Blair said, I believe my job is to represent all the people of Westerville. If elected, I will continue to keep Westerville safe, beautiful, affordable, and compassionate.

Coombs, 64, works as a real-estate agent.

I am humbled to have prevailed in such a tightly contested race, she said. The residents of Westerville city have spoken, and I look forward to ensuring they are the true winners. I will serve to the best of my ability and look forward to working together with my colleagues.

Coombs said she ran for council because she wants to keep the city healthy and prosperous and ensure Westerville's values and 25-year vision are upheld.

Westerville City Manager Monica Irelan said city staff are looking forward to welcoming the three new members.

Coutanya Coombs

I want to congratulate all candidates who ran for Westerville City Council, she said. I spent time with each of them individually, and I can say that each has a heart for service for this community.

I know that both the new and existing members of council would ask the community to stay engaged in the process, particularly by attending or watching public meetings. That is easy to do, with meetings airing live and links to contact members via email. It's all very accessible on the city website: westerville.org.

Council members Kathy Cocuzzi and Alex Heckman didnt seek reelection, and the Franklin County Board of Elections decided it wouldnt reconsider the rejection of council incumbent Valerie Cummings petition.

Votes are expected to be certified by the Franklin County Board of Elections by Nov. 23.

mkuhlman@thisweeknews.com

@ThisWeekMarla

This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Westerville council incumbent Michael Heyeck reelected to eighth term
Stillman College plans to commemorate a key figure in Alabama's history and an esteemed professional in civil rights work.

The HBCU aims to build a WYCA on its campus that will serve students and employees, as well as residents in Tuscaloosa's West End.

And they plan to name it after Vivian Malone Jones, the first African American to graduate from the formerly segregated University of Alabama on May 30, 1965.

Read more: Stillman College partners with the YWCA for building to honor Vivian Malone Jones

Her fight for admission to UA

Along with another African American student, Gadsden native James Hood, Malone Jones and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed suit against UA for denying entry to Black students, according to the NAACP.

A district judge ruled in favor of admitting them but was blocked by then-Gov. George Wallace in the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door event.

Gov. Wallace, on June 11, 1963, stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium as a show of his opposition to school integration imposed by the federal government.

The governor pledged to uphold segregation in the state, coining the now infamous slogan of Segregation now, segregation forever.

But after the arrival of federal guard troops and four and a half hours, the Malone Jones and Hood were admitted.

Vivian Malone Jones is led into Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. in September 1963. Gov. George C. Wallace tried to block her entrance into the University. (AP Photo/Montgomery Advertiser)

Civil Rights: 'Pain and shame' explain why Tuscaloosa's Bloody Tuesday remains less-known

Officials plan to the name the facility, the Vivian Malone Jones YWCA at Stillman College.

A successful career in Alabama's civil rights work

Malone Jones' husband, Mack Arthur Jones, was a Stillman student who served as her personal driver during her time at UA.

Malone Jones' family credits the support from Stillman and the West End community for helping her graduate from UA, according to the Tuscaloosa News.

The Mobile native received a bachelor of arts in business management, according to UA's website. When she graduated, she joined the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She also worked at the Environmental Protection Agency as director of civil rights and urban affairs and director of environmental justice before retiring in 1996.

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Vivian Malone and James Hood, two Black students, register at the Alabama University, 12 June 1963, in Tuscaloosa. In June 1963, a federal court barred any state government interference with the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, at the University of Alabama. Despite this order, Governor George Wallace appointed himself the temporary University registrar and stood in the doorway of the administration building to prevent the students from registering. In response, President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. One hundred guardsman escorted the students to campus and their commander, General Henry Graham, ordered George Wallace to "step aside." Thus were the students registered. Kennedy addressed the public, 11 June 1963, in a speech broadcast by all television networks, that cleared his position on civil rights. The bill that he submitted to Congress was ultimately passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Photo credit should read OFF/AFP via Getty Images)

That same year, former Governor Wallace presented the Lurleen B. Wallace Award for Courage to Malone Jones. He told her, according to the NAACP, that he made a mistake 33 years earlier and that he admired her.

More in history: Southern newspapers were vocal supporters of the Confederacy. It lasted for generations

She also gave the 2000 University of Alabama Commencement address, which you can watch here.

Malone Jones died in 2005 from complications following a stroke.

Molly Weisner is a digital producer for the USA TODAY network. Find her on Twitter @molly_weisner.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Vivian Malone Jones, first Black graduate from University of Alabama
Mirror celebrates third anniversary with new single All In One. (Photo: Instagram/mirror.weare)

Formed through ViuTVs reality talent show Good Night Show - King Maker in 2018, Hong Kong boy band Mirror celebrated their third anniversary on 3 November with a brand new single All In One.

As Mirror is made up of 12 members, with each member focusing on their individual work  singing, acting, hosting, and even endorsing brands  the new song is one of the rare times they would all gather together. All In One is now available on music streaming sites, and its music video has also premiered on YouTube.

The upbeat song features not only Mirrors cool dancing and fiery rapping, but also their fun side, with goofy faces and the 12 of them huddling together. Moving on from One And All that was released on their second anniversary last year, Mirror shows how they can still come together all in one, despite having individual achievements and goals over the past year.

Many fans posted congratulatory and encouraging messages in the comments:

Happy third anniversary! Unity is strength! This song is full of energy!

Im so touched to see all 12 of you together.

What a harmonious and happy group of brothers.

Thank you for bringing hope to Hong Kong and Hong Kongs music industry.
EXETER  Seeking to ease the mental health crisis plaguing the nation, Saco, Maine resident Gerry Scott believes he has come up with a solution.

All people need to do is come meet his black Friesian horse, Hercules, and his sidekick yellow lab, Molly.

Scott has started the nonprofit Horses Over America and he and his animal companions paid a visit to Exeter this past weekend.

People think more and feel less, but horses are just the opposite, and they feel more and think less, said Scott, a 28-year U.S. Army veteran. They are in a natural state of harmony. So because people are not in the same harmony as a horse, whether they realize it or not, they know they want more of it.

Horses Over America Director Gerry Scott, introduces his horse, Hercules to the staff at Lunachics. Horses Over America aims to improve community mental health by connecting people with horses.

Scott said Horses Over Americas mission is to partner with New England police departments as well as other horse owners around the region. He said the goal in working with police departments is so he and other horse owners don't cause traffic congestion.

Are there secret tunnels in Exeter?: Crime author Lara Bricker investigates

Then, he said Horses Over America is trying to raise $1.2 million, or about $2,000 per police department in New England, so they can spend a couple weeks a year in a town to walk around and cheer up residents. He said the money will be for any costs borne by police for possible traffic details.

Scott said he has adopted 10 communities across New England he will regularly bring Hercules and Molly to, as well as a couple of communities hell guest visit with his animals. He said his goal is to connect with horse owners willing to take on 10 communities each to spread goodwill in the community through passersbys connection to their animal.

Get ready to celebrate!: Exeter Holiday Parade set to return

Scott said he was inspired by the city of Liverpool, Englands experience during the COVID-19 lockdown. There, he said horse owners teamed up to pay a visit to every home in the city, and residents were able to meet their horses and it lifted their spirits while in isolation.

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The horse owner would just knock on the door and ask people if they wanted to meet his horse, Scott said. 99.9 percent of the time, the residents would come running out to see the horse and pet him.

Scott said Exeters response to meeting Hercules was incredible as scores of pictures were uploaded onto Exeter Community Forum Facebook page by community members who met her. He said when people see a horse, they instinctually harken back to their ancestors relying on horse-drawn carriages or saddle riding from place to place before automobiles.

Gerry Scott, his Friesian horse, Hurcules and his yellow lab Molly visit Exeter last weekend to lift spirits as part of Scott's nonprofit work with Horses Over America.

I'm doing something very old, but back in 1850 I'd say 70% of men and women in Portsmouth and Exeter were horsemen and horsewomen, Scott said. When we go down the street you can just feel the energy skyrocket. Nothing that goes down the street entices people to pull out their camera like seeing a beautiful black stallion that teams up with a yellow lab and they see three creatures in harmony.

To learn more about Horses Over America, and support Scotts work, visit HorsesOverAmerica.org.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Horses Over America spreads goodwill on horseback in Exeter NH
Port Huron's Municipal Office Center, 100 McMorran Blvd., on the St. Clair River in September 2021.

The chairman of Michigan's House Oversight Committee on Thursday asked the state's workforce safety agency turn over any documents concerning COVID-19 citations given to the city of Port Huron that have not already been destroyed.

It's a request that follows widespread media coverage earlier this week of the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration's dismissal of a year-old citation alleging the city violated protocols early in the pandemic, as well as areas of an Oct. 12 deposition transcript where a state compliance officer admitted to destroying communication and records related to his inspection of the city.

In a letter to MIOSHA Director Bart Pickelman, state Rep. Steve Johnson, R-Wayland, said he was concerned that "the actions by the agency and the inspector involved ... was not an isolated case."

Hearing that a state department was burning or destroying documents is very troubling, Johnson said in a statement, referencing news reports on the issue. The Oversight Committee will be looking further into this case to see what happened.

MIOSHA first fined the city $6,300 for allegedly failing to requiring employees to wear face coverings, conduct and maintain records of daily self-screening entry protocols, and training employees about the coronavirus.

The city contested the issue  based largely on the Michigan Supreme Court's opinion invalidating the governor's executive emergency orders  before rejecting a settlement.

Late Monday afternoon, Erica Quealy, deputy communications director for the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, said MIOSHA could not provide further information on the specifics of its case against Port Huron because of the "ongoing nature of the appeals process" even after the order to dismiss as any citation or "proposed resolution of the citation" could be "subject to further review and approval by the board of health and safety compliance and appeals."

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When asked about Johnson's request, Jason Moon, the department's communications director, said in an email, As a transparent organization, MIOSHA works to comply with requests for information, and will provide the information to the oversight committee to the extent permitted by applicable laws to share our efforts of protecting Michiganders in the workplace.

In the October deposition, Toddy Shoudy, the city's attorney, asked inspector Matthew Hartman a lengthy list of questions about the summer 2020 investigation of the city and alleged workplace coronavirus violations before, at one point, Hartman agreed the city had not violated any rules, standards or orders issued under MIOSHA.

But early on, he was asked about the records he kept from his unannounced visit to Port Huron's Municipal Office Center and email communication after the investigation.

Hartman said, workingfrom a home office, he typically burned his handwritten notes post-inspection.

Shoudy asked why emails sent to and from Harman's supervisor were also destroyed about the case and if there was something within them they "didn't want anybody to see." Harman said there wasn't.

"Why weren't those e-mails copied and made part of the official case file?" Shoudy said.

Harman replied, "It's just not standard practice for us to include every e-mail written about a specific inspection or investigation and include them in the case file."

City Manager James Freed, who's been an outspoken critic of the state's inspection response to COVID-19 workplace regulations, said he didn't have a comment related to Johnson's letter to MIOSHA. However, he reiterated earlier concerns on the citation, adding, "We just hope this never happens to anyone again."

In a news release, Johnson said the oversight committee would conduct a hearing on what unfolded. No date was given.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: House oversight chairman asks MIOSHA for records on Port Huron COVID-19 citations
Protesters held up crosses with names of the victims

Hundreds of people holding up crosses bearing the names of murdered women have marched in Mexico City to draw attention to rising cases of femicide.

The "Day of Dead Women" protest was held the day after Mexico's traditional Day of the Dead celebrations.

Femicide, or the intentional murder of women because of their gender, is increasingly a cause for concern.

At least 975 women were killed in Mexico in 2020, and 762 deaths happened from January to September this year.

Human rights group Amnesty International says investigations of the cases are often flawed because evidence is lost and a gender perspective is not applied correctly, making it "easier for these crimes to go unpunished".

Chanting "We are your voice," demonstrators used megaphones to read out the names of murdered women. They also carried photographs and banners with images of some of the victims.

A photo is pictured on a cross as relatives and friends of victims of femicide hold a march in Mexico City

Relatives and friends of victims of femicide hold a march in Mexico City

"Each cross is a case, a pain," Consuelo Martinez, mother of Victoria Pamela, who was killed by her partner, told Efe news agency. "We really want the authorities to act... We seek justice and truth for each of the dead [woman]."

The march was highly emotional, with some of the mothers crying and hugging one another.

"We're here for the same fight: our murdered daughters," said Nayeli Aquino, mother of Naela Daniela, who was killed in 2019 and whose case remains unsolved.

Cintia Ramirez, whose niece Dulce Lilian was murdered by her husband in 2019, said the protesters wanted the authorities to do more to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"The main demand is to urge the government to listen to us, to arrest people who are at large and for justice to be done. They aren't going to bring our dead back but at least they can give us some peace and tranquillity," she said.

Relatives and friends of victims of femicide hold a march in Mexico City

Earlier, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez said the government had opened 73 offices around the country to help female victims of violence.

Emergency calls related to violence against women in Mexico rose more than 30% last year, as Covid-19 lockdowns kept families stuck at home, according to Reuters news agency.
Linda Allen reported her year-old cat, Pooh Bear, was taken by a passing motorist last month. Police are investigating reports that a number of cats are disappearing in Hutchinson.

Hutchinson police are investigating claims of cats being snatched from the streets of Hutchinson.

Only one person has actually filed a report of a pet being taken, though there were multiple reports of feral cats missing, said Hutchinson Police Capt. Thad Pickard.

We are taking it seriously, and we are investigating, Pickard said. We dont know how widespread it might be.

Posts on several different Facebook sites contend the animals are being used to train dogs to fight, but Pickard and Det. Division Commander Lt. Dustin Loepp declined to speculate.

I hadnt seen my cat since Friday (Oct. 22), said Linda J. Allen, 66, who has filed a lone report. I went out to call for him, and my neighbor asked if I was looking for my cat, Pooh. He said a white pickup truck with two people in it had my cat. They asked him if it was his, and when he said it was not, they drove off. He couldnt remember what they looked like.

Another neighbor who lives across the alley from Allen has cameras set up and recorded the white pickup, which appears to be an older model Dodge with a club cab, driving through the alley.

Linda Allen believes the occupants of this truck, captured on a neighborhood video camera, took her cat on Oct. 21 and is seeking help finding it. Hutchinson Police are investing reports of cat snatchings in the city.

One picture shows the (truck) passenger holding a cat looking out the window, Allen said.

The timestamp showed it was taken just before noon, Oct. 21.

Allen said the officer who took her report advised anyone missing a cat they believe was taken should report it.

Pickard said Allens was the only report. However, he couldnt say how many feral cats people have reported missing because they dont generate reports for that, since they are free-range and dont belong to anyone, so there is no crime.

Allen said her gray tabby and its brother were adopted together from the Hutchinson Animal Shelter. The shelter had named it Pooh Bear and she kept the name for her grandson.

His brother still cries for him every day, she said.

Allen said theyve posted the video of the truck, hoping someone recognizes it.

Another video posted to the site Hutchinson Street Cat Society shows what appears to be a black man with long hair attempting to snatch a cat from a porch swing, but the cat got away, and the man drove off. The person who posted the video stated the car appeared to be a silver Grand Am.

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Allen lives near Allen Elementary School. She said her cousin in the 3700 block of Monroe also reported her cat came up missing. Other reports, she said, are on Reno County Lost and Found.

Theres a lot of speculation going on and a lot of information third-hand and on social media, but nothing concrete, Loepp said earlier this week. Its possible this stuff is going on, but so far weve been unable to confirm it.

To report a missing cat contact the Hutchinson Police Department at 620-694-2816.

This article originally appeared on The Hutchinson News: Multiple cat snatchings reported to Hutchinson police
President Joe Bidens much-touted Summit for Democracy is just weeks away. Whether it will have any lasting impact is another matter.

Biden aides are still shaping the agenda for the Dec. 9-10 virtual summit, and much of their work is confidential. The list of invited governments has not been made public, although POLITICO managed to obtain one compilation Thursday. The plans are all tentative, and civil society groups are complaining about being marginalized.

One, somewhat vague initiative the Biden team has discussed launching during the summit is an international alliance to promote internet freedom  called "The Alliance for the Future of the Internet," according to documents obtained by POLITICO. U.S. officials also have floated a list of potential commitments other countries can make, such as increasing funds for media literacy programs or enacting export controls on some dual-use technologies.

Overall, the variety of ideas underscores Bidens view that strengthening the worlds democracies at a time of rising authoritarianism requires tools beyond mere rhetoric about free-and-fair elections. Biden is, after all, hosting the summit during a year that has seen at least six coups in countries from Myanmar to Sudan.

But its far from clear how many countries attending the summit will sign up for commitments or how many will follow through. Although none of the suggested commitments appear to be internationally binding, many will require governments to sell them to constituencies back home and allocate funding to making them real. Thats also true in the United States, where a polarized political environment has blocked Bidens efforts to push through priorities such as voting rights legislation.

The symbolism of the gathering is important, but the actual change on the ground that the summit would generate remains to be seen, said Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. There are a lot of big questions on the table that the initial gathering wont address, like what to do about weaker democracies that are showing regression.

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Spokespeople for the White House-based National Security Council did not offer comment for this story. But a person familiar with the upcoming summit stressed the ever-changing status of the ideas under discussion: The document describing the tech alliance, for instance, has been overtaken by events, but wouldnt say what that meant.

The administration is kicking around a lot of different initiatives and kicking the tires on a lot of different ideas, the person said. All of them are at this point pre-decisional and subject to significant refinement.

A fully Hobbesian future

The document that lays out the tech alliance proposal is tagged as Non-Paper//Discussion Purposes Only. It argues that one reason to launch such a democratic-led alliance is to counter the rise of an alternative vision of the Internet as a tool of state control promoted by authoritarian powers such as China and Russia.

The alliances core principles would include: a collective commitment to develop and implement high standards for data privacy, data security and cyber security; a commitment to cooperation on tech platform regulation and information integrity; and commitment to establish a forum for technical cooperation on cybersecurity standards and incident response.

In addition, the proposal calls for a commitment to ensuring open and interoperable access for software and apps among members; non-discrimination in domestic regulations; and shared commitments regarding data localization.

In pursuing this proposal, we are not seeing [sic] to splinter the internet but offer a collective response to actions by a growing number of countries, particularly authoritarian countries, and thereby avoid a descent to a fully Hobbesian future where beggar-thy-neighbor conduct becomes the norm, the document states.

Its unclear how the alliance would differ from existing networks such as the Freedom Online Coalition. According to the text of a letter seen by POLITICO, people connected to that coalition are urging the Biden team to seek multi-stakeholder input as you consider creating new initiatives that may be duplicative of, or shift focus or resources from, the FOCs work.

The person familiar with the situation said the Biden administration is engaging the FOCs advocates and fully aware of its concerns, but that the idea for the alliance is not necessarily at odds with the U.S. support for the FOC  of which the United States is a member.

Due largely to the Covid-19 crisis, the administration has had to lower expectations for Decembers summit, the convening of which was one of Bidens most concrete foreign policy pledges during the 2020 presidential campaign.

The original idea was to hold one, in-person summit of world leaders earlier in Bidens first year. Instead, the administration now plans to host a first, virtual summit in December, to be followed by a year of action that culminates in a second, presumably in-person gathering in 2022.

In brainstorming ideas for the summit, administration officials came up with an Illustrative Menu of Options for commitments the U.S. could seek from the various countries invited to the gathering. That document includes an array of potential commitments that fall under the three main themes of the summit: fighting corruption, defending against authoritarianism and advancing human rights.

For instance, countries may be encouraged to convene a joint law enforcement-civil society commission that tackles human rights issues. Or they could run for a spot on a United Nations committee that deals with NGOs as a way to counterbalance the influence of authoritarian governments such as China. Or they could pledge to use tools such as export controls and sanctions to limit the ability of other governments to target dissidents across borders.

One of the documents obtained by POLITICO appears to be a compilation of Biden administration achievements that U.S. officials plan to tout during the December summit.

That list includes the creation of a White House Gender Policy Council; Bidens executive actions designed to improve access to voting; and the release of the first-ever U.S. National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

Civil society shutout?

While the White House is pushing forward with its planning for the virtual summit, civil society organizations have expressed growing frustration at what they see as their marginal role in the global gathering.

Various leaders of NGOs and other activists have been sharing drafts of letters and memos aimed at pressing the White House to engage them and give them more air time during the summit. At the moment, a huge chunk of the virtual event appears to be dedicated to three-minute speeches by the attending government leaders.

The person familiar with the situation stressed that the administration is actively engaging outside groups and that it is going to involve civil society meaningfully in every aspect of the summit itself ... The summit is not just about foreign heads of state.

During a meeting Thursday with civil society advocates, administration officials read out the list of governments to be invited and said there would be at least 17 approved official side events during the summit, according to a person briefed on the session. Some of those side events will include civil society representatives, administration officials told those gathered Thursday. The administration also has been unveiling websites related to the summit.

Its tough to say how far such assurances will go.

In one memo seen by POLITICO, some civil society groups urge the administration to stress to participating governments the importance of consulting civil society and other stakeholders on their commitments in ways that are inclusive and timely.

The memo also urges the administration to publish the list of invited countries so that civil society partners in those countries are better aware of the opportunities they have.

It is a shame that this initial event in December is not more inclusive, said Sarah Repucci, a top official with Freedom House, an organization that tracks the health of democracies around the world.

While some details have leaked about the invitees, the administration hasnt officially published a full list. Some countries, such as Turkey and Hungary, have not been invited because their leaders have been undermining their democratic systems for years. Taiwan is among the invitees, according to the list obtained Thursday.

Repucci said that its important to hold the summit, at the very least to send a signal to seemingly emboldened authoritarian states, especially China and Russia.

It does matter what democracies do, Repucci said. They need to set a positive example and band together, because the dictatorships band together.
Attorneys are refusing to be added to a list of pro bono legal aid providers the Biden administration is planning to give immigrants whom it places in a Trump-era program that forces them to wait in Mexico.

The immigration attorneys say they won't be complicit in the relaunch of the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as MPP or the "Remain in Mexico" program, which they say is not only dangerous but takes away the due process rights of immigrants and asylum-seekers. Organizations that help immigrants at the border will continue their work, including helping those put in MPP, said Sue Kenney-Pfalzer, director of the border and asylum network at HIAS, the Jewish nonprofit that aids refugees. But signing on to a list created by the administration that will send more immigrants into squalid border camps and crowded shelters than they can represent is a "farce" and a "hollow gesture," she said.

"For all of us, our duty is to the migrants, not the US government," Kenney-Pfalzer told BuzzFeed News. "What we're not going to do is be complicit with the government in trying to make MPP somehow more palatable, because there's no way MPP can be made more humane. It's illegal and inhumane."

The program was created in January 2019 under former president Donald Trump and forced more than 71,000 immigrants and asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for months, and in some cases years, while a US judge considers their case. In June, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas formally ended the policy, but a federal judge then ordered the administration to restart it, which could happen as soon as mid-November.

Immigration advocates have said the administration hasn't done enough to fight the court order, and they've criticized how lists of pro bono attorneys have been used by officials when MPP was previously running.

When an immigrant would show up to their court hearing without an attorney, judges would give them more time to find representation, postponing their case for months and referring them to a list of pro bono attorneys. The problem was that many legal aid organizations were already overwhelmed with thousands of immigrants asking for help and couldn't take on most of the new cases. The pro bono list, advocates said, became a false beacon of hope for immigrants and asylum-seekers.

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Felipe, an asylum-seeker from Honduras who was placed in the MPP program with his family, said he was handed a list of pro bono legal aid providers when he attended his first court hearing. The hearing took place in a tent in Brownsville, Texas, and the judge presided remotely, appearing via a screen.

"I called the numbers on the list, but no one ever picked up," Felipe told BuzzFeed News.

Without a lawyer, it's hard to figure out how to fill out asylum paperwork and know what to tell a judge, Felipe said, and it's only made more difficult for immigrants who live under the constant fear of being kidnapped, attacked, and extorted by criminals at the border who see them as easy targets.

"The judges were deciding MPP cases unjustly because we didn't know how to do things correctly," Felipe said. "We didn't have a chance."

Only about 10% of the 71,044 immigrants placed in the MPP program were able to get representation, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), and having a lawyer makes the chances of winning an asylum case significantly higher.

The Justice Departments Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation's immigration courts, declined to say how many organizations had so far agreed to be a part of the pro bono list that will be given to immigrants in MPP.

On Oct. 28, EOIR sent an email saying it was still seeking providers to be added to a list of pro bono legal services interested in offering aid via "remote technology." The list, EOIR said, will be given to immigrants in MPP who have hearings in San Diego and the three Texas cities of El Paso, Harlingen, and San Antonio.

"We will be expediting the application process due to the urgent need for pro bono legal services among the MPP population," the email said.

Refusing to be on the pro bono list is not the first time advocates have refused to work with the Biden administration on the reimplementation of MPP. On Oct. 16, border organizations "walked out" of a virtual meeting with White House staff over upcoming plans to restart MPP, saying they could no longer have conversations in good conscience with the Biden administration because it has continued to preserve policies enacted by Trump, including a policy that allows the US to quickly expel immigrants at the border.

Last week, the administration issued a second memo rescinding MPP, months after its first attempt was thwarted by a judge for not complying with the Administrative Procedure Act. Advocates have criticized the amount of time that passed between the two memos, which DHS officials acknowledged took "some time" to go through necessary materials in a recent call with reporters.

In spite of the new memo, the officials said, the Biden administration may still be obligated under the court order to restart MPP.

"If and when Mexico agrees to accept returns and the injunction has not yet been lifted, we will be bound to begin to place people back into MPP," a DHS official said. "We are hopeful that there will be groups and entities that will come forward and provide the access to counsel that we all know is so urgently needed."

The Mexican government, which has to agree to take back immigrants returned across the border before MPP can be restarted, has expressed concerns about due process and receiving vulnerable people sent back to the country, administration officials said.

Taylor Levy, an attorney who would regularly go to Ciudad Juarez to help immigrants in MPP, said advocates don't want to be added to the pro bono list because it could be used by the Biden administration to demonstrate to Mexico that the new version of the program will include increased access to legal counsel.

Organizations and attorneys that provide legal aid to immigrants will help those in MPP once it starts again, Levy said, but she will no longer be one of them. In her time working with immigrants in MPP, Levy said, she was threatened by cartels.

"I watched a family get kidnapped in front of me, and I was told point-blank to my face to step aside or else I was going to have problems, Levy told BuzzFeed News. "I watched a mother and father with a toddler in their arms sob and beg for help, and all I could do was watch because I needed to protect my life."

She remembered one family who was trying to attend their MPP hearing show up bloody, bruised, and dirty to the border after they were kidnapped on the way to court. Ciudad Juarez police beat them and orally raped the pregnant wife in front of her husband and mother-in-law, Levy said.

She tried to help the family, even though she knew she was putting her own life at risk by attracting attention from Mexican police and the cartel, whose lookouts told her they knew who she was. From February 2019 to February 2021, Human Rights First counted at least 1,544 public reports of murder, rape, and other attacks committed against people in MPP across the USMexico border. After two years of working with immigrants and asylum-seekers in MPP and facing hours of questions about her work by US Customs and Border Protection officers, Levy said, she was diagnosed with PTSD and couldn't go back to doing the same work.

"I am not willing to or able to emotionally and physically continue to put my life at risk, because the Biden administration has broken its promise and decided to reinstate this utterly evil program," Levy said. "There is no way to make it humane. There is no way to ensure due process."

Nicole Morgan, family detention attorney for the immigrant advocacy organization RAICES, said the group will remain on the general pro bono list that immigration courts provide immigrants, but the group will not be on the MPP list.

"We are not going to legitimize this program by giving them the veneer of providing access to counsel or due process," Morgan said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Felipe, the immigrant previously in MPP, and his family were able to reopen their case and enter the US after initially losing their asylum case while waiting in Mexico in January 2020. He blamed the initial loss on his unfamiliarity with the US's asylum laws and how to properly fill out the familys application. He hopes that now that hes in the US he'll be able to find an attorney and win their case.

As the Biden administration prepares to restart MPP, Felipe thinks about the families placed in the program under Trump who are still in Mexico.

"I know mothers and fathers living in shelters for years who are still waiting in Mexico for an opportunity," Felipe said.

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Onsight Eno was the organizer, supervisor and leader. Gucci Greg found potential home invasion victims, then helped in the robberies. Solja did witness intimidation and murder.

Thats how a 15-count federal indictment says Eric Hunter, 28; Greg Stickney, 31; and Derrick Slade, 27, essayed their roles in Fort Lauderdales Onsight gang from 2015 through earlier this year.

Among the charges each faces are RICO conspiracy; use and carrying of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence; and causing the death of a person by a firearm. Each of those carries the maximum sentence of life. And while maximum sentences add only flash to the vast majority of stories about charges filed, this indictment carries two unusual sections titled Special Sentencing Factor.

The first accuses Hunter and Slade of murdering Antaeous Jovan Bosfield on Nov. 3, 2015. The second accuses all three of murdering Donald Johnston on Nov. 4, 2015.

The Long Arm of the Other Side of the Law

Each sleeps, for now, at the Broward County Main Jail. Online jail records say Stickney was picked up Wednesday, but Hunter and Slade have been in county jail since 2018.

Hunter was arrested on three counts of extortion, then later got hit with charges of armed home invasion and criminal attempt to solicit a conspiracy. Slade had been on probation after being in prison from June 2012 through June 2015 on second-degree murder, burglary with structural damage, and grand theft charges.

The indictment includes:

 While incarcerated, members of (Onsight) corruptly obtained FBI reports which identified a potential witness against (Onsight).

 While incarcerated, members of (Onsight) contacted non-incarcerated (Onsight) members and associates and instructed them to identify, locate and harm potential government witnesses against them.

 A member of (Onsight), while incarcerated, used physical violence towards law enforcement and corrections officials in order to obstruct attempts to obtain the members fingerprint exemplars, which potentially could link him to past criminal acts.

The woman shot the man dead Wednesday, Fort Lauderdale cops say, then left in his car

A Miami-Fort Lauderdale pair used a mental health clinic for a $350,000 Medicaid fraud
A real estate agent from Frisco, Texas, who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot  and later said on social media that she would not be arrested because she is white, has blond hair and a good job  was sentenced Thursday to two months in prison, AP reports.

Driving the news: Prosecutors alleged that Jennifer Leigh Ryan demonstrated a lack of candor and remorse for her participation in the insurrection and did not understand the seriousness of her crime, per AP.

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"Your actions since Jan. 6 make me doubt some of those things," U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said of Ryan's apology.

The big picture: Prosecutors said that Ryan traveled to D.C. on a chartered jet, livestreamed her entry into the Capitol, and posted photos of herself on social media next to broken windows.

Ryan's lawyers argued that she was in the Capitol for two minutes, was not violent and was exercising her First Amendment right to speak on social media.

Ryan on March 26 wrote on Twitter: "Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and Im not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong."

Ryan said in court that she was responding to people who called for her arrest. "I was attacked and I was answering them," she said.

What's next: Ryan is expected to begin serving her sentence in January.

Go deeper: Alleged Capitol rioter sent back to jail after watching conspiracy theory event

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TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday he may take on the role of foreign minister until a new cabinet is formed this month, as the incumbent foreign minister took over a key ruling party post.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) officially confirmed on Thursday Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-foreign-minister-motegi-become-ruling-party-secretary-general-2021-11-02 as the party's secretary-general, the party's number two post and a powerful role that includes shaping policy.

"Until the new cabinet, I am thinking of working as foreign minister as well," Kishida, who previously served as foreign minister, told reporters.

Kishida led the LDP to better-than-expected election results https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-votes-test-new-pm-kishida-political-stability-2021-10-30 on Sunday, with the party retaining its strong majority in the lower house.

Motegi said he would focus on tasks such as recovery of the pandemic-hit economy and party reform to enhance diversity, vowing to drive policy with speed.

"It is very important to show the LDP is changing, as we implement what we can do fast, while presenting the big picture," Motegi said.

He said the ruling party would discuss details for extra budget with its junior coalition partner to create "rich, fulfilling" economic measures.

The parliament is set to convene a special session on Nov. 10 to confirm Kishida as prime minister. He is expected to name a new cabinet, which is likely to remain largely unchanged except for the post of foreign minister, shortly afterwards.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Elaine Lies; Editing by Richard Pullin, Robert Birsel)
Phil Murphy Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) appears to have won re-election to a second term on Tuesday, though the race was so close The Associated Press and other new organizations did not call it until about 24 hours after the polls closed. Murphy was trailing Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli until Wednesday morning, when returns from historically Democratic parts of New Jersey finally came in.

It isn't clear how large Murphy's eventual margin of victory will be  he leads by 1.2 percentage points with 98 percent of precincts reporting and 90 percent of the estimated vote counted, AP reports  but the unexpectedly narrow results rattled Democrats already reeling from Democrat Terry McAuliffe's loss in Virginia.

At the same time, history was working against the Democrats in both races  Virginia almost always elects a governor from the opposite party of the president, and before Murphy, no Democrat had won a second term in New Jersey since Brendan Byrne In 1977. Murphy is "also the first Democrat since Byrne to win during the first term of a [Democratic] president," The Nation's John Nichols notes. And while Murphy's breaking of a 44-year Democratic re-election curse is pretty unusual, his narrow margin of victory is not, as "political junkie" and "amateur historian" Russell Drew pointed out on Twitter.

Also, not every Democrat eked out a win on Tuesday. "In perhaps the most shocking result of Election Day in New Jersey, longtime state Senate President Steve Sweeney is trailing by more than 2,000 votes to a commercial truck driver named Edward Durr" who "spent just $153 on his campaign," NBC 10 Philadelphia reports. "Sweeney has not yet conceded, but his loss throws leadership in the New Jersey Legislature into uncertainty."

Ciattarelli also has not conceded the governors race, but Murphy gave a victory speech in Asbury Park on Wednesday night. "Tonight, I renew my promise to you  whether you voted for me or not  to work every single day of the next four years to keep moving us forward," he said.

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The last of the residents have left a homeless encampment in Burlington's South End, the city said.

A judge ruled Tuesday that the city could legally close the Sears Lane encampment.

Two camp residents had asked the judge to block the closure of the encampment, but the judge disagreed, ruling the residents had no legal claim to live there.

I think for some folks its sad," former resident Gina Johnson told WCAX-TV. For me, its just if they are going to take this place away  whats left  for people who dont have ways and means.

Makeshift homes are seen in a wooded section of Burlington's South End on Aug. 22, 2021. This view is from Sears Lane, looking north. The camps lie in the path of the proposed Champlain Parkway.

Johnson said she didn't need an apartment and prefers to live with minimal belongings. She said she planned to head to a hotel and eventually to move into an trailer provided by the city.

The Burlington mayors office says the last Sears Lane resident moved into a hotel on Tuesday.

In the nearly three weeks since I made the difficult decision to end the Sears Lane encampment, we have successfully delivered emergency resources to over 30 community members experiencing homelessness and moved them into safer and better housing," Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said in a Tuesday statement.

Previous coverage:

The Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says its disappointed in the judges decision.

All Burlington residents should be treated with respect and compassion, and both the city and the state need to adequately fund and implement services that address housing insecurity, poverty, mental health concerns, and substance use disorders, the ACLU said.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Judge denies effort to stop closure of Sears Lane encampment
Nov. 3If you are concerned about a child being neglected or abused, call Maine's 24-hour hotline at 800-452-1999 or 711 to speak with a child protective specialist. Calls may be made anonymously. For more information, visit maine.gov/dhhs/ocfs/cw/reporting_abuse.

The woman convicted of murdering four-year-old Kendall Chick will not receive the reduced sentence she was seeking. A judge denied her post conviction review request Wednesday.

Shawna Gatto was found guilty of depraved indifference murder by Justice William Stokes following a jury waived trial in April 2019 and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld her conviction last year.

Gatto sought to change her plea and receive a lesser sentence through the post conviction review process, alleging that her trial lawyer provided insufficient representation causing her to not fully understand the case against her and her legal options.

In his decision issued Wednesday, Stokes rejected Gatto's allegations that her lawyers provided constitutionally deficient representation.

"The attorneys made considerable and reasonable efforts to keep Ms. Gatto apprised of the state of her case and her options, and the court finds she understood them, even as she did not want to face or deal with them," Stokes wrote in his decision.

At trial, Gatto was represented by attorneys Phil Cohen  who has since died  and Jeremy Pratt. She is currently being represented by attorney Dylan Boyd.

During a hearing last month, Gatto said Cohen and Pratt did not communicate with her enough, resulting in a lack of understanding of her case. Gatto also said that she was uncomfortable talking with Cohen, who she said was dismissive of her and made her feel like she couldn't ask questions.

Had she fully understood the evidence or her plea options going into trial, Gatto said she would have entered a no contest plea instead of a not guilty plea.

Both a guilty plea and a no contest plea result in conviction. However, through a no contest plea, a person does not admit guilt, but concedes that a jury could find them guilty based on the evidence prosecutors would bring forth at trial.

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No contest pleas also typically result in a lesser sentence because the plea is seen as accepting some level of responsibility, according to Boyd.

Pratt said the concept of a no contest plea was discussed with Gatto, but that the conversation was a non-starter because she was adamant that she wanted a trial.

"There is no support in the record evidence suggesting that Ms. Gatto had any inclination to enter any type of plea that would have results in a conviction for the crime of murder," Stokes wrote in his decision.

Stokes accepted Gatto's testimony that Cohen appeared "annoyed and frustrated" with her leading up to trial. However, Stokes said that Cohen's behavior and the dueling perceptions about whether or not Gatto was kept adequately informed by her attorneys, "are explained, in large part, by Ms. Gatto's tendency to 'shut down' and refuse to see or hear things she could not deal with," according to Stokes.

As the judge presiding over her trial, Stokes said he has observed that Gatto is more intelligent and knowledgeable about her case than she portrays. He said that some of her frustration with her attorneys stems from the fact she was unable to face the reality of what happened to Chick and the consequences she was facing.

Assistant Attorney General Don Macomber said Wednesday that the state was pleased with Stokes' "well-reasoned decision."

"He totally rejected her self-serving claim that her lawyers were to blame for her conviction and resulting 50-year sentence. Instead, he properly found that the only one to blame was herself," Macomber said.

Boyd said he is scheduling time in the coming days to meet with Gatto to discuss her options in the wake of the post conviction review denial. Gatto could appeal the decision to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. However, Boyd said it would be up to the court to allow the appeal to proceed.
The judge overseeing Kevin Stricklands evidentiary hearing, which is set to start next week, on Thursday rejected three motions filed by the Missouri Attorney Generals Office.

Arguments made at the hearing again illustrated a power clash in the case, with the AGs office unsuccessfully contending that Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker does not represent Missouri in it. Disagreements also stemmed from how to interpret the states new law that allows local prosecutors to seek to free prisoners they believe are innocent.

Among the motions denied was one that attempted to narrow the scope of the evidence that will be presented at Mondays hearing. The AGs office sought to have two affidavits kept out, but prosecutors said the judge should consider them.

We think you can look at everything, Edward Chip Robertson, a former Missouri Supreme Court justice who joined Bakers team trying to free Strickland, told Judge James Welsh. We want to empower you to make the right decision.

The denials mean Stricklands evidentiary hearing, which has been delayed twice in Jackson County, is set to begin at 10 a.m. Monday. Evidence will likely be presented over several days. Welsh said he will order each side to file post-trial briefs, meaning they will assert their arguments again in writing after the hearing. It remains unclear when Welsh will make a ruling.

In an investigation published in 2020, The Star reported that, for decades, two men who pleaded guilty in the 1978 triple murder swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the killings. A third, uncharged suspect also said Strickland is innocent. The only eyewitness to the shooting later tried to recant her identification of Strickland and wanted him freed.

In May, Strickland, 62, received rare support from local prosecutors who said he is factually innocent and called for his release. Baker filed a motion seeking to free him when the new law went into effect in August. The AGs office has fought her efforts, contending Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested, is guilty and received a fair trial.

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Baker declined to comment Thursday and said she is going to try the case in the courtroom.

During the hearing, the AGs office attempted to argue that Baker does not represent the state in Stricklands case.

But Robertson  who suggested the AGs office does not like the new law  said there were three murder trials underway in Jackson County in which Baker or one of her assistants represented the state of Missouri. He noted the new laws language states the AGs office may appear at the evidentiary hearing, but it did not have to; it chose to be here.

Ahead of Mondays hearing, groups plan to gather at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Jackson County courthouse to call for Stricklands release. The rally was put together, in part, by the National Organization of Exonerees, a group of exonerees based in Michigan.

If prosecutors prevail and Strickland is exonerated, his imprisonment will mark the longest known wrongful conviction in Missouri.
A juror in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has been dismissed for making what prosecutors derided as a joke to a court official about the police shooting of a Black man that sparked the violent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020.

On Thursday, Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder removed the unnamed man, known as juror number 7, from the jury after he refused to repeat what he'd said.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger requested the dismissal of the juror, described by reporters in the courtroom as an "elderly white man."

I wasnt there. I dont know exactly what the juror said, but it was my understanding that it was something along the lines of Why did the Kenosha police shoot Jacob Blake seven times?'" Binger said. "It's my understanding that the rest of the joke is 'Because they ran out of bullets.'"

On Aug. 23, 2020, a 29-year-old unarmed Black man named Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha police officer while walking to his car. His three children were seated inside the car and saw the incident. Blake was paralyzed from the waist down as a result of his injuries. Protests and riots erupted in the wake of the shooting and, two days after Blake was shot, the streets of Kenosha became the site of Rittenhouse's alleged criminal activity.

Rittenhouse, 18, is accused of fatally shooting two people and wounding another during the protests on Aug. 25. On Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree homicide, one count of attempted homicide, two counts of recklessly endangering safety, and one count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 (he was 17 years old at the time).

Here is video clips of the exchange regarding Juror 7, what the joke he said to a deputy was, and what he said to the judge before being dismissed. #RittenhouseTrial 02:37 PM - 04 Nov 2021

When questioned by Schroeder, juror number 7 admitted to making the "joke" to a court deputy while being escorted to his car earlier in the week.

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Binger argued that the juror's comments suggested "some sort of racial bias which I think comes in to play in this case." Rittenhouse's lawyers did not object to the dismissal. "If Number 7 is unwilling to repeat it, what it was, were at a disadvantage and I suppose we can take his unwillingness in the worst light," defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said.

Juror number 7 attempted to defend himself to the judge by arguing that the "joke" was not relevant to the trial. "My feeling is, it was nothing to do with the case," he said. "It wasn't anything to do with Kyle and his seven charges."

"The point Im making is that the public needs to be confident that this is a fair trial and I think  at the very most, it was bad judgment to tell a joke of that nature," Schroeder said before thanking the former juror for his time.

With this dismissal, Rittenhouse's jury is now comprised of 19 individuals: 11 women and 8 men. Journalists in the Kenosha courtroom have reported that there is only one person of color in the jury; the other 18 men and women are white.

Twelve of these individuals will be jurors who decide the case, and the other seven will be alternates. During the jury selection process on Monday, Schroeder said that he will appoint the jurors and the alternates at the end of the trial, which is expected to last for two weeks.

More on this
Greg Abbott. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Thursday over Texas' new voting restrictions, which were signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in September.

The law bans 24-hour and drive-thru voting, expands access for partisan poll watchers, and imposes restrictions on absentee ballots, which the Justice Department alleges violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said democracy in the United States "depends on the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot and to have that ballot counted. The Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society."

The new Texas voting law was crafted by GOP state lawmakers, and Abbott has said the restrictions will "solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat."

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With COVID-19 vaccines approved for children ages 5-11, youths across Kansas will soon have access to the shot.

Gov. Laura Kelly announced Wednesday that Kansas adopted the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for administering the Pfizer vaccine to children ages 5-11 under an emergency use authorization.

"In the first wave of vaccine distribution, Kansas will receive 128,000 doses," Kelly told the Safer Classrooms Workgroup on Wednesday. "Some doses have already arrived and we expect most to be delivered by this Friday.

"Over half of these vaccines will go directly to large health care providers and local public health departments that have ordered the vaccine in packages of 300 doses. The other half will be repackaged in smaller amounts so that pediatricians, family physicians, community health centers and other providers can immediately begin to vaccinate their pediatric patients."

Kansas has more than 260,000 children in the 5-11 age group, Kelly said.

File photo: Gov. Laura Kelly joined Second Gentleman Douglass Emhoff, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and other local and state leaders for a tour of Topeka High's vaccine clinic earlier this school year. [Pool Photography by Evert Nelson/The Capital-Journal]

"Ultimately, this decision will be up to our parents," Kelly said. "So I encourage all Kansans to talk with their doctors, or other trusted health care providers, to make an informed decision on what's best for their kids. The tools we need to protect our children and finally return to normal are more accessible than ever. This new vaccine is safe, it's effective, and it's free. So call your doctor or go to vaccines.gov and schedule an appointment as soon as possible."

The KDHE on Wednesday reported 1,426 new cases among children and eight pediatric hospitalizations in the past seven days. Data showed Kansas had 51 active coronavirus clusters at schools, including eight new outbreaks in the past week.

Five Kansas children have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Three of those deaths have been during this fall semester.

"We've had five pediatric deaths in the state of Kansas," said pediatric hospitalist Stephanie Kuhlmann. "We have now a vaccine that's going to prevent that, so we shouldn't have any moving forward."

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Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation

Misinformation on COVID-19 vaccines has been widespread. The Kansas Legislature's anti-mandate committee has permitted several hours of public comment to spread misinformation without rebuttal.

More: 'That's medical rape': Kansas legislators, public spread misinformation at anti-mandate COVID panel

The Special Committee on Government Overreach and the Impact of COVID-19 Mandates meets again on Tuesday.

"Even now, nearly a year after the first vaccine was approved, misinformation about the vaccine continues to run rampant through our communities," Kelly said. "And some Kansans remain wary of getting vaccinated or having their kids vaccinated. I want to reiterate that the vaccine authorization process is thorough, they have the best minds working to ensure that the vaccine is safe."

Kristie Clark, a pediatrician and president of the Kansas Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics, said physicians need to reassure parents.

"Over 10 million kids in the U.S. age 12 and up have already received at least one dose of this vaccine," Clark said. "So that is something really important for parents to know, that this has (emergency authorization), it was tested in thousands of kids, there were no serious side effects and millions of teenagers at this point have had this vaccine and are doing well with it."

Polling of Kansas parents on vaccine hesitancy, analyzed by QuoteWizard by LendingTree and released Tuesday, showed concerns about side effects are the top reason cited by parents opposed to vaccination.

The survey, which allowed respondents to provide multiple reasons, found that 51% of parents cited concerns about side effects, 40% wanted to wait and see, 31% don't trust the government, 29% are not convinced their children need the vaccine and 12% don't believe in vaccination.

Masks and mitigation measures

The workgroup has promoted vaccines, testing and masks as the primary tools to keep children safe and in school.

Still, about 20% of public and private schools have shown no interest in implementing a KDHE testing program. Those schools educate about 75,000 children.

Only 20% of school districts, as of the start of November, required masks for all or most students. Those schools educate about 303,000 children, or about 63% of all schoolchildren in the state.

School mask mandates lead to fewer and smaller outbreaks of COVID-19, KDHE data show. Of the current clusters, outbreaks at schools without mask mandates affect seven times as many students per capita.

More: Kansas COVID clusters fall: 'When we require masks, we see fewer outbreaks impacting fewer students'

"We continue to stress to school districts vaccinations," state Education Commissioner Randy Watson said. "That's the real way we're going to really beat this virus. And then of course to mitigate until we can get there  masking and testing."

Mask mandates have already been lifted in some school districts. Kevin Riemann, executive director of the Kansas National Education Association, raised concerns that more mitigation measures could be rolled back amid turnover on local boards of education.

"Looking at the results of last night's school board elections we had, in all the suburban areas we talked about, had masking mandates and did a lot of those mitigation efforts," Riemann said. "A lot of candidates who have run off the platform of not masking and not doing the mitigation efforts won, and they will be on the boards in January."

Jason Tidd is a statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jtidd@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: With FDA and CDC approval, Kansas starts vaccinating kids for COVID
Kazakhstan looks set to adopt comprehensive regulations for its crypto mining industry.

Facing an electricity deficit mostly blamed on cryptocurrency miners, Kazakhstan is now trying to avoid energy problems this coming winter.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said there was an urgent need to maintain power supply for, and called for the immediate legal regulation of the expanding crypto sector.

During his meeting with the energy minister Magzum Mirzagaliev, Tokayev criticised his department for permitting a slump in fuel reserves. He also said there was a need to ensure an uninterrupted supply of electricity for both businesses and households.

The minister said that the so-called grey miners were expected to consume up to 1,200 MW of electricity and work to identify them continues.

Kazakhstan as a hub for crypto miners

The head of state also said that Kazakhstan had significant resources to provide the domestic market with high-quality fuels and lubricants and an uninterrupted supply of electricity.

The Central Asian nation, which maintains low electricity rates, became a hub to a growing number of cryptocurrency miners amid an ongoing crackdown on Bitcoin mining in China.

When China announced a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading in May, citing environmental and financial concerns, many miners fled to the US, neighbouring Kazakhstan or Russia.

This year, the Kazakh Association of Blockchain and Data Center Industries  an industry body for crypto miners  confirmed that active crypto exchanges registered in the country will be required to start working with local banks to facilitate Kazakh customers access to cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin (BTC).

Recently, Kazakhstan has limited the amount of money local retail investors can put into crypto.

That means retail investors can invest 10% of their annual income or 5% of their total assets, excluding their main residence, up to $100,000 per year, as long as they provide evidence of their finances to the regulator.
Kentucky Attorney Daniel Cameron filed a lawsuit Thursday with two other states to block the Biden administration's new vaccine mandate for federal contractors, arguing it is unconstitutional.

The legal action comes in advance of the Jan. 4 deadline for federal contractors and employees at facilities that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

A separate Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule requires workers at companies with more than 100 employees to either be fully vaccinated by that same date or face regular testing going forward  a rule expected to apply to many governmental entities across the country.

In his lawsuit, Cameron  along with fellow Republican attorneys general of Ohio and Tennessee  stated the requirement on federal contractors will violate constitutional rights and create harm to citizens.

More: There are new federal COVID-19 vaccine rules for workers. Here's what you need to know.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron spoke to the interim Joint Committee on State and Local Government about the Kentucky Supreme Court's COVID-19 ruling on Sept. 1, 2021.

The federal government contracts with private businesses and public agencies in states across the country, and the Commonwealth is no exception, meaning that numerous Kentuckians are subject to the Biden Administrations unconstitutional vaccination requirement, Cameron stated in a press release on the lawsuit. We are taking the issue of federal overreach seriously and will protect the livelihoods of countless Kentuckians and Kentucky businesses from overbroad mandates.

Cameron specifically mentions that local jails in Boone, Laurel and Grayson counties all have federal contracts to detain, house and transport federal prisoners, with that revenue accounting for "a significant portion" of their operating budgets.

While each of the jails "encourages vaccination" for staff, Cameron wrote it is not required and multiple staff members there "have indicated they will end their employment if forced to take a COVID-19 vaccine, which will only exacerbate the

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current staffing challenges at these institutions and threaten public safety."

The joint lawsuit goes on to allege the mandate on federal contractors violates state sovereignty to establish their own workforce vaccination policies and is unconstitutional because Congress did not give the president the authority to issue such a rule.

More: It's time to force city workers to vaccinate or test, mayor candidates, councilman agree

Cameron's lawsuit does not address the vaccine mandate for facilities treating Medicare and Medicaid patients or the vaccine and testing requirements for large employers.

Asked about the lawsuit at his Thursday press conference, Gov. Andy Beshear said he didn't yet know the "nuances" of it, but noted "thus far the Supreme Court and most of the federal Circuit Courts have been supportive of the constitutionality of different vaccine programs."

"In the end, we've got to follow the laws as a state, so we will prepare to comply with anything that's out there. And if a court tells us differently, then we'll look at our options then."

Beshear also said he believes state governments will apply as large employers under the separate OSHA rule, so state employees will have to be tested weekly if they are not vaccinated by the Jan. 4 deadline.

The governor said the specific OSHA rule for large employers should be referred to as a testing mandate instead of a vaccine mandate, as a shot is not a requirement for employment.

Since May, staff at Kentucky Department of Corrections facilities have already been required to be tested twice per week, unless they are fully vaccinated  though nearly half remained unvaccinated as of September.

Beshear said his administration is already "putting together the apparatus" for such a testing requirement to be implemented in anticipation of the Department of Labor finalizing the rules  adding that he estimates the vaccination rate of state workers is "running slightly above the rest of the population."

U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh wrote in a USA Today op-ed Thursday that "COVID-19 continues to hold back our workforce and our economy  and it will continue to do so until more Americans are vaccinated."

Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today at the top of this page.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: KY Attorney General Daniel Cameron sues over Biden vaccine mandate
The president of a small Christian college in Kentucky was fired on Monday after a colleague accused him of sexual assault, the school announced.

The Board of Trustees at Georgetown College announced the termination of William A. Jones, who had been the president for just over two years, after becoming aware the day before of "allegations of a sexual assault of a female College employee" and "inappropriate behavior with another female College employee."

"Georgetown College does not tolerate violence or misuse of authority," the board's chairman, Robert L. Mills, said in a statement on Monday.

"We hold our administrators, students and faculty to the highest standards of moral and ethical conduct. We are surprised and deeply disappointed by what we have learned."

One of the alleged victims filed an emergency protective order on Monday that says the assault took place on a work trip in Indianapolis last month, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.

"William Jones sexually harassed me in the lobby of (the) hotel before later sexually assaulting me in his hotel room," the employee wrote in the order, according to the local newspaper. "Multiple times throughout the incidents timeframe I told him to stop."

NORTH CAROLINA REP. GREG MURPHY INTRODUCES BILL TO GIVE PROTECTIONS FOR REOPENING SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

The Indianapolis Metro Police Department could not confirm on Wednesday if a police report had been filed.

Georgetown College hired Jones two years ago after Jones had a three-year stint at Bethany College, a Christian liberal arts school in Kansas.

"My wife, Amy, the Jones children, and I are looking forward to becoming part of the campus and local community," Jones said when he was hired in 2019. "Georgetown is a terrific place to raise a family!"

Jones did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The death of a 64-year-old man in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on Halloween has been ruled a homicide by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner.

Two suspects have been arrested in Kentucky in connection to the case  Derek W. Hebel, 30, from Milwaukee and Heather R. Rouse, 28, from Spring Hill, Florida. Kentucky State Police identified both as suspects in the Oak Creek case. They were arrested just before 8 p.m., Nov. 2.

The victim, identified by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office as Robert J. Peret of Fox Point, was found at the Red Roof Inn, 6360 S. 13th St., Oak Creek Police said in a news release.

Latest on Louisville's homicides: Police charge man with murder in Park Hill shooting

He was last seen alive just before 4 p.m. on Oct. 30 by hotel staff. Housekeeping found him at 4:10 p.m. the next day, according to a report from the Medical Examiner's office.

Police said two individuals, later identified as Hebel and House, had met with Peret. Authorities said the duo stole the 64-year-old's van which was later involved in a police pursuit in Indiana and a second pursuit in Kentucky.

Police said the two suspects also stole a vehicle while in Hopkins County, Kentucky on Nov. 2 and again led police on a pursuit. They were taken into custody after a short foot chase following a crash that ended the car chase.

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Hebel has been charged with two counts of fleeing/evading police, theft by unlawful taking (auto), possession of drug paraphernalia, operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs (first offense), second-degree criminal mischief, speeding and reckless driving, according to Kentucky State Police.

Rouse was charged with fleeing/evading, theft by unlawful taking (auto), possession of drug paraphernalia and public intoxication.

Both were also charged as fugitives from another state in relation to Oak Creek homicide investigation warrants.

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The case remains under active investigation.

Contact Erik S. Hanley at (262) 875-9467 or erik.hanley@jrn.com. Like his Facebook page and follow him on Twitter at @ES_Hanley.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Suspects in Wisconsin homicide investigation arrested in Kentucky
Tokyo, , 4th November, 2021, Chainwire

TRiCERA, a global art marketplace announce the release of the NFT version of White Deer (Oshika) by one of the most famous sculptor Kohei Nawa in Japan.

TRiCERA will be selling a NFT data package including the original 3D data of Kohei Nawas sculpture White Deer (Oshika) and an installation video in the Oginohama area of Ishinomaki City, which was damaged by a great earthquake.

Kohei Nawa is a Japanese sculptor exploring digital culture and contemporary spirituality. He is best known for his PixCell series, in which he creates works by covering found objects such as taxidermied deer with an intricate layer of glass beads, prisms, glue, plaster, and spray foam. Kohei is inspired in part by digital pixelswhich use light to construct imagesas a conceptual gesture, thereby making his sculptures a real-life analogue to the digital image.

White Deer (Oshika) is a sculptural work that reinterprets the divine deer depicted in ancient Japanese mythology using modern technology. It was unveiled at the Reborn-Art Festival 2017, a comprehensive art festival of art, music, and food held in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, and installed in the Oginohama area of the Oshika Peninsula, where many deer live and the place where pain still lingers after tragedy of tsunami in 2011.

White Deer (Oshika), a messenger from nature, appears in the human village with questions for human society, and waits for the coming of spring with its horns that have grown long.

This release aims to permanently install the White Deer (Oshika) in Oginohama, which is scheduled to be exhibited for a limited time until 2027 in consultation with Ishinomaki City. A part of the proceeds will be donated to the Reborn-Art Festival Executive Committee to fund the maintenance of the sculptural work. Together with the artists, we will explore new ways for public art to cross the real and virtual worlds. We look forward to your participation in this completely new initiative for NFT in public art.

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This project is a question of what public art is and what the meaning of social sculpture is for us in this new era. When an art festival or art space is created, the artists try their best under various pressures and a limited budget. When I thought about how to maintain and manage these miraculous works, which can only be created at the right moment, and how to pass them on to the next generation, I began to see the social significance and role of NFT. said Kohei Nawa.

We feel very honored to be able to announce this initiative with Mr. Nawa, one of the most prominent artists in Japan. TRiCERA believes in the infinite potential of NFT and has been discussing how to incorporate it into contemporary art for a long time. This project was born out of a dialogue with Mr. Nawa, and we have discussed how we could incorporate public art in NFT. I believe it has become a project of great social significance., Said Tai Iguchi, CEO of TRiCERA..

Sale summary

Sale will be available at https://white-deer.tricera.net/

Date of Sale : 12th Nov, 1 pm  19th Nov, 1 pm

Contents: NFT White Deer

1. 3D Data (.obj) *

 The original version of White Deer

2. Concept Movie (.mp4)

 CG images based on 3D data

3. Documentary (.mp4)

 Video of Ogihama, Ishinomaki City, where White Deer (Oshika) is displayed as public art.

*.obj is one of the 3D data formats. To preview it, you need 3D software such as Blender.

About Kohei Nawa

Kohei Nawa is a Japanese sculptor exploring digital culture and contemporary spirituality. He is best known for his PixCell series, he creates works by covering found objects such as taxidermied deer with an intricate layer of glass beads, prisms, glue, plaster, and spray foam. The artist is inspired in part by digital pixelswhich use light to construct imagesas a conceptual gesture, thereby making his sculptures a real-life analogue to the digital image.

Born in 1975 in Osaka, Japan, Nawa studied at the Kyoto City University of Art where he received his BFA and PHD in fine arts and spent one term as an exchange student at the Royal College of Art in London. His works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Gallery Victoria in Melbourne, among others. Nawa lives and works in Kyoto, Japan.

TRiCERA Inc,

CEO : Tai Iguchi

Head office: 3-22-5 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Website: https://www.tricera.net/

Contacts

Public Relations
A 19-year-old college student in California was murdered in what prosecutors suggest may have been a love triangle situation over the Halloween weekend.

Leilani Beauchamp, 19, was shot and killed sometime the night of 30 October after leaving a Halloween party, according to police reports.

The woman's body was found the following day in Monterey County, CBS 13 reports.

Three people were arrested in connection with the woman's death; siblings Jessica Quintanilla, 21, and Marco Quintanilla, 27, were taken into custody alongside Air Force Airman Juan Parra-Peralta, 20.

Ms Quintanilla has been charged with murdering Ms Beauchamp. Her brother, Mr Quintanilla, has been charged with accessory to murder and for violating his parole connected to another felony conviction for attempted murder.

Mr Parra-Peralta has not been charged with any crimes and was released from jail on a $25,000 bail. He was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira, speaking with KCRA, said that investigators were still determining the motives involved in the murder, but said it looks like it could be a love triangle situation.

A roommate at Mr Parra-Peralta's home  where the shooting is believed to have occurred  told police that Ms Quintanilla was dating Mr Parra-Peralta. Ms Beauchamp was last seen leaving a Halloween party on 30 October with Mr Parra-Peralta in the early morning hours.

Ms Beauchamp's grandmother confirmed that knew Mr Parra-Peralta and has visited his home in the past.

Her family members confirmed that she was also dating Mr Parra-Peralta.

It's just beyond what I expect from humanity, she told CBS 13. What Leilani deserves, she did not deserve for her life to end this way.

Ms Beauchamp's friend, Michele Smith, told the broadcaster that she was the most adorable woman on the planet.

The Fairfield Police Department, who initially found Ms Beauchamp's body, said it was deeply saddened by the events in a statement, and offered our thoughts, and condolences to the woman's family.

After her body was discovered, her family released a statement to ABC10.

Leilani was truly a blessing to us and her beloved friends, the statement said. Leilani shared a very close relationship with her younger brother and sister who, after she ventured out to college, maintained daily communication with them. We will miss her smile, her laugh, her caring demeanor, her strong will, her passion for life and the love she brought to our family. We love you Leilani.
Seven-year-old Elsa Trolliet doesn't want her father, who has diabetes, to catch COVID-19.

Or Kuta, the family cat.

So she came prepared Wednesday night, wearing fuzzy boots, a turquoise polka dotted coat and pink shorts, to get a vaccination shot in her left thigh  it'd hurt less, she said, than in the arm  alongside about 200 other people ages 5-11 at a clinic in Coralville.

The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics prepared for the event weeks in advance, ready to open appointments as soon as it got the green light. That happened Tuesday evening, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children. It was the final safety hurdle to clear after the Food and Drug Administration's authorization last week.

The availability of vaccine is expected to reduce COVID-19 caseloads nationally by at least 8% between November and March, according to the CDC.

Elsa's family was among the more than 1,000 that signed up for appointments at UIHC in the hour after the vaccine became available Wednesday morning. For Elsa, getting the vaccine means she can look forward to spending Christmas with her already-vaccinated family in Wisconsin. She didn't get to last year.

Stickers along with a numbing spray and small bumblebee character for children to distract themselves while receiving the Pfizer pediatric COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of a clinic with the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics are seen, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, at the University of Iowa Health Care Iowa River Landing location in Coralville, Iowa.

The newly approved vaccines contain one third of the dosage of adult-sized ones, but won't change from child to child no matter their age or weight. Two doses must be delivered at least three weeks apart.

All of the UIHC medical assistants, nurses, paramedics and pharmacists responsible for administering doses to children have learned how to ease the process using distractions  stickers, Eye Spy games, Rubik's cubes. Many patients' favorite Wednesday was "buzzy," or a vibrating bumblebee lookalike placed just above the injection site.

More: Johnson County COVID-19 vaccine tracker: 67% of people fully vaccinated

Luke Quinlan, 8, receives a dose of the Pfizer pediatric COVID-19 vaccine from medical assistant Consuelo Valladolid on the first day of a clinic with the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics as his parents Sarah, left, and Jeff comfort him, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, at the University of Iowa Health Care Iowa River Landing location in Coralville, Iowa.

Distractions came in handy for the Quinlan family.

Lily, 11, opted for the "freeze spray" on her left arm to cool the injection site. After medical assistant Consuelo Valladolid counted down from three and gave her the shot, she said with surprise: "It doesn't even feel like it goes in!"

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Luke had wanted his older sister to go first. Whether it's for the flu or COVID-19, he doesn't like shots, and seemed unfazed even after Lily told him with with confidence that it doesn't hurt.

Sarah, his mother, reminded him kindly that he's been talking about getting the shot for weeks. Sitting to his right on the examination table, she agreed to try out the freeze spray on her skin and quell his worries that it'd be too cold. That prompted more questions from the 8-year-old about whether it has numbing powers and why.

He eventually gave in to the family's encouragement, but only after asking if he could "take a breather for an hour," choose where to go for dinner, play games, or be on the front page of the newspaper in exchange for letting the needle get near him.

"Thank you," he said after.

Elsa Trolliet, 7, poses for a photo with Dr. Rami Boutros after receiving her first a dose of the Pfizer pediatric COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of a clinic with the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, at the University of Iowa Health Care Iowa River Landing location in Coralville, Iowa.

Rami Boutros, director of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine with UI, was ready to greet families in the post-vaccination waiting room. He joked with kids, posed for pictures in his white doctor's coat, and made sure to point out the experience of one patient who said getting the vaccine was far less unpleasant than the nasal swab test.

There's no shortage of doses for children in Iowa, he said in an interview. The clinics are operating on demand and continuing to open more appointments.

"I'm very happy to see that there is at least something that we can fight COVID with, especially at this young age. Which means that, for them, it's an opportunity to go back to school, socialize, do a lot of things that they have missed  a lot of experiences that they have missed in the previous year. I think it is very important for their mental health, as well as their development and growth," Boutros said.

More: Regents president given power to address how federal COVID-19 order will affect Iowa's universities

Sawyer Williams, 6 1/2, plays Pokemon Go with his mom Heidi after receiving a dose of the Pfizer pediatric COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of a clinic with the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, at the University of Iowa Health Care Iowa River Landing location in Coralville, Iowa.

News of the vaccine's availability for kids prompted various professional groups to give their signal of approval Tuesday, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society.

Sawyer Williams, 6, and his mom Heidi sat close together on the waiting room couch playing Pokemon GO. They've been cautious because of older loved ones in the family, but that's not the whole story of why they got vaccinated.

"I think in general it just gives us that extra breath, because there's so many close calls where we'll get an email from school, there's someone in his class who's tested positive," she said. "So it's just more about that peace of mind than anything else."

Cleo Krejci covers education for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. You can reach her at ckrejci@press-citizen.com or on Twitter via @_CleoKrejci.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Hours after CDC approval, Iowa children begin getting COVID-19 vaccine
Stray dogs and cats from far outside the Austin area might soon be housed on city-owned land.

Driving the news: The Austin City Council is poised Thursday to order that geographic restrictions be lifted on the city's partnership with the nonprofit Austin Pets Alive.

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Existing restrictions prevent APA, which has partnered with the city since 2011, from housing animals that come from outside five Central Texas counties  Travis, Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays and Williamson.

But the nonprofit wants to save animals from other areas without no-kill protections.

APA takes in stray and surrendered animals from the taxpayer-funded Austin Animal Center as part of its mission to prevent euthanizations.

The only pets now being euthanized have incurable medical conditions or were responsible for severe injuries in unprovoked attacks, per the Austin American-Statesman.

Austin Pets Alive does not get money from the city, but as part of the partnership operates a downtown shelter on city-owned land on West Caesar Chavez street.

Yes, but: The city's chief animal services officer had rejected the APA's request to lift geographic restrictions, telling the Statesman the city should focus on protecting Austin-area pets.

"The city's primary goal is to ensure that city taxpayer investments are focused on supporting animals found in the city's jurisdiction," he said.

Looming over the dispute, a Nov. 23 contract expiration for APA, which was threatening to leave the city  jeopardizing its high no-kill rate.

The resolution on Thursday's agenda, sponsored by four city council members and Mayor Steve Adler, lifts the constraints that APA had sought.

Our thought bubble: Following a breakdown of talks between city staff and APA earlier this year, the order from elected officials shows the political clout of APA, a visible and popular local nonprofit.

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With everything going on this year, this is the perfect time to take a breather and think about what matters most and how to help others. Due to the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are many people who need extra help this holiday season. Here are some ways to give back and lend a helping hand to those in need across the Louisville area.

WHAT: Provides coats and other warm clothing for the homeless. The organization is accepting new and slightly used coats, fleece, and blankets. Monetary donations are also needed for hats, gloves, masks, and other essentials.

WHERE: Donations can be dropped off at Pocket Change, 1753 Bardstown Road, and Unique Essentials, 1921 W. Broadway, Suite 1.

WHEN: Nov. 15 to Dec. 15

MORE INFORMATION: Monetary donations via: PayPal: bathwonderland@gmail.com; Venmo: @bathwonderland; Cash App: $BG2L. It is very important to note "Coat Drive" when donating. Email bathwonderland@gmail.com if you have questions.

Body Kindness Plus Size Women Empowerment (BKPSWE) of Louisville Food Drive

WHAT: BKPSWE is holding their 2nd annual food drive. Food donations will be given to Feed Louisville. They need non-perishable, unopened food items, canned goods, toiletries and more. The goal is to raise 1,500 pounds of food.

WHERE: Rainbow Blossom, parking lot, 3046 Bardstown Road

WHEN: Nov. 20, noon to 4 p.m.

MORE INFORMATION: Monetary donation will also be accepted.

WHAT: Needs monetary donations to help with the food pantry and Bliss House, its halfway house substance abuse treatment program.

WHERE: 213 E. Maple St. in Jeffersonville, Indiana

MORE INFORMATION: 812-282-0063; centerforlayministries.org.

Center for Women & Families

The Center for Women and Families

WHAT: The Center helps families experiencing domestic, intimate partner or sexual violence become survivors. It provides emergency shelter for families, including pets. The Center also needs monetary donations and has a wish list on Amazon. Purchase items most needed and have them shipped directly to one of their locations (thecenteronline.org/get-involved/give-donations/new-items).

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MORE INFORMATION: Send donations by mail to Development Office, The Center for Women and Families, P.O. Box 2048, Louisville, KY, 40201 or make them online at thecenteronline.org.

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WHAT: Needs monetary donations to help provide food for the community. Make your check payable to Dare to Care Food Bank and send to Dare to Care Food Bank, P.O. Box 35458, Louisville, KY 40232.

MORE INFORMATION: To donate online and for more information, visit daretocare.org.

WHAT: Grants dreams for critically and chronically ill children ages 3-18. The groups need monetary donations to help with granting dreams. Donations can be mailed in or go online and donate.

WHERE: 410 W. Chestnut St., #530

MORE INFORMATION: 502-561-3001; dreamfactoryinc.org.

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WHAT: Needs individuals, businesses and community groups to purchase and deliver gift cards in increments of $25. The gift cards will be used by the agencys client families to buy gifts for their children. Care cards also can be purchased online at famchildplace.org. They need gift cards from MasterCard or VISA, Target and Walmart.

WHERE: 525 Zane St.

MORE INFORMATION: Cards are needed by Dec. 17 and can be dropped off or mailed to Janet Tinsley. Information: Janet Tinsley, 502-893-3900, ext. 265.

Home of the Innocents

WHAT: The wish list is listed on its website. Items can be donated in-person or purchased directly from their Amazon Wish List and shipped straight to the Home. Monetary donations are also needed.

WHERE: 1100 E. Market St.

MORE INFORMATION: For more information, visit homeoftheinnocents.org/wishlist; outreach@homeoftheinnocents.org.

The Hope Bus

WHAT: Volunteers are needed to help serve Thanksgiving meals to families in need and the homeless. They need help sorting, preparing food, organizing meals and delivering to families.

WHERE: 3131 S. 2nd St., Suite 352

WHEN: Nov. 21-23, 5-9 p.m.; Nov. 24, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Nov. 25, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

MORE INFORMATION: Complete the form on the link and a Hope Buss representative will contact you to confirm your day, time and location. Link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdg71yeE8tynigNJxWd6gtx2JPwJQOxdru8bZ8j_nPKIpLp9A/viewform. 502-509-2248.

A puppy waiting to be adopted rests in the arms of a member of the Kentucky Humane Society during the Lucky's Mutt Madness event at the Kentucky Fair and Exposition center. Oct. 21, 2021

WHAT: Help animals in need by shopping the wish list on its website (items can be dropped off). A wish list on Chewy to donate much-needed pet food and supplies directly to their organization. It also has a wish list on Amazon Smile. Order online and Amazon will ship the supplies directly to KHS.

WHERE: 241 Steedly Drive (go to the end of the parking lot and leave donations outside admission doors); 1000 Lyndon Lane (there is a donation bin outside the front door).

MORE INFORMATION: For more information: 502-366-3355; kyhumane.org.

A cat up for adoption peeks out at Louisville Metro Animal Services' Animal House Adoption Center on Newburg Road. Dec. 11, 2020

WHAT: Needs a variety of donations for cats and dogs and can be dropped off daily, from 12-6 p.m., Animal House Adoption Center, 3516 Newburg Road. They need Kong, laundry detergent, newspaper, aluminum foil, Clorox Bleach and Anywhere Spray, canned puppy and kitten food, high-quality dry dog/puppy food, dog houses, medical supplies and more. Monetary donations are also needed.

WHERE: 3528 Newburg Road

MORE INFORMATION: For a complete list and more information: louisvilleky.gov/animalservices.

The Meerkats at the Louisville Zoo got in on the celebration of the season with a pumpkin enrichment during the Zoos Animal Pumpkin Smash.Oct. 31, 2021

WHAT: Guests who bring one can of food per person (through Feb. 28, 2022) to donate to Dare to Care may purchase tickets at the Louisville Zoo window for $9.50 per adult and $6.50 per child/senior ticket. Most-needed items: canned meats and fruits, beans, peanut butter, hearty soups, rice, cereal, fruit juice, pasta and canned vegetables. No glass containers.

WHERE: 1100 Trevilian Way

MORE INFORMATION: The discount is available at the gate only; not valid for online purchases. louisvillezoo.org/wildwinterdays.

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The Santa Shop inside St. Vincent de Paul's Family Success Center in Louisville, Ky. provided toys and games donated by Toys for Tots on Dec. 13, 2020.

WHAT: Provides toys at Christmas for children and families in need in Jefferson, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, Henry and Owen counties. They are accepting monetary donations to help with toy purchases. Donate online.

MORE INFORMATION: louisville-ky.toysfortots.org.

WHAT: Maryhurst is the oldest child welfare agency in Kentucky. The organization needs gifts for its Holiday Gift Drive. Donate gift cards to Walmart, Target, Amazon, Meijer, Kohls or Old Navy in $25 increments. Fulfill one or more childrens full, individualized wish lists  this list will consist of six gifts (approximately $250) or three gifts (approximately $125) that the child has personally chosen.

WHERE: 1015 Dorsey Lane

MORE INFORMATION: More information about gift wish lists and drop-offs can be found at maryhurst.org/holiday  or you can contact Lori Cecil at lcecil@maryhurst.org.

WHAT: Provides a home-away-from-home for families of children receiving healthcare at area medical facilities. Monetary donations are needed to help with cleaning supplies, meals, rooms and more.

WHERE: 550 S. First St.

MORE INFORMATION: To donate go to rmhc-kentuckiana.org.

These tags are used to list each child in the Salvation Armys Christmas Angel Tree Program and their gift wishes. David Snodgress | Herald-Times

WHAT: Christmas gifts, toys, clothing and more are provided to children from infant to age 12 from low-income families. More than 8,000 local children have been signed up for the Angel Tree this year across our community. Angel Trees will be located inside Oxmoor, St. Matthews, and Jefferson malls. Kroger will be selling Food Angels at all its stores thru December.

MORE INFORMATION: For more information and to adopt an angel: salvationarmylouisville.org or Kelly Hutchinson, Kelly.Hutchinson@uss.salvationarmy.org

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WHAT: The Salvation Army is asking for monetary donations to help with Red Kettle Christmas Campaign as the need is greater than ever because of COVID-19 and Red Kettle income may be down due to fewer people getting out. Volunteers bell ringers are needed to collect donations. There is an online kettle also.

MORE INFORMATION: To become a volunteer bell ringer, to give online and for more information: salvationarmylouisville.org.

Salvation Army's Stock the Pantry

WHAT: The Salvation Army needs 70 20-pound turkeys for its Thanksgiving meal in the Red Kettle Cafe. Canned vegetables, soups, cereals, dry goods, proteins and water are also needed.

MORE INFORMATION: To donate contact Debra.Bellis@uss.salvationarmy.org or call 502-671-4934.

WHAT: Shamrock Foundation has five ways to donate. (1): Direct donations by check. Send to The Shamrock Pet Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 24033, Louisville, KY 40224. (2): Direct donations with PayPal. (3): Donate each time you shop at Kroger. As you shop and buy items, you can identify a small percentage of each purchase to help Shamrock Pet Foundation. (4): Make Shamrock your Charitable Organization at Amazon. Every time you make an eligible purchase through Amazon Smile, Amazon donates a portion of your purchase back to Shamrock Foundation. (5): Give a portion of cash-back savings when making purchases from participating online stores. For a list of participating stores, go to GivingAssistant.org.

MORE INFORMATION: 502-585-3220; info@shamrockpets.com; shamrockpets.com.

Molly White, left, and CEO Ed Wnorowski fill a bag with donations during the Santa Shop inside St. Vincent de Paul's Family Success Center in Louisville, Ky. on Dec. 13, 2020. The program provided customers with toys and games donated by Toys for Tots and gift cards.

WHAT: Monetary donations are needed to help with the mens shelter, food pantry and open hand kitchen.

WHERE: 1022 S Jackson St.

MORE INFORMATION: Donations can be made by phone (Makenzie Smith, 502-272-2134 or Rich Flaherty, 502-301-8682), mail (P.O. Box 17126, Louisville, KY 40217) and online at svdplou.org.

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The St. John Center for Homeless Men

WHAT: Needs (92) $10 grocery gift cards for the men living in permanent supportive housing. The organization also needs hats, gloves, Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner, and hand sanitizer.

WHERE: 700 E. Muhammad Ali Blvd.

MORE INFORMATION: Items should be dropped off by Dec. 11 or sent by mail. Send to: St. John Center, c/o Jim Fulkerson, 700 E. Muhammad Ali Blvd., 40202. For more information call, 502-568-6758.

Signage at Wellspring, an agency focused on helping people with mental illness.

WHAT: Wellspring provides housing, hope and behavioral health services for adults with serious mental illness. Clients need Kroger, Target or Walgreens gift cards in at least $5 or $10 increments.

WHERE: 225 W. Breckinridge St.

MORE INFORMATION: Donations may be made by credit card online at WellspringKY.org or dropped off at the Wellspring Administrative Office. Call 502-753-1453 for more donation details.

WHAT: Provides a list of community-based organizations and emergency food providers to help those in need. Due to COVID-19, some hours at individual places may change. Call before you come.

MORE INFORMATION: Visit the website or call WhyHungers hotline 1-800-5-HUNGRY; whyhunger.org/find-food.

Reach news clerk Gege Reed at greed@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Christmas help 2021: How to help with donations around Louisville
President Biden Arrives To White House After COP26 Travel

President Joe Biden walks on the South Lawn of the White House after arriving on Marine One in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 3, 2021. Credit - Oliver ContrerasSipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Joe Biden got home at 1:35 a.m. on Wednesday morning, stepping off the Marine One helicopter onto the White House lawn about an hour after Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost the Virginia governors race in what was widely billed as an early referendum on the Presidents performance. Just hours before, Biden had told reporters: I think were going to win. It didnt turn out that way.

Biden returns from a climate conference in Scotland to a new political reality and a low point in his young presidency. His approval ratings have slid to the low 40s. His signature legislative proposals are mired in intra-party squabbles. Recent Gallup polling shows Americans most concerned about the pandemic, poor government leadership and the economyall issues that have proven stubbornly difficult to fix.

The loss in Virginia and the question of how to respond consumed the Presidents conversations with advisers Wednesday afternoon. Several aides say they want Biden to speak more about advances the countrys made in recent weeks on the pandemic, to highlight that hospitalizations from COVID-19 are down and vaccination rates are going up. And so Biden delivered remarks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to hail the authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. This is a day of relief and celebration, Biden said.

Read More: What Democrats Need to Learn From Glenn Youngkins Win in Virginia.

But there was no escaping the defeat in Virginia. At the end of his remarks, reporters questioned Biden about the fallout from McAuliffes loss. Asked what Democrats should do differently to avoid widespread losses in the midterm elections next fall, Biden said, I think we have to just produce results for them to change their standard of living and give them a little more breathing room.



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Biden and his close advisers think the best thing for the President and his party is to get his multi-trillion dollar spending bills signed into law. The loss in Virginia is gonna send a signal that we gotta produce, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told reporters on Wednesday. The American public gave us a majority in both houses for a reason and we got to get results for people.

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Democratic strategists are already planning ways to highlight what the proposals can deliver for voters a year from now. Im confident that as Democrats were gonna have one of the strongest messages in a generation because of what were going to pass and what we are going to be able to say that we have done for working families and seniors and small businesses, says John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster and strategist who advised Bidens presidential campaign.

But that requires breaking the stalemate in Congress and getting the two bills to Bidens desk. The White House has been signaling to Democrats in Congress that the window to deliver is closing and the party needs to reach an agreement soon. But Biden has been reluctant so far to twist arms too hard. And while party leaders keep teasing a vote on the horizon, disputes linger.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday announced a provision offering four weeks of paid family and medical leave would go back into the House version of the social spending bill, after a compromise made public last week had taken it out. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of two Democratic holdouts in the Senate, blasted the current version of Bidens proposed deal Monday, saying he hadnt signed off on the framework that was made public, which he declared was full of budget gimmicks and shell games.

Read More: Democrats Struggle to Keep the Faith in Biden.

Manchins takeaway from the loss in Virginia wasnt to hurry up and pass the bills. It was to slow down. I just think that the message was really sent, if were going to do something, lets take time and do it right. Lets make sure that people know whats in it, Manchin told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Its not difficult. Voters want government to act and act in a way that helps them, says Jonathan Kott, a former senior advisor to Manchin. Just get s done. Its been easier said than done.
The Lubbock County Courthouse.

Lubbock County voters on Tuesday approved significant pay raises for the Sheriff's Office to narrow the compensation gap with other law enforcement agencies.

About 57.13% of the 20,669 ballots cast in Tuesday's election for Lubbock County's Proposition A were in support of the proposal.

The proposal will increase the county's property tax rate from $.339978 to $.359990 per $100 valuation. That translates into an extra $5.2 million into the county's budget and will be dedicated to increasing pay for the more than 550 law enforcement employees at the Lubbock County Sheriff's Office.

"We're very, very pleased that the measure was successful," said Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe. "I think it's going to go a long way to help slow down some of the attrition and help get us into a more competitive range with other law enforcement agencies."

Salaries at the sheriff's office stagnated the last nine years and led to the steady loss of experienced deputies to other law enforcement agencies, Rowe said.

In the past four years, Lubbock County lost about 328 total years of experience to other law enforcement agencies. That's about $2.3 million in training that the county paid for that benefitted other counties, he said.

"That is basically the salary hours of somebody sitting in the classroom," he said.

To catch up, the salary increase required a 2-cent increase in the county's tax rate, which triggered a state mandate requiring voters to approve the increase in an election.

"We were so woefully behind that we needed this just to catch up," said County Judge Curtis Parrish.

Curtis Parrish

He said the result of the election showed Lubbock County residents' support for law enforcement.

"They want to make sure that the men and women who wear the badge every day - that we're caring for them as they protect and serve us," he said.

Parrish said the increase was not a measure for the sheriff's office to compete with other agencies, but to be competitive.

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"We need to make sure we're taking care of those who protect and serve us," he said.

However, Parrish said going forward salaries at the sheriff's office will be adjusted yearly, so it won't require a significant bump that will have to be decided by election.

"We don't anticipate ever needing to go back and do substantial raises for our sheriff's department from this point forward," he said.

Parrish said he anticipates the pay increase will come into effect on Jan. 1.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lubbock County voters OK pay increase at sheriff's office
Lynne and Britney Spears. Lawrence Lucier/Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

A new court filing from Lynne Spears' requests that her daughter's conservatorship estate pay her legal fees.

The petition says Lynne's retained counsel was working to benefit Britney over the last two years.

One firm is billing $504,000, while a second firm's total payment would be $146,548.

Lynne Spears, mother to pop star Britney Spears, has filed a new petition to the Los Angeles court requesting that her daughter's conservatorship estate pay for her legal fees incurred since 2019.

Filed by Lynne Spears' lawyers, the documents (reviewed by Insider) begin by explaining why she sought out legal counsel at a firm called Jones Swanson Huddle & Garrison in 2019. They say she believed her daughter was enduring a "crisis" in early 2019, and wanted to "get involved to help Britney free herself from what she saw as a very controlling existence."

"Above all, she and Britney wanted Jones Swanson to help Britney achieve independence from her conservator father James Spears ('Jamie')," the filing continues.

The filing says Britney "enthusiastically agreed" to have her mother join the conservatorship arrangement as what was called an "interested party," and that Lynne Spears wrote a letter at the time that acknowledged how the law firm may be permitted to "request compensation" from the conservatee's estate.

Here's a breakdown of the legal fees being requested:

Jones Swanson Huddell & Daschbach: $840,000, to which Jones Swanson is willing to apply a 40% discount to $504,000 Ginzburg & Bronshteyn, APC: $146,548 TOTAL: $650,548



Lynne Spears never had a formal role in the legal guardianship for her daughter, but the filing says her legal team began appearing in court hearings related to the conservatorship and conducted a review of the historic record of the case.

Mike Windle/Getty Images

The filing continues: "In taking on the representation of Lynne Spears, the mission of counsel was clear and simple: do whatever it took to assist Britney to break the restrictions imposed by the conservatorship and move in the direction of the removal of Jamie as conservator, and, ultimately, total termination of the entire conservatorship."

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Lynne Spears' lawyers make the case that, because Britney was not permitted to select her own lawyer until the summer of 2021, Lynne Spears "entered this case with her own counsel in order to fill that gap."

In essence, the petition claims that Lynne Spears' lawyers were working with Britney's interest in mind and played a role in having restrictions on her day-to-day life changed. They use the example of Britney being able to take vacations, drive herself around, and "get her iPhone back" after being restricted to using a flip phone.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Lynne Spears' lawyers also say they pushed back against fees being requested by Jamie Spears' lawyers related to handling "media," and saved money for the conservatorship in other ways.

"Attorneys' fees are appropriate and warranted in the instant matter for Lynne's counsel given the advantages, results, and benefits achieved for Britney and given the fact that all actions taken were in Britney's best interests," the filing says.

The filing then points to a section of the California Probate Code that supports their claim, saying estate funds can be used for compensation if the court specifically approves it.

Judge Brenda Penny will review this petition, along with any others filed in the case, during a December 8 hearing related to fees in Britney's conservatorship. Britney's lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, has made multiple statements in court documents that say the pop star's financial estate was "mismanaged" by her father over the last 13 years. In September, prior to Jamie Spears' suspension, Rosengart said he was trying to "barter" $2 million in exchange for leaving the conservatorship. Jamie Spears' attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment.

Before the December hearing takes place, however, a November 12 hearing will determine whether Britney's conservatorship is terminated altogether.

Read the original article on Insider
Britney Spears with her mother Lynne Spears in 2001. Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Lynne Spears' lawyers filed new court documents this week.

The filing includes her reasons why she decided to hire lawyers to help end Britney's conservatorship.

New details about the "control" the conservatorship had over Britney are included.

Lynne Spears, mother of pop star Britney Spears, filed a new petition to the Los Angeles court via her lawyers this week, asking for her legal fees to paid out of Britney's conservatorship estate.

In the opening section of the filing, which was reviewed by Insider, Lynne Spears' lawyers describe why she hired legal counsel in 2019.

"[Lynne] presented a very disturbing story of her daughter's life and the unreasonable restrictions under which she suffered," the court filing says. "Including some as serious as being involuntarily moved from her home, not being allowed to travel to Louisiana for a Spears family Christmas, and what Lynne pronounced as an extended stay in a medical facility against Britney's will."

The filing continues: "She described medical treatment that she did not believe was warranted. She also spoke of daily restrictions on Britney, 'microscopic control,' such as a paltry unexplained weekly allowance, the type of phone she was allowed (a flip phone), travel and movement restrictions including a prohibition on Britney driving her own car, and prohibitions on visitors to her home, including her boyfriend and even her children's frieds."

Britney Spears performs at the third annual Jingle Ball in 2003. Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

Earlier this year, Britney gave a public testimony that detailed her personal experience living under the conservatorship. She called the legal guardianship "abusive," and said her father (Jamie Spears) "loved" having control over her as one of the coconservators.

The newest court filing from Lynne Spears is a petition to have her legal fees paid out of her daughter's conservatorship estate. Spears' lawyers make the case that Britney's mother only retained legal counsel as a means to help her daughter "free herself from what she saw as a very controlling existence - a crisis being endured by Britney Spears."

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The filing continues: "In taking on the representation of Lynne Spears, the mission of counsel was clear and simple: do whatever it took to assist Britney to break the restrictions imposed by the conservatorship and move in the direction of the removal of Jamie as conservator, and, ultimately, total termination of the entire conservatorship."

The financial request (which totals just over $600,000) will be reviewed at a planned December 8 hearing.

In the meantime, an upcoming November 12 hearing will determine whether Britney's conservatorship will be terminated or not. At the end of September, Jamie Spears was immediately suspended from the conservatorship, but now Britney's lawyer (Mathew Rosengart) seeks to end the entire guardianship.

Read the original article on Insider
DAKAR (Reuters) - Since Lake Faguibine in northern Mali dried up, communities on its parched shores have had to defend their homes from encroaching sand dunes while finding new ways to scratch a living from the degraded soil.

The lake - once one of the largest in West Africa - used to be fed by annual flooding from the Niger River. But it started to disappear after catastrophic droughts in the 1970s, forcing more than 200,000 people to abandon their traditional livelihoods.

"All this area was covered by water," said farmer-turned-herder Abdul Karim Ag Al Hassane, pointing to the desert horizon in a video shared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Now he and other inhabitants of the formerly lakeside villages west of Timbuktu have to walk long distances to find water for their livestock and build barriers out of sticks in an effort to keep the dunes at bay.

The shrinking population of Lake Faguibine is set to come under further pressure from climate change. Average temperatures are expected to rise over 3C in West Africa by 2100 and up to 4.7C in northern Mali, according to the U.N. climate body.

Efforts to boost resilience by restoring Faguibine's wetlands and the area's role as the breadbasket of the Timbuktu region have been derailed by waves of conflict, most recently a years-long Islamist insurgency, according to a 2016 study in the African Journal of Aquatic Science.

In the village of Bintagoungou, the advancing dunes have buried a schoolyard and cracked the empty buildings' foundations.

"This is a school for almost 400 students," said mayor Hama Abacrene. "That's an entire generation. A lost generation, a generation condemned to flee or be recruited."

(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Giles Elgood)
A homebrew extermination attempt gone awry set fire to a Colorado womans home, sheriffs officials said.

A man told deputies he was burning cobwebs with a propane blowtorch in a crawlspace under his mothers home north of Longmont on Nov. 1 when the flames flared out of control, the Boulder County Sheriffs Office said in a news release.

The 39-year-old man tried to put out the fire himself for an hour that afternoon before calling for help, KCNC reported. The blaze did more than $100,000 damage to the home.

The man now faces charges including arson, criminal mischief, possessing a controlled substance and violating a protection order, The Boulder Daily Camera reported.

His mother had previously taken out a restraining order against him but told authorities she had allowed him to live with her after he became homeless, KCNC reported.

Investigators found an area in the crawlspace that was clear of cobwebs with a blowtorch on the ground nearby, The Boulder Daily Camera reported.

The man suffered smoke inhalation but no other injuries were reported, sheriffs officials said. No one else was home at the time and firefighters extinguished the blaze at 5:30 p.m. Mountain time.

Do-it-yourself wars on yellow jackets go up in flames  twice, Oregon officials say

He set a spider on fire. But the spider got even

Get a professional. Woman tries to kill bedbugs with alcohol, sets house ablaze
School nurse Deb Strouse, left, helps fourth-grader Isaiah Coleman adjust his mask on the first day of school for Woodcrest Elementary, Columbus City Schools' only year-round program on July 29.

School districts are quarantining students and staff members, depending on their exposure to COVID-19.

The Ohio Department of Health released quarantine guidelines for those who have been exposed to COVID-19 in a school setting on Oct. 25.

Students and staff can stay in schools after an in-school COVID-19 exposure as long as they wear a mask for 14 days after their last day of exposure, monitor for COVID-19 symptoms and isolate and get tested if they start to experience COVID-19 symptoms.

This differs from ODH's previous guidelines on Aug. 5 where school quarantines were determined by a person's vaccination status and if the exposed person was correctly wearing a mask.

"Quarantine in the face of high rates of transmission and hospitalization like were seeing now remains an important part of our public health response to COVID-19," said Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff. "But out of school quarantine has the unintended consequence of reducing in-school learning and can place added strains on our students, our parents, schools and our local health departments."

Students can also participate in extracurricular activities if they wear a mask, with exceptions for activities where distancing and masking are difficult, and test negative on two proctored tests: the first on the day of exposure and a second taken between five and seven days after exposure.

More: How many COVID-19 cases have been reported in your Columbus-area school district?

Greater Columbus school districts with students in quarantine

Listed here are all public-school districts in Franklin County and some from surrounding counties, and the number of people in each district who are in quarantine. This information was taken from each school districts website or from a district spokesperson and will be updated weekly on Friday afternoons.*

Bexley: 9 students, 0 staff in quarantine  data from Oct. 26 to Nov. 4.

Columbus: 1,139 students in quarantine, 23 staff in quarantine  data from Oct. 21-27.

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15,457 students, 515 staff (cumulative) in quarantine from Aug. 26-Oct. 27.

Canal Winchester: 7 students, 0 staff had a close contact  data from Oct. 25-29.

729 students, 4 staff (cumulative) had a close contact from Aug. 23-Oct. 29.

Dublin: 78 students, 0 staff in quarantine. 17 students, 1 staff in modified quarantine  data as of Nov. 1. The data represents active cases, not cumulative cases.

A modified quarantine is someone who was properly masked or fully vaccinated and had close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 in the school setting.

Gahanna Jefferson: 17 students and staff with a close contact that stayed at home, 75 students and staff with a close contact that stayed at school  data from Oct. 22-28.

Grandview Heights: Data not immediately available.

More: Which Columbus-area schools are requiring masks?

Hamilton: Data not immediately available.

Hilliard: Data not immediately available.

New Albany-Plain: 0 students, 0 staff in quarantine  data from Oct. 20.

738 students, 6 staff in quarantine (cumulative)  Aug. 1 through Oct. 21.

Olentangy: 78 reported quarantines  data as of Oct. 29.

Pickerington: 12 students, 0 staff quarantine  data from Oct. 23-29.

2,057 total quarantines from Aug. 14 through Sept. Oct. 29.

Reynoldsburg: Data not immediately available.

More: COVID-19 survivors say losing sense of smell and taste can affect mental health

South Western: 482 student close contact exposures, 4 staff close contact exposures  data from Oct. 23-29.

Upper Arlington: Data not immediately available.

500 quarantines (cumulative) from Aug. 20 through Oct. 15.

Westerville: Data not immediately available.

Whitehall: Data not immediately available.

Worthington: 85 students, 3 staff in quarantine  data from Nov. 4.

Not all school districts provide cumulative data.

*Last updated: 2:53 p.m. Nov. 4.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How many students are in quarantine in your Columbus school district?
The Duchess of Sussex is reportedly cold-calling U.S. Senators to lobby for paid paternity leave

Meghan Markle is reaching out to members of Congress to campaign for paid family leave.

The Duchess of Sussex is reportedly cold-calling U.S. Senators to lobby for paid paternity leave. TMZ reports that New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand gave Markle the cell phone numbers of Republican senators Susan Collins and Shelley Moore Capito, and both were surprised to receive a call from the former actress.

I talked to each of the women senators and let them know that shes going to reach out because she only completed two of the calls, Gillibrand said, according to Politico. Shes going to call some others, so I let them know in advance.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex speaks during a special school assembly at the Robert Clack Upper School in Dagenham ahead of International Womens Day (IWD) held on Sunday 8th March, on March 6, 2020 in London, England. (Photo by Ben Stansall-WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Gillibrand continued, She wants to be part of a working group to work on paid leave long term and shes going to be. Whether this comes to fruition now or later, shell be part of a group of women that hopefully will work on paid leave together.

Honestly  I thought it was Sen. [Joe] Manchin. His calls come in blocked, Senator Capito from West Virginia, told TMZ. And she goes Sen. Capito? I said, Yes. She said, This is Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.'

Capito added, I couldnt figure out how she got my number.

The Duchess of Sussex (Photo by Jeremy Selwyn  WPA Pool/Getty Images)

I was happy to talk with her. But Im more interested in what the people of Maine are telling me about it, said Sen. Collins. Much to my surprise, she called me on my private line and she introduced herself as the Duchess of Sussex, which is kind of ironic.

Markle is a longtime advocate for paid family and medical leave. She recently donated Starbucks gift cards to employees of a U.S.-based nonprofit campaigning for greater equity in the workforce, theGrio previously reported.

People reported that Markle granted the cards to members of the nonprofit organization PL+US. The organization advocates for high-quality paid family and medical leave for everyone in the U.S. by 2022, according to its website.

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Last month Markle penned a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in which she pushed for a national paid maternity leave bill. The letter was published by Paid Leave for All.

Over the past 20 months, the pandemic has exposed long-existing fault lines in our communities, the mother of two wrote, according to People. At an alarming rate, millions of women dropped out of the workforce, staying home with their kids as schools and daycares were closed, and looking after loved ones full-time. The working mom or parent is facing the conflict of being present or being paid. The sacrifice of either comes at a great cost.

A British lawyer has been suspended from her job at the family law firm she founded after her offensive tweets about the newborn daughter of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (above). (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

She continued: I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzlerit may have cost less back then (to be honest, I cant remember)but what I do remember was the feeling: I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky.

Meghan also noted that she and her husband Prince Harry both recently took 20 weeks of parental leave.

We knew we could take her home, and in that vital (and sacred) stage, devote any and everything to our kids and to our family, Meghan wrote. We knew that by doing so we wouldnt have to make impossible choices about childcare, work, and medical care that so many have to make every single day.

The families you represent need your strong leadership, she continued. Paid leave should be a national right, rather than a patchwork option.

Paid family leave was added into the $1.75 trillion social spending and climate policy bill, Pelosi announced Wednesday.

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The post Meghan Markle lobbies Republican senators for paid family leave appeared first on TheGrio.
African American leaders march down Jefferson Street at the head of a group of 3,000 demonstrators April 19, 1960, and head toward City Hall on the day of the Z. Alexander Looby bombing. In the first row are the Rev. C.T. Vivian, left, Diane Nash of Fisk University, and Bernard Lafayette of American Baptist Seminary.

After a squelched attempt to rename Public Square Park in honor of civil rights activist Diane Nash, Metro Council members filed legislation Wednesday to name the courthouse plaza in her honor instead.

The bill would establish the landing in front of the Historic Metro Courthouse, including the steps and large fountains, as "Diane Nash Plaza."

The location holds special significance for Nash  on April 19, 1960, she was one of thousands of protesters who marched to the courthouse after the bombing of attorney and civil rights activist Z. Alexander Looby's Nashville home.

Nash confronted then-Mayor Ben West on the courthouse steps, asking if it was wrong to discriminate against people based only on their race or skin color. West agreed it was wrong, a key symbolic victory for the movement.

Six downtown Nashville stores opened their lunch counters to Black customers for the first time on May 10, 1960.

Civil rights activist Diane Nash, left, is photographed with Tatiana Rudder after keynote address for Fisk University's Jubilee Day convocation on Thursday, October 6, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.

Public Square Park and the courthouse plaza have since been the site of numerous protests, demonstrations and memorials, including racial justice protests during the summer of 2020 and a memorial for Nashvillians who died of COVID-19.

Nashville has recently honored several Freedom Riders and civil rights activists who led Nashville's movement, including naming a portion of Fifth Avenue in honor of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis last November.

Council member Nancy VanReece first proposed renaming Public Square Park to honor Nash in July, saying "it's long past time to have Diane Nash's name in a place of honor."

On Wednesday, Metro's Park Naming Committee halted those plans, denying VanReece's request to waive a rule against naming parks in honor of living people. The proposal needed the Parks Naming Committee to suspend the rule and recommend consideration to the Metro Parks Board to move forward for review and public comment.

Following the decision, VanReece said she was "extremely disappointed" and would seek other avenues to "recognize Diane Nash properly and with full honor while she is here to receive it."

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Council members Sharon Hurt, Bob Mendes, Delishia Porterfield and Freddie O'Connell co-sponsored the bill. It circumvents the parks department decision by focusing solely on the plaza, a Metro structure that can be named through an ordinance adopted by Metro Council.

If passed, the legislation would also require "proper signage" reflecting the new name, according to the bill, which VanReece shared with The Tennessean.

Nash's family is aware of the efforts to name the park in her honor. VanReece filed the plaza renaming bill as soon as she could after the parks committee's decision because the idea that "Nashville's decided not to name something after (Nash)" was "just inexcusable," she said.

Ordinances must pass three Metro Council readings before going into effect, a process that can take several weeks. The new legislation was first reported by Axios Nashville.

Dickerson Road United in Struggle, a tenant union of long-term residents of the W.C. Mobile Home Community, rallied outside the Metro Courthouse before the council meeting Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021, supported by advocacy group Worker's Dignity.

Shaping history

In recent years, Nashville has invested more time and resources in studying the city's role in the Civil Rights movement.

On Wednesday, Metro Council approved a $50,000 National Parks Service grant that will allow Nashville's Metro Historical Commission to survey around 100 historic resources concerning Nashville's civil rights movement from 1944 to 1966, including demonstrations led by Lewis, Nash and Bernard Lafayette.

"Local historians believe the Freedom Rides would have never happened without Nashville's prior demonstrations, protests and involvement," the commission stated in a news release.

As part of the grant project, MHC will complete at least one new National Register of Historic Places nomination and fund one new historical marker for a significant place, event, person or group.

Some of the seven Black residents arrested after a racial clash with a group of white youths as they picketed an H.G. Hill store are facing the judge in Nashville City Court Aug. 7, 1961. Diane Nash, holding packages center, a leader in the demonstration, said she preferred to stay in jail because "it's ridiculous when the police arrest the innocent party."

Nash, born in Chicago in 1938, moved to Nashville when she transferred to Fisk University. There, she served as the chair of the Student Central Committee, a group of students who staged sit-ins at Nashville's lunch counters to "test" racial discrimination before launching larger-scale demonstrations, according to the bill.

Nash was also a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At 22, she organized the continuation of the 1961 Freedom Rides from Nashville to Alabama after other buses traveling from Washington D.C. to New Orleans were stalled by violent attacks.

Nash was arrested for teaching nonviolent protest tactics to youth in Mississippi and spent a short time in jail while pregnant. In 1963, Nash supported the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom through her work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was also part of the Alabama Project and the Selma Voting Rights Movement and supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to the bill.

Andrew J. Yawn contributed.

Reach reporter Cassandra Stephenson at ckstephenson@tennessean.com or at (731) 694-7261. Follow Cassandra on Twitter at @CStephenson731.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Metro bill aims to name courthouse plaza in honor of Diane Nash
A Mexican judge on Wednesday ordered a former oil executive and key figure in a corruption scandal linked to Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht to be held in preventive detention in prison.

Emilio Lozoya, who ran state oil giant Pemex from 2012-2016 and was once an advisor to former president Enrique Pena Nieto, was extradited by Spain in July 2020.

He had avoided going to prison while on trial after agreeing with prosecutors to cooperate as a witness in the Odebrecht case.

According to prosecutors, Lozoya has alleged that multimillion-dollar bribes from the Brazilian firm were channeled into the presidential campaign that brought Pena Nieto to power in 2012.

Lozoya's explosive claims shook Mexico's political elite and led President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to call for his predecessor to testify about the allegations.

In a statement to prosecutors leaked to the media in August 2020, Lozoya said he was ordered by Pena Nieto and his campaign coordinator Luis Videgaray, a former finance minister, to handle the bribes.

The attorney general's office argued during Wednesday's hearing that Lozoya had not met the criteria of a cooperating witness and represented a flight risk.

He will be detained in a prison in Mexico City, defense lawyer Manuel Ontiveros told the media.

Lozoya, 46, could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of charges including bribery, criminal association and the use of resources of illicit origin.

So far he is the highest-ranking Mexican official charged in the Odebrecht scandal, which has extended to several Latin American countries.

sem-dr/bfm
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Dozens of migrants traveling north to Mexico City clashed with the National Guard in the southern state of Chiapas on Thursday, near to where a Cuban national was killed on Sunday by the militarized police force.

The group of mostly Central American women and children resumed their journey on Monday in the Pijijiapan municipality of Chiapas, after fatigue and illnesses among some members prompted a two day break.

"There are two injured migrants, they were badly beaten. The officers tried to surround them with their shields," Luis Garcia, who helped organize the migrant caravan, told Reuters over the phone.

"Everything was chaotic. It's not right that the authorities keep acting this way. Despite all the repression we're not going to stop," Garcia said, adding that authorities had escorted away migrants in at least four buses.

The National Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

National Guard troops, who donned helmets and riot shields, confronted migrants, according to images on social media. Other videos shared with Reuters showed several migrants being detained by National Migration Institute agents.

The National Migration Institute also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The clashes occurred near to where a Cuban migrant was shot https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexicos-national-guard-kills-cuban-migrant-wounds-four-others-caravan-advances-2021-11-02 dead by the National Guard while four others were wounded by National Guard officers early on Sunday in an area where a caravan of migrants was heading towards the U.S. border.

About 3,000 people set off on foot last month from the Mexican city of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border. Many have rejected visas https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/migrant-caravan-advances-slowly-southern-mexico-some-reject-visas-2021-10-30 offered by Mexico, saying they distrust the authorities.

(Reporting by Jose Torres and Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) -Jurors deadlocked and a mistrial was declared on Thursday in the kidnapping-murder case against a two-time Idaho gubernatorial candidate charged in the 1984 slaying of a 12-year-old Colorado girl whose remains were unearthed over three decades later.

The 12-member jury found Steven Pankey, 70, guilty on one count of false reporting to authorities but failed to reach a unanimous verdict on charges he abducted and murdered Jonelle Matthews, leading the judge to dismiss most of the prosecution's case, court officials said.

Weld County Judge Timothy Kerns set a status hearing for next Monday to address the potential re-filing of kidnapping and murder charges, in addition to bond and sentencing on the false reporting count.

The hung jury, which began its deliberations at midday on Tuesday, capped a three-week trial stemming from Matthews' death.

The girl vanished in December 1984 from her Greeley, Colorado, home, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Denver, where she was dropped by off by a family friend after singing at a Christmas concert.

Her disappearance remained a mystery for more than 34 years until 2019, when an excavation crew working on a pipeline in rural Weld County uncovered human remains, which were later identified as those of Matthews.

She died from a gunshot wound to the head, authorities said.

Pankey surfaced as a person of interest in the cold case when he would periodically insert himself into the investigation by making "incriminating" statements to various people, police said. He was indicted in 2020 and transferred back to Colorado.

Prosecutors lacked physical evidence linking Pankey to the killing, but alleged that Pankey, who lived in Greeley at the time of the girl's disappearance, possessed knowledge of the crime that only the killer would know.

One such tidbit was the use of a rake by the killer to cover up shoe prints left in the snow at the crime scene, according to the indictment.

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Pankey testified that he did not kill the girl, and said he made up information in an effort "to be a big man in the case."

Pankey unsuccessfully ran for Idaho governor on the Constitution Party ticket in 2014, and lost a second gubernatorial bid in the 2018 Republican primaries.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Peter Cooney and Daniel Wallis)
Molnupiravir has been approved for use in the UK. (Reuters)

The UK has approved the world's first COVID antiviral pill that can be taken at home, in a landmark move that could significantly reduce deaths and hospitalisations from the disease.

Molnupiravir is produced by US pharmaceutical company Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on Wednesday.

Merck has said the drug will remain royalty-free so long as the World Health Organization classifies the pandemic as a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern".

Here's what we know about the "game-changing" drug:

What is it?

Molnupiravir has been designed for people who have had a positive COVID test and are at risk from the disease.

It is the first anti-viral pill for COVID-19 that can be taken at home to be approved in the world.

All other drugs for COVID-19 can only be administered in hospitals and most are by injection or infusion.

Watch: Merck's COVID Pill Approved by UK Health Authority

Read more: COVID deaths in the elderly increase by a third in past month

It prevents the virus from multiplying, keeping levels low in the body and therefore reducing the severity of the disease.

The treatment involves taking two rounds of four pills twice a day for five days.

The aim is to get it prescribed to the at-risk person as soon as possible to prevent them from developing the severe disease and keep them out of hospital.

It will be branded as Lagevrio in the UK.

How effective is it?

Results from a study by Merck showed the drug reduced hospitalisations and deaths in a population of patients at risk of more severe outcomes by around 50% (from 14.1% to 7.3%).

Dr June Raine, Chief Executive of the MHRA, said the approval was an important step as it meant it can be administered outside of a hospital setting before COVID-19 has progressed to a severe stage (PA)

No patient who took the drug died from the virus.

The results from the study havent yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.

Who can take it?

Anyone over the age of 18 can take it but it is for people who are most. at risk from COVID such as those who suffer from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, or are over the age of 60.

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When will it be available?

The Government announced last month that it had secured 480,000 courses of molnupiravir and will be rolled out within days.

Are there any side effects?

The final stage three trial of the drug found no serious side effects from the drug. No deaths were reported among molnupiravir recipients compared to 8 (2.1%) in placebo recipients

The most common minor side effects were headache and diarrhoea.

What has been the reaction?

Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, said: Today is a historic day for our country, as the UK is now the first country in the world to approve an anti-viral that can be taken at home for COVID-19.

This will be a gamechanger for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed, who will soon be able to receive the ground-breaking treatment.

We are working at pace across the Government and with the NHS to set out plans to deploy molnupiravir to patients through a national study as soon as possible."

Watch: How the world could be better after COVID

Professor Penny Ward, an independent pharmaceutical physician, welcomed the approval, but said the NHS needed to outline its plans for rollout and cautioned that supplies were likely to be tight given the strong global demand.

"Comments made by Mr Javid today suggest that it may be made available via a clinical trial, presumably to investigate its effectiveness in vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections, as the original study incorporated unvaccinated adults," she said.

If given to everyone becoming unwell, the nearly half a million courses would not last very long given the more than 40,000 current daily case rate, she said.

What do the experts say?

Dr June Raine, MHRA chief executive, said: Following a rigorous review of the data by our expert scientists and clinicians, we are satisfied that Lagevrio (molnupiravir) is safe and effective for those at risk of developing severe COVID-19 disease and have granted its approval.

Lagevrio is another therapeutic to add to our armoury against COVID-19.

Read more: COVID 'starting to penetrate the elderly' as death rates increase, warns Van-Tam

It is also the worlds first approved anti-viral for this disease that can be taken by mouth rather than administered intravenously.

She added: With no compromises on quality, safety and effectiveness, the public can trust that the MHRA has conducted a robust and thorough assessment of the data.

Robert Davis, chief executive officer of Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), said: The first global authorisation of molnupiravir is a major achievement in MSDs singular legacy of bringing forward breakthrough medicines and vaccines to address the worlds greatest health challenges.

In pursuit of MSDs unwavering mission to save and improve lives, we will continue to move with both rigor and urgency to bring molnupiravir to patients around the world as quickly as possible.
Before New York State Police Trooper Christopher Baldner was charged with murder in the 2020 crash death of 11-year-old Monica Goods on Interstate 87, he rammed another vehicle the year before on the same stretch of highway, prosecutors allege.

But much like in the case of the routine traffic stop-turned-chase that killed Goods in the town of Ulster in December, there remain inconsistencies between the state police's initial 2019 narrative and the one prosecutors now offer, according to records examined by the USA TODAY Network New York.

For instance, in both cases, the initial police press releases made little to no mention of Baldner's alleged actions in ramming the other vehicles.

Trooper Baldner pleaded not guilty last week to charges in both cases, including second-degree murder in Goods' death and first-degree reckless endangerment charges for the passengers in each of the wrecks.

New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner enters the courthouse during the bail hearing for New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner at the Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston, NY on Thursday, November 4, 2021.

He had a bail hearing Thursday before Ulster County Court Judge Bryan Rounds, who denied bail. Baldner was remanded and is being held at the Ulster County Jail.

Ulster County Court did not yet have a future court date scheduled for Baldner. His attorney, John Ingrassia, could not immediately be reached for comment after the hearing.

Thomas Mungeer, president of the New York State Troopers PBA, said afterward: "We look forward to having the trial and having the true facts of this case come out."

Baldner smashed into the back of a vehicle driven by Goods' father, Tristin, during a pursuit, leading to the girl's death on Dec. 22, 2020, the state attorney general's office alleges.

More: More than half of police killings in the US are unreported in government data, study finds

More: NY trooper indicted for murder of 11-year-old Monica Goods in Ulster crash

The police release, issued two days after the crash, didn't mention who initiated contact, or that Tristin Goods claimed Baldner deployed pepper spray or that there were four people in the car, including two children.

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In the 2019 crash, the versions of events presented initially by state police and later in the indictment paint different pictures. Early police narratives  including an accident report  stated the driver intentionally struck Baldner's vehicle.

Joseph O'Connor, a lawyer representing Tristin Goods, said his client was not shocked to learn Baldner was involved in two other similar incidents. Baldner was indicted for his role in the 2020 and 2019 crashes, but avoided charges in a separate 2017 crash, which was also described as "similar" in an executive order signed last month by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

"The behavior doesn't usually just start in one instance," O'Connor said, days before Baldner was indicted.

Police behavior receiving greater scrutiny

Michelle Surrency, the mother of Monica Goods, talks during a press conference outside the Ulster County Courthouse after the bail hearing for New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner in Kingston, NY on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Baldner's bail was denied.

Baldner's indictment came as police receive greater scrutiny over violent encounters with members of the public. A study published in The Lancet medical journal found that more than half of the deaths occurring during encounters with police officers between 1980 to 2018 were "misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports."

Danielle Taana Smith, an African American studies professor at Syracuse University, said many Americans envision policing as a force for protecting the public interest, leading them not to question their narratives, even when there's evidence to the contrary.

Smith, who wasn't part of the study published in The Lancet, added the idea of the infallibility of police is reinforced by the over-criminalization of the poor and people of color.

The underlying assumption is that these people did something wrong and are lying and that the police actions  were justified, she said. So, we dont rigorously question the police. We accept police reporting on face value.

As a result, she said, the American public suffers.

Similar crash one year before the death of Monica Goods

Rev. Kevin McCall talks during a press conference outside the Ulster County Courthouse after the bail hearing for New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner in Kingston, NY on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Baldner's bail was denied. KELLY MARSH/FOR THE TIMES HERALD-RECORD

The similarities with the 2019 incident that preceded Monica Goods' death were first revealed in Hochul's executive order, which allowed James' office to seek charges in the case.

On Sept. 6, 2019, Baldner used his police vehicle to barrel into the back of a speeding Dodge Caravan carrying three people on I-87 in the town of Ulster, causing the Caravan's driver to lose control, prosecutors said in the indictment.

The vehicle would then spin into the median and crash against a guardrail, creating "a grave risk of death" to the minivan's occupants, prosecutors said in court records.

It's unclear if the three people in the vehicle were injured.

That picture is nearly opposite to how the events unfolded in an accident report and press release from state police.

The state police report describes the trooper not being able to stop the other driver's vehicle for a traffic violation, leading to a chase.

During the pursuit, the release stated, the Caravan's driver "intentionally" struck Baldner's vehicle, contrary to what prosecutors now allege.

MORE: NY trooper indicted for murder of 11-year-old Monica Goods in Ulster crash

Attorney for the Goods family Sanford Rubenstein talks during a press conference outside the Ulster County Courthouse after the bail hearing for New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner in Kingston, NY on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Baldner's bail was denied.

The crash caused the other driver's vehicle to lose control slide sideways across both southbound lanes into the median coming to rest against a guide rail, according to the state police accident report.

Then, the accident report stated, the trooper pulled in front of the other driver "to prevent the operator from fleeing again." The Caravan's driver moved forward to strike the trooper's car, again, the report continued.

The prosecutor's indictment did not make mention of the driver hitting the trooper, casting some doubt on the initial police narrative.

State police said in the original press release that they found 62 grams of marijuana on the driver. The driver was charged with several offenses, including traffic violations, drug charges, and reckless driving.

Adult recreational use of the drug was legalized in New York this year. Small amounts of the substance were decriminalized in 2019.

Baldner did not face discipline for the 2019 crash, state police said Monday.

The death of Monica Goods on same roadway

A diagram of the Dec. 22 crash in the town of Ulster that killed 11-year-old Monica Goods. In this diagram, taken from a State Police report, V-1 is state Trooper Christopher Baldner's vehicle and V-2 is Tristin Goods' vehicle.

More than a year after the September 2019 crash, on the same roadway, Baldner would stop the Goods family on Dec. 22 for speeding in their Dodge Journey to visit family for Christmas.

Baldner and Tristin Goods would get into an argument, according to the father's account provided to the New York Daily News.

An argument ensued. Tristin Goods said he asked for a supervisor. Baldner used pepper spray inside the vehicle and Goods took off.

The two accident reports from the crash made no reference to the use of pepper spray, or the argument between the father and trooper before the chase and crash.

Although they do detail the crashes, the state police press release made no mention that Baldner hit Goods' SUV twice.

During the pursuit, in the area of mile marker 93.6, a collision between the 2017 Dodge Journey and the State Police car occurred. The Dodge lost control and overturned, the release read in part.

New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner listens during the bail hearing for New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner at the Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston, NY on Thursday, November 4, 2021. KELLY MARSH/FOR THE TIMES HERALD-RECORD

The attorney general's investigation would bring forward more details of that fateful night.

When Baldner hit the SUV a second time, prosecutors said, the car flipped over several times and stopped upside down.

Monica Goods was ejected from the car. She would die at the scene.

Policies for a state police chase

Callie Jayne, center, talks during a press conference outside the Ulster County Courthouse after the bail hearing for New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner in Kingston, NY on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Baldner's bail was denied. KELLY MARSH/FOR THE TIMES HERALD-RECORD

According to New York State Police policy, troopers should consider the nature of the offense along with the motorists, passengers, and pedestrians in initiating a pursuit.

But the policy also stated, "The pursuit must be terminated when it becomes apparent to the Members involved that the immediacy of apprehension is outweighed by a clear and unreasonable danger to the public or to the Members."

State police spokesman Beau Duffy said in a statement that they investigated the matter and cooperated with the attorney general's office.

"As with every state police investigation, our mission is to determine facts and ensure that justice is served, even when it involves one of our own members," he added.

An internal investigation into the December 2020 pursuit and crash that killed Monica Goods "is pending the conclusion of the attorney generals criminal investigation," according to the state police.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, whose office is special prosecutor on the case, said Baldner violated the duty to protect and serve when he allegedly used his police vehicle as a deadly weapon.

The union representing troopers, however, sees it differently.

Mungeer, the president of the New York State Troopers PBA, said that he looked forward to the release of facts that includes the "motorists reckless actions," seemingly referring to the Goods incident.

"We respect the legal process and are preparing for the next step, which will be to provide legal representation to the involved Trooper, a right afforded to every American citizen tried by a jury of peers," Mungeer said in a statement issued when Baldner was indicted.

He continued: "As this case makes its way through the legal system, we look forward to a review and public release of the facts, including the motorists reckless actions that started this chain of events."

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith covers race and justice for the USA TODAY Network of New York. Click here for her latest stories. Follow her on Twitter @T_Cusaac.

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: Monica Goods case: Indictment of trooper again raises questions of truth
Munroe Falls City Council has taken another step toward bringing the three-year legal battle between a former police sergeant and the city to an end.

On Tuesday night, council unanimously passed a resolution that authorizes Mayor James Armstrong to enter into a settlement agreement with the former employee Bob Post for an amount not to exceed $135,000, "among other things."

More: Former police Sgt. Bob Post, Munroe Falls agree to settlement

The city passed the resolution on first reading, rather than giving it a typical three readings.

"We've been advised by counsel that this needs to be taken care of tonight at this council meeting, and it wouldn't do anything really to prolong it," councilman Frank Larson said. "Sgt. Post has agreed to the settlement and so it's time to move on."

Post filed a complaint in federal court in December 2018 against the city of Munroe Falls, Armstrong, then-police chief Jerry Hughes and law director Tom Kostoff seeking compensation for lost earnings and benefits, as well as damages, court costs and attorney fees, after Post was relieved of his duties in April 2018.

The parties reached a settlement on Oct. 27, vacating a Nov. 8 trial that had been set in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio.

More: Trial postponed in fired Munroe Falls police sergeant's case against city, officials

More: Appeals court refuses to dismiss claims against defendants in fired Munroe Falls officer case

According to the city's resolution, "Council finds and determines that it is in the best interest of the City and its residents that the City approve and accept an agreement between Post and the City for the settlement of said Litigation as well as any and all claims that Post may have against the City."

Armstrong stated that the $135,000 will entirely come out of the city's general fund, and that neither he, nor Hughes nor Kostoff will personally pay any portion of the settlement. Armstrong, Hughes and Kostoff will also not personally pay anything in addition to the settlement.

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It is unclear what "among other things" in the resolution refers to, however councilman Mike Barnes stated in reference to that wording, "There is a part of this that you won't see immediately. At some point, when it's all sealed and delivered, we can share it."

Barnes continued that "at some point in the near future," he is planning to present a resolution that would return retirement rights to Post, including giving Post a retirement badge, giving him the opportunity to purchase his service revolver for $1, and restoring his access to the Law Enforcement Automated Database System.

Barnes' term expires at the end of this year.

"I would love if the people involved would offer Sgt. Post an apology," Barnes continued. "I don't think that's going to happen, but this is the best thing all around that Sgt. Post felt comfortable with. It gets the city past this and hopefully brings this unfortunate incident to a close."

Councilmen Allen Mavrides and John Hegnauer said they would have "no problem" returning Post's badge and gun, but said they could not speak to the return of the LEADS access.

Barnes also called for the resignation of all involved, including Armstrong, Kostoff, Mavrides, Hegnauer, council President Chris Ritzinger, and councilmen Gary Toth and Jim Iona. Each official declined to comment on Barnes' call for resignation.

"That's for the residents to decide," Hegnauer responded. "That's why we vote."

MORE: 2021 Summit County Election Results

Mavrides and Iona were re-elected to their seats Tuesday night, according to final but unofficial results from the Summit County Board of Elections. Toth lost his race to Ross Widenor.

Reporter Krista S. Kano can be reached at 330-541-9416, kkano@thebeaconjournal.com or on Twitter @KristaKanoABJ.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Munroe Falls Council agrees to pay $135K to Bob Post,
By Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea can get all the uranium it needs for nuclear weapons through its existing Pyongsan mill, and satellite imagery of tailings piles suggests the country can produce far more nuclear fuel than it is, a new academic study concludes.

Despite a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons tests since 2017, North Korea has said it is continuing to build its arsenal, and this year it appeared to have restarted https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-appears-have-restarted-nuclear-reactor-iaea-says-2021-08-29 a reactor that is widely believed to have produced weapons-grade plutonium.

According to research published last month in the journal Science & Global Security by researchers at Stanford University and an Arizona-based mining consulting company, North Korea may be able to increase production, and has no need for other uranium mills.

"It is clear that the DPRK appears to have substantially more milling capacity than it has been using to date," said the report, using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "This means that the DPRK could produce much greater quantities of milled natural uranium if desired."

The Pyongsan Uranium Concentration Plant and its associated mine are North Korea's only publicly acknowledged source of yellowcake, or uranium ore, according to analysts.

The report comes as other satellite imagery shows North Korea is building a large expansion at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which analysts say may be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.

"Given the DPRKs active nuclear program, it is of utmost importance to assess and understand its nuclear materials production capabilities," wrote the report's authors, who submitted their findings in April.

These capabilities govern the rate at which North Korea might expand its nuclear arsenal, determine the magnitude of the threat to international security and the challenge of potential nuclear disarmament, and measure North Korea's ability to fuel its future nuclear energy program, the report said.

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GROWING NUCLEAR ARSENAL

The question over how many nuclear weapons North Korea possesses is a key issue for intelligence agencies in South Korea and the United States, as well as for any talks aimed at limiting or reducing North Koreas arsenal.

The United States, which wants Pyongyang to surrender its nuclear arsenal, has said it is open to meeting with North Korea without preconditions. North Korea says talks are only possible after the United States and its allies drop hostile policies.

Intelligence on North Korean nuclear weapons is limited, but David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, has told Reuters he estimates the country has the capacity to produce material for four to six warheads a year.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in September https://www.reuters.com/article/northkorea-nuclear-iaea-idINV9N2IE02B that North Koreas "nuclear programme goes full steam ahead with work on plutonium separation, uranium enrichment and other activities."

There have been no reported accounts of outside inspector access to the Pyongsan uranium mine after the IAEA visited in 1992, leaving details of the mill uncertain, the academic report said.

The authors used artificial intelligence algorithms developed by Orbital Insight, a California-based geospatial analytics company, to analyse satellite imagery for land use patterns around the Pyongsan facility.

Yellowcake from the mine and mill is a key component of North Korea's nuclear fuel production, including its 5-megawatt (MW) reactor, which is seen as capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The IAEA and other analysts reported over the summer that the reactor appeared to be operating for the first time since 2018.

(Reporting by Josh Smith. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
Jackie Gingrich Cushman

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, unclear and misreported stories about where the virus came from have proliferated. Did it come from the wet market in Wuhan? From the Wuhan Lab? Was it a bio attack?

Early last year, President Donald Trump said that it might have originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. The media mocked him, and for the most part, dismissed his suggestion.

Since then, we have not learned for sure where the virus that causes COVID-19 came from, but we have learned that the research carried out in Wuhan and funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health was not properly managed with appropriate oversight.

Last week, Lawrence A. Tabak, principal deputy director of the Department for Health and Human Services, which NIH is part of, sent a letter to Rep. James Comer, the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, regarding NIH funding of experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The letter revealed that EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit based in New York City, engaged in NIH-funded experiments at the Wuhan center that resulted in bat coronaviruses becoming more infectious, potentially to humans. "EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant," Tabak wrote.

He added, "EcoHealth is being notified that they have five days from today to submit to NIH any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under this award. Additional compliance efforts continue." He did not say why EcoHealth was not in compliance, nor why it took so long for NIH to request compliance.

This claim against EcoHealth was false, according to a Vanity Fair article by Katherine Eban titled, "In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan," published last week. EcoHealth "said in a statement, 'These data were reported as soon as we were made aware, in our year four report in April 2018."

So where does this lead the "we say, they say" argument? Neither is good for NIH. If EcoHealth is correct, the NIH is hiding the data; if not, then NIH was not properly supervising the studies that they were funding. Neither answer should be satisfactory for taxpayers, nor for members of Congress.

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"Alina Chan, a Boston-based scientist and coauthor of the book 'Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19,' said the NIH was in a 'very challenging position,'" wrote Eban. "They funded research internationally to help study novel pathogens and prevent against them. But they had no way to know what viruses had been collected, what experiments has been conducted and what accidents might have occurred." Based on the conflicting information reported so far, the lack of transparency, and the NIH's inability to track what they have funded, there is the chance that there is more bad research news to come.

For example, NIH-funded experiments involving beagles instead of bats have recently come to the attention of the news media. They caught the attention of Rep. Nancy Mace and over a dozen other representatives, who sent a letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The letter references "reports of costly, cruel, and unnecessary taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs commissioned by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ... Based on documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act, 'NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on drug tests involving 44 beagle puppies. The dogs were all between six and eight months old. The commissioned tests involved injecting and force-feeding the puppies an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them." The letter also referenced the dogs allegedly having their vocal cords severed so that they would no longer be able to bark.

The resulting public backlash was rapid, with calls on social media for Fauci's resignation. According to a Rasmussen poll released this Wednesday, "Nearly half of voters believe Dr. Anthony Fauci lied about U.S. funding for 'gain-of-function' research and a plurality (46%) think the government's top COVID-19 expert should be forced to resign."

While we still don't know for certain the origin of the COVID-19 virus, we do know that the NIH has either lied about or mismanaged oversight of scientific studies. Neither of these options is acceptable. And even if Fauci does resign, his replacement will find that fixing the problems will require reform throughout the NIH organization.

To find out more about Jackie Gingrich Cushman, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Our National Institute of Health could be better
More than half the members of the Dublin City Schools Board of Education will be new when the board convenes in January.

Both incumbents on the Nov. 2 ballot lost: Rick Weininger and Lynn May, a four-term member who finished last in the eight-candidate field. The other incumbent, Stu Harris, did not seek reelection and instead ran for  and won  a spot on the Washington Township board of trustees.

Their replacements will be Tiffany deSilva, Lindsay Gillis and Diana Rigby.

According to unofficial results from the Franklin, Delaware and Union county boards of elections Nov. 2, deSilva led the field with 8,495 votes, followed by Rigby with 7,960 and Gillis with 7,290.

On the outside looking in were Cheri Striker (6,692 votes), Imran Malik (5,376), Weininger (3,486), Ted Sun (3,154) and May (3,142).

Tiffany deSilva

DeSilva, 45, said the choice of new board members indicated a desire by the community for positive change and perhaps a preference for a fresh perspective from members who have children in the district.

I am a parent and volunteer in the district, too, said deSilva, who has two daughters in high school and one daughter in middle school.

DeSilva said her early focus will be on increasing opportunities for public interaction, which could include town-hall style meetings apart from formal board meetings.

I think the more we engage people, the less divisiveness there will be, deSilva said.

Board meetings during the pandemic were not ideal, she said, with emotional outbursts related to COVID-19 protocols and the issue of critical race theory, but the more opportunity to discuss the issues, the more civil the discourse.

The emotion, I think, comes mostly from people feeling that they are not being heard," deSilva said.

Diana Rigby

Rigby, 50, said she looks forward to collaborating with the new board members in the best interest of the district and its students, as well as listening to parents.

We have passionate parents on both sides of the (COVID-19) vaccine and (mandated) mask issues, Rigby said.

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She said she does not think board meetings have been too contentious.

Passion is a good thing, as long as there is decorum," she said. "It is important to have these discussions."

Rigby said her early focus will be on the recovery of in-person education students lost when public schools were closed during the coronavirus pandemic.

When asked what the choice of all new board members indicated, Rigby responded that the reason was two-fold.

I think there was a desire for a change, and I think people recognized that when you sit on a school board without (your own) children in the district, you are at a disadvantage, said Rigby, who has a freshman son at Jerome High School and two children who are graduates of Dublin City Schools.

Lindsay Gillis

Gillis, 35, called it an honor to be among the three women elected and one of the two women of color, along with deSilva, who will serve on the board.

She also lauded May for 16 years of putting her heart and soul into the district and opined the three new members were elected because the community called for a change.

Gillis said her focus will be on unity and rebuilding the trust of the community, which is necessary before the board can effectively address other issues.

That trust was lost, Gillis said, because parents and community members did not feel they were being heard.

People are upset because no one was responding to them," she said. "We need more communication and transparency.

Gillis said she will respond to parents and others who have questions or concerns about what students are experiencing in the classroom, including instruction and protocols, and she wants to increase the opportunities for residents to interact with the board.

Lynn May

As for the incumbents, May said she was not shocked by the results.

I was not willing to run the race needed to win," she said. "For the first time, it was a partisan campaign, and I found that sad.

I took the high road and did the right thing for me."

May said she refuted accusations during the campaign that the board did not listen to the community.

We heard every word, but we couldnt do what they wanted," she said. "They wanted it their way, but we had to do what was right.

Rick Weininger

Weininger, a two-term incumbent, also said he was not surprised at all by the results.

The community was looking to go in a different direction," he said. "I ran a nonpartisan campaign, (but) the residents decided that a partisan campaign was more important, (and) Im fine with that.

kcorvo@thisweeknews.com

@ThisWeekCorvo

This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: No incumbents on Nov. 2 ballot will return to Dublin school board as deSilva, Rigby and Gillis win seats
OCALA  Assistant State Attorney Marissa Meyer argued that Christian Joel Villalba-Santos was guilty of hitting and shooting his wife following an argument between the two while on Interstate 75.

Villalba-Santos' lawyer, Sean K. Gravel, an assistant public defender, conceded that his client is guilty of physical abuse against the victim and while Villalba-Santos may've pointed a gun at the woman, the intent was not to harm her, he argued. Assisting Gravel was Jorge A. Jaramillo Jr. from the Public Defender's Office.

Jurors considering the case agreed with the prosecution.

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Jurors deliberated for 18 minutes on Thursday in deciding that Villalaba-Santos was guilty of aggravated battery with a firearm and battery, domestic violence.

The jury, consisted of four women and two men, was polled after the verdict was read and their decision was unanimous.

Circuit Judge Lisa Herndon, who presided over the two-day trial, set a sentencing date for Villalba-Santos on December 20 at 2 p.m.

With his conviction, Villalba-Santos could spend up to 25 years behind bars.

On Oct. 19, 2019, the 27-year-old man told two Marion County Sheriff's Office officials who interviewed him in Sumter County that he lost his temper and hit his wife in face three times.

Detectives said the two had been arguing while driving along Interstate 75 in Marion County about Villalba-Santos cheating on his wife.

In the interview, Villalba-Santos told the detectives that he stopped the car, got his semi-automatic handgun from the driver's door, pointed it at her and chambered a round. He said the gun fired while racking the weapon, hitting his wife.

The man said he called his mother and his mother-in-law then 911. He said he drove on the highway looking for a hospital when he was stopped by Sumter County Sheriff's Office deputies.

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The victim was transported to Ocala Regional Medical Center. Medical staff told detectives that the woman was hit in the upper body.

He has been at the Marion County Jail since Oct. 20, 2019 when he was transferred to the facility.

Meyer, in her closing argument, told jurors Villalba-Santos' intention was to harm his wife. The prosecutor said Villalba-Santos broke his wife's nose when he hit her.

She said Villalba-Santos pulled over, removed the firearm from a holster, pointed it at his wife and fired a shot.

"He was enraged and intended to cause harm," Meyer told jurors. The gunshot severely damaged the woman's intestines, according to court testimony.

Marion County Judicial Center, Thursday afternoon, January 21, 2021 in Ocala, FL. [Doug Engle/Ocala Star Banner]2021

Instead of calling for help, Meyer said Villalba-Santos called his mother and his mother-in-law before dialing 911.

"She(meaning Villalba-Santos' wife) asks him to call 911 and he didn't."

When it was his turn, Gravel told jurors that he's not disputing the fact that Villalba-Santos hit his wife. However, he disputed that the shooting was intentional.

The defense lawyer said Villalba-Santos wasn't glad that his wife was shot and was sad and crying while on the phone with a dispatcher when he called 911.

Circuit Judge Lisa Herndon

Gravel said another indication that the shooting was not on intentional was that her injuries was not lethal.

"He could've shot her in a lethal place," he added, such as the head or heart.

Gravel said Villalba-Santos was driving around looking for help and when the man called his mother, it was for her to pray for his wife.

The lawyer said there was a bloody blanket and napkins, suggesting that Villalba-Santos tried to stop the bleeding.

The morning began with Villalba-Santos telling the judge before the jury was brought into the courtroom that he was not going to testify. Once the jury came into the courtroom, Gravel told the court that they rest their case.

Although he can speak and understand some English, Villalba-Santos wore headphones so he could hear interpreters translating from English to Spanish.

Contact Austin L. Miller at 867-4118, austin.miller@starbanner.com or @almillerosb.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: The judge set a December court date for sentencing
Oklahoma Baptist's Andreja Peciuraite (33) and a Texas A&M player battle for the basketball Wednesday night in College Station, Texas.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas  The start of hoops season got underway for Oklahoma Baptist on Wednesday night against Southeastern Conference heavyweight Texas A&M.

Playing inside the Reed Arena, the host Aggies defeated the Bison 89-38.

Two players came off the bench to lead the green and gold. Freshman Kendall Parker and junior Melissa Southard each tallied six points. Senior Andreja Peciuraite added five points and five boards while Sierra Copeland, a newcomer, chipped in with four points and six rebounds.

Senior guard Jaylin Stapleton also pulled down six rebounds to tie for the team-high in that department. Additionally, Kalifa Ford and Mallory Lockhart each scored five.

As expected, A&Ms size in the frontcourt paid dividends as it out-rebounded the Bison 61-40 and had a 21-8 second-chance points advantage.

On the other side, the Bison reached the free throw line 24 times, a game-high, and hit 16 of those shots. Ford and Peciuraite led the way going 3-for-4 each.

OBU was set to wrap up the road trip with another exhibition against the Texas Longhorns Thursday night in Austin.

This article originally appeared on The Shawnee News-Star: Oklahoma Baptist women drop exhibition at Texas A&M
Update: Police said Thursday that the vehicle and driver had been located, and that the case remains under investigation.

The Olathe Police Department is seeking the publics help with finding a car involved in the attempted kidnapping of a woman that took place Tuesday evening.

Police say the woman was in the 20300 block of West 151st Street around 7:30 p.m. when a man tried to remove her from her own vehicle. He was later seen leaving the area in a car that was captured on camera.

The vehicle sought by police is a silver Chrysler PT Cruiser with a temporary license plate. Police are unsure which state the car is licensed in, Sgt. Joel Yeldell, a police spokesman, told The Star in an email.

The suspect is described by police as a white or Hispanic male, roughly 5-foot-7 and slender. He was wearing a white and black shirt and khaki pants at the time, police say.

Police hope someone from the public will alert them if they see someone matching the suspect description with a car that matches the vehicle description, Yeldell said. Police are not releasing other details of the case at this time, Yeldell said.

Police are asking anyone with information about the investigation to contact the Olathe Police Department at 913-971-6363 or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.
Mike Barcaskey

Local fall trout fishing is in full swing as several area lakes have or will receive stockings and trout streams cool down and fish become more active.

In Beaver County, Raccoon Creek Lake was stocked on Oct. 19 and Bradys Run Lake will receive fish on Nov. 18. Up in Butler County, Harbor Acres Lake was stocked on Oct. 20 and Glade Run Lake will be visited by stocking trucks on Nov. 3.

Cascade Quarry and Neshannock Creek in Lawrence County were stocked back on Oct. 3 and Bessemer Lake will be stocked on Dec. 12.

If you want a shot at some big trout, you need to head north to Erie as folks there are having a great year on the tributaries for steelhead and some of the best brown trout fishing will be happening over the next month or two.

As the colder water temperatures are upon us, remember to wear your life jacket when out on a boat.

During his report to the board at the last Fish and Boat Commissioners Quarterly Meeting, Executive Director Tim Schaeffer reminded anglers and boaters of the mandatory cold-weather life jacket requirement, which is effective annually from Nov. 1 to April 30. During this time, all boaters on boats under 16 feet in length, including all canoes, kayaks and paddleboards, are required to wear a life jacket.

"To date in 2021, we have had nine boating fatalities in Pennsylvania," Schaeffer said. "Statistically, around 80 % of victims of fatal boating accidents each year were not wearing life jackets, which means many of these tragedies could have been prevented. Whether you are fishing or hunting from a boat this fall, ice fishing this winter, or fishing early next spring, please always wear your life jacket."

Also at the recent commissioners meeting, the board voted to remove the Upper Pond at Raccoon Creek State Park from the Catch and Release Lakes program. This reservoir, which is owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and managed by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, will be completely dewatered in early winter 2022 in preparation for a floodplain restoration project planned for 2022. The lake is currently exempt from all seasons, sizes, and creel limits for all fish species to encourage anglers to harvest fish in advance of the pending complete and permanent drawdown of the impoundment.

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Recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages Shenango Reservoir in Mercer County, revised its local regulations to allow for the use of motors up to 20 horsepower, an increase from the previous 10 horsepower limit, in the area west of the Penn Central Railroad causeway to the Ohio line. The Corps requested that the Fish and Boat Commission make the same change to Title 58 so that Waterways Conservation Officers can continue to assist in boating enforcement. This change was made and will go into effect Jan. 1.

In good news for both fishermen and hunters, the commission received the good-ahead to acquire a 53-acre property in Middlesex Township, Butler County. The property is located adjacent to and at the head of the Glade Run Lake property and will help protect the quality of the water flowing into the lake. The Glade Run Conservancy and Allegheny Land Trust have entered into an agreement to purchase the property from the Jones Estates Group LLC for $344,500. Upon acquisition of the property, the trust plans to donate the property to the Fish and Boat Commission.

Mike Barcaskey can be reached at mikebarcaskey@outlook.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Outdoors: Keeping tabs on the waterways
The PlayStation 5 has been perhaps the most high-profile gadget to be hit by chip shortages (Getty Images)

People who havent yet bought devices such as PlayStations and smartphones might not get in them in time for Christmas, the boss of one of the worlds biggest chip makers has warned.

The world is currently in the grips of the most extreme chip shortage that Simon Segars, chief executive of chip firm Arm, has ever seen, he told the Web Summit event in Lisbon.

The difficulties getting hold of the processors that nowadays power everything from watches to cars mean that there might not be time to actually buy them in time for Christmas, he warned.

If you havent bought all your devices yet, you might be disappointed, he said, according to the BBC.

It has never been like this before.

And the issues could even remain for Christmas next year, Mr Segars said.

At the moment, companies were waiting as long as 60 weeks for chips they had ordered to arrive.

British company Arm designs chips that are used in devices from the smallest computer to the worlds most powerful one. Its technology is used in iPhones and many Android devices, as well as in other devices such as smart TVs.

As with every other company involved in making processors, it has seen difficulties in its supply chain, which in turn have led to famous problems getting hold of the PlayStation 5 and other gadgets.

Mr Segars said the shortage was the result of a range of factors  from increased demand for smart devices during lockdowns and an increase in cars, as well as supply problems such as coronavirus and ongoing geo-political tensions.

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Japan, with its nuclear power industry in crisis since the Fukushima disaster, has turned to coal to fill the gap and is building seven large new coal-fired power stations.

Ayumi Fukakusa, an activist with the "No Coal Japan Coalition" said protesters were demanding the country phase out the use and financing of coal by 2030.

Japan and its G20 counterparts committed on Sunday (October 31) to stop overseas funding for coal by the end of this year, but set no date for or phasing out coal power, promising only to do so "as soon as possible".

Delegates from all over the world are meeting in Glasgow to try to keep alive a target of capping global warming at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels - the limit scientists say would avoid its most destructive consequences.
LISBON, Portugal (AP)  Portugals president announced Thursday that he is dissolving parliament and calling a snap election for Jan. 30, following the minority Socialist governments defeat in a key vote on post-pandemic plans to spend billions of euros in European Union funding.

The announcement, in a televised address to the nation, was widely expected. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had previously said Portugal would go to the ballot box two years ahead of schedule if the governments 2022 state budget proposal was rejected by parliament, which happened last week.

The ballot will elect 230 lawmakers to parliament, where political parties then decide who forms a government.

The election comes at a sensitive time for the country of 10.3 million people, as it is poised to begin deploying some 45 billion euros ($52 billion) in help from the EU to help fire up the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rebelo de Sousa said the Portuguese needed to decide what they want from the next few years, which are decisive due to the windfall of funds.

This is the decisive moment for a long-lasting recovery from the greatest pandemic of the past 100 years and the social and economic crisis it caused, he said.

The 2022 spending plan is an especially important budget at an especially important time, he said.

Recent opinion polls suggest the center-left Socialist Party will win re-election but will again fall short of a parliamentary majority.

Given the procedural requirements, a new state budget proposal may not come before parliament until April. That could put the brakes on an economic rebound.

As things stand, the COVID-19 pandemic shouldnt disrupt an election, though health authorities have warned about a potential winter resurgence in Europe.

A popular mass vaccination campaign has helped Portugal, for the moment, largely contain COVID-19. The country has on average been reporting fewer than 1,000 new cases a day since mid-September, with daily deaths in single figures.

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The 2022 state budget forecast GDP growth of 4.8% this year and 5.5% next year, with a jobless rate of around 6.5%, roughly the same as now.

That has helped lift the Socialist Partys popularity, with polls predicting it will be returned to power with a comfortable win, capturing around 39% of the vote. But that would still leave the Socialists needing parliamentary support for legislation and put Portugal back where it started before the political crisis of recent weeks.

The traditional center-right opposition parties are in disarray. Both the main opposition Social Democratic Party and the smaller Popular Party are engaged in divisive leadership challenges.

The hard-left Communist Party and Left Bloc, who allied with the government up to last week, have seen their popularity dwindle to single figures in recent elections.

In the last election, in 2019, 10 parties won seats in the 230-seat parliament in a trend toward political fragmentation that compels parties to negotiate with each other.

Most striking is the rise of Portugals first right-wing populist party, Chega! (Enough!), which was founded just three years ago. It currently has just one lawmaker, but polls indicate it could capture as many as 20 seats in an election, potentially serving as a kingmaker.
Actors

Evan Ross Katz is In The Knows pop culture contributor. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram for more.

Hollywood has had an enduring love affair with rewarding cisgender, heterosexual actors for occupying LGBTQ+ roles. Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, Sean Penn, Jared Leto, Hilary Swank, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer and Nicole Kidman have all picked up Academy Awards for depicting queer characters, while Timothee Chalamet, Felicity Huffman, Eddie Redmayne, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cher, Rami Malek and Olivia Colman are part of a lengthy list of actors nominated for their efforts.

Consider this: No out LGBTQ+ actor has ever won an Academy Award for depicting an LGBTQ+ character. The closest weve ever come was Joel Greys 1972 win for Cabaret, though the emcees ambiguous gender/sexuality is never stated outright. Plus, Grey didnt come out publicly until 2015. Billy Porter holds the rare distinction of winning a major award as an out gay man depicting an out gay man for his turn on Pose.

Rewarding the depiction of queer existence by cis/straight people has a rich tradition that continues to this day. Most recently, there was the announcement that Normal Peoples Paul Mescal and The Crowns Josh OConnor would be playing lovers in the new World War I period piece, The History of Sound. Many were quick to voice their concern at historys repetitive nature. Were tired, commented Tony nominee James Cusati-Moyer, adding: Its a no. Others recognized this while contending with their excitement for two of Hollywoods biggest players taking on the project. Okay yes, yes cast gay actors in gay roles, but also yes, hot, I dig it, wrote literary agent Connor Goldsmith on Twitter, expressing a both things can be true argument.

Earlier that week, actress Julianna Margulies was on CBS This Morning promoting her role on The Morning Show when she was asked about the pushback around her playing a gay character. I can understand that, she said. My response also would be [that] were all making assumptions as to who I am and what my past is and what all of our pasts are. She then added that when it comes to race and gender, thats a whole different story, and I 100% agree with that. This comment reminded me of a recent one made by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who was called out in a similar way for his role in The Power of the Dog. I also feel slightly like, is this a thing where our dance card has to be public? Do we have to explain all our private moments in our sexual history? I dont think so.

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What both are more or less articulating is quite interesting in noting that were still living under a cis-hetero power structure in assuming that, unless someone declares they are not cisgender or heterosexual, then they must be by default. Still, I think the argument from some gay actors would be the lack of opportunities afforded to them in comparison to their straight counterparts.

My issue is not with these actors or with this project, an out gay actor who wishes to remain anonymous told me about The History of Sound. My issue is with the systemic problems that bar people like me from even being considered for roles like this. With the way that the system is rigged to disadvantage people like me, I didnt even know about this project. I was not granted the opportunity to audition for this role. It gets really annoying when I receive a script for a really good gay role, and the note at the bottom will say, The offer is currently out to Harry Styles. It just gets exhausting.

Its not that LGBTQ+ actors arent granted any opportunities. Jodie Foster, Zachary Quinto, Cynthia Nixon and Neil Patrick Harris are just a few out LGBTQ+ actors that have played straight to great acclaim that come to mind. Its more about the lack of opportunities for LGBTQ+ people to occupy roles aligned with their lived experience.

Its an issue even more outsized for people in the trans community, who continue to sit and watch as cis people are offered  and often awarded for  their performances as trans people (see: Boys Dont Cry, see Dallas Buyers Club, see: Transamerica, see: The Danish Girl). Trans actors are already disproportionately boxed out of opportunities in Hollywood, so to not even grant them the opportunity to play trans roles is adding insult to injury. In a sign that the times are slowly changing, the uproar has begun to bear results. Halle Berry and Scarlett Johansson are just two actors that backed down from playing trans characters after receiving backlash. The public thinks of trans women as men with really good hair and makeup and costume, actress Jen Richards noted in the Netflix documentary Disclosure. And its reinforced every time we see a man whos played a trans woman off-screen.

I now understand that I should not have considered this role and that the transgender community should undeniably have the opportunity to tell their own stories, Berry said.

Production on the film, however, appears to have halted after Berry backed out, thus showcasing the real indignity. In the case of Rub & Tug, the film Johansson dropped out of, there appears to be greater equity. The film is being reconfigured into a television series written by Emmy-nominated writer-producer Our Lady J with a commitment to cast a trans actor in the leading role.

Will the backlash over The History of Sound result in something similar? Likely not. Mescal and OConnor are too bankable of stars and, with openly gay director Oliver Hermanus at the helm, the project seems to have curtailed larger scrutiny for now. But the larger question looms: If out LGTBQ+ actors arent afforded the opportunity to know about these roles (which, it should be noted, remain few and far between), let alone audition for them, how can we get to a place where out LGBTQ+ stars can be bankable, too?

Its a bit of the which comes first, the chicken or the egg? scenario, notes actor Matthew Risch, highlighting the ways in which out actors, like himself, are often not given the runway to allow them for flight. What does he want to see happen next?

If we wanna live in a world where we can cast based on talent, we have to first have equal employment for out queer actors and we dont, he says. So since were rarely getting cast as heteros, shouldnt out queer actors be given the opportunity to become more bankable by playing ourselves? I say yes.

If you enjoyed this story, check out Evan Ross Katzs recent interview with Bob the Drag Queen!

The post Queer actors playing queer roles shouldnt be the tall order Hollywood makes it out to be appeared first on In The Know.

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Danica Patrick, a former NASCAR driver turned entrepreneur, speaks during the 5th Annual Women's Leadership Breakfast Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.

Danica Patrick, the former NASCAR driver turned entrepreneur, spoke at the Women's Leadership Breakfast hosted by the United Way of the Big Bend Thursday morning.

The event, held at the University Center Club, brought in the largest crowd yet in the fifth year of the event.

Patrick kickstarted her racing career with a go-kart that her parents bought her when she was 10. Years later, she won several regional and national titles, then moved to Europe to compete in road racing.

Patrick later returned to the States and raced in the Indianapolis 500 where she became the first woman to lead laps and finish in the top five.

"It's really about the commitment, the sacrifice and the magic of really wanting something," Patrick said.

How Formula 1 can improve: Danica Patrick says Formula 1 needs to make women feel welcome

Danica Patrick, a former NASCAR driver turned entrepreneur, speaks during the 5th Annual Women's Leadership Breakfast Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.

In 2013 she made the switch to the NASCAR Cup Series. During her five years competing in this male-dominated world, she made history by setting the fastest qualifying time in the Daytona 500, in which she finished 8th.

"Do you know what your loftiest dream would be," Patrick rhetorically asked the audience. "When you do, ... it's going to anchor your reality."

Danica Patrick: Away from racing, into wine

By 2018, Patrick stepped out of the driver's seat and into the business world. She purchased a vineyard called Somnium, which in Latin means dream, in 2009, located in Napa Valley, California. This led to her creating a rose wine under her personal label in 2021.

That's not the only business Patrick focuses on  she also hosts a podcast titled "Danica Patrick Pretty Intense Podcast," inspired by her book "Pretty Intense," where she features doctors, scientists, musicians, actors and anyone that catches her curiosity.

"I literally just get curious about somebody and then ask to interview them," Patrick said.

She finished by answering a couple of audience questions, including if she struggles to go the speed limit while driving: "The only way I can ensure I won't get a ticket is to let someone else drive," Patrick said.

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Reach photojournalist Alicia Devine at adevine@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @alicia_c_devine. Check out her photos on Instagram @adevinephotography.

Never miss a story: Subscribe to the Tallahassee Democrat using the link at the top of the page.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Danica Patrick went from NASCAR to entrepreneur, chasing her dreams
Associated Press

Yoshihiko Takeuchi, who ran a small restaurant on the island of Okinawa, told only a few friends he had the coronavirus. When he didn't answer phone calls from public health workers for three days, police went to his home and found him dead in his bed. In many countries, those with the virus stay home to isolate and recover, but critics say that in Japan, a country with one of the most affordable and accessible health care systems, people have been denied hospital care, and the policy amounted to jitaku hochi, or abandonment at home.
The Richmond Senior Community Center is located at 1600 S. Second St. Its hours are 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday to Friday.

RICHMOND, Ind.  The Richmond Senior Community Center will celebrate its 60th year with an open house and special activities Friday.

That's part of a busy weekend for the Richmond Parks and Recreation Department, which also opens its Winter Farmers Market and hosts the Veterans Parade on Saturday, according to a news release.

The senior center is housed at the former Southview Elementary School, 1600 S. Second St. An annual membership is $20 for residents 50 and older. The center is open 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday for a variety of activities.

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A free open house 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday will include a complimentary lunch, tours, games and door prizes.

The open house-style lunch begins at 11:30, with cake by Arbor Trace at noon. The Serenity Garden dedication will be at 12:30 p.m., with 10 games of bingo beginning at 1 p.m. and door prize and 50/50 raffle drawings at 2 p.m.

STAY INFORMED AND SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM: Subscribe today using the link at the top of this page.

On Saturday, the Winter Farmers Market returns to the Starr-Gennett Building 9 a.m.-noon, after the Farmers Market spent the summer at Elstro Plaza.

COVID: Some Wayne County parents waste no time getting children vaccinated

It is one of only three year-round farmers markets in Indiana and provides fresh foods and locally made products.

Veterans are invited to attend the market Saturday and enter a raffle for a free Farmers Market basket filled with items provided by market vendors.

The 13th annual Veterans Parade then begins at noon, traveling down East Main Street from 11th to Fourth streets.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Richmond Senior Community Center to celebrate 60 years with open house
(Getty Images)

The Royal Family can often cause divisive opinions, both here in the UK and across the world.

Many adore them while acknowledging their public service and feel they have a particular connection with individual members. However, the matter of their wealth, how much the taxpayer funds the upkeep of their estates and their lifestyle can often be one of the more contentious matters. Many believe the benefit and economic support the monarchy brings the UK outweighs the burden some claim them to be on the public purse string.

Then of course there is the matter of the individual members, their personal lives and how they choose to conduct themselves. Although many members make headlines for all the right reasons it cant be ignored that others have been making them for the wrong reasons.

The argument for Britain to become a republic has been a longstanding one despite never gaining much momentum in recent times, but as the Queen nears her 100th birthday, and with the Duke of Edinburgh having died earlier this year, the question of what is likely to happen to the monarchy seems more pertinent than ever.

Will Prince Charles be king, will the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge be king and queen, and when? And how will the role and duties of the Royal Family continue to develop as they navigate their way through the modern era?

To answer all these questions The Independent is hosting an expert panel discussion as part of our virtual event series.

The British monarchy: what does the future hold will be hosted by our lifestyle editor Harriet Hall and she will be joined by our associate editor Sean OGrady.

They will be joined by:

Graham Smith, the CEO of Republic, a membership-based pressure group campaigning for the abolition of the monarchy and its replacement with a directly elected head of state

Kristen Meinzer, a US-based British royals commentator

The event will be held on 4 November and will start at 6.30pm. it will be on Zoom and will last an hour.

Story continues

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EAST PROVIDENCE  When last we visited Anchor & Hope in Rumford, it was early 2020. James Davids and Marissa Stashenko were installing wine kegs in restaurants including Bayberry Beer Hall and Tavolo.

You know the next part of the story. Restaurants shut down till June due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their plan for their Enotap wine kegs to be in restaurants across the state, two years in the prep stage, was squashed, said Davids.

But not their entrepreneurial spirit.

Anchor & Hope cans their wine

With the assistance of a mobile canning company, they launched a new product, their wines in cans in May 2020. It was perfect for the Ocean State where boaters and beachers could take their wine to go, said Stashenko.

Single-serve can portions also proved prized in pandemic times at spots including Troop and Moniker Brewing in Providence.

The new lines of cans from Anchor & Hope are available at local liquor stores.

"Nicks on Broadway did well with the cans," said Davids about the Providence restaurant run by Derek Wagner.

"They were doing lunch boxes and dinner boxes and the canned wines fit in," he added.

Seven varietals were canned including chardonnay, gruner veltliner, sauvignon blanc, riesling and rose.

As their Anchor & Hope wines became more well known, and they began pouring at small events, they found one question being asked: Can I visit your winery?

The answer was no.

Theirs is a negociant, craft winery, which means they source their wines from small producers across the globe. Fermentation happens at the growers winery, and the wines ship to Rumford shortly after harvest. Some come in bladders and others in hard-sided containers. About 50% of the winemaking process happens on the ground in R.I. where they bottle their Anchor & Hope wines.

It's a style of business common in France, including names such as Louis Jadot. But their license did not allow them a tasting room.

Davids, a native of San Francisco, is the winemaker. Stashenko does the marketing. They didn't expect passion for their wines to include road trips.

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So they are expanding their business. They changed their license to allow making wines with local grapes.

A winery tasting room in Rumford

A tasting room is under construction for now, though it's more about cleaning. They are working with an architect but are clearing out the space first.

It's in the same complex where they make their wines  Phillipsdale Landing, an old mill along the Seekonk River  but in a different building. The new space is on the river and will have a water view. Adding windows and glass is part of the restoration of the space.

The Anchor & Hope team fill buckets of Greenvale Vineyard grapes from Portsmouth to top off the wine press. They are, left to right, owner/winemaker James Davids , fellow winemaker Mike daCruz, Jamie Busher (brand management lead for Craft Collective, their distributor) and Anchor & Hope owner Marissa Stashenko.

It was originally the space that held all the copper wire that was produced here before a train picked it up for shipping, said Davids.

They are optimistic for an early summer opening, maybe even Memorial Day.

"We want it to be a communal space, like you see at brew pubs," said Stashenko.

They may plan to have movie nights, pop-up wine dinners and food trucks, she said.

Last month, they began making the wines that will be served in that tasting room. They used their brand new press to crush grapes grown at Greenvale Vineyards.

"It wasn't what we set out to do," said Davids. "But we do see an opportunity."

Winemaker James Davids pulls another load of grapes from a truck into the Anchor & Hope Winery for pressing.

As they've started to meet people in the industry, they learned Greenvale had grown extra grapes, Stashenko said. They also brought in grapes from the New York Finger Lakes because of the passion for those wines from their employee Brian Hart, a Johnson & Wales University grad.

In all, they brought in 50,000 pounds of grapes.

1000 cases of wine

"That will translate to 1,000 cases of wine," said Davids.

Those will be the wines in the tasting room, so their customers can drink local and be exposed to the grape varieties grown here.

"Having a tasting room will be a way to share information on new varieties," Davids said, meaning not just chardonnay and pinot noir.

He's looking forward to introducing vidal blanc, for one. He compares it to sauvignon blanc in that it is brighter with acidity, but says it is not as aromatic and grapefruity.

Four year old Liam Davids, son of owners Marissa Stashenko and James Davids, squeezes in to get a closer look at the bins of grapes that where trucked in for winemaker by his parents at Anchor & Hope Winery.

He explained that what grows along New England's south coast are hybrids like vidal blanc. That's because the growing season here is almost three months shorter than you find in the world's great wine growing regions.

Grapes here don't get quite ripe before they have to be harvested. In Europe, you have bud breaks starting in March. Here it might be May or June.

They will have some merlot and chardonnay from those Greenvale grapes.

Davids is also excited to make some pet-nat wines. Petillant naturel are naturally sparkling and he will make a riesling pet-nat effervescent wine.

Anchor & Hope is also expanding into other collaborations.

Their relationship with Tavolo, which has three restaurants in Providence, Warwick and Smithfield, reaped rewards as they poured Anchor & Hope at their wine bar at the Big E fair in September.

Beer collaborations are also in the works.

Proclamation Brewing will create a beer aging some of their chardonnay grape skins, he said.

Moniker will ferment a sour beer with juice from merlot and cabernet franc grapes.

"It's an adventurous community that wants to try new things," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Anchor & Hope Winery crushing it, aiming for Rumford wine tasting room
Mitch McConnell. Pete Marovich/Getty Images

Senate Republicans on Wednesday once again blocked debate on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which Democrats want to pass in order to curb strict voting restrictions being put in place by GOP-controlled state legislatures.

The bill would restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013, giving the Justice Department the chance to review some state election laws before they are implemented. Just one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), voted with Democrats to advance the bill, which the House passed in August.

It was clear ahead of time that the bill would fall short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome procedural hurdles, but the vote was held in part to show Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that the filibuster he supports is keeping the Senate from passing voting rights legislation, The Guardian reports.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Wednesday was "a low, low point in the history of this body," and Democrats will "continue our fight for voting rights and find an alternative path forward, even if it means going at it alone, to defend the most fundamental liberty we have as citizens."

One group calling on the Senate to get rid of the filibuster is the organization Fix Our Senate, and its spokesman Eli Zupnik told The Guardian that Republicans have now blocked federal voting rights legislation four times in 2021. "It is "crystal clear that [Republican Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will weaponize the filibuster to block progress," he said. "Our question now to President Biden and Senate Democrats is this: What are you going to do about it?"

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With holiday gatherings on the horizon, health professionals are now urging parents to take advantage of vaccines newly authorized for children ages 5 to 11.

On Tuesday, a CDC advisory committee voted in favor of recommending the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for young children. On Oct. 29, the FDA officially authorized the shots for kids ages 5 to 11.

On Wednesday, Dr. Susan E. Coffin, a physician for the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, outlined some of the side affects from the vaccine which will come in a smaller needle for kids.

She also addressed false information spreading on social media.

"Your child may have a slight bump or a small bruise [at the injection site]," said Coffin. "We could even see some swelling. That is true for the first or second dose."

Some adults have a "wiped out" feeling a few hours after vaccination and similar side effects were observed in children, Coffin said.

Shortly after vaccination, lymph nodes under a child's arm may become swollen and this is evidence that the body's immune system has recognized and is responding to the vaccine, said Coffin, who runs a research program that focuses on the prevention of health care-associated infections and vaccine-preventable diseases.

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Before approving their use in kids, the FDA said it studied 3,100 children who got the vaccine and were monitored for two months. The vaccine was 90.7 percent effective in preventing infection and no serious side affects were reported, said Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA's Center for Biologics, Evaluation and Research.

While most children are unaffected and show little or no signs of COVID infection, they can spread the disease to more vulnerable populations.

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Serious illness is unlikely but possible for kids, said Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock.

"As a parent, if I had young children in this age group, I would get them vaccinated now," said Woodcock. "I would not want to take the risk that they would develop long COVID, multi-system inflammatory syndrome, or have to be hospitalized."

The CDC has reported 1.9 million cases of COVID-19 nationwide among children ages 5 to 11.

Of those, 8,300 children  or 0.4 percent  had cases serious enough to require hospitalization, according to the CDC.

The most likely to die of COVID-19 are individuals ages 75 and older who account for 52% of all fatalities reported since January 2020, according to the CDC.

The agency reports 657 deaths among Americans 18 and younger since the start of the pandemic.

At Wednesday's news conference, Coffin also worked to dispel misinformation spreading on social media.

Some posts falsely claim that vaccines cause infertility or lead to the early onset of puberty in children. None of that is supported by science, Coffin said.

"The vaccine gets stuck in the lymph node in your arm," said Coffin. "It doesnt go to your reproductive organs.

"We wouldnt expect to see long-term side effects," Coffin continued. "That's not how vaccines work."

Contact reporter James McGinnis at jmcginnis@couriertimes.com

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: CHOP doctor discusses side effects in children from COVID vaccines
NIAMEY (Reuters) -Gunmen killed 69 people including a mayor in an attack in a remote area of southwest Niger, the interior minister said on Thursday, part of a wave of violence against civilians that has swept the country this year.

A delegation led by the mayor of Banibangou was ambushed on Tuesday about 50 km (30 miles) from the town, near the border with Mali. The area is overrun by militants associated with a local affiliate of Islamic State that has killed hundreds of civilians in rural communities this year.

Fifteen people survived and a search operation was underway, Interior Minister Alkache Alhada said on state television. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

A poverty-stricken, arid zone of West Africa encompassing the borderlands of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso has been racked by violence in recent years as armed groups, some linked with al Qaeda, have sought to establish control over communities and rid the region of local and international military forces. Thousands of civilians have been killed and millions have been displaced.

Not including Tuesday's violence, Islamist groups have killed more than 530 people in attacks on civilians in the frontier regions of southwest Niger this year, over five times more than in all of 2020, according to data provided by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a consultancy which tracks political violence.

In August, militants carried out a string of attacks in the area, including one in which 37 people https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/armed-men-kill-37-attack-village-southwest-niger-sources-say-2021-08-17 were killed.

The militants frequently target local officials https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/africa-islamists-sahel-leaders including mayors, village chiefs and religious elders in an effort to destabilise communities, leaving them vulnerable to extortion and attack. Hundreds of such officials have been killed or abducted since the beginning of 2018.

(Reporting by Boureima Balima and Edward McAllister; editing by Mark Heinrich and Jonathan Oatis)
PARIS (AP)  The son of a former al-Qaida hostage struck back Thursday at French government claims that she has put herself and others in danger by slipping back into Mali, where she was held for four years.

Sophie Petronin's return to Mali has sparked criticism and made headlines in her native France, with the government spokesman this week accusing her of irresponsibility toward her own security and also the security of our troops in West African country.

But in an interview with French broadcaster BFM-TV, her son Sebastien Chadaud-Petronin said the 76-year-old is living extremely discreetly in an apartment in the Malian capital, Bamako. He said she has ventured out just once in six months, to shop and under escort, and has someone with her who watches over her security.

She is not in the desert, he said. She is not taking risks.

To make believe that she has gone back to her captors in northern Mali, that she is putting our soldiers' lives in danger, is not very responsible, he added.

Petronin apparently crossed a land border back into Mali without a visa in March, about five months after she was freed and flown back to France. Malian authorities say they are now looking for her and want to question her, but aren't saying why.

Her son said his mother was deeply unhappy back in Europe and wants to live out her years in the country where she worked before her 2016 abduction. She also wanted to be reunited with her adopted daughter in Mali, he said.

She spent 20 years there. Part of her life is there, said the son, who was speaking from Switzerland. She is an old lady in the autumn of her life and she just wants to be in the place where she feels most comfortable.

He said that he will travel to Bamako next week to check on her security arrangements and meet French Embassy officials. He also hopes to meet with Malian authorities.

I hope the Malians will offer her a little place in their community," he said. She just wants everyone to forget about her."
Sopranos creator David Chase is finally opening up about the fate of his iconic main character, Tony Soprano.

In the final scene of the HBO series' finale, "Made in America," Tony (James Gandolfini) is sitting in a diner with his wife Carmella (Edie Falco) and son AJ (Robert Iler). The tension builds as an unknown man sits down at the bar and daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) walks in. Then the screen cuts to black, with many viewers watching at the time thinking their cable gave out.

The divisive scene left people wondering whether Tony lives or dies  but Chase, 76, recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he initially had an entirely different end for the character, one in which Tony was killed on screen.

"The scene I had in my mind was not that scene," he said. "Nor did I think of cutting to black."

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Actor James Gandolfini in scene from HBO TV drama series The Sopranos.

Anthony Neste/Getty James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in HBO's The Sopranos

"I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car," Chase explained. "At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed."

He said he got the idea for what ended up being the finale when he was driving and spotted the restaurant that would inspire the one in that scene.

"I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast," Chase said. "And for some reason I thought, 'Tony should get it in a place like that.' Why? I don't know."

Though he did imagine that Tony died in that diner after the cut to black, the producer said it "bothered" him how much viewers wanted to actually witness his death.

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David Chase

Bennett Raglin/WireImage David Chase created The Sopranos and it's upcoming prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark

"I had no idea it would cause that much  I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed! Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos," Chase told THR.

"It was kind of incredible to me," he continued. "But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me."

Never miss a story  sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

"They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, 'God, you watched this guy for seven years and I know he's a criminal. But don't tell me you don't love him in some way, don't tell me you're not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You're a criminal after watching this shit for seven years.' That bothered me, yeah," Chase concluded.

The Sopranos ran from 1999 through 2007 on HBO. Last month, a prequel movie, The Many Saints of Newark, was released, with the late Gandolfini's son, Michael, taking on the role of a young Tony Soprano.
Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Grenita Lathan presented the district's 2022 recommendations for state lawmakers Monday evening. Its additions are a request for increased teacher pay and school safety measures.

Springfield Public Schools is asking Missouri lawmakers to boost teachers' salaries and fund increases to school and student safety in next year's legislative session.

The district's two new priorities are additions to an otherwise largely unchanged policy platform, as lawmakers prepare to return to Jefferson City in January with issues of education dominating political and policymaking spheres. The platform, presented to the district board Tuesday evening by Superintendent Grenita Lathan, will be voted on in two weeks.

Lathan said the addition of a "comprehensive state plan" to raise educator pay was necessary to lure and keep talented teachers in the region.

"That's so important as we move forward, not only as we try to attract especially teachers and other educational personnel, but we're able to retain them," Lathan said.

Missouri's average teacher salary ranks among the lowest in the country, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2019-2020, the Show-Me State's average teacher salary was $50,817; the U.S. average in that period was $64,133, according to the National Education Association.

Springfield Public Schools: District has 158 jobs open, including bus drivers, teachers, food service

That pay difference has been a frequently-voiced concern of education leaders, advocates and some lawmakers in the state. The Springfield district has recently called to attention a significant job shortage  most prominently among bus drivers, but also for teachers and other positions.

The district is also asking lawmakers to dedicate dollars to "enhance student/school safety," which Lathan called "a concern ... based on everything as a result of the pandemic" and also "prior to" COVID-19.

SPS's only other change to their proposed platform is scratching out language about internet sales tax after legislation passed last year brought Missouri onto equal ground with the national average. The district will continue to push for full funding of standard K-12 formula funding, as well as oppose legislation that would funnel money to "non-public educational entities" and that "erodes the authority of local school boards."

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Schools, teachers and students have become central to the political conversation in recent months, as COVID-19 prevention measures and concerns about curricula arose when students returned to the classroom in August. In Missouri, conservative state officials and lawmakers have often positioned themselves opposite from the desires of some districts, seeking to act against mask mandates and "critical race theory."

Education in Missouri: SPS asks for at least $170k to search for 'critical race theory' request by lawmaker

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican also running for U.S. Senate, attempted to sue all Missouri districts that had instituted mask mandates, including SPS  a case that was later knocked down by a judge to solely target Columbia Public Schools.

SPS in particular has been subject to concerns regarding the content of curriculum. Rep. Craig Fishel, a Springfield Republican, filed a Sunshine request with the district asking for all documents going back three years that mention "critical race theory" and more than 20 other phrases  which the district said would cost at least $170,000. Critical race theory, an academic framework that views U.S. history through the lens of racism, is not taught in the vast majority of Missouri K-12 districts (including SPS), a survey this summer determined.

A recent letter from the National School Boards Association, written in response to threats from parents toward local board members regarding COVID-19 and curriculum decisions, prompted the Missouri chapter to withdraw from the parent organization.

Lawmakers will be able to file bills and determine Missouri's annual budget when they return for their annual session in Jefferson City in January.

News-Leader education reporter Claudette Riley contributed to this story.

Galen Bacharier covers Missouri politics & government for the News-Leader. Contact him at gbacharier@news-leader.com, (573) 219-7440 or on Twitter @galenbacharier.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: SPS asks lawmakers to improve teacher pay, school safety measures
The late Vivian Malone Jones stands tall in the University of Alabama's history as the first Black person to graduate from the Tuscaloosa campus. The 1965 graduate also had deep ties to another Tuscaloosa campus, Stillman College, where she lived while she was a student at UA.

In a ceremony Thursday, Stillman College President Cynthia Warrick and the chief executive officer of YWCA USA signed a memorandum of understanding to build a YWCA facility on the Stillman Campus. Warrick announced that the name of the facility will be the Vivian Malone Jones YWCA at Stillman College.

Stillman College and the YWCA USA signed a partnership agreement Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, that will lead to the construction of a YWCA facility on campus. The new facility will be named in honor of Vivian Malone Jones, the first Black person to graduate from the University of Alabama. [Staff Photo/Gary Cosby Jr.]

Who was she?: The history of Vivian Malone Jones, first Black student to graduate from Alabama

"She credits staying on this campus and in the West End community for her being able to graduate from the university in those times," Warrick said. "Additionally, the university hired a driver who was a student at Stillman to take her to and from Stillman. She had a room in Winsborough Hall. She ended up marrying her driver, Mack Jones. He graduated, went to Emory (University) and became a physician."

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Stillman plans to remove two existing residence halls, both of which are contaminated with asbestos and lead paint in order to make room for the YWCA facility. Williams Hall and King Hall have been unoccupied for several years and will have a hazardous materials mitigation and demolition via an Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Assessment cleanup grant.

Stillman College and the YWCA USA signed a partnership agreement Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, that will lead to the construction of a YWCA facility on campus. The new facility will be named in honor of Vivian Malone Jones, the first Black person to graduate from the University of Alabama. Williams Hall, right, and King Hall, former residence halls contaminated with asbestos and lead paint, are the two buildings that will be torn down and replaced by the new facility. [Staff Photo/Gary Cosby Jr.]

During her career, Malone Jones worked as director for the EPA's Environmental Justice program. The Mobile native died in 2005.

Warrick, noting the lack of recreation facilities available in the West End community, said the new facility will fill a major gap in the community as well as at the college. Stillman has nearly 800 students but has only a single gym and no recreation facility for students or staff. Warrick said part of the motivation in forming the agreement with the YWCA is to provide recreation opportunities for students and to help the college recruit.

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"I spent every summer in YWCA camp so I know how important it is to the community in bringing the YWCA to Tuscaloosa and to Stillman College. It's going to make a difference and a significant impact on West Tuscaloosa," Warrick said. "It will mean a lot to our community. Stillman and the West End need a comprehensive recreational facility."

Elisha Rhodes, the YWCA's CEO, said the facility will help fulfill the community's needs.

"I remember how I entered the YWCA and the resources they provided for me as a Black kid from inner-city Brooklyn. YWCA was founded for young women," Rhodes said. "They created a space for young women to thrive, to create their own future. Partnering with Dr. Warrick and Stillman College creates an opportunity for us to move forward the legacy of the organization and also bring the resources this community desperately needs."

Stillman College and the YWCA USA signed a partnership agreement Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, that will lead to the construction of a YWCA facility on campus. The new facility will be named in honor of Vivian Malone Jones, the first Black person to graduate from the University of Alabama. Elisha Rhodes is the interim CEO and is COO for the YWCA USA. [Staff Photo/Gary Cosby Jr.]

Another major issue Warrick said the YWCA will fill is the desperate need for on-campus child care for students.

"Child care is a huge void in this community. I have young students, old students that have children, faculty and staff with children. We saw with COVID this was a real challenge to ensure that those children had somewhere to go. We had faculty and staff bringing their children to school. We had students with their babies in classrooms," Warrick said.

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Rhodes said the YWCA brings a great many services to a community beyond recreation. In addition to providing child care, YWCA also helps with housing, food support as well as other services designed to lift underserved communities.

"We know there are many systemic barriers that continue to plague the community we currently sit in," said Rhodes. "It is our unique responsibility to create solutions, to dismantle the systemic barriers not only the students, but the external community faces."

Part of Warrick's vision when taking the job to lead Stillman College in 2017 was to integrate the college and the West End community.

"Stillman's going to be in the community and the community at Stillman. That's part of why this partnership is so important because we will bring these services to Stillman and the whole community," Warrick said.

The YWCA provides community services with the special mission of elevating women and addressing racism issues. Rhodes said it is the largest provider of gender-based services for victims of domestic violence. The organization also helps with workforce development programs and housing needs.

Stillman College and the YWCA USA signed a partnership agreement Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, that will lead to the construction of a YWCA facility on campus. The new facility will be named in honor of Vivian Malone Jones, the first Black person to graduate from the University of Alabama. Cynthia Warrick, president of Stillman College, smiles during the signing ceremony. [Staff Photo/Gary Cosby Jr.]

"Essentially, what we do is when we see a community need, which typically is in underserved communities and let's call it what it is, Black and brown communities, we partner with the communities. We don't tell communities what they need. We partner with them so they get the resources they need to move from a space of surviving to thriving," Rhodes said.

The facility will be a multimillion dollar project and Warrick expects to begin fundraising at the first of the year, though she said donations are welcomed now. The school is now working with architects to form the plans for the new facility as well as for the renovation of Winsborough Hall, the residence hall Malone Jones lived in.

The college plans to convert Winsborough into housing for senior citizens. The YWCA is already managing housing in five Alabama counties from their location in Birmingham. Stillman will be partnering with them to manage the housing for those who will live in Winsborough Hall. It will also open opportunities for students in a variety of academic disciplines to work with the the senior citizens.

The project will be funded through federal grants, corporate donations and private donations. Warrick said anyone wishing to donate to the project can contact her at Stillman College or Rhodes at YWCA. Online donations can be made through give1876.stillman.edu or www.YWCA.org.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: YWCA on Stillman College campus to bear name of Vivian Malone Jones
Nov. 3If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault's 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

A part-time Stockton Springs police officer was arrested Monday for allegedly sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl at least a dozen times over the course of about six months.

Christopher C. Hast, 32, of Rockland, was charged with 12 counts of Class B gross sexual assault and is being held on $10,000 cash bail. The alleged assault began in the spring of this year, became more frequent over summer and continued that way until last week, according to court documents.

Maine State Police opened an investigation on Oct. 29 after the victim told a school counselor that she was being sexually assaulted by Hast, according to a police affidavit filed in Knox County court by Maine State Police Detective Christopher Crawford.

The teenage girl told police that Hast first sexually assaulted her around March or April, then about two months later he began having sex with her at least once a week, according to court documents. The last instance of alleged sexual assault was on Oct. 27.

The victim told police Hast considered himself to be her boyfriend and that they frequently communicated via text message or the messaging app Snapchat. Hast allegedly sent the girl sexually explicit internet links, requested that she send him nude photos of herself and also asked her to delete any messages to or from him, according to court documents.

About two weeks ago, Hast allegedly sent the girl a Snapchat message insinuating that he wanted to kill her mother so they "could be together forever," according to the affidavit.

In an interview with police on Monday, Hast denied having sex with the victim.

Hast has worked as a part time police officer for the town of Stockton Springs since 2015, according to town manager Mac Smith.

Smith said Wednesday that Hast is currently on unpaid administrative leave pending the outcome of the charges against him.

Hast, who has not yet entered a plea, made his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon in Knox County Court where a judge set his bail. He is scheduled to appear in court again on Jan. 27.
ASHEVILLE - Facing calls for help from emergency service officials and paramedics who say lives are at stake, commissioners voted to raise the budget for the area's main ambulance service.

The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Nov. 2 to add money to stock spare ambulances, buy two "quick response" SUVs and give a pay boost to 911 call center works as well as on-call pay for them and paramedics. Commissioners also voted to create 14 full-time and four part-time paramedic positions.

That came after Buncombe Emergency Medical Services Director Taylor Jones said in September the department was overwhelmed and running out of ambulances and that people should not call 911 unless it was a life-or-death emergency.

At the most recent commissioners meeting, paramedic Lance Jones, who is not related to Taylor Jones and who spoke on behalf of several other paramedics at the meeting, said high call volumes and lack of emergency workers were causing ambulances to respond on average in 18 minutes, more than double what it should be.

"This translates into physical and emotional exhaustion and burnout, and possible loss of life for both medics and patients," Lance Jones said. "For years those of us in the field have pleaded with management for more ambulances and the staff to keep them up and operational. But our input feels to have gone unheard."

Lance Jones

More: EMS 'overwhelmed,' 'understaffed' as calls rise, officials say; ask Buncombe for funding

Calls have been rising for years and are above many areas because of the high number of retirees, county staff have said. Under the pandemic, calls jumped while paramedics faced quarantines after exposures to COVID-19.

No deaths of paramedics from the virus have been reported, though in Black Mountain, a firefighter, Garrett Presnell, died in August from the disease. Town officials declined to say whether he was vaccinated.

The county is continuing see a decline in infections, with 107 cases per 100,000 this week compared to 119 last week, a drop below 5% positivity among those tested for the first time since July, Health Director Stacie Saunders said Nov. 2. But the fatality rate has increased with seven new deaths and Buncombe remains an area of high transmission, Saunders said.

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Commissioners committed $360,000 for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends June 30, but the additional staffing and other improvements will require ongoing annual boosts, county Performance Management Director Rafael Baptista and Budget Director Jennifer Barnette have said.

A total of $5.4 million from now through June 2025 is needed to bring EMS and 911 up to national standards, they told commissioners in October.

Ambulances parked outside of Mission Hospital.

More: 'We're running out of ambulances': COVID-19 leaves 51 dead in Buncombe County in August

Taylor Jones told commissioners at the Nov. 2 meeting that officials were looking to keep Buncombe from falling into the problems experienced by other county EMS departments.

"I was recently ... talking to a similar county, similar size, about 100 miles from here in North Carolina. They were down 31 paramedics," the EMS director said. Buncombe, Jones said has five of its current positions empty and has six now being hired.

"So when we get through the hiring process next week, we'll have all those positions filled except for some of our part time."

The same day, Jones announced the department's award of a $500,000 grant from Dogwood Health Trust, which manages money from the sale of the former nonprofit Mission Hospital to the for-profit owner, HCA.

The money would increase EMS' community paramedicine program for short and long-term treatment of those with opioid addictions. The county has seen a 5% decrease in overdoes deaths, while they have gone up 40% in state as a whole, he said.

Such programs will really help "decrease our overall call volume and also provide much more needed assistance and improve our response times," he said.

Taylor Jones

But paramedic Lance Jones said in addition to more vehicles, paramedics and 911 workers, current staff needed a reason to stay. While Taylor Jones said turnover was now 5%, Lance Jones said pay needed to be increased, "to attract potential candidates that are seeking employment with other agencies that have comparable compensation with less stress."

He said incentivizing extra shifts with overtime pay, as managers have proposed, was not the solution.

"Please, consider us as people with families that we want to make it home to without wrecking our cars on the way due to exhaustion. Please remember that we also have physical and mental health issues, and we are struggling," he said to commissioners.

Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He's written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville NC EMS gets more funding from Buncombe County commission
Axios

The Des Moines school board approved Oct. 19 paying teachers $30 an hour if they lose their planning time to cover as a substitute teacher in another classroom.Why it matters: That planning time is typically used to prepare classroom instruction, grade papers and catch up on work. But without it, burnt-out teachers are working extra at home.Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeSo far, DMPS has paid $5,719 between Oct. 20 and early No
The suspect in the October death of a 2-year-old was released Friday in what Washington County District Attorney's Office is calling a "public safety disaster" created by the McGirt ruling  despite the Cherokee Nation maintaining they were denied a simple remedy to the situation.

Declining to include names due to the 17-year-old suspects age, the Washington County District Attorney Kevin Buchanan described the situation Monday in a meeting with local media outlets. Bartlesville Police had sufficient evidence to arrest the suspect Friday after interviews with him and the childs 20-year-old mother.

Federal authorities, whose system is not designed to process juvenile offenders, indicated the tribe would need to hold the suspect until Monday. The tribe does not have a juvenile holding facility and while a facility in Vinita had open beds, they were not designated for use by the Cherokee nation, so BPD could not legally hold him, Buchanan said.

The Bartlesville Police Department had no choice but to set a murder suspect back onto the streets of Bartlesville, despite the fact he was completely distraught over the idea of losing his relationship with the mother of this kid. That relationship was over and he knew he was going to be charged with child abuse and murder, Buchanan said.

More: Gov. Kevin Stitt condemns vaccine mandate, McGirt ruling in Chamber talk

BPD took the suspect to the apartment of a non-family member convicted felon after serving him a protective order filed by the childs mother, Buchanan said.

Disputing this story, Cherokee Nation Attorney General Sara Hill said in a statement the State of Oklahoma had bed space available for the suspect but declined to house him. Additionally, tribal officials requested the suspect be placed in his mothers custody for the night, rather than the friend he was placed with.

On Friday, even though the state had bed space available for a 17-year-old murder suspect who falls in Cherokee Nations jurisdiction in McGirt, the Cherokee Nation was told no beds could be made available for a tribal defendant at any price. As always, Cherokee Nation was ready, willing and able to pay for the bed space, which was readily available, Hill said in the statement.

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On Saturday, the suspect gained access to the womans home when she was not home. He posted on social media, allowing someone who saw the post to deduce his location and report it to the police, Buchanan said.

He was arrested for violating the protective order and transported to a facility in far eastern Oklahoma.

That could have been horrific. There is a history of domestic abuse between them, Assistant District Attorney Will Drake said. I dont know what would have happened if she had walked through that door.

More: Cherokee Nation files brief in response to states efforts to overturn McGirt

Buchanan said if McGirt were not in place, the suspect would have been placed in the Vinita facility.

Instead, dispute all the dangers  he is turned loose on our streets because the Cherokee Tribe has run out of room to put such tribal members, Buchanan said. Although it may not be the intention of Native American Tribes to divide Oklahomans, the clear effect of the McGirt decision is to create two separate systems in which Oklahomans are treated, charged and punished by two different sets of rules.

Hill said Buchanans statement is incorrect, as the suspect was not loose on the streets following his Saturday placement in detention.

The DA would be better served trying to help protect communities and citizens here in the Cherokee Nation Reservation, rather than stir up confusion and blatantly false media narratives aimed at sabotaging tribes, Hill said.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Suspect in infant death released in McGirt-related dispute
Joshua John Portlock, of Smyrna, Tennessee, has been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, documents show.

Smyrna man Joshua John Portlock was arrested Wednesday in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, records show.

Video footage from the riot appeared to show Portlock pushing and moving barriers outside the Capitol, assaulting officers and joining a mob yelling "heave-ho" as they pushed into a tunnel on the Capitol's lower west terrace, according to a court document with a statement of facts from the FBI.

He faces seven charges:

Assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers

Civil disorder

Entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds

Disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds

Engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds

Disorderly conduct in a Capitol building

Act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings

Portlock is the 19th person with Tennessee ties to be arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. Court records show he is set to make an initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather on Nov. 9.

Footage from the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol appeared to show Tennessee man Joshua John Portlock pushing at barriers and officers, a court document showed.

RIOT ARRESTS: 19 with Tennessee connections arrested in Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot investigation

Multiple tips came in to the FBI about Portlock. One tipster said they used to work with him in Dallas, Texas, and recognized him from photos posted to the FBI's Capitol violence page, the document said. That person also provided a phone number for Portlock. The FBI then identified Portlock through public records and footage from the attack, along with speaking to a more recent co-worker of his that recognized him.

Document: Portlock was part of 'heave-ho' push in Capitol tunnel

Footage from the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol appeared to show Tennessee man Joshua John Portlock wearing a beanie with a Proud Boys emblem, a court document showed.

The document said Portlock was wearing a white cowboy hat with the words Trump 2020 on the front and Stop the Steal in red letters on the back. The hat also had an American flag pattern printed under the rim. Under the cowboy hat, he was wearing a black beanie with an emblem the FBI said is affiliated with the Proud Boys, a sometimes violent far-right group composed of all men.

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Footage from Jan. 6 shows Portlock pushing against and moving barricades manned by officers and later joining other rioters in assaulting officers, the document stated. At one point he grabbed what appeared to be a piece of plywood and used it to ram into and climb over officers with other rioters.

Footage from the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol appeared to show Tennessee man Joshua John Portlock ramming into and climbing over officers with what looks like a piece of plywood, a court document showed.

Footage showed him in a tunnel on the lower west terrace where rioters pinned officers against doors as they tried to force their way into the Capitol, according to the document. Footage from the tunnel attack was widely circulated on social media and across the news.

'THIS IS HOW I'M GOING TO DIE': At Jan. 6 hearing, officers tell of harrowing attacks

"Significantly, on at least two occasions, Portlock participated in 'heave-ho' efforts, by which multiple rioters collectively used their body mass for greater effect in pushing back officers by gaining momentum through leaning back and then pushing forward while chanting 'heave-ho' to coordinate their efforts," the document read.

Footage from the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol appeared to show Tennessee man Joshua John Portlock joining others in a "heave-ho" push in one of the building's tunnels, a court document showed.

Footage showed him passing what appeared to be stolen U.S. Capitol Police riot shields to others to help fortify them during the "heave-ho" push, the document stated. He repeatedly disobeyed commands from officers to leave the tunnel. At one point during the tunnel altercation, Portlock appeared to stand aside with his hands up as another rioter struck an officer with a baton, according to the document.

Later, the document said, he appeared to check on one officer who had been beaten by rioters on the lower west terrace. He also grabbed the collar of another officer who had been beaten and pushed him into a handicap elevator, getting him away from other rioters.

Find reporter Rachel Wegner at rawegner@tennessean.com or on Twitter @rachelannwegner.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: TN man with Trump, Proud Boys hats arrested in Jan. 6 insurrection
Therapist Ilene Glance was trying to be cute when she posted a video to TikTok with the words when a client wants to trauma dump first session on Oct. 19.

She went back to her afternoon sessions, and by the time she checked her phone that night, thousands of people were furious at the trauma dumping therapist.

is it trauma dumping if youre literally their therapist? if my therapist told me not to trauma dump on them i would start making my tapes, @diligenda said in a tweet featuring a screenshot of the video.

I have an MSW [masters of Social Work] and it is impossible to trauma dump on your THERAPIST. Even in relationships with laypeople, talking about your trauma a bunch is not even what trauma dumping MEANS, @Respexy said in another Twitter reaction.

ah ok *adds my therapist is making fun of me online to my grand list of anxieties,* posted @antitractionist.

The outrage increased after people realized that Glance provided counseling to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students following the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, which BuzzFeed News confirmed.

Glance, who works with clients aged 14 to 25 and specializes in trauma treatment, said her video had been misinterpreted.

Shed used the viral Holy spirit, activate! Holy spirit, activate soundbite  for people jokingly in search of backup from higher powers  and posted with the caption Not on my watch.

People were furious at the implied message that clients on Glances watch cannot share their most emotional experiences with her, their therapist.

What's with the caption, Ilene? What's never happening on your watch again? said a therapist who posts as @thatpsychnp in a TikTok response. You're not going to let trauma victims share their story with you, their therapist?  You are dangerous to your patients and dangerous to the mental health field.

Glance said that she wanted to use the colloquial phrase trauma dump to shed light on therapy best practices, saying she was trying to point out that therapy is a process and that not everything has to be said in the first session.

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I want them to understand we're going to go slowly, she said.

Glance thought only her 200 followers, most of whom are fellow therapists, would see it. Now shes struggling with going viral and being questioned about her ethics and work practice.

After the initial negative comments, she took the video down and made her TikTok private. She put up a second video saying she felt bullied. The second video amassed even more comments. She deleted her account, but screenshots of the trauma dumping video continued to circulate on social media.

A stranger called her work phone and used profanity. People shared her professional license number and resources to report Glance to the state. A Yelp page attached to an old address of her practice got disparaging reviews, as did an old Facebook page. Her relatives received social media messages. Someone mailed at least three vicious postcards to her home, she said.

She reported the unwanted attention to police, and a public information officer for Coconut Creek Police Department confirmed on Wednesday that law enforcement continue to regularly patrol in front of her home. The first week after she posted the video, she said, she had barely slept, wasnt eating and her blood sugar had reached dangerous levels for a diabetic.

I would really like to stop getting hurt, Glance said. Im asking to stop having my life ruined.

Fellow therapists who use TikTok note that while the backlash against Glance is extreme, her trauma dumping video was inappropriate and damaging.

Therapist Courtney Tracy said she initially felt bad for Glance but wanted to address the issue to her 1.6 million TikTok followers who would be looking for answers.

She posted a video explaining that no one can trauma dump on their therapist because the definition of the term implies offloading emotions inappropriately and without permission. This is the opposite of what therapy is  counselors give permission to clients to share their experiences.

People who are clinicians can understand what shes saying  it isnt beneficial for the client to come into session, trauma dump on the therapist and walk away  there may be no space for therapeutic support, she said to BuzzFeed News.

To the person that doesnt feel comfortable talking about their trauma in the first place, to see a professional using the words trauma dump  it just felt inappropriate, Tracy said.

Tracy said she knows to anticipate the myriad messy reactions a video can have  and shes had two videos get negative attention before. Those experiences made her realize how, for therapists, internet backlash can cause concerns that they'll lose their licenses or the goal of encouraging people to seek therapy will be negatively impacted.

Therapists being on TikTok is a relatively new phenomenon, noted Tracy, and they're still trying to figure out how much of their personal views versus psychoeducational perspectives to share on social media.

When its not your full-time job and youre not fully committed to understanding how this type of content is perceived, its easy to make mistakes, Tracy said.

However, she noted that whenever a professional makes a mistake online, its best to show up and come out with an apology video or explanation.

The people that were hurt by the video are likely sticking around to see if youre going to help them feel better because they were relying on you in the first place, she said.

Glances account is still deleted. She lost two clients from the video, and the remaining clients have discussed the situation with her and are 100% behind me, she said.

And she does hope that people begin to understand her message that clients shouldnt feel like they have to unleash all their trauma on day one of therapy.

They dont feel like they have to rush and dont have to hurt in order to heal, Glance said. I dont want anyone to hurt; thats not my job.

More on this
In January, President Joe Biden signs an executive order reversing Donald Trump's ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military.

Covering sex reassignment an abomination

As Veterans Day approaches, it is important that the public, especially veterans, know what the Department of Veterans Affairs is doing.

First, I am a Vietnam veteran. As a Navy nurse on a hospital ship in 1968, during the Tet Offensive, I saw firsthand the permanent wounds of our troops.

The VA, under Secretary Denis McDonough, has announced it will pay for transgender sex reassignment surgeries for the first time. This is an abomination!

More: How to send a letter to the editor

I don't care what or who people are or want to be, but these surgeries are personal, elective procedures. They are not for military-connected injuries.

Money for all our service members who have been in every war will be used for this purpose. I suspect individuals will join the military to get these procedures paid for with our tax dollars.

Enough is enough. Ask your representatives and senators to stop this.

God bless the America we once knew. We hope and pray to see it back again with common sense.

Valerie Vitulli Newman, Sarasota

Misplaced priorities: GOP fiddles, US burns

Like the ostrich with its head in the sand is America so preoccupied with minor wedge issues that affect only a small proportion of the population that we cant see the forest for the trees?

Right now Republicans are spending huge amounts of money and thousands of hours gutting Roe v. Wade, opposing transgender rights and critical race theory, making voting more difficult for minorities, etc., while they basically ignore fundamental, even existential issues like stopping COVID-19 with vaccines and a climate crisis that threatens our very existence.

Its possible that Mother Earth will eventually become uninhabitable if we dont deal with this issue in the next several decades.

Meanwhile, billions around the world desperately need help combating the pandemic, plus wildfires, droughts and floods that increase every year. Its like Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

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Whatever happened to the old American value of supporting the common good? Where are our priorities?

We ignore the future of our children and grandchildren if we dont get a lot more serious about the real issues of our survival and well-being, instead of the political gamesmanship now pretending to be actual leadership.

Stephen G. Prichard, Venice

Take proactive step for sake of planet

Nearly 1,000 manatees have died so far this year. Red tide has temporarily closed coastal restaurants. Seas are rising, climate is changing.

We must do something, but what? Our president is discussing options with other leaders.

In 2012, my wife and I bought a Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid. If it runs out of electricity, its small gas engine starts automatically and relieves range anxiety.

We get 40 miles each day of dependable electric driving. We plug it into 110 volts each afternoon and by morning it is fully charged.

Solar panels on the garage roof provide electricity. A summer car in New York, we drive it 3,000 to 4,000 miles each year on one or two tanks of gas. We use it for shopping and driving around town mostly.

The electric drive is silent, fast and reliable; the gas engine seldom starts.

The Volt is no longer made, but plug-in hybrids are still available and may provide a cleaner alternative until adequate infrastructure supporting nonpolluting, green vehicles is completed.

Our world is changing, seas are warming and rising, plants and animals like the manatees are dying. We must do something, and we must do it soon!

Henry Danielson, Englewood

Poll misleads about immigrant payment

The latest of U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan's InstaPolls asks if we approve of the Biden administration reportedly considering payments of up to $450,000 per person to illegal immigrants who were separated from their families at the southern border.

Sounds crazy, right? What the poll fails to mention is that the separations were ordered by Donald Trumps administration and that legal advice suggests that the price tag awarded to a family by a jury for the illegal taking of a child from his parents would be much higher.

What do you think the damages would be for taking a child away? In our tripartite government, the current administration has no control over the judicial branch and what could come of litigation against us.

It would be politically smarter to let the lawsuits proceed against those harmed by Trump's policies, rather than be perceived as giving money to illegals. This would likely leave us all responsible for a much larger sum once the courts finish their work.

These InstaPolls often aim to seed disinformation and discontent among the electorate in the name of seeking input. Buchanan needs to stop doing that.

Bruce E. Robinson, Sarasota

SEND A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Letters must have the writers name, full address and daytime phone number and should be no longer than 200 words. (Only name and city will be published.) We may condense letters and edit them for accuracy. Writers may have no more than one published letter every 30 days. We are unable to publish every letter we receive. We no longer accept letters by postal mail. Email letters to: editor.letters@heraldtribune.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: VA should not pay for sex reassignment, GOP has misplaced priorities
Worcester Police Chief Steve Sargent, center, raises a glass of Worcester's Finest beer at Wormtown Brewery on Thursday in honor of Manny Familia, who drowned June 4 while trying to save a teenager, who also died, at Green Hill Pond. Sargent was joined at the beer's release party by City Manager Edward Augustus, rear, and members of Officer Familia's family: brother Alex, left, sister-in-law Stephanie Cruz, his wife, Jenny, his parents Bienvenida and Augustin, and brother Elvin.

WORCESTER  Family, friends, city officials and fellow officers of Enmanuel "Manny" Familia gathered Thursday at Wormtown Brewery to celebrate the release of Worcester's Finest, a lager created by Wormtown to honor the officer who died in June trying to save a drowning teenager at Green Hill Park.

Worcesters Finest is a Mexican-style lager, which was Manny's favorite type of beer, according to his family.

One-hundred percent of the proceeds from the beer will be donated to the Familia Family Memorial Fund and the 267 Foundation, which were set up to support Mannys children and to provide equipment and training to first responders.

The brewing process began in mid-September.

Worcester Police Mounted Unit members Joe Quinn, left, and Jose Rodriguez stand vigil outside Wormtown Brewery during the release party for Worcester's Finest beer in honor of fallen Officer Manny Familia on Thursday.

The Shrewsbury Street brewery also created Worcester's Bravest in 2019 to honor fallen firefighters Christopher Roy and Jason Menard.

While we are always sad to brew a charity beer for a fallen member of Worcesters first responder community, our staff takes great pride in the effort," David Fields of Wormtown said in a press release. "We believe it is our duty as part of the fabric of the city of Worcester to do our part and help Officer Familias family financially as well as providing a day of healing and raise a toast to Manny.

Familia is survived by his wife, Jennifer, and two children, Jovan and Jayla.

Worcester's Finest is a Mexican-style lager.

.@WormtownBrewery A salute to #WorcestersFinest with a beer of the same name in honor of WPDs late Manny Familia. @TweetWorcester pic.twitter.com/3LRuhWP3ol  Allan Jung  (@ajungphoto1) November 4, 2021

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Wormtown Brewery Worcester's Finest Police Officer Manny Familia
TECUMSEH  After abruptly putting its school resource officer agreement to an end in June, Tecumseh Public Schools will be revisiting the issue at its Nov. 8 meeting.

A decision about the return of the SRO has not been made," said Tecumseh Public Schools Superintendent Rick Hilderley. "It will be a discussion item on the agenda at the Nov. 8 meeting. It would be premature to comment on any aspects of the agreement before board members have the chance to see it. The decision to dissolve the agreement last spring was made months before our funding level from the state of Michigan was known, but the situation looked grim. At the time, Tecumseh Police Department had a retirement which gave us an opportunity to make the change without anyone facing a layoff. Therefore, the decision was partly financial and partly because the timing allowed for no job loss.

The agreement started in 2018 with Officer Chad Rodgers. Rodgers has since been promoted to sergeant, and the district specifically requested he come back if they choose to go with the contract, so it would be paying a higher rate over a five-year period beginning in 2022, according to city manager Dan Swallow.

The districts rate would start out at $87,900 in 2022 and then top out at $95,146 in 2026. The citys portion would begin at $29,300 in 2022 and top out at $31,716 in 2026. The total five-year cost would be $609,915. This would cover Rodgers salary and benefits over the five-year period.

The district had been paying about $75,000 with the citys share at $25,000 under the original agreement.

The city council approved the reinstatement of the agreement at Monday's meeting. Council member Brian Radant, who voted against ending the agreement in June, said he was very pleased the district may want to bring the school resource officer back.

Mayor Jack Baker, who reluctantly voted in favor of ending the agreement back in June, also expressed his approval of the reinstatement of the agreement. He indicated he was pleased Tecumseh Public Schools had at least expressed some interest in bringing Rodgers back.

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The agreement does have a clause in it allowing the district to cancel the agreement with 180 days advance notice without reason. The district and police department want to ensure neither entity would have to experience a cut in staff as a result of the agreement or the termination of the agreement.

Both the schools and the city benefit tremendously from having an officer in the schools to assist with security and safety concerns," Swallow said. "The positive relationship between the officer and the students is also beneficial to help dispel some of the negative impressions that we have seen in the national media about community-police relationships. We are hopeful that Sgt. Rodgers can restart his role in January following the holidays, but we will not set a final schedule until the school board is able to review and approve the agreement.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: TPS board to revisit school resource officer agreement
Isaac Wright was charged with multiple felonies after police said he broke into restricted areas of Great American Tower to take photos from the roof.

Army veteran and photographer Isaac Wright will be enrolled in a treatment program in lieu of conviction settling the six felony charges against him in Hamilton County.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Lisa Allen accepted a plea deal Thursday. Wright will undertake therapy as recommended by a probation officer, who is also a military veteran, for around two years and check in monthly with the judge.

Allen also barred Wright from Great American Ball Park and Great American Tower at Queen City Square. Wright also agreed to pay $5,500 in restitution.

"You're a smart kid," Allen told Wright in court. "You're very talented."

The judge said she wants Wright to get his life back in order and comply with the treatment plan so he can continue to produce "beautiful art."

If Wright successfully completes the program, he will not be convicted on any of the charges he faces. If he fails to complete the program, he could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

It has been nearly a year since Wright, 26, was accused of unlawfully entering Great American Tower at Queen City Square to take pictures from the roof prompting a large police response to the building  a response he evaded.

After the incident in Cincinnati, Detective Jeff Ruberg had linked the incident to Wright's Instagram account and other social media, branded driftershoots, which include daring photos from the tops of skyscrapers and bridges across the country.

Isaac Wright appeared in court for a plea agreement on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.

The Colerain High School graduate took up photography after a stint as an assistant chaplain at a Louisiana military base. In 2018, at the age of 23, he was maintaining a suicide watch list and was trying to help his fellow soldiers find solace. But he still lost people, his friends.

By the end of that year, he was in therapy and had started taking photos.

"There was something about being above the city that calmed the storm in my head, it was the only thing that helped," Wright said. "Photography and exploring became my therapy."

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He was honorably discharged from the Army the next year after about six years of service.

Then in December 2020, police were tracking Wright's phone as he traveled across the country. Ruberg said he was evading law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions. Wright told The Enquirer he was just traveling to Las Vegas for a photography job and making a road trip of it.

In the Arizona desert on Dec. 17, he and the person he was traveling with saw traffic was stopped on the highway ahead of them. A law enforcement helicopter circled overhead.

Wright said he felt ill that day and was laying back in his seat getting some rest. Police said he was trying to avoid being spotted.

In an instant, the car was surrounded.

"Five to 10 officers approached my vehicle with handguns and assault rifles pointed at me. I was completely unarmed," Wright said. "Yelling at me to get on the ground, lay down on the ground."

Wright believes the aggressive arrest was due to the fact that the Arizona authorities were unaware of why he was charged.

He said Arizona police were only informed he was a potentially armed and dangerous military veteran with special operations training and a history of post-traumatic stress disorder. He said he has been diagnosed with PTSD but has never had a violent episode.

Wright's story got national attention when the New York Times wrote about the troubling intersection between military veterans and law enforcement and the potential discrimination that comes with special training and especially a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis.

Wright would spend the next 100 days in jail fighting to get released on bond.

Ruberg said Wright would disappear and never show up for court if he were released.

"Stealth and deception are his trademarks," Assistant Prosecutor Anne Flanagan said in court. "We don't know what other motive he may have ... but we do know what training he has."

At one point, his bond was temporarily set to $400,000.

When he was released with a GPS ankle monitor, Wright was permitted to travel to Louisiana to report on charges he faced there. As he returned, Wright was pulled over and arrested again on misdemeanor charges out of Northern Kentucky. He said officers told him this arrest was requested by Cincinnati police. Despite having his car impounded, Wright made it back from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Hamilton County in time for his next hearing.

He was arrested a third time in Colerain Township when officers swarmed his father's home after charges were levied against him in Philadelphia. His lawyer, Laurence Haas, said he felt like these repeated arrests amounted to excessive force.

Throughout the case, Cincinnati police have said Wright's offenses are more serious than just taking pictures. They also said they did not lead the arrest operations in any of the jurisdictions.

Captain Doug Weisman, who supervises Ruberg, previously told The Enquirer that Wright has caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage and has stolen items.

"His pictures are amazing. It's just what it takes to get to that," Weisman said. "He's putting people at risk. It's not safe. He needs to stop."

Weisman said several people have died doing what Wright does. Other notable "rooftoppers" have died falling from buildings.

"What he's doing is extremely dangerous," Weisman said. "Although he's probably an expert climber and he's proven that, people that are following him aren't."

After securing Wright's video camera, Cincinnati police said they had been in contact with dozens of police agencies across the country about offenses in other jurisdictions. In February, Ruberg said he expected many to file charges against him. To date, charges were filed in Michigan, Louisiana, Philadelphia and Kentucky. The charges in Michigan and Philadelphia have been dropped. The other cases are still ongoing.

Isaac Wright was charged with multiple felonies after police said he broke into restricted areas of Great American Tower to take photos from the roof.

Wright's lawyers said the solution here in Hamilton County could be adopted as a resolution in other jurisdictions.

Prosecutors said part of the plea agreement bars Wright from selling or posting photos from Great American Tower. When asked, Wright told Judge Allen he had a problem with this arrangement, but after some back and forth with Wright's lawyers, Wright agreed to not sell or post anything during his treatment period.

Wright's career has rapidly grown in the past year. A digital billboard bearing his work is currently on display above Times Square in New York City as part of the NFT Magazine Crypto Art Fair.

Wright said he has sold $6 million in art through NFTs or non-fungible tokens as cryptocurrency-related art trading has taken off. He told The Enquirer his strong mindset and determination through this court case have allowed him to keep striving to build his career.

"Eight months after being discharged from the military that he honorably served in for six years, Isaac was incarcerated for over 140 days," Haas said in a statement Thursday. "Isaac is looking forward to putting these episodes behind him and healing."

Haas said he's thankful to Judge Allen for allowing Wright to participate in the intervention program in lieu of a conviction,Fh which will result in no criminal record for Wright.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Treatment and no jail time for Isaac Wright, photographer and veteran, who shot photos from top of ball park
By Ali Kucukgocmen

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities are considering whether to deport a Syrian journalist over a humorous video about claims that local people cannot afford to buy bananas while Syrians in the country can, his lawyer said on Thursday.

Syrians in Turkey shared footage of themselves eating bananas last month after a video on social media showed a Turkish citizen saying he cannot afford bananas but Syrians are buying them "by the kilogram".

The videos outraged many Turks, prompting authorities to detain foreign nationals over "provocative posts" of them eating bananas. The Immigration Directorate said those detained would be deported.

Some 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently live in Turkey, but sentiment towards them has recently soured.

Turkish food prices have soared in recent months and some Turks say the government provides more economic support to migrants.

In a video, Majed Shamaa, a journalist working for Orient News, buys bananas in a secretive manner and hides away to eat them without being seen.

His lawyer, Mehmet Ali Hartavi, said Shamaa was sent to a repatriation centre near the Syrian border after being questioned and released by a prosecutor in Istanbul at the weekend.

He said Shamaa, who has lived in Turkey for seven years, had not intended to mock anyone and had wanted to address Syrians' problems in a humorous way.

"Believe me, Syrians are afraid when purchasing bananas or fruit. He touched on this bleeding wound," Hartavi told Reuters.

Shamaa fears being executed if sent back to areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, since he has also made comical videos about him, Hartavi said.

He said a decision on whether to deport Shamaa was expected on Friday.

Erol Onderoglu, Turkey representative for Reporters Without Borders, said the deportation procedure was being used as a weapon against journalists critical of the government.

"The treatment that Majed Shamaa faces for treating the 'banana' dispute in a humorous way shows how fragile the safety of residence and tolerance have become in Turkey," he said.

"We have serious concerns about the security of Shamaa's life," he added.

(Reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Giles Elgood)
.

WAYNE TWP.  The Ellwood-Wampum Rod and Gun Club had the following winners at their fall turkey shoot held on Oct. 26: Charles Bingle, Eric Palmer, Paul Lightner, Chuck Weir and George Tincani.

Double winners were Larry Baker and Jerry Sadler. Sadler was the winner of the evening's door prize.

The following were winners at the fall turkey shoot on Nov. 2: Chuck Bingle, E.J. Palmer, Tony Murphy and David Custozzo. Jerry Sadler was a double winner and George Tincani was a triple winner.

There will be three more weeks of turkey shoots each Tuesday through Nov. 23. Sign-ups are at 6 p.m.

Each shooter should bring their own ear protection. Youth may participate if they have a parent or legal guardian to supervise them. All shoots are open to the public.

This article originally appeared on Ellwood City Ledger: Turkey shoot results for Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 released
Two people who broke into a home in Canada to try to cart off a furnace knocked themselves out with propane fumes when they wrenched something loose, police said.

Officers responding to reports of a break-in at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 30 spotted a man and woman in their 40s unconscious inside the home, Winnipeg police said in a news release.

Despite a strong smell of propane gas, officers rushed in and rescued the two, who were revived by firefighters, police said.

Police said the man and woman had been trying to steal the homes furnace when they dislodged the gas feed and were overcome by fumes.

I dont know if they wanted to take it for another location, Im not sure what their goal was, Sgt. Dani McKinnon told Global News when asked why the two tried to steal a furnace.

The home was vacant, according to the publication.

Man burning cobwebs with a blowtorch sets moms house ablaze, Colorado cops say

Bear electrocuted while climbing a power pole falls and sparks Montana wildfire

A 62-year-old man goes back inside house tented for fumigation  and never comes out
Christopher Coburn and Thu Nguyen

With more than 80 out LGBTQ+ candidates winning elections Tuesday, when they are sworn in, for the first time there will be more than 1,000 out elected officials in the U.S.

The number currently stands at 997, but 53 of those people did not run for reelection, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which works to elect out candidates. However, 83 of the 131 candidates endorsed by Victory Fund in Tuesdays races have won so far, assuring that the number will go above 1,000 when everyone takes office. And the winners are a diverse group.

Among the key victories:

In Virginia, three LGBTQ+ members of the House of Delegates, all Democrats, have won reelection  transgender woman Danica Roem, the longest-serving trans elected official in the U.S.; gay man Mark Sickles; and lesbian Dawn Adams. Adamss race had been undecided Tuesday night, but she was declared the winner Wednesday. The Democrats are trying to hang on to their slight majority in the House, where all seats were up for election Tuesday.

In New York City, a record six out candidates were elected to the City Council. Crystal Hudson, a queer woman elected from a Brooklyn district, and Kristin Richardson Jordan, a lesbian elected from Manhattans Harlem neighborhood, will be the first Black women from the LGBTQ+ community on the council. White lesbian Lynn Schulman and queer Latina Tiffany Caban were the first women from the community elected to any public office from Queens. Chi Osse, a Black gay man from Brooklyn, is, at 23, the youngest person ever elected to the council, while white gay man Erik Bottcher will preserve LGBTQ+ representation in his district in Manhattans Greenwich Village area, home to the Stonewall Inn.

Detroit and Cleveland, which have had gay men on their City Councils, elected their first out queer women to the bodies  in Detroit, Gabriela Santiago-Romero, and in Cleveland, Rebecca Maurer. Santiago-Romero is the first Latina from the LGBTQ+ community to be elected in the state of Michigan. Also in Cleveland, Kerry McCormack, a gay man, was reelected to the City Council.

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Transgender man Dion Manley became the first out trans person elected in Ohio by winning an at-large seat on the Gahanna-Jefferson City Schools Board in the suburbs around Columbus. There were just five other trans men in elected office around the nation; one of them, Phillipe Cunningham of the Minneapolis City Council, lost his bid for reelection Tuesday.

Three nonincumbent nonbinary candidates and one incumbent won election; when they take office, they will increase the number of nonbinary elected officials nationwide from 11 to 14. Xander Orenstein won a seat on the Allegheny County Magisterial District Court in Pennsylvania, becoming the first nonbinary person elected to a judicial position in the United States. Thu Nguyen won their race for Worcester City Council to become the first nonbinary person ever elected in Massachusetts. Stanley Martin won their race for the Rochester City Council in New York to become the first nonbinary person to serve in that body, and Sarah Salem won reelection to the Poughkeepsie City Council, also in New York. Martin is also one of the first Black LGBTQ+ members of the Rochester council.

Liliana Bakhtiari is on track to win their election for the Atlanta City Council, becoming the first out LGBTQ+ Muslim ever elected in Georgia and the only out nonbinary person serving on the council of a top 50 U.S. city. As of Wednesday afternoon, Bakhtiari had won approximately 50 percent of the vote in a five-way race with all precincts reporting. However, the race has not been called and could go to a runoff if Bakhtiaris vote count dips beneath 50 percent.

Another out candidate for the Atlanta council, Keisha Sean Waites, is already headed for a runoff. She is a lesbian and would be the first Black LGBTQ+ person on the council. Alex Wan, a gay man who served on the council from 2010 to 2017, was elected to a new term Tuesday, restoring LGBTQ+ Asian-American representation to the body.

Christopher Coburn, a queer man, was elected to the Bozeman City Commission in Montana, making him the first Black member of the LGBTQ+ community to be elected in that state. Reggie Harris became the first Black out gay man elected to the Cincinnati City Council. Darin Mano became the first Asian-American out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Salt Lake City Council and Alejandro Puy became the first Latinx out LGBTQ+ person elected to the body; both are gay men, and now four of the six members of the council are from the LGBTQ+ community, out of six LGBTQ+ elected officials in Utah overall. Dontae Payne, who is gay, became the first Black man elected to the Olympia, Wash., City Council.

A notable reelection was that of Andrea Jenkins, a Black transgender woman, to the Minneapolis City Council. Jenkins, who in 2017 became the first Black trans woman elected anywhere in the U.S., has been focused on addressing systemic racism and police reform since the death of Black man George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police last year. While voters rejected a proposal to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a new Department of Public Safety, reforms are still expected, and Jenkins said that will be a top priority for her.

While most out candidates ran as Democrats or in nonpartisan races, Don Guardian, a gay Republican, ran for New Jersey Assembly and won, restoring LGBTQ+ representation to that body. Guardian, a former mayor of Atlantic City, won a seat from the Second Legislative District.

There were some losses too. Tyler Titus, who is genderqueer and nonbinary, Wednesday conceded the race for county executive in Erie County, Pa. Titus, a Democrat, lost to Republican Brenton Davis by less than 3,000 votes. Titus released this statement on Twitter:

Victory Fund President and CEO Annise Parker released a statement celebrating the victories and looking ahead to 2022. LGBTQ candidates across the country had a very successful Election Night, and when they take office, we will have more than 1000 out elected officials serving for the first time, she said. These victories for down-ballot candidates are critical, because local officials are best-positioned to change hearts and minds  as well as policies and legislation. Although the national media spotlight is focused on politics in Washington, D.C., it is state and local leaders like the ones who won on Election Night that most impact the daily lives of residents.

While we shattered lavender ceilings in many cities and states, key losses for pro-equality candidates and the continued barrage of anti-LGBTQ bills must be a wake-up call for LGBTQ people and allies. The 2022 election cycle begins now, and the anti-LGBTQ attacks and fights may be more brutal than ever. LGBTQ candidates could determine whether pro-equality majorities are maintained in Congress and in state legislatures throughout the country in 2022. Victory Fund is already at work on these races, and we call on our community to join us.
By Andrew MacAskill and Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government made an embarrassing U-turn on Thursday on plans to overhaul the system for combating parliamentary corruption, with the lawmaker whose case had provoked the row quitting his job.

Faced with unhappiness in his party and headlines accusing the prime minister and his Conservative administration of "sleaze", the government said it would think again about proposals it had pushed through parliament only the day before.

Backed by Johnson, Conservative lawmakers narrowly voted to halt a proposed 30-day suspension from parliament of Owen Paterson, a former minister, who had been found guilty by parliament's standards watchdog of repeatedly lobbying for two firms, which paid him nearly three times his annual salary.

Instead, they pushed through a proposal to delay the suspension and set up a new committee to review his case and the wider system of investigating lawmakers.

But with growing outrage from opposition politicians and some within its own party, the government backtracked, and said there would be another vote on the proposed suspension. Paterson then announced he was quitting "the cruel world of politics".

"The last two years have been an indescribable nightmare for my family and me," Paterson, whose wife took her own life last year, said in a statement. "I maintain that I am totally innocent of what I have been accused of."

Johnson said he was "very sad" that Paterson was stepping down as a lawmaker, adding it "must have been a very difficult decision but I can understand why...he has decided to put his family first".

Before the government's volte-face, a number of Conservative politicians had criticised their party's handling of the row, which commentators said reflected badly on the prime minister.

"This is one of the most unedifying episodes I have seen in my 16 years as a Member of Parliament," said Mark Harper, a Conservative lawmaker who rebelled against his party to oppose the plans.

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Another Conservative politician, Peter Bone, said his office had been vandalised because he voted in favour of the changes.

'DAMAGING MOMENT'

Earlier, Jonathan Evans, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and a former head of Britain's MI5 domestic spy service, said blocking the suspension of a lawmaker was "deeply at odds" with the traditions of British democracy.

The vote was "a very serious and damaging moment for parliament," Evans said in speech in London.

Johnson has faced other accusations of wrongdoing recently, including plans to have party donors secretly contribute to a luxury renovation of his Downing Street flat, and the government handing out large contracts for protective medical equipment to those with links to those in power.

The opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the government of corruption and said Johnson was "leading his troops through the sewer".

"Boris Johnson must now apologise to the entire country for this grubby attempt to cover up for the misdemeanour of his friend," Starmer said. "This isn't the first time he's done this but it must be the last."

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London, said allegations of corruption could be deeply damaging, citing the sleaze rows that dogged the last days of John Major's Conservative government in the mid-1990s.

However, Bale said the Conservatives had maintained their lead over the opposition in recent polls despite criticism of the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and a rise in the cost of living.

"What's happened this week won't do it any favours," he said. "But at the moment, I wouldn't bet too much money on us having reached some kind of tipping point."

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Michael Holden, Kylie MacLellan and Alistair Smout; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Giles Elgood)
KYIV (Reuters) - The Ukrainian parliament on Thursday voted to appoint President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's nominee Oleksii Reznikov as the new defence minister.

A 55-year-old former lawyer and deputy prime minister, Reznikov will replace Andrii Taran who resigned this week after his track record on reforms was criticised by lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties.

The appointment comes as Ukraine said Russia had left military units near Ukraine's border after exercises, with the number of Russian troops in the area now totalling 90,000. The United States said the Russian troop movements were significant but not "overtly aggressive".

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Editing by Matthias Williams)
The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Thursday that world food prices reached their highest level since July 2011 in October, rising for a third month in a row.

Why it matters: Costlier food contributes to political discontent around the world, especially in countries where large portions of the population live close to the edge of hunger, writes Axios' Bryan Walsh.

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By the numbers: FAO's price index averaged 133.2 points in October, up 3% from September.

The UN's food agency said the increase was in part caused by price hikes for cereals and vegetable oils.

Its index for cereals increased by 3.2% from the previous month despite an expected record world cereal production this year. Lower harvests in the United States, Russia and Canada caused wheat prices to jump by 5%.

Its vegetable oil index rose 9.6%  an all-time high  in part because of higher palm oil prices from labor shortages in Malaysia.

The big picture: There are indications that increasing food prices have contributed to political change and unrest in some countries this year.

Sudan's former government, which was just dissolved during a military coup last month, declared a state of emergency in several regions in February after destructive protests over soaring food prices.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets over the summer to protest a lack of food and resources, shortages that were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the summer, many Argentinian farmers protested new beef export limits passed by their government in response to surging beef prices because of the pandemic.

Go deeper ... UN report: North Korea faces growing food crisis, economic hardship

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Trevor Bidelman, president of the BCTGM Local 3-G, speaks during a rally outside Kellogg's World Headquarters on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021 to support workers on strike in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Leaders from Kellogg Co. and the Bakery Confectionery Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union wrapped up two days of negotiations in Virginia on Wednesday but did not reach an agreement on a new master contract.

Some 1,400 workers at the Battle Creek-based company's four ready-to-eat cereal plants have been on picket lines since walking off the job Oct. 5, and remain on strike after the union rejected Kellogg's "last best final offer."

According to the company's website detailing negotiations, kelloggnegotiations.com, it is no longer proposing a two-tiered employment structure. Instead, it is offering to continue the current pathway to "legacy" wages and benefits, including pensions, with wage increases for current and future "transitional" employees and enhanced benefits for all employees.

The proposed wage increases include $2-to-$5 per hour wage increases for transitional workers  depending on years of service  and a 3% increase for legacy workers upon ratification. The company stated that the average 2020 earnings for the majority of its ready-to-eat cereal employees was $120,000.

"This is our 'Last Best Final Offer' to the union," the company wrote Nov. 3. "The company remains ready and willing to consider any realistic offers from the union."

In its statement via bctgm2021rteccontract.com, the BCTGM negotiating committee wrote, "That offer did not achieve what we were asking, a pathway to fully vetted workers without takeaways. The company said they would get off their 2-tier and get to a pathway, but they could not find a fully benefited way to achieve this. With this issue, we were unable to address the other items that are still on the table. We cannot recommend this offer and will not bring it back to membership to vote on. We agreed that we will not have concessions and that is all their last offer was."

The two sides had been at the bargaining table since September after extending the 5-year master contract for one year in October 2020.

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Boxes of Kelloggs Special K are on display at a supermarket in Omaha, Neb.

Amid the strike, the company has turned to "third-party resources" and salaried employees to continue operations at its ready-to-eat cereal plants in Battle Creek; Memphis, Tennessee; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Omaha, Nebraska.

On Thursday, Kellogg Co. reported a third-quarter profit of $307 million, beating Wall Street expectations. The company posted revenue of $3.62 billion in the period that ended Oct. 2.

Cereals accounted for about 40% of the company's net sales in 2020, with a surge in demand amid the pandemic. However, the company reported organic net sales for cereal in North America was down 7% year-over-year for the third quarter, and for the first three quarters of 2021, organic net sales were down 10.8% over 2020.

Kellogg's cereal products

"We have one particular area that is more challenging than others, and that's our cereal business," Kellogg CEO Steve Cahillane said on Thursday's earnings call. "And that's obviously being compounded because of the strike."

Kellogg's was founded by Will Keith Kellogg in 1906 as "Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company." As of 2020, the company had some 31,000 employees worldwide.

Contact reporter Nick Buckley at nbuckley@battlecreekenquirer.com or 269-966-0652. Follow him on Twitter:@NickJBuckley

This article originally appeared on Battle Creek Enquirer: Union leaders reject Kellogg Co. 'last best final offer'
MOSCOW (AP)  Russian President Vladimir Putin marked the national Unity Day holiday with a trip to Crimea, declaring the region will always be a part of Russia.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in the wake of the overthrow of Ukraines Kremlin-friendly president, a move that Western countries regard as illegitimate.

Putin exalted the annexation while visiting the city that is the home port for Russias Black Sea fleet on Thursday.

Our country has regained its historical unity. This living and unbreakable bond can be especially keenly felt, of course, here, in Sevastopol, in Crimea," he said. "They are with Russia forever now, as that is the sovereign, free and unbending will of the people, of all our people.

Unity Day marks the expulsion in 1612 of Polish-Lithuanian forces that occupied Moscow; the holiday was started in 2005, replacing the Soviet-era commemoration on that date of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The day also became an occasion for anti-immigrant marches by nationalists, but Moscow authorities banned the event from taking place in the Russian capital this year.

About 20 people were detained as they tried to gather in a Moscow subway station for a nationalist demonstration, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political demonstrations and arrests.
We knew from the get-go that the defund the police rallying cry was a bad idea  and Minneapolis voters proved it this week.

The catchy slogan stemming from last years racial reckoning set off a different kind of firestorm than those protesting police brutality sought.

It sent police defenders into high gear, pointing to low morale that meant a shortage of cops at a time when all sorts of crime are going up. It even gave heartburn to those sympathetic to meaningful police reform in cities and towns across the country.

Voters in Minneapolis understood that getting rid of the police department and replacing it with something vague at best isnt the way to go.

On Tuesday, more than 56% of those who cast a ballot rejected the proposal to eliminate the police department  perhaps because the U.S. murder rate rose about 30% between 2019 and 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.

What now? Police reform needs a clearer vision

That public sentiment is significant because Minneapolis is at the heart of the reform-the-police movement triggered by the brutal killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white officer.

Minneapolis voters saw life without police, as the New York Post put it, and they didnt like it. Reality has caught up with the Defund the Police movement.

It did.

And its not good.

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Not for those seeking to dismantle or burn down police departments as a way to deal with police brutality, particularly against Black people, Latinos and other people of color.

To be sure, sometimes the best way to get rid of systemic problems is to uproot those systems and start anew. But supporters need a clear vision for its replacement  or be ready for chaos until a solution surfaces.

Minneapolis vision was a Public Safety Department with a public health approach, but without a police chief or minimum staffing levels. The idea, there and elsewhere, was to divert funds from police and spend it on crime-prevention programs like mental health and housing and drug-use intervention.

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That didnt convince Minneapolis voters. What now? Thats the discussion we must have locally and at the federal level.

Let's never use 'defund the police' again

Police brutality against people of color is real and wont go away by itself. Ignoring it until the next violent act provokes another national racial reckoning is senseless.

Perhaps the first thing we must do is to acknowledge that a functioning civil society requires sensible laws and a respected police force to deal with the lawbreakers.

Too many people, especially minorities, dont trust police and for good reason. We also know that too many people are blind to the plight of minorities and side with police officers without acknowledging the bad behavior of many of them.

Well never accomplish any meaningful reform if we remain as intransigent as weve been in the past year  all in the name of political power.

Those backing the men and women in blue are celebrating the Minneapolis vote and thumbing their nose at the defund the police movement.

Naturally, theyre celebrating and viewing the ballot-box victory as vindication that defunding the police doesnt work.

I couldnt agree more. The slogan backfired.

And that slogan should never be used again  not if the goal is a complete overhaul of policing in America. If activists just want to make noise, thats something else.

Nonetheless, dont fool yourself that the desire for major reform will go away. Distrust of police pulses deep in the veins of minorities, who make up a large chunk of Americas population.

That wont disappear when a political slogan vanishes.

Elvia Diaz is an editorial columnist for The Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or elvia.diaz@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Defund the police' is all but dead. It's the wrong slogan anyway
An American journalist detained for months by Myanmar's junta has been denied bail and hit with a third criminal charge, his lawyer told AFP on Thursday, drawing condemnation from Washington.

Danny Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, was held in May as he attempted to leave the country.

He is on trial for allegedly encouraging dissent against the military and unlawful association, and faces six years in jail if convicted on both counts.

At his latest hearing inside Yangon's Insein prison on Wednesday, "he was told another charge was added" for allegedly breaching immigration law, his lawyer Than Zaw Aung told AFP.

The charge carries a maximum of five years in jail and the trial was expected to begin on Friday, he said.

"We do not know the exact reason for adding (the) immigration charge," he said, adding Fenster's visa was still valid when he was detained.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price called Fenster's detention "a sad reminder of the continuing human rights and humanitarian crisis facing the country."

"The profoundly unjust nature of Danny's detention is plain for all the world to see and these charges only put a further spotlight on that," Price told reporters.

"We're continuing to press the Burmese regime to release Danny immediately," he said, using Myanmar's former name of Burma.

The new charge comes a day after former US diplomat and hostage negotiator Bill Richardson met junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in the capital Naypyidaw, handing the increasingly isolated junta some rare publicity.

Both the State Department and Richardson's organisation said he was on a private mission.

Concluding the trip, the former governor of New Mexico said in a statement he had secured the release of another prisoner, Aye Moe, who used to work for the Richardson Center on women's empowerment.

Richardson said he was looking to arrange the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines through the international Covax alliance.

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"I think it will open the door to the resumption of childhood immunizations and other critical health interventions. UN agencies will be key to finalising a deal," Richardson said.

Richardson has previously negotiated the release of prisoners and US servicemen in North Korea, Cuba, Iraq and Sudan and has recently sought to free US-affiliated inmates in Venezuela.

Fenster, 37, "is in good health physically but he's upset because of increased charges", Than Zaw Aung said.

He is believed to have contracted Covid-19 during his detention, family members said during a conference call with American journalists in August.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 1 coup and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government.

More than 1,200 people have been killed by security forces in a crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group.

The press has also been squeezed as the junta tries to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licences of local media outlets.

bur-rma/pdw-sct/md
University of West Florida President Martha Saunders has been awarded a one-year contract extension that will keep her at the helm of the university through the end of 2022.

The Florida Board of Governors unanimously approved the extension Thursday after the UWF Board of Trustees unanimously voted on Saunders' contract renewal in September.

"I am honored to serve as president of UWF for another year and appreciate the confidence that the UWF Board of Trustees has placed in me," Saunders said in a news release. "We are building on good momentum to meet the needs of our students, our region and our state."

Virtual training: How UWF is using virtual reality to train law enforcement for real-life situations

Expanding cybersecurity: UWF partners with Miami Dade College to expand cybersecurity workforce development

Under Saunders' leadership, UWF has led the state in the percentage of bachelor's degree graduates employed in this year's Florida Board of Governors performance metrics. The school increased the percentage of employed or furthering education graduates by nearly six percentage points from last year.

UWF also increased in the metric looking at the median wages of bachelor's degree graduates employed full-time one year after graduation. UWF increased in that metric by more than $4,000 over last year, landing this year at a median salary of $45,200. The median salary of UWF graduates is higher than almost all metric-participating institutions in the State University System of Florida.

Also in the last year, UWF experienced record enrollment and securing several awards, including the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award from INSIGHT into Diversity magazine four out of the last five years. It was also named a "Great College to Work For" in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

In a letter to the Board of Governors, UWF Board of Trustees Chairwoman Suzanne Lewis highlighted that under Saunders' leadership, the university has developed into a national leader in cybersecurity.

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She also noted Saunders navigated the school through the COVID-19 pandemic while executing a majority of her goals for the year.

"President Saunders is a proven and driven leader throughout the campuses of UWF and the Northwest Florida Region," Lewis said. "Her drive to develop and incorporate high impact practices and programs throughout the University and region continues to bring valuable economic and academic rewards to our students, faculty, staff and community as a whole."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: UWF President Martha Saunders awarded one-year contract extension
Ida Public Schools

Leadership at Ida Public Schools is evaluating next steps after the district's bond proposal was rejected by voters in Tuesday's election.

The proposal received 794 votes in favor of the bond, and 1,100 against it. Crafted by the district's building committee consisting mainly of community members, it would have provided the district with $38,800,000, not to exceed 30 years, with a debt of 4.7 mills.

According to the district's Supt., Sandra Kreps, the Building Committee reviewed all options and costs and conducted in-depth studies to reach the final proposal that was listed on the ballot. The proposal also stayed within the dollar amount that a community survey said it's members could and would support.

A huge thank you to those who voted, said Kreps. We have begun to analyze the outcome of the election and will debrief, regroup, and decide next steps. In the meantime, I invite all voters to review the information under Facility Study/Bond on our website.

The first $21,000,000 of the bond would have been used for needed replacement and re-constructs in the next 2 to 5 years. The remainder of the bond amount would have been for curriculum, safety, and facility improvements.

The bond would have allowed the district to make major improvements to each of it's three school buildings. Kreps said all classrooms would have received major improvements including new floors, ceilings, windows, doors, millwork and storage. All heating and ventilation systems would have been replaced and extensive safety upgrades would have been made to high school and middle school science rooms.

Information about the numerous other improvements that were planned to be made had the bond been approved can be found on the district's website.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Voters reject Ida Public Schools bond proposal
Chairman of Volkswagen Group Herbert Diess. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Volkswagen's CEO warned workers that Tesla's new German factory poses a major threat.

Herbert Diess noted that Tesla will build electric cars faster than VW currently can.

Diess has been on a mission to transform VW for the electric-car era.

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has made it his mission to catch up to - and eventually beat - Tesla as the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles.

Now Tesla is bringing the fight to Volkswagen's home turf of Germany, and Diess is warning workers that their jobs could be in jeopardy if the giant carmaker doesn't act quickly enough.

"Yes, I'm worried about Wolfsburg," Diess told workers during a staff meeting on Thursday, per Bloomberg. "I want that your children and grandchildren can still have a secure job here with us in Wolfsburg. That's my point today, that's why I'm here."

The Wolfsburg plant is the Volkswagen Group's main manufacturing facility where it churns out some 800,000 vehicles per year across multiple brands. Tesla, the fast-growing electric-car maker, poses a threat to Volkswagen and any other industry giant that moves too slowly as appetite for EVs grows.

Tesla plans to start ramping up production at its new German plant (its first in Europe) in 2022. Diess told workers that Volkswagen will need to make big changes to remain competitive when that happens, Bloomberg reported. He noted that Tesla is improving its build quality and will be able to build a vehicle from start to finish in 10 hours, triple the time it takes Volkswagen's main factory to spit out an electric car.

Diess' efforts to swiftly remake Volkswagen have alarmed labor representatives concerned about potential layoffs, Reuters reported. Diess held Thursday's meeting in an attempt to smooth over the conflict and recognize the contributions workers have made to Volkswagen's transformation.

"Only as a team can we make Volkswagen future-proof," Diess said during the meeting, according to Reuters.

In recent few years, Volkswagen has rolled out several electric models across its Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi brands. It also presented an ambitious vision for massive battery plants and big investments in charging infrastructure.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A leaked list of people who signed up for the anti-government Oath Keepers group includes 65 who identified themselves as law enforcement trainers, an illustration of how extremist and conspiratorial ideologies have proliferated in police departments across the U.S.

The majority of the 65 trainers claimed to be military veterans, law enforcement officers or both, according to a USA TODAY review of the list, which purportedly provides names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of almost 40,000 members.

"The police officers that are trainers are like the best of the best in their fields," said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst for domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. "You have people who are in these positions of influence. ... The fact that they're an Oath Keeper and a trainer would carry more weight for recruitment purposes."

Since its founding in 2009, the Oath Keepers has traded in warped interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. The group, which is part of what extremism experts call the militia movement, has recruited current and former members of law enforcement and the military.

Its members declare they will not enforce any government order they believe to be illegal, such as disarming Americans. The group has always had ties to white supremacists, but in recent years, it has spouted more anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

An armed member of the Oath Keepers walks through protests in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 10, 2015. The unrest stemmed from the first anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teen.

Members of the Oath Keepers have engaged in high-profile armed standoffs against the federal government. Other members face conspiracy charges in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which injured about 140 police officers. One died a day later after suffering two strokes.

Law enforcement trainers have a broader reach than patrol officers or even supervisors, said Val Van Brocklin, a national police trainer. Trainers shape rookies minds and can imprint their view of police culture and tactics onto their students, she said.

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Although tactical trainers may be less likely to talk about their personal views if they aren't teaching about laws or the First Amendment, she said, "I dont think anyone can go through a training of mine and not recognize Im a feminist."

With no national standards or curricula for policing, instructors in many states have the leeway to improvise, peppering in commentary and anecdotes.

'71 gets a gun': Graduates of Washington's police training academy unprepared to patrol streets, law enforcement leaders say

"It's concerning that you have that mentality among the elite of the police," Johnson said. Belief in the Oath Keepers' ideology can lead to a "training blind spot" for their students, he said, in which trainers are less likely to teach that armed white people can be threats.

Officers say they were attracted to group's pledge to defend the Constitution

Pittsburgh police Lt. Philip Mercurio described himself as a firearms instructor on the Oath Keepers sign-up form, writing that he "will spread the word to my students." He hung up on a USA TODAY reporter and did not reply to messages seeking comment.

Thursday, after learning about Mercurio's Oath Keepers tie, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police put him on administrative assignment pending the outcome of a city investigation, said bureau spokesperson Cara Cruz.

Daniel Blackford, a former Secret Service agent and investigator who protected Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, wrote on the form that he had been an instructor for more than 10 years, teaching tactics, firearms and driving.

Blackford told USA TODAY he signed up while working at the U.S. Postal Service's inspector general's office, where he conducted training on firearms. An early member of the tea party, he said he joined the Oath Keepers early because of the group's oath to support and defend the Constitution.

Eventually, he said, the group grew too radical for him, and he started marking its emails as junk.

"I've sent them to my spam folder for so long, I don't know if they're still around," said Blackford, director of the police academy at the College of the Mainland near Galveston, Texas.

David Moerschel, a member of the Oath Keepers, was arrested in Fort Myers, Fla., on July 1 and charged with conspiracy related to the Capitol riot Jan. 6.

Experts said that although the group has evolved over the years, it has always been extremist and always posed a conflict of interest for law enforcement officers, who take their own oaths.

'I don't trust the government'

Of the 65 people on the Oath Keepers list who claimed to be law enforcement trainers, USA TODAY confirmed 21 by speaking to them or their employers or reviewing online records. Most people on the list did not respond to phone calls, emails or text messages. Some hung up. One sent a text message saying, "Lose this number."

Scott McDaniel, 42, of Lexington, Kentucky, said joining the Oath Keepers about a decade ago was initially a positive experience. He said he could get behind the group's message, like when when he joined the Three Percenters, an unauthorized militia named for the discredited claim that only 3% of Americans took up arms against the British.

Then, he said, "things started getting really hairy," and he left after a year or so.

"I don't trust the government after being in the military and then working for the government for so long," said McDaniel, a former U.S. Marine who is a federal corrections officer.

McDaniel said he has trained law enforcement since 2008, but he never talks about his views with trainees except perhaps over a couple of beers afterward. He said he never thought about a possible battle for allegiance between the oath he swore as an Oath Keeper and the one for law enforcement.

"As law enforcement, I never really even looked at the oath I took," McDaniel said. "You kind of just do it. You never really process it, especially at a younger age."

Though all individuals have First Amendment rights, the Supreme Court has held that police officers agree through their employment to limitations on what they can say and with whom they can associate.

Police "are armed government agents with the power to arrest (and) often kill with impunity," said Jared Keenan, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. They're people "who will, by definition of their job, interject themselves into many, many people's lives," from all backgrounds and races.

Extremist group s can learn tradecraft from law enforcement officers

Detective James Dana, a terrorism liaison officer for the police department in Gilbert, Arizona, wrote on his Oath Keepers sign up-form, "NOT SURE WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR. ALWAYS WILLING TO HELP IF I CAN." He noted that he was a police trainer and supervisor.

Dana, a former U.S. Marine, did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for the Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training confirmed that Dana fulfilled training to be a "general instructor."

Brenda Carrasco, a Gilbert Police Department spokesperson, told USA TODAY in an email that Dana learned about the Oath Keepers site in 2009 because "he believed he would be able to keep in touch with Marine Corps colleagues." She said he lost interest because it wasn't the best avenue to do that.

Carrasco said Dana has no contact or affiliation with the Oath Keepers now.

One problem, Keenan said, is that a terrorism liaison officer who subscribes to Oath Keeper ideology is likely to view actions by certain nonwhite people as terrorism, but not the same actions by a white person.

In the post-9/11 world, terrorism liaison officers can become privy to sensitive information. "There's a potential for a lot of tradecraft secrets and tactics that police use being linked and given to the adversaries," Johnson said.

On his LinkedIn page, Dana described his role as a link to the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, federal, state and local law enforcement entities and the community.

"That's ironic," said Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice.

German said the FBI has long trained agents that when investigating militia groups and other extremists, the subjects of the investigation often will have active links to law enforcement officers. German said agents are trained to modify their tactics to deal with that.

James Breheny, a member of the Oath Keepers from New Jersey, was arrested May 20 and charged with participating in the Capitol riot Jan. 6. Federal officials say he was involved in a meeting in Pennsylvania on Jan. 3 to plan the Oath Keepers' efforts.

In October, The Arizona Republic obtained training materials from the state's Department of Corrections that were created for its special operations units, which have a history of excessive brutality against prisoners. Experts said the logo of a skull, knife, lightning bolt and crossed shotguns were similar to gang and white supremacist symbols.

The list of people who signed up for the Oath Keepers was obtained in a hack of its website; some of the files were made available to journalists by the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets. The list, which appears to go back years, gives no indication of how long people were with the group.

USA TODAY searched that list to find more than 200 people who identified themselves as active or retired law enforcement officers when signing up.

The number of police trainers on the list is likely an undercount. Most officers would know not to include their agency or identifiable details, given that law enforcement frequently gains access to that type of data, German said.

"The fact that there are so many that actually put their name on ... highlights how this kind of activity is tolerated within law enforcement," German said. But "the police dont get to decide what laws should be enforced and what laws shouldnt."

Tami Abdollah is a USA TODAY national correspondent covering inequities in the criminal justice system, send tips via direct message @latams or email tami(at)usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oath Keepers hack includes police trainers on membership list
Top-up fees should not exist, says Roxie Broun

Roxie Broun from East Sussex was looking forward to her three-year-old son receiving his 30 hours of government-funded childcare at nursery.

Yet, although the Department for Education's (DfE) early years policy offers 15 or 30 hours of childcare for children aged three to four in England (there are differences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) her nursery asked her to pay for a variety of extras.

"We thought we would receive free funded hours but they weren't free at all. Our monthly household outgoings were higher than our combined income," says Ms Broun.

"I couldn't have gone back to work full-time even if I wanted to, and my part-time earnings only just covered the cost of top-up fees.

"If the government says they are going to fund 30-hours-a-week childcare, then surely that's what they should do. Top-up fees shouldn't exist," she says.

Ms Broun isn't alone, many families are weighing up how to pay for childcare: a recent survey of 20,000 working parents revealed 97% thought the cost of childcare in the UK was too expensive.

The DfE says all charges are voluntary, so the choice to pay top-up fees is optional

Critics of Rishi Sunak's October Budget say it failed to include measures specifically targeted at helping young families to stay afloat and afford childcare, although he did announce extra support as part of a 500m package that, among other measures, will create a network of 75 family hubs across England.

Meanwhile, government guidance states top-up fees - the difference between the nursery's normal fee and funding received from the local authority - cannot be charged for.

But nurseries are allowed to ask for payments from parents and carers for nappies, snacks, nappy-creams and extra-curricular activities such as a music class or yoga - and this is a way of bridging the funding gap.

When a child attends a nursery, the DfE says all invoices must be itemised so parents know exactly what charges they are paying for.

The DfE says all charges are voluntary, so the choice to pay top-up fees is optional. It says parents should be told that they can supply their own snacks and nappies or join activities without purchasing any extras - ensuring their childcare is entirely free.

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However, many nurseries and childcare centres do not make this clear and parents can end up paying thousands of pounds a year.

At present there is no universal policy on how the government's early years funded hours can be delivered completely free - and parents face a wide range of fees and top-up expenses across childcare centres.

Some even ask parents to sign a contract stating that they will not take any legal action against the nursery for charging top-up fees - and in some cases fees can reach up to 9,000 per year.

Joeli Brealey wants an independent review of the affordability and quality of the childcare sector

Joeli Brealey from women's charity, Pregnant Then Screwed, says conversations about top-up fees often create stress and tension between parents and childcare providers.

But she acknowledges nurseries often have little choice, "as their costs are more than the funding provided by the government."

However, the Department for Education says that the scheme, which sees some 202,000 children in England take-up a place each year, is beneficial for children.

"The free entitlements are helping thousands of children, so we consider it's working well. Even during the pandemic the majority of eligible children have continued to access free places," the spokesperson says.

"We are not aware of any significant issues and we work closely with councils to ensure this."

However, Joeli Brealey rejects this, saying that a recent Freedom of Information request conducted by the Early Years Alliance which represents childcare providers, has shown that the government "purposefully underfunded the scheme".

"Ultimately, this has forced thousands of mothers out of the workforce and will reduce the quality of childcare, with providers in areas of deprivation worse affected."

Ms Brealey doubts Rishi Sunak's measures will go far enough. "Any investment in the sector is very welcome, but with a funding deficit of 662m in 2019/20, they are not tackling the current issues within our childcare sector.

"Hundreds of thousands of mothers are still priced out of work, or are forced to work fewer hours, due to childcare cost and availability."

Lucy Murray says she was made to feel she was being difficult when she queried top-up fees from a childcare provider

When Lucy Murray from Newport Pagnell, tried to understand more about the costs at her daughter's nursery she found the process was neither clear nor simple.

She thought her daughter's childcare would be free, but instead, her monthly bill was only discounted from 600 to 400.

"My daughter attended only 22 hours instead of the 30 hours but I was told we still had to pay fees. I asked for them to explain the top-up fees but was made to feel like I was being difficult. I felt embarrassed so I didn't probe further."

June O' Sullivan, who runs the London Early Years Foundation, a chain of 42 nurseries, says these funding challenges need to be addressed for both families and nurseries.

"The money from the government is supposed to cover everything, but they recognise that staffing is about 72% of your costs. So there is often a shortfall.

"Ultimately, we should be targeting children that are going to need it most, and make it manageable for all families, [but] it's a conversation that isn't happening."

June O' Sullivan says fund issues need to be addressed for both parents and nurseries

"Many providers report that an increase of funding would be welcomed by the sector but all nurseries in receipt of funding have to offer the 15 or 30 hours free at the point of delivery," says Ms O'Sullivan.

So where do parents looking for nursery funding go from here?

In a landmark case earlier this year, Damian Roche challenged his nursery at Kiddi Caru in Market Harborough, after they had charged him the difference between the government's fee and their own without showing any clear charging structure.

When he couldn't see what he had been paying for, he went through a two-stage complaint with his local council, Leicester City, and then took it to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsmen (LGO).

The LGO found the nursery had charged top-up fees that were unlawful, and consequently Mr Roche was refunded more than 1,000. After investigation, a further 79 parents were refunded.

Roxie Broun found her earnings from part-time work only just covered top-up fees for childcare

The LGO says that if nurseries choose to participate in the early years funding they must meet minimum standards: "The local authority pays the nursery directly. Parents must be able to take up their place entirely free of charge."

While this case was the first of its kind, it was not much use to Roxie Broun who after asking her nursery to work out how much her bill would be increased by, admitted she was still confused by it.

She says it highlights the fact that government funding can fall far short of what nurseries require to operate. She is concerned any gap will end up being met by parents of younger children who are not entitled to funding.

"It seems this is a problem across the board. Parents who have kids under three will end up paying even more, and they are the ones who already struggle the most with the cost of childcare."
Aliya Bizhanova, a Michigan State University Ph.D. student, leaves the Delia Kool International Academic Center on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, on the MSU campus in East Lansing. Bizhanova is an international student from Kazakhstan.

EAST LANSING  It took a 10,000-mile trip and a visit to campus for Aliya Bizhanova to make her decision: she was coming to Michigan State University to pursue a Ph.D.

Bizhanova is in the second year of a doctorate program in education policy and one of 10 students from Kazakhstan studying at MSU this fall. She finished her undergraduate degree at a university in Russia and earned her Masters at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

High academic rankings and glowing recommendations from colleagues helped Bizhanova identify MSU. But she didn't pick the school until that visit in February 2020, when she met with faculty, staff and students.

After the visit, I knew it was the place to be, said the 38-year-old.

Bizhanova is one of 4,106 international students from 128 different countries enrolled at MSU this fall. They make up nearly a tenth of the student body, but their numbers have fallen from 4,540 students last fall and about 5,705 in 2019.

In fact, international enrollment at MSU fell for a seventh straight year this fall, from a peak of about 7,750 students in 2014  15 percent of the student body.

MSU was once a leader for international enrollment, cracking the top 10 universities in the country between 2010 and 2015, according to Open Doors reports compiled by the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education.

The decline in international enrollment presents demographic and financial issues for MSU and East Lansing. International students pay more than $42,000 per year in tuition, while domestic students pay about $40,726 and in-state students pay $14,914.

MSU isn't alone in having fewer international students on campus.

Last academic year, international enrollment in the U.S. dropped by nearly 20,000 students, from 1.09 million in 2018-19 to 1.07 million, according to the Institute of International Education data. The number of new international students at U.S. universities has fallen for five straight years.

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The decrease can be at least partially blamed on COVID-19. But the trend of declining international enrollment began long before the pandemic.

Aliya Bizhanova, a Michigan State University Ph.D. student, reads a book inside the Delia Kool International Academic Center on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, on the MSU campus in East Lansing. Bizhanova is an international student from Kazakhstan.

COVID-19, U.S. unrest stymies international enrollment

Enrolling in a masters program is challenging in its own right. Doing so at a college across the planet can feel nearly impossible.

Madina Dadajonova, from Uzbekistan, learned that the hard way when she tried to enroll in a Master of Business Administration program at MSU.

First, it took her six months to get her student visa and Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status documentation. Then, because the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan was closed during the pandemic, she had to travel to Kazakhstan to secure her student visa.

The visa was initially denied until MSU officials stepped in. She was allowed to take classes online starting in September 2020 while she waited for her visa to arrive. Because of the time difference, that meant taking classes at 4 and 5 a.m.

Dadajonova finally arrived in East Lansing in December 2020, as her first semester was ending.

Some international students faced their own struggles getting to MSU during the pandemic.

The last two years, its been pretty difficult, said John Ambrose, MSUs director of admissions.

To address pandemic-related travel issues, MSU allowed international students to take MSU classes on the campuses of colleges and universities in their home countries. Nearly 70 students from around the globe are currently enrolled in those programs, Ambrose said.

Additionally, some international families have begun to fear for their children in the U.S. after seeing the mounting unrest, including immigration concerns at the U.S.-Mexico border and the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., Ambrose said.

All of these things are making the news worldwide, he said. I would think moms and dads and guardians are concerned about sending their children somewhere they dont know about or understand.

Aliya Bizhanova, a Michigan State University Ph.D. student, photographed inside the Delia Kool International Academic Center on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, on the MSU campus in East Lansing. Bizhanova is an international student from Kazakhstan.

To ease those concerns, admissions officials are taking a more personal approach. That means talking one-on-one with the students and families and trying to answer questions and quell safety concerns.

Much of that recruiting can be done in the students home countries in normal times, but COVID-19 forced MSU to stop international recruitment trips back in March 2020. Ambrose said those trips could resume next spring.

Meanwhile, competition for international students is at its highest point in a decade, both globally and within the U.S. More institutions have joined MSU in traveling abroad to recruit in recent years, Ambrose said.

More countries are also working to improve their own educational institutions in order to keep students at home rather than shipping them to the U.S. That's true in Uzbekistan, where Dadajonova said more educational institutions have cropped up, eliminating the need to leave to get an education.

Some researchers say U.S. immigration policy is also to blame. International enrollment began to fall nationwide in 2016 following harsh rhetoric and restrictive immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration, including travel bans and visa restrictions, according to the advocacy group FWD.us.

The downturn after what had been fairly consistent growth ... suggests a significant change influenced by new factors," the group wrote in a May 25 report. "In fact, students and higher education institutions report that U.S. federal policies and rhetoric on immigration are discouraging prospective students from enrolling in American schools.

Influx of Chinese students slows

From 2006 to 2014, Chinese students flocked to MSU, going from a little more than 600 students to nearly 4,800.

But fewer and fewer Chinese students have enrolled at MSU each year since.

MSU was at one time a national leader in enrolling Chinese students. In 2014, the Institute of International Education ranked MSU at the top in enrollment of Chinese undergraduates alone.

MSU began recruiting students from China earlier than most U.S. colleges, but other schools soon caught up. That meant more competition in the U.S. and abroad, and the flow of Chinese students to MSU slowed.

After enrolling 4,793 Chinese students in 2014, Chinese enrollment at MSU has fallen every year, hitting just 1,712 students this fall.

However, while international enrollment dropped among Chinese students, it rose among other nationalities.

The number of students coming to MSU from India increased for an eighth straight year this fall to 576 students. India historically sends the second most students to MSU behind China.

Other countries that once had little to no representation at MSU have become reliable sources of prospective students.

In the fall of 2008, just one international student from Bangladesh was enrolled at MSU. Now, 77 are enrolled, making Bangladesh the sixth most represented foreign country of 128 at MSU.

Were still excited about the students that we have, Ambrose said.

Despite the downturn, many international students still see the U.S. as their ticket to an education and career. Bizhanova chose to come to the U.S. not just for the quantity of colleges, but for the quality of education.

Its the highest quality of higher education in the world, she said.

And, Ambrose said, the students themselves are equally valued.

International students for us are an important part of the fabric of our university, he said. Weve been working with international students almost from day one when we opened the university. Wed be in a very different place without them. We think its very important to diversify the student population and continue to grow.

Contact Mark Johnson at 517-377-1026 or at majohnson2@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Why MSU is losing international students
A woman who admitted to convincing her husband he had Alzheimers to hide her fraudulent activities is accused of stealing up to $600,000 from him over 20 years, Connecticut police said.

Donna Marino, 63, turned herself in to police on Oct. 27 and faces charges of first-degree larceny and third-degree forgery, East Haven Police Capt. Joseph Murgo told McClatchy news in a statement.

She told police that she believed that convincing him that he had Alzheimers Disease would prevent him from going to the bank, ultimately to discover the low balances on his accounts.

Her daughter Elena Marino and husband, John Marino, first reported the fraud to police on March 16, 2019, accusing Donna Marino of stealing money from her husband since 1999, according to an police arrest warrant affidavit.

John stated Donna has always controlled his finances and he had no idea she was taking money from him, the affidavit said.

Then, Elena and John Marino had police put the investigation on pause to consider whether to move forward with it.

Ultimately, Elena Marino came back to the police department in March 2020, saying her father is a fraud victim and she believed he had lost between $500,000 and $600,000.

She accused Donna Marino of fraudulently signing Johns pension checks and depositing them into another bank account without his knowledge, among other accusations.

An investigation ensued and in a meeting with investigators on Jan. 11, 2021, Donna Marino said she had been depositing her husbands pension checks into her mothers bank account for roughly 13 years, according to the affidavit.

She also told investigators she had fraudulently obtained Power of Attorney for her husband by having her friend, who is a Notary Public, sign the form without her husbands knowledge.

Donna Marino told police she convinced her husband he had Alzheimers disease to hide what she was doing.

She explained when John wanted to go inside the bank to make a transaction, she told him the last time he went inside he made a scene due to his Alzheimers Disease, causing John not to go inside to avoid embarrassment, the affidavit states.

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Marino said she did so to prevent her husband from discovering the low balance in their accounts.

In addition, she also said she pawned off some of his belongings, including a set of silver coins that she received $40 for.

Donna stated she did not use the money to go on a shopping sprees or vacations, but used it to help her family, according to the affidavit, which mentions she financially helped out her brother to pay for his rent and groceries.

She said she was trying to make everyone happy, but it was at Johns expense.

Marino told police that she stole roughly $100,000 from her husband over 13 years.

This case highlights the importance of really staying invested and involved in the financial dealings of our elderly population, Murgo said in a statement to McClatchy News.

Although these crimes span across many years, if it werent for Mr. Marinos family discovering these financial discrepancies, Ms. Marino might have gotten away with this for longer, he added.

Murgo advised others to check in on their family and dont be afraid to dig deeper if something doesnt seem right.

In many instances, people get taken advantage of because they dont have the right people looking out for their best interest, he also said.

This case, and the justice hopefully to follow, prove what is possible when we are invested in our familys well being.

Marino was arraigned on Oct. 28 and released after promising to appear in court on Nov. 29, the New Haven Register reported.
Willliamson County officials are asking for public comment on a proposed redistricting map for commissioners, justices of the peace and constables.

The maps and a comment form are available at bit.ly/3bDQ9eF. Comments are due by Monday. A public hearing on the maps will be at the commissioners meeting, which starts at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Williamson County Courthouse, 701 S. Main St. in Georgetown.

The precincts are being redrawn because of population growth.

Redistricting is done once every 10 years when biennial census numbers are released. The process is based on figures from the 2020 census.

READ: Georgetown will redraw city council districts because of population growth

"The timeline for undertaking redistricting in Texas was very compressed this year due to delays in the U.S. Census Bureau releasing 2020 Census data to the states for redistricting purposes," according to a county news release on Thursday.

Proposed redrawn maps for Williamson County precincts for commissioners, justices of the peace and constables.

"The State of Texas completed their process of drawing Congressional, State Board of Education, State Senate and State Representative maps when the Governor signed the maps passed by the Legislature on October 25," the release said. "These maps were necessary to draw the countys map."

The Texas secretary of states office advised counties that their maps must be voted on by commissioners courts no later than Nov. 13, the release said.

The commissioners will vote on the proposed maps in December. To meet deadlines associated with the March 1, 2022, primary election, all commissioners courts must order changes to boundary lines of voter precincts no later than Dec. 30, the release said.

It said the new boundaries will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2022.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Williamson County seeks public comment on proposed redistricting map
A day after the Green Bay Press-Gazette first reported on child abuse charges referred by the Green Bay Police Department against Rep. Shae Sortwell, the leader of Wisconsin Right to Life said the lawmaker "voluntarily resigned from his role" as its Brown County chapter following the abuse allegations.

Wisconsin Right to Life condemns any form of child abuse against born and unborn children," said Heather Weininger, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. "The allegations made against Rep. Shae Sortwell in 2013 are serious and should be left in the hands of the appropriate authorities."

Weininger continued, While this incident happened prior to my time at Wisconsin Right to Life, it is my understanding that following the allegations, Rep. Sortwell voluntarily resigned from his role as part of the Brown County Chapter of Wisconsin Right to Life.

Weininger became the group's legislative director in September 2013 and its executive director in July 2014. Sortwell had previously worked as a legislative aide for Weininger's husband, former Assembly Rep. Chad Weininger. He is now Brown County's director of administration.

The police investigation against Sortwell began on Jan. 6, 2013, when a relative became concerned over several bruises on his child's body. By the end of the month, Green Bay police officers had referred charges to the Brown County District Attorney's Office.

On an unknown date in 2013, Sortwell accepted the role as the pro-life group's Brown County chair. And while charges were referred against him in the first month of the year, Weininger said in the statement that Sortwell resigned "following the allegations."

The resignation date was not provided in the statement. Despite Weininger stating that Sortwell resigned, Sortwell was still listing his role with the pro-life group in campaign material in his runup to the 2018 Assembly race. Besides a statement provided to the Press-Gazette through the Green Bay Police Department via an open records request, Sortwell has declined

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She further distanced the anti-abortion group from the Republican lawmaker from Gibson by stating Wisconsin Right to Lifes State political action committee has never endorsed Sortwell in any of his races for public office.

On Tuesday, the Green Bay Press-Gazette published a story that revealed Sortwell was investigated for allegations of child abuse in 2013 after bruises on one of his children so concerned a relative they contacted police, who recommended he be charged with a felony.

Sortwell explained to police that the Bible commanded him to strike his children as punishment and if he didnt he was not teaching what needs to be taught, according to records obtained by the Press-Gazette from the Green Bay Police Department.

But Sortwell, who would be elected to the state Assembly in 2018 and now serves on the Assemblys Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, was never charged, a decision the Brown County District Attorneys Office didnt explain until recently in response to a Press-Gazette inquiry.

This is a developing story.

Natalie Eilbert is a government watchdog reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Wisconsin lawmaker accused of child abuse: Right to Life distances
File.

STUARTS DRAFT  The Augusta County Sheriff's Office on Thursday identified a woman found dead in a submerged vehicle the day before in Stuarts Draft.

The body of Deborah Ann Greene, 66, of Stuarts Draft, was found in a 2004 Jeep Sport that was pulled from a pond Wednesday in the 300 block of Lake Road in Stuarts Draft.

This is a very unfortunate incident, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family during this difficult time," Augusta County Sheriff Donald Smith said in a press release Thursday.

The sheriff's office said Greene had been driving on a private road.

On Wednesday at 12:41 p.m., deputies from the sheriff's office responded to Lake Road for a report of a missing woman.

About an hour later, a deputy located the almost totally submerged Jeep in a pond, an earlier press release said. The deputy immediately requested assistance from Augusta County Fire-Rescue, the Stuarts Draft Volunteer Fire Department, the Stuarts Draft Rescue Squad and Virginia State Police.

A preliminary investigation revealed that a medical condition could have been a factor in Greene's death, the sheriff's office said.

More: Augusta County couple bilked out of nearly $100,000 in 2019, suspect arrested

More: Police ask for help in locating Staunton teen

Brad Zinn is the cops, courts and breaking news reporter at The News Leader. Have a news tip? Or something that needs investigating? You can email reporter Brad Zinn (he/him) at bzinn@newsleader.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Dead woman found in submerged vehicle in Stuarts Draft identified
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The dual national has been detained in Iran for the past five years as her family campaigns for her release.In London on Thursday evening, Zaghari-Ratcliffe's seven-year-old daughter, Gabriella, delivered a message from her mother upon accepting a Magnitsky human rights award.Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.In April, an Iranian court sentenced Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a new term in jail on charges of propaganda against Iran's ruling system, just a month after she finished a prior five-year sentence. That sentence has not yet started, though it has been upheld by an appeals court.Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family and the foundation have denied the charges. The foundation is a charity that operates independently of media company Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters.The Magnitsky awards recognize journalist, activists and politicians in the field of human rights.
The woman in charge of weapons on the movie set where actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins said Wednesday night that she had inspected the gun Baldwin shot but doesnt know how a live bullet ended up inside.

Who put those in there and why is the central question, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer for the movie Rust said in a statement issued by one of her lawyers, Jason Bowles of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hannah kept guns locked up, including throughout lunch on the day in question (Oct. 21), and she instructed her department to watch the cart containing the guns when she was pulled away for her other duties or on a lunch break.

The statement goes on to say that Hannah did everything in her power to ensure a safe set. She inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day. She always inspected the rounds.

The statement adds that she inspected the rounds before handing the firearm to assistant director David Halls by spinning the cylinder and showing him all of the rounds and then handing him the firearm.

No one could have anticipated or thought that someone would introduce live rounds into this set, Gutierrez Reed's statement said.
The world's top-selling carmaker Toyota has come joint last in a Greenpeace ranking of carbon emission efforts by auto firms, according to a list published Thursday during the COP26 climate summit.

The campaign group gave Toyota and US-European firm Stellantis "F minus minus" grades for decarbonization efforts including phasing out engines that burn planet-warming fossil fuels in favor of electric vehicles.

Minimizing carbon emissions in the supply chain and reusing or developing greener technology for car batteries were among the factors examined in the report that compared 10 major automakers.

General Motors received the least damning rating with a C- grade, followed by a D for Volkswagen and D- for Renault.

All the other firms, including Ford, Honda and Hyundai-Kia, were rated F plus or minus.

"Toyota, the world's number-one car seller last year, is the most stubborn in holding onto internal combustion engines," said Ada Kong, senior project manager of the auto industry campaign at Greenpeace East Asia.

The Japanese giant is also "most vocal in such advocacy, domestically and abroad", Kong said in a statement.

Toyota, which releases its earnings later Thursday, said in September it would invest 1.5 trillion yen ($13.2 billion) in batteries for electric and hybrid cars by 2030. ...continue reading
PM Modi celebrates Diwali with soldiers of Indian Armed Forces in Nowshera district in J&K

Nowshera , Thu, 04 Nov 2021 NI Wire

PM Modi celebrates Diwali with soldiers of Indian Armed Forces in Nowshera district in J&K

Pays rich tribute to heroes of Nowshera, Brig. Usman, Naik Jadunath Singh, Lt R R Rane and others

I have brought the wishes of the 130 crore Indian for you

Todays India, in the Amrit Kaal of the freedom is alert about its capabilities and resources

Connectivity in border areas from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, from Jaisalmer to Andaman Nicobar has been established with modern infrastructure, leading to unprecedent improvement in the infrastructure and convenience for soldiers

Participation of women in the countrys defence is touching new heights

Indian Armed forces are as professional as the top armed forces of the world but its human values make it distinct and extraordinary

We dont perceive the nation as government, power or empire, for us, it is living, present soul, defending this is not limited to defending just the geographical boundaries. For us national defence means defending national vibrancy, national unity, and national integration.

Like all his previous years in the constitutional position, the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi celebrated Diwali with armed forces, this year also. He visited Indian Armed Forces in Nowshera district in J&K today.

Addressing the soldier, the Prime Minister said that spending Diwali with the Armed Forces, for him, is in the same spirit as to celebrate Diwali with his family. He said, that is why, he has spent all his Diwali with the armed forces at the border after assuming constitutional post. He said he has not come alone but has brought with him with the wishes of the 130 crore Indians. He said today evening, every Indian will light one diya to convey his or her wishes for the brave soldiers of the country. The Prime Minister said to the soldiers that they are living security shield of the country. Serving the country as being done by the brave sons and daughters of the country, is a good fortune that is not available to everyone, he said.

From Nowshera, Shri Modi greeted the countrymen for Diwali and other upcoming festivals such as Goverdhan Puja, Bhaiyya DoojChatth. He also wished Gujarati people for their new year.

He said Nowsheras history celebrates the bravery of India and its present is the embodiment of the bravery and determination of the soldiers. The region has stood strongly against the aggressor and encroachers. Shri Modi paid rich tribute to the heroes of Nowshera, Brig. Usman and Naik Jadunath Singh who made the supreme sacrifice for defending the motherland. He saluted Lt. R R Rane and other bravehearts who set unprecedented examples of valour and patriotism. The Prime Minister also described his feelings for taking blessings of Shri Baldev Singh and Shri Basant Singh who supported armed forces steadfastly. He also praised the Brigade stationed there for their role in the surgical strike. He recalled the moment of relief when all the brave soldiers returned safely from the strike.

The Prime Minister said that the responsibility of protecting the freedom of the county vests with everyone and todays India, in the Amrit Kaal of the freedom is alert about its capabilities and resources. He also talked about the growing Aatmnirbharta in defence resources as opposed to earlier period of dependence on the foreign countries. He said 65 per cent of the Defence Budget is being used inside the country. A list of 200 products, a positive list, that will be procured only indigenously has been prepared. The list is going to be expanded soon, he said. He also talked of the 7 new Defence companies launched on Vijaya Dashmi as the old ordnance factories will now make specialized sector specific equipment and ammunition. Defence Corridors are also coming up . Indias youth is involved in vibrant defence related start ups. All this will strengthen Indias position as defence exporter, he said.

The Prime Minister emphasized that Indian Military power need to be expanded and transformed according to the changing needs. He said fast changing technology landscape has demanded new changes, that is why it is critical to ensure coordination in the integrated Military leadership. CDS and Department of Military Affairs are steps in that direction. Similarly, modern border infrastructure will enhance the countrys military muscle, he said. He remarked that connectivity in border areas from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, from Jaisalmer to Andaman Nicobar has been established with modern infrastructure, leading to unprecedent improvement in the infrastructure and convenience for soldiers.

The Prime Minister expressed happiness that the participation of women in the countrys defence is touching new heights. After being deployed on the frontlines in Navy and Air Force, now womens role is being expanded in Army also. Along with opening up of the Permanent Commission, NDA, National Military School, National Indian Military College for women, the Prime Minister mentioned his Independence Day announcement of opening up Sainik Schools for the girls.

The Prime Minister said that in the armed forces, he not only sees boundless capabilities but also unwavering service spirit, strong determination and incomparable sensitivity. This makes Indian armed forces, unique among the armed forces of the world. Indian Armed forces are as professional as the top armed forces of the world but its human values make it distinct and extraordinary, the Prime Minister said. For you, this not just a job for salary, for you this is a calling and worship, a worship in which you channel the spirit of 130 crore people the Prime Minister said. He continued, empires come and go but India was eternal thousands of years ago and remains so today and will remain eternal after thousands of years later. We dont perceive the nation as government, power or empire, for us, it is living, present soul, defending this is not limited to defending just the geographical boundaries. For us national defence means defending this living national vibrancy, national unity, and national integration.

The Prime Minister concluded if our armed forces are blessed with sky touching valour, their hearts are ocean of human kindness also, that is why our armed forces not only defend the borders but are also always ready to help during calamity and natural disasters. It has grown as a strong trust in the heart of every Indian. You are the custodians and defenders of Indias unity and integrity and the emotion of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat. I am fully confident that with the inspiration of your bravery, we will take India to the zenith of growth and progress.

--Source: PIB
We get the smell from feedlots more than we get the smell from the rendering plant, said Lisa Miller, who has lived in the subdivision for six years.

A resident half a mile southeast from the beef plant, however, said the plant had changed how she and her family live.

We smell it every freakin day, Cherie Bochnak said.

However, Kuna city administrators were unsure whether CS Beef Packers was the source, insisting that the smell came from Darling Ingredients.

Any smell you get out there is going to be from mostly (Darling Ingredients), said Kuna Mayor Joe Stear, complicating the fact-finding mission.

As the North Platte group left Idaho earlier this week, they discussed their findings.

I had every expectation of us smelling the plant  no matter what anyone had said before, I knew we were going to smell the plant. But compared to the other ones Ive been around, the smell seemed lower and seemed to dissipate quicker, Lucas said. But its hard to tell based off just one visit on one day.

Whatever the source of the smell, it was far less pungent in the Treasure Valley  even on an unusually humid day, which causes smells to linger longer.
Marketing executive Lauren has always appreciated her best friend Nate. After all, her father and stepmother adore him and he's always there to support her with gingerbread and hot cocoa  her favorites. She tries to be there for him, too, and promises to help him decorate the Christmas tree at the community center where he works. However, when Lauren's office is tasked with putting together a last-minute pitch for a client by Christmas Eve, she backs out. That night, she wakes at 2 a.m. to a confusing surprise  the boyfriend she'd had as a teenager is in her apartment and hasn't aged a day. Just as he warns Lauren, she is soon visited by three more ex-boyfriends, who help her revisit past their Christmases together in hopes of getting her to see the pattern in her relationships. During these trips to her holiday history, Lauren sees the one person she could always count on is Nate, but in the present, she is too scared to recognize the love that is right in front of her. She must learn from her past and open her heart or risk losing Nate forever.
As a bomber with the Army Air Forces during World War II, he was shot down. He received a Purple Heart and other medals but felt uncomfortable discussing his wartime experience.

Well, I tell you, I dont ever talk about it. I was in the Pacific. I came back and many of my friends did not come back and theyre just forgotten about, he said.

After the war, he attended the University of Missouri and Syracuse University before getting his law degree from Drake University in Des Moines in 1950. He farmed, worked as a lawyer, and served as an assistant county attorney in Polk County before he was elected to Congress.

Smith said he was inspired to enter politics during President Harry Trumans campaign in 1948. With Truman expected to lose, Smith went to the state Democratic headquarters and asked how he could help. He was told to start a young Democrats club at Drake, which he did.

He also recalled that during the Great Depression, politicians managed to give people hope.

It just seemed like people who were there working in the government were trying to help improve the situation, and it made one think that government service was a good thing to do, Smith said in the Iowa Public Radio interview.
A roundup of campaign news items of interest:

BRANSTAD ENDORSES GRASSLEY: Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad endorsed fellow Republican and longtime U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley. In an op-ed written for the Ames Tribune, Branstad referred to Grassleys efforts during the 1980s farm crisis.

All these years later, Chuck Grassley is still the best advocate Iowa could ask for when it comes to creating opportunity and opening markets for Iowa farmers, producers and job creators, Branstad wrote.

The 88-year-old Grassley is running for his eighth six-year term in the U.S. Senate. He faces a primary challenge from attorney and state legislator Jim Carlin of Sioux City, and the Democratic primary includes four candidates.

Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}}

UNION ENDORSES FINKENAUER: The Northwest Iowa Building Trades endorsed Abby Finkenauer in the Democratic primary for Iowas U.S. Senate race.
What services does your agency provide, and who generally does it serve? We're an organization that matches a mentor and mentee that get together one hour a week on school grounds. It's meant for the mentee to have a positive role model in their lives. Mentees are children from grades 3-12.
So you know, the question that we always have and that we ask to the Republicans is, why are they getting in the way?" Jean-Pierre said. Why are they getting in the way of trying to protect and save lives? Thats all were trying to do.

Challenges to the workplace mandate from Republicans and conservative groups are expected to be broad-based and quick, reflecting yet another aspect of the COVID-19 response  from mask requirements to social-distancing guidelines  that has fallen into a partisan divide. Democratic governors and attorneys general were relatively quiet after the OSHA rules were announced on Thursday. From California, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a simple Twitter message: The right move. Another Democrat, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, defended mandates in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor in Republican-dominated Kansas, was trying to walk a fine line on the new workplace rules. She said after a chamber of commerce event Thursday that federal mandates tend not to work and that she wanted a Kansas-focused way to meet, them but did not give details.

All 26 Republican state attorneys general have previously said they would fight the requirements, and most of them signed a letter to Biden saying as much.
Waiting in line, LaKeena Crawford worried about the consequences for her 8-year-old daughter, who she has seen try to turn on the water.

Im like, No! Crawford said, adding that she wants her daughter to understand that lead in water is dangerous. But, I dont want to frighten her too much.

Lead exposure can slow cognitive development, especially in young children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and federal officials say no amount of lead in drinking water is considered safe for their consumption. In recent months, activists have pushed for more immediate, aggressive action, and the state has ramped up its response.

Some wonder whether the problem would have been handled more quickly if Benton Harbor's residents looked more like those in neighboring St. Joseph, who are predominantly white.

Sometimes you just have to call out racism, and thats what it feels like, said Ambie Bell, helping distribute water to residents.
Even if the federal courts rule against the federal mandates, it does not stop employers from taking action on their own to make vaccines a term of employment. The Nebraska Red Cross has recently mandated the vaccine to its volunteers and employees, as have large medical organizations and big-pharma corporations. One would suspect that the Union Pacific Railroad, as a good-faith action with its workforce and community, would rescind its vaccine mandate if the courts put a restraining order on the Biden administration. The Nebraska Legislature still needs to act quickly when we convene in January. There will be legislation introduced to protect your right to decide your own health care choices and stop employers from discriminating against the unvaccinated. A majority of senators will fight to protect your liberty; our success will depend on continued public pressure on those senators who are fiercely loyal to Biden. I am looking forward to the floor debate; I am very curious how tyranny is defended.
Washington, PA (15301)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High near 45F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy. Periods of light rain early. Low 31F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Washington, PA (15301)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain for the afternoon. High around 45F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain...mainly this evening. Low 31F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
I have so many records already! I just want to play them!

So, what are a few good turntable options?

I hear you! But let's do some turntable anatomy first.So remember how the music lives in the grooves? When you play a record, the stylus "reads" the music in the grooves. If there is too much force from the stylus (this is called "tracking force"), over time, it can kind of "flatten" out the grooves, and ruin that beautiful, limited edition splatter release you picked up on release day. The number of times I heard my mom say, "I played that record until it was slick!" - meaning she played the shit out of it andit lost a lot of fidelity. This won't happen with one or five spins, but if you listen to a lot of records, Future You will be grateful for a balanced tone arm (the thing that you move over to play your record). Sometimes, this tone arm is so poorly balanced that it can hop around on the record. Famously, the first mix ofwas so loud that suitcase-style players couldn't play it, and it was remastered to be able to play on these. But now that pressing is highly sought after because reportedly, it sounds amazing.This is a great time to address Crosleys and similar turntables. There's so much discourse that it's hard to know what's the right way to go.These all-in-one players with built-in speakers are the worst offenders for wonky tone arms, which come with all the issues in the paragraph above. If you're buying for the first time, many record collectors would encourage you to glide past these to the beginner pick below. They'll probably be jerks about it, because a lot of people in the vinyl community can be quite gatekeep-y about it (avoid r/vinyl at all costs). I'm not here to gatekeep, but I'm on board with this too because the cost for a brand new all-in-one is in the same ballpark as the cost for the beginner pick, and with the suitcase players more of your money is going to aesthetics and less of it is going to equipment compared to the other options. If ONTDers are spending their cash on turntables, I want your money going toward the useful parts!If you're gifted one, or are able to get one on a great sale, or you just already bought one, I would never shame you for owning one of these - I owned one for years in college and it did what I needed it to do. If you have one and want to improve your sound, most have an external audio jack and you can plug in computer speakers to get better sound and to get the vibrations away from the turntable itself. This is what I did with my mid-aughts Victrola player and it worked okay until I got a better turntable for Christmas (and continued to use the speakers with my next turntable!). But if you want to get into collecting, a good rule of thumb is to never play a record that's worth more than your record player. So if you splashed out on a treasured red vinyl copy of Taylor Swift's Red , investing in your equipment would probably be the way to go.This is a bit more on the high end for a record player, but it'll do just the same for a diagram:The base or plinth can be made out of a few different materials. The heavier this is, the less likely it is to feel vibrations from around the house, and more stable the turntable. The record goes on the platter - these can be metal, acrylic, or glass, but in general heavier = more stable for them as well. People get finicky about the material, because they say that metal causes more static, or acrylic isn't as durable, but that's more audiophile stuff that we're not going to worry about here. You WILL want a slipmat, or platter mat - it keeps the platter from scratching your record, as well as preventing slippage, providing stability, and some of them can have benefits like static reduction. There are loads of fun ones , but a boring one will do the same thing. Put your record on the spindle. If you're playing a 7" with a large hole, use an adapter. Again, there are fun ones, and boring ones.Let's get to the important part. The tone arm. At the end, the part that touches your record is called the stylus. Most often these are built into a cartridge. Some (old) people call it the needle. It's very delicate and is what will be in contact with your precious record this whole time. You'll move the tone arm over, and if you have a turntable with a cue lever, you'll pull this so that the stylus sets down with an appropriate amount of force. This also prevents that record scratch that can damage your records. The counterweight at the back makes it so that the stylus never applies too much force to your record. Many budget turntables don't have a counterweight, including OP's top pick for beginners, but if you decide you love the hobby you can always upgrade down the line.When purchasing a turntable, it's important to know a couple of things - mainly, does it have a preamp, how do you change speeds, and how do speakers get power? When your turntable sends an audio signal to the speakers, it is VERY quiet, so you will need a preamp to boost this signal. Many turntables have a preamp built in, but some don't, so you should be aware when shopping.If you're on a budget, your best bet will be vintage. Every time. Your local record store may carry restored vintage parts, the parents / uncle / grandparents previously mentioned may have a vintage hi-fi you could borrow - for the money, these systems were made to play records, because that's how people played music when these were made. These weren't a novelty item, so they won't be aesthetically as cute, but they will be much, much more reliable. Craigslist / secondhand sellers are a good place to find vintage audio as well. Also check vintage audio stores around your city and they may be able to help you set up a system.*OP editorializing note: with the vinyl craze happening right now, vintage audio equipment is getting snatched up quickly, so this may not be the best option in 2021, but give it a shot.If you want something new, Audio Technica LP-60 $119+I had the previous version of this for a decade. It has since been phased out for a sleeker look, and is still a great buy for $119. If you want USB or Bluetooth, it can be purchased with those included as well (though for a price upgrade too). This one has a preamp built in, automatic tone arm play and return (so you won't have to get up to stop your record spinning), and can be hooked directly to computer speakers. There is a switch for easily changing between 33 and 45 RPM.This is my favorite for vinyl newbies! I love it because it makes listening to records easy - there's no additional equipment to worry about, the auto start/stop means there's no forgetting to stop the record from spinning and letting it go for hours, and the 33/45 button lets you switch speeds with no fuss. And if you end up loving records and want to upgrade your turntable later, it's the smallest investment of all these options so it's easier to let it go in the future. Fluance RT-80 $199The Fluance RT-80 is a step up from the LP60, but still a great buy. This one has an internal preamp, but has a bypass if you want to upgrade in the future. It also has a higher quality tone arm, so tracking force will be a bit more balanced. Fluance has several budget models, so if you are feeling a bit more spendy, I would also check out the RT-82 - it is $100 more, but you get a name brand stylus with a great reputation. This one will require a preamp.The stylus upgrade can be important because the previous two use a conical stylus, while the name brand ones are elliptical. Here's a bit more from Fluance on that, but basically, an upgraded stylus will allow you to hear more of the music, and can cause less damage over time as well. This is similar to the tracking force thing from earlier. Don't worry about this if you're looking for your first turntable to see if you like the hobby. Sony PS-LX310BT $229Sony's entry level bluetooth turntable gets a lot of love. And with its clean design, updated tone arm, and built-in preamp, it's a sleek plug-and-play option that can allow you to get into your music with headphones, or hook up some bluetooth speakers for a cable-free lifestyle. (Note - bluetooth will hamper your sound quality a bit! But a lot of people can't tell, so... honestly, if this makes your life easier go for it) It has auto play, auto return, and a 33/45 RPM switch. U-Turn Orbit $179+The U-Turn Orbit is a bare-bones record player. It is completely manual, does not include a preamp (though the option is available for upgrade), and to switch between 33 and 45 RPM, you have to physically move the belt, and it is fiddly. A general rule is that with fewer "features," like a 33/45 button, or tone arm return, you'll have fewer parts to break and the record player (and the parts within) is more reliable. The quality of tone arm and stylus on this one are much better than the previous options, so it can be a good place to start if you're serious about the hobby. And it also comes in a lot of fun colors! Upgrades you can make here are wide-ranging, but it will also increase costs that can rack up quickly. The platter can be upgraded to acrylic, there are considerable options for stylus upgrades, a cue lever can be installed, and more. Pro-Ject Primary E $250Again, this is a bare-bones record player. But what you lose in bells and whistles, the quality of the remaining parts make up for it. This basic model comes with a name brand stylus, meaning it can be switched out with upgrades from that brand in the future, and they are made in Europe. It will require a separate preamp. If you want to get a bit more future-proof, their Debut line is widely loved for having excellent sound, build quality, and a carbon fiber tonearm.You may be able to find any of the above turntables secondhand from someone who is upgrading or getting out of the vinyl game. With these more current turntable models, be sure to check the secondhand apps like Marketplace, Mercari, and Depop too for people selling them.The last thing to discuss is speakers. Another rule to remember is to put your speakers on a different surface than your turntable. Vibrations from the speakers can cause the stylus to vibrate and thus, cause sound distortion. For basic models, basic computer speakers will do. Anything powered with RCA inputs will work. If you have a bluetooth turntable, you can use bluetooth capable speakers like the popular Edifier R1280T . I would encourage you to get a set of two speakers rather than a single one, though, as many records are mixed differently for the left and right channels. As you move up, a receiver + speakers it has to power will produce cleaner and richer sounds. Vinyl aficionados love to boast about how *good* things sound on vinyl, so you'd be wasting money to spend a lot on a turntable, but then use cheap speakers with it. In this case, you might want to spend less on a turntable, and more on speakers so that they're both around the same price. Fluance has some speaker + turntable packages that could be worth considering, too.Turntable Lab has a guide to turntable setups that is pretty helpful for different speaker / receiver / preamp setups.Do not go broke for an archaic method of listening to music when you can easily access most of it on Spotify. The above are some budget options (which may feel laughable considering there are some that are multiple hundreds of dollars), but if it's still not in your budget, that's okay. It's okay to buy an all-in-one player secondhand, pick up some cheap records at a yard sale, and see if this is a hobby for you. And if you love it, you can invest more later when you're able. If you're ready for a better setup, the sky's the limit on how much a person can spend on hi-fi equipment, but hopefully some of the turntable options above work for you. It's a huge investment up-front, but - OP editorializing again - if you are planning to spend a lot of money over time on a record collection, invest some of that into your equipment as well to protect the investment in the records.
OPEC+, which meets later Thursday via video conference, has shown little signs it plans to waver from its plan to raise oil production gradually, despite pressure from senile presidents and consuming nations to temper high prices.

The OPEC+ alliances plan is to raise output by 400k b/d each month to remove previous cutbacks. Thatll increase the collective December target for 20 nations to 40.094m b/d...

... and all analysts in a Nov. 2 Bloomberg survey expect OPEC+ to ratify that today

Meanwhile, overnight Bloomberg reported quoting delegates and diplomats, that the U.S. had asking OPEC+ to increase production in December by between 600k-800k b/d, between 50% and 100% higher than the planned increase. And since OPEC+ will throw up all over this proposal - previously, both the Iraqi (Oct. 30) and Nigerian (Oct. 25) ministers said the planned 400k b/d increase is enough - the report noted that the US will accept the minimum 400k b/d increase if it comes with a pledge for other OPEC+ members to compensate if some fall short. Earlier this week we learned that OPEC delivered only about half of its October output increase as Angola and Nigeria struggled to pump more.

Sepratately, the U.S. and other consuming nations could potentially release oil from government- strategic stockpiles if they deem it an emergency, although such a move would hardly look prudent at a time when the entire world is pretending to care about the environment.

Going back to today's OPEC+ meeting, Saudi Arabia cautioned that the coronavirus pandemic, which caused demand to plunge in 2020, is not yet over, while Iran has emerged as another variable: with nuclear talks due to resume Nov. 29, theres a growing possibility of an eventual lifting of U.S. sanctions, potentially unleashing more than 1m b/d of crude for export on global markets.

And with oil prices having tumbled in the past three days as algos and CTAs misread Biden's leverage in controlling what OPEC+ can and can not do, we are finally seeing some reversal as the grown ups finally take control.

By Zerohedge.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
While it may seem like a long shot now, there is a glimmer of hope for Libyas oil industry if the country can successfully hold the December elections and bring in renewed oil major interest

Libyas civil war may have come to an end, but plenty of uncertainty remains ahead of elections set to be held next month

Just as it appeared that all hope for Libyas struggling oil industry was lost, the countrys Energy Ministry has announced plans to open up the market to boost international investment. The Ministry hopes these plans will soon be approved by the government so they can be put in motion and Libya can boost its oil production year on year, finally developing its huge potential after years of delays. This week, Refaat al-Abbar, Libyas Oil and Gas Ministry undersecretary, submitted plans to Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah to increase the presence of international oil and gas firms in the Libyan market. This comes as Libyas upstream operations have gained greater attention from international players, prompting Abbar to make this recommendation to enhance the countrys energy industry while demand for oil and gas remains high.

Abbar explained the "need for the presence of major international companies, investors and regional partners to support the Libyan oil and gas sector, such as TotalEnergies which will bring stability to Libya."

TotalEnergies has had a presence in Libya for around 60 years, with stakes in the Waha, Sharara, Mabruk and Al Jurf oilfields. Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, is set to make a speech at the Libya Energy & Economic Summit 2021 this November, demonstrating the companys ongoing commitment to Libyan oil. The energy event will be the first in around a decade aimed at boosting interest and foreign investment in the sector.

Eni, ConocoPhillips, OMV, Repsol are also present in Libya. However, there is space to attract greater international investment from oil supermajors such as BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil. The U.S. oil firm Hess Corporation is currently in talks with TotalEnergies about gaining a stake in Waha operations, with an agreement expected shortly.

Related: Oil Prices Slide On Fears Of Tighter Fed Policy Libyas oil industry was thrown into chaos just last month when Refaat al-Abbar threatened to resign. Abbar is seen by international investors as a figure of stability in the countrys otherwise turbulent oil and gas industry. The Oil Ministrys Deputy Ministers threat of resignation was in response to the ongoing battle between the Benghazi-based Libyan National Army and the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity to gain control of the country. However, Abbar decided to remain in his position upon the request of Libyan oil minister Mohamed Oun, and is now pushing to further develop Libyan oil and gas.

At present, Libya produces around 1.2 million bpd of crude oil. It hopes to boost this production to 1.45 million bpd by the end of 2021, 1.6 million bpd by 2024, and to 2.1 million bpd within the next four years. However, Libya has, in recent years, been unable to accelerate the development of its oil industry due to political instability and the unwillingness of international players to invest, despite the countrys significant potential as home to Africas largest proven oil reserves.

In recent weeks, Libya's Zawiya oil refinery was damaged during an outbreak of skirmishes in the area. The National Oil Corporation (NOC) said the damages included eight storage tanks for petroleum products and crude oil, as well as an additional five tanks for base oils and chemical additives. There was further damage at the mineral oil mixing and filling plant, resulting in a significant leak from the storage base oil.

More bad news came as the production of Es Sider crude plummeted by 72 percent, a drop from 285 bpd to 77,000 bpd, following a pipeline leak. Aging infrastructure has plagued Libyas oil industry, with the government showing little interest in greater investment in modernizing the countrys pipelines and plants. The pipeline leak was significant, causing it to be closed for maintenance and resulting in a loss of oil production for around 10 days.

Related: Why Everyone Should Support Cutting Methane Emissions

NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla stated, "We are counting on the government to give us priority to rebuild/rehabilitate the dilapidated infrastructure and pay off our debts that have accumulated for years,". "Reducing or postponing budgets has caused huge losses and preserving the country's oil capabilities is an absolute priority," he explained.

Yet there is still hope for Libyas struggling oil industry following Abbars new plan as well as the recent commencement of construction on a new oil refinery in the south of the country, near the major Al-Charara oilfield, expected to cost between $500 million and $600 million. Operations at the refinery are planned to begin within three years with a projected annual income of $75 million. The development of the refinery comes after almost forty years of delays, following the revitalization of the plan in 2017.

While Libyas political struggle continues, the future of the countrys huge oil potential is still uncertain. If infrastructure continues to age with little interest from the government in funding its improvement, and conflict halts operations further, this could drive international investors away. However, the recent announcement of a new refinery in the south, following decades of delays, as well as the plan to boost foreign investment in the sector, could see Libyas oil industry survive long enough to thrive.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
This transition is likely to cost trillions of dollars, but companies around the world are now throwing their weight behind it

The global shipping industry produces between two and three percent of the worlds carbon emissions, and the push to decarbonize the industry is now well and truly underway

Freight ships are huge carbon emitters and if countries and companies hope to meet Paris Agreement targets they must change the way freight shipping is managed, making it greener by using electric batteries or alternative fuels. At present, shipping products across the ocean using freight ships creates more greenhouse-gas emissions than the estimated 2 billion U.S. cars and trucks on Americas roads, at around one billion metric tonnes. The shipping industry is thought to produce between 2 and 3 percent of global carbon emissions. Maritime shipping contributes around 10 to 15 percent of all sulfur- and nitrogen-oxide emissions. And, in reality, very little is known about the shipping freight emissions of some of the worlds largest companies as very few report these types of emissions.

But changing the face of freight shipping is not a simple task. First, manufacturers must consider the best renewable energy to use in fuelling these mammoth ships. And then there is the cost. The cost of developing the alternative fuel, of switching to said fuel, and the cost of changing all the mechanics inside the ship to make it run on the new fuel. To this end, the Global Maritime Forum estimates that to meet the International Maritime Organization (IMO) 2050 emissions target by switching to ammonia fuel, it would cost over $1.15 trillion.

But the work has already begun. This June, the IMOs Marine Environment Protection Committee tightened ship efficiency requirements starting in November 2022, developing upon its 2018 strategy. The IMO has already introduced targets to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade, with the aim of a 40 percent reduction of CO2 emissions from international shipping by 2030 and a 70 percent reduction by 2050, compared to 2008, in line with Paris Agreement targets.

In terms of major individual shipping companies, in 2018, Maersk set the target of zero carbon emissions from operations by 2050. The aim is to have commercially viable carbon-neutral ships available by 2030 to achieve this goal. Sren Toft, Chief Operating Officer of Maersk explained, The only possible way to achieve the so much needed decarbonisation in our industry is by fully transforming to new carbon-neutral fuels and supply chains.

Related: Why Everyone Should Support Cutting Methane Emissions Other companies are looking to change practices in the short term to encourage greater decarbonization until a long-term solution is available. For example, the Swedish/Norwegian shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen suggested lengthening transit times, as reducing the speed of its ships could decrease CO2emissions by as much as 20 percent. But this option, unsurprisingly, is not popular among most shipping companies that run to strict timeframes.

Windward, a predictive maritime intelligence company, believes they can help reduce emissions by using artificial intelligence (AI). The company has started using AI systems to measure fuel use and waste to improve carbon management. Instead of using assumptions of fuel use, Windwards systems accurately track fuel use over time, speed, and location to provide a more detailed breakdown. They are now encouraging the greater uptake of AI systems in shipping through their Data For Decarbonisation program.

One cohesive proposal that came out of the 8th Annual World Ocean Summit Virtual Week in June is the potential for a research and development fund to be used to develop new technologies for carbon-neutral shipping. The funding would come from a $2 per tonne of fuel mandatory levy, contributing around $5 billion within a decade.

Now some are speculating that electric batteries may be used in the future of freight shipping. The U.S.-based startup Fleetzero is constructing battery-electric cargo ships, in the hopes of decarbonizing the shipping industry as well as boosting freight potential through greater access to international ports. The co-founders of the company hope to develop the technology to fully convert a small diesel ship by as early as 2022.

This trend was predicted by Elon Musk in 2017, Everything will go fully electric, apart from (ironically) rockets. Ships are the next easiest to solve after cars.. Although until recently this seemed like a pipedream.

Related: Oil Prices Slide On Fears Of Tighter Fed Policy

Fleetzero is testing the use of electric batteries in 20-foot shipping containers in Alabama, which are modified to power smaller ships so they can be swapped out with the container carrier once it enters the port. Co-founder Steven Henderson explains, Our ships use rapid battery swapping to refuel, and in doing that were able to distribute the costs of our batteries over a greater number of shipping containers to a point where we can be competitive with diesel ships.

Innovative solutions such as these are becoming increasingly necessary if major international companies hope to meet their climate targets, with Amazon, Ikea, and Unilever all pledging net-zero emissions shipping by 2040. This pledge was agreed upon by nine multinationals, but major funding is required to speed up the development of alternative fuels and technologies to be used on a wider scale

While it is clear that companies around the globe want to decarbonize freight shipping over the coming decades, the jury is out on exactly how this will be done. To achieve carbon-cutting pledges in the shipping industry in line with Paris Agreement targets, both state governments and multinational companies must establish a cohesive strategy and fund to speed up the development of new fuels and technologies to be used in shipping.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

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Nigeria and Angola, the two largest producers in the region, are unlikely to recover any time soon with a dearth of new oil discoveries

Global oil production is slowly recovering towards pre-Covid-19 levels, but in West Africa the pandemic is set to leave lasting effects. This important region for sweet crude oil production faces numerous challenges as it strives to heal from the pandemic, including underinvestment, a lack of infill drilling at mature fields, and infrastructure that is either aging or threatened, a Rystad Energy analysis showed. Sweet crude is the preferred oil grade to make jet fuel  the worst-hit segment as oil demand plunged last year. West African crude oil production dropped to 3.71 million barrels per day (bpd) last year from 4.12 million bpd in 2019, and is set to decline further to 3.39 million bpd this year. While we expect output to tick back up in 2022 and 2023 as jet fuel demand returns, production is set to fall below 3 million bpd already from 2025 unless heavyweights Nigeria and Angola can stage a strong comeback and shake off the dismal growth trends of the past decade.

West Africas oil production was not destined to follow this current grim projection before Covid-19 hit  in fact, the region was in line for more investment and activity. Last years low oil prices and the unstable market conditions that have continued into 2021 changed the outlook, however, as major operators decided to practice capital discipline and limit their investment exposure in regions including West Africa.

As a result, Rystad Energy has reduced its forecast for West African crude oil output by 600,000 bpd for 2021 and by 650,000 bpd for 2026, compared with our pre-Covid-19 projections.

The structural upstream obstacles that West Africa faces are realities that are not going away in the short term. Even if jet fuel makes a spectacular recovery and demand for light and medium sweet crude grades returns, Nigeria and Angola, as well as other neighbors in structural upstream decline, will not be in a position to supply the market, says Nishant Bhushan, upstream analyst at Rystad Energy.

Related: Oil Jumps As Markets Expect OPEC+ To Leave Output Plan Intact The regions decline in 2021 is driven by its two biggest oil producers, Nigeria and Angola, which together are estimated to have lost 440,000 bpd versus the pre-Covid-19 forecast. We also estimate that crude oil production has dropped significantly in countries such as Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea, which together produced between 250,000 bpd and 300,000 bpd in 2010. Equatorial Guinea has seen a 60% reduction in oil production and Gabon nearly 35% in the past 11 years.

Crude oil production from West African countries was expected to pick up pace in tandem with their Middle Eastern counterparts as the OPEC+ group opened its supply taps. But even as OPEC+ production caps have gradually eased, Nigeria and Angola have not been able to ramp back up to their pre-shut-in production levels.

Crude production is not the only thing thats been hit in the past couple of years. Since the start of 2020, we have also seen that the overall crude production capacity in Nigeria and Angola has taken a major blow. This is due to a number of reasons, including rapid declines at mature fields due to a lack of infill drilling, postponement of final investment decisions that were originally planned for 2020 and 2021, a lack of investment in oil and pipeline infrastructure which leads to frequent production shut-ins (prevalent in Nigeria), and civil unrest caused by militia groups.

West Africa has never had much unused capacity  most countries have produced at maximum capacity even as that capacity was gradually declining. When OPEC+ unveiled its massive 9.8 million bpd cut program in May 2020, the region had an overall oil production capacity of 4.2 million bpd. We estimate this has dropped by almost 420,000 bpd to around 3.8 million bpd by the end of 2021, and will keep shrinking to 3.5-3.6 million bpd by the end of next year.

Nigeria

Nigeria produces sweet crude grades ranging from light to heavy, but most of the volumes fall into medium to light grades. We expect the output of all sweet crude grades in Nigeria will decrease on the back of declining production from mature fields. The major drop in crude oil production is in grades like Bonga, Egina, and Qua IBoe, which are estimated to fall collectively by 180,000 bpd to 200,000 bpd by 2026 from 2021. Other crude grades, like Forcados, Bonny Light, Escravos, and Erha, are estimated to remain little changed, while some growth will be seen in crude grades like Amenam, Brass River, and Jonas Creek.

Related: When Will Americas Oil Industry Open The Taps?

The decline in Nigerias crude oil production in recent years looks more structural as the country has failed to attract new investments in its oil and gas industry, be it in exploration, greenfield developments, or brownfield expansions. In the short term, we estimate Nigerias crude oil production will rise to about 1.55 million bpd in 2022 and 1.58 million bpd in 2023, with some new marginal field developments adding 30,000-35,000 bpd in 2022 and another 35,000-40,000 bpd in 2023. At the same time, some fields currently in the ramp-up phase are estimated to add 65,000-70,000 bpd in 2022, but only 10,000-15,000 bpd in 2023. After 2023, we estimate Nigeria's output will continue to slide due to a lack of significant new discoveries, slipping to as low as 1.25 million bpd by 2026.

Angola

Like Nigeria, Angolas decline in crude oil production is also structural, and production has been plummeting since 2015  from 1.74 million bpd in 2015 to almost 1.11 million bpd in 2021. This output slump is the direct result of a lack of new investments in exploration and a failure by operators to halt the production decline at mature oil fields. New upstream projects are estimated to add 40,000-45,000 bpd this year and another 80,000-90,000 bpd in 2022, but this will not be enough to halt the downward spiral that will reduce Angolas crude oil production to between 750,000 bpd and 800,000 bpd by 2026.

Angola mostly produces sweet crude, and we expect production of all the major sweet crude grades to slide in the coming years. We see overall sweet to regular crude grade output slumping by almost 300,000 bpd from 2021 to 2026  a drop of about 30%. Major crude grades such as Nemba, Dalia, Mostarda, Gindungo, Girassol, and Kissanje are estimated to cumulatively decline by 280,000-300,000 bpd in 2026 from 2021. Some smaller crude grades like Sangos, Saturno, Cabinda, and Plutonio are estimated to remain at similar levels or inch up by 15,000-20,000 bpd combined.

By Rystad Energy

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Severe droughts and wildfires this year have pushed California to turn to natural gas in order to secure its energy supplies this winter, Reuters has reported, with the California Public Utility Commission to vote this week on expanding the gas storage facility in Los Angeles.

Droughts severely cut hydropower generation in the state, while wildfires compromised electricity imports, which are a big part of California's energy mix. The state also has plans to shut down four gas-fired plants and its nuclear plant, and last month the PUC ordered utilities to start buying renewable power and battery storage, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"While the companies are moving quickly to contract for power, the California Energy Commission and the state's grid operator have recently expressed concern that the purchases may not be enough to prevent electricity shortages in coming summers," the report said.

Per the Reuters report, also this week, regulators will vote on increasing the amount of gas stored at the biggest gas storage facility in CaliforniaAliso Canyon. The facility is problematic: six years ago, a months-long leak made headlines, and there have been suggestions that it must be shut down.

The problems with Aliso Canyon have contributed to California's tight gas supplies along with a lack of pipelines. But, according to PUC Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves, a small boost in capacity "will allow us to get through this winter while we continue our progress toward planning how to reduce or eliminate our use of Aliso Canyon by 2027 or 2035, or any time in between."

Until that happens, the planned closure of gas-fired plants could be delayed yet again. Initially, they were scheduled for retirement last year, but fears of blackouts in the evenings, when demand rises but solar power output declines, prompted a postponement. Now, one will be shut down this year and the other three in 2023.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Your problem isnt our problem was the harsh message delivered by OPEC+ on Thursday at a post-OPEC+ meeting presser.

Referring to the energy crisis soaring energy costs, Saudi Arabias Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman argued that oil is not the problem.

Indeed, the energy crisis began with a natural gas crisis that eventually spilled over into coal before snowballing into fertilizer, food, and various other crises as it spread to Asia and throughout the globe.

The Saudi Prince offered the market a solution: focus on the supply of natural gas to Europe and Asiawhere the problem originated. This would include the infrastructure that brings the supplies to market.

Some would look at the soaring crude oil and gasoline prices and argue that crude oil is in crisis mode as well. But according to Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the double-digit increases in crude oil prices are nothing compared to the triple-digit increases in the price of natural gas and coal.

Today, the OPEC+ group flatly ignored President Biden and the White Houses pleas for more crude production when it lived up to most industry expectations by sticking to its plan to add in another 400,000 bpd of crude production next month.

In retaliation, the White House said it would use whatever tools it had at its disposal to address the energy markets, and lashed out specifically at OPEC+ by saying the groups inaction implied that it seems unwilling to use its power to help global economic recovery.

This has become the mantra of the heaviest oil-consuming countries that have felt the sting of those double-digit price increases, including Japan and India.

But OPEC is still advising caution lest production get too far ahead of demand. We are not out of the woods yet Saudis Energy Minister said on Bloomberg Television last week.

The United States, Japan, and India would disagree.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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Chinas energy giant Sinopec has signed a long-term delivery contract for liquefied natural gas with U.S. Venture Global in what has become the biggest such deal in China.

Quoting state news agency Xinhua, Channel News Asia reported that the gas, which will be delivered for 20 years initially, will come from Venture Globals plant in Louisiana. Separately, a subsidiary of Sinopec will buy 3.8 tons of LNG from another Venture Global facility, in Calcasieu Pass. The annual supply size or value of the bigger deal was not disclosed.

The news report follows earlier ones from Reuters, which said in October that Sinopec had sealed three LNG delivery deals with Venture Global, two of which would see the Chinese state company receive 4 million tons of liquefied natural gas annually over the 20 years of the contract.

The deals, Reuters reported at the time, would double the total LNG imports into China from the United States. Yet the deals will not solve Chinas immediate energy problems: the Louisiana liquefaction plant in Plaquemines has yet to receive its final investment decision, and only then will construction begin. The Calcasieu Pass facility is also at the pre-construction stage.

China is absolutely key to global LNG market growth, Frank Harris, head of global LNG consulting at Wood Mackenzie, said, as quoted by the Financial Times in October. If Chinese buyers are now ready to sign long-term US deals again, its hugely significant for US LNG players in terms of supporting development of new capacity.

Asia as a whole has become an even bigger market for U.S. LNG, leaving Europe behind as Asian buyers were willing to pay more for deliveries amid the energy crunch.

Going forward, a rebalancing of the gas market could once again make U.S. gas popular with European buyers for diversification reasons, if nothing else. Yet, with Asias insatiable appetite for energy and its willingness to pay a premium for U.S. LNG because of the lack of major pipeline supplies, it is likely to remain as the ultimate market for U.S. LNG.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Dack said the states latest data show that the risk of being hospitalized for people of all ages who are not vaccinated is now about 10 times higher than for those who are vaccinated.

The adult version of the vaccine was approved for 12-to-15-year-olds in May. Elementary-age children, however, had to wait while clinical trials tested the vaccines safety and dosing in that population.

Michele Leibfarth, a registered nurse giving the shots at Kohlls, said the pharmacy administered about 50 kid doses in less than two hours Wednesday night. Children will need a second dose at least 21 days after the first.

Parents, she said, were enthusiastic, telling her, Im so excited, because now we can go places and do things.

Also lining up for his shot Thursday was Kaiden Kocourek, 8. His father, Ethan Kocourek, said his wife made the boys appointment online. This is just the next in line, he said. We got ours, and weve just been waiting for him to get his shot.

Kaiden rolled up his sleeve for his shot with no hesitation. He said he was prepared because he already had gotten a flu shot. In seconds, the shot was over and he had a bandage on his arm. He chose a Blow Pop as a prize and went with his dad to wait out his 15-minute observation period.
According to a court complaint, the woman told police that Matthews pushed her down a handicap ramp and slammed her head into a railing near West 157th Street and Broadway, close to the Washington Heights neighborhood in Manhattan. Once inside the womans apartment, Matthews slammed her face into a wall, causing substantial pain and swelling to her head, according to the complaint.

The woman then told Matthews that he couldnt use her car to drive to Philadelphia, and Matthews pushed her to the ground, put both hands around her neck and squeezed, lifted her by her neck and threw her to the bed, authorities said. That caused the woman to lose consciousness and caused pain to her neck, the complaint said.

Matthews put the womans car keys into his pocket and pushed her away when she tried to grab them, police said. He drove her car and did not return for a day.

Matthews listed public defender, April White-Small, declined to comment Wednesday. A phone number for Matthews went straight to a computerized message that said the wireless customer was unavailable.

The woman posted several photos of her injuries publicly on Facebook. She wrote that she suffered a bloody nose and bruises. Her father, who spoke to The World-Herald, said she suffered a concussion and spent several hours in the hospital.
LINCOLN  A Nebraska Attorney Generals Office investigation of clergy sexual abuse documented 258 victims across the states three Roman Catholic dioceses, along with a familiar-sounding pattern of behavior by church officials that often protected the predators.

Attorney General Doug Peterson, at times holding back tears as he spoke of the damage done to young victims, released a report on the investigation at a Thursday press conference. He said many of the cases found during the three-year-long probe were gut-wrenching. Few had been prosecuted.

Peterson said the vast majority of cases happened before the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. The Dallas Charter required all dioceses to take steps to protect children from sexual abuse.

The report found that more than half of the victims were abused in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Peterson said the Dallas Charter appears to have made a difference. He said it appears that church officials currently report allegations of abuse to law enforcement. He commended the Catholic Church for the steps it has taken.

But at the podium and in the written report, he and his investigators strongly criticized Nebraska bishops and other church leaders behavior in the past.
Some Democrats said the GOP proposal would create a wide-open portal for people to fraudulently claim an exemption to the vaccination mandate without truly having a valid reason.

You know and I know, everybody, even atheists, is going to come up and say its because of their religious beliefs, Democratic Rep. Pebblin Warren of Tuskegee said.

Under the legislation, employees would check a box in a new form for the reason they couldnt get vaccinated  such as a religious reason, certain qualifying medical conditions, or a health providers signed recommendation that the person shouldn't be vaccinated. There would be no requirement to provide proof of the reason. An employee denied an exemption could appeal to the state Department of Labor.

The proposal is a carve-out from existing law which allows companies to fire workers at will. The bill specifies that it wouldnt alter the ability of an employer to terminate an employee for reasons other than the employees COVID-19 vaccination status.

The new process and job protections would automatically end on May 1, 2023, unless extended by lawmakers.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A judge appointed Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt as a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against a state lawmaker accused of having sex with a drunk woman while on duty as a cop years ago, Schmitt's office confirmed Thursday.

An office spokesman said Schmitt, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, is reviewing whether to press charges against GOP state Rep. Chad Perkins, of Bowling Green.

The Missouri Highway Patrol launched an investigation after the allegations became public in May, and a patrol spokesman in October said the agency turned over a report on the claims to Pike County Prosecuting Attorney Alex Ellison.

Ellison said he asked a special prosecutor to take over the case because he knows Perkins personally. Pike County Circuit Judge Patrick Flynn last month ordered Schmitt's office to take on that role.

Weve been made aware of the Courts order and are reviewing the matter," Schmitt spokesman Chris Nuelle said in a statement.

Perkins worked in law enforcement in northeast Missouri before he won election to the state House in 2020.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. (AP)  Skeletal remains found in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park are believed to be those of a 27-year-old man from West Germany who disappeared during a multi-day mountaineering trip nearly 40 years ago, park officials said Thursday.

Rudi Moder, an experienced winter mountaineer who was living in Fort Collins, started his excursion over Thunder Pass and into the park Feb. 13, 1983. His roommate reported him overdue Feb. 19, 1983.

Searchers started looking for Moder the following day, but more than a foot (30 centimeters) of fresh snow prevented them from immediately finding tracks or other clues. The only major clues found during the four-day search were a food cache belonging to Moder that was discovered at the mouth of a canyon in the northwest corner of the park and a nearby snow cave with Moder's sleeping bag and other gear and items inside.

The search included teams on skis and snowshoes, a dog trained to find people in avalanche debris and a helicopter. Additional searches were conducted that spring and into the summer.
Setting aside the question of whether it is possible to keep Afghanistan from becoming a failed state while still enforcing sanctions against the Taliban, there is still the question of whether that is even the right policy goal for the United States.

The dilemma is  what is it that you can actually get out of a sanctions-isolation-distancing policy in terms of achieving U.S. national security interests? Miller, who is now the Asia program director at the International Crisis Group, which works to prevent wars, said in an interview. Like, what are you going to even plausibly get out of that? And what of what you can plausibly get out of that is worth the cost of what the UN has warned is a million children dying next year and the risk of universal poverty in Afghanistan?

As Miller sees it, the United States has competing interests in Afghanistan and must choose between them. It is clearly in U.S. national security interests to keep Afghanistan from becoming a failed state that international terrorist groups could use as a training ground and safe haven. There is also the risk of an internationally isolated and impoverished Taliban becoming reliant on heroin sales for income, turning the country into a narco-state.

Washington must decide if these possibilities are more unpalatable than having to engage with the Taliban, she says.
The government moved quickly to try to tamp down fears with assurances of sufficient supplies. A bright yellow sign in an aisle of a Beijing supermarket asked customers to buy reasonably and not to listen to rumors or stockpile goods.

The online speculation started with a Commerce Ministry notice posted Monday evening about a plan to ensure the supply and stable price of vegetables and other necessities for the winter and spring. A line in it encouraged families to store some necessities for daily life and emergencies.

That was enough to set off some hoarding and a discussion on social media that the ministry could be signaling people should stock up for war.

China's state media has covered the rising tensions with Taiwan heavily, including the often-tough words exchanged between China on one side and the U.S. and Taiwan on the other.

It is natural to have aroused some imagination, social commentator Shi Shusi said. We should believe the governments explanations, but the underlying anxiety deserves our thought.

He said the populist views cheerleading for war don't represent majority opinion but do send a signal or warning to Taiwan.
The STEM Community Platform, at STEMplatform.org, allows organizations and businesses to conveniently share internships that students, professionals and educators can utilize. Students can find and apply for internships in a desired career field and take part in real-life career experiences that promote successful development and critical thinking in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. These opportunities will help ensure a talented, thriving and equitable workforce for generations to come.

In our fifth year, OSE seeks to build a strong infrastructure and capacity to advocate for programs and innovative models in our community. As we expand evidence-driven research, assessments and outcomes, we strive to grow a talented tech pipeline through community development, recruitment and retention.

The STEM Community Platform will continue to grow into the future thanks to our ongoing connections and partnerships throughout Nebraska. We are currently working alongside the Nebraska Tech Collaborative, Beyond School Bells, Prairie STEM and Million Girls Moonshot to increase STEM program offerings throughout the state.

The STEM Community Platform also has the support from founding and supporting community partners, which include Cox, Facebook, AIM Institute, Clarkson College, Metropolitan Community College, CyncHealth, First National Bank of Omaha, Iowa West Foundation, Nebraska Department of Education, Nonprofit Association of the Midlands, Omahas Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium and University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Julie Sigmon is executive director of the Omaha STEM Ecosystem.
She notes that fewer than 46% of Nebraskas fourth-grade students are proficient in math, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and proficiency drops to less than 38% by eighth grade. Findings are similar regarding science.

Its important, too, to promote public awareness of current successes. A visit to Omaha this week by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Ronnie Green highlighted one such success: the Nebraska College Preparatory Academies, helping students at Omaha North High since 2008 and at Omaha South since 2017. The program currently involves 84 students at Omaha North and 105 at Omaha South.

The initiative selects academically talented eighth-graders from income-eligible backgrounds whose families have no direct experience with college. The students receive counseling to prepare them for college. Qualified students receive financial support, enabled through philanthropic support, covering their direct costs of attending UNL. Counseling supports the students during their time in college.

The success rate has been impressive: a six-year graduation rate of about 75%, which is 10 points above the overall UNL figure. That is a notable improvement over the national figure, as only 11% of first-generation, low-income students graduate from college.
Tales from 311 Parnassus Street, San Francisco

Told by Harold A. Lane, Jr., Santa Rosa, California, 2001.

The picture you see is of the house my great-grandparents bought and raised my grandmother in, as well as the house in which my father was raised. I've never been inside the house, but through the writings of my Dad, I can just picture what the house looked like. Below are two short stories, written by my Dad, about his grandparents, Jim and Annie Connell. ---Julie Lane, Paso Robles, California, 2008

The Ballad of Annie and the Pink Cocktail

My maternal grandmother, Annie Lynch Connell, might have been a tiny baby because she never scaled more than the 77 pounds she carried at her age 77 when she died. But she was the master, pardon, mistress of all she surveyed. Her word was law to the family of seven who sat around her dinner table. Annie loved to debate politics. She would inject her ankle-length-skirted self into her arguments with great vigor, often with a stemmed cocktail glass in hand---pointed at the enemy of the moment. That stemmed glass was often at a 30 degree angle or more but Annie was famous for not spilling a drop of the pink mixture it contained. The cocktail was a five o'clock ritual at Annie's house. Her pink creation may not have been the fore-runner of the Pink Lady, but it was very popular with visitors.

One day in Golden Gate Park Annie evidently won one of her debates that most of us would have lost. It was with a police officer who found Annie picking flowers there. Evidence of her victory was in the fact she brought the flowers home. He was an Irish cop.

A soft side of her was disclosed by her inviting a man from the Assessor's Office into her home when he rang her doorbell. He had said he was from Ireland. Later Annie and her spouse got a whopping personal property tax bill from the City. The Irish tax man had mentally inventoried most items in her house.

Annie came from a family of sixteen in County Caven, which at the time of her birth in 1848 was part of Northern Ireland. So, Annie's family were persecuted Catholics, or believed they were. She would tell you they were, again and again, with stark denunciation of the perpetrators she had been too young to know. She was the last of fourteen girls. When she was five years old she and four sisters were sent to the United States. It may have been all her parents could afford at $10 per passage. Note the year! 1853 was one of many that suffered from the potato famine in Ireland. There is little information from my forebearers on the nine daughters who stayed in Ireland. They never came to America like their five sisters---forty years before the establishment of Ellis Island.

I guess it was the beginning of a happy ending for the emigrant Lynch girls. They grew up with relatives in Dixon, Illinois. They all married and settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco, respectively. Annie didn't marry until she was thirty-five when her cousin brought co-worker Jim Connell home for Christmas from Denver. Jim and Annie married in Denver and honeymooned in San Francisco, where Annie fell in love with her "blessed fog" and refused to leave. The couple had four daughters, none of whom was very much like Annie. My mother was the youngest and her mother's favorite whom she called "Tots" and who inherited the recipe for the pink cocktail, the habit of the cocktail hour and a bit of Annie's antipathy for people who were not of her race or religion.

As for the pink cocktail, I can remember, young as I was, Annie's frequent fiat. "Let's have a little taste, Tots."

And long after Annie was gone I remember her youngest daughter proclaiming, "It's gotta be five o'clock somewhere" as she produced the bottle with the pink elixir.

Esteemed Elder

Grandpa Jim was a big man, often mistaken for a cop. Opposites attract, and maybe that's why he and his wife, tiny Annie, got together in 1883. They differed not only in size. Where Annie was animated, Jim was quiet and reserved. They had one thing in common. They both had a brush with the law, and Jim's appears below.

After Annie died, Jim had a daily routine until he passed away five years later. At that time he was eighty-three years old and I was twelve. When he got up in the morning my mother would serve him breakfast, then give him a quarter which he would use to go downtown. Round trip on the street car took ten cents, and fifteen cents was for the silent movies. Jim was quite hard of hearing. The movie houses often had three films, and he would stay all day, seeing them second time around.

One day Jim left the movie house in the late afternoon. It was getting dark, and he sat leaning against a fire hydrant on Market Street waiting for the streetcar. He fell asleep. When a Police Patrol Wagon came by, the officers saw him and presumed him to be a drunk. They put him in the paddy wagon and proceeded up Market Street on the way to Park Station. On that route they turned off to go up Haight Street hill. By that time Jim had convinced them that he was merely a sleeping giant, not a sleeping drunk. The paddy wagon was abreast of a Number 6 street car, which was Jim's normal car home and which he had evidently missed while asleep. With the cops' permission, Jim stepped on the patrol wagon step, grabbed the bar on the car-track side, and swung onto the streetcar platform.

The startled conductor slapped Jim on the back. "Gee! Ya did that slick! Dumb cops! Ya better get inside and duck."

I was proud to be part of Jim Connell's daily routine for a long time. When he arrived home each day he would remove his coat, hang it in the hall closet and then sit in his big armchair in the dining room where he would read the daily paper. I would bring his slippers, remove his high, laced shoes, and replace them with his slippers. His Granger Rough Cut smoking tobacco was on a side-board, and I would go to it, fill his pipe and bring it to him with matches. There was no conversation. I left him in peace with pipe and paper until he needed a tobacco refill. All this was a great privilege to me, because I adored the man.

I can remember Grandpa speaking only four words, which he uttered every night at the dinner table. "Pass the Worcestershire Sauce." I watched him pour it over each food item on his plate every evening.

Grandpa. Big. Silent. Pipe. Granger Rough Cut. Slippers. Newspaper. Worcestershire Sauce. Loved him.

Contribute your own stories about western neighborhoods places!
The Frozen Sea: 1536 La Playa's Hidden Past

by Woody LaBounty

The apartment building at 1536 La Playa is ugly, or, to be charitable, plain. Its flat facade of beige stucco is a massive dull square on the ocean-fronting streetscape, with nothing to offer in looks beyond rows of sliding aluminum-sash windows.

Pick your cliche: appearances can be deceiving, you can't judge a book by its cover, true beauty lies withinany and all apply to 1536 La Playa.

A few years ago, Frances Kniffen Larkin told me the building was once a fancy restaurant known as Mendel's. As a child in the 1930s she peeked in the front door and saw fine tables and chandeliers. Frances wondered why she hadn't heard anyone talk of Mendel's in regards to the history of Ocean Beach.

Then a resident of 1536 La Playa (the city-designated address, although the building appears to be on Great Highway) emailed me in the summer of 2010. She said there was a grand ballroom, decorated with wall moldings of shells and seahorses, hidden away between floors. My friend David Gallagher and I went to take a look, our cameras in hand. Like its exterior, the building's common halls are beyond nondescript with white walls and industrial stain-resistant carpets. Through a small hatch in one ceiling we could see some 1940s-era wallpaper and a couple of old light fixtures in a crawlspaceodd, but hardly magical. Our tipster didn't have the key for a similar ceiling hatch on the floor below. We made vague plans about coming back to investigate, but never followed up.

Then, in early November 2012, an amazing old photograph was posted for auction on eBay. Some 75 motorcyclists lined up in front of a dramatic backdrop: a handsome building with a second-floor open balcony, mullioned windows, and inset bookend towers topped by tall flagpoles. I guessed the photograph, mounted on a large card, was taken in the early 1910s.

Although this handsome structure looked nothing like the current version of 1536 La Playa, I recognized it instantly. I knew through some previous research that the Mendel's that Frances Larkin remembered had previously been operated as the Crest, and before that as the Breakers roadhouse. Here in the photograph the name Breakers and the address were clearly visible. And if that wasn't enough, the one-story carriage house on the right side of the image was still easily recognizable as the apartment building at 1540 La Playa. A nested-gabled house in the left background also still stands today on 48th Avenue.

Too beautiful and fascinating a photograph to pass up, my friend Glenn Koch and I pooled our funds to fight off determined motorcycle memorabilia fans and win the prize. Perhaps it was time to take another look inside the walls of the big ugly building at the beach.

Our former tenant tipster had moved out of state, but she put me in contact with the building manager, Clayton White, and on Saturday, January 12, 2013, David and I once again showed up with flashlights and cameras. Clayton met us carrying his own camera and flashlight, a ladder, and, most importantly, the key for the hatch door. My hope was perhaps we'd at least find some older wallpaper to photograph.

Clayton set up the ladder, unlocked and opened the hatch, flipped a light switch installed beside it, and climbed into the small square. His feet dangled a few inches from the top of the ladder before disappearing. I went next, carefully navigating my balance on the ladder while holding my gear and narrowing my shoulders to squeeze through.

When I lifted my head from my effort getting in, I turned to the right and found a large fish goggling at me, a chain hanging out of its open mouth. Already I knew we had something better than old wallpaper.

The fish, created out of molded plaster and wire, had brothers that encircled what appeared to be a chandelier collar about three feet in diameter. Each fish extended out from the fixture, each had a lamp chain dangling from its lips, and a few still had old electrical cord and bulb sockets attached to their chains. On the form between the larger fishI had decided they were carpwere ridges and undulations mimicking water and elaborated with smaller fish, seahorses, and vegetation.

We had a reasonably generous space to stand and walk hunched over. As David climbed in, I looked around to see cornice reliefs on the far wall, the tops of elaborate capitals poking between joists, and more chandelier collars matching the one beside the hatch. A beam extending the length of the building featured its own marine scenes. Amid more waves a turtle had his maw open, ready to catch some alarmed guppies. Starfish, coral, anemone, and crabs lined up beneath a course of sea horses and shells. Large rosettes punctuating the underside of the beam and ringing the capitals had their own light sockets.

Clayton explained that the building had experienced a number of fires over the years and the fire department had required retardant be sprayed through the crawlspace, making almost every molding and relief we saw a glossy gray. As we carefully made our way toward the back of the building, ducking beneath pipes, tiptoeing along narrow joists, stepping over boxes of rat poison, we noticed a couple of spots where the retardant missed. Along the south wall, where more large carp lined up disgorging their lamp chains, we could see the way these magnificent creatures were intended to be viewed. Instead of the industrial gray, here was a shocking gold and patches of iridescent bluish green with gilding.

We took what photos we could, our inadequate flashlights trying to illuminate what the flash on David's camera couldn't reach. Pieces of scenes had cracked and fallen off the wall. Some of the lamp fish looked as if a barracuda had taken a few bites out of them. The underwater world of plaster-and-wire marine life around us was a fragile one, surviving only due to the indifferent neglect of being barricaded away between floors, opened just occasionally over the decades to fix a pipe or run a new cable wire. Only a chance choice of renovation had preserved this magical space.

From 1904 to about 1940, the roadhouse known as the Breakers, the Crest, and, finally, Mendel's entertained guests who ate, drank, and danced underneath a fantastic fabric of garish, glimmering sea life. In the carriage house next door to the south, customers stabled their horses and parked their bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles. The upper floors provided rooms for card games, beds to sleep one off, and according to some tales passed down, cribs for working girls to entertain.

More research remains, but World War II seems to have put an end to 1536 La Playa's roadhouse days. Some people have told me that the military took over the building for office space during the war, and likely did most of the work carving out what would become apartments. The family that currently owns the building bought it in the early 1960s, along with the two structures to the south and at least another apartment house facing 48th Avenue. The stucco facade was applied in the early 1970s as part of a shallow front extension.

Generations of surfers, artists, and others drawn to the ocean's side have passed through the big building, unaware that while they looked out their windows to watch the waves roll in, beneath their floorboards a beautiful, if wholly imaginary, frozen sea lived on.

Our great thanks to the building owners and Clayton White for allowing us to document the reliefs. Thanks also to Cassandra Clark, Wanda Mazur, and Frances Larkin.

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Members of the United Auto Workers union rejected a deal with Deere & Co., extending a nearly three-week-long strike and illustrating the growing willingness of U.S. workers to hold out for better terms.

The second rejected deal offered substantial improvements over one that workers turned down before going on strike, and included larger wage increases, no new tiers to retirement benefits and a signing bonus of $8,500. Shares of Moline, Illinois-based Deere were down 4.6% in midday trading in New York on Tuesday.

By a vote of 45% yes to 55% no, UAW John Deere members voted down the agreement this evening, the union said in a statement late Tuesday. The strike against John Deere and company will continue as we discuss next steps with the company.

The rejection of the agreement demonstrates workers increased leverage amid a national labor shortage and strong demand for farm equipment. The wage increase offered at 14 Deere facilities was larger than nearly a dozen other collective bargaining agreements the UAW has negotiated since 2018, according to Bloomberg Laws database of labor contracts.

Thirty five years ago, workers at Deere lost a lockout and took a deal that froze and reduced wages, said University of Chicago historian Gabriel Winant. Today they rejected an offer that starts with a 10% raise. Its the biggest downward shift in the economic balance of power in my lifetime.

Some 10,000 Deere employees went on strike on Oct. 14 for the first time since 1986, having rejected a prior deal that called for a 5% to 6% wage increase for the first year. Thats about 14% of its global workforce as of November 2020. Deere has kept its factories running through the strike, using salaried employees. The company said the focus has been operating parts depots and its parts distribution center to ensure farmers can complete their harvest season.

Production and maintenance employees at 12 plants rejected the agreement, while workers at parts facilities in Denver and Atlanta approved a separate identical agreement, the company said in a statement.

Through the agreements reached with the UAW, John Deere would have invested an additional $3.5 billion in our employees, Deere said. With the rejection of the agreement covering our Midwest facilities, we will execute the next phase of our Customer Service Continuation Plan.

The number of U.S. workers on strike could grow substantially in the coming weeks if some of the tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers whove authorized work stoppages walk off the job, or if Hollywood workers follow their Deere counterparts lead in rejecting a tentative deal negotiated by union leaders.

The consensus of analysts estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows the company will report $10.6 billion in net sales from equipment operations when it reports fiscal fourth-quarter earnings Nov. 24.

The willingness of the union to hold out for a still-better deal is another sign that U.S. workers feel emboldened in pushing for better compensation as the economy emerges from the pandemic. The timing of the strike put further pressure on Deere, coming as supply chain snags for semiconductors and other parts are already causing turmoil at a time of peak demand for tractors during the U.S. harvest.

The six-year contract that was rejected also included wage hikes of 5% in the third and fifth years, as well as lump-sum bonuses amounting to 3% of workers pay for the other three of the six-year contract. It also offered a $35,000 retirement bonus for workers with 10 to 24 years on the job and a $50,000 bonus for workers with at least 25 years.

Events surrounding the negotiation have been intense at times. Senator Bernie Sanders, a vocal proponent of labor unions, tweeted shortly after the strike started that workers who spent years with the company are now being forced off their insurance.

The company later issued a statement that it will continue providing health care for all striking union-represented production and maintenance employees.

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SPRINGFIELD  Prospective students applying to any of Illinois' 12 public universities can now use the Common Application. That includes students considering Illinois State University in Normal and Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

Both schools are also maintaining their own internal application systems. However, the Common App allows students to apply to multiple schools with a single application, although some schools may require supplemental materials as well.

The only Illinois public university still not in the system is Northeastern Illinois University, which plans to join later this fall, according to a Thursday press release from Gov. J.B. Pritzker's office.

The Common App allows students to request fee waivers from their application portal. Free assistance is available through the Illinois Student Assistance Commission through the ISACorps.

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

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LEROY  The energy company behind McLean Countys planned wind farm has awarded grants in the communities that will be closest to the coming turbines.

Apex Clean Energy, the Virginia company thats planned the 300-megawatt project between Heyworth and LeRoy, announced a third round of grant funding this week as part of the Diamond Grove Wind Community Grant Program, which is named for the project.

These funds will support programs that serve the community through economic development, environmental sustainability, education, and health and recreation, according to a statement from Apex.

The Heyworth school district will receive $5,000 to put toward staffing the districts newest gym.

We want to improve the quality of life in our community by encouraging the usage of our modern and well-functioning workout facility, said April Hicklin, principal at Heyworth Jr./Sr. High School. This grant will allow us to properly staff our gym and provide work opportunities for our students. We believe providing work-based opportunities for our students will better prepare them for college and career readiness.

The City of LeRoy is the second grantee in this round of Diamond Grove awards. The city will receive $5,000 for repairs and improvements for the playground equipment and lighting structures at Brickyard Fields and Bowman Park.

These contributions will be well used and appreciated by the residents of LeRoy, as well as other visitors to our parks and playgrounds, Mayor Steve Dean said. These projects will benefit many of our residents, by providing better accessibility for Brickyard and safe play equipment for children at Bowman.

Diamond Grove has awarded $5,000 grants to McLean County organizations through this program on a quarterly basis.

The first grant was awarded in April to United Way of McLean County; the second grant went to the Heartland Community College Foundation in August.

Apex aims to begin production on Diamond Grove by 2024 with 75 turbines planned.

Contact Kelsey Watznauer at (309) 820-3254. Follow her on Twitter: @kwatznauer.

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BLOOMINGTON  For Beer Nuts, it all started in a confection shop's basement on North Main Street. There, peanuts with skins in tact were coated with salty-sugary glaze and sold by the scoop.

Here are nine facts about our own Bloomington-made snack star.

1937

Arlo Shirk and his father Edward Shirk buy the Caramel Crisp Shop, a peanut and popcorn store at 413 N. Main St. in downtown Bloomington. One of the popular products created by previous owners Herbert and Edith McCollum were sugar-coated Virginia and Southeastern Jumbo Runner peanuts.

20

Age of Edward's son, Russell Shirk, when he returned to Bloomington in 1940 after the death of Arlo to run the store and eventually oversee the expansion of the operation.

1950

Year the first Shirks Glazed Peanuts" were packaged for a local liquor store. The "Beer Nuts" name was adopted three years later.

7,000

Square footage of 505 N. Prairie St. building that housed operations starting in 1954, a year after the confectionary store was closed so attention could be focused on Beer Nuts. Shirk Products Inc. was incorporated in 1955. With the help of Eldridge C. Brewster, who sold Blue Star Potato Chips, the snack would be available in all 50 states by 1960.

4 million

Amount of Virginia peanuts sold in 1963, according to a Pantagraph article, which described the company as a "$2 million a year business." It employed 50.

1973

After expansions of the North Prairie Street plant in 1957, 1961 and 1962, the company moved to a factory at 103 Robinson St.

15 million

Sales, in pounds, in 1985.

5 million

Gift from Russell Shirk's family foundation for the Shirk Center at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he graduated from in 1943. The longtime company leader died in November 1999.

100,000

Square footage of current plant, which started as a dairy building. The business remains a family operation and Bloomington-made Beer Nuts are available far and wide.

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Anahi Morales looked away for a moment as the needle pierced her skin.

A second later, it was over, and the 11-year-old Little Village girl turned her attention to her younger brother, who stood by wide-eyed, awaiting his turn to also get the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday morning at an Esperanza Health Centers vaccination clinic in West Englewood.

She and her 9-year-old brother were the last of the seven children in the family to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

I can spend more time with my family  my grandparents can be safe, said Morales, who is in sixth grade. I havent gotten to spend a lot of time with my friends outside of school, but now that me and my friends are vaccinated, we can probably go out more together.

Morales and her brother were among the first children in Chicago to get vaccinated Wednesday morning, less than a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. The approval represented a major milestone in the countrys fight against COVID-19, with hopes high that vaccinating children will slow the spread of the illness and allow kids to return to rites of childhood that many once took for granted: indoor playdates and birthday parties, sleepovers, eating at restaurants, trips.

Anahi and her brother got their shots Wednesday morning as parents across the Chicago area called their pediatricians and went online seeking appointments. The timing of when providers are giving shots, in many cases, depends on when they receive them and can schedule appointments. Some, such as Esperanza, began vaccinating children Wednesday after receiving a shipment of the kids vaccines Tuesday. Others, including Advocate Aurora Health, Lurie Childrens Hospital, University of Chicago Medicine Comer Childrens Hospital, Walgreens and CVS Health, on Wednesday were allowing parents to make appointments for shots in the coming days. Many school districts are also working on scheduling after-school vaccination clinics for students, with some expected to take place next week.

Chicago Public Schools plans to begin administering shots to kids ages 5 to 11, at its regional vaccination clinics and its mobile school-based events, on Nov. 10. The Chicago Department of Public Health will host family vaccination clinics at City Colleges of Chicago starting Nov. 13.

The vaccine is being shipped in different vials and packaging than the Pfizer vaccine thats been given to adults and kids ages 12 and older. The vaccine for younger kids is one-third the dose of the one adults have been receiving. Like adults, kids will get two doses, three weeks apart.

In clinical trials, the vaccine was found to be nearly 91% effective in preventing COVID-19 among children 5 to 11 years old, according to the CDC. Side effects have been mild and similar to the ones experienced by adults, with the most common one being a sore arm.

Though some of the younger kids shed a few tears Wednesday at Esperanza as they prepared to get the vaccine, their parents said they were doing what was best for their children  a moment of discomfort for months of protection against whats still in many ways a mysterious disease. Many of the areas served by Esperanza were especially hard-hit by COVID-19.

Estela Diaz, of Chicago Lawn, said she understands that, despite the results of clinical trials, some parents remain afraid to get their kids vaccinated.

Im scared too, but I prefer they suffer two days with the pain in their arms, than I see them in a hospital bed, Diaz said, shortly after two of her daughters got vaccinated Wednesday morning at Esperanza. Diazs own mother ended up in the hospital because of COVID-19, she said, and has since recovered.

Diazs daughter Maia Lazcano, 11, said shes most looking forward to not having to stay home from school when kids in her class test positive for COVID-19. Her mother said that Maia has already had to spend a month at home doing virtual learning this school year because of cases at her school  a situation thats rough on Maia and her mother, who normally has to go to work.

More than 1.2 million children have already been affected by school closures this school year related to COVID-19, according to the CDC.

Sometimes I get very (behind) in school and miss a lot of assignments, Maia said. Shes looking forward to, eventually, no longer having to quarantine when cases arise at her school, and to spending more time with her friends.

Kate Johns, 9, of Roscoe Village, is also looking forward to seeing her friends more and traveling.

I havent seen my best friend for a while because of COVID, Kate said. Ill be able to see him.

Kate was the first child to get vaccinated at the Esperanza clinic Wednesday morning.

Before getting the shot, Kate asked to see the needle, and the medical assistant obliged.

With the song Baby Shark playing in the background, Kate closed her eyes for a brief moment as she got the injection.

A second later, it was over, and she opened her eyes. Having remained calm throughout, Kate proudly affixed a sticker to her chest reading I got the shot for COVID-19. The sticker featured a syringe resembling a rocket ship next to a picture of the spiky-looking virus exploding.

Kate said she was excited to show it off to everybody when she returned to school later that morning.

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SPRINGFIELD  A former Democratic leader in the Illinois House of Representatives pleaded guilty Wednesday in a bribery scheme that cost him his political career and could send him to prison for 20 years.

Luis Arroyo entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Chicago to one count of depriving the public of his honest services through a scam that involved popular but technically illegal sweepstakes games and entwined a state senator and the son-in-law of a once-powerful Cook County politician.

The so-called blind plea, offered without knowing of the sentence he will receive, could land the 67-year-old Chicago Democrat in prison for 20 years and cost him a $250,000 fine. Sentencing was set for Feb. 18.

Arroyo was charged with bribery in October 2019 after federal prosecutors announced he had paid a $2,500 bribe to an unnamed state senator who was wearing a recording device. He resigned the next month from the House seat he had held for nearly 13 years while rising to a leadership position.

A follow-up indictment filed last year added wire and mail fraud charges against Arroyo and lodged similar charges against James T. Weiss, the son-in-law of former Cook County Democratic leader Joseph Berrios.

Weiss allegedly began paying Arroyo bribes in November 2018 in exchange for the lawmakers' support of legislation favorable to sweepstakes machines, a specialty of Weiss' company. Not technically gambling instruments, they proliferate even though state regulators have declared them illegal.

Needing an ally in the Senate, Arroyo approached a then-veteran member of that chamber who was cooperating with the FBI for leniency in a false tax return investigation. The senator recorded a meeting with Arroyo in which the two agreed to $2,500-per-month in kickbacks for the senator's complicity.

Citing anonymous sources, the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune identified the senator as Democrat Terry Link of Vernon Hills, who repeatedly denied the label. But Link pleaded guilty in September 2020 to filing a false tax return before resigning his post. The FBI announced Link had been cooperating with the government criminal investigation and prosecutors indicated they would seek probation if his help continued in good faith.

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PEKIN  A former Pekin Fire Department captain faces one count of criminal sexual assault.

Jamie A. Evans, 52, is accused of sexually assaulting a tenant Aug. 4 in a building he owned, according to court records.

He remained in the Tazewell County Jail after being booked there Tuesday morning on a warrant with $150,000 bond, according to jail officials. He's scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, according to the Tazewell County State's Attorney's Office.

The charges allege that Evans was renting space he owned to a woman. An acquaintance of the woman told Pekin police he would threaten to shut off the woman's utilities if she didn't have sex with him, according to a probable cause statement filed Tuesday in Tazewell County Circuit Court.

The woman said he wouldn't let her pay rent even though she was able to do so. There was no dating relationship, she told an Illinois State Police investigator. The two had sex despite the fact that she didn't want to, the complaint said. But he would threaten her "in assorted ways," the complaint alleged.

Evans' phone was seized by state police and it showed a 48-second video of the woman being sexually assaulted while she was either sleeping or unconscious, the complaint said.

On Sept. 22, the woman was shown the video and told the investigator that she didn't remember the encounter. She said she might have taken prescribed Xanax that night, "causing her to sleep deeply."

Evans spent more than 25 years with the fire department before he retired Sept. 2, after he was placed on paid administrative leave. At the time, it wasn't clear why Evans had left the department.

If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

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Heather Macks attorney says the new federal charges accusing her of conspiring to kill her mother at a Bali resort in 2014 are a clear-cut case of double jeopardy.

But legal experts say not so fast.

Mack, who was convicted of the murder in Indonesia and spent seven years behind bars before her release last week, should be protected under U.S. law from prosecutors trying to take a second bite of the apple, attorney Brian Claypool told the Tribune on Wednesday.

From a legal perspective there is clearly a federal statute that says you cannot prosecute someone for a crime of theyve already been convicted of it in another country under the same set of facts, Claypool said shortly before Macks arraignment in U.S. District Court. This is a clear case of sour grapes. And we are going to fight it.

Attorneys who spoke to the Tribune Wednesday, however, said the double-jeopardy issue is not likely to impede the federal case from moving forward.

The bar against double jeopardy is in the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and provides protection against someone being prosecuted twice for the same offense.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has ruled that a state crime and a federal crime, both punishing the same act, are different, said Sergio Acosta, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Chicago.

Acosta said U.S. Department of Justice policy also requires prosecutors to formally assess whether a successive prosecution for the same act or series of acts should move forward.

That policy precludes initiation and continuation of a federal prosecution on substantially the same act unless several prerequisites are satisfied, including that the matter is of substantial federal interest and that the prior prosecution left that interest demonstrably unvindicated.

The key factor in most of these cases is, in my judgment, (is) whether the prior prosecution left a substantial federal interest unvindicated, Acosta said. Successive prosecution is a sensitive issue for the DOJ, which is why a successive prosecution must be approved at the highest levels.

Acosta added that while the policy doesnt address foreign prosecutions, the same underlying considerations and required approvals would likely apply in Macks case.

Other Chicago attorneys agreed that double jeopardy appears to be a difficult challenge for Macks legal team, based on the charges.

There is probably no finding in the other case of any factual or legal issue that is now at issue in the federal charges, said longtime criminal defense attorney Michael Leonard. While a double-jeopardy issue should be at least considered, Leonard said a more viable defense could be to challenge jurisdiction.

They committed a crime on foreign soil, Leonard said. What is the connection to the United States? I think that is a much stronger argument.

While much of the conduct laid out in the five-page indictment allegedly occurred overseas, one count does allege that Schafer was still in Chicago conspiring with Mack before he met them in Bali a day before the slaying.

Claypool said he will argue the U.S. government had an opportunity to try to extradite Mack from Indonesia and try her here for the murder, but they chose to let the process play out overseas instead.

They elected to defer to Indonesian authorities. They respected the Indonesian government enough to have her tried there, and not only that, they went further and actually worked behind the scenes to lend expertise and help obtain a conviction of Heather, Claypool said.

Records in the cases show it is true that the FBI, which has an office in the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, was involved in the murder investigation from the onset.

Besides ensuring that the victims remains were flown back to the United States, federal agents assisted Bali police with technical support related to texts and emails on phones and computers that belonged to the victim and defendants.

But the investigation was also on a different track than than in Bali, and for different offenses.

According to a search warrant and affidavit filed in October 2014, authorities were considering possible charges related to the foreign murder of a United States national, though none were filed at the time.

The U.S. investigation remained active even after Mack and Schaefer were convicted and sentenced in Bali. In 2015, the Tribune reported that federal authorities flew Indonesian law enforcement officials to Chicago at least twice to answer questions as part of the ongoing investigation.

And as recently as 2017, the U.S. attorneys office in Chicago filed a search warrant seeking to search Macks iPhone, which was confiscated after her arrest in Bali but remained locked because she refused to give investigators her password, court records show.

The phone had remained in the custody of Indonesian authorities until December 2016, when it was turned over to the FBI in Jakarta and later brought to Chicago.

The warrant for the phone stated the FBI was actively investigating whether additional people were involved in the murder conspiracy.

Mack and Schaefer were indicted four months later, but the charges remained under seal until her return to the U.S. on Wednesday.

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Three candidates are being considered to replace the states top legislative watchdog amid complaints from Republicans that delays caused by Democrats could leave the post vacant before a new inspector general takes office.

The General Assembly adjourned for the year last month without naming a replacement for Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope, whose resignation is effect. Dec. 15. In announcing her decision to quit this summer, Pope blasted what many considered a water-down ethics package passed earlier this year, saying lawmakers had demonstrated true ethics reform is not a priority.

The Democratic-controlled legislatures failure to act on a replacement while in session was criticized by the chair of the Legislative Ethics Commission, Quincy Republican state Sen. Jil Tracy, who said legislators had ample opportunity to make a selection

Now, we are in a situation where in just six weeks, we could have complaints coming into the commission and not have a legislative inspector general in place to address them, Tracy said. Allowing this position to go unfilled is a major disservice to the people of Illinois who deserve an accountable and transparent government.

The three candidates for the post are being interviewed and vetted by the eight-member Legislative Ethics Commission, which met Oct. 28, the final day of the legislatures fall session. Democratic members left the meeting before a candidate was chosen, Tracy said in a statement last week.

State Rep. Kelly Burke, an Evergreen Park Democrat who sits on the ethics commission and sponsored the ethics proposal that prompted Popes resignation, said this week that theres little risk of the office being left vacant.

Its our intention that it gets filled in a timely fashion, said Burke, of Evergreen Park. But theres a process to making sure we have the best available person to do this. Thats why were taking the time to do our due diligence.

Burke said this week that a search committee provided the panel with the three names for consideration. She declined to reveal the candidates identities but said they were chosen from among about 20 names.

Its a deliberative process, she also said. We want to make sure we do it right.

Pope and her two predecessors have long pushed for more independence for the office. Pope said she will not extend her tenure even if a replacement has not been named, noting that she gave the ethics commission five months to choose a successor.

If no replacement is chosen by then, Burke said, the commission could choose an interim watchdog before the nominee is considered for confirmation by the full legislature when it reconvenes in January.

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The GOP concerns about leaving the office vacant are rooted in recent history.

After the states first legislative inspector general resigned in 2014, the position went unfilled until the vacancy was thrust into the spotlight when a victims rights advocate testified at a legislative hearing in October 2017 that her complaint alleging shed been sexually harassed by a state senator went unanswered for more than a year.

The blowback led to the temporary appointment of former federal prosecutor Julie Porter, who held the position until Pope, a former state prosecutor and appellate judge, took over in March 2019.

In September, Democrats who control the House used a do-over vote to approve an ethics plan in a 74-41 vote after Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposed a tweak to the measure. The Senate approved the change in a 58-0 vote in late August.

The measure, which takes effect Jan. 1, requires additional disclosures from officials on personal financial interests, aims to prevent lawmakers from lobbying their former colleagues immediately after they leave office, and allows the legislative inspector general to initiate investigations of alleged wrongdoing without the blessing of the ethics commission, among other changes.

But it limits the offices jurisdiction to matters related directly to a lawmakers public office. Critics say it has other glaring weaknesses, including a six-month cooling-off period before lawmakers who leave office can become lobbyists, far shorter than in many neighboring states.

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NORMAL  There is a thirst for economic development in Central Illinois  and Bloomington-Normal is leading the way as a beacon for electric vehicle manufacturing.

Further development of the region's electric vehicle industry, already booming due to the presence of anchor companies like Rivian and strategic advantages in location and workforce development, could be coming down the pike with the Illinois General Assembly's passage of the Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois Act  an EV tax incentives package  late last week.

The REV Act, which passed overwhelmingly, adds "another tool in the toolbox that fundamentally changes conversations with potential new businesses and businesses that we have today," said Deputy Gov. Andy Manar.

Manar said the legislation came to fruition this summer as other states moved aggressively to offer incentive packages to entice electric vehicle manufacturers and the associated businesses that supply batteries and parts to relocate.

With many of those companies making decisions within the next few months, state officials sought to move quickly. Manar said the flood of incoming calls to the state's economic development arm from the EV industry expressing interest in the state also pushed action.

This matches what's happening at the local level.

'Theyre all talking about things that are happening in Normal'

Just in the last 10 months, the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council has fielded 100 projects from businesses looking to move into the area, or existing properties wanting to expand. And, four of those are $1 billion potential investments in the area, said CEO Patrick Hoban.

My prediction right now with whats in the pipeline, if we land a couple of these things, our population will hit over 200,000 within five to ten years, Hoban said, adding that economic development is turning into a war for talent.

In a typical year, the EDC might see 20 to 40 projects come to its doorstep, accounting for a nearly 150% increase in interested economic partners. Additionally, about 50% of the current 100 projects are manufacturing deals or distributing and data centers.

Interest, Hoban said, can largely be attributed to the rapid expansion and development of the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian.

The Irvine, California, company has invested millions into building out the former Mitsubishi Motors Corp. production facility in west Normal, garnering national interest as it began to roll out its first orders of the first fully battery electric truck last month.

Rivian, founded in 2009, purchased the 2.4 million-square foot building in 2017 for $16 million, tripling its work force to 3,136 employees in the last 10 months. With it, the electric vehicle manufacturer has put a spotlight on Central Illinois, garnering national attention through appearances on the 'Today Show' and in the New York Times.

Theyre all talking about things that are happening in Normal, said Normal Assistant City Manager Eric Hanson. Because of Rivian, the exposure for the Bloomington-Normal Region and the entire state from that standpoint as a hub of potential EV activity, you cant pay for that kind of exposure.

Rivian is the exact type of company the states REV Act is targeting, being in line to receive up to $49.5 million in state tax breaks through the states EDGE, or Economic Development for a Growing Economy, program.

The company is seeking a valuation of about $60 billion in its initial public offering. It also has a deal with Amazon to build 100,000 electric delivery vans.

REV Act

Earlier this week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker embarked on a seven-day mission to the United Kingdom in search of investment in the states burgeoning green economy.

Our historic clean energy legislation, talented workforce, and role as a transportation hub for the nation makes our state a top destination for international companies looking to do business in the U.S., Pritzker said last week when the trip was announced.

In the days following that announcement, the Illinois General Assembly gave Pritzker something to sell: the REV Act.

The legislation is meant to encourage businesses in the fast-growing electric vehicle industry to invest in Illinois and to encourage the state's existing automakers to invest in their facilities as the auto industry shifts to electric.

Under the legislation, EV producers and suppliers are eligible for what's essentially an enhanced version of the state's existing EDGE tax credit.

They would be able to qualify for an state income tax credit of 75% or 100% of payroll taxes withheld from each new employee for up to 15 years. The greater percentage would apply if the company locates in an underserved area.

They would receive 25% or 50% for current employees if the minimum number of new employees are hired.

There would also income tax credits for the wages of construction workers, a sales tax exemption for building materials and a tax credit for training workers.

The package is tailored so companies both large and small can partake.

For the largest tax break, an electric vehicle manufacturer must invest at least $1.5 billion and create 500 new jobs over a five-year period.

A larger electric vehicle parts manufacturer would have to invest at least $300 million and create 150 new jobs over a five year period.

The smallest companies would be eligible for incentives if they invest at least $20 million and create 50 new jobs over a four-year period.

Manar said this sliding scale was deliberate. The hope is to build out EV industry with battery makers and parts suppliers that can supplement large producers like Rivian.

"This isn't just about the large projects that typically get the media attention ... The governor also understands and is focused on building the supply chain  and he often uses the word 'ecosystem,'" Manar said. "We want to build that ecosystem in the state of Illinois and we are poised to do that."

James Chen, vice president for public policy at Rivian, told state lawmakers last week that it was "in active discussions with three potential suppliers, all of whom have asked how Illinois compares to other states in terms of a business friendly atmosphere."

The bill also includes a provision for existing automakers that make an investment of at least $100 million and create 75 new jobs over five years.

State Sen. Steve Stadelman, D-Rockford, said this could be an important incentive to keep the state's existing auto industry in Illinois.

Just outside Stadelman's district is the Stellantis plant in Belvidere, which currently produces the Jeep Cherokee. And there's the Ford plant on Chicago's South Side. Each plant employs thousands of people.

"As automakers will be deciding or transitioning the next couple of years to EV, I think Stellantis will be making decisions probably in the months ahead as far as where to locate EV facilities," Stadelman said. "And so I guess the goal and the hope is that eventually, they will retool the Belvidere plant for EV production."

Pritzker has indicated he will sign the bill.

"With our climate action plan in one hand and the electric vehicle REV Act in the other, I will aggressively work to recruit and support businesses that will create thousands of good jobs in communities across our state, Pritzker said.

President Joe Biden also spoke about transitioning to renewable energy and electric automobiles during the recent U.N. summit in Scotland and pushed for Congressional funding of incentives.

Meantime, the Twin Cities continues to work closely with the EDC to market development opportunities to potential businesses. That includes leveraging recent wins," such as Rivians rapid development in Normal and Italy-based Ferreros recently announced $75 million Bloomington chocolate processing plant.

The economy is definitely humming, in a large part because of the activity thats benign driven out west (of town), said Hanson, adding in the last year both cities have seen an uptick in building permits, construction, new homes, and workforce development, even during challenges brought on during the coronavirus pandemic.

Melissa Hon, Bloomington director of economic and community development, reiterated similar points, saying, I think another big point for our area is really a quality of life factor as well. People are looking to relocate or expand, not only are they looking at that site and the workforce, but also what type of quality of life can be offered.

She added, We have some great assets here in McLean County."

Of the act, Hoban said, "We're actually very excited that it's geared toward an industry where we're thriving right now because we want to continue to see that cluster grow."

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Children across Illinois will soon be able to get COVID-19 vaccines, following the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions approval of the Pfizer vaccine for kids Tuesday evening.

Heres what to know:

Q: When will Illinois children be able to start getting shots?

A: It depends on how quickly the vaccines get to area health departments, health systems and pharmacies. Some providers, such as Esperanza Health Centers, plan to begin vaccinating kids ages 5 to 11 as early as Wednesday.

Lurie Childrens Hospital said in a message to parents Tuesday that it anticipated starting vaccinations at its main hospital this weekend, and invited parents of its patients to log onto its website luriechildrens.org/vaccine Wednesday morning to begin scheduling appointments. Lurie said it was also working with health departments to get vaccines to its primary care providers.

Many school districts are also working on scheduling after-school vaccination clinics for students, with some expected to take place next week. The governors office said last week that the state health department was overseeing outreach to 756 elementary school districts to host vaccination clinics on school grounds.

Shipments of vaccines started this week, with plans to scale up to full capacity the week of Nov. 8, according to the CDC.

Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office said last week that more than 2,200 locations and providers statewide had signed up to offer the shots to children ages 5 to 11, including more than 700 pediatric and family practices, more than 700 pharmacy locations, about 100 urgent care locations, 112 local health departments and public health clinics, among others.

Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said last week that Chicago could initially receive nearly 100,000 doses of the vaccine, to be distributed across more than 125 locations.

Q: Can my kids get the vaccine at their pediatricians office?

A: Some pediatricians offices have said they plan to vaccinate children, while others are shying away for now because of logistical or other challenges.

Advocate Childrens Hospital has been planning for its nearly 100 pediatricians to begin giving the vaccine shortly after approval, said Dr. Frank Belmonte, chief medical officer. It also hopes to expand in-office vaccinations to many of its 400 affiliated pediatricians, he said.

Loyola Medicine has also said that it hopes to begin administering the vaccine to kids in its pediatric and COVID-19 clinics within a few days of the CDC committees decision.

Some pediatric practices, however, may not feel that they have the staff or infrastructure to offer the vaccines at the moment.

Q: Can my kids get the vaccine at a pharmacy?

A: Two of the largest retail pharmacy chains in Illinois, Walgreens and CVS Health, both plan to offer vaccines to kids ages 5 to 11.

Walgreens will begin giving the vaccine to kids in some of its stores Saturday, spokesman Phil Caruso said. Parents can begin making vaccination appointments at Walgreens stores starting Wednesday, by visiting Walgreens.com/ScheduleVaccine, using the Walgreens app or calling 1-800-Walgreens.

CVS said in a statement that the kids vaccines are expected to arrive in its stores later this week in select locations and once they arrive, CVS website will allow parents to start making appointments.

Q: Is the vaccine for kids the same as the one for adults?

A: The vaccine that has been authorized for use in kids ages 5 to 11 is the Pfizer vaccine, but it is one-third of the dose that adults received. The childrens Pfizer vaccine is formulated differently than the one for adults. The new formulation can be stored for longer in a regular freezer  10 weeks versus 31 days for the current one, making it easier for more providers to administer it. Its being shipped to providers in different vials than the Pfizer vaccine for adults.

Children will be given two doses, three weeks apart.

Q: How effective is the Pfizer vaccine for kids?

A: In clinical trials, the vaccine was found to be nearly 91% effective in preventing COVID-19 among children 5 to 11 years old, according to the CDC.

Q: What are the side effects of the vaccine in children?

A: In clinical trials, side effects were mild and similar to the ones experienced by adults and to side effects of other vaccines for children, according to the CDC. The most common side effect was a sore arm.

Fevers were less common in kids ages 5 to 11, in clinical trials, than in older children and young adults, Pfizer said.

Myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, has been a rare side effect of the vaccine, especially in older boys and young men after the second dose. The rate of myocarditis after vaccination among kids ages 5 to 11 is unknown, though there were no cases of myocarditis in the clinical trials with 3,082 kids in that age group.

Among older children and adults whove developed myocarditis, most people recovered quickly, according to the CDC.

An advisory committee to the CDC decided Tuesday that the benefits of the vaccine for kids outweigh the risks.

Q: Why should kids get the vaccine, given that most dont get severely ill from COVID-19?

A: Though severe cases of COVID-19 in kids are rare, some children do develop a serious inflammatory syndrome called MIS-C, and some develop long COVID, in which symptoms can linger for weeks or months.

During a six-week period in late June to mid-August, COVID-19 hospitalizations among children and adolescents increased fivefold, according to the CDC. Across the country, more than 8,300 children have been hospitalized with COVID-19.

Doctors also note that children sometimes spread COVID-19 to adults, increasing transmission rates. More than 1.2 million children have already been affected by school closures, this school year, related to COVID-19, according to the CDC.
COLLINSVILLE  Hundreds of police officers and other mourners filled a southern Illinois convention center for the funeral of a police officer who was fatally shot last week at a gas station.

About 1,000 people gathered Tuesday at Collinsvilles Gateway Convention Center for the funeral of Pontoon Beach Officer Tyler Timmins. Hundreds of officers attended, with Illinois State Troopers filling at least three rows of seats of a ballroom, The (Alton) Telegraph reported.

Timmins was later interred at Woodland Hill Cemetery in East Alton during a private burial.

Timmins, 36, died at a hospital on Oct. 26 after being shot at a Speedway gas station in Pontoon Beach, a Madison County village located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northeast of St. Louis.

During Tuesday's funeral service, Timmins wife, Linsey (Hornberger) Timmins, told fellow mourners that for me the definition of hero is my husband.

Every day he strapped that vest to his chest he was courageous and he paid the ultimate sacrifice," she said with emotion.

Pontoon Police Chief Chris Modrusic called the day Timmins was fatally shot the worst day in department history.

He had joined the department in April 2020.

A day after Timmins' death, Scott Hyden, 31, of Highland, Illinois, was charged with first-degree murder in the officer's killing.

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Boeing's recent announcement that it's building a drone factory at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah was good news for officials who have fought criticism for two decades over the cost of building the airport and the challenges of making it solvent.

The factory will bring about 300 jobs to the region, they point out, and it shows the defense contractor's long-term commitment. But it won't affect the airport's bottom line  at least not much  based on St. Clair County's two most recent audits.

The county still is spending more than $6.5 million a year to keep MidAmerica open for use by Scott Air Force Base and one passenger airline, Allegiant Air. Boeing's annual land-lease payment for the new factory will be $450,000.

The county-owned airport has been operating at a deficit since the terminal opened in 1998, despite early predictions that it would be turning a profit after five years. Related debt has risen to nearly $90 million, compared to the county's roughly $30 million share of initial construction costs.

Supporters argue that the airport's existence has kept Scott Air Force Base off the U.S. Department of Defense's list of base closures, a key factor for economic stability in the region. Opponents are skeptical.

St. Clair County audits are prepared by county Auditor Patty Sprague and the Scheffel Boyle accounting firm. The BND looked at both 2019 and 2020 because of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on many businesses, including MidAmerica.

"Enplanements grew from 33,000 passengers in 2015 to more than 153,000 in 2019," the 2020 audit states. "Due to the pandemic, however, enplanements plummeted in 2020 but have rebounded in 2021. As normally reported by airports, this translates into more than 300,000 passengers normally going through the MidAmerica terminal."

Despite the dramatic drop in passenger flights last year, the airport actually benefited financially from COVID-19. That's because it received $3.6 million in federal grant money through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

MidAmerica Director Bryan Johnson declined to be interviewed for this story. Rich Sauget, chairman of the St. Clair County Public Building Commission, which oversees the property, didn't return calls for comment.

Pre-COVID accounting

MidAmerica was designed to alleviate traffic at Lambert St. Louis International Airport, bring passenger service to the metro-east and support operations at Scott Air Force Base, which uses its runways.

Federal and state funding covered most of MidAmerica's $313 million cost ($218 for construction and $95 million for the required removal and replacement of a base housing complex).

In 2019, the airport took in $2.7 million in landing fees, terminal-usage fees, rents and fuel-sale profits, according to that year's audit. It spent $4.7 million for salaries, supplies and other operating costs, requiring the county to cover a $2 million annual deficit.

Beyond the operating budget, the county:

Paid $4.2 million in interest on bonds and debt certificates that have been issued for MidAmerica development, expansion and improvement over the years (and refinanced in some cases).

Paid about $1.8 million in airport-related debt principals, as projected in its 2018 audit.

Took in $1.4 million in grants, real-estate lease payments and other airport-related, non-operating revenue.

Overall, the county cost came to about $6.6 million for 2019. Remaining long-term debt related to MidAmerica was $74.6 million, not including an expected $44.4 million in interest on bonds.

Post-COVID figures

In 2020, the airport took in $2.4 million in landing fees, terminal-usage fees, rents and fuel-sale profits, according to that year's audit. It spent $5.2 million for salaries, supplies and other operating costs, requiring the county to cover a $2.8 million annual deficit.

Beyond the operating budget, the county:

Paid $3.6 million in interest on bonds and debt certificates that have been issued for MidAmerica development, expansion and improvement over the years (and refinanced in some cases).

Paid $2 million in airport-related debt principals, as projected in its 2019 audit.

Took in $4.9 million in grants, real-estate lease payments and other airport-related, non-operating revenue.

Overall, the county's costs would have totaled $7.1 million for 2020, but the one-time infusion of CARES Act money dropped it down to $3.5 million.

"Airport revenues increased more than $1 million," the 2020 audit states. "Declines in operating revenues due to the COVID-19 pandemic were offset by $3.6 million in Federal CARES grants.

"Aeronautical rents, fees, terminal concessions, Passenger Facility Charges, and parking revenues represented a $394,000 decrease. Fuel sales decreased more than $1.6 million as fuel prices continued to be volatile; however the number of gallons sold also dropped nearly 227,000 gallons."

Remaining long-term debt related to MidAmerica was $87.1 million in 2020, not including an expected $25.5 million in interest on bonds. This represents an increase in debt and decrease in interest due to refinancing.

Regional importance

County, state and federal officials who represent Southern Illinois have long emphasized MidAmerica's importance to the region as an economic driver, mainly because of its military and civilian "joint-use" status and sharing of runways with Scott Air Force Base.

The 6,000-acre airport property surrounds the base on three sides.

Scott is the largest employer in St. Clair County with more than 13,000 government, civilian and military employees and an annual economic impact of $3.5 billion, according to a standard paragraph that appears in all audit introductions.

"The Community understands the importance of the Base and County leadership has helped avoid any encroachment on base property," the audits state. "This has been the #1 criteria cited in previous base closure discussions. The Base continues to expand bringing additional jobs to the county."

Audits also note that MidAmerica's operating deficits include fixed costs  such as fire safety and security, insurance and runway maintenance  that are required to comply with the Scott joint-use agreement and to maintain Federal Aviation Administration "grant assurances."

On the civilian side, Allegiant Air offers non-stop passenger flights from MidAmerica to 12 U.S. destinations, including Las Vegas, Phoenix and vacation spots in Florida and South Carolina.

The airport also serves as a shipment hub for Northbay Produce, which occupies a 56,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse on the property.

Boeing expansion

The Boeing Co. announced on Sept. 17 that it's building a 300-square-foot production facility at MidAmerica that will be used to make the U.S. Navy's first aircraft-refueling drones.

It will be the defense contractor's second factory at the airport. The existing one, covering 50,000 square feet, produces components for fighter jets, commercial airplanes and military helicopters.

Boeing will pay $65,000 in rent the first year for the new factory, then about $450,000 annually, Johnson told the BND in early September.

Before MidAmerica even opened, it had been featured in an NBC Nightly News segment called "The Fleecing of America," largely because officials hadn't found an airline to provide passenger service at the airport after spending more than $300 million in taxpayer money to build it.

St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern defended the county support in 2010, when NBC reporter Kevin Tibbles returned to do a second "Fleecing" segment.

"When balanced against against $2.3 billion worth of economic impact that Scott Air Force Base brings to the region ... We believe that that's a trade-off worth taking," Kern said.

Four airlines  Pan American Airways, Great Plains Airlines, TransMeridian Airlines and Allegiant Air  eventually tried to operate out of the MidAmerica terminal. All ceased operations. Allegiant returned in 2012.

Today, other airport tenants are North American Helicopter, American Veterans (AMVETS), the Illinois State Police, Illinois Army National Guard Readiness Center and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

MidAmerica added 500 parking spaces in 2020, according to the county audit. It's now increasing its terminal size from 53, 500 to 98,599 square feet. Officials expect to cover about $13 million of the $30 million cost with FAA grants.

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Drugmaker Merck just shared stunning data on molnupiravir, an oral antiviral it developed to combat COVID-19. In molnupiravirs phase three clinical trial, it cut COVID-19 patients risk of being hospitalized or dying by 50%.

The company is now seeking emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

The medicine could be a game-changer in humanitys fight against this virus. In the United States and other developed countries, many have regrettably decided against getting vaccinated, leaving them at elevated risk of severe illness. Though rare, serious breakthrough cases are happening. And in the developing world, a variety of factors have led to a slow vaccine rollout. Finally, there is always the concern of a mutation that evades our existing vaccines.

Simply put, vaccines alone arent enough for our anti-COVID-19 arsenal. And were now poised to have at least one safe, effective and convenient oral treatment. Roche and Pfizer are working on others that could soon be on the way.

Yet instead of praising this achievement, some activist groups are focusing on molnupiravirs price, which is expected to be $700 for a full five-day, 10-pill course of treatment. They claim that because the researchers who made the initial discovery benefited from federal grants, the government should be able to set the price of this therapy or nullify Mercks intellectual property rights.

The argument ignores the basic economics of how drugs are developed  and sets a dangerous precedent that could deter future companies from making the investments needed to bring these sorts of medicines to market.

To see how illogical Mercks critics are, consider molnupiravirs back story.

About a decade ago, Emory University scientists received $35 million in federal grants to perform early-stage research on antivirals, which ultimately led to their discovery of the molecule behind molnupiravir. When COVID-19 struck in early 2020, many of these scientists thought their molecule  which they originally envisioned as a flu treatment  had considerable potential.

Despite this scientific hunch, the only way to prove the success of the product was to run expensive clinical trials. The scientists turned back to the government for additional funding  but were denied. The Emory researchers also tried crowdfunding but raised only a sliver of the money needed.

So instead, Emory researchers licensed the molecule to a small company named Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. After initial lab testing funded by Ridgeback showed promise, the biotech company partnered with Merck, which agreed to conduct clinical trials  and manufacture and distribute the therapy if it ultimately received FDA authorization. Without these private sector investments, the federally funded research would continue to sit in a lab, full of promise but unable to help patients.

Instead of applauding these two companies and their cooperation, some have criticized them as profiteers.

Small biotech startups lack the resources and expertise to shepherd potential drugs through the complicated clinical trial and regulatory approval process. Theyre also not equipped to mass-manufacture drugs. It would be inefficient to ask all of these small companies to make these sorts of investments.

Merck and other large pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, employ thousands of clinical researchers and entire factories of manufacturing experts. So its only reasonable that Ridgeback partnered with a more experienced, better-funded company.

Such partnerships are an ordinary and essential part of an efficient drug development process. They should be celebrated, not castigated.

Of medicines that do enter clinical trials, fewer than 12% ultimately earn regulators approval. Yet, despite these long odds, biotech firms spend more than $100 billion a year on research and development. Since firms must expect that successful medicines will pay for all the failures, its estimated to cost over $1 billion to bring a single new medicine to market.

Our drug development ecosystem enables university labs, small life science firms and large drug companies to collaborate  and bring lifesaving medicines like molnupiravir to patients. Thats cause for celebration, not complaint.

Craig Garthwaite is the Herman R. Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services, a professor of strategy and the director of the health care program at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management.

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The Transportation Security Administration announced that it found more firearms in carry-on bags at airport security checkpoints through the first nine months of 2021 than it had in any full year over the past two decades.

The detection rate was more than two times the rate in 2019, and even higher than the rate in 2020, when air travel was significantly depressed due to COVID-19.

On the surface, it is not clear whether we should feel more or less safe when flying. A closer look at the data being shared and data not being reported provides clues.

Highly populated states with the most lenient gun laws that have large international hub airports include Arizona, Texas and Georgia. Airports in these states, Atlanta Hartsfield, Dallas Fort Worth, Houston Bush Intercontinental and Phoenix Sky Harbor, make up the airports with the most firearms detected. Neither of the Chicago airports, OHare and Midway, cracked the top 10.

But simply having lenient firearm laws does not directly translate into more people carrying firearms with them to the airports in their carry-on bags.

TSA policy prohibits numerous items from carry-on bags. These include knives and other sharp objects, which TSA officers likely find even more frequently than firearms. Would reporting these numbers be informative to assess traveler safety? Of more concern, have TSA officers found any explosive devices in carry-on bags? Such items would represent an even greater risk to air travelers than firearms or knives. Data on such detections would be just as informative.

The breakdown of the background of the people found trying to carry firearms through airport security checkpoints would also be revealing. What percentage of them were PreCheck-qualified? It is likely that most firearm-toting passengers were not in this group. How about a deeper dive of the data, such as the distribution based on gender; type of ticket, such as one-way or round-trip, class of service; frequent flyer membership and status; and the form of payment involved, either cash, check, credit or business account?

What remains unclear is whether the higher firearm detection rate makes travelers safer.

TSA red teams in the past have demonstrated that firearms and other threat items can pass through airport security checkpoints undetected. Therefore, TSA officers are certain to be still missing some firearms. The good news is that any such undetected firearms have not resulted in bad outcomes on flights.

No firearms in carry-on bags is an appropriate TSA policy. However, detecting more firearms does not necessarily mean that travelers are either safer or at more risk. A person with nefarious intent to inflict harm during a flight is likely sufficiently devious to not try to bring an obvious weapon through airport security screening checkpoints.

What is riskiest to air travelers are not the known risks, but the unknown risks. That is why 9/11 was such an egregious terrorist event. The element of surprise enabled a group of people to use permitted items  box cutters  to cause unthinkable damage and harm.

So are flyers safer due to the higher TSA officer detection rate? In reality, it is what the TSA officers are unaware of that is the bigger concern.

That is why risk-based strategies such as PreCheck provide the most effective defense and protection for travelers; they focus on identifying low-risk passengers before they arrive at airports so TSA officers can focus their attention on the passengers of unknown risk.

Sheldon H. Jacobson is professor of computer science at the University of Illinois.

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With the recent passage of new congressional maps, it is time for a change in our redistricting process. The new congressional districts, that look like a jigsaw puzzle gone wrong, are now awaiting Governor Pritzkers signature. We can all agree that these maps show how much of a disaster redistricting can be when you let the party in power, Republican or Democrat, completely control the process. New maps that have no logical boundaries confuse not only voters, but those running for elected office.

I believe it is time to learn from our mistakes and take a page out of Iowas book for redistricting. Under Iowas model, new maps are drawn by a bipartisan commission made up of citizens, but the state legislature can approve or reject the proposals. Additionally, if the legislature rejects the first two proposals, they can marginally alter the third and final map. Ultimately, this process allows the General Assembly to continue to have their voice heard while allowing maps to be drawn based on fairness to all voters and keeping communities together. This process would create districts with normalcy in size and shape instead of districts that look like the alphabet.

No one should be happy with the new maps; they make Illinois the joke of the redistricting process. Princetons Gerrymandering Project gave our final congressional maps an F in Partisan Fairness, Competitiveness, and Geographical Features, and that is something we can all agree needs to change. Although the next time we redraw districts will be in 2031, we should all focus on reforming the broken system before this topic drifts into the background again. If you would like to show support, you can go to Change.org/illinoisredistricting and sign the petition. Lets reform Illinois.

Josh Millard, Arenzville

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Ghanas total expenditure in 2022 is projected at 128.3 billion which will be 25.8% of GDP.



Data from the Ministry of Finance indicate that total expenditure (including payments for the clearance of arrears) is projected at 128.3 billion (25.8% of GDP) in 2022.



This means government expenditure in 2022 is expected to increase by almost 13% relative to the 113.8 billion expenditure in 2021.



In terms of revenue mobilization, government intend to raise an amount of 89.1 billion (17.9% of GDP) for 2022 and represents a nominal growth of 23% over the projected outturn for 2021.



Further analysis shows that the overall budget deficit (including finsec and IPPs cost) is projected at 39.2 billion (7.9% of GDP) for 2022.



The ministry also noted that for the second time in a row, interest payments are expected to be higher than compensation of employees. Interest payments is projected at 37.2 billion (7.5% of GDP) in 2022.



Additionally, compensation of employees is projected to increase from 31.5 billion (7.2% of GDP) in 2021 to 34.6 billion (7.0% of GDP) in 2022.



Interest payments and compensation of employees for decades have been the two main component of governments annual expenditure accounting for a little over 58% expenditure in 2021.



For the first time in 2021, government spent more on interest payments (30.3 billion) relative to compensation (35.9 billion).





Source: GNA









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Zeepay MD, Andrew Takyi-Appiah officially introduced his company, Zeepay Ghana Limited to Otumfuo Osei Tutu II to seek Otumfuo's blessings towards Zeepay Mobile Money and donates GH20,000 to Otumfuo Education Fund.



Asantehene expressed his delight at the wholly Ghanaian-owned mobile money company and commended them for taking the initiative to compete in an industry operated only by foreign companies - MTN Mobile Money, Vodafone Cash and AirtelTigo.



The Asantehene further mentioned that he is exceptionally excited that one of his own, the late Dr A. K. Appiah is part of the starting founders of Zeepay, and therefore he receives Zeepay into Asanteman as his own.



Leading up to Akwasidae, Zeepay stormed Asanteman from Wednesday, October 27, 2021, to Sunday, October 31, 2021, where it conducted full scale market activations from Ejisu to Anloga Junction with support from local radio stations.



On Thursday, the float moved from Asafo to Adum and finally to Kejetia, announcing Zeepays presence in their town and signing locals onto Zeepay Mobile Money. On Friday, they visited Suame, Banatama and Abrepo with a crowing programme at a local chop bar called Efie Fufuo where locals were invited for free fufu with the Zeepay activations team.



The five-day event was climaxed by meeting the Asantehene at the Akwasidae celebration at Manhyia Palace during which Zeepay presented gifts to the Palace as custom demands. The Asantehene recalled his relationship to the late Dr Anthony Kwasi Appiah (Father to Andrew Takyi-Appiah), an old and dear friend of his and thanked the party for returning his lost son.



Finally, he offered his blessings and support to Zeepay Mobile Money. Zeepays MD said: This has been the single most effective campaign we have run in the Ashanti Region. We have indeed been honored to meet with the King to celebrate Akwasidae with the people of Asanteman and to be given the opportunity to donate to the Otumfuo Education Fund.



In attendance was Paa Kwasi Yankey, Chairman of the Board; James Quarshie, Zeepay Club Partner; Dede Quarshie, General Manager Commercial; Felicity Jaforktuk, Product Manager; Gloria Kumi, Service Delivery Manager; Morkor Quarshie, Brand Manager; Oscar Bempong, Author of Mindset Revolution; and Patrick Adjei Kontoh, Liaison Officer to Manhyia Palace.



Zeepay is the fastest growing mobile financial services company across Africa with operations in Ghana and the United Kingdom and terminating to 20 countries across Africa with termination agreements in over 90 jurisdictions globally.



Zeepay specializes in remittance termination into mobile wallets and is completely networked and partner agnostic.



The company is a wholly owned Ghanaian company and regulated in the UK by Financial Conduct Authority-FCA #592538 and in Ghana by Bank of Ghana- PSD/ZGL/20/03 under the Payment Systems and Services Act, 2019 (Act 987). Zeepay supports Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3 and is considered a Financial Inclusion Company positioned to improve last mile access. Visit myzeepay.com for more information.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









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Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has disclosed that drones will soon be used to deliver medicine to Ghanaians in their homes.



According to him, aged Ghanaians will no longer have to worry about going out to buy medicine as the government is initiating a new program in partnership with Zipline to ensure their medicines are delivered to them in the comfort of their homes.



He made this revelation while elucidating Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's public lecture held at Ashesi University Tuesday evening on the topic ,"Transforming An Economy Through Digitization: The Ghana Story''.



Dr. Bawumia lauded government's efforts in making healthcare adequately accessible to Ghanaians, particularly those in the rural areas, through Zipline drone service aimed at providing medical supplies faster to patients.



The Vice President touted the government's achievements since it commenced the drone health delivery service.



''Ghana was the second country in Africa after Rwanda to implement the delivery of medical supplies through drones. There are four Zipline distribution centers currently...and these four centers deliver about on average, they do 100 flights a day. This December, we will add two more centers...'', he said.



He added; ''Ghana is the largest medical drone delivery service in the world...What is even more impressive is that the drone centers are 100 percent manned by talented young Ghanaians [100%]. They are the flight operators and everything and it is really a sight to behold when you see them in action.''



Speaking in an interview on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'' programme Thursday morning, Hon. Oppong Nkrumah also underscored the benefits of the drone health delivery service stressing the drones were used to convey blood samples to medical centers during the COVID-19 outbreak.



He further stated the drones have also been very beneficial to rural communities by providing emergency health services to the residents.



"Each day, the four Zipline drone centers, on the average, do 400 flights a day," he said.



To advance the health sector using technology, the medical drone service is going to be upgraded to render individualized services, the Minister noted, emphasizing "if an elderly person is in the house and needs medication but cannot move to and fro, now due to the digital property address system, we are opening a platform that, if he can buy his/her medicine on the Zipline platform, a drone will deliver the medicine to the elderly in his/her courtyard''.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has paid glowing tributes to medical drone delivery service company, Zipline Ghana Limited for its industrial revolution in facilitating the immunization of dozens in the Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipal of the Western North Region and other parts of the country.



According to GHS, the erstwhile challenges of delay in the transport of medications, unavailability of storage systems for vaccines and administrative bottlenecks will no longer pose a banal threat to healthcare delivery in the Municipality, after Ziplines UAV made delivery of several components of vaccines in record time.



It will be recalled that the Government of Ghana in April 2019 put to neck a Memorandum of understanding with Zipline Ghana limited for the transportation of medical supplies to communities difficult to reach by road. The partnership has since expanded the tentacle of the company to include the distribution of covid samples for testing and child immunization vaccines delivery nationwide.



In an interaction with the media, the Municipal Focal Person for Immunization for the Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipal, Mr Clement Baffour, said the involvement of zipline in the supply chain process of the GHS represents a game-changer in the health delivery apparatus. He added that since the involvement of Zipline the challenges of travelling for vaccines and the delay in vaccine delivery have become a thing of the past.



Mr Baffour expressed the gratitude of the community and called for more support for the company to help reduce the mortality rate by facilitating the emergency delivery of medication to patients.



I think Zipline has brought a lot of relief to the communities and this directorate in the discharge of its work, for which reason they must be commended for their innovation. Previously we had to travel to Takoradi to take delivery of vital medications for lack of storage facilities. But having witnessed the innovation of Ziplines drones, it is safe to say we are out of the woods. We will continue to share in the benefit of their work and pray for them to succeed, Mr Baffour said.



Municipal Director of Health Service for Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipal, Oheneba Oppong-Darko, spoke fondly of how the company has substantially reduced the defaulter rate in the administration of child immunization vaccines in the municipality. He narrates that, before the intervention of Zipline, whenever the quantum of vaccine delivered for service provision got finished there was no backup available and therefore most patients often miss the opportunity to take their vaccines at the required time. This is now a thing of the past. A parent cannot miss this immunization any longer on the basis of non-availability of the vaccines as Zipline is just a call or text away and they deliver just-in-time to make our work much easier.



He commended the government for the partnership with the company which has ensured every citizen, irrespective of proximity, has equal access to healthcare delivery in the Country.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The government has begun the implementation of some initiatives to ensure a reduction of emissions in the cocoa and the shea sectors to improve livelihood opportunities for farmers, women groups and forest users in the country.

They are the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme (GCFRP) and the Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reduction Project (GSLERP), which are in line with the REDD+ strategy.



The strategy is a UN mechanism demonstrating countries' effort to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.



The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor, made this known at an event dubbed: Beyond the talk  Showcasing Ghanas forest sector climate solutions, at the ongoing climate change conference (COP 26) in Glasgow, Scotland, yesterday.



The event was held at the Ghana Pavilion in Glasgow.



Implementation



Mr Jinapor said his outfit was sourcing funding for the implementation of the entire programme in Ghanas 20-year REDD+ strategy and other key national initiatives on afforestation and reforestation.



He said the country was pursuing an aggressive afforestation programme, and that earlier this year, the government launched a Greening programme, which included the declaration of June 11, each year as Green Ghana Day.



That, the minister said, was in line with actions the country was taking to meet its target under the Bonn Challenge and the Africa Forest Landscape Restoration initiative (AFR 100).



Ghana is also fully committed to the Joint Framework of Action (JFA) signed between the governments of Ghana and Cote dIvoire, the worlds two largest producers of cocoa, on the one hand, and 36 cocoa and chocolate producing companies, on the other, to halt deforestation and forest degradation due to cocoa production.



We are also implementing a forest investment programme (FIP) to address concerns about drivers of deforestation and forest degradation to enhance carbon stocks and also improve on the livelihoods of rural communities, he added.



Interventions



Mr Jinapor also said Ghana recently launched a national alternative employment and livelihood programme (NAELP) to create jobs for artisanal miners and also safeguard the forest landscape from further degradation through mining activities.



The forest sector offers us fast, reliable and empirical evidence-based actions to mitigate the effect of climate change. We must, therefore, make concerted efforts to safeguard our forests.





It is my hope that todays event will result in a renewed sense of commitment to protect our forests through real and measurable actions, he added.



According to the minister, the worlds climate was changing at an alarming rate through the actions and inaction of people.



Since the first COP in Berlin in 1995, we have made commitments and resolutions in successive COPs in our bid to reverse the negative consequences of climate change.



Unfortunately, we have not been successful at it.



The world keeps getting warmer, rain patterns are changing, ice in the Antarctic and glaciers are melting and sea temperatures are rising.



In Ghana, our savannah ecological zone is getting drier and more humid as our primary tropical and sub-tropical forests are being depleted, he said.













Source: Graphiconline.com









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Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has hinted that plans are underway to introduce a mobile application that will aid self-registration in the ongoing national SIM card registration exercise.



According to her, only about two million of the population as of the end of last week have been able to register successfully, a situation she describes as very low. This is due to the number of SIM cards yet to be registered, hence the need for the app to facilitate the exercise.



Speaking at at the 11th Ghana Information Technology and Telecom Awards in Accra, where she won the Digital Leader Year, Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful said I must say in the coming weeks, were working on launching an application for self-registration.



A mobile application that will let individuals register at their own convenience without any delay. This is because looking at the figures it is just about two million SIM cards that had been registered so far and we have about 40 million cards nationwide to register, she noted.



I think that is on a bit low side hence the need for us to quicken the pace and clean up our digital eco-system for once and for all she added.



On how the exercise was faring, she said it is going well, but let me sound this caution that we are very serious about deactivating all unregistered SIM cards by March 2022 and therefore everyone who is yet to register must take the necessary processes to get registered before the deadline.

The compulsory SIM card registration exercise begun in the first week of October 2021 for all mobile phone users to register their mobile numbers.







Source: Republic Press









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NIGERIA: Wale Bob-Oseni, a real estate dealer and executive director of African Bureau for Legislative Empowerment, was on his way to the US on Monday. Then he got a call from Femi Osibona, owner of Fourscore Homes, to check out the ongoing development at Gerard Road, Ikoyi, Lagos state.



On his way to the airport, he stopped by to see the 21-storey building being developed by his friend and associate. The building collapsed with Bob-Oseni and Osibona inside, and they are now presumably dead after 48 hours of rescue efforts.



Dele Momodu, former presidential candidate and publisher, who was close to both of them, told TheCable on Wednesday that both men were his aburos  an affectionate term for younger friends.



Wale was on his way to the US this is so tragic, he told TheCable on phone.



In a video that went viral some minutes after the collapse, a man believed to be Bob-Osenis driver was seen crying, saying he was to take his boss to the Lagos airport.



He was heading to America. I want to go and drop him in the airport, the driver said in tears.

There is no official figure of the number of persons who were in the building before the incident happened but over 50 persons are said to have been trapped.



As on Wednesday, the death toll of the incident had risen to 22, while nine persons have been rescued.

Source: thetattleroomng









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Former Minister for Central Region, Kwamena Duncan, has lauded the Inspector General of Police (IGP) George Akuffo Dampare over his performance since his appointment.



The IGP has been receiving lots of praises for his determination to rid the nation of lawlessness and crimes.



He has been seen arresting celebrities in the persons of musicians Shatta Wale and Medikal following their public misconduct and this move is seen to be a step to tell Ghanaians that no one is above the law.



Another recent incident is the Police going after the Member of Parliament for Madina, Francis-Xavier Sosu who led a protest at Madina last week.



The MP has turned down an invite for Police interrogation over some incidents involving him that are said to infract the Public Order Act but the Police are resolute to arrest him should he continue to show the seeming recalcitrant behavior.



Discussing the MP's brouhaha on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', Kwamena Duncan encouraged the IGP to continue his good works and stay focused.



"If we fail to let the laws work, a point comes when our democracy will even be meaningless," he said.



He implored the citizenry to support the IGP as he executes his duties ensuring law and order in the country.



"If the entire nation rally behind him and if he stays on course, and I know he has no reason not to stay on course, that impunity" will stop because every person will be careful and say "asey let me not be damparized," he stated.







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The government is to plant a minimum of 20 million trees next year as part of major effort to restore lost forest cover in the country, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has disclosed in Glasgow, Scotland.



Speaking at the World Leaders Summit on protecting the forests and oceans held on the sidelines of COP 26 yesterday, the President announced: Next year, we aim to plant a minimum of 20 million trees, and we have already begun earnest preparations towards this.



In June this year, I led the entire country, through the Green Ghana Project, to plant over seven million trees, far above the five million we had targeted, he told the gathering of world leaders and environmentalists who are participating in the summit.



UN COP26



From Sunday October 31 - November 12, 2021, world leaders and environmentalists are gathering in Glasgow to participate in the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN COP26).



Since 1995, global leaders have met annually to firm up plans to tackle climate change. And for the summit in Glasgow, the expectation is to accelerate action towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.



Initiatives



According to the President, in the last two decades, the government had been implementing initiatives such as the national forest plantation development programme and the Ghana forest plantation strategy, in line with measures to restore lost forest cover in the country.



That, he said, was because deforestation and forest degradation are the greatest challenges to sustainable forest management in the country.



The President also gave an assurance that from 2024 and beyond, Ghana intended to reduce emissions by some 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in the cocoa-forest landscape through the implementation of the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme, one of five ecological landscape-tailored initiatives in the countrys REDD+ Strategy.



He also said through nationally determined contributions in the forestry sector, Ghana was committed to supporting the global target of halving emissions by 2030 and attaining neutrality by 2050.



Ocean management



On the sustainable management of the ocean, the President said requisite structures and processes were being put in place to finalise the countrys sustainable ocean plan by 2025.



The pressing threats we face are marine security due to the prevalence of piracy and armed robbery on our seas, the mounting menace of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU), over-fishing and its attendant decline in fish stocks and plastic pollution, he said.



President Akufo-Addo further said in partnership with the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea, we are also conducting an ocean governance study to help us strengthen our legal and institutional framework for ocean management.



In addition, he said, the country had implemented a close season for artisanal and industrial fishing to help reduce excessive pressure and over-exploitation of the sea in order to replenish the countrys falling marine fish stocks.



The results have been a phenomenal success.



We intend to continue to implement this policy over the medium-term.



We must leverage our collective political influence, build strong partnerships with business leaders and influencers in civil society to effectively drive the implementation of the transformation document by all countries, the President added.





Source: Daily Graphic









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The South Dayi MP has taken on the Former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) for describing him and the Madina MP, Francis Xavier Sosu, as jokers.



Rockson-Nelson, Dafeamekpor in an interview on JoyNews Prime, said Sam Okudzetos comments are uninformed.



Clearly, he lacks understanding of the workings of parliament. Because for him to say, two members of parliament, properly so-called, taking advantage of the provisions in the law, in the constitution and statutes to initiate a private members bill to him amounts to a joke, then the person who is joking in this matter is him, not the two of us.



He added, If he thinks the matter is a joke, then he shouldnt be perturbedBut clearly, hes bothered.



The one-time Member of Parliament and member of the General Legal Councils disciplinary committee had described two National Democratic Congress (NDC) MPs as jokers in the matter of a Private Members Bill seeking to amend the Legal Professions Act, 1960, Act 3.



The two NDC MPs have proposed amendments to the composition of the Board of Directors of the General Legal Council (GLC).



They also want to realign the functions of the GLC and to provide for reforms in legal education such that accredited faculties of law with the requisite facilities would be licensed to run professional law courses, provide for discipline of lawyers and related matters to give effect to Article 37(1) of the 1992 constitution.



One key proposal is also the removal of the Chief Justice and other Justices of the Supreme Court from the Board of the GLC.



In an interview on Asaase Radio, on November 3, Sam Okudzeto said the duo do not understand the law.

If they are lawyers, then their understanding of the law leaves a lot of question. I have been a member of the disciplinary committee for many years; I am still there if I tell you the number of complaints that keep coming there.



So I dont see how the qualified lawyer is going to appear before the court, and you say that those for who we are going to appear before do not have any power of control over their training or education.



Its a joke. I must confess that they are jokers, and I dont know who they are, and I dont want to know who they are, he said.



He warned that there could be repercussions for the two MPs; thus, they should not misbehave.



They have problems; I think they should go and keep quiet because there can be more troubles than they realized in the fact that we are concerned. However, if you misbehave, we will deal with you in accordance with the rules and laws that have been laid down, he said.



But speaking on JoyNews Prime, the South Dayi legislator took exception to the threats of Mr Okudzeto, citing a breach of the ethics of the legal profession and their parliamentary immunity.



For a lawyer to say a fellow lawyer doesnt understand law amounts to professional misconduct at the bar.



The person who taught me ethics and advocacy in the law school is calling another lawyer that he doesnt understand the law.





Meanwhile, he called his bluff and served notice of their readiness to defend themselves before the disciplinary committee of the General Legal Council, if dragged there.



Mr Dafeamekpor noted that these are intimidating tactics being adopted against him and the Madina MP.



It is a tactic to intimidate myself and Sosu they think we are young boys, we are small boys, thats the comments theyre passing but we are in parliament and we will do what we have to do, we will do what we know best in Parliament.











Source: JoyNews Prime









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Member of the finance committee of parliament and Member of Parliament(MP) for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, has washed down the digitalization lecture of the vice president, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.



According to him, "Digitalization is not a substitute for economic development".



Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he explained that there are real economic issues that need to be attended to by this government rather than trying to cover up their abysmal performance with an economic digitalization talk.



"Now that Dr Bawumia is digitalizing everything, your favourite delicacy which is fufu will even be digitalized," he told programme host Kwame Nkrumah 'Tikese'.



"This whole National Identification Card also known as GhanaCard initiative is meant to enrich a private business. The promotion by the Vice President is more of a business decision than a national interest.



"The fact is whenever a Ghanaian uses the Ghana card, the private business owner is paid an amount of money," he added.



The Vice President in delivering a statement on the theme TRANSFORMING AN ECONOMY THROUGH DIGITALIZATION- THE GHANA STORY on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at the Ashesi University, Berekuso in the Eastern Region disclosed a number of benefits in using the Ghana Card.



Watch video below





Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









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FRIENDS OF BAWUMIA -FOB, has commended Dr. Bawumia for being the Vice President Ghana has always needed.



This follows the vice president's digitalization lecture at Ashesi University on the 2nd of November 2021 under the theme "Transforming An Economy Through Digitalization- The Ghana Story".

The group, Friends of Bawumia- FOB believes His Excellency Dr. Mahmoud Bawumia has over the years proven and remain a very formidable force within the political environment of Ghana.



Winfred Kofi Gidiglo,a.k.a Chairman Sadam national chairman of the FOB says the lecture has given Ghanaians a clear picture of how digitalization is gradually shaping the country and also proven why it is the way to go.

"We as group believes Dr. Bawumia after the lecture has cleared every doubt Ghanaians had about him and also showcased why he will be the right man to take over from H.E Nana Akuffo Addo by being the pioneer behind the digitalization of the economy.~Chairman Sadam said.



He further said that he feels sad after seeing major opposition members advertising their ignorance publicly by not appreciating the link between digitization and economic development after such a transparent lecture.



FRIENS OF BAWUMIA (FOB) however appreciate the Vice President Dr. Bawumia for that wonderful lecture and believes that their vision of seeing him become President will be a reality.

Source: peacefmonline.com









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" " Allison Joyce/Getty Images People shop for decorations to celebrate Diwali in Mumbai, India. Diwali, the festival of lights, is one of Hinduism 's most important festivals.

Diwali (pronounced dih-vaa-lee) is one of the most widely celebrated festivals on the Hindu calendar, observed in late October or early November across India and the Indian diaspora by more than 1 billion people. While it shares some customs and traditions (lights, gifts, overeating!) with holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah, Diwali is a Hindu celebration that dates back thousands of years. The holiday is also observed by Sikhs and Jains. And in India, Muslims and other non-Hindus may celebrate Diwali, just as non-Christians in the U.S. may celebrate Christmas.

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Origins of Diwali

The name Diwali is derived from the Sanskrit word Deepavali meaning "row of lighted lamps," which is why Diwali is often called the Hindu "Festival of Lights." There are two sacred legends associated with Diwali that celebrate the victory of good over evil, and knowledge over negative qualities like anger, greed and fear.

The first legend, native to Northern India, is the story of Rama, a beloved prince who was banished from his kingdom along with his wife Sita by a jealous stepmother (it's always the stepmother). During his 14-year exile, Rama battled a demon king who kidnapped Sita. When the couple finally returned triumphantly to their kingdom, the people celebrated by lighting rows of earthen oil lamps.

The second legend, better known in Southern India, concerns Narkasura, the son of Mother Earth, who befriends a demon and becomes evil. After Narkasura invades kingdom after kingdom, the people cry out to Lord Krishna, who descends to defeat the evil Narkasura and restore peace to Earth.

" " Guru Mahant Swami Maharaj leads a Diwali service at Neasden Temple on Oct. 20, 2017, in London, surrounded by piles of foods. This temple is the largest Hindu temple outside India and hosts annual Diwali celebrations for the approximately 835,000 Hindus living in Britain. Carl Court/Getty Images

In addition to celebrating these historic victories, Diwali is a time to welcome the goddess Lakshmi into the home. Lakshmi is the goddess of prosperity, abundance and well-being, and part of Diwali is dedicated to worshipping her and receiving her blessings for the coming year.

In the West, Diwali lands on a different date each year because it's based on the lunar calendar. In India, the holiday always falls on the 15th of Kartik, the first month of the Hindu lunar calendar. The date corresponds with the first new moon of the lunar New Year, a normally dark night that's filled with light as the world celebrates Diwali.

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A Month of Frenzy, Food and Family

While Diwali itself is a five-day celebration  the third day is the climax  the anticipation and run-up to Diwali can last a full month. In that way, it's not unlike the month(s)-long countdown to Christmas.

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, grew up in the United States and remembers the mixture of excitement and dread that accompanied every Diwali season.

"There's a frenzy that leads up to Diwali," says Shukla, who as a kid wasn't a fan of the pre-Diwali traditional of cleaning the house from top to bottom to welcome Lakshmi. And while she adored all of the special Diwali snacks and sweets, she didn't understand why the family had to start cooking weeks before the holiday began.

But Shukla will never forget the pride her parents felt in preserving the culinary and cultural traditions of their home state of Gujarat, or the warm feelings of family and community when Diwali finally arrived.

"It was all worth it," says Shukla, "just knowing that our doors would be open, that we'd essentially host open houses where friends and family would visit and eat, and that we would be doing the same at their houses."

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It's Not 'Hindu Hanukkah'

Since it's called the "Festival of Lights," it's tempting to describe Diwali as a Hindu version of Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday that also falls around Christmas. And Shukla admits that even Hindus sometimes use Hanukkah as a useful starting point for a conversation about Diwali.

"In some sense, all of these festivals at a very core level are celebrating these positive values of righteousness or goodness," says Shukla.

But the lamp-lighting aspect of Diwali isn't really the same as lighting the menorah on the eight nights of the Jewish holiday. While traditional oil lamps called diya are lit during Diwali, it's done more as a decoration than a religious ritual, and lights of all kinds are popular during Diwali, including strings of colorful holiday lights, sparklers and firecrackers.

" " A little girl holds a firecracker during a Divali celebration on Oct. 30, 2016, in Mumbai, India. It's popular to light firecrackers and let off fireworks during this festival. Allison Joyce/Getty Images

The central ritual of Diwali is the Lakshmi Puja, a prayer offering made to the goddess Lakshmi on a small home altar. During the ceremony, grains, sweets, flowers and spices are presented to Lakshmi in return for her blessings of health and wealth. Since Diwali coincides with a new fiscal year in many parts of India, business owners will ask the goddess to bless their ledgers for a profitable new year.

Another beloved Diwali tradition is creating a colorfully patterned rangoli to welcome guests into your house. These creative floor decorations are made with colored powders or sand, spices, beans and lentils, and range from simple flower motifs to more intricate designs.

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Diwali Foods and Gifts

"The two words that come to mind to describe Diwali foods are 'fried' and 'crunchy,'" says Shukla, whose favorite is an empanada-like treat called ghughra, which her mom still ships to her from California.

"Ghughra are these crescent-shaped pastries filled with sugar, coconut, cardamon, saffron, nuts and raisins," says Shukla. "They're deep-fried and crunchy and just so good. They are quintessentially Diwali."

Exchanging small gifts while visiting family and friends is part of the Diwali tradition, but Lakshmi isn't Santa Claus, insists Shukla, and Indian children don't wake up on Diwali morning to a pile of gifts.

That said, Diwali is the biggest shopping season of the year, with huge holiday sales on clothing and housewares at stores both in India and in larger Indian-American communities like Jackson Heights, New York, and San Jose, California.

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Diwali in Diaspora

In India, Diwali is mostly observed among close family and friends, but in the Indian diaspora it's evolved into a community-wide celebration of Indian culture.

" " Indian dancers perform in an LED illuminated dance show as thousands of people gather on Leicester's Golden Mile to watch the switching on of the lights to mark the start of Diwali on Oct. 16, 2016, in Leicester, England. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Shukla says that Hindu and Indian-American cultural organizations will organize large Diwali festivals to showcase and preserve traditional Indian performing arts.

"I remember my mom choreographing dances from Gujarat and teaching them to my cousins and I to perform at the local Diwali program," says Shukla.

While some Diwali cultural festivals are held at Hindu temples, larger Indian communities in the U.S. and the U.K. now hold city-wide Diwali festivals complete with food, free concerts and fireworks.

Now That's Cool The fifth day of Diwali is called Bhai Duj and was traditionally the day men visited their married sisters to see that they were being treated well. It's traditional for brothers to give their sisters gifts on this day.

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Originally Published: Oct 25, 2019
" " Tomb Guards assigned to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment walk the plaza at sunrise at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Arlington National Cemetery, on Jan. 31, 2019. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Jacob Plank

The 3rd U.S. Infantry Division is the oldest active-duty infantry regiment in the nation. It is the Army's official ceremonial unit and the escort to the president. Known as The Old Guard, select 3rd Infantry soldiers also are assigned to a platoon with perhaps the most solemn duty in the armed forces: guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

Each year, more than 3 million tourists stream into Arlington National, which sits just west of Washington D.C., to visit the Tomb of the Unknowns. There, Sentinels of the 3rd U.S. Infantry have stood guard every minute of every day since July 2, 1937. They've stood through snowfalls and hurricanes. They were witness as terrorists flew a plane into the nearby Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The vigil remains unbroken to honor the sacrifice of the unknowns," Maj. Stephen C. Von Jett, the director of public affairs for the regiment, says in a email, "because they gave their very identities for our nation."

But visitors aren't allowed to approach the Tomb. Presidents and dignitaries often place flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but members of the public aren't allowed that close (see sidebar).

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The Story Behind the Tomb

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as it is today, contains the remains of more than one soldier. Once, it honored a soldier who later was identified.

The idea of a tomb for unknowns began in March of 1921, after Congress OK'd the building of a tomb on the plaza of the newly built Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington. The original idea was to honor an unidentified soldier killed in World War I. The Army exhumed four soldiers from American cemeteries in France on Memorial Day of that year, and chose one for the spot in Arlington in an elaborate ceremony in the city hall of Chalons-sur-Marne, France, on Oct. 24, 1921. After the casket was transported to the U.S. via the Navy cruiser USS Olympia, President Warren G. Harding presided over the internment ceremonies on Nov. 11, 1921.

A white marble sarcophagus was placed over the grave, with this inscription on the west side:

Here Rests in Honored Glory

An American Soldier

Known But To God



Over the years, to the west of the original tomb, three other graves were erected, marked with white marble slabs that are flush to the ground. These honor the unknown dead of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

The soldiers in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are among more than 5,000 unidentified soldiers buried throughout the 624 acres of Arlington National Cemetery.

"Generally, their gravestones read 'Unknown' and then what service the unknown served with, if known. If known, there will be a date of demise," Von Jett says of the other unknowns at Arlington. "We recently placed a flag on every gravesite for Memorial Day during 'Flags-In.' I've seen hundreds of unknown markers myself. Some are just right next to the tomb plaza."

The ceremonial unknowns of WWII and Korea were interred at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1958, and the Vietnam War unknown was ceremoniously interred on Memorial Day in 1984.

In 1998, after investigations pointed to the identity of the Vietnam unknown, the remains were exhumed and later positively identified, through DNA testing, as those of 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie of St. Louis, Missouri, a pilot shot down over Vietnam in 1972. Blassie's remains were returned to his family. He was reinterred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery on the banks of the Mississippi in St. Louis County, Missouri.

The Army made the decision to leave the Vietnam crypt empty. The cover has been replaced with one with this inscription:

Honoring and Keeping Faith with America's Missing Servicemen, 1958-1975

According to Von Jett, no plans exist for any further disinternments of unknowns from any previous wars.

These days, a DNA sample is now taken from every service member upon joining the armed forces, which helps identify fallen soldiers. "It may be that forensics science has reached the point where there will be no other unknowns in any war," former Secretary of Defense William Cohen told reporters after Blassie was returned home in 1998.

"The U.S. Army has made great strides when it comes to Service member identification," Von Jett says. "While some incidents might make initial identification of remains challenging, there are no unknowns from current or recent conflict."

" " Tomb Sentinels continue guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the wind, rain, snow and extreme cold. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Gabriel Silva

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Those Who Guard the Tomb

Standing vigil over the unknowns are the Tomb Guard Sentinels of The Old Guard, a hand-picked group of Army soldiers who are arduously trained and fiercely dedicated to honoring the memory of those who gave their lives for their country.

Watching the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is both awe inspiring and sobering. Whether it's in the dead of summer in front of thousands of sweaty tourists or at midnight in the dark of winter, the Sentinels carry out their duty with remarkable precision.

On every hour in the winter while Arlington is open, and on every half-hour in the summer (April 1 through Sept. 30), the soldiers move through an intricately choreographed ceremony that includes a rifle inspection and the literal changing of the guard. Once the ceremony is complete, the Sentinel who has come on in relief begins the slow and steady walk down a mat beside the tomb, rifle on shoulder, until the next change. (After-hours at Arlington, a Sentinel sometimes walks a longer shift, but a soldier is always on guard.)

The guard's walk consists of 21 slow steps (these refer to the 21-gun salute, the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary), a sharp military turn, a heel click, a 21-second pause while facing the tomb, another turn and another 21-second stop before beginning the 21 steps to the other end of the mat. The soldier's rifle is switched to the shoulder farthest from the tomb, between the tomb and any threat.

The Honor Guard has three groups, or "reliefs," which each include a relief commander (who addresses onlookers and announces the Changing of the Guard) and about six Sentinels. They currently do a 26 hours on, 22 hours off schedule for six days before they take a 96-hour "administrative" block before starting again. They train every day, even when they're off. When they're on, but not on the plaza, they're performing many daily rituals in preparation of their walk, including pressing and steaming their uniforms, buffing their medals and decorations, and practicing their rifle movements.

That's every day, 24 hours a day, since 1937, whether anyone's watching or not.

"I've been on the plaza when no one was there but me and the guard. I've been there with thousands packed shoulder to shoulder," Von Jett says. "Both are special, and I recommend both experiences."

" " Members of the public are allowed to lay flowers and pay their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the first time in almost 100 years in honor of the Tomb's centennial commemoration. Elizabeth Fraser/U.S. Army photo by Elizabeth Fraser

NOW THAT'S AWESOME For the first time in 96 years, members of the public can pay their respects up close to Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In conjunction with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Centennial Commemoration, the public will be allowed to walk on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier plaza and lay flowers Nov. 9 and 10, 2021.

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Originally Published: Jun 5, 2019
" " 'Intersectionality' is a term that some people affirm and others abhor. Wikimedia Commons

Before 2015, relatively few people had ever heard the word "intersectionality," first coined in 1989 as a legal term to describe intersecting areas of discrimination.

Fast-forward to today's internet-fueled culture wars, in which "intersectional" has taken on a life of its own. The once-obscure legal term has now become as politically weaponized on Twitter as "social justice warrior," "alt-right," and "identity politics," and demonized by critics as a "neo-Marxist religion" and "the biggest problem in America."

But how did this happen? How did intersectionality evolve from a relatively uncontroversial legal distinction to politically polarizing buzzword?

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Shining a Light on Discrimination

Let's start at the beginning. The term intersectionality was first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, a lawyer, law professor and civil rights activist. In 1989, she wrote an influential paper that identified a glaring hole in antidiscrimination law. The law recognized categories such as racial discrimination and gender discrimination, but was blind to situations in which two or more of those categories overlapped.

Take the case of DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, which Crenshaw cited in a 2016 TED Talk as an example of where the law fell short of delivering justice. In this case, a black woman named Emma DeGraffenreid was denied a job at a local car manufacturing plant and sued on the basis of discrimination. The judge threw out the case citing that the plant had a record of hiring both black people and women, so she had no grounds to sue.

But the judge missed the point, argued Crenshaw. Yes, the plant hired black people, but those were all black men hired for industrial or maintenance work. And yes, the plant hired women, but those were white women who worked as secretaries. But black women didn't fit into either of those narrow hiring categories, so they were effectively barred from employment at the plant.

" " Kimberle Crenshaw speaks onstage during the New York Women's Foundation's 2018 "Celebrating Women" breakfast in New York City. Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The New York Women's Foundation

Since there wasn't a word yet for this overlapping of identities that combined to form new, hybrid categories of discrimination, Crenshaw invented one. She called it "intersectionality."

"Intersectionality was a prism to bring to light dynamics within discrimination law that weren't being appreciated by the courts," Crenshaw said. "In particular, courts seem to think that race discrimination was what happened to all black people across gender and sex discrimination was what happened to all women, and if that is your framework, of course, what happens to black women and other women of color is going to be difficult to see."

So, in its original sense, intersectionality was a legal framework for seeing people whose identities and lived experiences are more complex, but who deserve equal treatment under the law.

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Intersectionality Goes Mainstream

Starting in the 1990s, academics began incorporating intersectionality theory into the social sciences. Up until that point, there was a tendency to study the experiences of different racial, ethnic or religious groups as homogenous blocks, says Mary Romero, a professor of justice studies and social inquiry at Arizona State University and author of "Introducing Intersectionality."

"The essentialist approach said that 'all Latinos are like this' without considering that there are all of these intersections of age, citizenship, sexuality and disability," says Romero, "so there's not a monolithic experience."

By examining the specific experiences of LGBTQ Latinos, undocumented Latinos, rich Latinos and poor Latinos, social scientists came up with data that could be used to inform important public policy decisions, like immigration.

"If we're going to look at immigration policy and see the ways in which it needs to be changed, we have to take into consideration all the various conditions," says Romero. "The argument would be, if you want to be inclusive and you want to be just, the policy has to exist without privileging one group over another."

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Enter the Activists

Kimberle Crenshaw may not have invented the word intersectionality as a call for social justice, but even she came to see it that way. In her TED Talk, Crenshaw spoke about violence perpetrated against black women, and how this violence is often invisible in the national discussion about implicit racial bias and policing. She asked why Michael Brown and Tamir Rice were household names, but not Michelle Cusseaux or Tanisha Anderson, two unarmed black women also killed by police.

Again, Crenshaw explained how intersectionality provides a prism or frame in which to see people whose experiences are often overlooked.

"Without frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer in virtual isolation," said Crenshaw.

The intersectionality mantra has been taken up by a lot of progressive organizations fighting for social equity and social justice. There is a growing recognition that not all of the members of an activist group fall into the same tidy categories or share the same experiences in the world.

At YW Boston, a community organization that grew out of one of the nation's oldest chapters of the YWCA, they say that intersectionality is "crucial" to social equity work.

"Without an intersectional lens, events and movements that aim to address injustice towards one group may end up perpetuating systems of inequities towards other groups," says a post on the YW Boston blog

As an example, it cited the 2017 Women's March, which caught flack from transgender members of the movement because of its "vagina-centric" messaging (remember the "pussy hats"?).

"Assuming that all women have vaginas or are defined by their bodies is an oversimplification that erases the experiences of those who exist beyond the gender binary," writes YW Boston. "By avoiding language that assumes our own experiences are baseline, we can open ourselves up to listening to others' points of view."

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The Backlash Against Intersectionality

The embrace of intersectionality by the left has led to a backlash on the right. Critics of intersectionality don't see it as a way of including or "seeing" a broader diversity of experiences, but as a type of political correctness on steroids. The goal of intersectionality, as conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro see it, is to pit people against each other in a kind of "oppression Olympics."

"[Intersectionality] is a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to," says Shapiro in a video. "At the bottom of the totem pole is the person everybody loves to hate: the straight white male." He goes on to say that a gay black trans woman who is also Muslim would rank above a gay black trans woman who wasn't. "The more memberships you can claim in oppressed groups, the more aggrieved you are and the higher you rank."

Conservative writer Andrew Sullivan called intersectionality a new "religion" imposed on liberal college campuses in which anyone not sufficiently "woke" is shunned and their voices silenced.

"[Intersectionality's] version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others," wrote Sullivan. "To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., 'check your privilege,' and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay."

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Getting Intersectionality Right

Romero at Arizona State says that both campus activists and their critics often miss the point of intersectionality. Romero says that she's definitely had students who misuse intersectionality as a way of separating the oppressed from the oppressors.

"I have always corrected them by using myself as an example," says Romero. "There are times when I am disadvantaged and other times when I have advantages over other people. It's very rare to find somebody who has absolutely no advantages in any situation."

The target of intersectionality shouldn't be the individual, Romero explains, but the structure in which the individual lives, works or studies. Is the structure designed to privilege only one type of person or does it give everyone equal access?

Seen that way, even Shapiro's vilified "straight white male" benefits from some of those "liberal" intersectional policies.

"What's the white male's age, their class, their citizenship?" asks Romero, "As we all get older, for example, we have certain structural disadvantages that we share with people who are disabled."

In the most just and equitable version of our world, we all hope that there are policies and institutions in place that "see" all of us in the various circumstances of our lives and give us all a fair crack at happiness.

Now That's Cool If you want to learn more about how intersectionality can be used for good, check out "Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics" by Ange-Marie Hancock.
In this photo illustration, medicine pills in form of capsules are seen in a hand dressed in a medical glove, with a Merck & Co., Inc. logo of a pharmaceutical company in the background. (Photo by Pavlo Gonchar / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)

The UK has become the first country to approve an anti-viral pill to treat COVID.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recommended that the drug, molnupiravir, be used as soon as possible following a positive COVID-19 test and within five days of the onset of symptoms.

Molnupiravir is the first dedicated oral antiviral treatment for COVID.

The government and the NHS will confirm how it will be deployed to patients in due course.

Watch: UK shows interest in antiviral pill molnupiravir after trial shows it halves rate of hospital admission and death

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said the "game-changing" treatment would be used for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed.

He added: This antiviral will be an excellent addition to our armoury against COVID-19, and it remains vital everyone comes forward for their life-saving COVID-19 vaccine - particularly those eligible for a booster - to ensure as many people as possible are protected over the coming months.

Read more: WHO Europe chief voices 'grave concern' about COVID rebound

MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said the approval of a drug that can be taken orally rather than intravenously was important as it meant the drug could be administered outside of a hospital setting before COVID-19 progresses to a serious stage.

Developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), molnupiravir works by interfering with the virus replication. This prevents it from multiplying, keeping virus levels low in the body and therefore reducing the severity of the disease.

Dr June Raine, Chief Executive of the MHRA, said the approval was an important step as it meant it can be administered outside of a hospital setting before COVID-19 has progressed to a severe stage. (Getty)

It has been authorised for use in people who have mild to moderate COVID-19 and at least one risk factor for developing severe illness. Such risk factors include obesity, older age (>60 years), diabetes mellitus, or heart disease.

The government announced last month that it had secured 480,000 courses of molnupiravir after a study found it cut the rate of hospital admission and death by 50% in mild-to-moderately ill patients who had at least one risk factor for the disease.

Story continues

In the study, the tablet was given twice a day to patients recently diagnosed with coronavirus.

Dr Raine said: "Following a rigorous review of the data by our expert scientists and clinicians, we are satisfied that Lagevrio (molnupiravir) is safe and effective for those at risk of developing severe COVID-19 disease and have granted its approval.

"Lagevrio is another therapeutic to add to our armoury against COVID-19.

"It is also the worlds first approved anti-viral for this disease that can be taken by mouth rather than administered intravenously.

"This is important, because it means it can be administered outside of a hospital setting, before COVID-19 has progressed to a severe stage.

"With no compromises on quality, safety and effectiveness, the public can trust that the MHRA has conducted a robust and thorough assessment of the data."

In October, the UK secured deals for two COVID-19 antivirals, one developed by Merck and the other by Pfizer, which it said could be used to treat patients by the end of the year if regulatory approval is granted.

Watch: How the world could be better after COVID
Credit: Pixabay

A "short squeeze" happens in the market when investors bet against a stock that aggressively increases in price, causing these sellers to cut losses and exit their positions.

The biggest short squeeze in history occurred in 2008 when Porsche embarked on an unexpected series of maneuvers that left it controlling a huge percentage of Volkswagen's (VW) stock. This briefly made VW the most valuable listed company in the world.

"In a short squeeze situation, when the price starts increasing rapidlywhich goes against short seller strategyshort sellers usually get scared, and they try to cover by buying the stock in the open market at a loss, which pushes up the price even further," said Angel Tengulov, assistant professor of finance at the University of Kansas School of Business.

"What we're documenting is how this short squeeze event led to distortion in market quality and price discovery of the underlying stock."

His paper titled "Market Efficiency and Limits to Arbitrage: Evidence from the Volkswagen Short Squeeze" analyzes this domination plan involving the two German auto giants. He and co-authors Franklin Allen, Marlene Haas and Eric Nowak argue this was a manipulation designed to save Porsche from insolvency, and the laws designed to prevent this kind of abuse were not effectively enforced, resulting in significantly impeded market efficiency. It's published in the October issue of the Journal of Financial Economics.

"If we take a step back, we can differentiate between information-based stock manipulation and action-based stock manipulation. Both types were ruled out in the United States by the introduction of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934," he said.

The Porsche-VW paper primarily focuses on the European securities market. Tengulov contends that if the EU (and Germany in particular) wants to develop and maintain well-functioning capital markets, strict disclosure requirements must be put in place.

"More importantly, they need strict enforcement of securities laws. As a recent example, we have the Wirecard AG scandal, which has the potential to turn out to be the biggest accounting fraud and corporate governance scandal in Europe," he said.

Tengulov and his co-authors spent months collecting data from court proceedings, translating it from German into English, then analyzing the results.

"One interesting aspect of this research for me is how companies can use financial derivatives in mergers and acquisitions," said Tengulov, who earned a doctorate in finance from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and speaks German fluently.

"What really happened was that Porsche, a company 10 times smaller than the size of VW by sales, was trying to acquire majority voting interest in VW partially through cash-settled financial derivatives, which were completely in stealth mode."

At the time, the regulations in Europe were structured so companies did not have to disclose ownership in other companies through such financial derivatives if that did not exceed a certain threshold. Porsche managed to accumulate approximately a 43% stake in VW with options to buy an additional 31%.

"When they disclosed that to the market, everybody was absolutely surprised," he said.

A native of Bulgaria, Tengulov joined KU this summer. He said he does not own a Porsche but does drive a VW. ("The German translation of Volkswagen means 'people's car,'" he said.)

"One important lesson of this research is that short squeezes are not a phenomenon of the past," he said. "Another even more recent example is the January 2021 events surrounding GameStop, AMC and other companies that happened in the U.S."

Tengulov emphasizes most people are not truly aware of the fact that social media platforms can act as a coordination device for retail investors (among others), which in turn can have huge market impact.

"This is a gray area, and U.S. regulators are in the process of establishing the extent to which the coordination was in accordance with stock market regulations," he said.

"Regulators really must think about what would be an effective framework and an effective way to enforce this framework in order to prevent market-distorting events such as short squeezes from happening."

Explore further SEC report questions trading apps after GameStop frenzy

More information: Franklin Allen et al, Market efficiency and limits to arbitrage: Evidence from the Volkswagen short squeeze, Journal of Financial Economics (2021). Journal information: Journal of Financial Economics Franklin Allen et al, Market efficiency and limits to arbitrage: Evidence from the Volkswagen short squeeze,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.05.015
Blue-tailed damselflies (Ischnura elegans). Credit: Erik Svensson

Many insect species are currently expanding their geographical ranges in response to climate change. In the northern hemisphere, most of these species are moving northward, to escape the warming climate in the south.

New habitat colonization occurs first with only a few establishing individuals. Consequently, the new populations are usually genetically poorer than the more central populations.

Other factors can also lead to genetic diversity loss. One of these may be the spread of the symbiotic bacterium Wolbachia in the quite common blue-tailed damselfly Ischnura elegans.

Wolbachia is a common endosymbiotic bacterium in insects, and it is naturally present in more than 40 percent of all insect species across the globe. Wolbachia is highly prevalent in the damselfly populations in Western Europe and Fennoscandia, but less common in East Europe and the Mediterranean.

"Blue-tailed damselfly has been the study system of over 6,000 scientific studies, but until now, no one had ever investigated whether the species was hosting endosymbiotic bacteria. This is important to study because if the symbionts remain hidden in this system, research studies could be associating some results directly to the host ecology or evolutionary biology, when they are actually linked to the bacterium and only indirectly to the host," says study author Junchen Deng, MSc, now doing his Ph.D. at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

In a new study, the researchers used genetic markers to show that the Ischnura elegans populations carrying Wolbachia were genetically less diverse than the uninfected populations.

"In addition, the more central populations had reduced genetic diversity, not just the populations at the edge of the species' range," explains Dr. Anne Duplouy, Academy Fellow at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki. She also supervised Junchen Deng's master's thesis at Lund University, Sweden.

A Wolbachia infection is often beneficial to infected insect females and can lead the Wolbachia-free host lineages to extinction.

"The goal of a symbiont is extremely selfish: it has to spread in its host population. Microbial symbionts have thus evolved a huge diversity of phenotypes to improve their spread in the host populations. For example, they can kill the brothers to release food resources to their sisters, they can make infected males incompatible with uninfected females but compatible with infected females, they can change males into females, they can improve the resistance of infected females against pathogens such as viruses, and so on," Anne Duplouy describes.

As to damselflies and Wolbachia, there is much that is yet unknown.

"We still have no clear idea of how the bacterium manipulates the infected damselflies to its own benefit. But maybe, more importantly, this study shows how the bacterium could tamper with the success of its host in escaping and surviving a changing environment," Erik Svensson, professor in evolutionary biology at Lund University points out.

"Indeed, if the source population is already low in genetic diversity, for example due to a hidden factor such as an infection with Wolbachia, the success of new colonization might be reduced. With that comes a reduced ability of the host species to expand their range and escape climate change in their native habitats," concludes Anne Duplouy.

Explore further One insect species introduced decades ago to a small island had an effect on several insect populations

More information: Junchen Deng et al, Wolbachia-driven selective sweep in a range expanding insect species, BMC Ecology and Evolution (2021). Journal information: BMC Ecology and Evolution Junchen Deng et al, Wolbachia-driven selective sweep in a range expanding insect species,(2021). DOI: 10.1186/s12862-021-01906-6
Credit: University of Cambridge

This month sees COP26 bringing together nations and representatives to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This month also marks the launch of the sign-up process to the Carbon Reduction Code for the Built Environment that offers organizations a collaborative and supportive approach to reducing carbon. Dee Dee Frawley, Program Manager for Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), urges organizations to commit to the Code.

COP26 is underway and much hope is invested in this important event to secure the world-wide solidarity needed to make the required commitment to address climate changereaching global net zero by mid-century and keeping 1.5C within reach.

The built environment has an important role to play in the move to decarbonisation. The sector is reported to be globally responsible for 36% of energy consumption, 38% of energy related carbon emissions, 50% of resource consumption, and expected to double in total footprint by 2060. Energy from fossil fuels consumed in the construction and operation of buildings accounts for approximately half of the UK's emissions of carbon dioxide, and the construction sector is the largest user of materials in the UK, producing the biggest waste stream in terms of tonnage.

There is no doubt that as a sector we need to do better and there are many excellent existing initiatives providing guidance to the sector including the ICE Carbon Project, Construction Innovation Hub Value Toolkit, Infrastructure Carbon Review Seven Years On report, RICS Building Carbon Database, and the Construction Leadership Council's Co2nstructZero program to name a few.

The Carbon Reduction Code for the Built Environment, which forms part of Co2nstruct Zero, was published by CSIC in June this year to provide a mechanism that enables individual organizations to publicize their annual progress, and thereby collaborate and share best practice on their journey to net zero with the intention of accelerating progress across the industry.

Developed by the Achieving Net Zero Cross-Industry Working Group which was convened by CSIC in 2020 and includes more than 40 representatives from a diverse range of consultants, contractors, industry groups, sustainability experts and local and central government, the Code was devised to provide challenging yet practical ways to move the infrastructure and wider construction industry towards meeting the UK's goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and the Scottish government's goal of meeting net zero emissions by 2045.

The Code is designed to facilitate collaborative action towards reducing carbon emissions (CO2eq) related to the design, construction, maintenance and operation of built assets and, importantly, asks organizations to report annually on reducing emissions. Transparency at this level enables participating organizations to learn from each other, collaborate and share best practice. Creating a supportive community also invites organizations leading the field in net zero to offer support and guidance to others who are at an earlier stage of transition, including smaller companies which might lack the resources available to larger firms.

Following early trials by the National Association of Construction Frameworks (NACF), the Environment Agency, and Skanska Costain STRABG and HS2 Joint Venture, the Code has been further developed to reflect industry feedback and has now been reissued (Carbon Reduction Code for the Built Environment Issue 2021:2) and published on the CSIC website along with the sign-up process that offers three levels of commitment. There are three levels of compliance with the code: Pledger, Signatory and Champion. All organizations must be in accordance with the minimum entry level of compliance to attain Pledger status. This means agreeing to the core commitments of setting out plans to meet net zero by 2045, including annual targets, and publishing these and the progress made against them every year. Pledger level also requires setting an interim target to reduce net direct and indirect carbon emissions for 2030, which aligns with or exceeds government strategy. Signatory level requires signing up to additional core commitments relevant to the organizationbe it client or supply chain. Champion level sees commitments to more ambitious collaborative progress. To enable wide participation, organizations may join at a global, national or regional level or at a major project level.

Creating a community of built environment organizations to support the journey to net zero will help everyone to reach the destination of net zero. The more organizations that sign up to the Code the greater the difference we can make.

Explore further Mapping the path to carbon neutrality
Authors of a new study in the journal Science credit declining costs of solar panels, electric vehicles and forms of renewable energy as contributors to the reduced risk of global temperature change rising to 4 degrees Celsius. Here, the Horn Rapids Solar, Storage and Training Project in Richland, Washington, represents the state's first opportunity to integrate a utility-scale solar and storage facility into its clean mix of hydro, nuclear and wind resources. Credit: Andrea Starr / Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Over 100 nations have issued new commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP26, currently underway in Glasgow, Scotland.

A new analysis published today in the journal Science assessed those new pledges, or nationally determined commitments (NDCs), and how they could shape Earth's climate. The study's authors find the latest NDCs could chart a course where limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and under within this century is now significantly more likely.

Under pledges made at the 2015 Paris Agreement, the chances of limiting temperature change to below 2 and 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 were 8 and 0 percent, respectively.

Under the new pledgesand if those pledges are successfully fulfilled and reinforced with policies and measures of equal or greater ambitionthe study's authors estimate those chances now rise to 34 and 1.5 percent, respectively. If countries strike a more ambitious path beyond 2030, those probabilities become even more likely, rising to 60 and 11 percent, respectively.

Further, the chance of global temperatures rising above 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) could be virtually eliminated. Under the 2015 pledges, the probability of such warming was, at 10 percent, more likely.

"We are so much closer to getting to the 2-degree goal than six years ago when the Paris Agreement was first signed," said corresponding author Haewon McJeon, a research scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "The wave of strengthened climate pledges and net-zero targets significantly increased our chance of staying under 2 degrees Celsius. And we practically ruled out the possibility of the worst climate outcomes of 4 degrees or higher."

But making the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit more likely will take more ambition, cautioned lead author Yang Ou, a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a partnership between PNNL and the University of Maryland.

"We find there's a roughly one in three chance that we'll stay under 2 degrees Celsius," said Ou. "But even with increased ambition, we're still far away from getting down to 1.5 degrees in this century."

The researchers used an open-source model called the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to simulate a spectrum of emissions scenarios. They then evaluated the probabilistic temperature outcomes for those scenarios.

At one end of the spectrum is a hypothetical future in which current climate mitigation measures and policies remain largely the same through 2100. At the other, nations commit to more ambitious targets for limiting emissions and increasing the global decarbonization rate. Such modeling illustrates the range of climate outcomes that lie beyond different courses of action.

The road ahead

Several factors reshaped near-term emissions trajectories and long-term climate outcomes, the authors said. Examples include the worldwide shift away from coal to technological advances that made solar panels and electric vehicles less costly. These developments, they said, have helped bring the goals of the Paris Agreement closer to fruition.

Even under a scenario in which no new emission mitigation policies take place through 2100, this century's emissions are projected to be lower than previous estimates, largely due to post-2015 developments like reduced coal power investment and the reduced cost of renewable energy.

"New commitments, technological advances, and the near- and long-term recovery from the pandemic have set us on a different course than what laid before us at the 2015 Paris Agreement," said co-lead author and PNNL research scientist Gokul Iyer. "But if we adopt more ambitious goals that truly reflect the common but differentiated responsibilities across all parties, that gives us a better than even chance of staying under 2 degrees Celsius."

"And this highlights the importance of the Glasgow meeting," Iyer added. "Without periodic and transparent updates, we won't get the commitments strong enough to meet the temperature goal."

The research team brought together researchers from PNNL with researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Action Tracker, the University of Maryland, the University of Melbourne, and Imperial College London.

"This was an all-out team effort among the scientists and policy experts with extensive knowledge of ongoing international discussions on climate policies," McJeon added. "We brought together the policy analysts who track each country's climate commitments with the modelers who simulate global greenhouse gas emission activities and the climate response to these increased emissions. It really shows the importance of collaborative science."

More information: Yang Ou et al, Can updated climate pledges limit warming well below 2C?, Science (2021). Journal information: Science Yang Ou et al, Can updated climate pledges limit warming well below 2C?,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abl8976
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

While biologists and chemists race to develop new antibiotics to combat constantly mutating bacteria, predicted to lead to 10 million deaths by 2050, engineers are approaching the problem through a different lens: finding naturally occurring antibiotics in the human genome.

The billions of base pairs in the genome are essentially one long string of code that contains the instructions for making all of the molecules the body needs. The most basic of these molecules are amino acids, the building blocks for peptides, which in turn combine to form proteins. However, there is still much to learn about howand wherea particular set of instructions are encoded.

Now, bringing a computer science approach to a life science problem, an interdisciplinary team of Penn researchers have used a carefully designed algorithm to discover a new suite of antimicrobial peptides, hiding deep within this code.

The study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, was led by Cesar de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor in Bioengineering, Microbiology, Psychiatry, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, spanning both Penn Engineering and Penn Medicine, and his postdocs Marcelo Torres and Marcelo Melo. Collaborators Orlando Crescenzi and Eugenio Notomista of the University of Naples Federico II also contributed to this work.

"The human body is a treasure trove of information, a biological dataset. By using the right tools, we can mine for answers to some of the most challenging questions," says de la Fuente. "We use the word 'encrypted' to describe the antimicrobial peptides we found because they are hidden within larger proteins that seem to have no connection to the immune system, the area where we expect to find this function."

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are small, naturally occurring molecules, produced by almost every living organism. Because of their ability to defend the body from infection, identifying new AMPs has been an active area of research, but traditional search methods, mostly based on chemical intuition and experimentation, have limited the discovery of peptide antibiotics beyond conventional AMPs.

"In this study, we applied a new way of using AI for antibiotic discovery in previously unrecognized places. What better place to start than by exploring our very own biological information, the collection of genes and proteins that make us who we are," says de la Fuente.

The researchers' approach started with the physiochemical characteristics all AMPs have in common: They are 8 to 50 amino acids in length, positively charged, and possess both hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts. This new method operates like a search function to identify peptides with antimicrobial properties in genomes and proteomes.

"Imagine you want to find a specific word in a huge Word document such as an encyclopedia. You would simply use the search function, set the parameters for the text you are looking for, and the algorithm would rapidly highlight all of the areas in the document that match," says de la Fuente. "That's essentially the approach we took when searching for new antibiotics. We knew the sort of molecules we were looking for, and utilized the algorithm to act like a search function to find them throughout the human body".

The algorithm searched the proteome, the complete set of proteins in the body, and returned 43,000 peptides of 8 to 50 amino acids in length, many of which were found in a new region of the proteome all together. This wide scope of potential antimicrobials was then filtered to 2,603 peptides based on their fitness function inclusive of all the parameters.

To validate the antimicrobial properties of these algorithm-derived peptides, 55 were synthesized and exposed to eight different pathogens including E. coli and bacteria that cause staph infection and pneumonia.

"We found that 63.6% of these 55 encrypted peptides displayed antimicrobial activity," says de la Fuente. "Interestingly, these peptides not only fought off infection by some of the most harmful bacteria in the world, they also targeted gut and skin commensal organisms that are beneficial to us. We speculate that this could be indicative of a microbiota modulating role that these peptides may possess as well."

The team also tested the ability of the peptides to act synergistically and found that cocktails of peptides derived from the same biogeographic area within the body were able to potentiate their individual ability to fight off infection by 100-fold.

"This synergistic effect is likely already happening in our bodies," says de la Fuente. "Some of the peptides discovered by our algorithm exhibited antimicrobial activity at levels that are physiologically relevant. These molecules are found throughout the body, including the immune system. A surprising finding was that these peptides were not only encoded in the immune system but were also found in the digestive, circulatory, and nervous systems, for example, indicating that fighting off infections caused by invading organisms may be a more holistic approach than previously thought."

When tested in vivo in relevant preclinical mouse models, these peptides again proved to fend off infection, decreasing the bacterial load by three orders of magnitude, an ability on par with known potent antibiotics and AMPs. Additionally, using these peptides as antibiotics in the mouse models did not lead to any signs of toxicity.

As one of the main concerns of antibiotic discovery, bacterial resistance was the next challenge the researchers addressed.

"Because these encrypted peptides have potential to be applied as natural antibiotics, we need to understand how they influence the mutation of bacteria to understand if they will promote resistance," says de la Fuente. "What we found was that these encrypted molecules attack bacteria by permeating their outer membranes, an integral organelle for survival. This more damaging membrane permeation would require a great amount of energy and multiple generations of mutations to create resistance in bacteria, indicating that these newly discovered peptides are good candidates for sustainable antibiotics."

By understanding that certain proteins under certain circumstances can be cleaved to secrete encrypted peptides, we can improve our understanding of the human body's ability to naturally protect itself against infection while conserving energy at the genomic level, where one gene encodes for one protein, which can perform many useful functions beyond its initial physiological role.

"This work highlights that every organism is a dataset of code to which AI can be applied to find relevant molecules," says de la Fuente. "This tool can potentially be applied to 'omes' other than the genome and proteome, such as the transcriptome and metabolome, to quickly and thoroughly search a wide range of places for those molecules, whether they be antimicrobial, anti-cancer or anti-viral, opening new doors in many areas of drug discovery and molecular research."

Explore further Screen of human proteins reveals some with antimicrobial power

More information: Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez, Mining for encrypted peptide antibiotics in the human proteome, Nature Biomedical Engineering (2021). www.nature.com/articles/s41551-021-00801-1 Journal information: Nature Biomedical Engineering Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez, Mining for encrypted peptide antibiotics in the human proteome,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-021-00801-1
Vampire bat allogrooming. Credit: Oasalehm/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

A combined team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and The Ohio State University, has found evidence of convergence toward a social gut microbiome among vampire bats. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, the group describes their study of fecal samples collected from vampire bats from several zoos and in several wild locations.

In recent years, medical scientists have found that the gut biome plays a much bigger role in overall human health than previously assumed. These findings have led to more studies of the gut biome in both humans and other mammals. In this new effort, the researchers wondered about the impact of close social living on the gut biomes of mammals such as vampire bats.

Vampire bats survive by eating the blood of other animals. They are also social animals; not only do they live closely together, they also interact and groom one another, and at times, share food by regurgitating it mouth-to-mouth. To learn more about the impact of such close interaction on their gut biome, the researchers collected fecal samples from six zoos in the U.S., from 15 bats from several bat colonies in Belize, and another 31 from colonies in Panama. All of the samples underwent DNA sequencing to determine which microbes were living in the guts of the bats.

The researchers found the gut biomes of members of one colony of bats were more similar to one another than to those living in another colony. And bats that were particularly close in one colony had more similar gut biomes than other members of the same colony. The researchers also ran a small experiment in which they captured several bats from colonies in Panama and housed them together for four months. Fecal sample testing before and after showed that the gut biomes of all the bats had begun to converge.

Explore further Vampire bats may coordinate with 'friends' over a bite to eat

More information: Karthik Yarlagadda et al, Social convergence of gut microbiomes in vampire bats, Biology Letters (2021). Journal information: Biology Letters Karthik Yarlagadda et al, Social convergence of gut microbiomes in vampire bats,(2021). DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0389

 2021 Science X Network
Water depths in a 100-year flood for Winnipeg are 2 metres higher than regular flow. Credit: floodmapviewer.com

A Western University flood-control expert has developed the first Canada-wide maps showing how floodplainsincluding low-lying areas of major cities like Vancouver and Montrealmay become inundated in the next 80 years under various climate change scenarios.

About four million Canadians now live in flood-affected areasand they and others will be at increased risk in coming decades, the mapping data shows.

Engineering professor Slobodan Simonovic's mapping tool is a deep dive into one consequence of more frequent, and more intense, extreme weather induced by climate change.

"What we used to call 100-year floods in London, for example, are taking place now once every 30 years," he said. "Floods are killing people around the world, and in countries you wouldn't expect, such as Germany, the U.S. and Japan. A year's worth of rainfall recently fell, in just three days, in central China.

"And here in Canada, until now, we haven't had a nation-wide, standardized way of understanding the vulnerabilities of our own landscapes."

Simonovic said releasing the map tool is part of his personal commitment, and Western's newest contribution, to mitigating and adapting to the impact of climate change. At the same time, world leaders gather for COP26 climate meetings in Glasgow this week and next.

The maps are a visual distillation of almost 150,000 reference documentsincluding current and historical rainfall and snow-melt run-off data, topographic analyses, hydrodynamic modeling, urbanization and deforestation factors that impede effective drainage, plus a range of climate projections.

Using this data, Simonovic has superimposed on web-based maps current and future flood frequency, flood depths, flood inundation and flow velocity.

Users can search by postal code and zero in on neighborhoods, or explore specific watersheds to compare current 100-year flood zones to those forecast under worst-, mid- or best-case climate-change scenarios 60 years and 80 years from now.

"The message is very clear: Up to 30 percent more of Canada may be under water by 2100. And flood depth may increase by up to 60 percent," Simonovic said.

Flood depths forecast for 2100 at Winnipeg could more than double, at 4.4 metres higher than regular flow. Credit: floodmapviewer.com

In short, the unusualheavy deluges and unseasonal thaws that overwhelm streets, homes, sewers and damswill occur not once in a century but regularly, several times in a generation.

The maps identify the most vulnerable areas in one-square-kilometer grid segments: places where rivers are most likely to overflow their banks, and by how much.

They include:

The Assiniboine and Red rivers that converge on Winnipeg, Man. (where some of the country's most advanced flood-management systems protect the city by redirecting heavy flows to surrounding areas). At one location, 100-year flood levels rise from historical/current 1.93 to 4.4 meters under the climate scenario with maximum level of emissionsplacing a severe strain on Winnipeg's flood-management structures and inundating surrounding areas.

The Fraser River that runs through Vancouver, B.C. At one location in that city, historical 100-year floodwaters rise to a depth of 2.07 meters (above normal, non-flood seasons). Under a scenario where climate change continues at the current rate of carbon emissions, floodwaters rise to a depth of 3.19 meters

The Thames River in London, Ont., where a 100-year flood (based on current and historical data) now raises the water level at the forks of the Thames by 6.2 meters. From 20602100, the new normal 100-year flood depth becomes 7.6 meters.

Also vulnerable are streams in Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec, the Mackenzie and Lower Mackenzie Rivers of Northwest Territories and northern British Columbia; and much of the island of Montreal.

The consequences go beyond an increased risk of flooded basements and insurance claims, although that too is a significant consequence and cost, he said.

Such flooding directly jeopardizes human lives, he said. It can crumble bridges, wash away roads, overwhelm drinking-water and wastewater treatment facilities, and disrupt ecosystems for generations to come.

Understanding the location and extent of the risk can help insurers, engineers, homebuilders, conservation authorities, and municipal, provincial and federal governments plan better policies and stronger flood protection, he said.

It's one reason the Canadian government has committed $63 million over the next three years, through Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, to more detailed flood maps for high-risk areas.

An August report from the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change for the first time emphasized a much stronger connection between climate change and extreme weather than ever before, Simonovic noted.
Bushfires on December 31, 2019 burning along the eastcoast of Australia. The brown area is burned vegetation with awidth of about 50 km and a length of 100 km. Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

As compounding impacts from our worsening climate crisis become more visible around the globe, leading scientists have released the 10 most important new insights on the climate. "The 10 New Insights in Climate Science" series is a horizon scan of the most pressing research findings and emerging scientific insights to help inform immediate and equitable transformations across sectors to preserve a safe and habitable planet.

In a report presented today to Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the report's authors outlined some of the most important recent findings related to climate from across a wide range of disciplines.

Among these distinct but interrelated topics is the increase in megafires around the world as well as new justifications for the costs of rapid climate action, each accompanied by targeted policy recommendations at various scales of action.

"Whilst we are rapidly running out of time to limit climate change, this report shows that stabilizing at 1.5C is still possible, but only if immediate and drastic global action is taken," says Dr. Wendy Broadgate, Future Earth Global Hub Director, Sweden. "World leaders at COP26 must set aggressive goals for emissions reductionsnothing short of 50% greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 and net zero targets by 2040 is sufficient."

The report warns that we are on the verge of or already past the point of exhausting the carbon budget for exceeding global warming of 1.5C, with observed increases in methane and nitrous oxide emissions that may even set us on a path to 2.7C warming. As temperature warms, so too does the risk of carbon-feedback cycles that may lower the threshold climate tipping points, such as the observed rapid melting of the Antarctic Pine glacier that may result in sea level rise of 0.5 meters or more. Given that human and ecosystem health are inextricably linked, deep transformations of energy and consumption patterns are required that must also take into account justice and equity, including support for vulnerable populations.

New research, however, shows that the costs of mitigating climate change are far outweighed by immediate co-benefits to both people and planet, such as the restoration of natural ecosystemswhich also represent high economic valueas well as the many improvements to human health and well-being. For example, renewable energy transitions could dramatically lower the 6.67 million deaths caused by air pollution annually, while strong methane reductions could boost agricultural yields around the globe.

"Our knowledge of the climate system has grown rapidly in recent years, but policymaking has yet to catch up with these critical advances," says Prof. Detlef Stammer, Professor at the University of Hamburg and Joint Scientific Committee Chair of the World Climate Research Program. "This report's findings are a strong call to decision-makers to meet the urgency of the state of our climate and help put us back on a path to a sustainable future."

A key addition to this year's report is the inclusion of key implications for policy makers at global, regional, and local levels. For example, to better support household behavior changesa crucial but often overlooked opportunity for climate actionthe report recommends defining equitable "consumption corridors" through democratic processes that place the burden of demand-side changes on high-emitting consumer elites. Importantly, to stay within the critical 1.5C warming target, the report also recommends an aggressive mid-term goal of a global 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as well as an ambition of net-zero by 2040.

"COP26 is a pivotal moment in our relationship with nature, as this year's 10 New Insights in Climate Science makes clear," says Professor Peter Schlosser, Vice President and Vice Provost of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University and co-chair of the Earth League. "It is our hope that this summary of the latest research from scientists around the world can help drive the global transformations we so desperately need."

This year's top insights:

Stabilizing at 1.5C warming is still possible, but immediate and drastic global action is required. Rapid growth in methane and nitrous oxide emissions put us on track for 2.7C warming. Megafiresclimate change forces fire extremes to reach new dimensions with extreme impacts. Climate tipping elements incur high-impact risks. Global climate action must be just. Supporting household behavior changes is a crucial but often overlooked opportunity for climate action. Political challenges impede the effectiveness of carbon pricing. Nature-based solutions are critical for the pathway to Parisbut look at the fine print. Building resilience of marine ecosystems is achievable by climate-adapted conservation and management, and global stewardship. Costs of climate change mitigation can be justified by the multiple immediate benefits to the health of humans and nature.

"Science is clear, exceeding 1.5C of global warming poses major challenges for humans and societies around the world, and raises the risks of crossing critical tipping points that regulate the state of the climate system", says Professor Johan Rockstrom, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Co-Chair of the Earth League. "We do not know exactly at what temperature rise tipping elements shift from dampening to self-reinforcing global warming, but it is increasingly clear that we must stay as far away as possible from 2C. This makes tipping elements like the Greenland ice sheet and our large forest systems, our new global commons, which need to be governed by the world community, to secure our future on Earth."

More information: Full report: Full report: 10insightsclimate.science/
A model of the Lsd14 molecule derived from X-ray crystallography. In new papers, two teams of researchers studied natural assembly-line molecules, including Lsd14, that help build common antibiotic drugs. Credit: Saket Bagde

Every cell is a master builder, able to craft useful and structurally complex molecules, time and again and with astonishingly few mistakes. Scientists are keen to replicate this feat to build their own molecular factories, but first they'll need to understand it.

"We have thousands of these assembly lines in nature, and they all make unique compounds," said Dillon Cogan, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Stanford chemist Chaitan Khosla. "The dream is to one day be able to recombine pieces from different assembly lines so that we can make useful compounds not found in nature. To do that, we need to know the design principles that make these things work."

Now, two new studies from researchers at Stanford University, the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Texas, El Paso, and Cornell University have revealed more about how two such assembly lines maintain precise control.

Using some of the most sophisticated structural biology techniques available, Stanford researchers have learned more about how these molecule-making assembly lines maintains its precise control. The studies, published Nov. 5 in Science, reveal new details of how two such assembly lines propel growing molecules through the construction process.

The complex molecules in question are called polyketides, a category that includes drugs like statins and antibiotics like erythromycin. While cells synthesize polyketides with ease using assembly lines called synthases, their chemical complexity means chemists struggle to create them in the lab.

Each synthase can contain dozens of catalytic domains, the chemical stations along the assembly line that add pieces to and modify growing molecular chains.

Stopping the molecular wiggles

In one study, Khosla, Cogan and colleagues focused on a module from the assembly line that produces the antibiotic erythromycin. They wanted to see the molecule in many different shapes, each one corresponding to a stage in the assembly-line process. To do so, they turned to SLAC and Stanford professor Wah Chiu, an expert in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), a technique that images wiggling molecules frozen in place, allowing researchers to see them in many different forms at once.

Chiu was instantly intrigued. "These are amazingly complex molecular machines. There are so many components that have to come together at the right place and the right time, in a highly orchestrated way," Chiu said.

Cogan partnered with Kaiming Zhang, a former postdoctoral scholar in Chiu's group, to study their assembly line module at SLAC's Stanford-SLAC Cryo-Electron Microscopy facility.

After many of years of work, they got a glimpse of something unexpected: Each module is made up of pairs of enzymes, and one of these pairs is two molecular arms that extend out from the sides. These arms were thought to mirror one another in their poses. But in the module Zhang and Cogan examined, one arm extended out while the second arm flexed downward.

The scientists soon realized that the structure they were observing was actually the module in action.

The flexed arm appeared to be operating like the arm of a turnstile, keeping incoming molecules waiting until the module releases the one it is working on. The pent-up energy of the flexed arm may also help to propel the molecule to the next stage of the assembly line.

X-rays and cryo-EM working together

In a second study, University of Texas at El Paso, chemist Chu-Young Kim, SLAC scientist Irimpan Mathews, and Christopher Fromme from Cornell University examined one of the assembly line molecules responsible for building lasalocid A, a molecule produced by the bacterium Streptomyces lasalocidi and used as a veterinary antibiotic.

As with the Khosla lab's study, Kim and colleagues wanted to better understand how the bacteria's assembly line worked so that new drugs can be produced using engineered synthases.

But getting high-resolution images of an assembly line module, known as Lsd14, has been a major challenge, Mathews said. Lsd14 is very large, with 8 different locations along the assembly line module that add pieces to the final product. This makes it relatively susceptible to breaking apart before researchers can study it. Its size and flexibility also make high-resolution studies with X-ray crystallography especially difficult because it is hard to crystallize.

Mathews and Saket Bagde, a graduate student in Kim's lab, joined the effort in 2017 and have been working since then to overcome those challenges and more. In the end, the team conducted X-ray studies at three facilities and made use of five different beamlines at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) before collecting enough good data to reach their conclusions.

The results came as a surprise. When first discovered, Kim said, scientists had thought Lsd14and other such moduleslooked like a series of beads on a flexible string, and that the molecule under construction hopped along this structure as it was being built.

"That's not the case at all," Kim said. Instead, X-ray crystallography revealed Lsd14 is an elaborate, highly organized and compact protein. "That's why previous attempts to engineer the protein frequently failed," he said.

To augment their results, the team also performed cryo-EM studies at Cornell University to see what Lsd14 looked like in different stages in its assembly process that had proven too resistant to crystallization to study with X-rays. These studies showed the Lsd14 in different shape forms. Combining both techniques yielded information that might not have otherwise been available. "Our work is a beautiful example of how X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM produce complementary structural information," Mathews said.

Kim said that having similar results from two different labs working on similar molecules lends support to the idea that the results may extend to other assembly-line molecules as well. Still, there's a lot of work to do before researchers can start engineering their own molecular assembly lines in the most informed way. For one thing, the teams haven't studied the entire assembly process of building either erythromycin or lasalocid A. The team needs to understand more about those processes, Kim said, "but this is a good start."

Explore further Study reveals how ribosomes are assembled in human cells

More information: Dillon P. Cogan et al, Mapping the catalytic conformations of an assembly-line polyketide synthase module, Science (2021). Dillon P. Cogan et al, Mapping the catalytic conformations of an assembly-line polyketide synthase module,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abi8358 Saket R. Bagde et al, Modular polyketide synthase contains two reaction chambers that operate asynchronously, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abi8532 Journal information: Science
Artist impression of the peptide reader, where a helicase (red) pulls up a DNA molecule (yellow) to which a peptide (purple) is attachedyielding a slow translocation of the molecule through the nanopore (green) which allows to read off the ion current signals (orange highlight) that characterize the amino acids of the peptide as they temporarily block the pore. Credit: Cees Dekker Lab TU Delft / SciXel.

Using nanopore DNA sequencing technology, researchers from TU Delft and the University of Illinois have managed to scan a single protein. By slowly moving a linearized protein through a tiny nanopore, one amino acid at the time, the researchers were able to read off electric currents that relate to the information content of the protein. The researchers published their proof-of-concept in Science today. The new single-molecule peptide reader marks a breakthrough in protein identification, and opens the way towards single-molecule protein sequencing and cataloging the proteins inside a single cell.

Proteins are the workhorses of our cells, yet we simply don't know what proteins we all carry with us. A protein is a long peptide string made of 20 different types of amino acids, comparable to a necklace with different kinds of beads. From the DNA blueprint, we are able to predict of which amino acids a protein consists. However, the final protein can greatly differ from the blueprint, for example due to post-translational modifications. Current methods to measure proteins are expensive, limited to large volumes, and they cannot detect many rare proteins. With nanopore-based technology, one is already able to scan and sequence single DNA molecules. The team led by Cees Dekker (TU Delft) has now adapted this technique to instead scan a single protein, one amino acid at a time.

"Over the past 30 years, nanopore-based DNA sequencing has been developed from an idea to an actual working device," Cees Dekker explains. "This has even led to commercial hand-held nanopore sequencers that serve the billion-dollar genomics market. In our paper, we are expanding this nanopore concept to the reading of single proteins. This may have great impact on basic protein research and medical diagnostics."

Like beads down the drain

The new technique reveals characteristics of even single amino acids within a peptide, but how? Lead author of the paper Henry Brinkerhoff, who pioneered this work as a postdoc in Dekker's lab, explains, "Imagine the string of amino acids in one peptide molecule as a necklace with different-sized beads. Then, imagine you turn on the tap as you slowly move that necklace down the drain, which in this case is the nanopore. If a big bead is blocking the drain, the water flowing through will only be a trickle; if you have smaller beads in the necklace right at the drain, more water can flow through. With our technique we can measure the amount of water flow (the ion current actually) very precisely."

Conceptual rendering of the peptide reader, where a helicase (red) pulls up a DNA molecule (black) to which a peptide (red) is attachedyielding a slow translocation of the molecule through the nanopore (green) which allows to read off the ion current signals that characterize the amino acids of the peptide as they temporarily block the pore. Credit: Henry Brinkerhoff, Cees Dekker Lab, TU Delft

Cees Dekker enthusiastically adds, "A cool feature of our technique is that we were able to read a single peptide string again and again. We then average all the reads from that one single molecule, and thus identify the molecule with basically 100% accuracy."

This results in a unique read-off which is characteristic for a specific protein. When the researchers changed even one single amino acid within the peptide ("a single bead within the necklace"), they obtained very different signals, indicating the extreme sensitivity of the technique. The group, led by Alek Aksimentiev at the University of Illinois, performed molecular dynamics simulations that showed how the ion current signals relate to the amino acids in the nanopore.

Scanning the barcode for identification

The new technique is very powerful for identifying single proteins and mapping minute changes between themmuch like how a cashier in the supermarket identifies each product by scanning its barcode. It also may provide a new route towards full de novo protein sequencing in the future. Henry Brinkerhoff clarifies, "Our approach might lay a basis for a single-protein sequencer in the future, but de novo sequencing remains a big challenge. For that, we still need to characterize the signals from a huge number of peptides in order to create a 'map' connecting ion current signals to protein sequence. Even so, the ability to discriminate of single-amino-acid substitutions in single molecules is a major advance, and there are many immediate applications for the technology as it is now."

Glimpsing the 'dark matter' of biology

Using the current nanopore peptide reader, researchers can start analyzing what proteins float around in our cells. After synthesis in cells, proteins still undergo changes that affect their function, called post-translational modifications. The resulting millions of protein variants are difficult to measure, and could be considered the "dark matter of biology." Cees Dekker notes, "To continue the metaphor, after a necklace with its beads is made, it will still be changed: Some red beads get a phosphoryl attached to it, some blue beads a sugar group, etc. These changes are crucial to protein function, and also a marker for diseases such as cancer. We think that our new approach will allow us to detect such changes, and thus shine some light on the proteins that we carry with us."

Explore further Molecular trap allows study of single proteins

More information: Henry Brinkerhoff et al, Multiple rereads of single proteins at singleamino acid resolution using nanopores, Science (2021). Journal information: Science Henry Brinkerhoff et al, Multiple rereads of single proteins at singleamino acid resolution using nanopores,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abl4381
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Scientists have transformed data captured during the most energetic series of extreme storms on record into a musical piece demonstrating the effects of climate change.

Song of the Sea, created by the University of Plymouth, has been released to coincide with the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), which gets under way in Glasgow this weekend.

It takes a popular sea shanty, "What shall we do with the drunken sailor?," and manipulates it using actual data captured by the Southwest Regional Coastal Monitoring Programme.

The result is a piece that listeners will initially recognize, but which then changes as the data reflect the stronger winds and higher waves generated as the storm reached its destructive peak.

The project is the result of a collaboration between the University of Plymouth's Marine Institute and its Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR).

It is centered on data gathered over a 48-hour period in February 2014, which resulted in the main rail line being washed away at Dawlish in south Devon.

Those two days were part of a series of storms that wreaked havoc along the Atlantic coasts of western Europe, with research by the University subsequently demonstrating them to have been the most energetic storms to hit western Europe.

Scientists have transformed data captured during the most energetic series of extreme storms on record into a musical piece demonstrating the effects of climate change. Credit: University of Plymouth

To create Song of the Sea, researchers assigned elements of the data to segments of the music and as the data changes the song changes with it.

For example, wave height data were aligned to an echo effect on the words, distorting them as they grew more powerful. Wind speed was assigned to tempo, speeding up the piece as it intensified.

Pressure was aligned with pitch, so that as the pressure dropped in the middle of the storm, the vocals deepen and grow more slurred and ominous. And temperature was assigned to a distortion effect on the drum, causing it to 'crunch' as the weather grew colder.

The project builds on the University's lengthy track record of combining science, the arts and other disciplines to enhance public awareness and appreciation of potentially complex areas of climate research.

Professor Richard Thompson OBE FRS, Director of the Marine Institute, said: "This project highlights our connection to nature and the very serious issues occurring as a result of climate change. It provides a snapshot of the devastation and destruction extreme storms can cause, but also shows how our relationship with the planet has become more distorted. As things stand, humanity is not dissimilar to the drunken sailorintoxicated by its thirst for things, and unwilling to address the reckless plundering and destruction that results. Will we come to our senses in time? That has to be the challenge for the COP26 delegates in Glasgow."

Researchers working in the ICCMR have for many years endeavored to use ground-breaking musical compositions as a means of breaking down complex science.

In the past, this has resulted in the creation of a biocomputer, which harnesses the ability of slime mold to perform computational tasks, and a brain computer music interface (BCMI) that harnessed the brainwave signals of patients from the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability (RHN) in London and enabled them to interact directly with musicians.

Professor Eduardo Miranda, Head of the ICCMR, added: "Historically, scientific data has normally been conveyed visually, as charts or illustrations. However, the combination of sound and images provides significantly more alternatives to convey information. Song of the Sea is a novel way of using actual climate data in such a way that it controls the music. And with extreme natural events predicted to increase in frequency and ferocity, there is no barrier to its principles being applied to represent the far-reaching effects of climate change on our planet."

Explore further Computer interface helps disabled patients set tone of musical performance
European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France, adjusts his glove as he talks to family and friends before a launch attempt at the Kennedy Space Center on April 23, 2021 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Through the portholes of the International Space Station, Thomas Pesquet has an arresting view of global warming's destructive repercussions that negotiators are seeking to tackle at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. Credit: AP Photo/John Raoux, File

Entire regions of Earth in flames. Storms trailing destruction in their wake. And the haunting fragility of humanity's only home floating like a bluebut also tarnishedpearl in the vastness of space.

Through the portholes of the International Space Station, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has an arresting view of global warming's repercussions. He used a video call from space to sound the alarm Thursday, as negotiators, government officials and activists continued meeting at a U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

"We see the pollution of rivers, atmospheric pollution, things like that. What really shocked me on this mission were extreme weather or climate phenomena," Pesquet told French President Emmauel Macron during the call.

"We saw entire regions burning from the space station, in Canada, in California," he said. "We saw all of California covered by a cloud of smoke and flames with the naked eye from 400 kilometers (250 miles) up."

From space, "the fragility of Earth is a shock," Pesquet continued. "It's a sensory experience to see just how isolated we are as an oasis, with limited resources."

This is Pesquet's second mission to the space station. He also spent 197 days in orbit in 2016-2017. The destructive effects of human activity have become increasingly visible, he said.

"Year after year, we also know we are beating records for fires, for storms, for floods. And that is very, very visible. I very clearly saw the difference compared to my mission four or five years ago," the astronaut said.

Macron said the goal for climate negotiators in Scotland must be to speed up humanity's response.

"There is still a huge job ahead of us, and I think we are all aware of that," the French leader said.

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Central Laser Facility, STFC. Credit: Queen's University Belfast

Researchers at Queen's University Belfast have discovered a new tool that will help to investigate more effective forms of cancer treatment. Using high-powered lasers, the experts have been able to generate a 'pure beam' of carbon ions with unique properties.

This bright, ultrashort particle source can be used to investigate how biological samples respond to radiation under extreme conditions. They say this could pave the way for advanced and more effective radiotherapy approaches.

Professor Marco Borghesi from the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen's, led the project and worked closely with experts from the University of Strathclyde, Imperial College London, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) Central Laser Facility (CLF).

Professor Borghesi explains: "Currently, radiotherapy is used to treat many forms of cancer, and while this is usually done using X-rays, more advanced and more costly forms of treatment use particle beams. Carbon ions, in particular, are very effective in treating types of tumors which are resistant to other forms of radiation.

"A current, promising development in radiotherapy is the "FLASH' approach where radiation is delivered in short, intense bursts. This leads to reduced side effects and potentially more effective treatment.

"There is therefore great interest in investigating the response of human cellshealthy and cancerousafter exposure to ultrafast ion irradiation. Through our research we have produced an ultrashort carbon beam that can deposit its energy in nanosecond bursts, or less. This is very innovative and important in advancing the science behind cancer treatment. We have now started cell irradiation experiments using this beam, in collaboration with our colleagues in the Patrick G. Johnston Centre for Cancer Research at Queen's."

Dr. Aodhan McIlvenny, a Queen's University researcher and lead author of the study, explains: "When we shine a short burst of lighta laseron a very thin object, we can push it forward at very high speeds. Typically, the energy transferred by the laser is carried away by particles we don't want, and we aren't able to use it.

"However, we have now discovered that by heating the object extremely quickly, we can remove these unwanted particles before hitting the object with the intense laser pulse.

"This means that we are then able to produce almost pure beams of the particle type we are interested inin this instance it is carbon ions. This gives us the ability to select a specific type of radiation and use it for targeted irradiation experiments in new areas that we have not yet explored."

Professor Kevin Prise from the Patrick G. Johnston Centre for Cancer Research at Queen's said: "This a major step forward in our ability to test new beams for future radiotherapy applications and it allows us to now explore potential new biology, which will help to explore ways to advance cancer treatment."

EPSRC Director for Research Base Jane Nicholson said: "This innovative new approach demonstrates the impact cutting-edge physical sciences research can have in improving healthcare technologies, such as more effective radiotherapy treatments for cancer.

"The inventive, discovery-led work of the UK's researchers, supported by EPSRC, will play a key role in pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge and addressing challenges across healthcare to deliver a better quality of life."

Explore further Scientists plan new groundbreaking facility to transform UK cancer treatment

More information: A. McIlvenny et al, Selective Ion Acceleration by Intense Radiation Pressure, Physical Review Letters (2021). Journal information: Physical Review Letters A. McIlvenny et al, Selective Ion Acceleration by Intense Radiation Pressure,(2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.194801
Rising 5,300-meters above sea level, Chacaltaya was a popular family weekend retreat for inhabitants of La Paz, just 30 kilometers away.

Bernardo Guarachi's eyes light up as he reminisces about the glory days of Chacaltayaonce the highest ski resort in the world but now a crumbling relic to climate change in the Bolivian Andes.

"Today, it's a cemetery," said Guarachi, pointing to the rusted poles and cables from the old chair lifts.

His eyes scan the 400-meter slope he once shot down at speed on a blanket of snow, now covered only in rocks.

"It used to be full of skiers on Saturdays and Sundays," said the mountaineer.

Rising 5,300-meters above sea level, Chacaltaya was a popular family weekend retreat for inhabitants of La Paz, just 30 kilometers away.

By 1998, the Chacaltaya glacier had been reduced to just seven percent of its size in 1940, while it disappeared entirely in 2009.

Bolivia has lost around half of its glaciers in the last 50 years and experts say things will get worse as global warming continues.

According to the Andean Glaciers and Waters Atlas, published in 2018 by UNESCO and the Norwegian foundation GRID-Arendal, "the expected warming will provoke the loss of 95 percent of the permafrost in Bolivia by 2050," including the loss of almost all its glaciers.

Disappearing glaciers

It is a familiar theme for Edson Ramirez, a glaciologist at the Mayor de San Andres University who conducted a comprehensive study on the impact of climate change on the Bolivian Andes.

He was also the first person to conduct an inventory of Bolivia's glaciers, including documenting their disappearance.

"All the similar glaciers to Chacaltaya ... are suffering the same process of melting, of death," said Ramirez.

At the end of the 1990s Ramirez and other scientists measured the thickest part of the glacier: 15 meters.

"We knew it could disappear in the next 15 years," he said.

It took only 11 years.

The glaciers are fed by an accumulation of snow but "the planet's temperature has risen to a point where we already cannot have snow in these places any more," said Ramirez.

Bolivia has lost around half of its glaciers in the last 50 years and experts say things will get worse as global warming continues.

According to some predictions, the temperature in the Andes could rise by two to five degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

"We need to take urgent action between all countries to lower the planet's temperature," said Ramirez, whose challenge is to preserve what remains of Bolivia's glaciers.

Money over nature

Guarachi, 67, looks off into the distance towards El Alto, the large satellite town overlooking La Paz, and the cloud of smog hanging over both.

"Man has changed a lot for one aim, which is to earn money, lots of money, and he has forgotten about nature (and) the mountains," said Guarachi.

Bolivia is 80th out of 181 countries in terms of CO2 emissions.

Earlier this year, the South American country of 11 million submitted a proposal to the United Nations that would see the worst offenders increase by "five to 10 times" their financing for the worst affected countries, as well as greater efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

But Ramirez says that his country cannot be excused of blame, pointing to the forest fires that every year devastate thousands of hectares of the Amazon basin to clear the land for agriculture.

"The effects of the fires also influence the state of the glaciers," said Ramirez, explaining that the carbon produced is deposited on the ice and accelerates the melting process by reducing the ability of snow and ice to reflect sunlight.

Water threat

The disappearance of the glaciers could impact the water supply for millions of Bolivians.

During periods of drought, the ice melt would provide up to 85 percent of La Paz's water needs. Several times in the last five years its residents have been forced to ration water.

Farmers on the Altiplano, above La Paz, have also felt the effects.

Offerings and prayers to Mother Eartha traditional deityhave surged.

Unaffected by the altitude, Guarachi strolls around the ruins of the Chacaltaya resort that was built in the 1930s.

"We have to change our mentality ... because I'd rather have water than a lot of money. You could have a lot of money but you won't be able to buy water if the glaciers disappear," he said.

For biologist Karina Apaza, the environment used to be seen as "an impediment to economic growth, but if you impact it, who are you impacting? Yourself."

Explore further Bolivian observatory collects data as glaciers melt

 2021 AFP
ALBANY  A Mechanicville man is set to spend 30 years in prison after admitting to sexually abusing three children.

Gary Ryan, 50, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Albany on Wednesday to aggravated sexual abuse and transportation of minors to engage in sexual activity.

Ryan admitted that in April or May 2003 he took a 5-year-old child with him to Florida and raped him and engaged in other sexual contact.

He then took this same victim to Massachusetts and Nevada and engaged in sexual contact in 2004. He admitted to providing the boy with drugs and alcohol, according to a news release.

He admitted that in 2007 that he took a different victim, then 14, to Florida, touched him inappropriately and showed him pornography, according to prosecutors.

Between 1998 and 1999, Ryan took a third victim, then 14 or 15, to Massachusetts with other teenagers. He provided the boy with alcohol and sexually abused the boy. He instructed another teenager to videotape it.

As part of a plea agreement, Ryan will receive 30 years when sentenced on March 1.

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EASTON  About half of Easton, by area, doesnt have reliable access to good broadband service, consultant Andy McAdoo told the Town Board on Monday evening. Funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act are available to help the town extend service, and the town has options on how to do that, he said.

McAdoo is retired from the telecom industry and describes himself as an advocate for rural broadband. A native of rural St. Lawrence County, McAdoo said hed been fighting for it since the Telecom Act of 1996.

McAdoo became interested in the towns connectivity through his wife, who grew up in the area, and his friendship with Chick Wilson, owner of the Willard Mountain ski area. When he realized much of the town is off the web, McAdoo volunteered his services to Town Supervisor Dan Shaw.

With McAdoos guidance, Shaw sent out a letter to town residents asking who lacked service. McAdoo compiled the responses and traveled the back roads asking residents directly.

According to his research, 326 households lack fixed broadband service with download speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps), the industry standard. On a map that McAdoo showed the Town Board, residents and businesses along state Routes 40, 29, 372 and parts of county Route 113 have service or can get it, but almost none of the roads to the east of Route 40 are connected. Almost all of the fixed service is provided by Spectrum. Verizons FiOS (fiber-optic service) reaches parts of only two roads in the towns far southeastern corner.

There appear to be several locations where Verizon and Spectrum have fiber-optic cable but are not providing residential services, McAdoo said.

Some residents told him they can log on via Hudson Valley Wireless, but wireless only works for houses with direct line-of-sight to a transmitter, McAdoo said. Other houses nearby may not be able to get a signal.

State and federal policy makers have pushed broadband service to local governments who arent equipped to work with it, McAdoo said.

As telecom companies have shed services they dont care to provide, government has become the last source of service. No one will build unless the government pays for it.

Fortunately, theres now no shortage of federal money, McAdoo said.

He said Shaw has already approached Spectrum about expanding service in the town.

The town has other options, McAdoo said. He cited a model used by Leverett, a rural town of fewer than 1,900 people in central Massachusetts. The town created a municipal utility to build its own fiber-optic network and contracts with third parties for maintenance, operations and internet service. Ownership of the network gives the town control and the towns administrative work is relatively minor, he said. A study to determine the feasibility of such a network in Easton would be eligible for ARPA funds, he said.

We can work through Spectrum but were trying to get on the front burner, Shaw said. Im in over my head on this.

In an interview the day after the meeting, Shaw said hes also contacted Verizon about what plans the companies have to add service in the town. The board needs to find out how much it will cost to connect underserved households and look for grants to pay for it, he said.

I want to try to push it, Shaw said.

Despite McAdoos suggestion, Shaw said he has no interest in having the town set up its own fiber-optic network. That might work in larger towns like Kingsbury, Fort Edward or Granville, but Easton doesnt have the staff to do it, he said.

However, Shaw said he was happy to continue working with McAdoo.

Hes a free consultant, Shaw said. Now I have someone who knows the right questions.

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WHITE CREEK  The Warren-Washington Industrial Development Agency on Wednesday voted to provide financial assistance to a proposed cannabis growing and processing facility in White Creek.

Flyin Dutch Enterprises, an Oregon-based company, was seeking sales and mortgage tax exemptions and a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement for its $5 million project to renovate two unused buildings at the Morcon Tissue facility at 879 Route 22 in White Creek.

The plan calls for using a 14,000-square-foot building for the growing operation and about 6,000 square feet of a 25,000-square-foot building for the processing part.

Tim Lorito, representative for the project, said he and his investors completed the purchase of the property last week. Now, they are looking to see how quickly the states Cannabis Control Board will adopt the regulations.

They claim theyre going to be about 12 to 16 months out from licensing. That got a lot of pushback from what were hearing, he said.

He believes, realistically, that the state will begin accepting applications about 12 months from now. That would mean maybe March 2023 before licenses are granted.

Lorito said he believes there is a 90% chance that the state would grant Flyin Dutch one of the licenses. Local support for the project is going to be one of the criteria and the town of White Creek has given its endorsement.

Work to renovate the buildings will continue, according to Lorito. He said they will probably have to stop construction until the state makes the final determination about the quantity of marijuana that can be grown. That will dictate the size of the canopies to be constructed inside the facility.

He said previously that he would hire 23 to 37 employees depending on whether the state permits at 3,000-square-foot operation on the low end or a 10,000-square-foot operation on the high end.

The IDA will negotiate the terms of the exemption and approve the agreements once the project receives approval from the local planning board.

The board set a completion date of March 2023 for the project.

The cost of the project includes about $725,000 in land acquisition costs, $3.2 million in new construction, $1.5 million in renovation and $1.1 million in equipment, according to the application.

Board member Nick Caimano voted against the application. He has stated previously his concern about legalized recreational marijuana.

Michael Goot covers politics, crime and courts, Warren County, education and business. Reach him at 518-742-3320 or mgoot@poststar.com.

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FORT EDWARD  A wood stove was the cause of a fire at a Fort Edward home on Wednesday.

Firefighters responded to a report just after 1 p.m. of a fire at 2083 state Route 4.

Fort Edward Fire Assistant Chief Bill Brown said dispatchers received a call from a person who spotted the fire from across the Hudson River.

In addition to Fort Edward, other responding departments included Argyle, Kingsbury, Middle Falls, Gansevoort, South Glens Falls and the Washington County Bureau of Fire. About 30 firefighters were on scene.

No one was home at the time and no one was injured, according to Brown. It took about an hour to get the fire under control.

The one-story waterfront cottage is a total loss. The American Red Cross is helping the residents.

The fire was accidental and appears to be caused by a wood stove located in the rear of the structure, according to Brown.

Washington County Fire Coordinator Glenn Bristol cited the likely cause as pyrolysis, which is the process when a substances ignition temperature is lowered after a constant cycle of heating up and cooling down.

State police and the Washington County Sheriffs Office assisted with traffic control. Route 4 from the intersection of Route 46 to the fire scene was shut down for several hours.

Michael Goot covers politics, crime and courts, Warren County, education and business. Reach him at 518-742-3320 or mgoot@poststar.com.

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NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Irvin Mayfield, the jazz trumpet player who became a symbol of New Orleans resilience after Hurricane Katrina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Wednesday for steering charity money meant for public libraries to his personal use.

Mayfield's musical and business partner, pianist Ronald Markham, also was sentenced to 18 months Wednesday in federal court. Both pleaded guilty last November to a single charge of conspiracy to commit fraud. Both are to report to prison on Jan. 5, although appeals of the sentence are possible. Both are to provide 500 hours of community service  music lessons for underprivileged children  when free.

Prosecutors said Mayfield and Markham, both 43, steered more than $1.3 million from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation to themselves, largely by funneling it through the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, which Mayfield founded.

I have really grappled over this because of the potential you have, the wonderful things you have done for the community," U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey told Mayfield as he announced the sentence. Zainey said he had to balance the need to punish a serious crime that unfolded over six years with the need for the musicians to get back to work, make restitution and return to community service for which both were held in high esteem.

Mayfield, addressing the court before he was sentenced, apologized to the library foundation, its donors and the New Orleans community. He acknowledged the library as a place where he first was able to listen to jazz records as a child. That brought one of several interruptions from Zainey.

The very library that got you your start  you ripped off, Zainey said. At one point, Zainey told Mayfield to turn and address the courtroom, where Mayfields supporters and supporters of the library system sat. I hope you accept my apology. I accept 100% responsibility, Mayfield told the audience.

Attorneys for the foundation, while not speaking on what kind of sentence Mayfield and Markham should get, said the damage done went beyond the $1.3 million. The scandal, they said, also seriously damaged the foundation's reputation and fund-raising ability.

Supporters of Mayfield included former New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass. Compass urged that Mayfield be spared prison time so he can continue to care for his disabled mother and an autistic older brother. He still fixes his brothers food like he did when he was a little kid, Compass said.

Defense attorney Claude Kelly said nothing would be gained by sending Mayfield to prison for a non-violent crime. He pointed to Mayfield's mentoring of young musicians and other community development efforts led by the musician and said Mayfield has and incredible capacity to really make it right.

Arguing for the maximum five years, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dall Kammer said failing to sentence the two to prison would be a classic example of white collar criminals getting a slap on the wrist.

Book One," an album by Mayfield and the Jazz Orchestra, won a Grammy in 2010. But the library foundation scandal led to his resignation as artistic director of the orchestra in 2016 while scrutiny of his role with the library grew following investigative reports by WWL-TV.

Mayfield was among musicians who took a high-profile role in promoting New Orleans after levee failures and catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mayfield's father died in the floodwaters.

Mayfield was also a founding member of the Afro-Caribbean jazz ensemble Los Hombres Calientes.

Prosecutors said that in addition to orchestra operating expenses and salaries for Mayfield and Markham, library foundation money went into Mayfields personal bank accounts and toward the purchase of a gold-plated trumpet.

Prior to his indictment and guilty plea, Mayfield had outlined grand plans for the city's libraries in an AP interview in 2008.

A library is democracy inside four walls, the freedom to information, he said then. Jazz is democracy we hear.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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In July, Nick completed phase 1 of his treatment (induction). Phase 1 was awful for Nick due to all the complications. However, there is no new cancer growth in his bone marrow. He continues to heal and stabilize his levels in preparation for phase 2 (consolidation). During this phase, the chemotherapy will become much more aggressive to ensure success. Nick lost a considerable amount of weight during the previous phase, 56 pounds in three weeks, and there are overall concerns about his strength.

Currently, Nicholas recently finished phase 2 (consolidation) of his Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. He remains nauseous and continues to have stomach issues. He very recently celebrated his 16th birthday. He has suffered malnourishment due to the intense amount of CHEMO. Nick also has had numerous blood and platelet transfusion due to his overall levels still being impacted. During phase 2, he spent 3 to 5 days per week, 5 to 10 hours per day, at CHOPs clinic in Voorhees, NJ. His final phase has been prolonged at lease a full month in an effort to allow his body to recover. His treatments will continue for the next two years with an end goal of October 2023, provided no new cancer cells form and there is no sign of relapse. Nick will also require follow up with his cardiologist to ensure the heart malformation is not causing any additional health risks.
WILDWOOD CREST  The Borough of Wildwood Crest has been awarded a $50,000 New Jersey Urban Community Forestry Environmental Stewardship Grant. The borough received word of this award following a successful grant application with the New Jersey Urban and Community Forestry Program (NJUCF). This resiliency planning grant comes through a program spearheaded by the NJUCF with respect to the New Jersey Shade Tree and Community Forestry Assistance Act.

Wildwood Crest plans to use this award to fund a borough-wide street tree inventory as part of the Green Teams ongoing efforts in implementing the boroughs state-approved community forestry management plan. The Green Team aims to assess the community tree resources, including species composition, stocking levels and tree conditions, all of which will assist in making informed management decisions. Further, the inventory data will further define effective planting locations to enhance Wildwood Crests tree resources.
Events

Thursday, Nov. 4

TOWNSHIP OF HAMILTON GREEN TEAM MEETING: 7 to 8:30 p.m. first Thursdays; join the Township of Hamilton Green Team to see how you can make a difference; Municipal Building, 6101 13th St., Mays Landing. TownshipOfHamilton.com.

Friday, Nov. 12

SECOND FRIDAY RECEPTION: 6 to 8 p.m. second Fridays; celebrate the opening of newest galleries; The Noyes Arts Garage Stockton University, 2200 Fairmount Ave., Atlantic City. 609-626-3805 or ArtsGarageAC.com.

Fundraisers

Tuesday, Nov. 16

CARD & GAME DAY LUNCHEON: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; hosted by Christ Child Society of Cape May County; play cards, board games and bingo, 50/50, door prizes, auction; The Shore Club, 1170 Golf Club Road, Cape May Court House; $30; RSVP and menu selection needed by Nov. 5. 609-846-7006.

Groups

Thursday, Nov. 4
Soroptimists seek applicants for Live Your Dream Award: Soroptimist International of Cape May County invites women to apply for the Live Your Dream Award, given to those who provide primary financial support for herself and dependents, not necessarily children, and who are enrolled or accepted to a vocational/skills training or undergraduate degree program. Recipients may use the cash award to offset any costs associated with their efforts to attain higher education, including books, childcare and transportation. Two awards of $2,000 each are being offered this year. The deadline to apply is Nov. 15. To apply online visit soroptimist.org and use zip code 08204 and club name Cape May County. For more information, call Ann Begany at 845-800-9977.
ATLANTIC CITY  Five Atlantic County residents were arrested Tuesday on drug charges following calls to police over people distributing drugs near South Carolina and Baltic avenues.

Detectives surveilled the area Tuesday morning. They recovered 365 bags of heroin and more than 10 grams of cocaine from the arrested individuals, police said in a news release.

Ibn Demps, 22, of Atlantic City, was charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to distribute and possession with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a school zone.

Ricky Gilliard, 23, of Atlantic City, was charged with two counts each of possession of CDS, possession with intent to distribute and possession with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a school zone.

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3 teens charged with assaulting delivery driver in Pleasantville PLEASANTVILLE  A stick shift stymied three 15-year-olds trying to steal a delivery drivers

Mary Inman, 40, of Mays Landing, was charged with possession of CDS.

DeShawn Neiderman, 28, of Ventnor, was charged with possession of CDS.

A 17-year-old male from Atlantic City was charged with possession of CDS, possession with intent to distribute and possession with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a school zone.

All five were released on summonses pending court.

Detectives Nicholas Berardis and Christopher Smith led the investigation.

Contact Nicholas Huba: 609-272-7046 nhuba@pressofac.com Twitter @acpresshuba

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Ocean City resident Suzanne Hornick, the administrator of a Facebook page dedicated to opposing the wind farm plans, has spoken several times at Ocean City Council meetings, while earlier this year, wind power opponents gathered outside a meeting of the Cape May County Commissioners.

The group Protect Our Coast NJ argues the plans amount to an industrialization of the ocean, suggesting the turbines will threaten birds and marine mammals and disrupt the fishing industry.

So far, Ocean City officials have been among the most outspoken against the proposal, with City Council President Bob Barr suggesting seeking ways to delay the plans, while Mayor Jay Gillian recently called for major changes to the placement of the turbines, asking that they be moved out of sight of the shore.

Potosnak said the wind power plan is not perfect, but he and other advocates say it is the most viable option to power New Jersey while reducing carbon emissions linked to warming the planet.

+2 Ocean City mayor: Wind turbines should not be seen from beach OCEAN CITY  Mayor Jay Gillian has called on regulators to ensure wind turbines could not be

Right here at home we can help reduce greenhouse emissions, he said. The key here is to make sure we hold the developer accountable.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP)  The former Rochester police chief who was fired over his department's handling of last year's suffocation death of Daniel Prude announced Thursday he is running for Congress.

La'Ron Singletary, who recently changed his registration from Democrat to Republican, is seeking to unseat two-term Democrat Joe Morelle in New York's 25th Congressional District, which includes Rochester.

I stand before you today to announce my candidacy to represent the 25th Congressional District of New York, Singletary said at a Rochester news conference where he was joined by Monroe County Republican leaders.

TV station WROC reported that the former police chief said that if elected, he would focus on empowering the police.

People do not want to defund the police, Singletary said. In fact, people want to keep the police. We have seen murders rise. The number of shootings are going up, and the number of officers are going down."
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  Manuelito Wheeler isn't sure exactly why Navajo elders admire Western films.

It could be that many of them were treated to the films in boarding schools off the reservation decades ago. Or, like his father, they told stories of gathering around a television growing up to watch gunslingers in a battle against good and evil on familiar-looking landscapes.

Whatever the reason, Navajo elders have been asking Wheeler to dub a Western in the Navajo language ever since Star Wars IV: A New Hope was translated into Navajo and released in 2013.

The result? Beeso Dah Yinijaa or A Fistful of Dollars, an iconic Western starring Clint Eastwood who plays a stranger  known as The Man With No Name  entering a Mexican village among a power struggle between families. The 1964 flick is the first in a trilogy of spaghetti Westerns produced and directed by Italians.

Unlike many other Westerns produced in the U.S., it has no Native Americans in it. That appealed to Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum.

"Usually in Westerns, there are inaccurate if not offensive depictions of Native people, so this one had no Natives, period, Wheeler said. That just eliminated that aspect for me.
Murphy is a former Goldman Sachs executive and served as ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Murphy in the weeks before Election Day.

He has said his next term will be about enacting a Reproductive Freedom Act aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade in the state as well as additional gun control laws and the expansion of taxpayer-financed pre-K for 3-year-olds.

Headwinds facing Democrats, like President Joe Biden's falling approval ratings and congressional Democrats' struggles to enact their agenda, didn't factor heavily enough into some experts' preelection analysis, said Ben Dworkin, the director of Rowan Universitys Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. He counted himself among them.

A spokesperson for Ciattarelli said Wednesday that the campaign was focused on the vote count and said a possible legal pursuit of a recount was on the table. Murphy also called Wednesday morning for every vote to be counted.

New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates are permitted to request one. The party that wants a recount must file a suit in State Superior Court in the counties where they want to contest tallies. That has to be done within 17 days of Election Day.
This year, we had a beautiful calm day with a flat ocean, Parkinson reported. From 7 a.m. until the sun rose higher, it seems that sand sharks and spring dogfish were the only fish biting. After that, there were some blues and kings.

A total of 153 fish were caught during the tournament, including 133 sharks, 12 kingfish, seven bluefish and one 10 spot.

The first place team award went to American Angler Team A with 72.75 points. RH Custom Rods Team Green placed second with 50 points. Merchantville Fishing Club Team A scored 44.25 points for third place. Anglers and teams earned points by the species and number of fish they caught.

Steve Benigno earned Top Individual with three points awarded for his catch in the tournament.

Matt McDaniel took top honors in the Youth Assisted division with a 12.75 bluefish. Dylan OConnell registered a 12.25 bluefish and a 12 kingfish to take first in the Youth Under 13 category. OConnell is a repeat winner, having earned trophies in the 2018 and 2019 OCFC tournaments.

These young fellas certainly know how to fish, Parkinson said. Its great to have them come out and be part of our tournament. Well try to get even more youths to participate next year. They are the future of our surf fishing sport.
 Damien Pernell Shepherd of Moline, who was 35 at the time of his arrest, is charged with attempted enticement of a minor. His trial had been scheduled for Oct. 4 in U.S. District Court, Rock Island. His attorney, Federal Public Defender Thomas Patton, has filed a motion to suppress the statements that Shepherd made to agents in the case. Patton argues that Shepherd told authorities he wished to invoke his right to remain silent at the time he was arrested. However, authorities kept up a dialogue with Shepherd on other topics. Patton argues that Shepherd is intellectually disabled and was manipulated into using one of the officers phones to call his mother, which the agents allegedly overheard and recorded to obtain evidence. Patton argues that the agents continued dialogue with Shepherd and alleged sardonic remarks about his refusing to speak with agents eventually broke the mans will and he spoke with agents without an attorney present. On Wednesday, Darrow ordered federal prosecutors to respond to Pattons motion by Oct. 25. In his response, Acting U.S. Attorney Douglas Quivey said the government concedes that it cannot carry its burden of proving that defendants (Shepherd) express waiver of Miranda rights in the third recording was made voluntarily, and thus, the government would not admit such statements in its case-in-chief. However, Quivey did argue that the statements Shepherd made to his mother that were overheard and recorded are not protected by the Fifth Amendment because they were not made in response to any interrogation. Quivey argues that officers gave Shepherd the opportunity to make a call to his mother but warned him that he would not have privacy. Shepherd told his mother that he was arrested because he was talking with a young guy online. Quivey argues that Shepherd was not coerced into making comments since his answers to his mothers questions remained evasive. According to Quiveys response, Shepherd actively sought to avoid making incriminating statements when he responded to his mothers questions about the boys age and the boys advertised profile information rather than what the boy told him. Darrow has set a motion hearing and pre-trail conference for Nov. 17 in U.S. District Court, Rock Island.
BOULDER, Colo. (AP)  Two former Colorado sheriffs deputies were sentenced to prison Thursday for causing the death of an intoxicated man by placing him on his stomach and squeezing him into a van to take him to a detox center.

Former Boulder County sheriffs deputies James OBrien and Adam Lunn were sentenced to six years and three years respectively for the 2018 death of 23-year-old Demetrius Shankling. O'Brien and Lunn were found guilty in August of manslaughter.

According to an arrest affidavit, they put the 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) man, with his hands behind his back, in a compartment that was less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) long. OBrien and Lunn had to press on the compartment door to close it, causing Shanklings leg to become wedged against the inside of the door, the affidavit said.

When they reached the detox center in the early hours of Sept. 9, 2018, Shankling was unresponsive and not breathing. He died after spending 27 days in a coma.

An autopsy found that Shankling died of suffocation because of his positioning, with alcohol and amphetamine as contributing factors.

Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle released a statement Thursday calling the death a tragedy to everyone involved.
If Number 7 is unwilling to repeat what it was, were at a disadvantage and I suppose we can take his unwillingness in the worst light, Chirafisi said.

I've talked quite a bit about public confidence in the result of the trial, Schroeder said. It is clear the appearance of bias is present and it would seriously undermine the results of the case.

The juror objected. It wasnt anything to do with the case, it wasnt anything to do with Kyle and his seven charges, the man said.

Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with shooting three men, two of them fatally, in the summer of 2020. The aspiring police officer had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from violent protests that broke out over the police shooting of Blake.

Also Thursday, a reporter who took video testified that the first man shot by Rittenhouse lunged for Rittenhouse's rifle in an attempt to take it away just before the 17-year-old fired.

Richie McGinniss, who was recording on a cellphone for the conservative website The Daily Caller, took the stand and described watching as Joseph Rosenbaum chased down Rittenhouse in one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night.

I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon, said McGinniss, who had been called to the stand by the prosecution.

The defense also has said that a shot fired by someone in the crowd moments before Rittenhouse began shooting made Rittenhouse believe he was under attack.

Kenosha Detective Martin Howard testified that video footage shows that a protester, Joshua Ziminski, had fired the first shot into the air. Howard said he used a stopwatch and timed five or six videos to determine that 2.5 seconds later, Rittenhouse began firing at Rosenbaum.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Thank you to Tom Loewy for the gut-wrenching story about grief after sons in two families died violently.

Why cant we talk about the elephant in the room? Why cant we talk about guns; we have too many guns that kill kids, adults, and large groups of people indiscriminately. We cannot even discuss it. Instead we talk about intervention groups, after-school programs and gang-infiltration consultants. Its not that hard, folks. If you get rid of guns, people wont die. But because of the non-negotiable Second Amendment, this country will continue to have the largest number of gun deaths, by far, of any developed country on this planet.

And we dont like references to how other countries deal with guns because those people dont enjoy the freedoms we do. Try to purchase a simple handgun in Canada, Japan, the UK, or Norway and youll see how far you get.

Furthermore, there are now so many guns out there (more than 120 for every 100 Americans) that a few simple gun control measures will do little. Those guns are stolen daily, passed around, and found unlocked by kids in their own homes.
Management attorneys started using the terminology last, best and final offer to basically indicate we want you to take this to a vote, whether you agree to it at the bargaining table or not, Iversen said.

The UAW constitution doesnt have this clause, so Deere using these terms does not compel the union to hold a vote, according to the UAW.

Iversen, who has experience in labor negotiations, said sometimes the final offer ended up being the agreement, but it wasnt guaranteed.

I've had negotiations where we're on the third last, best and final offer before we finally agree, Iversen said. For people that are experienced in negotiations, they don't place a lot of stock in last, best and final because it's usually just a bargaining position, a little bit of posturing.

Potential outcomes

If an impasse is reached, Deere can implement the new agreement and fill union members jobs with outside workers, according to Pappas.

If negotiations reach an impasse, an employer can impose terms and conditions so long as it offered them to the union before impasse was reached, according to the NLRB.
For our country, the choice is simple: get more people vaccinated, or prolong this pandemic and its impact on our country, President Joe Biden said in a statement Thursday. The virus will not go away by itself or because we wish it away  we have to act. Vaccination is the single best pathway out of this pandemic. And while I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good. So I instituted requirements  and they are working. They protect our workers and have helped us reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over the age of 12 from approximately 100 million in late July when I began requirements to just about 60 million today.
We have been inundated," Lund said. "I don't think anybody anticipated the level of crisis that we would have in the Quad-Cities. Along with a lot of other agencies and other businesses, we've been short staffed. Thankfully, we did a hiring event (Tuesday); we've got nine new staff that are coming on with the bulk of them starting Monday. So we recognize that 30 days is not the ideal situation. But we do have to get staff on board trained up to really start to move that.

Mark Johnston, a landlord with just one rental property in Geneseo, said he and his tenant had been going back and forth with Project NOW since the tenant applied for monetary assistance in April. Sometimes, he said, attendants would say that his tenant was missing information that the tenant had already turned in or told them Project NOW would soon be sending out checks that never came.

It's Johnstons only rental property, and he said he had to deplete some of his savings to pay property taxes in September that hed hoped wouldve been paid by the rental assistance his tenant had applied for months earlier.

Johnston said after he and his tenant called and emailed almost every day, he received a letter Nov. 1 that said his tenants application was approved and he should receive a check in the mail between 20-25 days.
Deere executives said Wednesday that the company wouldn't return to the bargaining table with striking workers because it wouldn't offer a better contract than one they rejected that included immediate 10% raises.

Marc Howze, the chief administrative officer of Deere & Co., said the deal the United Auto Workers union rejected on Tuesday represented the most it could offer and still keep its costs competitive.

Howze declined to discuss how much the ongoing strike is costing Deere, which will release its next earnings report later this month. The disputed contract would cover more than 10,000 Deere workers at 12 facilities in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas, who make the company's iconic John Deere green tractors and other equipment.

The company plans to reach out to employees directly now to stress the virtues of its offer while it tries to keep its plants running with salaried employees and other workers to meet customer commitments. Other Deere plants globally are also working to pick up the slack.
As part of a continued effort to curtail lung cancer in Native communities, the Walking Forward Program is holding a symposium in Rapid City this week with health care providers, pharmacists and people from Native and other communities to explore the problems and solutions of lung disease.

The symposium is called the Lung Health Forum & Policy Symposium.

Dr. Daniel Petereit is a radiation oncologist at Monument Health and a principal investigator with the Walking Forward Program in Rapid City. Petereit said the Walking Forward Program began in 2002, with an initial grant from the National Cancer Institute. He said the goal was to lower the cancer mortality rate for Native populations in the area.

Walking Forward is now a community research program under Avera Health, and it also partners with Monument Health, Petereit said.

The program, as Petereit explained it, focuses on cancer education, community navigation, cancer screening, earlier diagnosis, and clinical trials. Speaking on Wednesday, Petereit said, the death rates of Northern Plains American Indians from lung cancer are the highest in the United States.

Petereit said this is the first policy symposium Walking Forward has conducted, noting that the symposium is funded by a grant from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation. The symposium is taking place Wednesday and Thursday at the Holiday Inn at 505 N. 5th St., in Rapid City. One technological tool under discussion, Petereit said, is the Low-Dose CT Scan for lung cancer screening. Petereit described it as providing an efficient and unobtrusive path to cancer screening.

Petereit also noted, as he talked during a break in the symposium, the importance of trust when it comes to people outside of Native communities working with the communities.

Weve had some success gaining trust within the tribal communities by having a physical presence there, he said, contrasting Walking Forwards approach with helicopter research that does not involve long stays in a community.

Weve been a presence since 2002, so Walking Forward is a well-known entity within IHS (Indian Health Services) and Tribal Health, he said.

Dr. Donald Warne delivered the keynote address for the symposium, noting the vastly interconnected nature of health. Warne is associate dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of North Dakota and the director of the Indians Into Medicine Program there. He is a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe.

Warne received his M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1995 and his Master of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health in 2002. Hes worked extensively in the area of health in various parts of the country, including South Dakota.

A key component to health, Warne said in his address, involves acknowledging the way trauma affects a persons well-being. That, he said, requires historical honesty. He described, among other things, the way smallpox was used as a weapon against Indigenous Peoples, and he also noted continued inequities in contemporary life.

We need to understand the truth, not to make anyone feel bad  thats not the purpose, he said, but to understand the truth because these are the reasons for facing the challenges that we have.

Warne noted research that reveals the negative effects adverse childhood experiences have on peoples health.

I would also say for Indigenous Peoples, weve had spiritual trauma, he said. Loss of culture, loss of language, loss of traditional places  and all of those things that make us so connected to who we are culturally and historically.

But Warne, who spoke conversationally and engagingly with the audience, also pointed to paths that lead to healing.

We have a lot of solutions already within our cultures, he said. The whole idea of prayer and reconnection to culture is such a powerful thing. There are ways to study this to show that this can be an effective approach. Thats true if were dealing with lung disease or mental health issues or diabetes. That sense of reconnectedness is so vitally important.

Warne did underline the importance of technology such as the Low-Dose CT Scan, noting that the IHS funding levels create obstacles to utilizing such technology. He showed statistics from research in North Dakota illuminating the high rates of cancer among Indigenous Peoples. He stressed repeatedly the need to cease the use of commercial tobacco.

But Warne constantly worked to fuse physical and spiritual approaches, sometimes alluding to the ways everyday language might lead to anxiety.

What I was taught with morning prayer is being grateful, he said. Its remarkable. Recently there have been studies in general populations that show that if youre focusing and mindful of what youre grateful for, it changes your bodys physiology. It can lower your blood pressure, lower your stress hormones.

In our minds, he continued, we have the ability to improve our physiology and promote wellness.

If Warne envisioned personal health, he also sketched collective projects. He considered, for instance, the prospect of an American Indian School of Health Sciences.

We could have a Department of Traditional Medicine, he said. The department would not be an interesting side note. It would be at the core of who we are. Ive been working on this for more than a decade, and I think the time is now to try to consider making this happen.

He considered a number of staffing and funding possibilities, and then he added, I may be biased, but what an ideal location for an American Indian School of Health Sciences, right here in Rapid City.

The symposium was slated for Wednesday and Thursday, with presentations about health and about policy related to health. It also featured an opening prayer by Francis Whitebird, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

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A little lesson on mail delivery. SF is the main distribution point in this area. Your order may have been in a container along with hundreds of other orders. The container was scanned in at RC en route to SF. When container arrives in SF, it is then processed and shipped to wherever the order goes to.

Very sorry to hear of the death of Mike Rounds' wife, Jean. At times like this our political differences seem trivial in comparison.

When the SD governor and AG joined the lawsuit concerning vaccine mandates, I assume the South Dakota Medical Association as well as the SD Nurses Association were in agreement.

To the person who thinks we can't change "the natural course of nature," we can and have. We are presently between ice ages (there isn't just one Ice Age) and are due to begin another cooling period, but global warming has disrupted the geological cycle. It's not "arrogant" to acknowledge this; what's arrogant is to persist in denial of hard data and peer-reviewed analysis.

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Recruits from across the country officially became public servants of Pennington County at a swearing-in ceremony Thursday afternoon.

The recruits hailed from California, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, as well as South Dakota.

Seven of the 15 total new recruits sworn in will go to work for the Pennington County Sheriff's Office, including Randy Mullins, who moved to South Dakota to become a deputy.

Mullins previously worked in law enforcement in Kennewick, Washington. He arrived in Rapid City with his family just days ago.

"We came to South Dakota because we were looking for a safer place to live," he said. "Washington State is just not the best place to be. We really liked the politics in South Dakota."

Mullins said he even got a chance to meet Gov. Kristi Noem on Wednesday. Noem stopped by the Public Safety Building in Rapid City to meet with the new recruits and hear why they came to work for Pennington County.

"She is as genuine in person as she is in media," he said.

The only difficulty Mullins is having with the move is finding housing.

"We are trying to find a place to live, it's a little difficult. There are a lot of people moving here," he said.

As for the pay, Mullins took a step back from what he was making at his previous job but that was to be expected with a move.

The starting range of pay for a Pennington County Sheriff's Deputy is $22.80 to $27.01 an hour, with more experience garnering higher pay, according to Helene Duhamel, spokesperson for the Pennington County Sheriff's Office.

"I would say the pay at Pennington County is very reasonable starting," Mullins said. "I'm taking a few steps back from where I was, but that's just the way it is."

Matthew Williams, who is also starting as a deputy for the Pennington County Sheriff's Office, echoed Mullins' comments on the pay.

"It's comparable pay to the National Parks Service starting out," he said.

Williams previously worked as a law enforcement officer for the National Parks Service, where he was a seasonal employee based out of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in California.

"I came here after looking for a permanent job. I was doing seasonal law enforcement. I applied for some jobs out at Mount Rushmore, then on a whim I figured I'd apply at the Pennington County Sheriff's Office," he said. "So I came out and visited, and I really liked the people, liked the area, like the culture. I liked that it's all about integrity and respect and how they want to protect people's rights and be a part of the community."

The beauty of the Black Hills and the cold climate is what drew Alejandro Rivera from San Diego to Rapid City to work as a juvenile correctional officer at the sheriff's office.

"I picked this job posting in particular because it's smaller and colder. The climate and geography out here are really cool," Rivera said. "The little kid in me really liked the dinosaurs you have here. Pretty, very humble place."

Rivera said he was impressed with the sheriff's office when he came to visit for a physical fitness test last summer, but had already committed himself to the job when he initially submitted his application.

"I already had my mind made up when I decided to apply that I was going to commit to it," he said.

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The city of Hamilton is on the move.

Over the next 10 years, the community is expected to need 420 homes to accommodate anticipated population growth, according to a city report. It will also need to find space for an estimated 128,000 square feet of commercial buildings for the 333 new jobs that may be created in the same time frame.

On Tuesday, Hamilton community members will have the opportunity to share their views on how the city should accommodate that anticipated growth at three in-person land use workshops at city hall. The workshops are part of an effort to update the city's comprehensive plan.

The workshops are scheduled for 9 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. at 223 S. 2nd St. The city will also host a pair of virtual workshops on Wednesday, Nov. 17 at noon and Thursday, Nov. 18 at 6 p.m. People can access those Zoom meetings and find more information about the citys comprehensive plan update at EnvisionHamilton.com.

The city recently released an existing conditions report that sets the stage for the update to the comprehensive plan that will guide decision-making on land use, transportation, public infrastructure and a variety of other issues.

The report's release follows a community outreach effort this summer that helped identify three themes, said Hamilton City Planner Matthew Rohrbach.

When we started the process in June and July, we were hoping for a kind of vision that would help us figure out what people care about and what people value about this place, Rohrbach said. We know we are growing. We know we are changing. Growth isnt something we can just turn off.

The people who participated in this summers conversations said they wanted to see Hamilton grow in a thoughtful and proactive way.

Residents said to accomplish that, Hamilton and Ravalli County officials need to coordinate on growth adjacent to the city and the city needs to be proactive in planning for future water needs. Residents said new growth shouldnt put an undue burden on existing taxpayers.

The second theme centered on maintaining the small-town character of Hamilton. People said local businesses and the town's remarkable viewshed need to be preserved. Opportunities for new in-town recreation and bicycle and pedestrian connections between the current park system should be explored.

The final theme focused on strengthening the communitys self-sufficiency and resilience by supporting local food systems, fostering a sense of community and preserving open space and agricultural lands. Residents said the community needs to prepare for impacts from climate change  in particular, wildfire. And housing needs to increase to provide the workforce with a place to live.

Housing is the biggest issue we are facing, Rohrbach said. Its the same for all of Montana and the West right now. We have to balance getting more housing and affordable housing with protecting open spaces and ag lands and making sure that we are growing in a financially sustainable way and not putting that cost of growth on existing taxpayers.

We know we need to do those things, but we have to do it in the right way so we dont end up creating unintended consequences.

The 41-page existing conditions report sets the stage for where the community goes next in updating its comprehensive plan.

I think it does a good job of weaving in what the data is saying and anecdotally what were seeing on the ground, Rohrbach said. Its easy to say that housing is an issue or that were growing, but when the data reflects what youre seeing on the ground, I think it really enforces that.

The city last updated its comprehensive plan in 2015. While Rohrbach doesnt see a need for a complete overhaul, the kind of growth occurring now is different than whats happened in the past with more of it occurring in the city limits.

The plan isnt regulatory, but it does provide the framework for city officials in making future decisions. The hope is the update will be finalized in the spring.

The upcoming workshops will focus on difficult questions about where growth should occur and what does it look like.

We only have so much room to grow, Rohrbach said. Some might be infill. Some might be an extension of the citys boundaries if there are landowners who choose to come in. Where do those new houses go? What is that growth going to look like?

This is where it gets a lot more challenging, Rohrbach said. I think its easy to talk about what we care about and what the issues are but translating that into a workable land use plan is hard.

While Rohrbach sent postcards to every address inside Hamiltons city limits, he encourages people who live on its outskirts to take part in the discussion.

People who live outside of Hamilton, this is their community too, he said. Its the citys plan but I think the whole community has a stake in it.

There will be another round of public feedback after city officials have drafted the goals, objectives and policies of the updated plan. With federal dollars potentially becoming available for infrastructure, Rohrbach said the timing is right for the update.

I encourage people to come to the workshops ready to engage in discussions with their community and neighbors, he said. There have been no decisions or recommendations made at this point. We are still, very much, in the plan-making process. We want this plan to be reflective of the communitys values.

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A comment made by a Missoula-based lawyer at a parental rights meeting at Crosspoint Community Church on Monday has caused a stir in the education community.

Lawyer Quentin Rhoades of Rhoades Siefert & Erickson remarked that people should shoot superintendents they do not agree with. He later said the comment was made in jest.

Missoula County Public Schools released a statement on Wednesday saying they are "shocked and disheartened" by Rhoades' remark.

Advocating violence is never a joke, and to do so toward public school officials who work every day to ensure the safety of students in the school environment is especially troubling, the district wrote in the statement.

Looking ahead, the district hopes that suggestions or threats of violence will not be featured in any discussion related to educating children, the statement said.

The state Office of Public Instruction released a statement Wednesday from Superintendent Elsie Arntzen condemning any statements or actions of violence regardless of the context. She did not specifically mention Rhoades in the statement.

Arntzen spoke at Monday's meeting, but had left the auditorium before the comment was made.

These types of comments serve no purpose in championing parent voice in our public education arena, Arntzen said in the statement.

She first learned of the comment from an article in the Helena Independent Record on Tuesday, she said.

I have reached out to specific superintendents in the Missoula area to express my disdain for these comments made at an event in which I was the first speaker, Arntzen said.

At the meeting, MCPS Trustee Mike Gehl called on Rhoades to stand up from his chair in the audience and asked him to recall a conversation they had at a similar meeting in late August.

What is it you said about what to do with these two superintendents? Gehl asked Rhoades. He did not specify which two superintendents he was speaking about, though MCPS Superintendent Rob Watson was being discussed directly before Gehls exchange with Rhoades.

Shoot em? Rhoades replied, prompting laughter from the audience.

You said, fire em, Gehl corrected.

After the meeting, Rhoades said his comment was made in jest.

At the August meeting, Rhoades recommended the group change the makeup of the board through the upcoming election and then fire the superintendent.

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" " Coffee steeped by a French press produces a richer, bolder flavored cup of joe. 10000 Hours/Getty Images

Americans love coffee. In fact, the 2020 report from the National Coffee Association says seven in 10 Americans drink a cup of joe every week, and about 62 percent drink coffee every day. That's an increase of 5 percent since 2015.

Part of that could be because there are so many different gadgets for brewing and preparing the stuff. The top two methods still remain drip coffee makers like your classic Mr. Coffee and single-cup brewers like the Keurig, according to a Statista 2018 survey.

Still, there are lots of other tried-and-true brewing methods that have been around forever, including the French press. This method works by steeping coarse coffee grounds and hot water in a large glass carafe. Once the coffee steeps for a few minutes, you push the grounds to the bottom of the carafe with a mesh plunger that separates the grounds from the liquid coffee.

The first design for the French press was patented in 1852 by Frenchmen Mayer and Delforge. But theirs isn't the one we know today because it didn't establish a seal inside the carafe. The French press we use today was similar to the one patented in 1929 by Attilio Calimani and Giulio Moneta  both Italians.

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Why a French Press?

"The French press is definitely my preferred method of brewing both hot and cold coffee," says Grady Laird, president and co-founder of Grady's Cold Brew, a New Orleans-style cold brew coffee company in New York City. "My big Bodum is very dear to my heart. It's the only coffee equipment I have at home and was the original brewer I used to develop Grady's Cold Brew. It literally changed my life."

So what makes coffee made with a French press different from the coffee brewed in a drip brewer? Mostly it's the process of steeping the grinds in water  known as immersion brewing  for a lengthy time. The grinds are "immersed" in the water as opposed to the water "dripped" through the grounds as it does in drip-brewing.

This immersion method mixes the water and coffee together more uniformly. When the plunger is pushed to separate the two, the metal mesh filters out the grinds but keeps in the oils and finer particles, which gives the coffee a fuller body and richer aroma.

One caveat about using a French press, though: Because the mesh only filters out the grinds, the coffee can have a grittier mouthfeel.

"I love the simplicity, versatility and value of the French press," Laird says. "It's really easy to adjust the strength and quantity of your brew based on water temperature, amount of grounds used, and the amount of time you steep."

" " The classic Chambord from Bodum is one of the most recognized French press designs on the market. It's been available since the 1930s. Bodum

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Buying a French Press

When buying a French press, you should consider a few things: size, material and even brand. First, if you're the only one at home who drinks coffee, a small version might be just fine. But if you regularly make coffee for two or more people, one that makes more than "one cup" might serve you better. Also look to see how much it holds in ounces, rather than cups. Why? Because what one company considers "one cup" might be 4 ounces (118 milliliters), while another might consider "one cup" 8 ounces (236 milliliters).

Also, spend a little more money on a glass or stainless steel press. You'll get a quality brewing experience without using plastic. And it will likely last longer, too.

Finally, when it comes to brands, one of the most recognizable French press designs is the Chambord from Bodum. Its glass vessel, steel lid and round handle are well known, and the Chambord has been popular since the 1930s when French company Melior-Martin began manufacturing them.

The Low-Key Coffee Snobs blog suggests the Espro Press P7; in fact the blog considers this model the "Cadillac of French press coffee makers." It has double-walled stainless steel that not only retains heat, but also includes two micro-filters for a smooth coffee drink.

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The Perfect French Press Coffee

Grind some coffee beans to a coarse to medium-coarse grind (think granules not sand ). Add about a tablespoon of coffee per 4 ounces (118 milliliters) of water. Two tablespoons should be enough for a person if they want a second cup. Boil water on the stove or in an electric kettle. Let the water sit for 30 to 45 seconds after it comes to a full boil. (You can experiment with water temp according to your taste.) Add your coffee grounds to the carafe and then slowly pour the hot water over the grounds. Stir gently. Place the lid on the French press and let the grounds steep for about four minutes. Slowly press the plunger down to the bottom of the carafe. Pour and enjoy.

Laird admits coffee is arguably the most subjective beverage in the world and having some much-needed control over strength and flavor makes the French press a valuable tool to perfect your cup of joe. It's also one of the few coffee makers that can brew both hot and cold coffee with ease.

Brewing in a French press may take an extra few steps, but it's worth it for a lot more reasons than just having control over flavor. Because the grounds are steeped instead of brewed through a filter, you don't end up with as much waste as you do from single-cup and drip brewers, and that's always a good thing.

HowStuffWorks may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING Despite being one of the best ways to brew coffee, the French press remains one of the least used methods, in the U.S. at least. According to Statista, only about 4 percent of U.S. coffee drinkers in 2019 used the French press system, a 2 percent increase from 2018.
This kid has had no one since he could barely talk, Sommers told the court. Hes had nobody. Hes been part of the system since he was 8.

Further, Sommers said Williams has been incarcerated almost continuously since age 14, and when he was out, he was running on the street.

He was sent to Bon Air after being sentenced to serve 18 years on convictions of robbery, use of a firearm, malicious wounding and other crimes in Fredericksburg and Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. He was 16 when he and another teen robbed two women at gunpoint in May 2018.

After pleading guilty in Chesterfield earlier this year to several charges related to the July 2020 escape, and to a separate assault on a Bon Air corrections officer in February 2020, prosecutors in Fredericksburg and Stafford successfully asked the courts in those localities to revoke some of the suspended prison time Williams received for the 2018 armed robberies and malicious and unlawful wounding, Sommers told the court. He received an additional 12 years combined in the two localities, the attorney added.

The way that Ive got it computed, judge, hes looking at 26 years in prison even before hes sentenced on the Chesterfield charges, Sommers said.
Officials said Joy-Hoggs annual salary will be $225,000.

I am fortunate to have been selected by the city of Richmond and am excited to join a stellar team of individuals, Joy-Hogg said. My work in international, state and local governments has taught me many valuable lessons. I look forward to using those experiences to enhance the work that [CAO Lincoln] Saunders and his team have already begun to provide the best city services to the people of Richmond.

Richmonds deputy chief of finance and administration job has been unfilled since 2019 after Stoney fired former CAO Selena Cuffee-Glenn in the wake of a nepotism scandal involving several of her relatives. Reid replaced Cuffee-Glenn in a temporary capacity for more than a year before she was sidelined by a medical emergency.

Saunders, Stoneys former chief of staff, said hiring a new deputy chief to fill Reids old job had been a priority for the administration in recent months, particularly following the City Councils confirmation of his appointment to the CAO role last month.

Sabrina Joy-Hogg brings unparalleled expertise and enthusiasm to this role, Saunders said. With her experience in a variety of comparable localities, shell be both an innovative and dependable addition to the team.

Joy-Hoggs start date is slated for Jan. 10.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The State Departments internal watchdog said Thursday that a nearly $6,000 bottle of Japanese whisky given to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that was reported missing remains unaccounted for.

The department's inspector general also said that the gift vault, in which presents given to senior U.S. officials are stored, was found to be in a state of disarray when the Biden administration took office in January. It said new safeguards and controls are needed to ensure that gifts to senior U.S. officials are properly accounted for.

In a report, the inspector general said it was unable to locate a $5,800 bottle of 30-year-old Suntory Hibiki whisky that was given to Pompeo by the Japanese government in 2019, along with a 22-karat gold commemorative coin worth $560. The items were reported missing in August in a notice filed in the Federal Register.

At the time, a Pompeo representative said the former secretary knew nothing about the gift or the inspector generals inquiry.
Democrat Terry McAuliffe on Wednesday formally conceded to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the race for governor, a stunning defeat for Virginia Democrats in what was ultimately a referendum of their sweeping hold on the state.

Youngkin, the governor-elect, immediately vowed to alter the course of the state, focusing particularly on education and the cost of living.

Together, we will change the direction of this commonwealth, Youngkin told supporters early Wednesday morning at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly. Friends, we are going to start that transformation on day one.

For Democrats, who had not lost a statewide election since 2009  and who apparently lost control of the House of Delegates as well as the offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general  Tuesdays election marked the end of immediate progress on their agenda, which included accelerating the increase of the minimum wage and further work on criminal justice reform.

While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in, McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday, after leaving a voicemail for Youngkin acknowledging his own defeat. Congratulations to Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory.
Kordahi has refused to resign, insisting Yemens Houthis have the right to defend themselves and saying that he did not mean to offend with his comments, which were recorded before he became minister.

Gulf Arab countries have joined Saudi Arabia in pulling out their diplomats from Lebanon, deepening the diplomatic spat.

The row has tested Mikati's new government, sworn in after more than a year of deadlock among Lebanese politicians over the composition of the government.

The Cabinet has not been able to convene for weeks, mostly over a separate crisis, triggered when Hezbollah protested the course of the investigation into the Beirut Port explosion last year.

Hezbollah has criticized the judge leading the investigation, saying his probe was politicized and called on the government to ensure he is removed.

In the latest challenge to face the probe, an appeals court has accepted a lawsuit by a former minister - a defendant in the case - asking to remove judge Tarek Bitar. That automatically suspends the investigation until a decision is reached. Similar temporary suspensions have plagued the course of the probe over the past weeks but previous cases to remove the judge have been turned down.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump claimed the only way he could lose the White House was if the election was rigged. In victory, he griped he would have won by a bigger margin but for irregularities that didnt exist.

After Trump lost in 2020, numerous recounts and court cases revealed no widespread fraud that would have changed the election outcome. Trump persisted in his delusions, and too many Republicans bought into the Big Lie, leading to the stop the steal movement and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, one of the darkest days in our countrys history.

A majority of Americans believe that Trump says he lost because he doesnt like the outcome, according to a Marist Poll taken for NPR last month. Sadly, 75% of Republicans still say Trump has a legitimate claim that there were real cases of fraud that changed the results.

Many Republican-controlled states have passed laws since the 2020 election making it harder for their citizens to exercise their right to vote. Fortunately, Virginia, under Democratic control, moved in the opposite direction, passing much-needed reforms, including no-excuse early voting.

After a tough campaign season with scathing charges and countercharges, turnout in Virginia was higher than in any gubernatorial race since 1997.
Not even two months have passed since Richmonds Robert E. Lee statue was removed. As a historian who teaches in the city and once lived next to this monument, its removal appears surreal.

Given the remarkable staying power of the Lost Cause narrative  a romanticized vision of the Civil War that painted Confederate motivations as honorable, while glossing over the true motivation of maintaining slavery and white supremacy  upending the Lee statue appeared all but impossible. Convenient false narratives often eclipse inconvenient truths.

Though the removal of Confederate statues along Richmonds Monument Avenue began last year, Lee was the final holdout. This was as fitting as it was symbolic. The Lee monument was the first erected along the street and pioneered a wave of Confederate monument creation throughout the South and other parts of the nation as well. This made its removal all the more surprising.

As with many African Americans, reality has taught me to be cautious with my optimism for change while inhabiting a complex space  forced to imagine the impossible while simultaneously acknowledging the improbable. Nevertheless, with the removal of the Lee statue, there came a palpable hope within the city of reconciling with the past rather than ignoring it, and addressing past falsehoods and present inequities.
These are people who can get things accomplished. These are the people who can change the university, Owczarski said. Asked about the involvement of only two students, he said everyone on that work group brings the voices of the students they work with to the table as well.

In his statement, Sands acknowledged the contribution of students who have voiced concern, including those who participated in a United Feminist Movement demonstration held in front of Burruss Hall on Sept 28.

The United Feminist Movement, a campus group, rallied in late September for what it called a comprehensive university response to sexual violence, adding in a statement, we have been waiting for years.

A UFM group leader could not be reached Thursday. Larissa Schneider, a member who spoke at the September event, said Thursday that the UFM learned about the work groups creation Wednesday when the university published an online report.
A Pennsylvania bank has opened for business in the Roanoke region with plans for three initial locations, including a headquarters to be built from the ground up.

Ridge View Bank President Carrie McConnell said the bank began lending last month from a temporary office on Kirk Avenue.

It is the first new bank to enter the Roanoke market in about two and a half years.

Officials are evaluating two locations in the city for the headquarters, which should be under construction next year, McConnell said. The company also plans a loan office at Smith Mountain Lake and a full-service branch on West Main Street in Salem, she said. Within five years, more locations are possible in the New River Valley and in Southwest and central Virginia, she said.

We really want to grow at a pretty substantial pace, McConnell said.

Ridge View Bank is a division of Clearfield, Pennsylvania-based CNB Bank. CNB belongs to CNB Financial Corp., a holding company with $5.2 billion in assets.
A 39-year-old woman and a 19-year-old woman were taken to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital with gunshot wounds. Both are expected to recover, police said.

A bail determination sheet in Palmers court file said hed recently returned to the area, but it didnt mention where hed been or how long hed been gone.

Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone said during interviews at the scene Wednesday night that the suspect shot one woman, then shot the others when they went to help her.

Palmer has a preliminary hearing set for Jan. 11, according to court documents. A public defender will be assigned to represent him.

A Peace Walk was planned Thursday afternoon at Young Terrace. Grief counselors were also there to assist children and adults in need of immediate assistance.

On Saturday, the organization Stop the Violence plans to gather there at 2 p.m. to speak about gun violence in Norfolk, according to Bilal Muhammad, a member of the group. Muhammad said all who are interested are invited to attend.
Thats going to be the source of some votes, said Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the legislation.

Next election?Neither Gilbert nor House Democrats took a position on the possibility that House members will have to run again in 2022 in new political districts under a map that the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately will draw.

A lawsuit is pending in federal court to declare this weeks House elections unconstitutional. It argues that they were conducted under a district map the Republican-controlled legislature adopted a decade ago and dont reflect shifts in population under the U.S. census that was completed behind schedule this year.

The suit, filed by longtime Democratic political operative Paul Goldman against members of the Virginia Board of Elections and the state director of elections, is awaiting a decision by the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on whether state election officials are immune from being sued in federal court. Only then can a three-judge federal panel rule on constitutionality of the elections and impose a remedy if they are found unlawful. If Goldman wins, House members could stand for reelection next year and again in the regularly scheduled 2023 elections.

Until someone tells us otherwise, weve been elected to two-year terms, Gilbert said.
Chambers said the rules issued by the court offer a sense of what is going to happen. Although Im not sure that it completely tells us whats going to happen. Theyre just acting as the commission, frankly. They have to follow the law but theres not a case in front of them. So theyre just drawing these maps like any other group of seven people would draw the maps.

I am sure that theyre going to draw maps that are legal, because theyre smart and theyre going to have smart counsel, but its not as though the map they draw will be the Platonically perfect map  its just going to be one of a number of maps that are legal and may be viewed as fair by some, he said.

Chambers said, I suspect nobody on the court wants to do this. But, he added, They still may be in the best position to do it.

While the special masters will have 30 days to come up with a map or maps for the justices, it is unclear how long the court will take to do the job.

Im not sure they have an absolute limit on when they get the maps out, Chambers said. There are no more elections, even primaries, until next spring. But he said, I suspect they will want to get them out as quickly as possible just to provide as much time as possible for folks to look over them.
RIDGEWAY  A Magna Vista High School senior has died and two other students were transported to the hospital with injuries after a vehicle crash in Henry County on Thursday morning.

Virginia State Police responded at 8:24 a.m. to a single-vehicle crash in the 5100 block of Soapstone Road, 1.4 miles from the school, according to an email Thursday afternoon.

There is one confirmed fatality and two were transported to area hospitals for treatment. All were juveniles, the email stated.

Crouch did not name the person who died, but Henry County Public Schools confirmed that it was Nick Pruitt, a senior at Magna Vista.

Our crisis team (central office team members, school psychologists, and counselors from surrounding schools) deployed to support staff and students at Magna Vista following the notice of a serious accident involving four of our students on their way to school this morning, Communications Director Monica Hatchett said by email. We are deeply saddened to learn of Nick Pruitts passing following this mornings accident. Our thoughts are with the Pruitt family and the families of the other students involved.

Hatchett said that counselors had been talking with students and staff throughout the day and would continue to do so in the days ahead.
COVID-19 outbreaks still rage on, spread largely among and by the unvaccinated, jamming our hospital resources, delaying our economys recovery and creating chaos in our schools and workplaces.

If there were ever a time for wise and convincing leadership in this country, this is the time. But congressman Morgan Griffith remains silent on the COVID-19 vaccine campaign, choosing instead to champion the rights of the vaccine resisters.

Hes made it clear that if folks want to refuse the cure for the COVID-19 pandemic  the free, proven, effective, and abundant vaccine  thats OK with him. Not his business, I guess.

But we all pay for the lagging vaccination rates  those who are vaccinated, and those who are not. Some pay with sickness and death, so many more of us lose our freedom to work, play, go to school, travel freely and be with friends. And all of us pay with the inconvenience of living a closed-in life for so long. Why? So the refusers can have their freedom to refuse, to believe the misdirection, to embrace the fake science, to rail against the socialist take-over scare. Ah, freedom. Morgan Griffith is your champion  a freedom fighter, indeed.
In 2010, LewisGale Medical Center in Salem submitted an application to the State Health Commissioner to construct a neonatal intensive care Unit, or NICU, at the facility to provide mothers and infants with specialized care. They were rejected  and rejected again when they reapplied, with the state arguing that NICU services were already offered by a nearby provider.

CON officials had planted a ticking time bomb in Virginias health care system. Just two years later, a pregnant mother and her unborn baby were admitted to LewisGale in urgent need of a NICU. Tragically, there was no NICU available when the other facilitys specialized transport was occupied elsewhere.

Despite doctors best efforts, her child died.

CON has a price. By one estimate, Virginias COPN laws  some of the strictest in the nation  cost the state 49 hospitals and eight ambulatory surgery centers. Virginians would benefit from better health outcomes at lower cost if they could access the health care that COPN has denied them.

That is why, when the pandemic reached our shores, Gov. Ralph Northam issued an executive order suspending COPN for hospitals and nursing homes wanting to increase their bed supply without government approval.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the costs of Virginias COPN laws. And new research puts those costs into perspective. As Virginia hospitals reach their breaking point, and some consider placing tents outside to expand capacity, its time for us to take another look at these laws, and determine whether they do more harm than good.

Hernandez is the Virginia state director for Americans for Prosperity.
When prescribing a new medication for a patient, it is not guaranteed that the medication is covered. There are over 1,000 health insurance formularies. Electronic medical record systems cannot keep up with these diverse plans. Trying to find a particular insurance plan formulary on a health insurance website is challenging since each website is designed differently. Health insurance plans are required by Federal legislation to update the verify that their physician database is correct every three months. Large chain pharmacies should be required to do the same.

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many local pharmacies are understaffed, and the staff are overworked since they are providing COVID vaccinations along with filling prescriptions as well as offering other vaccinations. My experience is that it is taking up to five days to obtain a refill. Several local urgent care offices are now stocking antibiotics for patients with infections. Waiting five days to fill an antibiotic prescription is simply unacceptable.

So how do we fix this? I have several suggestions. New hiring avenues should be explored regarding full-time and part-time pharmacy staff. Removing some of the vaccination burden from pharmacies can be helpful. Our local health department director, Dr. Cynthia Morrow, and her staff and other local health care workers are helping in this regard.
Leadership skills can help you get a job, aid in your personal growth, and help you to become a better overall student. These skills help facilitate responsibility, accountability, and dependability, and can aid you in gaining more self-confidence.
For decades, its been one of Hollywoods darkest rumors: A teen-age Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by a top movie star more than twice her age when she agreed to meet with him at a hotel in Los Angeles
" " A view of the famous Fallingwater house by the late architect Frank Lloyd Wright near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. picture alliance/Getty Image

Acclaimed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, "The architect must be a prophet ... if he can't see at least 10 years ahead, don't call him an architect."

Wright proved his own words and became that prophetic architect when he designed Fallingwater, a private residence that is now preserved as a museum, and has captivated countless spectators for more than 80 years.

Set in the Laurel Highlands region in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, Fallingwater remains open to visitors today, many decades after Wright's death in 1959.

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The History of Fallingwater

Pittsburg department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. hired Wright in 1935 to design a private residence for his family. The house would serve as their weekend home out in the country, roughly 75 miles (121 kilometers) outside of Pittsburgh. Kaufmann and his wife, Liliane, were impressed by Wright's work after visiting their son at Taliesin, an architectural school Wright designed and ran in Wisconsin.

"The Kaufmanns were innovative retailers with an eye toward good design. Their son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., read Frank Lloyd Wright's autobiography and participated in Wright's apprentice program at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin," says Clinton E. Piper in an email. Piper works as a senior administrator of special projects at Fallingwater.

Since Wright had suffered from a lack of work during the Great Depression, which put a halt to many architectural endeavors, landing such a big commission helped put him back on the map as a top architect. Wright completed construction on the 5,330-square-foot (495-square-meter) main house by 1938 and finished building the 1,700-square-foot (158-square-meter) guest house the following year.

The home remained a private residence of the family until 1963, when the son, Edgar Jr., gave the deed to Fallingwater and the surrounding 1,500 acres (607 hectares) to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, dedicating the property as the 'Kaufmann Conservation on Bear Run, a Memorial to Edgar J. and Liliane S. Kaufmann.' Fallingwater first opened its doors in 1964 for public tours.

" " An interior view of the concrete, steel, wood and stone living room at Fallingwater, as it appeared in 1937, shortly after it was built. Today, it's the only major Frank Lloyd Wright work with its setting, original furnishings and artwork still intact. Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

Since then, many entities have recognized the importance of Fallingwater's artistry. In the late 1970s, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated the museum a National Historic Landmark. And in 2019, UNESCO added Fallingwater (and seven other Frank Lloyd Wright-designed sites) to its list of World Heritage Sites, marking an impressive international recognition of Fallingwater's legacy in the world of architecture.

More than 4.5 million people have visited Fallingwater since it opened to the public  among them architectural buffs and curious novices alike.

"Fallingwater is a humane experience, where Wright's insight, the Kaufmann family's way of life, and the natural setting are spread out for all to experience and question regardless of their background or previous knowledge," says Piper.

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Wright's Architectural Style

Wright popularized the Prairie style of design, which focused on residential houses in the Midwest between 1900 and 1916. The Prairie style emphasized neat horizontal lines, which became Wright's calling card. You can see these simple, blunt lines in the exterior of Fallingwater, which serve as a bold design statement.

Fallingwater particularly stands out as an exemplar of "organic architecture," which blends man-made structures with the natural world around them. Organic architecture became a staple in Wright's designs.

"Much of Wright's nearly 70-year architectural career created buildings and houses that connected one way or another to their natural setting," says Piper.

This was especially true of Fallingwater, which was surrounded by thousands of acres of wild beauty in the Bear Run Nature Reserve. Wright leaned into that natural setting by building walls of Pottsville sandstone  quarried on the property itself  to reflect the stone outcroppings found in Bear Run.

He also challenged the natural surrounding with concrete cantilevers, which he stacked to form bold terraces in multiple directions and offer beautiful vistas of the wilderness.

"The powerful symbolism of architecture seemingly erupting from nature was at the core of Wright's philosophy of organic architecture. Wright selected materials such as marine-grade walnut veneer plywood for the built-in furnishings to address the effects of living with nature," says Piper.

Fallingwater's most iconic attribute is, of course, its waterfall (hence the name 'Fallingwater'), which gently tumbles beneath the home. "The sound of the falls is the backdrop that ties the entire experience together," says Piper.

But designing such an architectural masterpiece made Fallingwater a pricy endeavor for Wright and the Kaufmanns.

According to Piper, the Kaufmanns set an initial budget between $20,000 and $30,000 for the construction of the house. But Wright well exceeded that initial budget. Fallingwater wound up costing $155,000, including an $8,000 commission fee for Wright and $4,000 for built-in furniture.

"As with any great artistic work of art, the house is really priceless," says Piper.

Here is some footage of the famous house shot by artist Max Deirmenjian:

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Visiting Fallingwater

According to Piper, famous guests, ranging from Albert Einstein to Frida Kahlo, have stayed at Fallingwater. Since being turned into a museum, Fallingwater no longer accepts overnight guests. But there are still plenty of ways that visitors can enjoy the museum.

During the COVID-19 crisis, guests may experience the outdoor setting of Fallingwater with an advanced reservation, and masks and social distancing are required.

If you can't swing an in-person visit, that's no problem. Try one of the at-home experiences, such as one of the virtual tours conducted via livestream weekly, each one offering information about a different aspect of the home.

Now That's Interesting As a prolific architect, Wright designed around 800 buildings, 380 of which were actually built. Many of them still stand today.
" " The legendary American architect, inventor, and futurist Buckminster Fuller raises his arms as he poses in front of a massive geodesic dome in Long Beach, California, on April 21, 1983. Fuller was widely known for popularizing the use of the domes. Bob Riha Jr/Getty Images

The first time I ever imagined a city could fly was when I saw Bespin's Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back." If you've never seen it, imagine a hovering gas mining factory teaming with pug-faced workers, run by administrative assistants who had smartphones for ears.

As it turns out, engineers have been envisioning cities that float since long before "Star Wars" ever hit theaters. In fact, the gifted 20th-century visionary and architect Buckminster Fuller theorized that if we could build a spherical structure large enough, it could potentially float into the sky with some simple temperature adjustments. Not only would the structures hold their own weight, but these spheres could house people, their belongings and an entire infrastructure of buildings inside. Let's quickly explore Fuller, his geodesic domes and how they evolved into the floating city idea he called "Cloud 9."

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Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller was an American architect/engineer whose height of invention was between the 1930s and the 1950s. He envisioned structures that we would refer to today as "green," meaning they attempted to address environmental and social issues in their design. One of his most famous patents is for the geodesic dome, a building that looks like a sphere cut in half, composed of triangular supports. To be clear, Bucky didn't invent these domes, as Walther Bauersfeld had already designed one for a planetarium in Jena, Germany, in 1926. Bucky just got the paperwork done first. Even though geodesic domes follow Bauersfeld's method, Fuller held the U.S. patent to this design and popularized the futuristic looking structures.

Geodesic domes don't just look cool, they're economical. This stems from another idea that Fuller may have appropriated elsewhere, an architectural concept called "tensegrity." Kenneth Snelson claims that he actually invented this idea for mobile sculptures he built while he was a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At the time, Snelson studied under Fuller, who subsequently coined the term tensegrity as a portmanteau of "tension" and "integrity." The relationship between those two forces allows these small structures to support comparatively great weights, regardless of whether Snelson or Fuller discovered it first.

So now we have this out-there architect who popularized dome structures that were highly durable for less material expense. How does this get us to flying cities?

Fuller was later challenged by a wealthy Japanese patron named Matsutaro Shoriki to design a community that could float on Tokyo Bay. Shoriki wanted a solution for Japan's crowding and imagined boats joined together to make a floating city, not too dissimilar from the Freedom Ship that was once under development. Bucky responded to Shoriki's challenge with the Spherical Tensegrity Atmospheric Research Station (STARS), also called "Cloud Nines." Though never constructed, these massive, buoyant, geodesic spheres would be filled with hot air and float over Earth.

It sounds like science fiction, but here's how Fuller proposed a Cloud Nine would work. A half-mile (0.8-kilometer) diameter geodesic sphere would weigh only one-thousandth of the weight of the air inside of it. If the internal air were heated by either solar energy or even just the average human activity inside, it would only take a 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degree C) shift over the external temperature to make the sphere float. Since the internal air would get denser when it cooled, Fuller imagined using polyethylene curtains to slow the rate that air entered the sphere. He wanted to build Cloud Nines and anchor them to mountains or let them drift so their inhabitants could see the world. One of the more practical uses he proposed for them was as disaster sites for emergencies.

Fuller regarded his Cloud Nine idea as an "exercise to stimulate imaginative thinking." While he believed the technique was possible, he didn't think these flying cities actually would be constructed until the far future. It's been more than 50 years since Fuller first patented the geodesic sphere. We're certainly capable of strapping computers to our heads like Lobot did on Cloud City. Do you think we're far enough in the future now to make Fuller's exercise into a reality?

Sources and further reading:

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Originally Published: Aug 7, 2013
" " NASA astronauts Bob Behnken, left, and Doug Hurley, wearing SpaceX spacesuits, walk through the Crew Access Arm connecting the launch tower to the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft during a dress rehearsal at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 17, 2020. SpaceX

For the first time since 2011, NASA astronauts will once again return to space from U.S. soil. Veteran astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will rendezvous with the International Space Station after they lift off May 27, 2020, from the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.

To get there, they'll ride a Crew Dragon spacecraft propelled into orbit by a Falcon 9 rocket, both designed and manufactured by SpaceX, the organization founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk. If all goes well, this mission will make SpaceX the first private company to put astronauts into space.

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A Legacy Interrupted

News of the flight was broken in April by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. During a series of virtual press conferences held Friday, May 1, Bridenstine  and other key figures representing both NASA and SpaceX  spoke about the Crew Dragon's unprecedented task.

"This is a high-priority mission for the United States of America," Bridenstine told the media. "We as a nation have not had our own access to the International Space Station for nine years. At the same time, we've had American astronauts on the [International Space Station] for 20 years in a row."

Stretching 357 feet (109 meters) long, the International Space Station is the largest man-made object in Earth's orbit. Crews stationed at the vessel perform a wide range of experiments in low gravity.

The International Space Station owes a great deal to NASA's Space Shuttle program. Green-lit by then-President Richard M. Nixon in 1972, this initiative gave the world its first reusable spacecraft. From 1981 to 2011, NASA sent astronauts into orbit on American-made shuttles. These were often used to transport portions of the International Space Station during its construction.

On July 21, 2011, the space shuttle era came to an end as the Atlantis orbiter returned from its final mission. With the program discontinued, ISS-bound astronauts grew dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets.

Then the law of supply and demand took over. For nearly a decade, no other rockets were capable of sending people to the International Space Station. All astronauts bound for that station had to be launched out of Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, a spaceport leased to the Russian government. And by April 2020, the Russians were charging $86 million to include foreign astronauts in their Soyuz missions.

Another Soyuz rocket launch is scheduled for October, and Bridenstine says NASA is currently in negotiations to book a seat. Nevertheless, it's hoped the SpaceX Crew Dragon will end this spaceflight monopoly.

"We want the [Russian-American] relationship in space exploration to remain strong," Bridenstine explained. "We see a day when Russian cosmonauts can launch on American rockets and American astronauts can launch on Russian rockets."

" " Illustration of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket during the companys uncrewed In-Flight Abort Test for NASAs Commercial Crew Program. SpaceX

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Dragons in Space

By now, SpaceX and the International Space Station have a fair bit of history. Using unmanned crafts, the company's delivered supplies to the orbiting laboratory since 2012.

The Crew Dragon aced a dress rehearsal in March 2019  when it left Merritt Island on the nose of a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket and autonomously docked with the International Space Station. Five days after its departure, the Crew Dragon returned to Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean some 142.9 miles (230 kilometers) off Florida's eastern coastline.

But that trip's only passengers were an Earth-shaped plush toy and a dummy named "Ripley." This time we'll get to see how the Crew Dragon fares when real, live astronauts are onboard.

"Dragon will be fully autonomous" said SpaceX crew mission director Benjamin Reed at the May 1 conference. "The expectation is [that] it can carry the crew safely to the station and bring them home without direct intervention."

Even so, Hurley and Behnken are set to take control for a short period and  as explained by NASA deputy manager Steve Stich  "do a little bit of manual flying" before the Crew Dragon docks. They'll be able to guide the vessel using touch screens or physical switches (both options are available) for certain portions of the journey. While aboard, the crew's expected to test out such components as the maneuvering thrusters and environmental control system.

And then we have the spacesuits. Designed by SpaceX, Reed says these wearable wonders are one-piece outfits built to supply the astronauts with oxygen, provide the appropriate temperature and maintain pressure. "The suits also have an integrated communications system so that the crew can communicate through their helmets," he added. The spacesuits plug into the Crew Dragon's chairs when their wearers sit down.

" " NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley (front) are seen here in SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft flight simulator. SpaceX

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Prepping for COVID-19 and Beyond

Neither Behnken nor Hurley are strangers to low-Earth orbit. Behnken's logged more than 708 hours in space, and Hurley was a member of NASA's last shuttle-era crew back in 2011. But every mission presents its own, unique challenges. Like the rest of the world, NASA, SpaceX and these two astronauts have had to make adjustments during the coronavirus outbreak.

"Obviously with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are taking extra precautions for all teams supporting the launch and all phases of flight," Stich said. Both SpaceX and NASA have implemented social distancing protocols (like keeping the work desks 6 feet, or 1.82 meters, apart) at their respective control rooms.

Meanwhile, the crew's getting a wide berth. "We have minimized contact with [Hurley and Behnken] for weeks now ... a lot of training events have been done virtually," Stich explained. The astronauts will also observe a preflight quarantine from May 16 until the launch May 27.

"It's really about not only Bob and Doug's safety, but it's also about the safety of the crew aboard the International Space Station," said NASA Commercial Crew program manager Kathy Lueders at the conference.

Right now, there are three spacefarers  two Americans and a Russian  living and working aboard the International Space Station. The length of Behnken and Hurley's stay at the facility will be determined at a later date; it could last anywhere from five to 30 days.

When the time to head home arrives, the Crew Dragon should undock autonomously and deliver its human charges to Florida (by way of the Atlantic).

There's a long, proud tradition of civilians gathering near the Kennedy Space Center to witness rocket launches. Unfortunately, NASA is discouraging people from following suit this time, lest they spread or contract COVID-19.

Still, you might want to tune in and watch the launch online. For just the fifth time in history, NASA astronauts will be test-flying a new type of spacecraft. Should Behnken and Hurley complete their mission objectives, we may yet see a golden age of space tourism and innovation  with private industry taking on development roles long adopted by governments.

"This really is the next major step in commercializing low-Earth orbit and having a really vital low-Earth orbit economy in which NASA is one of many customers," said Bridenstine.

" " A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida Jan. 19, 2020, carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft on the company's uncrewed In-Flight Abort Test. NASA/Tony Gray

Now That's Fun Ripley, the dummy who took flight on last year's unmanned Crew Dragon demo mission, was named after Ellen Ripley from the "Alien" franchise. Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of the sci-fi heroine earned her an Oscar nod in 1987.
This advances the liberal (aka progressive) soft bigotry of low expectations, because it tells especially minorities they have little to no chance of succeeding without federal help. We have heard this for decades. If government alone, or even government mainly, could cause people to make decisions that are good for themselves and the country, would it not have by now? Trillions of dollars have been spent on programs that have not fulfilled the promises of those who created them. What about the numerous people who have succeeded on their own by making right decisions? Forget them, because they dont help the Democrats narrative.
 Interesting accounting of Facebook spending and advertising by presidential campaigns | Main | Federal government completes its seventh (and final?) execution in 2020 

I am pleased to highlight a new call for papers relating to an exciting event I am excited to be involved in helping to plan, "Understanding Drug Sentencing and its Contributions to Mass Punishment." Here is the full call, which is also available as a full pdf document at this link:

INTRODUCTION

Discussion of the war on drugs frequently fails to examine precisely how drug offenders are sentenced  and how they should be. Drug sentencing practices are implicated in many fundamental criminal justice issues and concerns. Research suggests incarcerating people for drug offenses has little impact on substance use rates or on crime rates more generally. And, despite reports of comparable use rates, people of color are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug-related offenses than white counterparts. Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes are applied commonly, but inconsistently, in drug cases and for persons with a criminal history that involves drug offenses. And while states have created specialty courts to handle the cases of low-level drug offenders, the efficacy and appropriateness of the drug court movement has long been subject to debate.

Distinct state and federal realities complicate our understanding of the relationship between the drug war and punishment. Nearly all federal drug defendants get sent to prison and nearly 50% of the federal prison population is comprised of drug offenders; relatively few state drug offenders are sent to prison and less than 20% of state prisoners are serving time on drug charges. But data on arrests, jail populations, and community supervision highlight the continued, significant impact drug cases still have on state and local justice systems. The role of drug criminalization and sentencing contributes to mass incarceration, yet mass punishment can look quite different depending on the criminal justice system(s) and the drugs.



ABOUT THE CALL

These issues and others related to drug sentencing will be part of a symposium jointly sponsored by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and the Academy for Justice at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. "Drug Sentencing and its Contributions to Mass Punishment," will take place on June 1012, 2021, at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in Columbus, Ohio. As part of this symposium, we invite scholars to submit papers for inclusion in the workshop scheduled for June 12. Accepted submissions will be paired with a discussant who will review and provide feedback on the paper during the workshop. Each paper should reflect on some aspect of drug prosecutions and sentencing in the United States. Participants should have a draft to discuss and circulate by May 17, 2021. The papers will be gathered and published in a Spring 2022 symposium edition of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, a peer-reviewed publication. Participants should have a completed version to begin the publication process by August 15, 2021. Final papers may range in length from 5,000  20,000 words.

Deadline for submission is November 1, 2020. Please submit a title and an abstract of no more than 300 words to Jana Hrdinova at hrdinova.1@osu.edu. Accepted scholars will be notified by December 1, 2020
 First published papers from "Understanding Drug Sentencing" now available in latest issue of Federal Sentencing Reporter | Main | Split Sixth Circuit panel finds multiple errors in district court's reduction of LWOP sentence via 3582(c)(1)(A) 

November 4, 2021

Should veteran status justify reducing or increasing the sentences of January 6 rioters?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this lengthy new AP piece headlined "Feds seek tougher sentences for veterans who stormed Capitol." The piece merits a full read, and here are excerpts:

During his 27 years in the U.S. Army, Leonard Gruppo joined the Special Forces, served in four war zones and led a team of combat medics in Iraq before retiring in 2013 as a lieutenant colonel. During his six minutes inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Gruppo joined a slew of other military veterans as a mob of pro-Trump rioters carried out an unparalleled assault on the bastion of American democracy. Hes among dozens of veterans and active-service members charged in connection with the insurrection. Now, cases like his are presenting a thorny question for federal judges to consider when they sentence veterans who stormed the Capitol: Do they deserve leniency because they served their country or tougher punishment because they swore an oath to defend it? The Justice Department has adopted the latter position. In at least five cases so far, prosecutors have cited a rioters military service as a factor weighing in favor of a jail sentence or house arrest. Prosecutors have repeatedly maintained that veterans service, while commendable, made their actions on Jan. 6 more egregious.... Prosecutors arguments about rioters military service didnt sway one of the first judges to hear them  at Gruppos sentencing hearing last Friday. I dont view his military service that way. I just cant bring myself to do that, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said before sentencing Gruppo to two years of probation, including 90 days of house arrest.... In most criminal cases, judges typically view a defendants military service as a mitigating factor that favors leniency, said James Markham, a professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But he recognizes how the Justice Department could conclude that rioters with military experience should be held to a higher standard than those without it. Its obviously not related to their military service directly, but its also not entirely conceptually unrelated that somebody who is a veteran or had military service could be viewed as having a more refined understanding of the importance of civilian control and electoral stability, said Markham, a lawyer and Air Force veteran. More than 650 people have been charged in the Jan. 6 attack. Some of the rioters facing the most serious charges, including members of far-right extremist groups, have military backgrounds. A handful of riot defendants were on active duty, including an Army reservist who wore a Hitler mustache to his job at at a Navy base. More than 100 riot defendants have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of six months of incarceration. Two dozen had been sentenced as of Friday. At least three of the sentenced defendants are veterans, according to an Associated Press review of court records. In September, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg sentenced Air Force veteran Derek Jancart to 45 days in jail for joining the riot. Prosecutors had sought a four-month jail sentence for Jancart, an Ohio steelworker.... Another Air Force veteran, Thomas Vinson, was sentenced on Oct. 22 to five years of probation. Prosecutors had recommended three months of house arrest for Vinson, a Kentucky resident who served in the Air Force from 1984 through 1988.... At least two other rioters who served in the military are scheduled to be sentenced in the coming days. Prosecutors have recommended two months in jail for Boyd Camper, who served in the U.S. Marines from 1987 to 1990... Prosecutors are seeking two months of house arrest for Air Force veteran Jonathan Ace Sanders Sr., who is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday.

Some of many prior related posts:

November 4, 2021 at 09:22 AM | Permalink

Comments

It should be aggravating for 14A, sec. 3 purposes, previous swearing to uphold the Constitution grounds -- after involvement in an insurrection -- for denial of state and federal office.

Posted by: Joe | Nov 4, 2021 11:11:13 AM

I still haven't thought about this for a generic veteran, one who never got beyond the low enlisted ranks, but it sure as hell should be aggravating for a lieutenant colonel.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Nov 4, 2021 11:29:07 AM

Have to say I agree with Soronel on this one.

I don't see why the quoted professor needed to mince words over it either, aside from that's what law profs exist to do. ("more refined understanding of the importance of civilian control and electoral stability"? Way to both understate and obfuscate at the same time.) Really it's quite simple. The whole point of a military is to protect the country. (Maybe that's overly idealistic, but indulge me ok?) If you turn around and try to overthrow the national gov't, you're betraying the very purpose of military service and harming the very public that you're supposed to be protecting.

So I guess I have to disagree with the word-mincing prof on this one. Far from being "not related to their military service directly" it actually goes quite "obviously" to the heart of what that service means.

It's disappointing that Howell didn't see it that way. A little surprising too since I recall she voiced support for dealing with the insurrectionists more severely. Other parts of the article (which I will peruse in full per the OP's suggestion) note that Howell grew up as an Army brat (don't mean that disparagingly). The article further states that Howell "believes most Americans would have 'enormous respect' for [the defendant's] service." To that I would paraphrase TP and say "I like veterans who didn't try to destroy democracy." In other words, it's entirely possibleand should create no cognitive dissonance whatsoeverto continue to respect veterans who didn't go insurrectionist while heaping plenty of opprobrium on those who did.

Posted by: kotodama | Nov 4, 2021 2:03:44 PM

Since all these prosecutions are being done in bad faith and the courts are in some cases kangaroo-style, why should any time be given to any of these defendants? It's becoming clear that the FBI provoked much of it no harm was cause to anyone, the people were let in by the capitol police and none of the far more violent and murderous actors in other riots both in DC and within the United States.

All charges should be dropped forthwith and any convictions reversed.

Posted by: restless94110 | Nov 5, 2021 3:23:04 PM

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 Should veteran status justify reducing or increasing the sentences of January 6 rioters? | Main | Checking in with Oregon's drug decriminalization effort one year in 

November 4, 2021

Split Sixth Circuit panel finds multiple errors in district court's reduction of LWOP sentence via 3582(c)(1)(A)

The Sixth Circuit yesterday handed down a notable split panel opinion reversing the grant of compassionate release to a defendant who had been serving a life without parole sentence in US v. Bass, No. 21-1094 (6th Cir. Nov. 3, 2021) (available here). Here i how the majority opinion gets started:

In 2003, John Bass, a local drug kingpin in the state of Michigan, was convicted of murdering a hitman whom Bass had hired to kill Basss half-brother. Though the Government sought the death penalty, Bass was ultimately sentenced to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of release. In 2020, Bass moved for compassionate release due to COVID-19. The district court granted Basss request in January 2021 and ordered his immediate release. In March, a divided panel of this court granted the Governments emergency motion to stay the release. In this merits appeal, the Government argues that the district court abused its discretion when it granted Basss request for immediate release. Because the district courts decision rested upon legal errors, its decision to release Bass constituted an abuse of its discretion. On remand, moreover, the district court must reevaluate the compassionate release request based on current facts and circumstances, which have materially changed.

The "legal errors" identified by the majority relate largely to how the district court framed and balanced various 3553(a) factors, but the seriousness of the crime seems to be driving much of the analysis:

The district court also reasoned that, balancing Basss crimes with the circumstances under which they were committed, his twenty-two-year incarceration was sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to fulfill the purposes of his punishment. Bass, 514 F. Supp. 3d at 984 (quoting 18 U.S.C.  3553(a)). This conclusion does not fit the facts of Basss case. Basss crimes were so severe that the Government sought the death penalty, and Basss own defense counsel assured the jury that Bass would never leave prison in an effort to avoid imposition of the death penalty. Bass, 460 F.3d at 834. The district court justified Basss release by repeatedly emphasizing Basss commitment to rehabilitation and education. Bass, 514 F. Supp. 3d at 984-88. But the district court failed to square this lengthy rehabilitation analysis with the fact that Basss original sentence was life imprisonment without the possibility of release. This sentence would have ensured that the fifty-two-year-old Bass would remain in prison for the rest of his life, which could conceivably extend for several decades. In deciding Basss original sentence, the jury and the district court had already considered and rejected the possibility that Bass could be rehabilitated, or that his capacity for rehabilitation warranted the potential for an early release. This is not to say that compassionate release is never available for a defendant sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release. We assume that there are circumstances that would warrant compassionate release for a defendant so sentenced. But the nature of Basss life sentence calls into question the district courts decision to afford substantial weight to Basss efforts at rehabilitation after only twenty-two years in prison.

Notably, as detailed here, a few months ago in US v. Hunter, 12 F. 4th 555 (6th Cir. 2021), a unanimous Sixth Circuit panel reversed a life sentence reduced to "only" 21 years in prison based on questionable conclusions that certain factors could never permit a sentence reduction via 3582(c)(1)(A). Here the reversal is focused on the weighing of 3553(a) factors, and that reality in part drives the dissent that Judge White penned here. Her opinion starts and ends this way:

I would not have granted Basss motion for compassionate release, but under the compassionate-release jurisprudence this court has developed over the past year and a half or so, our disagreement with a district courts exercise of its discretion is expressly excluded as a ground for reversal. We require district courts to provide only the most minimal explanation, see, e.g., United States v. Quintanilla Navarro, 986 F.3d 668, 673 (6th Cir. 2021) (affirming a district court's single-sentence order), and we must defer to their judgment in weighing the  3553(a) factors and not substitute our own, see United States v. Ruffin, 978 F.3d 1000, 1005 (6th Cir. 2020); United States v. Hogg, 858 F. Appx 816, 818 (6th Cir. 2021); United States v. Keefer, 832 F. App'x 359, 36265 (6th Cir. 2020).... As I said at the outset, I would not have granted this motion. However, the district court adequately explained its decision and did not abuse its discretion in concluding otherwise. We must apply the same rules on review without regard to whether the government or the inmate is aggrieved by the district courts decision. Our trust in the discretion of the district court must be consistent regardless of whether the district court grants or denies a [compassionate-release motion]. Bass, 843 Fed. Appx at 740.

November 4, 2021 at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Comments

I think that it would shock the general public to believe that an inmate like John Bass could ever be released from his life sentence without the possibility of parole, given his past conduct and the fact that even his own defense lawyer told the jury, when they were considering giving him the death penalty for his crimes, that if they sentenced him to life without parole instead, he would die in prison and never be released back into free society. Just because he is obesely fat, placing him at a higher risk for getting COVID-19, should not qualify him for release -- after all, he is supposed to die in prison, one way or another, sooner or later. After the appeal was filed, the Bureau of Prisons cleverly offered to give him CV-19 vaccination shots, which he refused. The majority says that the District Judge should take that fact into consideration upon remand. Another option (to satisfy the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment) would be to transfer this violent sociopathic inmate to a Federal Medical Center, where his obesity could be treated and there would be a lower risk of COVID-19 infection than at his current Penitentiary (where the numbers have already dropped dramatically since the appeal was filed in January 2021). John Bass is one of those inmates who really should never be released from prison, unless he is a frail old man (in his 80s), terminally ill and restricted to a wheel chair. He is the worst of the worst, even by penitentiary standards, where at least 40% of the inmates (about 25% have a conviction for the homicide, and the other 15% were not caught and convicted of the crime) have killed someone in the free world before coming to prison. Another little know statistic is that a majority of the inmates on Federal Death Row are there for having killed another inmate or guard in prison, while already serving a life sentence.

Posted by: Jim Gormley | Nov 4, 2021 11:48:39 AM

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Red Tag Placard in Documents also city is requiring foundation repairs, See Daryl Bullock for additional info. $10,000 bond is required by the City. Take a Flashlight. According to the Sioux City Schools Website, the elementary school may change to Bryant in the next year or 2. The city has other requirements regarding the foundation needing raised. Inquire at City Inspection Department..
RICHMOND, Va.  Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey narrowly won reelection in his reliably blue state while a Republican political newcomer delivered a stunning upset in the Virginia governor's race, sending a warning Wednesday to Democrats that their grip on power in Washington may be in peril.

In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide office in a dozen years, tapping into culture war fights over schools and race to unite former President Donald Trump's most fervent supporters with enough suburban voters to notch a victory.

Murphy barely eked out a victory against GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli, who mounted a surprisingly strong campaign on issues including taxes and opposition to pandemic mask and vaccination mandates.

The two states' results were alarming to Democrats because of where they happened. President Joe Biden carried Virginia by 10 points last year. He took New Jersey by more than 15. Given the scale of those victories, neither state was seen as especially competitive when this year's campaigns began.

Murphy, in a brief victory speech Wednesday night, alluded to his narrow margin of victory by saying he would listen to all of New Jersey, but still emphasized Democratic goals like expanding voting rights, raising taxes on the wealthy and defending abortion rights.

Republicans celebrated their strong showing, with Youngkin telling a cheering crowd of supporters that "this is the spirit of Virginia coming together like never before." The GOP's strength extended to down-ballot contests, including the lieutenant governor's race, which Winsome Sears won, becoming the first woman of color to win Virginia statewide office.

McAuliffe formally conceded in a statement Wednesday morning that congratulated Youngkin.

"Losing is never easy," he said. "We put ourselves out there and left it all on the field."

A political neophyte, Youngkin was able to take advantage of apparent apathy among core Democratic voters fatigued by years of elections that were seen as must-wins, as well as growing frustrations with Biden and the economy.

He successfully portrayed McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor, Democratic National Committee chairman and close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as part of an elite class of politicians. He also seized on a late-stage stumble by McAuliffe, who during a debate suggested parents should have a minimal role in shaping school curriculums.

Perhaps most significantly, Youngkin prevailed in a task that stumped scores of Republicans before him: attracting Trump's base while also appealing to suburban voters who were repelled by the former president's divisive behavior.

During the campaign, Youngkin stated his support for "election integrity," a nod at Trump's lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, while also focusing on education and business-friendly policies. He never campaigned in person with Trump, successfully challenging McAuliffe's effort to cast him as a clone of the former president.

That approach could provide a model for Republicans competing in future races that feature significant numbers of Democratic or independent voters.

Elsewhere Tuesday, some of the nation's largest cities held mayoral contests. Democratic former police captain Eric Adams won in New York, and Boston voters elected City Councilor Michelle Wu as its first female and Asian American mayor. Cincinnati is getting its first Asian American mayor, Aftab Pureval.

Minneapolis voters rejected a ballot initiative that sought to overhaul policing in their city, where George Floyd was killed by a white police officer on Memorial Day 2020, sparking the largest wave of protests against racial injustice in generations. The initiative would have replaced the police force with a Department of Public Safety charged with undertaking "a comprehensive public health" approach to policing.

But no other contest in this off-year election season received the level of national attention  and money  as the governor's race in Virginia, a state with broad swaths of college-educated suburban voters who are increasingly influential in swaying control of Congress and the White House.

A former co-CEO at the Carlyle Group, Youngkin poured vast amounts of his personal fortune into a campaign that spent more than $59 million.

Youngkin ran confidently on a conservative platform. He opposed a major clean energy mandate the state passed two years ago and objected to abortion in most circumstances.

He also opposed mask and vaccine mandates, and he promised to expand Virginia's limited charter schools and ban critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation's institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history.

McAuliffe tried to energize the Democratic base by highlighting abortion, denouncing a new Texas law that largely banned the procedure and warning that Youngkin would seek to implement similar restrictions.

Youngkin didn't discuss abortion much publicly, and a liberal activist caught him on tape saying the issue couldn't help him during the campaign. He said an election win would allow the party to "start going on offense" on the issue.

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SIOUX CITY -- A Sioux City man has been arrested and charged with having sexual contact with a girl at a Sioux City home.

Bobby Schlosser, 23, was booked into the Woodbury County Jail Thursday morning on one count of third-degree sexual abuse, a Class C felony. His bond was set at $20,000.

According to a complaint filed Oct. 27 in Woodbury County District Court, Schlosser touched and had sexual contact with the girl on June 26 in his bedroom while the girl was watching a movie. Schlosser pretended to fall asleep, the complaint said, then began touching the girl, who was age 13 or younger, while his eyes were closed. He later removed the girl's shirt and underwear and got on top of her, continuing to assault her.

When Schlosser shifted to his side, the girl jumped over him, grabbed her clothing and left. The girl left the home and told her mother what had happened. Her mother took her to the hospital and reported the incident to police.

Schlosser sent messages to the girl, asking her not to tell anyone what had happened, the complaint said.

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VERMILLION, S.D. -- A Vermillion woman pleaded guilty Thursday of drowning her 14-month-old son and that she was mentally ill when she did so.

Maria Milda, 27, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to an amended charge of homicide as manslaughter in the first degree. Prosecutors amended the charge from first-degree murder.

Sentencing was scheduled for Jan. 13 in Clay County Circuit Court.

When making her plea, Milda acknowledged that as part of a plea agreement, prosecutors will cap their recommendation for a prison sentence at 75 years, with 35 years suspended. She admitted that she caused her son's death "in a cruel and unusual manner" by holding him under water and plugging his nose. She also said that she was mentally ill when she did so.

Milda contacted police on Nov. 2, 2020, to report that her child was not breathing. Officers and emergency personnel went to her home in the 200 block of Luxembourg Street and found the child, who was dead. Milda said she was mentally ill when she told investigators that she had intentionally killed the child. A medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and the cause of death was drowning.

In November, a judge granted a defense request for a psychiatric evaluation to determine Milda's mental competency to stand trial. According to court documents, Milda was committed to a competency restoration program at a Sioux Falls hospital in February and was treated there until May, when her psychiatrist reported her competent to stand trial. A judge's order declaring her competent was entered in June.

In South Dakota, a person sentenced under a guilty but mentally ill plea or verdict can receive any allowable sentence but could serve some or all of any prison sentence in a psychiatric treatment facility.

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SIOUX CITY -- The two incumbents re-elected easily to the Sioux City Council touted the results as a clear message voters approve of the direction they're taking the city.

After the ballots were counted Tuesday night, Councilman Alex Watters described the verdict as a "vote of confidence."

Watters captured his second full term after first being appointed by the council to fill an unexpired term. He finished 270 votes behind Dan Moore, the current mayor pro tem. Voters also elected political newcomer Matthew O'Kane to the third open seat on the five-member council.

"I think that we need to continue to lean in to some of those things, whether you're talking infrastructure, keeping taxes in check, or even the increase in quality of life amenities," said Watters, a 35-year-old who works as director of talent and community engagement at Morningside University.

Standing in the Woodbury County Courthouse rotunda, a beaming Moore, who won his third four-year term, said he was "really fired up to serve the citizens of Sioux City." The 68-year-old attorney acknowledged the council has a great deal of work to do.

"We have momentum. We're doing good. We're going to continue to do good, but there are other things that we need to look at, too," he said. "We gotta get back to the basics. For example, we need to have those neighborhood network gatherings and get the neighbors to start talking with each other and get back with each other. In addition to that, we need to continue with economic development. We need to develop those affordable housing units. We need to pull in workers into our community; and we need to start talking about day care."

With all 17 precincts reporting, Moore led the four-candidate field with 4,486 votes, or 31 percent, followed by Watters with 4,216 votes, or 29 percent.

O'Kane narrowly beat out Ike Rayford, another first-time candidate, by just 66 votes, according to unofficial results. O'Kane tallied 2,865 votes, compared to 2,799 votes for Rayford, as both candidates took about 19 percent.

Just 5,753, or 14.64 percent of the city's 39,289 registered voters cast ballots Tuesday.

Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill said Wednesday he was "disappointed" in the early voting turnout, which was down from recent elections. However, he said the Election Day turnout was "right on par" with what it was two years ago. Other than an issue with the electronic poll books, there were no major problems reported at the polls, according to Gill.

"The vendor failed to update the eligibility slips, so people were signing up that said that they were in Sioux County," Gill said. "They just crossed out Sioux County and put Woodbury there. The people that did notice it were pretty vocal about it."

Voters on Tuesday could select up to three candidates on their ballots, with the top three vote-getters winning the at-large seats on the council, which is officially non-partisan. Fireworks, affordable housing, infrastructure and diversity were among the topics candidates tackled during interviews and forums in the weeks and days leading up to the election.

O'Kane's supporters, some of whom were dressed in green "Team O'Kane" T-shirts, cheered and clapped when the winners were declared just after 8:30 p.m.

O'Kane, 35, will succeed Councilman Pete Groetken, who did not seek another term. O'Kane is a K-12 virtual art teacher for the Sioux City Community School District. His father, James D. O'Kane, once served on the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors and in the Iowa Legislature.

"I think voters spoke. I think that there were a lot of candidates that had some great points. I think the election results are what they are," O'Kane said.

Watters, who considers himself one of Sioux City's biggest cheerleaders, said he thinks the positivity of his campaign resonated with voters.

"I think we all need to have positivity about the momentum we have going in our community," he said.

While Rayford expressed disappointment in the results, the 49-year-old corporate audio visual technician and Sioux City NAACP chapter president, said he is proud of the campaign he ran. He said it is too early to say whether he will run for a seat on the council in the future.

"The three winners, I congratulate them. We'll continue to work with them, because, as I've said before, I love Sioux City," he said. "I'll continue to advocate and work for the community and do whatever is needed of me. And, I'll keep holding our city councilmen accountable for the job we elected them to do."

Moore, Watters and O'Kane will take their new oaths of office in early January, joining holdover members Mayor Bob Scott and Councilwoman Julie Schoenherr.

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At least six state or local political candidates won their elections on Tuesday, less than 10 months after they attended former President Donald Trump's Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, the day when thousands of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

At least 13 candidates on Tuesday's ballots for state or local offices were in Washington, D.C., for the rally promoting the lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump, according to a list compiled by BuzzFeed News. None of them have been charged with any crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 riot or accused of entering the Capitol that day.

Five of the 13 were running for seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, which Democrats and Republicans are battling to control. Three of the five, including two incumbent legislators, won their races on Tuesday.

The House remained up for grabs Wednesday, with a handful of competitive races still too early to call.

The list of losing candidates who attended the Stop the Steal rally included Oath Keepers member Edward Durfee Jr., who ran for the New Jersey General Assembly. He finished third behind two Democrats. Durfee worked a security detail for the Oath Keepers outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, Gothamist reported, but he isn't accused of joining other members of the far-right paramilitary group in storming the building.

The three rally attendees who won their Virginia House races were incumbents Del. Dave LaRock and Del. John McGuire and Marie March, who won an open seat. The two losers in Virginia were Philip Hamilton and Maureen Brody. BuzzFeed News reported that Hamilton and Brody were at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Elsewhere, Stop the Steal attendees winning local races included candidates for seats on the City Council in Nampa, Idaho, the Borough Council in Watchung, New Jersey, and the Board of Commissioners in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, according to published reports. Apparent losers included candidates for county executive in Pennsylvania and for the City Council in Mason, Ohio.

March said during an interview Wednesday that she doesn't regret attending Trump's Jan. 6 rally with her husband and father. She said they left before Trump finished his speech and the mob breached the Capitol and they didnt go to the Capitol before returning home.

Were in a very conservative district and a lot of people do like Donald Trump, March said. He was the sitting president of the United States of America at the time. We went to see him speak.

March, who owns a restaurant in Christiansburg called Due South BBQ, said she was motivated to run for office in part by an incumbent Democratic lawmaker from a neighboring district who tweeted, Who wants to start a BBQ joint in the (New River Valley) where the owners dont participate in an attempted coup?

"I won and he lost, so it's kind of poetic justice," March said of Del. Chris Hurst.

Over 650 people have been charged with federal crimes in the Jan. 6 riot. Several members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, another far-right extremist group, are charged with plotting coordinated attacks on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Trump urged the crowd of his supporters to march on the Capitol, saying, If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. The Democratic-led U.S. House impeached Trump on a charge he incited the riot, but the Republican-led Senate acquitted him.

LaRock told The Winchester Star in January that he saw rioters attacking the Capitol after attending Trump's speech, but didn't join them.

I dont know what constitutes the Capitol grounds, but I certainly didnt enter the Capitol, LaRock told the newspaper.

McGuire told The Washington Post in July that he was at Trump's rally but didn't enter the Capitol that day. He later issued a statement saying he had joined thousands of law-abiding citizens at the rally to voice our support of a free and fair elections process.

When I arrived home and saw the news, I was just as shocked and horrified as everyone else to see that people had entered the Capitol. It was a tragic day, and one we wont soon forget," his statement said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

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Deere executives said Wednesday that the company wouldn't return to the bargaining table with striking workers because it wouldn't offer a better contract than one they rejected that included immediate 10% raises.

Marc Howze, the chief administrative officer of Deere & Co., said the deal the United Auto Workers union rejected on Tuesday represented the most it could offer and still keep its costs competitive.

Howze declined to discuss how much the ongoing strike is costing Deere, which will release its next earnings report later this month. The disputed contract would cover more than 10,000 Deere workers at 12 facilities in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas, who make the companys iconic John Deere green tractors and other equipment.

The company plans to reach out to employees directly now to stress the virtues of its offer while it tries to keep its plants running with salaried employees and other workers to meet customer commitments. Other Deere plants globally are also working to pick up the slack.

We want to make sure they understand the value of the agreement, to make sure they understand that there is nothing to be gained by continuing to hold out, Howze said. To some degree, because we were able to come to a resolution as quickly as we were, I think theres some folks who believe there must be some more available.

In addition to the initial raises, this weeks offer included 5% raises in the third and fifth years of the six-year deal, and it would have provided an $8,500 ratification bonus, preserved a pension option for new employees, made workers eligible for health insurance sooner and maintained their no-premium health insurance coverage.

UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said union leaders were meeting to discuss their next moves. With a majority of workers voting against the latest offer, union officials face demands to deliver more but that might be difficult given the Moline, Illinois-based companys stance. And pressure to reach a settlement will mount the longer workers go without pay.

The vote Tuesday was much closer than when 90% of the workers rejected the company's first offer last month, but 55% of the workers still rejected the latest offer. Workers have been encouraged to seek more now because of the current worker shortages and Deere's strong profits.

It seems general membership feels emboldened by this current political moment of labor power. Theyre pushing things further than the union leadership apparently wants to go, said Victor Chen, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies labor. Its a gamble, but the economic wind is against their backs, given widespread supply chain problems and the current worker shortage.

Deere officials, who have predicted that the company will report record profits of between $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion this fiscal year, dont want to miss out on sales to farmers who are ready to buy thanks to strong crop prices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that farmers net income will increase by nearly 20% this year, to $113 billion.

Observers say the rejection of the deal shows pent-up anger among Deere workers over how much of its profits the company has been willing to share with workers.

Although the proposed contract was a significant improvement over the previous offer, the Deere workers evidently felt that the company could afford more, Fordham University sociologist Chris Rhomberg said. For decades, wages across the economy have lagged behind productivity growth, and workers may be tired of seeing the gains from their efforts go predominantly to corporations making record-breaking earnings.

Now the challenge for the UAW and Deere will be finding a way to resolve their differences in a way that workers will accept, said Todd Vachon, a former member of a carpenter's union who now teaches about labor relations at Rutgers University.

There is always the risk of overplaying ones hand  on both sides, really, Vachon said. It appears the final mile will likely involve some changes to work rules and working conditions in addition to just wage increases.

The longer the strike continues, the more painful it will become for everyone, Creighton University economist Ernie Goss said.

During the dragging on, both sides lose, Goss said. Workers are looking at lost income. John Deere is looking at lost sales. So they both have sort of guns pointing at each others heads, economically speaking.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Citing unspecified examples of election fraud, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday pledged to create a law enforcement agency to investigate election crimes as part of a new package of voting laws.

Speaking at an event in West Palm Beach, the Republican governor announced a series of election law proposals for lawmakers to take up during next year's legislative session, including new restrictions on ballot drop boxes and strengthened penalties for ballot harvesting.

DeSantis, who is up for reelection and is eyeing a 2024 presidential run, echoed many talking points on voting problems that have gained traction in the GOP following former President Donald Trump's false claims that his reelection was stolen from him.

The governor has previously praised the 2020 election in Florida as smooth, and there is widespread consensus among election officials and experts that there was no fraud that could have impacted results in the last presidential election.

Still, without evidence, DeSantis suggested issues at the ballot box.

There'll be people, if you see someone ballot harvesting, you know, what do you do? If you call into the election office, a lot of times they don't do anything. If you know that, there's, you know, in Florida, it's Constitutionally mandated, only citizens are allowed to vote in Florida, and yet you see examples of people, theyll even check theyre not citizens, and theyll still be given ballots, he said to applause.

DeSantis spoke broadly about the proposed election police force, but a news release from his office said the Office of Election Crimes and Security would be formed within the Department of State to investigate election crimes and fraud.

A spokesperson for DeSantis said the governor is seeking to proactively deter criminal activity and prevent voter fraud but referred questions on specific violations of election law to the Florida attorney general or the state department. Neither agency immediately returned an email seeking comment.

His event Wednesday at a hotel was listed as a press conference but included a large crowd that cheered along as he criticized coronavirus mandates, Big Tech and policing policies in liberal states.

Earlier this year, as part of a nationwide GOP push to tighten voting laws, DeSantis signed a bill that restricted the use of ballot drop boxes, strengthened voter ID laws and prohibited the so-called practice of ballot harvesting, the collection of completed ballots by a third party, among other things.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrats in the House appear on the verge of advancing President Joe Bidens $1.85 trillion-and-growing domestic policy package alongside a companion $1 trillion infrastructure bill in what would be a dramatic political accomplishment  if they can push it to passage.

The House scrapped votes late Thursday but will be back at it early Friday, and White House officials worked the phones to lock in support for the president's signature proposal. After months of negotiations, House passage of the big bill would be a crucial step, sending to the Senate Biden's ambitious effort to expand health care, child care and other social services for countless Americans and deliver the nation's biggest investment yet to fight climate change.

Alongside the slimmer roads-bridges-and-broadband package, it adds up to Biden's answer to his campaign promise to rebuild the country from the COVID-19 crisis and confront a changing economy.

But they're not there yet.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked furiously into the night at the Capitol Thursday and kept the House late to shore up votes. The party has been here before, another politically messy day like many before that are being blamed for the Democrats' dismal showing in this week's elections. On and off Capitol Hill, party leaders declared it's time for Congress to deliver on Biden's agenda.

Were going to pass both bills, Pelosi insisted at a midday press briefing.

Her strategy now seems focused on passing the most robust bill possible in her chamber and then leaving the Senate to adjust or strip out the portions its members wont agree to. The House Rules Committee processed final revisions including to a state-and-local tax deduction in a brief meeting late Thursday in preparation for floor votes.

Half the size of Biden's initial $3.5 trillion package, the now sprawling 2,135-page bill has won over most of the progressive Democratic lawmakers, even though it is smaller than they wanted. But the chambers more centrist and fiscally conservative Democrats continued to mount objections.

Overall the package remains more far-reaching than any other in decades. Republicans are fully opposed to Bidens bill, which is called the Build Back Better Act after the presidents 2020 campaign slogan.

The big package would provide large numbers of Americans with assistance to pay for health care, raising children and caring for elderly people at home.

There would be lower prescription drug costs, limiting the price of insulin to $35 a dose, and Medicare for the first time would be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for prices of some other drugs, a long-sought Democratic priority.

Medicare would have a new hearing aid benefit for older Americans, and those with Medicare Part D would see their out-of-pocket prescription drug costs capped at $2,000.

The package would provide some $555 billion in tax breaks encouraging cleaner energy and electric vehicles, the nations largest commitment to tackling climate change.

With a flurry of late adjustments, the Democrats added key provisions in recent days  adding back a new paid family leave program and work permits for immigrants. Late changes Thursday would lift a $10,000 cap on state-and-local tax deductions to $80,000.

Much of the package's cost would be covered with higher taxes on wealthier Americans, those earning more than $400,000 a year, and a 5% surtax would be added on those making over $10 million annually. Large corporations would face a new 15% minimum tax in an effort to stop big businesses from claiming so many deductions that they end up paying zero in taxes.

From the White House, the president has been very clear, he wants to get this moving, said principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

As night fell, Democratic leaders struggled to resolve a catalog of remaining issues as lawmakers balanced the promise of Biden's sweeping vision with the realities of their home-district politics.

Biden has few votes to spare in the narrowly divided House and none when the bill ultimately arrives for consideration in the evenly split 50-50 Senate.

Five centrist Democratic lawmakers want a full budgetary assessment before they vote. Others from more Republican-leaning regions are objecting to a new state-and-local tax deduction that favors New York, California and other high-tax states. Another group wants changes to the immigration-related provisions.

In recent days, both the overall price tag and the revenue to pay for it have grown. A new White House assessment Thursday said revenue from the taxes on corporations and the wealthy and other changes are estimated to bring in $2.1 trillion over 10 years, according to a summary obtained by The Associated Press. That's up from what had been $1.9 trillion in earlier estimates.

Pelosi noted a similar assessment Thursday by the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, and she echoed Biden's frequent comment that the overall package will be fully paid for.

But another model from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania suggested a shortfall in revenue for covering the cost, breeding fresh doubts among some of the Democratic lawmakers.

Still, the Democrats in the House are anxious to finish up this week, eager to deliver on the president's agenda and, as some lawmakers prepare to depart for a global climate change summit in Scotland, show the U.S. taking the environmental issue seriously.

Democrats have been working to resolve their differences, particularly with holdout Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who forced cutbacks to Biden's bill but championed the slimmer infrastructure package that had stalled amid deliberations.

Manchin has panned the new family and medical leave program, which is expected to provide four weeks of paid time off after childbirth, for recovery from major illness or for caring for family members, less than the 12-week program once envisioned.

Senators are also likely to strip out a just-added immigration provision that would create a new program for some 7 million immigrants who are in the country without legal standing, allowing them to apply for permits to work and travel in the U.S. for five years. It's not clear that addition would pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian under special budget rules being used to process the package.

On another remaining issue, Democrats are still arguing over a plan partly to do away with the $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions that particularly hits high-tax states and was enacted as part of the Trump-era 2017 tax plan.

While repeal of the so-called SALT deduction cap is a priority for several Northeastern state lawmakers, progressives wanted to prevent the super-wealthy from benefiting. Under the revised plan, the $10,000 deduction cap would be lifted to $80,000 for nine years, starting with the 2021 tax year.



Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freking, Aamer Madhani and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Cranley said Thursday he will fire Ohio's entire utility regulatory board if elected, part of changes he proposes to curb future abuses amid a sweeping, unresolved bribery scandal.

The Cincinnati mayor called for sitting members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to be replaced by those with three years experience in a relevant field and proof that they have no financial ties to the electric, gas and other utility companies they regulate.

The people of Ohio lost faith in their elected leaders," he said. "Job one of Ohios next governor is to restore public trust. I will do that by cleaning house at the PUCO to restore faith in Ohios leaders.

The announcement came two days after the election of Cranley's successor as mayor, Aftab Pureval. It was the first major policy proposal in his run to replace Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, which he announced in August. Cranley faces Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley in next years Democratic primary.

Whaley unveiled her own anti-corruption platform in June, pledging to create a bipartisan Public Accountability Commission to investigate questionable ethics, bolster funding to existing state ethics agencies and set new ethical standards for the governor and their appointees. She said she would also work with the Legislature to close dark money loopholes.

Both proposals come as the actions of DeWine's appointee as commission chair, Sam Randazzo, have been under scrutiny in a federal probe that alleges former Republican House Speaker Larry Householder orchestrated a $60 million bribery scheme that included the passage of a nuclear plant bailout bill that benefited Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.

As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, FirstEnergy said it paid Randazzo $22 million over the years, including the $4.3 million for future work on FirstEnergys behalf that rolled in just before DeWine made him head of the commission.

Householder has denied wrongdoing, and Randazzo has said he executed his duties as commission chair conscientiously, lawfully, and mindful of striking the right balance between competing interests. DeWine, who was warned Randazzo had FirstEnergy ties, has stood by the appointment.

I guess the political season is starting, DeWine told reporters at an afternoon news briefing. I'm not going to fire them. These comments are political comments.

Cranley's proposal would require utility commissioners to have at least three years of experience in one or more relevant fields: economics, law, finance, accounting, engineering, physical or natural sciences, natural resources, or environmental studies.

Under his plan, commission appointees would be precluded from holding stocks or bonds in a regulated utility or receiving any compensation, direct or indirect, from a regulated utility for at least a year. Those people would also have to pass a background check.



Associated Press writer Andrew Welsh-Huggins contributed to this report.

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BOSTON (AP)  The same day that voters elected Michelle Wu as Bostons first female and first Asian American mayor, voters in Framingham ousted Yvonne Spicer, the first Black woman to run a city in Massachusetts.

The 59-year-old Spicer lost her re-election bid Tuesday to fellow Democrat Charlie Sisitsky, 76, a well-known political figure in Framingham.

Serving as the mayor of Framingham has been the honor of my life, Spicer said Tuesday. I am thankful for the opportunity to have been Framinghams very first mayor, and the first African American woman to be elected mayor in Massachusetts. I am proud of successfully transitioning a 317-year-old town into a brand new city.

Spicer said she is leaving Framingham in a better place than when she took office, having led the city through the pandemic and having created the most diverse administration, boards and committees in the citys history. Framingham became a city in 2018 after decades of being operated by town meetings, effectively making Spicer its first mayor.

Spicer won endorsements from U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but was still handily defeated by Sisitsky. Before being elected mayor, Spicer had worked as a teacher, as a longtime advocate for science and technology education and as a vice president at Bostons Museum of Science.

Sisitsky was first elected to Framingham's former board of selectmen in 1998 and served until Framingham adopted a city form of government in 2017. He then served a single term on the new city council.

People want us to do a better job governing and it starts right here and right now, Sisitsky told supporters Tuesday. We're going to be open, accessible, transparent and most of all present working every day.

Sisitsky had also worked as public works director in Natick for two decades, and as head of the Medford Department of Public Works.

In 2017, Spicer defeated former State Rep. John Stefanini, also a Democrat, in the city's first mayoral election.

There were other key municipal elections around the state on Tuesday.

In Somerville, Katjana Ballantyne defeated fellow City Councilor and fellow Democrat Wilfred Mbah to succeed longtime Mayor Joe Curtatone, who opted not to seek reelection. Curtatone, also a Democrat, was first elected mayor in 2003.

Ballantyne was first elected to the Somerville City Council in 2013. She has served two terms as the council president.

In Holyoke, voters elected the citys first Latino mayor  Joshua Garcia, a former school committee member, Democrat, and current town manager in Blandford. Garcia, of Puerto Rican descent, defeated Michael J. Sullivan, an at-large city councilor.

Garcia, who was born in Holyoke, will lead a city where more than half of all residents identify as Hispanic, according to the most recent U.S. Census.

In Everett, incumbent Mayor Carlo DeMaria eked out a win over challenger Fred Capone, a city councilor. DeMaria will serve a sixth term.

In Lawrence, interim Mayor Kendrys Vasquez was defeated by Brian DePena, a former at-large city councilor. Vasquez took up the post in January, after former Mayor Dan Rivera stepped down to lead the state's development finance agency.

And in Salem, Kim Driscoll will serve a 5th term as that city's mayor.

In Boston, voters made history by electing Wu, who easily defeated fellow City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, also a Democrat. Boston had only elected white men to lead the city until Wu's win.

The 36-year-old, who was born and raised in Chicago and whose parent immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan, will take office Nov. 16.

The citys previous elected mayor  Democrat Marty Walsh  stepped down earlier this year to become U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden. Walsh was replaced on an acting basis by Kim Janey, the first Black woman to assume the office.

Walsh praised Wu on her win.

Its history, Walsh told the AP on Wednesday. We elected the first-ever nonwhite person as mayor of Boston. I talked to City Councilor Michelle Wu today to congratulate her. ... Its exciting for Boston. ... Shell be great, shell be successful, and Im going to support her any way that I can.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico health officials on Wednesday applauded the federal governments move to clear the way for COVID-19 vaccinations for children ages 5 to 11, saying the rollout will involve a robust team of physicians, pharmacies, hospitals and other health clinics.

Deputy Health Secretary Dr. Laura Parajon said children who don't get the shots will remain vulnerable.

This is really important because even though children dont usually get as sick, there are still children who can get sick from COVID and get hospitalized. Even five children have died in New Mexico, so we really want to prevent that, she said during a briefing.

The latest state data shows about one-quarter of the confirmed coronavirus infection cases reported in New Mexico over the past week were among children, but the number of hospitalizations among children has remained small. Officials also noted that there have been no deaths among children in recent weeks.

Health officials in New Mexico said they expect to receive an allocation of 90,000 doses of the pediatric vaccine over the next week. That will be enough to cover almost half of the states children ages 5 to 11.

State officials are planning to have vaccine clinics for youngsters in several cities around New Mexico in the coming weeks.

Many parents have indicated that they are reticent about getting their children inoculated. Almost two-thirds of parents in the U.S. recently polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they would either wait or not seek out the vaccines for their kids.

The vaccine for children is one-third of the dose given to older children and adults and administered with kid-sized needles. It requires two doses three weeks apart, plus two more weeks for full protection to take effect.

Parajon said there's data that shows the vaccines are safe for children, and the state will be working with providers and others on messaging aimed at easing parents' concerns. She pointed to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that estimates for every 10 children who are vaccinated, one case of COVID-19 can be prevented in another child.

Part of the goal is to reduce the opportunities the virus has to spread and mutate, state officials said.

The state Public Education Department is embarking on a new federally funded $63 million program for boosting testing in schools as a way to identify cases early on and avoid quarantines for students who have been exposed to someone who has been infected. The program is launching in Alamogordo, and numerous other schools have applied to participate.

Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus said it could take three to five weeks for schools to implement because training and certification will be required. In some cases, districts plan to hire additional staff for the program.

He said the testing program will allow students to stay in school as well as participate in extra-curricular activities and school-related competitions. He also said it will be flexible to accommodate the needs of individual districts.

The goal is to keep New Mexico students and staff safe. That's what we're working on, and we're getting better at it every week," he said. We want to minimize quarantine times, and we want to keep our kids engaged in in-person learning.

New Mexico is one of three states working with the CDC on the project. Officials said it's possible it could be expanded to pre-kindergarten programs and child care centers.

Overall, New Mexico is seeing its confirmed coronavirus infections increase, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase said.

We need to be even more careful because the spread of delta is much more robust. Delta seems very effective at finding pockets in families and workplaces of unvaccinated people and spreading quite rapidly," he said, adding that booster shots and precautions such as mask wearing, social distancing and hand-washing still are important because the virus can spread among the vaccinated.

State data shows more than 27% of cases reported in New Mexico over the last four weeks were among vaccinated people. While hospitalization rates were higher among the unvaccinated, 12 vaccinated people were among those who died because of COVID-19 in the past month.

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JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  The newest member of the Mississippi House of Representatives used to be in control of security on the other end of the state Capitol.

Democratic Rep. Robert Sanders of Cleveland took his oath of office during a small ceremony Wednesday in the House chamber. He served as sergeant-at-arms for the Mississippi Senate from 2000 to 2004.

Sanders succeeds former Rep. Abe Hudson of Shelby, a Democrat who resigned in late August from the District 29 seat in Bolivar and Sunflower counties.

Sanders will serve the rest of the four-year term that ends in January 2024. He said Thursday that he intends to continue serving as a member of the Cleveland Board of Aldermen while serving in the House. That is allowed under state law because both jobs are in the legislative branch of government.

In addition to working as Senate sergeant-at-arms, Sanders has been police chief for the city of Shaw and for Mississippi Valley State University.

Sanders and one other person, Keveon L. Taylor, signed up to run in a Nov. 2 special election to succeed Hudson in the House. The Mississippi Board of Election Commissioners ruled Sept. 14 that Taylor did not meet the two-year residency requirement because he switched his voter registration to Lafayette County, where he is a University of Mississippi law school student.

The commissioners said no election was needed with only one candidate, and they declared Sanders the winner.

Taylor challenged the decision, saying he is a lifelong resident of Bolivar County and intends to return there after law school. A Hinds County circuit judge ruled in his favor, but the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned that decision. On Wednesday, a Hinds County chancery judge dismissed Taylor's request for another review of his claim.

Republicans hold a wide majority in the 122-member Mississippi House.

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The latest on the U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  Environmental campaigners have awarded their Fossil of the Day award to the Polish government for giving  and then apparently backtracking on  a pledge to speed up its phaseout of coal power.

Climate Action Network, an umbrella group representing hundreds of non-governmental organizations, blasted Poland Thursday for committing at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow to end coal use, but then declaring itself a poor country and sticking to its previous deadline of 2049.

The little-coveted award went to the United States on Wednesday, for what climate activists say was a new measure that benefits mainly industrial agriculture companies rather than ordinary farmers.

The U.S. shared the prize with France for its efforts to get natural gas and nuclear power plants classified as sustainable forms of energy by the European Union, and with the International Emissions Trading Association for representing oil majors such as Chevron and Shell at the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 talks.



GENEVA  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says a new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden, in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power, amounts to a big transformation.

The First Movers Coalition, spearheaded by the U.S. government and the World Economic Forum, aims to help meet an increasingly difficult target laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So far, almost three dozen global companies in many sectors have committed to changing their purchasing practices to favor development of zero-emission technologies by 2030.

Designers of the project say half of the emissions reduction projected between now and 2030 will stem from innovations  like capturing carbon out of the air  that arent operating at a large scale.

Its a big deal, Kerry told many corporate leaders behind the project in Glasgow on Thursday.



GLASGOW, Scotland  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has joined the tens of thousands of attendees whove been humbled by tough entry procedures at the U.N. climate summit.

Kerry apologized Thursday for appearing about 20 minutes late for a renewable energy event at the United States pavilion inside the summit site.

Kerry said he had been off-campus visiting a venue outside the summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

As you all know, getting back in is not easy, he told the crowd. Even for those of us who thought it might be.

The summits organizers have imposed firm rules for accreditation badges, masks and proof of daily negative results on tests for COVID-19. Lines to get in lasted well beyond an hour early this week, but have shrunk noticeably since.



GLASGOW, Scotland  The British government says pledges of new or earlier deadlines for ending coal use have come from more than 20 countries including Ukraine, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and Chile.

Meanwhile, Poland, the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, appeared to backtrack on any ambitious new commitments within hours of the announcement at the ongoing U.N. climate conference.

Energy security and the assurances of jobs is a priority for us, Anna Moskwa, Polands minister for climate and environment, said in a tweet, citing the governments existing plan which provides for a departure from hard coal by 2049.

Earlier in the day, it had seemed that Poland might bring that deadline forward by at least a decade.

Campaigners reacted angrily to the apparent U-turn.

Moskwa has underscored that her government cannot be trusted to sign a postcard, let alone a responsible climate pledge, said Kathrin Gutmann, campaign director of the group Europe Beyond Coal.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Denmark and several other nations signed a different pledge to prioritize funding clean energy over fossil fuel projects abroad.



HELSINKI  Finland's capital city says it will no longer serve meat dishes at seminars, staff meetings, receptions and other events to reduce Helsinki's carbon footprint.

Instead, the city government plans to offer vegetarian food and sustainable local fish.

Liisa Kivela, Helsinki's communications director, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the change takes effect in January and excludes school and workplace cafeterias run by the city of about 650,000 residents.

Kivela said the the policy adopted by the City Council also allows deviations for certain high-level visits or similar events organized by Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen or the citys senior managers.

The policy also stipulates that coffee, tea and items like bananas offered at events will have to be sourced from fair trade producers. In addition, oat milk will replace regular milk, and snacks and refreshments no longer can be served in single-use containers.

The local government said in a statement that the measure is part of a broader effort which aims to reduce the climate impact of food and reduce the amount of natural resources used by the city.

The mayor, who assumed Helsinkis top post in August, said he was glad the city retains the option of serving meat on some occasions.

For example, should the king of Sweden arrive for a visit, then domestic game can be offered. Or some group for whom it would be natural to offer meat, then there must be discretion and common sense, Vartiainen told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.



PARIS  French astronaut Thomas Pesquet used a video call from space to describe the view from the International Space Station of global warming's repercussions.

Pesquet told French President Emmanuel Macron during the call on Thursday that the space station's portholes revealed the haunting fragility of humanitys only home.

We see the pollution of rivers, atmospheric pollution, things like that," the astronaut said. "What really shocked me on this mission were extreme weather or climate phenomena.

We saw entire regions burning from the space station, in Canada, in California, he continued. We saw all of California covered by a cloud of smoke and flames with the naked eye from 400 kilometers (250 miles) up.

This is Pesquets second mission to the space station. He also spent 197 days in orbit in 2016-2017. The destructive effects of human activity have become increasingly visible in the interim, he said.

Macron said the goal for negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Scotland must be to speed up humanitys response.

There is still a huge job ahead of us, and I think we are all aware of that, the French leader said.



GLASGOW, Scotland Several major coal-using nations announced steps to wean themselves off of the heavily polluting fossil fuel, although for some the weaning will happen slowly.

The pledges on Thursday to phase out coal come on top of other promises made at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The head of an international energy organization said the earlier commitments trimmed a few tenths of a degree from projections of future warming.

But outside experts termed that comment  only in a tweet, not a rigorous report  optimistic.

Optimism also abounded in relation to the promises on coal, which has the dirtiest carbon footprint of the major fuels and is a significant source of planet-warming emissions.

Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight, said Alok Sharma, who is chairing the conference of nearly 200 nations, known as COP26.

Forecasters with a more skeptical view noted that several major economies still have not set a date for ending their dependence on the fuel, including the United States, China, India and Japan.

Outside the COP26 venue, protestors clad as animated characters blasted Japans continued coal use.



COPENHAGEN, Denmark  The Danish government said Thursday it will donate 100 million kroner ($15.6 million) to efforts to purchase and decommission coal power plants and invest in new energy sources.

As part of our comprehensive climate efforts, the Danish government is working to phase out coal while also investing massively in new green energy sources, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a statement.

Minister for Climate and Energy Dan Joergensen said the money will help coal-intensive countries reduce their coal consumption and create new income opportunities in local communities, which is absolutely vital to accelerating the energy transition.

Denmark's money will go to the Climate Investment Funds new Accelerating Coal Transition program, and the primary focus will initially be on South Africa, India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Danish government said the program includes efforts supporting alternative employment of the local population in impacted areas.



SOULAINES-DHUYS, France  Nuclear power is a central sticking point as negotiators plot out the worlds future energy strategy at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Critics decry its mammoth price tag, the disproportionate damage caused by nuclear accidents, and the radioactive waste left behind.

But a growing camp of vocal and powerful proponents - some climate scientists and environmental experts among them  argue that nuclear power is the worlds best hope of keeping climate change under contro.

They note that it emits few planet-damaging emissions and is safer on average than nearly any other energy source. They argue that nuclear accidents are scary but exceedingly rare, while pollution from coal and other fossil fuels causes death and illness every day.

Many governments are pushing to enshrine nuclear energy in climate plans being hashed out at the conference in Glasgow, known as COP26.

The European Union, meanwhile, is debating whether to label nuclear energy as officially green  a decision that will steer billions of euros of investment for years to come. That has implications worldwide, as the EU policy could set a standard that other economies follow.

But nuclear waste remains a major problem, with the most radioactive material still toxic for tens of thousands of years.

 GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains government has claimed that the end of coal is in sight after 18 countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile committed for the first time to phase out and not build or invest in new coal power.

The statement, issued late Wednesday during the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, said more than 40 nations are committing to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, as well as rapidly scale up clean power generation. Participating nations also commit to phasing out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for smaller economies.

Separately, the statement also said that Chile and Singapore have joined a U.K.-led alliance on phasing out coal that includes over 150 countries and businesses such as HSBC and NatWest bank.

U.K. business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it was a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change.

But Ed Miliband, the opposition Labour Partys business spokesman, said there were glaring gaps such as a lack of commitment from China and other large emitters to stop increasing coal at home. There was also nothing on the phasing out of oil and gas, he said.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  An independent Pentagon review has concluded that the U.S. drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children in the final days of the Afghanistan war was not caused by misconduct or negligence, and it doesn't recommend any disciplinary action.

The review, done by Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami Said, found there were breakdowns in communication and in the process of identifying and confirming the target of the bombing. Said concluded that the mistaken strike happened despite prudent measures to prevent civilian deaths.

I found that given the information they had and the analysis that they did  I understand they reached the wrong conclusion, but ... was it reasonable to conclude what they concluded based on what they had? It was not unreasonable. It just turned out to be incorrect, Said said. He is the inspector general of the Air Force and is considered independent as he had no direct connection to Afghanistan operations.

His review said the drone strike must be considered in the context of the moment, as U.S. forces under stress were being flooded by information about threats to troops and civilians at the Kabul airport, just days after a deadly suicide bombing. Thousands of Afghans were swarming the airport, trying to get out of the country following the Taliban takeover.

Said found that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the bombing, but in the end may not have prevented it.

Said was asked to investigate the Aug. 29 drone strike on a white Toyota Corolla sedan, which killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organization.

The intelligence about the car and its potential threat came just days after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. troops and 169 Afghans at a Kabul airport gate. The U.S. was working to evacuate thousands of Americans, Afghans and other allies in the wake of the collapse of the country's government.

Said concluded that U.S. forces genuinely believed that the car they were following was an imminent threat and that they needed to strike it before it got closer to the airport.

They all have a genuine belief based on the information they had and the interpretation, that that was a threat to U.S. forces, an imminent threat to U.S. forces, he told reporters during a Pentagon briefing. Thats a mistake. Its a regrettable mistake. Its an honest mistake. I understand the consequences, but its not criminal conduct, random conduct, negligence.

He said repeated reviews of the video from that day showed that two minutes before the strike was launched, there was evidence that a child was in the strike zone.

Said, who said he watched the video himself, said troops in the strike cell did not see the child.

Im just saying it is 100% not obvious," he said. "You have to be like, no kidding, looking for it. But when youre looking for it, certainly after the fact, if you ask me, was there evidence of the presence? Yes, there was.

Steven Kwon, president of Nutrition and Education International, which employed Ahmadi, said he was deeply disappointed in the review.

According to the Inspector General, there was a mistake but no one acted wrongly, and Im left wondering, how can that be? Kwon said in a statement. "Clearly, good military intentions are not enough when the outcome is 10 precious Afghan civilian lives lost and reputations ruined.

The report, which has been endorsed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, made several recommendations that have been passed on to commanders at U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command. The review recommends that more be done to prevent what military officials call confirmation bias  the idea that troops making the strike decision were too quick to conclude that what they were seeing aligned with the intelligence and confirmed their conclusion to bomb what turned out to be the wrong car.

Specifically, the review said the military should have personnel present with a strike team, and their job should be to actively question such conclusions. The report says using a so-called red-team" in such self-defense strikes that are being done quickly might help avoid errors.

Said also recommended that the military improve its procedures to ensure that children and other innocent civilians are not present before launching a time-sensitive strike.

Those changes, he said, could go a long way to greatly mitigate the risk of this happening again in these types of rapidly moving, self-defense strikes.

For days after the strike, Pentagon officials asserted that it had been conducted correctly, despite mounting reports that multiple civilians and children had died and growing doubts that the car contained explosives. Said's review concluded that officials made their initial assessments too quickly and did not do enough analysis.

While Saids report does not find individual fault or recommend discipline, he said commanders may decide to take administrative actions once they review his report. He said commanders may look at the report and determine that there was subpar performance" and decide to decredential, retrain or fire personnel.

You should not perceive the fact that I didnt call any individual out with accountability that it does not mean that the chain of command wont, he said.

The U.S. is working to pay financial reparations to the family, and potentially get them out of Afghanistan, but nothing has been finalized.

A second defense official said Austin has asked that Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Richard Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, come back to him with recommendations for changes to address the gaps.

Said's review mirrors many of the findings outlined by McKenzie several weeks after the investigation.

The Central Command review found that U.S. forces tracked the car for about eight hours and launched the strike in an earnest belief  based on a standard of reasonable certainty  that it posed an imminent threat to American troops at Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk.

The airstrike was the last in a U.S. war that ended just days later, as the final American troops flew out of Kabul airport, leaving the Taliban in power.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Today is Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. Let's get caught up.

Here are today's top stories, celebrity birthdays and a look back at this date in history:

TOP STORIES

House prepares to debate, vote after bolstering Biden's bill

WASHINGTON (AP)  The House is preparing to debate and vote on a revised draft of President Joe Bidens now-$1.85 trillion domestic policy package as well as a companion $1 trillion infrastructure bill, Democrats eager to show voters the party can deliver on its priorities.

With a flurry of late-breaking adjustments, Democrats added key provisions to what has grown to a sprawling 2,135-page package  adding back a new paid family leave program, work permits for immigrants and changes to state and local tax deductions.

Votes are possible Thursday, with the Democrats anxious to finish up the president's signature package after drawn-out talks on Capitol Hill were partly blamed for the party's dismal election results in bellwether states this week.

Get it to my desk! Biden said in remarks Wednesday at the White House.

Keep scrolling for links to full versions of these top stories and more.

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UK authorizes Merck's COVID pill, 1st shown to treat COVID

LONDON (AP)  Britain has granted a conditional authorization to Merck's coronavirus antiviral, the first pill shown to successfully treat COVID-19. It is the first country to OK the treatment, although it was not immediately clear how quickly the pill would be available.

The pill was licensed for adults 18 and older who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have at least one risk factor for developing severe disease. The drug, known as molnupiravir, is intended to be taken twice a day for five days by people at home with mild to moderate COVID-19.

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'Rust' film armorer says someone may have put bullet in gun

The woman in charge of weapons on the movie set where actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins said Wednesday night that she had inspected the gun Baldwin shot but doesnt know how a live bullet ended up inside.

Who put those in there and why is the central question, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer for the movie Rust said in a statement issued by one of her lawyers, Jason Bowles of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hannah kept guns locked up, including throughout lunch on the day in question (Oct. 21), and she instructed her department to watch the cart containing the guns when she was pulled away for her other duties or on a lunch break.

The statement goes on to say that Hannah did everything in her power to ensure a safe set. She inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day. She always inspected the rounds.

***

Click on the links below for full version of today's top stories. Keep scrolling for a look back at this day in history and today's celebrity birthdays:

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IMAGE OF THE DAY

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TODAY IN HISTORY

Today in history: Nov. 4 In 1979, the Iran hostage crisis began as militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran, seizing its occupants, and more events that h

Today in sports history: Nov. 4 In 2001, Luis Gonzalezs RBI single off Yankees' Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth lifts the Arizona Diamondbacks to their first champ

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ...

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  A Kansas labor leader apologized Wednesday for remarks he made during a legislative hearing comparing COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews.

Cornell Beard said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has "a long, proud tradition of welcoming everyone into the labor movement. Beard is president of the union's Wichita district.

Beard said his remarks were taken out of context but added, I wholeheartedly apologize to the Jewish community.

Although it was not my intent, my comments came off as insensitive regarding one of the most sinister times in world history, Beard said in an email to The Associated Press.

Beard spoke during a committee hearing Friday against vaccine mandates announced in September by President Joe Biden. Beard, who is Black, gave the committee a written statement accusing people who wont work with others who are not vaccinated of preserving and perpetuating the ideology of a modern-day racist.

Were basically saying youre the modern-day Jew, Beard told the committee in person. Youre gonna wear that star  and we dont give a damn if you complain about it or not.

Before and during World War II, Nazi Germany forced Jews to wear yellow stars.

The Machinists union repudiated Beard's remarks, and Jewish leaders in the Kansas City area condemned them.



Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
In the months before he was charged with storming the Capitol, Doug Jensen was sharing conspiracy theories he'd consumed online. But it hadnt always been that way, says his brother, who recalls how he once posted the sort of family and vacation photos familiar to nearly all social media users.

A world away, Wahab hadn't always spent his days immersed in jihadist teaching. The product of a wealthy Pakistani family and the youngest son of four, he was into cars and video games, had his own motorcycle, even studied in Japan.

No two ideologues are identical and the gulf between different kinds of extremists, including in how deeply they embrace violence in the name of their cause, is as wide as it is obvious. But to dwell only on the differences obscures the similarities, not only in how people absorb extremist ideology but also in how they feed off grievances and mobilize to action.

For any American who casts violent extremism as a foreign problem, the Jan. 6 Capitol siege held up an uncomfortable mirror revealing the same conditions for fantastical thinking and politically motivated violence as any society.

The Associated Press examined the paths of radicalization through case studies on two continents: a 20-year-old man rescued from a Taliban training camp on Afghanistan's border, and an Iowa man whose brother watched him fall sway to nonsensical conspiracy theories and ultimately join the mob of Donald Trump loyalists that stormed the Capitol.

Two places, two men, two different stories as seen by two relatives. But strip away the ideologies, says John Horgan, a researcher of violent extremism, and look at the psychological processes, the roots, the experiences.

All of those things, Horgan says, tend to look far more similar than they are different.

THE AMERICAN

America met Doug Jensen, 42, via a widely circulated video that exposed the mob mentality inside the Capitol. Jensen's the man in a dark cap and black Trust the Plan" shirt, leading a crowd chasing a Capitol Police officer up the stairs.

William Routh of Clarksville, Arkansas, had an unsettled feeling even before the riot. I said, if you go down there and you're going to do a peaceful thing, then that's fine. But I said keep your head down and dont be doing something stupid.

In interviews with the AP days and months after his younger brothers arrest, Routh painted Jensen, a Des Moines father of three whod worked as a union mason laborer, as a man who enjoyed the trappings of a conventional American existence.

This was a shock to me more than anything, because I would not have thought this from my brother Doug, because he's a very good, hardworking family man and he has good values.

Precisely how Jensen came to absorb the conspiracies that led him to the Capitol is bewildering to Routh. But in the months before the riot, the brothers communicated about QAnon as Jensen shared videos and other conspiracy-laden messages he purported to find meaning in.

Before Jan. 6, Routh says, We have been being told for the last  what?  seven, eight months that if the Democrats get control, were losing our country, OK? That scares a lot of people.

A Justice Department memo that argued for Jensen's detention cites his criminal history and his eagerness to drive more than 1,000 miles to hear President Trump declare martial law." It notes that when the FBI questioned him, he said he'd gone to Washington because Q, the movements amorphous voice, had forecast that the storm had arrived.

His lawyer, Christopher Davis, countered by calling Jensen a victim of numerous conspiracy theories and a committed family man whose initial devotion to QAnon was its stated mission to eliminate pedophiles from society."

In July, a federal judge agreed to release Jensen on house arrest, citing a video showing Jensen referring to the Capitol building as the White House as a likely indication he couldn't have planned an attack in advance when he had no basic understanding of where he even was that day.

But in September, Jensen was ordered back to jail for violating the conditions of his freedom. A federal officer visiting Jensen found him in his garage using an iPhone to watch news from Rumble, a streaming platform popular with conservatives.

THE PAKISTANI

Wahab had it all. The youngest son of four from a wealthy Pakistani family, he spent his early years in the United Arab Emirates and for a time in Japan, studying. Wahab liked cars, had his own motorcycle and was crazy about video games.

His uncle, who rescued the 20-year-old from a Taliban training camp on Pakistans border with Afghanistan earlier this year, asked that his full name not be used because militants have deep-reaching tentacles in the northwest where the family lives. He agreed to be quoted using his middle name, Kamal.

Kamal is one of five brothers who runs the family-owned import/export conglomerate. Each brother has groomed their sons for the business.

Wahabs future was to be no different. He returned to Pakistan in his early teens from abroad.

His uncle blamed his slide to radicalization on the neighborhood teens Wahab socialized with in their northwest Pakistan hometown, plus video games and Internet sites his friends introduced him to that told of Muslims being attacked, women raped and babies killed.

He felt like he hadnt known what was going on, that he had spent his life in darkness and he felt he should be involved. His friends insisted he should. They told him he was rich and should help our people, his uncle said.

To his uncle, Wahab seemed to become increasingly aggressive, fixated on violence.

Earlier this year, Wahab abruptly disappeared. When Wahabs father discovered his son was at a training camp, he was furious, his uncle said.

He told the people Leave him there. I dont accept him as my son anymore. But I took it on myself to bring him back, Kamal said.

Today, Wahab is back in the family business, but is being closely watched.

We are watching all the young boys now, and most nights they have to be home  unless they tell us where they are," Kamal said.



Moral outrage. A sense of injustice. A feeling that things can only be fixed through urgent, violent action.

Those are what tend to motivate people who gravitate toward extremism, says Horgan, who directs the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University.

Those similarities you will find repeated across the board, whether youre talking about extreme right-wing militias in Oklahoma or youre talking about a Taliban offshoot in northwest Pakistan, Horgan says.

Research shows people who espouse conspiracy theories tend to do poorer on measures of critical thinking, reducing complex world problems to reassuring answers, says Ziv Cohen, an expert on extremism at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

That's where the stories of Jensen and Wahab seemingly intersect. Both were seeking something. Both found answers that were enticing, attractive  and distorted versions of reality.

For reasons he does not even understand today, he became a true believer and was convinced he (was) doing a noble service by becoming a digital soldier for Q," Davis, Jensen's lawyer, wrote in a June court filing. Maybe it was mid-life crisis, the pandemic, or perhaps the message just seemed to elevate him from his ordinary life to an exalted status with an honorable goal.

But is that goal ever reached? Perhaps counterintuitively, research has shown that when extremists' conspiracy theories are reinforced, their anxiety levels rise rather than fall, Cohen says.

People seem to not be able to get enough of a conspiracy theory," he says, "but theyre never quite satisfied or really reassured.



Associated Press writer David Pitt in Des Moines contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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I dont remember getting married. Its not that I was drunk or anything. I simply wasnt thereI was sound asleep, 4,400 miles away. Thankfully, my grooms sister was gracious enough to marry him for me.

In 2020, many couples discovered the charms of alternative ceremoniesthe intimacy of a backyard wedding, the giddy conspiracy of elopement. Its almost better with the excess and commercialism whittled away, they said on social media, the ceremony distilled down to its hearttwo people in love, together. But what happens when the bride and the groom cant be together for the wedding? Not even over Zoom?

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The story of our marriagenot our relationship, just our legal marriagehas more plot than it has any right to. Were talking hurricanes, an 18-wheeler fire, Pope Innocent III, and, of course, a pandemic. It was an aint no mountain high enough situation, but with more geopolitical strife and less of Marvin Gayes sanguine assurance that everything would work out in the end.

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After seven years of trans-Atlantic courtshipwe met after I befriended his sister when she was an exchange student at my high schoolI was set to marry Enrique, a Spaniard, on April 18, 2020. We had planned a modest ceremony with about 50 guests in a Spanish village, at the kind of restaurant with a broken-down cigarette machine in the corner, inconceivably good food, and a couple of old-timers cackling and judging you from the table by the bathroom. Afterward, we were going to apply for his visa and move to the United States together. But when Enriques parents both contracted COVID-19 in March, we made the nonchoice of postponing the wedding indefinitely.

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Soon the shutdown dominos started to fall across Europe. As a local reporter in North Carolina, I went from discussing the logistics of American quarantine as a legal question to interviewing bereaved families in a matter of weeks. Enrique and his family watched in horror as Spain converted its largest ice rink to an overflow morgue. (Enriques parents, luckily, recovered.)

In the revolving door of travel bans, Enrique and I got stuck on opposite sides of the Atlantic with no legal way to be in the same country at the same time (except perhaps Cambodia, if we made a deposit to cover the cost of our funerals). I felt like the walls were closing in on me as I did the mathI couldnt enter Spain unless we were married, but we couldnt get married unless I was in Spain. We didnt know how long restrictions would last, nobody could have guessed how successful the vaccine trials would be, and we couldnt wait forever.

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Our lawyer in Spain cracked some very old law books. We learned that thanks to a 13th century decision by the Catholics (shoutout to Pope Innocent III, whose most famous act in any other context would be his decision to have thousands of heretics slaughtered), we could get married like medieval royals hastily sealing an alliance in wartime. Spain, we learned, allows marriage by proxy.

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There was just one problem, said our American immigration lawyer, who is very young but so important he could only speak to us during his commute. The United States doesnt accept marriages by proxy, our lawyers sunroof said over video chatunless we can prove the marriage has been consummated in person after the legal celebration.

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Surely, we implored, surely that must mean something different in a legal context.

No, youve got it   the sunroof said wryly.

Are we  do we need to make a sex tape for the government?

For the United States to acknowledge our union, we would have to provide pictures of us in physical proximity after the marriage (clothed, the lawyer assured me) and plane tickets that would demonstrate we were in the same place at the same time. Apparently, they assume that as soon as we get within spitting distance of each other, well snap together like magnets. (We wondered how far could we push this. If we supplied the government with documentation that we shared a 45-minute layover in Heathrow, would some bureaucrat call my bluff and say we didnt consummate our union in a Terminal 3 bathroom?)

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Do we need to make a sex tape for the government?

Then, for Enrique to be able to live and work in the United States, wed need to sign a sworn affidavit of some kind affirming that we had, indeed, known each other in the biblical sense after the marriage. ICE cares nothing for premarriage-by-proxy sex. If you did happen to have a sex tape, the lawyer told us, but couldnt demonstrate that it was filmed after the marriage, that wouldnt work, either.

I confirmed we had no prior sex tapes, anyway. We just didnt foresee a legal situation in which that might be useful, I said.

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To designate Enriques sister as my proxy agent, I needed to sign the forms to give her special powers in the presence of a Spanish official. The local Spanish Consulate in Birmingham, Alabama, located two blocks from my childhood home, wasnt empowered to do this, so my mother and I made the 11-hour trek to Houston to the regional Spanish Consulate. This became a 16-hour trip when two 18-wheelers and a car collided on a Louisiana bridge we were on and burst into flames. About four hours into the resulting traffic jam, a caravan of desperate bathroom seekers, including us, made a break for it and gunned it east on I-10 West, to the mild alarm of law enforcement. (Since there were in excess of 50 vehicles whizzing the wrong way down the highway, they politely pretended not to see us.)

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After weaving through back roads lined with sugar cane and aboveground graves, we arrived in Houston in the wee hours of the morning and unsealed our hotel room, which had been taped up meticulously. It had not felt a human touch in three-plus days, the staff assured usthe cleanest hotel room weve ever been in.

The next morning, the consulate revealed itself as a baroque suite in a slick modern office building. There were swords, tapestries, oil paintings. I was dog-tired and discombobulated, so when they asked me about the trip, I lacked the wherewithal (or the vocabulary) to lie about it in Spanish. I told them all about the explosion, which made them check my ID one more time.

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Stamped documents in hand, we careened eastward about 20 minutes ahead of the bands of torrential rain from a tropical storm. Enrique charted our course home, from mission control in Spain. It all felt very biblical, or maybe very Amazing Race.

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We hadnt dared plan any celebrations for the proxy wedding until a week or so outMadrid teetered on the verge of a second total shutdown in October as cases surged, and there was a real chance the government would close. We didnt know what to plan anyway. There arent Pinterest pages for how to orchestrate a marriage-by-proxy celebration. There are no cards for thiswaking up married, with no idea when youll see your mate. How could we make a potentially heart-wrenching day special and fun?

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The nuptials occurred in a courtroom in Madrid, no phones allowed, at 4 a.m., Alabama time. I awoke at 6:30 a.m. to the sound of wedding bells ($1.29 on the app store) and a completely unexplained power outage. At the 9:30 a.m. Zoom reception, the bride wore a cream sweater, my mothers pink jeans, and no shoes. On the other side of the world, the groom sat on the edge of a couch and kept accidentally drifting off-screen while his aunts cracked jokes in experimental English. My grandmother, who willfully misunderstands videoconferencing, commented on peoples weight just a little too loudly. All the toasts were standardhappiness, love, and the opportunity to be on the same continent soon.

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Enrique and I have never wallowed in our separationIve always known what I was signing up for in a long-distance relationship, and Ive always known hes worth it. But we thought wed at least make it to the finish line hand in hand.

For now, were Schrodingers newlywedsa husband and wife married without a wedding. We struggled over whether to wear the rings right away or wait until our real wedding, but with variants and sparse booster shots, thats probably two years away at least. Im wearing mine the traditional Spanish way (right hand, ring finger) and hes wearing his on the American hand (left).

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According to the Spanish government, Im now Enriques wife. According to the United States government, Enrique is now my alien relative, which is an unromantic but strangely endearing term that he quickly embraced. In April of this year, we finally reunited in Denmark, where weve lived ever since, and where, as of this writing, the Danish government has spent six months trying to figure out how married we are. By all accounts, were more married than unmarried. My wedding dress, two-thirds fitted, hangs in the guest room closet of my childhood home. Itand wewill have our day.
Dear Prudence is Slates advice column. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

When I was a child of about 11, my mother took me to the doctors office for a physical. I insisted that I receive the physical alone since I was embarrassed for my mother to be in the room as I was getting older. That day my normal physician, a nice older lady of around 60, was apparently out so a substitute physician, a much younger woman, performed the physical instead. During our time alone, she molested me. At the time, I said nothing to my mother or father partly because I didnt really understand what had happened to me. This experience greatly affected how I felt around girls my age and older. I became incredibly uncomfortable being alone with almost any girl or woman who wasnt family, even some female friends that I had known for many years, were difficult to be around. It also made dating almost impossible as I got older. Time went on and I mostly adapted to avoiding uncomfortable situations in school and later my professional life.

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Unfortunately, keeping these feelings and somewhat constant anxiety bottled up eventually got to me, and about a year ago I checked myself into a hospital suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts and asked for help. This completely blindsided my parents, who thought I was doing very well. Not talking to them was my fault, but ever since the incident I generally did not talk to my parents about my issues. Fortunately, I received help that I desperately needed and am doing much better. I have even made some female friends that I feel comfortable spending time alone with. Unfortunately, my parents have convinced themselves that they must be responsible for the mental health issues that affected me due to their parenting when I was younger. My mother now frequently asks me if there was something they did or didnt do that affected me. I did not talk to them about the incident at the doctors when I was getting help and instead told them I was having issues with work stress and PTSD from my prior military service. I have told them repeatedly that they were great parents and not to blame themselves. I strongly believe that telling my mother I was molested in a doctors office while she waited in the lobby would devastate her. I also dont want them to feel as if they were responsible for what happened to me. Im not sure what to do. Should I tell them the whole truth or continue keeping my secret?

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 Guilty Son

Dear Guilty Son,

Im so sorry this happened to you and that youve had to live with a secret about something that was absolutely not your fault for so long. Its not your mothers fault either. I have to disagree that she would be devastated if she knew that this happened in a doctors office. It might actually give her some relief to know that there was nothing she did or failed to do that caused your suffering. If and when you feel ready, tell her what happened and remind her that no one would suspect a doctor, who is supposed to be a professional and a trusted figure, of this kind of behavior. Hopefully when the truth is out in the open, you can both begin healing.

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Dear Prudence,

My mom and I have always had a rather strained relationship. After my dad passed away, we ultimately got closer (especially after not living together). For the past three years, my now husband and I have lived in the condo she owns. She went to live with my brother three years ago to help care for my young nephew. She offered us to live at the condo, as long as we took care of rent and association dues. She takes care of bigger needs (i.e. like a landlord would do).

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The biggest issue I face is that while we do pay for the mortgage, and general upkeep of the home, it still feels like were living with her. She will occasionally stay overnight, ask to stop by to pick something up or hang out, or occasionally show up hours before she was expected, walking in during certain private situations 

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On one hand, I absolutely appreciate all she has done for my husband and me. She helped us pay for our wedding, takes care of the big needs at the condo, will treat us to lunch, let me borrow her car or offer a ride (we have just one car), etc. But also, as a married woman whose husband is having a VERY difficult time with this, I am stuck in the middle.

Ideally, Id want to keep living here for the next year as we work to save money for our own home rather than pack up again. But how can I have a conversation with my mom about boundaries in the living space we pay for? I love and respect her, but I also need to be fair with my husbands feelings. As he doesnt feel he can live comfortably knowing she may stay the night or pop by unexpectedly. It causes a strain in our marriage. When I have tried to approach the subject about how often she is stopping by, she has pulled the victim card and calls me ungrateful. Prudence, please help me find the right words so that my mom understands we are living here with the understanding that its temporary, that its our space, and that we have to set boundaries.

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 Stuck in the Middle

Dear Stuck,

It would be one thing if you were living in the condo for free, but youre paying for it! You can solve this problem by taking that money and moving somewhere elsesomewhere with a landlord who will never expect to pop up and spend the night.

Even if your mom is giving you a good deal, your peace of mind and marriage are worth it. Im sure your relationship with her was strained for many years for a reason, so Im not at all hopeful that a reasonable conversation about your need for space would be effective. This isnt about finding the right words to set a boundaryits about actually creating a boundary. Which you can do by giving 30 days notice.

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How to Get Advice From Prudie

Submit your questions anonymously here. (Questions may be edited for publication.) Join the live chat every Monday at noon (and submit your comments) here.

Dear Prudence,

Recently, a guy I know asked me if I would want to hang out with him. I wasnt expecting it, and it threw me off guard so I told him I wasnt available on that day and suggested another day. Well, as soon as my friends found out, they completely freaked out and started telling me that hes into me. The truth is, due to some past experiences and the fact that hes a good-looking guy, while I am  normal, Im feeling really anxious about this. We emailed each other (I dont know him that well), and he seemed pretty  uninterested? We did end up pushing it back to next weekend, but I just feel unsure. How do I approach this date? I like him and I wouldnt mind moving forward with this, but I just want to get a reality check. What expectations should I have from him, if any? Hes one of the nicest and kindest guys I know, and despite getting to know me and my friend at the same time, he only asked me.

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 Confused Friend

Dear Confused,

He could be really into you. He could be mildly into you. He could just want to be friends. He could have been really into you and met the love of his life the next day and lost interest. The possibilities are endless! I know this is new and exciting, and you cant just flip a switch and turn off your anxiety, but I think the best way to approach this hang-out is with curiosity, and the hope that you have a pleasant time talking to someone you like. Thats it. When you start wondering what hes thinking and what hes going to do and worrying about what will happen if this turns into another negative experience, see if you can stop yourself and focus instead on something thats more in your control: Making a plan to be okay and have some other things lined up that you enjoy, regardless of what happens. Good luck!

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Dear Prudence,

I have worked at the same organization for 10 years, and for the first 9 I loved it. I was (and am) pretty senior in title, and was deeply engaged in strategizing the future of the organization and the work we were going to do. Halfway through COVID, however, the organization went through a reckoning related to both racial equity and some workforce treatment issuesour constituents and some past and current junior staff revolted, our board conducted some investigations, and most of our senior leadership was let gobut not me. All that is likely for the best in the long term, but in the short term it means that most of the people I was closest to in the organization, and the ones who situated me where I was and were the best advocates for (and biggest fans of) my work, are gone. I find myself in fairly deep mourning about losing both my work friends and a set of people who valued and understood my work.

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Our interim leadership is nice and competent, and is trying to right the ship, but also doesnt either know me or seem to particularly value my work in the same way. It is possible that, as a vestige of the old regime, Im actually being actively sidelined out of strategic dialogue, though thats unclear. But what is clear is that major strategic conversations are occurring, and Im mostly not at the table in the way I would have been. I want to be part of carrying forward, and think I have things to offerbut I find myself listless and disconnected, and often just caught up in cycles of thinking about what could be happening if the reckoning hadnt occurredand feeling more than a little like I can only try and ask how to be part of it so many times before I either look desperate or clueless.

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My question is: How does someone faced with the loss of both human connection and a solid sense of place, positional influence, and value inside their workplace (but who is still there and doesnt want to leave, particularly) move past the feelings of loss and mourning so that they can be an active part of what comes next, particularly when the bright new future that could be the outcome hasnt come into focus yet?

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 The One Who Is Left

Dear One Who Is Left,

Its wonderful that you are (or were) so passionate about your profession, and that youre good enough at what you do that your behavior didnt raise any flags during the investigations. But I think this is a wake-up call about the danger of letting work become too important to your identity. As youve learned, things can change quickly. A favorite boss or mentor who made you feel special one year might be nowhere to be found the next. A new manager can fail to see your talents. Hell, you can be laid off even if youve done great work, and if you are, you may never hear from the majority of your colleagues again. That is, sadly, just the way things are in workplaces.

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So by all means, apply for other jobs where you think you can put your experience to use and take on more of a leadership role. But what might be even helpful is to switch your focus to the impact you want to have at work, rather than the way you want to be seen and treated. If you dont feel that what you do is particularly important to the world, then its time to look for meaning and connection outside of the office. Where can you share your talents, get close to like-minded people, and really be understood and appreciated for who you are? Church or volunteering? A sport? Political organizing? More quality time with friends? The things that make you happy and make you feel like your time on earth is valuable should not be things that can be completely destroyed by a reorganization.

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Dear Prudence Uncensored

In the same way you cant force someone to want to date you, you cant convince your colleagues to value you.

Jenee Desmond-Harris and friends discuss a letter in this weeks Dear Prudence Uncensoredonly for Slate Plus members.

Dear Prudence,

I met a nice, tall, dark, and handsome man online, and we initially hit it off. The problem is when it comes to making and breaking plans. Hell ask me to get together for a drink after work then pick me up only to say hes not feeling up to it and cancel right then and there after he already picked me up. I could have made other plans but chose to make time for him. Hell say he was thinking of getting together but was too tired and blamed his age (only 50!). Another time he asked me to go to the movies. I told him Id go with him after work that day, but he was off and only goes to the movies in the morning. He wont make plans with me, but Ill see him on social media doing fun activities and plans. We like to do a lot of the same things yet he doesnt ask me about those.

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 Seeing Red Flags

Dear Red Flags,

Hes married. And/or horribly flaky. Cut him loose!

Give Prudie a Hand in Were Prudence

Sometimes even Prudence needs a little help. Every Thursday in this column, well post a question that has her stumped. This weeks tricky situation is below. Join the conversation about it on Twitter with Jenee @jdesmondharris on Thursday, and then look back for the final answer here on Friday.

Dear Prudence, I am a soon to be college graduate in the field of Psychology, with plans to take a gap year before I begin a Ph.D. program. I have received several job offers for this period of time, specifically, one to teach an Intro to Psych class at my old high school. The high school I attended was a very strict, conservative protestant school with VERY antiquated and offensive views on sex, love, and gender. I was viewed throughout my time as a student as a good kid because I got good grades, kept my mouth (mostly) shut, and appeared to be following their paradigm of pure Christian femininity to a T. They did not, and still do not know that I am gay. Attending this school as a closeted queer teen was, frankly, hell on earth for me. I was imbued literally daily with the idea that I and people like me were evil, disgusting, and were going to burn in hell for merely existing. This, as you can imagine, took a profound toll on my mental health, so much so that my senior year I was disturbingly close to suicide. Thankfully, a much more accepting college, therapy, and personal growth has led me to accept myself for who I am and grow into my own. My mental health is worlds better now, and I am grateful for the increased empathy and awareness my hard times gave me. Throughout my experiences in high school and looking back, I have always known that if I had a little support from the adults at my school, even just one to tell me that Im not a monster, that Im not alone and my god didnt hate me, my experience would have been so much better. A part of me wonders, what if I did take this job? What if I could be that one adult for some other child, and, for the others, I could teach a Psychology course structured to lessen the blow of all the evils theyre taught, and help the many students who disagree with the status quo to find their voice and stand up for themselves? Another part of me thinks this is ridiculous, and that I cant possibly undo enough damage to make any difference, but I cant stop thinking about how much this would have helped me and my other queer friends who attended that school. (As an example of this schools behavior, I had one friend who was suspended and nearly expelled after a bully of his told a teacher he and another boy were dating, but another boy who did blackface on social media was only suspended for a day, and THAT was only after student and parent protests.) Should I further consider this job? And if I end up taking it, what are some ways I can covertly demonstrate to my students that I am liberal without being fired?  Us Against Them?

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Dear Prudence,

My wife and I moved for my work over the summer. She has been unemployed since COVID hit, and we couldnt find anyone to take care of our young son. She has been a stay-at-home mom ever since and hasnt really enjoyed it. She finds it isolating, especially since the move (big city to tiny town) and hasnt made any friends. We also have a 13-year-old daughter together who actually has the opposite problemshe has bloomed into a true social butterfly.

My wife has found one friend in Nan, our neighbor. Nan has an 11-year-old daughter herself: Anne. They come over, at least three times a week, for dinner or a movie night. I am fine with family time being neighbor time because it makes my wife happy and Nan and her kid are genuinely alright to be around. My problem is that Nan and my wife keep pushing our daughter to be besties with her kid and take her along when our daughter goes out with her friends.

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Anne is quirky at best. She collects animal bones and snake skins and constantly jumps into conversations to roll out random animal facts. She is fairly thin-skinned and will go on rants about how stupid other girls are for liking makeup and fashion. It is clearly a self-defense mechanism, but my daughter loves makeup and fashion, and so do all of her friends.

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The few times that my daughter has made attempts to include Anne in her social group without adult supervision have ended in tears. One of the girls called Anne creepy for showing off a rabbit skull she had in her pocket and she cried; another time, Anne threw away my daughters new makeup because she didnt want to watch braiding videos on YouTube and got voted out. My daughter has confessed to me she doesnt like Anne and hates having to babysit her because their moms were friends. I asked if she was ok with Anne being over while us adults were here and could she be kind then. She affirmed.

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I tried talking with my wife. Our daughter will be in high school next yearshe needs to navigate her own social groups and not be fenced in by us. My wife said that our daughter had it easy compared to Anne and could stand to learn some empathy. What should I do? Press, let up, or hope it all goes away?

 Forced Friendship

Dear Forced Friendship,

Youre right. Its reasonable to ask your daughter to be kind to Anne, or any other friend of the family, when she comes over. There are almost certainly some deeper issues behind this kids quirkiness that arent her fault, and your wife isnt wrong that treating her with compassion is the right thing to do. Right up until the point where Anne is being mean or destroying your daughters things, that is.

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Your wife is confused if she thinks the only quality your daughter will develop from being forced to engage with someone who insults her and doesnt respect her belongings is empathy. Perhaps you can frame it like this the next time you discuss it: Anne called our daughter stupid and destroyed her makeup. What are we teaching her if we tell her she has to put up with that kind of treatment? How would you feel if she took that lesson to heart and ended up in a relationship with someone who demeaned and abused her? If that argument doesnt land, I wouldnt worry too muchafter all, adults really dont choose friends for high school-aged kids. It sounds like Anne isnt making a big push to hang out with your daughter, so when both of their schedules start to fill up with activities and social events with other friends, this problem should take care of itself.

Classic Prudie

When I bought my car, the salesman swore up and down that hed be fired if we gave him anything less than a 5-star review to Honda corporate. I dont want that on my conscience, but it wasnt 5-star service. What do I do?
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Commerce barred notorious Israeli spyware company NSO Group, along with three other companies, from receiving exports of U.S. technologies because of the companies malicious cyber activities. NSO Group and another Israeli firm, Candiru, were sanctioned because they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers. Meanwhile, Russian company Positive Technologies and Singaporean firm Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE. LTD. were added to the blacklist because they traffic in cyber tools used to gain unauthorized access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide, according to the Commerce Departments statement.

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The statement frames the sanctions as part of the White Houses efforts to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, including by working to stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression. And theres no question that taking a strong, public stand against NSO Group, which has been implicated in a wide range of digital surveillance campaigns operated by governments around the world, is the right call from a moral and human rights standpoint. NSO Groups Pegasus spyware has been linked to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and extensive and excellent analysis of the companys software, especially by researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, has pointed to many other instances in which dissidents, activists, and journalists have been targeted using these same tools.

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So its been clear for some time that governments should be taking a more active role in trying to crack down on NSO Group exporting these tools to the authoritarian governments of Saudi Arabia, India, Hungary, and Rwanda, among others. But most of the pressure to act has been on the Israeli government, which could, if it chose, directly block the company from selling its spyware programs to these customers. Instead, Israel has continued to allow the company what appears to be relatively free rein in its dealings with foreign governments. And its a little difficult to say, in the absence of more stringent oversight by Israel, whether the sanctions announced this week by the United States will matter much when it comes to stopping, or at least slowing, the spread of NSO Groups spyware worldwide.

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The move has attracted some attention both because its still fairly unusual for the United States to sanction companies due to concerns about digital surveillance and spyware, and because its such a public statement of the U.S. governments low regard for NSO Group. For instance, former United Nations special rapporteur David Kaye said in an interview with the Washington Post, Who will want to work with a company thats been so publicly sanctioned by the U.S. government? But that interpretation seems unduly optimisticafter all, do we really think that the government of Saudi Arabia is going to be cowed out of working with NSO Group because the United States has voiced its strong disapproval?

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Beyond just trying to shame customers and investors into abandoning NSO Group, the sanctions also prohibit the company from receiving U.S.-originating technology. But there, again, its not clear how significant the impact of those prohibitions will be. Indeed, many U.S. tech firms including Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, had already cut ties with or denounced the company, long prior to the governments announcement. And fundamentally, NSO Group is a software companyit probably doesnt need to buy a lot of U.S. technology to continue to do what it does.

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That doesnt mean theres no value in the United States taking a strong public stance against NSO Group and the other companies included in this weeks announcement. But making strong public statements against adversaries in cyberspace has been a hallmark of the U.S. government for many years now, and its not clear how effective it actually is as a means of curbing anyones malicious online activity. Perhaps these latest sanctions will prompt Israel (and Russia and Singapore) to pay closer attention to what these companies are doing and impose more meaningful domestic export regulations. But NSO Group has been heavily criticized for years and that criticism has done little to change the Israeli governments policies. The United States should probably be prepared for the possibility that these latest measures will be similarly ineffectiveand that it may need to be willing to pressure Israel much more directly if it wants to see real changes in that countrys spyware industry.

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The U.S. governments response to NSO Group and the other companies sanctioned this week is not unique in that it may well turn out to be largely symbolic. In fact, one of the hardest things to figure out about the various ways the United States government has responded to cyberattacks and online misbehavior over the course of the past decade is whether any of those responses have had any real effect. Have the indictments of foreign hackers made any difference or merely served to further an ultimately ineffective name and shame strategy? Did the sanctions against Russia, issued earlier this year in the aftermath of the SolarWinds compromise, deter further espionage operations at all? Will the recently announced sanctions against cryptocurrency exchange Suex make any difference in the ongoing efforts to try to tamp down on ransomware attacks?

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The fact that theres tremendous uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of these measures doesnt mean theyre not worth trying, though. It just means that we still dont know very much about what actually works when it comes to dissuading or disrupting cybercriminals and foreign government cyber operations. The recent set of sanctions, including those issued against NSO Group, represent a small step beyond merely naming and shaming online adversaries in public indictments. But just as those indictments proved to be largely ineffective at deterring unwanted online behavior, it may yet turn out that so, too, are many of these targeted restrictions in which case the U.S. government should be thinking through what the next step would look like in escalating its responses to malicious cyber activity.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
ARCHIVED - Harmful food additive to be banned in Spain next year



The potentially dangerous substance will be banned from sweet treats in Spain and the rest of Europe

Most of us with a sweet tooth give little thought to the ingredients of the biscuits, cakes and buns we consume, but people might be interested to know that these sweet treats contain a potentially lethal ingredient that the European Union, including Spain, is fighting hard to outlaw.

E-171, also known as titanium dioxide, is a common ingredient used to whiten food; it serves a purely aesthetic function but its safety has not been sufficiently proven, according to a report published by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) in May.

The proposal of the European Commission to ban the additive has received overwhelming support from the majority of the EU member states and so it is likely that titanium dioxide will be prohibited as early as 2022.

For the regulation to be enforced, the Parliament and the European Council must first come to a common consensus, but as they are already in agreement, there should be little delay. Once the food additive is formally banned, manufacturers will be given a grace period to reformulate their products without the harmful substance. Once this moratorium has elapsed, consumers will no longer see E-171 on ingredient lists.

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One-fifth of respondents consider it to be one of the most important problems of our time.

News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription.

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Almost 70 percent of Slovaks are worried about climate change. One-fifth of respondents consider it one of the most important problems of our time.

This stems from a poll ordered by the Slovak Climate Agency and conducted by the Focus polling agency on 1,009 respondents between October 20 and 27.

The coordinator of the initiative, Katerina Chajdiakova, thinks the poll confirms that Slovaks are aware of the seriousness of climate change and they can quite precisely identify some possible solutions.

On the other hand, the bad news is that despite that, we do not believe that we can fulfil the given aims, such as carbon neutrality, she said, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

Solutions for energy conservation

About 41 percent of respondents think that better protection of the environment through a reduction of CO2 emissions along with the protection of underground water and forests would mitigate the consequences of climate change.

About a quarter of those polled (26 percent) noted that the greater use of renewable sources of energy, such as wind, water or solar energy, contribute the most to solving climate change.

No plan, no leader. Slovakia politically unprepared to face climate change Read more

14 percent of respondents opined that the solution lies in the improvement of energy conservation in buildings through additional thermal insulation or the construction of passive houses.

The same number of respondents opined that funding and financial contributions towards those that lack energy resources may help.

Sceptical about carbon neutrality

More than half of the respondents are sceptical about Slovakia's ambition to become a carbon-neutral country by 2050 (55 percent). About one-third of those asked think that this aim is reachable and 14 percent could not answer.

The Slovak Climate Initiative says the stance politicians take on carbon neutrality is important.

Pandemics are uninsurable, climate change is the real challenge Read more

We need clear leadership and concrete acts, Chajdiakova said, as quoted by TASR. Now it is up to those who decide on things to convince people that the goals set by Slovakia are realistic and achievable.




https://sputniknews.com/20211103/political-waves-what-the-virginia-governor-race-means-for-the-democratic-agenda--1090460416.html

Political Waves: What the Virginia Governor Race Means for the Democratic Agenda

Political Waves: What the Virginia Governor Race Means for the Democratic Agenda

Glenn Youngkin defeated incumbent Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday to secure the Virginia governorship, a move that has excited Republican candidates across the... 03.11.2021, Sputnik International

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us

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Terry McAuliffes failure to secure the Virginia governorship was unexpected. In the 2020 presidential election, US President Joe Biden, then the Democratic candidate, won the state by 10 points. Now, only a year later, Democrats lost the governorship by 2.5 points. The question Democrats need to ask themselves is how did the Virginia GOP swing 12 points so quickly?According to a Washington Post-Schar School Poll, in the weeks leading up to the election, 53% of Virginians disapproved of Bidens job performance, with 46% approving. The poll also uncovered that education topped the economy as the most important issue for voters.Glenn Youngkin was able to use mask mandates in schools and critical race theory, among other education-related grievances, to swing Virginias suburbs red enough to flip a state that has had a Democratic governor for 16 of the past 20 years.Democrats in Congress will take notice. Cultural issues can still lead to gains in the suburbs, and pushing more progressive policies could have major consequences in 2022.In the 2020 US presidential election, an estimated 4.3 million Virginians voted. In the 2021 gubernatorial election, 3.2 million people voted. McAuliffe sought to energize the Democratic base by comparing Youngkin to Donald Trump. The strategy did not pay off and Democratic organizers believe the partys inability to pass legislation in Washington may be hurting Democrats at the state level.Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, said voters of color are disappointed that Democrats have not yet passed laws on issues including voting rights and criminal justice. People dont want to be gaslighted about whats not happening and why, by being told that everything is great, she said.Virginia wasnt the only governors race this week. New Jerseys gubernatorial race also saw a Republican candidate perform much better than expected, which George Washington University professor Gary Nordlinger believes is the more tell-tale sign.The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial election results are ringing alarm bells among Democrats in Washington and across the country. Their inability to pass legislation has left their base lethargic, their progressive members rhetoric is thought by some to be scaring off some swing suburban voters, and trying to make an election about Trump when hes on the political sideline are all costly errors. A Democrat agenda will need to start producing results in order to avoid a political red wave.

https://sputniknews.com/20210727/how-critical-race-theory-may-cost-democrats-left-leaning--independent-votes-in-2022-midterms-1083470609.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211103/democratic-governor-phil-murphy-wins-re-election-in-new-jersey--1090459985.html

vot tak Having lived there, my view is virginia is a govnohole. Corrupt to the core with the usual american indoctrinated far right population making sure it remans a backwater. These rep and dem runners are not much different. They work for similar israeli colonial massas, represent mostly the same corporate interests and ignore the rest of us. 2

wtfud Isn't Virginia home of the deranged CIA? 2

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Nevin Brown

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Nevin Brown

republicans, terry mcauliffe, democrat, us
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/40-wars-in-40-regions-irgc-chief-condemns-us-policies-on-anniversary-of-tehran-embassy-seizure-1090480745.html

'40 Wars in 40 Regions': IRGC Chief Condemns US Policies on Anniversary of Tehran Embassy Seizure

'40 Wars in 40 Regions': IRGC Chief Condemns US Policies on Anniversary of Tehran Embassy Seizure

42 years ago, hundreds of armed students who backed the Iranian Revolution broke into the American Embassy in Tehran, which had been labelled a "spy den" by... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

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Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief, Major General Hossein Salami, has slammed US global policies, accusing Washington of starting 40 major wars in 40 regions across the world on the day of the 42nd anniversary of the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran. Today, Iranians are holding countrywide demonstrations in commemoration of the storming the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979, chanting "down with the US".Salami further stated that the US is guilty of over 200 interventions in the domestic affairs of other sovereign countries in the form of coups, sanctions, and military invasions. The IRGC chief summed up the US role in the world as a "factory producing dictators all over the world" in his speech at the event dedicated to the anniversary of the Tehran hostage crisis.The Iranian general went on to say that over the decades since the seizure of the embassy, which Tehran 1979 had accused of trying to undermine the newly established government of the Islamic Republic, Iran has grown in power. This, Salami claims, has resulted in the Islamic Republic preventing Washington from dominating the Islamic world, as it had supposedly aspired to.The general went on to praise the most recent sign of Iran's strength  the successful liberation of Iranian oil by the IRGC after it was allegedly "stolen" in an operation by the US Navy.On 3 November, Iranian media reported that US warships were approaching an Iranian oil tanker and forcing it to unload its crude onto another vessel sailing under a Vietnamese flag, the Sothys.The IRGC Navy responded to the incidents, catching up with the tanker and the US warships that were purportedly escorting it. Iranian forces boarded the Sothys and forced it to change course towards Iranian waters, where it reportedly transferred 700,000 barrels of oil, allegedly stolen from the Iranian ship. According to Tehran, a US destroyer and helicopter unsuccessfully tried to prevent the return of the crude to Iran.The Pentagon disputes the accounts of the Iranian media, claiming the incident happened on 24 October and that the US never seized Iranian oil. The US Department of Defence's spokesman also insisted that the US warships were simply monitoring the unfolding events, but did not elaborate on why one of its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers was sailing so close to the Sothys, when everything unfolded.

https://sputniknews.com/20211104/iran-releases-videos-of-irgc-close-encounter-with-us-destroyer-allegedly-trying-to-seize-oil-tanker-1090470148.html

USSuxRuskyNuts Iran is the ONLY ex US ally that had the balls to break away from the US strangle hold. Not a single one of the US' middle east allies have any balls they're nothing but CumDumps for the US! 3

mandrake Is Iran right in calling the us embassy a den of spirs - you bet, each and every us embassy is a den of spies plus all the informal spy dens the cia is keeping in all vital cities around the world. A good bet is to locate the teaching wife whose husband is in situ for a limited period, say 2 years, and the wife is allowed to earn something while the inofficial spy is doing his dirty deeds. Locate the wife and the cia spy follows. 1

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us, middle east, iran
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/acid-threat-mp-gets-suspended-sentence-paving-way-for-recall-bid-1090477829.html

Acid Threat MP Gets Suspended Sentence, Paving Way for Recall Bid

Acid Threat MP Gets Suspended Sentence, Paving Way for Recall Bid

Legislation passed in 2015  and invoked thrice since that time  allows for MPs convicted of crimes or suspended from Parliament for two weeks or more to be... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

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threats

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keith vaz

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owen paterson

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A left-wing MP who threatened to throw acid on her perceived love rival has received a 10-week suspended prison sentence.Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring handed down the sentence to Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe, who was elected as a Labour member in the Midlands seat, at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday.Webbe had her sentence for harassment held over for two years and was also ordered to complete 200 hours of community service, and pay 1,000 in compensation to her victim Michelle Merritt, as well as 2,000 in costs.But Goldspring refused to grant Merrit's request for a restraining order against Webbe.The Labour Party confirmed that Webbe was no longer a member after failing to appeal against its decision to expel her following her conviction last month. The party had previously withdrawn the Parliamentary whip from the MP when she was first charged in September 2020.Webbe was convicted last month over a series of threatening phone calls she made to Merritt between September 2018 and April 2020. The court heard how the MP made 19 of those calls after police had warned her to stop.In a recording of a call played in court, Webbe accused Merritt of having an affair with her partner Lester Thomas, called the latter a "slag", threatened to send nude photos and videos of the victim to her family and said "you should be acid", a phrase interpreted as 'you should have acid thrown on you'.Merritt had earlier received several intimidating but silent calls from a withheld number while meeting Thomas, and old friend of hers, for coffee.Goldspring said the MP had pursued a "campaign of harassment" out of jealousy, meaning to "cause real harm and distress", adding that her acid attack comment amounted "to a threat of very serious violence".The magistrate said Webbe, who claimed the recording was taken out of context and that her calls were made out of fear that Merritt and Lester were breaking COVID-19 restrictions, had shown "little remorse or contrition".Last month she reportedly claimed her conviction was due to "sexism and racism"."I am a black woman in a white court, facing a white system and white prosecutors," Webbe wrote in a message to supporters. "I know first-hand the sexism and racism institutions and media use to vilify black women."Recall ProcessEven with the custodial element of the sentence suspended, Parliamentary Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle must still allow a recall petition against the MP to go ahead in her constituency unless she wins her appeal.Under the Recall of MPs Act 2015, the signatures of 10 percent of registered voters in the seat are required to force a by-election. The legislation, which Conservative Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg said is too limited in scope, has been employed three times since it was enacted; twice successfully.Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Ian Paisley Jr narrowly avoided a recall in 2018 after he was suspended for 30 days for not declaring two trips to Sri Lanka paid for by the South Asian country's government, with 9.4 percent of his constituents signing the petition.In December 2018, Labour MP for Peterborough Fiona Onasanya was convicted of perverting the course of justice after trying to evade a speeding penalty by claiming her brother was driving. Her three-month sentence allowed for a recall petition which almost 20 percent of her constituents signed. Onasanya was expelled from the Labour Party at the time of her conviction, but initially vowed to stand as an independent. Labour candidate Lisa Forbes won the seat by a majority of less than 700 in June 2019, only to lose it six months later to Tory Paul Bristow at the December general election.Chris Davies, Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire in Wales, pled guilty in March 2019 to making 700 worth of false expense claims, and was issued a 1,500 fine and sentenced to 50 hours of community service. The sentence triggered a by-election in August of that year that saw Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds overturn Davies majority of some 8,000 to win. But Dodds was promptly beaten by Tory Fay Jones the following December.Another Welsh Tory, Rob Roberts of the Delyn constituency, escaped recall earlier this year after the Independent Expert Panel (IEP) found that he had made "repeated, unwelcome sexual advances" towards a male member of his staff, suspending him from the House of Commons for six weeks. Since the IEP was set up after the 2015 act was passed, the law did not cover the suspensions it orders. That loophole was closed by an amendment passed last month.Tory Sleaze, Labour SleazeWebbe's sentencing will be a welcome distraction for the Conservatives from the furore surrounding their vote on Wednesday to overturn the suspension of Owen Paterson, the MP for North Shropshire in Wales. Paterson announced on Thursday afternoon he was resigning to shield his family from attacks on him and his late wife Rose, whose suicide last year he has blamed on the probe into his conduct."Webbe is the seventh Labour MP to be handed a jail sentence, suspended or otherwise, in the past 10 years," a senior Tory source told political gossip website Guido Fawkes. As a sitting MP, Webbe earns almost 82,000 per year plus expenses  even if she does not turn up for Parliamentary debates and votes  meaning her fine and costs adds up to a mere two weeks' wages.Webbe was selected as candidate for the Leicester East seat after long-serving MP Keith Vaz stepped down ahead of the 2019 general election amid his own allegations of serious misconduct. At the time Webbe was a member of Islington borough council in North London  an area covering then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's seat, and had previously worked at London city hall under left-wing Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, who resigned from the Labour Party in 2018 amid a his row over allegedly anti-Semitic comments.Corbyn, his former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott all wrote character references in Webbe's favour for her trial.Vaz allegedly slept with male prostitutes and offered to buy cocaine for them. Last month he was censured by the Parliamentary Standards Committee for bullying staff member Jenny McCullough.Vaz is now reportedly preparing for a bid to be selected to run again in the East Midlands seat, where Labour's lead over the Tories slumped to 6,000 votes at the last election. The City's large Indian community may have been alienated by Labour's attempts to court the Pakistani vote in the recent Batley and Spen by-election by verbally attacking Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

https://sputniknews.com/20211019/uk-police-were-reluctant-to-investigate-former-labour-mp-accused-of-sex-crimes-1090037612.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211104/tory-mp-owen-paterson-to-step-down-amid-backlash-1090475593.html

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threats, british labour party, leicester, keith vaz, parliament, owen paterson, revenge porn, harassment, acid attack
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/alec-baldwin-posts-messages-denying-dangerous-conditions-on-rust-set-in-wake-of-fatal-shooting-1090465996.html

Alec Baldwin Posts Messages Denying Dangerous Conditions on 'Rust' Set in Wake of Fatal Shooting

Alec Baldwin Posts Messages Denying Dangerous Conditions on 'Rust' Set in Wake of Fatal Shooting

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed, and director Joel Souza was injured in a tragic incident when Baldwin pointed his revolver at the camera on the... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T07:13+0000

2021-11-04T07:13+0000

2021-11-04T07:13+0000

us

shooting

alec baldwin

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Actor Alec Baldwin has denied reports about unsafe conditions on the set of the western "Rust", addressing the fatal shooting that took place in October. Baldwin took to Instagram, posting messages from Therese Magpale Davis, who is believed to be a costume designer for the film. Davis said the story about the chaotic conditions on set were nothing but "bull****".The tragedy occurred on 21 October, when Baldwin fatally shot camera operator Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza on the st of "Rust", because the prop gun he used was loaded with live ammunition rather than the blank cartridges it should have held.Since the shooting, allegations over who is responsible for Hutchins' death have heated up. While some suggest it was Dave Halls who gave Baldwin the loaded weapon, Halls' lawyer Lisa Torraco stressed that it's "not the assistant director's job" to check the firearms on set. She also said it is unclear who exactly handed the gun to Baldwin right before the accident.At the same time, some reports say that armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed had earlier been the subject of several complaints, while some of her former colleagues allegedly found her to be "inexperienced and green".

Nevi'im With the publicity the potential movie 'Rust' has received in the Media it could be a Box Office success if completed. Handling of guns has it's mandatory safety protocols and this is a sad lesson in gun safety. 1

Gone As I heard, there were shooting sessions on set during the filming, with live rounds. Someone was having fun. Apparently, only weeks before the killing there was another incident. 0

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us, shooting, alec baldwin
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/as-steele-dossier-source-indicted-users-say-durham-will-unleash-mother-of-all-conspiracy-cases-1090475897.html

As Steele Dossier Source Indicted, Users Say Durham Will Unleash 'Mother of All Conspiracy Cases'

As Steele Dossier Source Indicted, Users Say Durham Will Unleash 'Mother of All Conspiracy Cases'

Igor Danchenko, an analyst who was exposed as a secret source who provided former MI6 agent Christopher Steele with information about the alleged ties between... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T16:07+0000

2021-11-04T16:07+0000

2021-11-05T10:46+0000

us

donald trump

doj

christopher steele

alleged collusion

steele dossier

john durham

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The arrest and indictment of a Russia analyst, Igor Danchenko, in the United States as part of a probe conducted by Special Counsel John Durham into the origins of the investigation into the Trump-Russia "collusion" has ignited social media.Many Twitter users are convinced that with the detention of Danchenko, who contributed to the infamous Steele dossier, compiled by discredited ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, Durham will unleash "the mother of all conspiracy cases".Osama bin Laden's niece Noor bin Ladin, who is an ardent supporter of ex-US President Donald Trump, has drawn attention to a change of narrative in the reporting by The New York Times:Other social media users hinted that Danchenko could end up like Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in his Manhattan prison cell while awaiting trial in August 2019. Even though his death was officially ruled a suicide, there's been much speculation that his wealthy and powerful friends could have had him murdered to let their dark secrets die with him. According to The New York Times, Danchenko, who helped compile the Steele dossier, was taken into custody on Thursday as part of the Durham probe. Danchenko has been charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI. According to the US Department of Justice, he allegedly lied about the source of information provided to the bureau during the 2016 presidential campaign. The Steele dossier was published a week before Trump's inauguration in January 2017, alleging that Russian intelligence had compromising information on the US president and that Moscow and POTUS had "extensive" secret backchannels.The document, which was subsequently discredited, became part of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats' efforts to tarnish the 45th president's political image. Clinton has repeatedly blamed her loss in the 2016 presidential election on the "Russian interference", accusing Trump of colluding with Moscow, something that has been repeatedly rejected by the US president as a "hoax" and a "witch hunt". Moscow has dismissed the claims as baseless and politicised, reiterating that Russia has never interfered with any internal US affairs.In March 2019, FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller released a long-awaited report on the probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 US presidential race. The report concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Trump had colluded with Russia during the election, and said that Mueller recommended no further indictments.John Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to probe suspicions that the FBI and US intelligence agencies had committed wrongdoing in their pursuit of the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.

https://sputniknews.com/20211104/analyst-who-contributed-to-discredited-steele-dossier-reportedly-arrested-in-us-1090474807.html

greg1242 So Steel's associate was arrested for helping Steele. Why Steele is not arrested then? 3

fluttershield mlp Doubtful an ignorant Justice Department male prostitute will do anything but bend over for his Israeli masters paycheck. Bark like a dog for your government paycheck while millions are being sickened and killed with an experimental drug. The Justice Department, FDA, and CDC, are the most degenerate and corrupt parts of our Israeli billionaire run government, 2

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Zara Muradyan

us, donald trump, doj, christopher steele, alleged collusion, steele dossier, john durham
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/biden-xi-likely-to-ink-agreements-on-consulates-easing-visa-restrictions-1090478022.html

Biden, Xi 'Likely to Ink Agreements on Consulates, Easing Visa Restrictions'

Biden, Xi 'Likely to Ink Agreements on Consulates, Easing Visa Restrictions'

WASHINGTON, (Sputnik)  US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are due shortly to hold a virtual meeting when they will probably reach... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T17:10+0000

2021-11-04T17:10+0000

2021-11-04T17:10+0000

world

us

asia & pacific

china

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Although no major breakthroughs are expected during the meeting, which has not yet been scheduled, the two sides could make modest progress in other areas, the report suggested.The bilateral closing of consulates in July 2020 marked the peak of tensions between the US and China during Trump's presidency. Trump ordered China's consulate in Houston to be closed on 21 July 2020, citing alleged "violations of [US] sovereignty and intimidation" of American people, as well as purported theft of intellectual property by China. Washington additionally claimed that Beijing carried out its espionage operations, including industrial espionage, on American soil via the said consulate, although he presented no evidence to back up his claims.Beijing condemned Washington's actions and threatened to retaliate. After the US kept the order to vacate the consulate within 72 hours, China responded by closing the American consulate in Chengdu on 27 July 2020. Beijing claimed that some of the US consulate's employees were "conducting activities not in line with their identities" and alleged that their actions were directed at undermining the security interests of the People's Republic of China.Before ordering the consulate in Houston to be closed, the Trump administration had already exerted pressure on China in several ways: specifically it launched a trade war with the PRC in 2018, accusing it of abusing existing trade practices. The US further increased the frequency of its military missions in the disputed waters of the South China Sea despite protests and warnings from Beijing.Finally, Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act passed by Congress in June 2020, which introduced sanctions against China over the alleged illegal detention of more than one million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang - something Beijing denies. In addition, the Trump administration designated China as the "greatest long-term threat" to the US, initiating a policy directed at containing and deterring it.

https://sputniknews.com/20200813/chinas-houston-consulate-had-long-been-scrutinised-by-fbi-justice-dept-official-says-1080152747.html

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world, us, asia & pacific, china
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/canadian-company-files-suit-against-russian-research-vessel-detained-in-denmark-1090474212.html

Canadian Company Files Suit Against Russian Research Vessel Detained in Denmark

Canadian Company Files Suit Against Russian Research Vessel Detained in Denmark

ZURICH (Sputnik) - The lawsuit against the Russian research vessel Akademik Ioffe that was detained in Denmark was filed by Canadian company One Ocean... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T13:20+0000

2021-11-04T13:20+0000

2021-11-04T13:31+0000

denmark

europe

russia

canada

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The embassy said that the Russian vessel, used by the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology for scientific purposes, was detained by the Danish authorities earlier this week as "an interim measure following a claim of a third party".

Dicksonrp Russia needs to arrest 2 Danish vessels to ensure that the legal rights of the Russian vessel and crew are upheld and nit held to US BACKED BLACKMAIL by their shitpile Canadian whimp 1

Dang! Hey Russia, send your armed navy to get your research ship the west is trying to steal!! Or start confiscating Western research ships as a quid pro quo! Better yet, pull a United States and illegally sanction EVERYTHING AMERICAN!! Why not, the USA does it ALL THE TIME!! What do you do with a BULLY?? CONFRONT!! 0

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denmark, europe, russia, canada
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/duchess-is-calling-why-meghan-markles-parental-leave-lobbying-unlikely-to-save-the-day-for-dems---1090478837.html

Duchess is Calling: Why Meghan Markle's Parental Leave Lobbying Unlikely to Save the Day for Dems

Duchess is Calling: Why Meghan Markle's Parental Leave Lobbying Unlikely to Save the Day for Dems

Meghan Markle appears to be testing the waters of US politics by reaching out to US senators to lobby for the parental leave agenda, which was recently brought... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T17:40+0000

2021-11-04T17:40+0000

2021-11-04T17:40+0000

joe biden

prince harry

us senate

world

us

opinion

nancy pelosi

sen. joe manchin (d-west virginia)

gop

meghan markle

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California-born British royal Meghan Markle is reported to be cold-calling American senators and advocating for parental leave."I'm in my car. I'm driving. It says 'caller ID blocked' And she goes 'Senator Capito?' I said, 'Yes'. She said, 'This is Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex'. I couldn't figure out how she got my number", Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia recalled in an interview with Politico Playbook earlier this week.Capito is not the only Republican senator who got a call from the "American royal". Sen. Susan Collins from Maine also discussed parental leave with Markle."She introduced herself as the Duchess of Sussex, which is kind of ironic", the senator told Politico reporter Marianne LeVine, admitting afterwards that although she "was happy to talk" with Meghan, she remains "more interested in what the people of Maine are telling [her] about it".Fight for Parental LeaveThe drama surrounding parental leave emerged late last month after Joe Biden threw it out of his landmark $3.5 trillion social spending package along with some other measures in order to reduce the bill to $1.75 trillion. Biden's decision prompted an outcry from progressive activists. For her part, the Duchess of Sussex on 20 October penned an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging them to put parental leave back in the bill.It's unclear what convinced the two top Democrats more, Markle's letter or the progressives' ire, but on 3 November Pelosi announced that she would insert four weeks of paid family leave into the Houses reconciliation bill.Sen. Kirsten Gilibrand (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday told Politico that she had given senators' numbers to Markle. Meanwhile, the major obstacle in the Dems' path for passing the bill is not so much the Republicans, but moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who is opposing the inclusion of parental leave in Biden's revamped proposal. Manchin's voice remains crucial in the evenly split upper chamber. Apparently therefore, Markle is reaching out to GOP senators to win more support for parental leave and Biden's Build Back Better initiative, the US media suggests.Will US Lawmakers Lend a Sympathetic Ear to the Duchess?However, that isn't really the point, according to him: "As ever with Markle and Prince Harry, the point is their relentless self-promotion and making money", Singh believes.The professor notes that given Markle's "endless narcissism and elevated sense of global and historic self-importance", she "probably does think that a stellar political career awaits".The Daily Mail broke on 13 March that the duchess is reportedly considering tossing her hat into the ring of the US 2024 presidential election. The media outlet noted that Markle was interacting with senior Democrats with an alleged aim of building a campaign and fundraising teams."[Meghan Markle and Prince Harry] have important contacts in the Democratic Party such as the Clintons and also are friendly with top celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney and Serena Williams", says Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal commentator and consultant. "In America this counts for a lot, they made one of the covers of Time magazine when it launched its list of the top 100 people globally".Fitzwilliams recalls that Markle has been an activist from the age of 11. At that time, Meghan wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton asking for help when she found a TV advertisement to be sexist. Decades later, the politician repeatedly supported the duchess, bemoaning the "cruelty" of the "British tabloids" going after her.Still, it wouldn't be easy for Meghan to win the hearts and minds of US lawmakers and ordinary Americans, according to the observers.In addition to this, Meghan and Harry are extremely controversial when it comes to their family affairs, which additionally tarnish their image in the eyes of Americans, according to Richard Fitzwilliams."Meghan is estranged, however understandably, from her own family, save for her mother and from the royal family", says Fitzwilliams. "This does not look good for a would-be philanthropist. Their highly contentious interview on Oprah won wide support in the US at the time but proven inaccuracies in it may yet haunt her".Although her support for paid parental leave is an admirable cause, it remains unclear whether it will help the Democrats in any way and how Americans would regard her involvement in their politics, the royal commentator concludes.

https://sputniknews.com/20211022/republicans-tell-meghan-markle-to-stick-to-acting-after-out-of-touch-intervention-in-us-politics-1090127275.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210316/from-princess-to-president-what-are-meghan-markles-chances-of-making-it-to-the-white-house-1082349171.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210325/contagious-presidential-ambition-meghan-markle-hires-ex-hillary-aides-bonding-with-ex-first-lady-1082449010.html

IronForge Did she Register as a Foreign Agent Lobbyist? Yea or Nay, she needs to leave Murican Politics Alone. 1

Max75 It is a plot by the British Government to take over the United States. Have one of their princes marry some American woman and then start meddling in the US politics. Well I like Prince William, and he should be next in line to rule the UK so it wouldn't be to bad. 0

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Ekaterina Blinova

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Ekaterina Blinova

joe biden, prince harry, us senate, world, us, opinion, nancy pelosi, sen. joe manchin (d-west virginia), gop, meghan markle, uk, build back better
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/ex-detainee-says-guantanamo-was-merely-human-lab-experimenting-on-inmates-1090479119.html

Ex-Detainee Says Guantanamo Was Merely 'Human Lab' Experimenting on Inmates

Ex-Detainee Says Guantanamo Was Merely 'Human Lab' Experimenting on Inmates

WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Ekaterina Chukaeva - The Guantanamo prison is the worst place on earth and, with all the torture occurring there, it is in effect a human... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T17:10+0000

2021-11-04T17:10+0000

2021-11-04T17:10+0000

cuba

us

torture

guantanamo bay

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Established by the Bush administration in 2002, the facility has long been criticized for mistreatment and abuse of prisoners, with human rights activists and international organizations calling for its closure. Former US President Barack Obama vowed to shut the camp down but faced strong opposition from Congress. His successor, Donald Trump, signed an order to keep the detention camp open indefinitely, while incumbent Joe Biden has promised to close it.The American authorities have since shut down secretive Camp Seven, where highly classified prisoners were kept, and transferred them to other accommodation blocks. Yet no announcement on the full closure of the camp has followed. In July, the White House announced that the Biden administration is aiming to close the detention facility for good and working to transfer its remaining prisoners out, but no date has been set.'I Had Dreams'Originally from a tribal area in Yemen, Adayfi finished high school and was working in a security company before he was kidnapped by warlords in Egypt and handed over to the CIA in 2002."I had a dream in Yemen to finish my job at the Institute - we were doing research  I was promised a regular reference letter and [an opportunity to study] in one of the Gulf countries. I was so happy planning my life. [I was thinking] about getting married. I was going to be that important person in society, you know, I had dreams. I loved a woman there and wanted to marry. Thanks to the Americans who destroyed that," he said, sharing the memories of life before his capture.He remembered that the CIA repeatedly called him an "Al-Qaeda [terrorist group, banned in Russia] commander" and "Al-Qaeda general."Detainee 441Adayfi recalled that on the way to Guantanamo he had over 40 hours of beatings, loud music, and was chained to the floor, hooded, gagged and blindfolded."They put duct tape over my mouth. It was horrible. I wished to die because you cannot hear, you cannot talk and understand. You only feel the pain and the hitting. Then we arrived at Guantanamo and it was worse," he said.That is how Adayfi became "Detainee 441" for the next 14 years. He remembers that American soldiers repeatedly told him: "You are under the control of the US." At Guantanamo, the torture continued  Adayfi again experienced beatings, being stripped naked, and other violations.According to Adayfi, the US authorities liked to give legal names to the practices they used at the notorious camp. For example, they never used the word "torture," but rather "enhanced interrogation techniques.""Guantanamo was selected to be outside the law. I'm talking about the system, you know, the system that was created to serve to protect humanity. [But] it only demonized us," he admitted.In 2002, General Geoffrey Miller was appointed to head Guantanamo shortly after the Bush administration approved so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. Miller, with experience of running other notorious CIA-run facilities, including Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca, retired in 2006. After his retirement, a number of allegations of torture under his command in Guantanamo emerged. For example, a French court summoned him back in 2016 over allegations of torture from a prisoner.Adayfi recalled that with Millers arrival, prison guards and interrogators started learning the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. He noted that Miller's tenure at Guantanamo was the worst for prisoners.When Someone is Trying to Break YouAccording to Adayfi, it was hard to believe that one can find himself in a place where he was totally cut off from the world and from himself. But this was Guantanamo."In Guantanamo, everything was designed to break us - interrogation, torture, noise, sleep deprivation, loud noises, loud music in the interrogation room, beating, little food, stripping naked; it was hard," Adayfi recalled.Time passed, and as prisoners tried asserting themselves against their prison guards, Adayfi emerged as a leader in the prison resistance. He organized hunger strikes to protest the poor treatment of prisoners, or "brothers," as he called them. The prisoners spent years on hunger strike and subsequent force-feeding."If they take your memories, if they take your knowledge, emotions, experience? That is Guantanamo. It's a place that changes you. We tried to survive at Guantanamo and first, we went on a peaceful protest - hunger strike  Someone tries to change you, to break you, to drag you to insanity. It is survival instinct," he recalled.Even during interviews he wears an orange scarf  a symbol of the resistance inside."Guantanamo stands for torture, abuse, lawlessness, indefinite detention, abuse of power, death sentence. Guantanamo shouldn't exist in any place anywhere and anytime because that would destroy humanity. I'm trying to send a message that that place should not exist, and it's my duty as a victim of that place to bring awareness to the people," Adayfi stressed.Waking Up to Screams to Learn About the Death of Fellow InmatesAdayfi spent 14 years in Guantanamo, and was released in 2016 without any charges. He entered it as a young man and left a fully-grown man. He spent half of his life behind bars and feels that he is a different man now. He adapted to that reality, and recalled that the prisoners tried to support each other, protecting the younger and supporting the older.The hardest moments in the prison were those when he learned about the death of fellow prisoners."It was one of the most difficult things. Waking up in the middle of the night hearing those guards scream. And I found suddenly when they took my dead brothers. I just cannot forget those moments, because they were never thinking about killing themselves or talking about it," he said.The guards would tell them that the prisoners committed suicide, but Adayfi couldn't believe that."When you see death for the first time in your life, someone who lives with you for years and [with whom you] struggled together, you go on a hunger strike, you become friends and one night you just wake up ... And there is someone there dead. I will never forget that," he admitted.Its been five years since Adayfi was freed. Since then, he has published a book about his life in the prison, entitled "Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo." He is now working on a new book about his life after the prison. He is living in Serbia, but has problems finding work or traveling to another country.Adayfi is currently collaborating with the CAGE group, which was formed to raise awareness of the lives of those held at Guantanamo.Adayfi has recently finished his thesis on rehabilitation and reintegration of former Guantanamo inmates into normal life, and sent a copy to the US government. He also maintains contact with other former inmates.There are 1.8 million of Muslims around the world, but only a handful of them have had connections to Al-Qaeda, and it's injustice to judge all Muslims by actions of individuals, Adayfi added."They used the war on terror for military expansion , to invade Afghanistan, to invade Iraq. They sent their soldiers, military campaign, drone assassination. Imagine those victims, entire families wiped out [in drone attacks]," he concluded.

https://sputniknews.com/20210909/20-years-after-911-why-are-39-people-still-detained-at-guantanamo-and-will-they-ever-face-trial-1088920346.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210929/biden-should-appoint-envoy-for-closing-guantanamo-ex-muslim-chaplain-at-gitmo-says-1089532944.html

Truth-Teller That is the reason why the US is so afraid of Iran becoming a country that possess nuclear weapons. The US is also afraid of any black country acquiring nuclear weapons. US is a white dominated country just like Europe with a very bad history of torture and doing inhuman things to other non white countries. They (the US and the other white dominated countries in Europe) knows that one day these victimized countries will take revenge. 2

Kiwi Why isn't ICC investigating these war crimes? 2

5

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cuba, us, torture, guantanamo bay
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/france-to-keep-sanction-threats-at-bay-amid-fishing-row-with-uk-1090479969.html

France to Keep Sanction Threats at Bay Amid Fishing Row With UK

France to Keep Sanction Threats at Bay Amid Fishing Row With UK

Since the United Kingdom decided to exit the European Union, London and Paris have been engaged in a dispute over fishing rights. Most recently, the squabbles... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T17:50+0000

2021-11-04T17:50+0000

2021-11-04T17:50+0000

france

sanctions

fishing

uk

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France decided to hold off on its threats to sanction the United Kingdom over the fishing row between the two countries, a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday.The comments come amid talks held between French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune and British Brexit Minister David Frost in Paris on Thursday with the goal to find ways to resolve the fishing rights dispute. While the sides failed to come to a final agreement on the issue, both London and Paris agreed to continue the dialogue.The French side revealed it still had "significant disagreements" with the United Kingdom, but wants to "give a chance" to dialogue, even though "all the options are open and all the options are possible".Earlier, Paris threatened that it would slap sanctions on London because of the UK's alleged refusal to issue fishing licences to French fishermen seeking access to British territorial waters. Britain's PM Johnson dubbed the threats as "unjustified" and incompatible with the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Last year, the two countries agreed that European fishing vessels can continue to operate in UK waters given that they prove they had done so in the past. However, Paris argued that dozens of its fishing boats had their requests to fish in the British waters denied.In the latest escalation of the French-British fishing row, Paris seized British trawler the Cornelis Gert Jan, claiming that it was not properly licensed to operate in French territorial waters. The UK condemned the seizure as "disappointing" and insisted that the trawler had the necessary license.Tensions eased on Wednesday when the Cornelis Gert Jan received permission to leave the northern French port of Le Havre, where it had been kept for about a week.

https://sputniknews.com/20211103/british-pm-boris-johnson-insists-uk-will-make-no-concessions-in-fishing-row-with-france-1090437670.html

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france, sanctions, fishing, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/google-aggressively-pursuing-cloud-contract-with-pentagon-despite-employees-revolt-1090476514.html

Google 'Aggressively Pursuing' Cloud Contract With Pentagon Despite Employees' Revolt

Google 'Aggressively Pursuing' Cloud Contract With Pentagon Despite Employees' Revolt

The tech giant's staff protested en masse after they learnt that the AI technology they have been developing will be used in US drones, including their attack... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T15:46+0000

2021-11-04T15:46+0000

2021-11-04T15:46+0000

us

google

pentagon

alphabet inc

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Alphabet, Google's parent company, is "aggressively pursuing" a hugely lucrative cloud computing contract with the Pentagon, the New York Times reported, citing several anonymous sources. Specifically, it is seeking to compete for bringing the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability into existence  a technology that uses cloud computing and artificial intelligence which the Pentagon hopes will give it the upper hand on the battlefield.According to the newspaper, Alphabet has given its attempts to secure a share of the contract - more than one tech company is expected to work on the project - a "code yellow" priority, drawing the company's engineers from other projects to develop a proposal for the Pentagon. Alphabet's officials have reportedly already met representatives from the US Air Force and other Pentagon top brass to discuss the bid.It is unclear, however, whether the Pentagon will agree to entertain Alphabet's bid to be one of the companies to work on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability; three years ago Alphabet ditched a contract to build AI for US drones, having been forced to take this step after a mass revolt among its employees, who opposed the idea of AI which they had developed being used in machines that could kill civilians.Alphabet caved in to their demands and created guidelines limiting the sale of its AI technology. It is unclear, however, whether the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability pushes the boundaries of these guidelines. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether Alphabet will be able to ensure the AI and cloud computing it provides for the Pentagon are not used to kill people, since the company's access will be severely limited for security reasons. The New York Times cited an anonymous source as saying that some Google workers believed the project did not violate the company's humanitarian guidelines.JEDI 2.0?The idea of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability came about in 2021 after the Pentagon decided to scrap the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), another cloud computing project, which Microsoft was supposed to develop and build. The Department of Defense faced lawsuits from Amazon - Microsoft's key cloud market rival - which lost the bid to build JEDI.Amazon claimed that the contract was illegally awarded to Microsoft and alleged that the choice had been made after lobbying by Trump. The latter slammed the company's owner Jeff Bezos because the Wall Street Journal - which Bezos owns - had published critical articles about the former president while he was in the White House.As the Pentagon announced the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, it claimed that because of a significant lag in awarding JEDI, the project - which was expected to cost $10 billion over 10 years - became outdated and needed an upgrade. The Department of Defense said that the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability will need even greater proficiency and experience from the companies making it and thus the list of candidates will be selected by the Pentagon itself. Apart from naming Microsoft and Amazon, the Pentagon pointed at Alphabet, Oracle and IBM as potential candidates.

https://sputniknews.com/20190818/their-people-are-morons-cbp-ice-officials-slam-irresponsible-google-employees-1076576112.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210706/jedi-is-dead-all-hail-new-jedi-pentagon-kills-its-cloud-computing-project-only-to-start-new-one-1083320885.html

Gone No paid parental leave, no public health system, 60 mil. on opiates, and they are building whatchamacallit? "Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability". Unfortunately, the joint in question can't be smoked in any ordinary way. 2

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us, google, pentagon, alphabet inc
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/israeli-parliament-approves-2021-budget-first-time-in-over-three-years-1090469783.html

Israeli Parliament Approves 2021 Budget First Time in Over Three Years

Israeli Parliament Approves 2021 Budget First Time in Over Three Years

TEL AVIV (Sputnik) - The Israeli Knesset narrowly approved the country's budget for 2021 and is going to vote on the draft budget for the next year, marking... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T10:05+0000

2021-11-04T10:05+0000

2021-11-04T10:05+0000

middle east

israel

budget

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Passing the budget was seen as a key test for the eight-party coalition led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yamina right-wing political alliance, and alternate prime minister Yair Lapid, the head of Israel's largest opposition party Yesh Atid. In case of a failure to approve the budget by a 14 November deadline, the Knesset would be dissolved, forcing new elections.As a result of the voting, which started on Wednesday and lasted all night, the parliament approved a $194 billion (609 billion shekel) spending plan for 2021, proposed by the government, and is to vote on a $183 billion (573 billion shekel) budget plan for 2022 later on Thursday, according to the Times of Israel.Foreign Minister and alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter that "after a long night, we approved the 2021 budget in the Knesset and there is another long day ahead. Another budget for the next year".The coalition, formed following the 24th Knesset elections, was named the Block of Changes and is based on a minimum parliamentary majority - 61 parliamentary votes in the 120-seat Knesset. Under the coalition agreement, the new government will be headed by Bennett for about two years, after which Bennett will yield the helm to alternate Prime Minister Lapid. Passage of the budget plan is expected to stabilise the ideologically diverse Bennet-Lapid coalition, made up of right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties, as well as an Islamist faction.

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middle east, israel, budget
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/jeffrey-epstein-claimed-he-escorted-princess-diana-new-book-reveals-1090469438.html

Jeffrey Epstein Claimed He 'Escorted' Princess Diana, New Book Reveals

Jeffrey Epstein Claimed He 'Escorted' Princess Diana, New Book Reveals

The reputation of one British royal, Prince Andrew, has already been shattered due to his ties to late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein - the Duke of York... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T09:54+0000

2021-11-04T09:54+0000

2021-11-04T09:54+0000

princess diana

prince andrew

jeffrey epstein

escort

uk

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American financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein asserted that he had accompanied Princess Diana to several events, as per a new book by US journalist Michael Wolff "Too Famous" as cited by the Daily Mail. The book sheds light on a previously unpublished interview with Epstein, in which he claimed to have gone out with Princess Diana when asked by Wolff.He, however, omitted the details, never revealing the time or the place of their alleged outings. Diana never claimed being friends with the financier, and there are no photos of the two together.The Daily Mail also noted that, according to some speculations, the two could have met in New York, where Epstein owned a 37 million ($50 million) townhouse.A convicted sex offender, Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in 2019, with his death ruled to be a suicide. Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997.Ties to the late sex offender have already damaged the reputation of one member of the UK Royal Family, Prince Andrew, who is currently facing accusations of sex abuse by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was 17 at the time of at least one incident. Giuffre is one of the alleged victims of Epstein's sex trafficking circle. The Duke of York has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, but his comments on his friendship with Epstein in a 2019 interview with the BBC prompted a strong backlash. Shortly after the interview, Prince Andrew had to give up his royal duties.According to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, the civil trial hearing on Giuffre's allegations could possibly occur between September and December 2022.

https://sputniknews.com/20211104/jeffrey-epsteins-pimp-ghislaine-maxwell-is-being-treated-like-hannibal-lecter-her-lawyer-claims-1090465252.html

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princess diana, prince andrew, jeffrey epstein, escort, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/jeffrey-epsteins-pimp-ghislaine-maxwell-is-being-treated-like-hannibal-lecter-her-lawyer-claims-1090465252.html

Jeffrey Epstein's 'Pimp' Ghislaine Maxwell is Being Treated Like Hannibal Lecter, Her Lawyer Claims

Jeffrey Epstein's 'Pimp' Ghislaine Maxwell is Being Treated Like Hannibal Lecter, Her Lawyer Claims

The 59-year-old was arrested by the FBI last July and has since been awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in New York City. She is accused of... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T06:33+0000

2021-11-04T06:33+0000

2021-11-04T06:33+0000

society

ghislaine maxwell

jeffrey epstein

rape

sexual abuse

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Ghislaine Maxwell's treatment in a New York jail "rivals scenes of Hanibal Lecter's incarceration in the movie Silence of Lambs, despite the absence of the cage and plastic face guard", her lawyer wrote in a letter to a federal judge. According to Bobbi C Sternheim, prison guards have been aggressive with Maxwell, 59, and touched her in a "sexually inappropriate manner on multiple occasions".The attorney said an investigation is underway within the US Marshals Service after a prison guard "verbally threatened" Maxwell, telling her: "You think you are special. You are not special. Remember you are in custody and the judge doesn't care about you".Mrs Sternheim emphasised that her client's "reprehensible" prison conditions are inappropriate for a woman on the cusp of turning 60 and said that if Maxwell's detention continues, she won't have the "stamina to assist in her defence and endure the physical demands of five-day per week, multi-week court proceedings".Other ComplaintsSince her arrest in July 2020, Maxwell's legal team and family has been constantly drawing attention to her prison conditions, which they've described as "cruel" and "onerous". Her lawyers claimed her hair is falling out and that she's lost six kilograms due to the "inedible prison food". They also said that at night the 59-year-old is reportedly woken up every 15 minutes to be searched by a prison guard.In April, lawyers released a photo Maxwell that purportedly showed her with a black eye. Last week, her brother Ian Maxwell claimed that guards had "abused" his sister.Maxwell's legal team also accused the prosecution of double standards. They said that high-profile male sex offenders such as Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein were granted bail, although they potentially posed a danger to women, while Maxwell was denied bail despite her posing no danger to the public. Maxwell's detention, the lawyers argue, prevents their client from preparing for her trial.Bobbi C Sternheim once again asked the federal judge to grant bail to Maxwell. Judges previously rejected all pleas, deeming the 59-year-old a flight risk. They remained adamant even after her legal team revealed that Maxwell would give up her French and British paspports.Who is Ghislaine Maxwell and Why Does Her Trial Matter?The ninth and youngest child of British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, she has been part of the highest circles in Britain and the United States. She dated US financier and millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, a man who has been accused of sexual abuse and rape by dozens of women. The accusations, which spanned years, didn't lead to trials until 2019, when Epstein was arrested on charges of running a sex trafficking network of minors. His accusers claimed that Epstein lured them into the hands of a millionaire promising them a well-paid job at his house. Some women alleged that Maxwell not only groomed them but took part in the abuse. Epstein's alleged victims didn't get justice  the financier hanged himself in custody a month after he was arrested. His death prompted numerous conspiracy theories. According to one, he was killed by his powerful friends, who feared they may be implicated in his crimes. Epstein's past friend Prince Andrew has been accused of wrongdoing by one of the financier's purported sex slaves.Thus, Ghislaine Maxwell is the only person who can shed light on Epstein's crimes. Her trial is scheduled to start on 29 November. She faces eight charges, including sex trafficking of minors and enticing minors as young as 14 to engage in illegal sex acts. She claims she is innocent and insists that the prosecution has made her a scapegoat for Epstein's crimes.

pgb in nz "She claims she is innocent and insists that the prosecution has made her a scapegoat for Epstein's crimes"---------sup with the Devil.....................!! 4

Uninformed Poor poor pedophile , how about releasing the secret info on the "Club" instead of the whataboutme thing 3

4

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society, ghislaine maxwell, jeffrey epstein, rape, sexual abuse
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/macron-suspected-submarine-deal-was-on-the-rocks-before-aukus-pact-leaked-text-suggests-1090471188.html

Macron Suspected Submarine Deal Was on the Rocks Before AUKUS Pact, Leaked Text Suggests

Macron Suspected Submarine Deal Was on the Rocks Before AUKUS Pact, Leaked Text Suggests

The AUKUS trilateral deal between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia that undermined a French submarine deal with Canberra caused a rift in... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T12:05+0000

2021-11-04T12:05+0000

2021-11-04T12:05+0000

aukus

france

joe biden

us

submarine

macron

aukus

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In June, French President Emmanuel Macron texted his Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, that he "[doesn't] like losing" when Canberra first hinted that it was looking for alternatives to the French submarines, the Australian Financial Review has reported.A day before announcing the trilateral deal, Morrison tried to call Macron, but the latter would not pick up - apparently because he "knew what it was about", the report suggests, citing federal government officials.The new details surrounding the AUKUS drama suggest that Macron was not sincere when he claimed he was blindsided by the cancelled submarine deal with Australia. Yet, the French president accused Morrison of dishonesty earlier in the week, when he was asked whether the Australian PM lied to him about the deal.Morrison described Macron's words as "slurs", vehemently denying that he ever lied to his French counterpart. The Australian PM recalled the June dinner.Still, Paris has repeatedly described the AUKUS announcement as a "stab in the back" that occurred out of the blue. In order to try and make up for the fallout in relations, US President Joe Biden apologised to Macron when the two met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome."I think what happened was  to use an English phrase, what we did was 'clumsy'", Biden said. "It was not done with a lot of grace. I was under the impression certain things had happened that hadn't happened".According to Biden, he "honest to God" thought that Paris was aware that the submarine deal with Australia was no longer a go when the AUKUS pact was introduced.Apologies from Washington appeared to have been welcomed by Macron, who said that he and his American counterpart had "clarified together what we had to clarify", noting that what is "important is to be sure that such a situation will not be possible for our future".AUKUS DealThe trilateral defence pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia envisaged, in part, that Canberra would receive nuclear-powered submarines within the AUKUS framework. This ditched the earlier multi-million dollar deal between France and Australia on the delivery of diesel-powered submarines.The cancellation of the deal prompted fury in France, with Paris recalling its ambassadors from Australia and the United States. However, in early October, French Ambassador to the US Philippe Etienne returned to Washington.

anne00marie So politicians lie to their people, regularly. That is fine. When a politician lies to another politician, that is out of order????? Seriously? Russia never made such a fuss, when France cancelled the Mistral Helicopter Carriers, after full payment and after one was fully built and waiting to be despatched. There again, Russia, has the world's leading statesman running the nation and France has a toddler out of kindergarten, tugging at his teacher's apron strings. 2

William Kierath What everyone is missing is the Submarine the French based their Diesel substitute was a Nuclear Submarine and so why ddn't the Morrison ask the French to offer a cost for that?..... The reason is he was pressured by the 5 Eyes, that's code for the US to do their dirty work and gain access to Australian Submarine Bases in Western Australia. Submarines which are American and crewed by Americans for which Australia will pay the costs? 2

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france, joe biden, us, submarine, macron, aukus
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/minsk-summons-polish-diplomat-to-express-protest-as-warsaw-claims-border-violated-by-armed-people-1090472296.html

Minsk Summons Polish Diplomat to Express Protest as Warsaw Claims Border Violated by Armed People

Minsk Summons Polish Diplomat to Express Protest as Warsaw Claims Border Violated by Armed People

Poland previously deployed 6,000 troops at the border with Belarus and approved the construction of a border wall, claiming that Minsk was behind a massive... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T12:05+0000

2021-11-04T12:05+0000

2021-11-04T12:27+0000

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The Belarusian Foreign Ministry summoned a Polish charge d'affaires on Thursday to express protest over Warsaw's statements regarding the situation at the border between the two nations.The Polish diplomat was "firmly notified" of the inadmissibility of escalating the situation at the border using methods that are "highly questionable", the ministry added.Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia accuse Belarus of encouraging large numbers of illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa to attempt to enter the EU via their borders.The crisis began in the summer of 2021 after Belarus froze an agreement with Brussels on the readmission of illegal immigrants in retaliation for severe economic sanctions imposed by the EU targeting Belarusian exports. While the EU has accused Minsk of using migrants as a "hybrid weapon", Belarus has stated it has no resources to suppress migration due to the sanctions.

FeEisi Belarus can deploy the military to make sure migrants are being treated well and aren't suffering a medical emergency. The military can supply food, water, and warm clothing to migrants who want go live with Merkel in the EU. 1

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belarus, europe, poland, border
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/play-hard-study-hard-taiwanese-math-teacher-turns-pornhub-into-tutors-cash-cow-1090464039.html

'Play Hard, Study Hard': Taiwanese Math Teacher Turns Pornhub Into Tutor's Cash Cow

'Play Hard, Study Hard': Taiwanese Math Teacher Turns Pornhub Into Tutor's Cash Cow

How many students can say their teacher is on Pornhub? More than you'd think. 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T04:00+0000

2021-11-04T04:00+0000

2021-11-04T03:57+0000

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While other professors hold study hall, Chang Hsu, a 34-year-old Taiwan-based math teacher, is assisting potential calculus students via an unlikely platform: the Canadian-owned internet pornography website Pornhub. While Chang, better known as changhsumath666, has been able to climb Pornhub's model ranking, the teacher is seen fully clothed in his calculus lessons, which have been uploaded to the porn site since he encountered employment issues in March 2020. While there's nothing sexy - for most people - about finding the derivative, Chang has been able to make money through the 'Play Hard, Study Hard' venture, as many Pornhub users have signed up for his paid classes available on other platforms. According to Focus Taiwan, Chang has earned NT$7.5 million (US$268,000) per year through his virtual tutoring program. Overall, the Taiwan-based teacher has amassed more than 7,000 subscribers and nearly 1.9 million total video views. Now that his secret is out, he intends to change up his content to separate himself from the competition. "This is a top business secret, and what I can only tell you is it will no longer be just me in the videos," Chang teased.

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/rapper-cardi-bs-theory-that-hoes-dont-get-cold-is-correct-scientists-say-1090476039.html

Rapper Cardi Bs Theory That Hoes Dont Get Cold is Correct, Scientists Say

Rapper Cardi Bs Theory That Hoes Dont Get Cold is Correct, Scientists Say

Remember when your grandmother told you that you wont learn anything good from listening to hip-hop artists who rap about wet a** p***ies, diamonds, parties... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T15:18+0000

2021-11-04T15:18+0000

2021-11-04T15:18+0000

tech

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In 2014, rapper Cardi B posted a video on her social media that went viral due to the saying "a hoe never gets cold", and it turns out she was right. Scientists from the University of South Florida and Colorado College decided to test this hypothesis by conducting a study.To be fair in their research, the scientists focused on self-objectification rather than on how sex workers are able to withstand cold temperatures. In particular, they looked into the correlation between how women look versus how they feel.The scientists spent five nights surveying women who attended Florida bars when the temperature was around 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit (4-10 degrees Celsius). Besides asking how cold the women felt, the researchers also took pictures of them to see how much of their skin was exposed.After analysing the data, the scientists realised that there was no relationship between skin exposure and how cold the participants of the survey felt. According to Roxanne Felig, one of the researchers in the study, the results showed that women who are high in self-objectification didnt feel cold. According to Ms Felig, this happened because women were too preoccupied with thinking about how they look rather than thinking about their internal sensations. Conversely, the sensation of coldness increased in women who were low in self-objectification.The news triggered a torrent of comments on social media, with users praising Cardi B.Many users jokingly called the rapper a scientist.Some even suggested the Grammy laureate should choose a field of research.Others seemed to disagree with the study and wondered what it means when a person feels cold.Still others joked about the issue.

Seam Yep! A lot of boobs , bum or penis doesn't make you more intelligent...There is a lot a proof to support that.. 3

Hampar Tokatlian Cardi B got a permanent cold - in the head. 2

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/republicans-win-big-in-elections-and-ethiopia-declares-state-of-emergency-1090460203.html

Republicans Win Big in Elections and Ethiopia Declares State of Emergency

Republicans Win Big in Elections and Ethiopia Declares State of Emergency

On today's episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including a whistleblower exposing multiple issues... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T07:30+0000

2021-11-04T07:30+0000

2021-11-05T07:56+0000

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Republicans Win Big in Elections and Ethiopia Declares State of Emergency On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including a whistleblower exposing multiple issues with Pfizers COVID19 vaccine trials, and Iran resuming JCPOA negotiations in Vienna on Nov 29th.

GUESTBob Schlehuber - Political Misfits Co-Host | Unrest in Ethiopia, The TPLF, and Elections in EthiopiaRabbi Yaakov Shapiro - Speaker, Author, and Rabbi | Judaism Is Not a Nationality, Zionism, and AIPACIn the first hour, Lee and John spoke with author Bob Schlehuber about his trip to Ethiopia, sexual assaults happening in Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Bob talked about feeling the tension upon arrival in Ethiopia and how the violent situation in this country originated. Bob discussed the ethnic tensions between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the lack of journalism covering the situation.In the second hour, Lee spoke with Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro about Israeli influence over Congress, Donald Trump, and The Law of Return in Israel. Rabbi Yaakov spoke about the history of Zionism and the definition of Judaism. Rabbi Yaakov talked about the influence Israel has held over Congress and how Donald Trump defended Israeli influence in American politics.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

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ethiopia, us, israel, virginia, republican party, nazi, zionism, the backstory, tplf (tigray people's liberation front), , radio
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/russian-navy-keeping-track-of-uss-mount-whitney-as-it-enters-black-sea-1090469257.html

Russian Navy Keeping Track of USS Mount Whitney as It Enters Black Sea

Russian Navy Keeping Track of USS Mount Whitney as It Enters Black Sea

The United States Sixth Fleet's flagship entered the sea on Thursday, as NATO is preparing for major military drills in the Mediterranean. 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T09:28+0000

2021-11-04T09:28+0000

2021-11-04T09:48+0000

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Earlier in the day, photos of the warship leaving Istanbul and heading to the Black Sea were posted online.Russia has repeatedly warned NATO that the increasing activity of the bloc near its waters may result in unwanted incidents. Last Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed the issue, saying that by sending military ships to the Black Sea, Washington does not add stability to the region, but is trying to push coastal countries toward confrontational policies.

Mo Ibn NATO what NATO they are all bunch of murderers because they are supporting evil  ISRAELI GOVERNMENT with powerful guns to CHILDREN WOMEN AND OLD PEOPLE IN PALESTINE 10

totundrac some joint Russia-China naval war games in the Caribbean Sea would be a show to watch 6

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/sweden-bans-plastic-cutlery-introduces-rubbish-fee-on-chewing-gum-cigarettes-1090465450.html

Sweden Bans Plastic Cutlery, Introduces 'Rubbish Fee' on Chewing Gum, Cigarettes

Sweden Bans Plastic Cutlery, Introduces 'Rubbish Fee' on Chewing Gum, Cigarettes

In its drive towards a more eco-friendly world, the Swedish government is also considering taxes on single-use mugs and food containers, with deductions for... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T06:19+0000

2021-11-04T06:19+0000

2021-11-04T06:19+0000

news

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The Swedish government has decided to ban a number of several disposable plastic products for environmental reasons. In line with the EU's disposable plastic directive, this is a total ban on plastic products considered harmful to nature, and that can be replaced with other, "greener" alternatives. The ban will come into force starting from April of next year and apply to plastic cutlery, straws, and chopsticks.Moreover, in the future, all companies that offer consumers takeaway food must be able to offer a reusable alternative. However, this particular change will not take effect until 2024, and some smaller eateries will be exempted from the requirement.Ultimately, these measures are meant to ensure that excess plastic disappears, and that the plastic still in use can be recycled to a greater extent. In 2020, the share of recycled plastic in Sweden was 24 percent."It also means that we get a more circular economy where we recycle plastic and make sure that we actually don't just buy and throw away but that things can return as new products", Bolund said.Additionally, certain products that ultimately contribute to littering will also be subject to a certain fee. These include chewing gum and cigarettes being thrown on the ground.The SEK 600 million ($70 million) that the fee is expected to bring in will be distributed among the municipalities and be spent on cleaning.At present, the Swedish government is considering levying a tax on single-use mugs and food containers, with deductions for low plastic content. According to yet another proposal currently under investigation, 2025 may be the year producers must ensure that packaging can be recycled in order to sell their products. In other words, at least 75 percent of the material must be recyclable.In 2020, Sweden introduced a controversial plastic bag tax, which was broadly slammed as "tokenism", "virtue-signalling", and a "fiasco", as it resulted in a temporary shortage of disposable bags and largely failed to deliver the tax profits promised.

https://sputniknews.com/20200916/swedens-green-tax-on-plastic-bags-slammed-as-triple-fiasco-1080471097.html

WhatTheFishIsThis Great idea !! Next will be tax on processed "junk food" for supporting healthcare. 0

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/taiwans-intel-chief-says-china-weighed-seizing-pratas-island-but-will-not-happen-before-2024-1090482349.html

Taiwans Intel Chief Says China Weighed Seizing Pratas Island, But Will Not Happen Before 2024

Taiwans Intel Chief Says China Weighed Seizing Pratas Island, But Will Not Happen Before 2024

The head of Taiwanese intelligence told lawmakers on the autonomous island on Thursday that while the Peoples Republic of China had weighed the option of... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T20:16+0000

2021-11-04T20:16+0000

2021-11-04T20:13+0000

china

south china sea

taiwan

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During a parliamentary meeting in Taipei on Thursday, National Security Bureau Director-General Chen Ming-tong told members of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee that while China might use force or the threat of force to reunite the island with mainland China at some time in the future, that scenario wasnt likely in the next several years.The hearing concerned a report to the US Congress published by the Pentagon the day prior, which focused on Chinas military and security developments over the last year.The report warned, referring to an unnamed statement by Chinese state media, that a force modernization effort by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) would be completed by 2027, giving Beijing more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency, including the capabilities to counter the US military in the Indo-Pacific region, and compel Taiwans leadership to the negotiation table on Beijings terms.The RoC ruled all of China from its foundation after the abdication of Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor, in 1912, until the Communist Party of Chinas victory in the civil war in 1949, when it had captured all of the mainland and declared the PRCs foundation in Beijing. The RoC remained in control of just Taiwan and several other islands off the coast, which the Red Army was unable to invade at the time, including a remote circular atoll called Pratas.Little Island, Big ControversyPratas is a horseshoe-shaped island in the South China Sea 1.5 miles long and 0.5 miles across, which sits 200 miles southeast of Hong Kong and 275 miles south of Kaohsiung, a city on Taiwans southern coast. The island has no permanent residents and is just big enough for a small airfield. However, it lies along key sea lanes connecting the South China Sea to the East China Sea and Philippine Sea, and the surrounding seafloor is believed to contain petroleum reserves.Rumors have pervaded in recent years that China might try and seize the island as a show of force. In early 2020, Japans Kyodo News Agency helped spread fears China might invade Pratas under the cover of amphibious drills in the region. While the PLA did hold war games involving amphibious forces on the Guangdong coast that August, they were clearly aimed at fortifying their own ability to defend against such an attack, and Pratas remained unmolested by PLA forces.The Pentagons Wednesday report suggested China might see an invasion of Pratas as politically desirable, it also noted this kind of operation involves significant, and possibly prohibitive, political risk because it could turn the international community against China and is likely to smother any remaining sympathy for reunion with the mainland in Taiwan."Frankly speaking, they have internally debated this before," Chen added. "We obviously have some understanding.Taipei Grows Close to WashingtonTsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party favors independence over reunion, is due to finish her second term in office in 2024. She came to power at the same time as Donald Trump in the United States. During their presidencies, US support for Taiwan has increased dramatically. Numerous modern weapons have been sold to Taiwan and top-level US officials have made several visits, stirring up Chinese anger at what amounts to a violation of Washingtons prior agreements with Beijing.After the Chinese socialist revolution, the US for many years refused to recognize the PRC government and continued to do business with the RoC on Taiwan. However, beginning in 1972, the first of three joint communiques were issued by the US and PRC that paved the way for Washington switching its recognition of the Chinese government from Taipei to Beijing. Chief among their concerns was the US agreeing to end its political and military support for the RoC, while acknowledging that economic and cultural ties would likely continue.Despite the agreement, the US has continued to informally support Taiwans self-defense.Incidentally, US Army Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said earlier this week that a Chinese attack on Taiwan was unlikely anytime soon.He added that the US, which is not treaty-obligated to defend Taiwan, absolutely have the capability to do that. No question about that.

bill b independance from usa, unite with family of brothers and cousins vs english foreigners pushing destruction of businesses, destroying monuments and war,usa has nothing to offer except a worthless dollar and obsolete weapons 3

AfricanFox China doesn't even have to drop forces in Taiwan. Those who favour one China have been politically suppressed. They will rise when the war starts and get rid of the Japanese and American agents infesting Taiwanese politics. Taiwan is no different from a corrupt, despot South American "democracy" being manipulated by Japan and the USA. The Taiwanese political leadership needs to be decapitated. 3

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china, south china sea, taiwan, amphibious assaults
https://sputniknews.com/20211104/top-three-naval-commanders-of-us-submarine-that-struck-seamount-relieved-of-duty-service-reveals-1090481794.html

Top Three Naval Commanders Of US Submarine That Struck Seamount Relieved of Duty, Service Reveals

Top Three Naval Commanders Of US Submarine That Struck Seamount Relieved of Duty, Service Reveals

Three top commanders of USS Connecticut were relieved of duty Thursday due to "loss of confidence" after the US submarine hit a seamount while operating in... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T19:41+0000

2021-11-04T19:41+0000

2021-11-04T20:28+0000

south china sea

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The incident that resulted in 11 crew members of the American nuclear-powered submarine Connecticut injured, occurred after the nuclear attack submarine collided with an "uncharted seamount" in the South China Sea in early October. As a result, the submarine's ballast tanks were severely damaged, prompting the USS Connecticut to an immediate shift in route to a "week-long voyage" to Guam. The reliefs follow the completion of the investigation into the October 2 collision, and after Chinese Defence Ministry raised concerns over the incident, demanding that Washington provide the full details of the accident. US Navy Honorable Carlos Del Toro said Thursday in a tweet shared by National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin that "he's confident with the investigation," which is set to relieve concerns and misunderstandings. Captain John Witte will assume duties as interim Commanding Officer while Commander Joe Sammur will assume duties as interim Executive Officer. USS Connecticut remains in Guam while undergoing damage assessment overseen by Naval Systems Command, and will return to Bremerton, Washington for repairs, the Navy announced Thursday.

fluttershield mlp Annapolis graduates are worthless and needless war criminals. 8

TruePatriot Note to Ozzys: Do NOT take sub driving lessons from the US Navy. 7

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/tories-shelve-replacement-for-sleaze-watchdog-after-opposition-boycott-threat-1090472807.html

Tories Shelve Replacement for Sleaze Watchdog After Opposition Boycott Threat

Tories Shelve Replacement for Sleaze Watchdog After Opposition Boycott Threat

The Conservative government had hoped in vain to garner support for its reforms of the semi-independent Parliamentary committee that probes misconduct... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T14:25+0000

2021-11-04T14:25+0000

2021-11-04T15:37+0000

britain

great britain

jacob rees-mogg

british conservative party

british labour party

andrea leadsom

scottish nationalist party (snp)

uk

boris johnson

owen paterson

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government is reportedly planning a U-turn on halting the suspension of an MP accused of paid lobbying.Hours after the Conservatives narrowly won a vote on replacing the Parliamentary Standards Committee and its commissioner, Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg told fellow MPs on Thursday morning the changes would not be implemented without cross-party consent.And government sources said the vote to annul the 30-day suspension of Tory North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson ordered by Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone could be re-run without a party whip in favour.Leadsom's amendment, signed by nearly 60 Conservative MPs, mandated replacing the current mixed committee of MPs and independent laypeople  including the commissioner  with one of nine MPs from the three biggest parties, in proportion to the size of their parliamentary groups. It would have five Tories, including the chair, three Labour and one Scottish National Party (SNP) member.Other rule changes contained in the text included giving MPs accused of misconduct the right to a representative at hearings, to cross-examine witnesses and to appeal decisions against them, in line with "natural justice". But both Labour and the SNP. who stridently opposed the amendment which also let Paterson off the hook, vowed to boycott the committee."The House voted very clearly yesterday to show that it is worried about the process of handling these complaints and that we would like an appeals system, but the change would need to be on a cross-party basis and that is clearly not the case," he conceded."We will bring forward more detailed proposals once there have been cross-party discussions," he added. Meanwhile a government source told the Daily Telegraph it was "very likely" that another vote would be held on Paterson's suspension, while one told the MailOnline: "He's going to end up being suspended."A suspension of more than two weeks would allow constituents to organise a recall petition against him, which would trigger a by-election if it collects the signatures of more than 10 per cent of registered voters. However, Paterson's greatly-increased 63 per cent majority and margin of nearly 23,000 votes at the 2019 general election, after the allegations against him surfaced, would be very hard for second-place Labour to overturn.Backbench RebellionThe apparent U-turn may also have been prompted by opposition to the move from the government benches, with 35 Tory MPs abstaining and 13 defying the whip to vote against the amendment.One of those rebels, Guildford MP Angela Richardson, was sacked as parliamentary private secretary to Levelling-Up Secretary Michael Gove on Wednesday evening, only to be reinstated the next morning. The rebellion made unlikely bedfellows of Brexiteers, including COVID Recovery Group chair Mark Harper who voted against, and Europhile 'wets' such as Tobias Ellwood, who merely abstained.Labour MP for Norwich Clive Lewis said the scandal was a result of the Conservative's connections to big business  the class it has represented in politics since the 19th century  but added that his own party needed to back radical change rather than defending the status quo.Paterson has claimed Stone's decision to suspend him  for raising concerns over carcinogenic additives to milk and ham allegedly on behalf of two companies that paid him as a consultant was pre-judged based on a 2019 article in The Guardian, and that she refused to take into account 18 written statements in his support. He also blamed the suicide of his wife Rose last year on the strain of the disciplinary process.

https://sputniknews.com/20211103/tories-move-to-block-fellow-mps-sleaze-suspension-for-paid-lobbying-1090443928.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/turkey-denies-moving-russian-made-s-400-missile-systems-to-us-airbase-in-south---reports-1090467750.html

Turkey Denies Moving Russian-Made S-400 Missile Systems to US Airbase in South - Reports

Turkey Denies Moving Russian-Made S-400 Missile Systems to US Airbase in South - Reports

DDN November 4 (Sputnik) - The Turkish Defence Ministry has denied reports it moved its Russian-made S-400 air defence systems to the Incirlik Air Base where... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T07:59+0000

2021-11-04T07:59+0000

2021-11-04T08:12+0000

russia

turkey

united states

s-400

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A number of Turkish outlets earlier in the week reported that the military had moved its defence missile systems, purchased from Russia much to the chagrin of Washington, to the vicinity of the strategic airbase in the country's south.The station is part of NATO's missile defence system in Europe where up to 50 tactical nuclear weapons are stored. In the context of disagreements with the United States over the purchase of Russian S-400 missile defence systems by Turkey, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan stated that Ankara would close off the Incirlik and Kurecik bases to the American military if any sanctions were imposed.

NCC-1701 The Russians are not mad. They said before they sold the missiles to Turkey that NATO cannot take them apart and inspect them. Do you think that they hadn't thought if it? Do you think they trust the Turks? 9

Brit26 Turkey cannot be trusted. It lies and supports which ever country offers it the most. At least with the Yanks, you definately know you cannot trust them. The treacherous Turks will let the Yanks examine the S-400s in return for more F-16s and F-35s. 8

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/uk-police-chief-facing-serious-sex-assault-allegations-1090472518.html

UK Police Chief Facing 'Serious' Sex Assault Allegations

UK Police Chief Facing 'Serious' Sex Assault Allegations

The allegations of sexual assault have notably emerged days after the accused Cleveland police chief held a meeting dedicated to police practices to protect... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T12:49+0000

2021-11-04T12:49+0000

2021-11-04T12:49+0000

investigation

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uk

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Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Steve Turner is being investigated over "serious" sex assault allegations, according to The Daily Mirror.The alleged attack is said to have occurred in the 1980s, but the report appears to have been filed just recently. The report did not elaborate on the details of the alleged sexual assault, and neither was the identity of the accuser disclosed. It was also unclear whether Turner will have to step down as the investigation continues. A spokesperson for the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner confirmed that the office was made aware of the allegations.The sexual allegations against Turner come hot on the heels of a discussion he held on how the police should enforce practices to protect women and girls in light of the case of Sarah Everard, who was kidnapped and murdered by an officer as she was heading home in South London."Sarah Everard's murder raised important questions nationally about how the sexual misconduct of police officers is monitored and how we can work to prevent such a tragedy occurring again", Turner said. "Whilst I believe our force has made good progress in this area, it's my responsibility as the public's representative for policing that I raise these important issues locally, as people expect every police force to take a hard look at their procedures following such a horrible crime".

keyboardcosmetics As usual the police investigate themselves and find there is no misconduct. 2

Mark Russell Wronguns through out the police. Lost my respect years ago working loads of overtime to help Thatcher destroy the miners and they removed their lapel identification numbers. Cockroaches! 1

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https://sputniknews.com/20211104/us-congress-passes-renacer-act-to-sanction-nicaragua-ahead-of-elections-sandinistas-expected-to-win-1090462641.html

US Congress Passes RENACER Act to Sanction Nicaragua Ahead of Elections Sandinistas Expected to Win

US Congress Passes RENACER Act to Sanction Nicaragua Ahead of Elections Sandinistas Expected to Win

The US House of Representatives passed by a wide margin on Wednesday a bill intended to hit Nicaragua with crippling sanctions like those already in place... 04.11.2021, Sputnik International

2021-11-04T01:15+0000

2021-11-04T01:15+0000

2021-11-04T01:12+0000

nicaragua

us house of representatives

sanctions

elections

sandinistas

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The Reinforcing Nicaraguas Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform (RENACER) Act passed by a vote of 387-35. It was previously passed by the Senate and now heads to the White House, where US President Joe Biden is likely to sign it before the Nicaraguan elections on Sunday.The structure is not unlike those sanctions imposed on Venezuela in the wake of former US President Barack Obamas 2015 labeling of the South American nation as an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. While appearing limited in form, their impact was extensive, as investment or even trade with Venezuela became a risky maneuver, and overcompliance in enforcing the sanctions reigned.In April 2019, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) think tank reported that two years of sanctions had caused 40,000 excess deaths in Venezuela and warned that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people with diseases requiring regular treatment, such as HIV, diabetes, cancer, and hypertension, lacked access to necessary medication as a result.Making the Economy ScreamCode Pink, a US-based antiwar group, urged its supporters ahead of the vote to pressure their representatives to oppose the RENACER Act, calling it a blueprint for regime change in Nicaragua by making the economy scream. If passed, it would give future administrations the legal framework for imposing broad sectoral sanctions and the justification for more coup attempts.RENACER also asks Biden to reconsider Nicaraguas membership in the CAFTA-DR regional trade agreement, which lowered trade barriers to Nicaraguas exporting to the United States.The 1990s-era deal dates to the period after US-backed Contra guerrillas forced the Sandinistas out of office in 1990 but before Ortegas return to power in 2006 elections. It created free trade zones in which up to one-sixth of Nicaraguas formal sector workforce is employed by local contractors who sell their manufactured goods to US corporate buyers like Wal-Mart, VF Jeans, Levi Strauss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and the Gap.Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), who introduced RENACER into the House, said Wednesday after the passing vote that what she was most proud of was introducing the free trade agreement reconsideration into the bill.The message now for Daniel Ortega is that making a commercial treaty or having a commercial exchange with the United States is not a right, it is a privilege that you will no longer have, she said.Nicaraguans have people who are defending them. That is why today is a glorious day for the Nicaraguan people, the Nicaraguan people who want freedom, democracy and progress in their country and that a little dictator like Ortega and Murillo does not come to steal the country that belongs to everyone, to all Nicaraguans, Salazar added, referring to Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is also Ortegas wife.Figures Behind 2018 Riots Arrested Before ElectionIn April 2018, US-backed protests erupted in Nicaragua driven by anger over reforms to the nations pension plan. While the proposed changes were quickly revoked, the demonstrations quickly grew into an uprising as armed gangs joined the opposition, set up roadblocks, and targeted police and FSLN members. They were heavily supported by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US State Department agency, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front group.While many of the movements leading figures went into hiding for a time, they later re-emerged and formed a new opposition movement, and several attempted to run for election in the elections scheduled for Sunday.More than two dozen have been arrested, including Lesther Aleman, a former student leader; Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a US-trained economist and head of the FUNIDES think tank who heads the group Civic Alliance for Justice in Democracy, which united with other opposition groups, including Alemans, last year to reinvigorate the fight" and rebuild the country; and Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, whose Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation for Reconciliation and Democracy has long served as a third-party pass-through for CIA money to cultivate an anti-Sandinista opposition movement in Nicaragua.Demonization CampaignSince the 2018 riots, which took place amid a widespread anti-leftist US offensive in Latin America that engulfed Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and El Salvador, Washington has ramped up its demonization of Nicaragua, the FSLN, and Ortega, casting the country as sliding toward dictatorship and becoming puppets of Caracas and Moscow.As MintPress News has demonstrated, Western-friendly NGOs have produced reports claiming the countrys indigenous population is under attack by Ortega instead of the self-rule they enjoy; that deforestation is increasing instead of decreasing; and that Ortegas government is as kleptocratic as the US-backed Somoza family who ruled Nicaragua before the FSLN overthrew them in 1979.Before it was a hybrid type of regime where there were elements of democracy, such as opposition candidates being allowed to run for the presidency, the official said. But what youre essentially getting there is something that no longer really has the characteristics of anything really resembling a democracy.In fact, the ballots on Sunday will have six candidates for president. In addition to the FSLN, whose candidate is Ortega, there is a right-wing evangelical party, and several varieties of liberal parties.

Ladyshadow The US just can't seem to mind its own business. The US foreign Policy of forced regime changes by means of sanctions or war have yet to succeed, this will be another failure. 5

wtfud As scum, the US float to the very top. All the evil they've dished out over decades will return to them 10 fold. 5

4

nicaragua

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nicaragua, us house of representatives, sanctions, elections, sandinistas
Guests on a bus tour of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation view the decommissioned plutonium-producing B reactor, April 3, 2008, near Richland, Wash. The federal government is moving forward with the cost-saving "cocooning" of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage for decades to allow radiation inside to dissipate until they can be dismantled and buried. Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File

Costs to clean up a massive nuclear weapons complex in Washington state are usually expressed in the hundreds of billions of dollars and involve decades of work.

But one project on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is progressing at a much lower price.

The federal government is moving forward with the "cocooning" of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage to allow radiation inside to dissipate over a period of decades, until they can be dismantled and buried.

"It's relatively non-expensive," Mark French, a manager for the U.S. Department of Energy, said of cocooning. "The cost of trying to dismantle the reactor and demolish the reactor core would be extremely expensive and put workers at risk."

The federal government built nine nuclear reactors at Hanford to make plutonium for atomic bombs during World War II and the Cold War. The site along the Columbia River contains America's largest quantity of radioactive waste.

The reactors are now shut down and sit like cement fortresses near the southeastern Washington city of Richland. Six have already been cocooned for long-term storage, and two more are headed in that direction. The ninth reactor was turned into a museum as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

While World War II ended in 1945 and the Cold War ended in 1989, the United States is still paying billions of dollars per year for the disposal of the nuclear waste produced by the atomic weapons that played a big role in ending those conflicts. The biggest expense is dealing with a massive volume of liquid wastes left over from the production of plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

While the liquid wastes stored in 177 underground tanks will take decades of work and hundreds of billions of dollars to clean, efforts to secure the nine plutonium reactors are much closer to completion.

The last two reactors, shut down in 1970 and 1971, are about to enter the cocooning stage, when they are covered with steel and cement to prevent radioactivity from escaping into the environment, French said.

The cocoons are expected to last about 75 years, by which time the radioactivity inside will have dramatically decreased and there presumably will be a plan for final disposition of the remaining parts, French said.

The decommissioned plutonium-producing DR reactor, left, and D reactor, right, are shown on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, June 13, 2017, near Richland, Wash. The federal government is moving forward with the cost-saving "cocooning" of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage for decades to allow radiation inside to dissipate until they can be dismantled and buried. Credit: AP Photo/Nicholas K. Geranios, File

Every five years, workers enter the reactor building to make sure there are no leaks or rodent or bird infestations, he said.

Cleanup of Hanford, which has about 11,000 employees and is half the size of Rhode Island, started in the late 1980s, and now costs about $2.5 billion per year. The work has been slowed by technical issues, lack of funding, lawsuits from state regulators, worker exposure to radiation and turnover of contractors on the complex job.

But the handling of the old reactors is a bright spot.

The nine reactorscalled B Reactor, C Reactor, D Reactor, DR Reactor, F Reactor, H Reactor, K-East Reactor, K-West Reactor, and N Reactorwere built from 1943 through 1965.

They were constructed next to the Columbia River because of the abundance of hydropower and cooling water needed by the reactors during operation.

All have been cocooned except K-East and K-West. Work on cocooning the K-East reactor has already started and should be finished by 2023, French said. Work on the K-West reactor is scheduled for completion in 2026.

The cocoon plan for K-East and K-West is to basically construct steel buildings around them. Each building is 158 feet (48.2 meters) long, 151 feet (46 meters) wide and 123 feet (37.5 meters) tall, French said. The two steel buildings will cost less than $10 million each.

The government also operated five plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina during the Cold War. All of those are also shut down, although three of the reactor buildings are being used to store radioactive materials Two of the reactors at Savannah River are closed but under a different procedure than the Hanford reactors, said Amy Boyette, a spokeswoman for Savannah River.

Future generations will decide the final disposition of the eight Hanford reactors, French said. They will likely be dismantled and buried in the central area of the Hanford site, away from the river.

"Robots may be deployed in the future" for that work, French said.

The decommissioned plutonium-producing B reactor is shown on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, April 3, 2008, as viewed from a bus taking visitors on a public tour near Richland, Wash. The federal government is moving forward with the cost-saving "cocooning" of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage for decades to allow radiation inside to dissipate until they can be dismantled and buried. Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File

Hanford watchdogs generally agree with this process, said Tom Carpenter, director of the Seattle-based watchdog group Hanford Challenge.

"Nobody is raising any concerns about cocooning," Carpenter said. "We're all worried about the tank waste that needs immediate and urgent attention."

The bigger question is whether future generations will be willing to pay the massive costs of Hanford cleanup, he said.

Carpenter said the estimated cost to completely clean up just the tank wastes at the Hanford site is around $660 billion.

"It's rather grim. It's multigenerational," he said.

"This will cost more than anyone thought possible," Carpenter said of the tank wastes and other wastes that were dumped into the ground at Hanford. "It's a hidden cost of the (nuclear) buildup."

By then, there might be bigger budget concerns such as dealing with the effects of climate change, Carpenter said.

The most intriguing of the old reactors is the B Reactor, the first one built during World War II. It will not be cocooned, and can be visited by tourists at the national historical park. B Reactor, which shut down in 1968, was cleaned up enough to allow some 10,000 tourists to visit each year and learn the history of Hanford. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Plutonium from Hanford's B Reactor was used in the testing of the world's first atomic bomb in July 1945. Called the Trinity Test, the bomb was blown up in the New Mexico desert. Hanford plutonium was also used for the bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.

Explore further Polluted nuclear weapons site to become tourist destination

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Matt Danzico's obsession with crypto trading saw him earn and lose huge sums in rapid successionand his emotions went on a similar rollercoaster.

When Matt Danzico began seeing cryptocurrency logos in the packaging of grocery store items, he knew he had a problem.

Danzico had been swept up in the global craze for trading digital currencies during the pandemic, and very quickly it had grown into an obsession.

"I would have these sleepless nights where I'd be tossing and turning, trying to get these charts out of my head," said the Barcelona-based designer and visual journalist. "I thought I was losing my mind."

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum are notorious for their volatility, and the 39-year-old saw "years worth of money won and lost in a very short amount of time".

His emotions went on a similar rollercoaster, not helped by the fact that he was speculating in the depths of a Covid-19 lockdown. His wife noticed him becoming anxious and angry.

Danzico declines to specify the damage the experiment did to his financessuffice to say that "for our bank account, it was bad".

Reflecting months later during a trip home to the United States, the cheerful American mostly feels relieved that he nipped his addiction in the bud fairly quickly.

But as cryptocurrencies have grown from being a niche interest to a more mainstream one, Danzico says experiences much darker than his own are unfolding worldwide.

"We're talking tens of millions of people who are trading cryptocurrencies," he said.

"If one small fraction of those people are becoming hooked, we're talking about a burgeoning potential mental health crisis on a scale that I don't think that the world has ever seen."

Danzico is grateful that he nipped his crypto addiction in the bud, but warns that many people are having much more damaging experiences.

The darkness of crypto Twitter

Danzico points out that you need look no further than Twitter, where crypto enthusiasts congregate, for a sense of the mental health consequences of the tokens' chronic instability.

Tweets by "people discussing deep depression, really extreme thoughts of isolation and suicide" often accompany plunges in value.

In September, a Czech man's tale of his disastrous attempt to get rich from cryptotaking on spiraling debts as he attempted to claw back his losseswent viral on Twitter.

Depressed and homeless, he was too ashamed to ask for help. "When I called my mom I just said it's all ok, I have (a) good job, place to sleep etc. In reality I was starving," wrote the user named Jirka, who has since started rebuilding his life.

Disturbed by his own experience and others described online, Danzico began researching crypto addiction, writing up his findings in an article for crypto news site Cointelegraph.

He found just one small-scale study into crypto addiction in Turkey, and a few therapists offering professional help, from Thailand to the US.

Experts regard the phenomenon as a form of gambling addiction, noting similarities with Wall Street traders whose investments have spun out of control.

Castle Craig, a Scottish rehab clinic, describes crypto addiction as a "modern day epidemic".

The problem is more common in men, the clinic notes on its website, "but this might just be because women trade cryptocurrencies less than men".

Danzico, a designer and visual artist, used projections to capture how crypto trading was taking over his life.

Art as therapy

For Danzico, it's "alarming" that more specialised help isn't available. Part of the problem, he suspects, is that people don't realise quite how mainstream crypto speculation has become.

Trading platform Crypto.com estimated in July that 221 million people were now trading worldwide. That figure had more than doubled in six months as millions began dabbling while stuck at home during the pandemic.

It was only after Danzico began trading himself that he began noticing signs that fellow traders were everywhere.

A neighbor would whoop every time ethereum spiked; he'd see young men in the street fretting over a crypto chart on a phone screen.

Danzico kicked his own habit by pouring his obsession into photography, using a light projector to superimpose images of crypto logos and charts onto the world around him.

Finding a way to express how all-consuming trading had become "somehow allowed me to move past it", he said.

He is now, with self-confessed irony, selling digital versions of the images as NFTsnon-fungible tokens, for which he is paid in ethereum.

Danzico still has some crypto assets, and believes that decentralised finance has a bright future. But he wants society to face up to what he regards as "an enormous mental health crisis".

"You have kids who are literally becoming millionaires in their parents' basements and then losing it all before they run up for dinner," he said.

"What we can do is begin talking about this."

Explore further Hackers steal $97 mn from Japanese crypto exchange

 2021 AFP
Queenie Tan advises her 100,000 TikTok followers to invest young, to build more wealth over a lifetime.

Trying to figure out how the stock markets work? These days you're as likely to turn to a social media influencer for advice as a financial adviser dressed in a suit.

Across the globe, baby-faced investment gurus in their twenties are building huge followings on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok by offering tips on how people can better manage their finances.

TikTok, the most downloaded app of 2021, may be best known for dance routines and weird recipes. But posts by so-called "finfluencers"financial influencershave proved an unexpected hit.

The hashtag "StockTok" has 1.7 billion views and counting, while "FinTok" (financial TikTok) has more than 500 million. Variations on "investing" rack up millions or even billions of views depending on the language.

Australian finfluencer Queenie Tan regrets that the app wasn't around six years ago when she was first wading into the intimidating world of investing. At the time, she mostly turned to books for pointers.

"It's so much better now, because it's so much more accessible," said the 25-year-old, who boasts 100,000 followers on her "Invest With Queenie" TikTok account and tens of thousands more on Instagram and YouTube.

Filmed in her living room in Sydney, her videos range from simple explainers of investment vehicles to the money lessons you can learn from hit Netflix series "Squid Game".

Like many finfluencers, Tan's posts have an aspirational quality: she already holds assets worth some $400,000. She encourages viewers to invest young, like her, to build more wealth over a lifetime.

But she stresses that her own success came from living frugally and then investing her savings wisely.

A period of living under the poverty line at 19 "really taught me how to budget and how to value money", she said, adding that she still lives simply and doesn't plan to "buy a mansion anytime soon".

Mexican finfluencer Andres Garza cuts an unusual profile, in that he is a certified investment strategy advisor.

'Anyone can invest'

Tan's background is in marketing, and like many FinTok personalities she cautions that she doesn't have any financial qualifications.

Mexican finfluencer Andres Garza, who is nearing a million followers, is unusual in that he is a certified investment strategy advisor.

Like Tan, his videos are popular among youngsters who prefer getting investment ideas from people their own age, with an innate understanding of how to communicate well on platforms like TikTok.

"People like me turn something complicated into something fun," the fresh-faced 22-year-old told AFP from his home in the northwestern city of Monterrey.

Like the easy-to-use trading apps that have popped up around the world, Garza sees social media as widening access to wealth.

"The financial system has always left the ordinary investor lagging behind," he said. "But increasingly, anyone can invest."

'Duff' advice?

In the West at least, millennials and their younger Gen Z counterparts are sometimes derided as financially frivolousoften unfairly, given their huge generational disadvantages compared to baby boomers.

The trend towards financial self-education is helping to bust stereotypes. Tan thinks it's "awesome" that so many people are "feeling empowered to start investing".

"But on the flip-side, there's lots of dodgy stuff happening as well," she said, pointing to some finfluencers' involvement in "pump and dump" schemeshyping an asset, then selling after the price rockets.

Benjamin Schliebener, 24, cautions his followers to do their own research before investing.

There's also the question of the videos' reliability. Regulators from Spain to New Zealand have urged young investors to be careful about following their advice.

Plaxful, a cryptocurrency trading platform, rated around one in seven of the FinTok videos it analysed as misleading.

Critics further charge that many finfluencers make more money from sponsorship deals than they do from investments, meaning the less scrupulous may promote dubious financial products.

To combat this, TikTok in July banned users from publishing sponsored posts about cryptocurrencies and investment services.

It is not the only platform under pressure.

Last month British lawmakers grilled Facebook's content policy director Allison Lucas, with one MP complaining that people were peddling "duff financial advice" on the company's Instagram app.

"We allow users to discuss and share advice on trading and investment," Lucas insisted, though she said "scam" content would be removed.

Benjamin Schliebener, a 24-year-old German with more than 50,000 TikTok followers, mostly sticks to encouraging his viewers to invest in diversified exchange-traded funds.

He also invests in individual stocks for fun, "but the clear message is that this isn't for everyone".

He and Tan both caution that people should do their own research before putting their money on the line.

"One of the most important things in investment is understanding what you are investing in," Schliebener said.

Explore further TikTok executive talks shopping and the famous feta pasta

 2021 AFP
This photo provided by Mazda Motor Corp., shows the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept car in Miyoshi, Hiroshima prefecture, western Japan, on Sept. 30, 2021. Cars already know how to park themselves, warn drowsy drivers, steer back into the right lanes and propose map routes to destinations. The cars Mazda has in the works for next year in Japan know when drivers have a stroke or heart attack. Credit: Mazda Motor Corp. via AP

Cars already know how to park themselves, warn drowsy drivers, steer back into the right lanes and propose map routes to destinations. The cars Mazda has in the works for next year in Japan know when drivers have a stroke or heart attack.

By 2025, the cars will even know when drivers are about to have a sudden health problem and warn them, according to the Japanese automaker.

What's involved are data from cameras inside the car, without resorting to laser sensors or other more obtrusive technology. And it's going to be offered in affordable models, not just luxury vehicles. The technology holds promise for one of the most advanced aging societies in the world.

Mazda told reporters recently it has been working with medical experts, including Tsukuba University Hospital, researching the collected image data to figure out what a healthy driver looks like, as opposed to an incapacitated driver, suddenly slumped forward over the steering wheel.

Once recognizing a problem, Co-Pilot Concept, which has yet to have an official name, will bring that car to a stop in a safe spot, such as the curb of the road, as quickly as possible.

The car will be honking, with blinker and hazard lights flashing, according to Mazda, although the exact warning signals are still undecided. An emergency call to the ambulance and police will also get relayed.

This image provided by Mazda Motor Corp., shows that the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept car flashes hazard lights on and off, after a mock driver has undergone a sudden health problem, and will come to a safe stop, in Miyoshi, Hiroshima prefecture, Japan on Sept. 30, 2021. Vehicles with the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept will warn drivers around them with hazard lamps and horns that the driver has undergone a sudden health problem. Credit: Mazda Motor Corp. via AP

Other major automakers, including Volkswagen of Germany and Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp., are working on similar technology.

Mazda plans to offer the technology in Europe after Japan. Mazda wants to wait and see before offering it in the U.S., because it believes questions remain about their social acceptance, although similar systems that stop vehicles are already being offered by rivals.

This image provided by Mazda Motor Corp., shows the dashboard of the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept car in Miyoshi, Hiroshima prefecture, Japan on Sept. 30, 2021. Cameras that are part of the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept will know through the image data that the driver has had a sudden health problem. The words at bottom read " (The vehicle) gradually slows down without impeding the flow of traffic." A rendering, left, shows an enlarged monitor on the dashboard. Credit: Mazda Motor Corp. via AP

As for privacy concerns, the personal data does not leave the car, according to Mazda.

Takahiro Tochioka, the engineer in charge, said Mazda is working on ways to predict a health problem that may be coming even if the driver may not be conscious of it.

What the car will be looking for are the ways people focus their vision, the swaying of their heads, slight aberrations in driving habits and other subtle changes, he said.

This combination of images provided by Mazda Motor Corp., shows a mock driver dozing off, left, and becoming incapacitated, right, in the automaker's Co-Pilot Concept car in Miyoshi, Hiroshima prefecture, on Sept. 30, 2021. The vehicle with the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept, when sensing that the driver has had a sudden health problem, will come to a stop finding a safe place as quickly as possible. Credit: Mazda Motor Corp. via AP

"And it will warn drivers even before actual symptoms appear," he told reporters proudly.

"But understanding and cooperation from the drivers around that car is crucial for this technology to work."

Mazda is hoping the Japanese public will see a driver in distress and help them, since an assumption of widespread public goodwill is characteristic of Japan.

The technology will empower people to keep driving through their lifetime, and will help reassure families and friends not to be worried, Tochioka said. Offering Co-Pilot will also allow Mazda to get feedback from real-life users, he said.

Explore further Mazda recalls over 262K vehicles to fix engine stall problem

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: University of Aberdeen

A robotic boat has been used for the first time to survey fish populations around oil platforms in the North Sea.

The survey was part of a project led by the University of Aberdeen, looking at the effects of decommissioning oil and gas structures on marine ecosystems.

The robotic boat, known as an Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV), owned and operated by ocean data company XOCEAN, used sonar to collect data on fish numbers around several oil platforms off Scotland's north-east coast.

XOCEAN's USVs operate 'over the horizon' transiting unaccompanied hundreds of kilometers from shore, without the need for a mothership. Fitted with high end commercial fisheries sensors, the USVs perform the same task as a crewed vessel but without the need to send a single person offshore. Instead, XOCEAN's innovative platform brings the surveyor online in real time to collect and validate the data from anywhere in the world.

XOCEAN's XO-450 USVs are around the size of an average car (4.5 meters), allowing it to get within 10m of a platformsignificantly closer than a conventional ship. The project, part of the UKRI-funded INSITE (Influence of Man-made Structures in the Ecosystem) program, aims to better understand the influences offshore structures have on commercial fish populations in the North Sea.

The survey was led by Dr. Joshua Lawrence, from the University of Aberdeen. He said: "The survey was a great success. After months of planning and working closely with XOCEAN and the platform operators, it was great to finally see the Uncrewed Surface Vehicle collecting data. It's amazing how this sort of technology reveals new opportunities to advance our understanding of these structures and their influences on the North Sea ecosystem. Previous work has suggested that fish aggregate up to several kilometers away from some of these structures, so we designed the survey to make approaches to the structures from 10 km away in each direction."

Credit: University of Aberdeen

The next stage of the project will see Dr. Dougie Speirs and Prof Mike Heath from the University of Strathclyde use the survey data to model the expected effects of a range of decommissioning strategies on the surveyed fish populations.

Dr. Speirs said: "The data coming out of this survey is providing us with an exceptional high-resolution picture of what is happening to fish distributions around marine installations. It was fascinating to see real-time online images from the USV, and the resulting data will be invaluable as we construct our fish population models."

James Ives, CEO of XOCEAN, said: "Conducting survey campaigns using USVs not only enables the collection of the highest possible resolution data, but it allows that to happen in a way that is safe, carbon neutral and economical for our clients."

Commenting on the survey exercise, Paul Shearer, Environment Team Lead, from Ithaca Energy said: "We are delighted to have supported this important project to understand why fish congregate around structures in the North Sea. It is important that quality data and science is available to enable more informed decisions to be taken in how the offshore energy industry interacts with the marine ecosystem. We look forward to supporting the project in future work."

Professor Paul Fernandes from the University of Aberdeen, the lead researcher on the project, explained why these data are so important.

"Fish have long been known to gather at offshore structures," he said. "However, the extent of this aggregation, and whether it leads to an increase in productivity to benefit our fish stocks, remains unclear. Offshore oil and gas platforms act as de facto marine protected areas, so we are aiming to quantify the extent to which the increased numbers of fish found there spill over into the surrounding waters."

The project, and the INSITE program, will run until 2023, and the team will be running similar surveys of more oil platforms using the USV next summer.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Tesla pushed out a new version of the experimental software suite it calls Full Self-Driving to approved drivers on Oct. 23 through an "over the air" update.

The next morning, Tesla learned the update had altered cars' behavior in a way the company's engineers hadn't intended.

In a recall report to federal safety regulators dated Oct. 29, Tesla put the problems like this: The company discovered a software glitch that "can produce negative object velocity detections when other vehicles are present."

In everyday English, Tesla's automatic braking system was engaging for no apparent reason, causing cars to rapidly decelerate as they traveled down the highway, putting them at risk of being rear-ended. Forward collision warning chimes were ringing too, even though there was no impending collision to warn about.

The company said no crashes or injuries were reported due to the glitch. Still, the incident demonstrates how complicated these systems are: Even a small change to one part of the system can affect how something as vital but seemingly simple as automatic braking will function. The incident raises the question of whether there is a safe way to test self-driving vehicles at mass scale on public roads, as Tesla has been doing.

Tesla's response to the glitch raises its own concerns. While its engineers worked to fix the software, they turned off automatic braking and forward collision warning for the software testers over the weekend, the company said. According to numerous messages posted on Twitter, owners were not informed that those safety systems has been temporarily deactivated, finding out only by scrolling through the menu on their cars' dashboard screens.

By Oct 25, Tesla had knocked out a software fix and zapped it to 11,704 drivers enrolled in the Full Self-Driving program.

Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department, could not be reached for comment.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving program is the company's attempt to develop a driverless car. It is markedly different from its driver assist system called Autopilot. The latter, introduced in 2015, automates cruise control, steering and lane changing.

Autopilot is the subject of a federal safety investigation into why a dozen Teslas have crashed into police cars and other emergency vehicles parked by the roadside. Those crashes resulted in 17 injuries and one death.

Investigators are trying to learn why Tesla's automatic emergency braking systems apparently did not engage to prevent or mitigate such crashes. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is looking into which system software elements are in charge of automatic braking when a car is on Autopilot and a crash is imminent. Experts have raised the possibility that Tesla is suppressing automatic braking when Autopilot is on, possibly to avoid phantom braking of the sort drivers experienced after the Full Self-Driving update.

Tesla's automatic emergency braking issues are beginning to creep into the courts. A trial due to begin in 2022 seeks damages from Tesla for an Autopilot-related crash that killed Apple executive Walter Huang in 2018 on a Mountain View, Calif., freeway. According to claims made in the lawsuit, Huang's Tesla Model X "was designed, built and introduced into the stream of commerce without having been equipped with an effective automatic emergency braking system."

According to a crash report from the National Transportation Safety Board, not only did the automatic brake system fail to engage, but the car also sped up into a concrete abutment.

Tesla has billed Full Self-Driving as the culmination of its push to create a car that can navigate itself to any destination with no input from a human driver. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has promised for years that driverless Teslas are imminent.

The regulations on deploying such technology on pubic roadways are spotty around the country. There is no federal lawlegislation on driverless technology has been gummed up in Congress for years, with no action expected soon.

And though California requires companies testing driverless technology on public roads to report even minor crashes and system failures to the state Department of Motor Vehicles, Tesla doesn't do so, according to DMV records. Companies including Argo AI, Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, Motional and many others comply with DMV regulations; Tesla does not, DMV records show. The Times has asked repeatedly over several months to speak with department director Steve Gordon to explain why Tesla gets a pass, but every time he's been deemed unavailable.

In May, the DMV announced a review of Tesla's marketing practices around Full Self-Driving. The department has declined to discuss the matter beyond saying, as it did Tuesday, that the review continues.

Like Tesla, other companies developing autonomous driving systems use human drivers to supervise public road testing. But where they employ trained drivers, Tesla uses its customers.

Tesla charges customers $10,000 for access to periodic iterations of Full Self-Driving Capability software. The company says it qualifies beta-test drivers by monitoring their driving and applying a safety score, but has not clarified how the system was developed.

YouTube is loaded with dozens of videos showing Tesla beta-test software piloting cars into oncoming traffic or other dangerous situations. When one beta test car tried to cross the road into another vehicle, a passenger commented in a video, "it almost killed us," and the driver said in the video, "FSD, it tried to murder us."

As such videos appeared, Tesla began requiring beta testers to sign nondisclosure agreements. But NHTSA sent Tesla a stern letter calling the agreements "unacceptable" and the video posting resumed. The agency said it relies on customer feedback to monitor automobile safety.

The recall that resulted from the automatic braking bugemploying over-the-air software, no visit to the dealer necessarymarks a beginning of a major change in how many recalls are handled. Tesla has taken the lead in automotive software delivery, and other car makers are trying to catch up.

Voluntary recalls are a rare event at Tesla. In September, NHTSA castigated the company for delivering software intended to help Tesla Autopilot recognize flashing emergency lights in the wake of the agency's emergency vehicle crash investigation. NHTSA told the company that safety fixes count as a recall, whether they are delivered over the air or whether a dealer visit is required. (Over-the-air software is delivered directly to a car through cell tower connections or WiFi.) As other manufacturers adopt over-the-air software updates, such recalls will become more common.

Federal safety regulators are only beginning to grasp the profound changes that robot technology and its animating software are bringing about. NHTSA recently named Duke University human-machine interaction expert Missy Cummings as senior advisor for safety.

"The problem is that NHTSA has historically focused on mechanical systems," said Junko Yoshida, editor in chief of the Ojo-Yoshida Report, a new publication that "examines the intended and unintended consequences of innovation."

In an article titled "When Teslas Crash, 'Uh-Oh' Is Not Enough," she writes, "Tesla's behavior to date makes a clear case for consequential changes in NHTSA's regulatory oversight of advanced driver-assistance systems."

Asked for comment, NHTSA said the agency "will continue its conversations with Tesla to ensure that any safety defect is promptly acknowledged and addressed according to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act."

Explore further Tesla software recall may head off fight with US regulators

2021 Los Angeles Times.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Original traffic scene. Credit: Pangiotis Meletis

If self-driving cars are to safely navigate traffic, they need to "understand" the things around them.

They can learn this by practicing with existing images of traffic situations. Panagiotis Meletis combined various collections of traffic images to enhance the perception capabilities of TU/e's self-driving car.

Is that young man with that cap waiting for someone, or does he intend to cross the street? A ball rolls onto the street, will a child come running after it? And is that small blue Toyota going to parallel park, or is it about to drive away? When you drive a car in the city, you constantly need to assess these kinds of situations, which requires some serious traffic insight from the person behind the wheel. One of the major challenges for a self-driving car therefore, is to arrive at the proper conclusions based on the things it 'sees' around it, so that it will be able to anticipate unexpected situationsa precondition to safely participate in traffic.

The first step towards more insight into traffic situations, is to correctly determine the various objects in the images that an autonomous vehicle receives from its camera, Greek researcher Panagiotis Meletis explains. Within the Video Coding & Architectures group, which specializes in image recognition, he worked on a project of the Mobile Perception Systems Lab: a self-driving car that regularly goes out for a test drive on the TU/e campus. "It needs to be able to determine whether it sees a traffic light or a tree, a pedestrian, a cyclist or a vehicle." And on a more detailed level, it also needs to be able to recognize wheels or limbs, because these indicate the direction of movement and intentions of the road users.

Gray torsos

You can teach an artificial neural network (the artificial intelligence, or AI) to analyze a traffic scene by feeding it large quantities of images of traffic situations, in which all relevant elements have been labeled. You can then measure the AI's level of understanding by feeding it new, unlabeled images. An example of such an image can be seen below. In the lower image, the colors show us how the AI interpreted the image: cars are blue, bicycles are dark red, people's arms are colored orange and their torsos are gray.

Ideal processed picture showing objects (white contours) and semantic information (colors). Credit: Panagiotis Meletis

When Meletis started his doctoral research, there were only a few publicly available image datasets depicting traffic scenes, he says. "Now, there are dozens, each with its own focus. Think of images that contain traffic lights, images that contain cyclists, pedestrians, etcetera." The problem however, was that each dataset was labeled with a different system.

What Meletis contributed, was the fact that he managed to connect those labels on a higher so-called semantic level. "To give an idea: cars, buses and trucks all belong in the category 'vehicle.' And cyclists, motorcyclists and chauffeurs are all specific examples of 'drivers.' With the help of those definitions, I was able to train our AI with all the available datasets at the same time. This immediately yielded much better results."

Heavy rain

The power of his method was proven during a workshop organized as part of the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in 2018. "This is a large annual conference with over ten thousand participants, including all the major tech companies. One of the competitions that year was about 'robust vision,' where traffic images with visual hazards, such as heavy rain or overexposure to sunlight, had to be analyzed. Our system performed better than all other participants on a dataset that contained many of such degraded images."

Over the past year, Meletis continued to work at this project as a postdoc, while he was reviewing his thesis, which is common practice in his group. "During that time, we managed to compile two new datasets for holistic scene understanding." And before the pandemic broke out, Meletis was part of TU/e's communication team that recruits students and Ph.D. candidates in his home country of Greece. "I'm very enthusiastic about the university and the atmosphere in Eindhoven, and I wanted to convey that to my compatriots, who perhaps wouldn't take the step and go to TU/e out of fear of the unknown."

And the future? "I'm looking for a job where I hope to put the most recent scientific insights into practice, somewhere at the interface between academia and industry. Preferably in the Netherlands or somewhere else in Europe due to the pandemic. I might also move to the United States when the timing is appropriate."

Explore further Linking self-driving cars to traffic signals might help pedestrians give them the green light
The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday added four companies, including Israel-based spyware companies NSO Group and Candiru, to a list of entities engaging in "malicious cyber activities."

The agency said the two companies were added to the list based on evidence that "these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers."

"These tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression, which is the practice of authoritarian governments targeting dissidents, journalists, and activists outside of their sovereign borders to silence dissent," the Commerce Department said.

Two other firms on the list include Singapore-based Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE. LTD. and Russia's Positive Technologies, the latter of which was already sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for allegedly providing support to Russian Intelligence Services in mounting cyberattacks against U.S. companies.

Both the companies have been added owing to their trafficking of weaponized software and exploits that were then used by state-sponsored hacking outfits to gain unauthorized access to corporate networks across the world.

Entity List, as the name implies, refers to a list of entities that have been found engaging in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the U.S., necessitating they be subject to additional trade restrictions, which mandate other U.S. organizations to acquire a special license from the government to conduct business with the four companies.

The development follows twin revelations in July 2021 that unmasked NSO Group and Candiru as behind the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple iOS and Google Chrome web browser to eavesdrop and track the movements of individuals deemed of interest to their customers. NSO Group is the developer behind the infamous Pegasus spyware that's capable of harvesting contacts, call histories, text messages, photos, and passwords stored in a phone without leaving a trace.

The designation also comes amid calls for a moratorium on the sale, use, and transfer of digital intrusive technologies until robust regulations are put in place and a legal framework requiring human rights due diligence is enforced upon private surveillance companies.

"The United States is committed to aggressively using export controls to hold companies accountable that develop, traffic, or use technologies to conduct malicious activities that threaten the cybersecurity of members of civil society, dissidents, government officials, and organizations here and abroad," U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo said in a statement.
[Originally published on MIR.com (Photography in Malaysia) way back in October 1999, under the title "Johnston's Lens Ramblings." It was very popular, Internet-wide, at the time. Cue theme music. When the song came out, it was 1982, and 1999 seemed futuristic. Now, of course, it's so last century.



This was originally an email(!), written to a reader who asked some questions. I should really write a new "Lens Ramblings Revisited," because the landscape has changed quite a bit.]

-

I tend to get in a lot of trouble when I talk subjective lens-talk in public. I love lenses, and maybe half of my photography is involved in simply trying lenses to see what they look like.

I'm no optical expert in the scientific sense, so I'm often left "thinking" that I see something and believing that "maybe" it may correlate to a scientific descriptive term. I'd be much more at home in Japan, where subjective connoisseurship of lenses is a well-established tradition. Here are a few of the things I believe about lenses:

That the "cult" of lens "sharpness" and quality evolved in parallel to the miniaturizing of film formats. It's very difficult for most lenses to look bad contact printed, or enlarged 3X; the smaller the film got, and the more it was enlarged, the more the characteristics of the lens were exposed; so along with the interminable push for more sensitive and finer-grained films and developers, the "cult of lens quality" emerged. [This continued, amped up even more, with what our friend Michael Reichmann dubbed "pixel-peeping."]

Case in point:

Nobody ever looked at a Daguerreotype and said "not very sharp. Too bad the lens was a dog." If you've seen a decent number of Daguerreotypes you'll know what I mean.

Nobody knows what anybody else means by the term "sharpness." Resolution of ultra-fine detail? Contrast? At what degree of resolution? Edge sharpness that accentuates boundaries? Some people like one kind of "sharpness," others another.

Sharpness doesn't matter. Seen from a gestalt perspective, images can be very diffuse and broad-brush and still be recognizable, in the same way extreme abstraction can still be "read": that is, a line and two dots can be a "face," and vague fuzzy patterns of light and shade can be figurative. Ever seen those "pictures" made from thousands of little pictures? Fine detail in that case is little pictures that don't have anything to do with Marilyn Monroe, or whatever the "big picture" is "of." (Forgive all these quotation marks.) Fact is, fine detail resolution doesn't have anything to do with why most pictures work as art--it almost never contributes to greater recognition of the subject, or to meaning. I could provide a list as long as your arm of great pictures in which even coarse detail can hardly be rendered.

Having said all this, why should a lens be "sharp" and what does that mean?

Most lenses are loaded with aberrations of different kinds, most of which are visible in pictures. But people don't see them, I guess because they don't know what to look for, or what they're looking at when they see it.

Case in point:

Many of our readers never noticed the quality of the out-of-focus blur until we did our articles on "bokeh" (bo-ke, Japanese for "blur"). We know because they wrote and told us. (Some people never wanted to notice it: we know because they wrote and reamed us out, highly indignantly, for presuming to discuss it.) Yet many, many photographs have large areas of out-of-focus blur and always have had and always will have.

It's a technical property of lenses. It's there in pictures. Why ignore it? Similarly, you can see color fringing, linear distortion, coma, spherical aberration, falloff, and on and on, in pictures. Some people don't "notice" flare ghosts or obvious falloff, much less the many, much subtler cues as to how a lens is behaving.

Some lenses go "well" or "not so well" with different kinds of films. Many color photographers are very preoccupied with the optical property of color transmission. This is not so much a concern with the film I use (Tri-X ). That's a blatant example, but you can get as subtle as you want. Many descriptions of a lens that begin, "This lens looks..." actually mean, "This lens with this film looks...."

You can't buy wine by the label, books by the cover, etc. In the 1980s, German tycoon Heinrich Mandermann owned both Rollei and Schneider, and Schneider built a set of wonderful new lenses for the Rollei 6000 series. Guess what? People wouldn't buy 'em. They wanted the magic word "Zeiss" on the lenses, and they'd buy older, bigger, heavier, more expensive, worse-performing lens designs to get it. Most of those Schneiders are now discontinued. German lenses aren't "better" than Japanese lenses, Leica lenses aren't all better than any other brand, etc.

On the contrary, there do seem to be "house tendencies" among optical companies. Zeiss lenses do tend to have lousy out-of-focus blur; Nikon lenses do tend to be super-sharp-looking but at the cost of a certain harshness that can make Caucasian skin look pasty; Canon does favor a smooth, high-res but not quite so high-contrast look that works best with color film (because color can function as contrast: it can help distinguish adjacent areas and their edges. Imagine two areas of equal value, but one red and one green. In B&W, it may all be one undifferentiated gray; but in color, these two areas would tend to, ah, stand out from each other. ZAP). Re Leica, some Japanese savants, I'm told, can wax poetic regarding the philosophies of the era of Mandler vs. the era of Kolsch.

Lens tests are meaningless. [c. 2021 there's one exception: Roger's.] They almost never give you data, they almost never sample enough of the many parameters under which a lens can be used, they almost never adjudge sample variation, they almost never consider how well a lens will remain in spec over time, and they almost never contribute to your understanding of what the lens will actually do, with your film, in picture-taking situations typical for you. (The one single thing they can offer is a comparative grading to make shopping easier.) Most especially, lens "tests" which purport to reduce the quality of a lens to a single number, grade, or ranking, are always invalid.

Always. There is no exception to this rule. Most of them don't even tell you how the disparate performance parameters are weighted! For instance, what if money is no object to you, and image quality is of paramount importance, and a lens tests weighs "value" highly in its final rating? What it if rates distortion as unimportant, and you're an architectural photographer who needs straight lines at the edge of the picture to look straight? What if it penalizes a lens for severe falloff wide open, yet every time you shoot wide open it is in "available darkness" with nothing but blackness and no important subject content anywhere near the edges? What if it rates ultra-fine detail resolution very highly but you use a grainy film with limited resolution? What if it "tests" the lens by photographing a test target four feet away at /8, but you're an aerial photographer who needs to know how the lens does wide open for subjects half a mile away?

###

Well, there's a lot more to it than this, of course. Where the fruit of all my investigations have led is that I sort of understand what properties I personally tend to value in a lens for my own work with my own film, and how a large number of the available lenses compare with each other within the focal-length ranges I work with. I.e., I don't know much...and the more I find out, the less I find I know.

But here are my recommendations:

1. Believe the evidence. If you love a lens but it's not "supposed" to be good, believe the pictures before reputation, published test results, or the status of the brand.

2. Don't believe one or another property should be important to you unless it is. If a lens is universally admired because it is super-sharp, don't accept this uncritically as being a good thing. Maybe that lens looks harsh to you; maybe your work needs a softer look.

3. New isn't necessarily good. Manufacturers in many fields typically expend a lot of effort and engineering expertise learning how to suck value out of a productthat is, to make it possible to make a "good enough" or an "almost good enough" product that can sell more cheaply and/or have a higher profit margin. With one lens design I've investigated thoroughly, I can virtually trace the bell curve as the makers first learned how to improve it and pour value and performance IN, and then as they subsequently discovered how and where they could cut corners and suck value back OUT! I.e., how they could reduce the number of elements, where they could get away with planar rather than spherical surfaces, which surfaces could be single-coated or left uncoated as opposed to being fully multicoated, how they could cheapen the barrel. The lenses at the top of the bell curve perform best, and some of these were manufactured thirty years ago.

4. Good isn't necessarily that good. Science can make much better lenses than any photographer will pay for, or than can be purchased for use on any camera extant.

5. Bad isn't necessarily bad. There are two parts to this rule. First, some very inexpensive lenses are surprisingly good; and second, even many poor lenses are good enough...for some use or other. Artists are people who can take tools and materials, perceive the properties of these tools and materials, and apply them to good effect. Good photographers can make, and have made, great photographs with really, really "bad" lenses.

6. Never be blinded into thinking that good tools = good work. The world is full of photographers who churn out sharp but wretchedly poorly-seen pictures. They can break their own arms smugly patting themselves on the back for owning the latest apo-this or aspherical-that, but regardless, Johnston's eighth law still holds: crap is crap.

7. Despite the high popularity of testing lenses and the great relish with which photographers argue the topic, ever wondered why photographers have no enthusiasm for conducting simple surveys with pictures? Actually, much of the seminal research into lens quality and exposure (in the 1930s and '40s) was done in just this way. Pay attention to what viewers of your pictures notice and tell you. Interestingly, the only lens I've ever used that got much in the way of compliments from non-photographer viewers was a 40mm /2 Rokkor-M.

8. Finallythis is again apposite to the foregoing pointmost viewers can't tell. Mushy feelings of delight at the optical prowess of this or that lens squelching up from within ourselves is something we photographers pursue for ourselves and for other photographers. Viewers of pictures just look at the pictures, not how grainy the film is or how luminous the bloody shadow detail is said to be or how many lp/mm the lens allegedly resolves on a test bench. How would they know anyway? They have no standard of comparison. So, much of lens connoisseurship is akin to masturbation: something one does for own's own diversion and gratification. Best not to confuse it with something done for the sake of another, or, for that matter, with anything important.

Lastly,

9. Never sell a good lens ! The three best lenses I've ever used are gone with the wind, swept out along with the sundry detritus of this acquisitive hobby. Woe is me.

Hope this helps

Mike Johnston

[ TOP is on hiatus this week. I'm hard at work on a new

opportunity I hope I can tell you about soon.]
Theres been increasing confusing over the legality of delta-8, a cannabis derivative that can be found in vape cartridges, tinctures and candy at smoke shops and CBD stores in Texas. While the Texas health department maintains that delta-8 is a controlled substance and is on the states list of unlawful drugs, the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized the production of hemp, which naturally contains delta-8 and has less than 0.3% THC. In 2019, Texas also legalized hemp growing. Delta-8 retailers believed the substance was as legal to sell as hemp. Delta-8 is legal in Texas for now after a Travis County judge blocked the state from criminalizing it. Should delta-8 continue to be legal in Texas?

You voted:
Trinidad and Tobago has experienced its deadliest day of the Covid-19 pandemic to date, with a record 28 new deaths being recorded yesterday.

Among the deceased is a child.

The Ministry of Health reported the deaths in its daily update yesterday evening.
A Danish company has proposed the construction of a wind power project worth about US$13.6 billion offshore Hai Phong in northern Vietnam.

Nguyen Duc Tho, vice-chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee, on Wednesday chaired a working session with a delegation led by Troels Jakobsen, commercial counselor from the Embassy of Denmark in Vietnam, to discuss the feasibility study of an offshore wind power plant, to be developed by Denmarks renewable energy company Orsted in Hai Phong.

At the meeting, Orsted suggested conducting research and surveys for constructing the plant at an estimated capacity of 3,900 MW and a projected cost of $13.6 billion.

The project will be located about 76 kilometers off Tien Lang District.

Vice-chairman Tho welcomed the project of Orsted, stating that the citys leaders will create favorable conditions for the Danish investor.

The official asked the enterprise to provide additional documents required by relevant departments during the working session in order to enhance the feasibility of the energy plant.

The project must follow current regulations and must not affect navigational channels as well as security and defense in the country, he added.

Orsted is a Danish government-owned enterprise and is the world's largest developer of offshore wind power, accounting for 29 percent of global installed capacity.

About 88 percent of energy produced by Orsted comes from renewable sources.

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Vietnams low-cost carrier Vietjet signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with France's high-tech group Safran during the ongoing official visit of Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to the European country.

The long-term partnership deal was inked on Wednesday in the presence of PM Chinh, his French counterpart Jean Castex, Vietjet managing director Dinh Viet Phuong, and Alexandre Ziegler, Safran senior executive vice president of international and public affairs.

The agreement was built on the two firms existing US$10 billion joint venture  CFM International  which focuses on aircraft engines and engine services.

Under the new deal, Vietjet and Safran will extend their cooperation by continuing their joint production of aircraft engines, seats, and interior supplies, the French company said in a press release.

Safran will also offer training programs to Vietjet related to management and technical training while supporting the carrier as it attempts to establish its aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) capabilities.

Vietjet and Safran Electronics & Defense will speed up cooperation to enable the former to achieve a best-in-class flight data analysis solution in the near future.

This agreement reflects a relationship of mutual trust between Safran and Vietjet, as well as the airlines recognition of Safrans expertise and experience, Ziegler said.

We are very pleased to be an integral part of Vietjets growth strategy, said Ziegler.

An international high-technology group, Safran operates in aviation, defense, and space.

It currently boasts 76,000 employees and sales of 16.5 billion ($19 billion), according to the press release.

Vietjet currently operates a fleet of 90 aircraft in a comprehensive network of routes across Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific region.

On Sunday, the carrier also signed a $400-million agreement with British firm Rolls-Royce for aircraft engines and engine servicing for its wide-body fleet.

The signing took place in Glasgow, Scotland, also in the presence of PM Chinh, who was there for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) and a working visit before leaving for France on Wednesday.

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The Peoples Committee of Hanoi has decided to let students in certain grades in 18 districts and towns return to in-person classes next Monday, having carefully considered COVID-19 developments in each locale.

The permitted returnees include fifth, sixth, ninth, tenth, and 12th graders in low- and medium-risk areas while other graders in the same neighborhood and students in other areas will stick to the online learning mode.

Teaching and learning activities for kindergarteners will remain suspended.

Eighteen out of 30 districts and towns in Hanoi considered as low-risk and medium-risk areas, labeled Level 1 and 2 in the countrys four-level COVID-19 risk assessment scale, are Ba Vi, Chuong My, Dan Phuong, Gia Lam, Hoai Duc, Me Linh, My Duc, Phu Xuyen, Phuc Tho, Soc Son, Son Tay, Thach That, Thanh Oai, Quoc Oai, Thuong Tin, Ung Hoa, Thanh Tri, and Dong Anh.

Staff at schools across those 18 outlying districts and towns have prepared for their reopening since last month, over five months after city authorities ordered the shutdown of educational facilities for pandemic prevention and control on May 4.

There have been a few outbreaks, so weve been familiar with the preparations for COVID-19 prevention, said a leader of Vong La Middle School in Dong Anh District.

The Hanoi Department of Education and Training issued a set of 16 criteria to assess the level of safety against COVID-19 at schools on October 29.

Facilities that meet only seven or fewer criteria will be forced to close.

The district-level education authorities are expected to complete evaluating school safety levels this week.

In addition, only teachers fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be eligible for face-to-face teaching, whereas others must continue running online classes, according to the local education authorities regulations.

Currently, 62 percent of administrative officers, teachers, and school staff in Hanoi have received two injections while more than 98 percent have got the first shots.

Hanoi authorities also plan to vaccinate over 95 percent of local children aged 12 to 17 from the remaining months of this year to the end of the first quarter of 2022, with those from 16 to 17 years old getting the shots first.

The capital city, whose population is over eight million, has recorded 4,824 local infections since the fourth coronavirus wave flared up in Vietnam on April 27.

Over six million people of the city have received the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine, with nearly four million of them fully vaccinated, according to the national COVID-19 vaccination portal.

Vietnam has found 939,463 infections since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year and 934,583 community transmissions in 62 out of its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth virus wave broke out.

More than 25.6 million people of the 98 million population in the Southeast Asian country have been fully inoculated against the coronavirus.

The central government has relaxed pandemic control curbs over the past few weeks as transmissions have slowed down, due partly to larger vaccine coverage.

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COVID-19 deaths and infections have declined across the Americas for the 8th consecutive week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday, warning that a very high percentage of hospitalized cases now are unvaccinated people.

In North America, all three countries reported drops in weekly cases and deaths, and there has been a notable decline in hospitalizations in the United States and Canada, PAHO said, with similar declines in South and Central America.

The regional health branch of the World Health Organization said 46% of the Latin American and Caribbean population have been fully vaccinated, and a majority of countries have already reached the WHO's 40% vaccination coverage target set for the end of the year.

"Vaccine inequity remains the biggest barrier to reaching our coverage targets," PAHO Assistant Director Jarbas Barbosa said in a briefing.

Given the limited supply of vaccines, he urged authorities to prioritize the elderly, frontline workers, and people with pre-existing conditions, to protect them and also to prevent health systems from becoming overburdened with severe cases.

PAHO recommends providing booster doses to people who are immunocompromised, including cancer patients, HIV positive individuals, patients on corticoids and transplant recipients.

PAHO said people over the age of 60 who received inactivated virus vaccines made by China's Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm should also get booster shots.

Barbosa dismissed as "fake news" the view that people who had coronavirus are immune to COVID-19 and do not need to get vaccinated. He pointed to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control study published on Friday that found people who are not vaccinated but previously tested positive are 5.49 times more likely to get reinfected than those who are fully vaccinated.

In Brazil, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic who caught COVID-19 in July 2020, has said he is immune and has no need for a vaccine.

"That is not true. It is fake news," Barbosa said. "The protection the disease gives you naturally is insufficient and people can get infected with the new variants," he said.
BENGALURU -- The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that it has granted approval for Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech's home-grown COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use listing, paving the way for it to be accepted as a valid vaccine in many poor countries.

The WHO tweeted that its technical advisory group had ruled that benefits of the shot, known as Covaxin, significantly outweighed the risks and that it met WHO standards for protection against COVID-19.

The decision had been delayed as the advisory group sought additional clarifications from Bharat Biotech before conducting a final risk-benefit assessment for the vaccine's global use.

WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization also recommended Covaxin's use in two doses, with an interval of four weeks, in age groups 18 and above. These recommendations are in line with the company's guidance.

Covaxin was given emergency-use authorisation in India in January even before the completion of its late-stage trial, which later found the shot to be 78% effective against severe COVID-19.

WHO's decision is expected to help millions of Indians who have received Covaxin to travel outside the country.

Stuck in a village in southern India for nine months and unable to return to his job in Saudi Arabia, Sugathan P.R. said he was very happy to hear the news.

"I am greatly relieved with the development since the WHO approval precludes the need for taking a local vaccine in Saudi Arabia," Sugathan told Reuters, adding he planned to leave for Dubai on Sunday on the way to Saudi.

The emergency use listing would allow Bharat Biotech to ship Covaxin to countries that rely on WHO guidance for their regulatory decisions.

A medic fills a syringe with COVAXIN, an Indian government-backed COVID-19 vaccine, before administering it to a health worker during its trials, at the Gujarat Medical Education and Research Society in Ahmedabad, India, November 26, 2020. Photo: Reuters

Sharing with the world

WHO's approval may also clear the way for India to commit supplies to the COVAX global vaccine sharing effort, which is co-led by the WHO and aims to provide equitable access to shots for low- and middle-income countries.

The listing procedure is a prerequisite for COVAX vaccine supply and allows countries to speed up their own regulatory approval to import and administer COVID-19 shots, the WHO said in its statement.

Before curbing overseas vaccine shipments in April, India had donated or sold more than 66 million COVID-19 doses, including Covaxin.

Bharat Biotech said in a statement that it has established Covaxin manufacturing to reach an annualised capacity of 1 billion doses by the end of 2021, with technology transfer activities in progress with companies in India and elsewhere.

"It is important for Bharat Biotech to improve its production capacity to meet the improved demand for other countries following this approval," said Prashant Khadayate, a pharma analyst at GlobalData.

According to GlobalDatas Pharma Intelligence Center, Covaxin is the second-most popular vaccine after Covishield as part of the COVID-19 vaccination drive in India.

"The WHO emergency approval will further improve the credibility of Covaxin and will boost our indigenous research capabilities at a global level. Moreover, we can see improved penetration of Covaxin usage in other countries," analyst Khadayate added.

The Hyderabad-based firm, which developed Covaxin with an Indian state research body, started sharing data with the WHO in early July.

Bharat Biotech's vaccine is the seventh to win WHO backing following two mRNA shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, adenovirus vector vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and its Covishield version made by the Serum Institute of India and Johnson & Johnson, and China's inactivated vaccines from Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm.
Seven-year-old Gael Coreas stuck out his left arm fearlessly to receive his first COVID-19 shot at a health clinic in the nation's capital on Wednesday, wincing briefly as cameras flashed to capture the moment.

Coreas was in the first cohort of young children to be inoculated as the United States on Wednesday began administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11, the latest group to become eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness to recipients and those around them.

"We are very excited," Coreas' mother Alma Benavides, a 37-year-old small business owner, said at Mary Center's in Washington. "We waited a long time and its very special for me."

On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE shot for broad use in that age group, four days after it was authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Only a limited amount of the initial 15 million shots being distributed will be available on Wednesday. They are expected to be more widely accessible at pediatrician's offices, children's hospitals and pharmacies next week.

Maria Stout brought her daughters Celeste, 9, and Victoria, 11, to Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego for their first COVID-19 shots on Wednesday morning, after a friend told her the hospital's website had open appointments.

Stout passed along the tip to other parents, some of whom were unable to book appointments, "so it was very fortunate that my friend shared that information with me early," she said.

The big national pharmacy chains, Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health and Rite Aid are among those offering appointments for this weekend.

"We have had significant demand and scheduling already," CVS Chief Executive Karen Lynch said in an interview on Wednesday. CVS expects to have 2,500 stores administering pediatric shots beginning this weekend.

While about 58% of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, some 28 million children under 12 have not been eligible until now.

The 10-microgram shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine authorized for school-age kids - a third the strength given to adolescents and adults - offers protection from the Delta variant of the virus that has led to thousands of pediatric hospitalizations.

Eleven year-old Victoria Stout receives the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine at Rady's Children's hospital vaccination clinic in San Diego, California, U.S., November 3, 2021. Photo: Reuters

'People will be more comfortable'

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, said the approval for this age group was especially important because they are school-aged children.

The vaccine, shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in children, provides an avenue for fewer quarantines or school closures and more normal activities and freedoms.

"In elementary schools, it's been really difficult for them to be totally normal without this vaccine because teachers have been worried about transmission," Gandhi said.

The rollout, although too late for these children to be fully protected by Thanksgiving later this month, should make year-end holiday celebrations safer.

"I think people will be more comfortable in the family gatherings not wearing masks because the youngsters now also are vaccinated," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a non-voting member of CDC's vaccine advisory panel.

Still, it remains unclear how many parents will jump at the chance. Even many who have been vaccinated themselves are more divided over whether to vaccinate their own younger children, given that severe COVID-19 is much less common for them.

There were no new safety issues in Pfizer's study of the vaccine in thousands of children, but there is also no long-term data for its use.

A few other countries, including China, are already vaccinating children. The European Union and Canadian regulators are currently considering Pfizer's application for the vaccine in this younger age group.

So far, only Pfizer's shot has been authorized for use in the United States for those under age 16.

Moderna Inc has delayed its request for authorization for its vaccine for children aged 6 to 11 and is waiting on an FDA review of safety data in connection with its application for 12- to 17-year olds.

The states with the highest adult COVID-19 vaccination rates are preparing bigger pushes to get children inoculated than states where hesitancy remains strong, potentially widening the gaps in protection nationwide, public health officials and experts said.

COVID-19 vaccines have emerged as yet another issue exposing deep political divides in the United States that led to opposing stances on vaccinations, face covering and other pandemic restrictions in various parts of the country.
Check out the news you should not miss today:

Politics

 Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Wednesday afternoon (local time) arrived at Orly airport in Paris, France, starting his three-day official visit to France at the invitation of his French counterpart Jean Castex, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Society

 People aged 55 years or older who received their COVID-19 vaccine shots at the medical station of Ward 5 in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 6 on Wednesday were also provided with a free chest X-ray to detect signs of tuberculosis (TB), as part of the USAIDs Erase TB project to increase TB detection and access to care in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, the U.S. Embassy said in a press release the same day.

 Ho Chi Minh City customs authorities said on Wednesday they had detected 266 boxes of medicines used in COVID-19 treatment in two postal parcels smuggled from Russia into the southern Vietnamese city.

 The Saigon Hi-Tech Park in Ho Chi Minh Citys Thu Duc City will open a facility to treat COVID-19 patients who are workers in the park with mild symptoms from November 5.

 Police in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday said they have recently broken an online gambling ring with bets of more than 1.1 billion (US$1.2 billion).

Business

 The export turnover of the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang has topped $582 million, equal to 77.7 percent of the annual target, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Wednesday.

Lifestyle

 Ha Long Bay in the northern province of Quang Ninh and the tourism city of Hoi An have recently been honored at the World Travel Awards with the Asia's Leading Tourist Attraction 2021 and Asia's Leading Cultural City Destination 2021 titles, respectively, while the Southeast Asian country also won Asia's Leading Sustainable Tourism Destination 2021 and Asia's Leading Destination 2021.

World

 The World Economic Forum said on Wednesday that it is postponing its event planned for later this month in Tianjin due to the outbreak of COVID-19 infections in China, where new locally-transmitted cases hit a near three-month high, Reuters reported.

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French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced at a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart Pham Minh Chinh that his country will donate nearly 1.4 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to the Southeast Asian country.

PM Chinh joined talks with PM Castex at Hotel de Matignon in Paris on Wednesday (local time) as part of his official visit to France from November 3 to 5.

The two leaders praised the close relationship between the two peoples as well as the extensive and diverse development of the two nations strategic partnership.

PM Castex announced that France will gift Vietnam 1.37 million additional COVID-19 vaccine shots, including 970,000 doses via the COVAX Facility and 400,000 jabs via bilateral channel.

This latest support brings Frances total vaccine donations to Vietnam to more than two million doses.

French President Emmanuel Macron previously announced a donation of 670,000 vaccine shots to the Southeast Asian country on August 12.

On behalf of the Vietnamese government and people, PM Chinh thanked the French government for supporting Vietnam in its pandemic prevention and control efforts.

He also expressed his hope that France continues to share its experience, transfer vaccine production technology, and help Vietnam train medical personnel and adapt to life with COVID-19.

Both sides discussed plans to elevate the Vietnam-France relationship on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the two countries diplomatic ties in 2023.

They agreed to effectively implement the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and step up the ratification of the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA) to create impetus for trade and investment linkages.

The leaders also discussed regional and international issues of shared concern, including the situation in the East Vietnam Sea.

As of Wednesday, Vietnam had received more than 113 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from contractual purchase, the COVAX Facility, and donations from other countries, according to the Ministry of Health.

About 34 million more jabs are expected to arrive in the country this month.

Vietnam has administered over 85 million vaccine doses since inoculation was rolled out on March 8.

About 25 million people have been fully inoculated, accounting for 35 percent of the countrys adult population.

Health authorities target to inoculate at least two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year.

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A student passed away after falling from the open door of a moving school bus in Dak Lak Province in Vietnams Central Highlands, local police said on Wednesday.

Functional forces are investigating the bus driver, Tran Van Lieu, a 49-year-old resident of Krong Nang District, for unintentionally causing the victims death.

Lieu drove a 50-seat bus carrying 30 students from Krong Nangs Dlie Ya Commune to nearby Ama Trang Long Middle School at around 12:20 pm on Tuesday, per a transport service contract he had signed with the schools management board.

N.G.H., 12, was thrown through an open door on the bus when Lieu swerved to avoid a collision with an oncoming tractor.

H. died immediately upon hitting the road on his head.

The police investigation into the case is ongoing.

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Customs officers in Ho Chi Minh City have discovered 266 boxes of COVID-19 medications smuggled into Vietnam inside two gift packages sent from Russia via air express delivery.

These boxes were found among the personal items, clothes, confectionery, and others contained in the two packages that were imported as gifts, the municipal Department of Customs said.

More than 3,000 medicine tablets for use in treating COVID-19 patients were found from the 266 boxes.

The packages were carried by a direct flight from Russia to Hanoi, from where they were transported to Ho Chi Minh City.

The Ho Chi Minh City addresses written on both packages for goods delivery are fake, the department said.

The consignees phone numbers registered with the shipping firm are incorrect, too.

This supplied photo shows boxes of smuggled COVID-19 medications hidden in two packages sent from Russia to Vietnam via express delivery service.

This is a recent trick of smugglers who use bogus addresses to avoid being caught by authorities," VTC News cited the department as saying.

"However, they are able to monitor the waybills for their shipments and whenever a shipment gets through customs clearance, they will contact customs offices to receive it.

Relevant agencies are investigating the case.

Recently, certain types of medicines designated the Ministry of Health for use in COVID-19 treatment under its control have been put up for sale widely on the market and e-commerce websites, without the ministrys authorization.

The ministry has released warnings against the illegal circulation of such drugs.

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The Ministry of Health announced 6,580 more COVID-19 cases on Thursday, alongside 1,731 recoveries and 59 fatalities.

The latest cases, including four imported and 6,576 local transmissions, were reported in 49 provinces and cities, the health ministry said, noting that 2,889 patients were detected in the community.

Ho Chi Minh City recorded 981 of the domestically-transmitted infections, Binh Duong Province 948, Dong Nai Province 939, Kien Giang Province 478, An Giang Province 381, Tien Giang Province 263, Tay Ninh Province 240, Dak Lak Province 210, Soc Trang Province 198, Binh Thuan Province 194, Can Tho City 186, Long An Province 178, Tra Vinh Province 123, Ha Giang Province 110, Hanoi 100, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province 98, Quang Nam Province 42, Khanh Hoa Province 34, and Da Nang 13.

Vietnam had confirmed 7,089 locally-acquired infections on Wednesday.

The country has registered 941,159 community transmissions in 62 out of its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth virus wave emerged on April 27, 832,589 of them having recovered from the respiratory disease.

Ho Chi Minh City has been hit the hardest with 435,717 patients, followed by Binh Duong Province with 236,241, Dong Nai Province with 69,138, Long An Province with 35,287, Tien Giang Province with 17,479, An Giang Province with 12,094, Tay Ninh Province with 11,691, Kien Giang Province with 10,740, Dong Thap Province with 10,135, Khanh Hoa Province with 9,102, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province with 5,048, Da Nang with 4,995, and Hanoi with 4,924.

Vietnam detected only 1,570 locally-transmitted infections in total in the previous three waves.

The health ministry recorded 1,731 recoveries on Thursday, taking the total to 835,406.

The toll has soared to 22,342 deaths after the ministry registered 59 fatalities on the same day, including 28 in Ho Chi Minh City and 13 in Binh Duong Province.

Vietnam has found 946,043 infections since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year.

Health workers have administered almost 85 million vaccine doses, including 774,054 shots on Wednesday, since inoculation was rolled out on March 8.

Over 26 million people have been jabbed twice.

Health authorities target to inoculate at least two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year.

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A Florida judge has denied Carole Baskin and her husbands motion for a temporary restraining order that would have prevented Netflix and Royal Goode Productions from using any footage of them in Tiger King 2.

While the Court understands the Baskins frustration, it does not appear that inclusion of Defendants footage of the Baskins will cause any immediate harm that cannot be compensated with monetary damages, Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington ruled, adding that the Baskins are not entitled to the extraordinary remedy of a temporary restraining order.

Baskin alleges that Royal Goode Productions breached contract by continuing to use footage of her and her husband in Tiger King 2, since they only signed appearance release forms for the first documentary.

The court is yet to decide on Netflix and Royal Goodes inclusion of the Baskins in season 2, due on November 17.

Source: EW.com
A door can symbolize a transition into new opportunities or a passageway linking one place to another. A historic door from the heart of the University has found a new home at the Greater West Dayton Incubator to do just that.

Tucked inside the meeting room of the GWDIs main office at 1105 W. Third St. is a conference table quite unlike many others. The table, reclaimed by the Matthew Tamerisk Collection, was taken from the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception during its 2015 renovation. Repurposing the door was a several-month-long project for designer Matt Spitz.

The table was once one of the outer doors of the Chapel.

It really captures the history of the university, the history of the city and the innovation that has happened right here in the city of Dayton, Spitz said. The door really creates a platform for economic development and continued innovation going forward.

The other chapel door was reclaimed by Spitzs team and placed in The Hub inside of the newly renovated Dayton Arcade. The Hub and the GWDI serve as a new wave of UD innovation and commitment to the community. The incubator operates out of a satellite office within the Hub, as well as its main headquarters in West Dayton.

The GWDI was born out of the Universitys vision to become an anti-racist institution and to connect women-owned and minority-owned businesses with resources like micro-lending services, networking opportunities, training and consulting services.

Whitney Barkley was selected to lead the GWDI as its director on Oct. 11. She said taking the job was a no-brainer after spending a lot of time in the city as a child and young adult. She thinks of the incubator as a place where ideas can come to life.

Whitney Barkley

As an entrepreneur herself, Barkley knows what it is like to develop a small business at every stage. She began her journey in 2015 when she started content marketing company Speakerazzi, and she said she is passionate about being on the frontline of innovation right alongside women and minority business owners.

I know what Dayton is capable of, Barkley said. I know what its entrepreneurs can do, and I'm just wanting to be that conduit to connect them to the resources that they need to succeed.

A business blitz is one of Barkleys plans for the GWDI going forward. The blitz will tackle major challenges business owners face in legitimizing, funding and digitizing their businesses.

As a long-term goal, Barkley said she hopes to take advantage of the GWDIs relationship with the L. William Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the UD students who study entrepreneurship there. She wants to assist in preparing Flyers to be community leaders in business and innovation, she said.

Exterior of the GWDI.

The annual Flyer Pitch Competition, sponsored by the Crotty Center and the GWDI, and the Cultural Capital microloan program are two of the Incubators current ventures that provide resources for the citys underrepresented business owners and loops UD into the entrepreneurial action. .

Much like the chapel door conference table, the GWDI serves as a transition to a new era of innovation and a passageway connecting the UD campus community with the entrepreneurial hub in West Dayton.

I think a lot of people in Ohio don't really know that Dayton is the place where innovation happens, Barkley said. This is where people invent things. This is where a lot of magic happens.
African and Western nations called for an immediate ceasefire in Ethiopia on Thursday after Tigrayan forces from the country's north made advances towards the capital this week.

The U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, arrived in Addis Ababa to press for a halt to military operations and a start to ceasefire talks.

African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat said he met Feltman to discuss efforts towards dialogue and political solutions to the conflict, which pits the central government against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and its allies.

The European Union and the East African bloc the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) joined the chorus of bodies calling for a ceasefire. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announced an IGAD meeting on Nov. 16 to discuss the war.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta urged the rival parties to lay down their arms and find a path to peace.

"The fighting must stop!," he said in a statement.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had spoken to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Wednesday and offered to help create the conditions for a dialogue.

Abiy's government declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as the Tigrayan forces threatened to push forward to Addis Ababa.

TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda said on Wednesday TPLF troops were in the town of Kemise in Amhara state, 325 km (200 miles) from the capital.

The U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa authorised the voluntary departure of some staff and family members because of the intensifying hostilities. Washington said on Wednesday it was "gravely concerned" about the situation and called for a halt to military operations and ceasefire talks.

The year-long conflict has killed thousands of people, forced more than two million more from their homes, and left 400,000 people in Tigray facing famine.

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations said that an end to a de facto government blockade in Tigray is needed to avert a large-scale famine.

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No humanitarian convoys have entered Tigray since Oct. 18 and no fuel has entered to aid the humanitarian response since early August, according to the United Nations.

Addis arrests

Streets and shops in Addis Ababa, a city of around five million people, were busy as usual on Thursday morning, though some residents said there was a feeling of uneasy calm.

"There are rumors about the approach of the rebels. People debate about the conflict, most of the people accuse the government for what happened," said one man, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Police had arrested "many people" in Addis Ababa since the government declared the state of emergency, police spokesperson Fasika Fanta said on Thursday.

Residents told Reuters on Wednesday many Tigrayans had been arrested but Fasika said arrests were not based on ethnicity.

"We are only arresting those who are directly or indirectly supporting the illegal terrorist group," he said. "This includes moral, financial and propaganda support."

He also said many people were registering weapons at police stations around the city in line with a government directive issued on Tuesday for people to prepare to defend their neighbourhoods.

"Some are even coming with bombs and heavy weapons. We are registering those too," he said.

Government spokesperson Legesse Tulu did not respond to requests for comment.

Year-old conflict

The conflict started last November when forces loyal to the TPLF, including some soldiers, seized military bases in Tigray. In response, Abiy sent more troops to the northern region.

The TPLF had dominated national politics for nearly three decades but lost much influence when Abiy took office in 2018.

The TPLF then accused him of centralising power at the expense of Ethiopia's regional states - an accusation Abiy denies.

The Tigrayan forces and their Oromo allies have made significant advances in the past week. Spokesman Getachew on Wednesday pledged to minimise casualties in their drive to take Addis Ababa.

"We don't intend to shoot at civilians and we don't want bloodshed. If possible we would like the process to be peaceful," he said.

A regional analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the TPLF was likely to hold off on any advance on Addis Ababa until they secured the highway running from neighbouring Djibouti to the capital.

That requires seizing the town of Mille, in Afar region. Getachew said on Tuesday that Tigrayan forces were closing in on Mille.

Ethiopian military spokesman Colonel Getnet Adane and an Afar regional government spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Abiy's spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, accused the international media of being "overly alarmist" in its coverage of Ethiopia.

"Perpetuating terrorist propaganda as truth from offices far off and detached from the ground is highly unethical," she said in a tweet.

(REUTERS)
This artist's illustration obtained from NASA shows the DART spacecraft prior to impact with the asteroid Dimorphos (AFP/Handout)

In the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster "Armageddon," Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck race to save the Earth from being pulverized by an asteroid.

While the Earth faces no such immediate danger, NASA plans to crash a spacecraft traveling at a speed of 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph) into an asteroid next year in a test of "planetary defense."

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is to determine whether this is an effective way to deflect the course of an asteroid should one threaten the Earth in the future.

NASA provided details of the DART mission, which carries a price tag of $330 million, in a briefing for reporters on Thursday.

"Although there isn't a currently known asteroid that's on an impact course with the Earth, we do know that there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids out there," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer.

"The key to planetary defence is finding them well before they are an impact threat," Johnson said. "We don't want to be in a situation where an asteroid is headed towards Earth and then have to test this capability."

The DART spacecraft is scheduled to be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 10:20 pm Pacific time on November 23 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

If the launch takes place at or around that time, impact with the asteroid some 6.8 million miles from Earth would occur between September 26 and October 1 of next year.

The target asteroid, Dimorphos, which means "two forms" in Greek, is about 525 feet in diameter and orbits around a larger asteroid named Didymos, "twin" in Greek.

Johnson said that while neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth they are ideal candidates for the test because of the ability to observe them with ground-based telescopes.

Images will also be collected by a miniature camera-equipped satellite contributed by the Italian Space Agency that will be ejected by the DART spacecraft 10 days before impact.

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- 'A small nudge' -

Nancy Chabot of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which built the DART spacecraft, said Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes "just like clockwork."

The DART spacecraft, which will weigh 1,210 pounds at the time of impact, will not "destroy" the asteroid, Chabot said.

"It's just going to give it a small nudge," she said. "It's going to deflect its path around the larger asteroid."

"It's only going to be a change of about one percent in that orbital period," Chabot said, "so what was 11 hours and 55 minutes before might be like 11 hours and 45 minutes."

The test is designed to help scientists understand how much momentum is needed to deflect an asteroid in the event one is headed towards Earth one day.

"We are targeting to be as nearly head on as possible to cause the biggest deflection," Chabot said.

The amount of deflection will depend to a certain extent on the composition of Dimorphos and scientists are not entirely certain how porous the asteroid is.

Dimorphos is the most common type of asteroid in space and is some 4.5 billion years old, Chabot said.

"It's like ordinary chondrite meteorites," she said. "It's a fine grain mixture of rock and metal together."

Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, said more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids have been catalogued but none currently pose a danger to the planet.

An asteroid discovered in 1999 known as Bennu that is 1,650 feet wide will pass within half the distance of the Earth to the Moon in the year 2135 but the probability of an impact is considered very slight.

cl/jh
Three University of North Georgia (UNG) alumni were inducted into the Georgia Military Veterans Hall of Fame on Nov. 6, including a father and son and another who served in World War II.

Retired Col. John Thompson, '87, goes into the Hall of Fame the same year as his father, Capt. Robert Thompson, '62, who was killed in action in Vietnam. Retired Maj. Gen. George Johnson, '38, who died earlier this year at age 103, also enters the Hall of Fame. UNG now has 18 of the 146 inductees since the Hall of Fame's inception in 2013.

"It's surreal not only to be inducted myself, but to go in with Dad means something special," John Thompson said. "My mom is especially thrilled."

Robert Thompson wrote a poignant letter for his 2-year-old son that John Thompson read for the first time as a teenager. His father's encouragement to live a life focused on serving others helped the young man find his path. John Thompson also pointed to retired Col. Gerald Lord, a former professor of military science and commandant of cadets at UNG and previous Hall of Fame inductee, as integral in his journey.
When Chris Potter arrived at the University of North Georgia (UNG), the freshman from a small private high school didn't know anyone. He searched for a group of like-minded individuals.

"I saw the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) on Instagram and went to their tabling event," Potter said. "I started attending meetings and was talked into joining the executive board."

Now, the junior pursuing a degree in political science is the GSA president on UNG's Dahlonega Campus. The student-led club is geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) community.

"It's an all-inclusive club," Potter said. "I've met some wonderful people and they helped me establish myself in college and build up my confidence."

His assurance spurred him to create the same safe and welcoming space for other students looking to belong.

"It's nice to have an environment to ask questions and get answers and not get ridiculed," the resident of Snellville, Georgia, said. "I sincerely hope I have created those safe spaces for all UNG students."

Creating those safe spaces during the 2020-21 academic year was no easy task. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, GSA met via Zoom with a few small in-person gatherings, Potter said. He plans to rebuild the organization's membership through tabling events and in-person activities.

Potter especially looks forward to GSA's signature event held every spring. The annual Mx. UNG is a fashion show by students for students.

"People can express themselves and dress up however they want," he said. "Students get to show their creativity and make a statement."

Potter has learned to make his mark on GSA through his organizing, planning and scheduling skills. He takes pride in arranging the group's meetings and events since they bring students together.

"When we put on our events, it's nice to see everyone and experience the social atmosphere," he said.

Potter also encourages students to get involved, because they don't know where it might lead.

"Often, when I talk to others about joining the executive board, they say, 'I couldn't do that. I'm not cut out,'" he said, explaining he felt the same way as a freshman. "I tell them, 'If you apply and believe in yourself, then you could learn to lead as I did.'"
Some 1.6 million Tajik citizens have entered Russia to work so far this year, new government data from Moscow show. Its a figure that many observers had suspected but had never before been reflected in official statistics, which usually record around 1 million, Eurasianet writes.

Migrant laborers are Tajikistans top export. In 2019, the remittances they sent from Russia exceeded $2.6 billion  about triple the value of all other Tajik exports that year combined, and equivalent to approximately 28 percent of Tajikistans GDP.

Between January and September 2021, Russias Interior Ministry registered 2,025,712 Tajik citizens entering the country  1.6 million of them, or about one-quarter of Tajikistans working-age population, with work as their official purpose. Over the same period, about 70,000 Tajik citizens received Russian citizenship. (The only country from which more people entered was Uzbekistan, with 3.3 million arrivals. But Uzbekistan has more than three times Tajikistans population.)

Migrant-rights activists have long suspected the figures are undercounts to help both Russian and Tajik authorities save face; neither side likes to admit how dependent its economy is on migration. When the pandemic shut down the global economy in the spring of 2020, many migrant laborers suddenly found themselves without work and unable to travel home. According to Russian Central Bank data for 2020, the volume of remittances from Tajik nationals decreased by $835 million to $1.7 billion. But the recovery was swift, says a September paper by two economists with Japans aid agency. Tajik families with a worker in Russia were more resilient against the pandemic. Migrant laborers are a safety net for Tajik households, wrote Satoshi Shimizutani and Eiji Yamada in PLOS One.

Russia is Tajiks main but not only destination. Once travel restrictions were eased and direct flights resumed in early 2021, some Tajik families sold whatever necessary  livestock, furniture  to buy a ticket. Members of President Emomali Rahmons family reportedly made a killing for a time as the only licensed ticket brokers for the limited available seats. This kind of corruption and nepotism has robbed Tajikistan of opportunities, many Tajiks say privately, in conversations where they discuss emigration as the only option for people with ambition and skill. Each fall for the last few years, Tajiks have been eligible for the United States Electronic Diversity Visa program: a global lottery for around 50,000 green cards that allow holders to legally live and work in the U.S. There are long lines in pop-up stores around Dushanbe offering to help properly complete the forms. Though the application is free, many people are willing to pay $20 for assistance.

More than 2,300 Tajiks won green cards in the last round. In a poll conducted on the Telegram messaging app last month, the Asia-Plus news agency found 53 percent of participating readers answered yes to the question: Do you want to move to the USA?
Over the weekend, a Turkmen delegation passed through Kabul for meetings with the Taliban* government. At the top of the agenda were Turkmenistans pipe dreams: The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-India-Pakistan (TAPI) gas pipeline, which has been in some form of development for decades.

The Diplomat writes, that Turkmen Minister of Foreign Affairs Rashid Meredov is one of of the highest-level Central Asian officials to travel to meet with the Taliban*in Afghanistan. In late September, Kyrgyzstan dispatched deputy chairman of the countrys Security Council, Taalatbek Masadykov, and the head of the Kyrgyz presidential administrations foreign policy department, Jeenbek Kulubaev, to forge connections with the Taliban. A few days later, Kazakhstan announced that its ambassador to Afghanistan, Alimzhan Esengeldiev, had met with Taliban leaders, too.

Uzbekistan has hosted Taliban* delegations on several occasions in recent years and continued to do so without pause despite the collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul in mid-August. Indeed, mere days before August 15, a Taliban delegation was in Tashkent to discuss current and future national projects such as security for railroad and power lines. On October 7, Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov landed in Kabul to continue talks with the Taliban. Energy and transportation issues topped the agenda.

Energy issues factor even more acutely in Taliban* relations with Turkmenistan, which has no significant industries outside of the gas business. In Kabul, Turkmen officials got what they wanted: Positive signals from the Taliban* in support of the TAPI project. Mohammad Issa Akhund, the Talibans* acting minister of mines and petroleum, said in a statement reported by Reuters that We have been working hard for some time and we are ready to take pride in starting work on the TAPI project.

Taliban* Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi was quoted in the Turkmen Foreign Ministrys statement after the meeting as saying that the Taliban wanted to get to work on projects between the two countries.

The Turkmen statement specified that the sides expressed readiness of the two countries to further cooperation in promoting the construction of the projects Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) transnational gas pipeline, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) high-voltage power transmission line, and railroad lines from Turkmenistan to some provinces of Afghanistan. Taliban* Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob was quoted in the Turkmen statement as pledging to spare no effort in ensuring the security of infrastructure projects.

The Taliban* have made such pledges before, as recently as February 2021 when a Taliban* delegation visited Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital. The Taliban* made the same pledge back in 2018 when representatives from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan (under the Ghani government), Pakistan, and India gathered in Herat to mark what they heralded as the start of work on the Afghan portion of the TAPI pipeline.

The TAPI project, which has an estimated price tag now of $10 billion, endeavors to bring 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas to energy-starved South Asia for 30 years via a 1,800-kilometer pipeline that will stretch across Afghanistan. Construction is estimated to last two years.

Turkmenistan threw a groundbreaking back in December 2015 for its 214-kilometer section of the pipeline. Virtually all news regarding the TAPI project comes via governments or government mouthpieces. This news is usually doused in a slurry of optimism and divorced from any sense of time. The smallest steps are touted as major progress and setbacks go unmentioned.

The latest Turkmen statement mentions neither timelines nor prices. The focus on security in a sense is a distraction from the real Achilles heel  funding  but the Talibans* return to power doesnt really change the security concerns.

While it may not be the Taliban* targeting construction efforts, the Islamic States* Afghanistan branch, known variably as ISKP* or ISK* would arguably pose a threat. ISK* has engaged in several attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban* took control, including in Kabul as U.S. and other foreign forces rushed to evacuate in August. In mid-October an ISK* suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Kunduz, and this week six attackers set off an explosion at the entrance of a military hospital in Kabul (ISK has not claimed responsibility yet but is widely believed to be responsible and has claimed similar previous attacks). ISK* has made no pledges about protecting infrastructure, and the Wall Street Journal reported this week that some former members of the Afghan security and intelligence forces are joining its ranks to fight the Taliban*.

Its hard to fathom that international financial institutions, which are hesitant to provide funding directly to the Talibans* government, will be enthusiastic about a gas pipeline through Afghanistan. Without significant external financial support, Turkmenistan isnt able to fund the project. As Steven Mann, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan and until 2020 a senior advisor to ExxonMobil, recently wrote in a piece assessing whether the Talibans* victory could give a boost to TAPI: The ADB has indicated it will contribute $1 billion in loans. The Turkmen government, grappling with a massive economic crisis, has risibly pledged $1.675 billion. The remainder is envisioned to come from export credit agencies and commercial lenders, all lending individually to the four governments and relying on sovereign guarantees from each country. What is an Afghan sovereign guarantee worth? Or a Turkmen? It strains credulity that an institution like the ADB would agree to this arrangement. In contrast, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which also has Turkmenistan in its purview, has long kept its distance from TAPI.

Mann floats China as a possible investor but gives long odds that China would be sufficiently motivated to bother with the project.

Ultimately, the Talibans* return to power in Afghanistan does not materially affect TAPIs prospects. If the financing question was troublesome before 2020, its only become more problematic since the onset of the pandemic and the fall of the government in Afghanistan. Security remains a concern if the primary problem  funding  can be solved. Despite several ultimately false starts, whether the pipeline will ever be built remains in question.

*Taliban, ISK or ISKP, Islamic State are groups prohibited in Russia
After the Azerbaijan victory, Turkish drones are in hot demand around Africa. The Bayraktar TB2 armed drone made by Turkish defence contractor Baykar is drawing attention of prospective buyer countries as a combat-proven technology. Nikkei Asia Review writes, that during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Angola last month, his host President Joao Lourenco reaffirmed the nation's interest in acquiring such capabilities. Lourenco had conveyed his intent when he visited Turkey in the summer.

"As you know, we are not conservative about such issues, and I told them we are ready to give all kinds of support," Erdogan said at a joint news conference with Lourenco. "Our defense ministers will talk, and we will take the necessary steps."

Military cooperation is especially effective in this strategy, with Turkey ready to sell everything from armed drones to armored vehicles and providing military trainers. This also fits with the desire of African states to diversify their sources beyond established suppliers like China and France.

According to former U.S. State Department official Rich Outzen's report "Deals, Drones, and National Will -- The New Era in Turkish Power Projection," Armenia lost 190 main battle tanks, 100 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles and dozens of air defense systems to Turkish-backed Azerbaijani attacks, in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of September-November 2020. "As drones of Turkish and Israeli manufacture pierced the air defense umbrella, Armenian forces proved highly vulnerable to detection and destruction," Outzen wrote.

Turkish drones are cheaper than those made in the U.S. or Israel. They also are easy to operate and fit the needs of African states, whose most common use is against non-state actors and terrorist organizations, according to Caglar Kurc, a Turkish defense analyst. From time to time, African states have made expensive acquisitions -- like buying aircraft -- but failed in maintaining and operating them," Kurc said.

At Turkey's Teknofest aerospace and technology festival in September, visitors from all ages took turns operating Baykar drones using joysticks at ground-control-station simulators. It takes roughly four months of training to become a certificated TB2 drone operator or technician, much shorter than a jet fighter pilot.

Hours after returning to Turkey from the four-day tour of Angola, Togo and Nigeria, Erdogan visited a Baykar factory on Oct. 21, telling employees about the response in Africa to the company's products. "Let me tell you this frankly: In Africa, wherever we went, they asked us for unarmed and armed drones, including the Akinci," the president said, referring to Baykar's latest high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned combat aerial vehicle.

"The world powers are following you, what you did in [recent conflicts with] unarmed and armed drones," Erdogan said. "Because now you are among the world's top 3" most successful countries when it comes to unmanned aerial vehicles."

Reuters reported last month Morocco had received its first batch of Turkish drones. Ethiopia also has requested them, much to the ire of North African powerhouse Egypt, which is at odds with Addis Ababa over a hydropower dam on the Blue Nile.

Turkish Exporters Assembly data shows defense and aviation exports to both Ethiopia and Morocco increased sharply in the past two months, without providing details of any drone sales.

"There may be reports in international media that Egypt is uneasy that we are selling drones to Ethiopia. There is nothing official that came to our attention about the matter," Turkey's Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic told reporters last month. "After all, Turkey and Ethiopia are sovereign nations, and Ethiopia can buy these drones from wherever they want."

Tunisia also reportedly received its first batch of armed drones from another defense company, Turkish Aerospace Industries, at the end of September.

Turkey's main rival for drone sales in Africa will be China, said Arda Mevlutoglu, another defense analyst. "China may have a cost advantage by lowering the price tag in exchange for other concessions from buyer states," he said. But such low costs are often accompanied by poor service afterward as well as quality problems in sensors and guided ammunitions, at least in their exported versions, Mevlutoglu said. "Turkey, meanwhile, offers NATO standards to buyers," he said.

Mevlutoglu cited Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Niger, Mali and Mozambique as countries having serious security problems in which low-cost drones that are easy to operate and maintain can be a good solution.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data shows the top four arms suppliers to Africa are Russia, China, France and the U.S. "Turkey has been selling items like armored vehicles, but after the military accomplishments of Turkish drones in Azerbaijan and Libya, African states now also want Turkish drones, as [they are] cheaper and accessible compared to U.S. drones," Kurc said. "Turkey does not apply embargoes or try to change foreign policy course. Turkey follows the footsteps of China on a no-strings-attached arms sales policy, which is welcome for buyers."

Delegations from Africa constituted the largest foreign attendance at the International Defense Industry Fair 2021, held in Istanbul during August, according to Ismail Demir, President of Defence Industries. Many defense contracts and cooperation agreements were signed during the event.
A meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan may take place, but so far, there is no relevant information, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Thursday.

"There is no information about the meeting of the leaders. I cannot exclude that such meetings will be held in the future, but there is currently no information on the issue, the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister said on the sidelines of the Global Baku Forum The World after COVID-19.
U.S. President Joe Biden conveyed to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan Washingtons concern over Ankaras use of Russian S-400 air defense systems at the G20 summit in Rome last weekend, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

"President Biden reaffirmed our defense partnership and Turkeys importance as a NATO Ally. But in that meeting, the President also noted concerns over Turkeys possession of the Russian S-400 missile system," the statement reads.

According to the spokesman, Washington has made their concerns with this system very clear. "Weve made the implications of that possession of the S-400 very clear as well, including in the context of the F-35 program," Price explained.
Russia and the United States are gradually restoring communication channels, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov said in a live broadcast of the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.

"As of today, we have established businesslike relations between the security councils and, naturally, we have never ceased contacts through the diplomatic agencies. Literally two weeks ago, a large delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk was here [in Washington] and held various meetings with representatives of various US structures. Chief of the [Russian] General Staff Army General [Valery] Gerasimov met with his counterpart in Helsinki," the Russian envoy said.

"All this shows that communication channels between the two states are being gradually restored," he said.

Importantly, these contacts have yielded concrete results in improving relationships between the two countries, the Russian ambassador stressed.

"The point is that there are a lot of problems. The first of them is coronavirus that has made changes to the normal life of Russians, Americans and citizens all across the world. Secondly, this is climate change that is now being discussed in Glasgow. Naturally, we need and we are interested in establishing pragmatic, businesslike and predictable relationships with the United States," Antonov stressed.
According to the head of the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health of Georgia, Amiran Gamkrelidze in 10 days, the country will join the EU Digital COVID Certificate system.

Earlier, the EU recognized the Turkish and Armenian COVID certificates.

"The IT department of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are working on this issue. According to my information, Georgia should join the EU Digital COVID Certificate system in about 10 days," he said on November 4.
Droa opposition party leader, Elene Khoshtaria, has gone on hunger strike in the parliament building of Georgia, demanding the transfer of former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvil, to a civil clinic for treatment.

Saakashvili, the third president of Georgia, has been on hunger strike since his arrest in Tbilisi on October 1, and is now demanding his transportation to a civil clinic instead of the government-provided prison hospital.

Khoshtaria says that she has never been Saakashvili's supporter and disapproves of many of his actions. However, she says that the governments attitude to Saakashvili is cynical and unacceptable, and that Saakashvilis life is at risk.

"I will stay on hunger strike until Saakashvili is transferred to a civil clinic and doctors say that his life is not at risk," Khoshtaria said late yesterday.

Saakashvilis doctor says the former president has lost 10 percent of his body weight and that a council of doctors will assess his health condition on Friday, Agenda.ge reported.

Khoshtaria was nominated as a joint candidate for the head of Tbilisi City Assembly by the United National Movement, European Georgia, Girchi-More Freedom and Droa opposition parties in recent municipal elections. She left the European Georgia opposition party back in December 2020, shortly after the October 2020 parliamentary elections, to create a new political movement.

Khoshtaria has refused to take up her parliamentary mandate which she received via the party list of the European Georgia opposition party in the 2020 parliamentary elections. She maintains that elections were fabricated by the ruling Georgian Dream party, and refuses to enter the state legislature in protest.
Azerbaijan is ready to start peace negotiations and sign peace treaty with Armenia, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in his speech at the opening of VIII Global Baku Forum - "The World after COVID-19".

"Now we are in the post-conflict period. We have proposed a peace and demarcation agreements to Armenia. But we have not received a response yet. Azerbaijan demonstrates the constructive approach at maximum level. Everything is depending on Armenia's stance. We are ready to work on the peace agreement, to turn a new page," AzerTAc cited the Azerbaijani leader as saying.
The Polish government donated the first batch of Pfizer vaccines to Georgia.

468,000 doses of vaccine will be delivered to Georgia. The deliveries will be performed in five stages. Pfizer is the most popular vaccine among Georgians.

"I hope that the population will actively use this vaccine, and finally, with the help of vaccination, we will put an end to the current 5th wave and pandemic. If necessary, Poland will help Georgia again," Polish Ambassador to Georgia Mariusz Mashkevich said on Thursday.
China intends to promote negotiations on the restoration of the Iranian nuclear deal through joint efforts with Russia, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday.

China and Russia are ready to continue strategic interaction and will jointly promote the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear problem, according to the commentary on a telephone conversation between the two countries' deputy foreign ministers, Ma Zhaoxu and Sergey Ryabkov, which took place on November 3.

It specified that the Chinese and Russian diplomats during the conversation reached a consensus on a wide range of issues. It emphasizes that the return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian Nuclear Program (JCPOA) must be carried out taking into account the interests of each of the parties concerned, on the basis of mutual respect.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier during the G20 summit, Moscow fully supports the return to the JCPOA in its original form. The document was signed with Tehran in 2015 by five permanent representatives of the UN Security Council and Germany. Former US President Donald Trump decided to break the deal in 2018, but current US leader Joe Biden has repeatedly expressed his readiness to restore it. The five plus one group (Russia, UK, Germany, China, US, and France) has been holding talks in Vienna on this issue since April. The start of the next round is scheduled for November 29.
Mikheil Saakashvili's lawyer Nika Gvaramia informed about the ex-presidents of Georgia memory lapses amid his hunger strike.

"Mikhail Saakashvili already feels very bad. One can see it definitely. He has communication problems and serious memory lapses. He cannot remember the names of people. He still remembers my name, but during the conversation, it became obvious that he did not remember the names of some of his friends," the lawyer said after meeting with his client.

Saakashvili has been on a hunger strike since the beginning of October. He was detained after entering Georgia illegally. He refuses to be admitted to the prison hospital.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, and granted his request for a one-time payment in the amount of 50 000 rubles to the participants in the heroic Siege of Sevastopol during the Great Patriotic War.

Alright, let's do it, Putin replied to the governor.

Razvozhaev recalled that such a payment had previously been approved by the president for residents of besieged Leningrad awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".
Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi said on Thursday that the next meeting of the Astana negotiations on Syria will be held in Nur-Sultan in mid-December.

"The guarantor countries have asked us to organize the next round of the Astana process. Its dates are still under consideration, it will be around mid-December," he said.

The top diplomat pointed out that the meeting would bring together the guarantors of the Astana process (Russia, Iran and Turkey), parties to the Syrian conflict and observers.

"We are currently trying to determine (the level of the talks), deputy foreign ministers usually represent the guarantor countries," Tleuberdi added.

The 16th international high-level meeting on Syria, which took place in Kazakhstan's capital of Nur-Sultan on July 7-8, involved the delegations of the guarantor countries, the Syrian government and the armed opposition. The parties discussed the situation in Syria, the international community's assistance to the country, the prospects for the resumption of the Syrian Constitutional Committee's activities and confidence-building measures, including prisoner swaps, the liberation of hostages and the search for missing persons.
Turkey and the United States will establish a joint working group on disagreements, including the issues of the PKK terrorist group's Syrian branch YPG, the Gulenist Terror Group (FETO) and the Russian-made advanced S-400 defense system, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday. He underlined that the proposal came from Washington, Daily Sabah writes.

Stating that Turkey maintains its contact with the U.S. administration, Cavusoglu said that the recent meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Joe Biden last Sunday was in a constructive atmosphere.

According to Daily Sabah, Cavusoglu said that the U.S. cooperation with the PKK/YPG, FETO's presence in the U.S. and its stance on the S-400-related sanctions are incompatible with the spirit of alliance.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the Ukrainian issue is sensitive one in relations with Russia.

He stressed that a constructive dialogue between Ankara and Moscow continues.

"We have disagreements, but we continue a constructive dialogue, not pressing mutual sensitive topics. The Ukrainian issue is one of them," Anadolu Agency quotes Cavusoglu as saying.
\Uzbekistans government on Wednesday drastically reduced the speed at which its 35 million citizens can access popular social networks and websites such as Facebook and YouTube, saying they did not comply with a new personal data law.

The law, which took effect last week, requires Uzbeks personal data to be stored on servers located in the Central Asian nation, a provision that Russia has also cited to restrict access to some social media, Reuters reported.

The list of restricted services also includes Meta Platforms Instagram, Microsofts LinkedIn and popular Russian messenger Telegram, according to state telecoms watchdog Uzkomnazorat.

Access to TikTok, Twitter, Skype, Russian social network VK and Chinas WeChat has been restricted since July.
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has reiterated her previous claims that she will not pardon arrested ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili.

"My position about pardoning ex-president unchanged and unwavering  no and never," Zurabishvili said at a special news briefing.

The Georgian President said Saakashvili, who was arrested a day before the October 2 municipal elections in Tbilisi, does not comply with any criteria of a political prisoner or of an innocent victim'.

"He is a convict, who entered the country voluntarily and illegally, aimed to cause destabilisation. Nevertheless, considering high public and political interest, he should be treated as a special prisoner," Zurabishvili said.

She said all the measures should be taken to ensure that his deterioration of health not be used for political speculations or destabilisation. This, President Zurabishvili said, requires as much transparency and timely response as possible in case of Saakashvilis deterioration of health, Agenda.ge reported.

Earlier the Special Penitentiary Service has announced that Saakashvilis health remains stable and he is under the constant supervision of health professionals.
Overcoming China and Cambodia, the US became the largest trading partner of Vietnam's agricultural industry in January-October 2021.

The latest import-export report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) shows that in this period, the total import-export turnover of Vietnam's agricultural, forestry and fishery products reached over 74.3 billion USD, up 24.2% over the same period of last year. Exports hit nearly 38.75 billion USD, up 13.1% and imports were 35.56 billion USD, up 39.1% year on year.

Notably, the US was the largest trading partner of Vietnamese agriculture in this period.

Specifically, with an export turnover of 10.8 billion USD (accounting for 27.9% of the market share), the US surpassed China to become the largest customer of Vietnam. Wood and wood products accounted for 68.4% of Vietnam's total export turnover to this market.

The US also passed Cambodia to become the largest agricultural export market to Vietnam, with nearly 3.3 billion USD, accounting for 9.2% of the market share (of which cotton accounted for 36.4% of the total value).

According to experts, thanks to the control of Covid-19 epidemic, the US becomes a potential market for Vietnamese agricultural exports. Not only in the interior wood segment, in recent months, seafood exports to this market have also increased sharply.

According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), by the end of September 2021, Vietnamese seafood exports to the US reached 1.45 billion USD, up 24% year on year.



Shrimp, pangasius and tuna are the three main product lines exported to the US. Of which, shrimp exports to the US increased by 22% to reach 775 million USD. The US is currently Vietnam's largest shrimp export market, accounting for 28% of the shrimp industry's export turnover.

For tuna, the US was also the largest market, accounting for 43.5% of the proportion, with 226 million USD in the above period, up 8% year on year.

Pangasius exports to the US reached 248 million USD, up 43%. Notably, Vietnamese pangasius accounted for 93% of the total imported catfish value in this market in the first three quarters of 2021.

According to the MARDs Department of Agricultural Product Processing and Market Development, Vietnams exports of vegetables, fruits, coffee, tea, pepper, rubber, cashew nuts and seafood to the US will continue to grow strongly in the coming time if they can overcome technical barriers.

T.A
A Facebook survey rates Vietnam as a home for digital transformation and forecasts that the market will lead the region in terms of e-commerce growth.

Inside the warehouse of an e-commerce platform in Vietnam. (Photo: Hai Dang)

Facebook and Bain&Company have recently published studies on the booming digital transformation in Southeast Asia. The report says that Vietnam, as the home of digital transformation, is at the forefront of promoting change and seizing opportunities for post-pandemic digital-based development.

Facebooks survey was conducted with about 16,700 digital consumers and more than 20 senior experts in six Southeast Asian countries, including 3,579 participants in Vietnam.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, about 70 million Southeast Asians over the age of 15 have become digital consumers. It is estimated that by the end of 2021, the number of digital consumers in the region will reach 350 million. In Vietnam, 7 out of 10 consumers have digital access and there will be 53 million digital consumers in the country by the end of 2021.

The growth rate of digital consumers drives the region's spending growth up to 80% per year, and the total value of online shopping is expected to double by 2026. Vietnam is expected to be the fastest growing market in Southeast Asia, with total value of e-commerce trade of US$56 billion by 2026, 4.5 times higher than the estimated value of 2021.

The number of categories of goods that Vietnamese consumers shop online has increased by 50% in 2021. The number of online stores yielding revenue has risen by 40%, resulting in 1.5 times increase in total online retail spending across the country compared to 2020.

In Vietnam, spending on online shopping for each product group this year nearly doubled and was nearly three times up for the group of personal care and beauty products.

The survey shows that the way Vietnamese consumers shop has changed dramatically. They now attach importance to online channels over direct shopping channels.

For example, social networks continue to be the number one channel for product and service discovery. The survey shows that 14% choose message boards on social networks and 22% choose videos on social networks as the top channel to learn information.

In the evaluation stage, Vietnamese consumers tend to search for product review content on social networks and e-commerce platforms, with the response rate for each channel reaching 26%.

When it comes to making decisions, e-commerce platforms and social media shopping platforms are the key channels, with market share of 33% and 19%, respectively.

The survey also points out that, for the first time, cash payments significantly decreased from 60% in 2020 to only 42% in 2021 while cashless payments rose, with 82% for e-wallet and 18% for bank transfers.

The number of online platforms that consumers in Southeast Asia make purchases on increased from an average of 5.2 last year to 7.9 this year. In Vietnam, 49% of consumers switched to an e-commerce site within the past three months.

After the pandemic, Vietnamese are expected to maintain up to 72% of their time for regular activities at home instead of going out. Eating and shopping online at home will be maintained regularly, accounting for 84% and 78% of the time, respectively.

Hai Dang
Vietnam is expected to quickly develop the 5G network through an infrastructure sharing model.

Recently, at the Ministerial Roundtable of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), discussion of investment in 5G networks heated up again. Ministers emphasized the importance of 5G as a national digital infrastructure and the need to accelerate 5G coverage.

Mr. Petr Ocko, Deputy Minister in charge of Digitization at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, emphasized the importance of digital infrastructure and digital services as the key to increasing the resilience of the economy and society, promoting post-Covid recovery, helping citizens and businesses in many aspects of their lives. Attention should be paid to issues such as technical standards, synchronization between digital communication infrastructure and other strategic infrastructures, transformation of telecommunications infrastructure, and a general viewpoint about the digital economy of the future. It is important to inform people about 5G network and its benefits.

Brazil plans to expand 5G networks in all major cities by June 2022. Currently, all cities in this country have mobile coverage in urban areas, with 95% covered by 4G services, and the rest by 3G services. From November 4, the Brazilian Government will open a 5G auction to provide spectrum in four different frequency bands. It is expected that the auction will attract both world and regional giants. The government has always been committed to accelerating digital transformation, said Artur Coimbra, Head of the Telecommunications Department, Ministry of Communications of Brazil.

Meanwhile, Abdelkader Batayneh, Director of Policy and Information, Ministry of Economy and Digital Enterprises, of Jordan emphasized the role of new technologies such as blockchain, 5G, and submarine fiber optic cable. These are digital technologies that are at the top of the government agenda.

Huynh Quang Liem, General Director of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT), said that countries with good digital infrastructure can reduce the negative impact of Covid-19 by up to 50%. The Vietnamese government has defined digital infrastructure as a pillar of the digital economy.

Currently, mobile networks in Vietnam cover 99.8% of the population. However, Internet access in rural areas is still limited. For example, many villages do not have broadband Internet and 30% of households have not installed a fixed Internet network.

The influence of 5G networks on digital transformation is considered a decisive factor. Vietnam is taking the first steps in piloting 5G networks. However, network operators encounter problems similar to countries that are going ahead in 5G development, such as investment costs, frequency licensing, and not having enough users to make a profit.

Vietnams initiative to quickly expand 5G coverage

At a meeting with ITU Secretary General Houlin Zhao within the framework of World Digital Expo on October 13, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung introduced Vietnam's solution to quickly expand 5G coverage. Accordingly, each of four network operators in Vietnam will develop its own 5G network to cover 25% of the population. These 5G networks will then be roaming in the first 2-3 years of operation. This model helps carriers to reduce investment costs and quickly deploy 5G networks to benefit themselves and the country.

Huynh Quang Liem, General Director of VNPT, said that Vietnamese carriers are sharing many base stations, and they can use 5G equipment infrastructure to optimize investment efficiency and better serve customers. Network design and 5G technology allow carriers to cooperate and share 5G telecommunications equipment.

"I think that it is not easy to collaborate on sharing 5G equipment, but today's technology allows us to do it. Therefore, carriers can work together to take another step in cooperation in sharing 5G equipment in order to reduce investment costs and jointly develop 5G networks quickly, not just sharing base stations," VNPTs Liem said.

Thai Khang
The structure of Vietnam's rice for exports has shifted towards increasing the proportion of high-value-added rice varieties and reducing the rate of low-grade rice products.

Since July 2019, LTP Import Export B.V Company has exported Vietnams rice varieties that have won international awards in the European Union (EU). Although rice is not a staple food for EU residents, European consumers have been accustomed to Thai fragrant rice for 30 years. For the past two years, they have learned more about Vietnamese fragrant rice.

However, Pham Van Hien, Director of LTP Import Export B.V Company, said that Vietnamese fragrant rice quality is not stable.

Speaking at a conference, Hien said: "I hope the quality of Vietnamese rice for export remains stable, and not only good for the first few shipments. This causes people to be disappointed with the Vietnamese rice. Thai rice quality is guaranteed to be the same in quality, so importers are willing to pay high prices for it. Cambodian rice has gained a firm position in Europe after ten years.

Vietnam ranks 5th globally in rice cultivation area and 3rd in rice exports. Vietnamese rice has been exported to over 150 countries and territories, and the country accounted for 10.48% of the global rice market share in the period 2017-2020. However, its export market mainly focuses on countries in the region (the Philippines, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore...) and faces competition from similar varieties of rice of Thailand, India and Cambodia.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam's rice production in the period of 2017 to H1/ 2021 met the needs of domestic consumption and export. The area for rice cultivation has gradually decreased, but the yield has been on the rise, so the rice output has been maintained at about 27-29 million tons of rice annually. Domestic rice consumption accounts for 77.99% of rice output.

Vietnams rice exports increased 1.18 times within four years (2017 - 2020). Rice export turnover rose from 2.633 billion USD in 2017 to 3.120 billion USD in 2020.

The structure of Vietnam's rice for exports has shifted towards increasing the proportion of high-value-added rice varieties and reducing the rate of low-grade rice products.

However, the Ministry of Industry and Trade admitted that the quality of exported rice is not high and stable. The proportion of rice products meeting VietGAP and GlobalGAP standards is still low, about 50%. Because of poor control on food hygiene and traceability, the quality of exported products is not high, making it difficult for Vietnamese rice to expand market share in markets with high technical barriers (USA, EU, Japan...). Compared with rice of the same type from Thailand, Vietnam's exported rice has lower quality and food safety.

The countrys scheme to restructure the rice industry to 2020, with a vision to 2030, set a goal of 20% of Vietnams export to have a rice logo and brand by 2020, but this goal was not achieved.

The annual agricultural outlook report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned: "India, Vietnam and Thailand will continue to lead the global rice trade, but Cambodia and Myanmar are expected to play an increasingly important role in global rice exports.

In particular, the report notes: The five largest rice exporters will lose market share to the less developed countries in Asia, especially Cambodia and Myanmar, as these countries are becoming increasingly more competitive in the international market.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade is developing the "Strategy to develop Vietnam's rice market for the period of 2021-2025 with a vision to 2035".

In this strategy, in addition to maintaining its position as one of the top three rice exporting countries in the world, besides India and Thailand, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is determined to raise the "quality" for Vietnamese rice, with the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) to be a passport for Vietnamese rice to penetrate deeper into this market. The fact that Vietnam's ST24 and ST25 rice varieties were honored as the world's best rice varieties in 2019, 2020 has brought many new customers to Vietnam.

The EVFTA that took effect from August 1, 2020 has opened the door to the EU for Vietnamese exports and rice in particular. For rice products, the EU commits to slash the tax rate to 0% after 3-5 years. Meanwhile, the EU's two major rice suppliers for many years, Cambodia and Myanmar, are subject to tax rates until the end of 2021, namely 175 Euro/ton (in 2019); 150 Euro/ton (in 2020) and 125 Euro/ton (in 2021).

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has set a target that by 2035, the rate of low- and medium-grade white rice will account for no more than 10%; high-grade white rice for about 22%; fragrant rice, japonica rice, specialty rice for about 45%; sticky rice for about 15%; and rice products with high added value such as nutritious rice, organic rice, rice flour, rice-processed products, rice bran and some other rice by-products for about 8%.

The Ministry also aims to gradually reduce the amount of exported commodity rice but maintain stability and increase rice export turnover; and increase the proportion of directly exported rice to about 60% of export turnover.

Luong Bang
A programme initiated by Google in association with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) of Vietnam has provided 650,000 people with digital skills training, 30 percent higher than the plan.

At an event reviewing the implementation of the programme held on November 3, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Sinh Nhat Tan said the success of the programme serves as a basis for more programmes for community in the future which facilitate digital transformation and e-commerce, contribute to faster recovery of the Vietnamese economy and create momentum for development in upcoming years.

Stephanie Davis, Google's Vice President for Southeast Asia, said Google aims to support all Vietnamese through free digital skills courses.

Vietnam holds enormous potential in the digital revolution and Google is committed to joining hands with the MoIT, associations, business community, startups and young talents of the country, Davis affirmed.

Participants of the programme.

The programme was launched in Vietnam from 2018 with free training courses held in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and Can Tho.

From July 2019, through the collaboration with the MoIT, it was extended with more teaching activities, including mobile class at remote areas and symposiums on related themes. It went fully online starting April last year due to the negative impacts of COVID-19.

The programme include lessons designed by experts in the fields of digital marketing, e-commerce, virtual presence and business management skills.

At the event, Google and the MoIT officially launched a subsequent training programme, comprising 14 categories and 28 online courses on the digital platform./.

Source: VNA
Smartmatic, a voting technology company, has joined Dominion Voting Systems in suing far-right pro-Trump news media outlets Newsmax and One America News. They are accused of spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 U.S. presidential election and claim their voting machines were to blame for former President Donald J. Trumps loss.

In two separate lawsuits filed on Wednesday, November 3. 2021, Smartmatic accused OAN and Newsmax of knowingly spreading false claims that the voting technology company rigged the election against then-President Donald Trump. A claim that neither company had any proof occurred.

Further like Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic insists in its court filings that both networks doubled down on the false claims they knew they had no evidence of as part of an effort to win over Trump supporters dissatisfied with Fox News Networks election coverage to increase each networks advertising revenues.

OAN is a privately owned company based in San Diego. Its lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

The case against Newsmax, a privately held company headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, was filed in state court in Delaware, where the company is incorporated.

A Newsmax spokesperson said in a statement regarding the new lawsuit by Smartmatic...

While Newsmax has yet to receive or review the Smartmatic filing, Newsmax reported accurately on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the President, his advisors, and members of Congress, as well as reporting on Smartmatics claims in its defense. Smartmatics action against Newsmax today is a clear attempt to squelch the rights of a free press.

Newsmaxs spokespersons statement and the claim are absurd on its face. News organizations have the right to report the news as guaranteed by the U.S. 1st Amendment to the Constitution, but all news must be based on facts and not conspiracies; Newsmax and OAN must prove they did extensive research and had evidence to support the claims they made. Suppose Dominion and Smartmatic can confirm that one or both right-wing news companies made the claims knowing they were not true and even continued to make the bogus claims after they were informed they were not true. In that case, both news organizations could wind up with judgments against them of literally billions in punitive and compensatory damages.

This lawsuit filed against Newsmax couldnt come at the worst time. The company is rumored to be attempting to raise $500 million from investors via a private placement. Being sued by Dominion was already a huge problem for Newsmax

Of the writing of this article, OAN has not responded to requests for comment from a multitude of news organizations.

Smartmatic has not made public how much money it demands from Newsmax and OAN but has claimed that these false election conspiracy theories have erased $2 billion in value from the company. Damages owed by each defendant will be determined at trial. They could amount to a multiple of the $2 billion loss in its valuation.

Smartmatic, U.S. headquarters is located in Boca Raton, Florida, already filed suit in February against New York-based Fox News, its parent Fox Corp, and several Fox hosts in a New York state court, alleging they falsely accused the company of helping rig the U.S. presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

In that lawsuit, Smartmatic also named two lawyers aligned with Trumps Republican re-election campaign, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who pushed the election-rigging conspiracy theory, as defendants. Smartmatic is suing for a whopping $2.7 billion in compensatory damages. It could be awarded much more if a jury awards them punitive damages.

Fox News and its co-defendants have asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing their commentary on Smartmatic was free speech protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, most legal analysts dont believe their motion for dismissal will be granted. Fox, Newsmax, and OAN have all taken in tens of millions of dollars in advertising from Mike Lindells MyPillow company and broadcast Lindells unproven allegations against Smartmatic and Dominion.

In fact, in Smartmatics lawsuit against OAN, the plaintiff (Smartmatic) mentions MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell 84 times and includes images from his documentaries.

Evidence of just how hard its going to be for Newsmax to obtain a dismissal of these lawsuits was evidenced when Dominion scored an early victory in August when a judge allowed its defamation claims against Powell, Giuliani, and Lindell to advance toward trial.

This could be a disaster for Newsmax, given these lawsuits could dissuade investors from investing the hundreds of millions of dollars its looking to raise.

Dominion sues Newsmax, OAN and founder of Overstock.com over false election claims
The Royal Air Force Museums ultra-rare Vickers Wellington T.Mk.X (MF628) is nearing the conclusion of its decade-long refurbishment at the organizations Michael Beetham Conservation Center in Cosford, with the fuselage now beginning to receive its first strips of Irish linen covering in the paint booth.

MF628 arrived at RAF Museum Cosford in July, 2010. The primary reason for taking the aircraft off display at the museums London campus was that the Wellingtons fabric covering was showing significant signs of deterioration and needed replacing  not an insubstantial task given the airframes significant bulk. However, given this opportunity to get into the airframes harder-to-reach areas, Museum personnel and volunteers have comprehensively gone through the entire airframe to sympathetically address various conservation issues, including corrosion suppression. This should hopefully see MF628 in a fit state of preservation for the next several decades, and hopefully longer.

Regarding MF628s future, the Conservation Centers manager, Darren Priday, mentioned in an interview this summer that he expected to see the Wellington go on display within a Bomber Command exhibit in Hangar 3 at RAF Museum Cosford, rather than returning to London. The museum is also keen to find a way to show off the airframes fascinating and unusual geodesic structure (designed by the legendary Barnes Wallis of Dambusters fame) that is normally hidden from view beneath the fabric covering. They are considering whether to leave the tail turret off the aircraft, thus allowing visitors to see far into the fuselage (discretely lit with LED bulbs) through the opening it would provide. Its an interesting concept, and might make for an effective display, especially if the tail turret is placed beside the exhibit, that way enabling its own features to be highlighted individually.

While the video below is from 2019, Darren Priday takes the viewers around the Michael Beetham Conservation Facility to give an overall impression of the facility and its capabilities. The Wellington features towards the end, but there is a great description of the Handley Page Hampden under restoration under the same roof, along with a useful depiction of the re-fabricing process, then underway on the RAF Museums Westland Lysander.

Wellington MF628 is one of just two complete examples, of more than 11,000 produced, in preservation at present. Her initial flight took place on May 9th, 1944, although she never served in combat. As her type designation suggests, MF628 served in the training role during her RAF career, which extended well after WWII had ended. In addition to her normal duties, MF628 also participated in a number of motion pictures, including Malta Story (1952) where she was a picture vehicle, and also The Dambusters (1954) in which her primary role included serving as the camera ship for many of the aerial sequences. Somehow, unlike almost every other WWII RAF bomber, MF628 avoided the scrap mans axe long enough to make it into preservation. She joined the nascent RAF Museum in 1957. For a more complete description of MF628s history, please click HERE.

The worlds only other complete Wellington within a museum is Mk.IA N2980, a combat-veteran airframe lifted from its crash site in Loch Ness near Inverness, Scotland during the 1980s, and restored for display at the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey. That being said, there are substantial remains from a half dozen other airframes which might one day reconstitute into fully-restored exhibits. Regardless, it will be marvelous to have MF628 back on display again in the not too distant future!
SPACE

Judge rules against Blue Origin in lunar lander lawsuit

A federal judge has ruled against Blue Origin in the companys lawsuit over NASAs selection of SpaceX for a $2.9 billion contract to build the next-generation lunar lander.

That full ruling is sealed, but a one-page filing posted Thursday said Judge Richard A. Hertling granted the federal governments motion to dismiss the Blue Origin lawsuit filed in August. Proposed redactions from Blue Origin and NASA are due to Hertling by Nov. 18 for a public version of his ruling.

What the ruling does do is free up NASA and SpaceX to proceed on the Human Lander System program awarded in April, but subject to a stop-work order since the protest cycle began subsequent to that.

Jeff Bezos Blue Origin went to the court with its protest after the Government Accountability Office in July rejected the challenges filed by that company and Dynetics.

More specific to Blue Origin, the company claimed NASA disregarded key flight safety requirements during the source selection process.

All three companies vying for the contract were required to include a flight readiness review before launching each element of the lander systems and SpaceX did not, Blue Origin argued.

But GAOs response said there was no evidence that anyone in the competition would have adjusted their proposals if they knew NASA would wave that requirement for flight readiness reviews.

GAO also rejected Blue Origins contentions over the pricing aspects and how NASA negotiated that element with SpaceX. The agency was both within its rights to conduct the negotiations and opt for a single winner over more than one, GAO said.

Elon Musk's SpaceX will provide its Starship rocket to deliver astronauts to the moon in support of NASAs Artemis missions, which seek to have humans on the lunar surface by 2024.

In a Twitter post Thursday, Bezos indicated Blue Origin will not appeal the ruling. No word on whether his $2 billion subsidy offer to NASA is still up for consideration.

Not the decision we wanted, but we respect the courts judgment, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract. pic.twitter.com/BeXc4A8YaW  Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 4, 2021

Blue Origin's full statement to WT in response to the ruling

Our lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims highlighted the important safety issues with the Human Landing System procurement process that must still be addressed.

Returning astronauts safely to the Moon through NASAs public-private partnership model requires an unprejudiced procurement process alongside sound policy that incorporates redundant systems and promotes competition.

Blue Origin remains deeply committed to the success of the Artemis program, and we have a broad base of activity on multiple contracts with NASA to achieve the United States goal to return to the Moon to stay.

We are fully engaged with NASA to mature sustainable lander designs, conduct a wide variety of technology risk reductions, and provide Commercial Lunar Payload Services.

We are also under contract with NASA to develop in-situ resource utilization technology, lunar space robotics, and lunar landing sensor collaboration including testing on New Shepard.

We look forward to hearing from NASA on next steps in the HLS procurement process.
COMPANIES

Who won 2021's edition of the GovCon awards?

The Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce and Professional Services Council have announced this year's class of companies and executives to receive the Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards.

Unlike last year due to COVID-19, there was a gala to present the awards in Tysons, Virginia.

Per custom, four GovCon companies and three executives were recognized for their success in the market, plus contributions to employees and the wider community.

This was the 19th annual edition of the awards, which also included the induction of Anne Altman into the Greater Washington Government Contractor Hall of Fame. She is currently chair of Siemens Government Technologies board of directors and a former leader of IBMs federal business, among other roles in her long public sector career.

Winners and categories of the industry awardees are below.

Contractors of the Year

Accenture Federal Services -- greater than $300 million

REI Systems -- between $75 and $300 million

Metron -- between $25 and $75 million

Kreative Technologies -- up to $25 million

Executive of the Year

Nazzic Keene, CEO of Science Applications International Corp. -- greater than $300 million

Kendall Holbrook, Dev Technology Group -- between $75 and $300 million

Ki Ho Kang -- up to $75 million
Lockheed takes $250M sole source special forces win

Lockheed Martin has won a $250 million contract from the Special Operations Command for engineering and integration support.

The company faced no competition for the sole source contract for integrated mission systems engineering and integration support.

The government generally posts justification documents for sole source contracts. But searches on the contracts solicitation number via Google, Sam.gov and market research data bases such as Deltek and GovTribe came up empty.

Lockheed will be providing the Special Forces Command with a system-of-systems aircraft computer interface which will allow multiple systems to communicate more efficiently.

The contract has a five-year base and three one-year options.
What about travel during the pandemic?

Before you make travel plans, be sure to double-check any rules pertaining to your destination and mode of transportation. Many states, cities and countries have travel restrictions or guidelines in place that could affect your trip. AARP has a list of coronavirus restrictions in every state. Plus, the CDC has country-specific travel recommendations based on COVID-19 risk levels.

The CDC says both vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers should still follow these recommendations for traveling safely:

Wear a mask over your nose and mouth. Masks are required on planes, buses, trains and other forms of public transportation, and also in U.S. transportation hubs such as airports and stations.





Keep a safe distance from others and avoid crowds. 





Wash your hands often or use hand sanitizer.

Fully vaccinated travelers are less likely to get and spread COVID-19 health officials say, but they should still be on alert. They can leave the country without getting a COVID-19 test unless their destination requires it, and they do not need to self-quarantine after returning to the U.S. unless its required by a local jurisdiction.

However, vaccinated people are still required to have a negative COVID-19 test result before they board an international flight in order to return to the U.S., the CDC says, and they should take a COVID-19 test three to five days after returning. People are fully vaccinated two weeks after they receive their second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you are unvaccinated: The CDC recommends delaying travel until you are fully vaccinated because travel increases your chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. Testing can help you travel more safely, the CDC says. The CDC recommends getting tested with a viral test one to three days before your trip. Keep a copy of your test results with you during travel; you may be asked for them.

International travel is strongly discouraged for unvaccinated individuals. Those who must travel should have a negative COVID-19 viral test result no more than three days before leaving the country, and they are required to have a negative COVID-19 viral test result no more than three days before returning to the U.S.

Testing and quarantining are also advised upon return. AARP has information about specific travel advisories, and airline change fees, as well as tips on how to stay safe when you travel.
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Go ahead, have a good cry. Far from a sign of weakness or source of shame, psychologists say giving in to your tears is an important coping mechanism and a form of mental hygiene.

Crying can be an important way to communicate and connect with others, says Daniel Coletti, a clinical psychologist at Northwell Healths Division of General Internal Medicine in Great Neck, New York.

Here, a few more specific reasons to let tears flow.

1. Youll actually feel better afterward

Shannon ONeill, a psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at Mount Sinai in New York, says crying is a sign that you need to pay attention to something your body is reacting to. Doing that, she says, allows you to acknowledge emotions you may or may not have fully recognized.

Leo Newhouse, senior social worker in neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, similarly says that once you allow yourself to read the body's signal that something is significantly bothering you, you're better able to accept what you're feeling and work toward a sense of calm.

Crying can also make you feel better in the short term, thanks to how it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, a kind of internal regulator of how our body spends energy. The PNS is often referred to as the rest and digest state. Once crying activates the PNS, youll begin to feel calm, ONeill says.

Psychologists also say that being unable to cry can be its own problem. Natalie Dattilo, director of psychology in the department of psychiatry at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, says being blocked or numb this way can indicate youre not in touch with your emotions or, possibly, clinically depressed.

2. Youll lessen your stress

Along with activating the parasympathetic nervous system, crying kicks off other physiological responses that can improve your well-being. When youre under pressure, Dattilo says, your body releases the hormone cortisol. Allowed to build up over time, cortisol can become physically harmful. But after youve had that cry, cortisol levels decrease and your body releases other hormones that can act as a sedative, creating a sense of calm.

Just before you begin to cry, your respiration and heartbeat increases and then your body begins to calm, says Lauren Bylsma, assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 
Ian Unterman has been on numerous sets over the course of his career.

Yet, the time he spent on the set of the Hulu series Dopesick are moments he is going to treasure forever.

Its unreal, he says of the experience. Being part of the cast was amazing. We are also diving into an epidemic that still rages in the country.

Dopesick examines how one company triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history.

The series takes viewers to the epicenter of Americas struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Big Pharma, to a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

It tells the story from several angles: doctors and patients using the drug, prosecutors and law enforcement trying to hold OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma accountable, and the drug maker itself. The series offers an authentic portrayal of the small, working-class, predominantly white communities ravaged by the opioid crisis.

The limited series is inspired by the New York Times bestselling book by Beth Macy.

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The eight-episode series stars Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Will Poulter, John Hoogenakker, Kaitlyn Dever and Rosario Dawson. Guest stars include Phillipa Soo and Jake McDorman.

It is written by Danny Strong and directed by Barry Levinson.

Unterman plays Jonathan Sackler, brother of Richard Sackler, played by Stuhlbarg, the president and CEO of Purdue Pharma. Their deceptive marketing became the driving force behind the stratospheric rise of OxyContin, which led to the explosion of the opioid epidemic.

When Unterman auditioned for the series, he wasnt familiar with the book.

Though the series is inspired by the book, he got to know the material and, when he found out that Strong and Stuhlbarg were involved, he wanted the role.

I spent five summers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (in Massachusetts) and I saw Michael in a show there. It was a performance that had a profound impact on me. Then, I get this role years later and have the opportunity to play his brother.

In preparing for the role, Unterman researched anything he could find on Jonathan Sackler.

I was looking for any scraps that I could find, he says. It appears that everything has been scrubbed from the internet. He actually passed away in July 2020. He was 68. The only thing I could find was two photographs and one bit of video where hes asking a question at a symposium and his back is to the camera.

This is where Unterman had a little more range for the character.

In terms of trying to replicate his look, we did it, he says. I even had to shave my head for the role.

Unterman describes his character as a touchstone for his brother, Richard.

Jonathan does enable his brother, but hes there to be that sounding board, he says. Hes very intense from the sidelines and is there to offer advice to his brother.

As Untermans profile continues to rise in the film industry, he often looks at the writing and who is involved in a production.

What Ive always looked for is collaborators that Im excited to work with, he says. I feel like working with people I like is the No. 1 thing. Then, I look at characters that I can start to get into and tip over the cart a little bit. I want to subvert the expectations of how it lives on the page.

Streaming now

Dopesick tells the story of the epicenter of Americas struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Big Pharma, to a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the Drug Enforcement Agency. It is streaming on Hulu.
I spent the first half of 2020 in Prague, arriving just weeks before the coronavirus changed our lives. This gave me a unique opportunity to experience how well the Czech Republic responded to the pandemic, while simultaneously following from afar just how differently things were going back home.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in addition to constant coverage of the viruss accelerating spread, U.S. news organizations offered frequent, pointed criticism of the Trump administrations handling of the pandemic. What did surprise me, though, was the similar criticism I started seeing in the European press. Major news outlets in the Big Three nations  the U.K., France and Germany, our most important European allies  offered substantial coverage of American domestic COVID-19 policy and its impact in the U.S. Whats more, in addition to reporting on U.S. hot spots, caseloads and death rates, the Big Threes papers openly and regularly criticized the U.S. presidents response to the crisis. They went beyond critiques of official policies and statements, offering blunt assessments of the presidents fitness for office, questioning his character and his ability to handle a national health crisis, and analyzing the political motivations driving his administrations response. Finally, these critiques were published not only in opinion columns, but also in papers U.S. or International or Health sections. That is to say, criticism of another countrys president  specifically, an allys president  had become something that could count as news.

In order to make sense of what I was seeing, I needed first to ask and answer a number of other questions:

 Have European media criticized prior U.S. presidents? If so, did they disparage only foreign policy, or did they also critique U.S.-internal issues? Was their focus on politics, or did they also get personal?

 Has cross-Atlantic press criticism gone both ways? In other words, have U.S. papers critiqued the leaders of other democratic nations, including our allies? Are such criticisms offered as opinion or news? Do they critique foreign leaders in terms of personality or policy?

 How are the Big Three countries media covering our new president? How does their 2021 Biden reporting compare to their 2020 Trump coverage? Is it personal or policy-focused? Do Biden critiques get into our internal developments, such as fissures within our major political parties, or only those affecting Europe, as well, such as climate change, the global economy and our military withdrawal from Afghanistan?

These questions have direct relevance to our daily lives as New Mexicans and as Americans. American citizens and the American press, after all, have a long, proud, constitutionally protected tradition of publicly criticizing our own elected officials, a tradition on full display during Trumps presidency  as well as during every presidency that preceded his. Most European democracies, including our allies, have similar traditions. At the same time, more than a few of the post-Communist nations of Central Europe, which eagerly embraced democracy after the fall of the Iron Curtain, have been rapidly returning to their old ways. In places such as Hungary and Poland, restrictions on media freedoms and clampdowns on journalists  especially those who publicly criticize their own countries leaders  are among the most visible and troubling results of this return to authoritarianism.

So, as disturbing as it can be to see elements of my own country, our government and its elected officials being ravaged in the press  here and abroad, in news articles, as well as opinion columns  its a crucial sign of Americas and our allies continuing commitment to free expression. And, as jarring as it may be to see American journalists castigating those allies in Western Europe, this practice must be understood in the same light.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Democrat Dayan Hochman-Vigil and Republican Bill Rehm represent adjacent districts in the state House stretching from the foothills of Albuquerque to the North Valley.

But they live just 3 miles apart and would be paired in the same district under every House map recommended by the Citizen Redistricting Committee.

It could force the two incumbents into an unusual decision  move, retire or run against each other next year to keep a seat in the House.

A total of 19 incumbents face similar pairings in at least one plan recommended by the citizen committee, illustrating a key challenge awaiting New Mexico lawmakers set to meet in a special session next month.

The Legislature is free to reject the recommended maps or adjust them to untangle potential pairings. But they are an added complication as lawmakers and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham draft new maps to reflect population changes over the past decade.

The toughest choices may involve Democratic Sens. Katy Duhigg and Bill ONeill of Albuquerque, Republican Sens. William Burt and Ron Griggs of Alamogordo, and Hochman-Vigil and Rehm  all of whom are paired in every suggested plan. The committee proposed three maps each for the state House of Representatives and state Senate.

Hochman-Vigil, an attorney, said she wasnt surprised to end up in a proposed district with a fellow legislator. It never made much sense, she said, for District 15 to be rooted in the North Valley, but hook past Interstate 25 to pick up neighborhoods farther east.

I think the most important thing is making sure the communities of interest are represented in a district that make sense for those communities, Hochman-Vigil said in an interview.

But Rehm, a retired sheriffs captain, said the proposals stand to weaken the legislative influence of his constituents in Northeast Albuquerque. As the only Albuquerque Republican left in the state House, he said, he is likely to be targeted by Democrats in the majority.

To go ahead and do this is just unbelievable, Rehm said of the potential pairing.

ONeill, who has represented a North Valley-based seat in the Senate since 2013, said he was disappointed to hear that all three plans would put him in the same district as Duhigg. He supports independent redistricting, he said, but pairing the same incumbents in every proposal isnt helpful.

The point is to give us a choice, he said. Thats not exactly a choice, is it?

The proposed maps were adopted by a redistricting committee designed to limit political influence over the new boundaries.

The seven-person panel  led by retired Supreme Court Justice Edward Chavez  was prohibited by law from considering partisan data as it evaluated maps.

Its membership, however, included some politicians. The seven-person panel included two former Democratic legislators, a former chairman of the state Republican Party and a former Republican candidate for the Legislature. The other two members were independents  a high school teacher and a demographer.

Six of the seven members live in Albuquerque.

By law, the committee was instructed to prioritize keeping communities of interest together, drawing compact districts and upholding traditional redistricting principles. Members could consider where incumbents live only in limited circumstances, and it was a lesser priority.

Legislators, however, will face no such limits when they meet in the special session expected to begin Dec. 6.

For the first time in 30 years, Democrats will control both legislative chambers and the Governors Office the year after a census. They are set to adopt maps for congressional and legislative seats, in addition to the Public Education Commission.

The maps that lawmakers will start with appear to match the political makeup of the state as a whole, according to independent analysis.

In a report sent to the Legislature, David Cottrell, a University of Georgia professor hired to evaluate the maps, said he found little evidence to suggest that the maps are unexpectedly unfair.

Based on voting patterns in statewide elections from 2012 to 2020, he said, the maps can be expected to produce:

 44 to 47 Democrats in the 70-person state House, compared to 45 now.

 27 or 28 Democrats in the state Senate, compared to 27 now.

 Two or three Democrats in the U.S. House, compared to two now.

A separate evaluation by the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project awarded an A for partisan fairness to every legislative map adopted by the citizen committee. It didnt grade the congressional concepts.

Republican Sens. Burt and Griggs live about 6 miles apart in Alamogordo and would share a district in all three proposed maps for the Senate.

Burts current district stretches north and then east, ending by Roswell. Griggs seat goes the opposite direction, toward Dona Ana County.

A few simple adjustments, Griggs said, would make it possible for both senators to maintain their separate districts.

I think their guidance is fantastic, Griggs said of the committee recommendations, but Id imagine well see some tweaking of the maps.

Burt said the recommended maps are a disappointment. Forcing him and Griggs into the same district, he said, would muffle the legislative voice of Otero County, an area home to Holloman Air Force Base, White Sands, mountain communities and the Mescalero Apache Reservation.

Just because were not in the upper Rio Grande valley, life out here in rural New Mexico is just as important and has just as many problems as it does in Bernalillo or any other county, quite frankly, Burt said. Its important that we, as rural senators or representatives, dont lose that kind of representation.

The challenge will go well beyond Alamogordo and Albuquerque. Among the legislators who are paired in at least two plans are Senate Minority Leader Greg Baca of Belen and Sen. Joshua Sanchez of Bosque; Sens. David Gallegos of Eunice and Gay Kernan of Hobbs; and House Minority Whip Rod Montoya of Farmington and Rep. James Strickler of Farmington  all of whom are Republicans.

Roswell Rep. Phelps Anderson, a former Republican who has no party affiliation, would also be paired in multiple plans. He said Wednesday that growth in southeastern New Mexico will clearly require changes to districts in the region, but that he hasnt decided yet whether to run again.

In past redistricting rounds, lawmakers have generally sought to avoid pairing incumbents as much as possible. In 2011, incumbent GOP Reps. Dennis Kintigh and Bob Wooley were paired after two Roswell-area districts were consolidated. Wooley went on to win the 2012 primary and that years general election.
MEXICO CITY  The U.S. ambassador to Mexico said Wednesday that his country has serious concerns about the Mexican governments attempts to limit competition in the electrical power sector.

Ambassador Ken Salazar said he met with Mexican officials to discuss a proposed constitutional change to restrict the market share of private power generators and favor Mexicos state-owned utility company.

Salazar wrote in his Twitter account that I expressed the serious concerns of the USA, adding that we agreed to continue the dialogue in the coming days.

Previously, a group of U.S. legislators from Texas had voiced their own concerns over President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors proposal, which faces an uphill battle in the Mexican Congress.

In a letter to Salazar in October, about 20 Texas congressmen and senators said Lopez Obradors proposal would discriminate against American energy producers.

The bill that Lopez Obrador submitted in October would cancel contracts under which 34 private plants sell power into the national grid. The plan would also declare illegal an additional 239 private plants that sell energy directly to corporate clients in Mexico. Almost all of those plants are run with renewable energy sources or natural gas.

The measure also would cancel many long-term energy supply contracts and clean-energy preferential buying programs, often affecting foreign companies.

It puts private natural gas plants almost last in line  ahead of only government coal-fired plants  for rights to sell electricity into the grid, despite the fact they produce power about 24% more cheaply. Government-run plants that burn dirty fuel oil would have preference over private wind and solar plants.

The plan guarantees the government electrical utility a market share of at least 54%, even though U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade pact prohibits favoring local or government businesses.

The letter from the U.S. lawmakers from Texas said that the (Mexican) governments proposed constitutional reforms would increase state control of the electricity industry and severely limit private investment. These steps, among others, harm our critical trading partnership with Mexico and potentially violate key tenets of the USMCA.

Mexicos government says it is seeking to cooperate with the United States on renewable energy. Yet many of the wind and solar electrical plants that Lopez Obrador wants to limit were built by U.S. or Spanish firms.

Lopez Obrador, a native of the oil-producing Gulf coast state of Tabasco, has made his main push in promoting fossil fuels. His administration is focused on building or acquiring new oil refinery capacity.

Experts say Lopez Obradors polices also could endanger Mexicos compliance with existing carbon reduction commitments. The president contends that increased hydroelectric capacity will allow Mexico to meet those goals.
DENVER  Colorado voters appear headed to rejecting a marijuana sales tax hike to fund out-of-school programs, such as tutoring, technical skill training, mental health counseling and enrichment programs in the arts.

That question was one of several posed to voters around the state on ballot initiatives this year that also include a measure that would limit how many unrelated adults can live together in Denver and another that would limit governors power to spend funds from outside sources such as the federal government.

A look at a few of the most interesting ballot initiatives:

MARIJUANA SALES TAX INCREASE

The measure to increase the states retail marijuana sales tax rate from 15% to 20% over the next three years was losing according to unofficial results provided by the Colorado secretary of state on Wednesday.

The measure sought to create a governor-appointed board to administer the program, which aims to provide educational and enrichment opportunities with after-school programs and tutoring. It would prioritize eligible Colorado children 5 to 17 years old whose families are at or below the poverty line.

Proponents of the initiative said it was timely and necessary due to the educational gaps worsened by the pandemic and even more so for students of color, those from low-income families and students with special needs.

The group No on Prop 119 said it would take already-limited funds away from public schools and it would create a private-run board with no oversight or accountability with out-of-state interests.

ROOMMATE LIMIT

A Denver ballot initiative that sought to repeal an increase in the number of unrelated adults who can live together was losing by a large margin in unofficial results from the city clerk from late Tuesday. At issue is an amendment, passed by the city council, which increased the number of unrelated adults who can live together. The amendment changed the citys zoning code to allow up to five unrelated adults to live together in a single home rather than the current limit of two. The amendment also allowed residential care facilities such as halfway houses for substance abuse programs to operate in more parts of Denver.

Groups like the grassroots campaign Safe and Sound Denver raised concerns that an increase in roommates and residential care homes would negatively impact the quality of life in neighborhoods, bringing more congestion, overcrowded parking and more trash. Keep Denver from becoming like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, the campaigns website states.

But those who opposed the repeal argued that the amendment takes away affordable housing options and makes it harder to live in Denver, one of the most expensive booming cities with a continuously increasing population over the last decade.

GOVERNORS POWER TO SPEND FEDERAL FUNDS

Although some ballots were still being counted, a constitutional amendment that would require legislative approval for the state to spend money received from outside sources, such as the federal government or legal settlements, appeared to have been defeated. Only about about 44% of the votes counted so far were in favor of the measure. It needs at least 55% support because it would add an amendment to the states constitution.

A conservative group sponsored the initiative after Democratic Gov. Jared Polis used his executive powers to distribute nearly $1.7 billion of federal COVID-19 relief funds in May 2020.

Michael Fields, executive director of Colorado Rising Action, an organization promoting conservative policies, spearheaded the measure, arguing that Polis allocation of federal pandemic funds were not transparent. In a Colorado Politics opinion piece, Fields calls for an elimination of executive branch slush funds.

However, opponents argued that limiting the appropriation of federal money puts more work on the part-time Legislature and creates more bureaucracy, which could delay the states spending in an emergency such as a pandemic.

HOMELESS CAMPS

A Denver ballot initiative that sought to allow residents to sue the city for a slow response to homeless encampment cleanups was losing in unofficial results as of Tuesday night.

The measure said that people would be able to sue the city if officials dont clean up an encampment within 72 hours of a complaint. However, a judge ruled Sunday that time limit was unlawful.

Given the ruling, the city said the part of the measure that would have allowed residents to sue wouldnt be enforced if it passed, said Jacqlin Davis, a spokesperson for the city attorneys office.

The remaining part of the ballot question would create up to four city-funded camping locations authorized on public property with required running water, restrooms and lighting. But local homelessness advocates say four sanctioned sites still isnt enough to address the scale of the problem.
TEHRAN, Iran  Ruhollah Parazideh, a wiry 38-year-old with a thick mustache and hair flecked with gray, was desperate for a job. The father of three in southern Iran walked into a local office of a foundation that helps war veterans and their families, pleading for assistance.

Local media reported that Parazideh told officials he would throw himself off their roof if they couldnt help. They tried to reason with him, promising a meager loan, but he left unsatisfied.

He soon returned to the gates of the building, poured gasoline over himself, and put a lit match to his neck. He died from his burns two days later, on Oct. 21.

Parazidehs suicide in the city of Yasuj shocked many in Iran, and not just because he was the son of Golmohammad Parazideh, a prominent provincial hero of the countrys 1980-88 war with Iraq that left hundreds of thousands dead.

It put a spotlight on the rising public fury and frustration as Irans economy sinks, unemployment soars and the price of food skyrockets.

His death occurred outside the local office of the Foundation for Martyrs and War-Disabled People, a wealthy and powerful government agency that helps the families of those killed and wounded in Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent wars.

I was shocked when I heard the news, said Mina Ahmadi, a student at Beheshti University north of Tehran. I thought that the families of (war) victims enjoyed generous support from the government.

Iran valorizes its war dead from the conflict with Iraq, known in Tehran as the Sacred Defense, and the foundation plays a big role in that. After the revolution installed the clerically run system, the foundation began providing pensions, loans, housing, education and even some high-ranking government jobs.

Following Parazidehs suicide, the foundation fired two of its top provincial officials and demanded the dismissal of the governors veteran affairs adviser as well as a social worker, lambasting their failure to send the distressed man to a medical facility or others for help, local media reported.

The fallout reached the highest levels of government. Ayatollah Sharfeddin Malakhosseini, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the case a warning that officials should get rid of unemployment, poverty and the disruption of social ties.

In 2014, parliament launched an investigation into one of the main banks affiliated with the foundation for allegedly embezzling $5 million. Its findings were never revealed.

The foundation is known to funnel financial support to Islamic militant organizations in the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza, leading the U.S. to sanction it in 2007 for supporting terrorism.

Parazidehs suicide was one of several in recent years that appear driven by economic hardships.

Self-immolations killed at least two other veterans and injured the wife of a disabled veteran outside branches of the foundation in Tehran, Kermanshah and Qom in recent years.

As the coronavirus pandemic wreaked economic havoc, suicides in Iran increased by over 4%, according to a government study cited by the reformist daily Etemad.

For many in the Middle East, the act of self-immolation  the protest used by a fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia that became a catalyst for the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings  evokes broader discontent with economic woes and the lack of opportunity.

I dont know where we are headed because of poverty, said Reza Hashemi, a literature teacher at a Tehran high school.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew America from Tehrans landmark nuclear agreement with world powers and brought back sanctions on Iran, pummeling an oil-dependent economy already hobbled by inefficiencies. The pandemic has aggravated the economic despair. About 1 million Iranians have lost their jobs, and unemployment has climbed over 10%  a rate that is nearly twice as big among youths.

Capital flight has soared to $30 billion, chasing away foreign investors.

Negotiations to revive the atomic accord stalled in the five months since hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi took office, allowing Tehran to press ahead with its nuclear program. On Wednesday, the European Union announced that talks between world powers and Iran on reviving the deal would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna. The announcement stoked modest hopes that the Biden administration can resuscitate the accord.

Its impossible to hide peoples discontent with the economy, said Mohammad Qassim Osmani, an official at the Audit Organization Services, a government watchdog. The structure of the country is faulty and sick. We need an economic revolution.

Irans currency, the rial, has shriveled to less than 50% of its value since 2018. Wages havent grown to make up the loss, and the Labor Ministry reported that over a third of the population lives in extreme poverty.

About 40 million people in the country need immediate and instant help, said lawmaker Hamid Reza Hajbabaei, the head of the parliamentary budget committee, in a televised debate last week  referring to nearly half the population.

The deepening poverty goes beyond just numbers, becoming a visible part of daily life. On Tehrans streets, more people are seen searching through garbage for something able to be sold. Children sell trinkets and tissues. Panhandlers beg for change at most intersections  a rare sight a decade ago.

Petty theft has surged, testing the already-tough justice system. Last week, a Tehran court sentenced a 45-year-old father of three to 10 months in prison and 40 lashes for pocketing a few packs of peanuts.

Gen. Ali Reza Lotfi, Tehrans chief police detective, blamed the economy for the spike in crime, noting that over half of all detainees last year were first-time offenders.

It has fallen to Raisi to handle the economic pressures. He frequently repeats campaign promises to create 1 million jobs through construction and tourism projects.

But many low-wage workers, bearing the brunt of Irans crisis, have no hope.

Last month, in another case that drew huge attention, a 32-year-old teacher facing crushing debt hanged himself in the southern city of Guerash after a bank rejecting his request for a $200 loan.

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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
KENOSHA, Wis.  The first man shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was hyperaggressive that night, threatened to kill Rittenhouse and later lunged for his rifle just before the 17-year-old fired, witnesses testified Thursday.

The testimony at Rittenhouses murder trial came from two witnesses who had been called to the stand by the prosecution but gave accounts often more favorable to the defense in the politically polarizing case.

Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with shooting three men, two of them fatally, in the summer of 2020. The aspiring police officer had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from violent protests that broke out over the police shooting of a Black man.

Richie McGinniss, who was recording events on a cellphone that night for the conservative website The Daily Caller, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot that night, was killed after chasing down Rittenhouse and making a lunge for the gun.

I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon, McGinniss said.

Ryan Balch, a former Army infantryman who carried an AR-style rifle that night and walked around patrolling the streets with Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum was hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner, including trying to set fires and throwing rocks.

Balch said he got between Rosenbaum and another man while Rosenbaum was trying to start a fire, and Rosenbaum got angry, shouting, If I catch any of you guys alone tonight Im going to f kill you!

Balch said that Rittenhouse was within earshot and that he believed the threat was aimed at both of them.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

The killing of Rosenbaum, 36, has emerged as one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video.

In an attempt to undo some of the damage done by his own witness, prosecutor Thomas Binger said McGinniss testimony about what Rosenbaum was intending to do was complete guesswork.

Isnt it? he asked.

Well, McGinniss replied, he said, `F you. And then he reached for the weapon.

But McGinniss also appeared to boost the prosecutions case when he said he had a sense that something bad could happen that night because of all the guns in the area. The prosecutor also elicited testimony from McGinniss and Balch that affirmed Rosenbaum was not armed that night and did not actually hurt anyone.

In his testimony, McGinniss said that as Rosenbaum lunged, Rittenhouse kind of dodged around with his weapon and then leveled the gun and fired.

Binger repeatedly tried to get McGinniss to say Rosenbaum was not lunging but falling when he was shot, as McGinniss said in a media interview days after the shooting.

But McGinniss said: He was lunging, falling. I would use those as synonymous terms in this situation because basically, you know, he threw his momentum towards the weapon.

As prosecutors played footage of Rosenbaum lying fatally wounded in a car lot, McGinniss struggled to keep his composure on the stand, rapidly inhaling and exhaling, then averting his eyes from a video monitor. The prosecutor apologized for playing it, saying he had to do it.

Across the room, Rittenhouse appeared to look away from his desktop monitor and cast his eyes downward as the video showed Rosenbaum bleeding from the head, groaning loudly.

The defense also has said that a shot fired by someone in the crowd moments before Rittenhouse began shooting made the young man believe he was under attack.

Kenosha Detective Martin Howard testified that video shows that a protester, Joshua Ziminski, had fired the first shot into the air. Howard said he used a stopwatch and timed five or six videos to determine that 2.5 seconds later, Rittenhouse began firing at Rosenbaum.

A wealth of video has been played in court that captured the tumultuous demonstration and the series of shootings.

The shooting of Rosenbaum set in motion the bloodshed that followed moments later. Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wisconsin, who was seen on bystander video hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard.

Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a protester from West Allis, Wisconsin, who had a gun in his hand as he stepped toward Rittenhouse.

Before testimony resumed Thursday, the judge dismissed a juror who had made a joke to a court security officer about the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the Black man whose wounding triggered the Kenosha protests. The juror, a retired man, declined to repeat the joke for the judge.

It is clear that the appearance of bias is present and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said.

Prosecutors also replayed widely seen video of the interview that The Daily Caller did with Rittenhouse before the shooting.

It began with Rittenhouse, a former police youth cadet, in front of a boarded-up building, where he said he and other men were there to protect this business, and part of my job is theres somebody hurt, Im running into harms way. He also said he was there to provide medical aid.

Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted in the politically and racially polarizing case that has stirred furious debate over self-defense, vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the racial unrest that erupted around the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other cases like it.

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Forliti reported from Minneapolis; Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press writer Dave Kolpack contributed from Fargo, North Dakota.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
The indigo bunting is a sparrow-sized bird at 5.5 inches in length. It is stocky with a short tail and conical bill.

The male indigo bunting lives up to its name. During the summer breeding season it is completely blue in color and hard to miss. Like all blue-colored birds, it lacks blue pigment. The color comes from microscopic structures in the feathers that refract and reflect blue light. This is similar to the particles in the atmosphere that make the sky appear blue.

The female and immature buntings are a cinnamon-brown color with a bit of blue in the wings and tail. This is an uncommon bird throughout New Mexico, but they can be seen during the summer breeding season and more often during spring and fall migration. The indigo bunting migrates at night, using stars to guide them. Earlier this fall I was lucky enough to spot several indigo buntings in the shrubs near water at the Ladd S. Gordon Waterfowl Complex.

This bunting prefers brushy, weedy areas along streams, abandoned farm fields and the edges of woodlands.

During migration, they can be seen in large flocks feeding in agricultural fields and grassy areas like lawns and parks. Indigo buntings feed near the ground on a variety of small seeds, berries, insects and spiders. In spring, when the hungry male arrives in its breeding territory, it will even eat buds and leaves from trees. It is possible to attract the indigo bunting by providing a thistle seed feeder or mealworms.

During nesting season, the male indigo bunting defends the nesting territory from predators. When disturbed, the male will raise its head feathers, giving it a crest-like appearance. In areas where the indigo and lazuli bunting ranges overlap, they will sometimes interbreed. The female indigo bunting chooses the nest site and builds the nest. The nest is usually near the ground in scrubby bushes or shrubs and well concealed.

The indigo bunting population has declined in the last 40 years, but are still fairly abundant in their range. Expanded agricultural practices and reforestation can negatively affect the population. In their wintering territory in parts of Mexico, it is not unusual for the male indigo buntings to be caged illegally and sold as pet birds because of their beautiful blue feathers.

Mary Schmauss is the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Albuquerque. A lifelong birder and author of For the Birds: A Month-by-Month Guide to Attracting Birds to your Backyard.
REDDING, Calif. - Man discarded a handgun in an area where officers attempted to pull over a stolen vehicle in Redding, according to the Redding Police Department.

At about 2:59 a.m. on Thursday, officers found a stolen Chevy Silverado near the area of Highway 44 and Victor Ave.

The vehicle initially yielded as officers pulled the vehicle over but the driver took off when officers were attempting to detain occupants of the vehicle.

Officer saw the rear passenger, 41-year-old Steven Quesada of San Francisco, manipulating an unknown object in the vehicle as it drove away.

Officers began a pursuit throughout eastern Redding which eventually ended in the area of Silver Bridge Rd. in the Palo Cedro area when the vehicle crashed into a tree.

An investigation revealed Quesada discarded a handgun in the area where 34-year-old Tyler McCormick of Anderon, the driver, initially yielded to officers.

McCormick had several active warrants within the Bay Area, including a federal warrant out to San Francisco FBI officer for a weapons charge.

Both Quesada and McCormick were treated at the local hospital before being booked in the Shasta County Jail.
CHICO, Calif.- Councilmember Sean Morgan has been issued a recall notice two days after Mayor Andrew Coolidge was issued one from a new group calling themselves "Chico Voters."

Thursday morning, while Morgan was teaching class, a Chico State student delivered him the Notice of Intention to Circulate Recall Petition.

I volunteered to deliver the notice to Councilman Morgan because I am shocked by his callous attitude towards the people of my hometown," the unnamed student said. "Moms, dads, students, workers we are all struggling and Morgans demeaning attitude is not the Chico way."

RELATED: Newly formed group "Chico Voters" criticize Chico mayor and push for recall

The grounds for the recall according to "Chico Voters" are a lack of care for law and order when things are not to his liking, being fiscally irresponsible, being unfair and inequitable when he chooses to be and being a person who "simply does and says what he wants, what he thinks his donors want."

"Chico Voters" further claim Morgan has ignored orders from a circuit judge, has voted for unconstitutional ordinances, has cost the City of Chico $50,000 for kicking a citizen out of chambers.

"Chico Voters" add Morgan is, "Irrespective of consequence. Irrespective of cost. Irrespective of the will of the people he was elected to serve. He is not a public servant. His irresponsible actions cost taxpayers. Recall and Replace Sean Morgan."

In order to get a recall question on the June ballot, around 3,000 signatures will need to be collected. "Chico Voters" said expects to gather enough signatures in time to avoid a special election and avoid associated costs.

Action News Now reached out to Vice Mayor Kasey Reynolds and she said that she has not received a recall notice and is unaware of any others being served one.
REDDING, Calif. - Police responded to a report of shots fired in the area of Polaris Way in Redding Thursday, according to the Redding Police Department.

Officers responded to 3627 Polaris Way around 3:20 a.m. Thursday morning.

Police said witnesses saw a man without a shirt on and in jeans shooting a weapon.

Witnesses tell Action News Now they heard about three to five shots but police have yet to determine how many shots were fired.

When officers arrived at the scene, a man in the house came out and told officers that someone else had fired shots and provided a false statement.

Police said they spoke with neighbors and determined the man, 24-year-old Ray Morrow, fired a shotgun.

It appears the Morrow was shooting into his vehicle as the vehicle has bullet strikes in and around it, according to officers.

Police did not find anyone else in the home but did find more firearms. They obtained a search warrant and found two shotguns, two rifles and several rounds of ammunition.

Morrow is a convicted felon and is not legally allowed to possess firearms. He was arrested and taken to the Shasta County Jail.
ANDERSON, Calif. - A Redding man was arrested on Tuesday after police received a report that a firearm was stolen while the victim was shopping at Walmart, according to the Anderson Police Department.

On Tuesday, police responded to a report of a stolen firearm from a locked vehicle at Walmart.

When officers arrived, they located the victim in his vehicle. He told officers a firearm and other property were stolen from the locked vehicle while he was in Walmart.

Officers were able to look at surveillance and identify a suspect vehicle and its license plate.

An officer located the vehicle and contacted the person inside of it. The officer identified the person inside as 33-year-old Nicholas Nolan of Redding.

Nolan was determined as the owner of the vehicle and on post-release community supervision.

Officers were able to search his vehicle due to the terms of his release. They found stolen items reported by the victim at Walmart but not the firearm.

The firearm was located at a home in Cottonwood.

Nolan was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail on multiple charges including burglary, possession of stolen property and illegal weapon possession violations.
1964  The chain grows to 17 stores. The original CVS logo is developed (CVS banner inside a shield, with the words Consumer Value Stores below) and displayed on store exteriors for the first time.

1963  The first CVS store, selling health and beauty products, is founded in Lowell, Massachusetts by brothers Stanley and Sidney Goldstein and partner Ralph Hoagland. CVS stands for Consumer Value Stores.

We are not a monolithic group at AofA. and if you feel it's the safest choice for your child to be vaccinated, we respect your decision as a parent. Your right to choose. In addition, we hope you never experience the heartache of vaccine injury, that so many AofA reader know is an ache that never stops beating. Here's the history of CVS, which launched as a health and beauty store and ended up buying Aetna some 50 years later. 1960s

Aaah, CVS, whose 2021 purpose statement is "the heart of health," is about to embark on a national clinical trial on American children. How did they get stocked across the nation just 5 days after approval? I Tweeted them yesterday. That said

1967  CVS begins operation of its first stores with pharmacy departments, opening locations in Warwick and Cumberland, Rhode Island.

1969  CVS is sold to Melville Corporation.

1970s

1970  CVS operates 100 stores in New England and the Northeast.

1972  CVS nearly doubles in size with its acquisition of 84 Clinton Drug and Discount Stores.

1974  CVS achieves $100 million in annual sales.

1977  CVS acquires the 36-store New Jersey-based Mack Drug chain.

1978  CVS/pharmacy finds success and differentiates itself from the competition by opening small health and beauty aids stores in enclosed shopping malls.

Baxter Healthcare Corporation launches the first national hemophilia home service.

1980s

1981  CVS breaks ground on the Store Support Center in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

1983  Hemophilia patient home health care is launched.

1984  Senior Vice President of Marketing Harvey Rosenthal is named President and CEO of CVS. He succeeds Stan Goldstein, who is named Executive Vice President of Melville Corporation.

1985  CVS reaches $1 billion in annual sales.

Baxter taps its expertise in health care cost management to begin providing prescription benefit management services. As a division of Baxter, Caremark launches mail service pharmacy, IGIV home care services, and growth hormone distribution and services.

1986  CVS co-founder Stanley Goldstein is named president and COO of Melville Corporation.

1987  Stanley Goldstein takes over as chairman and CEO of Melville Corporation.

1988  CVS/pharmacy celebrates its 25th anniversary, finishing the year with nearly 750 stores and sales of about $1.6 billion.

1990s

1990  CVS acquires 500 stores from Peoples Drug, which establishes the company in new mid-Atlantic markets including Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

1991  Caremark purchases Prescription Health Services (PHS).

1992  Caremark spins off from Baxter. The Caremark formulary is developed and clinical intervention programs are introduced.

1994  CVS launches PharmaCare, a pharmacy benefit management company providing a wide range of services to employers and insurers.

Tom Ryan is named President and CEO of CVS/pharmacy. Ryan began his career with CVS/pharmacy in 1974 as a pharmacy intern.

1995  Caremark launches CarePatterns disease management programs.

1996  Following the restructuring of Melville Corporation, CVS Corporation becomes a standalone company trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the CVS ticker. Stanley Goldstein is the companys first chairman.

Caremark enters the multiple sclerosis marketplace.

1997  CVS completes its acquisition of more than 2,500 stores from Revco, the largest acquisition in the history of the U.S. retail pharmacy industry. The acquisition of Revco gives CVS key drugstore locations primarily in the Midwest and Southeast.

Caremark merges the prescription benefit management business and the biotech business.

1998  CVS acquires 200 stores from Arbor Drugs of Michigan to bring its store total to 4,100 across 24 states.

Caremark defines pharmaceutical services as its core operating unit and establishes a national pharmacy and therapeutics committee.

1999 Caremark launches online prescription refills.

Tom Ryan is named chairman of CVS Corporation, succeeding company co-founder Stanley Goldstein.

CVS announces plans to enter Florida, with stores initially planned for the Tampa market.

CVS/pharmacy launches CVS.com, the first fully integrated online pharmacy in the United States.

2000s

2000  Rick Krieger and partners Douglas Smith, M.D., Steve Pontius and Kevin Smith, RN, FNP found QuickMedx, the retail health care centers that became MinuteClinic.

CVS Corporation acquires Stadtlander pharmacy, making CVS ProCare the largest specialty pharmacy in the U.S. at the time.

CVS/pharmacy announces plans to enter the Chicago market and continue expansion in Florida with stores slated for Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

2001  CVS/pharmacy introduces the ExtraCare Card, becoming the first national pharmacy retailer to launch a loyalty card program.

2002  CVS/pharmacy continues to grow, announcing plans to enter Texas with stores targeted for high-population-growth markets such as Dallas and Houston. The companys first locations in Phoenix and Las Vegas are also announced.

QuickMedx is renamed MinuteClinic in December 2002.

2003  Caremark Rx and AdvancePCS announce strategic combination, creating a $23 billion company.

2004  CVS completes its acquisition of 1,268 Eckerd Stores and Eckerd Health Services, Eckerds mail order and pharmacy benefit management business.

CVS ProCare becomes part of PharmaCare.

2005  CVS/pharmacy partners with MinuteClinic, announcing three clinics to open in CVS/pharmacy stores.

2006  MinuteClinic becomes the first retail clinic to be accredited by The Joint Commission.

CVS acquires 700 stand-alone Sav-On and Osco drugstores from Albertsons, growing its presence in southern California and key Midwest markets.

CVS Corporation acquires MinuteClinic, Americas leading operator of in-store health clinics.

2007  CVS Corporation and Caremark Rx, Inc. complete their transformative merger, creating CVS Caremark, the nations premier integrated pharmacy services provider.

2008  CVS Caremark acquires 541 stores from Longs Drug in California, Hawaii, Nevada and Arizona, giving CVS/pharmacy immediate market leadership in Northern and Central California.

2009  MinuteClinic begins a series of affiliations with major health systems across the U.S. to enhance access to high-quality, affordable health care services.

2010s

2011  In March, Larry Merlo succeeds Tom Ryan as President and CEO of CVS Caremark. Merlo joined CVS/pharmacy in 1990 through the acquisition of Peoples Drug.

2012  CVS Caremark announces that it exceeded $100 billion in revenues in 2011.

2014 CVS Caremark purchases Coram, the specialty infusion services and enteral nutrition business unit of Apria Healthcare Group Inc.

In February, CVS Caremark announces it will stop selling cigarettes and tobacco products in all of its CVS/pharmacy stores.

In September, CVS Caremark removes all cigarettes and tobacco products from its CVS/pharmacy stores and launches a national smoking cessation program.

CVS Caremark announces that its corporate name has changed to CVS Health to further reflect its broader commitment to health care.

CVS Health completes the purchase of Navarro Discount Pharmacy, the largest Hispanic-owned drugstore chain in the U.S.

2015  CVS Health completes its acquisition of Omnicare, the leading provider of pharmacy services to long-term care facilities.

CVS Health completes its acquisition of Targets 1,600+ pharmacies and clinics.

2016  CVS Health announces Be The First, a five-year, $50 million initiative to help deliver the nations first tobacco-free generation.

2017  CVS Pharmacy continues to expand access to the opioid overdose-reversal medication naloxone in more than 40 states as part of the companys multi-faceted approach to combating the nations growing prescription drug abuse epidemic.

CVS Health offers patients lowest cash price in the market for generic epinephrine auto-injector to treat allergic reactions.

2018  CVS Health fights back on high cost drugs by launching industrys most comprehensive approach to saving patients money.

CVS Health completes acquisition of Aetna, marking the start of transforming the consumer health experience.

2020s

2020  CVS Health commits the full strength of the enterprise to focus on addressing the critical and urgent health care needs stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. As a leader on the frontlines, the company becomes Americas largest private provider of COVID-19 testing, administering more than 15 million tests across 4,800 sites (through January 2021)  with an emphasis on addressing racial health inequities in Black and Hispanic communities.

The company also contributes more than $50 million in philanthropic actions in response to COVID-19.

CVS Health invests nearly $600 million over five years to advance employee, community and public policy initiatives that address inequality faced by Black people and other disenfranchised communities.

2021  In February, Karen S. Lynch succeeds Larry Merlo as President and Chief Executive Officer of CVS Health.

CVS Health begins administration of COVID-19 vaccines. In partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the company is one of the first to offer on-site COVID-19 vaccination services for residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the United States.

The company eventually offers COVID-19 inoculations at nearly 10,000 CVS Pharmacy locations. As of August, the company has administered 29 million COVID-19 tests and 30 million vaccine doses.

CVS Health introduces its new purpose statement.
The Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) used an AHRQ initiative to expand treatment for opioid use disorders in Pennsylvania. As a result, primary care physicians are now using medication-assisted treatment to care for their patients with opioid use disorders. This new practice has been a success; as of fall 2021, 75 percent of patients who initiated treatment have returned in the following calendar month to continue treatment. With addiction treatment, this number of returning patients represents a major improvement, as most patients traditionally end treatment quickly.

With eight hospitals and numerous health centers, physician practices, rehabilitation locations, and other outpatient locations, LVHN serves patients in seven eastern Pennsylvania counties. LVHN used AHRQ resources to integrate treatment for opioid use disorder into primary care practice.

In one visit, a patient can get his diabetes and blood pressure medications, plus his medication for opioid use disorder, without feeling the judgement of going to an addiction specialist, noted Gillian A. Beauchamp, M.D., LVHN emergency physician. When youre sitting in a primary care waiting room, nobody knows why youre there, so you dont feel the stigma you might in another setting of care.

With a background in toxicology, Dr. Beauchamp came to LVHN in 2016 interested in implementing a program that would help people struggling with opioids get treatment with medication, which has a proven track record. Two colleagues helped her develop and expand the program. One colleague knew about AHRQs work and connected the team with the resources available from AHRQ.

Paige Roth and Holly Maddox, certified recovery specialists at Lehigh Valley Health Network

The LVHN team collaborated with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, and the Graduate School of Public Health and the Program Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Pittsburgh through an AHRQ initiative: the Rural Access to Medication Assisted Treatment in Pennsylvania project (Project RAMP).

Project RAMP incorporated universal screening for substance use disorders in outpatient clinics and medications for opioid use disorder in primary care practices. LVHN committed to improve screening, prevention, and treatment, and to increase access to medication through implementation across many LVHN primary care clinics.

Beginning in 2018, Dr. Beauchamp and a multidisciplinary team of colleagues set up emergency department, inpatient, and primary care-based resources to support patients with opioid use disorders and to provide medication treatment. After implementing initial acute care treatmentincluding withdrawal management, initiation of medication, and referral for ongoing carethe team began to train primary care physicians to continue this care in the outpatient setting.

Starting with just four primary care physicians, the program expanded to 10, and as of spring 2021 had 25 participating primary care providers in urban, suburban, and rural Pennsylvania. These are mostly family doctors in the Lehigh Valley area. Two practices are in isolated locations where they provide nearly all local medical services.

At the beginning, because they were unfamiliar with addiction treatment, the primary care doctors were uneasy taking on this care. Now that theyve become more experienced, theyre quite comfortable providing it, Dr. Beauchamp said.

The training has been able to reach many physicians through webinars with monthly training and discussions using Project ECHO, a structure for virtual knowledge-sharing that brings specialty care to rural and underserved communities. LVHN also has monthly meetings for questions and discussion.

The LVHN team found AHRQs data assistance valuable. Figuring out how to collect data and pull reports is something we could not have done on our own, Dr. Beauchamp said.

As of 2021, the program has been designated by the State as a Center of Excellence, recognizing its leadership, best practices, research, support, and training. LVHNs Center of Excellence brings together community-based care management with emergency care and case workers, all of whom help patients connect with primary care providers for all their care.

About 100 patients a month are transferred from emergency departments and inpatient hospital units to maintenance care. Many of these patients now engage with primary care providers who integrate medication for addiction treatment into their overall primary care. In April 2021, 80 patients in 12 sites were receiving treatment from more than 20 providers.

While opioid overdose rates have gotten worse due to COVID, we are getting more people into treatment, Dr. Beauchamp noted. Were seeing three to eight more patients each month over previous months. And, with such a high-risk population, our 40 percent rate of patients returning month after month for their treatment is a very good return rate.

Approximately 72 percent of LVHNs patients in this program have remained in treatment after 120 days; 65 percent remain after 180 days. Nationally, 20 to 30 percent of patients usually remain in treatment by 120 to 180 days.
The Valor Economico Brazil Innovation Awards have named Embraer as the Most Innovative Company in Brazil, marking the fifth time Embraer has won the award. The Valor Economico Brazil Innovation Awards are organised by the newspaper Valor Economico, a leading daily newspaper in Brazil, and supported by Strategy & Consulting  a PwC consultancy.

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The awards assess the innovation practices at companies operating in Brazil. The ranking is based on five criteria: intention to innovate, effort to carry out innovation, results obtained, market assessment, and knowledge generation. The objective is to analyse how each of these pillars are embedded in the participating companies and distinguish the truly innovative companies from those that only follow technological trends.

The survey has a custom build model, developed specifically for the Brazilian market, and based on qualitative and quantitative indicators, that identify companies that adopt the best innovation management, achieve their investments in the market, and achieve results. The survey also assesses companies by sector in the economy. Based on comparisons and analysis, sector-based rankings are drawn up. The groups are created after analysing the five innovation criteria mentioned above, which illustrate the type of innovation common to each sector.

As a five-time title holder it clearly demonstrates we are on the right path in our transformation process, stated Francisco Gomes Neto, CEO of Embraer. Our focus on sustained growth and value creation will lead to continuous investments in innovative businesses. I dedicate this award to all of our 18,000 employees around the world, who overcome challenges every day, with great skill, focus, and energy.

Embraer sees its role in the innovation ecosystem as global and collaborative. In 2020, 43% of its revenue came from innovations that took place in the last five years. Embraer says that this illustrates the importance of having uninterrupted investment in innovation for the future and long-term competitiveness of the company.

Embraer is the result of the long-term view taken by visionaries who in the 1940s believed that Brazil could build its own aircraft. Their innovative and entrepreneurial spirit focused on generating and promoting knowledge, added Gomes Neto.
We should make peace when the right time has come, said Irans President Hassan Rouhani last week in a historical reference to Islam's second Shiite leader Imam Hassan, who clinched a peace agreement with his enemies in the seventh century.

Perhaps Rouhani did not anticipate the tremendous backlash from his opponents, who accused the moderate president of exploiting and distorting Imam Hassans story to justify his willingness for negotiations with the United States.

Mr. Rouhani! Today, the absolute majority of the Iranian public demands nothing less than your dismissal and punishment, tweeted Mojtaba Zolnouri, a hard-line lawmaker from the Paydari camp, which is shaped by the staunchest Rouhani critics known for their intolerance toward engagement with the West. Zolnouri, who also chairs the Iranian parliaments influential National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, went further: The supreme leader should issue a ruling on hanging you a thousand times.

Back in July, Zolnouri and some fellow lawmakers collected signatures on the parliament floor for an impeachment bid, which could have effectively put a premature end to Rouhanis second term. The group had to stand down after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared in a televised speech that he wants the sitting president to actively stay at the helm to the end of his tenure.

Zolnouri and his team held a gathering in the city of Qom on Monday to promote the impeachment push over a long list of perceived failures in what they called a litmus test for the parliament.

On the same day, Ahmad Amir-Abadi Farahani, a member of the parliaments presiding board, announced, We have decided to abort the impeachment. According to Farahani, impeaching the president would be a two-month administrative process, after which his first vice president would have to take over for another three months, making impeachment pointless as the next president is set to be chosen in early June.

The impeachment seekers have not found significant backing from ultraconservative papers. Despite their scathing attacks on the Rouhani administration, those outlets seemed unhappy with the timing and warned against inviting the political chaos that would ensue. According to Kayhan, a hard-line daily funded by Khameneis office, impeachment would only serve an American project of headless governments that Washington seeks to implement in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq with the aim of destabilizing the three countries.

Nevertheless, Zolnouri insists that his impeachment plan is not off the agenda. He has called on other lawmakers to come forth and sign on to bringing down the president. Some Iranian social media users are expressing support with a Persian hashtag about saving the country. From Zolnouri and his allies' standpoint, the Iranian presidents talk of peace came to prepare the Iranian public for rapprochement with the United States as polls predict victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.




    

  

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Sudan: 2021 Octobers deadlock is the biggest but could lead to the great compromise.

By Mekki ELMOGRABI

Press Writer on African Affairs

WhatsApp & Telegram +249912139350

elmograbi@gmail.com

Summary of the deal

Granting Freedom and Change alliance  all factions and signatories of Juba agreement  the blocking third in the parliament as a reward for being the strongest players in the change of April 2019  in exchange for  opening the two-third of the parliament for early election for all other parties. Still, FCA can compete with them with no further isolation against any other party.

It could be a good start for this deal to launch the suspended elections of Sudanese trade unions with the same compromise. That will ease the tension and will divert the energies of the politicians and activists toward something constructive.

Some procedures are necessary; ending political arrests and launching investigations in all violations of human rights that happened during the deadlock.

The October 2021 deadlock in Sudan is the biggest and the most complicated conflict in the modern history of this sub-Saharan nation, yet, it could lead to the greatest compromise between military and civilians, and also between liberal-leftists and the rest of the political spectrum.

One of the good things in Troikas stand toward Sudans crisis is that the three countries USA, UK, and Norway, either in their joint statements or individual ones throughout the past two years of the transition emphasize completing the transitional civilian institutions. Unfortunately, Sudan stuck in the blame game between military and political parties with no achievements for two years and that led to the deadlock and then the military-civilian confrontation manifested in Burhans decisions of 25th October 2021.

The parliament, the judiciary supreme council, and the constitutional court, all were abandoned and left behind by both parties. Also, a number of commissions for elections, combating corruption, peace, and other important transitional fields that could create real civilian rule didnt exist. The legislative and executive branches were unjustifiably merged for a long time in the joint meeting between the cabinet and sovereign council. No elections for trade unions, even after dissolving the previous ones and forming steering committees to organize elections, the new committees composed by political parties declared themselves as acting committees claiming the role of the unions and took over all assets with no hope for elections. For example, the Sudanese Journalists Union vanished and more than seven conflicting bodies appeared with legitimacy for all of them. The press freedom lost its national guard for two years and the civilian government failed to organize elections. The two years resulted in partisan authoritarianism coated by the civilian brand.

The second branch of the government was the Committee for Dismantling of 30th June Regime that held authorities even wider the merged executive-legislative practicing an absolute power in dismissing judges with no investigations or any right to the judges themselves to appear in front of the committee to know what are the accusations, the judges just see their names in lists issued by the dismantling committee in a public press conference. This point was specifically mentioned and criticized twice in the US department of state human rights report.

The civilians from their side, when they need to defend their position they play the blame game with the military. Not anymore, and thanks for Octobers deadlock! Ibrahim AL-SHEIKH, the Minister and leader within FCA on 21 October 2021 protests faced a heated discussion with the activists and the advocates of the civilian rule who challenged him to discover the reasons that led to the situation of civilian rule with no civilian institutions. He was brave enough to sit down on the ground with them while most of the other leaders made some photos and videos and disappeared, We did so because we need firstly to clean up the judiciary and dismiss judges using the dismantling committee and then to appoint new, so, we can make sure the voters in the elections of the judiciary council will be loyal to the revolution, Ibrahim said. That means the blame game between the military and the political parties was just a cover for an intended delay in establishing the transitional civilian institutions. This attitude questioned the ethics and morals of the civilians even they became later victims of the military that colluded with them for two years.

Another question will be answered one day, what did the military let the civilians do what they want? What is the price of silence or collusion?

Elements of the problem:

1\ The strong players in the transition for the two years mainly from the left or the center with a tendency to the leftist agenda have paralyzed the transition from establishing civilian institutions waiting to a point that makes them the majority in the civil service by appointing their elements and to recruit supporters in the civil service under the threat of the dismantling committee. As a result, they lost public support because of this practice and also because of their performance in the executive branch. The supreme court started to receive appeals against the decisions of the dismantling committee because the legal trick became invalid. Here was the trick; The FCA hindered the appeal committee of the dismantling committee claiming that no right for any person to go to the supreme court because the step of the appeal is necessary. The supreme court said the law is clear when the appellant is not allowed to practice his right to appeal because of the government failure, in this case, he has the right to appeal to the supreme court directly. The result was very bad for the plan of parties of the dismantling committee. The FCA lost its strongest tool.

2\ Friends of Sudan in Europe and the USA wanted to support the civilian rule in Sudan but they have no interest to allow the Sudanese communists, Baathists, and other leftists to replace Islamists and to establish a new authoritarian regime. Why USA, EU should allow political parties to establish a new government with a mix of Marxists, Baathists, and other opportunists? They want to take western support for granted to establish a socialist authoritarian regime.

3\ On the other hand, the military, and the former regime are not the right alternative and cannot be re-branded to rule Sudan. The new revolutionary generation sacrificed and faced the death toll to establish a civilian democratic rule.

4\ The election could be the best solution in all similar cases. Simply, let people choose! Still, with this deterioration situation and the bad practice of the left, the Islamists could take over again and their priority will be taking revenge which will bring Sudan again to the vicious cycle.

My suggestion:

To grant FCA and Juba signatories the blocking third in the parliament. Let us explain why this deal is good for them. firstly, The Communists, Baathists, and other leftists who are not popular in Sudan will secure some seats in the parliament. They deserve this reward for being among the strongest players in the revolutions against Bashirs regime. Secondly, the activists who are calling for liberal views that will never help them in the election in a country like Sudan also will have their voice in the parliament within the blocking third and then can fight democratically and peacefully against the conservative automatic majority.

Opening the two-third of the parliament for free election for all parties including the FCA with only one condition; No more exclusion or isolation for Islamists or traditional parties. The message is that; you already have the blocking third. You can also try to find popular people who can win more seats in the two-third.

The signatories of the Juba agreement or other agreements with the armed movements have an additional privilege to the seats of the parliament in the blocking third, they have their seats in the sovereignty council.

Why this compromise is good for all parties?

For the international community and Africa, stability in Sudan is crucial for the region.

For the FCA, the deal will save their achievements in the previous two years.

For the new liberal activists and small secular movements, the deal will give them seats in the parliament and the opportunity to compete with others. They can continue to communicate with their allies in the western world and to protect the liberals from eradication in a conservative tribal community.

For the Islamists, it will give them new life to re-brand themselves in an open democracy, if they take seats in the parliament still the democracy approved by the international community and the neighboring countries  especially Egypt and UAE  that are not in favor of regime with big Islamic existence in the power.

For the big traditional parties in Sudan; the Umma party and the Unionist party, they are still popular and they will be better with democracy. They have the granted seats within the blocking third and will compete in the two-third to bring their bases back.
Ive read the entire Revolver News expose about January 6, 2021, over the past several months, and what follows is the Readers Digest version of the dust-up that occurred at the Stop the Steal rally on that day, as reconstructed by Revolver News. (Links to the specific Revolver stories are provided at the end of this article.)

Long story short, J6 was an organized protest that was meant to be a peaceful but vociferous rejection of the stolen presidential election in 2020.

The investigative reporters from Revolver News have looked at all the data released by the federal government since the J6 protests at the Capitol, including the FBIs website of the J6 Most Wanted List of domestic terrorists and the indictments against those J6 terrorists. That research found some very curious anomalies.

It appears that some key players in the organization and execution of the January 6 terrorist Insurrection may have been Deep-State operatives working for the FBI or various other US intelligence agencies that day. Among these men were Stewart Rhodes, who founded the patriot group Oath Keepers, and Ray Epps, president of the Arizona chapter.

It became more and more evident, as the Revolver reporters began to dig deeper, that the Insurrection seemed to be a bought and paid-for FBI operation, contrived to frame Donald Trump and his supporters for the violence the FBI was orchestrating. All this while the FBI quietly left the linchpins of their J6 operation, Oath Keepers Epps and Rhodes, free and unindicted. The FBI even went so far as to remove Eppss photograph from the FBIs January 6th Most Wanted List after the Revolver News expose was posted.

Although to my mind, this FBI scheme had other broader objectives going forward. It seems the establishment intended to disparage, discredit, and besmirch the intended motivation of all the forces building in the United States against the New World Orders plan for the Globalization of America and its Great Reset.

From Sustainable Development, Agenda 21, Free Trade, COVID-19 Mandates, Climate Change, Open Borders, CRT, the Green New Deal, the Technocracy, the Great Economic Reset, and Internet censorship; to fomenting racial animosity and division, defunding the police, and the abolition of our God-given Constitutional freedoms, as of today, all American liberties are up for grabs. Moreover, the global political elite mandates the acceptance and advocation of this power grab and their agenda, no questions asked.

Not surprisingly, Americans are concurrently losing their freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly, redress of grievance, a speedy trial, and the right to face their accuser at an ever-quickening pace. To add insult to injury, Americans are being pushed to embrace the loss of their inherent liberties on the grounds that doing so is virtuous, desirable, inoffensively non-binary, and globally obligatory. Meanwhile, the narrative is that the public embraces the loss of the Bill of Rights altogether, including our Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons and papers and free from unlawful searches and seizures.

The FBIs idea (its psyop) was to hijack the peaceful protest on January 6, 2021, and then to spark mayhem. Working with the corporate media, this would create the intentional misimpression that the protestors were all racist insurrectionists. The Feds primary goal is to demonize freedom-loving Americans nationwide; and their secondary goal is to instill fear in ordinary Americans that the same will happen to them if they speak or act, effectively silencing them. Cowed, they wont act even as they witness leftists engage in the planned destruction of America and her institutions by those who have sworn to protect and serve it.

Further, people are beginning to grasp, irrespective of how they felt about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, that the powers behind all this have as their overarching goal changing Americas representative elected government. In one manner or another, they seek to surreptitiously overlay our constitutional democratic republic with another less democratic, less representative form of government. This new government will be ruled by a hodge-podge of overlapping corporate and international actors. The Rule of Law and the Constitution will no longer operate.

To borrow an idiom from the book The Animal Farm, in this new America its already becoming -evident that some Americans will be treated more equally than others. (For examples see: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill and Melinda Gates, the Clinton Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Christopher Wray, James Comey, Michael Hayden, Andrew McCabe, Dr. Anthony Fauci, George Soros, and the plethora of others globalist minions, from Jeffery Epstein to Hunter Biden)

Tucker Carlson has turned this Revolver expose into a documentary available on Fox Nation. Since Tucker began promoting his documentary, Americas ruling class, anticipating what would be seen, suffered exploding head-itis, metaphorically speaking. Folks like RINO Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, Liz Cheney, and Ben Sasse on the right, and Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, Ted Lieu, and David Cicilline on the left, are beside themselves. One can only imagine, then, what all those Deep-State functionaries at Americas mainstream media networks are going through.

With that said, if their modus operandi holds, look for the establishment to carry out some catastrophic distraction (false flag), which will later be blamed on some mentally deficient party or a White supremacist. That will distract the public from reaction to the governing classs treachery.

_____________________________

1. This is the best, most concise synopsis, of the three Revolver stories

2. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger Incite Liberal Meltdown Over Tucker Carlson Doc Exposing Dark Truth Behind 1/6

3. New Evidence of FBI Involvement in the 1/6 ProtestWith Darren Beattie, Who Broke the Story - Glen Greenwald on Rumble

Image: Ray Epps. Public domain image.

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Perhaps the most impressive feat of political misdirection by American progressives, rivaling the apocryphal Democrat/Republican great flip, was characterizing drug prohibition as a conservative project. Its superficially logical. Prohibition is enforced by police and courts. Conservatives support law and order. Progressives focus on social influences over individual responsibility.

But using law enforcement to improve the lower classes unseemly behavior was a late 19th-century progressive project. Early progressive targets included porn, gambling, prostitution, birth control, and alcohol. Opium wasnt an initial priority.

From Hammurabi to dynastic Egyptian courts, the Twelve Tablets of Rome, English Common Law, the Napoleonic Code, and the American Constitution, western societies laws addressed consistent concerns: crimes that harm anothers body, property, finances, or reputation; family and marital relationships and inheritances; civil obligations like paying taxes, attending court when summoned, testifying truthfully; not concealing crimes or criminals; and disputes between citizens. The Capitulary of Charlemagne (not fully implemented) ordered the clergy to avoid drunkenness and feasting. Until the 19th century, no western legislation banned consumption or possession of alcohol or drugs.

Its probably accidental that federal restrictions first targeted opium. There was no anti-opiate parallel to anti-alcohol Carrie Nation and several hundred followers rampaging through Topeka and Wichita saloons in 1901, no publications or lobbying to restrict opiates. Americas opium use had peaked in 1890.

The 1914 Harrison Act was enacted to conform to the 1912 Hague Convention, which addressed international economic concerns, not deadly danger to Americans. The treaty was a response to conflict over opium prices within China being undercut by British sales of cheaper products from India. Opium suddenly became a hot topic and an opportunity for U.S. purity crusaders.

For decades after its passage, medical experts, organizations, and publications decried Harrison. In 1915, a New York Medical Journal editorial said it should never have been enacted and would damage careers and families and disrupt the lives of people who would otherwise be socially functional. In 1926, the Illinois Medical Journal described Harrison as the work of well-meaning blunderers that made trouble for doctors and riches for criminals.

Illicit drug use and sales proved difficult targets under constitutional restraints. Unlike assault, fraud, defamation, or robbery, there are no victims making complaints of measurable damages. But, to a sufficiently righteous do-gooder, if a behavior could cause such self-harm that the damage is invisible to the person doing it, how would it be anything but good to use any available method to pressure the individual until theres no choice but to beg for help? (Similar logic informed federal requirements to add poison to industrial alcohol in the 1920s.)

Drug warriors got creative and began using undercover police allowed to lie along with confidential informants (miscreants turning in others for cash and reduced punishments). Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures were constricted to make drug investigations easier. Sentences expanded, mandatory minimums were enacted, selling was redefined to include gifts, and possession to include any innocuous substance believed to be a drug. Under the DARE program, police officers regaled students with tales of drug dangers (real or imagined). Hollywoods contribution to the drug war effort was imaginatively elaborating drug hazards -- even if the character of the hazards depicted was inconsistent over time. Reefer caused madness in the 1930s and sloth in the 1980s.

In 2006, new legislation unleashing massive waste of government and corporate money and effort, inconveniencing millions of law-abiding citizens. The federal restrictions on pseudoephedrine were justified because it could be used to manufacture methamphetamine. A 2017 DoJ budget report mentions that methamphetamine, is highly pure and potent and increasingly available.

Between 1914 and 2021, the only drug eliminated from the U.S. black market was Quaaludes, due to the corporation that owned the patent ceasing manufacture in 1983.

Federal agencies were formed to pursue the drug war: 1930, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1972, Drug Enforcement Agency, 1978, State Department International Narcotics & Law Enforcement Demand Reduction Program, 1983, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, 1988, White House Office of National Drug-Control Policy, 1995, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.

In the late 1990s, an old progressive formula was recycled, rehabilitative justice. Juvenile courts were an earlier offspring of this philosophy, emphasizing reform over punishment. Discredited and abandoned by the 1970s, it returned in two decades as therapeutic jurisprudence, targeting new clients via drug courts.

Drug court is presented to the accused as a diversion from prosecution leading to a clean record. That assumes successful completion of a year-long program having no resemblance to a trial. Normal adversaries -- judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney -- form a treatment team. The accused has no zealous advocate in drug court, no presumption of innocence, no day in court where facts must be proven with evidence. The focus isnt conforming to the law but demonstrating compliance with court demands.

Drug courts dont reduce resources expended on drug enforcement. The actual results are called widening the net. Low-level users, whose small stash a cop might destroy with a stern warning, are redefined as damaged people who require help. Confiscating contraband and issuing warnings isnt therapeutic, its abandoning damaged individuals. Drug arrests and inmates doubled after Denvers drug court had been open for two years.

Therapeutic ideology influences more than just drug prosecutions. One might expect drug infractions to be counted among aggravating factors. But the addiction-as-disease model means drug use is a mitigating factor justifying a reduced sentence. Imagine a defendant citing tobacco as a factor during sentencing for a robbery. Yet, according to medical literature, tobacco and heroin are about equally difficult to quit.

Our government and justice systems were designed to protect individuals and society by limiting the power of those holding office. Our rights to hold and express unpopular beliefs, own deadly weapons, live free of searches and seizures without warrant or imprisonment without a verdict, with our innocence being presumed are incompatible with government treatment teams reconfiguring the minds of individuals in the service of utopian designs for the uplift of society.

Decriminalization just tinkers with the public image of drug prohibition, with prosecution and punishment remaining on the books. Repealing drug laws doesnt remove laws against harming others. It would free up resources to police such crimes.

Progressives assume humans and society are perfectible by top-down pressure and expand the scope and function of government out of that belief. Conservatives accept imperfection as a permanent feature of the individual and humanity, working to limit power to reduce potential harm to those on the receiving end.

Image: Pixabay

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Three cheers for Virginia! Hip, hip, hooray! (You get the idea)

America, as founded, is worth fighting for. That is one of the resounding themes of this week's election results for Virginia governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and both houses of the Virginia House of Delegates. The overwhelming victory of Republican candidates is a breath of fresh air in what we thought was a terminal march to the left's goal of the fundamental transformation of America and the ultimate suffocation of the freedoms we cherish.

The canary can breathe again, and we are moving back to our source of life  the sweet smell of freedom.

Now, don't misunderstand  there is still a lot of work to do, and we are just getting started. But I must be positive and optimistic because, by listening to and watching the highlights of the corrupt state-controlled media's complete freakout, I can tell they know they lost big.

They know there has been a tectonic, seismic shift in momentum for their ruinous agenda. They know that Senators Manchin and Sinema, along with who knows how many moderate or just plain scared Democrat members of Congress who know nothing but how to hold onto their swamp privilege, will now cower before the demonstrated power of the electorate and will not support the radical left's Marxist dreams.

Patriots! Gear up! In the words customarily attributed to the famous Virginian, Patrick Henry: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."

Take heart! This is a time for optimism because there is not a single thing the Democrat party has supported for the past eighteen months that survived last night's cull:

Defund the Police

Critical Race Theory

Invasive government overreach

Lack of a coherent, comprehensive COVID strategy

Confiscatory taxes

Diminished parental rights and consent in the education of our children

To name just a few...

Wasn't it just last year we heard that Donald Trump lost ground with "suburban, college-educated women"? Well, it looks as though the Democrat party took those women on a "blind date" and got quite publicly and ceremoniously dumped. I describe the past several months as a blind date because we all pretty much know, in our gut and in our heart of hearts, that Joe Biden did not earn 80 million votes.

So once the Democrat party took off the mask after the inauguration parties and let the Squad dictate the legislative agenda while the installed administration (*) systematically dismantled everything that actually worked before the Wuhan flu "escaped" from its Chinese lab...well, this date was over. With every passing month, Virginians saw with ever-increasing clarity the broken promises of the Democrat party agenda and the anger and arrogance they displayed when they were questioned and held to account.

Neither the liberals in the Democrat party nor its radical, leftist, Marxist contingent that is hell-bent on burning down America can legislate and win. They cannot be honest about who they are and what they want to do. The past nine months have allowed us to see and hear (from their own mouths) the things they will do, by hook and by crook, to gain complete totalitarian control. This includes everything from the ballot box to their government-by-fiat overreach of executive orders to their court-packing schemes to legislate from the Judicial Branch in open revolt against the Constitution to their tangled and twisted parliamentary schemes and "budget reconciliation" (which it never is or was).

We, the People are fighting back. Virginia, as before, has led the way. Now the tough work of wresting our country from the craggy, grotesque claw of the socialist, communist, Marxist threat must be our day-in and day-out endeavor.

Endeavor we shall, because our timeless ideals of each citizen's divinely ordained rights of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have never been closer at hand so that all can participate in those blessings, but they also have never been in greater danger.

Endeavor we shall because America, as founded, is worth fighting for.

Jeff M. Lewis is a Christian, a husband and father, a veteran, and a small businessowner who resides with his family in South Texas.

Image: Glenn Youngkin's victory speech (edited in befunky). YouTube screen grab.

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For Joe Biden, reports of $450,000 payouts to illegal border crossers are "garbage" -- as is the suggestion that any such payouts would incentive more illegal border crossing.

Biden's bee ess response came as a result of a question from Fox News's Peter Doocy:

BREAKING: President Biden DENIES plan to pay migrant families separated at the border $450K per individual, calls such reports "GARBAGE" pic.twitter.com/beOl73kDEn  Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) November 3, 2021

Here's the Oct. 28 Wall Street Journal report which Biden effectively called "garbage":

WASHINGTONThe Biden administration is in talks to offer immigrant families that were separated during the Trump administration around $450,000 a person in compensation, according to people familiar with the matter, as several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who say the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma. The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family, though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said. Most of the families that crossed the border illegally from Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. included one parent and one child, the people said. Many families would likely get smaller payouts, depending on their circumstances, the people said. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents families in one of the lawsuits, has identified about 5,500 children separated at the border over the course of the Trump administration, citing figures provided to it by the government. The number of families eligible under the potential settlement is expected to be smaller, the people said, as government officials arent sure how many will come forward. Around 940 claims have so far been filed by the families, the people said. The total potential payout could be $1 billion or more.

Never mind that the original report came not from some blog but from the Wall Street Journal. It's "garbage," Joe says. Move along.

Yet House Republicans are taking action to stop it.

And the left-wing lawyers crafting these payouts are protesting.

According to the New York Post:

President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department, the ACLU charged Wednesday, after he labeled as garbage a news report that his administration is considering $450,000 per person payouts to families separated after illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. In a statement, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero warned Biden that he risked abandoning a core campaign promise to do justice for the thousands of separated families. We respectfully remind President Biden that he called these actions criminal in a debate with then-President Trump, and campaigned on remedying and rectifying the lawlessness of the Trump administration, Romero said. We call on President Biden to right the wrongs of this national tragedy.

Some 'garbage.'

Fact is, the American Civil Liberties Union has been working with Biden's U.S. Department of Justice to engineer these monster per-person payouts, which should make millionaires of all the "families" who'd ever been separated at the border after being caught in the act of illegally sneaking into the country. Incentives? Sure, Joe, no incentives. Apparently, he thinks both illegals and voters are stupid.

The Bidenites in the original report claimed they bowed to the open-borders lawyers because lawsuits from illegals would yield even higher payouts from juries.

The $450,000 payout package for the lawbreakers also includes a permanent right to reside in the U.S., which is even more appalling when you think about it. Already they're getting resettled in the U.S. after breaking in illegally with three "free" years of residence.

We see nothing in the way of 'fight' from the Bidenites, who are bending to everything the leftist lawyers want. And we also know why that's happening: For Joe, there's cynical political hay to be made of pinning the taxpayer payouts on President Trump.

For all the gushy rhetoric about national tragedies that the ACLU is promoting, separation is pretty much required by U.S. immigration law as crafted by the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement. That's the one that says child illegals can only be held for a few days, while border-breaking adults can be held longer. To pay illegals for breaking in together as leftist lawyers demand, is actually pretty outrageous, given that U.S. law should stand up in U.S. court.

So, what is to be made of this obviously false statement coming from Joe Biden happening before the cameras?

One, he's a dotard who has no idea about what's going on in his administration, which we can call the "French excuse," given that he used that argument to try to patch up relations with our angry ally, France.

Or two, he's counting on spin and lies to outride the news cycle. He knows the payouts are unpopular and he is down in the polls. His response is to say any lie to ensure the press chases it and repeats it, and then make the payouts to illegals on the side in complete contradiction to the statement, expecting the press to lose interest.

One is senile, the other is cynical, and this being Joe Biden, it may well be a full combination of the two. Neither of these motives changes facts, nor does it promote public trust in anything he says. He's a corrupt old fool who takes the voters for fools and lies with alacrity, and has done it so often he can't even remember it's happening.

Image: Screen shot from NBC video posted on shareable Twitter

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I live in the New York metro area. When the pandemic first struck, I would go to my window and notice what I didn't see. I didn't see ambulances lined up on my block, and I didn't hear drivers calling, "Bring out your dead!" I concluded that whatever we were experiencing, it wasn't the Bubonic Plague. So, at the height of lockdown mania, I never stopped going into Manhattan to run my ordinary errands.

I rode the subways in the spring of 2020 when they were so empty that no more than two or three passengers might be seated in each car. I walked through Midtown when the streets were deserted. I felt as if I had broken a taboo by venturing there. Back then, you saw maybe a lone jogger on Fifth Avenue or Madison Avenue, or a stray pedestrian walking a dog.

The construction workers, however, were out in force. No lockdown was imposed on any construction site. Did working in construction confer immunity to the virus? Of course not. New York is a real estate town, just as other localities at other times and places might have been mining towns or cattle towns. Wealth in New York is heavily concentrated in real estate. The presence of the construction workers during that eerie period was an expression and manifestation of the power and influence of the real estate industry. Business as usual.

Almost a year and a half later, the subways are crowded again, and the streets have come alive. Meantime, we've all learned a lot about COVID-19. We know that, except for the fragile elderly and people suffering other serious diseases, COVID is essentially nothing more than a bad flu.

We know that the universally promulgated vaccines are not really vaccines. They're a form of genetic therapy, a treatment modality that had been in the works for decades and that the biomedical profession had been itching to try out. A global experiment in the application of this treatment has been conducted, and we know now that the substances used are neither entirely safe nor effective.

Most curiously, we know that other medications are available that have been demonstrated to be both safe and effective, and also far less costly than the vaccines that are not vaccines. Yet these medications have by and large been withheld in many countries, including our own.

Contributors to American Thinker have courageously provided much insight and information about COVID, sometimes having to disguise their identity in the process. I'm grateful to them all. I would specifically like to reference Peter Skurkiss, a contributor who brilliantly observed that, if everyone were vaccinated, it would be impossible ever to conduct an authoritative study of the long-term effects of the vaccines because a large enough control group of unvaccinated people would not exist.

Nevertheless, our government (among others) continues to stoke our wildest fears about this manageable virus and goad us all into rolling up our sleeves for an injection that's at least as frightful as the disease it's supposed to protect us from  for up to six months per shot.

What do we make of all this? The COVID anomalies play to our deepest cynicism. We're tempted to say it's all about money. Go to Pfizer's web page, for example, and you'll find that the company's second-quarter revenues for 2021 increased by a whopping 92% over Q2 revenues for 2020.

Alternatively, we could be philosophical. We could reflect on the tendency of human beings to get locked into faulty patterns of thought and righteously seek to override the opposition. Authorities once resisted the idea that the Earth orbited the sun, not the other way around, and punished those holding contrary views.

Yet, somehow, greed and human frailties, though inherently part of the problem, fail to fully clarify the matter. Instead, we find ourselves in the position of the befuddled citizen who confronted numerous anomalies in each verse of the old Bob Dylan song, "Ballad of a Thin Man." "You know something's happening," Dylan wailed, "but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?"

To scope things out, maybe we and Mr. Jones need to look a little farther afield, beyond the evening news and Sunday morning panel shows. One of the basic facts of modern political life tends to elude conventional policy discussions. It nevertheless adds a bit of perspective to the COVID enigma: it's the fact that the nation-state is gradually losing sovereignty to commercial entities that don't identify with territories and borders.

A major revolution is taking place without comment. Most of the world was once divided into domains ruled by kings. The people living under those regimes, be they feudal barons or serfs, might not have been able to conceive of hereditary monarchs losing ground to other entities. But it happened.

Commercial entities came into existence that forced the monarchs to share and ultimately surrender power to the representatives of a new merchant class. These entities continued to evolve and today have shaken off the constraints of the nation-state. Some are more powerful than nation-states. Most have the resources to purchase the votes of lawmakers and collusion of functionaries here and abroad to impose policies favorable to their interests.

Are the COVID anomalies an expression and manifestation of the power and influence of the transnationals? Business as unusual?

About a hundred years ago, a celebrated American journalist named Lincoln Steffens visited Soviet Russia and declared upon his return, "I have seen the future, and it works!" Of course, he saw only what the Bolsheviks wanted him to see.

Be that as it may, we might be lucky to have endured the COVID experience. It has provided a glimpse of a possible future we may not have otherwise foreseen  a future that, for us, doesn't work.

Sheldon Bart of the Foundation to Illuminate America's Heroes (www.illuminateamericasheroes.com) is completing a book about a heroine of a more sane American era.

Collage by Andrea Widburg.

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On the heels of the Republican gubernatorial victory in Virginia, far-left political media pundits are awash in denial. Parents of school-age children in VA overwhelmingly rejected Terry McAuliffe, not only for saying out loud that parents should have no say in the education of their children but also vehemently denying that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is incorporated into the VA public school system curricula. In fact, not only is CRT woven into daily public school instruction but the CRT ideology and the CRT terminology have also been found in school curricula materials all across the country.

McAuliffe made numerous false claims  for one, denying the use of CRT materials in a recent Meet the Press interview with Chuck Todd. He should have checked the Virginia Department of Education website first. Had he done so, he would have discovered that the words "Critical Race Theory" appear multiple times. Instead, McAuliffe chose to say, "As I said before, and I'll say it again, it's never been taught in Virginia. And I really hate it, because it's a racist dog whistle. And all Glenn Youngkin has done in this campaign is run down Virginia, run down our education system, run down our economy." The reality for parents of school-age children in VA is very different, which explains why legions of angry parents have shown up at school board meetings in protest.

Furthermore, in 2015, when McAuliffe was Virginia's governor, he encouraged teachers "to embrace Critical Race Theory as part of its Culturally-Responsive Teaching and Learning Principles, with a stated desire to re-engineer attitudes and belief systems." The CRT ideology is so prevalent in Virginia public schools that in 2019, not only did several VA school superintendents endorse CRT in a memo to district teachers, but one school superintendent promoted both Critical Race Theory and the idea of "White Fragility;" based on the book of the same name by Robin DiAngelo. Another VA superintendent's memo endorsed "Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education" as an important resource, which enables and will ensure race-based developments in education.

This past June and under fire on multiple fronts, education officials in Loudoun County finally acknowledged that Critical Race Theory influences their work. Adding insult to injury, it was revealed a month later that a Virginia school district spent $30,000 on Critical Race Theory training for administrators. While Virginia public school officials were forced to come clean, numerous school boards across the country find themselves in similar situations. Parents are openly challenging the use of CRT materials in the classroom despite the plethora of denials from school administrators, principals, and teachers.

As a resource for parents, The Center for Renewing America developed a glossary of buzzwords and definitions frequently used to disguise the CRT teaching concepts in the classroom. From the website, "Critical Race Theory isn't always presented as Critical Race Theory. The framework of CRT can be utilized to frame other concepts or present them in an inappropriate context." In plain speak, by parsing, substituting, or rephrasing key terminology, school administrators and teachers covertly incorporated the CRT language and the pedagogy into their daily lesson planning.

Ironically, the nationwide public-school closure for 18 months, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, provided a golden opportunity for parents to review their children's school materials. In short, parents became the teachers, alarmed and incensed by what they discovered. As a result, thousands of parents began showing up to school board meetings, asking questions, and demanding answers.

In conclusion, school boards weren't prepared for the onslaught of angry parents, nor were they willing to admit that CRT is integrated into the classroom curricula despite evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, the despicable response by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), accusing parents of being domestic terrorists, backfired tremendously. The NSBA was eventually forced to retract its scathing letter to the DOJ, followed by multiple school districts renouncing their association with the NSBA altogether. Not surprisingly, numerous school board seats changed up this week in CO, KS, NJ, PA, and VA thanks to the support of the 1779 Project PAC. Many more school board seats will most likely change up next November. Likewise, the stunning defeat of Terry McAuliffe puts to rest the mistaken belief that teachers are experts and only they should decide what kids learn.

Image: JMacPherson via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

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It is amazing news that there has never been a famine caused by climate change until now.

The lead story on ABC news on Monday, November 1 was a blatant, intentional lie spreading propaganda on climate change to mislead the public.

It is tremendously sad and dangerous that so much of what is purported to be news today is Democrat talking points used to pass their radical leftist agenda to destroy America.

S. Madagascar on the verge of climate change-induced famine: How to help

But unlike other countries, where extreme hunger and near-famine conditions are caused by war, conflict, or isolated weather events, in this part of Madagascar, the cause is so far unique: southern Madagascar is on the verge of becoming the world's first climate-change induced near-famine in modern history.

The story itself was newsworthy and sad. A huge number of children are suffering from hunger due to a five-year drought in Madagascar. The lie occurred when David Muir said this is the first drought-based famine that has occurred because of climate change and implied that it is being caused by oil and humans. That is pure BS.

Anyone who still has a brain knows that droughts and famines throughout history have occurred naturally and cyclically. They are caused by a lack of rain. The Earth's climate has always been subject to change. How does Muir think so much of the Earth is covered by desert if it weren't for long droughts?



Sahara Desert.

Instead of ABC encouraging Madagascar to modernize by using fossil fuels, they are using the Malagasy as pawns to push the leftist agenda. Why are so many people who supposedly care willing to keep the poor and underdeveloped countries from thriving with the help of water utilities, wells, sewage plants, air-conditioning, central heat, and modern farming  all provided by fossil fuels?

Nothing says you care about your carbon footprint as much as when 400 private jets fly to Scotland to preach about other people's carbon footprint. I am also sure Biden's 85-vehicle caravan was absolutely necessary as he spews forth nonsense and falls asleep.

Five minutes of research showed famines throughout history, a significant share caused by climate change. Here are a few:

Millions of people died in successive droughts in India from 1870 to 1916. Out of six major droughts, five were caused cyclically and naturally because the climate always has changed and continues to change.

Drought and Famine in India, 18702016

Millions of people died due to famines in India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; however, the relationship of historical famines with drought is complicated and not well understood. Using station-based observations and simulations, we reconstruct soil moisture (agricultural) drought in India for the period 18702016. We show that over this century and a half period, India experienced seven major drought periods (18761882, 18951900, 19081924, 19371945, 19821990, 19972004, and 20112015) based on severity-area-duration analysis of reconstructed soil moisture. Out of six major famines (187374, 1876, 1877, 189697, 1899, and 1943) that occurred during 18702016, five are linked to soil moisture drought, and one (1943) was not. The three most deadly droughts (1877, 1896, and 1899) were linked with the positive phase of El NinoSouthern Oscillation. Five major droughts were not linked with famine, and three of those five nonfamine droughts occurred after Indian independence in 1947.

From 1876 to 1878, 50 million people died (when the world population was much smaller) in Asia, Brazil, and Africa due to varying climate situations that included the cool Pacific, a record-breaking El Nino, and a record warm Atlantic. None of these conditions was caused by humans, methane, cars, industrialization, or fossil fuels.

The extreme severity, duration, and extent of this global event is associated with an extraordinary combination of preceding cool tropical Pacific conditions (187076), a record-breaking El Nino (187778), a record strong Indian Ocean dipole (1877), and record warm North Atlantic Ocean (1878) conditions.

Climate and the Global Famine of 187678

From 1875 to 1878, concurrent multiyear droughts in Asia, Brazil, and Africa, referred to as the Great Drought, caused widespread crop failures, catalyzing the so-called Global Famine, which had fatalities exceeding 50 million people and long-lasting societal consequences. Observations, paleoclimate reconstructions, and climate model simulations are used 1) to demonstrate the severity and characterize the evolution of drought across different regions, and 2) to investigate the underlying mechanisms driving its multiyear persistence. Severe or record-setting droughts occurred on continents in both hemispheres and in multiple seasons, with the "Monsoon Asia" region being the hardest hit, experiencing the single most intense and the second most expansive drought in the last 800 years. The extreme severity, duration, and extent of this global event is associated with an extraordinary combination of preceding cool tropical Pacific conditions (187076), a record-breaking El Nino (187778), a record strong Indian Ocean dipole (1877), and record warm North Atlantic Ocean (1878) conditions.

The Sahara Desert used to be fertile but became a desert between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. The transition occurred because the climate changed, and it has been in a drought for thousands of years. People and animals adapted by moving.

Most of the media and other Democrats have lied for decades about the existential threat of climate change supposedly caused by humans and fossil fuels. Not once do we see scientific data, or facts showing a direct causal relationship, because facts don't matter, only the agenda and power.

I hope enough American people wake up and do not submit to the draconian measures being proposed, which will cause the U.S. to commit economic suicide. It is no wonder that the media are not trusted to tell the truth when they so willingly and intentionally lie.

In the 1970s, we were told that billions would die soon because of the existential threat of global cooling and starvation.

In the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s, we are continuously told of the existential threat of billions dying because of warming.

Basically, what we are told is based on an agenda, or feelings, not science. The rich people who live in multiple mansions and fly in private jets or have an eighty-five-car caravan clearly don't care about their carbon footprint. They care about their image, and if they say the same things as a teenager named Greta, they will be supported and allowed to live their lives as they want.

Anyone who tells the truth that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally, and that there is zero correlation between oil use and temperature, will be silenced, canceled, and destroyed.

Photo credit: daveynin, CC BY 2.0 license.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
The Marines occupy an almost mythic place in many Americans' minds as an invincible force that runs to the guns and fights no matter what. That's why it was so shocking to learn that, during a joint training exercise in the Mojave Desert, Britain's Royal Marines inflicted such a shellacking on the Americans that the latter had to surrender halfway through the exercise. This is a direct result of the Pentagon having gone woke under Obama  something that Trump failed to undo  followed by Biden doubling down on Obama's policies.

Marines used to be synonymous with dogged determination. Tripoli (1805), the Halls of Montezuma (1847), Belleau Wood (1918), Guadalcanal (1943), Iwo Jima (1945), Inchon (1950), Chosin Reservoir (1950), Khe Sanh (1968), Hue (1968), Fallujah (2004)  each of these names brings to us visions of Marines running to the gun, marching through the woods, slogging through the snow, fighting over volcanic islands, and never retreating, never stopping.

But the Marines have been in war nonstop since 2001, and that's a long time for a fighting force. At a certain point, rather than experience building them up and strengthening them, nonstop war wears men down. They lose their edge and their fire.

The American military has had another force bearing down on it that may be an even greater enemy than Islamists the world over. That force has been wokeism. Beginning with Obama, the American left has been using the military as a social justice experiment. According to James Hasson, author of Stand Down: How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging America's Military, Obama purged the officer class of old-timers and brought in progressive ideologues.

Under their aegis, Navy ships went green (when they were just meant to be mean) and bore the names of well-known leftists (gay rights advocate and pederast Harvey Milk and socialist activist Cesar Chavez, who happened to hate illegal aliens).

Obama ended "don't ask, don't tell" in favor of openly homosexual military service and invited mentally ill so-called "transgender" people into the military to serve under their "identified" sexes. That policy, more than any, affected troop fitness and deployability.

At the military academies, the focus wasn't on military history, tactics, and strategy; it was Critical Race Theory, gender theory, and anti-Americanism. The elite Rangers were forced to lower their physical standards so that women could be admitted.

The Marines were especially hard hit. Janet Levy summarized Hasson's findings:

When Marine infantry units integrated women, the male-female units had higher injury rates, slower casualty-evacuation times, poorer marksmanship skills, poorer preparation of fortified fighting positions and overall lower battle-essential skill sets than all-male units. Although all-male units outperformed coed units in 70% of combat tasks and mixed units were not recommended, Obama still issued a directive to integrate the Marine Corps infantry companies. Hasson characterizes this policy as "fulfilling the dreams of progressive ideologues at the expense of a service member's life."

The Trump presidency provided a brief respite on transgenderism but did nothing else to undo the damage that Obama's eight years wove into the military warp and woof. And when Biden came on board, he doubled down on wokeism, including Critical Race Theory and reinstating those transgender troops.

I don't need to remind you of Lloyd Austin's 60-day stand-down or Milley's obsession with "white rage," both of which allowed the Pentagon to purge people who aren't on board with the left's agenda. They've further purged people through the vaccine mandate. Add to that the disgusting and demoralizing retreat from Afghanistan, and perhaps you won't be at all surprised with the story of the Marines' loss in the "Battle of the Mohave Desert":

Royal Marines commandos 'dominated' US troops and forced them into a humiliating surrender just days into a mass training exercise in the Mojave desert, it has been revealed today. British forces took part in a five-day mock battle at the US Marine Corps' Twentynine Palms base in southern California, one of the largest military training areas in the world, and achieved a decisive victory against their American counterparts. The Royal Marines, along with allied forces from Canada, the Netherlands and the UAE, destroyed or rendered inoperable nearly every US asset and finished the exercise holding more than 65 per cent of the training area, after beginning with less than 20 per cent. Combatants used paintball-style training ammunition, which fires with reduced pressure and velocity, along with hi-tech simulators for heavier firepower like artillery, and live ammo on expansive ranges. Seeing no opportunity for victory, American combatants asked for the exercise to be 'reset' halfway through the five-day exercise, having taken significant casualties from British commandos.

That training loss transcends mere embarrassment. The leftist obsession with wokeism to the exclusion of battle readiness is bearing fruit. With the Chinese massively increasing their military technology (including that hypersonic missile); increasing the pressure for manly, aggressive men; and rattling the saber against Taiwan and Australia, the fact that our Marines couldn't survive a paintball battle is just devastating news for America's national security and for the free world generally.

Image by Andrea Widburg.

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The Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to New York's law giving the state discretion to determine whether someone deserves the right to concealed carry outside his home. The justices' questions and statements on oral argument show that the Court has arrogated way too much power to itself. It also shows that, no matter how academically smart the justices may be, their ideological blinders render them stupid.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen challenges a 1913 state law following the "may issue" model: to carry a gun outside your home, you must convince a bureaucrat that you have "proper cause" to need that gun.

To understand that viewpoint, I'll point you to what Robert Doyle, Marin County's sheriff back in 2014, said when the 9th Circuit held that sheriffs could not determine if people were truly in fear for their lives:

Doyle said he's a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment, but believes concealed-weapons permits should be reserved for those who have some sort of verifiable threat in their lives.

To "may issue" people, the right to bear arms isn't inherent in the people; it's inherent in the government granting them that "privilege."

While 41 states have a "shall issue" standard for licenses absent a clear reason not to (e.g., felony convictions), eight Democrat-run states, including New York, have "may issue" laws.

The New York plaintiffs sought concealed carry licenses but were issued licenses only for hunting and target shooting, not for personal self-defense. The district court tossed the case, the 2nd Circuit affirmed that decision, and the Supreme Court, for the first time in a decade, agreed to hear the matter.

During oral argument, the leftist judges' words revealed a Court that is way too big for its britches. Keep in mind that the Constitution gives them the power to decide cases (i.e., disputes) under the Constitution. Nothing in Art. III gives the Court legislative power.

Nevertheless, according to The Washington Post, "Justice Stephen G. Breyer pressed the attorney for the two gun owners about how the court could craft guidelines that would not lead to 'gun-related chaos.'" Once you're crafting guidelines, you're legislating. That's not the Court's job.

All the leftist judges plus Amy Coney Barrett were obsessively concerned with the minute details of where guns would or would not be safe. Bars? Stadiums? Subways?

In each, said the justices, it's possible for gun violence to occur. In fact, in all those places, illegal gun violence has occurred. The issue, as always, isn't the gun; it's who's handling it. As a reminder, people plotting mass gun mayhem deliberately go to places that bar guns.

Moreover, as the petitioners' attorney pointed out:

[P]lenty of other states and large cities, including Houston, Phoenix, San Diego and Chicago, have not had "demonstrably worse problems" than the states such as New York with strict gun regulations.

Justice Kavanaugh seconded that point, but Justice Kagan thought she had a clever riposte, saying, "Most people think Chicago is the world's worst city with respect to gun violence, Mr. Clement." Her ideological ignorance was showing.

Chicago's gun violence comes about because law-abiding citizens are disarmed, while its criminal element is completely feral, with no morals or decency. In fact, nothing brings criminals to heel faster than good guys with guns.

After the Supreme Court issued its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, affirming individuals' right to have guns in the home, gun-grabbers predicted that gun crime in Washington, D.C. would explode. John Lott explained then that it didn't:

But Armageddon never arrived. Quite the contrary, murders in Washington plummeted by an astounding 25 percent in 2009, dropping from 186 murders in 2008 to 140. That translates to a murder rate that is now down to 23.5 per 100,000 people, Washington's lowest since 1967. While other cities have also fared well over the last year, D.C.'s drop was several times greater than that for other similar sized cities. According to preliminary estimates by the FBI, nationwide murders fell by a relatively more modest 10 percent last year and by about 8 percent in other similarly sized cities of half a million to one million people (D.C.'s population count is at about 590,000).

(Of course, in D.C., as is true in all Democrat-run cities, violent crime increased following the Democrats' war on the police.)

Both Kagan and Sotomayor made points that should come back to haunt them regarding Texas's abortion law (keeping in mind that gun rights are explicit in the Constitution, while the right to an abortion is an imaginary constitutional right):

The court's liberal justices seemed willing to allow the state law to remain in place. Justice Elena Kagan called it "completely intuitive" that different states would have different gun laws, and that it is harder to get a license to carry a gun for self-defense in New York City than in a more rural area of the state. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that in her view, looking at the history and tradition of the Second Amendment, "states get a lot of deference" on restrictions.

Space constraints require me to stop now, but both streiff at RedState and Wolf Howling at Bookworm Room have good analyses about the case.

Image: Royalty free stock photo.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
As Terry McAuliffe and the Democrats reflect on McAuliffe's recent failure to become governor of Virginia again, they might want to revisit what he said during his last debate with Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin, for it speaks volumes about the sea change in Virginia politics.

As they were debating education, when Youngkin spoke about parents upset about sexually explicit material on library shelves, he turned to McAuliffe and said, "In fact, you vetoed the bill that would have informed parents that they [the books] were there." McAuliffe replied that the bill he vetoed would actually go beyond informing parents but would give them the right to remove books. "I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions." He then added, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

Inadvertently, with that arrogant and condescending response, former governor McAuliffe made Americans revisit the question: who is in charge of public education? Are "we the people" in charge of public education, or are the unelected educrats in charge of public education? McAuliffe sided with the educrats and lost.

Had McAuliffe corrected himself the next day by affirming that the taxpayers who fund public education are also the stewards of public education, he would be on his way to Richmond once more. Instead, he arrogantly doubled down on supporting the educrats while his buddy Biden sicced his FBI dogs on angry parents at school board meetings. These moves did not go down well with the voters in Virginia.

Winston Churchill once spoke of communist Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." The same can be said of American Public Education (APE). I was a public school teacher for 23 years, and I still cannot understand what APE is trying to do. I think, like the communists in the former Soviet Union they admire so much, APE doesn't want Americans to know what it is doing.

In 2015, as I was getting ready to retire, I witnessed another "McAuliffe Moment." I began to teach Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner, to my 12th-graders. Since the story involves Muslim culture, I spent some time teaching my students about the Five Pillars of Islam.

Not long after I began this unit, my principal called me to her office. She informed me that the mother of one of my students objected to my pro-Islamic proselytizing. I explained to my principal that I was merely sharing the basics of Islam with my students and that I was not endorsing Muslim beliefs.

My principal accepted my account but asked me to assign another novel to the student who had complained. I told her I would, and then she said something that I did not expect. "It's too bad," she added, "that we don't live in a communist system. In that case, we could assign the book, and that would be that."

Leftist educrats had a setback last night. However, they still believe they are the experts and they know better than citizens do what is best for America's students. They cannot dazzle us with their brilliance, but they can and will continue to baffle us with BS if we allow them to. They do not love America as it is; they love their idea of what America should be: a socialist utopia.

That transformation will not be stopped unless we stop it. They see Youngkin's win as a "bump in the road." I see Youngkin's win as an opportunity to dismantle a pernicious monopoly that we fund year after year with our tax dollars.

Image: Soviet propaganda poster (AKA the Democrat dream when it comes to education).

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb, proclaimed a British Army recruitment poster publicized during World War 1. The poster was alluding to air attacks that Britain was being subjected to.

At the start of World War One, Britain found itself totally ill-prepared to deal with the threat from enemy airships called Zeppelins, which are practically large bags filled with hydrogen gas. Floating at thousands of feet, Zeppelins could turn off their engines, and drift silently among the clouds carrying out surprise attacks. For the very first time, civilians were under threat.

The German Zeppelin LZ 18 at Berlin-Johannistal, 1913.

Zeppelins were first flown commercially as passenger airliners in 1910. By the time the First World War broke out, Zeppelins had flown over ten thousand fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights.

The principal feature of the Zeppelin's design was a fabric-covered rigid metal framework made up of transverse rings and longitudinal girders containing a number of individual gasbags. The framework of most Zeppelins was made of duralumin which is a combination of aluminium and copper as well as two or three other metalsits exact content was kept a secret for years. Early Zeppelins used rubberized cotton for the gasbags, but hydrogen molecules are so tiny that they escaped through the sheets. Then the Germans discovered goldbeater's skin, made from the intestines of cattle. The name comes from the products original usethey were traditionally used to sandwich sheets of gold in order to beat them down to gold leaf, just 1 micron thin. The sheets are tough enough to withstand the goldbeaters hammers, and they could be joined together and folded into impermeable layers.

Mark Steadman from the Post & Tele Museum explains how goldbeaters skin is manufactured:

Goldbeaters skin is made from part of a cows intestine, the outer layer of the caecum to be precise, which is also called blind gut or even the appendix. The outer layers of the blind-gut are carefully stripped off into sheets of around 60 cm in length by 25 cm in width. They are then cleaned of fat by dipping the gut in a mild alkaline solution and scraped with a blunt knife. The cleaned gut is then stretched over a frame. One quite remarkably quality of this material is that separate sheets can be joined or welded when wet by carefully rubbing the overlap of the two sheets. Several layers can be made this way as well, for example, airship gasbags usually consisted of up to seven layers of skin. The living tissues in the sheets grew together making a seamless and Hydrogen proof join. As well as being impermeable to Hydrogen it was also light and very strong, making it the perfect gasbag material.

An engraving showing the goldbeating process.

An incredible amount of cow intestines were needed to make these gasbags. A report prepared by Captain L. Chollet for the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1992 mentions that one cow furnishes only one such skin and 15 of them were required to prepare one square meter of the fabric. Each Zeppelin operated by the Germans had a balloon surface area of 20,000 to 30,000 square meters, requiring more than 250,000 cows to produce the bags that held the hydrogen gas in each Zeppelin. This wartime requirement put such a stress on the meat industry that Germans had to forgo their beloved sausages so that the army could have enough airships to rain down bombs upon British cities.

The collection of the goldbeater's skins was very systematic in Germany during the war, wrote Captain L. Chollet. Each butcher was required to deliver the ones from the animals he killed. Agents exercised strict control in Austria, Poland and northern France, where it was forbidden to make sausages.

Despite the ban on sausage making, the supply of goldbeaters skin ran out during the First World War, forcing the Zeppelin Company to recycle the material from older airships as well as use an inferior artificial substitute for the construction of the gasbags. The poor quality of these wartime gasbags were considered responsible for the loss of many war-time airships and their crew.

Women workers preparing the gasbag skins. Photo: airshipsonline.com

Gasbags under construction and testing. Photo: airshipsonline.com

The German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts during the war, resulting in over 500 deaths in bombing raids in Britain. The defenders found them surprisingly difficult to shoot down, despite being essentially floating balloons full of inflammable gas. Standard bullets and shrapnel made small holes causing inconsequential gas leaks. The British eventually developed new bullets, the Brock containing oxidant potassium chlorate, and the Buckingham filled with phosphorus, which reacted with the chlorate to catch fire and hence ignite the Zeppelin's hydrogen.

To counter the increasingly effective British defenses, the German army introduced new Zeppelins which were capable of flying higher, up to 21,000 feet, to escape enemy bullets. But increased altitude brought extreme cold and decreased oxygen which in turn led to altitude sickness. Besides, the wind was high and unpredictable at increased altitudes that made maneuvering the craft difficult. Many Zeppelins got caught in strong winds during air raids and failed to reach their targets.

Workers inspecting the gasbags. Photo: airshipsonline.com

The German defeat in the Great War marked the end of dirigibles in warfare, as the victorious Allies demanded a complete abolition of German air forces and surrender of the remaining airships as reparations. A week before the Treaty of Versailles was signed, many Zeppelin crews destroyed their airships in order to prevent delivery. The remaining dirigibles were transferred to France, Italy, Britain, and Belgium in 1920.

During the war, a total of 84 Zeppelins were built, of which 60 were lost. Half of this was lost to accidents. In the 51 raids made against England, more than 5,800 bombs were dropped resulting in over 550 deaths and over 1,300 injuries. It has been argued the raids were effective far beyond material damage in diverting and hampering wartime production: one estimate is that the due to the 191516 raids one sixth of the total normal output of munitions was entirely lost.

References:

# L Chollet, Balloon fabrics made of Goldbeater's skins, NASA

# Mark Steadman, The Goldbeater, the Cow and the Airship, Post & Tele Museum

# Zeppelin, Wikipedia
(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 4 - German NGO migrant rescue ships Sea Eye and Mission Lifeline rescued 400 migrants in Maltese waters overnight and they are now aboard Sea Eye with another 400 migrants rescued in recent days, heading for the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

The NGOs said "it was a disgrace that Malta ignored their distress calls".

The boat the latest migrants were aboard was a two-deck wooden vessel that was shipping water through a leak in the hull.

The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, meanwhile, was taking another 245 rescued migrants to Lampedusa.

The rightwing League party called for the Sea Eye and the Ocean Viking to land in Valletta, the Maltese capital, instead of bringing the migrants to Italy.

The migrant reception centre on Lampedusa has been over capacity for months. (ANSA).


RABAT - Almost eight billion dollars were sent by Moroccan nationals to people in their home country during the month of September, according to the currency exchange office of the country's finance ministry.



Compared with the previous year, remittances rose by 42.5% despite the pandemic.



To be able to welcome back 3 million Moroccan nationals living abroad, in mid-June Morocco arranged for special flights despite the fact that normal air traffic has not yet resumed due to COVID-19.



In the ranking of countries receiving money from its citizens in the Arab diaspora, Morocco is in second place (13.5%) only to Egypt, which holds a 53.9% share, according to the Union of Arab Banks.
BELGRADE - Further strengthening of the collaboration between Serbia, Albania and Northern Macedonia in order to facilitate and speed up economic and trade exchanges as part of the Open Balkan regional initiative was the focus Thursday of a three-way summit between Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic, Albanian prime minister Edi Rama, and Macedonian deputy prime minister Nikola Dimitrov.



Started two years ago under the name Mini Schengen, the initiative is open to all western Balkan countries with the aim to tearing down obstacles and barriers and reducing lengthy waiting for customs checks at the border to make the Balkans a more advanced and competitive zone in terms of trade and commerce at the global level.



In July, during a three-way summit in Skopje, the name of the initiative was changed to Open Balkan.



At that time, it was also decided that - starting in January 2023 - there would no longer be border controls between Serbia, Albania, and Northern Macedonia.



Three documents were also signed on the circulation of goods, import and export facilitation, and unrestricted labor market access in the western Balkans.



Prior to the three-way meeting, Vucic, Rama, and Dimitrov met with a delegation of businessmen and economists from the three countries.



Not taking part in the summit was Macedonian prime minister Zoran Zaev, who recently resigned after disappointing results by his party in local elections.



A dinner on Wednesday evening was participated in also by Montenegrin prime minister Zdravko Krivokapic, who ended a two-day visit to Belgrade.


PARIS - A migrant was found dead on Thursday around 7 AM on a beach in Wissant in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France.



The body was near a small boat. Two other migrants nearby were taken to hospital as they were suffering from "severe hypothermia", sources close to the inquiry told France Presse.



On Wednesday, the Dunkerque prosecutor's office had reported that one migrant had died and another was still missing after the capsizing of several boats the previous day in the English Channel. Some 400 others were rescued. Those rescued and dead had been trying to cross from France to the UK.



"Numerous" rescue operations were conducted in the Pas-de-Calais strait, beginning over the night between Tuesday and Wednesday and continuing "until the evening" yesterday, according to a statement issued by France's Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and North Sea (PREMAR).



The dead migrant is believed to be in his thirties and he was thought to have been travelling in a small boat that was carrying around 40 people off the coast of Dunkerque, Dunkerque prosecutor Sebastien Pieve told AFP.



The prosecutor's office has opened an inquiry under the direction of the Border Police for "manslaughter".



The missing person was said to have fallen into the sea, according to migrants rescued.



"This week there has been a lot of activity" of makeshift rafts trying to cross the English Channel, probably encouraged by "relatively mild weather conditions", the prosecutor added.



Over the night between Monday and Tuesday, another 292 people trying to cross the English Channel to the UK were rescued in seven operations.


VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas noted after a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday that: "Jerusalem must be recognized by all as a place of encounter and not of conflict, and that its status must preserve its identity and universal value as a Holy City for all three Abrahamic religions, also through a special internationally guaranteed status." According to a press release, their discussions were "cordial" and emphasized the good relations between the State of Palestine and the Holy See.



Abbas later met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.



"With regard to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, it was stressed that it is absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue in order to achieve a two-state solution, also with the help of more vigorous effort on the part of the international community," the statement issued by the Vatican said.



The statement noted that the talks at the Vatican had stressed the good relations between the Holy see and the State of Palestine and had dealt with bilateral issues of mutual interest.



It also stressed the need to promote brotherhood among humans and peaceful coexistence between faiths, as well as the urgent need to work for peace, avoid the use of weapons, and fight against all forms of extremism and fundamentalism.



This is the sixth time that Pope Francis has met with Abbas in the Vatican since the October 17, 2013 audience: there was the meeting of the prayer for peace alongside Israeli president Shimon Peres and Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew on June 8, 2014, as well as other audiences on May 16, 2015 (on the eve of the canonisation in the Vatican of four nuns including two Palestinian ones), January14, 2017, and December 3, 2018.



Other meetings had been held in Bethlehem on May 25, 2014 during Pope Francis's trip to the Holy Land.
Metal detectorists have unearthed the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold coins to be discovered in England to date.

The find of 131 gold coins, along with four other gold objects, was discovered in west Norfolk, with the exact location not disclosed as the landowner requested anonymity.

Most of the items were discovered by a single detectorist, who asked to remain anonymous, between 2014 and 2020.

However, 10 of the coins were found by a second detectorist, serving police officer David Cockle, who failed to report his discovery and tried to sell them.

Gold coins, along with four other gold objects, unearthed by metal detectorists (British Museum/PA)

His deception was discovered and the then 50-year-old was sentenced in 2017 to 16 months in prison after admitting theft.

He was also dismissed from the police.

Two of the 10 coins could not be recovered as they had already been sold and had disappeared into the antiquities trade.

A treasure inquest into the 1,400-year-old hoard, buried shortly after 600AD, was opened in Norwich on Wednesday.

Most of the coins are Frankish tremisses, and there are also nine gold solidi, a larger coin from the Byzantine empire worth three tremisses.

The hoard also contains four other gold objects, including a gold bracteate, which is a type of stamped pendant, a small gold bar, and two other pieces of gold that were probably parts of larger items of jewellery.

A gold bracteate, which is a type of stamped pendant, a small gold bar, and two other pieces of gold which were probably parts of larger items of jewellery (British Museum/PA)

At the point when the hoard was buried, England was not yet unified but divided into several smaller Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Of these, the Kingdom of the East Angles, including modern Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the most important.

This region is also one of the most productive in terms of finds of archaeological material through metal detecting.

The previous largest hoard of coins of this period was a purse containing 101 coins discovered at Crondall in Hampshire in 1828.

It had been disturbed before discovery and may originally have included more coins.

The most famous discovery from this period was the ship burial from Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, recently dramatised in the Netflix movie The Dig, and dating somewhere between 610AD and 640AD.

The Sutton Hoo burial included a purse of 37 gold coins, three blank gold discs of the same size as the coins and two small gold ingots, as well as many other gold items.

Gareth Williams, curator of Early Medieval Coins at the British Museum, said: This is a hugely important find.

Norwich Castle Museum hopes to acquire the hoard (British Museum/PA)

It is close in date to the famous ship burial from Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, and although it doesnt contain as much gold as the whole of the Sutton Hoo burial, it contains many more coins.

In fact, it is the largest coin hoard of the period known to date.

It must be seen alongside other recent finds from East Anglia and elsewhere, and will help to transform our understanding of the economy of early Anglo-Saxon England.

Norwich Castle Museum hopes to acquire the hoard, with the full support of the British Museum.

Tim Pestell, senior curator of archaeology at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, said: This internationally significant find reflects the wealth and continental connections enjoyed by the early Kingdom of East Anglia.

Study of the hoard and its findspot has the potential to unlock our understanding of early trade and exchange systems and the importance of west Norfolk to East Anglias ruling kings in the seventh century.

Helen Geake, finds liaison officer for Norfolk, said: The west Norfolk hoard is a really remarkable find, which will provide a fascinating counterpart to Sutton Hoo at the other end of the Kingdom of East Anglia.

It underlines the value of metal-detected evidence in helping reconstruct the earliest history of England, but also shows how vulnerable these objects are to irresponsible collectors and the antiquities trade.
The Queen has left Windsor Castle for a private weekend away at her Sandringham home in Norfolk.

It is understood the 95-year-old head of state is spending a few days at her estate after it was announced last week her doctors had advised her to rest for a period.

Aviation sources disclosed the Queen flew by helicopter to her home in East Anglia, a private trip that was long planned.

The Queen delivering her video message to world leaders attending Cop26 (Buckingham Palace)

The Queen is undertaking a period of rest after she had preliminary tests in hospital on October 20 during her first overnight stay at a medical facility in eight years.

But she has been carrying out light duties from her desk, and recorded a video message for Cop26 world leaders who met earlier in the week in Glasgow.

The head of state urged them to work together in common cause to tackle climate change, and hoped the summits legacy would be they recognised the time for words has now moved to the time for action.

She also carried out her weekly meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson by telephone on Wednesday.

The Queen hopes to attend the annual Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph (Chris Jackson/PA)

There has been concern for the Queen given her advanced years, but medics see the two-week period of rest, announced last Friday, as a sensible precaution.

In a statement at the time, Buckingham Palace said the monarch would miss the annual Festival of Remembrance staged by the Royal British Legion at the Royal Albert Hall and attended by senior members of the Royal Family.

But the Queen has the firm intention of leading the nation in honouring the countrys war dead on Remembrance Sunday on November 14.
Amazon takes another swipe at union as Alabama rematch looms Amazon.com Inc message is seen at a warehouse break room ahead of another potential union vote in Bessemer

By Jeffrey Dastin and Julia Love

(Reuters) - Earlier this year, Amazon.com Inc handily defeated a historic union drive at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. But with the prospect of another vote looming, the online retailer is leaving nothing to chance.

Over the past few weeks, Amazon has ramped up its campaign at the warehouse, forcing thousands of employees to attend meetings, posting signs critical of labor groups in bathrooms, and flying in staff from the West Coast, according to interviews and documents seen by Reuters.

It is an indication that Amazon is sticking to its aggressive playbook. In August, a U.S. National Labor Relations Board hearing officer said the company's conduct around the previous vote interfered with the Bessemer union election. An NLRB regional director's decision on whether to order a new vote is forthcoming. Amazon has denied wrongdoing and said it wanted employees' voices to be heard.

Still, the moves to discourage unionization ahead of any second election, previously unreported, show how Amazon is fighting representation at its U.S. worksites.

An uptick in labor activity since workers in April rejected joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), including organizing drives in New York and Canada, has pushed Amazon to react.

Other prominent unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are also vowing to organize Amazon. The risk: unions could alter how Amazon manages its vast, finely tuned operation and drive up costs at a time when a labor shortage is taking a toll on its profit.

Wilma Liebman, a former NLRB chair, said the stakes are high.

"They really, really fear any toe in the door to unionization," Liebman said. "There's nothing like a win, and a win can be contagious."

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said a union "will impact everyone at the site so it's important all employees understand what that means for them and their day-to-day life working at Amazon."

In the new campaign, Amazon has dedicated a week of mandatory meetings to warn staff that unions will force them to strike and forgo pay, a nod to the recent stoppages roiling workplaces across the country.

And like last time, Amazon has said unions are a business taking workers' money and told staff to consider what it can guarantee and what unions cannot - now in panels in bathroom stalls and above urinals. The panels carry information unrelated to unions as well.

"Unions can make a lot of promises, but cannot guarantee you will receive better wages, benefits, or working conditions," read a photo shared with Reuters.

UNION SUPPORTERS PUSH BACK

Some staff have challenged Amazon's claims and posted their own pro-union signs in warehouse bathrooms, according to worker accounts.

The RWDSU, meanwhile, has flown in personnel to Bessemer, facilitated nightly chats at a burger joint, and ramped up door-knocking. Home visits are a crucial part of organizing drives because unions have no guaranteed worksite access under U.S. law, said John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University.

Stuart Appelbaum, the RWDSU's president, said the union has heard from employees who now would change their vote to join. He said he believes door-knocking gives the union a new edge.

"We have a greater opportunity to engage with people every day than during the height of the pandemic," said Appelbaum. Organizers did not conduct home visits last time because of COVID-19 fears.

He added that the RWDSU's effort is about more than Amazon. "It's about the future of work."

A Teamsters spokeswoman said the union has attended strategy meetings on Amazon with other unions coordinated by the biggest U.S. labor federation, the AFL-CIO. Tim Schlittner of the AFL-CIO said the federation is "bringing the resources of the labor movement" to support Amazon workers.

Roadblocks abound, not least that the RWDSU has to reach new staff joining the company without knowing their names until an official election is ordered. Appelbaum estimated that Amazon was hiring 200 people a week in Bessemer.

Amazon had no comment on turnover. The warehouse headcount numbers more than 5,800.

SCARE TACTIC

On Oct. 10, just when Amazon raised hourly wages by 25 cents for more veteran staff, the company re-started mandatory weekly meetings in Bessemer to highlight different messages about unions. Amazon said the pay increase was unrelated to the meetings.

For Darryl Richardson, an outspoken union supporter at the facility, strikes were a bigger focus of Amazon's new campaign.

"They're trying to scare you more now," Richardson said. "You don't get paid going on a strike."

According to Richardson, Amazon falsely said a union would force workers to walk off the job and fine them if they crossed a picket line. The 52-year-old said Amazon has treated him differently as well: he was denied transfer requests, and an official walking through the warehouse to ask workers how they felt about unions had little to say after scanning Richardson's badge ... "'You're Darryl,' she said. 'Your mind is made up.'"

Amazon had no comment on Richardson's remarks.

Though the company told employees they can turn away organizers showing up at their doorsteps, Richardson said he and peers have kept knocking, while Amazon is making its case on home turf.

In one table-top sign Amazon put up at the warehouse, the company exhorted workers to "FOLLOW THE MONEY," claiming the RWDSU gave Appelbaum a "$30,000 raise paid for by union dues" and last year spent nearly $100,000 on cars for its officials.

Asked for comment, Appelbaum said he has no union car and that transportation is for field representatives whose jobs require travel to workplaces.

Amazon is "misrepresenting the information," he said.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Anna Driver and Bernard Orr)
FILE PHOTO: A sticker reads crude oil on the side of a storage tank in the Permian Basin

By Alex Lawler, Ahmad Ghaddar and Olesya Astakhova

LONDON (Reuters) -OPEC and its allies agreed at a meeting on Thursday to stick to plans to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) from December, despite calls from the United States for extra supply to cool rising prices.

The White House said Washington would consider a full range of tools at its disposal to guarantee access to affordable energy.

All oil producers suffered a drop in income during the COVID-19 pandemic and as demand recovers with the global economy it has allowed them to rebuild their balance sheets. OPEC+ supply restraint has underpinned a rally that has pushed global benchmark Brent crude to a three-year high of $86.70. [O/R]

Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia has dismissed calls for speedier oil supply increases from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, collectively known as OPEC+, citing economic headwinds.

OPEC+ sources said the United States has plenty of capacity to raise production itself if it believes the world's economy needs more energy. Sources have said Saudi Arabia and Russia are becoming more confident that the higher prices will not elicit a fast increase in output by the U.S. shale gas industry.

Producers are concerned about going too fast, fearing renewed setbacks in the battle against the pandemic and the speed of economic recovery, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Thursday.

He said oil stocks will see "tremendous" builds at the end of 2021 and early 2022 because of slowing consumption.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that since August OPEC has already added 2 million bpd to global supply and will continue with its plan to add another 400,000 bpd each month in the later part of 2021 and the early months of 2022.

"There are some signs of decreased oil demand in the European Union in October. Global oil demand is still under pressure from the Delta COVID variant," Novak said, explaining why OPEC+ has chosen not to add more barrels.

U.S. President Joe Biden had on Saturday urged major G20 energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production to ensure a stronger global economic recovery.

His statement is part of a broad effort by the White House to pressure OPEC and its allies to increase supply.

"OPEC+ seems unwilling to use the capacity and power it has now at this critical moment of global recovery for countries around the world," a White House spokesperson said on Thursday.

"The President believes Americans should have access to affordable energy, including at the pump, and has directed us to continue monitoring the markets and be prepared to use all tools as needed", the spokesperson said.

The world's largest oil producer, the United States, which is not part of OPEC+, saw its production fall steeply in 2020 and production has since recovered much slower than anticipated.

OPEC+ will meet again on Dec. 2.

(Reporting by OPEC team; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Edmund Blair, Elaine Hardcastle, Kirsten Donovan)
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jared Kushner's global investment firm, Affinity Partners, plans to add two senior partners and is seeking to raise several billion dollars as it begins to ramp up its activities, a person familiar with the plan said on Thursday.

Kushner, who was a top adviser to former President Donald Trump but has stepped away from politics for the time being, is expected to bring in two long-time private equity executives, Bret Perlman and Asad Naqvi, as senior investment partners, the person told Reuters.

Perlman spent 14 years at Blackstone before leaving to co-found Elevation Partners and has since been leading private investments for a family office.

Naqvi has long experience as a private equity investor, mostly recently as a senior partner at Apis, a global growth equity fund based in London.

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hires show Affinity Partners is ramping up its activities. Kushner based the firm in Miami, where he moved after Trump left office in January.

Affinity is expecting to raise several billion dollars "from a combination of American institutions, and investors as well as foreign investment institutions, including sovereign wealth funds and high net worth individuals," the person said.

Kushner is hoping to invest in American and Israeli companies that are looking for international expansion opportunities in India, Africa, the Middle East and other parts of Asia, the person said.

At the Trump White House, Kushner helped broker deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in a six-month flurry last year. He also helped negotiate a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

Kushner, who wants to work with Israeli and Gulf companies and investors to bolster investment between Israel and Gulf Arab countries, has already approached Saudi Arabia about creating "an investment corridor" between Israel and Saudi Arabia as a way to encourage investment between the two countries, the person said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
FILE - Census Bureau Director nominee Robert Santos, testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, Thursday, July 15, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Senate has confirmed Santos as the next U.S. Census Bureau director, Thursday, Nov. 4. As a third-generation Mexican American, he will be the first person of color to lead the nations largest statistical agency on a permanent basis. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Robert Santos was confirmed Thursday as the next U.S. Census Bureau director, becoming the first person of color to lead the nations largest statistical agency on a permanent basis.

The Senate approved Santos, a third-generation Mexican American statistician from San Antonio, Texas, for the job overseeing a bureau that conducts the once-a-decade census, often described as the nations largest civilian mobilization, as well as surveys that create the data infrastructure of the nation.

The new director inherits a Census Bureau workforce recovering from the execution of the most difficult head count of U.S. residents in recent memory. The 2020 census was challenged last year by the pandemic, natural disasters, delays and attempts at political interference by the Trump administration.

The pandemic also disrupted one of the Census Bureaus most important programs, the one-year American Community Survey, which provides a wide-ranging picture of the U.S. on everything from commute times to education levels. Bureau officials announced earlier this year that the 2020 survey wont be released in its usual format this fall because of troubles collecting data during the pandemic.

In his new job, Santos, 66, will be responsible for leading the agency as it lays the groundwork for executing the next census in 2030, as well as shepherding the last releases of data gathered during the 2020 census and supervising other bureau programs.

During his confirmation hearing, Santos told senators that his duel passions were statistics and helping people. He is a former president of the American Statistical Association and was vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute.

Those opportunities that Ive had allowed me to believe that I should pay it forward, and Ive tried to do that every day of my life, Santos said. Census Bureau data helps weave us together to form a more perfect union. Although this is a political position, Im not a politician.

Santos predecessor, Steven Dillingham, resigned last January, in the middle of data crunching for the 2020 census, while facing criticism that he was acceding to President Donald Trumps demand to produce citizenship information at the expense of data quality.

Bureau workers were under significant pressure from two Trump political appointees to figure out who was in the U.S. illegally using federal and state administrative records, and Dillingham, also a Trump appointee, set a deadline for bureau statisticians to provide him with a technical report on the effort, according to the Office of Inspector General. The effort to gather citizenship information was abandoned a short time later.

At the time, Dillingham described the events as a misunderstanding and said there were no potential violations of laws or regulations.

During Dillinghams tenure, the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire and named a handful of political appointees that statisticians and Democratic lawmakers worried would politicize the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. The president also issued two directives that advocacy groups said were part of efforts to suppress the participation of minorities and immigrants in the 2020 census.

After Dillingham resigned, the agencys chief operating officer, Ron Jarmin, assumed the directors duties on an interim basis. Santos will fill the remainder of Dillinghams term, which expires at the end of the year, and then start a new five-year term.

After Santos was confirmed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described him as a perfect fit" for the job.

He is exactly the kind of person our country needs overseeing our Census  an impartial, highly experienced professional from outside politics," Schumer said.

Santos told senators during his confirmation hearing that the Census Bureau needs more independence and transparency to build public trust in the statistical agency and that the agencys career staff needed nurturing after enduring a tumultuous 2020.

The 2020 census experienced unprecedented obstacles because of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. The pandemic forced the Census Bureau to delay until April the release of state population numbers used to apportion congressional seats. The release of redistricting data used for drawing congressional and legislative districts was postponed until August.

Looking ahead to the next census in 2030, Santos said he would be in favor of a proposal that never got off the ground before the last census  combining the questions about race and Hispanic origin. A previous study by the Census Bureau showed that doing so would increase response rates by Hispanics, who may be unsure how to answer the race question because they often are from mixed race and ethnic backgrounds.

The Office of Budget and Management had considered pairing the questions for the 2020 census, but the Trump administration decided to keep the race question separate from the ethnicity one.

I can use my own personal perspective as a Latino, and I can use my research experience and my leadership position, to work with OMB to make sure that the proper attention is given to that specific issue, Santos said.

Santos is the first person of color to be confirmed as Census Bureau director on a permanent basis. James Holmes, who is African American, was named acting director on a temporary basis in 1998 after the resignation of Martha Riche.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
HAMMOND, Ind. (AP)  A man was charged with murder Wednesday in the death of a 13-year-old boy who was killed when shots were fired at a group of trick-or-treaters on Halloween in northwestern Indiana.

Desmond Crews, 23, of Gary is also charged with attempted murder in the shooting Sunday in Hammond that killed Thomas DeLaCruz Jr., of East Chicago, and wounded another 13-year-old, the (Northwest Indiana) Times reported. It wasn't immediately known Wednesday if Crews has an attorney.

"He was being a kid out with his aunt trick-or-treating, walking with a group of kids, DeLaCruz' mother, Jasmine Anderson, told the newspaper. And some ignorant, sick person decided to shoot at kids.

One of the trick-or-treaters told police that he exchanged words with a man about 30 to 45 minutes before the shooting, which happened around 7:30 p.m. The man threatened to get a gun and shoot them, according to court documents.

The group later saw a car with five or six people inside who appeared to be staring at them. The man who had exchanged words with one of the youths got out of the car with some of the other occupants. Another man took a shooting stance and shots were fired at the trick-or-treaters, court records said.

A police officer captured Crews after the father of one of the youths chased him in the neighborhood, according to court records.

A gun and ammunition were found later in a storage barrel.

Other possible suspects were being investigated, police said.
Law enforcement officers collect evidence near the scene of a shooting at the Boise Towne Square shopping mall in Boise, Idaho, U.S., October 25, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

BOISE, Idaho (AP)  A 54-year-old Idaho woman was jailed after police say she stole from the body of a security guard killed during a Boise mall shooting.

Mary Alyce Scarbrough of Boise is charged with felony counts of alteration of evidence, malicious injury to property and grand theft, The Idaho Statesman reported Wednesday. She's being held without bail on accusations of violating her parole, as well as on a $250,000 bond on the other charges.

The courts very concerned about the alleged conduct in this case, said Magistrate Judge David Manweiler during a court hearing last week.

Court documents list Amy Mitchell as Scarbrough's attorney. Mitchell is also listed as an attorney with the Ada County public defender's office. That office declined to comment Wednesday when contacted by The Associated Press.

Security guard Jo Acker, 26, died in the Oct. 25 shooting at the Boise Towne Square mall. Roberto Padilla Arguelles, a 49-year-old Rupert man shopping for gifts for his family, was also killed.

Police say that minutes later they exchanged gunfire with 27-year-old suspect Jacob Bergquist, who died the next day.

Prosecutors said Scarbrough was inside the mall when the shooting began.

The defendant approached the dying security guard at the mall, a prosecutor said during Scarbrough's court appearance. The complaint said that Scarbrough took rings, a gun belt, clothing and other property from Ackers body.

A woman experiencing a mental health crisis significantly altered the crime scene by removing and displacing evidence throughout the mall, Boise Police Department spokeswoman Haley Williams said in an email to the newspaper.

According to court records, Scarbrough also went into an arcade and tore off sheets of metal, kicked holes in walls and damaged other items.

Scarbrough was booked into the Ada County Jail on the day of the shooting on a misdemeanor disturbing the peace charge, and was in custody when charged with the felony counts.

She has pleaded not guilty to disturbing the peace.

Scarbrough is on probation from a felony drug case after pleading in 2019 to possession of a controlled substance.
A day after Republicans won decisive victories in Virginia and came within striking distance of a major upset in New Jersey, both political parties stand at a crossroads.

For Democrats, their time in power on Capitol Hill appears to have an almost definite expiration date with the approaching 2022 midterms a year from now, and so they face questions about whether they can still  and should  pass both a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a larger social spending bill. More broadly, they must grapple with how to win over voters who could not stand former President Donald Trump but dont seem to like Democrats either.

Meanwhile, Republicans are dealing with an identity crisis of their own: Do Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkins victory on Tuesday and the partys gains in New Jersey offer them a path ahead to more victories without Trump, and if so, how do they get there?

The path to a post-Trump reality is treacherous and uncertain. But it does exist, as made clear by the GOPs wins this week, said Bill Palatucci, a key New Jersey Republican who is a close adviser to former Gov. Chris Christie.

Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin arrives to speak at an election night party in Chantilly, Va., after defeating Democrat Terry McAuliffe. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

New Jersey Republican Jack Ciattarelli mounted a far stronger challenge to incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, than had been anticipated. And Democratic state Senate President Steve Sweeney  long one of the most powerful and imposing politicians in New Jersey  was on the verge of being defeated by an unknown Republican candidate: a truck driver named Ed Durr, who spent very little money on the race.

Trump was not important here, Palatucci told Yahoo News. Zero role here.

Among Republicans who harbor hopes of running for president in 2024, Christie has been most aggressive in challenging the GOP to move on from Trump, and Palatucci predicted on Wednesday that the party would do so.

We will ultimately move past Trump, Palatucci said.

But if that happens, it will be a delicate dance, as demonstrated quite well by Youngkins candidacy.

"Youngkins savvy move was not to embrace Trump but also not to insult Trump or disavow him, wrote Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. He was not about being pro- or anti-Trump. Youngkin was about being not about Trump. Every time he was asked, he said he was just focused on Virginia. He refused to take the bait.

This is a different approach to the former president than has been taken by outspoken critics such as Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. But it may be that both open confrontation and a more conciliatory strategy are both needed to push Trump aside while retaining the voters he attracted to the GOP.

And it may also be the case that if the Republican Party cannot act decisively in some way to choose someone as its standard bearer in 2024 other than Trump, he will fill the vacuum.

Most of the Republican Party has either gone silent in the face of Trumps continued lies about the 2020 election, or are actively supporting the same disproven conspiracy theories that led thousands of Trump supporters to violently assault the Capitol earlier this year in an attempt to overturn an election.

Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington on Jan. 6. (John Minchillo/AP)

If the GOP cannot figure out a way beyond Trump, it will be wedded to his mercurial temperament and distaste for democracy. And it will also be stuck with a leader who lost the popular vote in a landslide last year while other Republicans made gains. Trump remains toxic in states like Virginia, which he lost by 10 points last November, so if the GOP is interested in repeating Youngkins success nationally, it will likely have to keep Trump at arms length.

As for Democrats, they woke up Wednesday staring into a new round of second-guessing about their agenda on Capitol Hill. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a former Virginia governor himself, said that his party had cost Democrat Terry McAuliffe the election by not passing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and a $1.75 trillion social spending bill last month.

Congressional Dems hurt Terry McAuliffe. Im going to be blunt, Kaine said. If we had been able to deliver infrastructure and reconciliation in mid-October, he could have sold universal pre-K, affordable child care, infrastructure, creating jobs.

Both bills have been stalled for months amid Democratic infighting. The infrastructure bill breezed through the Senate over the summer with 19 Republican votes and provides money for roads, bridges, waterways and expanded broadband internet access, among other priorities. But it has so far been unable to pass the House, where progressive Democrats are demanding a deal be reached first on a larger spending bill but havent been able to overcome objections from moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe hugs his wife, Dorothy, as he makes an appearance at an election night party in McLean, Va. (Steve Helber/AP)

Kaine, the partys 2016 vice presidential candidate, called for Democrats to forge ahead and pass both bills. Democrats control both houses and they have to act like it, have to be disciplined, have to get results. Our inability to come together and get a result hurt [McAuliffe], he said.

Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne spoke for many on the left when he called for the Democrats to abolish or reform the filibuster to push through their spending and infrastructure bills, but also to pass sweeping changes to elections laws. Democrats cannot allow the filibuster to block action on voting rights, now a more urgent cause than ever, he wrote.

But others said that Democrats  and progressives in particular  misread the 2020 election results by pushing for maximalist legislation such as the reconciliation package rather than delivering a solid win earlier this summer with the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

While there are many worthwhile elements in [Democrats] social spending package, things that would be beneficial to many, that doesnt mean that voters last November were authorizing it, said pollster Charlie Cook.

Manchin, who represents a state Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020, has been the main obstacle to progressive attempts to push through a social spending bill. And on Wednesday he reiterated that he was not comfortable with some of the spending in the package, raising further doubts about whether Democrats can get it done anytime soon.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has been a key holdout on President Biden's ambitious domestic package, is surrounded by reporters as he leaves the chamber after a vote on Wednesday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

If were going to do something, lets take time to do it right, Manchin said Wednesday. Were talking about revamping the entire tax code. Thats mammoth. Weve had no hearings. He said people were scared to death of these large changes.

Were talking about expanding something we cant even pay for now, he said of proposals to expand Medicare.

Democrats also engaged in some self-examination on Wednesday, particularly when it came to their rhetoric around cultural issues.

I think that Democrats are coming across in ways that we dont recognize, that are annoying and offensive and seem out of touch, in ways that I dont think show up in our feeds, when were looking at our kind of echo chamber, Van Jones, a former Obama administration official, said on CNN.

Lis Smith, a prominent Democratic campaign consultant and communications expert, agreed with Jones and tweeted, I would add condescending as well.

Incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who won the party primary this summer over more progressive candidates and drew large support from working-class, nonwhite parts of the city, put it succinctly: Government is not supposed to preach to its citizenry, its supposed to provide, Adams said on MSNBCs Morning Joe.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams speaks to supporters on Tuesday. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

John Halpin and Peter Juul, both analysts at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, wrote that a renewed push for the twin bills in Congress does not have to be in tension with a more relatable Democratic Party that reaches out to moderate Republicans and the working-class voters who have joined the GOP in recent years.

They called for Democrats to pass both bills. But they also said Democrats need to approach policy and political disagreements and debates with more modesty, humility and humanity.

Dont dismiss voters fears. Recognize that most Democrats are normal working- and middle-class voters, not leftists. Reach out beyond the base with a message of equal rights and dignity for all people  centered on core concerns around jobs, the economy, and health care wrapped in patriotic values, they wrote.
Niger Political Map with capital Niamey, national borders, most important cities, rivers and lakes. Illustration with English labeling and scaling.

NIAMEY (Reuters) -Gunmen killed 69 people including a mayor in an attack in a remote area of southwest Niger, the interior minister said on Thursday, part of a wave of violence against civilians that has swept the country this year.

A delegation led by the mayor of Banibangou was ambushed on Tuesday about 50 km (30 miles) from the town, near the border with Mali. The area is overrun by militants associated with a local affiliate of Islamic State that has killed hundreds of civilians in rural communities this year.

Fifteen people survived and a search operation was underway, Interior Minister Alkache Alhada said on state television. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

A poverty-stricken, arid zone of West Africa encompassing the borderlands of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso has been racked by violence in recent years as armed groups, some linked with al Qaeda, have sought to establish control over communities and rid the region of local and international military forces. Thousands of civilians have been killed and millions have been displaced.

Not including Tuesday's violence, Islamist groups have killed more than 530 people in attacks on civilians in the frontier regions of southwest Niger this year, over five times more than in all of 2020, according to data provided by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a consultancy which tracks political violence.

In August, militants carried out a string of attacks in the area, including one in which 37 people https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/armed-men-kill-37-attack-village-southwest-niger-sources-say-2021-08-17 were killed.

The militants frequently target local officials https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/africa-islamists-sahel-leaders including mayors, village chiefs and religious elders in an effort to destabilise communities, leaving them vulnerable to extortion and attack. Hundreds of such officials have been killed or abducted since the beginning of 2018.

(Reporting by Boureima Balima and Edward McAllister; editing by Mark Heinrich and Jonathan Oatis)
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected an accusation he was deliberately trying to avoid being questioned under oath in a defamation lawsuit by a former contestant on TV's "The Apprentice" who claimed he sexually assaulted her.

In a filing with a New York state court in Manhattan, Trump said a claim he used "delay tactics" to keep his accuser Summer Zervos from deposing him by a court-ordered Dec. 23 deadline "patently absurd, disingenuous, and entirely unfounded."

Lawyers for Zervos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Zervos has accused Trump of harming her reputation by claiming she lied by accusing him during his 2016 presidential campaign of subjecting her to unwanted kissing and groping in 2007, two years after she was on his reality television show.

The lawsuit seeks a retraction or apology, plus compensatory and punitive damages. Trump has denied Zervos' claims and called her case politically motivated.

On Oct. 18, Trump asked for court permission to countersue Zervos for wrongly interfering with his right to speak freely.

The former president cited a 2020 New York state law, known as an "anti-SLAPP" law, meant to deter lawsuits designed to harass defendants for speaking out on public issues.

Zervos, who sued Trump in January 2017, had said allowing the countersuit would delay Trump's deposition, adding to delays that have already caused her "significant prejudice."

But Trump said Zervos knew on Sept. 30 of his planned countersuit, "which she has no legitimate basis to oppose," and is herself "unnecessarily delaying" the case by objecting.

The case is unresolved in part because Trump argued while in the White House that a sitting president could not be sued.

That became moot after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and Trump became a private citizen. New York's highest court dismissed Trump's latest appeal in March. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)
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

View Results
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vahe Gevorgyan says Armenia is attaching importance to the resumption of the peace process of the Artsakh conflict.

There is a need to resume the peace process of the Artsakh conflict, he told reporters in parliament. And our efforts are first of all directed at reaching this goal. All other issues, including the issue of the status of Artsakh, will be discussed within the framework of the peace process. This is why now we need the resumption of the peace process within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship.

Asked to comment which maps will be beneficial for Armenia during the talks, the deputy FM said its too early for this question. He added that in order to speak about this there should be negotiations on delimitation.

As long as there are no delimitation negotiations, it is very early to speak about what maps and documents we are guided with. We will address these questions when the negotiations will happen, he said.

He noted that general approaches are developed during internal discussions, but it is too early to speak about the toolbox when there are no negotiations.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Investors operating in the field of high-technologies are surprised by the professional skills and knowledge of engineers in Armenia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the Cabinet meeting today.

They say that engineers of Armenia in many cases have an obviously great potential and advantage, and this increases Armenias investment attractiveness, the PM said, adding that he has presented to the investors other statistics which must encourage them.

I was pleased to know that when we conducted the teacher certification process, it turned out that math teachers received the highest scores. This is a very pleasant fact, it means that our strategy for technology sector development has a great potential, he said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian health authorities are recommending the government to require all unvaccinated employed citizens in the country to get tested every 7 days instead of 14.

Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan said that they are formally introducing the recommendation into circulation today.

If adopted, the regulation will come into effect December 1.

Employed citizens who havent been vaccinated will be required to produce a negative PCR test result for COVID-19 every seven days. The presently active regulation, which came into effect October 1, requires them to do so every 14 days otherwise face termination.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
A black bear strolls down the Rio Grande Trail alongside Catherine Store Road earlier this fall. The public has until Nov. 10 to provide input on a Colorado Parks and Wildlife draft plan which aims to manage bear populations in the Roaring Fork and Eagle River valleys.
SUV

Given that Ford already makes the Bronco Sport, Escape, and Lincoln Corsair on this platform, is there any reasoning to developing a three-row utility vehicle based on the Maverick? This Photoshopped design study from Kleber Silva explores that possibility, and its an enticing proposal in this exact spec thanks to chunky all-terrain tires and the suspension lift kit.On the other hand, there are two problems with a family-sized Maverick with an extra row of seats instead of a bed. Firstly, thewould eat into the sales of the Escape and Bronco Sport. Secondly, it would also steal customers from the best-selling Ford sport utility vehicle in North America because the biggest selling point of the Explorer is the seven-seat interior.That said, its worth remembering that you can morph the Maverick into a utility vehicle of sorts by paying $3,500 for the SnugTop bed cap that matches the body color of the unibody truck. The only issue with the SnugTop bed cap is purely visual, as in that its not flush with the roofline.But still, were nothing but wishful thinking here because Ford cant even make the Maverick fast enough to satisfy demand. The Dearborn-based automaker has stopped production twice last month, and November kicked off with a five-day halt at the Hermosillo plant due to material shortages.Priced from $19,995 for the XL and capable of getting 42 mpg (5.6 liters per 100 kilometers) in the city, the Maverick does present a viable alternative to compact-sized crossovers. It also happens to be capable of hauling more than enough whatnots, including two bikes with the tailgate down.
As you may already know, Einride proposes new commercial mobility solutions using autonomous trucks . Their first product, the T-Log, was revealed in 2018. Since then, they developed the Einride Pod, which is an electric driverless truck, the first to be road tested in Sweden.Since Bridgestone is Einride's exclusive tire supplier in the U.S., it was only natural for the company to sign a contract with the Swedish firm. Other customers include GE Appliances and Oatly. Einride will employ their Pod with SAE Level 4 self-driving technology on U.S. roads. The company will also use its Flatbed Pod for operations in ports, as well as in other centers where containers are handled.According to Robert Falck, the founder and CEO of Einride , the company will bring the biggest change in the U.S. freight industry since the adoption of diesel trucks 100 years ago. Einride plans to become an industry leader, and its arrival in the competitive U.S. transportation market is a key step in that plan.With the arrival in the U.S., Einride has also introduced Saga, an operating system that helps fleet operators shift to electric vehicles. According to Einride, at least 40 percent of U.S. road freight transportation could make the shift to electric today, at the same cost as its diesel fleet, if not less.The Swedish company has plans to open regional offices in San Francisco and Austin. Other offices will be opened in South East U.S. According to company estimates, Einride will create at least 2,000 new jobs in its first five years of U.S. operation, and some of those include the remote Pod drivers Mind you, Einride already has hired its first Pod driver , who will remotely operate a truck from a control center. As you can imagine, this paves the way for a new type of job in commercial transport.
And Hyundai is just the living proof in this regard, as the American subsidiary of the company managed to dodge a horror industry forecast with solid sales during October.More specifically, Hyundai managed to sell a total of 56,761 units in the United States last month, down just 1 percent compared to October 2020. And while this is indeed a drop, its not as massive as the industry expected it to be.Hyundai outperformed the industry with forecasts predicting a 20 percent drop in total industry sales, the company proudly said in a press release (also embedded below).Furthermore, Hyundai says it managed to set new October total sales records for a series of models in its lineup, including the Venue and the Kona. And the Nexo just had its best month ever.On the other hand, when combining the sales of Hyundai and Kia , the numbers are no longer so optimistic. The two sold together 108,828 last month in the United States, and this is a drop of 4.1 percent from the same period a year ago. Kia alone declined 7.2 percent year-over-year.Despite the challenging market caused mostly by the lack of semiconductors, Hyundai still expects its sales to go strong in the coming months. But at the end of the day, the company still doesnt believe itd manage to achieve its original target of 4.16 million units, so now it hopes to ship a total of 4 million vehicles by the end of the year.On the other hand, Kia's struggle is impacting its annual sales target in a more substantial manner, so the company expects to fail to reach the original target of 2.92 million sold cars in 2021 due to all these disruptions caused by the lack of semiconductors.
The latest such advertisement, recently released by the USAF, comes from Huntington Beach, California, where at the beginning of October the Pacific Air Show took place. As usual, the event was attended by the F-35s own demonstration team.The upside-down airplane you see here is flown by the teams commander, Maj. Kristin Wolfe , and is the star of an important moment in the aircrafts history: it was the first time when the F-35 deployed flares during a public performance.And we must say, even if weve seen this exact plane and this exact pilot in incredible postures over the past year, the image we have here must certainly be the most impressive of them all.The F-35 started being flown by the American military 15 years ago, so it didnt really get a chance to prove its skills in combat. The first use of the jet in a military sense dates back to 2018, when the Israeli Air Force deployed them against targets in Syria.As far as we know, the plane was not involved in any dog fights, but if it were, it would probably be an incredible adversary. Powered by a Pratt & Whitney F135 engine capable of generating 43,000 lbf (190 kN) of thrust with the afterburner on, the machine can reach a speed of Mach 1.6 (1,227 mph/1,975 kph).And by the looks of it, it can handle some really extreme maneuvers as well.
Israels Ministry of Defense unveiled the latest addition to its anti-missile arsenal, called Sky Dew. Despite its delicate name, this massive inflatable system will play a very serious part in the Israeli Air Force (IAF)s strategy over the following years. According to the official statement, it comprises a high availability aerostat system and an advanced radar.While the Israeli military already has established a powerful, multi-tiered anti-missile system comprised of several ground-based weapons, the main advantage and novelty of Sky Dew is that its radar will operate at a high altitude.The Ministry of Defense said that Elevated Sensor System is the result of a joint program between the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA). According to The Times of Israel , this radar system was developed in the context of the recent proliferation of drones and cruise missiles. The IAFs current capabilities will go to the next level by placing an advanced radar at a high altitude.IMDO, a Ministry of Defenses Directorate of Defense Research and Development division, will coordinate Sky Dews testing. After successfully completing these tests, the system will be deployed in northern Israel , for missile detection and early warning. Boaz Levy, CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries, said that the Sky Dew aerostat will boost aerial surveillance efficiency and represent a significant advantage for precise threat detection.IMDO hasnt released details about the new aerostats specifications. Still, its, reportedly, one of the biggest of its kind, equipped with highly-advanced technology. The aerial surveillance operations conducted by Sky Dew will complement the famous Iron Dome and Davids Sling, two of the most powerful missile defense systems developed by IMDO.
In 1987, LL Cool J released his sophomore album, BAD (Bigger And Deffer), which would soon go platinum and make its way onto the list of the top 100 greatest rap albums of all time. For the artwork of the album, the then-budding rapper brought out his own personal car, his first-ever flashy purchase, got on the hood of it and struck a pose as a leaned against the fence of the Andrew Jackson High School in Queens, which he attended briefly before dropping out.For 35 years, that car was kept in storage at his grandmothers. LL Cool J lived in his grandmothers basement for a while, including when BAD was released, so it made sense for him to leave his first-ever car there. He brought it out last year, sent it over to Will Castro and his Unique Rides team, had it fully restored, and then donated it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, just as he was being inducted into HOF himself.My favorite thing about the car is that it had the word determination on the gas thank, LL Cool J said of the car, as cited by Rock The Bells . It was my first car, and I worked hard to make it happen. [I remember] riding around New York blasting music, listening to new hip-hop when it came out, going to the Latin Quarter nightclub, seeing KRS perform, and playing my new album [Bigger and Deffer] in the car.LL paid $30,000 for the 1987 Audi 5000, which came with a Blaupunkt stereo system, tinted windows, and a car phone  the absolute pinnacle of luxury at the time. It was his first sign that he had made it, he would recall afterward.The rapper is now worth an estimated $120 million, so hes in a position to afford any car he could ever fancy . Classics are always a good investment, especially one thats been restored and touched up like the Audi 5000 is now, but instead of keeping it, he decided to give it away to the museum. It was a good call: as far as celebrity cars go, this one is pretty iconic and, now, more people will have access to it.After 35 years in storage, the Audi emerged in less than stellar shape, as photos included in the gallery and in the Instagram embed below will show. Unique Rides brought it back to life, with a full engine rebuild, new bodywork, a fresh paintjob, a brand new Blaupunkt cassette deck and pro audio system, a custom two-tone leather interior, original wheels, and red lighting.It came out beautifully, and this makes LLs gesture all the more impressive.
After more than thirty years, the Nissan Pathfinder has reincarnated with a more rugged look and reinforced off-road capabilities. The customized Pathfinder is a family adventure-ready off-roader straight off the assembly plant that's also ideal for homeschooling. Outfitted with Nismo Off-Road parts, Nissan shows its buyers how simple modifications can help it venture farther off-road.Improvements to the Nissan Project Overland Pathfinder are several special modifications, including a Nismo off Road 2-inch lift kit that feature; Bilstein shocks. The Pathfinder runs on 18 x8-inch Nismo Off-roading wheels and 265/60R18 RAZR AT tires.Mods on the exterior suitable for Overlanding include; Nismo Off-Road roof rack and 6-inch driving lights, custom front bumper guard fitted with 4-inch Rigid driving lamps, custom fabricated rock rails fitted with Rigid UltraSwing Multifit Hitch Carrier with Ultra table and Roam Adventure Rugged cases.For the off-roader interior, Nissan added an Egoe Nestbox Camper Kit with a camp kitchen sleeping platform system.The Pathfinder is just one of several off-road concept entries, and to build on the 2022 Nissan Frontier, the team developed the Project Overland Frontier build. Like the Pathfinder, the Frontier comes with a robust chassis suitable for off-roading, courtesy of Nismo Off-Road.These two entries for SEMA from Nissan, while expected, have gone an extra mile to showcase the Japanese manufacturers capabilities in custom off-roading concepts. In addition to the Pathfinder and Project Overland Frontier, Nissan will also showcase the DocZ from car enthusiast and actor Sung Kang.
As Scandinavias largest port, Gothenburg is a place where varied means of transport intersect, and where heavy-freight equipment is used regularly, which makes it a valuable location for clean energy production. Arvid Guthed, Vice President of the Gothenburg Port Authority, said that there is an increased demand for equipment powered by hydrogen.Together with Statkraft, a Norwegian renewable energy supplier, the Port of Gothenburg will build a hydrogen production facility with a 4 MW capacity. Initially, the facility will make more than two tons of hydrogens per day, with the option of increasing its capacity, depending on the demand. According to the ports representatives, this will lead to a carbon emission cut by more than four tons per day.Another important aspect is that the hydrogen that will be produced at Gothenburg is green, meaning that fossil-free sources, such as hydropower and wind power, will be used to obtain it. The green hydrogen will then be stored and used for heavy transport equipment.The project results from a $7 million (SEK 60 million) investment and is set to begin production by the middle of 2023. For now, the two partners are conducting a preliminary study focusing on safety requirements, which will be completed at the beginning of next year.This hydrogen production facility is part of Gothenburgs and Swedens efforts to reduce emissions from transport by 70% until the end of the decade. Gothenburg plans to drastically cut emissions not just for port operations but also throughout the entire region. Considering that its Scandinavias largest port, this would be an important achievement.
Qichao Hu made most of the video presentation about SES technologies. Thanks to him, we now know that the Hermes and Apollo cells are simply development stages of the companys hybrid lithium metal cells.SES calls them hybrid because they mix elements from solid-state lithium metal cells and current lithium-ion batteries. The explanation for that idea is an interesting one. Regular lithium-ion cells are easy to manufacture but have low energy density and a flammable electrolyte. Solid-state lithium metal cells have a high energy density but are challenging to manufacture, which would make them impractical for industrialization.With a hybrid approach, SES claims to have kept the best of both worlds: the manufacturability of normal lithium-ion cells with the high energy density of lithium metal. The company would have achieved that with a few technical achievements.The first is a proprietary high concentration solvent-in-salt electrolyte that is self-extinguishing in the case of thermal runways. However, taming dendrites was only possible with a protecting polymer coating on the lithium metal anode. Apparently, that's the only solid-state battery technology SES decided to use. The company did not mention if the separator is a common one or also something used by solid-state cells.Regarding dendrites, SES did not prevent them from growing. What it did was to make them change from the needle-like shape that could perforate the separator and blow up the battery to a lot denser and flatter structure that looks like a soft speed bump instead. In other words, it does not penetrate the separators.A third step the company adopted was to create an AI-powered (artificial intelligence) safety software to monitor battery health. This system was named Avatar because it behaves like the hybrid lithium metal battery to try to predict issues with it.That leads us to the Hermes and Apollo batteries we mentioned a while ago . Instead of cells for different applications, they are actually parallel development tracks, as Qichao defined them. Hermes aims to test new materials. Apollos goal is to evaluate manufacturing processes for automotive batteries. The SES founder then presented the Apollo. It was the first time it was publicly disclosed.The Apollo is an impressive cell that delivers 107 Ah, 935 Wh/l, and 417 Wh/kg with a weight of 982 grams. Thats 60% more energy density than the best lithium-ion cells currently used in electric cars, which have a 260 Wh/kg energy density. That means that battery packs with them and the same size of current battery packs with regular lithium-ion cells could deliver 60% more range.They could also be more than 60% smaller for the same range. If the battery packs were just 60% smaller to present the same capacity, electric cars would travel further than today, thanks to the weight savings. Another impressive aspect of Apollo is that it could recover 90% of charge from a 10% SOC (state-of-charge) in just 12 minutes with the adequate fast chargers.At this point, Qichao set the battery world on fire by stating he does not believe in solid-state cells . According to the executive, SESs ability to offer high energy density at a wide temperature range is what made his company drop efforts to develop these batteries.Solid Power and QuantumScape are betting on them and said they will have production versions of these batteries by 2024 and 2025. The SES founder said his company is the only one working on joint development of lithium metal cell A samples with car companies: GM and Hyundai . That would give anyone the impression that they are just around the corner, but that is not the case.Qichao said SES will build a lithium metal cell factory in Shanghai in 2023. With 300,000 square feet (27,870 square meters), it will have an annual capacity of 1 GWh. According to the executive, it may seem small compared to lithium-ion battery plants being built nowadays  most of them with a 40 GWh annual capacity  but it would be impressive for lithium metal cells.The executive also released a timetable for the development of SES hybrid lithium metal cell. B/C samples are to be produced in 2024, and mass production would be reached in 2025, one year after QuantumScape said it would start delivering its solid-state cells. Solid Power has recently announced a partnership with SK Innovation for producing these batteries. Both these competitors also have the support of carmakers: Volkswagen for QuantumScape and BMW and Ford for Solid Power The only thing that matters for regular car buyers is that lithium metal cells seem to be getting closer to production. Thanks to multiple efforts, well eventually be able to buy EVs with safer, more robust, and lighter cells, regardless of who can deliver them first.
In what it calls an expansion of the flight-test program for BATS , Boeing said this week two aircraft successfully completing separate flight missions at the Woomera Range Complex in South Australia, at an undisclosed date.As per the manufacturer, the first drone managed to demonstrate so far a range of key characteristics, and was the one to raise and engage, for the first time, the landing gear designed for it, while the second successfully completed its undisclosed mission.The data gathered by the two drones that have completed their flight missions will be fed by Boeing into a digital design which will be used to speed up the development program of an actual working fleet.The announcement surrounding the expansion of the test fleet comes a month or so after Boeing said the drone would be assembled in its first aircraft assembly facility of its kind outside of North America, signaling how much faith it has in its product.And it should, considering what this thing has been bred to do. Were talking about an AI-governed drone that can fly alone, if need be, but was designed to fly in support of other military, crewed airplanes.The 38-feet (11.7 meters) long machine has a conventional shape and can fly for as much as 2,300 miles (3,700 km) in a single mission. It can support allied troops by providing surveillance and reconnaissance, but can also take a more active role and conduct electronic warfare.At least six of these beasts are considered for production in the mid-term future.
This is also the case of this 1969 Hilux, as the vehicle was parked in a shed back in 1989.Originally purchased by a Japanese farmer who used it for 20 years, the Hilux was moved into long-term storage when the owner bought a new Toyota . So, in theory, the old-school truck was replaced with a more modern version, with the Hilux parked and forgotten for no less than 32 years.The current owner of the Hilux says they found the vehicle in a shed after the passing of the farmer, and whoever buys the truck is getting it in the same condition it was discovered.In other words, the vehicle hasnt even been cleaned, so the new owner will be the one wholl have the opportunity to discover pretty much everything about this Hilux.Worth knowing, however, is the engine was running just fine before the truck was moved into storage. But given eBay seller garwillam_0 hasnt even touched the vehicle, nobody knows exactly if its still starting. However, were being told the powerplant is still turning over just fine, so in theory, nothing serious should prevent it from starting.This all-original Hilux also comes with the owners manual, which was found in the glove box, and it goes without saying it also exhibits an unsurprising amount of rust here and there. A full restoration is definitely recommended, though some people might just want to use it as a regular driver with some simple fixes.The Hilux has already attracted the attention of lots of people, but despite the 25 bids received so far, the reserve is still yet to be met. The top offer at the time of writing is $1,450.
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In new pictures online, Brazilian model Alessandra Ambrosio returns to her car after taking her dog to the vet, which is quite a surprising choice for a supermodel with a net worth of $80 million.Dressed casually in an aqua hoodie with purple leggings, she was out and about in Brentwood, California, with one of her dogs, several days after she attended several Halloween parties. This year, the supermodel wore a fairy outfit, which you can see in the attached post below, but also dressed up in sweatpants and sweatshirt similar to the outfits in Netflixs massive Korean show Squid Game.Given that Alessandra Ambrosio is the mother of two, and she has three dogs, she needs as much space as possible. So, her option was this luxurious, comfortable and spacious Audi Q8. The coupeoffers quite a lot of trunk space, having a capacity of 605 liters, reaching 1,755 liters when the backrest of the rear seats is folded down. The five-seater also has enough space for its passengers, with a lot of legroom. Headroom is not that generous though, but it's more than enough for Alessandra's kids and dogs.It's impossible to guess which version Alessandra chose, but one thing is for sure. It is not the SQ8 with its 4.0-liter biturbo V8 and 500 horsepower.The model-turned-actress seems to go for reliable SUVs. In the past, she was spotted behind the wheel of a Range Rover . When it comes to other luxury cars, she was also seen driving a Jaguar XF, a Cadillac Escalade, and a Mercedes-Benz G500.Alessandra Ambrosios practical choice shows that, despite her salary, she goes for both luxury and safety. And, at 40 years old, she still looks good behind any wheel.
An independent Pentagon investigation into the U.S. drone strike that mistakenly killed 10 Afghan civilians on Aug. 29 did not find evidence of criminal negligence or violation of law, according to the official tapped to lead the review.

The big picture: The botched operation was the result of "execution errors combined with confirmation bias and communication breakdowns," Lt. Gen. Sami Said, the inspector general of the Air Force, said at a press conference Wednesday. The full report is classified to protect sources and methods, according to Said.

Details: 29 individuals were interviewed under oath in the course of the investigation, including 22 directly involved in the strike.

Said said that officials involved in the strike "truly believed at the time that they were targeting an imminent threat," but that their assessment was "regrettably inaccurate."

He stressed that the drone strike should be viewed in the context of the environment, in which intelligence showed a "very high" threat to U.S. forces in the wake of an ISIS-K bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghan civilians at Kabul's airport on Aug. 26.

The big picture: Pentagon officials initially said they were "confident" the operation "disrupted an imminent ISIS-K threat" to Kabul's airport, with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley referring to it at the time as a "righteous strike."

Weeks later, after the New York Times and Washington Post published in-depth forensic investigations into strike, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had mistakenly killed an Afghan aid worker and nine members of his family, including children.

The U.S. government has said it will make undisclosed "ex gratia condolence payments" to family members of those killed in the strike.

What to watch: Said issued three recommendations along with the report, including procedures to mitigate the risks of confirmation bias, enhanced intelligence sharing, and a review of pre-strike procedures used to assess the presence of civilians.
Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said the ministry will circulate later in the day a relevant draft decision that will be discussed by an interagency commission.

It would require people to produce, starting from December 1, the health pass showing that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have had a recent negative test in order to visit bars, restaurants and other public venues.

Armenians working for public or private entities already have to get inoculated or take coronavirus tests twice a month at their own expense. The draft Ministry of Health directive cited by Avanesian would require such mandatory testing to be done once a week.

The purpose of the proposed measures is to speed up vaccinations and thereby contain the latest wave of coronavirus infections in Armenia. Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting earlier on Thursday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian complained that the vaccination process remains slow despite having accelerated in recent weeks.

Avanesian told the cabinet that more than 852,000 vaccine shots have been administered in the country of about 3 million to date. Only about 264,000 people have received two doses of a vaccine, she said.

Daily coronavirus cases have steadily increased since June, reaching record-high levels late last month. The Ministry of Health reported a record 62 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday.

The ministrys National Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the respiratory disease killed at least 41 more Armenians on Wednesday. The center also said that as much as 19 percent of about 12,200 coronavirus tests carried out across the country came back positive.

Avanesian said Armenian hospitals remain overwhelmed by the increased number of infected people in need of urgent care.

We have a slight drop in the number of citizens awaiting hospitalization but [hospital] beds still dont stay vacant for a single second, she told Pashinian and fellow ministers.

Pashinian made clear that the government still has no plans to impose lockdown restrictions and will continue to concentrate on its immunization campaign. For his part, Education Minister Vahram Dumanian said he is unlikely to again extend school holidays that end on November 7.
Hovannes Harutiunian topped the list of the partys candidates for the October 17 election marked by a very low voter turnout. In a serious setback for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Civil Contract finished second with about 30 percent of the vote. It trailed a local political group linked to Gyumris outgoing mayor, Samvel Balasanian.

Harutiunian held a farewell news conference in Gyumri hours after Pashinians government formally accepted his resignation. He insisted that he was not forced to resign.

As soon as it was decided that I will be leading the list of Civil Contracts local election candidates it became obvious that regardless of the outcome of the election I will not hold the post of Shirak governor anymore, he said. What happened today is a logical continuation of that decision.

We need to understand why our citizens didnt want to go to the polls, Harutiunian said when asked about reasons for the ruling partys failure to install Gyumris next mayor. Pashinians party respects any decision made by voters, he added.

Despite the election defeat, Civil Contract reached a power-sharing agreement with the election winner, the Balasanian Bloc, whose top candidate, Vardges Samsonian, was elected as Gyumri mayor by the new city council on Monday. As part of that deal, the ruling party will name the two deputy mayors and other senior officials in the municipal administration.

The deal was signed on October 30 two days after two senior Gyumri officials affiliated with the Balasanian Bloc were arrested by Armenias National Security Service on corruption charges. The bloc did not publicly allege political reasons behind the arrests.

Some Armenian outlets reported earlier in October that the Balasanian Bloc is facing strong pressure from the central government to cut a power-sharing deal with Pashinians party and even cede the post of mayor to it. Senior party figures denied such pressure.
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Kern County public health officials and doctors are beginning to prepare for a whole new group of children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP)  Maintenance and service union workers at a West Virginia hospital went on strike Wednesday after their contract expired.

About 1,000 members of the the Service Employees International Union District 1999 walked off the job at noon at Cabell Huntington Hospital, one of the largest employers in Huntington.

In a statement, union district secretary-treasurer Joyce Gibson said hospital officials have repeatedly made it clear that they value profits over workers and patients.

Cabell Huntington Chief Operating Officer Tim Martin said the hospital was disappointed that workers rejected a wage and benefits offer.

Cabell Huntington Hospital has worked in good faith since August, throughout the demands of COVID, to reach a fair contract with a generous package of benefits, Martin said in a statement.

The hospitals offer included 3% average annual wage increases, increased shift differentials, an enhanced uniform allowance and continued automatic annual contributions to eligible employees retirement accounts.

Service employees also were asked to begin paying health insurance premiums. Under the hospitals latest offer, it would have contributed more than 90% of health care costs for employees and their dependents.

Martin said replacement service workers are now assisting with daily hospital operations.

Gibson said the hospital is paying contracted outside workers who are not invested in our community, rather than take care of their dedicated long-term employees.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  In an effort to fight COVID-19 vaccination requirements on workers, Alabama lawmakers on Thursday approved legislation to prevent companies from firing workers who claim a religious or medical exemption.

Republicans said they were responding to an outcry from unvaccinated constituents afraid of losing their jobs because of the Biden administrations vaccination mandate on federal contractors. Democrats argued the bill would put both federal contractors and public health in jeopardy for the sake of scoring political points.

The Republican-sponsored bill states employers must exempt employees from a COVID-19 vaccination requirement if the worker returns a new standardized state form to claim a religious or medical exemption. Alabama lawmakers gave final approval to the bill late Thursday night after votes that broke mostly along party lines. It now goes to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

Republican Sen. Chris Elliott, the sponsor of the bill, said lawmakers wanted to stand in the gap and provide some protection for employees while federal courts hear lawsuits brought by Republican states challenging the mandate on federal contractors.

There are people in the state of Alabama that are hurting right now, that are trying to decide about taking a vaccine that they are frightened of... They are in danger of losing their jobs due to federal mandates that are really unnecessary, Elliott said.

Republican Rep. Mike Jones of Andalusia said the federal government already allows exemptions for medical and religious reasons and lawmakers are trying to provide an easy way for employees to claim those exemptions. Theyre fearful of losing jobs theyve had for 20 years, very good jobs that they had with federal contractors, Jones said.

Jones said they are trying to find a way to protect employees without hurting federal contractors who face the mandate. But House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, argued the bill would do just that by interfering with a companys ability to comply with the federal mandate.

Im angry as hell right now, because this is a job killer, said Daniels, saying that federal contractors provide many of the jobs in, and around, his Huntsville district.

Biden in September announced executive branch employees and contractors who do business with the federal government must be vaccinated  with no option to test out. Other rules will require companies with 100 or more employees to regularly test unvaccinated employees for COVID-19. While much of the debate centered on the federal vaccination requirement, it would also impact companies who wanted to independently place vaccination requirements on workers.

Some Democrats said the GOP proposal would create a wide-open portal for people to fraudulently claim an exemption to the vaccination mandate without truly having a valid reason.

You know and I know, everybody, even atheists, is going to come up and say its because of their religious beliefs, Democratic Rep. Pebblin Warren of Tuskegee said.

Under the legislation, employees would check a box in a new form for the reason they couldnt get vaccinated  such as a religious reason, certain qualifying medical conditions, or a health providers signed recommendation that the person shouldn't be vaccinated. There would be no requirement to provide proof of the reason. An employee denied an exemption could appeal to the state Department of Labor.

The proposal is a carve-out from existing law which allows companies to fire workers at will. The bill specifies that it wouldnt alter the ability of an employer to terminate an employee for reasons other than the employees COVID-19 vaccination status.

The new process and job protections would automatically end on May 1, 2023, unless extended by lawmakers.

The legislation comes as Republican leaders in many states try to find ways to resist the federal vaccine mandate they call an infringement on personal liberties. The bill has drawn opposition from a business group, which said it would put federal contractors in a no-win situation.

Non-compliance with the federal mandate could result in the loss of current and future contracts and jobs for their companies and communities, the Business Council of Alabama said.

Lawmakers approved a separate bill requiring parental consent for minors to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

Alabama has seen at least 15,629 COVID-19 related deaths and has the second-highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 among states, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

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Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  Progressive New Mexico mayors have won second terms in Albuquerque, where violent crime and policing concerns dominated debate, and in the state capital of Santa Fe, which is in the throws of rapid growth and related concerns about housing affordability and cultural landmarks.

Uncertified election results showed Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller winning nearly 56% of the vote to defeat a Democratic county sheriff and a Republican talk show host. Publishing entrepreneur and Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber won almost 55% in uncertified results, defeating a Democratic city council member and a Republican who flouted local mask requirements last year.

The election extends a political winning streak for 43-year-old Keller, a former state auditor and legislator. But Republicans have a chance to hold a majority on the city council for the first time since 2013, amid pending runoff votes and the ouster of Keller ally Lan Sena to former police Officer Louie Sanchez  a proponent of greater budget austerity.

Keller said hell be open about the citys challenges and calls for solutions.

What were going to do going forward is were going to call it like it is. If problems are complex, were going to say that, he said. When we need assistance from other governments, were going to hold them accountable to help us. Were also going to ask everyone to pitch in.

Keller is contending with a record-breaking spate of homicides while emphasizing programs that address crime's root causes, such as addiction and poverty. He says public safety efforts are adequately funded, while backing pilot programs for gun violence prevention and emergency responses that leave police out of some mental health calls.

Police and crime issues came to the forefront in cities big and small after the killing of George Floyd last year. Albuquerque's reckoning with police brutality predates Keller's first election as mayor, with city police operating under a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department since 2014.

In Santa Fe, Webber campaigned on his handling of pandemic safety, financial upheaval in a tourism-dependent local economy and efforts to promote affordable housing.

The 73-year-old mayor touted Santa Fe's push to provide permits and stand up more residential housing, including rental units in several multi-family apartment complexes.

At the same time, we are conscious and very aware that people dont want to lose the quality of life that makes Santa Fe so special, said Webber of the capital city that added nearly 20,000 resident between 2010 and 2020  expanding by almost 30%.

Webber, the founder of Fast Company magazine who moved to New Mexico about two decades ago from Boston, withstood withering criticism on the campaign trail of the city's response to conflicts over historical monuments.

In October 2020, a tumultuous crowd toppled a downtown Civil War-era monument that honored Union soldiers including some Hispanics who died fighting Indigenous tribes and Confederate soldiers. The statue was reviled by many Native Americans for glorifying military campaigns against their ancestors  and toppled by mostly white, non-Hispanic protesters.

Webber sounded a note of reconciliation after his reelection.

I'm also grateful for the people who voted for other candidates because they've got a lot of wisdom and knowledge and great ideas, he said. We've got to come back together and work with each other and respect each other.

Voters ousted a city council member from a heavily Hispanic district who had endorsed Webber. Councilor Roman Tiger Abeyta lost by about 6 percentage points to Lee Garcia.

In Albuquerque, Kellers unsuccessful challengers included two-term Bernalillo County Sheriff Manny Gonzales, who backed a move by then-President Donald Trump to send more federal law enforcement agents to Albuquerque.

Tuesday's elections were a preamble to statewide and congressional contests in 2022, when Democrats hope to prolong their hold on all statewide offices, including governor, and majorities in the Legislature.

Webber was challenged unsuccessfully by Democrat JoAnne Vigil Coppler  a city councilor, real estate agent and Latina born in Santa Fe  who cast herself as a guardian of respect for the citys cultural traditions.

___

Cedar Attanasio contributed reporting from Santa Fe. 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.
Jefferson Countys director of human resources and risk management officially has announced his candidacy for Precinct 2 Commissioner.

I want to serve the citizens of Jefferson County and Southeast Texas in a more direct manner, a more hands on manner, said Cary Erickson.

He has been a civil servant for more than three decades  about 28 of which hes spent with Jefferson County. Erickson started the countys human resources department from scratch and led relief efforts, including working with the county auditor on insurance claims, after Hurricane Rita. He says its his experience that sets him apart from the other candidates.

Related: County commissioners race draws fourth candidate

I've worked with the Commissioner's court for the last 28 years, been to virtually every Commissioner's court meeting, and been in on every budget hearing for the last 20 years, he said. You know how the court runs, you establish good relationships with not only the other commissioners and the county judge but also with the other elected officials from Bevil Oaks to Sabine Pass and from Beaumont to Hamshire.

His campaign priorities include fiscal responsibility, maintaining or reducing the tax rate, making sound financial decisions for the county, improving drainage and infrastructure, giving proper attention to roads and bridges and diversifying business in the area.

We've depended on the petrochemical industry for so long and I think that's great  they're obviously the backbone of this county, and I think they'll continue to be for years to come. But I think we need to be forward looking and try to diversify our economic base as best we can, he said. We just need to play for the future.

His ideas for future business include partnerships between the private and public sectors; assisting the private sector through grants, economic development zones, and tax abatements; and collaborating with the economic development corporations of various cities in Jefferson County.

Related: LaBrie seeking incentives for further development

He also wants to build a greener future for the region.

Erickson was born and raised in Jefferson County. He hails from Port Arthur and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School. Hes lived in the area since 1962 and has memories of how bad pollution used to be.

The refineries back then were Texaco and Gulf. They weren't the Motiva, the Valero and the Exxon Mobil as it is today, Erickson recalled. I can remember some mornings waking up, and you could smell the air  you could smell the petrochemicals. You go out to your car, and you'd find particulate matter from the flaring and stuff.

He says the area has come lightyears from where they were back then, thanks to legislation, emission controls and refineries recognizing the steps to use cleaner, more environmentally-friendly methods of production. But local refineries still have topped the charts on emitting pollutants.

Related: These SE Texas plants released the most benzene

Now do we have a ways to go? Absolutely. Should we continue to explore other options? Green options? Absolutely, Erickson said. I think that wind energy, solar energy, all of those things are important and part and parcel of what the future has for not only Jefferson County but (also) the rest of the United States and the world.

Hed also like to focus on bringing businesses to the area that reduce the United States dependence on imports to foster cheaper, and eco-friendly energy.

He also noted that he believes in the Constitution of the United States and of Texas. He believes in government transparency, and he is a man of faith who believes in working for the good of his fellow man. He said he wants to give every resident a chance to make their voice heard and use his experience in government to satisfy his constituents.

I feel that I'm uniquely qualified, Erickson said. I've got the management skills, I've got the relationship skills, I know how to negotiate, I know how to mediate, and ultimately I know how to make a decision and stick to it.

Ericksons campaign kicks off Thursday at The Sombrero Mexican Grill in Nederland. The event will run from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Admission is free.

rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/ontheREKord
TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP)  A group of migrants trying to walk across southern Mexico pelted officers of Mexicos National Guard with a hail of rocks Thursday, injuring five guard officers.

The guards were tailing the march and had apparently tried to detain some of the mainly Central American migrants, when a group of 100 to 150 males started throwing rocks at two truckloads of guard officers equipped with plastic shields and helmets.

The Guard said in a statement that four male officers and one female officer suffered considerable injuries, and were hospitalized. It said that at no time did the officers respond to the attack.

So heavy was the rain of rocks that at least two guard officers tumbled from the trucks onto the highway below near the town of Pijijiapan, in the southern state of Chiapas.

Video footage showed one of the guardsmen unconscious, with some migrants trying to help him while another threw a punch at him.

National Guard officers have been wary of confronting migrants since a shooting incident Sunday left one migrant dead.

Confrontations between law enforcement and migrants had been relatively rare in Mexico, but National Guard officers opened fire on a pickup truck carrying migrants Sunday when the vehicle tried to avoid an immigration checkpoint; the Guard said it had tried to ram a patrol vehicle.

A Cuban migrant was killed and four other migrants were wounded.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador later said the shooting was unjustified, and that the pickup  apparently driven by a suspected migrant trafficker  had simply tried to run past the checkpoint, not ram the Guard vehicle. The guard officers involved are now subject to a federal criminal investigation.

Apparently, the migrants in the truck were not part of some 4,000 mainly Central Americans who are seeking to reach Mexico City on foot. The shooting occurred about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from where the migrant march was at the time.

An estimated 4,000 migrants set out from the city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, on foot on Oct. 23. They have made slow progress trudging along highways amid the brutal heat of the region, advancing only about 95 miles (150 kilometers) in almost two weeks.

The Mexican government has been attempting to discourage the march, saying the poor conditions are putting the migrants lives at risk. The National Immigration Institute said six cases of the tropical fever dengue had been detected among members of the migrant march.

Much larger caravans crossed Mexico in 2018 and 2019, but those migrants never tried to walk the whole distance. They usually caught rides aboard passing trucks.

But Mexico has told truckers not to pick up migrants, saying they could face charges of migrant trafficking. The migrants are also afraid of becoming separated from the group, for fear they will be rounded up and deported.

A National Guard officer was killed by suspected immigrant traffickers in September.

And a dozen members of an elite police force in the northern border state of Tamaulipas are on trial for allegedly killing 14 Guatemalan migrants and five other people, whose bodies were found shot and burned near the U.S. border in late January.

Frustration has been growing for months among the thousands of migrants waiting in Tapachula near the Guatemala border. Mexicos strategy had been to contain migrants in the south, far from the U.S. border, while allowing them to apply for asylum in Mexico.

But Mexicos asylum system has been overwhelmed and the slow process led many to decide it was not worth waiting.
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Regina Hansen, Boston University

(THE CONVERSATION) Horror and Catholicism have walked hand in hand on screen for almost a century. From Benjamin Christensens 1922 film Haxan to Mike Flanagans 2021 Netflix series Midnight Mass, scary films and television shows have portrayed the Catholic religion in both reverent and shocking ways.

Midnight Mass incorporates both approaches.

Set in a small, mostly Catholic community, the series gives a detailed depiction of everyday Catholic life. It also suggests an uncanny side to some elements of the religion, particularly the central sacrament of the Eucharist, or Communion, in which participants are understood to partake of the literal body and blood of Christ.

For many believers, Catholic ritual is meant to evoke a sense of wonder. For others, it can call up distrust of the religions overt mystical and supernatural claims and anger at the ongoing scandals within the Church.

In my experience as a scholar of religion in film, horror movies can offer a complex picture of Catholic belief, ritual and daily experience.

Demon-fighters and exorcism

Many horror films depict Catholic ritual as a means of fighting evil, especially demonic possession.

For instance, The Conjuring, a horror film franchise, fictionalizes the experiences of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a married couple, who are self-professed demon hunters and lifelong devout Catholics. In the films  The Conjuring, its two sequels, and the prequels Annabelle and The Nun  the Warrens employ the instruments of their faith, including prayer and sacramental objects such as rosary beads, to free possessed people.

In other films, often with the words exorcist or exorcism in the title, Catholic clergy are the heroes in the fight against evil. These movies often depict priests as martyrs whose sacrifices may even absolve them from violence they commit during the ritual.

In the 1973 film The Exorcist, which centers around the possession of 12-year-old character Regan MacNeil, two priests give up their lives in an attempt to expel the demon. The film has also been criticized for representing physical violence in a way that it appears necessary for saving the young female protagonist.

Similar violence is questioned within the 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose. In it, a priest is found guilty of homicide after the titular character dies during an exorcism. The movies narrative ultimately absolves him of moral, if not legal, guilt for her death because he believes himself to be acting according to the will of God.

Catholic symbols and the fight against evil

Screen heroes often dont have to be priests, or even Catholic, to fight evil with Catholic ritual and symbols. In horror television and film, vampire hunters employ religious symbols like the Christian cross, but also specifically Catholic elements such as holy water and the consecrated Communion wafer. Francis Ford Coppolas Bram Stokers Dracula leans heavily on such Catholic symbols.

Still, not all screen vampires fear the emblems of Catholicism. Many narratives make a point of the inefficacy of sacramental objects. These films and series include The Strain, Interview with the Vampire and even the Twilight franchise.

More importantly, many vampire narratives make use of the Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine consumed during Mass are the literal body and blood of Christ. Such stories connect Catholic rituals and vampirism. In fact, Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan has statedthat Catholic ritual and vampirism are explicitly linked. You are dealing with a mythology that is steeped in blood ritual and resurrection.

Other types of screen horror subvert or dismiss Catholic ritual and symbolism altogether. According to scholar Jana Toppe, modern zombie stories represent the opposite of Catholic belief regarding eternal life.

Toppe suggests that zombie narratives have come to satirize the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. In most zombie films, the eating of flesh does lead to a resurrection of a body, but one without a soul.

Gothic Catholicism

For every horror film that sees the rituals of Catholicism as instruments in the fight against evil, another portrays the Church itself as evil.

This representation dates at least back to horrors roots in the 18th-century Gothic novel, which dramatized the Enlightenment distrust of the irrational in general and the supposedly occult and uncanny nature of Catholicism in particular.

Gothics use of Catholic tropes  ruined abbeys, lecherous priests, nuns walled up in convents and so on  created a picture of the religion that could be both repellent and fascinating to readers.

According to scholar Susan Griffin, in England and in 19th- and early 20th-century North America, Catholics  usually from countries outside the English-speaking world  were often portrayed as a racialized other in Gothic as well as early horror.

Horrors critique of Catholicism

For years, horror film and television have also critiqued the Churchs secular and political influence, as well as the moral failures and sins of its adherents and hierarchy.

Horror narratives often reflect the Churchs reluctance to recognize or acknowledge the evil in its own midst. This has tragic relevance both in light of the child sex abuse crisis and its cover-up, as well as revelations about the treatment of Indigenous children in boarding schools administered by Catholic religious orders, among other groups.

Horror can call up historical abuses. The 2018 film The Devils Doorway is a supernatural film inspired by the abuse experienced by women at Irelands Magdalene Laundries, where the so called fallen women were confined and subjected to hard labor. In another example, the 2015 Polish film Demon combines Catholic characters with the Jewish mythological figure of the dybbuk, a spirit of the dead, to interrogate Catholic complicity in the Holocaust.

Other narratives critique the institutional church while treating faith respectfully. In the television series Evil, for example, a Catholic psychologist and an atheist raised in the Muslim faith investigate supernatural occurrences for the Vatican alongside a tortured but devout Catholic seminarian. In doing so, they address issues within the church such as abuse, racism, misogyny and clericalism, or the privileging the clergy over everyday believers.

Complexities of Catholicism and horror

The representation of Catholicism in horror is varied and complex, and emphasizes the narrative and aesthetic creativity, as well as the subversive nature, of a genre so often undervalued as merely shocking and violent. Flanagans show is a case in point.

Midnight Mass exposes religious intolerance, including the othering of the communitys Muslim sheriff, which recalls representations of Catholics in the Gothic novel. The show also decries false piety and draws attention to the evil that can result from blind religious belief.

At the same time, the series emphasizes the possibility of redemption, as well as the complexity and authenticity in each characters religious experience.

In Midnight Mass and other narratives, screen horrors evocations of Catholicism parallel the intricacies and contradictions, along with the good and the evil, within the Church itself, and perhaps within all powerful institutions.

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.
A woman died, and 36 people were detained after they tried to swim around a metal border fence that stretches into the Pacific Ocean and separates Mexico and the United States, authorities said Saturday.

The woman was part of a group of about 70 migrants attempting to enter the United States late Friday night by swimming from Tijuana, Mexico, around the border barrier and into San Diego, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement.

The steel fence, topped in some places by concertina wire, plunges about 300 feet into the ocean and is heavily monitored, making it one of the most difficult places for people to cross along the 1,900-mile border dividing the two nations.

Border Patrol agents have reported a recent increase in the number of migrants trying to reach California's coast, often aboard overcrowded, small fishing boats known as pangas led by migrant smugglers, which has prompted CBP to expand patrolling operations across 114 coastal border miles.

The rise in the number of migrants taking to the sea, prompted by a mix of factors including financial devastation caused by the pandemic across the hemisphere, highlights the greater dangers they are willing to face to reach the United States.

U.S. authorities acknowledged the phenomenon in August, when CBP reported record levels of maritime smuggling events in California's Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, resulting in the detention of 90 undocumented migrants.

"Smuggling along the California coastline is inherently dangerous and criminal organizations are not concerned with public safety," officials noted in a news release. "They see migrants and narcotics as simply cargo."

Border Patrol agents responded to reports of a group attempting to reach the San Diego beach about 11:30 p.m. Friday. When they reached the area, they found an unresponsive woman.

They tried to resuscitate her while requesting more assistance from San Diego Fire-Rescue Department firefighters and lifeguards. The woman was declared dead at about 12:30 a.m., authorities said.

Border Patrol, the U.S. Coast Guard, and authorities from state and local agencies continued to search the area and took into custody 36 Mexican citizens - 25 men and 11 women - who had swam around the border barrier.

The Coast Guard, which dispatched two cutters and a search helicopter, rescued 13 of those migrants from the water before handing them over to Border Patrol, a Coast Guard spokesman said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

All 36 people were taken to a Border Patrol station for processing.

It was unclear whether the rest of the migrants in the group returned to Tijuana or were missing. CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"This is yet another example of the ruthless tactics smuggling organizations use to bolster their power and profits," San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said in a statement. "We will work tirelessly to pursue and bring to justice those responsible for this tragedy."

The United States is grappling with a record number of detentions along the Mexico border. During fiscal 2021, which ended in September, Border Patrol agents detained more than 1.7 million migrants along the southern border - the highest level recorded to date, according to CBP data.

But regardless of stricter border security policies and number of detentions, the growing trend in maritime apprehensions in San Diego coastal waters became evident in May with several reports of intercepted vessels carrying migrants including one vessel carrying 33 people that overturned at Point Loma, in San Diego, an resulting in the death of three people, and several hospitalizations.

"It's definitely something we've seen an increase of over the past couple fiscal years. Last year was a record for maritime apprehensions with 1,273 apprehensions in the maritime environment," Border Patrol Agent Jacob MacIsaac said at a news conference, NBC San Diego reported.

On July 8, two migrants were hospitalized with hypothermia after another vessel capsized in the beach city of Encinitas in Southern California.
Chevron Phillips Chemical has announced Elliott Johnson as the executive vice president of environmental, health and safety with the company.

Johnson has 23 years of experience with CP Chem in operations and technical positions across multiple domestic manufacturing facilities, including as plant manager at the companys facility in Orange and operations manager at the Cedar Bayou facility.

He is filling the position left by Scott Sharp, who retired after 42 years with CP Chem and Chevron Corporation.

During his tenure with the company, Sharp oversaw operations at the companys joint ventures in Qatar and led the successful completion of its U.S. Gulf Coast expansion projects in Baytown and Old Ocean. Most recently, he played an instrumental role in developing and advancing potential growth projects in the U.S. and Qatar.

Steve Prusak, senior vice president, corporate planning and technology, will assume additional responsibility for the companys projects organization, which includes overseeing the development of expansion projects in the U.S. and Qatar. Prusak has 31 years of industry experience and has held commercial, project and strategy roles during his tenure with CP Chem. Notably, he served as a project director for the companys U.S. Gulf Coast expansion project completed in 2018.

Justin Sheffield has been named the chief operations officer for Beaumont-based Texas Regional Title.

Sheffield will be responsible for providing strategic vision, managerial and administrative procedures, as well as effectively communicating and fostering growth among the leadership team and all employees.

He comes to the company with more than 17 years of banking experience and 12 years of serving in an executive management position, and previously served as vice president of lending at Mobiloil Federal Credit Union.

Sheffield also holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Economics with a minor in general business from Texas A&M University.

Prior to Mobiloil Federal Credit Union, he served as branch manager at Wells Fargo where he managed all functions of a retail banking branch.

Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed Lisa Cowart of Sour Lake to the Rehabilitation Council of Texas for a term set to expire Oct. 29, 2024.

The council works with the Texas Workforce Commission to advocate for people with disabilities in the vocational rehabilitation process.

Cowart of Sour Lake is the PATH Project Director for Partners Resource Network. She is an advisory committee member of SpedTex, a general member of the Society for Human Resources Management and the vice chair of the Rehabilitation Council of Texas.

Cowart received a Bachelors Degree of Business Administration in marketing from Lamar University.

Hancock Whitney recently honored 49 Southeast Texas nonprofit organizations and presented grants totaling approximately $1.1 million on behalf of six prominent Beaumont area foundations at the annual Harvest of Giving awards ceremony.

Each year Southeast Texas nonprofits are invited to participate in a unified grant application process for funds available from six private foundations. Hancock Whitney Trust and Asset Management serves as trustee of these foundations.

Grant recipients by category include:

Arts

Art Museum of Southeast Texas

Beaumont Childrens Museum

Beaumont Civic Ballet

Beaumont Community Players

Downtown Beaumont Cultural Arts District KVLU

Southeast Texas Arts Council

Symphony of Southeast Texas

Texas Energy Museum Art Museum of Southeast Texas

Community Services

American National Red Cross

Beaumont Farmers Market

Crime Stoppers of Southeast Texas

Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council

Jeerson County Bar Association Foundation Magnolia Cemetery

Mauriceville Heritage Association

Southeast Texas Nonprot Development Center Vidor Rotary Club

Vidor Rotary Club

Education

Green Dot Public Schools Southeast Texas Lamar University Foundation

Lamar University Foundation

St. Anthony Cathedral School

St. Catherine of Siena Catholic School

Health

Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas Foundation

CHRISTUS Health Foundation of Southeast Texas

Hospice Care Team, Inc. dba Heart of Texas Hospice

Julie Rogers Gift of Life Program

Mental Health America of Southeast Texas

Nutrition & Services for Seniors

Rape and Suicide Crisis Center of SETX

RISE Center for Independent Living

Samaritan Counseling Center of Southeast Texas

Shorkey Education and Rehabilitation Center

Special Olympics Texas

Stable-Spirit

Surviving Parents of Southeast Texas

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Vidor Independent School District

Vidor Independent School District

Social Welfare

Boys Haven of America

Buckner Children and Family Services - Beaumont

CASA of the Sabine Neches Region

Catholic Charities of Southeast Texas

Orange Christian Services

Salvation Army

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

Some Other Place

Southeast Texas Family Resource Center

United Christian Care Center of Vidor

United Way of Beaumont and North Jeerson County

Wells of Agape

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

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EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP)  A mother, two grandparents and three other people have been charged following the death of a 3-year-old southwestern Indiana girl who ingested fentanyl.

Arcinial Watt, Jazmynn Brown and Allison Smithler appeared Tuesday in court on murder, drug dealing and neglect of a child resulting in death charges, the Evansville Courier & Press reported.

The girls 20-year-old mother, Makaylee Opperman, and the girls grandparents, Brandon and Amber Opperman, also were charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death.

The Associated Press was unable Wednesday to determine if any of those charged have attorneys.

Emergency responders found Kamari Opperman dead Oct. 27 in an Evansville home where police discovered thousands of fentanyl pills. Two other children, ages 2 and 4, were hospitalized with apparent opioid overdoses, authorities said.

Kamaris grandmother told police that the children got hold of a bag containing fentanyl pills the night before, the newspaper reported last week.

No one took Kamari to the hospital, and the other children who showed signs of overdosing didnt get medical treatment until first responders rushed them to a hospital. They were in stable condition last week. Police believe another child, an infant, was also exposed to fentanyl.

Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann said detectives found more than 5,600 fentanyl pills inside the home in the city, located about 165 miles (266 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis.
A protester holds a picture of Angelito Soriano, 15, a victim of an extrajudicial killing during a counter-narcotics operation, at a rally in Manila marking President Rodrigo Dutertes final state of the nation address to Congress, July 26, 2021.

Philippine activists on Thursday welcomed an independent commissions investigation that found a pattern of abuse in extrajudicial killings in the governments war on drugs, as President Rodrigo Duterte again rejected related efforts to charge him before an international court.

Earlier this week, the Commission on Human Rights, said it had reviewed 579 incidents of drug-related extrajudicial killings between 2016 and 2020, and found signs of foul play in dozens of deadly police operations.

Records of 87 victims showed they were shot multiple times and in different parts of the body  usually in the head, chest, trunk, and abdomen  and had also suffered blunt-force injuries and lacerations, the commission also said.

There are also other patterns of discrepancies based on eyewitness accounts during drug operations by law enforcers, including that the alleged operations might have not actually been conducted; that alleged nanlaban victims could not have initiated a shootout, the commission reported. It noted that witnesses had observed the planting of evidence in some cases and that some of the victims likely were not the intended target.

Nanlaban, a Tagalog term for a suspect who fought with police, has evolved to mean a suspect who has been killed.

As he oversaw the inauguration of a port project in southwestern Palawan province on Thursday, Duterte insisted that his administration had contained the drug menace. He warned that drugs would return if the government relaxed its law enforcement policies against narcotics.

The president will be leaving office after the May 2022 general election, when his constitutionally limited six-year term ends.

There must be law and order before anything else. Without law and order, there is nothing, Duterte said in a speech filled with profanity. He reiterated that he would push back against any effort to bring him before the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face trial over the killings in his administrations war on illegal drugs.

I will never accept their jurisdiction, even if hell freezes over. I will not agree to their nonsense. I do not have a problem if they say I sinned. That is admitted, either intentionally or unintentionally, the president said, referring to the ICC probe.

In September, the ICC approved a request by its former chief prosecutor to investigate extrajudicial killings tied to the drug war.

They want me to go to prison. Well, maybe. But it has to be a Philippine prison and I must be judged by a judicial court of the Republic of the Philippines and I must be prosecuted like me when I was a prosecutor, Duterte said. It should be Filipino.

About 8,000 suspected addicts and dealers have been killed in what police have claimed to be shootouts since Duterte took office in 2016 on a campaign vow to clean the streets of drugs. Rights groups, meanwhile, said the number of those killed could be between 20,000 and 30,000, including many killed by vigilantes.

Duterte has denied sanctioning those killings and said they could have been carried out by rival gangs to discredit the government.

In raids where there were drug lords killed, that is mine, I assume full responsibility. And if theres anybody who should go to prison, it should be me  not the police nor the PDEA, it should be me because they were acting upon my orders, Duterte said, referring to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

Awarded, rewarded or recognized

Gwendolyn Pimentel-Gana, a human rights commissioner, said 77 of 90 police reports that the commission secured showed that officers involved in killings are either to be awarded, rewarded or recognized.

Cristina Palabay, leader of the Filipino rights group Karapatan, told BenarNews that the findings confirmed what she and others had suspected  that the killings were widespread, sanctioned and that police involved were either promoted or rewarded.

Clearly, the killings were and are still being committed with impunity, she said. The findings are significantly more detailed and wider in scope compared to the earlier findings from the Department of Justices review, this despite the recurring obstacles in accessing police records regarding these cases.

A justice department report last month of deadly officer-involved shootings stated that 154 officers had allegedly staged shootouts during anti-drug sting operations.

Parts of the 20-page report were made public then in what the department and Dutertes government said was an effort to be transparent.

On Wednesday, Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, the national police chief, said officers respect the investigation by the human rights commission.

We in the Philippine National Police would also want to know the truth because these allegations of human rights and extra-judicial killings that have been hounding us for more than five years have resulted in the sweeping generalization that all our operations against illegal drugs are tainted with abuses, Eleazar said.
Bennington, VT (05201)

Today

Light snow this morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High near 50F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 43F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
The same day that voters elected Michelle Wu as Bostons first female and first Asian American mayor, voters in Framingham ousted Yvonne Spicer, the first Black woman to run a city in Massachusetts
'They're ready to go be kids again': Vaccinations kick off for younger children in Berkshire County
Cops and Courts Reporter

Amanda Burke is Cops and Courts Reporter for The Berkshire Eagle. An Ithaca, New York native, she previously worked at The Herald News of Fall River and the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise.
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Almost a year into the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, vaccines have been cleared for children ages 5-11. Find out where and when you can get your child vaccinated in Berkshire County.
News

WKU's enrollment dips again this fall amid pandemic

Western Kentucky Universitys enrollment for full-time equivalent students is down again this year, signaling that  despite the universitys best efforts to recruit students  it isnt exempt from a national decline in college enrollment thats been turbocharged by the pandemic.

WKUs new fall 2021 enrollment figures, recently finalized and confirmed by the Kentucky Council for Postsecondary Education, show that the university fell from 14,225 full-time equivalent students in 2020 to 13,660 this fall.

As for the universitys total enrollment  a figure that includes hundreds of high school students taking courses for college credit  WKU is sitting at 16,750 total students, down from 17,518 last fall. Thats a drop of 768 students  almost 4.5%.

The news doesnt necessarily come as a surprise to the universitys leadership.

It has been an exceedingly challenging year to recruit students to WKU because weve been unable to get into the schools, WKU President Timothy Caboni told the Daily News in August.

He forecasted that the universitys population of first-generation college freshmen and students from low-income households would be particularly hard hit this fall.

Whats unfortunate is the students who most needed to be in person and werent are the ones that were missing out on. So we know our numbers, this number of entering freshmen this fall from first-generation students and low-income students will be off significantly. And the reason is because they have not had an adviser helping them see college in their future, Caboni said, adding that high schools did everything they could just to get students across the graduation line, let alone think about college, amid the pandemic.

The latest enrollment figures for the university do show a decline in underrepresented minority students, defined as students who are Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander or of two or more races.

That figure fell from 3,008 last fall to 2,923 this fall, a drop of nearly 3%.

Ethan Logan, WKUs vice president of enrollment and student experience, also said this falls enrollment results arent unexpected given the pandemic.

Our fall enrollment is not unexpected coming out of the impact of the pandemic and challenges of enrollment for institutions across the country. Already we are seeing more engagement with our forthcoming class of prospective students than we saw during last years recruitment process. I believe that our challenge of being accessible to students (i.e., being in their high schools, hosting college fairs, etc.), even with our virtual resources, impacted our enrollment participation during the last recruitment cycle, Logan said.

WKU is forging ahead with a strong reinvestment in our future students in terms of our scholarship modeling and Hilltopper Guarantee. Access and opportunity are a part of our mission and we chose to reinvest in our students success towards graduation, he said.

The recruitment practice in higher education is ongoing and overlapping for each cycle of recruitment. We are already recruiting the Fall 2022 class and Fall 2023 class. Our Fall 2021 class may have had fewer students, but they are among the most academically qualified students weve admitted to the institution. We hope to see their aptitude demonstrated in our retention of students through this year, Logan said.

The university saw a significant decline in its freshman class, falling from 3,436 to 3,281 this fall, a drop of 4.5%. That drop is even steeper for first-time, first-year students, which includes summer session students. That figure fell from 3,120 the previous year to 2,832 this year  a decline of just more than 9%.

Like colleges in general, WKU also has a guy problem. The number of male students attending the university fell from 6,725 last fall to 6,250 this fall  a decline of 7%.

WKUs enrollment figures mirror a national decline. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, fall 2021 enrollment numbers show no signs of recovery from last years declines. Undergraduate enrollment is down 3.2% from a year ago. Undergraduate student numbers have now fallen by 6.5% as a total from two years ago.

Freshman enrollment nationwide continued to slip this fall, the center said. First-year student numbers declined by 3.1% overall and 3.9% among traditional-age students (18-20).

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Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death.

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BOISE - More than 250 personnel from the Idaho National Guards largest unit will deploy to Southwest Asia in support of Operation Spartan Shield. The brigade has trained for over a year in anticipation of this mobilization.

The operation is a joint mission under the United States Central Command and is part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Idaho Soldiers will comprise nearly 20 percent of the 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team task force during this rotation, and will include other Soldiers from Montana, Nevada and Oregon. Additionally, personnel from the Florida Army National Guard will also fall under this task force.

The Idaho Army National Guard will hold a send-off event for the families of deploying 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team Soldiers Friday, Nov. 5 at 8:30 a.m. on Gowen Field near Boise.

The Soldiers of the 116th are trained and ready to go, said 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team Commander Lt. Col. Eric Orcutt. I could not be more proud of these men and women and the efforts theyve put forth in training and preparing for this mission. They are eager and they are focused and as always, they will achieve the highest level of success.

This deployment is anticipated to last approximately 12 months and is the first rotation of two the 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team is scheduled to support, with the second turn occurring in the summer of 2022. The Soldiers mobilizing Friday will receive 45 days of additional training stateside before deploying overseas.

The 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team previously deployed in support of the Global War on Terror in 2004 and 2010 to Iraq. Idaho National Guard personnel have been supporting the state of Idaho throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as well as Idaho wildfires this past summer. Additionally, more than 400 Idaho Air National Guardsmen deployed to Southwest Asia in the summer of 2020.
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday while attending the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, an event that has drawn world leaders and tens of thousands of other people from around the world.

His office announced a positive test result in a tweet, adding only: He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated.

The climate summit is taking place at a time of very high coronavirus rates in the United Kingdom. The conference's United Nations organizers laid down rigid rules to guard against infection, including requiring each attendee to wear a mask and show daily proof of a negative result to enter the venue each morning.

Garcetti arrived Monday on a train with other mayors from around the world, including from London, Paris, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Garcetti has been among countless political and science leaders giving speeches, appearing on panels, posing for group photos and conferring with others at the climate talks.

Like many other participants, Garcetti varied between wearing a mask and not, photos from the summit show.

In an interview from his hotel room with KNX radio in Los Angeles, Garcetti said he was experiencing a mild scratchy throat and slightly runny nose but otherwise was feeling good.

He said he was hoping the test was incorrect  a so-called false positive -- but planned to keep up a regular work schedule if required to continue a quarantine at his hotel.

President Joe Biden nominated Garcetti as ambassador to India and he is awaiting confirmation in the Senate.

Garcettis 9-year-old daughter contracted coronavirus last December, when Los Angeles was experiencing its worst surge. Garcetti and his wife never got it but were forced to quarantine with their daughter.

Summit spokesman Alexander Saier declined comment, saying officials were not speaking on individual cases.

About 25,000 people picked up badges at the summit, Laura Lopez, conference affairs director for the summit, said Wednesday before news of Garcetti's positive test. Of them, 97% have been vaccinated.

Lopez said there had been roughly eight COVID cases, including one U.N. employee.

On Monday, the day world leaders spoke at the summit, about 1,000 people came to the front turnstiles without doing their lateral flow tests, she said. They were taken to a separate site and tested before being allowed in.

Organizers briefly closed the entry points that same day when the number of people inside hit 10,000, another precaution against infection.

Britains government recorded 33,865 infections Tuesday and 293 deaths, the highest daily death figure since February. While the number of cases have been coming down from a peak of around 46,000 a day in October, the countrys case rates are still much higher than in most of Europe.

So-called breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated people are rare, although vaccinated people can spread the virus to others.

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Michael Blood in Los Angeles, California, contributed to this story.

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Follow APs climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

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Follow APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP)  Maryland health officials have authorized providers across the state to immediately begin scheduling appointments, holding clinics, and vaccinating 5- to 11-year-olds, Gov. Larry Hogan announced Wednesday.

The announcement came a day after U.S. health officials gave the final signoff to Pfizers kid-size COVID-19 shot.

Our state health team has been working for many weeks in anticipation of federal approval to mobilize detailed operational plans for vaccinating children," Hogan said.

Maryland has about 515,000 newly eligible children. State health officials placed an initial order of 180,000 vaccine doses, which began arriving directly from Pfizer this week.

We will be receiving allocations in the coming weeks, and they have committed to supplying enough capacity for all of our 5- to 11-year-olds," the Republican governor said.

Dr. Jinlene Chan, the state's deputy health secretary, said that while the benefits of the vaccine have greatly reduced infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 over the past year, the proportion of cases in younger children who have not been able to get vaccinated has been increasing.

For example, early this year, about 6% of pediatric COVID-19 cases were in children under 10. In the middle and late part of the year, that age group comprised 14% of new cases, Chan said.

Vaccinating kids is another important step in our ongoing battle against the COVID-19 pandemic," Chan said.

There will be several options for children to get vaccinated.

All local school systems have agreed to facilitate clinics across the state in coordination with local health departments.

Those clinics are being planned as we speak and will be starting to take place next week and in the weeks to come, and local health departments are also planning mobile clinics to get into communities that perhaps have not had access to vaccines historically," Chan said.

Maryland health officials also have worked with the state's pediatric advisory group to enable pediatricians and family physicians to provide vaccines in their offices. The state's pharmacies also will begin offering COVID-19 vaccines for children.

The state of Maryland will provide staffing to school systems and local jurisdictions. The state also is deploying the Vaccine Equity Task Force to ensure equitable access for families in underserved communities and hard-to-reach areas, the governor's office said.

Dr. Monique Soileau-Burke, vice president of the Maryland chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Wednesday's announcement marked a day for celebration to begin enabling children safely to participate in events that they have not been able to during the pandemic.

Vaccinating our children is the right thing to do. Its safe. Its effective," Soileau-Burke said.

Dr. Michael Zollicoffer, a Baltimore pediatrician, said the availability of vaccines for young children offered new hope to battle the pandemic.

The shot is 91% effective. The shot is about a third of the dose that we give to adults. It's a two-shot regimen ... and it's a very safe shot with minimal side effects. This is a good shot," Zollicoffer said.
Watch the latest video at FoxNews.com By Bill O'Reilly Bad things happen to good people all the time. Nobody knows why. It's just the way life is. Once again, we have mass murder in America and the killer is a young man who was simply out of his mind. It's nobody's fault. There is no policy deficit. It's just an atrocity that's impossible to explain. This is the fifth time in 13 years that an American has committed mass murder. Columbine, Colorado -- April 20th, 1999 13 dead; 26 wounded after two students shot them down. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold then committed suicide. April 16th, 2007; a deranged man on the Virginia Tech campus kills 33 people including himself. No motive for the homicides. November 5th, 2009; Army Major Nadal Hasan kills 13 Americans at Fort Hood, Texas. He's currently charged with premeditated murder. His trial will begin next year. And finally January 8th, 2011 22-year-old Jared Loughner kills six, wounds 13 in Tucson, Arizona including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner is currently in a Missouri prison awaiting trial on 49 felony counts. And now, we have 24-year-old James Holmes from San Diego who allegedly killed 12 people, wounding 59 others in a Colorado movie theater. The crime took place in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, a place where I actually lived for two years. Aurora is a middle class neighborhood, just regular folks. Colorado authorities are holding Holmes and there is no question he did it. So once again, we have a crazy guy causing a massive amount of pain and destruction. There is little else to say. Fox News correspondent Jon Scott has the timeline. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JON SCOTT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A little after midnight local time the wildly anticipated premier of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" begins. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden I look to my right and there is this guy, you know, who is coming through this exit door to my right. And he looked like he was an actor or something you know he was just like a prop. SCOTT: About 20 minutes later the shooter stands at the front of the theater wearing body armor and a gas mask. He is armed to the teeth with an assault rifle, shotgun and at least one Glock pistol. First he sets off two devices which release some sort of irritant or smoke in the air. Then he opens fire. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Somebody is still shooting inside Theater Number Nine per an employee. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody is spraying gas in here too. SCOTT: For up to 20 minutes the shooter fires into the sold-out theater. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was this one guy who is on all fours crawling. There was this girl splitting up blood. There were bullet holes in some people's backs and some people's arms. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The thing that affects me most is just seeing that young girl just laying there just shot. Like she was just a little kid still, you know. Like it is just not right. SCOTT: 12:39 Local Time -- calls start coming in to police. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We may have a number of people dead inside the theater. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ok. If they are dead just -- just leave them, we are in a mass casualty situation at this time. SCOTT: Within two minutes police flood the scene. People covered in blood begin streaming out. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The first thing we see is a 13-14-year-old girl with a bullet wound in her leg and her stomach and probably her chest. And I think she was right there about to die. SCOTT: Minutes later, police arrest 24-year-old James Holmes in the back of the theater. And once the sun comes up the rest of the country begins to learn of the horror. President Obama saying the government will do whatever is necessary to bring the shooter to justice. BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to stand by our neighbors in Colorado during this extraordinarily difficult time. SCOTT: Back in Colorado, cops say the motive is unclear and they are not looking for any other suspects. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are confident that he acted alone. However, we will do a thorough investigation to be absolutely sure that that is the case. (END VIDEOTAPE) O'REILLY: And joining us now from the scene of the crime on the phone is Jon Scott. So you're a -- you're a Colorado native. Can you provide some perspective for us? SCOTT (via telephone): Yes Bill. I am struck as I come out here. It's a crystal blue sky today. There's a light breeze blowing. It's warm. It's everybody -- it's what everybody comes to Colorado for. The fantastic weather, the outdoor scenery and the lifestyle. Friendly people here and yet another one of these tragedies have happened just like it happened 13 years ago at Columbine. O'REILLY: Now, is there a culture in Colorado that is casual about firearms because you know that's going to come up. When I lived there in the late 1970s everybody was outdoors. There is obviously a western tradition where everybody has access to guns. And this guy bought his guns legally I understand. But -- but -- but it -- people they respect firearms there. But it isn't difficult to get them? SCOTT: Sure. It is not difficult to get them and I think there is a respect and healthy kind of respect for firearms here. When I lived here in my early 20s I had a rifle rack in the back of my pickup and would, you know, go up in the mountains and plink with a .22. O'REILLY: Right. SCOTT: It's like common out here. This just seems to be the case of an individual who just snapped. O'REILLY: Now, I don't know whether you can answer this question, but I haven't heard it addressed so I want to ask it. How do you get that kind of armament in a theater? I guess he had a back pack or something. But the guy has got full regalia. He's got three weapons. Two that are substantial, large -- all right. He's got tear gas canisters. How do you get that into a theater? SCOTT: I think I can fill you in on that. You see he bought a ticket, came in dressed as a civilian and sat in the very front row. And then sometime after either the previews started or the film itself started he went through one of the fire escape exits that's actually located at the front of the theater behind the movie screen. So then he went out to his car, dressed up in all his gear and after 15-20 minutes came back in carrying all that stuff. He must have either jammed open the door or used a piece of tape to make it, to be able to open it again. I talked to two witnesses who are in the third row who said when they saw this door open and light streaming in from the parking lot and a guy standing there wearing a mask they thought he was an usher. O'REILLY: All right. So that makes sense. So the guy comes in, he scopes it out. He then goes outside and he jiggers the door somewhat so that he can get back in. He arms himself and dresses himself in his car. Now, the apprehension -- and usually cases like this people either kill themselves or the cops gun them down. They captured this guy. Do you know how they did that? SCOTT: I do not absolutely. Although the witnesses that I was talking to said that at one point his gun seemed to jam although he had a number of weapons on him. Maybe his favorite gun for whatever reason something jammed and he just set the gun down and sauntered away to the back end of the theater and seemed to just sit there and wait. Now there are also reports that he had taken some kind of prescription medicine a couple of hours before the attack. Whether that had anything to do with it; whether that can be confirmed, I do not know. O'REILLY: All right. Then the police go to his apartment. Now, Aurora is a place with massive amounts of apartments. SCOTT: Yes. O'REILLY: I mean I lived in one called The Falls. And people come to Colorado from all over the West because you can make money in Denver. There are jobs in Denver and then they get apartments. That's what this guy did. He came from California. He came on in. But the apartment I understand, he had booby traps because he wanted to kill more people who were going to investigate him after the fact. Is that true? SCOTT: That's the case -- it seems to be the case. It may have been, I wonder whether he wanted to kill some of his neighbors because his neighbors say that around midnight which is must have been about the time he left to come to the theater, which is just a short distance away, they heard loud techno music repeating over and over again in his apartment and they went up and banged on the door. They live downstairs. They banged on the door to try to get him to stop. Well, if they had taken that -- if they had opened that door who knows what may have happen. O'REILLY: Well yes, obviously he was bent on killing as many people as possible. And as I said before it doesn't have anything to do with gun control. It doesn't have to do with anything other than this guy -- and again this guy didn't have anything in his past, Jon, I don't think to indicate any violence. He had no record. SCOTT: No. O'REILLY: He was a placid guy by all the accounts. Although his mother said something very interesting when she was confronted in San Diego. She told the authorities according to the reports she wasn't surprised that this happened. We don't know any more than that, though, do we at this point? SCOTT: Not at this point. All indications are that he just snapped. You know my -- my high school teacher here in Denver said something to me once that I will always remember. That the mind can get sick just like the body can and he must have been subject to something like that. O'REILLY: Yes and there's nothing any of us can do about it. All right, Jon Scott, everybody. He's a native of Colorado and actually Jon worked for the ABC station out there and I worked for the CBS station out there interesting. Content and Programming Copyright 2012 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2012 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content. Transcript Show Name: O'Reilly Factor
Bill joins Sean Hannitys radio program to discuss Tuesdays results in Virginia and New Jersey.



Your humble correspondent noted that independent voters rejected the progressive left with their votes. OReilly also told Hannity that independents and Republicans are tired of being insulted by the progressive left.

The folks stood up.

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A new telehealth app from Remote Doctors 4 Africa will not only bring digital healthcare to rural communities in Africa but has the additional benefit of allowing doctors to capture critical data at a village clinic level, providing stakeholders with invaluable insight into the prioritisation of much-needed resources.

Technology for Africa by Africa

Telehealth not telemedicine

Access to remote areas

While hospitals might have networks and connectivity in place, the rural village clinics do not have this. They often rely on dongles to connect to the internet.Most doctors in rural village clinics and communities do everything on a piece of paper which gets filed somewhere, says Ernest Mhlongo, CEO of Remote Doctors 4 Africa, a start-up focused on the digital healthcare ecosystem.If a patient visits another physician, there is no medical history to fall back on.By pushing for all this information to be stored in the cloud, we are making sophisticated analytics possible that can help healthcare providers and governments identify where best to allocate resources, he explains.For Remote Doctors 4 Africa, it is about connecting the unconnected and using technology to bridge the gap in healthcare.We are using technology built in Africa for Africans, says Mhlongo.We understand the challenges of infrastructure and healthcare on the continent, and we have developed a platform that is language-agnostic, biometrics enabled, to address the need to deliver hospital-grade healthcare to rural communities, he addsThe app can be used on all mobile devices whether a smartphone or a more basic feature phone, like a standard Nokia for example.Even though telemedicine (the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients through technology) has been getting significant attention on the continent, not much is said about telehealth, says Mhlongo.This is where hospital-grade diagnostic equipment is brought closer to the patient.Effectively, this sees a nurse operating the equipment at the location and a doctor doing the consultation remotely, enabled through various technology platforms.There are companies that specialise in either of these approaches, but we provide a value proposition that integrates both with local knowledge and skills, explains Mhlongo.Covid-19, and its subsequential onslaught to communities across the continent, highlighted the dire situation, not only in South Africa but across Africa, where rural communities lack access to education, healthcare, and infrastructure.It is these forgotten citizens that Remote Doctors 4 Africa want to assist through a range of telemedicine, telehealth, and connectivity solutions.Through the Remote Doctors 4 Africa app (RD4A), citizens in the remote corners of South Africa, Botswana, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe, will have access to digital telehealth services, and healthcare professionals will have access to critical data.
The 2022 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards competition is open for entries. New York Festivals Television & Film Awards honours storytellers from around the globe. Since 1957, the competition has celebrated excellence and innovation across all genres and platforms, keeping pace with industry-wide developments and global trends.

When we added ten categories for social justice content last year, filmmakers and storytellers from around the world responded with thought-provoking work, said Rose Anderson, VP/executive director of New York Festivals Television & Film Awards. This year, we are thrilled to announce the debut of our new trophy, the iconic NYF Tower in hand-polished Gold, Silver, and Bronze.2021 Social Justice medal winners included(CBS Sports),(50 Eggs Films),(CRTVE),(DW Deutsche Welle),(MLB Network),(The Edge Picture Company),(ESPN),(Al Jazeera English),(Antenna 3), and(Kreativ Inc. for Lifetime).View all the New York Festivals 2022 TV & Film Awards categories here Although the 2021 in-person NAB Show was cancelled due to pandemic quarantine restrictions, NYF pivoted with a 90-minute virtual ceremony Storytellers Gala featuring highlights and acceptances from 100 winning teams of men and women coming from their homes in 40+ countries.The 2022 TV & Film Awards Storytellers Gala will take place at the annual NAB Show in Las Vegas on 26 April 2022. This is the 12th year of NYFs strategic partnership with NAB Show. All NYF TV & Film Award winners have access to the multi-day event which is the worlds largest global gathering for the media and entertainment industry.For the second year in a row, New York Festivals welcomes JusticeAid, an organisation that promotes justice through the arts and public engagement, as a partner.The deadline to enter the 2022 Television & Film Awards competition is 1 February 2022.All Entries in the 2022 competition will be judged online and screened by NYFs TV & Film Awards Grand Jury of 200+ producers, directors, writers, and other creative media professionals from around the globe. Award-winning entries will be showcased on the TV & Film Awards winners gallery.For more, go to https://tvfilm.newyorkfestivals.com/Competition/Rules
Yesterday the Washington Post as well as Politico were again engaging in warmongering disinformation.

Both claimed that Russian troops are amassing at the Ukrainian border.

The Post wrote:

A renewed buildup of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border has raised concern among some officials in the United States and Europe who are tracking what they consider irregular movements of equipment and personnel on Russias western flank.

Politico headlined:

Satellite images show new Russian military buildup near Ukraine

But while the headline of the piece say "near Ukraine" the text actually places the pictured troops "near the Russian town of Yelnya close to the border of Belarus."

"Which is it?" one might ask. It could of course be both as Belarus and Ukraine are neighboring countries. But a look at a map shows that the real answer is "neither".

Yelnya is about halfway between Moscow and Minsk. The distance from Yelnya to the border of Belarus is some 60 miles or 100 kilometer. The distance to the Ukrainian border is about 150 miles or 250 kilometers. Yelnya is a regular Russian army training ground and the troops said to be there there are all units from Russia's western military district. To see those troops there, even in larger formations, is normal.

That is why even the Ukrainian defense ministry says that it has seen nothing it is concerned about:

Ukraine's defence ministry on Monday denied a media report of a Russian military buildup near its border, saying it had not observed an increase in forces or weaponry. The Washington Post said at the weekend a renewed buildup of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border had raised concern among some officials in the United States and Europe who are tracking what they consider irregular movements of equipment and personnel on Russia's western flank.

The Ukrainian defense ministry rejects the Washington Post claim of "irregular movements of equipment and personnel" in Russia and even called it "disinformation" (machine translation):

According to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, as of November 1, 2021, no additional transfer of Russian units, weapons and military equipment to the state border with Ukraine has been recorded. It is most probable that the facts published in the media and on the Internet about the increase of groups of the Russian Armed Forces in the Ukrainian direction are an element of special informational and psychological actions, and are essentially planned measures to relocate troops after training.

There are of course new tension between the Ukraine and Russia. The Ukraine has bought Turkish Bayraktar drones and allegedly recently used one in an attack on an artillery piece in the renegade Donbas region:

The strike prompted a wave of alarm in Moscow. I would like to mention once again that the conflict in southeastern Ukraine has no military solution, as was acknowledged by all those countries that so much fret over civilians and, generally, the situation in Ukraine. The attempts to settle it by force will have very deplorable and somewhat incalculable but generally tragic consequences, said Russias Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

There have also been artillery strikes on civil areas in Donbas and a Ukrainian takeover of a small hamlet in the demilitarized zone.

These are provocations designed to divert the Ukrainian public from the rather catastrophic economic situation Kiev is in.

The Saker asserted recently that a war over the Donbas region may be inevitable as it is in the interest of the 'west' as well as in the interest of current Ukrainian government.

I do not agree with that analysis. The Ukraine, even with silent help from NATO, would of course lose a war over Donbas. All the 'western' claims of supporting the Ukraine and all the U.S. maneuvers near Russia would then be exposed as empty talk and bluffs. Other U.S. clients, think Taiwan, would add that to the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan and the defeat of the U.S. sponsored opposition in Hong Kong and recognize that they can not trust any assurance coming out of Washington DC.

To be again exposed as toothless loudmouths would be another disaster for U.S. foreign policy. Joe Biden is too experienced to let that happen on his watch.

Then again - we have seen lots of nonsense coming from the White House, State Department and Pentagon.

Today the Ukrainian defense minister Andriy Taran suddenly resigned. No reasons were given. Did he receive orders he did not like?
Avast sweeping change towards a green economy is now being pushed by forces that may make an educated citizen rather uncomfortable.

Of course, news reports flash daily showcasing the brave young movement of eco-warriors led by Swedens forever 15 year old Greta Thunberg or Americas 17 year old Jamie Margolin who have become a force across Europe and America leading such movements as the Extinction Rebellion, This is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and Childrens eco-crusade.

The young face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez daily sells the idea that the only way for outdated capitalist forces that have plagued the world for decades to be replaced is by imposing a sweeping Green New Deal that priorities de-carbonization as a goal for humanity rather than continuing to allow the mindless forces of the markets to determine our destiny.

When EU President Ursula von der Leyen had stepped into her office, she lost no time attacking Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (which is ironically representing a true 21st century New Deal) by saying:

some are buying their influence by investing in dependence from ports and roads [but] we go the European way.

What is the European way? Not the development plans of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer who envisioned industrial growth and increasing population as positives, but rather a Green New Deal.

Von der Leyen then announced that:

I want Europe to become the first CO2 neutral continent in the world by 2050! I will put forward a Green New Deal for Europe in my first 100 days in office

Attacking the mindless forces of the market and vested power structures of capitalism are not bad things to dobut why must we de-carbonize? Re-regulating the too-big-to-fail banks is long overdue, but why do so many assume that a Green New Deal wont just empower those same forces that have run havoc upon the world for the past half-century and just cause more death and starvation than has already been suffered under Globalization?

One might only think to even ask such questions by first confronting the uncomfortable fact that behind such young cardboard cutouts as Thunberg, Margolin, Cortez or the Green New Deal are figures whom one would not associate with humanitarianism by any measure.

GREEN BONDS AND OLIGARCHS

When we begin to pull back the curtain we quickly run into figures like Prince Charles, who recently met with the heads of 18 Commonwealth countries to consolidate climate emergency legislation which was promptly passed in the UK and Canadian Parliaments.

At the end of the meeting Charles said that we have 18 months to save the world from climate change and called for increasing the amount of private sector finance flowing towards the supporting of sustainable development throughout the commonwealth.

Following the royal decree, the Bank of England and some of the dirtiest banks in the Rothschild-City of London web of finance have promoted green financial instruments led by Green Bonds to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects that no one in their right minds would ever invest in willfully.

The Ecological, Social, Governance Index (ESGI) has now been set up across 51% of Germanys banks including the derivatives-bomb waiting to blow named Deutschebank. Leading bankers supporting the ESGI like Mark Carney of the Bank of England have said that over 6.5 trillion Euros could be mobilized under this new index (which currently accounts for about $160 billion).

The creation of these green bonds run hand-in-hand with the Bail-in mechanisms which have now been implemented across the trans-Atlantic nations in order to steal trillions of dollars of from pension funds, RRSPs and Mutual funds the next time a bailout is needed to prop up the too big to fails which currently sit atop a $1.2 trillion derivatives bubble waiting to blow.

On top of heading the Bank of England, former Goldman Sachs-man Carney has also endorsed the Financial Stability Boards Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures which was created in 2015 and was used as a guideline for the UK governments July 2019 White Paper Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future.

The White Paper proposed to:

consolidate the UKs position as a global hub for green finance and positioning the UK at the head of green financial innovation and data and analyticsendorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally.

The Carney-led Task Force also spawned the Green Finance Initiative in 2016 which is now a primary vehicle designed to divert international capital flows into green tech.

Carneys former employer at Goldman Sachs has also created a Green Index for virtuous investing including two new sustainability indices to promote heavy investment in to green infrastructure called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW.

The acronym CDP originates from the Climate Disclosure Project  a London-based think tank that generated Goldman Sachs program. Goldman Sachs Marine Abiad promoted the CDP index saying on July 10 we are convinced that sustainable finance enables financial markets to play a virtuous role in the economy.

Just in case you thought the Extinction Rebellion was somehow untouched by the hand of social engineers, a leading figure behind the movement named Alex Evans was a former consultant on the Princes International Sustainability Unit, and co-author of the US National Intelligence Councils Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World which became an environmental/foreign policy blueprint for the Obama Administration in 2008. Currently Evans also runs the Collective Psychology Project where psychology meets politics.

Other leading British intelligence figures managing the Extinction Rebellion movement included Farhana Yamin and Sam Gaell of Chatham House (the controlling institution behind the New York Council on Foreign Relations).

COULD A BENEVOLENT GREEN DICTATORSHIP BE A GOOD THING?

The devils advocate speaks: Cant we presume that these central banks, oligarchs and hedge fund managers just care about the environment? So what if they are trying to modify humanitys behaviour in order to save the environment?

After all, humanity itself is a selfish, gluttonous pollution-making machine and isnt better for everyone if those enlightened elite just transform the world economy so that we consume less, and think more about the future?

If this line of thinking approximates something youve felt inside yourself then youve been brainwashed.

Of course, the world has turned into a consumerist cult over the past few decades which has sacrificed long term thinking for short term gain and of course we need a re-organization of the system. Thunberg and the Green New Dealers arent wrong about that stuff. Thats all fine and dandy.

But if you think that going along with the types of reform that aspires to put dollar values on reducing carbon footprints or spreading low quality (and very expensive) windmills and solar panels across the globe with the expectation that somehow these sources of energy will not cause a vast collapse of industrial capacity of civilization (and an associated loss of capacity to sustain human life), then you are fooling yourself.

One kilowatt of windmill energy is only the same as one kilowatt of nuclear power when applied to a mathematical equation but not in real life. When applied to capital-intensive work functions needed to melt industrial steel, run machine tools, power a vast agro-industrial complex, high-speed rail system or construct things like Belt and Road Initiative, green energy sources do not come even close to cutting the iron.

THE ISSUE HAS ALWAYS BEEN POPULATION CONTROL

The oligarchs running the grand green design since the Club of Romes Sir Alexander King began the Limits to Growth study in 1970 knew that green low energy flux density sources of energy would constrict global population and that is exactly what they wanted.

Sir King said as much in 1990 when he wrote:

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the billAll these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.

Sir King was, after all just following the lead of UNESCO founder (and Eugenics president) Sir Julian Huxley who wrote in 1946:

Political unification in some sort of world government will be requiredEven thoughany radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.

It was only a few years later that Huxley would co-found the World Wildlife Fund alongside Prince Philip Mountbatten and Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands.

All three were present at Bernhardts founding meeting of the Bilderberg group to advance this grand conversion of society into a willful self-extermination in 1954 and while Huxley wasnt present in 1970, the other two oligarchs co-founded the 1001 Nature Trust alongside 999 other wealthy misanthropes to fund the blossoming environmental movement.

These forces were also behind the coup detat in America which put the Trilateral Commission in power under Jimmy Carter and unleashed the controlled disintegration of the US economy from 1978-1982 (this will be the topic of another study).

This grouping, led by Zbigniew Brzezinski, not only played the radical Islam card against the Soviet Union, but also established a program of population reduction through the promotion of green energy sources long before it was popular.

The oligarchs that are currently trying to reform humanity today dont care about the environment. Prince Philip and Bernhardt have been recorded to have killed more endangered species on safari than most people have killed mosquitos. They just dont like people.

Especially thinking people. Thinking people who question how and why arbitrary rules are applied to justify wars, poverty and oligarchism which destroys lives both now and in the future.

The Belt and Road Initiative, and the tendency to grow the human population both quantitatively and qualitatively which such great projects entail, is the target of the Green New Deal.

The legacy of scientific and technological progress that launched western civilization out of a dark age and into a renaissance in the 15th century is under attack because it is that lost ethic which the oligarchy KNOWS may yet be awoken and which would bring the west into harmony with the Russia-China program for growth and development under a philosophy of win-win cooperation both on Earth and also in space.

The effects of the ideas of the renaissance coincided with the greatest rate of discoveries of universal principles as mankind sought to come to know the mind of god by studying the book of nature with a heart of love and attitude of humility exemplified in the figure of Leonardo Da Vinci.

The explosion of new technologies that arose not only revolutionized astronomy, medicine and engineering but gave birth to the modern industrial economy which coincided with the greatest rise of population in history.

This exponential rise has been used by Malthusians for centuries as the proof that mankind is just another cancerous growth on the purity of mother Gaia.

So if you dont agree with humans=cancer philosophy, and want something a bit more optimistic in your life, then support a real New Deal today.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review, Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow, BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and has authored 3 volumes of Untold History of Canada book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation.
It was widely seen as a 'revenge' strike for the days prior ISIS suicide attack at an airport gate which killed 13 American troops and 169 Afghans. Weeks later, a New York Times investigation revealed the strike actually took out a local worker for a US humanitarian organization named Zemerai Ahmadi and his nine family members - seven of which were children. Meanwhile the Pentagon kept altering its narrative of events until belatedly admitting the mass killing of an innocent family.

"An independent Pentagon review has concluded that the U.S. drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children in the final days of the Afghanistan war was not caused by misconduct or negligence, and it doesnt recommend any disciplinary action," The Associated Press is reporting Wednesday. More simply, there will be no accountability.

The review was overseen by Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami Said. The military deemed him an "independent" judge in the matter due to his not being connected to any operations in Afghanistan.

In short, based on the AP's description of what it's learned of the final report, the official review ultimately found no wrongdoing worthy of discipline or punitive actions against any high or low ranking official as everything can be chalked up to "good intentions" (our word choice). And there's the classic "mistakes were made" rhetoric to boot...of course shielding anyone in the Biden administration.

According to the AP:

The review, done by the Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami Said, found there were breakdowns in communication and in the process of identifying and confirming the target of the bombing, according to a senior defense official familiar with the report. But, Said concluded that the mistaken strike happened despite prudent measures to prevent civilian deaths, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a report not yet released.

And more:

Saids review said the drone strike must be considered in the context of the moment, as U.S. forces under stress were being flooded by information about threats to troops and civilians at the Kabul airport, just days after a deadly suicide bombing. Thousands of Afghans were swarming the airport, trying to get out of the country following the Taliban takeover. According to the official, Said found that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the bombing, but in the end may not have prevented it.

The AP notes that the highest ranks of Pentagon leadership have signed off on the investigative review, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who has made a series of recommended changes in targeting procedures designed to mitigate "confirmation bias" - which leads to overly hasty assumptions that a target being followed must be the correct target.

And then there's the below surreal explanation by Gen. Said during a Wednesday press conference wherein the Pentagon is exonerating itself...

Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami Said says evidence of a child was apparent two minutes before U.S. military launched a drone strike that killed innocent civilians and children in Kabul before U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.



But he says the evidence was 100% not obvious. pic.twitter.com/Ythnlx4eEH  The Recount (@therecount) November 3, 2021

Again, here's more of what sounds like the Pentagon is simply shrugging off this clear war crime as essentially unfortunate but justified based on mere good intentions: "Said concluded that US forces genuinely believed that the car they were following was an imminent threat and that they needed to strike it before it got closer to the airport."

Naturally, Afghans themselves are wondering just how the Pentagon would come to such a conclusion which results in zero US accountability...

"According to the Inspector General, there was a mistake but no one acted wrongly, and Im left wondering, how can that be?" Response of the President of the aid organization that employed Zemari Ahmadi--to whom Mr. Ahmadi was like a son--and ACLU here: https://t.co/2nnWJ9K701 https://t.co/UgxKmPjf7n  Hina Shamsi (@HinaShamsi) November 3, 2021

It begs the question: would Washington leaders ever accept such an explanation of but they "genuinely believed" the car full of innocent civilians was a threat in similar circumstances from other countries, especially rivals like Russia or China, or official enemies like the Iranians or Assad's Syria?
The US governments definition of biological product up until December 2019 may have prohibited the mRNA COVID-19 products from being labeled as vaccines.

(LifeSiteNews)  Without a quiet change to federal law just before the onset of COVID-19, the experimental, mRNA COVID jabs may never have been labelled as vaccines.

A previous article on LifeSiteNews.com described the major conflicts of interest observable during the process leading up to the U.S federal governments emergency use authorization of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. In December 2019 (before reported outbreak of COVID-19), the U.S. federal government signed a contract with one COVID-19 vaccine maker, Moderna, which stated mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates [are] developed and jointly owned by both Moderna and the U.S. federal government, the article explains.

This article discusses the additional significant fact that, also in December of 2019, the U.S. federal government changed the definition of biological product in federal laws governing vaccine labeling, emergency use authorization, and approval. The U.S. federal government labels vaccines as biological products.

A thorough discussion of the significance of the change of the U.S. federal law cannot be provided here due to the technical, scientific, and pharmaceutical terminology and descriptions required. A basic summary is as follows: without the December 2019 change to U.S. law defining biological product, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may have been required to be labeled as something other than a vaccine.

Stated slightly differently, the U.S. federal governments definition of biological product which was used up until a few weeks before the reported outbreak of COVID-19 may have prohibited the mRNA COVID-19 products from being labeled as vaccines.

It would probably be much more difficult for governments and/or employers to mandate receiving coronavirus mRNA substances labeled as drugs or other non-vaccine products. Guilt-tripping physicians, nurses, and others into receiving and supporting mRNA COVID-19 substances with the potential false accusation of anti-vaxxer would also be out of the question if the substances were not labeled as vaccines.

New definition of biological product weeks before COVID

It should be noted that to become approved in the United States, vaccine manufacturers are required to submit a Biologic License Application to the U.S. federal government. (Page 2) U.S. federal law has vaccines included in the category of biological products.

Prior to the 2019 change to U.S. federal law, the legal definition of biological product was as follows:

The term biological product means a virus, therapeutic serum, toxin, antitoxin, vaccine, blood, blood component or derivative, allergenic product, protein (except any chemically synthesized polypeptide), or analogous product, or arsphenamine or derivative of arsphenamine (or any other trivalent organic arsenic compound), applicable to the prevention, treatment, or cure of a disease or condition of human beings. (emphasis added)

The December 2019 change to the definition of biological product is found in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, and is as follows:

SEC. 605. BIOLOGICAL PRODUCT DEFINITION. Section 351(i)(1) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 262(i)(1)) is amended by striking (except any chemically synthesized polypeptide).

Thus, prior to the 2019 change which was made soon before the reported outbreak of COVID-19, any chemically synthesized polypeptide would not be regulated by the FDA as a biological product. This could be interpreted to mean that if a supposed vaccine was a chemically synthesized polypeptide, then apparently it would not be regulated as a biological product.

The significance of this change is that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines chemically synthesize the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (also known as the S) protein. (As of the time of this writing in August 2021), both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines which were given emergency use authorization by the FDA are nucleoside modified which means that they are chemically modified and programmed to synthesize the SARS-CoV-2 S protein.

Thus, the wording of the previous definition of biological product seems to suggest that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could not legally be labeled as vaccines. That would be a major problem for public health officials and vaccine makers.

COVID vaccines and chemically synthesized mRNA

Without getting overly technical, it should be noted that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are the first products which use the technique of synthetic or chemically synthesized mRNA to be given emergency use authorization by the FDA. (Pages 748-749)

After injected into humans, the chemically synthesized mRNA COVID-19 vaccines synthesize  or produce  a protein which is similar to the spike or S protein of SARS-CoV-2. Proteins contain one or more polypeptides. Thus, the synthesis of the S protein is also described as polypeptide synthesis.

A more specific explanation of the chemical synthesis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines from the scientific literature is as follows:

The chemical components of mRNA vaccines are pleasantly unremarkable, consisting primarily of RNA plus water, salt, sugar, and fat, with two notable exceptions. The first is the lipid nanoparticles that encapsulate the mRNA and facilitate its delivery, which are excellently reviewed elsewhere. The second is the non-natural RNA nucleobase N1-methylpseudouridine (m1; Figure 1b), which enhances immune evasion and protein production. (Page 748, emphasis added)

For this article, it is important to know that a chemical component of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is N1-methylpseudouridine. The chemical N1-methylpseudouridine enhancesprotein production. Protein production may also be stated as protein synthesis or polypeptide synthesis. Another way to state this is that N1-methylpseudouridine is a chemical which participates in the polypeptide synthesis of the S protein necessary for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

This means, then, that the S protein necessary for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could be accurately described as a chemically synthesized polypeptide.

Now, refer to the definition of biological product before the December 2019 change to U.S. federal law. The law previously excluded any chemically synthesized polypeptide from the definition of biological product. That definition, then, would seemingly exclude the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines from being labeled as a biological product.

But since vaccines require a Biologic License Application, then it would seem that with the previous definition of biological product, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could not be labeled as vaccines.

More evidence of a falsified pandemic?

It is unknown if the legal definition of biological product was amended by Congress to remove except any chemically synthesized polypeptide to permit foreseen chemically synthesized COVID-19 mRNA substances to be labeled as vaccines.

However, the fact that this significant change was made on page 595 of a 716-page law which is normally used for appropriating U.S. federal funding suggests the possibility of an attempt at being conspicuous.

The aforementioned change to U.S. federal law is also relevant to discussions in previous articles which described updates to U.S. federal laws made soon before COVID-19 suggesting the possibility that COVID-19 may be some sort of falsified pandemic exercise.

Specifically, the timing of the change  before COVID in December of 2019  along with the apparent hurried status  burying the change on page 595 of a U.S. federal funding act  again suggests the possibility that COVID-19 may be a falsified pandemic exercise which U.S. federal government public health officials and politicians were preparing for by attempting to legally protect themselves with several significant changes to laws, strategies, and plans governing and regulating public health emerging threats, pandemics, vaccines, or related subjects.

It is also worth repeating that the U.S. federal government partially owns an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and soon before their imposition onto Americans, the U.S. federal government seemingly ensured COVID-19 mRNA vaccines would be legal.

Of course, the timing and apparent conspicuousness of the 2019 change to the U.S. federal law which seemingly ensured that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could legally be labeled as vaccines could merely be a coincidence. If keeping track of the large number of major coincidences regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, though, the reasonable person might at least be cautious of anything certain persons and entities communicate regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
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A Brandon man says he is disgusted at a two-year wait to have his complaint investigated by the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, but new legislation is aimed at speeding things up at the agency.

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FILE Brandon resident Mike Thiessen shows his CNIB identification card in April.

A Brandon man says he is "disgusted" at a two-year wait to have his complaint investigated by the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, but new legislation is aimed at speeding things up at the agency.

Mike Thiessen filed a complaint in April over his CNIB ID not being accepted at provincial Liquor Mart locations. When he followed up two weeks ago, he said he was told he would have to wait up to 24 months before an investigator could look at the file.

"Our system is broken," he said.

"Thats how I felt about it. There is no legitimate argument that can be made that a two-year wait is OK. Why [are] the human rights of the citizens of Manitoba in such a low part of government movement that its a two-year waiting list?"

The CNIB card  provided by the CNIB Foundation, a national non-profit organization that offers programs and advocacy that "empower people impacted by blindness"  gives holders benefits like discounts and services from governments, businesses and community partners, according to its website. The ID is similar to a drivers licence, containing much of the same information, including a photo of the person, their name and address.

On Tuesday, the province announced it had proclaimed The Human Rights Code Amendment Act, which was passed by the legislature earlier this year.

The bill aims to speed up the complaints process and sets a cap of $25,000 on general damages that can be awarded. Currently, it can take up to six years for a complaint to move through the commission, according to a provincial press release.

Justice Minister Cameron Friesen said in the release the delays compromise access to justice and public confidence in the human rights complaints process.

The changes also allow the commission to dismiss complaints if they are outside its jurisdiction, or if they have already been addressed elsewhere.

Thiessen, who says he is completely blind in his left eye and only has 25 per cent eyesight in his right eye, uses his CNIB ID card as his main form of identification. He filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Manitoba after he was denied entry to a Brandon Liquor Mart location as the system used to scan IDs does not recognize CNIB cards.

Despite this, he said he can use the ID to vote in elections, shop at cannabis stores and pick up mail from Canada Post. While he could use other forms of ID to buy alcohol, he said it is an accessibility issue for him and others with a visual impairment.

"I had to provide [Liquor Mart] with two forms of identification, which to me felt like I was less worthy being visually impaired than someone who has their visual acuity and only has to provide ID with one form of ID," he said.

While it could be a two-year wait for the investigation to begin, the wait for a decision after that could be longer.

The amendments will speed up the human rights complaints process "considerably," said the commissions acting executive director, Karen Sharma. While its too soon to say how much quicker the process will get after the legislation takes effect on Jan. 1, the commission is currently triaging files already in the system.

The goal is to have no wait times for files within a year and a half of the new legislation taking effect, she said.

"We have known for quite a long time that this system has not been operating as efficiently or timely as Manitobans need and deserve, so were really looking forward to being able to implement new processes that will help streamline the system and make it more efficient."

The amendments are based on recommendations in an independent review by Allan Fineblit. The changes will also give adjudicators the ability to mediate complaints and set time limits to make sure hearings and decisions are within a set time frame.

 dmay@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @DrewMay_
In response to a long-standing demand by the public, the Manitoba COVID-19 task force will start reporting the number of positive test results by specific health regions.

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THE CANADIAN PRESS/FILE Dr. Jazz Atwal, deputy chief provincial public health officer.

In response to a long-standing demand by the public, the Manitoba COVID-19 task force will start reporting the number of positive test results by specific health regions.

The announcement was made during a live-streamed press conference on Wednesday with Dr. Jazz Atwal, deputy chief provincial public health officer, Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead for the provinces vaccine task force, and Dr. Marcia Anderson, public health lead for the Manitoba First Nations pandemic response co-ordination team.

The province will release the number of positive tests recorded on a bi-weekly basis starting on Friday with a region-to-region breakdown, Atwal explained. This is a change from only Winnipegs positive test numbers being released, with the rest of the province lumped together.

He explained the move comes after detailed discussions within public health. They were told the calls for this information were increasing.

"There is [a] benefit to having that information available," he said. "So as a group, we decided to have positivity rates by region made available to the public."

The team also addressed virus cases among health-care workers. Since Oct. 18, government-mandated testing caught six infections, including three in Prairie Mountain Health. The others included two in the Southern Health region and one in Winnipeg.

If a health-care employee is found positive from a rapid test, they are sent for PCR testing, then sent home to isolate for 10 days before they can return to work, then undergo rapid testing again, Atwal said.

Currently, 1,851 direct-care workers have disclosed they are not fully vaccinated and require a negative test result within 48 hours of the beginning of their shifts.

Offering rapid testing for employees who are not vaccinated allows the business to continue to operate while mitigating the risk to employees and any members of the public, Atwal said.

"It mitigates risk, but does not lower it 100 per cent," he said. "We recognize that testing does not replace vaccination."

From a testing standpoint, he said it allows for better contact tracing if a person does test positive.

The panel reiterated multiple times further restrictions and lockdowns for regions are not coming right now, despite the uptick in cases, especially in the Southern Health region. Atwal said the province will monitor the cases for the next one to six weeks to track the trajectory, adding they do anticipate the upswing to continue for at least the short term.

He explained they would rather work with communities to educate and understand why people are refusing to get vaccinated.

However, that doesnt mean more restrictions or lockdowns are out of the question.

"Ive said before everything is on the table, but we are concerned about how this will affect capacity in our medical facilities," he said.

The province is also expanding its recommendations for a third dose to include First Nations, Metis and Inuit adults, as well as anyone aged 70 and over.

Anderson explained the third dose should be given within six months of the second dose and whenever possible and be either Pfizer or Modernas mRNA vaccines.

This comes with confirmed data showing First Nations are 4.2 times at higher risk for severe outcomes than the rest of the population. Some factors include chronic overcrowding in reserve housing and lack of access to medical care. The vaccine will be made available at urban Indigenous sites, among other places.

The province is preparing to administer doses for children ages five to 11. Reimer said the rollout is going to be different than the initial vaccine distribution as they are not going to restrict access based on birth year. They will go into schools for vaccine clinics and it will be made widely available in pharmacies, pop-up clinics and other locations.

Pfizer and the federal government have assured Manitoba they are sending a "large" shipment, so there is no delay or shortage anticipated, she added.

"We may have to adjust for the birth year in schools because of cohorts and logistics for anyone under the age of five."

Another difference will be in how doses are injected. She said those administering doses will be trained to make the experience a positive one for children and their families. There will be information made available to families so those going to get their children immunized can do so with confidence.

The panel also stressed everyone who is eligible should get their flu shot. Atwal added there were very few cases last year due to lockdowns and high vaccine administration but anticipated higher cases this year because of looser restrictions and more socialization.

 kmckinley@brandonsun.com
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Giant wealth manager Australian Super is scouring overseas property markets for growth as it looks to double its real estate holdings in the next three to five years.

The countrys largest super fund - with 2.4 million members and $233 billion invested - is looking to global markets it views as more inefficient to bolster its real estate portfolio.

The Moorebank freight hub in south-west Sydney. Credit:.

More than likely, a lot of our growth will come from offshore rather than onshore because the opportunity set is that much bigger, the super funds head of property Bevan Towning said.

Australian Super does not assign defined weightings to geographies, he said, but is mainly looking to the US and UK for growth.
Qantas has accelerated plans to return its mothballed flagship Airbus A380 fleet to Australia as a rush of international bookings buoys its expectations of demand for overseas flights next year.

Chief executive Alan Joyce told the airlines annual general meeting on Friday that international bookings had been patchy since the border opened on Monday, with strong demand from Australians returning home before Christmas. Going in the other direction youll find that aircraft are relatively empty, he said.

But there was enough interest for Qantas to further accelerate the return of its flagship A380 superjumbos, after putting them in deep storage at Los Angeles LAX airport early in the pandemic with the intention to leave them there until late 2023.

Qantas A380 superjumbos have been parked in the California since early in the pandemic. Credit:AP

Along with two of the 484-seat, double-decker jets entering service on Sydney-Los Angeles flights in April, three more will now return and fly to London - which was previously slated to happen by November - while a sixth A380 will now return to service by the end of 2022.
When Tibetan refugee Pema Kyi came to Australia in 2019 she had a Bachelor of Arts degree and was passionate about finding a career in mental health and psychology. But Ms Kyi, who is fluent in Mandarin and English, found settling in Australia more challenging than she expected.

When I first came here I just had to start from zero, Ms Kyi says.

Tibetan refugee Pema Kyi wants to pursue a career in mental health to help other refugees. Credit:Justin McManus

Even with her university degree she was unable to use her qualifications to get a job and had to re-skill to make a living.

AMES Australia, a refugee and migrant settlement agency, helped Ms Kyi complete her Certificate IV in Aged Care and start studying for a diploma in mental health.
THRILLERS: The Presidents Daughter, Bill Clinton & James Patterson, Century, $32.99

State of Terror, Hillary Rodham Clinton & Louise Penny, Macmillan, $32.99

His begins on board a Black Hawk helicopter somewhere off the coast of Libya on a clandestine special forces operation that will inevitably go pear-shaped. Hers opens with an exhausted and dishevelled Secretary of State just back from a humiliating diplomatic failure in Seoul and already late for a State of the Union address. Both of them feature dastardly terrorist threats emanating from the Middle East that will have dire repercussions for close friends, family and America. But there the similarity ends.

Except, of course, that you cant help wondering just how much of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton there is in these fast-paced political thrillers and to what degree this was tempered by the wisdom of their co-writers, the impossibly best-selling James Patterson and Canadian treasure Louise Penny, whose Inspector Gamache manages to make a cameo late in the day.

The political commentary in Louise Penny (left) and Hillary Clintons book is terrifying in its implications. Credit:

For Bill and James, its the second time round the block (after The President Is Missing) in what often reads like a boys own adventure. Theres a lot of attention to the kinds of military and weapons technology that is largely a waste of space for those who simply dont care about such authenticity. When ex-president Michael Keating eventually weighs into the action, it takes the best part of half a page to describe his weapons and his kit, which includes a level III high cut ballistic helmet, with an ATN PVS14 night vision device extended up into the air. Its quite a look.
When James Bond appeared on screen in Dr No in 1962, it was clear even to Ian Fleming and the would-be spies who loved him that the British Empire had all but expired. India, the jewel in the crown, was split into two independent pieces in 1947. Britain was then so depleted that wartime rationing was still in force. In 1956, there was the humiliation of the Suez Crisis. In 1962  the very year Sean Connery blew up Dr Nos island lair  Jamaica declared its independence.

Well, you would never have guessed. Bond lands in Jamaica, where Fleming himself had spent part of every year since 1935, with plans to head straight to Government House for lunch. There is a bit of argie-bargie with some paid assassins, after which he finds the natives cheerfully deferential; those who arent are easily defeated in hand-to-hand combat with a properly trained white man.

Times have changed since Sean Connery was James Bond in Dr No.

In every other respect, it is an Edwardian fantasy of Empire, its hierarchies intact and habits immutable. The same four lightly suited codgers meet to play the same card games over the same multiple rounds of drinks every evening  although one of them does turn out to be wrong un, certainly, the first of a long line of traitors to present Bond with a spot of trouble en route to the real villain.

The real villain is, of course, usually a foreigner. Dr No was half-Chinese, an identity signified by his Nehru jacket, some Fu Manchu eyeliner and an unplaceable accent, which in itself would have been a source of unease to British audiences. In fact, the actor Joseph Wiseman playing Dr No was a Jewish Canadian, as was the producer who had cannily bought the rights to Bond, Harry Saltzman. His production partner, Albert Broccoli, was an Italian American. Bonds enduring USP was and is his distilled Englishness, but perhaps it took a couple of foreigners to pinpoint what that was and how to package it.
Mancini, who created the TV series, knows that Jakes sexuality might rattle some horror fans. It would be, he said, as if Frankenstein came out as bi. He has received death threats from a fan who was upset to learn Mancini was gay. But Im in a position to do it, so why not? he said. The idea of causing some peoples heads to explode was catnip to me. Jake (Zachary Arthur) purchases Chucky and soon discovers that the killer doll has read his diary in which he confesses a crush on a male classmate. Buzz around Chucky has been building since 2018, when Mancini first announced the series. Production was delayed by a clash over rights to the Chucky character, a conflict that resulted in a 2019 Childs Play reboot that Mancini wanted nothing to do with and that Chucky fans mostly disregard. (Mancini co-wrote Childs Play and wrote the other six films that are considered part of the characters canon, and directed three of them.) Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed shooting until last March. The shows earliest seeds, however, were planted long ago. Mancini grew up with his parents and four sisters in Richmond, Virginia, and he caught the horror bug watching the proto-queer gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. He came out while studying film at UCLA in the 80s; Mancini remembers hearing about fights over Cabbage Patch Kids at the time and thinking about using a doll as a metaphor for marketing gone awry.

Two films from 1984 were touchstones: Gremlins, with its creepy animatronic creatures, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy was a villain with a very distinct sense of humour, someone who could taunt victims verbally, Mancini said in a 2019 oral history of Childs Play. I was quite consciously influenced by that with Chucky, the idea of an innocent-looking childs doll that spouted filth. Mancini could have enjoyed the global success of the Childs Play franchise and called it a night. But even after several decades of Chucky, he wasnt done. I love the character of Chucky, and I dont get tired of him, he said. But to keep it alive this long, it cant just be about a killer doll. Once shooting finally began, in Toronto, it took about 100 days to complete. A group of six or seven puppeteers at a time worked in close quarters to bring Chucky to life  the doll is 99.5% puppet, Mancini said  which made following coronavirus protocols extra important. (An actor sometimes performs as Chuckys double.)

Mancinis preference for practical effects over computer-generated ones goes back to the first film. Im old school, but I think its much more fun to do things practically, he said. The queerness of the series wont surprise long-time Chucky fans: Childs Play may be the queerest of the big horror franchises. A gay-supportive character died a spectacular death  a horror badge of honour  in the fourth film of the series, Bride of Chucky (1998), which also signalled a pivot to campy horror-comedy. A scene from the 1998 film Bride of Chucky. Seed of Chucky (2004) introduced Chucky and his bride, Tiffany (voiced by Jennifer Tilly), to their transgender child, who goes by Glen and Glenda (a shout-out to Ed Woods B-movie Glen or Glenda). Other gay characters appear in Curse of Chucky (2013) and Cult of Chucky (2017).

Mancini enjoyed consciously injecting queer content into the films, he said, but Chucky is the most autobiographical work of his career. Its there in small details, such as the poster of the cast of The Outsiders that Jake has in his bedroom, the same one Mancini had as a kid. (Unlike Jake, Mancini did not hang it next to a pride flag.) But there are darker memories embedded in Chucky, which follows the doll as he terrorises Hackensack, New Jersey, to protect Jake from bullies. (Its not as heroic as it sounds.) Mancini experienced bullying and abuse from his own father for being gay, he said; one particular scene from the pilot, in which Jakes father (Devon Sawa) hits the boy during an argument over Jakes sexuality, was particularly challenging. The actors and crew were aware that this was very personal to me, said Mancini, who wrote and directed that episode. It was cathartic to see it acted out. To help him swim in such emotional waters, Mancini brought back long-time collaborators from the Childs Play universe, including Brad Dourif, the original voice of Chucky, and Alex Vincent, who reprises his role as Andy, Chuckys young owner in the first two films. Also returning is Tilly, a close friend of Mancinis and a major player in the franchise, having portrayed Tiffany in four films. (His chunky gold necklace that reads, CHUCKY DADDY is from her.)
One presence you cant escape inside the sprawling campus of the COP26 climate talks is that of Greta Thunberg, though she chooses to spend most of her time on the other side of several rings of security.

She may well have contempt for the suits inside the wire, but they appear not to share the feeling.

In his first address at the talks Boris Johnson quoted Thunbergs scathing assessment of the collective failure of the worlds governments and institutions to address climate change.

Limits of talk: Climate activist Greta Thunberg in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Credit:Getty

All those promises will be nothing but blah blah blah  to coin a phrase  and the anger and impatience of the world will be uncontainable unless we make this COP26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change, he said.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has signed off on an amendment to the states COVID-19 rules ahead of a further relaxation of restrictions for the fully vaccinated on Monday.

The object of this order is to amend the Public Health (COVID-19 General) Order 2021 to give effect to the road map for easing certain restrictions from 8 November 2021, the amendment, signed this afternoon, states.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard formally approved the road map changes on Friday afternoon. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

From Monday in NSW, there will be no limit to the number of visitors allowed in a home and no cap on bookings for hospitality.

Patron limits will also be scrapped for major recreation and entertainment facilities, subject to density limits or 100 per cent of fixed seat capacity.

The density limit for indoor and outdoor areas, including non-critical retail and restaurants, will shift to one person per two square metres.

Outdoor public gatherings and recreation must have a COVID-19 Safety Plan if there are more than 1000 attendees.

Singing and dancing will be permitted both indoors and outdoors, allowing nightclubs to return to normal operation, while sex-on-premises venues can reopen.

Amusement centres and play centres will also swing open their doors and indoor pools can open for all purposes.

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However, music festivals remain prohibited and masks will still be mandatory in indoor settings, except for office buildings.

The changes were brought forward from December 1, while those who are not vaccinated will have to wait until the state reaches 95 per cent full vaccination for its 16 and over population or until December 15, whichever is first.

NSW is on track to reach the 90 per cent full vaccination target on the weekend.

Border rules also eased with Victoria at 11.59pm on Thursday, as all remaining orange zones in NSW were declared green zones, meaning no testing or quarantine requirement upon arrival in Victoria. A permit is still needed.

However, any Victorian aged 16 and over who is not vaccinated cannot enter NSW for a holiday or recreation.

NSW Health said the maximum penalty for non-compliance with public health order directions for interstate travellers is $11,000 and/or imprisonment for six months, and a further 50 penalty units ($5500) for each day the offence continues.

Individuals can also be handed $1000 on-the-spot fines.
Your name is Cleo, Hello Cleo, the officers reply. Detective Senior Constable Kurt Ford was the police officer who swooped little Cleo into his arms after finding her in a locked house in Carnarvon. He said breaking into the home, he had no expectations of what he and three colleagues would find inside. If anything, our expectations probably werent going to be great, Senior Constable Ford said.

But it was obviously very emotional experience for me going in and it was a good result. I dont really remember it too well. I think I just saw obviously a little girl just sitting there, so I didnt even think about anything else, and then just picking her up. Senior Constable Ford said Cleo held tight as police took her away to be reunited with her family. Police are yet to charge a 36-year-old man in custody over Cleos disappearance, but are expected to later on Thursday.

Senior Sergeant Blaine also issued a fresh appeal for CCTV footage from around Carnarvon for the entire 18-day period she was missing that may help police with their investigations. Taskforce Rodia lead investigator Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde also revealed further details about how police managed to track down Cleo to the property on the north-western edge of Carnarvon. He said it was a quick-moving investigation that was about joining the dots of hundreds of thousands of bits of information from mobile phone data, car sightings and CCTV. If we can put people in certain locations at certain times thats what we look to identify and obviously from that we can build a picture of who is there who shouldnt be there and it led to us identifying that person, he said. We only really put that piece of information together late on the Tuesday afternoon and he was arrested not long after that.

Loading Specialist child interviewers from Perth conducted a gentle interview with Cleo on Thursday to fill in the gaps of what happened to her in those 18 days. Superintendent Wilde said police would liaise with the family to make sure the time was right as it could take several days to complete the interview. We are very careful, very mindful around the welfare when we take those interviews. It will take as long as it takes. Superintendent Wilde said it was believed the man acted alone and would face Carnarvon Magistrates Court when charges were laid.

Police revealed they were watching the man before his arrest which took place after police swooped on his vehicle on a street away from his Tonkin Crescent home. Some of us started to settle in for the night what was going to happen, we had some plans around what would happen, one of them was that the suspect that we were observing could be mobile and would leave the premises, Senior Sergeant Blaine said. So what happened was one of those scenarios and it was clear in my head what had to occur. So, it was just like, hey, lets do that. Premier visits family WA Premier Mark McGowan visited Cleo Smiths family on Thursday morning, describing her as well adjusted, considering her ordeal, and a delightful little girl.

The family were very appreciative of everything that has been done for them, so theyre quite decent, fundamentally decent, honest, human beings, he said. Western Australia Premiere Mark McGowan departs after visiting the family of Cleo Smith on November 4, 2021 in Carnarvon, Australia. Credit:Getty We did a few high-fives, I unfortunately trod on her new Barbie shoes and broke one of them, so I owe her a pair of shoes. Mr McGowan said he also gave Cleo two police teddy bears named Rod and Cameron after the senior police involved in her investigation but said she didnt like those names. Im not sure those names will stick, Cleo didnt seem too enamoured with those names, he said.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has expressed hope that game-changing coronavirus vaccines could be available to children by the end of the year, as pediatric experts say the country is waiting for further safety data before giving the green light for young children to get the jab.

Border rules have also eased, with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews releasing a joint statement on Thursday night announcing the border between the states would open to free travel.

Dominic Perrottet and Daniels Andrews announced the border change on Thursday. Credit:Dominc Lorrimer, Getty

Victorias Acting Chief Health Officer Professor Ben Cowie declared that from 11.59pm, the ACT and all remaining orange zones in NSW would become green zones under Victorias traffic light travel permit system.

This means there will be no testing or quarantine requirement for travellers entering Victoria but people still have to obtain a permit before they arrive.
Homicide detectives have been brought in to investigate the disappearance of a man last seen by his six fellow travellers more than two weeks ago in the harsh scrub of western Queensland.

Police ended the search for 27-year-old Jeremiah Rivers on Thursday in the belief they would have found him by now if he had wandered into the bush and become injured.

The disappearance of Jeremiah Jayo Rivers, missing for more than two weeks in remote western Queensland, is now being treated as suspicious.

Attention will again turn to Mr Rivers six border-hopping companions.

Speaking from Brisbane on Thursday, Detective acting Superintendent Stephen Blanchfield revealed evidence and inquiries to date have indicated some of the information we have is not consistent.
All academic eyes will be on Western Australias Fair Work Commission when it decides if providing correct data and information is necessary when conducting staff consultations, as universities restructure schools and issue redundancies.

Action brought by University of Western Australia sociology associate professor Martin Forsey against the Group of Eight university sought to prove it breached its Enterprise Bargaining Agreement obligations in its conduct over a plan to axe the anthropology and sociology major and make staff redundant.

UWA associate professors in sociology, Dr Farida Fozdar and Dr Martin Forsey, leaving the WA Fair Work Commission on Wednesday. Credit:Aja Styles

Dr Forseys counsel Kate Walawski argued there had been a lack of access to transparent, reliable and accurate data and information and the university did not conduct genuine consultation, with the redundancies being a foregone conclusion.

The professor tasked to defend UWAs proposal to axe its sociology discipline has denied it was unfairly targeted, but admitted under cross-examination that her own geography major within the school had greater drops in student enrolments than anthropology and sociology.
Victorias State Emergency Service has taken almost 10,000 calls for assistance in the past week after wild storms brought down trees and powerlines across the state on Friday.

More than 1000 calls were made in the past 24 hours as heavy rain caused flash flooding and left motorists stranded in parts of Victoria.

Almost 7000 calls over the past week were related to fallen trees and more than 2000 to damaged homes and businesses.

About 8000 properties, predominantly in Melbournes east and south-east, remain without power almost a week after strong winds downed trees and power lines, resulting in power outages for more than 500,000 households.
The man accused of raping Brittany Higgins has been committed to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court and is due to face court again on November 18.

Bruce Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent with the former ministerial staffer on March 23, 2019.

Former political staffer Brittany Higgins Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

He appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday via telephone, with his lawyer Warwick Korn also appearing remotely.

Magistrate Robert Cook committed Mr Lehrmann to trial in the higher court on the papers, meaning no evidence was read aloud during the hearing.
A key witness in the NSW corruption watchdogs inquiry into disgraced ex-MP Daryl Maguire was granted a travel exemption by Australian Border Force that allowed her to leave the country a month before she was due to give evidence.

Migration agent Monica Hao, 58, was summonsed to appear before the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on September 16 as part of its investigation into a cash-for-visa scheme linked to the former member for Wagga Wagga.

The migration agent was summonsed to appear as a witness as part of the ICACs investigation into a cash-for-visa scheme linked to former state Liberal MP Daryl Maguire. Credit:Janie Barrett

Unbeknown to the ICAC, Ms Hao flew to Dubai on Emirates flight EK415 on August 19, at a time when Australian citizens and permanent residents needed an exemption to leave the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Border Force was never notified Ms Hao was the subject of a summons to appear before the ICAC and she was not on the nations movement alert list.
The Australia Workers Union hopes more Australians will go into farm work after a historic victory at the Fair Work Commission, which ordered that every farm worker in the country was entitled to the minimum casual pay rate of $25.41 per hour rather than rates as low as $3 an hour.

The commission found against the current piece-rate pay arrangements, whereby workers are paid based only on the amount of fruit or vegetables they harvest. The AWU hopes higher wages could entice more Australians to join the farm labour workforce, which is dominated by migrants.

The Australian Workers Union has claimed a significant victory for fruit pickers. Credit:Louie Douvis

The piece rate arrangement was not fit for purpose and unfair, the commission said, finding that employers had engaged in widespread exploitation of workers.

The totality of the evidence presents a picture of significant underpayment of pieceworkers in the horticulture industry when compared to the minimum award hourly rate, the commissions ruling said.
The Victorian Liberal Party is divided about what to do about Tim Smith.

In the days since the Kew MP drove his Jag into the side of a house in Hawthorn, the majority of his colleagues on Spring Street have reluctantly accepted that his time in state politics should come to an end in November 2022.

Opposition MP Tim Smith faces the media after crashing his car on Saturday night. Credit:Justin McManus

Its not a decision they have come to lightly.

Smith is not only a political ally and friend to many state Liberals, including Matthew Guy, but he is an effective politician. His critics may loathe his brash style, but he gets air time and kept up the pressure on the Andrews government during the pandemic.
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Prime Minister on Thursday praised the soldiers for carrying out the surgical strike across the border and said that it fills everyone with pride.

The Prime Minister also said that the country has been giving a befitting reply to those attempting to disturb the peace in the region.

"It fills every Indian with pride on the role this brigade played during the surgical strike," the Prime Minister said while addressing soldiers at Nowshera in

He also said, "The role played by this brigade during the surgical strike fills everyone with pride. I will remember that day forever as it was decided that all soldiers should return before sunset... I was sitting beside the phone and was asking about the whereabouts of every soldier,"

"There were many attempts to disturb the peace here but each time a befitting reply has been given," the Prime Minister added.

The Prime Minister during his address also lauded the soldiers for serving on Indian borders and pointed out that security personnel were the "suraksha kawach" (armour) of the nation.

#WATCH The role played by this brigade during the surgical strike fills everyone with pride. I will remember that day forever as it was decided that all soldiers should return before sunset... I was sitting beside phone & was asking about whereabouts of every soldier...: PM Modi pic.twitter.com/AijhKq7JHn  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

The Prime Minister further said that it is because of the soldiers that people can sleep peacefully.

"Today I have in front of me brave brothers and sisters who have the good fortune of serving our motherland. I can see the dedication to protect our land in your eyes. It is because of you, we are able to celebrate our festivals with peace," said the PM.

The Prime Minister today continued his annual tradition of celebrating Diwali with soldiers. He left from Delhi for Nowshera today with minimum security arrangements.

In his address at Nowshera, PM Modi said, "I am not here as a Prime Minister but as your family member to celebrate Diwali."

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister paid tribute to soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty.

(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.)
Petrol price on Thursday was cut in the range of Rs 5.7 to Rs 6.35 per litre across the country and diesel rates by Rs 11.16 to Rs 12.88 as oil companies passed on a record reduction in excise duty rates to consumers.

Buckling under pressure, the government had on Wednesday cut excise duty on petrol by Rs 5 per litre and that on diesel by Rs 10 a litre to give reprieve to consumers battered by record high retail

Since states charge local sales tax or VAT not just on the base price but also on the excise duty levied by the Centre, the total incidence of price reduction is higher. The reduction was larger in states with higher VAT.

In Delhi, the reduction in petrol price was Rs 6.07 per litre and that on diesel was Rs 11.75, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers.

The lowest reduction in petrol price was in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu where rate was cut by Rs 5.7. Rajasthan saw the biggest drop of Rs 6.35 a litre.

For diesel, Chennai had the lowest reduction of Rs 11.16 per litre while Odisha had the biggest at Rs 12.88 a litre.

In addition, half a dozen BJP-ruled states have announced a cut in VAT rates but a formal notification has so far been issued only in case of four. Puducherry saw an additional Rs 7 a litre reduction in both petrol and diesel price because of the cut in value added tax (VAT).

Goa saw an additional Rs 5.47 a litre cut in petrol and Rs 4.38 on diesel.

Gujarat too had an additional reduction of Rs 5.65 a litre on petrol and Rs 4.32 on diesel. Uttarakhand saw an additional 81 paise reduction in petrol price because of VAT cut.

Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tripura and Bihar too have announced VAT reduction but a formal notification was not issued till Thursday morning and so no additional price reduction has been effected, industry sources said.

Petrol will cost Rs 103.97 per litre in Delhi against Rs 110.04, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. Diesel rates accordingly will reduce to Rs 86.67 per litre from Rs 98.42.

In Mumbai, petrol price has been cut by Rs 5.87 to Rs 109.98 and diesel by Rs 12.48 to Rs 94.14. Kolkata saw the price of petrol being reduced by Rs 5.82 to Rs 104.67 and that of diesel by Rs 11.77 to Rs 89.79.

Petrol price in Chennai has been reduced by Rs 5.26 to Rs 101.40 and diesel by Rs 11.16 to Rs 91.43.

VAT rates differ from state to state, leading to differential rates of fuel.

The excise duty cut announced on Wednesday night was the highest-ever reduction in excise duty. It rolls back a part of the Rs 13 and Rs 16 per litre increase in taxes on petrol and diesel effected between March 2020 and May 2020 to avoid passing on to consumers the sharp fall in international oil prices at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That hike in excise duty had taken central taxes on petrol to their highest level of Rs 32.9 per litre and that on diesel to Rs 31.8 a litre.

Reducing the excise duty, the union government also urged states to commensurately reduce VAT on petrol and diesel to give relief to consumers.

The tax cut follows an unrelenting hike in international oil prices pushing pump rates across the country to their highest-ever levels. While petrol soared to above Rs 100-a-litre-mark in all major cities, diesel had crossed that level in more than one-and-a-half dozen states.

The total increase in petrol price since the May 5, 2020 decision of the government to raise excise duty to record levels had totalled Rs 38.78 per litre. Diesel rates have during this period gone up by Rs 29.03 per litre.

The relentless increase in had been severely criticised by Opposition parties, particularly Congress which had demanded that the government reduce its excise duty.

Based on April to October consumption numbers, the loss of revenue to the government due to the excise duty cut will be Rs 8,700 crore per month. This totals to an annual impact of over Rs 1 lakh crore, industry sources said. For the remainder of the current fiscal, the impact would be Rs 43,500 crore.

Data available from the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) in the Union Ministry of Finance showed excise duty collections during April-September 2021 surged to over Rs 1.71 lakh crore, from Rs 1.28 lakh crore mop-up in the same period of the previous fiscal.

For the full 2020-21 fiscal, excise collections were Rs 3.89 lakh crore and Rs 2.39 lakh crore in 2019-20, the CGA data showed.

After the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, excise duty is levied only on petrol, diesel, ATF and natural gas. All other goods and services are under the GST regime.

Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Rameswar Teli had in July told Parliament that the union government's tax collections on petrol and diesel jumped by 88 per cent to Rs 3.35 lakh crore in the year to March 31, 2021 (2020-21 fiscal) from Rs 1.78 lakh crore a year back.

Excise collection in pre-pandemic 2018-19 was Rs 2.13 lakh crore.

(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.)
Indias credit card spending is back with a bang. It has risen consecutively for four months now. And, helped by the festive season, it crossed the Rs 80,000-crore mark in September. What is driving the overall surge? Is that indicative of a quick recovery for the larger economy? What are the lessons we can draw from this trend? Reliance Jios smartphone JioPhone Next was expected to be a disruptor that would help the company wrest control of a majority of the remaining 300 million 2G users in India. However, the phones price is a little higher than was expected, leaving analysts a tad sceptical about the smartphones potential.

Can JioPhone Next live up to its hype? A spectacular Samvat 2077 saw the Sensex playing down all the anxieties surrounding the pandemic and surging past the 62,000 mark for the first time. The Nifty also surpassed the 18,000 mark. As the year draws to a close, we take a look at how the markets fared this Samvat, which sectors sparkled on bourses, and what may be the road ahead for markets? Ethical hacking is quite a popular term now. Ethical hackers abound in real life and in fiction. But, what exactly is ethical hacking? How is it different from the other hacking we are hear about generally? Listen to these and more in todays Business Standard Morning Show podcast.
Europe could see 500,000 more Covid deaths by February, says WHO

A 53-country region in Europe and Central Asia faces the real threat of a resurgence of the pandemic in the coming weeks or already is experiencing a new wave of infections, the head of the World Health Organisation's regional office said Thursday.

Dr. Hans Kluge said case counts are beginning to near record levels again and the pace of transmission in the region, which stretches as far east as the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, is of grave concern. Read more

price cut by Rs 5.7-6.35, by Rs 11.16-12.88 across country

price on Thursday was cut in the range of Rs 5.7 to Rs 6.35 per litre across the country and rates by Rs 11.16 to Rs 12.88 as oil companies passed on a record reduction in excise duty rates to consumers.

Buckling under pressure, the government had on Wednesday cut excise duty on by Rs 5 per litre and that on by Rs 10 a litre to give reprieve to consumers battered by record high retail fuel prices. Read more

'Full of prejudice': says Pentagon's nuclear report disregards facts

dismissed the U.S Department of Defenses assessment that its nuclear weapons capabilities are expanding at an accelerated rate, amid growing alarm in Washington at the increasing scope of Beijings military power.

This report by the DoD, as with previous reports, is full of prejudice with a disregard of the facts, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Thursday. Read more

At J&K's Nowshera, PM Modi lauds soldiers for carrying out surgical strike

Prime Minister on Thursday praised the soldiers for carrying out the surgical strike across the border and said that it fills everyone with pride.

The Prime Minister also said that the country has been giving a befitting reply to those attempting to disturb the peace in the region. Read more
Britain has granted a conditional authorisation to Merck's antiviral, the first pill shown to successfully treat COVID-19. It is the first country to OK the treatment, although it was not immediately clear how quickly the pill would be available.

The pill was licensed for adults 18 and older who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have at least one risk factor for developing severe disease. The drug, known as molnupiravir, is intended to be taken twice a day for five days by people at home with mild to moderate COVID-19.

An antiviral pill that reduces symptoms and speeds recovery could prove groundbreaking, easing caseloads on hospitals and helping to curb outbreaks in poorer countries with fragile health systems. It would also bolster the two-pronged approach to the pandemic: treatment, by way of medication, and prevention, primarily through vaccinations.

Molnupiravir is also pending review at regulators in the US, Europe and elsewhere. The US Food and Drug Administration announced last month it would convene a panel of independent experts to scrutinize the pill's safety and effectiveness in late November.

Initial supplies will be limited. has said it can produce 10 million treatment courses through the end of the year, but much of that supply has already been purchased by governments worldwide.

In October, UK officials announced they secured 480,000 courses of molnupiravir and expected thousands of vulnerable Britons to have access to the treatment this winter via a national study.

Today is a historic day for our country, as the UK is now the first country in the world to approve an antiviral that can be taken at home for COVID-19," said Britain's health secretary, Sajid Javid.

"We are working at pace across the government and with the NHS to set out plans to deploy molnupiravir to patients through a national study as soon as possible," he said in a statement, referring to the UK's National Health Service. Doctors said the treatment would be particularly significant for people who do not respond well to vaccination.

and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutic have requested clearance for the drug with regulators around the world to treat adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who are at risk for severe disease or hospitalization. That's roughly the same group targeted for treatment with infused COVID-19 antibody drugs, the standard of care in many countries for patients who don't yet require hospitalization.

announced preliminary results last month showing its drug cut hospitalizations and deaths by half among patients with early COVID-19 symptoms. The results have not yet been vetted by outside scientists.

The company also did not disclose details on molnupiravir's side effects, except to say that rates of those problems were similar between people who got the drug and those who received dummy pills.

The drug targets an enzyme the uses to reproduce itself, inserting errors into its genetic code that slow its ability to spread and take over human cells. That genetic activity has led some independent experts to question whether the drug could potentially cause mutations leading to birth defects or tumors.

In company trials, both men and women were instructed to either use contraception or abstain from sex. Pregnant women were excluded from the study. Merck has stated that the drug is safe when used as directed.

Molnupiravir was initially studied as a potential flu therapy with funding from the US government. Last year, researchers at Emory University decided to repurpose the drug as a potential COVID-19 treatment. They then licensed the drug to Ridgeback and its partner Merck.

Last week, Merck agreed to allow other drugmakers to make its COVID-19 pill, in a move aimed at helping millions of people in poorer countries get access. The Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed group, said Merck will not receive royalties under the agreement for as long as the World Health Organization deems COVID-19 to be a global emergency.

But the deal was criticized by some activists for excluding many middle-income countries capable of making millions of treatments, including Brazil and China.

Still, experts commended Merck for agreeing to widely share its formula and promising to help any companies who need technological help in making their drug something no vaccine producers have agreed to.

"Unlike the grotesquely unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, the poorest countries will not have to wait at the back of the queue for molnupiravir, said Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni, a senior health adviser to the People's Vaccine Alliance. Fewer than 1% of the world's COVID-19 vaccines have gone to poor countries and experts hope easier-to-dispense treatments will help them curb the pandemic.

Previously Merck announced licensing deals with several Indian generic drugmakers to manufacture lower-cost versions of the drug for developing countries.

The US reportedly paid roughly $700 per course of molnupiravir, for about 1.7 million treatments. Merck says it plans to use a tiered pricing strategy for developing countries. A review by Harvard University and King's College London estimated the drug costs about $18 to make.

While other treatments have been cleared to treat COVID-19, including steroids and monoclonal antibodies, those are administered by injection or infusion and are mostly for hospitalized patients.

(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.)
star Tom Hanks recently said in an interview that Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, offered to fly him to space before William Shatner, but joked that he would have to pay.

According to Fox News, Hanks appeared on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' where he was asked about rumours that Bezos offered to fly him to space before William Shatner. There, the A-lister confirmed the rumour.

"And, you know, it costs, like 28 million bucks or something like that...and I'm doing good, Jimmy...I'm doing good" but he said he isn't going to fork over that amount. Shatner reportedly did not have to pay.

A news outlet reported last month that the company has not publicly stated a price for a ticket, so it is possible that Hanks was referring to the auction price for one of the seats.

Hanks, who famously played astronaut Jim Lovell in Ron Howard's 1995 'Apollo 13', proceeded to jokingly "simulate" what the 12-minute experience would be like, and let's just say Blue Origin would disagree.

Last month, Shatner and three fellow passengers hurtled to an altitude of 66.5 miles over the West Texas desert in the fully automated capsule, then safely parachuted back to Earth. The flight lasted just over 10 minutes. He called it the "most profound experience," explaining "I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it."

As per Fox News, another news outlet had reported that Shatner, along with Audrey Powers, Blue Origin's vice president of mission and flight operations, did not pay for their flight trip. The company described them as guests for the trip.

(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.)
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Steve Dickson told a U.S. congressional panel that Co has "more work to do" as the planemaker continues to face scrutiny following two fatal 737 MAX crashes in the space of five months in 2018-2019 that killed 346 people.

" is not the same as it was two years ago but they have more to work to do," Dickson told the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday. "We have reset the relationship with in no uncertain terms."

Boeing said Wednesday it is "is committed to full transparency and cooperation in all aspects of our relationship with the FAA. The ongoing dialogue facilitates continuous improvement in compliance and aviation safety to ensure that commercial aviation remains the world's safest form of transportation."

Dickson's comments came in the face of scrutiny from Congress. Senator Maria Cantwell, the committee chair, disclosed she plans to release a report on aviation whistleblowers by the end of the year.

"Line engineers had early warnings, whether it's the (Boeing) 787 battery issue, or whether it was this issue related to synthetic airspeeds or the complexity of automation and overload of pilots in the system," Cantwell said. "Those line engineers weren't listened to."

Dickson said the FAA is delegating fewer responsibilities to Boeing for aircraft certification. He told the committee the FAA is "demanding more transparency" from manufacturers.

The FAA is currently scrutinizing a number of issues involving Boeing airplanes.

Boeing agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department in January including $2.5 billion in fines and compensation stemming from the 737 MAX crashes.

Congress in December approved legislation boosting FAA oversight of aircraft manufacturers, requiring disclosure of critical safety information and providing new whistleblower protections.

Cantwell pressed Dickson on whether the FAA can meet all the reform requirements.

"I'm not going to allow the law to be skirted here. This issue is about whether you're going to follow a process that allows us to see the work of the FAA, see that it's completed," Cantwell said.

An FAA survey released in August 2020 found some safety employees reported facing "strong" external pressure from industry and raised alarms the agency does not always prioritize air safety.

Dickson said on Wednesday he has "made it clear internally that we always do the right thing when it comes to safety - and that I have the workforce's back on that."

(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Marguerita Choy, Chizu Nomiyama and Kim Coghill)

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By Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's Group, the world's biggest maker of personal computers, said that a global chip shortage would persist into the first half of next year as it reported a 65% rise in second-quarter profit on Thursday.

The company said it was able to outgrow the market by securing more supply of components than its peers, but acknowledged that a dearth of chips was "causing delays in order fulfilment and significant back-log orders across PCs, smartphones, and servers."

CEO and Chairman Yang Yuanqing told Reuters in an interview that his earlier prediction that the shortage will remain unresolved at least until the first half of 2022 remained unchanged.

"The shortage is driven by strong demand, particularly in the IT sector and in the electrical vehicle sector," he said.

Shares in the company fell as much as 5% after its results which Guotai Junan analyst Gin Yu said reflected market concerns over how the crunch, which has impacted goods from automobiles to home appliances, was affecting worldwide PC shipments.

Research consultancy Gartner said last month that growth in worldwide PC shipments slowed in the September quarter as easing anti-virus measures prompted consumer and educational spending to move away from PCs to other priorities and chip shortages constrained laptop shipments.

retained the title of largest worldwide PC vendor by shipments, though its growth slowed after five consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, Gartner said. In the third quarter, Lenovo's global market share grew 1.8% to 23.7%.

Yang said has been helped by its unique hybrid supply chain model, which sources components externally and from in-house manufacturing, and while it had seen a dip in educational PC demand, commercial demand remained strong.

Earlier on Thursday the company reported profit for the quarter ended Sept. 30 attributable to equity holders jumped to $512 million versus $310 million in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue rose 23% to $17.9 billion, slightly above an average estimate of $17.3 billion from 9 analysts, according to Refinitiv data.

Despite worries about chip supplies, Lenovo's shares have risen more than 70% over the last year, but investors were rattled last month when the company abruptly withdrew its 10 billion yuan ($1.56 billion) share listing in Shanghai.

Yang said factors such as market conditions and the listing process were behind the decision, and said that the move would not hurt its business.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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should improve its capability to secure nickel and cobalt resources and set up commercial reserves for the metals, the Shanghai Securities News (SSN) reported on Thursday, citing an official with the Nonferrous Metals Industry Association.

The world's top metals consumer still heavily relies on imported resources of the metals.

China's domestic nickel and cobalt production only accounts for 5% and 2%, respectively, of its total consumption, SSN quoted Wang Jian, the vice chairman of the association, at an industry conference this week.

Chinese firms have stepped up overseas investments, including Molybdenum Co in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as stainless and nickel giant Tsingshan Group and Huayou Cobalt in Indonesia.

However, the single source of imported materials leaves hidden risks of "putting all eggs in one basket", according to Wang.

He suggested the industry should "explore the establishment of commercial reserves of nickel and cobalt" and form a system that "combines strategic reserves and commercial reserves".

China has built vast reserves ranging from metals and oils to agriculture products, and releases reserves when market sees big fluctuations so as to stabilise prices and protect downstream sectors.

The amount of its stockpiles was not publicly known. Some major cobalt producers last year were asked by the authority to submit proposals to sell their metal to the state, according to sources.

(Reporting by Min Zhang in Beijing and Mai Nguyen in Hanoi; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

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UN conference host Britain said 77 countries had pledged to phase out coal, dirtiest of the fossil fuels that drive global warming, as a study showed the carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere had rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels.

We were expecting to see some rebound, said the studys lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate modelling researcher at the University of Exeter. What surprised us was the intensity and rapidity of the rebound. Alok Sharma, British president of the COP26 conference in Glasgow, said the two-week meeting was on its way to gradually ending use of the worlds most widely used fuel for which demand is set to hit a new record this year. He said on Thursday 77 countries had signed a pledge to phase out coal-fuelled power plants  which produce more than 35 per cent of the worlds electricity and stop building new ones.

Today I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight, Sharma told the conference.

Many developing countries, not least China, India and Indonesia, rely on cheap, accessible coal and other fossil fuels to grow, despite their disadvantages to the environment and health.

India, China absent

The British government said on Wednesday it expected 190 nations and organisations to sign the non-binding pledge, in which richer countries would phase out coal power before 2040, and poorer countries before 2050.

But the list published on Thursday left out both India and China, which is home to almost half the over 2,600 coal-fired plants operating or under construction around the world.

Poorer countries are certain to demand financial help from developed nations as the price of ending their reliance on coal  and richer countries have failed to meet a promise of providing $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020.

There are signs of initiatives to address the funding issue.

On Tuesday, countries including Britain and the United States announced an $8.5 billion partnership to help South Africa phase out coal faster.

Emissions abound

In 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by a record 1.9 billion tonnes  a 5.4 per cent drop  as countries locked down and economies ground to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Need 10x more cash for climate adaptation: UN

Developing countries need up to 10 times more funding to protect themselves from increasingly ferocious effects of climate change, the UN said. The UNEP report found developing countries will need to spend up to $300 billion a year, while in 2019, wealthy countries provided $79.6 billion in climate assistance.

Net-zero pledges may limit global warming to 1.8 C

Net zero emissions pledges and a commitment by leaders at the COP26 climate conference to cut methane, if enforced, would enable the world to limit global warming to below 2 degree Celsius, the Energy Agency said on Thursday.

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OSHA has issued a federal rule mandating Covid-19 vaccinations or at least weekly testing for workers at U. S. companies with 100 or more employees.

The OSHA rules are a key pillar of President Joe Bidens push to use employer mandates to drive up vaccination totals nationally. Biden already has expanded the rules for federal workers and contractors, which will take effect over the next five weeks, requiring vaccination and offering no alternative for regular testing. The OSHA rules, while less strenuous, essentially extend that push widely into the private sector.

Bidenelected in part on a pledge to quell the pandemicviews vaccination as the fastest path to reopening society and the economy, including employer mandates, booster shots and vaccines for kids aged 5 to 11 that began this week. About 80% of U. S. adults have received at least one dose.

The requirement published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the Federal Register Thursday takes effect Friday. The first compliance deadline for employersproviding time off for workers to get inoculated and ensuring those who arent vaccinated are wearing masksis Dec. 5. Workers must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or submit to testing.

The safety agency measure was announced in conjunction with a separate Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services vaccination requirement covering health-care workers at its 76,000 participating hospitals and other facilities.

Enforcement for it too starts Jan. 4.

The emergency temporary standard, which OSHA justified by citing the grave danger posed by the lingering pandemic, requires covered employers to develop, implement, and enforce a mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy or a policy requiring employees to choose either to get vaccinated or to undergo regular Covid-19 testing and wear a face covering at work.

In addition to requiring employers to provide paid time off for workers to get vaccinated, the ETS also mandates paid sick leave for them to recover from any side effects, the officials said.

Employers not enforcing OSHAs newest rule could be cited by the agency and face a fine of up to $13,653 for each serious violation. A willful violation, essentially an employer deliberately disregarding the mandate, could lead to a fine as high as $136,532.

Effect On States

Implementation of the standard in any of the 22 states with their own worker safety agencies for private industrysuch as California, Arizona, Michigan, and South Carolinacould be delayed as governments decide whether to accept the standard as written, modify it, or draft an equivalent or more protective rule. Each state has 30 days to implement a standard, officials said.

Those 22 states and six more states with safety agencies covering only government employeessuch as New York, New Jersey, and Illinoisalso will be required to apply the standard to local and state government workers.

Public employees in states that dont have their own safety agencyincluding Texas, Florida, and Ohiowont be covered by the federal mandate, which otherwise applies to just private employers.

Several Republican states attorneys general have vowed to sue in an effort to block the initiative.

Encountering Resistance

The simultaneous OSHA and CMS mandates, announced about 10 months after the first effective Covid-19 vaccines became available, follow earlier mandates pertaining to health-care workers and employees of federal contractors. In the aggregate, two-thirds of all U. S. workers will now be covered by at least one of those vaccination requirements, according to the administration.

Confronted with resistance to inoculation, particularly in southern states and often egged on by opposing politicians, President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 ordered the federal workplace safety agency to develop its emergency temporary standard. To do that, OSHA bypassed meetings with employer and worker representatives.

Instead, the White Houses Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs scheduled more than 100 meetings with companies, business groups, unions, and During those sessions, employers often asked for enforcement of the standard to be delayed until after the holiday shopping season to give employers adequate time to have compliance programs in place to allow workers up to six week to be considered fully vaccinated.

Earlier this year, it took OSHA and the Biden administration five months to issue the emergency temporary standard for health-care facilities where workers treat Covid-19 patients. That standard was enacted June 21.

The OSHA standards can last for six months after which they must be replaced by a permanent regulation.
dismissed the U.S Department of Defenses assessment that its nuclear weapons capabilities are expanding at an accelerated rate, amid growing alarm in Washington at the increasing scope of Beijings military power.



This report by the DoD, as with previous reports, is full of prejudice with a disregard of the facts, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Thursday.

The Pentagon estimated in its Wednesday report that will have at least 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 -- including 700 deliverable ones by 2027 that could be mounted immediately on various missiles -- exceeding previous Department of Defense projections. Those figures would still leave the U.S. far ahead with a current count of 3,750 warheads.

The new figures appeared to be based on evaluations of Chinas production capacity. Pentagon officials also cited Chinas construction of at least three silo fields, saying they will contain hundreds of new intercontinental ballistic missiles.

has repeatedly accused the U.S. of over-hyping the threat posed by the Peoples Liberation Armys modernization program. We will never use nuclear weapon in any circumstances and have committed to not use nuclear weapons, Wang reiterated on Thursday.

Chinese officials have previously said their nuclear buildup is purely defensive and pointed to their public commitment to a no first use of nuclear weapons policy. The U.S., by contrast, has stopped short of such a pledge.

Still, Chinas leaders have called on the country to speed up its drive to create a world-class military. In remarks to a military conference last week, President Xi Jinping called for China to break new ground in weapons development, adding that the nation must create a new situation to support the production of weaponry and military equipment.
Iconic City landmarks were illuminated on the occasion of Diwali as top UN officials extended greetings to those celebrating the festival of lights around the world.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres tweeted "Happy #Diwali. My best wishes to all celebrating."



The United Nations also tweeted "During #Diwali, the festival of lights - celebrated in India & by followers of many faiths across the world - clay lamps are lit to signify the victory of good over evil."



World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a tweet "May the lights of #Diwali bring good health and happiness to everyone celebrating."For the first time ever, Diwali-themed animation adorned One World Trade Center from November 2nd-4th as part of the South Asian Engagement Foundation (SAEF)'s inaugural #AllAmericanDiwali in City.

On Wednesday, a spectacular Diwali fireworks show light up the sky on the iconic Hudson River.

"We are excited to create and curate the colourful imagery of Diwali on the WTC podium to bring the messages of peace, harmony, and unity, said Mark Domino of the Durst Organization.

"There is no better symbol of the triumph of resiliency than the World Trade Center and we are very fortunate to work with The Durst Organization to bring this message to all, said Rahul Walia, Founding Trustee of South Asian Engagement Foundation.

SAEF dedicated this year's lighting to New York's finest, especially as the marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks.

"We're so honoured that the first annual All American Diwali is dedicated to the police of icers of City. As a police of icer of Indian origin, I'm particularly excited to see the One World Trade Center light up for this festival, a symbol of our city's enduring spirit," Detective Annand Narayan, President of NYPD Desi Society.

The Empire State Building will also be lit in Diwali colours on Thursday, the The Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) of tri-state area of New York , New Jersey and Connecticut said.

The South Asian Engagement Foundation (SAEF) is a non-profit organisation based in New Jersey. SAEF has a mission to increase leadership potential in Indian American communities by providing incentives using educational initiatives and civic engagements.

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Chinese property developer Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd missed a payment on a wealth management product (WMP) issued by a unit, a company source said on Thursday, adding to worries about a cash crunch at the debt-strapped firm.

Kaisa Finance in Shenzhen met with more than 100 investors earlier in the day to explain the situation, the person, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters.

Kaisa, in common with other heavily-indebted Chinese property developers and conglomerates, issues high-yielding WMPs to mostly mom-and-pop investors - a popular way of borrowing that sidesteps stringent government lending restrictions.

The Shenzhen-based developer has the most offshore debt coming due over the next year of any Chinese developer after embattled China Evergrande Group, which is teetering on the brink of collapse.

Kaisa did not respond to Reuters request for comment. The Shenzhen central sub-branch of People's Bank of China could not be reached for comment.

Hong Kong-listed shares of Kaisa, which has a market value of about $1 billion, plunged more than 14% at one point on Thursday to an all-time low. Its December 2021 6.5% dollar bond slumped more than 17% to 51.5 cents, yielding over 1,000%, according to Marketaxxess.

Kaisa, which was downgraded by rating agencies last week, has around $3.2 billion in offshore senior notes due in the next 12 months, with the next maturity worth $400 million falling on Dec. 7.

It has coupon payments totalling over $59 million due on Nov. 11 and Nov. 12.

Kaisa's woes come amid concerns about a deepening liquidity crisis in the Chinese property sector, with a string of offshore debt defaults, credit rating downgrading and sell offs in the developers' shares and bonds in recent weeks.

The worsening health of China's $5 trillion property sector, a key economic growth driver, is testing Beijing's resolve to press on with painful structural reforms such as reducing high debt levels.

Analysts at Nomura said this week that conditions in the property sector and the broader economy are likely to deteriorate further in coming months.

Kaisa Finance's headquarters was nearly empty on Thursday morning, with several police vehicles stationed outside the building.

The developer said late on Wednesday its October contracted sales have dropped 30.5% to 8.195 billion yuan ($1.28 billion), while sales in the first 10 months rose 23%.

Reuters reported last week that Kaisa is seeking buyers for its Hong Kong-listed property management unit, Kaisa Prosperity Holdings Ltd and two residential sites in the city.

Kaisa's bigger rival Evergrande, once China's top-selling developer, is reeling under more than $300 billion in liabilities, fuelling worries about the impact of its fate on the world's second-largest economy as well as on global

Evergrande narrowly averted a default for the second time last week, yet it faces another hard deadline on Nov. 10 for more than $148 million in coupon payments that had been due on Oct. 11.

Separately, smaller player Yango Group, which is seeking to exchange its dollar bonds to help avoid a default, has reached an agreement with investors in China to extend principal payments on asset-backed securities, two sources told Reuters on Thursday.

Investor concerns about the broadening impact of the liquidity crunch hitting Chinese developers sparked heavy selling of other developers' bonds in onshore on Thursday.

Exchange-traded bonds of onshore units of developers Yuzhou Group and Shimao Group plunged more than 20%, triggering trading halts.

Refinitiv data showed dollar bonds from Ronshine China Holdings, Zhenro Properties Group and Guangzhou R&F falling more than 10%.

(Reporting by David Kirton in Shenzhen, Clare Jim in Hong Kong and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee, Kim Coghill & Shri Navaratnam)

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By Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) - fell on Thursday, reversing earlier gains in a volatile session after a report that Saudi Arabia's oil output will soon surpass 10 million barrels per day for the first time since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The report, from Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV, came after the nation, along with other Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, agreed to stick to previously agreed-upon production increases.

Brent crude fell 29 cents to $81.70 a barrel by 1:11 p.m. EDT (1711 GMT). Earlier, Brent rose to $84.49 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 54 cents to $80.32 a barrel, well off the session high of $83.42.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, collectively known as OPEC+, agreed to stick to plans to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) on a monthly basis, sources said, despite calls from the United States for extra supply to cool rising prices.

Saudi Arabia has already dismissed calls for speedier oil supply increases from OPEC+. But the Al Arabiya TV report said the Saudis will reach 10 million bpd in December.

Oil stocks will see "tremendous" builds at the end of 2021 and early 2022 because of slowing consumption, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Thursday.

Oil prices, which had previously been up by more than $2 per barrel, began paring gains as OPEC+ met.

"A large (speculative) position was loading up" before OPEC, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho. He said traders then were inclined to sell and take profits rather than risk that the market could slip further as the White House calls for increased output.

"They preferred to book profit than look to get burned by any Biden counterpunch," he said.

The White House on Thursday criticized a decision by top oil producers to keep oil output steady, saying OPEC and its allies appeared "unwilling" to use their power to help the global economic recovery.

Top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia are confident higher will not elicit a fast response from the U.S. shale industry, OPEC+ sources said. U.S. companies have pledged to preserve capital and prioritize investor returns.

Still, several large oil companies plan to increase output or shale spending next year.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York; reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London and Florence Tan in SingaporeEditing by David Gregorio and Kirsten Donovan)

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By Florence Tan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices flipped to gains on Thursday as investors expect top producers to stand pat on output policy, shrugging off earlier concerns about the resumption of Iran nuclear talks that could result in more oil exports from Tehran.

Brent futures and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude pared losses of more than 1% as traders shifted focus to a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, later on Thursday.

The group is expected to reconfirm plans to keep monthly supply increases steady, despite calls for an acceleration.

Brent was up 47 cents, or 0.6%, at $82.46 a barrel by 0751 GMT, while WTI nudged up 2 cents to $80.88 a barrel after having slipped as low as $79.74.

Prices were down earlier, after Iran and six powers agreed to resume talks on Nov. 29 to revive the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna. Iran has demanded that the United States drop sanctions that have limited its oil exports.

News of the resumption of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks has probably wiped out any last hope for OPEC+ to boost production targets, supporting prices, said OANDA's senior analyst, Jeffrey Halley.

Citi analysts said OPEC+ was likely to stick to current policy, despite pressure from oil importers.

"The majority of OPEC+ members cannot raise production from current levels ... while even Saudi Arabia has stressed the need to exercise caution on demand growth, given increased COVID instances, while boosting crude oil output," the bank said in a note.

Top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia are also more confident that higher oil prices will not elicit a fast response from the U.S. shale industry, OPEC+ sources said, reflecting a desire to rebuild revenue and supporting the case against raising OPEC+ output more quickly.

However, several major oil companies plan to increase output or shale spending next year, which could undercut OPEC+'s efforts to control supplies and support prices.

On Wednesday, both benchmarks posted their biggest daily percentage declines since early August, with Brent closing at its lowest since Oct. 7 and WTI since Oct. 13, after weekly inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed a larger than expected rise in crude stocks last week. [EIA/S]

(Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Stephen Coates and Clarence Fernandez)

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OPEC and its allies are likely to stick to plans to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) at an OPEC+ meeting on Thursday, sources said, despite calls from the United States for extra supply to cool rising prices.

Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia has already dismissed calls for more oil supplies from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, collectively known as OPEC+. Kuwait and Iraq also support the current plans.

OPEC+ sources have said the United States has plenty of capacity to raise production itself if it wants to help the world speed up economic recovery.

Oil prices have surged this year to a three-year high above $86 a barrel as OPEC+ ramps up supplies gradually and demand recovers.

But producers are concerned about going too fas, fearing renewed setbacks in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Despite the pressure from consumers, I think the decision of the OPEC+ meeting on Nov. 4 will most likely be the same increase of 400,000 bpd," an OPEC source said, adding that supporters of increased production growth are in the minority.

The virtual talks on Thursday start with a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, followed by the decision-making meeting of all OPEC+ ministers scheduled for 1400 GMT, another source said.

"I think no changes so far," said another OPEC+ delegate.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday urged major G20 energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production to ensure a stronger global economic recovery.

His statement is part of a broad effort by the White House to pressure OPEC and its allies to increase supply.

A Russian source also expected such calls would not sway the OPEC+ decision.

"We are supposed to stick to the current plan," the Russian source said.

(Reporting by OPEC team; Editing by David Goodman)

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UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled a new 5-pound commemorative coin celebrating the life and legacy of to mark on Thursday.

Available in a range of standards, including gold and silver, the special collectors' coin is designed by Heena Glover and features an image of a lotus, India's national flower, alongside one of Gandhi's most famous quotes My life is my message.

This coin is a fitting tribute to an influential leader who inspired millions of people around the world, said Sunak, in his role as the Master of the Mint in the UK.

As a practicing Hindu, I am proud to unveil this coin during was instrumental in the movement for Indian independence and it is fantastic to have a UK coin commemorating his remarkable life for the first time, said the Indian-origin finance minister.

The commemorative Gandhi coin is said to build on the enduring relationship and cultural connections between the UK and India, as India celebrates its 75th year of Independence this year.

The 5-pound coin, which goes on sale on the UK Royal Mint's website from this week, is part of Royal Mint's wider collection, which includes 1-gram and 5-gram gold bars in henna-style packaging, and the UK's first gold bar depicting Lakshmi the Hindu goddess of wealth.

The 20-gram gold Lakshmi bar was designed in partnership with the Hindu community in South Wales, where the Royal Mint is based.

The Mint officials will also join Diwali celebrations at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Cardiff, where worshippers will offer prayers to Goddess Lakshmi and lord Ganesha for the coming year.

As we approach Diwali celebrations, we are delighted to unveil the first official UK coin commemorating the life and legacy of The beautiful design builds on the enduring relationship and cultural connections between the UK and India, said Nicola Howell, Chief Customer Officer for the Royal Mint.

Last year, Sunak commissioned the new Diversity Built Britain 50p coin following discussion with the We Too Built Britain' campaign, which works for fair representation of minority communities' contributions across all walks of life.

Around 10 million of the coins, which recognise and celebrate Britain's diverse history, went into circulation in October 2020.

The new Gandhi coin is a non-circulating commemorative item, available to buy online from the Royal Mint.

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The price of 10 grams of 24-carat fell on Thursday by Rs 440, to Rs 47,410. The price of 10 grams of 22-carat is now Rs 46,410.

The price of 1 kg of decreased by Rs 2,330 to Rs 62,400.

In Delhi, the yellow metal is trading at Rs 50,900 for 24-carat while in Mumbai, the price is Rs 47,410. Standard 22-carat in Delhi is selling at Rs 46,700 on Thursday, in Mumbai for Rs 47,410.

The price of 10 grams of 24-carat gold in Chennai is Rs 48,760, while for 22-carat it price is Rs 44,690. In Kolkata, 24-carat gold is trading at Rs 49,900 and 22-carat gold at Rs 47,100.

The price of gold jewellery across the nation varies due to due to excise duty, state taxes, and making charges.

The price of 1 kg of in Chennai is Rs 67,600. In Mumbai and Delhi, the precious metal is trading at Rs 62,400. The price of 1 kg of in Kolkata and Bangalore has also dropped to Rs 62,400.
Paytm, Indias digital payments pioneer, would consider offerings if the nations authorities removed regulatory uncertainty surrounding the adoption of crypto currencies. The rules around these assets remain in a grey area, Chief Financial Officer Madhur Deora said in an interview to Bloomberg TVs Haslinda Amin and Rishaad Salamat on Thursday.

 is still in a regulatory grey area if not a regulatory ban in India, Deora said. At the moment does not do If it was ever to become fully legal in the country then clearly there could be offerings we could launch.

The countrys central bank had effectively banned trading until the courts lifted the prohibitions in March 2020.

Since then, the government has considered the adoption of crypto legislation, but the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) remains highly critical and continues to advocate for its ban. Deoras comments come as prepares for public subscriptions to its $2.5-billion initial public offering (IPO), after selling almost half to anchor investors. The listing is expected mid-November.

said it has allocated shares worth $1.11 billion to more than 100 institutional investors, including the government of Singapore, ahead of what is expected to be Indias largest stock market listing.

Paytms offer garnered interest from 122 institutional investors who bought more than 38.3 million shares for ~2,150 apiece, according to a regulatory document dated November 3. BlackRock Global Funds, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority were among the investors.

Launched a decade ago as a platform for mobile recharging, Paytm grew quickly after ride-hailing firm Uber listed it as a quick payment option. Its use swelled further in 2016 when a ban on high-value currency bank notes in India boosted digital payments.

Paytm has since branched out into services including insurance and gold sales, movie and flight ticketing, and bank deposits and remittances. The companys offering will open on Monday and top investor Ant Financial, with a 27.9 per cent stake in Paytm, plans to sell shares worth ~4,704 crore.

Several companies, including Paytm, have tapped capital markets this year in a fund-raising frenzy on the back of record highs hit by the Indian stock market, which has outperformed Asian peers so far this year.

Paytms IPO is likely to be the biggest in the countrys corporate history, breaking a record held by Coal India Ltd, which raised ~15,000 crore more than a decade earlier.
President on Thursday extended greetings to the people on the occasion of and urged them to take a pledge to protect the environment.

"I extend my greetings and best wishes to all the countrymen on the auspicious occasion of is the festival of victory of good over evil and light over darkness. Let us all together, celebrate this festival in a clean and safe way and take a pledge to contribute to protecting the environment," the President tweeted in Hindi.

Prime Minister also greeted the nation on Diwali and wished for the festival to bring "happiness, prosperity and good fortune."

Union Home Minister Amit Shah conveyed his best wishes and said, "May this great festival of light and happiness illuminate everyone's life with new energy, light, health and prosperity."

Diwali is observed on the 15th day of Kartik, the holiest month in the Hindu lunar calendar and it is believed that on this day Lord Rama (the seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu) returned from a 14-year-long exile during which he fought and won a battle against the demon king Ravan.

People celebrate the festival by decorating their houses, exchanging gifts, and offering prayers in order to commemorate the "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.

(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 domestic equity barometers were trading with modest gains. At 18:57 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 330.58 points or 0.55% to 60,102.50. The Nifty 50 index added 92.25 points or 0.52% to 17,921.45.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index surged 0.77% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 1.32%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 2474 shares rose and 484 shares fell. A total of 121 shares were unchanged.

The domestic market is open today for a special one-hour Muhurat trading session on the occasion of Diwali. The session also marks the beginning of Samvat 2078 -- the Hindu calendar year that starts on Diwali.

The exchanges will remain closed on Friday, (5 November), on the occasion of Diwali Balipratipada.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty FMCG index rose 0.83% to 38,688.35. The index fell 0.76% in the past two sessions.

Radico Khaitan (up 2.84%), ITC (up 1.71%), United Spirits (up 1.44%), Godrej Consumer (up 1.33%), Colgate-Palmolive India (up 0.82%), Nestle India (up 0.74%), United Breweries (up 0.60%), Marico (up 0.50%), Britannia Industries (up 0.36%), Hindustan Unilever (up 0.45%), Dabur India (up 0.39%) and Tata Consumer Products (up 0.16%) advanced.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Steel Strips Wheels advanced 0.54% to Rs 1756. The company confirmed export orders valued close to $12 million from Western Hemisphere. The said orders would be executed till end of Jan 2022 from its Chennai & Dappar plants.

Lupin rose 0.13% to Rs 936. The drug major announced the launch of the authorized generic version of Antara (Fenofibrate) Capsules, 30 mg and 90 mg, of Lupin Atlantis Holdings, S.A. Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lupin.

Precision Camshafts added 2.48% to Rs 101.50. The company has signed an MoU with Solapur Municipal Corporation (SMC) to develop 100% retrofitted electric vehicles for waste collection.

Global markets:

Shares in Europe and Asia advanced on Thursday as markets reacted to the U.S. Federal Reserve's announcement that it will start to taper its bond-buying program and the Bank of England's decision to hold rates steady for now.

US stocks rose to new records on Wednesday after the US Federal Reserve made its long-anticipated announcement to slow the monthly bond purchases the central bank implemented during the pandemic.

The Fed said it will begin tapering bond purchases later this month and will reduce buying by $15 billion a month, putting it on track to end the quantitative easing by the middle of next year. This timeline and amount was in line with expectations. However, the Fed said it is prepared to alter the pace of purchases if warranted by changes in the economic outlook.

In Europe, the Bank of England held interest rates steady on Thursday. The bank's Monetary Policy Committee voted 7-2 to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its historic low of 0.1%, and 6-3 in favor of continuing the existing program of U.K. government bond purchases at a target stock of 875 billion ($1.2 trillion). The MPC voted unanimously to maintain its 20 billion stock of corporate bond purchases, keeping the total asset purchase program at 895 billion.

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The offer received bids for 54.89 crore shares as against 53.86 lakh shares on offer.

The initial public offer (IPO) of Sigachi Industries received bids for 54,89,47,440 shares as against 53,86,500 shares on offer. The issue was subscribed 101.91 times.

The portion set aside for non-institutional investors was subscribed 172.43 times. The qualified institutional buyers' portion was subscribed 86.51 times. The retail individual investors category was subscribed 80.49 times.

The issue opened for bidding on 1 November 2021 and it closed on 3 November 2021. The price band of the IPO was fixed at Rs 161-163 per share.

The offer comprised fresh issue of 76,95,000 equity shares aggregating up to Rs 125.43 crore at upper price band of Rs 163 and Rs 123.89 crore at lower price band of Rs 161.

Ahead of the IPO, Sigachi Industries on 29 October 2021 finalized allocation of 23,08,500 equity shares to anchor investors at an allocation price of Rs 163 per share, aggregating to Rs 37,62,85,500.

The company proposes to utilize the net proceeds from the issue towards funding capital expenditure for expansion of production capacity for microcrystalline cellulose at Dahej (Gujarat) amounting to Rs 28.16 crore, for the expansion of production capacity for microcrystalline cellulose at Jhagadia (Gujarat) worth Rs 29.24 crore, to manufacture Croscarmellose Sodium, a modified cellulose used as excipient at Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh amounting Rs 32.30 crore and balance for general corporate purposes.

Sigachi Industries, incorporated in 1989, started its journey manufacturing chlorinated paraffin and hydrochloric acid in its manufacturing unit situated at Hyderabad. The company diversified its product portfolio in 1990 to manufacture microcrystalline cellulose (MCC). MCC is widely used as an excipient for finished dosages in the pharmaceutical industry. The inert non-reactive, free flowing and versatile nature of MCC has varied applications in the pharmaceutical, food, nutraceuticals, and the cosmetic industries.

The company manufactures MCC of various grades ranging from 15 microns to 250 microns. The major grades of MCC manufactured and marketed by the company are branded as HiCel and AceCel. These products are distinguished with the help of different drying techniques employed by the company during the manufacturing process. HiCel is a spray dried product and is considered premium in quality due to the physical properties of the product such as particle size, density, flow, tableting properties, etc. AceCel on the other hand is manufactured through bulk drying process. It also manufactures various grades of this product in combination with various chemicals like colloidal silicon dioxide, carboxy cellulose sodium, mannitol etc. to cater to the growing market of the co-processed excipients.

The company reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 8.99 crore and total income of Rs 54.95 crore as on 30 June 2021.

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More than a thousand people blocked several streets in the center of the Ukrainian capital Wednesday, protesting against COVID-19 vaccine certificates and state-imposed restrictions aimed at halting the spread of the

The protesters, mostly women and young people, didn't wear masks and held up signs reading Say No to COVID Passports, Say No to COVID Genocide in front of the Ukrainian parliament building in Kyiv.

The rally comes in response to restrictions that require teachers, government employees and other workers to get fully vaccinated by November 8 or have their salaries suspended.

Last week, Ukrainian authorities also started requiring proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test results for people boarding airplanes, trains and long-distance buses.

The measures come as reports a record-high level of new infections and deaths from the

Authorities have mainly blamed the surge on widespread public reluctance to get vaccinated.

Ukrainians can freely choose between the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, but just about 17.1 per cent of the 41-million population has been fully vaccinated, which is Europe's second-lowest rate after Armenia.

I don't want to participate in an experiment on myself, but I am deprived of the right to choose, said Tamara Ustinova, 35, a teacher from Mariupol.

The authorities force Ukrainians to get vaccinated, creating unbearable conditions, but the danger of genetic mutations is much greater than the harm from COVID.

The police did not interfere with the rally, which was supported by ex-lawmaker Nadiya Savchenko who was detained at an airport a few weeks ago with a fake vaccination certificate.

The authorities will only aggravate the situation further, Savchenko said at the rally.

You have the right to move freely around the country, this is everyone's right.

Savchenko and the protesters held several prayers in front of the parliament building.

The government says that some denominations oppose vaccination, and false rumors about vaccines containing microchips, causing gene mutations or infertility are circulating among believers.

New government regulations and restrictions have spawned a booming black market for counterfeit documents. Fake vaccination certificates are selling for the equivalent of USD 100-300, and there have been reports of a fake version of a government digital app with fake certificates already installed.

Authorities have opened 1,065 criminal cases over the distribution of fake certificates involving 80 doctors and 35 travel agencies. Police have blocked 40 websites that offered fake certificates.

Parliament has proposed to make the use and production of fake certificates a separate criminal offence, punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine of about USD 6,460. A bill to that effect has already been supported by lawmakers in the first reading on Tuesday.

The anti-vaccination spirit quickly disappears in intensive care, and fake certificates do not work there, Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said at a briefing. Calls not to get vaccinated are, in my opinion, a mockery of our doctors and families who have lost their relatives.

In total, has reported 2,979,086 cases and 69,447 deaths.

(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.)
Local Covid-19 outbreaks in mainland China have spread to 19 out of 31 provincial-level regions, the widest distribution nationwide since the Wuhan outbreak early last year, as the number of infections mostly linked to trips in northern China since mid-October continues to grow.

As of Wednesday, China had recorded more than 700 locally transmitted infections in dozens of cities in 19 province-level regions since Oct. 17 when Xian, the capital of northwestern Shaanxi province, confirmed two cases in a group of eight who had visited Inner Mongolia and Gansu province. The widest spread prior to this began in Nanjing on July. 20 before reaching 16 provinces in a month.

The country confirmed 87 new locally transmitted cases (link in Chinese) on Wednesday, down from a three-month high of 93 a day earlier, according to the National Health Commission (NHC). About half of these cases were found in the city of Heihe in Northeast Chinas Heilongjiang province, which recorded its highest daily number of local Covid cases since the city reported its first positive case on Oct. 27.

Health authorities in China have been scrambling to control the multiregion Covid outbreak as the number of local infections linked to trips in northern China continues to grow. Nearly 500 of the some 700 total confirmed cases recorded since mid-October are directly and indirectly linked to outbreaks in Inner Mongolia and Gansu, according to local health authorities.

As of Wednesday, the city of Heihe, Heilongjiang province, has recorded 184 cases in eight days since one confirmed case was found in Anhui district on Oct. 27. The city has locked down multiple communities, conducted six rounds of mass testing for the coronavirus, and since Wednesday closed all public venues.

Wu Liangyou, deputy director of the NHCs disease prevention and control bureau, said at a press conference Saturday that the local cluster in Heihe, which neighbors Russias major Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk, was not linked to outbreaks in other regions but instead caused by new imported cases.

Heilongjiangs provincial health authorities have traced the local cluster in Heihe to the highly transmissible delta variant.

North Chinas Hebei province, which has the second-highest daily count among provincial regions, confirmed 23 cases on Wednesday, with 20 of them found in its capital city Shijiazhuang.

The Chinese capital recorded zero new cases on Wednesday. The city confirmed 9 local cases the previous day, all in Changping district. As of Tuesday, the city has recorded 39 locally transmitted cases in three districts in its latest local outbreak.

Other cities have reported new cases linked to outbreaks in North China. The city of Chengdu in Southwest Chinas Sichuan on Tuesday confirmed a locally transmitted case of a person who had travelled on business to Xi'an, Yinchuan, Lanzhou and Chongqing from Oct. 8-17.

Chongqing municipality on Tuesday confirmed four new local cases, two of which have had contact with the Chengdu case. The eastern city of Changzhou, Jiangsu province, on Tuesday reported three new cases linked to cases confirmed in Chongqing.

The country has been implementing its zero tolerance policy with strict disease control measures, which prominent infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan has defended in a state media interview, saying that measures to deal with sporadic Covid-19 outbreaks are less costly than treating patients after theyve been infected.

Zhong has said at a Saturday conference that the country could effectively contain the latest outbreak within a month.

Contact reporter Cai Xuejiao (xuejiaocai@caixin.com) and editor Heather Mowbray (heathermowbray@caixin.com)

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(Bloomberg)  Chinese turbine-makers have made their local wind power market the biggest in the world with a scorching pace of installations. Now, those giants want to take a larger slice of burgeoning global demand.

Companies including Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. Ltd., Envision Group and Ming Yang Smart Energy Group Ltd. have typically made only small inroads into overseas markets, though now plan to invest in factories abroad to take market share from European and American rivals such as Vestas Wind Systems A/S and General Electric Co.

Chinas largest turbine-maker Goldwind said it will be able to run shoulder by shoulder with overseas wind giants starting next year, while Ming Yang has made expanding in the offshore wind market in Europe a top priority.

We take that very seriously, said Marc Becker, head of the offshore unit at Zamudio, Spain-based Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA, the largest supplier of offshore turbines outside China. Companies in China have proven in many industries that they can be fast, and they know how to build turbines, Becker said.

Competition is heating up with global demand for wind power ready to surge. Regions from Europe to India and South America are scaling up renewable energy installations to help meet aggressive climate goals, and U.S. President Joe Biden has set a target for the U.S. to develop offshore wind capacity of 30 gigawatts by 2030, up from zero today.

Chinese turbine-makers have already shown theyre capable of competing on size and price. European companies have long competed to deliver the biggest turbines, with Vestas taking the lead earlier this year with a product boasting 15 megawatts of capacity. That title was short-lived after Zhongshan, Guangdong-based Ming Yang topped it with a 16-megawatt machine in August.

State-owned China State Shipbuilding Corp. has unveiled the largest offshore wind turbine model, which also has 16 megawatts of capacity and a rotor diameter of 256 meters, according to BloombergNEF. Larger turbines should help Chinese players make more inroads in the offshore wind sector.

While higher prices of steel and other raw materials are impacting manufacturers in Europe and the U.S., turbine prices in China are about 40% cheaper than overseas. Producers in the highly fragmented market are trying to undercut each other, pushing the cost of China-produced models to a new low in the first half of 2021.

That fierce local competition is also spurring China-based producers to look abroad, even with domestic demand expected to pick up after a slowdown this year.

Goldwind surged as much as 10% Thursday in Shenzhen, and Ming Yang jumped 10% to a record in Shanghai.

Some overseas customers are already buying. Italian renewable energy developer Renexia SpA plans to use 10 of Ming Yangs 3-megawatt turbines for a project off Italys southern coast. The company chose the turbines because they were well-suited to the Mediterraneans winds, according to Andrea Porchera, a spokesman for Renexia.

That small project is seen as a sign of whats to come, and Ming Yang is planning to build a manufacturing base in southern Germany, Vice President Ye Fan said in an interview.

Goldwind is aiming to export around 2 to 3 gigawatts annually from 2022, up from about 1.5 gigawatts over the past few years, according to President Cao Zhigang. That would boost its share of the overseas wind market to 5% from 3%, Cao said.

Still, Chinese companies face challenges to win more share of a global market thats typically been dominated by a handful of key players. Outside China, theres a bigger focus on efforts such as engaging with local communities, said Thomas Keller, president of Vestas China, the Danish firms Beijing-based unit.

In China, a lot of the hard work is with permitting, and then everything is easy, Keller said.

Processes overseas to verify the quality of turbines are also stricter and can take longer, meaning projects using China-made turbines could face difficulties in quickly gaining approvals or securing investment.

With demand rising, particularly in the offshore wind sector, there should be a greater role for Chinas producers in overseas markets, said Mats Sellei, Stockholm-based director of procurement and supply chain at K2 Management, an engineering and management consultancy.

The market of offshore wind at least in the next couple years will become truly global, said Sellei. There are too many projects and too few suppliers. If you just look at market forces, the Chinese companies have a good opportunity.

Contact editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)

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Painter Zhang Ben opened his new exhibition on Nov. 6 at Shanghai's M50 Art Zone. Zhang, born in Huangshan, East Chinas Anhui province, in 1984, is now working at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Known for his Symbolist oil paintings, Zhang presents a surrealistic space that reflects his inner self, including religious elements. Xiangwai Artha, an art-sharing platform, contributed to todays gallery

Nov 19, 2021 06:03 PM
The Facebook Papers project represents a unique collaboration among 17 American news organizations, including The Associated Press. Journalists from a variety of newsrooms, large and small, worked together to gain access to thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Frances
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Mazda has unveiled the first of its five all-new SUVs slated to arrive in the next two years the first-ever CX-50. Designed to meet the req...
Mobile veterinarian Stacey Manczka-Fisher, left, and veterinary assistant Erica Pettersen watch over an alpaca owned by Lou Ann and Dave Sekely while residents pet him during Alpaca Farm Day at Alpacas of the Crystal Coast in Ocean in 2019. The farm will offer the event this year from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. (Cheryl Burke photo)
Famed Veterans Day Parade set for Saturday in Morehead City, other events to be held Nov. 11
Photo: Contributed

One of the most devastating things about COVID has been the way it separates people  social distancing, restricted social activities and even quarantining. But one of the more positive trends to come from the COVID years has been the focus on supporting local businesses as a way to maintain our sense of community when were unable to safely spend time together.

A lot of this community support has, rightly, focused on restaurants  new legislation was introduced in B.C. to curb the control of profit-sucking food delivery apps and people were encouraged to eat more take-out when they couldnt sit-in to save our restaurants. Even with these additional community supports, forced restaurant closures over the last two years have contributed to a few casualties.

Now that restaurants are regularly opening for dine-in service however, it would be nice to see them embrace the same dedication to supporting local businesses.

Over the last few years breweries and cideries have exploded across the city and Kelowna has gone from around half a dozen breweries to 16 as well as six cideries as of today, and dozens more in surrounding communities like West Kelowna, Penticton, etc. Three new breweries opened their doors in Kelowna in August alone, likely after years of preparation, licensing applications and renovations.

Tap room sales are an important but small proportion of what breweries and cideries need to survive, and in order to sell their drinks on draft or in cans these producers rely on local restaurants and liquor stores to stock their products. Knowing this, its disappointing when we do find ourselves in one of Kelownas restaurants and see that nearly all of the options on the craft beer and cider menu are shipped in from the comparably bigger breweries in Vancouver and Victoria.

In addition to fighting for menu-space, Okanagan-based brewers are finding themselves crowded out of the limited fridge space at liquor stores in Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton, and other Okanagan towns. As nice as it is to see the availability of B.C. craft drinks, it would be great to see some more support for the 40-odd breweries and cideries here in the wider Okanagan, many of which have been open for less than two years.

The online menus of busy downtown Kelowna restaurants show the extent of the issue - the vast majority of the drinks on offer come from big names based in the lower mainland or Victoria, many with substantial investors or decades of growth behind them.

Of the restaurants reviewed, most were offering a selection of around 10 craft beers  in most cases 80 to 90% of the options are from Lower Mainland or Victoria breweries. Two Kelowna restaurants reviewed were not offering any local options at all, and even Craft Beer Market on Bernard Avenue, with its 73 beers on tap, carries only two beers from Kelowna and one from Penticton, representing just two of the roughly 40 Okanagan breweries on its vast menu.

Despite the community push to support our restaurants and shop locally, weve overlooked the opportunity to support the small businesses producing unique local drinks from Okanagan-grown apple cider, locally-crafted beers and even unique options like an alcoholic kombucha from Sajiva, all of which are owned and created by our neighbours here in the Okanagan.

During last years Penticton Beer Week, the citys seven biggest breweries raised and donated funds specifically for struggling members of the hospitality industry. It would be nice to see that kind of support reciprocated to our drinks producers now that weve seen at least three Okanagan-based breweries already close their doors permanently since the beginning of the COVID outbreak.

With that said, a big shout out goes to (local establishments) Skinny Dukes and Krafty Kitchen, whose beer menus were both offering almost entirely local options brewed here in Kelowna, and wed like to extend a challenge to other local restaurants to start offering products from at least two Okanagan breweries before year-end.

The additional local support for our Okanagan-based breweries would help to make sure that we will still have the opportunity to drink local.

Craig Snider, owner and operator, Okanagan Canning
Photo: Contributed Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola MP Dan Albas

In last weeks report I referenced the closure of the Kelowna International Airport (YLW) to international flights and asked:

Do you support the Kelowna Airport being re-opened to International flights as have been many other airports in Canada?"

I would like to thank all of those who took the time to respond and can state the responses were both overwhelming and almost unanimous in support of international flights returning to YLW.

Fortunately, we had some excellent news this week as Transport Canada announced eight more Canadian airports, including YLW, will, as of Nov. 30, again be open to international arrivals and departures.

The list also includes airports in St. Johns, Hamilton, Waterloo, Regina, Saskatoon, Abbotsford and Victoria.

I would like to sincerely thank all of those who worked in support of this announcement.

On the topic of international travel, currently more than 39,000 delegates are registered to attend the ongoing 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, making it the largest attended COP climate conference in history.

Blacklocks, a journalism organization out of Ottawa, reports the official Canadian delegation at the COP26 conference is 277 delegates, 30 Environment Canada staff, 17 press aides, a videographer and a speechwriter for the prime minister and four CBC reporters.

In the interests of full disclosure, members of the Opposition are also at the conference.I am attending on behalf of the official Opposition as the environment and climate critic. The leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, Bloc Quebecois MP Kristina Michaud and Green Party MP's Elizabeth May and Mike Morrice are also here.

Several government ministers, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are also attending this conference and the prime minister has made several announcements of behalf of Canada.

One of the more noteworthy announcements was a promise that Canada will impose a hard cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector. At the moment, the exact details of the announcement are unknown, however, the goal is to get emissions to net zero by 2050 within this Canadian industry.

One of the challenges is that other countries that produce oil and gas are not following Canada in setting emissions caps, nor are they setting a price on pollution when it comes to oil and gas. A further complication is that different regions of Canada use oil and gas imported from those countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United States.

That leads to my question for this week:

How do you think the government should deal with oil and gas imports from other countries that are not subject to these same types of policies?

I can be reached at [email protected] or call toll free at 1-800-665-8711.


Photo: The Canadian Press Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Francois-Philippe Champagne speaks at a news conference after the federal cabinet was sworn in, in Ottawa, on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Unblocking North America's clogged supply chain and making it more resilient to outside shocks  especially from China  tops Francois-Philippe Champagne's agenda as he starts two days of meetings in Washington.

Champagne told The Canadian Press he will be using his face time in Washington starting Wednesday to press the Biden administration on the potential in Canada's largely untapped rare-earth mining sector, which would allow the U.S.  and its continental neighbours  to be less reliant on China, the world's leading supplier of those minerals.

"We have the talent, we have the renewable energy, we have the critical minerals, we have the manufacturing base, we have the geostrategic location to do that. We can lead the world," Champagne said in an interview.

"Therefore, that's really what I'm going to be proposing to our American colleagues and later on in this week, (to) our Mexican colleagues."

Champagne is the federal innovation, science and industry minister, a portfolio he describes as being at the core of building back Canada's post-COVID-19 pandemic economy. And he's leveraging his former cabinet posts in the Trudeau government at foreign affairs and international trade with a trip to the American capital and to Mexico later in the week.

Champagne will be picking up the ball on talks that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Joe Biden and others held at last week's G20 summit in Rome on easing the supply chain crunch that has clogged U.S. ports.

The pandemic-induced bottlenecks have created shortages of semiconductors and rare-earth minerals needed to power everything from computers and cellphones to electric vehicles  obstacles to both economic recovery and the fight against climate change.

Champagne said a "regional" supply chain focus is required to make the North American continent more self-reliant and less vulnerable to offshore forces. It would also leverage the continent's updated free trade agreement, known in Ottawa as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA.

The minister said the vulnerability that the continent's economy experienced at the start of the pandemic, including shortages of personal protective gear and access to vaccines, must not be repeated. Much of it, he said, was due to a reliance on China, which must now be addressed.

That, he said, has led to a "moment where we should reflect and say, 'how do we make sure that we are more resilient for the critical elements that we will be needing to ensure prosperity over the next 20, 30, 50 years?'"

Co-operation on exploiting rare-earth minerals with the goal of supporting a self-sustaining and green electric car market would be a major way of achieving that, said Champagne.

China leads the world in rare-earth mineral extraction, accounting for almost two-thirds of production, but Canada has an estimated 15 tonnes of the elements that remain untapped. Moreover, 13 of the 35 minerals that the U.S. has identified as being critical to its national and economic security come from Canada. These include potash, indium, aluminum, tellurium, niobium, tungsten and magnesium.

"I think we're seeing a generational transformation towards electrification. I think that provides enormous opportunities," said Champagne. "Whether it's around the battery ecosystem, whether it's around the electric vehicle, whether it's around life sciences, we have a lot to benefit from if we work closer together."

That said, trade irritants with the Americans remain, and Champagne said he will be pressing for the relief on two fronts in Washington.

Canada has already joined two dozen countries in protesting the Biden administration's proposed electric vehicle tax credit, calling it a violation of international trading rules.

And Champagne will continue Canada's perennial pushback against any proposed "Buy American" provisions in U.S. economic aid packages that would limit the ability of Canadian firms to bid on American government contracts.

On a visit to Washington last month, Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister and deputy prime minster, said Canada would respond in-kind to any "Buy American" provisions by limiting access to American firms.

Champagne suggested that using access to the rare-earth minerals as a bargaining chip with the Americans was not something that he was interested in.

"My approach with the Americans is always to show that it's in our best interest to do things together, always go back to the fact that a decision on one side will have an impact on both," he said.

"You have to repeat these things to make sure that our friends always remember and appreciate the integrative nature of our economy."

Goldy Hyder, the president of the Business Council of Canada, said Canada should drive a hard bargain with the U.S. on guaranteeing any future access to rare-earth minerals because of the continued Buy American threats and other protectionist policies of the Biden administration.

"We have a fiduciary duty to the people of Canada to assert our independence, our sovereignty, our responsibility, our ownership of these assets," said Hyder.

"We have to make sure that this is not seen to be something that anybody can just kind of come in and just take and claim."

Champagne was scheduled to meet Wednesday with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and White House science officials.
Photo: BCCOS/Facebook

A B.C. food bank received 300 pounds of contraband moose meat over the weekend after B.C. conservation officers confiscated cuts from an illegally shot animal.

The shooting of the moose near Fort Nelson last month prompted officers to execute a search warrant in an undisclosed location in the Lower Mainland, where they found the meat already cut and wrapped.

The meat was donated to the Archway Food Bank in Abbotsford, according to a BC Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS) post on social media. The food bank says it helps feed roughly 3,000 people a month, of which more than a third are aged 18 or under.

Conservation officers are still investigating the case and charges have yet to be laid.

Glacier Media requested information on the number of seizures connected to illegal hunting in British Columbia in recent years. Over 48 hours later, BCCOS spokesperson Danielle Bell declined to provide the information, citing the lack of a public database that allows for easy extraction.
Photo: The Canadian Press The Canadian flag flies over the Columbia Icefields' Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, on May 7, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

A senior Canadian Security Intelligence Service official predicts the spy agency will make a "significant contribution" to understanding the threats posed by a warming planet as climate change accelerates.

Tricia Geddes, deputy director for policy at CSIS, told an intelligence conference Wednesday that global warming will have a profound effect on Canadians, including aspects of national security.

CSIS must continue to anticipate "the next threat" and understand it in order to support other government players, said Geddes, citing possible ripples from climate shifts, such as the mass migration of people.

"I think it's important that we are going to be in that space," she told a Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies symposium.

Geddes stressed that CSIS analysis of climate change would be anchored in its mandate of gathering information about threats to the security of Canada, including violent extremism, sabotage, foreign interference and espionage. CSIS is also permitted to collect foreign intelligence to support the ministers of defence and foreign affairs.

Ironically, perhaps, environmental and human rights activists have alleged that CSIS stepped over the line in recent years in collecting information about peaceful anti-petroleum groups aiming to protect the planet by protesting pipeline plans.

Geddes' comments came as world leaders gathered this week in Scotland to devise plans to curb global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Daniel Jean, a former national security adviser to the prime minister, told the intelligence symposium that officials are already seeing environmental effects on security, such as conflicts fuelled by water scarcity in Africa.

Canada faces security questions prompted by climate change in the North that is making once-frozen waters more navigable, said Jean, a senior fellow with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

"I think that our national security community has started to pay attention to these things. But there's a difference between paying attention and devoting more than just a running brief," he said.

"We're going to have to devote a little bit more attention to this in the whole dimension of what the world needs to do to deal with the warming of the planet.

"So the national security folks have to keep an eye on that. The rest of the public policy community has a tremendous weight on their shoulders as well."

Mass migration will be "a huge issue" flowing from climate change, meaning the Canada Border Services Agency will be prominent in collecting intelligence to understand the geographic patterns and risks, said Leah West, an assistant professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

The cyberspies of the Communications Security Establishment, who gather foreign intelligence from an array of sources, could play a supporting role, she suggested.

In addition, Canada's military is likely to be called upon more often, she said.

"Who do we call out for floods, fires and pandemics? It's the Canadian Armed Forces, right? And so the military is going to be stretched to respond to those missions. It may need to reorient itself in its organizational structure to handle those missions better."
Photo: The Canadian Press Montreal police officer Roger Frechette leaves the courtroom for the lunch break in his sexual assault trial on July 13, 2021, in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

A Montreal police officer who was charged with sexual assault following an independent investigation by the province's police watchdog was acquitted Wednesday by a Quebec court judge.

Roger Frechette was facing one count of sexual assault against a woman from Ontario who was visiting Montreal in February 2019 and whose identity is protected by a publication ban.

Frechette was the first police officer to be charged following an independent investigation by Quebec's police watchdog, the Bureau des enquetes independantes.

Judge Lori Renee Weitzman ruled that Frechette's version of events was "totally unbelievable," but she said she could not say from the woman's version  which included some contradictions and lack of clear memories  what had happened.

The woman had come to Montreal with her then-boyfriend for a Valentine's Day weekend when they were arrested downtown after they started arguing on the street following a night of drinking. Both were detained.

That's where Frechette, a detention officer, encountered the woman.

The woman, who had spent that night in police custody, testified that after she was released the following morning, Frechette, who had completed his work shift, insisted on taking her back to her hotel. She said the officer followed her into her room and allegedly groped her, licked her neck, grabbed her private parts and forced her hand on his crotch.

She also told the court she suffered post-traumatic stress previous to her 2019 arrest in Montreal and said she didn't remember specific conversations with Frechette or the sequence of events in the hotel room.

Frechette said in his defence that he was just trying to help the woman  whom he said he did not know  by bringing her back to her hotel, adding that he was the one who was groped. The 34-year veteran police officer, who had spent a decade supervising the cells at a downtown Montreal detention centre, told the trial it was the first time he had escorted a detainee home after his shift.

Weitzman said in her 18-page ruling "there is no doubt" the woman had a bad experience on Feb. 18, 2019, "and the court understands her frustration to not be able to rely on her memory of the events."

"However, her version of the facts is not sufficiently reliable to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that she was sexually assaulted by Mr. Frechette."
Photo: The Canadian Press

The International Criminal Court is opening a formal investigation into crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Venezuela under President Nicolas Maduros rule.

The opening of the probe was announced by ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan at the end of a three-day trip to Caracas.

Standing alongside Maduro, Kahn said he was aware of the political fault lines and geopolitical divisions that exist around Venezuela. But he vowed not to tolerate any interference in the investigation. He also signed an agreement with the Maduro government that would allow national authorities to advance in their own accountability efforts as outlined by the international treaty that gave rise to the United Nations-sponsored criminal court.

The ICC, at the urging of several Latin American nations opposed to Maduro, opened a preliminary investigation into abuses in 2018. With the opening of a formal probe, Venezuela joins a handful of mostly African nations where crimes are being investigated by the ICC.
Photo: The Canadian Press

BCE Inc. boosted its year-over-year earnings by 10 per cent last quarter, matching analyst expectations amid more mobile and internet subscribers and heftier ad spending across its platforms.

The parent company of Bell Canada and media companies that include CTV, TSN and radio stations saw revenue from its wireless network jump five per cent year over year in its third quarter to $1.65 billion, benefiting from a 14 per cent leap in net new mobile phone subscribers.

Media operating revenue rose 14.5 per cent $719 million, riding a higher wave of advertiser spending on television, radio and digital media platforms. Bell Media subscriber revenue also increased more than 12 per cent, driven by a five per cent bump in viewers signing up for the Crave streaming platform.

"The market has kind of been pent-up," chief executive Mirko Bibic told investors on a conference call Tuesday, citing the impact of COVID-19. "And stores coming back helped in terms of capturing that pent-up demand."

"We're all benefiting from a little bit of the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats kind of approach to this," he said, referring to steady or upward revenue for telecommunications rivals Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. "But in our case, I'm quite pleased with our performance in pretty much every geography."

BCE reported net earnings of $813 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with $740 million in the same period a year earlier.

Profit attributable to common shareholders totalled $757 million or 83 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company said. The result compared with a profit of $692 million or 77 cents per share a year ago.

Operating revenue totalled $5.84 billion, up from $5.79 billion in the same quarter last year.

On an adjusted basis, BCE said it earned 82 cents per share, up from an adjusted profit of 79 cents per share a year ago.

The result matched the average analyst estimate compiled by financial markets data firm Refinitiv.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says it's "irrational" for Canada to require fully vaccinated travellers to complete an expensive COVID-19 test before crossing the border.

All travellers over the age of five, regardless of citizenship or vaccination status, must provide proof of a negative COVID-19 molecular test in order to enter the country.

It can cost between $150 and $300, making it prohibitively expensive for many families.

Perrin Beatty, president of the business group, says the test requirement does not appear to be based on science, and is redundant for fully vaccinated travellers.

The latest figures from the Public Health Agency of Canada show that of all COVID-19 tests completed at the border on vaccinated travellers between Aug. 9 and Oct. 21, only 0.18 per cent were positive.

For unvaccinated and partially vaccinated travellers, 0.91 per cent were positive.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Premier John Horgan has announced a biopsy he underwent last week confirmed a growth on his throat was cancerous.

In a statement Thursday, Horgan said he is grateful to the amazing health-care team and support he has received.

The pathology confirmed that the growth in my throat was cancerous, the statement continued.

"My prognosis is good and I expect to make a full recovery. In the next couple of weeks I will need to start radiation treatment, which will conclude toward the end of December.

Horgan says he will continue to participate virtually in briefings, cabinet meetings, and other important meetings such as the Council of the Federation.

Deputy Premier Mike Farnworth and other cabinet ministers may attend in-person events in his place.

"I would, again, like to thank everyone who sent their well wishes. Your support gives me strength and humbles me. I look forward to being back in the legislature and travelling in the new year."

This is Horgans second bout with cancer. The 62-year-old was diagnosed with bladder cancer when he was in his 40s.
Photo: The Canadian Press Women walk in the al-Hol camp that houses some 60,000 refugees, including families and supporters of the Islamic State group, many of them foreign nationals, in Syria, Saturday, May 1, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Baderkhan Ahmad

A Canadian woman who spent two years in Syrian prison camps, now stranded in northern Iraq, wants a judge to compel Ottawa to give her an emergency passport so she can return home.

In her application to the Federal Court, the woman says she has no identity documents and little cash, and fears for her safety living in an Irbil hotel with an expired visa.

"I am desperate in every way and want nothing more than to return to Canada," she says in an affidavit filed with the court.

The Canadian Press is aware of the womans name but is not publishing it at the request of her counsel out of concern for her safety and to protect the identity of her daughter, a minor.

The woman's young daughter, who was born in Syria, made headlines earlier this year when she came to Canada to live with her aunt.

During the summer, the woman believed she was on the verge of getting a travel document from Canadian authorities, enabling her to fly home to her five-year-old child.

Instead, RCMP officers turned up in Iraq last week and interviewed her for several hours over the course of two days, she says in the affidavit.

The woman's court application says the denial of a temporary passport violates her charter rights to enter Canada and to have life, liberty and security of the person.

Global Affairs Canada said it could not comment on the case because it is before the court, and federal lawyers have yet to file a defence.

The woman's effort to return home highlights the plight of several Canadians among the estimated thousands of foreign nationals held in Syrian camps by Kurdish forces that wrested back the war-torn region from the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The woman was born in Somalia, arrived in Canada with her family in 1993 and became a citizen in 2004. She grew up in Toronto and later moved to Vancouver. Feeling depressed and lonely, she dropped her post-secondary studies to work at retail jobs.

In 2014, she left Canada for Turkey, soon travelling to Syria.

"Shortly thereafter, I realized that I had been manipulated into going to that country," her affidavit says.

"While in Syria, there were several times that I tried to leave, but I was not allowed to do so. I was moved around numerous times. I was not allowed to speak to my family or friends. My phone was taken away. I was completely isolated from the outside world."

Her daughter was born in May 2016. The woman last saw the girl's father in 2018 and has been told he is dead.

In early 2019, mother and daughter arrived at Camp al-Hol in northeastern Syria. The woman describes the conditions as dismal. They slept in a flimsy tent, drank unsanitary water, and heard gunshots and screams at night.

She obtained a phone, speaking with her sister in Canada and Global Affairs Canada. Canadian authorities told her they could help with her return home only if she made it out of Syria, the affidavit says.

She and her daughter spent time in a bleak cell at a women's prison before being moved to Camp al-Roj, where conditions were slightly better.

She made phone contact with Peter Galbraith, a retired American diplomat who was helping women and children get out of the camps.

At one point, he asked if she would answer questions for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, beginning a 16-month period of co-operation with the FBI, Galbraith says in his own affidavit filed with the court.

The woman provided extensive information to the FBI both about ISIL suspects and about kidnapped American children, he says.

"For all of this period, I was the applicants main conduit to the FBI, posing questions on behalf of the FBI and relaying the applicants answers to the FBI," Galbraith says.

"I am also aware that from the FBI and the applicant that FBI agents interviewed the applicant on several occasions."

Galbraith says that, based on his dealings with the woman, it did not appear she was aligned in any way with the ISIL adherents in the camps, and that co-operating with U.S. officials placed her at risk of harm from militants.

Galbraith, who has American and Canadian citizenship, tells of how he arranged first for the daughter's release into the custody of the woman's sister. A few months later, fearing for the woman's safety, he persuaded officials to release her as well, and they headed straight to Irbil.

Galbraith says he used his connections with the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to allow the Canadian to enter, and it provided her in late June with a 30-day visa.

He arranged for her stay in a hotel, expecting Canada would provide consular help to allow her to head home.

Galbraith says officials in Ottawa told him Canada would assist any Canadian who reached a Canadian diplomatic mission to return home.

"I do not know why Canada has reneged on this promise to me and one of its own citizens," he says.

"I never imagined that she would be stranded there by the Canadian government for a period of months. Candidly, I was surprised that the Canadian government allowed it to last for more than a couple of weeks," Galbraith adds.

"If Canada will not repatriate, it is very possible that the KRG will detain her and return her to Syria. There, she will be detained again in the al-Roj or al-Hol prison camps."

A Sept. 29 email from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, filed with the court by the woman's counsel, says the department was assessing her application for an emergency document and would try to respond within 30 days.

The woman says that during the Oct. 26-27 interviews, the RCMP asked about her time in Syria and one officer inquired about her plans upon returning to Canada.

"He explained that this was part of a 'threat assessment,'" she says. "After asking these questions, the RCMP officer told me that, given my answers and my presentation, it was his opinion that I was not a threat to anyone."

However, the Mounties said they had no authority to assist her return to Canada, which "was up to others in Ottawa," she says.

The young girl, meanwhile, wonders when she will see her mother.

"When I speak to (my daughter), she is sad and crying," the woman says. "She is always asking when I am coming home."
Photo: BC Forest Safety Council

One student was injured after a school bus in Alberta was impaled by a log from a logging truck on Wednesday.

The school bus was struck in Barrhead, 120 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, as it was transporting kids to school.

The B.C. Forest Safety Council issued an alert about the incident Thursday, reminding drivers of safety procedure, relaying reports that indicate overhanging logs on the back of the trailer swung out as it was turning left and struck the bus which was stopped at the intersection.

The logs went through a window and dislodged some unoccupied seats, the safety council said.

One student was taken to hospital with a possible concussion, but was not seriously hurt.

According to RCMP, the driver is facing charges for the vehicle being overweight and improperly loaded, the safety council said.

CTV News reports the bus had 21 students and two adults on board at the time. The log truck driver was not hurt.
On one Friday in June a swarm of angry beachgoers encircled two VPD officers making an arrest at English Bay beach. The scene quickly escalated leading to a search for the crowd's main aggressors. Five months later charges have been laid.

At the time of the incident, VPDs beach patrol officers were called to investigate a large fight and a possible assault involving 10 people at around 7 p.m. on June 18.

As officers were trying to diffuse the situation and disperse the crowd, one man began causing a disturbance and refused to leave, resulting in his arrest. This arrest caused dozens of beachgoers to surround the police, making the situation extremely volatile, the VPD stated in a recent release.

In the days following, the VPD launched a search for the suspects captured on video.

Weve reviewed video clips posted online and have identified two agitators who incited the crowd, assaulted the police officers, and obstructed them as they were doing their jobs, Cnst. Tania Visintin said at the time.

Now charges have been laid against three individuals involved.

Thanks to tips from the public, we were able to identify these alleged agitators and arrest them, says Visintin. We presented the evidence to the BC Prosecution Service, which this week approved criminal charges.

Anthony King, 26, and Chas Verrier, 21, have been charged with assaulting a police officer and obstructing a police officer. The third suspect, a youth, has been charged with assaulting a police officer and obstructing a police officer.
NEW YORK, NY, November 4, 2021  Prediabetes can be reversed  and the American Medical Association (AMA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Ad Council want people to know it.

Type 2 diabetes is one of the chronic health conditions that poses a significant risk for complications to those who contract COVID-19. A recent studyexternal icon showed type 2 diabetes is one of the top comorbidities associated with COVID-19 severity and deaths.[1]

Thats why the AMA, the CDC, and the Ad council have launched a series of new public service announcements (PSAs) taking a serious look at prediabetes  a condition that if left unchecked often leads to type 2 diabetes.

As part of the Do I Have Prediabetes?external icon campaign, the new Change the Outcome PSAs, created pro bono by creative agencies Grey and Wordsworth+Booth, raise awareness that prediabetes shouldnt be taken lightly and that it can be reversed. The Change the Outcome campaign includes a complementary suite of new print, radio, out-of-home, and digital banner assets that compare the risk of prediabetes to much less likely events.

Life sometimes grants us an opportunity to make small changes that can have profound effects on the trajectory of our health and our lives, said Christopher Holliday, PhD, MPH, director of the Division of Diabetes Translation at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diabetes affects every part of the body and can lead to a cascade of negative health outcomes, significantly impacting a persons quality of life. A prediabetes diagnosis sounds the alarm, letting people know that they need to change course and take the opportunity to prevent this devastating disease before its too late.

In the United States, some 88 million Americans  more than 1 in 3  are living with prediabetes, and more than 84% dont even know they have it. Prediabetes can increase a persons risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Research shows that once people are made aware of their condition, they are more likely to make the necessary long-term lifestyle changes, such as eating healthier, managing weight, and being active, that can help prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.

Raising awareness of prediabetes and stressing the importance of people knowing their risk is critical, particularly now as the COVID-19 pandemic amplifies the negative health risks associated with chronic health conditions, said AMA President Gerald E. Harmon, MD. Through our latest campaign, we aim to help more of the millions of Americans living with prediabetes find out whether they have the condition. Anyone who learns through the online test that they may be at risk for prediabetes should consult their physician right away to confirm a prediabetes diagnosis and learn how making lifestyle changes can help them keep type 2 diabetes at bay.

The new multiplatform communications campaign shows how prediabetes can be reversed through individual lifestyle changes and encourages audiences to visit DoIHavePrediabetes.orgexternal icon  PodriaTenerPrediabetes.orgexternal icon in Spanish  where they can take a one-minute risk testexternal icon to determine if they are at risk for prediabetes. If someone receives a high-risk score, the campaign encourages them to speak with their doctor to first confirm a diagnosis of prediabetes, then enroll in CDCs National Diabetes Prevention Program.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this new phase of our type 2 diabetes awareness work takes a more serious tone than past efforts to emphasize the importance of an early prediabetes diagnosis, said Heidi Arthur, chief campaign development officer at the Ad Council. Our aim remains the same as we equip people with the tools to both find out where they stand and take steps towards a healthier lifestyle.

The campaign website also features lifestyle tips and links to CDCs National Diabetes Prevention Program, which connects visitors to a registry of more than 1,700 in-person and online CDC-recognized programs across the country. Consistent with the Ad Councils model, all media will run entirely in donated time and space.

Its very rewarding to be involved in a campaign like this. The need to remind people that they have the power to change the outcome of their prediabetes is crucial, said Tim Jones, CCO of Pharma at Grey. We hope that this work connects with the right people to bring about this change in a meaningful and sustained way.

In life, we dont often get the chance to change outcomes, but with prediabetes you can, said Tony Mennuto, president, Wordsworth+Booth. Our audio campaign zeros in on that important and positive distinction.

The AMA and CDC are working with their local offices, affiliates, and partners to promote and activate the campaign in their communities, with evidence-based materials to aid physicians and other health care providers in the screening, diagnosis, and treatment process. Since the award-winning campaign launched in January 2016, 3.7 million people have learned their risk for prediabetes through the online risk assessment and risk test videos.

###

American Medical Association

The American Medical Association (AMA) is the physicians powerful ally in patient care. As the only medical association that convenes 190+ state and specialty medical societies and other critical stakeholders, the AMA represents physicians with a unified voice to all key players in health care. The AMA leverages its strength by removing the obstacles that interfere with patient care, leading the charge to prevent chronic disease and confront public health crises, and driving the future of medicine to tackle the biggest challenges in health care. For more information, visit ama-assn.orgexternal icon.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works 24/7 protecting Americas health, safety and security. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are curable or preventable, chronic, or acute, or from human activity or deliberate attack, CDC responds to Americas most pressing health threats.

This project is supported by CDC of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award in the amount of $1,337,549, which constituted 52% of the total funding. The other 48% ($1,234,680 in funds) was provided by the American Medical Association. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, CDC/HHS or the U.S. Government.

The Ad Council

The Ad Council is where creativity and causes converge. The non-profit organization brings together the most creative minds in advertising, media, technology, and marketing to address many of the nations most important causes. The Ad Council has created many of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history. The organizations innovative social good campaigns raise awareness, inspire action, and save lives.

To learn more, visit AdCouncil.orgexternal icon, follow the Ad Councils communities on Facebook and Twitter and view the creative on YouTube.

Grey

Grey, the global communications network, is part of AKQA Group. Its parent company is WPP (NYSE: WPPexternal icon). Under the banner of Grey Famously Effective Since 1917 the agency serves a blue-chip roster of many of the worlds best-known companies: Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, Kelloggs, Pfizer, Canon, MassMutual, Nestle, Google, Volvo, and Applebees. In recent years, Grey has been named ADWEEKS Global Agency of the Year twice; ADVERTISING AGEs Agency of the Year and CAMPAIGN magazines Global Network of the Year in recognition of its creative and business performance (www.grey.comexternal icon).

Wordsworth+Booth

Wordsworth+Booth is a full-service creative agency that combines the engagement power of the entertainment industry with the strategic smarts of advertising. They specialize in audio advertising, podcasting, audio branding, and making voice apps. www.wordsworthandbooth.comexternal icon

[1] Diabetes Care: COVID-19 Severity Is Tripled in the Diabetes Community: A Prospective Analysis of the Pandemics Impact in Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2337/dc20-2260external icon
Country Reports

Angola. Details of the unexpected discovery of dracunculiasis in three humans during 20182020 with no history of foreign travel and one dog in 2019 have been described previously (4). Despite ongoing active surveillance in 54 communities and routine integrated case searches (e.g., during National Immunization Days), no case or infected dog was detected from January 2021 through June 2021. Angola offers a US$450 equivalent reward for reporting an infected human or animal. Provisional DNA analysis of Angolas Guinea worm specimens yielded no clear link to another D. medinensis population.

Chad. Chad reported 12 cases in 10 villages in 2020. During the first half of 2021, Chad reported four cases in humans, 56% fewer cases than the nine reported during JanuaryJune 2020.

During 2020, Chad reported 1,508 dog and 63 cat infections, compared with 1,935 dog and 47 cat infections in 2019 (Table 1). During JanuaryJune 2021, 60% fewer infected dogs (428) and 48% fewer infected cats (13) were reported than during the same period of 2020 (1,081 dogs and 25 cats). Transmission of D. medinensis to humans and animals is hypothesized to occur from eating inadequately cooked fish, other aquatic transport, or paratenic hosts (hosts in which the larval parasite does not develop) (7). The Carter Center is helping Chads Ministry of Health implement active village-based surveillance for animal and human infections in 2,336 at-risk villages as of June 2021, an increase of four villages since December 2020 (Table 3). Since June 2017, approximately 81% of households sampled monthly in communities at risk were burying fish entrails; 83% and 81% of infected dogs were tethered (contained) in 2020 and during JanuaryJune 2021, respectively. Water treatment with temephos reached 75% of 408 villages with dog or human infections by December 2020 and 87% of 182 villages by June 2021. In December 2020, 49% of villages reporting infected dogs or humans had at least one source of copepod-free drinking water.

In areas under surveillance in Chad, 83% of residents surveyed in 2020 knew of the cash rewards for reporting human or animal infections; 92% of those surveyed in JanuaryJune 2021 knew of the rewards. Surveillance generated 61,341 reports about possible human or dog infections during JanuaryJune 2021 compared with 50,893 during the same period in 2020.

Cameroon. Cameroon reported one case, five infected dogs, and one infected cat in 2020 in villages less than 3 miles (5 km) from the Chad-Cameroon border that were likely infected in Chad, because the affected villages included families living on both sides of the border; Cameroon reported no infected humans or animals through June 2021.

Ethiopia. Ethiopia reported 11 cases in 2020, and one case during JanuaryJune 2021. The 2020 cases were in villagers exposed to a shared source of contaminated drinking water near Duli village in Gambella Region. During 2020, Ethiopia reported three infected dogs, eight cats, and four baboons, all in Gog district of Gambella Region, compared with two infected dogs and six baboons in 2019. During JanuaryJune 2021, Ethiopia reported one infected dog in Gog, compared with one infected dog and two baboons, also in Gog, during JanuaryJune 2020. Since 2017, The Carter Center has supported Ethiopias public health and wildlife authorities in a baboon and dog epidemiology project (2).

Since 2021, the Ethiopia Dracunculiasis Eradication Program has had 198 villages under active surveillance. The program applies temephos monthly to all water sources known to have been used by humans in the at-risk area of Gog, and, since April 2018, it has supported villager-initiated constant tethering of approximately 1,914 dogs and cats in villages where most infected animals were detected in recent years to prevent their exposure to water sources in adjacent forests where transmission apparently occurs (2). In 2018, Ethiopia increased rewards for reporting human dracunculiasis cases to US$360 equivalent and for reporting and tethering infected animals to US$40. In 2020, 92% of persons surveyed in active surveillance areas knew of the rewards; in JanuaryMay 2021, 96% were aware.

Mali. Mali reported one case in a human in 2020 after 4 consecutive years of zero cases; no cases in humans were reported during JanuaryJune 2021 compared with one during the same period in 2020. During 2020, nine infected dogs were reported, compared with eight dogs and one cat in 2019. During the first half of 2021, Mali reported two infected dogs, compared with no infected animals during JanuaryJune 2020. Six infected dogs identified in 2020 were detected in Segou Region; three were detected in adjacent Djenne district of Mopti Region. Segou Region is accessible to the program, but the dogs sold in Segou were bred and apparently became infected in areas of Mopti Region that have remained inaccessible since 2012. The two infected dogs identified during JanuaryJune 2021 were detected in Segou Region. In 2020, Mali had 2,699 villages under active surveillance. The reward for reporting a case in a human was US$340 equivalent and US$20 equivalent for reporting and tethering an infected animal. In areas under active surveillance in 2020, 89% of persons queried knew of the rewards for reporting an infected person or animal; 95% of persons queried in JanuaryMay 2021 were aware.

South Sudan. South Sudan reported one case in a human in the latter half of 2020, compared with four in 2019, and none during JanuaryJune 2021. Only one infected animal has been reported (a dog in the same household as an infected person in 2015). Extreme population mobility of cattle herders and others is a special challenge in addition to sporadic insecurity. By December 2020, South Sudans GWEP had 851 villages under active surveillance. The reward for reporting a case of dracunculiasis is approximately US$280 equivalent (US$26 for animals). A 2020 survey of residents found 93% of respondents knew of the reward for reporting an infected person.
The U.S. Departments of Education and Treasury are hosting a two-part webinar series that may be of interest to school nutrition professionals and other local educational agency (LEA) staff.

Part two of the webinar series  Using American Rescue Plan Funds and Other Federal Supports to Address State and Local Teacher and School Staff Labor Shortages  will be held on Thursday, October 28, 2021, from 1 to 2 p.m. The October 28, 2021, webinar will focus on staff shortages, such as school bus drivers and school nutrition professionals/food service workers.

Schools and LEAs across the nation are facing challenges in filling these critical positions in schools. The purpose of these webinars is to discuss the underlying causes of these shortages and share effective practices happening at the state and local levels and how federal resources, including those under the American Rescue Plans Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ARP ESSER) and the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF), can be used to support and sustain these efforts.

Registration

In order to join the entire webinar series, please register for the session.

Webinar: Staff Shortages (such as school bus drivers and school nutrition professionals)

Date and Time: Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021, 4 p.m. Eastern Time

Register for the Labor Shortages Webinar Series Part 2 webinar

After registering, you will receive a confirmation message containing information about joining the webinar.

Contact Information

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact Tria Stallings with the Department of Education at tria.stallings@ed.gov.

Questions: Nutrition Services Division | 800-952-5609

Last Reviewed: Monday, November 1, 2021
Vicat posts 9M21 consolidated sales up 4% YoY

ICR Newsroom By 04 November 2021

Vicat reported consolidated sales in the third quarter of 2021 of EUR794m, up 4.2 per cent YoY on a reported basis and up 19.7 percent at constant scope and exchange rates when compared with the 3Q20.



This performance confirms the strength of the Groups business trends in a quarter when the basis of comparison was highly unfavourable in France, the Americas and India. Last year, activity in the third quarter of 2020 was boosted by a catch-up in these regions after the pandemic had taken a heavy toll in the first six months of 2020. Against this backdrop, selling prices moved significantly higher in the third quarter of 2021, partly offsetting higher energy costs during the period, said the company in a statement.



January-September 2021

The company also posted consolidated sales of EUR2354m in the nine months ended 30 September 2021, representing an increase of 19.7 per cent at constant scope and exchange rates when compared with the 9M20.



The increase on a reported basis reflects a negative currency effect of -4.9 per cent due to the appreciation of the euro against all other currencies to which the group has exposure, a small negative scope effect as a result of the sale of Creabeton in Switzerland (partly offset by a concrete and aggregates acquisition in France, and organic growth of 19.7 per cent. In addition, the hike in selling prices fully offset the impact of higher energy costs.



Sales in France increased by 15.5 per cent on a reported basis (+14.8 per cent at constant scope and exchange rates) to EUR824m, while in the rest of Europe sales in the 9M21 reached EUR301m, down 4.8 per cent on a reported basis but up 4.5 per cent at constant scope and exchange rates. In the Americas 9M sales increased by 6.2 and 14.6 per cent, respectively, to EUR500m. In Asia sales in the 9M21 increased to EUR320m, up 30.6 and 39 per cent, respectively while in Africa 9M21 sales rose by around 22.3 per cent YoY to EUR242m. In the Mediterranean sales reached EUR166m, up 36.3 and 64.2 per cent, respectively.



Vicats performance in the nine months to 30 September reflects the dynamism of its markets amid the gradual recovery from the pandemic. The Group records solid growth when compared to the same period of 2020, but also compared to 2019 (+14.9 per cent at reported rates). Business trends in the third quarter held up at a strong level, with the Groups sales posting another increase despite an unfavourable basis of comparison in France, the Americas and India. Against this backdrop, the Group continues to take financial and industrial measures to achieve its operational, environmental and social objectives, said Vicat Chairman and CEO, Guy Sidos.

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It was during my Morning Readings that I learned about The If Only River, and it is not lost on me that Thanksgiving Day is now just three weeks away. Almost immediately I realized the story on my computer screen was written by Max Lucado, one of my favorite writers whose sub-specialty is writing books for people who dont read books. He has sold over 120 million of them because of that.

His primary specialty is winning peoples hearts for Jesus Christ and, even it that blows out your candle, the greatest virtue is gratitude and maybe this story will help prepare our hearts for three weeks from today 

* * *

THE SECRET TO THE GOOD LIFE

By Max Lucado

The widest river in the world is not the Mississippi, Amazon, or Nile. The widest river on earth is a body of water called If Only.

Throngs of people stand on its banks and cast longing eyes over the waters. They long to cross but cant seem to find the ferry. They are convinced the If Only River separates them from the good life.

If only I were thinner, Id have the good life.

If only I were richer, Id have the good life.

If only the kids would come. If only the kids were gone. If only I could leave home, move home, get married, get divorced.

If only my skin were clear of pimples, my calendar free of people, my profession immune to layoffs, then I would have the good life.

THE IF ONLY RIVER

This Thanksgiving, are you standing on its shore? Does it seem that the good life is always one if only away? One purchase away? One promotion away? One election, transition, or romance away?

If so, then weve traced your anxiety back to one of its sources. Youre in a hurry to cross the river and worried that you never will. Consequently, you work long hours, borrow more money, take on new projects, and pile on more responsibilities. Stress. Debt. Short nights. Long days. All part of the ticket cost to the land of the good life, right?

Not exactly, opined the Apostle Paul. The good life begins, not when circumstances change, but when our attitude toward them does. Look again at his antidote for anxiety. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6).

Paul embedded two essential words into the verse that deserve special attention: with thanksgiving. Sprinkled among the phrases of Help me Please give me Wont you show me are two wonderful words Thank you.

Gratitude is a mindful awareness of the benefits of life. It is the greatest of virtues. Studies have linked the emotion with a variety of positive effects. Grateful people tend to be more empathetic and forgiving of others. People who keep a gratitude journal are more likely to have a positive outlook on life. Grateful individuals demonstrate less envy, materialism and self-comparison. Thankfulness improves self-esteem, enhances relationships, quality of sleep, and longevity.[1]

If it came in pill form, gratitude would be deemed the miracle cure. Its no wonder, then, that, Gods anxiety therapy includes a large, delightful dollop of gratitude.

Gratitude leads us off the river bank of if only and escorts us into the fertile valley of already. The anxious heart says, Lord, if only I had this, that, or the other, Id be ok. The grateful heart says, Oh, look! Youve already given me this, that, and the other. Thank you, God.

On Thanksgiving, as you gather around a table with friends and family, instead of looking at what you dont have, look at your blessings.

Do you see any friends? Family? Do you see any grace from God? Love of God? Do you see any gifts? Abilities or talents? Skills?

As you look at your blessings, take note of what happens. Anxiety grabs his bags and slips out the back door. Worry refuses to share the heart with gratitude. One heartfelt thank you will suck the oxygen out of worrys world. So say it often. Focus more on what you do have and less on what you dont.

Years ago I lived on a houseboat that was docked on the Miami River in Miami, Florida. The level of the river would rise and fall with the tide. It rocked back and forth with the river traffic. But though the level changed and the boat rocked, it never drifted. Why? Because the boat was securely anchored.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Anchor your heart to the character of God. Your boat will rock. Moods will come and go. Situations will fluctuate and change. But will you be left adrift on the Atlantic of despair? No, for you have found a contentment that endures the storm.

No more if only. It is the petri dish in which anxiety thrives. Replace your if only with already. Look what you already have. Treat each anxious thought with a grateful one and prepare yourself for a new day of joy.

-- Max Lucado

* * *

GRATITUDE turns into what we have enough.

* * The If Only River

By Roy Exum

It was during my Morning Readings that I learned about The If Only River, and it is not lost on me that Thanksgiving Day is now just three weeks away. Almost immediately I realized the story on my computer screen was written by Max Lucado, one of my favorite writers whose sub-specialty is writing books for people who dont read books: he has sold over 120 million of them because of that.

His primary specialty is winning peoples hearts for Jesus Christ and even it that blows out your candle, the greatest virtue is gratitude and maybe this story will help prepare our hearts for three weeks from today 

* * *

THE SECRET TO THE GOOD LIFE

By Max Lucado

The widest river in the world is not the Mississippi, Amazon, or Nile. The widest river on earth is a body of water called If Only.

Throngs of people stand on its banks and cast longing eyes over the waters. They long to cross but cant seem to find the ferry. They are convinced the If Only River separates them from the good life.

If only I were thinner, Id have the good life.

If only I were richer, Id have the good life.

If only the kids would come. If only the kids were gone. If only I could leave home, move home, get married, get divorced.

If only my skin were clear of pimples, my calendar free of people, my profession immune to layoffs, then I would have the good life.

THE IF ONLY RIVER

This Thanksgiving, are you standing on its shore? Does it seem that the good life is always one if only away? One purchase away? One promotion away? One election, transition, or romance away?

If so, then weve traced your anxiety back to one of its sources. Youre in a hurry to cross the river and worried that you never will. Consequently, you work long hours, borrow more money, take on new projects, and pile on more responsibilities. Stress. Debt. Short nights. Long days. All part of the ticket cost to the land of the good life, right?

Not exactly, opined the Apostle Paul. The good life begins, not when circumstances change, but when our attitude toward them does. Look again at his antidote for anxiety. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6).

Paul embedded two essential words into the verse that deserve special attention: with thanksgiving. Sprinkled among the phrases of Help me Please give me Wont you show me are two wonderful words Thank you.

Gratitude is a mindful awareness of the benefits of life. It is the greatest of virtues. Studies have linked the emotion with a variety of positive effects. Grateful people tend to be more empathetic and forgiving of others. People who keep a gratitude journal are more likely to have a positive outlook on life. Grateful individuals demonstrate less envy, materialism and self-comparison. Thankfulness improves self-esteem, enhances relationships, quality of sleep, and longevity.[1]

If it came in pill form, gratitude would be deemed the miracle cure. Its no wonder, then, that, Gods anxiety therapy includes a large, delightful dollop of gratitude.

Gratitude leads us off the river bank of if only and escorts us into the fertile valley of already. The anxious heart says, Lord, if only I had this, that, or the other, Id be ok. The grateful heart says, Oh, look! Youve already given me this, that, and the other. Thank you, God.

On Thanksgiving, as you gather around a table with friends and family, instead of looking at what you dont have, look at your blessings.

Do you see any friends? Family? Do you see any grace from God? Love of God? Do you see any gifts? Abilities or talents? Skills?

As you look at your blessings, take note of what happens. Anxiety grabs his bags and slips out the back door. Worry refuses to share the heart with gratitude. One heartfelt thank you will suck the oxygen out of worrys world. So say it often. Focus more on what you do have and less on what you dont.

Years ago I lived on a houseboat that was docked on the Miami River in Miami, Florida. The level of the river would rise and fall with the tide. It rocked back and forth with the river traffic. But though the level changed and the boat rocked, it never drifted. Why? Because the boat was securely anchored.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Anchor your heart to the character of God. Your boat will rock. Moods will come and go. Situations will fluctuate and change. But will you be left adrift on the Atlantic of despair? No, for you have found a contentment that endures the storm.

No more if only. It is the petri dish in which anxiety thrives. Replace your if only with already. Look what you already have. Treat each anxious thought with a grateful one and prepare yourself for a new day of joy.

-- Max Lucado

* * *

WHO IS MAX LUCADO?

Max Lucado is a pastor, speaker, and best-selling author who, in his own words, writes books for people who dont read books. He serves the people of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, and his message is for the hurting, the guilty, the lonely, and the discouraged: God loves you; let him.

As a writer, Max is known for combining poetic storytelling and homespun humor with the heart of a pastor. All of his trade books began as sermon series at Oak Hills Church, and his sermons all begin with Max asking himself this question: What can I say on Sunday that will still matter on Monday? Hes been dubbed Americas Pastor by Christianity Today, and The Best Preacher in America by Readers Digest.

Maxs books have sold more than 120 million copies in 54 languages worldwide. He published On the Anvil, his first trade book, in 1985. His 42nd trade book, You Are Never Alone: Trust in the Miracle of Gods Presence and Power, was released on September 14, 2020. Maxs books regularly appear on bestseller lists, including The New York Times. His writing has also been featured in Bible studies, Bible commentaries, songs, greeting cards, and even plush toys.

Maxs love for everyday people began during his childhood in the small town of Andrews, Texas. His father was an oilfield mechanic, his mother was a nurse, and Max spent a lot of his time either running from or running after his brother, Dee. Max grew rebellious in his teenage years, and after one specific drunken night, he began to wonder if there was more to life than parties and chasing girls. He now believes that if Jesus hadnt found him and changed his heart, alcoholism would have been in his future.

After high school, Max attended Abilene Christian University and left with two degrees and a heart for following Jesus and helping others learn about him, too. He moved to Miami, Florida, and took a position as an associate pastor at a small church. This is where Max started writing about Jesus for the first time in the churchs monthly newsletter, and its where he developed his passion for people and ministry.

* * *

Gratitude tuns what we have into enough.

- - -

Max Lucados books are widely sold on Amazon (Roy Exums favorite is Traveling Light.) More information can be found at http://maxlucado.com

royexum@aol.com

November 3, 2021

WHO IS MAX LUCADO?

Max Lucado is a pastor, speaker, and best-selling author who, in his own words, writes books for people who dont read books. He serves the people of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, and his message is for the hurting, the guilty, the lonely, and the discouraged: God loves you; let him.

As a writer, Max is known for combining poetic storytelling and homespun humor with the heart of a pastor. All of his trade books began as sermon series at Oak Hills Church, and his sermons all begin with Max asking himself this question: What can I say on Sunday that will still matter on Monday? Hes been dubbed Americas Pastor by Christianity Today, and The Best Preacher in America by Readers Digest.

Maxs books have sold more than 120 million copies in 54 languages worldwide. He published On the Anvil, his first trade book, in 1985. His 42nd trade book, You Are Never Alone: Trust in the Miracle of Gods Presence and Power, was released on September 14, 2020. Maxs books regularly appear on bestseller lists, including The New York Times. His writing has also been featured in Bible studies, Bible commentaries, songs, greeting cards, and even plush toys.

Maxs love for everyday people began during his childhood in the small town of Andrews, Texas. His father was an oilfield mechanic, his mother was a nurse, and Max spent a lot of his time either running from or running after his brother, Dee. Max grew rebellious in his teenage years, and after one specific drunken night, he began to wonder if there was more to life than parties and chasing girls. He now believes that if Jesus hadnt found him and changed his heart, alcoholism would have been in his future.

After high school, Max attended Abilene Christian University and left with two degrees and a heart for following Jesus and helping others learn about him, too. He moved to Miami, Florida, and took a position as an associate pastor at a small church. This is where Max started writing about Jesus for the first time in the churchs monthly newsletter, and its where he developed his passion for people and ministry.

- - -

Max Lucados books are widely sold on Amazon (Roy Exums favorite is Traveling Light.) More information can be found at http://maxlucado.com

royexum@aol.com
A $10,000 Small Business Grant has been awarded to Ready2hangart.com, which is located on Calhoun Avenue.

Jermaine Freeman, city economic director administrator, said the funds come through the city Industrial Development Board.

To qualify for the grant, the small business must have hired at least five new full-time employees in the past 18 months.

The firm is headed by Juliana and Josh Roslin.

Company officials said, "Juliana Roslins background in the various facets of the fine art world and Josh Roslins in manufacturing and sourcing made for a perfect match. Joining their passion, drive, and expertise, they collectively and successfully forged the solution to make Decorating Simplified!" Established in 2013, Ready2HangArt came to life with a vision of innovating the wall decor market while supporting local artists.

To this day, the companys mission is to design and craft art locally, employ environmentally conscious practices and give back to the community."

Mr. Freeman said the Roslins came to Chattanooga from the Palm Beach area of South Florida.
Boyd Patterson, candidate for Division III Criminal Court judge, has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, Rock City Lodge #22.

Mr. Patterson said he has worked closely with Hamilton County Law Enforcement throughout his 20 years of public service, "earning their mutual trust and respect. And now, the Prosecutor-turned-Public Defender is ready to bring his dual-sided experience to the bench with local law enforcement in his corner."

The group said, "As police officers and sheriff deputies, the members of F.O.P. Rock City Lodge #22, both active and retired, have known and worked with attorney Boyd Patterson for over 20 years. During this time, he has proven himself to be fair and trustworthy.

"Mr. Pattersons long track record of working to seek justice for victims and to enforce the laws of Hamilton County and the State of Tennessee have earned him respect from the law enforcement community. He is known and respected for his good character, ethical conduct, and his exemplary work ethic.

"It is with great pleasure that the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, Rock City Lodge #22, has voted to endorse Attorney Boyd Patterson for the 2022 election of Criminal Court Judge in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Sincerely, F.O.P. Rock City Lodge #22.

Mr. Patterson is a candidate to serve Hamilton County as the next Division III Criminal Court Judge. The seat is currently held by Judge Don W. Poole who has announced his retirement. Primary voting is set for May 3, 2022.

I am honored to receive the endorsement of law enforcement officers, with whom I have worked for nearly 20 years. Respect for the law includes respect for law enforcement and their support highlights my commitment to apply the law fairly to all parties, Mr. Patterson said.

Boyd Patterson built his career around protecting our youth, defending those less fortunate, and combating gang crime from every angle. He is more than qualified and ready to serve as Hamilton Countys next Criminal Court Judge.

Serving as treasurer for the Committee to Elect Boyd Patterson is Tom Decosimo. Learn more about Boyds campaign at BoydPatterson.com.
Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III on Thursday filed a lawsuit, joined by the attorneys general of Ohio and Kentucky, challenging the Biden Administrations COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, asserts that the Administrations mandatory vaccination requirement is unlawful and unconstitutional.

Unless we intervene, federal contractors in Tennessee will be forced to make sense of the mandates many inconsistencies that require their entire workforce be vaccinated or face potential blacklisting and loss of future federal contracts, said General Slatery. That is simply unworkable and this lawsuit seeks to stop it.

In the lawsuit, the attorneys general outline the harm the mandate will cause for their respective states and citizens.

Nationwide, the Department of Labor reports that federal contractors account for approximately one-fifth of the countrys entire labor force. The coalition of attorneys general argue that the potential workforce loss among federal contractors presents a significant concern for the economies of their states and could exacerbate ongoing supply chain issues.

The attorneys general further argue that the Biden Administrations vaccine mandate violates state sovereignty by preventing the states from exercising their police power to establish laws regarding workforce vaccination policies.

The attorneys general also contend that the mandate is unconstitutional because Congress did not give the President authority to issue such a broad mandate. The coalition writes that the imposed mandates are unconstitutional because Congress did not articulate a clear principle by legislative act that directs the Executive to take sweeping action that infringes on state and individual rights.



To read the complaint, click here: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/pr/2021/pr21-42-complaint.pdf
Tennessee Arts Collective announced Thursday Women in History, From Then to Now, is seeking pre-professional/ professional artists to apply before Nov. 22 for a new collaborative visual and performing arts showcase.

Ive always felt compelled to create an organization that provides our community an accessible platform to experience the arts, said Stacey Perkinson, co-founder of Tennessee Arts Collective. In our first year Im excited to offer new programs that will reach across all demographics in Chattanooga.

This inaugural showcase, premiering March 2022, is seeking applications for artists to present work that is representative of the impact that a woman/women have made on our culture or community in honor of Womens History Month. Tennessee Arts Collective is accepting applications in the Visual Art (2D, 3D, project installation, fashion) Media (film, photography), and Performance (dance, music, instrumental, vocal, spoken word, theatre) genres.

This announcement comes as one of the first initiatives of Tennessee Arts Collective, the newest non-profit organization to launch in Chattanooga. Focusing on providing more access for artists to present work, as well as access for more to experience visual and performing art in non traditional fashion, they are committed to making art more inclusive to the community and eager to takeoff in their inaugural season, said officials.

To learn more about Women in History, From Then to Now, click here.




BlueCross sent a memo to its employees on Thursday informing that all employees would be required to be vaccinated. The company had said earlier that the vaccine requirement would only apply to those "whose job roles involve in-person contact with BlueCross members, business partners and community members, as well as all vice-presidents and above."

The new requirement will affect 1,800 employees. The first deadline is Dec. 8 for most employees, and Feb. 1 for the rest.

The memo said:

"As a mission-driven health plan, our values are a driving force behind the decisions we make - from the kinds of coverage we offer to the way we listen and respond to employees.

"We've demonstrated those values in our approach to educating employees about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines as they became available. Since March, we've published dozens of articles and videos, and hosted open Q&A sessions with our medical experts - all with the goal of sharing trustworthy information and alleviating concerns. We also offered a $200 incentive, which we'll be reinstating soon.

"Three months ago, we made the difficult decision to require vaccination for around 900 employees in leadership positions and roles that require in-person contact with members, including our state's most vulnerable, and with people outside the company. We still believe this was the right call to balance our commitments to employees, members and communities alike.

"Now, as a federal contractor, we will be required to comply with President Biden's executive order to ensure our employees are vaccinated against COVID-19. As you may know, we serve the Federal Employee Program as well as Medicare and Medicaid. - and those lines of business account for half our annual income.

"So, we will require COVID-19 vaccination for all BlueCross employees moving forward.

"We are respectful of the state of Tennessee's authority on vaccine requirements and appreciate they have allowed exceptions for federal contracts like BlueCross. We've notified the state comptroller's office of our intent to comply with the federal rules.

"In order to minimize service disruptions, we will be implementing this all-employee requirement in two groups. The majority will be required to show proof of vaccination by Dec. 8, and the second group will be required by Feb. 1, 2022.

"We are working with the Human Resources team to plan for direct communication with these groups - approximately 1,800 employees - and their managers ahead of each deadline. Fortunately all three COVID-19 vaccines are widely available at retailers across the state. And we expect to host additional on-site vaccine clinics to assist employees who choose to get vaccinated.

"Our 'Drive to 75' campaign over the past year has helped put us in a strong position here, with 72% of our workforce already vaccinated.

"We respect the strong beliefs many employees hold around this issue, and we'll continue to offer education and support throughout the difficult transition. One step in that direction is to reinstate our $200 incentive for submitting proof of vaccination. It will be available starting Nov. 10 for any vaccination received after the original incentive deadline.

"We will once again allow employees to request medical and religious accommodations, but the federal guidance does not allow a testing opt out.

"And as a reminder, many employees who requested accommodations from our first vaccine requirement reached the end of their accommodation period at the end of business yesterday, Nov. 3. Unfortunately 22 team members have left their positions with BlueCross."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is giving employers with more than 100 employees a Jan. 4 deadline to comply with President Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate and threatening thousands of dollars in fines for defiant businesses, according to a fact sheet released by the White House Thursday.

The OSHA rule is expected to be immediately challenged in court by Republican states and some business groups.

Separate from OSHA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is issuing a rule to require health care workers in facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid be fully vaccinated. The CMS rule will also go into effect Jan. 4 and will cover more than 17 million workers at approximately 76,000 health care facilities nationwide.

Unlike the OSHA rule, the CMS rule affecting health care workers does not allow for a testing alternative to vaccination. The CMS rule does allow for medical and religious exemptions.
First of all I want you to know that this is way outside my comfort zone and I have tried to talk myself out of sending this, however, it is becoming very clear that if more people like myself dont wake up and have some courage we are going to regret it for the rest of our lives. I firmly believe that God is completely in control but He frequently uses people to accomplish His purposes. So, to that end I am sending this with the hope that rational thought returns to the discussion about the virus and the vaccines that are being mandated.

I was informed this morning by people I love that BlueCross was about to force all of its employees to be vaccinated. This despite the large number of employees that work from home and could not possibly impact customers or other employees. I have several loved ones who work for BCBST and I am incredibly disappointed in this news given the relatively low amount of long term data that is available for these vaccines. In fact, there is a growing amount of data indicating that there have been some very severe vaccine injuries occurring. My guess is, and I hope that I am wrong, that none of you have personally taken serious time to evaluate if there is anything to be concerned about and potentially what accommodations should be given to those who end up with a vaccine injury as a result of this policy. Having worked in corporate America my entire life I fully understand how these types of decisions are made and it is frequently quite despicable.

More than likely, to protect yourselves from any personal responsibility, accountability or mental anguish you have established either a committee or have convened a group of people to make a recommendation which you can simply adopt and sign off on. Then when things go sideways the excuse is, what was I supposed to do, I listened to the experts or this is what we as a group decided. It is amazing how many people end up failing up after such a decision. While that kind of low-resolution thinking may work for many, I am here to emphasize that you have a moral and ethical responsibility to be as informed as possible.

I love the wording in the email that went out . we have given you trustworthy information. Can I ask, who is the arbiter of trustworthy? Most of the doctors I have watched who are concerned about these vaccines and the rapid administration are not quacks and in fact just the opposite. They seem to be trying to get real data and get to the bottom of what is going on with these vaccines. I would hope that you are at least somewhat educated on the large number of adverse cases that have resulted in long term injuries, hospitalizations, as well as death. I realize that statistically speaking it may be a relatively small percentage but that remains to be seen given the difficulty there is with submitting VAERS reports and the potential under reporting taking place there. Having studied this a bit it is starting to look like these adverse effects are at least partially due to doctors who are not educated on what to do when they see patients with symptoms which may have arisen due to an allergic reaction or quite possibly due to the vaccine being administered improperly.

You may say to yourself, well if it is not administered properly then that is not my fault. Good luck sleeping with that excuse! You should at least make your employees aware that they need to be on the lookout for improper administration of the vaccine. IE Aspirating the injection to make sure you are not injecting it directly into the blood stream. If you find yourself one day testifying on the witness stand you need to be able to say, I at least looked at these resources and educated myself on what people were saying. You dont want to be that guy who says, well we talked about it or I got an email about it but I was relying on the experts to tell me what we should do.

It is about time corporations like BCBST, had some real leaders that take the time to look for themselves and take some personal responsibility for decisions. Dont be that person that simply chooses to create a situation where you can hide from your responsibility and blame someone else. Check out the data for yourself. It is not hard to do. VAERS has the data and if you really read through the cases you should end up asking yourself what is going on with these vaccines. If you are not capable of doing that then we have a larger problem and perhaps there should be another remedy for that. At the very least try to understand where the large number of people, who are waiting for more data, are coming from.

This is not propaganda, these are people trying to get information out so that other people at least know what to do when they have a reaction to the vaccine. Be a responsible leader for Gods sake. If you want to force a vaccine on a large number of employees, at least have the courage to tell them if they have issues where to go to get information and provide support for that.

If leaders in this country were serious about encouraging people to take this vaccine, they would remove the liability waivers and give people a way to sustain their lives if they are negatively impacted by the vaccine. If you are serious, why not tell your employees that if they are adversely impacted that their families will be taken care of and then make sure that they are. How about this, why not ask your actuaries to evaluate what that policy of taking care of impacted employees might cost BCBST and see what they say? That would be a good exercise assuming they are not afraid to tell you the truth about the potential cost.

I would not count on being able to avoid liability for this decision. If it gets in front of a jury of regular people in a civil trial, you never know what is going to happen. You better be praying that nobody has a severe reaction to this vaccine on your watch.

My prayer is that you get wisdom from God and re-evaluate your approach. These short deadlines you have to make decisions and policy changes like this when the virus is in decline should cause you to take pause and wonder... why?

Dan Collyer
When A Million Little Things Season 4 returns with episode 6, Six Months Later, viewers meet Regina Howards (Christina Moses) father, Ronald. Although viewers met Reginas mother, Shelly (Romy Rosemont), several times, fans have hardly heard about her father. Who plays Reginas father, and why is he suddenly a guest star in the A Million Little Things Season 4 cast?

Who plays Reginas father, Ronald, in A Million Little Things Season 4?

A Million Little Things: Mario Van Peebles | ABC/Darko Sikman

Mario Van Peebles portrays Reginas father, Ronald, in A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6. Before guest-starring in the ABC drama, viewers might recognize the 64-year-old actor from various film and TV roles. However, in recent years, Van Peebles spent more of his Hollywood career directing.

According to IMDb, Van Peebles portrayed Agent Randall Harrison in Damages from 2007 to 2009. He also played Samuel Woods in All My Children in 2008 and Marcus Adams in Rude Awakening in 2000 and 2001. Viewers might remember Van Peebles from his roles in Superstition, Hellcats, Nashville, Bloodline, and Deception.

Are Reginas father and mother divorced?

A Million Little Things viewers probably dont remember meeting Reginas father because he and Reginas mother Shelly divorced. Regina doesnt speak about her father often. One of the only times she mentioned her father, Ronald, was in the pilot episode. During the reception after Jon Dixons (Ron Livingston) funeral, Eddie Saville (David Giuntoli) wondered why Jon never asked them for help. Regina explained that discussing depression is still taboo for many people.

We Black, she recalls hearing from her fathers side of the family. They said, We dont talk about that. We got Jesus.

RELATED: Why Is Delilah Leaving A Million Little Things Season 4? Will She Ever Return From France?

Viewers also might recall that in A Million Little Things Season 1, Regina fights with her mother about her uncle. Regina reminds Shelly that her uncle molested her when she was 12-years-old. However, her mother did not believe her. She loved working at an Italian restaurant in Somerville, Massachusetts, throughout her teenage years because they often had family meals together. It helped her feel like she was a part of a real family. Going into A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6, viewers think Regina is not close to her father.

A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6: Drama with Regina

A Million Little Things: Christina Moses | ABC/Darko Sikman

RELATED: A Million Little Things Season 4 Premiere Recap, Family First and Burning Questions We Have After Episode 1

In episode 5, Regina went to Miami with Shanice Williamson (Nikiva Dionne) to cater the actors latest film. When Regina appears in A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6, shes at a restaurant with her father.

Rome experiences a curveball with his film, and Regina deals with the drama of her own, the ABC press release about the episode reads.

Viewers will recall that Regina offered to bring her new co-worker, Valerie (Andrea Navedo), from Crocodilz along to Miami. However, the woman lied on her Crocodilz application about where her cooking experience came from. She worked as a cook while she was in prison. Will the drama Regina faces have something to do with her friend, or is it the fact that her father mysteriously makes an appearance back in her life?

Find out when A Million Little Things Season 4 airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. EST on ABC.
In the A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6 recap of Six Months Later, several things changed in the tight-knit group of friends. Maggie Bloom (Allison Miller) suddenly has a new boyfriend, Camden (Ryan Hansen). Rome Howard (Romany Malco) might have a new publicist for his film, Cassandra (Azie Tesfai), but she seems a little too flirty. Plus, theres drama in Regina Howards (Christina Moses) life when her father, Ronald (Mario Van Peebles), visits her. The three new additions to the A Million Little Things Season 4 cast shake things up. Plus, Delilah Dixon (Stephanie Szostak) pushes to sell her familys home where Sophie Dixon (Lizzy Greene) lives.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6, Six Months Later.]

A Million Little Things: Azie Tesfai | ABC/Darko Sikman

A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6: Where is Delilah?

When A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6 opens, viewers finally get a reminder about Delilah. She called from France and wants Eddie Saville (David Giuntoli) to go check on Sophie since shes not answering her calls. Eddie finds Sophie hungover and the Dixon house a mess. He makes her a deal not to tell Delilah about Sophies party if she helps clean up the house before the realtor arrives.

Delilah was serious about hating the constant reminder of her dead husband, Jon Dixon (Ron Livingston), so shes selling their family home. Delilah and Danny Dixon (Chance Hurstfield) are still away in France. When the new family arrives to look at the house, Sophie reveals to Eddie how awful it makes her feel. Sophie also admits that MMI called her for an audition. Eddie agrees to help her prepare for the audition.

Gary runs into Darcy in A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6

Gary and Darcy (Floriana Lima) broke up in A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 4 because of what Gary did to Peter (Andrew Leeds). They havent seen each other in the last six months, but they unexpectedly run into each other at a bakery. Darcy rubs her pregnant belly and tells Gary that shes pregnant with her ex-husband, Stephens baby. The interaction is completely awkward. When hes leaving the bakery, Gary sees his very first car roll by and almost hit him.

Later, Gary comes across Benjamin Hernandezs information and tracks down the college student who now owns the car. He test drives the car and teaches the young kid all the weird things about the vehicle. Gary also spills his drama with Darcy to the stranger. When Gary offers to purchase the car from Benny, the young kid declines. Instead, the whole day encourages Gary to move on with his life and he throws away a photo of himself with Darcy.

Who is Maggies new boyfriend, Camden?

A Million Little Things: Ryan Hansen | ABC/Darko Sikman

At the end of A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 5, viewers should recall that Camden flirted with Maggie at work and took her phone number. Maggie reveals to Jane Goodman (Stephnie Weir) that the couple has been dating for two months, but he wont take her out to a restaurant. When she confronts him, Camden admits that his last girlfriend didnt like how much attention his fans took away from their time in public. Now, six months later, the couple is officially an item. They finally venture out in public and Maggie is the one who runs into a fan wanting a photo.

A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6: Rome gets served

While Rome and a viewer of his film, Cassandra, chat about his film over a croissant and coffee, Rome receives a court summons. Its from Paragon Plus about the private church screenings hes been holding. Cassandra is flirty the entire time and eventually gives Rome her number. She claims to have connections to help him out, but it seems suspicious. Luckily, as hes staring at the phone number that evening, Regina calls to tell him about her awful day, and he throws the number away. It looks like he doesnt have a new publicist after all.

Regina meets with her father, Ronald

A Million Little Things: Mario Van Peebles | ABC/Darko Sikman

In episode 5, Regina agreed to fly to Miami with Shanice Williamson (Nikiva Dionne) to provide the catering for the actors latest film. She took her friend, Valerie (Andrea Navedo), with her from Crocodilz. While there, she meets her father, Ronald, for lunch; however, he spends the entire hour talking about himself and his other daughter who is a dermatologist. Ronald promises to show up at Reginas set later, but he never makes it. Instead, she deals with drama with Valerie. Regina told the director and Shanice that Valerie was in prison. Valerie wants to move on from that life so she insists on quitting the catering job.

Who is stalking Maggie?

In the last few minutes of A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 6, Jane calls Maggie with some scary news. Apparently, Maggie received an abundance of fan mail from one specific person. The head of security worries that the person is stalking Maggie and shes in danger. The fan who she took a photo with was credited as Emma Leduc; however, its not clear whether that is who is stalking Maggie. It looks like viewers have to wait until A Million Little Things Season 4 Episode 7, Stay, on Nov. 17 to find out who it is.

According to IMDb, A Million Little Things Season 4 airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on ABC and is available for streaming the next day on Hulu.
There have been several Dune adaptations. And in fact, one Dune movie is famous for not being made. Rebecca Ferguson stars in Denis Villeneuves Dune adaptation. And in a recent interview, she shared how she feels about Villeneuves movie compared to David Lynchs Dune from 1984.

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica Atreides in Dune | Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures

Denis Villeneuves Dune adaptation vs. David Lynchs Dune

Lynchs Dune cast featured Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides, Francesca Annis as Lady Jessica Atreides, Sean Young as Chani, Virginia Madsen as Princess Irulan (shell be introduced in Dune: Part Two), Sian Phillips as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Jurgen Prochnow as Duke Leto Atreides, Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, and more.

Ferguson almost turned down playing Lady Jessica (Charlotte Rampling did in the 1970s  more on that later). She feared Jessica was similar to her past roles. In Lynchs version, Jessica takes more of a back seat than she does in the book. But Villeneuve planned on making Jessicas character more similar to Frank Herberts book version. Ferguson didnt see Lynchs Dune before working on Villeneuves adaptation. But she told IndieWire the differences between Villeneuve and Lynchs Lady Jessicas is what stood out most to her once she did.

Ferguson said she was struck by how Villeneuve really changed it, and heightened, and activated [Lady Jessica] in comparison to Lynchs Dune. She also loved that Villeneuve placed equal importance on every subplot. She said:

Its a focus on it when he talks about it, because its a great conversation. But I didnt feel like we had genders on set. And that, for me, is true equality. He just, I think smartly, explained his story, and the story that he explained the heightened story of Jessica. There was no pushing anything [else] down. It was his story and how he believes that it needed to be told for the audience of today. Whether it was raising Jessica or the geopolitical environmental resource [subplot], its his version.

RELATED: Dune: The Pivotal Shot Rebecca Ferguson Pitched to Denis Villeneuve

How many Dune movies are there?

Villeneuve spent nearly two hours explaining his vision for Dune to Ferguson, who came in as a novice to Herberts story.

I got Denis love project handed to me for an hour and a half, she said. And I fell in love with his love for this world.

Lynchs adaptation was the first Dune movie to come out in theaters, but he wasnt the first to try. Alejandro Jodorowsky famously tried to make a Dune movie that wouldve been over 10 hours long. Jodorowskys Dune was in development in the 1970s. And he wanted Salvador Dali and Rampling in the cast as the emperor and Jessica. Rampling turned down the role because the director wanted extras defecating on camera in one scene. The Dune music was also going to be made by Pink Floyd. The movie never happened, but a documentary about its potential creation, Jodorowskys Dune, came out in 2013.

The Sci-Fi channel (now SyFy) made Dune TV mini series in 2000 and 2003. The first was called Frank Herberts Dune. The second was based on the other Dune books and called Children of Dune. James McAvoy played Leto Atreides II, Pauls son, in the 2003 series.

RELATED: Dune Gom Jabbar Scene Is One of the Films Most Important  Denis Villeneuve Explains Why

Dune: Part Two comes out in 2023

Villeneuve will direct Dune: Part Two, set for an exclusive theatrical release on Oct. 20, 2023. While its further down the line, he also hopes to make Dune Messiah.

Villeneuves Dune adaptation had a star-studded cast. And many of them will return for the sequel. But there are a lot of exciting characters still to be introduced in Villeneuves second installation of his sci-fi franchise. And if its anything like its predecessor, Dune: Part Two is going to be one incredible cinematic event.

Dune: Part One is now in theaters and on HBO Max.
Queen Elizabeth II is 95 years old, which means she has experienced a lot of remarkable events throughout her life. However, according to a royal expert, 2021 includes some of the most distressing events Her Majesty has ever faced. This year reportedly could be one of the worst years of her reign.

Queen Elizabeth II | Pool/Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images

Queen Elizabeth once called 1992 an annus horribilis

In a speech marking her Ruby Jubilee in 1992, Queen Elizabeth called that year an annus horribilis (Latin for horrible year). This is because there were several particularly unpleasant events the royal family dealt with in 1992.

For example, this was the year in which Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated. Andrew Morton also released the book Diana: Her True Story, which shared secrets about Dianas life in the royal family. Additionally, there was a leaked phone call between Diana and a friend named James Gilbey, where the two of them had an intimate conversation.

That same year, Princess Anne, officially divorced her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips, though the two of them had already been separated since 1989.

Prince Andrew also separated from his then-wife, Sarah Ferguson. Later, news outlets published photos of Sarah sunbathing topless and having her toes sucked.

Finally, a fire broke out in Windsor Castle, destroying a selection of valuable contents, including some artworks and porcelain items.

A royal expert says 2021 is also a very bad year for Queen Elizabeth

RELATED: Author Explains How Queen Elizabeth Prioritized the Monarchy Over Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Amid Royal Rift

According to royal commentator Neil Sean, 2021 has not been going well for Queen Elizabeth either.

In a recent YouTube video on his channel, Sean recapped some events that may have been distressing for Her Majesty this past year. For example, Sean noted that 2021 started with Prince Philip being extremely ill. Later on, in April, he died. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were married for nearly 74 years.

Queen Elizabeth also dealt with the fall-out from Prince Harry and Meghan Markles Sussexit, such as their explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey. Sean explained, We have that really, really terrible put-down from Prince Harry against his whole family, which Im also told really, really shook Her Majesty, the Queen, alongside Prince Charles, Prince William, and Camilla [Parker Bowles].

Additionally, the queen is still dealing with Prince Andrews sexual abuse case, which initially blew up in 2019. The alleged victim in the case, Virginia Giuffre, filed a lawsuit against Andrew in August 2021.

As you can imagine, this year has brought unbelievable trauma and, of course, discomfort for Her Majesty, Sean said.

Queen Elizabeth recently had a health scare

A Buckingham Palace spokesman confirmed to @ABC News that Queen Elizabeth was hospitalized earlier this week. https://t.co/mk6Vsnsx9U  ABC News (@ABC) October 22, 2021

RELATED: Prince Harry Felt Helpless During Queen Elizabeths Hospitalization

On Oct. 20, Queen Elizabeth was hospitalized, and she subsequently canceled a trip to Northern Ireland.

Following medical advice to rest for a few days, The Queen attended hospital on Wednesday afternoon for some preliminary investigations, returning to Windsor Castle at lunchtime today, and remains in good spirits, a spokesperson from Buckingham Palace said in a statement (via CNN).

On Oct. 29, the palace release another statement. Reportedly, the queens doctor had advised her to continue to rest for at least the next two weeks and undertake light, desk-based duties.

It is not clear what specific health issue she experienced, but this has no doubt added to an already tough year for Her Majesty.
Queen Elizabeth may step back from her day-to-day duties leading the British royal family. That is, according to a royal biographer, if her health becomes an issue. The queens health became a topic of concern following a brief hospitalization in October 2021. While the 95-year-old back to official engagements but, a royal biographer says Prince Charles will likely take over if Queen Elizabeths health prevents her from doing her job.

Doctors advised Queen Elizabeth to rest after a 1-day hospitalization

Queen Elizabeth had a short hospital visit in October 2021. Per The New York Times, Buckingham Palace confirmed it on Oct. 21, 2021, one day after she checked in for preliminary investigations. The statement came after Queen Elizabeth canceled a visit to Northern Ireland. As Buckingham Palace stated, the leader of the British royal went in for some tests on a Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday shed already returned to her home of Windsor Castle.

So what did doctors tell Queen Elizabeth? According to the palaces official statement given via a spokesperson, she received medical advice to rest for the next few days and reluctantly agreed. Now, weeks later, Queen Elizabeth is still taking it easy with a lighter-than-normal schedule to ensure she has plenty of time to rest.

As for how the royal family reacted, Prince Harry felt helpless being in Montecito, Calif., where he and Meghan Markle have lived since 2020. What about the rest of the royal family? Many senior royals including Charles, Prince William, Kate Middleton, and Camilla Parker Bowles are carrying out official engagements without Queen Elizabeth.

If Queen Elizabeths health gets in the way of her duties a royal biographer says she wont hesitate to have Charles act as head of state

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

So what does Queen Elizabeths health mean for the future of the royal family? According to a royal biographer if her health prevents her from performing duties she will turn to her oldest son. As first in the royal familys line of succession, Charles would carry out duties as head of state.

If she feels that she cannot continue to do the job to the best of her ability, if she feels in any way that her position will be detrimental to the monarchy as an institution, Ive no doubt whatsoever that she would step aside, Robert Jobson told Newsweek in October 2021. What would she do then? Jobson said shed most likely institute the Regency Act.

Under the Regency Act, Queen Elizabeth would remain the leader of the royal family. However, shed take a backseat to Charles, who would do most of the duties. What it comes down to is the moment when Queen Elizabeth feels her health is impacting the monarchy.

She wouldnt want the institution to be suffering in any way, Jobson said.

So when will a potential regency happen? The author says hes absolutely sure were not at that situation yet. Although he also acknowledges the Firms in uncharted territory.

Queen Elizabeth is gearing up for her Platinum Jubilee in 2022

Queen Elizabeth | Stefan Wermuth  WPA Pool /Getty Images

Described as being in good spirits following her hospital stay Queen Elizabeths looking forward. Particularly, the massive Platinum Jubilee celebration marking 70 years of her reign. Currently, she continues to carry out her official duties with a slightly less jam-packed schedule than normal. Meanwhile, preparations that have long been in the works for Queen Elizabeths Platinum Jubilee have been reconsidered. For now, events are slated to begin in early 2022. Theyll continue before wrapping up with an elaborate weekend-long celebration in June 2022.

RELATED: Prince Charles Judgment and Common Sense Are Being Questioned Amid Cash-for-Honors Allegations, According to a Royal Author
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

Andy Cohen confirms that the Real Housewives of Dubai is coming to Bravo.

A Bravo fan favorite Caroline Stanbury is rumored to be leading the cast.

But another well-known resident of Dubai will not be joining the show.

Rumored Real Housewives of Dubai star Caroline Stanbury | Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Real Housewives of Dubai will be the first international installment of the popular Bravo franchise. Its set to premiere in 2022, and the cast rumors are starting to swirl. Insiders say that the lineup will include at least one fan-favorite. But it wont be Lindsay Lohan.

Andy Cohen announces Real Housewives of Dubai is coming soon

On November 1, executive producer Andy Cohen confirmed that Real Housewives of Dubai was coming to Bravo in 2022. Cohen made the announcement on The Today Show, and he promised this is going to blow the lid off the entire franchise.

Everythings bigger in Dubai, and I couldnt be more excited to launch Bravos first international Housewives series in a city Ive been fascinated by for years, with an outstanding group of friends as our guides, Cohen said in a press release, according to Page Six.

The Bravo boss promises over-the-top opulence

Just like the US-based versions of the franchise, Real Housewives of Dubai will follow a group of women who live ultra-wealthy lifestyles while they navigate their relationships and careers. The backdrop of this version will be the lavish city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates  one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Its known as a billionaires playground, and the Real Housewives of Dubai press release promises fans will get a glimpse of Dubais over-the-top opulence, jaw-dropping modern architecture, and wild nightlife scene.

Lindsay Lohan will not be part of season 1 of Real Housewives of Dubai

Cohen did not reveal who would be in the cast of Real Housewives of Dubai. But one name that is off the table is Lindsay Lohan. Because she currently lives in the UAE, the fan speculation began immediately after Cohens announcement. But according to TMZ, the Mean Girls star will not be joining the cast.

Insiders claim that Bravo never even approached Lohan about the upcoming series. But when asked if hed be interested in the actor joining Real Housewives of Dubai, Cohen said he loved the idea.

The cast could include a Bravo fan favorite

Sources say that Cohen and the other Real Housewives of Dubai producers have already selected the cast, and there is one Bravo fan-favorite rumored to be on the list. Former Ladies of London star Caroline Stanbury moved to Dubai in 2016, and it appears she will be one of the new series six full-time cast members.

According to an unverified RHODubai Twitter account, Caroline will be joined by

Dr. Sara Al Madani, Lesa Milan, model Chanel Ayan, Fruit Cake founder Nina Ali, and real estate director Caroline Brooks. This list has not yet been confirmed.

Real Housewives of Dubai is facing some fan backlash already

Despite Cohens excitement for this latest installment of Housewives, many fans have shared their anger over the chosen location. In addition to being known for its glamour and wealth, the UAE is also a country known for its human rights violations. Particularly against women and the LGBTQ community.

The World Economic Forum ranked the UAE 120th on a list of 153 countries in gender equality. And a 2020 report from the US State Department declared that women face serious economic and legal challenges. While travel safety blog Equaldex named the UAE the ninth most dangerous country in the world for members of the LGBTQ community.

Is it bothersome to you that you are going to be shining a potentially positive spotlight on a country where being gay is a crime? one fan asked Cohen on Twitter. Another wrote, They cant drink, party, or wear sexy clothes. And swearing is haram. Sounds like a fun show.

Bravo has not yet announced a premiere date for Real Housewives of Dubai.

RELATED: The Real Housewives of Dubai Is Coming to Bravo and This Is What Fans Are Saying
Memorial service for Kevin Hair, 65, of Chickasha, OK will be held at 2:00pm, Saturday, November 13, 2021 at the Southern Oaks Church of Christ in Chickasha. Floyd Kevin Hair was a well loved father, son and brother. He was such a good brother-in-law that he just had to be called "brother." 
Fossil fuels cause 8 million deaths per year, according to Harvard researchers. To what extent will world leaders make the changes needed?

This is a continuation of an earlier post. The pilgrimage pictured above was conducted by Young Christian Climate Network and was recently featured by CT.

COP26 is an opportunity to help those already harmed today and also head off future harm, like climate disasters. So it must be asked, what is creating the conditions for harm? Why is the road to Jericho so perilous?

Science is clear that the primary cause is burning fossil fuels for energy. When fossil fuels are produced and burned for energy, it adds more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases trap the suns heat around the earth like a heat-trapping blanket, overheating and disrupting climates around the world. This leads to more extreme weather events which drive people from their homes as refugees, increase poverty and disease, exacerbate food and water insecurity, accelerate biodiversity loss and species extinction, and permanently alter the face of creation. Burning fossil fuels also pollutes the air, which kills over 8 million people a year (a normalized but morally unacceptable loss of life).

But transitioning to available clean energy sources with hastewithout leaving people behindis both possible and necessary in order to reduce emissions by half this decade and virtually eliminate it by mid-century. What happens at COP26 has the potential to significantly hasten this transition.

This is where COP26 is a test and could be a turning point.

It is entirely feasible, at this critical junction, to change course. We know what to do to protect human life and responsibly manage the earth we borrow from future generations. What is needed is political will. And this is where COP26 is a test and could be a turning point: To what extent will world leaders make the changes needed? And given the failures of past COPs to reduce the worlds emissions, to what extent will citizens (like us) pressure leaders to make these changes?

Faith leaders are speaking up. Last month, Pope Francis, Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby issued an unprecedented ecumenical plea for more ambitious climate action. In their forceful and stirring Joint Statement, which evangelical leaders endorsed, the leaders make justice central:

The people bearing the most catastrophic consequences of these abuses are the poorest on the planet and have been the least responsible for causing them. We serve a God of justice, who delights in creation and creates every person in God's image, but also hears the cry of people who are poor. Accordingly, there is an innate call within us to respond.

Christians will be present at COP26as official delegates in negotiations, as movement activists pressing the agenda from outside, and as non-party observers. One observer group is the Christian Climate Observer Program, an ecumenical cohort that includes evangelical creation care organizations. I will be at COP26 next week as a member of this group, joining my colleagues already present in Glasgow to learn, immerse, advocate, and bear witness to the proceedings. We pray we can practice at COP26 and beyond a form of hope that sees clearly and identifies with the pain of the world yet refuses the escapist options of denial or despair.

This will not be easy. The event is contentious and the moral stakes are high. So on behalf of our cohort, I humbly request fellow Christians join us in prayer, solidarity, and advocacy through the remainder of COP26 and beyond. (If you'd like to follow along and read our groups daily reflections from this critical event, which include prayer requests, you can sign up here. You can also join us for a virtual Climate Vigil this Saturday.)

Subscribe to email digests from the Better Samaritan.

Whatever the outcomes of COP26, there will be plenty of ways ahead for Christians to practice our faith as we act to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the harms befalling our neighbors because of the climate crisis. But these immediate days call for fervent prayer and fervent advocacy.

This is a critical moment, the ecumenical leaders conclude in their joint appeal. Our childrens future and the future of our common home depend on it.

Nate Rauh-Bieri will be attending COP26 as part of the Christian Climate Observers Program. He attended Wheaton College (B.A.) and Duke Divinity School (M.Div.) and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
On the surface, the life of a university president appears ideal: welcoming grateful alumni back to campus, dispensing wisdom to eager students over coffee, and conversing with erudite faculty members about their research.

The numbers, however, paint a different picture. For example, the American Council on Educations American College President Study reports the average length of service for a university president continues to decline: 8.5 years in 2006, 7 years in 2011, and 6.5 in 2017.

In contrast to the previously noted activities, the American College President Study also reports the areas occupying a presidents time, in order, include (1) budget/financial management; (2) fundraising; (3) management of senior leaders; (4) relations with board members; and (5) enrollment management. Not surprising, only 25 percent of presidents previously served as presidents.

Some presidents, however, defy those trends. This week, Samford University hosts the inauguration of Beck A. Taylor as its 19th president. Earlier this fall, Taylor University hosted the inauguration of D. Michael Lindsay as its 18th president. (Lindsay sits on Christianity Todays board of directors.)

Prior to their present appointments, these friends and fellow Baylor University graduatesTaylor from the class of 1992 and Lindsay from the class of 1994respectively served as the presidents of Whitworth University for 11 years and Gordon College for 10 years. Part of what also makes them unique is that, even as they begin their second presidencies, Taylor and Lindsay are still more than a decade younger than the average university presidents 63 years.

Earlier this fall, Margaret Diddams, editor for Christian Scholars Review, talked with Taylor and Lindsay about their transitions, the people who helped prepare them for their previous and current appointments, and the role mentorship plays in preparing the next generation of leaders.
Two observances this weekAll Saints' Day on November 1 and the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP) on November 7represent a new kind of holy week. Together they provide an opportunity to remember our Christian brothers and sisters suffering for their faith overseas.

Followers of Christ living abroad face extreme circumstances in many places, as well as slow-rolling repression grinding the faithful down. These days provide an opportunity to pause in remembrance, to commit to advocating for their rights, and to honor their sacrifice by helping others persecuted for their different beliefs. (In the sidebar below, I offer three rules to follow.)

Christians are under regular physical assault. An alarming trend is terrorist violence targeting Christians, whichbased on my diplomatic work over two decadesI believe represents the biggest challenge to the church globally.

Groups like the Taliban, ISIS, and Al Qaeda all have Christian blood on their hands. In ungoverned or under-governed countries, churches thrive but terrorists can also strike with impunity. Motives varyincluding animosity towards Christianity, jealously of resources, pure criminality, or all of the abovebut regardless, fear hangs over entire communities.

For instance, Boko Harams violence in Nigeria against Christians stands out due to its severity and the size of the Christian population it victimizes. Boko Haram has burned churches, murdered pastors, and destroyed towns. In addition, Christian girls in Nigeria face physical and spiritual rape when kidnapped, forcibly converted, and married, such as Leah Sharibu.

Of course, governments also still persecute. Communist China is the largest persecutor of Christians in the world. Space for freedom of worship and practice is rapidly disappearing, replaced by a forced ideology to Chairman Xi Jinping and enforced by police and bulldozers. Flushed with resources, the communist regime wants to crush the 70 million-strong Chinese church.

Elsewhere, North Korea assaults any independent practice of Christianity. In Burma (Myanmar), the military has escalated its war against ethnic and religious minorities who are predominantly Christian. Iran actively persecutes evangelicals, and Algerias new campaign against convert churches tarnishes a once bright spot in the Middle East. Conversion to Christianity is generally illegal across the Arab world, marking individuals for purely following their conscience.

And Christians are not alone. In almost every context, when Christian saints face persecution, others are also victimized for their beliefs, religious practices, or membership in a faith community.

Sometimes the persecution of others surpasses what Christians experience. For example, Chinas war on religion also targets Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims with a genocidal vengeance. Perhaps unexpected, Muslims take the brunt of government repression worldwide. In addition to Muslim persecution, other groups feeling the impact of persecution include Bahais, Hindus, Sikhs, and atheists.

These days of remembrance provide an opportunity to reflect on those suffering from our community and from others. While the Bible doesnt use the phrase human rights, we find global concepts of dignity and justice interwoven throughout. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed, Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widows cause (Isaiah 1:17 ESV). Galatians 6:9-10 proclaims a responsibility to help everyone: Let us not become weary in doing good. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Christ put it plainly in the context of the least of these in Matthew 25. Here, Jesus challenges his followers (and us today) to help the stranger: For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. He concludes by saying, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. We find a similar theme in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. The hero helps his neighbor, despite differences of faith and nationality, with Jesus concluding his followers should go and do likewise.

Who are the least of these for religious freedom? Who is our neighbor? Any person facing torture, beatings, jailing, and even death on account of their beliefs. To truly care for our global neighbors, to love them as we love our own, we should speak up for them as well as for our brothers and sisters in the faith. Heroic love of neighbor calls for Christians to fight for human rights and to assist the suffering, both our own and others.

The international environment for religious freedom is dismal. We must begin this work now. Restoring respect for religious freedom will take decades, if not generations. To borrow from Eugene Peterson, success will require a long obedience in the same direction. What the late Congressman John Lewis wrote about fighting for civil rights in America certainly applies to advocating for international religious freedom: Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.

While most cannot travel to the front lines, all can be steadfast in prayer, consistent in petitioning our elected leaders to act, and supportive of organizations working to advance religious freedom for all. In addition, resources are available to educate believers on the facts, to guide them in prayer, and to help them advocate effectively with policymakers. Great examples include Open Doors, Stefanus Alliance, CSW, and others.

Many churches observance of Holy Week leading up to Easter is a daily reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made for all humanity. To mark this proposed new holy week between All Saints Day and IDOP, lets remember the modern saints suffering physical violence for the simplest of reasons: their Christian faith.

And during this week, while remembering how our brothers and sisters need our help, we can prayer for our global neighbors from other religious traditions who also beckon for assistance. The church can have no better testimony of Gods love than advocating for religious freedom for all.

Knox Thames served as the State Department Special Advisor for Religious Minorities for both the Obama and Trump administrations. He is currently writing a book on 21st century strategies to combat religious persecution. You can follow him on Twitter @KnoxThames.

Speaking Out is Christianity Todays guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the magazine.

Religious Freedom Advocacy 101:

By moving governments and international institutions to act, religious freedom advocacy can save lives, free prisoners, and increase religious liberties. Anyone wishing to advocate for the oppressed and persecuted must act wisely and with great discernment. For every good story about international advocacy freeing a religious prisoner, or reforming laws, there is another about an overly aggressive or troubling ill-informed activist causing more harm than good.



When developing a plan of action, religious freedom advocates should consider the following three rules:



1) Abide by the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm is an absolute rule. Advocates must coordinate their efforts with the victims or their families, as they will bear the brunt of any response to international advocacy.



2) Speak out for all: It is also important for religious freedom advocacy groups to speak out against all forms of religious persecution and repression even if their coreligionists are not affected or persons of no faith are targeted. Often a positive conclusion in one case will be useful to others in similar situations. If not everyone can enjoy religious freedom, then there is not complete religious freedom for anyone.



3) Be truthful and fact-based: Advocates must be very careful about the facts. If they are found to exaggerate or misrepresent, or to be ill informed, then they will have a difficult time persuading persons of power and influence. Advocates must resist the temptation to exaggerate and make a situation sound more compelling in hopes of spurring a faster response. For instance, the word persecution is often carelessly thrown around without any thought as to its true meaning. Overuse only cheapens the term and lessens the impact in actual situations of persecution.



Excerpts from International Religious Freedom Advocacy: A Guide to Organizations, Laws and NGOs By moving governments and international institutions to act, religious freedom advocacy can save lives, free prisoners, and increase religious liberties. Anyone wishing to advocate for the oppressed and persecuted must act wisely and with great discernment. For every good story about international advocacy freeing a religious prisoner, or reforming laws, there is another about an overly aggressive or troubling ill-informed activist causing more harm than good.When developing a plan of action, religious freedom advocates should consider the following three rules:Do no harm is an absolute rule. Advocates must coordinate their efforts with the victims or their families, as they will bear the brunt of any response to international advocacy.It is also important for religious freedom advocacy groups to speak out against all forms of religious persecution and repression even if their coreligionists are not affected or persons of no faith are targeted. Often a positive conclusion in one case will be useful to others in similar situations. If not everyone can enjoy religious freedom, then there is not complete religious freedom for anyone.Advocates must be very careful about the facts. If they are found to exaggerate or misrepresent, or to be ill informed, then they will have a difficult time persuading persons of power and influence. Advocates must resist the temptation to exaggerate and make a situation sound more compelling in hopes of spurring a faster response. For instance, the word persecution is often carelessly thrown around without any thought as to its true meaning. Overuse only cheapens the term and lessens the impact in actual situations of persecution.Excerpts from International Religious Freedom Advocacy: A Guide to Organizations, Laws and NGOs

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In less than a month, the Supreme Court will take up arguments on a Mississippi case that could conceivably spell the end of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion as a constitutional right. At the same time, the justices sent signals that they were perhaps dubious of a recent Texas law that sought to restrict abortion through civil liability measures.

For the first time in a while, it seems that abortion is at the forefront of conversation in the United States. And yet, some surveys suggest that abortion is not the motivating factor for evangelicals that it once was.

Those who disagree with me on abortion may feel it is good news that evangelicals are lessening their priority on the pro-life issuethinking perhaps that a cooling down in the culture wars might lead to a less polarized America. But such people would be wrong. As a matter of fact, if this trend continues, it could be bad news for everybody.

Political scientist Ryan Burge collected polling data this summer from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and compared that with recent data gathered from the Association of Religion Data Archives. The poll asked respondents how they would rank their relative priority on various sociopolitical issues. Burge noted that, over time, the abortion issue has decreased in priority among white evangelicals and other issues, like immigration, have increased.

Most of this data was aggregated before critical race theory and COVID-19 dominated the public square. But many pollsters and activists say they see far more energy spent discussing race, masks, vaccines, and other topics. Abortion is low on the list.

Some argue that this has always been the case. For example, in his book Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, religion scholar Randall Balmer arguesagainst the common assumption that Roe mobilized evangelicals into political action. He calls this idea a myth, contending instead that segregated academies threatened with losing their tax-exempt status were the real motivatorsand that abortion was merely a convenient cover for the politics of white racial grievance.

That may well be true for some of the political strategy leaders at the time, but I remain skeptical of Balmers overall thesis. Even with the most cynical view possible of political-religious activist leadership (and I think Ive earned the right to some cynicism here), there has to be a reason why such leaders would choose to emphasize abortion in grassroot movements. The question isnt whether political strategists can manipulate the issue but rather what exactly is being manipulated. That is, one can only mobilize people around an issue they fundamentally care about.

A week or so ago, I was talking with a friend who disagrees with me on abortion. They asked mewith genuine curiosityWhy do you all want to impose your religious views on everyone else by restricting abortion?

This would be a fair critique, I responded, if evangelicals and other pro-lifers sought to enact blue laws, which banned Sunday commerce for everyone based on Levitical laws.

When it comes to abortion, however, the debate is not about whether society should protect the vulnerable, but about how many vulnerable people we should care about. In a pro-choice view of the matter, there is only onethe pregnant woman who must decide what to do with her body. For those of us who are pro-life, there are two vulnerable people herethe pregnant woman and the child within her womband we have a responsibility to consider both.

Former US Representative Barney Frank famously quipped that pro-lifers believe life begins at conception and ends at birth. This might well be true in some direct-mail fundraising operations, but it is not true for those at the grassroots levelthose for whom this issue is a matter of action as well as conviction, those who work on the frontlines with pregnant women in crisis, or those who help children find families and safe homes.

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As a matter of fact, these pro-life people can sometimes be the most sensitive to a holistic vision of human life and dignity. They are usually the ones who advocate for job training, childcare, and health care for women, so that no woman is put into a position where she must choose between the life of her child and her own well-being. Other pro-lifers are working in the foster care system or caring for people with disabilities in their homes.

Nearly every day, I speak with foster or adoptive parents who are giving their lives in service to children they lovethose ravaged by fetal alcohol syndrome, infant drug addiction, severe mental illness, or those coming from impoverished familiesand I have found that these people have almost always learned to love such children because they are pro-life.

When anchored biblicallyrather than merely as a partisan political strategya pro-life viewpoint is a contradiction of social Darwinism, which estimates human value in inverse proportion to vulnerability.

Ayn Rands conception of the poor as losers and takers is absolutely contradicted by the Sermon on the Mount (along with the rest of the Bible). In ideological frameworks like Rands, human rights are linked with viabilitythe ability to survive on ones own, independent of the womb and the life of another.

But those of us who follow a crucified Christ must recognize that none of us are viable in that sense. We always leave one womb to enter anotherthat of our mother to that of the biosphere around us. All of us are dependent on oxygen, water, and nutritionand we are all interdependent upon each other.

At its best, a pro-life vision reminds us of why Jesus was indignant when his disciples saw children as a distraction from his mission. He pointed out that to such belongs the children of God, and that those who do not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. The Lord welcomed childrenother peoples childrenand blessed them (Mark 10:1316, ESV throughout).

The entire Bible shows us why this is. We come before God as those who, in our utter dependence, cry out, Abba! Father! (Rom. 8:15), and we learn to receive others as we have been received (Rom. 15:7). This means that in following Christ, we, like him, are able to see the people we would rather or otherwise keep invisiblethe poor, the stranger, the vulnerable, the unviable, the un-useful.

We see the folly in human boasts of strengthwhether about ones net worth, physical attractiveness, or stage of development, whether living in the uterus of a mother or in a nursing home forgotten by everyone. Human dignity is not an earned right but a signpost to God, pointing every human life back to the Word who took on flesh and dwelt among us.

Thats why we must constantly ask ourselves, Who are the people in our lives for whom it is inconvenientwhether in terms of our social status, financial security, religious tribes, or political identitiesfor us to even see?

The priest and the Levite in Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan probably did not think of themselves as antagonists in the story of the beaten man by the Jericho Road (Luke 10:2537). They averted their eyes, seeing this man as a minor character, soon forgotten in the story of their lives. But Jesus says he will judge the goats on Judgment Day all the same for having no idea that they have neglected the poor, the naked, the hungry, and the imprisoned in their midst (Matt. 25:3146).

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This is why some of us were so concerned about political movements that celebrated winning and delighted in denigrating the weakwhether the disabled, refugees, or the elderly. It is also why some of us believed that waving away credible claims of sexual promiscuity and even sexual assault cannot sustain a pro-life movement long-term, no matter how many good judges are appointed.

When people are judged by their usefulness, the unborn are deemed dispensable as soon as they cannot help someone win an election. Whenever we make a determination on which people matter and which people dont, we lose the possibility of building a culture that supports life and family values, human rights, or social justice. In the end, all we are left with are constituencies to reward and enemies to punish.

At its best, the pro-life movement once cut across the polarized culture wars. Despite the publicized images in popular culture of angry protesters screaming at women outside abortion clinics, this did not happen most of the timefor the very reason that most pro-life activists sought to persuade women to choose life for their children. You cannot do that if you are focused on demonizing, intimidating, or overpowering people. In order to be true to itself, the pro-life movement had to be about loving your neighbor, not about owning the libs.

White racial grievance and fear of those who are different, by contrast, is not about loving your neighbor but about preserving yourself. And when these become badges of identity, human life begins to be defined not by the image of God, but in terms of its likeness to usand we define us more and more narrowly all the time. This is the way of Cain, especially when the way of Abelor the way of the Crossstarts to look weak.

In his new book, A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right, Matthew Rose points with data to a phenomenon present in so-called populist movements in Europe and now in North America. Many of these groups claim Christian identity or use its symbolism, because it helps to use the struggle to preserve Western civilization or Judeo-Christian culture as a way to ground ethnic or national identity.

But often, the people driving ideas behind the scenes are hostile to Christianitynot because Christianity is too narrow, too moralistic, or too intolerant, but because it is too globalist and egalitarian. Christianity upends ethnic and national superiorities because, as Rose writes, it requires non-Jewish Gentiles of all nations to adopt the sacred history and even the deity of another community, connecting their deepest beliefs to the unique experiences of a foreign people, namely, the people of Israel.

Most importantly, these post-religious illiberal movements ultimately revolt against what Rose calls the essence of the Christian Question, which is this: Christianity denied what antiquity had serenely assumed: that the strong are destined to rule the weak, that we have no obligations to strangers, and that our identities are constituted by our social status.

Rose warns that a post-Christian populism would give defiant expression to primordial passions, once disciplined by religion, that liberalism tried to repressabout preserving cultural differences, punishing enemies, and deposing disloyal elites. In other words, as Ross Douthat says in issuing a warning to secular America: If you thought the Religious Right was bad, just wait until you see the post-religious right.

If the dignity and sanctity of human life is replaced in priority of passion with the will-to-power, the unborn will suffer. But they will not suffer alone. Every vulnerable personwhose dignity isnt justified by his or her capacitywill suffer too.

Instead, we might find ourselves in a place where we dont argue about abortion anymore, not because weve settled the issue, but because weve replaced the worldly gods of Zeus, Thor, or Baalthe gods of thunder, power, fertility, or various tribeswith this proclamation: Yes, Jesus loves me; the Bible tells me so.

Russell Moore leads the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today.
Pastor, Al Sharptons younger brother indicted for distributing cocaine

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Alabama Pastor Kenneth Sharpton-Glasgow, the troubled younger half-brother of civil rights activist Al Sharpton, pleaded not guilty in federal court Wednesday to distributing cocaine with an unnamed suspect.

An indictment alleges that Glasgow, 56, who runs Kenny Sharpton-Glasgow Ministries International, distributed drugs over a period of time, WDHN reports. It did not specify how long the distribution continued. A hearing for the case against Glasgow is scheduled for March 2022.

Glasgow, from Dothan, has a checkered past with law enforcement, including a capital murder charge in 2018 that was eventually dropped.

Jamie Townes, a passenger in his car, shot a woman who had apparently stolen Townes vehicle, WAFF reported. Townes was charged with murder, and Glasgow was also charged under Alabamas complicity law because he was driving when the shooting occurred.

Glasgow is the son of Sharptons father, Al Sharpton Sr., and Sharptons older half-sister Tina Glasgow, ProPublica reported. Tina Glasgow is one of two children Sharptons mother Ada had during her first marriage in Alabama.

Tina Glasgow was 16 when she moved in with Sharpton and his parents in the early 1960s in Queens, New York. Sharptons father and his half-sister began a sexual relationship. When it was discovered, the two moved out of the home. Glasgow was born in May 1965.

The relationship was a scandal for Sharptons family at the time. Glasgows mother would eventually move back to Dothan with him when he was 12. It was there that his troubles with the law began.

While in Dothan, Glasgow, who described himself as sensitive when he was a child, said an acquaintance of his mother sent him to purchase weed. The seller turned out to be a cop, and Glasgow was arrested.

I was born messed up. My fingers messed up. Its meant for me to be messed up, he told the publication.

After high school, Glasgow got married and had children. But he also began using drugs and went in and out of jail.

In a letter to his brother published in The Village Voice in 2001, Glasgow revealed how his addiction to crack cocaine over the years had left him delusional and opined over the disparate lives they had lived.

I became immune to cocaine, he wrote. It got to a point where I didnt get high anymore. I started going to my mothers just to [stare] at [her], my daughter, and my granddaughter, and cry. I didnt tell them [that] other crackheads didnt want to get high with me anymore.

When I hit [got high], Alfred, I would start preaching! Yes, preaching and prophesying. I would visualize scripture in my mind and see vivid pictures of peoples lives. When I would tell them [what I saw], they would get uncomfortable. Some would cry. All who I got high with agreed that God was calling me and I should quit, he continued. Since I wouldnt quit, they just wouldnt get high with me. No matter how much I paid them, they didnt want to pray and get high with me.
Christian Aid Ministries says gangs taking power in Haiti; crime boss urges US to cut ties with govt

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As they continue praying for the release of their 17 missionaries kidnapped by gangsters in Haiti, the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries said nearly half the country is now under the control of gangs, as a powerful local crime boss called on the United States and the United Nations to sever ties with the government to liberate citizens.

This is now the 19th day since the kidnapping in Haiti took place. Our workers and loved ones are still being held. Our prayer is that God would protect them and give them courage as they endure yet another day as hostages, Christian Aid Ministries said in a statement Wednesday. The political situation in Haiti remains extremely volatile. Numerous reports state that nearly half the country is under the control of gangs. Pray for the many Haitians who suffer during this time of upheaval.

Jimmy Barbecue Cherizier, leader of the G9 Family and Allies, a federation of nine violent gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, called on the U.S. and U.N. Wednesday to cut ties with his government nearly four months after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise.

We take this opportunity to invite the United Nations in general and the so-called friendly countries of Haiti, in particular the United States of America, to register in this page of history as loyal allies who want the well-being of the Haitian people by divorcing the status quo, Cherizier said at a press conference.

The call comes amid the growing insecurity in the Caribbean nation, including hundreds of kidnappings, such as those of the 17 Christian Aid Ministries missionaries being held captive by the 400 Mawozo gang since October. A civil society group in that country reports that 600 kidnappings were recorded from January to September, compared with 231 over the same period last year.

Jimmy Barbecue Cherizier is leader of the G9 Family and Allies, a federation of nine violent gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. | YouTube/Al Jazeera English

Cherizier, who is reportedly one of Haitis most wanted men, has blamed the unrest on Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry whose resignation he has repeatedly called for.

Wilson Joseph, leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, recently threatened to put a bullet in the heads of the kidnapped missionaries if his $17 million ransom demand for their release isnt met.

I swear by thunder that if I dont get what Im asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans, he said in a video that has been circulating on social media.

The group of missionaries who were kidnapped on Oct. 16 while they were working with Christian Aid Ministries include six men, six women and five children, of which 16 are Americans and one is Canadian. They range in age from an 8-month-old baby to a 48 year old.

Last week, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden continues to be briefed daily about the kidnapping of the missionaries and noted that he was particularly concerned about the five children in the group.

I personally give an update on this issue every single day to the president, who is taking a deep interest in making sure we get every single one of those people home safely, Sullivan said.

While there has been no official update on the negotiations to free the 17 missionaries, the Ministry of Defense in Haitis neighboring Dominican Republic confirmed on Thursday that five U.S. helicopters that landed in Puerto Plata province to refuel and rest are likely on their way to Haiti on a humanitarian mission.

Invasion? Or a mission to liberate kidnapped missionaries in Haiti? Those helicopters are NOT ours. Video this early morning at Dominican-Haitian border. Please retweet. pic.twitter.com/JvwY9w1rVV  juan ml. valenzuela (@johnny2004) November 4, 2021

The helicopters caused a stir on social networks, due to the political crisis in Haiti, aggravated by the kidnapping of 17 American missionaries, said the Dominican Today. The operation is likely the start of a U.S. humanitarian mission in Haiti.
'Jesus Christ Money Master' author gets 3 life sentences for bilking millions from Christians

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William Neil Doc Gallagher, an 80-year-old Christian radio personality from Texas and author of the Jesus Christ, Money Master Leader Guide, was sentenced to three life sentences plus an additional 30 years in prison Monday for defrauding more than 190 people, many of whom were older adult Christians, of at least $23 million.

Doc Gallagher is one of the worst offenders I have seen, Lori Varnell, chief of the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Elder Financial Fraud team, said in a press statement. He ruthlessly stole from his clients who trusted him for almost a decade. He amassed $32 million in loss to all of his clients and exploited many elder individuals. He worked his way around churches preying on people who believed he was a Christian.

Gallagher, who was once president and CEO of the Gallagher Financial Group, described himself on the company website as an experienced financial advisor, financial journalist and author who also served as an instructor at Texas Christian University.

His companys mission was to be a vehicle of Gods peace and comfort to as many people as possible, helping first with their financial peace of mind, then also with their spiritual, emotional and family well-being. He also advertised on Christian radio with the tagline: See you in church on Sunday.

Despite the claims of his company to Christian virtues, the prosecutors say Gallagher was busy bilking seniors out of millions through a Ponzi scheme, which he pleaded guilty to running on Aug.31.

A release from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed that from December 2014 through January 2019, Gallagher raised at least $19.6 million from approximately 60 senior citizens by falsely claiming to be a licensed investment adviser.

He offered an investment that he called a Diversified Growth and Income Strategy Account, in which he promised to acquire income-generating assets for his clients in five specified categories. He promised investors that they would receive guaranteed, risk-free returns in their accounts ranging from 5% to 8% per year. In reality, except for one $75,000 annuity purchase, Gallagher purchased no assets in any of the five categories and no other assets to back the promised returns, the release said. Instead, he exhausted virtually all investor funds on spending unrelated to the accounts, including misappropriating significant portions for personal and company expenses and to make Ponzi payments to investors.

In addition to visiting churches and promoting his business on Christian radio stations owned by Salem Media, Gallagher promoted his investment business in books, like Jesus Christ, Money Master, which has a one-star review on Amazon.

More than a dozen of his older adult victims testified against Gallagher on Monday in a three-hour court hearing where they shared how they lost between $50,000 and $600,000, then asked Judge Elizabeth Beach to sentence him to life in prison for his crimes.

Some have had to sell their homes, borrow money from their children or take part-time jobs to supplement their social security payments. They spoke of losing trust in people and of the depression many now suffer because of losing their money through Gallagher's company, the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Office said.

"I'm afraid my money is going to run out," Judy Dewitt, one of the victims, said. "It's a very scary thing."

Another victim, Susan Pippi, said: "I don't trust anybody anymore, except for God and my family."
Winsome Sears: 5 facts about Virginia's first black female lieutenant governor

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Voters in Virginia decided on Tuesday to elect Republican candidate Winsome Sears to be the next lieutenant governor of the state, making her the first African American female to be elected to the office.

According to the unofficial results posted by the Virginia Department of Elections, with 2,726 of 2,855 precincts reported, Sears won 50.97% of the vote, while Democrat opponent Hala Ayala won 48.93%.

Ayala conceded on Wednesday afternoon, taking to Twitter to congratulate Sears on making history and paving the way for future women leaders who look like us.

At a victory speech held early Wednesday morning in Chantilly, Sears told supporters that the business of the Commonwealth is the chief item on her agenda moving forward.

We have things to tend to. We are going to fully fund our historically black colleges and universities. Were going to have safer neighborhoods, safer communities, and our children are going to get a good education, declared Sears.

Here are five interesting facts about Winsome Sears, which include her immigrant background, her charitable work with the Salvation Army, and an earlier milestone election victory in 2001.

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At 9:18 PM on Tuesday night, long before the final Virginia election results were in, Townhalltweeted, Larry Sabato: Its a bloodbath. (This was actually someone elses opinion, quoted by Prof. Sabato during a segment on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow.) Breitbart.com soon picked up on the theme, making it one of the lead headlines for the night.

So, what can we learn from this bloodbath?

First, this was not a referendum on Trump, who lost to Biden in Virginia by 10 points. On the contrary, as much as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (and his surrogates, including President Biden and former President Obama) tried to make the race about Trump, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin did the opposite.

And while Youngkin did not reject Trumps endorsement or speak against him, he ran his own campaign as his own man, distancing himself from Trump. Pundits are now looking at Youngkins strategy as a potential winning Republican formula for 2022, robbing the Democrats of their ability to make each race an ongoing rejection of former President Trump.

Second, this was a referendum on Biden (for relevant exit polls, see here.) Had Bidens popularity not been plummeting and had the state of America been dramatically better than it is today, the outcome of the election might have been very different.

In the words of New York Times writer Nate Cohn, Biden has nearly the worst approval ratings of any president on record at this stage of his presidency.

Just something to keep in mind if you're struggling to understand what happened tonight.

As of this writing (shortly after midnight, Tuesday night), the Republicans were poised to win the races for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General, along with taking back many seats in both local houses. And to repeat, just one year ago, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 10 points in this same state.

It would appear, then, that the anti-Trump animus that carried Biden to victory has waned greatly in light of the current administrations major failures and mishaps, not to mention the fact that COVID remains a very live (and controversial) issue.

Put another way, it was one thing to vote Democrat to get rid of Trump in 2020. Now that Trump is out, its another thing entirely to vote Democrat again.

This was confirmed by the gubernatorial race in New Jersey, a state in which Biden trounced Trump by nearly 16 percent, and yet a state in which the incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy and the Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli were running neck and neck, to the surprise of most pundits.

As a temporary headline on the front page of CNN read, The Republican candidates for governor are pacing ahead in states where Biden beat Trump by double digits last year.

Third, the culture wars are real and parents have said enough is enough. Whether the issue was the dangerous, radical transgender agenda in childrens schools (see here) or a destructive, overemphasis on racism in school curricula (see here), it appears that the voters spoke on these issues too.

A review of the polling data points in this direction, as McAuliffe maintained a solid lead through much of the campaign, reaching as high as 10 percent and holding at 5 percent one month ago.

What caused the dramatic shift in the last 30 days? It had to be more than Bidens waning popularity, since that has been tanking for months, especially since our bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan in August.

Instead, it appears that the shocking news that the rape of a Loudoun County teenage girl in the girls bathroom by a boy wearing a dress was covered up by the local school board and drew a sharp response from many parents. (And remember: the apparent cover-up was in the specific context of supporting transgender extremism in the schools.)

Parental outrage was only heightened when the concerned parents became the targets of a federal investigation in which they were viewed as domestic terrorists.

Coupled with this was McAuliffes disastrous comment on September 29 that, I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach. As much as he claimed that he was being taken out of context, his words were played over and again in Youngkins ads, with powerful effect.

As expressed in the headline to an op-ed by Joe Concha posted on The Hill on October 28, Education blunder igniting suburban parents driving McAuliffe panic in Virginia.

Of course, some on the left want to make these elections into a matter of race, as if those voting for Youngkin were largely white supremacists who didnt want their kids to learn the truth about slavery. But how do they explain the election of Winsome Sears to Lieutenant Governor, making her the first black woman to win a statewide office in Virginia? And how do they explain the gains made by Republicans in other state elections, where childrens education was not the major focus?

Whether headlines predicting that, A Youngkin win in Virginia spells defeat for Democrats in 2022 prove true remains to be seen.

But, since the same culture wars are being fought nationally, since Bidens numbers may not recover, and since Trump is not running for election in 2022, predictions like these seem quite plausible at this stage of time.

For now, it appears that: 1) America is not willing to move even further to the left and, 2) to the extent leftist policies fail, to that extent they will be rejected. Anti-Trump animus can only carry the Democrats so far.
5 takeaways from Election Day 2021

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On Tuesday, voters across the United States went to the polls in the first general election since President Joe Biden took office in January. The election was widely seen as a preview of next year's midterm elections that will decide the control of U.S. Congress and as a referendum on the president's first nine-and-a-half months in office.

While most political observers focused intensely on the Virginia gubernatorial race, New Jersey also had a gubernatorial election. Additionally, voters weighed in on hot-button cultural issues that were the subject of referendums at the state and local levels.

The following pages highlight five takeaways from Election Day 2021.

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Catholic charity has sent nearly $50M to aid Syrians since start of civil war

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To provide spiritual, financial and physical support to Syrians amid the ongoing economic crisis in Syria, the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need has sent close to $50 million in aid to conduct various projects since the start of the civil war in the Middle East country.

In partnership with numerous churches in Syria, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has provided ongoing support, including food, rent, medical aid and psychological support to thousands of Christian families in the country, which has endured nearly a decade of war and terrorism.

A representative from Aid to the Church in Need confirms that the charity has provided rent for hundreds of families in Aleppo for a year. The charity also runs a summer holiday program for disabled children who have suffered injuries from the war or were born disabled.

Since September 2020, the organization has also provided over 1,000 families with affordable bread. In recent years, the charity pledged over 1 million ($1.3 million) for projects in Syria. Since 2011, the start of the Syrian civil war, the charity has sent close to $50 million to provide pastoral and humanitarian aid to Syrias Christian population.

There are so many Syrians who went from supporting themselves to waiting in lines for help, and this has created a real sense of loss of dignity because many have become completely reliant on aid from our charity to survive, said Edward Clancy, the director of outreach for Aid to the Church in Need, told CP. We have to make sure that Christians in Syria are supported. We dont want the churches in Syria to become just a bunch of museums or empty buildings that are only open to people who are visitors simply because the Syrian residents stop finding hope in their churches.

Conflict erupted in Syria in 2011. Since then, the United Nations reports that over 5 million Syrians have fled the country, while 6 million are internally displaced. The international agency estimates that about 13 million people are in need of assistance. In addition to the civil conflict, Syrians have also been terrorized by Islamic extremists groups, such as the Islamic State.

Clancy told CP that since 2011, Aid to the Church in Need has provided about $35 million toward humanitarian aid (food, healthcare and housing), just under $7 million to support education and nearly $5.5 million for the reconstruction of homes, churches, schools and community centers. More than $1 million in general pastoral and community support.

Clancy, who has worked for ACN Charity for over 20 years and has been a director of the charity for 13 years, said he has been passionate about helping others in need for over a decade.

As Christians, we are called to live and express faith to others, and evangelization happens in the way you serve others, Clancy said. Jesus came to serve and not to be served. Jesus died serving, and I think its our duty to do as Jesus did by living to serve. There are so many people in Syria that are in desperate need right now, and they dont want to flee their country because that is the home they know.  There is a dire need.

Many residents in Syria are without electricity, Clancy said. And without the ability to power a refrigerator, milk and food will spoil. Aid to the Church in Need has helped provide non-perishable items like flour, rice, dry beans, oil, sugar and powdered milk for many families in need.

The charity has built a soup kitchen and a social market in Syria while also building two COVID-19 testing centers, as well as providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and hand sanitizers to many families, according to Clancy.

Many children in Syria do not have access to nutritional items that they need, such as milk, so we have worked to provide non-perishable items and powdered milk to as many families as we can so that their children can get the nutrition they need to be healthy and grow, he said. Theres no simple answer for these Syrian people because there are many diplomatic, civil, religious and economic issues coming together in one place. ... Christians had a life, and now it has gotten much worse.

Clancy has not visited Syria in person in several years. However, his organization continues to be run by one staff member working on the ground in Syria alongside many priests and nuns from various Syrian church communities to help run the charity's efforts.

The testimonies that Ive seen on video from many of the Syrian people has told me and many others working to support the charity that we are helping in big ways, Clancy said. I think the biggest fear that many of these Syrians have is to be forgotten. Our biggest goal is to give hope, light and faith to people in difficult situations because faith moves us beyond darkness.

Clancy encourages people everywhere to pray for peace and hope in Syria.

My prayer is that God would give the leadership in Syria wisdom to lead and that they will have a lasting impact on the Christian community in Syria, he said. I hope that the communities that were most harshly affected will have healing and recovery and for the community to go back to the ability to grow.
Code of generosity: Transformation Church donates over 200 MacBooks to students, high school staff

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Transformation Church has donated more than 200 MacBook laptops to high school seniors and staff at a school in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area.

The church distributed the 221 MacBook laptops at McLain High School for Science & Technology on Monday.

Tammy McQuarters, the executive pastor of Operations at Transformation, told The Christian Post that the giveaway was part of their culture code of generosity, noting that we give just to give, not to get.

Particularly in March, labeled as The Month of Generosity, we look for opportunities in the community to be generous. One of the opportunities identified this year was to bless the seniors, teachers and administration at McLain High School, McQuarters said.

As part of this code, McQuarters told CP that the church sets aside 10 percent of our income to give to individual benevolent situations, natural disasters, and other nonprofit organizations that provide support for homelessness, food banks, and other churches to name a few.

We just want people to know that the church cares for them and, more importantly, Jesus loves them. Our vision statement is to 'Re-present God to the lost and found for Transformation in Christ,' she continued.

We want to show God differently, promote God differently and give God differently, and sometimes that is best done by meeting their needs.

For their part, McLain High School took to their Facebook page to express their appreciation of the laptop giveaway, noting that it happened at an event featuring remarks by Transformation Church Lead Pastor Michael Todd.

He told them he hopes they turn that into a music studio, or a business, or the book that is living inside of them, or to use it to continue their educations, posted McLain.

We are so grateful, and even though they didnt do it for the shout out, we want to SHOUT THEM OUT! Thank you for pouring love into McLain!

Last December, Transformation raised millions of dollars to help several churches, charity groups, and individuals; this included giving one needy family a car and money to buy a house.

The whole mission of this message was to show you more than I could tell you, said Pastor Todd in a statement last year to commemorate the donations.

Transformation Church gains nothing from blessing these people and organizations personally but the reputation of the Kingdom of God is expanded because of what God did through us today.
Megachurch pays off $38K in student lunch debts across 2 school districts

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A megachurch in Florida recently paid off approximately $38,000 in lunch debts for students in two local public school districts as part of an effort to fight the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Idlewild Baptist Church, which has campuses in Tampa and Lutz, recently sent the checks paying for the lunch debts to Hillsborough County Public Schools and Pasco County Schools, respectively.

Yerusha Bunag, director of local missions at Idlewild, told The Christian Post that the charitable act was part of the churchs overall involvement in helping local public school students.

Our church has been very invested in helping public schools in our community. Before COVID, we were involved in tutoring, mentoring, campus rejuvenation, student supplies, teacher appreciation events, etc., Bunag explained.

When the pandemic impacted the churchs school partners, the congregations began sending them non-perishable groceries that were delivered to the families when they came to the school to grab their kids' lunches.

After talking to the school districts in the two counties where our church is sandwiched between, we found out that, though lunches are being funded this year, the debt that students owed to the schools was very high, continued Bunag.

We wanted students to know that God loves them; that in God, all debts are paid. So that's what we did. We paid the debt for juniors and seniors at Hillsborough County and the debt for all students at Pasco County.

The director also stated that the church did this to be a witness of the incredible love that God has for them.

She said the aim was to show the community that we are administrating God's grace to them through these charitable efforts.

We want to be a good testimony of what real love is, she added. We want our community to be curious about what God's love is. We want them to be attracted by our good works so that they will be open to listening to the Gospel.

Bunag said that the church is not involved in this effort to feel good about themselves or for vainglory.

We do it for the sake of the cross and to reach the lost, she said.

Pasco County Superintendent Kurt Browning and Hillsborough County Superintendent Addison Davis thanked Idlewild for the donations in statements shared with Patch.

"This will really make a difference, Browning said. It will come as a relief to so many families, especially at a time when many are struggling."

As the pandemic's economic impact continues to ravage the United States, many churches have stepped up to offer assistance to those in need.

Last December, for example, Hope City Church of Joplin, Missouri held a meal-packing event where volunteers packed approximately 40,000 meals for the needy.

In a season where it can be easy to give our attention and focus to things, we wanted to focus on people. Instead of having a typical worship gathering, we spent most of our time packing meals that will help feed hungry families, Hope City Lead Pastor Cody Walker told CP at the time.

We know everyone needs two things: food and hope. We hope these meals will be able to provide both for people who need to know they are not forgotten or alone.

In Southern California, Pastor Rick Warrens Saddleback Church delivered over 2.4 million pounds of food at over 300 food distribution events throughout Orange County, according to The Epoch Times.

Joel Osteens Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas partnered with the evangelical humanitarian organization World Vision to distribute thousands of boxes of fresh food through the Fresh Food Box Program to those facing hunger during the pandemic.
Only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview, research from George Barna finds

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Only 6% of Americans have a "biblical worldview," according to research from notable evangelical pollster George Barna released as part of a new endeavor with the Christian conservative advocacy organization Family Research Council.

In a statement Wednesday, FRC announced that Barna, who founded the influential evangelical polling organization Barna Group, joined the organization as a senior fellow of their newly launched Center for Biblical Worldview.

FRC President Tony Perkins said that the center is "designed to give Christians a firm foundation so that they can engage the culture by being rooted in Gods Word."

Every Christian can and should obtain a biblical worldview  which is only achieved when a person believes that the Bible is true, authoritative, and then taught how it is applicable to every area of life, which enables them to live out those beliefs," Perkins stressed in a statement.

As part of the center's launch, FRC released research conducted by Barna's Metaformation research group. Some of the new report includes questions and data compiled for the American Worldview Inventory produced by the Barna-led Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.

The data found, among other things, that while 51% of American adults said they have a biblical worldview, only 6% of American adults actually hold this worldview.

Barna drew the conclusion of inconsistency among the 51% reporting a biblical worldview by noting that many of the questions to determine worldview found this group technically outside of what the pollster defined as a biblical worldview.

For example, of the 51%, 49% said that reincarnation was a possibility after they die. Meanwhile, only 33% said they believed that human beings are born with a sinful nature and can only be saved from the consequences of sin by Jesus Christ.

Data for the research came from a May survey featuring a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, with a sampling error of about plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Christians have a duty to stand against the prevailing cultural tides and proclaim Gods truth to a dark and wandering world," Perkins stated. "But before you stand, you need solid ground."

The data comes as similar results have been found by other surveys in recent years. Last September, the Cultural Research Center revealed survey data compiled in January 2020 that showed that 2% of millenials hold a biblical worldview even though 61% identify as Christian.

In 2017, a survey from the American Culture and Faith Institute found that about 10% of Americans hold a distinctly biblical worldview even though 46% claimed to lead a Christian life.

In addition to Barna serving as a senior fellow, FRC's new Center for Biblical Worldview will be headed by David Closson, author of FRCs "Biblical Worldview Series" who has written pieces for publications including National Review and The Gospel Coalition. Owen Strachen, the provost and research professor of theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas, also joined the center as a senior fellow.

I am excited to work more closely with FRC to apply the research findings in ways that help to transform individuals lives and American culture," Barna said in a statement. "Given FRCs track record of making a difference in our society based upon its unwavering commitment to biblical principles, I look forward to an effective and fruitful partnership using research to guide our efforts.

The founder and namesake of the Barna Group, Barna also founded the Cultural Research Center in March 2020.
No, Juan Williams, parents rights isn't code for white race politics

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In his November 1 op-ed for The Hill, Fox News Analyst Juan Williams claimed that the parents rights mantra in the Virginia gubernatorial elections is simply 'a code for white race politics.' To the contrary, this really is about parents rights and about what is best for all children. To inject charges of white supremacy and racism is to miss the whole point of why so many parents are so upset. In all candor and with due respect, I would have expected better from Mr. Williams.

The fact is that these parents are concerned with the injection of racism into every phase of their childrens education, not to mention the injection of an extreme LGBTQ agenda. Williams should be standing with these parents, not against them.

With reference to campaigning strategies in the 2018 elections, he wrote, Virginia Republicans are back with a new and improved Culture Wars campaign for 2021. The closing argument is once again full of racial division  but this time it is dressed up as a defense of little children.

Specifically, he claimed that, It is a campaign to stop classroom discussion of Black Lives Matter protests or slavery because it could upset some children, especially white children who might feel guilt.

To the contrary, every white Christian parent with whom I have interacted wants their children to know the truth about slavery, segregation, and the lasting effects of those sinful institutions. And they want to see equal opportunities for all.

But they do not want their children thinking they are evil because they are white (this is actually happening). And they do not want their children to feel guilty for having a nice home or good educational opportunities, as if all success of all white Americans was built on the shoulders of slaves.

In the words of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, The way were talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past.

Most of all, these parents do not want everything to be about race, to the point that math can be seen as racist. Or that famous European poets and historians are canceled because of their whiteness.

Remarkably, to make his case, Williams repeats the very fine people lie, writing, Recall, it was Trump who famously said there were very fine people on both sides of the violence sparked by Unite the Right, the 2017 rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.

Surely Williams must know that this has been debunked time and time again. But why let a good lie die?

He also claims that Critical race theory  broadly, a focus on racial disparities as a fact of American life  is not explicitly taught in Virginias public schools or anywhere in American public schools. But Republicans nationwide have made it a boogeyman to excite racial divisions and get their base to the polls.

To be sure, there are different ways to define CRT. For some, it is healthy, positive, and objective. For others, it is unhealthy, negative, and biased. So, before we debate CRT, its important to ask, What, exactly, do you mean by the term?

And clearly, CRT in its full-blown, academic form, is not being taught to kids in Virginia (and elsewhere). But are classes taught through the lens of CRT? Without question.

As a Daily Wire headline announced on October 31, Terry McAuliffe Claims CRT Has Never Been In Virginia Schools. His Administration Pushed It, Documents Show. The documentation is clear and undeniable.

Yet Williams approvingly cites McAuliffe, who said, [Gubernatorial candidate Glenn] Youngkins closing message of book banning and silencing esteemed Black authors is a racist dog whistle designed to gin up support from the most extreme elements of his party  mainly his top endorser and surrogate, Donald Trump.

To the contrary, it is authors with extremist views that are under scrutiny, or, at the least, authors whose views are being exploited by educators with extremist agendas, while contrary views are rejected and banned. (As an aside, but for the record, Youngkin largely campaigned as himself and for himself, not as an extension of Trump, as other political commentators have noted.)

Unfortunately, Williams is guilty of reverse racism, one that projects all kinds of nefarious motives onto parents who really do care and who really want their kids to get a solid education rather than cultural brainwashing.

In that spirit, I recently tweeted, The solution to anti-black racism is not anti-white racism (or anti-Asian racism, etc.). Instead, it is cultivating mutual understanding, respect, and love, with a real desire to see others thrive and enjoy the best of what America has to offer.

Mr. Williams, I invite you to step higher with me so that, together, we could advance that mutual understanding, respect, and love based on truth rather than engage in an endless game of biased and racially charged sniping.

Surely America in 2021 deserves better.
2020 ballot initiatives: States weigh in on legalizing drugs, race discrimination, new state flag

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In addition to casting votes in the presidential contest, congressional races and a myriad of other state and local races Tuesday, millions of American voters made their voices heard on several ballot initiatives placed before them.

Two of the most notable referendums took place in Colorado and Louisiana, where voters were asked to weigh in on ballot initiatives related to the hot-button issue of abortion. In Colorado, a majority of voters rejected a ballot initiative that would ban abortion after 22 weeks while a majority of Louisiana voters supported a constitutional amendment asserting that abortion is not a constitutional right.

Other issues placed on the ballot included legalizing marijuana, allowing 17-year-olds to vote and a new "In God We Trust" state flag.

Here are four takeaways from the results of the ballot initiatives that were placed before voters Tuesday night.
Supreme Court vacates decision against religious groups fighting NY abortion coverage mandate

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The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling against multiple religious employers seeking an exemption to a 2017 New York regulation requiring employers to provide healthcare plans that include coverage of medically necessary abortions.

In an order released Monday morning, the nations high court vacated a lower court ruling in the case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, et al. v. Emani, Shiri, et al., remanding the case back to the New York Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court cited its unanimous July decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia to justify the order. In that case, the high court ruled that Philadelphia officials could not exclude a Catholic charity from its foster program because the organization refused to place children with same-sex couples for religious reasons.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch voted to hear the charities appeal rather than send the case back to the lower courts.

Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, a legal nonprofit that represents the diocese, said in a statement that he is thankful for the order.

New York clearly learned nothing from the federal governments own attempts to force nuns to pay for contraceptives and is now needlessly threatening charities because they believe in the dignity and humanity of every human person, stated Baxter.

We are thankful that the Supreme Court wont allow the New York Court of Appeals bad ruling to be the last word on the right of religious ministries to serve New Yorkers of all faiths.

A group of religious organizations and orders, including multiple Roman Catholic dioceses, Catholic Charities, an Anglican order of nuns and multiple Protestant churches filed lawsuits against New York over its abortion coverage mandate.

We believe that every person is made in the image of God, said Mother Miriam of the Sisterhood of Saint Mary, the oldest Anglican religious order founded in America. Thats why we believe in the sanctity of human life, and why we seek to serve those of all faiths  or no faith at all  in our community. Were grateful that the Supreme Court has taken action in our case and hopeful that, this time around, the New York Court of Appeals will preserve our ability to serve and encourage our neighbors.

The New York Codes, Rules and Regulations, Title 11, Section 52.16 (o) prohibits healthcare policies from limiting what it describes as medically necessary abortions.

No policy delivered or issued for delivery in this State that provides hospital, surgical, or medical expense coverage shall limit or exclude coverage for abortions that are medically necessary, the section reads.

Coverage for in-network abortions that are medically necessary shall not be subject to copayments, or coinsurance, or annual deductibles, unless the policy is a high deductible health plan  in which case coverage for medically necessary abortions may be subject to the plans annual deductible.

The New York mandate allows for a religious exemption, provided that the insurer for the religious employer obtains an annual certification confirming their status and that the insurer issues a rider for coverage of medically necessary abortions.

In section 52.2 of the New York Codes, a religious employer is defined as an entity that engages in the inculcation of religious values, primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity, serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity and is a nonprofit organization.

The plaintiffs contend that New York holds too narrow of a definition on what constitutes a religious employer and unlawfully restricts who can receive an exemption.

But religious organizations that have a broader purpose, such as serving the poor, or that employ or serve members of other faiths or no faith, must cover abortions in their health plans, stated the plaintiffs petition to the Supreme Court filed in April.

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled in favor of Christian-owned businesses and religious groups that sued for an exemption to an Obamacare mandate that required employers to provide health plans that cover birth control.
Loudoun County investigating sexual assaults of middle school boys by male student: sheriff's office

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Another series of sexual assaults have been reported in Loudoun County Public Schools as the Virginia school district continues to face scrutiny over its handling of two sexual assaults committed by a trans-identified male.

The Loudoun County Sheriffs Office released a statement Thursday announcing that it was investigating reports of multiple sexual assaults at Harmony Middle School earlier in the week. The sexual assaults involved a male student touching students inappropriately over their clothing.

At the end of the school day on October 27, the LCSO School Resource Office learned from school staff that earlier in the day a male student was inappropriately touched over his clothing by another male student in a hallway. At this time detectives have determined there are additional male students who were inappropriately touched by the same juvenile. Those incidents had not been previously reported to school officials or law enforcement.

Harmony Middle School Principal Eric Stewart emailed parents about the incidents on Thursday, after word of the sexual assaults began to spread on social media. Harmonys administration is reviewing the alleged incident with school staff and our school resource officer, he said. Because this involves possible disciplinary consequences, I cannot go into details.

Parents at an Harmony Middle School received this note today my sources indicate there has been another alleged assault in LCPS. pic.twitter.com/zbwUIkm6Lm  Chrissy Clark (@chrissyclark_) October 28, 2021

I wanted you to know that something out of the ordinary happened at school yesterday, that the administration is aware of it, and that we are taking all the proper steps following such an incident. The safety and security of our students and staff is the top priority of Loudoun County Public Schools, Stewart added.

The reports of sexual assaults at Harmony Middle School come as Loudoun County Public Schools continues to face criticism over its handling of two other sexual assaults that occurred at two separate high schools in the district at the hands of the same trans-identified male. The first sexual assault occurred on May 28 in a girls bathroom at Stone Bridge High School as the district was considering a policy that would allow trans-identified students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex.

At an impassioned June 22 school board meeting, where parents showed up to protest the proposed policy, Superintendent of Schools Scott Ziegler insisted that no sexual assaults had taken place in any of the districts bathrooms. The school board approved the policy on Aug. 10, and eight weeks later, the perpetrator of the May 28 assault sexually assaulted another girl at Broad Run High School.

After learning this, the father of the first victim came forward and spoke to The Daily Wire, which published a report detailing both assaults. Parents descended on the two most recent Loudoun County School Board meetings, calling for Ziegler and the school board to be held accountable and accusing the district of hiding evidence from every parent in LCPS about a heinous sexual assault of a student that occurred in a bathroom so as not to derail the implementation of the transgender bathroom policy.

Subsequent reporting from news outlet WTOP revealed that Ziegler informed the school board of the sexual assault at Stone Bridge High School on the day it occurred. He sent an email to members of the board, telling them that a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom.

Ziegler did not, however, communicate this information to parents. Instead, Stone Bridge High School Principal Tim Flynn sent parents an email focusing on an altercation that took place between the sexual assault victims father and school officials without mentioning the sexual assault: There was an incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriffs Office to dispatch deputies to Stone Bridge. The incident was confined to the main office and the entrance area to the school.

During an appearance on Fox Newss Life, Liberty and Levin on Sunday, Virginias Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin expressed support for a full investigation of the Loudoun County School Board, the Loudoun County School Superintendent and the commonwealth attorney there. He cited the school boards gross negligence as a justification for his demand that its members resign.

It reached an escalated acute level when they in fact secretly moved  the young man who has  now been found to have sexually assaulted a young woman in a bathroom. And while he was being investigated and prosecuted, they moved him quietly into another school and hid it from parents and from the public, Youngkin added.

Following backlash from parents, Ziegler apologized over the districts handling of the sexual assaults, delivering a message to the victims families: My heart aches for you and I am sorry that we failed to provide the safe, welcoming and affirming environment that we aspire to provide. We acknowledge and share in your pain and we will continue to offer support to help your families through this trauma.

Last week, the perpetrator of the sexual assaults was charged with forced sodomy and forced fellatio in connection to the sexual assault at Stone Bridge High School. He is due back in court on Nov. 15 for a hearing related to the second sexual assault.
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One of the most important cultural figures in the last century was G.K. Chesterton; an astonishingly prolific writer, speaker and defender of Christianity.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in 1874 to a London family with a liberal religious faith, from which he soon drifted away. He studied art in London where he also took classes in literature but left without ever graduating. Chesterton, intelligent and well read, began working in a publishers office but increasingly wrote art and literary criticism. His ability to rapidly produce appealing, thought-provoking articles on almost any topic was soon recognized, and he began writing weekly columns for journals  a trend that continued for the rest of his life.

Chestertons wife, Frances, whom he married in 1901, was responsible for bringing him to faith in Christ. Increasingly, GKC became a celebrated figure on the cultural landscape. He took a firm stand for traditional Christianity and challenged many of the ideas of the early 20th century. Chesterton became an imposing and popular speaker, debating with people such as George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Bertrand Russell. He was increasingly widely read and quoted, and in the 1930s began giving popular radio talks.

Chesterton died of heart failure at his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on June 14, 1936, at age 62.

Chesterton was remarkably prolific. He authored 80 books, several hundred poems, 200 short stories, 4,000 articles, and several plays. He has been called a master without a masterpiece. His three enduring achievements are his books defending Christianity, his poetry, and his detective novels.

His two defenses of the Christian faith  Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man  have played a part in many conversions, including that of C.S. Lewis. In his poetry, Chesterton created some of the most memorable and popular poems of the English language. Perhaps Chestertons most enduring achievement lies in his creation of Father Brown, an amateur detective who is a short, clumsy priest. In over 50 short stories, Father Brown succeeds in solving crimes, not because of his intelligence or deductive skills but  on the contrary  because he understands the depths of the human soul.

In his many writings, Chesterton produced numerous quotable phrases, many of which involve some sort of paradox in which truth is seen in a fresh and unexpected way. Let me give you some of my favorites:

We do not want a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world.

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

There is, too, the brilliantly brief response he wrote to a newspaper:

Dear Sir: Regarding your article Whats Wrong with the World? I am. Yours truly.

As brilliant as he was, even his greatest admirers still admit he was flawed. So, while he saw the threat of Hitler, he did write things that some view as anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, as the Christian poet T.S. Eliot said, Chesterton was importantly and consistently on the side of the angels.

As an evangelist, I see Chesterton as one of the great defenders of the Christian faith in the 20th century. He was resolutely, persistently, and brilliantly countercultural, and in the wonderful way he spoke out I find three things worthy of praise.

First, Chesterton confronted his world with courage. It was not easy being a traditional Christian in the early 20th century when it was fashionable to have belief in progress and disbelief in religion. Undeterred, Chesterton boldly attacked atheism, agnosticism, and liberal Christianity. He consistently reminded the people of God of Christ and their need for redemption.

Second, Chesterton was creative. He wrote an enormous amount on a variety of topics in many genres, and his Christian faith was there in everything. As a result, his works were a multifaceted attack on unbelief. Those able to resist Chestertons arguments in prose often found themselves challenged by his poetry.

Finally, Chesterton confronted his world with charm. All that he wrote was full of wit and humor. Although he battled against the most hostile of thinkers, he did so not with anger, but with generous grace. For all his zeal to confront, Chesterton made few enemies. In fact, the persistently happy tone of his writing may have had as much an impact as the words themselves.

We could certainly benefit from having men and women like Chesterton today, who can defend the Christian faith with courage, creativity, and charm.
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Who should make decisions about how children should be educated? The obvious answerconsistent with American democratic values  is clear: parents. The alternative is unavoidably tyrannical.

Indeed, the question of who our children fundamentally belong to has come to define our modern political divide.

I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach, said Democrat and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in September. This comment struck a deep chord with parents  particularly in Loudon County, Virginia, which has found itself to be ground zero for this national debate.

In Loudoun County, parents and the school board have clashed over the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, making national news. Virginians consider education to be the second most important issue, just after the economy.

This frustration with the public school system in Virginia has been boiling for a while. It has been the result of a series of cascading events that have challenged the autonomy of parents. Parents started to voice unprecedented levels of frustration with their local school boards when districts abruptly decided that children werent going to school anymore at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite overwhelming evidence that spending day after day on Zoom is detrimental to childrens health, and even more overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 does not pose a serious threat to children, schools remained closed in Virginia last year.

Parents noticed that the school districts endlessly moved the goal when it came to returning to in-person learning. They also felt that school officials were showing a lack of compassion for parents, who were desperately fighting to save their children from the drudgery of Zoom.

Meanwhile, parents got an unfiltered look into what their children were being taught.

Parents of high school freshmen, for example, were outraged to find out that their children were assigned reading that can only be described as pornography. Additionally, parents discovered that their children were being taught critical race theory, which led to a tumultuous school board meeting in Loudoun County in June, during which many parents claimed that their children were being indoctrinated with woke ideology.

At that meeting, a parent, Scott Smith, was arrested for disorderly conduct. Months later, the Daily Wire broke the story that this mans 14-year-old daughter was raped in a school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt to gain access to the girls bathroom at the end of May.

Smith later said that he was confronted and taunted by activists supporting the School Boards bathroom policy at the meeting, and during that exchange was tackled by police.

Loudoun County superintendent Scott Ziegler denied that the assault ever took place. Tragically, the offending student was simply transferred to another school, where he went on to assault another student. Smith was understandably outraged, and was arrested after trying to advocate for his daughter.

This was a breaking point for Virginia parents, and the pain of this father was felt all across the country as the story gained national attention. Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with the Virginia public school system  and perhaps the entire public school system in the United States.

Yet, the National School Board Association, instead of acknowledging some wrongdoing on the part of Loudon County Public Schools, issued a warning shot to parents in a now retracted letter to the White House, likening these parents who showed up at their local school board meetings to domestic terrorists. Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a shockingly partisan move, responded to this letter by issuing a memo that the FBI would be investigating these disturbances at school board meetings.

Many parents saw this as a threat, and its not hard to see why.

As Virginians engage in a fierce debate over public education, one cannot help but wonder how the public school system became so detached from the will of the parents, whose tax dollars fund the school. And even more to the point, why should parents have to fight an uphill battle to shake off the title of domestic terrorists simply for trying to exercise autonomy over their own children?

The answer is that the left has come to embrace the troubling perspective that children are partially owned by the state. In the leftist worldview, the family unit does not have the sole right to determine what values and perspectives children should hold, but that public schools are equal stakeholders in these deeply personal decisions.

Take, for example, a recent op-ed in the Washington Post titled, Parents Claim They Have the Right To Shape Their Kids School Curriculum. They Dont. The piece, which gained the praise of The American Federation for Teachers President Randi Weingarten, argues, that the fight for parental rights is nothing more than a Republican talking point meant to rally supporters.

The authors of the piece cited the Supreme Court case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which argues that the state has a vested interest in public welfare.

However, as Lindsey Burke, director of The Heritage Foundations Center for Education Policy, points out on Twitter, the authors neglected to include perhaps the most consequential assertion in the courts opinion, The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize him and prepare him for additional obligations.

Where to begin with the many problems in this piece? As @kportermagee has already noted, it leaves out the most crucial observation in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. https://t.co/MCVwNKW2I0  Lindsey Burke (@lindseymburke) October 25, 2021

Indeed, our children in American do not belong to their district assigned school. Parents are not helpless observers that are powerless to the will of education bureaucrats. As the Supreme Court noted, parents have a high duty to prepare their children for life, which involved making decisions about how and what their children learn. School boards work for parents, not the other way around. This distinction is fundamental to our democracy.

Particularly in areas where parents do not have options outside of the public school system, due to lack of school choice programs or the inability to afford private or homeschooling, a public school monopoly that dismisses the rights of parents is exceptionally abusive.

Now more than ever, parents must challenge the growing tyrannical power of the public school system and advocate for school choice in every state.

Originally published at The Daily Signal.
Justin Welby apologizes for likening 'climate crisis' to Nazi genocide

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has apologized after suggesting failure to act on climate change could be worse than the inaction of world leaders in the face of Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

Archbishop Justin Welby apologized "unequivocally" for the comparison, made in comments to the BBC as world leaders gather in Glasgow to discuss climate change.

The Archbishop suggested that a failure to commit to action at the COP26 summit could lead to "a genocide on an infinitely greater scale" than that perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazis.

He said it was possible that people in the future would speak of today's leaders "in far stronger terms than we speak today of the politicians of the 30s, of the politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany because this will kill people all around the world for generations, and we will have no means of averting it."

Failing to act, he continued, "will allow a genocide on an infinitely greater scale."

"I'm not sure there's grades of genocide, but there's width of genocide, and this will be genocide indirectly, by negligence, recklessness, that will, in the end, come back to us or to our children and grandchildren," he said.

In other remarks, he suggested that world leaders attending the summit would be "cursed" if they failed to reach an agreement on addressing climate change.

After his words sparked a backlash, the archbishop issued an apology on Twitter.

"I unequivocally apologize for the words I used when trying to emphasize the gravity of the situation facing us at COP26," he said.

"It's never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis, and I'm sorry for the offense caused to Jews by these words."

Originally published at Christian Today
Christian group launches prayer campaign to protect churches from UK conversion therapy ban

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A major Christian advocacy group in the U.K. has launched a prayer campaign in response to looming government legislation aimed at banning what is derisively referred to as conversion therapy. If such as ban goes into effect, it might also prohibit clergy from praying for people struggling with same-sex attraction and gender confusion.

The Christian Institutes Let Us Pray campaign was launched on Oct. 15 and comes as the British government continues to say that it intends to ban so-called conversion therapy, but has yet to define what types of therapy or counseling fall under this label. Some churches fear the ban will include outlawing prayer.



Conversion therapy is a wide umbrella term chosen by LGBT campaigners. It covers grotesque illegal assaults such as 'corrective rape' and abusive quack medical practices like electric shock 'therapy.' But the campaigners want to go much further, the Christian Institute's prayer initiative website states.

The larger goal of the proposed government legislation, the group says, is for churches and ministries to stop advocating the historic sexual ethics of the Christian faith. Preaching, pastoral care, and even parenting might get entangled in this new policy. It shouldnt be illegal for Christians to teach their faith, or for people to pray for their friends, the website declares.

No-one denies that some people who identify as LGBT have been mistreated in the past and are sometimes mistreated today. As Christians, we condemn abuse of every kind. And we welcome LGBT people into our churches, just like we welcome everyone else, an Oct. 15 post reads.

Should the government criminalize the expression of biblical sexual ethics, it would violate the obligations outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights, the group notes. The ongoing lack of clarity as to what is being considered under the proposed ban comes on the heels of whether prayer would be included in the legislation.

In June, David Walker, the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, told the Guardian that those who breach the ban on conversion therapy ought to face prosecution, but stressed that he did not mean those engaging in gentle, non-coercive prayer, but the kind where there is a level of power imbalance and a level of force.

At the root of the divide between theologically orthodox Christians and LGBT activists arguing for such a ban is an anthropological issue about what fundamentally defines a human being. While traditional churches have historically held that ones sexual inclinations and actions are not the sum total or defining features of a persons identity and that a long-standing scriptural standard must be followed regarding sexuality, LGBT activist groups often assert that any effort to challenge particular behaviors, especially if someone is dealing with unwanted sexual attractions or gender confusion, is tantamount to an assault on who you are.

Responding to Bishop Walkers exception for gentle prayer in June, Anglican LGBT activist Jayne Ozanne told the Guardian that all prayer that seeks to change or suppress someone's innate sexuality or gender identity is deeply damaging and causes immeasurable harm, as it comes from a place  no matter how well meaning  that says who you are is unacceptable and wrong."

In late March, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a letter to the Evangelical Alliance that he did not want to see pastors face criminal penalties.



As the Government made clear in 2018, when we first made our commitment to end conversion therapy, we will continue to allow adults to receive appropriate pastoral support (including prayer), in churches and other religious settings, in the exploration of their sexual orientation or gender identity, Johnson said. He added: "Like you, I do not want to see clergy and church members criminalized for normal non-coercive activity."

The Christian Institute's director Colin Hart said in a statement that the goals of those pushing for the ban are sweeping.

"Private prayer, evangelism, parenting, pastoral advice, preaching and teaching, church membership, baptism, confirmation and communion would all be put at risk by an overly broad ban, Hart said, adding that these are among the ordinary things churches do and must not be criminalized.



"We want to protect Gospel freedom. Politicians must not allow activists to exploit concerns about genuine abuse to further their own agendas against Christians," he said.






"Odd.i.see" is a collective of artists, teachers, healers and mystics offering goods and classes. The pop-up will be in the Micro Market until Nov. 13 in suite 107B.

Yoga instructor Kasie Lunson previously owned and operated the Dharma Art wellness studio and Black Hen Gallery with her husband Scott. They moved on from that endeavor but are still offering popular options from the former business.

We had the studio on Cuthbert Avenue for the past three years, and we decided we wanted to be like a traveling circus show, she said. We could come and go as we please and do what we wanted.

She saw that the Micro Market was hosting weekly rentals on one of the shops then jumped on the opportunity, she said. The pop-up decided to do some yoga classes and host a couple of art shows while renting the spot.

We thought the vibe at the Micro Market was really cool, she said. Its been a long time planning for us to be able to do classes while being able to have a wandering studio.

Classes include Kundalini yoga, Essentrics stretch, sips of cacao, life path guidance, belly dancing, astrology readings, dancing silks, gentle yoga, hoop dance and reiki.

"The classes we offer aren't offered anywhere else in Midland and -- personally speaking -- they are fun options that are community-driven," Lunson said. "Participants get to do weird things that spice things up."

Want to go? Visit @_oddisee_ on Instagram for the schedule and more pop-up events. For a class schedule at the Micro Market visit https://www.mydharmaart.com/classes-2. See More Collapse

On Friday, there will be an art opening for local artist Jane Becker. On Nov. 12, the pop-up will have an art opening for her art and her husbands art. Along with the art gallery, the shop is also selling earrings and necklaces from a local artisan.

The name comes from kind of being this traveling show along with the book the Odyssey, she said, "a book about traveling and having epic adventures while making friends along the way.

The pop-up will also have activities during the Lo. St. Market from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. by Centennial Park.

During the Lo. St. Market, we will have Lucia Light No. 3 from Source Float and Wellness which stimulates the pineal gland, she said. We will have more of our friends here doing tarot readings, reiki and friends selling their products too.

More biz news

--Velvet Mesquite Designs will have a grand opening from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday at its new location at 3211 W. Wadley, suite 23. The grand opening will feature cocktails, curated goods and raffle prizes.

--Flying Cow Tallow will have an early Black Friday sale online this Friday from 12:15 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. Get 30 percent off in store and online on tallow products (gift sets excluded). The store is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 4425 W. Wadley, suite 180, and purchases can be made on the website anytime at https://flyingcowtallow.com/.

--Lo. St. Market will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Centennial Park.

--The Artist Community Market will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at 1506 W. Illinois Ave. Check out local artists and creatives, food trucks, live performances and art activities.

--Young Professionals of Midland will host a joint mixer with Rope Youth at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 9 at Basin PBS, 203 N. Main St. Enjoy food and drinks while learning about upcoming volunteer opportunities. There will be networking opportunities with local leaders, including 2020 congressional candidate Brandon Batch. Register at ypmidland.com.

-- Midland College will host a free small business federal tax workshop from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11 at the Cogdell Learning Center. Special presenter, John Love of Love Wealth Management LLC. will go over financial solutions to problems that occur for small businesses. Those problems include: reducing taxable income via business deductions, record-keeping tips, utilizing different and unique deductions, accessing community business resources, avoiding problems with the IRS and estimating taxes. Register at midland.edu/taxworkshop.

--Miss Cayces Wonderland presented a check for more than $3,400 to Buckner Midland Children and Family Services after their fall and Christmas open house.
ONEOK Inc OKE posted third-quarter 2021 operating earnings of 88 cents per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 83 cents by 6%. Also, the bottom line improved 25.7% year over year.

Improving economic conditions led to an increase in volumes of natural gas and natural gas liquids, thus benefiting the quarterly results.

Total revenues of $4,536.2 million missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $5,324 million by 14.8%. However, the top line improved 108.6% from $2,174.3 million in the prior-year quarter.

Highlights of the Release

The company spent $3,449.1 million on cost of sales and fuel, up 172.5% from the year-ago quarters level.

In the third quarter, ONEOKs adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were $865.2 million, up 15.8% year over year.

The company incurred interest expenses worth $184 million, up 4.4% from the prior-year quarters level.

Its operating income came in at $667.9 million in the third quarter, up 21.3% from the prior-year quarters reading.

The company completed the 200-million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) Bear Creek natural gas processing plant expansion and its related infrastructure in the Williston Basin. In September 2021, it announced plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (combined Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions) by 30% within 2030 from the 2019 levels.

Financial Highlights

As of Sep 30, 2021, ONEOK had cash and cash equivalents worth $224.3 million compared with $524.5 million as of Dec 31, 2020.

Long-term debt (excluding current maturities) was $13,640.5 million as of Sep 30, 2021, down from $14,228.4 million as of Dec 31, 2020.

The companys cash provided by operating activities in the first nine months of 2021 was $1,491.2 million, up from $1,103.1 million in the comparable period of last year.

Capital expenditures (including maintenance) amounted to $166.2 million in the third quarter of 2021, down from $380 million in the corresponding quarter of last year.

Guidance

ONEOK increased its 2021 net income and adjusted EBITDA to the range of $1,430-$1,550 million and $3,325-$3,425 million, respectively, up from the earlier guided range of $1,200-$1,500 million and $3,050-$3,350 million. Maintenance capital expenditures are likely to be $190-$210 million in 2021.

Zacks Rank

ONEOK carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), currently. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Peer Release

ONE Gas Inc. OGS reported third-quarter 2021 earnings of 38 cents per share, on par with the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Upcoming Releases

Sempra Energy SRE is scheduled to release third-quarter 2021 operating earnings on Nov 5. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the metric is pegged at $1.70 per share.

Atmos Energy Corporation ATO is scheduled to release fourth-quarter fiscal 2021 operating earnings on Nov 10. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the same is pegged at 37 cents per share.

Zacks Names "Single Best Pick to Double"

From thousands of stocks, 5 Zacks experts each have chosen their favorite to skyrocket +100% or more in months to come. From those 5, Director of Research Sheraz Mian hand-picks one to have the most explosive upside of all.

You know this company from its past glory days, but few would expect that it's poised for a monster turnaround. Fresh from a successful repositioning and flush with A-list celeb endorsements, it could rival or surpass other recent Zacks' Stocks Set to Double like Boston Beer Company which shot up +143.0% in a little more than 9 months and Nvidia which boomed +175.9% in one year.

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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.

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LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP)  Virgin Orbit said Thursday that it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with ANA Holdings Inc. for 20 flights of its LauncherOne rocket originating from an airport in Japans Oita prefecture.

ANA Holdings, owner of Japans largest airline, and several partners would fund the manufacturing of mobile ground support equipment for the LauncherOne system, according to Long Beach, California-based Virgin Orbit.
HOLMDEL, N.J. (AP) _ Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG) on Thursday reported a loss of $2 million in its third quarter.

On a per-share basis, the Holmdel, New Jersey-based company said it had a loss of 1 cent. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 4 cents per share.

The results missed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 5 cents per share.

The provider of phone services through cloud-connected devices posted revenue of $358.3 million in the period, which topped Street forecasts. Six analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $347.6 million.

For the current quarter ending in December, Vonage said it expects revenue in the range of $358 million to $366 million.

The company expects full-year revenue in the range of $1.4 billion to $1.41 billion.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on VG at https://www.zacks.com/ap/VG
The harvest is over, wines are fermenting and thanks is being expressed for a bountiful harvest. Many Texas wineries are glad to be open during Texas wine month as designated by the Texas Department of Agriculture. It is great to be evolving out of a pandemic and into regular life. The last two years have been especially challenging for many, but we are still blessed. November is the month of feasts and celebrating with the giving of thanks for what should be a bountiful year. What wines should you pair for your big feast? Most of our foods like turkey, hams, sausage, pot roast, and such on the Thanksgiving table are probably grown in Texas. Local Texas wines would pair very well with these local Texas foods. Below are suggested wines from local Texas wineries to add to your celebration table for those special local foods:

Turkey - Becker Winery Viognier. Messina Hof Gewurztraminer. Pleasant Hill Blanc du Bois (dry). Windy Winery Chardonnay, Whitley Vineyards Grenache Rose. West Sandy Creek Winery Blanc du Bois.

Sugar-cured ham - Bernhardt Winery Schrock. Messina Hof Angel Riesling. Whitley Vineyards Rose of Sangiovese.

Wild game birds - Becker Iconoclast Cabernet Sauvignon; Bernhardt Winery Merlot,

Sausage - Bernhardt Winery Cabernet Sauvignon. Blue Epiphany Escape Plan

Pot Roast - Messina Hof Paulo Meritage. Bernhardt Cabernet Sauvignon. Whitley Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon. Bending Branch Red Blend, Becker Cabernet Sauvignon-Syrah Reserve.

Chocolate Desserts - Bernhardt Winery PORT. Messina Hof Paulo Port. Blue Epiphany Escape Plan, Llano Estacado Tempranillo Reserve

Whatever your choice of food, remember that local foods always go best with local wines! Plan a road trip with friends and visit several of the wineries to buy these local wines. Please call ahead since our local wineries have limited capacity and limited hours for visitors. Locations and contacts for these wineries are outlined below in alphabetical order:

Bernhardt Winery located at 9043 County Road 204 between Plantersville and Dobbin. (www.bernhardtwinery.com) or call 936-894-9829.

Blue Epiphany Winery at 400 Bryant Road in Conroe (www.Blue-Epiphany.com) or call 281-967-9799

Messina Hof Winery at 4545 Old Reliance Road in Bryan (www.messinahof.com) or call 800-736-9463.

Pleasant Hill Winery at 1441 Salem Road in Brenham (www.pleasanthillwinery.com) or call 979-830-VINE.

West Sandy Creek Vineyards at 1773 FM 1791 in Richards (www.wscwinery.com) or call 936-436-9050.

Whitley Vineyards at 401 College Street in Montgomery (www.WhitleyVineyards.com) or call 936-449-8052

Windy Winery located near the Brenham Airport at 4232 Clover Road (www.windywinery.com) or call 979-836 3252

By the way, several of these wineries can also produce your own unique labeled wines based on your designs and logos. Imagine having your own label on that special bottle of wine on your Thanksgiving table. If you plan ahead with these wineries, you can add that extra special flair to that celebration of a bountiful harvest. These special wines also make great Christmas gifts.

Upcoming wine events

The weather has been awesome paired with local wine events. Before that next major chill arrives, try these local wine events:

Every Saturday and Sunday - Messina Hof hosts a vineyard/cellar tour and tasting at 1, 3, and 5 pm which provides a lot of the behind the scenes information on Messina Hof Winery, one of Texas oldest winery.

November Saturdays and Sundays - Enjoy afternoon concerts on Saturdays and evening concerts on Sundays. For more information, go to www.BernhardtWinery.com.

Nov. 21 - Messina Hof Winery in Bryan hosts cooking classes with wine centered on a three course meal. This course focuses on traditional holiday foods and costs $69.95 plus tax and 20 percent gratuity. For more information call 979-778-4963 ext. 234

Dec. 11 - Winter Solstice Celebration at Bernhardt Winery

Ron Saikowski may be reached at rsaikowski@comcast.net.
courtesy of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office

Authorities are asking for the publics help in identifying a trio of young men who late last month held up a gas station cashier at gunpoint in Porter.

Around 12:10 p.m. Oct. 22, Montgomery County Sheriffs deputies were dispatched to the Exxon at 24645 FM 1314 about a reported aggravated robbery. Investigators learned three males entered the store with one brandishing a handgun and demanding the cashier open the cash register. After the clerk complied and the perpetrators took the money, they left in a dark four-door passenger car, according to the sheriffs office.
FORT MADISON, Iowa (AP)  Police in the southeastern Iowa town of Fort Madison have arrested a 17-year-old boy in connection with the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old.

Officers were called to a home just after 5 p.m. Wednesday and found the victim in a bedroom. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The victim's name has not been released.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP)  Authorities are investigating the deadly shooting of a 28-year-old man in Grand Island.

The Grand Island Independent reports that police responded just after 3 a.m. Thursday and found Tesloach Kek Yiel wounded. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
From her home in Illinois, Asma Yawari has built a relationship with her younger cousin in Afghanistan thats made the geographic distance between the two teenagers' worlds seem, well, not quite so distant.

They never met but have bonded over phone calls and messages -- swapping family photos and language lessons, sharing hair routines and future dreams. But after the Talibans return to power, the cousins worry that the space between their worlds may grow in new ways. Already, some shared experiences, like going to school or dressing up, are fading, replaced by the fear that the cousin, and others like her in Afghanistan, may be left behind.

We have similar goals and aspirations, the 17-year-old Asma says. The only difference is that Im able to achieve those goals and aspirations.

As a wary world watches to see the Talibans policies for women, many older girls in Afghanistan already face disrupted dreams, worried for their future, afraid of missing out on big career goals as well as little freedoms and hobbies that helped connect them to far-flung families. And perhaps none are more worried for them than the faraway women who could have been them - the sisters, the cousins, the friends.

The cousin, 13-year-old Bahara, tells Asma shes upset that boys in her age range have been called back to school, but not girls above the sixth grade. And even if shes allowed to return, she questions what dreams of hers may no longer have a place under the Taliban.

Her hope of one day becoming a fashion designer? Im just going to give up on that, she says. Its very sad for me.

Asma, who has helped organize protests in Chicago in support of Afghans scrambling to leave the country after the Taliban takeover, worries over the safety of her family in Afghanistan and the future of her female cousins.

I always think that could have been me, she says.

___

The status of Afghan women, at times used to help garner support for the U.S. war after the 9/11 attacks, has once again taken center stage after the recent rise of the Taliban who face international pressure to ensure womens rights.

During their previous rule between 1996 and 2001, the group severely restricted women in the public sphere, largely confining them to their homes. That track record looms large even as they promise more rights and freedoms this time.

Throughout decades, Afghanistan has been used as grounds for competing powers to play out their proxy wars, and the status of Afghan women is often at the heart of it, says Nura Sediqe, lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Changes over the last two decades brought opportunity for the women in Sediqes family in Herat province but then fatalities continued in more rural parts of Afghanistan, so I felt this guilt.

That diversity of experiences of Afghan women is often overlooked, says Mejgan Massoumi, an Afghan American historian.

Some girls and women worked to seize the opportunity of going to school and getting a job; others faced social and economic burdens holding them back, she says.

In bigger cities, like Kabul, women may have more visibility and rights than in the many rural areas of the vast country.

Girls education has been a battlefield with uneven progress.

Even before the recent Taliban takeover, multiple barriers -- including cultural norms, familial disapproval, security fears, financial pressures, the long distance to some schools and shortages of female teachers -- have kept significantly more girls than boys out of school, especially when the girls reach adolescence, according to a 2019 UNICEF report.

Still, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi told reporters that the number of children enrolled in schools increased from one million in 2001, when the Taliban were ousted from power, to almost 10 million, including 4 million girls. Despite this progress, 4.2 million children are out of school, including 2.6 million girls, he said.

The education gains of the past two decades must be strengthened and not rolled back, said Abdi, who added he urged the Taliban to let all girls resume learning.

Speaking in mid October, he said girls were allowed to attend secondary school in only five of Afghanistans provinces. Talibans education minister, Abdi said, told him they were working on a framework which they will announce soon that will allow all girls to go to secondary schools.

The Taliban have sought to portray themselves as more moderate than when they imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law during their earlier rule, but many Afghans are skeptical.

The Taliban is taking their personal, unique interpretation of Islamic law and fusing it with their cultural understanding of womens rights and womens access to the public sphere, says Ali A. Olomi, an assistant professor of Islamic and Middle East history at Penn State University, Abington, stressing that Islam strongly encourages education.

___

Masouma Tajik worries her younger sisters may not have access to the same opportunities that have allowed her to become a data analyst in Kabul.

The 22-year-old, career-minded Tajik graduated from the American University of Afghanistan, where she studied on a scholarship.

She recalls feeling scared shortly before the Taliban seized Kabul. The first reason that I was afraid was my right to live as a woman, she says. I put so much time and effort on my career."

After the Taliban takeover, Tajik left Afghanistan for Eastern Europe. Shes been applying for scholarships or refugee programs in different countries.

Her sisters stayed behind in Herat with the rest of the family.

One of her sisters' answers became shorter when they talked: No, she doesnt go to school (their youngest sister does). The sister, who used to tell Tajik that she wanted to join the army, didnt complain but her voice betrayed her sadness, Tajik says. More recently, that sister started sharing that she has been going out, including to the park, and studying English at home.

Tajik has no idea how to help; her own life is in limbo.

Im just like giving hope for them, Tajik says. I have nothing, no plan in my hands for them. She understands this.

Nazia, 30, is also missing a younger sister who is in Afghanistan. The two were separated two years ago, when Nazia moved to America and Hena remained in Kabul.

Hena is growing hopeless about what the future holds.

At times, Nazia, who didn't want her last name used to protect the identity of relatives in Afghanistan, tries to cheer her up; at others, she joins her in crying.

Since she was a child, Hena has dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Everything has been taken away from us, she says, speaking on Zoom as Nazia translates. She helps her mom with chores at home and, sometimes, reads her textbooks, unsure whether or when she will be able to use them in a classroom again.

And Nazia feels helpless: I cant do anything for them.

___

In Afghanistan, Bahara says she had been counting the days since boys beyond the sixth grade have been allowed back to school, but not the girls.

Before, time would fly by as she juggled going to her school and doing her homework with taking outside courses in English and her favorite hobby  sewing.

She scoured Instagram for fashion design inspiration; her family felt it would be inappropriate for her to post photos of herself, but she could browse. Her mother gave her a sewing machine and she made dresses for herself and her sisters.

Now, her world has shrunk. A close friend with whom she had planned a fashion design project left the country. The courses she used to take are no longer meeting. She tries to keep a low profile, wearing a loose, long black gown when she goes out and a tightly wrapped black headscarf that frames her face; she deleted from her phone cherished photos of herself wearing dresses she made.

A sister says she doesnt want to return to school even if allowed back, worried about potential Taliban harassment, Bahara says; but not her.

I miss my teachers, my books, my friends, she says. I wake up every day and when I see the clock, I think that that was the time that I should be in school.

Bahara's family is among the many who are hoping to leave the country for multiple reasons.

Talking or texting with her cousin Asma provides some relief.

Bahara holds onto the good memories, like her birthday party, shortly before Kabul fell to the Taliban. She didnt have anything to wear. In one night, I tailored a beautiful dress.

In her new dress, surrounded by childhood girlfriends, she laughed, played games and blew out the candles.

I think that was the last day for me that I was happy, she says. After that ... there is no day to spend without worries.

Meanwhile, Asma recently attended her schools homecoming, but hesitated before posting photos online of herself, dolled up in a sparkling baby blue dress and posing with friends. She didnt want her cousin or other family to think she was flaunting her freedom.

If I do go hang out with my friends, I feel guilty, she says. I just feel guilty, like, talking about it.

___

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela contributed.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP)  American Girl dolls and the strategy board game Risk were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday in recognition of their influence on the toy industry. Sand, which the group called perhaps the most universal and oldest toy in the world, was also inducted.

All three were honored during a ceremony at the hall after winning over a panel of experts who voted for them from a group of 12 finalists.

Also in the running this year were four other competitive games: Battleship, The Settlers of Catan, Mahjong and billiards, as well as Cabbage Patch Kids, Masters of the Universe, Fisher-Price Corn Popper, the toy fire engine and the pinata.

Anyone can nominate a toy but to be considered, they must have withstood tests of time and memory, changed play or toy design and fostered learning, creativity or discovery.

American Girl dolls, the 1986 creation of educator Pleasant Rowland, were recognized for their exploration of the country's social and cultural history. The 18-inch historical dolls and accompanying books each offer insights into an era. For example, Molly McIntire is waiting for her father to return home from World War II.

The Truly Me contemporary doll line, with its diversity of skin tones, hair and gender, followed in 1995, letting children choose a doll that looks like them.

Rowland, 80, called the American Girl doll's inclusion an incredible honor.

Im so proud of the American Girl familypast and presentwho have been faithful stewards of this brand for more than three decades, helping to capture the hearts of an entire generation of girls, she said in an emailed statement.

Rowlands formula for combining doll play with history lessons worked, in her words, like chocolate cake with vitamins,' curator Michelle Parnett-Dwyer said. In an era when some education experts claimed that school curriculums paid little attention to history, this toy may well have filled a void.

Risk, based on the French game Le Conquete du Monde, was first published in the United States in 1959 and continues to influence other board games, hall officials said. It challenges players to control armies and conquer the world on a game board that is a map of continents.

Risk became one of the most popular board games of all time, inspiring a new corps of passionate gamers, and influencing other games which began the wargaming hobby  and by extension the Euro-games like The Settlers of Catan that many enjoy today, curator Nicolas Ricketts said.

Sand was honored for its opportunities for tactical, physical, cooperative, creative, and independent free play, according to the hall of fame, which is housed inside The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

Children recognize sand as a creative material suitable for pouring, scooping, sieving, raking, and measuring, it said. Wet sand is even better, ready for kids to construct, shape, and sculpt.

Although some playthings can only be found online or in certain stores, sand has a global reach that most toy manufacturers would envy," chief curator Chirstopher Bensch said. "Its been a vehicle for play since prehistory, and anyone who has spent the day at the beach can understand the allure of this toy.

The class of 2021 joins 74 previous honorees.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  The Biden administration on Thursday sued Texas over new election laws that outlasted a summer of dramatic protests by Democrats, who remain unable in Congress to pass legislation they say is needed to counteract a year of Republicans adding restrictive voting measures nationwide.

The lawsuit does not go after the entirety of a sweeping bill signed in September by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, which already has some of the nation's toughest voting rules. Instead, the challenge filed in a San Antonio federal court targets provisions surrounding mail-in voting requirements and voter assistance, which the Justice Department argues violate federal civil rights protections.

It now puts two of the Texas GOP's biggest conservative victories this year in court against the federal government, as the Justice Department is simultaneously trying to stop a new Texas law that has banned most abortions since September.

Our democracy depends on the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot and to have that ballot counted, Attorney General Merrick Garland said. The Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society.

Georgia's new voting laws also drew a lawsuit this summer from the Biden administration, which is under pressure from the Democratic base to take greater action on voting rights, a top priority for the party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. But time is running out and Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked federal legislation to change election laws, including another attempt Wednesday.

Opponents of the Texas law known as Senate Bill 1 had already sued the state, accusing Republicans of setting out to disenfranchise minorities and other Democratic-leaning voters. The bill specifically targets Democratic strongholds, and was followed by Abbott weeks later signing new voting maps that fortify the GOP's slipping dominance amid the state's explosive growth.

Abbott and other Texas Republicans say the changes provide safeguards against voter fraud, which is rare.

Biden is coming after Texas for SB1, our recently enacted election integrity law, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted. "Its a great and a much-needed bill. Ensuring Texas has safe, secure, and transparent elections is a top priority of mine. I will see you in court, Biden!"

Under the new Texas law, people assisting voters who need help completing their ballot must take a longer oath that now includes acknowledging a penalty of perjury. It also removes old language about answering voters' questions, which opponents say will harm voters with disabilities.

Mail-in ballots must also now include a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number, which the Justice Department says raises the chances of ballots being wrongly rejected and excluding some eligible voters.

The law also bans 24-hour polling locations and drive-thru voting, which are not contested in the Justice Department's lawsuit.

The legislation in Texas set off a summer of walkouts by Democrats, for which Republicans threatened them with arrest, and Abbott vetoed the paychecks of thousands of rank-and-file staffers when the bill failed to reach him sooner. At one point, more than 50 Democratic lawmakers decamped to Washington, bringing the Texas Capitol to a grinding halt for 38 days.

Texas Democrats had hoped the gambit would pressure Congress into passing new voting rights protections at the federal level, but those efforts have repeatedly stalled. GOP senators oppose the Democratic voting bills as a power grab.

Texas is among at least 18 states that have enacted new voting restrictions since the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The laws are part of a national GOP campaign, including in Florida, Georgia and Arizona, to tighten voting laws in the name of security, partly driven by former President Donald Trumps false claims that the election was stolen.

Trump has called on Abbott to audit the election results in Texas, even though he won the state. Last month, Abbott appointed a new state elections chief, attorney John Scott, who briefly joined Trumps legal team last year as it challenged the 2020 results.

Abbott tweeted bring it" in response to the lawsuit, saying the new rules are legal. Democrats, meanwhile, welcomed the challenge.

Texas leaders must be held accountable for their blatant abuse of power in a shameless attempt to keep themselves in power, said Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Burundi is experiencing a rise in torture and enforced disappearances in "a clear pattern of abuses that undermines limited rights improvements under President Evariste Ndayishimiye, according to a group of independent researchers.

Members of the national intelligence service as well as the police are accused of torture, killings and enforced disappearances, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, an independent project that monitors rights abuses in the central African country, said in a new report Thursday.

Perpetrators are free "to track down any suspected opponents they view as a threat and do with them as they please, the report said.

Since mid-2021, Burundis approach to human rights has taken a concerning turn for the worse," the report said. Following a series of armed attacks and ambushes between April and September 2021, government officials accused political opponents of collaborating with armed groups and abducted or arrested dozens of them.

Abuses are taking place despite the governments diplomatic language of peace and security, including assurances by Ndayishimiye that the rights situation in his country was improving, the report said.

Ndayishimiye was elected president in May 2020 following the death of former leader Pierre Nkurunziza. Human rights groups have urged him to leave the repressive ways of his predecessor behind.

Government spokesman Prosper Ntahorwamiye didnt answer calls seeking comment.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in September, Ndayishimiye asserted that his government has focused on the protection of human rights, respect for democratic principles, freedoms of expression and opinion.

But some disagree.

Aime Magera, a Burundian opposition politician exiled in Brussels, called the president's speech an aberration, charging that opponents are killed, tortured to disappear, arbitrary arrested and imprisoned" by agents of the state.

The report by the Burundi Human Rights Initiative said abuses appear to have increased in recent months, with more than 20 publicly reported disappearances since July.

Detainees often ended up at the intelligence headquarters in Bujumbura, the largest city, where some were tortured until the pain was so intense that they said anything to make it stop.

While some detainees were eventually released, others have not been heard from again," the report said.

Others have raised similar alarms.

A recent report by SOS Medias Burundi, an independent collective of journalists working inside the country, said it had counted more than 60 bodies by the Rusizi River separating Burundi from Congo since January.

Most had been beheaded or had limbs amputated, it said.
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP)  Tunisia issued an international arrest warrant for former president Moncef Marzouki Thursday over accusations that he undermined the North African countrys security, a top Tunisian court said.

The court didn't provide any further explanation on the charges. Marzouki has been staying in France in the past month.
LAKE QUIVIRA, Kan. (AP)  Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly argued Thursday that mandates like those from the federal government for vaccinating workers against COVID-19 tend not to work," as the Democrat's made her first public statements on the rules heading into a difficult reelection campaign in her Republican-leaning state.

Kelly is top target among governors next year for Republicans nationally because Donald Trump twice carried Kansas by wide margins and President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates have roused conservative voters.

Her comments Thursday came during and after a Kansas City-area chambers of commerce lunch. She has faced criticism from Republicans and some labor-union members who oppose the mandates for not publicly opposing them after the Democratic president first announced them in September. Her staff has said she couldnt comment until the state learned the details.

We have not mandated a vaccine in the state of Kansas. We have done everything we can to encourage people and to make it easy for folks to get vaccinated," Kelly said. Ive lived in Kansas a long time and I understand that those kinds of things tend not to work.

Mandates have increased vaccination rates elsewhere. In New York City, more than 90% of the municipal workers received COVID-19 vaccinations ahead of the citys deadline Monday, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio. And Tyson Foods, which has six Kansas facilities, reported that 60,000 workers got inoculated after it announced its mandate in early August, to bring their vaccination rate above 96%.

Vaccine requirements work at this point in the pandemic. We have tried education, outreach and incentives, Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former Baltimore health commissioner, said in a recent interview. We need to end this this pandemic being a daily threat."

But Republicans already have made Kellys restrictions on businesses early in the pandemic and her later support for mask mandates key issues in the governor's race.

GOP Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who's running to oust Kelly, promised by social media Thursday to sue the Biden administration over the mandate affecting the most workers. Spokesman C.J. Grover tweeted that Kelly's comments showed that she and national Democratic Party officials had enough time to digest Tuesday nights results, in which Republicans captured the Virginia governor's office.

Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Kansas Legislature are having a panel  the joint Committee on Government Overreach and the Impact of COVID-19 Mandates  look for ways for Kansas to resist Biden's mandates. After two days of hearings last week, the committee is set to meet again next week and hopes to draft any proposals before Thanksgiving.

The loudest mandate critics include rank-and-file union members. But Andy Sanchez, the Kansas AFL-CIO's executive secretary, said he thinks most unvaccinated members will meet the Jan. 4 deadline, though the Kansas AFL-CIO doesnt track how many of its roughly 75,000 members are refusing the shots.

Just as time went on, people became more comfortable and felt more safe about getting the vaccinations, not that there was anything to worry about in the first place, Sanchez said.

Many mandate critics are calling on legislators to call themselves into special session to counter Biden's mandates, rather than waiting until 2022. Kelly said she does not think a special legislative session is due, but lawmakers can call one themselves if two-thirds of them sign a petition.

Many critics view the mandates as violating people's personal liberties.

I think those are sort of buzz words around this," Kelly said. "I think the real issue is, what do we do to get Kansans through this pandemic and help our businesses grow and thrive?

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued new rules Thursday under which Americans working at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly. The rules apply to about 84 million workers, and OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses.

Kelly expressed frustration that last year  when Trump was president  were really literally told, You are on your own.

We took that and we basically developed systems and strategies that worked within our state, so at this point to have the federal government come in and say, OK, now you all have to do if this way, is really tough to deal with, she said.

Under a separate Biden mandate, 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from the Medicare and Medicaid programs also must get vaccinated and don't have a testing option. Another Biden mandate applies the same tough rule to the employees of federal government contractors.

Schmidt already has brought Kansas into a federal lawsuit filed by multiple states against the requirement for government contractors.

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan. Andy Tsubasa Field in Topeka, Kan., also contributed.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP)  A former Arkansas state senator convicted in 2018 of corruption-related charges is pushing forward with a request for a new trial.

Attorney Lee D. Short of North Little Rock filed notice Wednesday that his client, former Sen. Jon Woods, will take his request for a new trial to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  A former New Hampshire prep school student accused of sexually assaulting the son of a faculty member in the 1970s has been found not guilty.

Jurors acquitted Benjamin Baker this week in the St. Paul's School case, WMUR-TV reported.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP)  Mohammed Abdel Sallam was shot in the chest not far from his home in Sudan's capital, where his mother was waiting for him. He had gone out to protest after hearing that there had been a military coup, the country's civilian leaders had been arrested and the government dissolved.

His brother carried him to a nearby hospital where he died from his injuries several days later, surrounded by family. He was 20 years old, and just one of more than a dozen protesters who have been killed since last week. More than 200 also have been injured.

On Oct. 25, the commander of Sudan's Armed Forces Abdel Fattah Burhan initiated the coup, also seizing power of state news and cutting communications across the country. The grab has been widely condemned by the United States and the West, and came more than two years after a popular uprising ended years of isolation and repression under an autocrat leader.

The takeover that day was the reverse of Abdel Sallams aspirations for Sudan. Mido, as he was known to family and friends, had also taken part in the 2019 mass protest movement that led to the ouster of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir. He spent months at a sit-in calling for democracy. His mother said he had felt compelled to take to the streets in dissent again.

They chased them till they got here, right next the house here, said Mahasen Abdullah Abuelgasim from her home where neighbors are still paying their condolences. The person who shot him wanted to kill him.

The ensuing protests have brought tens of thousands of people to the streets, chanting against the coup and calling on each other to remain nonviolent in their tactics. They have faced beatings, rubber bullets and live ammunition fired by security forces, according to activists. Sudan's interior ministry has repeatedly denied firing on peaceful protesters, and said that some of its forces have also been injured by gunfire.

On the same day that Abdel Sallam was shot, three other protesters were also killed. In total, a doctors' union affiliated with the Sudanese Professionals Association, the major force behind the 2019 protests, said that some 15 people have died after being shot by security forces during demonstrations. More than 280 others have been injured.

At first, Abuelgasim says she was scared for her other children to continue protesting while her son was dying in the hospital, but that feeling quickly dissipated when he died. Now, she wants to protest as well.

Anwar Abdel Sallam, Mido's older brother, carried him bleeding to the hospital. He has promised to carry on until the country is as his little brother would have wanted.

Those who died before us, we are not more precious than them, he said.
BERLIN (AP)  Germany's disease control agency on Thursday reported the highest number of new coronavirus infections since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The Robert Koch Institute, or RKI, said 33,949 new cases had been registered in the last 24 hours, up from 28,037 daily cases a week ago. The previous record was 33,777 new cases on Dec. 18, 2020.

The all-time high comes as the country's federal Health Minister Jens Spahn is set to meet with the 16 state health ministers to discuss how to limit the spread of the virus in the winter as intensive care units in the hospitals are starting to fill up again and infections among children are skyrocketing.

On Thursday, the RKI reported 165 deaths, up from 126 a week ago. The overall number of people who have died from a COVID-19 infection in Germany has risen to to 96,192.

Senior health officials have repeatedly appealed to German residents who havent yet been vaccinated at all to get their shots, though Spahn acknowledged Wednesday that many of the holdouts cant be convinced.

Official figures show that about two-thirds of Germanys population of 83 million has completed its first round of vaccination. Around 16.2 million people age 12 or above remain unvaccinated  including 3.2 million over-60s.

Although officials agreed in August to make booster shots available to over-60s and nursing home residents and staff, only just over 2 million have been administered so far.

Germany hasnt made coronavirus vaccinations obligatory for any professional groups, unlike some of its European counterparts. But regional governments have limited access to some indoor events and facilities to people who have been vaccinated, have recently recovered or been tested, and some are tightening those rules.

Pressure has been growing to implement mandatory tests in nursing homes after several outbreaks were reported in senior citizen homes in recent days that have led to more than a dozen residents dying.

The head of the association of family doctors, Ulrich Weigeldt, went even further on Thursday demanding mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for all employees working in nursing homes or hospitals.

No unvaccinated person should have contact with such a vulnerable group, either professionally or as a visitor," Weigeldt told daily tabloid Bild. "This applies to senior citizen homes and nursing homes as well as to intensive care units.

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GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The dramatic drop in carbon dioxide emissions from the pandemic lockdown has pretty much disappeared in a puff of coal-fired smoke, much of it from China, a new scientific study found.

A group of scientists who track heat-trapping gases that cause climate change said the first nine months of this year put emissions a tad under 2019 levels. They estimate that in 2021 the world will have spewed 36.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, compared to 36.7 billion metric tons two years ago.

At the height of the pandemic last year, emissions were down to 34.8 billion metric tons, so this year's jump is 4.9%, according to updated calculations by Global Carbon Project.

While most countries went back to pre-pandemic trends, Chinas pollution increase was mostly responsible for worldwide figures bouncing back to 2019 levels rather then dropping significantly below them, said study co-author Corinne LeQuere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

With 2020's dramatically clean air in cities from India to Italy, some people may have hoped the world was on the right track in reducing carbon pollution, but scientists said that wasnt the case.

Its not the pandemic that will make us turn the corner, LeQuere said in an interview at the climate talks in Glasgow, where she and colleagues are presenting their results. Its the decisions that are being taken this week and next week. Thats whats going to make us turn the corner. The pandemic is not changing the nature of our economy.

If the world is going to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, it has only 11 years left at current emission levels before it is too late, the paper said. The world has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s.

What the carbon emissions numbers show is that emissions (correcting for the drop and recovery from COVID19) have basically flattened now. Thats the good news, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasnt part of the report. The bad news is thats not enough. We need to start bringing (emissions) down.

Emissions in China were 7% higher in 2021 when compared to 2019, the study said. By comparison, Indias emissions were only 3% higher. In contrast, the United States, the European Union and the rest of the world polluted less this year than in 2019.

LeQuere said Chinas jump was mostly from burning coal and natural gas and was part of a massive economic stimulus to recover from the lockdown. In addition, she said, China's lockdown ended far earlier than the rest of the world, so the country had longer to recover economically and pump more carbon into the air.

The green recovery that many nations have talked about in their stimulus packages take longer to show up in emission reductions because rebounding economies first use the energy mix they already had, LeQuere said.

The figures are based on data from governments on power use, travel, industrial output and other factors. Emissions this year averaged 115 metric tons of carbon dioxide going into the air every second.

Breakthrough Institute climate director Zeke Hausfather, who wasnt part of the study, predicts that there is a good chance that 2022 will set a new record for global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

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For more AP climate coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @ borenbears.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  New Hampshire Republicans on Thursday released a redistricting plan that would transform the state's 1st Congressional District into one that favors their party, instead of a swing district where Democrats have made recent gains. But it also would solidify the Democrats' advantage in the 2nd District.

This map would virtually eliminate two-party competition for New Hampshires congressional seats for the next decade, said University of New Hampshire political science Professor Dante Scala. It would create a Blue Hampshire seat and a Red Hampshire seat.

Under the current map, the 1st District covers the eastern part of the state and some of the south, including Manchester. The 2nd District covers the western, northern and some southern communities, including Nashua.

With the latest U.S. Census figures showing the 1st District with about 18,000 more residents than the 2nd, Democrats on the House Special Committee on Redistricting propose making just one change: moving the town of Hampstead from the 1st District to the 2nd.

But Republicans, who control the Legislature, on Thursday proposed significant changes, creating a 1st District that climbs up from the southeast corner through the middle of the state, with the 2nd District reaching up and around it.

Republican strongholds in southern New Hampshire including Salem, Hudson, Windham and Atkinson would move into the 1st District, while Seacoast communities including Portsmouth, Rochester, Dover and Durham and surrounding towns would shift to the 2nd.

Can you tell me why we dont adopt the principle of, If it aint broke, dont fix it? asked Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, adding that moving one town would keep both districts competitive in recognition that New Hampshire is a purple state.

But Rep. Ross Berry, R-Manchester, said he considers the current map broken, because it divides communities along the southern tier.

"Its time that all that area gets put together, he said.

U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, a Democrat, is in her fifth term representing the 2nd District, while fellow Democrat Chris Pappas is in his second term in the 1st District. Democrats have won the last three elections there, but before that, it swung back and forth between the parties multiple times.

Devon Chaffee, executive director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, called the map blatant gerrymandering.

"The people of New Hampshire should choose their elected officials, not the other way around, she said in a statement. Every Granite State voice should be heard and valued equally when they cast their ballot. This map aims to prevent that.

Rep. Robert Lynn, R-Windham, acknowledged that political considerations were a factor.

Of course they were. This is a political process. Thats why its done by the Legislature, he said.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed bills in 2020 and 2019 that would have created an independent redistricting commission, saying it was unnecessary because gerrymandering is rare in the state and the current redistricting process was fair. He said Thursday he will look closely at the proposals and await further revisions.

This is the first round of maps that the public is seeing, and there are still many steps left in this democratic process, Sununu said.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Torrential rains triggered flash floods on Indonesias main island of Java on Thursday that left at least 11 people missing, officials said.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said rivers on the slopes of Mount Arjuno overflowed their banks and inundated five hamlets in Kota Batu, a city in East Java province. It said 15 people were swept away and four were later rescued.
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP)  A woman has been charged with child endangerment in the August fire deaths of her five young children, who she allegedly left in a southwest Illinois apartment without adult supervision.

Sabrina Dunigan, 34, of East St. Louis, faces five felony counts of endangering the life/health of a child in St. Clair County, and online court records indicate there are pending grand jury actions in the case, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Charging documents said the children had been left without adult supervision, which was a proximate cause of their Aug. 6 fire deaths, according to the Belleville News-Democrat.

Deontae Davis Jr., 9; 8-year-old twins Neveah Dunigan and Heaven Dunigan; Jabari Johnson, 4; and Loyel Dunigan, 2, were killed. Four of them died at the scene and the fifth died at a local hospital.

Dunigan had not surrendered to police or been served with an arrest warrant as of Thursday afternoon, said Chris Allen, a spokesman for the St. Clair County States Attorney office.

Dunigan's father, Greg Dunigan, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday that he cannot believe authorities would charge her with a crime after everything she lost.

Why are they trying to do this to her? he said. She done lost all she can lose already. Why they want to take the rest away, meaning herself? She dont have nothing left.

Assistant Fire Chief George McClellan of the East St. Louis Fire Department said shortly after the August fire that the children were home alone on the second floor of a two-story, brick building.

He said Sabrina Dunigan left briefly to pick up her boyfriend from work and she reported the fire after she and her boyfriend arrived at the apartment.

Sabrina Dunigan has said she suffered burns on her arms and feet during her futile attempts to reach her children.

Greg Dunigan has said he and his wife lived in a separate part of the one-bedroom apartment, and awoke to find smoke in apartment. He said flames prevented him from reaching his grandchildren and he and his wife jumped from the apartments second floor, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP)  A northern Indiana man has pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a woman and wounding her sister during a car chase that ended with the victims' car overturning outside a shopping center.

Kalekeni Lindeire, 38, pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder Wednesday in the September 2020 shooting that came as he was chasing the women's car with his vehicle.

If a St. Josephy County judge accepts his plea, Lindeire is expected to be sentenced to 50 years in prison in Noria Mtambalika's killing, the South Bend Tribune reported.

Mtambalika and her sister, Mundi Glory Sendeza, were found shot on Sept. 25, 2020, in an overturned car in the parking lot of a shopping center, in Mishawaka, just outside South Bend. Mtambalika later died at a hospital.

Court documents say the sisters were driving to an apartment complex when they saw Lindeire, who is an ex-boyfriend of Sendeza. The women drove away, trying to escape from Linderie after he fired multiple shots at their car, court documents say.

Sendeza later told officers she turned to see Mtambalika with blood on her face and she then lost control of the car, which hit a parked vehicle and flipped onto its roof.

Video footage from businesses in the shopping center show Lindeire pull up next to the crashed car and drag Sendeza from the wreckage. Sendeza pulled away but Linderie began tracking her in his car until a police vehicle showed up and Linderie drove away.
TOKYO (AP)  The head of Japans largest labor federation says she is determined to listen to the voices of all workers in fighting for better wages and conditions.

Tomoko Yoshino is the first woman to head Rengo, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation.

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, she said stable work has to be the top priority after the pandemic, which hit women and other vulnerable groups the hardest, in Japan and elsewhere.

Japanese unions traditionally have mostly just represented regular workers, or people employed in full-time permanent jobs. Rengo has stepped up efforts to encourage labor organizing among non-regular workers, such as those on temporary contracts, part-timers and freelancers, a large share of whom are women.

The most urgent issue is to secure stable employment. Suicides have risen among women . . . and many non-regular workers fear losing their jobs, while many others were laid off and ended up in dire straits after using up their savings, said Yoshino, who last month was elected president of the federation of about 7 million workers.

Japan has been contending with labor shortages for years, as its population shrinks and ages. The chronic short-handedness has prompted innovations such as hotels with front desks manned by robots and driverless trains. But it has not pushed wages appreciably higher - real incomes adjusted for inflation have been falling for most of the past 30 years. And growing numbers of workers are non-regular without full benefits.

In order to stabilize their daily life, we must hurry to protect their employment, she said. In that sense, as head of Rengo, I believe I must extend a hand to those people and listen to their voices closely and demand a better working environment for them.

The poverty rate among Japanese children, especially in single-parent households, is one of the highest among wealthy nations.

Meanwhile, the number of suicides in Japan rose by 912 to 21,081 last year, the first year-on-year increase since 2009, according to an annual report released Tuesday by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

It attributed the increase to the pandemic. While the number of suicides among men fell for the 11th straight year, those among women rose 15% to 7,026, the first increase in two years.

Rengos main responsibility is to negotiate with the employers of its members, especially in shunto annual wage talks. But Yoshino also is a member of a government panel appointed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took office in early October, to discuss ways to counter rising inequality with what he calls new capitalism.

In that role, she said, we are talking about all workers, including those outside of Rengo, so I would like to firmly speak up on behalf of the non-regular workers toward improving labor conditions, to protect human rights and correct disparities.

On paper, Japanese women enjoy the same rights as men at work. In reality, those laws are not enforced. Womens pay, benefits and opportunities for promotion lag far behind mens.

Gender inequality is also woven into the countrys tax and pension system, but its just part of a wider problem with workers rights, experts say.

Kishida has mentioned various ways to combat inequality, which he and other leaders have acknowledged is a major drag on the economy - families worried about making ends meet tend not to spend more than they have to. But economists say the hurdles to getting companies to raise wages and provide better benefits for non-permanent employees are daunting.

Raising wages of the lowest-paid workers in service industries is difficult because they already are operating with thin margins, while salaries of people working in nursing and elder care are set by the government and are a huge and growing cost for the country. Raising taxes to pay for such increases is politically untenable, said Sayuri Shirai, a professor at Tokyos Keio University and a former member of the Bank of Japans policy committee.

The Japanese economy is so fragile and companies have such low productivity, she said.

But Rengos efforts are a step in the right direction, she said. I think Rengo should speak more for non-regular workers. Rengo has to speak more on gender issues. They have to do more, she said.

As a student, Yoshino trained as a ballet dancer and then got a clerical job at sewing machine maker Juki Corp. after high school. That was nearly 40 years ago, just after the enactment of the Equal Opportunity Law. At the time, she said, she vaguely imagined a typical life of marriage and motherhood.

She got involved in union leadership after learning that issues raised by female employees were often deemed to be selfishness.

One day, she overheard female colleagues complaining about having to buy accessories required for their uniforms. She got her first taste of victory when she got the company to pay instead.

Many issues that should be taken up as labor issues come up in daily conversation, she said. It's important to have the skills and sensitivity to listen."
WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal judge expressed skepticism Thursday when attorneys for former President Donald Trump asked her to prevent the handover of documents sought by a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Some of the committee's requests dating back to April 2020 are alarmingly broad, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said. But she disagreed with claims by Trump's lawyers that Congress did not have a legislative purpose for getting Trump's call logs, talking points and other notes from Jan. 6 as his supporters stormed the Capitol in hopes of overturning his loss to President Joe Biden.

The Jan. 6 riot happened in the Capitol, she said. That is literally Congress' house.

Chutkan said she will rule soon on Trump's lawsuit seeking to block the release of documents related to the insurrection to the House committee. Biden largely waived executive privilege on documents held by the White House, setting up a showdown between Trump and the executive and legislative branches that's likely to go to the Supreme Court.

The records that would be given to the committee include call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from Trump's then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to a court filing by the National Archives. There are also copies of talking points from then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity," the National Archives said.

Trump's previous efforts to withhold his tax returns and other records from Congress was different because it involved his personal finances, Chutkan said Friday. The current fight is over documents that are thought to further Congress' oversight into the events of Jan. 6, she said.

The judge did question some of the dozens of demands made by the committee for Trump communications and other records. She asked specifically about a request for polling data held by Trump campaign officials dating back to April 2020.

Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the House, argued that polls would provide insight into Trump's spreading of unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud.

He didn't want to lose the election, Chutkan said at one point. Do you need polling data to determine that a president who's up for re-election wants to win and may be worried that he's not going to win?

Biden has so far waived executive privilege on nearly all the documents that the committee has asked for, though the committee agreed to defer its requests for several dozen pages of records at the behest of the Biden White House.

In explaining why Biden has not shielded Trumps records, White House counsel Dana Remus wrote that they could shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committees need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War.

Trump called the document requests a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition that was untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose, in his lawsuit to block the National Archives from turning over the documents.

The suit also challenges the legality of the Presidential Records Act, which allows an incumbent president to waive executive privilege of a predecessor, calling it inherently unconstitutional. Biden has said he would go through each request separately to determine whether that privilege should be waived.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky will have ample supplies of COVID-19 vaccine for younger children within weeks, but parents might have to be patient as kid-sized doses start going into arms, the state's public health commissioner said Thursday.

Health officials have hailed shots for children ages 5 to 11 as a major breakthrough as the country enters a new phase in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said his daughter will get the vaccine soon. The governor and his wife, meanwhile, received their COVID-19 booster shots during his Thursday news conference to showcase the importance of getting the extra dose.

Dr. Steven Stack, Kentuckys public health commissioner, stressed that the vaccinations are safe for children and that eventually there will be "plenty of vaccine to go around.

There will not be all the vaccine on day one," he said. "But over the first few weeks, it will very clearly escalate and be available very widely. So if you cant get in on day one or day two, just be patient. Youll be able to get in in the first few weeks. Im confident youll be able to get vaccinated.

Beshear said he looks forward to getting his 11-year-old daughter vaccinated because he and his wife trust the science. Their 12-year-old son is fully vaccinated.

As for the availability of the kid-sized dozes in Kentucky, the governor said: I think we will have enough vaccine in the first week, week and a half for about a third of all kids in the 5-to-11 age group, and enough for everybody within probably three weeks or a month.

As younger schoolchildren start getting vaccinated, local school districts should resist removing or relaxing mask mandates in schools, the Democratic governor said. School boards need to allow enough time for those children to get fully vaccinated, he said.

To say weve got a vaccine for kids now, so were going to drop masks before they can get the immunity that the vaccines would offer would be a mistake," Beshear said.

I think weve got a good shot at getting to a place with this virus where we wont need masks in school, hopefully during this school year, he added. "But we will not get to that place if we rush the decision.

In September, the states Republican-led legislature shifted masking decisions to local school leaders. School boards then voted overwhelmingly to keep masks on students and staffs while at school. It was at a time when COVID-19 cases in Kentucky were surging due to the fast-spreading delta variant. Virus cases have declined since then.

Meanwhile, the governor kept up his plea for Kentuckians to get their COVID-19 booster shots. To reinforce the point, Beshear and his wife, Britainy, received their shots during his media briefing Thursday. The first lady remarked that she barely felt it, and the governor said the COVID-19 shots were only ones in his life he was excited to get.

The booster shots are incredibly important," the governor said, in getting people's "level of immunity back to a place where youre less likely to get it, youre less likely to spread it.

If we have another (COVID-19) spike, and the severity of what it will be, will depend on how many of our people we have gotten boosted, he said.

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Millions of U.S. workers now have a Jan 4. deadline to get a COVID vaccine.

The federal government on Thursday announced new vaccine requirements for workers at companies with more than 100 employees as well as for workers at health care facilities that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients. It also extended a deadline for federal contractors.

The Biden administration says 70% of all adult Americans are now fully vaccinated. The new rules are aimed at the tens of millions who remain unvaccinated.

Here are the key takeaways:

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WHAT DO COMPANIES HAVE TO DO?

Companies with 100 or more employees must require those workers to get fully vaccinated  with two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, or one shot of Johnson & Johnson  by Jan. 4. After that date, any employee who remains unvaccinated must provide a verified negative COVID test weekly. Companies arent required to pay for those tests. Unvaccinated employees also must wear masks.

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WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO WORK AT HOME?

The requirements don't apply to people who work at home or who work outdoors.

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WILL WORKERS GET TIME OFF TO GET VACCINATED?

Starting Dec. 5, employers must offer paid time off for workers to get vaccinated and sick leave if workers experience vaccine side effects.

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HOW WILL THIS BE ENFORCED?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will assist companies with vaccination plans. It will also enforce the rules. Fines for non-compliance will vary based on a companys size and other factors, but companies might have to pay up to $13,653 per individual violator. But enforcement will be difficult. OSHA has only around 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million companies.

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IS THIS LEGAL?

OSHA says it's on sound legal footing, and has the emergency authority to issue rules that protect workers from an imminent health hazard. It also says the rules pre-empt all state law. Several states and Republican governors have threatened to sue, contending the government doesnt have the power to make such rules.

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WHAT ABOUT SMALLER COMPANIES?

OSHA said Thursday that the mandate could be expanded to companies with fewer than 100 workers. The agency said it will make a decision after collecting public comment on that proposal for the next 30 days.

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WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS?

Workers at health care facilities that treat Medicaid and Medicare patients must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4. There is no weekly testing option for those workers, but they can ask for religious or medical exemptions. The mandate will cover about 17 million health care workers at hospitals, nursing homes, surgical centers and other facilities.

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WHAT ABOUT FEDERAL CONTRACTORS?

In September, the Biden administration said it would require employees at federal contractors to get vaccinated by Dec. 8. On Thursday, the government pushed back that deadline to Jan. 4.
O'FALLON, Mo. (AP)  A federal lawsuit accuses the National Rifle Association of violating campaign finance laws by using shell companies to illegally funnel up to $35 million to Republican candidates, including former President Donald Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and others.

The Campaign Legal Center filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Washington on behalf of Giffords, a gun control nonprofit founded by former Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords. It accuses the NRA of practices dating to 2014 to evade campaign finance regulations by using a series of shell corporations to illegally but surreptitiously coordinate advertising with at least seven candidates for federal office.

The lawsuit names as defendants Hawley and U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana, but the text of the lawsuit also accuses the NRA of excessive and unreported in-kind contributions to the campaigns of Trump and Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and former Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. The contributions to Rosendale were during his unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign, according to the lawsuit.

Trump's 2016 campaign received up to $25 million as part of the scheme, the lawsuit states.

Two NRA affiliates  National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund and National Rifle Association of America Institute for Legislative Action  are accused of coordinating with GOP candidates to use the same personnel and vendors for campaign ads.

Campaign finance law prohibits groups like the NRA from buying influence over elected officials by coordinating spending with those candidates campaigns, Campaign Legal Center attorney Molly Danahy said in a news release. When special interests like the NRA secretly collude with candidates, this illegal coordination corrupts our election process and deprives voters of their right to know who is spending to influence their vote.

The NRA responded Thursday with a statement calling the lawsuit "another premeditated abuse of the public by our adversaries  who will stop at nothing in their pursuit of their anti-freedom agenda. This latest action is as misguided as it is transparent. Suffice it to say, the NRA has full confidence in its political activities and remains eager to set the record straight.

Email messages left with the offices of Trump, Hawley, Rosendale and others cited in the lawsuit were not immediately returned.

Giffords represented the 8th District of Arizona from 2007 to 2012, when she resigned after suffering a brain injury during a 2011 mass shooting in her district that killed six people.

Campaign Legal Center said the Giffords organization first brought the allegations against the NRA to light in 2018 when it filed a series of complaints to the Federal Election Commission. The center said Giffords sued after the FEC failed to take action.

The lawsuit seeks an order preventing the NRA from similar violations in future elections and asks the court to require the NRA to pay a penalty matching the amount that was allegedly spent illegally  up to $35 million.

The lawsuit accuses the NRA of illegally funneling funds to aid the Tillis, Cotton and Gardner campaigns in the 2014 election, the Johnson and Trump campaigns in 2016, and the Hawley and Rosendale campaigns in 2018.
GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP)  A Cascade County man was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for cutting his father's throat with an electric knife two years ago, nearly killing him.

Anthony Kevin Wall, of Black Eagle, pleaded guilty to attempted deliberate homicide in July for the December 2019 attack on his father that left him with health issues and impaired speech, the Great Falls Tribune reports.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP)  A Colchester man has been sentenced to a year in prison for federal migratory bird violations and unlawful possession of a firearm, federal prosecutors said.

The man pleaded guilty in 2019 to the illegal killing of a crow and woodcock without a license; illegal possession of a turkey vulture without a permit; and illegally possessing a shotgun after having previously been convicted of a felon, the Vermont U.S. attorney's office said. The three birds are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, prosecutor said. He was sentenced on Monday.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Navy said Thursday it fired the two senior officers of a nuclear-powered attack submarine that was damaged in an underwater collision last month in the South China Sea. A sailor who served as a senior enlisted adviser to the commander and the executive officer was also removed from his position

The actions were taken by Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, based in Japan.

Thomas determined sound judgement, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident, according to a 7th Fleet statement.

As a result, the statement said Thomas relieved Cmdr. Cameron Aljilani as commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Cashin as executive officer, and Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers as chief of the boat, due to loss of confidence. The chief of the boat is the senior enlisted adviser to the commander and the executive officer.

The Navy has yet to publicly explain how or why the USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class submarine, struck a seamount, or underwater mountain, or to reveal the extent of damage to the vessel.

The Navy has said the submarines nuclear reactor and propulsion system were not damaged. The collision caused a small number of moderate and minor injuries to the crew. USNI News, which was first to report that the sub had struck a seamount, said damage to the forward section of the submarine damaged its ballast tanks.

The incident happened on Oct. 2 but was not reported by the Navy until five days later, well after it had exited the South China Sea. The vessel made its way to Guam for a damage assessment, where it remains.

The 7th Fleet Statement on Thursday also said the sub will return at an unspecified time to Bremerton, Washington for repairs.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  A Nebraska attorney general's office investigation identified 258 victims who made credible allegations of sexual abuse against 57 Catholic church officials in the state going back decades, including many that high-ranking church leaders knew about and didn't report to the authorities, according to a report released Thursday.

Prosecutors can't charge against any current or former church officials with a crime because the statutes of limitations have expired in the vast majority of cases, Attorney General Doug Peterson said at a news conference announcing the findings. In one case where charges are still possible, Peterson said the accuser declined to participate in a prosecution.

The report outlines each known case in graphic detail, stretching from the 1930s to the 2010s. More than 90% of the victims were boys, usually young teenagers who served as altar servers.

The extent of the physical and psychological harm caused by the perpetrators and the failure of the church to safeguard so many victims is gut-wrenching, said Peterson, fighting back tears at several points during a news conference.

The investigation identified 57 church officials from Nebraska's three dioceses who were credibly accused, including 51 priests, four deacons and two teachers. There were 97 documented victims from the Lincoln Diocese, 158 from the Omaha Archdiocese and and three from the Grand Island Diocese.

Most of the reported abuse took place in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, although 10 people reported abuse that took place in the 2010s.

Peterson said he was frustrated that prosecutors couldn't file charges against anyone in the church, and would support efforts to loosen or eliminate old statutes of limitation for such crimes. Nebraska has since eliminated statutes of limitation for child sex assaults, but the change didn't apply retroactively to old cases and the old law prevents those victims from filing lawsuits.

This has in effect denied these victims justice and I am committed to setting this right, said state Sen. Rich Pahls, of Omaha.

Pahls promised to introduce a bill during next year's legislative session to address this egregious and unacceptable state of affairs.

In a joint statement, the bishops of all three Nebraska dioceses apologized to the victims and said they had taken steps to try to protect children and vulnerable adults.

This report also points out mistakes made in the way dioceses received, reported and responded to allegations of sexual abuse in the past, the bishops said. We have been committed in recent years to comprehensive measures to protect young people and vulnerable adults, preventing abuse, offering healing for past victims of abuse and fully cooperating with civil authorities in these matters.

Nebraska authorities launched the investigation and created a victim hotline in 2018 after several accusers came forward with allegations against the conservative Lincoln Diocese, which for years was the only U.S. diocese that refused to participate in annual reviews of sexual misconduct. The reviews were a key reform enacted in response to the 2002 Boston clergy abuse scandal.

Some of the allegations in Lincoln were against the Rev. James Benton, an elderly priest who only retired in 2017 even though church leaders had known about abuse accusations against him for at least 15 years.

Benton's nephew, Lincoln chiropractor Stan Schulte, said his uncle molested him at a rectory sleepover in the early 1990s when he was a boy.

Another Lincoln man, Jeffrey Hoover, reported a similar experience with Benton during a camping trip in the early 1980s while he and the priest slept in the same bed. Schulte has said he probably never would have been molested if church officials had handled Hoover's allegations against Benton properly.

Schulte, who attended Thursday's news conference and has pushed for accountability in the church, said he doesn't believe the church's current leaders have done enough to protect the public and that they should be removed from their posts. He said one credibly accused priest has been allowed to live in the Bonacum House in Lincoln, a home for retired priests that's a short walk from both a public and a private elementary school.

He said another credibly accused priest was assigned to a home in Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska, next to a Boy Scout camp, and that the church isn't monitoring him and didn't tell the public.

Schulte said another church official in Omaha has also been accused of engaging in a gay orgy with a subordinate, although no minors were involved in that incident.

If this were to happen in the public school system, and a principal knew for decades that there were teachers abusing children and refused to act, that principal would be asked to step down immediately, Schulte said. If the current leadership doesn't step down, we're very naive to think that there will ever be any real change.

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Follow Grant Schulte on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrantSchulte
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)  Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched from the sidelines Thursday as the government that toppled him after 12 years in power passed a national budget, dealing a major blow to his hopes of a swift return to the country's top office.

The man whose shadow loomed so large for so long over Israel, whose rule sparked both mass protests and cult-like devotion, has been relegated to the backbenches as opposition leader, far from the levers of power and exposed to serious corruption charges.

The first budget to be passed in three years, during which a prolonged period of political gridlock brought four divisive elections, was a stress test for Israels fractious coalition government.

It changes the timeframe for him," said Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist at the left-leaning Haaretz daily and Netanyahu biographer. "It doesnt mean hes going to give up. Hes not going to give up. He's incapable of giving up.

Failure to pass the budget before November 14 would have resulted in the dissolution of the government and snap elections  giving Netanyahu, who is rising in the polls, a chance at redemption. Now that it has passed, the government  established with the goal of ousting Netanyahu  appears to have bought itself some time. Coalition parties are struggling in the polls and none is likely to want to topple the government and trigger new elections, for now.

Netanyahu's best hope is that the coalition, made up of eight ideologically diverse parties, implodes over its own contradictions. Otherwise, his next chance will come when the government rotates its leadership in 2023, bringing the centrist Yair Lapid to power and perhaps giving his nationalist coalition partners a reason to bolt.

Aviv Bushinsky, a former Netanyahu aide, said Netanyahu is better off biding his time as opposition leader, a public platform from which he can contest the legal charges and ratchet up support from constituents.

Right now hes in no hurry. He has nothing to lose, he said.

Addressing parliament on Wednesday, ahead of the budget vote, Netanyahu vowed to carry on.

We will continue to fight this awful government. We will leave no stone unturned, we will look for any way to topple it, to return Israel to the right track, he said.

Netanyahu, a major figure in Israeli politics for the last quarter century, suffered a dramatic downfall earlier this year.

He began a 12-year run as prime minister in 2009, after an earlier stint in the 1990s, becoming Israel's longest serving leader and helping to shape the country. He was ubiquitous on the world stage, preaching against Iran's nuclear program and the accord with world powers meant to rein it in. He ramped up settlement building in the occupied West Bank, avoided peace talks with the Palestinians and presided over three wars against the Hamas militant group ruling Gaza.

He worked hard to convince Israelis that he was a world-class statesman, the only one who could safely guide Israel through its myriad challenges. But under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has travelled to the global climate summit, steered Israel through a fourth COVID-19 wave and passed a budget, that argument has eroded.

Suddenly you dont need to be Benjamin Netanyahu to be the prime minister of Israel. And that in itself has sort of been a revelation, Pfeffer said.

Netanyahu also used his office to divide Israelis, whipping up nationalists against dovish leftists, Jewish Israelis against Palestinian citizens of Israel and railing against the countrys institutions, especially after he was indicted in three corruption cases.

Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, breach of trust and bribery, charges he denies but which clouded his last years in office. Under Israeli law, Netanyahu did not have to step down after being indicted, leaving him a bully pulpit from which he could fight the charges, push to legislate immunity and air his grievances against the media and the judicial system.

After early elections in April 2019, Netanyahu was unable to form a coalition, with some of his former allies refusing to sit in government with him. Israel entered a lengthy political crisis, holding three more elections in less than two years. Protesters around the country descended on city squares and main intersections, demanding Netanyahu resign.

Netanyahu, dubbed a political wizard for repeatedly surviving threats to his rule, saw his magic run out in June, when a disparate constellation of political parties joined forces to oust him. In a Shakespearean twist, Bennett, Netanyahus former aide turned rival, was picked to helm the coalition.

Netanyahu, known for enjoying the luxuries of office and hobnobbing with world leaders, was relegated to the post of opposition leader as others swiftly moved into the limelight.

With a robust base and a coterie of loyal lawmakers, he has kept up a lively social media presence and still makes public appearances. His allies heckle and shout over Bennett's speeches in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

But he no longer drives the agenda.

He has done his utmost to undermine the current government, calling it illegitimate, compelling opposition lawmakers to boycott parliamentary committees and vowing to return to office. Israeli media have reported attempts by his right-wing Likud party to lure defectors from the coalition, efforts that have so far been unsuccessful.

Israels Justice Minister Gideon Saar, meanwhile, has been promoting legislation that would block an indicted lawmaker from being allowed to form a government, a bill he says was not crafted to target his former mentor.

Netanyahu isn't expected to resign after the budget defeat, even as some allies lose patience with being out of government, including one who is challenging him for the Likud leadership. Netanyahu is expected to prevail, but the challenge exposes cracks in his hold on the party.

If he does unexpectedly leave parliament, that would likely be what finally topples the coalition.

The strongest glue binding the coalition is the existence of Netanyahu, said Avraham Diskin, a political analyst. If Netanyahu quits, then that presents a serious chance for the coalition to fall.
SONOMA, Calif. (AP)  Pacific Gas & Electric has reached a $125 million settlement agreement with California regulators over the destructive Kincade fire, which was ignited in 2019 by the utility's equipment in a remote area of Sonoma County.

PG&E shareholders would pay a $40 million fine to the state general fund and spend another $85 million in the removal of abandoned transmission equipment throughout the utilitys territory as part of the agreement expected to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission at its Dec. 2 meeting, the Press Democrat reported Wednesday.

The agreement was reached after the commission's Safety and Enforcement Division found fault with the maintenance and condition of a high-voltage PG&E transmission tower that remained energized for years even though it had served a Calpine power plant that no longer was active.

Though the tower was disconnected from the facility in 2006, the 230,000-volt transmission equipment not only remained energized but was also left with jumper cables suspended and unsecured. One of them broke and arced against the tower during extreme winds on the night of Oct. 23, 2019, igniting vegetation on the ground, the report said.

The Kincade fire would go on to torch nearly 122 square miles (316 square kilometers), destroying 174 homes and about 200 other structures, and injuring four people. An estimated 190,000 residents, almost two-fifths of Sonoma Countys population, were ordered to evacuate.

PG&E left abandoned equipment energized for thirteen years even though that equipment provided no benefit or convenience to the public, the enforcement division report said.

The agencys investigation was separate from one conducted by Cal Fire, which last year traced the wildfire, the largest in Sonoma County history, to the high-voltage electrical transmission tower in the Mayacamas Mountains.

It is also independent of a criminal case still pending in Sonoma County Superior Court, where PG&E is charged with five felonies and 28 misdemeanor counts alleging the utility recklessly caused the fire.

A PG&E spokeswoman said Wednesday that the utility disputes several features of the utility commissions investigation. In particular, the company believed the Calpine unit served by the tower to be on cold standby, meaning it could be put back into use, spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said.

Calpine also continued to pay monthly service charges and had inspected the equipment as part of its wildfire prevention efforts, Paulo added.

The company agreed to settle with the commission, despite disagreeing with alleged violations, in hopes it will assist in allowing all parties to move forward with the fire, and permit us to focus on compensating victims and making our energy system safer, the utility said in a statement.

PG&E already has settled with Sonoma County and the cities of Windsor, Healdsburg, Santa Rosa and Cloverdale, agreeing last May to pay $31 million in damages related to the public safety response to the wildfire.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter related to the 2018 Camp Fire, which wiped out most of the town of Paradise and was sparked by its equipment. It also faces numerous criminal charges for fires caused by its fraying equipment, including four charges of manslaughter filed in September by Shasta County prosecutors.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, whose district sustained most of the damage from the Kincade fire, said Wednesday that he remains troubled by PG&Es lack of transparency and accountability.

You know, its interesting that a settlement is really about spending the money that you should have spent before on something, Gore said. Lets call it what it is.

A historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
ATLANTA (AP)  A Cessna single-engine, fixed-wing plane crashed Thursday in Georgia's DeKalb County but no one was injured, authorities said.

The pilot was the only person on the plane and he walked way unharmed after crash landing about 10 a.m. a few blocks from Emory Decatur Hospital, officials said.
LISBON, Portugal (AP)  Portugals president announced Thursday that he is dissolving parliament and calling a snap election for Jan. 30, following the minority Socialist governments defeat in a key vote on post-pandemic plans to spend billions of euros in European Union funding.

The announcement, in a televised address to the nation, was widely expected. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had previously said Portugal would go to the ballot box two years ahead of schedule if the governments 2022 state budget proposal was rejected by parliament, which happened last week.

The ballot will elect 230 lawmakers to parliament, where political parties then decide who forms a government.

The election comes at a sensitive time for the country of 10.3 million people, as it is poised to begin deploying some 45 billion euros ($52 billion) in help from the EU to help fire up the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rebelo de Sousa said the Portuguese needed to decide what they want from the next few years, which are decisive due to the windfall of funds.

This is the decisive moment for a long-lasting recovery from the greatest pandemic of the past 100 years and the social and economic crisis it caused, he said.

The 2022 spending plan is an especially important budget at an especially important time, he said.

Recent opinion polls suggest the center-left Socialist Party will win re-election but will again fall short of a parliamentary majority.

Given the procedural requirements, a new state budget proposal may not come before parliament until April. That could put the brakes on an economic rebound.

As things stand, the COVID-19 pandemic shouldnt disrupt an election, though health authorities have warned about a potential winter resurgence in Europe.

A popular mass vaccination campaign has helped Portugal, for the moment, largely contain COVID-19. The country has on average been reporting fewer than 1,000 new cases a day since mid-September, with daily deaths in single figures.

The 2022 state budget forecast GDP growth of 4.8% this year and 5.5% next year, with a jobless rate of around 6.5%, roughly the same as now.

That has helped lift the Socialist Partys popularity, with polls predicting it will be returned to power with a comfortable win, capturing around 39% of the vote. But that would still leave the Socialists needing parliamentary support for legislation and put Portugal back where it started before the political crisis of recent weeks.

The traditional center-right opposition parties are in disarray. Both the main opposition Social Democratic Party and the smaller Popular Party are engaged in divisive leadership challenges.

The hard-left Communist Party and Left Bloc, who allied with the government up to last week, have seen their popularity dwindle to single figures in recent elections.

In the last election, in 2019, 10 parties won seats in the 230-seat parliament in a trend toward political fragmentation that compels parties to negotiate with each other.

Most striking is the rise of Portugals first right-wing populist party, Chega! (Enough!), which was founded just three years ago. It currently has just one lawmaker, but polls indicate it could capture as many as 20 seats in an election, potentially serving as a kingmaker.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Primary Childrens Hospital is putting non-emergency surgeries and medical procedures on hold, due in part to an influx of COVID-19 patients, administrators said Thursday.

The Salt Lake City hospital is seeing an unprecedented volume of patients exceeding typical winter surge levels, hospital administrator Dustin Lipson told KUTV.
BOSTON (AP)  The principal of a Boston school was taken to the hospital after getting knocked unconscious during an assault, and a 16-year-old girl is facing charges, police said.

The principal at Dr. William W. Henderson K-12 Inclusion School in the city's Dorchester neighborhood was attacked at about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, police said in a post on the department's website. Her injuries are not considered life threatening.
PHOENIX (AP)  Two prominent Democrats announced Thursday they're stepping down from the Arizona House, further shaking up a Legislature that has seen a flurry of resignations ahead of the 2022 session.

Rep. Charlene Fernandez of Yuma, the former House minority leader, accepted a job with President Joe Biden's administration. Rep. Randall Friese of Tucson, formerly the assistant minority leader and a trauma surgeon, said he's leaving to refocus my time and attention on my medical career and service.

Biden appointed Fernandez to be the U.S. Agriculture Department's state director for rural development in Arizona. Fernandez has represented the 4th Legislative District stretching from southwestern Arizona to the outer reaches of the Phoenix metro area since 2015. The district is home to farms producing most of the nation's lettuce during winter months.

I have had the opportunity to represent working families, teachers, farmers and so many more who have taught me the great need for continued action across our state, Fernandez wrote in her resignation letter addressed to Reps. Rusty Bowers, the Republican House speaker, and Reginald Bolding, the minority leader. I will continue serving those communities, with the same Democratic values, in a new capacity as I move on to a new chapter.

Fernandez has deep ties to Arizona Democratic politics, having previously worked for U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, former Rep. Ed Pastor and former Gov. Janet Napolitano. In the Legislature, Fernandez was a prominent progressive lawmaker and rose to be House minority leader steering the Democrats' strategy and messaging.

She gave up the minority leader job after a disappointing showing for House Democrats in the 2020 election, which included the unexpected loss by Democratic Rep. Gerae Peten to a Republican in the same district as Fernandez.

Friese in September abruptly dropped out of the campaign for an open congressional seat in Southern Arizona despite his fundraising lead among Democratic candidates. He cited his desire to focus on his medical career for that decision as well.

Friese treated then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she was critically wounded in the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting in Tucson. He is a trauma surgeon who has served in the Arizona House since 2015.

I am extremely proud of my service to my community and the state during the seven years I represented Legislative District 9, Friese wrote in his resignation letter.

The departures of Fernandez and Friese further shake up the Legislature, which has seen an unusually high level of turnover this year with several lawmakers quitting for a variety of reasons or moving from the House to the Senate.

Fernandez is the second House Democrat to leave for a Biden administration job, following Arlando Teller's appointment earlier this year as deputy assistant secretary for tribal affairs at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Both Fernandez and Friese said their resignations are effective Nov. 15. Democratic precinct committee leaders in each district will nominate a list of potential replacements, with the final decision made by the elected supervisors in their home counties. State law requires their successors to be from the same political party.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  A Dutch newspaper reporter has been expelled from Russia, a move denounced Thursday as unacceptable by the Netherlands' foreign ministry.

The De Volkskrant newspaper reported Thursday that its Moscow correspondent, Tom Vennink, was ordered to leave Russia earlier this week after his residency permit was withdrawn over what authorities described as administrative violations.

Vennink is not the first reporter thrown out of Russia this year. In August, Russia refused to renew the visa of Sarah Rainsford, a longtime reporter for the BBC in Moscow. The U.K.'s Foreign Ministry said the action was retaliation for the British government's refusal to extend a visa to a Russian news agency correspondent.

Independent Russian media also are under increasing pressure. The government added several prominent news outlets, including the Dozhd television station and the online news site Meduza, to its list of foreign agents this year.

The designation, which media organizations see as an attempt to undermine an outlet's credibility. requires listees to preface their stories with a statement that the report comes from an organization that is considered a foreign agent.

Relations between the Netherlands and Russia plunged into a deep freeze following the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over conflict-torn eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board, many of them Dutch citizens, died. The Netherlands has held Russia liable for the downing of the aircraft, a charge Moscow denies.

But Volkskrant Editor-in-Chief Pieter Klok said in the newspapers story about Venninks expulsion, It is a mystery to us why the Russian government has chosen to do this now.

Volkskrant reported that Vennink had to pay a fine in November 2019 for not registering his Moscow address with local authorities on time and that he paid another fine in January 2020 for visiting a province in northern Russia without seeking permission from the governor.

In previous years, such administrative violations were never an obstacle to extending the residency permit, Klok said.

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it deplored the decision not to extend Vennink's visa and was seeking clarification from Russian authorities.

For the Netherlands, it is unacceptable that a journalist has to leave a country against his or her own will, the ministry said in a statement. Press freedom is a fundamental public good, and we are dedicated to ensuring that journalists can continue to do their job.

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Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed.
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (AP)  The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating the fatal shooting of a man by Eau Claire police.

The DOJ said officers responded to a 911 call of a person breaking into a residence in Eau Claire about 2:40 p.m. Wednesday. The caller said someone had broken in and was armed with a knife.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  Amid an historic drought posing threats to future harvests, California farmers now say they have no way to export the crops they do have because of a kink in the global supply chain that has left container ships lined up off the Southern California coast with nowhere to deliver their goods.

Problems with the supply chain have retailers worried their shelves  and their customers' online shopping carts  will be empty during the crucial holiday shopping season, prompting emergency actions from state and federal leaders to clear up the logjam.

But the backlog of ships entering U.S. waters also means there are fewer making the trek back across the Pacific Ocean, leaving the farmers in one of the nation's most important agriculture regions with nowhere to send their products.

We're at the mercy of foreign shipping companies, said Roger Isom, president and CEO of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association and the Western Agricultural Processors Association. We're in a game, somebody changed the rules on us and we have no way to correct it.

California is the nation's biggest supplier of tree nuts  almonds, walnuts and pistachios. Most of them are sold to other countries, totaling more than $8.1 billion in exports in 2019, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

But last month, Isom said more than 80% of scheduled shipments were canceled. Processors have resorted to paying much more to ship their products to other ports, sending pistachios and walnuts by train to Texas and Maryland and flying bales of cotton to Peru. Isom said they are losing money on these sales, but they have to do it or else risk losing their customers.

It's particularly a problem for walnuts, which are in high demand in Europe for the Christmas holiday. But Isom said California's orders are now being filled by other countries.

One of our members lost $7.5 million in one month of sales because of an inability to fill timely commitments, Isom told state lawmakers on Wednesday during an informational hearing on the global supply chain problems.

One reason for the shortage of ships is the intense demand for products has driven shipping prices so high that many ocean carriers simply hurry back to Asia once they leave Southern California, bypassing the smaller port in Oakland where most of the state's tree nuts are shipped.

Danny Wan, executive director of the Port of Oakland and the president of the California Association of Port Authorities, said last week one of the port's container terminals was empty of both containers and ships.

The operator tells me this is the first time in the history where they are operating in Oakland where they have not had one vessel call, Wan said. This is an example of the supply chain dictating this kind of market distortion.

But the solution is not as easy as simply turning some ships around in Los Angeles and sending them north to Oakland. Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell, chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Ports and Goods Movement, said ocean carriers need relationships with terminal operators, trucking companies and warehouses  all which require contracts to be negotiated.

That takes time. You can't just turn on a dime, he said.

Mike Jacob, vice president and general counsel for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, said it's important to us to reestablish shipping connections in ports in both Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, adding three companies have dedicated direct service calls to the Oakland port while two more have plans to start in January.

The Biden administration announced last month the Los Angeles port would soon begin operating 24 hours a day to help clear the backlog of ships. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has waived some state regulations to allow companies to pack more cargo on trucks.

In order to solve this problem, every single stakeholder in supply chain have to step up and make difficult choices  including the state, said Dee Dee Myers, a senior advisor to Newsom and director of the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development.

Fruits and nuts are California's fifth-largest export sector, according to an analysis of trade data by Michigan State University, trailing electrical and industrial machinery and motor vehicle and their parts.

California exports accounted for more than 10% of all U.S. exports in 2020. When it comes to agriculture, California accounted for 16% of all U.S. exports in 2019.

A great deal of attention is on imports and issues confronting these entities bringing in goods which are important, said Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Democrat whose rural Northern California district includes lots of farmers. However, California agriculture depends heavily on the exporting of its goods and  I cannot overstate this enough  we are in an urgent position.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that California is not the only state that produces commercially sold tree nuts such as walnuts, pistachios and almonds.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A Tennessee man is accused of being violent during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, federal officials said.

The charges against Joshua John Portlock, 40, of Smyrna, include engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, according to a statement from the Justice Department.

He was arrested Wednesday in Smyrna and made his initial court appearance in the Middle District of Tennessee. He was released pending a Nov. 9 hearing in the District of Columbia.

Portlock was part of a crowd that pushed and removed barriers supporting a line of police officers, according to court documents. When police then established a perimeter line closer to the Capitol, Portlock picked up a large piece of what appeared to be plywood and pushed it against a group of officers and later joined others attempting to push through a line of officers, documents said.

He was in this area for approximately 15 to 20 minutes, assaulting and obstructing officers and assisting others in collectively using their body mass to push back the line of law enforcement, the Justice Department said.

Portlock also appeared to provide assistance to two officers who had been assaulted by other rioters, the statement said.

It was not immediately clear if Portlock has an attorney.

So far, more than 650 people have been arrested and charged with federal crimes in connection with Januarys insurrection. More than 100 riot defendants have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of six months incarceration.
AP

FAIRFIELD, Iowa (AP)  Two 16-year-old students were charged with homicide in the death of a high school teacher whose body was found concealed at a park in southeast Iowa, authorities said Thursday.

Investigators said Nohema Graber, a 66-year-old Spanish teacher at Fairfield High School, was reported missing on Tuesday and her remains were found later that day at the Chautauqua Park in Fairfield, located about 95 miles (152.89 kilometers) southeast of Des Moines, The Ottumwa Courier reported. The city has a population of about 9,400 people.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  The U.S. ambassador to Mexico said Wednesday that his country has serious concerns about the Mexican governments attempts to limit competition in the electrical power sector.

Ambassador Ken Salazar said he met with Mexican officials to discuss a proposed constitutional change to restrict the market share of private power generators and favor Mexicos state-owned utility company.

Salazar wrote in his Twitter account that I expressed the serious concerns of the USA, adding that we agreed to continue the dialogue in the coming days.

Previously, a group of U.S. legislators from Texas had voiced their own concerns over President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors proposal, which faces an uphill battle in the Mexican Congress.

In a letter to Salazar in October, about 20 Texas congressmen and senators said Lopez Obrador's proposal would discriminate against American energy producers.

The bill that Lopez Obrador submitted in October would cancel contracts under which 34 private plants sell power into the national grid. The plan would also declare illegal an additional 239 private plants that sell energy directly to corporate clients in Mexico. Almost all of those plants are run with renewable energy sources or natural gas.

The measure also would cancel many long-term energy supply contracts and clean-energy preferential buying programs, often affecting foreign companies.

It puts private natural gas plants almost last in line  ahead of only government coal-fired plants  for rights to sell electricity into the grid, despite the fact they produce power about 24% more cheaply. Government-run plants that burn dirty fuel oil would have preference over private wind and solar plants.

The plan guarantees the government electrical utility a market share of at least 54%, even though U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade pact prohibits favoring local or government businesses.

The letter from the U.S. lawmakers from Texas said that the (Mexican) governments proposed constitutional reforms would increase state control of the electricity industry and severely limit private investment. These steps, among others, harm our critical trading partnership with Mexico and potentially violate key tenets of the USMCA.

Mexico's government says it is seeking to cooperate with the United States on renewable energy. Yet many of the wind and solar electrical plants that Lopez Obrador wants to limit were built by U.S. or Spanish firms.

Lopez Obrador, a native of the oil-producing Gulf coast state of Tabasco, has made his main push in promoting fossil fuels. His administration is focused on building or acquiring new oil refinery capacity.

Experts say Lopez Obradors polices also could endanger Mexicos compliance with existing carbon reduction commitments. The president contends that increased hydroelectric capacity will allow Mexico to meet those goals.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  Bills to prevent vaccine mandates and the teaching of certain concepts of race and racism will get hearings  and almost certain approval  when the Republican-controlled Legislature returns to the Capitol next week for a special session.

The original intent of the special session, which convenes at 9 a.m. Monday, was to approve a new map of legislative districts and the spending of $1.1 billion in federal coronavirus relief aid. But the hot-button conservative issues could overshadow those measures, both of which already have been vetted in recent weeks and arent expected to be widely contested .

The special session called by GOP Gov. Doug Burgum last week through an executive order has no time restriction and may last indefinitely, though legislative leaders said they hoped it would only last five days.

More than two dozen bills were submitted ahead of the session, many of which aim to restrict vaccination mandates and ban the teaching of certain concepts of race and racism, known as critical race theory.

Several of the bills have come from a loosely organized group of ultraconservative legislators known as the Bastiat Caucus, which supports limited government and gun rights.

Any bills that are introduced will have to first win the endorsement of the House or Senates delayed-bills committee. The bipartisan panels both have five members and are controlled by the Legislatures GOP leadership.

North Dakota Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature. Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner and House Majority Leader Chet Pollert said they prefer only one bill each be advanced addressing vaccine mandates and critical race theory.

Though there is no clear favorite measure at present among lawmakers addressing critical race theory, several legislators, including Pollert, said they support a anti-vaccine mandate bill sponsored by Hurdsfield GOP Rep. Robin Weisz, a longtime and widely respected lawmaker who heads the Human Services Committee. His bill would provide exemptions for medical or religious reasons, and would allow workers to avoid vaccinations if they agree to frequent testing for the coronavirus.

Bismarck Republican Rep. Rick Becker, who heads the Bastiat Caucus, recently signed on as a co-sponsor to Weiszs bill, despite being the primary sponsor of another bill aimed at preventing vaccine mandates in the state.

Becker said his colleagues bill doesnt go far enough but likely has the best shot of passage in the Legislature.

The prospect of vaccine mandates in North Dakota has become a lightning-rod issue in North Dakota, with a rally planned Monday at the statehouse to urge lawmakers to pass legislation opposing them.

State Attorney Wayne Stenehjem, a Republican, has brought North Dakota into a federal lawsuit against President Joe Bidens vaccine mandate for employees of government contractors.

The Biden administration is also requiring vaccinations for all federal workers and certain health care workers. Private employers with 100 or more workers will have to require them to be vaccinated or tested weekly.

The GOP majority leaders said they would personally support legislation that emerges from the session that prohibits vaccine mandates and bans public schools from teaching critical race theory  an academic way of thinking about Americas history through the lens of racism. With support of the GOP leaders, most Republican lawmakers in both chambers, who overwhelmingly outnumber Democrats, certainly will follow suit.

Any legislation during a special session could take effect immediately upon being approved by a majority vote. Its unclear if Burgum would sign the measures. Spokesman Mike Nowatzki said the governor typically does not comment on legislation before it reaches his desk.

GOP leaders said they want to limit the introduction of bills in the time-compressed session, and its unclear what other measures, including tax-related bills, may surface for debate.
RENO, Nev. (AP)  A Washoe County sheriff's deputy has been fined $1,140 after pleading no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in a Reno crash that killed a motorcyclist last October.

Judge Derek Dreiling of Reno Justice Court sentenced Deputy Jade Brinson on Tuesday in the death of 74-year-old Joel Edwards of Sparks

Edwards' family hoped Brinson would get some jail time and were disappointed by the sentence, said family attorney David Houston.

Edwards was killed Oct. 16 when Brinson made a left turn into Edwards' path while responding to reports of a drunk driver.

Brinson did not have his emergency lights or siren on and told investigators he didn't see Edwards coming.

With criminal proceedings over, Edwards' family will seek a financial settlement with Washoe County, Houston told KRNV-TV

Brinson remains a deputy and the Sheriffs Office said its internal investigation was only just beginning now that the criminal case is over, officials said..

Sheriff Darin Balaam said in a statement that he was deeply sorry" and that his heart went out to Edwards' family and friends.

Likewise, my thoughts are with Deputy Jade Brinson and his family. I honor Deputy Brinson for standing in court today and taking responsibility for the events of that fateful evening," Balaam said.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP)  A woman admitted to killing her boyfriend's 3-year-old daughter whose body was found after her grandparents raised concerns about her safety in a case that drew attention to the agency responsible for overseeing young children in Kansas.

Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick, 34, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Wyandotte County District Court to second-degree murder, child abuse and interference with law enforcement in the death of Olivia Ann Jansen.

An Amber Alert was issued for the Kansas City, Kansas, girl in July 2020 after her father, Howard Jansen III, reported that he awoke to find her gone and a door open. Investigators searched with all-terrain vehicles, drones and dogs before finding her body in a shallow grave in a wooded area about a mile away.

Court records show the girl had signs of physical abuse. Her father also was charged with murder, and his trial is set for May 2 .

Kirkpatrick is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 20.

Olivia's death led to calls for changes at the Kansas Department of Children and Families. Information previously released by the agency shows it received two reports of alleged physical abuse involving Olivia in February 2020. One report alleged Olivias father hit her on the leg, leaving a bruise and possibly breaking the limb. The other report alleged Kilpatrick hit the girl. Both were ruled unsubstantiated after a person who alleged the abuse recanted.

The girl also was visited by a caseworker over a video call 11 days before she was found dead. That investigation stemmed from a hotline report from someone worried that her caregiver was unavailable or unable to care for her and may be using drugs.

Child welfare officials also have acknowledged that they received repeated reports about a 2-year-old Wichita boy before he was found dead in a motel of a methadone overdose in May 2019. A 3-year-old Wichita boys body was found encased in concrete in 2017 after relatives repeatedly reported abuse. In the Kansas City area, a 7-year-old boy was tortured, starved, killed and fed to pigs in 2015 despite extensive involvement with welfare officials.

The state has taken several steps to address the issues, including creating an independent office to review complaints against the Kansas foster care system and recommend changes in child welfare policies, a longtime goal of advocates for abused and neglected children.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

President Joe Biden Wednesday shut down reports that immigrant families separated at the border could receive financial damages for their time in custody, upsetting some immigration advocates.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Biden's administration was considering making payments of $450,000 to settle lawsuits filed by immigrant families affected by former president Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which led to the separation of about 5,500 children from their parents, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The number of families eligible for compensation will likely be smaller, since only around 940 claims have been filed so far, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Trespassing charges filed against dozens of migrants arrested under Gov. Greg Abbotts catch and jail border security initiative were dropped last week because court documents filed by the local county attorney failed to point out on what property the men were allegedly trespassing.

The fumble, which ultimately led another prosecutor to sheepishly admit defeat and agree to toss out about 30 cases, is the latest in a string of missteps since Abbott deployed Texas state troopers and National Guardsmen to arrest migrant men suspected of crossing the border illegally on state criminal charges.

The dismissals came during Kinney Countys first court hearings for some of the hundreds of men who have been arrested in the rural border area under Abbotts initiative, which he began in July in response to a rise in illegal border crossings. Many of the men whose charges were dropped had already spent more than two months in Texas prisons waiting to go before a judge.

They were expected to be released to federal immigration authorities and likely will either be deported, further detained or released into the United States on asylum bonds.

The fact they have been held for that long on charges that were deemed defective is really disgraceful, said Amrutha Jindal, a Houston defense attorney whose organization, Restoring Justice, represents nearly 50 migrants arrested in Kinney County.

A sparsely populated region near Del Rio, Kinney County has accounted for the large majority of the more than 1,600 migrants arrested under Abbott's operation for allegedly trespassing. Most of the countys arrests occur after Texas Department of Public Safety officers pull people off passing train cars at a remote rail yard or when people are spotted walking across private ranch lands, sometimes caught on game cameras.

Many of the conservative countys residents have voiced support for the arrests, saying an influx of people crossing the border has led to high-speed police chases, damaged property and general feelings of unease.

Residents want protection, they want this to end, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe said in August. [Migrants] are tearing up their livelihood, theyre tearing up their fences, driving off their hunters, and thats our big industry here.

But with nearly every step into the new state criminal justice system for migrants, Kinney County officials have stumbled.

When arrests first began in the ranching county, about 150 men sat in prison for weeks without being appointed attorneys, which Texas law requires to happen within days of a person requesting one. In September, a state district judge ordered nearly 250 men, the majority arrested in Kinney County, to be immediately released from state custody on bond because they were being illegally detained, held for more than a month without the state filing charges against them.

In three court hearings for migrants last week, defense attorneys challenged the cases against migrants arrested in Kinney County because the prosecutors charging documents didnt include necessary information  like where the migrant allegedly trespassed, to whom the property belonged and what notice was given to the defendants that entry was forbidden. At least some of the complaints listed vaguely that the defendant did then and there, with notice that entry was forbidden, enter agricultural land of another."

Last Tuesday, a retired state district judge assigned to the migrant cases tossed the charging documents and ordered that several jailed men be automatically released from state custody on no-cost bonds until the state filed new paperwork. But defense attorneys continued to push back on continued prosecution, arguing there was no way to hold the men to conditions of a bond for nonexistent charges. By Friday, David McCracken, a Lubbock County prosecutor filling in for the Kinney County attorney, agreed to toss all 20 cases on the days docket, conceding that all of the complaints filed against the migrant men were deficient.

Defense attorneys argue the mistakes were not simple clerical errors, instead contributing to migrants long stints in jail before they get a hearing before a judge  which in some cases has taken more than three months.

The paperwork errors are not just mere technicalities. They are serious constitutional violations that are extremely concerning, especially when our clients have been in custody in prison facilities for months based on defective and unconstitutional charging documents, said Kristin Etter, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which is being paid by the state to represent hundreds of arrested migrants.

Overall, more than 30 men had their cases dropped last week, while three accepted deals to plead guilty to sentences of the amount of time they had already been in prison. Other men whose cases were set to be heard had bonded out of the state prisons and released to immigration authorities.

Those no longer facing charges were expected to be released to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, while those who now had a conviction would likely be transferred to U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Many of Kinney Countys legal mistakes have stemmed from the county attorneys office, which prosecutes misdemeanor crimes like trespassing. The office has only one lawyer, Brent Smith, who was recently elected to the job without any listed experience in criminal law, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In court, Smith has been noticeably absent, instead enlisting other prosecutors from across the state to act as temporary assistant county attorneys. Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan told The Texas Tribune in September that the high numbers of arrests had overwhelmed the modest judicial system of the county, which has only about 3,000 residents. But attorneys defending the arrested migrants question why Smith isnt taking the lead or offering explanations as problems continue to surface.

Smith did not respond to repeated requests from the Tribune through email, phone calls and an office visit to talk about the situation. Other prosecutors who have represented his office in court hearings also did not respond to questions.

It is strange that Mr. Smith has not actually appeared in any of these court proceedings and hasnt been able to provide any information as to why the charges were filed late or why the charges that were filed were deficient, Jindal said.

George Lobb, an Austin attorney representing a migrant client, said more concerning than Smiths absence from court is his activity outside of the courtroom, where he repeats anti-immigration rhetoric in memos and on social media and has spoken against migrants for allegedly causing damage on his own property. Last month, Lobb argued in a procedural court hearing that Smith, who was not present, should be disqualified from representing the state in such cases because of racist and discriminatory comments and his public discussion of his own property damage, presenting a conflict of interest.

His bias, or interests, is brought into question as well as his ability to see that justice is done impartially, Lobb told the judge, who waved away the argument saying it was not on the days agenda.

On Tuesday, more men appeared through Zoom from Texas prisons for arraignments to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty  some of whom had been locked up for nearly 100 days without seeing a judge. Many pleaded not guilty and were ordered to be released on no-cost bonds, likely to ICE, because Smiths office did not file charges against them within the 30-day deadline under state law, meaning they were illegally jailed.

The state, represented by McCracken and the Kimble County district attorney in lieu of Smith, had filed amended complaints to fix the faulty paperwork errors from last week.

Jindal said last week she expected the prosecutors to quickly fix the errors in their charging documents, but noted that so far the migrants criminal cases have largely failed every time they come under scrutiny from defense attorneys. Mentioning other concerns, like only arresting for trespassing men who are predominantly Latino, she said defense attorneys have litigated just the tip of the iceberg with the issues with these prosecutions.

There are still a lot of other issues that will be litigated in terms of violation of rights, she said.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/11/04/texas-border-migrants-charges-dropped/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Companies with more than 100 employees will have to ensure their workers are vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested weekly for the virus under new rules announced Thursday by the Biden administration that will affect around 80 million workers across the country.

The White House said more vaccinations are needed to save lives, protect the economy, and accelerate the path out of the pandemic.

Health workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid also must be fully vaccinated, which the White House said applies nationwide to more than 17 million workers at around 76,000 health care centers, including hospitals and long-term care facilities.

The White House said the new rules preempt any state and local laws, weakening Gov. Greg Abbotts ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates, employment lawyers said.

Abbott issued an executive order last month banning any entity in Texas, including private businesses, from requiring anyone to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The new Biden administration rule would void part of the ban, but Abbott's order still would apply to everyone else in the state, including local governments, school districts and smaller businesses.

Governor Abbott continues hearing from countless Texans who are worried about losing their jobs because of this federal overreach," Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a written statement. "The Biden Administration left Texans in the impossible position of having to choose between providing for their families or being fired for not getting the COVID vaccine because of their religious belief, medical condition, or personal conscience."

However, employment lawyer Karen Vladeck said the federal rules allow for medical and religious exemptions. The statement from the governor's office also hinted at future legal action.

Employers will not be required to pay for or provide tests for workers, which will put more pressure on employees to get vaccinated in order to avoid inconvenient testing requirements.

Its onerous for employees, said Vladeck, who is based in Austin. You have to pay for your own tests, which are very expensive, or you have to go in-person to get tested, which takes time.

It was immediately unclear how many employees in Texas would be affected by the new rules.

The conflicting state and federal orders had created confusion among businesses. Days after Abbott issued his order prohibiting vaccine mandates, companies that entered into contract work with the federal government were also required to have all employees vaccinated under orders from the White House.

The conflicting vaccine mandates put the many Texas businesses that receive federal contracts in a tough position: Comply with federal law and violate Abbotts ban, or comply with Abbott and turn down business from the federal government.

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines said they would continue requiring employee vaccinations despite Abbotts new order.

The Texas business community at large also pushed back against legislation stemming from Abbotts order. The Texas bills intended to block any Texas entity, including hospitals and private businesses, from mandating COVID-19 vaccines for employees, were a priority of Abbotts in the latest special legislative. But the bills failed to pass after business groups spoke out against the proposals and at least one key Republican lawmaker spoke out against one of the bills, calling it anti-business.

Texas and other states have already sued the Biden administration over the COVID-19 vaccination rules for federal contractors, which went into effect in October.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/11/04/white-house-vaccination-businesses/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Stick around Lake Tahoe long enough, and youll surely hear a story or two about George Whittell. Hes the eccentric San Francisco tycoon who, in the mid-20th century, owned about a third of the land in the Tahoe basin and 27 miles of the lakes shoreline.

Theres the story of Whittell as the heir to a fortune. He famously said he never worked a day in his life. Some gravitate to Whittells reputation as a recluse, not unlike Howard Hughes. Whittell spent his summers secluded and isolated in a lakefront estate called the Thunderbird Lodge on Tahoes east shore.

There are many stories of Whittell as a technology savant who collected luxurious automobiles, aircraft and yachts, including a king-sized wooden boat, also called the Thunderbird, that still occasionally roars to life on Lake Tahoe. Or about Whittells pet lion, named Bill, and his pet elephant, Mingo. Some say hed allow his larger-than-average pets to roam freely on his property. Ive heard stories of showgirls from the Cal Neva casino secretly boating across the lake under a dark sky to spice up late-night parties at the Thunderbird. And one of my favorite tall tales about Whittell is the poker hand he lost in a high-stakes game to another man of Tahoe folklore, Joe King. As the story goes, the winning pool was so big in that game that King used the money to purchase and name Kings Beach.

But theres another story about Whittell that is lesser known. And thats why, on a Tuesday morning, I drove down the east shore and turned onto the winding, narrow road that led down a boulder-strewn hillside to the Thunderbird Lodge.

I wanted to know how Whittell  tycoon, recluse, playboy, gambler, animal lover  became Tahoes greatest conservationist, by accident.

---

Ideologically speaking, Whittell was the polar opposite of John Muir. While Muir devoted his lifetime to the creation of our countrys national parks, Whittell was more focused on his whims.

In his youth, he ran off to join Barnum & Bailey Circus. His first love affairs were high-society scandals, which his family tried unsuccessfully to cover up.

But Whittell also inherited some of the business intuition that made his family so wealthy to begin with. Before the crash in 1929, Whittell liquidated his shares in the stock market and emerged from the Great Depression as one of the wealthiest men in California.

In the 1930s, Whittell landed in Reno, Nev., to skip out of Californias growing income taxes. (Nevada still doesnt charge an income tax, and for that reason, the state has lured generations of millionaires and billionaires to its side of Lake Tahoe.) In Reno, Whittell befriended a man named Norman Blitz, who was securing a deal to acquire about tens of thousands of acres in the Tahoe basin. Whittell wound up buying Blitz and his partners out, becoming the sole owner of virtually the entire length of Tahoes east shore, from the water to the top of the mountains.

In total, Whittell owned about 45,000 acres in Tahoe, according to Bill Watson, chief executive and curator of the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. He paid $6 for every shorefront acre and $3 for every mountainside acre. The deal was a bargain, even for the 1930s.

At first, Whittell planned to develop his land in Tahoe. There are documents that show designs for a Sand Harbor Hotel and Casino  today, thankfully, Sand Harbor has no such thing. Its a state park with a sandy beach and strikingly clear water where thousands of people visit every summer. Other plans were underway to divide Whittells land in Tahoe into parcels to develop condos and homes  but Whittell put an end to them.

Something changed Whittells mind; what that was, we dont know exactly, Watson told me.

When I arrived at the Thunderbird Lodge, late in the morning, purple-white clouds drifted in the sky above Lake Tahoes snow-capped mountains. The water was a deep shade of midnight blue. Made of stone, the estate was designed in the style of Tudor revival, and faces Sand Harbor and Crystal Bay from across the water.

I suspect Whittell was enchanted by the serenity of Lake Tahoe, the unobstructed views of the lake, the quietness of the forest, and he wanted to keep all of that beauty to himself. Or maybe he was just an odd, egomaniacal hermit who got tired of people and wanted to be alone. Probably it was a bit of both.

Watson let me wander the grounds of the estate. In addition to the main house, Whittell built a cottage for card games, mostly poker. Theres an opium den, a dark stone room thats accessed via an underground tunnel, and a boat house built into granite rock. The buildings blend in with the pine trees and the granite boulders. The entire estate sits above rocks, on the edge of the water, so staring out the windows feels as if youre on top of the lake itself. Looking out from the gazebo, long views extend across the entire lake  from the far south end of the lake and Mount Tallacs snowy slopes, to the deep canyons on the West Shore, and the rolling vista of Mount Watson in the north.

The Thunderbird Preservation Society acquired the property in the 1990s, and the nonprofit has managed to restore the structure and preserve its history through donations and philanthropy. Every summer, it offers tours of the grounds to the public.

The main room in the house has a warm feeling from the wood paneling. Photos of Whittell and Bill the lion are framed on the walls and the rooms are staged with furniture to resemble what this place looked like when Whittell lived here. Then I walked downstairs, through the servants quarters, and found a doorway that led to a long tunnel, blasted into the stone and built underground. Lights strung on the curved ceiling illuminated the cold passageway, which is about 600 feet long.

Whittell wanted privacy, to the degree that he didnt even want to be seen walking on his property from the lake. So he built this tunnel to give him hidden access to his boat house, where the Thunderbird yacht was stored.

Whittell went to great lengths to keep huge distances between him and other people. So the irony overwhelmed me: Why or how did he bestow such a huge gift of open space to posterity?

All around Lake Tahoe, private property rims the water. According to the California Tahoe Conservancy, more than half of the shoreline is private, much of it guarded by gates and no-trespassing signs. It used to be worse. In 1971, the public could access only 13.5 miles of Lake Tahoes shoreline. Over the years, the California Tahoe Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service and state parks in both Nevada and California have all kept a sustained effort to acquire more land for the public. Today, there are about 40 beaches throughout the lake that are open to all of us.

On the west shore, views of the lake are flashes of blue between one oversized mansion and the next. In Incline Village, Lake Tahoe is hidden behind tall iron gates and walls that guard the real estate investments of todays land barons. And South Lake Tahoe looks like one giant strip mall.

But the east shore is different. Here, the views of the lake are open and wide. Trails lead to hidden coves where boulders become diving boards into the water. In the summer, this stretch of the lake is crowded, because so many people come here to experience the Jewel of the Sierra, as Tahoes sometimes called. The rest of the year, the east shore is quiet.

Thats because the entirety of this shoreline, from Incline Village to Zephyr Cove  invaluable real estate  is undeveloped.

---

Whittell was not the first, nor was he the last, land baron in Lake Tahoe. Mrs. Knights Vikingsholm in Emerald Bay, on the other side of Lake Tahoe, is also in the public domain. D.L. Bliss protected some of the only old-growth forest in the basin, which is now a state park.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has settled into his own compound on the west shore. Another tech billionaire, David Duffield, owns a large slice of private property in Incline Village. And just last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made headlines, again, when he purchased the Hyatt. The Hyatt is Ellisons second storied Tahoe hotel in his portfolio; he also owns the Cal Neva. (Not to mention the fact that Ellison owns most of the island of Lanai in Hawaii.)

Another twist of irony: Whittell owned all of the land that Incline Village was built on. Ellison, Duffield  their land was once Whittells.

In 1959, however, Whittell sold 14.5 square miles on the northern edge of his property, up to Crystal Bay, to developers for $5 million, about $45 million in todays dollars. Ronald and Susan James sum up what happened next in their book about Whittell, called "Castle in the Sky": The newly created Incline Village clearly indicated how easily Whittells open space could turn into congested communities filled with people attempting to retreat to the wilderness of the Tahoe Basin.

Whittell did donate tracts of land to charity, and he preferred to give his donations anonymously, Watson said. Whittell gave land to the University of Nevada and St. Marys Hospital in Reno. He donated land in Douglas County to build a high school in Zephyr Cove, on the condition he not be named. Unfortunately for him, the school went against his wishes. Its named George Whittell High.

Watson said he thinks Whittell would have given more land to the public, but that isnt exactly what happened. In the last years of his life, Whittell relinquished Sand Harbor and some of his other valuable land to the Nevada state government when a court issued an order for eminent domain, forcing Whittell to sell 5,300 acres on the east shore for $3 million.

Whittell died on April 18, 1969. By then, most of the Tahoe basin was surging with new development  and a backlash was about to ensue. The same year as Whittells death, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created. The agency would soon institute a basin-wide moratorium that halted development in Lake Tahoe.

But for most of the lake, the moratorium came too late. The east shore was the exception. Because Whittell kept a strong grip on his land, and let his own plans to develop collect dust, the east shore didnt see the same rush to build that the rest of the Tahoe basin experienced.

Thats ultimately why the east shore is all forest and beaches and mountains, to this day.

After Whittells death, the U.S. Forest Service acquired some 4,700 acres for $1.5 million, and Wall Street investor Jack Dreyfus purchased the rest of his landholdings in Tahoe, including the Thunderbird Lodge. Dreyfus turned around, though, and sold another 10,000 acres of land to the U.S. Forest Service. The transaction secured the majority of Whittells landholdings in the basin as public land, forevermore.

The last 140 acres remained in Dreyfus possession for several decades. He built an addition to the Thunderbird Estate, but according to the book, "Castle in the Sky," Dreyfus rarely spent a night there. In the 1990s, Dreyfus put the property on the market. The Thunderbird Lodge would have slipped from the publics hands, had a coalition of environmentalists, land conservationists, with U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, not come together to form the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. The newly formed nonprofit, helmed by Watson, secured ownership of the lodge and maintains the property today.

I asked Watson, who has studied Whittells life and has steadily accumulated one of the largest repositories of documents that tell a story of Lake Tahoes history, what he thought about Whittells impact on Lake Tahoe. Watson told me he believes the Thunderbird Lodge, the Thunderbird wooden boat are the physical manifestations of an historic figure whose stories have become legend. But Whittells true legacy, Watson said, is the open space that encompasses the largest stretch of undeveloped shoreline in Tahoe.

His real legacy is the open space we enjoy on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, said Watson. The Nevada side of the lake does not look like the California side of the lake, but for one man, Captain George Whittell.
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A large star sits in the grass before getting placed at the top of a tree at the Thunder Bay police station for the upcoming Tree of Hope ceremony.
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IT managers are often responsible not just for overseeing an organizations IT infrastructure but overseeing its IT teams as well. To succeed, you need to understand the fundamentals of security, data storage, hardware, software, networking, and IT management frameworks  and how they all work together to deliver business value. Plus, you must be adept at managing teams, projects, and processes.

Certifications can lend credence to your ability to do these things. Which certs youll want to pursue will vary depending on the technologies you work with and the methodologies your organization employs. But whether youre on the management track or have your eye on an IT management career, any one of these 17 IT management certifications should help give you a leg up in the industry.

Top 17 IT management certifications

AMA Certified Professional in Management

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

Certified in Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT)

Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)

Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)

Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)

Certified Information Technology Manager (CITM)

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)

COBIT 5 Foundation

CompTIA Network+

CompTIA Project+

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Information Technology Management and Leadership Professional (ITMLP)

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Six Sigma

TOGAF 9

AMA Certified Professional in Management

The AMA Certified Professional in Management isnt an IT-specific certification, but its a great start for anyone interested in a management path. As an IT manager, you will need all the technical skills of an IT professional, but its also important to have the soft skills necessary for effective management. The certification is offered through the American Management Association and covers professional effectiveness, relationship management, business acumen, and analytical intelligence.

Exam fee: $450 plus a $50 application processing fee

Expiration: Three years

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

As an IT manager, youll be responsible for overseeing multiple IT projects during your career. The CAPM certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI) will demonstrate your ability to manage a product or service lifecycle. The CAPM is a generalized entry-level exam, so its a great place to start if youre looking to add project management skills to your resume to help pave a future in IT management. The certification requires a secondary degree and 23 hours of project management education before you take the exam. If youre further into your career and already have a background in project management, a higher-level certification such as the PMP (see below) might be a better fit for your IT management career path.

Exam fee: $225 for members, $300 for non-members

Expiration: Does not expire

For more information, see CAPM certification: Cost, salary, training, and more.

Certified in Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT)

The ISACA claims that IT professionals with a CGEIT certification are among the highest paid, citing an average salary of $141,000. This certification will show youre capable of dealing with any security threats and that youre well-versed on the requirements for IT governance. Youll need at least five years experience in IT governance or management to qualify for the exam. Maintaining your certification also requires an annual maintenance fee of $45 for ISACA members and $85 for non-members.

Exam fee: $575 for ISACA members, $760 for non-members

Expiration: Every three years; at least 20 CPE hours annually and 120 CPE over the course of three-years

For more information, see What is CGEIT? A certification for seasoned IT governance professionals.

Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)

As an IT manager, youll need to be aware of risk management, which is why the Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) certification can be a valuable addition to your resume. Offered by the ISACA, the CRISC certification validates your ability to understand and mitigate enterprise IT risk using the latest best practices to identify, analyze, evaluate, assess, prioritize, and respond to risks. The exam covers topics such as IT governance, IT risk assessment, risk response and reporting, and information technology and security.

Exam fee: $575

Expiration: Does not expire

Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)

The Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification from the ISACA verifies your knowledge and expertise in information security governance, program development and management, and incident and risk management. IT security is a growing priority for businesses and the CISM certification is often required by government agencies hiring IT workers. As an IT manager, you will need to have your pulse on enterprise IT security and the CISM certification can show you have the skills and knowledge to help the business stay secure and mitigate risk.

Exam fee: $575 for ISACA members and $760 for non-members

Expiration: Three years

Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)

Security is a main concern for the enterprise and once you start heading into management and leadership positions, it will become one of your top priorities. A CISSP certification from the ISC can demonstrate your knowledge and abilities around IT security and information assurance. The certification covers high-level topics such as organizational structure, budgeting, managing risk, monitoring and assigning deliverables, communicating with remote teams and executives, and managing complex large-scope projects.

Exam fee: $749

Expiration: Three years

Certified Information Technology Manager (CITM)

The Certified Information Technology Manager (CITM) certification offered by the Global Association for Quality Management (GAQM) is designed for management professionals who wish to gain an in depth understanding of the management of information technology in the modern corporation. The certification covers business frameworks, IT frameworks, software, database management, information systems, corporate IT strategy, corporate governance, risk, finance, and management of technology personnel. GAQM offers an e-course that takes 30 to 35 hours on average to complete that you can take prior to taking the exam.

Exam fee: $300 for the e-course and exam; $170 for the exam

Expiration: Does not expire

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)

The CSM certification from Scrum Alliance is designed to certify you as a point person to help Scrum teams work efficiently. The CSM is responsible for leading the team, limiting distractions, and working across teams and departments to keep projects on track. It requires all the soft and hard skills IT managers need to effectively manage projects and teams. With the certification, youll receive a logo to showcase your credentials as well as a two-year membership with Scrum Alliance, which will give you access to online social networks, discounts on events and other resources.

Exam fee: Free for initial certification

Expiration: Two years

For more information, see CSM certification: What you need to know.

COBIT 5 Foundation

If your company subscribes to the COBIT 5 IT management framework, you might be interested in the ISACAs COBIT 5 Foundation exam. The foundation and implementation exams will demonstrate your ability to understand IT challenges and how COBIT can be applied to fix organizational and process problems. It can demonstrate you have the management skills necessary to align IT goals with strategic business objectives, understand the value derived from IT, and are versed in the various types of IT governance frameworks. The COBIT exam is offered by a variety of vendors  some include training or bootcamp programs if youre not familiar with COBIT 5, while others will let you just take the exam.

Exam fee: Varies by vendor

Expiration: Does not expire

CompTIA Network+

The CompTIA Network+ certification verifies you have the knowledge and skills to design, implement, configure, manage, and maintain networks and network devices. It also verifies you are capable of implementing network security, standards, and protocols and can troubleshoot network problems. While its not a management-specific certification, networking is a core skill for any IT professional and it will be a vital skill on your path to IT management. A new CompTIA Network+ N10-008 certification exam was released in September and the prior N10-007 exam, originally released in 2018, is set to retire in June 2022. The exam was updated and reorganized to cover topics such as critical security concepts, key cloud computing best practices, new hardware and virtualization techniques, and the most recent skills needed to keep networks resilient.

Exam fee: $338

Expiration: Three years

CompTIA Project+

CompTIAs Project+ certification is a high-level exam designed for professionals who need to manage smaller, less complex projects as part of their other job duties but still have foundational project management skills. Its a versatile certification that covers multiple methodologies, frameworks, and management concepts  best suited for those who coordinate or manage small-to-midsize projects. The certification validates your ability and knowledge with managing project life cycles, change management, managing resources and stakeholders, and maintaining appropriate communication and documentation.

Exam fee: $338

Expiration: Does not expire

For additional project management certs, see our roundup of top project management certs.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

The ITIL framework from Axelos is a cornerstone in IT service, and if your organization subscribes to the methodology, a certification will help prove your ITIL 4 expertise. Its a great certification for IT managers because it focuses heavily on implementing effective management strategies to improve team efficiency and to improve organizational processes. You can be certified up to the expert level, which demonstrates high competency in ITIL 4 best practices. Like the COBIT 5 certification, youll have to find a third-party vendor that offers an accredited program or exam. Prices will vary depending on the company or training provider you choose.

Exam fee: Varies, depending on vendor

Expiration: Does not expire

For a deeper look at the ITIL cert, see ITIL certification: Mastering IT services management.

Information Technology Management and Leadership Professional (ITMLP)

The Information Technology Management and Leadership Professional (ITMLP) certification offered by the IT Management and Leadership Institute was designed to validate your skills and abilities as an IT manager. The certification includes a three-day boot camp that covers topics such as technical leadership, managing hybrid and virtual IT teams, creating innovative IT solutions, IT funding and cost management, vendor management, and client services. At the boot camp youll also learn more about IT trends including digital transformation, virtual and augmented reality, big data, machine learning, DevOps, cybersecurity, and more. Its best suited for CIOs, IT executives, current or future IT managers, project managers, and business analysts.

Exam fee: $1,995

Expiration: Does not expire

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

IT managers and leaders who rely on the agile framework will benefit from a PMI-ACP certification. This certification demonstrates your ability to work on or lead an agile team. It covers Scrum, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP), and test-driven development (TDD). To qualify for the exam, you will need a secondary degree, 21 contact hours of training in agile practices and eight months of agile project experience within the past five years. Youll also need at least 12 months of general project experience within the past five years but if you already have a PMP or PgMP certification, that will also satisfy this requirement.

Exam fee: $435 for members, $495 for non-members

Expiration: Three years

For additional agile-related certs, see our roundup of agile certs to take your career to the next level.

Project Management Professional (PMP)

If you already have a strong background in project management, you might want to consider PMIs Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. The PMP exam requires extensive experience and a background in project management, which makes it more difficult to obtain. You will need a four-year degree, 36 months of experience leading projects, and 35 hours of project management education or a CAPM certification. You can also qualify for the exam with a high school diploma or associates degree, 60 months experience leading projects, and 35 hours of project management education or a CAPM certification.

Exam fee: $405 for PMI members, $555 for non-members

Expiration: Three years

For more information, see PMP certification: How to ace the Project Management Professional exam.

Six Sigma
By: Larry Lunetta, Vice President, Solutions Portfolio Marketing, Aruba, a Hewlett

Packard company.

Not only has COVID-19 upended the traditional work environment, the resulting work-from-home (WFH) or hybrid-work scenarios have also forced employers and employees to rethink their respective relationships with technology and each other. In short, the reliance on a virtual office experience increases the need for secure and reliable remote connectivity that matches what the on-campus network provides.

This shift in the traditional work environment, mindset, and experience of the workforce, has spawned an entirely new cross-generational cohort dubbed Generation Novel, or Gen-N, for short. Coined by digital anthropologist Brian Solis, Gen-N describes a collection of people who thrive on digital-first experiences, and place greater value on personalization, customization, and transparency from the brands they buy from, work for, and support. Above all else, they also understand, use, and demand more from technology  both at home and work.

Those changes are evident in a recent study conducted by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company.

Aruba surveyed 5,018 hybrid workers across five of the largest markets in Europe, where 78% of respondents say they use technology more now than they did before the pandemic. 69% of respondents agree they now have more of an opinion on the technology they use at work and 71% feel its important to be able to customize their workplace tech set-up to suit their individual preferencesbut within the structure, discipline, and security of a traditional office setting.

The survey data suggests that this emerging generation of hybrid workers, with its evolving behaviors and heightened expectations, will put new demands on employers when it comes to workplace technology, especially connectivity tools. To boost efficiency within the workforce and support employees, businesses must address these new needs. They must strike the balance between an open network that will afford employees the flexibility, freedom, and personalization they now seek, without compromising on security and management.

However, if workforce expectations go unmet, the survey revealed the pressure Gen-N can bring upon employers. Only 38% of respondents say they have any significant choice in their workplace technology; and, without the right technology, workers indicated they will experience decreased productivity (35%) and diminished work/life balance (23%).

Gen-Ns expectations around increased flexibility and confidence in their technical abilities also opens businesses up to additional security risks  for example, 50% of respondents claim they are more likely to try to resolve a tech issue themselves now than they would have been before the pandemic. That increase in self-service technology troubleshooting may lead employees to expose themselves and the corporate network to extended periods of downtime and unforeseen security issues, such as inadvertently downloading malicious software. Meanwhile, more than half (55%) of survey respondents admit to connecting to a non-password protected public network at least once a week, but only a third (33%) consistently think of the security risks in doing so.

Simply opening a VPN connection to the corporate network through a consumer broadband network will not deliver what Gen N workers and the organization require. To read the full report, including recommendations on the actions business leaders much take to meet the needs of Gen-N in a hybrid workplace, visit.

For more about Arubas approach to the hybrid work environment, visit.
To change or not to change? It is a question that every IT leader faces in the wake of lagging technology growth.

While IT leaders arent blind to the problem, change remains elusive. Instead of risking stability and performance by switching to an unknown alternative, many leaders stick with their known incumbent.

But thats not the case anymore. We see a new generation of IT leaders challenging the status quo and transforming the technology behind world-leading companies.

But, how do you make the change happen? What goes into driving the change? And more importantly, how do you sustain it in the long run?

We met up with nine changemakers to understand the process that drives IT transformation and improves the perception of IT in an organization. Leaning on the nuggets of insights shared by the Changemakers, weve put together a 5-step process to help you become an agent of change in your organization.

1. Have a game plan.

What do you want to achieve by changing the course of IT in your organization, and how do you do it?

Draft a game plan.

Your game plan is the blueprint to help you drive the change and face the perception of IT in your organization. Include a list of changes you want to implement to reposition IT as a strategic force in your organization.

2. Start with human experience.

Countless transformations start with a tool or service and work backward to the experience of using it. This is completely backward, says Derek Rose, Group Head of IT and Deputy CIO at V.Group. Hes also one of our change-makers in the series.

By skipping straight to technology, leaders will often end up selecting the wrong tool and attempting to force it into a particular function. The alternative is to start, not with technology, but with employee and customer experience.

3. Check your foundations.

Technological transformation is like an amplification effect. It takes whats already in place and makes it stronger or more impactful. However, if the foundations are shaky, the tech will be unstable, too.

One Changemaker, Ian Leslie - Lead, IT Governance & Portfolio Management, Dangote, collaborated with his team and rewrote Dangotes entire process manual. He designed new incident management processes, service request workflows, change management policies, and problem management plans to strengthen the foundation and drive a sustainable IT transformation.

4. Engage your team in planning.

Leaders get away with one or two autocratic projects in their careers. But when they force decision after decision on their team, their employees will inevitably start to feel ignored and downtrodden. When that happens, engagement can drop, and buy-in can fade.

When running a software procurement project, most IT departments will use something called a scoring matrix. Its a tool used to compare options on the same variables. A boilerplate matrix might have product stability, customer references, price, and features. The selection group scores each option, sums up each vendors score, and declares a winner.

Your employees should play a role in the selection. After all, the engineers and end-users are going to be the ones using the product day-to-day.

5. Experiment with small scale test.

Start small and stay small.

Modest scale tests allow IT leaders to trial new technology and processes within a manageable environment. Once youve ironed out the creases, you can roll out the change more widely.

Meet the Change Makers

The insights here are just the tip of the iceberg. For a more in-depth knowledge of how to become a changemaker in your organization, you need to hear it from the real-life changemakers themselves. Get the eBook here.

You can also tune in and listen to The Change Makers - a podcast, profiling IT leaders, as they transform the ITSM landscape behind world-class organizations. We dive deep into profiles, events, and innovations, learning what it takes to drive large-scale IT transformations for successful businesses.

Click here to learn more about The Change Makers.
Kyndryl, formerly IBMs managed infrastructure services business, is now an independent company. On Nov. 4, 2021, it began trading independently on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker KD.

Although there are still close ties between the two companies  IBM retains a 19.9% stake in Kyndryl, which will remain one of its largest customers  the separation is opening up new opportunities on both sides.

For Kyndryl, those opportunities include addressing new business in markets such as intelligent automation, data services, cloud services, or security and resiliency. The company estimates that those new areas increase its total addressable market from $240 billion to $415 billion immediately after the split. Today, its capturing a small fraction of that, with annual revenue of $19 billion.

Technology  in the form of the tools that Kyndryl creates and uses to deliver services to its customers  will play a big part in exploiting those opportunities, says Kyndryl CTO Antoine Shagoury.

He knows the companys capabilities well. A former CIO himself, most recently at State Street and before that at the London Stock Exchange, Shagoury was a customer of both legacy IBM and of what is now Kyndryl.

His first reaction when IBM approached him about the Kyndryl CTO position, he says, was, Are you asking me as a former client? Youd better sit down and get a pen, because I have a lot of problems were going to have to fix. That didnt put either party off: It was one of those fun discussions, and it really became exciting to get exposed to the appetite to close the gap, and really start to position what Kyndryl is becoming now, this facilitator, this enabler of services.

Kyndryl Antoine Shagoury, CTO, Kyndryl

Some of the problems Shagoury wanted to fix related to what he calls the environmental issues of what the managed infrastructure services business was targeted to do. It had a lot of blinders on. It was very specific subsets of applications, very focused on IBM cloud, he says.

That part of IBM was as deeply embedded in its clients organizations as the clients own teams, he says. In that situation, It becomes very limiting how you can help the client navigate the complexity around modernization, around digitization, and availability in the marketplace, around that changed paradigm.

Those constraints are gone now, though, as Kyndryl creates its own way of working with customers.

Naturally, customers will have concerns about Kyndryls separation from IBM: Shagoury says that when he worked in banking, This type of separation would have made everybody pause in the building.

What CIOs are asking

Concerns about continuity of service are top of mind for many Kyndryl customers, but there is no cause for concern, Shagoury says: Kyndryl and IBM are among each others largest vendors and clients, and have committed to ensuring continuity of operations for their clients.

Second to worries about too much change are CIO concerns about whether there will be enough change: They want to know whether they will continue to see innovation under Kyndryl.

Of course, they will, says Shagoury: We are one of IBMs largest customers: We have direct access to the research results. If theres something that so unique to IBM, we can easily make sure that thats going to be a part of the discussion, the opportunity and the inclusion.

Kyndryl will also be an innovator in its own right, he says, starting out with 3,000 patents awarded, 800 pending, and more likely to be filed before year-end. We are far more innovative than people think, he says. Almost 40% of our patents are in AI. You wouldnt think about that for an infrastructure company. Those inventions wont just be put up for sale. We actually want to use them for the client, for their modernization and transformation work.

The third big concern CIOs have raised about the split, he says, is whether they will still have access to the right partners. They come with a list of who they want us to partner with, he says. Every operating environment is different, and the recipe to help someone modernize or optimize their environment is never the same twice. You need to make sure you have the right partners at the table with you.

Kyndryls new management have been educating people internally and externally about how they can help build the ecosystem partner environments that will help the company thrive, he says.

The role of technology

Technology will play a key role in enabling the ecosystem, and Shagourys role is at the heart of that. I run all the development, all of the architects, all of the research and the platforms themselves. So how were delivering the tools and the services, as well as the strategic platforms, how were going to deliver our services in a new way going forward in this ecosystem model, he says.

He wants to expose the technology that Kyndryl has inherited, and that it will build, so that its employees working in different industries, in different practices, are aware of what is available, and can see whether it is applicable to their work.

Much of that technology concerns automation. Were doing over 9 million automation activities every month for clients, Shagoury says, including server lifecycle management, incident response and remediation, all the way down to asset and patch management services. Automation is creeping up the stack, he says, and now includes robotic process automation (RPA) services and programmatic automation services beyond that.

The managed infrastructure services business that is now Kyndryl has been collecting metadata about its operations. Weve now created one of the worlds largest operational data lakes around this metadata, so we now have AI components that are now feeding our client operations or automation tools, as well as our planning tools, he says.

Opening up the ecosystem

Shagoury doesnt want the knowledge of those tools to stay buried within Kyndryl. Those tools are very rarely exposed to our partners and to our clients. And this becomes a huge opportunity for us, he says. Now were exposing that to the client, saying, Hey, do you want to look at these tools yourself? Do you want to see how we can actually help you be a part of what were working on, so you dont need all managed services?

His goal is to open up the possibility of customers choosing from a self-service menu of Kyndryls capabilities, or of bringing partners deeper into the Kyndryl ecosystem.

If I came to you today, and we wanted to brainstorm on something, youre going to want to have everything on the table: What are the ingredients we have to work with? Whats going to help me modernize faster, compete better, adopt technology in a more secure way for my business? And that is the best recipe to engineer and design the right outcome for the client, he says.
Wilkes-Barre, PA (18701)

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Concurs de granturi adresat COMUNITATILOR (APL) pentru sporirea rezilientei lor la schimbarile climatice si FEMEILOR ANTREPRENOARE in vederea dezvoltarii unor afaceri prietenoase mediului
One night last November, Jon Eagle Sr., tribal historian of the Standing Rock Sioux, spoke at a hearing before the North Dakota Public Service Commission. Three years had passed since the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and though life on the prairie had returned to some semblance of normalcy, concerns of a potential oil spill remained. Were still here, an ancient people, deeply connected to our environment, deeply connected to this land, this water, and this earth, Eagle said.

The hearing, held in the sleepy ranch town of Linton, would determine whether the volume of Bakken crude oil moving through the Dakota Access Pipeline would increase to 1.1 million barrels dailydouble the flow for which it was originally designed. Two hundred and fifty miles north, in Edinburg, oil oozed from a rupture in a different pipeline.

I sat in the auditorium and took notes. For ten hours, energy company officials had assured commissioners that the proposed expansion was safe, while a group of Indigenous water protectorsmany of whom had boarded a bus at five that morning to be therewaited for their turn to speak.

Eagle was the first Indigenous person the North Dakota energy commissioners had heard from all day. John Pretty Bear, a Standing Rock tribal councilman, was the second. Since the pipeline has been operational, our community has endured the daily stress of an impending oil spill, he said. Doubling the capacity only doubles our distress. It took nearly six hours more to record the testimony of every Lakota citizen present, making it the longest public hearing in the commissions history.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, impeachment inquiries were getting underway. Through the lens of the national media, that was the only hearing that mattered. Except for a swift summary filed by the regional bureau of the Associated Press, the DAPL proceedinga sequel to a global event that spotlighted environmental racism, Indigenous treaty abrogation, and government collusion with a corporate energy projectwas totally overshadowed by the politics of Donald Trump.

Journalists were missing a critical moment for the people of Standing Rockone arguably as important as the 2016 resistance. In this way, the established press continued its pattern of climate coverage, wherein solid enterprise reporting about environmental affairs takes a back seat to breaking-news assignments about extreme weather events. Standing Rock had been no different. Journalists only traveled to the reservation after police doused demonstrators with water on a subfreezing night, an event so shocking that it made the anti-pipeline resistance impossible to ignore.

The oversight also illustrated the medias myopic gaze, its stubborn failure to see the importance of Indigenous stories. Within the conversation about climate change, too little attention is paid to the people who possess wisdom about sustaining the land. The catastrophic bushfires in Australia, predicted by Aborigines years ago, provide one recent example.

Another: Berta Caceres, a Honduran Indigenous environmentalist who was assassinated in March 2016, just before the DAPL protests. I met up with Caceres early that year, in La Esperanza, where she was hiding out from government threats. I attempted to cover her situation, but my pitches were denied; it was only after her death that editors became interested in her story.

To this day, Im burdened by the thought that I should have pressed harder to publish before her murder. When I traveled to Standing Rock a few months later, I demanded from the start that editors recognize the importance of the demonstrations. Caceress death had made something clear to me: the invisibility and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples is inextricable from the harm inflicted on the planet.

Standing Rock represents the most vivid example in recent history of the links between aggressive natural-resource extraction in North America and human brutality, a pattern well documented since the time of the 1840s gold rush in present-day California. Then as now, women and girls have borne the brunt of the abuse. On the reservation borderlands of the Bakken oil fields, in North Dakota, the appearance, in the mid-2000s, of hundreds of male oil and gas workersliving in temporary housing often referred to as man campsled to a dramatic increase in rapes, sex trafficking, and the disappearances and deaths of Native American women. By 2016, crime had gotten so bad that the FBI opened up a new field office nearby.

Only in the past year has the lopsided rate of gender violence in Indian Country finally received the media attention it deserves. But an uptick in readership, on any topic, doesnt guarantee substantive journalism. Few if any publications have held the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation accountable for its complicity in the abuse visited upon its own women in the Bakken, or revealed that the majority of oil production occurs on the tribes trust lands. The Indigenous press, too, falls short; three-quarters of Indigenous media platforms are owned by tribal governments or advocacy groups. The result is coverage that tends to be dictated by political agendas rather than the facts.

Tribal citizens are among the most vulnerable people in the country to climate change. Among Native communities in Alaska, as many as thirty coastal villages will have to be relocated to escape rising ocean waters. Yet, for all the coverage addressing this slow-growing tragedy, little scrutiny has been cast on the contributions of Alaska Native Corporationsthe states largest private property owners, established specifically to capitalize on extracting resources from their lands.

According to the Government Accountability Office, todays tribal nations and their citizens collectively represent the third-largest owner of extractive resources such as oil, gas, and coal. For sovereign tribal economies faced with limited opportunities for revenue, these deposits are an attractive draw. This means Indigenous peoples must contend not only with encroachment from multinational corporations, but also with their own leaderships exploitation of the land. We need clear-eyed reporting on the complexities of these actorsor we risk distorting the public understanding of communities affected by climate change, and of those responsible for it.

Tribal citizens are among the most vulnerable people in the country to climate change.

When the public hearing in Linton concluded, well past midnight, I headed back to the hotel where I was staying on the Standing Rock reservation. As I drove, I wrestled with disappointment in the industry Ive worked in for twenty-one years. The Standing Rock protests had inspired a push by newsrooms big and small to enhance their coverage of Indigenous affairs, and yet on this day, almost no onenot even Indian Country Today, with its recent AP partnershipwas present. Once again, those who raised their voices loudest in a call for environmental justice were muted by the press.

I crossed the Missouri River, vibrant in the moonlight, and thought of the poem Anchorage, by Joy Harjo, a Muscogee Creek citizen and the current US poet laureate. Who would believe the fantastic and terrible story of our survival; those who were never meant to survive, she wrote of Indigenous resilience. In our contemporary emergency, Indigenous peoples are, as ever, on the front lines. It will take fortitude to tell the stories of a warming planet. Unless journalists know that the climate crisis is an Indigenous story, were likely to receive a warped representation of it. And that is perhaps the biggest emergency of all.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jenni Monet (MA '12) is an independent journalist and a tribal citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna who writes about Indigenous rights and injustice in the US and around the world.
One day in 1990, a friend of mine asked if I would have lunch with Al Gore, who was then the junior senator from Tennessee. Gore was writing his first book, Earth in the Balance, which, when it was published, in 1992, would warn of an impending crisis of global warming. (The term climate change was less commonly used in newspapers in those days.) Gore had told my friend that he wanted to talk about the gravity of the subject and make a pitch for more coverage.

At the time, I was a science reporter at the Washington Post. Global warming was only vaguely on my radar. My main responsibility was to focus on the aids epidemica distressing, full-time jobbut I also wrote more generally about medicine and, occasionally, about the environment. The movement to address climate change was building, having begun in earnest just two years prior, around the time that James Hansen, a nasa climate scientist, delivered congressional testimony saying that global warming was caused by human activity and that it posed significant risks to our planet.

There were many doubterssomehow there still arebut it was already clear to anyone who cared to look that something untoward was underway. The decade of the 1980s was the hottest since climate experts began keeping records a century ago, I had written in a story published in the Post on January 13, 1990. And it included six of the 10 hottest years on record. In the three decades since I and others covered that news, the planetary weather vane has only moved in one direction.

Gore had read my story in the Post, and when we met for lunch, in Washington, he told me that he had been annoyed by various caveats I had included. It is hard to imagine that he would remember that lunch, let alone his problems with the piece, but I have never forgotten. (Many climate scientists have predicted that the earth will get warmer as carbon dioxide and other heat-

trapping gases increase in the atmosphere, I had written. But there has been sharp disagreement about how great that warming will be or when it will be first detected.) Gore argued that there was already plenty of evidence to suggest that we needed to curb our industrial and personal excesses. He considered reporters who gave equal coverage to realists and denialists to be deeply misguided. Gore wanted more passionate climate storytelling.

Im not sure I had a reporting philosophy thirty years ago, but I did not come from a world of conviction or advocacy. I was taught to talk to people, present the facts, and file on time. In the piece Gore read I had done all that, I insisted. No matter how ominous one hot decade might seem, I told him, climate data from ten years of human history was simply not sufficient for scientists to draw meaningful conclusions about anything. (Believe it or not, in those days the magnitude of the disaster, while predictable, was not nearly as obvious.)

Gore was dismayed at what he thought was a general journalistic indifference to climate trends and what they implied about the future. I was not indifferent, I said; nor did I suspect that most of my colleagues were. But we didnt work for him or for Greenpeace or any other pressure group. Activists had one job, I felt, and journalists had another. It remained, I was certain, a world where facts would prevail. And my job was to lay them out for the reader.

In the end, my meeting with Gore was inconclusive. I respected his commitment, but he did not persuade me to approach my job in a new way.

I dont think we ought to discard the values of journalism and join an activist movement.

It took another conversation, not long afterward, to force me to recalibrate my conception of fairness and truth. One day, as I was on the verge of missing my deadline on a particularly explosive piece of aids policy news, I looked up to see my editor standing menacingly by my desk. Where is your copy? he asked. I told him I couldnt file until I got a comment from a well-known California representative who regularly denounced homosexuality and considered aids a plague visited upon sinners. My editor was astonished: Are you joking? There are not two sides to every story, he said. We pay you to exercise some judgment, not to type. File right now!

I did as I was told, feeling uneasy about it. The next day, though, when I looked at the story in print, I saw that my editor was right. What on earth did I think readers would gain from being exposed to comments uttered by a notorious homophobe? My approach to my job began to shift, slowly at first, but more dramatically as I moved from the Post to the New York Times, where impartial detachment was the official goal, and then to The New Yorker, where I had more space and more of a responsibility to construct an argument in my pieces. As a reader of news, I became increasingly attuned to false equivalences in stories. Theyre detestable, I realized, and theyre ubiquitous. You can always find a true believer to tell you, based on nothing, that vaccines will kill your children, that GMOs will give you cancer, that climate change is a hoax.

But preposterous statements should not share equal space with facts. Choosing what to leave out of a piece is just as important as deciding what to include.

The central question for our profession has never really been about whether we should remain objectivereporting can never be wholly neutral. Instead, it is about whether our reporting is fair and thorough. I am not an advocacy journalist; there are people who will dismiss anything I write if they think that I am taking a stand. But when I tell a story, my point of view is often easy to discern. I see no benefit to running down the middle of every aisle. Its dishonest.

The subject of the climate is complex. Changes are slow and often hard to recognize. Many readers dont see the disaster looming, or they dont think it matters. Yet the greenhouse effect has already had a profound impact in many countries, including the United States. Try growing wheat in Americas breadbasket, Kansas, where the weather is already too hot and unreliable to plant the way farmers did in the past. Or getting a house insured in many of our coastal communities. Or buying raspberries at a grocery store while unpredictable crop seasons disrupt the supply chain.

For years, many excellent writers have covered the subject exhaustively, fairly, and with insight. But there has been little significant progress. To stave off the worst effects of climate change, we have to cut carbon emissions sharply, yet in the past three years the world has released more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than at any time in human history. It is hard to ignore the fact, as the Global Carbon Project has demonstrated, that carbon dioxide emissions rose by an estimated 1.6 percent in 2017 and 2.7 percent in 2018.

A few years ago, toward the end of his editorship of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger tackled the question of how to persuade readers to care about climate change, writing that journalism has so far failed to animate the public to exert sufficient pressure on politics through reporting and analysis. One could argue that fairness and accuracy have never been enough to get the job done. Which raises a question: Since we are plunging rapidly toward the abyss, is activism, rather than journalism, the way to make the strongest case?

Maybe, but journalists should do their job and focus on helping the public see and understand the world in front of them. This may seem like a bleak time to occupy the high ground of dispassionate reporting, but I dont think we ought to discard the values of journalism and join an activist movement. After all, journalism that is honest and thoughtful and unafraid is a movement. It poses questions that challenge traditional ways of thinking, it surfaces information that has been hidden by powerful interests, and it draws attention to people and problems that are otherwise ignored.

To tell the whole story of climate change, we need to deploy our best reporting to make the terrifying conclusions obvious. When we write about the consequences of policy inaction, we should do so with human beings at the center. We need to illustrate the stakes for people who are economically displaced or flooded out of their homes. Theoretical tragedy doesnt make an impression. Lay out the facts and use your judgment to build a story that makes your point. Take a stand, sure, but do so in a measured and direct way, so that your reporting speaks for itselfloudly and clearly, but not in the tone of an angry commentator. That is the only way journalism will continue to matter.

How bad will things get before we take action, as a society, to mitigate climate change? It will get worseperhaps much worse. One day, though, I believe, the public will value facts again. So lets not abandon our principles at this dreadful, crucial moment. Gore, for his part, never told me to do that. His argument, which he made clear in the wholly fact-based 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, was that the truth would eventually help rescue the world.

I have no choice but to agree. And as journalists, if we dont believe that, Im not sure what we can believe.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Michael Specter has been a New Yorker staff writer since 1998, focusing on science and public health. He is an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.
Two weeks ago, Alex Heath of The Verge reported that the company then known as Facebook was planning to rename itself. An anonymous source told Heath that the new name was intended to direct attention away from the companys existing services (including WhatsApp, Instagram, and the social network itself) and toward its embrace of the metaverse. Ten days later at Connect, an annual conference the company hosts for developers, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks CEO, said the company would henceforth be known as Meta. The change was necessary to reflect who we are and what we hope to build, Zuckerberg said. He added his hope that Meta would eventually be seen as a metaverse company.

What Zuckerberg didnt make clear, in his comments at the conference or in the founders letter he published announcing the name change, is exactly what it means to be a metaverse company. The metaverse, Zuckerberg says, is an embodied internet where youre in the experience, not just looking at it. In this fabricated world he describes, users will be able to do almost anything you can imagineget together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, createas well as completely new experiences. A video presentation shows Zuckerberg walking through a virtual house with a fireplace and a view of the digital mountains, choosing what clothes his avatar should wear with a wave of his hand, fencing with a partner who is located elsewhere, and attending a virtual meeting that includes a large red robot.

In interviews, Zuckerberg elaborated, saying that he sees the metaverse as something like the next iteration of the internet, built by many companies working together. In this vision, Metas Oculus headset would be just one window into a virtual universe. One hurdle to achieving this future is that it would require Meta and other technology companies to not only cooperate but also inter-operatethat is, allow their products to work together. As critics have pointed out, the company formerly known as Facebook has a terrible track record when it comes to interoperability, and many other technology giants arent much better. (I hosted a discussion on CJRs Galley platform last year with author and free-speech activist Cory Doctorow about how interoperability can help dismantle surveillance capitalism.)

ICYMI: A grassroots prosecution seeks justice for murdered journalists around the world

Some believe that technology companies are interested in the metaverse because they want to recreate or extend their existing dominance into a new realm. Ian Bogost wrote in The Atlantic that the metaverse is a fantasy of power and control on the part of technology billionaires: If only the public could be persuaded to abandon atoms for bits, the material for the symbolic, then people would have to lease virtualized renditions of all the things that havent yet been pulled online. Ethan Zuckerman, cofounder of the Initiative for Digital Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, wrote that the current version of the metaverse isnt much better than those created 30 years ago by early experimenters (including Zuckerman himself). Metas vision, he wrote, is about distracting us from the world it has helped break.

Zuckerberg may have been thinking about the metaverse as a short-term distraction as well; as many observers have noted, Metas announcement came on the heels of a damaging document leak by former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen, which in turn fueled an avalanche of news stories. (Kevin Roose of the New York Times described the metaverse as Mark Zuckerbergs escape hatch.) Much of the coverage of those leaked documents pointed out that the company appears to have routinely ignored evidence from its own researchers about the harm done to users by its services. What steps will Meta take when the harassment, hate speech, and other problems it arguably enables happen in virtual worlds rather than on a Facebook page? That remains to be seen.

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Perhaps Meta hopes that its new focus might help the company recapture some of its previous dominance, especially among younger users. According to internal data, the number of teenage users of Meta in the US has fallen by thirteen percent since 2019, and is expected to drop another forty-five percent in the next two years. Young users, however, already have plenty of metaverses to choose from: Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, has operated a virtual world with hundreds of millions of users since 2011; Roblox, which allows users to create their own games, has 165 million users, and a number of brands, such as Chipotle, have already set up virtual equivalents there; Fortnite, a game that involves a free-form battle in a virtual environment, has hosted music performances and other events. Zuckerberg may have renamed his company Meta to show his love for the concept of the metaverse, but that love may wind up being unrequited.

Heres more on Meta and the metaverse:

Meta-buzzwords : Max Read, a former editor at Gawker and New York magazine who now publishes a newsletter on technology and culture, says the term metaverse is mostly a buzzword used to refer vaguely to a bunch of businesses, platforms, and technologies that might someday work together in some not particularly well-defined way. The Facebook version of this, he says, involves entering a world where you can go to VR meetings for your VR job [and] get summoned into a VR conference room to get VR furloughed by your VR boss and a VR human-resources representative.

Meta-racism : Erick Jose Ramirez, an associate professor of philosophy at Santa Clara University, writes about the false hope that technologies like virtual reality will help society deal with racism . The idea is that technology might help us better understand what its like to be someone on the receiving end of racist violence, Ramirez writes. Unfortunately, such approaches rely on seriously problematic assumptions about what it means to experience racism (or misogyny or classism or ableism) and often perpetrate the very racism theyre trying to help stop.

Meta-competition : Gene Park, who writes about gaming for the Washington Post , says that most of the things Mark Zuckerberg wants for his version of the metaverse already exist in various online games like Fortnite . While they dont offer the interoperability required for a true metaverse, the building blocks and runways had been established years before Zuckerberg publicly announced his intent to turn Facebook into a metaverse company, Park wrote. Chinese conglomerate Tencent has been pouring billions into investments into the metaverse for some time now. In this regard, Facebook/Meta is playing catch up.

Meta-journalism: Annia Ciezadlo, an editor for an independent media outlet in Beirut called The Public Source, writes in an opinion piece for Wired magazine that the Facebook Papers need to be released globally, because the news consortium exposing the companys worldwide abuses hasnt included the journalists best equipped to report on themthose in the global south. Despite the fact that many of Facebooks worst abuses are taking place in the global south, Ciezadlo writes, all of the news outlets initially analyzing this unprecedented look inside Facebooks operationsincluding Wiredwere from North America or Western Europe.

Other notable stories:

ICYMI: What does the Facebook data dump mean?

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Mathew Ingram is CJRs chief digital writer. Previously, he was a senior writer with Fortune magazine. He has written about the intersection between media and technology since the earliest days of the commercial internet. His writing has been published in the Washington Post and the Financial Times as well as by Reuters and Bloomberg.
Avis "Darlene" Searan, age 75, formerly of California, passed away at Restwell Home Plus in Oskaloosa, KS, on Tuesday, November 16, 2021. She was born the daughter of Leo Abraham and Avis Amelia (Gabbert) Searan in Claremore, OK, on June 25, 1946. Darlene loved watching baseball, especially,


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At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of workers stayed home, rendering physical office spaces useless, at least temporarily. Now that employees are returning to in-person work, what does the current commercial real estate market look like? And what does the future of office space
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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  After winning the second Miss Intercontinental crown for the Philippines this year, Cinderella Obenita is back in the country and is ready to start her reign.

The 25-year-old beauty, who is currently undergoing quarantine in Cebu, recalled the pageant's coronation night held in Egypt last Friday where she bested 71 other candidates from around the world.

READ: PH bet Cinderella Obenita wins Miss Intercontinental 2021

"I'm so happy we finally brought home the second Miss Intercontinental crown for the Philippines," Obenita told CNN Philippines' New Day on Thursday. "Winning the Miss Intercontinental crown was a huge feat for me and my biggest achievement in life so far."

Obenita, who earned the title Miss Intercontinental-Asia Oceania upon entering the Top 6, also explained her answer during the pageant's Q&A segment. She was asked about the importance of speaking English while representing the organization.

"Honestly, language and culture have been a heartwarming challenge for us, for all of the girls in the Intercontinental," she said. "But the organization has proven once again that no matter the language we speak, there is no language barrier at all because we have the language of love and understanding and that's what we showed all throughout the journey."

Obenita also shared how she will spend her year-long reign and represent the organization across the world.

"The thrust of Miss Intercontinental is really the power of beauty and touching lives through the spirit of advocacy, so I will be strengthening my advocacy on cervical cancer," she said.

"I will engage more women across the continents in conversations on health and well-being. I will be travelling around the world to do workshops, trainings to aspiring queens as well and participate in judging and hosting stints," she added.

The beauty queen called on young women who want to join the world of pageantry to be relentless, keep the faith, and never give up on their dreams.

"We all have days when we feel that we cannot survive, our dreams are unachievable, our dreams are invalid. Never lose faith and hold on to hope because you see these challenges will strengthen your character in the end," she said.

"Be relentless, push yourself to do more because it really takes so much character to build a stronger and better version of yourself," she added.

Obenita won the Philippines' second Miss Intercontinental crown after Karen Gallman in 2019.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 3)  The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has teamed up with the Philippines and Indonesia to establish an energy transition mechanism (ETM) in both countries.

ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa - along with Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati - announced the new partnership during the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, the regional lender said Wednesday.

The first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific, the ETM Southeast Asia Partnership hopes to accelerate Southeast Asia's transition to clean energy.

The ETM refers to a "transformative, blended-finance approach," hoping to speed up the retirement of coal-fired power plants and replace them with clean power capacity. It will be composed of two multibillion-dollar funds: one devoted to early retirement of the plants, and another for new clean energy investments.

The ADB will work with government stakeholders to pilot the mechanism in the Philippines and Indonesia with the joint conduct of a feasibility study zeroing in on each pilot country's optimal business model.

The ETM will raise financial resources needed to hasten the retirement of five to seven coal plants in both countries during the two- to three-year pilot phase, while encouraging investment in clean energy options.

"A clean energy transition in the Philippines will create jobs, promote national growth, and lower global emissions," Dominguez said, as he noted that the ETM could accelerate the retirement of coal plants by at least 10 to 15 years on average.

The organization and its partner countries will also establish an advisory group with nongovernment organizations and civil society groups to "prioritize a just transition to clean energy" during the ETM's design, the ADB said.

Affected workers and communities will be provided technical assistance for their reskilling and livelihood development, it added.

Under the partnership, the organization will also be "bringing together concessional resources from donor governments and philanthropies, in close coordination with global climate change-focused funds."

The ADB will likewise leverage large amounts of commercial capital to help usher in a "decisive" shift toward decarbonization.

It also noted that fully scaling up the ETM in both countries and possibly Vietnam, which involves retiring 50% of coal fleet or about 30 gigawatts in the next 10 to 15 years, could cut 200 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually - equal to taking 61 million vehicles off the road.

The Energy department announced late last year a moratorium on greenfield coal power plants in line with the government's bid towards renewable energy.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 3) Strengthening the country's healthcare and education sectors, as well as fighting hunger are at the forefront of presidential aspirant Vice President Leni Robredo's pandemic recovery plan for 2022.

Robredo on Wednesday shared her "Kalayaan sa COVID" (Freedom from COVID) plan which focuses on these three aspects  as she underscored the need for a "clear and strategic" crisis response.

Public health

If elected, Robredo said she would focus on strengthening the public healthcare system.

This will include forming a team of experts to advise the government, revamping the embattled Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, ensuring sufficient salaries and benefits for medical frontliners, rolling out free testing, supporting hospitals, and purchasing enough medicine supply.

Robredo said the government will also expand the "E-Konsulta system"  a teleconsultation platform launched by her office earlier in the pandemic  through partnerships with private service providers.

The Vice President also vowed enough funds for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines, and to ensure the doses' smooth distribution at the local level.

Hunger

Robredo also said the government will set aside 216 billion for pandemic aid.

"Gamit ito, matitiyak na hindi dadaan sa gutom ang mga pamilya, mabibili nila ang kanilang pangunahing mga pangangailangan," Robredo said.

[Translation: With this, we can ensure that families will not experience hunger, they can buy their essentials.]

The presidential aspirant added that she will push for the implementation of granular and street-level lockdowns instead of a nationwide quarantine.

A National Unemployment Insurance Program will also be created to help those displaced by the health crisis. Programs for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and other businesses will likewise be carried out, she said.

The agriculture sector was also highlighted in Robredo's recovery plan, as she eyes doubling its budget should she win the presidency.

Education

Robredo also proposed the reopening of schools in areas classified as low-risk for the coronavirus.

"Sa mga lugar na mayroong low prevalence ng COVID, buksan na ang mga eskuwela. Sa mga lugar na high prevalence, ang target: mabigyan ng device ang bawat estudyante," Robredo said.

"Lahat, dapat may libreng internet access sa de-kalidad na educational materials. Susuportahan natin ang mga guro at magulang," she added.

[Translation: In areas with low prevalence of COVID, let's open the schools. Those with high prevalence, our target would be to give every student his or her own device. Everyone should have free internet access and quality education materials. We'll support the teachers and parents.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has cited 'logistical bottlenecks' among the reasons why millions of COVID-19 vaccines remain unused.

Only around 60 million of the 87 million COVID-19 vaccines distributed nationally have been administered as of Nov. 2, data from the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) showed. The Philippines has so far gotten over 108 million doses.

"There are various reasons noh? Mga logistical bottlenecks. Minsan iyong (Sometimes), distance, transportation issues, cold chain logistics issues, so these are all being addressed and we are ramping up the distribution to the regions, and regions to the provinces and to the cities and municipalities," Duque said in an online media forum Wednesday when asked why over 40 million vaccines have not yet been administered.

Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje said in a separate briefing on the same day that "many" of the unused shots were "on the way" to various localities, while some were in warehouses and storage areas of the local health offices and local governments.

Cabotaje said another problem is that some local governments have yet to pick up their vaccination pace.

"Kailangan mabilisan na. Kapag andiyan na ang bakuna...dapat ibakuna agad iyan," she stressed.

[Translation: It has to be at a fast pace. If the vaccines are there, they should be administered immediately.]

As of Tuesday, Nov. 2, Cabotaje said Metro Manila remains with the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate among all regions while Bangsamoro has the lowest.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  The camp of presidential aspirant Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. maintained his conviction for failure to file income tax returns is not tantamount to tax evasion, following a petition to cancel his 2022 candidacy.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source on Thursday, Marcos' spokesperson Vic Rodriguez said the plea to void the presidential aspirant's candidacy was only a propaganda initiated by some "yellow wannabe political assassins."

"Ang importante, i-disabuse natin ang pag-iisip ng sambayanang Pilipino dahil sa propagandang ginagawa nitong mga yellow wannabe political assassins," Rodriguez said. "Walang tax evasion, non-filing lang po. Failure to file an income tax return. Magkaibang magkaiba po iyon."

[Translation: What's important is we must disabuse the minds of Filipinos out of this propaganda initiated by some yellow-wannabe political assassins. There is no tax evasion, only non-filing. Failure to file an income tax return. That's totally different.]

Rodriguez reasoned that Marcos was not able to correct his lapses in filing his tax returns because his father and namesake's regime fell in 1986.

He was referring to pro-democracy protests that culminated in a "people power" revolution which ousted late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in February 1986 and swept Corazon Aquino to power.

Marcos served as vice governor of Ilocos Norte from 1981 to 1983 and was governor from 1983 to 1986. Rodriguez said Marcos' taxes should have been filed by the provincial capitol at the time.

The 57-page petition of civic leaders pointed out that Marcos was convicted in July 1995 by a Quezon City court for his multiple failures to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985, a crime of "moral turpitude," just like the Marcos family's "repeated evasion" of duty for refusing to settle unpaid liability which now amounts to 203.8 billion.

RELATED: Petition vs. Bongbong Marcos' presidential bid filed before Comelec

Rodriguez dismissed this as another attempt by political opponents to "cheat," just like what they supposedly did when Marcos lost his vice presidential bid in 2016.

"Ang sinasabi lang namin, wag nating gawing launching pad ang Comelec sa mga yellow propaganda. Kung maari, lumaban naman ng patas ang aming mga katunggali."

[Translation: What we're saying is that, let's not make Comelec a launching pad for some yellow propaganda. As much as possible, let's fight fair.]

The defeated vice-presidential candidate continues to challenge the Presidential Electoral Tribunal in his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, who is months' away from concluding her term and also gunning for the presidency in the 2022 polls.

Meanwhile, members of Akbayan Party-list held a "taxpayers' protest action" in front of the Comelec office in Manila on Thursday, joining the call to nullify Marcos' presidential bid due to his tax evasion conviction.

"The call to cancel Bongbong's candidacy is very simple," Akbayan said in a statement. "He was convicted of tax evasion in 1995...when he filed his COC for president, he omitted this fact, thus, forswearing himself and lying to the Comelec and Filipino people."

It added: "We ask the Comelec to act on this petition urgently and protect our electoral democracy. This is a matter of both public trust and democratic integrity. Si Bongbong na tax evader ay hindi dapat iboto ng mga taxpayers (Taxpayers should not vote for Bongbong, a tax evader)."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will likely reach a decision next month on the petition seeking to cancel the certificate of candidacy of presidential aspirant Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.

"There's probably going to be something around December," Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez told CNN Philippines' The Source on Thursday.

Jimenez discussed the process for handling cancellation petitions, following the plea of some human rights groups to void Marcos' candidacy due to his "multiple false material representations" in seeking the presidency.

They pointed out that Marcos, the late dictator's son and namesake, committed a crime involving "moral turpitude" since he was convicted in July 1995 for his multiple failures to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985.

RELATED: Petition vs. Bongbong Marcos' presidential bid filed before Comelec

Jimenez said once the case is raffled to either the First or Second Division of Comelec, summons will be served to Marcos, and he has five days to file his answer.

A preconference will then be held on the case, and both parties will be given three days to submit their respective memoranda until the matter will be deemed up for resolution.

"With five days to answer and three days to submit the memoranda, that's already one week (of November) gone. And then you have to talk about the schedule, so I'm estimating maybe late December," Jimenez explained.

Meanwhile, Jimenez reiterated that his remark on Marcos' candidacy in a previous interview was taken out of context in a press release by the presidential aspirant's camp. He said it pertained to the former senator's vice presidential run in 2016, and not the November 2 petition.

"Obviously, if he is going to be disqualified now, then that question should have been raised much earlier considering that the conviction being talked about was all the way back in 1990s," Jimenez said. "It was in that context that I made that statement.....before the filing of the present petition."

A petition to cancel a certificate of candidacy, just like the plea against Marcos, can be filed within 25 days from the filing of COC. Meanwhile, a disqualification case can be filed any time after the last day for COC filing, but not later than the date of proclamation, Jimenez said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said he will order a government takeover of the power distribution in Palawan amid reported energy woes on the island province.

Duterte called out a certain power operator during his speech at a National Task Force and Regional Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-RTF ELCAC) event in Puerto Princesa, recalling how he "confronted" the firm three years ago due to the energy situation in the locality.

"Walang nangyari (nothing happened), so I will be discussing with [Energy] Secretary [Alfonso] Cusi. We will take over and i-distribute namin (we'll distribute)," Duterte said. "You cannot claim exclusivity, you cannot claim private interest because itong ilaw (this light) is impressed with public good."

"They wrote me a letter promising action that it will be improved," he pointed out. "So kunin ko na lang (I'll just take it). It is not a right, it is not a privilege. It's a thing granted to you and government can take it anytime."

Duterte added he will issue an order on the expropriation by "next week."

The chief executive did not name the concerned operator. But in 2018, he issued a warning to the Palawan Electric Cooperative (PALECO) that the national government may be compelled to take over its facilities if power interruptions persist.

CNN Philippines has reached out to Cusi for more details on the matter.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said he withdrew from the peace negotiations with communist rebels because they refused to answer for the crimes they've been accused of.

The President said accountability and subsequent sanctions are needed for a peaceful resolution to the decades-old insurgency.

"'Yung accountability, wala [There is no accountability]," Duterte said during the joint meeting of the anti-communist task force of the national government and of Mimaropa.

"Sabi ko may kulang dito. One ingredient is really the sanction sa mga ano, 'yung mga insurgents," he added.

[Translation: I said something is lacking. One ingredient really is the sanction on insurgents.]

Duterte has accused rebels of executing local government officials, as well as civilians suspected of being military informants.

Meanwhile, he defended the killings carried out by state forces, saying the government "would not kill for no reason."

The President's statements come days after the death of key communist leader Jorge "Ka Oris" Madlos.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines said Madlos was killed in a clash with troops, but his wife said he was unarmed and was ambushed on his way to get medical treatment.

Duterte abandoned the peace talks in 2017, as both sides accused each other of ceasefire violations.

READ: How peace talks with communist rebels failed
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4) President Rodrigo Duterte has signed a measure imposing higher penalties for perjury, or the act of making untruthful statements under oath.

Republic Act No. 11594 was approved by Duterte on October 29, a document released by Malacanang on Thursday showed.

Under the new law, persons who knowingly make untruthful statements or false testimonies shall be meted with a penalty of prision mayor in its minimum period (from six years and one day to eight years) to its medium period (from eight years and one day to 10 years).

The current penalty for perjury as stated under Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code is arresto mayor in its maximum period (four months and one day to six months) to prision correccional in its minimum period (six months and one day to two years and four months).

If the person who committed the act is a public officer or employee, he or she will also be slapped with a fine not exceeding 1 million, as well as perpetual disqualification from any appointive or elective government post.

Senator Richard Gordon  who authored and sponsored the bill in the Senate  earlier expressed optimism that the stricter penalties would deter people from committing the crime.

"The higher penalties would be sufficient to deter the commission of perjury and create a culture of truth telling," Gordon said in a statement last August.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano will recommend to the COVID-19 task force to do away with the mandatory wearing of face shields in enclosed spaces, an official said on Thursday.

Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said their agency will make the manifestation in the Inter-Agency Task Force meeting this week to scrap the use of face shields, except in high-risk locations like hospitals.

"In the next IATF meeting, I was told Sec. Ano will be proposing na tanggalin na ang [to remove the] face shield requirement," he said in the Laging Handa briefing.

The IATF will then endorse the proposal to President Rodrigo Duterte, who will make the final decision.

IATF spokesperson Harry Roque earlier said the task force is discussing easing the safety requirements in public spaces as COVID-19 cases decline.

The government currently requires the use of face shields in closed and crowded spaces.

The effectiveness of face shields has been a contentious issue among the public and lawmakers. A wind engineer from the University of the Philippines earlier said face shields would only trap COVID-19 airborne particles and that they offer no additional layer of protection.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Senator Ping Lacson and Senate President Tito Sotto  running mates in the upcoming elections  said they now prefer lifetime imprisonment over the death penalty.

"Sabi ni Tito Sen...nag author siya ng death penalty bill nung siya ay naging senador. Pero dun sa...in the course of time nagbago ang kaniyang pananaw. Ako ganon din, sabi ko I'm also a convert," Lacson, who is running for president in the 20222 elections, said at a virtual briefing on Thursday.

"Nung namulat yung aking kaisipan mas importante na masave yung buhay ng isang inosente na naconvict kaysa doon sa magexecute tayo ng talagang convicted at talagang napatunayang nagkasala," he added. "Nung tinimbang ko yun, sa tingin ko mas matimbang masave ng hindi pala yung, wrongly convicted."

[Translation: Tito Sen said he authored a death penalty bill when he became a senator. But in the course of time, his opinion changed. It's the same with me, I'm also a convert... I realized it's more important to save the life of an innocent person who was convicted rather than execute one who was proven guilty and convicted. When I weighed it, I believe it's better to save someone who was wrongly convicted.]

Lacson said a movie called "The Life of David Gale" which he saw on the streaming app Netflix made him change his perspective on the death penalty. He said the character in the movie set himself up to show that an innocent man could be executed.

Sotto, meanwhile, said he saw a much better solution for the punishment of drug traffickers whom he said were the target of the death penalty bill which he filed when he became a senator in the 90s.

"Iniisip namin e di ihiwalay itong sila...ihiwalay ang high level drug traffickers," he said at the briefing.

[Translation: We thought why not separate high level drug traffickers.]

Sotto even suggested moving such criminals into an environment similar to Alcatraz.

"Parang mas mabuti 'yon kesa ipasa mo pa ang death penalty na di mapasa-pasa," he said.

[Translation: That seems much better than passing the death penalty that seems impossible to pass.]

Lacson said this was a better option than the death penalty.

"Magdurusa habang buhay at talagang...wala siyang gagawin doon kung hindi magsisi. Kasi kung habang buhay, hanggang mamatay na siya sa kulungan," he said.

[Translation: They will suffer for the rest of their lives...they will not do anything but repent. Because it's for life, they will be there until they die.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee has cited resigned Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Usec. Lloyd Christopher Lao in contempt for not attending hearings on alleged anomalies surrounding the governments COVID-19 response funds.

Hes still needed here because hes got a lot of explaining as well, said Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Richard Gordon upon issuing the order against the former chief of the DBMs Procurement Service.

Now a private citizen, Lao isnt covered by President Rodrigo Dutertes order barring executive officials from participating in the panels inquiry into the management of the said funds.

Lao is among the individuals involved in the said probe, which looks into issues such as the purchase of allegedly overpriced medical supplies and equipment during the pandemics onset.

The embattled former DBM official is among individuals Gordon wants charged in light of the controversy.

RELATED: Lacson: Ex-DBM official liable for graft over Pharmally deals

The committee first subpoenaed Lao in late August to compel him to attend the probe. During past hearings, senators called him out multiple times for his supposedly arrogant and disrespectful conduct.

Thursday marks the 14th hearing of the Senate Blue RIbbon committee on the issue.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  The suspect in the killing of Mayor Caesar Perez of Los Banos, Laguna late last year was arrested, the slain mayor's son said on Thursday.

The mayor's youngest son Aldous Perez said the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-Batangas arrested former councilor Norvin Tamisin in Baguio City on Tuesday. He appealed to the suspect to come clean, including naming the possible mastermind.

"Naniniwala po ako, na ito ay dahil lamang sa politika, na mayroon pang mas maiimpluwensya at mayayamang tao na nasa likod nito," he said in a statement.

[Translation: I believe politics is the reason, that there are more influential and rich people behind this crime.]

An arrest warrant was issued against Tamisin after a murder complaint was lodged against him.

Mayor Perez was gunned down inside the municipal hall on Dec. 3, 2020.

He was part of the list of local politicians with alleged links to the illegal drug trade that was bared by President Rodrigo Duterte in 2019. In a TV interview, Perez denied his alleged drug ties and said the accusations were "politically motivated."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Former presidential adviser and Chinese businessman Michael Yang on Thursday denied being a Chinese communist agent.

"Number one, I am not an agent sent by the Chinese communist party," Yang said. "Second, we were never involved or would dare to be involved in the foreign policy of the President."

"Number three, what we wish for is really the China and the Philippines to have very good relations. This is something that we all want to see. I love the Philippines," he added.

Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Richard Gordon had suspected Yang of being a foreign agent who worked his way to have close ties with President Rodrigo Duterte.

During the resumption of the Senate inquiry on the government's allegedly anomalous pandemic deals with Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp., Gordon said Duterte became soft on China when Yang was his economic adviser.

"Nagtataka lang ako, napaka-coincidental, magmula nung dumating ka, nagbago na ang foreign policy ng Pilipinas, naging best friend mo si President Duterte," the senator said.

[Translation: I'm just curious because it was coincidental that since you arrived, the Philippine foreign policy changed and you became best friends with President Duterte.]

Yang has been linked to Pharmally after the committee showed a 2017 footage of him and some officials of the firm being welcomed by Duterte in Malacanang.

Tourist visa

Gordon also called out Yang for allegedly violating his tourist visa by engaging in business.

"Sinungaling yung ginawa mo. Tourist visa para magbiyahe ka, pero pumunta ka lang dito para maghanap ng kabuhayan," Gordon said.

[Translation: You lied with what you did. You used a tourist visa to travel, but went here to find livelihood.]

Yang explained he had a tourist visa when he first arrived in the Philippines in 1999, but was later changed into a permanent resident visa. He also claimed he only relied on financial help from family and friends then.

"When I first came to the Philippines, I stayed with my friends and started to look around on what possible businesses that I can do," Yang said.

However, Gordon recalled that Yang admitted in the last hearing that he had a ready-to-wear business in Davao City between 2005 and 2007.

The senator said he will have authorities check on Yang's tax records and alleged visa violation.

"I will write a letter to the BIR [Bureau of Internal Revenue] and check your tax records and all your activities. I will write to the Bureau of Immigration that you were violating your visa and that you are not entitled to a permanent resident visa, because it's a highway of lies that you showed," Gordon said.

The Senate earlier flagged Yang for failing to file his income tax returns from 2014 to 2017.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  Controversial Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation has 3.4 billion worth of unsupported purchases in 2020, a tax expert told the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on Thursday.

Of the 7.2 billion purchases made by Pharmally last year, accountant Mon Abrea said the trading corporation only declared 3.8 billion in purchases to the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs.

Dapat tanungin natin yung gumawa ng FS [financial statement], saan nanggaling yung 3.4 billion? said Abrea. Lumalabas na 3.8 billion lamang po ang na-report sa BIR at Customs, pero 7.2 billion ang kanilang ni-report sa kanilang audited FS.

[Translation: We should ask the one who made the financial statement, where did the 3.4 billion come from? [] Its shown that it only reported 3.8 billion to the BIR and Customs, but 7.2 billion was reported in its audited FS.]

Abrea said such purchases with no supporting documents could be non-existent.

Madalas po hindi po talaga totoo ang expenses, wala talagang resibo. Ginagawa lang ng iba yun para mapababa ang buwis na babayaran nila, he said.

[Translation: Most of the time, the expenses are not real, there are really no receipts. Some do it to lower the tax they need to pay.]

But Abrea said its also possible that the supposed unsupported purchases could have been paid to a supplier, but that there was no receipt issued: Yung unsupported po ay posible pong nabayad sa supplier, pero hindi nag-issue ng resibo, o naibigay sa ibang tao.

[Translation: The unsupported purchases could also have been paid to the supplier, but there was no receipt issued, or it could have been given to other people.]

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said material misstatements by Pharmally can be considered as false entries and would put its officers at risk of criminal prosecution.

The support documents for their financial statements should be produced. If you notice, with consistency, Dargani has refused to produce dahil doon lalabas ang kalokohan [because the fraud will be revealed there], he said.

Pharmally executives Mohit and Twinkle Dargani have still not shown up after the Blue Ribbon Committee ordered their arrest for refusing to submit subpoenaed financial documents.

Harassment

Meanwhile, the Senate sought to file a resolution to denounce the harassment against Abrea for attending the Senate hearings as a resource speaker.

Senator Francis Pangilinan made the proposal after Abrea told the committee that someone filed a complaint to the Professional Regulation Commission and requested to revoke his license as a public accountant.

I will seek the support of the members of the Senate that we file a Senate resolution assailing such harassment and urging the PRC to dismiss or to avoid any harassment suits on the basis precisely of Mr. Abreas involvement in terms of providing us guidance to better understand the ins and outs of accounting and the financial statements of Pharmally, said Pangilinan.

Abrea said that he also recently received insinuations and unsolicited advice to withdraw from attending the Senate investigation.

Gusto ko lang po ipaalam sa committee, na kung sakaling ako po ay mawawala, hindi po ako nagpapa-bribe, meron lang po na mga tao gusto ako i-discredit, he said.

[Translation: I just want to inform the committee that if ever I do not show up next time, I was not bribed, there are just people who want to discredit me.]

The Senate is investigating the deal between the Department of Budget and Managements Procurement Service and Pharmally for the procurement of allegedly overpriced personal protective equipment and testing kits.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 4)  The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (Philhealth) said on Thursday that it will resolve its debts to private hospitals before December after some facilities threatened to cut ties.

Rey Balena Jr, the state insurer's corporate communication department manager, said Philhealth augmented its personnel so more workers can process the reimbursement claims.

When asked if the payment will be made before December, he replied, "Dapat po."

He added Philhealth has enough funds to pay the claims. Balena said they have paid around P152 million from January 2020 to October 2021, representing 75% of all claims received.

PhilHealth is required to settle all hospital claims within 60 days.

Earlier this week, the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Incorporated said some hospitals are planning to disengage with the government agency over its continued failure to pay claims. Based on PHAPI's estimates, the state insurer owes their members at least P20 billion.

The official added no private hospital has notified them that they will disengage by 2022.

"Kami ay umaasa na kung may plano man ang ilang ospital na mag-disengage sa PhilHealth, sana po ma-reconsider nila ito. Napakaseryoso ng magiging epekto sa ating bansa, in particular sa pasyente na walang kakayanan na magbayad fully," he said.

[Translation: If some hospitals are planning to disengage with PhilHealth, I hope they reconsider. It will have a big implication, especially for patients who cannot pay their hospital bills in full.]

PhilHealth said it is instituting "major policy actions" to ensure that hospitals receive their claims on time.
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Through the narrative of a transgender actor fighting to make his way in Los Angeles amidst a battle of grief and love, the Centre Film Festival presented a live screening of Death and Bowling at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at The State Theatre.

As his debut film, queer and transgender director and writer Lyle Kash offered audiences a glimpse into a narrative that highlights a cast of almost entirely transgender actors. Kash said his film is historically the second feature film in history that features such a cast, as well as a largely trans cast.

Prior to the films screening, a short film titled Ten Leaves Dilated was shown to the audience. Directed by Kate Hinshaw, the short film documentary uses imagery from the world of the Cabbage Patch Kids to highlight a message on childbirth and motherhood in the American South.

Death and Bowling was in part sponsored by the Centre LGBTQA Support Network, the Penn State Jeffrey A. Conrad Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and Chumleys.

The film revolves around a community of people who are united through a lesbian bowling league, named The Lavender League, and the death of the leagues fearless matriarchial leader Susan.

After her death, the films central character, known simply as X, navigates the difficulties of coping with the loss of family. During the funeral, Susans estranged son, unknown to even those closest to Susan, travels back to the West Coast to say his farewells, causing the story to unravel into something entirely different.

Something that also makes the project unique is its not taking up trans-ness at like a coming-of-age moment, Kash said. It takes up trans-ness as a moment for a man in his late '30s and another guy in his '50s  I think thats very beautiful.

Though the cast is composed of mainly trans actors, Kash said the characters themselves remain ambiguously gendered, ultimately offering a double reading of how audiences can interpret the gender of the supporting characters.

With his work featured in the Centre Film Festivals lineup, Kash said it is special to be screening in a festival that isnt LGBT. He said having his work featured in a broader setting that isnt so niche breaks the tradition of queer and trans filmmakers being pidegon-holed into showing their films in spaces geared almost solely toward LGBTQ people.

After nearly a year's delay in its premiere due to the coronavirus pandemic, the film was initially shot in fall of 2019. After a lonely finish of post-production during the pandemic and a period of time just sitting and waiting for the chance to have an in-person screening, Kash said the film finally saw its premiere in August during the Outfest in Los Angeles.

Pearl Gluck, co-founder and artistic director of the festival and a professor at Penn State, said outside of queer- and trans-specific film festivals, she has not often seen authentic and realistic portrayals of LGBTQ characters that arent created to further a films humor.

I think a lot of queer narratives, even trans narratives, were hidden in certain ways, Gluck said. Either they were at the butt of a joke or the turn of a phrase... I think it's very important to have comedy, of course, but not at the cost of continuing to marginalize.

Part of the vision for the Centre Film Festival is to give opportunity to diverse filmmakers that are not often afforded the opportunity to tell their stories outside of festivals that are geared toward specific identities, Gluck said. While the goal is to highlight Pennsylvania-based filmmakers or stories, Gluck said the festival also gives opportunities for global stories to be told.

In attendance at the screening was Austin Yarrish, who said the themes and feeling behind the film offered a fascinating look into rivalry and sexuality. Yarrish said the film seemed more abstract at times, and it seemed to be without a focus on a linear aspect to the plot.

It was really weird in the best way, Yarrish said. I loved the first 10 minutes especially  I thought it was very abstract.

Harris Smith said the style of the film provided a lot of interesting and strange moments.

Smith (sophomore-human development and family studies) said while the film sometimes felt abstract, the film committed to this specific style and did a great job of executing the themes and emotions surrounding its plot.

Elaine Meder-Wilgus, the founder and owner of Websters Bookstore Cafe, said via email queer and trans narratives should be included in all film festivals, and having the opportunity to see Death and Bowling at the Centre Film Festival gives people the chance to see themselves in the arts and to have conversations about what inclusion really means.

Meder-Wilgus said the festival is not only great for the inclusion of all people but also for the community as a whole. She said the festival opens doors for people to see films they may never have heard about otherwise and allows younger audiences the chance to learn more intimately from professionals.

Following the screening of Death and Bowling, an aftermath reception was held at Chumleys, with Gluck and Kash in attendance to talk with audience and community members. The afterparty was held as part of an initiative to celebrate LGBTQ pride in central Pennsylvania.

Kash said what seperates Death and Bowling from other LGBTQ narratives is its focus on the complexities and struggles of its queer and trans characters. Kash said there is currently pressure on a lot of filmmakers to only show the positives of being trans specifically, with no room to highlight the difficulties of these characters.

Through his work, Kash said he wants to highlight stories that dont follow mainstream tropes or portrayals of queer and trans stories. He said the current climate of queer and trans cinema has become overly saturated in love stories or perfect coming-of-age narratives.

If we cant offer something new and interesting as queer artists, and if the programmers are not programming stuff that's boundary pushing, its not queer, Kash said. Im interested in work that is queer not because its 'gay'... I think we need to let go of identity politics and ask more of artists.

MORE LIFESTYLE CONTENT

The State Theatre to bring band Lotus Land to State College The State Theatre in downtown State College announced it will host Lotus Land at 8 p.m. Nov. 20.
The Penn State Student Programming Association announced it will bring comedian, actor and writer Jimmy O. Yang to perform at 7 p.m. Thursday in the HUB-Robeson Centers Alumni Hall.

Yang has appeared in a number of television shows including "2 Broke Girls and "Silicon Valley," and he is currently working on Netflix's "Space Force" as a writer and actor. He was also in the cast of the movies "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Patriots Day."

The performance will be free to students, according to a SPA release. There is no pre-registration required.

MORE LIFESTYLE COVERAGE

The State Theatre to bring band Lotus Land to State College The State Theatre in downtown State College announced it will host Lotus Land at 8 p.m. Nov. 20.
Penn State announced Friday its research expenditures decreased by 1.5% from last year, for a new total of $993.1 million spent in the 2020-21 fiscal year.

The changes included less federal funds, most of which were taken from the Department of the Navy, according to a release.

In other areas, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation and the other agencies in the Department of Defense, there were slight increases in funding, the release said.

Research funding from the state of Pennsylvania and private industry both remained steady, according to the release.

As for individual academic units, Penn State said the College of Engineering, the College of Medicine and the College of Education saw increases in their research funding.

This is a sign that our research sponsors have remained confident in our ability to innovate and advance research and scholarly findings, Lora Weiss, senior vice president for research, said in the release.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE
Penn States fall semester was largely riddled with protests, rallies, open letters and commentary in response to the universitys lack of a coronavirus vaccination mandate  with no policy changes enacted by the institution as a result.

During a virtual town hall meeting on Aug. 3, President Eric Barron announced the university would not mandate vaccinations, though Penn State "is not impartial to them.

But President Joe Bidens Sept. 9 executive order requiring vaccinations for all federal employees, contractors and others resulted in eventual compliance.

On Oct. 13, Penn State announced a vaccination requirement for all University Park employees  regardless of if they work under federal contract  by Dec. 8. Employees must provide proof of vaccination unless they have a medical exemption, disability or religious belief accommodation, according to the release.

Penn State employees will face consequences for refusing to get vaccinated, which could be up to and including termination, university spokesperson Wyatt Dubois said Oct. 13.

The decision was a step in the right direction, Raymond Najjar, professor of oceanography in the department of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State, said, but he was a bit surprised, considering Penn State has been really stubborn in its pandemic approach.

Najjar, who is a Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences representative for the Penn State University Faculty Senate, said the senate initially voted to approve a coronavirus vaccination mandate for students, faculty and staff prior to the fall semester return during its special meeting May 12.

While the senate supported the position to mandate vaccinations, this decision did not create official university legislation or any other specific policies.

My feeling is if that approach had been adopted by the university, if we were leaders in a sense that we know a lot, maybe people would [have been] inclined to follow us, Najjar said.

Whats more, Najjar said it was insufficient and terrible commonwealth campuses werent included in the Oct. 13 announcement.

Theres already inequity between University Park and the commonwealth campuses, Najjar said. I was not pleased at all with exempting the commonwealth campuses because its only going to make the disparities even greater.

Initially, Dubois said the university was reviewing how the executive order impacts other campuses and Penn State locations.

The executive order is complex, and the university has multiple teams looking at it, taking the time to study what areas of the university are affected, Dubois said in a statement.

On Oct. 19, Penn State extended the employee vaccine requirement to six of its commonwealth campuses  Altoona, Behrend, Brandywine, DuBois, Fayette and Harrisburg  after further considering Bidens executive order.

Then on Monday, the university expanded the requirement even further to include the commonwealth campuses of Berks and Schuylkill.

Though Najjar said hes pleased to see the requirement extended, its still too little too late.

Why not all campuses? Najjar said via email. Why split hairs about what exactly determines substantial federal funding? It's just the right thing to do to require the COVID vaccine for all at Penn State who are not prohibited from getting it for medical reasons.

At University Park alone, Penn State has about 1,000 federal contracts, including those in the Applied Research Laboratory, several different colleges, administrative units and research institutes, Dubois said in a statement. Thus, after reviewing the executive order, the university concluded that University Park would be covered by the mandate, so an announcement was made.

Dubois said Bidens executive order requires the entire campuss employees to be covered unless Penn State can affirmatively determine that no covered contractor employees will come into contact with any other employees in lobbies, elevators, stairwells, meeting rooms, dining areas and parking garages.

As an assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State Fayette, Julio Palmas commonwealth campus was one of those added to the employee vaccination requirement.

If youre a Penn State University faculty in the main campus, you can have classrooms that are fully vaccinated, Palma said. In the commonwealth campuses, you can be a faculty teaching 10, 12 hours a week, and you have almost no chance to have a classroom that is fully vaccinated.

Penn State Shenango and Penn State DuBois are commonwealth campuses that have two of the lowest vaccination rates, with 55.4% of students and 71.4% of employees fully vaccinated and 57.1% of students and 77.2% of employees fully vaccinated, respectively, as of Tuesday.

Palma, who is one of Penn State Fayettes two representatives in the Faculty Senate, said he believes the pandemic exposed and sometimes increased inequities between University Park and Penn States commonwealth campuses.

[The] decision-making process [is] very centered on University Park campus, Palma said. We must acknowledge that the policies are not consistent.

Palma said theres been a constant theme in the Faculty Senates requests  the involvement of faculty in Penn State decision-making and overall transparency.

We are told by the administration that the faculty are part of shared governance, but it hardly exists here at Penn State, Najjar said via email. Sure, [Penn State lets] us know what [it is] doing occasionally  but after decisions have been made.

This translated to institutional coronavirus policy, Najjar and Palma alleged. On Aug. 13, the Faculty Senate voted no confidence" regarding the university's coronavirus mitigation plans for this fall and encouraged it to reconsider them.

We hear all the time in many meetings, in many town halls  we hear the phrase Our health and safety of the community is our priority, Palma said. Is it really?

Najjar said he believes Bidens executive order intends to make employees, as well as individuals employees interact with, vaccinated so the environment is safer.

Were interacting very heavily with students, so it seems that the requirement should extend to them as well, Najjar said.

The universitys decision applies to graduate and undergraduate students who work on a wage payroll at the university, as well as students supported by graduate assistantships at University Park.

As an already vaccinated student employee at Penn State, Santiago Lopez said he personally didnt feel as affected by the requirement, but he knows a lot of individuals oppose coronavirus vaccinations based on personal beliefs.

I think that this is a problem because for many [employees], the job that they have here at the university is probably one of the few ways in which they can sustain their families, Lopez (senior-biomedical engineering) said. They have to find this balance between respecting what they believe and also balance the fact that they need to work here.

Lopez, who works as a teaching assistant, said he feels safe on campus due to the universitys indoor mask mandate for students, faculty, staff and visitors  regardless of vaccination status  and even if everyone was unvaccinated and wearing a mask, he said he would still be comfortable.

At the same time, though, Lopez said attempting to make public health decisions at an institution is complicated while trying to respect peoples autonomy.

He said he believes students werent included in the requirement because those refusing to comply would just drop out.

For employees, its more of a necessity to be here  [a] main source of income  whereas for the students, its more of a decision. They have more room to choose to leave if they wanted to, Lopez said. Not a lot of employees are [going to] stop working because of the vaccine mandate.

Recently, Penn State facilities have experienced staffing shortages, an issue thats reflected across the United States as well. The national unemployment rate declined sharply in September from 5.2% to 4.8%, which was the previous data recorded in August 2021, according to a U.S. Department of Labor release.

Though student Jenna Paritee said Penn States implementation of the vaccination requirement for employees was advantageous, she said she believes it should be extended to students.

However, Paritee (senior-human development and family studies) said she believes the extension wont be made due to Barrons statement regarding university funding.

In an open letter sent to the Penn State community Aug. 12 following backlash aimed toward coronavirus protocol, Barron said the university's mitigation efforts cover "vaccines, masking and testing" in a way that incites "as little polarization as possible," as there are widely differing opinions across the nation.

"Regulations across the country clearly reflect state-level political realities," Barron said in the letter. "State funding of our university requires a two-thirds vote of the Pennsylvania legislature, meaning that our funding relies on strong bipartisan support."

Paritee said she personally feels safe on campus because shes vaccinated, but she said she believes personal choices have been clouding safety measures  for example, when people decide to attend class with coughs.

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I think [Penn States] getting as close as [it] can without angering the people whose opinions [it] truly [values], Paritee said of the decision.

Alexander Papandrikos said in his opinion, Penn State still has time to enact a vaccination requirement for students, and its better late than never.

I think its definitely a step in the right direction  a huge step, actually, Papandrikos (sophomore-science) said of the vaccination requirement for employees. I feel that its just the first step in a long step of mandates that are soon to be implemented, so Im sure at some point theyre [going to] change that mandate to include students as well.

Papandrikos, of New Jersey, said he went home after two weeks at the beginning of his freshman year and stayed there for the rest of last fall and spring, so its been a weight off [his] chest to be able to go out and participate in activities on campus this fall.

Last year was definitely tough that really put a damper on my freshman year, Papandrikos said. Especially now that Im vaccinated, [its] so nice not having to worry constantly.

He said the higher vaccination rate among students compared to employees might be why Penn State hasnt yet added students to the requirement.

As of Tuesday, 88.7% of students and 83.2% of employees are fully vaccinated at Penn States University Park campus, according to the universitys COVID-19 Dashboard.

Especially seeing how many other schools are doing it, I think its only a matter of time until [Penn State follows] suit, Papandrikos said.

On Aug. 24, Ohio State became the ninth Big Ten school to mandate vaccinations, following Indiana, Rutgers, Northwestern, Maryland, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State and Minnesota. However, some of the aforementioned institutions allow individuals to remain unvaccinated if they are tested weekly.

Furthermore, Indianas decision to require vaccinations for on-campus students, which was upheld by a federal judge on June 19, was also allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 12.

Student Andrew Devitt said he was initially surprised by Penn States decision to require employees to be inoculated and said he thought the weekly testing protocol for unvaccinated individuals would be upheld.

Previously, students and faculty who did not provide proof of vaccination with the university were required to take a weekly coronavirus test. This now only applies to students and any employees exempt from the new requirement, though.

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Devitt (senior-political science) said he believes the decision targets the unvaccinated and is a tyrannical approach to dealing with the situation.

Im just of the belief that at the end of the day, our foundations are about personal choice, individual freedom [and] privacy, Devitt said. Once you start giving away your rights and freedoms and liberties, little by little, the people that want to take them away from you will realize that they can continue to take more and more from you.

He said he believes the university will mandate the vaccine for students if coronavirus cases worsen heading into this winter, and students will then have to choose between education and injecting themselves.

[Im] not happy [Penn State] didnt include students, Devitt said of the new requirement. [The university] should not include anyone in the first place.

Moving forward, Najjar said Penn State needs to move quickly and aggressively because coronavirus isnt a long haul situation.

We need to hit this with everything we absolutely can. I dont like forcing people to do things, Najjar said, [but] if we want to remain healthy and viable, we have to do things for the common good.

To Palma, who is from Mexico, its important to recognize the very privileged position Penn Staters are in  with access to coronavirus vaccines and testing.

For many months, we didnt have vaccines in my own country, Palma said. My family didnt have vaccines, and we are in a country where we are like, No, no thank you.

Penn States vaccination requirement for employees was the bare minimum from Palmas perspective because the decision was low-hanging fruit  the result of Bidens executive order, not Penn States administration.

The university is requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for University Park faculty and staff to fulfill a federal requirement, Dubois said in a statement. Unless employees have an approved exemption, they are expected to comply with the requirement.

Afterward on Oct. 19, Penn State extended the employee vaccination requirement to six of its commonwealth campuses.

In this country, we have access to vaccines, and we have the luxury to say no to vaccines, Palma said. If we have that access, we should use it.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE
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LANCASTER  More than two years after seven motorcyclists were killed in a collision with a pick-up truck on Route 2 in Randolph, the truck dr
Funeral service for Otis C. Harrison, Jr., 47, formerly of Oakwood, passed away November 6, 2021 in Cypress, CA. Viewing will be on, Monday, November 22 at Emanuel Funeral Home of Palestine from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Funeral will be held on Tuesday, November 23, at True Vine DOXA Center, Fairfie
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The UK Cyber Security Council is the self-regulatory body for the UKs cybersecurity profession. It develops, promotes and stewards standards for cybersecurity in support of the UK Governments national cybersecurity strategy. A key component of these aims is supporting cyber education, skills and career pathways in the UK.

As such, the Council recently launched its Careers Route Mapa free resource that helps jobseekers enter and succeed in cybersecurity roles. It details 16 cybersecurity specialisms and suggests pathways through and between them, along with providing information on important job-related factors. The specialisms include roles in areas such as incident response, threat intelligence, security testing, audit and assurance, and identity and access management.

Speaking to CSO, the Councils newly appointed CEO Simon Hepburn explains that, whilst the Careers Route Map is primarily aimed at supporting job seekers, it provides key benefits for hiring organisations, security leaders, and the sector in general amid ongoing cybersecurity workforce shortages.
By Cynthia Hubert

CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro met with Sacramento State students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni Wednesday, Nov. 3, in his continuing effort to assess the strengths and needs of the systems 23 campuses.

It was Castros first trip to Sac State as leader of the nations largest and most diverse public four-year university system. Castro was named chancellor in September 2020.

During his daylong visit, Castro received information about Sac States improving graduation rates, shrinking opportunity gaps for students of color, and the Hornet Launch initiative, which puts first-year students on the path to timely graduation by assigning them courses that they want and need. He also learned more about the Universitys new Antiracist and Inclusive Campus Plan and took a tour of the campus.

During a session with the news media, Castro singled out Sac States progress in graduating students from all backgrounds more quickly, particularly those from traditionally underserved groups.

Sacramento State's gains in increasing graduation rates impressed CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro (left), who told University President Robert S. Nelsen he is "unaware of any university that has made the progress that you have made." (Sacramento State/Andrea Price)

Im unaware of any university that has made the progress that you have made, he told Sac State President Robert S. Nelsen.

Sac States graduation rates have soared since 2016, when it launched its Finish in Four and Through in Two campaigns as part of the CSU Graduation Initiative 2025.

Preliminary data for 2021 shows that about 26% of students graduated in four years, compared to just 10% in 2016. Transfer students also have made significant gains in graduating in two years. Improvements have occurred across the board, including among Black, Latinx, and first-generation students.

Castro, who is the first Californian and first person of color to serve as CSU chancellor, said he can relate to many of Sac States scholars. The grandson of immigrants from Mexico and the son of a single mother, he was the first in his family to graduate from a university.

At an open forum, Castro and Nelsen took questions on a wide range of topics including the future of telework and online learning, faculty and staff compensation, pandemic safety, and retention of Black faculty members.

Castro and Nelsen emphasized that their focus, in all areas, is cultivating student success.

The guiding principle shall be what is best for them, said Castro.

The chancellor applauded Sac States new antiracism plan, the result of widespread input from across campus, saying it could be a very good model for other campuses.

Nelsen and Castro both expressed concern about the recent departures of faculty members of color, and said the University must do better to recruit and retain valuable personnel. Those issues are addressed in the antiracism plan, and will further be explored within the Division of Inclusive Excellence, which welcomes its new director, Mia Settles-Tidwell, this month.

As for concerns about fair compensation for faculty and staff members, Castro said he is confident that negotiations with unions, discussions with the CSU Board of Trustees, and legislative efforts will result in a positive outcome in the weeks and months ahead.

Actions speak louder than words, he said.

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Republicans notched a series of victories in municipal elections Tuesday, gaining control of a dozen or more town governments, but the results were decidedly more mixed in races where candidates on the right made blunt critiques against school curriculums focused on diversity and the teaching of race.

No town saw the debate around race take a more central role in local elections than Guilford, where a slate of five political novices running against the academic teaching of critical race theory ousted Republican incumbents on the Board of Education in a September primary.

That early upset brought a wave of attention to Guilford, as the issue of critical race theory took hold in other elections around the country, from Virginia to Kansas. Members of the new GOP slate in Guilford appeared on Fox News while other national outlets began covering the local election.

On Tuesday night, the race ended with a resounding defeat of the Republicans, who lost all five open seats on the board to a rival slate of Democratic and Independent candidates.

Democrats also led the returns in school board races in Glastonbury, where Republicans had campaigned against divisive curriculums in schools, as well as in Redding, where the local superintendent resigned earlier this year after facing backlash over an optional diversity, equity and inclusion survey that was sent to members of the community.

In Coventry, where the Hartford Courant reported that Republicans running for school board put up signs that said, Dont rewrite history, the Democratic slate flipped control of the Board of Education, according to the town clerk.

At the same time, Republicans appeared to have maintained their majority on the New Canaan Board of Education hours after voters were allegedly handed flyers urging them to vote for the GOP slate in order to oppose critical race theory. The GOP also performed well in Greenwich, where parents organized protests around the supposed teaching of critical race theory and school mask mandates.

As local officials and prognosticators pored over the results from those municipal races Tuesday, many eyes also turned to the gubernatorial election in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin won after campaigning heavily on giving parents more control over school curriculums, including the teaching of race.

One aspect of that debate, critical race theory, is an academic and legal concept developed in the 1970s describing racism as a characteristic of not only people, but larger social and political systems. While school officials almost universally deny that the theory is being taught in schools, opponents argue it has seeped into curriculums through teachings on social justice, history and equity.

Bilal Sekou, a professor of political science at the University of Hartford, said the outcome of Tuesdays elections showed that debates over race and education are animating to many voters, particularly Republicans.

I think the results in Connecticut suggest that those issues may not play as well here as they do in other states, especially states in the South, where these battles in many ways are really an extension of battles that we've been having in our country about race for decades, Sekou said.

When asked about the outcome of the races in Guilford and other towns on Tuesday, Connecticut Republican Party Chairman Ben Proto dismissed the relevance of critical race theory, saying parents statewide were more broadly fired up over the desire to have a greater say in school curriculums and health guidelines, including mask mandates.

He pointed to the results in several towns  including New Canaan, Greenwich and Cheshire  as evidence that Republicans are persuading voters on those issues.

Its not about critical race theory, its about parents, its about schools, its about parents being in control of their childrens lives, Proto said. Its about parents making decisions about their children, not the government.

Speaking at an event in New Haven on Wednesday, Gov. Ned Lamont also weighed in on the election results in New Jersey and Virginia. Pointing to local results, the governor said he did not envision a successful wave of opposition to diversity and racism education in 2022, when he is expected to run for reelection.

A lot of that pushback against our schools, I dont see that here in Connecticut, Lamont said. I saw the Board of Education vote, for example, in Guilford. I think people [are] standing up for our schools and standing up for our teachers.

While generally agreeing that opposition to critical race theory is unlikely to gain traction in Connecticut, political experts said other debates framed around school curriculums could have broader appeal among moderate or undecided voters.

It really sparked a lot of parents who started to research and look into and consider what is being taught in the classroom, what books are being assigned? said Jonathan Wharton, a political science professor at Southern Connecticut State University and former chairman of the New Haven Republican Party. So it really kind of motivated a lot of parents, whether they were on board with or concerned about racial issues or not.

Wharton and others said Youngkin, the Virginia Republican, was able to speak about the issue of race, education and parental control in a way that appealed to the partys base of supporters concerned about critical race theory, without alienating more moderate and suburban voters.

In Connecticut, such an approach is seen as the more likely strategy for candidates in 2022.

I think it will be much more subtle in terms of the message, Sekou said. What they will probably take away from this is that kind of overtly racist way of saying things just doesnt appeal to Connecticut voters.

Staff writer Christine DeRosa contributed to this story.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  An appeals court has formally ended a lawsuit that in 2018 temporarily suspended a California law that allows adults to obtain prescriptions for life-ending drugs, a gap that advocates blamed Thursday for a significant drop in its use that year.

California lawmakers made the lawsuit moot last month when they reauthorized and extended the law until 2031 while reducing the time until terminal patients projected to have six months or less to live can choose to be given fatal drugs.

The 452 terminally ill Californians who received prescriptions in 2018 was down 22% from the previous year, when 577 people received the lethal drugs, before increasing to 618 who obtained the drugs in 2019.

Last year, 667 people obtained prescriptions. In each year, not everyone who received the drugs used them to end their lives.

Compassion & Choices, a national organization that advocated for the law, blamed the drop three years ago on a Riverside County judge's ruling in May 2018 that state legislators acted unconstitutionally when they passed the law during a special session that was devoted to health care in 2016.

Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia's suspension was in place about three weeks before an appeals court reinstated the law.

But the advocacy group said at the time that the ruling interrupted the plans of about 200 patients who had already started the process, while causing confusion and fear among both doctors and patients about violating the law.

A different Riverside County judge last year ruled that lawmakers in fact did act properly and that physicians who sued to block it lacked legal standing to file the challenge. But the court allowed the opponents to refile their complaint if they could find patients to join the lawsuit.

Late last week the two sides agreed that the Legislature's recent reauthorization and extension of the law, which had been set to sunset in another five years, effectively ended the legal challenge. The 4th Appellate District Court of Appeal accepted the parties' stipulation in a one-paragraph order Monday, without comment.

Starting January 1 under the reauthorized law, the waiting period required between the time a patient makes separate oral requests for medication will drop to 48 hours, down from the current minimum 15 days.

The revised law also eliminates the requirement that patients make final written attestations within 48 hours of taking the medication.

Katie Short, legal affairs vice president for the Life Legal Defense Foundation, said the opponents she represented in the lawsuit still believe it is a deeply unjust and ill-advised law that initially was enacted illegally, and they will continue to seek ways to end the availability in California and elsewhere.

We always believed the California legislature lawfully passed the End of Life Option Act during a special session on healthcare because medical aid in dying is a palliative care option to relieve intolerable suffering, Compassion & Choices chief legal advocacy officer Kevin Diaz said in a statement. But thanks to the Legislature reauthorizing the law this year during a regular session, it doesnt matter anymore.

California is one of 10 states and Washington, D.C. that allow medical aid in dying. The others are Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
Its been a long, bruising political season that wont end with Tuesdays municipal elections, though that would be great. Negative politics can stifle voter participation, according to a library shelfs worth of nonpartisan studies. By slinging mud, calling names and misbehaving, some people who are rude with their politics succeed only in driving others away from the polls.

This is a bad system that feeds on itself. The meaner we get, the less engaged become some voters, and a less engaged citizenry means a less representative democracy. Even without negative campaigning, thats the way it usually goes during most municipal election years  unless you live in a town such as Guilford, which on Election Day saw upward of half of its eligible voters go to the polls. In most towns, though, mudslinging moves people to stay away in droves, to the peril of the rest of us.

We are, at some point, going to have to knock this off and come together. It wont be pretty, and it wont be easy, but I know it can happen because Ive seen it.

In what was then a mostly Democratic state, my parents were Republicans, but that wasnt the half of it. In 1968, my mother may have joined the more-than-a-handful of Missouri voters who cast a ballot for George Wallace. That year, Wallace broke away from the Democratic Party because it was leaving behind some of its more racist tendencies, while Wallace was still hoisting the Confederate battle flag.

My mother only hinted that Wallace got her vote that year, and I dont blame her. If you voted for Wallace in 1968, a secret ballot helped hide your shame. Wallace the man may have seen the light as he drew closer to his eternal reward, but in 1968, Wallace the candidate was still willing to stand in a door  any door  to defend segregation.

My grandparents  my mothers parents  were Democrats, of the Harry S. Truman variety. During the Depression, they credited the Democratic Party for bringing electricity to their corner of Arkansas. The ability to flip a switch and turn night into day earned their lifelong political gratitude.

My grandparents believed that Democrats were for the working people  particularly the working poor, a category into which my family fit neatly. My parents believed the Republican Party would lead this country to greatness. Their political conversations were loud and lusty and not terribly well-sourced, though they were all well-read. In a world stripped of folderol, voting was their holy rite.

A half-year shy of my 18th birthday, I wore a The Grin Will Win button to school on Election Day. Id been listening to the back and forth my entire life, and I studied the magazines that came to our house. Jimmy Carter, a fellow evangelical, looked like my candidate, or he would have been had I been old enough to vote. I thought everyone at my high school would agree with me, so imagine my confusion when first period was spent arguing the merits of Gerald Ford  who seemed like a nice man, but hed let Nixon go free, and as Grandpa said, Nixon was crooked as a dogs hind leg, so no. Some of my more Republican classmates had done their homework, and by lunchtime, I was exhausted  exhilarated, but exhausted from the discussions.

The difference from today, of course, is that my high school classmates and my mother and her parents didnt then go home to fire volleys at one another on social media. We ate together and spent time in one anothers homes. We disagreed over various candidates merits, yet we still pulled over to give each other rides on cold mornings. We saw no reason to hate or demonize one another. Two generations later, my brother and I cheerfully remain political opposites, and our discussions generally devolve thus:

Youre stupid.

No, youre stupid.

Im hungry.

Lets eat.

See what happens there? We argue  still well-read and still shamefully free of sources  but we do not question each others humanity. Instead, weve spent time getting to know how we each came to our respective politics. We may not agree with the others destination, but we appreciate the journey.

That level of trust only happens when you spend time IRL  in real life, away from the keyboard and the swill of online lies, which is not easy to do. As Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen recently said, Its easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions. We slide down the greased pole of the outrage machine and let loose the hounds, with nary a thought as to how that hurts democracy.

And here is where I should insert a meme of a cute toddler waving an American flag. U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger is a Republican from Illinois who voted to impeach the former president. He recently announced he wont seek another term. I disagree with him politically, but I appreciate his integrity. Should he seek national office  and its rumored he will  I wont vote for him, but I wont call him names, either. I doubt hell notice, but there you are. Im exhausted, but no longer exhilarated by the discussions.

So, on Tuesday, I voted because I want my little town to succeed, and by succeed, I mean I want affordable housing, good schools, paved streets and opportunities for all. I want a healthy economy. I want things to be fair. Maybe you do, too.

Susan Campbell is the author of Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood, Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker and Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl. She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.
Police say a teen has been arrested in connection with a crime spree that spanned several Connecticut towns and two counties Wednesday morning.

Fairfield police on Thursday said authorities have identified one of the suspects as a 15-year-old boy, who was arrested Wednesday night by New Haven police for an unrelated incident.

Police said charges are pending for the Wednesday incidents. Police said multiple juveniles were involved in the Wednesday crimes, but have not yet been arrested. Police in Branford, where two armed robberies tied to the group were reported, said the juveniles committed a string of five armed robberies along the shoreline from Clinton to Norwalk.

Fairfield police said the crime spree began early Wednesday when two juveniles  believed to be in a stolen vehicle from New Haven  committed an armed robbery in Clinton. Fairfield police said after the Clinton incident, the juveniles in the same vehicle drove to Branford.

Police in Branford on Thursday said multiple juveniles showed up in a vehicle that was carjacked in New Haven at gunpoint several days earlier. Police said they committed two armed robberies with a gun in Branford.

In the first Branford incident, the juveniles approached a victim walking to his vehicle at the Motel 6 around 5:30 a.m. The juveniles showed a gun and demanded the keys to the vehicle, the victims wallet and his cellphone, police said. The victim was punched before the juveniles took off in the vehicle. Police said they drove both vehicles to the Shell gas station, where one juvenile went inside and robbed the store attendant at gunpoint.

Branford police said the juveniles were identified within hours of the incident. The 15-year-old who brandished the gun was arrested, Branford police said. An arrest warrant is being sought for a 14-year-old juvenile as Branford police continue to investigate, with additional warrants for other juveniles allegedly involved expected at a later date.

After the Branford incidents, Fairfield police said, the juveniles drove in the stolen vehicle and robbed two faculty members of The Southport School at gunpoint around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday. Police said the two women were robbed of their phones and bags, but were not hurt during the incident.

About 20 minutes later, police said the juveniles attempted to steal another car from a Norwalk driveway.

At about 8 a.m. Wednesday, Norwalk police said they received a 911 call about a possible attempt to steal a car in the area of County Street.

Norwalk Police Sgt. Sofia Gulino said the car owner reported that someone tried to steal their Acura, which was unlocked and idling in the driveway. The owner said they were trying to warm up the vehicle because of the cold weather and the keys were inside the residence, Gulino said.

A few minutes after starting the Acura, the owner saw an unknown person inside the vehicle, Gulino said. Another vehicle was seen idling nearby. Gulino said the owner went out to confront the individual, who tried to put the car in gear and take off. When the Acura wouldnt move, the individual got out of the Acura and into the passengers side of the waiting vehicle, which fled the area, Gulino said.

Norwalk has not had a reported carjacking in 2021, Gulino said. Last year, she said, nearly 80 percent of the 111 vehicles stolen had car keys or fobs left inside.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) _ Qorvo Inc. (QRVO) on Wednesday reported fiscal second-quarter earnings of $319.2 million.

The Greensboro, North Carolina-based company said it had net income of $2.84 per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were $3.42 per share.

The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $3.25 per share.

The chipmaker posted revenue of $1.26 billion in the period, which also beat Street forecasts. Five analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $1.25 billion.

For the current quarter ending in January, Qorvo expects its per-share earnings to be $2.75.

The company said it expects revenue in the range of $1.09 billion to $1.12 billion for the fiscal third quarter.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on QRVO at https://www.zacks.com/ap/QRVO
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP)  The deaths of two of three people whose bodies were found in separate apartments in the same high-rise building are being investigated as homicides, the Kansas City, Kansas, police department said Wednesday.

Authorities said the third person died from natural causes.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was arrested Thursday on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information, among them a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton.

The case against Igor Danchenko is part of special counsel John Durham's ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI's probe into whether Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year's presidential campaign.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought by Durham and the second in a two-month span, is likely to boost complaints from Trump allies that well-connected Democrats worked behind the scenes to advance suspicions about Trump and Russia that contributed to the FBIs election-year investigation.

The case does not undercut investigators findings that the Kremlin aided the Trump campaign  conclusions that were not based on the dossier, which was barely mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller's report. But the indictment does endorse a longstanding concern about the Russia probe: that opposition research the FBI relied on as it surveilled a Trump campaign adviser was marred by unsupported, uncorroborated claims.

The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was financed by Democrats.

Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russian who'd specialized in Russian and Eurasian matters as an analyst at Brookings Institution, was a significant source for Steele as Steele compiled his dossier of research. That dossier, the target of intense derision from Trump, was ultimately provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

According to the indictment, Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI about his sources of information. Prosecutors say that deception mattered because the FBI devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate" the dossier's allegations and had relied in large part on that research in obtaining the surveillance warrants.

A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.

The indictment says Danchenko misled the FBI by denying that he had discussed any allegations in the dossier with a contact of his who was a public relations executive and longtime Democratic operative who volunteered for the campaign of Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent.

In fact, the indictment says, Danchenko had sourced one or more allegations in the dossier anonymously to that Clinton associate. As the FBI worked to corroborate the dossier's allegations, it would have been important to know the Democrat's role in feeding information for it because it bore upon his reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source," according to the indictment.

The individual is not named in court papers, but his lawyer confirmed his identity as Charles Dolan Jr., a former executive director of the Democratic Governors Association who advised Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and volunteered for her 2016 campaign. The lawyer, Ralph Drury Martin, declined to comment further on the ongoing investigation.

The charging documents also refer to salacious and unsupported sexual allegations involving Trump's behavior at a Moscow hotel that were included in the dossier but that Trump has vigorously disputed, including in private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey.

The indictment says Danchenko told the FBI he had collected information about Trump's activities at the hotel from multiple sources but didn't himself know if the sexual allegations were true.

According to the indictment, Dolan stayed in June 2016 at the same Moscow hotel and received a tour of the presidential suite. A hotel staff member revealed that Trump had stayed there, but Dolan and another unidentified person said the staff member didnt mention any sexual or salacious activity.

The indictment says that since Dolan was present at places and events where Danchenko collected information for the dossier, Danchenko's deception about his relationship with Dolan was highly material to the FBI's investigation of these matters.

The indictment also accuses Danchenko of lying to the FBI about a July 2016 phone call he claimed he received from someone he believed to be the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. That person, according to the dossier and Danchenko's account to the FBI, told him about a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between the Trump campaign and Russia  an assertion that prosecutors say would ultimately underpin the surveillance warrant applications.

The indictment says Danchenko fabricated his account and never actually received such a phone call.

Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged.

Trumps Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt. Trump pointed to the dossier, much of which the indictment says the FBI was unable to corroborate, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.

But the dossier had no part in launching the Trump-Russia investigation, though a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report raised significant questions about the accuracy of the information and the FBI's reliance on it. Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to charge a conspiracy to sway the election. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.

The indictment is the third criminal action from Durham.

Cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was charged in September with lying to the FBI during a 2016 conversation in which he relayed concerns about potentially suspicious cyber contacts between a Trump Organization server and the server of a Russian bank. Durham's team says he concealed from the FBI that he was passing on the concerns in his capacity as a lawyer for the Clinton campaign. He has pleaded not guilty.

Last year, Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer, admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of Page and was given probation.

____

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
BRIDGEPORT  The local elections may have ended, but another important race is just beginning.

Connecticuts Beardsley Zoo has just announced its five candidates for the coveted title of Mayor of the Zoo. The chosen critter will be the facilitys highest-ranking animal official, in a move the zoos human officials said showcase the important role of animal ambassadors.

The winner of last years election, Wiggles the Chincilla, died in office from advanced age. He was 19. Runner-up Kallisto the Amur leopard is completing Wiggless term.

The election will be decided by online votes. The general public can vote for the candidate of their choice by making a one-dollar donation for each vote at https://CBZMayor2021.givesmart.com. Voting begins on Thursday and polls close at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 18.

The winning mayor will serve a one-year term. All donations to the ballot box will be used to support the zoo

This years candidates range from birds to bison, and the zoo has provided brief biographies on each of them, listed below.

Harry the Guinea hog piglet: According to a news release from the zoo, Harry is the youngest candidate to enter the race, but has a maturity beyond his months. He demonstrates a remarkable ability to negotiate with his littermates on issues ranging from what to eat and when to eat it to what to roll in and how to roll in it.

Zari the African grey parrot: The mayorship wouldnt be Zaris first spin as a bird of the people, as she is a veteran of ZooMobile visits to senior centers and has lent her winged charisma to childrens birthday parties.

Her campaign slogan is a bird on the hand is worth two of the other candidates, according to her candidate bio.

K-Man the yacare caiman: Every race needs a wild card, and K-Man seems to fit that role. Sometimes called the piranha caiman as yacare caimans are known to snack on the razor-toothed fish. K-Mans campaign materials claim this ability makes him the perfect choice for choppy political waters.

Jolene the whistling duck: This is Jolenes second run for mayor. Sociable, boisterous, and noisy, she has openly supported the rights of ducks who prefer to walk on land as well as those who prefer to perch in trees, her bio states.

Clara the American bison: Clara has experience as a symbol of pride and dignity, as bison are the countrys national mammal.

A devoted single mother, Clara wants voters to know that she can run up to 35 mph, is extremely agile, and can spin around quickly, her bio said. She calls her ability to spin an advantage in seeing all sides of an issue.
PHOENIX (AP)  A Scottsdale man accused of killing his wife and two young children and then setting their house on fire in April 2001 has been removed from the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, the agency announced Wednesday.

The FBI Phoenix Field Office said that although Robert William Fisher remains at large, he no longer fits established criteria for continued inclusion on the list.

Because the extensive publicity Fishers case received during its nearly 20 years on the list has not resulted in his successful location and/or capture, the case no longer fulfills that requirement, the FBI said in a statement.

The agency said there have been no confirmed sightings of Fisher since his initial disappearance.

Authorities believe Fisher slit the throats of his wife, 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son while they were sleeping.

Evidence later showed a natural gas line was cut and an accelerant was spread throughout the house and over the three bodies, leading to an explosion.

Ten days later, authorities found the familys missing SUV in a forest about 148 miles (238 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix.

They said the familys dog was guarding the vehicle, but search crews found no trace of Fisher who would be 60 if hes still alive.

Fisher was wanted on three counts of first-degree murder, arson of an occupied structure and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

He was added to the FBIs most wanted list in June 2002.

Fisher now is the 11th person since 1950 to be removed from the Ten Most Wanted Fugitive list prior to apprehension, death or the dismissal of charges.

Taking Fishers spot on the most wanted list is Yulan Adonay Archaga Carias, the alleged MS-13 leader for all of Honduras.
BRIDGEPORT  A man involved with drug trafficking in the area has been sentenced to more than five years in prison, federal prosecutors said.

Constantino Acosta-Banda, 43, a citizen of Mexico last living in Chula Vista, Calif., was sentenced Tuesday by Judge Victor A. Bolden in Bridgeport to 70 months in prison for heroin and fentanyl trafficking offenses.

He pleaded guilty on March 4 to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute heroin and fentanyl.

The charges against Acosta-Banda stemmed from a 2019 investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administrations Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force.

The task force launched an investigation into an organization that prosecutors said was distributing heroin, fentanyl and crack cocaine in and around Bridgeport. Prosecutors said the investigation indicated the organization had ties to a Mexican drug cartel trafficking. Prosecutors said members of the organization also express interest in receiving a steady supply of narcotics from the west coast.

In December 2019, members of the organization traveled to San Diego, Calif., and bought 1.1 kilograms of fentanyl from their suppliers in exchange for $27,000. After the sale, they set up a meet to buy five kilograms of heroin from the suppliers, prosecutors said.

On Feb. 10, 2020, Acosta-Banda and three others were arrested after showing up at the same San Diego parking lot for the sale, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said investigators seized a box with about 4.9 kilograms of heroin in it. When investigators searched a storage locker in San Diego tied to these sales, prosecutors said, they found six kilograms of cocaine.

Acosta-Banda has been detained since his arrest. Prosecutors said Acosta-Banda  who has been deported to Mexico at least 17 times since 2002  faces immigration proceedings after he finishes his federal prison term.

Acosta-Banda was involved in a hit-and-run crash in California back in 2017. Prosecutors said he was driving under the influence during the crash, which seriously injured a 6-year-old boy.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Republican state officials reacted with swift rebukes Thursday to President Joe Biden's newly detailed mandate for private employers to require workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, threatening a wave of lawsuits and other actions to thwart a requirement they see as a stark example of government overreach.

At least two conservative groups moved quickly to file lawsuits against the workplace safety mandate, and a growing roster of GOP governors and attorneys general said more lawsuits were on the way as soon as Friday. Some Republican-led states had already passed laws or executive orders intended to protect employers that may not want to comply.

This rule is garbage, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, said Thursday through a spokesperson. Its unconstitutional and we will fight it. His state's governor, Republican Henry McMaster, said he is planning to issue an executive order keeping state agencies from enforcing the rule.

States have been preparing for the requirement since Biden previewed it in September. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements released Thursday call for companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Failure to comply could result in penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation. Federal officials also left open the possibility of expanding the mandate to smaller employers.

The White House said the administration has the authority to take actions designed to protect workers and expects the rule to withstand legal challenges.

Republican governors or attorneys general in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and South Dakota said Thursday they would file lawsuits against the mandate. The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, filed a challenge in federal court on Thursday. So did companies in Michigan and Ohio represented by a conservative advocacy law firm.

Robert Alt, a lawyer representing the Midwest companies suing manufacturer Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company and packaging firm Sixarp  said both companies are already facing staffing shortages amid the pandemic. The mandate will make things worse, he said.

It adds insult to injury and forces them potentially to fire trained employees," said Alt, president and CEO of The Buckeye Institute, a conservative advocacy group.

States say they are focusing on the role of the federal government in the lawsuits they're preparing.

"While I agree that the vaccine is the tool that will best protect against COVID-19, this federal government approach is unprecedented and will bring about harmful, unintended consequences in the supply chain and the workforce, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a statement.

At a news conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized what he called an executive fiat for the private sector. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds characterized the mandate as an imposition on personal choice, saying people should be able to make their own health care decisions. She recently signed a bill guaranteeing that people who are fired for refusing a vaccine can qualify for unemployment benefits.

At least 19 Republican-led states previously sued the Biden administration over a separate mandate requiring vaccines for employees who work for federal contractors. Several more filed similar lawsuits Thursday.

Biden, in a statement Thursday, dismissed the argument from many GOP governors and lawmakers that a mandate for employers will hurt businesses' ability to keep workers on the job.

There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements, he said. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support.

The administration has been encouraging widespread vaccinations as the quickest way out of the pandemic. A White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, said during a briefing Thursday that the mandate was intended to halt the spread of a disease that has claimed more than 750,000 lives in the U.S.

So you know, the question that we always have and that we ask to the Republicans is, why are they getting in the way?" Jean-Pierre said. Why are they getting in the way of trying to protect and save lives? Thats all were trying to do.

Challenges to the workplace mandate from Republicans and conservative groups are expected to be broad-based and quick, reflecting yet another aspect of the COVID-19 response  from mask requirements to social-distancing guidelines  that has fallen into a partisan divide. Democratic governors and attorneys general were relatively quiet after the OSHA rules were announced on Thursday. From California, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a simple Twitter message: The right move. Another Democrat, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, defended mandates in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor in Republican-dominated Kansas, was trying to walk a fine line on the new workplace rules. She said after a chamber of commerce event Thursday that federal mandates tend not to work and that she wanted a Kansas-focused way to meet, them but did not give details.

All 26 Republican state attorneys general have previously said they would fight the requirements, and most of them signed a letter to Biden saying as much.

Key to their objection is whether OSHA has the legal authority to require vaccines or virus testing.

In the letter to Biden, the top state government lawyers argued that the agency can regulate only health risks that are specific to jobs  not ones that are in the world generally. Seema Nanda, the top legal official for the U.S. Department of Labor, which includes OSHA, says established legal precedent allows rules that keep workplaces safe and that those rules pre-empt state laws.

That hasn't stopped state lawmakers and governors for taking a variety of actions aimed at undercutting federal mandates.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month issued an executive order prohibiting private companies or any other entity from requiring vaccines. An Ohio lawmaker has proposed a bill barring schools and colleges from expelling students who refuse vaccines and preventing employers from firing workers who do so.

Arkansas has adopted a law creating a vaccine-mandate exemption for workers who can prove they have COVID-19 antibodies, although a broader measure banning employers from asking about vaccination status failed in the Legislature. The OSHA rule does include a religious exemption, as well as one for people who work exclusively outdoors or away from others  such as from home.

Lawmakers or governors in states including Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming have called for special legislative sessions to counter vaccine mandates. In Nebraska, not enough state lawmakers agreed to a special session to get one on the calendar, but Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican in a GOP-dominated state, has been pushing them to keep trying.

In Ohio, factory owner Ross McGregor said he will follow the rules as he would any federal workplace mandate, but not because he agrees with them. McGregor, who said he is vaccinated, is opposed to the new requirement, just as he has publicly opposed efforts by Ohio Republican lawmakers to prevent him from mandating the coronavirus vaccine for his workers.

At the end of the day, every employer, and every employment situation, dictates what is best, said McGregor, a former Republican state lawmaker and owner of axle and brake component manufacturer Pentaflex, where he estimates that about half the 115 or so employees are vaccinated. Having either a ban on mandates or an imposition of mandates goes against that

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This version corrects new paragraph six to say it is the The Daily Wire, not Daily Caller, that filed a lawsuit, and to remove a reference to a lawsuit filed by Indiana, Louisiana and Mississippi. That suit filed Thursday addresses a separate, narrower mandate for federal contractors.

___

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Tom Davies in Indianapolis; Heather Hollingsworth in Lake Quivira, Kansas; Alexandra Jaffe in Washington, D.C.; and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report, along with other AP reporters from around the U.S.
NAUGATUCK  Faculty and staff from Naugatuck Valley Community College plan to boycott meetings planned with the president of Connecticut State Colleges and University Thursday after his alleged dismissive attitude toward their concerns about his consolidation plan.

Terrence Cheng, the president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities is wrapping up his community college tour Thursday with a visit to Naugatuck Valley.

Lisa Calabrese, the chapter chair for staff for the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges union said members are boycotting the meetings after colleagues from other colleges reported Cheng was consistently challenging the legitimacy of questions, deferring or simply deflecting the questions or answering with dismissive or evasive responses regarding CSCUs consolidation plan.

Leigh Appleby, a spokesperson for CSCU, said refusing to even have a conversation benefits no one.

This is an opportunity for faculty and staff members to have an open and honest conversation about the future of our colleges and our system, Appleby said. No one is obligated to attend, but if employees really have legitimate concerns, they should engage in a constructive dialogue with the president of the system.

Faculty and staff unions within CSCU are speaking out against the organizations proposed consolidation plan, which would morph the 12 campuses into a single accredited college with 12 branches.

Union members said shared services have already resulted in serious problems, such as delayed contracts for adjunct faculty and problems with employees pay.

The unions oppose the single accreditation because that decision requires building an entirely new middle management structure which siphons money away from the classroom, the union said Wednesday. Every dollar spent on these administrators salaries comes out of the funding allocated to the individual colleges, further impairing our capacity to serve students with the quality weve always been proud to provide.

Colleagues have also said that President Cheng continues to state he wants each college to retain local control and that were all working together but has dodged the questions pointing out contradictions in words versus actions, Calabrese continued. The continuation of consolidation and the stalled contract negotiations belie his reassurances regarding local control.

Our college is ready to show courage and try a different response to see if our concerns about our impending loss of autonomy, loss of creativity, and loss of our beloved community and our very identity at Naugatuck Valley can finally be recognized and addressed, said Gail Hughes, the chapter chair for part-timers for the 4Cs union.

Ron Picard, an English professor under the AFT union and a representative to the Board of Regents Faculty Advisory Committee, said If President Cheng is serious about listening to faculty and staff, then he should respond to our multiple calls over the last three years to pause the consolidation and assess the terrible financial and academic costs.

liz.hardaway@hearst.com
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  North Dakota health officials are expecting 18,000 initial doses of the pediatric coronavirus vaccine, which is enough to cover 25% of the states roughly 71,000 children ages 5 to 11 that were identified in the 2019 census.

The state Health Department said in a statement Wednesday that vaccinating children will help protect them from getting COVID-19 and reduce their risk of severe disease, hospitalizations, or developing long-term COVID-19 complications.
BRIDGEPORT  A 15-year-old has been charged with attempted murder after a shooting that left another teen hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, according to police officials.

Detective Thomas Harper said the citys 911 dispatch center received multiple calls of a male victim shot at the intersection of Trumbull and Reservoir avenues around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The 19-year-old victim was rushed to St. Vincents Medical Center with life-threatening injuries, Harper said.

The citys Fusion Center used cameras in the city to get a license plate for the alleged suspect vehicle, which Harper said was found to be stolen from Trumbull.

Members of the regional Auto Theft Task Force found the vehicle, and patrol officers attempted a motor vehicle stop. The driver engaged police in a pursuit before eventually stopping on State Street, Harper said.

The 15-year-old driver was taken into custody and charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault and additional felony charges, Harper said. He was transported to the Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center.

A passenger in the vehicle, identified by police as 19-year-old Carlos Matos, of Bridgeport, ran from the vehicle, but was apprehended hiding in a nearby backyard, Harper said. Charges against Matos were not immediately provided.

Investigators learned that the 19-year-old victim was waiting at the corner of Trumbull and Reservoir avenues to get his 9-year-old cousin off the school bus. As of Thursday, Harper said, the victim remains hospitalized in critical condition with life-threatening injuries.
The latest on the U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  Environmental campaigners have awarded their Fossil of the Day award to the Polish government for giving  and then apparently backtracking on  a pledge to speed up its phaseout of coal power.

Climate Action Network, an umbrella group representing hundreds of non-governmental organizations, blasted Poland Thursday for committing at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow to end coal use, but then declaring itself a poor country and sticking to its previous deadline of 2049.

The little-coveted award went to the United States on Wednesday, for what climate activists say was a new measure that benefits mainly industrial agriculture companies rather than ordinary farmers.

The U.S. shared the prize with France for its efforts to get natural gas and nuclear power plants classified as sustainable forms of energy by the European Union, and with the International Emissions Trading Association for representing oil majors such as Chevron and Shell at the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 talks.

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GENEVA  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says a new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden, in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power, amounts to a big transformation.

The First Movers Coalition, spearheaded by the U.S. government and the World Economic Forum, aims to help meet an increasingly difficult target laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So far, almost three dozen global companies in many sectors have committed to changing their purchasing practices to favor development of zero-emission technologies by 2030.

Designers of the project say half of the emissions reduction projected between now and 2030 will stem from innovations  like capturing carbon out of the air  that arent operating at a large scale.

Its a big deal, Kerry told many corporate leaders behind the project in Glasgow on Thursday.

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GLASGOW, Scotland  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has joined the tens of thousands of attendees whove been humbled by tough entry procedures at the U.N. climate summit.

Kerry apologized Thursday for appearing about 20 minutes late for a renewable energy event at the United States pavilion inside the summit site.

Kerry said he had been off-campus visiting a venue outside the summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

As you all know, getting back in is not easy, he told the crowd. Even for those of us who thought it might be.

The summits organizers have imposed firm rules for accreditation badges, masks and proof of daily negative results on tests for COVID-19. Lines to get in lasted well beyond an hour early this week, but have shrunk noticeably since.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland  The British government says pledges of new or earlier deadlines for ending coal use have come from more than 20 countries including Ukraine, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and Chile.

Meanwhile, Poland, the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, appeared to backtrack on any ambitious new commitments within hours of the announcement at the ongoing U.N. climate conference.

Energy security and the assurances of jobs is a priority for us, Anna Moskwa, Polands minister for climate and environment, said in a tweet, citing the governments existing plan which provides for a departure from hard coal by 2049.

Earlier in the day, it had seemed that Poland might bring that deadline forward by at least a decade.

Campaigners reacted angrily to the apparent U-turn.

Moskwa has underscored that her government cannot be trusted to sign a postcard, let alone a responsible climate pledge, said Kathrin Gutmann, campaign director of the group Europe Beyond Coal.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Denmark and several other nations signed a different pledge to prioritize funding clean energy over fossil fuel projects abroad.

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HELSINKI  Finland's capital city says it will no longer serve meat dishes at seminars, staff meetings, receptions and other events to reduce Helsinki's carbon footprint.

Instead, the city government plans to offer vegetarian food and sustainable local fish.

Liisa Kivela, Helsinki's communications director, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the change takes effect in January and excludes school and workplace cafeterias run by the city of about 650,000 residents.

Kivela said the the policy adopted by the City Council also allows deviations for certain high-level visits or similar events organized by Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen or the citys senior managers.

The policy also stipulates that coffee, tea and items like bananas offered at events will have to be sourced from fair trade producers. In addition, oat milk will replace regular milk, and snacks and refreshments no longer can be served in single-use containers.

The local government said in a statement that the measure is part of a broader effort which aims to reduce the climate impact of food and reduce the amount of natural resources used by the city.

The mayor, who assumed Helsinkis top post in August, said he was glad the city retains the option of serving meat on some occasions.

For example, should the king of Sweden arrive for a visit, then domestic game can be offered. Or some group for whom it would be natural to offer meat, then there must be discretion and common sense, Vartiainen told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.

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PARIS  French astronaut Thomas Pesquet used a video call from space to describe the view from the International Space Station of global warming's repercussions.

Pesquet told French President Emmanuel Macron during the call on Thursday that the space station's portholes revealed the haunting fragility of humanitys only home.

We see the pollution of rivers, atmospheric pollution, things like that," the astronaut said. "What really shocked me on this mission were extreme weather or climate phenomena.

We saw entire regions burning from the space station, in Canada, in California, he continued. We saw all of California covered by a cloud of smoke and flames with the naked eye from 400 kilometers (250 miles) up.

This is Pesquets second mission to the space station. He also spent 197 days in orbit in 2016-2017. The destructive effects of human activity have become increasingly visible in the interim, he said.

Macron said the goal for negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Scotland must be to speed up humanitys response.

There is still a huge job ahead of us, and I think we are all aware of that, the French leader said.

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GLASGOW, Scotland Several major coal-using nations announced steps to wean themselves off of the heavily polluting fossil fuel, although for some the weaning will happen slowly.

The pledges on Thursday to phase out coal come on top of other promises made at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The head of an international energy organization said the earlier commitments trimmed a few tenths of a degree from projections of future warming.

But outside experts termed that comment  only in a tweet, not a rigorous report  optimistic.

Optimism also abounded in relation to the promises on coal, which has the dirtiest carbon footprint of the major fuels and is a significant source of planet-warming emissions.

Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight, said Alok Sharma, who is chairing the conference of nearly 200 nations, known as COP26.

Forecasters with a more skeptical view noted that several major economies still have not set a date for ending their dependence on the fuel, including the United States, China, India and Japan.

Outside the COP26 venue, protestors clad as animated characters blasted Japans continued coal use.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark  The Danish government said Thursday it will donate 100 million kroner ($15.6 million) to efforts to purchase and decommission coal power plants and invest in new energy sources.

As part of our comprehensive climate efforts, the Danish government is working to phase out coal while also investing massively in new green energy sources, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a statement.

Minister for Climate and Energy Dan Joergensen said the money will help coal-intensive countries reduce their coal consumption and create new income opportunities in local communities, which is absolutely vital to accelerating the energy transition.

Denmark's money will go to the Climate Investment Funds new Accelerating Coal Transition program, and the primary focus will initially be on South Africa, India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Danish government said the program includes efforts supporting alternative employment of the local population in impacted areas.

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SOULAINES-DHUYS, France  Nuclear power is a central sticking point as negotiators plot out the worlds future energy strategy at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Critics decry its mammoth price tag, the disproportionate damage caused by nuclear accidents, and the radioactive waste left behind.

But a growing camp of vocal and powerful proponents - some climate scientists and environmental experts among them  argue that nuclear power is the worlds best hope of keeping climate change under contro.

They note that it emits few planet-damaging emissions and is safer on average than nearly any other energy source. They argue that nuclear accidents are scary but exceedingly rare, while pollution from coal and other fossil fuels causes death and illness every day.

Many governments are pushing to enshrine nuclear energy in climate plans being hashed out at the conference in Glasgow, known as COP26.

The European Union, meanwhile, is debating whether to label nuclear energy as officially green  a decision that will steer billions of euros of investment for years to come. That has implications worldwide, as the EU policy could set a standard that other economies follow.

But nuclear waste remains a major problem, with the most radioactive material still toxic for tens of thousands of years.

___ GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains government has claimed that the end of coal is in sight after 18 countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile committed for the first time to phase out and not build or invest in new coal power.

The statement, issued late Wednesday during the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, said more than 40 nations are committing to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, as well as rapidly scale up clean power generation. Participating nations also commit to phasing out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for smaller economies.

Separately, the statement also said that Chile and Singapore have joined a U.K.-led alliance on phasing out coal that includes over 150 countries and businesses such as HSBC and NatWest bank.

U.K. business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it was a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change.

But Ed Miliband, the opposition Labour Partys business spokesman, said there were glaring gaps such as a lack of commitment from China and other large emitters to stop increasing coal at home. There was also nothing on the phasing out of oil and gas, he said.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A central Mississippi woman has been arrested for her involvement in an attempted murder-for-hire plot.

Jessica Leeann Sledge, 39, of Pelahatchie, is charged with the use of interstate commerce facility in the commission of murder-for-hire, Acting U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca announced Wednesday in a press release. It was unclear if Sledge is being represented by a lawyer.
Ive been a bit freaked out over the last couple of months. I needed to inject a medication directly into my eyeball. My. Damned. Eyeball! Id never heard anyone talk about this procedure before, and Id like to share my experiences. Maybe it can help you be less clueless about it than I was.

Its my 30-years-living-with-diabetes anniversary this year, and Ive been diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy. Its a long-term complication causing too many small blood vessels to form and begin to leak in the back of the eye. The prospects, if left untreated, are a gradual loss of sight and ultimately blindness. Its treated by injecting a medication that stops new blood vessels from forming into the eye itself.

It was a slow build-up to the actual diagnosis. My eye doctor was worried about the development in my left eye and referred me to a specialist clinic. A couple of weeks later, I received a letter informing me about the date and itinerary for my visit. At the bottom of the list, theyd included and possibly an injection with no further details.

Thats a terrifying nugget of information to receive from an eye clinic. Surely, they couldnt possibly mean an eye-related injection? Thats not a thing, right? Its only something that happens in horror movies and after some traumatic eye injury, right?

For a couple of days, I convinced myself that it referred to a regular injection required for a specialized photo they take during the examination. Its a procedure where youre injected with a substance that shows up under ultra-violet light. They then take a series of photos of your eye over a couple of minutes where the blood vessels (and any otherwise undetectable leaks) show up like city streets at night seen from up high. (Yes, my urine had a fantastic yellow color that lit up under ultra-violet light for the next two days, thanks for asking.)

But that wasnt it, was it? That injection wasnt a faint possibility at the end of the visit. Onto the web to look up more information, and lo and behold: eye-injections are a real thing.

The prospect terrified me. Im a diabetic, so Im not afraid of needles. But Im scared of everything when it comes to my eyes. At the time, I couldnt even say why exactly what scared me about it. It just sounded unreal.

I had so many questions. How do you remain still while the doctor inserts a needle into your eyeball? How far in does it go? Will I see the needle tip approaching my eye while its happening? What if the doctor sneezes during the jab? Isnt there a United Nations convention or something that classifies this as torture?

Im sure the doctor has done the procedure many times before, and Id be in a building full of eye surgeons if anything were to go catastrophically wrong. Yet, I was incredibly stressed out and lived with a fight-or-flight response until the day of the possible injection.

I went to the examinations, did all the tests, got my brains blasted out the back of my skull with bright camera flashes, and  nothing. I didnt need the injection! Instead, I had to come back in three months for another examination. I could go home with nothing but an increased sensitivity to light that would wear off in a few hours.

Three months later, I was stressing out again. My new itinerary didnt list a possible injection this time, but I still worried. At the end of the second examination, the doctor said things hadnt improved since my first examination. He recommended that I take the injections; once a month for a few months.

He asked how I felt about it. My brain short-circuited, and I couldnt respond properly with my mind racing. He pressed the issue and strongly recommended I take the injections. My brain still wouldnt accept the new information, and it took a solid ten minutes before I was at a point where I could say yes.

Im not sure what I was worried about. In retrospect, I was mostly worried about my own reaction and whether I would manage to lay still while someone jabbed a needle into my eye. Secondly, would I see the needle? How could I not see the needle while it was inside of my eye? Yikes.

I still get so stressed by the mere thought that I had to take a break here while writing this. At the time, though, there wasnt anything concrete that stressed me out. It was just such an alien experience to me, and I didnt know anything about the procedure other than the part where the needle goes into the eyeball.

The doctor noticed my hesitation and anxiety, and gave me an anti-anxiety pill and some water. Half an hour later, I lay on a bed with a liberal amount of local anesthetic dripped into my eyes. I was trying my best to force my eyes open as the doctor tried in vain to install an eye speculum. The doctor didnt show me the speculum before trying to install it, and I felt uneasy and frightened by the mere idea of it. Ive only ever seen devices designed to prevent someones eye from closing in torture scenes in movies. There were sound medical reasons for installing it, but that wasnt a mental priority at the time.

As I lay on the table, the doctor repeatedly asked me to open my eye. I tried my best to comply. My fear of the situation overruled my proprioception. I tried to instruct my eye to open, and I perceived it to be open. Yet, I was seeing the inside of my eyelid. Upon realizing Id lost control over my eyelids (this is without the speculum), I felt my heart race and I kept forgetting to breathe.

The doctor gave up on the procedure, and I agreed to give it another shot in two weeks. Looking back at this, Im a bit disappointed that the doctor only wanted to increase my anti-anxiety medication and try again. We definitely should have had a chat about my experience and what we could do to achieve better results next time.

I was stressed out and had problems sleeping for most of the two weeks. I read up on the procedure and the equipment and even steeled myself to watch a video of it. I cant say this didnt freak me out or that I was comfortable watching the video. However, I can say that it made me better prepared to go back and try again. The procedure wasnt this big scary unknown thing anymore. It was just a very unpleasant future prospect that made me very uncomfortable.

In my amateur online research, I came across another video with an eye surgeon discussing how to deal with anxious patients. He suggested gently poking the patients eye with a sterile cotton swab and asking if they could see or feel it. Thats how youll experience the injection. (I cant find the link, sorry!)

Exposure Therapy 101! I thought this sounded a lot less scary than going straight to jabbing a needle into the eyeball. It would answer the question of whether Id see the needle or not during the procedure. I made a mental note to ask the doctor to do this for my next visit. It also lowered my stress level as I made a secret plan to abort the procedure if I was freaked out by the cotton swab.

 and then, the next visit went just fine. I showed up and got a doubled dose of anti-anxiety medication. However, I dont believe that it did as much to calm me as feeling more prepared myself. Id seen it done, I knew more about what would happen, and I had a plan to warm up with some super-quick exposure therapy.

I told the doctor about the cotton-swab thing, and he agreed to do it. I didnt use the words exposure therapy while describing it, but he muttered it to himself as he went to grab a swab. I was surprised to learn hed never heard of it before. Maybe most other anxious patients get so relaxed by the anti-anxiety tablets that it isnt a problem. I guess those dont work as well on me. In any case, the cotton swab should be part of the standard procedure for new patients.

I felt a lot better about the whole situation going into it. I was given anesthesic drops again, and even that went more smoothly than the last time. We did have a little trouble when he began installing the eye speculum and started giving me instructions for where to look, though.

He wanted me to look at my shoes, but I felt a bit panicky at the time, and had to respond that I didnt know where they were in relation to anything else at that exact time. He suggested I look at the bottom of his surgical mask instead. It took me like a solid ten seconds to seek it out with my eye, but as soon as I did and stopped moving my eyes the speculum was in. Why there wasnt large brightly colored shapes in the ceiling to look at Ill never understand.

My heart started racing and I had problems controlling my breath. I couldnt blink and started to panic. Somehow, Id not thought about this aspect of the procedure beforehand. I knew it intellectually, but I didnt realize that not being able to blink would give me a panic. A deep fear about the procedure suddenly crystallized in my mind: I fucking hate bright lights! I lay on my back in a very brightly lit room and couldnt close my eyes.

I hate sunlight, I hate brightly lit retail stores, and I hate not being able to look away from a bright light source. A 20-minute session under a bright examination light is like the thing I dislike the most about going to the dentist. I use a daylight therapy lamp four months of the year, and I hate every minute of it.

I asked the doctor to hold his hand over my eye to give them some shade and rest. According to my fitness band, my heart rate fell from 140 beats per minute (bpm) to 88 bpm from one measurement to the next about five seconds later. I immediately calmed down and felt greatly relieved.

About half a minute later, he slowly pulled his hand away, and I could more gradually adapt to the lighting. I still wasnt comfortable with it, but it didnt cause me to panic anymore.

As wed discussed, he proceeded to stroke the side of my eye with the cotton swab. I couldnt feel a thing, and I couldnt see the damned thing. I felt a lot better about the whole endeavor.

Maybe 20 seconds later, I could see some small bubbles floating upwards in my vision. That was it. That was the injection. Just some tiny bubbles reflecting light in crazy ways. Id been scared and freaking out on and off over a couple of months over a couple of small bubbles.

I should have been told to stick my hands under my body to keep me from bringing them up to my face. Twice during the procedure, I reflexively started raising my hands to rub my eyes. I stopped myself halfway through the motion, but the nurse got really freaked out by it.

My vision was grayish for a couple of hours. Having gone through this part before, I knew this was a short-lived side-effect of the anesthesia. My eyeball and eyelid felt a bit sore for the next four days. I startled myself a couple of times in the first couple of days as my eye would suddenly hurt as I looked up or down. I guess this is the normal reaction to an unfamiliar feeling of theres something wrong with my eye!

So, this has been a story about overcoming fear with knowledge (and two tablets of anti-anxiety drugs). However, its also about poor communication. Im sure I would have been less anxious and had a better couple of months if the initial letter contained more information. Im absolutely sure it would have helped if the doctor had volunteered some more specifics about the procedure.

We briefly discussed my anxiety, but his immediate solution was the anti-anxiety drug. I made it clear that I was worried about the procedure and wanted to know more details about it. He didnt want to explain the procedure beyond well inject medication that will help preserve your vision, and he avoided answering repeated questions. Maybe he tried to shield me from the details and not confirm my worst fears.

I didnt have the experience to know what to ask for. One of the few things I did ask about repeatedly was whether I could see the needle going in or not. The doctor who gave me the exams and diagnosis said he didnt know. The surgeon said I wouldnt see it approaching as it would come from the side. But he didnt know if Id see the actual needle from inside my eye looking out. Instead, he volunteered some technical details about the brand, length, and thickness of the needle itself (not something I asked about).

Frankly, Im surprised that no one seemed to know the answer to this. Surely other patients must have asked about it? Or commented on it after the procedure? For whatever reason, I was very worried about whether Id see the needle. I believe this one technical detail about the procedure served as a proxy for how Id react to it going into my eyeball.

Im not freaking out about my next injection in three weeks. I cant say I look forward to it, but I dont believe Ill lose any sleep over it either. Ive conquered the unknown, and discovered it to be nothing but a brief display of bubbles.
Starbucks will let you pay for your Caramel Macchiato with it. Whole Foods is happy to accept it for that deli container of buckwheat pilaf. And Microsofta corporate granddaddy in the space embraced it for some digital payments way back in 2014.

The it in question? Cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency has shed much of its reputation as the currency of choice for black marketers and users of the dark web, but it has yet to gain a lot of traction in the credit union space. If your credit union is crypto-curious, these five questions are a good place to start:

How is cryptocurrency impacting the financial services industry?

Most of us know that crypto coins are essentially digital files stored in digital wallets. People can hold onto a coin or use itor a portion of itto buy things from anyone who accepts it as a form of currency.

When these transactions happen, theyre logged into the blockchain, which is a database that monitors all cryptocurrency transactions. The blockchain ledger gives all blockchain users collective control over the currency and ensures the validity of all cryptocurrency transactions. Theres no government overseeing the process, every blockchain user can view the blockchain and once a transaction is entered into the blockchain, its permanently recorded.

But in addition to understanding what cryptocurrency is, its helpful to understand what its not. I liked this definition from Caroline Willard, president and CEO of Cornerstone League:

First, lets talk about what cryptocurrency is not. It is not traditional fiat currency. There is no checkbook for consumers to carry around and no debit card to swipe at the store. As a digital asset that can be transferred without the assistance of a financial institution, cryptocurrencys almost ethereal existence, thus far, can be described as invisible or even mythological. But its definitely real.

While many articles focus on the rags to riches stories of a few lucky investors, the real story here is that cryptocurrency offers people a way to move money around without relying on a third party. To that end, cryptocurrency investors may enjoy more data privacy and be less vulnerable to hacks and fraud.

What are the risks involved in cryptocurrency?

For individual investors, volatility certainly tops the list. Bitcointhe most well-known cryptocurrency skyrocketed to nearly $65,000 in April, only to lose nearly half its value by May. It will have to become stable before it can become a viable, widely used form of currency.

And although cryptocurrency is often touted as far less vulnerable to hacks and fraud than more traditional financial assets, the owner must use a digital key to prove ownership and access the assets. If the key is lost or stolen, that could mean a complete loss of assets (heres a not-so-funny story on that). Plus, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) points out that many cryptocurrency exchanges are unregulated and run by tech startups with little experience in risk management.

For credit unions, regulation is, of course, the elephant in the room, and the state of regulation is decidedly unsettled at present. From July to October of this year, the National Credit Union Association (NCUA) shared a Request for Information and Comment to seek input from credit unions about current and potential uses [for digital currencies] in the credit union system, and the risks associated with them. Many credit unions shared concerns about compliance management.

Credit unions arent the only ones debating the risks. As of August 2021, 18 bills had been introduced to Congress related to cryptocurrency and blockchain.

What do credit unions risk by not exploring cryptocurrency?

Considering the risks, not opting into cryptocurrency might seem like the smart choice, but it could mean your credit union will miss critical opportunities to meet member needs.

In a December 2020 consumer survey from Cornerstone Advisors cited by Forbes, nearly two-thirds of cryptocurrency owners would use their banks for their cryptocurrency investmentsbut only 2% of banks showed an interest in handling these currencies. Theres evidence thats starting to changejust Google banks that offer cryptocurrency.

According to the Financial Brand, the 2021 State of U.S. Crypto Report from Gemini, a cryptocurrency company, found that roughly 14% of the U.S. population  or 21.2 million adultsalready own some form of cryptocurrency. They found the average crypto owner to be male, 38 years old and with an annual income of about $111,000, though when it came to the crypto-curious (those who were interested but didnt yet own), 53% were female.

Other payment resources have already made inroads in this space. For instance, PayPal added Bitcoin and Ethereum (another popular cryptocurrency) to its wallet app in 2020, which means PayPals customers can buy, sell and pay for retail purchases with cryptocurrencies held through PayPal. Plus, PayPal offers the same fraud protections for cryptocurrencies as it does for other transactions.

In the not-too-distant future, not being able to accept and use cryptocurrencies through your credit union could hurt your ability to attract and retain members. Plus, credit unions entry into this marketplace could be a way to ensure members have access to safer cryptocurrency options.

Where should a crypto-curious credit union start?

Offer cryptocurrency trading through an external provider. Want to give your members a way to buy and spend bitcoin within their existing accounts without facing onerous regulatory requirements? Work with a third party.

According to Forbes, banks and credit unions will be able to give consumers access to cryptocurrency through a deal between NCR, an enterprise payments company, and NYDIG, a digital-asset management firm. Consumers will be able to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin and other currencies through a mobile app. From the consumer perspective, these transactions will appear to take place through their financial institutionjust one more service option. The reality: Nydig holds the actual cryptocurrency assets, and the attendant risk.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Mastercard and crypto firm Bakkt have partnered to enable cryptocurrency card payments, meaning that financial institutions that issue cards through Mastercard will be able to issue cryptocurrency debit or credit cards that let people make payments and earn rewards in bitcoin.

The risk for your credit union in these scenarios is largely reputational. If the value drops, a member might logically know your credit union had nothing to do with it, but they may still associate your name with their loss of holdings.

On the other hand, think back to that Cornerstone Advisor statthat nearly two-thirds of cryptocurrency owners would like to work through their financial institution. Learning what percentage of your members either already own or are interested in holding cryptocurrency could be a valuable nugget of information to inform your way forward.

Provide crypto custody services. According to TCS, there are a wide range of services that can fall into the category of crypto custody services: Safekeeping, analytics, asset servicing, lending , pricing and valuation, trading, payments and settlements and collateral.

For credit unions that want to make a limited foray into crypto services, safekeeping services could be a good place to start. In this role, your credit union provides the crypto vault thats used to safeguard the numeric key a member needs to access their cryptocurrency funds. Considering that theres typically no way to access the funds without this key, this is a critical service. The risk, of course, lies in your credit unions ability to safeguard the vault. Like any digital transaction, this will come down to strong digital security.

What opportunities in the space are unique to credit unions?

Credit unions are sensitive to being perceived as behind the technology curve compared to big banks and fintechs. Cryptocurrency could offer an opportunity for credit unions to position themselves as a savvy partner members can rely on for the latest in financial services and tools.

And, credit unions that offer currency exchange services will help members access a service they want in a way thats safer than many alternativeswhich could have long-term benefits for your credit union.

Perhaps most importantly, credit unions are always looking for better ways to meet the needs of the unbanked and underbanked. Financial inclusion is one of the big benefits of cryptocurrency: It democratizes money and gives the unbanked and underbanked an affordable way to access funds.

Another important member segment that could benefit from remittances: immigrants. If your credit union counts a large number of immigrants among its membership, youre likely always on the lookout for better ways to offer remittance services. Cryptocurrency has been suggested as an optionespecially after El Salvadors June 2021 decision to accept Bitcoin as legal tender.

It could be a fast, secure and less expensive way for immigrants to send money homeand certainly worth further discussion. As outlined in this overview from the FintechTimes, the pros are at least somewhat offset by the consthe need for technical knowledge and familiarity with currency options and available exchange platforms, the potential for loss with two money conversions during the process and the importance of accuracy, given that transactions cant be reversed and consumer acceptance might be limited. Were not there yet, but the day may not be far off when immigrants can bypass Western Union altogether  and save a significant amount of money in the process.

Ultimately, its probably worth a question or two in your next member survey to gauge your memberships interest in and appetite for cryptocurrency. At the very least, a webinar or workshop might be helpful for your members, many of whom are probably just as confused and curious as you are.

As weve become overwhelmed with articles about making (or losing) insane amounts of money, we do have to look harder to find the real story of cryptocurrency, which is more about improving access, privacy, and security  themes that are relevant to your members and anyone who cares about their financial wellness.
Cullman, AL (35055)

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Thadd White is Group Editor of the Bertie Ledger-Advance, Chowan Herald, Perquimans Weekly, The Enterprise & Eastern North Carolina Living. He can be reached via email at twhite@ncweeklies.com.
Reva Mae Love, age 75, of Dalton, Georgia passed away on Thursday, November 18, 2021. She was born on September 10, 1946. She is preceded in death by parents, Herbert and Lela "Grant" Lawson; brother, Charles Lawson. She is survived by her husband, Bubba (Harold) Love of Dalton; son, Brian F
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Gold Price Outlook:

Tough Sailing Ahead

Gold prices have been trading sideways at the start of November, facing difficult conditions as risk appetite remains firm  US equity markets have moved to fresh all-time highs  and the US Dollar (via the DXY Index) has been bolstered by higher US Treasury yields. While Wednesdays downturn was rebuffed by the rally on Thursday, it remains the case that the next few weeks may prove difficult as November has been the worst month of the year for gold prices during the QE era.

Negative seasonal tendencies aside, the fundamental backdrop continues to erode as the Federal Reserve has officially begun to taper its asset purchases while new fiscal stimulus from Washington appears limited in scope. The technical picture, which looked promising just last week, needs to shift more considerably before traders have a reason to embrace long gold positions.

Gold Volatility and Gold Prices Normalizing Relationship

Historically, gold prices have a relationship with volatility unlike other asset classes. While other asset classes like bonds and stocks dont like increased volatility  signaling greater uncertainty around cash flows, dividends, coupon payments, etc.  gold tends to benefit during periods of higher volatility. Recent signs of gold prices tracking volatility suggest the relationship is returning to more historical terms.

GVZ (Gold Volatility) Technical Analysis: Daily Price Chart (November 2020 to November 2021) (Chart 1)

Gold volatility (as measured by the Cboes gold volatility ETF, GVZ, which tracks the 1-month implied volatility of gold as derived from the GLD option chain) was trading at 15.77 at the time this report was written.

The relationship between gold prices and gold volatility continues to shift towards its historical tendency, with the 20-day correlation strengthening to its strongest point since early-June. The 5-day correlation between GVZ and gold prices is -0.19 while the 20-day correlation is +0.45. One week ago, on October 28, the 5-day correlation was +0.62 and the 20-day correlation was -0.03.

Gold Price Rate Technical Analysis: Daily Chart (May 2020 to November 2021) (Chart 2)

Last week it was noted that as trading is a function of both price and time, the ascending trendline from the May 2019, March 2020, and March 2020 now resides closer to 1810 as key resistance. In the event that gold prices are able to clear this hurdle, it could be a quick trip upwards to the swing highs established over the summer near 1835, which constitutes the neckline of an inverse head and shoulders pattern thats potentially been forming since June.

Unfortunately, gold prices havent been able to make significant technical progress and the dreadful seasonal backdrop suggests that November may not be the month to clear the aforementioned technical hurdles.

While gold prices are above their daily 5-, 8-, 13-, and 21-EMA envelope, the moving averages are in neither bearish nor bullish sequential order. Daily MACD is falling while above signal line, and daily Slow Stochastics are hovering around their median line. Until 1835 is achieved, then there is no sound technical reason to believe that gold prices have bottomed.

Gold Price Technical Analysis: Weekly Chart (October 2015 to November 2021) (Chart 3)

Gold prices technical structure on the weekly timeframe still doesnt indicate a significant directional bias. The weekly 4-, 13-, and 26-EMA envelopes slope remains flat, suggesting neither bearish nor bullish momentum. Even as weekly Slow Stochastics trended above their median line, weekly MACD remains below its signal line. It remains the case that with a triangle continuing to take shape (starting in June 2020), it appears that the sideways shuffle in gold prices is set to continue for the foreseeable future, unless the 1835 level is broken.

IG CLIENT SENTIMENT INDEX: GOLD PRICE FORECAST (November 4, 2021) (CHART 4)

Gold: Retail trader data shows 70.82% of traders are net-long with the ratio of traders long to short at 2.43 to 1. The number of traders net-long is 13.81% lower than yesterday and 5.37% lower from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 18.39% higher than yesterday and 20.82% higher from last week.

We typically take a contrarian view to crowd sentiment, and the fact traders are net-long suggests Gold prices may continue to fall.

Yet traders are less net-long than yesterday and compared with last week. Recent changes in sentiment warn that the current Gold price trend may soon reverse higher despite the fact traders remain net-long.

--- Written by Christopher Vecchio, CFA, Senior Strategist
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Even after falling on his sword, Owen Paterson continues to insist that hes done absolutely nothing wrong.

The fallen Tory MPs resignation statement, released at 2.30pm today, was utterly unapologetic.

It maintained that hes totally innocent of sleaze and sought to characterise his lobbying for two companies, which have paid him more than 500,000, as a courageous act of whistleblowing.

I acted in all times in the interests of public health and safety, it read.

North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson has resigned after facing the prospect of a 30 day suspension and threat of a by-election in his constituency

Paterson had been saying exactly the same thing on Wednesday night when, amid spiralling public outrage, he hit the airwaves to declare: I would do the whole lot again tomorrow morning. I wouldnt hesitate.

By the whole lot, hes referring to various meetings he arranged and emails (or letters) he sent between 2016 and 2020 that had helped serve the agenda of his two Northern Irish employers: health giant Randox  which paid him 100,000 a year for consultancy services  and a meat firm called Lynns Country Foods, which had him on a retainer of 12,000 a year.

Parliaments sleaze watchdog explained last month exactly why this work broke strict Commons rules, via a forensic 170-page report.

The committee which produced it contained three Tory MPs, all of whom unequivocally backed its findings. Yet Paterson and his supporters regard it as a politically-motivated stich-up.

Paterson alleged the living hell of the lobbying probe contributed to his wife Roses suicide last year, going so far as to argue at one point  via a letter to the committee  that to find him guilty would place the blame for his wifes death firmly at his door.

This argument seems, perhaps understandably, to have gained a sympathetic hearing from Boris Johnson (a victim of previous sleaze inquiries) who on Wednesday forced MPs to block Patersons suspension, on the grounds that hed somehow been denied natural justice.

It was, of course, a colossal misjudgement. But it was also entirely avoidable.

For had the PM bothered to actually read the report detailing Patersons misdemeanours, hed have quickly realised that this was an open-and-shut case. Or, to put things another way, his backbench chums woes were entirely self-inflicted.

Mr Paterson's resignation came after Boris Johnson performed a dramatic U-turn on plans to rip up the parliamentary standards system

The rules clearly forbid MPs from lobbying on behalf of paying clients, or from using their position as a Parliamentarian to confer a financial or material benefit upon them.

There is one loophole. It involves exceptional and very limited circumstances where they are seeking to highlight a serious wrong or substantial injustice. In other words, when the MP is acting as a sort of whistleblower.

Paterson relied on this defence when seeking to justify no fewer than ten approaches he made, on behalf of either Randox or Lynns, to the Food Standards Agency between 2016 and 2018, along with four approaches to the Department for International Development on behalf of Randox in 2016 and 2017.

Three of them involved the issue of antibiotics in supermarket milk, which represent a potential threat to public health. In November 2016, to this end, Paterson called the deputy chair of the FSA to arrange a meeting to discuss the topic, which had been brought to his attention via tests carried out by Randox.

A meeting was duly organised. There was, the subsequent inquiry found, nothing very wrong with this initial approach.

The MP was merely highlighting an issue of concern. However, in a series of emails to FSA officials following the meeting, he stopped sounding like a whistleblower, and instead began to resemble a Randox salesman.

One such email saw Paterson wax lyrical about the firms superior technology, declaring that current systems for testing milk miss certain illegal products which Randox can detect.

It added that officials were interested in using the Randox technology within the FSA and suggested that the Chief Veterinary Officer liaise with Randox and discuss further how their latest technologies might help on grain and meat.

Several months later, Paterson called a further meeting because he considered that the FSA had not taken adequate action.

In a follow-up email he told officials: Several large commercial dairies are extending their use of Randox testing. It would be great if you could call a meeting with the VMD [Veterinary Medicines Directorate] to ensure that government agencies do not fall behind.

This represented a clear effort to not just blow a whistle but also promote a firm paying him as a consultant... which is unequivocally against Commons rules.

Elsewhere, most of Patersons seven approaches to the FSA on behalf of Lynns involved rules governing the labelling of pork products.

In November 2017, he met with the agency to raise concerns that a rival food producer, Kerrys, had been selling a range of all-naturally cured ham that was said to be chemical-free but in fact contained a potentiallycarcinogenic nitrite derived from celery.

He argued the FSA should ban it the product. A subsequent email saw him raise the stakes further by asking the FSA to send a formal letter to Lynns (to be shared, he requested, with the trade press).

This could then be forwarded to rival firms such as Kerrys to warn them not to use this form of additive/technology in future.

Boris Johnson had on Wednesday forced MPs to block Patersons suspension, on the grounds that hed been denied natural justice

In other words, Paterson was seeking to persuade the FSA to not only remove a potential competitor from the market, but also further his clients PR agenda. This is, again, a clear breach of Commons rules.

The MP subsequently argued that by flagging the serious harm he believed Kerrys nitrite product could cause to public health, he was seeking to highlight a serious wrong.

But he was explicitly forbidden from doing that in a way that could benefit a client.

Adding to the seriousness of Patersons lobbying was the fact that four of the emails he sent to the FSA on behalf of Lynns made no mention of the fact that he was a paid consultant to them.

The MP later sought to argue, in his defence, that such a declaration would have been unnecessary because every single person at prior meetings had been aware of his status.

He was wrong. Commons rules clearly stipulate that if communications are in writing then the declaration should be in writing too.

When it came to DfID, Patersons lobbying began with a 2016 email to the then secretary of state Priti Patel to set up a meeting between her staff and Randox.

The firm had been seeking such a meeting, without success, for months. It was only when Paterson intervened that they were granted it.

Again, he therefore conferred a clear benefit upon a paying client. That is against the rules.

Rory Stewart, a DfID minister who attended the talks in question, said Paterson was not in my view conducting himself in that particular meeting as a paid advocate.

It was one of 17 witness statements Paterson submitted in his defence.

He has this week repeatedly complained that none of the people who signed them were cross-examined by the Standards Commissioner, arguing that he was therefore denied natural justice.

The truth, however, is that they werent cross-examined because all of their testimony was irrelevant to the specific charges Paterson faced.

With regard to Stewart, for example, the MPs behaviour at the meeting did nothing to alter the fact that he had previously initiated an approach that sought to confer or would have the effect of conferring a benefit on Randox.

It was the approach, rather than what happened next, which broke the rules. Other witnesses, Paterson has claimed, ought to have been interviewed because they will confirm my motivations were genuine.

Yet his motivation has nothing to do with whether he broke lobbying rules.

The actual test is whether an approach to a minister or public official might benefit a paying client. The MPs defence against other charges seems even more threadbare.

He argued his decision to hold 16 meetings with paying clients in his Commons office  against strict rules  was justified because whips had encouraged members to remain on the [Parliamentary] estate to take part in votes.

In fact it emerged that on one occasion that hed cited, the meetings had taken place at 9.30am and 3.15pm when MPs were actually voting at 10pm.

On another day, a meeting took place at 9am when MPs didnt have to vote until 12.15pm.

Paterson alleged the living hell of the lobbying probe contributed to his wife Roses suicide last year

The sleaze watchdog found no reason why Paterson couldnt have met clients at venues near to the Commons, or even held the meetings via telephone.

It also remains unclear why, throughout the period he was lobbying for both Randox and Lynns, Paterson made no effort to contact officials to check that he stayed on the correct side of the rules.

Had he taken such a step, he might have been advised that he could avoid falling foul of sleaze guidelines by paying back six months of his salary to his employers prior to lobbying on their behalf.

The most delicate chapter in the saga, of course, involves his wife Roses suicide last June.

Although Paterson gave evidence at the inquest, there is no record of him suggesting then that the sleaze probe had contributed to her decision to take her life.

It wasnt until this January, in a supportive interview with the Daily Telegraph, that the possibility of 'reports about Mr Patersons external consultancy work' being partly to blame was first raised.

Back then, the MP stressed: We will never definitively know why Rose took her life.

Fast forward to September. My family and I are in no doubt that the way this investigation has been conducted played a massive role in creating the extreme anxiety which led to her suicide, Paterson wrote to the Standards Committee.

When their report came out, he could yet have saved his political skin by accepting his guilt, serving a 30-day suspension, and moving on. It seems unlikely that voters, in a seat where he boasted a 24,000 majority, would have chosen to remove him from office.

Instead, he doubled down, sparking a toxic row that threw the Government into crisis.

In his resignation letter yesterday, he said the whole thing had placed him in an intolerable position.

Worst of all was seeing people, including MPs, publicly mock and deride Roses death and belittle our pain.

He did not provide any examples of MPs publicly mocking his wifes suicide, though an SNP politician named Kirsty Blackman did upload an off-colour Tweet at breakfast time to that effect.

And so, once more in this shoddy affair, Parliaments reputation slides further into the gutter.
The country's so-called strictest headteacher has defended her claims that children are 'born with original sin' during an appearance on Lorraine today.

Newly appointed Government adviser Katharine Birbalsingh, from London, now the chairwoman of the social mobility commission, was slammed for 'whipping up division' in a Twitter spat last week.

Appearing on the morning programme today, the former headteacher at St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell, south London, said all children need to be 'taught right from wrong'.

However she was slammed by viewers, who criticised her for her 'patronising' tone, with one commenting: 'Teachers own ethics and values shouldn't affect schooling!

'Keep your opinions at home and stick to the curriculum.'

Newly appointed Government adviser Katharine Birbalsingh, now the chairwoman of the social mobility commission, has defended her claims that children are 'born with original sin' during an appearance on Lorraine today

During her appearance on the programme, Katharine argued children were born with original sin, and compared it to choosing to eat a plate of cookies instead of broccoli.

She said: 'It's much more difficult to do the right thing. Getting on my treadmill is hard, sitting down and watching television is easy.

'It's not so much we're bad or good, it's that man is flawed, meaning we're not perfect.

'All original sin does is - I'm not Christian, I didn't think I was being provocative at all - I thought I was a making a cultural point to say, "Hey we aren't perfect".'

Viewers slated the teacher during her appearance on the programme, with many calling her 'very patronising'

She continued: 'Our role as adults is to get involved and to help children figure out how to behave well.

'All adults - teachers and parents, everyone in the child's environment needs to help him tell the different between right and wrong and help him choose what is right.

'Original sin isn't saying we're all damned. It's just saying we're all trying to eat broccoli and not cookies.'

And Katherine defended her reputation as 'Britain's strictest headteacher', adding: 'It's really important to use balance with children but they need to know that they're making a choice, when they are naughty, there is some kind of consequence.

Katherine also defended her reputation as 'Britain's strictest headteacher' and said children 'need to know' when they are being naughty 'there is some kind of consquence'

'At school that might be a detention and at home that might mean you're taking away their video games. You want to be consistent in your approach.

'You want to narrate to the child, so you're explaining the difference between right and wrong, so they are more and more often choosing what's right not what's wrong.'

'Teachers and parents need to work together in unison. What we want is for children to be happy and successful. In order for them to do that, they need to be loved.

'And I promise, children feel loved when they know we keep our expectations really, really high.'

The debate had been raging after Katharine responded to a comment from a social media user which read 'we are all born bad'.

The teacher, 48, wrote: 'Exactly. Original sin. Children need to be taught right from wrong and then habituated into choosing good over evil.

'That requires love and constant correction from all the adults in their lives over years. Moral formation is a good thing.'

The debate had been raging after Katharine responded to a comment from a social media user which read 'we are all born bad'

Her comments were blasted as 'unhelpful' by Saeed Atcha, who served as commissioner for young people for three years before his term ended yesterday. He said he hoped it was not 'a sign of things to come'.

He told the Times: 'When I read the comments, I just thought that the role of the chair of the commission is not to be making unhelpful comments like that and whipping up division.

'Social mobility is serious business and very complex and requires people coming together. It's a tone that the commission has used throughout our three years.'

Jessica Oghenegweke, another departing commissioner, said she disagreed with Birbalsingh. She said she had always viewed children 'in the best light' and any negativity came from an absence of support.

Sammy Wright, commissioner for schools and vice-principal at Southmoor Academy in Sunderland, said she supported Birbalsingh's point but didn't think it was very well phrased.

She said Twitter spats were not helpful for social mobility.

Boris Johnson visits Michaela Community School in Wembley, London in 2015, as children take part in a history lesson

Birbalsingh will 'level up opportunity and give everyone the chance to succeed' in her new role, according to Liz Truss, the women and equalities minister.

The former headteacher spoke about state education at the Conservative Party conference in 2010. She later resigned from St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell, south London, to set up the Michaela Community School, in Wembley, northwest London.

She believes education should be centred on the teacher and the 'adult is the authority in the classroom'.

At her school teachers do not accept excuses, children must walk in single file and silence and lateness is punished by detention.

Following the resignation of the previous commission chairwoman Dame Martina Milburn in May 2020, it has been jointly led by Sandra Wallace and Steven Cooper.
An 18-year-old woman is campaigning for a change in law which would allow adults to be adopted.

The anonymous woman, from west Hull, claims she has always been 'the odd one out in her family', which she says has led to various mental health issues.

She wants her friend to adopt her and believes she 'should have the right' to a loving family home - just like everyone else.

The woman claims that as a result of a difficult relationship with her family - who she no longer lives with - she faces many self-esteem issues.

An 18-year-old woman (pictured), from west Hull, is campaigning for a change in law which would allow adults to be adopted

While seeking help after leaving her family home, the woman met a new friend, in her 40s, who she says has become a 'key' motherly figure in her life and wants her to adopt her.

Unfortunately her adoption wishes cannot be granted as adoption in the UK is only allowed for children under the age of 18.

The government website states: 'To be adopted, a child must be under the age of 18 when the adoption application is made, or not be (or have never been) married or in a civil partnership.

Current adoption guidelines in the UK - from the child being under the age of 18 to both birth parents normally having to consent Overview To be adopted, a child must: - be under the age of 18 when the adoption application is made - not be (or have never been) married or in a civil partnership The childs birth parents - Both birth parents normally have to agree (consent) to the adoption, unless: - they cannot be found - theyre incapable of giving consent, for example due to a mental disability - the child would be put at risk if they were not adopted Who can adopt a child - You may be able to adopt a child if youre aged 21 or over (theres no upper age limit) and either: - single - married - in a civil partnership - an unmarried couple (same sex and opposite sex) - the partner of the childs parent Source: GOV.UK Advertisement

'Both birth parents normally have to agree (consent) to the adoption, unless they cannot be found, they're incapable of giving consent, for example due to a mental disability, or the child would be put at risk if they were not adopted.'

The woman is now pleading for change and wants people to sign the petition to change UK laws surrounding adoption.

Speaking about her relationship with her friend, she explained: 'She has been looking out for me and I want her to adopt me.

'I told her "I wish you could adopt me" and she agreed with me too. I told her about how it would be nice to have a second family who can love me better.

''She said "I would look after you". She felt sorry for me and has always acted as family. I want to feel like I belong to a family that fits, instead of being the odd one in the family.

'I was neglected in my teenage years so it has affected my self esteem. I am too different from my own family. My outer family and closer family are strained.

'It would be nice to have a proper family in my life because my brothers are awful to me and my family are strange. I am the odd one out. I am quite outgoing and they just don't get it.

'Even though I am an independent and an adult I need a second family, and deserve to have a proper family like everyone else.'

The woman is now pushing for people to back the parliament petition allowing people aged 18 and over to be adopted.

The petition reads: 'The Government should give adults the right to be lawfully adopted by the people they regard as their parents.

'Adoption shouldn't be reserved for children in their adolescent years. Parenthood extends after the age of eighteen and this should be recognised in adoption law.'

The woman needs 10,000 signatures to get the government to respond to the petition, and 100,000 to be up for debate in parliament.
The Duchess of Cornwall put on a stylish display as she interviewed author Douglas Stuart about his 'life-changing year' after winning the Booker Prize with debut novel Shuggie Bain.

Camilla, 74, unveiled her inner rock chick in a pink leopard print blouse and trouser suit as spoke with the Scottish author, who won the prize in 2020 with Shuggie Bain, during an interview that was broadcast during the ceremony for this year's award.

Shuggie Bain, which is based on Stuart's own childhood, is set in Glasgow in the 1980s and tells the story of a young boy growing up with a mother who is battling addiction.

The novel is dedicated to the Stuart's mother, who died following an alcohol addiction when he was 16.

Speaking about his win, the author, 44, said: 'It's utterly transformed my life, from winning the Booker to being here with yourself and being in the beautiful Clarence House. I couldn't have imagined any of it.'

The Duchess of Cornwall put on a stylish display as she interviewed author Douglas Stuart about his 'life-changing year' after winning the Booker Prize with debut novel Shuggie Bain

Stuart said he did not tell anyone when he began writing Shuggie Bain.

'I was trying to write it because I wanted it to be an incredibly personal project and I was thinking very much about the Glasgow I grew up in and my own mother and my own family,' he said.

He added: 'Oftentimes mother stories and young queer men in very masculine places are often invisible and so Shuggie for me became a very personal document in that way, to say we were always here, we are also on this landscape.'

During the interview, he also told Camilla that he 'couldn't even tell you how important the library was in my childhood.'

'It was just a very safe space,' he added. 'It was a tranquil space and it was a place you could go to sort of shut out the world.

'Libraries are crucial because children need an awful lot of peace in their environment to be able to focus on a book but also peace within themselves and libraries are one of the few places that will allow them to have those moments of respite or just to shut out the world and enjoy a book.'

Shuggie Bain, which is based on Stuart's own childhood, is set in Glasgow in the 1980s and tells the story of a young boy growing up with a mother who is battling addiction

The writer is the second-ever Scot to win the 50,000 award after James Kelman scooped the prize for How Late It Was, How Late in 1994.

Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow before moving to New York to pursue a career in fashion design at 24, working for brands including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Gap.

He began writing in his spare time a decade ago, and his short stories have since appeared in the New Yorker.

The author explores poverty, tough upbringings and alcoholism in his book

He was announced as the winner in a virtual ceremony last year which featured contributions from former US president Barack Obama and the Duchess of Cornwall.

The author said his Man Booker win meant he could abandon his career in the fashion industry and dedicate himself to writing.

At the time, Margaret Busby, chair of the judging panel who voted unanimously to celebrate Stuart's book, described Shuggie Bain as 'daring, frightening and life-changing'.

She added: 'The heart-wrenching story tells of the unconditional love between Agnes Bain - set on a descent into alcoholism by the tough circumstances life has dealt her - and her youngest son.

'Shuggie struggles with responsibilities beyond his years to save his mother from herself, at the same time as dealing with burgeoning feelings and questions about his own otherness.

'Gracefully and powerfully written, this is a novel that has impact because of its many emotional registers and its compassionately realised characters.

This year's prize has gone to Damon Galgut's novel The Promise (pictured)

'The poetry in Douglas Stuart's descriptions and the precision of his observations stand out: nothing is wasted.'

The author explores poverty, tough upbringings and alcoholism in his book, which Busby added is 'destined to be a classic'.

This year's prize has gone to Damon Galgut's novel The Promise.

The Promise is set in Pretoria, where the author grew up, and takes place against the backdrop of South Africa's transition out of apartheid.

The book tells the story of the declining Swart family, who are white farmers, through a series of four funerals.
On screen, Little House on the Prairie's Ma and Pa were the picture of marital bliss  but off-camera, there was no love lost between stars Michael Landon and Karen Grassle.

Nearly 40 years after the nine-season hit show ended, Grassle, now 79, has revealed that she and Landon, who died in 1991, were hardly enamored of one another  and in fact, he could be quite cruel.

In her upcoming memoir, Grassle recalls the 'disgusting' jokes Landon would tell on set, how he'd mock the way she looked, and that he 'insulted' her by insisting she shouldn't be paid more than the child actors on the show, which began airing in 1974.

Revealed: On screen, Little House on the Prairie's Ma and Pa were the picture of marital bliss -but off-camera, there was no love lost between stars Michael Landon and Karen Grassle

Not a fan: Grassle, now 79, has revealed that she and Landon, who died in 1991, were hardly enamored of one another  and in fact, he could be quite cruel

The behind-the-scene tidbits are revealed in her book, 'Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little Houses Ma'

The behind-the-scene tidbits are revealed in Grassle's book, 'Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little House's Ma,' according to the New York Post.

Grassle is most known for her role as Caroline Ingalls on the NBC drama, which ran on NBC from 1974 to 1982.

The show was based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiographical book series by the same name, and tells the story of Ingalls' family's life on a farm near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s through 1890s.

Though the series dealt with some very serious subjects including alcoholism, poverty, racism, addiction, cancer, and even rape, it's considered wholesome family viewing  which makes some of Grassle's revelations about what went on behind the scenes quite shocking.

Landon  who starred as Caroline's husand Charles Ingalls and also directed and produced much of the show  created the series after starring in Bonanza.

Grassle described him as an 'amazing, multi-talented person'  with a controlling streak.

'He was very highly strung, but he was carrying the weight of the show on his shoulders,' she said.

The relationship appears to have grown rocky after Grassle. asked for a raise for the second season. Landon said no, reportedly saying she should be making as much as the child actors

'I felt insulted as his co-star on a hit series,' she said. 'I didn't want to gouge anybody, but I expected a fair wage'

Vindictive? After that, she said, he began cutting her scenes and leaving her out of storylines altogether

But she doesn't seem to think that was any excuse for some of his behavior.

The relationship appears to have grown rocky after Grassle, who was paid $2,000 to $4,000 week at the height of her fame, asked for a raise for the second season.

Landon said no, reportedly insisting she should be making as much as the child actors  and insisting she wasn't as popular as she believed she was.

'I felt insulted as his co-star on a hit series,' she said. 'I didn't want to gouge anybody, but I expected a fair wage.'

After that, she said, he began cutting her scenes and leaving her out of storylines altogether.

He could also be cruel, mocking her body and facial expressions to crew members  but Grassle didn't feel she could call him out.

'It was almost like I was frozen,' she said. 'But, as a woman in the 1970s film industry, I was so accustomed to these putdowns, it never occurred to me to sharply rebuke him. I kept up the professionalism. Id be the good girl, play the part and hope.'

Not nice: He could also be cruel, mocking her body and facial expressions to crew members  but Grassle didn't feel she could call him out

R-rated: What's more, he made crude remarks, using nasty language like 'c**t' on set and making ' disgusting jokes about how a woman smelled after sex'

What's more, he made crude remarks, using nasty language like 'c**t' on set and making 'disgusting jokes about how a woman smelled after sex.'

Many of Landon's co-stars and colleagues have had kind words about him over the years, but Grassle is not the first to make critical remarks.

Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary Ingalls, had her own comments in her book, 'The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House.'

'Mike was a great father from everything that I saw,' she wrote. 'But at work, he was controlling, and he could be mean at times. He would single out certain people and tease them publicly and relentlessly.

'He could also be vindictive. I remember him telling me the main reason he decided to blow up the town of Walnut Grove at the end of Little House was so that no one else would ever be able to use our sets.'

Landon died at age 54 in 1991 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

In December, Deadline reported that a Little House reboot was in the works from Anonymous Content, Paramount Television Studios, and Friendly Family Productions.
The Duchess of Cornwall joked she'd like a part in ITV's adaptation of Grace today as she visited the set of the crime drama in West Sussex.

Camilla, 74, was in chilly Shoreham-by-Sea where she joined the crew and stars including John Simm, who plays the troubled Brighton policeman, as well as the writer of the best-selling Roy Grace series, Peter James.

Showing her good sense of humour she asked if she could have a part as 'body dragged from the sea' when a Peter suggested they'd have to get her 'back as an extra'.

The series is one of the latest recommendations of her successful The Duchess of Cornwall Reading Room book club on Instagram.

The Duchess of Cornwall, 74, cut a stylish figure as she visited the set of ITV's adaptation of The Roy Grace series, created by Peter James, in Shoreham, West Sussex on Thursday

The Duchess of Cornwall with Peter James, holding one of his coats with one of his book scripts printed on the inner lining

Camilla confessed she was a 'huge fan' as she arrived at Shoreham Port and was greeted on arrival by James, saying: 'I love your books. I've read them all, cover to cover. So I will know what vaguely is going on.'

The royal looked typically smart in an electric blue, black and red plaid jacket that had a velvet trim around the collar and matching buttons as she spoke to creator, Peter James.

The attention-grabbing garment appears to be a firm favourite for Camilla, who also wore it in February 2015 while touring the Art Worker's Guild, an organisation dedicated to distinguished craftspeople, artists and designers in London, and again the following year as she attended a children's literature festival.

Most recently, she donned the bold coat when she visited Gloucestershire Vaccination Centre in December alongside Prince Charles.

James has written a total of 19 Sunday Times No. 1s, sold over 21 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 38 languages.

ITV are currently filming series two of Grace for broadcast in spring next year.

Commenting on the chilly weather, Camilla revealed how she grew up nearby and each day would 'come over the hill' to go swimming in Shoreham, so was used to the 'freezing' conditions they were filming in.

Duchess of Cornwall with actor John Simm during her visit to the set of ITV's Adaptation Of The Roy Grace Series By Peter James

Camilla (pictured, with creator Peter James), wore her white blonde-hair carefully coiffed for the meeting

The Duchess of Cornwall (left, and right) watches a scene being filmed from a production tent during her visit to the set of ITV's adaptation of The Roy Grace series,

ITV are currently filming series two of Grace for broadcast in spring next year. Pictured, Camilla meets actor John Simm

Camilla confessed she was a 'huge fan' as she arrived at Shoreham Port and was greeted on arrival by the cast

She then took her place alongside Simm, James and ITV's Commissioner Huw Kennair-Jones, donning headphones to watch on a large monitor a scene being filmed on the waterfront.

Chatting with James like an old friend - the pair met at a reception for writers Camilla had thrown at Clarence House the week previously - and discussed another of her recommendations, The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins.

She revealed: 'I've seen it twice and the first time I was so terrified I got up and ran out [of the theatre].'

James said: 'I saw it twice and went to see it the second time as a refresher. I said 'I'm sure I didn't find it as frightening last time'. They said 'it probably was, but you just slept through the first half!' '

On the set of Dead Tomorrow, escorted by producer Kiaran Murray-Smith, the Duchess was delighted to be introduced to stars including John Simm and Richie Campbell.

She complemented Campbell's character, DS Glenn Branson, for being a 'snappy dresser' and joked with Simm about whether he had the 'sea legs' for the job.

'I was just saying to Peter [James], the programme was just how I imagined the character of Roy Grace,' she said. It's good casting.'

'Oh great, that's good,' beamed Simm.

The royal looked typically smart in an electric blue, black and red plaid jacket that had a velvet trim around the collar and matching buttons as she spoke to creator, Peter James (pictured)

The Duchess of Cornwall meets cast members during her visit to the set of ITV's adaptation of The Roy Grace series

On the set of Dead Tomorrow, escorted by producer Kiaran Murray-Smith, the Duchess was delighted to be introduced to stars including John Simm and Richie Campbell

Camilla joined the crew and stars including John Simm (pictured), who plays the troubled Brighton policeman, as well as the writer of the best-selling Roy Grace series, Peter James, on location

A scene is filmed during a visit by the Duchess of Cornwall to the set of ITV's adaptation of The Roy Grace series, created by Peter James

'It's something to look forward to,' Camilla, clearly a fan also of the programme, added.

She then took her place alongside Simm, James and ITV's Commissioner Huw Kennair-Jones, donning headphones to watch on a large monitor a scene being filmed on the waterfront.

Asked whether she was a good sailor, she said: 'I am actually. I am better ion the sea than I am in the air. I'd go on a boat any day. I don't love it [flying] and try to avoid it when I can. I hate it, really.'

She watched intrigued, adding: 'You always forgot how much goes on behind the scenes when you watch something.'

Camilla asked Simms whether when, they did take after take, and the weather was getting colder, 'tempers got a bit short'.

The Duchess of Cornwall with Peter James watches a scene being filmed from a production tent

The Duchess of Cornwall looked typically smart in an electric blue, black and red plaid jacket that had a velvet trim around the collar. Pictured, with Peter James

'They are actually a lovely bunch on this show,' he said. 'It may get a bit fraught, I guess, but actually it's great.'

Speaking afterwards Simm said shows such as theirs wouldn't be the success they were if it wasn't for the quality of the writing and storyline.

'Without such amazing writing behind it this would be just another generic cop show, I guess,' he explained.

'But because of the source material - i am also thinking of the Frost books, Morse books - it's great to have that wealth of material to draw on. To read the books and get inside the head of my character has been a wonderful experience. The books are hugely successful, so it's up to us not mess it up.'

He added: 'I am a voracious reader. I love fictioncrime fiction wasn't my genre until I got offered this part and devoured them. I am such a stickler for book that I will always opt for that over the film. And actually if I really like the book, I probably won't even see the film. '

Writer James also waxed lyrical about the Duchess's reading room initiative, saying: 'About seven years ago a journalist friend sent me a picture of the duchess in her office from the Mail with a row of my Roy Grace books behind her. I just squealed. I wrote to her too say thank you and she wrote me a charming handwritten letter back.

The Roy Grace series is a title recommended by The Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room. Pictured, Camilla with Peter James

'People tend to ignore books. They fall over movies and movie stars and stage actors. The humble author is always lowest down the food chain.

'But James Bond, that started with a book. Lord of The Rings. Every big movie you have ever seen, probably started with a book.

'You have a senior royal coming up and extolling the joys of reading in a complete non- esoterical, snobby way. For a humble crime writer like me, that is joy. The literary establishment can have an air of snobbishness about it. Oh, the crime writer, well that's just a penny dreadful.

'But she's taken that away, which is wonderful. She has such a eclectic range of recommendations, it's a delight.'

While they were chatting Camilla noticed that James was wearing a fantastically eye-catching coat sporting a lining printed with the words from one of his books, Not Dead Yet, on it - made by local Brighton tailor, Gresham Blake.

She loved it so much that she insisted on them having a photograph together with it.

'It's giving me a few ideas,' she joked mischievously, with a nod to her own wardrobe.
A new television network airing content specifically designed for dogs is set to launch in the UK.

DogTV will show programmes organised into relaxing, stimulating and exposure segments scientifically designed to provide the right balance for the daily routines of stay-at-home pups.

The channel, which is the first specifically designed for canine viewers, will be ready to add to your television package from November 8th and will be available to stream online for 6.99 a month.

Designed for a dog's visual, auditory and emotional sensibility, the content aims to alleviate symptoms from common conditions in pets like separation anxiety, loneliness and stress.

A new television network airing content specifically designed for dogs is set to launch in the UK. Pictured, a dog watching the channel in the US

The channel, which is the first specifically designed for canine viewers (one of which is pictured) will be ready to add to your television package from November 8th and will be available to stream online for 6.99 a month

Dogs have a strong sense of hearing and vision and DogTV will provide frequent moving images and a rich world of sounds including soothing frequencies and positive affirmations.

The channel is already available in other countries and will feature shows for owners including programmes by celebrity dog trainer Laura Nativo and programmes revealing simple recipes for dogs.

The colour of the programme is adapted for dog's eyes and every few hours the channels will show content that will stimulate your pup to stop them sleeping the day away.

According to DogTV, canines do respond to what they see on TV screens, paying the most attention when they see other dogs, animals and moving objects.

According to DogTV, canines do respond to what they see on TV screens, paying the most attention when they see other dogs, animals and moving objects. Pictured, dogs in the US watching the channel

Designed for a dog's visual, auditory and emotional sensibility, the content aims to alleviate symptoms from common conditions in pets like separation anxiety, loneliness and stress

They said dogs may be excitable at the content at first, advising owners to adjust the volume to a comfortable level and sit with their pups a few times as they become accustomed to the channel.

Professor Nicholas Dodman, chief scientist for DogTV, said: 'DogTV is an excellent resource for dog owners to help alleviate some of the behavioural problems that can arise when dogs are left alone.

'With numbers of dog owners rising over the pandemic, and owners now returning to work, DogTV helps canines to feel relaxed and comforted until their owners return home.'

According to DogTV, one out of six dogs suffers from overt separation anxiety and British animal trainer Victoria Stilwell said the concept could 'considerably' improve the lives of lonely pets.

'People think that DogTV is a bit of a weird concept at first, she said. 'But when I tell them the amount of research that has gone into this  that this TV channel can help their dogs while home alone, improve their lives considerably and help with different stresses and anxieties  they get it'.

The service will be available on a range of smart TVs, Android and Apple devices and online.
The Prince of Wales received a blessing of good energy after meeting with Native American environmental activists during the Cop26 summit in Glasgow this afternoon.

The heir-to-the-throne, who is known as the Duke of Rothesay when north of the border, attended an indigenous listening session with CEOs at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

The session was designed to encourage the private sector to listen to the wisdom of the world's indigenous people in order to address climate change.

Charles, 72, met Tom Goldtooth, a climate activist and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who presented the Duke with a gift of plaited sweetgrass.

The Prince of Wales received a blessing of good energy after meeting with Native American environmental activists during the Cop26 summit in Glasgow this afternoon

Charles, 72, met Tom Goldtooth, a climate activist and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who presented the Duke with a gift of plaited sweetgrass

The plant is commonly used for healing or ritual purposes and braided sweetgrass is thought to attract good spirits, positive energies and is used a tool to cleanse people's auras.

Charles spent his morning at the art gallery meeting Hollywood and fashion royalty including Leonardo DiCaprio and Stella McCartney, who are both keen environmental campaigners.

Charles has been front and centre throughout the conference, alongside other senior members of the royal family, including the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William and Kate Middleton.

On Monday Charles, William and Kate hosted a royal reception at the popular Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, a short distance from where the climate summit is being held.

The heir-to-the-throne, who is known as the Duke of Rothesay when north of the border, attended an indigenous listening session is pictured meeting indigenous people at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

The session was designed to encourage the private sector to listen to the wisdom of the world's indigenous people in order to address climate change

The Duke - who flew from Rome's to the conference on Sunday- demanded action on climate change at the G20 summit as he warned world leaders they have an 'overwhelming responsibility to generations yet unborn.

He said the UN climate change conference which opened in Glasgow on Sunday is 'quite literally' the 'last chance saloon' to save the planet.

Whilst recognising that urgent action on climate change is crucial, the prince told G20 leaders in Rome: 'I am, at last, sensing a change in attitudes and the build-up of positive momentum.'

The heir to the throne emphasised that the world leaders have an 'overwhelming responsibility to generations yet unborn'.

He told the G20 politicians: 'It is impossible not to hear the despairing voices of young people who see you as the stewards of the planet, holding the viability of their future in your hands'.

Prince Charles looked delighted today as he met with Leonardo DiCpario and Stella McCartney at COP26 in Glasgow.

Royalty meets Hollywood royalty! The Prince of Wales shakes hands with Leonardo DiCaprio today

Charles added: 'Cop 26 begins in Glasgow on Sunday and quite literally it is the last chance saloon.

'We must now translate fine words into still finer actions and as the enormity of the climate challenge dominates people's conversations from newsrooms to living rooms.

'And as the future of humanity and nature herself are at stake it is surely time to set aside our differences and grasp this unique opportunity to launch a substantial green recovery by putting the global economy on a confident sustainable trajectory and thus save our planet.'

After rubbing shoulders with celebrities yesterday, the Prince met with the CEOs of global companies awarded the Terra Carta Seal.

The Terra Carta Seal, designed by Sir Jony Ive, recognises global companies which are driving innovation and demonstrating their commitment to genuinely sustainable markets.

It was presented at today's inaugural awards to 45 companies that have committed to accelerating action over the next decade to help limit global heating to 1.5 C by 2050.
Queen Letizia continued to show off her diplomatic prowess today as she attended a lunch with the President and First Lady of Paraguay.

The Spanish monarch, 49, visited the Presidential Residence in the country's capital city Asuncion as part of an official visit to discuss a co-operation program between the two countries.

It's her sixth trip of the sort since becoming Queen.

Letizia sported a sleeveless red utility jacket paired with a white blouse, brown fitted trousers and a stylish snakeskin belt.

The royal appeared in high spirits as she waved to royal fans outside the building and chatted with President Mario Abdo Benitez and his wife Silvana Lopez Moreira.

Queen Letizia of Spain continued to show off her diplomatic prowess today as she attended a lunch with the President and First Lady of Paraguay

The 49-year-old appeared in high spirits as she waved to royal fans outside the building and chatted with President Mario Abdo Benitez and his wife Silvana Lopez Moreira

This marks Letizia's sixth co-operation trip since becoming Queen and she can be seen deep in conversation with President Mario Abdo Benitez

Putting safety first, the royal a white face covering and wore her raven tresses straight and loose around her shoulders, choosing a pair of practical hiking boots to finish off the outfit.

Also opting for a dressed down look, First Lady Silvana, 47, opted for a pair of khaki high-waisted paper bag trousers, white sandals and a green and brown shirt adorned with a geometric design.

Diplomacy between the countries have been going on for decades and yesterday Letizia praised the work and dedication of Spanish aid workers in Paraguay during a visit the ruins of the Jesuit mission of Jesus de Tavarangue.

The group are working to improve access to health and education services and fight against the trafficking of women in the South American country.

Letizia sported a sleeveless red utility jacket paired with a white blouse, brown fitted trousers and a stylish snakeskin belt

Putting safety first, the royal a white face covering and wore her raven tresses straight and loose around her shoulders

Opting for the dressed down look, Letizia opted for a pair of practical hiking boots to finish off her outfit this afternoon

Diplomacy between the countries have been going on for decades and today marks the third of an official co-operation visit to the South American country

Letizia landed in Paraguay on Tuesday evening at Asuncion Silvio Pettirossi International Airport, where she was welcomed by First Lady Silvana Abdo, as well as Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo and Madrid's Ambassador Carmen Castiella Ruiz.

Throughout the three day trip she will undergo many activities with the First Lady, focusing on projects between the two countries with a particular focus on women's empowerment and health, education and preparation for the employment of young people.

She was without her husband King Felipe VI, 53, and her daughter's Infanta Sofia, 14, and Princess Leonor who recently celebrated her 16th birthday.

The young royal, whois a student United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, recently reunited with her family for the first time since leaving for the boarding school back in August.

First Lady Silvana, Letizia and President Mario are seen waving to royal fans ahead of their lunch at the Presidential Residence

First Lady Silvana, 47, opted for a pair of khaki high-waisted paper bag trousers, white sandals and a green and brown shirt adorned with a geometric design

The Spanish monarch is pictured before shaking the hand of President of Paraguay Mario Abdo Benitez

Letizia met Felipe VI at a dinner party in 2002, and the pair enjoyed an instant connection, leading to their royal wedding in May 2004.

The former newsreader is the granddaughter of a taxi driver and the eldest daughter of Jesus Jose Ortiz Alvarez, a journalist, and first wife Maria de la Paloma Rocasolano Rodriguez, a nurse and hospital union representative.

She attended public high school and did a degree at the Complutense University of Madrid. She later gained an MA in Audiovisual Journalism at the Institute for Studies in Audiovisual Journalism.

King Juan Carlos abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son, now King Felipe VI.
Alyssa Milano has opened up about having flashbacks of being sexually assaulted when she gave birth for the first time, saying it 'triggered all of these memories.'

The actress, who shares a son Milo, ten, and daughter Elizabella, seven, with her husband David Bugliari, reflected on her childbirth experience during her appearance on this week's episode of People's new podcast 'Me Becoming Mom.'

'I remembered at one point [during childbirth] really not enjoying the fact that lots of people had access to my vagina,' Milano, 48, told host Zoe Ruderman.

'And thinking to myself, "Why does I don't like this. Why does it feel so familiar? I've never had a baby before. Why does this invasive feeling feel so familiar?" That was just a fleeting moment, a tick in time, but I didn't forget about it.'

Candid: Alyssa Milano opened up about her childbirth experience during her appearance on People's new podcast 'Me Becoming Mom,' saying it triggered sexual assault flashbacks

Trigger: Milano said feeling like she was being held down and having things done to her when she gave birth to her son Milo in 2011 (pictured) was 'reminiscent of being sexually assaulted'

Later, when she was undergoing therapy for postpartum anxiety and depression, she was able to better understand her experience.

'After going through therapy after giving birth to Milo and remembering that one moment of feeling like I was being held down and had things being done to me that I didn't want, to me, was very reminiscent of being sexually assaulted,' Milano said.

'It triggered all of these memories that I thought I had dealt with. I think anyone who has dealt with trauma has the moments where you're like, '"Yeah, I'm fine.

'I've dealt with that." Versus the moments where you go, "Oh, no I didn't. I just tried to tuck it away so no one could see them or I couldn't see them or feel them anymore."'

Trauma: Milano (pictured in 1992) revealed in 2018 that she had been sexually assaulted twice, including once when she was a teenager

Reflecting: The actress, who also has a daughter Elizabella, explained that she was better able to understand what she was feeling at the time through therapy

When @Alyssa_Milano had a miscarriage, she thought she was being punished for having abortions in her early 20s. On the latest episode of Me Becoming Mom, the actress shares how she overcame those thoughts that weighed on her as a parent. Listen now: https://t.co/elpN8WVE4p pic.twitter.com/nYyGsAJbk0  People (@people) November 4, 2021

She added: 'I gotta think that because it felt that way for me, it must've felt that way for other women. I wonder how much of my postpartum anxiety was due to  of course, hormones and all of the things  but also that feeling that felt like I wasn't in control, you know?'

In 2018, Milano revealed on Twitter that she is a survivor of sexual assault, writing: 'I was sexually assaulted twice. Once when I was a teenager. I never filed a police report and it took me 30 years to tell my parents.'

Using the #WhyIDidntReport hashtag, she spoke of the harrowing ordeal in response to President Donald Trump's tweet questioning the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford's sexual misconduct allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Realization: Milano (pictured with her husband David Bugliari) said giving birth 'triggered all of these memories' that she thought she had dealt with

Using her voice: 'I gotta think that because it felt that way for me, it must've felt that way for other women,' Milano said of her childbirth experience

The activist later recounted one of the traumatic sexual assaults during an emotional speech that was filmed at Sen. Susan Collins' office.

Milano said she was 19 years old and at a 'very famous' pop star's concert when there was a 'stampede' that had her fearing for her life.

'People were smashed against each other. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was gonna die, she explained. 'From behind me, I felt a hand up my skirt and I was punched repeatedly in the vagina.

'I couldn't turn around. I looked to the stage, and I looked to the security guards, and I said, "Please help me" and they couldn't help me. They shook their heads.

'I managed to break free and I climbed up the stage to get away from my predator. I turned around and I didn't know which one it was. I looked to the sea of people and I couldn't find him.'
Meghan Markle's ex-husband Trevor Engelson has welcomed his second child with his wife, Tracey Kurland.

The Hollywood producer, 44, announced the happy news on his private Instagram account, revealing that Tracey delivered a baby girl named Sienna.

'World, meet baby girl Sienna Lee Engelson my wife is a gangster!' he wrote, according to Woman's Day. 'I don't know what I did right, but I'm the luckiest guy I know.'

This is the second child for the couple, who also share 15-month-old daughter Ford Grace Engelson.

Trevor, who was married to the Duchess of Sussex from 2011 to 2013, remarried Tracey in Montecito, in May 2019.

Baby joy: Meghan Markle's ex-husband Trevor Engelson has welcomed his second child with his wife, Tracey Kurland

New daughter: The Hollywood producer, 44, announced the happy news on his private Instagram account, revealing that Tracey delivered a baby girl named Sienna

'World, meet baby girl Sienna Lee Engelson my wife is a gangster!' he wrote, according to Woman's Day . 'I don't know what I did right, but I'm the luckiest guy I know'

Little sister: This is the second child for the couple, who also share 15-month-old daughter Ford Grace Engelson

Coincidentally, Trevor's newborn shares a name with Princess Beatrice's first child. Beatrice and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi welcomed baby Sienna Elizabeth Mapelli Mozzi on September 18.

The exact birth date of Trevor's Sierra is unconfirmed, though Trevor was seen carrying the little girl in a black car seat in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Wearing all black, he securely cradled the car seat with some adjusting from his wife, also in all black.

In photos on his private Instagram account, Trevor grins over his baby, who is swadded and resting in Tracey's arms while she sits up in her hospital bed.

Sharing their exciting announcement, the proud dad wrote: 'This baby thing has been good so far... let's do it again... coming this fall!'

Exes: Trevor, who was married to the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, from 2011 to 2013

Number two: The Hollywood producer, 44, remarried Tracey in Montecito, in May 2019 (pictured together in 2018)

Trevor had previously shared the news that his wife was expecting, according to OK magazine, writing: 'This baby thing has been good so far... let's do it again... coming this fall!'

The gushing Instagram post included a photograph of the family, with Trevor holding on to his daughter Ford Grace, who was born in August 2020.

He and the American heiress announced their engagement just two weeks after Prince Harry and Markle's wedding in May 2018.

Engelson and Tracey then tied the knot in a lavish ceremony at the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort in Montecito, California, in May 2019.

Engelson, from Great Neck, New York, and Meghan first began dating in 2004 before she shot to fame on TV legal drama Suits.

Flashback: Trevor is pictured announcing his second wife's first pregnancy in 2020

The couple dated for six years before getting engaged in 2010 and marrying in a luxurious beach ceremony in Jamaica in 2011.

Their marriage lasted just two years, with sources close to the couple telling the Daily Mail in 2017 that her ascent to fame took a toll on their relationship.

Weeks into their marriage, Meghan got her big break on Suits and spent months each year filming in Toronto, Canada, while Engelson stayed at their home in Los Angeles.

'It put a strain on the relationship. Trevor was in LA making movies, Meghan was in another country five hours flight away and it simply took its toll,' the source said.

They separated in the summer of 2013 and divorced in 2014, with papers citing 'irreconcilable differences.'

Before: Engelson, from Great Neck, New York, and Meghan (pictured in 2011) first began dating in 2004 before she shot to fame on TV legal drama Suits

Moving on: Meghan moved on with husband Harry and has since welcomed their two-year-old son, Archie, and their new baby daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor

It has been reported that Meghan ultimately decided the marriage was over. She reportedly sent her wedding ring back to Engelson in the post after they split.

Engelson, who owns his own production company called Underground and produced films including Robert Pattinson's 'Remember Me' and the Bradley Cooper-Sandra Bullock comedy 'All About Steve,' moved on with nutritionist Tracey.

He proposed to the multi-millionaire banker's daughter in June 2018 while on a tour of California's wine country after dating for a year.

The couple celebrated their engagement with a bash in October that year held at a private home in the exclusive Hidden Hills, California.

Meghan moved on with husband Harry and has since welcomed their two-year-old son, Archie, and their new baby daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor.
Society beauties Lady Amelia and Eliza Spencer were the picture of glamour this evening as they attended Tatler's prestigious Little Black Book party.

Princess Diana's twin nieces, who graced the cover of the magazine earlier this year, stepped out in sparkling ensembles for the party, hosted with Michael Kors at Mayfair's Tramp nightclub.

The 29-year-old twins, who are daughters of Diana's younger brother Earl Spencer and first cousins of Princes William and Harry, matched in sparkling outfits with sleek wet-look hair.

After recently moving to London, Eliza was dubbed one of the magazine's most eligible singletons in their annual list, while Amelia announced her engagement to Greg Mallett last summer.

Lady Amelia Spencer was the picture of glamour this evening as she attended Tatler's prestigious Little Black Book party

Lady Eliza Spencer wore a sparkling black polo neck paired with matching cigarette trousers and killer black heels to the lavish event at London's Tramp nightclub this evening

The glamorous twins arrive at the distinguished event, as photographers take snaps of them on their way in

Lady Amelia Spencer was the picture of poise and elegance as she braved the cold weather in her sequinned gold minidress and minimal high heels

Amelia was stunning in a long-sleeved gown rendered entirely in shimmering gold sequins paired with stylish black block heels.

She opted for a winged black eyeliner and pale pink lip teamed with a touch of peach-toned blush, light bronze and silver highlighter to create a soft and dewy complexion.

Opting for a more casual look, Eliza wore a sparkling black polo neck paired with matching cigarette trousers and killer black heels.

The glamorous pair appeared in good spirits as they posed with editor of Tatler Richard Dennen at the swanky event this evening.

The glamorous pair appeared in good spirits as they posed with Editor of Tatler Richard Dennen at the swanky event this evening

The glamorous twins, both 28, are the daughters of Charles Spencer and Victoria Aitken, and appeared on the cover of Tatler's March 2021 issue

Tatler's Little Black Book party celebrates their annual guide of the 200 hottest dates in the land - which this year included the Duke of Westminster; Lady Lola Bute, Emma Raducanu, Bridgertons Rege-Jean Page and Prince Edwards daughter Lady Louise Windsor.

Guests at the Little Black Book party, celebrating this list, included musician Paul Weller's daughter, and fashion stylist Dylan Weller, actor Will Franklyn Miller, and Australian mining magnate and heiress Lady Georgina Hope.

British model and social media influencer Edie Liberty Rose, and British 1500m champion Revee Walcott Nolan were also on the guest list.

They were joined by actor Will Franklyn Miller among others including Scottish socialite Lady Lola Bute, and model Freddy Knatchbull.

Further attendees included musician JC Stewart and models Heloise Agostinelli and Elias Becker - who is the son of famed tennis player Boris Becker - and Matilda Lowther. Also in attendance was model, socialite, and TikToker Delphi Primrose.

Model Heloise Agostinelli - famous for a stint on reality TC show Made in Chelsea - also attended the party in a black suit featuring a blazer with a daring low neckline

Scottish socialite Lady Lola Bute - who took one of the sought-after spots on Tatler's annual list of the most eligible singletons - arrived at the party in a high fashion all-black ensemble

Model Elias Becker, 22, who snapped up the fourth spot on Tatler's eligible single's list attended the party in an all-white ensemble

Northern Irish singer, songwriter and musician, JC Stewart, 24, brought an edgy element to the upmarket do, in his unusually-cut suit

Model, socialite, and TikToker Delphi Primrose (right), decked out in a daring blazer mini dress and knee high boots, poses with fellow model Freddy Knatchbull

Australian mining heiress Lady Georgina Hope (R-L) looks in high spirits as she enjoys the soiree with influencer Edie Liberty Rose, and British 1500m champion Revee Walcott Nolan

Model and stylist Dylan Weller - daughter of musician Paul Weller at the do. As employee of top designer Vivienne Westwood, Dylan donned the brand's trademark tartan look

Olympian Revee Walcott Nolan stuns in a full length sequinned black gown, and an elegant smokey eye make-up look

British model and social media influencer Edie Franklin Rose made a statement in a grey and silver jumpsuit inspired by the classic pinstripe suit look

It's been a busy week for the twins models, who stepped out for the the Leopard Awards at London 's Goldsmith Hall in aid of The Princes Trust on Tuesday

Amelia and Eliza, who are both signed to Storm Model Management, grew up with their father and mother Victoria Aitken in Constantia but spent significant time in the UK after their parents split and Charles moved back to the family's seat, Althorp.

They have two half-sisters and half-brother from their father's second and third marriages, and half-brother from their mother's second marriage.

Princess Diana's nieces Lady Amelia and Lady Eliza Spencer were the picture of elegance today in matching silver dresses as they attended an award show in aid of The Princes Trust last night

Amelia, who recently moved from South Africa with her fiance Greg Mallett, donned a floor-length garment while Eliza opted for a shorter dress paired with a structured white blazer

Earlier this year, the pair were hailed by society bible Tatler as among the hottest and most elegant socialite siblings from across the world who are used to moving in the same circles as supermodels, aristocrats and royals.

They were ranked among others as one of the most glamorous sets of twins on the elite social scene.

The sisters have an unbreakable bond as twins, with Lady Amelia telling Tatler she and Lady Eliza have always been close and are 'very similar'.

'We love doing the same things and share the same friends,' she said. 'You're guaranteed to have a best friend there always  you can't really compare it to anything else.'
Cervical cancer has been virtually eradicated in young women because of the HPV vaccine's 'remarkable' success, a major study has found.

Cases of the disease have plummeted by 87 per cent as a result of the NHS vaccine programme.

Among women now in their twenties  the first generation to get the jab  cases have now dropped from about 50 per year to just five.

Today's 'historic' findings by King's College London represent the first evidence the HPV vaccine is saving lives in the UK.

The HPV vaccine prevents infection from human papillomavirus, a common group of viruses that are behind 90 per cent of cervical cancer cases.

It has been given to girls at the age of 12 and 13 in UK since 2008, and from 2019 was also made available to teenage boys.

Men can get cancer from HPV and can also put women at increased risk by passing the virus through sexual contact.

While a large proportion of boys may have been protected by immunisation among girls they may grow up to have sex with, introducing the vaccine for boys will ensure protection across the population.

Around 3,200 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed every year in Britain, leading to more than two deaths a day.

But today's study suggests the HPV vaccine will essentially wipe out the disease in younger generations and charities said the findings show it will soon become a 'rare disease' and 'thing of the past'.

KCL researchers have previously said they expect to have eradicated cervical cancer completely within 80 years.

The research, published in the Lancet, found that cervical cancer rates were 87 per cent lower in women who offered the vaccine in year 8 (red). For women who had the vaccine in years 10 or 11, rates of cervical cancer were 62 per cent lower and they were one third lower in women who had it in years 12 and 13

It provides the first proof the NHS vaccination programme  launched for teenage girls in 2008  is saving lives. A new HPV vaccine, Gardasil  which offers an even higher level of protection  is now being used for the HPV programme in schools

The research, published in the Lancet, found that cervical cancer rates were 87 per cent lower in women who offered the vaccine between the ages of 12 and 13 than those who were unvaccinated.

There was also a 97 per cent drop in pre-cancerous changes to cells among this age group, or cervical carcinomas.

For women who had the vaccine between 14 and 16, rates of cervical cancer were 62 per cent lower and they were one third lower in women who had it between 16 and 18.

Experts estimated that the first four years of the vaccination programme  between 2008 and 2012  had led to around 450 fewer cases of cervical cancer and 17,200 fewer cases of cervical carcinomas.

Professor Peter Sasieni, lead study author, said: 'It's been incredible to see the impact of HPV vaccination and now we can prove it prevented hundreds of women from developing cancer in England.

'We've known for many years that HPV vaccination is very effective in preventing particular strains of the virus, but to see the real-life impact of the vaccine has been truly rewarding.

WHAT IS HPV? THE INFECTION LINKED TO 99% OF CERVICAL CANCER CASES Human papilloma virus (HPV) is the name for a group of viruses that affect your skin and the moist membranes lining your body. Spread through vaginal, anal and oral sex and skin-to-skin contact between genitals, it is extremely common. Up to eight out of 10 people will be infected with the virus at some point in their lives. There are more than 100 types of HPV. Around 30 of which can affect the genital area. Genital HPV infections are common and highly contagious. Many people never show symptoms, as they can arise years after infection, and the majority of cases go away without treatment. It can lead to genital warts, and is also known to cause cervical cancer by creating an abnormal tissue growth. Annually, an average of 38,000 cases of HPV-related cancers are diagnosed in the US, 3,100 cases of cervical cancer in the UK and around 2,000 other cancers in men. What others cancers does it cause? Throat

Neck

Tongue

Tonsils

Vulva

Vagina

Penis

Anus Advertisement

'Assuming most people continue to get the HPV vaccine and go for screening, cervical cancer will become a rare disease.

'This year we've already seen the power of vaccines in controlling Covid. These data show that vaccination works in preventing some cancers.'

Dr Vanessa Saliba, consultant epidemiologist for the UK Health Security Agency, which also took part in the study, said: 'These remarkable findings confirm the HPV vaccine saves lives by dramatically reducing cervical cancer rates among women.

'We encourage all who are eligible for the HPV vaccine to take it up when it is offered in school. All those eligible can catch up until their 25th birthday.'

Cancer Research UK chief executive Michelle Mitchell said: 'Results like this show the power of science.

'It's a historic moment to see the first study showing that the HPV vaccine has and will continue to protect thousands of women from developing cervical cancer.'

HPV  human papillomaviruses  are extremely common and nearly always harmless, but have been proven to cause certain types of cancer in some people.

Cancers in both male and female genitals and reproductive systems, as well as of the rectum and the mouth and throat, may all be linked to the viruses.

The NHS HPV vaccination programme in schools started in 2008 and the jab was only offered to girls. It was thought that boys would be protected indirectly through herd immunity.

But the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises the UK on vaccines, decided the HPV jab should also be offered to boys for free.

A new HPV vaccine, Gardasil  which offers an even higher level of protection  is now being used for the HPV programme in schools.

Samantha Dixon, chief executive at Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust: 'At a time of when the topic of vaccination is in the public eye, it is incredibly positive to see solid evidence of the success of the HPV vaccine in reducing cervical cancer diagnoses.

'Even more encouraging, during 2021-22 the school programme will start using Gardasil 9 which provides an even higher level of protection.

'We are truly on the path to making cervical cancer a thing of the past.

'We must not get complacent however and must work to ensure every child has the opportunity to access their vaccination, especially as Covid continues to affect programme delivery.

'No vaccine is 100 per cent effective and cervical screening remains an important test.'

A report published in February 2019 predicted that the cancer cases would be cut in half by 2050 and eradicated completely by 2100.

The latest study looked in detail at cancer registry data between January 2006 and June 2019 for seven groups of women who were between the ages of 20 and 64 at the end of 2019.

The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) run by NHS Digital also took part in the study.
Millions of young men in Britain should be given the HPV vaccine, experts said today after a landmark study which found the jabs have virtually eradicated cervical cancer in women.

Major research last night revealed the injections  which NHS officials began giving to 12- to 13-year-old girls over a decade ago  have stopped hundreds from getting the disease.

Researchers at King's College London found cervical cancer rates fell 87 per cent to just five cases per year among women who were vaccinated as children and are now in their 20s.

But boys aged 12-13 have only been offered the vaccine in England and Wales since September 2019.

Health chiefs have so far ruled out a catch-up programme, despite offering millions of young women when the jabs were initially rolled out.

Charities today urged the Government to 'think again and do the right thing', calling on ministers to U-turn and offer the vaccine to all young men aged up to 26 who've missed out on the scheme.

The current inoculation drive 'doesn't go nearly far enough' and leaves boys 'playing a lottery with their future health', they said.

Men can get cancer from HPV, and can also put women at increased risk by passing the virus through sexual contact.

The HPV vaccine, called Gardasil and made by pharmaceutical giant Merck, protects against the human papillomavirus virus.

It provides the first proof the NHS vaccination programme  launched for teenage girls in 2008  is saving lives. A new HPV vaccine, Gardasil  which offers an even higher level of protection  is now being used for the HPV programme in schools

The research, published in the Lancet, found that cervical cancer rates were 87 per cent lower in women who offered the vaccine in year 8 (red). For women who had the vaccine in years 10 or 11, rates of cervical cancer were 62 per cent lower and they were one third lower in women who had it in years 12 and 13

The virus causes five per cent of cancers world wide, including cervical, throat and anal cancers, as well as genital warts. Not all strains cause cancer, but some high-risk strains cause abnormal cancerous growths.

Eight in 10 people will come into contact with the virus  which does not usually cause symptoms  and is transmitted through sexual contact with an infected person.

WHAT IS HPV? THE INFECTION LINKED TO 99% OF CERVICAL CANCER CASES Human papilloma virus (HPV) is the name for a group of viruses that affect your skin and the moist membranes lining your body. Spread through vaginal, anal and oral sex and skin-to-skin contact between genitals, it is extremely common. Up to eight out of 10 people will be infected with the virus at some point in their lives. There are more than 100 types of HPV. Around 30 of which can affect the genital area. Genital HPV infections are common and highly contagious. Many people never show symptoms, as they can arise years after infection, and the majority of cases go away without treatment. It can lead to genital warts, and is also known to cause cervical cancer by creating an abnormal tissue growth. Annually, an average of 38,000 cases of HPV-related cancers are diagnosed in the US, 3,100 cases of cervical cancer in the UK and around 2,000 other cancers in men. What others cancers does it cause? Throat

Neck

Tongue

Tonsils

Vulva

Vagina

Penis

Anus Advertisement

The HPV jab is currently offered to girls and boys aged between 12 and 13, before they become sexually active. A second dose is given up to two years later.

The jab was offered to girls from 2009, which included a catch-up campaign for around 3.5million all girls up to 18-years-old.

At the time, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), a panel which advises the Government on inoculations, ruled giving the jab to girls would provide herd protection to boys.

It said vaccinating them would provide 'little additional benefit' to prevent cervical cancer, which was the main goal of the programme.

Boys began receiving the jab in 2019 after the JCVI found it would provide protection against a wide range of cancers, including anal, penile and throat cancers.

Health bosses said a catch-up programme was not necessary because data suggests older boys already benefit indirectly from the herd immunity built up from 10 years of vaccinating girls.

However, men aged between 18-45 who have sex with men can get a HPV vaccine from sexual health or HIV clinics for free.

Jamie Rae, founder of the Throat Cancer Foundation, told MailOnline: 'It is imperative all boys and men up to 26 get priority access to a catch-up programme to increase overall protection against HPV.

'Daily, we see the devastation caused by viruses. HPV is one of them.

'We applaud Governments across the UK for eventually introducing HPV vaccination for boys; however, it doesn't go nearly far enough.

'It excluded swathes of boys and young men who were left playing a lottery with their future health. We would again call on all UK Governments to think again and do the right thing.'

Malcolm Clark, cancer prevention policy manager at Cancer Research UK, also said the Government should consider a catch-up programme for boys.

He said: 'The HPV vaccine saves lives, and its important that the vaccine programme is gender neutral.

'HPV can cause other cancer types such as anal, penile and upper throat, as well as cervical cancer.'

Meanwhile, David Winterflood, acting chief executive of HPV vaccination campaign NOMAN, told MailOnline the HPV vaccines are the 'greatest opportunity to prevent cancer in decades'.

Data from the now defunct Public Health England shows 59 per cent of 12 to 13-year-olds in England were vaccinated with the HPV jab in the school year 2019/2020 (dark blue bars)  28.8 per cent less than a year earlier. The rollout of the jabs was impacted by school closures due to the pandemic. Coverage ranged from 24.2 per cent in Lancashire and South Cumbria to 85.8 per cent in Greater Manchester. Meanwhile, 54.4 per cent of boys in England were vaccinated in the same year (light blue bars), ranging from 25.2 per cent coverage in Lancashire and South Cumbria to 78.3 per cent in Greater Manchester

He said: 'All genders must be vaccinated against this devastating virus.

'A catch-up programme for boys would only accelerate the end of the suffering caused by HPV.'

HPV vaccine is making cervical cancer a 'thing of the past' Cervical cancer has been virtually eradicated in young women because of the HPV vaccine's 'remarkable' success, a major study has found. Cases of the disease have plummeted by 87 per cent as a result of the NHS vaccine programme. Among women now in their twenties  the first generation to get the jab  cases have now dropped from about 50 per year to just five. The 'historic' findings by King's College London represent the first evidence the HPV vaccine is saving lives in the UK. The HPV vaccine prevents infection from human papillomavirus, a common group of viruses that are behind 90 per cent of cervical cancer cases. It has been given to girls at the age of 12 and 13 in UK since 2008, and from 2019 was also made available to teenage boys. Advertisement

Dr Jyotsna Vohra, director of policy at Royal Society for Public Health, said the data from the cervical cancer study is 'really promising and truly demonstrates how this vaccine could take us toward the elimination' of the disease.

She said: 'It is now time that we ramp up the vaccination programme capacity in schools and encourage the uptake of HPV vaccine among boys.

'It is essential that we address the existing disparities in vaccine uptake across our communities.

'We must do more to support girls and boys to uptake the vaccine, so that none of our children fall through the net and miss out on life-saving vaccines.'

MailOnline has approached the Department for Health on whether it has any plans to offer a HPV catch-up programme to boys.

It comes after a study, published in the Lancet, found cervical cancer rates were 87 per cent lower in women who offered the vaccine between the ages of 12 and 13 than those who were unvaccinated.

Among women now in their twenties  the first generation to get the jab  cases have now dropped from about 50 per year to just five.

There was also a 97 per cent drop in pre-cancerous changes to cells among this age group, or cervical carcinomas.

For women who had the vaccine between 14 and 16, rates of cervical cancer were 62 per cent lower and they were one third lower in women who had it between 16 and 18.

Experts estimated that the first four years of the vaccination programme  between 2008 and 2012  had led to around 450 fewer cases of cervical cancer and 17,200 fewer cases of cervical carcinomas.

Around 3,200 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed every year in Britain, leading to more than two deaths a day.

But the study suggests the HPV vaccine will essentially wipe out the disease in younger generations and charities said the findings show it will soon become a 'rare disease' and 'thing of the past'.

King's College London researchers have previously said they expect to have eradicated cervical cancer completely within 80 years.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in sales of all kinds of vices, but marijuana purchases increased more than others, a new study suggests.

Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada gathered sales data of marijuana and alcohol in their city to find if there was a pandemic-related increase in drug sales.

They found that, at the start of the pandemic, there was a surge in sales as many stockpiled marijuana and alcohol.

Marijuana sales increased much more, though, jumping nearly 25 percent, with alcohol sales only rising by five percent.

Researchers found that marijuana sales increased by 25% in Hamilton during the pandemic, and even continued to rise after an initial stockpiling surge

After the initial surge of purchases at the start of the pandemic, alcohol sales normalized. In total, sales increased by around 5%

'These results offer one of the first national perspectives on changes in alcohol and cannabis use during the pandemic,' Dr James MacKillop, co-author of the study and director of the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research at McMaster, said in a statement.

'These sales data give us an opportunity to quantify the pandemic's impacts on two of the most commonly used substances for the country as a whole.'

Researchers, who published their findings on Thursday in JAMA Network Open, gathered data from November 2018 to June 2021.

Marijuana was legalized in Canada in October 2018, and the legal age to purchase in Ontario is 19, with November 2018 being the first full month when it was legal.

The research team found a surge of both marijuana and alcohol sales at the start of the pandemic that it attributes to people 'stockpiling' goods when Covid first arrived.

Other consumer goods, such as toilet paper, also had similar early pandemic sales surges as people stockpiled it, hoping to have enough at home to ride out the pandemic.

While an exact reason for the growth in marijuana use cannot be determined by researchers, they believe it could have to do with people using the drug to cope with mental health issues caused by the pandemic

After the initial stockpile surge, alcohol sales normalized and returned to levels near where they were pre-pandemic.

Researchers found that sales increased by five percent on a monthly basis - or $1.86 billion in additional sales during the pandemic period.

Marijuana sales only continued to grow, though, as many turned to the drug during the pandemic.

After the initial stockpiling period, purchases of the drug increased a total of just under 25 percent during Covid - or $811 million more than the previous period.

Researchers cannot exactly pin-point why this occurred with marijuana, and not alcohol, though they theorize it could have to do with changes in ways people are managing their mental health.

'These sales figures give us clues into potential changes in behavioral patterns and can inform planning to address mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,' MacKillop said.

The increase in sales could also just be a part of a natural trend that would have formed whether the pandemic happened anyways, as the fairly recent legalization of the drug has caused explosive growth of sales over time.

Researchers are not sure if this trend occurred worldwide, and of data from countries with different timetables on marijuana legalization may have seen different trends.

'It's unclear whether similar patterns exist outside of Canada, but the findings indicate the value of sales data as a strategy to characterize the impacts of COVID-19 on substance use,' Dr Jean Costello, co-author of the study and director of evaluation at the Homewood Research Institute, said in a statement.

'Although the changing landscape following cannabis legalization is a critical consideration, the availability of cannabis sales data at all is a boon for researchers evaluating the pandemic's impacts.'

In the U.S., multiple states recorded an increase in marijuana sales last year, and in the states where the drug is legalized, the drug's industry had a record year.

Cigarette sales increased in 2020 as well, a rarity after decades of decline in usage.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) called on COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to only deliver doses to poor countries and not to nations that are administering boosters.

During a news briefing on Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said vaccine makers should prioritize deliveries of COVID-19 jabs to countries with fewer 40 percent of people immunized.

He also said that boosters should not be administered except to people who are immunocompromised.

'We continue to call on manufacturers of vaccines that already have WHO Emergency Use Listing to prioritize COVAX, not shareholder profit,' he said.

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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing on Thursday (above) that Covid vaccine manufacturers should only send doses to countries where few are inoculated

Tedros also said that Covid vaccine boosters should only be given to people who are immuncompromromised. Pictured: A man receives a booster shot at the Haverford Township Municipal Building in Pennsylvania, October 25

'We continue to call on all manufacturers to prioritize their contracts with COVAX and the Africa Vaccines Acquisition Trust, or AVAT,' Tedros continued.

'No more vaccines should go to countries that have already vaccinated more than 40 percent of their population, until COVAX has the vaccines it needs to help other countries get there too.'

There are several countries, particularly in Africa, that have fallen way behind in the global vaccine rollout.

Only about six percent of the continent's population is currently vaccinated, according to the WHO.

What's more, just five African countries are expected to hit the goal of vaccinating 40 percent of their populations.

Because of this, Tedros once against called for a moratorium on boosters aside for those with weakened immune systems.

'No more boosters should be administered, except to immunocompromised people,' Tedros said.

'Most countries with high vaccine coverage continue to ignore our call for a global moratorium on boosters, at the expense of health workers and vulnerable groups in low-income countries who are still waiting for the first doses.'

Previously, health experts had said that there was no evidence to suggest that fully vaccinated Americans needed booster shots.

However, more and more research has shown that people with weakened immune systems have low or undetectable antibody levels, even after two doses.

Several countries, including the U.S. and the UK, have been administering boosters to large swathes of their populations. In the U.S., 20.6 million people have received a booster dose with a seven-day rolling average of 586,309 (above)

A study in May found that all cancer patients developed fewer antibodies after being vaccinated compared to healthy participants and 10 percent barely developed antibodies at all.

Another study in June looked at 30 organ transplant recipients and found that 24 developed negative antibody levels - meaning they did not have any immune-fighting cells - after two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

The findings are worrying because immunocompromised people are already at an increased risk of hospitalization or death from the virus.

This makes COVID-19 immunity even more crucial for this population.

However, third doses may be a way to boost antibody levels.

For example, the study about organ transplant patients found that one-third of patients with negative antibody levels from the first two doses now showed an increase after a third dose.

Several nations including the U.S., the UK, France, Germany and Israel already have already rolled out boosters - and for far more people than just those with weakened immune systems.

In the U.S., 20.6 million people have received a booster dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with a seven-day rolling average of 586,309.
Two young children were mistakenly given adult doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine - two days before they were actually eligible for vaccination.

The two boys, ages six and seven, received the shots at the clinic run by the Garland, Texas, health department on Halloween after nurses told the families they were eligible.

WBAL-TV reports that the children are doing fine, but their parents and pediatricians are monitoring them for side effects, and the local health department is investigating the incident.

Pfizer doses for children ages five to 11 are one-third the size of doses for adults. The low dose is designed to reduce side effects while still providing children with a strong immune response to Covid.

Pediatricians and public health experts say that the shots are safe for kids, with no serious side effects detected in Pfizer's clinical trial.

The six-year-old son of Garland, Texas resident Julian Gonzalez was one of two children mistakenly given an adult-sized Covid vaccine dose at a clinic on Sunday. Pictured: Gonzalez and family pose for a portrait

The children were mistakenly given adult vaccine doses at a pop-up vaccination clinic, held at Mount Hebron Missionary Baptist Church in Garland, Texas. Courtesy of CBS-DFW

Pfizer's Covid vaccine was authorized for children ages five to 11 this week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) formally recommended the shots for this age group on Tuesday evening, and the first vaccination appointments started later that day.

For the five-to-11 age group, Pfizer developed a version of its vaccine that's tailored to younger immune systems.

The kids' vaccine dose is 10 micrograms, one-third the size of the adult vaccine dose, which is 30 micrograms.

Pfizer researchers tested out a couple of different dose options in clinical trials. They found that the 10 microgram dose can lead to fewer side effects for kids while still teaching their immune systems to recognize and fight off the coronavirus.

According to Pfizer's data, the low dose caused a similar antibody response for young kids as the standard, adult dose does for teenagers and young adults.

The company is shipping out kids' doses in vials with orange caps, while adult doses are stored in vials with purple caps - a measure specifically designed to help providers avoid mixing them up.

Yet a mix-up happened at one vaccine clinic in Texas before doses were formally available for the five to 11 age group.

On Sunday, October 31, two families went to a pop-up clinic run by the city health department in Garland.

At the clinic, hosted in a local Baptist church, nurses told the families that two young boys - ages six and seven - were eligible for vaccination.

The nurses provided Pfizer vaccine consent forms to the boys' parents, then administered the shots.

'They asked us our kids' ages, and so we told them four and six, and they said: "The six-year-old can obviously get it if you'd like to go ahead and do that,'"' Julian Gonzalez, parent of the six-year-old, told WBAL-TV.

'Going off their confidence and what we read [on the form] we were all for it,' he said.

Yet the clinic did not have 10 microgram dose vaccines available because the CDC would not formally authorize these vaccines for young kids for two more days.

Children tend to experience mild vaccine side effects like a sore arm and fatigue, similar to adults. Pictured: An eight-year-old gets ready to receive his first shot in Edinburg, Texas, November 2021

The parents learned about the mix-up on Monday, when they received a call from the city health department.

'We found out after the fact that the vials for the children's vaccine should have been different, the needles should have been differentit should have been labeled specifically for kids sowhere did that decision come from? Who was it that told them they could go ahead and offer it?' Gonzalez told WBAL-TV.

Both boys are doing fine, according to the local news station.

Gonzalez's six-year-old 'experienced moderate side effects' the day after his shot, he said, but was feeling better by Wednesday. He did not elaborate on which side effects the child experienced.

Similarly, the seven-year-old's mother told WBAL-TV that he was 'doing OK.'

The boys' parents are working with their pediatricians and local public health officials to watch out for any serious side effects.

'GHD also has reported the incident to state health officials and are further investigating the circumstances leading up to the error,' the City of Garland Health Department (GHD) said in a statement.

'The safety and privacy of our patients is always our top priority. Due to patient privacy, we cannot share additional information at this time.'

The CDC is tracking Covid vaccine side effects - for adults as well as children - through a system called v-safe.

Parents can sign up on behalf of their kids to receive personal health check-ins after their vaccination appointments.

So far, the agency has not reported any serious side effects in the five-to-11 age group.

Pfizer's vaccine clinical trials did not detect any side effects either, though one child in the trial did swallow a penny - unrelated to the vaccine.

Generally, children tend to experience sore arms, fatigue, and headaches after their Covid shots, just like adults.

Public health experts and pediatricians alike are strongly recommending vaccination for young children - and many scientists are vaccinating their own kids at the first possible opportunity.

'You can't wait until millions and millions of doses are given before you decide, because this virus is going to take every opportunity it can to infect someone,' pediatrician Dr Tina Tan told NPR.

While children are at a lower risk of severe Covid compared to adults, the disease has been a leading cause of death in the five to 11 age group over the past year and a half.
An antiviral drug that could slash hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 by half has received regulatory approval in the UK, the first country to green light the drug.

Molnupiravir, developed by the Kenilworth, New Jersey-based company Merck & Co., is garnering worldwide attention after promising results in the clinical trials.

The drug will be administered to Covid patients in four pill doses, twice a day for five days upon a person feeling symptoms of the virus.

While British patients will have access to the drug soon, it is pending regulatory approval in the U.S. and a meeting by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to discuss the drug's merits isn't scheduled until November 30.

A study at the start of the month showed molnupiravir can cut hospitalizations and deaths by up to 50%. It works by disrupting the Covid virus's ability to reproduce in the human body

The United Kingdom is the first nation to approve the usage of molnupiravir (pictured). The FDA has an advisory meeting scheduled to discuss the fate of the drug on November 30, and Americans will have to wait at least till then to access the drug

'The first global authorization of molnupiravir is a major achievement in Merck's singular legacy of bringing forward breakthrough medicines and vaccines to address the world's greatest health challenges,' Robert Davis, Merck's CEO, said in a statement.

British Health Secretary Sajid Javid called the treatment a 'game changer' for the most vulnerable.

Britain has bought 480,000 doses of molnupiravir at a cost thought to be in the region of 250 million, or around $290 million.

What is molnupiravir? The antiviral drug described as a 'game changer' Who makes it? Merck, the US pharmaceutical giant How effective is it? A recent trial of the pill in almost 800 patients found that molnupiravir cut hospitalisation and death rates in half for people at high risk of a severe illness from Covid. How much has the UK ordered? 480,000 courses What does it cost? Merck has charged the US government about $700 (500) per course of the drug. Though it is reported to cost just under 13 to make. How does it work? The pill works by introducing errors into Covid's genetic code to hamper its ability to multiply in human cells. It does so by attacking an enzyme that Covid uses to make copies of itself. Merck said that because of this, the tablet should be able to tackle new variants as it evolves. Vaccines, which are being made slightly weaker by new strains of the virus, work by targeting the spike protein. Advertisement

The drug will be sold under the brand name Lagevrio.

It is expected to be rolled out on the National Health Service (NHS) within weeks, providing the country with an extra layer of defense heading into winter.

The pill will be given out to both vaccinated and unvaccinated Britons, and officials will collect extra real-world data before buying more.

'We are now working across government and the NHS to urgently get this treatment to patients initially through a national study so we can collect more data on how antivirals work in a mostly vaccinated population,' Maggie Throup, the UK's vaccine minister, told Parliament.

The COVID-19 vaccines are still considered the most effective way to combat the virus, as they are safe and effective at preventing infection.

Molnupiravir is not to act as a vaccine replacement, but instead as another tool in the arsenal medical professionals will have to fight the virus.

Americans will have to wait a little longer than their counterparts across the pond to use the drug.

The FDA has scheduled an advisory committee meeting to discuss the fate of molnupiravir on November 30.

Merck is seeking FDA emergency use authorization for the drug, the same level of approval the Covid vaccines initially received.

The company is also partnering with generic manufacturers around the world to mass-produce and distribute the drug.

In July, the company announced it would partner with generic manufacturers based in India to help make the drug widely available in the Covid struck nation.

The company also announced a partnership with the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed public health organization, this week to help distribute the drug across over 100 other nations.

If the drug does get approval from regulators, then the U.S. has a deal in place to order 1.7 million doses.

France has also ordered 50,000 doses of the drug in advance of approval from regulators.

Davis told CNBC last month that Merck was prepared to distribute ten million doses of the drug by the end of the year if it received approval.

The drug works by blocking the virus from replicating in the body.

It does so by introducing errors into Covid's genetic code, hampering its ability to multiply in human cells.

The medicine targets an enzyme that the virus relies on to generate copies of itself. Merck said this process should make the tablet equally effective at tackling new variants.
Covid virus cells infiltrating a person's brain via their nos, could be the cause of some cognitive symptoms associated with 'long Covid.'

Researchers from the Rotman Research Institute - Baycrest in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the California National Primate Research Center in Davis, California, presented findings pointing to such at the Society for Neuroscience on Wednesday, according to NBC News.

Both sets of researchers believe the virus can directly affect the brain, causing a variety of cognitive issues such as brain fog and a memory recall problems.

The findings give experts more insight into 'long Covid,' a mysterious condition that has appeared in thousands of Covid survivors months after clearing the infection.

Researchers believe that Covid may be able to infect a person's neurons by coming in through the nose, bypassing barriers in place the brain has to prevent such infections (file photo)

Once Covid cells attach themselves to neurons, they can freely travel the body since the immune system is unlikely to attack them. This could potentially be the reason some Covid survivors suffer from cognitive issues post-infection

A person's brain has a natural blood barrier that protects it from viruses and other foreign objects.

The studies presented on Wednesday found that Covid may be able to work its way around that barrier by coming in through the nose, reported NBC News.

Researchers from Davis found in their study that rhesus monkeys that contracted Covid were showing evidence of their brain neurons being infected with the virus.

Monkeys that were older or diabetic - both risk factors for Covid complications - were more likely to show brain neuron infection.

The immune system is hesitant to attack neuron because they are arguably the most important cells in the body so infected neurons can travel around the body with little resistance.

This could be the cause for some cognitive issues related to long Covid, because the virus is remaining in the nervous system.

The Toronto-based research team found that Covid patients were displaying different brain waves up to seven months after infection.

On average, their brains were not working as efficiently as people who did not have Covid.

Dr Allison Sekuler, lead researcher and Vice President of Research at Baycrest, said that the findings clearly show that Covid is affecting the brain in some ways, though further research is needed to determine exactly how.

Dr Greg Vanichkachorn, a physician who treats long Covid patients at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said that Covid is much more than a respiratory virus.

'I have always felt from very early on in treating patients with this condition that it's more than just a respiratory condition,' Vanichkachorn told NBC News.

'I am not surprised about these findings.'

This inefficient brain activity could be the reason behind 'brain fog', when someone has trouble recalling and remembering things after suffering from Covid.

Dr Sam Pleasure, a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, told DailyMail.com last month that parts of the brain could also become inflamed as part of an immune response to the virus.

In cases he has studied, patients who recovered from Covid have suffered from severe psychiatric conditions for potentially months after their bout with the virus.

This kind of inflammation has also been found to occur after SARS infection, a virus very similar to Covid that erupted in Asia in the early 2000s.

'As neurologists, we are used to thinking about these things are occurring post infectious phenomena,' he said.

'We know based on the literature on SARS that there were a reasonable amount of incidence.'

Other conditions that can be caused by this type of inflammation include anosmia, the phenomenon of a person losing their taste and smell suddenly.

Long Covid has shown the ability to affect someone cognitively in a variety of ways, from a lessened attention span, memory issues to losing some executive functions.

While people who are hospitalized due to the virus are more likely to suffer long term cognitive issues due to the virus, experts have detected cases of long Covid in people with relatively minor cases as well.
SCIENCE

SLIME: A NATURAL HISTORY

By Susanne Wedlich (Granta 20, 336 pp)

In the 1960s, the New York City Fire Department decided to copy some fish.

Specifically, they copied predatory bony types like the perch and barracuda, which emit a slimy substance that reduces friction between their bodies and the water, allowing them to swim incredibly fast.

The Fire Department made a version of that slime, called Polyox, and added it to the tanks on their fire engines. The aim was to increase the distance over which their hoses could shoot the water. And it worked. The trouble was, it worked too well  the water displayed so little friction that the firemen kept slipping over in it. The experiment was abandoned.

Susanne Wedlich examines slime in its various guises all the way back to pre-history in a new book (file image)

It was one of the many uses to which mankind has put that disturbingly unpleasant  yet strangely fascinating substance known as slime. As far back as ancient Rome people noticed that the yellow excretions of the banded dye-murex snail turned deep violet in bright sunshine. So thousands of the poor creatures were killed in order to dye Roman rulers gowns an imperial purple.

As recently as the 20th century, a certain black slug was used to lubricate the wheels on carts in Sweden. A supply would be kept on board, and whenever an axle began to squeak, an unfortunate slug would be placed on the wheel hub and crushed as the journey continued.

If you were lucky, on the other hand, you came into this world as an ordinary snail that lived near Patricia Highsmith. The novelist kept hundreds of them as pets, taking them in a salad-filled handbag to dinner parties for company.

When Highsmith moved to France, she got round an import ban by smuggling the snails into the country during several trips, stowing a few of them under her bosom each time.

Susanne Wedlich interprets her brief widely, examining slime in its various guises all the way back to pre-history, including the stuff from which life first emerged. As a result, the book is really for those with a strong interest in the natural sciences. But the lay-reader still gets some choice pickings, mostly of the surely that cant be real? variety.

Theres the species of squid, for example, that confuses predators by shooting out several slimy replicas of itself. Or the glass squid, which avoids the predators in the first place by being completely see-through. Or almost completely: its digestive gland is dark.

The creatures that want the squid for their next meal tend to hunt from below, looking upwards for victims silhouetted against the light coming from above.

So the digestive gland, which is long and thin, can rotate within the squids body  whichever way the creature is facing, the gland turns (rather like a compass needle) to leave its thin end pointing straight down. This minimises the squids chances of being spotted.

We humans are pretty slimy, too. Theres a double layer of the stuff lining our stomachs, to make sure that the hydrochloric acid in there to kill harmful microbes doesnt start dissolving our own tissue.

At certain times of the month, the mucus plug guarding the cervix becomes thinner, thereby allowing access to sperm which at other times would be blocked. Then, in pregnancy the plug thickens again, to prevent dangerous pathogens invading the womb.

SLIME: A NATURAL HISTORY By Susanne Wedlich (Granta 20, 336 pp)

The white of a hens egg serves the same purpose. Its there to protect the embryo  even if a microbe got through the hard shell and the softer membrane inside, crossing the albumen to get to the embryo [would be] like a journey across the Atacama Desert for humans.

If reproduction is slimy, so too are the events leading to it. The males of some species of winkle use the slime trails of females to choose a partner: Well-fed ladies with broad trails free of parasites are particularly popular. As Wedlich points out, advertisement-by-slime is helpful for slugs and snails; after all, they rarely meet by chance, and speed-dating is out of the question.

Then theres the African common rain frog, whose male has front legs too short to hold onto the female during mating  so he attaches himself to her back using slime instead.

Its not only the New York City Fire Department that has taken ideas from nature.

The U.S. navy studied the hagfish (known in German as the schleimaal  slime eel), which defends itself by firing out a suffocating gel that can even cause a shark to gag. The military boffins are now trialling a similar substance that could stop enemy ships in their tracks.

The slug Arion subfuscus sticks itself to the ground with slime so strong that birds find it impossible to dislodge. Scientists analysed the goo, then used it as the starting point for a surgical glue that works in wet conditions  theyve even used it to repair a hole in a pigs heart.

And GoJelly is a project investigating the use of jellyfish slime to trap microplastics in wastewater plants, to prevent them reaching the sea.

Language lovers will learn something from the book. Amphibian comes from the Greek amphi, meaning both, and bios (life), because the creatures start off as herbivores living in water, before turning into carnivores that can exist on land.

But my favourite name belongs to some microbes that live in the Earths crust, sealed away in a coating of gel. Experts have named them subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems  purely so they can be termed SLiMEs.
SOCIAL HISTORY

CLASS OF '37

by Hester Barron and Claire Langhamer (Metro 16.99 272 pp)

One day in May 1937, an idealistic young teacher called Miss Kemp asked a class of 12 to 13-year-old girls what they wanted to do when they grew up.

Like Miss Kemps own father, most of those girls were destined to end up working in one of Boltons lung-clogging cotton mills when they left school at 14. But, perhaps for the first time in generations, many dreamed of better things.

I should like to keep a shop, wrote one girl, in a neat, curling script, as I like serving the little boys and girls with sweets. The women would buy loaves which I could tie up in a parcel. Others aspired to jobs as nurses or teachers, although some of their mothers complained about the homework which distracted the girls from their many household chores: mopping, sewing, cooking and running errands.

Hester Barron and Claire Langhamer have used essays written by teenage girls to write a fascinating book about life in a mill town. Pictured: Schoolgirls in 1937 dreamed of a better life

Miss Kemp had asked the girls of Pike Lane School to write their essays as a contribution to the Mass Observation project.

This had been set up by a group of Left-leaning intellectuals at the start of that year, aiming to create an anthropology of ourselves.

Historians Hester Barron and Claire Langhamer had spent years studying the MO archives when they came across the essays and found themselves enchanted by the intimate snapshot into the lives of these working- class children.

We knew immediately the preciousness of what we were looking at, they say. And theyve used the vivid detail of those essays (on everything from How I spent my holidays and The Royal Family to What I learn at home that I dont learn at school) to write a fascinating book about life in a mill town, two years before war would change everything for its inhabitants.

The characters of girls named Constance, Joyce, Nelly, Ada and Irene shine brightly from every page, often contradicting the rather snooty character sketches written by the (mostly privately educated) Mass Observers.

Madge is described thus: Father; lorry driver. Swears a lot . . . Mother admits cant manage her . . . Very funny looking . . . Untidy clothes.

But from her essays we learn that Madge spent her spare time writing good, sensible poems and dreamed of becoming an author when she grew up, although she also fancied a job on a farm. Just think how nice the fresh cream would be! she wrote. Anyone who reads this, I hope it does not make your mouth water as it has mine.

We learn about the hard conditions at home, at a time when 19 per cent of working men were unemployed and children often went hungry. Little Ada wrote proudly about being let out of school early at lunchtime to make a proper meal which costs only a few pence for her large family.

Sometimes people who have too much, like millionaires . . . go mad or get very miserly and will not give a copper to the poor, wrote Mavis. The poor people who have no money are sometimes tempted to steal, then money is evil when that happens.

Miss Kemp asked a class of 12 to 13-year-old girls at Pike Lane School to write essays about their ambitions in 1937. Pictured: Pikes Lane Girls School pupils c.1934

In the 1930s, the Bolton Housing Survey Committee had declared some parts of the town unsanitary.

Many houses suffered from a lack of light, ventilation and decent sanitation, and were crawling with bugs. Some had no hot water, bath or indoor WC, and many families still shared an outdoor toilet.

The poor housing, malnutrition and dangers of mill work meant that many of the girls had experience of the towns run-down, understaffed infirmary, which one Mass Observer described frankly as a hell hole. Maviss elder sister, Florence, died there of tuberculosis aged just 19. Mavis wasnt consoled by religion. In an essay on Heaven and Hell, she wrote that Jesus was sometimes a little too religious and that Heaven was made up so people can die happy.

The grimness of life threw the treats into sharp relief. Its delightful reading of the girls trips to the cinema. Some 946 million cinema tickets were sold in the UK in 1937 compared with 176 million in 2019, with sales peaking at 1.64 billion in 1946.

CLASS OF ' 37 by Hester Barron and Claire Langhamer (Metro 16.99 272 pp)

The girls write of thrilling to the sound of the Odeon organ music and crunching Maltesers (first sold in 1937) as they lapped up adventures on the screen, from which they learned how easy it is to open a safe and what a very good time a girl can have.

There is no premonition in the girls writing of the looming conflict, even as preparations were being made for the evacuation of children from cities in the event of aerial bombing.

But World War II would define their lives. Their first kisses would be snatched under cover of the blackout and all romance was heightened by the fear of loss.

Nellie goes on to marry a man who served in the RAF and, having witnessed so much death and destruction on the Normandy sands, will never be able to enjoy being on a beach.

Irenes husband (a PoW in the Far East for 18 months) will battle nightmares for the rest of his life.

Mary will be pregnant with her third child when she hears that her husband has been killed.

Madge, the young poet, went on to work as a bookbinder and died of a heart attack in her 50s. But her daughter told Barron and Langhamer that she would have loved to know her words would one day be published in a book: She would be so proud.
The UK Government is set to invest millions into a newly launched investment trust focused on renewable energy projects in Asia.

Investment company ThomasLloyd today announced its plans to raise $340million through its new vehicle, the ThomasLloyd Energy Impact Trust, with up to 25million backing from the Government.

The trust plans to target an annual dividend yield of 2-3 per cent in 2022, rising to 5-6 per cent in 2023, and at least 7 per cent thereafter.

The government will invest up to 25m in the trust as it encourages investors to back green projects

It is also targeting a net asset value total annualised return of 10 to 12 per cent in the medium to long term.

ThomasLloyd claims the trust will be the first ever dedicated emerging markets renewable energy offering to list on the premium segment of the London Stock Exchange.

It said: Carbon emissions in Asia are now greater than Europe and North America combined. Economic and population growth, together with rapid urbanisation in Low Middle Income countries in Asia is driving huge demand for funding to develop and upgrade existing energy infrastructure.

The trust says it has an investment objective of delivering a triple return, comprising a financial return on investment, a measurable environmental return and a discernible social return.

The ThomasLloyd Energy Impact Trust plans to be admitted in early December and the initial proceeds from the IPO are expected to be deployed within six to nine months.

It will initially invest in nine operational solar projects, and one under construction, in India and the Philippines, before investing across Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh.

The assets will be worth approximately $59million, with more than 500 MW of electricity generating capacity once fully operational.

We will use our operating platforms in [India and the Philippines] to expand into neighbouring markets We will grow our team which is based in New Delhi and Bangladesh, Thomas Lloyd chief executive Michael Sieg told This Is Money.

That gives people confidence that there is an established process often unfortunately in our industry [there is a] sort of trial and error process I think thats not what capital markets want to see.

The government has said it will match Thomas Lloyds commitment by investing up to 25million, subject to the completion of diligence, as part of its MOBILIST initiative, which encourages private capital into emerging and developing countries.

Thomas Lloyds chief executive Michael Sieg told This Is Money this could drop to 15million if the trust is oversubscribed.

Other investment products that have received funding from the government include Africa Infrastructure Equity Fund and FirstRand Banks Climate Fund.

The board of ThomasLloyd Energy Impact Trust will be led by Sue Inglis, currently a non-executive director of Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust and The Bankers Investment Trust.

Demand for energy in Asia is profound and set to rise in the coming decades. Asia is home to 60% of the worlds population and the challenge of CO2 emissions in Asia is becoming ever more pressing. Investing as usual will not get us to Net Zero, said Inglis.

With a target NAV total return of 10-12 per cent per annum, the Company will provide Shareholders with an attractive level of dividend income and prospects for dividend growth and capital appreciation over the long term.

Critically, the Company will also help to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, while delivering economic and social progress  a critical triple return. The Investment Manager is highly experienced, with an outstanding track record of delivering investment returns combined with genuine and tangible positive impact.
The boss of Sainsbury's has sought to reassure customers that the supermarket is in a 'good position' for the busy Christmas period, despite ongoing supply chain disruption having hit its Argos sales earlier in the year.

Sainsbury's saw its profits rise by 23 per cent in its first half and has maintained its full-year outlook, despite lingering uncertainty over supply chain disruption.

The chain, which is the country's second biggest supermarket behind Tesco, said it made an underlying pre-tax profit of 371million in the 28 weeks to 18 September, up from 301million a year ago.

Profit: Sainsbury's saw its profits rise by 23% in its first half, new figures show

In early morning trading, shares in FTSE 100-listed Sainsbury's fell, and they are currently down 2.8 per cent or 8.10p to 280.80p. A year ago the share price was 208.90p.

The supermarket's revenue increased by 5.3 per cent to 15.7billion over the period. This figure was bolstered by a rise of 62.7 per cent in fuel sales.

On a statutory basis, Sainsbury's swung to a 541million pre-tax profit, against losses of 137million a year earlier.

Like-for-like group sales, excluding fuel, rose 0.3 per cent in the first half, but slipped by 1.4 per cent in the second quarter after general merchandise sales tumbled.

Total Argos sales slumped 12 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter, with the group blaming 'supply challenges, unseasonal weather and lower demand for home office equipment and technology'.

Optimistic: Sainsbury's boss, Simon Roberts, said the supermarket was in a 'good position' ahead of Christmas

But the supermarket insisted it was 'well placed' to cope with the mounting supply chain issues and labour shortages.

It also kept its full-year profit outlook of 'at least' 660million, up from 356million generated the year before.

Simon Roberts, chief executive of Sainsburys, said: 'Our industry faces labour and supply chain challenges.

'However our scale, advanced cost saving programme, logistics operations and strong supplier relationships put us in a good position as we head into Christmas.'

Retailers and supermarkets have been battling global supply chain disruption and a lorry driver shortage in the UK, which has increasingly left shelves bare and led to delivery delays.

But Mr Roberts wrote to customers last week to reassure them that there would be plenty of products available in stores this Christmas despite the challenges in the supply chain.

The sector is also seeing shopper demand wane after being sent soaring during lockdowns, when non-essential retailers were forced to close.

Mr Roberts said: 'Whilst customers are returning to many pre-pandemic shopping habits, online sales have remained very strong and we continue to grow market share.'

Its interim results showed total grocery sales rose 0.8 per cent in both the first and second quarters, down from growth of 10.5 per cent and 5.1 per cent a year ago.

Outlook: Sainsbury's has maintained its full year profit outlook

Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: 'A sharp reduction in costs has been the major driver in improving profits, but the fiercely competitive environment remains a concern.

'Quite apart from competition provided by the discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, the recent sales of Asda and William Morrison could see renewed and invigorated propositions, while Marks & Spencer and Ocado provide further food for thought, let alone the ominously increasing Amazon presence.'

He added: 'Investment in price competition will also play a key role in the immediate future, especially with the impending and important Christmas season approaching.

'The shares have had a good run of late, with some M&A activity in the sector providing additional froth and have risen by 39 per cent over the last year, as compared to a hike of 23 per cent for the wider FTSE 100.

'However, the market consensus of the stock has recently slipped to a hold, suggesting that the price is now up with events in the absence of any further meaningful developments at Sainsbury, or indeed the sector as a whole.'

John Moore, senior investment manager at Brewin Dolphin, said: 'Sainsburys continues to show resilience, navigating the challenges of the pandemic, investing in its spread of services, and taking self-help measures to improve its position.

'Those initiatives are beginning to bear fruit in the form of increased sales, higher profits, better market share, and improving cash flow.

'These results will do little to dissuade potential buyers of the business  particularly as debt reduction targets are on track  and rumours of interest in the company are likely to persist following Morrisons takeover. Although up in the year to date, the shares still trade some way off previous peaks.'
Shares in BT jumped sharply today after the group revealed it has started dishing out dividends to shareholders again after an 18-month hiatus.

The company's shares, which are listed on the FTSE 100 index, are currently up 6.05 per cent or 8.6p to 150.75p. A year ago the group's share price was 99.42p.

BT said it would pay investors 2.31p a share, adding that it plans to introduce further dividend payments in due course.

Dividends: Shares in BT jumped sharply today after the group revealed it has started dishing out dividends to shareholders again

The group previously scrapped its shareholder dividends to be able to fund its full fibre broadband rollout.

Its decision comes as the telecoms giant revealed its Openreach full fibre broadband has now reached six million homes, costing between 250 and 350 per property.

BT said it had decided not to bring in a partner to help fund fibre to an additional five million premises after a reduction in build costs and strong demand meant it stacked up for the company to invest all the money itself.

BT added it has signed 10 communication providers who use Openreach, including Sky and TalkTalk, to its Equinox long-term full fibre pricing plan.

The details come as bosses revealed revenues in the six months to the end of September slipped 3 per cent to 10.3billion, with sales down in the Global division and the Enterprise wholesale business division.

Higher financing costs also hit profits, which dropped 5 per cent in the six-month period to 1billion, and the business said it was constrained by global supply chain issues hitting stock levels.

Boss Philip Jansen said: 'These results demonstrate an acceleration of pace in the transformation of BT.

In charge: Philip Jansen is the chief executive of BT

'We are creating a better BT for our customers, the country and our shareholders.

'After a record six months, Openreach has now rolled out full fibre broadband to almost six million premises and continues to lower its build cost.

'Its three largest customers are signed up to the new pricing offer as we see rapid adoption of what will be the UKs first nationwide full fibre network spanning 25 million premises by 2026.'

He added that the companys 5G network now covers over 40 per cent of the UKs population and that BT has hit its 1billion cost savings target 18 months early.

Keith Bowman, investment analyst at Interactive Investor, said: 'BT is today underlining its determination to become a more efficient and increasingly greater cash generative company.'

He added: 'This all comes on the back of largely inline results and importantly for investors, the restarting if rebased dividend payment.

'On the downside, the competitive environment remains intense while shareholder returns, are at least for now, not what they were. On the upside, greater previous regulatory clarity has allowed BT to increase and accelerate its total Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) build out.

'Speculative interest following a share stake ultimately taken by multibillionaire telecoms dealmaker Patrick Drahi back in June is not to be forgotten, with BT now building towards the potential for increased future shareholder returns.

'In all and given an undemanding valuation, analyst consensus opinion currently points towards a tentative buy".'
Virgin Money has bounced back strongly from the pandemic, with challenger bank expecting to record bumper profits for 2021.

The bank told investors on Thursday its underlying profit for the year to September surged to 801million, up from just 124million last year.

The lender also plans to cut costs by 175million between now and 2024, reinvesting only half of that back into the business, while accelerating its switch to a fully digital bank.

Closures: Virgin Money has announced it is shutting 31 bank braches and axing around 112 jobs

The bumper past year has enabled the bank to reinstate its dividend at 1p per share, which will come as good news to its shareholders.

David Duffy, the chief executive of Virgin Money said: 'We performed very strongly in 2021, with an expected return to statutory profit before tax underpinned by significant underlying profit growth.

'We increased our net interest margin, reduced costs, improved impairments and delivered a strong capital progression which enabled the proposed reinstatement of a dividend.'

Virgin, however, remains focused on becoming a fully digital, more efficient and growth-oriented bank, and says it will continue to rationalise its branch and office network.

Virgin Money branches closing Here is a list of the Virgin Money bank branches set to close early in 2022:  Airdrie

 Grantham

 Northallerton

 Ashton-Under-Lyne

 Keighley

 Newcastle, Northumberland St

 Banchory

 Leeds, Horsforth

 Nuneaton

 Beverley

 Leeds, White Rose

 Oban

 Blackburn

 Lincoln

 Portree

 Broughty Ferry

 Macclesfield

 Selby

 Chesterfield

 Mexborough

 Sheffield, Meadowhall

 Cumbernauld

 Milngavie

 Stenhousemuir

 East Kilbride, Princes Square

 Musselburgh

 Whitby

 Galashiels

 Nelson

 Wick Source: Virgin Money UK

Part of its cost saving plans include the shutting of 31 bank branches and axing around 112 jobs in a push to move more of its operations online.

Among others, branches in Beverley, Blackburn, Lincoln, Macclesfield, Nuneaton, Whitby and Wick are all due to close their doors for the final time early next year.

Whilst it appears to be on a mission to eradicate its physical presence on the high street, it is also planning to invest 275million over the next three years into online projects.

These include its intention to launch a digital wallet with Global Payments, a leading worldwide provider of payment technology and software solutions.

This will offer its customers integrated payments, Buy Now Pay Later services, and Virgin Red loyalty points scheme.

It is also planning to transition to Cloud-based IT architecture via a new partnership with Microsoft as well as launch a national digital business banking service.

Duffy said: 'Our accelerated digital strategy will result in new propositions, including a digital wallet, and will deliver efficiency and agility improvements.

'The combination of these factors will help us to become a growth-oriented digital bank that offers a best-in-class experience and unique loyalty rewards for customers, and delivers double-digit returns for shareholders.'

Accounts released by Virgin Money earlier today showed a return to profitability for the bank.

An increased net margin, reduced costs and soaring current account sales all helped the challenger bank towards increasing its operating profit by more than five times year-on-year.

Virgin Money UK's net interest margin - a key measure of a bank's profitability - improved six basis points to 162 for 2021.

The net interest margin is the amount of money that a bank is earning in interest on loans compared to the amount it is paying in interest on deposits.

Current account sales were also up by 95 per cent year-on-year along with relationship deposits which were up by 19 per cent.

Since the start of October last year, Virgin Money has recorded customer net gains of 32,994, according to Current account switching figures.

To put that in perspective only Starling Bank and Lloyds Bank have performed better, with many of the major banks having suffered net customer losses during that period.
Some households in England are paying council tax equivalent to a third of their annual rent or mortgage costs.

The inequity of the council tax system has been laid bare by new data from the property website Rightmove, which reveals vast differences in the amount paid across the country.

In the most expensive area, Nottingham, residents pay more than 2,226 per year for the typical Band D home - more than 2.5 times the 829 paid by residents in affluent Westminster.

And the cost is only set to increase, as Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced at last week's Budget that councils will be able to increase the levy by up to 3 per cent from next year.

In Middlesbrough, council tax is equivalent to 34% of an annual mortgage payment, compared to Kensington & Chelsea, where council tax is equal to just 2% of an annual mortgage payment

On average, council tax costs for band D properties are equivalent to 16 per cent of a households annual rent across England, and 15 per cent of annual mortgage payments - but there is huge disparity between areas.

Households in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough pay council tax equivalent to around a third of their total annual rent or mortgage bills, compared to those in Westminster where the proportion is just 1 or 2 per cent.

Council tax is a domestic property tax charged to households which is collected by local authorities.

The money is used to fund council services such as social care, schools and roads.

How much you pay depends on the council tax band assigned to the property you live in.

There are eight valuation bands from A to H (D being the average) which are based on how much the property was worth in 1991.

In Nottingham where average house prices are 241,000, residents pay the highest council tax, at 2,226 per year for the average Band D property.

This is nearly three times the 829 paid by residents in Westminster, where the average property price is a whopping 1,571,000.

Pricey postcodes: The areas with the highest council tax are Nottingham, Dorset and Rutland

Paula Higgins, founder and chief executive of the HomeOwners Alliance said: 'The council tax bands were last set 30 years ago in 1991 and is in dire need of reform.

'Basing a tax on 1991 house prices means that properties in areas of highest house price growth are undervalued compared to regions where house prices have not seen the same spectacular level of growth.'

Further increases could mean home-hunters start to consider council tax costs when they're choosing a location to move to Tim Bannister, Rightmove

At present, 104 out of 309 council tax districts charge families with Band D bills more than 2,000.

According to analysis by the Daily Mail, a 3 per cent rise could increase the number of districts charging in excess of 2,000 by 50 to 154 out of 309.

Tim Bannister, Rightmove's director of property data said: 'The data reveals a stark difference in the amount of council tax paid in many areas across England.

'Further increases could mean home-hunters start to consider council tax costs much more as a factor when they're choosing a location to move to, especially in those areas where the cost is more than, or close to, a third on top of the costs of their rent or mortgage.'

At present renters in Hartlepool, living in a property with a council tax band of D, can expect to pay 2,099 a year in council tax on top of 6,034 for their annual rent.

The areas with the lowest council tax in England are Westminster, Wandsworth and the City of London.

Areas of England with lowest council tax as a proportion of their mortgage bills.

However, renters in the London boroughs of Westminster and Wandsworth, where the average annual rents are 47,434 and 30,640 respectively, are only required to pay 829 or 845 in council tax for a band D property.

In Middlesbrough, council tax is equivalent to 34 per cent of annual mortgage payments, compared to Kensington & Chelsea, where council tax is equal to just 2 per cent of annual mortgage payments.

Who sets the rates - and why do they vary so much?

The quirks of Britain's council tax system mean homeowners in some parts of the country are paying close to three times more than in some of the most expensive areas of London, with wealthy homeowners asked to contribute less than those on more modest budgets.

Although the Valuations Office Agency, a central government body, is responsible for working out which council tax band each home should fall into, it does not decide what those charges should be. That is up to individual councils.

Poll What is your least favourite tax? Inheritance tax Capital gains tax VAT Sin taxes (sugar, alcohol, petrol) Stamp duty on property Council tax Income tax What is your least favourite tax? Inheritance tax 274 votes

Capital gains tax 33 votes

VAT 68 votes

Sin taxes (sugar, alcohol, petrol) 31 votes

Stamp duty on property 62 votes

Council tax 341 votes

Income tax 67 votes Now share your opinion





While council tax is a major source of a council's revenue, is is not their only source of income.

Government grants, transport services, parking tickets and fines, leisure centres, business rates and licensing also form part of a council's income.

This means that some councils derive more income from other sources and can therefore choose to charge lower council tax.

Paula Higgins said: 'Wealthier local authorities have other means to raise much- needed funds, such as business rates.'

This explains why authorities such as Westminster, which is home to lots of offices, shops and restaurants, might charge less.

The cost also depends on how heavily council services such as social care are used, and how expensive they are to run.

'Ironically, residents in poorer areas have more of a need for local authority services, and these are partially funded by council tax,' Higgins adds.

How can the council tax system be made fairer?

Updating the current council tax bands based on today's property values - rather than those from 1991 - would be one way to solve the issue.

Another solution is to add higher bands for those in the most expensive properties, as currently the highest band relates to homes worth 320,000 in 1991.

This equates to a home worth around 2million today. If those in properties worth much more than this could be charged even more, it would increase income from the tax - but it would still disproportionately benefit more wealthy areas.

Jeremy Leaf, north London estate agent and a former RICS residential chairman, said: 'A council tax revaluation is long overdue and, in my view, some extra bands should be added even if the present system stays in place.

'This is so that someone living in a house worth 20million is not paying the same Council Tax as someone in a 2million house just because they are both in Band H.

The council tax system is based on property values from 1991 - and some experts argue that it is overdue for an update, as the typical house price has more than doubled

'Maybe a percentage of stamp duty could be paid to the local authority, or people earning below a certain level should be exempt from payment of council tax and higher-rate taxpayers should be asked to pay more.'

Others have called for the system to be scrapped altogether and replaced with something else.

For example, the Labour-leaning think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research has called for homeowners to pay an annual levy worth 0.5 per cent of the value of their home, instead of council tax.

Paula Higgins also believes the current council tax system is in need of urgent reform.

'If the government is serious about levelling up, then the reform of council tax is a no-brainer.

'A fairer system would be to have an annual property tax that is based on the value of the property.'

How can you cut your council tax?

The good news is that people in certain circumstances can get a discount on their council tax bill.

Many of these exemptions are not applied automatically, so residents will need to inform their local authority if they think they are eligible.

Firstly, the local authority will assume two or more adults are living in any given property. But those who live alone can get a 25 per cent discount on their bill as a single occupant.

There are also means-tested ways of reducing a council tax bill for those on benefits or low incomes.

Full-time students, student nurses, the severely mentally impaired and members of religious orders are also exempt from paying.

Homeowners and renters can also challenge their council tax band if they think it has been banded unfairly.

A sensible first step, according to the HomeOwners Alliance, is to find out what your neighbours pay, either by asking them or looking online.

For homes in England and Wales you can search by postcode on the Valuation Office Agency website and it will list the council tax bands for properties.

For homes in Scotland, you can search on the Scottish Assessors website.

If you're convinced your property is in the wrong band then in England and Wales, you need to contact the VOA.

In Scotland, you'll need to start with the SAA website, input your details, choose to 'make a proposal' and they will contact you.

But challenging your tax band also runs the risk of being moved into a higher band.

You will therefore need to try and work out what your property was worth in 1991 to establish whether your banding is correct.

Almost one third of Britons successfully challenged their council tax bill in 2018/2019, according to figures from the Valuation Office Agency.

Its data showed that of the 38,350 cases resolved in 2018/19, 11,910 saw their bills fall compared to just 30 bills that were upped as result of challenging.

'It's not so well-known that residents can challenge their council tax band, but this is only worthwhile if you think you are paying more than neighbouring properties,' said Higgins.

'There are also discounts on offer if you are on benefits, a low income or you are living alone in the property.'
Advertisement

More people were infected with Covid in England last month than at any point this year, a mass testing study claimed today.

REACT-1 data  taken from one of the largest surveillance projects in England  show around 1.72 per cent of people (one in 58) across the country had the virus on any given day in October.

It was up from just 0.83 per cent the previous month and marked the highest point in any point sampled by the study.

But the Imperial College London researchers did not collect data during the height of the second wave towards the end of December and start of January.

Experts warned the figures, based on random testing of tens of thousands of people, show 'the pandemic is far from over and remains a serious threat to health and wellbeing'.

Infections grew quickest in children aged five to 17, with nearly six per cent in the age group infected at any one point during the month, and doubled in people aged 65 and over.

And outbreaks grew in eight out of nine regions, with the highest rates found in the South West where prevalence quadrupled.

The figures come despite official figures showing Covid cases have been falling week-on-week every day for eleven days barring Monday  a blip that was down to Wales not publishing any infection numbers the previous week.

Department of Health bosses posted 41,299 positive coronavirus tests yesterday, down six per cent on last Wednesday's figure of 43,941.

More people were infected with Covid in England last month than at any point this year, according to REACT-1 data  taken from one of the largest Covid studies in the country. It was up from just 0.83 per cent the previous month and was the highest point in any point sampled by the study, which did not collect data during the height of the pandemic during the end of December and start of January

Infections grew most quickly in children aged five to 17, with nearly six per cent in the age group infected during the month, and doubled in people aged 65 and over

And they grew in eight out of nine regions, with the highest rates found in the South West, which increased fourfold from 0.59 per cent to 2.18 per cent in a month

Top Covid scientist Sir Jeremy Farrar shared series of tweets criticising Government over lack of masks and Plan B days before quitting SAGE The eminent scientist who quit SAGE after condemning England's laissez-faire response to the third Covid wave shared a series of critical tweets aimed at Government in the run-up to his resignation. Sir Jeremy Farrar liked a post that accused ministers of seeing old people as 'expendable' at around the time he stood down from No10's scientific advisory panel at the end of October. On the same day, the distinguished epidemiologist endorsed a tweet slamming Tory MPs for not wearing masks in the Commons, which added: 'Seriously no wonder our stats are so terrible.' In the middle of October, Sir Jeremy liked a sarcastic post about rising Covid variants in Britain which read: 'How could this happen in the face of mask wearing, ventilation, vaccine passports, preventing infection in school children... oh.' In what appeared to be a thinly-veiled jibe at the lack of any social restrictions in England, he shared a story last Monday with the caption: 'Honeybees use social distancing when mites threaten hives.' Advertisement

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said: 'Although the number of hospitalisations and deaths remain lower than in previous peaks, these findings are a powerful reminder that the pandemic is far from over and remains a serious threat to health and wellbeing.

'This new data strongly reinforces the need for all eligible age groups to get vaccinated and to take mitigating measures such as wearing a face covering in crowded places and ensuring good ventilation indoors.

'This is particularly urgent for older people whose immunity may be waning given that several months have passed since they received their jabs.

'I strongly encourage everyone who is eligible for a third dose or a booster shot to come forward without delay.'

The REACT-1 study randomly sampled more than 67,000 volunteers in the general population from October 19 to 29.

Researchers suggest the increase is being driven by infection in children aged five to 12, and those aged 13 to 17.

The prevalence observed among the younger age group was 5.85 per cent, while in the older bracket it was 5.75 per cent.

The study estimated that the next highest prevalence was in 'parent-aged' adults, those between 35 and 54.

Regionally, the highest prevalence was in the South West, with researchers saying this 'might be related to widespread reports of people who tested positive using lateral flow tests going on to test negative using RT-PCR tests'.

'Reports specifically tied false negative RT-PCR results to a Covid-19 test laboratory in Wolverhampton which received many samples from South West,' the paper continues.

In mid-October, NHS Test and Trace suspended testing operations provided by Immensa Health Clinic Ltd at its laboratory in Wolverhampton.

An estimated 43,000 people may have been given wrong negative PCR Covid test results, resulting in them not isolating and potentially spreading the infection to many others.

Paul Elliott, director of the React programme, Imperial College London, told a press briefing: 'We do mention that in the paper as a possible explanation why we're seeing that cluster of cases in the South West.

'Obviously, we don't know, but I think it's a viable hypothesis.'

The study also found there was a higher rate of the virus among those who had been in contact with a confirmed Covid case, those who lived in larger households, and those who live in households with one or more children.

While 12- to 15-year-olds in England are eligible for Covid vaccines, data suggests the uptake has been slow.

Professor Elliott said: 'This does coincide with half-term. We do know that we saw a very, very similar pattern in round six at the same time last year, where over the half-term period the rates dropped.

'And then actually they rebounded and went up again. So I think watching what happens in the next week, 10 days, is going to be really critical.'

Dr Stephen Griffin, associate professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds, said: 'This latest analysis by the REACT team shows the highest prevalence of SARS-CoV2 that has ever been witnessed in the UK.

'This is predominantly amongst under 18s. I can only vigorously agree with the conclusions in the manuscript that vaccination in over-12s, with extension to 5-11, should be an absolute priority to prevent transmission, disruption in schools and incidence of severe disease amongst those infected.

'During the interim period, it seems ludicrous to not introduce mitigations in schools. This is not something to be ignored, no matter how desperately we all want to return to normality; the bitter irony in doing so is that it will make normal all the more difficult to regain in the longer term.

'We must protect young people from this virus, I urge the MHRA and JCVI to prioritise their assessment of the vaccine for under 12s.'
Tom Hanks admitted Jeff Bezos invited him to go to space for a cool $28million before imitating the short flight on Jimmy Kimmel's couch.

Hanks, 65, didn't seem too worried that he missed the excited 10 minute and 17 second ride in a phallic-shaped rocket ship Blue Origin after turning down 57-year-old Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' offer.

The offer eventually went to William Shatner - best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek - who did not pay to go on the ride, according to the Wall Street Journal. The 90-year-old became the oldest person to go to space.

The Toy Story actor didn't seem too impressed by the billionaire's space travel offer at such a high price,

'Well yeah, provided I pay,' he told Jimmy Kimmel on his show yesterday. 'And you know, it cost like 28million bucks for something like that. I'm doing good, Jimmy, I'm doing good.

'I'm not paying 28 bucks- you know what, we could simulate the experience of going to space right here. It's about a 12-minute flight...is that about it?'

Tom Hanks, 65, wasn't too upset that he missed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' second human flight to space. He told late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel yesterday that he was 'good' without paying the steep $28million price tag for a ride on Bezos' spacecraft

Hanks stimulated the 10 minute and 17-second ride into space by laying back in his hair while shaking his body and grunting to imitate take-off

The crowd roared with laughter as the Toy Story actor faked excitement over his trip. 'You do that for four minutes, alright. You do that for four minutes and then you get up and you're floating. You take off your seatbelt [and say:] "whoa, whoa, this is fabulous! Man, ohh, what?" then get back in and another four minutes of [grunting noises]. I don't need to spend 28million bucks on that,' he told Kimmel

Hanks proceeded to lay back against the chair and grunted while shaking his body to simulate take-off.

'You do that for four minutes, alright. You do that for four minutes and then you get up and you're floating. You take off your seatbelt [and say:] "whoa, whoa, this is fabulous! Man, ohh, what?" then get back in and another four minutes of [grunting noises].'

'I don't need to spend 28million bucks to do that.'

When Kimmel asked if the star would travel to space for free, Hanks admitted he'd simulate it 'on occasion.'

'I'd do it on occasion to experience the joy of pretending I'm a billionaire.'

Bezos, 57, made his first trip to space in mid-July, becoming a part of the first all-civilian, unpiloted crew

The phallic-shaped space craft took off for a little over 10 minutes before landing again in July

The pair also discussed Hank's new role as an astronaut in Apple TV's upcoming work Finch, where he plays a robotics engineer who has survived a 'cataclysmic solar event' and has to ensure the safety of his dog after he's gone by creating a robot to do just that.

The movie star is no stranger to challenging new roles.

The actor, who has played the role of airplane pilot Sully making an emergency landing on water and family-favorite Forrest Gump, is taking on a new challenge as a radio show host.

Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk actor William Shatner, 90, replaced Hanks on the second flight on October 13, becoming the oldest man to go to space

Shatner (pictured second left) reportedly did not have to pay a cool $28million for the flight like Hank's was offered, but rather went on the excursion for free

The actor told Kimmel he will be hosting a show on Boss Radio 66, which Hanks described as 'stuff from the 60s that you've never heard before.'

Hanks has already hosted several shows for the radio, including one for his 66th birthday.

Hanks might have opted out of the space flight extravaganza for a cheaper (and free) version of the excursion on his couch, but Bezos - alongside his brother, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands, and 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk took off on the first all-civilian flight in mid-July.

Shatner, who replaced Hanks, flew to space on Bezos' rocket on October 13, Blue Origin's second human flight. The second flight on the New Shephard spacecraft lasted a little over 10 minutes.

The crew flew 347,539 feet above ground level, or roughly 65 miles.

Bezos, who is worth $193billion, became a part of the first all-civilian, unpiloted crew in July and has since announced he plans to open a commercial space station called Orbital Reef by the end of the decade.

Orbital Reef will be able to host 10 people at a time and will have a 'space hotel,' as well as be an ideal place for 'film-making in microgravity' and be able to 'conducting cutting-edge research.'
An unlikely beat down was caught on video after a man dressed as the terrifying clown from the horror movie IT was jumped by group of kindergartners, who were seen tackling the man to the ground and then punching him.

The group of kindergartners was gathered inside the gymnasium at the school, identified only by the words 'Wildcats Nation' painted across the wall, sometime over the Halloween weekend.

As the kids run around and play, a man donning a Pennywise the Clown mask - complete with over-sized yellow pants, colorfully striped shirt and a brightly colored red wig - announces his terrifying presence with arms outstretched to the ceiling as he runs to approach a small child.

A chorus of high-pitched screams can be heard as the man menaces the kindergartners, many of whom were wearing Halloween costumes of their own.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

A man donning a Pennywise the Clown mask (pictured) - complete with oversized yellow pants and a red wig - announces his terrifying presence as he runs to approach a small child

A chorus of high-pitched screams can be heard as the man menaces the kindergartners, many of whom were wearing Halloween costumes of their own

One brave kid, pictured, literally jumps into action while drop-kicking and tackling the clown to the ground, where the rest of the children join in punching and beating the downed man

The viral video had more than 52,000 views and counting on WorldStarHipHop as of Wednesday evening

Suddenly, one brave kid literally jumps into action while drop-kicking and tackling the clown to the ground, where the rest of the children then join in punching and beating the downed man.

The viral video had more than 52,000 views and counting on WorldStarHipHop as of Wednesday evening.

Comments on the video ranged from surprise to disappointment, and also to support for the children, who wasted no time in jumping into action to attack what they likely believed to be a killer clown.

'That kid came out of nowhere,' one person said of the first kid who tackles the hapless clown to the floor.

'Shortest horror movie in history,' another person commented of the 24-second clip.

'These kids shouldn't even know what It is about... but some ppl [sic] let their kids watch (whatever),' a critic offered, alluding to the R-rating for the 2017 film starring Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise the Clown, which in itself was a remake of the classic 1990 Stephen King horror movie.

'Shortest horror movie in history,' another person commented of the 24-second clip

'These kids shouldn't even know what It is about... but some ppl [sic] let their kids watch (whatever),' a critic offered, alluding to the R-rating for the 2017 film

Pictured: Bill Skarsgard in the 2017 remake of the 1990 Stephen King classic It

'Even as kids, if we unite we are stronger than the enemy...,' a third person commented in support of the kids.

'Snatched his clown wig off and everything..' a different commenter wrote.

'He thought he was crashing the party but the party crashed him lol,' another commenter posted.

Clown masks and costumes have become quite controversial in schools nationwide following incidents over the years.

In 2014, a 14-year-old boy dressed in a clown mask terrorized students in a North Carolina middle school lunchroom, with students screaming and running from the lunchroom to get away, according to WBTV.

School officials found the boy waving a 12-inch butcher knife and wearing the creepy clown mask. When a responding officer asked the student to drop the knife, he continued to wave it in his right hand, the outlet reported.

'Snatched his clown wig off and everything..' a different commenter replied, with the costumed man seen wigless in the photo above

'Even as kids, if we unite we are stronger than the enemy...,' a third supporter of the kids wrote

In 2014, a 14-year-old boy dressed in a clown mask, pictured, terrorized students at a North Carolina middle school, with students screaming and running from the lunchroom to get away

School officials found the boy waving a 12-inch butcher knife and wearing the creepy clown mask, pictured. A second butcher knife was found inside the boy's backpack at the time

The officer said he had to strike the student in the forearm three times with his baton before finally getting him to drop the weapon.

A second butcher knife was found inside the boy's backpack.

The unnamed student was charged with possession of a weapon on school property, going armed in terror of the public, assault with a deadly weapon and communicating threats.

Two years later in 2016, a 12-year-old Michigan girl was removed from MacDonald Middle School after she was found wearing a clown mask and threatening her classmates, and she had two knives in her backpack, according to Fox 47 News.

That same year, schools in an Ohio district were closed for a day after a woman reported being attacked by a male dressed as a clown. The woman told police that her attacker also made a threat against students.
As police prepared to rescue missing girl Cleo Smith from a run down public housing home, they had no idea what was waiting for them inside.

Weeks of investigation failed to track her down since she was abducted from a remote camping ground on October 16, until a tip-off on Tuesday night.

Detectives had just hours to make a tough call on whether to go in blind, or leave Cleo, 4, there another night while they gathered more information.

They couldn't even be sure Cleo was actually in the house in Carnarvon in northwest Western Australia, or if any other children were held captive there.

Four-year-old Cleo Smith has an iced lolly in hospital after being rescued from a house in Carnarvon, Western Australia

About midnight they pulled over Terry Kelly, 36, who lived at the home on Tonkin Street in Brockman and arrested him on suspicion of kidnapping Cleo.

But police still didn't know what awaited them on the other side of the door, usually guarded by Kelly's dog.

Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson got a late night briefing on the situation from officers on the ground.

'They really did not know what they were going to encounter,' he said.

At 12.46am on Wednesday, police decided to risk breaking into the locked house and four officers with crowbars and a battering ram stormed inside.

Fortunately they found the house empty except for Cleo, who was playing with toys in a bedroom and appeared physically unharmed.

Western Australian Police Force bodycam footage shows four-year-old Cleo Smith being rescued in Carnarvon, Western Australia

Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine speaking during a press conference in Canarvon, Western Australia. He was one of four officers who broke into the house where kidnapped four-year-old Cleo Smith was being held

Commissioner Dawson said the tip, containing 'really important information about a car', was critical to the decision to strike.

'I can say that the information about a car was really important,' he told Perth radio station 6PR on Wednesday.

'Yes we had a number of people we were very very interested in, but late [Tuesday] and in the early hours of [Wednesday] morning we got a breakthrough.

'We got a strong lead and [the taskforce officers] briefed me on it and said "we're going to have to get into this house".'

When they did get in and found the little girl, they had to make absolutely sure it was Cleo.

'It certainly looked like Cleo,' said Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine, one of the four officers who broke into the house.

Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson speaking during a press conference in Canarvon. He made a fateful call before missing child Cleo Smith was rescued

'I wanted to be absolutely sure it was her, so I said "what's your name?" and she didn't answer, so I asked her again, "what's your name?" and she didn't answer again,' said Mr Blaine, who is a father himself.

'So I asked her a third time and she looked at me and said: "My name is Cleo".'

Bodycam footage showed Cleo clinging to an officer as Mr Blaine asked her if she was OK, telling she was going to be taken to see 'mummy and daddy'.

After reuniting with her daughter at the local hospital, Ellie Smith posted on Instagram a photo of Cleo with the words: 'Our family is whole again' alongside a red heart.
Queensland Health has left social media users in stitches by encouraging residents of the Sunshine State to masturbate.

The department issued the public health message on Thursday morning advising residents to 'Give Yourself a Hand', promoting the health benefits of masturbation.

'Masturbation is a normal and healthy part of a person's sexual experience and a great way to discover what you are comfortable with,' Queensland Health wrote on Facebook.

'The best part is, it's for everyone  and also offers a wealth of health and sexual health benefits!'

'It's important for us all to work towards normalising sex-positive messages about masturbation to reduce associated feelings of shame and fear, and improve overall sexual health and literacy.'

The latest article published by Queensland Health outlines the physical and mental health benefits while encouraging healthy conversation about masturbation.

Masturbation leads to increased endorphins that influence mental wellbeing, can help reduce menstrual cramps and can lead to body positivity, according to Queensland Health.

A remarkable announcement from Queensland Health on Thursday morning is encouraging Queenslanders to masturbate (pictured)

Queensland Health urged residents to open up the conversation around masturbation to reduce stigma on Thursday morning (pictured)

Other added benefits also include protection from sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy as a form of safe sex.

However the announcement took social media users by surprise as Queensland Health departed from its usual Covid-19 messaging.

'Wow good morning from Qld health!' wrote one person.

'Nice topic for this mornings breakfast,' commented another.

'Whos hacked the Qld health website,' added a third.

Other users saw the opportunity to come up with their best puns with one person writing: 'This is a STROKE of genius Qld Health'.

'We can do this if we all pull together,' commented another.

'Definitely hard work ahead,' added a third.
Louis Gabriel Ramos, 27, was arrested in Arizona by the FBI's office in Phoenix after fleeing from New York. It is believed that Ramos was 'possibly' on his way to the U.S. border with Mexico

A man connected to the double murders of a mother and daughter found brutally stabbed to death at their home in Yonkers was arrested after fleeing to Arizona in an attempt to cross the US-Mexico border.

Yonkers Police Commissioner John Mueller said Luis Gabriel Ramos, 27, was arrested on Wednesday in Salome, Arizona, where his extradition to New York is pending.

Ramos, faces two felony charges of second-degree murder for the stabbing murder which is believed to have taken place sometime on Halloween weekend, between Friday, October 29, and when the two were found on Tuesday, November 2.

Authorities believe the suspect drove to Arizona from New York after carrying out the double murder.

The two victims have been identified as Isabella Triano, 70, and her 38-year-old daughter, Trisha Miller.

The motive for their deaths was not immediately known, but police confirmed that this was not a random killing, as they believe the victims knew the suspect.

'We want to make sure that the public understands that they can rest easy that there's not someone out here doing this kind of thing on a random basis,' Yonkers Police Commissioner Mueller said. 'We think that the perpetrator knew the victims.'

Authorities added that they were able to track down one of Ramos' ex-girlfriends, who gave them valuable information on the perpetrator's location.

Triano and Miller were found in their home on Shipman Avenue with apparent 'knife trauma' on Tuesday after a friend asked for a welfare check Monday afternoon, when she had not heard from one of them for several days.

A press conference held by the Yonkers Police Department announced the arrest of Luis Gabriel Ramos. John Mueller, the department's commissioner is pictured wearing a vest

Both victims, Isabella Triano, 70, and Trisha Miller, 38, were found dead at their home on Tuesday after a friend asked for a welfare check when she had not heard from one of them for several days. Police say Triano and Miller suffered knife trauma, and it is believed they had been dead in the home for several days

Miller was last seen on Friday, which prompted the call for the wellness check. She worked at a nearby Burger King, while her mother was a custodian at Saunders High School.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Mueller praised his department's work, the help of the Westchester County District Attorney's Office and also the FBI Phoenix Fugitive Taskforce for apprehending Ramos about 150 miles from the border in Arizona.

He added that the investigation was especially challenging because of a hoarding situation at the home, and investigators needed to wear HazMat suits. Neighbors have previously complained about the house, according to ABC 7 News.

Department of Public Works trucks have been hauling garbage bags full of items that were filling the outside area and inside the home.

Local authorities said it could take some time before police are done collecting evidence due to the amount of personal items spread out both inside and outside of the home.

Authorities say there was also a hoarding condition inside the home, and bags of trash and other debris circling the outside area - hampering the investigation

Neighbors have previously complained about the mess, according to ABC 7 News

Police added that this was not the first time that Ramos had gotten into legal trouble. He was recently arrested on October 26 in Wappingers Falls for felony arson, but was then released on his own recognizance.

Meanwhile, one of the victims, Triano-Carpio was an employee of the Yonkers Public Schools for 24 years.

In a statement today, the district said 'Ms. Triano-Carpio began her career in 1997 as a custodial worker at Museum Middle School and in 2005 transferred to Saunders Trades & Technical High School. This tragic passing significantly impacts the staff and students at Saunders where she spent her last 16 years.

'Ms. Triano-Carpio epitomized a valued employee who was conscientious about her work and was a beloved member of the school's family. She is fondly remembered as a caring and kind individual who always ask with a smile, how are you doing and how is your family.'
Scott Morrison has sparked backlash after thanking God for 'answering our prayers' with the miracle rescue of missing youngster Cleo Smith.

The Prime Minister fought back tears after learning the missing four-year-old girl had been found in a locked home in Carnarvon, 900km north of Perth, just before 1am on Wednesday

'This particular case has captured the hearts of Australians and I want to thank all of the police and all of those involved in making sure Cleo is safe,' Mr Morrison said.

'Thank you so much I just thank God that Cleo is home and is safe.'

He took to social media to echo those comments, writing: 'Our prayers answered.'

But some took issue with Mr Morrison - who is a devout Pentecostal Christian - for bringing up his faith.

Four-year-old Cleo Smith was found alive by police in the early hours of Wednesday morning, having been missing for 18 days

Prime Minister Scott Morrison thanked God as well as the police who brought Cleo home

'Thanking the WA police and anyone else would be appropriate. Referring to prayers as PM in a country where religion is very separate to state is not,' tweeted student Simon Dwyer.

'Our prayers? Speak for all Australians please,' added another.

'Your prayers did nothing, Morrison. The WA coppers did it without the help of your Sky Fairy,' wrote a passionate atheist.

Western Australia Police Minister Paul Papalia also appeared to take a subtle swipe at Mr Morrison's comments.

'If you feel the need to thank God today, thank God for the Western Australian police force,' he said in a press conference following Cleo's return.

'Cleo's rescue wasn't the result of an accidental sighting or a suspicious event, it was the result of hard police grind.

'From the moment this incident began, the Western Australian police force conducted themselves to the absolute highest level of professionalism.'

'Nice slap-down Paul Papalia,' wrote one supporter after the conference. 'Big swipe at Scott Morrison,' pointed out another.

Meanwhile, others supported the Prime Minister in his faith and said they too had been praying for Cleo's safe return.

'Prayers answered. Now praying for her recovery of the experience,' one said.

'Praise God for her safe return - thankyou to all the police and emergency services and volunteers for their wonderful efforts,' said another.

Police used a battering ram and a crowbar to ram down the door of the house Cleo had been hidden in - which was just seven minutes away from her mother's home.

Mr Morrison also shared a tweet after the news broke the missing four-year-old had been found

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, WA Police Minister Paul Papalia said: 'If you feel the need to thank God today, thank God for the Western Australian police force'

Cleo who had been alone inside a bedroom told officers: 'my name is Cleo' before she was finally reunited with her family after an agonising 18 days apart.

Detectives say there is still much more work to be done surrounding the disappearance of the four-year-old.

A 36-year-old Carnarvon man was taken into custody and questioned over the suspected abduction but was yet to be charged on Wednesday night.

Police say he has no connection to Cleo's family and was not at the house when Cleo was found.

The man was not on a list of known sex offenders in Carnarvon, a tourist gateway on WA's northwest coast known for its banana plantations.

There are no other suspects linked to the case.

Police shared a photo of a beaming Cleo waving from her hospital bed after reuniting with her mother Ellie Smith and stepdad Jake Gliddon

Signs welcoming the four-year-old home were set up in the small country town of Carnarvon

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said the 140-strong taskforce investigating Cleo's disappearance would continue its work.

'We will be working through this for the next week or two at least,' he told reporters in Carnarvon.

'There's much more work yet to be done. But I'm just the proudest police commissioner in the world at the moment.'

Cleo was examined in hospital and found to be in good physical health.

Police officers are seen outside the house where Cleo had been detained in Carnarvon

Police shared a photo of a beaming Cleo waving from her hospital bed after reuniting with her mother Ellie Smith and stepdad Jake Gliddon.

'Our family is whole again,' Ms Smith posted on Instagram.

Mr Dawson thanked the WA public, volunteers and officers involved in the 18-day search for Cleo, while calling on the Carnarvon community to remain united.

'We can rejoice that this little girl has been found but we need to move forward as a community as well,' he said.

The state government had offered a $1 million reward for information to find Cleo but authorities do not expect it to be claimed.
A mother has recalled how her little boy predicted his playmate Cleo Smith would be found alive before she was miraculously found alive and well.

The Western Australian town of Carnarvon, and the nation, was rocked when the toddler vanished from her tent at a campsite 75km north of her hometown almost three weeks ago.

The four-year-old is finally back home in the safe arms of her parents after detectives rescued the child from a locked room inside a housing commission property on the town's outskirts early Wednesday.

Leticia Andreoli's son Jonah attends the local St Mary Star of the Sea Catholic School with Cleo.

She and her husband had been upfront with Jonah about his little friend's disappearance from the start without going into too much detail.

Jonah opened up to his parents on Tuesday night, just hours before Cleo was found.

Cleo Smith has been reunited with her family, 18 days after she vanished from a campsite

'He's seen posters and he always points at them but he hasn't really said anything until the night before she was found, where he saw her picture and he said, 'Oh, Mummy, Cleo's lost, she's gone,' Ms Andreoli told the Today show on Thursday.

'And I said, 'Yeah, Bub, she is lost.'

'And then he said, 'Oh, maybe we'll find her', and then it was absolutely amazing and in the morning we woke up and she'd been found, so I don't know what he knows that I don't but, yeah, he's on to it.'

Ms Andreoli and her husband were involved in the 18 day search for Cleo as marine rescue volunteers.

'I briefly told Jonah that Cleo wouldn't be at school and that Cleo was lost,' she said.

'I didn't go much further into detail, because he's only four, but I just wanted to give him a heads up just in case he heard it in another way.

Leticia Andreoli (right) has recalled the chilling words her son Jonah said about his missing school friend Cleo just hours beofre she was rescued

She described the rollercoaster of emotions for the close-knit community in recent weeks.

The 5000 residents had been losing hope before heartbreak turned to tears of joy in an instant.

'It's been absolutely insane. Like, obviously in 18 days before Cleo was found everybody in town was just really, really shell-shocked and upset,' Ms Andreoli said.

'There were a lot of people who were quite distressed. We just got out there in the community trying to make sure everyone had support and was doing OK. It's been really difficult.

'And then yesterday, the whole opposite. Everyone was just so happy.'

'I run a women's walking group and we were walking through town and everybody was smiling, hugging, there were balloons up and posters out.'

The rollercoaster of emotions for the town of Carnarvon turned from heartbreak to joy on Wednesday as the community celebrated Cleo's rescue

She also recalled waking up on Wednesday and leaping out of bed after she learned Cleo was safe.

'My mother-in- law rang up my husband and told him and he came and woke me up,' Ms Andreoli said.

'Usually I'm pretty cranky in the morning but yesterday I was definitely not cranky.

'It was a really, really wonderful morning. I flew out bed. Never flew out of bed so quick at 5am before and in front of that TV.'

'I just had tears in my eyes. I just couldn't believe it. It was just a miracle.'

'Everybody was smiling, hugging, there were balloons up and posters out,' family friend Leticia Andreoli told the Today show

Cleo Smith (pictured enjoying an ice block on Wednesday after her rescue) is finally back home in the safe arms of her parents

She believes it will take time for the town of Carnarvon to overcome Cleo's harrowing ordeal which is every parent's worst nightmare.

'The town are kind of feeling a bit unsafe at the moment particularly when it comes to the area where she went missing from,' Ms Andreoli said.

'The Blowholes is our place, that's where us locals go on the weekend to relax and take the kids. The kids can play safely and freely.

'That's kind of been taken away, which is really disappointing because it's a really beautiful place.

'It's going to take time for us to move on from that as a town but I'm sure, eventually, everybody will.'

It took time for young Jonah to understand his friend had found.

'It took him a while to get it,' his mum told Nine a day earlier.

'He said 'no Cleo is lost.' I said 'no bub, she's been found, so you can give her a big hug when you see her.''
Cooped-up Australians have pulled the passports from the back of the cupboard and are readying to travel overseas again, but fears remain about which countries are safest to travel to in the Covid-19 era.

A new online tool from data and analytics company Decision Inc is designed to help answer that question for fully-vaccinated holidaygoers.

The Pandemic Travel Risk Index developed by the company allows would-be travellers to find out which countries will provide the safest and most convenient travel experience.

The index assesses international destinations based on whether or not they require visitors to quarantine, ease of movement based on the vaccine they've received, and the incidence of Covid-19 in the country.

Decision Inc's Pandemic Travel Risk Index allows would-be travellers to find out which countries will provide the safest and most convenient travel experience during the Covid-19 pandemic

The data nominates Canada, New Zealand and Japan as the 'safest bets' for Australians to travel to with a level of normalcy

Travelers wait in line to verify their Covid-19 vaccination status as they check-in for a Qantas flight

Users can roll the mouse over countries and regions on an interactive map to bring up the necessary information, including the vaccination rates in the destination, its approved vaccines, the trend of cases in the country and its quarantine policy.

Based on its analysis, Decision Inc nominates Canada, New Zealand and Japan as the 'safest bets' for Australians to travel to with a level of normalcy.

'Fiji a possibility, Thailand to avoid for now,' it recommends on its website.

'Thailand would be a destination to avoid in the immediate term, with a low vaccination rate, high case numbers, and mid-level stringency measures indicating a slow return to normalcy,' the company said.

'Conversely, Fiji may be a destination to watch with a climbing vaccination rate, a low infection rate, and top stringency measures which are able to bring Covid to heel quickly.

'The US is also worth considering with reasonable vaccination rates and case numbers, though this varies on a state-by-state basis.'

The pop-up box for China on the map, for example, advises that travellers to the country will need to quarantine for 14 days.

'At some points of entry children 14 and over will be required to quarantine along, whether or not they test positive or negative for Covid.

'You will be separated from your child if one of you test positive for coronavirus.'

Travelling Australians will be expected to comply with Covid restrictions required both by airlines and destination countries

Decision Inc's data includes the trend of Covid cases in a selection of countries which Australians most frequently travel to

Australians who have received two doses of a Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)-approved vaccine can currently travel to the UK, the US, Canada, Italy, Greece, Germany and South Africa without the need to quarantine.

Singapore is the latest country to be added to that list, open to Australians from next week. Further countries are expected to be added in coming weeks.

Travelling Australians will be expected to comply with Covid restrictions required both by airlines and destination countries.

Some will require a traveller to produce a negative Covid-19 PCR test, procured at their own cost, at airport check-in to be able to depart Australia.

One of the biggest deterrents to international travel will be Australia's requirements for those re-entering the country. A negative PCR test must be produced within 72 hours of travel back home.

Quarantine requirements once back in Australia also differ from state to state, with NSW, Victoria and the ACT abandoning quarantine periods for the fully vaccinated.

Queensland, on the other hand, will require travellers to do 14 days quarantine, either in Queensland or the state in which they arrive, until the state reaches 90 per cent of its eligible population fully vaccinated.
A campaign is growing for the $1million reward to go to the neighbour of the man suspected of abducting Cleo Smith after he spotted vital clues in the hunt for the toddler.

Henry Dodd lives on the same street where the missing four year old was found imprisoned alone in a locked house in Carnarvon, Western Australia.

Acting on a tip-off which was then backed up by telephone data and forensics, police swooped on the address around 1am on Wednesday.

They smashed through the door and burst into a bedroom to find Cleo safe and well, despite her terrifying 18 day ordeal.

Cleo had been snatched in the middle of the night from the family tent in Blowholes campsite, 74 km away, while parents Ellie and Jake and baby sister Isla slept nearby.

A campaign is growing for the $1million reward to go to Henry Dodd (pictured, left) after he spotted vital clues in the hunt for missing Cleo Smith

The Western Australia government put up a staggering $1million reward early in the search for Cleo in a desperate bid to find her alive.

Now calls are growing for the money to be given to the neighbour who spotted tell-tale signs that Cleo was being held nearby, but police have said it's unlikely.

Mr Dodd revealed he knew the 36-year-old man suspected of Cleo's abduction and had spotted him behaving strangely in the days leading up to his arrest.

In a nervous TV interview which has since gone viral on social media, he also revealed he saw the suspect buying nappies just two days before police swooped.

Cleo Smith was miraculously found alive about 1am on Wednesday inside a Carnavon home after detectives received a tip off

'The other day, I think it was Monday, we saw him buying Kimbies in Woolworths but we didn't click on why he was buying them or who he was buying them for,' he said.

'Up until now...'

The suspect had changed his behaviour in recent days too, speeding through local streets in his car, and moving his dogs from the front yard to the back of his house.

'He's been acting a bit strange lately,' Mr Dodd added. 'He will get in his car, drive that fast.

'He doesn't have his dogs at the front [normally], he has his dogs out the back, but through this week he had his dogs out the front and he has been acting weird.'

A 36-year-old man with no connection to the family has been taken into custody. Pictured: The home where Cleo was found

Henry Dodd said police spent several hours driving up and down the street before breaking into the home.

Neighbours described the man as 'quiet' and said they wouldn't expect him to be involved.

'Everyone that knows the person that stays in that house, wouldn't think that it would be him,' he added. 'We got a shock ourselves that it was him.'

Mr Dodd's vital information won over the internet when the clip of him talking to a reporter from Seven's Sunrise show was posted on TikTok.

It was played almost a million times and liked by 86,000 people who rallied behind the call to give him the $1million reward money.

'Million dollar reward is all yours mate! Take it and rejoice my brother!' posted one.

A sign offering a $1 million reward for information on missing girl Cleo Smith is displayed on a digital tower in Yagan Square digital in Perth on October 30

Mr Dodd's vital information won over the internet when the clip of him talking to a reporter from Seven's Sunrise show was posted on TikTok, with viewers demanding he is given the $1million reward (pictured)

'Hope they give him the reward money, he's a true hero!' added Sarah Oscia. 'He deserves that million,' said Hine Tapatu.

Georgina Sullivan warned: 'He better get that reward money or us Aussies are going on a rampage.'

Another added: 'Aww he seems like the sweetest guy - I hope he gets the reward money.'

But police have since confirmed no-one will be collecting the million dollar payout offered by the state government on the sixth day of the investigation.

Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether he thought the reward would be claimed, acting Police Commissioner Col Blanch said: 'I don't believe so, no.

WA Police acting Commissioner Col Blanch (pictured) said it is unlikely the $1million reward for information leading to the discovery of Cleo will be paid out

Premier Mark McGowan announced the landmark $1million reward on October 21 as police officers started winding down a land search to focus on the theory Cleo had been abducted.

It was the first time in the state's history that the seven-figure sum has been offered for help solving a case within the first week of an investigation.

Commissioner Blanch said the move played a crucial part in boosting leads about the case, and ultimately leading to the toddler's discovery.

'[The reward] raised the profile so much we have community come out strong support. Everybody looking for Cleo, everyone was rallying, everyone called up Crime Stoppers,' he told Sunrise.

The first picture of Cleo Smith, safe and sound in hospital, after she was rescued from a house in Carnarvon, in northwest Western Australia, where she was held for 18 days

Neighbours of the home where little Cleo Smith (pictured) was kept prisoner before she was rescued by police on Wednesday have revealed the tell-tale signs she was there

'The information that came in as a result as a collective always helps point us in the right direction. It was a massive jigsaw puzzle, and we put it all together.'

The reward amount does not reflect the importance of a case or of the person missing but is selected based on the police tactics being used in each investigation.

Such large rewards are offered in the belief that someone knows critical information but considers the benefit of revealing it is outweighed by the downside, particularly if it implicates them in the crime.

The reward is designed to make the pros of giving information outweigh the cons, with $1million being the highest police will ever offer in exchange for information.

Cleo is now back in the arms of her mum Ellie and stepfather Jake (pictured together)

The revelation has raised questions about how the intelligence fell into the hands of detectives and its potential source.

Commissioner Col Blanch said detectives received new information about her location late on Tuesday and moved swiftly to rescue little girl.

'Intelligence led them to that house. They went into that house, Cleo was in the house alone,' he said.

While police are remaining tight lipped about key details due to the ongoing investigation, Commissioner Chris Dawson said 'phone data was critical' in cracking the case open.

Commissioner Dawson reportedly broke down in tears upon learning the heartwarming news. He said the youngster (pictured) was good as can be expected

Police had toiled away with few leads until they received a sudden tip-off on Tuesday night containing 'really important information about a car'.

Detectives confirmed it with phone data and 'a lot of forensic leads' - and just hours later raided the house.

Neighbours who witnessed the dramatic police raid, after which officers were seen carrying a crow bar and a battering ram out of the house, described how Cleo was carried to safety.

'We stood back and waited but after that, we saw someone, on the detective shoulder. We thought it might be the little girl, which it was,' Mr Dodd added.

In the early hours of the morning, police smashed through the locked door of a home (pictured) in the Brockman suburb of Carnarvon, Western Australia, to rescue the four year old

'I went closer to the detectives car and I saw her in the back of the car with the detective, he was holding her. They put her in the back and I came over, rushed over here and seen her there. She looked at me, a bit scared.'

Mr Dodd said he was shocked he had been just metres away from her while the nationwide hunt was going on for her.

'I just can't believe it and get over the fact that she is just the house down from us and locked up here for a couple of weeks,' he added.

'Going on three weeks, she is straight across from us. I've got little sisters there...'

Cleo was reunited with her family shortly after being found before being taken to hospital to receive care.

Photos shared by Western Australia Police on Wednesday afternoon showed the toddler smiling from her hospital bed as she ate an icypole.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde, who led the missing person investigation, said Cleo 'is physically OK' and had since been released from hospital to be with her mother and stepfather Jake Gliddon.

Smith found alive after 18 days A 36-year-old man with no connection to the familyis in police custody

Neighbours said the 'quiet man' was seen buying nappies at Woolworths

Cleo found alone inside the house when police broke down the door at 1am

Police were acting on a tip-off that led them to the housing commission home

The home is just seven minutes' drive from Cleo's family home

Cleo was smiling when she was rescued, the police commissioner confirmed

She is now in hospital for an assessment after being reunited with her family Advertisement

Daily Mail Australia understands a local police officer rang Cleo's mother to break the incredible news. She is now in hospital for assessment.

Ms Smith wrote on Instagram hours later: 'Our family is whole again.'

A close family friend also revealed the emotional message Ms Smith earlier wrote to her loved ones to let them know her 'beautiful girl is home'.

'To be woken at 4.50am with my phone going crazy and see the words Cleo is home alive and safe,' she wrote on Facebook.

'Seeing Ellie saying her 'beautiful girl is home' is nothing short of a miracle.'

Police Air Wing PC12 picked up the suspect, who has no relation to Cleo's family, from Carnarvon and landed at Perth's Jandakot Airport late on Wednesday morning.

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson was on board the plane and will spend the day meeting with police involved in the rescue and checking in with Cleo's family.

The police chief broke down in tears upon learning the heartwarming news. He said Cleo was as good as can be expected.

'I saw the vision, Cleo is a beautiful little four-year-old girl,' he said.

'She's as well as we could expect in the circumstances. She's alive, well, smiling, so it is a wonderful, wonderful result.'

He said Cleo's parents were emotional but doing well.

'They're strong people, they are really strong people. They have good support around them,' Commissioner Dawson said.

'It's a wonderful result today but it'll be a tough journey for them.'

Police Air Wing PC12 picked up the suspect, who has no relation to Cleo's family, from Carnarvon and landed at Perth's Jandakot Airport late on Wednesday
A man wrongly identified as the alleged kidnapper of four-year-old Cleo Smith was threatened with being speared and killed and sought protection from the police, sources close to the investigation told Daily Mail Australia.

Terrance Flowers calls himself Terry Kelly on social media - the same name shared by Cleo's suspected abductor. However, the wrong man was widely pictured and shamed on social media following the girl's rescue on Wednesday.

After being misidentified, Mr Flowers was bombarded with death threats, including that he would be speared in a traditional Aboriginal punishment, police sources said.

The misidentification came as Western Australia's Police Commissioner Chris Dawson reportedly held an emergency meeting with 20 Aboriginal elders in Carnarvon to ask for their help in easing tensions in the community.

There have been claims Indigenous locals are being targeted by racists over Cleo's abduction, and also hold fears of recriminations in the community itself, a report said.

A Western Australia man got death threats, including that he would be speared, after being wrongly identified as a suspect in the kidnapping of Cleo Smith (pictured)

A man wrongly identified as the suspect in the Cleo Smith kidnapping case was bombarded with death threats, including that he would be speared, police sources said.

Terry Kelly, the suspect in the kidnap of Cleo Smith in Western Australia, being taken to hospital. Another man of the same name was wrongly misidentified, as he has a similar name

As social media festered with theories about the 36-year-old Indigenous man being held over Cleo's kidnapping overnight, The Australian reported Mr Dawson told the elders: 'You are influencers in your community and you can talk to people who are more impressionable.'

'You can be that voice of reason,' he was reported as saying.

Asked about reports of community unrest on Thursday, WA Premier Mark McGowan said: 'I believe some extra officers are in town, not necessarily for community unrest but there's a lot of police officers from Carnarvon that have been tied up in this operation as well who are still assisting us.

'So that puts a drain on local resources. With that they've come to town to assist the local police,' he said.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan (centre) is greeted by Cleo Smith's stepfather (left) during a visit to the rescued girl in Carnarvon, 900km north of the state capital Perth. Four-year-old Cleo went missing from the tent she was sharing with her family at the Blowholes campsite near Carnarvon on 16 October. She was rescued in the early hours of November 3, 18 days after she was taken. A 36-year-old man is now in custody

Western Australia Premiere Mark McGowan (white shirt, centre) poses with police officers after speaking at a press conference in front of the Carnarvon Police Station on November 4, 2021

As for Mr Flowers, on top of the social media errors, he was wrongly identified as the suspected abductor by the Seven Network.

The media company issued a statement late last night apologising for wrongly saying Mr Flowers was the suspect in the Cleo Smith case.

'Earlier on Wednesday 7NEWS wrongly showed images of a man that were incorrectly labelled as the person under arrest over the disappearance of Cleo Smith,' the statement said.

'These were removed promptly, but 7NEWS apologises for the error.'

Image of when Cleo Smith was found and rescued by Western Australian Police

Neighbours look out onto the house where missing girl Cleo Smith (4) was rescued by Western Australian Police

Daily Mail Australia understands Mr Flowers 'sought shelter' with officers in Karatha after he was targeted on social media.

Mr Flowers was due to be interviewed on WA's Ngaarda radio station early on Thursday morning, but pulled out.

'Terrance Flowers has decided to pull out of his interview this morning because he has been talking with lawyers,' presenter Tangiora Hinaki said.

She added that Karatha Senior Sergeant Daniel Strachan 'has been very supportive of Mr Flowers during this tough time and also contacted Channel 7 on his behalf'.

View of House and police in Tonlin Street Carnarvon where Cleo Smith was detained > Duplex house centre of image Photo Bohdan Warchomij - 10162881

ABORIGINAL SPEARING One of the traditional tribal punishments in Aboriginal culture is where the victim gets speared into the thigh or calf. This type of punishment is often shown in films based around Indigenous society. The crime determined what kind of wound the offender received. From creativespirits.info Advertisement

Instead of having Mr Flowers on, Ms Hinaki instead featured an interview with his aunt, Nyamal woman Karen Beazely.

'People jumped the gun and saw, when they looked up Facebook, Terry Kelly and straightaway there were a lot of angry people,' said Ms Beazely.

'So they typed in Terry Kelly and what's come up is the wrong Terry Kelly.'

She added: 'My daughter Tracy and my niece Patricia, took him down to the Karatha police.

'When the family told him his face was on the ... news, he's broke down and cried and he was sobbing, really upset,' she said.

'I would like people to wait for the police to give out proper information, because jumping the gun can cause someone who is innocent ... people can go for the wrong person,' Ms Beazely said.

A post on the radio station's Facebook page said: 'Let the police continue to do their job, stop trying to be a lynch mob. Just leave it to be confirmed by the police and justice will be served.'

EXCLUSIVE: How the loner arrested over Cleo Smith's abduction was 'bashed in his cell by another prisoner' as soon as he realised he was the alleged kidnapper - with 'attack putting him in hospital'

By BRITTANY CHAIN FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A man arrested over the alleged kidnapping of Cleo Smith was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell - and has been taken to hospital a second time.

Terry Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner.

Kelly was arrested over the alleged abduction of little Cleo who was missing for 18 days after disappearing from a campsite 75km from her home while on holiday with her family.

A sign is seen on a fence in Carnarvon, Western Australia in celebration of the finding of Cleo Smith. Cleo was found in the early hours Wednesday November 3 after police raided a house in Carnarvon

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims, but confirmed the man in custody had been treated in hospital for a range of injuries including some of self-harm.

A sign welcoming Cleo Smith home to Carnarvon, Western Australia, and thank the police for rescuing her 18 days after she was abducted

A pavement sign celebrating the rescuing of four-year-old Cleo Smith in Carnarvon, Western Australia

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.

WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch told Sydney's Radio 2GB the alleged kidnapper was returned to hospital on Thursday morning, but his injuries are not serious.

Cleo, four, was found by startled detectives in the early hours of Wednesday morning in a locked house in her hometown of Carnarvon, 18 days after she disappeared from a remote campsite while on holiday with her parents.
Little Cleo Smith will be 'carefully' interviewed by police as they try to uncover exactly what happened in the '18 days of hell' she had been missing.

The four-year-old was finally reunited with her family in the early hours of Wednesday morning when police rammed their way into a locked home in Carnarvon, Western Australia, and found her playing with a toy alone in a bedroom.

She had vanished without a trace from her family's tent at the Blowholes camping ground early on October 16 with a $1million reward on offer for information on her whereabouts and an entire nation watching on anxiously.

Speaking a day after the little girl was found, WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch said detectives have been giving Cleo time with her family before they speak to her.

'We will be talking to Cleo, but we have to do it very carefully. We have professional child interviewing experts and we will try to get information out of her about those 18 days,' he told 2GB on Thursday morning.

'That is a really hard, slow process and it is OK if she doesn't want to tell us.'

Little Cleo Smith will be 'carefully' interviewed by police as they try to uncover exactly what happened in the 18 days she was missing

Mr Blanch said on the first night Cleo was reunited with her mum Ellie and stepdad Jake Gliddon, they all slept in the same room 'just cuddling all night'.

'Ellie and Jake had been through 18 days of hell and I know Australia have felt that with them,' he said.

He earlier told Sunrise police weren't under the impression anyone other than Cleo's suspected abductor had entered the house over the course of the 18 days.

'That is all subject to the investigation and the investigation is underway at the moment about the circumstances of those 18 days in that house,' he told the program.

'It is not our immediate information that that is the case but certainly we have to go through each day forensically and work out who came, who didn't and what the circumstances were and what took place in that house.'

Cleo has finally been reunited with her mother Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla (pictured together)

Police are seen outside the house where Cleo had allegedly been abducted to with charges expected to be laid later on Thursday

Terry Kelly, 36, has been arrested over Cleo's alleged abduction and was taken to hospital for a second time on Thursday morning, but Mr Blanch confirmed his injuries aren't serious.

He was pulled over by police and taken into custody before detectives broke into the home and found Cleo - which was just seven minutes away from the home she shares with her parents and baby sister Isla.

Detectives will work to uncover just what happened at the rundown house Cleo had been hidden away in for nearly three weeks.

Neighbours described Mr Kelly as a reclusive 'oddball' who largely kept to himself.

Four police officers used a battering ram and a crowbar to bang the door down and free the four-year-old who told them 'my name is Cleo'.

Remarkable bodycam footage captured the moment Cleo was rescued by detectives, with the brave little girl clinging to her savior as she is gently spoken to and told she would soon see her 'mummy'.

'Four fathers walked into that room they might have been wearing guns and detective suits but they were four fathers,' Mr Blanch said.

A beaming Cleo is seen from her hospital bed after being rescued by police on Wednesday

The four-year-old had vanished from a family camping trip at the Blowholes campsite, 75km from Carnarvon

Detectives found the little girl from a late 'tip off' on Tuesday night which was the 'final piece of the puzzle' police needed to pounce.

The intel from the public contained 'really important information about a car' which was later confirmed with phone data and 'a lot of forensic leads'.

Shortly after, officers slapped cuffs on the alleged kidnapper and police executed a search warrant at the nearby home where they uncovered Cleo.

Charges are expected to be laid on Thursday with investigators saying there are 'no other persons of interest'.

Police confirmed the suspect was not on the sex offenders register.
A doctor trying to return to Australia from India after her mother's funeral was forced to sleep on an airport floor due to Covid quarantine restrictions.

Dr Vinu Verghis flew into Melbourne from the Covid-hit country on Tuesday, expecting to stay in a hotel before her connecting flight to Brisbane 17 hours later.

Her own employer Queensland Health told her though she would be considered a domestic traveller and forfeit her right to a hotel quarantine place if she left the terminal.

Still grieving from the death of her loved one, the Toowoomba Hospital employee spent the night in the Melbourne Airport prayer room next to her mother's ashes.

The 50-year-old claimed Queensland Health officials lacked compassion and told her she was only in that situation because of her own decision to leave Australia during a pandemic.

'I came out of immigration and the staff member told me "this is the choice you made",' the public health masters graduate told Daily Mail Australia.

'How is this my choice? My mother died.'

Dr Verghis, from Moggill in Brisbane's west, said she wouldn't have even had the privacy of an Islamic prayer room for the night were it not for a kind airport worker who saw her crying.

'I am fully vaccinated. I am not adding any further risk whether I am in the airport or in a hotel,' she said.

'We are being held to ransom by the 30 per cent of people in Queensland who are not vaccinated.'

Pictured: The airport prayer room floor Queensland Health employee Dr Vinu Verghis was forced to sleep on after flying home to Australia from India following her mother's funeral

Dr Verghis claimed Queensland Health officials lacked compassion and told her she was only in that situation because of her own decision to leave Australia during a pandemic

The Queensland Health employee also vented her frustration as she spent the night in the prayer room in a live Facebook video.

The Queensland Health employee also vented her frustration as she spent the night in the prayer room in a live Facebook video

'This is my accommodation for the night - this is my bed and my trolley - I will be sleeping there,' she said.

'How is this fair? I am spending 17 hours in this airport because if I leave I am not allowed to go back home.'

A Queensland Health spokesman said anyone leaving Australia during the pandemic should understand 'what is required of them when they return'.

'We know hotel quarantine for overseas travellers works and has kept local transmission in Queensland to a minimum,' the spokesman said.

'This week an overseas traveller tested positive to Covid-19 on day one in hotel quarantine.

'Last week, several overseas travellers tested positive including one who tested negative on day one and positive on day five.'
Country Road Group has been accused by a union of putting down manure where workers from the fashion retailer's Victorian warehouse had planned to rally.

The United Workers Union also claims the retailer - which distributes fashion labels including Mimco, Trenery, Witchery and Politix - has responded to demands for equitable pay with 'intimidating tactics'.

Its Truganina warehouse workers want a pay rise of $1.50 per hour to bring their pay into line with their counterparts in the logistics and distribution operation.

A union has said manure was allegedly dumped at a rally point where Country Road factory workers were set to protest on Thursday (pictured: a Country Road shopfront)

'In an attempt to disrupt and disparage worker spirits, Country Road Group thought it would be a good idea to lay fresh manure outside of the gates in the same spot workers had planned to rally ahead of strike action,' UWU logistics coordinator Mick Power said on Thursday.

'The behaviour displayed towards workers at Country Road Group by managers is frankly disgraceful.'

The workers' plans to strike outside the retailer's Truganina warehouse have now been postponed.

The union also claims workers have been threatened with losing their jobs if they participate in any industrial action.

Mr Power further alleges workers are being pressured to continue working and have reported 'intimidation' by managers and that some had been visited at their homes out of hours.

The United Workers Union says the female-dominated workforce at the Truganina logistics centre (pictured) are being paid up to $10 less an hour than men performing the same work in warehouses in Western Melbourne

He said the union will continue to consult with workers about whether to begin legally protected industrial action next week.

AAP has contacted Country Road Group for comment.

Staff employed at the CRG Logistics warehouse in Melbourne had planned to walk off the job on Thursday as the female-dominated workforce demand a pay rise.

The United Workers Union said most workers were paid either $22.52 or $24.34 an hour - above the national minimum wage of $20.33.

They claim staff at the Truganina warehouse are not being paid a 'fair' rate and are seeking a 90c hourly increase - or an additional $25 to $30 a week.

But the company has accused the unions of running a smear campaign against its brands to 'publicly discredit our brands with false and baseless allegations of underpayment, bullying and harassment to leverage its demands'.

The UWU has launched a website titled 'Country Rogue' with a petition calling for people to sign up to help workers 'get the pay they deserve' and avoid visiting its retail outlets.

Country Road warehouse workers will go on an 'indefinite strike' from Thursday amid a bitter dispute with the fashion giant (pictured) over wages

Unions argue men in nearby warehouses performing the same work were earning up to $10 more an hour and the company's 44 per cent profit rise in 2020 means they can afford to pay staff more.

'It's time they rewarded their warehouse workers,' Victorian Trade Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari said.

'Shoppers should show their solidarity by avoiding shopping at Country Road until they come to the table.'

But the company claims staff are not hard done by - and it has in fact offered workers an annual 2.7 per cent pay rise for three years, which equates to an additional 66c an hour for those on the top rate, The Australian reports.

Country Road Group said this would allow staff to earn up to an extra $1,200 annually - depending on the number of hours worked - and staff were also given a separate $500 'recognition payment' in September.

If accepted, it would increase the workers' wages to 11 per cent above the award rate, a CRG spokesperson said.

But Mr Hilakari said Country Road Group could afford to pay staff more after it 'made a small fortune during this pandemic', receiving about $25million in JobKeeper subsidies on top of the company's growth.

UWU national secretary Tim Kennedy said many employees were young, single mothers who planned to strike indefinitely until an adequate agreement was reached.

'This is not a 24-hour fly by night thing. This is on and we'll see it through to the end like we have with all these other strikes,' he said.

Mr Kennedy said the walkout would be a 'big financial risk' to the company - which also supplies products to Mimco, Trenery, Witchery and Politix - ahead of the Christmas season.

The union is calling on shoppers to boycott the fashion chain as it demands 'fair' wages for the company's warehouse workers

He said existing supply chain delays are already threatening to slow shipments in coming months and shoppers will be eager to spend after emerging from Covid lockdowns.

'The company has sought to bully them out of any recognition or acknowledgment of their fundamental right to try and bargain for something better [since they joined the union last year],' Mr Kennedy said.

'There has been no real action by the company to demonstrate any desire to allow these workers to improve their lot in life. To get a wage rise, they've had to go out on strike'.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Country Road Group for comment.
By Olivia Day for Daily Mail Australia

Friday, October 15

Cleo along with her mother Ellie Smith, her partner Jake Gliddon and her little sister Isla Mae arrive at the Blowholes campsite around 6:30pm.

They had a 'quiet' night and arrived at sunset.

Saturday, October 16

1:30am: Parents' last sighting of Cleo in the tent she shared with her parents and baby sister when the four-year-old asks for some water.

6.23am: Ellie calls 000 to report her eldest daughter missing as she continues to search the camp ground.

6.30am: The first two officers are dispatched from Carnarvon police station. They travel to Blowholes as a matter of priority, with sirens and lights.

6.41am: A second police car with another two officers is sent to Blowholes, also with lights and sirens.

7.10am: The first police car arrives. The second is only minutes behind.

7.26am: Police on the scene establish a protected forensic area which is taped off to the public, surrounding the family tent where Cleo was last seen.

7.33am: A drone operator is called upon to search from the skies.

7.44am: A third police car is dispatched to the Blowholes.

8am: Family and friends of Cleo's parents begin to arrive to help with the ground search.

Another group of detectives briefly searches Cleo's home to make sure she's not there.

They then head to Blowholes and begin stopping cars coming into and leaving the area.

8.09am: A helicopter from a local company arrived at the scene and started searching as police request an SES team attend the Blowholes search.

8.24am: Police air-wing and volunteer marine searchers are called in to assist with the search.

8.34am: Roadblocks are set up at the entrance of Blowholes as detectives gather the names, registration details and addresses of people coming and going. Police search cars.

9.25am: Nine SES personel arrive at the Blowholes to assist with the search.

Investigators, bounty hunters and officers from the Australian Federal Police have spent two-and-a-half weeks searching for missing four-year-old Cleo (pictured)

9.30am: Detectives sit down with a distressed Ellie and remain by her side for the rest of the day while other search crews hunt for Cleo.

11am: Homicide detectives from the Major Crime Division are called and begin travelling from Perth to assist with the search.

1pm: More homicide detectives and search experts are flown in from Perth.

3pm: Officers and search experts arrive in Carnarvon to offer their expertise.

Sunday, October 17

Ms Smith takes to social media to plead for help finding her missing daughter.

A Facebook post uploaded at 1:45am on Sunday which said: 'It's been over 24 hours since I last seen the sparkle in my little girl's eyes.

'Please help me find her!

'If you hear or see anything at all please call the police!'

Police suggest Cleo may have been abducted.

Monday, October 18

Police release an image of the red and grey sleeping bag missing from Cleo's tent.

Cleo's biological father is interviewed by police in Mandurah and is asked to provide a statement, which he does so willingly.

WA Police with the help of SES members, volunteers and aircraft continue the land hunt for Cleo, with officers searching nearby shacks and vehicles in the area.

Tuesday, October 19

Cleo's mother Ellie Smith and her partner Jake Gliddon front the media for the first time and describe the terrifying moment they realised the little girl was missing.

Ms Smith says her four-year-old would never have left the tent by herself.

Police release new images of Cleo and the pink and blue one-piece she was wearing the night she went missing to aid the investigation.

Investigators urge anyone who was at the campsite or in the vicinity on October 15 to get in contact with police.

Wednesday, October 20

Police reveal the zip of the family tent, which was found hanging wide open by her mother at 6am on Saturday morning, was too high for Cleo to reach.

Officers say they 'haven't ruled out' reports from campers who heard the sound of screeching tyres in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Deputy Police Commissioner Daryl Gaunt confirms officers are investigating the whereabouts of 20 registered sex offenders in the Carnarvon area.

Thursday, October 21

The WA Government offers a $1million reward for information that leads to Cleo's location announced by WA Premier Mark McGowan.

'All Western Australians' thoughts are with Cleo's family during what is an unimaginably difficult time,' Mr McGowan said.

'We're all praying for a positive outcome.'

The speed of the reward being issued - within days of her disappearance - was unprecedented.

Pictured: Police are seen examining rubbish left near the Blowholes campsite in remote WA

Monday, October 25

WA Police confirm Cleo was definitely at the camp site - on CCTV footage on a camera installed inside a beach shack just 20 metres from the family tent she disappeared from.

Tuesday, October 26

Forensic officers and detectives spent much of the day at her home in Carnarvon, 900km north of Perth, on Tuesday and left with two bags of evidence.

Although investigators had been to the home before, this was the first time they thoroughly searched inside with a forensics team.

Acting WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said the search of the family home was 'standard practice' and did not indicate they were suspects in Cleo's disappearance.

Wednesday, October 27

WA Police forensics officers return to the Blowholes campground and are seen collecting soil samples from a number of campfires near shacks in the area.

The federal government announce Australian Federal Police officers had been drafted in to support forensic and intelligence efforts.

Friday, October 29

Police return to the Blowholes camp to analyse the area with drones.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde returns to the Blowholes campsite to join the search for Cleo as the search hit the two-week mark.

He confirms national and international agencies are engaged in the search for Cleo.

Sunday, October 31

Detectives go door-knocking at a number of homes along the North West Coastal Highway in the North Plantations, 5km from Cleo's hometown on Sunday.

Monday, November 1

Detectives sort through mounds of rubbish from roadside bins located hundreds of kilometres away from the campsite she vanished from.

The material was transported to Perth, where forensic officers and recruits sorted through hundreds of bags in search of items that may have helped them find Cleo.

Officers issue a plea for dash cam and CCTV footage from within a 1000km radius of where the four-year-old disappeared.

Police renew an appeal for more businesses in Carnarvon to provide footage and go door to door in an industrial area on the outskirts of the town.

Her elated mother, Ellie, (pictured, with Cleo, her partner and younger daughter) broke her silence the morning Cleo was found, sharing a series of love heart emojis on Instagram

Wednesday, November 3

After two-and-a-half weeks of searching Cleo Smith is found alive and well in the early hours of November 3.

WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch confirmed just before 7am AEST that little Cleo is alive and well and had been reunited with her relieved parents.

'One of the officers picked her up into his arms and asked her 'what's your name?' he said. 'She said: 'My name is Cleo'.'

Ellie Smith posted to social media: 'Our family is whole again'.

A Carnarvon man is currently in custody and being questioned by detectives.
One of the defense lawyers for the three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery raised his concerns that there aren't enough 'Bubbas or Joe six-packs' on the final panel of 12 jurors.

The comments were made by Kevin Gough, the defense attorney representing William Bryan, who is facing a murder charge for filming the shooting death of Arbery in February 2020.

Gough expressed his skepticism over the now-decided pool of jurors, which wasn't determined at the time of his interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying it lacked white men over 40 without a four-year bachelor's degree.

'We want a diverse jury,' he said. 'But we're missing a segment of what would normally be here.'

Defense attorney Kevin Gough, representing William Bryan, was concerned there weren't enough 'Bubbas or Joe six-packs', or college-educated white men over 40, in the group of more than 60 potential jurors. Pictured: Defense attorney Kevin Gough speaks during jury selection in the trial of the men charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery at the Glynn County Superior Court

Meanwhile, the judge in the trial declined to override decisions in jury selection Wednesday that left just one black juror on the final panel of 12, though he agreed with prosecutors that 'there appears to be intentional discrimination.'

Prosecutors had asked Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley to reinstate eight black potential jurors, arguing that defense lawyers struck them from the final jury because of their race. The U.S. Supreme Court has held it's unconstitutional for attorneys during jury selection to strike potential jurors solely based on race or ethnicity.

Walmsley said he was limited in his ability to change the jury's racial makeup because defense attorneys were able to give nonracial reasons for their decisions to strike the potential black jurors from the panel.

Race is a central issue in the trial over the 25-year-old black man's death. Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck after they spotted him running in their neighborhood.

A neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan,' joined the chase in his own truck and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.

After more than two weeks of jury selection, attorneys on both sides Wednesday narrowed a panel of 48 potential jurors to a final jury of 12.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23, 2020, while he was out for a run in his neighborhood

Travis McMichael (left), his father Gregory McMichael (center) and their friend William 'Roddie' Bryan (right) have all been charged with federal hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley narrowed the pool of 1,000 to 12 mainly white jurors except one. He agreed with prosecutors that 'there appears to be intentional discrimination'

Minutes later, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski challenged the defense attorneys' decision to strike eight specific black jurors, arguing they were cut from the panel because of their race.

Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, denied that the black panelists' race was considered in decisions to strike them from the jury pool.

'We have a very clear selection process within the defense team, and the issue of race is not one of the factors,' Hogue said. 'I can give you a race neutral reason for any one of these.'

She noted one such juror, identified in court as No. 218, had written on her juror questionnaire that Arbery was shot 'due to his color' and told attorneys during questioning that she felt the defendants were guilty.

Dunikoski noted that many prospective jurors questioned in open court expressed strong opinions about the case, but all who remained in the pool from which the 12 jurors emerged said they could be impartial and base a verdict solely on the trial evidence.

'The defense has not made a case as to why this juror and her opinions are any different than anyone else, black or white,' Dunikoski said of No. 218. 'She said the same thing almost every other juror said. So many had opinions. And they said they could put them aside.'

Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, rejected claims that the black panelists' race was considered in decisions to omit them from the jury pool

Defense attorneys Kevin Gough, left, and Robert Rubin, center, speak to prosecutor Linda Dunikoski, right, during a break in the jury selection for the trial

In issuing his decision not to change the makeup of the jury, Walmsley said defense attorneys 'have been able to explain to the court why besides race those individuals were struck from the panel.'

But, he said, 'This court has found there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel.'

The judge said the jury, along with four alternates, will be seated and sworn in Friday, when opening statements in the trial are expected.

In Brunswick, Georgia, where Arbery was killed and the trial is being held, black people account for nearly 55 percent of the population of 16,000 while white people make up 40 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But in Glynn County, which encompasses Brunswick, black people account for nearly 27 percent of the population of 85,000, with 69 percent identifying as white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The judge said 25 percent of the pool from which the final jury was chosen was black.

Arbery's death became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system after a string of fatal encounters between black people and police  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, among others.

No one was charged in Arbery's death until more than two months later, when the video of the shooting leaked online. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police and soon arrested all three men on nine charges, which include malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

Arbery was chased by the armed McMichaels as he was jogging in February 2020

Arbery, in a white T-shirt, is confronted by Travis McMichael, who holds a shotgun

Before a final jury is seated, attorneys in a criminal case get to take turns eliminating a significant number of prospective jurors from the final pool, for virtually any reason. The final process of elimination consisted of a bailiff passing a list of the potential jurors back and forth between the prosecutors and the three defense teams. Lawyers used the list to silently choose people to strike from the jury.

Defense attorneys say the McMichaels and Bryan committed no crimes. They say Arbery had been recorded by security cameras inside a nearby house and they suspected him of stealing. Greg McMichael told police his son opened fire in self-defense after Arbery attacked with his fists and grappled for Travis McMichael's shotgun.

Investigators have said Arbery was unarmed and there's no evidence he had stolen anything.

The slaying dominated news coverage and social media feeds in Glynn County, about 70 miles south of Savannah. That caused court officials to take extraordinary steps in hopes of seating an impartial jury.

They mailed 1,000 jury duty notices, and nearly 200 people were questioned by the judge and attorneys at the courthouse during jury selection.
A primary school has asked boys as well as girls as young as three to go in today wearing skirts  to promote equality.

But the request from Castleview Primary in Edinburgh has been criticised by some parents.

It follows a similar move in Spain where teachers and children have worn skirts to show solidarity with a boy who was expelled for wearing one last year.

November 4 is now wear a skirt to school day in Spain.

Castleview Primary School in Edinburgh has asked all pupils to wear skirts today to 'promote equality'

An email to parents from Castleview said it wanted children to be comfortable taking part and that trousers and leggings could be worn under the skirts if needed.

It even offered to provide skirts for some youngsters if none were suitable at home. Teachers can wear skirts too.

One mother called Megan with a son at the school tweeted: My son is five and just got this from the school! Let kids be kids.

Another Twitter user called Nicola replied: If a boy wants to wear a skirt to school, he should be allowed, but why put pressure on people to ask their son to wear a skirt or be seen as some sort of bigot?

The school said pupils in P6  the equivalent of Year 6 in England  came up with the idea after becoming aware of the Spanish campaign.

It added: We want our school to be inclusive and promote equality.

Teachers wrote to parents: Were keen to spread the message that clothes dont have a gender and that we should all be free to express ourselves as we choose.

Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, said adults were foisting their own anxieties on to children, who should simply be taught to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves.

The city council said pupils did not have to take part if they did not want to.
A man who attended the same elite Melbourne private school as Jordan De Goey has burned his blazer in protest against the institution's 'patriarchal culture' after the AFL player was arrested in New York over assault allegations.

James Robinson, a former pupil of St Kevin's College in Toorak, has taken to social media with a catalogue of accusations against the all-boys Catholic high school, claiming the halls are rife with toxic masculinity, homophobia, and bullying.

Detailing the years spent at his alma mater, Mr Robinson said he was left suicidal at 15 after being unwillingly 'outed' by peers as homosexual and witnessed fellow students engaging in vile acts towards women.

In the wake of the charges laid against De Goey, Mr Robinson - who also now calls the Big Apple home - this week decided to stage a 'protest' on the college's grounds by taking a lighter to his old uniform.

'I broke into the school yesterday to protest. Something snapped in me this time,' he wrote on Instagram, sharing photos of his flame-licked blazer.

James Robinson, a former pupil of St Kevin's College in Toorak, has set his blazer alight (pictured) on the school's grounds in protest after Jordan De Goey was arrested in New York

'The patriarchal culture I saw inside the school gates burst out and made its way to New York, my new home for the last five years. Allegedly assaulting someone in a city, where many in my queer community, like me, are rape and sexual assault survivors.'

Mr Robinson, who graduated in 2013, said it was 'unsurprising' De Goey was arrested in the US for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman on a dancefloor given the culture at their former school.

'St Kevins is a bubble where privileged young men can rehearse oppression without consequence, before graduating with flying colours into public,' Mr Robinson said.

'A place where locker room talk exists openly in hallways and classrooms,' he said.

'I saw a system designed to let young boys think they can do anything, assault anyone, and get away with it.'

Mr Robinson said he witnessed his male peers committing a range of derogatory acts towards teenage girls and female teachers.

'I saw revenge porn against girls from sister school" ... the objectifying of female teachers and the transphobic bullying of a teacher who transitioned,' he said.

'I saw friends make a pact of silence to protect two students who pulled a knife on a taxi driver, and a principal who subsequently paid to keep it quiet.'

Mr Robinson dedicated the stunt to current students who may be experiencing similar feelings and said the protest 'takes my healing full circle'.

Mr Robinson said he was left suicidal at 15-year-old after he was 'outed' by peers as homosexual

Former students of all-boys school across Australia praised Mr Robinson for his 'powerful' message, with many reporting enduring similar experiences.

'Well said James. such a beautiful post, definitely can't remember many good times from that place sadly but this protest is a beautiful one,' one man said.

'Thank you for speaking up. Sending you so much love,' another wrote.

'This is incredibly powerful. Well done James. [I had] a similar experience from a different same sex, all boys school,' a third wrote.

St Kevin's principal Deborah Barker has written to parents telling them she has been in contact with Mr Robinson and admires his courage for speaking out.

'On Wednesday night I became aware of social media posts by a former student who attended Year 12 at the College in 2013,' she wrote.

'I immediately took steps to reach out to James because I genuinely want to listen to, and fully understand, his heartfelt concerns and his personal journey.

Mr Robinson said the protest was an act of healing from the pain he suffered while attending the school as a teenager

'Most importantly I want James to know that we care for him and acknowledge his courage for speaking out.

'James and I have already been in communication and we plan to meet shortly.

'I would also like to acknowledge and thank the many current and former students who posted strong messages of support to James.

'Your support is vital and I am sure this means a lot to James at this critical time,' she said.

Ms Barker said there is much 'goodness' in the college but 'we still have much to do'.

'It has become clear in my first year, of the importance of listening deeply as we strive to deliver a safe and inclusive environment for all of our students in partnership with their families,' she said.

Issues with sexism and misogyny at the $19,000-a-year school first surfaced in October 2019 after footage of students singing an offensive chant on a tram began circulating online.

Former principal Stephen Russell resigned in 2020 after a string of scandals, with Ms Barker - the school's first female principal' stepping in to lead the school at the beginning of this year.

Collingwood player Jordan De Goey prepares for a night out in New York. He was later arrested and charged after allegedly groping a woman at a nightclub

In July this year, an independent review into culture at the school found sexism and misogyny are 'still clearly an issue'.

Meanwhile, De Goey's career is hanging in the balance after he and his tattoo artist mate Luke Dyso allegedly touched a woman in a trendy New York City nightclub then bashed her male friend on a Halloween-themed night out on Saturday.

The Collingwood forward has strenuously denies all allegations and plans to defend the charges.

The 25-year-old, who was in America for a six-week training session, will likely have to remain in the US until December 8 to appear in court.

Collingwood Magpies will reserve the right to terminate De Goey's playing contract should he be convicted.
Thousands of schools and small businesses face a bill shock after their energy firm became the latest to collapse yesterday.

CNG Energy, which supplies 41,000 businesses, is the 20th provider to fail since August amid the ongoing crisis over soaring energy prices.

Its customers  which include schools, restaurants and hotels  could be left paying thousands of pounds more every year because they do not get the same consumer protections as households when an energy firm fails.

CNG Energy is the 20th provider to fail since August amid soaring energy prices, leaving its 41,000 business customers facing an uncertain winter

Commercial customers are not guaranteed their money back if they are in credit on their energy account. They are also not protected by the official price cap.

It means their new supplier will be free to charge a higher market price  meaning they face massive increases in bills.

CNGs collapse comes days after four smaller firms went bust, leaving almost 24,000 customers in the lurch.

And it comes less than a week after Bulb, Britains seventh largest energy firm, revealed it was in rescue talks.

In a statement CNG said: Were very sad to say that CNG Energy Ltd is ceasing to trade...

The global energy crisis and extremely high wholesale energy costs have affected many suppliers already and unfortunately CNG is the next casualty.

We have tried and exhausted all options to remain in business.

Last night energy regulator Ofgem reassured customers, saying it would switch them over to a new supplier as soon as possible.

Retail director Neil Lawrence added: We know this is a worrying time for many people and news of a supplier going out of business can be unsettling.

I want to reassure affected customers that they do not need to worry. Under our safety net well make sure your energy supplies continue.

You can rely on your energy supply as normal. We will update you when we have chosen a new supplier.
Police are facing a race against time to charge the man suspected of snatching little Cleo Smith and holding her prisoner at his home in Carnarvon for 18 days.

Terry Kelly, 36 was arrested in connection with the abduction of the four year old after she was grabbed from a tent while on holiday with her family 75km from home.

However, almost 36 hours later, Kelly has still not been charged over the incident.

The process has been delayed after Kelly was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell within hours of his arrest.

Kelly was taken to hospital with head injuries and released after medical treatment.

Terry Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner

But police revealed on Thursday he had been returned to hospital for a second time after he is understood to have suffered new injuries while alone in his police cell.

Kelly is now again back in police custody, but police chief Col Blanch warned the suspect must be in good health before he can be interviewed.

Any future trial could be jeopardised if detectives try to rush the process, the WA Deputy Police Commissioner told Seven's Sunrise.

'The important thing for police, if we're going to interview someone about offences as serious as this ... we will need them in a condition where they have had a rest, they're in a good mental state, they've been fed,' he said.

'So, we've got to make sure we give them the best opportunity to answer questions and that's to ensure that the court process is validated if we get to that point.'

Remarkable bodycam footage captured the moment Cleo was rescued by detectives, with the brave little girl clinging to her savior as she is gently spoken to and told she would soon see her 'mummy'

Police are legally required to charge suspects within a 'reasonable time' of their arrest, allowing for medical treatment and the seriousness of the crime.

A senior officer can sign off the first 18 hours in custody but after that a magistrate must approve further extensions every eight hours.

Theoretically, it can be unlimited, but in practice a magistrate will end the process within a few days if charges are not laid - and the clock is now ticking for Kelly.

However it is understood the suspect could be charged with some minor offences later on Thursday to hold him in custody while the investigation continues.

Cleo, four, was found by startled detectives in the early hours of Wednesday morning in a locked house in her hometown of Carnarvon, 18 days after she disappeared from a remote campsite while on holiday with her parents

Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner and taken to hospital the first time.

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims.

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.

Cleo, four, was found by startled detectives in the early hours of Wednesday morning in a locked house in her hometown of Carnarvon, 18 days after she disappeared from a remote campsite while on holiday with her parents.

Detectives used crowbars and battering rams to kick in the door and free Cleo about 12.46am Wednesday from a home just seven minutes away from where she lives with her mum Ellie, stepdad Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla.

West Australian Police shared an adorable first photo of Cleo since she was rescued, smiling with an ice block in hospital. 'The miracle we all hoped for,' they captioned the picture

Remarkable bodycam footage captured the moment Cleo was rescued by detectives, with the brave little girl clinging to her savior as she is gently spoken to and told she would soon see her 'mummy'.

'Four fathers walked into that room they might have been wearing guns and detective suits but they were four fathers,' Mr Blanch said.

Shocked neighbours tell Daily Mail Australia they were first alerted to the commotion when police flood lights lit up their cul-de-sac, which is normally bustling with children playing in their front yards and at the park across the road during daylight hours.

'My nephews went up to see what was going on and then they saw cops leading out the little white girl,' a neighbour who has known Kelly for more than a decade said.

He described the accused as a 'loner' who never really made an effort to speak with people in the cul-de-sac, and never brought friends back to his house.

Others woke to the news that Cleo had been rescued, filing into the streets before the sun even rose to watch the scene unfold.

Cleo is now back in the arms of her mum Ellie and stepfather Jake (pictured together)

West Australian Police shared an adorable first photo of Cleo since she was rescued, smiling with an ice block in hospital in her Frozen pyjamas. 'The miracle we all hoped for,' they wrote.

The neighbour said he was a loner who 'kept to himself' and was not the type of person anyone else in the street would 'have a yarn with' despite being a long term resident.

He last saw Kelly just three days after little Cleo disappeared. Former friends say Kelly had not long been freed from jail.

Detectives allege Kelly was behaving suspiciously in the 18 days since Cleo vanished, doing laps of his street at all hours of the day and buying toddler nappies from his grocery store despite not being known to have children.

Dogs that he usually kept on the backyard of his home were also suddenly moved to the front of the home.

'His grandmother raised him... but after she died a year or so ago, nobody went over to yarn to him,' he said.

'He got a new car after he used to park it in the driveway and then close the gate, every day, always went and put the car in the same spot and closed the gate.'

Cleo was found alone in this suburban home in Carnarvon, in the north-west of Western Australia, shortly before 1am on Wednesday morning

Commissioner Dawson reportedly broke down in tears upon learning the heartwarming news. He said the youngster (pictured) was good as can be expected

Forensic officers in full protective gear including gas masks as they searched through rubbish left near the Blowholes campsite in remote WA - where Cleo went missing

That very car was reportedly crucial to cracking the case, with police revealing they received 'important information about a car' which they confirmed with phone data and 'a lot of forensic leads'. Within hours, they'd raided Kelly's home.

'We've collected phone data, witness statements, DNA, fingerprints, rubbish along the highways, CCTV - we've collected everything,' Mr Blanch said.

It's not yet clear if Cleo was held at the home for the entire three weeks she was missing or if she'd been moved around several times.

The vital tip-off was the last piece of the puzzle in a case that until then frustrated and eluded detectives and had Australians fearing Cleo would never be found, let alone alive.

Neighbours would often see Kelly walking to and from the local grocery store, 'keeping his head down and talking to nobody'.

Neighbours would often see Kelly walking to and from the local grocery store, 'keeping his head down and talking to nobody'

Neighbours of the home where little Cleo Smith (pictured) was kept prisoner before she was rescued by police on Wednesday have revealed the tell-tale signs they missed.

A man arrested over the alleged kidnapping of Cleo Smith was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell at Carnarvon police station (pictured)

But when one man saw Kelly buying toddler diapers, he was confused because he didn't know the 36-year-old to have any children.

Even though he knew it was strange, he didn't report his suspicions, police have confirmed.

'But we didn't click on what he was buying them for.'

He'd also been seen doing laps of the street at different times during the day, driving in and out repeatedly and at random hours.

'He doesn't have his dogs at the front [normally], he has his dogs out the back, but through this week he had his dogs out the front,' neighbour Henry Dodd told Nine News.

Mr Dodd revealed he watched Cleo come out on the shoulder of a detective in the middle of the night.

'I went closer to the detectives car and I saw her in the back of the car with the detective, he was holding her. They put her in the back and I came over, rushed over here and seen her there. She looked at me, a bit scared.'

Mr Dodd said he was shocked he had been just metres away from her while the nationwide hunt was going on for her.

'I just can't believe it and get over the fact that she is just the house down from us and locked up here for a couple of weeks,' he added.

'Going on three weeks, she is straight across from us. I've got little sisters there.'

Cleo Smith, four, has been found alive and well, 18 days after she vanished from her family's tent at the remote Blowholes campsite in Western Australia

Suspect's suspicious behaviour led to his arrest, police say Police have confirmed there were several signs that led them to suspect Terry Kelly rather than one particular lead. Acting on community reports, detectives began to notice a pattern of suspicious activity from the 36-year-old. While he was not linked to the family, police say there were behaviours over the past 18 days since Cleo disappeared that were out of the ordinary. First, he started doing laps of his own street at all hours of the day or night. Neighbours were also confused when they saw Kelly buying toddler nappies at the local Woolworths, despite not having any children. He was also purchasing food he wouldn't normally buy. Finally, the man's dogs had recently been moved from the backyard into the front of the house. Data from his phone was also collected to track his movements in the days leading to his arrest, further solidifying the theories that were being fleshed out among detectives. Advertisement

Kelly's name was widely circulated among the local community within hours of his arrest, and he's now the subject of intense public outrage.

The 36-year-old has not been charged with an offence, and Daily Mail Australia does not suggest charges will be laid, only that he is assisting police.

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said the man has no connection to Cleo or her family.

After she was rescued, detectives took Cleo to the car and called her parents, saying 'we've got someone here that wants to speak to you'.

'It was a wonderful feeling to make that call. They were ecstatic.'

Cleo cried out 'mummy' as she finally returned to her mother's arms having not seen her family in an agonising 18 days.

Mr Blaine described the little girl as an 'energiser bunny' and confirmed she was physically unharmed when she was found.

When asked if it was the best moment of his career, the sergeant replied: 'without a doubt'.

'We wanted to take turns holding her.'

Cleo was found in her hometown of Carnarvon in Western Australia, 75km from where she went missing on October 16

Cleo was found 18 days after she disappeared from a tent she was sharing with her family at the Blowholes campsite, less than 75km from Carnarvon. Police said she was smiling when she was rescued, and is now in hospital being assessed with her parents at her side

Premier Mark McGowan said it was 'a lot of information' that had led to an arrest and thanked the police for their efforts over the past three weeks
The biological dad of Cleo Smith has posted a heartwarming note to his front home hours after his daughter was found alive and well.

The four-year-old was reunited with her family on Wednesday, 18 days after she vanished from their tent at a remote campsite 75km north of her hometown of Carnarvon in Western Australia.

Cleo's biological dad Daniel Staines lives with his parents 1000km south of Carnarvon.

He has put up a 'Welcome Home Cleo' sign featuring a blue love heart on the front door of his Halls Head home located 77km south of Perth.

Cleo Smith (pictured) was reunited with her family on Wednesday, 18 days after she vanished from their remote campsite

Cleo's biological dad Daniel Staines posted this sign on the front door of his Halls Head home south of Perth

Mr Staines broke his silence for the first time a day earlier to express his joy and relief that Cleo had been found.

'We are all absolutely overjoyed at the good news this morning and so happy that Cleo has been reunited with her mum and dad,' the Staines family said in a written statement to The West Australian.

'Thank you to everyone who helped look for her and bring her home, particularly the WA Police, SES and the Carnarvon community.'

Mr Staines and his family sent Cleo, her mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon their 'best wishes'.

The note is similar to dozens of Welcome Home Cleo signs plastered around Carnarvon, where Cleo has spent her first night back home snuggled up her mum, stepfather and baby sister.

Welcome Home Cleo were the final words of WA Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch's video message to the world confirming that Cleo was alive and well.

Daniel Staines (right) is overjoyed that his biological daughter has been found

Mr Staines lives with his parents in Halls Head (home pictured), 1000km south of his daughter's hometown of Carnarvon

WA Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch said Cleo and her family slept in the same room on Wednesday night and 'cuddled all night'.

Mr Blanch said her parents are relieved to have their little girl home after police beat the odds to find Cleo safe and alive.

'Ellie and Jake had been through 18 days of hell and I know Australia have felt that with them,' he told 2GB's Ben Fordham on Thursday.

'They had a small amount of hope, but I thought they probably thought they were never going to give her a cuddle again.

WA Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch has revealed Cleo slept together in the same room as her mum, stepdad and baby sister and 'cuddled all night' after her incredible rescue

'I'm pretty sure they all slept in the same room just cuddling all night.'

West Australian police officers found the missing four-year-old girl at a Carnarvon home about 1am on Wednesday, almost three weeks after she vanished.

Terry Kelly, 36, who was not in the home when it was raided, has been arrested in connection with Cleo's abduction from her parents' tent at Blowholes campsite, 74km away, on October 16.
The University of North Carolina paid 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones almost $17,000 for a 40-minute speech on Tuesday night, it has emerged.

Hannah-Jones, whose controversial work for The New York Times won a Pulitzer, spoke at the Wilmington site as part of the university's Writer's Week.

She tweeted on Tuesday a photo of a gift basket in her hotel suite, containing a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon, apples, salted caramel chocolate and a copy of an 1860 book, The American Negro: His History and Literature, written by America's most famous fugitive slaves, Ellen and William Craft.

'Just got to Wilmington, NC, for @UNCWilmington Writers Week, checked into my room, and I have to say, y'all know how to treat a gal,' she said.

On Wednesday, Fox News obtained her contract, showing she was paid $16,670 for the appearance. The event consisted of a 40-minute speech from the 45-year-old and a 15-minute Q&A period.

The contract lists a 15-minute meet and greet with students but is crossed out in the signed version of the contract.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, pictured during a July interview, was paid almost $17,000 for a speech and Q&A at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, on Tuesday night

The university was also responsible for her airfare, transportation, meals, and lodging for up to two nights.

The 45-year-old won a Pulitzer for her 2019 work, but also fired up critics

'In the shadow of Wilmington's annual reckoning with its violent past as demonstrated in the bloody events of 1898, John Jeremiah Sullivan will be in conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of Time Magazine's most Influential People of 2021, named for her ability to shine a bright searchlight over American history,' the university said, publicizing her speech.

'In her light,' Barry Jenkins wrote in September's issue, 'the wounds of America's original and subsequent sins are laid bare.''

She argues that inadequate attention is paid to how America is built in part from slave labor, and how the story of America's founding has been sanitized and distorted, celebrating 1776 instead, and brushing over the past. Critics say she is labeling the United States as a racist country, and trying to make people hate their homeland.

Hannah-Jones spoke on Tuesday at the University of North Carolina's Kenan Auditorium, for a sold-out event

The Wilmington campus of the University of North Carolina is pictured

A spokesperson for the University of North Carolina Wilmington told Fox News that the event was paid through a 'donor-supported fund managed by the department.'

Yet the head of a conservative think tank that deals with economic policy in the state, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, said the fee would have been better spent on supporting local students.

Jenna Robinson pointed out that the fee would have covered two years' worth of tuition and fees for a student to study in the department.

'I'm glad it didn't come out of student fees, which is often where speaker fees come out of. I'm really glad it wasn't student fees,' Robinson told Fox.

'It was not the best use of funds. There are other writers available to talk about the same topic at a much lower cost.

'And I think the university would have been better served going to some other writer if they really wanted to talk on this topic.

Hannah-Jones speaks on stage during the 137th Commencement at Morehouse College on May 16 in Atlanta

New York Times' 1619 Project In August 2019 the New York Times Magazine published the 1619 project, a collection of essays, photo essays, short fiction pieces and poems aimed to 'reframe' American history based on the impact of slaves brought to the US. It was published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies. It argues that the nation's birth was not 1776 with independence from the British crown, but in August 1619 with the arrival of a cargo ship of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans at Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia, which inaugurated the system of slavery. The project argues that slavery was the country's origin and out of it 'grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional.' That includes economic might, industry, the electoral system, music, public health and education inequities, violence, income inequality, slang, and racial hatred. However, the project is debated among historians for its factual accuracy. In March 2020 historian Leslie M. Harris who served as a fact checker for the project said authors ignored her corrections, but believed the project was needed to correct prevailing historical narratives. One aspect up for debate is the timeline. Time Magazine said the first slaves arrived in 1526 in a Spanish colony in what is now South Carolina, 93 years prior to the landing in Jamestown. Some experts say slaves first arrived at present-day Fort Monroe in Hampton, instead of Jamestown. Others argue the first Africans in Virginia were indentured servants as laws on lifetime slavery didn't appear till 17th century and early 18th century, but worked essentially as slaves. Advertisement

Hannah-Jones was previously considered for a tenured position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but after the board of trustees offered her the position in June without tenure, she turned it down and accepted a tenured position at Howard University.

Hannah-Jones referenced the controversy in a tweet ahead of her speech, pointing out that she was invited to a different campus of the same university that rejected her.

'I'll be speaking at *another* UNC tonight,' she said. 'Thank you for welcoming me.'

Hannah-Jones's job offer at UNC Chapel Hill was withdrawn, it emerged afterwards, because a millionaire megadonor objected to her hiring and questioned her objectivity as a journalist - claiming she was 'trying to push an agenda'.

Millionaire newspaper tycoon Walter Hussman Jr., 75, complained when he learned that they were thinking of hiring the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter.

Hussman donated $25 million to his alma mater in 2019, and UNC renamed their journalism department after him.

'I worry about the controversy of tying the UNC journalism school to the 1619 project,' he wrote to Susan King, dean at the Hussman School of Journalism, in December 2020.

Hussman worried in the email sent in December, and obtained by The Assembly that many would believe that Hannah-Jones was, 'trying to push an agenda,' through the 1619 Project, and that, 'they will assume she is manipulating historical facts to support it.

'My hope and vision was that the journalism school would be the champion of objective, impartial reporting and separating news and opinion, and that would add so much to its reputation and would benefit both the school and the University,' he wrote.

'Instead, I fear this possible and needless controversy will overshadow it.'

Hussman expressed in the emails that he preferred the work of other Pulitzer Prize-winning historians such as James McPherson and Gordon Wood over Hannah-Jones's.

In particular, he disagreed with a part of her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, in which she wrote that black Americans had largely fought alone during the civil rights struggle after World War II.

'I think this claim denigrates the courageous efforts of many white Americans to address the sin of slavery and the racial injustices that resulted after the Civil War,' he wrote.

'Long before Nikole Hannah Jones won her Pulitzer Prize courageous white southerners risking their lives standing up for the rights of blacks were winning Pulitzer prizes, too,' he wrote, referring to southern journalists of the era.

Private emails reveal that UNC Chapel Hill megadonor Walter Hussman (right) had objected to the university's hiring of New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones as a Knight Chair professor at the school

After a $25 million donation to the college, UNC named its journalism school after Hussman

In response to what he has seen as a perceived loss of objectivity in modern mainstream journalism, in 2017 Hussman reiterated a commitment to impartiality in a statement of core values reprinted every day on Page 2 of all 10 of his newspapers.

King initially decided to hire Hannah-Jones anyway, as a Knight Chair professor at the Hussman School, and the decision was announced in April 2021.

But the school rescinded its offer of a tenured position a month later, confirming that Hannah-Jones would instead join its faculty this summer with a five-year contract.

The offer of a tenured teaching position was resubmitted to the board of trustees at a North Carolina university after outrage and campus protests when her tenure application was halted.

She would have been the first black person to hold the job - and the first person not to be tenured.

Although the school hired Hannah-Jones, it declined to give her tenure in the position, sparking backlash and claims of racism

In July she announced she would be teaching at Howard, not UNC.

Hussman was not the only person to criticize the hiring of Hannah-Jones.

How fight over appointment of 1619 Project founder unfolded August 2019 - The New York Times begins its 1619 project which aims to 'reframe the country's history' on slavery, but faces criticism over historical inaccuracies and generalizations May 2020 - Nikole Hannah-Jones is awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her introductory essay to the project Summer 2020 - UNC start considering hiring Hannah-Jones to its journalism faculty. December 2020 - In an email, Arkansas newspaper publisher Walter Hussman - a top donor to UNC - expresses his fears that Hannah-Jones was, 'trying to push an agenda,' through the 1619 Project, and that, 'they will assume she is manipulating historical facts to support it.' April 2021 - UNC announces that Hannah-Jones would be joining the journalism school's faculty as Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, traditionally a tenured professorship. May 2021 - Following criticism of the appointment, UNC u-turns and instead says she would take up the position on a five-year contract. This sparks a torrent of criticism, including from black students who claimed they had been neglected. June 30, 2021 - The trustees ultimately approved tenure last week, voting 9-4 to accept her application at a special meeting with a closed-door session that was invaded by her supporters, sparking an ugly brawl. July 6, 2021 - Hannah-Jones announces she has turned down the tenure offer and will go to Howard University instead. Advertisement

The news was swiftly condemned by conservative political groups with links to the UNC Board of Governors which oversees the state university's 16-campus system, according to NC Policy Watch.

Hannah-Jones received her masters in journalism from UNC in 2003 and got her start covering education for the Raleigh News & Observer. She then wrote for the Oregonian and later ProPublica before becoming a reporter for the Times in 2015.

Taking a different approach to Hussman's, Hannah-Jones has expressed skepticism to journalistic objectivity, telling NPR last June that: 'We really need to understand that all of our racialized experiences as journalists lead us to cover things a certain way.'

Hannah-Jones became a household name in journalism with the 1619 Project - which was slammed by former president Donald Trump as 'totally discredited' and part of the 'twisted web of lies' that has caught fire in American universities that teach American is a 'wicked and racist nation.'

Trump formed a '1776 Commission' in response to teach 'patriotism.'

It released a report this year before being ended by President Joe Biden.

The series 'reframed' American history to have it start in 1619, when the first slaves from Africa arrived to Virginia, instead of 1776, when the founding fathers declared independence from Britain.

In her essay, Hannah-Jones wrote that slaves laid the foundations of the US Capitol and built founding fathers' plantations.

She said the 'relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies' made Wall Street and New York City the financial capital of the world.

'Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they'd been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire,' Hannah-Jones wrote.

'But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage,' she said.

'Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country's history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.'

The project heralded by some and criticized by others, including a number of historians and Trump, who adamantly opposed the idea that it should be taught in classrooms.

Princeton historian Sean Wilentz criticized the 1619 Project, and some of Hannah-Jones's other work, in a letter sent to top Times editors and the publisher, The Atlantic reported in December 2019.

The letter, which was signed by other scholars James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes refers to 'matters of verifiable fact' that 'cannot be described as interpretation or "framing''' and says the project reflected 'a displacement of historical understanding by ideology,' The Atlantic reported.

Wilentz and the other signatories demanded corrections.

Trump called it 'revisionist history' and threatened to withhold federal funding from public schools that used it.

Republican lawmakers in a handful of states, including Iowa and Missouri, are continuing his fight to ban it from schools.

The 1619 Project won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. It was praised by some as shining a light on untold history, but lambasted by others, including former President Donald Trump, for what he said was a jaundiced view of the US

Bills were introduced in those state legislatures that would punish school districts that use the '1619 Project' by cutting federal funding.

A major critic of the project has been The Heritage Foundation, which says it 'has been tireless in its efforts to debunk the radical and anti-American positions taken by The New York Times and the 1619 Project.

One of The Heritage Foundation's articles pointed out post-publication edits that the Times made, including changing a in Hannah-Jones' leading article in the series to say that 'some of' the colonists fought the American Revolution to defend slavery.

'The editors called this a 'small' clarification, and it was indeed very small, although considering that the 1619 Project's full-throated commitment to demonstrating that American history can only be explained through the lens of slavery, this correction appears nothing short of essential,' Heritage policy expert Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst for Heritage's Center for Education Policy, wrote.

One of the project's supporters, Seth Rockman, an associate professor of history at Brown University, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post that the project 'is a testament to patriotism, not a repudiation.'

Rockman wrote that history is 'an ongoing conversation in which trained professionals and multiple publics wrestle with the meaning of the past' and disagreement is desirable 'as it shows us that something important is at stake.'

He said there are warranted criticisms that 'we should spend our time debating,' for example the project was 'insufficiently attentive' about how the Native Americans lost their land.

Trump suggested, however, that the project's teachings were dangerous.
Workers are being urged to hold their office Christmas parties early to avoid giving Covid to vulnerable relatives at family gatherings.

Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: People going home for the week of Christmas, if they will be staying in the same house as someone vulnerable or very elderly, may want to avoid crowds for a couple of weeks before that.

'While the risks are small, those who want to be ultra careful should consider arranging Christmas parties for the first week of December.

Workers spending Christmas with elderly or vulnerable relatives may want to avoid crowds in the weeks before December 25, health experts warn

Professor Catherine Noakes, an expert on infection, said people should consider going to fewer events during the party season.

Its about thinking where your priorities are, she said.

Professor Noakes is among the experts who will deliver this years Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution, to be shown on BBC4 between Christmas and New Year.

She suggests people should consider going to fewer events during the party season than usual.

Last year Christmas was effectively cancelled for London and much of the South East, as more than 16 million people were put into de facto lockdown and told not to leave tier four.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also slashed a Christmas amnesty from five days to just one.

This year, thanks to the vaccines for Covid-19, no such measures are currently planned, and thousands of people are looking forward to having one drink too many at their long-awaited office Christmas bash.

People are advised to plan ahead, however, and do a risk assessment.

If they are staying with family from the start of Christmas week, on December 20, with elderly or vulnerable people there too, they may want to avoid picking up the coronavirus, which conservative calculations suggest can still be infectious for two weeks.

Professor Hunter said that could mean planning Christmas parties for the first week of December, although he stressed the risk of passing on the virus is now minimal when households are double-vaccinated, particularly after boosters for older family members.

Workers are advised to plan ahead and carry out a risk assessment of parties

Professor Hunter said that could mean planning Christmas parties for the first week of December, although he stressed the risk of passing on the virus is now minimal when households are double-vaccinated, particularly after boosters for older family members.

Giving her own advice, Professor Noakes said: Having a smaller number of social events, and arranging bigger events like Christmas parties early in December, may be one way we can reduce the risk of spreading the virus to family and friends who we may meet over Christmas.

Its about thinking where your priorities are - do you have to go to six Christmas parties, or do you just go to two or three?

And perhaps its better to do a smaller number of more valuable activities than to just go to everything, because really the more people mix together, the more chances there are for this disease to spread.

Professor Noakes, an environmental engineer who is an adviser on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and has advised ministers during the pandemic, has also suggested Government funding should be available for people to better ventilate their homes for health reasons, as well as to insulate them to keep heat in.

This years Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution include Deputy Chief Medical Officer professor Jonathan Van-Tam, who will discuss scientific advances during the pandemic, along with Professor Noakes and five other leading UK scientists - Professors Katie Ewer, Julia Gog, Ravi Gupta, Teresa Lambe and Sharon Peacock (SUBS - pls keep).

The Christmas Lectures will be broadcast on BBC Four between Christmas and New Year.
Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday credited his victory in Virginia to a 'movement' of parents that started in Loudoun County as education became the central issue launching the Republican to victory over former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe.

'I was really overwhelmed by the broad support across the entire Commonwealth of Virginia,' Youngkin told Fox News' Tucker Carlson in the first network interview since he was declared winner of the gubernatorial race in Virginia in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

'This campaign stopped being a campaign a while ago, and it became a movement,' the Republican victor said, adding that 'education really did become a top issue in this election.'

'Parents across Virginia started to recognize that they really did need to have an important, decisive role in their children's education,' he continued. 'And when they heard Terry McAuliffe say he wants to put government between parents and their children, this ceased to be a campaign and it started to be a movement led by parents.'

Youngkin beat McAuliffe 50.9 per cent to 48.4 per cent in a state that was expected to easily be handed to Democrats after President Joe Biden won it by 10 points in the 2020 presidential election.

Issues involving education became a central focus of the campaign when parents were concerned they were losing say over their children's time at school  including the teaching of Critical Race Theory and the rights of trans students.

'So many people are trying to divide us and tell one group that they should be different than another and it's time for us to come together,' Youngkin said, adding people on the campaign trail told him they were tired of the divisiveness.

Republican Glenn Youngkin, the governor-elect of Virginia, attributed his victory to a 'broad movement' of parents across the state

During his campaign, Youngkin brought it back to religion, saying all people are equal because God made it that way.

'Here we have in our schools a moment to stop teaching our children about their differences and start teaching them about the things that can bring us together and prepare them for a great life,' Youngkin said. 'And that's what we're going to do in our schools when I'm governor.'

Conservatives have fought hard against schools implementing the teaching of Critical Race Theory, which is a way to teach history that links the development of the U.S. and its laws to race.

Republicans claim this teaching is a way to make America seem like a racist nation and they say it focuses too much on dividing students by race.

Trans issues have also become big in Virginia schools, especially in Loudoun County, the wealthiest county in the U.S.

The school board in Loudoun County ruled in August that transgender students could use facilities and participate in school groups, like sports, associated with their gender identity.

A few months later, the wealthy Virginia county was making national headlines for a case involving a rape of a girl student by a 15-year-old boy dressed in a skirt in the women's rest room at school.

Youngkin, a businessman before running for office, said he is ready to get to work for Virginians in 'real people time, not government time.'

He is expected to be inaugurated on January 15, 2022.

Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe (left) was expected to easily grasp victory for his old post in a state President Joe Biden (right) won by 10 points in the 2020 presidential election

The Democratic Party is warring with who to blame for the upsets in Virginia and the razor-thin margin of victory in New Jersey. Establishment Democrats say if Biden's agenda was passed before Election Day, the outcomes would have been different, but progressive factions claim the party needed to go far-left to win.

Joe Biden on Wednesday, said he didn't think it would make a difference if his agenda passed in Congress before voters headed to the polls, despite speculation the outcome was a rebuke on his presidency.

Instead, the president said the high number of Trump supporters turning up to vote was to blame and said people are upset over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the rising price of gas.

'I think it should have passed before Election Day, but I'm not sure that I would be able to have changed the number of very conservative folks who turned out and the red districts who were Trump voters. But maybe,' the president said during a White House event on Wednesday.

By invoking Trump, Biden was at least partly agreeing with his predecessor, who immediately took credit for Youngkin's win, and claimed it was MAGA forces who put him over the top  in a race where Youngkin took some notable steps to try to keep distance between himself and the former president.

When asked if Democrats should have won in Virginia considering Biden won it by 10 points in 2020, the president said: 'I know we did, but we also  I was running against Donald Trump'  a comment that suggested Youngkin was a stronger and less divisive figure.

Youngkin took stage at an election-night rally in Chantilly, Virginia on Tuesday night. The Republican beat McAuliffe by 2.5 percentage points

Biden said that he continues to bring up Trump 'because the issues he supports are affecting their lives every day, and their negative impact on their lives.'

'Look, I just think people are at a point, and it is understandable, where there's a whole lot of confusion. Everything from are you ever going to get COVID under control or are my kids going to be in school, are they going to be able to stay in school to whether or not I'm going to get a tax break that allows me to be able to pay for the needs of my kids and my family,' he said.

The president added: 'People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things  from COVID to school to jobs to a whole range of things, and the cost of a gallon of gasoline.'

Progressive factions of the party claim that Democrats need to realign even further left to adjust to the changing political landscape.
A crew member on the upcoming Indiana Jones film has died on location, it has been reported.

Nic Cupac, 54, who was among 100 crew members working for the blockbuster sequel, was tragically found dead in his hotel in Fes, Morocco, The Sun reports.

He had flown out to help with a complicated stunt for the film involving a rickshaw before he passed away.

Today, fellow crew members paid tribute to Mr Cupac, who is thought to have died of natural causes.

A crew member on the upcoming Indiana Jones film was tragically found dead in his hotel in Fes, Morocco, it has been reported. Pictured: Harrison Ford in Raiders Of The Lost Ark

One friend wrote: 'One of the very best  taught me so much when I was starting out.'

And another person aded: 'I'm heartbroken. Nic was such a lovely man.'

The fifth and final Indiana Jones sequel, which was initially due for release in 2022 but has now been pushed back to 2023, saw filming halted by three months this year after actor Harrison Ford suffered a shoulder injury.

The actor had been rehearsing for a fight scene for the upcoming film when he was injured.

A statement from Disney at the time: 'In the course of rehearsing for a fight scene, Harrison Ford sustained an injury involving his shoulder.

'Production will continue while the appropriate course of treatment is evaluated, and the filming schedule will be reconfigured as needed in the coming weeks.'

The new film - which will sees James Mangold take on directing duties from long-time helmer Steven Spielberg - also saw shooting previously pushed back as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The untitled film, which will also star Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen, comes thirteen years after the release of the fourth film.
Sky Bet offered free spins to recovering gambling addicts who had banned themselves from the online bookmaker.

A message from its casino brand Sky Vegas, thought to have been sent to thousands of vulnerable ex-players, said theyd be given 100 spins in return for a 5 bet.

The Gambling Commission watchdog is investigating, with Sky Bet saying it will treat the matter extremely seriously.

It is a legal requirement for gambling companies to offer and safely administer self-exclusion schemes, which must also block marketing messages sent by phone or email. Part of a Sky Vegas advertisement is pictured above

The advert prompted a wave of anger among campaigners and MPs, who said the promotional material could trigger relapses.

The incident is especially embarrassing for Sky Bets owner Flutter, as it took place during Safer Gambling Week.

Sky Bet said: We sincerely apologise to those who have mistakenly received Sky Vegas promotional communications and for the distress this may have caused.

It is a legal requirement for gambling companies to offer and safely administer self-exclusion schemes, which must also block marketing messages sent by phone or email.

The subject line of email, seen by the Mail, read: Take a peek at what your mystery bonus is.

It continued: Here at Sky Vegas, we love the unexpected. Thats right. Simply opt in, spend 5 and claim your 100 free spins. The best part? Whatever you win is yours to keep - thats the fun in fair!

It came as the Government finalises proposed changes to the Gambling Act, in what promises to be the biggest shake-up of the laws governing the industry in 15 years.

Sky Bet said: We sincerely apologise to those who have mistakenly received Sky Vegas promotional communications and for the distress this may have caused.

Several MPs have demanded that ministers ban gambling advertising outright.

Recovering addicts, who received the message from Sky Bet after self-excluding, said it could put them at risk of relapse.

James Grimes, an addict turned campaigner, said: Its a direct threat to my recovery. We need these systems in place to protect people, if not whats the point. Self-regulation has failed.

Inevitably gambling companies are using data not to prevent harm but to further profits. Father-of-two Chris Gilham, 39, another recovering addict, received the email after banning himself from Sky Bet brands over four years ago.

He said: It just makes me feel disappointed and let down. That is a trigger, and that could lead to someone gambling, and ultimately taking their lives.
Notorious vegan activist Tash Peterson has compared the abduction of four-year-old Cleo Smith to baby cows being taken from their mothers.

The belligerent animal rights extremist accused the Australian public of hypocrisy for celebrating Cleo's rescue from a locked home in Carnarvon, WA.

The four-year-old was returned to mum Ellie and stepdad Jake Gliddon 18 days after she was kidnapped from a remote campsite during a family holiday.

Moving bodycam footage captured the moment Cleo was rescued by detectives, with the little girl gently told she would soon see her 'mummy and daddy'.

But Ms Peterson claimed abducting a child was no morally different to taking baby animals in the meat and dairy industry.

Tash Peterson (pictured) has compared the abduction of four-year-old Cleo Smith to baby animals who are taken from their mothers for milk and beef production

Little Cleo (pictured) was miraculously returned to her grateful parents 18 days after she mysteriously vanished from the Blowholes Campsite in remote Western Australia

'Whilst Australia celebrates the rescue of Cleo... the majority of the nation pay people to steal babies from their mothers and shoot them in the head on dairy farms,' she captioned an image of a young cow.

'This is an image of a five day old baby awaiting his murder in a slaughterhouse in Tasmania.

'Males born in the dairy industry are often murdered just days old because they don't produce milk.'

The militant vegan went on to claim people who bought dairy products supported the 'rape, slavery, abuse, murder and the abduction of babies'.

'One day this heinous crime towards non humans will be illegal just like it is amongst humans. Be on the right side of history, live vegan.'

Some commenters agreed with the comparison that 'every mother is a mother', but even some of her most loyal supporters said she had gone too far.

Her statement on Facebook (pictured) came soon after it was announced police had freed little Cleo from a locked home in Carnarvon

The militant vegan - also known online as @vganbootyy said the abduction of a child is no morally different to the abduction of babies in the dairy industry

In one of her latest protests the social media influencer marched into the designer store in Perth wearing only a nude G-string, with red paint daubed from her chest down to her crotch

'You cannot be serious? The nation is in tears of relief about this precious little girl being found safe and you're using her already to feed your agenda?' one wrote.

'Can count on you to make something as sweet as little Cleo's story all about you and your 'cause',' a second wrote.

'I have been following you Tash and respected what you do and getting your point out but this is majorly next level and quite frankly wrong!' another fan commented.

'This young girl should not be used to gain your 'likes' and 'followers'.'

Despite the online backlash, the controversial plant-based campaigner doubled down on her claims and lashed out at her critics.

'Its fascinating witnessing the cognitive dissonance and how challenged people are feeling from a statement that I made which points out the blatant hypocrisy within our society,' she wrote.

'Triggered animal abusers can't even figure out that they pay for abuse, torture, slavery and murder' the activist replied to comments slamming the comparison

'The purpose of my post was to highlight the engrained anthropocentrism and speciesism within our society, it meant no disrespect to Cleo.

'People are accusing me of being iniquitous and offensive for drawing comparisons between the abduction of a human and the abduction of a non human, with no consideration of the fact that we are all animals who feel pain and suffering.

'All animals (human and non human) are mothers, fathers, children and babies with families with emotional connections.'

Anthropocentrism is the belief that humans are the only, or primary, holders of moral standing, and are separate from and superior to nature.

Ms Peterson claimed the majority of the people who disagreed with her post were 'actively paying for people to abduct babies from their mothers'.

The plant-based public figure (right) recently protested against horse racing at Ascot Racecourse in Perth and was seen being escorted away by police

She said those who labelled the comparison as distasteful needed a 'reality check' and should be outraged by the 'animal holocaust' they were contributing to.

'What is abhorrent, barbaric and outright shameful is supporting the dairy industry and other animal industries,' she concluded.

The 27-year-old has become known for her shock-tactic demonstrations performed in food courts, butchers, meat isles in supermarkets and busy restaurants.

She recently uploaded footage of police escorting her out of the Ascot Racecourse in Perth as she protested horse racing in front of a crowd of bemused punters.

Ms Peterson claims to earn $40,000 a month as an Instagram and OnlyFans star - more than enough to fuel her dream of being a full-time activist.

She has also dressed in bloodied aprons and stormed into restaurants and supermarkets like McDonald's, KFC and Coles.

Detectives used crowbars and battering rams to enter a home in Carnarvon and free little Cleo Smith about 12.46am on Wednesday.

The animal rights activist (pictured) claimed the majority of the people who disagreed with her post are 'actively paying for people to abduct babies from their mothers'

Her statement comes after detectives used crowbars and battering rams to enter a home in Carnarvon and free little Cleo Smith (pictured) about 12.46am on Wednesday

The house the little girl was found is just seven minutes away from where she lives with her mum Ellie, stepdad Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla.

Terry Kelly, 36, who was not in the home when it was raided, has been arrested in connection with Cleo's abduction from her parents' tent on October 16.

After the little girl was rescued, detectives took Cleo to the car and called her parents, saying 'we've got someone here that wants to speak to you'.

'It was a wonderful feeling to make that call. They were ecstatic.'

Cleo cried out 'mummy' as she finally returned to her mother's arms having not seen her family in an agonising 18 days.
The Duchess of York could be called as a witness in the sex assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew, it has been reported.

Lawyer David Boies, who represents the Duke of York's accuser Virginia Roberts, has spoken of his intentions to formally speak with two British witnesses to a New York judge.

The move, which comes after lawyers for Ms Roberts said they would request for Prince Andrew to give testimony under oath, has sparked speculation that the royal's former wife Sarah, Duchess of York, could be subpoenaed, The Telegraph reports.

It comes after Sigrid McCawley, another lawyer for Ms Roberts, suggested that one of the people who could be asked for a deposition was Andrew's ex-wife.

The Duke of York, 61, is facing a civil lawsuit in the US after Ms Roberts filed the lawsuit in August alleging that she was forced to have sex with him three times under orders from the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2001 when she was 17.

Prince Andrew has always vehemently denied the claims and his legal team is seeking to get the US case thrown out.

The Duchess of York could be called as a witness in the sex assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew after David Boies, who represents the Duke of York's accuser Virginia Roberts, spoke of his intentions to formally call two British witnesses

In her civil lawsuit, Ms Roberts also claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew at Jeffrey Epstein's mansion in New York and on Little St James, his private island in the Caribbean.

She alleges she was 'trafficked' to London in March 2001, where she was photographed next to Andrew in Maxwell's house.

Andrew has insisted he has 'no recollection' of meeting Miss Roberts and has repeatedly denied her account of events.

He told a 2019 Newsnight interview he was at a Pizza Express restaurant in Woking, Surrey, on the day they supposedly went dancing and had sex.

Ms Roberts has also alleged she has suffered 'significant emotional and psychological distress and harm' because of her alleged abuse and is claiming damages which could run into millions of pounds if her case succeeds.

In her lawsuit, she claimed Andrew knew she was a victim of sex trafficking by Epstein, and also knew she was a minor under US law.

The lawsuit alleged she was 'compelled by express or implied threats by Epstein, Maxwell and/or Prince Andrew to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew, and feared death or physical injury to herself or another and other repercussions for disobeying Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew due to their powerful connections, wealth, and authority.'

Ghislaine Maxwell is also facing a criminal trial accused of procuring and trafficking underage girls for Epstein. She denies the allegations.

This week it was revealed that lawyers for Prince Andrew's accuser will seek a deposition from him as part of her sex assault lawsuit against him.

This month Sigrid McCawley, another lawyer for Ms Roberts, suggested that one of the people who could be asked for a deposition was Andrew's ex-wife Sarah Ferguson

The Duke of York, 61, is facing a civil lawsuit in the US after Ms Roberts filed the lawsuit in August alleging that she was forced to have sex with him three times

Ms Roberts alleges she was 'trafficked' to London in March 2001, where she was photographed next to Andrew in Maxwell's house

The legal team for Virginia Roberts will request for the Duke of York to give testimony under oath and could do so 'relatively promptly'.

Ms Roberts' lawyer David Boies said that he would seek to depose between eight and 12 people while the Duke's lawyers wanted to question a similar number.

During a 10-minute hearing before a federal court in New York, Mr Boies said that the case was 'moving along' after delays caused by the Duke refusing to accept service of the legal paperwork.

The judge set a tentative trial date of next September or October meaning that it will cast a shadow over The Queen's Platinum Jubilee, which will take place in June 2022 marking 70 years since she acceded to the British throne.

The hearing came days after Andrew filed his response to Ms Roberts' lawsuit claiming she accused him for 'another payday at his expense'.

During the hearing Mr Boies said that his list of 8-12 witnesses included people he 'can't identify right now because I'm not sure who we will be able to get, and that investigation is ongoing'.

He said: 'We'd be prepared to start some of the depositions relatively promptly, some (targets) will not be identified for another two months'.

The Duke's lawyer Andrew Brettler said that he would be seeking a similar number of depositions.

Judge Lewis Kaplan asked if either side anticipated needing letters rogatory, or a formal request from him to the British legal authorities to get somebody to sit for a deposition.

Convicted paedophile Epstein, 66, was found dead in his prison cell while awaiting trial on trafficking charges in 2019

Mr Boies said: 'There are two people in the United Kingdom where it might be necessary for letters rogatory. We may be able to get them to appear voluntary. We ought to know that within the next 2-3 weeks.'

Mr Brettler said he was 'not ruling out the possibility' of making a similar request of the judge.

In an interview earlier this month Sigrid McCawley, another lawyer for Mrs Giuffre, suggested that one of the people who could be asked for a deposition is Andrew's ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

Judge Kaplan said he was 'looking at the possibility of September, in any case October to December' for the trial, though he couldn't set a firm date yet.

The Duke of York stepped back from public life after the disastrous Newsnight interview over his relationship with convicted paedophile Epstein, 66, who was found dead in his prison cell while awaiting trial on trafficking charges in 2019.
Do you know more? Email tips@dailymail.com

Police released CCTV of a man who they believe can help with inquiries

A close friend of a former reality TV contestant who was mysteriously found dead in a fire escape says the 'good-looking boy' didn't need to pay for sex - amid theories he had a rendezvous with an escort hours before his death.

Paul Browne's body was found in a fire exit that runs between the floors of an apartment complex in Rosebery, in Sydney's inner-south, at about 9pm on October 8.

Police are unsure how the 33-year-old died, but say he had driven from his home in the neighbouring suburb of Zetland to a female sex worker's unit on October 7 - the night before his body was found.

On Thursday, Mr Browne's mate Isaac Parry told Daily Mail Australia that he's '100 per cent sure' the construction worker was partying with the woman, rather than using her services.

Paul Browne, 33, was mysteriously found dead in the fire exit of an apartment complex

Paul Browne's friends flocked to social media to pay tribute to the construction worker (pictured right with a friend)

'I honestly don't think he was there to pay for sex,' Mr Parry told Daily Mail Australia in an exclusive interview.

'He would have been partying with an escort as friends.

'He was a good looking boy.'

Detectives told the Daily Telegraph that Mr Browne took drugs while he was in the apartment.

Mr Parry confirmed the 33-year-old enjoyed party drugs when they were younger - but said he wasn't a drug dealer.

The revelation comes as footage of emerged of Mr Browne auditioning for the singing show X-Factor, showing the construction worker in high spirits and having a laugh as he performed a ballad by Robbie Williams.

Police are unsure how Paul Brown died at this stage. They have appealed to the public for information

Mr Browne was just 22 when he was dared to perform 'Angels' by Robbie Williams on stage in front of judges Natalie Bassingthwaighte, Guy Sebastian, Ronan Keating, and Mel B.

When his vocal prowess was dubbed 'terrible' by all four judges, the young man said it was likely because 'my mouth is a little dry' and 'the song wasn't in my key'.

Mr Parry said the pair enjoyed talking about 'girls, music, clubbing and crypto currency' when they saw each other at a Sauna in Waterloo, and remembered him as a 'loving and respectful' person.

'Miss you already brother,' he said.

'You touched my life in a way few people do.

'You earned my love and respect by simply being loving and respectful to whoever you would meet.

'You had a fire inside you that burned so bright it drew people too you like moths to camp light.

Mr Browne was just 22 when he was dared to perform 'Angels' by Robbie Williams on stage in 2011 as part of an X-Factor audition

'I know you left this world a better place then you found it. Fly high young blood... see you when I get there.'

On Wednesday, police released CCTV footage of a mystery man wearing a dark tracksuit, cap and white sneakers leaving the scene on October 8.

Officers from South Sydney Police Area Command are looking to speak with the man and appealed to the public for information.

Police said they were desperate to piece together Mr Browne's last movements for his 'devastated' family.

An autopsy did not reveal the cause of death.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or report online.
A graffiti vandal who caused over 130,000 worth of damage to the London Underground claimed he was 'creating a job for the person cleaning it'.

Bacari Adams, 33, was caught red-handed when officers discovered his favourite tag was the very same one tattooed on his knuckles.

Dozens of trains and stations were damaged by Adams totalling 77 offences - all committed across the city railway system.

British Transport Police officers first started investigating the 33-year-old in 2016 by interviewing people who said they had seen someone trespassing onto the railway, sometimes in the dead of night, and scrawling tags on trains and other property.

When enough evidence was accumulated, Adams and a second man, 31-year-old Jake Martin, were arrested at their homes in December 2018.

Their phones included decisive evidence, officers said, as it included pictures of their vandalism which they had kept as trophies.

Text and WhatsApp messages were also found which showed they planned more vandalism on trains and railway property.

In an interview with police in January 2019, where Adams was shown CCTV footage of him writing his tag on a London Overground train, he admitted the offences.

Bacari Adams, pictured, was jailed for six months after he was convicted of 77 offences relating to graffiti attacks across London over the course of two years

Police said Adams of Enfield caused at least 130,000 of damages to tubes, trains and stations across London, file photograph

He said: 'Sorry, I'm not going to do it again. I can't deny catching me red-handed, only an idiot would deny that'.

Adams, of Enfield, was jailed for six months at Inner London Crown Court on Wednesday, October 13. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to destroy or damage property.

Martin, of Tottenham, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in prison suspended for 18 months.

The damage caused to the railway totalled 133,817.

Alom Uddin, from British Transport Police, said: 'This was a long and thorough investigation. We were committed to securing enough evidence to link Adams and Martin to the dozens of crimes committed across the London railway network.

'Graffiti on the railway is inherently dangerous.

'It often involves trespassing onto the railway lines, which can be charged with electricity, or have trains constantly passing through. It also costs the railway network significant sums of money and disrupts services while carriages are cleaned.

'We're committed to identifying anyone committing these acts on the railway and will invest significant resources and time to ensure they're brought before the courts.'
An urgent rescue is underway after a man plunged 50metres down a cliff at a popular hiking spot in the Gold Coast hinterland.

Queensland Ambulance Services confirmed multiple crews arrived to the scene at Natural Bridge in the Springbrook National Park just before 10am on Thursday.

Rescue teams are making their way towards to Ship Stern circuit - a grade four hiking track for experienced bushwalkers.

A rescue operation is underway for a man who fell 50metres down a cliff at Natural Bridge in the Springbrook National Park (pictured) just before 10am on Thursday

Paramedics and firefighters were still working to reach the man as of 12.20pm (AEST) to determine his condition but say he is responsive.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) said crew were liaising with the Rescue 500 helicopter to assist with operations.
Mystery surrounds the tragic death of a two-year-old toddler who was rushed to hospital after being found with critical injuries.

Arapera Fia died at Starship Children's Hospital in South Auckland on Sunday after she was found at a Weymouth home, New Zealand Police confirmed on Thursday.

Police said an investigation was underway after the injuries sustained by the girl were considered suspicious.

Arapera Fia (pictured), 2, was found with serious injuries at a Waymouth house and was rushed to hospital but couldn't be revived by doctors

'The police investigation is continuing to establish the full circumstances surrounding her death,' Counties Manukau Detective Inspector Warrick Adkin said.

He added the injuries were not being considered as accidental.

'Enquiries at the Weymouth address are continuing and the occupants are currently co-operating with police.'

The tragic death has shocked neighours who said they used to see the girl playing on a children's slide out the front of the house and would wave to her in the street.

One resident told The New Zealand Herald she also had a young daughter and was shaken over the incident.

She added that detectives had questioned her about whether she had noticed anything unusual on the street before the girl was found.
Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has admitted destroying Cleo Smith's brand new shoes while playing with the rescued child and her dog.

Mr McGowan visited the four-year-old and her family a day after she was rescued from a locked Carnarvon house in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The state leader said he and Cleo 'did a few high-fives' before he accidentally stood on one of the little girl's new Barbie shoes.

'I owe her a pair of shoes. But I gave her the two little police teddies which we named Cameron and Rod,' Mr McGowan told a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

'I am not sure that will stick, Cleo didn't seem too enamoured by the names.'

Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has admitted destroying Cleo Smith's brand new shoes while meeting her and her family on Thursday

The teddy bears are named after Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde - the lead investigator into Cleo's disappearance - and Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine.

Sergeant Blaine was one of the four officers who was on the scene as Cleo was rescued from the delipidated Carnarvon home.

Mr McGowan said the youngster was 'bubbly' and 'sweet' during their encounter and eating an icy pole - the same treat she was pictured holding in hospital on Wednesday.

'She spilt it everywhere. She told me it was very, very sticky, which I believed,' he said.

'She was just delightful. It was a lovely experience to meet that little girl. She is just bubbly, friendly and sweet.'

When asked if Cleo was aware of the enormity of what had happened to her, Mr McGowan replied simply 'probably not'.

The WA leader said Cleo - whose disappearance from a remote campsite on October 16 sparked a mass police search and made headlines around the world - appeared to be a 'well-adjusted little girl'.

'She heard the school siren go off and she said "That's my school." She was talking about her dog. We just had a normal conversation,' he said.

Mr McGowan is greeted by Cleo Smith's stepfather during a visit to see the rescued girl in Carnarvon, 900km north of Perth on Thursday

Mr McGowan said the four-year-old had 'done a lot of sleeping and eating' since being reunited with her mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon.

'She was a very bright, upbeat, sweet little girl... They have done a lot of lying around together, cuddling and connecting as parents do with their little daughters,' he said.

'They're a very humble family... and fundamentally decent, honest human beings - it's great to meet them and acknowledge what they've been through.

'They had no complaints - no demands. I said to them "there's so many resources here to help you, whatever you need". They weren't difficult at all.'

Speaking alongside the premier on Thursday, Sergeant Blaine said he didn't think Cleo 'was too keen' on naming a teddy bear after him or his colleague.

'Quietly while the premier was talking to the parents I tried to convince her she could call it Mark,' he said.

Mr McGowan arrives at a press conference at Carnarvon Police Station on Thursday. He visited the four-year-old and her family a day after she was miraculously rescued from a locked Carnarvon house

The WA premier flew into the state's north-west on Thursday to give the rescued four-year-old teddy bears named after the police officers who led the search to find her

Cleo Smith's alleged kidnapper 'acted ENTIRELY alone', police confirm The man accused of abducting Cleo Smith from her family's remote campsite allegedly acted alone, police have confirmed. Terry Kelly, 36, remains in police custody but is yet to be charged. Police have confirmed they believe no one else was involved in the alleged abduction. The man who allegedly abducted Cleo Smith (pictured) from her family's campsite acted alone, police have confirmed 'That is what we will allege has taken place, that he worked solely alone,' Superintendent Rod Wilde told reporters on Thursday. Charges are expected to be laid later on Thursday as soon as officers conclude interviewing Kelly. 'At present we have a man in custody and those investigations are continuing so no charges have been laid as yet,' Supt Wilde said. 'There's still some work that's being undertaken and interviews occurring. 'I believe there's a magistrate in town now. So I would imagine he will go before the magistrate if he's charged this afternoon.' He also confirmed Kelly has been taken to hospital twice during his time in custody. Advertisement

'It was really heartwarming to see her interacting and playing in the backyard and just being herself,' he said.

'I'm sure [the past two weeks] has had an impact but to see her behaving like a four-year-old girl should do, and enjoying being in the presence of her little sister and her family was nice.'

Superintendent Wilde meanwhile said Cleo was 'playing around and in great spirits' when he saw her.

Officials spoke of meeting the little girl after it emerged the man arrested over her alleged kidnapping was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell.

Terry Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner.

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

Terry Kelly, a suspect in the kidnap of Cleo Smith in Western Australia, being taken to hospital

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the WA Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims, but confirmed the man in custody had been treated in hospital for a range of injuries including some of self-harm.

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment.

A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.

Remarkable bodycam footage captured the moment Cleo was rescued by detectives, with the brave little girl clinging to her savior as she is gently spoken to and told she would soon see her 'mummy'

Cleo, four, was found by startled detectives in the early hours of Wednesday morning in a locked house in her hometown of Carnarvon, 18 days after she disappeared from a remote campsite while on holiday with her parents

WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch told Sydney's Radio 2GB the alleged kidnapper was returned to hospital on Thursday morning, but his injuries are not serious. .

Detectives used crowbars and battering rams to kick in the door and free Cleo about 12.46am Wednesday from a home just seven minutes away from where she lives with her mum Ellie, stepdad Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla.

Remarkable bodycam footage captured the moment Cleo was rescued by detectives, with the brave little girl clinging to her savior as she is gently spoken to and told she would soon see her 'mummy'.

West Australian Police shared an adorable first photo of Cleo since she was rescued, smiling with an ice block in hospital. 'The miracle we all hoped for,' they captioned the picture

'Four fathers walked into that room they might have been wearing guns and detective suits but they were four fathers,' Mr Blanch said.

Shocked neighbours told Daily Mail Australia they were first alerted to the commotion when police flood lights lit up their cul-de-sac, which is normally bustling with children playing in their front yards and at the park across the road during daylight hours.

'My nephews went up to see what was going on and then they saw cops leading out the little white girl,' a neighbour who has known Kelly for more than a decade said.

Cleo is now back in the arms of her mum Ellie and stepfather Jake (pictured together)

He described the accused as a 'loner' who never really made an effort to speak with people in the cul-de-sac, and never brought friends back to his house.

Others woke to the news that Cleo had been rescued, filing into the streets before the sun even rose to watch the scene unfold.

West Australian Police shared an adorable first photo of Cleo since she was rescued, smiling with an ice block in hospital in her Frozen pyjamas. 'The miracle we all hoped for,' they wrote.
Sydney's Taronga Zoo has welcomed five new lion cubs this week, marking the first time in 18 years the zoo has been home to a full lion pride.

The five lion cubs - three females and two males - were born 12 weeks ago in August.

Zoo supporters have named the three female cubs 'Malika', 'Zuri' and 'Ayanna' and the public have named one of the male cubs 'Khari', meaning 'like a king' in Swahili.

The Swahili name Malika means 'like a queen', Zuri means 'beautiful' and Ayanna means 'beautiful flower'.

Keepers at the zoo chose the name 'Luzuko' for the other male, which is a South African name meaning 'glory'.

Lioness Maya with three of her cubs enjoying the sun at Taronga Zoo's African Savannah habitat

The new cubs are a welcome addition to the pride at Taronga Zoo

Carnivore Unit Supervisor Louise Ginman said the cubs are growing at a rapid rate.

'It's been such an honour to watch these five precious lion cubs as they develop their own unique personalities,' she said.

'It has been over 18 years since we've heard the pitter-patter of lion cub paws at Taronga Zoo and it is the first time ever we have had a full pride in the new African Savannah.'

This is the first time in 18 years the Zoo has been home to newborn lion cubs

Maya was transferred to Sydney from Taronga's Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, regional NSW roughly a year ago, where she had lived since coming to Australia from a South African zoo in 2014.

She took up residence in the new African Savannah precinct that opened in June last year, where she was introduced to lion brothers Lwazi and Ato to establish a pride at the zoo.

Maya and Ato sired the cubs, which will have access to the main exhibit for a couple of hours a day until they gain confidence.

The addition of these cubs to the Zoo marks the first time it has had a full pride

Taronga Zoo has welcomed a litter of new lion cubs to its pride, who are now 12 weeks old

The cubs weigh between 11 and 13 kilos each.

'Now that Sydney has reopened, we're so excited to welcome back our guests and Zoo Friends to meet these new arrivals and to connect with wildlife,' Taronga CEO Cam Kerr said.

'As Sydney's only not-for-profit zoo, every time you visit, you support us to deliver vital conservation work both here in Australia and around the globe.'
Meghan Markle has called two Republican senators on their private numbers and used her royal title to urge them to vote in favor of paid parental leave, it emerged on Wednesday - shocking the politicians with her latest foray into political activism.

The move is just the beginning for the Los Angeles-born mother of two, as she is now hoping to be part of 'a working group to work on paid leave long term,' according to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

She called Republican Sens. Susan Collins from Maine and Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia, both of whom said they were shocked that Markle called out of the blue and noted that she even used her royal title to lobby for the cause.

Collins said: 'I was happy to talk with her, but I'm more interested in what people from Maine are telling me about paid leave.'

And it comes after she wrote a letter to the top Democrats directly lobbying them on the issue, and then bought gift cards for Starbucks for workers at an activism group in a high-profile stunt designed to raise awareness of the cause.

The Duchess of Sussex on October 20 wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer advocating for paid family leave - a letter that was handed out to several media outlets.

On Wednesday Politico reported that she had - following a conversation with Kirsten Gillibrand, senator for New York - taken her lobbying a step further and picked up the phone.

Meghan Markle. the Duchess of Sussex, is pictured at the Global Citizen Live festival in Central Park with Prince Harry on September 25. In October, she began a lobbying campaign for paid parental leave

Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican senator for West Virginia, told Politico on Wednesday that she was shocked to receive a call from Markle

Gillibrand, one of the most vocal campaigners in the senate for paid parental leave, handed the Duchess the phone numbers for Susan Collins, senator for Maine, and Shelley Moore Capito, senator for West Virginia.

Moore Capito said she expected the call to be Joe Manchin, the other senator for West Virginia. Manchin, a moderate Democrat, has been calling the shots for Joe Biden's infrastructure bill, wringing concessions from progressives and cajoling moderate Republicans like Moore Capito to agree.

She told Politico: 'I'm in my car. I'm driving. It says caller ID blocked. Honestly, I thought it was Senator Manchin, his calls come in blocked.

'And she goes "Sen. Capito?" I said, "Yes." She said, "This is Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex."'

Moore Capito added: 'I couldn't figure out how she got my number.'

Collins said she too was called by the 40-year-old.

Susan Collins, Republican senator for Maine, was also called by Markle. She said: 'I told her there were a lot of different approaches, and people were working on it'

She expressed amusement that the Los Angeles-born Markle was using her British title to lobby U.S. senators, after having quit the royal family in 2020.

'Much to my surprise, she called me on my private line and introduced herself as the Duchess of Sussex, which is kind of ironic' said Collins.

She told Politico: 'I was happy to talk with her, but I'm more interested in what people from Maine are telling me about paid leave.'

Collins later told The New York Times: 'She just weighed in that she thought paid leave was really important, and I told her there were a lot of different approaches, and people were working on it.'

Biden had initially hoped to push through plans for a 12-week paid family and medical leave program, costing $500 billion over 10 years.

The benefit declined from 12 to four weeks, as the legislation shrank to less than $2 trillion from $3.5 trillion to win agreement from Manchin and fellow moderate Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.

Gillibrand said on Wednesday that she gave senators' numbers to Markle, and said it was just the start.

'I talked to each of the women senators and let them know that she's going to reach out, because she only completed two of the calls,' Gillibrand said.

'She's going to call some others, so I let them know in advance.'

Gillibrand added: 'She wants to be part of a working group to work on paid leave long term and she's going to be.

'Whether this comes to fruition now or later, she'll be part of a group of women that hopefully will work on paid leave together.'

Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat senator for New York, has said she handed out Collins and Moore Capito's phone numbers to Markle to call. Gillibrand is one of the most vocal champions of paid parental leave

Markle's latest intervention heightens speculation that she sees herself in a political position in the future, like her heroines Angelina Jolie and Amal Clooney.

Some have even speculated that she could be considering a run for political office - even the presidency, according to wild online hype.

In her October 20 letter, Markle wrote: 'I'm not an elected official, and I'm not a politician.

'I'm writing to you at this deeply important time - as a mom - to advocate for paid leave.'

The extraordinary 1,030-word letter asked Pelosi and Schumer to consider her plea 'on behalf of my family, Archie and Lili and Harry'.

Markle, pictured above with Prince Harry and her first born Archie, made a rare political statement on Wednesday

The duchess depicted humble beginnings, saying that her family struggled when she was young - despite her well-documented middle class upbringing in which she attended private primary and secondary schools on her Emmy award-winning lighting director father's $200,000-a-year salary.

And she now lives in a $14million sprawling mansion in Montecito, California, complete with designer touches. She has also signed a series of lucrative deals with Spotify and Netflix thought to be worth well over $150million.

'I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler,' Markle wrote.

'I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky. I started working (at the local frozen yogurt shop) at the age of 13.

'I waited tables, babysat, and piecemealed jobs together to cover odds and ends,' Markle said.

However, she failed to mention the $750,000 California state lottery win her father scooped in 1990, which funded her secondary education at $9,412-a-semester Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles.

Meghan also studied a private primary school - Hollywood's Little Red Schoolhouse nursery, which she attended from the age of two.

The primary school now costs between $20,000 and $28,300-a-year, and was paid for by her father Thomas and her airline steward mother Doria's salaries.

She went on to study at Northwestern, a college in Illinois, that would have cost $24,000-$28,000-a-year for tuition when Meghan studied there from 1999-2003.

But the duchess described working from the age of 13 doing several jobs 'to cover odds and ends' and said saving money was a 'luxury' in her family in her letter.

'I worked all my life and saved when and where I could - but even that was a luxury - because usually it was about making ends meet and having enough to pay my rent and put gas in my car.

'I expect many of your constituents have their own version of that story,' she continued.

Meghan lived in a series of childhood homes in Los Angeles - including a second-floor apartment on Providencia Street, in Woodland Hills, where she lived with her parents and half-siblings Thomas Jr and Samantha.

Meghan lived on the property until she was two years old and it was the biggest and 'flashiest' home she lived in during her youth.

Meghan lived in a series of childhood homes in Los Angeles - including a second-floor apartment on Providencia Street, in Woodland Hills

After her parents divorced in 1983, Meghan and her mother Doria moved into a top-floor apartment (pictured) in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood of LA

Meghan lived in different humble abodes growing up, but received a private education from kindergarten until high school. She attended Immaculate Heart High School (pictured) on Franklin Ave in Los Angeles from the age of 11 up to 18

She attended a prestigious private nursery and kindergarten school called Little Red Schoolhouse, pictured, which cost $18,800 a year for kindergarten

Meghan Markle offered fans a rare glimpse inside the Californian mansion she shares with Prince Harry today during a 'special message' shared on her 40th birthday

Meghan said in the letter she recognized she had not struggled in the same way many new parents who are not offered paid leave do.

'In June, my husband and I welcomed our second child,' she said.

'Like any parents, we were overjoyed. Like many parents, we were overwhelmed. Like fewer parents, we weren't confronted with the harsh reality of either spending those first few critical months with our baby or going back to work.'

Meghan and Harry were able to take four months family leave after the birth of their daughter Lilibet in June this year, retreating to their Montecito home for several months before returning to work in September.

The duchess was also able to take time off after having Archie in 2019, staying at home for four months before returning to work.

The couple also reportedly used nannies to look after their children in the UK, and hired and fired several after Archie was born in 2019.

They allegedly sacked their first nanny over reports she was 'unprofessional' and the second one was only employed to work night shifts. Meanwhile reports at the time said their nanny moved back to the UK after following the couple to the U.S. before the pandemic.

Meghan and Harry are pictured with their newborn son Archie at Windsor Castle on May 8, 2019

The duchess went on to detail her humble beginnings. 'I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler,' she said

Meghan and Harry are seen in September during a visit to New York City. The pair went to the One World Observatory, with a camera crew in tow

Meghan went on to attack the American economic system.

'Many of our economic systems are past their expiration date, and as you well know, too many Americans are forced to shortchange themselves when it comes to what matters to them.'

A spokesman for Meghan said she 'cares deeply about advocating for families in the US and around the world' and had partnered with three campaign organizations on the issue.

She followed up the letter with an October 30 donation to Paid Leave US, an activist group.

Neil Sroka, the director of communications for the group, took to Twitter to write: 'The Duchess of Sussex (aka #MeghanMarkle) bought everyone at @PaidLeaveUS a few cups of coffee while we're working overtime to #SavePaidLeave.

Markle, pictured at her home in California, was hailed 'classy' after buying coffee for employees working overtime to campaign for paid family and medical leave in the US after writing to politicians pleading for it to be made a 'national right'

The Duchess of Sussex gifted workers at PL+US, a group running a national campaign to win paid family and medical leave by 2022, a $25 Starbucks voucher through her non-profit Archewell

'Unbelievably classy... and necessary. Truly honored to know she has our backs in the fight to win'.

The gesture had a mixed reaction online, with some saying small kindnesses can make a 'huge difference', while others called the donation 'pitiful' and suggested the act could be a publicity stunt.

Her wading into the debate about parental leave is just the latest salvo from the Duchess.

After moving to LA in March 2020, the pair were seen volunteering at a food bank the following month.

In June, as protests broke out against the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd, Markle and her husband spoke about issues of race and policing - something they had previously steered clear from.

On July 14, Markle told the UN 2020 Girl Up Leadership Summit: 'You are organizing Black Lives Matter protests around the world, you are creating films to encourage your peers to become activist leaders, you are reforming the criminal justice system, you are telling your school boards we need more mental health resources for all ages, you are leading coalitions to end gun violence.

'You are standing up and demanding to be heard, yes, but you're also demanding to own the conversation.'

A slice of happy family life: Sitting next to grandmother Jeanette, 12-year-old Meghan tucks into a cake at her cousin Donovan's birthday party in 1993

Meghan on her 11th birthday with her mother Doria in 1992, seen in pictures kept by her uncle Joseph Johnson

They also continued discussing mental health.

On October 14, 2010, Meghan in a podcast reflected on being 'the most trolled person in the entire world, male or female' of 2019 and the 'almost unsurvivable' impact that had on her psyche.

'You can either try to break through or you can potentially break down,' she said of feeling overwhelmed and in need of support.

'But use it as a moment to break through.'

As the November 2020 election neared, they urged people to vote - Harry shocking some by admitting he had never voted before.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spoke out about the U.S. election, in a stark break with British tradition that prohibits royal involvement in politics

Harry said ahead of the election: 'As we approach this November, it's vital that we reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity'

Markle, who before meeting Harry was a UN advocate for gender equality and the empowerment of women, was more open about her views.

'Every four years, we're told the same thing: 'This is the most important election of our lifetime.' But this one is,' she told Time magazine ahead of the election.

'When we vote, our values are put into action, and our voices are heard.'

She hosted feminist icon Gloria Steinem at her Montecito home for a conversation filmed for Makers - a media company that describes itself as 'accelerating the women's movement through stories of real-life experiences.'

Markle and Steinem discussed the importance of voting, and urged a more open discussion on issues of race and power.

A month before Christmas, Markle revealed that she had had a miscarriage, prompting an outpouring of grief and praise for her candor.

She gave birth to their second child, Lilibet, in June this year.

In recent months Markle has waded back into politics - visiting New York in September and attending meetings at the U.N. before addressing Global Citizen Live, a festival of activism in Central Park.

Markle (left) joined Gloria Steinem for a 'backyard chat' ahead of the election

She is set to appear on November 9 at an online conference organized by the New York Times to discuss 'women reaching economic and professional parity.'

The mother-of-two will appear in a half-hour session called 'Minding the Gap' alongside Mellody Hobson, Co-C.E.O. and President, Ariel Investments, and the chairwoman of Starbucks Corporation.

The session is promoted as 'two groundbreaking figures' who will share their views.

'How can women reach economic and professional parity? Two groundbreaking figures join us to discuss top-down solutions, and reflect on how their shared experiences influenced their thinking about creating opportunities for others,' the blurb states.

Other speakers at the conference include Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, as well as the CEO for Pfizer Albert Bourla and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

Other stars speaking including Matthew McConaughey and Dax Shephard, with whom Prince Harry gave an explosive interview for his Armchair Expert podcast.
had been dismembered at the neck, shoulders and hips

A New York City man was charged in the cold-case murder of an an 81-year-old World War I veteran who went missing more than four decades ago and whose dismembered remains were found in 2019.

A grand jury indicted Martin Motta, 74, of Queens, on Wednesday in the December 1976 death of George Clarence Seitz, who disappeared on his way to the barbershop.

Partial remains - a pelvis and torso - belonging to Seitz were found buried inside a plastic bag under concrete in a Richmond Hill backyard in March 2019.

Although his cause of death has not been disclosed, authorities say his body had been dismembered at the neck, shoulders and hips.

After an investigation of more than two years utilizing a comprehensive genealogical profile, witnesses interviews and records searches spanning across five states, police found 'crucial evidence' linking Motta to Seitz's death.

Motta was charged with second-degree murdered and ordered held without bail. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison. He is expected back in court on Friday.

Martin Motta, 74, of Queens, was indicted Wednesday in the December 1976 slaying of WWI veteran George Clarence Seitz (pictured) who went missing on his way to the barbershop

'After 45 years, the alleged killer of a WWI veteran is being held accountable and brought to justice,' District Attorney Katz said in a statement. 'We hope the identification of the remains and the indictment in this case will begin to bring peace and closure to his loved ones.

'This indictment serves as an example of how police and prosecutors work together to bring individuals alleged to have committed crimes to justice, regardless of how much time passes or how many obstacles are placed in our path.'

Seitz, 81, was last seen leaving his Jamaica home at 10am on December 10, 1976. He was reportedly headed to an area barbershop for a hair cut.

His whereabouts remained unknown until 2019 when the torso and pelvis were discovered.

At that time, the coroner compared DNA samples from the remains to local, state and national databases but yielded no results.

In February 2021, nearly two years later, a private laboratory was enlisted to use the DNA evidence and develop a genealogical profile of the victim.

Seitz's remains were found in March 2019 buried in the backyard of a Richmond Hill home. His body had been dismembered at the neck, shoulders and hips

The FBI, Queens District Attorney and NYPD then used that profile to find the victim's potential relatives.

Officials contacted the potential family members, obtained DNA samples for comparison and ultimately identified the discovered remains as belonging to Seitz.

'The officers of the NYPD's Detective Bureau, its Homicide and Cold Case squads, and its highly trained forensic units, never forget and never give up,' Police Commissioner Shea said.

'Here again, this case shows that no matter how much time passes, our police officers and partners in the Queens District Attorney's Office carry out a sustained commitment, across decades, to establishing justice for crime victims and their families in New York City.'

Authorities have not specified how Seitz was killed and the indictment against Motta does not indicate a cause of death.
Eyewitness reports of a car seen travelling south from Cleo Smith's campsite the morning she disappeared proved to be the critical clues that cracked open the mystery.

Detectives leading the investigation into the four-year-old on Thursday shed more light on the key pieces of information that led them to rescue the little girl from a locked home in Carnarvon, in Western Australia's northwest.

Cleo was found 'physically OK' inside a home shortly after midnight on Wednesday. A man, 36, has been arrested over her alleged abduction, however, he is yet to be charged.

There had previously been claims a single tip off led police to the missing girl but that has been disputed by the WA Police Force.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde said a 'dark' car seen turning south off Blowholes Road about 3am was 'significant' to the investigation.

Cleo Smith (pictured) was miraculously found alive by police on Wednesday after vanishing from her family's campsite on October 16

'We would say that car was significant and it was in the right time frame,' Superintendent Wilde told reporters on Thursday.

'We were looking for something that has occurred at the Blowholes, this [new] information would be relevant to that.'

He would not confirm whether the 36-year-old man who has been arrested in connection with Cleo's discovery was driving the car.

Hundreds of tips about the accused's behaviour around town added pieces to the puzzle, Superintendent Wilde said.

'If we can ... put people in certain locations at certain times, that is what we look to identify,' he said.

'From that we can build a picture of who was there, who shouldn't have been there, and [that] led to us identifying the [suspect]'.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde (pictured) has revealed the information police received on Tuesday related to an incident at the Blowholes campsite

Superintendent Wilde said a key clue about a car spotted south of Cleo's campsite during the timeframe she went missing was 'significant' to her being rescued (pictured) on Wednesday

Police previously revealed phone data and 'a lot of forensic leads' were used to confirm the tip off, with officers swooping to rescue Cleo just hours later.

The man is currently in police custody facing further questioning after being released from his second hospital visit since his arrest.

Police have already confirmed the accused man has no connection to Cleo's family and was not on a list of known sex offenders in Carnarvon.

Police will allege he acted alone, with charges yet to be laid but expected to be announced later on Thursday.

'It'll probably be later today but there's still some work that's being undertaken, some interviews that are occurring,' Superintendent Wilde said.

'I would imagine that those interviews will conclude today, possibly this afternoon.'

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan greets police officers as he arrives at a press conference in front of the Carnarvon Police Station on November 4

The 36-year-old man (pictured) was taken to hospital after reportedly sustaining head injuries in custody on Wednesday

Officers found Cleo, alone in a room playing with toys, after breaking into the locked-up house.

A suspect was arrested while driving in a nearby street and taken into custody .

After busting into the house, Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron asked Cleo what her name was before she replied: 'My name is Cleo.'

Superintendent Wilde said police were yet to establish whether Cleo was kept at the property, which is 73.7km south of her family's campsite and just seven minutes from her home, for the entire 18 days.

Sergeant Cameron Blaine spent time with the family on Thursday and said the little girl appeared to be holding up well.

'I can only see her from the outside. But from that point of view, I'm amazed that she seems to be so well-adjusted and happy,' he said.

'It was really heartwarming to see that she's still bubbly and she's laughing.

The first picture of Cleo Smith, safe and sound in hospital, after she was rescued from a house in Carnarvon, in northwest Western Australia, where she was held for 18 days

A sign thanking police for finding Cleo Smith is seen on the main road into Carnarvon on November 3

'She's falling asleep in her mother's arms. There was one occasion where she asked if she could lay next to mum and have Ellie look at her while she fell asleep.

'It's really good to see that she's adjusted, she's getting some sleep, she's playing in the backyard exactly how you would expect.'

Premier Mark McGowan also met with the family, describing Cleo as a delightful little girl who spoke to him about her school and her dog.

'It was a lovely experience to meet her ... she was a very bright, upbeat, sweet little girl,' he said.

'They're decent, fundamentally honest people.'

'But certainly we would say that that car was significant and it was in the right timeframe.'

Specialist child interviewers have been flown to Carnarvon and would meet with Cleo when the time was right.

'We'll sit down with the family and work out the appropriate time,' he said.

Cleo was pictured smiling and waving from a hospital bed soon after reuniting with her mother and stepdad.

Her rescue has been welcomed around Australia and WA Police have been congratulated for their 'old-fashioned police work' in tracking her down.
Question Time panellist Nazir Afzal today backed Fiona Bruce, saying he had 'no criticism' of the host after accusing her during the show of asking him first about the cricket racism row because he is a 'brown person'. The BBC programme has become embroiled in an 'unconscious racism' row after Bruce asked Mr Afzal, the only non-white member of the panel, to be the first person to answer an audience member's query about racism. During the show, Mr Afzal agreed with Bruce that he thought she was 'wrong' to go to him first. But reacting this morning after the incident prompted huge debate online, Mr Afzal tweeted: 'I have no criticism of Fiona Bruce. I made point that racism is something which everyone should have a view on, not just minorities. If the subject was say child or domestic abuse, you wouldn't just ask the victim. It's everybody's business.' The question, which was partly about recent allegations of racist abuse made by cricketer Azeem Rafiq, was asked last night to a panel made up of former crown prosecutor Mr Afzal; white psychologist Jordan Peterson; and three white MPs - Mims Davies from the Conservatives, Stella Creasy of Labour and Stephen Flynn from the SNP. Bruce then immediately turned to Mr Afzal and asked him to answer, prompting him to say: 'The brown person will answer first'. As he made the comment he turned to the audience and laughed, which saw some chuckle with him. The presenter then asked him: 'Nazir, so do you think that was wrong of me to come to you first?' Mr Afzal replied: 'I think so' and attempted to continue answering the question while pointing towards the audience. But Bruce then added: 'Well let's not do it. I'm not being sarcastic at all. I mean if that's how you feel, I respect that.' Mr Afzal then stopped speaking and sat silently, while Bruce went to Mr Peterson to hear from him instead.
The man arrested moments before Cleo Smith was discovered in a derelict house was allegedly obsessed with dolls and created fake social media profiles of his imaginary family.

Terry Kelly, 36, was charged on Thursday night over Cleo's 18 day disappearance after she was dramatically rescued from a Carnarvon house, in Western Australia, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Police charged him with multiple offences, including kidnapping.

Since Kelly's arrest, multiple social media accounts have emerged which allegedly belonged to him, where he boasts about his love for Bratz dolls.

One social media account is allegedly solely dedicated to his obsession with dolls, showing a room in a house filled with the toys.

It is unknown if the room is in Kelly's Tonkin Crescent home, where Cleo was found.

When asked about the alleged doll obsession and whether Kelly might have used the toys to lure Cleo, police told media gathered at a press conference that they would not be commenting on it.

Terry Kelly, 36, (pictured) was charged with Cleo Smith's kidnapping on Thursday night

Little Cleo was seen in her mother's arms holding a balloon and wearing a pink summer dress on Thursday

All of the windows at the home are completely blacked out - hidden from public view - and overgrown shrubs and bushes climb the walls of the housing commission home located in Tonkin Crescent

Junk was seen in Kelly's backyard on Thursday morning, as police still assessed the home

Other profiles allegedly linked to Kelly detail children and family members, but neighbours and long-time friends of the man said they did not know of him ever having kids of his own.

One of the social media accounts followed Cleo's mother Ellie Smith, where she begged for help finding her missing four-year-old girl who was taken from a tent while camping at the Blowholes grounds 75km north of their hometown.

Detectives said when they found Cleo inside the house, she was playing with toys. Bodycam footage shows the brave little girl being carried out the house, her hair is clean and brushed and her pyjamas are fresh and clean.

Neighbours allowed Daily Mail Australia inside their property for a glimpse over the fence to Kelly's home where Cleo was allegedly held for almost three weeks.

Little Cleo looked well groomed when she was rescued from the home just seven minutes' drive from her family home

There is no sign of any toys or children's games - instead just a dusty bare yard dotted with rubbish and fence palings

Cleo is carried inside by her mother Ellie holding a pink balloon after Carnavon decorated the town in support of the little girl

Cleo holds her back covered in cartoon princesses as mother Ellie and stepfather Jake walk to the car on Thursday morning

There is no sign of any toys or children's games - instead just a dusty bare yard dotted with rubbish and fence palings.

All of the windows are completely blacked out - hidden from public view - and overgrown shrubs and bushes climb the walls of the housing commission home located in Tonkin Crescent.

Neighbours say the community is reeling from the revelation the 'quiet bloke' at number 18 is allegedly the man at the centre of the world's biggest kidnapping story.

He reportedly kept his two dogs in the backyard until recently, moving them to the front of the gated home in the past few weeks.

Terry Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, for a few hours on Wednesday before he was taken to hospital requiring medical treatment

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan is greeted by Cleo Smith's stepfather during a visit to the rescued girl in Carnarvon

Windows at the rundown property were blacked out as items were stored under an awning

Neighbours tell Daily Mail Australia they still can't believe little Cleo was right under their noses the whole time.

'I have kids around the same age,' Kelly's adjacent neighbour at number 16 said.

'I saw (Kelly) coming and going. I didn't really interact with him, he kept to himself. It's a pretty friendly neighbourhood but he was closed off.'

The man said he never saw any dolls with his neighbour.

'I never saw anything like that. I just saw him driving his car up and down the street or hanging around outside (Woolworths) in town.'

Forensics officers, working out of a makeshift tent based outside the house, were seen busily coming and going from the today with police tape cordoning off the site and the surrounding street.

Authorities reportedly broke down in tears upon learning the heartwarming news that Cleo was safe. They say the youngster (pictured) was good as can be expected

Police continue to carry out forensic work at the house where detectives found Cleo locked inside on Wednesday morning

Earlier on Thursday, Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine said police were not yet in a position to confirm reports of a toy room and the man's alleged fascination with dolls.

'I think I've said the lights were on and she was playing with toys,' he said. 'That's about all I want to say. This is still a matter that needs to go before the courts.

'There are certain aspects of what we saw, you know, that is going to be evidence and I really don't want to say anything that is going to prejudice that.'

Police did, however, confirm they believe the accused acted 'entirely alone' in taking Cleo from the campsite.

Charges are expected to be laid later on Thursday as soon as officers conclude interviewing Kelly.

Cleo has spent her first night back home with her mother Ellie Smith, stepfather Jake Gliddon and baby sister following her 18 day disappearance.

Cleo Smith, four, was found alive and well, 18 days after she vanished from her family's tent at the remote Blowholes campsite in Western Australia

Police speak as they gather extensive amounts of evidence after a 36-year-old man was arrested at the home in Carnavon where Cleo was found

'She's been checked out at the hospital and physically she's ok,' Superintendent Rod Wilde said.

Cleo will be interviewed by specialist child interviewers at the 'appropriate time', but is enjoying playing with her sister and getting lots of cuddles off her mum and stepdad in the meantime.

WA Premier Mark McGowan described Cleo as a delightful and well adjusted little girl after meeting her at the family home earlier in the morning.

'It was a lovely experience to meet that little girl. She was bubbly, playing, friendly, sweet. She was delightful,' he said.

'Fundamentally decent, honest human beings, they were lovely people and it was great to meet them and acknowledge what they have been through.

'We have a way to go from here, but they are on the right pathway.'
Little Cleo Smith has been seen back in the arms of her mother Ellie at last as new audio is released of the emotional moment detectives rescued the toddler from 18 days of hell.

Police smashed down the door of a home in Carnarvon, Western Australia, to free the toddler after she was snatched from her family's tent at a campsite 75km away.

A massive manhunt eventually tracked her down to a house just 3km from her family's home and at 12.46am on Wednesday, police smashed their way into the locked home.

They found the four year old in a bedroom playing with toys, and immediately asked her name three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo.'

On Thursday, Western Australia Police released audio of the amazing moment detectives knew at last that they had found her safe and well.

Cleo Smith's mother Ellie was seen with her daughter for the first time since her dramatic rescue on Thursday afternoon - as new audio was released of the emotional moment the little girl was found at a home

Little Cleo is seen getting into the car with her mother Ellie on Thursday afternoon, one day after she was rescued

Police speak as they gather extensive amounts of evidence after a 36-year-old man was arrested at the home in Carnavon where Cleo was found

The audio opens with the sound of the police smashing through the door as metal hits the ground before they spot Cleo and one officer says: 'We got her.'

'Hey Bubby' said one, as another says hello to the toddler before Detective Sergeant Cameron Blaine asks her name three times.

Officers can be heard ordering a camera to be brought into the crime scene but only audio was released on Thursday to prevent any prejudice of a future trial.

The little girl has now returned home with her mother Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla and is said to have been happy and playing.

The sound clip was released as Cleo and her family met with Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan.

Cleo's stepfather Jake greeted the premier wearing freshly-painted white nail polish, believed to have been applied by the toddler in honour of the special visit.

Cleo's stepfather Jake Gliddon (pictured left) greeted Premier Mark McGowan (centre) wearing freshly-painted white nail polish, believed to have been applied by the toddler in honour of the special visit

Premier Mark McGowan (centre) described Cleo as a delightful little girl who spoke to him about her school and her dog

Mr McGowan brought along two teddies for little Cleo as he visited the four-year-old at her home

Cleo is carried inside by her mother Ellie holding a pink balloon after Carnavon decorated the town in support of the little girl

Mr McGowan described Cleo as a delightful little girl who spoke to him about her school and her dog.

He gave her two police teddy bears he nicknamed Cameron and Rod after the detectives who led the hunt for her.

However he also accidentally stood on one of her Barbie doll's shoes and broke it. 'I owe her a new pair of shoes,' he joked afterwards.

'It was a lovely experience to meet her ... she was a very bright, upbeat, sweet little girl,' he said. 'They're decent, fundamentally honest people.'

Police have already confirmed the accused man has no connection to Cleo's family and was not on a list of known sex offenders in Carnarvon.

He is alleged to have acted alone.

Cleo is said to be in good spirits with her family despite her dramatic ordeal as West Australian police prepare to lay charges against her alleged abductor.

Cleo holds her back covered in cartoon princesses as mother Ellie and stepfather Jake walk to the car on Thursday morning

Police have already confirmed the accused man has no connection to Cleo (pictured) or her family and was not on a list of known sex offenders in Carnarvon

The Carnarvon community banded together to welcome Cleo home after being missing for 18 days

Man wrongly identified as Cleo Smith's suspected kidnapper is threatened with spearing A man wrongly identified as the alleged kidnapper of four-year-old Cleo Smith was threatened with being speared and killed and sought protection from the police, sources close to the investigation told Daily Mail Australia. Terrance Flowers calls himself Terry Kelly on social media - the same name shared by Cleo's suspected abductor. However, the wrong man was widely pictured and shamed on social media following the girl's rescue on Wednesday. After being misidentified, Mr Flowers was bombarded with death threats, including that he would be speared in a traditional Aboriginal punishment, police sources said. Daily Mail Australia understands Mr Flowers 'sought shelter' with officers in Karatha after he was targeted on social media. Advertisement

A 36-year-old Carnarvon man is being questioned over the suspected abduction. He is expected to be charged later on Thursday.

Police have confirmed the man was twice taken to hospital after self-harming while in custody.

He has since returned to the local police station and is expected to face a magistrate in Carnarvon once charges are laid.

'It'll probably be later today but there's still some work that's being undertaken, some interviews that are occurring,' Superintendent Rod Wilde told reporters in Carnarvon.

'I would imagine that those interviews will conclude today, possibly this afternoon.'

The accused man was arrested on a nearby street around the same time.

Supt Wilde said police were yet to establish whether Cleo was kept at the property for the entire 18 days she was apart from her family.

Detective Blaine spent time with the family on Thursday and said the little girl appeared to be holding up well.

'I can only see her from the outside. But from that point of view, I'm amazed that she seems to be so well-adjusted and happy,' he said.

'It was really heartwarming to see that she's still bubbly and she's laughing.

'She's falling asleep in her mother's arms. There was one occasion where she asked if she could lay next to mum and have Ellie look at her while she fell asleep.

Detective Cameron Blaine spent time with the family on Thursday and said the little girl appeared to be holding up well. (Pictured, a sign in Carnarvon celebrating Cleo's safe return'

Police had been seeking the driver of a car that was seen leaving the Blowholes campsite around the time Cleo was allegedly taken from the tent where she was asleep alongside parents Ellie and Jake and baby sister Isla (pictured)

Cleo will be spoken to by specialist child interviewers when the time is right, police say

Police continue to carry out forensic work at the house where detectives found Cleo locked inside on Wednesday morning

'It's really good to see that she's adjusted, she's getting some sleep, she's playing in the backyard exactly how you would expect.

Authorities have been tight-lipped on the exact intelligence that led officers to Cleo's location. They had been seeking the driver of a car that was seen leaving the Blowholes campsite around the time she was allegedly taken.

'That hasn't been confirmed as yet,' Supt Wilde replied when asked whether the accused man had been identified as the driver.

'But certainly we would say that that car was significant and it was in the right time frame.'

He said specialist child interviewers had been flown to Carnarvon and would meet with Cleo when the time was right.

'We'll sit down with the family and work out the appropriate time,' he said.

Cleo was pictured smiling and waving from a hospital bed soon after reuniting with her mother and stepdad.

Her rescue has been welcomed around Australia and WA Police have been congratulated for their 'old-fashioned police work' in tracking her down.
Multiple Victorian doctors are under investigation, suspected of breaching the chief health officer's Covid-19 directions.

The state's Department of Health is understood to have significant concerns about a small number of doctors undermining the vaccine rollout, including falsifying whether the vaccine was administered or giving fake exemptions.

'While the regulation of general practitioners is a matter for the federal government, we will always protect Victorians and Victoria's health system from fraudulent practice,' a departmental spokesman said in a statement.

'We are investigating reports of GPs breaching CHO directions and are actively considering all options, including compliance, enforcement and regulatory avenues.'

Victoria's Department of Health has concerns about a 'small group' of Victorian doctors it suspects of breaching chief health officer Brett Sutton's (above) COVID-19 directions

Two Maidstone general practitioners last month had their registrations suspended over concerns about fake vaccination exemptions.

Crowds seen by AAP and neighbours revealed often-unmasked people would line up with little social distancing at the practice of Dr Michael Keng Sin Lee and Dr Yee Wah Eva Wong for hours.

'Public protection is our number one priority. Our message is clear: we believe vaccination is a crucial part of the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic,' the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the Medical Board of Australia said in a statement.

AAP has also found a comment posted under an article on the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners website by a person with the same name as Dr Lee touting the use of hydroxychloroquine, a dismissed treatment for Covid-19.

'For GP to help we need hydroxychloroquine, zinc, Zithromax, dexamethasone. These have been used successfully in US for early cases of Covid. Also PPE,' the post by Dr Michael Keng Sin Lee on August 5, 2020, reads.

AAP approached Dr Lee for comment and received no response.

'When providing care, advice or sharing information online, registered health practitioners have a professional obligation to provide information that is evidence-based, in line with the best available health advice, and is consistent with public health messaging,' AHPRA said in its statement.

Reports by GPs of being pressured into giving vaccination exemptions recently saw Victoria tighten the rules around obtaining one

The RACGP is the industry body for general practitioners and its president Karen Price says it expects the highest standard of professionalism and care from its members.

'We actively provide advice and support to GPs so that they are informed on the latest clinical evidence and guidance, including in regard to caring for patients with Covid-19,' she said in a statement.

Reports by GPs of being pressured into giving vaccination exemptions recently saw Victoria tighten the rules around obtaining one.

Exemptions can only be issued on specific medical grounds, including a severe reaction to a Covid-19 vaccine or a severe acute medical illness that allows for a temporary delay in vaccination.

From October 29, Victorians have to fill out an exemption form with the Australian Immunisation Register to obtain an exemption certificate via the myGov website.
Mandating Covid-19 vaccinations for healthcare workers continues the state's approach to vaccinations in health settings, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant has told a court.

Dr Chant testified in support of the public health order being challenged by an unvaccinated paramedic said to object on moral, religious and political grounds to Covid-19 vaccines.

The state's top doctor, whose advice led to the vaccine order, said her concern was the risks and consequences of outbreaks in hospitals and, more broadly, putting protections in other healthcare settings.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant (pictured) testified on Thursday in support of the public health order being challenged by an unvaccinated paramedic

'This is a longstanding approach NSW Health has had in relation to considerations of vaccination in the health workforce,' she said on Thursday.

Tumut paramedic John Larter is seeking declaratory relief to allow him to work unvaccinated as long as he is wearing appropriate personal protective equipment or working remotely.

His lawyer said the sacking of healthcare workers who contentiously object is a permanent effect of the temporary Covid-19 storm.

'The nature of a public health power is to provide extraordinary powers in extraordinary circumstances, and only for those extraordinary circumstances,' barrister Shane Prince SC said on Wednesday.

Dr Chant, whose advice led to the vaccine order, said her concern was the risks and consequences of outbreaks in hospitals, and putting protections in other healthcare settings (Pictured: a nurse receiving a Covid vaccine dose)

'It is not to put in place a regime that will apply once the storm has passed.'

Mr Prince sought to differentiate his client from teachers who failed in October to overturn a public health order that requires them to be vaccinated to work in state-run schools.

In that case, the court found the order applicable to teachers and nurses were not vaccine mandates but restrictions on movement.

Unlike teachers, paramedics and other healthcare workers were required to be vaccinated whether they worked in high-risk areas, in a clerical capacity or from home, Mr Prince said.

'There is no reason he can't provide training to people by video and the like and be accommodated. But the terms of this order don't provide for that,' he said.

Mr Prince described his client as an adherent to the Roman Catholic faith who considers himself to be a political conservative.

'It's his religious, moral and political views that makes him feel he is unable to take the vaccine as he finds it morally repugnant,' he said.

Tumut paramedic John Larter (pictured) has objected to Covid-19 vaccines on moral, religious and political grounds and is seeking declaratory relief to allow him to work unvaccinated

With more than 92 per cent of NSW residents over the age of 16 having had at least one dose, it was a 'terrible thing' that people like Mr Larter were stuck in a small minority because of their religious beliefs.

'It's not something that... is dealt with by coercion for vaccination, in the same way a person who is medically unable... cannot be vaccinated regardless of any attempt of coercion,' he said.

The case is being heard by Justice Christine Adamson.

All barristers and solicitors in court on Thursday were fully vaccinated, the court was told.

Mr Larter was said to be watching via the court's YouTube live stream.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given her assessment of Tuesday's election smackdown in Virginia, telling reporters 'it was not a good night' as she prepares to call up President Joe Biden's major economic legislation.

She acknowledged when pressed that 'it would have been better' if Democrats had voted on Biden's $1.1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package before Tuesday, as Democrat Terry McAuliffe had been calling on Congress to do.

But she declined to assess that House Democrats were partly to blame for his loss, saying she was awaiting more 'data.'

A skein of lawmakers and pundits have pointed to the failure to act on the Biden agenda  as well as constant reports on haggling over the details and process  as part of what damaged Democrats in multiple states on Election Night.

Pelosi also declined to state that leaders had the votes to pass two key pieces of budget legislation  after reportedly telling colleagues they could vote on infrastructure as soon as tonight and Biden's Build Back Better plan on Friday morning.

'Were going to pass both bills. But in order to do so we have to have votes for both bills. And thats where we are,' she said cryptically at a Capitol press conference Thursday.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., acknowledged at a press conference it would have been 'better' to have passed major legislation before the Virginia election

Pelosi also touted paid leave legislation Democrats are inserting into Build Back Better legislation, after it got dropped by the White House amid opposition from West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

'We can afford it. Its universal. Its a compromise,' she said.

Pelosi used language that did not rule out the possibility of losing the fight over the provisions, however.

'We would like to put on the table family and medical leave,' she said.

The speaker only hinted at centrist Democrats and others who may be withholding support.

'We have questions that members have,' she said.

House Democrats could vote on infrastructure legislation as soon as tonight, Pelosi told members. A copy of H.R.5376, the Build Back Better Act, is seen as the House Rules Committee begins work on President Joe Biden's sweeping domestic agenda, the Build Back Better Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa., is objecting to Pelosi's effort to put family leave legislation in the Build Back Better plan

'It was not a good night,' Pelosi said, after Republican Glenn Youngkin captured the Virginia governor's mansion

She also made clear that progressives had prevailed in their demand that the infrastructure bill not move without the package containing social program funds.

Asked if infrastructure might move on its own, she replied simply: 'No.'

The House is preparing to debate and vote on a revised draft of President Joe Biden's now-$1.85 trillion domestic policy package as well as a companion $1 trillion infrastructure bill, with Democrats eager to show voters the party can deliver on its priorities.

With a flurry of late-breaking adjustments, the Democrats added key provisions to what has grown to a sprawling 2,135-page package - adding back a new paid family leave program,work permits for immigrants and changes to state and local tax deductions.

Both the overall price tag and the revenue to pay for it are expected to grow. A new White House assessment Thursday said revenue from the taxes on corporations and the wealthy and other changes are estimated to bring in $2.1 trillion over 10 years, according to a summary obtained by The Associated Press. That's up from what had been $1.9 trillion in earlier estimates.

A senior administration official said Thursday the House bill will be fully paid for, echoing Biden's frequent statement. The official requested anonymity to discuss the new estimates.

Votes are possible Thursday, with the Democrats anxious to finish up the president's signature package after drawn-out talks on Capitol Hill were partly blamed for the party's dismal election results in bellwether states this week.

"Get it to my desk!" Biden implored in remarks Wednesday at the White House.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced House votes were possible on both Biden's big bill of social services and climate change programs and the slimmer bipartisan infrastructure package that had stalled amid deliberations. Voting, though, could push until Friday, aides and lawmakers said.

After months of talks, Democrats are desperate to make gains on Biden's proposals after grim election results for the party in Virginia, a warning that their hold on power could be in peril in next year's midterms.

Many voters in Virginia said drawn-out negotiations in Washington over Bidens governing agenda were an important factor in their vote, so blame was flowing to Capitol Hill where Democrats have spent months arguing over details of the package.

"Weve got to produce," Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia told reporters at the Capitol. "Weve got to get results for people."

The House Rules Committee convened late Wednesday in a hearing that ran past midnight to consider the updated text - a crucial step before what is expected to be a lengthy floor debate that could start Thursday and spill into Friday.

Democrats have been working fervently to shelve their differences, particularly with holdout Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and launch votes on Biden's big bill and the related infrastructure package that has stalled.

The new family leave provision is expected to include four weeks of paid time off for childbirth, recovery from major illness or caring for family members, less than the 12-week program once envisioned, but all fully paid for with revenue elsewhere.

Biden had reluctantly dropped a scaled-back paid leave proposal from last weeks White House framework after Manchin balked at the cost. But Democrats who lobbied that paid leave has been a party priority for decades continued to push it.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said it's "a policy that will finally give workers and their families the peace of mind" in face of difficulties.

On another remaining issue, the Democrats compromised on a plan partly to do away with the $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions that particularly hits New York, California and other high-tax states and was enacted as part of the Trump-era 2017 tax plan.

While repeal of the so-called SALT deduction cap is a priority for several northeastern state lawmakers, progressives wanted to prevent the super-wealthy from benefiting. Under the plan, the $10,000 deduction cap would be lifted to $72,500 for 10 years, starting with the 2021 tax year.

And the just-added immigration provision would create a new program for some 7 million immigrants who are in the country without legal standing, allowing them to apply for permits to work and travel in the U.S. for five years. It would also allow the government to tap unused visas to admit people into the U.S.

Resolving the immigration issue was among the last daunting challenges to finishing up the draft of Biden's package. Biden had set aside $100 billion to fund the immigration changes, which bolsters the overall package from $1.75 trillion to at least $1.85 trillion - though that could slip if the provision is accepted by the Senate. Lawmakers plan to make their case to Senate parliamentarian in coming days, hopeful the changes will pass muster under Senate rules, those involved said.

"We have to have something for our immigrants," said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif.

The changes are increasing the cost of the package, but also revenues. A deal reached earlier this week to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices for seniors is among the revisions helping to offset the bottom line.

Both the paid family leave and the immigration law changes have drawn resistance from Manchin, whose support remains crucial in the 50-50 Senate, where Biden has no votes to spare. The overall bill faces united opposition from Republicans.

Manchin wants Democrats to take more time in negotiations, and panned the paid-leave announcement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosis strategy now seems intent on passing the most robust bill possible in her chamber and then leaving the Senate to adjust or strip out the portions its members won't agree to.

Biden's package would provide large numbers of Americans with assistance to pay for health care, education, raising children and caring for elderly people in their homes. It also would provide some $555 billion in tax breaks encouraging cleaner energy and electrified vehicles, the nations largest commitment to tackling climate change.

Much of its costs would be covered with higher taxes on people earning over $10 million annually and large corporations, which would now face a 15% minimum tax in efforts to stop big business from claiming so many deductions they end up paying zero in taxes.

A deal announced earlier this week adds another major provision - capping out-of-pocket Medicare Part D costs for older Americans at $2,000 and reducing the price of insulin to no more than $35 a dose.

Some moderate Democrats in the House said they want to see a fiscal assessment of Biden's overall package from the Congressional Budget Office before taking the vote.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Alan Fram and Colleen Long contributed to this report.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa., who has been a key holdout on President Joe Biden's ambitious domestic package, peers out from an elevator after a vote, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Progressive and centrist lawmakers, particularly Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have fought over details of the sprawling 1,600-page package. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Reporters question Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a negotiator on the paid leave proposal in President Joe Biden's domestic agenda, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa., had earlier refused to support it but the measure is now back in the far-reaching social spending package. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pauses for an interpreter as she hosts a visit with Roberto Fico, president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. After losses on Election Day, Democrats are rushing to overcome party battles and finish a final draft of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda to pave the way for voting as soon as Thursday on the overall package. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, updates reporters before meeting with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and fellow Democrats as President Joe Biden's $1.75 trillion domestic policy package remains in limbo, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., talks to reporters as he walks to the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth, D-Ky., center, is joined from left by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair Bobby Scott, D-Va., and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., as the House Rules Committee begins work on President Joe Biden's sweeping domestic agenda, the Build Back Better Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-Minn., left, and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., right, take their places on the dais as the House Rules Committee begins work on President Joe Biden's sweeping domestic agenda, the Build Back Better Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
A hero police officer who was filmed cradling little Cleo Smith in his arms after storming her alleged kidnapper's home has opened up about the 'emotional' night.

Detective Senior Constable Kurt Ford was one of four officers tasked with breaking into the home in Carnarvon, Western Australia, at 12.46am on Wednesday.

'I don't think we had really any expectations going in - we didn't know what we were going into,' the brave officer said on Thursday.

'If anything our expectations weren't great.'

Constable Kurt and three other officers, who are all fathers, used crowbars and battering rams to break into the run-down home on Tonkin Crescent.

They found the four year old in a bedroom playing with toys, and immediately asked her name three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo.'

'I just saw a little girl sitting there and didn't think about anything else than picking her up,' Mr Ford said of the moment.

'It was an emotional experience going in and it was a good result.'

Detective Senior Constable Kurt Ford (pictured) carrying Cleo Smith out from the house she was locked in at 1am Wednesday morning

WA Premier Mark McGowan (front left) personally congratulated the officers involved in Cleo Smith's rescue

The members of the task force that rescued Cleo gathered this morning, receiving praise from WA Premier Mark McGowan.

WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch said finding Cleo alive and well touched the hearts of every officer present.

'Four fathers walked into that room to rescue Cleo,' Mr Blanch said.

'They might have been wearing guns and detective suits, but they were four fathers.'

Meanwhile, little Cleo Smith is in good spirits after her dramatic ordeal as West Australian police prepare to lay charges against her alleged abductor.

Cleo was found alive and well early on Wednesday, 18 days after she went missing from her family's tent at the remote Blowholes campsite.

She was rescued from a property just minutes from her family home in Carnarvon, a coastal town almost 1000km north of Perth.

The little girl has returned home with her mother Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon and baby sister Isla and is said to have been happy and playing.

Questioning is still underway, according to local authorities.

'It'll probably be later today but there's still some work that's being undertaken, some interviews that are occurring,' Superintendent Rod Wilde told reporters in Carnarvon.

'I would imagine that those interviews will conclude today, possibly this afternoon.'

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan is seen arriving with Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine

Sign maker Jace Kempton's 'welcome back' sign to Cleo Smith in Cornarvon

Supt Wilde said police were yet to establish whether Cleo was kept at the property for the entire 18 days she was apart from her family.

Homicide detective Cameron Blaine, who was among Cleo's rescuers, spent time with the family on Thursday and said the little girl appeared to be holding up well.

'I can only see her from the outside. But from that point of view, I'm amazed that she seems to be so well-adjusted and happy,' he said.

'It was really heartwarming to see that she's still bubbly and she's laughing.

'It's really good to see that she's adjusted, she's getting some sleep, she's playing in the backyard exactly how you would expect.'

Premier Mark McGowan also met with the family, describing Cleo as a delightful little girl who spoke to him about her school and her dog.

'It was a lovely experience to meet her ... she was a very bright, upbeat, sweet little girl,' he said.

'They're decent, fundamentally honest people.'

Police have already confirmed the accused man has no connection to Cleo's family and was not on a list of known sex offenders in Carnarvon.

He is alleged to have acted alone.

Authorities have been tight-lipped on the exact intelligence that led officers to Cleo's location.

They had been seeking the driver of a car that was seen leaving the Blowholes campsite around the time she was allegedly taken.

'That hasn't been confirmed as yet,' Supt Wilde replied when asked whether the accused man had been identified as the driver.

'But certainly we would say that that car was significant and it was in the right timeframe.'

He said specialist child interviewers had been flown to Carnarvon and would meet with Cleo when the time was right.

'We'll sit down with the family and work out the appropriate time,' he said.

Cleo was pictured smiling and waving from a hospital bed soon after reuniting with her mother and stepdad.

Her rescue has been welcomed around Australia and WA Police have been congratulated for their 'old-fashioned police work' in tracking her down.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has has been slammed as a a 'complete and utter nark' for his attack on Scott Morrison..

Radio shock jock Ray Hadley flung a brutal putdown in defence of his friend the current prime minister, who was called a liar by Mr Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull called Mr Morrison 'shameful' and 'duplicitous' over his behaviour towards France when scrapping a $90 billion submarine deal.





'He's always been a liar,' Mr Turnbull said, while attending the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Wednesday.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has copped a spray from radio personality Ray Hadley, who was defending his friend Scott Morrison

An awkward handshake in Rome between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (right) and French President Emmanuel Macron (left)

But on Sydney's 2GB station, Mr Hadley opened fire, calling Mr Turnbull a 'complete and utter nark' and accusing him of 'siding' with France and against Australia.

'[Malcolm Turnbull] doesn't have a legacy, as far as I'm concerned that's gone,' Mr Hadley told his listeners.

'An unwanted nuisance, that's what Malcolm's been in Glasgow you're just a nark, a complete and utter nark.'

But then Mr Hadley's language got cruder: 'You're a whinging, complaining nark who needs to shut up some would say, "shut the f**k up".'



Mr Turnbull hit out at Mr Morrison after the PM said he wouldn't cop any 'sledging of Australia' after French President Emmanuel Macron labelled him a liar.

'Oh, he's lied to me on many occasions,' Mr Turnbull said when asked about the spat at the Glasgow summit.

'There's quite a few examples in my book, but he's - Scott has always had a reputation for telling lies.

Ray Hadley used some very crude language on his radio show in reference to Malcolm Turnbull

Queensland Senator Matt Canavan hit back at the former PM Turnbull, who has repeatedly undermined those involved in his ousting as Liberal Party leader and thus prime minister.

'I thought Malcolm Turnbull went halfway around the world to save the planet, but apparently he's gone to just grind more axes',' the Senator told the Today show on Wednesday.

'Three years on from losing his job it still hurts. He's trying to take it out here.

'He's just become a bit of a tosser, hasn't he?' He just constantly seems to gripe about these things.

'He's gone all this way over to Glasgow, you'd think he would focus on those issues that are obviously very personally passionate to him.'

Today co-host Allison Langdon asked if he'd just called Mr Turnbull a 'tosser' and would the Senator keen to elaborate further.

'Is there any other word to describe it,' Senator Canavan replied.

'Get over it. It happened years ago. It was a decision of the party room that you yourself benefitted from years before in getting rid of Tony Abbott.

Queensland Senator Matt Canavan called Mr Turnbull a 'tosser' over the comments and said he was still bitter about being replaced as Prime Minister by Mr Morrison in 2018

'To take this new stance 'I'm the only one that's ever been deceived in politics', there's only one other word for it and it's good Australian word, 'Mate you're a bit of tosser. Get over it!'

Australia in September announced it was cancelling the 2016 contract to acquire conventional Attack Class submarines from France's Naval Group.

Mr Morrison said he made it 'very clear' to Mr Macron in June the conventional diesel-powered submarines were not going to meet Australia's strategic requirements.

'We discussed that candidly. I did not discuss what other alternatives we were looking at,' he said.

'It's no secret, I'm sure in Australia, that this was a project that had few friends, and that is a point that we had made to Naval and particularly to the French government.

'It's clear from President Macron's statements yesterday that the level of offence is still very great and we will wait for that to subside.'

Emmanuel Macron (pictured at Cop26 in Glasgow on Monday) has repeatedly claimed Scott Morrison gave him no warning the French submarine deal was to be scrapped

The government will now spend the next 18 months looking at the feasibility of acquiring technology for nuclear-powered vessels from the United States and United Kingdom under the AUKUS partnership.

Communications between the two leaders were also leaked to the media, with the French president reportedly telling Mr Morrison, 'I don't like losing'.

Days before the announcement, Mr Macron reportedly messaged Mr Morrison asking, 'Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarine ambitions?'

Mr Albanese said the leaking of the text messages highlighted how the prime minister was treating international partners as political opponents.

'Gaslighting and backgrounding is no way to build relations with our important democratic neighbours,' he said.

'Diplomacy requires trust and sombre engagements between leaders'.

The latest comments come after a leaked text message appears to show that Emmanuel Macron was given warning that Australia could torpedo its $90billion submarine deal with France, as his extraordinary row with Mr Morrisonreaches fever pitch.

A secret leaked text message (pictured) appears to show that Emmanuel Macron was given warning that Australia would torpedo its $90billion submarine deal with France

The French president had claimed he was not informed about Australia's plans to tear up the defence contract until moments before the AUKUS security pact was revealed to the world on September 15.

In a stinging rebuke at the G20 Summit in Rome, he called Scott Morrison a 'liar' for suggesting he was given prior knowledge that the defence deal would be scrapped.

But in a message believed to have been leaked by Mr Morrison's office to show Mr Macron knew the agreement was on shaky ground, the French leader wrote: 'Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?'

The leak comes off the back of Mr Morrison issuing a stunning reproach to the French leader, lambasting him for 'sledging Australia' in a war of words which threatens to overshadow diplomatic negotiations in Europe.
The Federal Government has launched an $8million marketing campaign to persuade Aussies to give travel experiences as Christmas gifts.

The campaign, launched by Tourism Australia on Friday, aims to give a much-needed boost to tourism businesses which have been struggling through Covid-19 lockdowns and border closures.

The centrepiece of the campaign is a TV advert featuring comedian Hamish Blake and his wife Zoe sitting in a bar overlooking Sydney's Harbour Bridge.

The Federal Government has launched an $8million marketing campaign starring Hamish Blake (pictured) to persuade Aussies to give travel experiences as Christmas gifts

The pair call up various celebrity friends to discuss what Hamish should get for his mate and comedy partner Andy Lee.

'You know Zo, what if the gift everyone needs this year is not a thing but it's out there? Out there in Australia, the best gift shop in the world,' Hamish says.

The video shows stars including comedian Hannah Gadsby and NRL legend Johnathan Thurston enjoying experiences around the country and finishes with Andy Lee jumping out of a plane while skydiving.

Every state except Western Australia will have their borders open for Christmas and Tourism Minister Dan Tehan wants Aussies to experience their own back yard.

'Australia is re-opening to travel and Australians are booking holidays again,' he said.

'A travel experience is a unique gift, from wine tasting, surfing lessons, a hot air balloon ride or a romantic weekend away.

The video shows stars including comedian Hannah Gadsby and NRL legend Johnathan Thurston (pictured) enjoying experiences around the country

The clip and finishes with Andy Lee (pictured) jumping out of a plane while skydiving

'Not only do tourism experiences make a unique gift, with Australians typically spending around $16 billion on gifts over the Christmas period, buying a tourism experience will help support local jobs and businesses.

'Australians are generous gift givers and they also love getting out and doing things, so giving the gift of travel is the perfect combination this holiday season.'

It comes as Australia's international border gradually opens with double vaccinated tourists expected by the end of the year, according to Scott Morrison.

Australia's international border has been closed since March 2020 to reduce the spread of coronavirus and the country has been alone among democratic nations in banning its own citizens from leaving.

NSW and Victoria removed quarantine for international arrivals on November 1.

The Federal Government has removed caps for Australians returning home and scrapped the outbound travel ban.

The next move later in the year is to allow fully vaccinated foreigners to enter, including students, workers and tourists with dates yet to be determined.

NSW Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres said his state would not discriminate based on nationality.

Pictured: Tourists visit the Twelve Apostles, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Victoria

But he flagged the Federal Government will let people from some countries in before others because it will be quicker to set up systems to test the vaccination status of arrivals from certain countries.

'There is no doubt that the Commonwealth will be able to do that with some countries faster than others,' he said.

'They will also be able to do that in conjunction with many airlines faster than others so there will be some incremental staging that has brought about by the ability for the Commonwealth to verify vaccination status but we are not delineating between countries.

'There is no delineation between Australian citizens and other citizens of countries around the world.

'The focal point here is a delineation between vaccination status so vaccinated and unvaccinated.

'We will require the Commonwealth to ensure that a person is fully vaccinated,' he said.
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Heaps of garbage have been piling up across New York City as about 1,440 of the city's 7,200 sanitation workers, nearly 20%, are placed on administrative leave for not complying with Mayor Bill de Blasio's vaccine mandate for municipal workers  which Mayor-elect Eric Adams has promised to revisit.

Adams won yesterday's mayoral election with a landslide 68 percent of the vote over Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa's 28.8 percent. He has already promised to sit down with unions to negotiate vaccine mandates that have not only impacted waste collection throughout the city but have also stretched the FDNY thin.

As of yesterday, 23 percent of the FDNY's 11,000 firefighters are still not vaccinated and few have been given religious or medical exemptions, meaning 2,530 who haven't had the shots yet cannot report for duty.

2,300 are on sick leave, meaning nearly a third of the force's 11,000 uniformed firefighters aren't on the streets.

What has been on the streets, however, is an inordinate amount of garbage bags piling up since Monday.

A woman nonchalantly passed heaps of garbage on 43rd Avenue in Queens on Wednesday

About 1,440 of the city's 7,200 sanitation workers, nearly 20%, were placed on administrative leave Monday for not being vaccinated. A slowdown in pick-up has already begun, as seen in the above photo at 43rd Avenue in Queens

Garbage has been piling up across the city as a result of the shortage in staffing and due to a protest of outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio's vaccine mandate. Above, a family walks past the waste on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan

People walk past past uncollected trash along 54th Street. 1,440 of the city's 7,200 sanitation workers, nearly 20%, have been placed on administrative leave

'Most of my neighbors work for the city, and they're supporting the sanitation workers. But if this continues, the situation is going to be unbearable,' Juan Cuautle, a nonprofit worker in Staten Island  where the issue is at its worst  told Gothamist.

'It's going to get bad in the streets,' Wendell Rivera, a 29-year-old sanitation worker who has requested a medical exemption, told the news outlet. 'The garbage is going to pile up. We already have enough manpower problems.'

But de Blasio dismissed the issue and said that there has been a 92% compliance rate among city workers, although about 9,000 were placed on unpaid leave Monday, while another 12,000 have applied for religious or medical exemptions that could take days to weeks to review.

De Blasio announced the vaccine mandate on October 20, removing a weekly testing option and offering a $500 incentive for the jabs.

From October 24 to October 30, complaints about trash increased ten times from the previous month in Staten Island.

Mayor-elect Eric Adams has already vowed to revisit the mandate by negotiating with unions across the city. He is above trying a vegan sandwich at at Marinello's Gourmet Deli in Brooklyn

Adams won yesterday's mayoral election with a landslide 68 percent of the vote over Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa's 28.8 percent

Since the mandate went into effect, employees told Gothamist that they have received substantial bonuses in exchange for helping to cover routes that have not received trash pick-ups. But other workers are intent on sending a message to the city.

Brian, a Staten Island sanitation worker who declined to give his last name, told Gothamist that he is vaccinated but supports his colleagues' protest. 'You leave stuff out, you leave stuff out. I'm sure the job didn't get done to the city's satisfaction today.'

Despite the number of garbage heaps piling up throughout the borough, a number of residents are encouraging the protest to continue in solidarity with the sanitation workers.

'There's no question people are upset their garbage is not being picked up. But I'd say there's also support for the people not picking up. We're a place that really does care about our city workers. The anger is aimed at the mayor,' Councilman Joe Borelli, a Republican who represents the borough, told Gothamist.

As of yesterday, 2,530 or 23 percent of the FDNY's 11,000 firefighters are still not vaccinated and cannot report for duty. Above, UFA President Andrew Ansbro spoke to hundreds of city workers at a rally protesting the COVID-19 vaccine mandate outside Gracie Mansion in New York on October 28

Another 2,300 firefighters are on sick leave, meaning nearly a third of the force's 11,000 uniformed firefighters aren't on the streets.

Meanwhile, Eric Adams has vowed to try and 'reset' the city and restore the faith of the NYPD in City Hall amid the vaccine mandates. On Wednesday morning, after partying the night away at swanky members club Zero Bond then Cipriani's, Adams did the rounds on morning television.

During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, he said: 'The mask mandates we should keep in place because we're doing an amazing job on that.

'And we need to revisit how we address the vaccine mandates. What I'm going to encourage him to do is to sit down with the unions. We can work this out.

'This is a very difficult moment but there's an opportunity to sit down with the unions. I communicated with some of the union leaders yesterday and they are open to sit down.

'I'm going to encourage him to do that, he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, de Blasio threatened to fire the firefighters who have called out sick since the mandate took effect, accusing them of faking illness to avoid getting the shots and avoid losing their pay.

Of the 300 fire companies across the city, the Fire Commissioner said 12 were out of service yesterday - less than half of the 31 the unions claimed were down.

Firefighters across the board who are working say they are overstretched and understaffed. The FDNY has not released 911 response times for the three days since the vaccine mandate took effect, and it is the only agency that has the data.

De Blasio has also threatened to fire firefighters who have called out sick but are 'faking it', a claim firefighter unions have strongly denied. Hundreds of workers protested the mandate above outside Gracie Mansion on October 28

One five alarm fire in Harlem which ripped through five businesses was dealt with quickly; units arrived within four minutes, a minute quicker than the average 5 minutes before the mandate came into effect.

De Blasio has also threatened to fire firefighters who have called out sick but are 'faking it', a claim firefighter unions have strongly denied.

More than 2,000 firefighters are on sick leave and the FDNY said earlier this week the majority are unvaccinated, with some submitting bogus claims to avoid missing out on pay.

'We've got firefighters who are faking sick leave and leaving fellow firefighters in the lurch and creating a danger...that is unconscionable and they will face consequences for what they have done,' de Blasio said on Wednesday morning during an interview with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who encouraged him to fire all 26,000 city workers who still haven't received the shot.

Later, de Blasio said at a press briefing: 'We're not seeing any noticeable impact response times, for first responders continue to be strong and where we need them to be.

'We're seeing no disruption to service, firehouses are open, everything's moving forward.'

However firefighters on the ground say the city is deliberately concealing response times and the total number of workers on unpaid leave to avoid panicking New Yorkers.

De Blasio announced the vaccine mandate on October 20th, removing a weekly testing option and offering a $500 incentive for the jabs

While 2,530 firefighters remain unvaccinated, the true number who are out of work is unclear because the FDNY won't confirm how many have taken unpaid leave.

It's unclear how many of the 2,300 out sick have other injuries too.

'We have firefighters that put their lives on the line that are battling cancers, some WTC-related. We also have some operating at a fourth alarm fire in the Bronx.

'We have a very dangerous job, firefighters get hurt in the line of duty... the assertion that thousands are faking medical leave, we reject,' Andrew Ansbro, President of the UFA, said.

Among the firefighters sent home on Tuesday was Mark Keating.

'Tonight my husband went in for his shift, like he has done over and over again throughout this pandemic.

'But today he was told to go home because he's fighting for his right to choose, and for the right to choose for our children.

'I'm sick to my stomach over what this city has become,' his wife Danielle said in a Facebook post.

Indeed, firefighters across the city are furious with de Blasio and accuse him of treating them like 'second class citizens'.

Gary Debiase, 55, who served with L 109 for 29 years told of stepping over dead bodies on the day of the 9/11 attacks and said:

'I wanna go back but I dont want a shot. Were in a position where we can go without for a few more weeks. Forcing someone to take a vaccine is coercion.

'Ill absolutely go back to work if they let me.

'You can't even sit down to eat. Are you kidding me? We made a sandwich at home because we can't even sit in any of these places, we'll eat it on the ferry on the wat home. We're treated like second class citizens.

'Everybody is ready to work. Nobody wants to go home. In the end, if we don't win this fight, they will do whatever they want from now on. Mandates will be the new norm. Now you do this, now you do that.'

One firefighter at an anti-mandate protest on Wednesday told DailyMail.com he is now putting in for early retirement. Both he and his sonographer wife have lost their city jobs, and say they feel like they are being treated as 'second class citizens' because they're unvaccinated.

Gary Debiase, 55, who served with L 109 for 29 years told of stepping over dead bodies on the day of the 9/11 attacks and said: 'I wanna go back but I dont want a shot. Were in a position where we can go without for a few more weeks. Forcing someone to take a vaccine is coercion.

'Ill absolutely go back to work if they let me

'My wife and I are in a position where we could hold out a few weeks but after that I'm going to put in for my retirement and that's it. I don't want to retire. But they won't let me work. They're saying "you can't go to a school", "you can't go to a hospital", "you can't do this, you can't do that."

'You can't even sit down to eat. Are you kidding me? We made a sandwich at home because we can't even sit in any of these places, we'll eat it on the ferry on the way home. We're treated like second class citizens.

'Everybody is ready to work. Nobody wants to go home. In the end, if we don't win this fight, they will do whatever they want from now on. Mandates will be the new norm. Now you do this, now you do that.

'If we lose this fight, they will do whatever they want. There's no COVID emergency right now, there's nobody getting sick. 19 months she was doing sonograms, now she's a danger to the public? We both had COVID in August of this year.'

Gary's wife Anna Rose Carpenito, who lives with him on Staten Island, added: 'I don't like anyone telling me what to do. I was never afraid of COVID in the first place.'

An anonymous firefighter said: 'If you dont have enough guys to do the job that we do, something is going to go wrong

'If I really dwell on what's actually happening it gets very emotional. We want to get back to what we love doing.

'There were three multiple-alarm fires in NYC in 12 hours, we dont enjoy that.

'Its a very dangerous job. Right now with staffing levels so low, the men who are vexed are working more than they should.'
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Children ages five to 11 started to get their covid-19 vaccines on Wednesday even as controversy rages over whether they should get the jab and many parents say they won't get their kids jabbed.

President Biden announced that following Wednesday's final authorization from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 20,000 COVID vaccination sites across the country will now offer children ages five to 11 the FDA-approved Pfizer vaccine.

'Today, we have reached a turning point in our battle against COVID-19: authorization of a safe, effective vaccine for children age 5 to 11,' a statement shared by the White House read. 'It will allow parents to end months of anxious worrying about their kids, and reduce the extent to which children spread the virus to others. It is a major step forward for our nation in our fight to defeat the virus.'

However, almost two-thirds of parents recently polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they would wait or not seek out vaccines for their kids.

Many have questioned the need for kids to get vaccinated since they are less likely than adults to develop severe COVID-19.

About 5 million children under 18 have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic started. Almost 45 million people overall have tested positive across the country.

In the most recent surge of the virus, pushed by the more contagious delta variant and the loosening of social distancing measures, cases increased across all groups  but more children have been testing positive relative to older adults. This is mostly due to more older Americans receiving both doses of the vaccine.

The U.S. enters a new phase Wednesday in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with shots now available to millions of elementary-age children in what health officials hailed as a major breakthrough after more than 18 months of illness, hospitalizations, deaths and disrupted education

The first day COVID-19 vaccinations were available for children from 5 to 12 on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, following the CDC's approval to inoculate the age group

President Biden announced that nationwide-run COVID vaccination sites will NOW offer children ages 5-11 the FDA approved Pfizer vaccines

Children ages 5 to 11 are the latest group to become eligible for the shots that provide protection against the widely infectious disease. Pictured: Kidney transplant patient Sophia Silvaamaya, 5, held by her father Pedro Silvaamaya, is vaccinated by a nurse at Children's National Hospital in Washington

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has expanded COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for an estimated 28 million American children between the ages of 5 -11.

With the federal government promising enough vaccine to protect the nation's 28 million kids in this age group, pediatricians' offices and hospitals began inoculating children. Schools, pharmacies and other locations plan to follow suit in the days ahead.

In order for children to be vaccinated, they must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. However, it remains unclear as to whether parents will also be allowed to give verbal consent over the phone to allow children to get the vaccine on their own.

Many pediatricians' offices expected strong interest in the shots at least initially, but health officials are worried about demand tapering off.

The vaccine  one-third the dose given to older children and adults and administered with kid-sized needles  requires two doses three weeks apart, plus two more weeks for full protection. That means children who get vaccinated before Thanksgiving will be covered by Christmas.

'The timing before winter holidays is very fortunate,' said Dr. Jennifer Shu, whose Children's Medical Group office in Decatur, Georgia, began vaccinating first thing Wednesday. 'This age group will be able to spend holidays with friends and family more safely than they have been able to since the start of the pandemic.'

Thousands of pediatricians pre-ordered doses, and Pfizer began shipments soon after the Food and Drug Administration's decision Friday to authorize emergency use. Pfizer said it expects to make 19,000 shipments totaling about 11 million doses in the coming days, and millions more will be available to order on a weekly basis.

Authorities said they expect a smooth rollout, unlike the chaos that plagued the national one for adults nearly a year ago.

Asked about parents having trouble finding vaccine appointments, White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said the vaccines.gov website will be updated by Friday for parents to search for locations near them. He said the kid vaccination campaign will be at full speed next week as Pfizer continues to ship millions more doses to locations around the country.

More than 6,000 vaccination clinics are being planned at schools around the country before the winter holiday break, he said.

Leah Lefkove, 9, covers her face as she waits for her dad Dr. Ben Lefkove to give her the first COVID-19 vaccine at the Viral Solutions vaccination and testing site in Decatur, Georgia

Data shows Covid poses a low risk to the age group, with children accounting for less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths in America

Carter Giglio, 8, reacts and holds his father's hand, Brian Giglio, as he is vaccinated by nurse Lydia Holly, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, at Children's National Hospital in Washington.

Ava Onaissi (L), 8, looks away as her mom, Caitlin Penney, (C) holds her 6 year-old daughter Audrey Onaissi (R) as she receives a pediatric Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination during a vaccination clinic at Emmanuel Baptist Church on November 03, 2021 in San Jose, California

Twins Ryann, left, and Jamie Onofrio Franceschini, 11, pose for a photo with Covid-19 vaccine stickers after being inoculated with the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Wednesday

Finn Washburn, 9, shows his vaccination site as his mother, Kate Elsley, takes a photo shortly after he received a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in San Jose, California

Siblings Amechi, 7, left, Chizara, 5, center and Kenechi Acholonu, 9, enjoy gifts from the hospital as they wait in observation after being inoculated with the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, in the Bronx borough of New York

Walgreens planned to start kids' vaccinations Saturday and said parents could sign up online or by calling 1-800-Walgreens. CVS was also accepting appointments online and by phone at select pharmacies starting Sunday.

Despite the initial enthusiasm, not everyone is rushing out to get shots.

Hannah Hause, a Colorado mother of four children ages 2, 5, 7 and 8, is herself vaccinated, but wants to see how the child vaccines play out and are studied in the larger childhood population.

'It's not studied long-term. It just makes me nervous,' she said. 'As long as I can wait, I will wait.'

At a White House briefing Wednesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said authorities thoroughly reviewed all available data on the vaccine's safety, efficacy and the immune response it generates before recommending shots for kids.

Dr. Ada Stewart, a black family physician in Columbia, South Carolina, and past president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said she's seen the toll the virus has taken on younger children  not just in family illness and death but with school disruptions, slipping grades and mental strain.

School closures throughout the pandemic have disproportionately burdened children of color, widening academic gaps and worsening mental health, according to data presented Tuesday to CDC advisers. It showed more than 2,000 COVID-related school closures in just the first two months of the current school year.

A Pfizer study of 2,268 children found the vaccine was almost 91 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections. The FDA examined 3,100 vaccinated kids in concluding the shots are safe.

Since the pandemic began, at least 94 children ages 5 to 11 have died from COVID-19, more than 8,300 have been hospitalized and over 5,000 have developed a serious inflammatory condition linked to the coronavirus. Black and Latino youngsters and those with chronic conditions are among the hardest hit.
The first black person elected as lieutenant governor of Virginia in the commonwealth's 400-year legislative history has criticized Democrats for failing to listen to black voters, and taking them for granted.

Winsome Sears, 57, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and arrived in the United States when she was six. She grew up in the Bronx, entered the Marines as an electrician, and ran a homeless shelter before entering Virginia politics in 2001.

On Wednesday, the day after her historic election, Sears told Fox News's Sean Hannity that she ran as a Republican because the Democrats were complacent about black voters.

'The Democrats, they really don't have the solutions,' she told Hannity.

Winsome Sears, the first black person elected as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, said on Wednesday night that her election was a repudiation of Democrat policies

Sears told Hannity that results mattered more than political allegiance, and communities should not allow politics to divide them

Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears joins Sean Hannity for a powerful interview following her historic win. pic.twitter.com/pZ85LlvRye  The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 4, 2021

'And so when you look at the Democrat run cities, the Democrat run counties, states, they are losing.

'The neighborhoods are the worst, the schools of the worst. Everything, it is the worst.

'And so they moved from Democrat led states, come to Republican led states and they ruin it - forgetting, when you came here, it was fine and now it has changed because you brought the same policies with you that ruined the state you just left.'

Sears was speaking after the state elected Glenn Youngkin as governor - the first Republican to win statewide office since 2009.

Sears is seen on Tuesday night, at an election party in Chantilly, Virginia

Sears is seen on Tuesday night with Glenn Youngkin, who was elected the next governor of Virginia

Sears said that her role was to be 'a heartbeat away' for all his decisions.

And she said the trouncing of Democrats in the state was due to taking their vote for granted.

'When you look at a birth certificate for a black child, does it say you must vote Democrat every time, all the time?' she asked.

Sears is pictured as a Marine, having signed up after leaving high school

'Otherwise you are not black?

'And for the white child, does it say you can vote any way that you want, any choice that you want, always and forever?

'Who made up those rules for us?'

Sears said that the point of the United States was being free to choose your political allegiance.

'This is America, this is freedom,' she said.

'Who died and left you in charge of all of us as black people so that we could be corralled into doing what you want us to do?

'I thought you said that you were the tolerant folks.

'If you are tolerant, that means you will allow other ideas to percolate.

'You don't want just ideas that you agree with, because then, you see, we wouldn't be living in America, we would be living in a totally different country. Nobody wants that.'

Sears is pictured on the campaign trail on September 1 in McLean

Sears said that Richard Nixon was among the first to champion black businesses, pointing out that political party was less important than results, and unity.

'All of this time it appears that Nixon was a homeboy,' she joked.

'What we are going to do is we need someone who has sensible ideas, sensible solutions, because the message is important but the messenger is equally important and what I want to say to black people, Asian people, whatever, minorities, Latinos, whatever, don't allow political parties to divide us.

'Don't allow political parties to use whatever grievances that have been historically against you to force you to look at them as the savior so that they can swoop in and think they are saving you when all they are doing is pitting one race against the other, one race against of the other.'
Cleo Smith's parents are under strict instructions not to discuss the four-year-old's 18-day nightmare with her.

Police gave the 'incredibly hard' orders to mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon, immediately after they kicked down the door of a home in Carnarvon, Western Australia, to rescue the toddler after she was snatched from her family's tent at the remote Blowholes campsite 75km away.

Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine revealed on Thursday that discussing the details of what happened could jeopardise the prosecution's case by diluting the accuracy of her information.

Terry Kelly, 36, who is not known to the family but lives just minutes away, was charged with multiple offences on Thursday night, including Cleo's kidnapping.

Police have warned Cleo's parents to wait until specialist child abuse detectives formally interview the four-year-old before talking about the traumatic events with her.

Cleo is back in the arm's of her mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon (pictured on Thursday)

Police officer's guard the Tonkin Crescent house in Carnarvon, WA where Cleo Smith was rescued

Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine (pictured) warned the parents discussing the details of what happened could jeopardise the prosecution's case by diluting the accuracy of Cleo's information

'This is still a matter that needs to go before the courts, there's certain aspects of what we saw that is going to be evidence, and I don't want to say anything that's going to prejudice that,' Senior Sergeant Blaine, who was one of the four detectives that rescued Cleo from the locked house said.

'It's not always the case that people understand that, but we want to see a successful prosecution at the end of the day for the people who are responsible.

'We've given them advice around that, and that must be incredibly hard for them, so we appreciate their assistance and cooperation with that.'

He said the family have been 'cooperative and understanding' all the way through the hellish ordeal as police worked tirelessly to track down Cleo's alleged abductor.

'They understand where we are going with the investigation and what remains to be done,' Senior Sergeant Blaine said.

'Our family liaison officer is going back out there now to speak to them and talk them through the next steps.'

Cleo Smith's mother Ellie was seen with her daughter for the first time since her dramatic rescue on Thursday afternoon

Little Cleo is seen getting into the car with her mother Ellie on Thursday afternoon, one day after she was rescued

A heart-warming audio clip of the moment detectives first found Cleo alone in a room playing with toys was heard for the first time on Thursday.

Sergeant Blaine can be heard asking the little girl 'what is your name?' three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo.'

He said police have tried to share as much information they can with the parents but at this stage investigators are still piecing all the details together themselves.

'We share with them what information we can. They know what they need to know,' Senior Sergeant Blaine said.

'Obviously it's still a time where we're exploring all the facts. We're getting information from, still, a number of different sources. Some of that information is completely wrong.

'So we're careful about what information we share with people, we want to make sure we're 100 per cent sure of the facts.'

The doll collector: Terry Kelly, 36, is pictured with Bratz dolls on his social media

Terry Kelly, 36, was taken away from Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, after sustaining head injuries

It's been 45 hours since police dragged Kelly out of his car at about midnight on Wednesday and slapped handcuffs on him.

The process of charging has been delayed after Kelly was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell within hours of his arrest.

He was taken to hospital with head injuries and released after medical treatment.

But police revealed on Thursday he had been returned to hospital for a second time after he is understood to have suffered new injuries while alone in his police cell.

Police forensic teams are continuing to scour the Tonkin Crescent address where Cleo was found

Thousands of missing person's posters were put up for Cleo Smith all over Carnarvon and surrounding areas

Forensic officers are expected to be at the home where Cleo was found for days if not weeks

Any future trial could be jeopardised if detectives tried to rush the process, the WA Deputy Police Commissioner told Seven's Sunrise.

'The important thing for police, if we're going to interview someone about offences as serious as this... we will need them in a condition where they have had a rest, they're in a good mental state, they've been fed,' he said.

'So, we've got to make sure we give them the best opportunity to answer questions and that's to ensure that the court process is validated if we get to that point.'

When detectives first found the little girl alone in a room playing with toys Sergeant Blaine asked her 'what is your name?' three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo'

A beaming Cleo is seen from her hospital bed after she was rescued by police on Wednesday

Kelly had only been at Carnarvon police station for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner and taken to hospital the first time.

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims.

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.
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A favourite day on the Spring Carnival calendar, Ladies Day, did not disappoint with a glamorous, well-heeled turnout at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse on Thursday as thousands enjoy their newfound freedom.

Punters showed up, frocked up and suited up in their thousands for a busy afternoon of nine Oaks day racing under blue skies at the famous track.

The city has only just been released from what became the world's longest Covid lockdown, giving party-starved locals a fantastic excuse to let loose.

With the weather holding up ahead of forecast storms, punters took off their jackets and instead donned sunglasses, delicate fascinators and skin-hugging dresses and basked in the summery conditions.

A favourite day on Melbourne's Spring Carnival calendar, Ladies' Day, did not disappoint with a glamorous, well-heeled turnout at Flemington racecourse on Thursday afternoon

Bright colours and light fabrics were in vogue as punters again turned Ladies' Day at Flemington into a virtual 'fashions on the field' at every turn on Thursday afternoon under sunny skies

Punters showed up, frocked up and suited up in their thousands for a busy afternoon of nine Oaks day races under blue skies at the famous Melbourne track, enjoying post-lockdown freedoms and the company of friends

Glamorous and fashionable punters were keen to enjoy the racing and the company of friends on Oaks Ladies' Day. Bright colours, skin tight dresses and big and bold eighties-style jackets were among the fashions on show

Eighties-inspired suits were among the fashions on display trackside as Melbourne racing fans got out in force and in their finest outfits for Ladies Day

Many punters were happy to bask in summer-like conditions and enjoy their recently-returned post-lockdown freedoms on a fine Melbourne afternoon with or without champagne

Bright colours and light fabrics were in vogue as punters again turned Ladies' Day at Flemington into a virtual 'fashions on the field' at every turn and took centre stage as much as the racing on track.

As the long afternoon wore on and the drinks flowed some got carried away partying trackside and even a little frisky on occasion.

Others were more focused on the races and some unexpected wins as the racing hotted up.

Some punters were keen to boogie trackside as the drinks flowed after months stuck in frustrating lockdowns

Ladies' Day is a great day to frock up and suit up for Melbourne's race-loving public, particularly after just being released from lockdown. The drinks flowed as the punters were centre-stage as much as the racing

Most punters were in a celebratory mood, evidently thrilled to enjoy the company of friends with a few drinks on a sunny, summery day in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon

Blokes might not go for fascinators trackside like the ladies, but they have other ways of displaying their fashion sense as this mustachioed legend managed at Flemington on Thursday afternoon

Other racegoers focused on the racing and even got lucky as the racing at Flemington hotted up on Oaks Day on Thursday

Most seemed content to simply celebrate the chance to get out and glam up with friends after the recent return of post-lockdown freedoms.

Willowy won the day's big race, the Group One $1million Kennedy Oaks, run over 2,500 metres.

The filly is owned by the Godolphin stable and was ridden to the win in a thrilling finish by veteran champion jockey Damien Oliver.

It was Oliver's seventh win in the big race and his third in a row.

As usual ladies day brought out a wide array of fashions and fabrics and punters revelled in the chance to dress up and explore their fashion options after many months in lockdown

Ladies Day is a great day to get glammed up and hit the track - and Melbourne's fashionistas didn't disappoint

Sunglasses and celebrations were the order of the afternoon for the sun-drenched punters who enjoyed a few drinks and the company of good friends at Flemington racecourse

Retro fashions are more and more popular trackside every year - with plenty of 1960s-inspired outfits on display trackside
The mysterious case of two missing campers could be on the verge of a breakthrough as detectives believe 'someone tried to cover their tracks' - with their devastated families pleading for answers.

Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, who were having a secret affair, haven't been seen since March 2020 when they were camping at the Wonnangatta Valley in the Victorian Alps.

Police have been dogged in their ongoing investigation, but so far have failed to locate the pair - or any distinct signs of their possible remains.

However, detectives revealed new information into their disappearance in a preview for Sunday's 60 Minutes, confirming 'someone tried to cover their tracks' and that they are honing in on new targets.

Russell Hill (pictured, left) had been friendly with Carol Clay (right) for decades before they reportedly had an affair

Police have been dogged in their ongoing investigation, but so far have failed to locate the pair - or any distinct signs of their possible remains

The families of Mr Hill and Mr Clay also visited the destroyed campsite of the couple, revealing their torment at not knowing what happened to the couple

Mr Hill left his home in Drouin, in Victoria's Gippsland region, on March 19 last year and collected Ms Clay from her home in the south eastern Melbourne suburb of Pakenham in his Toyota Land Cruiser.

They travelled through Licola, spending one night at Howitt High Plains before heading into Wonnangatta Valley where they vanished without a trace.

Mr Hill was last heard from on March 20 over the radio telling friends he was in Wonnangatta Valley, while Ms Clay had told friends she was heading away and was expecting to return by March 29.

A friend of Ms Clay revealed she knew she was heading on the trip with her secret lover in the 60 Minutes preview.

The families of Mr Hill and Mr Clay also visited the destroyed campsite of the couple, revealing their torment at not knowing what happened to the couple.

'I feel like there's always that little glimmer of hope he might come back,' Mr Hill's daughter said.

The area is notorious for blood-thirsty hunters illegally killing deer, who often use thermal imaging with their high-powered rifles to shoot at prey from as far away as 800 metres

'I feel like there's always that little glimmer of hope he might come back,' Mr Hill's daughter told 60 Minutes

A new image of Mr Hill's white Toyota Landcruiser. It was found with minor fire damage at their burnt campsite near Dry River Creek Track in the valley on March 21

Police are now focusing on the theory that someone 'covered their tracks' and the destroyed campsite may be more nefarious than a phone charger having caught fire.

The area is notorious for blood-thirsty hunters illegally killing deer, who often use thermal imaging with their high-powered rifles to shoot at prey from as far away as 800 metres.

Crossbows are also used in the rugged valley by many to kill wild animals.

According to the Herald Sun, a local, known only as Mick, told missing persons investigators he recalled finding a fluorescent green crossbow arrow, in 'close proximity' to where the couple's burnt-out campsite was discovered.

Investigators are said to be open to a number of possible scenarios, as mystery continues to deepen into the whereabouts of Mr Hill and Ms Clay.

Neither has accessed their bank accounts since their disappearance, with their respective families holding grave fears for their safety.

Two days after making their way to Wonnangatta Valley last March, their campsite was found burned to the ground. A trail of clues left behind have led authorities to believe the pair might have been set upon by unknown attackers.

Russell Hill and Carol Clay were last heard from on March 20 last year, with Mr Hill's wife unaware he was travelling with another woman

Mr Hill's white Toyota Landcruiser was found with minor fire damage at their burnt campsite near Dry River Creek Track in the valley on March 21, 2020

A mobile phone charger is believed to have set their campsite on fire and burned their tent, table and camping chairs.

Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper said in March, on the one year anniversary of the pair's disappearance, officers were chasing all leads and had zeroed in on a driver of a white ute that was seen in the valley a day before the pair disappeared.

'It might seem like only a very small possibility that those in the white ute will have information about Russell and Carol's disappearance but we can't afford to leave any stone unturned,' he said.

The ute remains unaccounted for, along with the couple's sleeping bags, prompting speculation they may have been brutally used as body bags.

Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper said police had been able to identify all vehicles seen in the area near the doomed couple's campsite on March 20 last year except the white ute.

'It might seem like only a very small possibility that those in the white ute will have information about Russell and Carols disappearance but we cant afford to leave any stone unturned,' he said in March.

'We cannot leave any "what ifs" when it comes to an investigation like this.'

Victorian detectives have released a new map of an area where a mystery white ute was spotted on the day the campers went missing

Victoria Police detectives had moved their search 80km northwest to the Mount Hotham area in April where they found two shovels in thick bush off the Great Alpine Road.

The status of those shovels remains unknown after they were sent off to be forensically examined.

A week after they were found police moved back to the campgrounds of Wonnangatta where the pair first vanished.

Investigators had been focused on areas along the Dargo High Plains Road, Cynthia Range Track, Herne Spur Track and the Wonnangatta Track as a result of information obtained from previous searches.
Cleo Smith's alleged abductor, who has a room full of children's Bratz dolls and boasted of his collection online, has appeared in court charged with her kidnap almost 48 hours after the missing four-year-old girl was rescued by detectives.

Terry Darrell Kelly, 36, was charged with multiple offences including forcibly taking a child under 16 and appeared in Carnarvon Magistrate's Court on Thursday barefoot and wearing a black T-shirt.

He was represented by a Geraldton Aboriginal Legal Service lawyer who appeared via video link and did not apply for bail.

Kelly complained about the frenzied press coverage at the 'open court' asking the judge: 'What the f**k are the media doing here?'

He then yelled 'I'm coming for you!', The Australian reported.

Cleo Smith's alleged kidnapper Terry Kelly, 36, is pictured with Bratz dolls on his social media

Bizarre details have emerged about the accused's strange obsession with toys as numerous social media account's linked to Kelly show a room full of childrens dolls

For the rest of the hearing Kelly did not show much emotion, taking several moments to acknowledge his name and only nodding to indicate he understood the kidnapping charges against him.

He was closely guarded in the dock by two police officers and wore his long, black, curly hair down.

Bizarre details have emerged about the accused's strange obsession with toys as numerous social media account's linked to Kelly show a room full of Bratz dolls.

Police will allege the Carnarvon man snatched Cleo from her family tent at the remote Blowholes campsite in remote Western Australia as she slept next to her parents and younger sister on October 16.

Charges were finally laid against Kelly after more than 30 hours of interrogation by detectives who have been relentlessly pursuing the case in the desperate hunt to rescue Cleo.

Overgrown shrubs and bushes climb the walls at the Tonkin Crescent home where Cleo was found

Junk was seen in Kelly's backyard on Thursday morning, as police still assessed the home

The alleged child predator was rounded up by investigators just after midnight on Wednesday following a 'tip off' from the public that was corroborated with mobile phone data.

Kelly was bundled out of a car before officers slapped hand cuffs on him.

Detectives then raided his Tonkin Crescent home where they allegedly found Cleo locked in a room.

Since Kelly's arrest, multiple social media accounts have emerged which allegedly belonged to him, where he boasts about his love for Bratz dolls.

One social media account is allegedly solely dedicated to his obsession with dolls, showing the toys piled from wall to ceiling.

Detectives said when they found Cleo inside the house, she was 'playing with toys'.

Cleo holds her backpack covered in cartoon princesses as mother Ellie and stepfather Jake walk to the car on Thursday morning

Bodycam footage shows the brave little girl being carried out the house, her hair is clean and brushed and her pyjamas are fresh and clean.

Neighbours say the community is reeling from the revelation the 'quiet bloke' at number 18 is allegedly the man at the centre of the world's biggest kidnapping story.

'I have kids around the same age,' Kelly's adjacent neighbour at number 16 said.

'I saw (Kelly) coming and going. I didn't really interact with him, he kept to himself. It's a pretty friendly neighbourhood but he was closed off.'

The man said he never saw any dolls with his neighbour.

'I never saw anything like that. I just saw him driving his car up and down the street or hanging around outside (Woolworths) in town.'

Terry Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, for a few hours on Wednesday before he was taken to hospital requiring medical treatment

Since Kelly's (pictured) arrest, multiple social media accounts have emerged which allegedly belonged to him, where he boasts about his love for Bratz dolls

The process of laying charges on Kelly was delayed after he was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell within hours of his arrest.

He was taken to hospital with head injuries and released after medical treatment.

But police revealed on Thursday he had been returned to hospital for a second time after he is understood to have suffered new injuries while alone in his cell.

Kelly had only been at Carnarvon police station for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner and taken to hospital the first time.

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

Police forensic teams are continuing to scour the Tonkin Crescent address where Cleo was found

Cleo will be spoken to by specialist child interviewers when the time is right, police say

Police had been seeking the driver of a car that was seen leaving the Blowholes campsite around the time Cleo was allegedly taken from the tent where she was asleep alongside parents Ellie and Jake and baby sister Isla (pictured)

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims.

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.

The small community in Western Australia are celebrating Cleo's safe return after her nightmare ordeal
Lawyers representing the armorer who loaded Alec Baldwin's gun which killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins claimed the weapon was left unattended for two hours on set, before backtracking and saying it was only ten minutes.

Jason Bowles, speaking on behalf of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, suggested the gun may have been tampered with before it fired the fatal shot during the filming of Rust.

The .45 Long Colt was not supposed to contain live rounds and was one of three on a tray given to assistant director David Halls who then passed it on to Baldwin.

Gutierrez-Reed, 24, who says she gave the actor gun training and told him to never point a firearm at someone, had loaded the gun on the prop cart with six dummy rounds which she took from a prop ammunition box labeled 'dummies', Bowles claims.

These rounds do not contain any gunpowder and are used on film sets to mimic real bullets.

Bowles claimed the guns were left unattended for two hours including the crew's lunch break during a TV interview on Wednesday.

But later he backtracked after consulting Gutierrez-Reed, saying the guns had been locked in a safe during lunch and were only left unattended for five to 10 minutes, he told the New York Times.

Lawyers representing armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (pictured) who loaded Alec Baldwin's gun, suggested it could have been tampered with

Attorneys Robert Gorence (left) and Jason Bowles (right), representing 'Rust' armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, appeared on the Today Show on Wednesday to discuss the fatal shooting

That is the central question to this case: How did a live round get on set?@SavannahGuthrie speaks exclusively with Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, attorneys for Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who are speaking out about the investigation for the first time. pic.twitter.com/qTNGiAK5h1  TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 3, 2021

Bowles said his client had asked her colleagues to watch the gun cart when she was not there and she remembered seeing it left unattended at points throughout the day.

Gutierrez-Reed loaded the three firearms at 11am, including the .45 Long Colt, which were to be used during filming on the fateful day, fellow lawyer Robert Gorence said.

He said: 'Was there a duty to safeguard them 24/7? The answer is no, because there were no live rounds.'

The gun was declared 'cold' meaning it was safe to use and it remains unclear how a live round was used.

Gutierrez-Reed said in a statement issued by her lawyers: 'Who put those in there and why is the central question.

'Hannah kept guns locked up, including throughout lunch on the day in question, and she instructed her department to watch the cart containing the guns when she was pulled away for her other duties or on a lunch break.'

The statement goes on to say that 'Hannah did everything in her power to ensure a safe set. She inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day. She always inspected the rounds.'

The statement adds that she inspected the rounds before handing the firearm to assistant director David Halls 'by spinning the cylinder and showing him all of the rounds and then handing him the firearm.'

'No one could have anticipated or thought that someone would introduce live rounds into this set,' Gutierrez Reed's statement said.

The statement also noted that 'she did firearms training for the actors as well as Mr. Baldwin, she fought for more training days and she regularly emphasized to never point a firearm at a person.'

It comes as Halyna's husband Matthew hired the firm Panish, Shea, Boyle and Ravipudi in Los Angeles and is set to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

It is not yet clear how the live round entered the gun before it shot and killed Halyna Hutchins (pictured)

The .45 Long Colt was not supposed to contain live rounds and was one of three on a tray given to assistant director David Halls who then passed it on to Baldwin (pictured on Monday)

The .45 Long Colt (file image) was not supposed to contain live rounds and was one of three on a tray given to assistant director David Halls

Sources told TMZ there will be multiple defendants in the suit and it will be filed on behalf of Matthew and their son Andros, nine, following her death on October 21.

Gutierrez Reed's attorneys floated the theory that a 'disgruntled' crew member may have planted the live round on set as an act of revenge, during an interview with the Today show's Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday.

In the wake of the fatal shooting that also wounded director Joel Souza, several crew members have come out claiming that they were overworked and denied hotel rooms in the vicinity of the New Mexico set.

'I believe that somebody who would do that, would want to sabotage the set, would want to prove a point, want to say they're disgruntled, they're unhappy,' Jason Bowles said.

The armorer's attorneys suggested that a disgruntled crew member on set near Santa Fe, New Mexico, may have planted the live round as an act of sabotage

'And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before... and the reason they are unhappy is they're working 12 to 14 hour days, they are not given hotel rooms in and around the area, so they had to drive back and forth an hour to Albuquerque, and they're unhappy.'

Gutierrez Reed has not been named a suspect, or charged with any crime in connection with Hutchins' killing, but she retained legal representation.

'There was a box of dummy rounds, and the box is labeled 'dummy,'' Bowles said. '[Gutierrez Reed] loaded rounds from that box into the handgun, only later to find out - she had no idea - that there was a live round.'

The armorer then handed the vintage Colt pistol to assistant director David Halls, who, in turn, passed it on to Baldwin and announced 'cold gun,' indicating that the weapon was safe to use, according to authorities investigating the deadly October 21 shooting near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Baldwin, pictured after being questioned just hours after the shooting mourned the loss of Hutchins, whom he called his 'friend'

'We're assuming somebody put the live round in that box,' Bowles told Guthrie. 'The person who put the live round in the box of dummy rounds had to have the purpose of sabotaging the set. There is no other reason you would do that: that you would mix that live round in with the dummy rounds.'

Gorence said the box of dummy ammunition was in a prop truck, which was 'completely unattended at all times, giving someone access and opportunity.'

Gutierrez Reed's lawyers defended her actions that day, saying that the loaded gun was not in her care for the entire duration of the filming because she was expected to perform two jobs on set: as an armorer and a props assistant.

Lawyers said as Gutierrez Reed (pictured at her home in Arizona, left) handed the loaded gun to assistant director David Halls (right), she spun the chamber to show him the rounds, but did not inspect them

Bowels said that after lunch, Gutierrez Reed handed the gun she had loaded earlier to Halls and then went about performing her other duties as a props assistant.

As she handed over the Colt, the lawyer said Gutierrez Reed spun the chamber to show Halls the rounds inside.

'She did spin the cylinder for him,' Bowles said. 'She did show him each and every round in that chamber, which there were six.'

He added: 'The problem is, when you look at a dummy round and you look at their appearance, they have the same projectile tip; some of these do not have a hole in the side. They mimic and look like a real round.'

The armorer's legal team admitted that she did not inspect the gun to ascertain that the rounds inside the chamber were not live ammunition.

Gorence explained that Gutierrez Reed was not inside the church set at the time of the shooting because it took place while cameras were being set up, and not during filming,

'She wasn't there,' the lawyer stressed.

The armorer's attorneys said they are cooperating with the investigation, and are hoping that the FBI would be able to determine who had planted the live round.

The attorneys for Gutierrez Reed she is 'absolutely devastated.'

'She remains very emotional about everything that's happened,' Bowles said. 'Coming on the scene and everything that she saw, she is heartbroken and she is just devastated by what's happened.'

Meanwhile, 'Rust' camera assistant Lane Luper, who quit on the eve of the shooting, told Good Morning America that there were only two safety meetings on set and said production did not take gun safety seriously.

'I think with Rust, it was the perfect storm of the armorer, the assistant director, the culture that was on set, the rushing. It was everything,' he said.

Luper claimed the crew were overworked and exhausted from commuting to and from the set, and he also cited poor gun safety, which he said resulted in two accidental weapon discharges and one accidental sound-effects explosion.

Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin leave the bedroom home they are renting with their children in Manchester, Vermont on November 1

Baldwin has been largely silent about what happened on the set of 'Rust,' but on Tuesday he shared a social media post from one crew member slamming her coworkers for painting a 'blatantly false' picture of the set as 'chaotic and unsafe'.

Baldwin issued a public statement the day after Hutchins' death in which he indicated that he was cooperating with authorities and offered his condolences to her family.

Halls released a statement to the New York Post on Monday, saying he hopes the tragedy prompts the film industry to 'reevaluate its values and practices' to ensure no one is harmed again.

Concerns have been raised about Halls' safety record by colleagues on two previous productions.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said last week there was 'some complacency' in how weapons were handled on the set. Investigators found around 500 rounds of ammunition  a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and suspected live rounds  even though the set's armorer, Gutierrez Reed, said real ammo should never have been present.
A firefighter who was the face of his brigade's 'values' campaign has been sacked for engaging in Carry On-style banter about kinky sex during a staff team building event.

Richard Holden, 46, was reported to senior colleagues after he repeatedly joked about 'pegging' - a slang term for the practise of women wearing a sex aid while having intercourse with their husbands or partners.

Married Holden had not known what the term meant when it was initially mentioned by a young female recruit who said her partner 'enjoyed being pegged'.

But the part-timer, who regularly raised money for the firefighters charity, started using the term himself in an attempt to fit in with the younger recruits during the three-day event in the Lake District.

Holden - based at Preesall fire station near Fleetwood - was later fired after a disciplinary investigation while two of the young recruits, a man and a woman, were given written warnings.

In a statement, he said that he felt his punishment was 'too harsh' as he had admitted he was wrong and apologised immediately, adding that he did not realise 'the gravity' of his comments until later.

Lancashire firefighter Richard Holden (pictured) has been sacked after repeatedly referencing sex acts while chatting with younger recruits during a training weekend in the Lake District

He said: 'While I was certainly naive during the days we are discussing, I haven't been in any way dishonest or evasive at any point as is proven by my immediate and complete admittance of my part in each of the circumstances questioned.

'I was the only one dismissed and the increased severity of my treatment seems to be based on my not showing as much remorse and emotion.

'I have confirmed all along I knew it was a sexual activity, and I knew and accepted it was stupid to say it, and for that reason I apologised to the instructor immediately at the end of the lecture, but I did not understand the gravity of the comment when I said it until afterwards on Friday night.

'There is no dishonesty in my case - the severity of my dismissal is much too harsh.'

Details emerged at an employment tribunal in Manchester where Holden who joined the brigade in 2014 lost a claim for unfair dismissal.

The hearing was told how Holden had stood up against bullying and dishonesty and during his career devoted his own time to raise money for mental health charities and other good causes.

In 2018, Mr Holden (left) was given a Star award from the fire service for his charity work

He was awarded the 'LFRS star award' in 2018, and had been used on posters promoting the brigade's campaign within the service called STRIVE an an acronym which stands for 'Service, Trust, Respect, Integrity, Valued, Empowered.'

His downfall began in September 2020 when he joined rookies on a course at Brathay Hall Residential Centre in Ambleside as part of his training as a recruit to a full-time role.

Referring to Mr Holden as the 'claimant,' tribunal judge Brian Doyle said: 'He was much older than the other recruits on the course, as many of the recruits were in their twenties, whereas he was in his forties.

'He tried his best to join in conversations and to be part of the group.

'Most of the conversation was around partners and the topic turned to sexual matters, including a discussion of their partners' reduced interest in sex after having a baby.

'One recruit mentioned 'pegging' and how her last partner had enjoyed being pegged.

'The claimant asked about the meaning of the word because he had no idea what it meant and he had the impression that he was the only one who did not know what this meant.

'She explained what pegging was and another recruit said he also enjoyed it.'

Mr Holden insisted he did not understand the term when he first heard it and did not realise how inappropriate it was until he researched the term at home after the training course

The tribunal heard that the group were warned about using inappropriate language after an instructor became aware of their conversation.

'The next day as the group were leaving Brathay Hall in the minibus, an instructor asked the group what they had learned from the course.

Judge Doyle continued: 'But the following day during a health and well-being lecture, the claimant's group was asked for a team name and the claimant shouted out peggers.

'Someone sat in front of the claimant immediately told him he should not have said it and the claimant was shocked as he had thought it was a bit cheeky, which was stupid because he knew what it was, but it had been just used in normal conversation that week.

'The instructor misheard it as beggars and the recruit corrected her, spelling it out and at the end of the lecture, the claimant went and apologised to the instructor.

The tribunal was told that an investigation was launched over Mr Holden's behaviour and that he insisted that while he knew the term, he didn't understand the level of impropriety over its use until he researched it when he got home.

The incident took place during a residential weekend at Brathay Hall in the Lake District

Judge Doyle added: 'He confirmed that he said peggers as a potential quiz team name, and that it was stupid to have done so.

'It was the station manager's view that everyone bar Mr Holden took responsibility for their actions, were remorseful and, she believed, would be able to demonstrate those values in their future employment with the respondent service.

'In her view, the claimant's lack of honesty, and his attempts to minimise what he had done during the investigation and disciplinary hearing, were in fact separate and further breaches of the respondent's values.

'She regarded him as having displayed a lack of integrity, showed that he could not be trusted, and demonstrated a lack of respect to the respondent service and the disciplinary procedure by not being honest.

'His lack of remorse and acceptance of wrongdoing, she considered, also meant that he was less likely to amend his behaviour in the future.

'There would therefore be the possibility that he would breach the values again in some way, making him an unsuitable employee.'

LFRS said Holden was dismissed after being deemed to have shown a 'lack of honesty' and 'no remorse' during an investigation into his conduct, which constituted 'separate and further breaches of the service's values'.

The other recruits were only spared being dismissed as their banter about 'pegging' had taken place outside work hours and was therefore deemed 'less serious'.'

Bob Warren, director of people and development, at LFRS said: 'Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service is pleased that the tribunal has agreed with the outcome of our internal investigation.

'The service strives to keep a safe and positive environment for all staff and we have a set of values to help us achieve this. Where any employee fails to live up to the standards that we set, we will take the appropriate action.'
An adult film model says she has been detained for 14 days for baring her buttocks in view of the Kremlin.

Known as Rita Fox, 20, she is the fourth person in recent days to be held for such stunts.

The actress posted a picture of her 'bare buttocks against the background of the Kremlin', on the edge of Red Square, in Moscow, which triggered complaints, she said.

The porn star said she was detained after a racy photoshoot that she took in front of the Kremlin in Moscow's Red Square

She told her followers: 'I am now imprisoned for 14 days.

'I have been punished for the petty hooliganism, according to my sentence.'

Ren TV said she had been 'inspired' by Instagram model who posted an image simulating oral sex in view of St Basil's Cathedral, also on Red Square.

Anastasia Chistova, 19, and her boyfriend, influencer Ruslani Murodzhonzoda, 23  a Tajik national also known as Ruslan Bobiyev, both apologised but were jailed for ten months each.

The adult actress claimed to have been arrested for public hooliganism by Russian police

Anastasia Chistova, 19, and Ruslani Murodzhonzoda, 23 were also jailed for simulating oral sex in front of the Kremlin as part of a crackdown on stunts near cultural landmarks in Russia

In another case Instagrammer Ira Volkova, 30, was held in St Petersburg for exposing her rear outside floodlit St Isaac's Orthodox Cathedral.

She will face a trial later and is now under house arrest.

Fox - whose real first name is Ksenia, and is reported to be from St Petersburg - was punished more quickly with a 14-day sentence for her post on Telegram, she said.

Fox, whose real first name is Ksenia, said she initially had not understood what she had done

Russia has tightened its laws over stunts which may cause offence in or near churches or other important buildings.

When the complaints poured in, Fox said 'at first I didn't understand.

'Then, oh, how I understood what I had done.'
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Natacha Bouchart, the Mayor of Calais, told French radio station RTL that Emmanuel Macron's government must 'strongarm' Britain to 'overhaul' the treaty that obliges France to control migrants before they cross the Dover Strait

Britain is an 'Eldorado' for illegal migrants and 'lacks the courage' to tighten its laws to deter Channel crossings, according to the Mayor of Calais.

In a call for showdown talks over migration, Natacha Bouchart told French radio station RTL that Emmanuel Macron's government must 'strongarm' Britain to 'overhaul' the treaty that obliges France to control migrants before they cross the Dover Strait.

Her intervention comes after one migrant was declared dead off Dunkirk yesterday and another is missing presumed drowned - among more than 400 people rescued by French authorities throughout Tuesday night into Wednesday evening.

Dunkirk's public prosecutor, Sebastien Pive, has announced a manslaughter inquiry into the death, saying the boat was so overloaded it broke down and sank.

Ms Bouchart, who is a member of the centre-Right Republicains, accused Britain's 'soft touch' on migrants of inflicting 'trauma' on Calais residents 'for over 20 years' by essentially luring people to the French port town from all over the EU.

'We know that a migrant who arrives in England is taken care of. They are housed, they have an income,' the Mayor said. 'For them, England remains an Eldorado but the British Government does not have the courage to review its legislation in the field.'

Under the Touquet Treaty first approved in February 2003, the UK border was effectively moved on to French soil. As a result, the French government has complained that this ultimately leaves them - not Britain - in charge of the border protection arrangements.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has paid Paris the first installment of the 54million to counter Channel migrants, after her French counterpart, Gerald Darmanin, promised to stop 100 per cent of the boats if the UK paid the full amount. However, fewer than half of the migrants have been intercepted by French authorities, The Times reported. And France has raised the prospect of ending checks on migrants unless Britain backs down in the ongoing post-Brexit dispute over fishing licences.

Either side can revoke the border agreement with just two years' notice before it is cancelled.

It is believed that the current surge in migrant crossings has been caused by good weather along the coast of southern England since Monday - despite the sudden drop in temperatures - which has seen calm Channel waters. In July and September, thousands of migrants took advantage of calm seas and clear skies to make the journey across the Dover Strait.

And yesterday, a cross-Channel Irish ferry, the Isle of Inishmore, was even forced to stop and rescue 13 migrants in a sinking dinghy and return them to Calais.

The surge in crossings led the Conservative MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke, to call for controversial 'pushback' tactics to begin immediately against migrant dinghies. She said the French had 'entirely lost control of their border', adding: 'It says something when a ferry has more success taking migrants back to France than the French authorities. It's time to take forward additional measures including turning boats around and swiftly returning those who come in illegally.'

Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, called on the Government to ramp up efforts to reach an agreement with the French government to prevent future tragedies.

In a post on Twitter, he said: 'It's a grim reality that over 20,000 people have risked their lives in the English Channel this year. There needs to be an effective deal with the French authorities and properly managed safe and legal routes. The Conservatives must listen and act-urgently.'

Migrants come ashore at Dungeness in Kent, escorted by border officials and RNLI, after crossing the Channel

A cross-Channel Irish ferry, the Isle of Inishmore, was forced to stop and rescue 13 migrants in a sinking dinghy and return them to Calais

Migrants come ashore at Dungeness in Kent, escorted by border officials and RNLI, after crossing the Channel

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard the Dungeness Lifeboat following a small boat incident in the Channel

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, by Border Force officers following a small boat incident in the Channel

It is believed that the current surge in migrant crossings has been caused by good weather along the coast of southern England since Monday - despite the sudden drop in temperatures - which has seen calm Channel waters

Footage yesterday showed the moment a Channel ferry was forced to stop and rescue migrants in a sinking dinghy, as the number of illegal crossings this year breached 20,000

Five suspected asylum seekers are found in a refrigerated lorry The group of five people, thought to have been suffering from hypothermia, were found in the rear of a loaded 44-tonne refrigerated lorry Five people believed to be refugees have been discovered in the back of a refrigerated lorry. Emergency services were called at around 8.10pm on Tuesday evening to the Poyle Interchange on the M25 Northbound. The group of five people, thought to have been suffering from hypothermia, were found in the rear of a loaded 44-tonne refrigerated lorry near to the Harmondsworth immigration removal centre. Traffic officers from Thames Valley Police were alerted to the find and called in firefighters to assist with oxygen and a specialist thermal imaging camera. A number of people were removed from the rear of the lorry and wrapped in silver space blankets before being taken to the hospital for a check-up. Those involved have now been handed over to UK border force. A spokesman for the London Fire Brigade said one crew from Heathrow attended and used a thermal imaging camera to check the lorry to make sure there were no further stowaways aboard. A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: 'We were called by our colleagues in Surrey to reports of five people being inside a refrigerated lorry on the M25. 'Officers from Surrey Police stopped the lorry and Thames Valley Police arrested a 48-year-old man on suspicion of illegally helping asylum seekers to enter the United Kingdom. 'He remains in police custody at this time. 'In terms of an update on the five people inside the lorry, this is being dealt with by Surrey Police.' Advertisement

Mrs Elphicke said tragic deaths could be prevented with help from France.

'Month after month lives are being lost in the English Channel. This is not just tragic, it is wholly avoidable if the French stepped up to the plate and stopped boats leaving in the first place,' she said.

'Traffickers will continue to ply their disgusting trade while they are able to do so. It is the responsibility of all civilised countries to put a stop to it.'

The migrant who was pronounced dead after being found unconscious while attempting the Channel crossing was a man aged in his 30s, according to French newspaper Voix du Nord.

Mr Pive said: 'Investigations are underway, the circumstances of this tragedy are still unclear. An investigation for manslaughter has been opened and handed over to the border police.'

Ben Bano, from refugee charity Seeking Sanctuary, said: 'These latest tragic deaths come on top of two recent deaths in the last four weeks.

'They are completely avoidable. The UK and French governments can work together to provide safe and secure ways to seek asylum in the UK- instead those involved put their lives in even more danger in response to what they see as a hardening of attitudes from both governments.

'And the refugees making the journey are by no means economic migrants - victims of the wars and persecution which affect so many parts of the world today.'

Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action which supports detained refugees, said: 'It's deeply saddening to hear that a person has died and one has gone missing this week while trying to reach the UK.

'Our condolences go out to their families and friends, and anyone who was traveling with them.

'Parliament is currently considering adding a new Humanitarian Visa to the Government's Nationality & Borders Bill that would allow refugees currently waiting in France to apply for safe, efficient passage to the UK to make their claims. We urge this Government to accept the amendment.

'No 'hostile environment' or threat of punishment can extinguish hope, but by providing people with a safe way to reach loved ones and rebuild their lives in our communities we can prevent more of these tragedies.'

Yesterday's drowning was the second fatal incident in the past ten days, after at least one migrant was reported to have gone overboard by men rescued on a small boat off Harwich, Essex last Tuesday. It is believed to be the single biggest tragedy in the Channel, an international shipping lane, since a Kurdish-Iranian family of five lost their lives in October last year.

The latest migrants to die on the perilous journey were among more than 400 people rescued by French authorities throughout Tuesday night into Wednesday evening.

The Home Office has confirmed that not one of the more than 20,000 migrants who have crossed the Channel and reached Britain this year has been returned to the EU countries through which they passed, where they should have claimed asylum.

Yesterday, a group of migrants who got into difficulty in the Channel told their rescuers a person had fallen into the sea off Pas-de-Calais. French Navy helicopter Dauphin carried out an extensive search with the help of the fire and rescue service. But this was called off after no one was found by the afternoon.

Another rescue operation saw an unconscious migrant recovered who was later pronounced dead upon arrival at a French port.

A spokesman for the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea said late on Wednesday night: 'Unfortunately, despite the means implemented, one person is missing and one other was declared dead, among these very many castaways.

'Indeed, during a rescue operation, the recovered castaways told rescuers that a person had fallen into the sea off the Pas-de-Calais. The CROSS then engages the Dauphin helicopter to carry out dedicated research. Actions are also coordinated with resources from the departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS).

'At the end of the morning, after fruitless searches and lack of new information, the maritime prefect of the Channel and the North Sea decided to suspend the searches at sea. In addition, during another rescue operation, a castaway was recovered unconscious.

'Rescuers did their best, but this person was pronounced dead upon returning to the dock.'

The French Navy helicopter Dauphin and Belgian Army chopper Caiman helped rescue tug Abeille Languedoc, French Navy patrol vessel Cormorant, Customs patroller Jacques Oudart Fourmentin, Maritime Gendarmerie surveillance boat Scarpe in the multiple rescues.

Various lifeboat crews, assisted by local lighthouse beacons, also joined the emergency response.

It comes just over a week since two Somalian migrants rescued in an emergency 30 miles off Harwich last Tuesday claimed a third man had gone overboard and drowned.

It is the most fatal day of crossings in the Channel since Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin all died after the boat they were travelling in sank in October last year.

The Home Office is yet to confirm how many migrants arrived on UK shores on Wednesday. MailOnline has contacted the department for comment.

3/11 Dover Posted by Chris Johnson on Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Pictured: A group of migrants are brought to shore by RNLI Dover Lifeboat/Hunter

Border Force as the number of migrants to have crossed the Channel passes 20,000

Priti Patel says deaths of up to three migrants who are feared to have drowned in the Channel is an 'absolute tragedy' Priti Patel last week said the deaths of up to three migrants who are feared to have drowned in the Channel after trying to reach Britain by boat was an 'absolute tragedy'. The individuals are still unaccounted for after trying to cross from France to the UK in a dinghy earlier this month . Two men - both Somali nationals - were rescued off the Essex coast last Monday and searches for any remaining survivors have now been called off. Speaking while visiting the Thames Valley Police Training Centre in Reading, Priti Patel said: 'It is a tragedy. It is an absolute tragedy, it really is. 'Clearly there are investigations taking place right now so we have to let that investigation process occur. 'But I can give everyone solid, solid assurance that my work with both France and other counterparts as well is very much based on stopping the loss of life.' Asked what she would say to their families, Ms Patel said: 'It is terrible, it is tragic and it is absolutely appalling. 'We want to stop the loss of human life, and everything that we are doing as a Government is focusing on ensuring that we work in joint co-operation with other governments and other countries to actually get to the source of these issues, which is to stop the people-smuggling.' Advertisement

Footage yesterday showed the moment a Channel ferry was forced to stop and rescue migrants in a sinking dinghy, as the number of illegal crossings this year breached 20,000.

Photos taken from onboard the Isle of Ishinore show more than a dozen migrants on a packed boat being propelled through the world's busiest shipping lane by a single man holding a flimsy paddle.

The ferry stopped midway through a crossing from Dover to Calais after the craft was spotted drifting 10.45am, with the captain telling passengers: 'Apologies for the delay but we had to stop and rescue 13 migrants in distress who's boat had run out of fuel and was sinking'.

The ship dispatched a rescue craft which threw a rope to the stricken boat so it could be pulled alongside. The crew hauled all 13 migrants to safety and found two of them were without life jackets. They were all taken to Calais.

Other video emerged of migrants celebrating arriving in Britain by chanting 'Yay, UK is good' as they being ferried into Dover on an RNLI lifeboat.

The video was taken as 456 more migrants arrived from France in 15 small craft, bringing the total number of people who have made the perilous journey so far this year to an astonishing 20,198.

This is more than double the 8,410 who arrived in Britain last year, and the figure will soon increase after more migrants were seen arriving today.

Numbers have risen dramatically despite Miss Patel vowing to make Channel crossings an 'infrequent phenomenon' by spring 2020. Facing increasing pressure to 'get a grip' on the crisis, she recently agreed to hand a further 54million to Emmanuel Macron's administration in France to step up patrols on their coast.

'Pushback' tactics - to stop migrant boats and divert them back to France - have also been authorised by Miss Patel, but have yet to come into force. The French oppose these tactics, saying they breach maritime law.

Yesterday, more migrants were seen arriving onboard the Morrell, an RNLI lifeboat based at Dungeness, Kent, which brought the first group in to Dover Marina shortly before 7am.

Two men wearing lifejackets were seen being walked up the gangway by Immigration Enforcement for processing while their small black dinghy was towed into harbour.

Approximately 40 more migrants were seen packed onto Border Force cutter Hunter before disembarking around 8am. The Morrell returned to the harbour again with around 30 people on board half an hour later. Border Force's largest catamaran Hurricane was also been bringing dozens of migrants to shore.

It had to double park with a lifeboat and wait to disembark its rescued occupants, draped in red blankets for warmth, around 10.30am this morning.

Many of the men carried their possessions in clear plastic bags. The RNLI's Dungeness vessel was also said to be working through the night on search and rescue.

Onlookers monitoring activity in the Channel off the Kent coast predict could see higher numbers of arrivals than on Monday.

October saw a total of 2,669 migrants make the Channel crossing in 92 boats.

Elsewhere, maritime gendarmerie coastal surveillance boat Escaut recovered 34 migrants while Customs Coast Guard patroller Jacques Oudart Fourmentinis saved 49 people in two operations.

That is six times more than the 463 who arrived in 33 boats in the same month last year.

Dan O'Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said: 'These journeys are illegal, dangerous, unnecessary and facilitated by violent criminal gangs profiting from misery.

'We are working with the French to stop boats leaving their beaches and crack down on the criminals driving these crossings.

'People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. The Government's New Plan for Immigration will fix the system, making it firm on those who abuse it and fair on those in genuine need.'
A 17-year-old girl was allegedly abducted and gang-raped by 17 men over four days in Kazakhstan after being spiked by a taxi driver who took her to a stranger's house.

The high school student, identified by her first name Dilnoz, was reportedly exposed to the horrific sexual abuse in the southern town of Saryagash.

The 17 men allegedly took it in turns to rape her and beat her and threatened to drown her in the river when she tried to fight back.

Dilnoz alleges she was given a spiked drink by a taxi driver when she was heading home from the market after buying a prom dress in May.

At one point, the cab driver is said to have turned the car around and driven her in the wrong direction.

Dilnoz said she got scared and started crying when the driver persuaded her to calm down and drink water from a plastic bottle he gave her.

She alleges she took a couple of sips before blacking out at once.

The high school student, identified by her first name Dilnoz, was allegedly abducted and gang-raped by 17 men over four days in Kazakhstan after being spiked by a taxi driver who took her to a stranger's house

Recalling her ordeal, Dilnoz said: 'I awoke by the river. I was lying on the ground completely naked and surrounded by several men.

'They raped me on the bank then took me to a house. There, they raped me again then started to call their friends saying 'come here, we have a girl''.

'One by one, the other men came into the room where I was locked and did it to me.

'They beat me and threatened to drown me in the river when I tried to fight them off.'

The girl's mother stated the abuse lasted four days. After that, the offenders returned the victim her clothes and put her out the front door.

According to the victim and her mother, they resorted to local media after losing hope that perpetrators would be brought to justice.

'The criminal case was opened five months ago. No one has been arrested since then,' the victim's mother said.

The girl's mother (pictured left with the girl) stated the abuse lasted four days. After that, the offenders returned the victim her clothes and put her out the front door

Dilnoz alleges the 17 men took it in turns to rape her and beat her and threatened to drown her in the river when she tried to fight back

Seventeen men are now under investigation for the alleged gang-rape after one reportedly abducted her. Dilnoz remembered the faces of her 17 alleged abusers and reported them to the police, all of whom are under police order to not leave the town.

A spokeswoman for the Turkestan region police department, Saltanat Karakozova, commented on the case: 'A series of examinations are underway. The investigation is ongoing.'

According to investigators, important evidence was destroyed by the victim's mother, who had burned the clothes her daughter was wearing at the moment of the crime.

The mother explained that she burned the clothes 'to get rid of bad memories', local media reported.
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HS2's huge Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) have continued to rip through stunning English countryside as they plough yet more concrete into the earth.

The 100billion high-speed network's latest phase tore two enormous holes for 10 miles under the Chilterns at the picturesque village of West Hyde, Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire.

Aerial pictures showed the devastation caused by the 557ft TBMs - called Cecilia after astronomer Payne-Gaposchkin and Florence after nurse Nightingale - as acres of greenery were turned into a building site.

Furious campaigners argued HS2 - which will run between London and Birmingham - poses 'a grave threat to the UK's ancient woods, with 108 at risk of loss or damage'.

But the firm blasted back that only 0.29 square kilometres (0.11 square miles) of ancient woodland will be lost during the first phase.

Meanwhile the rail industry is bracing for a downsizing of a major section of HS2 due to the project's ballooning price tag amid the economic impact of the pandemic.

HS2's huge Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) have continued to rip through stunning English countryside as they plough yet more concrete into the earth

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? The 100billion high-speed network's latest phase tore enormous holes for 10 miles under the much-loved Chilterns near the village of West Hyde in Hertfordshire

A member of the HS2 team pauses on a stretch of the tunnel as he walks towards the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) named Cecilia, after astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, yesterday

A dramatic photograph shows the tunnel leading up to the monster Tunnel Boring Machine being used to dig for HS2. The rail industry is bracing for a downsizing of a major section of HS2, together with the project's ballooning price tag - especially after the economic harm of the pandemic

The high-speed rail line has recently come under fire from critics who have questioned whether the project is worth its ballooning price tag

4000-tonnes, 1,000ft in length and the height of FOUR giraffes... Florence and Cecilia in numbers: 557ft each in length  1.5 times length of football pitch;

2000 tonnes each  the same as 340 elephants;

Run non-stop for 3.5 years

Maximum burrowing depth of nearly 300ft;

TBM cutterhead is 30ft - two giraffes high;

Trains will pass at a distance of 30ft;

Concrete in tunnels is 6.5ft x 13ft and 8.5 tonnes each;

112,000 concrete segments needed for both tunnels. Advertisement

Identical twins Florence and Cecilia are both at the Hertfordshire site tearing through the earth at a steady one centimetre per minute - or 15m per day.

The 2000-tonne monsters work around the clock and will not stop for three years until they have completed the ginormous burrows striped across Britain.

A 17-strong crew man each TBM in shifts to keep the machines running 24/7 while being supported by people on the surface managing logistics.

Florence was the first launched - in May 2021 - while Cecilia followed and both were deployed to the same site in the South East.

Both machines are specifically designed for the mix of chalk and flint they will encounter under the stunning Chiltern Hills.

The TBMs convert the spoil into slurry which will be pumped back to the main site where it is treated before being used for landscaping on-site.

In total 10 of the giant machines will excavate 64 miles of tunnels on the first phase of the high speed railway between London and the West Midlands.

Aerial pictures showed the devastation caused by the 557ft TBMs as acres of greenery was turned into a building site with stacks of metal and stone piled up in front of two vast burrows

Furious campaigners argued HS2 - which will run between London and Birmingham - poses 'a grave threat to the UK's ancient woods, with 108 at risk of loss or damage'. Pictured: The tunnel entrances near West Hyde

HS2 blasted back at campaigners saying that only 0.29 square kilometres (0.11 square miles) of ancient woodland will be lost during the first phase. It comes after Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen told the Commons the project will be 'loss-making' and won't be completed before 2041 - around 10 years later than planned

Ten 170 metre-long tunnel boring machines, which weigh up to 2,200 tonnes, will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to bore and line the tunnels, covering around 15 metres per day. The tunnel boring machine will head south towards London to begin digging the tunnel, while a second tunnel will also be dug to create the twin bore tunnel. Each of the two tunnels will take around five months to dig. Pictured: A construction worker near concrete tunnel lining ring segments

The final stage will see a 'green tunnel' built, where a soil 'roof' is constructed around the tunnel entrance to integrate it within the natural landscape, according to HS2's website. Pictured: A huge crane at the site to lift the concrete slabs

A construction worker is pictured laying the concrete floor along a stretch of the HS2 tunnel yesterday. Work suspensions, social distancing and reduced productivity over the past 12 months saw HS2's costs soar by another 1.7bn in September - with the project's estimated overall budget now swelling over 106billion

Pictured: The huge tunnel entrances near West Hyde yesterday. Meanwhile, Northern leaders and the rail industry are braced for a downsizing of the a major section of the HS2 in a report expected to be published during or after the Cop26 summit

HS2 costs soared another 1.7BILLION in past year The cost of the controversial HS2 high-speed rail project has increased by a further 1.7billion over the past year due to social distancing measures and work suspensions caused by the pandemic. Coronavirus and lockdown restrictions first imposed in March last year disrupted work at most HS2 sites, causing further delays which have put even more strain on the UK's biggest infrastructure project. Similar pressures have been reported by industry experts in projects ranging from Crossrail and the A303 Stonehenge tunnel to the Tideway tunnel and the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset. As a result of work suspensions, social distancing measures, and reduced productivity over this year, costs have soared by around 1.7billion - another increase on the project's estimated 106billion budget. Opposition to the project is mounting, with local anger contributing to the Tory by-election defeat in Chesham and Amersham. The new line is due to run through the Buckinghamshire constituency. The costs associated with Phase 1 of the line between London and Birmingham have increased by as much as 800million, people close to the project told the FT. That increase follows an 800million rise announced by HS2 in October, including money spent on remediating the terminus site at Euston in London. The price of the Birmingham Interchange station also rose by 100million to 370million even before contractors have been appointed. Advertisement

The Chilterns tunnel for the HS2 London-Birmingham rail link is not only longer than most sections of the London Underground  at 30ft across, it is considerably wider than any rival, including the Channel Tunnel.

That is because it will also be the fastest stretch of rail tunnel in the land and speed determines the width of a tunnel.

At 200mph, the trains would simply suck the air out of anything narrower.

There are two tunnels  one bore for northbound traffic, and one for trains going the other way, meaning it is more like 20 miles of tunnel.

A short walk from there another huge engineering exercise is underway as what will be Britain's longest railway bridge is being steadily erected.

The two-mile viaduct will be built to feed the high-speed trains in and out of the tunnel and over the Colne Valley.

HS2's 140-mile line from London to Birmingham  which currently accounts for 44.6 billion of the total  is broken in to four sections with different builders for each.

The shortest section, known as C1, is the 14-mile leg running from the London suburbs up through the Chilterns towards the late Roald Dahl's home village of Great Missenden.

Run by a multi-national consortium called Align, this is also the most complex stretch as it includes the longest tunnel and longest bridge on the entire line.

A construction worker gives an idea of the scale of the cranes and concrete slabs being used to line the tunnel as he directs the operator yesterday. The high-speed rail linking Birmingham and Leeds, also known as the 'eastern leg', is no longer expected to be laid in full. It means HS2 trains will run at slower speeds on existing track for as much as 60 miles of the distance between the two cities

Pictured: A member of the HS2 team speaks with a colleague as he walks along a stretch of the tunnel beneath the Chilterns yesterday. Journey times could take about an hour rather than 40 minutes, according to sources familiar with plans being considered by ministers. However, a compromise is said to have been struck following pressure from pro-HS2 northern leaders which could still see around 80 miles of high-speed track laid

Pictured: A view of a working area within the HS2 Tunnel Boring Machine. HS2 will link London to Birmingham in phase one before forking into two sections. The western leg connecting Birmingham with Manchester is expected to go ahead

A member of the HS2 team holds a pack of emergency rations as he stands within an emergency refuge shelter onboard the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) named Cecilia yesterday

The pilot gestures to her monitor screens as she discusses her role on the HS2 Tunnel Boring Machine yesterday. The Integrated Rail Plan is set to be published around mid-November after being delayed since January

Pictured: A view of the rear of the cutterhead at the front of the TBM. Phase 1 of HS2 was due to open in 2026, but in an update to Parliament in 2019, Transport Sinister Grant Shapps said the opening date would be pushed back to between 2028 and 2031

A vehicle carries a load of concrete tunnel lining ring segments, which weigh an average 8.5 tonnes each, into one of two tunnels at the HS2 south portal site yesterday. In the HS2 six-monthly report to Parliament in March 2021, the DfT said the projected 'delivery into service' date range is between 2029 and 2033

In September, Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, said he had received information from a whistleblower within HS2 Ltd, which claims the first phase of the line will not open until 2041.

He told MPs: 'Experts in the field estimate that the energy requirements of HS2 trains will be five time that of conventional rail.

'Can we have an extended debate on the impact of HS2 on Government's energy policy and the level of subsidy this loss-making project will have to be supported with annually if it is ever built?

'Could we have this debate before 2041, which is the date that my whistleblower at the very top of HS2 tells me the project for phase one will actually be able to carry passengers between London and Birmingham?'

Work suspensions, social distancing and reduced productivity over the past 12 months saw HS2's costs soar by another 1.7bn in September - with the project's estimated overall budget now swelling over 106billion.

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed Mr Bridgen's claims, saying: 'I thought whistleblowing was more steam engine than fast high-speed trains but never mind.

'Obviously, the energy to run a train that is 440 yards long, that is two furlongs long, extraordinary length of train, at 225 miles an hour is more than running Ivor the Engine.'

Mr Rees-Mogg continued: 'And that is of course something that has to be built into the overall energy plans of this country.

'But the cost of energy to operate the HS2 network has been accounted for within the overall business case of the project and this energy will be procured in the open market at the right time to start operations and achieve value for money for the taxpayer.'

He said the figures were wrong, adding: 'The delivery and service of HS2 phase one remains 2029-2033, so I am interested in his whistle blower and I will of course pass the whistle on to the Secretary of State for Transport.'

A service vehicle pauses to drop off passengers on a stretch of the HS2 tunnel beneath the Chilterns yesterday. One contractor close to the project said that HS2 Ltd, the state-funded body responsible for delivering the line, 'doesn't really know how much Covid has added'. HS2 Ltd declined to comment when approached by MailOnline

A view of the rear of the cutterhead at the front of the HS2 Tunnel Boring Machine. Construction started on Phase 1 of the London to Birmingham line in August last year after more than a decade of planning. But the ballooning costs could add to Treasury fears that HS2 will be a black hole for taxpayers

Pictured: The tunnel wall including the semi-rigid air input tube (top) and slurry flow pipes are seen on a stretch of the HS2 tunnel beneath the Chilterns yesterday

A member of the HS2 team looks back along a stretch of the tunnel from onboard the Tunnel Boring Machine. The Department for Transport previously conceded to MailOnline that there had been 'unavoidable costs' arising from the Covid pandemic

Pictured: A view from within the HS2 Tunnel Boring Machine highlights the scale of the project. HS2 said it the high-speed line will reduce journey times between London and northern England and add capacity to Britain's crowded rail network

Meanwhile, Northern leaders and the rail industry are braced for a downsizing of the a major section of the HS2 in a report expected to be published during or after the Cop26 summit.

The high-speed rail linking Birmingham and Leeds, also known as the 'eastern leg', is no longer expected to be laid in full.

It means HS2 trains will run at slower speeds on existing track for as much as 60 miles of the distance between the two cities.

Journey times could take about an hour rather than 40 minutes, according to sources familiar with plans being considered by ministers.

But a compromise is said to have been struck following pressure from pro-HS2 northern leaders which could still see around 80 miles of high-speed track laid.

A purpose-built hub in the village of Toton, in Nottinghamshire, would be scrapped. Instead, about 50 miles of high-speed rail would link Birmingham and East Midlands Parkway station.

At this point, HS2 trains would join the existing Midland main line, which would be upgraded. This would take trains at a slower speed than envisaged up to the village of Clayton, in West Yorkshire.

Sources said the planned changes would represent a 'significant scaling back' of the project. The proposals could save between 10billion and 20billion and comes after Treasury officials raised concerns about HS2's costs.

A crane lifts concrete tunnel lining ring segments, which weigh an average 8.5 tonnes each, in a storage area at the HS2 south portal site yesterday. 112,000 of these concrete segments will be required to be installed by the Tunnel Boring Machines to complete both tunnels
The crew of a British trawler are 'in good spirits' as they celebrated their return to the UK today after being impounded by the French in the continuing row over post-Brexit fishing rights.

The Scottish-registered scallop dredger Cornelis Gert Jan left Le Havre yesterday evening after being held there since last week, when France accused it of fishing in its waters without a proper licence.

The blue, white and red trawler departed the quayside after dusk and docked at Shoreham-by-Sea, near Brighton, at 4.46am today, according to MarineTraffic.com. As of 9am the vessel was just off the coast after apparently leaving port.

The Scottish-registered scallop dredger Cornelis Gert Jan left Le Havre yesterday evening (pictured is the crew celebrating on deck)

The public affairs director of the vessel's owner Macduff Shellfish confirmed it has been released by French authorities.

'The court (of appeal) determined that no bond was required for the release of the vessel,' Andrew Brown said in a statement.

He added: 'We are pleased to have this matter resolved and delighted that our crew and vessel are now able to return home. The crew have acted with calmness and professionalism throughout the entire incident.

'They are in good spirits, looking forward to return to their loved ones and are grateful for all the messages of support received from the British public.'

The ruling came after the boat's captain, Jondy Ward, appeared at the Court of Appeal in Rouen earlier yesterday.

Mr Ward explained that French maritime police detained the trawler last week for not being on a European register when it was fishing off the Normandy coast.

The skipper said he did not know if it was an error on the part of UK or French officials.

'We had everything in order on the bridge, as far as I was concerned we had everything in place to be legal,' he said.

The Cornelis Gert Jan leaves the port of Le Havre in France last night after being released by the authorities

He said the boat was 'definitely' caught in the middle of the Franco-British spat over post-Brexit fishing arrangements.

The comments were echoed by his lawyer, Mathieu Croix, who told reporters outside the courtroom: 'We're clearly caught in a political game as there is a whole story spun around this entire case, whereas in fact it is a rather mundane affair over fishing in an area that is supposedly out of bounds, and about licences that may or may not have been given and catch amounts that are relatively modest.'

It comes as Lord Frost prepares to meet France's Europe minister Clement Beaune in Paris in an attempt to end the crisis in cross-Channel relations.

France has threatened sanctions over what it perceives as a refusal to issue licences to its trawlers to operate in UK waters.

The UK Government insisted the overwhelming majority of applications for licences have been granted.

French president Emmanuel Macron has delayed the imposition of punitive measures while talks between the UK, France and the European Commission take place.

The blue, white and red trawler departed the quayside after dusk and docked at Shoreham-by-Sea, near Brighton, at 4.46am today

But the French government has insisted the measures - which could include a ban on British trawlers landing their catches in French ports and tighter customs checks to hamper cross-Channel trade - remain 'on the table' if a deal cannot be reached.

Lord Frost will follow his talks with Mr Beaune today by heading to Brussels on Friday to meet European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal underlined that the threat of sanctions remained: 'We will see what comes with those meetings.

'As you know, the control measures that we announced are still suspended but all options are on the table and we may need to implement those measures if we do not reach an agreement.'

Today, he said: 'We are just waiting for one thing: for the UK to respect the deal that they signed.'

Under the Brexit deal, European Union boats which can show they have fished in British waters in at least four of the years from 2012 to 2016 are eligible for a licence.

Some 1,831 applications for licences have been received, with 1,793 issued.

Captain Jondy Ward (pictured) is seen getting the Cornelis Gert Jan to leave Le Havre

The main source of contention has been for smaller vessels, the under 12-metre category fishing between six and 12 nautical miles of the coast, where 50 applications have been received - all from French vessels - but just 19 have been issued.

The fishing row is just one of the issues Lord Frost will be raising during his talks in Paris and Brussels.

The main dispute between the UK and European Union is over Northern Ireland's post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Talks are continuing between the UK and EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the Brexit divorce deal which avoided a hard border with Ireland.

The deal effectively keeps Northern Ireland inside the EU's single market for goods, resulting in some checks for products crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain, which left the single market.

Emmanuel Macron (seen with Boris Johnson) has delayed the imposition of punitive measures while talks between the UK, France and the European Commission take place

Lord Frost has claimed the conditions for using Article 16 - allowing parts of the deal to be suspended - have been met because of the difficulties being caused.

The UK wants an end to the European Court of Justice's oversight role, something that Brussels has said is impossible.

European Commission executive vice-president Frans Timmermans told ITV's Peston: 'I think Mr Frost knows very well that this is not possible for the European Union.

'I know he knows full well that whenever the internal market is involved, the ultimate arbitrator is the European Court of Justice.'

But he said the European Commission had been 'bending over backwards' to reach an agreement with the UK on the protocol.
The House of Commons' standards watchdog has been plunged into chaos and is facing major questions about its future after Tory MPs voted to block the suspension of Owen Paterson.

Tory MPs won a controversial vote in the Commons yesterday afternoon to review Mr Paterson's case and to overhaul the current standards system.

The move has sparked complete chaos, with the current system for regulating MPs' behaviour in tatters.

Opposition parties have vowed to boycott a new Government-backed committee which is supposed to be making recommendations on how to improve the existing process.

There have also been Tory calls for the current Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, to quit.

The turmoil means it is unclear what will happen to the eight politicians, including Cabinet minister Therese Coffey, who are currently being investigated by the Commissioner.

Three of the MPs who are under investigation - Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly, Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski and Tory MP David Warburton - voted in favour of overhauling the system.

The other MPs currently under investigation, according to the watchdog's website, are Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger and Labour MPs Chi Onwurah, Jo Stevens and Barry Gardiner.

The fact that an investigation is taking place does not mean that Commons rules have been broken.

Ms Stone has indicated that she has no intention of resigning but the long term future of the current standards system is uncertain.

The House of Commons' standards watchdog has been plunged into chaos after Tory MPs voted to block the suspension of Owen Paterson and overhaul the system. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, has indicated she has no intention of resigning

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey and Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly are among eight MPs currently under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Who are the eight MPs currently under investigation by the standards watchdog? A total of eight MPs are currently under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. They are: Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski Tory MP David Warburton Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger Labour MP Chi Onwurah Labour MP Jo Stevens Labour MP Barry Gardiner Advertisement

Former minister Mr Paterson, the Tory MP for North Shropshire, was found to have committed an 'egregious' breach of standards rules by directly advocating for two companies while they were paying him more than 100,000 per year.

Ms Stone conducted an investigation and the Committee on Standards then recommended Mr Paterson be banned from the Commons for 30 sitting days.

Mr Paterson has angrily disputed the findings of the standards report, claiming the investigation was unfairly conducted.

MPs were due to vote on the suspension yesterday afternoon but allies of Mr Paterson brought forward an amendment to block the suspension and see his case reviewed.

The amendment, which was passed by 250 votes to 232, will also create a new committee with a Tory majority which will make recommendations for a shake-up of the current standards process.

The vote was won after Boris Johnson told Tory MPs to vote for the amendment as opposition parties and 13 Tory MPs opposed the move.

Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats have all vowed to boycott the new committee, meaning it risks being seen as Tories 'marking their own homework'.

There have been Tory calls for Ms Stone to quit and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said this morning that she should 'decide (on) her position'.

He told Sky News: 'I think it's difficult to see what the future of the commissioner is, given the fact that we're reviewing the process, and we're overturning and trying to reform this whole process, but it's up to the commissioner to decide her position.'

Pushed on what he meant by 'decide her position', Mr Kwarteng said: 'It's up to her to do that. I mean, it's up to anyone where they've made a judgment and people have sought to change that, to consider their position, that's a natural thing, but I'm not saying she should resign.'

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski (pictured left) and Labour MP Barry Gardiner (pictured right) are also among the eight MPs currently being investigated

Labour has accused the Government of 'trying to bully the Standards Commissioner out of her job'.

Responding to Mr Kwarteng's comments, shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire said: 'Having already ripped up the rules policing MPs' behaviour to protect one of their own, it is appalling that this corrupt Government is now trying to bully the Standards Commissioner out of her job.

'Boris Johnson must immediately distance himself from these latest attempts to poison British politics. And all decent people of all political beliefs must stand against these naked attempts by Tory MPs to avoid scrutiny of their behaviour.'

Labour MP Chris Bryant, the chairman of the Committee on Standards which oversees the Commissioner's work and considers her reports, said yesterday that the committee will continue to meet.
Mark Zuckerberg's former mentor who was an early Facebook investor has said democracy 'may never recover' if the social media firm does not change.

Roger McNamee, a previous advisor to the tech CEO, has since become a staunch critic of the business and called yesterday for misuse of users' data to be seen as unethical as child labour.

The businessman, who befriended Zuckerberg in 2006, said our fundamental institutions will suffer if the trove of leaked documents and testimonies by whistleblower Frances Haugen do not force wholesale changes at Facebook.

Roger McNamee (pictured at the Lisbon Web Summit on Wednesday) fears democracy 'may never recover' unless Facebook changes

He told the Web Summit in Lisbon: 'If it doesn't then democracy and our ability to make our own choices may never recover.'

He added: 'Extracting the essence of our humanity in data form and then using it to manipulate our behaviour is as unethical as child labour and it should be banned the same way that child labour was banned.'

McNamee also praised how Haugen has managed her stream of allegations against the tech giant.

She first disclosed company documents anonymously before revealing her identity on a TV interview.

The whistleblower then testified in front of US Senators and in UK Parliament while releasing a cache of leaked files to various news outlets.

Among her damning allegations, Haugen claimed Facebook places profits over the safety of its users, peddles hateful and divisive content and deliberately manipulates people's behaviour through its algorithms.

This has led to the proliferation of human trafficking on the platform and failures to crackdown on conspiracy theories and hate speech which has led to real world violence, she claims.

McNamee, a previous advisor to Zuckerberg (pictured) has since become a staunch critic of the business

McNamee said: 'She is the first person ever to perceive that you could do whistleblowing like a tech product announcement, a tech product rollout.

'I would argue that the way she did her whistleblowing was the most effective product rollout since the original iPhone  And I just tip my hat to her. Simply brilliant.'

Comparing her revelations to the film Jaws, he said: 'They don't show you the shark at the beginning of the movie. There is a nice buildup and the anticipation makes the appearance of the shark more effective.

'The impact of that literally stopped the conversation and restarted it in a profound way.'

Facebook's rebranded parent company Meta has denied the claims, with Nick Clegg, the company's vice president of global affairs, saying their content was mostly 'babies, barbecues and Bar Mitzvahs'.

McNamee also praised how Haugen (pictured meeting German lawmakers on Wednesday) has managed her stream of allegations against the tech giant

Meanwhile Chris Cox, Meta's chief product officer, said there are an 'important set of questions' to answer but said people had 'lost track' of the vast sums they invest in keeping users safe.

McNamee, whose net worth is estimated at $1billion, set up a venture capital firm which invested $210 million in Facebook shares in 2009 and 2010.

But later he said he started having concerns about its 'surveillance capitalism' model - collecting and aggregating user data to micro-target people to predict and manipulate their behavior.

In 2016, he said he suspected the company's advertising tools were being used by political operatives to sway outcomes, and after Brexit passed in June 2016, he said he went to founder Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to demand they take action.

When they didn't, he broke off his contract, and began lobbying public officials to regulate social media sites, according to McNamee, who also accused Facebook of allowing Russian meddling to influence the 2016 presidential election result.

He began offloading his stock in the company in late 2019, months after he began speaking out against it, saying that to do so earlier would have looked like he was plotting against the company.

He is now a member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board, set up in response to Facebook's own oversight board, which members of the 'real' group claim does not have enough teeth to challenge Zuckerberg and other executives.

In the new Facebook papers, the company was accused of being used to traffic women in the Middle East which bosses failed to eradicate despite warnings.

After publicly promising to crack down, Facebook acknowledged in internal documents that it was 'under-enforcing on confirmed abusive activity' that saw Filipina maids complaining on the social media site of being abused.

The documents also reveal that Mark Zuckerberg personally agreed to requests from Vietnam's ruling Communist Party to censor anti-government dissidents.

It was warned that Instagram 'may never be safe for 14-year-olds' because it can turn them into addicts and school bullying follows them home.

Leaked documents revealed this week that Facebook was working to target children as young as 6 years old to expand its consumer base and generate greater profits for the tech titan.

An internal blog post published on April 9 announced that the company was in the process of hiring employees to re-envision its full range of products for kids ages 6-9 and tweens ages 10-12. The company currently already targets children starting at 13 years old.

The post, titled 'The internet wasn't built with young people in mind, but we're about to change that,' was among documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen's legal team and provided to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission that has become known as the Facebook Papers.

'Our company is making a major investment in youth and has spun up a cross-company virtual team to make safer, more private, experiences for youth that improve their and their household's well-being,' the blog post read, according to NBC News.

'For many of our products, we historically haven't designed for under 13.'

It comes after Facebook announced this week it will shut down its controversial face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people, citing the concerns the technology has on society.

As a result of the change, it will no longer automatically recognize people's faces in photos or videos, a move that will have enormous implications.

Users will also no longer be able to face recognition to suggest a tag for a person in a photo or video. People will still have the option to tag posts manually.

The shock announcement is the company's second move - after last month's name change - to rehabilitate itself after a series of privacy scandals.

More than one-third of Facebook's 1.93 billion daily active users - equating to approximately 640 million - have opted into the Face Recognition setting and the ending of the system will impact them.

Facebook said it will shut down its face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people

'This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history,' said a blog post from Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence for Facebook's new parent company, Meta.

'More than a third of Facebook's daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognized, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion peoples individual facial recognition templates.'

It's unclear exactly how much money Facebook has spent on facial recognition technology, but the company purchased Face.com for less than $100 million in 2012, according to TechCrunch.
A student union worker who was forced out of his job after objecting to a manager's demands to exclude 'white middle-aged' celebrities from opening a new building has won an employment tribunal.

Ellen Rudge, then a senior manager at the University of Leicester's Students' Union, sent an email to staff asking for suggestions for high-profile figures to launch its new hub - the Percy Gee Building.

In her email the marketing manager stated she did not want 'another white, middle-aged man' for the opening of the building as she was trying to 'reflect diversity'.

But she was warned by HR worker Ricardo Champayne that by singling out a particular group she risked being offensive and derogatory.

Ms Rudge complained to her boss about Mr Champayne's response. But rather than probe her comments, an investigation was launched into Mr Champayne - who subsequently resigned.

At an employment tribunal, the father-of-six alleged he had been 'victimised' by the students' union for calling out potential discrimination.

He has now been awarded more than 1,000 after winning his claims of whistle-blowing and victimisation against the University of Leicester's SU.

In her email, marketing manager, Ms Rudge, stated she did not want 'another white, middle-aged man' for the opening of the building as she was trying to 'reflect diversity'

Ellen Rudge, then a senior manager at the University of Leicester's Students' Union, sent an email to staff asking for suggestions for high-profile figures to launch its new hub - the Percy Gee Building (pictured)

At the employment tribunal, in Nottingham, a judge ruled that it was reasonable for Mr Champayne to conclude that Ms Rudge's email on February 14, 2020, was discriminatory.

In the message she said: 'I am looking for suggestions for notable public figures the University could approach to officially open the new SU/Percy Gee Building in September.

'I have been very vocal about the need for the person to reflect diversity i.e. not another white middle aged man...'

Mr Champayne, who had only worked at the SU for a month, replied to her: 'Dear Ellen, I write in regard to your email seeking nomination for representative to SU.

'I have set the matter as needing urgent attention. With all respect, I am bound by personal and legal principles to object the [sic] tone of your email.

'It is not right to speak in a derogatory way against anyone. I must highlight that diversity can be represented by any race of class.

'I am conscious that recipients of this email potentially were offended.'

Ms Rudge considered Mr Champayne was alleging she was a 'racist'. She claimed she was 'shocked and attacked' and that her 'integrity was questioned'.

'Upset' Ms Rudge brought the matter to her colleague, HR and fiance manager Samantha Creese, who 'treated the matter seriously' and launched a disciplinary investigation into Mr Champayne.

Around the same time, female workers had complained about 'inappropriate' messages from Mr Champayne on social media asking to be friends outside of work and he was jointly investigated for that.

As Mr Champayne was investigated, Ms Rudge, who now works for a volunteer group charity in Cornwall, was allowed to continue in her role at the union.

In an email, Mr Champayne said: 'I am concerned no one did anything about Ellen's conduct, given the gravity of what she sent to all the staff.

'I stand by my words, SU is inclusive and everyone is welcome, regardless of sex, status, age, etc. There is no place for discrimination. I will always challenge such behaviour, in and out of work.'

Mr Champayne lost a grievance against Ms Rudge after Ms Creese found in favour of her and he resigned on March 4, 2020.

The SU told him his behaviour would have amounted to 'gross misconduct' despite not attending a disciplinary hearing.

Now, Employment Judge Rachel Broughton has ruled Mr Champayne suffered 'detriments' as a result of the investigation, suspension, and grievance outcome in which he was 'intimidated'.

Employment Judge Rachel Broughton has ruled Mr Champayne suffered 'detriments' as a result of the investigation, suspension, and grievance outcome in which he was 'intimidated'. Pictured: The incident was at the student union at Leicester University (pictured)

The students' union argued Mr Champayne's complaint was 'political correctness' rather than whistle-blowing but the judge dismissed the claim.

Judge Broughton said his whistle-blowing 'influenced' the students' union to suspend him.

The judge said: 'Ms Creese understood that Ms Rudge felt that Mr Champayne was calling her a racist...

'The tribunal conclude that the content of the protected act email was a significant reason why Ms Rudge was so upset and a significant reason why Ms Creese treated it so seriously, as an act of gross misconduct.

'We conclude that the allegation of discrimination was a significant reason behind the decision to suspend, the decision to carry out the disciplinary investigation into the protected act and to treat is as gross misconduct.'

As a result of the victimisation, Mr Champayne said he has 'lost his confidence', has been 'significantly damaged', and has become a 'couch potato' who has less energy for his children.

He was awarded 1,048 compensation.

However, Judge Broughton said Mr Champayne would have rightfully faced a gross misconduct investigation anyway over allegations of 'inappropriate' messages and 'potential' sexual harassment.

The University of Leicester's new Students' Union, the Percy Gee Building, opened in this year.

The union declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.
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Insulate Britain have today blocked an insulation lorry - carrying the exact materials they want installed in homes across the country - as activists took their sit-down protests to the heart of Westminster.

Some 62 banner-waving eco-zealots planted themselves near Westminster Underground station in Parliament Square from 9am this morning, with many glueing their hands or feet to the road. The group's latest action brought traffic to a grinding halt and had resulted in 34 arrests by 11.30am, a figure which had risen to 59 by 4pm.

The truck from insulation company CCF displayed a series of services offered by the firm on the side of the vehicle - including insulation, drywall, ceilings, partitioning, screening and fire protection. CCF, which has 35 branches across the UK with a head office in Northampton and is owned by Travis Perkins, declined to comment.

The irony is that Insulate Britain's whole mantra revolves around demanding that Prime Minister Boris Johnson fast-tracks plans to insulate UK homes to cut carbon emissions - and it wants this done by the end of the decade.

It comes two days after Insulate Britain took their protests UK-wide, on the M56 near Manchester Airport and the A4400 in Birmingham, after police stopped them getting onto an M25 junction near South Mimms, Hertfordshire.

Today, some of the same faces seen in Manchester and Hertfordshire were at Westminster - including Ben Taylor, Amy Pritchard, Emily Brockelbank and Dr Ben Buse - meaning they will have been arrested twice in 48 hours.

Demonstrations by Insulate Britain - which also wants a 'legally binding' national plan published within four months - have already cost Scotland Yard nearly 2million in the first four weeks of its two months of protests.

Today, the activists sat on the ground while holding banners on the south east of Parliament Square, on Bridge Street, and at the Peers' entrance to the Houses of Parliament. Around 30 glued themselves to the road.

Conservative MP Dehenna Davison, for Bishop Auckland in County Durham, tweeted a photo of her next to the group, saying: 'I just went to chat to some of the Insulate Britain protestors who are blocking Westminster Bridge and the route to St Thomas' Hospital. Don't worry, folks. They're 'letting' ambulances take a different route...'

The environmental campaigners have now blocked roads on 19 days since September 13, causing misery for drivers stuck in long queues on the M25 around London and further afield in Manchester, Birmingham and Dover.

Before today, 161 people had been involved in the roadblock campaign and there had been 801 arrests. Up to 32 of its activists now face up to two years in prison for breaching a court injunction by blocking traffic on motorways.

Insulate Britain issued pictures of many of them yesterday, and said nine have already been summoned to the High Court in London on November 16 for breaching the National Highways injunction by disrupting the M25.

A truck carrying insulation is turned around as Insulate Britain block traffic at Parliament Square in Westminster today

Climate activists from Insulate Britain attempt to block traffic at Parliament Square today including an insulation lorry

A group of Insulate Britain activists attempt to block traffic at Parliament Square in Westminster from about 9am this morning

Police made arrests as Insulate Britain activists stage a demonstration and block the roads around Parliament Square today

Around 40 protesters from the group sat on the road near Westminster Tube station today and glued themselves to it

An Insulate Britain protester glues himself to a police van in Parliament Square during the demonstration this morning

Insulate Britain activists block Parliament Square in Westminster today as they continue to bring chaos to the UK's roads

Insulate Britain activists have their hands glued to the pavement as they block a road outside Parliament today

A passer-by shouts at environmental activists from Insulate Britain blocking a road at Parliament Square today

Climate activists from Insulate Britain attempt to block traffic at Parliament Square in Westminster from 9am this morning

Two police officers remove an Insulate Britain protester from the road at Parliament Square in Westminster this morning

A police officer speaks to protesters from Insulate Britain as they block the road in Parliament Square this morning

Police officers monitor environmental activists from the group Insulate Britain blocking the road at Parliament Square today

Police officers stand over activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to Parliament Square this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

A passer-by calls for the removal of environmental activists from Insulate Britain blocking a road at Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police officers monitor environmental activists from the group Insulate Britain blocking the road at Parliament Square today

Police officers remove an Insulate Britain activist from the road as they block Parliament Square in Westminster this morning

Police officers monitor environmental activists from the group Insulate Britain blocking the road at Parliament Square today

A police officer speaks to protesters from Insulate Britain as they block the road in Parliament Square this morning

Protesters from Insulate Britain block Great George Street in Parliament Square in Westminster this morning

Officers monitor an activist from Insulate Britain waving a banner from the top of a police van at Parliament Square today

A police officer attempts to remove protesters from Insulate Britain as they block the road in Parliament Square today

Protesters from Insulate Britain block the road in Parliament Square this morning as they bring chaos to Westminster

Insulate Britain activists have their hands and feet glued to the pavement as they block a road outside Parliament today

A Scotland Yard spokesman said at 10.40am today: 'We are continuing to respond to a protest in Parliament Square this morning where a number of activists have sat on the road, blocking traffic.

'Officers are on scene and are working as quickly as possible to get traffic flowing again. Around 40 activists have used superglue to stick to the ground, frustrating and delaying our response.

'Specialist teams are on scene and train for this scenario. They are working to remove any glue and make arrests. This process can take time. Insulate Britain have the right to assemble and protest, however they do not have the right to cause serious disruption to London and prevent others from going about their business.'

The force then added at 11.30am: 'At this time, officers have made 34 arrests in response to this protest. Units were immediately on scene following the initial protest. Bridge Street will be cleared shortly and officers remain on scene working to remove further obstructions.'

A final update at 3.50pm said: 'We can confirm that officers have made 59 arrests in response to this protest.'

The Extinction Rebellion offshoot group said they face a contempt of court hearing and if found to be in breach of the court order could be subject to unlimited fines, seizure of assets and jail sentences of up to two years.

A further 23 activists, who have also defied one or more of the four injunctions, are expected to be summoned to court in the coming days. They were effectively banned from all major roads in England on Monday last week.

It comes as figures obtained by LBC revealed policing Insulate Britain protests on roads around London cost the Metropolitan Police 1,961,616.44 in the first four weeks of its action from September 13 to October 10.

The force said 'opportunity costs' for police staff and officers amounted to more than 1.7million, 'fleet' costs for cars and vehicles came in at 22,000 and paying for officers to work overtime lost the force 217,000.

Andy Trotter, ex-Met deputy assistant commissioner at and former chief constable of the British Transport Police, said it was a 'shocking use of public money that could easily have been used for something better'.

AMY PRITCHARD - Amy Pritchard was at Parliament Square today (left) after being arrested in another protest in Manchester on Tuesday (right). The 36-year-old from Kingston, South West London, was convicted of criminal damage in 2019 after gluing herself to the offices of a coal-mining firm. Speaking about Insulate Britain, she said: 'I am knowingly breaking the injunction because it is my duty to prevent the horror of both local and global consequences of not reducing our emissions'

BEN TAYLOR - Insulate Britain protester Ben Taylor was taking part in another road blockade today in Parliament (left), just two days after he was removed from junction six of the M56 near Manchester Airport on Tuesday (right)

EMILY BROCKELBANK - Insulate Britain protester Emily Brockelbank was involved in the road blockade in Westminster today (left), just two days after being removed from junction six of the M56 near Manchester Airport on Tuesday (right)

BEN BUSE - Insulate Britain activist Dr Ben Buse was back out at Parliament Square today (left), two days after being arrested on St Albans Road near to the South Mimms roundabout at the junction of the M25 and A1 in Hertfordshire on Tuesday (right). The Bristol University researcher from Cheddar, Somerset, has been a regular feature at the Insulate Britain protests. He is part of Christian Climate Action and spent a week in jail earlier this year after gluing himself to furniture in a courtroom

STEPHANIE - An Insulate Britain protester known only as Stephanie was involved in the road blockade in Westminster today (left), just two days after being removed from junction six of the M56 near Manchester Airport on Tuesday (right)

RUTH JARMAN - Insulate Britain activist Ruth Jarman was out at Parliament Square today (left) after being seen at various previous protests including one last week in Dartford, Kent, on October 27 (right). She is a viola-playing Oxford graduate and 58-year-old mother-of-three works for a Christian charity called Operation Noah which promotes action in churches on climate change. Ms Jarman is part of Christian Climate Action and has also taken part in Extinction Rebellion demonstrations

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps revealed today that '475 injunctions have been served to protesters at their homes for contempt of court', in relation to Insulate Britain protests.

Insulate Britain: How activists have made a mockery of the law September 13 - 78 Insulate Britain protesters arrested after blocking junctions 3, 6, 14, 20 and 31 of the M25 September 15 - More than 50 protesters arrested after targeting junctions 1, 8, 9 and 23 of the M25 September 17 - 48 protesters arrested after targeting junctions 3, 9 and 28 of the M25, as well as the M3 September 20 - 29 protesters are arrested after blocking the M25 at junctions 4 and 18, as well as the A1 September 21 - Protesters risk death by running into moving traffic to block the carriageway near Junction 10. Some 38 arrests are made. National Highways obtains an injunction against further protests on the M25 September 22 - Protesters burn copies of the injunction outside the Home Office, blocking the road outside the ministry. No arrests are made September 24 - 39 protesters arrested after blocking roads at three locations in Dover. They are all released under investigation. National Highways obtains a second injunction covering Dover. September 27 - 53 protesters are arrested for blocking a slip road at Junction 14 of the M25. They are all released under investigation. September 28 - National Highways says it is taking 'legal advice' over how to enforce its injunction September 29 - 27 protesters are arrested for blocking a roundabout at Junction 3 of the M25 on two occasions September 30 - Protesters return to junction 30 at Thurrock in Essex, and nine are arrested October 1: The group block the M4 at junction 3, the M1 at junction 1 and M25 at junction 25. Some 39 arrests October 2: Third injunction bans them from obstructing traffic and access to motorways and major A roads in and around London October 4: 38 arrests after protesters block three major roads in London - the Blackwall Tunnel, Wandsworth Bridge and A40 and North Circular at Hanger Lane. October 8: 19 arrested over protest at Old Street roundabout and a further 16 on the M25 at junction 24. Transport for London gets a High Court injunction to ban them from obstructing traffic in 14 locations in London. October 13: Protesters return to the M25 at junction 31 and a nearby industrial estate, with 35 people arrested. October 25: Activists target areas around Southwark Bridge, Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street station. Some 53 are arrested. October 27: Protesters blockade the A40 in North Acton, West London, and a major roundabout next to the Dartford Crossing in Kent. Kent Police arrested 32 protesters, while the Metropolitan Police detained 17. October 29: 10 activists are arrested after walking onto the M25 between junctions 28 and 29 in Essex November 2: Police arrest 20 activists before they can even get onto the M25 at junction 23 for South Mimms, but other actions take place on the M56 in Manchester, with 11 arrests, and the A4400 in Birmingham November 4: Some 62 protesters sit down at Parliament Square in Westminster Advertisement

He told the House of Commons: 'So far, following my requirement that National Highways seek injunctions against these protesters, 475 injunctions have been served to protesters at their homes for contempt of court. Thirty-two are due to be coming to court, nine of which are coming later this month.'

Mr Shapps also said the Insulate Britain protesters are 'preventing members from getting into the chamber which is completely unacceptable'.

He said: 'When it gets to the point that protesting against climate change prevents members from this House getting here to hold ministers to account and be heard it is clearly counter-productive.

'Contempt of court can lead to unlimited fines, and prison sentences. And we will be acting where the law has a gap in it through the Police and Crime Bill to resolve the gap that has led to this.'

Ru Roberts, UK country manager at sat nav app Waze said: 'Climate change protesters have attempted to block Parliament Square and are causing tailbacks, with current delays at Whitehall resulting in average speeds as low as 4mph.

'To avoid getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper queues, we recommend motorists plan their journeys ahead of time and use alternative routes where possible.'

The Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle said Insulate Britain protesters were 'blocking democracy' by prevent MPs from attending Parliament.

He was speaking after the Commons heard that Conservative MPs Darren Henry for Broxtowe and Adam Afriyie for Windsor were unable to attend due to protests outside Parliament.

Mr Afriyie was due to ask about re-evaluating the carbon cost of a third runway at Heathrow, and Mr Henry was due to ask about encouraging the uptake of walking and cycling.

Sir Lindsay said: 'Once again the Member of the Parliament can't access the House to represent democracy and his constituents.

'Once again these people are blocking democracy and the fact that people are actually talking about the same issues and being blocked from doing so is totally counterproductive.'

Mr Afriyie told the Commons: 'It's very seldom I become furious. I'm absolutely apoplectic about missing my question this morning due to those reprobates outside who are doing their service no good whatsoever.

'I was sitting in my electric vehicle  I was coming here for the sole purpose of putting pressure on the Government to reduce carbon emissions from aviation from Heathrow Airport, so it's absolutely bizarre that they should block that question.'

A shout of 'lock them up' could be heard as Mr Afriyie spoke.

Sir Lindsay had earlier told the House: 'We have got a slight problem. Darren Henry is trapped outside because Insulate Britain have blocked the access to the House.

'This is totally unacceptable. This is interfering with democracy. This is not what should happen and it is a tragedy that those constituents are not going to be represented by the member for Broxtowe.'

Today at Parliament Square, Paul Sheeky, a protester from London, was among those glued to the pavement.

He said: 'We have been out on the road now for several weeks and a lot of the time the drivers say to us 'this is not the right way to be doing this, go to Parliament, protest there'.

'We thought we would take that advice and give it a go. We know from protesting in Parliament in the past it doesn't work, which is why we have to protest on the roads, but we thought we would come here all together as a show of unity just to say, yes we are going to keep going.'

He added: 'This is fine compared to what is coming from the climate crisis, this is a walk in the park essentially.

'The death and destruction that is on its way unless we tackle this issue is just beyond imagining. A slight discomfort now is a small price to pay for saving lives in the future.'

Diana Hekt, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was also glued to the pavement next to Mr Sheeky. She said police communicating with the protesters had been 'very civil and polite'.

Peter Anthony-Gord, a bus driver with Abellio London Bus, criticised the group's action.

An Insulate Britain activist holds a banner on top of a police car as they block a road outside Parliament today

An environmental activist from the group Insulate Britain with her hands glued to the street at Parliament Square today

Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain as they block the road in Parliament Square this morning

Insulate Britain activists have their hands and feet glued to the pavement as they block a road outside Parliament today

A protester from Insulate Britain stands on a police van as they block the road in Parliament Square this morning

A police officer attempts to unstick a hand of an activist from Insulate Britain glued to the street at Parliament Square today

Insulate Britain activists have hands and feet glued to the road as they block a road outside the Houses of Parliament today

A protester from Insulate Britain stands on a police van as they block the road in Parliament Square this morning

Police officers unglue a protester from Insulate Britain as they block Great George Street in Parliament Square today

An environmental activist from the group Insulate Britain, with her hands glued to the street, at Parliament Square today

A police officer attempts to remove protesters from Insulate Britain from Parliament Square today as he takes away a banner

Police officers unglue a protester from Insulate Britain as they block Great George Street in Parliament Square today

Protesters from Insulate Britain block the road in Parliament Square today as they take their demonstration to Westminster

Protesters from Insulate Britain block the road at Parliament Square in Westminster this morning

Insulate Britain activists attempt to block traffic in Parliament Square today as they try to bring more mayhem to London

Insulate Britain protesters glue their hands and feet to the ground in Parliament Square today

An Insulate Britain activist holds a banner on top of a police car as they block a road outside Parliament this morning

A protester from Insulate Britain stands on a police van as they block the road in Parliament Square this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

People watch as police officers carry away an environmental activist from Insulate Britain at Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police officers monitor environmental activists from Insulate Britain blocking a street at Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police officers monitor environmental activists from Insulate Britain blocking a street at Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

An activist from Insulate Britain glues their hand to the road near Parliament Square this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain are removed from Parliament Square are blocking it by glueing their hands to the road today

An environmental activist from Insulate Britain waves a banner from atop a police van at Parliament Square today

Police arrive to release activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to the road near Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police arrive to free activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to the road near Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square today as they cause buses and lorries to be delayed

Police remove banners from Insulate Britain protesters as they block Parliament Square in Westminster this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

He said: 'I don't think they are doing this properly. I really think there is a better way to do this. There are ways of insulating Britain which you can do with other sources, other people, companies, private finance etc rather than causing absolute chaos in London. This is not going to insulate one home sitting here.'

Insulate Britain are 'blocking democracy', says Sir Lindsay Hoyle The Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle said Insulate Britain protesters are 'blocking democracy' by prevent MPs from attending Parliament. He was speaking after the Commons heard that Conservative MPs Darren Henry (Broxtowe) and Adam Afriyie (Windsor) were unable to attend due to protests outside Parliament. Sir Lindsay Hoyle speaks in the House of Commons yesterday Mr Afriyie was due to ask about re-evaluating the carbon cost of a third runway at Heathrow, and Mr Henry was due to ask about encouraging the uptake of walking and cycling. Sir Lindsay said: 'Once again the Member of the Parliament can't access the House to represent democracy and his constituents. Once again these people are blocking democracy and the fact that people are actually talking about the same issues and being blocked from doing so is totally counterproductive.' Advertisement

Mr Anthony-Gord said he had been waiting in his bus at the head of the queuing traffic on Parliament Square for 34 minutes, and would usually be driving a route towards Crystal Palace over Lambeth Bridge.

Rachel Speller, a bus driver's wife, had walked to the front of the traffic to see what had happened after sitting on a bus with her husband, the driver, in the tailback along Whitehall.

She said: 'It is just getting ridiculous now. Every other week there is some sort of protest and now they glue themselves to the floor.'

An Insulate Britain spokesman said today: 'Insulate Britain has been one of the most successful campaigns in history: our name recognition went from zero to 77 per cent of the public in three weeks.

'We have attracted enormous media interest and we have started thousands of conversations, in the press, on social media and in homes up and down the country.

'Importantly, we have exposed the government's refusal to act on home insulation as cowardly and vindictive and their refusal to protect our country and our children from the climate crisis as genocidal and treasonous.'

They added: 'What we say to the bystanders who look on in fear and denial is this: look at what we did. A hundred people captured the country's attention for weeks. Think what 1,000 people can achieve.

'Come and join us and we will change the tide of history. What more meaningful thing can you do with your lives, at this time when everyone and everything you love is in mortal danger?'

On Tuesday, police failed to arrest Insulate Britain activists blocking a busy road near a hospital, instead telling them that they did not 'want to put good people in a cell'.

West Midlands Police asked the group of protesters to leave the A400 on Tuesdaymorning, giving them 'another ten minutes' on the road near Birmingham Children's Hospital before the group 'dispersed peacefully'.

In a video, a constable could be seen asking them to move as nearby 'you've got the children's hospital, you've got people that are dying, kids that are dying, people going for cancer therapies'.

But despite the force's softly-softly approach, Insulate Britain returned a few hours later to the streets of central Birmingham, causing disruption as they clogged up the junction once more.

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police arrest activists from Insulate Britain who blocked Parliament Square with banners this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police arrive to free activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to the road near Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road today

Police arrive to free activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to the road near Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain are spoken to by police officers after blocking Parliament Square this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road today

Police arrive to free activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to the road near Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police arrive to free activists from Insulate Britain who have glued their hands to the road near Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain are arrested by police today after blocking Parliament Square in Westminster

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road this morning

Police officers monitor environmental activists from the group Insulate Britain blocking a street at Parliament Square today

Activists from Insulate Britain are spoken to by ppolice officers as they block Parliament Square this morning

Activists from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square with banners and glue their hands to the road today

A protester from Insulate Britain speaks to a motorist as they block Parliament Square in Westminster this morning

Police officers talk to protesters from Insulate Britain today as they block the road at Parliament Square in Westminster

Protesters from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square today as they bring their road blockades to Westminster

Protesters from Insulate Britain block the road in Parliament Square today as they bring chaos to Westminster

The protesters at Parliament Square brought most traffic to a halt today, but cyclists could still make their way past them

A police officer speaks to protesters from Insulate Britain as they block Great George Street in Parliament Square today

A protester from Insulate Britain with their hand glued to the road in Parliament Square this morning

Protesters from Insulate Britain block the road at Parliament Square in Westminster today after arriving there from 9am

Protesters from Insulate Britain block Parliament Square today on what is their 19th day of protests since mid-September

Conservative MP Dehenna Davison, for Bishop Auckland in County Durham, tweeted a photo of her next to the group today

Insulate Britain yesterday released photographs of some of the faces among its 32 activists who face up to two years in prison for contempt of court. They are (left to right, first row): Ruth Jarman, Dr Diana Warner, Rowan Tilly, Jess Causby, Steve Gower, Liam Norton, Greg Frey, Reverend Sue Parfitt, (second row) Mark Latimer, Dr Ben Buse, Gabby Ditton, Arne Springorum, Tony Hill, Theresa Norton, Stephanie, Emma Smart (third row) Emily Brockelbank, Biff Whipster, Amy Pritchard, Paul Sheeky, Louis McKechnie (bottom row) Roman Paulch, Ben Taylor, Ana Heyatawin, David, Oliver Roc, Tracey Mallaghan and Tim Speers

The activists were once again 'spoken to' by officers, before agreeing to leave, the force said. Tuesday's demonstrations in Birmingham and Manchester were the first time the group has operated north of London.

Greater Manchester Police were forced to spend hours dislodging activists who had glued themselves to the road near Manchester Airport, eventually arresting 11 people.

The group also targeted their normal stamping ground of the M25, with Hertfordshire Police arresting 20 people trying to block Junction 23, and the A1081 St Albans Road slip road.

Over the weekend Swedish activist Greta Thunberg voiced support for the group's tactics, saying sometimes you have to 'p*** people off' to protect the environment.

It comes as world leaders and members of the Royal Family continue to gather in Glasgow for the landmark Cop26 climate change conference.
The movie Stillwater was released this year - featuring Matt Damon - that was based on a fictionalized version of the events surrounding Ms Kercher's death

She told Woman's Hour she had to face the world's 'made-up version of myself'

Amanda Knox has said she faces an 'ongoing struggle' to live with the public's 'made up version of herself' - a decade after she was released from jail having been wrongly convicted in Italy of her British flatmate's murder.

It is almost 14 years to the day that 21-year-old student Meredith Kercher was raped and killed by Rudy Guede in a brutal attack in the apartment they shared in the Italian city of Perugia.

But as details of the case built up, attention quickly turned to Knox in what has been described as an attempt to build a narrative of her being a 'sexually voracious femme fatale' and of she and her then-boyfriend as prime suspects.

Media coverage dubbed the then 20-year-old US student as 'Foxy Knoxy', after a nickname she already had, and she was referred to at the time as a 'sex-mad American party girl' and an 'evil temptress'.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour on Thursday, Knox said the story that captured global attention 'became a morality tale about female sexuality.'

'Meredith was pitched as this virginous Madonna character and I was portrayed as this sexually obsessed lustful uninhibited whore,' she told radio host Emma Barnett on Tuesday.

Knox was wrongly found guilty along with boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and served four years in prison, but after an appeal was released in 2011 to return to the US.

After another trial reinstated her conviction, Italy's supreme court presided over another appeal that fully exonerated her in 2015, and pointed to glaring errors in the original investigation.

Amanda Knox has said she faces an 'ongoing struggle' to live with the public's 'made up version of herself' - a decade after she was released from jail over her British flatmate's murder

It is almost 14 years to the day that 21-year-old student Meredith Kercher was raped and killed in a brutal attack in the apartment they shared in the Italian city of Perugia

'I think that there was an incredible violation of my privacy. But also a capitalisation upon my identity that often had nothing to do with me,' she told Barnett.

'People vehemently stood for one side or the other and were unable again there was the sense of confirmation bias you see what you want to see.'

Knox said she was speaking out about her ordeal after the release of Stillwater - a Hollywood movie based on a fictionalised version of the events surrounding the murder of Ms Kercher.

The American said that the movie portrayed her as being involved in the murder of Ms Kercher, despite her being exonerated.

'They used my name and my face to publicise the film that they then said was fictionalised so it shouldnt reflect upon who I am or what the outcome of the case was.

'However, the Amanda Knox character in their film was treated as indirectly involved in the murder of her roommate whom she had a sexual affair with,' she said.

Pictured: Matt Damon (right) seen in the movie 'Stillwater' that is loosely based on the events surrounding Meredith Kercher

When asked by Barnett what she would say to actor Matt Damon, the lead in the movie, Knox said: We should talk. We can have a conversation. Im not going to judge you. Lets recognise something real is happening here.

Knox said the movie was, like the press, guilty of portraying her 'not really as a human being but as an idea of a person'.

'They (the press at the time of the case) were making Meredith into this perfectly invisible ideal victim to never name again,' Knox said. 'Its fascinating to me the number of times Foxy Knoxy was in the headline, but Meredith was not.

'Just the idea of a sexually deviant violent woman was enough to get people so riled up that they didnt care about the truth anymore.

'And that is an insane problem, and that is something that I dont think has really really been addressed. How justice was thwarted because of our obsession with female deviancy and female sexuality.'

Speaking of how the case would have been viewed today - particularly after the MeToo movement, she said: 'It's interesting. I think that it would be I would hope that people would have been more sceptical about that portrayal of events today.

Speaking BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Amanda Knox (pictured during the interview) said the media scrum following the conviction and later release made her lose control of her identity

'That said, I think that social media was already quite active at the time of my case and had a huge impact in how the case played out.

'And if anything it has become even more about tribalism, which is also a big problem where people vehemently stood for one side or the other and were unable again there was the sense of confirmation bias you see what you want to see.'

'So I very much felt like as I was coming into the world I was in conversation constantly with a made-up version of myself that was in people's minds before they ever encountered me as a real person.

'And that's an ongoing problem for me.

'It's an ongoing struggle for me that has it's not over.'

Knox spent four years in prison in Perugia for the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, who was found dead in the house they shared in November 2007.

She was convicted in December 2009 and sentenced to 28 and a half years, but was acquitted in 2011 after an appeals court found that legal procedures had not been followed and there was no DNA tying her and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to the scene.

Speaking of how the case would have been viewed today, she said: ' It's interesting. I think that it would be I would hope that people would have been more sceptical about that portrayal of events today'

Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 36, were convicted of Kercher's murder in 2009 before being acquitted, convicted again and then finally definitely cleared in 2015. Pictured: The former couple in 2007, shortly after Kercher's body was found

A local man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial after his DNA was found on Kercher's body and in the room where she died. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2008, but was released in December 2020 and will spend the rest of his sentence doing community work.

Knox was tried again in absentia, convicted again, and then ultimately had the conviction overturned by Italy's highest court in 2015.

She now lives in Seattle with her poet and novelist husband Christopher Robinson, 39.

Knox recently revealed that she had given birth to a baby girl - but lied to listeners to her podcast by saying that she was still pregnant in a bid to avoid a media storm.

Amanda Knox now lives in Seattle with her poet and novelist husband Christopher Robinson, 39

The couple welcomed daughter Eureka Muse Knox-Robinson 'several months ago', she told The New York Times.

Yet Knox only announced that she was pregnant on August 4, in the first episode of her podcast, Labyrinths. By that point, she had likely already given birth - or was just about to.

Last month, Knox explained that she and Robinson, who married in 2020 in a time travel-themed wedding, wanted to keep their daughter's arrival a secret and so documented her pregnancy in their podcast, Labyrinths, but kept the birth secret.

'I'm still nervous about the paparazzi bounty on her head,' said Knox, speaking to the paper from their home on Vashon Island near Seattle, in Washington State.
An army veteran who served in Iraq and Northern Ireland has been killed on his motorbike in a car crash - with a 29,000 Mercedes driver arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving high on drugs.

Retired Warrant Officer Pete Tunstall, 52, of Tring, Herts had been on his motorcycle when he was hit when a grey Mercedes C200 and a blue Vauxhall Grandland X collided.

The father-of-five was killed instantly in the crash, which happened in his hometown near the BP service station just before 4pm on October 29.

Police arrested the Mercedes driver, a 38-year-old man from Diss, in Norfolk, at the scene on suspicion of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drugs and drug driving.

Detectives say he was taken to Thorpe Wood Police Station in Peterborough and has since been released under investigation.

Today Mr Tunstall's devastated family paid tribute to him, describing the former serviceman as having the 'heart of a lion'.

Their statement said 'Pete was a loving husband, father, brother, uncle and friend.

'Pete, a scouser by birth and big Liverpool FC fan, was a retired warrant officer who served 22 years in the British Army in the Royal Corps of Transport (RCT) and later the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC).

Retired Warrant Officer Pete Tunstall, 52, of Tring, Herts had been riding on his motorcycle

The crash happened near the BP service station in Tring just before 4pm on October 29

'He was a very experienced and safe rider who had in the past competed in endurance races on his bike, ridden off-road bikes and had been a close protection driver and rider in the military, trained to advanced police standards.

'He had a diverse and varied career; serving all over the world including Northern Ireland and Iraq. He ended his career in Wales as the Permanent Staff Instructor in Carmarthen, which is where he met his wife Tracy.

'Pete had the heart of a lion, was fiercely protective of his family and friends and loved Tracy and his children Ryan and Aimee and three step-sons Chris, Alex and Jack totally and unconditionally.

'He was always ready with a smile, a bear hug and words of encouragement.

The driver of a grey Mercedes has been arrested on suspicion of drug driving ( stock pic)

'The baby of the family, he also leaves behind brothers Tim and Ian and sisters Jaqueline and Gillian. Pete was also a loyal friend and proud veteran who had just started to get back in touch with old mates again.

'The whole family are devastated by the loss of Pete, and are still struggling to come to terms with what has happened. Tracy would like to thank everyone who has offered words of comfort and support, and in particular the military community, who have been truly amazing.'

Police investigating the death are currently piecing together a timeline of what happened.

They are looking at the actions of the two cars before the collision happened.

Officers say anyone with information, in particular dash-cam footage of the collision or any of the vehicles involved in the moments before, is urged to contact them.

Do you have any information or footage? Contact: Beds, Cambs and Herts Road Policing Unit via web chat at https://bit.ly/3vsiYDw or online forms at www.cambs.police.uk/report quoting incident 265 of 29 October. Anyone without internet access should call 101.
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Covid infection rates fell in all but 10 per cent of English councils during the half-term week, official data today revealed after hopes were raised that cases have peaked for 2021.

UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) statistics show cases fell in 132 out of 149 local authorities in England in the week ending October 31. North Somerset in the South West  the region where cases have been highest  saw the biggest drop off (35.2 per cent).

Meanwhile, separate data from one of the UK's largest surveillance studies showed Covid cases in the UK fell five per cent in a week.

King's College London scientists who run the research have been saying for months that cases were consistently soaring  despite official numbers painting a more mixed picture. Last week the study found Britain was getting 'worryingly close' to 100,000 symptomatic cases per day, while Government dashboard data found that they were falling to below 40,000.

Now the KCL team estimate there were about 89,000 new symptomatic infections every day last week, down on the 93,000 they forecasted the previous week. It marks the first time the surveillance project found a sustained week-on-week fall since before schools went back in September.

Professor Tim Spector, the epidemiologist behind the survey, said the country is probably over the 'last great peak of Covid' for the year.

The distinguished scientist has softened his stance on the UK' coronavirus situation after last month pleading for the Government to take a more cautious approach because the country was 'really in trouble'.

His symptom-tracking study, ran alongside healthtech firm ZOE, relies on people coming forward to report their result, which experts say makes it susceptible to bias.

The ZOE findings are in line with the downward trend reported in the daily Department of Health statistics, which have fallen in 10 of the last 11 days. Scientific advisers told No10 the epidemic could shrink naturally without curbs because of a combination of the booster vaccine rollout and growing natural immunity in children, who triggered an explosion in cases.

It comes as ministers are expected to reveal in the coming days that NHS won't have to get a Covid jab this winter to keep their jobs  one of the measures they were considering to keep the pandemic at bay. But the 'no jab, no job' rule will come into play from April, Whitehall insiders say.

Meanwhile, the first at-home antiviral pill used to treat Covid was approved by the UK's medical regulator.

 Slide me  Covid infection rates fell in all but 10 per cent of areas in England during the half-term week, data from the UK Health and Security Agency's weekly Flu and Covid Surveillance Report shows

The experts behind the ZOE Covid Study  which is based on reports from around 750,000 weekly contributors and more than 40,000 swabs  calculated there were 88,592 daily symptomatic Covid cases across the UK, based on data from 42,359 positive PCR and lateral flow tests taken between October 16 and 30. Around a third of cases (26,928) are among double-jabbed Brits, up from 26,928 last week, the study found.

The UKHSA data shows cases were highest in the South West last week (533.5 cases per 100,000) but they fell 21 per cent from the previous week (675.9 per 100,000)

People aged 10 to 19 had the highest case rate of any age group (785.6 per 100,000) but also the biggest fall in cases, with 36 per cent

A drop in infection rates among children is the main driver of the downward tread, the researchers said. One in 34 people aged 10 to 19 were infected last week, while the rate is one in 52 for children aged nine and under. Infections are levelling off in all other groups apart from those aged 55 to 75, which the experts said is a 'cause for concern'  but rates are still below the national average in the group

Across the UK, one in 53 people have symptomatic Covid, while the figure is higher in England (one in 52) and Wales (one in 42), while it is less in Scotland (one in 81). The researchers said there were not enough respondents in Northern Ireland to generate a reliable estimate. Within the UK, infection rates are highest in West Midlands (one in 45), South West (one in 45) and North East (one in 46)

Across the UK, one in 53 people had symptomatic Covid last week, while the figure is higher in England (one in 52) and Wales (one in 42), while it is less in Scotland (one in 81), according to the Covid Symptom Study. Within the UK,infection rates are highest in Midlands, South East and North East

The surveillance study predicted an average of 1,489 people a day who had Covid in the last week will go on to experience symptoms for longer than 12 weeks

NHS staff WON'T be forced to have a compulsory Covid jab this winter despite fears of a spike in cases NHS workers won't face being sacked if they don't get vaccinated against Covid this winter, it was claimed today despite fears of another wave over the coming months. Ministers are set to announce compulsory jabs for hundreds of thousands of frontline medics in the coming days, but the actual rule is not expected to be enforced until April. The policy is part of efforts to control rising infections, which will also soon include allowing the double-jabbed to book their third booster dose a month earlier than planned to speed up the roll-out. Officials have been deliberating over a 'no jab, no job' move for NHS staff for months, in a bid to protect the health service this winter. Ministers have already pressed ahead with the same controversial move for care home workers, who are required to have two doses from November 11 in order to keep their jobs. Department of Health bosses told MailOnline 'no final decision' had been made, with Health Secretary Sajid Javid rumoured to still have reservations about the policy  despite publicly admitting that he was 'leaning towards' the mandate. However, a Whitehall insider close to the negotiations claimed the move was a 'done deal' and could be formally unveiled as soon as today. It comes after England's deputy chief medical officer yesterday said Covid booster shots, flu jabs and 'caution' are key to coping with the virus during the 'problematic' Christmas period. Professor Jonathan Van-Tam hinted further lockdowns could be avoided and the pandemic brought under control by spring if people act responsibly. Advertisement

The UKHSA data shows cases were highest in the South West last week (533.5 positive tests per every 100,000 people) but they fell 21 per cent from the previous week (675.9).

Cases fell in all regions, with the next biggest drop-offs seen in the South East (16 per cent), East of England (13 per cent) and East Midlands (12 per cent).

London has the lowest rate at 256.1, down from 288.9.

People aged 10 to 19 had the highest case rate of any age group (785.6 per 100,000) but also the biggest fall in cases, with 36 per cent.

They were followed by five- to nine-year-olds (21 per cent), over-80s (16 per cent) and 70- to 79-year-olds (nine per cent).

Meanwhile, the ZOE study estimated there were 88,592 daily symptomatic Covid cases across the UK every day in the week up to October 30.

This was based on data from 42,359 positive PCR and lateral flow tests, and hundreds of thousands of users of the app.

Around a third of cases (26,928) were among double-jabbed Brits.

Across the UK, one in 53 people were estimated to have symptomatic Covid, while the figure is higher in England (one in 52) and Wales (one in 42), while it was less in Scotland (one in 81).

The researchers said there were not enough respondents in Northern Ireland to generate a reliable estimate.

Within the UK, infection rates were highest in West Midlands (one in 45), South West (one in 45) and North East (one in 46).

A drop in infection rates among children was the main driver of the downward tread, the researchers said.

One in 34 people aged 10 to 19 were infected last week, while the rate is one in 52 for children aged nine and under.

Infections are levelling off in all other groups apart from those aged 55 to 75, which the experts said is a 'cause for concern'  but rates are still below the national average in the group.

And it estimated the the R rate stood at one across the UK. This suggests that for every ten people who have the virus, they are passing it on to 10 more people.

ZOE also predicted 1,489 people a day will go on to experience Covid symptoms for longer than 12 weeks.

Professor Spector said: 'It's great that we're finally seeing cases start to come down, and hopefully we're over the last great peak of Covid in 2021.

'This is driven in large part by declining cases in children who have been on half term holidays and by high rates of previous infection, but we're hopeful that the trend will continue.'

He warned that is is 'still worrying that cases in the older, more vulnerable age group are increasing' but said the booster programme will likely bring cases down.

Professor Spector said: 'As the temperatures drop and winter comes we're still seeing far too much Covid in the community leading to high long Covid and hospitalisation rates compared to other countries in Western Europe.

'With high rates of other viral respiratory illnesses too (although no flu yet), there is no room for complacency.'

Covid cases hit record highs in October because of outbreaks in schoolchildren, mass surveillance study claims More people were infected with Covid in England last month than at any point this year, a mass testing study claimed yesterday. REACT-1 data  taken from one of the largest surveillance projects in England  show around 1.72 per cent of people (one in 58) across the country had the virus on any given day in October. It was up from just 0.83 per cent the previous month and marked the highest point in any point sampled by the study. But the Imperial College London researchers did not collect data during the height of the second wave towards the end of December and start of January. Experts warned the figures, based on random testing of tens of thousands of people, show 'the pandemic is far from over and remains a serious threat to health and wellbeing'. Infections grew quickest in children aged five to 17, with nearly six per cent in the age group infected at any one point during the month, and doubled in people aged 65 and over. And outbreaks grew in eight out of nine regions, with the highest rates found in the South West where prevalence quadrupled. Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said: 'Although the number of hospitalisations and deaths remain lower than in previous peaks, these findings are a powerful reminder that the pandemic is far from over and remains a serious threat to health and wellbeing. 'This new data strongly reinforces the need for all eligible age groups to get vaccinated and to take mitigating measures such as wearing a face covering in crowded places and ensuring good ventilation indoors. 'This is particularly urgent for older people whose immunity may be waning given that several months have passed since they received their jabs. 'I strongly encourage everyone who is eligible for a third dose or a booster shot to come forward without delay.' Advertisement

He added: 'While restrictions, masks and vaccine uptake in children are factors, it's clear that there's no single solution to bringing rates down permanently.

'We've seen that a combination of population safety precautions and vaccines works best, and so the third booster vaccine, coupled with mask wearing and distancing in high risk areas, is our way out.'

Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, said the half-term break has likely reduced transmission among children and rates may rise as pupils return to classrooms.

He said: 'But one consequence of all this virus transmission in younger people is that they will become immune and as immunity builds transmission will slow.

'Whilst I dont expect massive increases in case numbers, I think case numbers over the next few months will still be lumpy as the virus continues to circulate in unvaccinated people and in those whose immunity has started to wane.

'That's why it's so important for people to get vaccinated and, when invited, get their booster jab.'

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, said: 'The suggestion that Covid cases have probably peaked for 2021 is likely to be correct.

'As was reported in the past few weeks most, but not all, of the models for Covid presented to Sage have suggested that the epidemic would peak late October/early November before declining towards the end of the year.

'One of the uncertainties with the daily reported cases has been whether the half-term holiday could have led to an apparent fall because of reduced testing of children when not attending school.

'Although this may have contributed to some of the fall, it could not account for all as case numbers started to decline the weekend before the start of the holiday and so far we have not seen a rebound increase because schools are now back this week, though we should wait another couple of days to be certain.'

Data from the gold-standard Office for National Statistics infection survey  which is closely watched by ministers but lags behind ZOE  estimated one in 50 people were infected in the seven days up to October 22, marking a 13 per cent rise in a week.

Its next update is due Friday.

It comes after Department of Health bosses posted 41,299 positive coronavirus tests yesterday , down six per cent on last Wednesday's figure of 43,941. Cases have fallen week-on-week every day for eleven days barring Monday  a blip that was down to Wales not publishing any infection numbers the previous week.

Hospitalisations remained flat on Saturday, the latest date data is available for. Some 888 patients were admitted with the virus, down 0.7 per cent on the week before.

But deaths are continuing to increase, jumping 4.8 per cent on last week's total to 217. Changes in fatality levels lag several weeks behind cases because of how long it can take for infected patients to become severely ill.

The figures come after Professor Jonathan Van-Tam yesterday warned Britons that another Christmas lockdown could be on the cards if people act like the pandemic has finished.

England's deputy chief medical officer said there were 'hard months to come' and the country's infection rate was 'running hot' already heading into what is expected to be a tough winter for the NHS. In one of his now-famous analogies, he added: 'The final whistle on Covid hasn't blown yet.'

Professor Van-Tam urged the nation to behave responsibly and emphasised the importance of face masks  but did not outright call for their enforced return in public spaces.

But Whitehall insiders claimed today that NHS workers will not be forced to get a Covid jab this winter to keep their job  a policy that would have been part of efforts to control rising infections.

Ministers are set to announce compulsory jabs for hundreds of thousands of frontline medics in the coming days, but the actual rule is not expected to be enforced until April.

Officials have been deliberating over a 'no jab, no job' move for NHS staff for months, in a bid to protect the health service this winter. Ministers have already pressed ahead with the same controversial move for care home workers, who are required to have two doses from November 11 in order to keep their jobs.

Department of Health bosses told MailOnline 'no final decision' had been made, with Health Secretary Sajid Javid rumoured to still have reservations about the policy  despite publicly admitting that he was 'leaning towards' the mandate.

However, a Whitehall insider close to the negotiations claimed the move was a 'done deal' and could be formally unveiled as soon as today.
A young mother who gave birth while in a coma after contracting Covid has finally got the chance to meet her newborn daughter nearly one month later.

Saskia Lane, 21, from West Sussex, tested positive for the virus and was admitted to intensive care at Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath after suffering with breathing difficulties.

Saskia, who was eight months pregnant at this time, was sent down for an emergency c-section in early September to help her body recover without being pregnant.

But devastatingly Saskia wasn't woken up following the birth of her daughter, Betsy Mae Blackman, who is now eight-weeks-old, after doctors decided to keep her in an induced coma to give her the best chance of survival.

After three weeks in an induced coma, Saskia was woken up on September 25 and met her daughter for the first time on September 30 after her partner Lee Blackman, 23, brought in Betsy for the first time.

Saskia is now urging other pregnant women to have the vaccine after she initially decided to turn it down following conflicting advice.

Saskia Lane, 21, from West Sussex, was pregnant when she tested positive for the virus and was admitted to intensive care at Princess Royal Hospital after suffering with breathing difficulties

Saskia's mother, Becky Knight, 41, explained: 'Saskia was diagnosed with gestational diabetes whilst pregnant with Betsy and decided not to have the vaccine initially after worrying about the impact it could have on Betsy.

'I encouraged her to get the vaccine but unfortunately, she had her first jab a few days before contracting Covid so it wasn't effective.

'She initially felt worn out and tired but eventually, she began experiencing breathing difficulties and on her third trip to A&E, they admitted her to the intensive care unit.

'The doctors decided that Betsy should be delivered immediately to help her body have the best possible chance to beating Covid and she was aware of this.

Saskia wasn't woken up following the birth of her daughter, Betsy Mae Blackman, after doctors decided to keep her in an induced coma to give her the best chance of survival. She met her three weeks later (pictured)

While in St Thomas' hospital, London, the young mother was placed on life support for two and a half weeks as doctors battled to save her

'But after putting her to sleep, doctors decided to keep her in an induced coma to allow her body to rest and recover.

'We were all absolutely devastated - we couldn't go in and visit her because she had Covid and Lee wasn't able to meet Betsy until she was a few days old.

'When she was finally woken up, she was extremely confused and didn't understand what had happened so I reassured her that Betsy was fine and healthy and we gave her, Lee, and Betsy the chance to meet for the first time privately.'

Pregnancy and Covid jabs: The confirmed facts and figures so far Since April, pregnant women in the UK have been eligible for the vaccine at the same time as the rest of their age group. But uptake remains low and health chiefs are concerned about rising admissions for Covid-19 among pregnant women. Severe illness due to Covid-19 is uncommon in pregnant women, but is more likely in later pregnancy. All studies so far have suggested mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, are safe for pregnant women, with no proof behind claims they cause stillbirths or defects. Pregnant women who do get symptomatic COVID-19 infection are 2 to 3 times more likely to give birth to their baby prematurely. Public Health England data shows more than 81,000 pregnant women have received the first dose of a Covid vaccine, and around 65,000 have received their second dose, NHS England said. Advertisement

Saskia was classed as vulnerable during her pregnancy due to her diagnosis of gestational diabetes and was one of the first in her family to be offered the vaccine.

But, Saskia initially turned it down after conflicting advice on the effects it could have on pregnant women.

She gave birth to a completely health Betsy, who weighed 5lb, 8oz. Saskia is also a mother to 23-month old Eliza Grace Blackman.

While in St Thomas' hospital, London, the young mother was placed on life support for two and a half weeks as doctors battled to save her.

Becky added: 'Whilst she was in the hospital, she was placed on life support and moved to several different hospitals.

'The staff at Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath were incredible and the nurses and doctors went above and beyond to look after her and save her life.

'We as a family are hoping to do a fundraising event at some point next year to give back for saving Saskia's life.

'Whilst she was in a coma, we were able to see her only through video calls and it was devastating seeing her in that state.'

Saskia is still in hospital at Guy's Hospital in London receiving treatment after severe damage to her lungs.

The mother-of-two has been transferred to three different hospitals in an attempt to save her life.

Becky said: 'Saskia was able to see both Betsy and Eliza on alternate days.

'She's been in intensive care for nine weeks now and we can't wait for her to come home.

'Her lung has collapsed so it's only half the size of a normal lung.

'She also has sepsis in her lung and has had a total of six drains put into her lungs, as well as a tracheotomy which left her unable to speak for three weeks when she woke up.

'She's terrified of going home because she doesn't want to catch Covid again - it's traumatised her.

'Saskia wants to encourage everyone to get the vaccine following her experience.'

Saskia' partner Lee Blackman, who works as a panel beater, has had to work part-time following Saskia's illness and is looking after both Betsy and Eliza (pictured) while she is in hospital

The family are currently fundraising to support Lee and Saskia once she returns home from the hospital.

Lee, who works as a panel beater, has had to work part-time following Saskia's illness and is looking after both Betsy and Eliza while she is in hospital.

Becky added: 'There's no funding if you contract Covid and are seriously ill and have to take time off work.

'She's also been diagnosed with postnatal depression so we're hoping to get her some more funding to cover therapy costs once she's home.'
This is the moment a driver knocks out a 'drunk' man with a single punch during a street argument about a broken wing mirror.

The two men were filmed having a dispute outside the White Cart Chippy in Cathcart, Glasgow at 9pm on October 29.

One of them, a motorist, claims that the other had punched his wing mirror - an alleged incident which was not caught on camera - while 'standing in the middle of the f***ing road'.

The driver keeps backing away from the other man, who appears to be inebriated, saying 'I don't want to hit you, you're trying to hit me'.

After continuously moving away from the 'drunk' male for about one minute, the driver eventually says 'are you being serious' and delivers a single punch to the other man's face, sending him to the ground.

A Police Scotland spokesman told MailOnline a 47-year-old man had been charged over the incident.

One of the men, a motorist (left), claims that the other (right) had punched his wing mirror while 'standing in the middle of the f***ing road'. A third man (centre), who appears to be a worker for one of the nearby eateries, had unsuccessfully attempted to intervene in the brawl, trying to calm down the 'drunk' man

The 'drunk' man (pictured) had continuously approached the driver with his hands bunched into fists, and appears to be trying to attack the other man several times. When the driver eventually punches him in the face, he falls back unconscious onto the road, hitting his head on the tarmac

The motorist had told the other man: 'I'm not fighting you mate.

'I'm not fighting you. You just broke my f***ing wing mirror.'

When the driver eventually punched the other man in the face, the 'drunk' man falls back unconscious onto the road, hitting his head on the tarmac.

A third man, who appears to be a worker for one of the nearby eateries, had unsuccessfully attempted to intervene in the brawl, trying to calm down the 'drunk' man.

A Police Scotland spokesman said: 'We received report of a disturbance on Newlands Road in Glasgow around 9pm on Friday, 29 October, 2021.

'A 47-year-old man has been charged in connection with incident and a report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.'
A woman has accused a Hull funeral director of holding her father's ashes 'hostage' two years after his death.

Mikala Hill, 33, claims she is still waiting for Heavenly Services to release her father Russell Hill's ashes, after he died aged 58 following a stroke and battling muscular dystrophy in September 2019.

She fears she now may never get the ashes back, adding that a representative of the company allegedly left a voicemail instructing her to collect them or risk them being put into storage.

Heavenly Services is currently being investigated by Humberside Police over allegations of fraud, and has been criticised by several disgruntled customers, according to local media.

'It's a possession. It's like holding him hostage. I don't want him stuck in a cupboard somewhere,' Ms Hill said. 'It's made me distraught. I'm still sat here now without my dad.

'I can't grieve and I can't put him to rest, it's left me empty.'

Mikala Hill (left) claims she is still waiting for Heavenly Services to release the ashes of her father, Russell Hill (right)

Heavenly Services is currently being investigated by Humberside Police over allegations of fraud, and is under fire from several disgruntled customers, local media reported

Ms Hill claims she paid 1,650 in total to Heavenly Services in monthly instalments after being advised to pay that way by a staff member, despite having the money to pay outright.

'While I was paying I thought he was in safe hands. I was upset they wouldn't give me him back, but there was not a lot I could do,' she told Hull Live, after receiving a call last week requesting her to pick up the ashes.

'They wouldn't give me his ashes because I didn't pay straight away, but now they've told me I've got to go get them right now.

'Why couldn't you have just given me them in the first place? It would have saved me a lot of heartache... It's all I can think about.'

She claims she was recently told by Heavenly Services that a new owner is taking over the premises and was advised to go down so they can give her the ashes.

The funeral director is being investigated over allegations of fraud.

One woman claims she was told by the company to collect her husband's body from the morgue, while another woman claims the funeral director never booked a plot for her father's grave.

MailOnline has contacted Heavenly Services for comment.

A Humberside Police spokesman said: 'We can confirm that a complaint has been received and an investigation is underway. We will be making enquiries and speaking to all involved parties to assess all relevant circumstances.'
Germany has reported the country's highest number of new coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic with 33,949 infections recorded.

The number of cases have jumped by more than 5,000 in the past week, as ministers rush to stem the spread of the virus.

The all-time high comes as Germany's federal Health Minister Jens Spahn warned the country is in the grips of a 'massive' pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Health professionals said unvaccinated people suffering from Covid-19 account for the majority of patients in intensive care, with numbers rising sharply.

Germany on Thursday registered 33,949 new cases in the last 24 hours, up from 28,037 daily cases a week ago. The previous record was 33,777 new cases on December 18, 2020.

The cases have been raging sharply over the past few weeks, with Mr Spahn warning that a fourth wave was raging 'with exceptional force'.

Mr Spahn is set to meet with the 16 state health ministers to discuss how to limit the spread of the virus in the winter as intensive care units in the hospitals are starting to fill up again and infections among children are skyrocketing.

The number of Covid deaths in Germany - and Europe as a whole - is increasing. On Thursday, Germany recorded 165 deaths, up from 146 a week ago, meaning 96,192 people have now died from Covid in Germany.

It comes as the World Health Organisation warned that Europe could see another half a million deaths in the next three months as the region is 'back at the epicentre of the pandemic'.

An intensive care nurse and a specialist are busy caring for a Covid-19 patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at Dresden Municipal Hospital in Dresden, Germany, on Wednesday

Germany's federal Health Minister Jens Spahn warned the country is in the grips of a 'massive' pandemic of the unvaccinated

Europe could see half a million deaths in next three months, WHO warns The World Health Organisation has warned that Europe could see another half a million deaths in the next three months and said the region is 'back at the epicentre of the pandemic'. 'The current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region is of grave concern,' WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said, adding that one reliable projection would mean 'another half a million COVID-19 deaths,' by February if the current trajectory continued. 'We are at another critical point of pandemic resurgence,' Kluge told reporters from WHO Europe headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. 'Europe is back at the epicenter of the pandemic, where we were one year ago.' He said the difference now is that health authorities know more about the virus and have better tools to combat it. Relaxed prevention measures and low vaccination rates in some areas explain the latest surge, he said. Kluge said hospitalization rates due to COVID-19 in the 53-country region more than doubled over the last week. If that trajectory continues, the region could see another half a million pandemic deaths by February, he said. WHO Europe says the region tallied nearly 1.8 million new weekly cases, an increase of about 6% from the previous week, and 24,000 COVID-19 weekly deaths, - a 12% gain. Kluge said the countries in the region were at 'varying stages of vaccination rollout' and that regionwide an average of 47% of people were fully vaccinated. Only eight countries had 70% of their populations fully vaccinated. 'We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of COVID-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place,' Kluge said. WHO's headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday reported that cases had risen in Europe for the fifth consecutive week, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing. The infection rate was by far the highest in Europe, which reported some 192 new cases per 100,000 people. Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have seen daily case numbers shoot up in recent weeks. The WHO's European Region spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia. Advertisement

Ministers have blamed Germany's relatively low vaccination rate for the surge in Covid cases, with just 66.9 per cent of the population fully jabbed as of Thursday.

Official figures show that about two thirds of the country's population of 83 million have had one dose of the vaccine. But around 16.2 million people age 12 or above remain unvaccinated - including 3.2 million over-60s.

'We are currently experiencing mainly a pandemic of the unvaccinated and it's massive,' Mr Spahn said on Wednesday, warning that 'in some regions in Germany intensive care beds are running out again'.

He added: 'The number of infections is increasing, as well as the number of deaths from Covid and especially the number of patients in intensive care units in some regions of Germany, regions where vaccination rates are not as high as in other regions.

'The truth is that there would be far fewer Covid-19 patients in intensive care if everyone who could do it got a vaccination.'

Senior health officials have repeatedly appealed to German residents who haven't yet been vaccinated at all to get their shots, though Mr Spahn admitted that many of the holdouts can't be convinced.

Although officials agreed in August to make booster shots available to over-60s, nursing home residents and staff, only just over 2 million have been administered so far.

Germany hasn't made coronavirus vaccinations obligatory for any professional groups, unlike some of its European counterparts.

Mr Spahn is calling for curbs targeting unvaccinated people to tame the resurgence in infections.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has called the coronavirus trend 'very worrying', signalled she was in favour of stricter curbs focussed on the unvaccinated.

'If the pandemic situations in hospitals worsens... then further restrictions for unvaccinated people are possible,' Merkel said through her spokesman Steffen Seibert.

A recent survey also showed that the vast majority of Germany's still unvaccinated adults have no intention of getting inoculated against Covid.

'For the unvaccinated, the risk is high that they will become infected in the coming months,' warned RKI chief Lothar Wieler, speaking alongside Mr Spahn in Berlin.

'If we don't act now, this fourth wave will still bring a lot of suffering. Many people will become seriously ill and die, and the health care system will be heavily burdened.'

Mr Spahn called for more thorough checks at establishments or events where only those who can show they have been vaccinated, recovered from Covid or recently tested negative are allowed to enter.

In hard-hit regions, he said, access should be limited to those who are fully vaccinated or can show proof of recovery - a system that excludes the unvaccinated and is known as '2G' in Germany.

'It's nothing to do with vaccine bullying,' he said, 'but with avoiding an overloading of the healthcare system'.

He also recommended a bigger push on booster jabs, saying the current pace 'is insufficient'.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has called the coronavirus trend 'very worrying', signalled she was in favour of stricter curbs focussed on the unvaccinated

Mr Spahn's plea for all vaccinated Germans to get a third jab after six months is however at odds with the nation's STIKO vaccine commission, which for now is only recommending booster shots for the elderly and certain at-risk groups.

For the elderly, getting a booster was urgent, said Leif Erik Sander, who leads a research group on infection immunology at Berlin's Charite hospital.

'Our studies show that around 40 percent of people above 70 no longer have neutralising antibodies against the Delta variant six months after their vaccination,' he warned.

Pressure has been growing to implement mandatory tests in nursing homes after several outbreaks were reported in senior citizen homes in recent days that have led to more than a dozen residents dying.

The head of the association of family doctors, Ulrich Weigeldt, went even further on Thursday demanding mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for all employees working in nursing homes or hospitals.

'No unvaccinated person should have contact with such a vulnerable group, either professionally or as a visitor,' Weigeldt told daily tabloid Bild. 'This applies to senior citizen homes and nursing homes as well as to intensive care units.'

People line up for vaccination injections in front of at the vaccination center of the Malteser relief service on the fair grounds in Berlin on Wednesday

The Covid surge comes as Germany is in political limbo following September's general election, with the winning Social Democrats hoping to have a new coalition government in place by early December.

The incoming coalition parties have so far ruled out mandatory jabs and said there will be no new lockdowns - at least not for the vaccinated.

However, under Germany's federal system, regional states have significant powers to decide their own Covid approach, at times leading to a confusing patchwork of regulations.

The regional governments have limited access to some indoor events and facilities to people who have been vaccinated, have recently recovered or been tested, and some are tightening those rules.

The southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg on Wednesday introduced new rules in response to the fourth wave, after breaching a self-imposed threshold on occupied intensive care beds.

Unvaccinated adults in the state must now show a negative PCR test for many activities, including indoor dining and entry to cinemas, museums or gyms. The tests can cost upwards of 50 euros ($58).

The eastern state of Saxony aims to unveil tougher restrictions on Friday.

Under its proposed '2G' plans, unvaccinated people would be excluded from indoor dining, leisure facilities as well as bars and nightclubs.

Across Europe, Covid cases are on the rise, with the UK recording 41,299 infections on Wednesday.

The WHO have described the trend as a 'grave concern' and warned the region could see another half a million deaths by early next year.

'The current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region is of grave concern,' WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said, adding that one reliable projection would mean 'another half a million COVID-19 deaths,' by February if the current trajectory continued.

'We are at another critical point of pandemic resurgence,' Kluge told reporters from WHO Europe headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. 'Europe is back at the epicenter of the pandemic, where we were one year ago.'

He said the difference now is that health authorities know more about the virus and have better tools to combat it. Relaxed prevention measures and low vaccination rates in some areas explain the latest surge, he said.

Kluge said hospitalization rates due to COVID-19 in the 53-country region more than doubled over the last week. If that trajectory continues, the region could see another half a million pandemic deaths by February, he said.

WHO Europe says the region tallied nearly 1.8 million new weekly cases, an increase of about 6% from the previous week, and 24,000 COVID-19 weekly deaths, - a 12% gain.

Kluge said the countries in the region were at 'varying stages of vaccination rollout' and that regionwide an average of 47% of people were fully vaccinated. Only eight countries had 70% of their populations fully vaccinated.

'We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of COVID-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place,' Kluge said.

WHO's headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday reported that cases had risen in Europe for the fifth consecutive week, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing. The infection rate was by far the highest in Europe, which reported some 192 new cases per 100,000 people.

Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have seen daily case numbers shoot up in recent weeks.

The WHO's European Region spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia.
British cattle farmers are being forced to export carcasses to the EU for processing due to a shortage of butchers.

Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, said beef producers were shipping supplies to Ireland by ferry for cutting and packing before re-importing them into the UK.

This will cost around 1,500 for each lorry load when transport fees and Brexit customs requirements - such as export health certifications - are taken into account.

Pork farmers are also expected to start shipping millions of pig carcasses to the Netherlands to be prepared in a similar process. Meat produced in this way cannot be listed as British pork for UK sale.

Pork farmers are also expected to start shipping millions of pig carcasses to the Netherlands to be prepared in a similar process

The developments provide fresh evidence of the crisis facing the industry after hundreds of butchers have left the country due to the pandemic and Brexit.

'Due to the shortage of meat workers in the UK and the limitations to recruit caused by the immigration policy, processors are taking advantage of the fact that other countries are sourcing extra labour from around the world and exporting meat to be processed and returned to this country,' Mr Allen said.

'Whilst it is an added cost it is a better option than empty shelves and animals building up on the farms,' he said.

There is a 15% staff shortage across many meat plants in the UK, climbing as high as 20% in some cases, he said.

The UK beef sector needs to fill 15,000 vacancies, a majority of them skilled or semi-skilled, he added.

Last month the British government agreed to issue 800 temporary visas for butchers to work in the UK for six months, but the government has not said how many applications have been made.

More than 10,000 healthy pigs have already had to be culled due to a backlog on farms, according to the National Pig Association.

Chief executive Zoe Davies: 'This is not excess supply, farmers have been contracted to grow these pigs, but the facilities are taking a quarter less than they agreed because they simply don't have the butchers.

'The Government has to help now because all the processors have tried very hard to recruit lately, wages have gone up exponentially over the last few months. The reality is that most people in the UK do not want to work in abattoirs and it doesn't matter how much you pay them.'

Rules mean farmers can only kill their own animals for consumption on the farm, and are banned from selling the meat commercially.

Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, said beef producers were shipping supplies to Ireland by ferry for cutting and packing before re-importing them into the UK

It comes after MPs were warned supermarkets will be short of home produced fresh turkeys this Christmas with stores turning to imports from France and Poland.

The warning came from farm industry leaders, who say this is evidence of a wider crisis across the food supply chain caused by a chronic lack of workers.

The nation's turkey farmers decided to raise fewer chicks this year because they could see the country would not have enough workers in processing plants to handle them.

Farmers' leaders said the labour shortages are a disaster for British food production with the result that huge quantities of fresh produce and milk is going to waste.

The doomsday scenario was set out by farm industry leaders in evidence to an inquiry by MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, into the impact of labour shortages.

Chairman of the British Poultry Council, Graeme Dear, said there is a 'likelihood' there will be a shortage of UK-produced turkeys for Christmas. Around 20per cent fewer birds have been reared this year on British farms.

The Government recently announced that it would allow in 5,500 poultry plant workers on short-term visas, however this came too late to boost the number of turkeys being raised.

Mr Dear said: 'We would have loved to have known about that in June, and therefore could have placed enough turkeys for a full Christmas.

'We will do our utmost to make sure that Christmas is as normal as it can be, but there is a likelihood that there will be a shortage - had we known back in June or July that would have been fixed.

'The irony is that we may find ourselves having to import turkey from France and Poland for a British Christmas, probably with some of the very workers we trained and left to go back to their homelands.'
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Britain's Covid booster vaccine drive is going quick enough to keep winter cases under control, experts claimed today despite a flurry of demands to accelerate the rollout.

Labour has again urged the Government to 'turbo charge' the NHS programme to 500,000 doses a day  nearly double the current average rate  to avoid hospitals becoming overrun this winter.

And Health Secretary Sajid Javid  who has already warned Christmas curbs may be on the cards if uptake does not pick up  has repeatedly urged all eligible adults to come forward for their third jab.

But despite a slow start to the rollout beset by bureaucratic hurdles and slow uptake, NHS medics and volunteers are now dishing out an average of 1.9million booster doses every week in the UK  up from around 1.2million in the first week of October.

Unusually optimistic models by SAGE advisers predicted cases and hospitalisations will fall naturally this winter even without implementing the Government's 'Plan B' if 1.3million boosters are dished out a week.

And independent experts told MailOnline today said the current pace of the rollout should be enough to keep the virus at bay.

Professor David Livermore, a microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline the rollout is likely to reach the majority of the country's most vulnerable adults by early December at the current pace.

He added: 'Any suggestion that we should move to Plan B owing to the "slow" rollout should be robustly resisted.'

At the current rate of 1.9million boosters a week, 23million people will have had their booster shot by Christmas Day  nearly three quarters of all 32million eligible adults.

But officials have also warned against complacency, urging Brits to book their booster jabs as soon as possible to ensure the rollout stays on track.

NHS medics and volunteers are now dishing out an average of 1.9million booster doses a week in the UK, up from around 1.2million in the first week of October

Models by SAGE suggest a weekly rollout of 1.3million would be enough to keep hospitalisation numbers below the April 2020 first peak when they are expected to increase next spring, even with normal mixing this Christmas under no restrictions (top left)

Modelling by SAGE predicted that the combination of vaccine-acquired immunity and natural protection would be enough to keep hospital rates below levels seen in the second wave. Even in the most pessimistic scenarios, the group estimated that daily Covid hospital admissions would not rise above 1,500. More optimistic models had them peaking at below 1,000 in winter. The above charts are based on modelling by Warwick University and look at how quickly people go back to pre-pandemic social contacts. It was based on the booster doses given 'sustained' immunity

No evidence to show vaccine passports in Scotland are working to cut Covid rates There is no way to know whether the coronavirus vaccine passport scheme is working in Scotland is working, the country's Deputy First Minister said today. John Swinney, who is also Covid Recovery Secretary, said the Government does not have any evidence to show if the measure is reducing the spread of coronavirus and encouraging people to get vaccinated. Mr Swinney said it is 'impossible to segment' data on coronavirus to determine whether it is working, but he believes it is 'delivering a positive benefit to the suppression of the virus'. Since the start of October, adults in Scotland have had to prove they are double vaccinated to enter nightclubs or attend large events, with legal enforcement in effect from October 18. The Scottish Government said the certification scheme aims to increase take-up of vaccination, reduce the spread of the virus and allow supposedly high-risk venues to remain open. Mr Swinney told Holyrood's Covid-19 Committee that the proportion of 18- to 29-year-olds who have received both vaccinations rose from 64 per cent on October 1 to 68 per cent by November 1, describing it as a 'sizeable increase in the level of vaccination'. He added: 'We have cases at a too high level so we are trying to take measures which are proportionate to our objectives of enabling as much of the economy and our society to recover from Covid-19 but also, at the same time, to suppress the virus. 'Obviously there may well be impact on night-time industries as a consequence, but there could be an even greater impact of closure and that's what we're trying to avoid by the measures that we're taking.' Asked what the criteria is for the scheme to end, Mr Swinney said: 'We have to consider on a three-weekly basis whether it remains proportionate and that's an issue that we retain under active review.' He also warned the Scottish Government is considering imposing additional restrictions if the situation with the virus worsens. Mr Swinney told MSPs: 'If the case numbers and numbers in hospital get worse, then we have to look at whether the baseline measures are accurate. 'So in the interest of absolute candour with the committee, there is the possibility that baseline measures could be relaxed, there is also the possibility that baseline measures could be expanded. 'Covid certification could potentially be extended to other sectors, or it could have no role to play within our measures. But that will be dependent on our judgment of proportionality. 'If we find ourselves in the next few weeks with a rising prevalence of the virus and greater pressure on the National Health Service than we are already experiencing  and the NHS is under absolutely colossal pressure  we might have to take stronger measures, which might apply greater mandatory enforcement.' Mr Swinney also suggested that people who are reluctant to be vaccinated should speak to people whose loved ones have been killed by the virus. Reflecting on a meeting earlier in the week with families who are making representations about a forthcoming Covid inquiry, he said: 'We should actually get people who are vaccine-hesitant to sit and have a conversation with the bereaved relatives who've lost loved ones in care homes, and let them listen to it. 'Because, I'm telling you, I sit through many conversations that are very tough in my role as a minister and that was a tough one on Tuesday, believe you me, so maybe folks should listen to that.' Advertisement

Professor Livermore told MailOnline: 'Around seven to eight million of the circa 12 to 13million [currently] eligible for boosters in the UK have received them. I don't see reason to be overly concerned.

'Scotland and Wales are essentially already in Plan B, with continued mask mandates and with Covid passports for nightclubs and events. Yet their Covid rates are no different from England, which lacks these restrictions.'

He added: 'This strongly suggests that Plan B amounts to inconveniencing people for no useful effect.'

Booster jabs are currently available to everyone over the age of 50, vulnerable adults and NHS and care workers who had their second dose at least six months ago.

Cases have already begun falling across the UK and remain low in older age groups. If the trend continues, experts expect hospitalisations and deaths to follow in the next two weeks.

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, said he is glad the NHS has now got on top of the programme after a slow initial rollout.

He told MailOnline: 'Emerging evidence mainly from Israel does suggest that the booster dose is remarkably effective at preventing symptomatic infection, hospitalisation and death over and above the protection from the earlier two-dose schedule.

'So for every booster dose given that will reduce risk to the individual and reduce pressure on the NHS.

'The start of the campaign does seem to have been slower than we would have liked, though it does appear to have picked up a bit more recently.

'Booster doses are always slower on the uptake as first course in part because people feel less scared about the disease.

'So the UK has to really make it easy for people to get their booster doses as soon as possible, manage the system so big queues are avoided and get the message out strongly.'

Eligible adults are now able to book their booster appointments five months after their second dose, meaning they can have the third jab exactly six months after their last visit.

Models used by the Government to guide policy suggest even in the most pessimistic scenario, hospital admissions will stay below levels seen in the April 2020 peak and well below those seen in January this year as long as the booster programme remains above 1.3million.

SAGE member Professor John Edmunds  one of the scientists behind the models  said the slow increase in hospitalisations could be 'plugged' by the booster programme.

The models show admissions dropping over Christmas before a slight uptick in spring, which is dependent on how long-lasting immunity from the boosters is.

He told MailOnline: 'The reason why many of the models suggest that there might be a further increase in cases in the spring is the waning of immunity in older individuals and a gradual return to normality.

'The booster programme plugs that potential gap. If you look at the document that we submitted a few weeks ago, we also looked at boosting everyone  well 90 per cent of them  six months after their second dose, rather than just those over 50.

'Our model suggested it would make a very big difference and could avert or perhaps delay any further upswing.'

Despite cause for optimism, MPs are continuing to call for the rollout to be rapidly sped up.

Labour's shadow health minister Rosena Allin-Khan told the Commons that the Government 'just does not have a handle on Covid going into the busiest season for our NHS' even with the winter plan B, and said the UK needs to 'turbo charge vaccine boosters'.

Dr Allin-Khan, who is also a doctor at St George's Hospital, said: 'On current trends we won't complete the booster programme until spring 2022. The Government needs to get a grip and set a target of 500,000 boosters a day. At the moment the figures are less than 300,000.'

People needing booster jabs told to go to clinic a 128-mile round trip by road away People needing booster jabs have been told to go to a clinic 'seven miles away' but is only accessible via a 128-mile round trip. Residents of the Isle of Sheppey in Kent have been advised by the NHS to go to Southend in Essex for their third dose of the Covid vaccine. Southend is only seven miles away as the crow flies but the Thames Estuary sits between the two counties. There is no way for most people to get to the other side other than taking the 90 minute, 64 mile road trip via the Dartford Crossing. Pensioner John Twiselton, 73, said: 'When you go onto the NHS vaccine website the distances to vaccination centres are measured as the "crow flies" which is why Southend comes up. 'I feel sorry for people on the Island who do not have car transport to reach the Medway Towns or Canterbury. There is something wrong with the distribution system.' Mr Twiselton, of Minster, Isle of Sheppey, added: 'I was in contact with my surgery and they did not have a clue when they would receive more vaccine. 'It is ludicrous for Kwasi Kwarteng, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to urge people to get their booster vaccination when there are not enough centres nearby. 'Leysdown is offering vaccinations for late November at the earliest. Nowhere else in Swale is offering booster vaccination dates. 'There is lots of availability in Medway and Canterbury where you can have your booster any day. The same applies to Southend!' Advertisement

She also spoke of problems with the current vaccine rollout, saying: 'Local residents are contacting us saying they can't get the boosters they so desperately need.

'One lady in her 70s who has underlying health conditions went to her pharmacy and called 119 just to be told she wasn't eligible for a booster.

'She has now finally got one booked for December but had to rely on her daughter to book the appointment for her because she doesn't use the internet. The system simply isn't working.'

She added: 'The Government had a deadline of November 1 to offer booster jabs to all care home residents.

'Right now only 23 per cent of care home residents in Leicester have had their booster jab with the picture across the country extremely patchy.'

The call came as vaccines minister Maggie Throup told the Commons more than 650,000 12 to 15-year-olds have had a first Covid jab, and eight million people have been given a booster across the UK.

Ms Throup told MPs more than 650,000 12 to 15-year-olds have been vaccinated 'since launching the programme in September'.

'We are also rapidly rolling out our booster programme to give people the best protection over winter and help reduce pressures on the NHS,' she added, with eight million people across the UK having 'now received the vital protection a booster dose provides'.

Ms Throup also spoke about the effort to roll out flu jabs after low levels of circulation of the virus last year due to lockdown.

She said: 'As a result we may see lower levels of population immunity against the flu and more strains in circulation this winter.

'To combat this, a record 35 million people are eligible for a free flu jab this year. This provides us with another way that we can keep our country safe.'

Conservative former health secretary Jeremy Hunt pressed the Government on vaccinating teenagers, saying: 'One of the reasons why we are behind other European countries when it comes to vaccinating teenagers is because the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) didn't give its decision until September, whereas France was able to start vaccinating before the summer holiday.'

Mr Hunt also questioned Ms Throup on mandatory jabs for NHS workers, adding he would support the measure 'if the Government brought it to the House'.

The vaccines minister said Health Secretary Sajid Javid will make an announcement on mandatory vaccination for NHS workers in the future.
Scientists have discovered a gene common in South Asian people that doubles the risk of death from Covid.

Oxford University researchers found the LZTFL1 gene  present in 60 per cent of South Asians  allows the virus to multiply in the lungs easier.

For comparison, it is only found in 15 per cent of European people and two per cent of black Africans.

Scientists say the genetic quirk may partly explain why South Asian people in the UK have been disproportionately affected by Covid.

But they emphasised the single gene is not the sole reason for the disparity, and highlighted the seriousness of social and economic factors.



Office for National Statistics data show Bangladeshi men were nearly five times as likely to die with the virus than their white counterparts during the second wave of the pandemic in England.

Pakistani men were the second most affected (3.4 times as likely), while Indian men were the fourth worst hit ethnic group (1.95 times as likely).

Scientists have discovered a gene found in 61.2 per cent of people with South Asian ancestry that doubles the risk of death from Covid

Covid deaths in the second wave were up to five times higher in Bangladeshi Brits than white adults in England, ONS data has shown

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show fatalities were worst in Black African Britons last spring

Covid deaths in second wave were up to FIVE TIMES higher in Bangladeshi Brits compared to white adults Covid deaths in the second wave were up to five times higher in Bangladeshi Brits than white adults in England, official data revealed today. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show Britons from the 'Black African' demographic group were worst-hit last spring. But the trend has changed between the first and second waves, according to the Government's statistical body. The ONS analysis  which goes up until the end of March  crunched the data of every coronavirus victim aged 30-100 listed on the 2011 census. It showed Black African Britons, a group distinct from people with Black Caribbean backgrounds, were 3.7 times more likely to die than white people in the first wave, up to September 11. That dropped to 1.62 in the second wave, considered as starting the day after. For comparison, the risk among Bangladeshi Brits went from three to 4.96. The ONS offered no explanation as to why coronavirus deaths were higher in BAME people, or why the second wave hit certain communities harder. Scientists investigating the topic have repeatedly claimed a number of factors are behind the link, including ethnic minorities being more likely to be key workers who come into contact with more people. Other included living in crowded housing, where transmission is more likely, as well as having underlying conditions that raise the risk of getting seriously ill. Advertisement

Experts had previously found a stretch of DNA could double the risk of dying in adults aged 65 and above but were not aware of the exact gene that was causing the effect.

Professor Jim Hughes, a genetics expert who co-lead the study, said: 'The reason this has proved so difficult to work out, is that the previously identified genetic signal affects the 'dark matter' of the genome.

'We found that the increased risk is not because of a difference in gene coding for a protein, but because of a difference in the DNA that makes a switch to turn a gene on.

'It's much harder to detect the gene which is affected by this kind of indirect switch effect.'

The team used a newly-developed, highly accurate technique to analyse people's DNA and pinpoint the exact gene behind the effect.

LZTFL1 was found to cause more severe disease by blocking a protein that allows the lungs to fight off the virus.

It makes it easier for the virus to enter the lung cells and multiply, causing them to deteriorate.

The fact the gene works in this way means it has no impact on how well vaccines protect people against Covid, the researchers said.

Scientists had feared the gene was impacting people's immune systems, which could have meant jabs would not work as well on them.

Professor James Davies, one of the co-leads of the study, told a press briefing: 'If this gene hit the immune system, you would be really worried that people with this genotype would not respond to the vaccine.

'The way this gene affects the lung is a completely different mechanism to the way the vaccine works against the virus.

'The effect is in the biology of the lungs, which means people with the higher risk version of the gene should respond fully to vaccination.'

He added: 'The higher risk DNA code is found more commonly in some black and minority ethnic communities but not in others.

'Socioeconomic factors are also likely to be important in explaining why some communities have been particularly badly affected by the Covid pandemic.

Although we cannot change our genetics, our results show that the people with the higher risk gene are likely to particularly benefit from vaccination.

'Since the genetic signal affects the lung rather than the immune system it means that the increased risk should be cancelled out by the vaccine.'

Dr Raghib Ali, an infectious disease expert at the University of Cambridge, said the discovery of the gene has helped understanding of why death rates have been so high in South Asian communities.

But Dr Ali, who is also an independent adviser on Covid and ethnicity to the Race Disparity Unit in the Cabinet Office, said it was important not to brush over other factors, including deprivation.

But he added: 'There has been an unexplained residual excess risk in South Asians even after taking these risk factors into account.

'Other studies have also shown that South Asians and Bangladeshis in particular  but not black groups  have worse survival than whites.

'This study, as well as others, show that this may be due to them being more likely to carry this gene which increases their risk of death once infected.

'Vaccine uptake has been high in South Asian groups but this study reinforces the importance of taking the booster doses now to maximise their protection and reduce their risk as immunity is now waning.'
A woman who became 'very unwell' with salmonella after eating five bags of pork scratchings has launched legal action to see if the illness triggered her subsequent heart failure.

Mr Porky products, made by Tayto Group at a factory in Lancashire, were recalled in September when 179 people were reported to have suffered diarrhoea, vomiting and fever following consumption.

A number were also reported to have been hospitalised, including Susan Williamson, 64, from Blackhall Colliery, County Durham.

She became ill with salmonella infantis, underwent a number of follow-up tests and was later diagnosed with heart failure.

Mrs Williamson has now instructed public health experts at Irwin Mitchell to investigate how she became unwell and whether her heart failure is linked to her salmonella illness.

'The last few months have been an absolute nightmare and it doesn't seem to be coming to an end anytime soon,' she said.

'When I fell ill after eating the pork scratchings, I thought it might make me a bit sick and off colour for a few days.

' Never did I ever imagine that it would lead to salmonella and I would still be suffering more than two months on. I'm still very unwell now and have been told I'll need medical care for a long time. It's been such a traumatic time for me and my family.'

Mr Porky products, made by Tayto Group at a factory in Lancashire, were recalled in September after 179 people were reported to have suffered diarrhoea, vomiting and fever following consumption

Susan Williamson, who became 'very unwell' with salmonella after eating five bags of pork scratchings, has launched legal action to see if the illness triggered her subsequent heart failure

Salmonella food poisoning: Symptoms and what you should do if you've been infected Food contaminated with salmonella bacteria does not usually look, smell, or taste spoiled. However, anyone can become sick with a salmonella infection - and children, seniors and people with underlying health conditions are at higher risk of serious illness. Anyone who has eaten any recalled products and developed symptoms of salmonella food poisoning should seek medical attention. Salmonella infection symptoms can mimic other illnesses, frequently leading to misdiagnosis. Symptoms include diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, and fever within 12 to 72 hours after eating contaminated food. Otherwise, healthy adults are usually sick for four to seven days. Head of the Gastrointestinal Pathogens Unit of PHE's National Infection Service, Saheer Gharbia, said: 'Salmonella generally causes a mild illness, although vulnerable groups like children under five years, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems may experience more severe illness and may require hospitalisation. 'Symptoms of a Salmonella infection include diarrhoea, stomach cramps and sometimes vomiting and fever. 'Anyone who is concerned about symptoms should contact their GP or out of hours service in the first instance.' Advertisement

Mrs Williamson bought a multipack of five bags of pork scratchings on August 3 and ate them over a few days.

She fell ill on August 8 and began to suffer with sickness and diarrhoea, as well as hallucinations.

Mrs Williamson contacted her GP and the NHS 111 service as her condition deteriorated over the following days. On August 12, she was taken to hospital by ambulance and was admitted.

She was put on a drip overnight and discharged the next morning, Two days later, she was readmitted to hospital, diagnosed with salmonella infantis on August 17 and discharged on August 23.

Mrs Williamson subsequently consulted her GP surgery on various occasions, complaining of breathing issues, loss of appetite, fatigue and shaking.

On September 17, she attended hospital where she was given a chest X-ray. An ECG was performed and she was found to have suffered heart failure and was readmitted to hospital.

Doctors have told Mrs Williamson she will need ongoing care and a procedure on her heart.

She and her husband, Paul, had been due to go on a couple of holidays in their motor home but these were cancelled because of her illness.

Life has still not gone back to normal for Mrs Williamson as she is still suffering tiredness and the complications arising from the salmonella.

'It's also very worrying to think that there could be more people out there suffering like I am, and we deserve to have some answers as to how this happened,' she added.

'I know an investigation can't change what I'm going through, but at the very least it can hopefully help prevent it happening to others in the future.'

Irwin Mitchell is now instructed by eight people who say they have fallen ill after eating Mr Porky products.

Sebastian Thornton, 37, from Malton in North Yorkshire, said he ate Mr Porky products as part of a Thai dish and shortly afterwards he fell ill on July 1 with fever, diarrhoea, sweats, and lethargy.

He also experienced shakes and was passing blood. The self-employed professional joiner was hospitalised on July 4 as a result of his illness. He was discharged two days later with antibiotics.

'By the time I heard about the recall, I had already eaten the pork scratchings. Within a few days, I felt awful,' he said.

'I ended up having to go into hospital and after I was discharged I was told I had salmonella infantis. It was a huge shock. The impact of my illness lasted for around six weeks, so I wasn't able to work during that time.

Mr Porky products are made by Tayto Group (stock image)

'It's really worrying to think that so many other people have also been struck down with symptoms of salmonella. I feel it's important that an investigation takes place to try and prevent this from happening to others in the future.'

The legal firm supports people affected by illness outbreaks such as the well-known outbreaks of salmonella at the Real China restaurant and the Newcastle Spice Festival, as well as the Chapman and Sons butchers' salmonella outbreak in Blackhall Colliery in 2018.

Sebastian Thornton said he ate Mr Porky products as part of a Thai dish and shortly afterwards he fell ill on July 1 with fever, diarrhoea, sweats, and lethargy

Clare Pearson, the specialist public health lawyer at Irwin Mitchell representing Susan, said: 'Susan is among a number of people who have been diagnosed with Salmonella Infantis and other illnesses after consuming pork scratchings.

'Not only is salmonella a serious bacterial infection, it can often lead to ongoing and long-lasting health problems, and even death.

'In some cases, salmonella has been known to have the ability to lead to cardiovascular complications. We're now investigating how our clients fell ill and also whether Susan's heart failure is linked to her salmonella infection.

'While we can't change what Susan and the other people we represent are going through, we're determined to get them the answers they deserve as to how this happened and will support them throughout the process.

'If any others have also fallen unwell like Susan after eating pork scratchings we would like to hear from them as this will assist us with our investigations.

'It's also important that if during the course of our investigations any issues are identified, necessary lessons are learned to ensure food hygiene standards are met in the future.'

At the time of the reports, Public Health England and the Food Standards Agency urged people not to eat packets with a best-before date up to February 2022.

A spokesperson for Tayto Group said: 'At Tayto Group, we take the safety of our products very seriously which is why we swiftly halted production and issued a product recall.

'Since then, in conjunction with the relevant agencies, we have conducted a detailed investigation and implemented changes before restarting production.

'We have been in touch with a number of consumers directly and are working closely with them to resolve their concerns.

'We are very sorry to hear that a number of people are still feeling unwell and we wish them a speedy recovery.'
Two wayward flamingos have been rescued at locations deep in cold Siberia after taking wrong turns as they migrated and ending up 4,350 miles way.

The first with an awry sense of direction was found at the Sporyshevskoye oil field in the subarctic Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region.

Denis Islamov, production operator, said: 'It was freezing, obviously emaciated.

'It was standing, but then, maybe frightened, it sat on the snow and hid its head under its wing.

Two wayward flamingos (pictured) have been rescued at locations deep in cold Siberia after taking wrong turns as they migrated and ending up 4,350 miles way

Anna Livtinova (pictured) assisted the second flamingo and said 'it was weak' and showed signs of frostbite after being examined by an ecologist

The trips that the flamingos made is unexplained and they were lucky to be found by workers in the region which sees some of the coldest temperatures on the planet

'I took off my jacket, wrapped it up, and we took it away.'

The bird probably intended to fly from Kazakhstan to winter in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Sudan but for unknown reasons flew north instead of south.

The temperature when it was rescued was around minus 7C.

The second lost flamingo was found 1,160 miles to the east on Monday in the world's coldest permanently populated region, Yakutia.

Shivering and emaciated, it was close to another famous Russian energy installation, the Chayandinskoye gas field.

Oil production director Anna Litvinova said the bird had been saved by worker Sultan Magomedov who realised it was a visitor from a tropical climate.

A first shivering bird was found 45 miles from remote Sporyshevskoye oil field, Siberia after inexplicably flying north instead of south for the winter

The temperature was luckily unseasonably mild when the birds were found but the climate was far colder than what the flamingo was expecting in Saudi Arabia or Egypt

The second exotic bird was found at the Chayandinskoye gas field (pictured) in Siberia, around 4000 miles away from where it had expected to find itself

Here the temperature was an unseasonably mild minus 5C, but it was far too cold for the flamingo which is more than 4,000 miles from its intended destination.

'It was weak,' said Anna.

'The bird was examined by an ecologist from Gazprom Neft Zapolyarye and concluded that it showed signs of frostbite.

'But after a few hours the flamingo came to its senses, and it drinks water, bathes, and is rather active.

'We feed him with vegetables, seaweed, today we gave him an egg and pollock.

'The bird eats little by little.

'The flamingo responded to the name 'Grisha', so we named him Grisha, although we do not know his gender. '

In both cases, the energy saviours are looking for experts at faraway zoos to get help with the animals.

As temperatures plunge, they cannot release the birds into the wild.
The government has been torn apart online after a screeching U-turn on overhauling the standards system and getting Tory MP Owen Paterson off the hook.

Social media users mocked ministers after Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg was deployed to confirm they had backtracked in the wake of furious opposition.

Some were furious at the move and blasted the Tories for the 'stupid' decision to hold a vote yesterday in the first place.

But others subjected the ruling party to brutal mockery, with one asking if people are suffering from whiplash from the constant U-turns.

The PM watered down the plans to overhaul the disciplinary process for MPs and review Mr Paterson's alleged breach of the rules after outrage this morning.

Mr Rees-Mogg said he would seek 'cross-party' changes to the system after Labour and other opposition parties refused to take part in a 'corrupt committee'.

He suggested any changes may not 'apply retrospectively' after the Government came under intense criticism for blocking Mr Paterson's immediate suspension.

But later the MP for North Shropshire took things into his own hands by quitting as a politician to be 'outside the cruel world of politics'.

Social media users were unforgiving online and panned the government for the embarrassing volte-face.

The PM's former chief aide Dominic Cummings branded him a shopping trolley again - in reference to Mr Johnson smashing between aisles.

He tweeted: 'Alert: crash, smash, arghhhh ... forward to victory chief [thumbs up, rush from room].'

Another person wrote: 'Boris Johnson wakes up with yet another red wine hangover and makes the 48th U-Turn of his premiership.'

One man said: 'A government U-turn after public backlash to another stupid decision.'

Another put: 'Put your hands up, bend your knees bounce around in a circle, get down with me come on, come on, it's not hard to learn Come on, come on, it's called the U-Turn'

A woman said online: 'Arriving at Platform 1: the predicted Tory U-turn to Embarrassment, Shame, and Corruption.

'This train of misery will decouple at Owen Paterson, with the rear portion continuing to Egregious Breach.'

One put: 'Was trying to do some training on a call, my phone went off and I saw the word u-turn, and then burst in to tears of laughter.'

And one more added: 'So with this latest U-Turn, does this mean the Tory party are giving up on sleaze?'

Mr Rees-Mogg's comments to MPs came as an ethics adviser to the PM described Wednesday's votes as a 'very serious and damaging moment for Parliament'.

Lord Evans, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said plans for a Tory-led review was 'deeply at odds with the best traditions of British democracy'.

The Commons Leader recognised standards must be reformed on a cross-party basis as he acknowledged 'that is clearly not the case' with the proposals.

He said: 'While there is a very strong feeling on both sides of the House that there is a need for an appeals process, there is equally a strong feeling that this should not be based on a single case or apply retrospectively.

'I fear last night's debate conflated an individual case with the general concern. This link needs to be broken.

'Therefore I and others will be looking to work on a cross-party basis to achieve improvements in our system for future cases.

'We will bring forward more detailed proposals once there have been cross-party discussions.'

Despite his measured tone, there were jeers from across the House and social media users continued to pile on the U-turn.

One person joked: 'Another U-turn? Are you a journalist following British politics? Speak to a specialist whiplash lawyer today!'

Another male user said online: 'Government U-turn when they realise public don't like crooks.'

A Labour councillor wrote: 'Getting Jacob Rees-Mogg; the man who embodies old school tie elitism to announce all of this; its so out of touch you can't even begin.

'U-turn imminent but the whole affair looks like the same old Tory elites; one rule for them and another for everyone else.'

Chris Boyd posted on his Twitter account on Thursday morning: 'Tfw you see the latest tory u-turn.'

The move had meant a motion on suspending Mr Paterson for 30 days for lobbying rule breaches is now set to be brought before the House again.

The PM had smashed convention by ordering his party to oppose the conclusions of the standards watchdog.

But the amendment 'pausing' the process and calling for a reform of the sleaze rules only passed as he was hit with a major revolt from backbenchers.

The block sparked chaos and left the existing system for regulating MPs' behaviour in tatters as Opposition parties vowed to boycott plans to agree a new one.

Mr Paterson was found to have committed an 'egregious' breach of standards rules by directly advocating for two companies from which he pocketed some 500,000.

He denies wrongdoing, saying he would do it all again, and called for standards commissioner Kathryn Stone to resign.

This was endorsed during media rounds by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng just hours before the volte-face.

But later in the day Mr Paterson dramatically quit as an MP and said he wanted to 'remain a public servant but outside the cruel world of politics'.

He said: 'This is a painful decision but I believe the right one. The last two years have been an indescribable nightmare for my family and me.

'My integrity, which I hold very dear, has been repeatedly and publicly questioned.

'I maintain that I am totally innocent of what I have been accused of and I acted at all times in the interests of public health and safety.

'I, my family and those closest to me know the same. I am unable to clear my name under the current system.'
A mother who killed her five youngest children after seeing a picture of her ex-husband with a new woman has been jailed for life in Germany.

Christiane K, now 28, drugged daughters Melina, one, Leonie, two, and Sophie, three, along with sons Timo, six, and Luca, eight, in September last year before suffocating or drowning them in the bath and placing their bodies in their beds.

Her eldest son, 11-year-old Marcel, survived only because he was at school but told the court that his mother asked him to jump in front of a train with her when he arrived home. He refused, and was instead put on a train to his grandmother's house.

Christiane then attempted to kill herself by jumping on to tracks in Dusseldorf, but survived and was arrested. On Thursday, a court in the city of Solingen jailed her for a minimum of 15 years while all-but ruling out the possibility of release after that.

Christiane K, now 28, has been jailed for life with a minimum of 15 years in jail and little prospect of release after that after being found guilty of murdering five of her six children

Christiane drugged and then smothered daughters Melina, one, Leonie, two, and Sophie, three, along with sons Timo, six, and Luca, eight, in September last year. Eldest son Marcel, 11 (pictured together), survived only because he was at school

Judge Jochen Kotter, who was overseeing the case, described it as a 'tragedy'.

Prosecutors told the court how Christiane - who was only identified by her first name in line with German privacy law - had lived a 'facade' life with her third husband in which she played the role of the perfect mother.

She 'had a longing for a healthy family and took refuge in the role of mother', the court was told.

But, shortly before the murders took place, her husband had left her and the facade had crumbled.

Christiane was left alone with six children, four of whom were from her last marriage, and was 'emotionally overwhelmed'.

Prosecutors said the catalyst for the murders was a Facebook image that Christiane's ex had uploaded on the morning of September 3 showing him with a new partner.

The court heard that Christiane then messaged him, telling him that he would never see his children again.

'After the facade was removed, the children had no function,' prosecutors said.

Police were alerted to the tragedy by Christiane's mother, but arrived too late to save any of the children who were found wrapped in towels in their beds

Christiane is then thought to have slipped a cocktail of drugs into the children's breakfasts which sedated them enough that they could be easily killed.

She then suffocated or drowned the children in the bath, wrapped their bodies in towels, and placed them into their beds.

When her 11-year-old arrived home from school, she asked him to jump in front of a train with her then sent him to his grandmother's house when he refused.

Along the way, he is thought to have texted with someone at his school telling them that his siblings were dead.

The murders took place in Solingen, a city close to Dusseldorf in western Germany, on September 3 last year

It was the boy's grandmother who alerted police to the crime, saying she had learned of their fates directly from her daughter.

Officers then raced to the woman's flat but arrived too late to resuscitate the kids.

Christiane made her way to Dusseldorf Central Station when she threw herself under a train, but survived with serious injuries.

Christiane claimed that a masked intruder had broken into the house, tied her up, and then killed the children, but was unable to provide any evidence of this.

Prosecutors had been asking for an acquittal, but the request was dismissed.

Psychiatric experts examined Christiane before trial, and found that she was fit to stand and be held criminally responsible.

The case garnered nationwide attention in Germany, where she was branded 'Todesmutter' or 'Death mother'.
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Eco-activists have lashed out at COP26 organisers over the blue zone menu which features a burger with the carbon equivalent of a ten-mile journey.





Animal rights groups compared offering meat and dairy at the climate summit to 'serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference'.

The Government promised the food served to delegates would be almost 60 percent meat and dairy based and sourced from Scottish farms.

Every meal offered on the menu at Glasgow's SEC has a carbon dioxide score rating, which measures how much greenhouse gas was emitted to create it.

Critics have pointed out that some of the dishes, including the burger and mozarella pizza, have a carbon footprint of 2.1 to 3.9kg Co2.

The Government promised to source most of the climate summit's menu (pictured), which is almost 60 percent meat and dairy based, from Scottish farms

Animal rights groups compared the COP26 menu to 'serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference'. Pictured: XR Demonstrators during the Cop26 summit in Glasgow earlier today

Eco-activists have lashed out at the COP26 menu for featuring a burger with the carbon footprint equivalent of a ten-mile journey. Pictured: XR demonstrators at COP26 earlier today

Pictured: Demonstrators marched on Glasgow's SEC centre where the COP26 conference was being held earlier today

Some 80 percent of the ingredients are from Scotland, which cut down on transport emissions, but meat is still more damaging to the environment than vegetables because of the impact of feeding the animal.

Joel Scott-Halkes, a spokesperson for campaign group Animal Rebellion, told the Big Issue that offering meat, seafood and dairy at a climate conference was like 'serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference'.

The Salmon and Conservation Trust also questioned the sustainability of the farmed salmon on offer.

Andrew Graham-Stewart, director of Salmon and Trout Conservation, said the decision 'beggars belief'.

The menu's lowest carbon options were meat free - including a kale and vegetable pasta dish which created just 0.3kg of carbon per serving.

Swedish start-up Klimato was responsible for calculating the carbon footprint of all menu items. It said it wanted to 'help [people] choose the dishes with the lowest carbon footprint' but it is unclear what happens to the high-carbon food if no one chooses to eat it.

Demonstrators at a Extinction Rebellion protest during the Cop26 summit in Glasgow

Pictured: Environmental activists gathered at the COP26 conference in Glasgow wearing white masks

What is the carbon footprint of the items on the COP26 menu? Salads Canned Scottish Beetroot and Broccoli 0.2kg Co2 Shredded Scottish Chicken 0.5kg Co2 Loch Duart Smoked Salmon and Fennel 0.4kg Co2 Pasta Organic Kale and Seasonal Vegetable Pasta 0.3kg Co2 Graised Gartmorn Farm Turkey Meatballs 0.9kg Co2 Burgers Scottish Beef Burger 3.9kg Co2 Buttermilk Grilled Chicken Burger 1.1kg Co2 Herblabism Herb Burger 0.6kg Co2 Pizza Scottish Field Mushroom 0.8kg Co2 Smoked chicken 1.7kg Co2 Scottish Buffalo Mozzarella 2.1kg Co2 Advertisement

Each page on the menu reads: 'According to the WWF, we need to get [the carbon footprint of food] down below 0.5kg CO2e [per meal] to reach the goals defined in the Paris Agreement.

'By including climate labels on our menus, we aim to make it easier to achieve this goal  together.'

Mr Scott-Halkes added that serving meat was 'reckless' and slammed it as a 'damning indictment of the UK government's utter failure to grasp the root cause of the climate crisis'.

Mr Graham-Steward added: 'To include farmed salmon on the COP26 menu beggars belief.

'One wonders what level of scrutiny and due diligence was applied before the menu was finalised.'

MailOnline has contacted the organisers of COP26 for comment.

This comes as Extinction Rebellion activists marched through the south side of Glasgow as part of a demonstration around the Cop26 summit.

The 'march for peace' started at a Home Office building in Cessnock before heading along Govan Road towards the BAS Systems facility.

Protesters gave speeches and banged drums outside the Home Office building before setting off.

Earlier, protesters dressed as Pikachu gathered opposite the Cop26 conference as climate protests continue in Glasgow.

The giant Pokemon were demanding an end to Japan's support for coal power.

On Thursday morning, a group called No Coal Japan held up a banner saying 'Japan, time to end coal' on the opposite bank of the Clyde.

They say Japan is continuing to finance coal plants in Bangladesh and Indonesia.

It comes after several demonstrations took place in Glasgow on Wednesday, including an Extinction Rebellion march through the city attended by hundreds.

On Wednesday evening, Police Scotland said five arrests had been made at the demonstration, including two after an incident where officers were sprayed with paint.

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie said: 'We will provide a proportionate policing response to any protest and it is therefore extremely disappointing that officers were assaulted by having paint sprayed in their faces.

'These officers were simply doing their job and trying to protect people and keep them safe.'

On Friday, thousands are expected to march through Glasgow with the Fridays for Future movement founded by Greta Thunberg.

Saturday will see another large march from the Cop26 Coalition, with organisers saying tens of thousands are expected.
Ghislaine Maxwell has accused prison guards of telling her youre not special as she made a desperate sixth bid for bail.

Maxwell claimed that during a hearing this week a guard waited until he was alone with her and became verbally threatening.

The guard allegedly said: You think you are special? You are not special. Remember you are in custody and the judge doesnt care about you.

Maxwells lawyer claimed that her disturbing treatment meant she should be released immediately.

Her conditions in the prison are so bad they are akin to the surveillance of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of The Lambs, wrote Bobbi Sternheim. It was a claim her legal team first made in April and repeated again in the latest six-page letter to the judge.

Jury selection in Ghislaine Maxwells trial began Wednesday with the first of 600 jurors filing into a court in New York. as she tried to get bail for a sixth time.

Over two days they will answer questions about their availability and whether they can serve to whittle them down to a panel of 12 people.

According to a draft of the jury questionnaire, jurors will be asked if about their views on the MeToo movement and if they are prejudiced against people with luxurious lifestyles

Other questions asked in the questionnaire include whether or not the perspective juror has formed any opinions about Maxwell, posted on social media about Maxwell or Epstein or have been or known of anyone who has been accused of sexual harassment, abuse or assault

They would also be asked if they would have trouble getting to court on time and whether anything else would prevent them from being fair and impartial.

Potential jurors will be questioned in open court by the judge and the prosecution and defense on Monday.

Opening statements are due to begin on November 29th.

Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyer says the alleged child sex trafficker's treatment in jail 'rivals scenes of Hannibal Lecter' (pictured with Jeffrey Epstein in 2005)

Bobbi Sternheim said the treatment brings to mind Anthony Hopkins' character in Silence of the Lambs (pictured)

In a court filing Sternheim wrote that the male US Marshal assigned to Maxwell for Mondays hearing was inappropriately rough with and threatening to her.

The filing said: His brusque manner was evident in the courtroom. When alone with Ms. Maxwell, he stated, in substance: You think you are special. You are not special. Remember you are in custody and the judge doesnt care about you.

The marshals vitriol runs counter to the presumption of innocence and reflects poorly on the districts Marshal Service. I made a complaint to the US Marshal and have requested that this particular marshal not be assigned to Ms. Maxwells detail in the future.

According to the letter, the US Marshals are investigating.

Sternheim demanded her client be released from jail before the trial gets properly underway on November 29, reiterating Maxwell has been subjected to horrific treatment and sexual abuse by guards.

The lawyer said the British socialite's 16 months in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn has been 'reprehensible and utterly inappropriate for (a) woman on the cusp of turning 60 with no criminal record or history of violence'.

She added: 'The surveillance rivals scenes of Dr. Hannibal Lecter's incarceration despite the absence of the cage and plastic face guard.'

Maxwell has already been denied bail five times and was previously deemed a 'significant risk of flight' by US District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan, who is overseeing the case.

Sternheim cited several factors behind Maxwell's renewing her proposed $28.5million bail package, which also included offers to renounce her non-US citizenships and move most of her and her husband's assets into a separate account.

In her letter, Sternheim wrote: 'My weekly in-person legal visits with Ms. Maxwell are conducted under the most humiliating circumstances that I have ever experienced in many decades of federal criminal practice. As disturbing and invasive as they are for no justifiable reason, I get to leave; Ms. Maxwell does not.'

She said Maxwell 'suffers from headaches and back pain and general physical weakness' and alleges she has been 'touched in a sexually inappropriate manner by corrections officers on multiple occasions'.

She adds: 'Many of the officers are openly hostile toward her and have mentioned having read the press and seen various television shows which amplify their hostility.'

The lawyer said the British socialite's 16 months in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn has been 'reprehensible and utterly inappropriate'

Maxwell (pictured left with a black eye earlier this year) has already been denied bail five times and was previously deemed a 'significant risk of flight' by US District Judge Alison Nathan (right)

The lawyer claims if the treatment continues, 'it is highly likely that she will not have the stamina to assist in her defense and endure the physical demands of a five-day per week, multi-week court proceedings'.

Sternheim says Maxwell is being made to live in 'unsanitary conditions' and is receiving 'insufficient nutrition' to the point she has lost 15 pounds and her hair is falling out.

The move is a last-ditch bid to free Maxwell before the trial starts this month.

Jury selection kicks off this morning with around 600 potential jurors filling out questionnaires that will then be used to determine who sits on the panel of 12 plus six alternates.

They will be asked questions about trial logistics and assessed if they can be impartial about an accused sex predator.

One of the questions reads: 'During the trial, you will hear evidence alleging sex crimes against underage girls. Some of the evidence in this case will involve sexually suggestive or sexually explicit conduct.

'Is there anything about the nature of this case and the accusations as summarized at the beginning of this questionnaire that might make it difficult for you to be a fair and impartial juror in this case?'

Another says: 'Do you have any specific views or feelings concerning laws regarding the age at which individuals can or cannot consent to sexual activity with other individuals that would affect your ability to serve as a fair and impartial juror?'

Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and other charges for helping recruit and groom underage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.

Epstein killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, in what a medical examiner called a suicide.

Questions asked include whether or not the perspective juror has formed any opinions about Maxwell, posted on social media about Maxwell or Epstein or have been or known of anyone who has been accused of sexual harassment, abuse or assault

A graying and shackled Ghislaine Maxwell appeared at a pretrial hearing at federal court in New York Monday

Maxwell's attorneys filed a series of last-minute motions seeking to include and block certain evidence from her upcoming sex trafficking trial

Earlier this week, Maxwell suffered a series of legal setbacks at a pretrial hearing in New York after a federal judge denied her bid to include a swathe of evidence in the upcoming proceedings.

Judge Alison Nathan on Monday ruled against a number of last-minute motions filed by the defense that sought to impose restrictions on prosecutors and question their decision to level charges at the trial.

The judge ruled that any evidence suggesting that the case against Maxwell was brought for 'political' reasons could not be introduced in front of the jury.

She also sided with prosecutors by allowing victims to use pseudonyms when testifying, adding a layer of secrecy to the case which has already come under intense scrutiny.

Sternheim told the courtroom Maxwell was awoken hours before dawn and was forced to 'get on her hands and knees' to get in the prison van to attend the hearing because she was in leg shackles.

Maxwell was also not allowed to look at legal materials, Sternheim told the court.
The doll-obsessed man accused of kidnapping Cleo Smith was spotted just a week ago with a car full of children's toys, a neighbour has revealed to Daily Mail Australia.

Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, was charged with multiple offences including forcibly taking a child under 16 and appeared in Carnarvon Magistrate's Court on Thursday barefoot and wearing a T-shirt.

Police allege Kelly, who boasted of his bizarre Bratz doll collection online, snatched the little girl from her family tent while she slept at the remote Blowholes campsite in Western Australia on October 16.

A massive state-wide investigation over 18 days eventually led detectives to a Tonkin Crescent property in Carnarvon where Cleo was found alone, with police reportedly waiting for Kelly to leave before they smashed their way into the home.

Kelly was bundled out of a car and placed in handcuffs shortly after the raid at 11.30pm on Tuesday, with grainy taxi footage revealing for the first time the moment he was arrested.

The state's top cop said the unlikely rescue, brought about by tireless detective work, will go down as one of the proudest moments in WA police history.

Commissioner Chris Dawson said he will never forget the moment he watched little Cleo fall asleep in her mother's arms moments after the pair were reunited.

In the close-knit housing commission community where Kelly lives, neighbours have been left scratching their heads at the revelation the 'quiet bloke' from their street is allegedly the man at the centre of the world's biggest story.

He was known to buy girls toys including Disney Princess and Bratz dolls from the local Toyworld store long before he was arrested - even though he doesn't have any kids - but locals assumed it must have just been for his extended family.

Cleo Smith's alleged kidnapper Terry Kelly, 36, is pictured with Bratz dolls on his social media

Bizarre details have emerged about the accused's strange obsession with toys as numerous social media accounts linked to Kelly show a room full of children's dolls (pictured)

A massive state-wide investigation eventually led detectives to a Tonkin Crescent home in Carnarvon where Cleo (pictured with her mum Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon) was found alone in the room of a rundown house

In various social media profiles, Kelly shares images of himself in a Bratz doll T-shirt along with other photos of an entire room full of dolls with the toys stacked from floor to ceiling.

More recent purchases, while Cleo was still missing, seem to have attracted the attention of police, with the local toy shop asked to hand over CCTV footage.

Neighbour Henry Dodd claimed he saw the accused kidnapper with a dozen dolls in the back of his dark blue Mazda one week before his arrest, when police were desperately scouring the state searching for Cleo.

Mr Dodd said the brand new dolls were still in their packaging 'as if they had been collected from the post office'.

Neighbour Henry Dodd (pictured) claimed he saw the accused child predator with 'around ten' dolls in the back of Kelly's dark blue Mazda one week before his arrest when police were scouring the state searching for Cleo

Since Kelly's (pictured with a doll) arrest, multiple social media accounts have emerged which allegedly belonged to him, where he boasts about his love for Bratz dolls

'There were around ten or twelve dolls... and it looked like he had picked them up after they were delivered somewhere,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'You could see them in their boxes like he ordered them online.

'They were all piled in the back of his car.

'I thought it was weird. But I didn't know anything about him collecting dolls or anything. I didn't know he had a whole room full of them in his house.

'We didn't know that until it (was reported) today.'

Mr Dodd also claims to have passed the observation on to Carnarvon Police.

The four-year-old is now back in the arms of her mother Ellie Smith after being rescued (pictured) with police saying she had fallen asleep moments after their reunion

Neighbour Mr Dodd (pictured) said the brand new dolls were still in their packaging 'as if they had been collected from the post office'

Carnarvon Police declined to comment on Mr Dodd's claim, saying only that 'police have their own way of deciding what to follow up and not follow up on' with regards to tips from the public.

Police have ruled out paying the $1million reward for information about Cleo's whereabouts to anyone, with a spokesperson saying Kelly's arrest came about solely as a result of police work and not from one particular tip from the public.

Kelly was represented by a Geraldton Aboriginal Legal Service lawyer on Thursday afternoon in court, who appeared via video link and did not apply for bail.

The accused complained about the frenzied press coverage at the 'open court' asking the judge: 'What the f**k are the media doing here?'

He then yelled 'I'm coming for you!'

All of the windows at the home where Cleo was found (pictured) are completely blacked out - hidden from public view - and overgrown shrubs and bushes climb the walls of the housing commission home located in Tonkin Crescent

Junk was seen in the home's backyard on Thursday morning, as police continued to look inside

A dark blue Mazda (pictured) was pictured at the house as forensic police scour the property

For the rest of the hearing Kelly did not show much emotion, taking several moments to acknowledge his name and only nodding to indicate he understood the kidnapping charges against him.

He was closely guarded in the dock by two police officers and wore his long, black, curly hair down.

Charges were finally laid against Kelly after more than 30 hours of interrogation by detectives who have been relentlessly pursuing the case in the frantic race to rescue Cleo.

The alleged kidnapper was rounded up by investigators just before midnight on Wednesday following a 'tip off' from the public that was corroborated with mobile phone data, police said.

Kelly was bundled out of a car before officers held him on the ground and slapped handcuffs on him.

Just an hour or so later, detectives executed a search warrant on the Tonkin Crescent property where they found Cleo awake and well.

Bodycam footage shows the brave little girl being carried out of the house, with her hair clean and brushed and her pyjamas also fresh.

The tight-knight community in Carnarvon (pictured) is still reeling from the shocking news

Locals have been left scratching at the revelation the 'quiet bloke' on their street is allegedly the man at the centre of the world's biggest kidnapping story

TV news crews continue to broadcast from the scene where little Cleo was rescued after the case attracted the attention of the world's media - but with many outside of WA banned from travelling there due to the state's strict Covid restrictions

'It was a day that will go down in history as one of the greatest triumphs for WA Police Force. For many officers, it will be the greatest day of their careers,' Commissioner Dawson told the force's internal weekly magazine From The Line on Thursday.

He recounted how he met Cleo along with her parents Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon at the family home the day after she was rescued.

'As Cleo and her mum were exchanging kisses and hugs she fell asleep in Ellie's arms,' Mr Dawson said.

'None of us will forget that day. It's why we join the police force.

'From the bottom of my heart - which is so very swollen with pride - thank you to all... Enjoy this moment in history and let it carry you forward in service of our community.'

Homicide detective Cameron Blaine (pictured), who was one of the four detectives that freed Cleo from her 18-day nightmare, said he is amazed at how 'well and happy' she seems to be

Commissioner Chris Dawson (pictured) told reporters he will never forget the moment he watched little Cleo fall asleep in her mothers arms after she was saved

Homicide detective Cameron Blaine, who was one of the four detectives that freed Cleo from her 18-day nightmare, said he is amazed at how 'well and happy' she seems to be.

'It was really heartwarming to see that she's still bubbly and she's laughing, he said.

'She's falling asleep in her mother's arms. There was one occasion where she asked if she could lay next to mum and have Ellie look at her while she fell asleep.

'It's really good to see that she's adjusted, she's getting some sleep, she's playing in the backyard exactly how you would expect.'

This is the first picture released of Cleo Smith, safe and sound in hospital, after she was rescued from a house in Carnarvon, in northwest Western Australia

Pictured: The community of Carnarvon is celebrating Cleo's safe return home after the ordeal
Nadine Dorries today revealed she will consider banning tech giants such as Facebook from removing any content published by news websites to cement freedom of expression online and clamp down on Silicon Valley censorship.

The Culture Secretary insists her proposed Online Safety Bill will protect journalism by preventing social media firms deleting stories 'willy-nilly' after years of doing so without punishment - or recourse for recognised publishers.

Her admission that she is willing to consider coming down even harder on tech firms deleting news stories came during questioning by Lord Gilbert of Panteg, who sits on Parliament's and Draft Online Safety Bill (Joint Committee) and today urged the minister to simply 'tell Silicon Valley that they just cannot take down news content'.

In response Ms Dorries told Lord Gilbert she would seriously consider his recommendations, which would amount to complete publisher exemption from the Online Safety Bill after Facebook, Twitter and Google have all be accused of censoring stories from news websites they don't like.

Lord Gilbert, a Tory life peer, also asked her to also consider ensuring these US companies are forced to pay news outlets for the content their platforms share for free while raking in tens of millions of pounds in advertising each year. Again Ms Dorries said she would consider it.

It came days after MailOnline and other British publishers accused Google of using 'woke' algorithms to bury and downgrade their original content while bumping up stories from organisations they are more sympathetic to.

Nadine Dorries (pictured today) revealed she will consider banning tech giants such as Facebook from removing any content published by news websites during questioning by Lord Gilbert of Panteg (right) who urged the minister to simply 'tell Silicon Valley that they just cannot take down news content'

Facebook is unquestionably making hate worse, whistleblower warned Facebook is unquestionably making online hate worse because it is programmed to prioritise extreme content, a whistleblower warned MPs last week. Frances Haugen told MPs and peers that bosses at the social network were guilty of negligence in not accepting how the workings of their algorithm were damaging society. The American data scientist claimed the tech giant was subsidising hate because its business model made it cheaper to run angry and divisive adverts. Miss Haugen on October 26 told the joint committee on the draft Online Safety Bill that it was a critical moment for the UK to stand up and improve social media. The Bill will impose a duty of care on social media companies to protect users from harmful content and give watchdog Ofcom the power to fine them up to 10 per cent of their global turnover. Facebook is currently battling a crisis after Miss Haugen, a former product manager at the company, leaked thousands of internal documents that revealed its inner workings. Its founder Mark Zuckerberg has previously rejected her claims, saying her attacks on the company were misrepresenting the work it does. The committee highlighted how the tech giant had previously claimed it removes 97 per cent of hateful posts on the platform. But leaked research showed its own staff estimated that it only took down posts that generated around 3 to 5 per cent of hate speech and 0.6 per cent of content that breached its rules on violence and incitement. A Facebook spokesman said: Weve always had the commercial incentive to remove harmful content from our sites. People dont want to see it when they use our apps and advertisers dont want their ads next to it. Advertisement

Responding to the Culture Secretary's pledge to look at a full exemption for news publishers from the scope of the Online Safety Bill during a Draft Online Safety Bill oral evidence session this morning, News Media Association chief executive Owen Meredith said: 'We welcome the commitment given by the Culture Secretary to look at a full exemption for news publishers from the scope of the Online Safety Bill, including a positive duty on platforms not to take down news publisher content.

'We believe that a full and robust exemption from the regime is the best way to balance the need to protect freedom of speech with the laudable objectives of the legislation to crack down on online harms propagated by the platforms.

'We look forward to working with Government on how the exemption can be most effectively drafted and implemented.'

Today Ms Dorries named Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg and warned them they could be put in the dock if Facebook and their sites including Instagram continue to share 'toxic and hateful' content, particularly encouraging suicide, self-harm and anorexia.

She said that she wants to accelerate the introduction of personal liability sanctions for company managers to spark a faster response to the threat of online harms - cutting it from two years after the bill is passed to three to six months.

During her evidence, the Culture Secretary also criticised Facebook's recent company rebrand to Meta and its plans to work on the virtual world known as the metaverse, saying that while its boss Mark Zuckerberg and communications chief Nick Clegg want to 'take off into the metaverse' they should instead 'stay in the real world' because 'you will be accountable to this Act'.

The draft Bill includes personal criminal liability sanctions for executives which can be introduced two years after the implementation of the Bill.

However, Ms Dorries said it was 'nonsense' to give firms two years to change, confirming she was looking at 'three to six months' for criminal liability to be introduced.

'Now I believe we heard that they're (Facebook) putting 10 or 20,000 engineers on to the metaverse - put those 10 or 20,000 engineers now on to abiding by your terms and conditions and to removing your harmful algorithms because if you don't, this Bill will be watertight,' she said.

'They (social media platforms) have a chance to put that absolutely right now, why would we give them two years? Why would we give them two years to change what they can change today? Remove your harmful algorithms today and you will not be subjecting named individuals to criminal liability and prosecution'.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are trying to stop laws from being rolled out that would force their platforms to pay news publishers for content

Harmful posts such as the one above have been shared on Instagram and seen by children

Ms Dorries said she believed the Bill was 'possibly the most important piece of legislation to pass through Parliament' in her time as an MP, calling it a 'novel' piece of legislations that was 'groundbreaking' and 'extremely important'.

'So, to the platforms, take note now - it will not be two years,' she told the committee.

'We are looking at truncating that to a very much shorter timeframe and that's one of the areas as Secretary of State I want to go further in this Bill.

'I think it's just a nonsense that platforms have been given two years to make themselves ready for what would be criminal action.

'They know what they're doing now, they actually have the ability to put right what they're doing wrong now, they have the ability now to abide by their own terms and conditions - they could remove harmful algorithms tomorrow.'

Under the current proposals, tech firms that fail to protect their users from harmful content face fines of up to 10% of their global turnover - which could run into billions of pounds for the largest platforms - as well as having access to their sites blocked.
The World Health Organisation has blamed Europe's 'insufficient vaccine coverage' for a rising number of coronavirus cases in the region which are expected to kill another half a million people in the next three months.

The head of the WHO's Europe office warned that the region is now 'back at the centre of the pandemic' amid a soaring number of infections.

With 78 million cases in the WHO's European region - which spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia - the cumulative toll now exceeds that of South East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean region, the Western Pacific, and Africa combined, the organisation said.

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge blamed the caseload on Europe's 'insufficient vaccination coverage'.

While Britain was able to get on top of their world-beating vaccine rollout and administer 20 million jabs within a few weeks of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines being approved, EU leaders lagged behind in implementing a vaccine plan.

Countries such as France and Germany went back-and-forth about whether to rollout the AstraZeneca jab, which sowed doubts among the public and led to a low uptake of the vaccines.

It comes as Germany, the EU's most populous country, recorded the highest number of new coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic with 33,949 infections.

Germany's federal health Minister warned the country is in the grips of a 'massive' pandemic of the unvaccinated and that intensive care beds were starting to run out in some regions.

Meanwhile Britain on Thursday became the first country in the world to approve the use of Merck's anti-Covid pill to treat patients suffering from mild to moderate coronavirus infections.

Health minister Sajid Javid called the molnupiravir antiviral 'a game-changer for the most vulnerable and the immunosuppressed'.

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge blamed the rising number of covid cases on Europe's 'insufficient vaccination coverage'

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said: 'The current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region is of grave concern,' adding that one reliable projection would mean 'another half a million COVID-19 deaths' by February if the current trajectory continued.

'We are at another critical point of pandemic resurgence,' Kluge told reporters from WHO Europe headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. 'Europe is back at the epicenter of the pandemic, where we were one year ago.'

He said the difference now is that health authorities know more about the virus and have better tools to combat it.

Kluge blamed the soaring caseload on 'insufficient vaccination coverage' and 'the relaxation of public health and social measures' in some areas. Measures like testing, tracing, physical distancing and the use of face masks were still part of the 'arsenal' in fighting the virus, he said.

Hospital admission rates were higher in countries with lower vaccination rates, he said.

Kluge said hospitalization rates due to COVID-19 in the 53-country region more than doubled over the last week. If that trajectory continues, the region could see another half a million pandemic deaths by February, he said.

WHO Europe says the region tallied nearly 1.8 million new weekly cases, an increase of about 6% from the previous week, and 24,000 COVID-19 weekly deaths, - a 12% gain.

Kluge said the countries in the region were at 'varying stages of vaccination rollout' and that regionwide an average of 47% of people were fully vaccinated. Only eight countries had 70% of their populations fully vaccinated.

In countries such as the UK where cases have risen to 41,299, their effective vaccine-roll out has meant deaths are much lower than during the peak of the pandemic.

'This reflects the life-saving efforts of vaccines and the Herculean task of health authorities, health workforce and communities to develop, administer and accept vaccines,' he said.

An intensive care nurse and a specialist are busy caring for a Covid-19 patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at Dresden Municipal Hospital in Dresden, Germany, on Wednesday

Speaking about the countries with a low vaccine rollout, Kluge said: 'We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of COVID-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place.'

WHO's headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday reported that cases had risen in Europe for the fifth consecutive week, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing. The infection rate was by far the highest in Europe, which reported some 192 new cases per 100,000 people.

Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have seen daily case numbers shoot up in recent weeks, with about 250,000 cases and 3,600 deaths per day.

Over the past seven days, Russia has led the rise with 8,162 deaths, followed by Ukraine with 3,819 deaths and and Romania with 3,100 deaths, according to offical data.

Globally, the virus has killed more than five million people, while the overall caseload has topped 248 million.

The WHO estimates however that the pandemic's real toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19.

Although Germany was initially praised for its handling of the pandemic, the rapid uptick in cases and sluggish uptake in vaccinations among adults has led to mounting concern.

Despite vaccines being widely available, just 66.9 percent of the German population was fully inoculated as of Thursday, according to official figures.

Official figures show that about two thirds of the country's population of 83 million have had one dose of the vaccine. But around 16.2 million people age 12 or above remain unvaccinated - including 3.2 million over-60s.

'We are currently experiencing mainly a pandemic of the unvaccinated and it's massive,' Mr Spahn said on Wednesday, warning that 'in some regions in Germany intensive care beds are running out again'.

He added: 'The number of infections is increasing, as well as the number of deaths from Covid and especially the number of patients in intensive care units in some regions of Germany, regions where vaccination rates are not as high as in other regions.

'The truth is that there would be far fewer Covid-19 patients in intensive care if everyone who could do it got a vaccination.'

Germany's federal Health Minister Jens Spahn warned the country is in the grips of a 'massive' pandemic of the unvaccinated

Senior health officials have repeatedly appealed to German residents who haven't yet been vaccinated at all to get their shots, though Mr Spahn admitted that many of the holdouts can't be convinced.

Although officials agreed in August to make booster shots available to over-60s, nursing home residents and staff, only just over 2 million have been administered so far.

Germany hasn't made coronavirus vaccinations obligatory for any professional groups, unlike some of its European counterparts.

Mr Spahn is calling for curbs targeting unvaccinated people to tame the resurgence in infections.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has called the coronavirus trend 'very worrying', signalled she was in favour of stricter curbs focussed on the unvaccinated.

'If the pandemic situations in hospitals worsens... then further restrictions for unvaccinated people are possible,' Merkel said through her spokesman Steffen Seibert.

A recent survey also showed that the vast majority of Germany's still unvaccinated adults have no intention of getting inoculated against Covid.

'For the unvaccinated, the risk is high that they will become infected in the coming months,' warned RKI chief Lothar Wieler, speaking alongside Mr Spahn in Berlin.

'If we don't act now, this fourth wave will still bring a lot of suffering. Many people will become seriously ill and die, and the health care system will be heavily burdened.'

Mr Spahn called for more thorough checks at establishments or events where only those who can show they have been vaccinated, recovered from Covid or recently tested negative are allowed to enter.

In hard-hit regions, he said, access should be limited to those who are fully vaccinated or can show proof of recovery - a system that excludes the unvaccinated and is known as '2G' in Germany.

'It's nothing to do with vaccine bullying,' he said, 'but with avoiding an overloading of the healthcare system'.

He also recommended a bigger push on booster jabs, saying the current pace 'is insufficient'.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has called the coronavirus trend 'very worrying', signalled she was in favour of stricter curbs focussed on the unvaccinated

Mr Spahn's plea for all vaccinated Germans to get a third jab after six months is however at odds with the nation's STIKO vaccine commission, which for now is only recommending booster shots for the elderly and certain at-risk groups.

For the elderly, getting a booster was urgent, said Leif Erik Sander, who leads a research group on infection immunology at Berlin's Charite hospital.

'Our studies show that around 40 percent of people above 70 no longer have neutralising antibodies against the Delta variant six months after their vaccination,' he warned.

Pressure has been growing to implement mandatory tests in nursing homes after several outbreaks were reported in senior citizen homes in recent days that have led to more than a dozen residents dying.

The head of the association of family doctors, Ulrich Weigeldt, went even further on Thursday demanding mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for all employees working in nursing homes or hospitals.

'No unvaccinated person should have contact with such a vulnerable group, either professionally or as a visitor,' Weigeldt told daily tabloid Bild. 'This applies to senior citizen homes and nursing homes as well as to intensive care units.'

The Covid surge comes as Germany is in political limbo following September's general election, with the winning Social Democrats hoping to have a new coalition government in place by early December.

The incoming coalition parties have so far ruled out mandatory jabs and said there will be no new lockdowns - at least not for the vaccinated.

However, under Germany's federal system, regional states have significant powers to decide their own Covid approach, at times leading to a confusing patchwork of regulations.

The regional governments have limited access to some indoor events and facilities to people who have been vaccinated, have recently recovered or been tested, and some are tightening those rules.

The southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg on Wednesday introduced new rules in response to the fourth wave, after breaching a self-imposed threshold on occupied intensive care beds.

Unvaccinated adults in the state must now show a negative PCR test for many activities, including indoor dining and entry to cinemas, museums or gyms. The tests can cost upwards of 50 euros ($58).

The eastern state of Saxony aims to unveil tougher restrictions on Friday.

Under its proposed '2G' plans, unvaccinated people would be excluded from indoor dining, leisure facilities as well as bars and nightclubs.
Midsomer Murders star John Nettles will have one of the UK's largest solar farms on his doorstep after councillors voted in favour of the massive scheme this afternoon.

Torridge district councillors in Devon granted permission for the massive solar farm on agricultural land at Derril Water, near Pyworthy.

The scheme will see the installation of 76,000 solar panels on four pieces of land including 28 fields and will be surrounded by security fencing, 85 CCTV cameras on poles and 15 inverter substations in industrial containers, each with hard-standing

The council's planning committee approved the scheme by five votes to four despite more than 200 objections and a campaign by countryside charity Devon CPRE spearheaded by the actor, who moved to the area around a decade ago and has a smallholding near the site.

The Bergerac star had presented a short video campaigning against the scheme, arguing there are already six solar farms in the area, including Devon's biggest on 109 acres at Pitworthy.

Nettles branded it a 'hideous scheme' and said : 'I am not a NIMBY, I am a NIABY - not in anyone's backyard.'

Actor John Nettles has joined a campaign led by Mike Godfrey (right) to kill plans for one of the UK's largest solar farms on a large stretch of land in Pyworthy, Devon, near the actor's home

Locals said the development would ruin the landscape but the company behind it argued it would provide low-cost, low-carbon power for around 12,000 homes.

Mr Nettles also says that 'local residents feel enough is enough' and that the scheme would 'desecrate the pastoral vista in this part of Devon' and turn it into an 'industrialised landscape'.

Describing the plans as 'hideous', the actor, who keeps donkeys and horses on a plot of land near Holsworthy, added: 'People need to understand the enormous scale and visual impact of these solar farms.'

Mark Mariott has ploughed his life savings into a holiday lettings business which will overlook the solar farm.

He said he would not have invested in this agricultural and tourist area if he had been aware of the plan and said: 'Green energy should be on brown field sites.'

Actor Nettles said: 'Obviously we all need to reduce our carbon footprint but it's a question of getting the right balance.'

He said these solar farms will 'desecrate the pastoral vista in this part of Devon turning it into an industrialised landscape of solar panels across 28 fields'.

Local Roger Norsworthy said: 'This project is about greed not green and the local environment and community are simply collateral damage.'

The applicant, RES Energy Ltd, wants permission for 40 years for the 66.33 hectare site, equal to just under 164 acres. Pictured: Concept images show the wide-spanning solar farm plans

The Devon Campaign to Protect Rural England director Penny Mills said: 'This part of Devon is on the verge of being ruined.'

Despite the concerns, a 47-page report by Torridge District Council's planning officer recommended the go-ahead for the solar farm in the week when the world debates how to reduce the impact of climate change at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow.

The applicant, Renewable Energy Systems, RES, stated: 'As we transition to a net-zero future, reducing the impacts of climate change both locally and globally, RES' priority is to deliver clean, green electricity at the lowest cost for consumers.

Torridge District Council announced their own climate emergency in August 2019, whereby the council have committed to a target of 'net zero carbon emissions from their operations by 2030.

Councillors were told the project's overall CO2 savings are anticipated to be approximately 18,6003 tonnes per annum, making a contribution to the UK's target of reaching net zero by 2050.

Opponents said the council ignored detailed information provided by 213 local objectors and two parish councils, supporting their opposition to the 164acre proposal across four separate parcels of land on 28 fields.

The proposal for the structure with nearly 76,000 panels would span 66 hectares, becoming the largest solar farm in the county. Pictured above: An existing solar farm in Pyworthy, Devon

The CPRE, Campaign to Protect Rural England, had stated: 'The planning officer's extensive report reduces the technical arguments put forward by objectors to a list of bullet points.

'In contrast, pages of information from bodies such as Natural England and Highways are given in full.'

In May Devon CPRE launched a video campaign fronted by Bergerac and Midsomer Murders star John Nettles who has a smallholding near the site.

The video, including drone footage of Pyworthy's existing solar installations and the site of the proposed new one, has since received almost 17,500 views.

Devon CPRE says that over four thousand acres of farmland in Devon, more than seven square miles of agricultural land, have already been developed for solar farms, and plans for several other massive solar installations are yet to be decided.

Before planning permission was granted, Dr Phil Bratby, Devon CPRE trustee and energy spokesperson, said: 'There are several existing solar farms surrounding the small village of Pyworthy, including one on the south-eastern boundary of the proposed site and another about a kilometre away.

Developers say the scheme would generate enough electricity to supply around 12,100 homes, displacing 18,608 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and 'contributing to the UK's 2050 target'

'Three together would turn this rural part of Devon into an industrialised landscape of solar panels and security fencing stretching across 28 fields.

'How is this a good use of some of the best pasture land in the whole of the county?'

Devon CPRE had urged the committee to refuse planning permission at its meeting on Thursday on two main grounds, the industrialising effect on the landscape of this and other existing solar farms, wind turbines and energy infrastructure in the immediate locality; and the loss of agricultural land.

The company argued the site is mostly on lower grade agricultural land, which would be taken out of crop use but could still be used for light grazing, and it could be returned at the end of the life of the solar farm

The solar energy industry says the UK needs to triple capacity by 2030 to meet its carbon reduction targets.

Devon CPRE is urging the committee to refuse planning permission due to the loss of farmland for 40 years, and the 'industrialising effect on the landscape'.

Only a mile from Upper Tamar Area of Great Landscape Value, they say more than seven square miles of agricultural land have already been developed for solar farms and plans for several other massive solar installations are yet to be decided.
Tory MPs won a vote yesterday to block the suspension of Owen Paterson from the House of Commons and to overhaul Parliament's sleaze watchdog.

But Boris Johnson has now performed a screeching U-turn following a ferocious backlash.

Below is a breakdown of what the U-turn means, what MPs voted for and what is likely to happen next.

Boris Johnson today performed a screeching U-turn over plans to overhaul the House of Commons' standards system

The Government is expected to bring forward a fresh vote on whether Owen Paterson should be suspended from the Commons for 30 days

What has the Government U-turned on and what will happen next?

The Government has performed a U-turn on its decision to block the 30-day suspension of Tory MP Owen Paterson from the House of Commons after he was found to have breached lobbying rules.

A new vote on suspending Mr Paterson will be brought forward by the Government in the coming weeks after yesterday's vote sparked widespread outrage.

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg confirmed the U-turn this morning as he insisted ministers do still want to look at reforming the Commons' standards process.

Mr Rees-Mogg said any changes to the system would need to be agreed on a cross-party basis but he admitted that after yesterday's vote that would not happen.

He said while there is a 'very strong feeling' among MPs over the need to reform the standards process there is 'equally a strong feeling that this should not be based on a single case or apply retrospectively'.

He said the 'link needs to be broken' between the case of Mr Paterson and the wider issue of standards reform.

The Cabinet minister said the Government will now be 'looking to work on a cross-party basis to achieve improvements in our system for future cases' with details brought forward 'once there have been cross-party discussions'.

In simple terms, the Government has completely torn up the proposals agreed by MPs yesterday.

Meanwhile, the handling of the row has inflamed tensions with opposition parties which means the floated 'cross-party discussions' may struggle to get off the ground. That could see reform of the standards system kicked into the long grass.

What did MPs vote for yesterday?

Allies of Mr Paterson tabled an amendment to block his suspension from the House of Commons.

The amendment was passed by 250 votes to 232 after Mr Johnson instructed Tory MPs to vote for it.

The amendment proposed creating a new committee with a Tory majority to review the case of Mr Paterson and to make recommendations on the overhaul of the current standards process.

How would the amendment have changed the standards rules?

The new committee would have been tasked with looking at whether the standards system should give MPs 'the same or similar rights as apply to those subject to investigations of alleged misconduct in other workplaces and professions'.

That would include looking at things like the right to representation, examination of witnesses and the right of appeal.

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg confirmed the U-turn this morning as he insisted ministers do still want to reform the standards system

The committee would have had broad scope to look at any other issues which it deemed to be relevant.

Who was Mr Paterson working for?

Mr Paterson became a consultant to clinical diagnostics firm Randox - which sponsors the Grand National horse race - in August 2015, a year after he left Government after serving as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Environment under David Cameron.

He has carried out a similar role for Lynn's Country Foods, a processor and distributor of meat products including 'nitrite-free' items, since December 2016.

Both firms are based in Northern Ireland and between them paid him more than 112,000 a year on top of his 80,000 annual MP salary.

What is Mr Paterson said to have done?

Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone found that he breached paragraph 11 of the 2015 MPs' Code of Conduct that prohibits 'paid advocacy' - when he made three approaches to the Food Standards Agency relating to Randox and testing for antibiotics in milk in November 2016 and November 2017.

Emails to the FSA apparently read like marketing pitched on behalf of the firm, mentioning 'Randox's superior technology' in helping identify problems.

He went on to suggest that 'once established the application of the technology could be discussed not just within the FSA but across the whole dairy industry,' something from which the company stood to make large sums of money.

The hardline Brexiteer broke the same rules by making seven approaches to the FSA for Lynn's Country Foods in November 2017, January 2018 and July 2018 regarding a rival 'global food producer (who) was acting in breach of EU law by mislabelling a product'.

And the same rules were breached in October 2016 and January 2017 when he made four approaches to ministers at the Department for International Development relating to Randox and blood testing technology.

Ms Stone also found that Mr Paterson had breached paragraph 13 of the 2015 MPs' Code of Conduct, on declarations of interest, by failing to declare his interest as a paid consultant to Lynn's Country Foods in four emails to officials at the FSA on 16 November 2016, 15 November 2017, 8 January 2018 and 17 January 2018.

Lastly, she found that Mr Paterson breached paragraph 15 of the 2015 MP's Code of Conduct, on use of parliamentary facilities, by using his Westminster office on 16 occasions for business meetings with his paying clients between October 2016 and February 2020; and in sending two letters, on 13 October 2016 and 16 January 2017, relating to his business interests, on House of Commons headed notepaper.

What punishment was recommended by the Commons Committee on Standards?

After receiving Ms Stone's report the Commons Committee on Standards, made up of a cross-party group of MPs, recommended Mr Paterson serve a 30-day suspension that could trigger a recall petition in his seat.

What does Mr Paterson say?

Mr Paterson continues to deny any wrongdoing, saying he was acting on genuine concerns for public safety.

Ahead of the release of the investigation last week he made an astonishing attack on Ms Stone, claiming her 'cruel' probe in to his activities contributed to the death of his wife, Rose, who took her own life last year.

The 65-year-old North Shropshire MP believes the investigation against him was 'biased' and 'an absolute denial of justice'.

After yesterday's vote he said: 'The process I was subjected to did not comply with natural justice. No proper investigation was undertaken by the commissioner or committee.

'The Standards Commissioner has admitted making up her mind before speaking to me or any witnesses.

'All I have ever asked is to have the opportunity to make my case through a fair process. The decision today in Parliament means that I will now have that opportunity.

'After two years of hell, I now have the opportunity to clear my name.

'I am extremely grateful to the PM, the Leader of the House and my colleagues for ensuring that fundamental changes will be made to internal parliamentary systems of justice.

'I hope that no other MP will ever again be subject to this shockingly inadequate process.'

Why do Mr Paterson's supporters think he has been wronged?

Allies of Mr Paterson claim the standards investigation was 'so amateurish it failed to interview witnesses'.

They claim that he had 17 witnesses ready to give oral evidence on his behalf but complained they were never called. The Standards Committee however, pointed out that each of the 17 had supplied it with comprehensive written statements and 'did not see what further 'relevant information could usefully be gleaned by inviting oral evidence from the witnesses concerned'.

Supporters believe the current standards system is flawed and must be overhauled to give MPs the ability to appeal.

Former Brexit secretary David Davis said MPs currently have 'no effective right of appeal' because 'this is a standards system where one person is chief investigator and prosecutor combined'.

Tory MPs want to replace the current standards system with a quasi-judicial process and a 'proper' appeal system.
Tory MP Angela Richardson was today dramatically reinstated as Michael Gove's ministerial aide - just 14 hours after being sacked over the Commons standards row.

Ms Richardson refused to obey Boris Johnson's order to vote for an amendment saving former minister Owen Paterson from a 30-day suspension over lobbying.

She revealed last night that she had been fired, saying she viewed abstaining as a 'matter of principle'.

But after a dramatic U-turn by the PM this morning, the Guildford MP confirmed that she has got her job back.

'Pleased to be reappointed to my role as PPS to Michael Gove. Busy department and work to get on with,' she tweeted.

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the government has dropped plans for a retrospective overhaul of sleaze rules after a huge backlash at the 'politically-motivated' decision.

The move means that a motion on suspending Mr Paterson for 30 days for lobbying rule breaches - as was recommended by the cross-party standards committee - is now set to be brought before the House again.

Tory MP Angela Richardson (pictured) was today dramatically reinstated as Michael Gove's ministerial aide - just 14 hours after being sacked over the Commons standards row

Ms Richardson revealed at 7.18pm last night that she had been fired, saying she viewed abstaining as a 'matter of principle'

But after a dramatic U-turn by the PM this morning, the Guidford MP confirmed that she has got her job back

The PM had smashed convention by ordering his party to oppose the conclusions of the standards watchdog.

But the amendment 'pausing' the process and calling for a reform of the sleaze rules still only narrowly passed last night, as he was hit with a major revolt - including by Ms Richardson.

The controversial bid to save Mr Paterson sparked complete chaos, leaving the existing system for regulating MPs' behaviour in tatters and Opposition parties vowing to boycott the government's plans to agree a new one.

The Tory MP for North Shropshire, was last week found to have committed an 'egregious' breach of standards rules by directly advocating for two companies from which he pocketed some 500,000.

He continues to deny any wrongdoing, saying he would do it all again, and has called for standards commissioner Kathryn Stone to resign - something that was endorsed by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng just hours before the volte face.

Addressing MPs amid growing signs of panic in Downing Street, Mr Rees-Mogg said today: 'It is important that standards in this House are done on a cross-party basis.

'The House voted very clearly yesterday to show that it is worried about the process of handling these complaints and that we would like an appeals system, but the change would need to be on a cross-party basis and that is clearly not the case.

'While there is a very strong feeling on both sides of the House that there is a need for an appeals process, there is equally a strong feeling that this should not be based on a single case or apply retrospectively.

'I fear last night's debate conflated an individual case with the general concern. This link needs to be broken.

Owen Paterson (right) was among the Tory MPs who voted yesterday block his own suspension after Boris Johnson (left) issued orders

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the government has dropped plans for a retrospective overhaul of sleaze rules after a huge backlash at the 'politically-motivated' decision

'Therefore I and others will be looking to work on a cross-party basis to achieve improvements in our system for future cases.

'We will bring forward more detailed proposals once there have been cross-party discussions.'

One government source told MailOnline of Mr Paterson: 'He's going to end up being suspended.'

A senior Tory said: 'There will be a lot of angry MPs who gave way and voted for the Government. Marched up to the top of the hill '

Standards committee chair Chris Bryant, a Labour MP, had warned that retrospectively changing the system when an ally was under threat was 'what they do in Russia'.

The chair of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, former MI5 head Lord Evans, also waded in this morning saying the decisions were 'politically motivated'.

Mr Johnson himself has previously clashed bitterly with Ms Stone, including over a 15,000 'freebie' to Mustique with now-wife Carrie.
A 16 year-old schoolgirl is in custody over claims she punched her 61 year-old headteacher, knocking the principal out and breaking her ribs.

The unnamed teen was arrested and Patricia Lampron - the principal of Dr. William W. Henderson Upper Campus school - was taken to the hospital to treat the head injury and broken ribs after being assaulted on Wednesday afternoon, Boston Police officials said.

Witnesses told police that the teenager punched Lampron, 61, in the head and attacked a second member of staff at the Upper Campus of the Dr. William W. Henderson K-12 Inclusion School in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood.

'This incident is disturbing and completely unacceptable,' Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in a statement. 'We want to be clear: Violence of any kind is not tolerated and will not be tolerated in the Boston Public Schools.'

Police officials said the mother of the teen had also threatened Lampron the night before the incident.

Pictured: Patricia Lampron - the principal of Henderson Upper Campus school - who was knocked unconscious in an attack at the school on Wednesday. A 16-year-old student has been arrested and charged with assault and battery

The attack occurred at the Upper Campus of the Dr. William W. Henderson K-12 Inclusion School in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood

Police said an officer assigned to a safety post outside the school campus was altered to a 'very violent attack' taking place at 2:30 p.m., WCVB reported.

When the officer arrived, he found the principal on the ground unconscious, and being tended to by other staff members.

Witnesses to the incident told police that the student told Lampron and other school staff members to stop following her, before she allegedly attacked the principal.

Lampron is reported to have been knocked out for several minutes before she was taken to hospital.

The 61-year-old suffered a head injury and broken ribs, but while her injuries are considered serious, the police said they are not life threatening.

The other staff member who was attacked was reported to be okay despite suffering from some injuries as well.

Two school safety officers had been detaining the student before the officer arrived.

The teenager was taken into custody and will appear in Dorchester Juvenile Court on assault and battery charges. The school was closed Thursday.

Police officials said that the investigation over the incident is still ongoing.

Patricia Lampron, pictured celebrating Thanksgiving with family. Her daughter, MaryKate, center, said her family expects a full investigation over the incident

The school was closed on Thursday following the attack, and the district said a crisis team and support staff will be available for students and faculty on Friday

MaryKate Lampron said there was no place for violence in schools following the incident

MaryKate Lampron, the principal's daughter, posted a message on behalf of the family, condemning the alleged assault.

'Today our mother, Patricia Lampron, was violently attacked at school and seriously injured by a student. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance where she is being assessed and treated for her injuries,' she wrote on Facebook.

'Anyone who knows her knows how passionate she is about this school, its students and the Henderson School community. Our primary concern is her health and safety. She will need time and support to recover from her injuries.

'We expect a full investigation into the circumstances of the assault to assure the safety of all the students, staff and teachers in the Henderson School Community. She wants everyone to know that there is NO place for violence in our schools.'

Cassellius echoed those remarks, 'This violent behavior will not be tolerated,'

'The health, safety and well-being of our students and staff is our top priority at Boston Public Schools. I am personally involved and am ensuring we are taking immediate and swift action.'

Cassellius added that the decision to close the school for the following day was made out of the utmost caution, CBS reported.

Students in grades two to 12 attended the Upper Campus of the Henderson School.

Officials said the Boston Public Schools crisis team and other support staff would be made available to students and teachers when they return to school on Friday.
Kiwi prime minister Jacinda Ardern has been mocked by Joe Rogan after she shut down a press conference when it was hijacked by anti-vaxxers.

The American 'martial arts fanatic' and podcast host took issue with the New Zealand leader pausing a media briefing this week when vaccine sceptics began to shout over her while she spoke.

Rogan slammed 'that lady running New Zealand' then attempted to copy her voice while smoking a large cigar during a recording of his popular show.

'Have you seen that lady running New Zealand?' Rogan began.

'If she even gets asked questions and press conferences she goes "we're going to shut this down" and then she just leaves.'

During the press conference in question, Ms Ardern (pictured) gave the man a chance to stop interrupting before decisively denying him a platform

The unruly press conference he referred to occurred on Tuesday.

Ms Ardern was in the middle of answering questions when American far-right news reporter American Shane Chafin began shouting at her, demanding she answer questions about Israel's vaccination program.

When he accused the Prime Minister of lying, Ms Ardern abruptly stopped the briefing with instructions for accredited media to continue at an adjacent indoor venue.

At the same moment, an agitated Maori activist began shouting and singing loudly before having a stand-off with NZ police.

Ms Ardern did not leave the press conference but continued taking questions from accredited media shortly after nearby.

Rogan correctly stated Mr Chafin's questions were about the vaccine program in Israel.

Kiwi prime minister Jacinda Ardern has been slammed by Joe Rogan (pictured) who mocked her for thinking she is 'the Queen' after she shut down a press conference hijacked

After Israel experiencing a peak of infections and deaths in September 2021 - despite high vaccination rates - those numbers have steadily fallen through October and November.

Rogan complained that Ms Ardern had 'ultimate power'.

'They have the power to keep people in their homes. It's not as simple as just protecting people, it's also they have power,' he said.

'So when they have power they f***ing like it man, that's the reason why people run for governor and mayor in the fist place. They enjoy telling people what to do.

'They like being the king.'

Then Rogan again imitated Ms Ardern: 'I like being the Queen, hoo hoo.'

Joe Rogan (pictured) referred to NZ Prime Minister as 'that lady running New Zealand'

During the press conference in question, Ms Ardern gave Chafin a chance to stop interrupting before decisively denying him a platform.

'We are all completely on the same page when it comes to driving vaccinations, and this is an issue,' Ms Ardern said before Chafin cut in, yelling: 'Why are the vaccines not working in Israel?'

The Prime Minister tried to continue her speech as Chafin shouted over the top of her several more times, repeating the same question.

Eventually she paused, responding: 'Sir, I will shut down the press conference if this continues'.

As Chafin continued to grill her, Ms Ardern tactfully advised she would only answer questions by 'accredited members of the media' - before pulling the plug on the event when he failed to desist.

New Zealand recorded 139 local cases of Covid on Thursday, as infection rates in the nation steadily climb after 18 months of virtually no transmissions.
A Professor of Criminology at the Open University has described how she was compared to a 'racist uncle at a Christmas dinner table' for her gender critical beliefs.

Professor Jo Phoenix has crowdfunded more than 80,000 to fight her current employers for not protecting her from a bullying campaign after she expressed views about the silencing of academic debate on transgender issues.

She claims the Open University, who she began working for in 2016, 'shattered' her dreams and made her feel 'like a pariah'.

Professor Phoenix said she has been publicly vilified and suffered public harassment for launching the Open University gender critical research network.

She also said her view that male-bodied prisoners should not be allowed in female prisons resulted in her being compared to a transphobic and racist.

By bringing the Open University to an employment tribunal, she hopes to protect female academics from 'the vicious bullying perpetrated by those who disagree with our beliefs on sex and gender'.

The Government's policy to house transgender women in female prisons was ruled lawful by the High Court in July earlier this year amid claims from an inmate it raised the risk of sex attacks.

In 2018, Karen White - who was born a man but was placed in women's prison HMP New Hall after telling authorities of his identification as a woman - sexually assaulted two female inmates.

Professor Jo Phoenix said the Open UIniversity made her feel 'like a pariah' when she began expressing views about the silencing of academic debate on transgender issues

Criminology professor Jo Phoenix has raised more than 80,000 to fund her battle with the Open University and protect female academics from 'the vicious bullying perpetrated by those who disagree with our beliefs on sex and gender'

Prosecutors questioned whether White really wanted to transition to become a woman, or just used it as a ruse to target other women. He is now being housed in a male prison. He is pictured in 2016, before his arrest, when he was known to cross-dress, but had not begun gender reassignment

White pressed his penis against a woman inmate in women's jail HMP New Hall (pictured)

Prosecutors claimed White - who had a history of sex attacks - used a 'transgender persona' to gain access to vulnerable females. White was ordered to serve a life sentence in a male prison for the jail sex attacks.

The High Court heard that trans women make up around one per cent of the female incarcerated population, but are responsible for around six per cent of sexual assaults in women's prisons.

In 2020, official figures showed that transgender prisoners carried out seven sex attacks on women in jail.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) policy allows prisoners to be housed according to their gender identity 'irrespective of whether they have taken any legal or medical steps to acquire that gender'.

MoJ figures, though, also showed that 11 transgender prisoners were sexually assaulted in jails in England and Wales across 2019.

Campaign group Stonewall called the figures 'upsetting'.

Professor Phoenix, though, has also faced a backlash for openly criticising the influence of controversial LGBT charity in the UK.

Stonewall runs a programme, Diversity Champions, where companies sign up and pay for advice from Stonewall on how to create an inclusive environment for LGBT workers.

However, a raft of organisations including Ofcom, Channel 4, the Cabinet Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission left the initiative following criticism of its hard-line policies and widespread outrage after its boss said believing a person's sex cannot be changed is as bad as anti-Semitism.

The BBC is also understood to have dropped the scheme after it emerged the broadcaster showed staff a controversial 'genderbread person' graphic in equality training using material from Stonewall.

The 'genderbread person' graphic shown to employees at the BBC earlier this year. The broadcaster is understood to have dropped the charity's scheme

An investigation by Nolan Investigates, a podcast run by 5 Live presenter Stephen Nolan, found that the image was presented to employees as part of an internal BBC course set up in conjunction with the lobby group.

The 'genderbread person' graphic depicts sex as a spectrum and defines gender identity as 'how you think about yourself'.

It was apparently shown to BBC staff with no alternative explanations despite these ideas being contested.

A spokesperson for Stonewall said last month: 'Our work with employers focuses on helping to build an LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace for their employees, and in no way affects their impartiality. Supporting LGBTQ+ people in the workplace should not be seen as a political or controversial act.'

Professor Phoenix was also caught up in controversy with another university in 2019 following 'transphobe' accusations.

The University of Essex had to apologise in May, 18 months later, after a planned seminar was called off due to protestors.

It was set to explore tensions around placing transgender women - who were born men - in female prisons in Britain.

The Centre for Criminology cancelled the event a few hours ahead of it taking place, citing concerns that the 'open debate and discussion might be obstructed'.

The seminar was cancelled partly due to security concerns, but an investigation later found that the decision 'amounted to a breach of Professor Phoenix's right to freedom of expression'.

It follows the resignation of Professor Kathleen Stock, 48, from her position at the University of Sussex last month for her views on transgender people.

Professor Kathleen Stock resigned from the University of Sussex after facing a campaign of 'bullying and harassment' for her views

A group of masked demonstrators at the University of Sussex staged a protest on campus demanding lecturer Kathleen Stock lose her job

The mob of protestors stood in a group on a patch of grass next to a footpath on the university campus holding up signs and chanting loudly

The philosophy professor was at the centre of a blazing row - and a student-led protest - at the university after saying she believes gender identity does not outweigh biological sex 'when it comes to law and policy'.

She also said that people cannot change their biological sex, sparking anger from protesters who accused her of 'transphobia'.

The professor said she was stepping down from her job after facing a campaign of 'bullying and harassment'.

Professor Phoenix, meanwhile, says she has been researching sex, gender and justice for two decades and is 'known around the world'.

She said things 'started to go horribly wrong' when she began speaking out regarding her views.

Listing examples of alleged abuse she has faced, she claimed to have been told she is 'like a racist uncle at the Christmas dinner table' by a senior manager.

She added that more than 360 colleagues at the university signed a public letter condemning the Gender Critical Research Network she founded and called for her employers to remove all support and funding.

The professor also said that she was instructed not to speak about her research in departmental meetings.

As a result of the ordeal, she now claims to have been diagnosed with PTSD and has been 'too unwell to work for months'.

Professor Phoenix said: 'My hope is that this case will force universities to protect female academics from the vicious bullying perpetrated by those who disagree with our beliefs on sex and gender; bullying that is designed to silence us and our research.

The Open University. Professor Phoenix plans to bring the university to an employment tribunal

'We desperately need to show that this type of treatment is unlawful harassment relating to protected gender critical beliefs.

'These issues of sex and gender are so important, and we need to be able to talk about and research them without fear of being hounded out of our jobs.

'Above all, I am taking this case to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression.'

The Open University and Stonewall UK have been contacted for a statement.
Judge Tanya Chutkan was assigned Trump's case at random last month (pictured in 2016 at Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's memorial)

An Obama-appointed judge presiding over Donald Trump's quest to block the release of more than 700 pages of White House documents to the Democrat-led House committee investigating the Capitol riot is weighing a ruling that could potentially be a win for the firmer president.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan appeared on Thursday to back the Biden administration's decision to waive executive privilege over the documents, but conceded that 'there has to be some limit' on what House lawmakers can ask for, according to reports after the hearing.

Acknowledging that the deadline for the first round of documents is coming up on November 12, Chutkan vowed to make a decision 'expeditiously.'

At one point during the proceedings, she laughed off the former president's lawyers when they were presenting their case today.

Chutkan asked Trump's attorneys for evidence to back their claim that two other probes already cleared Trump of wrongdoing.

She called it a 'rather startling' conclusion and asked, 'What's your basis for that assertion?' in reference to a legal brief they filed earlier this week.

'Just a published article from Reuters with respect to the - quoting the FBI...' the attorney explained, according to audio of the hearing obtained by RawStory.

Chutkan replied, 'You cite an article - and by the way, the article says the FBI has found scant evidence, but I mean -'

She paused for a stunned chuckle before continuing on.

'I mean, that's your only support for that statement?' she asks.

The article in question appears to be a Reuters story from late August, titled 'Exclusive: FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated - sources.'

Chutkan was handed the case at random last month. She's known for handing down harsh words and harsher sentences to people who participated in the Capitol riot, once denouncing them from the bench as a 'violent mob.'

The case will test the bounds of executive privilege, which the ex-president successfully invoked as a defense in past probes while he was commander-in-chief.

Trump has denounced the House's investigation as a 'witch hunt' and claims he should have control over the release of his White House files

Chutkan is hearing Trump's lawyers explain why they believe the National Archives should be blocked from releasing his executive records.

She could issue the highly-anticipated ruling as early as this afternoon.

Trump has denounced the House select committee's investigation of January 6 as a 'witch hunt' and argued that he should have sole control over access to the records of his White House.

The files, which could include phone records, visitor logs, speech drafts and memos of Trump and his closest aides, have the potential to be groundbreaking for the bipartisan House probe.

The National Archives has already agreed to hand over the documents, and Joe Biden's White House said it would not stand in the way.

Lawmakers led by Democratic Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Republican Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming have sought to paint the documents as critical to their probe.

'In 2021, for the first time since the Civil War, the Nation did not experience a peaceful transfer of power,' committee lawyers said over the weekend, according to CNN.

Lawmakers led by Democratic Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson and Republican Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney have argued the documents are critical to their probe

They argued, 'A peaceful transfer of power from one President to another is crucial to the continuation of our democratic government. It is difficult to imagine a more critical subject for Congressional investigation, and Mr. Trump's arguments cannot overcome that pressing legislative need.'

Trump's lawyers told Chutkan's court this week, 'Permitting the expansive request here would harm future presidents and their close aides by allowing invasive congressional fishing expeditions that will certainly chill candid advice and harm the institution of the presidency.'

Among the records they're trying to block are files from ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was subpoenaed by House investigators in September.

They also include call logs between Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who was forced into hiding at the Capitol while the ex-president's supporters broke in.

Ex-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's binders containing 2020 election talking points and documents belonging to adviser Stephen Miller are also on the list.

Chutkan, whose decision today could either make or break the House investigation, called the Capitol rioters as a 'violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government' during the sentencing hearing of one participant, Matthew Mazzocco, who she sentenced to 45 days in jail despite prosecutors not recommending any incarceration.

Chutkan has been known to hand down harsh sentences to Capitol rioters appearing in her courtroom

The 59-year-old judge was appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.

Public records show she donated around $2,200 to Obama in 2008, when she was a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner.

Already Chutkan is known for handing down sentences of at least 14 days for Capitol riot defendants who've entered her courtroom.

During the sentencing hearing of Capitol rioter Mazzocco, she condemned the Trump supporters as a 'very real danger' to democracy, CNN reported.

Prosecutors recommended home confinement for Mazzocco's misdemeanor charge but Chutkan reportedly disagreed.

'There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home,' she said in court.

Chutkan said the rioters had 'soiled and defaced the halls of the Capitol.'

She went after Trump directly when she said Mazzocco didn't go to the Capitol on January 6 'out of any love for our country.'

'He went for one man,' the judge said

She also slammed comparisons to earlier Black Lives Matter protests in DC.

'To compare the actions of people around the country protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and downplays the very real danger that the crowd on January 6 posed to our democracy.' Chutkan said.

An earlier case of Chutkan's made headlines in 2019 when she sentenced Russian spy Maria Butina to 18 months in prison for conspiring to infiltrate the National Rifle Association. That sentence was in line with the government's recommendation.
A Conservative police and crime commissioner is being investigated over an allegation of a historic sexual assault.

Steve Turner is being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) watchdog and a force from another part of the country over the alleged sexual offence, which is said to have been carried out in the 1980s.

Mr Turner, who was elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland in May, was already in the spotlight after he was named in Parliament as having been cautioned some years ago for theft when he worked at a supermarket.

He was given a police caution for theft while he was a supermarket manager in the 1990s - a job he 'voluntarily' resigned from. Mr Turner had previously described the incident as a 'stupid error' and a 'minor incident'.

No arrests have been made, but Mr Turner is now resisting pressure to resign following the recent revelation, the Mirror reports.

Steve Turner is being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) watchdog and a force from another part of the country over the alleged sexual offence, which is said to have been carried out in the 1980s

Policing Minister, Kit Malthouse (centre) in Middlesbrough with Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner, Steve Turner (right)

An IOPC spokesperson said: 'Any allegation that a criminal offence may have been committed by a police and crime commissioner (PCC) must be referred by the appropriate authority to the IOPC to determine whether the matter should be investigated.

'We have now begun a managed investigation following a complaint referral from the Cleveland Police and Crime Panel regarding the alleged conduct of the current PCC prior to taking up the role.

'This investigation, which follows an allegation of a serious non-recent criminal offence, will be carried out by a force from another area under our direction and control.

'We have contacted the complainant to make them aware of our involvement.

Mr Turner, who was elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland in May, was already in the spotlight after he was named in Parliament as having been cautioned some years ago for theft when he worked at a supermarket

'As this investigation is at a very early stage, it would not be appropriate to comment further.'

Mr Turner's office said he has no plans to resign or temporarily step down.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner said: 'We have been made aware that a referral has been made to Cleveland Police and Crime Panel relating to a non-recent allegation against Police and Crime Commissioner Steve Turner.

'We extend our full co-operation to the panel and the IOPC and we will assist them with any inquiries they need to make.'

Mr Turner's job is to oversee the workings of the police force and to give victims a voice.
NYC mayor-elect made a dig at outgoing Bill de Blasio by vowing to 'get stuff done' while in office - including bringing back a plain-clothes police unit.

Eric Adams, 61, a former NYPD officer, said his first 100 days in office would focus on crime, from revamping the controversial plainclothes anti-crime unit to addressing the crisis at the Rikers jail complex.

'I am not going to be a philosophical mayor,' Adams told MSNBC, taking a jab at outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio.

'I'm going to be a mayor that's going to be a G.S.D. mayor, 'get stuff done.''

Eric Adams, New York City's mayor-elect, vowed to stomp out crime in his first 100 days

Adams said he would bring back the city's controversial plainclothes unit, which was disbanded in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter movement

The NYPD's plainclothes unit, which at its peak had 600 officers, was disbanded in June 2020 by de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, as calls to defund the police swept the nation in the wake of the George Floyd shooting.

De Blasio ultimately slashed $1 billion of the department's $6 billion budget.

The plainclothes unit was heavily criticized for targeting minority groups in the city and its connection to some of the city's most notorious shootings. Photos and videos also started to surface showing the officers engaging in excessive force.

Adams said the unit would return, but this time around, the officers would wear body cameras and focus on gang violence and shooting prevention.

'It's not anti-crime, but an anti-gun unit,' he told The New York Times. 'It's having well-trained officers who are going to use their body cameras so that we can see their interactions. They're going to specifically zero in on gang and gun violence.'

Adams, a centrist, ran on the promise to curb the city's steadily rising crime rate.

So far this year, the city has seen 18,898 felony assaults, about 8 per cent more than last year.

Rape is also up from 1,216 last year, to 1,241 this year, and robbery has also gone up from 10,822 to 10,996.

While murders dropped from 407 to 399 and shootings fell from 1,564 to 1,559, overall crime is still up 1.3 per cent from last year.

Adams, a former police officer, ran on the promise to tackle the city's rising crime rates

He said the plainclothes unit would now focus on gang and gun violence. The unit had been previously criticized for its excessive use of force, like in the incident pictured where an officer tased a man for failing to comply with social distancing rules in the East Village

Overall crime in New York City continues to steadily grow

Adams also plans to focus on reforming the notorious Rikers Island prison complex, which has seen overcrowding, alleged mistreatment of inmates and waves of strikes in recent years.

Adams said he would immediately change the format of the prison to keep gang members separated to help restore peace, the NY Times reports.

He added that the true path to fixes the issues at Rikers lied in changes to how the city grapples with education in order to cut off the pipeline to crime.

'If you're talking about closing only the building of Rikers Island, that's not progressive,' Adams said, referring to calls from civic leaders to shut down the ailing prison.

'Close the pipeline that feeds Rikers Island. Fifty-five per cent of the men and women there have learning disabilities, so if you're not talking about stopping that pipeline...how can you be progressive?'

Adams has previously promised to maintain the city's Gifted and Talented program and tweak it to be more inclusive to all communities after de Blasio said he would end the program, which disproportionately serves white and Asian students.

Adams said he would also focus on the Riker Island prison complex in his first 100 days

The sanitation workers are responsible for keeping the city's streets clean and removing trash. 1,500 are now out of work as a result of the vaccine mandate

Thousands of city workers, mostly firefighters, gathered outside Gracie Mansion as New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's vaccine mandate looms just one day ahead of the deadline

Adams' victory also comes as de Blasio's vaccine mandate for all city employees, ranging from police officers to parks employees, goes into effect.

On Monday, about 9,000 of New York City's 378,000 municipal employees were put on leave without pay as the vaccine mandate went into effect, de Blasio announced on Tuesday.

Under the mandate, all city employees had until 5pm Friday to show that they had received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine or request an exemption.

About 92 per cent have now received at least one dose, including a large number of first responders, CNN reports, while about 12,000 other employees have applied for a religious or medical exemption.

City officials are expected to rule on those cases in the coming days, and those who requested exemptions can continue working at least until their case is decided.

The mandate has not resulted in any service interruptions for the city police, fire and sanitation departments, de Blasio said on Monday, but angry essential workers protested in Manhattan against the rule.

Adams has said he would work and speak to all departments about the mandate and how to best serve the city.

'I'm going to build those bridges and not blow those bridges up,' he told MSNBC, saying he'd next discuss possible changes to the mandate after taking office in January.
An Indiana man was charged with murder on Wednesday for allegedly shooting dead a 13-year-old trick-or-treater.

Desmond Crews, 23, of Gary, Indiana, was also charged with attempted murder in Sunday's shooting, which killed Thomas DeLaCruz Jr of East Chicago and wounded another 13-year-old boy.

Thomas and his friends were trick-or-treating in Hammond's Hestville neighborhood, where his grandmother has lived for more than 15 years, when one of the victim's friends who was in a clown mask is said to have gotten into a verbal argument with one of Crews' pals.

Desmond Crews (left), 23, of Gary, Indiana, was charged with murder and attempted murder on Wednesday after firing a 9mm semi-automatic gun into a group of trick-or-treater, killing Thomas DeLaCruz Jr (right), 13, and wounding another 13-year-old boy

His mother Jasmine Anderson, 30, told the Times that her son had just celebrated his 13th birthday and was just 'being a kid' when he was taken from his family too soon.

Another trick-or-treater, who was wearing a clown mask, told police that he spoke to a man wearing shorts somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes before the shooting, which happened around 7.30pm.

According to court records the unidentified man reportedly 'threatened to get a .38 gun and shoot them,' as reported by the NWI Times.

The teen in the clown mask continued trick-or-treating with a group of friends and they walked several more blocks before seeing a silver car with about five or six people in it - including Crews - who appeared to be staring at the kids.

He told police that the passengers all got our of the car - one of them was the man in shorts he saw earlier and another took a 'shooting stance'.

According to the Times the masked boy then told his friends to run as they heard gunshots ring in the 3066 block of 167th street.

Crews was seen running with a gun and surveillance video also showed that he threw something out before he was caught. A Hammond police officer captured the shooter after a father of the one of the trick-or-treaters chased him from the scene, court documents said.

Police later discovered that the item was a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and ammunition in a storage barrel.

Thomas and his friends were trick-or-treating in Hammond's Hestville neighborhood, where his grandmother has lived for more than 15 years, when Crews fired the shots in the 3066 block of 167th street (pictured)

Crews allegedly fired after feeling pressure from the other passengers in the car. According to court documents he thought he shot over the kids' heads but wasn't sure he missed them because he saw one of the children collapse

Crews admitted to officers that he was a passenger in the silver car and was wearing a yellow sweatshirt at the time of the fatal shooting. He said that the man wearing the shorts, who sat behind Crews in the car and has yet to be identified, 'kept saying a group of people could have rolled him and someone was going to die tonight'.

Court documents stated that Crews said the man in shorts then pointed out a kid in a clown mask and he realized the trick-or-treaters were 'just little kids,' according to the Times.

He recalled that the others in the car handed him the 9mm gun and extended magazine and added that 'he felt like he had to shoot' after others in the car started firing.

Crews allegedly thought he shot over the kids' heads but wasn't sure he missed them because he saw one of the children collapse. He is now facing murder and attempted murder charges for killing Thomas and shooting another unidentified trick-or-treater, 13, in the leg.

Thomas's mother recalled her son as 'the best brother, the best cousin, the best friend in the world, ' adding: 'He danced, he was happy, he was a kid.'

Thomas is survived by his 10-year-old sister. 'She shouldn't have to go through this,' Anderson said, adding: 'I'm only 30 years old. I only got 13 years with my son.'

'He was being a kid out with his aunt trick-or-treating, walking with a group of kids. And some ignorant, sick person decided to shoot at kids.'

As of Wednesday evening, the grieving mother was preparing for her son's body to be released to the funeral home and she said she didn't know 'where to start or begin'.

Anderson was planning a vigil for Thomas at 5pm on Thursday at the site of the shooting.

'If I have to post his picture in the sky, everyone is going to know what this man did to my child,' she said, according to the Times.

In a statement posted to Facebook the Hammond Indiana Police Department said that the other 13-year-old boy who was shot in the leg 'was treated at the hospital and released'.

'While we are thankful for the community support which led to the arrest of the person of interest, we are heartbroken that such an event could even occur,' it added.

An investigation into other possible suspects is ongoing and Crews is being held at Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana.
An infamous prison escapee who was killed after a 2015 jailbreak may be the answer to a murder case in which the two men convicted for killing a young mother in western New York have been cleared by DNA evidence.

The case dates back to 1993, when suburban Buffalo mother Deborah Mendl walked into her home. Police said that Mendl, upon entrance, was stabbed dozens of times, handcuffed and strangled with a man's tie.

The tie was left hanging around Mendl's neck.

The investigation initially focused on Mendl's husband, who had spoken about having his wife killed but it soon turned to Brian Scott Lorenz and James Pugh, two petty thieves who were tried and convicted in connection with the murder, despite a lack of forensic evidence.

A new theory emerged from an investigation by two prosecutors from the Erie County district attorneys office, pointing the finger at Richard Matt, a man convicted of murders in 1997 and 1998 who was shot to death after breaking out of prison in 2015 following a nationwide manhunt.

The attorneys presented their findings Erie DA John J. Flynn in August.

However, Flynn rejected their claims and removed the two prosecutors from the case.

'There is no credible evidence to link Richard Matt to the murder of Deborah Meindl,' District Attorney John J. Flynn said. 'These narratives asserted by defense counsel representing Brian Scott Lorenzo and James Pugh are false.'

Flynn's office said that despite the lack of forensic evidence, testimony at trial was enough to convict Pugh and Lorenzo.

Flynn would not comment on why the two prosecutors were reassigned.

'While I cannot comment further on personnel matters, I can confirm that both prosecutors were later reassigned after I made the decision to remove them from the case,' he said.

Richard Matt, previously convicted of two murders and fatally shot on an escape attempt from prison in 2015, has been alleged to have committed a murder of a New York woman in 1993

Deborah Mendl (pictured above) was murdered in 1993

Attorneys for James Pugh (left) and Brian Scott Lorenz (right) said that Matt is responsible for the murders after DNA evidence showed no trace of their clients on the scene

Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said there is no credibility to attorneys' accusations regarding Matt and the murder of Mendl

'One prosecutor was relieved of his Bureau Chief position. He continues to work as an Assistant District Attorney in the Appeals Bureau. The other prosecutor was not demoted, but reassigned from the Appeals Bureau to the offices Felony Trials Bureau.'

Pugh was recently paroled after serving 25 years, while Lorenzo remains imprisoned.

The lawyers for the two men claim that not only did Matt kill Mendl, but he did it on the request of the lead detective investigating, David Bentley.

Flynn has also said there are no credible ties to that accusation.

Bentley himself adamantly denied the charge.

'It's totally, absolutely, unequivocally insane,' Bentley said 'I could never say that stuff and have hired him to murder somebody.'

Defense attorneys claimed in a motion filed in New York State Supreme Court that there is evidence linking Matt to Mendl's death, alleging he confessed to fellow 2015 escapee David Sweat.

The home where, in 1993, Deborah Mendl was brutally stabbed and strangled to death

Matt made multiple escape attempts from prisons before being killed during a nationwide manhunt

Detective David Bentley was friendly with Matt, to the point that attorneys for the defendants have accused him of setting up the murder to cover up corruption charges that were forthcoming against him

The defense argued Bentley had ties to Matt and inconsistencies in the prosecution's original case are why Lorenzo and Pugh should be cleared.

The judge presiding, Christopher J. Burns, said he'd 'like to get an answer to this,' indicating that there may be a further investigation.

'I knew, in my heart, that I didn't commit this crime,' Lorenzo told the New York Times. 'But I never gave up.'

Lorenzo's confession notably got major details about the crime incorrect and it was deemed inadmissible at trial.

Flynn denied that there was any credible evidence 'to link Richard Matt to the murder of Deborah Meindl.' He also defended his response to the findings of the prosecutors who looked into the case for a second time.

'I, along with my entire senior leadership team, several of my senior bureau chiefs and most experienced trial attorneys, disagreed with their conclusions due to a lack of any credible evidence,' he said.

Prosecutors have yet to publicly release their findings.

Bentley helped raise Richard Matt's daughter Jamie and acknowledged being close to Matt, whom he would use as an informant.

'I related to Rick: I felt bad for him,' Bentley said. 'You could almost say I loved the kid.'

He doesn't believe Matt killed Mendl, calling him 'just a punk' and not capable of something like a brutal murder.

'Somebody planted the idea about him just to defend Pugh and Lorenzo,' he said.

Mr. Bentley also suggested that Mr. Matt 'was known to brag about all sorts of stuff that never existed.'

However, neither Lorenzo nor Pugh's DNA was found on the scene after testing done on blood splattered items at Mendl's house.

Lorenzo's lawyers, including Ilaan Maazel, have gone as far as to say Bentley was having an affair with Mendl. Their filing alleges that Bentley sent Matt to murder her to protect him from potential corruption findings.

During his career, Bentley was the subject of at least 15 police brutality and harassment complaints.

'I solved more crimes than the whole department did because I was savvy,' he said on Tuesday. 'But I was not crooked.'

He also denied a romantic relationship with Mendl.
The judge in the racially-charged case of Ahmaud Arbery's death slammed his own trial for 'intentional discrimination' after just one black juror was picked to sit on the 12-person jury to decide the fate of three white men accused of hunting down and murdering the black jogger.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley expressed his concern over the racial makeup of the jury after eight other black potential jurors were booted following objections from defense lawyers.

'This court has found there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel,' Walmsley said.

However, Walmsley said he had limited authority to intervene in jury selection - after the final 12 were narrowed from a pool of 48 over the last two weeks - because the defense attorneys were able to give nonracial reasons for their decisions to strike the potential black jurors from the panel.

In Brunswick, Georgia, where Arbery was killed and the trial is being held, black people account for nearly 55 percent of the population of 16,000 while white people make up 40 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But in Glynn County, which encompasses Brunswick, black people account for nearly 27 percent of the population of 85,000, with 69 percent identifying as white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The judge said 25 percent of the pool from which the final jury was chosen was black.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23, 2020, while he was out for a run in his south Georgia neighborhood

Travis McMichael (left), his father Gregory McMichael (center) and their friend William 'Roddie' Bryan (right) have all been charged with federal hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley narrowed the pool of 1,000 to 12 mainly white jurors except one. He agreed with prosecutors that 'there appears to be intentional discrimination'

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski challenged the defense attorneys' decision to strike eight specific black jurors, arguing they were cut from the panel because of their race.

Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, denied that the black panelists' race was considered in decisions to strike them from the jury pool.

'We have a very clear selection process within the defense team, and the issue of race is not one of the factors,' Hogue said. 'I can give you a race neutral reason for any one of these.'

She noted one such juror, identified in court as No. 218, had written on her juror questionnaire that Arbery was shot 'due to his color' and told attorneys during questioning that she felt the defendants were guilty.

Dunikoski noted that many prospective jurors questioned in open court expressed strong opinions about the case, but all who remained in the pool from which the 12 jurors emerged said they could be impartial and base a verdict solely on the trial evidence.

'The defense has not made a case as to why this juror and her opinions are any different than anyone else, black or white,' Dunikoski said of No. 218. 'She said the same thing almost every other juror said. So many had opinions. And they said they could put them aside.'

In issuing his decision not to change the makeup of the jury, Walmsley said defense attorneys 'have been able to explain to the court why besides race those individuals were struck from the panel.'

Meanwhile, one of the defense lawyers raised his concerns that there aren't enough 'Bubbas or Joe six-packs' on the final panel of 12 jurors.

The comments were made by Kevin Gough, the defense attorney representing William Bryan, who is facing a murder charge for filming the shooting death of Arbery in February 2020.

Gough expressed his skepticism over the now-decided pool of jurors, which wasn't determined at the time of his interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying it lacked white men over 40 without a four-year bachelor's degree.

'We want a diverse jury,' he said. 'But we're missing a segment of what would normally be here.'

The slaying dominated news coverage and social media feeds leading court officials to take extraordinary steps in hopes of seating an impartial jury.

The court mailed 1,000 jury duty notices, and nearly 200 people were questioned by the judge and attorneys at the courthouse during jury selection.

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski probes questions on Wednesday, October 27, during the jury selection in the McMichaels and Bryan trial in Glynn County Superior Court in Brunswick, Georgia

Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, (pictured Wednesday, October 27) denied that the black panelists' race was considered in decisions to strike them from the jury pool: 'I can give you a race neutral reason for any one of these'

Defense attorney Kevin Gough, representing William Bryan, (pictured Wednesday, October 27) was concerned there weren't enough 'Bubbas or Joe six-packs', or college-educated white men over 40, in the group of potential jurors

William 'Roddie' Bryan attends the jury selection on Wednesday, October 27 after a particularly difficult process due to the high-profile case centered around race

Travis McMichael (right) and his attorney Robert Rubin (left) attend the jury selection in his trial together on Wednesday, October 27

Greg McMichael (pictured on Wednesday, October 27) his son, and neighbor face murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment charges in connection to Arbery's death

Before a final jury is seated, attorneys in a criminal case get to take turns eliminating a significant number of prospective jurors from the final pool, for virtually any reason. The final process of elimination consisted of a bailiff passing a list of the potential jurors back and forth between the prosecutors and the three defense teams. Lawyers used the list to silently choose people to strike from the jury.

On February 23, 2020, Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck when they spotted him jogging after having entered a home under construction in their neighborhood, about 70 miles south of Savannah.

A neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan,' joined the chase in his own truck and took cellphone video of the fatal encounter. Video shows the McMichaels stop their truck in front of Arbery as Travis McMichael aims his gun at the young black man.

In the footage, Arbery tries to run around the truck before getting into a physical altercation with Travis McMichael and being shot three times.

Defense attorneys say the McMichaels and Bryan committed no crimes. They say Arbery had been recorded by security cameras inside the home that was under construction and they suspected him of stealing. Greg McMichael told police his son opened fire in self-defense after Arbery attacked with his fists and grappled for Travis McMichael's shotgun.

Investigators have said Arbery was unarmed and there's no evidence he had stolen anything.

Arbery was chased by the armed McMichaels as he was jogging in his neighborhood on February 23, 2020

Arbery, in a white T-shirt, is confronted by Travis McMichael, who holds a shotgun

No one was charged in Arbery's death until more than two months later, when the video of the shooting leaked online. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police and soon arrested all three men on nine charges, which include malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

Arbery's death became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system and across the country after a string of fatal encounters between black people and police continued to make national headlines George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, among others.

The judge said the jury, along with four alternates, will be seated and sworn in Friday, when opening statements in the trial are expected.

Arbery's death became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice after a string of fatal encounters between black people and police continued to make national headlines

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has worked with the Arbery, Floyd, and Taylor families, responded to the jury selection in the McMichaels and Bryan trial: 'After being hunted down, cornered, and shot for being a Black man in a white Georgia neighborhood, Ahmaud Arbery is again denied justice.

'His killers' fate will be decided by a nearly all-white jury after defense attorneys denied eight potential Black jurors. Even the judge acknowledged 'there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel.'

'A jury should reflect the community. Brunswick is 55% Black, so it's outrageous that Black jurors were intentionally excluded to create such an imbalanced jury in a cynical effort to help these cold-blooded killers escape justice.'

Arbey's family has also commented on the 'injustice' of the jury selection.

His aunt, Thea Brooks, said: 'I wasn't surprised. That's just some of what we've already been facing in this case. Just another of the injustices that we see here in Glynn County. Not just with this case, but with many. So it's just another part of what we face every day.'

Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told reporters she found the selection: 'devastating.' But she said: 'I'm very confident that they'll make the right decision after seeing all the evidence.'

Her attorney, S. Lee Merritt, said he remains confident the trial will end in a conviction, despite the his belief the defense lawyers had: 'created a jury that was more favorable for their defendants, an almost entirely white jury.'
Parents fed up with the prospect school boards implementing Critical Race Theory were undoubtedly the decisive factor in Republican Glenn Youngkin's surprise defeat of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia's gubernatorial race, Fox News' Tucker Carlson said.

The conservative TV anchor pushed back at liberal media pundits who argued that CRT was used as a 'bogeyman' for Republicans to get parents to vote red.

'Schools are teaching students, your children, that some races are inherently superior to other races. That's the definition of racism, that some children are born with the sin of sin, inherently? That's Nazi stuff, it is. It is totally un-American. No child is born with a stain of sin,' Carlson said.

He accused the media of desperately holding onto the false belief that the reason Democrats lost the state was that 'Virginia parents are racists.'

'This is not a semantic debate about what critical race theory means,' Carlson said, accusing MSNBC journalists of drinking the cool-aid served up by 'Jim Jones,' referencing the People Temple's preacher who led the mass murder-suicide of 900 people.

The tight Youngkin-McAuliffe race took a turn after the Republican newcomer pledged to ban CRT, seizing on the discontent of parents who had grown agitated after the Loudon County school board announced a $6million 'equity-training' program that parents associated with CRT.

Journalist @realchrisrufo single-handedly led the charge in exposing the anti-white racism and CRT being taught in schools across the country pic.twitter.com/fkyIV8bjF0  Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 4, 2021

Carlson accused the media of desperately holding onto the false belief that the reason Democrats lost the state was that Virginia parents are racists

'This not a semantic debate about what critical race theory means,' Carlson said, and called MSNBC journalists 'Jim Joes,' referencing the People Temple's preacher, who led the mass murder-suicide of 900 people

'Our schools are teaching our kids what to think as opposed to how to think. We're going to go in on day one and re-establish excellence in schools,' Youngkin said during an interview with Sean Hannity.

Youngkin vowed to ban critical race theory from schools and said he would open an investigation into the Loudoun County School Board, which has been marred in controversy over an alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl by a boy wearing a skirt in a high school bathroom.

MSNBC's Nicole Wallace said after McAuliffe's election defeat that 'critical race theory, which isn't real, turned the suburbs,' while Maria Teresa Kumar said that Republicans 'were okay with the dog whistles of racism' and then centered the state on 'schools, schools, schools.'

Another MSNBC anchor, Joy Reid, added that the GOP had weaponized race in order to win the election and CRT was being used as a right-wing 'bogeyman.'

Carlson countered: 'These people are Jim Jones. At best. Most of them don't even believe it with the sincerity,' Carlson said.

Youngkin took stage at an election-night rally in Chantilly, Virginia on Tuesday night. The Republican beat McAuliffe by 2.5 percentage points

Youngkin vowed to ban critical race theory from schools and said he would open an investigation into the Loudoun County School Board, which has been marred in controversy over an alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl by a boy in a skirt in a high school bathroom

Parents protest against anti-racist teachings in the school district while officials insist CRT is not on the curriculum

Two people were arrested during a school board meeting that descended into chaos

A man is detained after a fight broke out during a Loudoun County School Board meeting which included a discussion of Critical Race Theory and transgender students

Loudon County, a Democratic stronghold in northern Virginia, became the focal point of debate over woke policies by school boards across the country.

In April, the county announced that they planned to allocate more than $6 million to 'equity training' which was met with strong opposition by some residents.

They claimed that training was part of a pro-CRT push which would lead to students seeing themselves as victims or oppressors, depending on their race.

Then over the summer, a rowdy school board meeting debating transgender rights ended in an arrest.

Protests then reignited in September, when the school board voted 6-3 in favor of beginning a study into whether it would be appropriate to give reparations to black people after it previously ignored a landmark desegregation ruling.

Glenn Youngkin holds hands with Winsome Sears (L) and his wife Suzanne (R) during a group prayer after a news network called the Virginia Gubernatorial race in favor of Youngkin at the Westfields Marriott Washington Dulles

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe speaks during his election night event at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner

The tight Youngkin-McAuliffe race took a turn after the Republican newcomer pledged to ban CRT, seizing on the discontent of parents who had grown agitated after a school board announced a $6million 'equity-training' program that parents associated with CRT

The school board then faced another incident when it was revealed that a 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped in the girls' bathroom by a 'boy wearing a skirt.'

That boy was moved to another school, where he allegedly carried out a second sex attack in October. The teen is now in custody, amid an uproar over how he was allowed to allegedly offend again.

Youngkin stormed to victory in Virginia on Tuesday by taking votes away from Democrats with a surge in support from white women, the suburbs, and areas where Donald Trump struggled when he lost the state by 10 points in 2020.

Exits polls showed white women went for Youngkin after Biden carried them over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Turnout surged in the state, forcing precincts to print extra ballots, but a lower showing from black voters hampered McAuliffe.

Republicans haven't won statewide in Virginia since 2009. That year, Bob McDonnell was able to capitalize on a backlash against Barack Obama's presidential win to take the state. His victory preceded a GOP wave that gave Republicans control of the House in the 2010 midterms.

Virginia, however, also tends to elect a governor of the opposite party to whoever occupies the White House.
Eight fire engines rushed to tackle a blaze on the 18th floor of a block of flats in south London today.

Around 60 firefighters were called to Hurlock Heights in Deacon Street, Elephant and Castle, just before 11am on Thursday.

Emergency services evacuated the building and taped off the road while firefighters battled the blaze. In an update at 12.25pm the brigade said the fire had been brought under control.

London Fire Brigade said while the building had cladding, it was not ACM cladding - which was used on Grenfell Tower - and was not affected by the fire.

The cause of the fire is being investigated.

Dozens of firefighters rushed to tackle a blaze on the 18th floor of a block of flats in south London today

London Fire Brigade said crews were called to blaze in Deacon Street in Elephant and Castle just before 11am on Thursday

Eight fire engines and around 60 firefighters are at the scene, where a balcony is alight

This map shows where a fire broke out in a towerblock on Deacon Street in Elephant and Castle

Fire crews from Lambeth, Dockhead, Dowgate, Brixton and surrounding fire stations attended.

Valeria Monterosso, 22, who lives in the block of flats, said she was at her friend's home nearby when the blaze broke out.

She told PA Media: 'I heard ambulances and went outside because I thought I should check on my dog, Marcello.

'I walked over and saw about 15 trucks and thought, 'oh my God'.

'I saw smoke coming out of it and was just concerned if everyone was OK. I've asked and they've (the emergency services) told me everyone is fine.

'My dog is still inside and I'm worried about him, but the police have told me it's going to be a few hours until they let us back in.'

Fire crews from Lambeth, Dockhead, Dowgate, Brixton and surrounding fire stations have attended

Eyewitnesses have shared photos and videos of smoke billowing out from the building

Station Commander Dave Hill, who is at the scene, said: 'Firefighters are making steady progress at the scene of the fire in Elephant and Castle.

'A road closure is in place and there is heavy congestion.

'Crews evacuated residents on three floors of the building who were affected by the smoke. There are currently no reports of any injuries.

'The brigade's drone team assisted by providing an aerial view of the incident. We encourage people to avoid the area.'

Eyewitnesses have shared photos and videos of smoke billowing out from the building.

A video posted on social media showed flames and black smoke coming from a corner balcony of the block of flats.

Jerome Wise, who filmed the video, said: 'Yo prayers, prayers man. This is mad.'
New text messages shown at trial revealed that the neo-Nazis who attended the deadly 2017 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville wore black in order to coverup bloodstains.

Text messages between organizers of 2017's Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville were revealed in court this week during the federal civil trial that will determine whether those who orchestrated the deadly event conspired to engage in racially motivated violence, the Washington Post reported.

Ten people who say they were physically harmed and went through emotional distress during the weekend rally brought the suit, backed by Integrity First for America, a civil rights nonprofit organization, against multiple white supremacist organizations and 14 people who are alleged to have orchestrated the violent demonstration that led to one death and multiple injuries.

Matthew Heimbach's text show him deciding on a dress code for the event, with organizers landing on an all black uniform in order to hide blood, attorneys said

Leaders of white supremacist groups are accused of orchestrating the deadly event and conspiring to engage in racially motivated violence

Defendants claim that their speech was constitutionally protected and that the violence that occurred was not carefully coordinated but instead brought on by police inaction and counter protesters, the Post reported.

The first of two dozen defendants was Matthew Heimbach, leader of the white nationalist group Traditionalist Worker Party, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to disorderly conduct for assaulting a protester at a 2016 campaign event for then-President Donald Trump.

Heimbach's communications, including photos, videos and texts leaked from the messaging app Discord, were presented in court on Tuesday and Wednesday as he was questioned about his organization efforts and outreach to make the 2017 event come together.

Presented as evidence were texts Heimbach sent to Jason Kessler, the lead organizer of the Unite the Right rally, trying to decide on a dress code for the event.

Heimbach initially suggested 'Khakis and a polo,' but organizers ultimately landed on an all black uniform in order to hide blood, attorneys said.

The violent Unite the Right rally in 2017 led to one death and multiple injuries

Heimbach was among hundreds of white nationalists - including neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members - who descended on Charlottesville in 2017

Messages dating back to May 22 of that year show the concerted effort to bring about the weekend rally.

'I wanted to invite you and pick your brain about how to conceive this thing,' Kessler texted Heimbach.

From there, texts show how Heimbach assembled leaders of various hate groups to make the event happen.

'We've got 90% of all the real orgs in America together,' Heimbach said in a June 5, 2017 message to Dillon Hopper, the commander of hate group Vanguard America, 'With the leadership being you, me, Jeff and Dr. Hill,' Heimbach added, referring to Jeff Schoep, the former leader of the National Socialist Movement and Michael Hill, a neo-Confederate leader of the League of the South, the Post reported.

'Now all we need is Spencer and Damigo,' Hopper replied, referring to Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo, leader of neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa.

'Well this is where charlottesivlle [sic] comes in,' Heimbach wrote. 'We're all doing it together.'

Prior to the rally Kessler also asked Heimbach to reach out to two violent skinhead groups, the Hammerskins and Blood & Honour social club, groups who Heimbach said in court were known to be 'rough around the edges.'

He also told the court he reached out to 'comrades in Greece' in order to get someone from the violent neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn to attend, but according to Heimbach the notoriously violent groups were asked to attend the rally in order to intimidate counter protestors, 'so there would be a deterrent effect.'

Heimbach pictured at the Charlottesville rally in 2017. He is being accused of orchestrating the violent event

During cross examination Heimbach tried to distance himself from his former comrades and pushed back against evidence linking him to Nazis.

When presented with a picture he posted to Discord in 2017 of him performing the Nazi salute, his attorney Joshua Smith objected, and said 'It's actually referred to as a Roman Salute.'

But Heimbach had a well documented history of admiring and defending Nazis, including viewing it as a 'slur' when people mention the U.S. fought Nazis in World War II, saying that when his newborn son first opened his eyes he thought of Adolf Hitler and requesting his his followers salute him saying 'Heil Heimbach,' the Post reported.

In 2018, Heimbach was charged with domestic battery after he got into an altercation with his wife and his alleged mistress' husband, who happens to be his wife's stepfather.

Heimbach was arrested and charged with domestic battery.

Heimbach was among hundreds of white nationalists - including neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members - who descended on Charlottesville in part to protest the city's decision decided to remove a monument to Confederate Gen Robert E Lee from a park.

Violent fighting broke out between attendees and counterprotesters. Authorities eventually forced the crowd to disperse, but a car later barreled into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more. A state police helicopter later crashed, killing two troopers.

After James Alex Fields Jr. was sentenced in 2019 to life plus 419 years for killing Heyer and injuring dozens during the rally, prosecutors say Heimbach wrote him a friendly letter.

The letter to Fields Jr., presented in court, said that although they never met they are 'comrades' and that Heimbach knew he was 'a good man,'

'You my friend,' Heimbach wrote, 'are a martyr for our folk.'
A single case of Covid has prompted the return of strict Covid restrictions in the Northern Territory, after an unvaccinated man working in the remote outback town of Katherine tested positive.

Greater Darwin was thrown into a 'lockout' - where only the fully-vaccinated can go about their business but must wear masks - from midnight on Thursday.

They are not allowed to leave the region, and people must prove they are fully-vaccinated to enter hospitality venues.

The man, believed to be in his 20s and not vaccinated, has not recently travelled out of the NT and is a contract worker at the RAAF Base Tindal in Katherine.

The shock case, and fears of further community transmission, has sent the small town - which is 320km from Darwin, into lockdown for 72 hours, with even the fully-vaccinated banned from leaving home for anything but essential reasons.

Darwin is the first major city to test the 'lockout', which sees vaccinated residents allowed to live freely while the unvaccinated must remain home and locals banned from leaving the city (pictured, Darwin under a previous snap lockdown in August)

A contract worker at the RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory has tested positive for coronavirus - throwing the region and Greater Darwin into a snap lockdown

NORTHERN TERRITORY EXPOSURE SITES Darwin: Monsoons Nightclub on Friday 29 October Equinox Fishing Charter at 2pm on Saturday 30 October Noonamah: Noonamah petrol station on Saturday morning 30 October Katherine: RAAF Base Tindal on Monday 31 October and Tuesday November 1 The Katherine Club on Monday October 31 between 5pm and 6pm Advertisement

In a late night press conference, Chief Minister Michael Gunner said he wouldn't rule out a full lockdown for Darwin if other cases are discovered.

Vaccinated residents in Darwin are allowed to continue to live as normal, with venues, retail and offices remaining open.

The man had been out in the community and was likely infectious from October 31 to November 2.

The contract worker, who lives in Darwin, first developed symptoms on Tuesday and was tested Wednesday.

He returned a 'strong positive' on Thursday, with officials quickly acting to lockdown areas of potential transmission.

There are five exposure sites confirmed so far, including a nightclub, pub and fishing charter.

Darwin is the first major city to test the 'lockout', which sees vaccinated residents allowed to live freely while the unvaccinated must remain home and everyone is banned from travelling elsewhere.

'This doesn't rule out a full lockdown if circumstances change,' Mr Gunner said.

'We do not know where, when or how this man became infected.'

Greater Darwin (pictured) is set to be thrown into strict Covid restrictions from midnight on Thursday after the Northern Territory recorded a shock new case of community transmission

The NT has not yet reached the 80 per cent fully-vaccinated rates, leaving them far behind other Australian states.

Those in Katherine can only leave home to get tested or vaccinated, to get food, for essential work, exercise or medical reasons.

They are only permitted to exercise within a 5km radius from their home.

The restrictions will remain in place until midnight on Sunday.

Vaccinated residents in Darwin will be able to avoid most restrictions but will have to be masked when out of their homes (pictured, Darwin under a previous snap lockdown in August)
Outgoing Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of Donald Trump's most aggressive Republican critics, is reportedly toying with the idea of a run for higher office after he retires from the House in early 2022, he indicated on Thursday.

He's one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riot.

He told CNN today that he 'definitely' wouldn't rule out a 2024 presidential bid after last week announcing he won't seek re-election.

The 43-year-old Air Force veteran said he's at least mulling a run for Senate or governor of his state, which is currently run by Democrat JB Pritzker.

Kinzinger anticipates he'll 'probably' have a decision made not soon after he leaves office in January or February.

'I never rule anything out,' he said today.

'The key is, how do we restore the honor of the party in the country?'

But winning the White House is a difficult path for the Republican who made his name criticizing a president of his own party and joining a Democrat-led panel investigating Trump's actions concerning the January 6 Capitol riot.

According to recent polling, a vast majority of Republican voters want Trump to mount a comeback in 2024. After him, some of the highest-polling potential GOP candidates are former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis - both of whom have been far more flattering of Trump than Kinzinger.

Kinzinger said he's thinking about running for higher office and will 'probably' come to a decision by February

Carving out a path to the governorship may also be difficult in the blue state of Illinois. The state has voted for a Democrat to become president every election since Bill Clinton in 1992.

For the better part of two decades, a Democrat has also led the state - save for Bruce Rauner, who was governor from 2015 until 2019.

It may also be difficult to get through a Republican primary with what's sure to be vehement opposition from the ex-president, who's mocked Kinzinger as 'cryin Adam' on a number of occasions.

The nickname is a reference to Kinzinger's emotional reaction at a January 6 committee hearing in which members of the Capitol and DC Metro police forces gave graphic testimony of the horrors they witnessed - and endured - during the Capitol riot.

Most Republican voters say they want Trump (pictured accepting the GOP nomination in 2020 at the RNC) to run again in 2024

A third possibility is staying in Congress and running for the Senate in 2022, when Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth will be up for re-election.

Kinzinger indicated one of those paths is most appealing, but didn't say which.

Trump celebrated the news of the lawmaker's retirement last week in a brief emailed statement, writing: '2 down, 8 to go!'

He announced his retirement in a video posted on Twitter late last month where he champions the vote to impeach Trump and says the country has been 'poisoned' by 'mistruths'

'It's also become increasingly obvious to me that in order to break the narrative, I cannot focus on both a re-election to Congress and a broader fight nationwide,' he said in the message.

Kinzinger, an Iraq war veteran, has represented Illinois' 16th District since 2013. Before that he was in Congress for the state's 11th district.

Throughout the five-minute video he criticized the ex-president for the division he's caused without ever mentioning Trump by name.

Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are working with the majority-Democrat committee investigating the Capitol riot, which has led to a barrage of criticism from their own party.

Kinzinger along with Rep. Liz Cheney are the only two Republicans on the Democrat-dominated Capitol riot committee

Kinzinger has also been facing potential redistricting issues as Illinois is poised to lose a House seat after the 2020 census.

On Friday he decried the state of politics in America today, claiming that 'you must belong to a tribe' to have a political future.

'Our political parties only survive by appealing to the most motivated and the most extreme elements within it,' he said in an apparent reference to the violent Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.

'The price tag to power has skyrocketed, and fear and distrust has served as an effective strategy to meet that cost.'

He warned, 'Dehumanizing each other has become the norm.'

Kinzinger then took a shot at Trump more directly, saying, 'We've allowed leaders to reach power selling the false premise that strength comes from degrading others.'

'As a country, we've fallen for those lies and now we face a poisoned country filled with outrage blinding our ability to achieve real strength. It has become increasingly obvious to me that as a country, we must unplug from the mistruths we've been fed,' he said.

He's the second Republican who voted to impeach Trump announcing his retirement after Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio. Gonzalez had been facing a primary challenge from a Trump-backed former White House aide.
Joseph Rosenbaum threatened to kill any of Kenosha's self-appointed vigilantes if he got them alone the night of August 25, 2020.

Jurors heard the startling testimony as Ryan Balch took the stand Thursday afternoon. Balch, a self-avowed 'boogaloo boi' had traveled to Kenosha to 'police' the community after hearing of the protests and riots that had taken place across the previous nights.

According to Balch, Rosenbaum made the threats within ear-shot of Rittenhouse who had quickly attached himself to Balch and the two spent much of the evening side by side.

Rittenhouse was by Balch's side when Rosenbaum 'got in his face' 'yelling and screaming.'

In direct testimony Balch told Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, 'He was yelling and screaming. I said, ''Dude back up, chill out.''

The court then heard that Rosenbaum turned to Balch and said, 'If I catch any of you guys alone tonight I'm going to f***ing kill you.'

Kyle Rittenhouse is accused of gunning down three people with a military-style semi-automatic rifle last year, killing two and injuring one

Jurors heard the startling testimony as Ryan Balch took the stand Thursday afternoon. Balch, a self-avowed 'boogaloo boi' had traveled to Kenosha to 'police' the community after hearing of the protests and riots that had taken place across the previous nights

Rittenhouse fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum (pictured), 36, with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle after Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse across a parking lot and threw a plastic bag at him shortly before midnight on August 25, 2020

According to Balch, 'the defendant was close enough to hear what was said.'

Later that night Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse down in a pursuit that ended when the younger man turned on him and fired off four shots, shooting him dead.

Earlier in his testimony Balch, a military veteran who was armed with an AR-15 and wearing body armor that night, characterized Rosenbaum as, 'hyper-aggressive and acting out in a violent manner.'

He said, 'He was always having to be restrained by someone. The crowd was pretty good about getting in between him and whoever it was.

'If he landed a blow I didn't see it, but he definitely wanted to.'

In contrast Balch described Rittenhouse  whom he believed to be 19 years old  as 'underexperienced and underequipped.'

He said, 'He seemed like an impressionable kid. I felt like as young as he looked and the general way he was carrying himself the protesters would have seen that as a weakness and tried to exploit that.'

In a moment of levity Balch recalled the only direct encounter he witnessed between Rittenhouse and a protester. He said, 'He had one exchange that I saw. Just some random person in the crowd yelled, 'F*** you!'

Balch said Rittenhouse replied, 'I love you too ma'am.'

Balch told the court that he mistakenly believed the hospital bag that Rosenbaum was carrying to contain ammonia and bleach  the ingredients for a Molotov cocktail.

Daily Caller Chief Video Director Richie McGinniss (pictured) took the witness stand Thursday morning as a prosecution witness. He claimed Rittenhouse victim Joseph Rosenbaum 'lunged towards the muzzle' of Rittenhouse's gun in the moment the teen levelled it towards him and shot

Balch described Rittenhouse  whom he believed to be 19 years old  as 'underexperienced and underequipped'

Earlier in the day Daily Caller Chief Video Director Richie McGinniss took the stand to testify that Joseph Rosenbaum 'lunged towards the muzzle' of Kyle Rittenhouse's weapon in the moment the teen leveled it towards him and shot.

McGinniss had traveled to Kenosha to cover the unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake and was so close to the shooting on August 25, 2020, that Rittenhouse has been charged with reckless endangerment.

He told the court he followed Rosenbaum's pursuit of Rittenhouse because he sensed that 'something newsworthy' was about to happen after seeing Rittenhouse running carrying a fire extinguisher in one hand and his AR-15 in the other.

McGinniss had been called as a state witness, but if he had hoped that McGinniss would further his case Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger was disappointed. At times his direct examination seemed more like a contentious cross.

McGinniss detailed the events of the night as he had witnessed them chronicling the 'menacing' atmosphere and random violence up to the point where he found himself just feet behind Rosenbaum as Rittenhouse turned to face him.

Binger focused in on the moment that Rittenhouse pulled the trigger  suggesting that Rosenbaum was already 'falling forward' when the first shot was taken, a key element to the state's contention that Rosenbaum was no threat and that the shooting was therefore not self-defense.

But McGinniss pushed back, with testimony that rendered him more a witness for the defense than the state.

Indeed DailyMail.com has learned that McGinniss, who gave a host of interviews to right-wing outlets in the days following the shooting, was seen speaking with the defense team in a Kenosha hotel last night.

McGinniss said, 'It's unclear to me whether the shots were the reason he was falling because he lunged as the shots were fired. Perhaps it was the shots that caused him to fall forward.

'He was lunging, falling, I would use those as synonymous terms  he threw his momentum towards the weapon. His momentum was going forward and that's the point at which he fired the shots.'

Binger badgered McGinniss to cede the point and agree with him that Rosenbaum was falling when the shots were fired but despite an increasingly tense examination McGinniss would not be swayed.

He insisted that Rosenbaum 'lunged' towards the rifle and that it was in that moment that Rittenhouse, 'levelled [his gun] at Mr. Rosenbaum and fired.'

McGinniss went onto recall how he attempted to comfort Rosenbaum as he sped to hospital with the dying man in the back of a stranger's car.

He said, 'I was telling him we were going to have a beer together afterwards and that it was all doing to be okay. I believe that when I was talking, I like to think, that he could hear me.

'It seemed that his eye was looking at me but it was kind of rolling back and when I started talking it kind of rolled back towards me, looking at me.

'He was having difficulty breathing.'

McGinniss revealed that the crowd were so 'animated' and angry that he was punched in the face as he tried to load Rosenbaum into the car.

A juror was dismissed Thursday morning from the Rittenhouse trial after it emerged that he had made a racial joke about the shooting of Jacob Blake

Earlier McGinniss had been robust in his testimony, even combative when pressed by Binger, but his demeanor changed as footage of Rosenbaum that he himself had filmed was played in court.

He did not look at the monitor once, as the close up footage of Rosenbaum screened. He put a trembling hand to his forehead, appeared tearful and stressed and drank from a bottle of water placed by his side.

On the night of August 25 he had taken the shirt of his back to try to stem Rosenbaum's bleeding. On Thursday he described how he had flipped Rosenbaum onto his back where he lay between the cars.

McGinniss said he caught sight of Rittenhouse's legs in his peripheral vision as the younger man had come to stand behind him.

He said, 'I said, 'Call 911,' and I saw a hand go into a pocket and assumed that's what was happening.'

In fact Rittenhouse was calling his friend Dominick Black, telling him 'I shot a man.'

McGinniss said that, in that moment, he did not register that it was the shooter who was by his side.

When he stood to cross-examine Mark Richards addressed the fact that one of the four shots hit Rosenbaum in the back  a fact of which Binger made much in his opening statements.

Richards made short shrift of the notion that this was 'the proverbial shooting an innocent person in the back.'

He asked McGinniss, 'As he [Rittenhouse] shot you never saw [Rosenbaum] turn around, look at you directly and begin running away for the back shot correct?'

McGinniss answered, 'Correct.'

It is the defense's contention that a bullet hit Rosenbaum in the back as he fell forward.

In fact he said that Rosenbaum and Rittenhouse almost made contact and may have had a glancing contact as the shot man 'lunged for the barrel' of Rittenhouses' gun.

McGinniss told police officers on that night, 'He was certainly trying to grab the barrel of the gun.'

He also told them, 'In my best estimation I think this individual and possibly other individuals decided they were going to get [Rittenhouse's] gun from him.'

Standing momentarily he mined the motion for the jurors  thrusting both arms down and forward as he said Rosenbaum had done as he lunged towards Rittenhouse that night.

He told officers on the night, 'It was pretty clear to me that the guy with the gun was trying to evade the other guy.'

It was the shooting of Blake (pictured), a black man, by a Kenosha Police Officer on August 23, 2020, that sparked nights of protests and riots in Kenosha

A juror was dismissed from the trial after it emerged that he had made a racial joke about the shooting of Jacob Blake.

The bombshell move came at the start of the third day of the high-profile trial with Judge Bruce Schroeder making it clear that public confidence in the outcome of the case is paramount.

Called to speak to the judge, the juror refused to repeat the joke that had already been outlined by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger.

Addressing the court Binger said his understanding was that the joke was, 'Why did it take seven shots to shot Jacob Blake? Because they ran out of bullets

Rusten Sheskey shot a black man, Jacob Blake, in Wisconsin last year

'The implication of the punchline was that it if Kenosha police had more bullets they would have continued to shoot.'

Binger continued, 'I think the rest of this joke suggests some sort of racial bias which comes into play in the subtext of this case and beyond.'

It was the shooting of Blake, a black man, by a Kenosha Police Officer on August 23, 2020, that sparked nights of Black Lives Matters protests and riots in Kenosha.

And it was amid this civil unrest that Rittenhouse armed himself with his AR015 and took to the streets on the fateful night of August 25, 2020, when he shot and killed two men and gravely injured a third.

Schroeder was in no mood to hear the juror's protestations that his joke had 'nothing to do with the case,' as he dismissed him.

He said, 'I'm going to tell you I've talked quite a bit about public confidence in the outcome of the trial and regardless of whether the issue is as grave as (Mr. Binger) presented it in terms of inner feelings it's clear the appearance of bias is present and would seriously undermine the outcome of the case. That in itself would be conditions for discharge.'

Rittenhouse told a reporter on the scene that he was a qualified EMT there to administer 'medical' to people in need and prepared to go 'into harm's way.'

The revelation came as testimony continued Thursday with Daily Caller Chief Video Director Richie McGinniss taking the stand.

Judge Bruce Schroeder made it clear that public confidence in the outcome of the case is paramount

McGinnis interviewed Rittenhouse on the night of August 25, 2020 as he had traveled to Kenosha to cover the unrest.

Speaking on camera Rittenhouse claimed that he was an EMT  he is not - and armed to 'protect himself.' He went onto say he worked as a lifeguard, which was true.

He said, 'I'm running into harm's way. We're running medical. We're going in and we're getting people. You get hurt I'm grabbing you.'

He was filmed walking with avowed 'boogaloo boi' Ryan Balch yelling, 'Medic! Medic coming through!' And asking if anyone needed medical help.

Asked by Assistant District Attorney Binger if McGinniss had ever encountered a medic armed with an AR-15 before McGinnis, who had covered the chaos in Seattle, said, 'No.'

He said, 'I saw a lot of people who were medics some of whom were armed but not with an AR-15. I just recall in Seattle a medic armed with a handgun.'

Rittenhouse listened intently having arrived in court this morning carrying a large black briefcase as he has done each day. Dressed in suit and tie the young man, who once wanted to be a police officer and passed himself off as an EMT, took notes and appeared more like a legal intern at the defense table then the defendant in the case.

During Wednesday's trial, Rittenhouse averted his eyes as harrowing scenes of Joseph Rosembaum taking his final breaths were played in Kenosha County Courthouse.

Bystanders crowded Rosenbaum who groaned in a protracted death rattle in the moments after he was shot four times by Rittenhouse who had fled the scene.

Moments earlier, the court had watched further livestream footage from the night of August 25, 2020, in which Rittenhouse could be seen being chased by Rosenbaum, while Daily Caller reporter Richie McGinness followed on. McGinness was so close to the shooting Rittenhouse has been charged with reckless endangerment.

Rittenhouse sat before a monitor and watched those scenes, wiggling his pen rapidly. His discomfort during the barrage of video evidence entered after lunch was clear.

Looking back at the screen for a period of time Rittenhouse appeared emotional. At one point he put his hand to his cheek and wiped his eye.

Jurors at the Kenosha shooter's trial have heard jolting audio of the first four shots fired by Kyle Rittenhouse on the night of August 25, 2020

Moments later, as Rittenhouse was running down a street, he shot and killed Anthony Huber (right), 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wisconsin

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting as the narrator shouts, 'He shot him! He shot him!' McGinness is filmed taking off his shirt and attempting to stem Rosenbaum's bleeding. Meanwhile Rittenhouse, who had earlier walked the streets declaring himself a medic stands dumbly by, before turning and fleeing the scene, leaving others to call for medics.

In other chaotic footage the panicked crowd can be seen carrying the shirtless, dying man to a nearby vehicle and loading him into back in a bid to get him to medics.

Members of the jury were visibly disturbed as more footage showed Rittenhouse on the ground shooting up first at Anthony Huber then at Gaige Grosskreutz who was filmed howling in pain, screaming for a medic, having been shot in the arm.

In scenes of violent confusion a man can be heard screaming, 'People are getting shot everywhere!' as Rittenhouse is seen, pointing his gun and walking away from the scene.

Under direct examination Detective Martin Howard, recounted how he had chronicled Rittenhouse's injuries when he saw him in the early hours of August 26, at Antioch Illinois, police station.

Detective Howard recalled that Rittenhouse had a scratch above his left eyebrow, a cut on his lower lip, some redness on his chest and near his belly button, redness on the tip of one thumb, a scratch on his back and two lumps, 'the size of a penny' on the back of his head behind his left ear, not visible through his thick hair but clear to the touch.

Defense attorney Richards returned to this theme during cross examination and neatly converted it to his cause, saying, 'I guess what the state is getting at is the injuries weren't serious he shouldn't have shot.'

He continued, 'When you're getting hit in the head you don't know what's going to happen do you? When somebody's hitting you again with their skateboard you don't know. When somebody puts their bare hand on your firearm you don't know if that person is going to get your gun, turn it and use it on you.'

He concluded, 'Sir if a weapon is taken from somebody it could be used against them as a deadly, dangerous weapon. Correct?'

Detective Howard agreed, 'Correct.'

Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year

The defense claims Rittenhouse tried to turn himself in for shooting Rosenbaum, but was seized by a mob, including Huber, who they claimed tried to 'decapitate' Rittenhouse

Richards play never-before-seen FBI surveillance footage that tracked body-heat using infrared technology. In it Rosenbaum and Rittenhouse can be seen, from a distance of 9000 feet, as two white blobs  Rittenhouse marked as person of interest 1, Rosenbaum as person of interest 2.

Rosenbaum can be seen walking parallel to Rittenhouse then disappearing between parked vehicles before he emerges behind Rittenhouse in apparent pursuit.

'Correct me if I'm wrong,' Richards said, 'But this looks like the perfect ambush.'

Richards highlighted the fact that the first shot of the night was not fired by Rittenhouse but by a man called Joshua Ziminski who was about 30 feet behind Rittenhouse when he fired one shot. Rittenhouse fired off four rounds seconds later.

And the defense circled back to some of the footage that had shocked jurors earlier, pointing to the bangs of bats being smashed against cars and pausing at a point where the words, 'Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!' can clearly be heard.

Those words were shouted by Rittenhouse as he was being chased by Rosenbaum who, it was noted was steadily gaining ground.

Rittenhouse turned to face Rosenbaum with his gun but, according to Howard, the man was deterred only briefly and pressed on.

Defense Mark Richards, center described a chaotic scene on the night of the protests that scared Rittenhouse and hindered his decision making that led to the two deaths that night. He showed photos of the moment Huber was shot

In opening statements on Tuesday, both sides agreed on one point; there is no mystery to this trial. 'I'm not going to ask you to solve a murder,' defense attorney Mark Richards told the court. 'It's not a who dunnit?'

Instead, this is a tale of competing narratives.

In the version offered by Kenosha Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, Rittenhouse is a 'chaos tourist' who recklessly wielded his AR-15, shooting two unarmed men and grievously wounding another. He was a fantasist, a wannabe vigilante and, of all the people in the streets that night, he alone fired his weapon at anyone.

To Rittenhouse's defense, he is a panicked 17-year-old who acted in self-defense. He believed his life was in danger, according to Richards; first from Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, who was intent on killing him and taking his gun.

In a moment of high drama Richards quoted from footage that showed Rosenbaum shouting, 'Shoot me n*****! Shoot me n*****!'

Rosenbaum had been released from a mental health facility earlier that day  information that the jury may not hear after the prosecution sought to exclude it. He had attempted to commit suicide.

Next came Anthony Huber, 26. and Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. All were part of what Richards characterized as a violent mob, with Huber and Grosskreutz attacking Rittenhouse as he lay on his back on the ground.

Huber wielded his skateboard in an attempt to 'decapitate' Rittenhouse, he said.

Grosskreutz came at him with a Glock.
A furious black mom is suing a Michigan police department for pointing a gun and handcuffing her 10 year-old son after his dad was apprehended by cops.

'I'm scared,' the visibly frightened child can be heard telling the Pittsfield Township officer while getting handcuffed, in footage recorded from the officer's person during the April 16 incident.

The altercation, which saw the boy's dad filmed screaming over how his son was treated, has since become the focus of a federal lawsuit filed by the boy's mother.

It came after the boy's father was ordered by cops to drive away from the scene of a shooting that had been cordoned off by police. He drove down the wrong side of a road, sparking a police response. A 100mph chase then ensued, with the dad and his son both restrained after officers finally apprehended their white Dodge car.

The suit, filed in a Michigan US District Court on October 5, argues that the Pittsfield Township officer, who has not been formally identified, caused 'emotional injury' to the youngster during the April 16 traffic stop, and is asking for $400,000 in damages.

A Michigan cop is in hot water for pointing his gun at a 10-year-old black boy after the child's father fled from police during a traffic stop, in an encounter that was caught on the lawman's bodycam

'This changed everything about him,' the boy's mother, Makia Dixson, said in an interview Tuesday with local outlet CW50 Detroit at a 'Black Boys Matter' protest was held in Pittsfield Township.

Dixson told the outlet that prior to the terrifying encounter with the officer last spring, her son was a happy and outgoing - but revealed that the boy is now a shell of his former self, traumatized by the incident.

'He sits in the house all the time now,' Dixson said

'He really doesn't want to go outside.'

In the 12-page filing, Dixson alleges the officer violated the civil rights of her son when he pointed his loaded service weapon at him and put him in handcuffs - while the boy trembled and desperately clutched his phone.

'I'm scared,' the visibly scared child can be heard telling the Pittsfield Township officer while getting handcuffed during the April 16 incident

Dixson's attorney, Dionne Webster-Cox, added to CW50 during the congregation of about a dozen protesters that the officer mishandled the situation after the child's father was pulled over near I-94.

'Get down, get down, do this, giving all these demands, put the phone down,' Webster-Cox told the outlet Tuesday, citing the body camera footage that the family released to the public amid the ongoing suit.

'The boy is so visibly shaken you can see his hands, he sits down, then he makes up stand back up and puts him in handcuffs.'

The altercation began after a reported shooting at Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, with the Pittsfield Township officer being one of several police personnel to respond to the call.

Minutes after handcuffing the boy, officers apprehended his father, who had fled the scene. While being restrained, he can be heard asking officers in the body camera footage, 'Why the f**k do you have my son in handcuffs?'

Webster-Cox says that police then honed in on the car carrying Benjamin and his dad, who were driving near Briarwood Mall.

According to the attorney, police had shut down a road nearby due to the investigation, and the boy's father drove in the opposite direction of where police told drivers to go.

However, the attorney added that the department later deemed the stop a case of 'mistaken identity.'

A chase then ensued, with Pittsfield police saying the fleeing vehicle exceeded speeds of 100 mph.

The boy's father, who has not been named, was subsequently pulled over eight miles from where the chase started, and fled the scene - leaving his son behind.

The altercation has since become the focus of a federal lawsuit filed by the boy's mother, Makia Dixson, who is seeking $400,00 in damages for her son's 'emotional injury'

The footage captured from the officer's body camera shows the lawman pointing his service weapon at the boy, who is visibly shaken, and proceeds to handcuff him.

'Lay down. Lay down. Put the phone down,' the officer can be heard saying.

As the officer cuffs the child, he appears to notice how young and overwhelmed by the situation he is.

'I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do,' the boy repeats in the clip, visibly emotional.

'I'm scared,' he tells the officer.

Moments later, the boy's father, apprehended by police, is brought back to the scene and also cuffed.

While being restrained, he can be heard asking police why his son is handcuffed as well.

'That's my f***kin son!' the father shouts while being stuffed into a squad car.

'Why is he handcuffed? Why the f**k do you have my son in handcuffs?'

In the footage, the officer then walks the boy into one of the many police vehicles at the scene, and seems to question him.

Webster-Cox says it's a violation to question a minor without a parent present, and argues that the officer's actions were unprofessional and dangerous, going against department's established practices.

After approximately two minutes, another officer tells the lawman to uncuff the child.

During the Tuesday protest, the child's mother joined civil rights activists in front of the Pittsfield municipal offices to object against the township for not disciplining the officer, who is still on the job.

'We are tired of our children being victimized and being brutalized in our streets,' Dixson said.

Attorneys for the family concede that the boy's father was wrong for not initially pulling over for police.

However, they say the subsequent altercation left Benjamin traumatized - hence why they are seeking a $400,000 payout from the Pittsfield police department, which is comprised of only 40 officers.

DailyMail.com reached out to the department to ask about their officer's actions, but they did not immediately reply to the request for comment.
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A NYC firefighter who worked at Ground Zero on 9/11 is now putting in for retirement because he doesn't want a COVID vaccine, having already recovered from the virus.

Gary Debiase, 55, who served with Ladder 109 in Staten Island for 23-and-a-half years, told DailyMail.com that he still loves his job. But he added that outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio's edict forcing all municipal city workers to have the shot by November 1 forced him out.

Debiase told DailyMail.com: 'They told us the air was clean at ground zero - I'm never trusting what the government tells me is safe for my health again...

'I wanna go back but I dont want a shot. Were in a position where we can go without for a few more weeks. Forcing someone to take a vaccine is coercion.

'Ill absolutely go back to work if they let me... Everybody is ready to work. Nobody wants to go home.'

'My wife and I are in a position where we could hold out a few weeks but after that I'm going to put in for my retirement and that's it.

'I don't want to retire. But they won't let me work. They're saying "you can't go to a school", "you can't go to a hospital", "you can't do this, you can't do that."'

Gary Debiase, 55 (pictured right), who served with L 109 for 23-and-a-half years told DailyMail.com of stepping over dead bodies on the day of the 9/11 attacks. He refuses to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and was sent home from work on Monday as a result. Anna Rose Carpiento, 54 (left) has been out of her job as a sonographer at Bellevue Hospital for five weeks after she, too, refused the jab. The pair said they felt like 'second-class citizens'

Both he and his wife, Anna Rose Carpiento, a sonographer at public Bellevue Hospital, lost their city jobs after refusing the jab, and say they feel like they are being treated as 'second class citizens' because they're unvaccinated.

Speaking at an anti-vaccine mandate in Manhattan on Wednesday, Debiase told of stepping over dead bodies on the day of the 9/11 attacks: 'I was knee deep in ash, and the chief said if you step over anyone, see if theyre alive. If theyre not, leave them.

On September 12, 2001, he went straight back to work despite the apocalyptical scene he described.

But on Monday, he was sent home from his Staten Island firehouse when he didn't show up with a vaccine card in-hand.

'I wanna go back but I dont want a shot. Were in a position where we can go without for a few more weeks,' Debiase (pictured) told DailyMail.com. 'Forcing someone to take a vaccine is coercion'

Firefighters told DailyMail.com that at least 150 other retirement-age firefighters were spurred to hang up their gear for good.

As of today, 21 percent of New York's 11,000-strong fire department - approximately 2,310 people - are unvaccinated, and have been sent home.

That is a two per cent drop from the 23 percent of firefighters who hadn't been jabbed on Monday, suggesting that de Blasio's mandate is having some effect.

It is unclear whether firefighters who have applied for exemptions due to religious and other concerns are included in that number - their claims are currently being processed by the city.

Firefighters said that the city of New York was asking those who opted out of vaccination due to their religion to provide their place of worship on paperwork, then calling those establishments to verify that they were indeed parishoners.

As of today, 21 percent of New York's 11,000-strong fire department - approximately 2,310 people - are unvaccinated, and have been sent home

Debiase, a life-long Staten Island resident, told DailyMail.com that he would get the jab if it were a 'real vaccine' - one that would come with a guarantee that you wouldn't get sick - and fears the precedent that could be set by the city's mandate.

'In the end, if we don't win this fight, they will do whatever they want from now on,' he said amid a crowd of protestors at City Hall Park. 'Mandates will be the new norm - Now you do this, now you do that.'

Scientists insist COVID vaccines are safe and effective - although 'breakthrough' cases of the virus who've already had the jab have gone some way towards undermining public confidence in them.

Debiase's wife, Bellevue Hospital sonographer Anna Rose Carpiento, hasn't been back to work for five weeks after refusing to comply with the mandate: 'I don't like anyone telling me what to do. I was never afraid of COVID in the first place.'

She is just three years off being able to retire, but now faces an uncertain future because of the vaccine mandates.

The pair said they had already contracted COVID-19 in August. Now, they said, they are 'second-class citizens' without a vaccine card in the city.

'You can't even sit down to eat. Are you kidding me? We made a sandwich at home because we can't even sit in any of these places, we'll eat it on the ferry on the way home.'

Since the mandate went into effect on Monday, the number of out-of-service firehouses each day has been difficult to ascertain. Union heads said at a Tuesday press conference that members of different firehouses were being 'shuffled around' to feign the impression that the majority of firehouses are operational.

On Wednesday, it was reported that 12 had closed, while on Thursday, this number is said to have dropped to 10, although Mayor de Blasio said the number had dropped as low as four.

'They can never get the media outside a firehouse saying "this fire house is closed," one firefighter told DailyMail.com.

Protestors gathered outside City Hall Park on Wednesday to protest the vaccine mandate

On Tuesday, 60 companies were closed according to Andrew Ansbro, the President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, who said that the departments were 'falling apart behind the scenes.'

City Hall and the FDNY won't confirm exactly how many people the force is down but the union said on Monday they expected it 1,700 firefighters going on unpaid leave.

Today, Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said that only four of the city's 350 units were out of service, and that as many as 20 units can be out of commission on a typical day for maintenance or to be used for training.

When a 'very difficult' fire broke out on Lenox Road in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, the third major fire throughout the city that day, 150 firefighters were dispatched to the scene. Firefighters told reporters that units surrounding the incident - Engines 249, 310 and 248 - were all out of commission at the time.

The apartment complex at 222 Lenox Rd houses 168 apartments, according to building records, and a number of firefighters told DailyMail.com that the shortage in firefighters delayed the department's response.

Mayor Bill de Blasio denied that claim, however, at a press conference on Thursday morning: 'I think a lot of information is being put out. A lot of it is misinformation put out by people with an axe to grind.'

When a 'very difficult' fire broke out on Lenox Road in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning (pictured), the third major fire throughout the city that day, 150 firefighters were dispatched to the scene. Firefighters told reporters that units surrounding the incident - Engines 249, 310 and 248 - were all out of commission at the time

(L-R seated) Lt. James McCarthy, President of the FDNY-Uniformed Fire Officers Association, Edward Kelly, IAFF President, Andy Ansbro, President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association on Tuesday morning

Around 2,300 firefighters were off work on Monday, as a rule enforcing COVID vaccination. Monday's deadline applied to all municipal workers, ranging from police officers to parks employees. Twelve firefighters from Ladder 29 in Mott Haven, in the Bronx, were sent home on Monday after reporting for duty unvaccinated

It is unclear how many of the firefighters who walked out on Monday (pictured) will lose their jobs, and how many will find a way around the rules

Mayor-Elect Eric Adams, who won Tuesday's election with 68 percent of the vote, said on Tuesday that he would 'revisit' De Blasio's vaccine mandates upon taking office on January 1:

'We can work this out,' he said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. 'This is a very difficult moment but there's an opportunity to sit down with the unions. I communicated with some of the union leaders yesterday and they are open to sit down.'

One firefighter told DailyMail.com that Adams' response 'gave him hope' - another said it was 'too little, too late.'
Democratic political strategist James Carville tore into 'stupid wokeness' as the root of Terry McAuliffe's defeat in the Virginia governor's race as well as Democratic defeats across the board  and pleaded with party members to avert a backlash.

The 'Ragin Cajun' who helped steer Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 aimed squarely at cultural clashes over race, education, and police funding as the heart of the matter, after Repulbican Glenn Youngkin took down McAuliffe by winning over suburban areas that had gone for Joe Biden just a year ago.

'What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington,' Carville said as he ticked off election results in an appearance on PBS News Hour.

'I mean, this "defund the police" lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools. I mean that  people see that,' he said.

He said Terry McAuliffe got 'caught up in something national' and blamed it for his loss (McAuliffe also has deep Clinton ties).

Democratic strategist tore into 'stupid wokeness' and said it was causing a backlash that was suppressing the Democratic vote, after the party suffered a range of losses Tuesday

Voters in Minneapolis voted down an effort to replace the police department in the city where George Floyd was killed.

Carville blasted activists and progressives for hijacking the agenda and driving down turnout. Youngkin set a record for votes cast for a statewide candidate in the Commonwealth by driving up support from his own supporters.

'It's just really  has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a 'woke' detox center or something," the Louisiana native riffed, while wearing a Louisiana State University sweatshirt and a Tulane hat.

'They're expressing a language that people just don't use, and there's backlash and a frustration at that,' he continued.

'We got to change this and not be about changing dictionaries and change laws,' he said  as Democrats in Washington struggled to agree on President Joe Biden's agenda.

Carville also called out 'defund the police lunacy'

Voters in Minneapolis chose not to replace the city's police department with a new Department of Public Safety

Carville spoke on the PBS News Hour

Analysts are still combing over the election results in Virginia, where Youngkin had a wide lead among parents with school-age children, according to exit polls. Virginia parents expressed frustration with school closures. Youngkin also stressed 'critical race theory' that he said was being pushed by Virginia schools, and ran a campaign ad by a Fairfax County, Virginia mother who said her 'heart sunk' at 'explicit' reading material in her son's school class.

Carville was also referencing a push in San Francisco to rename schools and potential take off the names of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. The city backed down after a public outcry.

In Buffalo, mayor Mayor Byron W. Brown appears to have prevailed through a write-in campaign against a democratic socialist, India Walton, who beat him in the primary.

Carville, who boosted Clinton with his 'It's the economy, stupid' mantra, weighed in even as 'squad' member Rep. Ilhan Omar retweeted a message saying progressives would get blamed for McAuliffe's loss, suggesting he didn't run left enough.

There were echoes of Carville's critique in comments by Sen. Joe Manchin Thursday, although Manchin spoke to economic issues.

Manchin claimed the US is a 'center-right' country and that President Biden should give up on trying to get the kind of 'major legislation' done that passed under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

'You wanna know what's wrong with the place? I go to work in a hostile work environment every day,' Manchin said

"You want to know what's wrong with the place? I go to work in a hostile working environment every day."@Sen_JoeManchin discusses his hopes for bipartisanship in Congress.https://t.co/9zINPfILOv pic.twitter.com/PVSVBM9w3j  New Day (@NewDay) November 4, 2021

'We can't go too far left,' the West Virginia Democrat told CNN from Capitol Hill on Thursday. 'This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center  if anything, a little center-right country, that's being shown  and we ought to be able to recognize that.'

'You wanna know what's wrong with the place? I go to work in a hostile work environment every day,' he inveighed, after becoming a center of attention as one of two Democrats in the Senate holding up Biden's economic agenda and demanding changes.

'If you're a Democrat and a Republican is up for election, you're supposed to be against that person,' even if their opponent is 'Donald Duck,' he complained.

'I just saw it to confirm that we have a divided country  I hope it's a wake-up call for all of us,' the West Virginia Democrat told Fox News' Special Report's Bret Baier about the election results on Wednesday.
Ministers have turned to a luxury influencer couple used to promoting 30million mansions to help sell the first time house buyer scheme.

The government featured Summer Newman and Matt Mellor in a paid advert for the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities.

The glamorous YouTube video shows the 21-year-old and 24-year-old explain the scheme while showing off Bentleys and Ferraris in a fancy garage.

But ministers and the pair have been blasted for the clip, which was compared to a 'cigarette salesmen fronting asthma awareness'.

Ms Newman and Mr Mellor rose to fame by posting videos on social media of them touring luxury properties.

The couple, from Rugby in Warwickshire, recently looked around a 30million mansion and a 10million pad in London.

But they are currently out in Marbella in Spain promoting expensive villas for their latest videos.

Ministers have turned to a luxury influencer couple used to promoting 30million mansions to help sell the first time house buyer scheme

The government featured Summer Newman and Matt Mellor in a paid advert for the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities

The glamorous YouTube video shows the 21-year-old and 24-year-old explain the scheme while showing off Bentleys and Ferraris in a fancy garage

The mortgage guarantee scheme explained: First-time buyers have been able to get Government-backed mortgages with deposits of 5 per cent from five major banks and building societies since April. The scheme, which is also open to current homeowners, was first announced in March and sees lenders advance 95 per cent of the purchase price on homes worth up to 600,000. The Government underwrites the mortgages in order to give lenders the confidence to offer loans with such low deposits. This is the first time that all the big banks have offered mortgages with 5 per cent deposits since May 2020. The scheme is open to new applications until 31 December 2022, and people from every country in the UK has access to them. Advertisement

Their advert for the government, shared on their YouTube page on October 10, links to the Own Your Own Home page on gov.uk.

The clip is titled: 'How you can buy a property in the UK with a five per cent deposit through the mortgage guarantee scheme.'

Mr Mellor says: 'You may know we tour lots of amazing luxury real estate on here and we also document and vlog our own property investment.

'Today we are going to be talking about the mortgage guarantee scheme and how you can purchase a property in the UK on a five per cent deposit.

'So this is helping you access the housing ladder sooner.'

The clip was shared with the comment: 'The mortgage guarantee scheme announced at Budget 2021 and launched on April 19 2021; will help to increase the supply of 5 deposit mortgages for credit-worthy households by supporting lenders to offer these products through a government backed guarantee on new 95 per cent mortgages until December 31 2022.'

Labour councillors vented their fury at the couple fronting the advert for affordable homes.

Aydin Dikerdem said: 'Dunno if I'd pick buy-to-let landlords as my levelling up help-to-buy scheme ambassadors to be honest.'

The Queenstown in Battersea added: 'It's like cigarette salesmen fronting asthma awareness.'

Ms Newman has 1.2million TikTok followers while Mr Mellor has more than 300,000 - and they have a combined Instagram following of 65,000.

Their company - Matt and Summer Property - had assets of 50,000 in 2020, according to documents lodged with Companies House.

Their advert for the government, shared on their YouTube page on October 10, links to the Own Your Own Home page on gov.uk
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is offering a $100,000 reward for information to hunt down fugitive MS-13 gang leader in Honduras who was indicted in New York for trafficking tons of cocaine to the United States.

Yulan Andony Archaga Carias, 39, was charged in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York with racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to import cocaine, and possessing and conspiring to possess machine guns, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.

Archaga Carias' associate David Campbell, a Honduran national jailed in Nicaragua, is facing similar charges.

Archaga Carias, who goes by the aliases of Alexander Mendoza and Porky, allegedly controlled the MS-13's criminal operations in Honduras and supplied support and resources to the network throughout Central America and the United States.

Yulan Andony Archaga Carias, identified by U.S. federal authorities as the MS-13's leader in Honduras, was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List on Wednesday. The agency announced it is offering a $100,000 reward for his arrest and/or conviction

Yulan Andony Archaga Carias is accused by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York with racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to import cocaine, and possessing and conspiring to possess machine guns

U.S. authorities claim the fugitive gang leader provided weapons, drugs and money to the MS-13.

Archaga Carias is accused of also supporting drug trafficking organizations that shipped tons of cocaine through Honduras to the United States and ordering the killings of rival members and others linked to his gang.

'For decades, MS-13 has been synonymous with extreme violence and brutality,' said Anne Milgram, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 'The only way to weaken and disrupt criminal organizations that wreak havoc on our communities is to attack them at their core  their leadership and suppliers. '

David Campbell, who was the MS-13's leader in Nicaragua, is also accused by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York of committing racketeering, narcotics trafficking, and firearms offenses

The announcement of the bounty comes as Archaga Carias was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive's List as well as the DEA's and Homeland Security Investigations' most wanted lists.

'This indictment demonstrates the resolve of the FBI to aggressively pursue transnational criminal gangs like MS-13. We will work with our law enforcement partners to find wanted fugitives wherever they seek refuge and hold them accountable for their crimes,' said Jay Greenberg, acting assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division said.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams indicated that Archaga Carias had previously worked to plot 'violent attacks' with Campbell, the MS-13's former top leader in Nicaragua, who oversaw the gang's finances and drug trafficking activities.

Campbell billed himself as a businessman and spent five years on the run before Nicaraguan authorities apprehended him June carrying more than $400,000.

The Department of Justice said that Campbell and the MS-13 utilized companies that 'they owned or controlled to launder drug proceeds, including through banks in the United States.'

'MS-13 violence, fueled by drug trafficking and firearms, has a devastating impact across the United States and Central America,' said John J. Durham, director of Joint Task Force Vulcan. 'The indictment unsealed today, which charges the highest ranking leader of MS-13 in Honduras and one of MS-13's alleged main drug suppliers in Honduras, shows that no leader of MS-13 is beyond the reach of the Department of Justice and United States law enforcement.'
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The Queen is believed to have flown to Sandringham by helicopter from Windsor Castle today as she continues to rest following an overnight hospital stay.

The 95-year-old monarch is expected to spend the weekend at her Norfolk estate as she recuperates after doctors advised her to cancel all official visits for a fortnight amid her determination to be fit for Remembrance Sunday.

Her Majesty last week pulled out of a planned visit to the landmark Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow and instead recorded a video message from Windsor last Friday, which was played to world leaders on Monday.

And her 105-mile flight to Sandringham for the weekend comes after insiders said the Queen was determined to host her family at the estate for Christmas this year after the pandemic forced them to scrap last year's event.

Buckingham Palace refused to comment to MailOnline on her trip today, and a source said it was a 'private matter'.

Queen Elizabeth II is seen during a Cop26 video message recorded last Friday and played in Glasgow on Monday this week

The Queen was pictured driving close to Windsor Castle on Monday after being instructed by doctors to rest for a fortnight

A royal source told Mirror Online today: 'The Queen had been hoping she would still be able to spend the weekend at Sandringham and was delighted her doctors gave her the all clear to travel.

'Her Majesty is very much looking forward to hosting her family at her Norfolk home for the Christmas holiday and there is much preparation to be done in time to accommodate everyone who has been invited.

'The Queen has many happy memories of being at Sandringham with the family over Christmas and was in the firm belief that she was far better off being there in person to oversee everything as much as possible.'

The source added that the Queen travelled 'on the understanding with her doctors that she continues to rest as advised' after they said last week that she should only take part in 'light, desk-based' duties for at least a fortnight.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who died in April, last year spent their Christmas alone at Windsor Castle  which made it the first time since 1987 that she did not spend the holiday with her family at Sandringham.

The Queen has been staying at Windsor Castle in Berkshire for rest following her overnight hospital stay last night

The monarch is expected to spend the weekend at her Norfolk estate of Sandringham after flying there by helicopter

The monarch has vowed to attend the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph on November 14, even though she will miss the traditional Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall the previous day.

The Queen's very busy October schedule The Queen maintained her typically busy schedule in October up until she was told to rest by doctors and cancelled a trip to Northern Ireland around two weeks ago. Here is what the 95-year-old monarch has been up to since the start of October: October 6: The Queen holds two virtual audiences at Windsor with the Greek ambassador and the ambassador for Belize. She meets Canadian troops from 1st Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, and later has a telephone audience with Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

October 7: The Queen, with the Earl of Wessex, launches the Queen's Baton Relay for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games from the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.

October 12: The Queen, accompanied by the Princess Royal, attends a Westminster Abbey service of thanksgiving to mark the centenary of the Royal British Legion. She uses a walking stick at the abbey, the first time she has done so at a major event.

October 13: The monarch has a face-to-face audience with pianist Dame Imogen Cooper to present her with the Queen's Medal for Music. She also holds three other audiences.

October 14: On an away day to Cardiff, the Queen delivers a speech at the sixth session of the Welsh Senedd.

October 16: The Queen enjoys a day at the races at Ascot, and presents the trophy after the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes during the Qipco British Champion Day.

October 18: She holds a virtual audience with the new Governor-General of New Zealand, Dame Cindy Kiro.

October 19: The Queen has three engagements, two virtual audiences with the Japanese ambassador and the EU ambassador, and then hosts an evening reception at Windsor Castle to mark the Global Investment Summit.

October 20: The Queen is under strict orders to rest and 'reluctantly' cancels a two-day trip to Northern Ireland.

October 21: Buckingham Palace confirms the Queen spent the previous night in hospital for 'preliminary investigations'. She returns to Windsor Castle at lunchtime and is said to be in 'good spirits', back at her desk, undertaking light duties.

October 24: The monarch misses a church service at Windsor.

October 26: The Queen carries out virtual audiences from Windsor Castle, her first official engagements since she was ordered to rest by doctors. Later, Buckingham Palace announces the Queen has 'reluctantly decided' not to attend a Cop26 reception in Glasgow on November 1. Instead, she will deliver an address via recorded video message. Advertisement

The head of state had been due to attend Cop26 where she had hoped to deliver an in-person speech and to host a reception, but was forced to drop out after royal doctors said that she should not travel for any duties.

The Royal Family were instead represented at the conference by Prince Charles, Camilla and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Last month, the Queen was secretly taken to the private King Edward VII Hospital in London. Royal aides have only said that the trip was for 'preliminary investigations' with the exact reason for the trip still unknown.

Speaking last weekend, the Prime Minister said that the Queen was in good spirits when they held their regular weekly audience last Wednesday.

Boris Johnson said: 'She seems in very good form. She's been told by her doctors that she's got to rest and I think we've got to respect that and understand that. I think the whole country wishes her well.'

But despite reassurances from Buckingham Palace that she remains in good spirits, public concern is unlikely to be eased at what has been the lengthiest absence from ill health during her reign.

Doctors will reassess the monarch at the end of her recommended fortnight of rest, with it likely that her diary could be affected for some time to come.

The Queen's eagerness to get out and about as soon as possible will ultimately be overshadowed by what her doctors think is best.

This will leave other senior royals, especially the Prince of Wales, having to attend more engagements on her behalf whenever possible.

Concerns about the Queen, who has recently been seen using a walking stick at events for the first time, were triggered last month when she cancelled a two-day tour to Northern Ireland.

The decision came just hours before she was due to fly and despite aides saying she stayed at Windsor Castle she was later whisked to hospital for her first overnight stay for eight years.

On Monday the Queen was photographed driving close to Windsor Castle in Berkshire in a green estate car, wearing a signature headscarf and a pair of sunglasses.

During her message to world leaders at Cop26 on Monday, the Queen issued a powerful plea to them over the climate crisis, saying they should put aside division and act now for the sake of 'our children'.

In her first major intervention on the environment, the monarch said they should 'rise above the politics' and show 'true statesmanship' on the issue.

Speaking in a video message  played at a reception marking the first day of the climate summit  the Queen declared: 'The time for words has now moved to the time for action.'

She included a poignant nod to her advancing years, saying many involved in the Glasgow summit  including herself  would not see the fruits of their actions, adding: 'None of us will live for ever.'

But she stressed: 'We are doing this not for ourselves but for our children and our children's children, and those who will follow in their footsteps.'

She struck a markedly positive note, saying that 'working side by side' the world's leaders could solve 'the most insurmountable problems' and 'triumph over the greatest of adversities'.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh last year spent their Christmas alone at Windsor Castle - the first time since 1987 that she did not spend the holiday with her family at Sandringham. The Queen and Philip are pictured at Sandringham in 2017

Insiders said the Queen was determined to host her family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk for Christmas this year

She spoke with unusual candour of her pride in her family and their stance on the environment  from 'my dear late husband', the Duke of Edinburgh, to her son the Prince of Wales and grandson the Duke of Cambridge.

She recalled how in 1969 Prince Philip told an academic gathering: 'If the world pollution situation is not critical at the moment, it is as certain as anything can be that the situation will become increasingly intolerable within a very short time If we fail to cope with this challenge, all the other problems will pale into insignificance.'

The Queen said: 'It is a source of great pride to me that the leading role my husband played in encouraging people to protect our fragile planet lives on through the work of our eldest son Charles and his eldest son William. I could not be more proud of them.'

She added she had also 'drawn great comfort and inspiration from the relentless enthusiasm of people of all ages  especially the young  in calling for everyone to play their part'.

But she emphasised the enormous task ahead, saying: 'In the coming days, the world has the chance to join in the shared objective of creating a safer, stabler future for our people and for the planet on which we depend.'
Igor Danchenko was taken into custody on Thursday by US federal agents

A key source who provided information to British ex-spy Christopher Steele for his 'dirty dossier' of allegations against Donald Trump has been arrested in the US.

Igor Y. Danchenko, a Russian-born analyst living in the United States, was arrested on Thursday in Virginia by federal agents assigned to John H. Durham's special counsel inquiry into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the Justice Department.

He is charged with five counts of lying to FBI agents about the sources he used in collecting information for Steele, who is identified in the indictment only as 'UK Person-1'.

Danchenko, 43, was the primary researcher for Steele's dossier alleging that Trump's 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia in a covert operation to beat Hillary Clinton, and that Russia had salacious videos that could be used to blackmail Trump.

Many of the dossier's claims remain unproven or have been debunked, though the document was cited by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller in secret warrant applications to spy on a Trump campaign advisor.

The indictment alleges that Danchenko lied to federal investigators by saying that he had not gotten information about Trump from a certain US-based executive at an American public relations firm, who had deep and longstanding ties to the Democratic Party.

In fact, Danchenko did communicate with the unnamed PR exec, and used him as a key source for one or more of the allegations in the Steele report, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, the PR executive was a state chairman for both of Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996, and served as an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.

He was also the chairman of a national Democratic political organization at one point, and actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the indictment.

Igor Danchenko, a Russian-born analyst living in the United States, was arrested on Thursday by federal agents assigned to John H. Durham's special counsel inquiry

Special Counsel John H. Durham is investigating whether the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, code-named 'Crossfire Hurricane,' was opened and conducted legally

Danchenko's attorney was in trial and could not be immediately reached by DailyMail.com on Thursday morning.

However, the arrested man's father Yuri Danchenko, 68, spoke to DailyMail.com from his home in Perm, Russia, saying: 'Of course, I am very worried about my son. But I don't plan to fly to America yet.'

'We will wait for the development of the situation for now,' he added. 'I have just read the news about the detention of my son. He did not contact me, I did not speak to him on the phone. I will not take any action.'

Danchenko's father Yuri (above) spoke to DailyMail.com from his home in Perm, Russia

On his fears for his son, he said: 'He will figure it out himself, Igor is legally literate. His wife is also a legally literate person.'

Danchenko's wife, a corporate attorney in DC, did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com.

A Justice Department spokesman confirmed Danchenko's arrest, which was first reported by The New York Times. Danchenko is due to appear in court for arraignment on Thursday afternoon.

The indictment against Danchenko was issued on Wednesday by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he is believed to live in the DC suburb of Alexandria.

The charging document outlines five instances in which Danchenko allegedly lied to FBI agents about his work on the Steele dossier.

In addition to lying about contact with the PR exec, Danchenko is accused in four counts of fabricating information about an anonymous phone call he claimed he received in July 2016 from someone he believed to be the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.

The information purportedly conveyed by the anonymous caller included the allegation that there were ongoing communications between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, and that the Kremlin might help get Trump elected. The indictment claims the purported call never took place.

The most explosive allegations in the indictment related to the unnamed public relations executive, whose relationship with Danchenko is detailed at length.

Danchenko was the primary researcher for British ex-spy Christopher Steele's (above) dossier alleging that Trump's 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia in a covert operation

According to the indictment, an employee at a DC think tank introduced Danchenko to the PR exec with deep Clinton ties in February 2016.

Subsequently, the two men discussed collaborating in Danchenko's work for Steele, and the executive enlisted Danchenko's help planning a conference for business executives in Moscow in October 2016.

The executive said of Danchenko in a June 2016 email to an acquaintance: 'He is too young for KGB. But I think he worked for FSB,' referring to Russia's Federal Security Service, the successor organization to the Soviet KGB.

'Since he told me he spent two years in Iran. And when I first met him he knew more about me than I did. [winking emoji],' the email added. Danchenko has publicly denied being a Russian spy.

According to the indictment, Danchenko told the executive in an August 16, 2016 email that he had a 'project against Trump' and asked for 'any thought, rumor, allegation' regarding the resignation of Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who is identified in the indictment as 'Campaign Manager-1'.

The executive responded in an email that he'd had a 'drink with a GOP friend' and shared gossip that former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewnandowski 'hates' Manafort and remained close to Trump.

The allegation appeared nearly verbatim in a portion of Steele's dossier, dated August 22, 2016.

The indictment states that the PR executive later admitted to the FBI that he had never met with a 'GOP friend,' but instead had fabricated the meeting and gleaned his insights from public news sources.

The executive insisted that he wasn't aware of the nature of Danchenko's 'project against Trump, and had no idea the information he furnished would later be provided to the FBI by Steele.

According to the indictment, Danchenko told the executive in an August 16, 2016 email that he had a 'project against Trump' and asked for 'any thought, rumor, allegation'

The executive responded in an email that he'd had a 'drink with a GOP friend' and shared gossip that former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewnandowski 'hates' Paul Manafort

The allegation appeared nearly verbatim in a portion of Steele's dossier (seen above)

In a subsequent interview with FBI agents on June 15, 2017, Danchenko falsely stated that he had never spoken to the PR executive about information that later appeared in the Steele dossier, according to the indictment.

The indictment also suggests, without confirming, that the PR executive may have played some role in other aspects of the dossier, including its most salacious and inflammatory claims regarding deviant sex acts in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow.

The indictment notes that in June 2016, the PR executive stayed in the Moscow hotel and spoke with the general manager, whom Danchenko later claimed was his source for the explosive allegation.

Prosecutors allege that Danchenko's false statements about his communications with the PR executive were 'highly material' in part because they influenced the FBI's investigative steps as they probed the dossier's claims.

Steele is a former British intelligence officer who prepared the dossier for Fusion GPS, which was working for a law firm that represented the Democratic Party and Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

Two sources familiar with Durham's activities told Reuters that he had issued subpoenas seeking evidence from multiple sources, including people linked to Fusion GPS.

One of the sources familiar with Durham's activities said Fusion GPS was not a target of Durham's investigation. Steele had previously declined to cooperate with investigators working for Durham and could not be reached for comment.

Trump has long denied any illegal conspiracy with Russia in his 2016 campaign, insisting that the allegations were trumped up by his political enemies. Likewise, Democrats claim that Durham's probe is a political hatchet job.

Durham was appointed as special counsel by Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr in October 2020, and tasked with investigating whether the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, code-named 'Crossfire Hurricane,' was opened and conducted legally.

Danchenko's role in the affair emerged last year, when he was revealed as the primary researcher behind Steele's explosive but dubious claims in the dossier, which was funded by the Democratic Party and Clinton's campaign.

In June 15, 2017, Danchenko falsely stated that he had never spoken to the PR executive about information that later appeared in the Steele dossier, according to the indictment

Prosecutors allege that Danchenko's false statements about his communications with the PR executive were 'highly material'

Trump is seen at the 2013 Miss Universe competition in Moscow, on the trip that is at the center of the dossier's most salacious allegations

In FBI hands, the dossier was used to further its probe into Trump during the presidential campaign, and was cited in a FISA warrant application to surveil Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, an American who has never been criminally charged.

Durham previously signaled his interest in Danchenko and the Steele dossier by obtaining subpoenas in February for old personnel files and other documents related to Danchenko from the Brookings Institution, where he worked from 2005 until 2010.

Last year, Trump allies Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Representative Devin Nunes, top Republican on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, made comments suggesting that Danchenko is a Russian agent.

Danchenko responded to the allegations with a statement denying that he was working as a spy for Russia.

Danchenko told Reuters in an email that he was merely 'an experienced expert in Russian affairs who has spent more than a decade in business intelligence.'

Danchenko previously denied that he was working as a spy for Russia

'My academic and business intelligence work in Russia has always been on behalf of Western clients and never on behalf of Russia,' he added.

Danchenko also told the Guardian that he didn't back down from the dossier's claim that the Russians' may have held compromising information on Trump. 'I stand by it. I got it right,' he said.

But he also downplayed the most salacious claims of the dossier, which also argued broadly that the Russians held financial leverage over the president.

He said he traveled to Russia and St. Petersburg, Russia to assist Steele in his reports.

He said his own work with sources of information in Russia amounted to 'hearsay' and 'jest.'

Information about Danchenko's role in gathering information for the 2016 dossier emerged during Senate look-backs at the Russia probe.

In September, Durham indicted cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann (above) accusing him of lying to the FBI about who he was working for in a tip-off about alleged Trump-Russia ties

Sussman (left) and FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith (right) are the only other people to be charged as part of Durham's probe thus far

Durham has moved methodically and quietly since he first began probing Crossfire Hurricane in May 2019, first as a US Attorney and later as special counsel.

His office has been the source of very few media leaks and has issued only a handful of terse statements.

But in recent weeks the probe has appeared to be increasing in tempo and intensity.

Danchenko is the third person, and second in a two-month span, to face charges in Durham's probe.

In September, Durham indicted a cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann, accusing him of lying to the FBI during a September 2016 conversation in which he relayed concerns about potentially suspicious cyber contacts between a Trump Organization server and the server of a Russian bank.

The indictment alleges Sussmann told the FBI's then-general counsel, James Baker, that he was not bringing the concerns to the FBI on behalf of any particular client when he was actually representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and a technology executive.

Sussmann has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have attacked the case as driven by politics rather than facts.

The first criminal charges in Durham's probe were against Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI attorney assigned to the Robert Mueller probe, who altered an email during the process of acquiring a wiretap warrant renewal on Page.

Clinesmith pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
Allies of Turkish President Erdogan have been forced to deny he is suffering health problems after footage of him apparently struggling to walk emerged online.

Erdogan, 67, was filmed during Sunday's G-20 summit in Rome appearing unsteady on his feet, leading to intense speculation about his health including rumours he had died after he then failed to show up at COP26.

Thirty people are now being investigated for 'spreading disinformation' after tweeting about Erdogan using the hashtag 'olmus', which roughly translates as 'rumoured to be dead'.

Meanwhile the president's allies have denied there is anything wrong, posting videos of him at an event in Ankara on Wednesday while insisting he looks 'very healthy.'

President Erdogan allies have been forced to deny rumours about his health after he was seen 'walking with difficulty' at Sunday's G-20 summit

The Turkish president was filmed posing for a red-carpet photo before walking slowly off to one side, as guards rushed to move a rope barrier out of his way

Turkey's disinformation law only came into force last month, and punishes users with up to five years in jail if they are caught spreading 'false information' - though campaigners say it will actually be used to stifle free speech.

The users are also being investigated for insulting the president, a years-old law which can result in up to four years in jail.

Speculation about Erdogan's health is nothing new, with the latest round sparked by his appearance at the G-20 in Rome on Sunday.

After Erdogan posed for a red-carpet photo, he was filmed walking away - apparently unsteady on his feet as guards rushed to clear a rope barrier out of his way.

It took until Monday for the footage to emerge on social media, at the same time as it was confirmed Erdogan would not attend the COP26 summit in Glasgow that day - ostensibly because of security issues.

That quickly led social media users to begin circulating rumours that he was suffering from a serious health condition or had died.

Erdogan's spokesman subsequently tweeted a video of him walking into an event in Ankara on Wednesday, as allies said he is 'very healthy'

Erdogan then reappeared at an event to mark the 19th anniversary of his party taking power in Ankara which was held on Wednesday.

Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan's spokesman, tweeted a video showing him walking into the event in an attempt to dispel the rumours.

He uploaded it along with the caption 'trust the friend, fear the enemy'.

'The chief has arrived from Istanbul to Ankara,' another party member tweeted. 'He is very healthy.'

Erdogan underwent two surgeries in 2011 and 2012 to fix polyps - growths in his small intestine.

Since then he has gone on record several times to deny suffering cancer.

The video emerged as Erdogan announced he would skip the COP26 conference, leading some to speculate that he had died (pictured on Sunday at the G-20)

But rumours about his ill health began circulating at the start of the year when footage emerged which seemed to show him needing help to climb stairs.

A clip that showed him addressing members of his AKP party in July also showed him appearing to slur his words and trail off mid-sentence.

The strongman leader has dominated Turkish politics for the better part of two decades, as President since 2014 and as Prime Minister since 2003.

But his popularity appears to be waning, particularly among younger voters.

In 2019 mayoral elections, his party suffered several humiliating defeats in major cities such as Istanbul.

The next presidential elections are due to take place in 2023, with a recent article in Foreign Policy magazine questioning whether Erdogan will run.
Boris Johnson accepted a free summer holiday for himself and his family from a millionaire former MP he made a peer, it was revealed today.

The Prime Minister quietly revealed in the latest list of ministerial interests that Lord Goldsmith allowed him, Carrie and Wilfred to stay at his 25,000-per-night estate near Marbella without payment.

Goldsmith is the former MP for Richmond Park - a close friend of the PM's wife - who was elevated to the peerage by Mr Johnson after losing his seat at the 2019 election.

The move allowed the 46-year-old to remain in Government as an environment minister. He is currently Minister for the Pacific and the Environment having been given an additional role in a 2020 reshuffle.

The stay at the Torre Tramores in early October sparked fury as Mr Johnson left the UK amid a gas price crisis that struck businesses.

In the latest register, released today, a simple paragraph reads: 'The Prime Minister has a longstanding personal friendship with the Goldsmith family and, in that capacity, in October 2021, stayed in a holiday home in southern Spain which was provided free of charge by the Goldsmiths.

'Given Lord Goldsmith is a Minister of the Crown, the arrangement has accordingly been declared.'

The Prime Minister quietly revealed in the latest list of ministerial interests that Lord Goldsmith allowed him, Carrie and Wilfred to stay at his 25,000-per-night estate near Marbella without payment.

Goldsmith is the former MP for Richmond Park - a close friend of the PM's wife - who was elevated to the peerage by Mr Johnson after losing his seat at the 2019 election.

The move allowed the 46-year-old (pictured at Cop26 this week with the Prince of Wales) to remain in Government as an environment minister. He is currently Minister for the Pacific and the Environment.

In the latest register, released today, a simple paragraph reads: 'The Prime Minister has a longstanding personal friendship with the Goldsmith family and, in that capacity, in October 2021, stayed in a holiday home in southern Spain which was provided free of charge by the Goldsmiths. 'Given Lord Goldsmith is a Minister of the Crown, the arrangement has accordingly been declared.'

The private hideaway is a short drive from the picturesque village of Benahavis, and has its own helipad to make sure VIP holidaymakers can arrive and leave without being seen.

Princess Diana is rumoured to have stayed at the exclusive estate, set in over 600 acres of woodland, after her divorce from Prince Charles.

Downing Street insisted the Prime Minister remained in full control of the country when he whisked Carrie and Wilfred off on a sunshine getaway at the opulent Costa del Sol holiday home.

No10 and Government figures defended his right to take a holiday, with Security Minister Damian Hinds saying it was 'important for the whole country' that its political leader has time to switch off.

But it came at a time when producers of steel, glass, ceramics and paper and other sectors were warning they may be forced to halt production unless the government does something about energy prices, which have rocketed due to a shortage of natural gas in Europe.

Mr Johnson faced growing unrest from Tory MPs amid fears thousands of manufacturing jobs could go in crucial northern seats, with global demand and supply chain issues after the pandemic sending fuel costs spiralling.

There were also concerns about the funding of the trip, after his previous family holiday to Mustique in 2019 saw him narrowly avoid action from the sleaze watchdog.

Plenty of security officials and police activity was spotted around the property after Boris' trip was revealed

Mr Johnson was dramatically cleared in the summer of breaking Commons rules over a 'freebie' trip to the millionaire's playground - despite Ms Stone condemning his behaviour and the 'unusual' arrangements.

The cross-party Standards Committee found the PM had made an 'accurate and complete' declaration about the 15,000-per-night holiday in December 2019, saying it was a donation from Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross even though the couple did not stay in his villa.

The committee - chaired by Labour MP Chris Bryant - over-ruled Ms Stone after she concluded that Mr Johnson did breach the Code of Conduct for MPs during a 15-month wrangle after initially failing to provide a full explanation, slamming him for 'not showing the accountability required of those in public life'.

The report also suggested that the premier himself did not know exactly how the jaunt was being funded until after he arrived on Mustique and realised he was not staying in Mr Ross's own property.
Doomed Hollywood actress Natalie Wood's younger sister has claimed in her upcoming memoir that Spartacus star Kirk Douglas was the mystery man who sexually assaulted Wood when she was still a minor.

For decades, it's been one of Hollywood's darkest rumors: A teenage Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by a top movie star more than twice her age when she met with him at a hotel in Los Angeles.

In her memoir 'Little Sister,' coming out next week, Lana Wood accuses Douglas, who was then 39, of the sexual attack on her late sister at the famed Chateau Marmont when Natalie was just 16.

According to Lana, Natalie, who mysteriously drowned at the age of 43 in 1981, did not discuss with her what happened until both were adults.

After describing being brought into Douglas' suite, Natalie told her sister, 'And, uh ... he hurt me, Lana.'

Lana Woods (left) has claimed that her sister, Hollywood star Natalie Woods (right) suffered a sexual assault at the hands of Spartacus actor Kirk Douglas

'She looked awful. She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and Mom started urgently whispering to each other,' writes Lana

In her memoir 'Little Sister,' coming out next week, Lana Wood alleges that her late sister's assault occurred when she was just 16, and Douglas was 39

This cover image released by Dey Street Books shows "Little Sister: My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood" by Lana Wood. Lana also writes about Natalie's alleged rape by Douglas

Lana, 75, writes that her mother, Maria Zakharenko, dropped Natalie at the Chateau Marmont and when she returned to the car 'disheveled and 'upset,' Zakharenko told her to 'suck it up.'

Lana was around 8 when the alleged incident occurred and wrote that her sister and their mother agreed it would ruin Natalie's career to publicly accuse Douglas - one of the most powerful Hollywood stars at the time.

The meeting had been arranged by their mother, who thought that 'many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf,' according to Lana.

'I remember that Natalie looked especially beautiful when Mom and I dropped her off that night at the Chateau Marmont entrance,' Lana Wood writes about the alleged incident in the summer of 1955.

Around the time, Natalie Wood was filming 'The Searchers.'

'It seemed like a long time passed before Natalie got back into the car and woke me up when she slammed the door shut,' she writes.

'She looked awful. She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and Mom started urgently whispering to each other.

'I couldn't really hear them or make out what they were saying. Something bad had apparently happened to my sister, but whatever it was, I was apparently too young to be told about it,' Lana goes on to write.

'It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified, I was confused,' Lana Wood remembers her sister saying.

'Suck it up' was Maria's advice, according to 'Little Sister,' much of which focuses on Natalie Wood's death during a boating trip in 1981, when her body was found off Catalina Island in California.

The meeting had been arranged by Natalie's mother who thought that 'many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf,' according to Lana

According to Lana, Natalie did not discuss with her what happened until both were adults and Natalie, after describing being brought into Douglas' suite, told her sister, 'And, uh ... he hurt me, Lana'

Lana, now 75 and around 8 when the alleged incident occurred, remembered her sister and their mother agreeing it would ruin Natalie's career to publicly accuse Douglas - one of the most powerful Hollywood stars at the time. Above, Douglas and actress Linda Darnell on the set of 'Letter to Three Wives'

Authorities initially ruled the death an accidental drowning, but that has changed after years of scrutiny and more witnesses emerging.

Wood's husband at the time, actor Robert Wagner, was aboard the boat along with fellow actor Christopher Walken when the actress died. Wagner has been called a person of interest and Lana Wood is among those who hold him responsible for her death.

In her book, she recalls promising her sister not to discuss the assault by Douglas, but rumors were so prevalent that when he died in 2020, at age 103, Natalie Wood's name trended along with his on Twitter.

Lana Wood, whose own acting credits include 'Diamonds are Forever' and the TV series 'Peyton Place,' believes enough has changed since her conversation with Natalie that she can now tell the whole story.

'With no one still around to protect, I'm sure she'll forgive me for finally breaking that promise,' she wrote.

Douglas' son, actor Michael Douglas, said in a statement issued through his publicist: 'May they both rest in peace.'

Kirk Douglas had acknowledged that he was a womanizer and an unfaithful husband before his death last year.

Douglas' son, actor Michael Douglas, said in a statement issued through his publicist: 'May they both rest in peace'

Kirk Douglas, in his late 30s at the time of the alleged assault, died in 2020 at the age of 103, after a legendary career in the Hollywood industry. Above, Michael Douglas arrives at Westwood Memorial in Los Angeles on Friday for his father Kirk Douglas' funeral

Kirk Douglas and Anne Buydens, pictured together in 1954, were married for 65 years despite Douglas' extramarital affairs

Kirk Douglas and Anne Buydens pictured in 1963 with their son Peter - the couple had a second son Eric who died in 2004. Douglas himself acknowledged that he was a womanizer and an unfaithful husband

Douglas is seen in a promotional still from the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus

Fellow actress and friend Neile Adams said about Douglas in December 2016, less than a year before the #MeToo movement caught on, that 'You could not sit beside him without his hand crawling up your leg.'

Douglas starred in films that included 'Spartacus,' 'The Bad and the Beautiful' and 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.'

He also was one of the first major actors to form his own production company and a prominent liberal activist who has been widely credited with helping to break the Cold War blacklist against suspected Communists when he hired Dalton Trumbo to write 'Spartacus' and listed him by name for the 1960 release.

Douglas and his second wife, Anne, donated millions of dollars through the Douglas Foundation they co-founded in 1964 with a mission to 'helping those who might not otherwise be able to help themselves.'

In his memoir 'The Ragman's Son,' published in 1988, Douglas writes briefly about Natalie Wood.

He remembers driving home one night and stopping at a red light. The door of the car in front of him opened and 'a pretty little girl wearing a suede jacket hopped out' and ran up to him.

''Oh, Mr. Douglas, would you please sign my jacket?'' he remembers her saying.

'As I obliged, the woman who was driving got out and introduced her. `This is my daughter. Shes in movies, too. Her name is Natalie Wood.' That was the first time I met Natalie. I saw her many times afterward, before she died in that cruel accident.'

In his memoir 'The Ragman's Son,' published in 1988, Douglas writes briefly about Natalie Wood. He remembered driving home one night and stopping at a red light. The door of the car in front of him opened and 'a pretty little girl wearing a suede jacket hopped out' and ran up to him
DailyMail.com can reveal Brian Hsu's father is Yun 'Richard' Xu, a banking and private equity attorney who sits on the Asian Law Alumni Advisory Board at Georgetown University

The father of the 20-year-old accused of assaulting a flight attendant last week sits on Georgetown University's Asian Law Alumni Advisory Board and is a successful Shanghai attorney  but his son is using a public defender.

Yun Xu, who also goes by Richard, is a banking and private equity attorney with 'science, law and MBA degrees from Nanjing University, Peking University, the University of Georgia and Georgetown University,' his website says.

The 55-year-old attorney 'currently sits on Georgetown University's Asian Law Alumni Advisory Board,' according to the Shanghai-based law firm he founded, Han Yi Law Offices.

His Irvine, California-based son, Brian Hsu, 20, is accused of punching an American Airlines flight attendant in the face after bumping into her during a flight home from New York on October 27.

Brian Hsu is charged with assaulting an American Airlines flight attendant last week. He is seen at his family home in Irvine, California on Wednesday

The 20-year-old appears to be using a public defender to fight the charges, despite his father's legal prowess

Hsu was restrained after an incident aboard an flight from New York to Santa Ana which was diverted to Denver, Colorado following the physical confrontation

Hsu, who is allegedly recovering from brain surgery on a skull injury from a brutal attack in New York City last year, claimed to an FBI investigator that the attendant 'charged' at him and then smashed her nose into his hand.

Despite the legal prowess of his jet-setting father, who according to neighbors and his law website works between his son's home in Irvine, his New York office and Shanghai, Hsu does not yet appear to have hired a private attorney, instead using a public defender over his federal assault charges.

Federal court records show Hsu retained California public defender Andrea Jacobs, and has been released with a $10,000 bail bond  on the condition he submit to a mental health evaluation.

Hsu is also banned from traveling anywhere but Rhode Island 'for the purposes of medical treatment', his home in Southern California, and Colorado where his federal case is being heard, and is disallowed from owning guns or other weapons.

A 2001 letter from Georgetown McDonough School of Business names Hsu's father as a 1996 alumni based in Hong Kong.

His LinkedIn page says he has been managing partner of Han Yi since 2007, and previously worked as an associate at the New York offices of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and at O'Melveny & Myers LLP in Hong Kong.

Federal court records obtained by DailyMail.com show Hsu retained California public defender Andrea Jacobs, and has been released with a $10,000 bail bond  on the condition he submit to a mental health evaluation.

New York state records show he was admitted to the bar in 1996.

His Han Yi Law Offices bio said he also worked 'with two leading PRC law firms as a PRC lawyer for several years.'

'Mr. Xu is educated and trained as both a PRC and a New York lawyer and has science, law and MBA degrees from Nanjing University, Peking University, the University of Georgia and Georgetown University,' the site said.

'He currently sits on Georgetown University's Asian Law Alumni Advisory Board.

'Mr. Xu has been the primary counsel to numerous leading investment institutions and multinational companies from a broad range of industries and provided full range of legal services from deal structuring, legal document drafting to deal closing for their various cross-border M&A, joint venture and financing projects, privatization transactions and other financing initiatives related to China.'

Xu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

His son was interviewed by an FBI agent after American Airlines flight 976 made an emergency diversion to Denver International Airport following the alleged assault.

Hsu claimed in the interview he had been attacked in New York last year, sustained a severe skull fracture, and was returning home from a Rhode Island doctor's appointment after receiving brain surgery.

Hsu claimed in interviews with police that he was returning home after undergoing brain surgery in Rhode Island due to a severe skull injury he sustained from an attack in New York last year

General view of the house where its believed Brian Hsu lives with his mother Julie in Irvine, California

Richard Xu's Han Yi Law Offices bio states he also worked 'with two leading PRC law firms as a PRC lawyer for several years'

According to the New York District Attorney, 40-year-old River Tarpley was charged over the alleged September 2020 assault at the south east corner of Union Square West and East 17th Street.

The DA's complaint says Tarpley used 'a deadly weapon' to attack Hsu.

'I am informed by an individual known to the District Attorney's office that he observed the defendant punch him in the face multiple times causing him to fall to the ground and hit his head,' the complaint said.

Hsu, 20, is seen leaving a Los Angeles court on Monday after being released on a $10,000 bond

'I am further informed that he observed the defendant take informants head and slam it on the ground causing him to lose consciousness. I am further informed that he suffered intracranial bleeding, as well as a skull fracture, bleeding, bruising and substantial pain, injuries which are consistent with a person's head making contact with the ground in a forceful manner.'

According to his neighbors, Hsu graduated from Irvine's Northwood High School and attended university in New York.

He lives with his mother, Julie Yu, 49, in a suburb of the Southern California city near Los Angeles.
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A massive crane has begun removing the wreckage of trains involved in a horror crash in Salisbury from the rails four days after the dramatic collision.

A South Western Railway train slammed into a stationary Great Western Rail service in the Fisherton Tunnel at 6.45pm on Sunday, causing both locomotives to derail and injuring dozens of people, investigators said in a preliminary report into the crash.

Images posted to Twitter by Network Rail today show a big crane at the scene of the crash and removing the wreckage. The removal of the carriages is such a large-scale operation that it is expected to take several days, Network Rail said.

Video and photographs showed Network Rail airlifting the first carriage from the track using a crane and four huge red ropes. After it was removed, it was loaded onto a lorry and taken away. Another carriage is expected to be removed on Thursday.

The section of the A30 London Road between St Mark's Avenue and Barrington Road has been shut since the incident and will stay shut until Friday.

A Network Rail spokesperson said: 'Investigators have now handed back the accident site and we will begin the process of removing the trains, assessing the damage and planning repairs. While it is too early to determine how long works will take, we can confirm the railway around Salisbury will be closed until at least Monday November 15.'

They added: 'We anticipate the actual lifting of the train carriages should take a couple of days, and then another day to break down the crane site and give the people of London Road and the allotments their space back.'

Network Rail also revealed 'we're investigating potentially laying new track in Fisherton Tunnel, and we'll know more about that later this week'.

According to the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, the 74-year-old driver of the SWR train, Robin Tandy, attempted to apply the brakes before reaching the stop signal.

However, despite the driver and the train's automatic protection system also requesting emergency breaking, it did not stop until it reached the junction outside Fisherton Tunnel. The train subsequently smashed into the side of a stationary GWR service. Passengers on the stationary train were thrown around their pitch-black carriages before it 'jolted' to a halt.

Scroll down for videos.

A massive crane has begun removing the wreckage of trains involved in a horror crash in Salisbury from the rails four days after the dramatic collision

Images posted to Twitter by Network Rail today show a big crane at the scene of the crash

The section of the A30 London Road between St Mark's Avenue and Barrington Road has been shut since the incident and will stay shut until Friday

A Network Rail spokesperson said: 'Investigators have now handed back the accident site and we will begin the process of removing the trains, assessing the damage and planning repairs'

A South Western Railway train slammed into a stationary Great Western Rail service in the Fisherton Tunnel at 6.45pm that day, causing both locomotives to derail and injuring dozens of people, investigators said in a preliminary report into the crash

Driver of train left with 'life changing' injuries partially retired 74-year-old rail veteran and 'probably the most experienced in the country' The hero train driver who averted tragedy in Sunday night's rail collision at Salisbury is a 74-year-old veteran with years of rail driving experience, MailOnline can reveal. Robin Tandy had just six seconds to react and apply the emergency brakes before flinging himself away from the driver's side of his cab as his train collided with another in a tunnel. Hero train driver Robin Tandy (pictured), who averted tragedy in Sunday night's rail collision at Salisbury, is a 74-year-old veteran with years of rail driving experience, MailOnline can reveal Miraculously, no one was killed and Mr Tandy's quick-thinking actions have been hailed by colleagues for preventing a high number of casualties and deaths following the accident. But it came at a cost to him personally as he was airlifted to University Hospital Southampton with what police described as 'life-changing' injuries. Advertisement

As part of an ongoing probe into the incident, investigators have said they will examine how Network Rail managed the risk of 'low wheel/rail adhesion' where the collision took place.

It is understood that one of the trains was 'almost certainly' affected by 'low adhesion between the wheels and the track', which meant it was unable to stop at a red signal.

Low adhesion can be caused by 'contaminants' on the line such as leaves, moisture, oil and grease, is particularly common in autumn and can impact a train's ability to stop, according to the Rail Safety Standards Board. The issue can be particularly severe in the autumn due to leaves falling from the trees onto the tracks. The leaves created a thin, slippery layer which create a similar effect to that of black ice on roads.

It makes it more difficult for trains to accelerate and brake efficiently, leading to some operators producing special autumn timetables to allow extra time for trains to be driven at a more cautious speed.

Martin Frobisher, Network Rail's safety and engineering director, said on Tuesday night that the issue 'affects railways across the world'

He added that the annual problem is something that the industry bodies 'work hard to combat so that we can run trains safely and reliably throughout autumn'.

The RAIB has also said it will consider Network Rail and SWR's general policies towards the issue.

A total of 92 passengers were on both trains when they collided just outside Salisbury city centre.

Thirty passengers attended a casualty centre set up in a nearby church, 13 of whom were taken to hospital to be treated for minor injuries.

Passengers fearing they were about to die had called loved ones to say goodbye.

Mr Tandy, though, has suffered 'life-changing injuries', according to police.

SWR managing director Claire Mann said the driver, who continues to be treated in hospital, 'reacted correctly to the signals by braking to slow the train down'.

She added: 'We believe his actions went some way to preventing a much more serious incident and we wish him a speedy recovery.'

The rail operator said Mr Tandy has over 50 years' experience of driving on the route' and has 'an excellent professional track record'.

A statement said all drivers undergo regular assessments 'to the highest standards' and the injured driver 'fully satisfied all requirements'. There is no mandatory retirement age for train drivers in the UK. Drivers can keep their licence for as long as they continue to pass regular medical and competence assessments.

Cameron Thrower, one of the passengers involved in the collision, described the 'extremely scary' moment he was suddenly 'thrown' onto the floor after the trains crashed.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast from his home in Dorset, he said: 'The next thing I know there's just an almighty noise, I'm being thrown about the joiner carriage. Worst of all, I turn around behind me and there's this huge whoosh of fire and sparks on the door outside.

'And the next thing I know I'm just in the dark on the floor wondering what's happened and realising that everything is definitely not quite as it should be and it was extremely scary in that moment.

'Even in this horrible moment, the first thing everyone was doing was making sure their fellow man was OK and making sure that everyone else was fine, that no one was injured, and if they were that they were getting the help we could provide them in that moment.'

Another passenger, Dimitri Popa from Romania, was travelling on the train from London to Sherborne when the terrifying crash occurred. The 17-year-old said: 'It all happened so fast... I was just sitting in the first carriage and there was a huge crash.

Investigators at the scene of a crash involving two trains near the Fisherton Tunnel between Andover and Salisbury in Wiltshire on November 1, 2021

Emergency services at the scene of a crash involving two trains near the Fisherton Tunnel between Andover and Salisbury in Wiltshire on November 1, 2021

Salisbury train crash: 'It sounded like a bomb going off' Witnesses described hearing a massive bang 'like a bomb going off' as two trains collided in the tunnel near Salisbury last night. A local resident living near the tunnels said she was out with her children celebrating hallowe'en when they heard the noise of the train crash which she liked to thunder or a bomb going off.. Tamar Vellacott told reporters that she was out with her children and mother celebrating hallowe'en at the time of the crash. 'It was a noise we've never heard before, my young ones started panicking thinking it was a bomb and we said maybe a lorry had crashed on the London Road and not to panic,' said the 25-year-old. 'There was no screeching like brakes, just a long rumbling sound like thunder. It did spook us though, so we decided to get in our car and drive home. Three police cars passed us at speed.' Peter Golden, 52, from Laverstock, Wiltshire, said the collision 'sounded like something big collapsing - the sound of things falling into each other'. 'With the windy day we've had I first thought it was a big gust of wind that has knocked something heavy over. 'It wasn't till the helicopter arrived on station over the tunnel that I realised what I had heard. 'The first helicopter arrived on station and started hovering about 30 to 40 mins after the collision. 'There were lots of sirens and emergency vehicles on London Road. 'Emergency vehicles were coming from the west and east - presumably Andover - as well as Salisbury.' Advertisement

'Then I saw the flames and got pretty scared, and all the lights went out. The carriage was 45 degrees to the right. We didn't know where we were or anything... we were all just so shocked.'

Other witnesses recalled hearing a sound 'like a bomb going off' as the crash, one of the most serious in recent years on the UK rail network, took place.

Angela Mattingly, who was on the SWR train, said: 'Everything went black and there were red flashes and everything.

'There was suddenly a lot of jostling, possessions being thrown around and I think a few people went forward and hit their heads.

'You just don't know for a couple of seconds what's happening. People started to panic but nobody was seriously injured.'

Tamar Vellacott was walking with her young children around half a mile from the scene when they heard the crash.

The 25-year-old said: 'It was a noise we've never heard before, my young ones started panicking thinking it was a bomb and we said maybe a lorry had crashed on the London Road and not to panic.'

Fisherton Tunnel is a major junction joining two lines as they approach Salisbury from the south and from the east.

Firstly the 5.08pm Great Western Rail service from Portsmouth Harbour to Bristol Temple Meads, which entered the junction from the south, is said to have hit an object in the tunnel  possibly material that fell from the tunnel roof, sources said  and the rear carriage derailed.

The train had been due into Salisbury at 6:28pm but bad weather was causing delays across the rail network.

Seven minutes later at around 6.45pm, the 5.20pm SWR train from London Waterloo to Honiton in Devon, which was due into Salisbury at 6.47pm, sped into the junction from the east.

For some reason signals had not alerted the driver of the obstruction  or had failed to stop his train if he missed the red lights.

The SWR train smashed into the stationary GWR service in the tunnel, derailed itself and skidded along the inside of the tunnel at 45-degrees, apparently being held up by the tunnel wall.

Its driver was trapped in his mangled cab and needed to be cut free by emergency workers. Only the last carriage remained upright.

British Transport Police Detective Chief Inspector Paul Langley said: 'This will no doubt have been an incredibly frightening experience for all those involved and our thoughts are with them and their families today.

'Specialist officers and detectives remain on scene in Salisbury and we are working closely alongside the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) and the Office of Rail and Road to establish exactly how these two trains came to collide.

'We are keeping an open mind but at this early stage there has been nothing to suggest the train struck an object or that there was any significant delay between the trains colliding and then one derailing'.

Disruption to services through Salisbury is expected to continue until at least the end of the day on Monday November 8.
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So will 'callous' MP now be kicked out of the Commons? Webbe is currently sitting as an independent MP for Leicester East after having her Labour whip removed. But voters in the Leicester East constituency could soon be able to remove her as their MP under a rule introduced following the 2015 Parliamentary expenses scandal. Under parliamentary rules, a recall can be opened for any MP that is - Convicted of an offence and received a custodial sentence (including a suspended sentence) or ordered to be detained, other than solely under mental health legislation;

Barred from the House of Commons for 10 sitting days or 14 calendar days, or;

Convicted of providing false or misleading information for allowance claims under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. In the case of a conviction, the recall petition will not be opened unless the appeal period expires without the conviction, sentence or order having been overturned or all appeals have been heard and dismissed. Webbe has said she will appeal, so is likely to stay sitting as an MP for months. If a recall petition is opened and 10% of the electorate then vote for Webbe to be recalled, this will trigger a by-election. Two MPs have been removed by recall petitions since their creation, both in 2019. Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was jailed for three months after being convicted of perverting the course of justice for lying over a speeding ticket. Chris Davies, the Tory MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, was kicked out after he pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates court to making false expenses claims. He was ordered to do 50 hours unpaid work and fined 1,500. Advertisement

A disgraced Labour politician who was found guilty of harassing a 'love rival' who she threatened to douse with acid defiantly told a judge 'the answer is yes' when she was asked if she would remain employed as an MP.

Claudia Webbe, 56, who is sitting as an independent after having the Labour whip removed, was handed a suspended 10-week jail sentence and 200 hours' community service for harassing Michelle Merritt after becoming suspicious of the 59-year-old's relationship with her partner Lester Thomas, a Chelsea FC scout.

She was today spared jail despite being found guilty of harassment but still faces being thrown out of the Commons as a judge slammed her for claiming she was the real victim.

Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring said it was 'concerning' a probation officer had to remind her that she was a convicted criminal.

When the judge asked whether she would remain employed as an MP, Webbe loudly declared from the dock: 'The answer is yes.'

In a message apparently sent to her supporters before the verdict, Webbe described herself as a 'black woman in a white court', adding: 'I am facing a white system and white prosecutors. I have been deliberately targeted because I am vulnerable. I know first-hand the sexism and racism institutions and media use to vilify black women.'

Today Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring called abuse she had received online 'disgusting' but said he found it 'odd and concerning' that a probation service report said Webbe felt like a victim herself.

The district judge said she had behaved in a 'callous and intimidatory' manner and noted the four occasions when she referred to herself as 'the victim' during her testimony from the witness box at the trial.

Webbe was kicked out of Labour after her sentencing. Speaking outside court, she said was 'disappointed' by Mr Goldspring' s decision and repeated her claim to be innocent. 'I am lodging an appeal and despite today's sentence I fully expect the appeal to be granted and that, ultimately, it will be successful,' she said.

'Throughout this process I have received numerous threats to my life and vile racist abuse. The cowards responsible for these attacks will not deter me from clearing my name.'

Webbe is currently sitting as an independent MP for Leicester East after having her Labour whip removed. Labour has demanded she resign as an MP today and this afternoon confirmed her expulsion as a party member.

At her sentencing this afternoon, the MP's lawyer Paul Hynes said the defence team were 'taken aback' by an application for costs totalling 17,620.82. He said his client, who told the court she had a salary of 81,000, 'does not have that sort of money available'.

Under parliamentary rules, any jail sentence that is not overturned - suspended or not - will lead to a recall petition. If 10% of the electorate then vote for her to be recalled, there will be a by-election.

However, this process can only start after appeals have been exhausted, and given Webbe has said she will appeal she could still stay in the Commons for months.

Webbe won the Leicester East constituency in 2019 after its previous MP, Keith Vaz, stepped down in 2019 after offering to buy cocaine for male prostitutes. She won on a slimmed down majority of 6,000 compared to Mr Vaz's 22,000 as the Tories gained ground.

Local Labour figures now fear Mr Vaz could seek to influence the by-election and could even stand as a candidate himself, in what would represent an extraordinary political comeback. However, a source close to Mr Vaz described the speculation as 'tittle tattle', according to the Huff Post.

Meanwhile, in court today Webbe's victim, Ms Merritt, sobbed as she recounted the MP's campaign of harassment.

Speaking from behind a screen, she said: 'She (Webbe) has made me feel very vulnerable, in public, in my own home. I was scared to go to my door. I had many sleepless nights. I would like to feel safe again. Due to Ms Webbe's position in government (sic), I don't know what she is capable of.'

Ms Merritt's voice broke with emotion as she said she worried Webbe would 'seriously harm' her.

She added: 'My self confidence has plummeted, I have anxiety attacks, I have almost become a hermit. I have fallen into huge debt, I desperately wanted to move away from the area Ms Webbe said she knew I lived in.'

She added: 'I am so very proud I have had the strength to continue because no woman should be threatened or harassed the way she has to me over the years, least of all a politician.'

Claudia Webbe, 56, made a string of threatening calls to 59-year-old Michelle Merritt. She is seen with hand in hand outside court today with her partner, Lester Thomas

The return of Keith Vaz? Locals fear disgraced former Labour MP wants to replace Webbe two years after quitting the Commons over a drugs and rent boys scandal David Wilcock, Whitehall Correspondent for MailOnline Claudia Webbe's conviction for threatening to throw acid at a love rival could open the way for shamed ex-Labour MP Keith Vaz to attempt a return to national politics, locals fear. Mr Vaz, 64, quit Parliament at the 2019 election, having been handed a six-month suspension from the Commons after he was caught offering to buy Class A drugs for male sex workers. The former Europe minister was replaced as MP at the election that year by Ms Webbe, but remains chairman of the local constituency Labour Party (CLP). Mr Vaz, 64, quit Parliament at the 2019 election, having been handed a six-month suspension from the Commons after he was caught offering to buy Class A drugs for male sex workers. His successor is facing the possibility of a recall petition and by-election after today being handed a suspended 10-week jail sentence and 200 hours' community service for harassing Michelle Merritt, in a row involving the 59-year-old's relationship with her partner Lester Thomas, a Chelsea FC scout. She has been stripped of the Labour whip and kicked out of the party. Locals in Leicester say Mr Vaz has been 'acting just like a parliamentary candidate' recently by campaigning visibly on issues including boundary changes that could affect a Labour majority. One told HuffPost UK: 'The tricky question for Labour is if they don't give Vaz some of what he wants, does he stand as an independent? He could cause quite a bit of damage in the seat.' Ms Webbe held the seat with a majority of 6,000 in 2019, down from more than 22,000 enjoyed by Mr Vaz just two years previously. Any independent run by Mr Vaz could split the vote and allow the Tories to take it. Advertisement

At her conviction the judge described Webbe as 'vague, incoherent, illogical and untruthful' and said she had 'made up evidence on the spot'.

Yet former leader Jeremy Corbyn leapt to her defence, describing her as a 'warm-hearted person' who is particularly 'dedicated' to issues of social justice.

He wrote: 'Claudia is a person who is very committed to ensuring justice is done, and is prepared to state uncomfortable truths when it matters.

'I have the outmost respect and confidence in her, and as someone who has known her well for many years, I have no hesitation in recommending her as a person of good character, that makes an important contribution to our world.'

Meanwhile former shadow chancellor John McDonnell wrote: 'I know her to be an honest, responsible and extremely caring person.

'In all that she does, Claudia shows her empathy and emotional understanding. Claudia will always go the extra mile to help someone.

'She has demonstrated, both as a trade unionist representing her members and as a member of parliament representing her constituents that she has that human quality that enables her to relate to others, understanding their concerns and gaining their trust.

'She is meticulous in her behaviour, always polite and respectful and mature in her judgement. In the most challenging situations I have witnessed her respond with sincerity and calm.'

Last month Ms Merritt told the court the MP's calls made her feel 'worried and unnerved'.

She said: 'When you're being called and there's no one answering it unnerves you, especially as a woman who lives alone.

'We've all seen the films. You don't know who is calling you, who is watching you.'

When Ms Merritt received a call on Mother's Day 2019, in which Ms Webbe identified herself, she decided to call the police.

Ms Merritt told the call handler: 'I was with my daughter celebrating Mother's Day at the time but now that's gone and the reality has just hit me.

'She works for the Labour Party, she is in the public arena and she's accusing me of, in her words, 'slagging around with her boyfriend', which I'm not.

'She's threatened to throw acid over me, she knows where I live, she's going to send pictures of me and him to my daughters.'

Police officers spoke to Webbe and Ms Merritt hoping that would be the end of it, the court heard.

But on April 25 last year, Ms Merritt received two calls, both eight seconds long and both from the same number.

Ms Merritt told the court: 'I just hung up very quickly. I didn't want to speak to her.

'[Having received those two calls] I had to somehow prove that she was calling me because until that date all the calls had been no caller ID and the first threat call wasn't recorded...so I called back the number that was on my phone.'

In the recording, played to the court, Webbe answers the phone and immediately begins shouting at Ms Merritt.

Webbe says: 'Why are you still butting in and getting with Lester? Why, why?

'He's not your friend, he's with me and I don't want you to be in touch with me, I don't want you to be in touch with him.'

Loyal Corbynite and former aide to Red Ken who told court, 'I'm not mad, I'm an MP' Born in Leicester, Webbe studied social sciences at De Montfort University, before moving on to London to study race and ethnic relations at Birkbeck. She first achieved some measure of notoriety as an aide to the mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone. In 2006, he was suspended from office for four weeks after he compared a Jewish journalist to a Nazi guard. Webbe wrote to The Guardian to say that his suspension 'smacks in the face of true democracy' and that his 'history of work in the anti-racist movement is unquestionable'. A decade later Mr Livingstone would be suspended from Labour over comments about Hitler and Zionism. In 2010, Webbe was elected a councillor in the London Borough of Islington where she came into the orbit of local MP Jeremy Corbyn, moving up through the Labour Party's ranks after he became leader. In 2016, with the backing of hard-Left grassroots organisation Momentum, she was elected to Labour's national executive committee (NEC). Two years later she was made chairman of Labour's dispute panel  a role that saw her tasked with deciding whether to refer complaints, including allegations of anti-Jewish behaviour, to the committee that has the power to expel members. Given her earlier defence of Livingstone, it was an appointment that did not go uncommented upon. Then, in 2019, Webbe was chosen by the NEC to stand to become an MP in Leicester East. The sitting MP, veteran Keith Vaz, quit Parliament at the election, having been handed a six-month suspension after being caught offering to buy Class A drugs for male sex workers. Webbe's selection was not without controversy. John Thomas, chairman of the Leicester East constituency party, described her selection as a 'fix and a disgrace' and promptly resigned from Labour. Sundip Meghani, who lost out to Webbe in the race for the seat, also did not pull any punches, criticising the 'dodgy practices and nepotism involved in this process'. He added: 'This type of conduct, where a well connected favourite is nodded through, is no better than the Etonian old boys network that Labour seeks to condemn.' While Webbe went on to win the seat, she did so with a much-reduced majority  cutting Vaz's 22,000 to one of just over 6,000. In Parliament she sits on the Environmental Audit Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee of Arms Export Control. In February 2021, Webbe apologised after an investigation by the found that she had broken the Code of Conduct for MPs by her multiple late registrations of remunerations received for her role as a councillor in Islington. She was found guilty of harassing 59-year-old Michelle Merritt on October 13. Earlier in the case, the court was played a row in which Webbe's partner, Lester Thomas, could be heard asking her 'are you mad?' Prosecutor Susannah Stevens suggested to the MP the comment was made 'because you had gone mad'. Webbe said: 'I'm not mad. I'm a member of Parliament.' Additional reporting: Tom Rawstorne for the Daily Mail. Advertisement

In the background Mr Thomas, Webbe's partner, can be heard shouting: 'Don't listen to her, send me a message whenever you like.

'Michelle, come off the phone and call the police.'

Webbe screams: 'Lester why don't you go and live with her? Take everything and go and live with her!'

Ms Merritt asks why Webbe keeps calling her but Webbe screams: 'Can you stop. Can you get out of my relationship, get out of my relationship! Get out of my relationship!'

'I've seen all of your posts, I've seen all of your naked pictures, I've seen all of your relationship with Lester. Get out of my relationship!

'Otherwise I will tell all of your family and I will show them all of your pictures.'

Giving evidence last month Webbe admitted she rang Ms Merritt on April 25 because her and Mr Thomas had 'repeatedly breached lockdown' rules by meeting.

She said she was arguing with Mr Lester when Ms Merritt called her back.

Asked whether she had ever made withheld calls to Ms Merritt, threatened to throw acid on her, called her a slag and threatened to send naked pictures of her to her family, Webbe told the court: 'I've spent my lifetime campaigning for the rights of women, challenging this kind of behaviour.

'This is not something that's in my character and it's not something I would ever do. Those terms, those words, are not my words.

'I would never use such expletives, such derogatory terms about another person let alone another woman.'

She said: 'Lester said he had met up with Michelle and I had said 'you can't really do that, we're in a national lockdown'.

'Lester doesn't really believe in cover and I felt I needed to tell Michelle that she shouldn't be breaking it.

'He believes it's a hoax, he doesn't want to get vaccinated. He doesn't believe it.

'I couldn't understand why she would breach lockdown with Lester and I couldn't understand why Lester would.

'He felt that he was an essential worker and he could continue with his everyday life. He saw nothing wrong with it and therefore meeting up with Michele was something that he did.

'I said 'well you actually can't do that' but he was not wanting to listen so I asked Michelle could she not breach lockdown with Lester.'

Webbe said: 'On April 25, 2020 I confronted [Lester] as to why he went out.

'He told me Michelle needed him and so he had no choice.

'The conversation between Lester and I became hated.

'I attempted to call Michelle twice on this day to understand why she had repeatedly breached lockdown with Lester. Michelle then called me back in the middle of this.

'During the call I was having two conversations at once and I repeatedly told Michelle to get out of my relationship and by this I meant that she should not be relying upon Lester for support as they were not in a relationship.

'I did not threaten to disclose photos of her - this was a comment directed at Lester because he had been physically violent and I was trying to get him off me.

'Eventually he smashed my phone... I was so angry with Lester, he was not wanting to listen to me, he did not want to respect my role as an MP, he did not want to understand how serious Covid was.

'People were dying in my constituency. I lost constituents to Covid, I lost a good friend to Covid, I just could not understand why Lester could not understand how serious this pandemic was and how important it was to abide by the rules.'

A judge described Webbe (seen today) as 'vague, incoherent, illogical and untruthful' and said she had 'made up evidence on the spot'

Ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described Webbe (both pictured above) as a 'warm-hearted person' who is particularly 'dedicated' to issues of social justice

Her voice breaking, Webbe continued: 'He was constantly rebuking me, ridiculing me, goading me, as though this is not something that is as serious as people make out and that he can do what he wants.

How recording caught Webbe 'threatening to send naked photos of woman to her family' In a recording played to Westminster Magistrates' Court, MP Claudia Webbe answers the phone and immediately begins shouting at Michelle Merritt. Webbe says: 'Why are you still butting in and getting with Lester? Why, why? 'He's not your friend, he's with me and I don't want you to be in touch with me, 'I don't want you to be in touch with him.' In the background Lester Thomas, Webbe's partner, can be heard shouting: 'Don't listen to her, send me a message whenever you like. 'Michelle, come off the phone and call the police.' Webbe screams: 'Lester why don't you go and live with her? TAKE EVERYTHING AND GO AND LIVE WITH HER!' Ms Merritt asks why Webbe keeps calling her but Webbe screams: 'Can you stop. Can you GET OUT OF MY RELATIONSHIP, GET OUT OF MY RELATIONSHIP. 'GET OUT OF MY RELATIONSHIP! 'I've seen all of your posts, I've seen all of your naked pictures, I've seen all of your relationship with Lester. 'GET OUT OF MY RELATIONSHIP! 'Otherwise I will tell all of your family and I will show them all of your pictures.' Ms Merritt then informs Webbe that she is recording the calls and will 'leak it to the press' before hanging up. Advertisement

'It was just a terrible situation and I wanted Michelle to understand and just try and help me. I just wanted her to stop engaging with him for the sake of the pandemic... I was just so angry with Lester.'

On the 'naked photographs', Webbe said they were a reference to an argument over how her still current partner Mr Thomas had gone to St Lucia for a trip that would have included their engagement.

She told the court: 'When I was running to be an MP for Leicester East, we were due to go to St Lucia.

'I couldn't go, and Lester carried on and went ahead to St Lucia and he had a picture of himself when I would say he was naked from the waist up. He or his family had taken that picture and therefore I wanted to know who had taken the picture.

'He wasn't forthcoming with who he had taken the picture. He was naked from the waist up.'

She added: 'My partner was goading and gaslighting me. He knew that we were in a domestic. He knew what he was doing. He knew that he was grabbing my arm. He knew I was telling him to stop.

'This is about denial and goading and gaslighting and coercive control.'

Webbe continued: 'I was angry with Lester. My anger was directed at Lester. She [Ms Merritt] called me in the middle of this argument that I was having with Lester.

'She called me and I was asking her to get out of my relationship as I was continuing an argument with Lester that had got out of control and is probably one of the worst arguments that I've had.

'I've never had a neighbour call in regards to a domestic abuse where I'm left screaming and my phone is broken at the end of it.'

She added: 'I felt no anger toward Michelle and I'm sorry for what that tape portrays because it's not my finest moment but it wasn't intended to cause Michelle any harm and it just is to me very embarrassing.

'It's not something I ever want to repeat...I just would hope that we would never ever go there again.'

Webbe entered the House of Commons in December 2019, winning the seat formerly held by Keith Vaz, the Labour veteran who retired from Parliament in the wake of a scandal.

She was a councillor in Islington between 2010 and 2018 and was a member of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee.

Earlier in her career, she was a political adviser to then-London mayor Ken Livingstone.
Britain and France remain locked in a state of stalemate over a post-Brexit row about fishing rights after a showdown in Paris failed to deliver a breakthrough.

Lord Frost, the UK's Brexit chief, met Emmanuel Macron's Europe Minister Clement Beaune for crunch talks today.

But no significant progress appears to have been made, with the UK Government simply stating that 'both sides set out their positions and concerns'.

Lord Frost, the UK's Brexit chief, met Emmanuel Macron's Europe Minister Clement Beaune for crunch talks in Paris today

But no significant progress appears to have been made, with the UK Government simply stating that 'both sides set out their positions and concerns'

France has accused the UK of failing to issue fishing licences to all eligible French vessels to work in British waters and has threatened disruptive action if Number 10 refuses to give ground.

But the UK Government has repeatedly insisted the overwhelming majority of applications for licences have been granted.

Mr Macron has delayed the imposition of punitive measures while talks between the UK, France and the EU take place.

But the French government has insisted the threatened action which could include a ban on British trawlers landing their catches in French ports and tighter customs checks to hamper cross-Channel trade  remains 'on the table' if a deal cannot be reached.

Mr Beaune welcomed Lord Frost to Paris today for talks but the two sides do not appear to have made progress.

A UK Government spokesman said: 'Lord Frost and Europe Minister Clement Beaune met in Paris this morning.

'As foreshadowed, they discussed the range of difficulties arising from the application of the agreements between the UK and the EU. Both sides set out their positions and concerns.

'Lord Frost will meet European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic in Brussels tomorrow. Lord Frost and Minister Beaune expect to speak again early next week.'

French Government spokesman Gabriel Attal had earlier underlined that the threat of sanctions remained: 'We will see what comes with those meetings.

'As you know, the control measures that we announced are still suspended but all options are on the table and we may need to implement those measures if we do not reach an agreement.'

On Wednesday, he said: 'We are just waiting for one thing: for the UK to respect the deal that they signed.'

Under the Brexit deal, EU boats which can show they have fished in British waters in at least four of the years from 2012 to 2016 are eligible for a licence.

Some 1,831 applications for licences have been received, with 1,793 issued.

The main source of contention has been for smaller vessels, the under 12-metre category fishing between six and 12 nautical miles off the coast, where 50 applications have been received  all from French vessels  but just 19 have been issued.

The Scottish scallop trawler Cornelis Gert Jan is pictured leaving the northern French port of Le Havre on November 3

The fishing row is just one of the issues Lord Frost is discussing with Paris and Brussels.

The main dispute between the UK and EU is over Northern Ireland's post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Lord Frost's trip to Paris came after a British trawler which was impounded by France amid the dispute over fishing rights arrived back in the UK after being released by French authorities.

The Scottish-registered scallop dredger Cornelis Gert Jan left Le Havre on Wednesday evening after being held there since last week, when France accused it of fishing in its waters without a proper licence.

The blue, white and red trawler departed the quayside after dusk and docked at Shoreham-by-Sea, near Brighton, at 4.46am on Thursday, according to MarineTraffic.com.
This is the chilling moment a teenage knifeman is seen on CCTV carrying a blade seconds before the brutal murder of a 15-year-old schoolboy.

Murderous Michael Ugochukwu, 18, is seen here in CCTV images holding a knife used in the fatal stabbing and shooting of Keon Lincoln.

The teenager was blasted twice by a 14-year-old gunman and stabbed 'with large knives' during a 30-second onslaught in Birmingham in January this year.

Today jurors convicted the 14-year-old Birmingham youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, of murder. He showed little emotion as the verdict was read out.

They also returned a guilty verdict on the same charge against a 16-year-old, from Walsall, who was caught on CCTV armed with a large knife as Keon was attacked near his home. He also cannot be named due to his age.

Ugochukwu, seen here on CCTV with a knife seconds before the attack, and Tahjgeem Breakenridge, 18, were also found guilty of murder.

The verdicts came after 15 hours and 50 minutes of jury deliberations spread over four days.

Jurors have yet to reach a verdict on 18-year-old Kieron Donaldson, who denies murder. The jury will resume their deliberations on Friday.

This is the chilling moment a teenage knifeman (pictured Michael Ugochukwu with a knife) is seen on CCTV carrying a blade seconds before the brutal murder of a 15-year-old schoolboy

Murderous Michael Ugochukwu, 18, is seen here in still CCTV shots holding the knife that was used in the fatal stabbing and shooting of Keon Lincoln

Keon Lincoln was blasted twice by a 14-year-old gunman and stabbed 'with large knives' during a 30-second onslaught in Birmingham in January this year

Tahjgeem Breakenridge, 18, and Michael Ugochukwu, 18, were also found guilty of murder after 15 hours and 50 minutes of jury deliberations spread over four days.

A five-week trial has been told Keon suffered eight sharp force injuries and a fatal injury to his abdomen from one of two gunshots fired in Linwood Road, Handsworth, at about 3.35pm on January 21.

CCTV cameras captured the hooded mob unleashing the attack, which continued even after Keon tried to get up and run away, the trial heard.

Prosecutor Michael Burrows QC told Birmingham Crown Court: 'He [Keon] was shot at whilst he was on the ground.

;Still, the group continued to attack him, stabbing and hacking at him with large knives.

'Eventually, the group ran away and got back into a white Ford S-Max and that car was driven away from the scene.'

Keon Lincoln, 15, was blasted twice by a 14-year-old gunman and stabbed 'with large knives' during a 30-second onslaught in Birmingham in January this year. Pictured: Police at the scene

Footage showed that one suspect shot Keon twice including once in the stomach which later killed him, the jury was told.

Other CCTV shows Ugochukwu and Breakenridge casually walking down down the street towards Linwood Road, in Handsworth, prior to the killing.

Opening the case for the Crown at the start of the trial, prosecutor Mr Burrows said a Ford S-Max was used by those who attacked Keon.

The getaway vehicle, which had been stolen and was on false plates, later crashed.

Left behind was forensic evidence including a hunting knife, which was found in the footwell of the car.

Opening the case for the Crown at the start of the trial, prosecutor Michael Burrows QC said a Ford S-Max, with stolen plates, (pictured) was used by those who attacked Keon

The getaway vehicle, which had been stolen and was on false plates, later crashed. Left behind was forensic evidence including a hunting knife (pictured)

Donaldson, of Aston Lane, Perry Barr, who the jury are yet to reach a verdict on, is alleged to have 'helped and supplied weapons' for the pre-planned attack.

The teenager bought ten hunting knives, two survival knives and two machetes between October last year and this January, and then supplied them to others, the court heard.

Mr Burrows said the prosecution could not say what the precise motive for the attack was.

He added that the attack was 'planned', and also said the suspects made sure that their phones did not betray their movements.

The four defendants convicted of murder were all remanded in custody by trial judge Lord Justice William Davis until a sentencing hearing on November 29.

Along with murder, the 14-year-old was also convicted of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.

The 16-year-old boy, who also cannot be named, along with Breakenridge and Ugochukwu were further convicted of having an offensive weapon.

Following Keon's death, his mother, Sharmaine Lincoln, described her son as a joker and a 'loving child with a jolly spirit' whose 'unbelievable laugh' would echo daily around her home.
A yoga teacher who was born with dwarfism has revealed how she underwent limb lengthening surgery as a teenager to stretch her body 14 inches.

Kristen DeAndrade, 36, suffered from the rare genetic condition achondroplasia dwarfism which prevents bone growth in the legs and arms.

Aged just 12, she decided to undergo terrifying bone-breaking surgery to stretch her limbs.

A yoga teacher who was born with dwarfism has revealed how she underwent limb lengthening surgery as a teenager to stretch her body 14 inches (pictured as she is today)

Kristen DeAndrade, 36, suffered from the rare genetic condition achondroplasia dwarfism which prevents bone growth in the legs and arms (pictured at the start of her surgery, age 12)

The author, from West Palm Beach, Florida, shot up from 3ft9 to 4ft11 after four years of surgery (pictured aged 16)

The author, from West Palm Beach, Florida, shot up from 3ft9 to 4ft11 but her decision has caused a stir within the dwarfism community.

Kristen said: 'I saw the surgery as a way of living a more functional, independent life in a world built for a person of average height.

'As a child, I experienced a lot of medical difficulties because of my achondroplasia, like ear infections.

'I also struggled to navigate through public places. Toilets were too high, and I couldn't reach light switches.

Aged just 12, she decided to undergo terrifying bone-breaking surgery to stretch her limbs. Pictured: before, during and after her surgery

Kristen's struggles as a child were key in her decision to go ahead with limb lengthening surgery

'My school had to adapt everything for me, I had my own table with little boxes to help me get up to my chair.'

Kristen's struggles as a child were key in her decision to go ahead with limb lengthening surgery.

She discovered Dr Paley, a specialist in limb lengthening surgeries who operated in the Maryland Centre For Limb Lengthening And Reconstruction.

Kristen went through her first limb lengthening procedure in June 1998.

Kristen is now an advocate for the procedure and a motivational speaker and has written a book, Little Legs, Big Heart

Kristen defends her decision as she is now able to navigate the world like everyone else despite criticism from some quarters

Kristen went through her first limb lengthening procedure in June 1998 after deciding to undergo surgery aged just 12

She went on to have the procedure repeatedly over the space of four years.

The surgery involved Kristen having her bones broken, with external fixators added to help stretch out the healing bone.

A hole is drilled into the leg bone to break it into and a metal rod is then inserted and held in place by screws.

The rod is slowly lengthened until the patient reaches the desired height and the bones can then heal back together.

She said: 'I was about 12 when I had my first surgery.

'They stretched out my lower legs, the tibias first, to six inches long.

'When I had my legs lengthened, Dr Paley actually straightened out my legs which were bowing outward.

'Then I had four inches on my arms.

Thanks to her surgery, Kristen now works as a yoga teacher and has delayed or solved many of her limb problems

The surgery involved Kristen having her bones broken, with external fixators added to help stretch out the healing bone

Aged 29, Kristen lost the feeling below her waist and had to undergo surgery again with Dr Feldman (pictured right)

How limb-lengthening works Limb-lengthening is a procedure to extend bones in the arms or legs. It is a gradual process that slowly increases the length of both bones and soft tissues (skin, muscles, nerves). The leg bone is broken in two places before a state-of-the-art telescopic rod is implanted into the cartilage of the bone. The orthopedic device is then gradually adjusted to pull apart - usually at a rate of one millimetre a day - so that it slowly separates the two bone segments. New living bone then grows to fill the gap and increases the overall length of the limb, but will not be considered 'healed' until this regenerate bone has hardened and calcified. Muscles, nerves, arteries and skin also renew themselves. Source: limblength.org Advertisement

'When I had my upper legs lengthened, specifically the femurs, Dr Paley also corrected the deformity I had in my hip joint.'

During the surgery on her arms, the doctor corrected an elbow deformity which allowed her arms to hang down at her side and rest comfortably.

Not only did her arms gain four inches in length but Kristen said it removed a chronic pain.

Kristen added: 'Each month, my limbs would be stretched an extra inch, and then there'd be an extra month for consolidation.

'It was four years of back-to-back procedures and healing.

'In that time, I had to learn how to walk again and to learn to love my scars.'

After having her first procedure, Kristen was finally able to reach the kitchen counter, enabling her to learn how to cook and help her mum in the kitchen.

At 16, after her limb lengthening procedures had finished, she celebrated by gaining her driver's licence.

Aged 29, Kristen unexpectedly lost sensation from the waist down and she was diagnosed with spinal stenosis.

She underwent surgery again with Dr David Feldman at the Paley Institute who helped her recover the feeling in her legs.

But not everyone agrees with her decision to be taller.

She said: 'There are some people in the dwarfism community who claim it to be cosmetic surgery.

'They have said that I should love my body for who I am and that I should be ashamed for wanting to be like everyone else. '

Yet Kristen defends her decision as she is now able to navigate the world like everyone else.

Kristen's parents Lynn and Joe (pictured) are both of average height and supported her decision

During the surgery on her arms, the doctor corrected an elbow deformity which allowed her arms to hang down at her side and rest comfortably

She said: 'I knew from a young age that I wanted the surgery.

'Both my parents Lynn, 73 and Joe, 70 are both of average height.

'From the start, they supported me in my decision making. '

With her experience's achondroplasia and limb lengthening, Kristen is now an advocate for the procedure and a motivational speaker and has written a book, Little Legs, Big Heart.

She said: 'For me, the surgery was my view into the future.

'A future of being independent and the ability to navigate an average-sized world free of pain.

'Adults with dwarfism tend to have a lot of health issues, and after my limb lengthening, I've delayed a lot of those problems.'
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A hospital electrician had sex with at least 100 dead bodies in morgues as he remained free for thirty years after murdering two women, it was revealed today.

Married hoarder David Fuller finally admitted the murder of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987 after the crime mystified police for three decades.

However, as detectives investigated the 67-year-old, they soon found this seemingly harmless oddball was in fact hiding a double-life of deviant abuse of corpses.

The mother of one of his victims - 24-year-old Azra Kemal, who died falling from a bridge - today spoke of how her daughter was 'violated' at least three times while in the morgue at Tunbridge Wells Hospital.

The first attack took place only hours after her mother, Nevres, had visited to say a heartbreaking farewell, before Fuller struck again shortly after the parent had left, Sky News reports.

In an emotional interview with the site's Home Editor Jason Farrell, a family friend, she said: 'I had spent two hours in the mortuary sleeping with her. And that gave me some sort of comfort. Little did I know that my daughter had been violated prior to that day and the evening of that day.

'So, whilst I'm stroking my daughter's hair, sleeping on her hair, a man had... crawled all over her skin... And there's me kissing and cuddling and saying my last goodbyes.

'What does one think? How do you comprehend such a thing?'

Ms Kemal spoke of her anger at the ease in which Fuller was allowed to access his victims, having reportedly gained entry to the mortuary and autopsy area thousands of times.

She added: 'I'm told he was the man to go to. He always made himself available to the mortuary staff. They thought he was a great guy and basically, he groomed them. They became compliant and they never questioned him.

'Like women who are raped around the world they have a voice, Azra has a voice - I am speaking out for my daughter.'

Fuller was identified as the prime suspect in the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce after a DNA breakthrough achieved by analysing genetic material found at the crime scenes and searching criminal databases for relatives.

The electrician was totally unknown to police but officers discovered a partial DNA match in one of his relatives after combing through a list of 1,000 people on the database who could be related to the killer.

After investigating Fuller, who had 1,000 extreme images of sexual abuse in his possession, officers arrested him at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3 2020.

Footage of the arrest released by Kent Police today shows Fuller - who was still working for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust at the time - opening the door to officers, to which he declares: 'Oh, blimey.'

It emerged in court that the pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife.

But he was finally unmasked last year and his offending - described today by the CPS as 'a kind no British court has seen before' - was brought into the daylight.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she hoped the victims' families can 'find some solace in seeing justice finally done'.

Describing the case as 'shocking', she added: 'The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern.'

'A highly dangerous man': Fuller will be sentenced for his crimes at a later date after admitting the murder of two women

The mother of one of his victims - 24-year-old Azra Kemal (pictured), who died falling from a bridge - today spoke of how her daughter was 'violated' at least three times while in the morgue at Tunbridge Wells Hospital

Married hoarder David Fuller finally admitted the murder of Wendy Knell (left) and Caroline Pierce (right) in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987 after the crime mystified police for three decades

The pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife

The electrician was totally unknown to police but officers discovered a partial DNA match in one of his relatives after combing through a list of 1,000 people on the database who could be related to the killer

Fuller was still working for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust when he was arrested by detectives investigating the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce

Painful agony of corpse abuse killer Fuller's two 1987 murder victims Police read out a statement on behalf of Wendy Knell's family, including her mother Pam, who has been at the trial throughout, her sister Jane and brother Phil. Sadly, Miss Knell's father Bill died in 2017 without seeing justice. They wrote: 'For 34 years, we as a family, the police and press have been focusing on what actually happened to Wendy, wanting to know who did it and how she spent her last moments alive. 'We now know, and sadly it's much worse than we could have ever imagined. 'Hopefully we can now start to grieve and move past the pain, and remember her as the beautiful, kind, generous, caring, funny girl she was, who had a smile and kind word for everyone - a daughter, a sister, an auntie and good friend to many people. 'Although the timing has meant our dad is not here to share this moment as we lost him four years ago. It broke his heart he never found out before he died. 'Yet he has been with us every step of the way until now, we are deeply sad he's not with us today. 'Although the guilty plea won't change anything deep down, as the pain and loss will always be there, it is good knowing he will not be in a position to hurt or cause any more pain, not just for our family but Caroline's family and friends who have been on this same journey with us, and all the other families his life has affected. We feel a deep sadness for you all. 'We want to thank the cold case team for coming through and for all their support over the years, and especially since his arrest. 'We are so grateful to all our family and friends for the amount of support we have received.' The statement concluded with 'Thank you, Pam, Jane, Phil and the family'. Miss Pierce's family are believed to have moved to Spain several years ago. She was described in court as 'fun, outgoing, sociable, and with a strong character'. Advertisement

Fuller initially denied the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce, but dramatically changed his plea to guilty.

The pair are understood to be the first women he sexually assaulted, but police could have little idea what horrors their search of his family home would uncover.

A den in his property hid a cache of hard drives and pictures showing he carried out 'acts of sexual penetration of female corpses' .

Detectives also found the diary detailing the age of the 80 dead bodies he defiled and when he had abused them, often on film.

Police think there could have been hundreds more victims in his 30-year career. The youngest dead person he defiled was just nine and the oldest 100.

The CPS said today the investigation into him was still open in case any further victims were uncovered.

Spokeswoman Libby Clark said: 'David Fuller's deeply distressing crimes are unlike any other I have encountered in my career and unprecedented in British legal history.

'This highly dangerous man has inflicted unimaginable suffering on countless families and he has only admitted his long-held secrets when confronted with overwhelming evidence.

'Fuller, with his uncontrolled sense of sexual entitlement, treated Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce with extreme depravity. Both women were simply at home or returning from work when he ambushed them.

'Their families never gave up on achieving justice even when all hope seemed lost. My thoughts are with them today and all the families of women and girls whose lives have been cut short by senseless violence.

'Fuller's appalling crimes did not end with these killings and he went on to abuse his position of trust as a hospital electrician in the most grotesque manner imaginable.

'No British court has ever seen abuse on this scale against the dead before and I have no doubt he would still be offending to this day had it not been for this painstaking investigation and prosecution.'

It would be DNA evidence that irrefutably linked him to the heinous crimes and end his three decades of crimes.

Investigators believe he would have 'undoubtedly' carried on offending if he had not been identified.

Bodily fluids he left on Ms Knell's duvet and Ms Pierce's tights matched with DNA police had on their database from one of his brothers.

That family member was ruled out, but Fuller's activities at the relevant times led detectives to his door.

He was arrested for the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3, 2020.

Police read out a statement on behalf of Ms Knell's family outside Maidstone Crown Court this afternoon after he changed his plea to admit murdering them.

They said: 'For 34 years, we as a family, the police and press have been focusing on what actually happened to Wendy, wanting to know who did it and how she spent her last moments alive.

'We now know, and sadly it's much worse than we could have ever imagined.

'Hopefully we can now start to grieve and move past the pain, and remember her as the beautiful, kind, generous, caring, funny girl she was, who had a smile and kind word for everyone - a daughter, a sister, an auntie and good friend to many people.'

Brought to justice: The moment corpse defiler and murderer Fuller arrived at the police station more than 30 years after murdering two women

Fuller was caught after police found a number of pieces of evidence, including a distinctive shoe print in blood

David Fuller, pictured wearing the shoes which were later linked by detectives to one of the murders in 1987

Twice-married Fuller, 67, was seen by locals as a harmless oddball, but hid a double-life of deviant abuse of corpses

CCTV issued by Kent Police of David Fuller being questioned, before he pleaded guilty to murdering Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987

'Very ordinary man' with hospital job who hid 'very dark secret' of abuse of the dead Crown Prosecution Service lawyers said Fuller had lived a very ordinary life in Kent. But prosecutor Libby Clark said: 'This was a man with a very, very dark secret.' Fuller was born and raised in Hampshire before moving to the Kent and East Sussex area, where he lived from the late 1970s. He married three times and worked in electrical maintenance roles at the hospitals from 1989 up until his arrest. Fuller was directly employed by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust until shortly before the site closed, by when he had transferred to the new Tunbridge Wells hospital, where he was then employed by an electrical contractor which works with the NHS. Fuller generally worked the late shift, from 11am to 7pm, and as a maintenance supervisor had an access all areas pass, with a swipe card he could use to go anywhere, including the mortuary. He was often alone in the mortuary after its staff left from their day shifts and would disappear into areas not covered by the cameras, detectives said. Fuller's crimes were discovered when officers searched his three-bedroom semi-detached home in the town of Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, after he was arrested for the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce in the early hours of December 3 2020. The box room acted as his home office, which was monitored by a CCTV system and had access to the loft through a hatch. Inside an office wardrobe, police found a handmade box screwed to the back of a cabinet, with four hard drives hidden inside, containing pictures and videos of Fuller sexually assaulting dead women and girls. The evidence found dates back to 2008 but police believe that could be because that was when digital camera devices were becoming more widespread, so the true scale of his offending may never be known. More than 3,500 exhibits were seized from 'hoarder' Fuller's office and loft, including computers going back to the late 1970s, mobile phones as old as 20 years and handwritten diaries. There were more than 100 hard drives, 2,200 floppy discs, 30 sim cards and mobile phones, 1,300 CDs and DVDs, 34,000 photo prints, negatives, slides and camera rolls, and 3,500 digital storage devices. A dedicated team of 100 officers and staff was created to investigate and officers took five months to sift through the material. Advertisement

Ms Knell, the manager of a Supasnaps photography shop in Camden Road, was dropped off at her ground floor flat in Guildford Road by her boyfriend at around 11pm on June 22.

He found her body in the bedsit just before 11.30am the following day after breaking in when she failed to show up for work. She was naked, covered with a duvet.

The bed, duvet and pillows were bloodstained, and her bloodstained head was resting on a towel.

Police could find no signs of forced entry, and neighbours heard nothing through the flat's thin walls.

Ms Pierce, who worked in popular cafe Buster Browns, also in Camden Road, was attacked and abducted outside her bedsit at the end of a cul-de-sac in Grosvenor Park around five months later, on November 24.

She was last seen at around midnight when she was dropped off by a taxi at her home following a night out with a friend.

Neighbours heard screams coming from the direction of the cemetery next to her flat at the time she is believed to have been abducted.

She was reported missing by her concerned family when she did not turn up for work the next day.

Her body was found by a farm worker driving a tractor around the edge of a field on December 15, some 40 miles away in a water-filled dyke near St Mary in the Marsh, close to Romney Marsh. She was naked apart from a pair of tights.

Both victims had suffered severe blunt force trauma to the head and both had injuries of compression of the neck by strangulation - either of which could been the cause of death - and both victims had suffered similar injuries during sexual assaults.

There is evidence Fuller remained with Ms Knell for some time after her death, while his second victim's body was not discovered until weeks after her disappearance.

Top pathologist Dr Nat Carey found evidence that the sexual injuries suffered by Ms Knell occurred at the time of death or after death.

Prosecutors believe the killings may have been motivated by his sexual interest in the women after death.

At Ms Knell's home, police found blood-stained clothing, a blood-stained Millets carrier bag and a distinctive shoe print in blood.

It is not known whether her killer, who could have broken in through an insecure rear window, was laying in wait or came in after she was sleeping.

With DNA profiling still in its infancy, a crude, low-level profile was recovered from the duvet cover on Ms Knell's bed following her murder.

Samples were taken from many men in the area but no match was found.

In 1999, advances in science meant detectives obtained a full DNA profile but there were no matches on the national DNA database, which was launched in 1995.

A decade later, in 2019, police for the first time forensically linked the killer to Ms Pierce when a partial DNA profile was recovered from her tights, which had been in the water for three weeks more than 30 years earlier.

With still no match, detectives looked for any potential relatives on the DNA database, making a list of 1,000 names.

The list was whittled down to the 90 people most likely to have a familial link to the killer - by being a parent, child or sibling - and they were visited to obtain voluntary DNA samples.

A breakthrough came at the end of November 2020 when a very close match in a possible sibling was found.

David Fuller today admitted murdering both Wendy Knell, 25, and 20-year-old Caroline Pierce

The horrific moment police searching his home found Fuller's diary of corpses he had abused. A forensic officer in yellow gloves holds the notebook as they realise its siginificance

Fuller- seen here being checking into custody - claimed to know nothing about the murders

Fuller led a double life and hid his depravities from his family and had been married three times

Ms Knell, the manager of a Supasnaps photography shop in Camden Road, was dropped off at her ground floor flat in Guildford Road (pictured) by her boyfriend at around 11pm on June 22, 1987

Ms Pierce's body was found by a farm worker driving a tractor around the edge of a field on December 15, some 40 miles away in a water-filled dyke near St Mary in the Marsh, close to Romney Marsh. She was naked apart from a pair of tights

Fuller was arrested for the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3 2020.

Detectives said he did not look surprised, but he denied any involvement and said he had no knowledge of the case or the area where the women lived.

A DNA comparison with the sample recovered from Ms Knell's home was an exact match.

DNA found on her duvet, pillowcase, and towel, as well as intimate samples, was found by scientists to be a billion times more likely to have come from him than anyone else.

Tests on the DNA from Ms Pierce's tights showed it was 160,000 times more likely to have come from Fuller than anyone else.

A fingerprint in Ms Knell's blood, recovered from the Millets carrier bag found on the floor behind the headboard of her bed, was also matched to Fuller.

And the shoe print found on a blouse in her blood matched a white Clarks Sportstrek trainer, which family photos recovered from Fuller's home showed him wearing in the 1980s.

Paperwork proved he lived in Tunbridge Wells, where he worked as an electrician, at the time of the murders, while both sets of his grandparents lived near Romney, where Ms Pierce was found.

He had holidayed there both as a child and an adult and was a keen birdwatcher, who visited the marshland area to pursue his hobby, while one of the routes of a cycling club he was a member of went directly past the dyke she was dumped in.

David Fuller inside one of the hospitals where he went to abuse bodies lying in the morgue

Fuller puts his hand to his mouth inside hospital in a still released by officers from Kent police

Fuller was convicted of 'creeper-type' domestic burglaries often involving break-ins through rear windows in the 1970s.

He pleaded guilty to three domestic burglaries at Portsmouth Crown Court, with 23 other offences taken into consideration, in 1973 and a further offence in 1977, with three other offences taken into consideration, but he was never jailed.

Described by police as a 'hoarder', his 1980s diaries showed he had visited Buster Browns, while the semi-professional photographer also had Supasnaps sleeves in his home.

The victims' family members were said to be in 'genuine shock' when they were told of Fuller's arrest and said they 'thought this day would never come'.

'If you are truly sorry you would quit': Mother of woman defiled by morgue pervert David Fuller calls for hospital boss to resign for not noticing the decades of vile abuse

A mother whose daughter was raped at least three times by a hospital electrician as she lay in the morgue has spoken of her anger at the ease in which he was able to access his victims and called for the trust boss to quit.

Married hoarder David Fuller today admitted to the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.

Police were stumped by the mystery for more than three decades, before finally making a breakthrough using DNA.

Fuller was arrested at his home in East Sussex last year but before he confessed to the two killings, detectives found the 67-year-old had sex with more than 100 dead bodies in morgues at the hospitals where he worked.

It emerged in court that the pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife.

One of his victims was 24-year-old law graduate Azra Kemal, who died after falling through a gap above the A21 dual carriageway in Kent.

Today, her mother, Nevres, revealed how her daughter was the subject of sickening abuse after her death.

The first attack took place only hours after she had visited to say a heartbreaking farewell, before Fuller struck again shortly after the parent had left, Sky News reports.

In an emotional interview with the site's Home Editor Jason Farrell, a family friend, she said: 'I had spent two hours in the mortuary sleeping with her. And that gave me some sort of comfort. Little did I know that my daughter had been violated prior to that day and the evening of that day.

'So, whilst I'm stroking my daughter's hair, sleeping on her hair, a man had... crawled all over her skin... And there's me kissing and cuddling and saying my last goodbyes.

'What does one think? How do you comprehend such a thing?'

One of his victims was 24-year-old law graduate Azra Kemal, who died after falling through a gap above the A21 dual carriageway in Kent

Today, her mother, Nevres, revealed how her daughter (pictured) was the subject of sickening abuse after her death

Fuller was arrested at his home in East Sussex last year but before he confessed to the two killings, detectives found the 67-year-old had sex with more than 100 dead bodies in morgues at the hospitals where he worked

Ms Kemal went on to demand the resignation of Miles Scott (pictured), chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where Fuller continued to work for years until his arrest last year

Ms Kemal spoke of her anger at the ease in which Fuller was allowed to access his victims, having reportedly gained entry to the mortuary and autopsy area thousands of times.

She added: 'I'm told he was the man to go to. He always made himself available to the mortuary staff. They thought he was a great guy and basically, he groomed them. They became compliant and they never questioned him.

'Like women who are raped around the world they have a voice, Azra has a voice - I am speaking out for my daughter.'

Ms Kemal went on to demand the resignation of Miles Scott, chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where Fuller continued to work for years until his arrest last year.

'He should ask the victims 'do you think I'm the best person to be managing this hospital trust?' If you are truly sorry, you would step aside,' she said.

The trust has since announced an independent investigation will be launched to determine whether more could have been done to prevent the crimes.

Sir Jonathan Michael - a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians - has been commissioned to carry out the probe.

Mr Scott said today: 'I want to say on behalf of the Trust, how shocked and appalled I am by the criminal activity by David Fuller in our hospital mortuary that has been revealed in court this week.

'And most importantly, I want to apologise to the families of those who've been the victims of these terrible crimes.

'We've been working with a team of specialist Police Family Liaison Officers to offer these families whatever help or assistance they may need.

'I am confident that our mortuary today is safe and secure. But I am determined to see if there are any lessons to be learned or systems to be improved.'

Married hoarder David Fuller finally admitted the murder of Wendy Knell (left) and Caroline Pierce (right) in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987 after the crime mystified police for three decades

The pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife

Fuller was identified as the prime suspect in the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce after a DNA breakthrough achieved by analysing genetic material found at the crime scenes and searching criminal databases for relatives.

The electrician was totally unknown to police but officers discovered a partial DNA match in one of his relatives after combing through a list of 1,000 people on the database who could be related to the killer.

After investigating Fuller, who had 1,000 extreme images of sexual abuse in his possession, officers arrested him at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3 2020.

Footage of the arrest released by Kent Police today shows Fuller - who was still working for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust at the time - opening the door to officers, to which he declares: 'Oh, blimey.'

It emerged in court that the pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife.

But he was finally unmasked last year and his offending - described today by the CPS as 'a kind no British court has seen before' - was brought into the daylight.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she hoped the victims' families can 'find some solace in seeing justice finally done'.

Describing the case as 'shocking', she added: 'The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern.'
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pledged to create a law enforcement agency to investigate election crimes and fraud, he announced on Wednesday.

Citing unspecified examples of election fraud, DeSantis on Wednesday said the agency would be created as part of a new package of voting laws.

Speaking at an event in West Palm Beach, the Republican governor announced a series of election law proposals for lawmakers to take up during next year's legislative session.

Other laws will include new restrictions on ballot drop boxes and strengthened penalties for ballot harvesting.

DeSantis, who is up for reelection and is eyeing a 2024 presidential run, echoed many talking points on voting problems that have gained traction in the GOP.

This has come since former President Donald Trump started pushing claims that the 2020 presidential reelection was stolen from him, despite no evidence.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pledged to create a law enforcement agency to investigate election crimes and fraud, he announced on Wednesday. Pictured: DeSantis asks the crowd 'How about Virginia,' as he arrives at an event in West Palm Beach, Florida, to announce proposed election reform laws, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021

The governor has previously praised the 2020 election in Florida as smooth, and there is widespread consensus among election officials and experts that there was no fraud that could have impacted results in the last presidential election.

Still, without evidence, DeSantis suggested issues at the ballot box.

'There'll be people, if you see someone ballot harvesting, you know, what do you do? If you call into the election office, a lot of times they don't do anything.

'If you know that, there's, you know, in Florida, it's Constitutionally mandated, only citizens are allowed to vote in Florida, and yet you see examples of people, they'll even check they're not citizens, and they'll still be given ballots,' he said to applause.

DeSantis spoke broadly about the proposed election police force, but a news release from his office said the Office of Election Crimes and Security would be formed 'within the Department of State to investigate election crimes and fraud.'

A spokesperson for DeSantis said the governor is seeking to proactively deter criminal activity and prevent voter fraud but referred questions on specific violations of election law to the Florida attorney general or the state department.

Neither agency immediately returned an email seeking comment.

His event Wednesday at a hotel was listed as a press conference but included a large crowd that cheered along as he criticized coronavirus mandates, Big Tech and policing policies in liberal states.

Chants of 'Let's go Brandon' broke out during the press conference after he mocked President Joe Biden's White House as the 'Brandon administration'.

The anti-Biden phrase originated at a NASCAR race when a reporter lied to drown out chants from the crowd and quickly rose to the mouths of mainstream figures.

Republicans nationwide were in a buoyant mood after GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin scored an upset victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election over the state's popular former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday night.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis supporter Kerry Kensington of North Palm Beach, Florida looks on wearing a 'Make America Florida' hat at an event in West Palm Beach where DeSantis announced proposed election reform laws, Wednesday, November 3, 2021

'If you look at what's going on with some of the big corporations with their woke agenda, when you look at the Biden - the Brandon administration - in terms of what they're doing,' the Florida Republican said.

Cheers and applause broke out before DeSantis finished speaking, prompting him to trail off and laughs as chants of 'Let's go Brandon' filled the room.

It's supposed to be a stand-in for 'F**k Joe Biden.'

Instead of toning down the crowd's cheer, which is more commonly seen at sporting events than small-scale political remarks, DeSantis quietly nodded and allowed the crowd of mostly middle-aged and older adults grow louder with some people clapping and whooping along.

He then ventured to explain the origins of the phrase and defended it by saying Donald Trump endured worse criticism as president.

'Do you know how that started? Like it was - you have the media and their hand-wringing over this, but you know it was at a NASCAR race. They're doing the interview with the driver, I guess his name was Brandon,' DeSantis began as the crowd egged him on.

'And the crowd starts chanting very colorful language about Joe Biden. And it was obvious what they were doing, and you know it is what it is.' He added, 'They said way worse about Trump for four years, we know that,' to more applause.

Earlier this year, as part of a nationwide GOP push to tighten voting laws, DeSantis signed a bill that restricted the use of ballot drop boxes, strengthened voter ID laws and prohibited the so-called practice of 'ballot harvesting,' the collection of completed ballots by a third party, among other things.

Trump in 2020 attacked efforts to expand ballot access during the pandemic, spreading baseless claims of fraud.

Republicans nationwide were in a buoyant mood after GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin (pictured at victory part on Wednesday) scored an upset victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election over the state's popular former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday

Republican-controlled states have rushed to tighten voting laws, cutting early voting hours, restricting mail balloting and arguing that liberalizing elections invites fraud and helps Democrats.

The latter claim contradicts repeated studies that have found that mail voting does not favor either political party.

Virginia's latest election - which saw Youngkin defeat former Governor Terry McAuliffe in Tuesday's vote - is another example of how liberal voting laws don't hurt conservatives.

Likewise, New Jersey Democrats greatly expanded access to mail voting in recent years but struggled to hold onto the governor's mansion in the solidly blue state.

Incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy squeaked by Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli, even though registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans there by more than 1 million.

The result had been in doubt until the Associated Press called the race for Murphy on Wednesday evening, sparing the Democrats a humiliating defeat.

Ciattarelli, 59, a former state lawmaker, had trailed by as much as 10 points in some opinion polls but gained ground by criticizing Murphy's unpopular mask requirements for school children.

Both Republican candidates saw strong gains in the suburbs from independent voters who had been turned off by Trump's style of politics. The results in states that Biden won easily in 2020 suggest that Democrats' razor-thin majorities in Congress are highly vulnerable in the 2022 elections.

If Republicans gain control of both, or even one, chamber of Congress, the party would win the ability to block Biden's legislative agenda in the final two years of his term.

Pictured: A voter casts his vote during the Miami General Municipal and Special Elections in Miami-Dade County, Florida, at the Jose Marti Gym on Tuesday, November 2, 2021

The Democratic loss in Virginia gives Trump an opportunity to portray it as a repudiation of Biden as the Republican sets the stage for another possible presidential run in 2024.

But Biden, whose approval ratings last week were at the lowest level of his presidency according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national poll, avoided taking direct responsibility for the disappointment.

'People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things, from COVID to school to jobs to a whole range of things and the cost of a gallon of gasoline. And so if I'm able to pass and sign into law my Build Back Better initiative, I'm in a position where youare going to see a lot of things ameliorated, quickly and swiftly,' he said.

The top Democrats in Congress vowed to push ahead on Biden's legislative agenda, hoping to pass twin bills worth a combined $2.75 trillion to rebuild roads and bridges as well as bolster the social safety net and fight climate change.

They have been held up by months of infighting between progressive and moderate Democrats.

Wednesday saw Glenn Youngkin, 54, declare victory after a campaign in which he focused on parents' anger over schools' handling of COVID-19, as well as teaching on race and gender issues.

He walked a fine line on Trump, taking care not to alienate the former president's hardcore base and not offering a full-throated endorsement of his false claims about widespread 2020 election fraud.

McAuliffe's efforts to paint his rival, a former chief executive of the Carlyle Group Inc, as a Trump acolyte fell flat with voters.

'Together, we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth,' Youngkin told a rally in Chantilly, Virginia, early on Wednesday.

Republican congressional campaigns may follow Youngkin's model of focusing on culture wars and promising to give parents more control over public schools.

A voter stands on line before casting his vote during the Hialeah General Municipal and Special Elections in Miami-Dade County, Fla., at the Hialeah Fire Station # 5 on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021

Youngkin and other Republicans latched onto concerns from parents that schools are teaching left-wing ideas to combat racism, at the expense of more traditional subjects.

He vowed to ban the teaching of 'critical race theory,' a legal framework that examines how racism shapes U.S. laws and policies and is linked to anti-racism concepts such as 'white privilege.' Virginia school officials say critical race theory as a subject is not taught in classrooms.

Republicans also appeared to erase the Democrats' 10-seat lead in Virginia's House of Delegates, appearing to gain a 50-50 split or perhaps a one-seat advantage.

Virginia Republicans picked Youngkin in an unusual convention format in May, rather than by a statewide primary. That format was designed to pick a more moderate candidate, rather than one more closely allied with Trump.

Even so, Trump sought to claim credit, thanking 'my BASE' in a statement for putting Youngkin over the top.

In New Jersey, Murphy, 64, ran as an unabashed liberal and became the first Democratic governor to win re-election in New Jersey in four decades. He sought to strike a tone of political unity in brief victory remarks before cheering supporters at an Asbury Park convention hall on Wednesday.

'I renew my promise to you, whether you voted for me or not, to work every single day of the next four years to keep moving us forward,' he said.

Besides hammering Murphy over the governor's aggressive pandemic response, Ciattarelli campaigned on cutting taxes and supporting law enforcement. In an unusual position for a Republican, he supports abortion rights, at least for the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Elizabeth Holmes told the FBI during taped 2017 depositions that she was the ultimate decision maker, at her doomed startup Theranos, despite claiming during her high-profile fraud trial that her ex-partner Ramesh Sunny Balwani masterminded the crime and manipulated her into participating.

Speaking to lawyers during an SEC investigation more than three years ago, Holmes said she called the shots at the disgraced blood-testing startup she once led.

I did, Holmes told lawyers, according to the taped deposition obtained by CNBC.

I signed many of the Walgreens agreements. I dont know if I signed all of them. And yes. I mean, Im the CEO. Im the ultimate decision maker for the company.

Holmes is on trial for fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud charges over allegations she misled investors, patients and doctors about the capabilities of Theranos' blood-testing technology.

Disgraced Theranos leader Elizabeth homes is on trial for fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud charges over allegations she misled investors, patients and doctors about the capabilities of her company's blood-testing technology

Holmes' trial, in its eight week, is being held at a San Jose, California, US federal court. Before the trial accused her ex Ramesh Sunny Balwani of abusing and manipulating her and the allegations have rolled into her defense strategy

Holmes and Balwani are pictured in 2015 speaking to Theranos staff. At the time, she was 31 and he was 50

Her Palo Alto company claimed its portable blood-testing devices could screen for diseases with a prick of a finger, but prosecutors claim she knew the technology didn't work even as she peddled it to the public and investors.

Prosecutors said she knowingly lied to collects millions of dollars in investment to prop up Theranos despite knowing the technology was flawed.

Holmes previously accused her ex of abusing and manipulating her, and the allegations have rolled into her defense strategy during the trial, now in its eighth week.

In court filings submitted more than 18 months ago, Holmes's lawyers said they planned to present evidence that Balwani abused her emotionally and psychologically in a relationship that spanned more than a decade.

She allegedly plans on having an expert attest to the psychological, emotional and sexual abuse she experienced from Balwani during their decade long relationship, according CNN.

Holmes allegedly told her lawyers that she believed she was bringing in 'the best businessman she knew' when she hired Balwani but now realizes it was one of her biggest mistakes.

Holmes said during a 2017 SEC deposition that she was the 'ultimate decision maker'

'You will learn that Mr. Balwani did not take well to people who disagreed with him,' her lawyer Lance Wade said during his opening statement.

Holmes and Balwani met in 2002 when she was 18 and he was 37, Wade noted to jurors.

Text messages between the former lovers submitted as evidence at her fraud trial have undermined claims of manipulation.

Prosecutors have submitted texts Holmes (left) exchanged with Theranos co-founder Balwani (right) her former secret lover, in 2014 and 2015

The exchanges revealed how Holmes she called Balwani 'tiger' and 'my king', thought investors were injecting cash into their 'destiny' and argued over how she would 'emotionally transition' when they broke up in 2015 as the company headed toward ruin.

The shared hopeful exchanges in 2014, with Holmes telling her partner: 'This is our year. We can never forget it tiger... for our kids never forget who we are.

But the mood darkened in 2015 when discussions about internal staff complaints, FDA clearances and the 'challenges' ahead emerged.

That July, the pair discussed Balwani leaving the company as their romance began tapering.

In July 2015, Balwani discussed leaving the company but not until it broke even. The romance had soured by then and the pair were focused on saving the company. He warned her about 'challenges' ahead which he said she was underestimating

In December 2014, Holmes texted Balwani calling him 'tiger' and telling him it was 'their year'

In the texts, he complained to her: 'I worked for 6 years day and night to help you. I'm sad at where you and I are. I thought it would be better.

'I know u r angry in ur way. And upset with me for not doing everything you wanted me to do.'

He then warned her about 'challenges' ahead and said 'U need me'.

A sketch of Elizabeth Holmes watching on as testimony takes place during her fraud trial in San Jose on September 22

The jury heard earlier this week that former education secretary Betsy DeVos was tied to the company's funding.

The DeVos family office's investment arm pumped nearly $100million into Theranos after meeting with the blood-testing firm's disgraced CEO.

Lisa Peterson, a director of the billionaire's family office who managed private equity investments for their RDV Corporation, said she and members of the dynasty jetted out to Silicon Valley in 2014 to meet with the businesswoman who is currently on trial for wire fraud.

The DeVos family met with Holmes and her ex-boyfriend and former president at Theranos, Balwani, while the couple were 'hand picking' wealthy families to invest in their company, Peterson told jurors.

Peterson told the US District Court in San Jose that Holmes had told the Devos family she was courting a small number of private backers in order to avoid pressure from larger firms to take Theranos public, The Daily Beast reported.

The family of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos invested nearly $100million in Theranos after meeting with the blood-testing firm's disgraced CEO Elizabeth Holmes

She said she believed that Holmes was 'very much' singling out the family to be a long-term investor for the health tech company.

The DeVos family was ranked the 88th wealthiest in the US in 2014 with an estimated net worth of $5.4billion.

During the 2014 summit, the DeVos family, including Betsy's sister-in-law Cheri who received a Theranos blood test, spent five hours at the company headquarters prior to the investment.

Peterson testified: 'To my knowledge, she received the results.'

The family and Peterson then gathered in the parking lot to discuss the planned $50million investment which they later doubled.

Among Theranos' other investors were media tycoon Rupert Murdoch who pumped $125million into the company, project manager Daniel Edlin testified.
President of the Reunion region described the comments as 'outrageous'

French screen legend turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was on Thursday fined 20,000 euros (17,000) by a court on France's Indian Ocean island of La Reunion over a 2019 diatribe where she described its inhabitants as 'savages'.

Bardot, 87, launched the rambling attack against the inhabitants of La Reunion, one of France's overseas territories spread across the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, in response to what she saw as their mistreatment of animals.

Her spokesman Bruno Jacquelin was also fined by the court in the main town of Saint-Denis de la Reunion 4,000 euros (3,400) for his role in sending the statement to several media outlets at her request.

Bardot was fined 20,000 euros and her spokesman was fined 4,000 euros for the offensive comments she made about the French territory

The 84-year-old film star's comments sparked wide condemnation on the Indian Ocean island

'The natives have kept their savage genes,' the animal rights campaigner wrote in an open letter attacking the islanders for their treatment of animals, describing locals as 'degenerate savages'.

She took aim at the island's Hindu Tamil population for sacrificing goats, evoking the 'cannibalism of past centuries' as she lashed 'a degenerate population still soaked in barbarous ancestral traditions'.

Bardot, who shot to fame in the 1956 film '...And God Created Woman', has become a controversial figure, and has also been convicted in the past over her comments about Muslims.

France's then overseas territories minister Annick Girardin told her in a letter at the time after her comments on Le Reunion 'that racism is not an opinion, it's an offence'.

Miss Bardot quit the movie industry in 1973 and now runs an animal sanctuary in the French Riviera resort of St Tropez

Didier Robert, President of the Reunion region, previously described Bardot as 'irresponsible, outrageous and contemptuous'.

He said her letter contained deeply racist terms that were 'absolutely unacceptable'.

During previous court appearances in France, Miss Bardot has also received substantial fines and been forced to apologise for her bigotry.

Bardot is a close friend of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the FN, who has been convicted for anti-Semitism, racism and Holocaust denial. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, now runs the party.

Reunion, which is 6000 miles from Paris, is one of five overseas departments and regions of France

Bardot quit the movie industry in 1973 and now runs an animal sanctuary in the French Riviera resort of St Tropez, where she first shot to stardom in the 1950s.

Animal rights activists say abuse of animals is common on the island and that animal sacrifice is tolerated in some religious ceremonies.

Reunion, which is 6000 miles from Paris, is one of five overseas departments and regions of France.

It is a favoured holiday destination of thousands from Europe.

The island, east of Madagascar, has also made headlines in recent years for a spate of fatal shark attacks.
A Florida nurse just weeks away from giving birth found out her baby was dead after she was shoved against a wall and nearly kicked in the stomach by a patient in a mental health ward.

The unidentified nurse, who was 32 weeks pregnant, was administrating medication to a female patient in the behavioral heath unit at South Seminole Hospital in Orlando when she was attacked by fellow patient Joseph Wuerz, police said.

Wuerz, 53, entered the room and shoved the pregnant nurse up against a wall and tried to kick her before hospital security pulled him off of her, according to the Longwood Police Department.

Joseph Wuerz, 53, (pictured) is facing charges of unborn child manslaughter, aggravated battery of a pregnant woman, and aggravated battery of nurse

Wuerz remains in John E. Polk Correctional Facility under $90,000 bail and is set to appear in court again in January 2022.

Although none of the kicks landed, the nurse told police she was 'terrified and shocked and unsure about injury  to the unborn child,' the Washington Post reported.

Following the attack, she went for a checkup at another hospital, where doctors found no heartbeat and told the nurse her baby had died, according to the arrest report.

Wuerz was charged with homicide of an unborn child, aggravated battery of a pregnant woman and aggravated battery of nurse.

The nurse, who told police her baby was totally healthy prior to the attack, said she believes the stress of the attack caused her to lose her unborn child.

Wuerz was not one of the nurse's patients and did not say anything to her during the vicious attack, she told police.

A 32 week pregnant nurse at South Seminole Hospital (pictured) was administrating medication to a patient when she was attacked by 53-year-old Joseph Wuerz

A spokesperson for the hospital said they were cooperating with police.

'We are aware of an incident that occurred at Orlando Health South Seminole Hospital,' the spokesperson said. 'At this time, this is a law enforcement investigation, and we are fully cooperating.'

Wuerz remains in John E. Polk Correctional Facility under $90,000 bail and is set to appear in court in January.

The incident is one of many recent attacks against hospital workers.

Police say on Sunday two nurses, including one who was pregnant, were attacked in the mental health area of a Scranton, Pennsylvania hospital by 19-year-old Elizabeth Young.

Young punched and kneed the visibly pregnant nurse in her stomach before escaping, PAhomepage.com reported.

Young was taken to her room but escaped and then attacked a male nurse before security was able to restrain her.

In October, a Chesapeake man was arrested after stabbing a 65-year-old male nurse at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Virginia, dailypress.com reported.

In Missouri, a hospital has equipped up to 400 staff members with panic buttons attached to their badges, the Post reported.

According to Cox Medical Center in Branson, violence against its staff increased dramatically from 2019 to 2020, 'with the pandemic greatly compounding the issue.'

The number of reported assaults jumped from 40 to 123, and injuries jumped from 17 to 78, the hospital said.
A Republican truck driver who spent just $153 on his campaign and ran for office after he was denied a gun permit secured a stunning victory against the longest-serving legislative leader in New Jersey history in the state's elections - but the loser is disputing the results and claims more ballots were 'found' on Thursday.

The election was held on Tuesday but Associated Press only called the race today after 100 percent of precincts had reported.

Underdog GOP candidate Ed Durr delivered a humiliating defeat to Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney in South New Jersey's 3rd Legislative District by a razor thin margin of 52 percent of the vote to 48.

It's another embarrassing upset for the Democrats after they lost the Virginia gubernatorial election, struggled in the race for New Jersey governor and were swept by a red wave in Long Island, New York.

But two days after voters cast their ballots, Sweeney said the race still isn't over and he's not conceding. That's despite the Associated Press indicating that every precinct in the legislative district has already finished reporting.

'The results from Tuesdays election continue to come in, for instance there were 12,000 ballots recently found in one county,' the veteran lawmaker told Politico.

'While I am currently trailing in the race, we want to make sure every vote is counted. Our voters deserve that, and we will wait for the final results.'

Sweeney claimed more ballots were 'found' in the local race, despite AP reporting that all the precincts in New Jersey's Legislative District 3 had turned in their results

Durr was seen speaking to media on Thursday near his home in Swedesboro, New Jersey

Nationwide, Americans are indicating that they're unhappy with rising inflation and the state of the economy - and how Democrats are handling them.

On Fox News last night Durr said he didn't even have any plans for when he gets to the state capital of Trenton.

'I really don't know,' he said when asked about what he'll do his first day.

'Thats the key factor. I dont know what I dont know, but I will learn what I need to know, and Im going to guarantee one thing - I will be the voice and people will hear me because if there is one thing people will learn about me, I got a big mouth and I dont shut up when I want to be heard. Im going to be heard.'

Durr, 58, is employed as a truck driver for furniture store Raymour & Flanigan. He grew up in South Jersey and has three children and six grandchildren.

Out of the $153, he spent $66.64 at Dunkin Donuts to buy food and drinks for his 'staff' and $86.67 for flyers and business cards.

Durr posted a photo of himself to social media going to vote on Tuesday, before his surprise victory

The 58-year-old truck driver appears to have shot his campaign video with very little assistance

He's never held elected office but said in a past interview that he was spurred to run in his blue collar and predominantly white area by being unable to get a concealed carry permit.

The trucker launched a failed bid for New Jersey's lower house in 2019.

But now for the first time since 2002, his legislative district will be represented by a pro-Second Amendment conservative Republican, rather than a Democrat who once reportedly called New Jersey's former GOP Governor Chris Christie a 'rotten bastard.'

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney is one of the most powerful elected officials in the state

Durr's campaign video, which he appears to have shot himself, paints Sweeney as complacent to Governor Murphy's actions leading the state through the COVID-19 pandemic and its high property taxes.

'In 2020, my opponent sat by and watched as Governor Murphy forced nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients, resulting in the death of over 8,000 of our seniors,' Durr says while walking through a cemetery in broad daylight.

'He remained silent as Governor Murphy, with his lockdown and mandates, forced the closing of over one third of our small businesses costing New Jersey families thousands of jobs.'

'He has done nothing, as seven out of every ten moves are leaving the state, placing a heavier burden on those of us who remain. The Senate president has spent 20 years in Trenton - higher taxes, increasing debt and a rising cost of living. We deserve better. New Jersey, it's time for a change.'

Durr described himself to Politico as a 'constitutional conservative' who has backed cutting an array of different taxes for 'businesses to grow' and supports federal legislation to ban abortion.

Sweeney, an Ironworks union official and one of the most powerful politicians in the state, has been a state senator for nearly two decades. He became Senate President in 2010.

He was also floated as a possible 2024 gubernatorial candidate, before facing a possible loss now.

But it appears now that Sweeney - who spent millions in 2017 on one of the most expensive state legislative races in US history - was bested by a trucker who only spent about $153 to try and unseat him.

Sweeney's defeat is part of a wider rebellion of suburban and working-class Americans against Democrats. The incumbent Democratic Governor Phil Murphy just barely crawled to victory ahead of his Republican challenger in a race that polls had indicated would be a blue landslide.

Durr barely campaigned for his stunning victory over a powerful New Jersey career politician

Durr was asked what he'd do on his first day in office and he said he doesn't know

Durr's winning campaign is emblematic of Americans' nationwide dissatisfaction with Democrats

Nationwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is fading as a top concern of voters and being replaced by the economy and rising inflation, a troubling sign for Biden and Democrats heading into the midterm elections.

Just 12 percent of adults rated health issues like the coronavirus as a top national priority, down from 20 percent in February, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found for October.

Meantime, two-thirds of the country, including the majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents, say that 'inflation is a very big concern for me.'

The job market is also being closed watched as the poll found that 73% of adults want political leaders to focus on jobs and economic growth.

Democrats, meanwhile, are showing signs of panic and asking Biden to deal with this quality of life issues affecting voters.

'We were so willing to take seriously a global pandemic, but we're not willing to say, 'Yeah, inflation is a problem, and supply chain is a problem, and we don't have enough workers in our work force,' Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia told The New York Times. 'We gloss over that and only like to admit to problems in spaces we dominate.'

She also said Biden needs to reminder why voters put him in the Oval Office.

'Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,' she said, referring to the sweeping net of social programs Biden is seeking to make into law.

Unexpected outcomes across local and state New Jersey races have forced the state's Senate Democrats to postpone a leadership conference - until after they can figure out who survived the competition.

'Due to the closeness of several State Senate elections, the leadership caucus scheduled for tomorrow will be delayed,' Sweeney had announced in a statement. 'The caucus will be rescheduled once the result of every Senate election is determined.

Defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli ran a surprisingly competitive race against incumbent Governor Phil Murphy

New Jersey state Senate Democrats will now be forced to pick a new leader.

It can even be seen in Virginia, where Republican first-time candidate Glenn Youngkin won the gubernatorial race against a former governor, Democratic powerhouse Terry McAuliffe.

Newly-minted state Senator-elect Durr's also advocated for lowering the state's property taxes - the highest in the nation - which is also a frequent issue brought into the race by Murphy's challenger for governor, former state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli.

Murphy has never sought to defend himself against the accusation, instead choosing to point out the quality of education, healthcare and other civil services those taxes can afford.

It may be why he and other Democrats were in tight spots on Tuesday.

Durr told Politico he picked up on feelings of discontent and distrust among South Jersians with the way Democrats were running the state.

'Just the constant nepotism, corruption, "if you take care of me, I'll take care of you" deals,' Durr said. 'You don't have evidence, you can't get anyone arrested or prove anything, but there's always "when there's smoke there's fire" kind of statements.'

At least one veteran Democrat operative agrees that his party appears to have gone off track with American voters.

Political strategist James Carville blamed Democrats' losses on Tuesday on 'stupid wokeness' in a PBS interview.

'What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington,' Carville said as he ticked off election results in an appearance on PBS News Hour.

Democratic strategist tore into 'stupid wokeness' and said it was causing a backlash that was suppressing the Democratic vote, after the party suffered a range of losses Tuesday

There were echoes of Carville's critique in comments by Sen. Joe Manchin Thursday, when he called the US a 'center-right' country

'I mean, this "defund the police" lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools. I mean that  people see that,' he said.

Carville, who boosted Clinton with his 'It's the economy, stupid' mantra, weighed in even as 'squad' member Rep. Ilhan Omar retweeted a message saying progressives would get blamed for McAuliffe's loss, suggesting he didn't run left enough.

There were echoes of Carville's critique in comments by Sen. Joe Manchin Thursday, although Manchin spoke to economic issues.

Manchin claimed the US is a 'center-right' country and that President Biden should give up on trying to get the kind of 'major legislation' done that passed under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

'We can't go too far left,' the West Virginia Democrat told CNN from Capitol Hill on Thursday. 'This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center  if anything, a little center-right country, that's being shown  and we ought to be able to recognize that.'

'You wanna know what's wrong with the place? I go to work in a hostile work environment every day,' he inveighed, after becoming a center of attention as one of two Democrats in the Senate holding up Biden's economic agenda and demanding changes.

'If you're a Democrat and a Republican is up for election, you're supposed to be against that person,' even if their opponent is 'Donald Duck,' he complained.

'I just saw it to confirm that we have a divided country  I hope it's a wake-up call for all of us,' the West Virginia Democrat told Fox News' Special Report's Bret Baier about the election results on Wednesday.

But progressives have been singing the opposite tune. Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said her party's election night upset - specifically in Virginia - is the fault of moderates who failed to get progressives to vote.

The lawmaker took to her Instagram stories to discuss Democrats' losing the governorship of Virginia - a state Biden won by 10 points in the 2020 election.

She called the loss a 'bummer' but blamed it on moderate candidate Terry McAuliffe for failing to 'energize' progressives to come on Election Day.

Progressives claim the loss is a sign they need to speed up passage of Biden's $1.75 trillion social agenda while moderates are asking the president to focus on the econony and jobs, arguing Democrats missed the message voters were sending.

Ocasio-Cortez also brought up the race issue, saying McAuliffe didn't handle 'race baiting' from Republicans well - a likely reference to Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin attack ads on the use of Critical Race Theory in schools and how he took advantage of a McAuliffe faux pas, where the Democratic candidate rejected the idea that parents should have more control in a child's education.

'Historically moderate Democrats have believed the best way to respond to race baiting by the right is to say little/nothing,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram stories Q&A. 'We see how that demoralizes the base you're supposed to protect and turn out while also ceeding white swing voters to the right w/ inadequate responses or silence.'
Katie Couric says her friendship with former Today show co-host Matt Lauer 'just fizzled out' in the wake of his downfall from multiple sexual assault allegations, adding that the disgraced anchor 'probably thought that I had abandoned him.'

Couric said she was 'taken aback' by everything she had read and heard about Lauer, including allegations that he was inappropriate with a young woman she had brought to NBC, though she still texted him that she 'loved' him.

The pair spent nine years as co-anchors of the network's flagship morning show, which averages about four million viewers a day.

Couric, 64, has made waves with her new book, Going There, in which she shared portions of text messages she sent Lauer after he was fired in November 2017.

Katie Couric, 64, and Matt Lauer, 63, co-hosted the Today show on NBC for nearly a decade

Couric said their relationship 'fizzled out' after Lauer was fired for sexual harassment: 'I think he probably knew I had read that article and probably thought that I had abandoned him'

Couric wrote him: 'I am crushed. I love you and care about you deeply. I am here. Please let me know if you want to talk. There will be better days ahead.'

Lauer responded with a blowing kiss emoji.

Couric spoke about their relationship during a Zoom interview with Nancy O'Dell on talkshoplive Wednesday night.

'I think its sort of clear through the text messages that I shared, and some I didnt because I thought they were too personal that he had written - I sort of paraphrased them - you could see when I didnt call him that time because I heard about another situation involving a young woman I had brought to NBC

'And we were scheduled to have a phone call to discuss what was going on and I said, "Im going to call you in a few days," I think he probably knew I had read that article and probably thought that I had abandoned him.'

The journalist, who has worked at all three major networks, clarified that she was never all that close to Lauer outside of work.

'People are like, "How did you not know?" And I think people just don't understand that the Today show is like being in a Broadway play.

'You can have incredible chemistry, have so much fun, everything can click, you get to know each other really well to the point of finishing each other's sentences, but for us, that was two hours in the day. As much as I enjoyed working with Matt, we were not social friends. We had very separate lives.'

Couric was all smiles discussing her tell-all, Going There, on talkshoplive Wednesday night

The broadcast journalist, above on October 23, criticized the 'sensational, salacious headlines' being used to describe her book. She's worked at all three major US networks

Couric, worth a reported $100 million, also objected to being called 'America's Sweetheart,' saying the term is 'sexist, really, honestly.' Above, Couric and Lauer on Today in May 2006

Lauer was fired just two days after an unidentified female colleague accused him of inappropriate behavior.

At the time, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack said it was the 'first complaint about his behavior in the over twenty years he's been at NBC News,' but that they had reason to believe there were other incidents.

'I think I was just so taken back by everything I was learning in real time that I had these two thoughts in my head about my friendship with Matt and the horrific things I was reading,' Couric said.

'I think I was just trying to square these two things. Basically you see that honestly things just fizzled out.

'I think our legacy was very intertwined because we worked together and I think we were such a successful pairing on a morning show.'

The book is No. 1 on Amazon this week

In Ronan Farrow's 2019 book Catch and Kill, Brooke Nevils claimed that Lauer anally raped her while the two were covering the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Laurer responded by saying, 'There was absolutely nothing aggressive about that encounter. Brooke did not do or say anything to object.'

On Wednesday's interview with talkshoplive, Couric also complained about often being called 'America's Sweetheart.'

'First of all, it's so incredibly gendered. It is so limiting. It's sort of like calling someone a beauty queen or a beauty contestant or a Miss America type. It's just - I think it's very sexist, really, honestly,' she said.

Couric kicked off her career in 1979 at the ABC News bureau in Washington, DC. She then joined CNN as an assignment editor before working for local stations in Miami and DC.

She was born in Arlington, Virginia and her father, John Martin Couric, Jr., was a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an editor at the United Press wire service, according to his obituary in the Washington Post.

Couric left the Today show for CBS Evening News in 2006, a move that she called 'death by a thousand cuts.'

'There wasn't one thing necessarily but I think it was just a very hostile work environment,' she said.

Lauer was making $20 million a year when he was fired during the Me Too movement

Brooke Nevils later claimed that Lauer anally raped her while they were covering the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Lauer, who was married, said the encounter was consensual

'They wanted to protect the status quo and I was brought in as a change agent and I understand that's very difficult for people to deal with, you know, if they are very happy and secure, doing the kind of thing they did every day and Les Moonves hires me and says, "I want you to shake things up, I want you to kind of recreate the format, re energize it, reinvigorate it because it's kind of old and stayed and antiquated."'

Ashleigh Banfield said Couric made it difficult for her to work at the network because she was treated so frostily

Moonves, who is married to Big Brother host Julie Chen, stepped down as chairman of CBS after multiple sexual harassment allegations surfaced against him.

Couric has a net worth of $100 million, according to Yahoo, where she also worked for a brief stint from 2014 to 2017.

She's criticized the coverage of her tell-all book Going There, in which she describes giving fellow journalist Ashleigh Banfield the cold shoulder because helping her would have been 'self-sabotage.'

Staffers said Banfield was humiliated by Couric at the 2000 Olympics and treated like a child.

Banfield has told DailyMail.com that Couric made her work life more difficult than it needed to be.

'I think the tabloid coverage is what tabloids do,' Couric told O'Dell. 'Tabloids cherry pick things. They look for sensational, salacious headlines to to get clicks. I understand that's the business they're in.

'I think anyone who read the book will soon realize, unfortunately, I think it will increase distrust in the media because they'll see that they willfully misrepresented the book and created a narrative that isn't in there.

'People like to fabricate these catfights.'

Couric added: 'I wanted people to understand that I'm a multi-dimensional person. I have shortcomings and strengths. I have flaws. I have things that upset me and made me mad, things that delighted me, things that left me reeling with grief. I wanted to show the full spectrum of a full human being.'
A Georgia judge ruled on Thursday that jury in the trial of three white men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery will not see a toxicology report showing that a small amount of THC, a psychoactive compound in marijuana, was found in the black victim's blood.

The jury, comprised of just one black juror and 11 white panelists, is due to be sworn in and hear opening statements on Friday morning in Glynn County Superior Court about the deadly shooting that took place on February 23, 2020, when Arbery went on a Sunday afternoon run through the mostly white residential neighborhood of Satilla Shores.

Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William 'Roddie' Bryan all face nine charges, which include malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

On Thursday, Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley heard arguments from prosecutors and defense lawyers about what evidence can be presented to jurors.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley responds to arguments made during a motion hearing in the trial of Greg McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan on Thursday, November 4

Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down by the McMichaels while on a jog in his predominately white neighborhood; Bryan recorded the altercation in south Georgia on February 23, 2020

Travis McMichael (left), his father Gregory McMichael (center) and their friend William 'Roddie' Bryan (right) have all been charged with federal hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery

Defense lawyers claim the three defendants acted in self-defense after chasing and cornering the 25-year-old Arbery.

Police say Travis McMichael, 35, fired a shotgun three times after Arbery initially grappled with the weapon and then turned to run. The men say they were trying to make a citizen's arrest of someone they thought resembled a burglar.

The defense has sought to argue before the jury that Arbery had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, and that smoking marijuana can cause aggression in someone with this condition. The judge previously ruled that Arbery's mental health records are not admissible as evidence.

Prosecutors from the Cobb County district attorney's office said initial tests on Arbery's body found no evidence of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine or other drugs. A second test found 3.2 nanograms per milliliter of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, in his blood, which they called a tiny amount.

Linda Dunikoski, the lead prosecutor, said the state had no plans to tell jurors about the toxicology reports, and that the THC finding was irrelevant to the defense.

'Why Mr. Arbery did anything he did is completely irrelevant,' she told the court. 'The question is about what the defendants did, and they knew nothing about what was in his system.'

Greg McMichael (center) listens to his attorney during a motion hearing at the Glynn County Courthouse as his son Travis McMichael (right) sits across from him on Thursday, November 4

William 'Roddie' Bryan (right) listens to his attorney Kevin Gough (left) in the Brunswick, Georgia courtroom on Thursday, November 4

Defense attorneys Bob Rubin (right) and Laura Hogue (center) converse next to their client Travis McMichael (left) on Thursday, November 4

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski (right) argues a motion before Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley (left) on Thursday, November 4, a day before open statements are set to begin

On Wednesday, after a grueling process, a jury of 11 white people and one black person was seated.

In Brunswick, Georgia, where Arbery was killed and the trial is being held, black people account for nearly 55 percent of the population of 16,000 while white people make up 40 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But in Glynn County, which encompasses Brunswick, black people account for nearly 27 percent of the population of 85,000, with 69 percent identifying as white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The court mailed 1,000 jury duty notices, and nearly 200 people were questioned by the judge and attorneys at the courthouse during jury selection. The judge said 25 percent of the pool from which the final jury was chosen was black.

Judge Walmsley expressed his concern over the racial makeup of the jury after eight other black potential jurors were booted following objections from defense lawyers: 'This court has found there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel,' Walmsley said.

However, Walmsley said he had limited authority to intervene in jury selection - after the final 12 were narrowed from a pool of 48 over the last two weeks - because the defense attorneys were able to give nonracial reasons for their decisions to strike the potential black jurors from the panel.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Arbery's father, responded to the jury selection in the McMichaels and Bryan trial: 'After being hunted down, cornered, and shot for being a Black man in a white Georgia neighborhood, Ahmaud Arbery is again denied justice.

'His killers' fate will be decided by a nearly all-white jury after defense attorneys denied eight potential Black jurors. Even the judge acknowledged 'there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel.'

'A jury should reflect the community. Brunswick is 55% Black, so it's outrageous that Black jurors were intentionally excluded to create such an imbalanced jury in a cynical effort to help these cold-blooded killers escape justice.'

Judge in Ahmaud Arbery judge accuses defense of 'intentional discrimination' after selecting just ONE black juror for case against three men accused of murdering the jogger in county where 55% of people are black

The judge in the racially-charged case of Ahmaud Arbery's death slammed his own trial for 'intentional discrimination' after just one black juror was picked to sit on the 12-person jury to decide the fate of three white men accused of hunting down and murdering the black jogger.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley expressed his concern over the racial makeup of the jury after eight other black potential jurors were booted following objections from defense lawyers.

'This court has found there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel,' Walmsley said.

However, Walmsley said he had limited authority to intervene in jury selection - after the final 12 were narrowed from a pool of 48 over the last two weeks - because the defense attorneys were able to give nonracial reasons for their decisions to strike the potential black jurors from the panel.

In Brunswick, Georgia, where Arbery was killed and the trial is being held, black people account for nearly 55 percent of the population of 16,000 while white people make up 40 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But in Glynn County, which encompasses Brunswick, black people account for nearly 27 percent of the population of 85,000, with 69 percent identifying as white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The judge said 25 percent of the pool from which the final jury was chosen was black.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23, 2020, while he was out for a run in his south Georgia neighborhood

Travis McMichael (left), his father Gregory McMichael (center) and their friend William 'Roddie' Bryan (right) have all been charged with federal hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley narrowed the pool of 1,000 to 12 mainly white jurors except one. He agreed with prosecutors that 'there appears to be intentional discrimination'

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski challenged the defense attorneys' decision to strike eight specific black jurors, arguing they were cut from the panel because of their race.

Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, denied that the black panelists' race was considered in decisions to strike them from the jury pool.

'We have a very clear selection process within the defense team, and the issue of race is not one of the factors,' Hogue said. 'I can give you a race neutral reason for any one of these.'

She noted one such juror, identified in court as No. 218, had written on her juror questionnaire that Arbery was shot 'due to his color' and told attorneys during questioning that she felt the defendants were guilty.

Dunikoski noted that many prospective jurors questioned in open court expressed strong opinions about the case, but all who remained in the pool from which the 12 jurors emerged said they could be impartial and base a verdict solely on the trial evidence.

'The defense has not made a case as to why this juror and her opinions are any different than anyone else, black or white,' Dunikoski said of No. 218. 'She said the same thing almost every other juror said. So many had opinions. And they said they could put them aside.'

In issuing his decision not to change the makeup of the jury, Walmsley said defense attorneys 'have been able to explain to the court why besides race those individuals were struck from the panel.'

Meanwhile, one of the defense lawyers raised his concerns that there aren't enough 'Bubbas or Joe six-packs' on the final panel of 12 jurors.

The comments were made by Kevin Gough, the defense attorney representing William Bryan, who is facing a murder charge for filming the shooting death of Arbery in February 2020.

Gough expressed his skepticism over the now-decided pool of jurors, which wasn't determined at the time of his interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying it lacked white men over 40 without a four-year bachelor's degree.

'We want a diverse jury,' he said. 'But we're missing a segment of what would normally be here.'

The slaying dominated news coverage and social media feeds leading court officials to take extraordinary steps in hopes of seating an impartial jury.

The court mailed 1,000 jury duty notices, and nearly 200 people were questioned by the judge and attorneys at the courthouse during jury selection.

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski probes questions on Wednesday, October 27, during the jury selection in the McMichaels and Bryan trial in Glynn County Superior Court in Brunswick, Georgia

Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, (pictured Wednesday, October 27) denied that the black panelists' race was considered in decisions to strike them from the jury pool: 'I can give you a race neutral reason for any one of these'

Defense attorney Kevin Gough, representing William Bryan, (pictured Wednesday, October 27) was concerned there weren't enough 'Bubbas or Joe six-packs', or college-educated white men over 40, in the group of potential jurors

William 'Roddie' Bryan attends the jury selection on Wednesday, October 27 after a particularly difficult process due to the high-profile case centered around race

Travis McMichael (right) and his attorney Robert Rubin (left) attend the jury selection in his trial together on Wednesday, October 27

Greg McMichael (pictured on Wednesday, October 27) his son, and neighbor face murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment charges in connection to Arbery's death

Before a final jury is seated, attorneys in a criminal case get to take turns eliminating a significant number of prospective jurors from the final pool, for virtually any reason. The final process of elimination consisted of a bailiff passing a list of the potential jurors back and forth between the prosecutors and the three defense teams. Lawyers used the list to silently choose people to strike from the jury.

On February 23, 2020, Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck when they spotted him jogging after having entered a home under construction in their neighborhood, about 70 miles south of Savannah.

A neighbor, William 'Roddie' Bryan,' joined the chase in his own truck and took cellphone video of the fatal encounter. Video shows the McMichaels stop their truck in front of Arbery as Travis McMichael aims his gun at the young black man.

In the footage, Arbery tries to run around the truck before getting into a physical altercation with Travis McMichael and being shot three times.

Defense attorneys say the McMichaels and Bryan committed no crimes. They say Arbery had been recorded by security cameras inside the home that was under construction and they suspected him of stealing. Greg McMichael told police his son opened fire in self-defense after Arbery attacked with his fists and grappled for Travis McMichael's shotgun.

Investigators have said Arbery was unarmed and there's no evidence he had stolen anything.

Arbery was chased by the armed McMichaels as he was jogging in his neighborhood on February 23, 2020

Arbery, in a white T-shirt, is confronted by Travis McMichael, who holds a shotgun

No one was charged in Arbery's death until more than two months later, when the video of the shooting leaked online. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police and soon arrested all three men on nine charges, which include malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

Arbery's death became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system and across the country after a string of fatal encounters between black people and police continued to make national headlines George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, among others.

The judge said the jury, along with four alternates, will be seated and sworn in Friday, when opening statements in the trial are expected.

Arbery's death became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice after a string of fatal encounters between black people and police continued to make national headlines

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has worked with the Arbery, Floyd, and Taylor families, responded to the jury selection in the McMichaels and Bryan trial: 'After being hunted down, cornered, and shot for being a Black man in a white Georgia neighborhood, Ahmaud Arbery is again denied justice.

'His killers' fate will be decided by a nearly all-white jury after defense attorneys denied eight potential Black jurors. Even the judge acknowledged 'there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel.'

'A jury should reflect the community. Brunswick is 55% Black, so it's outrageous that Black jurors were intentionally excluded to create such an imbalanced jury in a cynical effort to help these cold-blooded killers escape justice.'

Arbey's family has also commented on the 'injustice' of the jury selection.

His aunt, Thea Brooks, said: 'I wasn't surprised. That's just some of what we've already been facing in this case. Just another of the injustices that we see here in Glynn County. Not just with this case, but with many. So it's just another part of what we face every day.'

Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told reporters she found the selection: 'devastating.' But she said: 'I'm very confident that they'll make the right decision after seeing all the evidence.'

Her attorney, S. Lee Merritt, said he remains confident the trial will end in a conviction, despite the his belief the defense lawyers had: 'created a jury that was more favorable for their defendants, an almost entirely white jury.'
A 93-year-old care home resident woman with dementia was beaten to death with a metal walking stick by her mentally ill neighbour while she was recovering from coronavirus, a jury has found.

Eileen Dean was beaten repeatedly in her bedroom at Fieldside in Catford, south London on January 3 by Alexander Rawson, 63, and suffered severe injuries to her face, head and upper body.

The Old Bailey heard how Rawson phoned 999 in a state of distress and agitation after killing Mrs Dean.

He told the operator: 'I think somebody's been killed and I don't know what's happening. I think I might have done something wrong.'

Mrs Dean had suffered multiple fractures to facial bones and traumatic brain injury, and died in hospital. A blood-stained metal walking stick in her room had Rawson's fingerprint on it.

Eileen Dean (left) was beaten repeatedly in her bedroom at Fieldside in Catford, south London, on January 3 by Alexander Rawson (right)

Police outside a carehome in Catford, south London on January 5, 2021

At the time of the attack, Mrs Dean had been self-isolating in her room as she recovered from Covid. She had lived at the care home since June 2020 and was described by staff as 'very calm, lovely and quiet'.

Despite her age, she was independent and only required support for her personal care, jurors were told.

Rawson moved into the bedroom next door in late December last year, having previously been detained under the Mental Health Act and been an in-patient at two south London hospitals since last July.

He had been charged with Mrs Dean's murder but was deemed unfit to stand trial.

Forensics outside the Catford care home in south London in January 2021

Rawson will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on December 20.

Detective Chief Inspector Chris Wood, of Scotland Yard, said: 'Eileen was a completely defenceless woman whose life was suddenly taken away in a horrific manner.

'She had already been through a great deal, losing her husband almost 30 years ago, but she was described as a calm, quiet and lovely woman by all those who knew her.'
During a heated Senate debate Dr. Anthony Fauci called Sen. Rand Paul 'egregiously wrong' after the senator said Fauci refused to take responsibility for the pandemic and accused him of scrubbing the definition of 'gain-of-function' from the NIH website.

'You have said I am unwilling to take any responsibility for the current pandemic. I have no responsibility for the current pandemic,' the NIAID director said.

'I don't expect you to admit today that you approved of gain-of-function research in Wuhan but your repeated denials have worn thin and a majority of Americans frankly don't believe you,' the Kentucky Republican told Fauci.

'This was risky type of research,' he said. 'It was risky to share this with the Chinese and Covid may have been created from a not yet revealed virus.'

Paul has repeatedly accused Fauci of misleading the public about the NIH's grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn distributed nearly $600,000 of that funding to its collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). He says that WIV could likely enhanced a pathogen that spilled out and led to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Wednesday report from The Intercept found that NIH officials collaborated with EcoHealth to help them evade restrictions on coronavirus research.

But the senator freshly accused Fauci of scrubbing the term 'gain-of-function' from the NIH website to fit his narrative that the NIH didn't fund such research.

'We're aware that you deleted the gain-of-function definition from the NIH website,' Paul said.

'You have said I am unwilling to take any responsibility for the current pandemic. I have no responsibility for the current pandemic,' the NIAID director said

'Until you accept responsibility we're not going to get anywhere close to trying to prevent another lab leak with this dangerous sort of experiment. You won't admit that it's dangerous and for that lack of judgment, I think it's time that you resign,' said Paul

'The preponderance of evidence points toward this coming from a lab and what you have done is change the definition on your website to cover your ass basically. That's what you've done. You've changed the website to try to change the definition so it doesn't include the risky research that is going on,' he said.

'Until you accept responsibility we're not going to get anywhere close to trying to prevent another lab leak with this dangerous sort of experiment. You won't admit that it's dangerous and for that lack of judgment, I think it's time that you resign,' said Paul.

'It makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something but he is egregiously incorrect in what he says,' Fauci said.

'History will figure that out on its own,' Paul interjected.

'You said the overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that it's a lab leak,' Fauci continued. 'I believe ... most virologists would disagree with you. That it is much more likely, even though we leave open all possibilities, it is much more likely this was a natural occurrence.'

Prior to Oct. 20, as Paul points out, the NIH website said that gain-of-function research 'describes a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent.'

The definition appeared under the title 'Gain-of-Function Research Involving Potential Pandemic Pathogens.'

'The subset of GOF research that is anticipated to enhance the transmissibility and/or virulence of potential pandemic pathogens, which are likely to make them more dangerous to humans, has been the subject of substantial scrutiny and deliberation,' the website previously said.

But on Oct. 20, the day the NIH admitted that the Wuhan lab did alter viruses to make them more transmissible or more lethal, the term 'gain-of-function' was removed from the website term list, Paul pointed out.

That page is now titled, 'Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens.'

But on Oct. 20, the day the NIH admitted that the Wuhan lab did alter viruses to make them more transmissible or more lethal, the term 'gain-of-function' was removed from the website term list, Paul pointed out

'On limited occasions, when justified by compelling public health need and conducted in very high biosecurity laboratories, NIH has supported certain research that may be reasonably anticipated to create, transfer or use potential pandemic pathogens resulting from the enhancement of a pathogens transmissibility and/or virulence in humans,' the website says.

The Obama administration instituted a moratorium on federal funding of the controversial research, but the NIH lifted that ban in 2017.

A search of the term on the NIH website still pulls up external links on the research, such as a report entitled, 'Gain-of-Function Research: Ethical Analysis.'

That same day, Oct. 20, the NIH admitted to funding research on bat coronaviruses, to test different spike proteins, in the Wuhan lab that is at the center of COVID-19 origin theories.

It comes after Fauci testified on multiple occasions before Congress than U.S. taxpayers never financed so called 'gain-of-function research.'

The revelation came in a letter sent to Kentucky congressman James Comer, in which NIH's principal deputy director Lawrence A. Tabak refers to a 'limited experiment' conducted to test whether 'spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model,' at the Wuhan lab.

According to Tabak, the mice infected with the modified bat virus 'became sicker' than those infected with the unmodified bat virus, according to unpublished data.

He wrote that the finding was an 'unexpected result of the research,' and that the viruses studied were 'genetically very distant' from the one that causes COVID-19.

The result is a tussle over how to define 'gain-of-function.'

While never using the term, Tabak essentially confirms that gain-of-function research, which looks at both transmitting disease between animals and humans and is a way for scientists to alter organisms and diseases to study how they could become deadlier or more transmissible, took place at the Chinese lab despite consistent denials from Dr. Fauci.

The letter shifts the blame to U.S non profit EcoHealth Alliance, which used NIH money to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, for not being transparent about the kind of research they were doing.

'EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant,' Tabak wrote in his letter. 'EcoHealth is being notified that they have five days from today to submit to NIH any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under this award.'

In May, Fauci testified that the NIH 'has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.'

However, Fauci also said during that hearing that there was no way to know if Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lied and conducted gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses using U.S. tax dollars.

'There's no way of guaranteeing that,' Fauci said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, responding to a question from Republican Sen. John Kennedy.

'But in our experience with grantees, including Chinese grantees, which we have had interactions with for a very long period of time - they are very competent, trustworthy scientists,' Fauci testified.

In September, The Intercept revealed it had received 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance's research in Wuhan, China.

In its first report on the documents, The Intercept highlighted two previously unreported EcoHealth Alliance grant requests that were funded by the NIH.

One of the grants included $599,000 to go to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to 'identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans,' The Intercept said.

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told The Intercept that the documents suggest researchers were creating novel coronaviruses in Wuhan.

'The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,' Ebright told The Intercept after reviewing the documents.

He said the documents showed that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice.

'While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,' he said.
Greta Thunberg has denounced the climate change summit in Glasgow for being the 'most excluding COP ever' and called the international conference a 'greenwash festival'.

The 18-year-old climate change activist, who arrived in Glasgow by train on Sunday, slammed world leaders attending COP26 and said it was instead 'a two week celebration of business as usual'.

Her comments come just days after Miss Thunberg criticised world leaders for 'whatever the f*** they are doing in there' during a demonstration at Festival Park in Glasgow.

Taking to Twitter today the Swedish activist wrote: 'COP26 has been named the must excluding COP ever.

Greta Thunberg criticised the climate change summit in Glasgow for being the 'most excluding COP ever'

The 18-year-old climate change activist said it was instead 'a two week celebration of business as usual' in a post on Twitter

'This is no longer a climate conference. This is a Global North greenwash festival. A two week celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah.'

On Monday Miss Thunberg said that heads of government were not doing enough to save the planet from disaster at a demonstration on the first day of the Cop26 summit.

She said: 'No more blah blah blah, no more whatever the f*** they are doing inside there.

'Inside Cop, there are just politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously, pretending to take the present seriously.

'Change is not going to come from inside there, that is not leadership - this is leadership... We say no more blah blah blah, no more exploitation of people and the planet.'

As heads of Government from around the world discussed what could be done to save the planet from ruin, the Swedish eco activist later appeared to lay the blame for looming natural disasters squarely on them as she riled up her fellow activists with a chant of: 'You can shove your climate crisis up your a***'.

On Monday morning, Miss Thunberg along with fellow campaigner Vanessa Nakate, from Uganda, met with the First Minister, who tweeted: 'The voices of young people like @GretaThunberg and @vanessa-vash must be heard loudly and clearly at Cop26 - the next few days should not be comfortable for leaders, the responsibility to act must be felt.'

Miss Thunberg has previously been critical of the Scottish Government's climate policy, saying that the country was 'not a leader on climate change', as the First Minister had previously stated.

Miss Thunberg said that heads of government were not doing enough to save the planet from disaster at a demonstration

The teenage activist was also filmed singing 'You can shove your climate crisis up your a**e' while outside COP26

The Swede has pledged to go 'net-zero' - a term commonly used by those aiming to balance out the harm they cause on the environment - by 'saying something nice' every time she swears

Scotland has pledged to cut emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and be net zero by 2045, but the last three years of targets have been missed.

Nicola Sturgeon has said that world leaders gathering in Glasgow for the Cop26 climate summit should feel 'bloody uncomfortable' for not 'doing enough' to tackle global warming.

Ms Sturgeon, speaking as the crucial summit began, insisted: 'Every climate promise must be kept. Frankly none of them are being kept right now.'

Speaking at an event hosted by the environmental organisation WWF, she told how she had just met Ms Thunberg and another young climate activist, Vanessa Nakate from Uganda.

Ms Sturgeon said: 'Those voices often, including for me, are really uncomfortable at times, because they make us confront the hard realities of our own lack of delivery.

'But my goodness they are so important to shake the gatherings that will take place here over the next few days out of the sense of complacency that surrounds them all too often.'

She continued: 'If we only face up to the easy, relatively easy things we won't get anywhere. This has to be a moment that leaders, all of us, whether we are round that negotiating table or not, are held to account for the reality of what we promise not for the rhetoric of it.'

World leaders pose for a group photo during an evening reception to mark the opening day of the COP26 summit in Glasgow

Last week Miss Thunberg was being interviewed by Andrew Marr when she was asked about the recent protests by eco-zealots Insulate Britain.

She said: 'To make clear, as long as no-one gets hurt, then I think sometimes you need to anger some people.

'Like, for instance, the school strike movement would never have become so big if there wasn't friction, if some people didn't get p***ed off.'

Yesterday, Miss Thunberg promised to go 'net zero' on swearing as Extinction Rebellion protestors were arrested during COP26 clashes with police.

The 18-year-old strolled into a debate alone on Wednesday, much to the surprise of police and security officials who had been expecting her in a car.

Announcing her pledge to her five million followers on Twitter, the 18-year-old said: 'I am pleased to announce that I've decided to go net-zero on swear words and bad language.

'In the event that I should say something inappropriate, I pledge to compensate that by saying something nice.'
An out-of-control driver jumped the curb and barreled into outdoor diners at a popular Florida restaurant, pinning one woman under her SUV who had to have her legs amputated.

Rosemary Villaran watched in horror as the driver ran over her friend, a tourist visiting from Peru, while the two dined with the victim's family at The Bang Shack in Hollywood.

'Everyone was yelling and when I turned my head, she was under the car and I was trying to stand up to help her,' Villaran said. 'And this lady in the SUV was speeding through the alley.'

The unidentified tourist was rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital, where she is in a medically induced coma following the loss of her legs. Two other diners were also injured.

Police have not disclosed if the unidentified driver was under the influence at the time of the crash or if she will face any charges.

The driver of a black SUV struck diners sitting outside a Hollywood restaurant, injuring three seriously. One of the victims had both her legs amputated

Rosemary Villaran, a friend of the victim, said that she had been visiting from Peru. 'Everyone was yelling, and when I turned my head, she was under the car and I was trying to stand up to help her,' Villaran said. 'And this lady in the SUV was speeding through the alley'

The unidentified driver crashed her black SUV into several pedestrians sitting outside The Bang Shack, a restaurant along South 20th Avenue, around 8.45pm on Tuesday

The SUV came from an alley and was heading east between Harrison Street and Hollywood Boulevard. The driver tried to turn to avoid a firetruck that was heading northbound, and lost control, jumping on the curb, Hollywood Police said.

Jason Hadley, the restaurant owner, told NBC Miami, he had just spoken to the customers moments before the crash.

'I just hear all the screaming, the chaos. I see my table, now it's over on this side when it was on the other side of the tree,' Hadley said.

The injured tourist was pinned between the car and the tree with her legs trapped under the vehicle.

'I was just talking with those patrons. I was just talking to them, with my neighbors. I had my back turned ... [It could have] easily been me,' Hadley said.

According to Hadley, the driver then got out of her vehicle as witnesses accused her of being drunk.

'I'm not drunk. I haven't drunken anything,'' she reportedly said.

Calvin Rahma, who was dining outside the restaurant with his girlfriend, also saw the driver get out of her car.

'She comes right up on the curb, smacks the table. When she smacks the table, she comes out. She looked like she was about to take off and run,' Rahma said.

Villaran called on police to charge the driver.

'That girl needs to be arrested,' she said.

Driver runs into a group of pedestrians sitting down on the sidewalk| #ONLYinDADE pic.twitter.com/aGd7S4CFwF  ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) November 3, 2021

Video posted on Twitter shows paramedics and police helping pedestrians after the commotion. White restaurant chairs scattered around and a firetruck and ambulance can be seen in the background

The SUV came from an alley and was heading east between Harrison Street and Hollywood Boulevard

The Bang Shack does not hold a permit for outdoor dining, Local 10 reported.

Although payment and paperwork for the permit have been submitted, the decision is still pending.

The restaurant opened this May. Hadley was featured on an episode of 'Shark Tank,' in which he pitched his 'world-famous chicken bang dip' restaurant idea that would eventually become a reality with The Bang Shack.

Hadley had been working on opening the business since 2017, but due to the pandemic, he experienced a series of setbacks that forced him to take several loans to keep his staff hired and the restaurant afloat.

'A lot of people don't know why I stay so positive, how I keep bouncing back after the bad stuff, and the truth is I can't sit still,' Hadley said in the spring to the Sun Sentinnel.

Jason Hadley, the restaurant owner, told NBC Miami, he had just spoken to the customers moments before the crash
Fears of an impending coronavirus outbreak at COP26 are mounting after more than 100 police officers were forced to isolate with suspected Covid.

There were concerns heading into the event about a surge of the virus, with more than 30,000 people from 200 countries pouring into Glasgow to attend.

There is no evidence to suggest infections have increased in the city yet, but there has been a rise in police officers with Covid-like symptoms.

And Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti tested positive today just a day after having breakfast with Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Public health experts warned the event was the perfect breeding ground for new variants, citing the nearly 40,000 Glaswegians have not been fully vaccinated.

Official figures show the city has the lowest uptake of the vaccine in Scotland. Stats published by Holyrood's research unit found 11 per cent of those eligible in the city had not been double jabbed by the end of last month.

With an adult population around 344,000, this means around 38,000 have not received two doses of the vaccine.

More than 100 police officers are in isolation or awaiting Covid PCR test results amid fears of an outbreak at COP26

Pictured: Police officers escort an Extinction Rebellion protest outside the COP26 Summit as a banner is seen reading 'how many cops to arrest climate chaos?' on Tuesday night

There is no evidence to suggest infections have increased in Glasgow yet, but health chiefs have warned of an inevitable uptick in cases. Graph shows: Infections in Glasgow

Police Scotland cited 'operational reasons' for refusing to divulge the number of officers and status of those affected by the outbreak in the force.

However, multiple sources told the Scotsman newspaper that as many as 103 are affected.

Public health experts warn COP26 is increasing Covid outbreak risks Public health experts warned COP26 was increasing Covid risks including possible new variants, with nearly 40,000 people in Glasgow not fully vaccinated. New official figures show Glasgow has the lowest uptake of the vaccine in Scotland. Stats published by Holyrood's research unit found 11 per cent of those eligible in the city had not been double jagged by the end of last month. With an adult population around 344,000, this means around 38,000 have not received two doses of the vaccine. It comes as 25,000 international delegates descended on the city for COP26, with 100,000 environmental activists due to march from Kelvingrove Park to Glasgow Green for a demonstration on Saturday. Professor Andrew Watterson, a public health expert at Stirling University warned Glaswegians were most at risk due to the influx of people from elsewhere. He said: 'For months, it has been blindly obvious to the average Glasgow citizen that bringing large numbers of people from outside the city into the city, or any other city for that matter, during a pandemic would increase risks. 'This would include English police and security staff as well demonstrators this weekend. 'The risks will then be higher when a lower percentage of the population have been double vaccinated or received boosters. 'So yes, it is a real concern that Glasgow city inhabitants most at risk will have that risk increased by all activities associated with and around the COP26 event from those visiting the city from outside Scotland.' Advertisement

It has been claimed the officers concerned were given PCR tests and instructed to self-isolate on Monday.

The Scottish Police Federation (SPF) is aware of the situation, but sources within the union insist none of its members were affected.

One SPF source said: 'These are not our officers or members, but have travelled to Glasgow from elsewhere in the UK to bolster the numbers the chiefs can deploy on any given day throughout the fortnight of COP26.

'You have to be realistic and see it for what it is. A hundred or so people from a total of just over 10,000 are taking PCR tests or are waiting for test results.

'It's a precautionary move. The numbers still add up to take on any scenario that arises during the summit.'

The policing operation at COP26, codenamed Operation Urram, Gaelic for respect, is the largest ever staged in Scotland and one of the biggest in the history of UK policing, with 10,000 officers deployed on summit duties each day.

Of that number, 7,000 have been brought in from outside forces.

About 45 per cent of the officers have been drawn from the ranks of Police Scotland, with the rest coming from other forces, British Transport Police, the Ministry of Defence and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary.

While Police Scotland would not confirm the number of officers caught up in the Covid scare, well-placed sources maintain that senior commanders are 'fully confident' they have the necessary numbers to cope with any situation.

A spokesman for Police Scotland said: 'We have a Covid management plan in place.

'However, for operational reasons [we] will not be releasing numbers of those isolating (either awaiting a result, or having had a positive result).'

Mayor Eric Garcetti is currently isolating in his hotel after testing positive today.

Boris Johnson made a brief appearance at the event on Tuesday in the blue zone at COP26 in Glasgow.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her Welsh counterpart Mark Drakeford hosted the event along with Northern Ireland's First Minister Paul Givan and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill.

A message on the official mayor of Los Angeles Twitter account posted on Wednesday afternoon said: 'Mayor Garcetti tested positive for Covid earlier today.

'He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated.'

Among those in attendance at the breakfast were the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Barbados and Vietnam, as well as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.

The presidents of Armenia, Costa Rica and Zambia also took part, as well as Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken.

Mr Sturgeon met Mr Garcetti 'briefly', according to her spokesman, but she has not been identified as a close contact.

Everyone attending the COP26 blue zone must take a lateral flow test each morning and increased hygiene procedures are in place at the venue.
A Texas realtor who took a private jet to the Capitol riot for a date with a man who dumped her hours later has been jailed - despite bragging she'd be spared a custodial sentence.

Jennifer 'Jenna' Ryan, 50, of Frisco, faced four charges and pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor account after admitting that she 'paraded, demonstrated or picketed' inside the Capitol when she knew she didn't have permission to be there, according to Huff Post.

On Thursday US District Judge Christopher Cooper sentenced Ryan to 60 days in jail and told Ryan: 'You were a cheerleader, you cheered it on' despite playing a 'lesser role in the criminal conduct that took place' than many others did.

Texas real estate broker Jennifer 'Jenna' Ryan (pictured), 50, bragged on Twitter that she's 'definitely not going to jail' after traveling to the US Capitol riots on a private jet while on a date with a man who dumped her hours later has been sentenced to 60 days behind bars

Ryan threw up a peace sign as she stood on the steps of the Capitol on January 6, which left five people dead. She has consistently maintained that she did nothing wrong and has no regrets

Ryan candidly tweeted before the start of her trial and was proven wrong when Cooper announced the guilty charge and said: 'Youre not being singled out for your political views or anything like that. Its how and where you decided to express them'

'But that does not mean that you dont have any culpability in what happened that day,' he added, noting that Ryan knew she wasn't going to a peaceful protest when she left her hotel room that morning.

Before the start of the trial Ryan responded to a tweet warning her she was destined for custody, saying: 'Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.'

But she was proven wrong Thursday when Cooper announced her conviction and and said: 'Youre not being singled out for your political views or anything like that. Its how and where you decided to express them.'

It's unclear whether anyone else in the group Ryan traveled with the Washington was arrested in connection with the riots.

When the judge brought up the tweet Ryan claimed that she didn't mean that she 'was above prison' when she wrote it, adding that she 'just shouldn't tweet,' according to Huff Post.

'I just felt that it would be unlikely since I was pleading to entering the Capitol for two minutes and eight seconds. Now I realize that was a false notion but having a false notion does not automatically mean I deserve incarceration,' she wrote in a letter to the judge.

'A tweet of me taking up for myself against a bully who is harassing me does not indicate that I feel above-the-law,' she added.

Ryan previously said she went to the riot on a whim after receiving a Facebook message from a handsome stranger looking for people to join him at the rally then-President Donald Trump was holding at the White House on January 6.

'He was adorable,' said the single realtor, who told NBC News earlier this year that she loves Trump, firmly believes his unfounded claims of voter fraud and has always wanted to attend one of his rallies.

'So I said: 'Heck yeah, let's go.' I mean, who wouldn't go and get on a private jet?' she added.

After agreeing she asked her friend Brian to come with her as a 'bodyguard', and once inside the cabin Ryan shared several photos of the group getting to know each other while drinking and bonding over their mutual love for Trump.

But unfortunately for Ryan, the pairing wasn't meant to be.

Ryan added: 'There was another adorable girl there, too, and they ended up getting together, darn it.'

Ryan revealed that she decided to go to DC on a whim after receiving a Facebook message from a handsome stranger looking for people to join him at the rally Trump was holding at the White House. Pictured: Ryan (left) with the new friends she joined on the jet. She did not identify her crush by name but he is presumed to be one of the three men above

Ryan's Twitter plea asking for help paying for legal fees racked up thousands of replies in a matter of hours - the majority of them from unsympathetic critics who pointed out the irony of asking for money after she boasted about her posh private flight to DC

Ryan posted this photo inside the cabin of the plane on Facebook and said the group spent the flight getting to know each other while drinking and bonding over their mutual love for Trump

Ryan is the only member of the jet group facing charges for involvement in the MAGA riots

.@CynthiaMcFadden sat down with Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan who says she took no part in the violence on January 6 though her social media posts raise significant questions. pic.twitter.com/vTKFHcpnVw  TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 18, 2021

Although Ryan didn't identify her crush by name, it's possible he is one of the three men she and another woman were photographed with alongside the private jet before their flight to DC.

Two days after the riot, Ryan realized she had much bigger problems than the failed romance as the FBI identified her as a person of interest and shared grabs of a livestream she filmed of herself storming the Capitol.

She turned herself in to authorities before the end of January for her role in the Capitol siege, which left five people dead, and has consistently maintained that she did nothing wrong and has no regrets.

'I'm glad I was there, because I witnessed history,' she added later. 'I'll never get the chance to do that again. No one will probably ever be able to go near [the Capitol] again,' she told NBC.

She was released from custody hours later and returned home, where she demanded that Trump pardon her from charges of knowingly entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct.

But the demand went unanswered as Trump left office and Ryan was put on trial in Washington, DC.

At one point Ryan even turned to fellow MAGA fans for help. 'I am accepting donations to pay legal fees and losses due to my arrest and charges by the FBI for protesting at the US Capitol. Thank you for your support. Any amount helps,' she tweeted in January along with a link to her PayPal account.

Ryan documented the fallout from her attendance at the Capitol riot on Twitter. At one point she even turned to fellow MAGA fans for help

'I have to go to trial in Washington DC for this misdemeanor. I believe I was wrongfully arrested and charged and we have to fight for my freedom and [clear] my name,' she added in another post.

While Ryan did manage to scrape together about $1,000 in donations, the plea racked up thousands more replies in a matter of hours - the majority of them from unsympathetic critics who pointed out the irony of Ryan asking for financial assistance after she boasted about her posh private flight to DC.

At the end of the hearing Cooper advised Ryan to think about what sources she relied upon for her news in the future, as reported by Huff Post.

Ryan also posted a photo of a broken window on Twitter, writing: 'Window at The capital. And if the news doesn't stop lying about us we're going to come after their studios next'

Ryan posted a 21-minute livestream on Facebook as she made her way to the Capitol, telling the camera: 'We're gonna go down and storm the Capitol. They're down there right now and that's why we came and so that's what we are going to do. So wish me luck.' The video has since been deleted but was described in an affidavit for her arrest

Two days after the insurrection Ryan realized she had much bigger problems than the failed romance, as the FBI identified her as a person of interest and shared grabs of a livestream she filmed of herself storming the Capitol

To date the FBI has reportedly made more than 650 arrests in connection with the Capitol riot, which they predict is one-fourth of the total number of potential defendants who committed chargeable crimes that day.

Ryan has said she fears that her involvement in the riots could ruin her real estate career.

The Texas Real Estate Commission has faced numerous complaints demanding that her license be revoked. Ryan responded by issuing a statement saying she was 'truly heartbroken' over the lives lost during the assault.

'Unfortunately, what I believed to be a peaceful political march turned into a violent protest,' she wrote on Twitter.

She also tweeted that she lost a publishing deal for a book related to her work.

'This has taken my company. This has taken my business,' she tweeted.

Since the rally she said she has received thousands of death threats and people attacking her business. Despite this, she said she would do it all over again.
A Met police officer was left 'distressed' after 'accidently' running over a suspect who attempted to evade capture on a bicycle, a court heard.

PC Eugene Acheampong, 28, had been called to reports of two suspects 'tampering' with parked cars at Wood Green, north London, on August 3, 2019, when 46-year-old Arnold Taylor tried to flee on a bicycle.

Speeding in a police patrol car, PC Acheampong veered too close to the cyclist who lost control and disappeared underneath the BMW car, sustaining serious injuries.

PC Eugene Acheampong (pictured), 28, had been called to reports of two suspects 'tampering' with parked cars at Wood Green, north London, on August 3, 2019, when 46-year-old Arnold Taylor tried to flee on a bicycle

Explaining the 'momentary misjudgement' in a defence statement, PC Acheampong said: 'In what seemed like a flash he just seemed to disappear, he just went out of my visibility.

'Then I felt the vehicle judder as if it went over something solid. I had the horrific thought I may have driven over him.

'Things happened very quickly. It would appear that I ran him over. Naturally, I am sorry this happened, it was very distressing for me.

'I thought I was driving in a manner that was safe and sensible, I did not deliberately set out to run over him.

'If he had simply stopped then this would not have happened.'

PC Acheampong had been engaged in a one minute pursuit, between 14.53 and 14.54, before hitting Taylor on Hawkepark Road.

Paramedics took the injured cyclist to the Royal London Hospital to be treated for his injuries which included a partially severed left ear, collapsed lungs and rib fractures, a jury heard.

Wearing a navy blue suit and black tie, PC Acheampong, of Gainsborough Road, Rainham, had previously denied one count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving following the collision on August 3, 2019.

On the second day of his trial, a jury heard 'admirable' character references from his police colleagues.

Defence counsel Edmond Gritt said: 'In trying to do his duty, he made a mistake, he made a misjudgement.

'There were terrible consequences for the man he was trying to follow, a consequence he never meant to bring about and evidentially regrets.'

Speeding in a police patrol car, PC Acheampong veered too close to the cyclist who lost control and disappeared underneath the BMW car, sustaining serious injuries

Paramedics took the injured cyclist to the Royal London Hospital to be treated for his injuries which included a partially severed left ear, collapsed lungs and rib fractures, a jury heard. Pictured: Southwark Crown Court

In a prepared statement given to police in an interview in January 2020, PC Acheampong alleged the fleeing suspect was riding in an 'arrogant' manner.

He said: 'He was moving quite erratically from side to side to get away from me. He was taking as much room as he could.'

Having been involved in a similar pursuit before, PC Acheampong had expected the cyclist to 'give up'.

He added: 'I had no intention of trying to stop him. It seemed to me the best thing was to maintain pressure knowing there was another unit behind me and he would give up trying to evade police.

'It all happened incredibly quickly, it seemed to be not more than a few seconds, I was trying not too get too close.'

The officer exclaimed that he was 'staggered' on discovering he had driven 13mph over the speed limit during the pursuit.

He said: 'My own impression was that I was going much slower than that.'

Mr Recorder Jas Jandu heard that PC Acheampong was travelling at 27mph when his police car hit the rear wheel of the bike, causing it to be 'dragged' under the police car.

The jury sitting at Southwark Crown Court are expected to retire to consider their verdicts on Friday.
Barack Obama is to reignite COP26 with a flying visit to Scotland on Monday.

The former US President will jet in to Glasgow to deliver a speech at the climate summit and catch the ears of the youth of the world.

Many of the worlds leaders have departed Scotland after three days of rubbing shoulders with royalty and thrashing out ideas to help save the planet.

Former US President Barack Obama at an event in Newark, New Jersey, on October 23. He is due to fly in to Glasgow on Monday to reignite COP26 talks.

World leaders pose for a group photo during an evening reception to mark the opening day of the COP26 summit in Glasgow

But one activist Sarah Clatworthy, 52, who was demonstrating outside the ring of steel thrown around the summit, said: Biden and Johnson hardly spread any charisma around Glasgow while they were here.

Barack will bring some power to this very flat conference and appeal to the younger people watching around the world. He has the pulling power that the others simply do not.

Maxine Green, 47, from Dumbarton added: Barack has such an incredible amount of respect from younger people. Its brilliant that he has agreed to travel here.

This conference will prove largely impotent unless young people tune into the important messages of COP26. It is for the younger people who will outlive us that we are all here.

It is believed Obama has timed his visit so as not clash with the visit of President Biden and risk stealing the limelight. Biden departed on Tuesday.

The Obama Foundation will host the event and he will sit down with a small group of youths from across the globe to discuss how best to combat climate change.

In a message released today to mark his trip, Obama said: From the perspective of the Obama Foundation, one of the things Im most excited about is to see the young activists from around the world who are taking up the baton and not just working in their own countries, but now forming a collective movement across borders to tell the older generation that has gotten us into this mess that we all have an obligation to dig our way out of it.

"And if old folks wont do it, get out of the way, because these young folks are coming.

Star climate activist Greta Thunberg said COP26 'is no longer a climate conference' and was a 'two-week celebration of business as usual'.

The 18-year-old climate change activist said it was instead 'a two week celebration of business as usual' in a post on Twitter

Greta Thunberg criticised the climate change summit in Glasgow for being the 'most excluding COP ever'

And theyre ready to make sure that we have a sustainable planet and a better future for our kids and our grandkids.

But star teenage activist Greta Thunberg said tonight that COP26 was the most excluding COP ever.

She said on Twitter: This is no longer a climate conference.

This is a Global North greenwash festival.

A two-week celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah.'
Unruly airline passengers in at least 37 incidents could be charged with assault for attacking crew members or other fliers after the FAA announced referrals the federal agency made to the FBI for possible prosecution.

The possible criminal cases come as airlines cope with rocketing incidents of violence - either between passengers or flight attendants - with many involving feuds over the federally imposed mask mandates.

An FAA spokesman said the agency has initiated 227 enforcement cases and referred 37 to the FBI for review. The agency did not identify any individuals.

Through November 1, there have been 5,033 reports of unruly passenger incidents, including 3,642 related to pandemic face covering regulations.

'Let this serve both as a warning and a deterrent: If you disrupt a flight, you risk not just fines from the FAA but federal criminal prosecution as well,' said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson.

Brian Hsu, 20, is seen leaving a Los Angeles court after being released on a $10,000 bond for assaulting a flight attendant

U.S. airlines like Southwest have reported a record number of disruptive and sometimes violent incidents this year,

FAA Administrator Steve Dickson administrator (pictured) said the referrals are warnings to quell future incidents of passenger rage

Earlier this week, a California man accused of punching an American Airlines flight attendant so hard he broke her nose has claimed that she 'charged' at him first and ran into his outstretched palm as he was traveling home after undergoing brain surgery stemming from an assault in New York City last year.

T he Justice Department and FBI said in a statement that they 'are committed to prioritizing the review of the cases referred by the FAA and initiating criminal prosecution where appropriate.'

U.S. airlines have reported a record number of disruptive and sometimes violent incidents this year, and the FAA has pledged a 'zero tolerance' approach. The FAA and Justice Department said the 'increased coordination is part of a broader effort to prevent dangerous unruly passenger incidents.'

On Oct. 8, President Joe Biden said he instructed the Justice Department to 'deal' with the rising number of violent incidents onboard planes.

FBI Acting Assistant Director Jay Greenberg said the agency is 'working in tandem with our partners to ensure the safety of all passengers and investigate crimes within our jurisdiction aboard commercial flights.'

In June, a group representing major U.S. airlines, such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, as well as aviation unions, asked the Justice Department to prosecute violent air passengers.

FAA and Justice Department officials began meeting in August 'to develop an efficient method for referring the most serious unruly-passenger cases for potential criminal prosecution,' the agencies said, adding that 'resulted in a process where the FAA regularly sends cases to the FBI, which forwards those that merit potential prosecution to field offices for further investigation.'

Democratic Party lawmakers sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Tuesday asking the justice department to do something over what they're calling 'passenger rage.'

'It is well documented that our nation has witnessed a sharp increase in air and airport confrontational behavior, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,' they added. 'This has led to a dramatic increase in unruly and disruptive passenger behavior onboard aircraft toward crewmembers and toward passenger service agents at airports.'

There have been several stories, often captured on video, of airline assaults or anti-maskers in 2021.

Cellphone footage shows the moment Adelaide Schrowang, 23, was escorted off the plane at Southwest Florida International Airport on July 7 when a captain ordered she be removed from the flight

A viral video shows a passenger identified as Vyvianna Quinonez punching the crew member in the face with a closed fist and pulling her hair (pictured)

Congress has written to Attorney General Merrick Garland (pictured) in an attempt to quell the recent 'passenger rage'

A California woman who allegedly punched a Southwest Airlines flight attendant in the face, knocking out two of her teeth, and pulling her hair has been charged with felony assault in federal court.

Vyvianna Quinonez, 28, was also charged on Wednesday with interfering with a flight crew, a felony. She is scheduled to appear in court in San Diego on September 17.

The attendant on the Southwest Airlines plane, identified in court documents only as S.L., lost two teeth and suffered other injuries to her face after instructing the suspect to fasten her seatbelt and wear her face mask properly on the May 23 flight from Sacramento, California, to San Diego, prosecutors stated.

A Florida woman was arrested and forced off a Delta flight after allegedly refusing to wear a mask and spitting at other passengers has been caught on camera.

Cellphone footage shows the moment Adelaide Schrowang, 23, was escorted off the plane at Southwest Florida International Airport on July 7 when a captain ordered she be removed from the flight.

Brian Hsu, 20, of Irvine, California, was charged on Monday with assault and interference with a flight crew for the alleged altercation onboard an American Airlines flight from New York to Santa Ana, California on October 27.

The business class passenger appeared before U.S. District Judge Autumn Spaeth in Santa Ana on Monday and was released after paying a $10,000 bond. He is next due in court in Denver on November 15.

Asked by reporters outside court if he hit the flight attendant, he replied: 'No, sir.'

When he was asked by KTLA if he had a message for her, he said: 'I love America.'

The in-flight- which was investigated by the FBI and Denver Police Department - forced the pilot of the Airbus to make an unscheduled landing in Denver shortly after 6.30pm.

Witnesses on the flight last week say Hsu punched a flight attendant twice in the face and broke her nose after she bumped into him on the flight.

Court documents obtained by DailyMail.com show that Hsu claims he was the victim.

He also claimed that he could not have punched the flight attendant because he had sustained an injury to his right hand a few weeks ago, which prevents him from making a fist.

Scroll down for video

Brian Hsu, 20, is seen leaving a Los Angeles court on Monday after being released on a $10,000 bond

Court sketches show Hsu in Santa Ana on Monday, appearing before U.S. District Judge Autumn Spaeth

Hsu's mother, Julia Yu, confirmed to CBS News on Monday that her son had been arrested, but said she could not comment. She was with Hsu on the flight on October 27

Hsu told police he was on the plane returning home after undergoing surgery in Rhode Island to reconstruct his skull. He said that he had suffered a head injury after being assaulted in New York City in the fall of 2020, which has left him suffering from psychological damage and 'brain fog,' ringing in his ears, nausea, dizziness, and loss of balance.

'He is now sensitive to sound and sometimes experiences a mental 'fog', during which thinking is difficult,' the agent wrote in his report into the arrest. 'Hsu said his parents think he acts differently than he used to.'

Hsu told agents he got up to use the bathroom and was standing and stretching in the aisle when he 'accidentally' bumped the flight attendant with his hand or arm.

According to the passenger, the flight attendant 'became agitated and began swinging at Hsu's head' with her hands.

'Hsu stated that he became scared because an impact to his head in its current state could cause him severe injury or death,' according to the document.

In a bid to prevent the flight attendant from hitting him, Hsu claimed that he backed up towards his seat and raised his hands defensively, with his palms facing outward.

'Hsu then stated that the Victim charged at him and hit her nose against the palm of his right hand,' the complaint reads. 'After impact, Hsu did not see the Victim holding her nose, nor did he see any blood.'

A male flight attendant then placed himself between Hsu and his injured colleague, and restrained the passenger with tape and plastic handcuffs.

He complained that other passengers berated him 'and did not want to hear his side of the story.'

Hsu's mother was traveling with him on the flight, and confirmed that he had a neurological condition.

'Hsu's mother stated that after his brain injury, he had symptoms of dizziness and seems to become more easily angered,' the agent wrote. 'After his most recent surgery in Rhode Island, Hsu had trouble sitting still and frequently felt the need to stretch.'

Hsu's mother told the agent that her son had accidentally knocked into the flight attendant, and then the flight attendant became enraged.

'The victim became angry and rushed towards Hsu,' the agent notes. 'Hsu raised his palms to defend himself and one of this palms hit the victim in the nose.'

The man's mother said her son 'is afraid of people touching his head.' She also reiterated that he has a broken finger on his right hand from a recent workout injury and cannot make a fist.

The flight attendant, however, told investigators that Hsu had hit her.

She said he hit her in the head with his elbow, then 'charged at her, flailing his arms'.

Another flight attendant came to help his colleague, but Hsu, according to her account, charged again.

Police met the plane at the gate and immediately apprehended Hsu, who was snapped sitting in Denver International Airport in handcuffs by fellow passenger Mackenzie Rose

An image snapped by a passenger and circulated on Twitter appeared to show crew members and other passengers on American Airlines flight 976 rallying to secure the man to an airplane seat using duct tape following the assault

'When he charged at the victim this time, he struck her in the face with the closed fist of his right hand.'

She was 'stunned' and walked into first class, where she and others barricaded themselves in with a drinks cart, while Hsu was restrained.

Hsu was later seen duct-taped on a seat after the plane made the unscheduled stop, as his alleged victim was being treated at a local hospital for broken bones in her face.

She spent the night in hospital, and was discharged the following day.

American Airlines officials have since banned Hsu, and said they will demand the strictest punishment for the suspect.

Following the altercation, the head of American Airlines, Doug Parker, called it 'one of the worst displays of unruly behavior we've ever witnessed,' in an Instagram post and video posted on Thursday.

'Last night, American Airlines had one of the worst displays weve seen, when a passenger violently assaulted one of our flight attendants. Thankfully, our flight attendant is recovering and we are making sure she and her fellow crew members have the support they need.

'The passenger, however, will never be allowed to fly American again and we are doing everything we can to ensure they are prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. But at the end of the day, while these interactions are not the norm, even one is too many, and they must stop.'

Video shared online showed passengers booing as cops boarded the jet when it landed at Denver Airport.

Mackenzie Rose, a passenger on the flight, said she saw the flight attendant walk by after the incident 'with blood on her mask', and speculated that the attacker might have been drunk or high.

Meanwhile, a photo posted on Twitter appeared to show crew members and passengers duct-taping the man to his seat.

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, pictured, condemned the attack on the flight attendant

The flight took off from JFK Airport just before 5pm ET and landed in Colorado at 6.43pm Denver time according to flight tracking website Flightview.

Police met the plane at the gate and immediately apprehended Hsu, who was snapped sitting in the airport in handcuffs by Rose.

Denver Airport Police confirmed the subject was taken into custody and said the FBI is investigating the incident.

Paul Hartshorn Jr. of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants confirmed that the flight attendant has since been released from a Denver hospital and is on her way back home, according to KTLA.

'After a flight attendant who was working in a different cabin bumped this passenger, were told, she then walked into one of the flight galleys and this passenger approached her and punched her in the face at least twice. Thats what we know right now and she sustained broken bones in her nose and her face,' Hartshorn said.

The assault was initially believed to have occurred after the male passenger was asked to put on a mask by a flight attendant, but the exact cause of the attack was clarified by airline officials Thursday.

The female flight attendant had inadvertently bumped into the male passenger before apologizing, causing the man to swing a pair of punches at her, according to witnesses, hitting her in the face.

'I understand that he actually punched her twice. I saw her walk back down the aisle afterwards and she had blood splattered on the outside of her mask.

'In terms of men hitting women, it's absolutely absurd and ridiculous.'

Rose went on to say that she had 'an impression that there might be a substance or alcohol involved' in the incident.

The flight eventually left Denver for Orange County about 9:30 pm Denver time following the incident, according to American Airlines.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced earlier this year that it would begin to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for unruly passengers after a rise in reports of aggressive behavior on flights.

The agency said in August it had issued more than $1 million in fines to unruly passengers in 2021, and revealed there have already been 4,941 unruly passenger reports this year alone.

Assaulting a flight attendant is a felony and could land an offender years in prison.

American Airlines flight 976 diverted from its original destination of John Wayne Airport to Denver International after a male passenger, thought to be traveling in business class, allegedly punched a female flight attendant twice in the face in a dispute over masks according to witnesses (flight 976 pictured at Denver International airport)

Mackenzie Rose (pictured), a passenger aboard American Airlines flight 976, said: 'I understand that he actually punched her twice. I saw her walk back down the aisle afterwards and she had blood splattered on the outside of her mask.'

American Airlines released a statement following the plane's arrival at Denver International (pictured), expressing their 'outrage' at the incident and promising to ban the individual, who has not yet been named, from all future American Airlines services.

The airline confirmed it intends to prosecute the individual, who it says was apprehended by law enforcement at the gate following the safe landing at Denver International Airport.

'We are outraged by the reports of what took place on board. Acts of violence against our team members are not tolerated by American Airlines,' it said in a statement.

'We have engaged local law enforcement and the FBI and we are working with them to ensure they have all the information they need. The individual involved in this incident will never be allowed to travel with American Airlines in the future, but we will not be satisfied until he has been prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

'We thank our crew for their quick action and professionalism to ensure the safety of their fellow team members and customers on board,' the airline said.

'Our thoughts are with our injured flight attendant and ensuring that she and her fellow crew members have the support they need at this time.'

Were you on the flight? Contact newsUS@dailymail.com
A group that is proposing a $40 billion system of sea gates to protect New York and New Jersey from deadly storm surges toured the shores ravaged by Hurricane Sandy aboard a 100-ft-long luxury yacht.

Engineers, scientists and city planners with the New York New Jersey Storm Surge Working Group met on the ninth anniversary of Sandy to discuss how to best protect the area from floods like the one caused by the deadly storm in 2012.

The hurricane killed 60 people in New York and New Jersey, flooding homes and businesses and causing New York City alone an estimated $19 billion in damage, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

As a result, the Working Group has proposed three sea walls at the East River, Jones Inlet and East Rockway, plus a bigger one in the Outer New York Harbor connecting New York and New Jersey.

Members of the group discussed the $40 billion plans aboard the Manhattan II, a mahogany-finished, air-conditioned vessel with panel windows that rents for up to $2,400 an hour, according to Classic Harbor Line.

Scientists, engineers, architects and city planners met aboard the Manhattan II yacht to discuss ways to protect the New York and New Jersey region from storm surges last week

The New York New Jersey Storm Surge Working Group has proposed four sea barriers, with the largest one, stretching from Sandy Hook, NJ to Breezy Point, NY, estimated at $36.4 billion

The group traveled along the bottom tip of Manhattan, according to a Bloomberg report

The barriers could prevent floods from storms like Hurricane Sandy, which caused about $19 billion in damage in New York City alone. Above, the Plaza Shops on October 30, 2012

'Dont underestimate the destruction, dislocation, and human misery that climate change and rising seas will bring in the decades ahead,' said Stony Brook oceanography professor and chair of the Working Group Malcolm Bowman, according to Bloomberg.

One person aboard the yacht pointed out that a low-tide mark he saw when he first moved to New York is now completely covered, even when the water is at its lowest.

The Working Group says their four proposed barriers would cost about $30 billion to $40 billion to build.

Flooding continues to be a major problem for New York City.

Over the summer, Tropical Storm Elsa left residents trawling through flooded subway stops, with photos and videos of stations bursting with water going viral.

One shocking video circulating on social media showed a woman plunging into the squalid, trash-filled water to catch a train as it arrived in the station, holding shopping bags high above her head to keep them dry.

Video from Tropical Storm Elsa in July showed a woman plunging into the squalid, trash-filled water to catch a train as it arrived in the station

Storm surge or flood barriers work by closing shut when extreme water levels are forecast, preventing water from coming into the coast. Above, an illustration from the USACE

The NY/NJ Working Group met last week aboard the mahogany-paneled Manhattan II yacht

The Army Corps of Engineers, which would need to approve the project, said in a 2019 report that the largest barrier - running from Sandy Hook, New Jersey to Breezy Point, New York - would cost about $36.4 billion and take 25 years to build.

How do surge barriers work? Storm surge barriers - also called flood barriers - are hard engineered structures that prevent coastal flooding. They're fixed barriers or moveable gates that can be closed shut when an extreme water level is forecast. They're usually proposed in narrow areas, like the parts of the New York harbor that the NY/NJ Working Group is trying to protect. They're expensive projects, and there are no known examples in the developing world. Moveable storm surge barriers and closure dams provide a high degree of protection and allow the economy and culture of a region to continue unabated, by opening and closing to water traffic when needed. Source: Climate Technology Centre & Network Advertisement

The Corps pointed out that it would need to study the cost and time it would take to build the barriers as well as any environmental risks and navigational concerns.

'Any surge barrier across a navigable waterway will include a gate large enough to allow vessels to pass through. A navigational traffic analysis would be required to be completed if a surge barrier is recommended,' the Corps wrote.

Recent storms in New York have caused floods that have inundated apartments and left cars stuck on drowned roads.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency last month as the city braced for fall storms.

Sea barriers have been erected throughout the world, and many are still functioning.

In the Netherlands, the 688-ft-long Maeslant Barrier was built from 1991 to 1997.

It cost $727,832,700 to build in 2021 US dollars. It's made up of two steel barriers that swing open and close to keep water out during storms.

The Thames Barrier in the UK is another example, spanning 1,700 feet and consisting of 10 steel gates as tall as a five-story building that can be raised into position across the River Thames, according to the UK government.

'Regional sea gates constructed as part of a layered defense system will provide the best protection from coastal storm surge and rain-induced inland flooding,' said Sandeep Mehrotra, an environmental scientist who was aboard the Manhattan II last week.

The Thames Barrier in the UK spans 1,700 feet of 10 steel gates that can be raised into position

In New Orleans, the IHNC)-Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, proposed after Hurricane Katrina, cost $1.1 billion to build and was completed in 2013 on an expedited construction schedule

Examples can also be found close to home.

The largest storm barrier in the US is in New Orleans, where the Army Corps of Engineers expedited a project after Hurricane Katrina.

The storm pummeled the city in 2005 and caused more than $100 billion in property damage and 1,800 deaths.

Dubbed the IHNC Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, the 1.8-mile-long barrier cost $1.1 billion and was completed in 2013, according to Corps.

Floods continue to hit New York, such as the one seen above in Brooklyn on October 26

After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Battery Park Underpass was completely flooded

The effectiveness of flood barriers depends on how well the planet can work to keep global warming down.

Higher temperatures melt ice, which leads to higher sea levels. Water also expands when it warms, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Most international agreements seek to keep warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a proposal that billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, attending the COP26 climate change conference in Scotland this week, said would be 'difficult.'
A mother whose daughter was raped at least three times by a hospital electrician as she lay in the morgue has spoken of her anger at the ease in which he was able to access his victims and called for the trust boss to quit.

Married hoarder David Fuller today admitted to the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.

Police were stumped by the mystery for more than three decades, before finally making a breakthrough using DNA.

Fuller was arrested at his home in East Sussex last year but before he confessed to the two killings, detectives found the 67-year-old had sex with more than 100 dead bodies in morgues at the hospitals where he worked.

It emerged in court that the pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife.

One of his victims was 24-year-old law graduate Azra Kemal, who died after falling through a gap above the A21 dual carriageway in Kent.

Today, her mother, Nevres, revealed how her daughter was the subject of sickening abuse after her death.

The first attack took place only hours after she had visited to say a heartbreaking farewell, before Fuller struck again shortly after the parent had left, Sky News reports.

In an emotional interview with the site's Home Editor Jason Farrell, a family friend, she said: 'I had spent two hours in the mortuary sleeping with her. And that gave me some sort of comfort. Little did I know that my daughter had been violated prior to that day and the evening of that day.

'So, whilst I'm stroking my daughter's hair, sleeping on her hair, a man had... crawled all over her skin... And there's me kissing and cuddling and saying my last goodbyes.

'What does one think? How do you comprehend such a thing?'

One of his victims was 24-year-old law graduate Azra Kemal, who died after falling through a gap above the A21 dual carriageway in Kent

Today, her mother, Nevres, revealed how her daughter (pictured) was the subject of sickening abuse after her death

Fuller was arrested at his home in East Sussex last year but before he confessed to the two killings, detectives found the 67-year-old had sex with more than 100 dead bodies in morgues at the hospitals where he worked

Ms Kemal went on to demand the resignation of Miles Scott (pictured), chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where Fuller continued to work for years until his arrest last year

Ms Kemal spoke of her anger at the ease in which Fuller was allowed to access his victims, having reportedly gained entry to the mortuary and autopsy area thousands of times.

She added: 'I'm told he was the man to go to. He always made himself available to the mortuary staff. They thought he was a great guy and basically, he groomed them. They became compliant and they never questioned him.

'Like women who are raped around the world they have a voice, Azra has a voice - I am speaking out for my daughter.'

Ms Kemal went on to demand the resignation of Miles Scott, chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where Fuller continued to work for years until his arrest last year.

'He should ask the victims 'do you think I'm the best person to be managing this hospital trust?' If you are truly sorry, you would step aside,' she said.

The trust has since announced an independent investigation will be launched to determine whether more could have been done to prevent the crimes.

Sir Jonathan Michael - a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians - has been commissioned to carry out the probe.

Mr Scott said today: 'I want to say on behalf of the Trust, how shocked and appalled I am by the criminal activity by David Fuller in our hospital mortuary that has been revealed in court this week.

'And most importantly, I want to apologise to the families of those who've been the victims of these terrible crimes.

'We've been working with a team of specialist Police Family Liaison Officers to offer these families whatever help or assistance they may need.

'I am confident that our mortuary today is safe and secure. But I am determined to see if there are any lessons to be learned or systems to be improved.'

Married hoarder David Fuller finally admitted the murder of Wendy Knell (left) and Caroline Pierce (right) in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987 after the crime mystified police for three decades

The pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife

Fuller was identified as the prime suspect in the murders of Ms Knell and Ms Pierce after a DNA breakthrough achieved by analysing genetic material found at the crime scenes and searching criminal databases for relatives.

The electrician was totally unknown to police but officers discovered a partial DNA match in one of his relatives after combing through a list of 1,000 people on the database who could be related to the killer.

After investigating Fuller, who had 1,000 extreme images of sexual abuse in his possession, officers arrested him at his home in Heathfield, East Sussex, where he lived with his family, in the early hours of December 3 2020.

Footage of the arrest released by Kent Police today shows Fuller - who was still working for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust at the time - opening the door to officers, to which he declares: 'Oh, blimey.'

It emerged in court that the pervert kept a detailed diary of his sex assaults, penned in his own handwriting and secreted in the home he shared with his wife.

But he was finally unmasked last year and his offending - described today by the CPS as 'a kind no British court has seen before' - was brought into the daylight.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she hoped the victims' families can 'find some solace in seeing justice finally done'.

Describing the case as 'shocking', she added: 'The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern.'
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Mayor Bill de Blasio announced New York City will begin paying children between the ages of five and 11 $100 each to get their COVID-19 vaccine as parents lined up to get their kids their first shot.

Earlier this week De Blasio announced that the city would begin vaccinating children ages five to 11 at city run sites starting Thursday and in schools on Monday after the FDA approved Pfizer's two-dose shot.

A total of 300,000 vaccine doses have been ordered in a mad dash to vaccinate kids - even as controversy rages over whether the low-risk age group should get the jab.

De Blasio announced that following Wednesday's final authorization from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, city-run Covid vaccination sites will offer children ages 5-11 the FDA-approved Pfizer vaccine.

There have been 680 pediatric, under 18, Covid related deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to the CDC, representing less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths in the country.

In a press conference on Thursday, De Blasio confirmed that children will also be eligible for the $100 vaccine bonus first announced for adults who received the vaccine from June 30: Everyone could use a little more money around the holidays' and that it 'buys a whole lot of candy.'

The city's COVID vaccine incentive program includes a $100 pre-paid debit card with proof of first dose.

Children were already lined up to be vaccinated on Thursday afternoon at the city-run vaccination site at Essex Crossing 244 Broome Street.

Those who spoke to DailyMail.com included 11-year old Mia Taylor and her mom Tamara Jenkins. Mia told DailyMail.com: 'I wanted to get it - now that I have it, I feel safer.'

Jenkins was planning to get her daughter vaccinated before hearing about the $100 incentive: 'We didn't know about the incentive until my husband texted "we're gonna get $100." That's gonna be her candy money.'

'I can't wait for her and her friends to be able to get together with no swabs.'

Mia Taylor, 11, went with her mom Tamara Jenkins were also ready to be vaccinated. Mia told DailyMail.com: 'I wanted to get it - now that I have it, I feel safer'

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that children ages five to 11 are eligible to receive $100 when they get vaccinated against Covid at a city-run vaccination site

During his press conference on Thursday, De Blasio reported that New York City has administered 12,113,400 vaccinations

Starting TODAY kids 5-11 can get vaccinated against #COVID19 at City-run sites. Join us at City Hall with more. https://t.co/jiQfrhjspQ  Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 4, 2021

Seven-year-old immunocompromised Paulo and his dad Sokio - who did not want give a last name - also lined up for the shot.

Sokio convinced his son to get vaccinated but Paulo will be the luckily one getting $100 richer.

'I understand the hesitancy, especially in people of color communities, But I think science is great and people are working hard to make things safer,' Sokio told DailyMail.com.

Paulo said it hurt: 'Kinda more than a flu shot.'

Paulo, 7, and his immunocompromiseddad Sokio lined up to get the vaccine. After he got the shot at Essex Crossing 244 Broome Street, Paulo said it hurt: 'Kinda more than a flu shot'

Ellen Hollander-Sande, a nurse practitioner, brought her six-year-old son Jonah to get vaccinated.

'I am thrilled, I couldn't be more excited. we've been waiting a long time for this moment. I'm glad its finally here and it will keep him safe and keep others safe,' Hollander-Sande told DailyMail.com.

She's also using her position to encourage others to get their children vaccinated.

'We all care about our kids and we want to do what's safe for them. I do try to talk to other parents at my work about the vaccine,' she said.

'It's been given a billion times over the world - they tested kids, they tested 12 to 15. The results from the younger kids is great. I just try to talk to people about what's concerning then and address that.'

But her son Jonah wasn't concerned: 'He's been very excited to get the shot. He's been asking about it, waiting for it'

Jonah confirmed his excitement: 'I've been counting the days!'

Hollander-Sande shared: 'Before he was just quiet, a little shy in there, but he was pretty happy, doing jumping jacks and thrilled. Two of his cousins also got the shot today, so it's a great day.'

Ellen Hollander-Sande, a nurse practitioner, brought her six-year-old son Jonah to get vaccinated. 'I've been counting the days!' Jonah said

Twelve-year-old Michael Jones also got his vaccine at Essex Crossing on Thursday. He told DailyMail.com: 'I was kind of a little excited and nervous, more excited than nervous.'

His mother, Yvette Acevedo, said: 'Me and his dad were vaccinated but he had to wait a little bit - he was disappointed.

'My niece has a daughter [and she is nervous to get her vaccinated] - either way, you're taking a gamble. Might as well try.'

Twelve-year-old Michael Jones also got his vaccine at Essex Crossing on Thursday. He told DailyMail.com: 'I was kind of a little excited and nervous, more excited than nervous'

No child has been seen crying or rubbing their arm, everyone seems to be in good spirits as they get their shots.

NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi noted children have: 'endured so much during the pandemic and now it's their turn to have the same protection and grown-ups and teens albeit in a kid-sized dose.'

He said that the vaccine is safe and effective for children and that the city's health department has been working with about 1,500 pediatricians and family doctors to prepare to receives an initial order of 330,000 doses for children.

Dr. Chokshi stated that CDC data shows that if every New Yorker between the ages of 5 and 11 were to get vaccinated an estimated 38,000 Covid cases could be prevented.

CDC figures show that fewer than 700 children aged 18 and under have died of COVID since recording began in March 2020, amid concerns kids are at such low risk of serious infection that potential vaccine side effects - including heart inflammation - may not be worth the risk.

Dr. Kavita Patel said: 'For every nine New York City children that are vaccinated we're likely to prevent one case of Covid.'

The NYC mayor then went over the city's Covid numbers to date reporting that the big apple has administered 12,113,400 vaccinations.

He also reported that the city recorded 103 patients hospitalized for suspected Covid cases, confirmed positivity is at 15.7 percent, the hospitalization rate is at 0.53 percent per 100,000, and the number of new reported cases on a seven day average is at 579 cases.

Children ages five and up were seen arriving with their parents at city-run vaccination sites throughout the city on Thursday

Starting Monday every public school with students ages 5-11 years old will have a day for each school when vaccination is provided at the school building itself

NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi announced the city placed an initial order of 330,000 doses for children

Children, those under 18-years-old, have accounted for less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths in the country

Still, the lame-duck mayor will provide pop-up sites at select schools Thursday before a full rollout next week.

In order for children to be vaccinated, they must be accompanied by a parent or guardian or provide written or verbal consent over the phone, the city said.

Starting Monday, every public school with students ages five to 11 years old will have a day for each school when vaccination is provided at the school building itself.

In total there will be 1,070 school vaccination sites over the the course of the week and nearly 200 school sites daily providing vaccinations, allowing for every child to get a chance at getting vaccinated, De Blasio said.

De Blasio previously said he expects most parents will take advantage of the newly approved vaccine.

'As a parent, I know parents in the city are gonna be so energized to get their kids this vaccination and keep them safe,' he said.

De Blasio said he expects most parents will take advantage of the newly approved vaccine to vaccinate their children

The United States is one of the first countries in the world to officially approve Covid vaccines for children under 12 years old

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that children ages five to 11 receive the Pfizer vaccine

De Blasio's announcement comes after the Centers for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices unanimously voted 14-0 to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid pediatric vaccine dose for five to 11-year-olds on Tuesday.

CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky signed off on Tuesday's vote, meaning that approximately 28 million children in the US are now eligible for the shots.

It was the final step in the process that will allow injections in young children to begin this week in the United States, with President Joe Biden issuing a statement calling the decision 'a turning point' in the battle against Covid and said they had secured enough vaccines for every child in America.

Minutes after the decision, Hartford Hospital in Connecticut administered a low dose of Pfizer's Covid to six children, aged between five to 11.

The US became one of the first countries in the world to officially approve jabs for this age group, with scientists in Britain warning officials against 'blindly' following America and recommending the jab to young children.

Because of the low risk of severe illness, polls have shown that many American parents are not inclined to vaccinate their young children.

One poll from Axios/Ipsos in September found that 44 percent of parents of children aged five to 11 said their kids were likely to get a vaccine and 42 percent said it was unlikely their children would be immunized.
New York City struck a deal with four major municipal labor unions, including its largest, which will see some allowed to stay at work without having their COVID vaccines. Those represented by District Council 37, Teamsters Local 237, the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association Local 831 and SEIU Local 300, will be able to apply for paid leave if they submitted requests for religious or medical exemptions by Friday.

Anyone who applied for the exemption before Tuesday can stay on payroll during an appeal against their exemption, but those who apply for such an exemption between Wednesday and Friday must take unpaid leave if their claim is rejected and they wish to appeal.

Anyone who's applied for an exemption must also submit to weekly COVID testing.

Those who decide to not get vaccinated or whose requests are rejected will be able to either resign or take six months unpaid leave and keep their health benefits until June 30.

An employee can choose to return at any time during that six months if they choose to get vaccinated.

'Vaccinations are critical to our recovery and our city workforce is leading the way,' NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said. 'Ninety-two percent of city employees have stepped up and gotten vaccinated, and this agreement ensures a fair process for those seeking exemptions. Thank you to these unions for working with us to keep New Yorkers safe.'

The unions who agreed to the deal represent thousand's of the city's maintenance, clerical, sanitation, technical, public housing, health and education employees.

Not included are the city's emergency workers and the bulk of the sanitation employees.

Protestors continued to denounce the vaccine mandate for all New York City public employees on November 3. The city struck a deal on the mandate with four key labor unions

Out-going Mayor Bill de Blasio has agreed to allow employees who applied to a vaccine exemption to remain on paid leave, and those who are not vaccinated will be allowed to resign or be placed on unpaid leave for six months, all while keeping their health coverage

Protestors, the majority of which were emergency workers and their allies, took to the streets outside de Blasio's home last week to protest the mandate, which took effect last Friday

De Blasio and Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro had previously accused some firefighters of filing late exemptions to extend their time on payroll without having to get vaccinated.

Union representatives for the city's firefighters denied the allegations.

The city's deal comes as 92 per cent of the city's more than 378,000-member workforce has gotten at least one jab of the vaccine per de Blasio's orders.

The mandate struck a nerve thousands of city employees, notably the New York Police, Fire and Sanitation Departments, whose workers protested the order in recent weeks.

Thousands of emergency and sanitation workers are still not vaccinated

Protestors gathered outside City Hall Park on Wednesday to protest the vaccine mandate

The latest figures show that 15 per cent of the city's 36,000 cops, 21 per cent of the Big Apple's 10,951 firefighters and 10 per cent of the city's 10,000 emergency responders - around 4,300 of whom are employed by the fire department - have yet to get jabbed.

And about 15 per cent of the city's 7,200 uniformed sanitation workers remain unvaccinated as well.

Since the mandate went into effect on Monday, the number of out-of-service firehouses each day has been difficult to ascertain. Union heads said at a Tuesday press conference that members of different firehouses were being 'shuffled around' to feign the impression that the majority of firehouses are operational.

On Wednesday, it was reported that 12 had closed, while on Thursday, this number is said to have dropped to 10, although Mayor de Blasio said the number had dropped as low as four.

On Tuesday, 60 companies were closed according to Andrew Ansbro, the President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, who said that the departments were 'falling apart behind the scenes.'

City Hall and the FDNY won't confirm exactly how many people the force is down but the union said on Monday they expected it 1,700 firefighters going on unpaid leave.

Today, Fire Commissioner Nigro said that only four of the city's 350 units were out of service, and that as many as 20 units can be out of commission on a typical day for maintenance or to be used for training.

When a 'very difficult' fire broke out on Lenox Road in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, the third major fire throughout the city that day, 150 firefighters were dispatched to the scene. Firefighters told reporters that units surrounding the incident - Engines 249, 310 and 248 - were all out of commission at the time.

Around 2,300 firefighters were off work on Monday, as a rule enforcing COVID vaccination. Monday's deadline applied to all municipal workers, ranging from police officers to parks employees. Twelve firefighters from Ladder 29 in Mott Haven, in the Bronx, were sent home on Monday after reporting for duty unvaccinated

When a 'very difficult' fire broke out on Lenox Road in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning (pictured), the third major fire throughout the city that day, 150 firefighters were dispatched to the scene. Firefighters told reporters that units surrounding the incident - Engines 249, 310 and 248 - were all out of commission at the time

The apartment complex at 222 Lenox Rd houses 168 apartments, according to building records, and a number of firefighters told DailyMail.com that the shortage in firefighters delayed the department's response.

Mayor Bill de Blasio denied that claim, however, at a press conference on Thursday morning: 'I think a lot of information is being put out. A lot of it is misinformation put out by people with an axe to grind.'

Mayor-Elect Eric Adams, who won Tuesday's election with 68 percent of the vote, said on Tuesday that he would 'revisit' De Blasio's vaccine mandates upon taking office on January 1:

'We can work this out,' he said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. 'This is a very difficult moment but there's an opportunity to sit down with the unions. I communicated with some of the union leaders yesterday and they are open to sit down.'

One firefighter told DailyMail.com that Adams' response 'gave him hope' - another said it was 'too little, too late.'
All 24 female senators from both parties came together on Thursday to ramp up pressure on President Biden to develop a plan for the dire situation that now faces Afghan women and girls.

The letter, led by Sens. Shelley Capito and Dianne Feinstein, says that 'American disengagement from Afghanistan puts at risk hard-won gains for Afghan women and girls.'

'Women and girls are now suffering the predations of a Taliban regime with a track record of brutalizing, isolating, and denying them life and liberty. Taliban leaders who promised that women would be treated well under the new government are not upholding those commitments,' the letter reads.

The senators note that women are now the victims of targeted beatings and are banned from leaving home without a male chaperone.

Where some 3.5 million girls were in school in Afghanistan last year thanks to the American-backed government led by Ashraf Ghani, the Taliban has indefinitely suspended secondary school for girls.

The letter, led by Sens. Shelley Capito and Dianne Feinstein, says that 'American disengagement from Afghanistan puts at risk hard-won gains for Afghan women and girls'

The US hastily pulled out of Afghanistan as it fell to Taliban rule for the first time in 20 years

Taliban fighters stand guard in Kabul in October

Female primary school students leave school after a class in Kabul, Afghanistan, October 25, 2021. The Taliban has allowed all boys and younger girls back to class, but has not let girls attend secondary school

The Islamist group leading Afghanistan has said that girls will not be allowed to return to class at Kabul University 'until an Islamic environment is created.'

Last month, Afghanistans Ministry of Interior Affairs said girls would be allowed to return to school soon, but did not give a timeline. A limited number of schools have already reopened their doors to girls in the north, where women have long played a more prominent role in society.

Many women have returned to head-to-toe hijab in fear of being beaten or killed otherwise. They are banned from participating in sports.

While the Taliban has sought to present a more moderate ruling style, its actions thus far cast doubt that it will be any better than the last brutal Taliban regime that ruled from 1996-2991.

Biden faced bipartisan backlash for the US frenzied withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 31, and the president promised to 'speak out' for the rights of women and girls.

The White House said last month that in a meeting of G-20 leaders, Biden discussed providing 'humanitarian assistance directly to the Afghan people through independent international organizations, and to promote fundamental human rights for all Afghans, including women, girls, and members of minority groups.'

As the Afghan economy, weak before the fall to the Taliban, falls into disarray with international aid on hold, many families have resorted to selling their young daughters off as brides for cash to feed the rest of their families.

One Afghan father sold off his nine-year-old daughter to a man who claims to be 55 so he can buy food has pleaded for his child's new husband not to beat her.

Parwana Malik, nine, is being sold by her parents to a stranger who the youngster describes as an 'old man' due to his white beard and eyebrows.

On the day Parwana was taken away by her 55-year-old buyer, Qorban, her weeping father, Abdul Malik, pleaded for him to not hurt his child, reports CNN.

Abdul, who is 'broken' with guilt, broke down in tears as he told Qorban: 'This is your bride. Please take care of her. You are responsible now, please don't beat her.'

Parwana's family said they had no choice, and are among scores of destitute families who being forced to sell their young daughters into marriage to survive, as Afghanistan plunges further into a humanitarian crisis.

Parwana Malik, nine, (pictured) is being sold by her parents to a stranger who the youngster describes an 'old man' due to his white beard and eyebrows

One girl, aged 10, spends her days crying as she waits for the day she is sold to a 70-year-old man to help her family pay off their debts.

Another nine-member family is preparing to sell their four-year-old and nine-year-old daughters to have enough money for food.

Parwana and her family have been living in an Afghan displacement camp in northwestern Badghis province for the past four years. They have survived on humanitarian aid and work which earns them around 2 a day.

Abdul was forced to sell Parwana's 12-year-old sister months ago to help his family survive.

Parwana, her small face peeping out from her pale pink hijab, told CNN: 'My father has sold me because we don't have bread, rice or flour. He has sold me to an old man.'

Her father Abdul said he is 'broken' with guilt at the sale of his daughter and is unable to sleep at night.

He told the news outlet he had searched for unsuccessfully for work and borrowed money from relatives - with his wife even begging other camp residents for food - but nothing worked.

Abdul, who felt he had no choice but to sell Parwana to help his family survive, said: 'We are eight family members. I have to sell to keep other family members alive.'

He said that while Parwana is being sold for 200,000 Afghanis (1,600) in the form of cash, sheep and land, it will only sustain his family for a few months before they must find another way to raise funds to survive.

Parwana hoped she would be able to change her parents' minds as she didn't want to leave her family or her education as she wanted to be a teacher when she grew up.

But, her buyer Qorban, who only has one name, arrived at the family's home with the payment last week.

Parwana, her small frame covered in a black head covering and a floral garland around her neck, hid her face from her family and new husband, who she fears will beat her and force her to work.

A weeping Abdul told Qorban: 'This is your bride. Please take care of her. You are responsible for her now, please don't beat her.'

Qorban agreed before grabbing Parwana's arm and led the small child towards the door, with her father watching on.

As they reached the door, Parwana struggled and dug her feet into the ground - but her efforts were futile as she was led away to a car and to her new home.

Parwana, her small frame covered in a black head covering and a floral garland around her neck, hid her face from her family and new husband, who she fears will beat her and force her to work

Qorban insisted he would look after Parwana as his child and said he had a wife already.

'[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money,' he told CNN. 'She will be working in my home. I won't beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind.'

But Abdul said he has no power over what happens to his daughter now and recalled: 'The old man told me, 'I'm paying for the girl. It's none of your business what I'm doing with her, that's my business'.'

He added: 'As I can see, we don't have a future - our future is destroyed. I will have to sell another daughter if my financial situation doesn't improve - probably the two-year-old.'

Another child being forced into marriage is Magul, a 10-year-old girl, who is being sold to a 70-year-old man to help pay off her family's debts of 200,000 Afghanis (1,600).

'I really don't want him,' Magul said as she wiped tears away. 'If they make me go, I will kill myself. I don't want to leave my parents.'

The buyer, who has not been named by CNN, has taken Magul's father, Ibrahim, to Taliban-run prison and threatened to send him to jail for not repaying the money.

Ibrahim, who said he would pay the money within a month, has run out of time.

He said: 'I don't know what to do. Even if I don't give him my daughters, he will take them.'

Gul Afroz, Magul's mother, said: 'I'm praying to God these bad days pass.'

Another nine-member family in Ghor province are selling their four-year-old and nine-year-old daughters as their disabled father is unable to work.

He told CNN he will sell the girls for 10,000 Afghanis (800) each.

Zaiton, the four-year-old daughter, said she understands why she must be sold.

'Because we are a poor family and we don't have food to eat.'

The girls' grandmother Rokshana is distraught and said: 'If we have food and there is someone to help us, we would never do this. We don't have any choice.'

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August, the country's economy is on the brink of collapse.

Families in Afghanistan are being forced to sell their children to pay off debts, as the country's economy teeters on the brink of near-total collapse. Pictured: Women and their children wait for healthcare in Helmand province

That has seen the value of its currency collapse even though hard notes are in short supply, while prices for basic goods have soared due to shortages, with the UN warning that food could run dangerously low soon.

It has led to the chief of the UN this week to warn that Afghanistan is facing a 'make-or-break moment' as he urgently appealed to countries to inject cash back into the Afghan economy, which before the Taliban takeover in August was dependent on international aid that accounted for 75% of state spending.

Afghanistan is grappling with a liquidity crisis as assets remain frozen in the U.S. and other countries, and disbursements from international organizations have been put on hold.

The effects of the economic collapse could prove lethal for the country where a third of the population survives on less than $2 per day.

It has meant an increasing number of families are turning to the illegal practice of selling their children under the age of 15.

A girl collects food and recyclable materials through garbage near the airport in Kabul on September 21, 2021

'Day by day, the numbers are increasing of families selling their children,' said Mohammad Naiem Nazem, a human rights activist in Badghis told CNN. 'Lack of food, lack of work, the families feel they have to do this.'

'It's absolutely cataclysmic,' said Heather Barr, associate director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch. 'We don't have months or weeks to stem this emergency. We are in the emergency already.'

Many girls in Afghanistan are out of school - and the Taliban have not said when they might be allowed back.

'As long as a girl is in school, her family is invested in her future,' said Barr. 'As soon as a girl falls out of education, then suddenly it becomes much more likely that she's going to be married off.'

Once a girl is sold as a child bride, she is extremely unlikely to continue her education and many are forced to have unconsensual sex with their buyers.

Local Taliban leaders in Badghis said they are planning to distribute food to families. 'Once we implement this plan, if they continue to sell their kids we will put them in jail,' said Mawlawai Jalaludin, a spokesperson from the Taliban's Justice Department.

But the humanitarian crisis stretches across Afghanistan and affects at least 18 million people, or half the country's population. Many are now left to collect plastic bottles to recycle or sell to earn enough money for food.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to countries to inject cash back into the Afghan economy after humanitarian aid has dried up.

There is mounting frustration among experts who argue that holding back international aid is not affecting the Taliban - but the poor.

Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, head of office at UNOCHA, told CNN: 'By not releasing the (development) funds that they are holding from the Taliban government, it's the vulnerable, it's the poor, it's these young girls who are suffering.
Bill Gates has called on governments to give billions in research and development funding to prevent future pandemics and 'bio-terrorism'.

The billionaire founder of Microsoft warned that world leaders must prepare for disasters like 'smallpox terror attacks' whatever the cost, and called for the formation of a new billion-dollar World Health Organisation Pandemic Task Force.

He gave the warning and bid for funds during a Policy Exchange thinktank interview with chair of the Health Select Committee and former UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday.

While the research may be expensive, he said that it could also lead to other innovations, such as eradicating flu and the common cold.

He said that countries like the US and the UK must spend 'tens of billions' to fund the research.

'I'm hoping in five years, I can write a book called, 'We ARE ready for the next pandemic', but it'll take tens of billions in R&D  the US and the UK will be part of that', he said.

Bill Gates called on governments to give billions in research and development funding to prevent future pandemics and 'bio-terrorism' during a Policy Exchange thinktank discussion with the former UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday (Gates pictured at the COP26 climate conference on Tuesday)

The billionaire founder of Microsoft warned that world leaders must prepare for disasters like 'smallpox terror attacks' whatever the cost, and called for the formation of a new billion-dollar World Health Organisation Pandemic Task Force to accelerate research and development (pictured: AstraZeneca covid vaccine)

Gates warned of the possibility of future terror attacks and bio-warfare (pictured: a man suffers with smallpox - photo undated)

'It'll take probably about a billion a year for a pandemic Task Force at the WHO level, which is doing the surveillance and actually doing what I call 'germ games' where you practise.'

Gates suggested that the 'germ-games' could include preparing for acts of bioterrorism such as smallpox attacks on airports, likening them to 'war-games' used by militaries to train for conflicts the world over.

'You say, OK, what if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports? You know, how would the world respond to that?' Gates said.

'There's naturally-caused epidemics and bioterrorism-caused epidemics that could even be way worse than what we experienced today.'

Gates suggested that 'germ-games' could include preparing for acts of bioterrorism such as smallpox attacks on airports, likening them to 'war-games' used by militaries to train for conflicts the world over (pictured: Child suffering from smallpox in 1977)

'What if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports? You know, how would the world respond to that? There's naturally-caused epidemics and bioterrorism-caused epidemics that could even be way worse than what we experienced today,' said Gates (pictured in Glasgow on Tuesday)

Despite the dire warning, the world's fourth richest man also struck an optimistic note during the interview, anticipating the 'incredibly beneficial' medical innovations that will come from increased funding for pandemic prevention.

'The nice thing is a lot of the R&D we need to do to be ready for the next pandemic are things like making vaccines cheap, having big factories, eradicating the flu, getting rid of the common cold, making vaccines just a little patch you put on your arm, things that will be incredibly beneficial even in the years when we don't have pandemics,' he said.

He added that he will continue to talk about pandemic preparedness, as part of his work as a philanthropist.

He said: 'So along with the climate message and the ongoing fight against diseases of the poor, pandemic preparedness is something I'll be talking about a lot.

'And I think it'll find fertile ground because, you know, we lost trillions of dollars and millions of lives. And citizens expect their governments not to let that happen again.'

Prince Charles, right, speaks with Gates as he co-hosts a reception for world leaders during the COP26 summit, in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Gates, who founded Microsoft with the late Paul Allen in 1975, was also seen at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow this week.

He said at the conference that the world is likely to miss the 2.7F (1.5C) climate change target, as set out in the aims of the Paris Agreement.

Hitting the target  limiting the global temperature increase to 2.7F (1.5C) above pre-industrial levels  is seen as key to averting a planetary catastrophe, leading to devastation in the form of frequent climate disasters and millions of deaths.

However, Gates did have praise for the UK for its 'exemplary' use of green innovations, including off-shore wind farms, saying the country has a 'very good grade on climate change'.

Gates joined COP26 just days after toasting his 66th birthday with Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos on his $2million-a-week rental superyacht.
Western Australia's top cop has shared new details of Cleo Smith's incredible rescue and the unforgettable reunion with her family.

The four-year-old was returned to the arms of her mother and stepfather on Wednesday, 18 days after she vanished from their tent at a remote campsite 75km north of her hometown of Carnarvon in Western Australia.

Body worn cameras captured the moment detectives rescued little Cleo from a locked bedroom inside a housing commission property in Carnarvon's outskirts shortly before 1am.

It will be a day WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson will never forget as he recalled new details to the state's 7,200 officers in internal weekly publication From The Line.

Clutching a pink balloon, Cleo Smith was pictured in her mum's arms outside her Carnarvon home on Thursday, 24 hours after her incredible rescue

'It was a day that will go down in history as one of the greatest triumphs for WA Police Force. For many officers, it will be the greatest day of their careers,' Commissioner Dawson said.

'My heart has been bursting with pride since I first received a phone call from Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch advising of Cleo's rescue shortly before 1am.

'Today, I want that pride to fill the hearts of all employees of this great agency.'

The commissioner met Cleo along with her mum Ellie Smith, stepfather Jake Gliddon and her grandparents at the family home just hours after the little girl was rescued.

'As Cleo and her mum were exchanging kisses and hugs she fell asleep in Ellie's arms,' he recalled.

'None of us will forget that day. It's why we join the police force.

'From the bottom of my heart - which is so very swollen with pride - thank you to all... Enjoy this moment in history and let it carry you forward in service of our community.'

Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson (pictured) as shared new details of Cleo Smith's incredible rescue and how the little girl fell asleep in her mum's arms when he met Cleo on Wednesday

He also sent an photo of Cleo smiling and waving in hospital to WA Premier Mark McGowan, who described the little girl as well adjusted, sweet and delightful during his visit to the family home on Thursday.

Commissioner Dawson also recalled the heart-melting moment he first heard the audio of the little girl's rescue and the first words she uttered, telling officers: 'My name is Cleo'.

'In policing, we frequently see the worst of society and the circumstances surrounding Cleo's abduction certainly fit that bill,' he said.

'But on occasion...we also have the great privilege of having a front row seat to witness the very best of humanity and the rescue of Cleo is one of those moments.

'It should be treasured.'

Meanwhile, Cleo parents are under strict instructions by police not to discuss the four-year-old's 18-day nightmare with her.

Commissioner Smith will never forget when he first heard the audio of the little girl's rescue and the first words she uttered, telling officers: 'My name is Cleo' (pictured during her rescue)

Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine revealed on Thursday that discussing the details of what happened could jeopardise the prosecution's case by diluting the accuracy of her information.

Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, who is not known to the family but lives just minutes away, was charged with multiple offences on Thursday night, including Cleo's kidnapping.

He appeared in Carnarvon Magistrate's Court on Thursday afternoon, where he was formally refused bail.

Police have warned Cleo's parents to wait until specialist child abuse detectives formally interview the four-year-old before talking about the traumatic events with her.

Cleo is back in the arms of her mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon (pictured on Thursday)

Police officer's guard the Tonkin Crescent house in Carnarvon, WA where Cleo Smith was rescued

Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine (pictured) warned the parents discussing the details of what happened could jeopardise the prosecution's case by diluting the accuracy of Cleo's information

'This is still a matter that needs to go before the courts, there's certain aspects of what we saw that is going to be evidence, and I don't want to say anything that's going to prejudice that,' Senior Sergeant Blaine, who was one of the four detectives that rescued Cleo from the locked house said.

'It's not always the case that people understand that, but we want to see a successful prosecution at the end of the day for the people who are responsible.

'We've given them advice around that, and that must be incredibly hard for them, so we appreciate their assistance and cooperation with that.'

He said the family have been 'cooperative and understanding' all the way through the hellish ordeal as police worked tirelessly to track down Cleo's alleged abductor.

'They understand where we are going with the investigation and what remains to be done,' Senior Sergeant Blaine said.

'Our family liaison officer is going back out there now to speak to them and talk them through the next steps.'

Cleo Smith's mother Ellie was seen with her daughter for the first time since her dramatic rescue on Thursday afternoon

Little Cleo is seen getting into the car with her mother Ellie on Thursday afternoon, one day after she was rescued

A heart-warming audio clip of the moment detectives first found Cleo alone in a room playing with toys was heard for the first time on Thursday.

Sergeant Blaine can be heard asking the little girl 'what is your name?' three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo.'

He said police have tried to share as much information they can with the parents but at this stage investigators are still piecing all the details together themselves.

'We share with them what information we can. They know what they need to know,' Senior Sergeant Blaine said.

'Obviously it's still a time where we're exploring all the facts. We're getting information from, still, a number of different sources. Some of that information is completely wrong.

'So we're careful about what information we share with people, we want to make sure we're 100 per cent sure of the facts.'

Terry Kelly, 36, was taken away from Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, after sustaining head injuries

It's been 45 hours since police dragged Kelly out of his car at about midnight on Wednesday and slapped handcuffs on him.

The process of charging has been delayed after Kelly was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell within hours of his arrest.

He was taken to hospital with head injuries and released after medical treatment.

But police revealed on Thursday he had been returned to hospital for a second time after he is understood to have suffered new injuries while alone in his police cell.

Police forensic teams are continuing to scour the Tonkin Crescent address where Cleo was found

Thousands of missing person's posters were put up for Cleo Smith all over Carnarvon and surrounding areas

Forensic officers are expected to be at the home where Cleo was found for days if not weeks

Any future trial could be jeopardised if detectives tried to rush the process, the WA Deputy Police Commissioner told Seven's Sunrise.

'The important thing for police, if we're going to interview someone about offences as serious as this... we will need them in a condition where they have had a rest, they're in a good mental state, they've been fed,' he said.

'So, we've got to make sure we give them the best opportunity to answer questions and that's to ensure that the court process is validated if we get to that point.'

When detectives first found the little girl alone in a room playing with toys Sergeant Blaine asked her 'what is your name?' three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo'

A beaming Cleo is seen from her hospital bed after she was rescued by police on Wednesday

Kelly had only been at Carnarvon police station for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner and taken to hospital the first time.

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims.

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.
The Manhattan District Attorney has convened a second six-month grand jury to look into the Trump Organization's finances for potential criminal wrongdoing.

The first grand jury, which convened this spring, found that Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg had been running a 15-year tax fraud scheme. It handed felony indictments to Weisselberg and two Trump companies.

Both Weisselberg and the two companies have pleaded not guilty.

The new grand jury will meet three days per week, according to the Washington Post, and is expected to look into how former President Trump's company valued its assets.

The second grand jury's investigation is expected to extend beyond district attorney Cyrus Vance's term, which expires at the end of the year, and to be take up by Alvin Bragg, who was elected to succeed Vance on Tuesday.

The new grand jury is expected to hear evidence beginning Thursday.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has launched a separate civil inquiry into Trump's business, and the Trump family has previously accused both James and Vance of being politically motivated.

Both James' and Vance's investigations are looking into accusations that the Trump Organization misrepresented the value of its assets to get favorable loan rates or lower tax brackets.

Trump himself has not been charged.

Trump has called the first grand jury a 'witch hunt,' and defended Weisselberg for not properly reporting perks and benefits to the IRS.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, above, has convened a second six-month grand jury to look into the Trump Organization's finances for potential criminal wrongdoing

Trump has called the first grand jury a 'witch hunt,' and defended former CFO Allen Weisselberg for not properly reporting perks and benefits to the IRS

Weisselberg was indicted in July on 'sweeping and audacious' tax and fraud charges, after prosecutors of taking a total of $1.7 million in perks and compensation that the longtime CFO and the Trump Organization did not declare in tax filings.

The off-the-books perks allegedly include lease payments for Mercedes cars for Weisselberg and his wife, an apartment in Manhattan, and tuition fees for his grandchildren at a top prep school.

'They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car,' Trump complained.

'You didn't pay tax on the car or a company apartment. You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is,' he continued, taking on the role of the government in the case. 'You didn't pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don't even know. Do you have to? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?' Trump asked.

Weisselberg also owned a home in upstate New York during some of the years outlined in the indictment.

Trump, who took heat for years for failing to release his tax returns as a candidate and as president, also said any alleged crime didn't stack up to violent felonies.

'Think of it, think of how unfair it is. Never before has New York City and their prosecutors or perhaps any prosecutors criminally charged a company or a person for fringe benefits. Fringe benefits. Murders, okay. Human trafficking, no problem  but fringe benefits, you can't do that,' Trump said.

Weisselberg, who has worked for the Trump Organization since 1973, pleaded not guilty to 15 state charges, including grand larceny.

James, who recently announced her candidacy for governor, said in a court filing last year that her office is specifically targeting Trump's Los Angeles golf course, a Manhattan office building an his upstate New York estate known as Seven Springs.

While Vance's investigation could end in criminal charges, James' would end in a civil lawsuit. Still, Vance and James have collaborated, sharing information and attornies.
The US Navy has fired a nuclear submarine's Commanding Officer, Executive Officer and Chief of the Boat for 'loss of confidence' after their vessel collided with an 'uncharted seamount' in the South China Sea.

The $3.1 billion USS Connecticut's CO Cmdr Cameron Aljilani, XO Lt Cmdr Patrick Cashin and COB Cory Rodgers were relieved of their positions on Wednesday.

A seamount is a mountain which rises from the ocean floor.

A statement from the Navy said that the October 2 crash, which injured 11 crew members, could have been prevented with 'sound judgement, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning'.

Three interim officers were ordered to fill in and the Seawolf-class submarine is reportedly in Guam 'undergoing damage assessment' overseen by the Naval Sea Systems Command.

On the day the USS Connecticut struck the underwater mountain there were soaring tensions with China after 39 warplanes breached Taiwanese airspace and a record 56 aircraft flew into the zone two days later in a 24-hour period.

The US Navy has fired the Commanding Officer (CO) Cameron Aljilani (pictured), Executive Officer (XO) and Chief of the Boat (COB) for 'loss of confidence' after a nuclear-powered attack submarine collided with an 'uncharted sea mount' in the South China Sea

XO Lt Cmdr Patrick Cashin (pictured) and COB Cory Rodgers were also relieved of their positions on Wednesday and three interim officers were ordered to fill in and the submarine is reportedly in Guam 'undergoing damage assessment'

But the 7th Fleet, which operates in the western Pacific, determined after an investigation that there had been no foul play in the incident, concluding that the Connecticut simply smashed into a mountain rising from the sea bed on October 2.

'The investigation determined USS Connecticut grounded on an uncharted seamount while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region,' a spokesman said.

The Navy remained on high alert in the South China Sea where Beijing -valued for their strategic and historic significance - continues to make threats to Taiwan and lays claim to other smaller disputed islands.

Taiwan's president confirmed for the first time last week that American troops were stationed on the island - just days after President Joe Biden publicly confirmed he would defend the nation from China should it come under attack.

The 7th Fleet, which operates in the western Pacific, said an investigation had concluded that the USS Connecticut (pictured in Puget Sound, Washington, in 2016) smashed into a geological formation and not another vessel on October 2

On the day the USS Connecticut struck the underwater mountain there were soaring tensions with China after 39 warplanes breached Taiwanese airspace. A record 56 aircraft flew into the zone two days later in a 24-hour period

Cdmr Cameron Aljilani pictured shaking hands with Commander of the US 7th Fleet Vice Adm Karl Thomas as he welcomes Thomas on a tour of the submarine at Fleet Activities Yokosuka on August 2

President Tsai Ing-wen explained how US soldiers were stationed on the self-governing island, explaining that Taiwan had a 'wide range of cooperation with the US aiming at increasing our defense capability'.

The training mission, which consists of a special-operations unit and contingent of Marines is believed to have been in operation for at least a year.

For decades, the Pentagon maintained a large troop presence in Taiwan but the American Taiwan Defense Command was ended in 1979 as the United States began a formal diplomatic relationship with China. Washington continued to maintain unofficial ties with Taiwan.

Although there are said to be less than three dozen troops currently stationed on the island, the token gesture is significant and symbolic as it signals American presidential administrations will defend a democratic Taiwan and stand up to Chinese aggression.

Last month's submarine accident was confirmed by the Navy a week after it took place. At the time they only confirmed that the Connecticut had 'struck an object while submerged.'

Beijing today accused Washington of failing to provide timely and detailed information on the incident, complaining of a 'lack of transparency and lack of responsibility from the US.'

This map shows China's territorial claim in the South China Sea (in red), which the US rejects. Marked in blue are US bases in Okinawa off Japan and in Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory, and Sembawang wharf in Singapore where Britain's Royal Navy maintains a small presence. Marked in red are three naval bases in South China belonging to the People's Liberation Army

Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China urges the US to provide an explanation of the vessel's 'navigational intentions, the specific location of the accident, whether it was in the exclusive economic zone or territorial waters of any country, and whether it caused any nuclear leak or damage to the ocean environment.'

USS CONNECTICUT The USS Connecticut is a Seawolf-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine. It is the the fifth active United States Ship to be named for the U.S. state of Connecticut, going back to 1776. It was constructed by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation at Groton, Connecticut, and launched on September 1, 1997. Class and type: Seawolf-class submarine Displacement: 7,568 tons light, 9,137 tons full, 1,569 tons dead Length: 353 ft Beam: 40 ft Draft: 36 ft Propulsion: 1 S6W pressurized water reactor (PWR) 57,000 shp (43 MW) 1 secondary propulsion submerged motor 1 shaft 1 pump-jet propeller Complement: 15 officers, 101 men Armament: Eight 26-inch torpedo tubes, 40 torpedoes and missiles, or 100 mines Advertisement

Washington should 'stop sending warships and military aircraft to provoke trouble and make shows of force,' Wang said, warning that 'this type of accident will only become more frequent' without any change in US actions.

The 7th Fleet said there would be further deliberation on 'whether follow-on actions, including accountability, are appropriate.'

USNI News, published by the US Naval Institute, a thinktank close to the Navy, reported that there were some moderate and minor injuries in the accident.

It said the crash damaged the sub's forward ballast tanks and forced it to sail on the surface for a week back to Guam for repairs.

The ship's nuclear plant was not damaged, the publication said.

The 353-foot vessel was commissioned in 1998 and sails with a crew of 116, including 15 officers.

It can carry 40 torpedoes or missiles.

The South China Sea remains a central sphere of influence for America and its allies as China seeks to dominate its smaller neighbors and wrest control of the strategic islands and reefs which dot the region.

And last month, as tensions escalated over the flying of warplanes into Taiwan, it emerged that China had tested a new hypersonic nuclear-capable missile, taking world powers by surprise with a fearsome technology capable of striking virtually anywhere on the planet.

Counterbalancing the threat posed by China is the new Aukus alliance forged by the US, UK and Australia last month.

That new security pact has further heightened tensions in the South China Sea where many of the smaller countries, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, look to the US for military support.

Weapons race: A comparison of the most advanced (columns from left) missiles, aircraft carriers, tanks and aircraft possessed by China, the US and Russia

China's President Xi Jinping has previously stated that Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, will inevitably become subsumed as part of China.

Taiwan's government has made frequent, recent appeals to Washington and the West not to dismiss Beijing's threats as pure bombast.

As part of the West's show of strength, a fleet of US, UK and Australian vessels have been charting the world, travelling to the Far East and back.

Led by HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier, the fleet has since returned from the South China Sea and travelled to the Gulf via the Bay of Bengal.

The Gulf is the UK Carrier Strike Group's final destination before it returns to Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
Victoria has completely thrown open its border to NSW, even to those not fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

Premier Daniel Andrews and NSW counterpart Dominic Perrottet issued a joint statement on Thursday night announcing the states would open their borders to each other from Friday.

Travel between the two states had already been unrestricted for the fully vaccinated from Monday.

But from 11.59pm on Thursday, all remaining NSW and ACT orange zones were downgraded to green under Victoria's travel permit system.

Travel between the two states had already been unrestricted for the fully vaccinated from Monday

'This means, for the first time in more than six months in Victoria, all local government areas in all states and territories across Australia will be green zones for the purposes of entering Victoria,' the joint statement said.

The change allows all travellers and workers to enter Victoria without any testing or quarantine requirements, including unvaccinated people, if they apply for a permit beforehand to verify they are not Covid-positive or a close contact.

Fully vaccinated Victorians can also freely travel into NSW unless they've been to a place of high concern, but those over 16 who are not double-dosed still cannot for recreation or a holiday.

Mr Perrottet said the 'free travel' announcement showed the path back to normality, while his Victorian counterpart thanked those on both sides of the border for rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated.

Mr Perrottet said the 'free travel' announcement showed the path back to normality, while his Victorian counterpart thanked those on both sides of the border for rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated

'Victoria and New South Wales have been through so much over the last few months, and we're pleased that more families will now be able to reunite just in time for Christmas and the holiday season,' Mr Andrews said.

Meanwhile, Victoria is keen to start vaccinating currently ineligible primary school-age children against Covid-19 before classes wrap up this year.

Premier Daniel Andrews flagged he will raise the issue of child vaccines at Friday's national cabinet meeting, after US regulators approved the Pfizer jab for five to 11-year-olds.

'Hopefully our federal government's doing the same, and they can make announcements quite soon about vaccinating our kids,' he told reporters on Thursday.

He said it would be preferable for children under 12 to have at least their first dose before summer holidays begin.

The premier also plans to ask about booster vaccines and isolation requirements, as state and territory leaders meet for the first time since October 1.

It comes as Victoria recorded 1247 new locally acquired Covid-19 infections and another nine deaths on Thursday, with the state now managing 17,674 active cases.
Dontarius Magee, 17, is charged with carjacking, kidnapping and aggravated assault

A Mississippi teenager was arrested after allegedly shooting his Lyft driver numerous times after he kidnapped her and took her to the woods to rob her, police said.

Brandy Littrell, 36, was shot seven times on Tuesday after picking up 17-year-old Dontarius Magee from an apartment complex in Byram, directly south of Jackson.

Magee reportedly forced Littrell into the backseat of her black Dodge Journey after hailing a ride and, holding her to gunpoint, drove her to a wooded area off Beasley Road, Jackson Deputy Chief of Police Deric Hearn said.

'I gave him whatever he wanted because I was just trying to stay alive,' she told 16ABC from her hospital bed.

'He wanted my PIN number to my phone, my debit cards and wanted to know how much money I had in the bank, and wanted to know what was in my house.'

After shooting Littrell and getting her home address, garage door opener and car keys, Magee fled the scene, police said.

Once he left, Littrell feared for the life of her grandmother, who was at her house, so she ran to a nearby apartment complex for help.

Police said they arrested the 17-year-old near Adkins Boulevard, and he has since confessed to the crime. He has been charged with carjacking, kidnapping and aggravated assault.

Magee allegedly ordered the Lyft ride and was picked up by Littrell at the Spring Lake apartments.

When they arrived at the destination Magee had set - an apartment complex off of McWillie Circle - the teenager pulled out a gun and made Littrell crawl through the woods, police said.

'I gave him whatever he wanted because I was just trying to stay alive,' Littrell said from her hospital bed. 'He wanted my PIN number to my phone, my debit cards, and wanted to know how much money I had in the bank, and wanted to know what was in my house.' Above, a picture Littrell provided to abc16

Littrell said he then ordered her to 'get on [her] knees.'

'So, I got on my knees, and then I heard the first shot...' she recalled of the horrific experience.

Magee shot Littrell a total of seven times while he collected the information he planned to use to steal from her, according to police.

He then fled the scene with her car keys and valuables.

Littrell, in shock and covered in blood, realized Magee had left and ran to a nearby apartment for help.

'It took every strength in me because, at this point, I am concerned... my grandmother is at my house, and I was worried he was going to go after her,' Littrell said.

She was rushed to the University of Mississippi Medical Center and is now recovering and alive 'by the grace of God.'

Hearn said Magee has a criminal history of robberies of this sort.

'It is my understanding through our interview with this individual, this is not the first time this has occurred,' the chief said.

Littrell, 36, was shot seven times on Tuesday, after picking up 17-year-old Dontarius Magee from an apartment complex in Byram, Jackson

'It is my understanding through our interview with this individual, this is not the first time this has occurred,' Jackson Deputy Chief of Police Deric Hearn (pictured) said

In a statement about Littrell's incident, Lyft said: 'The incident described is horrific and our hearts go out to Ms. Littrell and her loved ones. We've reached out to offer our support, have permanently removed the rider from the Lyft community, and stand ready to assist law enforcement with their investigation.'

Attacks against ride-hail drivers have been increasing at an alarming rate.

In July, The Markup reported that there had been 124 carjackings of ride-hail drivers over the last 18 months.

Eleven drivers have died as the result of the attacks. Seventy-five percent of the attacks happened after drivers were paired with their assailants through Uber and Lyft.

In August, a California Lyft driver was left with a huge gash on his forehead after a local DJ bashed him in the head with a microphone stand when he wasn't allowed to put his equipment in the sedan's backseat.

Lyft driver Ye Lu shared a photo of his bloodied forehead after a brutal injury that required six stiches.

Lyft driver Ye Lu shared a photo of his bloodied face after a brutal injury that required six stiches

Lu was transported to the hospital following the attack and the gash on his forehead required six to seven stiches

Nearly two weeks after the attack Lu's forehead wound has healed and stiches have been taken out but he has not gone back to driving out of fear

Lu told CBS Los Angeles that he was assaulted outside a bar in Jurupa Valley in the early hours of August 1 as he was picking up the passenger, identified by cops as Mark Trunko.

In March, a 19-year-old DoorDash driver in Ohio, Mihretab Sendano, had his jaw broken and his cheekbone shattered after he got confused over an address and was subsequently attacked.

Upon arriving at the initial, incorrect residence, Sendano received a threatening call from an individual who he was delivering to, demanding the driver bring him his food and accusing the delivery man of trying make off with his order.

Sendano eventually arrived at the right address, leaving the man's food at his apartment door.

However, when Sendano attempted to drive off multiple cars appeared in front of his vehicle and cut him off - and he was attacked by a group of people.

Someone found him in the car and called 911, at which point the teen was carted off to a hospital ICU to receive surgery on his face. He also suffered a swollen eye and several cracked ribs.

DoorDash announced Wednesday that it is adding a panic button to its app to protect drivers amid a recent surge of violent crimes against them.

The announcement, in partnership with personal and home security giant ADT, comes after at least three attacks on DoorDash delivery personnel in recent months - one of them deadly.

Lyft and Uber also have in-app buttons to let riders and drivers contact emergency services in their apps - with DoorDash's planned SafeDash toolkit seems strikingly similar to Uber's driver Safety Toolkit, which also includes an in-app emergency assistance button and several other features.
The team behind the rescue of Cleo Smith were given a round of applause as they enjoyed a pint at a pub to celebrate the safe return of the four-year-old girl.

Nearly 50 officers, including forensics, data analysts and detectives, were given the hero's welcome by pubgoers as they packed into the Carnarvon watering hole.

The group was part of Taskforce Rodia - the team responsible for finally ending an 18-day long search mission that began when Cleo was allegedly kidnapped from her family tent at the remote Blowholes campsite in Western Australia on October 16.

The accused Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, has been charged with multiple offences including forcibly taking a child under 16.

Many members of the taskforce were parents meaning their investment in the search and rescue went beyond their police duties - for them, it was deeply personal.

The team behind the rescue of Cleo Smith were given a round of applause as they enjoyed a pint at a pub to celebrate the safe return of the four-year-old girl

Clutching a pink balloon, Cleo Smith was pictured in her mum's arms outside her Carnarvon home on Thursday, 24 hours after her incredible rescue

One of the officers who took part in the rescue mission was a father-to-be (pictured, Cleo being rescued)

One of the officers has a baby on the way. The soon-to-be-father was part of the group that rescued Cleo as they stormed into the housing commission property and found the little girl in a locked room shortly before 1am on Wednesday.

The celebrations will, no doubt, continue as the officers prepare to return to their homes in Perth.

Some have been spotted visiting local surf shops and purchasing a memento to take home. The most popular souvenir appears to be a cap with the Carnarvon postcode '6701'.

The caps will serve as a constant reminder for the time when an entire coastal town was brought to their knees by the disappearance of a four-year-old girl and lifted back up to their feet by a small group of officers who found her safe and well.

Detective Senior Constable Kurt Ford said officers had little expectations as they prepared to storm the housing commission property after receiving a tip-off.

'I don't think we had really any expectations going in - we didn't know what we were going into,' he said.

'If anything, our expectations weren't great. It was an emotional experience going in, and it was a good result.

'I just saw a little girl sitting there and didn't think about anything else than picking her up.'

Body worn cameras captured the moment detectives rescued little Cleo from a locked bedroom inside a housing commission property in Carnarvon's outskirts shortly before 1am.

It will be a day WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson will never forget as he recalled new details to the state's 7,200 officers in internal weekly publication From The Line.

'It was a day that will go down in history as one of the greatest triumphs for WA Police Force. For many officers, it will be the greatest day of their careers,' Commissioner Dawson said.

Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson (pictured) as shared new details of Cleo Smith's incredible rescue and how the little girl fell asleep in her mum's arms when he met Cleo on Wednesday

'My heart has been bursting with pride since I first received a phone call from Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch advising of Cleo's rescue shortly before 1am.

'Today, I want that pride to fill the hearts of all employees of this great agency.'

The commissioner met Cleo along with her mum Ellie Smith, stepfather Jake Gliddon and her grandparents at the family home just hours after the little girl was rescued.

'As Cleo and her mum were exchanging kisses and hugs she fell asleep in Ellie's arms,' he recalled.

'None of us will forget that day. It's why we join the police force.

'From the bottom of my heart - which is so very swollen with pride - thank you to all... Enjoy this moment in history and let it carry you forward in service of our community.'

He also sent an photo of Cleo smiling and waving in hospital to WA Premier Mark McGowan, who described the little girl as well adjusted, sweet and delightful during his visit to the family home on Thursday.

Commissioner Dawson also recalled the heart-melting moment he first heard the audio of the little girl's rescue and the first words she uttered, telling officers: 'My name is Cleo'.

'In policing, we frequently see the worst of society and the circumstances surrounding Cleo's abduction certainly fit that bill,' he said.

Cleo is back in the arms of her mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon (pictured on Thursday)

'But on occasion...we also have the great privilege of having a front row seat to witness the very best of humanity and the rescue of Cleo is one of those moments.

'It should be treasured.'

Meanwhile, Cleo parents are under strict instructions by police not to discuss the four-year-old's 18-day nightmare with her.

Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine revealed on Thursday that discussing the details of what happened could jeopardise the prosecution's case by diluting the accuracy of her information.

Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, who is not known to the family but lives just minutes away, was charged with multiple offences on Thursday night, including Cleo's kidnapping.

He appeared in Carnarvon Magistrate's Court on Thursday afternoon, where he was formally refused bail.

Police have warned Cleo's parents to wait until specialist child abuse detectives formally interview the four-year-old before talking about the traumatic events with her.

Police officer's guard the Tonkin Crescent house in Carnarvon, WA where Cleo Smith was rescued

Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine (pictured) warned the parents discussing the details of what happened could jeopardise the prosecution's case by diluting the accuracy of Cleo's information

'This is still a matter that needs to go before the courts, there's certain aspects of what we saw that is going to be evidence, and I don't want to say anything that's going to prejudice that,' Senior Sergeant Blaine, who was one of the four detectives that rescued Cleo from the locked house said.

'It's not always the case that people understand that, but we want to see a successful prosecution at the end of the day for the people who are responsible.

'We've given them advice around that, and that must be incredibly hard for them, so we appreciate their assistance and cooperation with that.'

He said the family have been 'cooperative and understanding' all the way through the hellish ordeal as police worked tirelessly to track down Cleo's alleged abductor.

'They understand where we are going with the investigation and what remains to be done,' Senior Sergeant Blaine said.

'Our family liaison officer is going back out there now to speak to them and talk them through the next steps.'

Cleo Smith's mother Ellie was seen with her daughter for the first time since her dramatic rescue on Thursday afternoon

Little Cleo is seen getting into the car with her mother Ellie on Thursday afternoon, one day after she was rescued

A heart-warming audio clip of the moment detectives first found Cleo alone in a room playing with toys was heard for the first time on Thursday.

Sergeant Blaine can be heard asking the little girl 'what is your name?' three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo.'

He said police have tried to share as much information they can with the parents but at this stage investigators are still piecing all the details together themselves.

'We share with them what information we can. They know what they need to know,' Senior Sergeant Blaine said.

'Obviously it's still a time where we're exploring all the facts. We're getting information from, still, a number of different sources. Some of that information is completely wrong.

'So we're careful about what information we share with people, we want to make sure we're 100 per cent sure of the facts.'

Terry Kelly, 36, was taken away from Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, after sustaining head injuries

It's been 45 hours since police dragged Kelly out of his car at about midnight on Wednesday and slapped handcuffs on him.

The process of charging has been delayed after Kelly was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell within hours of his arrest.

He was taken to hospital with head injuries and released after medical treatment.

But police revealed on Thursday he had been returned to hospital for a second time after he is understood to have suffered new injuries while alone in his police cell.

Police forensic teams are continuing to scour the Tonkin Crescent address where Cleo was found

Thousands of missing person's posters were put up for Cleo Smith all over Carnarvon and surrounding areas

Forensic officers are expected to be at the home where Cleo was found for days if not weeks

Any future trial could be jeopardised if detectives tried to rush the process, the WA Deputy Police Commissioner told Seven's Sunrise.

'The important thing for police, if we're going to interview someone about offences as serious as this... we will need them in a condition where they have had a rest, they're in a good mental state, they've been fed,' he said.

'So, we've got to make sure we give them the best opportunity to answer questions and that's to ensure that the court process is validated if we get to that point.'

When detectives first found the little girl alone in a room playing with toys Sergeant Blaine asked her 'what is your name?' three times before she finally falteringly replied: 'M-my name is Cleo'

A beaming Cleo is seen from her hospital bed after she was rescued by police on Wednesday

Kelly had only been at Carnarvon police station for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner and taken to hospital the first time.

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims.

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.
A Juilliard-trained concert pianist from South Carolina has been charged with brutally murdering a veterinary hospital worker, who was engaged to a man now suspected of producing child pornography and was dealing with custody issues.

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office on Thursday announced the arrest of 29-year-old Zachary Hughes.

Hughes, who attended the prestigious NYC theater school, has been charged with counts of murder and weapons possession during a violent crime stemming from the October 13 killing of 41-year-old Christina Parcell.

Parcell, a mother-of-one working as a veterinary technician, was found suffering from multiple stab wounds in her Greer home. Her fiance Bradly Post was arrested for child sexual exploitation and child porn offenses on October 20, but cops say they do not believe that case is linked to Parcell's killing.

Sheriff Hobart Lewis told reporters during a press conference that investigators have yet to determine a motive behind what he described as a 'very violent' attack, reported Greenville Online.

Zachary Hughes, a 29 year-old concert pianist, has been accused of brutally murdering a veterinary hospital technician, 41 year-old Christina Parcell

Parcell was found dead of multiple stab wounds at her Greenville County home on October 13

'It was a very brutal crime scene, for sure,' the sheriff added.

Hughes is a graduate of the world-famous Julliard School in New York City who has been working as a concert pianist.

According to Lewis, surveillance video from Parcell's neighbors and physical evidence found at the scene tied Hughes to the murder.

The 29-year-old suspect turned himself in to the authorities on Wednesday night and was booked into the county jail.

The sheriff said investigators do not know whether Hughes and Parcell knew each other prior to the incident, but he said the victim was 'targeted.' .

Parcell is survived by her eight-year-old daughter. The girl's biological father was arrested on October 25 and charged with violating a custody order, transporting a child under age 16 and not returning her within 72 hours.

Parcell's fiance Bradly Post, pictured, was arrested for child sex offenses on October 20, although cops say they don't believe that case was linked to the murder

Parcell had been involved in a custody battle with her daughter's father, while her current fiance Bradley Post is facing child porn charges

Last year, Parcell launched a GoFundMe campaign, seeking donations to help pay her lawyer during a custody battle with her daughter's father, who she claimed had traveled with the child out of the country.

Less than a week after her killing, Parcell's current fiance, Bradly Post, was arrested and charged with five counts of first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor for allegedly producing child pornography, reported WYFF.
Sinaloa Cartel

Founded in 1989 by Hector Palma, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman and Ismael El Mayo Zambada, the Sinaloa Cartel today stands as one of the most established transnational drug trafficking organizations. While it has carved out a presence in 15 of the 32 Mexican states, the cartel also expanded its operations into the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.

With El Chapo in prison, the cartel has been plagued by internal fighting between Zambada and three of El Chapos four sons, known as Los Chapitos.

The Drug Enforcement Administration views the Sinaloa Cartel as one of the top two criminal organizations along with its rival, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

The DEA said the Sinaloa Cartel 'exports and distributes wholesale amounts of fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana in the United States by maintaining distribution hubs in various cities.'

How they get drugs into the US: 'Illicit drugs distributed by the Sinaloa Cartel are primarily smuggled into the United States through crossing points located along the [south west border]. The cartel employs gatekeepers assigned to Ports Of Entry and controls Arizona and California area smuggling corridors into the United States.'

Jalisco New Generation Cartel

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel was once allied to the Sinaloa Cartel as El Chapo depended on its firepower to combat Los Zetas.

Commandeered by Nemesio El Mencho Oseguera, the group set itself apart from other cartels in the country butchering its enemies and today is considered by the Mexican government as the most dangerous group in the country.

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel is spread out across 23 of the Mexico's 32 states and currently finds itself at war with at least ten cartels.

The group has been known to have increased the power that its members have by purchasing military weapons and parts from the United States.

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, according to the DEA, specializes 'in manufacturing and distributing large amounts of fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine.'

How they get drugs into the US: 'The CJNG smuggles illicit drugs into the United States by accessing various trafficking corridors in northern Mexico along the SWB including Tijuana, Juarez, and Nuevo Laredo. The CJNG also has influence over the busiest port in Mexico, the Port of Manzanillo, and utilizes that influence for the distribution of large quantities of drugs.'

Beltran-Leyva Organization

For a while, the Beltran-Leyva Organization [BLO] was born out of the Sinaloa Cartel and became one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico led by the Beltran Leyva brothers: Marcos Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo, Mario Alberto and Hector.

The Beltran-Leyva Organization was involved in a deadly war with the Sinaloa Cartel after the brothers accused their cousin, El Chapo, of being responsible for the January 2008 arrest of Alfredo. The brothers retaliated by reportedly plotting the murder of El Chapos 22-year-old son, Edgar Guzman, in May 2008.

Alfredos arrest sparked one of the worst periods in Mexicos war on drugs as the BLOs new ally, the Juarez Cartel, went to war with the Sinaloa Cartel in Ciudad Juarez, a border town across from Texas.

The BLO also expanded its might by going toe-to-toe with the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Cartel in the northeastern border city of Reynosa.

While the cartel remains viable today, the organizations members over time split into 11 factions.

How they get drugs into the US: 'BLO relies on its loose alliances with larger cartels for access to drug smuggling corridors along the [south west border].'

Los Zetas and the Cartel del Noreste [Northeast Cartel]

Los Zetas were created by Mexican military deserters who formed an alliance with the Gulf Cartel in 1999 and based its operations in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across from Laredo, Texas. The group quickly carved out a named for itself through its savage killings. By 2010, Los Zetas split from the Gulf Cartel.

Los Zetas at one point dominated more cities across Mexico than the Sinaloa Cartel, with whom it clashed amidst a threat from the Gulf Cartel to eliminate it completely.

Like some of the other Mexican cartels, Los Zetas saw some of its members split and form their own groups.

Los Zetas role play in the drug trade is enforced by one of its factions, the Cartel del Noreste [Northeast Cartel]. Together, the criminal groups have set up its small, but lucrative, drug trade business into the Texas border cities of Laredo and Eagle Pass while controlling routes and turfs in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas.

How they get drugs into the US: 'Members smuggle the majority of their illicit drugs through the [south west border] in the areas of Laredo, Texas; Eagle Pass, Texas; and the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and parts of Tamaulipas.'

Guerrero Unidos

Operating in central Mexico, the Guerrero Unidos broke away from the Beltran-Leyva Organization and formed an alliance with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to traffic drugs into the United States and bring back its profits into Mexico.

The cartel is accused of being behind the September 2014 disappearance of 43 students, who were kidnapped by local police in Iguala, a city in the southern state of Guerrero.

How they get drugs into the US: 'The cartel has a working partnership with the CJNG and uses the same transportation networks to move drug shipments into the United States and to return drug proceeds back to Mexico.'

Gulf Cartel

The Gulf Cartel is considered to be one of the oldest active criminal organizations in Mexico and is believed to have close ties to other gangs in Europe, West Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, and the United States.

The organization started off by smuggling alcohol into the United States during the Prohibition Era. It was not until the 1980 that it got itself immersed into the drug trade.

The DEA believes the Gulf Cartel has been working closely with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as it ships heroin and cocaine to the Texas border cities of McAllen and Brownsville.

How they get drugs into the US: 'The Gulf Cartel focuses its drug trafficking activities on heroin and cocaine by transporting loads into the United States near the McAllen and Brownsville, Texas, areas.'

Juarez Cartel and La Linea

The Juarez Cartel cemented itself as one of the mayor players in the drug trade business back in the 1970s. It founder, Amado Carrillo, was known as 'El Senor de los Cielos' or 'The Lord of the Skies' due to the massive fleet of planes he owned to transport drugs, especially cocaine from Colombia and other countries in Latin America.

The cartel was once allied to El Chapo before that relationship fell apart after the notorious drug lord declined to pay the Juarez Cartel for the right to use its drug smuggling routes.

The Juarez Cartel has depended on its armed wing, La Linea, to transport heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas.

How they get drugs into the US: 'These cartels greatest territorial influence is in the state of Chihuahua near the [south west border]. This area has profitable smuggling opportunities between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas.'

La Familia Michoacana

La Familia Michoacana was once linked to the Gulf Cartel before it went on its own in 2006.

Between 2009 and 2010, the cartel proposed to the Mexican government that it had plans of laying down its arms as long as its home state of Michoacan was granted protection. However, President Felipe Calderon shot down their offer, which led to the cartel becoming increasingly involved in the funding of political candidates.

La Familia Michoacana today maintains a relationship with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and other criminal groups as part of its drug smuggling operation.

How they get drugs into the US: 'LFM has some ties to the CJNG and also works with other smaller groups to further the cartels drug trafficking activities.'

Los Rojos

Just like Guerreros Unidos, Los Rojos was formed as an armed wing and broke away from the Beltran-Leyva Organization.

According to a 2020 Congressional report, Los Rojos 'operates in Guerrero and relies heavily on kidnapping and extortion for revenue as well as trafficking cocaine, although analysts dispute the scope of its involvement in the drug trade.'

How they get drugs into the US: 'Los Rojos is involved in heroin trafficking'
A man wrongly identified as the alleged kidnapper of four-year-old Cleo Smith is planning to sue Channel Seven as he recalled the deep distress the shocking mistake has caused.

Nyamal man Terrance Flowers was wrongly shamed on social media after the West Australian child was found alive and well on Wednesday, 18 days after she vanished from her family's tent.

Mr Flowers was confused by 'sleuths' online for Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, who has since been charged over Cleo's alleged abduction. The Seven Network also published the wrong picture.

Daily Mail Australia revealed this week that Mr Flowers faced death and spearing threats in the wake of the claims.

He went to his local police station in Karratha on Wednesday for help in getting the false social media posts shut down.

Later that night, he was at the hospital with his baby daughter when he became aware Seven had widely circulated his image online, wrongly identifying him as the suspect.

A man plans to sue Channel Seven after he was wrongly identified online as Cleo Smith's alleged kidnapper. Pictured is the little girl with her parents on Thursday

FLOWERS PLANS TO SUE MEDIA OUTLET THAT SHARED MISINFORMATION TERRANCE FLOWERS PLANS TO SUE MEDIA OUTLET WHO SHARED PHOTOS LINKING HIM TO CLEO SMITHS ABDUCTION Mr Flowers has engaged Senior Associate of O'Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors to represent him in a defamation lawsuit. The Solicitors worked with Yirrkala Aboriginal Community who sued Sunrise in 2019 for using images as a backdrop when talking about Aboriginal Children being adopted by white families. Mr Flowers says he wants media outlets to learn from this and be professional when covering stories. Posted by Ngaarda Media on Thursday, November 4, 2021

'I got upset and went back into the police station. I ended up getting more upset and I had a panic attack in the police station,' he told Ngaarda Media.

A traumatised Mr Flowers, who Daily Mail Australia has chosen not to picture, was hospitalised following the panic attack and needed medical treatment to calm him down.

He has described what happened as unacceptable.

'What they did was go straight on Facebook. The first person they seen got through my photos and uploaded on social media, and spread it around, not just in Australia, this is worldwide,' Mr Flowers said.

'I want them to do their job more seriously, and professionally and I'm gonna end up suing them anyways, cause it's not the right thing for them to be doing.'

Mr Flowers is now in talks with lawyers about possible legal action.

The blunder has also caused deep distress and grief for Mr Flowers' partner and mother.

Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, (pictured) has been charged over Cleo Smith's alleged abduction

Daily Mail Australia contacted Channel Seven for further comment.

The network was quick to issue an apology over the awkward blunder on Wednesday night.

'Earlier on Wednesday, Seven News wrongly showed images of a man that were incorrectly labelled as the person under arrest over disappearance of Cleo Smith,' a statement said.

'These were removed promptly, but 7NEWS apologises for the error.'

The misidentification came as the WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson reportedly held an emergency meeting with 20 Aboriginal elders in Carnarvon to ask for their help in easing tensions in the community.

There have been claims Indigenous locals are being targeted by racists over Cleo's abduction, and also hold fears of recriminations in the community itself, a report said.

A Western Australia man got death threats, including that he would be speared, after being wrongly identified as a suspect in the kidnapping of Cleo Smith (pictured)

A man wrongly identified as the suspect in the Cleo Smith kidnapping case was bombarded with death threats, including that he would be speared, police sources said.

Terry Kelly, the suspect in the kidnap of Cleo Smith in Western Australia, being taken to hospital. Another man of the same name was wrongly misidentified, as he has a similar name

As social media festered with theories about the 36-year-old Indigenous man being held over Cleo's kidnapping overnight, The Australian reported Mr Dawson told the elders: 'You are influencers in your community and you can talk to people who are more impressionable.'

'You can be that voice of reason,' he was reported as saying.

Asked about reports of community unrest on Thursday, WA Premier Mark McGowan said: 'I believe some extra officers are in town, not necessarily for community unrest but there's a lot of police officers from Carnarvon that have been tied up in this operation as well who are still assisting us.

'So that puts a drain on local resources. With that they've come to town to assist the local police,' he said.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan (centre) is greeted by Cleo Smith's stepfather (left) during a visit to the rescued girl in Carnarvon, 900km north of the state capital Perth. Four-year-old Cleo went missing from the tent she was sharing with her family at the Blowholes campsite near Carnarvon on 16 October. She was rescued in the early hours of November 3, 18 days after she was taken. A 36-year-old man is now in custody

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan (white shirt, centre) poses with police officers after speaking at a press conference in front of the Carnarvon Police Station on November 4, 2021

Image of when Cleo Smith was found and rescued by Western Australian Police

Neighbours look out onto the house where missing girl Cleo Smith (4) was rescued by Western Australian Police

View of House and police in Tonlin Street Carnarvon where Cleo Smith was detained > Duplex house centre of image Photo Bohdan Warchomij - 10162881

ABORIGINAL SPEARING One of the traditional tribal punishments in Aboriginal culture is where the victim gets speared into the thigh or calf. This type of punishment is often shown in films based around Indigenous society. The crime determined what kind of wound the offender received. From creativespirits.info Advertisement

Ngaarda Media published an interview with Mr Flowers' aunt, Nyamal woman Karen Beazely.

Ms Beazely explained that Mr Flowers used the name 'Terry Kelly' on Facebook - leading to him being wrongly pegged as a suspect.

'People jumped the gun and saw, when they looked up Facebook, Terry Kelly and straightaway there were a lot of angry people,' said Ms Beazely.

'So they typed in Terry Kelly and what's come up is the wrong Terry Kelly.'

She added: 'My daughter Tracy and my niece Patricia, took him down to the Karatha police.

'When the family told him his face was on the ... news, he's broke down and cried and he was sobbing, really upset,' she said.

'I would like people to wait for the police to give out proper information, because jumping the gun can cause someone who is innocent ... people can go for the wrong person,' Ms Beazely said.

A post on the radio station's Facebook page said: 'Let the police continue to do their job, stop trying to be a lynch mob. Just leave it to be confirmed by the police and justice will be served.'

EXCLUSIVE: How the loner arrested over Cleo Smith's abduction was 'bashed in his cell by another prisoner' as soon as he realised he was the alleged kidnapper - with 'attack putting him in hospital'

By BRITTANY CHAIN FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A man arrested over the alleged kidnapping of Cleo Smith was allegedly attacked by another prisoner inside a police holding cell - and has been taken to hospital a second time.

Terry Kelly, 36, had only been at Carnarvon police station, in Western Australia, for a few hours on Wednesday when he was allegedly set upon by a prisoner.

Kelly was arrested over the alleged abduction of little Cleo who was missing for 18 days after disappearing from a campsite 75km from her home while on holiday with her family.

A sign is seen on a fence in Carnarvon, Western Australia in celebration of the finding of Cleo Smith. Cleo was found in the early hours Wednesday November 3 after police raided a house in Carnarvon

That prisoner's mother told Daily Mail Australia her son was 'furious' when he discovered why Kelly had been arrested.

'As soon as he heard this bloke was arrested over that little Cleo, he blew up, beat him black and blue,' the woman said.

'I tell you what, he (Kelly) got a real hiding... my son had to be taken out in shackles, and he (Kelly) was taken for treatment... he was in a bad way. He is a big bloke but he really copped it'.

A spokesman for the Western Australia Police Force said detectives would not be commenting on the woman's claims, but confirmed the man in custody had been treated in hospital for a range of injuries including some of self-harm.

A sign welcoming Cleo Smith home to Carnarvon, Western Australia, and thank the police for rescuing her 18 days after she was abducted

A pavement sign celebrating the rescuing of four-year-old Cleo Smith in Carnarvon, Western Australia

Kelly was loaded into an ambulance outside the police station yesterday morning and taken to hospital for treatment. A large white bandage was wrapped around his head.

WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch told Sydney's Radio 2GB the alleged kidnapper was returned to hospital on Thursday morning, but his injuries are not serious.

Cleo, four, was found by startled detectives in the early hours of Wednesday morning in a locked house in her hometown of Carnarvon, 18 days after she disappeared from a remote campsite while on holiday with her parents.
A woman who was jailed for 21 years for decapitating her mother and leaving her head on the front lawn has allegedly attacked two prison officers while behind bars.

Jessica Camilleri was found guilty of manslaughter and is being held at the Silverwater Correctional Centre in Western Sydney, after killing her mother Rita on July 19, 2019.

Court documents reveal Camilleri has been involved in two alleged assaults on correctional officers at the prison, one on August 14 and the other on October 10, The Daily Telegraph reported.

It's alleged she grabbed a handful of a female prison officer's hair on August 14 and yanked it, pulling hair from the officer's scalp. The injury required medical treatment.

Camilleri was segregated from other inmates as a result of the alleged attack.

Jessica Camilleri (pictured) is alleged to have attacked two correctional officers at Silverwater Women's Prison in August and October this year

Camilleri used seven kitchen knives in the attack (pictured, Camilleri's mother Rita), four of which broke due to the force of the attack

'On October 10 the inmate pulled the hair of another officer and NSW Police were notified. We are providing all available support to the assaulted officers,' a spokesperson for NSW Corrective Services said.

In April Camilleri faced court for assaulting another inmate after claiming she had been bullied and was being 'targeted' inside because of her manslaughter conviction.

'They single me out in prison because of the nature of my crime. No matter what I do, no matter where I go other prisoners will make my life a living hell,' she told the court.

The court heard she had walked behind another prisoner before she grabbed her hair and pulled it in an attempt to vault her out of her seat.

Court documents stated Camilleri, who said she suffers from bulimia, told police she believed the inmate was making fun of her eating disorder.

Camilleri approached the inmate in the recreation room and told her she was still hungry, according to the documents.

'Who should I ask for more food?' Camilleri said.

'I don't know who to ask, haven't you had enough food already?' the inmate said.

Camilleri was convicted of the assault but received no additional punishment.

Jessica Camilleri (pictured) is being held at the Silverwater Correctional Centre, in western Sydney, after killing her mother Rita on July 19, 2019

Jessica Camilleri took her mother's head outside their St Clair home and placed it on a footpath (pictured: Camilleri's mother Rita)

The 27-year-old used seven kitchen knives in the 2019 attack on her mother - four of which broke due to the force of the strikes - before taking her mother's head outside their St Clair home and placing it on the footpath.

Justice Helen Wilson sentenced Camilleri to 21 years in jail in March with a non-parole period of 16 years and two months.

In April Camilleri filed a notice of intention to appeal against the severity of her sentence to the NSW Supreme Court.

At the court appearance via video link in April, Camilleri told the court life in prison was 'hard' and that correctional officers 'can't protect you'.

'Sometimes, and I hate to say it in this courtroom, but other prisoners have been murdered by other prisoners in jail, that's how it is in jail,' she said.

Camilleri has since fronted court again after she was charged with assaulting an inmate at Silverwater Correctional Centre

She was found guilty of manslaughter and ordered to serve 21-years in jail where she is being monitored closely by prison officials (pictured, a crime scene was established following the incident in 2019)

During Camilleri's trial, following the attack on her mum, the court heard the defendant had an obsession with horror films, owning eight copies of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and five of Jeepers Creepers, which she watched 'over and over again'.

Two forensic psychiatrists had told the trial the frenzied knife attack was prompted by an intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder that features a fixation on horror films, though only one attributed the loss of control to the mixture of those conditions.

The other expert said an intermittent explosive disorder had a significant role to play.

Camilleri will face Burwood Local Court on November 10 in relation to the alleged attacks on the prison officers.
The Justice Department (DOJ) has filed suit against Texas, arguing its new voting law violates a provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that guarantees people can receive assistance at the voting booth.

The DOJ also argued that the law violates the Civil Rights Act because it requires rejecting mail ballots due to 'immaterial errors or omissions.'

The DOJ's suit says that these provisions will disenfranchise voters with limited English proficiency, voters with disabilities, voters in the military who are deployed and American citizens voting from abroad.

The court filing notes that the Voting Rights Act guarantees that voters who require assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may receive assistance by a person of the voter's choice.

It notes that the Civil Rights Act ensures that voters will not be deprived of the right to vote because of an error or omission on a paper or record that is not material to the voter's qualifications under State law to vote in an election.

The Texas law established new requirements, and possible criminal penalties, stipulating that those who assist voters at the polls must fill out new paperwork detailing their relationship to the voter and must under oath swear that they did not 'pressure or coerce' the voter into choosing them for assistance.

They must also pledge to limit their assistance to 'reading the ballot to the voter, directing the voter to read the ballot, marking the voter's ballot, or directing the voter to mark the ballot.'

The Texas bill also added new restrictions to voting by mail, where voters must include their driver's license number, election identification certificate or the final four digits of their Social Security number and an 'ink-on-paper' signature that can be checked against any previous signature on file with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Other provisions not mentioned in the DOJ lawsuit include a ban on unmanned ballot drop boxes and 24-hour and drive-thru voting, a standardization of Election Day voting hours from 6am to 9pm, a ban on unsolicited mail ballot applications and the empowerment of partisan poll watchers.

The Justice Department, led by AG Merrick Garland, has filed suit against Texas, arguing its new voting law violates a provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that guarantees people can receive assistance at the voting booth.

The Texas law established new requirements, and possible criminal penalties, stipulating that those who assist voters at the polls must fill out new paperwork and take an oath

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill that incited a national frenzy, after a dramatic standoff with state Democrats. When they fled Texas to deny Republicans quorum to pass the vote, Abbott threatened to have them arrested.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in June that he was doubling the size of the civil rights division in the DOJ to crack down on new voting restrictions in GOP-led states.

'There are many things open to debate in America, but the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them,' Garland said at the time.

Meanwhile, Republicans filibustered the John Lewis Voting Rights Act for the fifth time on Wednesday, stopping the bill from moving forward in the legislative process.

The legislation, named after the late Congressman and civil rights activist, would replace part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

The bill would also restore voters' ability to challenge laws, such as those related redistricting or voter ID requirements that could be seen as discriminatory.

This the second time President Biden's Justice Department is going to war with a state over voting rights - in June the DOJ filed suit against Georgia.

Garland said at the time that the complaint centered on the DOJ's claim that 'recent changes to Georgia's election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color, in violation of Section two of the Voting Rights Act.'
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has suffered an embarrassing social media slip-up after posting a photo of a popular NSW beach to promote tourism in her state.

Ms Palaszczuk has been slammed for uploading a photo of the idyllic Duranbah Beach to encourage Gold Coast residents to spend their new tourism vouchers.

The beach pictured in the graphic is located south of the Queensland border in Tweed Heads, a detail that some argued the premier should have been aware of.

The image was promoting the Play Money Reward Campaign, which gives a $100 voucher for accommodation and $50 towards retail, dining or experiences.

Ms Palaszczuk has been slammed for uploading a photo of the idyllic Duranbah Beach (pictured) to encourage Gold Coast residents to spend their new tourism vouchers

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured) has been slammed for posting a photo of a NSW beach to promote tourism in QLD despite employing a 30-person strong media team

A government spokesperson told the Courier Mail the images were 'posted in error'.

It comes after the publication revealed Ms Palaszczuk employs a 30-person strong media team with 18 full-time staff, none of whom flagged the slip-up.

The opposition came out in full-force to slam Ms Palaszczuk for the ultimate blunder, which had been quickly deleted from the leader's social media accounts.

Jarrod Bleijie, Manager of Opposition Business, criticised the premier by saying the wide-reaching social media post was deleted out of embarrassment.

'The Premier's 30 media spin doctors can't even find a picture of a Gold Coast beach for a Gold Coast incentive and then out of sheer embarrassment they delete it,' he said.

Currumbin MP Laura Gerber took the opportunity to slam the premier for not recognising the popular beach, known as 'D-bar' to those who live locally.

Currumbin MP Laura Gerber took the opportunity to slam the premier for not recognising the popular Duranbah Beach (pictured), known as 'D-bar' to those who live locally

The embarrassing image was posted as part of a tourism campaign designed to encourage residents to spend big in their own backyard (pictured, Queensland's Gold Coast)

'If the Premier actually bothered to engage with border communities, she'd realise this is a New South Wales beach,' she said.

The vouchers are part of the state government's $1million initiative to boost tourism operators and over 150 businesses in Covid-weary border zone communities.

The campaign encourages residents to spend big in their own backyard by offering $50 back when $100 is spent at a local participating business or $100 back when $200 or more is spent on accommodation.

Those from other states wanting to visit the Sunshine State are still required to do 14 days quarantine until 90 per cent of Queenslanders are fully vaccinated.

NSW, Act and Victoria have abandoned quarantine periods for the fully vaccinated.

The blunder comes as Queensland Health left social media users in stitches after posting a public health message that encouraged residents to masturbate (pictured)

The blunder comes as Queensland Health left social media users in stitches after posting a public health message that encouraged residents to masturbate.

The campaign 'Give Yourself a Hand' promoted the physical and mental health benefits of masturbation while encouraging more healthy conversations.

The announcement took bemused social media users by surprise as Queensland Health departed from its usual tone of Covid-19 messaging.

'Wow good morning from Qld health!' wrote one person.

'Nice topic for this mornings breakfast,' commented another.

'Who's hacked the Qld health website,' added a third.
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Two people believed to be drug dealers have reportedly died following a shooting at a five-star hotel in Cancun that is popular with American tourists.

The shooting broke out around 3pm Thursday when men allegedly carrying machine guns fired shots on the beach area of the Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun resort in Mexico, where an LGBTQ event was reportedly taking place.

Guests were told to seek shelter in their hotel rooms and barricade the doors, according to Mike Sington, a Twitter user whose biography says he is an executive at NBC Universal.

Another vacationer, speaking to CNN anonymously, said guests 'manned the entrances to the basement and were given metal sticks, even a pedestal bathroom sink, to defend ourselves.'

Police said the shooting involved conflict between members of rival drug dealer groups. Although two alleged drug dealers were killed in the incident, authorities said 'there are no seriously injured or kidnapped tourists.'

Guests at the Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun say they were instructed by staff to hide after men allegedly carrying machine guns fired shots on the resort's beach area

Police said the shooting involved conflict between members of hostile groups of drug dealers

Mexican soldiers walk outside the Hyatt Ziva Riviera hotel after shots were allegedly fired at the resort Thursday afternoon

Witnesses say loud gunshots were fired on the beach, causing panicked vacationers to run into the resort.

'Thought glass broke at a restaurant, then firework sounds, then everyone from the beach [came] running. Got into a room and stayed,' hotel guest Brian Minish Malinconico told The Daily Beast.

Another guest, Vincente Garcia, who claimed to be 'very close to the gunshots' said they were 'quick shots which made me think it was like a machine gun'.

'He was on the beach and there was someone with a machine gun that started firing,' echoed Andrew Krop, whose husband Eric is at the resort.

One vacationer added: 'I was by the pool when multiple successive gunshots occurred. It went on for a little while and everyone dove for cover.'

Several people said on Twitter that guests were told by staff to hide at the Hyatt Ziva Cancun hotel because of an active shooter.

Some guests sought shelter in their rooms, while others said they were confined to the lobby or other common spaces.

Mike Sington, a Twitter user whose biography says he is an executive at NBC Universal, says guests were instructed to hide in their rooms and barricade the doors

Guests were hiding in the dark at the hotel in Cancun following the reported shooting

Hotel staff are seen telling guests that the shooter 'has been apprehended'

The U.S. embassy in Mexico said on Thursday consulate officials were looking into social media reports of shots being fired at the hotel.

A U.S. embassy media representative told Reuters by email that the U.S. consulate in Merida in the Yucatan was trying to confirm the reports.

Meanwhile, a Hyatt spokesperson issued a statement to DailyMail.com confirming that a situation occurred at the resort: 'The safety and wellbeing of guests and colleagues is always a top priority. Local authorities have confirmed that the hotel may resume normal operations at Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun.

'As soon as the situation occurred, the hotel team immediately engaged local authorities who thoroughly investigated the situation.

'The hotel team took steps in an effort to ensure the safety of guests and colleagues, and further questions may be directed to local authorities.'

All guests and employees told to duck, and were all taken to hiding places at Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun Resort. Active shooter? Terrorist or kidnapping threat? Theyre not telling us anything. pic.twitter.com/Hf7SRzRJIZ  Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 4, 2021

Sington later tweeted that guests were taken out of hiding and brought to the hotel lobby, where they cried and hugged each other

Sington told Reuters by direct message that he was hiding with other guests in a dark area of the hotel and that staff had not explained what was happening.

Other guests told him they heard gunshots and that a gunman had been on the beach, he said.

'In hiding in the dark now. Was told active shooter on property. Paramedics are here,' Sington said.

He later tweeted that guests were taken out of hiding and brought to the hotel lobby, where they cried and hugged each other.

Hotel staff then told guests a shooter had been apprehended.

Hotel workers are seen at the entrance to a hotel after two suspected drug gang members were shot dead in a beachfront clash between rival groups
Australia has scraped over the line to remain in the top ten best countries in the world as Germany took out the top spot for the fifth year running and the UK fell three places.

Australia dropped one spot to tenth in the 2021 'Nation Brands Index' rankings, conducted by British political scientist Simon Anholt and pollster Ipsos.

The Anholt Ipsos Nation Brands Index is a global nation brand survey that measures how 60 nations are perceived on six different scales each year.

Australia has scraped into the top ten list of 'the best countries in the world', falling one place to tenth in the 2021 'Nation Brands Index' rankings (Pictured: Bondi Icebergs in Sydney)

The survey examines the areas of the country's exports, governance, culture, people, tourism, immigration and investment, which gives an overall indication of a nation's reputation.

Despite the lower ranking, Australia managed to improve on its 2020 score by just under three points, achieving 68.55 per cent.

The UK also fell from second to fifth in the rankings due to a decline in its global reputation on people and governance - notably on the perceptions of the welcoming nature of its people and protecting the environment.

Germany took out the top spot in 2021 for the fifth year in a row in the survey conducted by pollster Ipsos (Pictured: Munich, Germany)

Meanwhile, the US rose to eighth after being tenth last year following the end of Donald Trump's presidency.

Germany was followed by Canada, Japan, Italy and the UK in the 'nation brands' rankings.

Scroll down to read full rankings

Pictured: The comparison of 2020 and 2021 rankings of the top ten nations

Germany's reputation has benefited massively by people feeling positive about German products and the government's work to fight poverty (Pictured: Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel)

Germany retained its first place position for the fifth time in a row and seventh time overall.

Their score improved to 71.1 per cent in this year's results, compared to 69.1 per cent in 2020.

Germany's reputation has benefited massively by people feeling positive about German products and the government's work to fight poverty.

The country also earned points for its stellar reputation in sports, despite the country ranking ninth in the medal table at this year's Tokyo Olympics.

Canada also moved up to second place this year, after coming third place in 2020.

The country received high points for its policies on immigration and governance, while people also commended Canada for its culture and friendliness.

The U.S was able to claw back two spots this year and was ranked eighth.

In 2020, the country had one of 'the most notable declines' after it dropped to 10th from sixth in 2019.

Ipsos also found that people's desire to visit countries around the world - if money was no object - has grown over time

Ipsos said the fall was triggered by sharp decreases on the indices on Governance, tourism, immigration and investment.

But now, in 2021, Ipsos said 'despite the Covid-19 still being prevalent in the US, a wide political divide in society, and persistent vaccine hesitancy,' the country's reputation has begun to improve.

For other countries not ranked in the top ten, China rose four spots to 31st while India fell by six to 40th.

Ipsos also found that people's desire to visit countries around the world - if money was no object - has grown over time.

While the levels declined in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, levels of desire to visit foreign countries increased to its highest point in 2021.
Teaching primary pupils that humans harm the planet can be our key weapon in the fight against climate change, the Education Secretary claimed yesterday.

Nadhim Zahawi is to urge schools to equip children as young as five with the skills and knowledge to build a sustainable future.

Teachers will also be encouraged to install bird boxes and other wildlife features on school grounds to boost biodiversity.

For the first time, primary schools will be told to include climate change in the science curriculum. Secondary schools will be shown how to address the topic in other subjects, such as English.

The plans were welcomed by the UN last night  although one critic raised fears that fuelling panic among pupils could damage their mental health.

Britain's Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi is to urge schools to equip children as young as five with the skills and knowledge to build a sustainable future (Zahawi pictured October 27, 2021)

For the first time, primary schools will be told to include climate change in the science curriculum. Secondary schools will be shown how to address the topic in other subjects, such as English (stock image)

The Department for Education said the green policy, to be formally announced by Mr Zahawi today at the Cop26 summit, will put climate change at the heart of education.

Although teaching the new content will be voluntary, schools will be told it is best practice to take it on board.

Climate change is already on secondary schools statutory national curriculum in science, citizenship and geography.

But the DfE now wants it covered in other subjects too, and will issue lesson plans showing teachers how to do so.

In primary schools there is currently no specific reference to climate change in the national curriculum.

In future, officials want simple references to it during science lessons. This could include telling children that humans can harm the environment when examining the natural world.

The DfE said its new, voluntary model science curriculum for primaries will be issued by 2023. It will demonstrate how to teach children about nature and their impact on the world around them.

Mr Zahawi said of the plans: Empowering teachers in every school to deliver world-leading climate change education will not only raise awareness and understanding of the problem, but also equips young people with the skills and knowledge to build a sustainable future.

Cop26 has further amplified the UKs commitments to become a world leader in sustainability across the education system.

Scarlett Westbrook, 17, (L) Campaigns Manager of Teach the Future and Nadia Whittome, the youngest sitting MP, call for climate education for young people at Westminster (October 27, 2021)

He will also announce a new Climate Award, similar to the popular Duke of Edinburgh scheme, with pupils rewarded for working on local environment projects or educating others.

In addition, plans to replace gas boilers with green energy pods which do not cause any carbon emissions will be trialled in schools.

If successful, they could be rolled out to other public sector buildings, too.

UNESCOs Stefania Giannini said yesterday that she welcomed Mr Zahawis speech. But former government education adviser Chris McGovern said of the new lessons: Teachers need to avoid causing panic and over- reaction. We already have a mental health epidemic in schools.

It would be better to teach children how humanity has overcome problems in the past, such as how the agriculture and industrial revolutions prevented the Malthusian prediction of mass starvation.
BBC News presenter Huw Edwards is being spoken to by bosses after he wrote that he felt uneasy about a museum removing a portrait of an Army general due to his links to slavery.

A picture of Sir Thomas Picton was taken down this week after more than 100 years on display at the National Museum Wales.

The museum said the image  which labelled the slave owner a hero  was removed to re-frame his legacy.

BBC News presenter Huw Edwards (pictured) is being spoken to by bosses after he wrote that he felt uneasy about a museum removing a portrait of an Army general due to his links to slavery

But in response to the move, the BBCs News at Ten host, who last year was paid up to 429,999, wrote on Twitter: As a journalist I feel uneasy about this element of censoring history.

'Should not Picton remain on display as a reminder to Wales of an aspect of its past  no matter how disgraceful?

His comments come as the BBC clamps down on impartiality, including in the way its news staff express their views on social media.

It emerged yesterday that the BBC is talking to Edwards about his post in relation to its guidelines around impartiality.

A spokesman said: We are discussing this with Huw.

BBC rules say that staff whose work requires them to be impartial should not express a personal opinion on matters of public policy, politics, or controversial subjects.

Edwards, 60, took down a social media post featuring a Welsh flag in it in March, after he appeared to mock a row caused when BBC Breakfast presenters Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty were accused of poking fun at then housing secretary Robert Jenrick for being interviewed in front of a large Union Jack.

The picture of Picton has now been put in storage while two artists with Trinidadian roots have been asked to provide greater context on his life.

A picture of Sir Thomas Picton (above) was taken down this week after more than 100 years on display at the National Museum Wales

The museum is calling the project Reframing Picton. As governor of Trinidad, Picton abused slaves he owned and was considered a tyrant by 19th century standards.

The portrait reflected his status as the highest-ranking officer to be killed at the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815.

Last week, after the publication of the Serota review  set up to examine BBC editorial processes in the wake of the Martin Bashir scandal over his Princess Diana interview  the corporation said it would sack stars who breached impartiality standards.
Two Sydney homes have been raided by police as the manhunt for alleged cocaine kingpin Mostafa Baluch continues.

The fugitive from Sydney's northern beaches remains on the run, 11 days after he broke off his ankle monitor on October 25 while on strict bail conditions facing international drug importation offences.

Police raided two homes in Potts Hill and Yagoona in the city's south-west on Thursday night as part of national and international efforts to find Baluch.

Officers seized more than $250,000 cash, 200 grams of cocaine, 485 grams of an unknown substance, mobile phones and an electronic money counter.

Police believe Mostafa Baluch (pictured) remains in hiding in NSW as they ramp up efforts to track him down

Investigators believe the properties were allegedly used for a criminal syndicate.

Police believe Baluch, 33, is still in NSW as the manhunt to track him down ramps up.

'We discovered not our crook, but a whole lot of money,' Detective Superintendent Rob Critchlow told 2GB on Friday.

'[Mr Baluch's] departure has made us really focus on this group and a lot of people are going to get locked up as a result of our investigations.'

He revealed the manhunt is going 'very well' and that police believe they're 'pretty close behind' the fugitive.

'We're putting a lot of pressure on people who know him, and it's going very, very well,' he said.

'He is very focused on leaving the jurisdiction...I can tell you for certain he is seeking assistance from those who will fly him out of NSW and out of the country,' he said.

Police have warned the public not to approach Baluch and to call triple-0 if they have information about his whereabouts.

Baluch is described as Mediterranean/Middle Eastern appearance, about 180 centimetres tall, of a muscular build, with black hair, brown eyes and unshaven.

Baluch pictured outside his home in Mona Vale on October 25, hours before the international drug lord disappeared - with authorities fearing he fled Sydney on a plane

Police allege Baluch was the sole financier of a 900kg shipment of cocaine from Ecuador with an estimated street value of at least $AUD270million.

Baluch now faces life in prison accused of masterminding a drug importation syndicate the likes of which NSW Police has 'never seen before'.

The 33-year-old was granted bail despite opposition from police that he posed too great a risk to the community and vanished three days later on October 25.

His strict bail conditions included not leaving his Bayview home except to report to Mona Vale police station and offering the property, worth an estimated $4million, as surety.

Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told a budget estimates hearing last week that the search for the 33-year-old fugitive will cost 'multiple millions of dollars'.

The last sighting of Baluch shows CCTV footage of him flying down Pittwater Road near Bayview in his black Range Rover at around 10:30pm that evening

The NSW government should attempt to recover that from the $4 million surety put up for Baluch to receive bail, the state's top cop said.

Mr Fuller said Baluch had 'a lot to lose by staying in custody'.

His whereabouts are still unknown but police have received intelligence he flew out of Bankstown Airport on a private flight the night he cut off his ankle monitor.

Mr Fuller dismissed claims Baluch may have been kidnapped as 'absolute rubbish'.

Police Minister David Elliott criticised the decision to grant Baluch bail but rejected the characterisation he 'slammed' the presiding magistrate.

Mr Elliott said he was 'disappointed' the court didn't heed police concerns about Baluch being a flight risk 'and as a result he's no longer in custody'.
Radio personality Lauren Phillips has apologised on air to the mother of a murdered child she had mocked during a broadcast.

Aspiring dancer Rachel Barber was just 15 when Caroline Reed Robertson strangled her to death with a telephone cord in a plot to steal her identity in 1999.

Last week, Phillips disgusted the family and friends of the murdered dancer when she laughed on Melbournes KIIS 101.1 while listening to a podcast describing her brutal murder.

Rachel Barber, a 15-year-old dance student, was murdered by strangulation in Melbourne in 1999

Lauren Phillips used the horrific murder of a Melbourne child as part of an on-air chat

Caroline Reed Robertson was 19 years old when she murdered Rachel Barber, pictured here after her arrest

'Am I a psychopath?' Phillips asked during the conversation with co-host Jason 'Jase' Hawkins, outraging Elizabeth Barber, her friends and family.

Phillips told listeners on Wednesday she had been unaware the audio producers played during her conversation had been taken from the the very real life CASEFILE series of true crime podcasts.

The chat saw Phillips describe how she had used the podcast discussing Rachel's tragic murder to cheer herself up.

Phillips cackled with laughter in the segment, which was later posted on the radio station's own social media platforms.

The 34-year old explained she had just had an argument with her boyfriend when she decided to listen to the podcast.

On Wednesday, Phillips claimed she had become aware over the weekend that the snippet she had laughed at had been ripped from a TikTok video.

Choking back tears, Phillips said she had never intended to use audio of a real life crime to go with her on-air chat.

'All of us here on the show were devastated when we realised what we had done. The show takes full responsibility and our background checks on the source of audio should have been more thorough,' Phillips said.

Hawkins too apologised for his limited role in the conversation and thanked Rachel's mum for taking their calls to apologise in person.

'She didn't have to do that and we both had chats with her and yeah we appreciate her taking the call,' he said.

Lauren Phillips upset the friends and family of murder victim Rachel Barber with an insensitive segment on Melbourne radio

Rachel Barber's murder shocked all of Melbourne in 1999. The beloved child was only 15 when she was cruelly murdered.

Rachel had been a talented dancer in her short life. Her cruel death still haunts Melburnians

Phillips added that the incident had impacted deeply on the entire production crew.

'We really, from the bottom of our hearts, are very sorry that that audio was used, but we are deeply sorry and we will do everything in our power to ensure nothing like that ever happens again on our show,' she said.

Daily Mail Australia revealed on Monday the shocking impact of Phillips' cruel discussion on the friends and family of Rachel Barber.

The story saw Phillips viciously trolled online, with some going so far as to make threats against her life.

On Thursday, Mrs Barber said she had accepted Phillips and Hawkins' apologies and thanked them for doing it again on-air.

She expressed concern for Phillips' welfare amid the brutal fallout from the disrespectful on-air conversation with her co-host.

'It was a tough lesson for Lauren in particular, but I do hope it will make her more considerate. We did feel that the vitriol in the comments was a bit overboard,' Mrs Barber told Daily Mail Australia.

'It was also tough reading some of the comments because people can also be very cruel. We all make mistakes. What is important is that we learn from them and become better people for it.'

Rachel Barber with her parents Elizabeth and Michael just before she was killed

Elizabeth Barber has accepted an apology from a pair of radio presenters who had laughed about the murder of her precious daughter Rachel (pictured)

The Barber family stuck thousands of posters up around Melbourne in the hope of finding their daughter alive

Lauren Phillips had a good laugh while listening to a podcast describe how Rachel Barber was killed

The backlash against Phillips whipped into high gear when Mrs Barber revealed to Daily Mail Australia she had attempted to contact the radio identity, but was not allowed.

Instead, the show's executive producer claimed she had given the all-clear for the discussion because they all believed the clearly labelled true crime podcast had been fictional.

'I said Lauren should apologise on air out of respect, so that maybe another occurrence of a similar situation does not arise again,' Ms Barber said at the time.

It is understood the radio station was bombarded with complaints, but the social media posts promoting the conversation were only pulled down on Monday after being contacted directly by Ms Barber.

In 2000, Reed Robertson, then 19, was jailed for 20 years after pleading guilty to the murder of Rachel, with a non-parole period of 14 and a half years.

She would be released from jail in 2015 with the forgiveness of Ms Barber's parents.

It was a case so twisted that it inspired a star-studded 2009 Australian film, 'I Am You' (also known as 'In Her Skin'), starring Guy Pearce, Miranda Otto, Sam Neill and Rebecca Gibney.

The murder of Rachel Barber will never be forgotten in Melbourne.

Rachel Barber and her parents before she was murdered

Rachel Barber's life was just about to begin when it was all ended in the most horrific of ways

Robertson was the victim's former babysitter, a trusted family friend and neighbour, who lured the teen to her death by manipulating her trust.

No one realised that she was plotting to kill her beautiful neighbour and assume her identity for a new start.

The Supreme Court heard that Reed Robertson had convinced herself that after killing Rachel she could in some way assume her identity.

As Rachel's devastated family desperately searched for their daughter, Reed Robertson wrapped the body in two rugs and took a taxi to her father's Kilmore farm, telling the driver she was moving a statue.

Rachel's body was buried in a shallow hole, bizarrely positioned next to the grave of the murderer's pet.

Not long after, Reed Robertson was arrested by police. She confessed to the murder and 12 days later Rachel's body was found - the cable used to kill her still tightened around her neck.

Lauren Phillips has made an on-air apology over an awful conversation she had on Melbourne radio last week

Lauren Phillips and co-host Jason 'Jase' Hawkins have apologised to Rachel Barber's mum
Global carbon pollution is set to bounce back in 2021 to almost its pre-pandemic levels, scientists have warned as the Cop26 climate talks continue.

Carbon emissions from fossil fuels fell 5.4 per cent in 2020 from a record high the previous year due to widespread Covid-19 lockdowns.

But they are expected to rise again by 4.9 per cent to 36.4 billion tonnes this year, or about 0.8 per cent below 2019 levels, the annual Global Carbon Budget analysis reveals.

Researchers analysing the figures expressed surprise that carbon emissions had rebounded so quickly, especially as parts of the global economy have not fully recovered.

The possibility of limiting temperature rises to 2.7F (1.5C)  beyond which the worst impacts of climate-related extreme weather, rising seas, and damage to crops and wildlife will be felt  was still alive, but required action now, they said.

Global carbon pollution is set to bounce back in 2021 to almost its pre-pandemic levels, scientists have warned as the Cop26 climate talks continue

The world has only 11 years left before it has used up its whole carbon 'budget' The figures show that at current levels of emissions, the world has only 11 years left before it has used up the whole 'budget' for the amount of carbon humans can pump into the atmosphere and still stay within the 2.7F (1.5C) limit. And they show that the world has to cut carbon dioxide emissions by around 1.4 billion tonnes a year  compared with the 1.9 billion-tonne drop in pollution caused by the pandemic. Advertisement

Emissions from coal and gas are set to rise to above-2019 levels in 2021, but pollution from oil remains below its pre-pandemic levels, according to the team, which includes researchers from the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia (UEA), the CICERO Centre for International Climate Research and Stanford University.

The rapid rise could be a temporary 'sugar hit' from stimulus packages that focused on industry, such as in China where emissions continued to rise during 2020, and drove an increased use of coal.

But a further rise in emissions in 2022 to new highs cannot be ruled out if road transport and aviation return to pre-pandemic levels and coal use does not drop back again after the 'over-correction' of pandemic stimulus, they said.

Professor Corinne Le Quere, from UEA, said the findings were a 'reality check' on the need for rapid action by countries to deliver bigger greenhouse gas emissions cuts to keep the globally agreed 2.7F (1.5C) warming limit within reach.

The figures show that at current levels of emissions, the world has only 11 years left before it has used up the whole 'budget' for the amount of carbon humans can pump into the atmosphere and still stay within the 2.7F (1.5C) limit.

And they show that the world has to cut carbon dioxide emissions by around 1.4 billion tonnes a year  compared with the 1.9 billion-tonne drop in pollution caused by the pandemic.

Prof Le Quere said the fall in emissions during the pandemic was not a structural shift, saying 'it is the difference between parking your car for a year and switching to an electric vehicle', and was never going to last.

While the latest figures were not fantastic, she said the 2.7F (1.5C) goal 'is still alive'.

The figures show that at current levels of emissions, the world has only 11 years left before it has used up the whole 'budget' for the amount of carbon humans can pump into the atmosphere and still stay within the 2.7F (1.5C) limit

'This decrease every year of 1.4 billion tonnes is a decrease that is very large indeed but it is feasible with concerted action.'

She urged decision-makers and everyone focused on climate change not to be discouraged by the findings, but to tackle the issues one by one, first through commitments and then planning for the immediate implementation after that.

She added: 'We do not yet see the full effect of the investments that were made during the pandemic and more importantly the climate policy and decisions that will be taken here in Glasgow, which could be a game-changer in the trajectory of the emissions in the next few years.'

The level of CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere, causing climate change. Emissions from deforestation and other land-use change remain high, partly offset by removals from regrowth of forest and soil recovery

Dr Glen Peters, from CICERO, added that there was a lot of ambition discussed at UN climate conferences, such as 2050 or 2030 targets.

'But the big question is what are governments going to do today and next year to ensure emissions don't rise and will go down?

'A key message is focus a little bit less on 2030 and really bring home what you are implementing today and changing today that will avoid emissions going up and making them peak in 2022.'

The figures for some of the biggest emitters show that China's emissions are projected to rise four per cent compared with 2020, up 5.5 per cent on 2019 levels, to contribute 11.1 billion tonnes or 31 per cent of global carbon emissions.

The US will see emissions rise by an estimated 7.6 per cent this year compared with 2020, but will still be 3.7 per cent below 2019 levels, while the EU will see emissions rise 7.6 per cent compared with 2020, but will still be 4.1 per cent below 2019.

The rest of the world as a whole still has carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels that are below 2019 levels, the analysis finds.

Over the past decade, annual global emissions overall from land use change were 4.1 billion tonnes, with the amount being taken out of the atmosphere by forests and soils growing and emissions from deforestation and other issues remaining relatively stable.

This suggests a recent decline in overall emissions from changes to land use, though the figures are highly uncertain, the researchers said.
Capital city of the Mongolian Empire, Karakorum, 'much larger than previously thought,' according to archaeologists who have mapped the ancient metropolis for the first time.

Founded by Genghis Khan's son, Ogodei, in the 13th century CE, the scope of the city has been revealed thanks to experts from the University of Bonn in Germany.

They were able to map the road layouts, neighbourhoods and details of the ancient city without digging up the surrounding landscape thanks to advanced geophysics.

The work has given historians a deeper insight into what happened to the capital city of the largest contiguous empire, which had fallen into ruin by the 15th century CE.

They found the remains of walls and gates mentioned int he historic record, as well as a city beyond the walls extended out as far as 1.8 miles along approaching roads.

Inside the walls the city spanned an area half a square mile, with palaces, regions of the city for industrial and residential purposes, as well as older areas.

However, the team ultimately found the biggest single feature of Karakorum was nothing, with 40 per cent of the area within the walls left empty.

The vehicle-drawn SQUID measurement system at work in front of the Buddhist monastery of Erdene Zuu, founded in 1586 and probably erected on top of the former palace area of Karakorum, according to the researchers

Founded by Genghis Khan's son, Ogodei, in the 13th century CE, the scope of the city has been revealed thanks to experts from the University of Bonn in Germany

The work has given historians a deeper insight into what happened to the capital city of the largest contiguous empire, which had fallen into ruin by the 15th century CE

KARAKORUM: A CAPITAL CITY WITH A DIFFERENCE Karakorum, the capital city of the Mongol Empire in the 13th, wasn't like other cities of the time. Unlike European cities, its people spread out well beyond the walls, with no clear end to the settlement. There was also very little permanent residency on the part of the Mongol people or the empire elites. They had residence in the city, but would rarely visit, leaving the forced labourers and craftspeople as the only permanent residents. Founded between 1235 and 1260, it fell into ruins by the 15th century CE. Its ruins lie in the northwestern corner of the Ovorkhangai Province of Mongolia, near today's Kharkhorin. It was founded by Ogodei, son and successor of Chinggis, who is more commonly known as Genghis Khan. Under Ogedei and his successors, Karakorum became a major site for world politics. Mongke Khan had the palace enlarged, and the great stupa temple completed. When Kublai Khan claimed the throne of the Mongol Empire in 1260 he relocated his capital to Shangdu, and later to Khanbaliq - today's Beijing. This reduced Karakorum to a mere administrative centre of a provincial backwater of the Yuan dynasty. Advertisement

Professor Jan Bemmann, study lead, found that the Mongolian city, first rediscovered in 1889 but rarely studied since, stretched far beyond its walls.

'We arrive at a profound re-evaluation of this important city, which underlines its eminent place in Mongolian and Eurasian history,' said Professor Bemmann.

It was founded by Ogodei, son and successor of Chinggis, who is more commonly known as Genghis Khan, as a permanent home for the massive empire.

It was built up on the site of one of the hoarding empire's camps in the 13th century CE, with most of its construction completed under the reign of Mongke Khan.

Franciscan friar William of Rubruck, who was an envoy of King Louis IX of France and visited the city in the 13th century, described it as an 'enclosed city with four gates' .

He wrote that it was thriving and home to Chinese artisans, Muslim merchants and captives from all over the empire.

For both Ogodei and Mongke, it was an important place, according to historians.

However, it had fallen into dereliction by the 15th century, just 200 years after it was founded, due to the Mongolian Empire fracturing into separate entities.

While the city was never forgotten, and lived on in the history books, its exact location was unknown until an expedition in 1889 found it again.

'Limited excavations at prime spots of the city and earlier maps revealed insights into the core of the walled city area, said Prof Bemmann.

He said there is knowledge of the craftsmen quarter in the middle of the city, of a Buddhist temple and of the location of the palace.

'However, we do only poorly understand the inner layout and the extent of the city beyond the actual walled area as well as the social organisation of the city's population,' the researcher explained.

To fill in the gaps they surveyed an 1,149 acre area of land over 52 days using a piece of equipment known as 'SQUID' (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device).

They found the remains of walls and gates mentioned int he historic record, as well as a city beyond the walls extended out as far as 1.8 miles along approaching roads

They were able to map the road layouts, neighbourhoods and details of the ancient city without digging up the surrounding landscape thanks to advanced geophysics

However, the team ultimately found the biggest single feature of Karakorum was nothing, with 40 per cent of the area within the walls left empty

This measures the topography of the surface, but also the magnetic field beneath the surface, as different materials have different magnetic properties.

They combined the 'SQUID' data with field surveys, aerial photography and an analysis of the historic records to build a map of Karakorum.

'The most exciting facet of our work for me was to see the progress of data acquisition during the field season,' said Prof Bemmann.

'It was astonishing to witness the growing extent of the map day by day and with that the digital reconstruction of Karakorum.

Professor Jan Bemmann, study lead, found that the Mongolian city, first rediscovered in 1889 but rarely studied since, stretched far beyond its walls

Preliminary reconstruction of the road system within and leading to Karakorum, based on the magnetic and topographic mapping (graphic by J. Bemmann and S. Reichert).

Climate change  NOT Genghis Khan  was to blame for wiping out Central Asia's medieval river civilisations 700 years ago Climate change  not Genghis Khan  was to blame for wiping out Central Asia's medieval river civilisations 700 years ago, a new study claims. UK researchers investigated the river channels around the Aral Sea in Central Asia, which was historically a vast body of water but is now a fraction of its former size. Hundreds of years ago, the Aral Sea and its major rivers were the centre of advanced river civilisations that used floodwater irrigation to farm. The region's decline is often attributed to the devastating invasion by the Mongol Empire in the early 13th century, led by the ruthless and legendary Khan. However, the new research into the long-term river dynamics and ancient irrigation networks shows that a changing climate and dryer conditions was the real cause. The experts reconstructed the effects of climate change on floodwater farming in the region, partly using radiometric dating of irrigation canals. They found decreasing river flow  caused by drier conditions  was 'equally if not more' important for the abandonment of these previously flourishing civilisations. Genghis Khan, the brutal founder of the Mongol Empire, created a military state that invaded its neighbours and extended across Asia, causing the deaths of roughly 40 million people in the process. Advertisement

With every day, with every new piece of the city added to the map, our understanding of the city grew alongside.'

They mapped city walls, revealing three of the four main gates mentioned by William of Rubruck in his 13th century discourse, but also looked beyond the walls.

'In the thirteenth century CE, based on his experience of medieval western European cities, Rubruck had no doubt that the ramparts surrounded the entire city of Karakorum,' the researchers wrote in the paper, published in Antiquity.

This perspective informed later historians and archaeologists alike, painting a picture of a city within its walls that lasted generations.

'The combination of large-scale and high resolution surveys now undertaken reveals that the city had no clear limits, with built areas becoming less dense with distance from its centre,' the authors explained.

Inside the walls, the city spanned about half a square mile, with neighbourhoods of different building designs, hinting at distinct functions or inhabitants in various parts of the city, with no overall coherent vision.

In the middle of the city there were denser deposits seen within the record, which suggests some parts were occupied longer, building out from the middle.

Despite all the building, it was a mainly empty city, with about 40 per cent of the area within the walls left empty, reflecting the mainly nomadic origins of its inhabitants, with many remaining nomadic even after the city was built.

As such they would not have needed to visit the city much, if at all, so would not need to build permanent residences, the researchers explained.

Even Ogodei and Mongke, who founded and built the city, would have only spent part of the year there  although they did build palaces, and powerful members of Mongolian society joined them in constructing permanent dwellings in the city.

The labourers and craftspeople, needed to sustain the city, may have been its only permanent residents, and most would have been permanently relocated or taken as prisoners of war - adding to the alien nature of the city, the team explained.

It was founded by Ogodei, son and successor of Chinggis, who is more commonly known as Genghis Khan, as a permanent home for the massive empire

'The peculiarity of these cities lies in the fact that they were 'implanted' by the ruler into a landscape without fixed architecture, and that the permanent inhabitants were brought from abroad,' they wrote in their paper.

'Hence, these cities remained foreign entities, the continued existence of which was unimportant for the pastoral nomads, as they were not dependent on them.'

Professor Bemmann says research into Karakorum isn't just about shedding light on a capital city, but on a different type of city to those found in Europe.

He says it was created by the ruling classes, but detached from them and wider Mongolian society, used for visits, rather than occupation.

The findings have been published in the journal Antiquity.
A creepy species of parasitic fungus turns flies into 'zombie' necrophiles by emitting a powerful chemical aphrodisiac, a new study shows.

Researchers in Denmark have found the fungus species, Entomophthora muscae, releases a potent mix of fungal compounds once it's fatally infected a female housefly.

Healthy male houseflies respond to the intriguing mix of chemical compounds by mating with the dead zombie female, ensuring the fungus' spread.

After E. muscae infects houseflies, it penetrates their skin, grows spores throughout their body, digests their guts and kills them in five to seven days.

A fly killed by the killed by Entomophthora muscae fungus, which ascend to a high point and spread their wings to spew spores from their abdomen

HOW DOES E. MUSCAE USE HOUSEFLIES? Entomophthora muscae infect houseflies, penetrating their skin. It grows throughout the flies' bodies, digesting their guts and killing them in fiveseven days. The fungi can even hijack the insects' brains  forcing them to land on a surface and crawl upwards to give the parasite a better shot at spreading. On the fly corpse, the fungi grows an array of tiny spore cannons to infect other flies that come nearby. Advertisement

The fungus infects both male and female houseflies, but the new study, led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, focused on the effect of female infection to attract male flies.

The scientists gave male flies the option to mate with infected and non-infected dead females.

'Healthy males are attracted to fungus-killed cadavers [dead bodies] and engage in courtship and mating attempts, which significantly increase infection of new host individuals and thereby ensures transmission of the fungal pathogen,' the authors say.

'Infection with E. muscae induces changes in the volatile chemistry that attract house flies by both altering the levels of cuticular fly hydrocarbons and by producing several unusual volatile compounds.'

The 'unusual volatile compounds' include a class of chemicals called sesquiterpenes, not previously associated with house flies.

Sesquiterpenes have already been found to be attractive in several other insects, the researchers report, including the Asian honey bee and bumblebees.

Previous studies have already detailed E. muscae's ruthless process of infection. Its genus name, Entomophthora translates to 'destroyer of insects'  and it's no surprise why.

Once infected, spores called conidia are produced from the fly  a process called sporulation.

E. muscae causes flies to ascend to a high point and spread their wings like a marionette on a string, to eventually spew the spores from their swollen abdomen.

The fungus invades the fruit fly's nervous system and forces it to embark on the fatal climb, known as 'summit disease', before devouring the brain and muscles.

Entomophthora muscae turns its victim into a zombie. Once infected, E. muscae causes flies to ascend to a high point and spread their wings like a marionette on a string, to spew spores from their swollen abdomen

When the fly is dead, the fungi grows an array of micro-sized stalks on the corpse, each one a pressurised cannon of liquid with a spore that can be ejected outwards.

Unfortunate male flies are attracted to 'zombie' female fly corpses  and when they accidentally trigger the cannons, they end up coated in a spray of infectious spores.

This ensures that the fungal spores are dispersed as widely as possible so the gruesome process happens again on another fly.

Overall, the E. muscae infection process itself is not different between male and female houseflies.

Now, the researchers show that it's not only the altered size and appearance of the dead fly that attracts unsuspecting males, but the potent compounds, which act as something of a love potion.

In a lab setting, the researchers offered male flies the choice between mating with 'early killed' dead females (equivalent to an early sporulation stage) and 'late killed' dead females (equivalent to a late sporulation stage).

They found a significant increase in mating attempts when the dead female was in a late stage of sporulation  a crafty trick to maximise chances of further infection.

On the fly corpse, the fungi grows an array of tiny spore cannons to infect other flies that come nearby

'Close physical contact in late stage of infection increases the chance of fungal transmission because there are more infectious conidia compared to the early stage where the conidiophores are just maturing,' the team explain.

Results also showed that 73 per cent of male flies had become infected after exposure to the late killed flies, compared to 15 per cent of males exposed to early killed flies.

Genome analysis also showed that late killed had a higher expression of several key enzymes known to trigger the production of various compounds including 'long-chained alcohols and esters'.

After infecting males as well, researchers found many fungus-produced volatile compounds that were similar between infected male and female cadavers.

However, there were differences in quantities of some of these compounds between a male and a female.

'Some compounds which are linked to a female sex-pheromone function that could stimulate male sexual behaviours were increased in infected female cadavers,' study leader Andreas Naundrup told MailOnline.

The study focused on females because males are thought to be more likely to come into contact with spores via sexual contact with an infected female.

'So besides both males and females being attracted to the conidia, the males will additionally have a sexual attraction to the conidia-ridden cadavers, which they physically associate with through copulation attempts,' Naundrup said.

Interestingly, release of the chemicals during infection, and the initial volatile attraction of the fungus's next victim, could even be related to feeding.

'The negative effect on mating imply male house flies investigate or feed off the surrounding conidia rather than being stimulated to mate,' the team say.

This research is detailed as a preprint, yet to be peer-reviewed, on bioRxiv.
Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and Instagram crashed for the second time in a month last night, while a string of banks, phone networks and fellow tech giants have also experienced major outages recently.

Even Britain's biggest supermarket Tesco was brought to its knees by a hack of its website and app last month, leaving thousands of customers unable to order groceries for 48 hours and costing the retailer an estimated 40m in lost revenue.

But what is behind all these website crashes and outages? Is it just a coincidence, a fundamental problem with back-end systems or is there something more sinister going on?

MailOnline has spoken to a number of cyber security and internet experts to find out the main reasons for the outages, beginning with the issues experienced by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Technical difficulties: Facebook and Instagram crashed for the second time in a month last night, while a string of banks and other companies have also experienced outages recently

Matthew Hodgson, co-founder and CEO of Element and technical co-founder of Matrix, said Meta's centralised back-end system was a key problem.

It means there is a single point of failure which can affect Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, rather than just one of the platforms.

'The spate of recent outages is an inevitable side-effect of massive centralisation, where companies like Facebook have ended up on the critical path of providing infrastructure for billions of people,' Mr Hodgson told MailOnline.

'Consumers end up unwittingly obliged to put all their eggs in one basket, and when inevitably some failure mode occurs for that company or its infrastructure (be it accidental or malicious) the end result is catastrophic.'

Internet scientist Professor Bill Buchanan also believes the internet has become too centralised.

He's called for systems to have multiple nodes so that a single failure doesn't stop a service from working.

Hodgson agreed.

'The solution is to decentralise apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, just as the web and email and internet itself has no central points of control or failure  so there's simply no single company or infrastructure which can have an outage which impacts the whole system,' he said.

Jake Moore, a spokesman for internet security and antivirus company ESET, told MailOnline: 'Centralising their data has been one of the biggest issues for Meta combining all three giants  Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

'With this comes problems which are often not located until crunch time which can be too late.

'These outages are often the outcome and companies using these platforms for business use must have other tools in place should they rely on these services such as another messaging tool.

'We are likely to see more outages in the coming months as more people use these services.'

When an outage happens, people often speculate that the disruption is the result of some sort of cyber-attack, many of the experts said.

But they added that more often than not it's down to human error, as was the case last month when Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger went down for seven hours.

The was ultimately blamed on a faulty update that disconnected Meta's servers from the internet and brought down all its platforms.

Back in June, a massive internet blackout which brought down hundreds of websites across the world was also blamed on a single unnamed IT customer.

It left millions of people unable to access a host of major sites including Amazon, Spotify and PayPal, as well as the BBC, UK government and the White House.

The outage was caused by a software bug triggered when a customer for Fastly  the US cloud-computing company responsible for the problems  changed their settings, the firm said.

Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THEORIES FOR WHY THE INTERNET KEEPS BREAKING? Human error People often assume any kind of web disruption is linked to hacking, but actually more mundane reasons such as human error tend to be the more likely cause, experts say. IT employees for companies, tech giants and even supermarkets make mistakes, which one cyber security expert blamed on them being 'under pressure' and having to take shortcuts. Meta's outage on October 4 was ultimately blamed on user error, when a faulty update disconnected its servers from the internet. Hacking There have been increases in the sophistication of hacking, experts say, with numerous Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks seen recently, including on Microsoft, Google and other massive companies. DDoS attacks work by flooding a victim's system with 'internet traffic' in an attempt to overload it and force it offline. Meanwhile, ransomware  a form of cyberattack which locks files and data on a user's computer and demands payment in order for them to be released back to the owner  is also on the rise. The head of Britain's cybersecurity agency said it was 'the most immediate danger' of all cyber threats faced by the UK, and businesses need to do more to protect themselves. Too much traffic One cyber security expert told MailOnline that tech giants and other businesses had been hit by an unexpected surge in traffic because of the Covid pandemic, putting strain on their infrastructure. He said these 'sheer numbers of more online users and traffic' was causing a lot of the outages. Centralised systems Many companies, including Meta, have centralised back-end systems which means there is a single point of failure. It Meta's case, this means it can affect Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, as is what happened last month. An internet scientist has agreed that centralised systems are a problem, while another expert said Meta's outage showed the advantage of having a 'more reliable' decentralised system that doesn't put 'all the eggs in one basket'. Ageing web infrastructure Having been born in 1989, the World Wide Web is now an 'ageing infrastructure', according to several experts. And with the increase in traffic and volume of users on the internet, systems are coming under more and more pressure. 'Businesses must test their infrastructure and have multiple failsafes in place,' one expert warned. Advertisement

Gav Winter, CEO of website performance and cybersecurity firm RapidSpike.com, has said that large scale outages have risen over the past 12 months, adding that human error was a often a big culprit.

He said mistakes occurred because many staff are under pressure from their company and choose to take ill-fated shortcuts.

Experts also told MailOnline that IT problems are compounded by outdated systems that hold the internet together.

Having been born in 1989, the World Wide Web is now an 'ageing infrastructure', they said, and coming under pressure from more users.

'The internet isn't the large-scale distributed network that DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the original architects of the internet, tried to create, which could withstand a nuclear-strike on any part of it,' Professor Buchanan has previously told the BBC.

'The protocols it uses are basically just the ones that were drafted when we connected to mainframe computers from dumb terminals. A single glitch in its core infrastructure can bring the whole thing crashing to the floor.'

MailOnline has spoken to a number of cyber security experts to find out why there have been so many web outages, starting with the problems experienced by Meta

RECENT FACEBOOK OUTAGES Facebook and Instagram crashed for the second time in a month yesterday, affecting thousands worldwide during the three-hour outage. Prior to that, on October 4, all Facebook-owned apps went down for almost seven hours during a massive worldwide crash. In September, a technical issue with Facebook-owned Instagram also caused an outage that plagued users around the world for 16 hours. The last time Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down at the same time, other than October, was in June. More than a thousand people in countries including the United States, Morocco, Mexico, Bolivia and Brazil reported outages. There were also two Facebook platform outages in March, with Instagram down on March 30, and all three down on March 19. Advertisement

Moore also said tech giants and other businesses had been hit by an unexpected surge in traffic because of the Covid pandemic, putting strain on their infrastructure.

'These outages are increasing in volume due to the sheer numbers of more online users and traffic,' he added.

'The pandemic has forced more people online in quick succession rather than the predicted slow increase over time.

'Sheer large numbers funnelling through passages created for times gone by cause black outs very much like when lots of people all visit a website at once to purchase tickets that have just gone on sale.'

Moore added: 'Businesses must test their infrastructure and have multiple failsafes in place but as often it is with the case, it is simply impossible to simulate the size and magnitude of the issue in a safe environment without testing the actual network.'

According to Luke Deryckx, chief technical officer at Down Detector, a website that monitors websites for disruption, widespread outages are becoming more frequent and more serious.

All of the experts MailOnline spoke to said that major outages had been on the rise and are only expected to increase further in terms of their disruption.

The answer, they say, lies in companies moving to more decentralised systems, updating ageing infrastructure and creating servers that are more fit-for-purpose in terms of the number of users they can host.

Until that happens, there is likely to be a lot more outages, with Meta and its huge band of users bearing the brunt of the disruption.
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An ancient gold ring set with amethyst, thought to be worn in an attempt to stop hangovers, has been found at the world's largest ancient wine factory.

The 'spectacular' ring was found during excavations led by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the city of Yavne in central Israel.

This is the location of the 75,000 square-foot Byzantine wine factory, revealed earlier this year, that produced up to two million litres of wine per year in its prime.

With its lustrous violet-coloured centre stone, the ring may have been worn by a person of high status to indicate their wealth, perhaps around the 7th century AD.

It's also possible that the last wearer was a wine taster who believed the purple stone would ward off the effects of alcohol  a widely-shared myth in the ancient world.

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A spectacular gold ring set with amethyst was discovered during Israel Antiquities Authority excavations at the world's largest ancient wine factory in Yavne, Israel

The gold ring is set with amethyst - widely believed in the ancient world to halt the effects of alcohol, although this is rubbished by modern science

AMETHYST: A QUACK HANGOVER 'CURE' Amethyst is crystalline quartz that comes in colours ranging from pale lilac to a deep reddish purple. The name of the popular gemstone means 'not drunken' in Greek, and it was widely believed in the ancient world to halt the effects of alcohol - although this is rubbished by modern science. University College London says: 'Since glass is nothing but non-crystalline quartz, an amethyst glass won't stop a hangover any more than a wine bottle will.' Regardless, amethyst stones are being sold on Amazon today as a quack 'crystal therapy' to cure a hangover. Advertisement

Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) shared the finding on its Facebook page.

'Amethyst is mentioned in the Bible as one of the 12 types of stones on the High Priest's breastplate,' it says.

'Many virtues have been associated with this gem, including preventing hangovers, which is ironic as the ring was discovered near the Byzantine wine factory.'

Amethyst is crystalline quartz that comes in colours ranging from pale lilac to a deep reddish purple. It's classified as a semi precious stone and today is generally relatively affordable.

It was one of the 12 stones fitted into the High Priest's ceremonial breastplate, as mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible.

Dr Amir Golani, an ancient jewelry expert at the IAA, presumes the ring must have belonged to a wealthy person and that wearing it indicated their high status and wealth.

'Such rings could be worn by both men and women,' Dr Golani told the Times of Israel.

Excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority are hesitant about precisely dating the ring.

However, it was found in layers dated to the late Byzantine to early Islamic periods (7th century AD), suggesting it's around 1,400 years old.

It is possible that such a ring may have been passed down over generations for centuries, the IAA claims.

'In fact, gold amethyst rings were common in the Roman world; therefore, the ring may have even been passed down from a wealthy person who lived in Yavneh as early as the 3rd century AD,' it added.

Experts think the ring (pictured) would have been worn by a person of high status to indicate their wealth, perhaps around the seventh century AD

The ancient wine production complex covered a 75,000 square foot area, with individual winepresses each 2,400 square feet

Pictured are ancient vats once used for wine storage at the former Byzantine winepress in Yavne - the world's largest ancient wine factory

The Greeks are thought to have started the trend of keeping amethyst close to them to lessen the effects of a hangover  something that is of course rubbished by modern science.

The name of the popular gemstone means 'not drunken' in Greek, and it was widely believed in the ancient world to halt the effects of alcohol. This belief may have spread to the Byzantines.

'Did the person who wore the ring want to avoid intoxication due to drinking a lot of wine?' said Dr Elie Haddad, director of the excavation for the IAA, speaking to the Times of Israel. 'We probably will never know.'

The Byzantine Empire (395 to 1204 and 1261 to 1453), also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was a powerful civilization based at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).

The ring was discovered at the vast historical Byzantine network that once made up the ancient Israeli wine factory.

The site, located in the central area of Israel, would have been important enough of a region to be on a map alongside Jerusalem

Archaeologists spent two years excavating the 75,000 square-foot site, as part of a move to expand the city of Yavne into the surrounding area.

They found five massive wine presses, warehouses for ageing and marketing the wine and even kilns for firing the clay vessels used to store the wine.

The well organised and structured factory produced the regional wine known as Gaza, or Ashkelon, which was then exported throughout the Mediterranean.

Israeli employees of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) work at the site of the 1,500-year-old industrial estate wine factory, uncovered in archeological excavations in Yavne

A general view of the site. They found five massive wine presses, warehouses for ageing and marketing the wine, and even kilns for firing the clay vessels used to store the wine

'We were surprised to discover a sophisticated factory here, which was used to produce wine in commercial quantities,' excavation directors said in a statement.

'A calculation of the production capacity of these winepresses shows that approximately two million litres of wine were marketed every year, while we should remember that the whole process was conducted manually.'

For comparison, the UK as a whole now produces just short of eight million litres per year.
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The Northern Lights were visible over Stirling, the Lake District and even as far south as Devon last night, as a huge solar flare hit the Earth.

According to the Met Office, a coronal mass ejection (CME) left the Sun on November 2, and as charged particles hit the Earth, a geomagnetic storm was generated, producing the stunning light shows.

Usually these displays are restricted to high-latitude regions around the Arctic and Antarctic.

But when the solar flares or coronal mass ejections are particularly strong, as was the case last night, these shows can appear at lower latitudes, with images shared of the light show in the Lake District, North Wales, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and even Devon.

There will be another geomagnetic storm tonight, expected to be between a level three and four (out of five), according to the Met Office.

This could lead to aurora being visible throughout the UK, not just in the most northerly parts, and could cause problems for GPS satellites.

The northern lights were visible over Hadrian's wall following a coronal mass ejection from the sun. The mesmerising display spread as south as Cambridgeshire

A spectacular display of the Northern Lights seen over Derwentwater, near Keswick in the Lake District, last night and into the early hours of Thursday amazed photographers and skygazers

One of the most southerly was this orange glow shared by Luke Farley, taken at about 9pm near Crediton in Devon

SOLAR FLARES AND CMEs A solar flare is a tremendous explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in 'twisted' magnetic fields (usually above sunspots) is suddenly released. In a matter of just a few minutes they heat material to many millions of degrees and produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, including from radio waves to x-rays and gamma rays. Solar flares are different to 'coronal mass ejections' (CMEs), which were once thought to be initiated by solar flares. CMEs are huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours. Advertisement

Skywatchers have been sharing images of the colourful light displays from across the UK, from faint glows over Bedfordshire, to glimmering dancing light shows in the north of Scotland.

The reason for the brighter, and more widespread aurora is down to a more active coronal mass ejection (CME).

It is what is known as a Cannibal type of CME, that is it sweeps up any slower flares that were ejected before it as it races towards the Earth.

Combined, they create a mash of strong magnetic fields and plasma that then act to generate geomagnetic storms as they hit the atmosphere.

These storms come in waves over a few days, with the first hitting last night, and another expected between 18:00 GMT and 01:00 GMT tonight.

In the UK a G4 storm, described as 'severe', will have no significant impact on the power grid, but elsewhere could lead to some control problems and even outages.

There will be some small issues for spacecraft that will require adjustments to orbital position, and radio frequencies could be disrupted on the Earth.

The Met Office space weather forecast for the next two days reads: 'The strong solar wind speeds following the arrival of the CME are likely to continue through day 1 (4th) and into day 2 (5th).'

In the north of Scotland the lights were a multicoloured display, but from Cambridgeshire (pictured) they were a muted glown on the horizon

The northern lights can be seen as a green glow lighting up the night sky over Ayr Beach in this image. When the solar flares or coronal mass ejections are particularly strong, as was the case last night, these shows can appear at lower latitudes, with images shared of the light show in the Lake District, North Wales, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and even Devon

Taken near Fernland in Cambridgeshire, the Northern Lights are just visible on the horizon. According to the Met Office , a coronal mass ejection (CME) left the Sun on November 2, and as charged particles hit the Earth, a geomagnetic storm was generated, producing the stunning light shows

There is a chance it will ease back, but they aren't overly confident in that forecast, predicting 'minor or moderate geomagnetic storms' potentially increasing.

There has been a marked increase in larger flares that can cause more southerly aurora in recent months.

The increase in solar activity is due to the fact the Sun has entered the more active phase of its 11-year cycle, according to astronomers.

Every 11 years, the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field shifts, and as it does so the forces in our star get tangled and punch through the surface - sending plasma into space as CMEs and solar flares.

There were multiple colours visible for residents of Eden Valley in Cumbria. Skywatchers have been sharing images of the colourful light displays from across the UK, from faint glows over Bedfordshire, to glimmering dancing light shows in the north of Scotland

They were even visible under the glowing light pollution of Edinburgh. The reason for the brighter, and more widespread aurora is down to a more active coronal mass ejection (CME)

One photographer, Roger Skillin, managed to capture a faint red glow from Cranfield, Bedfordshire. It is what is known as a Cannibal type of CME, that is it sweeps up any slower flares that were ejected before it as it races towards the Earth

SOLAR CYCLES AND AURORA ACTIVITY The Sun has an 11-year cycle, where it increases and decreases in solar flare activity levels. It entered the active phase of this cycle in 2020, and this has already resulted in an increase in the number of coronal mass ejections and solar flares reaching Earth. This latest increase is expected to peak around 2025, after which it will begin to calm down again. The Met Office told MailOnline: 'We are seeing a gradual increase in solar activity and associated space weather. 'This is due to us moving away from solar minimum (late 2019/early 2020) and towards the next solar maximum (expected around mid-2025). 'Over the next few years we can expect increasing solar activity, with a corresponding increase in space weather events affecting Earth and the near-Earth space environment.' Every 11 years, the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field shifts, and as it does so the forces in our star get tangled and punch through the surface - sending plasma into space as CMEs and solar flares. Advertisement

The Sun moved into the active phase of its cycle in 2020, which has already resulted in an increase in flares and solar storms reaching the Earth.

It will peak around 2025, around the time the ESA Solar Orbiter is expected to fly within 26 million miles of our star.

The Met Office told MailOnline: 'We are seeing a gradual increase in solar activity and associated space weather.

'This is due to us moving away from solar minimum (late 2019/early 2020) and towards the next solar maximum (expected around mid-2025).

'Over the next few years we can expect increasing solar activity, with a corresponding increase in space weather events affecting Earth and the near-Earth space environment.'

A solar flare is an intense burst of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots (areas that appear dark on the Sun's surface).

Solar flares are different to CMEs, which were once thought to be initiated by solar flares. Both are types of solar storms.

NASA explains: 'We typically see a solar flare by the photons (or light) it releases, at most every wavelength of the spectrum.

'The primary ways we monitor flares are in x-rays and optical light. Flares are also sites where particles (electrons, protons, and heavier particles) are accelerated.

'Flares are our solar systems largest explosive events. They are seen as bright areas on the sun and they can last from minutes to hours.'

In the Earth's north, the Northern Lights is officially known as the aurora borealis, while in the south it is called the aurora australis.

The Northern Lights has fascinated Earthlings for centuries, but the science behind it has not always been understood.

The Lake District enjoyed a bright and varied show, shown here in Eden Valley, Cumbria. Combined, they create a mash of strong magnetic fields and plasma that then act to generate geomagnetic storms as they hit the atmosphere

Derwentwater, near Keswick in the Lake District. In the UK a G4 storm, described as 'severe', will have no significant impact on the power grid, but elsewhere could lead to some control problems and even outages

Earth has an invisible forcefield, the magnetosphere, that protects us from dangerous charged particles from the Sun.

The magnetosphere is the area around Earth controlled by the planet's magnetic field.

Science expert Marty Jopson explains: 'Whilst it shelters us, it also creates one of the most impressive phenomena on Earth  the Northern Lights.'

'When the deadly solar winds meet Earth's magnetosphere, some of the charged particles get trapped, and are propelled down the Earth's magnetic field lines straight towards the poles.

Northern Lights seen from Campsie Fells just after 10.15pm Wednesday evening. There will be some small issues for spacecraft, that will require adjustments to orbital position, and radio frequencies could be disrupted on the Earth

Northern Lights over Stirling, Scotland. The Sun moved into the active phase of its cycle in 2020, which has already resulted in an increase in flares and solar storms reaching the Earth

'And when they reach Earth, they strike atoms and molecules in our atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light.'

Unfortunately, disruption to our magnetic field can also affect satellites in orbit, navigation systems, terrestrial power grids and data and communication networks.

'Harmful space weather has affected Earth before, but as we become increasingly reliant on systems and technologies vulnerable to the Sun's outbursts, future solar impacts could be even more disruptive,' says the European Space Agency (ESA).

WHAT ARE AURORAS AND WHAT TRIGGERS THE STUNNING NATURAL DISPLAYS? The Northern and Southern Lights are natural light spectacles triggered in our atmosphere that are also known as the 'Auroras'. There are two types of Aurora - Aurora Borealis, which means 'dawn of the north', and Aurora Australis, 'dawn of the south.' The displays light up when electrically charged particles from the sun enter the Earths atmosphere. There are two types of Aurora - Aurora Borealis (file photo), which means 'dawn of the north', and Aurora Australis, 'dawn of the south.' The displays light up when electrically charged particles from the sun enter the Earths atmosphere Usually the particles, sometimes referred to as a solar storm, are deflected by Earths magnetic field. But during stronger storms they enter the atmosphere and collide with gas particles, including hydrogen and helium. These collisions emit light. Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are common. Advertisement
A baleen whale was lunch for a giant shark  possibly a megalodon  some 1215 million years ago, bite marks on a fossilised flipper bone have revealed.

Perhaps fortunately for the whale, it was most likely dead at the time and floating at the sea surface when the shark scavenged it, Calvert Marine Museum experts said.

Analysis of the damage inflicted to the flipper bone, or radius, suggests one shark repeatedly sunk its teeth into the corpse, thrashing its head back and forth to tear off each bite.

As is standard for so-called 'trace fossils'  evidence of animal behaviour  the bite marks were given their own species name, that of 'Linichnus bromleyi'.

The 11-inch-long bone was found at Parkers Creek, in Maryland's Calvert County, by local fossil collector William Douglass, and donated to the Calvert Marine Museum.

Identifying the exact shark species that left the bite marks is difficult  but suspects include a young Otodus megalodon, the largest shark ever known to have lived.

Megalodon was an extinct mackerel shark thought capable of growing up to 65 feet in length and biting through flesh and bones with a force of 182,200 newtons.

A baleen whale was lunch for a giant shark  possibly a megalodon  some 1215 million years ago, bite marks on a fossilised flipper bone, or 'radius', have revealed. Pictured: an artist's impression of the shark feeding on the larger whale

MIOCENE MARYLAND During the Miocene  the geological period spanning roughly 235 million years ago, and from which the fossil whale bone dates  Maryland's Chesapeake area was intermittently flooded by water from the Atlantic. In the period from 209 million years ago, fossil-rich sediments were deposited in this sea, forming today the rocks that outcrop at Parkers Creek in the Calvert Cliffs. Today, the cliffs yield assorted fossils  including not only the direct remains of ancient creatures, but also so-called trace fossils like burrows and fossilised faeces (or 'coprolites'). Advertisement

'This bone is very unusual because it preserves so much evidence of head-thrashing behaviour of an extinct shark feeding on an extinct whale', Calvert Marine Museum's curator of palaeontology and paper author Stephen Godfrey said in a press release.

Multiple gouge marks were found on both sides of the whale's flipper bone, indicating that the shark took at least three bites of the large marine mammal.

'The biteshake traces consisting of shallow, thin arching gouges on the radius likely indicate scavenging rather than active predation,' Dr Godfrey told Live Science.

'The shark would have clenched down on the flipper firmly and then shaken its head vigorously in an attempt to cut through the bone (unsuccessfully) or to simply remove flesh. After it had removed some, it re-bit the flipper to remove more.'

Based on the radius bone's flattened and curved shape, the researchers believe that the fossil originally belonged to a filter-feeding baleen whale  most likely Diorocetus hiatus, an extinct species known to have lived in the area.

'When a whale dies, it inverts and floats at the surface of the water due to the build-up of abdominal gases from decomposition,' Dr Godfrey told Live Science.

Scavenging sharks often feed at the ocean's surface  and the whale's flipper would have been an easy target for the hungry creature, the team explained.

Analysis of the damage inflicted to the radius (pictured, following whitening to enhance the contrast) suggests that the shark repeatedly sunk its teeth into the corpse, thrashing its head back and forth to tear off each bite. The numbers indicate the gouges left by each of the three bites, in the most likely order that the marks were inflicted

Alongside Megalodon, several other sharks could have been behind the posthumous attack, Dr Godfrey said, including Alopias grandis or palatasi, Galeocerdo aduncus, Hemipristis serra, Physogaleus contortus and Sphyrna laevissima.

Unfortunately, the bite marks do not indicate clearly enough whether or not the shark had serrated teeth  which could have been used to narrow down the culprits.

Were the marks made by a shark with non-serrated teeth, Dr Godfrey told Live Science, then the 'most likely candidate would be Carcharodon hastalis  the ancestor of the living great white shark.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Carnets Geol.

The 11-inch-long bone was found at Parkers Creek, in Maryland's Calvert County, by local fossil collector William Douglass, and donated to the Calvert Marine Museum
Paleontologists have discovered a 290 million-year-old fossil in Utah that likely belonged to an 'early reptile relative' and could wind up being an entirely new species.

The discovery, made last month at Utah's Canyonlands National Park, is a 'rare' example of a Permian-aged skeleton, said paleontologists at Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park, who worked on the team that was part of the discovery.

The fossilized specimen was found in the bottom of a slickrock wash that was threatened by erosion by rainstorm that previously hit the canyon.

'It's roughly the size of an iguana and (the fossil) preserves at least the vertebrae, top of the skull, and some of the shoulder girdle and forelimb,' Adam Marsh, lead paleontologist at Petrified Forest National Park, said in comments obtained by the Charlotte Observer.

'We're preparing the fossil at Petrified Forest and it will eventually get CT scanned in the next year.'

Paleontologists discovered a 290 million-year-old fossil that likely belonged to an 'early reptile relative' and could be a new species

The stone that enveloped the fossil was taken out of the ground in two chunks, using a concrete saw, hammer and chisels

The fossil is roughly the size of an iguana and it has the creatures vertebrae, top of the skull, some of the shoulder girdle and forelimb

'The team held a permit to collect the fossil and determine its place within the Cedar Mesa Sandstone at CANY to estimate its geologic age and context,' Petrified Forest National Park wrote in a Facebook post.

The discovery was made after a '13 mile round trip hike,' Petrified Forest National Park added in the Facebook post.

The stone that enveloped the fossil was taken out of the ground in two chunks, using a concrete saw, hammer and chisels, Marsh added.

The discovery was made after a '13 mile round trip hike' at Canyonlands National Park in Utah

The discovery was made last month at Utah's Canyonlands National Park by paleontologists from multiple organizations, including Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park

After the paleontologists have determined the identity, exact age and context of the fossil, it will be sent to museums for exhibit.

'This is an incredibly rare specimen from of the Pennsylvanian/Permian of Utah, where any kind of fossil is important, much less an articulated skeleton,' Marsh explained.

'It really goes to show what kind of fossil resources are hidden in our National Parks waiting to be discovered and shared with the public.'

Earth's largest mass extinction event occurred during the Permian Period 252 million years ago.

A study published in April found that it took ten times longer on land than it did in the water.

In the oceans, the event took approximately 100,000 years to kill off most life.

However, on land, it took almost a million years to kill of land-dwelling species.

Ultimately, this event, known as the Great Dying, resulted in the extinction of 97 percent of all living species.

The Great Dying is widely considered one of 'the most most devastating incidents of mass extinction in Earth's history,' according to the National Park Service.

The Permian Period ranged from 298.9 million years ago to roughly 251.9 million years ago, a span of 47 million years.
Boeing received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) late on Wednesday to begin building an internet satellite constellation in Earth's orbit.

The application, which was initially filed in 2017, is to launch and operate 147 satellites to provide high-speed broadband internet worldwide.

Boeing plans to deploy 132 devices 656 miles above Earth's surface, while the rest will be non-geostationary that sit more than 27,000 miles above the surface as they follow the planet's rotation.

Boeing's petition to the FCC was met with pushback from Elon Musk's SpaceX, which said it presented a 'clear danger of harmful interference' to other systems, according to Reuters.

However, Boeing's constellation could outperform SpaceX's Starlink in that its satellites are set to broadcast in the V-band, which is a high-frequency wireless spectrum that refers to frequencies ranging from 40 to 75 gigahertz.

Starlink uses Ka- and Ku- bands, which commercial airlines utilize for in-flight internet access that has frequencies ranging from 12 to 18 gigahertz.

Boeing will also operate in both low-Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit, while SpaceX 's Starlink satellites are only situated in low-Earth orbit.

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Boeing received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday to begin building an internet satellite constellation in Earth's orbit. The application, which was initially filed in 2017 , is to launch and operate 147 satellites to provide high-speed broadband internet worldwide

'Boeing sees a multi-orbit future for satellite technologies,' Boeing said in a statement.

'As the demand for satellite communications grows, diversity will be required across orbital regimes and frequencies to satisfy unique customer demands, and we see V-band as helping to provide some of that diversity.'

According to Boeing's application, it first plans to serve users in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands before expanding its reach globally.

'The system will extend terrestrial networks to provide broadband access to all Americans, especially in rural and remote areas,' Boeing shared in the document.

According to Boeing's application, it first plans to serve users in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands before expanding its reach globally

However, Boeing's constellation could outperform SpaceX's Starlink in that its satellites are set to broadcast in the V-band, which is a high-frequency wireless spectrum that refers to frequencies ranging from 40 to 75 gigahertz. Pictured is an animation of SpaceX's Starlink constellation upon completion

Starlink uses Ka- and Ku- bands, which commercial airlines utilize for in-flight internet access that has frequencies ranging from 12 to 18 gigahertz

'This will help fulfill the mandate and regulatory objectives for universal broadband access. In addition, as the deployment phases are completed, this 147-satellite system will provide high speed data connectivity for people around the world.'

SpaceX has been leading the internet satellite industry with its more than 1,740 Starlink internet satellites in orbit that provide at least 90,000 users with service.

The Musk-led company petitioned the FCC in 2019 claiming Boeing's would cause interference, but the FCC rejected SpaceX's argument that Boeing should face additional requirements.

'SpaceX raises concerns about interference from Boeing's uplink beams to its highly inclined satellites and recommends that Boeing utilize higher gain antennas on those satellites with corresponding reductions in uplink power levels. We decline to adopt SpaceX's proposal,' the FCC said.

Now Boeing is in a race with not only SpaceX, but Amazon's Project Kuiper and UK-based OneWeb as well.

OneWeb, on the other hand, has not made as much noise and is slowly building its constellation  it currently has 322 internet satellites in space

Amazon received approval from the FCC on November 1 to launch its first two satellites into orbit, which will be used as tests for its upcoming constellation of 3,236 devices.

However, Amazon and SpaceX have also been at odds on who dominates, as the Jeff Bezos-founded company petitioned the FCC to prohibit SpaceX from modifying parts of its Starlink satellites, CNBC reported in February.

While Amazon said that it 'supports the ability of operators to modify their system designs,' the company argues the changes are too complex and should not be approved - thus grounding future Starlink batches. The FCC has yet to make a final decision.

OneWeb, on the other hand, has not made as much noise and is slowly building its constellation  it currently has 322 internet satellites in space.
With many of us finally back in the office following months of Covid-19 lockdown, you may be worried that your dog is lonely at home on their own.

While you might be tempted to buy a second pooch to keep your dog company, a new study suggests that this could actually do more harm than good.

Academics in Switzerland fitted dog-owning homes with cameras to monitor canine behaviour when their owners were away.

They found that barking  an indicator of separation anxiety  was more common in multi-dog households compared to single-dog households.

Physical activity  another potential indicator that can lead to destructive behaviour  was also higher in multi-dog households, primarily in the first hour of separation.

Signs of separation anxiety in dogs include barking, howling, digging and scratching, disruptive chewing and urination or defecation, even with house-trained dogs.

Separation anxiety is the feeling of panic when an animal is separated from a family member. Signs of separation anxiety in dogs include barking, howling, digging and scratching, disruptive chewing and urination or defecation - even in house-trained dogs

WHAT IS SEPARATION ANXIETY? Separation anxiety is triggered when dogs become upset because of separation from their guardians, the people theyre attached to. Escape attempts by dogs with separation anxiety are often extreme and can result in self-injury and household destruction, especially around exit points like windows and doors. Veterinary specialist Dr Joanna Woodnutt MRCVS says: 'Separation anxiety is the feeling of panic when an animal is separated from an important "resource" - usually a family member. 'It was an evolutionary advantage to stick together in a pack or group, so the feeling of fear when alone was useful to the canine ancestor. The problem is, in modern-day living we need our dogs to be relaxed when left alone for short periods. 'This often isn't the case, and signs of separation anxiety include howling and whining when left alone, or panicking when you go to leave the house. Bad cases will see your dog pacing back and forth, and destructive behaviour such as chewing.' Source: ASPCA Advertisement

The new study has been led by researchers at the Academy for Animal Naturopathy in Durnten, Switzerland.

'Many dogs are left alone at home by their owners for several hours on a daily basis,' they said. 'This practice is known to be a possible source of complication in dog keeping.

'Behaviourists and veterinarians are frequently consulted due to excessive vocalisations, destructive behaviour and house-soiling of dogs left alone by their owners.

'These observations are thought to be symptoms of a disorder which most authors refer to as separation anxiety or separation related behaviour.

'Since dogs under single-dog conditions show more resting and less vocalisations, we could not support the view that familiar conspecifics could facilitate coping with separation stress.'

The researchers videotaped 32 dogs in single-dog households and 45 dogs in multi-dog households left home alone as part of their usual routine.

Owners were instructed to align the cameras to the places where the dogs would most probably stay during separation (like the exit-door and the sofa), before leaving their dog (or dogs) alone.

Most dogs showed low vocal and physical activity, independent of the amount of time being alone at home.

For 22 per cent of the filming time, dogs showed some minor activity, including lying with raised head, sitting or standing around.

Only during 1.9 per cent of the time they showed activities like walking or running around.

But there was no destructive behaviour  like ripping furniture  on show, nor soiling, and lengthy vocal activity was 'very rare'.

However, there were significant differences found between the single dog and multi-dog conditions.

Physical activity was higher in multi-dog households, primarily in the first hour of separation.

'We observed more separation-related behaviour in multi-dog households,' lead author Gerrit Stephan told New Scientist.

Escape attempts by dogs with separation anxiety are often extreme and can result in self-injury and household destruction, especially around exit points like windows and doors (stock image)

PANDEMIC PUPS MAY HAVE GREATER SEPARATION ANXIETY Dogs purchased as puppies since March 2020 - when the Covid lockdown started in the UK - have only ever known what it's like to have their family around them at all times. The sudden change as owners to commute to the office again could trigger separation anxiety. 'This could come as a shock and lead to more stressed out pets and behaviour issues if the signs aren't spotted early and handled correctly,' said Claire Haynes, animal behaviourist at Blue Cross. 'In the most serious cases, stress could lead to unwanted behaviours, such as aggression and health problems.' Advertisement

Stephan did admit that canine company may help dogs cope with separation from human attachment figures in individual cases.

But generally, the study challenges a common belief that dogs are 'not that alone' if they're home with other dogs of the same breed, he said.

'It's a common misconception  and often given as poor advice  that a dog with separation-related anxiety will fare better and show fewer stress responses if another dog is added to the household,' added Natalie Waran at Eastern Institute of Technology in New Zealand, who wasn't involved in the study.

'This doesn't address the underlying problem for the dog with separation anxiety, and it often results in another dog showing anxious or excitable behaviour.

'The key is to understand the causes of problem behaviour to be able to manage or treat those effectively.'

The research team also investigated the effects of sex and neuter status  factors that are thought to have an influence on the onset of separation anxiety.

After looking at the difference between the sexes, male dogs in multi-dog households showed higher vocal activity.

A further sex related difference was that male dogs were more prone to stay at the exit-door.

Females showed a decrease in this behaviour the longer the owner was away, whereas male dogs showed an increase. No significant effects of neuter status were detected.

The study authors say further research is needed to see if dogs of the same breeds can cope during separation from humans

'Our data suggest rather the opposite,' they conclude in their paper, published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
A federal judge has ruled against Blue Origin in its lawsuit against NASA over a $2.9 billion contract that the space agency awarded to SpaceX.

Federal judge Richard Hertling of the U.S. Federal Court of Claims ruled against the Jeff Bezos-founded company, siding with the defense in the matter.

The denial of Blue Origin's lawsuit over a lunar lander contract was first reported by CNBC.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to the news, with a Judge Dredd meme that showed a photo of the titular character, played by Sylvester Stallone, with the caption 'YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED.'

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to the news, with a Judge Dredd meme

Following the decision, a NASA spokesperson told DailyMail.com it will resume work with SpaceX on the contract 'as soon as possible.'

Additionally, the U.S. space agency will continue to work with 'multiple American companies to bolster competition and commercial readiness for crewed transportation to the lunar surface,' the spokesperson added.

DailyMail.com has reached out to SpaceX with a request for comment.

Blue Origin filed a suit in August that said NASA had originally intended to award multiple contracts for the lunar lander.

NASA eventually chose the Musk-led SpaceX as the sole provider for the $2.91 billion award.

A federal judge has ruled against Blue Origin in its lawsuit against NASA over a $2.9 billion contract that the space agency awarded to SpaceX

Commenting on their loss, a Blue Origin spokesperson said: 'Our lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims highlighted the important safety issues with the Human Landing System procurement process that must still be addressed.

'Returning astronauts safely to the Moon through NASAs public-private partnership model requires an unprejudiced procurement process alongside sound policy that incorporates redundant systems and promotes competition.

'Blue Origin remains deeply committed to the success of the Artemis program, and we have a broad base of activity on multiple contracts with NASA to achieve the United States goal to return to the Moon to stay.'

The spokesperson continued: 'We are fully engaged with NASA to mature sustainable lander designs, conduct a wide variety of technology risk reductions, and provide Commercial Lunar Payload Services.

'We are also under contract with NASA to develop in-situ resource utilization technology, lunar space robotics, and lunar landing sensor collaboration including testing on New Shepard.

'We look forward to hearing from NASA on next steps in the HLS procurement process.'

Bezos publicly commented on the ruling, saying it was 'not the decision [Blue Origin] wanted, but we respect the court's judgement, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract.'

Bezos publicly commented on the ruling, saying it was 'not the decision [Blue Origin] wanted, but we respect the court's judgement, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract'

The Bezos founded company said its suit was 'an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASAs Human Landing System.'

Blue Origin was originally in competition with SpaceX and a third firm called Dynetics for what was expected to be two NASA contracts.

Following the lawsuit, NASA temporarily stopped work on the contract in August.

After Congress trimmed the space agency's budget, NASA announced in April 2021 that SpaceX's Human Landing System (HLS) would be the sole contractor.

That month, Blue Origin and Alabama-based Dynetics filed a 50-page protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog.

In response, Musk rolled his fellow multibillionaire Bezos, tweeting he 'can't get it up (to orbit).'

In July, the GAO rejected Blue Origin and Dynetics' protest, finding 'NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award,' striking down Blue Origin's main argument.

'The announcement reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all,' GAO stated in a press release at the time.

'In reaching its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award.'

The same month the GAO rejected the protest, Bezos became the first billionaire in space, joining his brother, Mark, 82-year-old space pioneer Wally Funk, and an 18-year-old student aboard the New Shepard rocket ship.

After the GAO decision in July, a Blue Origin spokesperson told DailyMail.com that the company stood firm 'in our belief that there were fundamental issues with NASA's decision, but the GAO wasn't able to address them due to their limited jurisdiction.'

They added Blue Origin would 'continue to advocate for two immediate providers, as we believe it is the right solution,' but did not suggest outright legal action.

'The Human Landing System [HLS] program needs to have competition now instead of later, the rep said, 'that's the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country.'

A rendering of Blue Moon, the lunar landing vehicle Blue Horizon intended to develop for NASA

Blue Origin has been working on its moon landing system, known as Blue Moon, since 2017.

In 2019, Bezos unveiled a rendering of Blue Moon during a Blue Origin event in Washington, DC.

Days after Blue Origin and Dynetics filed their protest, NASA told SpaceX to halt building the HLM until the GAO made its ruling.

The July decision meant Musk could restart work on the lander, part of the larger project to land the first woman and next man on the moon.

In July, Musk also responded to the General Accounting Office's rejection of a protest filed by Blue Origin and Dynetics by tweeting the strong arm emoji and 'GAO'

Musk responded to the July ruling by posting 'GAO' with the 'strong arm' emoji on Twitter.

NASA initially made the announcement about the lunar lander contracts in April 2020, awarding Blue Origin $579 million, Dynetics team $253 million and SpaceX $135 million to develop a model for a lander.

According to Blue Origin, the space agency was expected to name two winning teams this year, with both companies receiving lucrative contracts to turn their designs into working spacecrafts.

However, on April 16, 2021, NASA announced SpaceX was going to be the sole company to construct a lunar lander, with a $2.91 billion contract that was reportedly much lower than Blue Origin's $5.99 billion bid.

'NASA had indicated an overriding intention to make two awards but due to perceived shortfalls in currently available and anticipated future budget appropriations, it made only the award to SpaceX, eliminating HLS competition, and effectively locking down immediate and future lunar landing system development and launch and lunar landing opportunities,' lawyers for Blue Origin told AL.com.

An illustration of the SpaceX Starship human lander design that will carry the first NASA astronauts to the surface of the Moon under the Artemis program in 2024

Though Blue Origin claims NASA had indicated it would award several contracts, in April gave Elon Musk (pictured) and his Space X the lone $2.91 billion contract to develop a lunar lander

On April 16, SpaceX revealed plans for its lander, which will include the company's tested Raptor engines, along with new tech pulling inspiration from the Falcon and Dragon vehicles' designs.

The lander will feature a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moonwalks.

'The Starship architecture is intended to evolve to a fully reusable launch and landing system designed for travel to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations,' NASA shared in the April announcement.

In July, Blue Origin claimed NASA had 'moved the goalposts at the last minute' and, 'in NASA's own words... made a 'high risk' selection.'

'Their decision eliminates opportunities for competition, significantly narrows the supply base, and not only delays, but also endangers America's return to the Moon,' the company added.

Since then Blue Origin has been taking potshots at Space X on social media, posting several infographics underscoring the 'unprecedented number of technologies, developments, and operations that have never been done before for Starship to land on the Moon.'

Blue Origin has questioned whether SpaceX is up to the challenge of developing the 'unprecedented number of technologies, developments, and operations that have never been done before ' in order for Starship to land on the Moon'
It is the biggest and most expensive space telescope NASA has ever built and will peer deeper into the cosmos than its iconic predecessor Hubble.

But the $10 billion (7.2bn) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is also by far the US space agency's most complicated, meaning there will still be scores of potential pitfalls even when it is finally launched next month.

More than 300 to be exact. That is according to NASA, which has estimated there are 344 ways the six-tonne observatory could fail when it takes up its orbit 930,000 miles from Earth.

About 28 minutes after blast-off, the JWST will detach from its launch vehicle and begin 'the most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted in a single space mission,' the US space agency said.

NASA has estimated there are 344 ways its James Webb Space Telescope (pictured) could fail when it takes up its orbit 930,000 miles from Earth shortly after its launch on December 18

INSTRUMENTS ON THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE NIRCam (Near InfraRed Camera) an infrared imager from the edge of the visible through the near infrared NIRSpec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph) will also perform spectroscopy over the same wavelength range. MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument) will measure the mid-to-long-infrared wavelength range from 5 to 27 micrometers. FGS/NIRISS (Fine Guidance Sensor and Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph), is used to stabilize the line-of-sight of the observatory during science observations. Advertisement

Once in orbit it will have to unfold itself from inside its launch rocket in a process likened to an origami exercise in reverse.

This will take place over a period of about 14 years and involve the choreographed movement of all manner of pulley, levers, hinges, cables and springs.

'There are 344 single-point-of-failure items on average,' according to Mike Menzel, Webb lead mission systems engineer for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who said that 'approximately 80 per cent of those are associated with the deployment'.

He added: 'When I started in this business about 40 years ago, I remember one of the first lessons I got taught was to avoid deployments on orbit.

'James Webb cannot avoid the deployments. In fact, James Webb has to perform some of the most complex deployment sequences ever attempted, and these come with many challenges.'

JWST was built by Northrop Grumman, with final assembly and testing completed in August at the aerospace manufacturer's factory in Redondo Beach, California.

Krystal Puga, JWST spacecraft systems engineer for Northrop Grumman, said during the briefing that the telescope has 144 release mechanisms 'which all must work perfectly'.

The $10 billion (7.2bn) James Webb space telescope is a successor to Hubble, and will allow astronomers to peer deeper into the Universe than ever before

The mirror will have to be folded up to fit inside the rocket (artist's impression pictured), before retracting in space

ARIANE 5: THE EUROPEAN HEAVY-LIFT LAUNCH VEHICLE Ariane 5 is the European heavy-lift space launch vehicle. It was developed and is operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency and launched out of French Guiana. It sends satellites into geostationary and low Earth orbit and has an 82 consecutive successful streak since first launch in 2003. It was built by Aribus and costs up to 185 million (159 million) per launch to get a payload into space. It has a height of 171ft over the two stages and can take a maximum payload of 23,953lb. Ariane 5 is the launch vehicle of choice to send the James Webb space telescope to the L2 point. Advertisement

'The sunshield is like a skydiver's parachute; it needs to be folded perfectly so that it unfolds and deploys perfectly without snags, without any tangles,' she added.

Alphonso Steward, JWST deployment systems lead for NASA Goddard, said: 'Like an origami object, proper folding and unfolding is necessary in order to achieve a specific shape.'

Menzel said the team had reduced the number of release mechanisms as much as they could.

'We found the sweet spot between getting the control that we want, with these large flexible membranes,' without adding too many single points of failure, he said.

Menzel stressed that extensive work had been carried out to ensure the mission's success.

'When we identify a single point failure, we give it very special treatment,' he added.

'We have what we call a critical item control plan, and we always throw in extra inspection points. And we've done extra offline testing on these devices.'

JWST has been plagued by delays and cost overruns, including many with the readiness of the European Space Agency's Ariane-5 rocket, which is due to send it up into space on December 18.

After its launch, it will take about three days to reach lunar orbit, and another 27 days after that to get to its final orbit.

When in position, it will see the very first stars to shine in the Universe thanks to its large mirror, which is 21ft in diameter compared to the 7.8ft mirror on Hubble.

However, JWST will focus more on the infrared wavelength, rather than visual light.

As well as giving astronomers the ability to see cosmic dawn (the birth of the very first stars 13.5 billion years ago), it will also reveal atmospheres of distant worlds.

The latest space observatory is a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), described by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson as a 'colossal achievement, built to transform our view of the universe and deliver amazing science.'

The observatory carries a suite of state-of-the-art cameras, spectrographs and coronagraphs, and the largest astronomical mirror ever sent to space.
NASA announced on Wednesday that it will send an ice-mining experiment to the moon's south pole, set to head into orbit late next year.

The mission will head to a ridge close to the Shackleton crater by late 2022, an area where NASA engineers and scientists believe could have ice below the surface.

This region, which has been studied for 'months,' gets enough sunlight to power a lander for a 10-day mission, while still being in a clear line of sight for communications.

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It will be the first time resources are found and extracted on the moon, which could help NASA establish a presence in space, particularly for the upcoming Artemis missions.

NASA is working with Intuitive Machines, the agency's partner for commercial deliveries to the moon, on the mission. It will use Intuitive's Nova-C lander.

NASA will send an ice-mining experiment to the moon's south pole, scheduled for late 2022, using Intuitive Machine's Nova -C lander (pictured)

The mission will head to a ridge close to the Shackleton crater (pictured) by late 2022, an area where NASA engineers and scientists believe could have ice below the surface

The agency said this area and the conditions that come with it give the 'best chance' for proving that the three technologies on board the upcoming robotic lander will work:

the Polar Resources Ice-Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1).

a 4G/LTE communications network developed by Nokia of America Corporation.

and Micro-Nova, a deployable hopper robot developed by Intuitive Machines.

'PRIME-1 is permanently attached to Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander, and finding a landing location where we might discover ice within three feet of the surface was challenging,' said Dr Jackie Quinn, PRIME-1 project manager at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in a statement.

'While there is plenty of sunlight to power the payloads, the surface gets too warm to sustain ice within reach of the PRIME-1 drill. We needed to find a 'goldilocks' site that gets just enough sunlight to meet mission requirements while also being a safe place to land with good Earth communications.'

The Shackleton crater gets enough sunlight to power a lander for a 10-day mission

In October 2020, NASA chose Nokia to build the first cellular network on the moon ahead of the 2024 Artemis mission.

Once the lander touches down at the moon's south pole, the PRIME-1 drill, known as TRIDENT, will try to drill up to three-feet worth of lunar soil (regolith) and look for water once it's on the surface.

The other PRIME-1 instrument, MSolo, will measure gases that escape from the regolith TRIDENT excavated.

A group of researchers - NASA, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, Nokia, Arizona State University and Intuitive Machines - built 'ice-mining' maps of the surface using remote sensing data.

'Simply operating and drilling into the tough lunar surface will provide valuable insight to engineers for future lunar missions, such as the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, mission, which is slated to land at the lunar South Pole in late 2023,' NASA added in the statement.

Nokia will test the cellular network by having a rover developed by Lunar Outpost venture more than one mile away from the Nova-C lander to test the strength of the network.

If successful, it could 'pave the way for a commercial' 4G/LTE network on the lunar surface, including high-definition video from astronauts to base stations, vehicles to base stations and more, NASA added.

'These early technology demonstrations employ innovative partnerships to provide valuable information about operating on and exploring the lunar surface,' Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, explained.

'The data will inform the designs for future in-situ resource utilization, mobility, communication, power, and dust mitigation capabilities.'
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The remains of an ancient ship that sank 2,500 years ago near the island of Kythera, Greece was discovered during a marine survey for the Crete-Peloponnese subsea interconnection, the Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO) announced on Thursday.

During the survey of the Aegean Sea, which took place in 2019, IPTO stumbled upon hundreds of amphoras  tall ancient Greek jars with two handles and a long neck  that led them to the sunken cargo ship.

The remains sat 728 feet below the water's surface, between Neapolis, a small town in Greece, and Kythera, and indicates there may have a developed trade in the region during the time period.

The ship's deck is covered with the ancient jars that originated from Corfu, Skopelos and Chios  islands surrounding Greece.

Scientists with the Hellenic Center for Marine Research used their oceanographic ship 'Aegean' equipped with a submarine remote control vehicle, known as the MAX ROVER, to investigate the ship and its treasures, which was conducted in September.

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During the survey of the Aegena Sea, which took place in 2019, IPTO stumbled upon hundreds of amphoras, tall ancient Greek jars with two handles and a long neck, that led them to the sunken cargo ship

Using their underwater technology, the team also found clay vessels from Chios, three pithos, a set of table vessels including a flat-bottomed table amphora, as well as a fish panel and two skyphids at the shipwreck site.

Researchers are working on a three-dimensional image of the shipwreck that is expected to give a clearer view of the size of the vessel and the volume of its cargo.

Another ancient Greek shipwreck was discovered in 2018 at the bottom of the Black Sea and was deemed the oldest intact every to be discovered in the body of water.

The 75-foot-long Greek trading vessel was found lying whole with its mast, rudders and rowing benches after more than 2,400 years.

The remains sat 728 below the water's surface, between Neapolis and Cythera, and indicates there may have a developed trade in the region during the time period

Using their underwater technology, the team also found clay vessels from Chios, three pithos, a set of table vessels including a flat-bottomed table amphora, as well as a fish panel and two skyphids at the shipwreck site

It was found in a well known 'shipwreck graveyard' that has already revealed over 60 other vessels.

During the most recent exploration in late 2017, the team discovered what has now been confirmed as the worlds oldest intact shipwreck  a Greek trading vessel design previously only seen on the side of ancient Greek pottery such as the Siren Vase in the British Museum.

The ship, found 1.3 miles under the surface, could shed new light on the ancient Greek tale of Odysseus tying himself to a mast to avoid being tempted by sirens.

Prior to this discovery, ancient ships had only been found in fragments with the oldest more than 3,000 years old.

Another ancient Greek shipwreck was discovered in 2018 at the bottom of the Black Sea and was deemed the oldest intact every to be discovered in the body of water. The 75-foot-long Greek trading vessel was found lying whole with its mast, rudders and rowing benches after more than 2,400 years

The team from the Black Sea Maritime Archaeological Project said the find also revealed how far from the shore ancient Greek traders could travel.

Jon Adams, the projects chief scientist, told The Times the ship probably sank in a storm, with the crew unable to bail water in time to save it.

It was chiefly used for trading but Adams believes it may have been involved in a little bit of raiding of coastal cities.

The ship, according to the scientist, was probably based at one of the ancient Greek settlements on what is now the Bulgarian coast.
Great header. Wrong net. Tomas Souceks own goal wasnt how millennium man David Moyes envisioned seeing in his 1,000th game, as West Ham surrendered their 100 per cent record in Europe.

The visiting supporters, some of them topless and tipsy, were singing and dancing in their cramped corner of the Cegeka Arena. Said Benrahma had scored his second of the evening in the 82nd minute and it looked like qualification for the Europa Leagues knockout stages was set to be sealed in victorious style.

Then Soucek helped the hosts to an equaliser in the 87th minute. He hasnt scored since the seasons opening day, away at Newcastle, and unfortunately he broke that drought at the wrong end. Thats the bad news.

Genk celebrate getting a way back into the game through Tomas Soucek's freak own goal

West Ham looked to be on their way to the knockout stages after a double from Said Benrahma

Benrahma inspired West Ham to a comeback in the second half with two top finishes

The better news is West Ham remain unbeaten in the Europa League. Theyre top of Group H, a good few points clear of their competition, and mathematically speaking, theyve qualified. Failure to win was not the end of the world.

On reflection, a draw might have been the right result, said Moyes, whose side were trailing 1-0 at half time after an uncharacteristic poor first 45. I'd slightly altered a couple of things to see how it would work and if it would go for us.

'We are trying to rotate the squad and make the most of what we've got. We are still new to this (Europe). We knew somewhere along the line it would be bumpy. It wouldn't always be smooth.

Sir Alex Fergusons 1,000th game in charge of Manchester United was a 2-1 win over Lyon. Arsene Wengers 1,000th in charge of Arsenal ended in an extraordinary 6-0 loss at Chelsea. These occasions can go very right, or very wrong.

West Ham players mob Benrahma after he gave the team the lead in the second half

Benrahma scored his second goal after a brilliant individual run from outside the area

Aaron Cresswell looks on in disappointment after Soucek's own goal gifted Genk the equaliser

MATCH FACTS Genk: Vandevoordt, Munoz (Ugbo 87), Sadick, Lucumi, Arteaga, Heynen, Thorstvedt (Preciado 87), Paintsil (Oyen 90+4), Hrosovsky, Ito, Onuacho Subs not used: Chambaere (GK), Leysen (GK), McKenzie, Bongonda, Tresor, Eiting Goals: Paintsil 4, Soucek og 87 West Ham: Areola 6; Coufal 6.5, Dawson 6, Diop 5.5, Cresswell 6.5; Noble 5.5 (Soucek 58, 6), Rice 6.5; Benrahma 7.5, Lanzini 6.5 (Kral 85), Masuaku 5.5 (Fornals 58); Antonio 6 (Bowen 58, 6) Subs not used: Fabianski, Randolph, Zouma, Ogbonna, Fredericks, Johnson, Chesters, Baptiste Scorers: Benrahma (59, 82) Booked: Rice, Dawson Manager: David Moyes 6 Referee: Aleksandar Stavrev 6 Attendance: 12,239 Advertisement

Wanting it to go more Ferguson than Wenger in his 1,000th in management altogether, Moyes named a surprisingly strong side, despite the looming visit of Liverpool on Sunday. Yet even with Declan Rice, Michail Antonio and the gang starting, it was Genk who dominated.

Theyre seventh in the Belgian First Division and so havent enjoyed the best of seasons. Instead of sacking the manager, John van den Brom, they fired the assistant, Dennis Haar, and in the two games since announcing that decision, they had scored 12 goals.

They were feeling clinical and four minutes into the start of this contest, West Hams record of having not conceded in this competition was dismissed.

It started with Junya Ito, Genks most inventive player, playing a nice pass behind West Hams defence. Issa Diop tried to intercept but was sluggish. Joseph Paintsil latched on to the ball instead and beat Alphonse Areola, despite the goalkeeper getting a hand to it.

Genk almost doubled their advantage before the 10-minute mark, with Areola saving Bryan Heynen and Paul Onuachus headers. Rice was getting frustrated and started shouting towards Moyes. West Ham were being outnumbered in midfield and couldnt cope. Genk were formed in 1988  a year after Mark Noble was born in 1987. West Hams club captain was looking his age here, chasing shadows.

West Ham would have equalised before the break, were it not for some heroic goalkeeping and defending from Genk. First, Maarten Vandevoordt denied Said Benrahma from tapping in Arthur Masuakus low cross from the left. Then, Antonios shot squirmed under Vandevoordt. The ball was about to cross the line, and Rice was rushing in to make sure of it, but Patrik Hrosovsky somehow produced a sliding goal-line clearance to ensure it remained 1-0.

David Moyes salutes West Ham's travelling fans after a hugely entertaining 2-2 draw in Belgium

One thousand Hammers made the trip but were denied a fourth straight Europa League win

After 57 minutes, Moyes made a triple substitution: Antonio for Jarrod Bowen, Noble for Tomas Soucek and Masuaku for Pablo Fornals. Seconds later, it was 1-1, with Vladimir Coufal crossing and Benrahma scoring through the legs of Vandevoordt.

West Hams supporters tossed red and blue flares on to the pitch. Coufal sprinted over to throw them to the sidelines. He wanted the game to restart, sensing they could score again.

In the 82nd minute, the visitors thought theyd won it, courtesy of Benrahma. He took the ball by Mujaid Sadick then stuck it through Vandevoordts legs for 2-1. The winner, or so they thought.

In the 88th minute, it was 2-2. Angelo Preciado crossed and Soucek could only head the ball into his own net. Not to worry, because West Ham will make it out of their group nonetheless.

Ghanaian striker Joseph Paintsil gave Genk a surprise lead in the fourth minute of the game

Moyes was taking charge of his 1,000th game but the evening ended in disappointment

RE-LIVE ALL THE ACTION AS IT HAPPENED...
Rio Ferdinand has claimed Liverpool have looked much more assured in the Champions League this term compared with Manchester United.

The Reds easily strolled into the last-16 of the competition as group winners with two games to spare on Wednesday evening following a comfortable 2-0 victory over Atletico Madrid.

It marks an impressive campaign in Europe thus far for Jurgen Klopp's side who had been put into what looked like a tricky section along with AC Milan, Porto and the Spanish champions.

Liverpool cruised into the last-16 of the Champions League after beating Atletico Madrid 2-0

Rio Ferdinand has praised the Reds for their ability to control matches in any situation

But goals from Diogo Jota and Sadio Mane saw them take an early lead at Anfield before Felipe was sent off in the first half to give Klopp's outfit an easy night.

While Manchester United are also on top of their group, it's much in part thanks to three late goals in the competition from Cristiano Ronaldo who struck in stoppage time on Tuesday to rescue a 2-2 draw at Atalanta - his third goal in the final 10 minutes of a European tie this term.

Former United defender Ferdinand believes Liverpool are showing better in-game management of their fixtures this term, with the Reds now on a 25-match unbeaten run that stretches back to April.

Manchester United meanwhile have been constantly been left chasing games in Europe

But three late Cristiano Ronaldo goals has kept them on course for the Champions League last-16, with his latest rescuing a 2-2 draw at Atalanta on Tuesday night

'This is a team in control in every situation they are in,' Ferdinand told BT Sport.

'Yesterday with United was disarray in trying to get a point.'

Another former United player in Dion Dublin echoed a similar sentiment, claiming Liverpool's preparation and settled team is helping them glide through games.

'Liverpool just approach these games right - they look very organised and professional,' he told BBC 5Live.

'The spine of the side is very strong and very experienced. Fabinho and Jordan Henderson bring experience, while Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane up top and the two centre-halves make it look easy.'
Owen Hargreaves believes Raheem Sterling will make a 'good impact' in the Manchester derby if Pep Guardiola makes the decision to start him.

Sterling scored in Manchester City's 4-1 win over Club Brugge in their Champions League group game on Wednesday night. The goal marked his first strike since August and only his third in his last 31 club appearances.

However, Hargreaves has still backed the 26-year-old to excel in Manchester City's Premier League clash with United at Old Trafford on Saturday.

Owen Hargreaves believes Raheem Sterling (above) will have 'good impact' on the Manchester derby if Pep Guardiola makes the decision to start him

Speaking after Manchester City's Champions League clash on Wednesday night, Hargreaves said: 'Raheem Sterling could have a good impact on Saturday if he started for the Manchester derby.'

Hargreaves also reflected on how Sterling must be feeling at the moment given he has started just two Premier League games.

The BT pundit has also said it was nice to see Phil Foden celebrate with Sterling after their third goal.

Hargreaves (above) also said he understood how difficult it has been for Sterling not starting

Sterling scored in Manchester City's 4-1 win over Club Brugge in their Champions League group game on Wednesday night (above)

He said: 'It was really nice that Phil Foden came over and celebrated with Sterling. As a player you know how hard it can be as an attacking player.

'Pep always says you need numbers and if you score you will stay in the team. So, because Foden and Jesus are scoring all the time they are staying in the team.'

When asked who would be the best option for City ahead of their clash with Manchester United on Saturday, Joleon Lescott said every played had 'given themselves the opportunity to start'.

Hargreaves said it was nice to see the likes of Phil Foden (R) celebrate with Sterling (Middle)

Joleon Lescott (above) has also said that Guardiola has 'no bad options' for Saturday's derby

The BT pundit said: 'I don't think there are any bad options. They have all given themselves an opportunity to start on the weekend but it would be good to pick Sterling. However, no one is being dropped, I think they are being rotated.

'The fact that you don't play the derby will be disappointing but if you play against PSG in Champions League that will be great. I don't think there is a bad game to play in.'

Lescott went on to credit Manchester City for having well-rounded squad, saying: 'Their two best players (Dias and De Bruyne) didnt even start today.

'I dont think anyone in the premier league or even the champions league can compete with their depth.'
Former WBC Lightweight International Champion Viktor Kotochigov has suffered an 'acid attack' while training in the UK ahead of his next fight.

The Kazakh fighter, 28, has described how he was left 'curling in pain' after a gang of hooded men burst into his apartment, before throwing an 'acid-like' substance over him.

The ex-champion has told his followers on Instagram that he was ready to defend himself, but his assailants had come with no intention to fight.

After the attack, Kotochigov posted images with rashes and burns visible on his face, neck, body and arm.

Former WBC Lightweight International Champion Viktor Kotochigov posted images on his Instagram account showing burns to his face, neck, arm and body after the attack

Kotochigov, who has won 12 of his 14 fights, losing the last two, was in the UK to prepare for his next bout, which was due to take place on December 11. And he has been supporting his friend, Tursynbay Kulakhmet, who lost to Juan Carlos Abreu last Friday.

However, his preparations have been turned on their head by the attack.

'The England camp was a bit unlucky for me,' Kotochigov, who lives in Almaty in Kazakhstan, explained on Instagram. 'I flew to England, to prepare for the duel scheduled for December 11.

'Got a room and started working out. It's been four days, sleeping at home at night, hearing some noise outside the door, someone trying to open the lock loudly.

Kotochigov said on Instagram he was due to fight in the UK on December 11 and was training

The boxer who lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan, told Instagram followers he was ready to fight

'I'm breaking into my mind and want to grab a knife, but there was nothing in the kitchen except for a form and spoon.

'The door opens, people fly in, with their hood on their heads.

'Not long thinking I stand up and go to them but apparently, they had no plans to fight me and they were pouring acid-like substance on me, I curled in pain and these people quickly hid.'

The fight scheduled for December would have been Kotochigov's second in the UK. He previously fought and won against Andrejs Podusovs in Bethnal Green.
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The 100-metre pool at the Silversands resort on Grenada

The Caribbean conjures images of palm tree-fringed beaches with white sand slipping gently into a sparkling, crystal-clear sea. And while these gorgeous islands are ripe for relaxation, they also have some of the best pools in the world, where you can take a dip without having to worry about tides, currents or what lurks beneath the tropical waters.

Take, for instance, the epic 100-metre infinity pool at Silversands on Grenadas Grand Anse Beach. Its the longest in the Caribbean, offering views right across the ocean for those who like to indulge in some laps before hitting the breakfast buffet.

B&B costs from 635 per night based on two sharing (silversandsgrenada.com).

For something more secluded, Beach Houses By The Crane on the quiet east coast of Barbados are ideal. Well away from the busier resorts, each villa has an infinity pool looking out over the Atlantic, plus a hot tub for post-dip soaking.

The Discover Beach Houses B&B package starts at 205 per night for a one-bedroom suite (beachhouses.bb).

At Beach Houses By The Crane, pictured, each villa has an infinity pool and a hot tub for post-dip soaking

Not to be outdone in the private-pool stakes, Galaxy Sanctuaries, a resort within a resort at Jade Mountain on St Lucia, takes things to another level.

Each open-sided suite has an infinity pool that forms part of the bedroom and living space, with views of the towering Pitons across the bay.

High above the lush forest that tumbles down to the beach, these secluded pools are pure heaven.

Each open-sided suite at Galaxy Sanctuaries has an infinity pool that offers views of the towering Pitons across the bay

Life for guests at the Jade Mountain resort in St Lucia is sheer paradise

Nightly rates start at 795 based on two sharing (jademountain.com).

Further north, Antigua has stellar options for those looking to enjoy some serious pool time.

Curtain Bluffs main pool is in an idyllic, shady spot surrounded by towering palm trees with plenty of space for stretching out and honing your front crawl.

Curtain Bluffs main pool, pictured, is in an idyllic, shady spot with plenty of space for honing your front crawl

The resort, set on a rocky outcrop between two secluded coves, is one of the islands very best. The Terrace Suites private pool overlooks the Caribbean and is the dream place to see out the day with a sundowner.

Double rooms start from 850 per night during high season, which runs from December 17 until April 2 (curtainbluff.com).

Over on St Vincent and the Grenadines, Bequia Beach Hotel has a new salt-water pool overlooking the beach. Procure a sunlounger and enjoy a well deserved cocktail.

B&B costs from 224 a night based on two sharing (bequiabeachhotel.com).

Pictured above is the new salt-water pool overlooking the beach at Bequia Beach Hotel on St Vincent and the Grenadines

On Canouan, a tiny island at the very south of the St Vincent and the Grenadines archipelago, the Mandarin Orientals gorgeous infinity pool runs along the back of its private, pink-sand beach.

Loll about in the shallow end and watch the waves break over the coral reef, or practise your front crawl with the warm sun on your back. The adjacent hot tub will help you work out any post-swim kinks.

Rooms cost from 1,192 per night based on two sharing (mandarinoriental.com/canouan).

On Canouan, the Mandarin Orientals gorgeous infinity pool, pictured, runs along the back of its private, pink-sand beach

Few pools in the region are as swanky as the one at private villa Kaia Kamina on Grand Cayman.

It sits high above the sea and the palms which surround the property, providing a secluded space for kicking back. Sure, it starts at 2,429 per night, but it sleeps 18.

And with private beach access, it has the feel of your own resort (luxurycayman villas.com).

Dive in: The two-tier infinity pool at Rosewood Little Dix Bay on Virgin Gorda

The pool at Palm Heights, pictured, has a swim-up pool bar, which lends it a pleasingly 1970s Roger Moore-era Bond feel

Round the coast on Seven Mile Beach, the Palm Heights has put its pool at the heart of the action. Theres a swim-up bar as well as design touches that give it a pleasingly 1970s Roger Moore-era Bond feel. Rooms start at 767 per night (palmheights.com).

For something truly unique, make for Rosewood Little Dix Bay on Virgin Gorda, one of the British Virgin Islands. The resorts two-tier infinity pool sits just above the quiet bay, part of a rambling 500-acre estate which is yours to explore.

Ocean View Cottages cost from 3,915pp for seven nights, including BA flights (elegantresorts.co.uk).
Qatar Airways is the undisputed best airline in the world, having been named the No.1 carrier on the planet for the sixth year running at the 'Oscars of Aviation', the Skytrax World Airline Awards 2021, and scooping the gold medal in the 'best business class' category.

But how has it earned these accolades and are the standards kept up at the back of the cabin, too? Travel experts from The Points Guy UK set about finding out.

Two of them boarded one of the carrier's flagship Boeing 777s in Doha for a flight to London Heathrow with video cameras in tow to compare the business and economy class experiences. Was the posh end perfection? Nearly.

The Points Guy UK filmed their experiences in business class, pictured, and economy class on a Qatar Airways Doha-Heathrow flight

Qatar Airways is the undisputed best airline in the world, having been named the No.1 carrier on the planet for the sixth year running at the 'Oscars of Aviation'

The lucky Points Guy flier at the front in Qatar Airways' lauded Qsuite berth was Liam Spencer, with the tips site managing to save a whopping 52 per cent on the cost of his ticket by routing the journey from Abu Dhabi with an overnight stop in Doha.

The site explains: 'Qsuite prices started at a hefty 2,275, however, there are many short connecting flights around the Gulf and we had already planned to be in nearby countries before Qatar anyway. We searched various departure points to see if this dropped the price, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

'To our joy, flying out of the latter with an overnight stop in Doha lowered the price by a whopping 52 per cent to just 1,091!

Liam from The Points Guy UK is impressed with the extras in Qatar's Qsuite

And Liam's verdict? He said: 'The best business-class product I've ever experienced. The seat itself was incredibly comfy and had a ton of privacy thanks to the fully closing sliding door.

'The food was absolutely delicious and wouldn't have looked out of place in a fancy London restaurant.

'The sleeping experience was perfect. The seat turned into a fully-flat bed with White Company bedding and pyjamas. Once I was tucked in it felt like I was in a bedroom in the sky.'

For his main meal, Liam opted for an Arabic mezze, pictured

Liam's main course was pan-fried veal and mashed pumpkin

However, it wasn't quite 10 out of 10.

He added: 'It took the cabin crew over 10 minutes to come to my seat after I pressed the call bell.

'[Also] a lot of my fellow business-class passengers were not adhering to mask-wearing rules, and the cabin crew made no effort to enforce them.'

Nicky Kelvin, Head of The Points Guy UK, documented the Qatar Airways 777 economy offering, paying 228 for seat 28K.

And he liked it very much indeed.

Nicky Kelvin, Head of The Points Guy UK, documented the Qatar Airways 777 economy offering, paying 228 for seat 28K

Nicky is here demonstrating the 'poor man's business class'

Nicky approved of the food in economy - 'tasty and substantial'

He said it was an 'incredibly comfortable and spacious seat for an economy product' and that 'it was a bonus that the cabin was so empty allowing me to make a "poor-man's business class", spreading out across multiple seats'.

He also approved of the food  'tasty and substantial'  and the service from the 'very attentive crew', which was 'fast and friendly'.

Any downsides? Just the pudding - 'some kind of take on a cheesecake base topped with Angel Delight-style pudding, which wasn't great'.

For more from TPG UK visit thepointsguy.co.uk/mailing-list and watch the full-length video by clicking here.

Nicky's main course was lightly curried rice and chicken, which he says is 'my kind of vibe'
Radio host Chris Kearns has died at the age of 75 following a battle with cancer.

The former Sky Racing presenter and horse racing fan passed away peacefully on Melbourne Cup day.

Kearns worked in radio for his entire adult life, and was employed at commercial stations 2CH, 2SM, 2UW, 2UE, MIX FM and 2GB.

Rest in peace: Radio veteran Chris Kearns has died at the age of 75 after a battle with cancer

Former colleague Tim Webster paid tribute to Kearns, saying: 'It was time for him to rest in eternal peace.

'Chris was a good bloke who would do anything for anyone, including mentoring any juniors who wanted to get into radio.'

Former 2CH boss Cherie Romaro also offered some words on Kearns' passing.

Tribute: Former colleague Tim Webster paid tribute to Kearns, saying: 'Chris was a good bloke who would do anything for anyone, including mentoring juniors who wanted to get into radio'

'Chris was unique in every sense of the word. He took over from the legendary Bob Rogers in mornings on Classic Hits 2CH and did an outstanding job,' Romaro said.

'He loved his beloved cat Joey and was a special generous friend to all that knew him and or worked with him. Vale Chris Kearns.'

Kearns' final role was working at Classic Hits 2CH, which plays music from the '60s, '70s and '80s.

A passion for the airwaves: Kearns worked in radio for his entire adult life, and was employed at commercial stations 2CH, 2SM, 2UW, 2UE, MIX FM and 2GB

He was an avid horse racing fan and passionate about the sport in Australia, previously working as a Sky Racing presenter.

The radio announcer was around friends on Saturday for Melbourne Cup day and even placed a bet, picking Verry Elleegant to win.

He died later that night.
Today host Allison Langdon has shared a glimpse into her family life in a charming photo shoot for the December issue of The Australian Women's Weekly.

The Channel Nine presenter, 42, looks ever so stylish in an $800 pastel dress by Jacquemus as she graces the front cover of the glossy magazine.

She poses with her husband, Michael Willesee Jr, 53, and their two children, Mack, four, and Scout, two, in the stunning pictorial.

At home with Allison Langdon: The Today host has shared a glimpse into her family life in a charming photo shoot for the December issue of The Australian Women's Weekly. Pictured with her husband, Michael Willesee Jr, and their two children, Mack, four, and Scout, two

She dotes on her children and cosies up to her husband in a series of photos taken on location at a luxury home in Sydney's Palm Beach.

Allison looks sensational in the strapless yellow dress, which highlights her svelte frame, and styles her short blonde hair in loose curls.

She also models a white floral frock from Oroton, which costs $950.

Radiant: The Channel Nine presenter, 42, looks ever so stylish in an $800 pastel dress by Jacquemus as she graces the front cover of the glossy magazine

Allison spoke to AWW about her relationship with Michael, saying they were 'mostly separated from each other' before they had children because of their busy careers.

She praised her husband for supporting her over the years when she was a reporter on 60 Minutes, despite him having his own high-pressure career in the media.

Michael used to be a TV presenter, but now has a corporate job at Westpac.

Sitting pretty: She also models a white floral frock from Oroton, which costs $950

'Not many couples can survive such highs and lows. But Mike's an extraordinary, understanding man. He's been by my side, supporting me, for 15 years now,' she said.

Michael also said of his wife: 'As a mum and a journo, Ally's the hardest working person I've ever known.'

The December issue of The Australian Women's Weekly is out now
She's known for playing the avid George Michael fan Heather Trott on EastEnders.

And Cheryl Fergison has landed her first TV role in six years with the actress teasing that her new project would feature David Walliams and Sheridan Smith.

Alongside a selfie, the 56-year-old former soap star told her fans on Instagram: 'Where am I off to today?? Well only back down to the smoke for a press release tomorrow with @dwalliams @sheridansmithster.'

Making moves: Cheryl Fergison has landed her first TV role in six years with the actress teasing that her new project would feature David Walliams and Sheridan Smith

'Back down to the smoke for a press release tomorrow with @dwalliams @sheridansmithster,' the former soapstar excitedly told her fans on Instagram

Cheryl continued: 'Are you ready press? Yes it's gonna be another must see family watch...

'It's a fantastic cast...and I'm so humbled and blessed to be in this. Thanks to everyone for your continued support.'

The actress is joining the cast for the upcoming Sky TV Christmas show Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After, which is set to star David and Sherdian.

Full details of Cheryl's latest project are set to be announced on Thursday with her representatives giving MailOnline further insight into the project.

Co-stars: The actress is suspected to be joining the cast for the upcoming Sky TV Christmas show Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After, which is set to star David and Sherdian (pictured together in November)

Cheryl's management told the MailOnline: 'Cheryl is a significant box-office draw the length & breadth of the UK & recently has accepted offers too good to refuse in order to return to her roots in the Theatre. However, during this period she has still found time to appear on Screen.

'The pandemic sadly meant that UK Theatres were no longer open & so Cheryl was once again able to consider approaches for Screen work.

After Ever After is certainly amongst her personal favourites & she also has Dodger with Chris Eccleston, an alternative Sketch Show + an exciting major new Netflix series in the can for screening next year.'

Heather's new role comes after it was previously revealed that she moved closeby to the Coronation Street set after she was killed off by EastEnders in 2012.

Cheryl lives in the North West with her husband Yassine Al-Jermoni, 34, who she tied the knot with in 2011 after he moved to the UK to be with her.

Discussing her career move, Cheryl told the Distinct Nostalgia podcast: 'I would totally contemplate doing Corrie and given now that I live up North and talk like that now. I am like "Hiya love".'

Role: Cheryl is known for playing the avid George Michael fan Heather Trott on EastEnders (pictured on the show in 2011)

Cheryl has also revealed that she burst into tears after being told she was out of the fictional Walford -based soap.

She told Best magazine: 'It was a bittersweet day. What you get with one hand, you get taken away with another!

She said: 'When they told me Heather was for the chop, (the boss) had to get me a tissue.

Sad: Cheryl previously revealed that she burst into tears after being told she was out of the fictional Walford -based soap (pictured on the show)

'Sometimes a character is sacrificed to make other stories work. I get it. I knew it was going to come but it was still a shock.'

Since leaving EastEnders, Cheryl appearanced on the 2012 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, Big School, The Spa as well as being a guest host on Loose Women.

Despite her different career moves Cheryl previously admitted that she struggled to move on from EastEnders and found her beloved character hard to 'shake'.

Career: Since leaving EastEnders, Cheryl appearanced on the 2012 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, Big School, The Spa as well as being a guest host on Loose Women (pictured on The Paul O'Grady Show in 2009)

Cheryl's character Heather was murdered by Ben Mitchell after he robbed her while trying to flee Walford and late served four years in prison for the crime.

Previously discussing a return to the Square, Heather has suggested that she could come back as her character's twin sisters who she was separated from at birth.

In an interview with Good Morning Britain in 2012, Cheryl teased upcoming soap roles, saying she would like to appear in Emmerdale or Corrie.

Career: In an interview with Good Morning Britain in 2012, Cheryl teased upcoming soap roles, saying she would like to appear in Emmerdale or Corrie

She said: ' You've got people with funny bones up there.

'I wouldnt mind getting in another one of those soaps again. Corrie or Emmerdale. A long lost Dingle.'

She previously dropped a major hint, saying: 'It seems many of the soap-watching public would like to see me on the cobbles or in the dales.

Other options? If Cheryl had her way, she would be part of the famous Dingle family on Emmerdale

'[Emmerdale and Coronation Street] worth considering if you are thinking of new characters?

'Heather was such a great character to play. Now it's time to create a new character. Time to see a completely different character in one of the other continuing dramas.'

Still, she has a lot to be getting on with for the minute, as Cheryl is currently starring in he is starring in Maggie May The Musical in Liverpool.

And she admitted her life isn't quite as glamorous as it used to be.

Cheryl is happily married to Yassine Al-Jermini, but she previously said she didn't reveal her celebrity status to him for five months.

Talking to Loose Women last year, the actress said she enjoyed an 'old-fashioned' courtship with her 30-year-old toyboy.

She said: 'We met online and wrote to one another on the computer and spoke on the computer. It was very old-fashioned.

'He didn't know what I did for a living. I didn't show him my picture. It was five months of chat before we met each other.

'I saw him and it was like "ping". I knew he was the man I was going to marry and I had been married once before.'

Addressing the 21-year age gap, Cheryl said that 'age doesn't matter' and 'no one blinks when a man does it.
The vinyl version of Adele's upcoming album 30 had ramped-up production due to pandemic-related shortages and shipping issues.

Sources with Sony told Variety that the upcoming release from the 33-year-old musical artist had to be finished earlier to accommodate the vinyl release in tandem with the streaming release.

Sony insiders said that more than 500,000 vinyl copies have been produced over the past few months to accommodate the November 19 release date, and the company incorporated use of overseas pressing plants to ensure the demand would be met.

The latest: The vinyl version of Adele's upcoming album 30 had ramped-up production due to pandemic-related shortages and shipping issues. She was snapped last year on SNL

The Grammy-winner submit the final copy of the album six months back to ensure production of the vinyl recordings would be timely, according to the outlet.

The production comes amid an enhanced demand of vinyl records, which are sold at large retailers such as Target and Walmart; and shipping shortages linked to the pandemic.

Thirty Tigers label head David Macias told the publication of the comeback of vinyl albums amid the pandemic.

'A lot of people were looking for ways to keep themselves entertained at home during the pandemic,' Macias said, citing a spike in his label.

The Grammy-winner submit the final copy of the album six months back to ensure production of the vinyl recordings would be smooth

The superstar songstress was snapped last month at a Lakers game with beau Rich Paul

'As a configuration, its gone from the cool factor to a huge chunk of the business ... in 2019, Thirty Tigers did about 295,000 units of vinyl, and this year were on pace to do 800,000,' he said. 'Its crazy how much its blown up in two years.

'If you miss your album street date by three or four months, it can reduce your vinyl sales to 30-40 percent of what they otherwise would have been.'

Vinyl sales grew 85.7 percent over the past year, with $467 million in sales in the first half of the year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Adele on her website opened up about the creative process behind her forthcoming release, and the themes of restoration.

'When I was writing it, it was my friend who came over with a bottle of wine and a takeaway to cheer me up,' she said. 'My wise friend who always gives the best advice ... the friend whod stay up all night and just hold my hand while Id sob relentlessly not knowing why. The get up and go friend who would pick me up and take me somewhere I said I didnt want to go but just wanted to get me out the house for some vitamin D.'

She continued, 'And then that friend who no matter what, checked in on me even though Id stopped checking in with them because Id become so consumed by my own grief.'

Adele said she's 'painstakingly rebuilt [her] house and [her] heart since then and this album narrates it.'
Danny Dyer admitted on Wednesday that he thinks having sex with the same person for the rest of your life is 'cruel' and that he envies the free love era of the 60s.

The 44-year-old TV personality met his wife at 13-years-old, became a father aged 18, and married his childhood sweetheart Joanne Mas in 2016.

He told The Mirror: 'I've been with the same bird since I was 13 years of age. It is rare and it is a beautiful thing, but it does come with its hiccups... I resented it in a way.'

'I've been with the same bird since I was 13': Danny Dyer admitted on Wednesday that he thinks having sex with the same person for the rest of your life is 'cruel'

Danny specified that he didn't resent the birth of his daughter Dani who he 'grew to love' but regretted never being single in his youth.

The EastEnders actor shares Dani, 25, and their two other children Sunnie, 14, and eight-year-old Arty with Joanne.

However, the father of three admitted that despite his early parenthood he has only really matured in his 40s.

He explained: 'I think older men grow up slightly. You've got to hit 40 when they really think, 'What the f**k have I been doing for 20 years?'

The 44-year-old TV personality met his wife at 13-years-old, became a father aged 18, and married his childhood sweetheart Joanne Mas in 2016.

Danny's views on monogamy come after he recently labelled all of his daughter Dani's ex boyfriends as 'tw**s'.

Speaking on their shared podcast Sorted With The Dyers, Danny said: 'Ultimately, all we want for our children is someone they fall in love with that worships the f***ing ground they walk on.

'Thats it. There are many t**ts out there, as I have learnt, especially with you, Dani. Well, only with you.'

Opinionated: Danny's views on monogamy come after he recently labelled all of his daughter Dani's ex boyfriends as 'tw**s' during an episode of their podcast Sorted With The Dyers

Dani went on to reveal how she was worried she wouldn't meet the man of her dreams in the next five years.

She said: 'I have one more chance in life to get married and have children. I only really want to have one more go. I havent got time.

'Ideally I want to be married before 30, so Ive got five years to get to know them and marry them.'

Dani split from her ex Sammy Kimmence in July after he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars for posing as an investor. They are parents to eight-month-old son Santiago.

Unlucky in love: The EastEnders actor, 44, called them 't***s'.Dani, 25, pictured ex-boyfriend Sammy Kimmence is currently serving a three-and-half year jail sentence

During the podcast, Danny also hit out at The Only Way Is Essex, insisting the show is 'highly irritating' after it emerged Dani's ex Jack Fincham is joining.

Jack, 30, who won Love Island alongside Dani in 2018 filmed scenes for the ITVBe reality show earlier this month, which resulted in a 'huge row' between him and his most recent ex, Frankie Sims, 26.

And EastEnders actor Danny mocked outrage when Dani asked her father if he had the programme on series link, exclaiming: 'Don't be f***ing ridiculous.'

Unimpressed: During the podcast, Danny also hit out at The Only Way Is Essex, insisting the show is 'highly irritating' after it emerged Dani's ex Jack Fincham is joining

Screen star: Jack, 30, who won Love Island alongside Dani, 25, in 2018 filmed scenes for the ITVBe reality show earlier this month

He said: 'Don't be f***ing ridiculous. Don't you f***ing ever say s**t like that around me.

'The first rule about watching TOWIE is that you never speak about watching TOWIE, OK?

'You don't f***ing declare it to no other human being, unless you want all of your credibility to completely vanish in front of your eyes.

'So let me reiterate, I haven't got that f***ing show on series link.'

Danny added he was annoyed by the language used on the show, saying he was exasperated with the cast's use of 'East London words like "ag" and they've turned it into "aggy"'.
Today presenter Allison Langdon has seemingly taken a thinly veiled swipe at her predecessor Lisa Wilkinson, who hosted the Nine breakfast show from 2007 to 2017.

Langdon, 42, told The Australian Women's Weekly she'll always trust her co-anchor Karl Stefanovic, in an apparent response to Wilkinson saying he'd thrown her under the bus during contract negotiations in 2015.

'Karl's got my back and I know he'll never let me fail. I've never trusted anyone I've worked with as much as him,' she said.

Swipe: Today presenter Allison Langdon (right) has seemingly taken a thinly veiled swipe at her predecessor Lisa Wilkinson, who hosted the Nine breakfast show from 2007 to 2017, by saying she'll always trust her co-anchor Karl Stefanovic (left)

'Karl and I are mates. We feud like brother and sister, but it's authentic. We can't fake our relationship  the audience would see through it  so it plays out naturally.'

She added: 'We keep it real and if someone needs a slap down, it's done with love.'

It comes after Wilkinson, 61, alleged in her autobiography, It Wasn't Meant to Be Like This, that Stefanovic had abandoned her during salary negotiations in 2015, leading to an 'off the charts' gender pay gap.

Dispute: Her remark was perhaps in response to Wilkinson (pictured) saying Stefanovic had thrown her under the bus during contract negotiations in 2015

She said Stefanovic, 47, had proposed in August 2015 they join forces to renegotiate their Nine contracts - not unlike how the cast of American sitcom Friends famously worked together to broker better deals with NBC.

But she claims he ended up ditching this idea and instead played rival networks Nine and Seven off against each other in order to secure a better deal for himself.

'Weeks later... the media became awash with stories that Stefanovic was restless at Today and looking for greener pastures  and more civilised working hours  at Channel Seven,' she wrote.

Stefanovic was soon at the centre of a bidding war between Nine and Seven that resulted in him re-signing a five-year deal with Nine worth at least $2million per year.

Wilkinson's deal was worth significantly less, about $780,000 a year, and was only for two years.

'Karl's got my back and I know he'll never let me fail. I've never trusted anyone I've worked with as much as him,' Langdon, 42, told The Australian Women's Weekly

'There was no doubt about it: Karl certainly knew the art of the deal,' she wrote, adding that the resulting pay disparity between them 'was so off the charts that no-one would have believed it'.

Wilkinson left the Today show in October 2017.

At the time it was reported Channel Nine was 'unable to meet her expectations' after she demanded equal pay with Stefanovic.

Nine's then-CEO Hugh Marks said she'd asked for $2.3million per year, which would have surpassed Stefanovic's base annual salary of $2million.

Wilkinson has since dismissed this claim as a 'lie'.
Home and Away star Sam Frost made headlines last month for refusing the Covid-19 vaccine, only to backflip this week by finally agreeing to get the jab.

And her co-star Lynne McGranger has since defended her, saying the cast and crew remain supportive even though they disagree with her anti-vax views.

The 68-year-old actress told Fitzy and Wippa on Thursday: 'Everyone is very supportive of Sam. We all might have differing opinions, but that's one thing about the cast and crew, we are supportive.'

Diplomatic response: Lynne McGranger (pictured) has said the Home and Away cast 'is supportive' of Sam Frost despite disagreeing with her anti-vax views

The Summer Bay veteran, who has endorsed the vaccine on social media, said Sam has accepted the consequences of not getting vaccinated until next year - which means her character will have to be temporarily written out.

'She realises that everyone supports that, and we don't want to lose her, because we love her,' Lynne said.

'I personally think she is a great little actress and a lovely person.'

The saga began when Sam shared a video to Instagram last month in which she tearfully admitted she was unvaccinated and was struggling with her mental health due to other people judging her.

'She is a great little actress': Lynne said Sam has accepted the consequences of not getting vaccinated until next year - which means her character will have to be temporarily written out

She said: 'I was really hesitant about doing a video or even speaking up about this sort of thing, but I feel like it's getting to a point now in the world where there's a lot of segregation.

'There's a lot of harsh judgement and opinions being thrown around a lot and it's taking its toll on my mental health for sure, and I know people around me are struggling - particularly if they're on the side of they don't want to get vaccinated, for whatever reason.

'There are lots of different reasons why people are not getting vaccinated and it might be because of their medical history, their concerns, they might have family history, it could be religious reasons.'

Sam then said she hadn't been vaccinated, but claimed she had spoken to her doctor as well as a psychologist about her decision; however, it's understood she does not have a valid medical exemption.

Vaxxed up: The Summer Bay veteran has endorsed the Covid-19 vaccine on social media

She added tearfully: 'It's a really hard time to be in society right now and you feel like you are less of a human and you feel like people judge you.

'And you're too scared to talk about your opinion or your feelings and part of you wants to go, "Well, it's none of your damn business why I'm not! And there's good reasons why I'm not and I don't want you to judge me."'

She explained it was important for the unvaccinated to look after their mental health, especially as freedoms return for fully vaccinated Australians.

'I'm struggling a lot with my mental health and I like to think that I'm pretty on to it. I see a psychologist regularly. So I can't imagine what it's like for people who don't have a support network around them,' she said.

She added that she could 'get in trouble' for coming out publicly as unvaccinated, before urging people to treat each other with more kindness and compassion.

Judgement: Sam shared a video to Instagram last month in which she tearfully admitted she was unvaccinated and was struggling with her mental health due to other people judging her

Her video caused a great deal of controversy, mainly because of her use of the word 'segregation' when referring to the way society 'judges' unvaccinated people.

'Segregation' is typically used to describe societies that are divided due to race, religion or sexual orientation.

In the following weeks, Sam was pictured on the Palm Beach set of Home and Away.

However, Channel Seven last Friday announced a vaccine mandate across all shows.

Tone deaf: Her video caused a great deal of controversy, mainly because of her use of the word 'segregation' when referring to the way society 'judges' unvaccinated people

The network said it 'will only engage fully vaccinated presenters, cast and crew' from January 10, meaning Sam was essentially told: 'Get the jab or face the sack.'

She confirmed on Tuesday she will be fully vaccinated by late February - about seven weeks after the vaccine mandate comes into effect.

Her character, nurse Jasmine Delaney, will be 'written out temporarily' until she's double vaxxed.

Mandate: Channel Seven last Friday announced a vaccine mandate across all shows. The network said it 'will only engage fully vaccinated presenters, cast and crew' from January 10, meaning Sam was essentially told: 'Get the jab or face the sack'

'I'll be back': Sam confirmed on Tuesday she will be fully vaccinated by late February - about seven weeks after the vaccine mandate comes into effect. Her character, nurse Jasmine Delaney, will be 'written out temporarily' until she's double vaxxed

The former Bachelorette said on Instagram she wasn't able to get the jab sooner because of an unspecified 'medical procedure booked in for January'.

She also insisted she wasn't leaving the soap permanently and that she had the full support of Seven executives.

'I'm not leaving Home and Away. I've got a medical procedure booked in for January, so I won't be fully vaxxed until mid to late February,' she wrote on Instagram Stories.

'I will be written out temporarily. Jazzy is going on an off-screen adventure for a few weeks, but I'll be back.'

She added: 'My bosses are amazing; we've been in open communication for months. [I'm] very grateful we were able to make a plan that works for everyone.'
Rebecca Hall showcased her elegant style as she attended as special screening of Passing at The Soho Hotel in London on Wednesday night.

The actress, 39, wore an ivory two piece adorned with black and cream floral motifs and a pair of glamorous silver heels.

The upper half of her outfit left her naked arms exposed to the air while her skirt finished just above the knee with a thigh-high split to her left.

In style: Rebecca Hall, 39, showcased her elegant style in an ivory two piece as she attended as special screening of Passing at The Soho Hotel in London on Wednesday night

The star, accessorised with a pair of delicate chain earrings which hung down on either side of her face and she wore minimal make-up to highlight her pretty features.

Rebecca sported a pixie hairdo as she posed with her pals at the event.

She could be seen standing alongside Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce, 74, who wore a charcoal grey suit jacket over a grey jumper.

Famous friends: She could be seen standing alongside Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce, 74, who wore a charcoal grey suit jacket over a grey jumper

Rubbing shoulders: The pair posed alongside actress Kate Fahy who wore autumnal coloured outfit for the evening

He had on a pair of trousers to match his jacket which he teamed with a pair of brown leather shoes.

Passing, written and directed by Rebecca, centres on the friendship of Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga), two light-skin Black women who both 'pass' - intentionally and unintentionally - as white in 1920s New York.

The film sees Irene and Clare reconnect in a chance encounter at a whites-only hotel during the Harlem Renaissance. It is Irene's first attempt at passing, while Clare has done it for her entire life, even marrying a white racist who is unaware of his own wife's heritage.

In addition to the feature's two leads, the project features performances from actors such as Alexander Skarsgard, Gbenga Akinnagbe and Bill Camp, among others.

Stepping out: Rebecca was joined at the event by broadcaster Vanessa Feltz, 59, who wore a cream coat with animal print faux fur cuffs

Rebecca was joined at the event by broadcaster Vanessa Feltz, 59, who wore a cream coat with animal print faux fur cuffs.

She wore an orange floral print dress which matched the large hoop earrings she wore in her ears.

Vanessa had on a pair of brown suede boots as she carried a bag packed full of belongings for the evening.

Fashion focus: She wore an orange floral print dress which matched the large hoop earrings she wore in her ears
Emily Ratajkowski, 30, looked ethereal as she walked through New York City on Wednesday night.

The statuesque model turned heads in a billowing full-length yellow skirt and a fitted, sheer, brown shirt that flashed her bra.

She finished the fall look with a pair of cream booties with a brown heel.

Angelic: Emily Ratajkowski looked ethereal as she walked through New York City on Wednesday night

Two-toned black and gold hoops were seen in her ears when the wind blew her long, straight, brunette hair back.

Her glossy locks were styled in an immaculate center part that divided her hair into a perfectly symmetric style.

The mom-of-one's face was beautifully made up to accentuate her big brown eyes, high cheekbones, and plump lips.

A rosy color flushed her cheeks while a glossy brownish pink hue was painted on her pout.

Statement piece: The statuesque model turned heads in a billowing yellow skirt and a fitted, sheer, brown shirt that flashed her bra

While carrying a yellow leather purse over her shoulder Emily looked serene with a closed-mouth smile as she walked solo through the city that never sleeps.

Earlier in the day the writer was active on Instagram to promote press from her forthcoming literary debut My Body.

Speaking to her 28.5 million devout fans on the app, she said: 'It was an absolute honor to talk to Lisa [Taddeo] about my book of essays (available next week! Preorder link in my bio). Please take a minute or two to read our conversation for @elleusa.'

Cool and calm: While carrying a yellow leather purse over her shoulder Emily looked serene with a closed-mouth smile as she walked solo through the city that never sleeps

In her Insta Stories she included a link to the feature.

It's the latest piece of media coverage the music video vixen has received ahead of her book's release on November 9.

The outspoken runway star was also recently profiled in the New York Times, and Time magazine shared an excerpt from her book last month.

She's an author! The San Diego-raised stunner shared a short video clip showing stacks of her printed book of essays set on a coffee table

In addition to pieces from the Elle interview, the San Diego-raised stunner shared a short video clip showing stacks of her printed book of essays set on a coffee table.

The hard copies were on a green marble coffee table in what looked like a colorfully decorated living room setting.

The snippet was silent as the camera panned several piles of books.

And following the books was a precious close-up photo of her baby boy Sylvester Apollo Bear, whom she shares with husband Sebastian Bear-McClard.

The tot is the spitting image of his actor-producer father.
Gal Gadot was all smiles while arriving at Jimmy Kimmel Live to promote her new movie Red Notice.

The film, which also stars Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds, will debut in select theaters November 5 before arriving on Netflix November 12.

It was also announced on Wednesday afternoon that Gadot, 36, was in final talks to play the Evil Queen in Disney's live-action Snow White adaptation.

All smiles: Gal Gadot was all smiles while arriving at Jimmy Kimmel Live to promote her new movie Red Notice

Evil Queen: It was also announced on Wednesday afternoon that Gadot, 36, was in final talks to play the Evil Queen in Disney's live-action Snow White adaptation

Gadot stepped out in a unique cut-out black dress covering just one of her long legs as she walked to the Hollywood studio.

She was carrying a bottle of water with a large black leather Gucci bag draped over one of her arms.

She completed her look with a pair of black suede heeled boots as she waved to fans before heading inside.

All smiles: Gadot stepped out in a unique cut-out black dress covering just one of her long legs as she walked to the Hollywood studio

Gal's look: She was carrying a bottle of water with a large black leather Gucci bag draped over one of her arms

Her outing came just as her role in Snow White was announced on Deadline, with the actress joining Rachel Zegler as Snow White.

The live-action film will expand upon the story and the music from the 1938 original animated film.

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, Dear, Evan Hansen) will write the new music for the upcoming film.

Outing: Her outing came just as her role in Snow White was announced on Deadline , with the actress joining Rachel Zegler as Snow White

Animated: The live-action film will expand upon the story and the music from the 1938 original animated film

Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man, (500) Days of Summer) is directing from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson.

The project is expected to start production in early 2022, though no release date has been announced yet.

Gadot will next be seen in the long-delayed Death on the Nile, which is hitting theaters on February 11, 2022.

Coming soon: Gadot will next be seen in the long-delayed Death on the Nile, which is hitting theaters on February 11, 2022

Not announced: The project is expected to start production in early 2022, though no release date has been announced yet

She is also attached to star in the biopic Irena Sendler, playing the Polish nurse who helped the Polish Underground Resistance in German-occupied Warsaw during World War 2.

Gadot is also attached to star as Cleopatra, and she's slated to return as Diana Prince in a third Wonder Woman movie.

She is also attached to star in the spy thriller Heart of Stone as well.

Coming soon: She is also attached to star in the biopic Irena Sendler, playing the Polish nurse who helped the Polish Underground Resistance in German-occupied Warsaw during World War 2

New roles: Gadot is also attached to star as Cleopatra, and she's slated to return as Diana Prince in a third Wonder Woman movie
Jennifer Garner checked on construction of her in-progress home in Brentwood, Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Noticeably, the 49-year-old mother-of-three's diamond ring had been moved from her ring finger to her middle digit.

Days ago fans suspected that the actress was engaged after she appeared on social media wearing the piece of jewelry.

Spotted: Jennifer Garner checked on construction of her in-progress home in Brentwood, Los Angeles on Wednesday

The Alias star wore a cream plaid button up shirt that she partially tucked into a pair of blue jeans.

Underneath the patterned top she wore a white crewneck shirt.

The media personality wore large, black-rimmed glasses over her eyes and a pair of studded earrings.

Her brunette hair was sectioned in the front and pulled back into a loose bun at the back of her head.

Switch: Noticeably, the 49-year-old mother-of-three's diamond ring had been moved from her ring finger to her middle digit

Walking in a pair of fur-lined tan clogs that she wore with socks, the producer smiled as she monitored the development of her future home.

Jen sparked engagement rumors after she was spotted sporting a ring on Instagram earlier this week.

The mother-of-three flashed a sizable diamond while chatting with her 13 Going On 30 co-star Judy Greer about their evolving relationships with drinking alcohol.

It was hard to ignore the sparkler decorating her left hand as she sipped tea and took off her glasses in the 25-minute video chat.

Garner has been dating boyfriend John Miller since 2018.

Attentive admirers: Days ago fans suspected that the actress was engaged after she appeared on social media wearing the piece of jewelry

Classic style: The Alias star wore a cream plaid button up shirt that she partially tucked into a pair of blue jeans

Content: Walking in a pair of fur-lined tan clogs that she wore with socks, the producer smiled as she monitored the development of her future home

Ready to wed? Jennifer Garner has sparked engagement rumors after she was spotted sporting a ring in her latest Instagram

It was her first relationship since finalizing her divorce from ex-husband Ben Affleck, with whom she shares children Violet, 15, Seraphina, 12, and Sam, nine.

Unlike Garner's past partners, Miller comes from the business world. He is the CEO of CaliGroup holding company.

Last month an insider told Us Weekly: 'Jen and John are serious. They are totally set on a long-term future together. They've taken their time to get this committed.'

The pair have certainly taken things show.

In August of 2020 the pair pressed pause on the relationship, only to rekindle their romance by May of 2021, according to Page Six.

Her guy: Garner has been dating businessman boyfriend John Miller since 2018

Miller's been making Garner a happy lady since.

'It's hard to remember Jen being this happy, and she definitely feels safe and secure with John, who's unlike anyone else she's ever dated,' Us Weekly's source said.

'He's hugely successful in his own right, of course, and she loves his mature and measured take on life.

'Being with someone as down-to-earth and calm as John is exactly what Jen needed in a partner.'

Before dating Miller, Garner was with Affleck from 2005 to 2015, but they did not finalize their divorce until three years later.

Serious stuff: Last month an insider told Us Weekly : 'Jen and John are serious. They are totally set on a long-term future together. They've taken their time to get this committed.' They're seen in September above

Affleck has since gone on to reunite with ex-fiancee Jennifer Lopez.

Before wedding her Daredevil co-star, Garner was married to Scott Foley from 2000 to 2004. The pair met while working on the set of Felicity.

Miller was previously married to Caroline Campbell, who he shares two children with.

The businessman and Campbell tied the knot in 2005, but he filed for divorce in 2011 only to reconcile a year later, and split for good in 2014.

Their divorce, however, wasn't finalized until a month before his relationship with Garner went public, according to Page Six.
Extraordinary Extensions

Rating:

Britain's Scenic Railways

Rating:

Never mind the surveyors report or the agents flimflam. All you need to know when youre moving into a new place is whether it is haunted.

Estate agents ought to be legally required to inform you if a previous occupant was stabbed to death in the kitchen, spontaneously combusted in front of the telly or simply disappeared shortly before that patio was laid.

But builder Rod wasnt exactly reassuring when he showed his future wife Clarice around the house he planned to renovate for them in the Cotswolds  featured in Extraordinary Extensions (C4).

The three terraced cottages, built for 17th century labourers and their families, had been derelict for a decade.

Extraordinary Extensions (C4) is presenter Tinie Tempahs first property show and hes making a confident job of it

Its a bit creepy and you can kind of imagine a murder might have happened there, Rod told her, but try to see past that.

Clarice wouldnt be convinced, though, until shed brought her dogs to sniff round the property. If they started shivering or whining, she warned, Rods dream was off. This seemed less than foolproof. What if the cottages are haunted by dog-loving spooks?

But Rod and Clarice had bigger problems to worry about, such as the local planning committees stipulation that their L-shaped extension had to be 16ft high to match the existing roofline: the bedroom ended up like a country chapel.

The couple tried painting the upper walls dark green to disguise the looming void above, I bet it doesnt half echo if they snore.

This is presenter Tinie Tempahs first property show and hes making a confident job of it. The rapper is an enthusiastic amateur architect. In fact, that enthusiasm is too much for some.

NHS surgeon Humza and his wife Pari, a banker, were embarrassed by the way he raved over the improvements to the back of their 1930s semi in Essex. Humza said he was too generous with his praise.

Im not, man, urged Tinie. Take it and internalise it.

Im not sure whether you need planning permission or therapy for internalising. It sounds painful either way.

Perhaps the star, whos had more No 1 singles than any other British rap artist, has internalised too much praise himself: the credits bill him as plain Tinie.

Wind your ego in, old chap. Youre not Madonna!

To inspect a truly sensational renovation job, Britains Scenic Railways (More4) stopped at the Forth Bridge, where the work never stops.

A lighthouse on Inchgarvie Island, under the bridge, is so dilapidated that workmen cant even stand on its rusting balcony.

But the most daunting repairs are taking place high above, where engineers abseil from the girders.

Britain's Scenic Railways followed trainee driver Tom Rotherham at Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway

Obviously, said one maintenance man, if youve got vertigo, this might not be your gig.

At least he had a safety harness. Old newsreel showed workers in the 1930s astride the swooping stanchions with no more protective gear than a cloth cap.

Hope I dont slip! shouted one.

They had spectacular vistas, but so did we in this hour. All the segments were picked for their breathtaking backdrops.

A fireman called Tom on the footplate of a steam loco at the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway in Cumbria was preparing to take his drivers assessment.

It must be difficult to keep your eyes on the track when the test route runs through the fells around Windermere. And a helicopter took a longdistance look, using an ultrazoom lens, into an ospreys nest perched on top of a Scottish electricity pylon.

Youre going to get a cracking view, one engineer promised us at the start of the programme  he wasnt wrong about that.
Fans kept up with the Kardashians for more than a decade on their popular E! reality show, which ended earlier this year after 20 seasons.

And Scott Disick caught up with Kris Jenner over lunch in the San Fernando Valley on Wednesday afternoon with cameras still rolling on their new Hulu show.

The 38-year-old budding fashion designer just arrived from Miami Beach to meet up with Jenner, 65, days after his ex, Kourtney Kardashian, celebrated Halloween in grand fashion with her new fiance, Travis Barker.

Back on the West Coast: Scott Disick caught up with Kris Jenner over lunch in the San Fernando Valley on Wednesday afternoon with cameras still rolling on their new Hulu show

Scott had a little assistance while arriving at Maria's Italian Kitchen in the Woodland Hills area of the valley in a black SUV.

Kris, who serves as manager to her six children, rocked a crisp white coat over an all-black ensemble while stepping out of her Rolls Royce.

She carried one of her trusty Hermes Crocodile Birkin bags by her side, with an estimated value of $42,500.

Boss: Kris, who serves as manager to her six children, rocked a crisp white coat over an all-black ensemble while stepping out of her Rolls Royce

Queen bee: The 38-year-old budding fashion designer just arrived from Miami Beach to meet up with Jenner, 65, days after his ex, Kourtney Kardashian, celebrated Halloween in grand fashion with her new fiance, Travis Barker

Nice ride: Kris, who serves as manager to her six children, rocked a crisp white coat over an all-black ensemble while stepping out of her Rolls Royce

Scott became a single man just last month after ending his year-long relationship with Lisa Rinna's 20-year-old daughter, Amelia Hamlin, but is rumored to be dating Elizabeth Grace Lindley, 20.

And just as soon as he became a single guy, Kourtney was taken off the market when the Blink 182 drummer dropped down to one knee and proposed on the beach overlooking the sunset in Montecito last month with her famous family looking on from the Miramar hotel.

Kourtney went public with her new romance at the beginning of the year, and has Reign, six, Penelope, eight, and Mason, 11, from her previous relationship with Scott.

Worth every penny: She carried one of her trusty Hermes Crocodile Birkin bags by her side, with an estimated value of $42,500

Spooky season: The couple went all out for their Halloween festivities, including dressing up as Edward Scissorhands and Kim Boggs

Big fans: Another costume change was reenacting his favorite film, True Romance, where Kourtney dressed up as Patricia Arquette's character, Alabama, while Travis played Christian Slater's character, Clarence

Travis famously filed for divorce from Shanna Moakler in 2006 after just two years of marriage following claims that she had been unfaithful, and shares Landon, 18, and Alabama, 15, in addition to her daughter, Atiana, from her previous relationship with Oscar de la Hoya.

The couple went all out for their Halloween festivities, including dressing up as Edward Scissorhands and Kim Boggs.

Another costume change was reenacting his favorite film, True Romance, where Kourtney dressed up as Patricia Arquette's character, Alabama, while Travis played Christian Slater's character, Clarence.
It was the photo millions of Aussies had been waiting for: a smiling, happy Cleo Smith reunited with her mother after she went missing for 18 excruciating days.

But not everyone found the image released by WA Police on Wednesday afternoon particularly heart-warming.

TV and radio host Zoe Marshall, the wife of NRL star Benji Marshall, said the photo of Cleo waving for the camera and eating an icy pole made her feel 'uncomfortable'.

TV and radio host Zoe Marshall (left, with NRL star husband Benji Marshall) has asked why WA Police shared a photo of missing girl Cleo Smith in hospital hours after her miracle rescue

She reposted the widely shared image of Cleo on Instagram Stories but obscured the child's face with a block of text, which read: 'This makes me so uncomfortable.

'Why is there a photo of her waving and smiling? Why is there someone taking a photo and sharing it with the world at all?'

She added: 'What this little girl has endured. I just don't get it. Let her recover, be with her family, get the camera out of her face.'

She reposted the widely shared image of Cleo on Instagram but obscured the child's face with a block of text, which read: 'This makes me so uncomfortable. Why is there a photo of her waving and smiling? Why is there someone taking a photo and sharing it with the world at all?'

'What this little girl has endured. I just don't get it. Let her recover, be with her family, get the camera out of her face,' Zoe wrote across the photo

After her post made headlines, Zoe gave a statement to Daily Mail Australia praising the police investigators for doing an 'incredible' job.

She also said she reacted the way she did to the hospital photo because, as a mother herself, she 'instinctively felt protective' of Cleo after everything she'd been through.

'I'm so relieved and happy that Cleo is home and safe with her family where she belongs. As a mum of two small children this story really hit home,' she said.

'When Cleo was found I instinctively felt protective of the family and what theyve been through.

'Like everyone in Australia, I just want Cleo and her parents to have the privacy to heal and recover. I wish them only the best.'

'The WA Police and the investigators did an incredible, amazing job and are to be applauded,' she concluded.

WA Police shared the photo because of the overwhelming public interest in the case and it was presumably released with Cleo's family's permission.

The little girl seemed happy for her photo to be taken and her mother, Ellie Smith, can be seen holding her feet in the bottom right corner.

WA Police shared the photo because of the overwhelming public interest in the case and it was presumably released with Cleo's family's permission. Cleo seemed happy for her photo to be taken and her mother, Ellie, can be seen holding her feet in the bottom right corner

The photo of a smiling Cleo propped up on her hospital bed eating an icy pole has been shared millions of times around the world.

Many Australian celebrities posted it on Wednesday alongside messages of support for the child's family.

Zoe isn't the only WAG to weigh in on Cleo's disappearance and miracle rescue.

After her post made headlines, Zoe gave a statement to Daily Mail Australia praising the police investigators for doing an 'incredible' job. She also said she reacted the way she did to the hospital photo because, as a mother herself, she 'instinctively felt protective' of Cleo after everything she'd been through. Pictured with her husband Benji and son Fox

Jesinta Franklin, who is married to AFL superstar Lance Franklin, used the child's discovery to highlight the 'disparity' in media coverage of missing children who are white and those who are black or Indigenous.

'Without taking away from the joy of finding a missing child alive and well, I can't help but think about the disparity that exists in this country between missing children who are white and Indigenous children when it comes to the visibility and coverage of the case,' she wrote on Instagram Stories.

'I have read so many heartbreaking stories of missing Indigenous children that garner hardly any media coverage or the social media coverage that a case like Cleo's did.

'I have no doubt the widespread broadcasting of information in regards to the case assisted the phenomenal efforts of the WA police force in locating this beautiful little girl and reuniting her with her family.

'Posting this because I think we need to do better for all children who go missing and their families.'

Jesinta later deleted her post.

Jesinta Franklin (right), who is married to AFL superstar Lance Franklin (left), used the child's discovery to highlight the 'disparity' in media coverage of missing children who are white and those who are black or Indigenous

'Without taking away from the joy of finding a missing child alive and well, I can't help but think about the disparity that exists in this country between missing children who are white and Indigenous children when it comes to the visibility and coverage of the case,' she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post

Jesinta is mother to daughter Tullulah, 20 months, and son Rocky, seven months.

Her husband is Sydney Swans star Lance 'Buddy' Franklin, a proud Noongar-Wajuk man whose ancestors hail from south-west Western Australia.

Indigenous people account for 17.5 per cent of all unsolved missing persons cases in Western Australia, despite making up just three per cent of the local population.

In August 2019, the families of 15 missing Aboriginal children united for a state-wide rally in NSW to raise awareness for Indigenous cases.

Family: Jesinta is mother to daughter Tullulah, 20 months, and son Rocky, seven months. Her husband is Sydney Swans star Lance 'Buddy' Franklin (pictured), a proud Noongar-Wajuk man whose ancestors hail from south-west Western Australia

Cleo disappeared from a remote campsite in Western Australia on October 16 and was found alive at 12.46am on Wednesday when police stormed a public housing home after a sudden tip off with a 'needle in haystack' clue.

Police feared the missing girl could have been spirited away anywhere in the country - but instead she was under their noses all along in a rundown house just 3km from her home and 75km from the campsite.

'What's your name?' officers asked as they scooped her up into their arms. 'My name is Cleo,' she replied.

Found: Cleo disappeared on October 16 and was found alive at 12.46am on Wednesday when police stormed a public housing home after a sudden tip off with a 'needle in haystack' clue

That rundown house on Tonkin Crescent in Brockman, in the northern suburbs of Carnarvon in northwest Western Australia, is just kilometres from where she lived in South Carnarvon.

Cleo was likely already locked up in the house when her mother, Ellie Smith, and stepfather, Jake Gliddon, awoke at 6am to find she was no longer lying next to them and her baby sister, Isla, in their tent at Blowholes camping grounds.

Terence Darrell Kelly has been charged with a range of offences including forcibly taking a child under 16.
Omarosa Manigault Newman believes Donald Trump will be in prison before he has the chance to make a run for president again in 2024.

Trump's former political aide, 47, made the prediction during an interview with Nova radio host Kent 'Smallzy' Small on Smallzy's Surgery earlier this week.

She was on the show to promote her appearance on Big Brother VIP when Small asked whether she thought her former boss would ever return to the White House.

Huge: Former political aide Omarosa Manigault Newman (right) claims Donald Trump (left) will go to jail before he can run for President again in 2024. Pictured in April 2013 in New York City

'I don't think you can run for president from jail,' the reality TV star said.

Omarosa added that Trump's legal issues and possible criminal charges will be his downfall.

'He's got so many legal problems right now. I just completed a lawsuit with him that I won, and I suspect that he will lose quite a few of these suits,' she said.

'I don't think you can run for President from jail': She was on Australian radio show Smallzy's Surgery to promote her appearance on Big Brother VIP when host Kent 'Smallzy' Small asked whether she thought her former boss would ever return to the White House

'But the (possible) criminal charges he is facing will probably impede his ability to run for President in 2024,' she continued.

Small then congratulated Omarosa on her alleged legal victory against the former president.

'I may not ever see the money, but at least I can brag about it on your show. I don't think he's ever going to pay it,' she replied.

Obstacles: Omarosa believes Trump's legal issues and possible criminal charges will be his downfall and 'impede his ability to run for President in 2024'. Pictured on January 6

It's not the first time Omarosa has made a shocking claim about Donald Trump.

In a recent trailer for Big Brother VIP, she recalled a 'disgraceful obsession' he had with KKK memorabilia when the pair were opening a civil rights museum a few days before she was fired from his administration.

'I was organising the opening of a civil rights museum. He [Trump] was fascinated with the KKK [Ku Klux Klan] garb,' she claimed.

'He was obsessed with a white supremacist display. Who is this person?' she added.

Controversial: It's not the first time Omarosa has made a shocking claim about Trump. In a recent trailer for Big Brother VIP, she recalled a 'disgraceful obsession' he had with KKK memorabilia when the pair were opening a civil rights museum

Her recollection of the day's events left her fellow Big Brother housemates stunned.

Omarosa went to the opening of the museum with Trump in Mississippi the weekend before she was unceremoniously fired from her role as his assistant in December 2017 for reportedly abusing the White House car service

Since her sacking, she has been a vocal critic of Trump and his administration.
Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson 'met up for the second night in a row' in New York City on Wednesday.

According to TMZ, the 41-year-old KUWTK star and the 27-year-old SNL star 'joined a group of friends for dinner' at celeb hotspot Zero Bond but arrived 'separately.'

Pete was reportedly the first to arrive, while Kim rolled up the restaurant 'about 10 minutes later.'

Later an onlooker told PageSix the stars were 'smiling and laughing a lot and seemed genuinely affectionate with each other. But there was no Kravis-style PDA,' referring to Kim's older sister Kourtney Kardashian and fiance Travis Barker relationship.

Round two: Kim Kardashian (seen Wednesday) and Pete Davidson (seen in 2020) 'met up for the second night in a row' in New York City on Wednesday

Kardashian was photographed strutting her way towards Zero Bond's front entrance in a skintight black velvet dress and a pair of pointed-toe boots.

She was later captured exiting the restaurant solo, heading in the direction of a nearby SUV.

The PageSix insider also noted it was a dinner for 10, which included Simon Huck, his fiance, Phil Riportella, and Jonathan Foodgod Cheban.

'A cake was bought out in advance of Simons birthday, which is today,' the eyewitness added.

Separate arrivals: According to TMZ , the 41-year-old KUWTK star and the 27-year-old SNL star 'joined a group of friends for dinner' at celeb hotspot Zero Bond but arrived 'separately'

Their first reported NYC dining experience occurred just the night prior, with TMZ detailing that Pete and Kim enjoyed a 'private' meal at one of his favorite pizzerias, Campania restaurant, located in his hometown of Staten Island.

The pair - who are said to be 'just friends right now' - entered through the backdoors, before indulging in a few decadent Italian dishes.

Early last month, Kim and Pete shocked the world when they shared a kiss in an Aladdin themed skit during her first-ever Saturday Night Live hosting gig.

Spotted: Kardashian was photographed strutting her way towards Zero Bond's front entrance in a skintight black velvet dress and a pair of pointed-toe boots

Heading out: She was later captured exiting the restaurant solo

Chauffeur: She made her way towards a chauffeured SUV

Last Friday, they fueled romance rumors after they were seen holding hands on a ride at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California.

The two are said to be enjoying each other's company, according to a new report from People on Tuesday.

A source for the publication said the two stars 'have chemistry' and are having 'fun' together.

'Pete can be super charming and Kim loves the attention,' an insider added.

Kim filed for divorce from husband Kanye West in February after almost seven years of marriage and seems primed to finally enjoy the single life.

First time around: Their first reported NYC dining experience occurred just the night prior, with TMZ detailing that Pete and Kim enjoyed a 'private' meal at one of his favorite pizzerias, Campania restaurant, located in his hometown of Staten Island

Privacy: The pair - who are said to be 'just friends right now' - entered through the backdoors, before indulging in a few decadent Italian dishes

The source for People said: 'She is having fun and enjoying life. Her focus is still on her kids and work, but you can tell that she is ready to date.

'She is very happy and in a good place. She has moved on from Kanye and feels it's for the best,' they noted.

Previously, People reported he and Kim simply 'hang in the same circles so they will be together from time to time.'

'It's just friends hanging out,' a source said of their double date with Kim's newly-engaged sister Kourtney and Travis Barker at Knott's Berry Park on Friday.

She shares her four children North, eight, Saint, five, Chicago, three, and and two-year-old Psalm with her estranged husband.

Change of scenery: The inside of Campania Restaurants is pictured

Same circles? Previously, People reported he and Kim simply 'hang in the same circles so they will be together from time to time'; seen in April

Kim arrived in Pete's hometown to accept the WSJ. Innovator Award at a glitzy event on Monday night in New York City.

Her rumored love interest is back in Manhattan to prepare for this week's episode of Saturday Night Live, according to PageSix.

Adding fuel to the fire, they are both single at the moment, following his breakup with Phoebe Dynevor in August, after five months of dating.

Their split occurred just a month after putting on a loved-up display at Wimbledon.

A source claimed that the former lovebirds called it quits after trying to make things work long distance 'put a strain' on their relationship.

A source told The Sun: 'Pete and Phoebe's romance was a real whirlwind and from the start they were both totally committed.

Quite the honor: Kim arrived in Pete's hometown of New York City on Monday night as she accepted the WSJ. Innovator Award at a glitzy event

Locked lips: Eyebrows were first raised when the two kissed on the lips during an early October SNL skit when she played Princess Jasmine and he Aladdin as the sat on a flying carpet

'It was wild while it lasted... But the distance has put a strain on them. They will remain close but unless something drastic changes their relationship won't recover.'

The source continued that both of the stars have very busy schedules at the moment, with Phoebe filming Bridgerton series two in the UK and Pete working on Saturday Night Live in the US as well as filming a movie called Meet Cute.

It is also thought that travel restrictions have added a further pressure to their romance as it isn't easy to just 'jump on a plane' and see each other.

Phoebe and Pete are thought to have started dating in February, with her taking a trip to NYC the same month, and they confirmed their romance in April.

It has been previously reported that Pete fell for her after watching her raunchy love scenes on Bridgerton.

He's back! Her rumored love interest Pete Davidson has also landed back in Manhattan to prepare for this week's episode of Saturday Night Live , according to PageSix

The Saturday Night Live star is said to have told pals he thought the actress was 'hot as hell' over her character Daphne's intimate scenes with Simon, The Duke of Hastings (Rege-Jean Page).

A Los Angeles based friend of Pete's told The Mirror: 'Pete just loved Bridgerton and just got totally tripped out by Phoebe.

'She was totally his type - fresh faced, youthful, innocent looking beauty.

'We all joked with him about the naughty scenes, and of course he confessed he found them hot. He binge watched the show and felt it was his destiny to meet her.'

Despite living in his mother's basement until this April, his past romances include Kate Beckinsale, Margaret Qually, Kaia Gerber, Cazzie David and a brief engagement to Ariana Grande.

Most recent girlfriend: Adding fuel to the fire, they are both single at the moment, following his breakup with Phoebe Dynevor in August, after five months of dating; seen in July

Dream girl: It has been previously reported that Pete fell for her after watching her raunchy love scenes on Bridgerton

In 2018, Grande claimed in a since-deleted that Davidson has a ten-inch penis, which sent social media into a frenzy and to describe him as having 'big d**k energy (BDE).'

BDE, as explained by The Cut, is 'a quiet confidence and ease with oneself that comes from knowing you have just an enormous penis and you know what to do with it.'

Seven months ago, he revealed he 'just moved out' of the Staten Island home he purchased with his mother, Amy, on social media.

Short-lived engagement: In 2018, Ariana Grande claimed in a since-deleted that Davidson has a ten-inch penis, which sent social media into a frenzy and to describe him as having 'big d**k energy' (seen in 2018)

Pete's shared living quarters with his mother for the last few years after splitting up with his ex-fiancee and moving out of their $16million massive apartment in Manhattan.

His father Scott - a firefighter - died during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

During an interview with Variety in 2018, he revealed his dad's death caused his depression to become so severe that he tried to drown himself as a child.

Pete has been open about mental health issues and previously revealed that he suffers from borderline personality disorder.
Lisa Wilkinson addressed her former Today co-host Karl Stefanovic's split from his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn in her new book, It Wasn't Meant to Be Like This.

And on Thursday, Lisa narrowly missed an awkward run-in with Cassandra in Sydney, just one day after releasing her tell-all autobiography.

Lisa, 61, was spotted visiting a cafe in Mosman shortly before Cassandra arrived and parked her car just metres away.

That would have been awkward! Lisa Wilkinson (left) narrowly missed an awkward run in with Karl Stefanovic's ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn (right) in Sydney on Thursday

The Project host dressed casually in a black dress and matching coloured cardigan as she visited the cafe.

She teamed her ensemble with sandals, a brown bag, sunglasses and a face mask.

Meanwhile, Cassandra wore grey pants, a navy T-shirt and matching coloured jacket as she visited a nearby supermarket.

That was close! Lisa was spotted visiting a cafe in Mosman shortly before Cassandra arrived and parked her car just metres away

Casual: The Project host dressed casually in a black dress and matching coloured cardigan as she visited the cafe

Accessories: She teamed her ensemble with sandals, a brown bag, sunglasses and a face mask

It comes after Lisa addressed Karl's split from his ex-wife Cassandra in her new book.

In an excerpt from the autobiography, the 61-year-old admitted she was 'shocked' when Thorburn - a former producer on the Today show - sent her a text message informing her Stefanovic had moved out of the family home in 2016.

'They had just bought a waterfront property a month or two before and he had just signed a massive deal with the network. I presumed everything was great,' Wilkinson wrote.

Wilkinson said she 'gasped' when she received the text from Thorburn telling her the couple had separated after 21 years of marriage.

Casual: Cassandra wore grey pants, a navy T-shirt and matching coloured jacket as she visited a nearby supermarket

Bombshell: It comes after Lisa addressed Karl's split from his ex-wife Cassandra in her new book

'Cass wanted to let me know that Karl had moved out a few weeks before,' she wrote.

'She was worried he hadn't yet told me and didn't want me mentioning anything on air about them that might make things uncomfortable.'

Stefanovic and Thorburn, who share three children, Jackson, 20, Ava, 15, and River, 13, separated in 2016 and divorced a year later.

The former journalist is rumoured to have walked away with about $6million in assets and cash.

Shock: In an excerpt from the autobiography, Lisa admitted she was 'shocked' when Thorburn - a former producer on the Today show - sent her a text message informing her Stefanovic had moved out of the family home in 2016

Warning: Wilkinson said she 'gasped' when she received the text from Thorburn telling her the couple had separated after 21 years of marriage
Australia rejoiced on Wednesday when four-year-old Cleo Smith was found safe and sound after going missing for 18 excruciating days.

And while Perth-raised model Megan Gale was one of the first to reach out to Cleo's parents to celebrate the news, she also took the time to lash out at those who had falsely suggested Cleo's family had something to do with her disappearance.

In a comment posted on Cleo's mother Ellie Smith's Instagram page, Megan, 46 - who is mother to Rosie, four, and River, seven - wrote: 'Sending love to you all. So incredible and the most beautiful news that you have your little girl back.'

Speaking out: While Perth-raised model Megan Gale (pictured) was one of the first to reach out to Cleo's parents to celebrate the news, she also took the time to lash out at those who had falsely suggested Cleo's family had something to do with her disappearance

Her message of support was quickly followed by scathing words aimed at those who had made vile accusations towards Cleo's family in the midst of her disappearance.

'I hope all the people who took the time to troll Cleo Smith's mum and sent her awful messages accusing her of being involved in her little girl's disappearance are also going to take the time to reach out to her,' Megan said.

She added that she hopes the trolls 'admit they were wrong and apologise for their judgment and accusations'.

Discovery: Police broke their way into a locked house in Carnarvon, 75km from where Cleo went missing, about 1am on Wednesday and found the girl in one of the rooms. Cleo pictured with her mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon

West Australian police officers found the missing four-year-old girl at a Carnarvon home about 1am on Wednesday, 18 days after she disappeared.

A 36-year-old man with 'no connection to the family' has been arrested.

Since Cleo vanished from her family's campsite on October 16, social media trolls had filled online forums with conspiracy theories falsely claiming that the girl's parents were involved - despite detectives making clear early on they were not being treated as suspects.

Vile claims: Cleo's parents Ellie and Jake (pictured) had been targeted by cruel trolls since their daughter disappeared on October 16

Within minutes of the news breaking she had been found on Wednesday, people flocked online to denounce those who pointed the finger at Cleo's mum Ellie and step dad Jake Gliddon - demanding they issue the parents an apology.

'Such amazing news about Cleo Smith! It's really the only thing that matters today,' Nine News journalist Libby-Jane Charleston Tweeted.

'Let's hope the conspiracy theorists who have posted vile accusations against her parents now offer a public apology.'

Another man said: 'I wonder what all the sick trolls who harassed her parents on the inter web are doing right now? Being called out I hope. Deleting posts at a rapid rate is my guess.'

Added a third: 'To all the vile people who trolled Cleo Smith's parents during the most horrific period of their lives, now publicly apologise.'

Response: Social media users blasted keyboard warriors for adding to the parents' stress while they lived 'every parents' worst nightmare'

Support: A woman from Scandinavia sent her love to Cleo's family as they recover from their horrific ordeal

Fury: One woman called for those who criticised the family to publicly apologise to the little girl's parents

Authorities also addressed the unwarranted treatment Ms Smith and Mr Gliddon have suffered over the past three weeks while speaking to the media on Wednesday.

Speaking on Sunrise, Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch reminded 'internet detectives' that case cracking was best left to professionals.

'We cautioned early on about internet detectives. Police were doing their work and sifting through it,' Deputy Commissioner Blanch said.

'I think what's happened here today is a strong reminder, don't judge too quickly.'

Cleo vanished from her family's tent between 1.30am and 6.30am on October 16 as her parents and baby sister slept nearby.

All smiles: Police had released this photo of little Cleo eating an icy pole in hospital after her miraculous rescue on Wednesday, 18 days after going missing

Her disappearance sparked a widespread search operation and major police investigation, with the state government offering a $1million reward for information leading to her location.

After a tip off, police raided a Carnavon home on Wednesday - just 73.7km south of the Blowholes campsite she went missing from, raising the possibility she was right under the noses of police for the past three weeks.

Even eerier, the property is only a seven minute drive away from where the toddler's family live in the small coastal Western Australian town.

Cleo was reunited with her family a short time later.
Lisa Wilkinson's bombshell autobiography It Wasn't Meant to Be Like This, featuring various claims about her former Today show co-host Karl Stefanovic, dropped in bookstores on Wednesday.

And Karl and his shoe designer wife Jasmine Yarbrough put on a united front on Thursday as they left their Sydney home together.

The couple were spotted hopping into Karl's $130,000 Toyota Land Cruiser.

United: Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough put on a united front in Sydney on Thursday after Lisa Wilkinson's bombshell autobiography was released

Jasmine looked casual chic in a pair of blue high-waisted jeans adorned with white flowers.

She teamed the look with a white printed T-shirt, beige slip-ons and a pair of designer sunglasses.

Today show host Karl wore an all-black denim outfit, wearing dark jeans and a denim jacket with brown leather boots.

Stepping out: The pair cut casual figures as they hopped into Karl's $130,000 Toyota Land Cruiser for an outing

It comes after Karl's former Today co-host Lisa Wilkinson released her tell-all autobiography the day before.

Her book includes a chapter dedicated to her sacking from Channel Nine and falling out with former co-anchor Karl over a pay dispute.

She was sacked from the Today show in October 2017 after a reported gender pay gap issue.

The Nine Network was reportedly 'unable to meet her expectations' after she demanded equal pay with Karl.

Bombshell book: It comes after Karl's former Today co-host Lisa Wilkinson released her tell-all autobiography, It Wasn't Meant to Be Like This. Her book includes a chapter dedicated to her sacking from Channel Nine and falling out with former co-anchor Karl over a pay dispute

She also addressed Karl's split with his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn in her book.

The 61-year-old admitted she was 'shocked' when Cassandra - a former producer on the Today show - sent her a text message informing her Karl had moved out of the family home in 2016.

'They had just bought a waterfront property a month or two before and he had just signed a massive deal with the network. I presumed everything was great,' Lisa wrote.

Making headlines: She also addressed Karl's split with his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn in her book. The 61-year-old admitted she was 'shocked' when Cassandra - a former producer on the Today show - sent her a text message informing her Karl had moved out of the family home in 2016

Lisa said she 'gasped' when she received the text from Cassandra telling her the couple had separated after 21 years of marriage.

'Cass wanted to let me know that Karl had moved out a few weeks before,' she wrote.

'She was worried he hadn't yet told me and didn't want me mentioning anything on air about them that might make things uncomfortable.'

Jasmine also gets a mention, with Lisa recalling the time Karl first told her about his 'new love' after his split with Cassandra.

Karl and Cassandra, who share three children, Jackson, 20, Ava, 15, and River, 13, separated in 2016 and divorced a year later.

The former journalist is rumoured to have walked away with about $6million in assets and cash.

Karl is now married to Jasmine, whom he wed in Mexico in December 2018, and the couple share a one-year-old daughter Harper.
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Gal Gadot brought the glamour on Wednesday night as she attended the premiere of Netflix's Red Notice in Los Angeles.

The 36-year-old actress draped her statuesque frame in a slinky red sequin gown while gracing the red carpet with husband Yaron Varsano.

Gadot was joined by actors Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Ryan Reynolds, who co-lead the action flick set to premiere on the streaming platform this Friday, November 5.

Glamour: Gal Gadot brought the glamour on Wednesday night as she attended the premiere of Netflix's Red Notice in Los Angeles

Red Notice follows an FBI profiler (played by Johnson) who teams up with the 'world's most wanted art thief' (played by Reynolds) to successfully track down an 'elusive crook' (played by Gadot) who has a major heist up her sleeve.

Adding even more sparkle to her red carpet look, Gal was drenched in jewels from the 2021 Tiffany Blue Book Collection.

She fastened a pair of platinum earrings boasting diamonds of over 15 total carats to her ears, while decking out her wrist in a platinum bracelet featuring blue cuprian elbaite tourmalines of over 17 carats and diamonds of over 4 carats.

Co-stars: Gadot was joined by actors Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Ryan Reynolds, who co-lead the action flick

Glitzy: The 36-year-old actress draped her statuesque frame in a slinky red sequin gown

Support: She graced the red carpet with husband Yaron Varsano

Sparkling diamond: Adding even more sparkle to her red carpet look, Gal was drenched in jewels from the 2021 Tiffany Blue Book Collection

The Wonder Woman star's brunette tresses were worn down and slicked back to highlight her enviable bone structure.

As for makeup, Gal gave herself a sultry stare with a strategic dusting of brown eyeshadow while coordinating her pout with her dress.

She strutted her stuff down the red carpet in a pair of strappy gold heels that exposed her maroon toned manicure.

Coming soon: Red Notice is set to premiere on the streaming platform this Friday, November 5

Sultry: As for makeup, Gal gave herself a sultry stare with a strategic dusting of brown eyeshadow while coordinating her pout with her dress

Golden girl: She strutted her stuff down the red carpet in a pair of strappy gold heels that exposed her maroon toned manicure

Varsano, whose been married to Gadot since 2008, looked dapper in a fitted navy blue suit.

The couple share three daughters, Alma, 10, Maya, four, and Daniella, four months.

Gal also made sure to mingle on the red carpet with Johnson and Reynolds, who rocked rivaling velvet tuxedos.

Snapping back: Gal welcomed her third daughter just four months ago

Premise: Red Notice follows an FBI profiler (played by Johnson) who teams up with the 'world's most wanted art thief' (played by Reynolds) to successfully track down an 'elusive crook' (played by Gadot) who has a major heist up her sleeve

Slick: The Wonder Woman star's brunette tresses were worn down and slicked back to highlight her enviable bone structure

Reunited: Gal also made sure to mingle on the red carpet with Johnson and Reynolds, who rocked rivaling velvet tuxedos

Ryan, giving a nod to the film's title, donned a red velvet suit complete with a matching vest and a patterned tie.

To create some contrast, the 45-year-old Deadpool star wore a charcoal dress shirt.

Reynolds rode solo for the evening, with his wife Blake Lively and their three daughters presumably across the country at their New York home.

A nod: Ryan, giving a nod to the film's title, donned a red velvet suit

Contrast: To create some contrast, the 45-year-old Deadpool star wore a charcoal dress shirt

Complete: His suit was complete with a matching vest and a red, patterned tie

He also had on a pair of brown suede shoes.

As he posed for shutterbugs, Reynolds offered several friendly waves in the direction of fans watching the premiere from afar.

Johnson brought not one but two dates to Wednesday's premiere.

Too cool: Dwayne looked effortlessly cool in a plum velvet suit, which he styled with an unbuttoned white dress shirt and a pair of loafers

Arm candy: The 49-year-old action star posed beside his wife Lauren Hashian

Wow! Lauren, hanging on her husband's arm, stunned in a jeweled black dress with a slit up one leg

Family life: The pair, who have been married since 2019, share five-year-old daughter Jasmine and three-year-old daughter Tiana

The 49-year-old action star posed beside his 37-year-old wife Lauren Hashian, as well as his gorgeous mother Ata Johnson.

Dwayne looked effortlessly cool in a plum velvet suit, which he styled with an unbuttoned white dress shirt and a pair of loafers.

Lauren, hanging on her husband's arm, stunned in a jeweled black dress with a slit up one leg.

#1 fan: After getting in snaps with his wife, Dwayne made sure to give his mother Ata Johnson her opportunity to shine

Proud mom: The mother-son duo posed with their arms wrapped around one another

The pair, who have been married since 2019, share five-year-old daughter Jasmine and three-year-old daughter Tiana.

After getting in snaps with his wife, Dwayne made sure to give his mother her opportunity to shine.

The mother-son duo posed with their arms wrapped around one another.

Date night: Anthony Michael Hall hit the red carpet with his wife Lucia, who showcased her killer figure in a red peplum gown

Flashy: She accessorized the monochromatic look with a rhinestone purse shaped like a skull

Anthony Michael Hall hit the red carpet with his wife Lucia, who showcased her killer figure in a red peplum gown.

She accessorized the monochromatic look with a rhinestone purse shaped like a skull.

Molly Sims looked every bit the supermodel in a see-through black lace gown with ruffled sleeves and an A-line skirt.

Gorgeous: Molly Sims looked every bit the supermodel in a see-through black lace gown with ruffled sleeves and an A-line skirt

Concealed: To protect her modesty, the 48-year-old beauty rocked a black bra top and a pair of high-waisted hot pants

Longtime love: She was accompanied by her hunky husband Scott Stuber

Metallic: Terri Seymour put on a leggy display in a ruched metallic mini dress with long sleeves and a small cut-out on the chest

Finishing touches: The 47-year-old TV personality styled her brunette hair in uniform curls and slipped her feet into a pair of black sandals

To protect her modesty, the 48-year-old beauty rocked a black bra top and a pair of high-waisted hot pants.

Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail and accentuated her eyes with a smokey eyeshadow look.

She was accompanied by her hunky husband Scott Stuber.

Terri Seymour put on a leggy display in a ruched metallic mini dress with long sleeves and a small cut-out on the chest.

Goddess: Brenna Marie Narayan turned heads in a striking champagne gown that featured a jeweled belt and straps

Elegant: The actress accessorized with some gold dangly earrings and a statement clutch

The 47-year-old TV personality styled her brunette hair in uniform curls and slipped her feet into a pair of black sandals.

Brenna Marie Narayan turned heads in a striking champagne gown that featured a jeweled belt and straps.

The actress accessorized with some gold dangly earrings and a statement clutch.

Becki Newton and her husband Chris Diamantopoulos put on a loved up display, while showcasing her killer legs in a black-and-white rose patterned dress and pair of hot pink heels.

Cute couple: Becki Newton and her husband Chris Diamantopoulos put on a loved up display, while showcasing her killer legs in a black-and-white rose patterned dress and pair of hot pink heels

Patterns: Melanie Wilking and Dany Garcia also made use of eye-catching patterns, with Wilking modeling a leopard mini and Garcia turning heads in a floor-length floral number

Showstopper: Bozoma Saint John stole the show in a plunging red number with flowing sleeves and a semi-sheer skirt

Melanie Wilking and Dany Garcia also made use of eye-catching patterns, with Wilking modeling a leopard mini and Garcia turning heads in a floor-length floral number.

Bozoma Saint John stole the show in a plunging red number with flowing sleeves and a semi-sheer skirt.

Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber cut a dapper figure beside his wife Sarah Koplin, who sported a head of lavender hair.

Chilean actress Leonor Varela took the plunge in a fitted black blazer styled with some loose fitting trousers.

Taking the plunge: Chilean actress Leonor Varela took the plunge in a fitted black blazer styled with some loose fitting trousers
Wilmer Valderrama and his fiancee Amanda Pacheco posed on the red carpet at the premiere of his new film Encanto in Los Angeles at the El Capitan Theatre Wednesday.

The 41-year-old NCIS actor donned a checkered grey suit over a white patterned top with brown shoes.

Pacheco, 30, donned a backless red gown with red sandal heels and a matching clutch. She had her blonde locks pulled back and parted in the glamorous outing.

The latest: Wilmer Valderrama, 41, and his fiancee Amanda Pacheco, 30, posed on the red carpet at the premiere of his new film Encanto in Los Angeles at the El Capitan Theatre on Wednesday

The Miami native voices the character Augustin Madrigal in the Disney production, which also features the voices of Stephanie Beatriz, Maria Cecilia Botero, John Leguizamo and Diane Guerrero.

Valderrama, whop played Fez on That '70s Show, and Pacheco became parents earlier this year when they welcomed their daughter Nakano in February.

The couple said on Instagram in a joint statement: 'Life is an ever evolving journey, and for all those times when our path needs a light.. often angels are sent to show us the way and that we can be more.. straight out of heaven we welcome our first daughter.'

He told People in March about how a trip to Japan inspired he and Pacheco to choose Nakano as their daughter's name.

The Miami native voices the character Augustin Madrigal in the Disney production

The 41-year-old NCIS actor donned a checkered grey suit over a white patterned top with brown shoes

'Amanda and I traveled the world on our first year of our relationship,' he said. 'We decided to just throw ourselves in the deep end, so we traveled the planet. And one of those big trips that we took was to Japan.

'There was something very spiritual about traveling there and really understanding the culture, to take it in, the spirituality of it all. It really touched us. That trip was just so beautiful and eye-opening.'

He said that they researched the names of ancient Japanese warriors and found the name of the female samurai Takeko Nakano.

'Nakano became something that felt strong, felt unique, felt different,' he told People. 'I thought what a cool, fun little conversation topic for our daughter to have as she grows older.

'But also, the respect and the heritage, and the tribute to one of those beautiful moments where my fiancee and I said "I love you" for the first time. To commemorate that trip to Japan with our first labor of love.'

The pair, who were first romantically linked in April of 2019, announced their engagement in January of 2020.

Pacheco, 30, donned a backless red gown with red sandal heels and a matching clutch. She had her blonde locks pulled back and parted in the glamorous outing

The couple are parents to eight-month-old daughter Nakano
After admitting she was developing feelings for newcomer Ben Giobbi, Lexy Thornberry accidentally swiped his private parts on Thursday's episode of Love Island Australia.

The 20-year-old student was sitting next to Ben by the edge of the pool, posing for photos with him, when she grabbed his genitals.

Seemingly meaning to make a play at the 25-year-old plumber's leg, Lexy's right hand swept over his privates in an awkward moment.

Oops: After admitting she was developing feelings for newcomer Ben Giobbi, Lexy Thornberry accidentally grabbed his private parts on Thursday's episode of Love Island Australia

'Oh, f**k!' she exclaimed after realising her mistake, covering her mouth with her hand in embarrassment.

But Ben didn't seem to mind, and shot Lexy a cheeky smile in response.

Earlier in the episode, Lexy admitted she was developing feelings for Ben after they enjoyed a flirty workout together.

Hands on: The 20-year-old student was sitting next to Ben by the edge of the pool, posing for photos with him, when she grabbed his genitals

Making things awkward: Seemingly meaning to make a play for the 25-year-old plumber's leg, Lexy's right hand swept over his privates

'I am getting butterflies, which is odd,' a red-faced Lexy later confessed.

'At the beginning with Ryan [Reid], I didn't get butterflies. I just got a gut feeling that I wasn't doing the right thing.'

A smiling Lexy then watched Ben do a series of chin-ups, clearly enjoying the view.

'Oh, f**k!' she exclaimed after realising her mistake, covering her mouth with her hand in embarrassment

'I am getting butterflies, which is odd,' a red-faced Lexy later confessed. 'At the beginning with Ryan [Reid], I didn't get butterflies. I just got a gut feeling that I wasn't doing the right thing'

She added: 'I think Ben is really sweet. I get really good vibes from him.

'Like, I haven't had any gut feelings from him that he's a bad person so far, which is a really good sign.'

Lexy previously admitted that she had her doubts about if Ryan, 25, was 'genuine' after he kissed Tayla Mellington.

Love Island Australia continues Monday at 9pm on Channel Nine
Nicky Hilton attended the Haute Living Event with Nicky Hilton on Wednesday night in New York City.

The soiree was a celebratory gathering to mark her November cover of the luxury lifestyle magazine.

Hilton, 38, wore a long dress to the intimate dinner hosted at Zero Bond in New York City's Soho neighborhood.

Special occasion: Nicky Hilton attended the Haute Living Event with Nicky Hilton on Wednesday night in New York City

The statuesque heiress wore a stretch crepe dress midi dress from Self Portrait in camel.

It boasted a sweetheart neckline and a gathered wrapping at the bust.

The number featured a side split and three-quarter sleeves.

The blonde showstopper rounded out her ensemble with a pair of pointed-toe leopard print pumps, and she carried a studded black handbag.

Cover star: The soiree was a celebratory gathering to mark her November cover of the luxury lifestyle magazine

Classy: Hilton wore a long dress to the intimate dinner hosted at Zero Bond in New York City's Soho neighborhood

Hilton's blonde tresses were styled in a side part and tucked behind her ears as they fountained over her shoulders in orderly loose waves.

For the occasion she kept her jewelry minimal, adding stud diamond earrings, an understated bracelet, an anklet, and a ring.

When arriving to the popular establishment she kept warm in a plush brown coat worn over her dress.

Outerwear: When she arrived to the popular establishment she kept warm in a plush brown coat worn over her dress.

Man behind the brand: Mrs. Rothschild posed with Haute Living's founder Kamal Hotchandani

Throughout the evening Mrs. Rothschild posed with attendees, which included Haute Living's founder Kamal Hotchandani, entrepreneur Jonathan Cheban, and real estate mogul Jared Seligman.

The mother-of-two, who's married to financier James Rothschild, took a night off from family life as she was seen at the swanky function without her spouse and kids.

Taking to Instagram Stories, the designer shared an outtake from the special occasion with her 1.3 million followers.

Fans were treated to a behind-the-scenes image of her sophisticated place setting inside the fine dining eatery.

Mingling: Throughout the evening Mrs. Rothschild posed with attendees, including real estate mogul Jared Seligman

Instagram post: Fans were treated to a behind-the-scenes image of her sophisticated place setting inside the fine dining establishment

Cheban, also known as Food God, dropped by the exclusive shindig to show support for Paris Hilton's younger sister.

He was seen wearing a multicolor sweater that boasted four pockets on the front, and large gold pendant buttons.

He paired it with a pair of jeans and his blonde-highlighted crop of hair was pushed back.

It was just one stop throughout his busy night, as he was also in attendance at Dolce and Gabbana's NFT Launch.

Drop-in: Cheban, also known as Food God, dropped by the exclusive shindig to show support for Paris Hilton's younger sister
Production has started for a brand new ABC horror comedy series called Crazy Fun Park.

The ambitious 2022 ABC ME project is produced by Werner Film Productions with support and funding from the ABC, Screen Australia, The Australian Childrens Television Foundation and Film Victoria.

Crazy Fun Park is created by writer and director Nicholas Verso, who helmed the 2016 fantasy film Boys in the Trees, and produced by Joanna Werner.

Opening soon: Production has started for a brand new ABC horror comedy series called Crazy Fun Park

'Crazy Fun Park is a funny, scary and enthralling drama that deals with some big important themes, wrapped up in a comedy horror series,' said Werner.

'Nick has created a fascinating world of compelling, diverse characters, both alive and dead, whos stories are told in the incredible setting of an old abandoned Fun Park that comes alive after the sun sets.'

The producer also thanked the numerous investors who have supported the show.

Behind the scenes: Crazy Fun Park is created by writer and director Nicholas Verso (pictured), who helmed the 2016 fantasy film Boys in the Trees, and produced by Joanna Werner

'This is a big ambitious production which wouldnt be possible without the amazing support for the ABC, ACTF, Screen Australia and Film Vic, and we cant wait to bring it to audiences in Australia and around the world,' he said.

Crazy Fun Park will comprise of 10 thirty minute episodes and will be shot in Victoria.

The story is described as a coming of age tale that will follow two best friends: Chester and Mapplethorpe.

What's in store: Producer Joanna Werner says the show will be 'funny, scary and enthralling drama that deals with some big important themes, wrapped up in a comedy horror series'

After Mapplethorpe tragically passes in the town's Crazy Fun Park, Chester soon finds out his best friend is now 'living' with other 'undead' kids who died at the abandoned park.

The pair are soon 'forced to redefine their friendship' as they 'navigate their teenage years' and live in 'fear their friendship may not be as eternal as they originally imagined'.

Crazy Fun Park will premiere on ABC ME and ABC iview in late 2022
Celeste Barber created a social media firestorm earlier in the week when she openly mocked model Emily Ratajkowski.

But the 39-year-old appeared to brush off the upset on Thursday when she returned to Instagram with another one of her beloved parodies.

In her latest Instagram post, Celeste is seen mocking sportswoman Adelina Lazarova stylishly exiting a luxurious convertible in New York.

Return: Comedian Celeste Barber (L) has returned to Instagram with a parody of Adelina Lazarova (R) after being slammed for her 'misogynistic' criticism of Emily Ratajkowski

In the footage, Adelina is seen backflipping out of the car in heels before rushing off to an appointment.

Celeste's take on the clip is slightly less glamorous as she awkwardly struggles to fit out of the window of her parked car, before tottering off across the car park with hilarious sound effects.

'The second international borders open,' Celeste wrote alongside the footage.

It comes after Celeste mocked a post by Emrata seductively leaning against a column in nothing but a pair of g-string bikini bottoms.

Statuesque: In the footage, Adelina is seen backflipping out of the car in heels before rushing off to an appointment

Not so fast! Celeste's take on the clip is slightly less glamorous as she awkwardly struggles to fit out of the window of her parked car, before tottering off across the car park with hilarious sound effects

Like Emily, Celeste teetered on sky-high stilettos - however she stood on Astroturf instead of the concrete-floored surface of the supermodel's fashion shoot.

She captioned the spoof post, 'We are sick of you objectifying our bodies! Also, heres my a**.'

Ratajkowski, 30, is known for her scantily clad Instagram posts, often advertising her own line of swimwear.

Target acquired: On Monday, the Aussie comedian took on one of the world's hottest models, Emily Ratajkowski (pictured), creating a firestorm on Twitter

'The internalised misogyny is overwhelming,' pointed out another user on Twitter.

'Misogyny is still misogyny even if youre the one making fun of women babes xx,' commented a third.

Another found the caption particularly galling given Ratajkowski had written an essay about her own feelings of objectification in The Cut.

'Have you read Emilys piece in The Cut? You should!' suggested another Twitter user.

Cheeky: When it comes to choosing targets for her skin baring parody posts, Celeste Barber (pictured) doesn't care how big the celebrity is

Celeste's funny post comes after she announced her tour of Australia.

The tour, called Fine, Thanks, begins in Newcastle in May 2022 and finishes up in Sydney in June.

'Ive been stuck inside staring at a wall for the best part of two years, so trust me when I say Im ready to pack a suitcase, reacquaint myself with what the inside of a plane looks like and get back on stage,' the comedian said.

Her own best advertisement: Ratajkowski, 30, is known for her scantily clad Instagram posts, often advertising her own line of swimwear

'Everyone in my house is sick to death of listening to me bang on so its time to find some new ears to chew off. Plus mamas got bills to pay,' she added.

General tickets are on sale now.

Visit celestebarber.com for more information
The second season of Saved by the Bell arrives on Stan on November 25, the same day it launches in the U.S.

And the new trailer for the sitcom reboot, which dropped on Thursday, shows Elizabeth Berkley Lauren and Mario Lopez reprise the roles that made them famous.

It comes after the show's producers revealed the series will pay tribute to late original star Dustin Diamond following his tragic passing in February.

Coming soon! The second season of Saved by the Bell arrives on Stan on November 25, the same day it launches in the U.S. Pictured: star Elizabeth Berkley Lauren

Jessie (played by Elizabeth Berkley Lauren) is now the mother of a student at the high school where the show is set, and in the trailer she is seen to be undergoing a divorce.

Her old feelings for her high school 'first love' AC Slater - played by Mario Lopez and now the PE teacher - begin to resurface.

The duo are seen dancing at what appears to be a school event and in another scene he tells her sympathetically: 'You've been through a lot.'

They're back: And the new trailer for the sitcom reboot, which dropped on Thursday, shows Elizabeth Berkley Lauren (right) and Mario Lopez (centre) reprise the roles that made them famous

Single and ready to mingle: Jessie is now the mother of a student at the high school where the show is set, and in the trailer she is seen to be undergoing a divorce

The first season of the rebooted 80s sitcom earned praise for its meta take on reboots, as well as for its sharp comedy.

In one self-aware scene from the trailer, a trans cheerleader played by Josie Totah remarks on how 'we have all these reboots of teen shows from the 90s'.

'Get a new idea Hollywood,' she quips.

Steamy: Her old feelings for her high school 'first love' AC Slater - played by Mario Lopez and now the PE teacher - begin to resurface. Pictured: Elizabeth and co-star John Michael Higgins

Meta: The first season of the rebooted 80s sitcom earned praise for its meta take on reboots, as well as for its sharp comedy. Pictured: Haskiri Velazquez

Elizabeth rose to fame on Saved By The Bell as high school girl Jessie Spano, a role tailored especially to her strengths.

The Showgirls star and Tiffani Amber Thiessen had both auditioned for one of the other roles.

After Tiffani ultimately got that part, the character of Jessie was created for Elizabeth.

Rising stars: In one self-aware scene from the trailer, a trans cheerleader played by Josie Totah (pictured) remarks on how 'we have all these reboots of teen shows from the 90s'

RIP: The new show's producers recently revealed just how they intended to pay homage to fan favourite Screech, played by Dustin Diamond (pictured in 1990)

The new show's producers recently revealed just how they intended to pay homage to fan favourite Screech, played by Dustin Diamond.

Executive producer Franco Bario told Variety he had spoken to Diamond prior to his passing about 'possible stories that would include him in Season 2'.

In light of the actor's death, showrunner Tracey Wigfield decided to include moments of the original cast 'mourning this character' in a 'sensitive' way.

Diamond passed away on February 1, 2021 following a brief bout with extensive stage four small cell carcinoma of the lungs.

Saved by the Bell season two debuts on Stan on November 25
Cardi B has given fans a glimpse at her luxurious new home she will share with her husband Offset in New York City.

The rapper, 29, took to Instagram on Wednesday and gave her followers a behind the scenes tour of the property before the renovations began.

The house had no furniture and had not been painted yet in the clip, which Cardi said was filmed back in May.

Abode: Cardi B has given fans a glimpse at her luxurious new home she will share with her husband Offset in New York City

The entrance to the home features a large hallway and a dramatic double staircase leading to the second floor while another room featured French doors.

There is plenty of space for the couple and their daughter Kulture, three, and two-month-old son with the person filming the clip heard saying: 'It looks huge'.

Cardi captioned the video: 'Back in May now its mine! Put your mind to it!!!'

The hitmaker shared a photo of herself taking in the view by her staircase on Tuesday as she celebrated finally having a house of her own in her 'home city.'

Home: The rapper, 29, took to Instagram on Wednesday and gave her followers a behind the scenes tour of the property before the renovations began

Tour: The house had no furniture and had not been painted yet in the clip, which Cardi said was filmed back in May

Cardi wrote in her caption that it was a dream come true to have a place to herself in her hometown, though her busy touring schedule made it hard to classify any city as her home base.

'These days I dont just live one place, Im everywhere due to my work,' she explained. 'One thing for sure I needed a home in my home city of NY!

'Im soo proud of myself,' she gushed. 'I work so hard for my children to be comfortable everywhere they are regardless of work. Me and my husband have always dreamed of having a crib in NY, and we have decided to add to our portfolio of homes, along with Atlanta and LA.'

Part of the appeal of a New York home was being so much closer to family.

Mansion: There is plenty of space for the couple and their daughter Kulture, three, and two-month-old son

Luxurious: Cardi captioned the video: 'Back in May now its mine! Put your mind to it!!!'

'Now having a home in NY, I can have get togethers with my family all the time!!' she wrote. 'I have accomplished so many things yet I still feel far from all the goals I want to accomplish. This is one dream I can cross off..'

The new home comes at a perfect time, as she and Offset welcomed their second child, a baby boy whose named hasn't yet been revealed, in early September.

The couple already share their three-year-old daughter Kulture.

Cardi and Offset seem to be on a buying spree, as the Migos member presented her with an investment property in the Dominican Republic earlier this month as a birthday present.

Close to home: Cardi said it was a dream come true to have a place to herself in her hometown

Their new $1.5 million villa is located in a tony neighborhood and features six bedrooms and an equal number of bathrooms across 7,000 square feet, along with a separate studio and two pools on the 0.37-acre property to help beat the heat.

Offset bought the villa via the Brandi Hunter Luxury Group, and he posed with company owner Brandi Hunter-Lewis in an Instagram photo to celebrate his wife's gift.

On Instagram, Cardi revealed that she'd been hoping to focus on 'short term home rental properties,' which her husband's gift would help her accomplish.

'For a hot minute now I've been telling Set that I really want to invest in short term home rental properties in the DR and other Caribbean countries (since people vacation all year around in those locations), but I felt like he didn't agree with me and would rather put money into other investments,' she wrote.

Movin' on up: Cardi first revealed she and her husband Offset had purchased a home in her hometown of New York City in this snap on Tuesday

'Well, I was wrong. I just can't believe this! This was sooo amazing to me,' she gushed. 'For one, Im so happy that you were actually really listening to me and not just smiling and nodding your head so I could stop talkin to you about it.

'Two, you dont think my investment ideas are wack and three, I love that you asked my dad to work with you on this. You and my dad (and the [mother holding baby emoji]) are the most important men in my life and it makes me so happy that you guys are close and have your own bond and relationship,' she concluded.

Back in 2019, the rapping couple purchased an enormous mansion in Atlanta for just under $5.8 million.

Close to home: Cardi wrote that it was her dream to have a home in expensive New York City so that she could 'get together' with her family regularly

Happy birthday! Cardi and Offset seem to be on a buying spree, as the Migos member presented her with an investment property in the Dominican Republic earlier this month as a birthday present

Although she mentioned a home in Los Angeles in her caption, it's not clear that the two have purchased a West Coast home yet, though it may be next in their sights.

Back in 2017, Cardi described living in an apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey, in a profile for The Fader.

The apartment was a half-hour drive from New York under the best traffic conditions, and her rent was $3,000 per month, far less than she would have paid for an apartment of similar size in New York.

However, as Cardi has had several hit singles and the acclaimed album Invasion Of Privacy, she can now afford more lavish homes across the country.
Her latest movie The Eyes Of Tammy Faye sees her undergo a dramatic makeup transformation.

But Jessica Chastain cut a very sleek figure as she attended AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York City on Wednesday.

The actress, 44, looked chic in the black ensemble as she stepped out to the movie theatre.

Stylish: Jessica Chastain, 44, looked very chic in a monochrome ensemble as she stepped out in New York after the release of her latest movie in New York City on Wednesday

Jessica wore a long blazer jacket with a pair of ballooned tuxedo trousers that were cropped at her ankle.

She paired the stylish suit with a crisp white shirt and kept her accessories simple with a floral pin on her jacket collar.

The film star added height to her frame with a pair of black leather pointed heels and her flame red hair was pinned back off her face in to a neat low bun.

She kept her makeup fresh as she opted for a sweep of shimmery pink eye shadow, fluttery lashes and a light pink blush across the apple's of her cheeks.

Chic: Jessica wore a long blazer jacket with a pair of ballooned tuxedo trousers that were cropped at her ankle

Striking: She kept her makeup fresh as she opted for a sweep of shimmery pink eye shadow, fluttery lashes and a light pink blush across the apple's of her cheeks

The look was very different from Jessica's appearance in her most recent film The Eyes Of Tammy Faye.

The movie sees Jessica take on a heavy makeup routine including the use of prosthetics as she transforms into Tammy Faye.

The biopic follows the lives of American evangelist Tammy and her husband Jim Bakker who is portrayed by Spider-Man actor, Andrew Garfield, 38.

Transformation: In her most recent film The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, Jessica can be seen sporting a more dramatic makeup look

Jessica spent hours in the makeup chair to recreate Tammy's iconic look across different phases of her life.

The star could be seen sharing this process and the various makeup looks on her Instagram.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye was released in US theatres on September 17, and will hit UK cinemas on February 4.
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Ioan Gruffudd was spotted for the first time since going public with his new girlfriend Bianca Wallace as he filmed in the South of France on Wednesday.

The Welsh star of the Fantastic Four and ITVs thriller Liar, 48, was seen on location in the south of France as he filmed the French murder mystery La Reunion, based on the best-selling novel by Guillaume Musso.

He cut a serious figure when he was seen on the set of the TV mini series in an appearance that comes after his estranged wife Alice Evans hit out at his new romance in a series of Twitter and Instagram rants.

Since Bianca and Ioan went 'Instagram official', Alice, 50, has made her feelings known and on Thursday morning she shared a throwback snap of her and Ioan, late night selfies and changed her social media bios to pointed slurs on 'homewreckers', and an attack on Bianca for 'ruining kids' lives and sleeping with married men.

Appearance: Ioan Gruffudd was spotted for the first time since going public with his new girlfriend Bianca Wallace as he filmed in the South of France on Wednesday

Ioan was seen with a facemask in place and wearing a black pea coat as he shot the thriller, in which he plays Thomas alongside Nicolas Robin and Rupert Graves.

On Wednesday, the crew took over an ornate old brasserie in the Cote d'Azur, which holidaymakers sauntered past in the narrow streets. One of the crew said: People here are used to Hollywood A-listers being seen filming and strolling in the streets, so Ioan can move around without being recognised as hes not quite in that league.

The Reunion synopsis reads: 'An elite prep school frozen in the snow. Three friends linked by a tragic secret. One girl taken by the night. 25 years ago, The girl body was buried in the gymnasium wall, the same wall that is about to be demolished'. The release date for the series is yet unknown.

Its not known if Bianca, who was photographed earlier this month enjoying a break with Ioan at the exclusive 700-a-night Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Antibes, is still in France. The hotel is now closed for its winter break.

Happier times: Since Bianca and Ioan went 'Instagram official', Alice, 50, has made her feelings known and on Thursday morning she shared a throwback snap of her and Ioan and changed her social media bios to pointed slurs on 'Homewreckers'

Then: On Wednesday last week, Ioan and Bianca, 29, went 'Instagram official' by sharing a cosy snap on their respective social media accounts

Many shots: Following the image of her and her husband in happier times, Alice also shared a slew of stunning selfies in quick succession of one another

Fury: He has been at the heart of the drama since revealing his new love

While Ioan was on-set, Alice changed her Twitter bio to: 'I do not sleep with married men. I do not wreck homes I do not ruin little kids' lives. I did used to smoke though;)', while her Instagram read: 'Not a home-wrecker'.

On Wednesday last week, Ioan and Bianca went 'Instagram official' by sharing a snap on their respective social media accounts moments before Alice made explosive allegations about the duo having a three year long affair.

In her ongoing tirade against the new couple, Alice has frequently reminded her critics not to call them 'exes' as she is still married to Ioan, with whom she shares two daughters - who she has accused Ioan of 'forgetting'.

Her latest post saw Alice share a throwback alongside a caption reading: 'Oops! This came up when I was going through old photos. No offence to the New Girfriend.

Following the image of her and her husband in happier times, Alice also shared a slew of stunning selfies in quick succession of one another.

Her new Twitter bio meanwhile read: 'I do not sleep with married men. I do not wreck homes I do not ruin little kids' lives', while her Instagram details are now listed as: 'Not a home-wrecker', alongside a link to her IMDB page.

Ioan who? She shared a stunning selfie amid her words about her husband

Busy: The set was packed on the street to shoot the upcoming thriller

Packed out: On Wednesday, the crew took over an ornate old brasserie in the Cote d'Azur, which holidaymakers sauntered past in the narrow streets

Earlier in the week, Alice, who is mother to Ella, 12, and Elsie, eight, with the star, gave a shocking insight into their parenting arrangements.

In her latest blistering tirade, Alice hit back at Twitter users who accused her of making the split 'all about money' and also suggesting it was 'her choice' to quit her career and become a stay at home - something she staunchly denied.

Alice explained that she 'altruistically' allowed Ioan to continue working, while staying at home with the girls, despite battling chronic pain and tiredness in fibromyalgia - making it hard for her to even get out of bed at times.

Hitting back: She hit out at her husband and his new girlfriend in the bold statements

She wrote: 'I did NOT make that choice. Two actors cannot both work because it's impossible to work in the same city. Just like two war-reporters or two overseas volunteers. I accepted to step down cos he earned more...

'It was hard. Really hard. I felt I was doing my bit for the family... every time I came to near breaking I told myself I would get back out there once they were older and that at least my husband was getting the opportunity to do the stuff he wanted...

'Rather than the stuff which shoots here, which is very limited. everything I did was altruistic... It was so freaking hard during the early years...

'I have fibromyalgia so sometimes it was hard to move or get out of bed. But I brought the girls on planes to wherever he was and TRIED to do the occasional guest spot. I felt a bit sad when I saw my friends doing amazing'.

Hitting back: Earlier in the week, Alice, who is mother to Ella, 12, and Elsie, eight, with the star, gave a shocking insight into their parenting arrangements

Ioan filed for divorce from Alice in March, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason behind their split.

The document, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on March 1, revealed the former couple separated on New Year's Day - a month before they went public with their relationship status.

At the time, they had shared a joint statement that read: 'As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for our family and we remain committed to our children. Thank you for respecting our privacy.'

It was also reported the divorce papers state the exes are in a 'collaborative process and intend to resolve all issues including spousal support by written agreement'.

All over: Alice confirmed she and Ioan were splitting after 20 years in a shock statement she shared on Twitter in January 2021 (pictured together in 2018)

Alice, meanwhile, had addressed the pair's split in a shock statement shared to Twitter in January in which she claimed Ioan had 'mentally tortured' her.

The mum-of-two also accused her estranged husband of 'winding the s**t up me' as she posted a vitriolic video about their 'collaborative divorce' talks.

Alice and Ioan met on the set of 102 Dalmatians in 2000, when Alice was in a relationship with Pablo Picasso's grandson Olivier.

She and Ioan became engaged six years later after she gave him an ultimatum about their relationship, and they tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in Mexico in September 2007.

Ioan hasn't publicly addressed the couple's divorce.
She's never shy about giving her followers exactly what they demand.

And Rebecca Lobie was back at her sensual best on Thursday, posting a mirror selfie with plenty of underboob.

The 33-year-old niece of the late Steve Irwin paired a very skimpy black crop top with lace panties for the pulse racing post.

Crikey, indeed! Steve Irwin's 'hot niece' Rebecca Lobie (pictured) risked a major wardrobe malfunction with a steamy Instagram post on Thursday

She captioned the naughty post, 'The look I give when Im up to no good'.

It comes just one week after Lobie left very little to the imagination in a plunging blue swimsuit.

The adult model flaunted her best assets poolside in the flesh-baring one-piece in a photo shared to Instagram.

Her eyes are up here! Adult model Rebecca Lobie, who is the niece of the late Steven Irwin, flaunted her best assets in the flesh-baring one-piece in a photo shared to Instagram on Wednesday

Her buttocks and side-boob were on display as she turned round to face the camera.

'That view though' she cheekily captioned the snap.

Earlier in the day, Rebecca had given fans a glimpse of her figure in a busty selfie, as she soaked up the sun in the same swimsuit.

Eye-popping: Earlier in the day, Rebecca had given fans a glimpse at her busty selfie, as she soaked up the sun in the same blue one piece

'What an afternoon,' she captioned it.

It comes as the blonde bombshell continues to encourage fans to pay a $7 monthly fee for access to her 'exclusive' online content.

Rebecca is charging fans US$4.99 (AUD$6.80) for the first month's subscription on beckylobie.com, and US$9.99 (AUD$13.61) thereafter.

Hustling: It comes as the blonde bombshell continues to encourage fans to pay a $7 monthly fee for access to her 'exclusive' online content

For an additional US$55 (AUD$74.92), Rebecca says one video shows her 'fully naked... with just the seat belts covering up my [lemon emoji].'

'But don't worry, I made sure to pull back to give you a full view. We are just getting started,' she added.

For an extra US$34 (AUD46.31) she promises a 'nip slip' in a three-photo gallery.

Business: Rebecca is charging fans US$4.99 (AUD$6.80) for the first month's subscription on beckylobie.com, and US$9.99 (AUD$13.61) thereafter

Rebecca, who is the daughter of Steve Irwin's sister Joy and her husband Frank Muscillo, resigned from Australia Zoo in December 2015.

She recently spoke about her new website in an interview with Daily Mail Australia, explaining it's similar to subscription platform OnlyFans but uses her own branding so she has 'more control'.

'Having another platform to be able to share my content is something I have wanted to do for a while now and has always been a big request from people,' she said.

'I love creating content and engaging with my fans and this is another way I can.'

She said of her decision to shun OnlyFans: 'It has the same features if not more. I will be posting exclusive content, chatting with fans and going live.'
Amber Heard brushed off her latest legal woes as she shared a stunning selfie on Instagram on Wednesday.

The actress, 35, showcased her incredible figure as she donned a black crop top that highlighted her toned midriff.

She seemed carefree despite news she is being investigated for perjury in an FBI-backed probe into claims she lied to Australian officials.

Wow: Amber Heard looked incredible as she shared a stunning selfie to Instagram on Wednesday.

The film star also sported a matching pair of leggings while she styled her blonde locks into a ponytail.

The Justice League actress displayed her natural beauty as she went makeup free in the snap.

Alongside the post, she wrote: 'Working (out) from home'.

Amber is being investigated for perjury in an FBI-backed probe into claims she lied to Australian officials after smuggling her dogs into the country in 2015.

The actress avoided biosecurity charges after she publicly apologized and blamed a lack of sleep for jetting into the country without the required paperwork for Yorkshire Terriers Pistol and Boo.

Legal issues: Amber was charged with illegally smuggling Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, into the country on a private jet in 2015 with ex Johnny Depp But was let off the hook after issuing a public apology and blaming a lack of sleep (pictured in 2016)

But Aussie authorities are revisiting the smuggling spat as a perjury investigation after fresh details dredged up at last year's UK libel trial between Heard's ex, Johnny Depp, and The Sun newspaper, called her explanation into question.

Depp's former estate manager Kevin Murphy raised eyebrows Down Under when he told the London court that Amber had ordered him to lie on oath after she flew the pets into Queensland in a private jet without declaring them.

DailyMail.com can reveal that the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment responded by quietly reopening a criminal probe and enlisting the help of the FBI to track down witnesses in the US.

One of those, Murphy, has now been interviewed at length by Australian investigators and has provided a lengthy witness statement and a trove of emails allegedly implicating Heard.

Sources close to the investigation believe she could be weeks away from being hit with charges of perjury or subornation of perjury, which involves inducing someone to provide false testimony.

Perjury carries a maximum jail term of 14 years while the latter offence can result in a seven-year stretch under the Queensland penal code.

Claims: DailyMail.com can reveal Australian officials have quietly reopened the case over fresh claims of perjury after Depp's former estate manager accused Heard of ordering him to lie under oath. Pictured: Pistol and Boo

It's unlikely the Australian government would try to have Amber extradited, but she could nonetheless face arrest if she tried to enter the country again.

'She could just ignore the whole thing and never go back but a huge number of movies are shot in Australia, including Aquaman, the movie for which she's most well-known,' dished an insider.

'Alternatively, Amber could go back there and face her detractors. That's often her style. It's pretty evident by now that she's not one for backing down in the face of legal threats.'

Amber was originally facing two charges of illegal importation of an animal and a possible ten-year prison sentence after she flew the two pooches into Australia in April 2015 to meet Depp, who was filming Pirates of the Caribbean.

Pistol and Boo should have been declared to customs and placed in 10-day quarantine but their arrival went undetected for several weeks until a grooming salon posted snaps of the cuddly pair to Facebook.

The spat was dubbed the 'The War on Terrier' by Australian media and Depp and Amber were given 72-hours to send them home or face having the dogs seized and euthanized.

Case: Amber's version of events went unchallenged until July last year when Depp's estate manager told the court in a written statement that he had repeatedly warned the actress about Australia's strict animal entry rule

Amber eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of falsifying an immigration document and accepted a fine of 10,000 Australian dollars ($7,650) after her lawyer, Jeremy Kirk, insisted the paperwork had 'slipped through the cracks' and that there was 'no attempt to deceive'.

Kirk said Amber thought that her then-husband's staff had completed the paperwork and was exhausted and suffering from sleep deprivation when she ticked the wrong box on her arrival card.

'Australia is free of many pests and diseases that are commonplace around the world. That is why Australia has to have such strong biosecurity laws,' Heard said in a groveling video apology to the court, recorded jointly with Depp.

'I'm truly sorry that Pistol and Boo were not declared. Protecting Australia is important.'

In dropping the more serious charges, magistrate Bernadette Callaghan accepted that Amber 'did not set out to deceive the Australian authorities', adding that the benefits of her public support for quarantine laws would outweigh the damage done by her mistake.

Amber's version of events went unchallenged until July last year when Murphy told London's High Court in a written statement that he had repeatedly warned the actress about Australia's strict animal entry rules.

Pet pooches: Amber's Yorkshire Terriers Pistol and Boo

'I also explained to Ms. Heard several times the fact that trying to take the dogs into Australia without completing the mandatory process was illegal and could result in very harsh penalties including euthanizing the dogs,' said Murphy, 59.

He went on to allege that, when the smuggling controversy erupted, Heard demanded he provide a 'false statement' to the Australian court saying she didn't know anything about the requirements.

'When I expressed that I was extremely uncomfortable with this, Ms. Heard said to me 'Well I want your help on this  I wouldn't want you to have a problem with your job.'

'It became very apparent that Ms. Heard was threatening my job stability unless I cooperated with providing a declaration that supported her false account for the Australian proceedings.

'Because of this I felt extreme pressure to cooperate, despite knowing this would involve being untruthful,' added Murphy, who worked for Depp for eight years.

The declaration was subsequently prepared for Amber by an attorney and 'contained statements that were not entirely truthful', his statement went on.

Statement: In a joint video apology to the court with ex Johnny Depp, Amber said she was 'truly sorry that Pistol and Boo were not declared' and that 'protecting Australia is important'

Murphy said that when Depp and Amber split in May 2016 he sought legal advice on attempting to voluntarily retract his statement about Pistol and Boo but he abandoned it because of the cost.

The Sun's lawyers pushed back against his account during cross-examination, accusing him of lying and attempting to discredit Heard, who appeared as a key witness for the UK-based tabloid.

Murphy confirmed to DailyMail.com this week that he had been contacted by the FBI and had agreed to provide Australian authorities with a witness statement. He declined to comment further.

Amber's lawyer in the US, Elaine Bredehoft, dismissed suggestions that her client was facing a fresh investigation.

'I am absolutely confident that neither the Australian Government, nor the FBI, would consider 'reopening' an already fully adjudicated matter years later, especially after the UK Court had fully reviewed the evidence,' she told DailyMail.com.

However a spokesperson for the Australian government confirmed: 'The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (department) is investigating allegations of perjury by Ms Heard during court proceedings for the 2015 illegal importation of (her) two dogs into Australia.

Snap: The 35-year-old actress later mocked the incident in a 2018 Instagram post of herself wrapping her dog in her coat captioned: 'What dog?'

'The department is seeking to obtain witness statements and once obtained, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will consider whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant pursuance of the matter. As the matter is ongoing, the department cannot make any further comment.'

The probe comes as Depp and Amber are preparing to square off next year in Fairfax County, Virginia, where the actor is suing his ex-wife for $50 million over a Washington Post op-ed in which she described herself as a domestic violence survivor.

The December 2018 article did not mention him by name but Depp, 58, claims he was axed from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise after the 'hoax' account led to speculation he was the abuser.

Declaration: Pistol and Boo should have been declared to customs and placed in 10-day quarantine but their arrival went undetected for several weeks

He is fighting an uphill battle to salvage his reputation after Britain's High Court sided with The Sun at last year's defamation trial, sparked by a different 2018 article that labeled him a 'wife beater'.

Mr Justice Nicol ruled that The Sun's depiction was 'substantially true' and that father-of-two Depp had attacked Heard a dozen times, causing her to fear for her life on three occasions before their divorce.

Amber, who had a baby girl in July via a surrogate, is counter-suing for $100 million, claiming she has been falsely labeled a liar and that her accounts of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Depp are true.
Delilah Hamlin reunited with boyfriend Eyal Booker on Thursday following her accidental overdose and health struggles.

The couple had spent three months apart, but 26-year-old Eyal, who lives in London flew to Los Angeles to be with the American model, 23, following her health scares.

Delilah documented the occasion with a sweet photo on her Instagram Story.

Loved-up: Delilah Hamlin, 23, and boyfriend Eyal Booker, 26, reunited after a three month stint apart on Thursday following her accidental overdose and recent health struggles

The loved-up pair could be seen embracing and Delilah looked teary eyed in the emotional snap that she captioned: 'Haven't seen each other in 3 months this was the best feeling ever.'

Elsewhere, Love Islander Eyal teased his 800,000 followers as he posted an in-flight selfie and asked fans to take a guess at where they thought he was headed.

The news comes after Delilah opened up about her recent health struggle with prescription drugs on Tuesday.

Transatlantic: Eyal, who lives in London flew to Los Angeles to be with American model Delilah as he teased his followers on Instagram with an inflight selfie

Health battle: It comes after Delilah claimed that she OVERDOSED on Benadryl and beta blockers and got hooked on Xanax after getting the COVID vaccine

The daughter of actors Lisa Rinna, 58, and Harry Hamlin, 70, revealed that she had recently sought treatment after getting hooked on the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and believes it is connected to her getting the COVID vaccine.

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In an emotional Instagram video, Delilah claimed that she accidentally overdosed on Benadryl at the same time as taking prescribed beta blockers and ended up hospitalized.

Delilah said that she was 'in no way an Anti-Vaxxer' but believed the vaccine caused autoimmune diseases in her body to 'flare up.'



She said: 'I didn't realize that the vaccine would cause an autoimmune response in my body that basically flared up and triggered certain autoimmune diseases that I didn't know I had.'

The Global Autoimmune Institute say the evidence available at this point indicates that the benefit of COVID-19 vaccination outweighs the risk of side-effects.

Most comment side effects are the vaccine shot include tiredness, headaches, chills, fever and nausea.

The model went on to state that she began to suffer from migraines, panic attacks, OCD, and PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections).

To treat the extreme panic attacks she went to a psychiatrist who ended up 'overprescribing' her Xanax (alprazolam) which is a benzodiazepine drug, used to treat anxiety and panic disorders.

Delilah went on to say that she has since been diagnosed with encephalitis, also known as inflammation of the brain, meaning she can no longer drink alcohol or fly on planes.

She credited her boyfriend Eyal for being 'so supportive' throughout her health battle.

Supportive: She credited her boyfriend Eyal for being 'so supportive' throughout her health battle
Anthea Turner has revealed she's fractured her foot after tripping on a curb while rushing for a taxi.

The TV presenter, 61, took to Instagram on Thursday where she shared a series of images documenting her movements the previous day, with the star revealing she injured herself shortly before attending the Pink Ribbon Foundation's clothing launch at the Martinez Club in Soho.

In a lengthy post, Anthea explained that she had fractured her 5th metatarsal and will have to wear a medical boot, as she jokingly remarked: 'So, yesterday didnt work out as expected!'

Oh no! Anthea Turner has revealed she's fractured her foot after tripping on a curb while rushing for a taxi

Detailing what had happened throughout her day, she told how she went to a department store to get an outfit altered before heading off to Soho for a photoshoot to promote Pink Ribbon's new Pink Boob T-shirt.

However, as she hurried into a taxi to head to the event, she twisted her foot on a dropped curb.

Despite being in immense pain, Anthea still attended the event where she mingled with the likes of Laura Whitmore and former Page 3 girl, Danielle Mason.

She then explained that after the event, she dropped by the hospital where doctors gave her the bad news about her foot.

Ouch: The TV presenter, 61, explained that she had fractured her 5th metatarsal and will have to wear a medical boot, as she jokingly remarked: 'So, yesterday didnt work out as expected!'

Her Instagram post saw a series of images including a scan of her fractured foot and a picture of her waiting in A&E as well as other images of the hospital.

Other images saw her injured foot in a medical boot as well as her infrared facemask resting on her foot.

She explained to her followers: 'Just after I took this picture outside Fenwicks hailed a black cab, but rushing to get in tripped on a dropped curb twisting my foot, immediately it started to hurt and by the time I arrived @martinezbarlondon where the shoot was taking place, was in total agony.'

Smiling through the pain: The star revealed she injured herself shortly before attending the Pink Ribbon Foundation's clothing launch at the Martinez Club in Soho

Explanation: In a detailed post, Anthea told her followers about her day, saying that after the event, she dropped by the hospital where doctors gave her the bad news about her foot

She went on: 'So after posing around decided to go home via Chelsea and Westminster A&E - actually on the insistence of Mark and another Black Cab Knight of the road.

'Now wearing funny boot and resting my fractured 5th Metatarsal in bag of ice taking painkillers every 4 hours wearing my @cellreturn.uk face mask on my foot, because Ive read infrared light helps with bone healing and of course moaning

'Hospital were simply amazing but will take 4-6 weeks to fully mend.'

Painful: 'Now wearing funny boot and resting my fractured 5th Metatarsal in bag of ice taking painkillers every 4 hours'

Anthea's affliction comes after she spoke out last year about her engagement with Mark Armstrong, 56.

Describing her partner as 'the love of her life' Anthea said 'we adore each other he makes me smile every day and we are excited about our life together'

Mark proposed to his fiancee at whirlwind speed just two months after their first date.

She said: 'Our relationship moved at whirlwind speed. It sounds very quick, but sometimes when you are a bit older and you have lived, something tells you that this is so right...You just know.'

Every little helps: 'wearing my @cellreturn.uk face mask on my foot, because Ive read infrared light helps with bone healing and of course moaning'

Although she is ready to tie the know for the third time, Anthea has remained close to her ex husband Grant Bovey and his children.

Earlier this year, Anthea sent a special birthday message and attended a small gathering with Grant and his daughter Claudia who celebrated her 25th birthday.

She took to social media to share a series of intimate snaps of her with the family enjoying dinner as they celebrated her big day.

The images included Anthea smiling whilst sitting opposite her ex husband as they dined at Mucca's Italian restaurant in London.

Other family members included Grants other children Lily and Amelia, Anthea She caption the image with the words 'Claudia Bovey is officially 25!'

She added: 'Happy birthday you star, we love you.'
Daisy May Cooper has discussed her colourful love life and a past attempt to be a lap dancer in her new autobiography Don't Laugh, It'll Only Encourage Her.

The actress, 35, recalled how she had an ex-boyfriend who had a fetish for impersonating house hold objects, including an ash tray, a coat stand and a footstool.

In a passage from her book obtained by The Sun, Daisy wrote: 'He positioned himself on all fours with his tongue out while I put my feet up, drank wine, watched Location, Location, Location and flicked my ash his way.

Candid: Daisy May Cooper has discussed her colourful love life and a past attempt to be a lap dancer in her new autobiography Don't Laugh, It'll Only Encourage Her

'I tried to do it casually, but it occurred to me that I could get arrested for this. He loved me stubbing my fag out on him. He winced with pleasure, I winced with pain.

'I berated him for being the most unkind, uncouth and uncaring boyfriend ever.'

The This Country star put up with the man's proclivities because he had plenty of wine in his flat and she preferred it there over living with her parents.

Daisy was planning on breaking up with the man after he asked to be tied up but he ended up ending things first as he found her 'too vanilla' in the bedroom.

Biography: The actress, 35, recalled how she had an ex-boyfriend who had a fetish for impersonating house hold objects, including an ash tray, a coat stand and a footstool

Elsewhere in the book, Daisy writes about how she failed to secure any acting work after graduating from RADA and so auditioned to be a lap dancer.

When asked by the club boss 'Tony' what her name would be, she panicked and replied: 'Louise. Louise Redknapp'.

Her audition didn't go well as she ran out of dance moves before the song ended and then tried 'snogging' the pole before the manager declined to give her a job.

Speaking about another ex, Daisy claimed a barman named 'Jake' claimed to be a former MI5 officer forced to retire after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Memory lane: Elsewhere in the book, Daisy writes about how she failed to secure any acting work after graduating from RADA and so auditioned to be a lap dancer (pictured in June 2021)

He later gave a different story about why he left MI5, claiming he developed a drug problem after a mission involving a cocaine smuggling ring.

'Jake' asked Daisy to move in with him but she ended the relationship after paying for them to go on a holiday to Zakynthos.

The actress also writes about meeting up with a boy she met online as a teenager after duping him using a profile picture of the model Eva Herzigova.

Daisy does not write about her ex-husband Will Weston, who she shares two children with, in the book.

Former flame: Daisy does not write about her ex-husband Will Weston, who she shares two children with, in the book (pictured in 2018)

The couple met on Tinder in 2015 with Daisy previously saying: 'He is an amazing man, but we're just not compatible.'

After several failed auditions in London, Daisy moved back to her hometown of Cirencester where she and her brother Charlie began making mini videos as various characters, including Kerry, who became Daisy's character on This Country.

After BBC bosses saw the pair's videos, they recorded a pilot show which led to the first series on BBC Three back in 2017.
Gogglebox Australia stars have remembered beloved TV legend Bert Newton following new of his death.

During Thursday night's episode, the shocked cast were quick to express their condolences following the iconic funnyman's passing at age 83.

'You woke me up last night and told me about this,' Keith said to Lee.

Gone but not forgotten: Gogglebox Australia stars paid homage to Bert Newton (pictured) during Thursday night's episode, following his death at age 83

Mick and Di then offered genuine praise for show business veteran.

'He was a total icon,' said Di, before adding, 'He was loved by everybody.'

The TV stars then expressed their interest in Bert's career trajectory, with Keith mentioning his longstanding working relationship with Graham Kennedy.

'We did grow up with Bert, didn't we,' Mick said.

Beloved: 'He was a total icon,' said Di, before adding, 'He was loved by everybody.' Pictured: Di

Pals Anastasia and Faye remarked that times have changed so much that many entertainers 'wouldn't be able to do' what Bert did.

'Today you wouldn't be able to do some of the shows they did because it is politically incorrect,' Anastasia said, before Faye added, 'Exactly.'

Lee and Keith went on to comment there would be 'no-one else like him'.

'That generation is gone now,' Keith said.

Stardom: Lee and Keith went on to comment there would be 'no-one else like him'. Here: Lee and Keith

'You will be missed moonface. You will be missed,' Lee finished.

Bert died aged 83 on Saturday after a well publicised battle with illness over recent months.

Such was his regard in his hometown of Melbourne, he will be farewelled in a state funeral.

Legacy: Pals Anastasia and Faye remarked that times have changed so much that many entertainers 'wouldn't be able to do' what Bert did. Both pictured

Wife Patti revealed it was 'painkillers and anaesthetics' that ultimately led to his death.

'It was complications with everything,' she told Daily Mail Australia on Monday, two days after the show business veteran's passing.

'When you have a leg amputated you have to be on a lot of painkillers and Bert had had, just this year alone, he's had eight procedures, which all involved anaesthetics and that effects you pretty badly,' said the 76-year-old entertainer.
Tamara Francesconi wowed as she headed to the launch party for her new collection with Misspap at London's Mandrake Hotel on Wednesday night.

The influencer, 25, turned up the heat as she flashed her toned pins in an eye-popping red trench coat, which she matched to the shade of her lipstick.

Strutting her way through the city in a pair of knee-high black leather boots, she wore her gorgeous brown tresses in curls.

Emerging: Tamara Francesconi wowed as she headed to the launch party for her new collection with Misspap at London's Mandrake Hotel on Wednesday night

Putting on a street-side fashion show for gawking onlookers, the model certainly stood out from the crowd in her very fashion forward ensemble.

The show-stopping appearance follows a series of smouldering new images where Tamara flaunts her model credentials while working her best items in a variety of glamorous pieces from the line.

From plunging dresses to sparkling suits, the brunette beauty's new collection is perfect for party season.

Hot stuff: The influencer, 25, turned up the heat as she flashed her toned pins in an eye-popping red trench coat, which she matched to the shade of her lips

Show-stopping: Strutting her way through the city in a pair of knee-high black leather boots, she wore her gorgeous brown tresses in curls

Centre of attention: Putting on a street-side fashion show for gawking onlookers, she certainly stood out from the crowd in her very fashion forward ensemble

Beauty: Rocking a bold red lip for the shoot and with her glossy tresses cascading in loose waves past her shoulders, Tamara dropped jaws

Rocking a bold red lip for the shoot and with her glossy tresses cascading in loose waves past her shoulders, Tamara dropped jaws in every look.

Stand-out pieces include a thigh-skimming black sequinned minidress, a strapless red dress complete with slip-on puffed sleeves and patterned jumpsuit.

The South African model shared a sneak peek of the collection on her Instagram last month, revealing the collaboration was shot at night in beautiful Rome.

It comes after MailOnline revealed exclusively in September that Tamara had called time on her relationship with her Gossip Girl star boyfriend, Ed Westwick, 34.

Sizzling: The show-stopping appearance follows a series of smouldering new images where Tamara flaunts her model credentials while working her best items in a variety of glamorous pieces from the line

While neither Ed nor Tamara have commented on the split, the model hinted at unease earlier in September when she shared a cryptic video of Oprah.

Oprah said: 'When people show you who they really are, why don't you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are...

'Why can't you get it the first time when people show you who they are?. Believe them the first time'.

The couple first got together in October 2019, after Ed slid into Tamara's DMs. She explained during an Instagram Q&A last year: 'Going to answer this first because it's my most asked question, and probably the reason a lot of you follow me.

'He direct messaged me out of the blue saying hi and I nearly fell off my chair, we then chatted for a while and he asked me on a date, which I assumed would be a dinner.

'Instead he took me to a butterfly sanctuary in Mayfair, we thereafter spent the whole day exploring London together, and the rest is history.

'I feel like we have all become codependent with our partners this year (I know I have) I think it's really important to do things alone and for yourself, read a book, go for a walk, chat to a friend.'
Angelina Jolie has revealed she is 'always careful' and follows gun procedure on set following Alec Baldwin's fatal shooting accident on the set of his film Rust.

The actress, 46, weighed in on the tragic incident after the actor, 63, was given a loaded gun, which he shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with, as well as injuring director Joel Souza.

Angelina, who has worked with guns on set on many occassions both as an actor and director, said that 'certain procedures' have to be taken 'very seriously', when asked about the accident during a recent interview with The Times.

Opinion: Angelina Jolie has revealed she is 'always careful' and follows gun procedure on set following Alec Baldwin's fatal shooting accident on the set of his film Rust (pictured Salt 2010)

The Eternals star, said: 'I can't imagine what these families are going through. At this moment, the grief and the tragedy of that accident is quite overwhelming.

'I've always been very careful because I've had to work with guns a lot. The way I've worked or checked when I'm directing, there are certain procedures. You have to take it very seriously.'

Angelina's many action parts have seen her handling guns on countless occassions, including her roles in Tomb Raider, Mr & Mrs Smith and Salt.

The A-lister previously revealed her pro-gun stance in 2008 when she admitted she kept a gun in the house during her marriage to Brad Pitt, 57.

She said: 'Brad and I are not against having a gun in the house, and we do have one. And yes, I'd be able to use it if I had to If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I have no problem shooting them.'

Tragic: The actress, 46, weighed in on the tragic incident after the actor, 63, was given a loaded gun, which he shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with, as well as injuring director Joel Souza

Careful: Angelina, who has worked with guns on set on many occassions both as an actor and director, said that 'certain procedures' have to be taken 'very seriously' (pictured on Mr and Mrs Smith - 2005)

The latest update in the Baldwin case is that lawyers representing the armorer who loaded his gun claimed the weapon was left unattended for two hours on set, before backtracking and saying it was only ten minutes.

Jason Bowles, speaking on behalf of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, suggested the gun may have been tampered with before it fired the fatal shot during the filming of Rust.

The .45 Long Colt was not supposed to contain live rounds and was one of three on a tray given to assistant director David Halls who then passed it on to Baldwin.

Claims: Lawyers representing armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (pictured) who loaded Alec Baldwin's gun, suggested it could have been tampered with

Gutierrez-Reed, 24, who says she gave the actor gun training and told him to never point a firearm at someone, had loaded the gun on the prop cart with six dummy rounds which she took from a prop ammunition box labeled 'dummies', Bowles claims.

These rounds do not contain any gunpowder and are used on film sets to mimic real bullets.

Bowles claimed the guns were left unattended for two hours including the crew's lunch break during a TV interview on Wednesday.

But later he backtracked after consulting Gutierrez-Reed, saying the guns had been locked in a safe during lunch and were only left unattended for five to 10 minutes, he told the New York Times.

Bowles said his client had asked her colleagues to watch the gun cart when she was not there and she remembered seeing it left unattended at points throughout the day.

Gutierrez-Reed loaded the three firearms at 11am, including the .45 Long Colt, which were to be used during filming on the fateful day, fellow lawyer Robert Gorence said.

He said: 'Was there a duty to safeguard them 24/7? The answer is no, because there were no live rounds.'

TV appearance: Attorneys Robert Gorence (left) and Jason Bowles (right), representing 'Rust' armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, appeared on the Today Show

The gun was declared 'cold' meaning it was safe to use and it remains unclear how a live round was used.

Gutierrez-Reed said in a statement issued by her lawyers: 'Who put those in there and why is the central question.

'Hannah kept guns locked up, including throughout lunch on the day in question, and she instructed her department to watch the cart containing the guns when she was pulled away for her other duties or on a lunch break.'

The statement goes on to say that 'Hannah did everything in her power to ensure a safe set. She inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day. She always inspected the rounds.'

The statement adds that she inspected the rounds before handing the firearm to assistant director David Halls 'by spinning the cylinder and showing him all of the rounds and then handing him the firearm.'

'No one could have anticipated or thought that someone would introduce live rounds into this set,' Gutierrez Reed's statement said.

The statement also noted that 'she did firearms training for the actors as well as Mr. Baldwin, she fought for more training days and she regularly emphasized to never point a firearm at a person.'

It comes as Halyna's husband Matthew hired the firm Panish, Shea, Boyle and Ravipudi in Los Angeles and is set to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

Muddy waters: It is not yet clear how the live round entered the gun before it shot and killed Halyna Hutchins (pictured)

Sources told TMZ there will be multiple defendants in the suit and it will be filed on behalf of Matthew and their son Andros, nine, following her death on October 21.

Gutierrez Reed's attorneys floated the theory that a 'disgruntled' crew member may have planted the live round on set as an act of revenge, during an interview with the Today show's Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday.

In the wake of the fatal shooting that also wounded director Joel Souza, several crew members have come out claiming that they were overworked and denied hotel rooms in the vicinity of the New Mexico set.

'I believe that somebody who would do that, would want to sabotage the set, would want to prove a point, want to say they're disgruntled, they're unhappy,' Jason Bowles said.

Theory: The armorer's attorneys suggested that a disgruntled crew member on set near Santa Fe, New Mexico, may have planted the live round as an act of sabotage

'And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before... and the reason they are unhappy is they're working 12 to 14 hour days, they are not given hotel rooms in and around the area, so they had to drive back and forth an hour to Albuquerque, and they're unhappy.'

Gutierrez Reed has not been named a suspect, or charged with any crime in connection with Hutchins' killing, but she retained legal representation.

'There was a box of dummy rounds, and the box is labeled 'dummy,'' Bowles said. '[Gutierrez Reed] loaded rounds from that box into the handgun, only later to find out - she had no idea - that there was a live round.'

The armorer then handed the vintage Colt pistol to assistant director David Halls, who, in turn, passed it on to Baldwin and announced 'cold gun,' indicating that the weapon was safe to use, according to authorities investigating the deadly October 21 shooting near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

'We're assuming somebody put the live round in that box,' Bowles told Guthrie. 'The person who put the live round in the box of dummy rounds had to have the purpose of sabotaging the set. There is no other reason you would do that: that you would mix that live round in with the dummy rounds.'

Gorence said the box of dummy ammunition was in a prop truck, which was 'completely unattended at all times, giving someone access and opportunity.'

Gutierrez Reed's lawyers defended her actions that day, saying that the loaded gun was not in her care for the entire duration of the filming because she was expected to perform two jobs on set: as an armorer and a props assistant.

Reports: Lawyers said as Gutierrez Reed (pictured at her home in Arizona, left) handed the loaded gun to assistant director David Halls (right), she spun the chamber to show him the rounds, but did not inspect them

Bowels said that after lunch, Gutierrez Reed handed the gun she had loaded earlier to Halls and then went about performing her other duties as a props assistant.

As she handed over the Colt, the lawyer said Gutierrez Reed spun the chamber to show Halls the rounds inside.

'She did spin the cylinder for him,' Bowles said. 'She did show him each and every round in that chamber, which there were six.'

He added: 'The problem is, when you look at a dummy round and you look at their appearance, they have the same projectile tip; some of these do not have a hole in the side. They mimic and look like a real round.'

The armorer's legal team admitted that she did not inspect the gun to ascertain that the rounds inside the chamber were not live ammunition.

Gorence explained that Gutierrez Reed was not inside the church set at the time of the shooting because it took place while cameras were being set up, and not during filming,

'She wasn't there,' the lawyer stressed.

The armorer's attorneys said they are cooperating with the investigation, and are hoping that the FBI would be able to determine who had planted the live round.

The attorneys for Gutierrez Reed she is 'absolutely devastated.'

'She remains very emotional about everything that's happened,' Bowles said. 'Coming on the scene and everything that she saw, she is heartbroken and she is just devastated by what's happened.'

Meanwhile, 'Rust' camera assistant Lane Luper, who quit on the eve of the shooting, told Good Morning America that there were only two safety meetings on set and said production did not take gun safety seriously.

'I think with Rust, it was the perfect storm of the armorer, the assistant director, the culture that was on set, the rushing. It was everything,' he said.

Luper claimed the crew were overworked and exhausted from commuting to and from the set, and he also cited poor gun safety, which he said resulted in two accidental weapon discharges and one accidental sound-effects explosion.

Baldwin has been largely silent about what happened on the set of 'Rust,' but on Tuesday he shared a social media post from one crew member slamming her coworkers for painting a 'blatantly false' picture of the set as 'chaotic and unsafe'.

Baldwin issued a public statement the day after Hutchins' death in which he indicated that he was cooperating with authorities and offered his condolences to her family.

Halls released a statement to the New York Post on Monday, saying he hopes the tragedy prompts the film industry to 'reevaluate its values and practices' to ensure no one is harmed again.

Concerns have been raised about Halls' safety record by colleagues on two previous productions.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said last week there was 'some complacency' in how weapons were handled on the set. Investigators found around 500 rounds of ammunition  a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and suspected live rounds  even though the set's armorer, Gutierrez Reed, said real ammo should never have been present.
She has jetted to Qatar to show support for emerging young talent in the fashion industry.

And Naomi Campbell looked a vision on Wednesday evening as she attended the Fashion Trust Arabia Prize awards ceremony at the Middle Eastern country's national museum.

The 51-year-old model sported a highly-embellished top and trouser co-ord for the event, the top adorned with sparkling gold detail and feather-like features.

Glam: Naomi Campbell, 51, was a vision in a highly-embellished top and trouser co-ord as she attended the Fashion Trust Arabia Prize awards in Qatar on Wednesday

The quirky garment also boasted a layered flowy trail which fell past her tailored white trousers.

In true model style, Naomi contributed to her frame with elegant silver heels, which had an impressive chunky platform.

Earlier on in the day, the Vogue cover star participated in a public talk moderated by Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Chairperson of Qatar Museums.

Beauty: The quirky garment boasted a layered flowy trail which fell past her tailored white trousers

Gorgeous: The model's top was adorned with sparkling gold detail and feather-like features

Chat: Earlier on in the day, the Vogue cover star participated in a public talk moderated by Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Chairperson of Qatar Museums

London-born Naomi went bold in blue, sporting an eye-catching shawl and sequinned cargo trousers.

She completed her get-up with Nike trainers as she spoke at the #QatarCreates event.

The cultural celebration, taking place in the heart of Doha, connects the fields of art, fashion, and design through a diverse program of exhibitions, awards, public talks, and special events.

Qatar Creates: London-born Naomi went bold in blue, sporting an eye-catching shawl and sequinned cargo trousers

Chat: The model completed her get-up with Nike trainers as she spoke at the #QatarCreates event

Cultural celebration: Qatar Creates connects the fields of art, fashion, and design through a diverse program of exhibitions, awards, public talks, and special events (from L-R Kenneth Ize, Naomi , Bianca Saunders, Russlynn Ali and Thebe Magugu)

Kicking back: Naomi marked her Qatar trip via Instagram earlier this week

Naomi marked her Qatar trip via Instagram earlier this week.

Alongside a selfie and a photo on the steps of the Qatar Executive aircraft, she wrote: '#KICKING OFF THE MONTH WITH #QATARCREATES with my cousin @biancasaunders ( bet you did not know we had a designer in the family ) PROUD 

'In Qatar Supporting new young emerging talent Thank you @qatarairways . #qatarcreates .'
Strictly Come Dancing's youngest ever pro dancer Cameron Lombard has taken his Globan Warning climate change campaign to the gates of Buckingham Palace.

The South African Latin Champion, 20, who is currently lighting up the nation's TV screens every weekend, has danced a 'global warning' after experiencing the devastating effects of climate change during his upbringing.

Cameron is using the medium of dance to drive home the Royal Family's pleas for immediate action on climate change and inspire younger generations to be more socially responsible and compassionate to our planet.

Taking a stand: Strictly Come Dancing's youngest ever pro dancer Cameron Lombard has taken his Globan Warning climate change campaign to the gates of Buckingham Palace

In his first video with Climate Actions Now, Cameron has taken his call to action right to the gates of Buckingham Palace, using movement and music to encourage more young people to get involved in climate action and to take leadership.

In the video, Cameron is dancing to Global Warning, a hip-hop track written and performed by his best friend, Shaun Musungate, 19, a Zimbabwean refugee from the age of six now living in Cape Town.

Cameron - who doesn't have a celebrity partner on this year's show, explains: 'I really started to become aware of Climate Change in 2017 when I was 16. We had a very serious drought with water rationing in Cape Town.

'We couldn't shower and people had to even queue up for drinking water. Since then I was aware and looking for a way I could make a difference.

Global Warning: The video shows Cameron perfoming outside the palace

Video: At the beginning of the music video he travels to Buckingham Palace on the tube

Powerful: He hopes to incite change with his performative piece

'Then I met Robert Stephenson in Cape Town, who had started a movement called Climate Actions Now (CAN).

'I became a Climate Action Youth and Dance Ambassador for CAN early this year, before I came to the UK to work with the BBC. I believe art has a very important part to play in creating awareness, telling the truth and engaging people in a positive way around the issues of climate change.

'I want to use any influence I have - my art and that of my artist friends  in a proactive and constructive way, to help send out positive existential Climate Action messages. The lyrics of 'Global Warning' say it all and I hope my choreography highlights this powerful message.'

CAN is a solution-focused advocacy movement that is creating and linking virtual and physical Climate Action Centres of Excellence in South Africa, Uganda and Ireland, with a mission to help find and promote solutions tot of Climate Change.

Stage presence: The South African Latin Champion, 20, is currently lighting up the nation's TV screens every weekend (pictured with Jowita Przystal)

Growing up in South Africa, Cameron has seen the destructive effects of climate change on his home country first-hand.

The country is particularly vulnerable to climactic changes and is already experiencing increasing temperatures and rainfall variability.

These climate changes are more rapid, and with impacts that are more severe, than the global average.

Speedy environmental changes are becoming more prominent, increasing the likelihood of extreme droughts and the depletion of water resources.

Working together: In the video, Cameron is dancing to Global Warning, a hip-hop track written and performed by his best friend, Shaun Musungate

The impact on the country's water supply and agriculture sector will be catastrophic unless urgent action is taken to find solutions.

Developing countries are the most impacted by climate change and the least able to afford its consequences.

They are more likely to disproportionately experience the negative effects of global warming.

As temperatures rise further, regions such as Africa will face declining crop yields and will struggle to produce sufficient food for domestic consumption.
He's one of the most in-demand male models in the country.

And on Thursday, Jett Kenny was back to doing what he does best as he posed up a storm for activewear brand Front Runner.

The 27-year-old genetically blessed hunk shared a number of photos from the shoot to Instagram, where he is seen working his best angles for the popular fashion brand.

Looking good! Jett Kenny smouldered as he modelled for activewear brand Front Runner on Thursday, sharing images to Instagram

Jett offered the camera a sultry gaze as he sat down on a chair and played with his signature blond tresses.

He paired the vibrant jumper with a pair of blue jeans.

'New favourite,' he captioned the images.

Handsome: Jett offered the camera a sultry gaze as he sat down on a chair and played with his signature blond tresses

It comes after Jett, a self-confessed 'fussy eater, revealed he finally tried food most of us take for granted on SAS Australia.

'I ate a banana for the first time on the show,' the son of Lisa Curry and Grant Kenny admitted to the Daily Telegraph recently.

Jett also revealed he disliked the food served to the reality TV recruits so much he lost eight kilograms during filming.

First timer: It comes after Jett, a self-confessed 'fussy eater, revealed he finally tried food most of us take for granted on SAS Australia.

'The selection of food I eat isn't great at the best of times,' he conceded.

The son of Uncle Toby's spokesperson Lisa Curry also revealed he actually can't stand eating oats, which was often served on the show.

'I am not an oats fan,' stated the ironman, saying that his preferred food would be McDonald's.

'Fussy eater': Jett has revealed the one thing about SAS Australia he literally couldn't stomach: the food served to recruits

Kenny ranked the food even lower than the physicality of the show's gruelling challenges and his infamously testy relationship with co-star Koby Abberton.

'We are polar opposites and we clashed here or there, but we got along in the end,' he said of the surfer, while imploring those attacking Abberton and his family online to leave them alone.

Jett recently hinted that his run-ins with Koby weren't the only tensions simmering behind the scenes.

Prickly: Kenny ranked the food even lower the physicality of the show's gruelling challenges and his infamously testy relationship with co-star Koby Abberton (pictured right)

Jet said in a recent interview on Queensland radio that one of his fellow recruits had blocked him on Instagram.

Jett didn't name the celebrity who'd blocked him, but said he suspected they were linked to a troll account that targeted him when he was on Dancing with the Stars in 2019.

'I'm not going to say who it is... I was on Dancing with the Stars, and Lilly [Cornish, his dance partner] and I were sort of getting bad messages from someone saying that we were bad people,' he explained.
Samantha Armytage ushered in the New Year marrying businessman Richard Lavender in an intimate ceremony in the Southern Highlands.

And on Thursday evening, the former Sunrise host shared an exciting announcement just shy of the couple celebrating one year of matrimonial bliss.

'Meet out newest family member,' Sam, 45, proudly gushed alongside a photo of a newly born foal shared to Instagram.

Something to smile about: Former Sunrise host Samantha Armytage (pictured) shared an exciting family announcement with her legion of fans on Thursday evening

'A gorgeous little filly born this morning to Doncella (& Capitalist),' she continued.

Sam stamped the image 'hello gorgeous' before sharing another picture of her handsome husband tenderly gazing at the newborn.

'It's really tiring being born,' she captioned the adorable frame, adding a crying and love heart eyes emoji.

Sam's welcome addition to the family follows the announcement she will be returning to television screens in 2022 as a guest judge on Farmer Wants A Wife.

Giddy-up: 'Meet out newest family member,' Sam, 45, proudly gushed alongside a photo of a newly born foal, sharing the image to Instagram

Love at first sight: Sam proudly stamped the image 'hello gorgeous' before sharing another image of her businessman husband tenderly gazing at the newborn

The veteran broadcast journalist will assist with the matchmaking process alongside host Natalie Gruzlewski.

'I've always been a huge fan of the show and of country people, and I know first-hand that falling in love with a farmer is just about the most wonderful thing you can do,' said Sam in a media statement.

Her guest role will involve hosting a segment called Sam's Choice, where she introduces the farmers to a 'new lady based on her own expertise and experience'.

Career move: Sam's welcome addition to her family follows the announcement she will be returning to television screens in the New Year as a guest judge on Channel Seven's ratings hit, Farmer Wants A Wife. Pictured with husband Richard Lavender

Seven's Director of Programming, Angus Ross, said the network was 'thrilled to welcome Sam back to our screens'.

'Farmer Wants a Wife has been such a hit with audiences because of its heart and Natalie's earnest mission to help farmers find the love of their lives,' Mr Ross said.

'Given Sam's new life on the farm, she's in the perfect position to share a snapshot of what farm life could look like for the ladies.'

Partnership: Sam, who married wealthy farmer Richard late last year, will assist with the matchmaking process alongside host Natalie Gruzlewski (pictured)

Expertise: A trailer for next year's season of FWAW introduces Sam as someone 'who knows a thing or two' about finding love with a farmer

A trailer for next year's season of FWAW introduces Sam as someone 'who knows a thing or two' about finding love with a farmer.

'I really want to help find the right woman for each of our farmers,' she says, while standing in a paddock wearing a cowboy hat.

'I won't hold back because this is love. This is for the rest of their lives. I really want to help a farmer find a wife. Have you all met Rich?'

Richard then walks on screen and says, 'Every farmer needs love,' to which Sam replies giddily: 'That's lovely, darling!'

Fancy seeing you here! 'I really want to help a farmer find a wife. Have you all met Rich?' she says as her husband walks on screen

Their story: Sam married equestrian businessman Richard, 60, at his country estate in the NSW Southern Highlands on New Year's Eve

Sam married the equestrian businessman, 60, at his country estate in the NSW Southern Highlands on New Year's Eve.

They had announced their engagement in June last year.

Sam went on to quit Sunrise in March and has now moved away from Sydney to live with Richard at his 40-hectare rural property.

The new season of Farmer Wants a Wife premieres on Seven in 2022
They are both known for their stunning figures.

So Amanda Holden and Davina McCall were the perfect dream team for a new collaboration as they both stripped down to lingerie to plug the new festive campaign for online retailer JD Williams.

Amanda opted for a duo of racy looks, with the BGT judge, 50, sizzling in red and black numbers, while Davina, 54, wowed in a racy nude look.

Wow: Amanda Holden and Davina McCall were the perfect dream team for a new collaboration as they both stripped down to lingerie to plug the new festive campaign for online retailer JD Williams

As she frequently shows off her incredible figure, Amanda was the perfect candidate for the campaign in which she wore two sexy looks.

The first featured a red longline bra with underwiring and low-slung Brazilian bottoms to best show off her taut abs.

Davina meanwhile was looking breathtaking in a black and nude two-piece, which showed off the results of her gruelling hard work in the gym.

The ladies also posed fully dressed, including chic shots showing them both in winter coats and boots as they posed together.

Stunner: Davina went for a chic nude and black two-piece

Amazing: Amanda also sported a black lace two-piece

They then rocked Christmas pyjamas in the perfect prep for the festive season.

The new shoot comes after Amanda recently landed a role on Neighbours playing the aunt of Jason Donovan's daughter, Jemma, 21.

Channel 5 released the first look images from set last month after the pair filmed in Waterloo, London, together ahead of the episodes airing in the spring.

Stunner: They then rocked pyjamas in the perfect prep for the festive season

Amazing: The duo looked sensational as they larked around in front of the camera

On the show, Jemma's character Harlow will jet to the UK in the hope of figuring out a mystery about her late mother, Prue, who was played by Denise Van Outen.

Between filming scenes, Amanda and Jemma posed for a snap together as they held up the Ramsay St street sign, where the soap is set.

Amanda also revealed that many passers-by thought the pair were related in real life.

Playful: Davina also wore Christmas pyjamas in one of the shots

She said: 'My first day on set was such a fun and surreal experience. If I'd told my 12/13-year-old self I would one day appear in Neighbours I'd have never believed it!

'So many people were beeping in their cars and passersby assumed that Jemma was my real daughter because we look quite similar! I can't wait to continue the journey of my character Harriet.'

She previously said in a statement: 'Like most people in the UK who were around in the late Eighties and early Nineties, I grew up watching Neighbours every single day.

Hell for leather! Amanda wore a sizzling black leather pencil skirt and tight forest green top

Here come the girls! The TV twosome wore elegant coats and boots for another of the shots

'I was glued to our TV for the wedding of Kylie [Minogue] and Jason [Donovan], while cursing Mrs Mangel [Vivean Gray] and praying that Mike and Jane [Guy Pearce and Jane Harris] would eventually get together!

'Not to mention all the other greats over the years,' she added.

'To now have the opportunity to be a part of such an iconic Australian show is simply fabulous. I can't wait to work with Jemma in London. This feels like a joyous occasion for everyone.

Santa has arrived! Davina toted a large hat box wrapped in a bow
Ollie Locke and his husband Gareth have discussed their heartbreaking wait to see if their IVF attempt has been successful.

The couple recently jetted to Cyprus along with their surrogate, who has undergone treatment on their behalf.

The Made In Chelsea star, 34, and his fashion director partner are yet to find out if their surrogate has fallen pregnant following an artificial insemination on Friday.

Wow! Ollie Locke and his husband Gareth have jetted to Cyprus, along with their surrogate who has undergone IVF treatment on their behalf (pictured in 2019)

With a two week wait to go, the couple have revealed they are feeling especially anxious following a devastating failed first attempt earlier this year.

The Made In Chelsea star told The Mirror: 'It's the most horrendous wait. The two weeks waiting before you get a pregnancy result. Its really horrible. Were very confident. Hopefully, itll be fine.'

The pair had to fly the embryos from Mexico to Cyprus in order for their new effort to go ahead.

He said: 'We wanted to do IVF in America but they weren't letting anyone in. So we went to Mexico instead. Our egg donor is Brazilian so she flew up from Brazil'.

Worries: The Made In Chelsea star, 34, and his fashion director partner are yet to find out if their surrogate has fallen pregnant following an artificial insemination on Friday

It is the couple's second attempt, using embryos that were frozen in Mexico earlier this year.

The couple learnt in July that their first IVF attempt had been unsuccessful, with their tearful phone call with their surrogate filmed and broadcast on Made in Chelsea.

Their second surrogate got in touch after watching the devastating scenes on the E4 reality show.

Ollie explained: 'Our amazing surrogate has had two babies before. When the doctors saw her they said everything's perfect. Sometimes it just doesn't take.'

The couple also revealed they will announce the biological father of their child at a later date, but would like to keep it quiet for now.

Ollie and Gareth tied the knot last November and avid Made In Chelsea enthusiasts could watch their nuptials - the most viewed wedding worldwide of 2020 - on the E4 show.

Positive: Amid their personal experience with surrogacy, the pair are keen to see a change in the legislation surrounding the arrangement

And the television star candidly recalled the moment he knew they were ready to embark on parenthood together.

'Now I'm in my mid thirties, I thought that potentially there was something very, very missing and as all of my friends started doing it, I learned that I needed to be a father,' he said.

'More than anything it was Gareth when he was playing with India my goddaughter - Binky's daughter. I sat there and I was like 'why am I being mad? We are both absolutely in a position to have children.'

'I was like 'Gareth is so good with kids, I'm really good with kids. We need a family."'
Sarah Parish has arrived back in the UK after fracturing her spine and breaking a rib in Turkey.

The Bancroft star, 53, revealed on Instagram over the weekend that she was in hospital after a 'nasty fall' on to a hard surface while holidaying with her family.

The actress updated her concerned Instagram followers on Wednesday night to say she was flying home and thanked her husband James Murray for organising her trip back.

Good news: Sarah Parish arrived home in the UK on Wednesday night after fracturing her spine while on holiday in Turkey

She shared a photo of herself lying in an aeroplane to her Instagram story with the caption: 'I'm home! Thank you @thejimmurray for getting me here and sorting everything out. #hero.'

The actress - known for playing Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Bancroft in the ITV series Bancroft - had previously been enjoying a family trip with her husband and two children in Turkey for the half-term holiday, sharing photos of them wake-boarding, wake-surfing and scuba diving.

Taking to Instagram over the weekend, Sarah shared a picture of herself in bed on her ward, writing: 'A broken rib?? No, no, that's not enough for this f**k wit.

'I'm home!!': The actress updated her concerned Instagram followers on Wednesday night to say she was flying back to the UK - and thanked her husband James Murray for organising her trip back

Mishap! The Bancroft star, 53, revealed on Instagram over the weekend that she was in hospital after a 'nasty fall' on to a hard surface while holidaying with her family

Update: The star shared a picture of herself in bed on her ward, writing: 'A broken rib?? No, no, that's not enough for this f**k wit'

'Let's pop in to the equation a nasty fall on a very hard surface resulting in a fractured spine. Yes, that's better.

'Spending a couple of extra days in Turkey but not at the lovely @hillsidebeachclub. At the local Turkish hospital. FFS.

'Life really does appear to be taking a massive dump on my head right now.'

Unexpected: The actress was been forced to extend her stay in the country after seeking medical treatment

Some of Sarah's famous friends were quick to comment with their well wishes after learning of the news.

Fellow actress Catherine Tyldesley wrote: 'Oh b**ody hell love! Get well soon! Xxxx'

While Lucy-Jo Hudson posted: 'Sending you all my love xxx'

Painful accident: It comes after Sarah was treated at Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester for a broken leg after using a cheap plastic sledge to snowboard in 2018

Sarah gave her fans a similar health update on social media in 2018 when she shattered her leg after attempting to snowboard on a cheap plastic sledge.

She was treated at Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester after the accident which required a pin to be put through her leg to help it heal.

Sharing a picture of herself being tended to by the emergency services on Instagram, she wrote at the time: 'No sleep last night, was on enough Morphine to knock the Navy out but still in pain.

'Note to self: cheap plastic sledges are for sitting in and gently trundling down primary slopes NOT a substitute for a stand up snowboard.'

Sarah played the character Dawn Rudge in the ITV drama series Peak Practice in 1993, but more recently starred in the third and final series of Broadchurch as Cath Atwood.

She also played Katie Roden in the BBC One series Mistresses between 2008 and 2010.

Reminder: Sarah wrote on Instagram at the time: 'Note to self: cheap plastic sledges are for sitting in and gently trundling down primary slopes NOT a substitute for a snowboard'
He is starring as MI6 agent Nicholas Elliott in upcoming Cold War drama, A Spy Among Friends, which is currently shooting in west London.

And Damian Lewis was spotted on set with Anna Maxwell Martin for the first time as she joins the star-studded cast for the new limited series on Thursday.

The Billions actor, 50, looked dapper as he transformed into the British spy, wearing a pinstripe suit and a white shirt with a brown tie.

All smiles: amian Lewis was spotted on set with Anna Maxwell Martin for the first time as she joins the star-studded cast for the new limited series on Thursday

Smiling Damian stood with his hands tucked into his pockets while mingling with Anna and other members of the cast and crew.

Getting into character, the screen star wore his hair swept back and sported a pair of yellow chunky-framed glasses.

Anna, who has not previously been spotted on set, arrived wearing a blouse and tweed pinafore-style dress.

Arrival: Anna, who has not previously been spotted on set, arrived wearing a blouse and tweed pinafore-style dress

Suited and booted: The Billions actor, 50, looked dapper as he transformed into the British spy, wearing a pinstripe suit and a white shirt with a brown tie

Anna - whose character is currently unknown, layered her look with a brown shearling jacket while also sporting a pair of suede boots.

The BAFTA-winning star wore her brunette locks in a bouncy blown out bob, while opting for a subtle pallet of make-up.

The actress could be seen taking direction from one of the producers on set.

Outfit: Anna - whose character is currently unknown, layered her look with a brown shearling jacket while also sporting a pair of suede boots

Stepping out: The BAFTA-winning star wore her brunette locks in a bouncy blown out bob, while opting for a subtle pallet of make-up

The new show is based on the bestselling book of the same name by author Ben Macintyre, and will focus on Elliot's friendship with former colleague Philby.

Philby gained notoriety in 1963 after he was exposed as a prominent member of a British spy ring responsible for sharing British secrets with the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War.

Known as the Cambridge Five, the group also included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross - although none were ever prosecuted for spying.

Real life: Lewis plays Nicholas Elliott (pictured right), a British MI6 intelligence officer noted for his close association with double agent Kim Philby, who defected to Russia in 1963

Filming: Smiling Damian stood with his hands tucked into his pockets while mingling with Anna and other members of the cast and crew

Details: Getting into character, the screen star wore his hair swept back and sported a pair of yellow chunky-framed glasses

Checking in: The actress could be seen taking direction from one of the producers on set

Chatting: Damian could be seen stood beside Anna

Philby escaped to Moscow in 1963 before he could face trial and would spend the rest of his life in Russia, where he would die aged 76 in 1988.

Stephen Kunken and Adrian Edmondson are also expected to star in the new drama, with Nick Murphy serving as executive producer and director.

A Spy Among Friends will reunite Lewis with Alexander Cary, an executive producer who previously worked with the British star on Homeland.

'How could I resist the opportunity to dramatize the true story of Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby  two spies and lifelong friends, one of whom was betraying the other all along?' Cary told Deadline.

Official: The first official movie snap shows Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliot and Guy Pearce as Kim Philby

Old times: Philby (pictured) gained notoriety in 1963 after he was exposed as a prominent member of a British spy ring responsible for sharing British secrets with the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War

'A friendship that resulted in the gutting of British and American intelligence at the height of the Cold War and shaped the field of play for the dangerous game against Russia that we're still trying to win today.

'Macintyre's books about spies from recent history are relevant and exciting because they examine the larger universal themes of human behavior that drive individuals among us, and like us, to excel in the murky world of espionage and, for better or worse, leave a lasting impact on the world.'

Lewis has previously played a spy in John Le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor, while also expressing a keen interest in playing a 'better' spy than fictional MI6 agent James Bond.

A Spy Among Friends is expected to air in autumn 2022 via Britbox in the UK and Spectrum's On Demand platform in the U.S.
Busy Philipps was seen working on the New York City set of Girls5eva on Monday morning.

The 42-year-old actress appeared to be enjoying her time on set as she was seen playing around with a bright yellow hard hat as she interacted with another cast member.

The performer has been involved with the show ever since its inception, and she is currently working on its second season.

Doing her thing: Busy Philipps was seen working on the New York City set of Girls5eva on Monday morning

Philipps wore a lovely pattered purple dress that showed off a slight portion of her toned legs. She added a slightly darker biker-style jacket.

The Freaks And Geeks actress also sported a set of heeled burgundy shoes that rose to her knees.

She accessorized with a stylish light purple purse that was slung over her left arm as she worked on the program.

Her gorgeous blonde locks fell onto her shoulders and chest and were partially held back by a rose colored hairband.

Costumed well: Busy wore a lovely pattered purple top that showed off a slight portion of her toned legs, as well as a slightly darker biker-style jacket

Fancy footwear: The Freaks And Geeks actress also sported a set of heeled burgundy shoes that rose to her knees during filming

Girls5eva, which was created by Meredith Scardino, initially premiered on the Peacock streaming service this past May.

The series is centered around a girl group from the 1990s who gets another shot at fame after one of their tracks is sampled by a budding rapper.

In addition to the Dawson's Creek cast member, the show also stars Sara Bareilles, Paula Pell and Renee Elise Goldsberry.

Development on the program was initially announced in January of last year, when Tina Fey signed on as one of its executive producers.

Recent arrival: Girls5eva, which was created by Meredith Scardino, initially premiered on the Peacock streaming service this past May. (l-r) Paula Pell as Gloria, Sara Bareilles as Dawn, Rene Elise Goldsberry as Wickie and Philipps as Summer

The show received critical acclaim upon its debut with much praise going towards the performances of its cast.

Following the premiere of its first season, Girls5eva was renewed for a second set of episodes this past June.

Philipps previously spoke to Collider and told the media outlet about her first impressions of the project.

'I sort of zoned out. It was like a dream, to be able to do the flashbacks and be in the '90s girl group...It seemed too good to be true. And then it continued to exceed my expectations at every turn,' she said.

Another one: Following the premiere of its first season, Girls5eva was renewed for a second set of episodes this past June

The actress then noted that she had been waiting to take on a project like Girls5eva for much of her career.

'To be given this gift of a job, and the content within the job, what it was, and what it was saying was so inline with things that I've been feeling for years,' she stated.

Philipps added that she was excited to be involved with the project and to be able to perform with her costars.

'I just felt every day that I was at work, I felt so grateful and lucky to be there. And also just in awe of all of the talent around me, from top to bottom,' she said.
Yazmin Oukhellou has revealed she has had her lip filler dissolved after being warned by her parents it was 'getting a bit much'.

The TOWIE star, 27, admitted she now thinks she looked like a duck with her lip fillers and believes that look is now 'dated'.

Speaking to The Sun, she said: 'I kept overfilling my lips getting more and more put in. I started looking stupid and like a duck.

Natural: Yazmin Oukhellou has revealed she has had her lip filler dissolved after being warned by her parents it was 'getting a bit much'

'The final straw for me was when I went to a family wedding and my mum and dad said 'the lip filler is getting a bit much now'. So I wanted to strip it back and be a bit more natural.

'Especially as I want to do more outside of Towie so I want to get taken more seriously. You can do both - get work done and have people take you seriously. The natural look is definitely in now, the big lips are dated.'

The star took to Instagram and shared a snap of herself getting the procedure and wrote: 'Dissolved my lip filler yesterday, a lot of you will be happy to hear. Thanks so much to the best in the business @RajaCQuilla'.

Yazmin has been open about the cosmetic procedures she has had in the past, previously undergoing a nose job and a Brazilian bum lift.

Candid: The TOWIE star, 27, admitted she now thinks she looked like a duck with her lip fillers and believes that look is now 'dated'

She has also had two breast augmentations, with the second done due to the first leaving her with scarring.

Yazmin previously said that she got her Brazilian bum lift after being subjected to cruel comments online about her body.

She told new! magazine: 'It's quite traumatic. I really don't want people thinking I'm promoting it to young girls... It's not something I'm encouraging people to go out and get, but it's made me feel a lot better in a swimsuit.'

She said: 'If I wasn't in this industry, I don't know if I'd have got it done. It is hard. I make out the comments don't bother me, but they do.

'Sometimes if I would wear certain things I'd get comments like, "is she having a baby?" and, "someone's put on the pounds!" When I first started TOWIE, the abuse I was getting for my nose was awful. So I got a nose job!'

Procedure: The star took to Instagram and shared a snap of herself getting the procedure and wrote: 'Dissolved my lip filler yesterday, a lot of you will be happy to hear

The star kept her plans to get the procedure quiet, only telling her mother she was having surgery after it was already booked so she couldn't talk her out of it.

Yazmin, who said she suffers from low self-esteem, has realised she needs to fix herself 'within', rather than having more surgeries.

The brunette added that she feels a lot of pressure to look good while in the limelight, saying there is a lot of competition in the industry.

Yazmin is back on TOWIE this year after she briefly departed the series following her breakup with James Lock, which saw her move to Dubai.
Kelly Dodd and Rick Leventhal are shrugging off the controversy they received after they were slammed for Rick's tasteless Halloween costume - dressing up as Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust.

Meanwhile, the Real Housewives of Orange County star Kelly had 'celebrated her Native American heritage' with a war bonnet headband. Both posed with toy guns sparking intense outrage.

However, the couple put on a happy display as they set sail on boat trip in California on Tuesday, seemingly unbothered by having got themselves into hot water.

What drama? Kelly Dodd and Rick Leventhal shrug off getting in hot water over Alec Baldwin costume as they enjoy a boat trip in California on Tuesday

The pair were seen smiling and hugging before enjoying an ocean excursion just days after Rick ended up deleting the offending post 'out of respect' for cinematographer Halyna Hutchins family.

Leventhal, 61, posed in a Western outfit with a gun in his hand, while Dodd, 46, wore a feathered headdress. He captioned the post: 'Kelly celebrated her native American culture and I celebrated the great American film actor Alec Baldwin.'

Despite many of Leventhal's followers being accustomed to his controversial antics, the decision to make light of the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins by Baldwin on the set of a Rust last month was a step too far.

Tasteless: Leventhal came under fire for photos he shared of his Halloween costume this week dressed as Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust, seemingly making light of the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins by Baldwin last month

In hot water: Rick and Kelly shrug it all off for a boat trip together

Sail away: Kelly and Rick enjoy a day out with their friends

Walking the plank: The reality stars have recently been roasted on social media over their tasteless costume

The former Fox News correspondent told Page Six : 'People twisted our outfits and intent in ways neither of us could've imagined and filled our page with hate.'

He continued: 'We took the post down out of respect for the victims' families and only hope the cancel culture won't cancel Halloween next.'

Despite what he told the outlet, Rick seemed to be looking for a reaction as he captioned the initial photo saying: 'Kelly celebrated her native American culture and I celebrated the great American film actor Alec Baldwin.'

Get up: The Real Housewives of Orange County star Kelly had 'celebrated her Native American heritage' with a war bonnet headband this Halloween

Stepping out: The reality star looked a world away from any backlash

Not treading carefully: The couple were certainly happy to take a big risk with their Halloween costumes this year

Helping hand: They were surrounded by pals for their fun day out

'A child lost his mother,' one commented, while another wrote: 'On the very day that a young boy buries his mother, this is in poor taste.'

Mother-of-one Hutchins was buried in a private funeral in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Friday after she was accidentally shot dead by Baldwin on October 21.

Before deleting the post Leventhal stood by his ensemble, telling The New York Post on Monday: 'In no way was I trying to offend anyone, except Alec Baldwin. Hes a jerk and deserves all the heat hes getting.'

After the storm: Leventhal made the post on Sunday, after which his comments section was quickly flooded with disdain for their costumes

Others were offended by his wife's decision to wear a stereotypical Native American outfit. Dodd's claims she is '30 percent Native American.'

One follower wrote: 'So talk about your heritage not mock it.. seriously? A costume? You can't argue with stupid.'

Another said: 'Yes the wardrobe of native Americans is beautiful but its not a costume n hopefully u will learn that.'

Leventhal made the post on Sunday, after which his comments section was quickly flooded with disdain for their costumes.

Carrying on regardless: The couple are getting on with their lives amid the drama

Choppy: Kelly is seen getting hands on and she pushes their boat away into the water

Tough: The RHOC star was putting the effort in as they left on their boat

'Pathetic you have to attach Alec Baldwin to this,' one follower wrote. 'A horrific thing happened on set and you think Halloween is the time to display such disrespect.'

A follower called Elaine Rieger said: 'Really insensitive, but no one is surprised. She will bring you down wait and see.'

Another commented: 'I always defend you both, but hard to find dressing up as Alec funny when a young woman's life was cut short and a young boy is now without his mum.'

Dodd - who has not spoken publicly yet about her costume - told E! News in January that she was '30 percent Native American.'

In plain sight: The duo were pictured having fun with their friends

Out at sea: Kelly and Rick appeared to be with another couple

Family fun: The group set off for a boat trip around a marina in California

'My point was I'm black, Asian, Mexican, Spanish, I'm 30 percent Native American and I'm one percent Jewish. And I'm all races. I don't see people with color, I see people. That's it,' she said at the time.

'I think the fashion is beautiful & this was a tribute & celebration,' the fired Real Housewives of Orange County star, 46, captioned a slideshow of photos from the night.

Dodd has also faced backlash for her controversial opinions on COVID-19, as well as facing accusations of racism and homophobia.

In February, she was dropped from her partnership with Positive Beverages due to her 'controversial views and opinions' on coronavirus.

Not sorry: Although he deleted the picture, Rick has doubled down on his decision to dress as Alec Baldwin

Another Halloween party? Rick was seen walking past some decorations after his controversy

She first partnered with the brand in February 2019 and regularly promoted the sparkling beverage on her social media accounts and in episodes of RHOC.

Kelly also made headlines last April after saying on social media that she believed that the pandemic was 'Gods way of thinning the herd' as she argued with an Instagram user who called her out after taking a cross-country flight.

After a user wrote to Dodd, 'If non-essential workers keep traveling back and forth like you, it will last longer,' the reality star replied, 'Do you know how many people died from the H1N1, the swine flu or SARS? It's 25% get your facts straight you are only hearing numbers not the reality! It's God's way of thinning the herd!'

Hugs: Rick and Kelly embrace one another while posing with pumpkins

She subsequently apologized for the remarks and attempted to clarify her statement.

'When I wrote that it's 'God's way of thinning the herd,' that's not what I meant,' Dodd said on Instagram Stories. 'What I meant was, 'Do these pandemics happen because it's God's way?' I'm not God. I'm not insensitive.'

'I feel bad for all the families that have lost loved ones, and I do think we should all stay at home and protect everybody. That's not what I meant, and I want to apologize to anyone who got offended, OK? I'm sorry.'

She apologized again while appearing on Watch What Happens Live, saying of her past controversy: 'It was insensitive and I apologize if I hurt or offended anybody.'
The holidays are fast approaching.

And Rachael Ray was feeling the love as she got into the Christmas spirit with her husband John Cusimano for her magazine's Holiday 2021 issue.

The talk show host, 53, beamed with happiness as her husband planted a kiss on her temple in a shot from the latest issue of her publication, Rachael Ray In Season.

Holiday kisses! Rachael Ray was feeling the love as she got into the Christmas spirit with her husband John Cusimano for her magazine's Holiday 2021 issue

Though November has only just begun, the couple were already a vision of the holiday spirit as they posed beside a quaint wreath.

Rachael was lightly bundled up in a white coat while her beau wrapped up warm in a windbreaker jacket and scarf.

On the cover of the magazine, Rachael couldn't have looked any happier preparing for the festive season.

The TV icon flashed her trademark bright smile as she carried the pinecone-adorned wreath in her hands.

Cover girl! On the cover of the magazine, Rachael couldn't have looked any happier preparing for the festive season

The last year and a half has not been easy for Rachael and her husband, however the talk show host struck a positive tone in a letter she wrote for her magazine.

The couple's pit bull Isaboo passed away in June 2020, and several months later they lost their home in upstate New York to an accidental fire.

In September, their New York City apartment was flooded.

Looking up: The last year and a half have not been easy for Rachael and her husband, however the talk show host struck an optimistic tone in a letter she wrote for her magazine

'Like so many workers, John and I have been living a hybrid life, filming from our home in the Adirondacks for stretches and then going into the studio in New York City,' Rachael reflected in a letter.

'It feels like that requires twice the organization, twice the schedulingwhere am I supposed to be today? Then, just as we started taping, Hurricane Ida sank our apartment in NYC. Then some workers hit our main water pipe and sunk it again. Yes, it's been a time.'

Despite the difficulties and the ongoing pandemic, Rachael said: 'I'd designated 2021 as my year of gratitude.'

Staying positive: Despite the difficulties and the ongoing pandemic, Rachael said: 'I'd designated 2021 as my year of gratitude'

'I think most experts would say gratitude is what we need most in a year like this. Being thankful for what we have rather than dwelling on what we don't is the salve for our challenging times.

'I'm trying to put that into action in these pages, filled with good food, spirits that raise your spirits, and stories about what really matters. Because being here, being with each other, in groups big or small, is what it's all about.

'This holiday season, I hope that, whatever precautions we still have to take, and however strained things still feel among us, we can gather friends and family to break bread and be together, and that we can look at our lives and find more good than not. That's not quite there, but it's somewhere, and I'll take it. '

Strike a pose: Ray pictured dressed in black in 2019

Rachael reflected on the hardships on Extra when asked what she had been grateful for after the past year and a half.

'Being alive. When I lost my dog I was so grateful that I could be with her the last several month of her life,' Ray said.

'She died in my arms I felt guilty and grateful at the same time,' Ray explained.

'People suffered actual human loss from COVID or because they couldnt get care and how many people died alone,' she added.

Ray and Cusimano had owned their home in Lake Luzerne since 2013, with Rachael opening up about how the fire started.

'The fire, the chimney burped under the roof, thats just life. So many people wrote to me and reached out and said we lost so much too, I mean thats just bad luck,' she said.

As for her apartment flood, she added, 'we werent there' when the flooding took place.

'Leaks became bigger and the roof became worse and we thought we had repaired everything then Ida the whole apartment, was just raining inside,' she added.
She was dressed to the nines while front-row at Gucci's star-studded Love Parade fashion show on Tuesday night.

But Olivia Wilde cut a considerably more casual figure while out fetching coffee in LA on Thursday.

The 37-year-old Booksmart director bundled up in a blue vintage pullover and baggy brown track pants for the Starbucks outing.

Coffee run: Olivia Wilde was cozy while fetching her morning cup of coffee in LA on Thursday

She wore her hair loose and donned chic Ray-Ban sunglasses with a face mask.

Her dressed down look was a dramatic difference from the sultry ensemble she sported out to Gucci on Tuesday night.

There, the House actress donned a sexy lace bustier which revealed a sliver of skin under her cleavage.

The next day she gave fans a glimpse into her night out, along with a rare peek at son Otis.

Sharing a mirror snapshot with pal Babs Burchfield, the Co-Founder of Conscious Commerce, and her son, she wrote: 'Otis sets a strict curfew.'

Retro: The 37-year-old Booksmart director bundled up in a blue vintage pullover and baggy brown track pants for the Starbucks outing

Sizzling: Her dressed down look was a dramatic difference from the sultry ensemble she sported out to Gucci on Tuesday night

Wilde shares Otis, seven, and daughter Daisy, five, with ex Jason Sudeikis.

She's since gone on to date Harry Styles, who she met while shooting her film Don't Worry Darling.

The couple embarked on a new relationship earlier this year.

The pair were seen holding hands at a wedding in January, just months after Wilde ended her relationship with longtime partner Sudeikis.

Peek: She gave fans a glimpse into her night out along with a rare peek at son Otis via Instagram on Wednesday

Wilde won't just be sitting around at home waiting for her beau though.

The Tron: Legacy actress has a part in the upcoming Damien Chazelle movie, Babylon, which is currently filming.

The movie is rumored to be a period Hollywood piece, and also stars Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Tobey Maguire.
The Weeknd was spotted hugging an female friend during an evening out with a group of pals in West Hollywood on Wednesday evening.

The crooner and his friends, which included Will Smith's son Jaden Smith, were seen enjoying an excursion to the swanky Sunset Tower Hotel whose bar has become a celebrity hot spot.

The night before, The Weeknd's ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez was spotted exiting the watering hole.

So sweet: The Weeknd was spotted hugging an female friend during an evening out with a group of pals in West Hollywood this week

During his latest outing The Weeknd, 31, was wearing a cream quarter zip Rhude sweater that retails online for $625.

The Canadian pop act, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, clashed the top fashionably against a pair of black trousers.

Meanwhile the son of Will Smith cut a dapper figure in a shirt and tie, topped with $255 'Astrosquiggle' sweater-vest by MSFTSrep.

He rounded off the look with a pair of print jeans and a white sneakers as he stepped out with his pop star pal and some other friends.

Their latest nightspot the Tower Bar is a swank establishment that also serves food and has been designed to evoke Old Hollywood.

Only the best: During his latest outing The Weeknd, 31, was wearing a cream quarter zip Rhude sweater that retails online for $625

The outing comes amid a swirl of rumors about the nature of The Weeknd's friendship with Angelina Jolie.

They have been seen out together on multiple occasions leading to conjecture that their bond might be more than just platonic.

However after the first time they were seen together a Page Six source intimated that their meet-up was professional.

'Hes definitely focused on getting to the movie business. He has the new HBO series hes starring in,' the insider stated.

On the town: He and his friends including Jaden Smith (pictured) were seen enjoying an excursion to the swanky Sunset Tower Hotel whose bar has become a celeb hot spot

However more recently an Us Weekly source said Abel 'is in awe of' Angelina who herself 'lights up' when discussing him.

'Both Angie and Abel are telling people that they are just friends, but those who know them think something romantic is going on,' the insider dished.

During a recent interview with E!'s Daily Pop Angelina awkwardly dodged a question that broached the subject of The Weeknd.

Same location, different night: The night before, The Weeknd's ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez was spotted exiting the watering hole. Seen together in 2017

She was asked whether her six children were more excited about her friendship with The Weeknd or by her new movie Eternals which her interview was promoting.

'They're very excited about this film... If that's what you're asking,' she said with an uncomfortable-looking smile. 'They're very excited about this film.'

Jaden and Abel have known each other for a while - back in 2017 the duo were seen out together in a group that included The Weeknd's then girlfriend Gomez.

Superstar: The outing comes amid a swirl of rumors about the nature of The Weeknd's friendship with Angelina Jolie who is pictured at the London premiere of Eternals last week

Getting around it: During a recent interview with E!'s Daily Pop Angelina awkwardly dodged a question that broached the subject of The Weeknd

That year Abel released a remix of his song Reminder featuring A$AP Rocky who made a joke in his verse about Jaden's eye-catching Met Gala look that year.

For the 2017 Met Gala, which was a salute to Comme Des Garcons founder Rei Kawakubo, Jaden carried around his severed dreadlocks.

'No way you think if ever I decide to cut my hair like Abel,' Rocky quipped on the Reminder remix. 'Just like Jaden Smith, Ill probably walk around all day with it.'
Fear The Walking Dead actor Nick Stahl says his drug and alcohol addiction became so severe he 'spent time on the streets' looking to get his next fix.

'Things got really bad for me,' the 41-year-old actor told The Hollywood Reporter. 'It's a horribly cliche child-actor story, but I had a very unusual relationship to drugs and alcohol. I never had a brake pedal with it.'

In his interview Stahl also corrected rumors he was living on LA's infamous Skid Row during a low-point, telling the paper he was never a resident but was a frequent visitor to the 'open drug market.'

Low point: Fear The Walking Dead actor Nick Stahl talked about his drug and alcohol addiction with The Hollywood Reporter, admitting things were once so severe he 'spent time on the streets' looking to get his next fix. He's seen clean and sober in 2019 above

Early start: Stahl - who made his acting debut at just 14 in 1993's The Man Without A Face - was introduced to drinking at a young age, calling his first drunk at age 13 his 'first spiritual experience.' He's seen in 2001 above

Stahl - who made his acting debut at just 14 in 1993's The Man Without A Face - was introduced to drinking at a young age, calling his first drunk at age 13 his 'first spiritual experience.'

'Suddenly, I had a freedom from thinking, from uncomfortability. I felt OK in my skin and I hadn't really felt that before.'

Things escalated after he moved to LA at age 16, where he began dabbling in cocaine and methamphetamine.

'I was pretty much hung over for every single day of work that I ever did,' the Sin City talent explained.

'As a kid, in my early 20s, through all the films, through In the Bedroom, through Terminator, through Carnivale, through all of it.'

Still, Stahl said there were others hurting much more than him.

In the interview he also touched on his late Bully co-star Brad Renfro's substance issues, revealing he had to have someone on set to keep him sober. Renfro died at 25 in 2008.

Speaking about Renfro, he said: 'He was more severe in his addiction than I was.'

'He just progressed to a point where he had to have someone on set with him to keep him sober.

Tough times: 'Things got really bad for me,' the 41-year-old actor told The Hollywood Reporter . 'It's a horribly cliche child-actor story, but I had a very unusual relationship to drugs and alcohol. I never had a brake pedal with it.' He's seen in 2008 above

Heavy: In the interview he also touched on his late Bully co-star Brad Renfro's substance issues, revealing he had to have someone on set to keep him sober. Renfro died at 25 in 2008. Renfro is seen on the left above

'I remember feeling my heart going out to him, just dealing with something that was bigger than him and he was just trying to function.'

Stahl's struggles would ebb and flow through the years.

Soon after Stahl's addition 'started to get awful pretty quickly' in LA, he tried to set himself straight with a trip to rehab in 2007, and then another stint in a Texas facility in 2009.

After moving to Austin, he married and had a daughter.

But things would spin out of control once more when the family relocated to Hollywood, leading to several arrests a missing persons report filed by his wife.

He stepped away from acting in 2012 to continue his recovery.

'Not only did I learn how to live as a sober person, which I didn't know how to do, but I learned how to have a life outside the business.'

He is now four years clean and sober.

And work is better than ever for Stahl, who was credited on seven different film/TV projects in 2021.

But he said staying sober always matters most, saying: 'Its more important to me than making films.'

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction please contact the SAMHSA substance abuse helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
Bethenny Frankel has made a crude comment about Pete Davidson that has brought up an old rumor over the size of his manhood.

The SNL funnyman has found himself to be a target on social media this past week, due to his rumored romance with Kim Kardashian - and the former RHONY star took aim at his anatomy.

Bethenny, 51, tweeted: 'Years later, I still maintain that Pete Davidson shoots diamonds out of his penis.he needs a deal with @ZalesJewelers (and yes he is talented, charming, smart & cute) but his game is tight.'

Rude: Bethenny Frankel makes a VERY crude comment over size of Pete Davidson's manhood after his rumored romance with Kim Kardashian

She appeared to be referring to Pete's ex-fiance Ariana Grande, who once famously boasted about the size of the comedian's manhood on Twitter, prompting a social media user to coin the phrase 'big d**k energy.'

A fan had asked Ariana 'How long is Pete?' referring to the song named after the star on her album, to which she replied, and later deleted: 'Like 10 inches? oh fi meanlike a lil over a minute.'

A Twitter user named Tina (@babyvietcong) responded: 'Pete Davidson is 6'3 with dark circles, exudes big d**k energy, looks evil but apparently is an angel, and loves his girl publicly the only thing wrong w him is that he's a Scorpio but anyway..... I'd married him within a month too.'

Really? The former RHONY star made a crass comment about why so many glamorous celebrities are attracted to Pete

Response: Bethenny's comments prompted a flurry of replies from social media users

Last Friday, Pete and Kim fueled romance rumors after they were seen holding hands on a ride at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California.

The two are said to be enjoying each other's company, according to a new report from People on Tuesday.

A source for the publication said the two stars 'have chemistry' and are having 'fun' together. 'Pete can be super charming and Kim loves the attention,' an insider added.

Short-lived engagement: In 2018, Ariana Grande claimed in a since-deleted that Davidson has a ten-inch penis, which sent social media into a frenzy and to describe him as having 'big d**k energy' (seen in 2018)

Meanwhile, Bethenny's comments about Pete's endowment prompted a flurry of responses from social media users.

'That guy must have great game & Kim definitely could use a funny guy right as opposed to what she just had all those years,' someone tweeted in response.

And Pete's ex Kate Beckinsale also joined in a different conversation about the star, after she liked a social media post about his allure with 'beautiful' women.

Writer Kristen Mulrooney had tweeted: 'I love how every time Pete Davidson starts dating another beautiful celebrity everyone's like 'wtf is happening how did he do this what is this mystery???' and everybody refuses to entertain the possibility that he might have a nice personality.'

Round two: Kim Kardashian (seen Wednesday) and Pete Davidson (seen in 2020) 'met up for the second night in a row' in New York City on Wednesday

Locked lips: Eyebrows were first raised when the two kissed on the lips during an early October SNL skit when she played Princess Jasmine and he Aladdin as the sat on a flying carpet

Kate, 48, - who was linked to Pete, 27, in November 2019 - liked the post about the comedian, in a sign that she agreed with the sentiment of the tweet.

Kim, who filed for divorce from husband Kanye West in February after almost seven years of marriage, now seems primed to finally enjoy the single life - with Pete firmly on her agenda.

The source for People said: 'She is having fun and enjoying life. Her focus is still on her kids and work, but you can tell that she is ready to date.

'She is very happy and in a good place. She has moved on from Kanye and feels it's for the best,' they noted.
This Morning's Alison Hammond shared with her fans a rare photo of her cab driver ex husband on Thursday.

The presenter, 46, posted a picture of Noureddine Boufaied while she was taking part in an TikTok challenge where users show a photo of their child and their parents.

The former couple share son Aidan, now 16, who also appeared in the post as she told how she was 'so proud' of him as they posed at the Pride of Britain Awards.

Surprise: This Morning's Alison Hammond shared with her fans a rare photo of her cab driver ex husband on Thursday

Posting the TikTok of him, captioned 'our son', she wrote: 'Aidan is certainly here ! I have no idea where that confidence comes from.'

She also included a picture of her ex-husband Noureddine, which surprised her followers.

Alison was married to the cab driver from Manchester and found out she was pregnant shortly after appearing on the third series of Big Brother.

The star refused to name who the father was at the time, but later posed for a magazine shoot together while she was three months pregnant.

Family: The presenter, 46, posted a picture of Noureddine Boufaied while she was taking part in an TikTok challenge where users show a photo of their child and their parents (pictured with their son Aiden)

It is not clear when she split from Noureddine but she later went on to get engaged to security guard Jamie Savage in 2014 before calling time on the romance in 2017.

Alison has previously admitted her one regret in life is not having more children.

She told Hello magazine: 'My one wish would be that I'd had more children. I wish I'd had another three back then.

Offspring: The former couple share son Aiden, now 16, who also appeared in the post as she told how she was 'so proud' of him as they posed at the Pride of Britain Awards

'I would totally consider adoption in the future. I've got so much more love to give  I don't think I'm done with one child, I'm just not.

'Aidan has already got two sisters and a brother from his dad's side, who he still sees.'

Earlier this year Alison ruled out finding love on a dating app, admitting she would rather meet someone 'naturally'.

Split: Alison was married to the cab driver from Manchester and found out she was pregnant shortly after appearing on the third series of Big Brother (pictured with Aiden when he was younger)

Alison previously discussed her hopes to find lasting love, though, telling Woman's Own: 'I would love to get married. I'd love to walk down the aisle in a big, white dress and have the fairy-tale wedding.

'I love being in love; I am a different person when I am. My heart sings  it's amazing.'

Alison went on Celebs Go Dating in 2020 but failed to find a long-term partner.

Fans were quick to compliment Alison as one person wrote under the post: 'What a lovely handsome boy he is and all because you are a fabulous mummy! Love you both millions xxx'.

Another said: 'Aidan gets his confidence from you. You are beautiful, classy with a positive spirit, confidence and intelligence. I wish you and Aidan the best in all that you do.'

A third wrote: 'Handsome young man you have there Alison'.
She starred as Moana in the hit Disney movie and is currently filming an array of upcoming projects.

But it won't be much longer until Auli'i Cravalho begins hitting the books at Columbia University.

'I'm excited to go to college,' Cravalho, 20, told People at the premiere of Encanto on Wednesday.

'I'm excited to go to college': Auli'i Cravalho gushed about attending Columbia University at the premiere of Encanto on Wednesday

While attending the New York based college, Cravalho plans on studying environmental studies.

'It's a lot of science,' she told the website. 'A lot of math. Using the other part of my brain right.'

While appreciative for the opportunities she's had as an actress, Cravalho is looking forward to a new chapter in academia.

'I've been so grateful to work in this industry, but I also want to get a taste for things outside of it,' she said.

Iconic role: Cravalho lent her voice to the role of Moana in the hit Disney film of the same name

The actress - who came out as bisexual on TikTok April 9 - was accepted to Columbia University back in June.

Cravalho previously said she was still debating between studying environmental science or conservation studies after she was admitted.

'I'm thinking of going into either environmental science or conservation studies,' she told WTOP in June. 'Before auditioning for Moana, I was interested in microbiology and graduated with more than four years of science.

Up in the air! Back in June, Cravalho said she was still debating between studying environmental science or conservation studies after she was accepted to the school

'I was in a molecular cell biology course.  Now I get to pursue my passion of acting and singing, but I really want to get back into that intellectual and academic space.'

In August, Cravalho signed on to star as elusive track star AJ in Sammi Cohen's coming-of-age film Love in Color for Hulu, which is being produced by Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne.

The Acting for a Cause star was only 14 when she was originally cast in the titular role voicing Polynesian Disney princess Moana, which featured songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

She will also be playing teen Jos Cleary-Lopez in the upcoming Amazon Prime series based on the book by Naomi Alderman, The Power.
Jamie Dornan looked smitten with his wife Amelia as they attended the premiere of his new film, Belfast in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Thursday.

The pair made for a picture perfect couple as they graced the red carpet at the city's Waterfront Hall, to mark the opening night of the Belfast Film Festival.

Jamie, 39, looked as handsome as ever in a tailored black suit and crisp white shirt as he embraced his wife.

Wow: Jamie Dornan looked smitten with his wife Amelia as they attended the premiere of his new film, Belfast in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Thursday

Amelia, 39, also looked stylish in a vibrant satin green floral dress which featured a dramatic draping hem.

She wore her caramel flecked tresses in soft waves and sported a radiant palette of make-up.

Jamie's co-star Caitriona Balfe, 42, cut a stylish figure in a black suit and bow tie as she walked the red carpet.

Eamonn Holmes, 61, was seen for the first time since revealing he was battling Covid.

Chic: The pair made for a picture perfect couple as they graced the red carpet at the city's Waterfront Hall to mark the opening night of the Belfast Film Festival

Style: Jamie, 39, looked as handsome as ever in a tailored black suit and crisp white shirt

Style: Jamie's co-star Caitriona Balfe, 42, cut a stylish figure in a black suit and bow tie as she walked the red carpet

Fun: Jamie and Caitriona also joined forces with their on-screen son Jude Hill , 11, (front) who has received critical acclaim for his role in the film

Good to see you: Jamie greeted Patrick Kielty as Ciaran Hinds looked on

Delight: Jamie looked delighted as he chatted with Kenneth Branagh

The was suited and booted as he leaned on a walking stick while on the red carpet.

Jamie and Caitriona also joined forces with their on-screen son Jude Hill , 11, who has received critical acclaim for his role in the film.

The drama - directed by Kenneth Branagh - is a semi-autobiographical film inspired by the BAFTA winner's early childhood growing up in Northern Ireland surrounded by a large extended family.

It is billed as 'chronicling the life of a working class family and their young son's childhood during the troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.'

Fun: Jude looked delighted as he posed with his mother on the red carpet

Stars: Lewis McAskie, Caitriona, Kenneth Branagh, Jamie, Ciaran and Jude posed up a storm

Better: Eamonn Holmes, 61, was seen for the first time since revealing he was battling Covid

The film is not a straightforward biography of Kenneth's childhood, and sees Jude Hill take on the lead role under the name of Buddy.

Jamie plays Buddy's father in the new film, with Outlander star Caitriona Balfe taking on the role of mother.

Hollywood heavyweight Judi Dench portray his grandmother, with Ciaran Hinds starring as Kenneth's grandfather.

Belfast will be released in be in the United States on November 21 and in the UK on February 25.
She never fails to bring the glam when she steps out for star-studded events.

And Naomi Campbell wowed in a glittering yellow gown as she arrived at the Doha Fire Station in Qatar for Us designer Virgil Abloh's exhibition on Thursday night.

The flawless supermodel, 51, joined Adriana Lima at the event who put on a busty display in a plunging black velvet mini dress.

Stunning: Naomi Campbell wowed in a glittering yellow gown as she joined Adriana Lima at the Doha Fire Station in Qatar for Us designer Virgil Abloh's exhibition on Thursday night

Naomi looked elegant in the high-necked dress that was embellished with thousands of tiny gold squares.

She shrugged over a shortsleeved canary jacket and accessorised further with a pair of stunning diamond drop earrings.

The supermodel emphasised her natural beauty with a smokey black eyeshadow look and tied her raven tresses up into a half-up-half-down style.

Naomi decorated her wrists and fingers with dazzling diamond jewellery and smouldered as she worked her angles for the cameras in the lavish outfit.

Details: Naomi looked elegant in the high-necked dress that was embellished with thousands of tiny gold squares

Ensemble: She shrugged over a shortsleeved canary jacket and accessorised further with a pair of stunning diamond drop earrings.

Gorgeous: The supermodel added to her natural beauty with a smokey black eyeshadow look and tied her raven tresses up into a half bun style as she decorated her wrist with diamonds

Meanwhile, Adriana showcased her ample assets in her LBD which featured a daring zip front detail that was left open beneath her cleavage.

The Brazilian beauty arrived with her boyfriend Andre Lemmers who she gazed at with affection while they posed for cameras.

Andre cut a dapper figure in a pale grey suit and completed his look with a burgundy tie.

Adriana beamed as she snuggled up to her beau in her daring mini dress and swept her raven tresses into a very sleek low ponytail.

Turning heads: Meanwhile, Adriana showcased her ample assets in her LBD which featured a daring zip front detail that was left open beneath her cleavage

Loved-up: The Brazilian beauty arrived with her boyfriend Andre Lemmers who she gazed at with affection while they posed for cameras

Beauty: Adriana beamed as she snuggled up to her beau in her daring mini dress and swept her raven tresses into a very sleek low ponytail

Strike a pose: The model didn't fail to stun as she showcased her signature curves in the figure-hugging ensemble

Also in attendance was Sabrina Elba who oozed confidence in a chic black suit and diamond decorated stilettos.

The wife of Idris Elba set pulses racing as she sported a sheer mesh bodysuit underneath her jacket.

She completed the stylish look with a pair of large hoop earrings, a slick of red lipstick and wore her raven tresses in a straight bob style.

Stylish: Also in attendance was Sabrina Elba who oozed confidence in a chic black suit and diamond decorated stilettos

Wow: The wife of Idris Elba set pulses racing as she sported a sheer mesh bodysuit underneath her jacket

Anna Cleveland stunned as she arrived in a floor-length red gown that flawlessly hung from her frame in small pleats.

She accentuated her features with matching red lipstick and a sweep of sparkling highlighter as she wore her chestnut tresses in a sleek side parting.

And Julianne Hough attended the star-studded event in an effortlessly cool silver suit with a daring plunging neckline.

She posed confidently in the co-ord which she styled with open-toed stilettos and finished off her ensemble with wet-look hair and dinky diamond hoop earrings.

Wow: Anna Cleveland stunned as she arrived in a floor-length red gown that flawlessly hung from her frame in small pleats

Turning heads: Julianne Hough attended the star-studded event in an effortlessly cool silver suit with a daring plunging neckline
Eamonn Holmes attended the Belfast premiere in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Thursday - nine days after revealing he had caught Covid-19.

Last Tuesday, the TV presenter, 61, said he was 'halfway through his isolation' and was 'coping with the symptoms and effects well' after having previously received two doses of a vaccine.

Eamonn looked in good spirits as he walked the red carpet in his home city, while leaning on a walking stick - having now recovered from the virus and completed his isolation period.

Recovered: Eamonn Holmes attended the Belfast premiere in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Thursday - nine days after revealing he had caught Covid-19

The star donned a stylish navy blue suit and patterned tie as he posed up a storm.

A spokesman told MailOnline: 'Eamonn has tested negative both before leaving England and arriving in Belfast. He passed his lateral flow test and all the requirements as laid down by The Belfast Film Festival for which the opening film was tonight.'

Last month, This Morning host Eamonn offered his apologies for being a 'no show' at work and personal events as he recovered at home, following his absence from the the ITV magazine show last week despite typically filling in over the half-term period.

On Twitter, he penned: 'Covid finally caught me. Thankfully I'm double jabbed. More than halfway through my isolation and coping with the symptoms and effects well...

'Unfortunately I'm going to be a No Show for some Professional & Personal events. Just want to let everyone know why & offer my apologies'.

Good to see you: Eamonn looked in good spirits as he walked the red carpet in his home city, while leaning on a walking stick - having now recovered from the virus and completed his isolation period

Eamonn and his wife Ruth Langsford typically fill in for Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning in half-terms yet were notably absent last week.

As of October 25, there were 36,567 new people confirmed with a positive test result for Covid-19 in the UK. To-date, a total of 49,715,228 people aged 12+ have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine, and 45,561,445 have received a second dose in the UK.

The UK is not yet 'on top' of the coronavirus pandemic but the Covid-19 vaccines are 'winning the battle', an expert has said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

'Thankfully I'm double jabbed': Last month, This Morning host Eamonn offered his apologies for being a 'no show' at work and personal events as he recovered at home, following his absence from the the ITV magazine show

Recovering: The TV presenter said he's 'halfway through his isolation' and is 'coping with the symptoms and effects well' after having previously received two doses of a vaccine

Festive period: Following his recovery at home, Holmes and his partner Ruth Langsford (pictured) will spend Christmas apart with 'a sea dividing us'. They both have elderly mothers they want to spend the festive period with after Covid restrictions saw many families apart

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said the UK is making 'really good progress' but urged people 'not to throw it all away' and to get a booster jab when invited to do so.

Following his recovery at home, Holmes and his partner Ruth will spend Christmas apart with 'a sea dividing us'.

The TV presenters both have elderly mothers they want to spend the festive period with after Covid restrictions saw many families kept apart last year.

Speaking to Woman and Home magazine this week, Holmes admitted the couple often have this issue at Christmas as Ruth's family are in England and his are in Northern Ireland.

Family: Speaking to Woman and Home magazine this week, Holmes admitted the couple often have this issue at Christmas as Ruth's family are in England and his are in Northern Ireland. Langsford is pictured with her mother Joan

He said: 'We have this issue now, in that we've got a sea dividing us. We often have a dilemma of whether I go to Belfast, whether Ruth comes with me.

'But Ruth wants to be with her mum. My mother is 93 this year. It's easier for us often to be apart.'

Langsford, 61, added: 'Being apart for Christmas has never been a problem. I wouldn't be going to Belfast this year, because I need to be with my mum. It's about family for me.'

Her mother Joan lives in Surrey and the pair were unable to be together last Christmas amid the pandemic.

Langsford, 61, added: 'Being apart for Christmas has never been a problem. I wouldn't be going to Belfast this year, because I need to be with my mum. It's about family for me'

Meanwhile Holmes' Covid battle comes after he recently recalled his 'panic' after being told by a doctor that he could go blind due to painful shingles.

He also admitted that seeing himself in the mirror with red scars on his face was like 'waking up in a horror movie'.

Holmes was struck down with the illness in 2018 and spoke publicly of his experience this year in a bid to raise awareness.

On his health battle, he told the Mirror: 'I literally jumped back at my image shouting "what the heck is this?" It was like waking up in a horror movie.

Reunited: Langsford's mother Joan lives in Surrey and the pair were unable to be together last Christmas amid the pandemic

'When I called my doctor and said it was on my face the first question was, "Is it near your eyes? Don't touch your eyes because it could affect your vision  you could go blind. Get down here to let me see it". It was panic stations.'

Last month, Holmes shared a picture of himself on Instagram from when he had shingles in 2018, with his face looking puffy, and red marks and scabs visible on his skin.

He thanked ITV and television show Loose Women for letting him speak out on the matter after making a recovery, but admitted he was shocked to have contracted the illness, a rash caused by the reactivation of chickenpox.

Health woes: Holmes recently recalled his 'panic' after being told by a doctor that he could go blind due to painful shingles

The chances of suffering shingles and the severity of the illness increases after the age of 50, with it becoming more likely during times of stress or when the immune system is lowered.

And Holmes believes it was stress that triggered his illness in 2018, saying his status as a freelance worker was challenged by HM Revenue & Customs when they claimed he worked for ITV and should pay more tax, resulting in a court appearance.

The broadcaster took time off work to recover from shingles, saying he could not have gone on television looking the way he did at the time.

He said the illness also impacted his eldest son Declan's wedding, adding: 'I had makeup all over my face trying to pretend everything was fine, but my eyes were just two slits.'

'Horror movie': The presenter was struck down with the illness in 2018 and admitted that seeing himself in the mirror with red scars on his face was like 'waking up in a horror movie'

While most people make a full recovery from shingles, Eamonn admits he was 'blissfully ignorant' but now realises people need to be more aware.

The screen star has also spoken of his back pain on television this year after two slipped discs in his spine left him with nerve damage.

Holmes suffered excruciating pain for a month and was left needing a crutch to help him walk.

He has been prescribed steroid injections which now help with the pain.

In a clip of himself doing physio, which he shared on social media earlier this year, Holmes said: 'This all looks very simple and it is very simple except it's like learning to walk again.'

'I've lost nerves in my right leg and there's certain actions I can't do so even the most simple thing is hard but it's getting better.'
Beverly Hills, 90210 star Brian Austin Green recently celebrated his one-year anniversary with Australian ballroom dancer Sharna Burgess.

And the pair spoke about their romance on The Morning Show earlier this week.

After gushing about his girlfriend, the 48-year-old actor admitted he still doesn't understand Australians' fascination with Vegemite.

National delicacy: Brian Austin Green (right) told The Morning Show he still doesn't understand Australians' fascination with Vegemite. Pictured with Aussie girlfriend Sharna Burgess (left)

Vegemite is a thick, dark brown spread made from leftover brewers' yeast extract. It's considered a household staple in Australia, but is reviled in other parts of the world.

'Aussies are awesome, you know this,' joked Sharna after Brian praised her for being a great stepmother to his four children.

He then replied: 'Vegemite makes me question that a little bit, but whatever.'

Divisive: Vegemite is a thick, dark brown spread made from leftover brewers' yeast extract. It's considered a household staple in Australia, but is reviled in other parts of the world

Having a laugh: 'Aussies are awesome, you know this,' joked Sharna (pictured) after Brian praised her for being a great stepmother to his four children. He then replied: 'Vegemite makes me question that a little bit, but whatever'

Elsewhere in the interview, Brian said his partner had done a good job handling the 'responsibility' that comes with dating a man with children.

'It's amazing, it's a huge world that she's stepping into. I have four kids, I have three young kids, she has really stepped in and just been so responsible in handling it all,' he said.

'She's so great with the kids and they love her so much and everybody that meets her loves her. She's a really special person and I'm incredibly lucky.'

Sharna, 36, said that Brian 'amplifies the heck out of [my] happiness'.

Smitten: Sharna, 36, said that Brian 'amplifies the heck out of [my] happiness'

'I spent the last six years mostly single... and then it came out of nowhere and within 12 months I'd met, bonded and fallen in love with this man,' she said.

'We have this life together now and it brings me so much joy... it brings me everything I ever wanted.'

Sharna, who hails from Wagga Wagga and now lives in the U.S., went Instagram official with Brian in February.

They are now partners on the American version of Dancing with the Stars.

His ex-wife Megan Fox is dating musician Machine Gun Kelly.
Georgia May Jagger looked as stylish as ever as she hosted a dinner for Hourglass Cosmetics and Space NK in London on Thursday.

The beauty, 29, teased her cleavage and midriff in a frilled navy off-the-shoulder top as she posed up a storm.

She paired this with matching flared trousers and peep-toe heels at the event.

Wow: Georgia May Jagger looked as stylish as ever as she hosted a dinner for Hourglass Cosmetics and Space NK in London on Thursday

Her blonde tresses were styled in soft waves and she sported a radiant palette of make-up.

She was joined at the event by glamorous stars including Tigerlily Taylor and model Erin O'Connor.

Georgia quit Britain to move in with her boyfriend, Louis Levy, 31, in the States two years ago. She swapped London for New York in 2019, moving to the Big Apple to be with her restaurateur beau.

The British model and the Parisian-born restaurateur, 31, had been together since 2018. The couple then spent last summer at Georgia's LA home.

Chic: The beauty, 29, teased her cleavage and midriff in a frilled navy off-the-shoulder top as she posed up a storm

Model moment: Georgia posed up with chic supermodel Erin O'Connor

Fun: Clara Paget was next up to pose with Georgia at the event

Pals: Lilith Ai and Josephine de La Baume posed up a storm

Wow: Erin looked typically stunning as she wowed in a camel coat

Moguls: Erin took a moment to pose with Hourglass Cosmetics Founder Carisa Janes

Sadly, MailOnline revealed in July that they had quietly split.

Speaking about the shock split, a source said: 'They loved living together in New York, but when Georgia decided to split her time between there and LA, it put a strain on the relationship that turned out to be too much.

'Louis owns two restaurants in New York, so he has to be there. It's his home.'

Last year, Georgia admitted being in lockdown in Los Angeles had its benefits. She told The Telegraph in October: 'I feel thankful for so many things, really, I've found slowing down and not getting on a plane every few days for work to be beneficial....

'I do feel that I was probably travelling and living a bit too quick, you know? I definitely feel very, very privileged and try to remind myself of that every day.'
Von Dutch was the must-have brand of the early 2000s with celebrities from Dennis Rodman, Eva Longoria, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, Rachel Hunter, and perhaps biggest of all, Paris Hilton rocking the fashion brand.

But not many know about the rapid rise and fall of the company as it spiraled down so much there was even a murder case centered around it.

The 40-year-old heiress kicked off the intriguing two-and-a-half minute long trailer for HULU docuseries The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For released on Thursday.

Royalty: Paris Hilton kicked off the intriguing two-and-a-half minute long trailer for HULU docuseries The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For released on Thursday

Iconic: The film is centered around the American fashion brand which was best known for their trucker hats and tells the true story of the company which saw its demise after a power struggle between its founders

The film is centered around the American fashion brand which was best known for their trucker hats and tells the true story of the company which saw its demise after a power struggle between its founders.

The clip opens with Hilton catching one of the caps before saying: 'Von Dutch was iconic for Y2K fashion.'

She begins to name the pieces the label was known for before talking about its influence on pop culture.

The clip opens with Hilton catching one of the caps before saying: 'Von Dutch was iconic for Y2K fashion'

Dynamic duo: Halle Berry (pictured left in March 2005) and model Rachel Hunter (pictured right in September 2002) are seen rocking the brand

Still relevant today: Proving that fashion always comes back Amber Rose was seen with now ex AE Edwards who wore a Von Dutch t-shirt on an outing in LA back in October 2019

Paris continued: 'That was like our uniform basically.'

NBA legend Dennis Rodman also chimed in by saying: 'Everybody on the planet had Von Dutch.'

It then goes into the party lifestyle that the brand helped create with several of the top dogs in the company partaking in it alongside celebrities including Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

Everything takes a turn when an interviewee says: 'It was such an amazing achievement, the difficulty was one of the co-founders was charged with first-degree murder.'

Wild times: It then goes into the party lifestyle that the brand helped create with several of the top dogs in the company partaking in it alongside celebrities including Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee

Everything takes a turn when an interviewee says: 'It was such an amazing achievement, the difficulty was one of the co-founders was charged with first-degree murder'

The dark side of the brand starts to get covered as they show Ed Boswell, Bobby Vaughn, and Michael Cassell who all adamantly claim to have created Von Dutch.

Not only did one of the interviewees claim that there were 'fistfights in the company' but the trailer also alludes to the company perhaps being a money laundering scheme as Vaughn even says: 'Fashion is the easiest way to launder money.'

Things definitely got interesting as they brought on CEO Tonny Sorensen before an interviewee mysteriously says: 'The only option was to get him out of the picture.'

No doubt the story is going to get even more interesting as the main players in the company are all asked by the documentary team: 'Did you ever have anyone killed?'

Power struggle: The dark side of the brand starts to get covered as they show Ed Boswell, Bobby Vaughn (pictured), and Michael Cassell who all adamantly claim to have created Von Dutch

Things definitely got interesting as they brought on CEO Tonny Sorensen before an interviewee mysteriously says: 'The only option was to get him out of the picture'

No doubt the story is going to get even more interesting as the main players in the company are all asked by the documentary team: 'Did you ever have anyone killed?'

According to a HULU press release: 'The Curse Of Von Dutch: A Brand To Die For chronicles the unbelievable true tory behind the rise and fall of the 2000's most iconic fashion trend.

'In this character-driven saga, Venice Beach surfers, gangsters, European garmentos and Hollywood movers and shakers all vie for control of the infamous brand - pushing it from obscurity to one of the most recognizable labels on Earth. After a decade of backstabbing, greed, and bloodshed, their lives - and pop culture - will never be the same.'

The three episode docuseries was directed by Andrew Renzi who is best known for his work helming 2015's The Benefactor and 2013's Karaoke!

The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For is set to stream on HULU beginning November 18.
He is well known for showing off his still-impressive physique in various movies and television programs.

And Danny Trejo was recently honored with his very own life-size wax figure at the world-famous Madame Tussauds museum in Hollywood.

The 77-year-old performer was also present at the unveiling of the creation, and appeared ecstatic when addressing a crowd that had assembled to see the statue.

An accolade of sorts: Danny Trejo was recently honored with his very own life-size wax figure at the world-famous Madame Tussauds in Hollywood

Trejo sported a navy blue jacket, which was worn on top of a black t-shirt, and a matching pair of pants for the reveal.

The Machete star also wore a silver necklace with a sizable cross pendant, which was also featured on the statue.

The figure itself was only dressed in a pair of jeans and leather shoes.

The statue also featured an impressive array of fake tattoos that closely mirrored the Spy Kids actor's own.

Spitting image: The statue also featured an impressive array of fake tattoos that closely mirrored the Spy Kids actor's own

The Desperado actor notably took several pictures while holding a machete and posing next to the wax figure.

According to ABC7, a group of artists spent over half a year constructing and constructing the statue.

The performer also caught up with the news outlet at the event and appeared to be overtaken by the gesture, as he stated: 'I don't know what to say.'

Trejo later spoke to KTLA following the statue's unveiling and told the media outlet about his impression of the figure.

Serious effort: According to ABC7, a group of artists spent over half a year constructing and constructing the statue

The actor noted that 'it was kind of creepy, but they made him look better than me, so that was cool.'

When asked about his take on the statue's build, he expressed that the artists who worked on it 'did really well.'

The Blood In Blood Out actor then expressed that he was at a loss for words when asked to speak at the figure's unveiling.

'It was so humbling, and I'm usually pretty good at just winging a speech, but when I saw that I was just, like, tongue tied,' he stated.

High praise: The actor noted that 'it was kind of creepy, but they made him look better than me, so that was cool'

Several figures from the local community were in attendance at the ceremony, including Los Angeles' mayor, Eric Garcetti.

Trejo also recalled that the governor of California also spoke to him after the unveiling and jokingly noted that he would have normally expected to speak to the official under different circumstances.

'[Gavin] Newsom called me and said he was sorry he couldn't make it. You know, the only thing I looked to the governor for was a parole,' he said.
TOWIE's Yazmin Oukhellou revealed her reduced pout as she attended the LullaBellz launch at The Gotham Hotel in Manchester on Thursday - after getting her lip filler removed.

The star, 27, exuded confidence as she stepped out in an ab-flashing monochrome co-ord with statement shoulders.

The star wore her raven tresses in a high ponytail and sported a rich palette of make-up.

Toned: TOWIE's Yazmin Oukhellou revealed her reduced pout as she attended the LullaBellz launch at The Gotham Hotel in Manchester on Thursday - after getting her lip filler removed

She also displayed her toned legs in a pair of towering black heels.

She was joined by stars including Love Islanders India Reynolds and Kaz Crossley and fellow TOWIE star Demi Sims.

This comes after Yazmin revealed she has had her lip filler dissolved after being warned by her parents it was 'getting a bit much'.

The TOWIE star admitted she now thinks she looked like a duck with her lip fillers and believes that look is now 'dated'.

Stunning: The star, 27, exuded confidence as she stepped out in an ab-flashing monochrome co-ord with statement shoulders

Love Islanders: Kaz Crossley and India Reynolds put on busty displays at the event

Oh my: Rachel Finni wore a bikini top as she attended the event

Busty: Georgia Steel wore a typically revealing ensemble on the night

Wow: Kelsey Stratforf wowed in an extremely busty number

Speaking to The Sun, she said: 'I kept overfilling my lips getting more and more put in. I started looking stupid and like a duck.

'The final straw for me was when I went to a family wedding and my mum and dad said 'the lip filler is getting a bit much now'. So I wanted to strip it back and be a bit more natural.

'Especially as I want to do more outside of Towie so I want to get taken more seriously. You can do both - get work done and have people take you seriously. The natural look is definitely in now, the big lips are dated.'

The star took to Instagram and shared a snap of herself getting the procedure and wrote: 'Dissolved my lip filler yesterday, a lot of you will be happy to hear. Thanks so much to the best in the business @RajaCQuilla'.

Yazmin has been open about the cosmetic procedures she has had in the past, previously undergoing a nose job and a Brazilian bum lift.

There she is: Chloe Ferry wowed in a bodycon busty dress as she posed

Natural: This comes after Yazmin revealed she has had her lip filler dissolved after being warned by her parents it was 'getting a bit much'

Candid: The TOWIE star, 27, admitted she now thinks she looked like a duck with her lip fillers and believes that look is now 'dated'

She has also had two breast augmentations, with the second done due to the first leaving her with scarring.

Yazmin previously said that she got her Brazilian bum lift after being subjected to cruel comments online about her body.

She told new! magazine: 'It's quite traumatic. I really don't want people thinking I'm promoting it to young girls... It's not something I'm encouraging people to go out and get, but it's made me feel a lot better in a swimsuit.'

She said: 'If I wasn't in this industry, I don't know if I'd have got it done. It is hard. I make out the comments don't bother me, but they do.

'Sometimes if I would wear certain things I'd get comments like, "is she having a baby?" and, "someone's put on the pounds!" When I first started TOWIE, the abuse I was getting for my nose was awful. So I got a nose job!'

Procedure: The star took to Instagram and shared a snap of herself getting the procedure and wrote: 'Dissolved my lip filler yesterday, a lot of you will be happy to hear

The star kept her plans to get the procedure quiet, only telling her mother she was having surgery after it was already booked so she couldn't talk her out of it.

Yazmin, who said she suffers from low self-esteem, has realised she needs to fix herself 'within', rather than having more surgeries.

The brunette added that she feels a lot of pressure to look good while in the limelight, saying there is a lot of competition in the industry.

Yazmin is back on TOWIE this year after she briefly departed the series following her breakup with James Lock, which saw her move to Dubai.
She's leaning on friends now more than ever.

And Teddi Mellencamp admitted that Dorit Kemsley is 'going to do the work' to process the terrifying home invasion that happened when she was home with her children at her Encino mansion just last week.

The 40-year-old former reality star, who worked with Dorit on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for a few seasons, noted that Kemsley is 'so beautiful and so strong' as she navigates the difficult terrain of overcoming the traumatic event.

Strong: Teddi Mellencamp admitted that Dorit Kemsley is 'going to do the work' to process the terrifying home invasion that happened when she was home with her children at her Encino mansion just last week; seen in 2019

'She is so incredibly strong, the way that she was able to handle everything, the way that her kids never had to know anything was going on,' the former Bravo reality star told Access.

'I know that she's going to do the work to be able to get through, you know, it's very traumatic  like beyond traumatic.'

John Mellencamp's daughter added: 'I'm having a hard time sleeping at night and it didn't even happen to me. She's a good person and nobody deserves that, I'm just so beyond grateful that they're all okay.'

Awful: DailyMail.com exclusively revealed that three men broke into Kemsley's $6.4 million Encino Hills home just before 11 p.m. on Thursday while she and her children slept; seen in June

DailyMail.com exclusively revealed that three men broke into Kemsley's $6.4 million Encino Hills home just before 11 p.m. on Thursday while she and her children slept.

During the invasion, the intruders entered the home around by smashing through the children's classroom door. Two of the suspects walked into Kemsley's bedroom while she was sleeping and she woke up to them standing at the end of her bed.

They grabbed her as as she begged: 'Don't hurt my babies. Don't kill me. I'm a mother.' To which one of the men responded: 'Kill her.'

Friends: The 40-year-old former reality star, who worked with Dorit on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for a few seasons, noted that Kemsley is 'so beautiful and so strong' as she navigates the difficult terrain of overcoming the traumatic event.

'My kids are unaware of what happened, they slept through it and I thank God for keeping my kids and myself from being physically harmed,' Kemsley said on Instagram

Dorit broke her silence days later on Instagram: As you all know by now I have been through a terrifying ordeal, one that no parent or person should ever have to experience...

'My kids are unaware of what happened, they slept through it and I thank God for keeping my kids and myself from being physically harmed.'

Kemsley said she appreciated the outpouring of support she has received and added that her family needed to start the healing process.

She added: 'I have thrown myself straight back into work as I want our family to return to normality as soon as possible.

'With the love and support of my husband, my incredible family, friends, fans and followers, I am confident this is the right thing to do whilst I independently work through the trauma.'

Pushing through: Dorit Kemsley's husband PK gave fans an update on how his wife and kids are doing after they were victims of a terrifying home invasion this week

Kemsley recently returned from a trip to London, where she attended her nephew's wedding on Tuesday alongside her husband, PK Kemsley.

PK was still abroad at the time of the attack, but is now back at home and by his wife's side.

Mellencamp discussed more of the robbery on her own podcast, and noted that she spent the morning after the incident with Dorit.

'I started getting these text messages from people like, "Is Dorit okay?" And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And then I saw the news [reports] that her house had been broken into and her kids were home and that she was robbed, and so I spent the morning over there at her house,' she said.

A source told PEOPLE magazine: 'She is continuing to put one foot in front of the other and is trying to keep things as normal as possible for her children while personally trying to heal from the trauma she has experienced. She has a long journey ahead involving therapy and is committed to the process.'
Seattle, WA (98195)

Today

Considerable clouds early. Some decrease in clouds later in the day. High 48F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 36F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.


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People buy fire crackers on the eve of Diwali in the city on Wednesday. (Photo:DC)

HYDERABAD: The state capital is all decked up to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, with rekindled spirit on Thursday. The excitement and fervour were palpable as people thronged crackers stalls, flower vendors and diya sellers on the eve of Diwali on Wednesday.

The festival, which comes after several months of sufferings due to Covid-19, lockdowns, financial crisis, and the fear of pandemic, seems to have brought cheers to millions of families in the megalopolis.

Apparel stores, sweet shops and home appliances showrooms saw brisk business while major business establishments made irresistible offers in order to lure customers ahead of the festival.

Traditional toys and idols, earthen lamps, crackers and umpteen other items are being sold like hotcakes and houses are decorated with lights.

Womenfolk are having whale of a time arranging diyas, preparing sweets and snacks while men and children are busy busting fireworks.

Asish and Shraddha Agrawal, residents of Adarshnagar said, Last two years we missed celebrating this festival. We had to confine to our house and could not catch up with friends and relatives due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We strictly followed social distancing and banned ourselves from social gatherings for the past two years.

Padma Iruvanti, a resident of Sagar Society, Srinagar Colony, said, As the previous two years were so suffocating, this year we have planned to make it a grand celebration.

Goverdhan of Guddus Dry Fruit Hub said, We did not expect so many orders. We are sure to break all our previous records of sale this year. Individuals and corporates ordered in bulk.

Rakesh of Vijaya Sweets at Sultan Bazaar, said, This years sales are better than the last two years. There are a lot of orders on sweets with special packaging.

Dr Koothala Jyothsna, an ophthalmologist, suggested that the firecrackers should be burnt under elders supervision. If any particle accidently enters the eye, splash normal water in the eye to wash out the particles. Protective spectacles are advised while bursting crackers.
Moderna is scaling back expectations for the number of Covid-19 vaccine deliveries it expects to make this year and the revenue it will record from them.

The drugmaker said on Thursday that longer delivery lead times for exports and a temporary impact from expanding its fill-finish capacity may shift some deliveries to early 2022.

The company now expects full-year, 2021 product sales of between $15 billion and $18 billion.

Also Read | Moderna says FDA needs more time to complete review of its Covid-19 shot for adolescents

That's down from a prediction for $20 billion in sales that it made in August.

Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine is the only product the drugmaker has on the market. It brought in $4.81 billion in sales during the third quarter, up from $4.2 billion the previous quarter.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company also reported on Thursday third-quarter results that missed expectations.

Also Read | Moderna Covid-19 shot could start being used in children, teens 'within weeks,' CEO says

Company shares fell almost 11% before the opening bell.

Moderna Inc. makes one of three Covid-19 vaccines currently being used in the United States.

The others are made by Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson.

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Oil prices extended declines on Thursday, pushing US futures below $80 a barrel, after Iran and world powers agreed to resume nuclear talks this month that could lead to the removal of US sanctions on Iranian oil, increasing global supplies.

US West Texas Intermediate crude slid for a third day to $79.94 a barrel by 0106 GMT, down 92 cents, or 1.1%. Brent crude futures for January fell for a second session to $81.19 a barrel, down 80 cents, or 1%.

Both benchmarks on Wednesday posted their biggest daily percentage declines since early August, with Brent closing at its lowest since Oct. 7 and WTI since Oct. 13, after weekly inventory data from the US Energy Information Administration showed a larger than expected rise in crude stocks last week.

"The fall in oil prices overnight was likely partly due to the rise in US oil stockpiles," Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar said in a note.

"The more dominant driver of the decline in oil prices was Iran's announcement that the US and Iran will resume talks on reviving a nuclear accord."

Tehran and six powers will start talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal on Nov. 29. Iran has demanded that the United States remove sanctions that have been limiting its oil exports.

Later on Thursday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, will meet. The group is expected to reconfirm plans to keep monthly supply increases steady despite calls for an acceleration.

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Oil prices extended declines on Thursday, pushing US futures below $80 a barrel, after Iran and world powers agreed to resume nuclear talks this month that could lead to the removal of US sanctions on Iranian oil, increasing global supplies.

US West Texas Intermediate crude slid for a third day to $79.98 a barrel by 0326 GMT, down 88 cents, or 1.1 per cent. Brent crude futures for January fell for a second session to $81.33 a barrel, down 66 cents, or 0.8 per cent.

Both benchmarks on Wednesday posted their biggest daily percentage declines since early August, with Brent closing at its lowest since Oct. 7 and WTI since Oct. 13, after weekly inventory data from the US Energy Information Administration showed a larger than expected rise in crude stocks last week.

"The fall in oil prices overnight was likely partly due to the rise in US oil stockpiles," Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar said in a note.

"The more dominant driver of the decline in oil prices was Iran's announcement that the US and Iran will resume talks on reviving a nuclear accord."

Also Read: Iran rejects western 'concerns' over nuclear compliance

Tehran and six powers will start talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal on Nov. 29. Iran has demanded that the United States remove sanctions that have been limiting its oil exports.

"We think [Iranian President Ebrahim] Raisi is still keen to strike a deal, despite his differences with the US, because of the economic windfall from US sanctions being lifted," Dhar said, referring to the country's newly elected president.

Also Read: Oil extends decline after Iran, world powers set date for nuclear talks

Later on Thursday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, will meet. The group is expected to reconfirm plans to keep monthly supply increases steady despite calls for an acceleration.

"The majority of OPEC+ members cannot raise production from current levels ... while even Saudi Arabia has stressed the need to exercise caution on demand growth given increased Covid instances, while boosting crude oil output," Citi analysts said.

OPEC+ was likely to stick to its current policy despite pressure from oil importers, they added.

Also, top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia are more confident higher oil prices will not elicit a fast response from the US shale industry, OPEC+ sources said, reflecting a desire to rebuild revenue and supporting the case against raising OPEC+ output more quickly.

However, several major oil companies are planning to increase output or shale spending next year which could undercut OPEC+'s efforts to control supplies and support prices.

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OPEC and its allies are likely to stick to plans to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) at an OPEC+ meeting on Thursday, sources said, despite calls from the United States for extra supply to cool rising prices.

Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia has already dismissed calls for more oil supplies from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, collectively known as OPEC+. Kuwait and Iraq also support the current plans.

OPEC+ sources have said the United States has plenty of capacity to raise production itself if it wants to help the world speed up economic recovery.

Oil prices have surged this year to a three-year high above $86 a barrel as OPEC+ ramps up supplies gradually and demand recovers.

But producers are concerned about going too fast, fearing renewed setbacks in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Also read: Oil prices slip further as Iran nuclear talks set to resume

"Despite the pressure from consumers, I think the decision of the OPEC+ meeting on November 4 will most likely be the same increase of 400,000 bpd," an OPEC source said, adding that supporters of increased production growth are in the minority.

The virtual talks on Thursday start with a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, followed by the decision-making meeting of all OPEC+ ministers scheduled for 1400 GMT, another source said.

"I think no changes so far," said another OPEC+ delegate.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday urged major G20 energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production to ensure a stronger global economic recovery.

His statement is part of a broad effort by the White House to pressure OPEC and its allies to increase supply.

A Russian source also expected such calls would not sway the OPEC+ decision.

"We are supposed to stick to the current plan," the Russian source said.
China has been taking "incremental and tactical actions" to press its claims at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India and has unsuccessfully sought to prevent New Delhi from deepening its relationship with the US during and subsequent to the standoff, the Pentagon has said in a major report on China's military modernisation.

The Pentagon report comes amid heightened tensions between the US and China over the issue of Taiwan and was published hours after the most senior US general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley issued a stark warning about China's military progress.

The Pentagon has repeatedly referred to China as the "pacing challenge" for the US.

Read | India deploys US weapons to fortify disputed border with china

"The PRC (People's Republic of China) seeks to prevent border tensions from causing India to partner more closely with the United States. PRC officials have warned US officials to not interfere with the PRC's relationship with India," the Department of Defense told the US Congress on Wednesday.

The Pentagon regularly reports to the Congress on the India-Chinese military standoff in eastern Ladakh. The Department of Defense has categorically said China is indulging in aggressive and coercive behaviour with its neighbours, India in particular.

Chinese officials, through official statements and state media, had also sought unsuccessfully to prevent India from deepening its relationship with the United States during and subsequent to the standoff, while accusing India of being a mere instrument of US policy in the region, the Pentagon said.

Also Read | Standoff clashes with China: 20 ITBP personnel honoured with gallantry medals

Beginning in May 2020, the Chinese Army launched incursions into customarily Indian-controlled territory across the border and has concentrated troops at several standoff locations along the LAC, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon said despite the ongoing diplomatic and military dialogues to reduce border tensions, China has continued "taking incremental and tactical actions" to press its claims at the LAC.

As of June 2021, China and India continue to maintain large-scale deployments along the LAC and make preparations to sustain these forces while disengagement negotiations have made limited progress, it said.

In addition, a substantial reserve force from the Tibet and Xinjiang Military Districts were deployed to the interior of Western China to provide a rapid response, the Pentagon report said.

The acute tensions and clashes along the border with India in 2020 resulted in significant PLA force buildup and the establishment or enforcement of forwarding positions along the LAC.

Also Read | Almost 90% of Indians continue to support ban on Chinese apps

"These tensions likely provided the PLA with valuable real-world operational and tactical experience," it said.

According to the report, at the height of the border standoff between China and India in 2020, the Chinese Army installed a fibre-optic network in remote areas of the western Himalayas to provide faster communications and increased protection from foreign interception.

The PLA field commanders view near-real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and situational data as well as redundant and reliable communications as essential to streamlining decision-making processes and shortening response timelines, it said.

The June 2020 skirmish in Galwan Valley, which led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers, marked the first loss of life on the LAC since 1975.

In February 2021, China's Central Military Commission (CMC) announced posthumous awards for four PLA soldiers, though the total number of Chinese casualties remains unknown, it said.

In 2020, China built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the Chinese Tibet Autonomous Region and India's Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC.

Also Read | Chinese Shein app blocked but sale of products on other platforms not covered: Meity to HC

"These and other infrastructure development efforts along India-China have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media," the Pentagon said.

In contrast, China has attempted to blame India for provoking the standoff through India's increased infrastructure development near the LAC, the report said.

Asserting that its deployments to the LAC were in response to Indian provocation, Beijing has refused to withdraw forces till India's forces have withdrawn behind the Chinese version of the LAC and ceased infrastructure improvements in the area, the Pentagon said.

As the standoff continues, China has expressed its aim to prevent the standoff from worsening into a wider military conflict, the report said, adding that Beijing has voiced its intent to return bilateral relations with New Delhi to a state of economic and diplomatic cooperation it had perceived to be improving since the 2017 Doklam standoff.

Chinas state-controlled media forcefully asserted China's intent to refuse any territorial concessions demanded by India.

Also Read | Chinese apps making profit in India despite facing ban

The border standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries erupted on May 5 last year following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas and both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.

As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process in the Gogra area in August and in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake in February.

However, India and China failed to make any headway at their 13th round of military talks on October 10 in resolving the standoff in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh.

Each side currently has around 50,000 to 60,000 troops along the LAC in the sensitive sector.

India has voiced hope that China will work with it to bring a satisfactory resolution to the current issues, keeping in view each other's sensitivities and interests.

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The current rate of Covid-19 transmission in Europe is of "grave concern", the World Health Organization's Europe head, Hans Kluge, told a media briefing on Thursday.

CORONAVIRUS SPECIAL COVERAGE ONLY ON DH

"The current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region, is of grave concern," Kluge said, adding that new cases were nearing record levels, exacerbated by the more transmissible Delta variant of the virus.

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The Chinese city of Dandong aims to build more facilities at its border crossing with North Korea as the two countries resumed cross-border rail freight traffic, media reported, fuelling anticipation of the complete reopening of the border soon.

North Korea shut its borders in January 2020, one of the first countries to do so after cases of Covid-19 infection were reported in neighbouring China, its most important trade partner.

China, which has a zero-tolerance policy on coronavirus prevention, has also been wary in opening its borders to other countries.

A Dandong government procurement tender notice dated November 1 invites companies to bid for the management of construction at the port of entry at the New Yalu River Bridge, a vehicular dual-carriageway connecting Dandong with the North Korean town of Sinuiju.

The bidding notice did not specify what facilities are to be built on the Dandong-side, only that the winning company would be responsible for managing the entire process of construction, from planning to construction to inspection and evaluation.

Meanwhile, trains from Dandong resumed rail freight shipments across the Yalu River border to North Korea on Monday, the US government-funded Radio Free Asia reported, citing unidentified sources.

Also Read | China, Russia urge UNSC to end key sanctions on North Korea

The resumption of rail freight would mean supplies of trade goods and aid for North Korea as it grapples with an economic crisis and what foreign analysts believe is a serious food shorage.

The new bridge over the Yalu has never been used since construction was completed a few years ago because facilities on the North Korean side have yet to be built.

On the Chinese side, a customs building and complex of residential and commercial facilites have been built.

North Korea has for years relied on China for oil, fertiliser and mechanical parts to stay afloat amid UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes. China accounts for more than 90 per cent of its trade.

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Facebook says it has removed a post by Ethiopia's prime minister that urged citizens to rise up and bury the rival Tigray forces who now threaten the capital as the country's war reaches the one-year mark.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's post on Sunday violated the platform's policies against inciting and supporting violence, spokeswoman Emily Cain for Facebook's parent company, Meta, told The Associated Press. It was taken down on Tuesday morning, she said.

The obligation to die for Ethiopia belongs to all of us, Abiy said in the now-deleted post that called on citizens to mobilise by holding any weapon or capacity.

Abiy is still regularly posting on the platform, where he has 3.5 million followers. The United States and others have warned Ethiopia about dehumanising rhetoric after the prime minister in comments in July described the Tigray forces as cancer and weeds.

Facebook has removed posts from world leaders before, although in rare circumstances. Earlier this year, the company deleted a video from US President Donald Trump in which he peddled false claims about election fraud following a deadly skirmish at the US Capitol. Facebook said at the time the video contributed to the risk of ongoing violence. Just last week, the tech platform yanked a live broadcast from Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro because he made false claims about the Covid-19 vaccines.

Spokeswoman Cain did not say how Facebook was made aware of the Ethiopia post, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister made as Tigray forces took control of key cities over the weekend that put them in position to move down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa.

Alarmed, Abiy's government this week declared a national state of emergency with sweeping powers of detention and military conscription. The prime minister repeated his call to bury the Tigray forces in public comments on Wednesday as he and other officials marked one year of war.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia's highly polarized social media this week saw a number of high-profile posts targeting ethnic Tigrayans and even suggesting they be placed in concentration camps.

Thousands of people have been killed in the war between Ethiopian and allied forces and the Tigray ones who long dominated the national government before Abiy took office. The United Nations human rights chief said Wednesday they had received reports of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans being rounded up for detention in recent months.

Former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen last month singled out Ethiopia as an example of what she called the platform's destructive impact on society. My fear is that without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning, she told the Senate consumer protection subcommittee. What we saw in Myanmar and are seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it.

Meta spokeswoman Cain declined to say how many staffers they have on the ground in Ethiopia or dedicated to detecting violent speech in Ethiopia on its platform, but she said the company has the capability to review posts in Somali, Amharic, Oromo, and Tigrinya. She also said it has a team that includes people from Ethiopia or who have spent time in the country.

But Berhan Taye, a researcher in digital rights based in neighboring Kenya who tracks social media on Ethiopia and regularly escalates questionable posts to the Facebook platform, told the AP last week the platform wasn't moderating in the Tigrinya language, the language of Tigrayans, as recently as April.

Overall in Ethiopia, if you report (posts) on the platform, it's very highly likely to get no reply at all, she said. From the amount we escalate, and the number of replies we get, that tells you their internal system is really limited.

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The heavily forested Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan - which measures its success in "Gross National Happiness" - hasn't made a net-zero pledge, like a growing number of nations.

That's because it is already "carbon negative", absorbing more climate-changing emissions each year than it produces.

The forests of the thinly populated country of less than a million people absorb more than 9 million tonnes of carbon each year, while its economy, designed to reduce fossil fuel use and waste, produces less than 4 tonnes.

DH Deciphers | What is Net Zero? Can India achieve it in 50 years?

"We are showing the world what we can do if we have the political will," Sonam Wangdi, secretary of the National Environment Commission, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview at the UN climate talks in Glasgow.

A tiny but growing club of "carbon negative" forest countries is emerging, with Suriname - a small rainforest country north of Brazil - already a member and Panama expected to be certified later this year.

What they have in common is strong protection of their carbon-absorbing forests alongside increasingly tough measures to hold down climate-changing emissions, including efforts to adopt renewable energy, electrify transport and cut waste.

At COP26, they formed a formal alliance, signing a declaration calling for international finance, preferential trade, carbon pricing and other measures to support their economies and other "carbon negative" nations yet to emerge.

"We are taking the first step. What is the world doing for us? We're looking for support," said Albert Ramdin, Suriname's foreign minister, at the signing.

"What these three countries have achieved has been based on national efforts and national sacrifice," he added.

Wangdi said Bhutan's "carbon negative" path began in the 1970s, when its then-king rejected plans to grow economically by cutting forests to make way for farms and industry.

Instead, the king pushed for an economy built in part on sustainable forest management, with a focus on balancing conservation and development, Wangdi said.

That has ultimately helped the tiny, landlocked kingdom protect its environment while cutting its poverty rate from 36 per cent in 2007 to 12 per cent in 2017, according to the World Bank - though the pandemic has recently pushed the rate up slightly.

"We don't extract as much, we reuse, we recycle. Its an effort not just by government but by everyone," Wangdi said.

Bhutan's laws require the government to maintain at least 60 per cent forest cover; currently trees cover 72-73 per cent of the land.

Join the club

Erika Mounes, Panama's foreign minister, said channeling economic benefits to nations that protect their forests is key to expanding the "carbon negative" club and helping drive global efforts to cut climate-changing emissions.

"Being carbon negative has a cost. There's surveillance - when you have a protected area you have to make sure it's actually protected," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Educating citizens about protecting nature is also crucial, she said, since "they are the actual forest-keepers".

Panama now hopes to share what it has learned on its path to being certified carbon negative by the UN climate secretariat - including lessons from its indigenous forest communities.

"If were able to do it, then many more can do it."
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday that he was considering acting as foreign minister himself until a new cabinet was formed later this month, as the incumbent foreign minister was set to take over a key ruling party post.

Kishida has tapped Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi for the No.2 post in the ruling party, a powerful role that includes shaping policy.

The party will convene an executive board meeting later on Thursday to confirm that appointment.

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South African writer Damon Galgut won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction on Wednesday with The Promise, a novel about one white family's reckoning with South Africa's racist history.

Galgut had been British bookmakers' runaway favorite to win the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize with his story of a troubled Afrikaner family and its broken promise to a Black employee  a tale that reflects bigger themes in South Africa's transition from apartheid.

Galgut took the prize on his third time as a finalist, for a book the judges called a tour de force. He was previously shortlisted for The Good Doctor in 2003 and In a Strange Room in 2010, but lost both times.

Despite his status as favorite, Galgut said he was stunned to win.

Galgut said he was accepting the prize on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard, from the remarkable continent that I'm part of. He noted that this year's Nobel literature laureate, Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was also African.

Please keep listening to us  more to come, Galgut added.

His novel paints a troubling picture of modern-day South Africa, though Galgut said he did not set out to be negative.

I didn't plan for the overall trajectory of the book to be a downward one, he said  though that's how it turned out.

I think the portrait it paints of modern South Africa is not a happy one, he said. I had no agenda in describing it that way, but things are not great with us right now. You could read that as a warning or a portrait, I don't know, but South Africa has seen better days.

Historian Maya Jasanoff, who chaired the judging panel, said The Promise was a profound, forceful and succinct book that combines an extraordinary story, rich themes -- the history of the last 40 years in South Africa -- in an incredibly well-wrought package.

Galgut's ninth novel traces members of the Swart family  the word is Afrikaans for black  haunted by an unkept promise to give their Black maid, Salome, her own house. The book is structured around a series of funerals over several decades; Galgut has said he wanted to make readers fill in the narrative gaps themselves.

He is the third South African novelist to win the Booker Prize, after Nadine Gordimer in 1974 and J.M. Coetzee, who won twice, in 1983 and 1999.

The Promise was selected over five other novels, including three by US writers: Richard Powers' Bewilderment, the story of an astrobiologist trying to care for his neurodivergent son; Patricia Lockwood's social media-steeped novel No One is Talking About This and Maggie Shipstead's aviator saga Great Circle.

The other finalists were Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam's aftermath-of-war story A Passage North and British/Somali writer Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men, about a Somali man falsely accused of murder in 1950s Wales.

Jasanoff said many of the shortlisted novels, including Galgut's, reflected on the relationship between past and present.

This is a book that's very much about inheritance and legacy, she said of the winner. It's about change over a period of decades. And I think it's a book that invites reflection over the decades and invites and repays rereading.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers' careers and was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the UK.

The judging panel winnowed their list from 158 novels submitted by publishers. Only one British writer, Mohamed, made the final six, a fact has renewed debate in the UK about whether the prize is becoming US-dominated.

Last year there also was only one British writer on a US-dominated list of finalists, Scotland's Douglas Stuart. He won the prize for Shuggie Bain, a gritty and lyrical novel about a boy coming of age in hardscrabble 1980s Glasgow.

For a second year, the coronavirus pandemic has scuttled the prize's usual black-tie dinner ceremony at London's medieval Guildhall. The winner was announced in a ceremony broadcast live on BBC radio and television.

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UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled a new 5-pound commemorative coin celebrating the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi to mark Diwali on Thursday.

Available in a range of standards, including gold and silver, the special collectors coin is designed by Heena Glover and features an image of a lotus, Indias national flower, alongside one of Gandhis most famous quotes  My life is my message.

This coin is a fitting tribute to an influential leader who inspired millions of people around the world, said Sunak, in his role as the Master of the Mint in the UK.

As a practising Hindu, I am proud to unveil this coin during Diwali. Mahatma Gandhi was instrumental in the movement for Indian independence and it is fantastic to have a UK coin commemorating his remarkable life for the first time, said the Indian-origin finance minister.

PM Narendra Modi reaches J&K to celebrate Diwali with jawans at LOC: See Pics

The commemorative Gandhi coin is said to build on the enduring relationship and cultural connections between the UK and India, as India celebrates its 75th year of Independence this year.

The 5-pound coin, which goes on sale on the UK Royal Mints website from this week, is part of Royal Mints wider Diwali collection, which includes 1-gram and 5-gram gold bars in henna-style packaging, and the UKs first gold bar depicting Lakshmi  the Hindu goddess of wealth.

The 20-gram gold Lakshmi bar was designed in partnership with the Hindu community in South Wales, where the Royal Mint is based.

The Mint officials will also join Diwali celebrations at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Cardiff, where worshippers will offer prayers to Goddess Lakshmi and lord Ganesha for the coming year.

As we approach Diwali celebrations, we are delighted to unveil the first official UK coin commemorating the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. The beautiful design builds on the enduring relationship and cultural connections between the UK and India, said Nicola Howell, Chief Customer Officer for the Royal Mint.

Last year, Sunak commissioned the new Diversity Built Britain 50p coin following discussion with the We Too Built Britain campaign, which works for fair representation of minority communities contributions across all walks of life.

Around 10 million of the coins, which recognise and celebrate Britains diverse history, went into circulation in October 2020.

The new Gandhi coin is a non-circulating commemorative item, available to buy online from the Royal Mint.

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New York Congresswoman, Carolyn B. Maloney has piloted a bill that aims to secure a federal holiday on Diwali.

Maloney, 75, is chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and former chair of the Joint Economic Committee, the first woman to hold both of these positions. Only 18 women have chaired Congressional committees.

She is most remembered among Indians for a seven-year-long battle. before US postal service, in 2016, finally issued a stamp commemorating Diwali.

"I'm very, very happy and excited to be introducing the Deepavali Day Act this week alongside members of the Congressional Indian Caucus, which will enshrine Diwali into law as a federal holiday," Maloney said at an event at the US Capitol on Wednesday.

Also Read | UK minister Rishi Sunak releases new Gandhi commemorative coin to mark Diwali

She also tweeted 30-minutes of speeches by community leaders to this effect. This had 2,400 retweets at the time of publication.

The legislation is co-sponsored by a number of US lawmakers, including Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi.

Krishnamoorthi has also introduced a resolution in the US Congress recognising the religious and historical significance of Diwali.

Maloney said Diwali this year symbolises the nation's continuing journey out of the darkness of Covid-19.

For context on stature, Maloney has authored and passed more than 74 measures, either as stand-alone bills or as measures incorporated into larger legislation packages. Twelve of these were signed into law at formal Presidential signing ceremonies.

She is the first woman to represent New York's 12th Congressional District. The district includes most of Manhattan's East Side, Astoria and Long Island City in Queens, Greenpoint, Brooklyn as well as Roosevelt Island.

Maloney is a member of the Democratic Party.

She is the author of Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women's Lives Aren't Getting Any Easier -- And How We Can Make Real Progress For Ourselves and Our Daughters, used as a textbook in women's studies courses.

Other legislations include the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, its reauthorisation, and the 'Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act to make sure all those suffering health aliments associated with 9/11 get the medical care and compensation they need and deserve; the Debbie Smith Act, which increases funding for law enforcement to process DNA rape kits and has been called 'the most important anti-rape legislation in history;' and the Credit CARD Act, also known as the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, which according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), saved consumers more than $16 billion annually since it was signed into law in 2009.

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Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Thursday expressed grief over the demise of JCC(J) MLA and former MP Devvrat Singh, saying the state has lost an energetic and popular public representative.

The CM gave instructions that Singh's last rites be performed with full state honours, a government official said. Singh died following cardiac arrest at Khairagarh in neighbouring Rajnandgaon district in the wee hours of Thursday.

The 52-year-old leader, who belonged to the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh, was a four-time MLA from Khairagarh and was once also elected to the Lok Sabha from Rajnandgaon.

"Chhattisgarh has lost an energetic and popular public representative. The death of Shri Singh at a young age is an irreparable loss to the state's politics," a government statement said quoting Baghel.

The CM expressed deep condolences to the bereaved family members and prayed for the departed soul to rest in peace, it said.

Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) state chief Amit Jogi said the untimely demise of such a young, intelligent and experienced leader has left a void in the state's politics that cannot be easily filled.

"The entire state is shocked upon hearing the news of Shri Singh's untimely demise...We met only 25 days ago and he had boosted my morale like an elder brother as he always did," Jogi said.

Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly and BJP MLA Dharamlal Kaushik described Singh as a sensitive public representative and said his untimely demise is an "irreparable loss to all of us".

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met soldiers in Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmir on the occasion of Diwali, keeping up with his practice of spending the festival with Army personnel. Meanwhile, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled a new 5-pound commemorative coin celebrating the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi to mark Diwali. Follow DH for live updates.
Senior Trinamool Congress leader Subrata Mukherjee died while being treated for cardiac ailments at a state-run hospital in Kolkata on Thursday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said.

Mukherjee, who was the state panchayat minister, was 75. He is survived by his wife.

Mukherjee was also in charge of three other departments.

The veteran politician who underwent angioplasty early this week, died at 9.22 PM after suffering a massive cardiac arrest, state minister Firhad Hakim said.

The chief minister who was performing Kali Puja at her Kalighat residence, visited the SSKM Hospital and announced that he is no more.

"I still can't believe he is no longer with us. He was such a dedicated party leader. It is a personal loss for me," she said.

His body will be taken to Rabindra Sadan, a government-owned auditorium, on Friday for the people to pay their last respect. From there, it will be taken to his Ballygunge home and then to his ancestral home, Banerjee added.

Sources in the hospital said the minister had a 'stent thrombosis', one of the fatal complications of percutaneous coronary intervention.

Mukherjee, who was hospitalised on October 24 following breathing problems, underwent angioplasty when two stents were inserted inside his blocked arteries on November 1, the sources said.

He had been suffering from high blood sugar, CoPD and other age-related ailments.

The former Kolkata mayor was hospitalised with similar ailments in May, after he was arrested and sent to jail in connection with the Narada sting tape case. He was out on bail.

Mukherjee was an up and coming Congress leader of West Bengal during the time of Indira Gandhi's second term of prime ministership in the 1970s. He had formed a trident with other two Congress leaders - Somen Mitra and Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi.

Mukherjee and Mitra joined the Mamata Banerjee-led party in 2010 and 2008 respectively. While Mitra returned to his old party in 2014, Mukherjee remained in the TMC. Dasmunsi and Mitra died in 2017 and 2020 respectively.

"I have faced many disasters in my life but this is a very big blow. I do not think there will be another man like Subrata da who was such a nice and hard-working person. The party and his constituency (Ballygunge) were his soul. I will not be able to see Subrata da's body.

"This evening the principal of the hospital told me that Subrata da is fine and he will be going back home tomorrow. Doctors tried their best," Banerjee said.

West Bengal Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury also condoled his death.

"This is a big loss for West Bengal. It feels like I have lost my elder brother. A few days back, I went to see him in the hospital and spoke to him. It's a big loss for Indian politics," he said.

The BJP's West Bengal president, Dr Sukanta Majumdar described Mukherjee's death as the end of a great era of Bengal politics.

"It's definitely very sad. He was the youngest Cabinet minister in the Siddhartha Shankar Ray government. From then till today, he was a popular politician. May his soul rest in peace."

Senior CPI(M) leader and former Kolkata mayor Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya said, "He is a politician of the bygone era. He has always been a smiling personality and an intelligent politician. We may have certain differences of opinion but I consider him as one of the best politicians of Benal I have ever seen."

Mukherjee was also the chief of a club that organises one of the most popular Durga Pujas of the city.

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Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) president Om Prakash Rajbhar on Thursday said his alliance with the SP will support jailed BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari in the upcoming 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

Rajbhar, who forged a tie-up recently with the Samajwadi Party for the UP assembly polls, had met Ansari in Banda jail, prompting the ruling BJP to accuse him of practising the "politics of appeasement".

"I have met Mukhtar in Banda jail two days ago. During the meeting, his son Abbas Ansari was also present. The SP and the SBSP alliance will support him in the assembly polls," Rajbhar told PTI.

"It depends on Mukhtar whether he contests in alliance with the SP and the SBSP or as an independent candidate," he added.

Also Read | SBSP chief Rajbhar meets Mukhtar Ansari, cooks up new equation ahead of UP polls

When asked whether Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will be ready to support him, Rajbhar said, "If he has to form a government, he should not have any problem in giving support. When he can forge an alliance with Mayawati, then there will be no problem in supporting Mukhtar."

Rajbhar had earlier termed Mukhtar as an "old friend". He used to go to meet him in Punjab jail, even as a minister in the Uttar Pradesh's BJP government.

"Mukhtar is an old friend whom I have known for the past 19 years," Rajbhar had said.

In a statement on Rajbhar's meeting with Ansari, Uttar Pradesh government spokesperson and Cabinet minister Siddharth Nath Singh on Wednesday said, "It was not just a meeting between Rajbhar and mafia Mukhtar Ansari but an evidence of the politics of appeasement that the BJP often talks about."

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Polls: Former BJP ally SBSP extends support to Akhilesh Yadav

The SBSP had held a rally in Mau on October 27 with SP president Yadav too participating in it and announcing a poll alliance with Rajbhar's party, which is said to have a considerable influence over his community voters in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The SBSP, which had contested the 2017 assembly elections in alliance with the BJP, has four MLAs at present. Rajbhar was also made a Cabinet minister in the Adityanath government but due to differences with the chief minister, he quit the government..

In September this year, BSP supremo Mayawati had said her party will make efforts to not field 'bahubali' (strongmen) or mafia candidates in the next year's Uttar Pradesh polls and announced that jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari will not be given a party ticket from Mau again.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met soldiers at Nowshera sector in the border district of Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir on the occasion of Diwali.

Since taking over as prime minister, Modi has made it a point to meet troops in a border region on Diwali, starting from a visit to Siachen in 2014.

Official sources shared photographs of him at an Army post in Nowshera.

Also Read  Your bravery adds colour to festival of lights, PM Modi tells soldiers in Nowshera

Army chief General M M Naravane had carried out an aerial reconnaissance of forward areas, including Rajouri, on Wednesday and he was briefed about the prevailing security situation along the Line of Control (LoC) in the Jammu region.

An Army operation against terrorists has been going on through the forest belt in the Poonch-Rajouri area. This has been the longest such operation in the recent past and it entered the 26th day on Thursday.

Meanwhile, when Modi left his residence in the morning, there were minimal security arrangements in place and no traffic route was deployed to minimise any inconvenience, official sources said.
The Gujarat government has reduced the Value Added Tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel by Rs 7 per litre each, according to the Chief Minister's Office. The decision was announced hours after the Centre cut excise duty on petrol and diesel on Wednesday, and the new price came into effect from midnight, the CMO said in a statement issued late at night.

"Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel has announced to reduce the prices of petrol and diesel in Gujarat by Rs 7 per litre," the statement said. " Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to reduce the excise duty on petrol and diesel, the Gujarat government has also decided to reduce the VAT on petrol and diesel and implement this reduction in the entire state from midnight," it stated.

Also Read | 10 BJP-ruled states cut taxes on petrol, diesel: Here's how much fuel costs in these cities

With this decision, petrol will now cost Rs 95.13 per litre and diesel Rs 89.12 per litre in Ahmedabad, while the two fuels will cost Rs 94.89 and Rs 88.89, respectively, in Surat.

Chief Minister Patel took to Twitter to thank PM Modi for the decision to slash the excise duty on petrol and diesel. "The people of Gujarat thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his Diwali gift by taking a public-oriented decision to reduce the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 5 and Rs 10 per litre, respectively," he said.

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The Organised Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG), an umbrella organisation of professional medical associations of post-graduate doctors, thanked the WHO for approving Bharat Biotechs Covaxin saying that it is not only a Diwali gift to India but several other poor nations.

Indias 'Vaccine Maitri' programme to help other nations will now flourish. Several rich countries have stockpiled vaccines but did not give them to other nations and India is the only hope for them.

Also Read | Glad to see Covaxin get the Emergency Use Listing approval: WHO chief

It was a foregone conclusion that WHO would accord the Emergency Use Listing (EUL) status to the made in India Covid vaccine as the WHO was left with little choice. With several countries including the USA, Australia, UK, UAE etc. approving Covaxin, WHO was under tremendous pressure of losing its sanctity if it continued its defiance. Even it is indeed in the best interest of WHO itself, as its COVAX programme, to reach out the Covid-19 vaccines globally with the principle of equity, is under severe threat of being ridiculed, OMAG secretary-general Dr IS Gilada and president Dr Suneela Garg said.

COVAX has met just 10% of its goal of reaching out to poorer nations globally. Time is of prime essence because all eligible people should be fully vaccinated worldwide within limited time duration and the WHO is aiming for all countries to fully vaccinate 70% of their population by June 2022, said Dr Gilada.

Also Read | Emergency Use Listing nod to Covaxin expands availability of vaccines: WHO official

Secondly, WHO EUL sanction for Sinovac and Sinopharm -- both made in China vaccines -- which had mere 51% efficacy on paper was always considered a partisan approach by a supposedly neutral body. China itself has little confidence in their vaccines and hence decided in favour of a booster dose with another vaccine from outside China. However, the Covaxin has demonstrated 77.8 per cent effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19 and 65.2 per cent protection against the Delta variant, the OMAG stated.

Before according to its sanction, the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of WHO had sought additional details from Bharat Biotech on several occasions and kept postponing the approval. It is pathetic that diplomacy at the highest level needed to get this sanction rather than science. Covaxin is the second most widely used vaccine in India among the six vaccines currently approved in India since mid-2021. Of these Moderna, J&J and ZyCovD are yet to make a debut. Covishield accounts for most of the doses administered  almost 89% and Covaxin 11%, added Dr Gilada.

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Reports of vigilante groups taking the law into their own hands for various reasons connected with inter-faith matters are on the increase. At the same time, terrorism is a subject of daily reportage. Both these matters affect everybody directly or indirectly, and bear discussion.

Vigilantism, and its span

A vigilante is a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate. Vigilantes bypass the governments legal-justice system by taking measures against whosoever they believe are violators of established law (or social norms), as they understand it.

This sometimes extends beyond extra-legal enforcement of established law, to imposing self-accepted laws, rules, morals and mores, to punish people who are seen to violate customs, or are deemed to have caused insult or harm to ideas, icons, etc., which they hold to be sacred or inviolable. Usually, persons hailing from the numerical majority of a population try to enforce a moral code.

Persons or groups who profess a certain idea, or claim to protect a certain entity, and act outside of the law-and-justice framework by attacking whosoever they deem has opposed their idea or ideology, are also vigilantes. Vigilantes often treat their targets as inferior or unwanted others, who deserve to be hated and killed.

Vigilantes strike fear among their declared targets, and are not concerned that their activities are illegal. If governments are unable or unwilling to prevent such activities, vigilantes enjoy freedom to operate. Sometimes, a government or powerful social-political lobby may clandestinely support or tacitly approve of vigilante groups because they find their activities convenient, even beneficial, to further their political interests.

Vigilantism is not at all recent in origin. Two examples should suffice: Starting in 12th Century France, groups within the Catholic church conducted a Holy Inquisition to combat religious deviation and heresy. Heretics and witches were burned at the stake; and, in the 17th Century, Galileo was indicted for suggesting that the Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun.

In America, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist terrorist group, targeted African- Americans as well as Jews, immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists. KKK used physical assault, including lynching, against politically active blacks and their allies, even if the latter were whites. They also intimidated voters, targeted African-American leaders, and organised opposition to the civil rights movement, including suppressing activists. KKK later adopted a business model of full-time, paid recruiters to induct members into its fraternity.

Vigilantism is thus an instrument of organised violence, used by a group to further its dogmas, beliefs, ideas and ideals, by targeting groups or individuals, to create fear, or injure and kill. Vigilantism is also used to silence or subjugate opposition. A political aim or agenda is undeniably at the core of vigilantism.

Terror, terrorist, terrorism

Terror is an emotion of extreme fear, caused by the threat or use of violence, or perception of grave danger. Terror is also an instrument, to cause extreme fear in targeted individuals or groups. Use of terror as an instrument for political purposes is age-old, and terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

The person who uses the instrument of terror, for personal, partisan, political or any other conceivable purpose, is a terrorist. A terrorists claim of representing or belonging to a particular ethnic, religious, ideological, or political group, and whether or not that ethnic, religious, ideological, or political group acknowledges or denies his membership or allegiance, is of no consequence. Terrorism is undeniably terrorism, and a terrorist is a terrorist regardless, although different from a militant.

Terrorists are indoctrinated, trained and launched by their mentors, handlers, financiers and sponsors, to attack soft targets and create fear among populations. They strike at people to kill them and destroy property, with the intention of spreading fear and causing maximum damage. Terrorism is a complex global issue, with social, religious, cultural, economic and political dimensions.

As the erstwhile UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes, is unacceptable and can never be justified.

If terrorism is unacceptable, can vigilantism be accepted?

Extra-legal or extra-constitutional use of threats, or physical and psychological violence to punish, or to cause, incite or stoke fear and hate  and especially in present times, by fake or false news on social media  are common to both vigilantism and terrorism. Also common is the politics-religion agenda.

To enforce their chosen moral code, or protect a certain entity, idea or custom, vigilante groups victimise individuals who they believe have violated a law. Reportedly, the police have often been complicit. Accusations of tacit support or encouragement of vigilantes by politicians or subverted government agencies for political benefit are hotly refuted by government supporters. These accusations and counter-accusations are sometimes accentuated by use of epithets such as Islamic terrorist, Hindu terrorist, etc.

These are naturally objected to by Muslims and Hindus respectively, who assert that such epithets are unfair to the tenets of their religions, and that terrorists are simply terrorists, regardless of their social-religious background or who/what terrorists may claim to represent.

Governments fight shy of connecting the religious identity of vigilantes who killed Akbar Khan (Jaipur, Rajasthan, 2018), Alimuddin (Ramgarh, Jharkhand, 2017), Mohammad Akhlaq (Dadri, UP, 2015), for example, and other killings.

Significantly, in the run-up to the 2019 general elections, PM Modi is reported to have said: In my culture and in my limited knowledge, no Hindu can ever be a terrorist and if he is a terrorist, he can never be a Hindu.

Notwithstanding our PMs categorical assertion, the reader might like to decide whether vigilantes are indeed terrorists, and if not, whether vigilantes and terrorists are siblings, born as a result of the vicious politics of hate and fear.

(The writer retired as Additional Director-General, Discipline & Vigilance, in Army HQ, New Delhi. He is a member of the National Alliance of Peoples Movements and Peoples Union for Civil Liberties)
Weeks after states of Uttarakhand and Kerala faced flash floods killing and displacing thousands of people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders met at the premier global climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow on Monday. The annual conference held since 1995 has already been responsible for watershed initiatives like the Paris Agreement. This year's conference has been touted as make-or-break by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Being the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world (behind China and the USA, and followed by Russia and Japan), all eyes will be on India to see if it takes a proactive stance on climate change mitigation at Glasgow. India has set extremely ambitious targets at COP26, with the PM declaring for the first time a net-zero emission target of 2070 (Chinas is 2060, while it is 2030 for most others). Although this has been generally welcomed by the global community, given its economic and diplomatic clout, India can do a lot more.

Indias participation in other multilateral fora on environmental issues, however, does not paint a very promising picture. Earlier this month, in a landmark resolution passed at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment was for the first time, explicitly recognised as a human right. India though was one of only four countries that abstained from voting for it, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has on multiple occasions, already declared the right to a clean and healthy environment as integral to the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The inextricable link between international trade and environmental issues is well-recognised, with WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stating earlier this year that, new trade rules can help our economies become greener, cleaner, more prosperous, and more inclusive. In fact, many environment-related trade issues are at the forefront of negotiations at the WTOs 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) to be held later this year. Various countries have spearheaded plurilateral environment-related initiatives under the aegis of the WTO. These include the initiating of an informal dialogue on reducing plastic pollution and moving to a more environmentally sustainable plastics trade; discussions on reforming fossil fuel subsidies; and coordinating structured discussions on trade and environmental sustainability. India, however, perhaps wary of disguised protectionist measures, has not co-sponsored or contributed effectively to any of them.

Furthermore, according to official WTO statistics (taken from the WTOs Environmental Database), India has since 2009, undertaken only 120 environment-related measures notified under various WTO Agreements, as opposed to 382 by Japan, 648 by China and more than 2,000 by the USA.

This, however, does not make for a completely grim reading. On the positive side, India has largely been on track to reach its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement and is one of the top countries in the world in terms of installed renewable energy capacity. There is also some merit in the argument that developed countries, being historically large polluters and possessing more technological capacity, have a bigger onus on taking positive climate action; and that a transition from a coal-based economy to a renewable energy-based one requires more time, support, and technical assistance from other developed countries.

Nonetheless, stronger multilateral proactivity is the need of the hour. Despite being a bystander to pollution contributions historically, India at present lies front and centre in the global climate crisis. In fact, there have already been increasing calls for India to set more ambitious climate change mitigation targets, and COP26 is an encouraging start.

With environmental issues taking up an increasingly important role in global discourse and MC12 looming, now is a better time than any for India to answer these calls on the world stage.

(The writer is a Master of Laws graduate from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva)
Seven months after Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech submitted EOI (Expression of Interest) to the World Health Organization (WHO) for its Covid-19 vaccine's Emergency Use Listing (EUL), the global health body on November 3 gave a green signal to the indigenously-developed Covaxin.

The advisory group was expected to make a decision on Covaxin last week but had asked for additional clarifications from Bharat Biotech before conducting a final risk-benefit assessment for the vaccine's global use. The EUL would allow Bharat Biotech to ship Covaxin to countries that rely on WHO guidance for their regulatory decisions.

Also read: Glad to see Covaxin get the Emergency Use Listing approval: WHO chief

Developed in partnership with the National Institute of Virology, Pune that isolated the vaccine strain, the vaccine has so far been administered to more than 12 crore Indians. But the absence of the WHO certification was a bottleneck for such persons undertaking international travel.

The vaccine, which was approved for use in India in January this year, wasnt considered valid by many countries. The nod is likely to pave the way for Indians receiving Covaxin to travel freely all over the world besides opening up the doors for export and manufacturing of the Indian vaccine in other countries through the technology transfer route.

Restrictions in travel

The manufacturers are hopeful that it would help expedite requests from countries seeking to buy the vaccine. The authorisation will enable us to contribute to accelerating the equitable access of Covid-19 vaccine, and the access to our vaccine globally, Krishna Ella, a top official at Bharat Biotech said.

WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan had earlier noted that one of the reasons for the high amount of stress that people who've received vaccines which are not yet approved, either by WHO or by any of the other main stringent regulatory agencies, is because of restrictions in travel that have been imposed.

To ensure a simplified international travel regime, last month, India had also proposed a reciprocal Covid-19 vaccine certification framework to its partner countries. The mechanism is based on reciprocal recognition of the integrity of the vaccine certification process by the partner countries and it will help in normalising international travel, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had said at a media briefing.

Controversies

Covaxin was approved by Indian government officials in January and administered to millions of people even without data being released. Many in the country, including front-line health care workers, had feared that Covaxin could be ineffective or worse, slowing down the national campaign to inoculate 1.3 billion people.

After the drug regulator approved the vaccine for restricted emergency use in India, some senior Congress leaders had criticised the move noting that it was given the nod without phase three trial data. However, a day after Bharat Biotech said its anti-coronavirus vaccine has shown 81 per cent efficacy, the BJP hit out at the Congress for questioning the drug regulator's decision to grant it emergency use approval and said everyone should be proud of the results shown by it.

Read more: Emergency Use Listing nod to Covaxin expands availability of vaccines: WHO official

Before the phase three trial results, some healthcare experts also questioned the government's assertion that Covaxin can target mutated coronavirus strains and may be used as a "backup", as they asked for the scientific basis for the claim and for the vaccine's safety and efficacy. ICMR Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava had said Covaxin is based on an inactivated whole virus, having the potential to target mutated coronavirus strains including the UK-variant, and it was a major reason for giving it a conditional nod. He had maintained that no clear data regarding the efficacy of the vaccine was available at the time of the approval.

Meanwhile, officials in Brazil, where the government had bought doses of Covaxin, had raised questions about the vaccine and were investigating possible irregularities in its contract to buy 20 million shots of Covaxin from India.

Efficacy and performance

In a statement issued in July after it approached the WHO for granting the EUL, Bharat Biotech had claimed the vaccine to be 77.8 per cent effective against symptomatic Covid-19 and 93.4 per cent effective against severe symptomatic Covid-19. In addition, the efficacy data demonstrated 65 per cent protection against the Delta variant. The WHO said Covaxin had a 78 per cent efficacy rate against Covid-19 and should be administered in two doses four weeks apart to adults, noting the vaccines easier storage requirements might be convenient for poor and developing countries.

The global health body, however, said that available data on vaccination of pregnant women with the Covaxin vaccine is insufficient to assess vaccine safety or efficacy in pregnancy. "Available data on vaccination of pregnant women with the Covaxin vaccine is insufficient to assess vaccine safety or efficacy in pregnancy; studies in pregnant women are planned, including a pregnancy sub-study and a pregnancy registry," the WHO said in a series of tweets.

The shelf life of Covaxin has also been extended from six to 12 months from the date of manufacture, based on data showing that it is safe and effective. Covaxin is being manufactured in three locations in India, with the current production at more than 50 million doses per month. Bharat Biotech has said it is aiming to make 1 billion doses per year by the end of this year.

(With DHNS/agency inputs)
Indian astrophysicists on Thursday hit the bull's eye with their prediction of a "Diwali Storm" that lit up the polar and high latitude regions in spectacular displays of auroras triggered by a medium intensity solar flare.

Since the wee hours of Thursday, auroras have been reported from unexpected countries such as Scotland, Ireland, several US states and Canada with pictures of brilliantly lit northern skies flooding social media.

While solar scientists around the world, including those at the Indian Institute for Science, Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata predicted the auroras by closely tracking the flare and the solar storm that ensued, the Indian team comprising Suvadip Sinha and Dibyendu Nandi were bang on target.

IISER researchers forecast the arrival of the solar storm in the Earths atmosphere at around 2 am on November 4 with a speed of 768 km per second. In reality, the storm reached at around 1 am with a speed varying between 750-800 km per second.

For comparison, the prediction from the USAs National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was that the storm will arrive at around 4:30 am on November 4 with a speed of less than 700 km per second.

"We were bang on target with our prediction. It was caused by an M-class (medium intensity) solar flare from an active region near disk center of the Sun (very close to the Sun-Earth line) which has launched a fast moving solar storm, which in turn trigger geomagnetic storms in the atmosphere to light up the night skies in northern latitudes, Nandi told DH.

Since solar storms have earlier been named based on the day they have originated or impacted Earth, the Indian team suggested naming this one the Diwali Storm. In the past, there was a solar storm named after Bastille Day in 2000, a Halloween day storm that hit Earth in 2003 and a St. Patricks Day storm that occurred in 2015.

On November 2, a solar flare  a highly energetic phenomenon  occurred. When a flare occurs, the energy stored in such structures is converted to heat and light energy, generating intense X-ray radiation and accelerating charged particles in the Suns atmosphere to very high speeds.

The flare led to what is known as coronal mass ejection or a solar storm, which is among the largest explosions in the solar system generating as much energy as a billion atomic bombs.

The scientists knew the solar storm had a better chance of reaching the earth because of the location of the flare. Space weather alerts were issued because of the storms ability to cause damages to satellites, navigation systems and undersea internet cables.

Forecasting solar flares ahead of time is a difficult task. Predicting the arrival times and impact of a coronal mass ejection or CME is even more challenging as observations are sparse in interplanetary space and the trajectory of these storms is governed by complex mechanisms, Nandi added.
The first study to methodically calculate how much food blue whales and some of their close relatives eat has yielded a simple answer: a whole lot.

The blue whale, the largest animal in Earth's history, eats about 16 tons of krill daily in the North Pacific, gobbling up these tiny shrimp-like crustaceans with a filter-feeding system in the mouth using baleen plates made of keratin, the substance found in people's fingernails, scientists said on Wednesday.

"That is roughly the weight of one fully loaded school bus," said study co-author Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

The researchers calculated daily food intake for seven baleen whale species, tracking 321 individual whales in the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Oceans from 2010 to 2019. These gigantic marine mammals were found to eat up to three times more food than previous estimates that were based on stomach contents of hunted whales or extrapolations from smaller marine mammals.

The other species studied - humpback, fin, bowhead, right, Antarctic minke and Bryde's whales - also devoured impressive amounts. North Pacific Humpback whales can eat 9 tons of krill daily, while fin whales consume 8 tons.

"It is an unimaginable amount of food. But large whales are themselves unimaginable. A blue whale is the size and weight of a Boeing 737," said Stanford University marine biologist Matthew Savoca, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

Blue whales, larger than even the biggest dinosaurs, can reach 110 feet (33 meters) long and 200 tons.

The researchers determined how often each whale engaged in feeding behavior using electronic tag devices suction-cupped to the animal's back, with a camera, microphone, GPS locator and an instrument that tracks movement. Drones were used to estimate the size of a whale's mouth area and how much prey it could engulf. An acoustic method measured nearby prey biomass.

Baleen whales eat zooplankton: small prey including krill, fish or crustaceans called copepods. The largest species prefer krill. Smaller species such as humpback, Bryde's or minke whales can eat schooling fish or krill.

Most baleen whales do not eat year-round, having a feast-or-famine annual cycle. They eat about 100 days annually, typically during a summer breeding season, while eating little the rest of the year. Based on eating 16 tons in a day, the blue whale would consume perhaps 1,600 tons annually.

Food intake varied based on species, location and prey type. Among three humpback populations studied, North Pacific krill specialists consumed 9 tons daily, North Pacific fish eaters 3.5 tons and Southern Ocean krill specialists 3 tons daily.

Among the other species, Arctic bowhead whales consumed 6 tons daily of copepods, North Atlantic right whales 5 tons of copepods, South Atlantic Bryde's 1 ton of fish and Southern Ocean minke 0.69 tons of krill.

Since the whales eat more than previously known, they also produce more excrement, an important ocean nutrient source. By catching prey and defecating, they help keep nutrients suspended near the sea surface to generate blooms of carbon-absorbing microscopic organisms called phytoplankton that form the base of marine food webs.

Pyenson said the study's calculations suggest that before baleen whale numbers were dramatically reduced by 20th century industrial whaling, they had consumed more food than all of the world's current krill biomass and global fisheries combined.

"The implication of these numbers is that whales supported far more productive ocean ecosystems before whaling, and that promoting whale recovery in the 21st century may restore ecosystem functions lost in the past hundred years," Pyenson added.
Four SpaceX astronauts of the Crew Dragon capsule will be without the bathroom option, during their trip back home from Interntaional Space Station.

During the hours-long trip in the 13-foot-wide capsule, the crew will have to rely on "undergarments", said Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, on Friday.

NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan, will be the four astronauts who will be forced to travel without an operable toilet after issues were detected with it.

Also Read: SpaceX needs to fix the toilet before NASA astronauts launch

While the duration of the trip is not confirmed, it will be dependent on several factors, including weather.

"We are working to try to always minimize that time from undock to landing and so that's what we'll do with this flight," added Stich.

The toilet issue was first detected in September while SpaceX was inspecting a different capsule. It found that the tube used to carry the urine into the storage tank to be unglued, resulting in a leaky mess beneath the capsule' floor.

Also Read: NASA, SpaceX delay Crew-3 ISS mission due to bad weather

The toilet issue was found in all three SpaceX spacecraft. And as of now, only two spacecraft have returned from ISS with people onboard. While the first one took 19 hours to reach, the latter finished it in just 6 hours.

Recollecting the issue, Jared Isaacman, the commander and financier of the Inspiration4 mission, told CNN about the alarm going off during the mission alerting the crew to the problem with the toilet's fan. He said that his fellow passengers and him worked with SpaceX controllers on the ground to fix the problem.

Although no problems occured, the SpaceX crew dismantled the spacecraft, upon return, for further inspection and to figure out the underlying problems with the spacecraft.

"There's a storage tank where the the urine goes to be stored [and] there's a tube that came disconnected or came unglued," said William Gerstenmaier, a former associate administrator at NASA who now works as SpaceX's head of mission assurance.

Fans are used on spacecraft toilets for suction and to and control the flow of urine as microgravity in space can cause waste to go in every possible direction.

"That allowed urine essentially to not go into the storage tank, but essentially go into the fan system," he added. He also said that the Inspiration4 crew did not notice any sort of waste floating around the cabin as the leakage was still restricted to sealed-off areas undernearth the floor.

This scenario is a prime example of how, even after a spacecraft has conducted all the necessary tests, flaws can still emerge.

Also Read: NASA sending four astronauts to ISS on October 31

Gerstenmaier told CNN that SpaceX researchers ran a number of tests to make sure the capsule's aluminum structure had not become too corrosive and can hold up to the leaked urine. This is to ensure that the spacecraft is relatively safe to carry these astrunauts back. "For this, they coated some pieces of metal in urine mixed with Oxone. Oxone is the same substance used to remove ammonia from urine. These metal pieces were then put inside a chamber to mimc the vacuum of space and they found limited corrosion," he said.

While the astronauts are on the space station, they will not be facing issues, since the ISS has its own toilets. However, they will be forced to make use of the the undergarment option once they begin their return journey, which is scheduled to take place as early as this weekend, NASA said.

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Every year around this time, more than 1 billion people worldwide celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, with warm family meals, bursting fireworks, glowing lamps and an ornate ancient Indian folk art known as rangoli.

These geometric patterns, religious symbols and floral designs are drawn on the floor of ones home, often using chalk and colorful powders, as a way to ward off evil spirits and welcome the good faith of gods and goddesses. The word rangoli is derived from the Sanskrit word rangavalli and roughly translates to rows of colors, a fitting image for Diwalis message of light conquering darkness.

Also Read: Home entrepreneurs add colour to festive lamps

The Christmas tree is to Christmas as rangoli is to Diwali, Jugnu Verma, an artist and arts educator in Columbia, South Carolina, said in a recent phone interview. Its incomplete without it.

While making rangoli can be celebratory, it is also a daily ritual for many women in India and throughout the diaspora  a tradition that grounds them in challenging times. Verma, 40, who has been making rangoli for three decades, said the focus required to make rangoli helps develop meditative power.

She was born in Bihar, India, where her mother created a new rangoli every day outside their home, and moved to the United States when she was 27. It was a very difficult time, Verma said. I was far, far away from my family for the first time. She frequently felt lost and lonely.

That changed when a friend invited her to make henna tattoos and rangoli for a cultural event at the local library. The experience helped Verma connect with her new community. I didnt know many people here, but when they saw my art, they wanted to know more, she said.

Verma often makes rangoli using edible materials such as rice flour, turmeric and lentils, so that any creatures that pass her doorstep can feast on her creation. Its OK if her designs are eaten by insects, trampled over by visitors, whisked away by wind or washed away by rain. That impermanence is part of the forms beauty.

This idea, of feeding as many souls as possible during the day, pervades the tradition, though the style of rangoli can vary throughout India. The kolam, in Tamil Nadu, is traditionally made with white rice flour. Each work starts with a grid of dots, which are then connected with various patterns of lines and curves. The result is a highly computational drawing.

Also Read: Diwali 2021: 5 unique recipes you must try this festive season

Four hundred million Hindu women do some form of this kind of art or ritual sometime during the year, said Vijaya Nagarajan, the author of a book on the kolam and an associate professor of religious studies at the University of San Francisco.

Though Id always noticed in my own family that the ritual was done only by the women of the household, I realized through conversations with Nagarajan that it is almost universally closely tied to female experience. In conducting research for her book, Nagarajan spent time in Madurai, a city in Tamil Nadu, where she spoke with people whose gender expressions were fluid. They made the kolam when they woke up in the morning and felt like a woman, she said. They would dress in their sari, put the jasmine flowers in their hair, braid their hair and make the kolam. Its an indication of gender, even if the gender is fluid.

In recent years, kolam artists have adopted the multicolor tradition of the rangoli  though the change has been divisive, especially at kolam competitions in India. If the judges were more traditional, elder judges, the traditional kolam was the best, most aesthetic, Nagarajan told me. But if they were younger women, they would say the rangoli was better, reflecting the fascination with color and changing notions of beauty.

Srividya Vallurupalli, 46, a software engineer in Danville, California, experienced that shift firsthand. When my mom was growing up, it was only done with white powder, she said. In our generation, the colors got added.

Once passed down through generations of Indian women, typically from mother to daughter, the art of rangoli is now the subject of countless tutorials on social media. Instagrammers such as Kanchan Kauthale, 36, who lives in Maharashtra, post step-by-step photos of their rangoli creations. On TikTok, rangoli videos take the viewer from simple outline to bold pattern at a mesmerizing speed; together, posts tagged #rangoli have more than 840 million views.

Also Read: Avoid getting scammed while shopping online this Diwali with these quick tips

At the same time, the ritual has become less and less of a daily practice. People are using paints so that they dont have to put the rangoli every day in front of the house. It can last for at least a few months to a year, Vallurupalli said, unlike traditional rangoli, which is largely at the will of the elements.

In the winter of this year, when the United States was starting to see a recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, India was entering another deadly wave. There have been more than 34 million reported cases in the country, and estimates have put the death toll around 4 million.

In India, with all the people dying and dealing with this problem, you just pray, Verma said. Making rangoli is the same as praying.

In the midst of the crisis, my grandfather on my fathers side died in Vijayawada. He didnt die from Covid-19, but the travel restrictions and health fears made it impossible to see him. No one in my immediate family could be there to hear his last words or even attend the funeral. In lieu of more traditional rites, we held a small ceremony at our house in Syracuse, New York.

Also Read: 'Most firecracker eye injuries occur to bystanders': Heres how to stay safe

Anyone whos been to central New York in the winter knows that snow is a constant of the season. So rather than making our rangoli outside, my grandmother and I constructed one at the base of our fireplace, following a YouTube tutorial and gridding our design with Crayola chalk. The final design was a row of white flowers surrounded with green detailing. The rangoli is still there today.

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As his government completes hundred days in office, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Thursday said he is satisfied with the decisions taken so far in taking the administration in the right direction, and the work is on towards inclusive economic progress. He also ruled out any discussions regarding expanding the cabinet immediately.

"I'm satisfied with the decisions that have been taken with regards to taking the administration in the right direction, by taking officials into confidence," Bommai said in response to a question whether he is satisfied with the hundred days of his administration.

Ending months of speculation about the change of guard in the state, Bommai on July 28 had taken over as the new Chief Minister of Karnataka, from BJP stalwart B S Yediyurappa, who stepped down from the coveted post, coinciding with his government completing two years in office.

Though hundred days is not a major milestone, it is certainly a clear indication on our way forward, the Chief Minister told reporters and added, "the strong and promising steps that we have taken in the last hundred days, and the decisive decisions that we have taken, will indicate about the pro-people path that our government will take in the future."

Also Read | An even brighter Diwali: Karnataka slashes tax on petrol, diesel by Rs 7: Check prices

Pointing at the programmes of his government like 'Amrith' schemes, scholarship to children of farmers, and social security initiatives, he said, the economy is slowly recovering, and looking at the recovery the administration plans to take several progressive steps for the welfare of the people.

"I have two plans- one is to improve the system and see to it that the government and its programmes reach the people. Second is, utilising of human resources effectively, with economic progress, for example- though our per capita income is among top five states, there has to be contribution from all sections of society for it, like- SC/ST, OBC, poor and women- in our economic progress, we are working on it," he added.

Bommai also highlighted the implementation of "CM Dashboard", which is said to be in line with the Prime Minister's Office, which facilitates him to review the progress of various Departments on a digital platform, as a major step towards administrative reform.

Ruling out any talks regarding the cabinet expansion, he said, he will not go to Delhi on November 7 and will be attending the National Executive meeting via video conferencing from the party office here.

Speaking on his government's decision to reduce both petrol and diesel prices by Rs 7 per litre, Bommai said, "after the central government's decision to reduce fuel prices I spoke to the Union Finance and Home Minister and they expressed desire that the state too slashes the prices. I spoke to our senior officials and decided on it."

Stating that the cut in prices will be effective from this evening, he said, it may cause an estimated loss of Rs 2,100 crore to the state's exchequer.

Buckling under pressure, the central government on Wednesday had cut excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 5 and Rs 10 per litre to help bring down rates down from their highest-ever levels.

Stating that the 'Janasevaka', an initiative, under which government services are delivered to the doorstep of beneficiaries, will be rolled out across the state on January 26, the Chief Minister in response to a question said, it will be done in stages, and staff will be trained for it. Noting that it has been launched in Bengaluru, he said, "if there are any shortcomings, we will rectify it and then proceed to other places."

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Karnataka police appear to have delayed escalating notorious hacker Sriki's case to national agencies, even after learning that he was involved in the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange hack in 2016, considered to be the largest cryptocurrency heist at the time.

Though Sriki was arrested in December 2020 and a charge sheet with his confession of the Bitfinex hack was filed in February 2021, the Basavaraj Bommai administration informed the Interpol wing of CBI only on April 28, 2021.

The CBI's Interpol was informed two weeks after international agencies and blockchain analytics firms tracked the transfer of the long-dormant, blacklisted bitcoins from cold wallets to newly-created wallets.

Read | Sriki used Bitcoin trader to sell hacked cryptocurrency, reveals probe

According to the charge sheet filed by Bengaluru police, Sriki boasted to be the first person to have hacked Bitfinex twice.

Bitfinex was first hacked in 2015, and then in 2016.

The second hack, in 2016, "was a simple spear phishing attack which led two Israeli hackers, working for the army, get access to the computers of one of the (Bitfinex) employees," according to his statement in the charge sheet.

Two Israeli brothers - Eli Gigi and Assaf Gigi - were arrested in 2019 for their alleged role in the Bitfinex hack. Eli, according to reports, was in the Israel Defense Forces before his arrest. However, authorities were not able to recover all the 1.19 lakh bitcoins from them and suspected the role of others in the hack.

Sriki has also detailed the manner in which the Bitfinex hack was executed and how he routed the bitcoins from the exchange to his own bitcoin address.

The Bitfinex hack had alerted international authorities as 1.19 lakh bitcoins were stolen. All the coins were blacklisted by the exchange, forcing hackers to store a majority of them in cold wallets, while a small amount of the coins were moved over five years. Bitfinex had also announced a reward of $400 million - equal to 30 per cent of the net worth of 1.19 lakh bitcoins that were worth around $1.34 billion in 2020 (around $7 billion today) for information about the hackers.

Read | Sriki hacked Rahul Gandhi's Twitter account, says chargesheet

On April 14, 2021, the stolen bitcoins started moving for the first time in five years and moved over $750 million worth bitcoins, exceeding Rs 5,580 crore. Over 30 transactions took place involving over 11,000 bitcoins shortly after bitcoins reached an all time high of around $65,000 per coin. Many of the transactions were to newly-created wallets.

A chronology of the events starting from Sriki's arrest in December 2020 till the first charge sheet filed against him in February 2021 suggests that investigators were aware of his role in the Bitfinex hack, months before CBI Interpol was alerted.

DH reached out to senior police officials, including the state police chief Praveen Sood to ascertain the reasons for the delay in alerting CBI Interpol. They were unavailable for comment.

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Moving on from the dismal defeat in Sindgi and Hangal bypolls, JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda said Thursday his party would actively work for the 2023 Assembly elections.

The future of any party is in the general election and not in the bypolls where parties tend to misuse power, Gowda said.

The party fielded candidates for the bypolls only because there was pressure from certain well wishers so that the party cadre will be not be disappointed, the former prime minister said.

Read | Bypoll results will have no bearing on 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls: Yediyurappa

"Even though the party was unable to secure people's mandate electorally, it enjoyed goodwill in the region. No matter how much the Congress or BJP want to negate the efforts of JD(S) in the region, people will remember the contributions of the party, especially to the irrigation sector here," Gowda said.

As for allegations by Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah that JD(S) fielded Muslim candidates in both Sindgi and Hangal only to split Congress votes, Gowda said the charge was nothing new. "Siddaramaiah has only one weapon for all occasions, which is to blame JD(S) for fielding Muslim candidates," he said. "We got 4,000 votes in Sindagi. There were 38,000 Muslim votes there. If the rest of the Muslim votes didn't go to BJP, it must have gone to Congress itself."

He also said that the party needed donations to grow in the days to come. He was confident that the leaders in the party would help out, he said. Anyone who contributes to the fund will get a receipt and the accounts will be clean, he added.

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Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar on Thursday claimed that many BJP leaders had lined up to join his party.

There are many BJP names, and I dont want to discuss them before the media. We are discussing them locally. Based on local conditions, we will decide, Shivakumar said.

The Congress door is open to even people who are not on good terms with Shivakumar. They may not be on good terms with me or somebody else. But that wont be the basis for us to decide whether or not they should be inducted, he said.

Last year, Shivakumar constituted a committee headed by senior leader Allum Veerabhadrappa to scrutinise applications made by members of other parties to join the Congress. Since then, the party has welcomed several grassroots leaders from the JD(S) and BJP as part of Shivakumars strategy to further expand the partys presence.

Shivakumar dismissed speculation that former BJP minister CP Yogeshwar would join the Congress. I can't comment on one individual. But some people create a market for themselves. They create news, he said, without naming Yogeshwar.

According to Shivakumar, the future is uncertain for the 14 MLAs who defected from the Congress to join the BJP in 2019. "You'll see what will happen to them closer to the 2023 election," he said.

Power crisis ahead?

Shivakumar, a former energy minister, warned the Basavaraj Bommai that Karnataka could be headed towards a power crisis.

I'm warning the CM, if you show power shortage and take up power cuts, no investors will come to Karnataka. Keep this in mind, Shivakumar said, adding that the Congress would hold a meeting on November 7 to discuss this.

The state is getting coal thats enough for one day. The state isnt producing power commensurate with its capacity. The only saving grace is rainfall, he said, demanding to know the governments plan of action going forward.
Stetson - Alfred J. Marcotte, Jr., 89, formerly of Derry, NH, died Nov. 8, 2021 in Bangor, ME. He was born March 22, 1932 in Manchester, NH, the son of Alfred J. Marcotte, Sr. and Lila (Bartlett) Marcotte. Alfred lived in Derry until age 55 when he moved to Stetson, ME where he has resided s
A leading climate research group, Climate Central, has produced a stark warning for Derry that could see the train station and the Foyle and Peace bridges under water if the world's temperature does not cool down by 2030.

Also under threat would be the City of Derry airport. While the predicted maps show it will just survive being submerged by water, the new coastline will be right on its doorstep making it vulnerable to further land erosion should global temperatures continue to rise post-2030.

The Climate Central group, an independent body of leading scientists and researchers based in New Jersey, USA, has produced a series of maps on their website that show how the world as a whole would be affected if the current rate of global warming is not checked over the next nine years.

Derry falls in the category of land areas that are at risk with a number of areas close the River Foyle set to be totally submerged by water.

The Foyle, Peace and Craigavon bridges will be gone while areas such as the land close to the Waterside and Lakeview hospitals will be submerged.

The Waterside will more than live up to its name come 2030 as the train station will be gone. Even if it survived, it's purpose of rail travel will be made redundant with the majority of the Derry to Coleraine track being wiped out.

Water eroding the immediate areas on both sides of the Foyle river will force many residents and businesses to move out as current buildings there will no longer be around come 2030.

The maps from Climate Central show what Derry's landscape will look like in 2030 if the current rising in global temperatures is not checked. The areas in red show which parts of the city will be submerged in water due to rising sea levels. Images: Climate Central

The worldwide damage caused by rising seawater levels  which in turn have been manifested by rising global temperatures  has lead to many world leaders meeting in Glasgow this week at the COP26 conference to discuss what can be done to avoid this catastrophe and how quickly to implement these measures.

A mindful world public are determined to hold their governments to account on this and Saturday will see protest marches across the world in a global day of action.

Derry will be playing its part too with Cllr Shaun Harkin of People Before Profit being one of the main organisers.

He said: We're very much part of the campaign to limit temperature rise across the world. There is a serious concern that it will be above the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Along with the COP26 Coalition, we're very much backing their demands for real zero (rise in temperature) rather than net zero (of reducing the current rate of temperature rise to below 1.5) and to reach that target much faster than most governments are planning.

There are very local issues close to Derry here. For example, issues like rail expansion. We want to see it in Derry, the north west and across Ireland.

But again, this is something that has been put on the 'long finger' with regards to Derry. The Derry to Coleraine rail upgrade was supposed to be finished this year but it will now not be done until 2027 at the earliest.

With rail being one of the solutions to the climate crisis, that's a concern for us and we want that acted on much more quickly. We want to see tracks going down rather that promises.

There is also an issue with Mobuoy dump  the biggest illegal toxic dump in Europe that's right on the edge of Derry.

The Stormont Executive agreed to a public enquiry in 2014 as to how that happened but this enquiry has not happened. Nor has there been a plan to actually clean it up. The dump is still festering away there.

Dalradian Gold's plans for the toxic mining of the Sperrins is very contentious and the BBC Spotlight programme that was one about this not long ago, highlighted what could be a real disaster for the Sperrins and that's of huge environmental importance.

There are two different climate bills being debated in Stormont  and we welcome that because the North is one of the few places without a Climate Act. We also welcome that because the Executive has refused to create and support an independent environmental agency.

However, both bills fall way short of what we believe is necessary. The DUP bill, we think, is basically an attempt to make sure that there's no serious effort at halting climate change. It is basically 'green-washing'.

The other bill, from the Green Party  which we in the main welcome and support  has the goal of net zero being reached by 2045, we think, is not urgent or radical enough.

So that's why we're backing the call from the COP26 Coalition. We have to have a goal for 2035 for real zero.

Cllr Shaun Harkin of People Before Profit

Harkin insists that the global day of action protest is the people's way of ensuring that their government's are not let off the hook  especially in light of India trying to manoeuvre away from net zero by 2035 to a target of 2070 instead.

He added: India's statement of them hopefully limiting temperature levels by 2070 was disappointing. How much confidence do people have that this gathering in Glasgow will produce an agreement with statements like that?

Not to mention how much confidence they will have in big governments and the corporations attached to them to produce an agreement that they will follow through on.

There was similar optimism following the Paris Agreement back in 2015. However, one of the reasons why there are going to be big protests around the world over the next two weeks and Saturday in particular, is because many of the agreements from Paris have not been followed through on.

It's the same world leaders gathering again and I think people across the world are making the same appeal which is to act on the agreements that those leaders have previously agreed upon.

When you see India saying 2070 is their target, it is disappointing and alarming and I hope there will be protests there from people to hold their government to account and push them towards a much earlier date for net zero.

The problem right now that the COP26 Coalition has highlighted is that a lot of the net zero plans that governments have were actually not real because they do carbon trading and they set up these carbon markets that allow corporations to continue to pollute.

That just re-enforces in people that they can't trust world leaders to take the type of radical and urgent action to bring about fundamental change.

We'll be trying to put pressure on the Stormont Executive, the Dail and Westminster for the big global demands but also for them to follow through on the big demands that fall upon this island.

However, there are those who are still sceptical about whether or not global warming is really taking place. Harkin though insists that it is and that the evidence backs him up of the very real threat to the world from climate change.

He continued: The debate about whether or not the planet is warming up is over. There is growing evidence that this is happening.

There's more extreme weather that's hitting us here in Ireland and Europe. We've seen wildfires across California at an intensity that we've never really seen before.

We've seen flash floods in central Europe with numbers of people dying  and all of that is in the most economically-developed countries.

Then you see similar extreme weather across the world that's hitting the lesser-developed nations even further.

We are now seeing the reality of a changing climate that is the result of a planet that's heating up.

A 1.5 degrees Celsius rise is already too much and that's what we're already on target for. But there's so much happening across the world that we are more likely to be on course for a rise of 2.7 by the end of this century.

This is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has described this as a red alert for humanity.

The Global Day of Action in Derry is on Saturday, November 6. The meeting point will be at Waterloo Place with stalls open from 1.30pm. The rally and march itself will begin at 2pm.
A 20-year-old student who used another person's card to buy drinks and pizza has been found guilty of fraud.

Meghan Corey, of Aghagaskin Road, Magherafelt, contested three counts of fraud by false representation at Magherafelt Magistrates Court this week.

The charges related to incidents on the night of August 2/3 2019 in a bar and fast food outlet in Magherafelt.

Under questioning from her defence counsel, the defendant told the court she was studying law and accountancy at Ulster University Jordanstown, and intended to become a barrister.

Corey said she had just turned 18 at the time of the incident and would normally have had access to her mother's card on nights out 'just in case'.

The defendant also told the court her then-boyfriend would have normally kept her card for her, as she 'had been known to lose it' on previous nights out.

The court was shown CCTV footage from a Magherafelt bar - LJ's Tavern - from the night in question, which showed the defendant retrieve the card from her phone case and use it to buy drinks before returning it.

Corey had initially attempted to get into Secrets nightclub, but opted for LJ's Tavern after her then-boyfriend was refused entry. He was 17 at the time.

The defendant told the court she had drunk a bottle of Echo Falls wine and some vodka before leaving the house that evening, and that she had been 'very drunk'.

Defence pointed out that the card Corey normally used at that time, her mother's, was a blue Ulster Bank card, similar in appearance to the blue Nationwide card visible on the CCTV footage from the bar.

They also noted that on the third occasion, when the card was used in Dominos Pizza, the defendant gave her real name when ordering, which they said was further evidence the fraud was unintentional.

Corey then claimed she would not have used the card had she known it was not her mother's, and that she had 'very little' recollection from the night in question.

However, prosecution pointed out that she had been able to offer an explanation under police questioning, and also raised doubts about her inability to differentiate between the two cards.

They also noted that on the CCTV footage, the defendant's then-boyfriend attempted to hand her a note the first time the card was used.

They argued this was because he was alive to the possibility that a PIN code may have been required, and that they did not have it.

Prosecution then argued that having gotten away with it once, the defendant decided to use it on two further occasions.

Summing up, defence for Corey noted her clear criminal record and good character, and that her given evidence had been in line with her police interview.

Counsel implored the judge to question why a law and accountancy student would jeopardise her future career by using her real name while committing fraud.

Prosecution concluded by drawing the judge's attention to the CCTV footage showing she was in possession of the card and had used it on three occasions.

They argued she would have known the difference between an Ulster Bank and Nationwide card, and that she had 'chanced her arm' after the first attempt to use the card was successful.

District Judge Dunlop found Corey guilty of the charges and said that on the evidence, he was satisfied she 'knew exactly what she was doing'.

He adjourned the case until December 8 in order to allow a pre-sentence report to be completed, but warned the court was not obliged to comply with its recommendations.
Foyle Hospice has launched their annual Lights of Love Christmas appeal which will see hundreds of twinkling lights shine brightly on a tree on hospice grounds in memory of loved ones.

Every Yuletide, Foyle Hospice invites the community to get together with a local family to switch on the Christmas tree lights.

This year however, they are asking their supporters to send their love from their homes as they launch their annual Lights of Love Christmas Tree campaign.

You can dedicate a light by returning a Lights of Love tag or sponsor a light on the Christmas Tree in the grounds.

Tree tags are available for you to write a personal message in honour or remembrance of a loved one, or it might be one of support for their patients and staff.

You can post this tag back to Foyle Hospice along with your donation, where it will be placed on the hospice tree, as a token of love and remembrance.

Christmas is a festive time filled with activities and laughter. But for people living with a terminal or life-limiting illness, it can be a time of profound fear and isolation.

Foyle Hospice strives to make the holiday period bright and special for those in their care.

Donall Henderson, CEO of the Foyle Hospice said: With another year of restrictions and limitations it is safe to say that 2021 like 2020, has been a challenging year for all of us.

Foyle Hospice is heavily reliant on the support of the community  more than 65 per cent of our funding comes from our generous donors and for the last thirty-five years, that kindness has enabled us to care for more than 18,000 patients and their families.

No-one should have to face a terminal or life-limiting illness alone especially during Christmas and with your help, they wont have to. I want to thank our supporters for their continued and for your continued and tireless support  particularly over the past 18 months.

Michael Lyttle and his family will be switching on the lights this year. His wife, Mandy, was in the care of the Hospice after receiving a late-stage cancer diagnosis. She died aged 59. Michael and his two sons  Michael and Shane  shared their familys experience of the support and care provided by Foyle Hospice.

Michael said: Mandy and I grew up locally and our family which included our two sons and grandchildren were the centre of our lives.

When we were able to go on holidays together Mandy especially loved going to Spain where she could read a book and spend time relaxing in the sun by the pool. Dinner and a glass of wine were the perfect ending to the day.

Mandy also loved fashion and her friends and family know that shopping for clothes was definitely something she enjoyed tremendously.

She hadnt been feeling too well and after searching for a diagnosis for two years Mandy was given the devastating diagnosis of Stage IV bowel cancer. She started chemotherapy in February 2019 and continued it through to September.

Unfortunately, by October after undergoing further tests we received the news that cancer had spread to her liver.

Mandy was approved for a procedure to target her liver and in December 2019 was sent to Belfast where she was treated and recovered well enough to go home the Friday before Christmas. She was delighted to be able to be with her grandchildren for Christmas and spend the holidays at home with family where she was happiest.

In January 2020 during a routine appointment, we were delighted to hear the news that her liver was showing signs of responding to the treatment.

At this time Mandy had mentioned that she was having pain in her back from what she thought was arthritis. The doctor ordered an MRI and it was then that they discovered that the cancer had spread to her spine.

Mandy started a round of radiotherapy and relied on a syringe driver to help relieve the immense pain. When her pain did not subside and she was urged to go to into Foyle Hospice to help get it under control. At this point Mandy did not want to go into Foyle Hospice because she feared that she would not be able to go home again.

By February 2020 Mandy had lost a lot of weight and her pain was unbearable, she had a very high threshold for pain but it got to the point where it was excruciating.

The healthcare worker told us that she had contacted Foyle Hospice because they specialise in helping regulate pain. I heard that it may be two weeks before a room was available but luckily, they called me a few days later saying we could come in the morning.

Mandy still had to be convinced that she was only going in for a brief period in order to help with the pain. Fortunately, she finally agreed to go to the Hospice as an inpatient.

The staff were amazing, not only did they care for Mandy, they supported all of us. And it wasnt only the medical team, we met the cleaning staff, administration team and Bill and Lisa from the kitchen. They all made sure that we had everything we needed.

Her doctor Karen Harkin, even brought her dogs in to visit the patients. Mandys nurses were very reassuring and I knew that I could go home at night and that Mandy would be well cared for.

While she was there Mandy enjoyed visits from her family and friends and because of the care she was receiving at the Hospice she felt well enough to enjoy spending time with them.

Everyone at Foyle Hospice always had a smile and were there to make sure all of our needs were more than met. There was nothing that they wouldnt do to make sure that Mandy was comfortable.

After several weeks Mandy was sitting up in bed and Dr Karen told us that she could go home.

People dont realise that hospice is not always about end of life, it is about getting pain under control and getting well enough to go home.

She would not have had the last eight weeks with us if it werent for Foyle Hospice, I could not have coped having her at home with all the pain she had been in.

The staff were great with Mandy and always there for me with a smile, kind word and even a laugh.

We had no idea the journey that we would be on with Mandys illness, I dont know what we would have done without the support of Foyle Hospice.

In March 2020 Mandy died peacefully at home where she wanted to be. Foyle Hospice is honoured that her family has agreed to light the Lights of Love Christmas Tree this year, in memory of Mandy.

Hospice care is more than end of life or palliative care, it offers families a support circle to help them through a devastating and challenging time. Community commitment to keeping Foyle Hospice running is the reason this family and so many families like the Lyttles have had the support and care they need in unimaginable circumstances.

If you wish to donate to the Lights of Love appeal, go to: https://foylehospice.com/get-involved/lights-of-love/ or https://foylehospice.com/donate/

You can also donate via Foyle Hospice's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/foyle.hospice/ or by calling fundraising on: 02871359888.

If you would like to know more about Foyle Hospice, including its services and support please call 028 715351010.

If you would like to share a fundraising idea, please telephone 028 71359888.
Pooja Bhatt remembers actor Faraaz Khan on first death anniversary

It's an emotional day for Pooja Bhatt as today marks the first death anniversary of actor Faraaz Khan. Taking to Instagram, Pooja penned a heartfelt post in the beloved memory of Faraaz.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pooja B (@poojab1972)

"It was the 4'TH of Nov 2020 when I was granted the privilege & responsibility of announcing to the world that Faraaz Khan had left us by his grieving & truly generous family. Time has flown, yet not. I speak for us all when I say we are still numb with the suddenness of his departure and the vacuum he leaves behind, one that we fill with the music he introduced us to & taught us to love and the memory of some dramatic & mostly laughter infused times," she wrote. Pooja also posted a candid picture of Faraaz.

"This is my favourite photo of him. One that I shot on a beach in the Seychelles. A time that was smeared in innocence, discovery and genuine camaraderie between every single person on that journey.A time that shall live on in my memory till I breathe my last & then hopefully convert to a lingering,light-filled memory for another to draw from & pass on. Shine on Faraaz.. and thank you for the love & the music," she added.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pooja B (@poojab1972)

Faraaz, best known for his role in 'Fareb' and 'Mehndi', died of brain infection last year.
Soni Razdan will regret rejecting Gadar 'for the rest of life', adds 'I think Anil Sharma never forgave me after that'

Gadar has been one of the biggest blockbusters of Indian cinema. The film that released two decades back became a massive hit upon release. In fact, people came in trucks to catch the film in a theatre near them. But one thing that many might not know is the fact that Soni Razdan was also offered a role in the film. Now, the actress who was recently seen in Call My Agents: Bollywood opened up about the decision and added that she would regret it for the rest of her life.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Soni Razdan (@sonirazdan)

Talking to IndiaExpress, Soni Razdan said, The one project I got offered was Gadar and I said no to it at that moment. Not for any other reason but because I was producing my own show for Star Plus called Aur Phir Ek Din. I was dealing with date issues of actors. I was a producer and I could not deal with having to go away to Lucknow to shoot. I had to go to Lucknow to shoot this wonderful project, which I said no to like a fool.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by   (@journalistvineetablog)

She also added, Im so upset that I said no to it because I really wanted to be a part of it. And I think Anil Sharma never forgave me after that. He was like How can you say no? But I said, You dont realise what Im going through. Im going through a worst nightmare because I remember I was trying to juggle Kiran Kumars dates with XYZs dates with my dates. I couldnt deal. So, I said no to it.

Now, Gadar 2 would be releasing soon. The film would go on floors this month.
Divya Agarwal says she's changed after her breakup with Priyank Sharma: "Today when I talk to Priyank I am like we were such donkeys"

Divya Agarwal is quite emerging to be the queen of reality shows. The actress had recently won Bigg Boss OTT. But, it was earlier Bigg Boss itself that was to be blamed for her breakup with former partner Priyank Sharma. The duo, who had been together since Spiltsvilla, parted ways after Priyank participated in Bigg Boss. She is currently in a relationship with Varun Sood, and shares a good bond with Priyank too. Now, in a recent interview, she has opened up about it.

Talking to Bollywood Bubble, Divya said, It was a very scary time as nobody was guiding me, honestly before Spiltsvilla I was just working I was not getting any media attention and I never got such questions. But then Splitsvilla mein jo hua (what happened in Splitsvilla) it was a fairy tale. And when the media started calling me I thought when someone asks me a question, I should say it right! My friends are away from the industry. I used to be honest with the media and was unfiltered and things were amplified on me in a bad manner. I decided there has to be a stop to it."

So, how has things changed now? Divya revealed, "Now, I am a changed person if my partner enters a reality show and does something, then I will pack his bags and keep them outside the home. At that time I had no idea and to stop media calls I had to go inside the house. I had to stop it but then I understood. Today when I talk to Priyank I am like we were such donkeys. We could have cleared the confusion. I was getting new fame and media because Splitsvilla was on the air as well.

Well, Divya's growth has been immense in the last few years and fans want to see her grow more and soar higher.
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BURNS, Ore. (AP)  Another rural, conservative county in Oregon has expressed interest in becoming part of Idaho.

The OregonianLive reports that voters in Harney County on Tuesday approved a ballot measure which requires local officials to hold meetings about moving the county into Idaho. The measure passed with more than 63% of the vote. The unofficial results were: 1,567 for and 917 against.





. . .
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SEATTLE  A national firm has purchased Bellevue-based real estate brokerage Coldwell Banker Bain, according to The Seattle Times.

Owner and Chairman Bill Riss sold his majority interest in the company to US RES Holdco LLC, an affiliate of Houston-based title insurance company Stewart Information Services, the newspaper reported. Financial details were not disclosed.





. . .
Dulcie visited The Duncan Banner for Take Out Tuesday. She is a pit bull terrier and very sweet, just like her name. Dulcie is available for immediate adoption from the Stephens County Humane Society.
STONEWALL [ndash] Funeral services for Maple Hamilton, 78, of Stonewall, OK will be 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021, at the Stonewall First Baptist Church with the Apostle Gary Bruner officiating. Interment will be in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Stonewall, OK. Mrs. Hamilton passed away in a Deni
A report by KPMG into the impact of Bus Eireann onto Dundalk has shown that the company contributes approximately 21 million into the local economy.

The report, commissioned by Bus Eireann, has said that the company has had a positive effect on the local Dundalk area, as well as further afield in Louth.

The report says that the significant contribution to Dundalk comes through the local depot on the Long Walk.

According to the report, Bus Eireann town services across both Dundalk and Drogheda carried over 600,000 passengers in 2019, before the Covid-29 pandemic reduced passenger traffic on public transport across the country.

The report also details that 3,700 students across the country are taken to school every day on public transport.

There are a total of 240 Bus Eireann bus stops in Louth, 15 of which are within 2km of higher education institutions like Dundalk IT and Drogheda Institute of Further Education.

We are proud of the contribution Bus Eireann and its employees make to the country, and to local communities in County Louth, said Stephen Kent, CEO of Bus Eireann.

Ultimately, the value of Bus Eireann as Irelands national bus company is our understanding of transport needs in Irelands regional cities, towns and rural areas.

Of the companys 2,701 employees across the country, 132 of them are employed in Louth.
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It is looking likely that St Brigids day will become Irelands 10th Bank Holiday which will be good news for workers who will get an extra day off on the Monday closest to 1st February each year.

With this in mind, Sinn Fein Councillor Edel Corrigan is asking Louth County Council to carry out a programme of works to improve the area surrounding the historical site of the Saints birthplace at Fochard Bride (Faughart).

Cllr Corrigan said: Saint Brigid was one of the most remarkable and extraordinary women of her times, she is remembered for her compassion and spirituality as well as being a symbol of feminine power and strength.

We are very proud to have such strong connections to St Brigid in the North Louth area and we could do more to highlight and protect this in the surrounding area.

We need improved access to the site as well as facilities and directional signage. I would also ask the Council to promote the local connection to St Brigid and would encourage local groups, especially those with an interest in history, to get behind any campaign to promote the connection.

Ireland currently has nine bank holidays while the European average is twelve.

Cllr Corrigan said: While St Patrick is celebrated throughout the world, St Brigid has never received the full recognition that she deserves so I would welcome having a national day in her name as our other patron saint.
Dundalk-based healthcare company, Myhomecare, is set to more than double its workforce, with 300 new jobs set to be created by the company.

Myhomecare, which was established in Dundalk in 2006, currently employs 220 people nationwide in both homecare and administration roles.

The recruitment campaign comes due to the high levels of demand for home care, especially moving into the winter months, with 95% of the new jobs set to be homecare nurses or homecare assistants.

Speaking on the announcement, Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Leo Varadkar said that it was an incredible expansion for Myhomecare.

This is an incredible expansion by Myhomecare, doubling its workforce and creating 300 new jobs, said the Tanaiste.

These additional homecare nurses and assistants will make a big difference to countless people and families up and down the country, allowing those with additional needs to stay in the comfort of their own home.

It will of course also take some pressure off of hospitals, by allowing people to return home and be looked after there, rather than in a hospital.

Deirdre Doyle, Operations Manager at Myhomecare said that she was excited to bring the new staff into the company, and that she knew what it was like to have an impact on a person through homecare.

From my own previous experience as a healthcare assistant, I understand the impact and responsibility these roles bring. It is such a rewarding career knowing that we are making a difference in the lives of those most vulnerable in our community, said Ms Doyle.

With the 300 additional staff, Myhomecare will have over 520 employees employed nationwide, with services designed to help expecting mothers, babies and the young and old from birth to retirement and beyond.

Fine Gael Senator for Louth, John McGahon welcomed the campaign, saying that it was fantastic to see a company from Louth making an impact.

It is fantastic to see local Louth company Myhomecare creating 300 incredibly valuable jobs across Ireland, said Senator McGahon.

Supporting our elderly community in continuing a safe and independent life in their own homes is something we should always strive for and these new roles will certainly assist in achieving this.
There were three new travel related Covid-19 outbreaks with 19 confirmed linked cases from Lisbon, Alicante and Malaga, according to latest figures released.

Data on 128 outbreaks were reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) by regional Departments of Public Health for week 43, ending on October 30.

Six new nursing home outbreaks were reported with 15 confirmed linked cases.

One new community hospital/long-term care facility outbreak was reported with two confirmed linked cases.

There were six new acute hospital outbreaks reported with 29 confirmed linked cases.

There were 7 new residential institution outbreaks reported with 31 confirmed linked cases; six outbreaks were in centres for disabilities and one was in a Children's/TUSLA residential centre.

There were six outbreaks in other healthcare services (two in clients of home care services; three in day care centres and one in a GP clinic) with 20 confirmed linked cases.

Eighteen workplace outbreaks were reported with 58 confirmed linked cases; including two in other food production and processing, two in construction, 11 in other workplace types and three in not specified/unknown/other workplaces.

There were five new outbreaks reported in schools with 32 confirmed linked cases, four in primary schools, and one in a post-primary school.

One outbreak was reported in childcare facilities with two confirmed linked cases.

There was one University/College associated outbreak with three confirmed linked cases.

There were eight outbreaks related to retail outlets with 25 confirmed linked cases.

There were four new public house associated outbreaks with 11 confirmed linked cases.

There were four new hotel associated outbreaks with 16 confirmed linked cases.
Claremont, NH (03743)

Today

Mainly cloudy with snow showers around this morning. High 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 42F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
North Andover, MA (01845)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning will become partly cloudy this afternoon. High 54F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain. Low 47F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
A 155-acre industrial park called Unbound Gateway was approved by the Planning and Zoning Board, despite opposition from Union Pacific Railroad, which plans a 6-mile rail extension in the area south of Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
EBRD President Renaud-Basso to participate in EU-Central Asia Economic Forum

Meeting with European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis

Commitment to support green economy, digitalisation and inclusive growth

The President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Odile Renaud-Basso, will participate in the EU-Central Asia Economic Forum in Bishkek, the capital of the Kyrgyz Republic, on 5 November 2021, demonstrating the Banks commitment to the region and its sustainable development.

The Forum will give high-level international and regional stakeholders an opportunity to discuss matters of primary importance to Central Asia, including regional economic resilience, prosperity and cooperation.

Arriving from the COP26 Climate Conference, the EBRD President is expected to use her opening address to emphasise the urgent need for a green transition and the Banks aim to support countries in their shift to low-carbon and net-zero economies. Though Central Asia is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, many countries are adopting ambitious climate targets. The EBRD is actively supporting them with policy engagement and financing to develop and implement their strategies.

Ms Renaud-Basso said: I would like to confirm that the EBRDs future activity in Central Asia will be aligned with our own target of making half of the Banks annual investment green by 2025 and compliant with the goals of the Paris Agreement by early 2023. We have the capital and experience to do this, and our partners in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan can testify that the EBRD is already delivering towards these objectives.

The EBRD President is also expected to speak about the post-Covid-19 economic recovery in Central Asia, the need for better regional integration, digitalisation, inclusive development and improvement of business environment for both local and foreign investors. The concerted efforts of major international stakeholders, such as the European Union (EU) and the EBRD, can help the regions economies, some of which are still badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, move towards a sustainable and green future with targeted financial assistance and policy engagement.

At the Forum, Ms Renaud-Basso will also meet with European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis and senior representatives of the Central Asian states. It will be an opportunity to discuss the Banks policy reform agenda in Central Asia, which aims to promote stability and transparency in the business environment, support small and medium-sized enterprises and help attract greater foreign direct investment.

The EBRD has been working in Central Asia for 30 years and has since invested US$ 17.8 billion (15.4 billion) in almost 930 projects. The institutional partnership between the Bank and the EU in the region, particularly through the EU Investment Facility for Central Asia (IFCA), has been instrumental in the success of many investments. It has helped to deliver focused assistance in the form of technical cooperation and co-investment grants, guarantees and other instruments.
A MOTHER-OF-THREE who was catastrophically injured when the car her husband was driving and a tractor were in collision on a Cork road has claimed 1m in loss of earnings, the High Court has heard.

Counsel for Cork County Council, Fergus OHagan SC, told the High Court that the claim in the case of Olivia Redmond OCallaghan for 1m in loss of earnings was extremely spurious and goes to the credibility of the entire case.

In a submission to the court, Mr OHagan told Mr Justice Tony OConnor that, when an application was made to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board in 2013 in this case, there was no claim for loss of earnings, but he said later 744,000 came out of the blue and had since escalated to 1m.

Ms Redmond OCallaghan was left with massive brain damage and needing 24-hour care for the rest of her life after the accident on the old Glanmire to Cork road in 2011. She was aged 28 at the time.

Her counsel, John OMahony SC, previously told the High Court that his client, who was pregnant with her third child at the time of the accident, suffered massive brain damage, which has rendered her totally incapacitated.

He said she had been left with a most appalling repertoire of profoundly serious injuries and did not recognise her children.

Her husband, Myles OCallaghan, who was driving the car at the time, lost his life in the accident.

Ms Redmond OCallaghan is suing her late husbands estate, the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland (MIBI), and Cork County Council.

On the second day of the hearing, Mr Justice OConnor was told the issue of loss of earnings was a highly contentious aspect of the case.

Counsel for the MIBI, Edward Walsh SC, said Ms Redmond OCallaghan had not worked for three years before the collision. He said he fully accepted that the case involved one of the most profound injuries you could imagine. However, he said Ms Redmond OCallaghan had no insight and, he argued, in that case, she was not entitled to general damages, only special damages such as care.

Mr Walsh also contended liability should be heard first in the case.

Ms Redmond OCallaghan, who is now aged 37, from Gowlane South, Donoughmore, Co Cork, has taken her action through her stepfather, Liam Power.

Against Cork County Council, it is claimed the council constructed a public roadway that was allegedly defective and dangerous to road users.

It is claimed that the road was constructed with a very tight bend, with a radius of curvature that is allegedly below the minimum acceptable standard.

It was further alleged that high vegetation was permitted to grow on the embankment of the road, which allegedly restricted forward visibility, and there was an alleged failure to erect any proper warning signs.

However, Cork County Council claims the collision was caused by the alleged negligence of the late Mr OCallaghan regarding his driving, speed, care, management, and control of the car in which his wife was a passenger.

In its defence, the MIBI has claimed Ms Redmond OCallaghan allegedly failed to have any regard for her own safety and permitted herself to be carried in a car for which she allegedly knew there was no valid insurance policy in place.

Mr Justice OConnor will tomorrow hear further submissions on certain issues around the management of the case, which is expected to last six weeks.
Unfortunately, it will never bring our girl back to those of us who still miss her every day.

The words of the heartbroken family of young mother Olivia Redmond OCallaghan as they stood outside the Four Courts where the High Court had approved a 14.75 million settlement of Olivias action over the devastating brain injuries she suffered in a road accident.

Mum Olivia, who was 12 weeks pregnant with her third child, lost her husband Myles OCallaghan in the smash on October 4, 2011. He was the driver of the car in which Olivia was the passenger which crossed a double white line near an acute bend on the old Cork-Dublin road outside Glanmire and collided with a tractor and trailer.

Her counsel Dr John OMahony SC told the high court 28-year old Olivia from Donoughmore, Co Cork was rendered totally incapacitated and had the most appalling repertoire of profoundly serious injuries.

She has been left in an appalling sad state where she does not recognise her children and has been in institutional care since the accident, he said.

She carried her baby- Daniel- through all the trauma but she never regained awareness of the reality of her environment or home.

"She has no engagement with anybody."

Dr OMahony added: A lovely family has been literally destroyed.

The settlement of the action was against the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland and Cork County Council.

Olivias family outside court said the settlement will ensure they can plan for her future care and gives them hope for her further rehabilitation.

In a statement read by their solicitor John Henchion, they said they were and continue to be most grateful to all those who helped Olivia and her late husband Myles at the scene of the crash.

We also acknowledge the shock that the tractor driver experienced that day and that he did all he could to try and take evasive action, they said.

Thanked staff at CUH

The statement added: The staff at the Cork University Hospital did immense work for both Myles and Olivia. Thankfully the skill of Mr George Kaar and his team together with the many supporting doctors and nurses managed to save Olivia's life and that of her unborn child such that we were able to welcome a new addition to the family some months afterwards.

"This was obviously a time of huge joy, but coupled with enormous sadness as well.

It further said: On October 4, 2011, our grandchildren lost their parents; our daughter lost her big sister and brother-in-law and we lost our eldest daughter and son in law. At 3:2pm that afternoon the car in which Olivia and Myles were travelling on the old Dublin to Cork road crossed to it's incorrect site colliding with a tractor with devastating consequences.
ITS the last night for All The Angels at the Everyman, and if you havent got to it already, make haste.

Written by Nick Drake, this wonderful piece was first performed at Shakespeares Globe Theatre in London, now Cork audiences can see it on their own ground.

The first performance of Handels Messiah at the Fishamble Street Musick Hall is a part of Dublins history.

This delightful play, with music, re-tells the unique story in a gloriously festive Irish premiere production by Rough Magic.

Partly set in the original Smock Alley Theatre, this joyous play tells the story of the worlds most popular choral work, from its fraught birth to its glorious outcome; a tale about the complicated, comedic business of putting on a show and the transformative power of music.

Directed by Lynne Parker, the production stars Brian Doherty, Ross Gaynor and Rebecca OMara, with soprano Megan ONeill, tenor Ross Scanlon and baritone Owen Gilhooly-Miles. And if you have missed your chance here, you can always get to Dublin to see it at Smock Alley in November and on into December.

Call 021 450 1673 or see www.everymancork.com. 8pm start.

Joanne McNally brings her Waiting for Wifi to Cork Arts Theatre.

Back at the Cork Arts Theatre this week by popular demand is Waiting For WiFi, written and performed by Jessica Courtney Leen. Maggie is the girl whose life you love to hate, as she sifts effortlessly through South America on the back of her successful travel blog. Except for the fact its 2023 and Maggie is actually still in her bedroom since 2020, when she developed agoraphobia during lockdown.

Surviving on Tesco home delivery and working as an online GAA content curator, she has her family and friends fooled into believing she is living her best global life, while she runs a fake blog from the green screen in her bedroom. But tonight, when the power goes and the only world she exists in disappears, an interrupted Maggie must weather her own existential storm. Until Saturday, November 6 at 8pm.

And coming next week, the Cork One Act Theatre Festival - four nights of effort and excitement as different groups compete to be adjudged the best. Thats Wednesday-Saturday, November 10-13, at 8pm.

Taking the first slots on the Wednesday will be Gaggin Drama Group with Lucy in the Sky, by Tony Layton, and Camross Drama Group, with Semblance of Madness, by John H Newmeir. More on that event next week. All Cork Arts Theatre bookings on 021 450 5624 or www.corkartstheatre.com.

Good news for those who have missed live music for the past year and a half. Shanleys Bar in Clonakilty is launching the Shanley Sessions on Sunday nights, restarting the tradition of bringing music to the community and hosting artists as they come together and play live again.

Shanleys has played a key role in the Clonakilty music scene since the late 1970s. Now, nine weekly streamed performances and interviews, showcasing over 20 artists and bands, will take place online, weekly on Sunday at 8pm nights, via Vimeo ( https://vimeo.com/638366024 ).

Follow Shanleys on social media for live updates: https://www.facebook.com/ShanleysBar/, https://twitter.com/ShanleysBar, https://shanleysbar.ie/.

Work is building up backstage at the Opera House, sets are being constructed, scene drops being painted, wardrobe mistresses working overtime, and in dance schools, small hopefuls are rehearsing their routines for the big night when the pantomime opens. That isnt until December 10, but tickets are already on sale, and going fast!

In the meantime, after the success of their recently released studio album One Day At A Time, Kodaline are now on an acoustic tour across Ireland, and are at the Opera House on Wednesday, November 10.

Call 021 427 0022 or see www.corkoperahouse.ie for bookings.
Health officials have urged people to reduce their socialising amid a big rise in Covid-19 cases.

The stark message came as health officials said that socialising had returned to levels not seen since the pandemic began.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said individuals should scale back the number of people they are meeting. That will mean cutting contacts, he told a press briefing.

Perhaps its not what people want to hear. Its not something I want to be telling people, he added.

He called on people to ration the kinds of discretionary activity you might undertake.

If we can have most of the people observing most of the measures most of the time, that will make a huge difference.

It comes as a further 3,174 cases of Covid were reported in the Republic on Wednesday, the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) confirmed.

There are 460 Covid-positive patients in hospital, including 86 in intensive care.

A further 56 deaths were newly notified in the past week, bringing the total number of Covid deaths in the State to 5,492.

Dr Holohan said Nphet was not currently considering recommending that the Government introduce fresh restrictions.

For now, the question of restrictions is a hypothetical one, Dr Holohan told reporters.

He noted that incidence was "increasing rapidly" in young adults aged 19-24 and across all adult age groups up to those aged 75.

The chief medical officer stopped short of telling people to avoid nightclubs, stressing instead that cases were too high among all segments of the population and that no one activity could be blamed.

He asked people to be more careful and to cut down on high-risk activities.

Epidemiologist Professor Philip Nolan said there were only two weeks since the start of the pandemic when the number of cases reported was higher.

He warned that there was no way to guarantee cases would peak in the next few weeks, and that it was impossible to say precisely when cases might peak and start to fall.

Prof Nolan said that some models showed that case numbers might peak in late November or early December.

However, he said that other models showed that the peak could happen later this year and case numbers may be slower to decline.

It is very hard to say, Prof Nolan said.

Pressure on health system

Earlier, a senior health official said the hospital system was currently able to cope with the surge in Covid-19 cases.

Chief clinical officer in the HSE, Dr Colm Henry, said the recent rise in coronavirus cases was causing pressure on the health system.

However, he stressed that the situation would be significantly worse if Irish people did not have the protection provided by the Covid vaccine.

Were seeing a surge in cases, he said on Wednesday.

Thats clearly causing its own strains and pressure because its happening at a time in winter when other viruses are circulating and were beginning to see our first cases of influenza, albeit in small numbers.

The 14-day incidence now stands at 695 per 100,000, an increase of 18 per cent on last week, according to Nphet.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said on Tuesday that he is not currently contemplating reintroducing restrictions to stem the spread of Covid-19.

Dr Henry told RTE radio on Wednesday: Were seeing that firewall, that floodwall, of vaccine protection hold tight for the large part.

The harm that it is converting into is much lower than it was in January.

Vaccines alone will not prevent the spread of infection and vaccines alone will not prevent serious illness if enough people become infected, he warned.

While some hospitals have been forced to make cancellations amid growing pressures, Mr Henry said that that system is currently coping.

However, he warned that extra capacity was not indefinite.

That intensive care capacity is not indefinite, in terms of its ability to absorb all the pressures that are being heaped upon it.

Earlier this week, the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac) recommended that booster jabs be rolled out to healthcare workers.

Dr Henry said that the booster programme for doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff will begin in the coming days and will take around six weeks.


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The "Linux Threat Report 2021 1H" from Trend Micro found that Linux cloud operating systems are heavily targeted for cyberattacks, with nearly 13 million detections in the first half of this year. As organizations expand their footprint in the cloud, correspondingly, they are exposed to the pervasive threats that exist in the Linux landscape.

This latest threat report, released Aug. 23, provides an in-depth look at the Linux threat landscape. It discusses several pressing security issues that affect Linux running in the cloud.

Key findings include that Linux is powerful, universal, and dependable, but not devoid of flaws, according to the researchers. However, like other operating systems, Linux remains susceptible to attacks.

Linux in the cloud powers most infrastructures, and Linux users make up the majority of the Trend Micro Cloud One enterprise customer base at 61 percent, compared to 39 percent Windows users.

The data comes from the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network (SPN) or the data reservoir for all detections across all Trend Micro's products. The results show enterprise Linux at considerable risk from system configuration mistakes and outdated Linux distributions.

For instance, data from internet scan engine Censys.io revealed that nearly 14 million results for exposed devices running any sort of Linux operating system on July 6, 2021. A search for port 22 in Shodan, a port commonly used for Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) for Linux-based machines, showed almost 19 million exposed devices detected as of July 27, 2021.

Like any operating system, security depends entirely on how you use, configure, or manage the operating system. Each new Linux update tries to improve security. However, to get the value you must enable and configure it correctly, cautioned Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at Thycotic.

"The state of Linux security today is rather good and has evolved in a positive way, with much more visibility and security features built-in. Nevertheless, like many operating systems, you must install, configure, and manage it with security in mind -- as how cybercriminals take advantage is the human touch," he told LinuxInsider.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T





Top Linux Threats

The Trend Micro Report disclosed rampant malware families within Linux systems. Unlike previous reports based on malware types, this study focused on the prevalence of Linux as an operating system and the pervasiveness of the various threats and vulnerabilities that stalk the OS.

That approach showed that the top three threat detections originated in the U.S. (almost 40 percent), Thailand (19 percent), and Singapore (14 percent).

Detections arose from systems running end-of-life versions of Linux distributions. The four expired distributions were from CentOS versions 7.4 to 7.9 (almost 44 percent), CloudLinux Server (more than 40 percent), and Ubuntu (about 7 percent).

Trend Micro tracked more than 13 million malware events flagged from its sensors. Researchers then cultivated a list of the prominent threat types consolidated from the top 10 malware families affecting Linux servers from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2021.

The top threat types found in Linux systems in the first half of 2021 are:

Coinminers (24.56 percent)

Web shell (19.92 percent)

Ransomware (11.56 percent)

Trojans (9.56 percent)

Others (3.15 percent)

The top four Linux distributions where the top threat types in Linux systems were found in H1-2021 are:

CentOS Linux (50.80 percent)

CloudLinux Server (31.24 percent)

Ubuntu Server (9.56 percent)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.73 percent)

Top malware families include:

Coinminers (25 percent)

Web shells (20 percent)

Ransomware (12 percent)

CentOS Linux and CloudLinux Server are the top Linux distributions with the found threat types, while web application attacks happen to be the most common attack vector.

Web Apps Top Targets

Most of the applications and workloads exposed to the internet run web applications. Web application attacks are among the most common attack vectors in Trend Micro's telemetry, said researchers.

If launched successfully, web app attacks allow hackers to execute arbitrary scripts and compromise secrets. Web app attacks also can modify, extract, or destroy data. The research shows that 76 percent of the attacks are web-based.

The LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) made it inexpensive and easy to create web applications. In a very real way, it democratized the internet so anyone can set up a web application, according to John Bambenek, threat intelligence advisor at Netenrich.

"The problem with that is that anyone can set up a web app. While we are still waiting for the year of Linux on the desktop, it is important for organizations to use best practices for their web presences. Typically, this means staying on top of CMS patches/updates and routine scanning with even open-source tools (like the Zed Attack Proxy) to find and remediate SQL injection vulnerabilities," he told LinuxInsider.

The report referenced the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10 security risks, which lists injection flaws and cross-scripting (XSS) attacks remaining as high as ever. What strikes Trend Micro researchers as significant is the high number of insecure deserialization vulnerabilities.

This is partly due to the ubiquity of Java and deserialization vulnerabilities in it, according to Trend Micro. It's report also noted that the Liferay Portal, Ruby on Rails, and Red Hat JBoss deserialization vulnerabilities as being prominent.

Attackers also try to use vulnerabilities where there is broken authentication to gain unauthorized access to systems. Plus, the number of command injection hits also poses a surprise as they are higher than what Trend Micro's analysts anticipated.

Expected Trend

It is no surprise that the majority of these attacks are web-based. Every website is different, written by different developers with different skill sets, observed Shawn Smith, director of infrastructure at nVisium.

"There is a wide range of different frameworks across a multitude of languages with various components that all have their own advantages and drawbacks. Combine this with the fact that not all developers are security gurus, and you've got an incredibly alluring target," he told LinuxInsider.

Web servers are one of the most common services to expose to the internet because most of the world interacts with the internet through websites. There are other areas exposed -- like FTP or IRC servers -- but the vast majority of the world is using websites as their main contact point to the internet.

"As a result, this is where attackers will focus to get the biggest return on investment for their time spent," Smith said.

OSS Linked to Supply Chain Attacks

Software supply chains must be secured to deal with the Linux attack landscape as well, noted the Trend Micro report. Attackers can insert malicious code to compromise software components of third-party suppliers. That code then connects to a command-and-control server to download and deploy backdoors and other malicious payloads within the system, causing remote code.

This can lead to remote code execution to an enterprise's system and computing resources. Supply chain attacks can also come from misconfigurations, which are the second top incident type in cloud-native environments, according to the Trend Micro report. More than 56 percent of their survey respondents had a misconfiguration or known unpatched vulnerability incident involving their cloud-native applications.

Hackers are having an easy time. "The major attack types on web-based applications have remained constant over the recent past. That, combined with the rising time-to-fix and declining remediation rates, makes the hackers' job easier," said Setu Kulkarni, vice president of strategy at NTT Application Security.

Organizations need to test applications in production, figuring out what their top three-to-five vulnerability types are. Then launch a targeted campaign to address them, rinse, and repeat, he recommended.

The "Linux Threat Report 2021 1H" is available here.

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open-source technologies. He is an esteemed reviewer of Linux distros and other open-source software. In addition, Jack extensively covers business technology and privacy issues, as well as developments in e-commerce and consumer electronics. Email Jack.


Effingham, IL (62401)

Today

Showers early, then partly cloudy for the afternoon. High 53F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low near 25F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Fayetteville, TN (37334)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain during the afternoon. High 63F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain ending this evening. Partial clearing overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low near 40F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Sir Barry Gibb to feature on Isle of Man stamps

A special set of stamps will celebrate the musical career and charitable work of Manxman Barry Gibb.

Gibb, the last surviving member of legendary group The Bee Gees, was born at the Jane Crookall Maternity Home in Douglas on 1st September 1946, and lived on the Island until 1955 when the family moved first to Manchester, then emigrated to Australia in 1958 before returning to the UK in 67. He currently resides in Miami in the US.

Says Barry Gibb: Im very proud of my Manx roots. I was born and bred on the ancient, mystical, magical Isle of Man, and I have very fond memories of growing up there, so to appear on a set of its stamps is not only a wonderful surprise, but also an honour and a privilege.

The stamp issue from Isle of Man Post Office will help to raise awareness for Nordoff Robbins, a charity dedicated to investigating the impact that music therapy can have for those affected by lifelimiting illness, isolation or disability.

The seven 2021 Barry Gibb Isle of Man stamps created feature Barry at various stages in his incredible musical career.
Athens, AL (35611)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High near 65F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain ending this evening. Partial clearing overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low 39F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Blue Origin has failed in its lawsuit against NASA over SpaceX's lunar lander contract. CNBC reports the Federal Court of Claims has ruled against Blue Origin, dismissing the company's claims. While the opinion is currently sealed, Blue Origin's case had revolved around accusations NASA ignored "key flight safety requirements" when handing the Human Landing System to SpaceX.

The opinion will be publicly available sometime after November 18th, when both sides of the lawsuit are expected to supply redactions. NASA put SpaceX's work on hold following the lawsuit, but efforts should resume November 8th.

Blue Origin previously challenged the contract through the Government Accountability Office only to be rejected in July, leading Jeff Bezos' outfit to respond with a lawsuit. The firm even tried drastically undercutting SpaceX with a $2 billion bid, arguing at the time that NASA has historically awarded contracts to multiple partners to make sure a mission launches on time.

The outcome isn't surprising given NASA's own skepticism. The agency believed Blue Origin was gambling with its initial $5.9 billion proposal on flawed assumptions that NASA would both haggle down the price and receive the funding needed to cover a more expensive bid. Blue Origin disagreed with the assessment and felt it made a good offer, but that still suggests NASA preferred SpaceX for its lower pricing instead of any unfair criteria.

In a statement, Blue Origin portrayed the ruling as a partial victory. The case allegedly "highlighted the important safety issues" in HLS procurement. and showed the need for an "unprejudiced" process that spurred competition and included backup systems. The company was also keen to tout its continued involvement with the Artemis program, including development of lunar resource systems, robotics and sensors. It's not clear if Blue Origin will challenge the outcome (we've asked about this), but we wouldn't be shocked if there was an appeal. You can read the full statement below.

Our lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims highlighted the important safety issues with the Human Landing System procurement process that must still be addressed. Returning astronauts safely to the Moon through NASAs public-private partnership model requires an unprejudiced procurement process alongside sound policy that incorporates redundant systems and promotes competition. Blue Origin remains deeply committed to the success of the Artemis program, and we have a broad base of activity on multiple contracts with NASA to achieve the United States goal to return to the Moon to stay. We are fully engaged with NASA to mature sustainable lander designs, conduct a wide variety of technology risk reductions, and provide Commercial Lunar Payload Services. We are also under contract with NASA to develop in-situ resource utilization technology, lunar space robotics, and lunar landing sensor collaboration including testing on New Shepard. We look forward to hearing from NASA on next steps in the HLS procurement process.

In a tweet, Bezos said: "Not the decision we wanted, but we respect the courts judgment, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract."

Not the decision we wanted, but we respect the courts judgment, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract. pic.twitter.com/BeXc4A8YaW  Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 4, 2021

Update 11/4, 1:50PM ET: NASA said it would resume work with SpaceX "as soon as possible" following the decision. It added that it was working with multiple companies on Artemis projects, such as a 2022 request for recurring lunar landing services.
Scammers used a new type of phishing campaign, which doesn't use emails, to steal around $500,000 worth of cryptocurrency from wallets this past weekend alone. According to Check Point Research, those bad actors purchased Google Ads placements for their fraudulent websites that imitate popular wallets, such as Phantom App and MetaMask. The malicious websites have URLs close to the original's, such as "phantonn.app"  the real service's URL is "phantom.app"  with designs also copied from the real deal.

Check Point Research

The scammers will then steal the victim's passphrase if they visit the fake website and type it in. If the victim uses the fake website to create a new wallet, they will be given the attacker's secret recovery phrase. In the event that they use the recovery phrase to log in, they'll actually be logging into the bad actor's account, and any fund transferred to it will go to the scammer. For MetaMask, in particular, the fake website has the option to import an existing wallet. Since doing so requires a seed phrase, the scammers will also get access to it.

As Check Point Research explains, the Phantom App and MetaMask are some of the most popular wallets for Solana and Ethereum. It cross-referenced Reddit forums to come to the conclusion that around half a million dollars were stolen last weekend alone, and it found 11 compromised wallet accounts containing crypto worth between $1,000 and $10,000. The scammers had already withdrawn funds from those wallets before CPR found them.

CPR says scamming groups are now bidding on keywords on Google Ads, which is a testament to how effective the method is. It's now advising users to examine the wallet's URL closely and to skip Google Ads results altogether so as not to unknowingly fall for the scam.

Update 11/05/21 1PM ET: Google has told Engadget in a statement: "This behavior directly violates our policies and we immediately suspended these accounts and removed the ads. This appears to be a malicious actor looking for ways to evade our detection. We are always adjusting our enforcement mechanisms to prevent these abuses."
GM's self-driving Cruise division has launched its fully driverless robo-taxi service in San Francisco, with co-founder and President Kyle Vogt getting the first ride, TechCrunch reported. To start with, the service will be offered only to GM employees, as it's still only licensed for testing.

"Earlier this week, I requested a ride through our Cruise app and took several back-to-back rides in San Francisco  with no one else in the vehicle," Vogt wrote in a YouTube video description. "There are lots of other Cruise employees (not just me) who are testing and refining the full customer experience as we take another major step toward the first commercial AV [ride hailing] product in a dense urban environment."

Vogt said the Cruise launched the Bolt vehicles on Monday at 11PM, and it "began to roam around the city, waiting for a ride request." He got his first ride from a Cruise Bolt EV called "Sourdough," saying the experience was "smooth." A separate video showed sections before and after the vehicle picked up passengers while it was in "ghost mode" with no one in it.

Early last month, Cruise received a California DMV permit to operate the service between the hours of 10PM and 6AM at a maximum speed of 30 MPH in mild weather conditions (no worse than light rain and fog). It's allowed to run them without drivers and charge for delivery services, but not ride-hailing. For paid robo-taxi rides, it must apply for a final permit with the California Public Utilities Commission.

GM recently launched its "Ultra Cruise" system for passenger vehicles, promising that it will "ultimately enable hands-free driving in 95 percent of all driving scenarios." The company has spent 10 million miles testing the system, and its previous Super Cruise has generally garnered positive reviews compared to rival systems like Tesla's Autopilot.

Update 11/4/2021 1:19 PM ET: Cruise told Engadget that it is currently only offering fully driverless rides to employees right now. While it is allowed under its testing permit to offer free rides to the public as well, it's not doing so yet. The headline has been changed to emphasize that the program is still in the testing phase, and a reference to rides being available to certain members of the public has been removed.
Google is honoring South Korea's law requiring support for third-party payments, but not quite in the way you might have expected. The Wall Street Journal reports Google will allow the use of alternative payment systems for Play Store apps in South Korea. Check out with a supporting app and you'll have the choice of billing methods for the transaction. However, this won't let developers duck Google's fees.

The company stressed that it would still charge service fees, but would cut that cost by four percent to help offset costs from running a separate billing system. E-book and music streaming app developers would pay Google a six percent cut instead of the previous 10 percent, for instance, while most creators will pay 11 percent instead of 15 percent. Some very popular developers won't see much change at all, though, dropping from 30 percent to 26 percent. More implementation details are coming in the "weeks and months" ahead.

Senior public policy director Wilson White argued that Google still needed to take a cut to "continue to invest" in Android and the Play Store. The fees help keep those platforms free, White said. They also fund the advancement of Android, developer tools and security.

Whether or not Korean regulators will accept Google's approach isn't clear. The new law doesn't bar Google from taking a slice of in-app purchases, but the small drop in fees might not be enough to offset the costs of third-party systems. The law was meant to open up app stores and foster competition  that won't happen if it's too cost-prohibitive to use third-party payments. While this might stop Google from suing developers who offer alternatives, it may still discourage those developers from considering alternatives in the first place.
Electric transport startup Rivian has been sued by one of its former employees. Per The Wall Street Journal , Laura Schwab, an executive who was a vice president of sales and marketing at the automaker until last month, filed a gender discrimination complaint with the California Superior Court in Orange County on Thursday. In the lawsuit, Schwab alleges she was fired by Rivian after she complained of a toxic bro culture that saw other executives exclude her from meetings and ignore her advice.

The culture at Rivian was actually the worst Ive experienced in over 20 years in the automotive industry, Schwab told The Journal. A veteran of the automotive industry, Schwab held executive posts at Aston Martin Lagonda and Jaguar Land Rover before she joined Rivian in November 2020.

According to the outlet, Schwab tried to push the company to address numerous concerns while she was there. In one instance, she allegedly tried to tell the other executives on Rivians leadership team that the company had underpriced its vehicles. In yet another situation, she tried to raise concerns about the quality of the automakers manufacturing process. In the former case, the company allegedly initially dismissed her advice only to later follow through on it after a male executive raised the same issue.

The suit comes ahead of Rivians planned IPO next week where the company will seek to raise as much as $9.6 billion in additional investment. It also recently started producing R1T trucks for customers. More broadly, the suit comes as several other companies in the tech space face scrutiny over their gender equality practices. Most notably, theres Activision Blizzard, which was sued by Californias fair employment regulator in July for fostering what it described as a sexist frat boy workplace culture. The fallout from that lawsuit has been far-reaching. Following months of pressure from employees, the company ended its policy of forced arbitration in cases involving sexual harassment and discrimination and put in place a zero-tolerance stance toward harassment.

Citing the quiet period ahead of its IPO, Rivian declined to comment on the complaint.
Enid, OK (73701)

Today

Mostly cloudy early, then sunshine for the afternoon. High near 60F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

A clear sky. Low around 30F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
The damage caused by COVID-19 to the lungs smallest blood vessels has been intricately captured using the ESRF-EBS's high-energy X-rays.

Scientists from UCL and the ESRF have used a revolutionary new imaging technology called Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT), to scan donated human organs, including lungs from a COVID-19 donor. Using HiP-CT, the research team, which includes clinicians in Germany and France, saw how severe COVID-19 infection shunts blood between the two separate systems  the capillaries that oxygenate the blood and those that feed the lung tissue itself. Such cross-linking stops the patients blood from being properly oxygenated, which was previously hypothesised but not proven.

HiP-CT enables 3D mapping across a range of scales, allowing clinicians to view the whole organ as never before by imaging it as a whole and then zooming down to the cellular level. The technique uses X-rays supplied by the ESRF-EBS, now the brightest source of X-rays in the world at 100 billion times brighter than a hospital X-ray. Due to this intense brilliance, researchers can view blood vessels five microns in diameter (a tenth of the diameter of a hair) in an intact human lung. A clinical CT scan only resolves blood vessels that are about 100 times larger, around 1mm in diameter.

Scientists Claire Walsh, UCL (left) and Paul Tafforeau, ESRF (right), during experiments at the ESRF. (Credit S.Cande/ESRF)



Dr Claire Walsh (UCL Mechanical Engineering) said, The ability to see organs across scales like this will really be revolutionary for medical imaging. As we start to link our HiP-CT images to clinical images through AI techniques, we will - for the first time - be able to highly accurately validate ambiguous findings in clinical images. For understanding human anatomy this is also a very exciting technique, being able to see tiny organ structures in 3D in their correct spatial context is key to understanding how our bodies are structured and how they therefore function.

Maximilian Ackermann MD (University Medical Center Mainz), clinical user of the technique, said, Shortly after the beginning of the global pandemic, we demonstrated that COVID-19 is a systemic vascular disease using histopathological (optical imaging of tissue) and molecular methods. However, these techniques did not adequately address the extent of the changes and clotting in fine blood vessels of whole lungs.

Danny Jonigk, Professor of Thoracic Pathology, (Hannover Medical School, Germany) said, By combining our molecular methods with the HiP-CT multiscale imaging in lungs affected by COVID-19 pneumonia, we gained a new understanding how shunting between blood vessels in a lungs two vascular systems occurs in COVID-19 injured lungs, and the impact it has on oxygen levels in our circulatory system."

Dr Paul Tafforeau, lead scientist at ESRF, said, The idea to develop this new HiP-CT technique came after the beginning of the global pandemic, by combining several techniques that were used at the ESRF to image large fossils, and using the increased sensitivity of the new Extremely Brilliant Source at the ESRF, ESRF-EBS. This allows us to see in 3D the incredibly small vessels within a complete human organ, enabling us to distinguish a blood vessel from the surrounding tissue, and even to observe some specific cells. This is a real breakthrough, as human organs have low contrast and so are very difficult to image in detail with the current available techniques. ESRF-EBS has allowed us to go from deciphering the secrets of fossils to seeing the human body as never before."



Using HiP-CT to create the Human Organ Atlas (link)

With support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the UCL-led team are using HiP-CT to produce a Human Organ Atlas, launching today. This will display six donated control organs: brain, lung (of a COVID-19 patient), heart, two kidneys and spleen. They will be available online for surgeons, clinicians and the interested public.

Project lead Professor Peter Lee (UCL Mechanical Engineering) said, The Atlas spans a previously poorly explored scale in our understanding of human anatomy, which is the centimetre to micron scale in intact organs. Clinical CT and MRI scans can resolve down to just below a millimetre, whilst histology (studying cells / biopsy slices under a microscope), electron microscopy (which uses an electron beam to generate images) and other similar techniques resolve structures with sub-micron accuracy, but only on small biopsies of tissue from an organ. HiP-CT bridges these scales in 3D, imaging whole organs to provide new insights into our biological makeup.



Insights for other diseases and conditions

The researchers are confident that the scale-bridging imaging from whole organ down to cellular level could provide additional insights into many diseases such as cancer or Alzheimers Disease.

Clinician Willi Wagner, radiologist at University Hospital in Heidelberg said, HiP-CT is filling a vast imaging gap in human medicine: clinical imaging provides 3D data of the body and organs but is limited to a gross scale; histopathology on the other hand provides detailed images of tissues and cells derived from small pieces of organs. It is generally limited to a small field and two dimensions. HiP-CT is bridging the organ to tissue scale, tightly linking the clinical disciplines of radiology and pathology and providing never before seen structural data of 3D tissue architecture and disease patterns.

The authors hope the Human Organ Atlas will eventually contain a library of diseases that affect organs on a range of scales, from 1 to 100s of microns to entire organs, helping clinicians as they diagnose and treat a wide range of diseases. The team also hope to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to calibrate clinical CT and MRI scans, enhancing the understanding of clinical imaging and enabling faster and more accurate diagnosis.

The work was supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the ESRF, the UK-MRC and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Additional support was from the German Centre for Lung Research (DZL, BREATH), the ERC, the German Registry of COVID-19 autopsies (DeRegCOVID), INSERM, University of Grenoble Alpes, Kidney Research UK, Rosetrees Trust, the Wellcome Trust, GOSH and the German Registry of COVID-19 Autopsies.

Reference

Imaging intact human organs with local resolution of cellular structures using hierarchical phase-contrast tomography, C.L. Walsh et al., Nature Methods (2021); https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-021-01317-x
The logjam of U.S. imports stacked on ships off the coast of Los Angeles isnt just getting longer. Its getting wider.

Of the 77 container vessels waiting as of Tuesday for berth space at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, 23 had room to carry more than 10,000 containers measured in 20-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, according to data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California & Vessel Traffic Service Los Angeles and Long Beach.

That share  30% of queued vessels exceeding 10,000 TEUs  is up from 23% at the end of August, when 10 of the 43 anchored ships topped that threshold. Thats pushed the average capacity of the waylaid ships close to 6,900 TEUs, or about a thousand more than the average two months ago, according to the data.

So its not just the number of ships that matters in assessing the severity of the snarl  its the amount of boxes theyre carrying. With bigger payloads coming into the ports, efforts to move cargo inland on trucks and trains will have to accelerate to make any noticeable dent in the backlog in the near term. The average wait for ships bound for Los Angeles exceeded 14 days this week, roughly the amount of time it takes the fastest carriers to cross the Pacific.

Container Chaos

A rising number of big container ships is worsening U.S. port bottlenecks

Source: Marine Exchange of Southern California & Vessel Traffic Service Los Angeles and Long Beach

Its gotten so bad that the governor of Texas launched the Escape California Twitter campaign this week, with a 30-second video telling carriers that in less than two weeks, they can re-route cargo to one of the 24/7 functioning Texas cargo ports.

Among the carriers operating on the transpacific lanes is Hawaii-based Matson, which is trying to meet strong demand for expedited freight to the West Coast from Asia ahead of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the rest of the holiday shopping season. Its also seeing shippers planning ahead for delivery before Chinas Lunar New Year holiday in February.

All elements of the supply chain infrastructure from origination in China, to the distribution points in the U.S., are in chaos, Matson CEO Matthew Cox told Wall Street analysts Wednesday. We expect elevated consumption demand and inventory restocking to remain largely in place at least through mid-year 2022.

Brendan Murray

 : www.bloomberg.com
A benefit that can provide seniors with increased monthly Social Security benefits is being promoted by the American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance.

"When Medicare Open Enrollment began we started getting inquiries from consumers wanting to know more about the Give Back program," explains Jesse Slome, director of the American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance (AAMSI). "The television airwaves are full of ads talking about this great benefit but with no details. Many seniors are wary of calling a toll-free number and having their name added to a solicitation list."

To benefit seniors seeking information, the Association has just posted answers to key questions about the program. For example, the maximum benefit a senior can receive in 2022 is $148.50-per-month. However, the benefit can be as little as one dollar or less.

"It is important to understand who is eligible and that not all plans offer this benefit," Slome points out. "Medicare Open Enrollment is the ideal time to look into this benefit and compare your coverage with what could be better, cost less, or provide this added benefit." Open Enrollment ends December 7, 2021.

The American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance advocates for the importance of planning and supports independent Medicare agents who market Medicare solutions. To learn more about the 2022 Medicare Give Back Benefit visit the Association's website at www.Medicaresupp.org /edicare-give-back-benefit/
Parents of children 5 to 11 in Bexar County can now get them vaccinated against COVID-19  starting this week at some providers  after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric COVID-19 vaccine for that age group.

Claude Jacob, director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, estimated that 330,000 children now will be eligible for the vaccine.

The child-size dose, which was recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a CDC advisory panel, comes as nearly 6.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. About 1 million of those infections have occurred since early September, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

More than 900 health care providers across Texas will receive 1.3 million doses of Pfizers pediatric COVID-19 vaccine over the next week. Thirty-four providers in Bexar County will receive the shots, with 5,400 allocated to University Health.

As distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine for children ramps up in the coming days, heres what parents need to know.

Where to get vaccinated

Parents are encouraged to contact their childs pediatrician to receive the Pfizer vaccine.

The Childrens Hospital of San Antonio began administering the COVID-19 vaccine for children 5 to 17 on Wednesday. Schedule an appointment online or by calling 210-704-2011.

University Health will begin vaccinating children Thursday at the Wonderland of the Americas mall at 4522 Fredericksburg Road. Appointments are required for children 5 to 11 and can be scheduled at University Healths website. For those 12 and older, appointments are not necessary.

On ExpressNews.com: Where Texans can find the COVID vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds

Pharmacies, such as CVS and Walgreens, will be accepting appointments for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines for children 5 to 11 starting Saturday. Parents can sign their children up for appointments at Walgreens at Walgreens.com/ScheduleVaccine or at CVS on its COVID website.

H-E-B will begin offering the pediatric vaccine in select stores starting Monday. Appointments can be scheduled online at heb.com/vaccine.

Children can receive the COVID-19 vaccine at Metro Healths drive-thru site at the Alamodome and at its various vaccine pop-up clinics starting Nov. 10. Register for a vaccination at the Alamodome at Metro Healths website.

A list of Texas providers is available here. Parents can also check vaccines.gov.

Also, San Antonio Independent School District is working with South Texas Allergy & Asthma Medical Professionals to hold vaccine clinics for children 5 to 11. The clinics will be held from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 12 and Nov. 19, and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 13 and Nov. 20. Information is available at www.saisd.net.

Why should I vaccinate my child?

Children who contract the coronavirus may get COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, which can sometimes require hospitalization and in rarer cases lead to death. They could also develop long-term complications known as long covid. Since the delta variant emerged, the CDC reported that COVID-19 hospitalizations in children increased fivefold. Children 5 to 11 make up 39% of cases among those under 18, and 8,300 COVID-19 cases in that age range have resulted in hospitalization. As of Oct. 17, the CDC reported 146 deaths of children 5 to 11.

Is it safe to vaccinate your child?

Yes. The Food and Drug Administration concluded that the Pfizer vaccine is nearly 91% effective in preventing COVID-19 in children and that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh its risks. Roughly 3,100 children 5 to 11 received the vaccine during trials, and there have been no serious side effects.

The Pfizer dose is lower for young children  10 micrograms instead of 30 micrograms. The child vaccine will be administered in two doses, three weeks apart.

Are there side effects?

In clinical trials, side effects from the child vaccine were mild and similar to those seen in adults and with other vaccines recommended for children. The most common side effect was a sore arm, while some experienced headaches, fatigue, joint pain, chills, fever and nausea. Most children reported side effects after the second dose rather than the first.

Side effects tend to subside within two days.

What about severe allergic reactions?

A registered nurse or doctor will administer the vaccine to children and will wait 15 to 30 minutes to monitor for adverse reactions. If a child has an allergic reaction  such as anaphylaxis  an emergency team will be close by to help.

Severe reactions from the COVID-19 vaccine have been rare.

Can I get Moderna or Johnson & Johnson for my children?

As of right now, Pfizer is the only vaccine approved for children 5 to 11.

Elena Bruess writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. elena.bruess@express-news.net

Cayla Harris reports from the Express-News Austin Bureau. cayla.harris@express-news.net

laura.garcia@express-news.net
DENVER (AP)  A North Dakota-based organization representing Native Americans sued Colorado this week for a measure banning American Indian school mascots which was passed last year amid a nationwide push for racial justice following George Floyds murder in Minneapolis.

The lawsuit by the nonprofit Native American Guardians Association was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, naming Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser and Kathryn Redhorse, the executive director of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs. The firm is representing a John Doe, Jane Doe and three other Colorado residents who cite Native American heritage in the lawsuit.

The organization's lawsuit argues that the Colorado law is unconstitutional and unlawfully enacts state-sanctioned race discrimination" against the Native American residents the association is representing.

The Colorado measure, signed into law in June, fines public schools, colleges and universities $25,000 monthly for their use of American Indian-themed mascots after June 1, 2022. The law does not apply to schools on tribal lands and also allows exceptions for schools that had existing agreements with tribes.

The suit argues that the complete erasure of Native American imagery is not beneficial and that the use of positive and respectful Native American symbols and mascots in schools honors the group, helps neutralize offensive stereotypes and teaches the public about Native American history. The lawsuit also states that the use of positive Native American symbolism is a form of reappropriation or a way to reclaim names and images that were once directed at them as insults in order to turn them outward as badges of pride."

According to the lawsuit, John and Jane Doe, who are of Cherokee and Chippewa descent, attend Yuma High School in northeast Colorado which is home of the Yuma Indians. The two want their school to continue honoring their cultures and heritage because as the suit alleges, they would suffer a hostile environment" if the Native mascots were banned.

The Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs has identified more than 20 schools across the state for violating the law by using terms such as Savages, Indians and Warriors in their mascot's name.

Spokespeople for Polis and Weiser said they would not comment because the lawsuit is ongoing.

An email sent Thursday to the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs for comment on the lawsuit was not immediately returned.
U.S. Army North has dispatched a medical team to Utah to help support civilian health workers caring for COVID-19 patients.

The San Antonio-based command, which provides operational oversight to the Pentagons active-duty military coronavirus response in support of federal efforts and the states, sent 15 medical specialists at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

They are the first monoclonal antibody infusion team the Department of Defense has deployed, and are among the roughly 10,000 troops Army North has sent to help civilian health care providers since the coronavirus pandemic began in March, 2020, its commander, Lt. Gen. John Evans Jr., said in a statement.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio-based Army North sends medical teams to Washington state

The treatment can block the virus from taking over cells and is used in higher-risk patients with moderate cases of COVID-19.

The Utah team is from the Air Force and includes a medical doctor, nurses and other healthcare workers who will support Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital in St. George, Utah.

The Beehive States 14-day average positive test rate for coronavirus struck a new high Monday that exceeded 12 percent, according to a chart maintained by the Mayo Clinic.

The rate had been relatively flat until Oct. 20, when it hit 11 percent and began to rise.

Other military medical teams currently are working in Alabama, Idaho and Washington state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Utah had recorded 10,166 coronavirus cases in the past seven days, with 317 cases per 100,000 in that time period. CDC tracked 89 deaths in the past seven days.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio-based Army North bolsters more hospitals in COVID hot spots

At the height of the pandemic, units led by the command housed in the historic Quadrangle at Fort Sam Houston helped support civilian hospitals across the United States. Army North last November had around 560 military medical personnel working with civilian healthcare providers treating patients sickened by the virus in six states and the Navajo Nation.

It sent active-duty troops to support federal vaccination efforts in early February, overseeing around 150 military medical and support personnel from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force. Working in 25 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Army North teams administered around 5 million vaccines before ending that mission on June 21.

sigc@express-news.net
Military veterans in need of dental care can get the work done for free at select Aspen Dental locations Saturday.

There are six locations spread across San Antonio, Selma, New Braunfels and Kerrville participating in this Day of Service special, and about 600 Aspen Dental locations taking part across the country.

This is the seventh year that the company is offering free dental care to veterans, according to a news release. Since launching the effort in 2014, Aspen Dental offices across the U.S. have donated more than $22 million in services to more than 27,500 veterans and others through the companys Healthy Mouth Movement campaign.

Aspen Dental does not have a grant or any fundraising efforts to cover the costs of the work; senior vice president of external communications Steve Nolan said that doctors simply volunteer their time.

On ExpressNews.com: Day of Service brightens smiles

The Day of Service event is an incredibly rewarding day for Aspen Dental dentists, Dr. Lauren McDonough, vice president of practice owner development at Aspen Dental Management Inc., said in a news release.

Its our small way of giving back to our nations veterans, who have given so much to all of us, her statement reads.

Nolan said that the type of services provided Saturday will consist mostly of check-ups, cleanings and comprehensive exams. Other services may also be available depending on capacity.

Veterans must call 1-844-ASPEN-HMM if they are interested in booking an appointment. Nolan said that there are still many appointments available in the San Antonio area.

The following San Antonio area Aspen Dental locations are participating in this weekends event:

 2814 SW Military, San Antonio

 1803 N. Loop 1604 E, San Antonio (Stone Oak)

 2323 Babcock Road, San Antonio

 1205 Junction Hwy South, Kerrville

 8143 Agora Parkway, Selma

 2830 Town Center Dr., New Braunfels

megan.rodriguez@express-news.net
Jurors at a capital murder trial saw graphic autopsy photographs Wednesday of rib fractures and a broken neck and nose among the injuries inflicted on a 75-year-old San Antonio woman in 2015.

Paula Mendez Boyd, a beloved H-E-B worker known as the deli lady, was beaten, strangled, robbed and sexually assaulted, prosecutors say. Her granddaughters husband, R.C. Curtis, 36, was arrested days later when authorities concluded he was using her bank cards after her death.

San Antonio police found her nude body during a welfare check at her Northwest Side apartment on Oct. 21, 2015.

It was obvious she had some trauma on her face and neck area, said Dr. William McClain, who worked as an assistant medical examiner in Bexar County and conducted the autopsy.

McClain, now a medical examiner in Tennessee, detailed injuries on Boyds face as pictures flashed on a video screen in the 187th District Court. Boyd suffered a broken neck, he said, and her eyeballs hemorrhaged, likely from strangulation and blunt-force blows.

Her nasal bridge was fractured; the inside upper and lower lips were lacerated; and her tongue was clenched between her lower and upper teeth.

The doctor said a blunt object striking, like a hand or object smashed over the face, or the face being shoved into the surface of a floor, can cause those injuries.

Jessica Phelps /San Antonio Express-News

McClain said Boyd had 15 rib fractures, something akin to injuries received in a car crash.

Additional photos showed bruises and a swollen left cheek, where blood leaked into the soft tissue, which McClain said could have been caused by a fist.

McClain also took the jury through photographs of the inside of Boyds swollen brain.

A blunt object struck a portion of that head, or she struck a blunt object, he said.

After drumbeat of objections by defense attorneys, jurors after lunch only heard partial testimony about two receipts obtained by a police investigator at an ATM at a store on Huebner Road the day after Boyds death.

They were to be entered into evidence to compare the numbers on the machine to Boyds bank documents, but only one was allowed, from San Antonio Police Detective Randall Hiness use of the machine with his own bank card. The other, which he retrieved from a trash can inside the store, was not allowed as evidence.

The Bexar County District Attorneys Office is not seeking the death penalty in this case. If convicted, Curtis faces life in prison.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
Lawyers for families suing the Air Force over the Sutherland Springs mass shooting rested their case Thursday, four years after a former airman burst into their church and opened fire.

Over the past week, experts in psychiatry, medical care and life expectancy have testified for the plaintiffs in support of medical expenses and past and future damages for mental pain and anguish that are millions of dollars more than estimates formulated by the government, whose experts will testify next week.

The trial is to determine how much the Air Force should pay the families over the Nov. 5, 2017, shooting in which Devin Kelley killed 26 people and injured more than 20 more at the First Baptist Church, where his wife was a member.

On ExpressNews.com: Witnesses recount Sutherland Springs church mass shooting

In opening arguments in October, lawyers from the U.S. Attorneys Office in San Antonio, representing the Air Force, said the government has already stipulated reasonable compensation and reasonable treatment for some of these plaintiffs including for past medical expenses, trauma surgeries, physical rehabilitation and mental health counseling.

In testimony Thursday, Dr. Joe Gonzalez of San Antonio, who specializes in physical rehabilitation, pain management and occupational medicine, defended some of the plaintiffs exhibits that showed large differences with the governments estimates for things such as life care plans, medications, acute care services and home health care and nursing.

Some of the survivors were left with injuries and conditions that will continue to affect them later in life, such as issues with walking or increased susceptibility of urinary tract infections.

Gonzalez explained minute details of how he helped determine some of those costs. He estimated home health aides might charge $149 per service for one victim beginning at age 55, gradually increasing to $186 per service starting at age 65 and $297 at age 75.

In exhibits shown during testimony, the plaintiffs estimated present value life care plans for about 15 plaintiffs is more than $37 million, while the government argues its closer to $12.9 million, a difference of nearly $23.8 million. Other categories, such as damages for lost earnings, showed huge differences as well.

Kelley was booted from the Air Force because of his propensity for violence. Before his discharge, he was convicted of domestic violence for an incident in which he seriously injured his stepson and had been barred from Holloman AFB in New Mexico because of a pattern that included threats to superiors and bringing firearms onto the base.

The conviction was not reported to a national FBI database that might have prevented him from legally buying firearms, including the assault-style rifle he used in the church massacre.

In July, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez found that the Air Force was 60 percent liable for the shooting because it failed to exercise reasonable care in reporting Kelleys criminal history to the FBI database. The judge found Kelley 40 percent liable.

The government begins presenting its evidence on Monday. Closing arguments are not expected until late November or early December.

guillermo.contreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland
Two former employees of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton have been indicted for allegedly helping a San Antonio man rig millions of dollars in Air Force contracts.

John G. Hancock and Karen Paulsen, both of Ohio, have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery or corrupt the contracting process, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, major fraud against the United States and three counts of unlawfully obtaining confidential bid information.

The pair are the latest to be charged in connection with a lengthy investigation that initially targeted Keith Seguin, a civil servant who worked for 28 years with the 502nd Trainer Development Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.

Seguin, 55, pleaded guilty in mid-June to charges that he illegally steered more than $400 million in Air Force government contracts to a company in the Beltway, QuantaDyn Corp.

A part owner of QuantaDyn, David Bolduc Jr., is charged with conspiring to give Seguin $2.3 million in bribes for his help in steering the contracts to prime contractors that then hired QuantaDyn as a subcontractor. The prime contractors were Booz Allen Hamilton and the engineering division of another contractor that Booz Allen acquired in 2012, records show.

The kickback scheme, which began in 2006 and continued even after Seguin retired in 2017 after 28 years with the government and went to work at QuantaDyn, is the largest military graft case to come out of San Antonio in more than a decade.

Hancock and Paulsen, who are in their late 50s or early 60s, are identified as intermediaries Seguin used in order to help him steer contracts for flight simulators and related technology to QuantaDyn as part of arrangements that also improperly benefited Booz Allen, one of the largest government contractors.

According to Seguins plea documents, Booz Allen Hamilton and the subsidiary served merely to pass through the contracts to QuantaDyn and that Booz Allen and its subsidiary profited for doing little to no work.

The indictment said Seguin leaked confidential government information to Hancock and Paulsen, enabling them and other Booz Allen employees to fabricate artificial labor hours, costs, and profit to approximate government budgets that Seguin had improperly disclosed.

Hancock worked for Booz Allen and the subsidiary from August 2002 through February 2015, first as an analyst, then as a program manager. Hancock supervised Paulsen, who worked for Booz Allen and the subsidiary from March 2007 through May 2020, first as a staff analyst and then as a project and program manager.

Defendants Seguin, Bolduc, Hancock, and Paulsen and Co-Conspirator Quantadyn would and did collude to eliminate competition for (Randolph trainer development) contracts and orders, to subvert and defeat (U.S. General Services Administration) contracting procedures, and to determine the winner and the price of contracts and orders, the indictment said.

Had investigators not found Seguin was sharing confidential information, he and Bolduc would have collected on another rigged contract worth $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion.

Booz Allen Hamilton denied any wrongdoing and has stressed that neither the corporation nor the subsidiary it acquired have been charged in the case. A spokesperson also said the contractor is cooperating with the government investigation.

Paulsens lawyer, Jay Hulings, declined comment. A lawyer for Hancock was not available for comment Thursday.

In October 2020, QuantaDyns majority owner, William T. Dunn Jr., entered a guilty plea on behalf of the company to charges that it participated in the graft. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery sentenced QuantaDyn to five years probation, and the company agreed to pay a $6.3 million fine and $37 million in restitution.

Another defendant, Rubens Wilson Fiuza Lima of Atlanta, pleaded not guilty this week to charges that he was in on the scheme and helped Seguin launder some of the bribes.

guillermo.contreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland
Jubilee Academies, a charter network with six schools in San Antonio and 12 schools across Texas, received a seven-year, $23 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the school announced Thursday.

The grant will bolster programs that help current kindergarteners through seventh-graders prepare for college or a career, though the details are still to be worked out, Superintendent Kevin Phillips said. The goals will include increasing graduation rates and student and parent college knowledge  a college-going culture throughout our school, with our teachers, administrators, and with our kids, Phillips said..

(The grant) is all about gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs, and we added career readiness, Phillips said. It is not just about going to college; it is about post-secondary readiness  will they be ready for life after they graduate?

The Jubilee network will receive about $3.3 million annually for the next seven years.

A college-going culture will look different at each grade level, Phillips said. Sixth- and seventh-graders will start preparing for Texas Success Initiative Assessment tests earlier thanks to the grant. High schoolers will have opportunities to take dual-credit classes sooner, earning themselves some college credit, thanks to the grant.

The charter network will also be able to take students and their families to college campuses for visits and offer financial literacy classes for parents.

We want to ensure each parent understands what the FAFSA is, how to complete it, so they can receive the financial assistance if they need it, Phillips said. And understand what college finances looks like so students can sustain themselves once they are at school. We help them plan that out.

Jubilee is looking to partner with universities and corporations to help implement the grant.

Phillips also noted that the funds from the grant will go toward addressing learning loss that occurred during the pandemic.

If our teaching and learning doesnt line up with college level teaching and learning, then our kids wont be successful, he said.

An earlier version of this story misstated the acronym for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

claire.bryan@express-news.net
During a staycation last weekend, I was playing tourist in a San Antonio River Walk souvenir shop when I spotted toilet paper with former President Donald Trumps image printed on each square and a toilet brush cleaner made in his likeness.

While I am no fan of Trump, it was shocking. Some may have laughed it off. Others may have purchased the items. But the more I think about these novelty items, the more they sadden me. Its yet another stark reminder of the loss of civility that seems to be so easily accepted.

It reminded me of Gov. Greg Abbotts Oct. 19 tweet that I also found dismaying: These illegal immigrants thought they were going to make it through by wearing camouflage clothing. Texas Dept. of Public Safety and Texas National Guard saw right through that. The illegal immigrants were arrested for trespassing on a ranch in Kinney County.

As if his words werent offensive enough, Abbott also inserted three Face with Tears of Joy emojis and a photo of the migrants desperate faces.

Why does our governor think thats OK? We know he lacks empathy for immigrants because of his constant attacks  each aggressive move fighting them with more force. But aside from his immigration policy, Abbott was beyond tacky. He was mean.

We can easily trace back this problem of civility to the man on the toilet paper squares  Trump. Before he used Twitter as a toxic soapbox, that wasnt done to the extent that it is now. Once he normalized meanness, it seemed to give license to other politicians, leaders and others.

Although Trump lost access to social media platforms, that didnt stop him from sharing his appalling words about the late Gen. Colin Powell.

Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media, Trump said in a statement. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!

A CNN analysis Oct. 20 by Chris Cillizza that featured the headline Donald Trump (yet again) proves theres no bottom was, sadly, appropriate.

San Antonio isnt immune to this behavior. How can we forget the recent Express-News article by Patrick Danner and Elizabeth Zavala about the local lawyer who called a judge an expletive during a court proceeding via Zoom?

Some local politicians have also started taking increasingly personal jabs at others on Twitter that appear to be getting bolder, though they havent yet crossed the line.

Of course, this uncouth communication isnt limited to politicians. It has spilled into business. One recent example is how a Southwest Airlines pilot concluded an announcement with a phrase that has been used as a vulgar insult against President Joe Biden.

An Express-News article Monday detailed how the Southwest Airlines pilot greeted passengers over the intercom of a flight from Houston to Albuquerque with a standard announcement regarding the planes speed and the weather conditions, before veering off course with Lets Go Brandon  a trending phrase among right-wing circles that is code for (Expletive) Joe Biden.

The fact that Go Brandon even became a thing and is still being used now  yes, even by Abbott  shows the public also has zero respect for the office. This wouldnt have been OK not too long ago  well, before Trump became president.

I am not arguing for all words to be kind. My concern is about how ideas are presented. Where is the tact from political leaders and elected officials? Their professionalism? Their respect for their own office? Their comments lack polish, grace and refinement.

Some say Trump and others cant help themselves. Please. They are educated adults entrusted to be leaders  they should be held to a higher standard, yes, even in communication.

May they all find their class. (Insert crying face emoji, because I know better.)

Nancy.Preyor-Johnson@express-news.net
Merrick Garland is a better person than I am. Much better.

The 68-year-old attorney general showed more restraint than I would have been able to muster had I been unfairly berated by the Senate Judiciary Committees answer to the Three Stooges  each of them driven by what appears to be naked political ambition.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri all received top-notch educations. Cruz and Cotton graduated from Harvard Law School, and Hawley from Yale Law School.

Yet you wouldnt know we were in the presence of all that brainpower given the ridiculous manner in which the senators conducted themselves when Garland recently appeared before the Judiciary Committee.

The nations chief law enforcement officer got an earful of the concerns that conservatives have with his job performance.

Meanwhile, the rest of us got a good look at whats broken with a political system that often puts emotion before reason.

Right-wingers are fired up by an Oct. 4 memo in which Garland instructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. attorneys offices to look into reports of school board members being threatened by citizens who are angry over everything from vaccines to critical race theory.

Thats it? Thats what has everyone on the right fit to be tied? Some perspective would be a breath of fresh air in Washington.

The Garland memo came in response to a letter that President Joe Biden received from the National School Boards Association, or NSBA, asking for help in protecting members from harassment and threats of violence.

Standing at a podium and sharing concerns with school board members is protected free speech. Following those same school board members to their cars after the meeting, or showing up at their front door, or leaving threatening phone messages, not so much.

Its true that the NSBA likened those who are trying to intimidate board members to domestic terrorists. But Garland did no such thing.

Thats a major point that was lost on the three senators, who peppered Garland with rhetorical questions. They got swept up in hyperbole, and their theatrics were over-the-top. They got their facts wrong and went on the attack like schoolyard bullies. Rather than presenting serious concerns about Garlands memo, they came across as less-than-serious people.

This is a memo to the Federal Bureau of Investigation saying go investigate parents as domestic terrorists, Cruz shouted at Garland.

Its wrong, Hawley told the attorney general. It is unprecedented to my knowledge in the history of this country, and I call on you to resign.

This testimony, your directive, your performance is shameful, Cotton told Garland as he piled on. Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court. You should resign in disgrace, judge.

All three of these senators appear to be interested in seeking the GOP nomination for president in 2024.

The fact that President Joe Bidens job approval rating has hit a new low of 42 percent in a recent NBC News poll is likely to only increase that interest.

So the senators behavior wasnt just rude. It was also transparent. The Republicans werent trying to get answers. They were trying to score points with GOP voters and collect video clips for future campaign ads.

In overseeing the executive branch, lawmakers are expected to pose questions. But they are better able to root out the truth if they dont spend all their time posing for cameras.

Frankly, I would have lost it. Garland should have stood up to the bullies and said something like this:

Senators, thank goodness youre not in the executive branch. There, some of us have the responsibility of running things larger than a Senate office. I make no apologies. I did what an attorney general is supposed to do. When an angry and unruly mob is trying to intimidate elected officials and prevent them from doing their work, its my job to intervene. It has always been the case that we need to be vigilant in protecting the democratic process. But, in light of the tragic events of Jan. 6, I shouldnt have to remind you  of all people  of the consequences when we fail to do so. Whether the folks being threatened are local school board members or members of Congress, its my job to protect them. And I intend to do so.

Garland doesnt have to be anyones punching bag. Hes free to punch back. And in this case, he should have. His critics had it coming.
A pall has settled over this country, and it is not tied to any meteorological event.

No, it is the darkness in our own political soul, a bitterness that cleaves this great nation. Particularly troubling is how comity and a commitment to one another is getting lost for some. Diplomacy  to one another, not just abroad  is the hallmark of any healthy, working and sustainable democracy.

A recent poll from Public Religion Research Institute reports an alarming finding: About 30 percent of Republicans agreed with this statement: Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: To wave off insurrection is to doom democracy

That the question was even asked is chilling.

It is an alarming finding, Robert Jones, founder and chief executive of PRRI, told reporters. Ive been doing this a while, for decades, and its not the kind of finding that as a sociologist, a public opinion pollster  youre used to seeing.

These are dark times, and the results of the poll should have been no surprise. We have seen this belief  the notion that violence is the answer  morph into action. The Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol is one glaring example, but there are others, and it would be foolish to think there are not more to come.

More to come? They already have. A man recently advocated violence at a Turning Point USA rally in Boise, Idaho, and he did it in a calm, sober voice, as if he were suggesting nothing more shocking than a dinner date.

At this point, were living under corporate and medical fascism, the man said. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns?

The crowd applauded.

No, and Im not  thats not a joke, the man continued. Im not saying it like that. I mean, literally. How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?

Charlie Kirk, executive director of Turning Point USA, denounced the comments, but he did it for the wrong reasons, saying they played into all their plans. So there you have it. Murder is not intrinsically wrong; it is a bad PR move.

The question struck an important note. Among those who believe the Big Lie that the presidential election was stolen, the poll found support for violence rose to 39 percent. Little wonder an insurrection occurred.

We have seen this dynamic play out throughout the country, including in Texas. Police laughed and refused to help after receiving a 911 call about Trump supporters driving erratically to harass a Biden campaign bus near San Marcos last October, according to a lawsuit filed by Biden staffers. The ploy could have had catastrophic results.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: They were insurrectionists, not patriots

It is easy to justify violence when it is part of your belief system. Rep. Marjorie Taylor, R-Ga., is a prime example. She recently suggested that the Capitol riot was in line with the Declaration of Independence, an absurd interpretation of the heroism that birthed this nation and a ghastly defense of an insurrection.

While more Republicans supported violence, 11 percent of Democrats agreed it may be necessary to solve our problems, the poll found. They should be condemned also, especially when the belief hardens into action, as it did a year ago in Tucson, Ariz. A father and son, driving in a pickup, were shot at after honking at a Joe Biden supporter putting up a Black Lives Matter sign, according to police.

These ugly incidents show a nation in disarray. They must be condemned, vigorously, whether perpetrated by Republicans or Democrats. The proper battlefield for political conflict is the polling booth.
Three years into a 10-year affordable housing plan, San Antonio is revamping its goals for rental units and homeownership, with officials saying the city already has surpassed many of the targets set initially.

The new Strategic Housing Implementation Plan, dubbed the SHIP, set out to define affordability, determine funding and create new goals. Housing costs are outpacing incomes in San Antonio. Without action, residents could continue to be priced out of their homes, officials said.

The city could spend $3.38 billion over the next decade to produce and preserve 28,000 units, most of which would be for residents who make at or below 50 percent of the area median income, or around $22,000 to $37,000, depending on family size.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonios affordable housing budget balloons beyond bond funding. Heres what it includes

The SHIP is primarily based on the Mayors Housing Policy Framework, which City Council adopted in September 2018. That plan set a 10-year goal of 18,681 homes.

Just three years later, the city has surpassed its targets on production of new rental units and nearly completed its goal on the number of rental units to preserve as affordable. Movement has been slower on the citys homeownership goals, but officials said they are still more than 50 percent of the way there.

The last plan aimed to produce 8,498 rental units, and the city says 11,882 have been produced since then. It also aimed to deliver 3,985 homes for ownership and has so far seen 2,090 homes produced.

Most City Council members Wednesday had no major qualms with the new plan, although some wanted to ensure it would extend to particularly vulnerable populations like those who age out of foster care or LGBTQ youth who experience homelessness.

But at least two progressive voices on the council, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez in District 2 and Teri Castillo in District 5, wanted to see more investment in existing public housing through the San Antonio Housing Authority. Rehabbing those buildings would preserve affordability in the long run, they said.

Public housing is the last opportunity before being homeless, Castillo said.

The citys plan can still include public housing, said Lori Houston, assistant city manager.

This is just a roadmap, she said.

San Antonio also revised its definition of affordability to shift toward lower incomes than federal guidelines: down to 60 percent of the area median income for rentals, instead of 80 percent of the area median income. Thats because federal guidelines take into account the metro area and suburbs outside the city, where incomes may be higher than within city limits.

The citys new definition of affordability will impact its housing targets in the new plan and who can access affordable housing. In order for the rentals to be considered affordable by the city, they must be restricted to households making no more than 60 percent of the area median income, which is $40,020 for a family of three.

By February, the city could have a new dashboard online to track its progress toward the new targets, updated quarterly.

How to give feedback

City officials will host at least one more meetings for public input on the new housing plan.

The public can weigh in from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Igo Library, 13330 Kyle Seale Parkway.

The city extended public comment on the housing plan through Nov. 22. Its slated for City Council to consider for approval on Dec. 2.

megan.stringer@express-news.net
AUSTIN  Deputies pulled Joshua Langley over for failing to signal a turn. They stopped John McGills F-150 pick-up because his license plate was faulty. Lisa Woodruff was detained for an expired registration. Larry Turner was pulled over after running a stop sign.

While they were stopped by Henderson County sheriffs deputies last year for different traffic infractions, all four shared something in common: Each ended up on the side of the road while deputies searched their vehicles for contraband. None turned up anything illegal, records show.

Its an unusually common occurrence in the community southeast of Dallas. Deputies conducted roadside searches on nearly 4 of every 10 motorists they pulled over last year, records show - one of the highest rates in Texas.

Thats extraordinary, said Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina professor considered one of the countrys top stop-and-search experts. Its a very, very high number.

Only about one in three Henderson County deputy searches uncovered any contraband, the records showed. Less than one in five resulted in an arrest.

By contrast, troopers at the Texas Department of Public Safety, the states busiest traffic enforcement department, searched about 5 percent of motorists they stopped in 2020, a rate one-eighth as high as Henderson Countys.

A Houston Chronicle investigation has identified the Texas law enforcement agencies most likely to detain and search drivers based mainly on an officers hunch. During traffic stops  the most common interaction between civilians and police  these departments performed discretionary searches at the highest rates, according to data each department submits annually to the state.

In Texline, a small Panhandle community, city marshals searched about one in every three vehicles stopped. In Cleveland, a small city north of Houston, police last year searched nearly every driver they pulled over, according to data the department submitted to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which maintains the filings.

It says they are already making the decision to search before they ever even turn on their red lights. said Patrick OBurke, a former commander within the Department of Public Safety.

Police call investigative traffic stops a valuable tactic, important to interacting with their communities and crucial to interrupting the flow of illegal drugs and other crimes along roadways. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was apprehended during a routine stop.

BIKERS BRAWL: Texas bikers say police have unfairly labeled them as gang members

Yet records show officers in Texass high-search jurisdictions often found nothing, or such inconsequential amounts of contraband that the driver was not arrested. That mirrors national research showing that most discretionary traffic stop searches bear little fruit.

Police say, Look at all the heroin we found! said Derek Epp, a University of Texas government professor who studies traffic stops and searches. They dont mention the other side of the equation, which is they had to stop 1,000 people to find that.

Citizens have been asked to tolerate the roadside investigations as a minor inconvenience for the greater good. Yet in recent years there has been a growing awareness the practice comes at a price.

While it is true that any one stop is a limited intrusion in duration and deprivation of liberty, each stop is also a demeaning and humiliating experience, federal Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in her opinion citing low hit rates and a high proportion of minority targets to declare New York Citys stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional.

Treating mostly innocent motorists with suspicion can erode trust in the police among populations most subjected to them, added Charles Epp, a University of Kansas professor (unrelated to Derek) and author of Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. Without civilian support, police solve fewer crimes, he said.

Studies also have shown searches to be racially biased. In its analysis of more than 200 million traffic stops, the Stanford Open Policing Project concluded police require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than white drivers. This double standard is evidence of discrimination.

Pushed by the Black Lives Matter movement, a growing number of jurisdictions are re-examining the practice of roadside investigations. Several states and cities have limited police authority to conduct discretionary searches, particularly after stops for minor traffic offenses.

Other reformers question the fiscal efficiency of a long-time practice that appears to produce little public safety benefit. If youre a police department and 80 percent of people you stop and subject to investigation end up with fruitless searches, it seems like you need to do more on your end to get better at this, said Michael Burbank, a retired police officer and director of Law Enforcement Initiatives at the Center for Policing Equity.

SPEED TRAP AHEAD: New analysis reveals where police pulled over the most people

If its ineffective, why do it?

Having a police officer occasionally rifle through a vehicle during a traffic stop has long been considered the acceptable cost of aggressive law enforcement. If a driver had nothing to hide, what was the big deal about waiting a few minutes while an officer made sure?

Courts generally have supported the practice. While premises searches typically require a warrant, the U.S. Supreme Court long ago ruled that automobiles are an exception.

Since then, the nations top court also has concluded that as long as a motorist violated a traffic rule, no matter how minor, police can stop the vehicle and initiate an investigation. While the court determined officers must inform arrested civilians of their 5th Amendment Miranda right to remain silent, the justices decided it was unnecessary for police to tell people they have a 4th Amendment right to refuse a search request.

So drivers typically dont. Studies show most vehicle searches are those in which police request and gain the drivers permission.

Yet analyses of millions of traffic stops have shown so-called consent searches to be inefficient. Only about a quarter turn up contraband, said Baumgartner; fewer than 15 percent are serious enough for officers to make an arrest.

All the research on consent searches is they are a tremendous waste of time, added UTs Epp, who has a paper on the subject in review. So if its so ineffective, why do it? Good question.

Even when police declare they have enough reason to conduct a search without permission, a large number of those, too, turn out to be fruitless. Baumgartner calculated that just over half of so-called probable cause searches turned up contraband. Only a quarter were serious enough to result in an arrest.

If the probable in probable cause turns out to only be a half of a half, he said. It makes the phrase meaningless.

To identify the high-search agencies, the Chronicle reviewed traffic data police departments submit annually to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. For agencies that made at least 1,000 traffic stops last year, reporters calculated each departments discretionary searches as a percentage of total traffic stops. For the top-searching departments, reporters reviewed a sampling of traffic tickets.

There is no accepted search rate to assess if a departments actions are tolerable or abusive to citizens. Nor is there a contraband hit-rate benchmark to measure if police are searching efficiently.

Based on his studies, Baumgartner said that searching about 5 percent of stopped vehicles is a common figure for traffic enforcement. The Chronicle identified nearly 30 Texas police agencies whose search rate was at least 3 times that. Officers in 16 departments performed discretionary searches at a rate more than 4 times the benchmark  meaning that at least one out of every five traffic stops resulted in an officer deciding to search the vehicle.

RACIAL PROFILING?: Virtually everyone a Fort Bend police officer stopped was Hispanic. His bosses shrugged.

Practice defended as proactive policing

In Wise County, just northwest of Dallas, records show sheriffs deputies decided to search about one of every four traffic stops, five times higher than Department of Public Safety officers. Sheriff Lane Akin said it ws unfair to compare the two.

DPS is more concerned about crash rates, while we are focused on crime rates, he said. His deputies are dedicated to making this county a safer place to live, work, worship and play.

The vast majority of thefts, robberies, burglaries, assaults, and other criminal acts are committed by meth users, Akin added. Wise County is safer because our officers are lawfully seizing illegal drugs (mostly meth), interdicting violators, and booking criminals into jail. Their actions, I believe, have prevented countless criminal acts.

Yet records show that 60 percent of Wise County deputies nearly 600 discretionary searches last year turned up nothing.

Even departments claiming high contraband finds often ended up making few arrests. Texline, in the northwestern corner of the Panhandle, reported finding contraband in more than 80 percent of its searches. But only 5 percent uncovered enough illegal substances for an arrest, its self-reported numbers show.

Most of the contraband that is discovered during the vehicle searches is personal use THC products purchased out of state then brought through Texline, Marshal Donnie Davis acknowledged in an email. The small amounts of these products that are often found, while illegal in Texas, do not meet the thresholds for prosecution that is set by the prosecutors office.

Still, Davis said he would continue the department's practice of searching about a third of all traffic stops. Deputies are encouraged to look for signs of criminal activity and to go beyond the original traffic stop when signs exist that warrant this, he said. Criminal interdiction is an important part of conducting traffic enforcement.

In Kaufman County, where deputies last year searched just under one in four vehicles stopped, a review of six randomly selected days showed deputies in the county east of Dallas searched 11 of the 42 motorists they pulled over. Two yielded contraband.

Sheriff Bryan Beavers said the practice still is worthwhile. Were trying to find the criminal element, he wrote in an email. The only way to find people (committing crimes) is when you stop them for a violation of law and do interviews on the side of the road.

DOES HARRIS COUNTY NEED CONSTABLES?: In fallout from 'bachelor party' scandal, critics want to know

Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Agencies of Texas, which represents police, said departments conducting high rates of roadside investigations reflect the priorities of the local community and their elected representatives. Weve got to make sure to remind ourselves who decided this, he said. People in charge have voted to have traffic enforcement.

In Cleveland, the police department's self-reported data showed officers searched between 85 and 90 percent of all traffic stops over each of the past three years. A review of a months-worth of tickets found a much lower number, however, many citations were blank where officers were to indicate if they had performed a search.

Chief Darrel Broussard declined to comment in detail, but said Most of those we stop lead to a search. In an email, he added We have not received any complaints for any motorist about being searched. We serve a great community that support their (law enforcement) officers.

Epp, the Kansas professor, said inefficient roadside investigations historically have prompted little outcry because those most often subjected to them tend not to have much political leverage. If this were to be imposed on upper-middle-class doctors, lawyers and accountants who are white, the practice would be ended pretty quickly, he said.

On Feb. 15 last year, Jardarius Williams, of Carthage, in East Texas, drove his Chevy Tahoe to a nearby gas station hoping to buy some candy. The store was closed, and when he pulled out he noticed a police cruiser behind him.

After explaining Williamss car had an expired registration tag, the Panola County sheriffs deputy said he smelled marijuana and so would like to conduct a search. Williams agreed. He was released after the deputy uncovered just a gram of pot.

What was the point in that? he remembered thinking.

eric.dexheimer@chron.com
Republican Glenn Youngkins victory in the Virginia governors race on Tuesday night surprised many following Democrat Joe Bidens resounding win there last fall  and also appears to be offering lessons to Texas Republicans heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

Youngkin, a former business equity executive, focused his campaign on a commitment to giving parents more of a say in the increasingly intense battles over the way race, gender and COVID-19 policies are handled in public schools.

The issue has dominated the political discourse of late in Texas as well, with Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican elected officials publicly inquiring about the race and gender content of school books. Youngkins success has political science experts predicting that Texas politicians will hit those same themes in statewide and other races next year.

Texas has a long history of conservative politicians leveraging tension between parents and education professionals over how children should be taught to score political victories, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

Thats been going on in Texas for half a century, Jillson said. Texas (politicians) saw what happened in Virginia, and theyll try to build on that, but they wont be building from scratch.

The Virginia race started to turn around in late September when Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor who is close to Bill Clinton, was still leading in polls by a few points. McAuliffe remarked at a campaign forum that he wasnt going to let parents come into schools and get rid of books and said, I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.

Youngkin seized on the comment and tapped into parents anger. It proved a powerful weapon as he was able to defeat McAuliffe by more than 2 points in a blue-trending state that Biden carried by 10 points.

Ian Prior, executive director of the activist parent group Fight For Schools, in Loudoun County, Va., said thats because the issue of children and education transcends traditional political lines.

In the past 15 years, the political discourse has been about the politics of division, said Prior, who also works as a communications consultant for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Candidates put different groups in different boxes and pit them against each other to win elections. What we saw here was we needed a unifying issue that would beat that back  Its a message of unity where youre getting past the divisiveness and focusing on one very important thing: Thats your children.

Priors group has fought against diversity initiatives, the teaching of what it has identified as critical race theory and policies allowing transgender students to use the public bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. He also supported Youngkin on the campaign trail.

Critical race theory is an academic concept based on the idea that racism is a social construct, stemming not only from individual bias or prejudice, but also from systemic practices in the legal system and policies.

Although Virginia school officials say they dont teach critical race theory and PolitiFact found it hadnt moved into all Virginia schools, as Youngkin alleged, conservatives in recent years have used the term to encapsulate a wide swath of race-related issues.

Some Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that its a racially tinged appeal to white conservatives.

McAuliffe, for example, attacked Youngkin for a campaign ad featuring a parent who wanted to remove the late Black author Toni Morrisons novel Beloved from the states schools. The parent argued the book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, contained graphic content that might be too intense for teenage readers, according to the Washington Post.

In Texas, several school board candidates who ran on anti-critical race theory platforms won their elections, including in Southlakes Carroll ISD, where they captured enough seats to topple a controversial diversity plan, as well as in the Cy-Fair ISD outside Houston.

Still, some Democrats on Wednesday advised against reading too much into Youngkins win. Longtime Texas Democratic consultant Harold Cook said a key problem with McAuliffes campaign was unwise messaging.

The takeaway in Virginia was that Democrats dont think parents should be involved in what kids get taught. Thats just not the core issue, Cook said. If voters are getting the wrong impression, then you said it wrong. Its your responsibility to clearly articulate their message.

Cook said there is likely more common ground than some might think, but that McAuliffe, by effectively saying parents ought to be shut out of the conversation, probably alienated and turned off many voters. McAuliffe did not repeat Bidens success in appealing to independent voters, for example.

In addition to reworking their messaging, Democrats in Washington will have to achieve some legislative victories to present to voters next year, he said. Although Biden successfully pushed through a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package in March, congressional Democrats have been unable to reach a deal to pass both a $1 trillion infrastructure package and the more costly Build Back Better plan addressing the social safety net and climate change.

I think what Democrats lack at this point is measurable results, Cook said. They are in charge of the government right now. Instead of delivering on some form of Bidens plan, they have been busy bickering over what theyre going to vote on. So everybody is very familiar with the process, which has been very unpleasant, and nobody knows whats in it.

On Wednesday, Biden was asked whether he thought McAuliffe would have won had Congress passed these top priorities.

I think it should have passed before Election Day, but I'm not sure that I would have been able to have changed the number of very conservative folks who turned out in the red districts who are Trump voters, but maybe, maybe, Biden told reporters.

Texas Republicans will doubtless see that Youngkin performed well in suburbs in Virginia, Jillson said, and pursue a similar strategy.

And some already have, he said, pointing to a letter sent by Abbott earlier this week to the Texas Association of School Boards warning them that they are obligated to stop inappropriate and pornographic material from reaching Texas school children.

That came after state Rep. Matt Krause, a Republican seeking his partys nomination for attorney general, asked a number of Texas school districts to provide information on books in school and classroom libraries. He specifically wanted to know whether they covered topics made off-limits by new state laws that ban the teaching of critical race theory and set new standards for sexual health education.

How successful Republicans in Texas will be compared to Youngkin remains to be seen, Jillson said, as there are several important distinguishing factors.

The first is that unlike Virginia, no Democrat has been elected statewide in Texas since 1994. The GOP completely controls the apparatus of state government, Jillson said, which makes it harder for Republicans to blame Democrats for any perceived problems in public schools.

Its much harder to say that CRT and the liberals are running amok in Texas public schools without saying, how the hell did that happen? Werent you in charge? Its just not the same dynamic, Jillson said.

The second is that Democrats will have time to come up with a better response to political attacks on the subject than McAuliffe did in Virginia, he said.

Democrats will also have to address Bidens flagging popularity, public perceptions about how Democrats in Congress are doing, the economy and other factors.

Its not one issue, but (the issue of parental control over public schools) was decisive at a critical point in the election when McAuliffe still appeared to be in control of the race Jillson said. We dont know what all the background issues are going to be in 2022, let alone in September or October of 2022, but we do know Republicans have seen the importance of this issue.

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com

edward.mckinley@chron.com
Sterling, VA (20165)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 54F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy. Some light rain is likely. Low 44F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Late actor Paul Newman was known for iconic roles in The Hustler, Hud and Cool Hand Luke. Soon, readers will get to learn about his life in a previously unreleased memoir.

According to the Associated Press, Newman began the memoir in his Westport home in the 1980s with the help of screenwriter Stewart Stern, then left it there unpublished.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced Wednesday that the untitled memoir will include Newman's thoughts on "acting, directing, boyhood, family, fame, Hollywood, Broadway, love, his first marriage, his 50-year marriage to Joanne Woodward, drinking, politics, racing, his ultimate ride to stardom, and aging gracefully.

The untitled memoir was recently found in the Connecticut home that Newman and Woodward shared.

The home stands at the center of a 10.46-acre estate in the Coleytown section of Westport.

Newman's daughter, Melissa, said she had fond memories of life there, including sledding down the hill with her siblings while her famous father steered a sled.

Newman's legacy in Connecticut is centered more on philanthropy than acting.

In 1982, Newman and his neighbor, the writer A.E Hotchner, started Newman's Own, the company that sold Newman's original oil-and-vinegar dressing. The company grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All of the company's profits are donated to charities.

Later in 1988, Newman founded The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford. The camp was created for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. He then established similar camps in several other states and in Europe.

Newman's memoir is set to be released in the fall of 2022, according to the Associated Press.
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  In the hours after the COVID-19 vaccine was formally approved for use in younger children Tuesday, social media pages lit up with eager parents seeking appointments for their grade-schoolers.

So on Wednesday morning, it didn't take long for some parents in the Boise region to figure out that a couple of health care providers were already accepting appointments.

My kids are scheduled for Walgreens on Saturday, one parent wrote on a Facebook page for local parents of school children.

Primary Health Pediatrics is taking walk ins starting today! another parent replied.

Primary Health Group CEO Dr. David Peterman said traffic to his company's website picked up early Wednesday morning from parents seeking pediatric COVID-19 vaccines. By late morning  a few hours before Primary Health Group officially announced it was offering the vaccines  the website was seeing three times the number of visits as normal, and clinics were getting walk-in visits from parents and children looking for the shot.

I'm not sure exactly how parents found out, through word-of-mouth or on Facebook, but we've already given many vaccines this morning and have many appointments scheduled, Peterman said. That's very exciting, to see that there is a group of parents that are very anxious to get their children vaccinated. It's great."

Primary Health Group has 21 family medicine and urgent care clinics in southwestern Idaho. The quick vaccine rollout at some of the organization's clinics was possible because workers there spent the last several days training in preparation, Peterman said. The COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer approved for 5- to 11-year-old kids is a different dose and formulation than the version approved for older patients, using different syringes and with different storage requirements. The state sent out information on the vaccine's requirements to medical providers 10 days ago.

Since the pandemic began, more than 6 million children have been infected with COVID-19 in the U.S., with more than 20,000 of them requiring hospitalization, Peterman said. More than 600 U.S. children have died from coronavirus.

We are incredibly fortunate to finally have a COVID vaccine for younger children to keep them safe, keep them in school, and to stop the spread of disease to others in their households and communities. Studies have shown the vaccine has very few serious side effects and is extremely effective and well-tolerated by young children, Peterman said. I strongly recommend parents get their children vaccinated, and I encourage parents who have questions to speak with their pediatricians and family doctors, who have long been trusted sources of information.

Other health care providers are also notifying families that pediatric vaccines are available. Saint Alphonsus Pediatric Clinics said appointments can be made online starting Nov. 8 in Boise, Caldwell and Nampa.

It's too soon to tell how many Idaho residents in the newest group will get vaccinated. Roughly 55% of all eligible Idaho residents ages 12 and older have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 so far, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, but vaccination rates are much higher in older age groups and lower in younger age groups.

Only about 33% of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated in Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

The first federal distributions of the vaccine required big minimum orders, making it easier for large organizations like Primary Health Group to get early distributions. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is working on distributing vaccine to smaller health care providers, and shots in those locations will be available in coming days, officials said.

State health officials said they are expecting 57,000 initial doses of the pediatric vaccine, enough to cover 32.5% of the state's roughly 175,500 children ages 5 to 11.

We are very pleased there is now an opportunity for Idaho's younger children to get the same protections against COVID-19 as their older peers and adults, Elke Shaw-Tulloch, Division of Public Health administrator, said in a prepared statement. This comes in time to protect children for the holidays and make sure they can return to the classroom and daycare safely.
BOULDER, Colo. (AP)  Two former Colorado sheriffs deputies were sentenced to prison Thursday for causing the death of an intoxicated man by placing him on his stomach and squeezing him into a van to take him to a detox center.

Former Boulder County sheriffs deputies James OBrien and Adam Lunn were sentenced to six years and three years respectively for the 2018 death of 23-year-old Demetrius Shankling. O'Brien and Lunn were found guilty in August of manslaughter.

According to an arrest affidavit, they put the 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) man, with his hands behind his back, in a compartment that was less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) long. OBrien and Lunn had to press on the compartment door to close it, causing Shanklings leg to become wedged against the inside of the door, the affidavit said.

When they reached the detox center in the early hours of Sept. 9, 2018, Shankling was unresponsive and not breathing. He died after spending 27 days in a coma.

An autopsy found that Shankling died of suffocation because of his positioning, with alcohol and amphetamine as contributing factors.

Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle released a statement Thursday calling the death a tragedy to everyone involved.

Im sure of one thing, this death did not need to occur. Im also sure these former deputies intended no harm, he said. "I am confident we took all the necessary steps for accountability and transparency during this process. We relied on the justice system for a just outcome, and we trust that outcome is the best it can be under a horrible and yet preventable situation.

Prosecutors told jurors that OBrien and Lunn acted recklessly and disregarded their training on positional asphyxia. Meanwhile, the defense argued that the former deputies, who were working an extra shift at the time, were not very familiar with the van.

The sheriffs office was in charge of taking people to detox that weekend because students had just returned to the University of Colorado and city and university police wanted to keep their officers on patrol instead.
ATLANTA (AP)  Democrats and liberal-leaning groups on Thursday attacked a Republican plan to redraw districts for the Georgia state Senate as violating the federal Voting Rights Act by unnecessarily dividing minority populations.

It's a crucial discussion as the state Senate's Republican majority moves toward voting their preferred map out of committee as early as Friday. The U.S. Supreme Court in the last decade has ruled out challenges based on partisan gerrymandering. But although the court struck down the requirement that Georgia and other areas with a history of racial discrimination get preclearance for new district maps from the U.S. Justice Department, the way remains clear for people to sue in court alleging racial bias after lawmakers pass maps.

Such lawsuits are likely the best opportunity Democrats will have to change a map that could initially produce a 33-23 Republican majority in the Senate, down from 34-22 now. Legislative proceeding are likely to become part of the evidence in any court challenge.

Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee Chairman John Kennedy, a Macon Republican, defended the maps from charges of racial bias.

Weve also endeavored and ensured that weve complied with the Voting Rights Act, creating majority-minority districts and new minority-opportunity districts, Kennedy said.

But critics, starting with Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, a Stone Mountain Democrat, pointed to particular examples they said showed ill intent. Butler focused on Senate District 48, now held by state Sen. Michelle Au of Johns Creek. The GOP plan draws parts of it into whiter areas of Gwinnett and Forsyth counties, creating a district more likely to be won by a Republican.

The proposed plan turns a majority-minority district to a majority-white district, Butler said of District 48.

Sen. Bill Cowsert, an Athens Republican, said Butler's analysis was legally flawed because she was lumping all nonwhite people together and that the Voting Rights Act doesn't protect minority coalitions. That remains an area of dispute under federal law.

This is not a voting-rights protected district, Cowsert said.

Speakers also criticized the continued split of Athens-Clarke County, which makes it possible for all Republicans to represent parts of one Georgia's most Democratic counties, as well as how Gwinnett County is split.

The map would draw districts now in northern Cobb and Fulton counties into more Republican areas of Cherokee and Bartow counties, likely creating easier paths to reelection for several Republican incumbents.

Kareem El-Hosseiny, government affairs director for the Georgia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that move would crack communities in competitive Cobb County by stretching them out further away from Atlanta.

Kennedy defended the Cobb moves, saying those areas are communities with common interests, and said some larger counties like Savannah's Chatham County were split to keep smaller counties whole. The proposed Republican map splits 29 of Georgia's 159 counties, down from 39 now.

Kennedy also said it's unfair to focus on any one district.

Taking any one district out from the rest of the map, and looking at it in a vacuum is not really a realistic or fair way, because each district has a connection to the districts around it, Kennedy said.

Vasu Abhiraman, senior policy counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, disputed that point, saying map-drawers must look at voting patterns in local areas.

The ability of communities of color to elect candidates of choice at an equal level to other communities is paramount," Abhiraman said. "It rules. It's not something to be balanced against those other factors.

Fair Districts GA, a group that tries to prevent gerrymandering, graded the Senate proposal as an F, saying it's far too Republican to reflect the states overall partisan balance. The group also faults the map for having only one district where parties are expected to be competitive.

Janet Grant, vice chair of Fair Districts GA, urged Republicans to consider a plan less stacked against Democrats, as well as more districts where both parties would be competitive and at least one more district with enough minority voters to influence outcomes.

Cowsert was dismissive of the group, in part because it relies on modelers at Princeton University to aid in analysis.

The people who are drawing the maps, who could have built 35 or 36 Republican seats if they wanted to be partisan, instead reduced the number of Republican seats, and Princeton, New Jersey, thinks thats unfair, Cowsert said.

There are other considerations in the map. Except for two Republicans running for statewide office, the map protects all Senate incumbents.

Kennedy said the map includes some Democratic suggestions and requests from public hearings, such as an onion belt district around Vidalia.

___

Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  The trial hasnt even started and yet issues of race are dominating the case in which three white men are charged with murder for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery.

The 25-year-old Black man's slaying has become part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the U.S. legal system. Greg and Travis McMichael, a father and son, and their neighbor William Roddie Bryan werent charged for more than two months until a cellphone video of the shooting leaked online.

And Arberys family and their supporters had their faith rattled after 2 1/2 weeks of jury selection ended Wednesday with the judge agreeing to seat a panel of 11 whites and one Black man.

Its probably clearer than before that race is going to be at the forefront of this case and will probably even play a big role in jury deliberations at the end of the trial, said Page Pate, a Georgia criminal defense attorney who isnt involved in the case.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley plans to have the jury sworn in Friday to hear opening statements from lawyers on both sides. He intends to seat 15 total panelists: a main jury of 12 plus three alternates.

The total number shrank by one Thursday when the judge dismissed a juror from the main panel, a white woman, citing medical reasons. The race of the alternate juror who replaced her was not known. The judge has not given the races of the alternate jurors, and they werent asked their race in court during jury selection.

The judge had said that he agreed with prosecutors that the exclusion of other Black potential jurors appeared to be intentional discrimination. He also said Georgia law limited his authority to intervene after defense attorneys stated nonracial reasons for cutting those jurors.

The judge said the group of 48 used to narrow down the final jury had included 12 potential jurors who were Black. Prosecutors were allowed to strike a dozen people from the jury pool and defense lawyers got to cut 24, for virtually any reason save for one exception. The U.S. Supreme Court has held its unconstitutional to exclude potential jurors based solely on race or ethnicity.

Its outrageous that Black jurors were intentionally excluded to create such an imbalanced jury, Ben Crump, an attorney for Arberys father, Marcus Arbery Sr., said in a statement Thursday.

Black potential jurors seemed to face greater scrutiny than whites as they were questioned by lawyers during jury selection, and the resulting jury likely favors the defense, said Pate, who practices in Atlanta and Brunswick.

Im not saying its intentionally discriminatory, or if it was just the dynamic of this case, but it was a lot harder to get on this jury if you were Black than if you were white, Pate said.

Many expressed strong opinions about Arberys killing and their beliefs that race played a role. Some knew Arbery or other members of his family. Defense attorneys cited those reasons for striking Black people from the jury pool.

The McMichaels armed themselves and pursued Arbery after spotting him running in their neighborhood. Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.

Defense attorneys say the men committed no crimes. They say Arbery had been recorded by security cameras inside a nearby house under construction and they suspected him of stealing. Greg McMichael told police his son opened fire in self-defense after Arbery attacked with his fists and grappled for Travis McMichaels shotgun.

Most of the jurors among the final 16 had previously told attorneys that they had seen the video, and many had read news stories about the case. All said they could keep an open mind during the trial.

I dont think the video is the whole story, said one juror, a woman who works in retail and said she didnt know enough to form an opinion about the case.

Another juror, a retired government employee, described a conversation about the shooting with her husband as being probably something that was like, `Thats too bad that happened.

Other jurors expressed stronger reactions to Arberys death. One young woman called the cellphone video of the shooting obscene, saying: theres no reason someone should ever have to see someone else die.

An Air Force veteran who made the final jury panel said it was his impression that Greg McMichael was stalking Arbery. Another juror, a woman who works with volunteers, told lawyers she was somewhat fearful of the defendants, adding: Theyre driving around with a gun!

A railroad worker on the jury said he could fairly consider whether Travis McMichael shot Arbery in self-defense, though he also noted Arbery was unarmed.

He didnt have no gun or nothing and he was by himself, the juror said of Arbery. It was three persons who attacked one and no gun.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Advocacy groups and voters sued on Friday to block the North Carolina General Assembly's timetable to pass new boundaries for legislative seats next week, saying Republicans are breaking rules designed to ensure Black voters can elect their favored candidates.

The North Carolina NAACP, Common Cause and four individuals filed a lawsuit i n Wake County court challenging the legislators' refusal to consider racial data or evaluate the presence of racially polarized voting in the state before considering map proposals. Avoiding such activity means it's impossible to follow the state constitution and the legal recipe set by the state Supreme Court in the 2000s to make sure House and Senate districts comply with the U.S. Voting Rights Act, according to the lawsuit.

The result of this fatally flawed process is one that will be harmful to voters of color, Allison Riggs with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the plaintiffs lead attorney, told reporters. Even with plain instructions set out by the state Supreme Court, she added, Republicans got it wrong and have stubbornly refused to look at race-based data and analyze parts of the state where voting patterns divided by race have worsened.

The plaintiffs want a judge to immediately stop the current process, demand that the recipe be followed and delay the General Assembly primary set for March 8 until at least May to give legislators and voters more time.

The litigation came about as General Assembly members have been drawing maps over the past three weeks and held public hearings this week. Lawmakers were expected to begin debating and voting on specific plans starting Monday. They want to enact boundaries based on 2020 census figures for the two legislative chambers and for the U.S. House delegation by the end of next week. Candidate filing is currently set to begin Dec. 6.

Republicans filed additional plan proposals Friday that if approved likely would heavily favor the GOP to extend their current legislative majorities in each chamber and have a good chance to win at least 10 of the 14 U.S. House seats the state will have starting with the 2022 elections.

The GOP-controlled House and Senate redistricting committees voted in August to prohibit racial data  such as the percentage of minorities on voter registration rolls and within the voting-age population of a certain county or proposed district. They argue that maps drawn in the late 2010s that courts signed off on didn't use such data, and that judges have found there isn't enough voting polarization by race to be necessary to review.

We did not look at race, and the courts did not criticize us for that, said Sen. Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican and co-chairman of the Senate Redistricting Committee, in a recent interview. So as we walk now into 2021, why would we do anything different?

But without successful litigation, the plaintiffs lawyers wrote, the votes of Black residents will be diluted and their power weakened.

Lawmakers supposed race-blind redistricting process is rigged to reduce the strength of our votes, silence our voices, and negate decades of struggle and sacrifice for fairer maps, state NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell said in a news release. The lawsuit doesn't challenge the congressional map process, which isn't covered by the state Supreme Court rulings from the early 2000s identified in the litigation.

House Redistricting Committee Chairman Destin Hall of Caldwell County, a lawsuit defendant along with Speaker Tim Moore, Senate leader Phil Berger and others, called the litigation in a tweet another iteration of the Democrats' strategy to sue to win more seats. The Democratic Party or a party official isn't listed among the plaintiffs, however.

I stand firmly behind our process and look forward to fighting against this ludicrous lawsuit, Hall said in a news release.

___

Associated Press/Report for America writer Bryan Anderson contributed to this report.
Next to the penny above: 2 milligrams of fentanyl, a lethal dose for most people when injected.

By Vince Bielski, RealClearInvestigations

November 4, 2021

On a September afternoon, Allyssia Solorio wondered why her energetic young brother hadnt emerged from his bedroom in their Sacramento, Calif., home. When she opened his door, she saw 23-year-old Mikael leaning back on his bed with his legs dangling over the side. She rushed to her brother and shook him, but to no avail. He was dead. A counterfeit pharmaceutical pill laced with illicit fentanyl had killed him.

Mikael Tirado was one of an estimated 93,331 overdose fatalities in the United States last year  an all-time high. Nearly five times the murder rate, the deadly overdose toll was primarily caused by fentanyl, a highly lethal synthetic opioid. Its manufactured mostly by Mexican cartels with ingredients imported from China, and then smuggled over the southwestern U.S. border. Fentanyl has been arriving in larger quantities each year since at least 2016.

The cartels are taking advantage of law enforcement weaknesses and policy failures to smuggle record amounts of the lethal drug into the United States, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former drug and immigration agents. While a lack of screening technology to find contraband at ports of entry and an inept U.S-Mexico campaign to cripple the cartels are longstanding issues, theres also a new one: the flood of migrants across the border that the Biden administration has done little to stop.

Former law enforcement officials say the cartels are orchestrating the surge, overwhelming the capacity of agents to pursue drug smugglers. They can freely enter Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California carrying fentanyl while agents are diverted to the time-consuming duty of apprehending and processing migrants.

Frustrated border agents and their union have been calling on Congress to send reinforcements. But help is not on the way. The administrations upcoming budget request doesnt include funding for more Customs and Border Protection agents.

In September, tensions boiled over after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris lashed out at agents on horseback in response to videos showing them blocking Haitians crossing the border. Harris compared the incident to the mistreatment of slaves, an inflammatory accusation that the union strongly denied, saying no migrants were hit or hurt.

The administration is pivoting away from law enforcement and embracing a public health approach to the fentanyl crisis. It has proposed spending $11.2 billion  a huge increase over last year  to expand substance abuse prevention, treatment and recovery services. Fewer addicts would mean fewer deaths from fentanyl.

But curbing opioid addiction is very challenging. The vast majority of substance abusers avoid treatment, according to researchers, and only about one-third of those receiving long-term medical care fully recover. These success stories, however, will be offset if the supply of fentanyl continues to boom and fuel more addiction.

Drug treatment is very important, but you cant treat someone in the morgue who just died from fentanyl poisoning. Its too late, says Derek Maltz, the former director of the Drug Enforcement Administrations special operations division, which primarily targets cartels. We have to vigorously attack the production labs in Mexico and increase border security on our side.

Cartels have turned to fentanyl because the super-potent powder is cheap to produce, making it more profitable than heroin, says Eric Triana, an assistant special agent in charge at the DEA division in New York. Two of Mexicos most powerful crime groups  the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels  manufacture the synthetic drug in rustic clandestine labs. In the U.S., the powder is mixed with heroin to stretch supplies.

To boost sales, cartels have more recently increased production of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. They are made with fentanyl but labeled to look exactly like legitimate medications such as Percocet, Vicodin and Xanax.

The fake pills, which are promoted and sold on social media platforms as real pharmaceuticals, are priced to sell at a discounted rate of about $20 each. They have brought the dangers of fentanyl to mainstream America, with victims belonging to every age, class and racial group. Nationwide, DEA agents seized an unprecedented 9.5 million fake pills -- some portion of that total in every U.S. state in the first nine months of 2021, or more than the last two years combined. That prompted the agency to issue a rare public safety alert in September.

Fentanyls potency  at 50 times the strength of heroin  is what makes it so deadly. Two milligrams, which can fit on the tip of a pencil, can kill. But cartels dont take precautions to make sure the pills arent lethal. DEA analysis found that 40% of the seized pills had a potentially deadly dose.

I saw the devastation that heroin brought to Baltimore as a young police officer, Triana says. But fentanyl is a more potent deadly threat. Its frightening.

Crime groups have gained complete control of the Mexican side of the 1,950-mile border, directing the flow of both migrants and drugs. The Gulf Cartel runs the region around Brownsville, Texas, and moving west to California, the Cartel of the Northeast, Juarez Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel have staked out turf, says Victor Avila, a former supervisory special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement who specialized in human and narcotics trafficking.

Diversion Game at the Border

They operate openly as if they were the Mexican military. Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has recently expanded operations, even slaps a CJNG logo in big letters on its military-style trucks and uniforms as part of a show of force.

The surge of migrants that began in 2019 and accelerated after Biden took office has been a boon to these violent enterprises. The migrants are coming from Eastern Europe and Africa as well as Central and South America, lured partly by the administrations policy that allows unaccompanied children and families to stay in the states while they apply for asylum, according to border agents who have interviewed them. In addition to paying cartels between about $2,000 and $9,000 each to cross, migrants are also used as decoys in drug smuggling operations.

Equipped with encrypted communications and satellite technologies, crime organizations are precisely orchestrating the timing and location of the border crossings of large migrant groups as part of a diversion tactic, several officers say. Dozens of agents are forced to leave their posts guarding many miles of the border and at checkpoints on roads to assist with apprehensions of the groups.

The cartels work with spotters in the Halcon network to identify these wide security gaps along the border and send drug smugglers on foot through them undetected.

A Call for More Agents

The illegal alien flows are so big that the Border Patrol has to leave hundreds of miles of border unprotected, says Avila. This absolutely means more fentanyl has been entering the country in the last few years.

The smugglers make their way across tough terrain to one of hundreds of stash houses located near roads in the border region. The drugs are then placed in cars and driven through often unguarded checkpoints and across the country.

Rather than pursue these smugglers, many Border Patrol agents are handling the crush of migrants entering the U.S. They apprehended more than 1.7 million this fiscal year, or six times the 2017 number. (That doesnt include the hundreds of thousands who got away, according to Border Patrol estimates.) Agents deport most of the single adults. But they have to assist in transporting, processing, housing and feeding the unaccompanied children and families who are placed in border patrol facilities for weeks before they are released into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims.

In the busiest border areas, such as Texas Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio, as many as 30% of agents are pulled from the frontlines to deal with the migrant overflow, says Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Texas is trying to fill the security void by deploying hundreds of state troopers and the National Guard in Operation Lonestar, a $1.8 billion effort. They have seized 127 pounds of fentanyl this year through early September.

The Trump administration was able to tamp down the number of migrants crossing the border by forcing them to remain in Mexico while they applied for asylum. Biden ended that program, calling it inhumane, and the administration is now fighting a court order to reinstate it.

Judd says as long as Bidens asylum policy is in place, the Border Patrol, which has about 14,000 field agents covering both coasts and both land borders, needs thousands more to help secure the Southwest flank. Pleas to congressional leaders for help, made by Judds union and former Border Patrol chiefs, have gone unheeded.

If you are not going to change the policy, then give me more manpower to stop the drugs, Judd says. But Democrats control Congress, and while some of them are fairly good on border security, it isnt a priority for a majority of them.

So far this year, CBP has redeployed 400 agents from the northern and coastal areas to the southern border  not nearly enough to fill the gaps, Judd says.

In a statement to RealClearInvestigations, a CBP spokesperson said the agency continues to evaluate the need for more agents and pointed to drug busts as evidence of strong enforcement. Border and customs agents seized 10,000 pounds of fentanyl this fiscal year, according to agency data. Thats five times the catch in 2018. But agents say more seizures actually indicates that more of the deadly drug is entering the country since they have only been capturing an estimated 10% to 15% of the total.

Most of the fentanyl is pouring over the Southwest border at the U.S. ports of entry, particularly in California, a favorite route for smugglers. The challenge for customs agents at the controlled inspection ports in four states is very different than the cat-and-mouse pursuits of the Border Patrol: How to find illegal contraband in vehicles without slowing trade with Mexico worth hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

The San Ysidro port in California between San Diego and Tijuana is the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere. The 70,000 vehicle passengers headed north every day through the port have to wait in long lines of traffic for an hour, on average. Nearby, the thousands of commercial trucks that go through the Otay Mesa port daily have even longer waits.

Customs agents are in a fix. They are under pressure to efficiently clear trucks from Mexico carrying fruits, vegetables, electronics and other goods for entry into the U.S. But that priority to avoid costly commercial delays is in constant conflict with the need to stop and search the vehicles for illicit goods.

More often than not, smugglers get waved through without a search. Transnational criminal organizations take advantage of the chaos and clutter at the ports of entry that are dealing with so much legitimate trade and travel, says Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol supervisor and now a security expert at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Cartels have the confidence to go big at the border. In August, a Mexican tractor-trailer driver attempted to cross at Otay Mesa with 2.8 tons of methamphetamine and fentanyl hidden among plastic household goods. Agents scanned the cargo using an X-ray-like machine and saw what they described as anomalies inside the trailer. Then a canine team sniffed out narcotics worth $13 million. It was the largest ever meth bust along the border.

Customs agents would arrest more smugglers if they were equipped with basic scanning technology used in the huge Otay Mesa seizure. It helps them quickly make better decisions about which vehicles to inspect manually, a process that can take hours. CBP says it has been deploying more large-scale scanners at ports of entry in the last two years.

Remarkably, only 15% of trucks were scanned at Southwest ports of entry in 2019, according to a CBP report. And less than half of them received any formal inspection because customs agents have to move too rapidly through the snarl of waiting traffic, says Manjarrez.

Many of the 328 U.S. ports also need to be expanded and modernized to reduce wait times to allow for more inspections. The Biden administration is asking Congress for $660 million for upgrades, or enough to improve only a handful of the old ports. Otay Mesas $144 million expansion plan alone would absorb almost a quarter of this new funding. Its really only a down payment for what is needed, Manjarrez says.

Hugs, Not Bullets in Mexico

More agents and technology would absolutely make a bigger dent in the flow of fentanyl over the border, Manjarrez says, but not stop it. Agents say Mexico also has to begin targeting the hundreds of cartel production labs to further cut the supply.

Destroying the labs has to be a top priority because, without them, the cartels cant continue to kill our kids, says Maltz, the former DEA organized crime specialist.

But President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ended Mexicos military campaign against cartel leaders two years ago. Soldiers captured and killed many kingpins, but the crackdown also unleashed a reign of violence that Lopez Obrador pledged to blunt.

The populist president is pushing his hugs, not bullets agenda to reduce poverty in the hope that it will eventually curb the appeal of drug smuggling. Meanwhile, the cartels, facing little government resistance, have continued to expand their hold on territory and corrupt lawmakers, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a scholar focusing on nonstate armed actors at the Brookings Institution.

The clout of the cartels was made clear in 2020 when U.S. agents arrested a former Mexican defense secretary for taking bribes to protect the ultraviolent H-2 Cartel. Outraged officials pressured the U.S. to return Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda to Mexico where prosecutors promptly exonerated him.

The more lasting damage to drug enforcement came when Mexico passed a law in response to Cienfuegos arrest. Maltz says it froze DEAs operations in Mexico by requiring agents to pass sensitive intelligence through a central foreign affairs office that they believe is corrupt.

The cartels control Mexico. All of it, says Avila, the former ICE agent who survived gunshot wounds in an ambush with a cartel. They are running a parallel government.

The U.S. Plays Nice

With the U.S. drug enforcement imperiled, Felbab-Brown has called on the Biden administration to get tough with Mexico. In January she urged the administration to use financial support as leverage to compel Mexico to target mid-level cartel operatives and their corrupt government protectors to avoid the bloodshed that comes with taking down bosses.

But the State Department is taking a conciliatory position, essentially backing Lopez Obradors economic development strategy in an agreement between the two countries announced in early October.

At a joint press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the countries had relied too much on security forces to try to weaken the cartels. Over the past decade the U.S. has spent $3 billion to arm and train the Mexican military and police as part of the Merida Initiative. During that time, drug trafficking into the U.S. increased. A new agreement will replace Merida, making job creation in poor communities and drug treatment and prevention top priorities, Blinken said.

The countries did agree to pursue the cartels, particularly by curtailing the illegal supply of U.S. arms into Mexico and money laundering activities. But the prosecution of cartel members isnt the priority. Mexico Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the success of the agreement wont be measured by how many drug lords go to jail.

The administrations strategy has plenty of backers in the criminal justice and public health professions. I'm sympathetic to the argument that Mexico is on the border with the largest consumer of fentanyl and cocaine in the world, says Bryce Pardo, a drug policy specialist at Rand Corp. We could do more to reduce our insatiable appetite for drugs.

In the meantime, more fentanyl smuggled into the U.S. means more deaths. Triana, the DEA special agent, estimates that the number of overdose fatalities this year will either be on par with or exceed 2020s.

Allyssia Solorio, the sister of the Sacramento man who died from fentanyl, has become an activist to raise awareness of the dangers of the illicit drug. The former postal worker says law enforcement must play a larger role.

President Biden can do a lot more to shut down the smuggling of fentanyl over the Mexican border, she says.
The United States and the European Union reached a detente last weekend regarding the American steel and aluminum tariffs that so angered our European trading partners that they raised duties in 2018 on American whiskey, orange juice and motorboats.

The new arrangement will exempt a portion of European steel and aluminum imports from the tariffs imposed by the last administration under Section 232 of our trade laws. It will improve Washingtons relationship with the EU; President Bidens national security adviser called the tariffs one of the biggest bilateral irritants between the sides.

But in satisfying a major trading partner and innocent bystander industries  Harley-Davidson, whose motorcycles are no longer facing steep EU tariff increases, is calling it a big win  the Biden administration managed to negotiate an agreement the domestic steel industry believes is fair.

The steel tariff has worked, and the thousands of steel jobs created since it was imposed and the billions in new capital investment are proof positive. But this past weekends deal is still a good one for American steelworkers, because two important trade enforcement tools have been imposed on the EU. The first is a tariff rate quota that will guard against future import deluges from Europe by automatically enacting a duty once a certain import volume has been achieved. The second is a melted and poured requirement that will guarantee any steel imported to the U.S. from Europe is actually made there  and not in Russia or a state-owned mega mill in northeastern China.

That requirement is informative because it gets at the problem that caused the Trump administration to justifiably raise this tariff in the first place: the persistent production overcapacity in the global steel industry that is mostly driven by the gargantuan, state-controlled steel industry in China. For well over a decade, China has made far more steel than even its voracious domestic construction industry can consume, and it sells its heavily subsidized surplus around the world. That has driven down prices everywhere as steelmakers whose bills arent paid by their governments have scrambled to stay competitive. And, as a new white paper points out, this flood of steel is a feature and not a bug of its industrial policy; the Chinese government is purposefully doing this to both capture market share and position its champion companies at the top of lucrative value chains. Its very deliberate. They say it out loud.

Take, for example, the deal struck by NSM Steel, a small Italian steel processing company, and Baosteel, a Chinese state-owned enterprise that is the worlds largest steelmaker. The latters 2011 investment in the former gave NSM a serious shot in the arm and access to a reliable supply of cheap steel. But Baosteel got far more: It gained market access. In addition to access to NSMs client list, which includes names like Fiat and Maserati, it could now circumvent EU trade laws and, through this foothold, compete with other European steelmaking rivals that cant match the cost advantages associated with being explicitly backed by the Chinese state.

That kind of capture should be a concern to European regulators but, with the melted-and-poured rule now in place between the U.S. and EU, it will now be less of one for American policymakers because lightly touched steel that was made elsewhere wont qualify for duty-free status on its way to the American market.

Put another way: The Baosteels of the world wont be able to use Europe as a steppingstone to avoid richly earned U.S. anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures.

It should be noted that nothing in the arrangement modifies the dozens of existing anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases on EU metals, which have also been richly earned in recent years, and the deal still permits new unfair trade cases to be initiated against the EU.

It will, however, create the space to allow the U.S. and EU to turn toward the problem of overcapacity and the goal of less carbon-intensive steel trade. That  and the quota, and the rule ensuring that only European-made steel qualifies for duty-free treatment  make this a fair agreement for the American steel industry.

The Biden administration could have reflexively rejected an import restriction erected by its predecessor. To its great credit, it instead acknowledged the underlying premise that steel is vital to our national security and has now enlisted the EU in efforts to contain Chinas destructive steel strategy.
Morrisons has reduced its pork prices and increased the amount of meat it prepares as part of new measures to help the country's struggling pig farmers.

The retailer has cut the price of seasonal cuts of pork - such as joints, chops, bellies and steaks - to encourage customers to support farmers and buy more pork products.

Britain is a significant exporter of pork. However, in recent months a labour shortage of skilled workers, as well as increased difficulties in exporting, has left the sector with a growing backlog of pigs.

Looking to alleviate the issues, Morrisons has slashed pork prices across its Morrisons Market Street counters for November to help drive customer demand.

For example, Morrisons British Bone In Pork Loin is now 3 per kg, Pork Shoulder Steaks are 2 per kg and a six pack of Best Thick Pork Butcher Counter Sausages is now 1.

Morrisons said it had already changed its meat cuts because stock was growing larger on farms before reaching meat preparation sites.

The supermarket added that it had invested more in automating processing sites while adopting new ways of working to enable it to take up to 3,000 more animals per week.

In addition to supplying more pork to stores, throughout November its meat sites will be supporting the wider pig sector by supplying pork for sale outside of Morrisons.

This meat will either be exported outside of the UK or sold domestically to smaller butchers as whole carcasses, the company explained.

Sophie Throup, head of agriculture at Morrisons, said the pig sector was struggling: "As a meat producer as well as a retailer we believe we are well placed to help.

"We will therefore be offering our customers great deals on pork throughout the month, as well as trying to help the whole industry to prepare more meat.

Rob Mutimer, chairman of the National Pig Association (NPA), welcomed the measures announced by the supermarket chain.

Last month, the trade group urged the UK's main supermarket chains and retailers to prioritise domestic pork to help resolve the supply chain crisis.

Mr Mutimer said: The NPA is delighted that Morrisons continues to support the British pig sector with their proactive approach in finding solutions to help alleviate the difficulties our farmers still face.

"Anything retailers can do to promote British pork to their customers is warmly welcomed.
Farmers can receive one-to-one guidance to improve their grazing strategy as part of a new mentorship initiative delivered by the British Grassland Society and AHDB.

Farmers will receive guidance and support about their grassland management from an experienced grazing mentor as part of the new initiative.

The mentors, who are livestock producers and grassland managers, have undergone training to help farmers set goals and improve grassland efficiency.

Eight new mentors have joined the project this year, consisting of a mixture of dairy, beef and sheep farmers from across the country.

Farmers will receive two visits from their mentor, alongside conversations to help with problems and update on progress.

As part of the initiative, farmers can also visit their mentor's farm if they need to.

Siwan Howatson, AHDB animal health scientist said: The BGS Grazing Mentors can help farmers unlock the potential of their pasture, the one-to-one guidance on their grazing strategy is specifically tailored to each farm.

Better production and utilisation of grass and forage provides an opportunity to reduce costs and optimise profits on any livestock farm.

"The key to success is to learn from other farmers experiences and expertise," she said.

Kenton Bennett, a dairy farmer from Dorset, has had a British Grassland Society grazing mentor since May 2021 to help him get more from his grass.

He said: Weve learnt a lot from our grazing mentor. Although weve had a tough year its taught me to plan better for next year.

"You can take a lot of knowledge from someone thats already been through it.

Farmers who are interested in receiving mentoring from autumn to 2021 to 2022 can find more information online.
Police have issued farmers a warning to keep livestock safe from rustlers after 26 ewes were recently snatched in Devon.

Devon and Cornwall Police are appealing for witnesses after the sheep were stolen from farmland between 20 October and 27 October.

The Highlander ewes were stolen from a field in Brayford, Barnstaple, the police said on social media.

The sheep were fully fleeced, uniquely tagged and marked with black spray marker in various ways.

Livestock rustling remains one of the most costly crimes for British farmers after vehicle and machinery theft.

Figures by NFU Mutual show that farm animals worth an estimated 2.3m were stolen from UK farms in 2020.

We are appealing for witnesses and anyone with information in connection with a report of theft of sheep," Devon and Cornwall Police said.

"If you have any information which may relate to this please phone: 101, or via webchat on the Devon and Cornwall police website or via email: 101@dc.police.uk, quoting CR/094378/21."

In August, a 25-year-old man who stole over 87,000 worth of sheep was handed an eight month prison sentence.

Daniel Smith, from Sutton St. Nicholas, Hereford, pleaded guilty to four counts of livestock theft for crimes committed between November 2020 to January 2021.
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Cloudy this morning. A few showers developing during the afternoon. High 53F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

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One of Indias favourite destinations, the kingdom of Thailand is now welcoming travellers from 63 countries

On November 1, 2021, Thailand threw open its borders once again to visitors from 63 countries, including India.

Most parts of the kingdom of Thailand are now open with relaxed COVID-19 restrictions. Visitors from 63 countries including Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and India are now welcome to enter the kingdom by air if they are fully vaccinated.

You need to have a certificate of vaccination; the second dose taken at least 14 days before arrival in Thailand. Children under 12 years of age, travelling with their parents, are exempt from this vaccination requirement. A negative RT-PCR lab result taken not more than 72 hours before arrival and insurance cover of not less than US $50000 are also mandatory.

Before arrival, you will need to apply for a Thailand Pass QR Code at this site. You can then choose from three plans - Exemption from Quarantine (Test and Go), the Sandbox Programme, and Alternative Quarantine.

Test and Go is ideal, requiring a prepaid nights stay at an approved hotel, as you wait for the results of the test on arrival.



The Sandbox Programme allows you to visit any of the 17 blue zone destinations for a mandatory stay of seven nights before you move on to other destinations in Thailand. You must have proof of confirmed and prepaid stay for seven days at an approved hotel.







Happily, the blue zone destinations include places we love: Bangkok (above), Krabi (main image), Chon Buri (Banglamung, Pattaya, Si Racha, Ko Si Chang, and Sattahip  Na Jomtien and Bang Sarey), Chiang Mai (image below) (Mueang, Doi Tao, Mae Rim, and Mae Taeng), Trat (Ko Chang), Buri Ram (Mueang), Prachuap Khiri Khan (Hua Hin and Nong Kae), Phang-nga, Phetchaburi (Cha-Am), Phuket, Ranong (Ko Phayam), Rayong (Ko Samet), Loei (Chiang Khan), Samut Prakan (Suvarnabhumi Airport), Surat Thani (Ko Samui, Ko Pha-ngan, and Ko Tao), Nong Khai (Mueang, Sangkhom, Si Chiang Mai, and Tha Bo), Udon Thani (Mueang, Ban Dung, Kumphawapi, Na Yung, Nong Han, and Prachaksinlapakhom).

The Alternative Quarantine is of 10 days duration.

What Else Do You Need To Know?

Nearly all businesses in the four pilot tourist destinations - Bangkok, Krabi, Phang-Nga and Phuket - have resumed new normal operations. Which means you can visit shopping venues, convenience stores, markets, cinemas and theatres, beauty salons, restaurants and eateries, and the like.

The Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, as well as other royal palaces and locations such as the Bang Pa-In Palace in Ayutthaya, the Bhubing Palace in Chiang Mai, the Chang Hua Man Royal Project in Phetchaburi, the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in the Grand Palace complex in Bangkok, and the Sala Chalermkrung Royal Theatre in Bangkok are also open.

The Arts of the Kingdom Museum in Ayutthaya will reopen on November 19, 2021.

There are also yellow, dark red, red and orange zones with other restrictions and relaxations.

Also see: Find vegetarian delights on your next trip to Switzerland
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TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / October 25, 2021 / Idaho Champion Gold Mines Canada Inc. (CSE:ITKO ; OTCQB:GLDRF; FSE:1QB1) ("Idaho Champion" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the completion of the 2021 exploration program at its 100% controlled Champagne Gold Project ("Champagne") near the city of Arco, Butte County, Idaho.

2021 Champagne Exploration Highlights

Focused on testing the large, induced polarization (IP) anomaly comprising the prospective St. Louis-Reliance Corridor with a series of drill "fences" (Figure 1) (See press release dated September 14, 2021).

Completed ten (10) diamond core holes totaling 3,432 metres - located along IP lines -3, -4 and -6.

Expanded IP coverage by an additional 7,800 line metres in two lines over the northern extent of the St. Louis- Reliance Corridor.

Jonathan Buick, Idaho Champion's CEO, commented, "The large scale of the IP anomaly discovered in 2020 warranted a rigorous drilling test, so we completed several drill fences across the shallower targets reported earlier this year. As we recently announced, the extent of alteration, sulfide mineralization, and veining is encouraging. We encountered disseminated and vein hosted sulfide minerals that indicate depth continuity to the mineral system. We are confident that the results from this drill program will improve our understanding of the zonation within this large geophysical anomaly and mineral system. The potential for both high-grade veins and porphyry style mineralization at Champagne is an excellent foundation for the continued growth of Idaho Champion."

Drilling Program

On July 7, 2021, Idaho Champion commenced a core drilling program designed to test the large IP anomaly identified during the 2020 exploration program northwest of the Mine Hill mineralization (See press release dated February 2, 2021). The program was recently completed, including 3,432 metres in ten (10) holes. Three reconnaissance drill holes are located in the newly defined Western Corridor and are positioned on IP Lines -1 and -2. Seven holes are located within the St. Louis-Reliance Corridor on IP lines -3, -4 and -6 (Figure 1). Core processing (logging and sampling) is almost completed; the final hole, DDH-CC-21-10, is currently being logged and sampled. The Company expects to receive the first of the analytical results in the very near term.

2021 Induced Polarization Program

The Company completed two new IP lines north of the 2020 survey (lines 7 and 8) totaling 7,800 metres (Figure 1). These new lines extend the survey coverage over the St. Louis-Reliance Corridor IP anomaly by an additional 1,000 metres of strike length to the north.

Figure 1: Summary of IP and Drilling at Champagne Project

Target Review and 2021 Exploration Strategy for Champagne

The principal targets at the Champagne Project are the roots to the polymetallic sulfosalt-sulfide vein system and gold-silver vuggy silica/breccia bodies historically exploited at Mine Hill. Geologic mapping at Mine Hill found that the veins could be traced at the surface for distances ranging from 500 to 1,200 metres, totaling approximately four kilometers of cumulative prospective strike length.

Historic mining on the property by Bema Gold in the 1990s focused on gold-silver-bearing vuggy silica breccia bodies and clusters of veins covering an area of approximately 1,200 by 700 metres on Mine Hill. It is the interpretation of the Idaho Champion team based on its chemistry, alteration, and textural features that the Gold Hill mineralization is the upper-most part of a high-sulfidation system related to a porphyry copper intrusion at depth.

Core drilling and IP surveys carried out in 2020 revealed that the vein system and breccia bodies at Mine Hill had been sheared off at shallow depth along a flat-lying detachment fault and displaced a considerable distance in an eastward direction. Hence, the downward extent of the vein system and breccia bodies remains intact and concealed beneath cover rock overlying the detachment fault. The roots of the vein and breccia system may have significant depth extent, including possible bonanza grades so the depth extent of that system a worthwhile target to pursue. The 2020 IP survey defined a large IP anomaly west of Mine Hill and extending for 2,000 metres north-south and having widths up to 1,000 metres. The geophysical anomaly appears to have considerable depth extent (>800 metres).

While the northern and southern portions of the IP anomaly are concealed beneath 150 to 300 metres of cover rock, the central segment, which is approximately 1,200 metres long, is uplifted bringing the IP anomaly close to surface. The Idaho Champion team believes that the characteristics of the central portion of the IP anomaly fit well with the signature expected from the targeted sulfide-rich veins and breccias. A porphyry copper system at depth is an attractive target, but the associated veins and breccias overlying a porphyry system may host very attractive grades of polymetallic mineralization.

Reports from the historic mines in the Mine Hill area indicated bonanza grades for precious and base metals in several of the productive veins, including:

The central vein cluster at Mine Hill with 2- 3% copper and 12 oz/ton silver;

An outer vein containing 4% lead, 7% zinc, 2 to 3 oz/ton silver, and 0.03 oz/ton gold; and

Another vein west of Mine Hill carried ore grades of 8% lead, 5 - 10% zinc, and 12 to 18 oz/ton silver with minor gold credits.

The Company cautions that the information from historic reports about past-producing mines at Champagne is not likely to be indicative of mineralization on Idaho Champion's property. The historic data is provided only for context and as an illustration of the prospectivity of the property. There can be no assurance that this type of mineralization still occurs on the proper, and if mineralization does occur, that it will be of sufficient quantity or grade to result in an economic extraction scenario. The Company has not yet conducted sufficient exploration to ascertain if a mineral resource is present on the property.

About the Champagne Project

The Champagne Mine was operated by Bema Gold as a heap leach operation on an epithermal gold-silver system that occurs in volcanic rocks. Bema Gold drilled 72 shallow reverse circulation holes on the project, which complement drilling and trenching from other previous operators. The property has had no deep drilling or significant modern exploration since the mine closure in early 1992.

The Champagne Deposit contains epigenetic style gold and silver mineralization that occurs in strongly altered Tertiary volcanic tuffs and flows of acid to intermediate composition.

Champagne has a near surface cap of gold-silver mineralization emplaced by deep-seated structures that acted as conduits for precious metal rich hydrothermal fluids. Higher grade zones in the Champagne Deposit appear to be related to such feeder zones.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Peter Karelse P.Geo., a consultant to the Company, who is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Karelse has more than 30 years of experience in exploration and development.

About Idaho Champion Gold Mines Inc.

Idaho Champion is a discovery-focused gold exploration company that is committed to advancing its 100%-owned highly prospective mineral properties located in Idaho, United States. The Company's shares trade on the CSE under the trading symbol "ITKO", on the OTCQB under the trading symbol "GLDRF", and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol "1QB1". Idaho Champion is vested in Idaho with the Baner Project in Idaho County, the Champagne Project located in Butte County near Arco, and four cobalt properties in Lemhi County in the Idaho Cobalt Belt. Idaho Champion strives to be a responsible environmental steward, stakeholder and a contributing citizen to the local communities where it operates. Idaho Champion takes its social license seriously, employing local community members and service providers at its operations whenever possible.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Jonathan Buick"

Jonathan Buick, President and CEO

For further information, please visit the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com or the Company's corporate website at www.idahochamp.com.

For further information please contact:

Nicholas Konkin, Marketing and Communications

Phone: (416) 567- 9087

Email: nkonkin@idahochamp.com

THIS PRESS RELEASE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY SECURITIES IN ANY JURISDICTION, NOR SHALL THERE BE ANY OFFER, SALE, OR SOLICITATION OF SECURITIES IN ANY STATE IN THE UNITED STATES IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SALE, OR SOLICITATION WOULD BE UNLAWFUL.

Cautionary Statements

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its regulation services provider has reviewed or accepted responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release This press release may include forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business of the Company. Forward-looking information is based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by the management of the Company, including suggested strike extension. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking information is based on are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: Idaho Champion Gold Mines Canada Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/669422/Idaho-Champion-Gold-Completes-2021-Exploration-Program-at-Champagne-Gold-Project
Your phone is listening and helping marketers to target you. What can you do about it?

LONDON, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Last year, there was a 5% increase in the installation of monitoring apps, a study by NordVPN shows. Yet some users suspect that their smartphones are spying on them even if they have no monitoring apps installed.

This is true. Virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa listen to their users all the time. They have to constantly listen so they can hear the voice command and assist. However, some of the things people say are being recorded for companies' own benefit, like improving the service quality or for marketing purposes.

"When you ask Google Assistant or Siri to find something, this information is used for online advertising. It's no different from typing something into Google Search. If you're looking for car dealerships in your city, related ads will start chasing you across the internet. In a way, virtual assistant is just another search engine," says Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN .

The expert shares how you can check if your phone is spying on you.

How to test your phone?

The best way to see if your phone is helping marketers target you is by setting up a trap.

Select a good topic.

Isolate the topic from your phone.

Select keywords.

Discuss the topic out loud next to your phone.

Once you set up the trap, notice if any new ads have started targeting you on social media or other digital channels. If they have, then your phone is probably helping these ads reach you.

How can you protect your privacy?

First of all, you should review your app permissions.

"Once access is granted, the app can do whatever it wants with that data. So, build a routine to review your phone's app permissions and think twice before agreeing to an app's demands," Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN , emphasizes.

Some apps might want to access your microphone without any reason. This might allow bad actors to spy on you in the background or collect ad-targeting data when you don't want them listening.

Also, clear your activities once in a while and turn off the audio recording function.

Finally, install a VPN on your smartphone and enhance your privacy. A virtual private network masks your IP address and encrypts traffic.
- Report based on interviews with 200 digital native media in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia provides key lessons for growing sector

- More than 85% of African digital media interviewed have contributed to 'significant political and societal changes'; more than half have won journalism awards

- But more than half subjected to online attacks and threats

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital media entrepreneurs are producing ground-breaking journalism and achieving significant impact on their societies, in spite of often tiny budgets and constant online threats and attacks, a new global report revealed today.

The Inflection Point International report, published by SembraMedia, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurial journalists in partnership with the global philanthropic organisation Luminate, carried out more than 200 global interviews and interviewed 49 independent digital native media organizations in Africa, in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

The researchers found that more than 85 percent of the media interviewed had contributed to significant political and societal changes, in a report that comes just a month after the award of Nobel Peace Prizes to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their achievements in defending freedom of speech and upholding democracy.

African media entrepreneurs reported achieving enhanced civic engagement, criminal investigations, and changes in the law through their coverage. Almost half said they were engaged in some form of solutions journalism - compared with 15 per cent in Asia - citing solutions reporting and investigative journalism as key factors in achieving social change.

"This report shines a light on a new generation of creative and courageous media entrepreneurs, developing solutions to Africa's social and economic challenges and strengthening the workings of democracy and issues of governance," said Abdul Noormohamed, Director, Africa of Luminate.

Download the full report

The full report is available on the Inflection Point International website, and can be downloaded in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Executive Summary is available in 12 other languages, including French.

The report found that 57 per cent of the African digital newsrooms interviewed had won national awards and 28 per cent had won international awards in recognition of their work. However, they had done so in the face of ongoing harassment, with more than a third reporting cyber-attacks on their news platforms.

Some of the entrepreneurs also reported a degree of self-censorship, in avoiding stories that could lead to legal challenges, because they could not afford attorneys to defend themselves. Media in Nigeria and Ghana reported significantly higher incidences of lawsuits and legal attacks than the media organisations interviewed in other countries.

Yet most of the entrepreneurs appear to have survived the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"While there are differences across the three regions, what struck us most as we reviewed the data were the similarities that emerged among these news organizations as they strive to cover their communities and build sustainable business models," said Janine Warner, co-founder of SembraMedia.

Some of the outlets were established news sites, such as the Daily Maverick in South Africa, but many were much smaller, with 60 per cent of the outlets interviewed globally earning less than US$50,000 in revenue.

Overall, the African digital media reported higher levels of advertising revenue than Latin American and South-east Asian digital media, with advertising contributing around 29 per cent of incomes for the African media in 2019, falling to 26 per cent in 2020. The top tier digital media on the continent was also found to be earning more for smaller audiences - measured as page views - than equivalent media in Latin America and South-east Asia.

However, the African entrepreneurs had the most limited financial records with around half unable to identify their total revenues or revenue sources. Those that shared financial details were also benefitting from a lower proportion of grant funding than digital media elsewhere, at 16 per cent of revenue in 2019. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, grants to African media rose, to account for more than 19 per cent of revenues in 2020.

About SembraMedia

SembraMedia's mission is to empower diverse voices in media to publish news and information with independence, journalistic integrity, and a positive impact on the communities they serve. We help digital media entrepreneurs build more sustainable, independent news organizations by offering business and technical training, market intelligence, networking opportunities, specialized consulting, and direct financial support. Our work is driven by an international team of journalists, entrepreneurs, consultants, and academics with deep knowledge of global political, economic, and media markets. We are guided and supported by a distinguished Advisory Board whose members contribute their expertise as journalists, media executives, professors, and consultants. To learn more, visit Sembramedia.org.

About Luminate

Luminate is a global philanthropic organization focused on empowering people and institutions to work together to build just and fair societies. We support innovative and courageous organizations and entrepreneurs around the world, and we advocate for the policies and actions that will drive change across four impact areas: Civic Empowerment, Data & Digital Rights, Financial Transparency, and Independent Media. We work with our partners to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in and to shape the issues affecting their societies, and to make those in positions of power more responsive and accountable. Luminate was established in 2018 by philanthropists Pierre and Pam Omidyar. The organization was founded by The Omidyar Group. www.luminategroup.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 3, 2021) - Bayhorse Silver Inc (TSXV: BHS) ("Bayhorse" or the "Company") has received excellent assay results from recent underground drilling at its silver rich, Bayhorse Silver Mine, Oregon, USA.

The highest grade interval was 2,180g/t (63.65 oz/t) over 0.6m (2 ft.) in Hole BHDD008, a 24.5 m (80 ft) underground hole, which intersected a 3.66 meter (12 feet) interval from 17 m to 20.7 m (56 ft to 68 ft) assaying a weighted average of 844 g/t (24.65 oz/t).

The full results are tabulated below.

Sample ID Hole ID From ft To ft Au (ppm) Ag (Tr. Oz/tn) Cu % Pb% Sb Zn 658145 21BHDD-008 40 45 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.47 658146 21BHDD-008 45 48 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.63 658147 21BHDD-008 48 51 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.62 658148 21BHDD-008 51 54 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.45 658149 21BHDD-008 54 56 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.5 658151 21BHDD-008 56 58 <0.05 28.82 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.85 658152 21BHDD-008 58 60 <0.05 63.65 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 1.95 658153 21BHDD-008 60 62 <0.05 36.06 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 2.59 658154 21BHDD-008 62 64 <0.05 8.50 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 3.48 658155 21BHDD-008 64 66 <0.05 4.96 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 2.05 658156 21BHDD-008 66 68 <0.05 5.96 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 2.45 658157 21BHDD-008 68 74 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.11 658158 21BHDD-008 74 75 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.08 658159 21BHDD-008 75 79 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.04 658161 21BHDD-008 79 80 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 0.07

True width yet to be determined

BHDDH008 was drilled at the main haulageway intersection and intercepted stockwork mineralization with a weighted average of 844.5 g/t (24.65 oz/t).

The westerly trending Bayhorse mineralized zone is open to the west, averages 25 feet in thickness, and is up to 200 feet in width. It rises to the North of the main haulageway and dips to the south. The Company is currently conducting drilling operations in a zone 300 meters (1,000 ft) to 450 meters (1,500 ft) west of the Mine Portal.

Underground drilling operations proceed as underground drifting installs additional drill stations. Due to the shortage of experienced underground drillers, trained to Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) requirements, the Company has been training its own underground drilling crews. Further drill results are pending and will be released when received.

Bayhorse CEO Graeme O'Neill comments, "Despite the unprecedented challenges posed this past year through Covid-related issues, the Company has steadily advanced on a number of fronts to measure, develop, and recover silver from the Bayhorse." He further comments that, "The new mill building has been erected with mill equipment currently being installed, with completion projected for renewed operation by early December."

The Company is not basing any decision to produce on a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability and advises there is an increased uncertainty and specific economic and technical risk of failure with any production decision. These risks include, but are not limited to, (i) a drop in price of commodities produced, namely silver, copper, lead and zinc, from the pricing used to make a production decision; (ii) failure of grades of the produced material to fall within the parameters used to make the production decision; (iii) an increase in mining costs due to changes within the mine during development and mining procedures; and (iv) metallurgical recovery changes that cannot be anticipated at the time of production.

This News Release has been prepared on behalf of the Bayhorse Silver Inc. Board of Directors, which accepts full responsibility for its contents. Dr. Stewart Jackson, P.Geo., a Qualified Person and Consultant to the Company has prepared, supervised the preparation of, and approved the technical content of this press release.

On Behalf of the Board.

Graeme O'Neill, CEO

604-684-3394

About Bayhorse Silver Inc.

Bayhorse Silver Inc. is an exploration and production company with a 100% interest in the historic Bayhorse Silver Mine located in Oregon, USA. With state of the art Steinert Ore-Sorting technology reducing waste rock entering the processing stream by up to 85%, we have created a minimum environmental impact facility capable of mining 200 tons of mineralization per day and the ability to process and supply 3,600 tons per year of silver/copper concentrate ranging between 7,500 to 15,000 g/t using standard flotation processing at its milling facility in nearby Payette County, Idaho, USA, with an offtake agreement in place with Ocean Partners UK Limited. The Company also has an option to acquire an 80% interest in the Brandywine high grade silver/gold property located in B.C. Canada. The Company has an experienced management and technical team with extensive mining expertise in both exploration and building mines.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101981
Sleep is a personal thing; no two people or their bodies are the same. For that reason, in consultation with clients and sleep experts, Beter Bed has introduced a series of innovations that result in a new mattress range: B Bright . With the B Bright mattress, the sleep specialists can meet all the personal needs of their clients.

The B Bright mattress range is the first step towards the full renewal of the mattress collection. In addition to the B Bright range, the collection will also consist of a B Better and a B Genius range. In renewing and optimising the entire collection, Beter Bed will make use of the latest technological insights and innovations from the market. As a result, everyone will be able to sleep better and wake up more energised, on a product that meets their personal sleep wishes, physical needs and available budget.

B Bright

"The promise we offer our customers is sleep better, live better. The introduction of our new B Bright range will help us keep that promise as sleep specialists.This extensive product range is based on innovative and sustainable sleep solutions, that as well as offering ultimate sleeping comfort also help reduce our ecological footprint to a minimum," explained Cyril van Seumeren, Group Director Category Management.

B Bright: sleep better, live better for everyone

The B Bright range, manufactured in Europe, consists of nine different mattresses that are classified in the 3000, 4000 and 5000 series. All mattresses have a pocket spring core, each with their own cover layer. Depending on the product series and mattress type, these cover layers vary in comfort and modularity, the factors that determine the price structure of the mattresses. This allows everyone to select the B Bright mattress that best suits him or her. At the end of the day, our customers can enjoy optimum recovery that makes them ready to face up to the rigours of the next day, full of energy.

B Bright 5000: today's sustainable and innovative mattress

A unique product in the B Bright range is the 5000 series consisting of mattresses with a sustainable, innovative and modular structure. With the exception of the mattress base, all components can be easily separated. The top layers are integrated separately in the mattress, without glue. As a result, these mattresses can be almost entirely recycled.

Another feature of the 5000 series mattresses is the edge-to-edge pocket spring core. In other words, these mattresses no longer use foam bars. One benefit of the absence of the transition from foam to springs is 100% sleeping comfort across the entire width of the mattress, guaranteeing permanent body support. This development is enhanced by the use of progressive soft-touch pocket springs. These special pocket springs feel soft to the touch but as soon as you lie on the mattress, the pressure applied by the body generates a progressively firmer level of counter pressure. The overall result is optimum, personalised sleeping comfort.

About Beter Bed Holding

Beter Bed Holding (BBH) is the Netherlands' leading sleep specialist in retail, wholesale and B2B.

Our mission is simple. We believe that the better we sleep, the happier, healthier and more productivewe are. And we won't rest until everyone gets the high-quality sleep they deserve.

Listed on Euronext Amsterdam, BBH operates the successful retail brands Beter Bed, Beddenreus and the new subscription brand Leazzzy. In addition, through its subsidiary DBC International, BBH has a wholesale business in branded products in the bedroom furnishings sector, which includes the well-known international brand M line.

With 3 distribution centres, a fleet of 80 vehicles, 134 stores and a fast-growing online presence, our team of over 1,000 dedicated employees served nearly 200,000 customers in 2020, generating over  200 million in revenue.

Providing expert sleep advice is at the very heart of our strategy, and thanks to our revolutionary 'Beter Slapen ID' tool, our sleep consultants help customers to get the perfect night's sleep. BBH is proud that

M line is the official sleep supplier of AFC Ajax, TeamNL, Jumbo-Visma, NOC*NSF and the KNVB.

For more information

Press enquiries: Uneke Dekkers / CFF Communications

T +31

Please click on the link below for the PDF of the press release. Press photos can be downloaded here .

Attachment
FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Commerzbank AG (CRZBY.PK) reported Thursday that its third-quarter consolidated profit attributable to Commerzbank shareholders amounted to 403 million euros, compared to prior year's loss of 60 million euros. The operating profit went up to 472 million euros from last year's 168 million euros. In the third quarter, Commerzbank generated revenues of 2.006 million euros, almost same as last year's 2.033 billion euros. Underlying net commission income rose by around 7 percent to 873 million euros. Looking ahead, Commerzbank continues to expect a positive net result and operating result for the full year 2021, despite the restructuring expenses. Revenues are still expected to exceed the previous year. Regarding its restructuring, the company noted that around 10,000 full-time positions are to be cut by 2024 to become a sustainably profitable bank. After the successful implementation of the voluntary programme, more than half of the necessary personnel reduction has already been achieved in a socially responsible way, the company noted. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NICOSIA, CYPRUS / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Atalaya Mining Plc (AIM:ATYM)(TSX:AYM) will release its third-quarter financial results for the period ended 30 September 2021 ("Q3 2021") together with its unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements for the year to date on Thursday, 18 November 2021.

The Company is also pleased to announce that Alberto Lavandeira (CEO) and Cesar Sanchez (CFO) will provide a live presentation relating to the Q3 2021 and year-to-date results via the Investor Meet Company platform on 18 November 2021 at 11:00am GMT.

The presentation is open to all existing and potential shareholders. Questions can be submitted pre-event via the Investor Meet Company dashboard up until 9:00am the day before the meeting or at any time during the live presentation.

Investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company for free and click "Add to Meet" Atalaya via:

https://www.investormeetcompany.com/atalaya-mining-plc/register-investor

Investors who already follow Atalaya on the Investor Meet Company platform will automatically be invited.

Contacts:

Newgate Communications Elisabeth Cowell / Adam Lloyd / Tom Carnegie +44 20 3757 6880 4C Communications Carina Corbett +44 20 3170 7973 Canaccord Genuity

(NOMAD and Joint Broker) Henry Fitzgerald-O'Connor / James Asensio +44 20 7523 8000 BMO Capital Markets

(Joint Broker) Tom Rider / Andrew Cameron +44 20 7236 1010 Peel Hunt LLP

(Joint Broker) Ross Allister / David McKeown +44 20 7418 8900

About Atalaya Mining Plc

Atalaya is an AIM and TSX-listed mining and development group which produces copper concentrates and silver by-product at its wholly owned Proyecto Riotinto site in southwest Spain. Atalaya's current operations include the Cerro Colorado open pit mine and a modern 15 Mtpa processing plant, which has the potential to become a centralised processing hub for ore sourced from its wholly owned regional projects around Riotinto that include Proyecto Masa Valverde and Proyecto Riotinto East. In addition, the Group has a phased, earn-in agreement for up to 80% ownership of Proyecto Touro, a brownfield copper project in the northwest of Spain. For further information, visit www.atalayamining.com

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Atalaya Mining PLC

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671130/Atalaya-Mining-PLC-Announces-Notice-of-Q3-2021-Results-Investor-Presentation
HANOVER (dpa-AFX) - German re-insurer Hannover Re AG (HVRRY.PK, HVRRF.PK) reported Thursday that its third-quarter Group net income declined to 185.37 million euros from last year's 265.46 million euros. Earnings per share were 1.54 euros, down from 2.20 euros a year ago. Operating profit or EBIT was 324.53 million euros, compared to last year's 399.34 million euros. In the quarter, gross written premium, however, grew to 7.16 billion euros from last year's 6.15 billion euros. Net premium earned increased to 6.12 billion euros from 5.39 billion euros a year ago. Looking ahead for fiscal 2021, the company continues to expect Group net income of 1.15 billion euros to 1.25 billion euros. Gross premium for the Group is expected to show growth at least in the upper single-digit percentages adjusted for exchange rate effects. Following the good performance in the first nine months, the company now expects a return on investment of more than 2.4 percent for the current financial year. Further ahead, for fiscal 2022, Hannover Re anticipates Group net income of 1.4 billion euros to EUR 1.5 billion euros, a return on investment of at least 2.3 percent, as well as growth of at least 5 percent in Group gross premium adjusted for exchange rate effects. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.


TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Nikon Corporation (NINOF.PK), a Japanese optics and imaging products and services company, on Thursday posted a turnaround to profit for the six-month period ended in September, with a rise in sales, decline in other operating expenses, and a recovery from the Covid-driven slowdown.



The Tokyo-headquartered firm reported a profit of 26.38 billion yen or 71.68 yen per share, for the first half of the fiscal 2021 ended in September, compared to a loss of 31.54 billion yen or 85.90 yen per share, reported for the same period, last year.



It also reported a pre-tax profit of 35.91 billion yen for the 26-week period ended on September 30, against a pre-tax loss of 38.89 billion yen, reported for the six-month period of the year ago.



Owing to positive market cues, the Asian company recorded an operating profit of 32.10 billion yen, for the 160-day period, versus an operating loss of 46.63 billion yen, posted for the same six-month period of 2020.



Operating expenses for the period declined 20.63 billion yen to 1.19 billion yen, posted for the 26-week period of last fiscal.



For the period from April to September, Nikon generated revenue of 273.04 billion yen, higher than 175.64 billion yen, reported for the first half of the last fiscal.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Ultra Electronics (ULE.L) announced that it has been awarded about 65 million multi-year development contract by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, to undertake a significant development and delivery programme to support the UK's Armed Forces. The company noted that the programme would deliver future capability that provides the UK Armed Forces with state of the art communications tools. Simon Pryce, Chief Executive, commented, 'This is a very significant order for Ultra's Cyber business. Not only does it further strengthen our strategic relationship with the MoD, it is also evidence of Ultra's increasing capabilities. The team has shown great commitment, particularly in the face of pandemic driven challenges, and continue to work collaboratively to develop outstanding solutions to highly complex problems.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Regulatory News:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005268/en/

Air Liquide (Paris:AI) and Eni join forces to support hydrogen mobility as one of the solutions to decarbonize the transport segment. The two companies have entered into a partnership with the aim to invest in the development of the infrastructure necessary to allow the expansion of hydrogen mobility in Italy.

Air Liquide and Eni signed a Letter of Intent with the objective to enable the sustainable deployment of an extended network of hydrogen refueling stations in Italy. Firstly, the collaboration will include a feasibility and sustainability study for the development of the low-carbon and renewable hydrogen supply chain supporting the fuel cell vehicles market for heavy and light mobility. The partners will also identify the strategic locations for the positioning of hydrogen refueling stations in Italy

The partnership will leverage Air Liquide's expertise across the entire hydrogen value chain (production, transportation, storage and distribution) and Eni's expertise in commercial and retail activities coupled with the availability of an extended network of service stations. This cooperation aims to promote the development of technologies, skills and infrastructures to enable hydrogen mobility, also evaluating partnerships with other relevant players.

Pascal Vinet, Senior Vice President and a member of the Air Liquide Group's Executive Committee supervising Europe Industries activities, said: "Decarbonizing the transport sector is a major challenge of the energy transition. Implementing a H2 refueling stations network is a critical milestone along this journey. The alliance between a leader in hydrogen with an integrated global energy company such as Eni will pave the way to an extended access to hydrogen in Italy. Together with our long-standing partner Eni, we have the ambition to contribute to a more sustainable future through the use of hydrogen."

Giuseppe Ricci, General Manager Energy Evolution at Eni, said: "The agreement with Air Liquide is a further step forward in the promotion of sustainable mobility. The decarbonisation of transport must make use of the synergy and complementarity of available technologies. For this reason, Eni has launched activities ranging from the strengthening of power systems for electric vehicles to the production of biofuels, from the distribution of biomethane to that of hydrogen, which is one the products to reduce emissions on which Eni intends to accelerate. At the beginning of 2022 Eni will open the first hydrogen refueling station in Italy in an urban environment in Mestre (Venice), followed by the second one in San Donato Milanese (Milan). Thanks to the agreement with Air Liquide, the cooperation between operators is strengthened for an even greater efficiency on the path towards energy transition."

About Air Liquide

A world leader in gases, technologies and services for Industry and Health, Air Liquide is present in 78 countries with approximately 64,500 employees and serves more than 3.8 million customers and patients. Oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are essential small molecules for life, matter and energy. They embody Air Liquide's scientific territory and have been at the core of the company's activities since its creation in 1902.

Air Liquide's ambition is to be a leader in its industry, deliver long term performance and contribute to sustainability with a strong commitment to climate change and energy transition at the heart of its strategy. The company's customer-centric transformation strategy aims at profitable, regular and responsible growth over the long term. It relies on operational excellence, selective investments, open innovation and a network organization implemented by the Group worldwide. Through the commitment and inventiveness of its people, Air Liquide leverages energy and environment transition, changes in healthcare and digitization, and delivers greater value to all its stakeholders.

Air Liquide's revenue amounted to more than 20 billion euros in 2020. Air Liquide is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange (compartment A) and belongs to the CAC 40, EURO STOXX 50 and FTSE4Good indexes.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005268/en/

Contacts:

Air Liquide CONTACTS



Corporate Communications

media@airliquide.com



Investor Relations

IRTeam@airliquide.com



Eni CONTACTS



Press Office: Tel. +39 0252031875 ufficio.stampa@eni.com



Freephone number for shareholders (from Italy): 800 940 924

Freephone number for shareholders (from abroad): 800 1122 3456

investor.relations@eni.com
OSLO, Norway, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Navamedic ASA (OSE: NAVA) grew revenues by 12% in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter last year. The company reported revenues of NOK 63.6 million in the third quarter of 2021 with an EBITDA of NOK 3.7 million, driven by underlying growth in the portfolio and Mysimba in particular. The company reiterates its mid-term ambition of building a NOK 500 million company through organic growth.

"Our portfolio of specialty pharma and consumer health products continue to grow with particularly strong performance for the obesity medicine Mysimba, which grew by 77% in the third quarter. We expect the high demand for Mysimba to continue going forward, further fueled by the conditional reimbursement in Finland and roll-out of our successful patient support program, helping obesity patients across the Nordics to succeed in their treatment," says Kathrine Gamborg Andreassen, Chief Executive Officer of Navamedic ASA, and continues.

"We are also pleased to see the strong performance of our portfolio of antibiotics products, displaying solid traction on tenders compared to plan with new tenders won in several countries."

Revenues in the third quarter of 2021 were NOK 63.6 million (NOK 56.8 million in the third quarter of 2020). The gross margin was 38.9% (31%), while the EBITDA was NOK 3.7 million (3.8). In YTD 2021, revenues grew by 21.8% compared to the same period last year, up from NOK 154.6 million to NOK 188.3 million, while EBITDA was NOK 10.6 million, up from NOK 2.4 million in the same period last year. Navamedic will launch products in at least one country in each launch window going forward. The company targets 20% annual growth from 2021 and reiterates its mid-term ambition of building a NOK 500 million company through organic growth with strong gross margins and underlying profitability.

Navamedic is hosting a webcast presentation of the third quarter 2021 financial results, Thursday 4 November at 08.45 CET. The presentation will be held at Sparebank 1 Markets in Olav V's gate 5 in Oslo as well as via webcast on www.navamedic.com/investors/financial-results under '2021'. Representatives from Navamedic will be CEO Kathrine Gamborg Andreassen and CFO Lars Hjarrand.

EBITDA and other alternative performance measures (APMs) are defined and reconciled to the IFRS financial statements as a part of the APM section of the attached third quarter 2021 presentation on slide 22.

For further information, please contact:

Kathrine Gamborg Andreassen, CEO, Navamedic

Mobile: +47 951 78 680

E-mail: kathrine@navamedic.com

Lars Hjarrand, CFO, Navamedic

Mobile: +47 917 62 842

E-mail: lars.hjarrand@navamedic.com

Navamedic ASA is a Nordic pharma company and reliable provider of high-quality products, delivered to hospitals and through pharmacies, meeting the specific needs of patients and consumers by leveraging its highly scalable market access platform, leading category competence and local knowledge. Navamedic is present in all the Nordic countries, the Baltics and Benelux, with sales representation in the UK and Greece. Navamedic is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (ticker: NAVA). For more information, please visit www.navamedic.com

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/navamedic-asa/r/navamedic-asa--q3-2021-financial-results,c3446751

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CROWTHER, Great Britain, Nov. 04, 2021, the leader in fully integrated on-product and online authentication and brand protection, has today launched OpSec SuRe, a family of surface relief effects for security and brand protection applications that provide visually stunning overt Level 1 security features for ease of public recognition with the naked eye.



With decades of expertise in holography and Optical Variable Devices, leverages cutting edge optical technologies that appear three dimensional and offer high security performance, without compromising the integrity of the document or product. Created with proprietary technology (patent pending), the graphic imagery of OpSec SuRe is visible in all lighting conditions and is simple for the public to recognize and verify. Distinctly different to a hologram and more easily viewable in any lighting, OpSec SuRe can be easily integrated with any of OpSec's existing colored and dynamic features.

OpSec Cameois the first in a series of forthcoming products within the OpSec SuRe family. Cameo creates the visual illusion of a three-dimensional bas relief sculpture that appears raised and sculpted or molded on the surface with a depth of several millimeters. Cameo imagery can be integrated with multiple holographic techniques from OpSec to produce aesthetically pleasing designs with varying levels of security for overt public, covert inspector, and forensic investigator level verification.

The latest innovation from OpSec supports the organization's commitment to meeting growing marketplace demand for efficient and effective authentication solutions. Roger Herring, Director of Product Management of OpSec's Authentication Films and Foils, commented, "This is a real step forward for OpSec's high security and brand application capabilities. Our customers can combine the visual effects of three-dimensional sculpture with sophisticated holographic effects to bring the highest level of optical security to vibrant and pleasing designs that are simple to recognize, yet very difficult to replicate."

The OpSec SuRe family includes a range of technologies, including ideal solutions for banknotes, brand protection programs, identity solutions, security documents, tax stamps, and other high security applications. OpSec SuRe is fully supported by our global cutting-edge design, technology, and manufacturing resources. OpSec's secure manufacturing facilities are accredited to ISO9001:2015 and ISO14298:2013. OpSec is also a member of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association and operates in accordance with the IHMA Code of Practice.

Contact the expertsat OpSec to request a sample and a consultation to discuss a customized solution to fit your specific challenges.

About OpSec Security

OpSec Securityis the global market leader in securing and protecting brands and providing uncompromised high security solutions to governments and brands across the globe.

After decades of leadership in brand protection technology, OpSec grew to become the leading provider of fully integrated brand and document security, providing companies and governments with myriad solutions to help our customers ensure brand quality, reputation, and integrity.

OpSec is a leading innovator in online brand and digital content protection, offering our clients end-to-end safeguards against counterfeiting, piracy, and unauthorized usage. We continue to innovate, finding increasingly advanced ways to meet an ever-growing range of threats. Even as the counterfeiters, pirates, and other bad actors employ more sophisticated ways to damage your brand, we never stop getting better at protecting it.

What is missing from your high security authentication or brand protection program? Find out more at www.opsecsecurity.com.

Media Contact

Amanda Hershey

Marketing Communications Manager

Email: media@opsecsecurity.com

Phone: +1

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5d8ff401-dbc7-4f2a-b65f-2c81308abd8b

A video accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/aaa36ef0-c0fb-44ba-8a20-c3c3996d05e3
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Blender Bites Ltd. (the "Company", "Blender Bites" or "Blender"), (CSE:BITE)(FSE:JL4)(WKN:A3C3Y2), a Canadian company involved in the development and marketing of a line of frozen premium organic and plant-based pre-portioned frozen smoothie pucks, announces a significant increase in the production of its smoothie pucks in the month of October.

Blender Bites is the first company to produce a pre-portioned smoothie puck in the Canadian market and its certified organic, non-GMO, plant-based convenient smoothie pucks are currently available in over 800 retail stores across Canada. In the month of October, the Company saw a significant production increase which can be attributed to an expanded consumer base as a result of a number of Canadian Club store locations being added to its distribution channels, and the need to fulfill orders to meet increasing consumer demand.

The Company is pleased to announce that in the month of October the production of Blender Bites' superfood smoothie pucks increased by 2934% compared to the same period in 2020. In October 2020 the Company produced 9,216 of its superfood smoothie pucks, whereas in the same period of the current year has produced 279,648 smoothie pucks.

These production numbers are a direct result the Company's newly introduced distribution venues, rapidly growing demand for its product, and the Company's foresight to upgrade its production facility in the months leading up to its September 2021 transition from a privately held company to a publicly listed issuer on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

"Blender Bites continues to set records with its production for the month of October. Due to the implementation of its significant expansion plans, the company forecasts November will be its highest producing month since inception" stated Chelsie Hodge, the Company's CEO.

In the month of October 2021, the Company also secured its first US distribution partnership with Active Marketing Group Inc. ("AMG"). It is anticipated that production numbers will continue to grow as AMG and Blender seek to secure first orders in the US grocery retail market. As a result of its recently announced partnership with AMG, Blender Bites products could be exposed to over 50,000 US retail locations and introduce its product to an even larger number of new customers.

About Blender Bites

Blender Bites is a Canadian company involved in the development and marketing of a line of premium frozen food products with a focus on functionality. Blender Bites was founded in 2016 and was first to market in Western Canada with a pre-portioned "easy smoothie" product that is free of any unnecessary inner plastic packaging. Blender Bites products are certified organic, vegan, non-GMO, gluten free, dairy free and soy free. They contain no added sugars and are made in Canada. Blender Bites products are distributed internationally across Canada and the US, and are currently sold in over 900 stores, including Sobeys, Safeway, Save on Foods, Whole Foods Market, Buy-Low/Nesters, IGA and Fresh Street.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Blender Bites Limited

Chelsie Hodge, Chief Executive Officer

For further information, contact Blender IR Team at:

Email - investors@blenderbites.com

Telephone - 1-888-997-2055

CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER STATEMENT

This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, and uncertain capital markets. Readers are cautioned that actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE: Blender Bites Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671106/Blender-Bites-Reports-Record-2934-Increase-in-Production-for-October
OSLO, Norway, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Due to an error, all shareholders have today received information regarding dividend payment of NOK 11.75 in November 2021. The dividend decision is on the agenda for consideration in today's Board of Directors meeting in Aker ASA. The company will inform the market of any relevant decision when taken.

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.


HERZOGENRATH (dpa-AFX) - Aixtron SE (AIXA), a German manufacturer of metalorganic chemical vapour deposition equipment, on Thursday posted a significant rise in profit for the nine-month period ended in September, with a rise in sales and an increase in order intake. In addition, amidst positive market cues, the company has reiterated its revenue guidance for the current fiscal.



The German equipment maker reported its pre-tax profit and operating profit at 41.07 million euros and 41.11 million euros, respectively, for the 36-week period, compared to 10.57 million euros and 10.34 million euros, reported for the three-quarter period of 2020.



The Herzogenrath-headquartered firm generated a profit of 42.94 million euros or 0.39 euros per share for the nine-month period ended in September, compared to a profit of 9.56 million euros or 0.09 euros per share, reported for the same period, last year.



Owing to a continuing high demand from various end markets, the company's order intake is reported at 377.6 million euros for the 270-days of 2021, higher than 209.3 million euros order intake reported for the nine-month period of last fiscal.



It also posted its EBIT at 41.1 million euros for the three-quarter period, compared to 10.3 million euros, reported for the same period of last fiscal.



Amidst a rise in demand for company's products and services, Aixtron generated a revenue of 248.05 million euros, against a revenue of 161.13 million, reported for the nine-month period ended on September 30, 2020.



Based on the business development and positive market cues in the first nine months of the fiscal 2021, the company has reaffirmed its revenue guidance for the current fiscal of 400 million euros - 440 million euros.



Aixtron also expects to achieve a gross margin of approximately 40 percent of revenues and an EBIT margin of between 20 percent and 22 percent of revenues in 2021.



Nine analysts, on average, polled by Thomson-Reuters now estimate the firm to report its revenue at 427.62 million euros for the fiscal 2021. Analysts' estimates typically exclude one-time items.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

AIXTRON SE-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Global technology leader develops strategic framework to drive sustainable change across three interconnected pillars:

Connected Planet : Use technology solutions that help protect, restore, and regenerate the natural world, conserving precious natural resources for future generations.

: Use technology solutions that help protect, restore, and regenerate the natural world, conserving precious natural resources for future generations. Connected Economy : Use trusted technology to help organizations thrive and make their contributions to a sustainable and more resilient digital future.

: Use trusted technology to help organizations thrive and make their contributions to a sustainable and more resilient digital future. Connected Communities: Support diverse, inclusive, and accessible communities where NTT operates to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to realize their potential.

NTT Ltd., a global technology and business solutions provider, is today announcing a series of commitments to reduce its carbon footprint and create a connected future that is both more sustainable and inclusive for all. NTT will work to achieve net zero emissions across its operations by 2030 and its value chain by 2040. It is also driving towards powering its Global Data Center Division an operation of almost 600,000m2 across 20 countries and regions with 100% renewable energy by 2030 as an urgent priority.

Additionally, NTT is proud to have joined the United Nation's Race to Zero campaign. This follows the company joining the Business Ambition Pledge for 1.5C and committing to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). These initiatives are regarded as the gold standard for corporate climate action. They aim to support businesses who are committing to ambitious targets to limit global warming to 1.5C and avoid the worst effects of climate change.

NTT Ltd.'s Global Chief Executive Officer, Abhijit Dubey, commented, "As one of the largest technology companies in the world, we have an obligation to make the world a more sustainable place. Employees, customers and partners are demanding that companies become more purpose-led. This is core to our NTT heritage, and I am incredibly proud to be announcing our commitment to reach net zero emissions and broader strategic sustainability goals. This is a significant step for us, which will see NTT using technology not only to help the world become more sustainable, but also to be connected long into the future. We will continue making investments in technology, people and programs to achieve these goals."

NTT's strategic framework is focused on accelerating sustainable and transformational change across three interconnected pillars:

Connected Planet: Develop new and expand on existing partnerships to scale technology solutions focused on the protection and regeneration of biodiversity and ecosystems on every continent it operates in support of a more positive future by 2025 Incorporate circular economy and regenerative design principles working in partnership across its operations, supply chain and client solutions by 2026 Engage 50% of its employees in conservation and regenerative initiatives in their local communities in support of the UN SDGs and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration by 2025



Connected Economy: Grow its portfolio of smart solutions to support its clients and partners in decreasing 200m tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2026 Establish a Sustainability Innovation Fund, review board and mentorship program to incubate ideas and scale the impact of climate tech and sustainable solutions and in support of the UN SDGs



Connected Communities: Ensure that more than 50% of its workforce will belong to one or more of the diversity categories of gender, race, sexual orientation, socio-economic background and disability. To further reinforce this commitment, NTT will double the diversity of its executive leadership team with an emphasis on female representation by 2025 Provide 5 million young people and children from underprivileged areas across the world with digital access and education to reduce inequality and build critical skills and opportunities for a connected future by 2030 Enable and empower its employees to contribute 1 million hours of volunteering to support the initiatives forming the three interconnected pillars and in support of the UN SDGs by 2025



Commenting on the NTT's sustainability commitments, Marilyn Chaplin, Chief Human Resources and Sustainability Officer at NTT Ltd., said, "We know that the greatest opportunity to make a positive impact is through our people, operations, and our core business solutions. This strategic framework gives us clear direction towards making a tangible difference across societies, the economy and our planet. It also provides us with an opportunity to further support our existing initiatives, such as the Connected Conservation Foundation, which uses technology to reduce poaching, and ROBOCEAN, a start-up looking to reduce climate change through the conservation of seagrass. I look forward to working with our talented and diverse ecosystem of stakeholders to help accelerate the change we need to see in the world and making these commitments a reality."

Visit our website to learn more about our commitment to making the world a more sustainable place.

NTT Ltd. is part of NTT Group, which is committing to zero emissions across its entire group and subsidiaries by 2040.

ENDS

About NTT

NTT Ltd. is a leading global technology services company. Working with organizations around the world, we achieve business outcomes through intelligent technology solutions. For us, intelligent means data driven, connected, digital and secure. Our global assets and integrated ICT stack capabilities provide unique offerings in cloud-enabling networking, hybrid cloud, data centers, digital transformation, client experience, workplace, and cybersecurity. As a global ICT provider, we employ more than 40,000 people in a diverse and dynamic workplace that spans 57 countries, trading in 73 countries and delivering services in over 200 countries and regions. Together we enable the connected future.

Visit us at hello.global.ntt

About Business Ambition for 1.5C:

Business Ambition for 1.5C is a campaign led by the Science Based Targets initiative in partnership with the UN Global Compact and the We Mean Business Coalition. It was launched in 2019 by a global coalition of UN agencies, business and industry leaders.

About Race to Zero:

Race to Zero is the UN-backed global campaign rallying non-state actors including companies, cities, regions, financial and educational institutions to take rigorous and immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030 and deliver a healthier, fairer zero carbon world in time. Led by the High-Level Champions for Climate Action Nigel Topping and Gonzalo Munoz Race to Zero mobilizes actors outside of national governments to join the Climate Ambition Alliance, which was launched at the UNSG's Climate Action Summit 2019 by the President of Chile, Sebastian Pinera.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005516/en/

Contacts:

Media Enquiries:

Hotwire for NTT Ltd.

Beth Sissons

beth.sissons@hotwireglobal.com
Collaboration aims to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the pharmaceutical value chain. ?

Schneider Electric to design and deliver global program, convened by partner Carnstone.

4 November 2021, Rueil-Malmaison - Schneider Electric, the global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, which was recognized in 2021 as the world's most sustainable corporationby the Corporate Knights Global 100 Index , and Carnstone, an independent management consultancy specializing in corporate responsibility and sustainability, today announced Energize - a program to increase access to renewable energy for pharmaceutical suppliers.

The Energize program is a collaboration between 10 global pharmaceutical companies to engage hundreds of suppliers in bold climate action and decarbonization of the pharmaceutical value chain. The program is a first-of-its-kind effort to leverage the scale of a single industry's global supply chain in a pre-competitive fashion to drive system level change. Creating life-saving medicines and services requires a lot of energy, much of it being used by the value chain. By proactively engaging with their suppliers to create renewable energy opportunities, the 10 convening companies are taking meaningful action to collectively address their energy usage and inspire other industry sectors to follow suit.

The program will help pharmaceutical and healthcare suppliers to address their own operational Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions through green power procurement, which in turn will reduce the participating companies' Scope 3 emissions. The program will be designed and delivered by Schneider Electric; the pharmaceutical companies will promote the program collectively, and individually invite their suppliers to participate. Corporate program members include:

AstraZeneca

Biogen

GSK

Johnson & Johnson

MSD

Novartis

Novo Nordisk

Pfizer

Sanofi

Takeda





The Energize program will enable pharmaceutical suppliers to learn more about renewable energy adoption and contracting. In practice, this will mean giving suppliers - who may not otherwise have the internal resources or expertise available - the opportunity to participate in the market for power purchase agreements (PPAs).

"Todaymarks 'Energy Day' ofthe 2021 United Nations Conference of Parties (COP26) on climate change, where representatives from around the globe come together to accelerate action towards the mitigation of climate change," said Susan Uthayakumar, President, Sustainable Business at Schneider Electric. "In support of that mission, we're honored to launch the Energizeprogram and collaborate with the pharmaceutical industry to drive emissions reductions, ultimately benefitting both people and our planet."

"We believe Energize will be a really effective collaboration of pharmaceutical companies looking to take bold climate action. Every business should be moving aggressively towards using 100% renewable electricity, and supporting their supply chains to do the same," said Sam Kimmins, Head of RE100, Climate Group.

Renewable energy procurement can be challenging for companies of all sizes for a variety of reasons. The Energize program is designed to overcome typical market barriers such as inadequate knowledge about renewable energy transactions, load size, lack of credit, and the need for guidance throughout a complex and protracted contracting process. Participating suppliers will learn about the renewable energy market, receive guidance on PPAs, and have the opportunity to access and contract for renewable energy on their own or as part of a collaborative buyers' cohort.

The program will initially focus on suppliers with energy load in Europe and North America, with the intention to expand globally where interest and renewable energy market opportunity align.

"Limiting global warming to safe levels will depend on moving the entire world to renewable energy. This is not something that companies can achieve on their own. We are strong believers in the power of collaboration, and are honored to be bringing the pharmaceutical industry together to drive the adoption of renewable energy in its supply chains," said Glynn Roberts, Senior Partner, Carnstone.

Convened by Carnstone, the Energize program will be designed and delivered by Schneider Electric. Schneider's team of leading renewable energy experts will engage with participating pharmaceutical suppliers and facilitate an education and project selection process to advance supplier progress towards the execution of individual and aggregated renewable energy purchases. Schneider Electric is the leading global consultant on corporate renewable purchasing, having advised companies on over 150 utility-scale PPA purchases across North America, Europe, India, Australia and Latin America for a total of more than 11,000 megawatts of wind and solar power. The Energize program will be powered by Schneider's NEO Network, a global collaboration platform and community designed to accelerate renewable energy decision-making and decarbonization.

Pharmaceutical suppliers, other pharmaceutical, bioscience, and healthcare corporations, members of the media, and interested parties are welcome to join one of two introductory sessions to learn more about the program and how to participate:

Tuesday, 9 November, 12:00 EST | 18:00 CET - Register Here (https://schneider-electric-ee.webex.com/schneider-electric-ee/onstage/g.php?MTID=e4f92c383035c1c7f89e5aeaeea8a7508&sourceID=PR)

Thursday, 11 November, 10:00 EST | 16:00 CET - Register Here (https://schneider-electric-ee.webex.com/schneider-electric-ee/onstage/g.php?MTID=e9bd384ab69cdbc9c4f3bdf0970cb2b3a&sourceID=PR)

About Schneider Electric

Schneider's purpose is to empower all to make the most of our energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability for all. We call this Life Is On.

Our mission is to be your digital partner for Sustainability and Efficiency.

We drive digital transformation by integrating world-leading process and energy technologies, end-point to cloud connecting products, controls, software and services, across the entire lifecycle, enabling integrated company management, for homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries.

We are the most local of global companies. We are advocates of open standards and partnership ecosystems that are passionate about our shared Meaningful Purpose, Inclusive and Empowered values.

www.se.com

About Carnstone

Carnstone is a specialised management consultancy working globally at the intersection of sustainability

and business strategy. Rooted in sound technical and commercial understanding, we provide advice and

support to large companies, international organisations and NGOs from offices in London and Shanghai.

We believe collaboration is one of the most effective ways to tackle complex sustainability issues, and a significant part of our work consists of bringing companies together, including in the pharmaceutical, chemical, media and publishing sectors.

www.carnstone.com

Follow us on:

Attachment


TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Toyota Motor Corp. (TYT.L, TM) reported that its net income attributable to the company for the first half of fiscal year ended September 30, 2021 climbed to 1.52 trillion yen or 109.28 yen per share from 629.37 billion yen or 44.76 yen per share in the same quarter last year.



Operating income rose to 1.75 trillion yen, from 519.98 billion yen in the previous year.



Total sales revenues grew to 15.48 trillion yen, from 11.38 trillion yen last year.



The company declared interim ordinary dividend of 120 yen per share, an increase of 15 yen compared to the previous fiscal year. It has also decided to conduct a repurchase of up to 150 billion yen of common stock.



Consolidated vehicle sales for the period was at 4.94 million, which was 132.7% of consolidated vehicle sales for the first half of the previous fiscal year. Toyota and Lexus brand vehicle sales was at 4.852 million, which was 121.0% of such sales for the first half of the previous fiscal year.



For the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, the company now expects Consolidated vehicle sales to be 8.55 million units, which is 98.3% of the previous forecasts. As for Toyota and Lexus brand vehicle sales, the company anticipates that vehicle sales will be 9.4 million units, which is 97.9% of the previous forecasts.



The company now expects annual net income of 2.49 trillion yen, operating income of 2.80 trillion yen. Previously, it expected net income of 2.30 trillion yen, operating income of 2.50 trillion yen.



The company still expects annual sales revenues of 30 trillion yen.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

TOYOTA-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
The "The US and European Electronic Monitoring Market: Size Forecast with Impact Analysis of COVID-19 (2021-2025)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The report provides an in depth analysis of the US and European electronic monitoring market by value, by segment, etc. The report also provides a detailed analysis of the COVID-19 impact on the electronic monitoring market.

The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall electronic monitoring market has also been forecasted for the period 2021-2025, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.

The US and European electronic monitoring market is fragmented with many major market players operating worldwide. The key players of the electronic monitoring market are G4S Plc., Big Technologies, Track Group and Satellite Tracking of People (Securus Technologies, Inc.) are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.

The US and European electronic monitoring market increased significantly during the years 2016-2020 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next four years i.e. 2021-2025 tremendously. The electronic monitoring market is expected to increase due to the high cost of incarceration and detention, growing migrant asylum seeker populations, increasing digital enablement, growing globalization, increasing cybercrimes, technological advancements and government policies supporting the market. Yet, the market faces some challenges such as false alarms and costly electronic home monitoring.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on the US and European electronic monitoring market. Since the onset of the pandemic, governments have been facing the dilemma of reducing jail populations to avoid the spread of disease, while still keeping the community safe.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

2.1 Internet of Things (IoT): Overview

2.2 Technologies Involve in IoT

2.3 Uses of IoT

2.4 Electronic Monitoring: An Overview

2.5 Electronic Monitoring Process: Overview

2.6 Electronic Monitoring Segmentation

3. The US Market Analysis

4. European Market Analysis

5. Impact of COVID-19

6. Market Dynamics

6.1 Growth Drivers

6.1.1 High Cost of Incarceration and Detention

6.1.2 Growing Migrant Asylum Seeker Population

6.1.3 Increasing Digital Enablement

6.1.4 Growing Globalization

6.1.5 Technological Advancements

6.1.6 Increasing Cybercrimes

6.1.7 Governments Policies Supporting the Market

6.2 Challenges

6.2.1 False Alarms

6.2.2 Costly Electronic Home Monitoring

6.3 Market Trends

6.3.1 M2M Platform

6.3.2 Partnerships among Major Players

7. Competitive Landscape

7.1 The US and European Electronic Monitoring Market Players: A Service Comparison

8. Company Profiles

G4S Plc.

Big Technologies

Tack Group

Satellite Tracking of People (Securus Technologies, Inc.)

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/sc384i

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005538/en/

Contacts:

ResearchAndMarkets.com

Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

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SINGAPORE, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Straive (erstwhile SPi Global), a market-leader in technology driven EdTech, content, and data solutions, has been named a contender across global geographies by advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) in its Provider Lens Contact Center - Customer Experience Services 2021 global report. Straive has been featured in multiple quadrants, including Digital Operations, AI & Analytics, Work from Home Services & Social Media Services, owing to its proficiency in driving business agility and operational excellence in customer support services.

ISG Provider Lens is a practitioner-led service provider comparison. Research reports provide independent vendor evaluations and enterprise buying behavior segmentation.

As an industry leader for more than 15 years, Straive's capabilities encompass outsourcing services, comprehensive offerings, advanced delivery centers, global language capabilities, and 24/7 availability of subject matter experts. With 2,300+ support agents specialized across various disciplines and providing multi-channel support, Straive drives customer engagement efficiently across the information industry segments including publishing (scientific/professional), education, legal & tax, financial information among others. Straive's robust technology solutions suite is tailored to meet customer expectations, enhancing sales, product, and service.

On the feature, Ratan Datta, President and CEO, Straive, said, "The evolving digital technologies have radically transformed the ways of customer engagement. Straive's entry and feature in the ISG Provider Lens quadrant report is a testament to our knowledge, expertise, and successful record in customer support services. A fine blend of subject matter expertise and the latest technologies-AI, ML, and Analytics have been at the center of our capabilities."

The ISG Report noted, "Straive is consciously working towards developing its tech-enabled customer services across various channels in order to deliver an enriched customer experience in its target market segments."

Straive has a strong and established CX practice focused on improving the customer experience, with product and technical support being one of the major offerings, along with lead generation. With more than 18,000 employees, including 2300+ dedicated customer service personnel, and operations spread across 8 countries, the company offers digital support, back-office services, sales & marketing support along with multilingual support and content operations in more than 10 languages. Straive also has a dedicated team in its labs to foster innovation, create industry benchmarks and co-create solutions with clients.

To read the full report, Click Here

About Straive (erstwhile SPi Global)

Straive is a market-leading content technology enterprise that provides data services, subject matter expertise (SME), and technology solutions to multiple domains such as research content, e-Learning/EdTech, and data/information providers. With a client base scoping 30 countries worldwide, Straive's multi-geographical resource pool is strategically located in eight countries: Philippines, India, USA, China, Nicaragua, Vietnam, United Kingdom, and the company headquarters in Singapore.

For media queries, contact

Kshitiz Ahuja

Lead-Brand and PR

kshitiz.ahuja@straive.com

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678685/Straive_New_Logo.jpg
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Hannan Metals Limited ("Hannan" or the "Company") (TSXV:HAN)(OTC PINK:HANNF) is pleased to report that U-Pb zircon dating on four porphyry intrusive centres within an area of 140 by 50 kilometres has defined a previously unrecognized Miocene metallogenic belt associated with significant BLEG, float and outcrop Cu-Au geochemical anomalism at its 100%-owned Previsto project in Peru.

Highlights:

Radiometric dating work by Hannan has identified a previously unrecognized Miocene copper-gold metallogenic belt in the sub-Andean zone of central Peru, with eight porphyry samples within an area of 140 by 50 kilometres yielding ages ranging from 21.5 Ma to 12.2 million years ("Ma"; early to mid-Miocene).

This new district overlaps in age with the Miocene magmatic arc in the Western Cordillera of Peru, where some of Peru's largest porphyry copper+/-gold and epithermal gold deposits were formed at the same time. This work 're-draws' the map of where such deposits can be found and verifies Hannan's assumptions that Previsto represents a new search space in a country thought to be mature in its exploration potential. (Figure 2).

Hannan has continued to stake additional ground and increased its land position by 7% for a total of 113,200 ha (1,132 sq km). Fourteen mining concessions for 13,500 ha (135 sq km) are now granted (Figure 3).

The Company is currently working with local stakeholders to plan next steps.

Michael Hudson, CEO, states "Through boots on the ground exploration and modern scientific methods, Hannan has defined a greenfield porphyry copper exploration district in non-traditional areas of the Peruvian sub-Andean region. All dates are interpreted to represent the timing of emplacement of the porphyry intrusions and associated mineralization. The presence of Miocene magmatic rocks in the sub-Andean zone of Previsto is considered regionally unusual and a potentially significant finding for future discovery. The case for "young" porphyry deposits located in a back-arc setting, that is to say, far inboard of their volcanic arc contemporaries is best exemplified by the case of Bajo de la Alumbrera (pre-mining measured resource 695 Mt @ 0.51% Cu, 0.66 g/t Au) in Argentina, which lies some 150 kilometres east of contemporaneous porphyry deposits in the Chilean Andes. We look forward to working closely with local stakeholders to advance exploration in the area".

The Previsto project, located 300 kilometres south of Hannan's 100%-controlled San Martin sediment-hosted copper-silver project, defines a previously unknown mineralized belt within a 140 by 50 kilometre area (Figures 1 and 2). The area comprises shallow marine to continental sedimentary rocks of Upper Permian to Miocene age that have experienced considerable WNW-ESE-directed shortening, though folding and thrusting, during multiple events of Andean deformation. Theis dating suggests that moderately oxidised, medium- to high-K calc-alkaline intrusions, rock types commonly associated with porphyry copper-gold deposits globally, intruded this deformed sedimentary package during the early to mid-Miocene, some 140 kilometres east of the coeval magmatic arc in the Peruvian Cordillera.

At Previsto, regional exploration has identified seven porphyry/skarn targets with associated coincident Cu-Au-Mo-Ag and lesser Pb-Zn-Sn-W anomalism from multiple datasets including stream sediment" outcrop and boulder geochemical sampling, geological mapping and regional airborne magnetics. The nature of the targets is at an early stage. The entire area is under thin cover, and it is estimated that <1% of the bedrock outcrops.

The most advanced of these prospects is located at Previsto Norte where a large number of copper-bearing boulders comprising a variety of porphyry intrusions occur with strong hydrothermal alteration and quartz veining. Assays up to 25.6% copper and 28 g/t silver (previously report) have been returned. Gold anomalous boulders are also present, with 0.9 g/t gold and 0.12% copper assayed from a strongly leached hydrothermal breccia with porphyritic clasts.

Hannan is working closely with local stakeholders in the area and regional government to plan the next steps on the project now that 14 mining concessions for 13,500 ha (135 sq km) have recently been granted (Figure 3).

Technical Background

Uranium-lead ("U-Pb") dating is a well-established and accurate radiometric dating method used to determine the age of rock formation. The method is usually applied to zircon as this mineral incorporates uranium and thorium atoms into its crystal structure, elements that then produce lead by radiogenic decay at a rate that is well established. As zircon strongly rejects lead when forming during magmatic processes, measurement of the ratio of lead to uranium in a rock sample can be used to determine its accurately and precisely determine its age.

Hannan contracted Zirchron LLC, Tucson AZ, USA to perform the dating work at Previsto. Zircons were separated from the rock matrix using an Electro Pulse Disaggregator, sieving and Wilfley water table, Frantz paramagnetic separator and heavy liquid MEI separation, before being mounted in epoxy resin discs and polished. Zircon U-Pb ages were measured at the Radiogenic Isotope and Geochronology Lab (RIGL) at WSU using an Analyte G2 193 excimer laser ablation system coupled with a Thermo-Finnigan Element 2 single-collector, inductively coupled, plasma mass spectrometer.

Of the ten samples dated, eight yielded dates ranging from 21.5 Ma to 12.2 Ma (early to mid-Miocene), while two samples recorded dates of older intrusions, being 119.5Ma +/1 1.4Ma (Early Cretaceous) and 298.3Ma +/3.3Ma (Early Permian).

All mineralized samples from Previsto were collected by Hannan geologists. Samples were transported to ALS in Lima via third party services using traceable parcels. At the laboratory, rock samples were prepared and analyzed by standard methods. The sample preparation involved crushing 70% to less than 2mm, riffle split off 250g, pulverize split to better than 85% passing 75 microns. The crushers and pulverizes were cleaned with barren material after every sample. Samples were analyzed by method ME-MS61, a four acid digest preformed on 0.25g of the sample to quantitatively dissolve most geological materials. Analysis is via ICP-MS.m Channel samples are considered representative of the in-situ mineralization samples and sample widths quoted approximate the true width of mineralization, while grab samples are selective by nature and are unlikely to represent average grades on the property.

About Hannan Metals Limited (TSXV:HAN) (OTCPK: HANNF)

Hannan Metals Limited is a natural resources and exploration company developing sustainable resources of metal needed to meet the transition to a low carbon economy. Over the last decade, the team behind Hannan has forged a long and successful record of discovering, financing, and advancing mineral projects in Europe and Peru. Hannan is a top ten in-country explorer by area in Peru.

Mr. Michael Hudson FAusIMM, Hannan's Chairman and CEO, a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release.

On behalf of the Board,





"Michael Hudson"

Michael Hudson, Chairman & CEO Further Information

www.hannanmetals.com

1305 - 1090 West Georgia St., Vancouver, BC, V6E 3V7

Mariana Bermudez, Corporate Secretary,

+1 (604) 685 9316, info@hannanmetals.com

Forward Looking Statements. Certain disclosure contained in this news release may constitute forward-looking information or forward-looking statements, within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. These statements may relate to this news release and other matters identified in the Company's public filings. In making the forward-looking statements the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that are based on the Company's current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to: the political environment in which the Company operates continuing to support the development and operation of mining projects; the threat associated with outbreaks of viruses and infectious diseases, including the novel COVID-19 virus; risks related to negative publicity with respect to the Company or the mining industry in general; planned work programs; permitting; and community relations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news.

SOURCE: Hannan Metals Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671131/Hannan-Radiometric-Dating-Confirms-Miocene-Porphyry-Belt-at-the-Previsto-Copper-Gold-Project-Peru
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Komo Plant Based Foods Inc. (CSE:YUM)(OTCQB:KOMOF)(FRA:9HB) ("Komo"), a premium plant-based food company, today announces record plant-based food sales in October 2021 of more than $45,000, a 67 percent increase over the previous month.

Komo launched its plant-based comfort food products locally earlier this year, and in October it was successful in significantly expanding production to meet demand from distributors and retailers One of the recently signed distributors is TransCold Distribution Ltd., a Unilever Master Distributor, which delivers frozen products to over 10,000 distribution points in Canada and the United States. This week Komo has begun its expansion to other provinces and Komo expects to double its retail distribution network to over 100 points within the next few months.

Komo also sells direct-to-consumer through its own eCommerce platform, and it has received over 130 five star reviews from verified purchasers through the Yotpo app, which enables automatic review generation.

"We were able to achieve significant revenue in October, within 7 months of launch as a new brand and with only 30 distribution points. We have already grown this month to 50 retail locations with the addition of the Nesters Market chain," says Komo CEO Wiliam White. "We have proven that we are able to achieve rapid growth locally and we look forward to continuing this trend now that we have production and distribution in place to expand across Canada and into the United States.""

About Komo

Komo Plant Based Foods Inc. is a premium plant-based food company that develops, manufactures and sells a variety of plant-based frozen meals that are always hearty, satisfying, and made with wholesome ingredients. At Komo, our mission is to help make plant-based meals a staple on every dinner table by sharing our love for feel-good food that connects the people to the planet. We believe plant-based eating is the future and - Change can start with a single biteTM. Our experienced plant-based innovation and development team recreates vegan versions of traditionally cheesy and meaty classics, with 100% plants. Komo's products are sold direct-to-consumer through our eCommerce website and a distribution network of online and brick and mortar grocery, convenience and natural retailer channels. Our operating subsidiary Komo Comfort Foods launched in 2021 with our flagship products: plant-based Lasagna, Shepherd's Pie and Chickenless Pot Pie and has recently launched a new line - Komo Plant-Based Meal HelpersTM - versatile meal starters to allow the creation of many dishes at home. All of our products are 100% plant-based, made with wholesome ingredients, free from preservatives, and frozen for freshness. Freezing products is a natural and effective way of keeping food products for longer without having to use any preservatives. Komo's meals have a 1-year frozen shelf life.

Learn more at: www.komocomfortfoods.com and follow on Instagram: @komocomfortfoods

For further information, please contact:

William White, President & CEO, Komo Plant Based Foods Inc.

will@komoeats.com

1-866-969-0882

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or Komo's future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on Komo's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, Komo's product development plans, its ability to launch its products on food delivery apps, its ability to retain key personnel, its revenues, and its expectation as to the acceptance of its products by retailer stores and consumers constitute forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The statements made in this press release are made as of the date hereof. Komo disclaims any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be expressly required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: KOMO Plant Based Foods Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671123/Komo-Plant-Based-Foods-Sees-67-Sales-Increase-in-October
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Provenance Gold Corp. (CSE: PAU) (OTCQB: PVGDF) (the "Company" or "Provenance") is pleased to report that the latest drill holes have confirmed the location of a newly recognized open-ended gold mineralization feeder structure that extends across the core mineralized area of 3.2 km in length and 1.3 km in width. Drill hole 45 intersected the feeder structure at 17 meters (55 feet) and was still in it at 104 meters (340 feet), where the hole had to be terminated because of ground conditions. Between 17 and 84 meters (55 and 275 feet), the hole averaged 0.015 oz/t gold (0.52 g/t) within which 21 to 52 meters (70 to 170 feet) averaged 0.026 oz/t gold (0.88 g/t) and between 37 and 49 meters (120 and 160 feet) the hole averaged 0.032 oz/t (1.11 g/t). The hole bottomed in mineralization at 340 feet, with indications it was entering another zone of stronger mineralization.

The deposit is unusual in that it extends along the crest of a broad, high ridge (White Rock Mountain) in an area that is being geologically stretched like the surface of an inflating balloon. These events have created near-surface cracks that formed in the weakest rocks. While this ridge setting is positive for future open pit mining, the cracks have created difficulties for drilling. The drill steel has often become stuck and even been lost in these cracks. The weakest most easily cracked rocks are in the gold zone because it has been structurally broken and subsequently altered by the ore emplacement of the gold system, so the cracks have become an indicator for the gold zone. Provenance's geologists have worked around this problem with cross-sections and confirmation holes.

The White Rock gold project consists of 258 lode mining claims (5,160 acres) with gold being hosted in silicified limestone, conglomerate, and shale. Provenance has completed 35 holes in the first year of a continuing exploration program, with further assays pending. With these holes, along with the historic drilling of 67 holes, the company is building a firm understanding of the gold system and believes that this is an extensive open-pit grade gold deposit, with grades similar to current Nevada open pit mines.

In addition to the newly identified plumbing structure, recent step-out drilling continued to expand the gold mineralization in several directions from our previously reported drill hole WR-23, which returned an interval of 117 meters (384 feet) of gold mineralization. Large step-out drilling tested new areas including the rhyolite graben to the northwest, the Nose area to the south and the newly identified plumbing structure.

The Rhyolite Graben, located to the northwest and west of WR-23 was tested with two holes. Both intercepted gold mineralization with hole WR-32 assaying 65.5 meters (215 feet) of 0.305 g/t gold which included 20 meters (65 feet) of 0.411 g/t gold. The hole bottomed in mineralization and was lost. The importance of this intercept proves that the host rocks in the graben will host gold mineralization and now become a substantial new target.

The Nose is at the south end of Central Ridge and is located 350 meters south of WR-23. Six angle holes were drilled from this one site in all directions. Even though five of the holes were lost before reaching their target depths, all holes entered the main gold horizon but were lost within the mineralization. A key hole was WR-40, which was drilled to the west, and intercepted 20 meters (65 feet) of 0.449 g/t gold (0.013 oz/t) before being lost due to broken ground before it was able to penetrate the bulk of the projected gold zone. These results confirm that higher grades follow the main north-south fault on the west side of Central Ridge. This discovery will guide future drilling into key "feeder" plumbing structures in addition to the one intersected in hole 45.

Rauno Perttu, Provenance's CEO, states, "It has been an extremely encouraging first round of exploration at White Rock to date, in which we have been able to establish the large size and characteristics of the gold mineralization system. We now have two very encouraging undrilled step-out areas as well as this new feeder structure to follow across the property which should further expand the size and increase the grade of this promising discovery."

Figure 1 - Drilling hole 45 into the feeder structure. White Rock Mountain in the background. Next year's drilling plans to extend the gold zone into White Rock Mountain.



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5654/101983_figure1.jpg



Figure 2 - Drilling newly discovered feeder zone on central ridge at White Rock. The zone projects open-endedly across the core mineralized area.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5654/101983_fig2.jpg

Quality Assurance and Quality Control : The reverse-circulation drilling program utilized by Provenance completed a quality assurance / quality control program (QA/QC) with control samples consisting of standards, blanks and duplicates inserted approximately every 100 feet. Control samples were randomly inserted into the sample stream prior to being sent to the laboratory. The RC drill sampling was in five-foot sample intervals. Drill samples were taken to Paragon Geochemical, an ISO 9001 compliant company in Sparks, Nevada for fire assaying for gold and silver. The rejects and pulps remain with Paragon in Sparks, Nevada. The QA/QC program was implemented as part of the sampling procedures for the exploration program.

Private Placement Closing

The Company also announces that it has closed a second tranche of its non-brokered private placement through the issuance of 1,596,077 units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.13 per Unit for gross proceeds of $207,490.01. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Issuer (each, a "Share") and one common share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant") with each Warrant entitling the holder thereof to purchase one additional common share (each, a "Warrant Share") of the Issuer at a price of $0.20 per Warrant Share until November 4, 2024. The Company paid a cash finder's fees of $9,773.40 in connection with the closing. All securities issued in connection with the private placement are subject to a statutory hold period until March 5, 2022.

Rauno Perttu, P. Geo., a Qualified Person (as defined by National Instrument 43-101), and the Chief Executive Officer of the Company, has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this News Release.

About Provenance Gold Corp.

Provenance Gold Corp. is a precious metals exploration company with a focus on gold and silver resources within North America. The Company currently holds interests in three properties in Nevada, USA. For further information please visit the Company's website at https://provenancegold.com or contact rclark@provenancegold.com.

On behalf of the Board,

Provenance Gold Corp.

Rauno Perttu, Chief Executive Officer

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange, nor its regulation services provider, accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. This news release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When or if used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target, "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and similar words or expressions identify forward-looking statements or information. Such statements represent the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social risks, contingencies and uncertainties. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements and information other than as required by applicable laws, rules and regulations.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101983
Project Ramp-Up on Schedule with Confirmation of Rapid Gold Extraction Kinetics

Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Minera Alamos Inc. (TSXV: MAI) (the "Company" or "Minera Alamos") is pleased to report that it has made an initial delivery of gold dore from its Santana gold project ("Santana" or the "Project") in Sonora, Mexico. The gold was recovered from early material stacked on the Santana heap leach pad during the months of July and August (see news release dated September 8th, 2021) and intended primarily to commission the Company's carbon recovery plant and associated solution pumping systems in advance of ramping up daily mining operations. Leaching activities commenced at the end of August as the rainy season subsided and the results to date have confirmed the rapid gold extraction kinetics experienced during the heap leach test pad operations concluded in 2019.

"We are thrilled to have turned the corner to become a gold producer at our first mine in Mexico. It is truly a credit to the abilities of our technical group that we have managed to successfully complete this transition while dealing with all the challenges of the last 18 months as a result of the pandemic," stated Darren Koningen, CEO. "The results from early operations have confirmed those from previous test mining activities at Santana with rapid gold extractions and low reagent consumptions. If the current ramp-up trends continue we appear to be well on track to exceed our initial timing for achieving consistent net cash generation at the operation level."

"I am immensely proud of the execution by Darren and the rest of the team in Mexico in delivering this important event in the Company's development. The diligent work performed during extraordinary circumstances to build the Santana gold mine is a testament to them all," stated Doug Ramshaw, President. "We also couldn't have reached this point without the strong support of each and every shareholder of the Company whom have shown great patience with the advancement of the Santana gold mine and we look forward to continue to deliver exciting news to warrant the support we have received to date."





Photo: First Dore Production from Santana Gold Project

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Approximately 400 oz of gold was contained in the dore poured from the first shipment of carbon sent off site to validate the operational and QA/QC procedures from the treatment facility being considered for future gold concentrate (carbon) processing. This material has been sent for final refining and sale. Further dore from subsequent deliveries will be announced in due course.

Ongoing Gold Extraction/Recovery Performance

The area of mineralized material that is under active leaching continues to grow as the project ramp-up advances. For the announced dore production the majority of gold extraction came from leach pad areas 1 through 3 (with area 3 coming online in mid September) which contained an estimated 1050 ounces (from 41,000 tonnes). As of mid October, when the first carbon lots were removed for processing, approximately 600 ounces of gold had been recovered in the Company's processing facilities. Allowing for the normal delays between the initiation of leaching operations in new areas and the resulting discharge of solutions from the leach pad, this represents an overall extraction approaching 60% (roughly 75% of the +80% ultimate recoveries achieved during test pad operations in 2018/19) in an average of 30-40 days. The rapid kinetics closely match what was achieved during the previous test pad operations.

As part of the Company's commissioning activities six samples of mineralized material were also collected from different locations on the stacked leach pad area (prior to initiation of leaching) and sent to an external laboratory for gold recovery and reagent consumption analysis. When pulverized to less than 10 mesh and subjected to conventional bottle roll procedures (72 hours) the ultimate recoveries generally ranged from the low to high 90s (percent) with the majority of gold extraction occurring in the first 12 hours. Lime and cyanide consumptions were low (<0.5 kg/t) and once again in line with those achieved during the previous Santana test leaching activities.

Overall Project Ramp-Up

In general, the overall ramp-up in mining activities at the Santana project site continue to advance as expected. As occurs normally during a start-up scenario it is expected that some variability in production metrics will continue for some time to come until the operations begin to stabilize.

Despite some fleet optimization and maintenance activities early in the month, the total material mined for the month of October approached 200,000 tonnes which was close to double the production rates achieved in the prior month. Late in the month mine production rates approached initial design start-up levels on multiple days and efforts continue to maintain these levels on a consistent basis during the remaining ramp up phase.

With substantially more than 50% of the mineralized material, stacked on the leach pad to date now under active leaching for gold extraction this percentage has grown steadily. As the area under leach has expanded the gold concentration in the feed to the plant has continued to rise in parallel with the increase in flow rates coming from the leach pad. Gold content in the pregnant leach solution pond (feed to the carbon recovery plant) has risen steadily from a range of 0.2 and 0.3 ppm in September as the new gold solution flows started accumulating in the pond (contained dilution water from the end of the rainy season) to in excess of 0.8 ppm in the second half of October. At the same time the process plant solution throughput has also steadily increased from an average of 1400-1500 m3 per day over the month of September to in excess of 3000 m3 per day on occasions later in October.

As the mining operations at the Nicho Norte starter pit continue to ramp-up the Company has continued planning for the eventual start of mining activities at the Nicho Main Zone. Ultimately the ability to source mineralized material from multiple locations will facilitate more optimal mine production scheduling and ultimately allow the Company to expand production rates beyond our initial targets.

Cautionary Statement

The Company made its production decision and has started the development and production of the Santana gold mine without having completed a feasibility study demonstrating economic and technical viability. As such, there may be increased uncertainty of achieving planned production levels, estimated recovery of gold, the costs associated with such recovery, including increased risks associated with developing a commercially mineable deposit. Historically, such projects have a much higher risk of economic and technical failure. Failure to commence production would have a material adverse impact on the Company's ability to generate revenue and cash flow to fund operations.

Mr. Darren Koningen, P. Eng., Minera Alamos' CEO, is the Qualified Person responsible for the technical content of this press release under National Instrument 43-101.

For Further Information Please Contact:

Minera Alamos Inc.

Doug Ramshaw, President

Tel: 604-600-4423

Email: dramshaw@mineraalamos.com

Victoria Vargas de Szarzynski, VP Investor Relations

Tel: 289-242-3599

Email: vvargas@mineraalamos.com

Website: www.mineraalamos.com

About Minera Alamos Inc.

Minera Alamos is a gold production and development company. The Company has a portfolio of high-quality Mexican assets, including the 100%-owned Santana open-pit, heap-leach mine in Sonora that is currently going through its operational ramp up. The newly acquired 100%-owned Cerro de Oro oxide gold project in northern Zacatecas that has considerable past drilling and metallurgical work completed and could enter the permitting process rapidly. The La Fortuna open pit gold project in Durango (100%-owned) has an extremely robust and positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) completed and the main Federal permits in hand. Minera Alamos is built around its operating team that together brought 3 mines into production in Mexico over the last 13 years.

The Company's strategy is to develop very low capex assets while expanding the projects' resources and continuing to pursue complementary strategic acquisitions.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking information and Minera Alamos cautions readers that forward-looking information is based on certain assumptions and risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations of Minera Alamos included in this news release. This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements", which often, but not always, can be identified by the use of words such as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". These statements are based on information currently available to Minera Alamos and Minera Alamos provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements with respect to Minera Alamos' future plans with respect to the Projects, objectives or goals, to the effect that Minera Alamos or management expects a stated condition or result to occur and the expected timing for release of a resource and reserve estimate on the projects. Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, the economics of processing methods, project development, reclamation and capital costs of Minera Alamos' mineral properties, the ability to complete a preliminary economic assessment which supports the technical and economic viability of mineral production could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons. Minera Alamos' financial condition and prospects could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: an inability to finance and/or complete an updated resource and reserve estimate and a preliminary economic assessment which supports the technical and economic viability of mineral production; changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Minera Alamos' activities; and other matters discussed in this news release and in filings made with securities regulators. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of Minera Alamos' forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on Minera Alamos' forward-looking statements. Minera Alamos does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by Minera Alamos or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The Company does not have a feasibility study of mineral reserves, demonstrating economic and technical viability for the Santana project, and, as a result, there may be an increased uncertainty of achieving any particular level of recovery of minerals or the cost of such recovery, including increased risks associated with developing a commercially mineable deposit. Historically, such projects have a much higher risk of economic and technical failure. Failure to commence production would have a material adverse impact on the Company's ability to generate revenue and cash flow to fund operations.

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101993
Schwazze to Host Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call & Webcast Nov 15, 2021

OTCQX: SHWZ

DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Schwazze, (OTCQX: SHWZ) ("Schwazze" or the "Company"), announces that it will host a third quarter 2021 conference call and webcast on November 15, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. ET.

Q3 2021 Webcast

Investors and stakeholders may participate in the conference call by dialing 416 764 8650 or by dialing North American toll free 888-664-6383 or listen to the webcast from the Company's website at https://ir.schwazze.com/. The webcast will be available on the Company's website and on replay until November 22, 2021 and may be accessed by dialing 888-390-0541 / 807433#.

Following their prepared remarks, Chief Executive Officer, Justin Dye and Chief Financial Officer, Nancy Huber will answer investor questions. Investors may submit questions in advance or during the conference call itself through the weblink: https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1506871&tp_key=909a00d089 This weblink has been posted to the Company's website and will be archived on the website. All Company SEC filings can also be accessed on the Company website at https://ir.schwazze.com/sec-filings

About Schwazze

Schwazze (OTCQX: SHWZ) is building the premier vertically integrated cannabis company in Colorado and plans to take its operating system to other states where it can develop a differentiated leadership position. Schwazze is the parent company of a portfolio of leading cannabis businesses and brands spanning seed to sale. The Company is committed to unlocking the full potential of the cannabis plant to improve the human condition. Schwazze is anchored by a high-performance culture that combines customer-centric thinking and data science to test, measure, and drive decisions and outcomes. The Company's leadership team has deep expertise in retailing, wholesaling, and building consumer brands at Fortune 500 companies as well as in the cannabis sector. Schwazze is passionate about making a difference in our communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, and doing our part to incorporate climate-conscious best practices. Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. was Schwazze's former operating trade name. The corporate entity continues to be named Medicine Man Technologies, Inc.

Schwazze derives its name from the pruning technique of a cannabis plant to enhance plant structure and promote healthy growth.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "plan," "will," "may,", "predicts," or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future events or performance, are based on certain assumptions, and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control and cannot be predicted or quantified. Consequently, actual events and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) our inability to manufacture our products and product candidates on a commercial scale on our own or in collaboration with third parties; (ii) difficulties in obtaining financing on commercially reasonable terms; (iii) changes in the size and nature of our competition; (iv) loss of one or more key executives or scientists; (v) difficulties in securing regulatory approval to market our products and product candidates; (vi) our ability to successfully execute our growth strategy in Colorado and outside the state, (vii) our ability to consummate the acquisition described in this press release or to identify and consummate future acquisitions that meet our criteria, (viii) our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses and realize synergies therefrom, ({ix) the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, (x) the timing and extent of governmental stimulus programs, and (xi) the uncertainty in the application of federal, state and local laws to our business, and any changes in such laws. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law.

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Investors: Joanne Jobin, Investor Relations, Joanne.jobin@schwazze.com, 647 964 0292; Media: Julie Suntrup, Schwazze, Vice President, Marketing & Merchandising, julie.suntrup@schwazze.com, 303 371 0387
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - ScreenPro Security Inc. (CSE: SCRN) (OTSCQB: SCRSF) ("ScreenPro" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on productions serviced by ScreenPro and the GoStop app (the "App") presently deployed with its film and television clients.

The Company is currently working with over 30 film and television productions in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec as well as providing concierge services to productions within those regions. The GoStop App is an integral part of the reporting software for the productions, providing pushed COVID-19 screening results to cast and crew members, as well as automated identification codes for our laboratories and analytics to productions and on their testing cadence.

Lena Kozovski, CEO of ScreenPro Security commented, "GoStop is an essential reporting platform for ScreenPro clientele, assisting with individual results for screening purposes, as well as assisting with our COVID screening analytics and it is also integrated with our laboratory patient identification system. Productions employ hundreds of office employees, film technicians, and actors per production over multiple locations, including offices, carpenter shops, studios and on location. It is critical to communicate to all stakeholders any positive results that might shut down a multi million-dollar production."

About ScreenPro

ScreenPro is a Screening and Medical Technology company that provides turnkey screening solutions with its proprietary medical alerting software. ScreenPro's unique access to multiple manufacturers of high-quality test kits and its strategic partnership with labs in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec allowing ScreenPro to be a full-service nationwide provider of COVID testing solutions across Canada. In addition, ScreenPro has its own medical doctor and nursing professionals along with on the ground support staff and transportation, as access to high quality PPEs to ensure that its clients are protected in all aspects of their testing needs. ScreenPro provides alerting software through its secure GoStop application that enables individuals to use the app for test screening results as well as provides automated identification codes for our laboratories and analytics to our clients on their testing cadence. For additional information on ScreenPro and other corporate information, please visit the Company's website at www.screenprosecurity.com.

For more information about the Company, please refer to the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE") nor it's Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For further information please contact:

Jamie Hyland, Director

Email: info@screenprosecurity.com

P. (604) 442-2425

Forward Looking Statements:

Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forward-looking information, including statements relating to expectations regarding acquisition of Concierge Medical Consultants Inc. and the future development of ScreenPro's business. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "should", and similar expressions. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. The actual results of ScreenPro could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of regulatory decisions, competitive factors in the industries in which ScreenPro operates, prevailing economic conditions, changes to ScreenPro's strategic growth plans, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of ScreenPro. Management of ScreenPro believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information herein are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking information should not be unduly relied upon. Any forward-looking information contained in this news release represents ScreenPro's expectations as of the date hereof and is subject to change after such date. ScreenPro disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities legislation.

###

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101967
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.
BEDFORD, NS / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / (TSXV:SSE) - Silver Spruce Resources Inc. (the "Company") is pleased to announce a technical services agreement signed with MPX Geophysics Ltd. ("MPX") to conduct an airborne survey of the Mystery Au project ("Mystery" or the "Property"). The Company recently signed a Definitive Agreement to acquire 100% of three early-stage gold exploration properties, Mystery, Till and Marilyn located near Grand Falls, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, 20-25 kilometres west of New Found Gold Corp.'s Queensway project and 15-35 kilometres south of Sokoman Minerals Corp.'s Moosehead gold project.

"Given the history of recent exploration discoveries and successful drilling along several major structures in the Exploits Subzone, we are excited to launch our first gold exploration program in the region at the Mystery project. The MPX airborne survey is scheduled for early November and will require only 3-5 flight days, weather permitting, to complete data collection over the entire Property," said Greg Davison, Vice-President Exploration and Director of Silver Spruce.

Figure 1. Map of the Mystery project claims, named from north to south, Marilyn, Till and Mystery, located only 20-50km south of the MPX flight base in Bishop's Falls, Newfoundland.

"Our initial site exploration reported mineral and rock textures common to shallow epithermal and/or orogenic 'mesothermal or lode' vein-style mineralization with Au-AsSb geochemical association. These points are consistent with the regional discoveries and significant global analogues. We are targeting major and minor structural sets, zones showing strike shift and potential dilation, zones of high resistivity associated with one of more styles of silicification, among other indicators," said Greg Davison, Silver Spruce VP Exploration and Director. "Fortunately, we have prospective regional geology and structure with only limited exploration and no history of drilling. The MPX survey will complement our grassroots project ArcGIS database with state of the art, high resolution magnetic, radiometric and VLF data. MPX has completed similar airborne surveys over several adjacent properties where significant lineaments can be interpreted along anastomosing and intersecting trends."

MPX Geophysical Survey

The airborne survey will comprise three grids totaling 1,460 line-km along E-W (Marilyn and Till) and N-S (Mystery) flight lines with 100 metre nominal line spacing, and 180 line-km of orthogonal tie lines with 1,000 metre nominal line spacing (Figures 2, 3 and 4). The Piper Aztek aircraft will fly daily from the airstrip at Bishop's Falls located from 20km to 50km north of the Properties.

Figure 2. Mystery Claims showing location of MPX Geophysics airborne survey (UTM WGS 84) using 100m flight lines and 1000m tie lines. Base map - World Imagery.

The aircraft airspeed will be 130-150 knots. Optimum terrain clearances for the aircraft and instrumentation (magnetometer, spectrometer, VLF) during normal survey flying are 60-70 metres. Vertical position along flight lines will be established using a pressure altimeter, a radar altimeter and GPS height. Final horizontal survey positions will be computed from differentially corrected GPS to a precision of  1m.

Figure 3. Till Claims showing location of MPX Geophysics airborne survey (UTM WGS 84) using 100m flight lines and 1000m tie lines. Base map - World Imagery.

The attitude and motion of the aircraft in flight, with respect to the Earth's magnetic field vector, will be monitored/recorded by a three-component fluxgate magnetometer (Billingsley TFM 100G2 Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer), which is very sensitive to attitude changes.

The magnetic sensors utilized for the survey are Geometrics 822A or Scintrex CS3 high resolution cesium split-beam total-field magnetometer which will be installed in a tail stinger. Magnetic compensation of the acquired "raw" magnetometer data will be collected in real-time using the RMS Instruments DAARC500/ARC510 Data Acquisition and Aeromagnetic Real-Time Compensator ("RMS"), together with comprehensive and flexible data acquisition and recording. The RMS offers the ultimate in aeromagnetic compensation.

Radiation Solutions RS-500 multi-channel gamma-ray spectrometer with 33.6 liters "downward looking" NaI sensor, and 8.4 litres "upward looking" NaI sensor will be installed on the aircraft for the survey. The RS-500 supersedes all other airborne systems given its advanced DSP / FPGA technologies. The RS-500 is a fully integrated system that includes an individual Advanced Digital Spectrometer (ADS) for each crystal within the detector box.

Figure 4. Marilyn Claims showing location of MPX Geophysics airborne survey (UTM WGS 84) using 100m flight lines and 1000m tie lines. Base map - World Imagery.

The Totem VLF sensor utilized for the survey will be a RMSVLF system. This device contains three orthogonal coils, a signal amplifier and it has eight different frequency bands for different VLF transmitters. The VLF system is sampled in the 15-25 kHz. The VLF system employed is configured to simultaneously measure five transmitting stations.

MPX crews will conduct all field activities in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) under strictly adhered to corporate and client COVID safety protocols.

Exploration Plan

The Company has staged plans to complete, with receipt of NL Mineral Lands Division project approvals, regional till sampling for gold grain analysis and soil geochemistry, prospecting, airborne geophysics, QA/QC program development, ArcGIS geological and geophysical data compilation and as warranted by the Phase 1 results, to undertake a detailed geological mapping and sampling program, grid soil sampling and planning for our first exploration drill campaign.

All aspects of the exploration program will be conducted with strict adherence to COVID-19 protocols for personal safety.

Project Background

The 8,750-hectare project is located within the Exploits Subzone, an extensive area of mineral exploration activity and discoveries over the past two years. The Properties are well situated in terms of exploration logistics, located close to each other and 10-45 kilometres south by Bay d'Espoir Highway from Bishop's Falls, Newfoundland. The Properties are located <70 kilometres from the Gander International Airport and are easily accessible from major paved roads and local logging and bush roads and trails.

The region is structurally complex and located, in large part, between several major crustal lineaments. Numerous major to lesser sub-parallel features merge and bifurcate along strike and are transected by NW and EW-trending faults. These deep-seated structures, which juxtapose geological terranes over hundreds of kilometres, are key to the location and formation of orogenic gold deposits containing several million ounces of gold as reported by junior companies in the district.

The Properties have seen little structured exploration to date. Prospecting by the Vendor is the only exploration conducted during the past ten years. Silver Spruce expedited its initial site visit on the Properties during the week of August 23rd and received an independent positive initial report on the mineral and rock textures potentially related to shallow epithermal and/or orogenic vein-style mineralization. Silver Spruce recently verified sample locations for the historical assays and collected new rock samples. The results remain pending and will be reported in due course.

Figure 5. Calcite with quartz replacement, typically associated with epithermal deposits, e.g., hot spring, collected along Great Rattling Brook, Mystery claims.

A selection of historical assays was reported for precious and base metals and pathfinder elements from 123 samples collected from Mystery and Marilyn (see Press Release of September 14, 2021). Eighteen samples reported Au >0.5 g/t (max. 12.5 g/t Au). Cu values were reported up to 9.85% with minor Ag, Pb and Zn. Arsenic was highly anomalous with values for thirty-six samples over the 2200 ppm upper limit for Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP-OES) analysis, strongly associated with elevated Au values and displayed as minor to abundant arsenopyrite.

Multiple surface occurrences are reported of agate chalcedony to colloform and crystalline silica veining and multi-phase breccias, carbonate replacement by quartz, and open-space filling quartz and calcite, all textures indicative of the upper zones of epithermal systems and structural conduits in orogenic systems and are accompanied by Au and arsenopyrite, stibnite, chalcopyrite, bornite and Cu carbonate mineralization in several host lithologies including quartz veins, black shale and other sedimentary units, and ultramafic and gabbroic intrusions.

All metal values disclosed herein for the Mystery and Marilyn properties by past operators, including the Vendors, and by Silver Spruce are reported from grab samples which may not be representative of the metal grades, or the metal grade distribution, and those from previous exploration efforts must be considered as historical in nature.

Qualified Person

Greg Davison, PGeo, Silver Spruce VP Exploration and Director, is the Company's internal Qualified Person for the Mystery, Marilyn and Till Projects and is responsible for approval of the technical content of this press release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), under TSX guidelines.

About MPX Geophysics Ltd.

MPX Geophysics is an international leader in airborne and remote sensing for the mining, O&G, civil and environmental engineering sectors. MPX operational and HSE procedures are industry-leading. MPX has undertaken more than 500,000 line-km of airborne geophysical surveys worldwide operating from both helicopter and fixed-wing platforms, including numerous projects in northern Canada, in remote and difficult locations. Survey technologies include magnetics, radiometrics, electromagnetics, gravity, MT, LiDAR, data processing and interpretation. The MPX Group of Companies is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

About Silver Spruce Resources Inc.

Silver Spruce Resources Inc. is a Canadian junior exploration company which has signed Definitive Agreements to acquire 100% of the Melchett Lake Zn-Au-Ag project in northern Ontario, and with Colibri Resource Corp. in Sonora, Mexico, to acquire 50% interest in Yaque Minerales S.A de C.V. holding the El Mezquite Au project, a drill-ready precious metal project, and up to 50% interest in each of Colibri's early stage Jackie Au and Diamante Au-Ag projects, with the three properties located from 5 kilometres to 15 kilometres northwest from Minera Alamos's Nicho deposit, respectively. The Company is acquiring 100% interest in the drill-ready and fully permitted Pino de Plata Ag project, located 15 kilometres west of Coeur Mining's Palmarejo Mine, in western Chihuahua, Mexico. Silver Spruce recently signed a Definitive Agreement to acquire 100% interest in three exploration properties in the Exploits Subzone Gold Belt, located 15-40 kilometres from recent discoveries by Sokoman Minerals Corp. and New Found Gold Corp., central Newfoundland and Labrador. Silver Spruce Resources Inc. continues to investigate opportunities that Management has identified or that are presented to the Company for consideration.

Contact:

Silver Spruce Resources Inc.

Greg Davison, PGeo, Vice-President Exploration and Director

(250) 521-0444

gdavison@silverspruceresources.com

Michael Kinley, CEO and Director

(902) 402-0388

mkinley@silverspruceresources.com

info@silverspruceresources.com

www.silverspruceresources.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking statements," Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future, including but not limited to, statements regarding the private placement.

Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with mineral exploration and difficulties associated with obtaining financing on acceptable terms. We are not in control of metals prices and these could vary to make development uneconomic. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate.

SOURCE: Silver Spruce Resources Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671159/Silver-Spruce-contracts-MPX-Geophysics-for-MagRadiometricsVLF-Airborne-Survey-on-Mystery-Au-Project-central-Newfoundland-and-Labrador
Several members of the senior management team have reinvested in VirExit by purchasing additional stock.

RICHLAND, WA / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / VirExit Technologies, Inc. (OTC PINK:VXIT) is pleased to announce that several members of the senior management team have reinvested in the company through a debt to stock purchase.

"Our team is solid and stands behind VirExit's long-term plans for the organization," said James C. Katzaroff, CEO. "Dave Croom, VirExit's Chief Operating Officer has invested $10,000. Bruce Jolliff, our Chief Financial Officer, invested $25,000; and I have invested an additional $30,000."

VirExit's focus has always been in the health, beauty, wellness, and security spaces. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has provided customers with access to top-tier products, information, and guest columnists.

VirExit has designed a proprietary, full-service program that promotes all aspects of wellbeing, productivity, safety, and creativity. VSure, VirExit's latest undertaking focuses on certification and implementation. That portal is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2022.

The company is also pleased to announce that James Chism from Hermosa Beach, California, has agreed to join the company in the role of Senior Sales Consultant. With over two decades of business-to-business sales experience, with fifteen of them as an independent telecommunications consultant with Sandler Partners Communications.

The VirExit team of professionals, including our top health advisors, are currently evaluating a variety of additional products and educational materials which will be onboarded regularly to both the site and the market. The company invites others to reach out with additional products they believe fit our program by emailing info@virexit.com .

NOTICE REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements that include the words believes, expects, anticipate or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In addition, description of anyone's past success is no guarantee of future success. This news release speaks as of the date first set forth above and the company assumes no responsibility to update the information included herein for events occurring after the date hereof.

About VirExit Technologies, Inc.

VirExit Technologies, Inc. (VXIT) is a diversified company focused on innovative, effective, ethical, and safe products within the health, safety, and wellness verticals. In 2020, the company purchased SaferPlace Technologies, LLC, whose purpose is to create a primary sales and marketing platform as a vertical online marketplace. This new acquisition seeks to provide a single source for buyers and sellers of protective products and services which resonate with the VirExit mission statement: making the world a healthier and safer place with innovative, ethical and effective technologies. For investor relations information please contact investorrelations@virexit.com .

CONTACT:

Brooke Greenwald

Cornerstone Communications, LTD

brooke@cornerstonepr.net

(240) 360-0866

SOURCE: VirExit Technologies, Inc

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671134/VirExit-Technologies-Inc-Announces-That-Members-of-Its-Management-Team-Have-Participated-in-a-New-Private-Placement
World's First Controlled Study to Investigate Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Awakn Life Sciences Corp. (NEO: AWKN) (OTCQB: AWKNF) (FSE: 954) ('Awakn'), a biotechnology company developing and delivering psychedelic therapeutics (medicines and therapies) to treat addiction, announced today that the 'Ketamine in the Reduction of Alcoholic Relapse' (KARE) psychotherapy intervention study, which was the first controlled study in the world to investigate ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, will be published in the American Journal of Psychiatry later this year. The study was conducted by the University of Exeter (UoE) and led by Prof. Celia Morgan, Professor of Psychopharmacology at UoE and Awakn's Head of Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for addiction. Awakn has acquired the rights to this research.

The findings, which will be shared in detail in the journal, are a very exciting step forward in the treatment of alcohol use disorder and for the wider psychedelic industry in general. The phase II a/b trial had four groups, ketamine with and without therapy, and placebo administered with and without therapy.

Professor Morgan commented, "We are delighted that the findings are to be published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. This new approach looks set to revolutionise the treatment of alcohol use disorder. We are excited to partner with Awakn for the next steps in the journey of ketamine-assisted therapy into a licensed treatment for this group of patients with limited treatment options."

With ketamine already a licenced medicine, the phase II a/b results allow Awakn to deliver the KARE treatment in its clinics in the UK and Europe immediately and through its licencing partnerships outside of these territories. The University of Exeter and Awakn are investigating how best to move this research forward to a pivotal phase III trial, which ultimately would allow it to be delivered 'on label', meaning it could be adopted by public health systems and covered by insurers.

Following the study, Dr. Morgan's research team also interviewed participants in the trial and published an analysis of their experiences in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry entitled, "This Is Something That Changed My Life: A Qualitative Study of Patients' Experiences." A brief selection of quotes from the paper below shows the life-changing effect the treatment had on them and crucially how it changed their relationship with alcohol.

"It helped family wise, relationship wise, in every, every single avenue of my life, It's changed it."

"I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for it. I can definitely say that."

"I feel I have much less desire to drink now than I used to. And I think what it is, I actually, I think I enjoy it less now"

"I think before the trial all my life was sort of focused around alcohol. I was either drinking it at home or selling it to students or working in an event where there was alcohol, the alcohol was a focus of it. So it" was sort of everything and then afterwards, it just sort of stopped.

Chief Executive Officer of Awakn, Anthony Tennyson commented, "This is a very exciting moment for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. For so many people who are suffering from alcohol addiction, for whom the current treatments just aren't working, a successful phase II a/b trial and a unified ambition to progress this forward to a pivotal trial, gives real hope to those seeking a better and healthier future."

About Awakn Life Sciences Corp.

Awakn Life Sciences is a biotechnology company with clinical operations, developing and delivering psychedelic therapeutics (medicines and therapies) to better treat addiction. Awakn's team consists of world leading chemists, scientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who are developing and advancing the next generation of psychedelic drugs, therapies, and enabling technologies to treat addiction. Awakn will deliver these evidence backed psychedelic therapies in clinics in the UK and Europe and through licensing partnerships globally.

www.awaknlifesciences.com | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Notice Regarding Forward Looking Information

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements, as defined in applicable securities laws (collectively referred to herein as "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements reflect current expectations or beliefs regarding future events or the Company's future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "continues", "forecasts", "projects", "predicts", "intends", "anticipates", "targets" or "believes", or variations of, or the negatives of, such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, including statements relating to the proposed NEO listing, and the business of the Company. All forward-looking statements, including those herein are qualified by this cautionary statement.

Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the statements. There are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking information. These include: whether conditions to the listing on NEO will be satisfied; the business plans and strategies of the Company, the ability of the Company to comply with all applicable governmental regulations in a highly regulated business; the inherent risks in investing in target companies or projects which have limited or no operating history and are engaged in activities currently considered illegal in some jurisdictions; changes in laws; limited operating history; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; inconsistent public opinion and perception regarding the medical-use of psychedelic drugs; and regulatory or political change. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release speak only as of the date of this news release or as of the date or dates specified in such statements.

Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For more information on the Company, investors are encouraged to review the Company's public filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward- looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities in the United States. The Company's and Awakn's securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

Investor Enquiries:

KCSA Strategic Communications

Valter Pinto / Tim Regan

Phone: +1 (212) 896-1254

Awakn@KCSA.com

Media Enquiries:

America and Canada: KCSA Strategic Communications

Anne Donohoe

Adonohoe@KCSA.com

Rest of World: ROAD Communications

Paul Jarman / Anna Ramsey

Awakn@roadcommunications.co.uk

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101920
Session Goods introduces an exclusive limited-edition series to their signature collection of smoking accessories

San Francisco, California--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Session Goods, the San Francisco based lifestyle brand creating modern cannabis pieces, is pleased to announce the launch of their exclusive, limited-edition Designer Series. To celebrate the brand's fourth birthday, Session Goods has taken their award-winning, iconically designed, smoking accessory line and created an exclusive limited edition run of all black and white bongs, pipes, and cleaning caps.

Session Goods

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8203/102003_25b38a1854765b61_001full.jpg

This series was created to explore the beautiful styling of their modern products by purposefully indulging in a classic and traditional designer aesthetic of monochromatic black and white. These two contrasts have inspired countless artists, designers and brands to convey class and refinement. Fashion can be so much more than clothing and accessories. Session Goods new Designer Series intersects fashion and cannabis - two things that are important to many but rarely connected. With thoughtfulness that flows through every fine detail, this matchup is timeless, sleek, and effortlessly trendy. Intersecting fashion and cannabis hardware is a new approach to both industries.

When it comes to design, color is just an element. Black and white provide a sophistication that color can't. For this launch, the brand chose to abandon the rainbow for something more simple - a minimalistic, high-contrast, dynamic duo. The Designer Series captures the edgy, sophisticated, drool-worthy facets of Session Goods' smoking accessories highlighted in the duality of black and white. The color Ash Black has undeniable power and strength and its darkness creates a unique visual potency. Black connotes seriousness and diligence, it can be sinister or rebellious, while simultaneously being the epitome of chic and sophistication with a hint of eroticism. It is smart, elegant, and attractive - black never goes out of style. Cloud White has a gravitas that speaks for itself with an elegance that creates a stunning visual allure. Ash White epitomizes clean minimalism and is imbued with a sense of luxury, balance, and harmony. It is both richly classy and impractically extravagant.

These phenomenal smoking accessories combine smooth, clean lines, and an elevated aesthetic to create pieces that look and perform like no other. From the angled mouthpiece to the tapered body and the stylish silicone sleeve, each piece is still as beautiful, functional, and unapologetically simple as its original design. The addition of the black tinted glass of the all-black designer series and the frosted white finish of the all-white set will hit every visual pleasure center in the brain. The seductive limited-edition line will be the perfect addition to any discerning smoker's collection. All Session Goods products are made of high-quality materials and designed with an elegant and sophisticated look that highlights simple and functional smoking features.

These products are available for purchase on https://sessiongoods.com. The Bong retails for $200 which will also include a set of matching cleaning caps and the pipes retail for $50.

Sit back, relax and enjoy your Session.



Media Contact:



Name: Session Goods

Website: https://sessiongoods.com/

Email: help@sessiongoods.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102003
2021 Virtual Field Trips Continue to Inspire Next Generation of Manufacturers

Allegion plc (NYSE: ALLE), a leading global provider of security products and solutions, brought the manufacturing industry to life with real-time virtual field trips for more than 500 students during the month of October. The initiative was part of Allegion's seven-year commitment to strengthen career pathways for students through annual "Manufacturing Day" celebrations hosted by its U.S. operations teams as top local employers and active members of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

With October known as "National Manufacturing Month" in the U.S., the NAM's Manufacturing Institute and many of the organization's members have traditionally hosted in-person open houses to showcase modern manufacturing careers to students, parents, teachers and community leaders. Manufacturing Day proactively addresses a key challenge the industry is facing: a skills gap that could leave as many as 2.1 million manufacturing jobs unfilled by 2030, according to The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte.

Allegion, who has been hosting Manufacturing Day events since 2015, took its open houses from physical to virtual in 2020 amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic. Now a leader in that virtual pivot, the company expanded on the early success of those efforts to hold online field trips across 10 of its U.S. facilities and their local communities this year.

"We all know that 2020 and 2021 have been anything but typical due to the ongoing pandemic," said Allegion Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Integrated Supply Chain Cindy Farrer. "Rather than letting these important efforts fall to the wayside, the Allegion team used its digital capabilities to transform our open houses into virtual field trips. In doing so, our company successfully struck the right balance of health and safety while still working to inspire the next generation of manufacturers across the U.S. As someone who has spent more than 30 years in manufacturing, experiencing the vibrant and valuable career opportunities firsthand, I couldn't be prouder of the fact that Allegion maintained this long-held commitment to the future innovators and creators of this great industry."

The online experiences featured video tours of the company's production and distribution facilities; recorded interviews with employees across a variety of locations and roles; live presentations on local capabilities and the future of the industry from plant leadership teams; keynote conversations with Farrer and Allegion Chairman, President and CEO David Petratis; as well as special remarks from federal, state and local government officials on the important role manufacturing plays in today's society. Educators were given the opportunity to participate in the virtual field trips live or opt for a recording to share with students later.

While Manufacturing Day efforts at Allegion address the industry's skills gap, the company's leaders additionally believe they are important for providing ongoing support to educators across high schools, vocational schools and technical or community colleges that want to partner with local employers to give students real-life experiences.

"We recognize that teachers, administration and staff play such an important role in guiding students which ultimately means they're influencing how future generations and our communities thrive. Coming alongside them through Manufacturing Day, tutoring and mentoring programs, as well as local support of robotics teams and STEM-based classes, are among the many ways our employees give back," Farrer added.

Allegion also offers tuition reimbursement and apprenticeship programs to upskill and reskill its current manufacturing employees in the U.S. And the company is innovating in its career development and hiring efforts in many other ways across the globe, including a new program in India to hire women who have taken a pause from their careers due to personal reasons and were interested in re-joining the workforce.

"Whether we're looking at near-term challenges like pandemic-induced labor shortages or long-term issues like racial injustice or gender bias, companies have an important role to play," Petratis said. "As someone who has spent more than 40 years in the manufacturing industry, there's no doubt in my mind that innovating in the way we attract and train both current and future talent has never been more important. Ultimately, bringing different experiences, skillsets and perspectives to the table helps make manufacturers like Allegion and their communities better."

Allegion's 2021 Manufacturing Day events are now publicly available and accessible to all educators who would like to use them as learning opportunities for students through the following online recordings, displayed by the location of the local operations that hosted them:

Blue Ash, Ohio Chino, California joint event;

Everett and Snoqualmie, Washington Perrysburg, Ohio joint event;

Indianapolis, Indiana, event;

McKenzie, Tennessee, event;

Olathe, Kansas, event;

Princeton, Illinois, event; and

Security, Colorado event.

For information on career opportunities at Allegion, visit www.allegion.com/careers.

About Allegion

Allegion (NYSE: ALLE) is a global pioneer in seamless access, with leading brands like CISA, Interflex, LCN, Schlage, SimonsVoss and Von Duprin. Focusing on security around the door and adjacent areas, Allegion secures people and assets with a range of solutions for homes, businesses, schools and institutions. Allegion had $2.7 billion in revenue in 2020, and its security products are sold around the world.

For more, visit www.allegion.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005338/en/

Contacts:

Allegion Media Contact:

Whitney Moorman Reputation Management Leader

317-810-3241

Whitney.Moorman@allegion.com

Allegion Analyst Contact:

Tom Martineau Vice President, Investor Relations, and Treasurer

317-810-3759

Tom.Martineau@allegion.com


VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Aztec Minerals Corp. (TSXV:AZT)(OTCQB:AZZTF) and Kootenay Silver Inc. announce the approval of a 22 hole, 5,000 meter reverse circulation ("RC") drilling program at the Cervantes porphyry gold-copper property in Sonora, Mexico. Aztec (65%) and Kootenay (35%) recently formed a 65/35 joint venture ("JV") and the JV Management Committee met this week to review and approve the Phase 2 drill program which follows up on the results of the recently completed 2021 Phase 1 exploration program (see news release date August 4, 2021).

The JV plans to commence the 22 hole, 5,000 m reverse circulation program in late November and will test four main targets. View: Cervantes Proposed Phase 2 RC Drilling Plan

At the California target, where Aztec previously discovered extensive porphyry gold-copper mineralization (drill intercepts up to 0.77 gpt gold over 160m), the JV will drill 14 infill and step-out holes at a 50m spacing to expand and better define the area of mineralization, followed by two 500m deep holes to test the depth extent of the strong IP chargeability anomaly At the California North prospect, one hole will test the coincident IP chargeability and gold-copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomaly At the Jasper prospect, one hole will test the outcropping copper mineralization and copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomaly At the Purisima East target, six holes will test the high grade gold mineralization in the Glory Hole mine working and coincident IP chargeability and gold-copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomaly within a breccia along the rim of a brecciated QFP porphyry intrusion

The primary objectives of the two phase 2021 exploration program are to better define the open pit, heap leach gold potential of the porphyry gold oxide cap at California, evaluate the potential for deeper copper-gold porphyry sulfide mineralization underlying the oxide cap, test for north and west extensions of the California mineralization at California North and Jasper, and assess the breccia potential of Purisima East.

Aztec CEO Simon Dyakowski commented "Success in the upcoming drilling program will help build our confidence in advancing the project to an initial open pit resource estimate and elevate the profile of the Cervantes project in a region that has both porphyry copper and heap leach gold production in Mexico."

Cervantes Project Overview

Cervantes is a highly prospective porphyry gold-copper-molybdenum property located in southeastern Sonora state, Mexico. The project lies 160 km east of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico within the famous Laramide porphyry copper belt approximately 265 km southeast of the Cananea porphyry copper-molybdenum mine (Grupo Mexico). Cervantes also lies along an east-west trending gold belt 60 km west of the Mulatos epithermal gold mine (Alamos Gold), 45 km west of the La India mine (Agnico Eagle), and 40 km northwest of Santana gold deposit (Minera Alamos). View: Cervantes Project Location Map

Large well-located property (3,649 hectares) with good infrastructure, road access, local town, all private land, water wells on property, grid power nearby

(3,649 hectares) with good infrastructure, road access, local town, all private land, water wells on property, grid power nearby Seven prospective mineralized zones related to high level porphyries and breccias along an 7.0km east-northeast corridor with multiple intersecting northwest structures

related to high level porphyries and breccias along an 7.0km east-northeast corridor with multiple intersecting northwest structures Distinct geophysical anomalies , California target marked by high magnetic and low resistivity anomalies, high radiometric and chargeability anomalies responding to pervasive alteration

, California target marked by high magnetic and low resistivity anomalies, high radiometric and chargeability anomalies responding to pervasive alteration Extensive gold mineralization at California zone, 118 soil samples average 0.44 gpt gold over 900 m by 600 m area, trench rock-channel samples up to 0.47 gpt gold over 222m

at California zone, 118 soil samples average 0.44 gpt gold over 900 m by 600 m area, trench rock-channel samples up to 0.47 gpt gold over 222m Already drilled the first discovery hole at the California zone, intersected gold oxide cap to a classic gold-copper porphyry deposit, drill results up to 0.77 gpt gold over 160 m

at the California zone, intersected gold oxide cap to a classic gold-copper porphyry deposit, drill results up to 0.77 gpt gold over 160 m Excellent gold recoveries from preliminary metallurgical tests on drill core from California zone; oxide gold recoveries in bottle roll tests range from 75% to 87%

from preliminary metallurgical tests on drill core from California zone; oxide gold recoveries in bottle roll tests range from 75% to 87% California geophysical anomaly wide open laterally and at depth, IP chargeability strengthens and broadens to >500m depth over an area 1100 m by 1200 m

laterally and at depth, IP chargeability strengthens and broadens to >500m depth over an area 1100 m by 1200 m Three-Dimensional IP Survey conducted in 2019 extends strong chargeability anomalies to the southwest covering Estrella, Purisima East, and Purisima West, coinciding well with alteration and Au-Cu-Mo soil geochemical anomalies, all undrilled.

California Target

In 2017-18, Aztec completed a Phase 1, 17 diamond core hole drill program, totaling 2,675 meters (m) (see news release dated June 26, 2018). Phase 1 drilling tested the California target 900m by 600m gold-in-soils anomaly that averaged 0.44gpt covering hydrothermal breccias within a quartz feldspar porphyry stock intruding Paleozoic siliciclastic sediments.

The Phase 1 drill program consistently intersected an oxidized gold cap to a porphyry-type gold-copper-silver system at California, including multiple 100+ meter widths of exceeding 0.40 gpt gold, spanning an 800-meter length and a 200-meter breadth, to a maximum vertical depth of 150 meters. The area tested by drilling represents only 30% of the surface gold soil anomaly.

Mineralization at the California zone is open in all directions. Highlights of the 2017-18 Phase 1 drill program are as follows:

160m @ 0.77 gpt gold incl 80m @ 1.04 gpt gold, 0.11% copper in 18CER010

139m @ 0.71 gpt gold incl 20m @ 2.10 gpt gold, 0.16% copper in 17CER005

118m @ 0.63 gpt gold incl 43m @ 1.18 gpt gold, 0.16% copper in 17CER003

122m @ 0.60 gpt gold incl 62m @ 0.88 gpt gold, 0.06% copper in 18CER007

170m @ 0.42 gpt gold incl 32m @ 0.87 gpt gold, 0.06% copper in 18CER006

Preliminary metallurgical tests on California drill cores were conducted in 2019 (see news release dated March 12, 2019). Drill core samples were grouped into 4 separate types of mineralization: Oxide 1, Oxide 2, Mixed Oxide/Sulfide and Sulfide. The preliminary results of bottle roll tests showed excellent potential for heap leach gold recovery, as follows:

85.1% recovery on 2.0mm material and 94.3% on 75-micron material in sample Oxide 1

87.7% recovery on 2.0mm material and 94.2% on 75-micron material in sample Oxide 2

77.9% recovery on 2.0mm material and 89.0% on 75-micron material in sample Mixed Oxide/Sulphide

51.2% recovery on 2.0mm material and 78.7% on 75-micron material in sample Sulphide

Additional Targets

Purisima East - outcropping gossans, altered and mineralized diatreme breccias and porphyry intrusions marked by a 700m by 600m geochemical soil anomaly in 193 samples that average 0.25 gpt gold, a small historic 'glory hole' mine where rock chip sampling returned high-grade mineralization up to 44.6 gpt gold.

Estrella - outcrops of gossan and sulfides in silicified Paleozoic sediments near quartz porphyry dikes with rock chip samples up to 3.9 gpt gold and 2,010ppm copper.

Purisima West - a mirror image of Purisima East in size and type of gossans, altered and mineralized breccias and intrusions in association with gold and copper soil anomalies.

Jasper - 2017 trenching returned skarn/replacement-type mineralization up to 0.52% copper and 0.62 gpt gold over a 92.4 m length.

California North - coincident IP chargeability and gold-copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomalies may be a north extension of the California target

Other targets - porphyry alteration and geochemical soil anomalies mark the Jacobo and Brasil prospects but more work is required to expand and define these targets

Allen David Heyl, B.Sc., CPG., VP Exploration, is the Qualified Person who reviewed and approved the technical disclosures in this news release.

"Simon Dyakowski"

Simon Dyakowski, Chief Executive Officer

Aztec Minerals Corp.

About Aztec Minerals - Aztec is a mineral exploration company focused on the discovery of large polymetallic mineral deposits in the Americas. Our core asset is the prospective Cervantes porphyry gold-copper property in Sonora, Mexico. The historic, district-scale Tombstone properties host both bulk tonnage epithermal gold-silver as well as CRD silver-lead-zinc mineralization in Cochise County, Arizona. Aztec's shares trade on the TSX-V stock exchange (symbol AZT) and on the OTCQB (symbol AZZTF).

Contact Information - For more information, please contact:

Simon Dyakowski, CEO or Bradford Cooke, Chairman

Tel: (604) 619-7469

Fax: (604) 685-9744

Email: simon@aztecminerals.com

Website: www.aztecminerals.com

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements under Canadian securities legislation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "expects" or "it is expected", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from results contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Accordingly, the actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. When relying on forward-looking statements to make decisions, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: Aztec Minerals Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671110/Aztec--Kootenay-Joint-Venture-Approves-22-Hole-5000-Meter-RC-Drill-Program-at-Cervantes-Gold-Copper-Project-Sonora-Mexico
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Sky Gold Corp. (TSXV:SKYG)(OTC PINK:SRKZF) ("Sky Gold Corp." or the "Company") is pleased to announce the discovery of a new zone of surface copper mineralization on its Evening Star Property, located in Mineral County, Nevada.

Discovered through prospecting, geological mapping, rock and soil sampling, the new target known as the "High Life Zone" was sampled over an area approximately 200 by 400 meters. Fifteen (15) surface grab samples averaged 0.42 percent copper (% Cu), and 11.7 parts per million silver (Ag ppm). Peak values were 1.54 Cu % and 63.7 Ag ppm. The table below summarizes all rock samples received from the preliminary sampling.

The Evening Star property is prospective for CRD (Carbonate Replacement Deposit) base and precious (silver and gold) mineralization and has previously been explored for copper-gold porphyry mineralization. The property is located 12 kilometers southeast of the town of Hawthorne, north of, and contiguous to the Pamlico property, owned by Newrange Gold Corp.

The High Life Zone is located approximately 250 meters north of the Gold Bug mine workings. The copper mineralization appears as copper oxides (malachite, azurite, chrysocolla), associated with quartz veins, veinlets, limonitic microfractures and disseminated in a quartz monzonite porphyry host rock interpreted as Cretaceous in age. To date, no carbonate rocks have been observed. Outcrop exposure is limited due to widespread sandy, druzy, weathered granodiorite cover (windblown) but the grab rock samples are interpreted to reflect subcrop mineralization under relatively thin cover.

The Company has also completed a preliminary soil sampling survey over the same area that the rock samples were collected, comprised of 33 samples. The arithmetic average for the soil samples was 0.040 ppm Au, 1.8 ppm Ag, 479 ppm Cu, 77 ppb Pb, and 173 ppm Zn. The 90% percentile values (indicative as strongly anomalous) were 0.099 ppm Au, 7.6 ppm Ag, 1197 ppm Cu (0.12% Cu), 195 ppm Pb and 419 ppm Zn.

These soil results are interpreted as strongly anomalous for copper and silver and are supportive of the anomalous values obtained from the rock sampling program. The soil geochemistry is also anomalous for gold which was not reflected in the rock sample assays. In addition, some rock and soil samples are elevated in bismuth and arsenic which may indicate multiple phases of mineralization.

Following the receipt of pending assays from additional soil and rock sampling on the new copper area, the Company will also be making application with the Bureau of Land Management to complete an expanded drill program. To date, the Evening Star property has received permits for 1.46 acres of disturbance, under a Notice of Intent, which allows for to five acres of surface disturbance. EM Strategies, based in Reno, Nevada, will be contracted to assist with the new permit submittal.

Qualified Person

Sky Gold's disclosure of a technical or scientific nature in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Garry Clark, P.Geo., who serves as a qualified person under the definition of National Instrument 43-101.

About Sky Gold Corp.

Sky Gold Corp. is a junior mineral exploration company engaged in acquiring and advancing mineral properties in Canada and the USA. The Company is active in Newfoundland on the Mustang and Virginia properties, which are located contiguous to New Found Gold Corp's Queensway project, where high-grade gold mineralization has been discovered, with the district being actively explored by numerous companies. The Company also owns the Evening Star property, located 12 km southeast of Hawthorne, NV, which is prospective for gold mineralization and CRD (Carbonate Replacement Deposit) base and precious (silver and gold) mineralization. The Company also owns the Imperial Project comprising two contiguous claim blocks (6,576 hectares) prospective for gold and VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) mineralization and covers 4.7 kilometres of the northern border with Amex Exploration's Perron property in Quebec, where high-grade gold has been intersected in three zones along a 3.2 km corridor.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Mike England"

Mike England, CEO & Director

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Tel. 1-604-683-3995

Toll Free. 1-888-845-4770

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward -looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at WWW.SEDAR.COM).

SOURCE: Sky Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671112/Sky-Gold-Discovers-New-Copper-Target-on-the-Evening-Star-Property-Nevada
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / CAT Strategic Metals Corporation (CSE:CAT) ("CAT" or the "Company") announces that it has received all of the necessary governmental authorizations and permits required to begin diamond drilling on the Company's Burntland Property in northern New Brunswick. CAT is about to proceed with a 7 hole diamond drill program to further explore and evaluate the potential volume of a trenching program that occurred over the summer of 2020.

This previous trenching identified extensive areas of skarnified sediment-hosted mineralization adjacent to porphyry dykes. The average of 27 samples collected from this trench area returned 1.67 % Cu and 39.3 g/t Ag, with samples taken selectively across approximately 60 metres of the exposed trench. The highest-grade samples from this exercise include up to 16.3 % Cu & 220.0 g/t Ag, 5.58 % Cu & 192.0 g/t Ag, and 6.2 % Cu & 118 g/t Ag. Note that rock grab samples are selective by nature and values reported may not represent the true grade or style of mineralization across the property. A historical ground magnetic survey indicates that skarn-type mineralization on the Project is often found at the margins of magnetic-high areas.

Over the summer of 2021, CAT conducted a 975 line-kilometre high-resolution drone magnetic survey that was flown at a low elevation approximately 10 metres above the tree-line and at 25 metre line spacings, covering the entirety of the Project. The magnetic survey, flown at low altitude and lower speeds compared to conventional helicopter or fixed-wing surveys, collected an abundance of data that was used to identify structural features that may be related to mineralization as well as to identify areas of magnetic disruption that may be related alteration associated with hydrothermal mineralizing fluids.

The results of the drone magnetic survey indicated that further work needed to be done and the Company engaged EAGLE Geophysique Inc. ("EAGLE") to perform a geophysical VLF-EM, DTM and Mag survey designed to identify structures that would provide enough data to establish targets for a diamond drill program. This recently concluded survey, known as a Quadri-Mag, is the latest generation in high precision airborne equipment, and the ultra-wide horizontal and vertical gradient allows mapping of subtle changes in rock properties. The platform was towed under a helicopter for maximum ground proximity, and It's 10 meter horizontal and 3 meter vertical gradient enable it to locate hydrothermal alteration, kimberlite dykes and sills and other geological structural features. The passive EM equipment is capable of detecting conductors at depths greater than 1 kilometer. By measuring naturally occurring EM fields (AFMAG - audio frequencies magnetics) both discrete conductors and bulk changes in resistivity and conductivity common in geologic contacts and structures can be detected.The EAGLE geophysical program consisted of a total of 970 linear Km's over a survey area of 47.55 square Kilometers.

The combined data of the trenching geophysical programs were instrumental in identifying the initial 7 diamond drill targets and allowed the Company to engage Forages Technic Eau Inc. ("FTE") as the contractor to undertake the diamond drill program which is scheduled to begin November 15, 2021. Further, and ongoing, study and interpretation of the most recent EAGLE geophysical survey is expected to indicate additional areas of heightened interest and result in identifying additional diamond drill targets on the property.

Qualified Person

Mr. Patrick Laforest, P.Geo (Quebec), is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 who has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this press release. The Qualified Person has not completed sufficient work to verify the historic information on the Property, particularly in regard to the neighbouring projects and historical drilling data.

About CAT Strategic Metals Corporation:

CAT Strategic Metals Corporation is a Canadian based mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and de risking of overlooked projects situated in well-established World Class geological districts in North America. The Company is specially focused on minerals which are considered highly strategic from a monetary as well as global infrastructure and energy point of view. CAT's shares trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) under the trading symbol "CAT", on the OTCMarkets.com under the trading symbol "CATTF", and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol "8CH".

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Robert Rosner

Chairman, President & CEO

Further information regarding the Company can be found on SEDAR at www.SEDAR.com , by visiting the Company's website www.catstrategic.com or by contacting the Company directly at (604) 674-3145.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Particular risks applicable to this press release include risks associated with planned production, including the ability of the company to achieve its targeted exploration outline due to regulatory, technical or economic factors. In addition, there are risks associated with estimates of resources, and there is no guarantee that a resource will be found or have demonstrated economic viability as necessary to be classified as a reserve. There is no guarantee that additional exploration work will result in significant increases to resource estimates.

Neither Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

We seek safe harbour.

SOURCE: CAT Strategic Metals Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671127/CAT-Strategic-Receives-Work-Authorization-to-Conduct-Diamond-Drill-Program-on-Burntland-Project-in-New-Brunswick-Additional-Drill-Targets-to-be-Identified-Following-Latest-Airborne-Geophysical-Survey


FORT LAUDERDALE (dpa-AFX) - Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS) said the company made significant progress on its transition to the cloud. Third quarter total Annualized Recurring Revenue or ARR grew organically 13% year-over-year, excluding Wrike. Organic SaaS ARR grew 48%. The company reaffirmed its prior guidance of nearly 10% organic total ARR growth, excluding Wrike, for 2021.



Third-quarter non-GAAP net income was $152 million, or $1.20 per share. On average, nine analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report profit per share of $0.89, for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.



Net profit was $51.8 million or $0.41 per share compared to $98.2 million or $0.78 per share, prior year.



Revenue increased to $778.45 million from $767.17 million, a year ago. Analysts on average had estimated $772.83 million in revenue.



Total ARR was $3.08 billion, up 20% year-over-year. Excluding the contribution of Wrike, total ARR increased 13%. SaaS ARR was $1.1 billion, up 75% year-over-year. Excluding Wrike, SaaS ARR was $934 million, up 48%.



For the full year, the company now expects non GAAP EPS in a range of $4.90 to $4.95, and revenue in a range of $3.19 billion to $3.20 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report profit per share of $4.86 on revenue of $3.23 billion.



For the fourth-quarter, the company expects non-GAAP EPS in a range of $1.04 to $1.09, and revenue in a range of $825 million to $835 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report profit per share of $1.33 on revenue of $866.53 million.



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CITRIX SYSTEMS-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Dalriada has worked with Dunad since its inception to support the development of its novel small molecule protein degradation modality

TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dalriada is pleased to congratulate Dunad Therapeutics on its strategic collaboration and license agreement with Novartis potentially worth $1.35 billion, to generate orally bioavailable covalent and protein degrading small molecule drugs. This leading-edge technology has the potential to deliver next-generation therapeutics with advantages over traditional drugs against a wide range of diseases by unlocking access to disease-causing and often undruggable targets.

Since its inception Dunad's R&D has been supported by Dalriada, a contract research organization to enable the development of their novel therapeutic modality that uses mono-valent small molecules to induce selective degradation of proteins via direct modification of the target.

"We are very pleased to see the impact and application of Dunad's technology amplified through the collaboration with Novartis," says Dr. Charlie Younger, Chief Operating Officer, Dalriada. "It takes an agile and innovative team to advance a novel therapeutic modality. We've had the privilege of supporting Dunad to rapidly scale and further validate their platform technology, and to continue supporting the quick advancement of their pipeline."

Dunad's unique platform offers a target-class agnostic mechanism of action that is clearly differentiated from other targeted protein degradation technologies. As part of their Turn-keyTM model, Dalriada has been providing integrated drug discovery support for Dunad across medicinal chemistry, biophysics, cell and molecular biology and proteomics.

"Dalriada has provided the perfect model to support a rapidly growing company like Dunad. To scale up at the pace we have, proactive communication and quick turn-around times from resource deployment to the design-make-test-analyse cycles are critical," says Dr. Graham Simpson, Senior Vice President Drug Discovery, Dunad. "Dalriada has consistently invested in the science and focused on meeting our objectives. Their team has become a most trusted partner for Dunad."

"We consider the unique science and needs of each of our partners to create a highly tailored approach that includes everything from custom assays to full program design," says Jeff O'Meara, Vice President Drug Discovery, Dalriada. "It's great to see that our team's focus on the fastest possible turn-around times in the design-make-test-analyse cycle is achieving significant outcomes for our clients."

"Drug discovery and the biotech industry are in a very exciting, disruptive period. As we shift towards novel therapeutic modalities, we are paving the way to better treat complex diseases and modulate previously inaccessible targets," adds Younger. "Unchartered territory requires a new way of thinking that isn't one size fits all. Dalriada understands that to break new ground in the evolving drug discovery space, biotech companies need tailored, comprehensive support right from the start to most rapidly and effectively advance their technologies and pipelines."

Dalriada is not a traditional CRO:

Dalriada is a leading Canadian contract research organization specialized in small molecule therapies. Purposely built as an agile, co-located and uniquely integrated drug discovery partner, Dalriada accelerates the discovery and development journey of high value new small molecule therapeutics from concept to IND. Our partners have access to and support from a team of more than 60 drug discovery scientists (>70% PhD) specialized across all aspects of medicinal & computational chemistry, cell & molecular biology, biophysics & biochemistry, ADME and proteomics. Our unique Turn-KeyTM operational model offers the global biotechnology industry a full suite of drug discovery, preclinical development, intellectual property, and business expertise to manage and execute tailored R&D programs. To date Dalriada has supported integrated programs of public and venture capital-backed companies, including Antibe, Janpix, Canopy Growth and Dunad Therapeutics. Learn more: www.dalriadatx.com

Contact: Sacha Kennedy, E: sacha.kennedy@dalriadatx.com, T: 647-740-1240

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678382/Dalriada_Drug_Discovery_Dalriada_Drug_Discovery_Celebrates_Clien.jpg
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FEEL FOODS LTD. (the "Company" or "Feel Foods") (CSE: "FEEL") (OTC: "FLLLF") (FSE: "1ZF") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a Letter of Intent (the "Agreement") with Plantastic Food Inc. ("Plantastic"), a British Columbia based vegan food company, and the shareholders of Plantastic to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Plantastic (the "Acquisition").



Founded in 2019, Plantastic and its unique plant-based products are currently offered in twenty-two

Plantastic offers a variety of delicious plant-based cheesecakes including Cappuccino, Chocolate, Lemon, Pumpkin Spice, and Strawberry flavors as well as its Three-Bean Chipotle and Kale-O-Mania plant-based burgers.

A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on the image or link below:

Feel Foods Director and CEO David Greenway states: "We are thrilled to be working towards bringing Plantastic into our rapidly growing plant-based family of companies at Feel Foods. Plantastic's unique and delicious line of plant-based cheesecakes are my personal favorite desert, and the plant-based burgers compliment our existing lines of Black Sheep Vegan Cheeze. Feel Foods intends to work closely with Plantastic to grow sales, increase market exposure, and expand distribution throughout Canada and the US while continuing to create new and exciting plant-based offerings."

Plantastic Food founder Sanit Jain states: "We have found a perfect fit in the Feel Foods family that aligns with Plantastics' values and vision and will allow our current offerings and new in-development products to reach many more health-conscious consumers. Plantastic offers great tasting non-dairy cheesecakes so that desert lovers can have their cake and eat it too, while being part of a movement towards a plant-based world, that benefits health, the environment and the animals."

Vegan entrepreneur Mr. Sanit Jain who started to company due to his personal plant-based success and recovery story. After losing his father to a heart attack stemming from high cholesterol, and finding that he too had very high cholesterol, Saint ventured to find alternatives to pharmaceuticals to manage his cholesterol and be healthier.

Plantastic is based on the idea that if we can help more people have access to healthy choices without compromising on taste and texture, we would have made a positive impact on the community. Every decision we make at Plantastic, every product we launch, community health and wellness are top of mind. We neither compromise on the quality of ingredients nor method of preparation, rest assured that Plantastic products are prepared with the best quality and noble intentions.

The plant-based food market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.9% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $74.2 billion by 2027. The growth of this market is mainly attributed to the factors such as increasing incidence of intolerance for animal protein, growing urbanization with new consumer aspirations, increasing vegan population, and significant venture investments in this sector. *

Terms of the Agreement

Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, on closing of the Acquisition (the "Closing"), the Company will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Plantastic (the "PlantasticShares") under terms to be negotiated and outlined in a subsequent Definitive Agreement following the completion of due diligence by Feel Foods.

The Acquisition is subject to certain conditions, including: (i) the completion of satisfactory due diligence; (ii) the receipt of all necessary consents, waivers and approvals, including the approval of the CSE, as applicable; (iii) the entry of the Consulting Agreements; (iv) there having been no material adverse effect occurring with respect to the Company or Plantastic; and (v) other closing conditions customary for transactions of this nature.

Following the Closing of a Definitive Agreement, Plantastic Food Inc. will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Feel Foods Ltd.

About Feel Foods Ltd.

FEEL is an agri-food holdings company focused on innovative products and technologies in the food services industry including its wholly owned Black Sheep Vegan Cheeze Company, offering a variety of 10 unique vegan dairy substitute products and currently available in over 30 retail locations, it's 100% owned Be Good Plant-based Foods line of plant-based chicken, pork and beef products as well as is currently investing in the research and development of keto-friendly plant-based candy products.

Company Contact:

Mr. Joel T Warawa

Corporate Communications

E-mail: jw@feelfoodsco.com

Corporate Contact:

Website: www.feelfoodsco.com

E-Mail: info@feelfoodsco.com

Instagram: Instagram.com/feelfoodsco

Phone: 604-235-0010

Statistics Reference: * https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-plant-based-food-market-report-2020-2027-rising-industry-concentration-with-growth-in-mergers-and-acquisitions-in-the-plant-based-products-space-301268737.html

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which reflect the expectations of management regarding the Company. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future, including with respect to: the entry of the Consulting Agreements, the completion of the Acquisition and the acceptance of the Acquisition and terms thereof by the CSE. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements, including risks related to factors beyond the control of the Company. The risks include the following: the unknown magnitude and duration of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the inability of Feel Foods to close the Acquisition and other risks that are customary to transactions of this nature. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. Feel Foods undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

This press release is not an offer of the securities for sale in the United States. The securities have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

The CSE (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Fortitude Gold Corp. (OTCQB:FTCO) (the "Company") declares its monthly dividend of $0.04 per common share payable on November 30, 2021 to shareholders of record as of November 19, 2021. Fortitude Gold is a gold producer, developer, and explorer with operations in Nevada, U.S.A.

Dividends may vary in amount and consistency or be discontinued at the Board of Directors' discretion depending on variables including but not limited to operational cash flows, Company development requirements and strategies, construction, spot gold and silver prices, taxation, general market conditions and other factors described in the Company's public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

About Fortitude Gold Corp.:

Fortitude Gold is a U.S. based gold producer targeting projects with low operating costs, high margins, and strong returns on capital. The Company's strategy is to grow organically, remain debt-free and distribute substantial dividends. The Company's Nevada Mining Unit consists of five high-grade gold properties located in the Walker Lane Mineral Belt, with the Isabella Pearl gold mine in current production. Nevada, U.S.A. is among the world's premier mining friendly jurisdictions.

Cautionary Statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. If you are risk-averse you should NOT buy shares in Fortitude Gold Corp. The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. When used in this press release, the words "plan", "target", "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the statements regarding the Company's strategy, future plans for production, future expenses and costs, future liquidity and capital resources, and estimates of mineralized material are forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon information available to the Company on the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those discussed in this press release. In particular, the scope, duration, and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mining operations, Company employees, and supply chains as well as the scope, duration and impact of government action aimed at mitigating the pandemic may cause future actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. Also, there can be no assurance that production will continue at any specific rate.

CONTACT:

Greg Patterson

719-717-9825

greg.patterson@fortitudegold.com

www.Fortitudegold.com

SOURCE: Fortitude Gold Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671107/Fortitude-Gold-Declares-November-Monthly-Dividend
2021 Seoul Relax Week Meditation Conference will be held for 3 days from November 5th to 7th.

The conference looks into Western Meditation Education to boost emotional stability in children and adolescents.

It stars 6 global authorities on meditation in education including Karen Bluth, a developer of mindfulness for adolescents.

8 speakers including Ven. Misan, the head director of KAIST Center for Contemplative Science, will guide attendees through the progress of meditation education in Korea.

It is held simultaneously offline at the Korean Buddhist History and Culture Memorial Hall and online via Zoom Webinar.

In a confusing and complicated society, we can only trust ourselves. Because it is only through ourselves that we can develop our inner wisdom and bring about self-change, more and more people are turning to meditation to look deeply within. In Korea, this trend of non-religious people interested in meditation is still relatively new compared to the Western society where meditation has more or less become established as a basic education tool for future generations.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005565/en/

With the topic of 'Mindfulness in Education', the 2021 Meditation Conference will be held from November 5 to 7 as part of the 2021 Seoul Relax Week. It will be held onsite and online simultaneously at the Korean Buddhist History and Culture Memorial Hall and via Zoom Webinar. This year's line up boasts a total of 14 speakers consisting of 6 global authorities on meditation in education including Karen Bluth, a developer of mindfulness for adolescents and 8 domestic speakers including Ven. Misan, Ven. Seo-Gwang, and Shin Ho-Seoung. The Conference aims to expand the scope of mindfulness meditation from individual self-improvement to encompassing the wider perspective of education. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Since the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea has quickly become a leader in 'Edutech'. On the other hand, despite their great importance, mental health and self-care education has not been actively addressed. What is driving western societies like the U.S. and U.K. to focus on meditation education for mental health in both private and public education sectors?

To propose and highlight meditation education as public policy, the 2021 Meditation Conference will be held over 3 days from November 5th to November 7th as part of the 2021 Seoul Relax Week. The Meditation Conference will be held offline (face to face) at the Korean Buddhist History and Culture Memorial Hall and online through simultaneous livestream via Zoom Webinar.

The topic of the 2021 Seoul Relax Week Meditation Conference is 'Mindfulness in Education'. The aim is to expand the scope of mindfulness meditation from individual self-improvement to encompassing the wider perspective of education.

The stand out feature of this year's Meditation Conference is the spectacular speakers. The line up boasts a total of 14 domestic and international authorities on meditation, 6 of whom are international speakers who successfully introduced mindfulness meditation to public education in the U.S. and the U.K. The other 8 speakers are domestic authorities currently leading the popularisation of mindfulness meditation in Korea.

Korean meditation leaders will communicate both online and offline with: University of North Carolina assistant professor Karen Bluth, co-creator of the 'Mindful Self-Compassion for Teens' curriculum; Amy Saltzman, creator of 'Still Quiet Place', an MBSR program for students and adolescents; and Megan Sweet, who has played a major role in creating and developing mindfulness education theory and practice programs in the U.S. as a senior director at Mindful Schools.

Also joining us are the writer of 'Say What You Mean', Oren Jay Sofer, who is facilitating a conversation about meditation and nonviolence throughout the American meditation community; Susan Kaiser Greenland, creator of the American Inner Kids program and the children's meditation education application 'Stop, Breathe, Think Kids'; and Kim John Payne, a therapist and educator at around 230 public and private schools in the U.S. for 27 years.

We will also be welcoming special guests from within Korea: Ven. Misan, who is opening new horizons in the field of Meditation Engineering as chief of the KAIST Center for Contemplative Science; Professor Kweon Yong-Sil, director at the education policy research institution School Mental Health Resources and Research Center (SMHRC), a professor of neuropsychiatry at the Catholic University of Korea's College of Medicine, and one of the few experts in infant and adolescent neuropsychiatry in Korea; Chairman Kim Kyung-Seung, who, as Director of the Korean Academy of Meditation in Medicine and the president of psychiatry at Gotham Medical Foundation Maya Hospital, applies treatments based on MBSR; and Professor Kwak Young-Sook, professor emeritus of neuropsychiatry at Jeju National University, who is currently leading the development of child meditation education programs at the Meditation Education TFT of the Korean Academy of Meditation.

Also speaking on stage are Ven. Hye-Ju, a professor in the Department of Child and Youth Education (Department of Buddhist Childhood Education) at Dongguk University who has played the main role in bringing the SEE Learning program to Korea; Ven. Seo-Gwang, a director of Korean Meditation and Psychotherapy who brought the MSC meditation program to Korea; Ven. Hyo-Rim, a second director and official MSC teacher at the Institute of Korean Meditation and Psychotherapy; and author Shin Ho-Seoung, an active 'communication designer' focused on nonviolent communication.

The topic of the first day of the conference is 'Meditation Becomes Education' in which we will cover the current state of meditation education around the world and look at successful cases overseas. The second day focuses on 'Mindfulness for Children' and looks at meditation education methods that boost the moral and emotional development of infants and children. On the last day, with 'Mindfulness for Adolescents', we will go over self-care meditation methods that develop adolescent self-care, self-esteem, empathy, and interpersonal skills. Planned lectures and practice exercises are scheduled for each day.

The first and third days will begin with an opening discussion via Zoom Webinar among domestic and international speakers. On the first day, Ven. Misan, Megan Sweet, and Susan will discuss the theme of this Meditation Conference: 'Why We Should Talk About Mindfulness in Education Now'. On the third day, Ven. Seo-Gwang and Karen Bluth will have a conversation about mindfulness and self-care for adolescents with the topic 'How to Look After Myself'.

Buddhist Newspaper, Bulgwang Media, and the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism are the hosts of this Meditation Conference where practice and education intersect through meditation. The conference will be conducted both online and offline. Sequential translation for Korean and English will be provided for in-person participants while Korean and English subtitles will be available with the online video stream. The conference will be recorded live and the content will be distributed at no cost for child and adolescent meditation education.

The Korean Academy of Meditation in Medicine is a sponsor of the 2021 Meditation Conference. The Korean Academy of Meditation in Medicine (Chairman Kim Kyung-Seung) is a collective of about 300 psychiatrists who study theories of meditation as an important means of psychiatric treatment and share their clinical findings.

You can support this event and its discussions surrounding the effects and value of mindfulness meditation education for future generations and the self-care and internal development of children and adolescents through participation or voluntary sponsorship. Sponsorships can range from gifts such as e-books or conference tickets to monetary donations via PayPal.

Meanwhile, 2021 Seoul Relax Week is being held all over Seoul and through the online homepage under the topic of 'Mindfulness Through Meditation'. Having raised its curtains last June with a retreat at the main downtown temples, Seoul Relax Week will continue to conduct programs such as the Relax Spot Program, the Meditation Conference, and many others until November.

Detailed lectures by date are below.

The first day 'Meditation becomes Education' Scientific Meditation Program Development Cases (Ven. Misan); Mindfulness as a Powerful Tool to Improve School Culture (Megan Sweet); Introduction of Meditation Education as Public Policy (Kweon, Yong-Sil); Mindfulness in Education (Oren Jay Sofer).

The second day 'Mindfulness for Children' Meditation, Preparation for a Future Society (Kim, Kyung-Seung); Mindful Games: An Introduction to Activity-based Mindfulness for Children, Educators, Clinicians (Susan Kaiser Greenland); Development of a Mindfulness Program for Children and Adolescents in Korea (Kwak, Young-Sook); From Surviving to Thriving: Practical Compassion for Educators (Kim John Payne); Social Learning Model for Children (Ven. Hye-Ju).

The third day 'Mindfulness for Adolescents' How to Look After Myself (Ven. Seo-Gwang, Karen Bluth); Character Education for Teens Based on Mindful Self-Compassion (Ven. Seo-Gwang Ven. Hyo-Rim); Making Friends with Yourself: A Mindful Self-Compassion Program for Teens (Karen Bluth); Mindfulness for Teens: Skills for Finding Flow in School, Sports, and Life (Amy Saltzman); Restorative Dialogue for a Peaceful Classroom (Shin Ho-Seoung).

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005565/en/

Contacts:

2021 Seoul Relax Week Operator

Mind Design

Dami Kang

+82-2-2231-2011
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / MediXall Group Inc. (OTCQB:MDXL), an innovative healthcare solutions provider, today issued the following open letter to shareholders from Travis Jackson, the recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Company's wholly owned subsidiary, Health Karma:

Dear stakeholder and friends,

After many years of healthcare leadership positions, I jumped at the opportunity to return to my entrepreneurial roots to take over the reins as the new Chief Executive Officer of Health Karma, a wholly owned subsidiary of MediXall Group, Inc. (MDXL).

For those of you who aren't familiar with my background, I stepped into the CEO role at Health Karma with more than three decades of experience working in the healthcare industry, most recently as Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for Beacon Health Options, one of the largest behavioral health organizations in the country. Beacon serves more than 40 million individuals across all 50 states. While at Beacon, the Company was acquired by Anthem in 2020 and currently resides as a wholly owned subsidiary in Anthem's Diversified Business Group.

Prior to Beacon, I was Executive VP of Sales for Linkwell Health, where I was responsible for national sales and marketing activities for the company, with these efforts directed towards health insurance plans, hospital systems and health services companies.

Along with senior leadership positions at large healthcare organization I have also had success in building new businesses. I was a founder of both Ascendant Behavioral Health and Highland Springs Specialty Clinics, a series of outpatient behavioral health clinics. Prior to this I was a co-founder of My ePHIT, where we created a multimillion-dollar company from an initial idea, through fundraising, production, active sales and service and renewal phases and ultimately the sale of the company. At time of sale, My ePHIT had achieved over 23 million paid members.

I would like to share with you what attracted me to Health Karma. I was introduced to MediXall by Don Mathern and Scott Leavitt, individuals who have been involved in the insurance business for many years, with Don also being a long-term investor in MediXall Group.

I was originally invited to be on the Advisory Board about one year ago along with some other fantastic board members. Before accepting the position, I went to the MediXall Group / Health Karma headquarters in Florida to visit the company. It was at this time, I saw a lot of potential and an incredible team that Michael Swartz and Eddie Solar had put together over the past years and believed that I, along with the other Board of Advisor members, could bring value by working with this management team.

The key was taking time to focus on valuable solutions that would be purchased because there is vital need for it and for a distribution channel system that matches the need. Feedback was provided and the team responded. Initially, I accepted the position with a mutual understanding that I would only have limited time to work with the Health Karma team due to my leadership position at Anthem/Beacon Health Options. I had no intention of leaving an incredibly well paying, respected job within the behemoth that is Anthem. Well, as the team progressed the entrepreneurial bug arose and then as we started gaining momentum after the roll out of our distribution model, I knew I had to come lead this company.

After several months of working closely with the team, I sat down with Neil Swartz and Timothy Hart to discuss getting more involved and they proposed I come on board as CEO of the company.

In fact, when I joined Health Karma as CEO, many people asked me why I would leave the stability of my previous job for one that was anything but. My answer was simple: I believe Health Karma has the potential to be a once-in-a-generation company, and the opportunity ahead of it is enormous.

Looking back at my first 60 days as CEO, I wanted to give all shareholders and friends of MediXall an update.

Under my new leadership the entire team is laser-focused on achieving organization-wide goals we set to help take the Company to new heights. Through this we have accomplished the following over my first 60 days:

Product Enhancements

We upgraded the Health Karma VPC product

Refined our Behavioral health offering to add 24/7/365 behavioral health access to Masters level licensed therapists, providing members instant access to help anytime

Added a fully Spanish language experience to the Health Karma Membership - online, materials, videos, providers

Dental discount program through Careington

Vision discount program through VSP

Hearing discount program through Epic

Durable medical equipment and services discount program

Vitamin/Nutritional items discount program

Currently analyzing prescription drug programs and will be adding a set of $0.00 copay commonly prescribed drugs for our members

Sales Pipeline

Partnered and sold HK solution to a Payroll company in the Midwest with over 20,000 employee coverage. Marketing and enrolling members starts November 2021

Partnered and sold HK solution to a Temporary Staffing company on the East Coast starting November 2021

Multiple small business sold and starting between October 2021 through January 2022

Addition and training of over 100 insurance brokers to distribute Health Karma

Addition of national broker insurance quoting company that serves over 1,200 brokers to start December 2021

Growing pipeline with opportunities actively moving through the pipeline to achieve Health Karma paid members

Testing of Direct-to-Consumer channel to go live November 2021 for significant marketing push in this channel

Actively implementing a partnership with a leading employer/employee benefits enrollment platform used nationwide by over 1,000 brokers and 27,000 companies, which is expected to be live January 2022 - it will easily automate the ability to add Health Karma to a benefits package by brokers.

Actively implementing an Affinity Marketing Partnership with a leading association with over 100,000 member base of licensed health insurance agents, brokers, general agents, consultants and benefit professionals across America.

With the TBG Holdings and R3 Accounting foothold being located in South Florida we have also implemented a plan to become a major player in our own backyard of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

With that being said, I am now even more excited about the potential of MediXall.com/Health Karma than I was before I started. In my experience leading other premier healthtech organizations, strong teams united by a common mission are what enable companies to succeed and scale. Health Karma has cultivated outstanding talent. And its mission to empower Americans with the tools and the resources to access the care they need at prices they can afford is a worthy cause that I fully embrace and believe in. I am convinced that the Company is at an inflection point for accelerating growth and value creation.

I pledge to keep you updated as we progress towards our important and exciting goals.

Sincerely,

Travis Jackson

CEO

Health Karma

For more information on Health Karma, visit their official website: www.healthkarma.org and follow @HealthKarmaApp on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

About MediXall Group, Inc.

MediXall Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MDXL) is a technology and innovation-driven organization purposefully designed and structured around delivering products and services to make it easier for consumers to learn, decide and pay for healthcare. The mission of MediXall Group is to revolutionize the healthcare industry by improving communication; providing better technology and support services; and enabling more efficient, cost-effective healthcare for the consumer. By approaching the entire healthcare ecosystem, MediXall creates, invests, and incubates companies that embody its mission statement.

About Health Karma, Inc.

Health Karma, a wholly owned subsidiary of MediXall Group, is a data-driven healthcare technology company that is on a mission to continually raise the bar of the healthcare experience by empowering people to understand and manage their entire health care journey anywhere, anytime, whether they have insurance or not. For more information, please visit www.gethealthkarma.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on current plans and expectations of management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect the company's current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. Specifically, the company's ability to raise additional capital, execute its business plan and strategy, sustain, or increase gross margins, achieve profitability, and build shareholder value are forward-looking statements. A more extensive listing of risks and factors that may affect the company's business prospects and cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the reports and other documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Relations Contact: (954) 653-8216

Media Contact: Justin Baronoff, justin@transmediagroup.com, (561) 750-9800

SOURCE: MediXall Group, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671191/Health-Karmas-CEO-Travis-Jackson-Issues-Open-Letter-to-Shareholders
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Silo Wellness Inc. (CSE: SILO) (OTCQB: SILFF) (FSE: 3K70) ("Silo Wellness" or the "Company"), a leading global psychedelics company, announces that Mr. Winfield Ding is appointed as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Ding has been CFO and director for a number of public companies in Canada. He is a seasoned senior finance executive with over twenty years of finance and operations experience. A former audit manager and currently a self-practitioner, he worked in audit, taxation and advisory roles across a wide range of industries with a focus on public issuers financial reporting and business advisory. Mr. Ding received his MBA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Mr. Ding replaces Ryan Ptolemy as the Chief Financial Officer of the Company.

"Winfield was instrumental to the company through the RTO process and has been an active and highly valued board member," stated Silo Wellness Chief Executive Officer Douglas Gordon. "This is a considerable opportunity for our management team to benefit from his Winfield's wisdom on a more day-to-day basis."

Additionally, the Company would like to announce that it has agreed to part ways with Kenny Choi, the former Corporate Secretary of the Company. Mr. Ptolemy and Mr. Choi will remain available to ensure a smooth transition. The Company's Board of Directors and management would like to express their gratitude to Mr. Ptolemy and Mr. Choi for their contributions and wishes each of them all the best in their future endeavours.

The Company further announces that it has changed its auditor from McGovern Hurley LLP effective as of November 1, 2021 to Zeifmans LLP ("Zeifmans") as its auditors. The Board of Directors of the Company approved the appointment of Zeifmans for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2021.

Silo Wellness intends to settle a total of $30,000 of debt (the "Debt") owed to a consulting services provider of the Company, through the issuance of an aggregate of 392,156 common shares of the Company (the "Debt Shares") at a deemed price of $0.0765 per Debt Share (the "Debt Settlement"). Completion of the Shares for Services is subject to compliance with applicable regulations, including policies of the CSE.

ABOUT SILO WELLNESS

Silo Wellness is a growth-oriented holding company focused on functional mushroom and psychedelic opportunities that benefit from a unified ecosystem and exceptional leadership. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Toronto, Silo Wellness has operations in Jamaica and Oregon. Silo Wellness is a publicly-traded company on the Canadian (CSE: SILO) and Frankfurt (FRA: CK70) exchanges and trading on the OTCQB Venture Market (OTCQB: SILFF).

Silo Wellness offers a diverse and growing portfolio of functional mushroom products, psychedelic wellness retreats in Jamaica and Oregon, cultivation of psychedelic mushrooms and truffles in Jamaica, development of a brick-and-mortar smart shop in Jamaica, and intellectual property, focused initially on the commercialization of its metered-dosing psilocybin nasal spray.

In March 2021, Silo Wellness announced a multi-year licensing agreement with the family of legendary musician Bob Marley for the exclusive worldwide rights to brand, market and sell a distinct product line of functional and psychedelic mushrooms. The Marley One line of functional mushrooms is available at www.MarleyOne.com.

For more information about Silo Wellness, please visit www.silowellness.com.

For further information, please contact:

Silo Wellness Media Relations:

hello@trailblaze.co

Silo Wellness Investor Relations:

(778) 383-6740

ir@silowellness.com

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates, and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements relate, among other things, to: the Shares for Debt and the business plans of Silo Wellness. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, regulatory, political and social uncertainties and the potential impact of COVID-19. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the risk factors included in Silo Wellness's continuous disclosure documents available on www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. Silo Wellness assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102012
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / With COVID-19 affecting daily life in unprecedented ways, the demand for health solutions has never been greater. With their health division in mind, Sparta Group (TSXV:SAY) (the "Corporation" the "Company", "Sparta Group", "Sparta Capital", "SAY.V" or "Sparta") has appointed two of the country's most accomplished systems engineers, specializing in several areas, including aerospace and space health, to its Technical Advisory Board ("TAB"). Starting immediately, Mr. Michel Lortie and Mr. Sol Rauch will both be part of a growing TAB that is helping guide the Company in its quest to build a healthier planet.

"COVID-19 has significantly raised societal awareness about the presence of potentially harmful pathogens that share our space and in-turn the importance of testing, regardless of vaccination status. Having Mr. Lortie and Mr. Rauch on the TAB is a huge advantage for us since they have the expertise to assist Sparta in the development of advanced technologies for testing of various pathogens, not just the virus that causes COVID," said Sparta President and Chief Technology Officer, John O'Bireck

Mr. Lortie a mechanical engineer and Mr. Rauch an electrical engineer, have worked on several projects together over the course of their impressive careers. However, each come to the TAB with specialized talents.

Currently based in Montreal, Michel Lortie has an extensive background in computer and systems design in various industry sectors. He began designing computer-based control systems in the chemical processing industry in the 80's which led to managing an air vehicle integration team at Canadian Marconi Company. Mr. Lortie was instrumental in helping design and implement computer-based systems leading to an FDA-certified reusable data acquisition system while working in pharmaceutical development in the 90's. In 2010, he began focusing on health informatics and medical decision support systems. He helped develop projects for the Canadian Space Agency ("CSA"), related to Astronaut health and exploration missions. As well, he completed projects with CSA and DND on systems for health as an employee of MDA Corporation, the designers of the CanadArm. Although he retired in 2019, he has continued to collaborate with MDA Corporation on the development of a cognitive workload assessment system for astronauts and military jet pilots. He discusses aerospace and health concepts with Sol Rauch on a regular basis.

While Mr. Lortie is an accomplished individual, some of his proudest work has been in concert with Mr. Sol Rauch whose broad background in product development and program management compliment Mr. Lortie's talents. Lortie worked under the leadership of Rauch at Canadian Marconi Company in the 80's and early 90's. The two collaborated on various assignments, including the design and development of a flight computer. Both Rauch and Lortie have indicated they are eager to get to work with Sparta's TAB.

"Engineers go to their graves wanting their ideas to come to life. Sparta can help convert our work into commercial offerings and we can use our collective systems engineering background to guide Sparta as they move some of their existing technologies and concepts forward," said, Michel Lortie

Based in Ottawa, Mr. Rauch had a long career with the Canadian Marconi Company, holding several key positions, including Design System Engineer, as well as Project Engineer, overseeing design and development of both commercial and military applications. He also held the position of VP of avionics; responsible for all activities related to cockpit management systems. He ended his work at Marconi as VP of Product Management. Following Marconi, Mr. Rauch was involved in business development, product development, and program management for everything from sophisticated navigation systems and L-band phased array antennas to resident location systems for retirement homes and aeronautical enhanced vision systems. In 2013, Mr. Rauch was the program manager for the Canadian Space Agency project to develop a "Doctor in a Box" for Astronauts. Today, he provides project management support to GBatteries Energy Canada as they develop smart battery management technology and he is on the Board of a start up Company producing a new medical isotope.

"Ideas are not much good unless they are of use to do good. Together with Sparta, we can bring ideas to reality and do good," stated, Sol Rauch

"To say we are lucky to have these two talents on our advisory board is a big understatement. We couldn't be more pleased and excited to have them both. And we look forward to having our extended team work closely with them and their network of talented colleagues to help integrate some of the key contemplated medical testing technologies that were developed for the use in Space but can be applied back to Earth." added O'Bireck

These latest appointments bring the Sparta TAB to ten members with expertise in areas including, finance, business development, advanced digital integration, power optimization, combustion engineering, chemical engineering, as well as electrical and mechanical engineering.

About Sparta

Sparta Group (a.k.a. Sparta Capital Ltd.) is a technology-based company that owns or holds a controlling interest in a network of independent businesses that supply energy saving technologies designed to reduce energy inefficiencies, achieve reduced emissions, and increase operating efficiencies in various industries. In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Sparta has also expanded its scope to help facilitate supply of necessary materials while assisting talented inventors who are looking to introduce innovative technical solutions that will bring greater normalcy to the post COVID-19 world. Sparta's network of independent businesses provides a wide range of specialized energy capturing, converting, optimizing, and related services to the commercial sector. Sparta provides capital, technical and engineering expertise, legal support, financial and accounting knowledge, strategic planning, and other shared services to its independent businesses. As Investors are increasingly applying non-financial factors to their analysis process (ESG), Sparta continues to strengthen its environmental and social path by adding new green products and services, as well as advanced health technologies for human good.

Sparta is a publicly traded company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. under the symbol "SAY" (TSX.V: SAY). Additional information is available at www.spartagroup.ca or on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

For more information contact:

John O'Bireck, President

Email: jobireck@spartagroup.ca

Telephone: (905) 751-8004

This above may contain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. When used in this address, the words "estimate", "project", "belief", "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "plan", "predict", "may" or "should" and the negative of these words or such variations thereon or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. Although the Corporation believes in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information because the Corporation can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date of publication of this information and the Corporation undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change. Furthermore, the Corporation undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third parties in respect of the Corporation. All forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release).

SOURCE: Sparta Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671208/Sparta-Appoints-Aerospace-and-Space-Health-Experts-Mr-Michel-Lortie-Mr-Sol-Rauch-to-its-Technical-Advisory-Board
BEIJING, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Recently, China Yunhong Holdings (Yunhong Group) held the "Green Nature - Harmonious Symbiosis - 2021" conference in Beijing. At the conference, the company officially announced the launch of "Fully Biodegradable Material" products. Many industry professionals attended the conference and expressed interest in "fully biodegradable" products. The experts believe that this breakthrough technology will help achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.

According to introduction, Yunhong Group has developed world-leading polylactic acid fully degradable non-woven fabrics and low-cost biodegradable plant fiber starch tableware. The fully biodegradable technology uses corn starch, tapioca starch and plant fiber as the main raw materials. Yunhong Group made breakthroughs in the core technology and solved key production equipment problems of starch-based biodegradable catering utensils, and realized fully automatic and semi-automatic continuous production. Fully biodegradable disposable catering utensils and packaging products containing up to 90-99% starch cellulose are industrially produced. This technology is at the international advanced level and it has gotten the German LFGB testing certification and the European Union CE testing certification. Yunhong Group has submitted invention patent application materials to the State Intellectual Property Office.

This product launch has drawn great attention from many politicians and ambassadors to China, and received many congratulatory messages. Bertie Ahern, the 17th Prime Minister of Ireland, said, "I sincerely appreciate the new environmental treatment technology developed by Yunhong Group, and congratulate Yunhong for developing this world-leading technology and getting the EU CE certification. The Yunhong Group's progress towards the new type of fully biodegradable materials shows the efforts and commitments made by the Chinese government and enterprises to solve global pollution problem. Here, I also hope that relevant departments and organizations can make in-depth cooperation with Yunhong Group to promote the application of biodegradable materials and solve the environmental problems. "

At the product launch, Yunhong Group and Macau Wanheng Group Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Based on the good trust of both parties and the long-term development strategy, the "full biodegradation" project agency cooperation will be carried out in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The market share of the contract reached USD 3 billion. Yunhong Group said it would seize policy opportunities, continue to strengthen the docking, and promote the implementation of cooperation as soon as possible. At the same time, taking this cooperation as a starting point, the two parties have established an in-depth strategic cooperative partnership. Yunhong Group shall adhere to the concept of green development, efficient development and high-quality development, promote the application of fully biodegradable materials, and actively explore new models of modern green industry development.

For more information, visit

Website: http://www.yunhongkg.com/

Media Queries

Luan Cao, Yunhong Group Media Office

Email: caoluan@yunhongkg.com

Tele: +86 180 8662 6600

Address: SCPG Center, Heping Road, Qingshan District, Wuhan, China

SOURCE: Yunhong Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/668748/China-Yunhong-Holdings-Releases-Fully-Biodegradable-Material-Products


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A private prison company GEO Group (GEO) commented Thursday on the recent unfavorable jury verdict and combined $23.2 million judgments in the retrial of two cases, State of Washington v. GEO Group and Nwauzor et al. v. GEO Group, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.



GEO said it strongly disagrees with the verdict and judgments in the retrial of the lawsuits. GEO intends to raise several issues on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, including the applicability of the state of Washington's Minimum Wage Act to detainees who participate in the federally-mandated Voluntary Work Program at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, and the affirmative defenses that GEO believes were wrongly dismissed in these cases.



On Tuesday, The U.S. Judge ordered GEO Group to surrender $5.9 million in unjust enrichment gained through the use of $1 per day labor, after jury awards $17.3 million in back pay to detainee workers.



U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan ordered The GEO Group, the for-profit operator of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, to pay $5.9 million, the amount GEO unlawfully gained through the use of $1-per-day labor since 2005.



The workers performed essential tasks while detained at the Center such as doing the laundry, preparing and serving food and cleaning the facility. The work included cooking and serving three meals a day, scrubbing showers and toilets, cleaning the walk-in oven, and buffing and waxing the floors in the middle of the night.



In the first phase of the trial, a jury unanimously found GEO liable for violating Washington's Minimum Wage Act. Consequently, GEO must now pay all its workers at least Washington's minimum wage. Washington's current minimum wage is $13.69 per hour.



In the second phase, the same jury awarded $17.3 million to more than 10,000 individuals detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center to compensate them for back wages owed.



Washington is the first state to sue a for-profit detention center for failure to pay minimum wage and for unjust enrichment. Ferguson filed the lawsuit against GEO in September 2017, alleging that GEO's practice violates Washington law by paying workers less than the minimum wage, and that GEO unjustly enriched itself by doing so.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Fifth Third Bank announced a special payment of $1,250 for full-time employees who have provided essential banking services to customers through the ongoing pandemic. It is the second time the Bank has recognized the work of the employees through a special payment program. The bank noted that eligible front-line, full-time employees, including those in customer service and operations roles, who were in their role between May 10, 2020, and April 5, 2021, will receive their special payment at the end of November. Part-time employees in those roles during the same time period will receive $625. More than 7,500 employees will receive this special payment. Front-line employees also received special payments in April and May of 2020. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PHILADELPHIA, PA / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Pennexx Foods (OTC PINK:PNNX) in its long-standing commitment to bringing cryptocurrency solutions to consumers, merchants and enterprises, Pennexx has launched features to reward consumers in Bitcoin (BTC) each time an offer is redeemed.

Entering the cryptocurrency market creates immediate value for the company. Consumers can now receive Bitcoin (BTC) for utilizing the companies offers, discounts, rewards and coupons by shopping online and instore.

Rewarding customers in cryptocurrency creates a tremendous and exciting opportunity to use the currency in a unique and powerful way. The way is works in the merchant signs up for the YourSocialOffers.com (YSO) platform and selects rewarding customers through cryptocurrency. Each time the merchant redeems one of these offers the consumer receives cryptocurrency to their digital wallet. This reward is as good or even better than cash as cryptocurrency value has been increasing.

The company plans to release a number of cryptocurrency products and intends to be releasing more news in this arena over the next 30 days.

Vincent Risalvato, CEO of Pennexx said, "I am extremely excited to open door to the cryptocurrency world. We believe that cryptocurrency, savings and rewards are a perfect fit. We will be innovating in this area to bring terrific value to consumers, merchants and enterprises."

This is the company's first product in the cryptocurrency market which according to CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/06/cryptocurrency-market-cap-tops-2-trillion-for-the-first-time.html topped $2 trillion dollars.

This is the first step for the company to becoming a source for cryptocurrency technology.

As far as the company knows, there is no other discounts or rewards site which currently offers cryptocurrency as a reward to consumers through coupons the in the manner that YSO does.

This puts the company in a unique position. It also puts its consumers and clients in a unique position to offer a new, exciting compelling product.

For More Information

Pennexx will do its best to openly and publicly answer your questions and concerns via social media on Twitter https://twitter.com/pennexx @pennexx, or you may email info@pennexx.net.

About Pennexx Foods Inc. (PNNX: OTCMKTS US). Pennexx, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, is a holding company within the Software/Internet Industry that focuses on social media, prepaid debit cards, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, targeted marketing, and consumer rewards.

Safe Harbor Act: This release may contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and such forward-looking statements are made according to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may," "future," "plan" or "planned," "will" or "should," "expected," "anticipates," "draft," "eventually" or "projected." You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report.

For additional information, visit our website at www.Pennexx.net or call 866-928-6409. We are also on Twitter @Pennexx.

SOURCE: Pennexx Foods, Inc.



View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671216/Pennexxs-Your-Social-Offers-Platform-Enters-the-Trillion-dollar-Cryptocurrency-Industry-by-Offering-Rewards-to-Consumers-in-the-Form-of-Bitcoin-BTC
Irvine, California--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - On the one year anniversary episode of the Schaftlein report, Peter Navarro announced the release of his innovative audiobook, "In Trump Time" -- with a just released "Big Reveal" audio sample from the first "Red Wedding" chapter of the book.





Cannot view this video? Visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gkAYb_NVp8

While a guest during the one year anniversary Episode of The Schaftlein Report, Peter Navarro discussed the release of his new audiobook, "In Trump Time". This innovative audio presentation and dramatic production features the voices of numerous people appearing in the book, from Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, and Dr. Steven Hatfill to National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, and President Trump himself.

Read by author, Peter Navarro "In Trump Time" is the definitive insider's account of the Trump White House. The interview can be heard at https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-schaftlein-report-87879188/episode/schaftlein-report-an-inside-account-of-the-trump-white-house-as-told-by-peter-navarro-88714990?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false

"This first of its kind audiobook allows the listener to truly feel like they are experiencing history," said Peter Navarro. "The unique addition of key voices makes this searing account of my time in the White House a must-hear for all Americans."

Mark Schaftlein host commented: "It was truly an honor to have Perter Navarro on our special 1 year anniversary episode. His insight and access to what was really going on at the top of the Trump administration is second to one. I strongly encourage anyone regardless of their political opinions to experience this truly groundbreaking and insightful audiobook."

Peter Navarro is one of only three White House officials by the President's side from the 2016 campaign to the end of the President's first term. Always moving In Trump Time, as was his signature, Dr. Navarro's new book seeks to get to the bottom of what happened in a Wuhan bioweapons lab and hold Communist China accountable for its deadly role in the pandemic. This compelling audio presentation races along delivering new revelations in every chapter.

Peter Navarro holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and was a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the University of California-Irvine for more than 20 years. He served as Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy at the White House during the Trump Administration. He is the author of numerous books, including his China Trilogy: The Coming China Wars (2006), Death By China (2011), and Crouching Tiger (2015).

The Schaftlein Report is produced in the Market Mover Media studio in Irvine, California, and is hosted by political commentator Mark Schaftlein. The Schaftlein Report features several regular contributors and guests including Military Leaders, Congressional Political Candidates, Noted Economists, Financial Leaders at Major Universities, Political Analysts, authors, and media personalities. The shows are produced daily Monday through Thursday with relevant and engaging dialogue regarding current events.

Dr. Navarro's interview on The Schaftlein Report can be heard on all major podcast platforms.

In Trump Time is available now on Amazon: https://bit.ly/InTrumpTimeAudio

For more information about The Schaftlein Report or to become a guest visit the website at SchaftleinReport.com or contact Liz Martin at Liz@invictaconsulting.agency.

The Schaftlein Report is enjoying a rapidly growing national audience reached through the company's websites, social media accounts, podcasts, and an in-house email list. The podcast's audio format is intended to provide commuters in particular the ability to enjoy the show on their podcast platform of choice. Mr. Schaftlein has been a conservative political commentator on the international stage and the host of his political talk show, which seeks to address factual political news without the left-wing bias of mainstream media.

Mark Schaftlein

877-704-6773

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101831


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Thursday, the Biden administration has announced a set of new policies that will protect workers and drive additional progress in getting millions of Americans vaccinated.



First, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, is issuing a rule to require employers with 100 or more employees to ensure each of their workers is fully vaccinated by January 4 or tests negative for COVID at least once a week. This rule covers 84 million employees.



Second, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is issuing a rule to require that healthcare workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid are fully vaccinated by January 4. This rule covers more than 17 million workers at approximately 76,000 healthcare facilities around the country.



And third, to make it easy for businesses and workers to comply, the deadline for the previously announced requirement for employees of federal contractors to be fully vaccinated will be aligned with these new OSHA and CMS rules. This single, consistent deadline across all three requirements is January 4, 2022.



Any employee covered by the CMS or federal contractor requirement must have their final vaccination dose by January 4, the White House said. Employers covered by the OSHA rule will need to ensure their employees have received their final vaccination dose by January 4, with at least weekly testing required for unvaccinated employees after that.



On Wednesday, CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices made a strong recommendation that children 5 to 11 years old should be vaccinated with the Pfizer pediatric COVID-19 vaccine. With their unanimous vote, more than 28 million children in the United States will become eligible for receiving Covid vaccine.



More than 700 children have lost their lives after getting infected by the disease in the United States, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a regular news conference.



With 83501 new cases reporting on Wednesday, the total number of Covid infections in the country rose to 46,254,373, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.



An additional 1905 Covid deaths on the same day took the total number of people who died due to the pandemic to 750,435.



Michigan reported the most number of cases - 11,962 - while Pennsylvania - 181 - reported most Covid-related deaths.



37,009,990 people have so far recovered from the disease in the country.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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France has announced a new 10-measure plan to facilitate solar deployment, featuring new and existing provisions. It is designed to support the installation of more than 3 GW per year throughout the country by the end of 2025.From pv magazine France French Minister of Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili announced a 10-measure plan on Wednesday to accelerate the development of photovoltaics. Some of the measures were already known and implemented, such as the new feed-in tariff for PV systems up to 500 kW and the obligation to install solar panels on certain kinds of buildings. But the new provisions ...

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.
Glasgow, 4 November 2021: Today, some of the largest companies in the world launched a shared initiative to reach the climate goals through ground-breaking technology.



The companies participating in Joe Biden's "First Movers Coalition" share a common vision that development and technology will be crucial to reach the climate target of 1.5 C.

The coalition has committed to zero-emission purchases by 2030 to create a market for zero-emission goods and services.

-First Movers Coalition can become an important tool to reach the set climate targets. We are a coalition of global companies with a great impact in our respective industries, that we will use to accelerate the development of new technologies in industries that today account for the biggest emissions. The decisions must be made now if they are to have effect by 2030. That is why a shared initiative is key to developing new technologies, says Svein Tore Holsether, CEO of Yara International.

The coalition was launched by the World Economic Forum (WEF) during the climate summit in Glasgow this week, in partnership with John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

The First Movers Coalition is a platform for a wide range of companies with a global footprint in their respective industries to make purchasing commitments that can only be met if innovators bring emerging technologies to commercial scale. Early demand makes it possible to invest in new technologies and innovation at a lower risk.

-Technology has given us the most important tools to reduce emissions and make a stronger, more future oriented economy. If companies are to take a risk on developing new, innovative solutions, they need to know that there is a market for these solutions. This initiative shows that the industry is taking responsibility and leading the way for the world to reach the climate targets. These companies' significant clout can transform value chains and help us reach the 1.5-degree target, says BrgeBrende, president of the WEF.

Eight key sectors

The first Movers Coalition targets eight sectors. Seven of these sectors - steel, cement, aluminium, chemicals, shipping, aviation, and trucking-account for more than a third of global carbon emissions, but do not have cost-competitive energy alternatives to fossil fuels. The eighth, direct air capture, could reduce atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels to help achieve net-zero global emissions, but also requires technological innovation to reach commercial viability.

-Yara will contribute to decarbonise agriculture and long-distance transportation at sea through the development of green ammonia, says Holsether.

The First Movers Coalition provides opportunities for a wide range of companies to make commitments, take action and build a clean and profitable supply chains of the future. It also brings together a range of civil society and expert organisations to build momentum, complement ongoing efforts and input into the design of the initiative.





Contact:

Josiane Kremer, Director External Communications

Mobile:





About Yara



Yara grows knowledge to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet. Supporting our vision of a world without hunger and a planet respected, we pursue a strategy of sustainable value growth, promoting climate-friendly crop nutrition and zero-emission energy solutions. Yara's ambition is focused on growing a climate positive food future that creates value for our customers, shareholders and society at large and delivers a more sustainable food value chain.



To achieve our ambition, we have taken the lead in developing digital farming tools for precision farming, and work closely with partners throughout the food value chain to improve the efficiency and sustainability of food production. Through our focus on clean ammonia production, we aim to enable the hydrogen economy, driving a green transition of shipping, fertilizer production and other energy intensive industries.



Founded in 1905 to solve the emerging famine in Europe, Yara has established a unique position as the industry's only global crop nutrition company. We operate an integrated business model with around 17,000 employees and operations in over 60 countries, with a proven track record of strong returns. In 2020, Yara reported revenues of USD 11.6 billion.



www.yara.com



Attachment
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Last night, David Arquette announced a long-term strategic partnership with NFTY Token. Arquette has years of professional acting, directing, and producing experience. He has appeared in a multitude of films including the SCREAM franchise, Never Been Kissed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among many others.





Cannot view this video? Visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrLV-mYiAg

"I'm thrilled to partner with NFTY because they will provide a launching pad for artists to share their art with the world while the artists participate in the profits in a more meaningful way," Arquette said.

The producer and art connoisseur has partnered with NFTY to bring timeless creativity to the metaverse. Both parties will leverage their strengths to facilitate continuous and sustainable growth towards making NFTY a top-tier brand in the NFT industry.





Left to Right Ed Mills, Chris Mills, David Arquette, Alyze Sam, Clinton Mills; Photo by David Scott Holloway



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8406/102020_e8317db4b421e8c2_001full.jpg

Arquette was one of several VIP's that attended the NFTY's exclusive launch event at the AC Hotel in Times Square, which took place on November 2nd at the Castell Rooftop Lounge. The event was open to NFTY holders only.

"David is a tremendous asset to what we're doing," CMO, Ed Mills stated. "We look forward to seeing how far this great partnership will take us. [Arquette's] expertise, influence, and extensive intellectual property are all exciting additions to what we're doing at NFTY."

NFTY is "rewarding excellence" to improve the discoverability of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and improve the level of quality on platforms that use its protocol. NFTs can represent physical or digital creations. They are finding uses in fine art, music, film, video games, and other industries. NFTY's protocol can be integrated with any NFT platform. Its protocol, the project founders claim, is needed for NFTs to clear the hurdles currently facing their wider adoption.



"There is nothing like NFTY out there," co-founder, Alyse Sam added. "There are a lot of amazing people in the space...our protocol brings them together by making the experience better for all of them. We've put together a set of incentives to give great NFTs the exposure they deserve. By incentivizing advocacy [boosting an auction with NFTY tokens], we're giving collectors a reason to participate in our ecosystem. There isn't a single NFT platform out there that doesn't stand to benefit from our protocol."





Chris Mills, David Arquette, Clinton Mills



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8406/102020_e8317db4b421e8c2_002full.jpg

Actor, producer and director, David Arquette is the latest artist to join NFTY. Others include Alan Teitel, Greig Welch, Michael Genzel, George Krieger, and Michael Nash. VLBO, a luxury auction house with a concierge service to assist creators with the NFT minting process, is NFTY's first use case. Enthusiasm for the token has been mounting for over a month. Since its initial launch on Unisa in September, NFTY has risen more than eight-fold from its initial fair launch price of $0.10. It is currently over $0.80 a token.

"We've been asked what made us think of making NFTY," CEO, Chris Mills said. "The honest answer is we were all noticing roadblocks with the NFT market and as long-time problem solvers we wanted to find a solution. With [Alyse] Sam's help we brought together an incredible team who put together a gamified DeFi [decentralized finance] solution. It has appealed to a lot of people in the industry and beyond it. We're seeing it on our AMAs, our social media, and the response to our NFT.NYC event. The bottom line is NFTY puts the power of discoverability and value into the hands of the people, not some algorithm."

Contact

Ed Mills

CMO

Ed.mills@nftytoken.io

270-320-5212

https://nftytoken.io/

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram:

NFTY Token | Facebook

NFTY Token (@NFTYtoken) / Twitter

NFTY Token: Overview | LinkedIn

NFTY Token (@nfty. token)





NFTY



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8406/102020_e8317db4b421e8c2_003full.jpg

About NFTY

NFTY is the first reputation-based ERC-20 utility token for NFTs. NIFTY Protocol to stake, advocate, and vote. Alongside VLBO, the world's first luxury NFT auction house, NFTY is offering decentralized solutions for NFT creators and collectors.

About VLBO

VLBO is a luxury auction house for high-end NFTs. Boasting a full-fledged concierge service, VLBO's white glove approach is making the minting process accessible to deserving creators. With a focus on the top-tier of fine art and collectibles, digital or physical, VLBO is positioning itself as the premiere NFT platform.

About David Arquette

David Arquette has years of professional acting, directing and producing experience and has appeared in a multitude of films including the SCREAM franchise, HAMLET 2, THE GREY ZONE, STEALING SINATRA, NEVER BEEN KISSED, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, DREAM WITH THE FISHES, etc. Arquette was featured as an arc opposite Jerry O'Connell in the series CARTER, as well as had a role on CREEP SHOW for AMC and in David Ayer's DEPUTY opposite Stephen Dorff for Fox. David was recently seen in the thriller SPREE opposite Joe Keery from STRANGER THINGS, MOPE directed by Lucas Heyne, and MOBTOWN opposite Jennifer Esposito and PJ Byrne.

Arquette is an investor in XTR, the leading premium nonfiction film and television studio in America, which has premiered a number of films at Sundance the past two years and produced the critically acclaimed feature documentary on himself called YOU CANNOT KILL DAVID ARQUETTE, which follows Arquette as he attempts a rocky return to the sport that stalled his promising Hollywood career. Dangerously determined to redeem his reputation and reclaim his self-respect, Arquette stopped at nothing to earn his place in professional wrestling

Arquette is also co-owner of the L.A. nightlife staple Bootsy Bellows alongside H.Wood Group's John Terzian and Brian Toll.

He will next be returning to the highly anticipated SCREAM franchise as Dewey Riley in the upcoming relaunch, set to be released in theatres by Paramount on January 14, 2022.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102020
TRUU OPENS EUROPEAN ENGINEERING HUB IN PRAGUE

Company Expands Its Presence on the Continent at Grand Opening Event Welcoming Members of the Technology, Business, and Media Communities

Hub to Fuel Customer Growth throughout the Region and Provide Support for Existing European Workforce

TruU, the leader in continuous identity for Zero Trust, today announced that it is expanding its European presence with a new design and development hub based in Prague, Czech Republic.

TruU is making significant investments in Prague to increase access to top cybersecurity talent, accelerate its product development cycle, and firmly establish its global footprint. Initially, the company's focus will be on hiring cybersecurity-savvy data scientists skilled in AI-based deep learning and neural networks and software engineers for Java in AWS, iOS and Android, Windows and Mac OS, QA, SRE, and DevOps. The new center in Prague will become the nexus for all of TruU's European operations, with an initial focus on product development and engineering, to augment U.S.-based business and engineering centers.

"We're thrilled to join the ranks of technology giants like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP by growing our operations in Prague," said TruU Founder and Chief Executive Lucas Budman. "The startup scene is thriving, the city is close to all major European and West Asian markets, and the time zone can support customers and team members in Canada and Singapore with equal ease. We hope you'll join us on November 08 at 5:00pm CET to learn more about TruU and our long-term vision for growth in Czech Republic."

WHO Lucas Budman, TruU founder and CEO Jiri Kopsa, TruU product manager and Prague group lead Dave Pasirstein, TruU chief product officer and head of engineering WHAT TruU Prague Grand Opening Event WHERE Register at: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvce-vqzgiHNVMHP9kUWvHtLD_FPIjKZwh WHEN Monday, November 08, at 5:00 p.m. CET

TruU offers a patented, purpose-built AI that powers TruIdentity Cloud, the first-of-its-kind continuous adaptive trust (CAT) platform, to continually receive signals from a user's smartphone, computer, network, and proximal environment to make highly secure decisions on identity and authentication. It also uses patent-pending multipath optimization technology to find the most secure path to communicate identity to systems, applications, and resources. Importantly, TruU integrates out of the box with dozens of popular solutions for fast, secure deployment.

Join us in Prague by registering and learn more about TruU and TruIdentityCloud by visiting https://truu.ai/.

About TruU

TruU is on a mission to protect identities with security that learns and experiences users love. We remove the biggest enterprise security risk, compromised credentials, with the industry's first passwordless authentication solution that deploys in minutes and at scale. Our award-winning AI engine ingests environmental factors, behavioral biometrics, and user proximity signals for adaptive decision making and risk scoring for the best continuous identity available. No other provider can match our ability to improve security with each user experience. TruU is based in Palo Alto with operations around the world. Learn more at www.truu.ai.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211103005269/en/

Contacts:

KC Higgins

TruU Media

kc@truu.ai

+1 303.434.8163
Appointment of Zsolt Oros marks a new phase in the go-to-market strategy of TrendMiner focused on helping new customers start their digitalization journey

Zsolt brings 25+ years industry and sales experience which, will help TrendMiner to expand its global customer footprint rapidly

He worked for over 12 years at OSIsoft and understands the challenges of process industry to fully utilize their process and asset data

HOUSTON, TX and HASSELT, BELGIUM / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / TrendMiner NV, a Software AG company, today announced the appointment of Zsolt Oros as the Global New Business Sales Director. In this role Zsolt will be responsible for expanding TrendMiner's global footprint within targeted process manufacturing industries.

"TrendMiner has shown significant and continued growth since its first release. To support our future growth, we have made significant investments in our teams. We continue to focus on delivering and supporting our strong industrial analytics platform to an increasing number of industries, in every region of the world. Zsolt has the expertise to accelerate our sales performance in winning new business. We are excited about entering this next phase in our global expansion," said Joan van de Wetering, General Manager at TrendMiner.

Zsolt is an experienced sales leader, driven by his passion for achieving superior business results through enabling industrial customers to improve their operational performance. He worked for more than 12 years within OSIsoft, in various sales and business development roles for a variety of regions. Furthermore, Zsolt brings great industry expertise to the table putting him in the best possible position to help new customers empower their operational experts making data driven decisions by using TrendMiner. In addition to his industry experience, Zsolt holds a master's degree in Chemical Engineering.

"TrendMiner has proven itself in hundreds of use cases, helping process manufacturing customers control and improve their business outcomes. There are still many companies who are looking to start their digitalization journey and I'm looking forward to help them on that journey," said Zsolt.

About TrendMiner

TrendMiner, part of Software AG company, delivers self-service data analytics to optimize process performance in industries such as chemical, petrochemical, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, metals & mining and other process manufacturing industries. TrendMiner software is based on a high-performance analytics engine for time-series data that allows users to question data directly, without the support of data scientists. The plug-and-play software adds immediate value upon deployment, eliminating the need for infrastructure investment and long implementation projects. Search, diagnostic and predictive capabilities enable users to speed up root cause analysis, define optimal process behavior and configure early warnings to monitor production. TrendMiner software also helps teams to capture feedback and leverage knowledge across teams and locations. In addition, TrendMiner offers standard integrations with a wide range of historians such as OSIsoft PI, Yokogawa Exaquantum, AspenTech IP.21, Honeywell PHD, GE Proficy Historian and Wonderware InSQL.

Founded in 2008 and now part of Software AG, TrendMiner's global headquarters is located in Belgium, and has offices in the U.S., Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.

Media Contact

Dawn Fontaine

Ripple Effect Communications

dawn@rippleeffectpr.com

+1-617-536-8887

SOURCE: TrendMiner

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671225/Zsolt-Oros-Appointed-as-Global-New-Business-Sales-Director-at-TrendMiner-a-Software-AG-Company
Limassol, Cyprus--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - The MetaTrader 5 trading servers' utilization by brokers is increased by a factor of 1.5, compared to the previous platform version ones. According to our latest study, the percent utilization of the MetaTrader 4 servers has dropped to 36.7%. This is an expected dynamic change: back in June 2021, we reported that MetaTrader 5 had become more popular than MetaTrader 4 among brokerage companies, and the trend has been increasing since then.

MetaTrader 5 vs MetaTrader 4





Renat Fatkhullin, CEO of MetaQuotes Ltd, has commented on the new statistics: "This is a logical and predictable result. MetaTrader 5 is a technologically advanced platform which offers the widest possible opportunities to users, and assists companies in solving business tasks of any complexity level. Furthermore, we expect a complete replacement of MetaTrader 4, amid the rapidly growing popularity of MetaTrader 5."

MetaQuotes' specialists believe that the growth in popularity is mainly due to the new Pay as You Go model and to a number of important MetaTrader 5 updates, which have been released over the past year.

The most noticeable updates include but are not limited to:

The ability to administer cluster machines directly from the administrator terminal

Expanded capabilities of the Automations service

A new section for managing Integrations

New web integration capabilities

Click here to order MetaTrader 5 for brokers, banks and hedge funds.

Source

MetaQuotes Ltd

Mikhail Kirilin

Kirilin[at]metaquotes[.]net
Yongkang, China, Nov 4, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - The 1st World Hardware Development Conference kicked off in Yongkang, Jinhua City in East China's Zhejiang Province on November 1, inviting global minds to discuss the future of hardware industry.



Themed "Inheritance. Innovation. Integration. Building a bright future for global hardware industry", the conference gathered over 40 representatives from international enterprises based in countries like the US, France, Japan and South Korea, more than 60 representatives of national hardware industry clusters, and more than 70 representatives of overseas Chinese entrepreneurs.



Over 100 international brands participated in the conference with more than 1,000 categories of products. The three-day event includes a hardware industry development summit, a symposium on the construction of China's hardware industry base and a tour of the world hardware exhibition hall.



At the opening ceremony, hardware industries around the world jointly issued Yongkang Declaration to promote high-quality development of global hardware industry.



The declaration calls for a people-oriented principle, inheritance of ingenuity, innovation and integration, openness and coordination and ecological and environmental protection.



China Yongkang Hardware Index was also released.



The index was first compiled in September, 2013, and simultaneously released on the commercial weather forecast platform of the Ministry of Commerce. A special column was set up in People's Daily (Overseas Edition) to provide hardware information to hardware manufacturers, purchasers and market operators in more than 80 countries and regions around the world every month.



It reflects economic trends which are close to local reality and consistent with the economic development trend of China and even the world.



The index can provide timely and effective price, supply and demand, product and other information for hardware-related industries, manufacturers, traders and professional markets, so as to better respond to market changes and adjust industrial layout.



A promotional film which demonstrates the strengths and potential of Yongkang's hardware industry was released, and a forum on Yongkang's hardware brands going abroad was held.



More than 10 international organizations, including International Federation of Hardware and Housewares Association, North American Hardware and Paint Association and Asia Pacific Doors & Windows Architectural Hardware Association, sent congratulatory messages to the conference.



Media Contact:

He Yangning,

Tianmu Media Office

E: heyn@8531.cn

T: +86 15857143688



SOURCE: Tianmu Media Co., Ltd







Copyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.





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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Kingfisher Metals Corp. (TSXV:KFR)(FSE:970)(OTCQB:KGFMF) ("Kingfisher" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results from its annual general meeting of shareholders (the "Meeting") virtually held on November 3, 2021. Shareholders voted as follows on the matters before the Meeting.

Election of Directors

All five (5) of the nominees listed in Kingfisher's management information circular dated October 7, 2021, that were proposed by management for election to the board of directors at the Meeting were duly elected. The directors will remain in office until the next annual meeting of the Company's shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed.

The results of the vote on the election of the directors at the Meeting are as follows:

Nominee For % For Withheld % Withheld Dustin Perry 18,912,690 99.54 87,003 0.46 David Loretto 18,912,690 99.54 87,003 0.46 Giuseppe (Pino) Perone 18,837,690 99.15 162,003 0.85 Chris Beltgens 18,918,190 99.57 81,503 0.43 Richard Trotman 18,913,190 99.54 86,503 0.46

Appointment of Auditors

Shareholders reappointed De Visser Gray LLP as auditor of the Company for the upcoming year and authorized the directors of the Company to fix the remuneration of the auditor.

Approval of Stock Option Plan

The Company's incentive stock option plan, and amendments thereto, were approved by shareholders with 99.88% of shares represented at the Meeting voting in favour.

About Kingfisher Metals Corp.

Kingfisher Metals Corp. (https://kingfishermetals.com/) is a Canadian based exploration company focused on underexplored district-scale projects in British Columbia. Kingfisher has three 100% owned district-scale projects that offer potential exposure to high-grade gold, copper, silver, and zinc. The Company currently has 84,173,300 shares outstanding.

For further information, please contact:

Dustin Perry, P.Geo.

CEO and Director

Phone: +1 236 358 0054

E-Mail: info@kingfishermetals.com

Neither the TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainty affecting the business of Kingfisher. In making the forward-looking statements, Kingfisher has applied certain assumptions that are based on information available, including Kingfisher's strategic plan for the near and mid-term. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Kingfisher does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: Kingfisher Metals Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671227/Kingfisher-Announces-Annual-General-Meeting-Voting-Results
The Flume Catheter Company Ltd. (TFCC), a medical device company dedicated to developing an improved alternative to the Foley indwelling urinary catheter, today announced that it has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the FLUME catheter in the United States.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005979/en/

FLUME receives FDA 510(k) clearance for new indwelling urinary catheter (Photo: Business Wire)

Approximately 30M patients in the U.S. (and 100M worldwide) continue to rely on the 1930's Foley design for the indwelling urinary catheter, despite it being associated with infection, blockage, pain and distress for patients and significant financial burden for healthcare.

The patented FLUME catheter has the same intended use as a Foley catheter, but it is distinguished by its balloon design. Founder Dr. John Havard explains, "The balloon is designed to address some key shortcomings of the traditional Foley catheter design. When inflated, the FLUME balloon envelops the tip of the catheter so that the emptying bladder makes contact with the flexible balloon surface rather than the rigid catheter tip. The drainage ports are then deliberately inset and positioned at its base.

A first-in-human evaluation of this alternative design is underway in the UK under Principal Investigator Prof. Marcus Drake, supported by a 'Research for Patient Benefit' (RfPB) award by the UK National Institute for Healthcare Research (NIHR). Results are expected towards the end of Q1 2022.

"We welcome the opportunity of evaluating this novel design with patients, in an area sorely in need of innovation," said Prof. Drake, Professor of Physiological Urology at University of Bristol.

TFCC is looking to initiate a controlled market release in the U.S. during 2022, that will then lead to a full commercial launch.

"We are delighted to achieve 510(k) clearance and look forward to working with lead partners in the U.S. to establish the potential of FLUME catheter, which we believe will positively impact the experience of patients," said Roger Holmes, Co-Founder CEO.

The FLUME catheter is manufactured in the U.S. For more information; www.flumecatheter.com

About The Flume Catheter Company Ltd (TFCC)

TFCC was founded in the UK in 2016 by Suffolk family practitioner Dr. John Havard and engineer, private equity investor and former M&S CEO, Roger Holmes.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes statements relating to the Flume Catheter, its FDA clearance and the Flume Catheter Company's future plans and goals, which constitute "forward looking statements" as defined in Section 27a of the Securities Act of 1993 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and may be beyond the control of the Flume Catheter Company.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005979/en/

Contacts:

Roger Holmes, Co-Founder CEO [+44 (0)207 808 9125

info@flumecatheter.com
Approval of a Dividend of 0.93 Per Share, up 5%

Regulatory News:

The Ordinary and Extraordinary Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Eutelsat Communications (Paris:ETL) was held today in Paris. All the resolutions submitted were approved. They included notably:

Approval of the accounts;

Dividend relating to Financial Year 2020-21, amounting to 0.93 per share, up 5% compared to previous year. Dividend will be paid on 18 November 2021;

Renewal of the mandates of Esther Gaide, Dominique D'Hinnin and Didier Leroy;

The appointment of BPIFrance Investissement as a Board member. It will be represented by Paul Francois Fournier;

Compensation of corporate officers and compensation policy.

The Board remains composed of 10 members, 50% of whom are women and 70% of whom are independent.

The outcome of the vote on the resolutions will be available on www.eutelsat.com.

About Eutelsat Communications

Founded in 1977, Eutelsat Communications is one of the world's leading satellite operators. With a global fleet of satellites and associated ground infrastructure, Eutelsat enables clients across Video, Data, Government, Fixed and Mobile Broadband markets to communicate effectively to their customers, irrespective of their location. Around 7,000 television channels operated by leading media groups are broadcast by Eutelsat to one billion viewers equipped for DTH reception or connected to terrestrial networks. Headquartered in Paris, with offices and teleports around the globe, Eutelsat assembles 1,200 men and women from 50 countries who are dedicated to delivering the highest quality of service. Eutelsat Communications is listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ticker: ETL).

For more about Eutelsat go to www.eutelsat.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006023/en/

Contacts:

Investors

Joanna Darlington

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 31 07

jdarlington@eutelsat.com

Cedric Pugni

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 31 54

cpugni@eutelsat.com

Alexandre Illouz

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 46 81

aillouz@eutelsat.com
Regulatory News:

AKKA (Paris:AKA) (BSE:AKA) (ISIN:FR0004180537) is pleased to extend its partnership with the University of California Riverside (UCR), a highly rated public university located in the Los Angeles area. UCR ranks in the top 1 percent of universities worldwide, one of the nation's top 12 public universities, No. 4 in the United States for social mobility, and No. 26 most innovative universities in the country. UCR is on the leading edge of pioneering research that has both a local and global impact.

AKKA started its partnership with UCR in 2017 to run Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) testing projects with their Ph.D. students. Currently, AKKA has a memorandum of understanding signed with the UCR's College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research Technology (CE-CERT). CE-CERT specializes in various vehicle development services, including but not limited to: emissions testing laboratory to meet OEM requirements, vehicle instrumentation, certification testing, and an electronic lab.

The cooperation between AKKA and UCR CE-CERT offers niche expertise in testing calibration for emissions, On-Board Diagnosis, and Electric-Drive (E-Drive) components characterization, then responding to all the emissions requirements in accordance with American and European standards. Together, AKKA and CE-CERT will deliver a work package support model to match OEM expectations with respect to timing, costs, deliverables, and quality.

Dharam Sheoran, CEO AKKA North America mentioned: "We are delighted to extend our partnership with the University of California Riverside to support global Automotive OEMs, and we are looking forward to providing our project management proficiency and experiential learning opportunities to UCR students while leveraging their knowledge and research expertise. Academia partnership is a key strategy of AKKA globally to bring innovation to our customers and as well as to support and provide opportunities to the aspiring talents. Mobility is AKKA's strongest industry segment, and we are confident that such alliances will help in expanding the future of strategic mobility themes.".

ABOUT AKKA

AKKA is a European leader in engineering consulting and R&D services. Our comprehensive portfolio of digital solutions combined with our expertise in engineering, uniquely positions us to support our clients by leveraging the power of connected data to accelerate innovation and drive the future of smart industry. AKKA accompanies leading industry players across a wide range of sectors throughout the life cycle of their products with cutting edge digital technologies (AI, ADAS, IoT, Big Data, robotics, embedded computing, machine learning, etc.) to help them rethink their products and business processes. Founded in 1984, AKKA has a strong entrepreneurial culture and a wide global footprint. Our 20,000 employees around the world are all passionate about technology and share the AKKA values of respect, courage and ambition. The Group recorded revenues of 1.5 billion in 2020. AKKA Technologies (AKA) is listed on Euronext Paris and Brussels segment B ISIN code: FR0004180537.

For more information, please visit: https://www.akka-technologies.com/

Follow us on: https://twitter.com/AKKA_Tech

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006058/en/

Contacts:

Stephanie Bia

Group Communications Investor Relations Director

Tel: +33(0)6 47 85 98 78

stephanie.bia@akka.eu
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm and Romanian Minister of Energy Virgil Popescu Highlighted the New Partnership at the U.S. Pavilion.

As world leaders and government officials convene in Glasgow to address climate change, NuScale Power and Nuclearelectrica agree to work together to advance clean energy solutions in Europe.

At the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26), U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm, U.S. Department of Energy, and Romania's Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, highlighted that earlier today NuScale Power and Romania's S.N. Nuclearelectrica S.A. signed a teaming agreement to advance the deployment of NuScale's innovative small modular reactor (SMR) technology. Following the partnership, Romania has the potential to accommodate the first deployment of SMRs in Europe and to become a catalyst for SMRs in the region, as well as a base for supporting operatorship of this new technology in other countries.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006088/en/

Cosmin Ghita, Chief Executive Officer, Nuclearelectrica and John Hopkins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, NuScale Power (Photo: Business Wire)

The teaming agreement between NuScale Power, whose SMR is the first and only small modular reactor to receive design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Nuclearelectrica, a Romanian nuclear energy producer, comes at a pivotal time as senior government policymakers from around the world discuss the urgency of accelerating the clean energy transition. Discussion at the signing ceremony echoed this call to action and reinforced how NuScale's SMRs can support international climate goals, help mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, and strengthen global prosperity.

Under the teaming agreement, NuScale will help Nuclearelectrica evaluate its technology, and together, the organizations will take steps toward deploying a first NuScale 6-module, 462 MWe, power plant in Romania as early as 2027/2028. The NuScale 6-module power plant is estimated to generate 193 permanent power plant jobs, 1,500 construction jobs, 2,300 manufacturing jobs and help Romania avoid 4M tons of CO2 emissions per year.

"The United States views nuclear energy as a pivotal technology in the global effort to lower emissions, expand economic opportunity, and ultimately combat climate change," U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "We have been supporting the development of SMRs for decades, and it is extremely gratifying to celebrate this important milestone for Romania to help them achieve their climate goals."

"Based on the Integrated National Plan in the field of Energy and Climate Change (PNIESC), Romania plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% until 2030 and its import dependency from 20.8% today to 17.8% in 2030. Nuclear energy has an essential role in achieving these decarbonization targets and ensuring the energy transition to a carbon-free economy, currently contributing 33% in total CO2-free energy production. After the implementation of strategic investment projects, this contribution will increase exponentially, while also ensuring energy security for Romania and the region. Building and operating small modular reactors will have proven environmental benefits of clean, emissions-free energy, bringing direct socio-economic benefits to the community it serves and generating continued prosperity for the regional industry and economy. We aim to develop the first SMR this decade in order to meet our critical energy demand and green targets securing a quality future for the generations to come. Decarbonation with nuclear is possible! I salute and support the signing of the teaming between the two companies, based on the long history of our two countries. The bilateral relations between Romania and the USA in the nuclear field started in the 1980s and since then they bring numerous benefits, most importantly economic stability and energy security. I thank our American partners and Secretary Granholm for supporting and endorsing the nuclear programs," said Virgil Popescu, Minister of Energy, Romania.

"As Romania aims to diversify its energy portfolio and meet climate goals, NuScale's advanced technology presents the perfect safe, economic and scalable solution," said John Hopkins, NuScale Power Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "While world leaders emphasize how critical this moment is in addressing climate change, NuScale's SMR technology not only represents a pathway to meet Romania's climate commitments, but also is a means to bolster local economic growth. NuScale is excited to work with Nuclearelectrica and to showcase the many benefits our technology will bring."

"Nuclearelectrica is proud to be at the lead, valuing its experience operating at excellent standards and one of the highest performing nuclear plants in the world, into developing the first SMRs in Europe, an energy source that is 100% carbon free and which will reduce environmental footprints and put us on a path toward a zero-emission world. And at the same time, will form a new generation of engineers, which will benefit from the 25 years of experience Nuclearelectrica has and the groundbreaking innovation of NuScale's SMR technology. What exciting times to contribute to the future of energy, to build a clean legacy for the generations to come," Cosmin Ghita, Chief Executive Officer, Nuclearelectrica.

Watch the Signing Ceremony

Specifically, the teaming agreement outlines the next significant milestones for Nuclearelectrica and NuScale to develop safe, affordable zero-carbon baseload power technology with a focus on retired coal plant sites. It will support the Government of Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan to phase out 4.59 GWe of coal fired energy production by 2032. By repurposing coal plants, Nuclearelectrica and NuScale can help communities and plant workers participate in the transition to decarbonized energy, while also continuing to provide local economic benefits. This teaming agreement serves as a catalyst for deployments in other Three Seas Initiative countries seeking to decarbonize.

This agreement follows a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Nuclearelectrica and NuScale in 2019 to evaluate the development, licensing and construction of a NuScale SMR in Romania. The new teaming agreement advances the commitment to facilitate the deployment of a NuScale SMR in Romania.

In August 2020, NuScale made history as the first and only SMR to receive design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission-a crucial step towards the construction and deployment of this SMR technology. The company maintains strong program momentum toward commercialization of its SMR technology, including supply chain development, standard plant design, planning of plant delivery activities, and startup and commissioning plans.

About NuScale Power

NuScale Power has developed a new modular light water reactor nuclear power plant to supply energy for electrical generation, district heating, desalination, hydrogen production and other process heat applications. This groundbreaking small modular reactor (SMR) design features a fully factory-fabricated NuScale Power Module capable of generating 77 MW of electricity using a safer, smaller, and scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology. NuScale's scalable design-power plants that can house up to four, six, or twelve individual power modules-offers the benefits of carbon-free energy and reduces the financial commitments associated with gigawatt-sized nuclear facilities. The majority investor in NuScale is Fluor Corporation, a global engineering, procurement, and construction company with a 70-year history in commercial nuclear power.

NuScale is headquartered in Portland, OR, and has offices in Corvallis, OR; Rockville, MD; Charlotte, NC; Richland, WA; and London, UK. Follow us on Twitter: @NuScale_Power, Facebook: NuScale Power, LLC, LinkedIn: NuScale-Power, and Instagram: nuscale_power. Visit NuScale Power's website

About Nuclearelectrica

The National Company "Nuclearelectrica" S.A. is the national Romanian company producing electricity, heat and nuclear fuel, which operates under the authority of the Romanian Ministry of Energy, the state holding 82.49% of shares and other shareholders, 17.50%, after the listing of the company on the stock exchange in 2013.

Cernavoda NPP Branch operates two CANDU nuclear units, which are two of the most performant units among more than 400 nuclear power plants in the world, a nuclear fuel factory and is in the process of achieving an integrated fuel cycle by acquiring an uranium concentrate processing line to support the company's long-term investment projects.

Nuclearelectrica has a major role at the national level, contributing over 18% of nuclear energy in total energy production and 33% in total CO2-free energy production in Romania.

www.nuclearelectrica.ro

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006088/en/

Contacts:

Diane Hughes, Vice President, Marketing Communications, NuScale Power

dhughes@nuscalepower.com

(C) (503) 270-9329

Tones Ludmila, Advisor of CEO, S.N. Nuclearelectrica

Ludmila.Tones@nuclearelectrica.ro

0040-730044468
LAGOS, Nigeria, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Mallam Balarabe Shehu Ilelah has said that the Commission is committed to a timely and efficient completion the Digital Switch Over (DSO) project across the country as it will create a people centered information society which will connect underserved populations and remote communities in Nigeria and hence provide inclusion for all and sundry.

Speaking at the launch of the DSO in Kano on Tuesday November 2, Malam Ilehah said NBC is keying into the agenda of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to democratize information in digital broadcasting, empower the people and create millions of jobs along the value chain. "Three days ago,100 artisans from the 44 Local councils were trained on FreeTV dealership, installation and activation," Malam Ilelah, said.

He said the beneficiaries are Kano state indigenes being empowered to take up the task of dealership, installation and activation of the set-top boxes in the homes, and those who end up as dealers may engage more hands to work with them which is in tandem with the vision of President Muhammadu Buhari on job creation.

Also speaking at the Kano DSO launch Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said: "the key benefits of digital television broadcasting are- wider choice in TV and radio channels, improved picture quality, for example, High Definition (HD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD), high-fidelity sound, greater flexibility with the potential for portable and mobile reception, enhanced information services including the electronic programming guide or enhanced 'teletext' services, potential for interactivity and increased market competition," Alhaji Mohammed , said.

"We have also instituted a number of reforms, some of them necessitating amendments to the broadcasting code which we have since carried out, with a view to encouraging investments in the broadcast industry in particular and the creative industry in general", the Minister of Information said.

A digital switch over is the migration of television broadcast technology from analogue to digital system. Kano is the second state in the phase two of the DSO roll out after Lagos in April this year. With Plateau state pioneering the DSO in Nigeria, other states that followed phase one roll out plan were Kaduna, Enugu, Kwara, Osun, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Commenting further Mohammed said: "I want to use this opportunity to implore state governments to be at the vanguard of providing set-top boxes to their people. This is because the provision of set-top boxes is a social service that will take governance to the grassroots and bridge the information gap between the government and the governed, among other advantages", adding, "for Kano state in particular, with a population of over 15 million people, governance will be revolutionised if each of the 2.4million television households can have a set-top box."

Host Governor, Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje said his administration has studied the DSO and has identified areas it could use to promote digital technology in broadcasting.

With the Federal Government determined to achieve a nationwide coverage of the digital switch over, the NBC has listed Rivers State in the South as the next in line to enjoy the new experience in broadcast content consumption that the digital broadcasting technology offers.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1679265/NBC.jpg
HALIFAX, NS / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Namibia Critical Metals Inc. ("Namibia Critical Metals" or the "Company" or "NMI") (TSXV:NMI)(OTC PINK:NMREF) today announced that it has joined the Rare Earth Industry Association based in Brussels.

The Rare Earth Industry Association (REIA) is an international non-profit organization representing the global REE industry. Founded in June 2019, under the auspices of EIT Raw Materials Internationalization project GloREIA. The network continues to grow today. REIA has active members worldwide representing all major countries. With such a global context, REIA is well placed to contribute to a better understanding of rare earth element (REE) value chain.

Darrin Campbell, President of Namibia Critical Metals stated "We are very pleased to be joining the REIA and become part of this growing and important industry network. As we continue to advance our Lofdal Heavy Rare Earth Dysprosium-Terbium Project with our JOGMEC partners it is important to engage with key REE stakeholders and stay in tune with best practices within the industry."

About Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) and the JV

JOGMEC is a Japanese government independent administrative agency which among other things seeks to secure stable resource supplies for Japan. JOGMEC has a strong reputation as a long term, strategic partner in mineral projects globally. The mandated areas of responsibilities within JOGMEC relate to oil and natural gas, metals, coal and geothermal energy. JOGMEC facilitates opportunities with Japanese private companies to secure supplies of natural resources for the benefit of the country's economic development.

Rare earths are of critical importance to Japanese industrial interests and JOGMEC has extensive experience with all aspects of the sector. JOGMEC provided Lynas with US$250,000,000 in loans and equity in 2011 to ensure supplies of the Light Rare Earths metals suite to the Japanese industry.

The Company currently owns a 95% interest in the Lofdal project with the remaining 5% held for the benefit of historically disadvantaged Namibians. The terms of the JOGMEC joint venture agreement with the Company stipulate that JOGMEC provides $3,000,000 in Term 1 and $7,000,000 in Term 2 to earn a 40% interest in the Lofdal project. Term 3 calls for a further $10,000,000 of expenditures to earn an additional 10% interest. JOGMEC can also purchase another 1% for $5,000,000 and has first right of refusal to fully fund the project through to commercial production and to purchase all production at market prices. The collective interests of NMI and historically disadvantaged Namibians cannot be diluted below a 26% carried working interest upon payment of $5,000,000 to JOGMEC for the dilution protection. The JV Agreement is structured such that no NMI equity will be issued and it is totally non-dilutive to NMI shareholders. To date, JOGMEC, has funded Term 1 and 2 expenditures totaling $6,600,000.

About Namibia Critical Metals Inc.

Namibia Critical Metals Inc. holds a diversified portfolio of exploration and advanced stage projects in the country of Namibia focused on the development of sustainable and ethical sources of metals for the battery, electric vehicle and associated industries. The two advanced stage projects in the portfolio are Lofdal and Epembe. The Company also holds significant land positions in areas favourable for gold mineralization.

Figure 2: Location of Namibia Critical Metals' projects highlighting position of gold projects (Erongo, Otjiwarongo and Grootfontein) in relation to important gold projects within the Navachab-Otjikoto gold belt

Heavy Rare Earths: The Lofdal Dysprosium-Terbium Project is the Company's most advanced project being fully permitted with a Mining Licence (ML 200) issued in 2021. The project is being developed in joint venture with Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") to provide a sustainable supply of heavy rare earths to Japan, most notably dysprosium and terbium.

Gold: The Company's Exclusive Prospecting Licenses ("EPLs") prospective for gold are located in the Central Namibian Gold Belt which hosts a number of significant orogenic gold deposits including the Navachab Gold Mine, the Otjikoto Gold Mine and more recently the discovery of the Twin Hills deposit. At the Erongo Gold Project, stratigraphic equivalents to the meta-sediments hosting the recent Osino gold discovery at Twin Hills have been identified and soil surveys are progressing over this highly prospective area. The Grootfontein Base Metal and Gold Project has potential for magmatic copper-nickel mineralization, Mississippi Valley-type zinc-lead-vanadium mineralization and Otjikoto-style gold mineralization. Detailed interpretation of geophysical data and regional geochemical soil sampling have identified first gold targets, with the first targets currently being drill-tested.

Tantalum-Niobium: The Epembe Tantalum-Niobium-Uranium Project is at an advanced stage with a well-defined, 10 km long carbonatite dyke that has been delineated by detailed mapping and radiometric surveys and over 11,000 meters of drilling. Preliminary mineralogical and metallurgical studies including sorting tests (XRT), indicate the potential for significant physical upgrading. Further work will be undertaken to advance the project to a preliminary economic assessment stage.

Copper-Cobalt: The Kunene Copper-Cobalt Project comprises a large area of favorable stratigraphy along strike of the Opuwo cobalt-copper-zinc deposit. Secondary copper mineralization over a wide area points to preliminary evidence of a regional-scale hydrothermal system. Exploration targets on EPLs held in the Kunene project comprise direct extensions of the cobalt-copper mineralization to the west, sediment-hosted copper, orogenic copper, and stratabound manganese and zinc-lead mineralization.

The common shares of Namibia Critical Metals Inc. trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "NMI".

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For more information please contact -

Namibia Critical Metals Inc.

Darrin Campbell, President

Tel: +01 (902) 835-8760

Fax: +01 (902) 835-8761

Email: Info@NamibiaCMI.com

Web site: www.NamibiaCriticalMetals.com

The foregoing information may contain forward-looking information relating to the future performance of Namibia Critical Metals Inc. forward-looking information, specifically, that concerning future performance, is subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in the Company's filings with the appropriate securities commissions.

SOURCE: Namibia Critical Metals Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671264/Namibia-Critical-Metals-Inc-Joins-the-Rare-Earth-Industry-Association
Press Contact:

Joseph Hood

Tel.:+44 (0) 7385 026 260

E-Mail: joseph.hood@capgemini.com

Capgemini and Fraunhofer IAIS lead study inQuantum Machine Learning for IT security commissioned by the German Federal Office for Information Security

Bonn/St. Augustin/Paris, November 4, 2021 - The German Federal Office for Information Security has commissioned Capgemini and the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS to conduct a fundamental study on Quantum Machine Learning (QML) in the context of IT security. Under the scientific leadership of Professor Christian Bauckhage from Fraunhofer IAIS, a joint team will investigate key security-related issuesfor the first time.

Quantum Machine Learning aims to optimize classical machine learning approaches by utilizing quantum informatics. The core objective of the study is to identify the threats and potential of QML at an early stage in order to use the findings to actively and securely shape digitization in Germany. It will examine the vulnerability of QML methods and their applications to new forms of cyberattack.

Another element of the study is the threat posed by QML to classic IT security systems. It will address whether there are novel attack vectors or a significant increase in the efficiency of existing attacks. The study also aims to answer the question of opportunities for IT security through QML, using QML to defend against attacks and strengthen IT security.

"Until now, there hasn't been a study like this that summarizes all currently relevant QML methods, evaluates them in terms of their practicality for the coming years, and discusses QML in the context of IT security," said Prof. Dr. Christian Bauckhage, Lead Scientist Machine Learning at Fraunhofer IAIS.

Frank Jacobsen, Head of Public Sector at Capgemini in Germany, adds: "Quantum computing will be one of the predominant innovation drivers for IT in the future. This makes it all the more important to address today the risks and opportunities for classic security architectures that arise from the combination of the mega trends toward the use of artificial intelligence and quantum computing."

About Fraunhofer IAIS

As part of the largest organization for application-oriented research in Europe, the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS based in Sankt Augustin near Bonn is one of the leading scientific institutes in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data in Germany and Europe. With its more than 300 employees, the institute supports companies in the optimization of products, services, processes and structures as well as in the development of new digital business models. Fraunhofer IAIS thus shapes the digital transformation of our working and living environment.

About Capgemini

Capgemini is a global leader in partnering with companies to transform and manage their business by harnessing the power of technology. The Group is guided everyday by its purpose of unleashing human energy through technology for an inclusive and sustainable future. It is a responsible and diverse organization of over 300,000 team members in nearly 50 countries. With its strong 50-year heritage and deep industry expertise, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to address the entire breadth of their business needs, from strategy and design to operations, fueled by the fast evolving and innovative world of cloud, data, AI, connectivity, software, digital engineering and platforms. The Group reported in 2020 global revenues of 16 billion.

Get The Future You Want | www.capgemini.com

Attachment
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - New Break Resources Ltd. ("New Break" or the "Company") is pleased to announce continued progress in preparation for going public, including the appointment of Michael Farrant as Chief Executive Officer, the appointment of Jim O'Neill as Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary, significant enhancements to the Company's corporate governance structure, receipt of the Moray Gold Project ("Moray") exploration permit and the commencement of the preparation of a preliminary prospectus.

Appointment of Michael Farrant Chief Executive Officer ("CEO")

The board of directors of New Break (the "Board") is pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Farrant as CEO, effective October 1, 2021. Mr. Farrant has served as the Company's President since March 2019 and has over 25 years' experience in the gold mining industry, including senior financial roles with Barrick Gold Corporation and Kinross Gold Corporation. In his inaugural leadership role as a President and CEO, he led the successful turnaround of a TSX-listed Mexican gold producer and then later oversaw the creation of an Arizona focused gold and silver exploration company which grew to host an estimated measured and indicated resource of over 1.0 million gold equivalent ounces, ultimately guiding each of these companies through successful acquisitions. Mr. Farrant holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from Queen's University and earned his CPA, CA designation with Coopers and Lybrand (now PwC).

Appointment of Jim O'Neill as Chief Financial Officer ("CFO") and Corporate Secretary

The Board is also very pleased to announce the appointment of James (Jim) O'Neill as the Company's new CFO and Corporate Secretary, effective October 1, 2021. Mr. O'Neill has over 30 years' experience as a finance executive with multi-national businesses operating in Canada, the USA, the UK, Turkey and Kenya. His extensive public company financial management and governance experience spans junior mining exploration, development and operations, including appointments as CFO and Corporate Secretary of Aldridge Minerals Inc. and Virtus Mining Ltd. He currently also serves as CFO and Corporate Secretary of Western Gold Exploration and as CFO of Waseco Resources Inc. Mr. O'Neill holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (Honours) from Wilfrid Laurier University and earned his CPA, CA with Ernst & Whinney (now KPMG).

In connection with these appointments, Nigel Lees stepped down as Executive Chairman of the Board and into the role of Non-Executive Chairman, Michael Skutezky stepped down as Corporate Secretary and Michael Farrant stepped down as CFO, effective October 1, 2021. Each of Mr. Lees, Mr. Skutezky and Mr. Farrant continue to serve as directors of New Break.

Michael Farrant, President and CEO of New Break, commented, "I am grateful for the confidence that the Board has placed in me to assume a leadership role in the development and execution of the Company's strategic plans, which include taking New Break public and successfully advancing and exploring its Canadian gold projects in Nunavut and Ontario. I feel extremely fortunate that those exploration efforts will be led by Bill Love, New Break's Vice President, Exploration who was part of the discovery team for the world-class Hemlo gold deposit. We are also very fortunate to have added a finance professional of Jim O'Neill's calibre to the New Break team and I look forward to working with him."

Compensation, Governance and Nominating Committee ("CGN Committee")

Effective September 8, 2021, as part of its commitment to strengthening the governance structure of New Break prior to going public, the Board formed a Compensation, Governance and Nominating Committee comprised of a majority of independent directors, to assist the Board in its oversight role with respect to (i) the Company's human resource strategy, policies and programs (ii) all matters relating to the proper utilization of human resources within the Company, with a special focus on management and board succession, development and compensation, and (iii) with the Company's oversight through a well-defined Corporate Governance Framework. The Board has appointed Ashley Kirwan and Joshua Bailey, independent directors of the Company along with Nigel Lees, to serve on the CGN Committee with Ms. Kirwan serving as the Chair.

Audit Committee

New Break's audit committee, established September 1, 2020, has been comprised of Thomas Puppendahl as Chair and Ashley Kirwan, both of whom are independent, along with Mr. Lees. Effective October 1, 2021, Joshua Bailey replaced Ms. Kirwan on the audit committee, in order that Ms. Kirwan may focus her efforts exclusively on assisting the Company in establishing a robust Corporate Governance Framework and addressing various compensation and human resource matters prior to going public. Mr. Bailey's appointment maintains that a majority of the committee's members are independent.

Going Public Update

New Break is pleased to announce that the Company's lawyers, Peterson McVicar LLP have begun preparation of a preliminary prospectus for submission to the Ontario Securities Commission in connection with plans to seek liquidity options for the common shares of New Break.

Receipt of Moray Exploration Permit and Update of Technical Report

New Break is also extremely pleased to announce that on October 22, 2021, the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry ("MNDMNRF"), issued the Company an exploration permit for the Company's Moray Gold Project, located approximately 49 km southeast of Timmins, Ontario and 32 km northwest of the Young-Davidson gold mine, operated by Alamos Gold Inc.

In connection with the plan to take New Break public, the previous National Instrument 43-101 technical report on the Moray Gold Project, dated March 1, 2021 with an effective date of December 31, 2021 is being updated to include the results of work performed by the Company during 2021, which includes recently completed very low frequency ("VLF") and Drone-MAG surveys. The exploration permit issued by the MNDMNRF is valid for a three-year period to October 21, 2024 and will enable New Break the ability to carry out various exploration activities including mechanical stripping and drilling programs contemplated in the next phases of exploration on the property.

About New Break Resources Ltd.

New Break is a private Canadian mineral exploration and development company with a dual vision for value creation. In northern Ontario, New Break is focused on acquiring highly prospective gold projects in well-established mining camps, within proximity to existing infrastructure, while at the same time, through our prospective land holdings in Nunavut, we provide our shareholders with significant exposure to the vast potential for exploration success in one of the most up and coming regions in Canada for gold exploration and production. These complimentary visions are supported by a highly experienced team of mining professionals committed to placing a premium on Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance, respecting the values and interests of all our stakeholders.

For further information on New Break, please visit www.newbreakresources.ca or contact:

Michael Farrant, President and CEO

Tel: 416-278-4149

mfarrant@newbreakresources.ca

No stock exchange, regulation securities provider, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained in this news release.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Except for statements of historic fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements including, but not limited to comments regarding the timing and expectations for finalizing property agreements, timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles etc. Forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions and therefore involves inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors beyond the Company's control. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise any forward-looking information, except as may be required by law. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties that could affect financial results is contained in the Company's financial statements and management's discussion and analysis (the "Filings"), such Filings available upon request.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102059
New partnership will allow Indonesian mobile operator to bring personal cloud services to a market of more than 170 million subscribers

BRIDGEWATER, N.J., Nov. 04, 2021, Indonesia's largest mobile operator. The addition of the Synchronoss Personal Cloudsolution will give Telkomsel's subscribers the ability to back up and manage their valuable digital content, including photos and videos, from any device.



The white-label Synchronoss Personal Cloud solution-branded "Floudrive" and managed by Telkomsigma-will be made available to Telkomsel's 170 million subscribers as a premium feature. Subscribers will be able to choose between two different storage tiers and enjoy an initial free 30-day period. The solution gives subscribers a reliable and intuitive cloud storage experience, with the ability to backup and sync digital content, while also introducing advanced tagging and search capabilities.

"We are excited to be partnering with Synchronoss to integrate its personal cloud solutions into our consumer channel," said Tanto Suratno, Director of Business and Sales, Telkomsigma. "Having outgrown our existing personal cloud offering, now is the perfect time to embrace this opportunity and provide our subscribers with an advanced solution that meets their evolving needs. We look forward to enabling our customers to optimize and manage their precious digital content, and to protect and store it safely and securely. As well as benefiting our customers, this partnership also represents the next step as we move towards offering more digital services."

The solution will be delivered through Synchronoss' agreement with Telkomsigma, the IT Services and Data Center arm of Telkomsel and Telkomsigma's parent company, Telkom Indonesia. Unlike other cloud solutions on the market, the Synchronoss-powered personal cloud allows subscriber data to be stored in-country, a critical requirement for Telkomsel to adhere to Indonesian law.

Anthony Socci, President and General Manager, APAC for Synchronoss, said he is delighted to be working with Telkomsel on its new cloud offering. "As a private cloud solution provider, we are always looking for ways to support telecom partners in their mission to deliver more varied and advanced digital services to their subscribers. This cloud solution will be instrumental to Telkomsel as it facilitates a more integrated experience and promotes a safer handling of personal assets," he said. "This deal builds on the success we have already experienced with Telkomsigma that impressed and inspired Telkomsel to deliver similar offerings to their mobile subscribers. It will also create greater synergies between the two organizations within the group."

To learn more about Synchronoss cloud solutions, visit synchronoss.com/solutions/cloud.

About Synchronoss

Synchronoss Technologies.

Media Contacts

For Synchronoss:

Anais Merlin,

CCgroup,

E: synchronoss@ccgrouppr.com

Investor Contact

For Synchronoss: Todd Kehrli/Joo-Hun Kim, MKR Investor Relations, Inc., E: investor@synchronoss.com
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

MONTREAL, QC / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Critical Elements Lithium Corporation (the "Corporation" or "Critical Elements") (TSXV:CRE)(FSE:F12) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Cantor Fitzgerald Canada Corporation (the "Underwriter") pursuant to which the Underwriter has agreed to purchase on a "bought deal" basis pursuant to a short form prospectus for a total of 14,915,000 units (the "Units") of the Corporation at a price of C$1.75 per Unit (the "Offering Price") for gross proceeds of C$26,101,250 (the "Underwritten Offering"). Each Unit shall consist of one common share of the Corporation and one half of one common share purchase warrant (each whole common share purchase warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant shall be exercisable for one common share of the Corporation for a period of 24 months from the Closing Date (as herein defined) at an exercise price of C$2.50.

In addition, the Corporation has granted the Underwriter an option (the "Over-Allotment Option" and together with the Underwritten Offering, the "Offering") to purchase additional Units at the Offering Price to raise additional gross proceeds of up to 15% of the Underwritten Offering, for a period of 30 days after and including the Closing Date to cover over-allotments, if any, and for market stabilization purposes.

The net proceeds from the Offering are expected to be used by the Corporation to fund the development of the Rose lithium project and for general working capital purposes.

Closing of the Offering is expected to take place on or about November 25, 2021 (the "Closing Date"), and is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to the receipt of all applicable regulatory approvals including approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Units to be issued under the Offering will be offered by way of a short form prospectus in each of the provinces of Canada. The Units to be issued under the Offering may also be offered in the United States on a private placement basis pursuant to exemptions from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933 (the "U.S. Securities Act"), as amended, and certain other jurisdictions in accordance with applicable securities laws.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act, or the securities laws of any state of the United States and may not be offered or sold within the United States (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or pursuant to an exemption from such registration requirements.

About Critical Elements Lithium Corporation

Critical Elements aspires to become a large, responsible supplier of lithium to the flourishing electric vehicle and energy storage system industries. To this end, Critical Elements is advancing the wholly owned, high purity Rose lithium project in Quebec. Rose is the Corporation's first lithium project to be advanced within a highly prospective land portfolio of over 700 square kilometers. In 2017, the Corporation completed a robust feasibility study on Rose Phase 1 for the production of high quality spodumene concentrate. The internal rate of return for the Project is estimated at 34.9% after tax, with a net present value estimated at C$726 million at an 8% discount rate. Capital cost parameters were confirmed in 2019 by Primero Group in the context of a Guaranteed Maximum Price under an Early Contractor Involvement agreement, as a prelude to an Engineering, Procurement and Construction process. Detailed engineering for Phase I is expected to conclude this year as the Corporation plans to deliver technical studies for Phase II; the conversion of spodumene concentrate to high quality lithium hydroxide. In the Corporation's view, Quebec is strategically well-positioned for US and EU markets and boasts exceptional infrastructure including a low-cost, low-carbon power grid featuring 93% hydroelectricity. The project has received approval from the Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change on the recommendation of the Joint Assessment Committee, comprised of representatives from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and the Cree Nation Government; we await similar approval under the Quebec environmental assessment process near-term. The Corporation also has a strong, formalized relationship with the Cree Nation.

For further information, please contact:

Jean-Sebastien Lavallee, P.Geo.

Chief Executive Officer

819-354-5146

jslavallee@cecorp.ca

www.cecorp.ca

Cautionary statement concerning forward-looking statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian Securities legislation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "scheduled", "anticipates", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "scheduled", "targeted", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information contained herein include, without limitation, statements relating to the completion of the Project's approval, the completion of the provincial permitting process, mineral reserve estimates, mineral resource estimates, realization of mineral reserve and resource estimates, capital and operating costs estimates, the timing and amount of future production, costs of production, success of mining operations, the ranking of the project in terms of cash cost and production, permitting, economic return estimates, power and storage facilities, life of mine, social, community and environmental impacts, lithium and tantalum markets and sales prices, off-take agreements and purchasers for the Corporation's products, environmental assessment and permitting, securing sufficient financing on acceptable terms, opportunities for short and long term optimization of the Project, and continued positive discussions and relationships with local communities and stakeholders. Forward-looking information is based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable at the time such statements are made. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Although Critical Elements has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expected results described in forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: the completion of the Project's approval, the completion of the provincial permitting process, Critical Elements' ability to secure sufficient financing to advance and complete the Project, uncertainties associated with the Corporation's resource and reserve estimates, uncertainties regarding global supply and demand for lithium and tantalum and market and sales prices, uncertainties associated with securing off-take agreements and customer contracts, uncertainties with respect to social, community and environmental impacts, uncertainties with respect to optimization opportunities for the Project, as well as those risk factors set out in the Corporation's year-end Management Discussion and Analysis dated August 31, 2020, the Corporation's Annual Information Form dated August 3, 2021, and other disclosure documents available under the Corporation's SEDAR profile. Forward-looking information contained herein is made as of the date of this news release and Critical Elements disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is described in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Critical Elements Lithium Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671289/Critical-Elements-Announces-Bought-Deal-Public-Offering-to-Raise-Gross-Proceeds-of-26101250
TORONTO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mandalay Resources Corporation ("Mandalay" or "the Company") (TSX: MND, OTCQB: MNDJF) announces that its third quarter 2021 financial results will be released after market close on November 09, 2021, followed by a conference call with Dominic Duffy, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mandalay for investors and analysts on November 10, 2021, at 8:00 AM (Toronto time).



Analysts and interested investors are invited to participate using the following dial-in numbers:

Participant Number (Toll free): (800) 582-0984 Participant Number: (212) 231-2912 Conference ID: 13724968

A replay of the conference call will be available until 11:59 PM (Toronto time), November 24, 2021, and can be accessed using the following dial-in number:

Encore Toll Free Dial-in Number: (877) 660-6853 Encore ID: 13724968

For Further Information:

Dominic Duffy

President and Chief Executive Officer

Edison Nguyen

Manager, Analytics and Investor Relations

Contact:

(647) 260-1566

About Mandalay Resources Corporation:

Mandalay Resources is a Canadian-based natural resource company with producing assets in Australia (Costerfield gold-antimony mine), Sweden (Bjorkdal gold mine) and Chile (Cerro Bayo gold-silver mine). The Company is focused on growing its production and reducing costs to generate significant positive cashflow.

Mandalay's mission is to create shareholder value through the profitable operation of both its Costerfield and Bjorkdal mines. Currently, the Company's main objective is to continue mining the high-grade Youle vein at Costerfield, which continues to supply high-grade ore, and to extend Youle's Mineral Reserves at depth and to the south, as well as continuing the regional exploration program. At Bjorkdal, the Company will aim to increase production from the Aurora zone and other higher-grade areas in the coming years, in order to maximize profit margins from the mine and continue exploration in near mine and regional.
WASHINGTON, D.C. / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2021 / Bank of Idaho President and CEO Jeff Newgard testified Wednesday before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions.

Newgard testified as a representative of The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICB), calling on Congress to extend Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act data security standards to retailers, technology companies, and other parties that process or store consumer financial data. He was one of a panel of four witnesses to testify Wednesday morning, appearing remotely as part of the hybrid-format hearing.

Newgard said extending the banking industry's security standards to all players in the payment system would deter security breaches.

"When a data breach occurs, we believe that liability for that breach should be assigned to incentivize stronger security. The cost of a breach should be born by the party that incurs the breach, be that a retailer, a credit reporting agency, bank, or credit union," he said. "Too often, the breached entity evades accountability, while financial institutions are left to mitigate damages to their customers. Uniformity and harmonization will strengthen the ecosystem by eliminating redundancy, closing gaps and strengthening weak links."

Newgard, who chairs ICBA's Cyber and Data Security Committee, had further testimony which focused on three themes: The need to close gaps in law standards, promoting greater uniformity in regulatory efforts, and a call to share information across the economic landscape.

"Right now we have a patchwork throughout all the states, and that becomes very problematic," he said about existing cybersecurity regulations and enforcement agencies. "I would say that one size does not fit all institutions  but having some standardization and harmonization would be great.

CONTACT:

Tyler Kraupp

Phone: 1.208.390.0667

Tyler.Kraupp@bankofidaho.net

SOURCE: Bank of Idaho Holding Co

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/671295/Bank-of-Idaho-CEO-Calls-on-Congress-for-Data-Security-Standardization
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Brascan Gold Inc. (CSE: BRAS) ("Brascan" or the "Company") is pleased to announce, further to its news release dated October 20, 2021, that it has entered into an option agreement (the "Agreement") with Jason Flight, Wayne Hurley, Kenneth Lewis and Daniel Jacobs (collectively, the "Optionors") to acquire a 100% interest in the Middle Arm Fault property located 30 km south of the town of Baie Verte, Newfoundland (the "Property"). The Property contains three (3) contiguous mineral claims covering 650 hectares.

Newfoundland and Labrador is ranked among the top 10 mining jurisdictions world-wide by the Fraser Institute, and boasts excellent infrastructure reflecting its long mining history including roads, grid power, port facilities, complete mining services as well as a skilled and experienced workforce.

The option claims are contiguous with the northern boundary of Maritime Resources Corp.'s Whisker Valley Project, and 14 km north of Maritime's past-producer Hammerdown gold deposit, which is described in some detail in Maritime's PEA (McCracken et al., 2020)1.

The Property covers a portion of the regionally significant Middle Arm Fault, which extends more than 15 km to the southwest, where it is spatially associated with several gold showings, as reported on the Newfoundland and Labrador Geoscience Atlas (https://geoatlas.gov.nl.ca/Default.htm). A 2.5 km long magnetic high anomaly occurs adjacent to the Middle Arm Fault on the Property, and Brascan considers this anomaly to be a target warranting follow up exploration.

Pursuant to the Agreement, the Company may acquire a 100% interest in the Property by: (i) making an aggregate cash payment to the Optionors of $168,000; (ii) issuing an aggregate of 670,000 common shares of the Company to the Optionors; and (iii) incurring an aggregate of $725,000 in exploration expenditures on the Property all prior to the fourth anniversary of the date of the Agreement. The share issuances, cash payments and exploration commitments gradually increase over the term of the Agreement. The Optionors will retain a 2.5% net smelter royalty, 1.5% of which may be purchased by Brascan for $2,000,000.

About the Company

The Company is a gold exploration issuer based in Vancouver, BC. The Company holds an option over the Vulcan Property, located in the Fort Steele Mining Division in southeastern BC and the Middle Arm Fault property, located 30km south of the town of Baie Verte, Newfoundland.

For more information, investors should review the Company's filings that are available at www.sedar.com.

Contact Information

Balbir Johal

Director

Telephone: 604 812 1747

Email: bjohal75@gmail.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that are "forward looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements that are not historical facts, including without limitation, statements regarding future estimates, plans, programs, forecasts, projections, objectives, assumptions, expectations or beliefs of future performance, including statements regarding the share issuances, the cash payments and the exploration expenditures, the viability of exploration at the Property and the NSR are "forward-looking information". These forward-looking statements reflect the expectations or beliefs of management of the Company based on information currently available to it. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those detailed from time to time in filings made by the Company with securities regulatory authorities, which may cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. These factors should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.



NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES

1 https://www.maritimeresourcescorp.com/site/assets/files/5013/hammerdown_pea_technical_report_4-15-20.pdf

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/102097
Regardless of the course, age, and capital required, deciding to be a student entrepreneur is a big commitment. Successful entrepreneurs devote long hours to their startup and get involved in every aspect of the business. Even for a part-time student, the academic journey is a time-consuming process that leaves most energy drained.

The workload and the need to balance school and a business can make any college student pause their business plan. However, numerous entrepreneurs started their businesses in college that eventually became a success. So what is the secret to becoming a successful student entrepreneur without sacrificing academic performance? Read the tips below to find out.

Seek Funding Opportunities

Most students live on a tight budget. Therefore, if you plan to start a business, the chances are high that your money alone will not be enough to cover up the capital needed. Thus if you want your business to start on the right path, you must find alternative funding opportunities. Personal savings, money from family and friends can be a great source of startup funds, but the funds may not be enough and end up limiting your business potential.

On the other hand, grants provide a good financial boost and dont come with many strings attached. Depending on your niche and your industry, you can find grants that you can apply to get a decent working capital. The good part about grants is they dont need to be repaid, so you dont need to relinquish any equity in your business. Advantages of grants as compared to loans include

Provide instant cash boost

Give support to your business startup, which includes mentoring

Enhance your business security since it doesnt require you to leverage your assets.

A student entrepreneur who wants to start a business but lacks funds should consider applying for a grant. Unlike loans, which are the go-to source of capital for most companies, they require repayment in a specific period and come with interest. Apart from grants, you can also go for peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding.

Make Use of Academic Business Incubator

Technology has made it easier for students to buy essay to understand their subjects better and save time which can be allotted to growing a business. But before you PayforEssay, read the Review of the Top 5 Academic Assistance Platforms to ensure the company you want will meet your writing needs. One university resource that a student entrepreneur should make use of is the university incubator. An incubator provides resources such as office space, amenities, networking, mentorship programs, and access to industry experts.

All these resources will go a long way in growing your business and boosting its success rate. Access to academic or university business incubators gives student entrepreneurs the freedom to come up with unique ideas and speed up the change from concept to reality.

The academic incubators are meant to foster entrepreneurship exploration and connect students with businesses collaborators. This forges a solid connection between academia and industry while also preparing learners for a rewarding career. The school that offers the academic incubator benefits by remaining relevant and competitive.

Build a Strong Network

To be a successful student entrepreneur, you must connect to the local group focused on your industry or business niche. You can also build a strong network by attending workshops or expand your search to include sector-specific mentorship. Use your alumni network and connect with like-minded individuals on social media sites, platforms such as LinkedIn, and industry experts, including the university directory.

Know your competitors

To be a successful student entrepreneur, you must know who your competitors are. The next step is to research the companies to find out what they offer and what you need to do to make your business unique. With the information from extensive research, you can find your competitors weaknesses and create a marketing strategy that will give your business a competitive edge.

Believe in Yourself

There will be numerous challenges in both your academic and entrepreneurship journey. However, you have to trust in your abilities to make good decisions. Yes, the business might take longer to pick up than you anticipated but try not to be discouraged. Remember that successful student entrepreneurs continue to put in the work; they plan their day with purpose, have a dedicated mindset, ask for help, especially in areas you are struggling with and strive to know your industry. If you dont believe in yourself and your concepts, others will have difficulty believing in your business. So put in the time and celebrate the few wins.

BIO:

For many years, Adam Stone been helping students who need essays in such subjects as Religion and Theology. I always focus on 100% original ideas for my essays, delivering unique, authentic texts on time for my customers. If you need a quality essay in any religion- or theology-related course, then Im your writer for the job!
Hakkoda, a Boulder CO- and Costa Rica-based based cloud data engineering consultancy company, raised $5.6M in funding.

The round was led by Tercera, with participation from several individual investors.

The company intends to use the funds to increase its presence in North America and Costa Rica, to expand its team of data engineers in Latin America, and to build vertical-specific solutions on the Snowflake platform.

Led by Erik Duffield, CEO, Hakkoda provides data engineering consulting solutions and services specializing in Snowflake. The company uses a subscription model that works the way the cloud works  providing on-demand access to data engineers, architects, machine learning and application development experts. Its subscription-based scalable teams model offers customers on-demand access to experts specializing in data migration, architecture, analytics, engineering, machine learning, governance and application development, to be applied in areas where skills are needed.

Hakkodas new Snowflake Concierge service offers customers onboarding, governance, enablement and training to get teams to value faster and to drive long-term customer success. Through partnerships with Alation, DataRobot, Fivetran, and Unqork, the company can also allow companies to create no-code enterprise apps that put data to work.

Hakkoda is building its flagship delivery center and customer innovation center in San Jose, Costa Rica and expects to hire 300 employees for that location. It is partnering with the Costa Rican government and organizations such as Rocket Girls to find, train and inspire the next generation of data talent.

FinSMEs

04/11/2021
Nauta Capital, a pan-European Venture Capital firm investing in capital-efficient B2B software companies, closed its fifth fund, at 190M.

With a 120M first closed announced in 2020, the funds final close brings the firms assets under management to 550+M. Limited Partners include institutions across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The vast majority of Limited Partners joining the fund are private institutions with strategic interest in funds B2B focus as well as Family Offices with links to corporations aligned with the funds investment thesis. Among these are Netherlands based European Family Office Merifin Capital and the private markets division of the Spain based giant BBVA Asset Management. The fund has also had backing from leading investors such as British Patient Capital, ICO, the European Investment Fund, ICF, and Germany-based KfW Capital.

As a sector-agnostic B2B investor, Nautas main areas of interest include SaaS solutions with strong network effects, vertically focused enterprise tech transforming large industries as well as those leveraging deep-tech applications to solve challenges faced by large enterprises. Investing from late seed and Series A, typically Nauta invests between 1M  5M initially, with the ability to follow on at later stages.

Based in London, Barcelona, and Berlin, Nauta has invested in 11 companies across Europe from the new fund since its launch. The companies invested from the new fund range from SaaS purchase and management (Cledara), open source platform (Nhost), and app analytics and management platform (Appfollow)) to solutions democratising employee wellbeing (ifeel), embedded insurance for SMEs (insureQ), and b2b last-mile delivery company (Gophr), among others.

Nauta Capital has had a successful year leading up to the funds final close with two portfolio exits in the last 8 months. The VC firm exited from Brandwatch, a global leader in digital consumer intelligence, which was acquired by Cision for $450M earlier in 2021, and from Holded which was acquired by Visma group.

As part of the new fund, the VC firm will invest 100-250K in 16 pre-seed deeptech companies through its recently launched Nauta Labs initiative. These 16 smaller investments will be in addition to the approx. 35 companies Nauta plans to invest in from its new fund.

FinSMEs

04/11/2021
Uvaro, a Waterloo, ON, Canada-based online tech sales academy, closed a $12M (USD) Series A funding.

The round was led by White Star Capital with participation by Real Ventures and BDC Capitals Women in Technology Venture Fund.

The company intends to use the funds to scale up the programming and deliver enhanced services for members aimed at creating ongoing career success.

Led by Joseph Fung, CEO, Uvaro is a career success platform that provides just-in-time training, paid apprenticeships, and career development services for North Americas under-employed land roles in tech.

FinSMEs

03/11/2021
Viceversa, a Milan, Italy and Dublin, Ireland-based Revenue Based Financing company, raised 23m in seed and debt funding.

The combined financing round of equity and debt saw the participation of investors such as Fasanara Capital, Fabrick (Group Sella Bank) and business angels from the financial and digital sectors like Roberto Ferrari, Enrico Giacomelli and Enrico Pandian among others, who are joining Digital Magics as early investors.

The company intends to use the funds to expand its portfolio from 1M to 20M in the next 12 months, and to establish partnerships with Marketing Agencies, VC funds and eCommerce players.

Founded in late 2020, Viceversa is a Revenue Based Financing company that has been operating in stealth mode until now.

Led by Matteo Masserdotti, CEO, Pedro Salvi, CFO, Pietro Pogliani and Patrick David, the company currently provides capital to European digital businesses operating an investment model that supports them in their growth, without equity dilution or debt guarantees. Viceversa invests between  10K to  1M in digital companies that show clear signs of growth.

FinSMEs

04/11/2021
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MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- With Veterans Day just a week away, one local army vet was celebrated early for his service and sacrifices by being awarded something that will make his life a little more comfortable.

Local Vietnam Veteran and American Legion Rider, James Fitzgerald was beside himself when he found out he was chosen by Hansen Heating and Air to receive a brand new A/C system.

"Oh, I fell out, we both did, because we needed it bad, it's something you just can't get every day," said Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald, best known as "Uncle Fuzy" by his friends and family, served in the U.S Army from 1967 to 1970. His heroism earned him four Bronze Star Awards.

He said his A/C unit was failing and a few months away from needing to be replaced, now he no longer needs to worry.

"Oh, I love it. Ours was fixing to go out, it's a blessing and I didn't know where we were going to get one from and it miraculously appeared," said Fitzgerald.

Crews with Hansen Heating and Air worked hard to get the system installed in the Fitzgerald's home. James and his wife, Pam is now able to keep their home cool and comfortable during the hot Alabama Summer months.

"We appreciate being chosen and I want to thank Hansen for all that they've done," said Pam Fitzgerald.

Christina Kunde with the Hansen Air and Heating said it was a small "thank you" for all Fitzgerald has done for our country.

"To be able to help somebody out, especially around veterans day, somebody that served our country, that he's the reason that we're doing what we do every day," said Kunde.

Fitzgerald wanted to leave this message to his fellow vets:

"Ya'll keep it up now, don't lose faith, keep rolling with the flow, keep going with what you're doing."

Veterans Day is observed on November 11th.
Bettina Lerman was on a ventilator for weeks after getting COVID-19 and hadn't responded to doctors' efforts to wake her from a coma when her family made the difficult decision to take her off of life support.
If You Go

Dreams During the Long Peace: Artwork by Leigh Cortez and spoken word by R. Cortez

When: Nov. 6 to 30, with an opening reception from 1 to 9 p.m. Nov. 6. Regular gallery hours are 1 to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

Where: Gaslight Gallery, 118 E. Church St., Frederick

Leigh Cortez is both an Army veteran and spouse of an active-duty combat soldier. She served on active duty with the 10th Mountain Division from 2001 to 2004. After leaving the military, she pursued a tattoo apprenticeship and has tattooed professionally in addition to building a fine art career. As a multidisciplinary artist and married to an active-duty soldier, she has lived and worked in various military towns in the United States, as well as overseas. The experiences of military life and tattooing in military towns influenced the medium and message of her painted works. Cortezs work has recently been featured at Dulles International Airport and at the Military Womens Memorial, the formal entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

Her work examines the unpredictability, tension and trauma of military life from personal experience as a veteran and a spouse of an active-duty combat soldier. Taking inspiration from artists of postwar material realism as well as cubism, she continues the dialogue of the relationship between destruction and creation.

Learn more about the artist at leighcortez.com.

R. Cortez is a Chief Warrant Officer 3 serving on active duty in the U.S. Army. His writing has been featured in Riverblood Magazine. His spoken word performances include the Summer with the Arts Exhibition at the Military Womens Memorial.
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 "Social Action Works with Local Author Julie Mathison," 4:30 p.m. Thursday, beav.es/UY7. Mathison, an indie author and founder of Starr Creek Books, will speak about creating a dedicated readership focused on your voice and unique place in the literary landscape.

 Live music by Gadzooks, 6 p.m. Thursday, Common Fields, 545 SW Third St., Corvallis. Seating is limited and first come, first served.

 Oregon State University Theatre presents "It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play," 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, main stage, Withycombe Hall, 2921 SW Campus Way, Corvallis. Free tickets available at https://oregonstatecla.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?SeriesID=2.

 "Pumpkin-Palooza," 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Willamette Community and Grange Hall, 27555 Greenberry Road, Corvallis. Free event featuring pumpkin treats; nutritional, historical and educational information; small pumpkin decorating and trebuchet tossing for the children; small-group tours of the historic hall. Fionnghal will play live music from noon to 2 p.m.

 Downtown Corvallis Wine Walk, 2 to 7 p.m. Saturday. The walk, presented by the Downtown Corvallis Association, features Oregon wineries offering samples of their finest vintages. Admission: $25, which includes a tasting glass, available starting at 2 p.m. at the Inkwell Home Store, RE/MAX Integrity, and Burlap & Lace.

 Champinefu Webinar Series, 7 p.m. Wednesday. Greg Archuleta and Ed Jensen will present Trees and Forests of Marys Peak: The Stories They Tell. Registration: https://bit.ly/champinefu2.

 Mid-Valley Live

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  The head of a European Parliament delegation on its first official visit to Taiwan said Thursday that its high time for the European Union to step up cooperation with the self-ruled island, which is also claimed by China.

Seven lawmakers from the Parliaments committee on foreign interference in democratic processes met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on the second day of their three-day visit.

We came here with a very simple, very clear message. You are not alone, said Raphael Glucksmann, the French chair of the committee. Europe is standing with you, by you, in the defense of freedom and the defense of rule of law and human dignity.

It is high time for the European Union to step up its cooperation with Taiwan, he said.

Tsai kept her welcome remarks short, calling the visit highly significant and saying Taiwan was willing to share its experience in combating disinformation and that it wants to build a democratic alliance against disinformation.

Last month, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for the body to intensify EU-Taiwan political relations. The non-binding resolution also called for changing the name of the representative office in Taiwan to the European Union Office in Taiwan, and to establish a bilateral investment agreement with the island.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spoke out against the visit Thursday, saying it "urges the European side to correct its mistakes and not to send any wrong signals to the separatist forces of Taiwan independence, so as to avoid serious impact on China-EU relations.

Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing that the fact that Taiwan is part of China cannot be changed.

The visit comes amid growing support among Western countries for the democratic island, which China claims as part of its territory to be annexed by force if necessary, and rising negative perceptions toward Beijing.

China has sent an increasing number of fighter jets toward the island in a prolonged campaign of military harassment since at least last year, when Taiwan began publicly releasing the data.



Associated Press video producer Liu Zheng contributed to this report.

This story was first published on November 4, 2021. It was updated on November 6, 2021 to correct the number of parliamentarians in the delegation. There were seven, not 13. The story also incorrectly used the pronoun she in referring to Raphael Glucksmann, the head of the delegation. Glucksmann is male.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Technology increases the amount and quality of data that can be efficiently and cost-effectively obtained from a small DNA sample



Manufacturing of the first product from a new technology platform is underway with expected commercial availability in early 2022; early access programs with renowned research institutions are ongoing

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, Nov. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cambridge Epigenetix (CEGX), a life sciences tools and technology company revolutionizing genome sequencing, today announced the signing of an $88 million Series D financing, bringing the total funds raised to date to $146 million. Temasek led the Series D round with participation from new investors including Third Point and existing investors such as GV, New Science Ventures, Ahren Innovation Capital and Sequoia.

Proceeds from the financing will be used to commercialize the companys proprietary genetic and epigenetic sequencing technology, which easily integrates into existing sequencing platforms to enable more information to be read from DNA. The technology has been validated by leading genomic research institutions of which several, including Professor Dennis Lo of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Professor Wolf Reik of the Babraham Institute, have continued using the technology through early access programs.

Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian FRS, founder of Cambridge Epigenetix, said, We are pleased to have raised a significant Series D round from high-profile investors to support the commercial launch of the first product from our new multi-omic platform, and the expansion of our organization. Importantly, our sequencing technology works with all sequencers and enhances their accuracy as opposed to replacing or competing with them. Further, our technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of genome sequencing, as the low sample requirement and streamlined workflow facilitate its cost-effectiveness and ease of use without sacrificing accuracy. We look forward to product and to making game-changing contributions to DNA sequencing, epigenomic research and precision medicine.

CEGXs product unambiguously identifies five letters of DNA  four genetic bases (A-T-C-G) plus methylated cytosine (5mC or 5hmC)  in a single sequencing workflow with a low DNA sample requirement and high accuracy. Epigenetic marks are a vital source of biological information that will enable the next generation of diagnostics such as those for early cancer detection. The laboratory component of CEGXs product is in manufacture and these kits, combined with software, are expected to be available for purchase in early 2022. This will be followed by the launch of additional platform products, the next being a 6-letter kit.

About Temasek

Temasek is an investment company with a net portfolio value of S$381 billion (US$283b) as at 31 March 2021.

Headquartered in Singapore, it has 13 offices in 9 countries around the world. The Temasek Charter defines Temaseks three roles as an Investor, Institution and Steward, which shape its ethos to do well, do right, and do good.

As a provider of catalytic capital, it seeks to enable solutions to key global challenges. With sustainability at the core of all Temasek does, it actively seeks sustainable solutions to address present and future challenges, as it captures investible opportunities to bring about a sustainable future for all.

For more information on Temasek, please visit www.temasek.com.sg.

About Third Point

Third Point LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser based in New York. The firm was founded in 1995 by Daniel S. Loeb, who serves as Chief Executive Officer. The firm often engages with company managements and boards to improve performance and will also take passive stakes in companies with a long-term view of value creation. For over twenty years, Third Point has partnered with entrepreneurs throughout a companys lifecycle from the earliest stages to pre-IPO and beyond.

About Cambridge Epigenetix

Cambridge Epigenetix is revolutionizing sequencing by delivering new dimensions of information from DNA to see and treat disease earlier and transform life sciences and medicine. The commercial-stage companys platform provides more information with greater efficiency at higher quality and lower cost than standard next generation DNA sequencing technology. Easily integrating into existing sequencers, the companys products allow the user to see at-a-glance genomic and epigenetic information. This information can be used to detect, diagnose, treat and understand disease. Based in Cambridge, UK, the company is founded by a pioneer in DNA sequencing intent on leading the next great leap forward in genomics.

Business Contact

enquiries@cegx.co.uk

Media Contact

Tony Plohoros

tplohoros@6degreespr.com
Dublin, Nov. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Asia-Pacific Tyre Market Outlook, 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The market is evaluated to be worth more than USD 70 Billion as of 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.58% in terms of volume during the period of 2021 to 2026.

The Asia-Pacific tyre market is a rapidly developing market. As the economies in the region are rapidly growing and infrastructure development is taking place throughout the region; the Asia-Pacific tyre market finds itself on a suitable pedestal to grow upon.

In order to assess and study the regional trends and patterns in the Asia-Pacific tyre market, the research has been approached by looking at the market through appropriate segments and classification. The segments that were made during the comprehensive evaluation of the markets were based on vehicle types, end-use demand, and the demand of tyres on the basis of their construction design.

The Asia-Pacific tyre market is majorly driven by China, Japan, and India having a combined share of little shy than 65%. Australia contributes the lowest share in the overall Asia-Pacific tyre market as of 2020.

As many of the major national markets in the region are rapidly growing, Japan is the only market that is showing signs of maturity. Japan grew at a CAGR of roughly 2% during the historical period of 2015 to 2020. It has been further forecasted that its tyre market will be progressing towards maturity by growing at a CAGR of 3.70% during the 2021 to 2026 period.

However, during the same period, the rest of the Asia-Pacific regional markets combined excluding the major economies are projected to be registering a growth rate of more than 9%. As of 2020, it was derived that about 127.23 Million units of 2 wheeler tyres were sold in the region, making it one of the major drivers of the tyre market in the region.

3 wheeler and other tyres are expected to be the fastest-growing category during the 2021 to 2026 period, expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 11%. As the region is a major global hub for vehicle manufacturing and assembly, the OEM demand for tyres is more promising in the Asian Pacific market than anywhere else in the world.

The research also includes profiles of some of the major tyre companies in the world, namely: Bridgestone, Michelin, Sumitomo, Goodyear, Continental, Pirelli, Yokohama, Cooper tires, Apollo, MRF, Hankook, and Maxxis.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary



2. Report Methodology



3. Global Tyre Market Outlook

3.1. Market Size by Value

3.2. Market Size by Volume

3.3. Market Share

3.3.1. By Vehicle Type

3.3.2. By End Use

3.3.3. By Design

3.3.4. By Sales Channels

3.3.5. By Region

3.3.6. By Country

3.3.7. By Company



4. Asia-Pacific Tyre Market Outlook

4.1. Market Size by Value

4.2. Market Size by Volume

4.3. Market Share

4.3.1. By Vehicle Type

4.3.2. By End Use

4.3.3. By Design

4.3.4. By Sales Channels

4.3.5. By Country

4.4. China Tyre Market Outlook

4.5. Japan Tyre Market Outlook

4.6. India Tyre Market Outlook

4.7. Australia Tyre Market Outlook



5. Market Dynamics

5.1. Key Drivers

5.2. Key Challenges



6. Market Trends and Developments



7. Company Profiles

7.1. Apollo Tyres

7.2. Bridgestone

7.3. Continental

7.4. Cooper Tires

7.5. Goodyear Tyres

7.6. Hankook

7.7. Maxxis International

7.8. Michelin

7.9. MRF

7.10. Pirelli



8. Strategic Recommendations

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/1begha




LONDON, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The merger of MB Partners and Kaga Investment Management Co., Ltd. brought together two highly complementary businesses to create a larger, commercially stronger, and more competitive financial services company, well placed to deliver increased value to its clients, shareholders, and the Asian finance industry.

Andrew Allbright, Chairman of MB Partners, said of the merger, "This agreement was a significant step towards our shared vision of creating outstanding value for our clients and shareholders by bringing together two of Japan's leading financial service companies to create a stronger player in Asia. Kaga Investment Management Co., Ltd brought with it strong brand recognition and high-quality complementary platforms like sustainable investing and other key growth areas. Since the agreement took place, we have accelerated our expansion strategy, leveraging the combined expertise of our respective global teams and built a world-class all-encompassing financial services giant."

As part of the company's combined global innovation agenda, MB Partners grew in scale, gained financial strength and expertise to compete more effectively. The highly complementary assets and services of both companies have brought innovation and improvements, enabling a broader service offering and the delivery of enhanced investment products for its clients around the world.

"The products and services we have managed to develop through our alliance with Kaga Investment Management Co., Ltd. have helped us create more value for our clients, complementing their existing portfolio management and investment strategies with more sophisticated solutions, and helped preserve their wealth for the next generation," said Anthony Woods. "As we look towards 2022, we will continue to establish a company where a relentless drive propels our growth and improves the lives of our team and our clients. To do this, our focus will be to continually provide opportunities for our teams to grow and achieve their dreams both personally and professionally. For our clients, we will only provide investment opportunities that our processes have exhaustively evaluated. Every day, we will work with determination to overcome every challenge and achieve our goals."

Today, global investors are increasingly consolidating relationships towards large-scale asset managers, allocating more capital to a smaller roster of companies. The increasing average fund size - 80% of funds closed in 2020 are over US$1 billion in size - underscores the trend of larger managers gaining a greater share of fund commitments. As a result of its growth to becoming one of Asia's largest financial services companies, MB Partners has more than capitalized on this trend.

Founded in 2013, MB Partners is a respected financial services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with an extensive research office in London, England. The company has evolved to a workforce of 120+ employees, comprising seasoned investment advisors, research analysts, and other finance professionals who collaborate to offer industry-leading financial planning and investment services to its rapidly increasing client base. With US$11.21 billion in assets under management, MB Partners is today one of the leading Asia-based independent financial services companies for private clients and institutional investors.

MB Partners Media Contact

Mr. Edward Wright, Head of Media & Press

+44(0)2081571290, edward.wright@mbpcorporation.com,

One Canada Square, London,

E14 5AB, United Kingdom.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.
REGINA, Saskatchewan, Nov. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Board of Directors (the Board) of Information Services Corporation (TSX:ISV) (ISC or the Company) today declared a quarterly dividend of $0.23 per Class A Limited Voting Share (Class A Share). The dividend will be paid on or before January 15, 2022 to shareholders of record as of December 31, 2021.



On September 21, 2021, the Board of ISC announced that it approved an increase in the expected annual dividend of its Class A Share from $0.80 to $0.92. The new annual dividend represents an increase of 15 per cent from the previous quarterly dividend of $0.20. The increase reflects the strength of the Companys current business and affirms the Companys commitment to continue to reward shareholders as it grows.



The dividend has been designated as an eligible dividend pursuant to the Income Tax Act. An eligible dividend paid to a Canadian resident is entitled to the enhanced dividend tax credit. For further information on tax implications, please consult a tax advisor.

About ISC

Headquartered in Canada, ISC is the leading provider of registry and information management services for public data and records. Throughout our history, we have delivered value to our clients by providing solutions to manage, secure and administer information through our Registry Operations, Services and Technology Solutions segments. ISC is focused on sustaining its core business while pursuing new growth opportunities. The Class A Shares of ISC trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ISV.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release includes certain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation including, without limitation, expectations with respect to payment of dividends. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Companys plans or expectations include risks relating to changes in the condition of the economy, including those arising from public health concerns, reliance on key customers and licences, dependence on key projects and clients, securing new business and fixed-price contracts, identification of viable growth opportunities, implementation of our growth strategy, competition and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company including those detailed in ISCs Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2020 and ISCs Unaudited Condensed Consolidated interim Financial Statements and Notes and Managements Discussion and Analysis for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, copies of which are filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The forward-looking information in this release is made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, ISC assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances.

Investor Contact

Jonathan Hackshaw

Senior Director, Investor Relations & Capital Markets

Toll Free: 1-855-341-8363 in North America or 1-306-798-1137

investor.relations@isc.ca
Noida, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An increasing number of infertility issues among men and women resulting from unhealthy lifestyles is driving the growth of the global sperm bank market. Furthermore, the growing awareness of assisted reproductive technology (ART) is anticipated to boost the market growth

A study recently conducted by the strategic consulting and market research firm BlueWeave Consulting revealed that the global sperm bank market was worth USD 4,654.0 million in 2020. The market is projected to reach USD 5,970.0 million by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period (2021-2027). The global sperm bank market is fueled by the rising number of miscarriages worldwide, technological advancements in sperm storage, rising awareness of infertility issues, and advances in cryopreservation.

Growing fertility tourism favoring the global sperm bank market

Due to the growing trend of fertility tourism in countries like Spain, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and India, the demand for semen analysis services has increased significantly. According to the National Association for Fertility Problems data, Spain accounted for more than 40% of European fertility tourism. A total of 138,553 IVF cycles and 36,463 artificial inseminations were performed in Spain's 307 public and private clinics in 2016. India is also fast becoming one of the world's most popular fertility tourism spots. The number of Indian couples opting for fertility services in India is about 5%, while 70% of surrogacy cases come from foreign clients and 25% come from non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin. The Australian government also granted exemptions to citizens traveling overseas for IVF treatment or surrogacy arrangements in June 2021. As the vaccination rate is rising worldwide, more countries are allowing tourists into their countries. Thus, fertility tourism is likely to grow in the forecast period, supporting the growth of the global sperm bank market.

Increasing prevalence of miscarriages driving the growth of the global sperm bank market

Experiencing a miscarriage is an unfortunate experience for everyone involved, and the number of women suffering miscarriages is on the rise globally. According to March of dimes, almost 10-15% of pregnant women miscarry a non-profit organization. Miscarriages can be caused by various reasons, including infection, hormonal irregularities, uterine abnormalities, radiation, severe kidney problems, and thyroid disease.

Tommy's, a registered charity in England, Wales, and Scotland, reports that 1 in every four women experiences a miscarriage, and one in every hundred women experiences recurrent miscarriages (three or more in a row). Despite this, more than six out of ten women who suffer from recurrent miscarriages can conceive successfully by using IVF, IUI, and others. As more and more people become aware of the miracles of IVF, IUI, and other similar techniques, the demand for sperm and sperm bank is likely to propel the growth of the global sperm bank market.

Request For Free Sample Report @ https://www.blueweaveconsulting.com/report/global-sperm-bank-market/report-sample

High cost of the procedures impeding the growth of the global sperm bank market

The high costs associated with procedures, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), intrauterine insemination (IUI), and other similar procedures are a major hindrance to the growth of the global sperm bank market. According to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the average cost of an IVF cycle in the U.S. is USD 12,400. This figure varies greatly based on the patient's location, amount of medication administered, and the number of cycles performed. The high cost of these techniques and other similar techniques means that most people in developing nations cannot afford such procedures, which hinders the growth of the market.

In-Vitro Fertilization accounted for the largest share in the global sperm bank market in 2020

Global sperm bank market can be grouped into intracervical insemination, intrauterine insemination, in-vitro fertilization, and others segment, based on insemination techniques. Among these segments, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) dominated the global sperm bank market with largest market share in 2020. In-Vitro fertilization is the most common type of procedure with an average pregnancy success rate of 27.3% per cycle; however, the pregnancy success rate goes up to 45-53% after three full cycles of IVF. With the advancement of technology and techniques, success rates are increasing among all age groups. In-vitro fertilization has received a large market share in the global sperm bank market due to this factor.

Global Sperm Bank Market: Regional insights

The global sperm bank market is geographically grouped into the Asia-Pacific (APAC), North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa regions based on regions. North America dominated the global sperm bank market in 2020 owing to the large number of people in the region suffering from fertility issues. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 12% of women in the U.S. have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a child to term, and 10% of couples cannot conceive after two years of unprotected sex. A high prevalence of obesity, a robust healthcare infrastructure, major market players, and the large number of people suffering from fertility issues in North America have also contributed to the dominance of the global sperm market in 2020.

COVID-19 Impact on Global Sperm Bank Market

One of the few markets that saw increased demand during the lockdown phase was the global sperm bank market. The supply, however, was insufficient due to lockdown restrictions and disruptions in the value chain. According to The Fertility Partnership, one of the largest fertility specialists in the UK, the number of UK donors has declined by 66% since the pandemic. Since March 2020, patients waiting to get sperm donations have been unable to find donors due to a shortage of suitable donors and sperm. Sweden and China are currently witnessing an acute shortage of sperm due to decreasing number of sperm donors. Additionally, the sperms banks now require donors to be fully vaccinated, making it difficult for unvaccinated people to donate sperm. The demand for sperms is likely to go up as demand for ART (assisted reproductive technology) increases in the coming years.

The Leading Players Operating in the Global Sperm Bank Market are California Cryobank, Cryos International, Fairfax Cryobank Inc., European Sperm Bank, Androcryos, CSG-BIO, Cryobio, NW Cryobank., Indian Spermtech, New England Cryogenic Centre, Seattle Sperm Bank, London Sperm Bank, Baby Quest Cryobank Pvt. Ltd., ReproTech Limited, Semovo, Generate Life Sciences, and others. Companies operating in the global sperm bank market constantly strive to increase their market share by increasing awareness, launching new facilities, enhancing existing technologies, or launching new methods and techniques. The Zhejiang Sperm Bank, faced with a severe sperm shortage due to low awareness and a small number of suitable donors, appealed to the public for sperm donations in 2021.

Recent Developments

In August 2021, Cryos International Sperm and Egg Bank opened its second satellite sperm donation center in the United States at 4414 Lake Boone Trail, Suite 108 in Raleigh. The bank is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. till 4 p.m., with a focus on recruiting men aged 18 to 45.

Dont miss the business opportunity of global sperm bank market. Consult our analysts to gain crucial insights and facilitate your business growth.

The in-depth analysis of the report provides information about growth potential, upcoming trends, and statistics of global sperm bank market. The report also examines the factors influencing forecasts of total market size. Additionally, it promises to provide recent technology trends, along with industry insights to help decision-makers make sound strategic decisions. Furthermore, the report also analyzes the growth drivers, challenges, and competitive dynamics of the market.

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OTTAWA, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada is expected to spend a new record of $308 billion on health care in 2021  thats over $580,000 every minute. In fact, in the time it took to read that first sentence, Canadas health care costs were about $70,000 (around $10,000 per second).



New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows that total health spending is expected to have increased by more than 12% between 2019 and 2020, a rate of increase we havent seen in more than 30 years. This is triple the growth rate experienced from 2015 to 2019, which was steady at approximately 4% per year. This historic spending increase took place alongside a contraction in the economy, both due in part to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Trends in health care spending

Over the last 45 years, health spending in Canada has continued to climb, and it currently represents approximately 40% of total provincial and territorial budgets. Historically, health spending grew alongside  and at times faster than  the economy. But COVID-19 caused a significant increase in spending due to the immediate need to scale up health systems to respond to the pandemic.

Hospitals, drugs and physicians remain the 3 highest areas of spending and, combined, are expected to represent over 50% of total health spending in Canada in 2021. But a new spending category, referred to as COVID-19 Response Funding, will make up about 7%  or $23 billion  of total health spending. This category includes costs for things like COVID-19 treatment, contact tracing and vaccinations.

In addition to pressures caused by the ongoing pandemic, Canadas health care systems are also making adjustments to care for an increasingly aging population. While those age 65+ make up just 18% of the total population in Canada, they use approximately 45% of public-sector health care dollars.

Quick facts

Total health spending in Canada is expected to reach $308 billion in 2021.

Hospitals (25%), drugs (14%) and physicians (13%) are expected to continue to account for the largest shares of health spending in Canada in 2021.

The new spending category COVID-19 Response Funding will make up about 7% of total health spending.

Seniors represent the largest age group in terms of health care spending, at about 45% of total public health dollars (about $78 billion was spent on their care in 2019).

CIHI also released new information on public drug spending for 2020 that includes spending trends and the drugs that accounted for the highest costs in our health systems.

Quote

COVID-19 resulted in the single biggest increase in health spending we have ever seen in this country. An aging population and the continued pandemic will no doubt put more strain on our health systems and take up a larger proportion of government budgets. Challenges lie ahead, no doubt  but so do opportunities as improved technologies, pharmaceuticals and models of care can lead to better health outcomes for Canadians.

 David OToole, President and CEO, Canadian Institute for Health Information







-30-

About CIHI

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing essential health information to all Canadians.

CIHI works closely with federal, provincial and territorial partners and stakeholders throughout Canada to gather, package and disseminate information to inform policy, management, care and research, leading to better and more equitable health outcomes for all Canadians.

Health information has become one of societys most valuable public goods. For more than 25 years, CIHI has set the pace on data privacy, security, accessibility and innovation to improve Canadas health systems.

CIHI: Better data. Better decisions. Healthier Canadians.

Media contacts

media@cihi.ca

For English inquiries:

Stephanie Bright

289-981-8458

For French inquiries:

Alexandra Maheux

416-549-5317
English Lithuanian

INVL Renewable Energy Fund I, which was established three months ago and which invests in renewable energy projects and is managed by INVL Asset Management, one of the leading asset management companies in Lithuania, raised an additional EUR 16.14 million from investors to hold a second close at EUR 34.6 million.



Investors interest and confidence are encouraging, as are the results achieved in terms of raising capital. At the second close we have already surpassed half the funds target size of EUR 60 million. Renewable energy clearly has become an attractive investment alternative in recent times, and the current high prices for natural resources and electricity are further increasing the intensity of investments, said Liudas Liutkevicius, the managing partner of the INVL Renewable Energy Fund I.

With the backing provided by investors, the fund will develop its activities investing in renewable energy projects in the territory of the European Union, currently with a focus on the Polish market.

Ever since the fund was established, we have been building the infrastructure of the fund's partner network, which includes both project developers and support services  companies providing legal, financial, accounting, engineering and other services, the managing partner of the fund said.

Since the funds inception, he said, an agreement has already been signed on the development of over 150 megawatts of early-stage solar farm projects on the Polish market. Active work continues on enlarging the portfolio and on other possible agreements as a basis for developing the project portfolio in Poland.

It is important to note that not all of the projects in development will reach the construction phase, since some of them will not be granted grid connection capacity or will be dropped for economic reasons. Thus we are actively working with other potential partners and seeking to expand the portfolio of projects under development. We are also interested in projects in the Baltic countries and so invite renewable energy developers that operate in the Baltics to collaborate, Liudas Liutkevicius said.

In its initial closing, the fund raised EUR 18.5 million from investors.

The fund has a target size of EUR 60 million, a maximum size of EUR 100 million, and an expected net return for investors of 11%. In Lithuania, the funds units are distributed by the financial brokerage firm INVL Finasta. The minimum investment amount is EUR 125,000. The duration of the fund is 7 years.

About the INVL Renewable Energy Fund I

The INVL Renewable Energy Fund I, established on 20 July 2021 by the asset management company INVL Asset Management as a sub-fund for informed investors, will invest in renewable energy projects (solar, wind) at the green field and brown field stage, including the construction of new power plants, the acquisition of existing power plants, the development and/or acquisition of the infrastructure necessary for the operation of power plants, and the effective management of existing power plants in the European Union, Great Britain, and member states of the European Economic Area.

The person authorised to provide additional information:

Liudas Liutkevicius, Managing Partner of INVL Renewable Energy Fund I

E-mail liudas.liutkevicius@invl.com




Vancouver, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Against the backdrop of an aging population and compounding labour shortages, there is a substantial talent pool that is currently being overlooked.

A new study from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute in partnership with the Rick Hansen Foundation finds that two-in-five (40%) of those living with a disability say that companies fall short when it comes to hiring those who are disabled.

Barriers also persist in the workforce, with another two-in-five (39%) of those living with disabilities saying that Canadian companies have a way to go when it comes to supporting their employees who have a disability.

The more severe the disability someone is living with, the worse they rate Canadian companies. Half (48%) of those with severe disabilities say that companies are bad at hiring those with disabilities, while 46 per cent say the same about the supports offered by corporate Canada to disabled employees.

More Key Findings:

Over half (55%) of those with a disability between the ages of 18 and 34 say companies do either a bad or terrible job when it comes to hiring disabled Canadians.

When it comes to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policies in the workplace, four-in-five (78%) Canadians say disability should be included.

Three-in-five (62%) Canadians say they would be more likely to give their business to a company if they knew that they had specific policies to support those living with disabilities.

Methodology:

The Angus Reid Institute conducted an online survey from August 16  20, 2021 among a representative randomized sample of 2,085 Canadian adults who are members of Angus Reid Forum. This included a national general population survey sample of 1,610 as well as an augment of Canadians living with disability to bring that key survey sub-sample up to 983. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding. The survey was self-commissioned and paid for by ARI. Detailed tables can be found at the end of this release.

INDEX

Part One: Assessing accessibility

Private businesses

Customer experiences

Part Two: Working with disabilities

Entering the workforce

Supporting employees living with disabilities

(Re-)Assessing equity, diversity, and inclusion policies

Part Three: Appetite for new initiatives

Part One: Assessing accessibility

When a space is said to be accessible, it means that it is easy to get into and move around in for everybody who might need to use it including those who are injured, the elderly, parents with children, and those living with disabilities.

Previous studies have found that there is broad-based support for improved accessibility within Canadian society with nine-in-ten (91%) agreeing that accessibility is human right, not a privilege. Another done in 2019 found that seven-in-ten think universal accessibility should be the goal for newly constructed buildings.

Earlier this year another partnership study with RHF found that nine-in-ten (92%) Canadians agree that taxpayer funded projects should be held to the highest accessibility standards.

Despite this broad based support for higher levels of accessibility, disability advocates have highlighted that many barriers to accessibility persist and that there remains much room for improvement across Canada.

Related reports:

Platform Inaccessibility? Canadians living with disabilities say key issues are being overlooked in Election 44

Disability in Canada: Does closing the accessibility gap literally start from the ground up?

Disability and Accessibility: Canadians see significant room for improvement in communities where they live

Accessibility: A source of future anxiety and a significant consideration for Canadian consumers today



Private businesses



When asked specifically about how accessible they found restaurants, shops, and other private businesses to be on a scale out of ten, three-in-five Canadians rated them as accessible to very accessible (between six and 10 on the scale).



There is an important difference, however, in how those living with disabilities perceive the accessibility of private businesses versus those who have no exposure to disability at all. Of note, only half (54%) of those living with a disability think that accessibility at Canadian private businesses ranks as above average, with few saying that its great (see detailed tables).

Part of the accessibility of a private business stems from the government provided infrastructure that surrounds it (e.g., curb cuts, accessible public transit, snow removal, etc.) and to what extent it facilitates, or not, access to the business in question. A second factor are the decisions made by companies as to how they train their staff and design their stores or offices  i.e., how accessible are the experiences they are providing their customers and clients.

On this second point, three-in-five (62%) of those with disabilities think Canadian companies do a good or great job of providing accessible experiences for customers and clients living with disabilities:

The perception of corporations would appear to correlate with the severity of the disability that the respondent is living with. Two-thirds (69%) of those whose daily activities are least impacted by their disability say that Canadian companies do at least a good job. This number falls to 55 per cent among those with the most severe disabilities:

Part Two: Working with disabilities

Entering the workforce

If Canadians living with disabilities saw room for improvement in terms of their experience as patrons and clients, their views of Canadian corporations as employers were more negative. Overall, 40 per cent of those surveyed said that corporations were either bad or terrible when it comes to hiring those with disabilities:

These opinions reflect divergent employment realities in Canada. A comparison of employment rates of Canadians aged 25 to 64 by disability status done in 2016 indicated that only 59 per cent of Canadians with disabilities were employed at a time when the national average sat at over 80 per cent. Echoing trends witnessed here, this study further found that employment outcomes were correlated with severity of disability  the more severe the impact of the disability the less likely an individual was to be employed.

There are also variations in opinion by age and gender. Disabled women are more likely to say companies are doing a poor job of hiring those with disabilities (45%) than their male counterparts (35%). Of note, those at earlier stages of their careers have the most negative assessments: over half (55%) of those with a disability between the ages of 18 and 34 say companies do either a bad or terrible job when it comes to hiring disabled Canadians.

Supporting employees living with disabilities

In addition to the barriers faced when trying to enter the workforce, those living with disabilities can encounter further challenges in the workplace. These can range from inaccessible workplaces (e.g., cubicles or offices not having enough space for wheelchair users, no elevators, etc.) to not being provided with the appropriate tools for the job (e.g., screen readers, modified workstations, etc.).

There is broad support in Canada for removing barriers to employment and ensuring that those with disabilities are able to fully participate in the workforce. Four-in-five (91%) Canadians agree, for example, that its unacceptable that those with physical disabilities are underemployed because of workplace barriers (see detailed tables).

When it comes to how Canadian companies fare in providing workplace supports, however, those living with disabilities highlight that there is much room for improvement. Echoing a 2019 study done by Statistics Canada, those with the least severe disabilities had the most favourable views with almost half (46%) saying that companies did a good job.



Among those with the most severe disabilities, the same number (46%) instead ranked Canadian employers as either bad (33%) or terrible (13%).



Almost half (46%) of men living with disabilities responded that companies do a good or great job of supporting disabled employees. In contrast, only one-third (33%) of women said the same while another quarter (26%) said they didnt know.

(Re-)Assessing equity, diversity, and inclusion policies

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policies are often seen as an important vehicle for both promoting a healthy workplace and leveraging the skillsets of all team members. If EDI strategies are often associated with questions of race, sexuality, or gender expression, an article in the Harvard Business Review warned that only four per cent of companies considered disability to fall under the scope of such policies (note: the original report that contains this number appears to have been taken down).

In stark contrast, among respondents who reported having an EDI strategy in their workplace, three-in-five (61%) said that, as far as they knew, it contained provisions for supporting employees with disabilities.

When it comes to whether disability should be included in EDI strategies, eight-in-ten (78%) Canadians responded yes:

Part Three: Appetite for new initiatives

As conscious consumerism continues to grow, there have been a number of initiatives designed at helping consumers decide where they want to spend their dollars. These range from initiatives such as the fair trade movement, which seeks to ensure that small-scale farmers and agricultural workers get fairly compensated, to allowing businesses to tag themselves as LGBTQ-friendly on Google Maps.

Respondents seemed broadly open to the possibility of similar programs geared towards those living with disabilities. Three-in-five (62%) of all Canadians say they would be more likely to give their business to a company or organisation if they knew there were specific policies in place to support those living with disabilities:

For detailed results by severity of disability and proximity to disability, click here.

For detailed results by age and gender, click here.

About the Rick Hansen Foundation

The Rick Hansen Foundation (RHF) was established in 1988, following the completion of Rick Hansens Man In Motion World Tour. For nearly 30 years, RHF has worked to raise awareness, change attitudes, and remove barriers for people with disabilities. Visit www.rickhansen.com to learn more.

About ARI

The Angus Reid Institute (ARI) was founded in October 2014 by pollster and sociologist, Dr. Angus Reid. ARI is a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation established to advance education by commissioning, conducting and disseminating to the public accessible and impartial statistical data, research and policy analysis on economics, political science, philanthropy, public administration, domestic and international affairs and other socio-economic issues of importance to Canada and its world.




VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Due to a design flaw in Canadas equalization program, have not provinces will receive $8.9 billion in overpayments by 2025/26, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.



This design flaw means billions in additional equalization spending in the years ahead, despite the shrinking gap between richer and poorer provinces, said Ben Eisen, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and coauthor of Why Is Equalization Still Growing? 2021 Update.



Despite a shrinking gap in the incomes of richer and poorer provinces, the study shows that due to a design flaw in the equalization program, costs will continue to rise each year. Specifically, equalization spending is projected to reach an estimated $25.1 billion in 2025/26 compared to only $16.2 billion if the flawed rule didnt exist, an overpayment in excess of 50 per cent.

Moreover, under the flawed rule, projections show Ontario becoming a recipient or have not province by 2025/26 and receiving billions of extra dollars each year because of the programs design.

As the gap between richer and poorer provinces shrinks, policymakers should review the equalization program to ensure the formula is sensitive to changing fiscal and economic conditions, Eisen said.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Ben Eisen, Senior Fellow

Fraser Institute

To arrange media interviews or for more information, please contact:

Drue MacPherson, Media Relations, Fraser Institute

(604) 688-0221 ext. 721

drue.macpherson@fraserinstitute.org

Follow the Fraser Institute on Twitter | Like us on Facebook

The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institutes independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org
Dublin, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Final days to register for the "Data Integrity: FDA, WHO and EMA's Requirements" training course has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The objective of this two day seminar is to explore and define the necessary elements in the development and implementation of a Data Integrity program and how to maintain Quality Systems that minimise these issues.

This seminar is designed to assist in assuring that your organisation is maintaining itself within cGMP compliance.

Case studies to include Warning Letters will be discussed to illustrate the wide array of issues that continue to arise and how to find them within your organisation and your vendors before the regulators find them for you.

This seminar represents a great opportunity for a team from your Corporation to attend and mutually benefit each other.

Key Topics Covered:

DAY 01 (10:00 AM - 4:00 PM EDT)

10.00 AM: Session Start

Overview of Data Integrity - The issues Background Purpose/Objective

Definitions Key definitions within the subject of Data Integrity Data Integrity Metadata Audit Trail Systems

Determination of the Key Regulatory Requirements to maintain Data Integrity GMP requirements of Data Integrity 21 CFR 210, 211, and 212 - an explanation of the most common CFR sections

The Most Prevalent 2015 Observations Associated with Data Integrity A Review of Nineteen Observations Why do they Repeat Year after Year

A Summary of Data Integrity Issues within: In-coming Materials Manufacturing Laboratory Training Finished Products Documentation Product Release



DAY 02 (10:00 AM - 4:00 PM EDT)

Key Issues Associated with Data Integrity to include: Exclusion of Data from Decision Making Validation of Workflow Restriction to Computer System Access Data Integrity Remediation And Many more

Breakout for Case Studies

Discussion of Case Studies to include recommendations

The breathe of falsification to include laboratory, stability, microbial and batch testing - where did they go wrong? Hemofarm - Serbia - Microbiological Issues Unimark - Basic issues with Data Integrity Megafine Pharma Limited - Liquid Chromatography Micro Labs LTD - Laboratory Records

Why Import Alerts may share Early Warning Issues

Why do fraudulent records continue to appear - despite a history of Warning Letters

Avoiding Responsibility through Contract Manufacturing and Testing Facilities - Does this work?

Case Studies and recent Warning Letters

For more information about this training visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/37900h
DENVER, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DCP Midstream, LP (NYSE: DCP) (the Partnership) announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, DCP Midstream Operating, LP (the Operating Partnership), has commenced a public offering of $400 million aggregate principal amount of its senior notes due 2032 (the Senior Notes). The Senior Notes will be fully and unconditionally guaranteed by the Partnership.



The Operating Partnership intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to repay indebtedness under its revolving credit facility and for general partnership purposes.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Mizuho Securities USA LLC, RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., MUFG Securities Americas Inc. and TD Securities (USA) LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. PNC Capital Markets LLC, Regions Securities LLC, SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc. and U.S. Bancorp Investments, Inc. are acting as co-managers for the offering.

The Senior Notes are being offered and will be sold pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement that was previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). This offering is being made only by means of a base prospectus and related prospectus supplement.

Before you invest, you should read the preliminary prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus in the registration statement for more complete information about this offering. When available, copies of these documents may be obtained from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, Attn: Prospectus Department, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or by telephone at 1-866-803-9204.

You may also obtain these documents free of charge by visiting the SECs website at www.sec.gov.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities described herein, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or 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 jurisdiction.

DCP Midstream, LP (NYSE: DCP) is a Fortune 500 midstream master limited partnership headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with a diversified portfolio of gathering, processing, logistics and marketing assets. DCP is one of the largest natural gas liquids producers and marketers and one of the largest natural gas processors in the U.S. The owner of DCPs general partner is a joint venture between Enbridge and Phillips 66.

This press release includes forward-looking statements as defined under the federal securities laws, including statements regarding the intended use of offering proceeds and other aspects of the senior notes offering. Although management believes that expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given that such expectations will prove to be correct. In addition, these statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other assumptions that are difficult to predict and may be beyond the control of the Partnership or the Operating Partnership, including market conditions, customary offering closing conditions and other factors described in the base prospectus and accompanying prospectus supplement for the senior notes offering. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if underlying assumptions prove incorrect, the actual results of the Partnership or the Operating Partnership may vary materially from what management anticipated, estimated, projected or expected.

Investors are encouraged to closely consider the disclosures and risk factors contained in the Partnerships annual and quarterly reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in the base prospectus and accompanying prospectus supplement for the senior notes offering. The statements herein speak only as of the date of this press release. The Partnership and Operating Partnership undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

DCP Midstream Investor Relations:

Mike Fullman

(303) 605-1628

Source: DCP Midstream, LP
TORONTO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Compass Gold Corp. (TSX-V: CVB) (Compass or the Company) announces that it has completed the first diamond drilling program at the Tarabala prospect on its Sikasso Property in Southern Mali (Figure 2).



Highlights

Completed four diamond drill holes for a total of 520 m

Core is being logged for geological information and sampled for gold

Results for all drill holes are expected in 4-5 weeks



Compass CEO, Larry Phillips, commented, We have completed our planned diamond drilling at our Tarabala prospect. This drilling has focused on characterizing the gold mineralization previously identified in quartz veins by shallow air core and deeper reverse circulation drilling beneath the artisanal workings there. The core is currently being studied in preparation for sample selection, and the first assay results are expected in early December. If they are positive, our main 2,000 m reverse circulation drilling program will begin by late December.

Compass Exploration Manager, Dr. Madani Diallo, added, I am happy to report that we have intersected the specific structures that we have targeted with this deeper diamond drilling, which contain quartz veins with pyrite. The drill target is beneath an area with higher gold mineralization, that was identified previously with shallow soil geochemistry and shallow air core drilling. Now, we await the critical assay results that will determine the degree of gold mineralization present, which will help us to focus the location of the planned next phase of drilling on the 1,000 m long Tarabala prospect.

Figure 1: Summary drilling results on the Tarabala Trend and the location of the completed diamond drill holes.

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a95edc88-e9b8-4ff6-acbd-6493167c344c

Next Steps

The 520-m-diamond drilling program at the Tarabala prospect started on October 16th and was completed on November 3rd. Due to unsatisfactory core recovery from the top portion of one of these holes, an adjacent 40-m twin hole will be drilled shortly to provide a complete record of this profile. This drill program was aimed to determine the critical characteristics of the previously identified (See Compass news releases dated March 1st, March 16th, and May 18th, 2021) gold-bearing quartz veins (width, grade, orientation, and mineralogy) at depths of 60 to 120 m from the surface. Once the core has been logged and key structural measurements collected and interpreted, it will be assayed to determine the degree of mineralization. These laboratory results are expected in early December. All the information will be used to finalize the location of an additional 2,000 m of planned deep RC holes later in December, over the 1,000 m strike length of the Tarabala prospect.

Additional geochemical sampling and geophysical surveys are continuing on the other exploration permits within the Sankarani property.

Figure 2: Property map showing the location of the Tarabala prospect.

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4e356230-7260-4de6-b6a5-022fc225e34d

Technical Details

Three oriented diamond core holes at the Tarabala prospect were drilled on an azimuth of 270 (towards the west) and oriented one hole at 195 (SSW), all at dips of 55. Hole lengths varied from 78.7 m to 150 m. Three holes were designed to test mineralization associated with the main Tarabala Fault, and one hole to test potential mineralization interpreted to form at the intersection between the main Tarabala Fault and a smaller (and later) east-west trending fault. Drilling was performed by FOARACO (Mali). All logging was performed by Compass staff with the assistance of Dr. Karel Maly, PGeo, from Aurum Exploration Services. Compass staff will perform sampling, and samples will be analysed for gold at SGS (Bamako, Mali) by fire assay.

About Compass Gold Corp.

Compass, a public company incorporated into Ontario, is a Tier 2 issuer on the TSX- V. Through the 2017 acquisition of MGE and Malian subsidiaries, Compass holds gold exploration permits located in Mali that comprise the Sikasso Property. The exploration permits are located in three sites in southern Mali with a combined land holding of 867 sq. km. The Sikasso Property is located in the same region as several multi-million-ounce gold projects, including Morila, Syama, Kalana and Komana. The Companys Mali-based technical team, led in the field by Dr. Madani Diallo and under the supervision of Dr. Sandy Archibald, PGeo, is conducting the current exploration program. They are examining numerous anomalies first noted in Dr. Archibalds August 2017 National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report on the Sikasso Property, Southern Mali.

Qualified Person

This news release has been reviewed and approved by EurGeol. Dr. Sandy Archibald, PGeo, Compasss Technical Director, who is the Qualified Person for the technical information in this news release under National Instrument 43-101 standards.

ForwardLooking Information

This news release contains "forwardlooking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the Companys planned exploration work and management appointments. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forwardlooking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by such information. The statements in this news release are made as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forwardlooking information except as required by applicable law.

For further information please contact:

Compass Gold Corporation Compass Gold Corporation Larry Phillips  Pres. & CEO Greg Taylor  Dir. Investor Relations & Corporate Communications lphillips@compassgoldcorp.com gtaylor@compassgoldcorp.com T: +1 416-596-0996 X 302 T: +1 416-596-0996 X 301

Website: www.compassgoldcorp.com

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Body Collective, Austin's first trauma-informed wellness studio, will be holding a week-long Grand Opening event at its North Lamar studio starting Nov. 8 and running through Nov. 14. Grand Opening Week activities will include yoga and dance classes, a raffle for a free membership, and more. The studio is located at 5501 N Lamar Blvd C111 Austin, TX 78751.

During the Grand Opening Week, there will be opportunities to try a wide range of yoga and dance classes, attend dance socials, win a free membership, connect with the community, among other things.

"We started this venture two years ago with the goal of providing trauma-conscious wellness and community building opportunities for all bodies," said Jean Devlin, co-founder of Body Collective. "After an 18-month delay due to the pandemic, we're thrilled to be able to finally bring our vision for an inclusive, trauma-informed wellness space to the Austin community."

Founded by Jean Devlin and Lindsey Morrison in 2019, and originally scheduled to open in March 2020, Body Collective pivoted to provide online, on-demand content that was designed to be a support structure during the height of the pandemic. Now, the original vision of a movement and wellness space is finally coming to fruition.

"We created Body Collective to fill a gap that we saw in the wellness space," said Morrison. "Our mission with Body Collective is to create a diverse, inclusive, trauma-conscious wellness environment where bodies of every race, gender expression, sexual orientation, class, and age, are not only represented but celebrated."

To learn more about what Body Collective is building, visit austinbodycollective.com . To register for Grand Opening Week events, visit the Schedule .

About Body Collective

Body Collective is a female-founded, trauma-informed wellness studio. Our mission at Body Collective is to create a space in which we can offer the highest quality yoga, yoga therapy, dance, massage, and acupuncture to the Greater Austin community. Our goal is to ensure that every person who walks through our doors feels safe, welcomed, and accepted.

For more information, please contact Paige Sanders at (817) 304-3398 or paige@austinbodycollective.com.

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Image 1: Body Collective









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A l ong-time Safety Standdown supporter, Verdea has demonstrated exceptional safety leadership throughout his 25-year aviation career

Influential award recognizes exceptional efforts to improve aviation safety throughout the industry

Bombardiers Safety Standdown celebrating 25 years of aviation safety stewardship and education

MONTREAL, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nick W. Verdea, a Certified Aviation Manager (CAM) and Global Leadership Professional (GLP), has been named the 2021 winner of the Bombardier Safety Standdown Award, as selected by the Safety Standdown Advisory Council members. Verdea, Director of Aviation and Corporate Travel for The Williams Company in Tulsa, OK., is a long-time supporter and advocate of this highly influential event.

Verdea accepted the award on November 3, 2021, during the 25th annual Bombardier Safety Standdown event in Wichita, KS. The two-day, in-person safety gathering brought industry professionals together for enhanced learning opportunities, compelling workshops, presentations and more, laying the foundation for safety training and professional development. For a quarter of a century, Bombardier has led the industry in providing aviation professionals with critical knowledge-based aviation training and lifelong professional development opportunities.

The Bombardier Safety Standdown Award is presented annually to an aviation professional who has demonstrated exemplary dedication to improving aviation safety through the Safety Standdown principles of Learn, Apply, Share. Verdea was nominated for his leadership in aviation safety management over the course of his 25-year aviation career by Richard Westmoreland, Director of Aviation for First Horizon. At The Williams Company, Verdea oversees the daily operations and priorities of a high-performing team of 13 that operates corporate aircraft. A major part of his responsibilities is to execute and expertly manage the annual travel services budget with a compliance concentration on travel experience and cost containment. Verdeas commitment to safety excellence is admirable and this is clearly reflected in his many leadership roles over his career. He is a dedicated life-long learner and has an impeccable flying record of more than 13,000 accident-free hours in the cockpit.

On behalf of Bombardier, I wish to congratulate Nick Verdea for his outstanding career and unwavering commitment to Safety Standdown and to promoting aviation safety and professionalism at all levels of our industry for a quarter of a century, said longtime Bombardier executive, Andy Nureddin, who stewards the Safety Standdown program. Nick embodies precisely what the Safety Standdown Award stands for: celebrating individuals who are role models in the field and have made a real difference day-to-day. He is the ideal ambassador for our Safety Standdown mission.

Bombardiers Safety Standdown is one of the most comprehensive safety conferences in the industry. This years in-person event celebrated 25 years of safety stewardship and this years theme, Learn, Apply, Share reminds aviation professionals and organizations to learn new skills, apply them and share their knowledge to make an impact as a role model.

About Safety Standdown

Conceived in 1996 as a human factors safety-training event for the Learjet flight demonstration team, the conference quickly garnered a reputation for excellence beyond Bombardiers customer base. In 1999, in response to growing interest within the industry, Bombardier opened the seminar to all pilots. In 2010, Safety Standdown expanded beyond the seminars into a year-round global human factors program offering online resources. Since 1996, more than 10,000 corporate, commercial and military aviation professionals have attended Safety Standdown seminars around the world, live and through the webcast, including in Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, Switzerland and the USA.

About Bombardier

Bombardier is a global leader in aviation, creating innovative and game-changing planes. Our products and services provide world-class experiences that set new standards in passenger comfort, energy efficiency, reliability and safety.

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Bombardier is present in more than 12 countries including its production/engineering sites and its customer support network. The Corporation supports a worldwide fleet of over 4,900 aircraft in service with a wide variety of multinational corporations, charter and fractional ownership providers, governments and private individuals.

News and information is available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier .



Visit the Bombardier Business Aircraft website for more information on our industry-leading products and services.

Bombardier and Learjet are registered or unregistered trademarks of Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries.

For information

Matthew Nicholls

Bombardier

+1 514-243-8214

Matthew.Nicholls@aero.bombardier.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5720955a-d603-48bb-8597-9964e5b499e2
Dublin, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Microbial Air Sampler Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Product, Collection Technique, Connectivity, End Users, and Distribution Channel" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



According to this report the market is expected to grow from US$ 227.69 million in 2021 to US$ 402.17 million by 2028; it is estimated to register a CAGR of 8.5% from 2021 to 2028.

The report highlights trends prevailing in the market and factors driving its growth. The market growth is mainly attributed to factors such as growing usage of microbial air samplers in combating COVID-19 and increasing cases of food contamination by microbes. However, the concerns of high capital investment for setting up advanced labs hinders the market growth.



Nearly 50 million COVID-19 confirmed cases have already been reported worldwide, with over a million deaths, according to world health organization (WHO) in 2020. SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA has been detected in airborne material collected by air samplers positioned distal to COVID-19 patients. It has also been reported that microbial air sampling had a useful role in the etiologic agent of many bacterial respiratory infections. As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, technological applications and initiatives are developing to curb the spread of the disease. Anderson bioaerosol sampler was developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for sampling and identification of culturable microorganisms in workplaces.

A field guide for detecting biological agents in environments has also been recommended by the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). Even if people return to normalcy, there will remain a risk of infection. The safe reopening of public spaces such as schools and restaurants will require effective environmental air monitoring technology. Such methods will also help in the understanding and preventing infection among healthcare workers in hospitals. To combat disease spread, early warning, detection, or identification of air contamination are important. Many diseases caused by biological agents are highly contagious, and infected persons continue to spread the disease during this time lag, thereby increasing the disease's reach. All the aforementioned factors driving the microbial air samplers market.



Asia Pacific held the largest market share in 2021. In Asia Pacific, India is the largest market for microbial air sampler. The market growth in Asia Pacific is mainly attributed to factors such as increasing cases of COVID-19 and increasing cases of other respiratory diseases. However, the concerns of high cost of microbial air sampler products may hinders the market growth in Asia Pacific.



Aerosol Devices Inc., ORUM INTERNATIONAL, Aquaria Srl, Cantium Scientific Limited, Cherwell Laboratories, Multitech Enviro Analytical LLP, Spectrex Corp., Munro Instruments Limited, MERCK KGaA, and bioMerieux SA are among the leading companies operating in the microbial air sampler market.



Reasons to Buy

Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the Microbial Air Sampler Market.

Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.

The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Microbial Air Sampler Market, thereby allowing players across the value chain to develop effective long-term strategies.

Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.

Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.

Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin security interest with respect to client products, segmentation, pricing and distribution.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Global Microbial Air Sampler Market - Key Takeaways

3. Research Methodology



4. Microbial Air Sampler Market - Market Landscape

4.1 Overview

4.2 PEST Analysis

4.2.1 North America - PEST Analysis

4.2.2 Europe - PEST Analysis

4.2.3 Asia Pacific - PEST Analysis

4.2.4 Middle East and Africa - PEST Analysis

4.2.5 South and Central America (SCAM) - PEST Analysis

4.3 Experts Opinion



5. Microbial Air Sampler Market - Key Market Dynamics

5.1 Market Drivers

5.1.1 Growing Usage of Microbial Air Samplers in Combating COVID-19

5.1.2 Increasing Cases of Food Contamination by Microbes

5.2 Market Restraints

5.2.1 High Capital Investment for Setting Up Advanced Labs

5.3 Market Opportunities

5.3.1 Increase in Industrial Activities in Emerging Markets

5.4 Future Trends

5.4.1 Technological Innovations in Microbial Air Sampler Products

5.5 Impact analysis



6. Microbial Air Sampler Market - Global Analysis

6.1 Global Microbial Air Sampler Market Revenue Forecast and Analysis

6.2 Global Microbial Air Sampler Market, By Geography - Forecast and Analysis

6.3 Market Positioning of Key Players



7. Microbial Air Sampler Market Analysis - By Product

7.1 Overview

7.2 Microbial Air Sampler Market Revenue Share, by Product (2021 and 2028)

7.3 Portable Microbial Air Sampler

7.3.1 Overview

7.3.2 Portable Microbial Air Sampler: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.4 Desktop Microbial Air Sampler

7.4.1 Overview

7.4.2 Desktop Microbial Air Sampler: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.5 Accessories

7.5.1 Overview

7.5.2 Accessories: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



8. Microbial Air Sampler Market Analysis - By Collection Technique

8.1 Overview

8.2 Microbial Air Sampler Market, by Collection Technique 2021 & 2028 (%)

8.3 Impact Air Sampler

8.3.1 Overview

8.3.2 Impact Air Sampler: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.4 Impinge Air Sampler

8.4.1 Overview

8.4.2 Impinge Air Sampler: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.5 Surface Air Sampler

8.5.1 Overview

8.5.2 Surface Air Sampler: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.6 Compressed Air Sampler

8.6.1 Overview

8.6.2 Compressed Air Sampler: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.7 Real-Time Samplers

8.7.1 Overview

8.7.2 Real-Time Samplers: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.8 Others

8.8.1 Overview

8.8.2 Others: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



9. Microbial Air Sampler Market Analysis - By End User

9.1 Overview

9.2 Microbial Air Sampler Market Revenue Share, by End User (2021 and 2028)

9.3 Research and Academic Institutes

9.3.1 Overview

9.3.2 Research and Academic Institutes: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

9.4 Hospitals and Clinics

9.4.1 Overview

9.4.2 Hospitals and Clinics: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

9.5 Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies

9.5.1 Overview

9.5.2 Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

9.6 Food and Beverage

9.6.1 Overview

9.6.2 Food and Beverage: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

9.7 Personal Care Industries

9.7.1 Overview

9.7.2 Personal Care Industries: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

9.8 Others

9.8.1 Overview

9.8.2 Others: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



10. Microbial Air Sampler Market Analysis - By Distribution Channel

10.1 Overview

10.2 Microbial Air Sampler Market Revenue Share, by Distribution Channel (2021 and 2028)

10.3 Direct Tender

10.3.1 Overview

10.3.2 Direct Tender: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

10.4 Retail Sales

10.4.1 Overview

10.4.2 Retail Sales: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

10.5 Third Party Distributors

10.5.1 Overview

10.5.2 Third-Party Distributor: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

10.6 Others

10.6.1 Overview

10.6.2 Others: Microbial Air Sampler Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



11. Global Microbial Air Sampler Market - Geographic Analysis

12. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Microbial Air Sampler Market



13. Microbial Air Sampler Market - Industry Landscape

13.1 Overview

13.2 Growth Strategies Done by the Companies in the Market, (%)

13.3 Organic Developments

13.3.1 Overview

13.4 Inorganic Developments

13.4.1 Overview



14. Company Profiles

14.1 Aerosol Devices Inc.

14.1.1 Key Facts

14.1.2 Business Description

14.1.3 Products and Services

14.1.4 Financial Overview

14.1.5 SWOT Analysis

14.1.6 Key Developments

14.2 Orum International

14.2.1 Key Facts

14.2.2 Business Description

14.2.3 Products and Services

14.2.4 Financial Overview

14.2.5 SWOT Analysis

14.3 Aquaria Srl

14.3.1 Key Facts

14.3.2 Business Description

14.3.3 Products and Services

14.3.4 Financial Overview

14.3.5 SWOT Analysis

14.3.6 Key Developments

14.4 Cantium Scientific Limited

14.4.1 Key Facts

14.4.2 Business Description

14.4.3 Products and Services

14.4.4 Financial Overview

14.4.5 SWOT Analysis

14.4.6 Key Developments

14.5 Cherwell Laboratories

14.5.1 Key Facts

14.5.2 Business Description

14.5.3 Products and Services

14.5.4 Financial Overview

14.5.5 SWOT Analysis

14.5.6 Key Developments

14.6 Multitech Enviro Analytical LLP

14.6.1 Key Facts

14.6.2 Business Description

14.6.3 Products and Services

14.6.4 Financial Overview

14.6.5 SWOT Analysis

14.6.6 Key Developments

14.7 Spectrex Corp.

14.7.1 Key Facts

14.7.2 Business Description

14.7.3 Products and Services

14.7.4 Financial Overview

14.7.5 SWOT Analysis

14.7.6 Key Developments

14.8 Munro Instruments Limited

14.8.1 Key Facts

14.8.2 Business Description

14.8.3 Products and Services

14.8.4 Financial Overview

14.8.5 SWOT Analysis

14.8.6 Key Developments

14.9 Merck KGaA

14.9.1 Key Facts

14.9.2 Business Description

14.9.3 Products and Services

14.9.4 Financial Overview

14.9.5 SWOT Analysis

14.9.6 Key Developments

14.10 bioMerieux SA

14.10.1 Key Facts

14.10.2 Business Description

14.10.3 Products and Services

14.10.4 Financial Overview

14.10.5 SWOT Analysis

14.10.6 Key Developments



15. Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/w0w8d3
ROCKVILLE, Md., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The US Navy has awarded a new contract to Global Management Systems, Inc. (GMSI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Dinocrates Group LLC, for its SeaPort Next Generation (SeaPort-NxG) contract vehicle. The multiple-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract holds a total value of $7.5 billion and includes a five-year base period with one five-year option. The contract will allow GMSI to compete for individual task orders for the US Navy and the US Marine Corps.



SeaPort-NxG enables acquisition support services for the US Navy and Marine Corps in 23 functional areas including engineering and program management. Service examples include system engineering; software development, programming, telecommunications, network and engineering support; interoperability, test and evaluation and trials support; research and development; and services to support financial analysis, quality assurance, analytical and organizational assessment, logistics, information system development, information assurance and Information Technology (IT) to achieve the US Navys mission objectives.

We are excited about the opportunities within this contract vehicle, said Mike Schaefer, GMSIs President and former US Naval Aviator. SeaPort-NxG will enable GMSI to expand our support of the US Navy with leading-edge technology and advanced information support services around the world and at home. GMSI doesnt just deliver effective operations. We deliver peace of mind. GMSI has proudly served the military, civilian and intelligence agencies since 1988.

About GMSI

GMSI provides innovative mission-critical enterprise solutions to the US Federal Government. Over the past 30 years, GMSI has successfully delivered on over 850 task orders valued over $250 million in support of enterprise modernization efforts. Our successful approach to delivering these services has been built on a foundation of service, performance, and industry leading IT thought leadership. https://gmsi.com/




BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Freeway Honda (Victory Automotive Group) will host an event on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 5-6, with proceeds going to the Ronald McDonald House and Sickle Cell Foundation charities. During the two-day "Cuts for Kids" event, haircuts will be $5 from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Freeway Honda's goal is to provide 1,000 haircuts by close of business on Saturday.

Freeway Honda (Victory Automotive Group) strives to be more than a car company and is committed to making a difference in the community by supporting all families  especially those who need to stay close to their hospitalized child. Ronald McDonald House Charities supports this goal by providing affordable housing for families who have children in the hospital. Ronald McDonald House Charities offers its services in over 64 countries and provides more than 1.4 million overnight stays each year. Its assistance helps families save over $443 million in lodging and meal expenses.

Similarly, the Sickle Cell Foundation is devoted to helping people who are struggling with sickle cell disease. The disease, which is generally diagnosed at a young age, affects around 100,000 Americans. It occurs in about one out of every 365 Black births.

Please note that 100% of the proceeds and donations for "Cuts for Kids" will go to Ronald McDonald House and Sickle Cell Foundation. In support of this event, all of Birmingham's premier food trucks will be onsite Saturday, Nov. 6: Fat Charles BBQ, Southern Snow Shaved Ice, A Dab Of This and A Dab Of That, Lil Bougie Foodie, Lemonade Junkeez, Coco Crabs, KJ Elegant Pastries, Big Doon's BBQ, Whole Latte Drip, Terrific Treatz, and Newborn's BBQ.

Freeway Honda is also excited to celebrate the kick-off of its partnership with Lyft and its Service Department. While people work, live and play, Freeway Honda's Certified Technicians will take care of their vehicle (any make and any model). Customers can simply drop vehicles at Freeway Honda and take a free Lyft  on the dealership  to their next destination. When their vehicle is finished, the customer can then take a complimentary Lyft back to the dealership.

For questions or additional information, please reach out to General Manager Marion Cain at 205-668-5416 or marion.cain@freewayhondaal.com .

As always, Freeway Honda is committed to providing the safest event possible for the community. This means the dealership will be implementing all CDC guidelines and will also be providing hand sanitizer and masks, as well as gloves, for everyone who attends. Freeway Honda of Birmingham can't wait to see everyone there.

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PITTSBURG, Kan., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LimeLight Marketing, a digital marketing company that specializes in branding, websites, digital advertising, SEO and social media marketing, has been named 2021 Kansas Woman-Owned Business Professional Service Firm of the Year by the Kansas Department of Commerce, Office of Minority & Women Business Development. The organization spotlights outstanding achievements of women-owned businesses across various industries.



Im so proud to represent women-owned businesses among this prestigious group of entrepreneurs in the state of Kansas, said LimeLight Owner and President Brandee Johnson. This honor helps to elevate the impact of LimeLights work and highlights our mission to relentlessly pursue our passion to be the best at what we do.

Brandee started LimeLight in 2015, focusing on digital marketing. Today, the team has grown to more than 20  including in-office and remote experts in development, paid media, SEO, UX, UI, branding, and more  specializing in ecommerce for clientele across the country.

As a native Kansan, Brandee has valued growing her business from Pittsburg, helping clients and employees in the area, while also giving back to the local community through various charities and local organizations.

Building and growing a women-owned business within a small community in Kansas shines light on a truth: when we embrace the idea that we can pursue big things in life and we have passion and audacity, we can create uncommon outcomes, she said. Its so important that when young girls and women look at the leaders in our community, they see versions of themselves and have confidence to chase their biggest dreams.

LimeLight was recognized at the Minority Enterprise Development Award Luncheon on October 20, 2021, in Topeka, Kansas.

Clients of LimeLight include KEY Apparel, Russell Cellular, Backyard Discovery, Creative Candles, Progressive Products, and Architecture Woodworking Institute among others.

About LimeLight

Specializing in ecommerce and providing the full range of digital marketing services, LimeLight offers everything from website development and design to paid media strategies, branding, social, SEO, and more. The company is ranked as one of the top 10 Kansas City digital marketing firms and inbound marketing agencies. For more information, visit www.limelightmarketing.com .

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/993d1f9c-7af7-427f-89a2-f2c99a40f16a
KUALA Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following the strategic investment of Huobi Ventures and 20 other prominent crypto VCs, Torum SocialFi platform is excited to announce that the project has secured a strategic investment from KuCoin Labs, the $50M incubator and research arm of KuCoin.

The Torum KuCoin Ecosystem

Torum is a SocialFi Metaverse ecosystem that is specially designed to connect cryptocurrency users and projects. The Web 3.0 ecosystem is built with a social media platform with over 120,000 users at its core, integrated with an interactive yield farming platform, an NFT marketplace, and lastly the world's first PFP Metaverse identity - Torum Avatar NFT.

Everything started when Torum announced the ambition to expand into the Metaverse and NFT on 27th September 2021. The SocialFi Metaverse concept has caught the eye of KuCoin Labs, which led to intensive meetings and follow-up calls between the two parties and lastly the strategic investment on Torum.

Lou, Head of KuCoin Labs stated:

"The beauty of Metaverse lies in its diversity. Social, Avatars, NFT collections, GameFi - Metaverse is going to change the world as we see it. This is merely the tip of the iceberg, and we look forward to supporting Torum's vision to build a SocialFi Metaverse for the crypto users.''

Ecosystem Expansion

As part of this strategic investment, Torum will be building an immersive and interactive SocialFi Metaverse ecosystem, where cryptocurrency users around the world can access Social, Decentralized Finance, NFT and Metaverse all in one place.

Yi Feng Go, CEO, and founder of Torum stated:

"This round is a major step towards the upcoming Metaverse revolution. It doesn't matter if you are a Bitcoin maximalist, DeFi player, altcoin trader or NFT artist. This SocialFi Metaverse is our promise of creating an open, safe and interconnected world for everyone."

The partnership with KuCoin Labs will empower Torum with the connection to exclusive partners and access to premium services (blockchain technical support, legal advice, etc) that are within the reach of the KuCoin ecosystem to focus on the development of the SocialFi Metaverse.

About KuCoin Labs

Initially founded as the KuCoin Investment and Incubation Program in May 2018, KuCoin Labs is the investment and research force of the KuCoin ecosystem. With a team of research and market experts, KuCoin Labs diversifies and intensifies investments into early-stage projects, ecosystems, and communities, empowering BUIDLers to achieve sustainable growth and success in the decentralized world.

About Torum

Torum is the world's largest SocialFi Metaverse ecosystem that is specially designed for cryptocurrency users and projects. The Web3.0 ecosystem is built on a social media platform, coupled with a yield farming platform for DeFi players, an NFT marketplace for crypto artists and Avatar NFT for Metaverse enthusiasts.

Torum Socials

Twitter | Telegram | Discord | Medium | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit

Media Contact Details

Contact Name: Jayson Tan

Contact Email: hello@torum.com

Torum is the source of this content. This Press Release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

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ATLANTA, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cox Media Group (CMG) has announced that Chris Eagan has been named VP of Audience and Operations, CMG Radio effective immediately. In this role Eagan will lead the overarching programming strategy, audience development, and multiplatform distribution for CMG Radio. He will also lead the CMG Digital Content team and partnerships to drive innovation for CMG Radio.

Eagan previously served as Senior Director of Operations for CMG Atlanta Radio, where he led the continued evolution of operations, brand presence, and programming for CMG Atlanta radios top-rated brands B98.5 (WSB-FM), News Talk WSB (WSB-AM), 97-1 The River (WSRV-FM), and Kiss 104.1 (WALR-FM).



Eagan joined Cox Media Group in 2008 as the program director at WEZN. In 2012, he assumed the role of director of branding and programming, responsible for on-air programming for WSB-FM and WSRV-FM in Atlanta. He also provided expert consultation with six of CMGs radio markets as AC/Hot AC Format Leader to achieve target ratings in the adult contemporary brand.



There is nothing we love more than being able to promote internal talent to fill crucial roles such as this one, said Rob Babin, SVP-Head of Radio. Chris is an excellent leader who has demonstrated continued success in every role he has held at CMG. He has the unique ability to combine strategic vision, team alignment, and operational execution leading to successful outcomes. His experience partnering across CMG divisions and partners will be a tremendous asset to our team.



Jaleigh Long, VP and General Manager of Atlanta radio added, Eagan has been instrumental in recruiting top talent and connecting our premiere brands with the Atlanta audience for the past nine years. Its remarkable to have him in this role to make a greater impact across CMG.



A graduate of Emerson College, Eagan began his radio career holding various positions in Boston, Mass. and in Providence, R.I.



This is an exciting time for our industry and our company, and I am honored to be tapped for this role, said Eagan. I look forward to working with our markets on further enhancing our award-winning radio brands and looking to the future for new partnerships and areas where we can grow our audiences.



About Cox Media Group

Cox Media Group, Inc. (CMG) is an industry-leading media company with dominant brands, award-winning content, and exceptional people. CMG provides valuable local content to viewers in the communities in which it serves. The company's operations primarily include 33 high-quality, market-leading television stations in 20 markets, 54 top-performing radio stations delivering all genres of content in 11 markets, and numerous streaming and digital platforms. CMG's portfolio includes primary affiliates of ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and MyNetworkTV, as well as several valuable news and independent stations. Additionally, the company also offers a full suite of national, regional, local and digital advertising services with CMG Local Solutions, CoxReps and Gamut. For more information about CMG, visit www.coxmediagroup.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/eafa4f0e-9ba4-4a13-a470-7dfbdb6a17da
HIGHLIGHTS



Novo has identified multiple discrete untested aeromagnetic anomalies with magnetic characteristics comparable to the Hemi-style gold-bearing sanukitoid intrusions being developed by De Grey Mining Ltd. ( De Grey ) (ASX: DEG).

) (ASX: DEG). Novos extensive Pilbara land package includes 216 km 2 of highly prospective yet under-explored Mallina Basin geology across a significant NE trending mineralized corridor potentially extending to De Greys Hemi gold discovery (Figure 1).

of highly prospective yet under-explored Mallina Basin geology across a significant NE trending mineralized corridor potentially extending to De Greys Hemi gold discovery (Figure 1). Review of historical exploration has defined two large (> 1 km strike) coincident high-order Au-As-Sb soil anomalies along the structural corridor in the vicinity of the Becher epithermal system.

Reconnaissance drilling undertaken by another issuer in 1997 (20 x 200 m) within the Au-As-Sb anomalous zones intersected up to 4.38 g/t Au. This information has not been verified by Novo and is not necessarily representative of mineralization throughout the Egina project.

Exploration planned for early 2022 includes high-resolution aeromagnetics, regolith and basement mapping, grid soil sampling and drilling to test these priority targets.



Figure 1 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/54d57cee-80e2-4930-b584-df87b4dd99e8

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novo Resources Corp. (Novo or the Company) (TSX: NVO, NVO.WT & NVO.WT.A) (OTCQX: NSRPF) is pleased to announce that it has identified a series of new targets in the northern sector of the Egina project centred on exploration licence 47/3673 (Figure 2). These newly identified targets are located within a broad NE-trending structural corridor which forms part of a network of shear zones and sanukitoid intrusive centres that host De Greys recent Hemi discovery1. Hemi is one of Australias recent major gold discoveries, hidden under 20 to 30 m of transported cover.

The new targets include multiple discrete magnetic targets identified from detailed aeromagnetic interpretation, interpreted to represent potential intrusive bodies under cover, and extensive Au-As-Sb soil anomalies in the vicinity of the epithermal vein system at Becher.

Figure 2 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/af5d3d06-2ab9-4d90-9b95-68ca257c4026

Exploration licence 47/3673 has few outcrops (approximately 10% of the tenement contains outcrop and subcrop) and is essentially covered by colluvial and alluvial material, calcrete and several ridges of aeolian sand dunes. The large (> 1 km long) coincident Au-As-Sb soil geochemical anomalies are restricted to areas of weathered outcrop and subcrop only, and thus the bedrock targets remain open under transported cover for several kilometres to the WSW and ENE.

Previous reconnaissance inclined rotary air blast (RAB) drilling by Resolute Mining Limited (Resolute) (ASX: RSG) in 1997 across the northern Becher Au-As-Sb anomaly yielded encouraging results including multiple gold assays of greater than 1 g/t Au (Figure 3) including:

3m @ 3.68 g/t Au from 25m (LGRB306) including 1m @ 4.38 g/t Au from 25m

1m @ 1.04 g/t Au from 30m (LGRB294)

1m @ 1.63 g/t Au from 26m (LGRB299)

2m @ 1.09 g/t Au from 32m (LGRB300)

Table 1 below provides a list of location information plus significant intersections from RAB drilling.

This historical data was disclosed in annual exploration reports (Reports) filed by Resolute on the Western Australian Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safetys (DMIRS) website in 1997. The technical information contained in Table 1 has been extracted from the Reports. Reference should be made to the Reports which are available on DMIRS website (https://geodocs.dmirs.wa.gov.au/Web/documentlist/10/Report_Ref/A55647).

A qualified person has not verified the technical information contained in the Reports, and Novo is unaware of the existence of any technical report prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects or the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves in connection with the technical information contained in the Reports. Novo is unable to comment on the reliability of the technical information contained in the Reports and therefore, reliance should not be placed on such technical information.

Figure 3 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/834c16b4-769b-4a65-9ca4-8a8b14d4be26

Novos exploration team has been diligently reviewing the northern portion of its Egina land holdings for prospectivity for Hemi-type discoveries, commented Dr. Quinton Hennigh, Non-Executive Co-Chairman and a director of Novo. Numerous potential intrusive centers resembling sanukitoids like those at Hemi exist along a NE trending corridor extending from Novos tenure to Hemi. At Becher, a coincident Au-As-Sb soil anomaly is associated with an interpreted cluster of such intrusions. Novo plans to undertake high-resolution aeromagnetics, regolith and basement mapping and grid soil sampling in preparation for drilling in 2022.

1 Refer to De Greys public disclosure materials which are available at https://degreymining.com.au/

2022 Egina Basement Gold Program

Historical data analysis is ongoing at Egina, with further geophysical and structural interpretation to aid in drill targeting to be completed early in 2022. Drilling is planned to test intrusive targets defined by high-resolution aeromagnetics, the extensive, coincident Au-As-Sb soil anomalies at Becher and targets defined by historic RAB drilling.

Gold analyses from drilling programs will be completed by PhotonAssay through the Intertek Laboratory in Perth, where Novo are currently receiving 7 - 9 day turnaround times for gold assay.

QP STATEMENT

Dr. Quinton Hennigh (P.Geo.) is the qualified person, as defined under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, responsible for, and having reviewed and approved, the technical information contained in this news release other than the technical information extracted from the Reports. Dr. Hennigh is the non-executive co-chairman and a director of Novo.

About Novo

Novo operates its flagship Beatons Creek gold project while exploring and developing its prospective land package covering approximately 13,250 square kilometres in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. In addition to the Companys primary focus, Novo seeks to leverage its internal geological expertise to deliver value-accretive opportunities to its shareholders. For more information, please contact Leo Karabelas at (416) 543-3120 or e-mail leo@novoresources.com.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors,

Novo Resources Corp.

 Michael Spreadborough 

Michael Spreadborough

Executive Co-Chairman

Forward-looking information

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information (within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation) including, without limitation, planned exploration activities and the expected timing of receipt of assay results. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, without limitation, customary risks of the resource industry and the risk factors identified in Novos managements discussion and analysis for the six months ended June 30, 2021, which is available under Novos profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date those statements are made. Except as required by applicable law, Novo assumes no obligation to update or to publicly announce the results of any change to any forward-looking statement contained or incorporated by reference herein to reflect actual results, future events or developments, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting the forward-looking statements. If Novo updates any forward-looking statement(s), no inference should be drawn that the Company will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements.

Analytic Methodology (as set out in the Reports)

Soil samples were taken as 2kg samples sieved to -2mm fraction and submitted to Genalysis Laboratory Services, Perth, for the following analysis:

Au (B/ETA 1 ppb)

Cu (B/AAS 1 ppm)

As (B/AAS 5 ppm)

Sb (B/ AAS 1 ppm)

Original 4m RAB composites were sampled using a PVC spear and sent to Genalysis Laboratory Services, Perth for the following analysis:

Au (B/AAS 0.01 ppm)

As (B/AAS 5 ppm)

Sb (B/AAS 1 ppm)

Cu (B/AAS 1 ppm)

Follow-up RAB intervals were taken as single metre splits from the 4m composites and submitted to Analabs, Welshpool for gold (fire assay 0.01 ppm).

Table 1: Significant intercept table for historical single metre split RAB results.
Dublin, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Healthcare Smart Beds Market By Application (Hospitals, Outpatient Clinics, Medical Nursing Homes and Medical Laboratory and Research), By Regional Outlook, COVID-19 Impact Analysis Report and Forecast, 2021 - 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Healthcare Smart Beds Market size is expected to reach $880.9 Million by 2027, rising at a market growth of 8.8% CAGR during the forecast period.

Smart beds and mattresses are easily movable & flexible and are totally different from traditional bed functionality. To provide better facilities like comfort, sleep, and health, a variety of technology applications are fixed in the healthcare smart beds.

These beds comprise built-in biometric sensors, which help in tracking heart rate, breathing pattern, sleep duration, and body movement while sleeping. Smart beds are capable to study data based on the information of the user's sleep quality. This examined data is later utilized by smart beds to adjust themselves to the changing positions at the time when the patient is sleeping. Many beds are also fixed with anti-snoring devices. The patient has the choice to connect with their most preferred digital application to manage the temperature and scheduled exercise time. Many of the smart beds can be operated by phones while some of the smart beds are unmanageable by phones for which patients need to get up and change the adjustments & settings.

The growth of the healthcare smart beds market is witnessing a significant surge in its demand from the hospital sector as they are helpful in monitoring the patients from distant locations. In addition, the healthcare sector of the emerging nations is investing a huge amount for deploying smart beds, which is giving rise to the demand for healthcare smart beds. Additionally, the growing number of aging population is accountable to contribute to the demand for smart beds and mattresses in several big hospitals. In the evolving world, hospitals are choosing smart beds instead of traditional beds as they are able to examine data of the patient, which helps in enhancing the quality of care provided to the patient.

COVID-19 Impact Analysis

The negative impact of COVID-19 is witnessed across all industries. The pandemic compelled people to stay at their homes as it was a rapidly spreading virus. Also, governments across the world imposed stringent regulations, which restricted the movement. Various industries witnessed a slowdown in the manufacturing and productivity of the products. In addition, the supply chain of products was disrupted as traveling was banned in most of the countries.

Besides this, significant growth was seen in the demand for essential products and medical products & devices. Similarly, the demand for healthcare smart beds witnessed gradual growth in its demand. Around the world, many people were infected by COVID-19 due to which, hospitals were overburdened with an increased number of patients, which has also expanded the need for smart beds during the pandemic. Moreover, it is anticipated that the demand for healthcare smart beds will rapidly rise around the world in the upcoming years.

Market Growth Factors:

Growing prevalence of chronic diseases

The cases of chronic diseases are constantly rising across the world. The major factors contributing to surging the common and costly long-term health problems are changes in societal behavior and an aging population. Also, the middle class is growing due to which regions are getting urbanized and people are inclining towards a sedentary lifestyle. This has resulted in an increasing rate of obesity and cases of diseases like diabetes.

Integration of latest technology with smart beds

Latest scientific achievements and technology improvements have introduced a number of new & advanced medical devices, aided with highly developed embedded-control functions and interactivity. Healthcare smart beds comprise integrated devices for patient assistance, care, and monitoring, based on an inclusive, multidisciplinary design approach. Smart beds are integrated into the healthcare system and comprise a unique opportunity in enabling more efficient efforts for caregivers and more responsive environments for patients.

Market Restraining Factor:

The high production cost of healthcare smart beds

The sales of healthcare smart beds are still at a low rate due to which, the demand for smart beds is declining. Various developing and underdeveloped nations do not have a robust economy, this is the major factor hampering the growth of the healthcare smart beds market. Smart beds are embedded with a lot of the latest technologies, sensors, automation devices, artificial intelligence, real-time system devices, and others that help in better treatment procedures but this integration leads to an increase in the cost of the smart beds.

Application Outlook

Based on Application, the market is segmented into Hospitals, Outpatient Clinics, Medical Nursing Homes and Medical Laboratory and Research. The hospitals segment acquired the maximum revenue share of the market in 2020. This surge in the segment is witnessed due to the growing number of chronic diseases like kidney failure, heart diseases, and cancer, which is giving rise to the number of patients.

Regional Outlook

Based on Regions, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, Middle East & Africa. North America acquired the largest revenue share in 2020. Factor such as the increased usage of healthcare smart beds for long-term or acute care facilities are responsible for the massive share of the regional market. Healthcare Smart beds assist medical teams and professionals by providing continuous monitoring of the patient's health in a non-invasive way. In addition, these beds automatically transfer the real-time data through a wireless network, which enables the doctor to review the data and monitor the patient's vitals in real-time, this helps in increasing the safety of the patient.

The market research report covers the analysis of key stake holders of the market. Key companies profiled in the report include Stryker Corporation, Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., Invacare Corporation (Johnson & Johnson Private Limited), Paramount Bed Co., Ltd. (Paramount Bed Holdings Co., Ltd.), LINET spol. s r.o. (WIBO Holdings GmbH), Joerns Healthcare LLC, Stiegelmeyer GmbH & Co. KG (Joh. Stiegelmeyer & Co. GmbH), Arjo AB, Volker GmbH, and Favero Health Projects SpA.

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Market Scope & Methodology



Chapter 2. Market Overview

2.1 Introduction

2.1.1 Overview

2.1.1.1 COVID-19 impact

2.1.1.2 Market composition and scenario

2.2 Key Factors Impacting the Market

2.2.1 Market Drivers

2.2.2 Market Restraints



Chapter 3. Global Healthcare Smart Beds Market by Application

3.1 Global Hospitals Market by Region

3.2 Global Outpatient Clinics Market by Region

3.3 Global Medical Nursing Homes Market by Region

3.4 Global Medical Laboratory and Research Market by Region



Chapter 4. Global Healthcare Smart Beds Market by Region



Chapter 5. Company Profiles

5.1 Stryker Corporation

5.1.1 Company Overview

5.1.2 Financial Analysis

5.1.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis

5.1.4 Research & Development Expense

5.2 Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc.

5.2.3 Segmental and Regional Analysis

5.2.5 Recent strategies and developments

5.3 Invacare Corporation (Johnson & Johnson Private Limited)

5.3.3 Regional Analysis

5.4 Paramount Bed Co., Ltd. (Paramount Bed Holdings Co., Ltd.)

5.5 L I N E T spol. s r.o. (WIBO Holdings GmbH)

5.5.2 Recent strategies and developments:

5.5.2.1 Partnerships, Collaborations, and Agreements:

5.5.2.2 Product Launches and Product Expansions:

5.5.2.3 Acquisition and Mergers:

5.6 Joerns Healthcare LLC

5.6.1 Company Overview

5.6.2 Recent strategies and developments:

5.6.2.1 Product Launches and Product Expansions:

5.7 Stiegelmeyer GmbH & Co. KG (Joh. Stiegelmeyer & Co. GmbH)

5.7.1 Company Overview

5.8 Arjo AB

5.8.1 Company Overview

5.8.2 Financial Analysis

5.8.3 Regional Analysis

5.8.4 Research & Development Expenses

5.9 Volker GmbH

5.9.1 Company Overview

5.10. Favero Health Projects SpA

5.10.1 Company Overview



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/tykb5n
English Lithuanian

AB Ignitis grupe (hereinafter  the Group) informs that on 4 November 2021 the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania adopted amendments to the Law on Electricity of the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter  LoE) and the Law on Natural Gas of the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter  LoNG), which change the legal regulation of the supply of natural gas as well as public and independent supply of electricity to B2C customers. UAB Ignitis, a Customers & Solutions company controlled by the Group, (hereinafter  the Company or Ignitis) carries out public supply, independent supply of electricity and supply of natural gas to private customers, thus such legislation amendments will impact the activities of the segment.



The main changes to LoE and LonG influenced by the ongoing price increase in energy commodities, including electricity and gas, in the global market:

1. the amendments to LoE extend the deadline of stage II of the market liberalisation by half a year to 1 July 2022 (from 1 January 2022) and establish procedures of informing the consumers related to the change. The final electricity market liberalisation deadline remains unchanged, and the liberalisation process shall be implemented by 1 January 2023;

2. the amendments to LoE provide an opportunity for the Company to apply to National Energy Regulatory Council (hereinafter  NERC) and propose to NERC to adopt the decision not to recognise a part of electricity purchase price when determining price caps for public supply of electricity, and to spread out the difference between the actual price and the price determined by NERC throughout the period until 31 December 2027 by including an additional component to the price of the transfer services. This opportunity would be available to the Company if the public electricity price for private customers would increase by more than 40%. LoE provides that the Company would be compensated for the borrowing costs experienced due to the amortisation;

3. the amendments to LoNG establishes the Company an opportunity to propose NERC to adopt a decision regarding the reduction of the forecasted natural gas (product) prices and to spread out the difference from the unrecognised part, due to income that was not actually received or was exceeded, throughout a period of 5 years by including an additional component to the price of natural gas distribution services applied to households. Natural gas supply companies may submit such proposals to NERC if the difference between the natural gas tariff for private customers estimated by the natural gas supplier and the currently effective tariff for private customers is more than 40%. LoNG provides that the Company would be compensated for the borrowing costs experienced during the amortisation.

According to the assessment of the Group, the amendments to LoE and LoNG will not have a significant impact on the activities and performance of the Group but will ensure the interests of the consumers because postponing the deadline of stage II of the market liberalisation will provide consumers an opportunity to make decisions in line with their interests over a longer period. The extended deadline of stage II of electricity market liberalisation and the respective delay in stage II deregulation will reduce the estimated independent supply sales of the Company for the first half of 2022. The Company will not experience performance losses due to the amendments to LoE and LoNG related to reducing the electricity and natural gas purchase price by spreading out the differences between the actual cost of commodities and the approved tariffs for private customers over the future periods. Even though the borrowing costs will be compensated, the amendments to LoE and LoNG will lead to a significant increase of debt level of the Company, which will gradually decrease until 2027. The Group has already informed about the intent of the Company to conclude a short-term loan agreement. Depending on the prices of commodities in the future, the Company may evaluate additional financing alternatives.

The legislation amendments will also have to be signed by the President of the Republic of Lithuania. The Group will not inform separately about the signing and entry into force of the legislation, unless the legislation will not be signed by the President of the Republic of Lithuania.





For more information please contact:



Arturas Ketlerius

Head of Public Relations at Ignitis Group

arturas.ketlerius@ignitis.lt

+370 620 76076




ARLINGTON, VA, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Aluminum Association, which represents the majority of aluminum production and jobs in the United States, today called on the Biden administration to redouble efforts to promote strong trade enforcement and eliminate massive industrial subsidies that drive excess capacity in the Chinese aluminum sector as it moves ahead on future negotiations around Section 232 tariffs. During a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai today, the association also asked the administration to push the European Commission to reimplement recently suspended tariffs on unfairly dumped Chinese flat-rolled aluminum.

In a joint statement announcing the replacement of Section 232 tariffs on aluminum imports from the European Union with a tariff rate quota (TRQ), the parties committed to closely monitor trade flows and find solutions and address non-market excess capacity in the global steel and aluminum sectors.

While the Aluminum Association continues to disagree with a TRQ as a replacement for Section 232 tariffs, we were pleased to see the administration commit to tackling unfair trade together with our allies. One easy way to demonstrate this commitment would be for the European Commission to reimplement tariffs on unfairly traded Chinese aluminum, said Ryan Olsen, vice president of market growth & development at the Aluminum Association. Fully 97 percent of the more than 166,000 direct aluminum industry jobs in the U.S. are in mid-and-downstream production and processing. These American workers depend on an integrated supply chain that allows for fair trade among allies to meet demand and support growth. And while we fully support efforts to spur meaningful investment in domestic primary aluminum production, it is simply a fact that we cannot continue to invest in U.S. manufacturing and grow American aluminum jobs without open but rules-based trade with other market-oriented economies.

The Biden administration should renew its focus on strong trade monitoring and enforcement; work with like-minded trading partners to address unfair Chinese trade practices; and continue making reforms to the Section 232 product exclusion process to avoid market manipulation. The administration should also pursue policies that increase the availability of recycled aluminum as inputs which will support increased U.S. aluminum production and domestic job growth along with significant environmental benefits. Finally, the administration should facilitate industrial access to affordable and reliable energy  the best way to spur sustainable investment in U.S. primary aluminum production and support international climate goals.

Policymakers need to recognize the unique position of the U.S. aluminum industry in the global marketplace  including key differences between steel and aluminum. We need trade strategies that work for all U.S. aluminum companies rather than a few select market segments, added Olsen. Thats the path to sustainable growth and investment for the domestic industry, which makes some of the cleanest aluminum and aluminum products in the world.

Aluminum made in North America is among the lowest carbon metal in the world. A recent life cycle assessment report found that an aluminum beverage can made with primary aluminum sourced in China would be almost twice as carbon intensive compared to the average North American can. And the U.S. industry has significantly reduced energy use, carbon emissions, water impacts and more since the 1990s  a time period when domestic aluminum demand grew around 25%.

###

About The Aluminum Association

The Aluminum Association represents aluminum production and jobs in the United States, ranging from primary production to value added products to recycling, as well as suppliers to the industry. The association is the industrys leading voice, representing companies that make 70 percent of the aluminum and aluminum products shipped in North America. The association develops global standards, business intelligence, sustainability research and industry expertise for member companies, policymakers and the general public. The aluminum industry helps manufacturers produce sustainable and innovative products, including more fuel-efficient vehicles, recyclable packaging, greener buildings and modern electronics. In the U.S., the aluminum industry supports $172 billion in economic activity and nearly 660,000 jobs. For more information visit https://www.aluminum.org or find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.
Dublin, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Backpack Baby Carrier Market Overview, 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The market research report titled- Global Backpack Baby Carrier Market Overview, 2021-2026 analyses trends and markets for the baby backpack carrier market. To achieve clarity, the market has been studied from different facets by appropriately segmenting the market. Further different sales and distribution channels have been analyzed by categorizing them into Supermarket & Hypermarket, Specialty Stores, Online sales channels, and others. The market is studied across 5 major regions and 19 major countries.



The baby backpack has a rigid frame, wearable on the back suitable for toddlers as well as older babies, who can keep their heads up. The new design introduction at an affordable price is the major market driver. The market was valued at USD 169 Million in the year 2015. The young parents are now looking out for an easy way to carry the baby with them without compromising on either comfort. Urbanization and the use of lightweight materials are the key factors for the market growth, allowing the market to grow with an anticipated CAGR of over 5%. The leading market players are focusing on creative marketing strategies to expand their customer base.



The global market is led by North America, which accounted for nearly 30% in 2015. This high share can be attributed to the comfort the parents seek while traveling with their babies. Apart from this, new companies are entering this segment while the leading players are offering more premium products, with no compromise on quality. On the other hand, Asia with its bundle of developing countries seems to have a lucrative opportunity in the coming years. Countries like China, India, Bangladesh, etc are moving towards westernization of lifestyle. As the number of working women increases, disposable income has also risen.



Classified on sales channel the market is led by the supermarket/hypermarket segment. However, the online sales channel is expected to be growing with the highest CAGR during the forecasted period. Mobility ease, functionality, and style are the key reason for the market growth. Baby carriers are preferred as they also increase the psychological and physical connection between the toddler and parent. The baby carriers are known to have reduced the number of products that the parents have to carry while they are out with their baby.

This report would help you answer the following questions:

1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market?

2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market during the forecast period?

3. Which region outstands in the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market?

4. Which are the segments to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market?

5. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market?

6. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market?

7. What are the major companies in the Global Baby Backpack carrier Market?



Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary



2. Report Methodology



3. Market Structure

3.1. Market Considered

3.2. Market Definitions



4. Global Baby Backpack Carrier Market Outlook

4.1. Market Size by Value

4.2. Market Share

4.2.1. By Sales Channel

4.2.2. By Region

4.2.3. By Country



5. North America Baby Backpack Carrier Market Outlook

5.1. Market Size by Value

5.2. Market Share

5.2.1. By Sales Channel

5.2.2. By Country

5.3. US Baby Backpack Carrier Market

5.4. Canada Baby Backpack Carrier Market

5.5. Mexico Baby Backpack Carrier Market



6. Europe Baby Backpack Carrier Market Outlook

6.1. Market Size by Value

6.2. Market Share

6.2.1. By Sales Channel

6.2.2. By Country

6.3. UK Baby Backpack Carrier Market

6.4. Germany Baby Backpack Carrier Market

6.5. France Baby Backpack Carrier Market

6.6. Spain Baby Backpack Carrier Market

6.7. Italy Baby Backpack Carrier Market

6.8. Russia Baby Backpack Carrier Market



7. Asia Pacific Baby Backpack Carrier Market Outlook

7.1. Market Size by Value

7.2. Market Share

7.2.1. By Sales Channel

7.2.2. By Country

7.3. China Baby Backpack Carrier Market

7.4. Japan Baby Backpack Carrier Market

7.5. India Baby Backpack Carrier Market

7.6. Australia Baby Backpack Carrier Market



8. Latin America Baby Backpack Carrier Market Outlook

8.1. Market Size by Value

8.2. Market Share

8.2.1. By Sales Channel

8.2.2. By Country

8.3. Brazil Baby Backpack Carrier Market

8.4. Argentina Baby Backpack Carrier Market

8.5. Columbia Baby Backpack Carrier Market



9. Middle East & Africa Baby Backpack Carrier Market Outlook

9.1. Market Size by Value

9.2. Market Share

9.2.1. By Sales Channel

9.2.2. By Country

9.3. UAE Baby Backpack Carrier Market

9.4. Saudi Arabia Baby Backpack Carrier Market

9.5. South Africa Baby Backpack Carrier Market



10. Market Dynamics

10.1. Key Drivers

10.2. Key Challenges



11. Market Trends and Developments



12. Company Profiles

12.1. Artsana

12.2. BabybJorn

12.3. Boba Inc

12.4. Britax

12.5. Combi Corp

12.6. Infantino LLC

12.7. Lillebaby LLC

12.8. Solly Baby LLC

12.9. The Ergobaby Carrier

12.10. Twingo



13. Strategic Recommendations



14. Related Reports



15. Disclaimer



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rc1ynq
Detroit, MICH., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DTE Energy today announced its plans for a $7billion, five-year investment in southeast Michigans electric grid, preparing the state for the 21st century demands posed by automobility/electrification, increasingly severe weather trends, and the fast-evolving needs of consumers and businesses.

The investment was detailed in a filing with the Michigan Public Service Commission on September 30 and compliments DTEs vast, forwarding-looking plan to harden and upgrade the grid for the next 10 to 15 years.

This visionary plan recognizes that our customers homes and businesses interact with the electric grid in ways we couldnt imagine just 20 years ago, and the future of mobility is being revolutionized again in Michigan through electrification, all of which means the grid we share must be adapted to the 21st century, said Jerry Norcia, president and CEO, DTE Energy. Much of our grid was designed and built more than a century ago, providing customers the energy required for a much simpler day-to-day life.

The plan includes a multi-billion-dollar investment to combat power outages due to a global increase in storm frequency and strength. These investments include increased automation, self-healing circuits, pole maintenance, tree trimming, and projects that modernize the grids oldest infrastructure, especially for our most vulnerable customers. In addition, DTE is planning pilot projects to study the cost and benefits of non-wire alternatives, like energy storage, and burying existing overhead power lines in residential areas.

These planned investments will minimize more costly outages and allow DTE to build and operate a clean, affordable, reliable, resilient, and accessible grid that will support the evolving needs of its customers and the State of Michigan well into the future.

Responding to the day-to-day needs of home and business owners, and investing in infrastructure critical to continued economic development, DTE plans to upgrade and build new substations throughout its footprint to better serve all customers. The new investment will increase electric capacity in southeast Michigan to support the needs of consumers and businesses moving toward electrification, creating a more reliable and cleaner grid.

The plan also includes new technology and integration to support the increased efficiency of the electric grid along with customers increasing adoption of private solar generation and storage.

About DTE Energy

DTE Energy (NYSE: DTE) is a Detroit-based diversified energy company involved in the development and management of energy-related businesses and services nationwide. Its operating units include an electric company serving 2.3 million customers in Southeast Michigan and a natural gas company serving 1.3 million customers in Michigan. The DTE portfolio also includes non-utility businesses focused on industrial energy services, renewable natural gas, and energy marketing and trading. As an environmental leader, DTE utility operations will reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions by more than 80% by 2040 to produce cleaner energy while keeping it safe, reliable and affordable. DTE Electric and Gas aspire to achieve net zero carbon and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. DTE is committed to serving with its energy through volunteerism, education and employment initiatives, philanthropy and economic progress. Information about DTE is available at dteenergy.com, empoweringmichigan.com, twitter.com/dte_energy and facebook.com/dteenergy.





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Murrieta, CA, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shawn Sorensen, Broker/Owner of EXIT Alliance Realty with two locations in Murrieta, was honored with the Humanitarian Award by EXIT Realty Corp. International during the companys annual awards event broadcast recently throughout the US and Canada.

Mrs. Sorensen has been with EXIT since 2004 and is committed to improving the lives of people living in the communities she serves. In November of 2013, she wanted to create a memorable experience to share with the agents at her brokerage in lieu of a traditional holiday party. From this simple wish, her Random Acts of Kindness Alliance (RAKA) was born.

More than 100 people attended that first event where Mrs. Sorensen and her team held a scavenger hunt, going door-to-door collecting items for a homeless shelter and a domestic violence prevention organization. They also shopped at local stores purchasing items for families in need. After everything was collected the group jammed into the patio of a local restaurant and shared their stories. Every person left the event inspired to continue paying it forward and helping their neighbors.

Over the years, RAKA has grown to an annual community extravaganza. Even during the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, they distributed warm blankets, coats, and bags full of gifts and goodies to 200 deserving children at a drive-up event.

I plan to carry on this RAKA event for as long as I have breath in my lungs! she says. I love the lives it touches, and I am so moved by the generosity of the people who show up to volunteer. Many children who come to volunteer for the RAKA day end up sharing their stories with their teachers, and one school even held their own Random Acts of Kindness Day!

Shawn has a heart of gold, said Erika Gileo, EXIT Realty Corp. Internationals Chief Operating Officer who nominated Mrs. Sorensen for this honor. In addition to founding RAKA, she has worked tirelessly for many years with the Big Sisters Big Brothers of the Inland Empire. She is a shining example of someone who leads with love.

About EXIT Realty: EXIT Realty is a company founded and built on human potential. A full service, forward-thinking, real estate franchisor with offices across North America, EXIT has to-date paid out more than a half a billion dollars in single-level residual income to its associates. The Expert Marketing Suite including geolocation Smart Sign technology gives sellers an edge in a competitive marketplace. The Focus on Good Health blog promotes wellness at work and home. A portion of every transaction fee received by EXIT Realty Corp. International is applied to its charitable fund. To-date, more than $6 million has been allocated to charity. For more information, please visit www.exitrealty.com and www.joinexitrealty.com

Attachment
WESTPORT, Conn., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HMG Strategy, the Worlds #1 digital platform for enabling technology executives to reimagine the enterprise and reshape the business world, is excited to be hosting its 2021 HMG Live! Greenwich CIO Executive Leadership Summit on November 10. HMG Strategys highly interactive events bring together the worlds most distinguished and innovative business technology leaders to discuss the most pressing leadership, strategic, cultural, technology and career challenges and opportunities that they face today  and into the future.



World-class business technology and industry executives at the virtual event, developed in partnership with the SIM Fairfield-Westchester chapter, will be focused on The Carbon-Neutral CIO: The Role of Technology in Environmental Sustainability. This includes the roles that CIOs and business technology executives play in working with the executive team and the Board of Directors on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives as well as the responsibility among technology leaders in actively managing and measuring the impact of Green IT technology deployments across their organizations.

ESG is a hot topic among Board members, regulators and investors, but its a fairly nascent area of responsibility for CIOs and business technology leaders, said Hunter Muller, President and CEO of HMG Strategy. Were proud to be working with the SIM Fairfield-Westchester chapter in identifying and exploring this emerging topic for C-level executives to contemplate and to act courageously on.

World-class sustainability leaders and industry executives speaking at the 2021 HMG Live! Greenwich CIO Executive Leadership Summit will include:

Adrian Cockcroft , VP, Sustainability Architecture, Amazon

, VP, Sustainability Architecture, Amazon Dustin Demetriou , Senior Technical Staff Member, Advanced Thermal Energy Efficiency Lab, IBM

, Senior Technical Staff Member, Advanced Thermal Energy Efficiency Lab, IBM Jim Himes , U.S. Congressman, Chair of the National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee

, U.S. Congressman, Chair of the National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee Dawn James , U.S. Director, Sustainability and Environmental Sciences, Microsoft

, U.S. Director, Sustainability and Environmental Sciences, Microsoft Jim Panos , CIO, Central National Gottesman Inc., FWSIM President

, CIO, Central National Gottesman Inc., FWSIM President Jon Winkel, CEO, The Stamford Partnership

Valued Partners for the 2021 HMG Live! Greenwich CIO Executive Leadership Summit include Akamai, Auth0, BetterCloud, Darktrace, Forescout Technologies, Globant, NPower, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, SIM Fairfield-Westchester, Skybox Security, Zoom and Zscaler.

To learn more about the 2021 HMG Live! Greenwich CIO Executive Leadership Summit and to register for this thought-provoking event, click here.

HMG Strategy will also be hosting its 2021 HMG Live! Pacific Northwest CIO Executive Leadership Summit on November 18. Timely topics to be explored at this virtual event will include the impact that President Bidens COVID vaccination mandate is having on CIOs and business technology executives in their efforts to address the global war for talent.

Top-tier CIOs and industry executives speaking at the 2021 HMG Live! Pacific Northwest CIO Executive Leadership Summit will include:

Tony L. Antalan , CTO, Silver Reef Casino

, CTO, Silver Reef Casino Bridget Barnes , SVP & CIO, Oregon Health & Science University

, SVP & CIO, Oregon Health & Science University Patrick Benoit , VP & Global Business Information Security Officer, CBRE

, VP & Global Business Information Security Officer, CBRE Michael Chill , CIO, Johnstone Supply

, CIO, Johnstone Supply Jimmy Godard , SVP, Program Manager, Global Technology & Operations, Bank of America

, SVP, Program Manager, Global Technology & Operations, Bank of America Jamie Holcombe , CIO, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

, CIO, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office John Iannarelli , Former FBI Special Agent and Senior Executive Advisor, FBI

, Former FBI Special Agent and Senior Executive Advisor, FBI Martin Leach , VP, R&D IT, Global Quality IT, Human Experience IT, Alexion Pharmaceuticals

, VP, R&D IT, Global Quality IT, Human Experience IT, Alexion Pharmaceuticals Wafaa Mamilli , EVP, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Zoetis

, EVP, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Zoetis Theresa Masse , Cyber Security Advisor, Region 10 (Oregon), U.S. Department of Homeland Security

, Cyber Security Advisor, Region 10 (Oregon), U.S. Department of Homeland Security Lee David Milligan , SVP & CIO, Asante Health System

, SVP & CIO, Asante Health System Sanjay Srivastava , SVP & Chief Digital Officer, Genpact

, SVP & Chief Digital Officer, Genpact Robert Stretz , VP of IT Infrastructure, Aquent

, VP of IT Infrastructure, Aquent James Turgal, VP, Optiv

Valued Partners for the 2021 HMG Live! Pacific Northwest CIO Executive Leadership Summit include Aisera, Akamai, Auth0, BetterCloud, Darktrace, Forescout Technologies, Globant, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, SIM Portland, SIM Seattle, Skybox Security, Zoom and Zscaler.

To learn more about the 2021 HMG Live! Pacific Northwest CIO Executive Leadership Summit and to register for the event, click here.

To learn about all of HMG Strategys Upcoming CIO & CISO Summits, click here.

About HMG Strategy

HMG Strategy is the world's leading digital platform for connecting technology executives to reimagine the enterprise and reshape the business world. The HMG Strategy global network consists of more than 400,000 CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, CDOs, senior business technology executives, search industry executives, venture capitalists, industry experts and world-class thought leaders. HMG Strategys global media model generates more than 1 million impressions per week, providing vast opportunities for business technology leaders and sponsor partners to promote themselves and their brands.

HMG Strategy was founded in 2008 by Hunter Muller, a leadership expert who has worked side-by-side with Fortune 2000 executives with strategic planning and career ascent for the past 30+ years. HMG Strategys regional and virtual CIO and CISO Executive Leadership Series, authored books and Digital Resource Center deliver unique, peer-driven guidance from CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, CDOs and technology executives on leadership, innovation, transformation and career ascent. HMG Strategy offers a range of peer-led research services such as its CIO & CISO Executive Leadership Alliance (CELA) program which bring together the worlds top CIOs, CISOs and technology executives to brainstorm on the top opportunities and challenges facing them in their roles.

HMG Strategys Research Stack is a unique set of research services that are designed to keep business technology executives up to speed on the latest and global geo-economic trends that are impacting businesses and industries.

HMG Ventures is a venture capital unit thats designed to connect CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and other technology executives with innovative early-stage technology companies from Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv. HMG Ventures provides technology executives with a window into hot emerging technology companies that can help move the needle for their businesses while also offering these executives unparalleled personal investment opportunities. One early-stage investment in an enterprise-level AI-powered service management provider has generated a 100X return.

HMG Strategy also produces the HMG Security Innovation Accelerator Panel, a new webinar series thats designed to connect enterprise technology and security leaders with the most innovative technology and cybersecurity companies from across the world.

To learn more about the 7 Pillars of Trust for HMG Strategy's unique business model, click here.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f3a38a78-4883-4e33-aa79-8259bccbff3c
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (BIGG or the Company)(CSE: BIGG; OTCQX: BBKCF; WKN: A2PS9W), owner of Netcoins (Netcoins.ca) (Netcoins), the online cryptocurrency brokerage that makes it easy for Canadians to buy, sell, and understand cryptocurrency, and owner of Blockchain Intelligence Group ( blockchaingroup.io ) (BIG), a leading developer of blockchain technology search, risk-scoring and data analytics solutions, is pleased to announce the appointment of Kalle Radage, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Neptune Digital Assets Corp (TSXV: NDA; OTC: NPPTF) to BIGGs Board of Directors.



Mr Radage is an entrepreneur and leader with a background in enterprise software, payments, and financial technology. In addition to being the COO and CFO of Neptune Digital Assets, he is the co-founder and chairman of Clearly Payments. In the past, he was the President of a leading payment processor, Payfirma. He has held senior roles at Oracle and Nokia and was a Venture Capitalist at Nokia Ventures and BDC Venture Capital. He is an active member of the technology community as an advisor, investor, and board member. Kalle holds a BSc in Computer Science from UBC and MBA from IESE Business School.

Mark Binns, BIGG CEO, remarked, I have the utmost respect for Kalle and what the Neptune team has accomplished in the crypto industry over the past few years. Kalle is a leader that can help guide, educate and contribute to the BIGG Board as well as our operating businesses alike. We look forward to Kalles contributions, as a crypto industry leader, to the BIGG mission where we believe the future is a safe, compliant and regulated environment - in which we are positioned uniquely to win.

On behalf of the Board

Mark Binns

CEO

ir@biggdigitalassets.com



Investor Relations

Victoria Rutherford

Victoria@adcap.ca

T: 1.480.625.5772

About BIGG Digital Assets Inc.

BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (BIGG) believes the future of crypto is a safe, compliant, and regulated environment. BIGG invests in products and companies to support this vision. BIGG owns two operating companies: Netcoins ( netcoins.ca ) and Blockchain Intelligence Group ( blockchaingroup.io ).

Netcoins develops brokerage and exchange software to make the purchase and sale of cryptocurrency easily accessible to the mass consumer and investor with a focus on compliance and safety. Netcoins utilizes BitRank Verified software at the heart of its platform and facilitates crypto trading via a self-serve crypto brokerage portal at Netcoins.app .

Blockchain Intelligence Group is a global developer of blockchain technology building a secure future. Financial institutions and crypto companies depend on its technology to monitor risk from crypto transactions. Investigators and law enforcement quickly identify and track illicit activity. The crypto forensics technology was designed by investigators for investigators. Blockchain Intelligence Group is trusted globally by leading financial institutions, crypto companies, Fintech, Regtech, law enforcement and regulators.

For more information and to register to BIGGs mailing list, please visit our website at https://www.biggdigitalassets.com. Or visit SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which include completion of the search technology software and other matters. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as may, expect, estimate, anticipate, intend, believe and continue or the negative thereof or similar variations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the state of the economy in general and capital markets in particular, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of BIGG. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because BIGG can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from BIGGs expectations include, consumer sentiment towards BIGGs products and Blockchain technology generally, technology failures, competition, and failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, BIGG disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, BIGG undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters discussed above.

The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this Press Release.
NEW YORK, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BOARD30, the only fully-comprehensive and energizing resistance band training program, announced the official launch of its studio partnership with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan (MMJCCM) Center for Health and Wellness. Riding the momentum of the many BOARD30 studios that opened across the country over the past three years, this partnership offers the first opportunity for the New York City market to experience this unique and exciting new training program.

BOARD30 is the only 30-minute, full-body workout that is solely focused on resistance band training to engage, build and strengthen every muscle in the body. This specialized, first-of-its kind fitness concept offers classes that fit any schedule, centered on a customized, patented Bodyboard. Participants can expect a fun, welcoming, and music-fueled environment that fosters a workout that builds the body up without breaking it down. Through its resistance training program, BOARD30 will challenge you with a high-energy, low-impact fitness regimen that cannot be found anywhere else.

BOARD30 has already shown signs of impressive growth and differentiation within the $30B fitness industry. In 2020 and 2021, the brand opened new locations in cities across the nation, including Naples, Florida, Park City, Utah, and Denver, Colorado. This past year, BOARD30 also inked deals for new studios across the United States and the EU.

Current studio locations:

Denver, CO

Fort Collins, CO

Naples, FL

Ponte Vedra, FL

Westin, FL

Albuquerque, NM

Santa Fe, NM

New York, NY

Park City, UT



Coming soon:

St. Petersburg, FL

Boston, MA

Tulsa, OK

The BOARD30 studio model was developed in 2017 by Floery Mahoney, a serial entrepreneur with decades of fitness industry experience. Since then, the product itself has developed a cult-like following, garnering the attention of top models and professional athletes. After years of research, Mahoney saw the need for resistance band training not only as part of a daily workout, but as a full workout itself. Today, the concept has grown from a product-based business, to a full-studio license opportunity in just three years. In 2018, Mahoney was selected by the Tory Burch Foundation, which supports the empowerment of women entrepreneurs, to become a member of its fellowship program. This highly prestigious honor comes with access to entrepreneurial education and mentorship, workshops and networking. Floery has taken the knowledge she learned as a Tory Burch Fellow and used it to drive BOARD30 to where it is today.

"Resistance band training is something that, in the past, had not been seen as an effective standalone workout, but it absolutely should be. Our unique and comprehensive training regimen offers a workout that participants could never get from any other training program," said Floery Mahoney, Founder and CEO of BOARD30. "We are thrilled to be partnering with the MMJCCM to share our unique concept with the New York community."

"We are thrilled to welcome BOARD30 to the JCC and partner with such a vibrant, committed team of fitness professionals to offer this unique program," said Melissa Donovan, Chief Operating Officer, Health & Wellness of MMJCCM. "We hear daily from health-focused members of our community seeking safe, in-person, breakthrough workouts. We're so excited for the energy, efficiency and whole-body benefits that BOARD30 will bring to their wellness journey."

Classes launch at the MMJCCM for a soft opening the week of Nov. 8, 2021. Full class rotation begins Nov. 14, 2021. To sign-up for a class time and for more information, please visit: https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=249102&stype=-111&sView=week&sLoc=0

About the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan

Together with its community, the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan creates opportunities for people to connect, grow, and learn within an ever-changing Jewish landscape. Located on 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, the JCC is a vibrant non-profit community center on the Upper West Side. It also presents a robust slate of virtual programing, serving an even wider community. The JCC serves over 55,000 people annually through 1,200 programs each season that educate, inspire, and transform participants' minds, bodies, and spirits. Throughout Covid-19, the JCC has pivoted to meet the community online, exceeding 102,000 registrations to over 3,000 virtual classes and programs in the earlier part of the pandemic. Since its inception, the JCC has been committed to serving the community by offering programs, classes, and events that extend beyond neighborhood boundaries, reaching people at all stages of their lives. Learn more at mmjccm.org.

Media Contact: Heidi Mahoney, 802-349-7697, heidi@board30global.com and Lauren Alexander, 646-467-9226, lalexander@mmjccm.org. Studio Manager Laura Thomas, 904-334-2709, Laura@Board30global.com

Related Images











Image 1: Resistance band workout like no other.





Using multiple angles we are able to engage the entire body in each exercise.









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TORONTO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alo Solutions Ltd. is a Canadian tech company with indigenous founders committed to creating lasting positive change for all stakeholders in the Canadian welfare system.



Devin Edwards an Indigenous man and co-founder Sarah Sparks, a Black Biracial, Indigenous woman, have successfully worked together in the tech space for over a decade. In 2018, they joined forces to create a streamlined, modern tool to create better outcomes for children in the Canadian child welfare system.

We all read the headlines on Friday afternoon about the Federal government filing an appeal regarding Indigenous compensation. They then back-pedaled on to say they hoped not to have to pursue the appeal, as they were sitting down for further negotiations with key stakeholders.

With over 50 percent of the children in care being Indigenous, although they only represent 7 percent of the National population, co-founders Mr.Edwards and Ms.Sparks believe that headlines of this nature illustrate not only the continual back-pedaling by the government when it comes to Indigenous children in care but also the systemic issues at play.

As Mr.Edwards says: I hope the Government of Canada is going to sit down to these talks in good faith and good conscience, but I fear they're using this appeal to bully Indigenous people and children into accepting less than what they need under the threat of years in court.

For Ms.Sparks, the headlines are further ...justification of why prevention needs to be a priority. We need to be reactive in our approach to righting the wrongs of the past and compensating victims fairly. We also need to be proactive in our approach to the future, through the clear lenses of what Canadas past is and how that has trickled down into the systemic issues that continue to hurt children.

The government itself has and continues to admit that the system is broken. However, trust from the Indigenous population towards the government is broken and has been for centuries, never mind generations and rightfully so. Mr.Edwards and Ms.Sparks are hoping that their modern solution from the community will go a long way towards building trust.

Through its cloud-based SaaS technology and customizable CRM, the Alo team has already developed an Application Portal for foster, adoption, customary care, kinship and respite, which stakeholders have said would be invaluable. Alo has plans for developing a Case Management Portal and a Parent Portal, which their market research has indicated is in high demand.

The Alo platform is easily integrated with many systems the secure online platform is designed to support all stakeholders, including government agencies at all levels, Indigenous communities, public and private organizations, and individuals like social works and everyone involved in the Canadian child welfare system.

Ms.Sparks, CEO and Mr.Edwards COO, are excited about Alo's future and, most importantly, for how their system can help change the lives for children in the child welfare system.

Female and BIPOC founders are some of the most under-funded in Canada. However, the team hopes to change this through their equity crowdfunding campaign, which launched yesterday on Equivesto, an Exempt Market Dealer, out of Toronto, ON. People who believe in what Alo is trying to do can view the full offering and start investing from $100: https://portal.equivesto.com/offering/alo

About Alo Solutions Ltd.

Alo Solutions Ltd., based in Toronto, Ontario, is an inclusive next-generation solution for better child welfare. Founded by a Black biracial woman with Indigenous roots, Alo Solutions offers a cloud-based SaaS and customizable CRM that automates and modernizes the caregiver application process. Alo seeks to provide a modern-day solution for all stakeholders in the Canadian child welfare system, from the government to organizations, social workers, foster homes (public and private), and parents looking to adopt and foster. Alo Solutions is first to market, scalable across geographies, easy to use, and allows seamless integration for all users.

Website: http://www.alosolutions.ca/

IG: @alosolutionscanada

FB: https://www.facebook.com/alosolutionscanada

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alo-solutions-canada

Twitter: @alo_canada
DUBLIN, Calif., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Giga-tronics Incorporated (OTCQB:GIGA) will release results for the second fiscal quarter ended September 25, 2021 on Tuesday, November 9, 2021 after the close of trading on the OTCQB Market.



Also, on November 9, 2021, Giga-tronics will host a conference call at 4:30 p.m. EST to discuss results and to provide an update on Company operations.

To participate in the call, dial: (888) 517-2513 or (847) 619-6533 and enter PIN Code 9015656#. It is recommended that you call in five to ten minutes prior to the start time.

A replay of the call will be available later on the Giga-tronics website under Investor Relations. This conference call will reflect managements views as of November 9, 2021 only.

Giga-tronics produces electronic warfare test solutions used in the defense industry and RADAR filters used in fighter aircraft.

Headquartered in Dublin, California, Giga-tronics is a publicly held company, traded on the OTCQB Market under the symbol GIGA.

Source: Giga-tronics Incorporated
SALT LAKE CITY, UT & LOS ANGELES, CA, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intermountain Healthcare has launched a strategic workforce education program to invest in the continued development of their caregivers (employees) and communities. Through a new partnership with InStride, Intermountain caregivers will have access  at no cost to them  to a wide array of online degrees, credentials, and diplomas for in-demand and future skills.

In addition to courses for frontline medical and nursing personnel, Intermountain will offer education programs for nonclinical employees. Beginning in 2022, Intermountains 42,000 caregivers in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada will have access to prepaid courses in the subject of their choice from InStrides best-in-class academic network of accredited institutions that includes Arizona State University, CUNY, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Memphis. Utah Valley University and the College of Southern Idaho will also offer Intermountain-specific courses, with more regional schools scheduled to add courses in the future.

Education provides meaningful career growth for our caregivers and is the foundation on which our organization, and our communities, can build lasting success, said Intermountain Chief People Officer Heather Brace. At Intermountain, we believe we must invest in developing a diverse workforce, and that means providing robust educational opportunities at all levels of our organization. This initiative will help break down barriers to equitable education by providing language, GED, and certification and degree options for all employees.

Intermountain and their leaders should be commended for their dedication to serving their caregivers who, in turn, serve their communities, said InStride CEO and Co-Founder Vivek Sharma. We are proud to partner with them to create strategic workforce education programs that develop and prepare their employees to provide the best care possible, today and in the future.

To learn more about this program, visit Intermountain.InStride.com.

###

ABOUT INTERMOUNTAIN HEALTHCARE: Located in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada, Intermountain Healthcare is a nonprofit system of 25 hospitals, 225 clinics, the Intermountain Medical Group with some 2,700 employed physicians and advanced care practitioners, a health plans division called SelectHealth, Homecare, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes and sustainable costs.

ABOUT INSTRIDE: InStride drives business and social impact through strategic workforce education. As the global leader in these programs, InStride works with corporate partners like Aramark, adidas, Carvana, Magna and more, providing their employees with access to top-tier academic institutions, strategic learning paths, and an innovative technology platform. Guided by its mission to change lives for working adults and cultivate the workforce of the future, InStride has been recognized with Fortunes Impact 20 and Inc.s Best in Business awards. Visit instride.com or follow InStride on Twitter and LinkedIn for more information and up-to-date news.
Management Board of Northern Horizon Capital AS (the Management Company) has approved the unaudited consolidated interim financial statements of Baltic Horizon Fund (the Fund) for the first nine months of 2021.

Baltic Horizon wins EPRA Gold award

Baltic Horizon Fund received a prestigious award at the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) virtual annual conference 2021 for the second year in a row. The Fund scored a Gold Award for the adoption of EPRA Best Practices Recommendations (BPR)  widely accepted industry standards for the highest level of transparency, comparability and compliance in financial reporting. EPRA assessed the financial statements of 181 European listed real estate entities as part of its annual award process.

Extension of bank loans

On 14 July 2021, the Fund extended a EUR 7.8 million bank loan to finance G4S Headquarters. According to the agreement, the maturity date of the loan is 31 October 2022.

On 19 July 2021, the Fund extended a EUR 2.1 million bank loan to finance Sky SC. According to the agreement, the maturity date of the loan is 31 January 2022.

Property management

As of 1st September 2021, CBRE Baltics and Censeo became the partners of Baltic Horizon Fund and will be providing property management, leasing and accounting services for the entire portfolio of the Fund. Censeo will provide services to the Lithuanian business centres Duetto and North Star, as well as to the Domus Pro shopping centre and office complex. CBRE Baltics will provide services to the remaining portfolio.

Two buildings receive BREEAM certification

Baltic Horizon is aiming to certify all currently operational office assets by the end of 2021 using BREEAM In-Use environmental assessment method. During Q3 2021, the Funds North Star and G4S Headquarters properties were awarded the BREEAM In-Use Very Good environmental certification.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic

At the beginning of 2020, a new coronavirus (COVID-19) started spreading all over the world, which has had a strong impact on businesses and economies, including in the Baltics. The virus outbreak has caused significant shifts in the Funds operating environment, which has had a negative overall impact on the Funds performance in 2020 and 2021.

At the end of 2020, the Baltic countries entered the second round of lockdowns and heavy government restrictions for residents and businesses to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Shopping centres were forced to close for a limited period except for essential retail shops (groceries, pharmacies). In summer 2021, all three Baltics countries eased COVID-19 restrictions as new virus cases dropped and the situation stabilised. However, COVID-19 cases in all three countries started to substantially increase at the end of Q3 2021. As a result of spiking cases, Latvian government decided to reimpose the lockdown for a period between 21 October to 15 November. At the date of this report, Galerija Centrs is operating with heavy restrictions.

BHFs operating results of Q3 2021 were affected by the COVID-19 lockdown effects on the tenants financial performance and the relief measures taken to deal with the pandemic. However, broad diversification of the portfolio should allow the Fund to limit the COVID-19 impacts and maintain healthy consolidated operational performance throughout the year. The Funds operational performance has largely recovered once heavy restrictions were lifted in all Baltic countries.

Distributions to unitholders for Q2 2021 and Q3 2021 Fund results

On 28 July 2021, the Fund declared a cash distribution of EUR 1,316 thousand (EUR 0.011 per unit) to the Fund unitholders for Q2 2021 results. This represents a 0.98% return on the weighted average Q2 2021 net asset value to its unitholders.

On 28 October 2021, the Fund declared a cash distribution of EUR 2,034 thousand (EUR 0.017 per unit) to the Fund unitholders for Q3 2021 results. This represents a 1.63% return on the weighted average Q3 2021 net asset value to its unitholders.

With reduced payouts over 2020 and 2021 in the light of prevailing market uncertainty, the Fund has opted to retain EUR 6.4 million of distributable cash flow. The Management Company of the Fund will continue to actively monitor the economic impact of the pandemic and reassess future distribution levels depending on the upcoming operating results.

Dividend capacity calculation

EUR 000 Q3 2020 Q4 2020 Q1 2021 Q2 2021 Q3 2021 (+) Net rental income 4,799 4,745 4,173 4,357 4,676 (-) Fund administrative expenses (682) (713) (745) (756) (735) (-) External interest expenses (1,327) (1,362) (1,346) (1,311) (1,407) (-) CAPEX expenditure1 (230) (131) (79) (92) (38) (+) Added back listing related expenses 114 85 - - - (+) Added back acquisition related expenses - 26 31 5 9 Generated net cash flow (GNCF) 2,674 2,650 2,034 2,203 2,505 GNCF per weighted unit (EUR) 0.024 0.022 0.017 0.018 0.021 12-months rolling GNCF yield2 (%) 9.4% 8.6% 7.4% 7.0% 7.0% Dividends declared for the period 3,111 1,316 1,316 1,316 2,034 Dividends declared per unit3 (EUR) 0.026 0.011 0.011 0.011 0.017 12-months rolling dividend yield2 (%) 7.5% 5.8% 5.4% 5.0% 4.5%

The table provides actual capital expenditures for the quarter. Future dividend distributions to unitholders are aimed to be based on the annual budgeted capital expenditure plans equalised for each quarter. This will reduce the quarterly volatility of cash distributions to unitholders. 12-month rolling GNCF and dividend yields are based on the closing market price of the unit as at the end of the quarter (Q3 2021: closing market price of the unit as of 30 September 2021). Based on the number of units entitled to dividends.

Net profit and net rental income

In Q1-Q3 2021, the Group earned net rental income of EUR 13.2 million, a decrease of 13.1% compared to the net rental income of EUR 15.2 million for Q1-Q3 2020. Net rental income decreased due to the relief measures granted to tenants during the pandemic and a one-off rental guarantee write-off at Pirita Shopping Centre in the amount of EUR 0.2 million.

Portfolio properties in the office segment contributed 62.4% (Q1-Q3 2020: 55.1%) of net rental income in Q1-Q3 2021 followed by the retail segment with 33.0% (Q1-Q3 2020: 40.6%) and the leisure segment with 4.6% (Q1-Q3 2020: 4.3%). Retail assets located in the central business districts (Postimaja, Europa and Galerija Centrs) accounted for 21.8% of total portfolio net rental income in Q1-Q3 2021. Total net rental income attributable to neighbourhood shopping centres was 11.2% in Q1-Q3 2021.

During Q1-Q3 2021, investment properties in Latvia and Lithuania contributed 36.6% (Q1-Q3 2020: 39.4%) and 37.1% (Q1-Q3 2020: 35.3%) of net rental income, respectively, while investment properties in Estonia contributed 26.3% (Q1-Q3 2020: 25.3%).

During Q1-Q3 2021, the Group recorded a net loss of EUR 6.9 million (Q1-Q3 2020: a net loss of EUR 6.9 million). The net result was significantly impacted by the one-off negative valuation result of EUR 14.3 million recognised in June 2021 (a valuation loss of EUR 15.8 million recognised in June 2020). Compared to Q1-Q3 2020, the Fund recognised smaller valuation losses on investment properties but a decrease in net rental income throughout Q1-Q3 2021 led to similar net results in Q1-Q3 2021 and 2020. Even with COVID-19 restrictions, the Fund managed to maintain positive operational performance of investment properties. Excluding the valuation impact on the net result, net profit for Q1-Q3 2021 would have amounted to EUR 7.4 million (Q1-Q3 2020: EUR 8.9 million). Earnings per unit for Q1-Q3 2021 were negative at EUR 0.06 (Q1-Q3 2020: negative at EUR 0.06). Earnings per unit excluding valuation losses on investment properties amounted to EUR 0.06 (Q1-Q3 2020: EUR 0.08).

Gross Asset Value (GAV)

At the end of September 2021, the Funds GAV was EUR 349.6 million (31 December 2020: EUR 355.6 million), which was a drop of 1.7% over the period. The decrease is mainly related to the negative property revaluation of EUR 14.3 million which was slightly offset by capital investments in assets and an increase in the cash balance. The Group made capital investments (EUR 4.0 million) in the Meraki office building development project during Q1-Q3 2021. The Fund aims to carry on with the construction of the Meraki office building throughout 2021. An additional EUR 0.7 million was invested in other (re)development projects. The Management Company will continue to actively monitor the economic impact of the pandemic and ensure sufficient liquidity levels during the construction period.

Net Asset Value (NAV)

At the end of September 2021, the Funds NAV decreased to EUR 126.1 million (31 December 2020: EUR 136.3 million) as a result of a negative portfolio revaluation. Compared to the year-end 2020 NAV, the Funds NAV decreased by 7.5%. The increase in operational performance and positive cash flow hedge reserve movement of EUR 0.6 million over the period was offset by a EUR 3.9 million dividend distribution to the unitholders. As at 30 September 2021, IFRS NAV per unit stood at EUR 1.0539 (31 December 2020: EUR 1.1395), while EPRA net tangible assets and EPRA net reinstatement value were EUR 1.1273 per unit (31 December 2020: EUR 1.2219). EPRA net disposal value was EUR 1.0552 per unit (31 December 2020: EUR 1.1435).

Investment properties

The Baltic Horizon Fund portfolio consists of 15 cash flow investment properties in the Baltic capitals and an investment property under construction on the Meraki land plot. At the end of Q3 2021, the fair value of the Funds portfolio was EUR 330.9 million (31 December 2020: EUR 340.0 million) and incorporated a total net leasable area of 153,351 sq. m. During Q3 2021, the Group invested EUR 0.1 million in the existing property portfolio, EUR 0.2 million in the reconstruction projects and an additional EUR 2.1 million in the Meraki development project.

Interest bearing loans and bonds

During Q1-Q3 2021, the Fund completed a private placement of 18 months secured bonds of EUR 4.0 million. The bonds bear a fixed-rate coupon of 5.0% payable semi-annually. The net proceeds from the issuance of the bonds will be used for financing the construction of the Meraki office building. The bonds are issued in tranches to match the financing and investment cash flows for the project. After the bond subscription interest-bearing loans and bonds (excluding lease liabilities) increased to EUR 209.3 million (31 December 2020: EUR 205.6 million). Outstanding bank loans decreased slightly due to regular bank loan amortisation. Annual loan amortisation accounts for 0.2% of total debt outstanding.

Cash flow

Cash inflow from core operating activities for Q1-Q3 2021 amounted to EUR 9.7 million (Q1-Q3 2020: cash inflow of EUR 11.9 million). Cash outflow from investing activities was EUR 4.0 million (Q1-Q3 2020: cash outflow of EUR 2.5 million) due to subsequent capital expenditure on existing portfolio properties and investments in the Meraki, Postimaja and CC Plaza complex and Europa development projects. Cash outflow from financing activities was EUR 4.4 million (Q1-Q3 2020: cash outflow of EUR 10.9 million). During Q1-Q3 2021, the Fund made a cash distribution of EUR 3.9 million and paid regular interest on bank loans and bonds. At the end of Q3 2021, the Funds consolidated cash and cash equivalents amounted to EUR 14.6 million (31 December 2020: EUR 13.3 million) which demonstrates sufficient liquidity and financial flexibility.

Key earnings figures

EUR 000 Q3 2021 Q3 2020 Change (%) Net rental income 4,676 4,799 (2.6%) Administrative expenses (735) (682) 7.8% Other operating income 4 - - Valuation losses on investment properties (5) (4) 25.0% Operating profit 3,940 4,113 (4.2%) Net financing costs (1,470) (1,367) 7.5% Profit before tax 2,470 2,746 (10.1%) Income tax (127) (153) (17.0%) Net profit for the period 2,343 2,593 (9.6%) Weighted average number of units outstanding (units) 119,635,429 113,387,525 5.5% Earnings per unit (EUR) 0.02 0.02 -

Key financial position figures



EUR 000 30.09.2021 31.12.2020 Change (%) Investment properties in use 324,788 334,518 (2.9%) Investment property under construction 6,072 5,474 (10.9%) Gross asset value (GAV) 349,555 355,602 (1.7%) Interest-bearing loans and bonds 209,346 205,604 1.8% Total liabilities 223,476 219,281 1.9% IFRS Net asset value (IFRS NAV) 126,079 136,321 (7.5%) EPRA Net Reinstatement Value (EPRA NRV) 134,864 146,180 (7.7%) Number of units outstanding (units) 119,635,429 119,635,429 - IFRS Net asset value (IFRS NAV) per unit (EUR) 1.0539 1.1395 (7.5%) EPRA Net Reinstatement Value (EPRA NRV) per unit (EUR) 1.1273 1.2219 (7.7%) Loan-to-Value ratio (%) 63.3% 60.5% - Average effective interest rate (%) 2.7% 2.6% -





Property performance

During Q3 2021, the average actual occupancy of the portfolio was 93.1% (Q2 2021: 93.9%). The occupancy rate as of 30 September 2021 was 92.9% (30 June 2021: 93.7%). Occupancy rates in the retail segment dipped, mostly due to the Europa SC reconstruction as part of the premises were temporarily vacated to be reconstructed in upcoming months. Occupancy rates in the office segment remained strong, but slightly decreased resulting from a temporary vacancy in Domus PRO Office at the end of Q3 2021. This building was once again fully occupied at the beginning of November as a new tenant moved to the vacant premises. The average direct property yield during Q3 2021 was 5.4% (Q2 2021: 5.2%). The net initial yield for the whole portfolio for Q3 2021 was 5.8% (Q2 2021: 5.5%). Property yields increased compared to Q2 2021 albeit rent vacancies and relief measures are still affecting the Funds performance. The average rental rate for the whole portfolio for Q3 2021 was EUR 12.2 per sq. m (Q2 2021: EUR 11.3 per sq. m).

Overview of the Funds investment properties as of 30 September 2021

Property name Sector Fair value1

(EUR 000) NLA

(sq. m.) Direct property yield

Q3 20212 Net initial yield

Q3 20213 Occupancy rate for Vilnius, Lithuania Duetto I Office 16,569 8,587 8.0% 7.2% 100.0% Duetto II Office 19,455 8,674 7.4% 7.1% 100.0% Europa SC Retail 35,284 16,856 2.7% 2.9% 82.0% Domus Pro Retail Park Retail 16,241 11,247 8.3% 8.0% 99.5% Domus Pro Office Office 7,620 4,831 8.9% 7.6% 91.6% North Star Office 18,999 10,550 6.0% 6.6% 89.7% Meraki Land 6,072 - - - - Total Vilnius 120,240 60,745 5.9% 5.9% 92.5% Riga, Latvia Upmalas Biroji BC Office 21,244 10,459 7.4% 8.3% 100.0% Vainodes I Office 18,141 8,052 6.7% 8.0% 100.0% LNK Centre Office 16,124 7,453 6.4% 6.8% 100.0% Sky SC Retail 4,916 3,254 7.3% 7.5% 96.9% Galerija Centrs Retail 65,181 20,022 2.6% 3.0% 80.6% Total Riga 125,606 49,240 4.6% 5.3% 91.9% Tallinn, Estonia Postimaja & CC Plaza complex Retail 29,852 9,145 3.4% 4.1% 92.9% Postimaja & CC Plaza complex Leisure 14,260 8,664 9.1% 7.6% 100.0% G4S Headquarters Office 15,401 9,179 7.7% 7.8% 100.0% Lincona Office 15,911 10,870 7.2% 7.1% 90.3% Pirita SC Retail 9,590 5,508 5.9% 7.7% 88.5% Total Tallinn 85,014 43,366 5.9% 6.3% 94.6% Total portfolio 330,860 153,351 5.4% 5.8% 92.9%

Based on the latest valuation as at 30 June 2021, subsequent capital expenditure and recognised right-of-use assets. Direct property yield (DPY) is calculated by dividing annualized NOI by the acquisition value and subsequent capital expenditure of the property. The net initial yield (NIY) is calculated by dividing annualized NOI by the market value of the property.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF PROFIT OR LOSS AND OTHER COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

EUR 000 01.07.2021- 30.09.2021 01.07.2020- 30.09.2020 01.01.2021-

30.09.2021 01.01.2020-

30.09.2020 Rental income 5,332 5,267 14,844 16,549 Service charge income 1,271 1,245 3,697 3,749 Cost of rental activities (1,927) (1,713) (5,335) (5,109) Net rental income 4,676 4,799 13,206 15,189 Administrative expenses (735) (682) (2,236) (2,205) Other operating income 4 - 4 186 Valuation losses on investment properties (5) (4) (14,264) (15,757) Operating profit (loss) 3,940 4,113 (3,290) (2,587) Financial income - 1 1 3 Financial expenses (1,470) (1,368) (4,222) (4,118) Net financing costs (1,470) (1,367) (4,221) (4,115) Profit (loss) before tax 2,470 2,746 (7,511) (6,702) Income tax charge (127) (153) 632 (161) Profit (loss) for the period 2,343 2,593 (6,879) (6,863) Other comprehensive income that is or may be reclassified to profit or loss in subsequent periods Net gain (loss) on cash flow hedges 168 (3) 619 (227) Income tax relating to net gain (loss) on cash flow hedges (3) (2) (34) 13 Other comprehensive income (expense), net of tax, that is or may be reclassified to profit or loss in subsequent periods 165 (5) 585 (214) Total comprehensive income (expense) for the period, net of tax 2,508 2,588 (6,294) (7,077) Basic and diluted earnings per unit (EUR) 0.02 0.02 (0.06) (0.06)





CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION

EUR 000 30.09.2021 31.12.2020 Non-current assets Investment properties 324,788 334,518 Investment property under construction 6,072 5,474 Property, plant and equipment 3 2 Other non-current assets 22 22 Total non-current assets 330,885 340,016 Current assets Trade and other receivables 3,523 1,901 Prepayments 549 352 Cash and cash equivalents 14,598 13,333 Total current assets 18,670 15,586 Total assets 349,555 355,602 Equity Paid in capital 145,200 145,200 Cash flow hedge reserve (1,076) (1,661) Retained earnings (18,045) (7,218) Total equity 126,079 136,321 Non-current liabilities Interest-bearing loans and borrowings 140,611 195,670 Deferred tax liabilities 5,407 6,009 Derivative financial instruments 1,060 1,736 Other non-current liabilities 1,136 1,026 Total non-current liabilities 148,214 204,441 Current liabilities Interest-bearing loans and borrowings 69,220 10,222 Trade and other payables 4,719 3,640 Income tax payable 4 1 Derivative financial instruments 84 27 Other current liabilities 1,235 950 Total current liabilities 75,262 14,840 Total liabilities 223,476 219,281 Total equity and liabilities 349,555 355,602





For more information please contact:

Tarmo Karotam

Baltic Horizon Fund manager

E-mail tarmo.karotam@nh-cap.com

www.baltichorizon.com

The Fund is a registered contractual public closed-end real estate fund that is managed by Alternative Investment Fund Manager license holder Northern Horizon Capital AS. Both the Fund and the Management Company are supervised by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority.

This announcement contains information that the Management Company is obliged to disclose pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the above distributors, at 20:10 EET on 4 November 2021.

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English French

CLARINGTON, Ontario, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), Canadas premier nuclear science and technology organization, is pleased to announce the capping and closure of the engineered aboveground mound at the Port Granby Project Long-Term Waste Management Facility. The Port Granby Project is being undertaken as part of the Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI).



The final layers of topsoil and grass were placed on the storage mound in September 2021, following the final transfer of low-level radioactive waste excavated from the Lake Ontario shoreline in Southeast Clarington to the engineered facility for safe, long-term storage. Now complete, the facility is one of several environmental remediation projects being undertaken by CNL, including the design and construction of a similar facility proposed for the Chalk River Laboratories site, known as the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF), which is currently undergoing an environmental assessment.

CNL is cleaning up and safely managing this historic waste on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and that is a responsibility we take very seriously said Joe McBrearty, CNL President and CEO. In pursuit of that goal, CNL is applying proven engineering containment methods that have been used internationally to tackle challenging environmental issues like the cleanup in Port Granby.

The capping and closure of the engineered storage mound is a major milestone for the Port Granby community and the PHAI. It also marks the transition of the project to Phase 3, long-term monitoring and maintenance. The landscaping of the new long-term facility and the former waste management site is expected to be completed by summer 2022.

"This project and the collaboration it inspired will support and strengthen other nuclear waste management initiatives  in Port Hope, across Canada and around the world," said Fred Dermarkar, President and CEO of AECL. "It will also enable ongoing stewardship and relationship-building with Indigenous and local communities, spurring opportunities for future partnerships as we work together to build a collective vision for these lands for generations to come."

Construction of the storage mound began in 2016 and involved the installation of multi-layered base liner and cover systems to safely isolate the waste from the environment. In November 2020, CNL completed the excavation and safe transfer of historic waste from the former site on the shore of Lake Ontario. More than 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated soil and industrial waste that had been located on the unstable site for decades were placed in the mound for safe, long-term storage. Dedicated systems within the mound and around the perimeter of the facility will allow maintenance and monitoring of the facilitys safety and performance for hundreds of years into the future.

This challenging and complex project, the first of its kind in Canada, could not have happened without the collaboration, problem solving, and technical expertise of our municipal partners, contractors and staff, added McBrearty. We are committed to bringing the same level of rigor, public transparency and collaboration that has been shown here to other CNL waste management projects.

CNL is implementing the PHAI on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a federal Crown corporation.

ABOUT THE PORT GRANBY PROJECT

The Port Granby Project involves the relocation of approximately 1.3 million tonnes of historic low-level radioactive waste from the legacy storage site on the shoreline of Lake Ontario in Southeast Clarington, to a new, engineered aboveground mound. Ongoing maintenance and monitoring will continue for hundreds of years. The historic waste resulted from radium and uranium refining operations of the former Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear and its private sector predecessors, which operated from the 1930s to 1988.

ABOUT THE PHAI

The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) represents the federal governments commitment to respond to the community-recommended solutions for the cleanup and local, long-term, safe management of historic low-level radioactive waste in the municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington. Through its Historic Waste Program, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is implementing the PHAI on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a federal Crown corporation.

Port Hope Area Initiative projects are situated on the traditional land of Indigenous peoples dating back countless generations that remains the home of the Metis and Anishinaabe people, and is part of the Williams Treaties territory of the Mississauga of this region. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work on these lands, and near traditionally and culturally significant waterways, and offer respect to the First peoples of the area.

For more information, please contact:

Shernette Muccuth Henry

Acting Manager, Public Communications

Historic Waste Program Management Office

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories

905.885.0291 or info@phai.ca

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/40d839cb-0800-4600-a911-c7eeef7d2bda
Denver, CO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DENVER  Denvers Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency released its visionary five-year plan for the voter-supported Climate Protection Fund. The plan outlines a comprehensive and strategic approach to city-led initiatives that equitably address the global climate crisis at a local level as world leaders convene at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26.

As the world turns its attention to the global collaboration happening on the ground right now in Glasgow, I am proud to say that Denver is a leader in the U.S. when it comes to tangible and innovative solutions to climate change that provide direct benefits to residents, said Mayor Michael Hancock.

Denver is one of only two cities in the nation that have a dedicated, voter-approved climate fund to support catalytic projects driven by the community. Last fall, Denver voters overwhelming supported Ballot Measure 2A, creating the Climate Protection Fund and serving as a model for how cities can rapidly address human-caused impacts of climate change with equity and environmental justice integrated in all solutions.

According to projections by the United Nations, our cities will account for 68% of the worlds population by 2050. Cities are beacons of innovation when it comes to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, said Grace Rink, Denvers chief climate officer. Denver needs to create a healthier, more inclusive environment if we are to do our part in avoiding the worst climate change impacts to come, and the Climate Protection Fund is well on its way to achieving our ambitious targets.

The Climate Protection Fund provides up to $40 million annually of direct support in the six areas of Adaptation and Resiliency, Environmental Justice, High Performance Buildings and Homes, Job Creation and Workforce Development, Renewable Energy, and Sustainable Transportation. Projects and programs collectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, help vulnerable communities adapt and thrive, and promote environmental justice for people and communities most impacted by climate change.

Highlights of the plan include:

Funding priorities to aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts

Citywide goals aligned with the latest climate science

Frameworks to inform data-driven equity solutions and to conduct meaningful, targeted community engagement

Desired outcomes with measurable indicators that will inform progress

Financial transparency to track revenue and expenditures, endeavoring to invest 50% or more of funding in vulnerable communities

In less than a year since its inception, the Climate Protection Fund has provided e-bike libraries for essential workers, e-cargo bikes for local food rescue and delivery services, financial support for Denver homeowners to install solar, workforce development to recruit and train workers for green jobs, net-zero energy training for building owners and developers, and micro transit shuttles in neighborhoods with high transit needs.

This funding strengthens Mile High Youth Corps work-based training program and develops new career pathways for Corpsmembers in the Energy and Water Conservation program, said Nate Edge, senior program manager for Mile High Youth Corps. "This will increase our program recruitment and outreach in high-priority Denver neighborhoods, add training certificates for program enrollees, provide supportive services to enrollees, and expand career exploration activities for Corpsmembers.

The Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency will work to co-create future funding opportunities with communities that have experienced the greatest inequities and injustices in the climate crisis.

This is an incredible opportunity, and it comes at such a critical time in our human history. As we align our work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions with the latest climate science, we can and will operate at the intersection of bold climate action and intentional environmental justice, said Rink.

Read the plan: https://denvergov.org/files/assets/public/climate-action/cpf_fiveyearplan_final.pdf

###

About Denvers Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency

Mayor Michael Hancock and the Denver City Council created the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency to manage the City's ambitious emission reduction goals and sustainability programs in collaboration with fellow departments, other units of government, and community partners. The office ensures that the City's targets are aligned with current climate science, promotes the role that climate action and sustainability play in strengthening Denver's economic vitality and a prosperous future for all residents and businesses, and embraces equity as a value and practice in all of its work

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GIG HARBOR, Wash., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- INLOCH, a workforce technology company, provides an innovative, quick-to-implement, and easy-to-use solution for companies with 100+ employees to comply with the Biden administration's vaccine mandate. The deadline for compliance is Jan. 4, 2022, and companies that fail to meet the new requirements could face stiff fines of up to $14,000 per violation.

A preliminary version of the mandate was published on Nov. 4, 2021. Implemented by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) using the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), it requires any company with 100 or more workers, as well as federal contractors, to comply. The new rules, effective January 4, will require that employers gather, record, and store vaccination records for their employees. If the employee is not vaccinated, they must present negative test results weekly, which the company is also responsible for managing. Records must also be collected and stored securely and in compliance with laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, and be ready for audit by OSHA. The ETS is estimated to impact up to 84 million U.S. workers.

"Companies with less than 500 employees hire 2/3 of the workforce in the United States. These organizations are the backbone of the U.S. economy, and we want to ensure they have access to a solution that can provide immediate assistance," said Marissa Campbell, Founder of INLOCH. "There isn't a corner of the country that this mandate does not touch," she said. "We've developed a product to assist companies in navigating this process efficiently, allowing time to focus on their core business."

In addition to assisting businesses to comply with the federal mandate and keep their businesses open, Keep by INLOCH's technology and processes allow companies of all sizes to effectively, efficiently, and ethically manage their confidential data with a simple click.

"We partnered with INLOCH early in the pandemic to ensure our students' safety and keep families confident that we continued our mission," said Amanda Beard, 7-Time Olympic Medalist and Co-Founder of Beard Swim Co. "INLOCH provided the process support and tech tools to collect, manage and audit required information for students, families, and staff, allowing us to keep the doors open without additional burden on our team. Thank you, INLOCH!"

Media Contact

Marissa Campbell

407.493.8477

mcampbell@inloch.com

ABOUT INLOCH

INLOCH is a third-party, non-biased aggregator and reporter of the information you need to navigate the slippery world of workforce compliance. Our patent-pending technology and process solutions put the power in your hands. INLOCH. Risk, Measured. For more information about Keep by INLOCH, visit www.inloch.com.

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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eyenuk, Inc., a global artificial intelligence (AI) medical technology and services company and the leader in real-world applications for AI Eye Screening, applauds the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) determination to set a national payment rate for autonomous AI diagnostic technology for the detection of diabetic retinopathy including Eyenuks EyeArt AI technology. On November 2, CMS issued the CY 2022 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) final rule and the CY 2022 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) final rule that updated payment rates. The Final Rule (found in Federal Register Document pages 106-114) establishes a national payment amount for CPT code 92229 (Imaging of retina for detection or monitoring of disease; point-of-care automated analysis and report, unilateral or bilateral).



In the PFS final rule (Federal Register Document on page 2266), CMS noted that, According to the AAO, it is estimated that 61 million adults in the United States are at high risk for vision loss although only half have visited an eye doctor sometime in the last 12 months. New technology, such as artificial intelligence, may be an important step to make initial screenings more convenient and accessible, reaching people who may have otherwise gone without. While it is not expected that artificial intelligence would replace physicians, it will increase efficiency. As artificial intelligence may be able to assist in the detection of diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration, it may help to catch those patients that are currently being missed for this extremely important examination.

Based on input from physicians, professional societies, and technology developers, CMS concluded that, After consideration of the public comments, we are finalizing our proposal to establish values for CPT code 92229 based on a direct crosswalk to CPT code 92325. Based on Relative Value Units (RVUs) published by CMS for CPT code 92229, together with the CY 2022 PFS conversation factor, it is estimated that national average physician fee for CPT 92229 will be approximately $45.69. Physician payment amounts varies across the country depends on the applicable Geographic Practice Cost Indices (GPCI) for a specific locality, and in the locality with the highest cost index the physician fee for CPT code 92229 is estimated to be $62.93.

The PFS Final Rule also confirmed that autonomous AI can be used to close care gaps (Quality #117) for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). Specifically, CMS revised its policy to read The [diabetes] eye exam must be performed by an ophthalmologist or optometrist, or there must be evidence that fundus photography results were read by a system that provides an artificial intelligence (AI) interpretation.

In the OPPS final rule (Federal Register Document), CMS assigned CPT code 92229 to APC 5733 (Level 3 Minor Procedures) with a payment rate of $57.12.

Eyenuk appreciates CMS efforts to establish a national price for CPT code 92229 which will allow autonomous AI to close care gaps related to diabetes eye exam, commented Kaushal Solanki, PhD, founder and CEO of Eyenuk. This historical decision reflects the view of the broad stakeholders who support the use of AI diagnostic technology for their patients. The certainty and transparency of Medicare national pricing enables providers to make informed decisions about their adoption and provision of new technologies such as our EyeArt AI system for their patients, which can help improve access and equity and eliminate health disparity.

About the EyeArt AI System

The EyeArt AI System provides fully autonomous diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening, including retinal imaging, DR detection based on international clinical standards and immediate reporting, in a single office visit during a diabetic patients regular exam. Once the patients fundus images have been captured and submitted to the EyeArt AI System, the DR detection results are available in a PDF report in less than 30 seconds.

The EyeArt AI System was developed with funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is validated by the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). In addition to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance, the EyeArt AI System has CE marking as a class 2a medical device in the European Union and a Health Canada license. It is designed to be General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) compliant.

The EyeArt System is reimbursable by government and private payors in the U.S. under the newly created Category 1 Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code 92229.

VIDEO: Learn more about the EyeArt AI System for Autonomous Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy

About Eyenuk, Inc.

Eyenuk, Inc. is a global artificial intelligence (AI) medical technology and services company and the leader in real-world AI Eye Screening for autonomous disease detection and AI Predictive Biomarkers for risk assessment and disease surveillance. Eyenuk is on a mission to screen every eye in the world to ensure timely diagnosis of life- and vision-threatening diseases, including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, stroke risk, cardiovascular risk, and Alzheimers disease. Find Eyenuk online on its website, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Eyenuk, Inc. Contact

Frank Cheng, President & CCO

frank.cheng@eyenuk.com

+1 818 835 3585
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arlington Nissan, a member of the Rohrman Automotive Group, donated $15,900 to the Samuel Floersheimer Foundation on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021.

The donation was part of a sales event held at the dealership that ran through the month of October 2021. During the sales event, when a consumer purchased or leased a new or pre-owned vehicle, the dealership would pledge a donation of $100 to the Samuel Floersheimer Foundation.

The Samuel Floersheimer Foundation is a Chicago-based charity dedicated to raising awareness of how to improve the health and wellness of children and young adults with Down Syndrome. By raising awareness and educating families of ways to improve the health, wellness and happiness of those with Down Syndrome, the Foundation believes that a better life is within reach.

Elizabeth Floersheimer is not only the Founder of the Samuel Floersheimer Foundation, she is also Samuel's mother. "The Foundation educates, advocates, and creates jobs that individuals with Down Syndrome are entitled to, with equal work and equal pay. We also strive to have lots of fun in the process," said Floersheimer.

Floersheimer had a life-long passion for cooking. This passion for cooking and her looking to create opportunities for Samuel led her to creating Downtown Diners cooking classes and Cucu Cucina for children and young adults with special abilities.

"The donation from Arlington Nissan will provide for Downtown Diners scholarships and help take Cucu Cucina to the next level," continued Floersheimer.

Bobby Clifford, the General Manager of Arlington Nissan, is a program supporter. "I've known Sam Floersheimer for a while and he is one of the most amazing young adults you will meet," said Clifford. "His mother started the foundation to help Sam, but it has grown far beyond that helping so many other children and young adults with Down Syndrome in the Chicagoland area."

About Arlington Nissan - Arlington Nissan is a franchise new car dealership located in Arlington Heights, IL. The dealership is part of the Rohrman Automotive Group, one of the largest privately-held automotive groups in the United States. Not only do they sell and service new Nissan vehicles, they also sell a large number of quality pre-owned cars, trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles. https://www.arlingtonnissan.com

About the Samuel Floersheimer Foundation - The Foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of ways to improve the health, wellness and happiness of those with Down Syndrome by educating families, partnering with impactful organizations and having lots of fun in the process! https://www.downtownfoundation.org

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CONTACTS :

Bobby Clifford, General Manager, Arlington Nissan, (312) 636-6578

Elizabeth Floersheimer, Founder Samuel Floersheimer Foundation, (773) 620-7505

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From left to right Elizabeth Floersheimer, Founder of the Samuel Floersheimer Foundation, Samuel Floersheimer, Bobby Clifford, General Manager Arlington Nissan and Bob Wolf, Director Rohrman Automotive Group









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NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

( Note : All dollar amounts in this news release are expressed in U.S. dollars except as otherwise noted. The financial results are prepared using the recognition and measurement requirements of International Financial Reporting Standards, except as otherwise noted, and are unaudited.)

TORONTO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Helios Fairfax Partners Corporation (TSX: HFPC.U) announces a net loss of $13.6 million in the third quarter of 2021 ($0.12 net loss per diluted share), compared to a net loss of $58.4 million in the third quarter of 2020 ($0.99 net loss per diluted share), principally reflecting change in unrealized gains in the third quarter of 2021 compared to change in unrealized losses in the third quarter of 2020 and the inclusion of the company's Helios Transaction expenses in the third quarter of 2020.



Highlights in the third quarter of 2021 included the following:

Net change in unrealized gains on investments of $4.4 million principally comprised of increases in the market price of the company's investments in the Atlas Mara Facility Guarantee ($18.7 million), Other Common Shares ($3.8 million) and TopCo LP Class A units ($3.3 million), partially offset by decreases in the market price of the company's investments in the Atlas Mara Facility ($14.1 million), TopCo LP Class B units ($13.4 million), and the Atlas Mara Bonds ($3.4 million). The net change in unrealized gains on investments also included a reversal of unrealized losses on the Nova Pioneer Bonds of $9.5 million recorded in the prior periods as a result of the settlement of the Nova Pioneer Bonds.

Net realized losses on investments of $6.0 million principally related to a net realized loss of $9.5 million on the settlement of the Nova Pioneer Bonds for an indirect equity interest in Nova Pioneer, partially offset by a net realized gain of $3.6 million on partial disposition of Other Common Shares.

The company reported net foreign exchange losses of $8.2 million.

A performance fee of $0.9 million was accrued for the period from January 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021. The performance fee, if any, will only be crystallized on December 31, 2023 at the end of the three year measurement period.

At September 30, 2021 common shareholders' equity was $593.6 million, or book value per share of $5.44 with 109,107,606 shares outstanding, compared to $599.7 million, or book value per share of $5.50 with 109,118,253 shares outstanding, at December 31, 2020, a decrease of 1.1%.

On August 20, 2021 the company entered into a secured lending arrangement with AFGRI International, a wholly-owned South African subsidiary of AGH. On August 26, 2021 the company advanced $10.0 million of financing under the secured lending arrangement with AFGRI International, which earns interest at a rate of 12.75% per annum and matures on August 26, 2022.

There were 109.1 million and 59.0 million weighted average shares outstanding during the third quarters of 2021 and 2020 respectively. At September 30, 2021 there were 53,654,741 subordinate voting shares and 55,452,865 multiple voting shares outstanding.

HFP's detailed third quarter report can be accessed at its website www.heliosfairfax.com.

In presenting the companys results in this news release, management has included book value per basic share. Book value per basic share is calculated by the company as common shareholders' equity divided by the number of common shares outstanding.

Helios Fairfax Partners Corporation is an investment holding company whose investment objective is to achieve long term capital appreciation, while preserving capital, by investing in public and private equity securities and debt instruments in Africa and African businesses or other businesses with customers, suppliers or business primarily conducted in, or dependent on, Africa.

For further information, contact: Jennifer Pankratz, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary (416) 646-4180

This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements may relate to the company's or an African Investment's future outlook and anticipated events or results and may include statements regarding the financial position, business strategy, growth strategy, budgets, operations, financial results, taxes, dividends, plans and objectives of the company. Particularly, statements regarding future results, performance, achievements, prospects or opportunities of the company, an African Investment, or the African market are forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate" or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved".

Forward-looking statements are based on our opinions and estimates as of the date of this press release and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the following factors: the COVID-19 pandemic; geographic concentration of investments; financial market fluctuations; pace of completing investments; minority investments; reliance on key personnel and risks associated with the Investment Advisory Agreement; operating and financial risks of African investments; valuation methodologies involve subjective judgments; lawsuits; use of leverage; foreign currency fluctuation; investments may be made in foreign private businesses where information is unreliable or unavailable; significant ownership by Fairfax and Principal Holdco may adversely affect the market price of the subordinate voting shares; emerging markets; South African black economic empowerment; economic risk; weather risk; taxation risks; MLI; and trading price of subordinate voting shares relative to book value per share. Additional risks and uncertainties are described in the companys annual information form dated March 5, 2021 which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the companys website at www.heliosfairfax.com . These factors and assumptions are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors and assumptions that could affect the company. These factors and assumptions, however, should be considered carefully.

Although the company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein, except as required by applicable securities laws.
Not for distribution to U.S. newswire services or dissemination in the United States.

TORONTO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Helios Fairfax Partners Corporation (Helios Fairfax) (TSX: HFPC.U) announces that it has appointed Kofi Adjepong-Boateng as an independent director.

Kofi Adjepong-Boateng is a founding partner of Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Managers and Senior Operating Partner of Sanlam Africa Real Estate Advisor Proprietary Limited. Both these companies are based in South Africa and invest in African businesses. Before taking up these two positions, Kofi co-founded First Africa, a corporate advisory firm, with offices in Johannesburg, Nairobi and elsewhere around the world. The firm was subsequently purchased by Standard Chartered Bank.

In addition to his significant focus on banking and investment management in Africa, Kofi has been involved in a number of African-related pursuits, such as past chair of the Policy Committee of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford and as a Trustee of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

In October 2020, Kofi was recognized in the Queens Birthday Honours list by the award of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his contribution to philanthropy.

Helios Fairfax is an investment holding company whose investment objective is to achieve long term capital appreciation, while preserving capital, by investing in public and private equity securities and debt instruments in Africa and African businesses or other businesses with customers, suppliers or business primarily conducted in, or dependent on, Africa.
Palm City - Margaret Jan Crandall passed away at home on November 14. Her daughter Martha and her husband Robert were at her side. Jan Crandall, nee Schmults, was born on June 2, 1935, in Barrington, Rhode Island. During WWII, the family lived in Newport where her father, Ernest, worked at t
Goshen, IN (46526)

Today

Cloudy with light rain this morning...then becoming partly cloudy. High 49F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

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Rain showers early, then cloudy and windy for the afternoon. High near 50F. SSW winds at 10 to 15 mph, increasing to 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Higher wind gusts possible..

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In Europe, Volkswagen has launched a new ID. family top model as part of its ACCELERATE brand strategy: the ID.5 electric SUV coupe and the sporty ID.5 GTX with dual-motor all-wheel drive. Like the ID.3 and ID.4, the new ID.5 is manufactured at the Zwickau plant and both models are carbon-neutral on delivery to the customer.





Volkswagen ID.5 GTX and ID.5 Pro Performance

The e-SUV coupe is equipped with the new ID. software version 3.0, which includes improved charging performance and voice control among other features. With the use of swarm data and latest-generation driver assistance systems, Volkswagen is also taking the next step towards automated driving.

Like all ID. models, Volkswagens first e-SUV coupe is based on the Volkswagen modular electric drive matrix (MEB).

At 4599 mm long (ID.5 GTX: 4582 mm), the e-SUV coupe from Volkswagen will launch in 2022 with three power options. The base ID.5 Pro will be powered by an electric engine in the rear delivering 128 kW; the ID.5 Pro Performance is also a rear-wheel drive model, but producing 150 kW. The dual-motor all-wheel drive of the ID.5 GTX is powered by e-motors on the front and rear axles that deliver 220 kW, with a top speed of 180 km/h (111 mph).

Range for the ID.5 Pro Performance is projected to be 520 km (323 miles), while the ID.5 GTX supports 480 km (298 miles), both on the WLTP.





ID.5 Pro Performance

The electronic Vehicle Dynamics Manager is a groundbreaking development by Volkswagen. We have networked it with other important control systems, and it is also integrated with the all-wheel control function. This brings an entirely new level of sporty driving pleasure, traction and driving safety. Thomas Ulbrich, member of the Board of Management for Technical Development

All ID.5 types are powered by a 77 kWh battery pack. A low drag coefficient of 0.26 (or 0.27 in the ID.5 GTX) increases efficiency and boosts the vehicles range. This capability is further supported by the integrated spoiler in the wide-opening, aerodynamically shaped tailgate. Electric cooling air vents in the front of the vehicle open only when necessary, so as to ensure optimal air flow.

Despite its coupe-type shape, the ID.5 has just 12 mm less headroom in the back than the Volkswagen ID.4. The long 2766 mm wheelbase facilitates interior spatial conditions comparable to those of SUVs in higher vehicle classes. The luggage compartment volume is 549 liters.

The driver display and high-resolution multimedia system deliver strikingly brilliant visuals. An innovative augmented reality head-up display (optional) within the drivers field of vision presents additional information. The new ID. software 3.0 features various improvements including natural voice control (Hello ID.) It is now learning-enabled and enables online access to information from the Cloud. For atmospheric interior lighting, the Ambient Lighting feature offers a choice of up to 30 colors. We Connect services provide the driver with real-time online traffic information, online map updates, information about charging stations, web radio and much more.

With Car2X communication, Volkswagen is taking safety to a whole new level. Data from compatible vehicles in the Volkswagen fleet and signals from infrastructure within a radius of up to 800 meters can be locally interpreted in a fraction of a second, enabling driver alerts about dangerous areas, accidents and stationary traffic. The ID. Light in the cockpit helps by providing visual warnings.

The VW ID.5 and ID.5 GTX will launch in Europe in early 2022.

With the ID.5 and ID.5 GTX, Volkswagen is tapping into an entirely new market segment and thereby advancing its electric offensive in all vehicle classes in the framework of its ACCELERATE strategy. By 2030, at least 70% of Volkswagens unit sales in Europe are expected to come from electric-only vehiclesthat is equivalent to more than one million vehicles. In North America and China, the goal is that electric vehicles will account for at least 50% of unit sales. To achieve these goals, Volkswagen is launching at least one electric vehicle onto the market every year.
The decarbonization of EU road transportation will increasingly impact the demand for fossil and biofuel, especially after 2030. The long-term outlook for biofuels, beyond 2045, does not look promising, as the expected decline in demand is likely to encourage biofuel companies to look for alternative uses for their products, according to a new research report from Rabobank.

The path toward decarbonization in road transportation in the EU will require a multifaceted approach that, besides traditional biofuels, also includes the use of renewable electricity, green hydrogen, and other advanced biofuels. This, along with regulations banning the sale of internal combustion engine cars by 2035, will slowly replace the vehicle fleet and negatively impact the demand for fossil fuel and biofuel as early as 2025, with a bigger impact after 2030, the report says.





In line with global efforts to cap global warming at 1.5C to 2C, the EU aims to become climate-neutral while achieving net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. On 14 July, the European Commission proposed a package plan, Fit for 55, to reduce gas emissions to at least 55% by 2030 when compared to 1990.

The road transport sector is by far the biggest contributor of GHG emissions, representing 22% of the total share of emissions of the entire industry in the EU. This explains the need for tighter policies in this sector, especially for passenger cars, which account for 61% of road transport emissions. The proposed reduction target for the transport sector is 13%. Maria Afonso, Senior Analyst  Sugar, Grains & Oilseeds at Rabobank

Decarbonization of car fleet to impact biodiesel and bioethanol demand. The pathway to decarbonization in the EU is geared toward the electrification of the car fleet, and the use of renewable or green hydrogen in heavy and commercial vehicles. Renewable sources of energy in transport contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fossil-fuel dependence.

Electrification and hydrogen adoption in road transport will have a negative impact on the demand for fossil and biofuels, especially after 2030. In the short-term until 2025, given the higher replacement rate of diesel vehicles, Rabobank forecasts that diesel and biodiesel demand will decline at the same rate of almost 4% from 2020 levels.

On the other hand, gasoline and bioethanol demand is expected to grow by 5% until 2025, as the replacement rate of gasoline motor vehicles will take longer to have an impact.

A steeper decline will show in the years that follow, as new technologies start to replace the old vehicle fleet.

By 2030, we expect diesel demand to be 10% below its 2020 levels, and bioethanol to be down by 5%. By 2050, biofuel demand will be more than half lower than 2020 levels. Maria Afonso

The declining demand for biodiesel will not translate to the same extent into a declining demand for its feedstocks. The phasing out of palm oil in EU biofuel production through 2030 is likely to spur a competition between rapeseed oil and used cooking oil to fill the gap. The growth in ethanol demand until 2025 should benefit most ethanol players and their feedstocks. Its decline thereafter would impact feedstocks at a similar rate except for cellulosic ethanol, which should be incentivized to grow as it is considered advanced biofuel.





The future for traditional biofuels is discouraging. The long-term outlook, beyond 2045, does not look good. By then, most of the EU vehicle fleet will already have been replaced with electric and hydrogen vehicles. The expected decline in biofuels demand is likely to encourage biofuel companies to look for alternative uses for their products.

According to Afonso, unless policies change to allow these biofuels to be used directly as fuel, it is unlikely that there will be additional investments to expand capacity of conventional biofuels even with the positive short-term outlook, and considering that there is existing idle capacity available.

Rabobank is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services company.
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Green River Police Department reports for Oct. 24

At 11:21 a.m., officers responded to a report of shots fired on Wilson Street. Officers canvassed the area but did not locate any individuals involved and completed a report of the incident, which is still under investigation.

At 2:56 p.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism on Bridger Drive. Officers met with an individual who reported the tire on their vehicle had been slashed. Officers observed the damage to the tire and completed a report of the incident.

At 6:55 p.m., officers responded to a report of a hit and run collision...
A number of signs supporting Tuesdays general purpose tax caused concern at the Sweetwater County Clerks Office as some residents believed the signs to violate Wyomings electioneering laws.

The signs started appearing in Rock Springs and Green River late last week, reading Created to Support Public Safety & Economic Development, then urging residents to vote Nov. 2.

I have had people calling me all day, Sweetwater County Clerk Cindy Lane said Friday.

The issue callers have had with the signs is that they didnt initially identify who paid for them, resulting in questions regarding if theyre legal campaign advertisements. Lane said she had called the Wyoming Secretary of States Office to get an opinion as to how she should proceed and if the signs did violate the law.

According to Wyoming Statute 22-25-10, candidates, their supporters, political action committees and organizations cannot pay for campaign literature or advertising without printing information about who is paying for the advertising. However, the statute does not include small campaign items, such as buttons, stickers, balloons and yard signs, which prompted the call. The office later told Lane the signs were in violation of election laws.

Lane said she contacted the Green River Chamber of Commerce to inquire if the chamber paid for the signs. Lane said an unidentified employee she spoke with initially told her they didnt know anything about the signs, but said later she found small stickers placed on the bottom of the signs identifying they were paid for by the chamber. Lane said she later received calls from residents claiming the stickers are too small to see.

Lane said she could have had the signs removed even with the stickers on, as they are not conspicuous enough for people looking at the signs to see, however, opted to let them stand as the chamber complied with her earlier request. Lane said she was told eight signs were printed, with seven being placed in Rock Springs and Green River. As of Monday, two of the signs in Rock Springs were vandalized with spray paint.

The Green River Chamber of Commerce did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

According to email communications from the county commissioners requested by the Green River Star, an email discussion about the need for campaign signs took place Oct. 19 between Commissioner Lauren Schoenfeld and Kaylee Hughes, the communications director for SweetwaterNOW and a designer with its affiliate business Rocket City Creative, with Commissioner Roy Lloyd added as a CC.

Schoenfeld noted the need after seeing signs from the Sweetwater GOP opposing the tax, writing we need to get a few of the big signs out. Schoenfeld asked Hughes to design a sign, providing both the language used in the sign and a suggested color scheme. She also said she wasnt aware what the sizes should be, making a suggestion to ask Model Signs in Rock Springs.

Just a thought, could that be considered campaigning and not informiational (sic)? Just thinking out loud, Lloyd asked in a following email.

Yes, it will not be paid for by the County, Schoenfeld responded.

A draft of the signs design was shared in an Oct. 20 email between Schoenfeld, Lloyd, Green River City Administrator Reed Clevenger, Green River Grants Administrator Ryan Rust, Green River Communication Administrator Steve Core, Green River City Attorney Galen West, Sweetwater County Attorney Dan Erramouspie and Deputy Sweetwater County Attorney John DeLeon.

Signs were always a part of the proposed marketing push for the tax. Hughes initially presented members attempting to market the tax proposal to voters with a $30,000 proposal heavily focused on election signs, bulk mailing and digital advertising. That effort changed when local governments were told by the Wyoming Attorney Generals Office taxpayer funds could not be used to promote a tax, only to provide education to residents about why theyre seeking an additional sales tax. According to Hughes proposal, yard signs were part of the initial marketing push and were estimated to cost $7,000, based on 500 signs.

It is my hope that signs will be distribute (sic) by supporting local organizations and/or the Rock Springs and Green River Chambers of Commerce, Hughes proposal reads.

The Green River Chamber of Commerce is a nonprofit business association that receives funding from fundraisers, membership dues, the Green River City Council and the Sweetwater County Travel and Tourism as the chamber operates the Green River Visitors Center. The chamber was earmarked to receive $90,000 in the 2021-2022 city budget and would likely have benefited from the economic development piece of the tax as well.

While a proposed distribution of the economic development portion of the tax was not finalized, Clevenger told county lawmakers the Green River and Rock Springs chambers should receive revenue from the tax. In an email dated July 16, Clevenger shared his views with how the tax should be distributed, saying the estimated $4 million a year that would be taken for economic development shouldnt solely go to the Sweetwater Economic Development Coalition.

Everyone from SEDC to Chambers, URA/Main Streets, to the Middle Baxter Road Industrial project would be included, Clevenger wrote.

Clevenger said money would first be broken out to cover specific uses, such as the Middle Baxter project, which would extend basic infrastructure into the area and the Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport.

The cost of that infrastructure project is estimated at more than $28 million. Clevengers email did not specify how the money would be spent on the chambers of commerce. The Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce at one time housed SEDC and both chambers aid in the countys econmic development efforts.

Rick Lee, CEO of the Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce, said their chamber board opted to remain neutral in the election, saying the board wanted voters to educate themselves and vote according to their opinions.

Our position is we just want people to vote, Lee said.
Barbara Gunyan, 69, passed away Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County in Rock Springs, Wyoming. She passed away from a lengthy battle with COVID. Mrs. Gunyan was a long-time resident of Rock Springs and former resident of Idaho.

She was born November 21, 1951 in Wallace, Idaho; the daughter of Grant Gibbons and Edna Ball.

Mrs. Gunyan attended schools in Idaho and Rock Springs, Wyoming. She was a 1970 graduate of Rock Springs High School.

She married Ronald Gunyan Jr. on July 16, 1970 in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

She worked for Sweetwater School District #1 i...
Sheila Welch Kellogg, 62, of Rock Springs, WY, passed away on October 28th, 2021 at Sweetwater County Memorial Hospital after a courageous battle fighting against a sudden illness.

She was born on January 21st, 1959 to the late Billie Eugene Welch and Betty Catherine Welch in Carlsbad, New Mexico. She attended school in Green River, WY.

We all want to remember what an incredibly strong and independent woman she was. Not forgetting to mention how incredibly stubborn she was. Someone who could never set roots but loved to make homes out of something that someone had given up on. She had a tal...
The Green River Chamber of Commerce shouldnt have gotten involved in the special general purpose tax election and has overstepped its bounds.

The chamber paid for signs urging voters to support the 1% sales tax local governments wanted to use to fund ambulance subsidies, emergency services and economic development efforts.

The chamber is a organization that is independent of the Green River municipal government and Sweetwater County, yet it receives a substantial amount of funding from the city to continue its operations. In the 2021-2022 budget, the chamber was earmarked $90,000 toward...
"Pride of Belonging."

These three words are printed in bold on a small, shiny tag that has the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor printed on its four corners. This is one of the eleven benefit tags that are used to help align with the needs and motivators of individuals interested in joining America's finest fighting force. This tag is a crimson red and summarizes the special bond found in the United States Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps is recognized for being a close-knit brotherhood and sisterhood. The camaraderie and pride of belonging that was first felt in recruit training is something every M...
Greensburg, IN (47240)

Today

Periods of rain. High around 45F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

Tonight

Some clouds. Low 24F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
WEST HAVEN  City Hall employee John Bernardo was arrested Thursday on a federal wire fraud charge stemming from the alleged circumstances of the federal case against his business partner, former state Rep. Michael DiMassa, according to the Department of Justice.

Bernardo is charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal authorities said. He was released following his appearance before U.S. District Judge Robert M. Spector in New Haven.

DiMassa was arrested last month and charged with one count of wire fraud after allegedly transferring more than $600,000 in federal pandemic relief funding from City Hall to a business bank account set up for Compass Investment Group LLC. Bernardo is a principal in Compass, records show.

Spector unsealed the case against Bernardo during the court appearance, where Bernardo was accompanied by his attorney Tara Knight. According to the warrant affidavit, after the city of West Haven made payments to Compass, money was withdrawn and allegedly deposited in Bernardos account on more than one occasion. Federal authorities have alleged that none of the work for which Compass billed the city was done.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

On Thursday, wearing a light gray, long-sleeved shirt, dark gray slacks and glasses, Bernardo sat in one of Courtroom 4s leather chairs, beneath an imposing portrait of a former magistrate judge.

Mr. Bernardo has no criminal record. Hes 65. He was a firefighter for 26 years, Knight told the court, adding that Bernardo was injured in the line of duty several times.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ray Miller, who is prosecuting the case, said in court that Bernardo could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He also could be fined twice the amount of money involved in the case, amounting to roughly $1.2 million, Miller said.

Following the hearing, the prosecutor declined to say whether he planned to seek the maximum fine.

For the prosecution to proceed and for Bernardo to enter a plea, the court must confirm there is probable cause, Spector told the courtroom. He set a probable cause hearing for Nov. 24 but noted the event would not occur if a grand jury were to indict Bernardo before then or if Bernardo requests more time to review the charges.

Knight informed Spector her client intended to pursue the latter option.

Bernardo was released on a $250,000 bond secured in part by real property - in this case, his West Haven home.

Under the conditions of his release, he is not permitted to have contact with DiMassa or with any victims or potential witnesses. He may, however, speak with municipal employees regarding employment-related procedural matters.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

Mr. Bernardo worked for the city of West Haven for several years. Hes on paid administrative leave right now, Knight said in court. Housekeeping issues, such as the need for Bernardo to turn over his work phone, have necessitated some contact with the city, she said.

The court also ordered Bernardo to surrender the two firearms he owns, as well as his passport.

As we continue forward with the investigation into this alleged horrific crime, I am happy to see that those suspected of wrongdoing and fraud are being held accountable for their actions, Mayor Nancy Rossi said Thursday.

Bernardo was listed as a principal in Compass Investment Group LLC with DiMassa in January, according to records from the secretary of the state. The listed address for the business is Bernardos home address.

Investigators reviewed a bank account associated with Compass Investment Group and reportedly found seven checks made payable to the business by the city of West Haven, ranging from $11,847.50 to $87,650 from Feb. 12 to April 30.

According to court documents, an invoice was filed on Feb. 17 for COVID-19 Legal + Site work reportedly performed for the city Health Department that included 180 hours of Consulting Service-COVID 19 Site Support, 24 hours of Consulting Service-Legislative Review Executive Orders COVID-19, and 38 hours of Consulting Service-Support Staff Services for $14,256.

The following day, a check was issued to Compass Investment Group and the day after that it was deposited into the business bank account. Investigators said on Feb. 22 a check was made payable to DiMassa for $8,000, and on Feb. 26 a second $8,000 check was made payable to DiMassa and a $3,000 cash deposit was made to Bernardos personal bank account.

Investigators said that on Feb. 24, an invoice to the citys Health Department claimed similar services by Compass Investment Group were provided for $41,667.50 worth of work. On March 1, a check was issued to the business and deposited into a bank account the same day. On March 4, investigators allege DiMassa made a $10,000 withdrawal and a $10,000 check was issued made payable to Bernardo, which was deposited the following day.

On June 15, the city received an $85,225 invoice for COVID-19 Grant Services IT Transport + Clinic Services Cleaning/Lobby work from Compass Investment Group. On Aug. 19, the city received a $20,200 invoice from Compass Investment Group for COVID-19 Public Health Services Legal Review +Outdoor dining regulations support. Within days of the invoices, both checks were deposited. On Aug. 27, investigators allege a wage payment of $64,454.50 was made from Compass Investment Group  both DiMassa and Bernardo reportedly collected $32,227.25 in wages from their business bank account.

Investigators said in court documents that the citys corporation counsel said the citys health director never used, selected, approved, or otherwise engaged Compass Investment Group for any work or services concerning the West Haven Public Health Department.

Shortly following his release, Bernardo took his dog for a brief walk around his neighborhood in the area of Sunflower Circle. He declined comment, citing his lawyers advice.

Several neighbors, who did not share their names, said they did not know Bernardo other than seeing him walk his dog around the block.

Bernardo works as a housing specialist for West Havens Community Development Administration.

In court, Knight also noted Bernardos 26 years of service as a firefighter.

I am sick to my stomach over this alleged theft, and I want all those individuals involved to be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If found guilty, they need to go to jail, Rossi said in a statement.

As I stated early on when I found and reported this probable fraudulent activity, I will continue to update our residents when information becomes available and when its release will not compromise the ongoing investigation, she said.

Meanwhile, the city is preparing for a recount of Tuesdays mayoral election at City Hall on Sunday. Results with the citys registrar of voters, prior to the mandatory recount, reflect Rossi defeating Republican challenger Barry Lee Cohen, a 10th District City Council member, by 29 votes on Election Day.

In a statement, Cohen claimed there was not enough city oversight.

Unfortunately, our city continues to be negatively impacted by the complete lack of oversight by the Rossi administration to oversee any expenditures over $500 as she pledged to do when taking office in 2017, he said. This is why myself and my supporters wish to ensure every ballot cast was done so appropriately to secure the integrity of Tuesdays election.

Rossi, in response, said Cohen is a city councilman and a member of the Finance Committee who could have raised concerns about internal controls if he had any at the time.
LONDON (AP)  British lawmakers voted Wednesday not to suspend a Conservative legislator who was found to have broken lobbying rules  a decision that instantly brought accusations of corruption from opponents of the Conservative government.

The House of Commons voted by 250 to 232 not to approve the 30-day suspension of Owen Paterson recommended by the Commons standards committee. It is the first time in decades that lawmakers have not followed through on the standards committees decisions.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone said last month that Paterson lobbied the government in 2016 and 2017 on behalf of two companies that were paying him  the clinical diagnostics company Randox and the meat-processing firm Lynns Country Foods.

The Commons Standards Committee said Patersons actions were an egregious case of paid advocacy and had brought the House into disrepute. It recommended that he be suspended from the House of Commons for 30 sitting days.

Paterson, a former environment minister who has been a member of Parliament since 1997, called the investigation biased and said he had not been allowed to present his own evidence. He said anxiety about the probe played a part in the death of his wife Rose, who killed herself in 2020.

Patersons cause gained support from many other Conservatives, who secured Wednesdays decision not to suspend him immediately, but instead to review the case and look at overhauling the Commons disciplinary process.

Paterson said the move would allow him to clear his name after two years of hell, but anti-corruption campaigners and opposition politicians condemned the decision.

Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the main opposition Labour Party, accused the Conservatives of wallowing in sleaze.

Today the Tories voted to give a green light to corruption, she tweeted, adding that The Prime Minister, Conservative Ministers and MPs have brought shame on our democracy.
MIUI 13 to come before the end of the year, Lei Jun says

Xiaomi's founder Lei Jun has shed some light on the company's upcoming major MIUI release. MIUI 13 will bring lots of changes that will greatly improve the user experience.

More importantly he confirmed the new version of the software is on track to arrive before the end of this year. Normally it would be the Chinese version to come out first with the international one coming a few weeks later.

Lei Jun also took the opportunity to highlight MIUI 12.5's battery optimizations contributing to the Redmi Note 11 Pro's great battery life.

As per rumors, the MIUI 13 will deliver performance and battery optimizations along with a revamped UI design. And as usual, it will be distributed to phones running Android 11 and Android 12.

Source (in Chinese)
Samsung is now offering Early Black Friday deals because who wants to wait until the 26th? Theres a bit of something for everyone, from the newest foldables, through Galaxy S21 series and Note20 Ultra deals to smart wearables. Before we look at all the offers, we should note that they are available only from Samsung US.

Another important point is that while the links below lead to Samsung.com, the deals are available only through these links - you won't see them if you just open the Samsung US site.

Foldables have started to edge into affordable territory, now even more so with a discount and a few freebies. Samsung will knock $100 off the price of the Galaxy Z Flip3 - bringing the cost down to $900 - and will throw in Galaxy Buds2 for free (or Buds Pro for $50), plus a free wireless charger.

The larger Galaxy Z Fold3 is discounted by $250, so it starts at $1,550 and comes with the same freebies. If the prices still seem too steep, Samsung is offering what it calls enhanced trade-in  you can send in a phone, tablet or a laptop and you can trade in up to two devices. Putting it all together, you can get up to $600 of trade-in credit for the Z Flip3 and up to $900 for the Z Fold3.

The Galaxy S21 series is due for a replacement soon, but that is also the right time for discounts. The S21 Ultra is $200 off, bringing its starting price down to $1,000, the S21+ is down to $850 ($150 off) and the vanilla S21 is discounted to $700 ($100 off). Besides the immediate discount, the three phones also come with $50, $50 and $25 Samsung Credit, respectively.

Prices can get even lower with trade-in credit up to $600. This could be a good time to get rid of an old phone with a cracked screen  you can get the most value out of a high-end Apple device, e.g. an iPhone 12 Pro Max is worth $600 if in good condition, $550 with a cracked screen (with a few conditions). An old Galaxy phone can get you a few hundred dollars in trade-in credit too, up to $550 if you have a Galaxy Note20 Ultra ($350 with a cracked screen).

There are many other older devices you can send in, including ones from Google, Motorola and LG.

The Galaxy Note20 Ultra is no spring chicken, but its still a solid pick if you want a high-end stylus experience. Samsung is knocking $100 off the price and if $1,100 still seems high, you can play around with the trade-in options. To further sweeten the pot, Samsung will throw in a free Chromebook 4, which is normally worth $230.

If youre looking for a more powerful laptop, however, check out the Galaxy Book Pro and Galaxy Book Pro 360 offers. These two offer AMOLED screens and some powerful graphics (up to RTX 3050 Ti). Back when they went on pre-order, the company was offering $180 Samsung Credit, now the deal is even better - $200 Credit and some discounts on top of that.

The Book Pro is $250 off, meaning that the 13.3 model with a Core i5 is just $750. You can get the larger 15.6 model instead for $100 more. Upgrading to a Core i7 and more storage (512 GB) is $200 extra. The Galaxy Book Pro 360 model is down $300, so it starts at $900 for a 13.3 unit and $1,000 for the 15.6 one. The 360 always comes with an i7, but there are options for the RAM and different storage capacities.

You can pick up a Galaxy Watch4 (40 mm) for as little as $65 (or $95 if you want the 44 mm one). Thats with a straight $50 discount, bringing the price down to $200, and trade-in credit of up to $135. To get that much off, you will have to send in a Galaxy Watch3, an Apple Watch Series 6 will net you $100 credit.

If a rotating hardware bezel is a must (its a unique feature you cant get elsewhere), then the Galaxy Watch4 Classic is the one to look at. At the very least you get $50 off, so the most you have to pay is $300. Then you can score up to $135 of credit with the same trade-in options. At best the 42 mm model can drop to $165 ($195 for the 46 mm model). By the way, these prices are for the Wi-Fi versions of the watches, but both the vanilla and the Classic have LTE versions, which are only $50 more.

Samsungs TWS buds are also discounted. You can check out our Galaxy Buds Pro, Galaxy Buds2 and Galaxy Buds Live reviews to help you figure out which ones are right for you. Once youve decided, its time to talk discounts.

The Buds Live get the biggest price cut, $70, so you can get them for $100. The Buds Pro are $150 ($50 off) and the Buds2 can be found for $120 ($30 off). Note that while there isnt a trade-in deal, you can get up to $50 off the price if you recycle an old audio device (there is no requirement that it is working).
News

featured

Public Health: 'There's been a dramatic drop in COVID-19 cases'

Rick Cruz / Rick Cruz/PDN Dededo resident, Mark Flores, receives his Moderna booster vaccination from visiting Federal Emergency Management Agency-contracted nurse, Emily Watson, during a village clinic conducted at the Inalahan Mayors Office/Community Center on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rick Cruz / Rick Cruz/PDN Guam Department of Public Health and Social Service personnel, Guam National Guard members and visiting Federal Emergency Management Agency-contracted health care workers, conduct a village vaccination clinic at the Inalahan Mayors Office/Community Center on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.

Although three new COVID-19 deaths were announced Thursday evening, Public Health officials say that overall, the number of cases reported has dropped in the last week.

Average daily cases over the past three weeks were hovering at 100 to 110, and had fallen to the upper 90s last week, Vince Campo of Department and Public Health and Social Services Surveillance said Thursday.

But now, in this past week, weve actually seen something pretty amazing. Were looking at about 60 cases per day. So thats such a dramatic decrease in versus what we were expecting to see, he said.

On Thursday, however, 97 new COVID-19 cases were reported out of 1,149 tests performed on Nov. 3, according to the Joint Information Center. Of those, 60 cases were identified through contact tracing.

All three deaths were men who are reportedly unvaccinated.

A 71-year-old man died Monday at Guam Regional Medical City. He was the 246th COVID-19-related fatality,

A 61-year-old man with underlying health conditions died Wednesday at the Guam Memorial Hospital. He tested positive on Oct. 28, and was the 247th fatality.

The 248th fatality was a 48-year-old man with underlying health conditions who also died Wednesday at GMH. He tested positive on Oct. 30.

Around summertime, about 6% of tests came back positive, and that had jumped to about 12% of tests as the August surge began. With 8% percent of tests coming back positive as of Thursday, we can see that were starting to see were slowly getting out of this surge, Campo said.

There have been a total of 18,507 officially reported cases with 2,505 cases in active isolation. The CAR Score was 10.0 on Thursday.

Behavior

According to Chief Public Health Officer Chima Mbakwem, behavioral change in the community  more consistent masking and social distancing  likely was driving down case numbers as the community became more concerned over the virus. That meant it was harder to predict when the surge might end.

The timeline is consistent with behavioral change from the community. So I think we cant put a hard number on that, Mbakwem said.

Meanwhile, deaths would probably drop in about one to two weeks, Campo said.

Usually when we have large cases, we expect the death time to lag a little bit about one to two weeks, he said, and the same could be expected for the death rate.

Hospitalizations

There were 46 people hospitalized with COVID-19, including six in intensive care and four on ventilators, the Joint Information Center reported.

Of the 46 people in island hospitals, 32 were at Guam Memorial Hospital, with three pediatric admissions, four in the ICU and two on ventilators.

There were 13 people hospitalized at Guam Regional Medical City, with one in the ICU and one on a ventilator.

Naval Hospital reported one hospitalized with one in the ICU and one on a ventilator.

Of the 46 people hospitalized, 20 were vaccinated and 25 were not vaccinated, including two who were ineligible. The status of one person was unknown.

Related
A repeal of the error that significantly expanded war claims eligibility under the World War II Reconciliation Act will go up to vote Friday, but some lawmakers still see an expanded war claims program on the horizon.

Bill 217 is identical to the text of the Reconciliation Act, now Public Law 36-59, as it was meant to be passed. Bill 217 was introduced by Speaker Therese Terlaje to remove language mistakenly attached to the law, which significantly expanded war claim eligibility to include every person who survived World War II on Guam, and their descendants.

The Reconciliation Act mirrored a previous federal program, which excluded anyone who died before 2016.

While the error was a source of contention, including a Republican walkout late last month, lawmakers were finally able to move forward after questioning legislative staff.

Terlajes message

Terlaje, who announced she had COVID-19 on Monday, was not present during Thursdays session. Sen. Sabina Perez read a statement from the speaker. We arent sure how many people there are or how much that will cost, she said of the expanded applicant pool, but stressed that Bill 217 would not close the door for lawmakers to seek expanded coverage.

Terlaje introduced the amendment which caused the error back in September.

Shelton

Sen. Amanda Shelton, meanwhile, already has introduced a bill to fund an expanded war claims program at $150 million, which has the support of Vice Speaker Tina Muna Barnes and Sen. James Moylan. The current law, without the error, was estimated at less than $10 million.

This was, unfortunately, a mistake, she said of the expanded law, but it was a mistake that brought, I think, a moment of hope to so many to finally see justice to finally experience some type of closure, Shelton said, adding that she would have difficulty voting for the repeal.

Payments under the originally passed law shouldnt be delayed, Sen. Chris Duenas said, and Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero has said she is already preparing a rollout plan to pay claimants, who were included under the original Reconciliation Act.

There is no impediment for the anticipated 10 plus million dollars to be paid for those survivors, Duenas said.

The error

On Wednesday, Clerk of the Legislature Rennae Meno said that the mistake had occurred in part because more time was not provided to prepare them. The speaker had asked that the Reconciliation Act and other measures be ready for vote the evening after Lawmakers recessed on the afternoon of Oct. 4.

On Thursday, Sen. Mary Camacho Torres said that clerks were typically given a few days to prepare bills for vote, but had gotten only a few hours.

I had mentioned yesterday, I believe that in any case, where youre pushed against a wall, the risk of committing errors is greater when youre not afforded what is customarily the time that youre afforded to perform your job, Camacho Torres said.

I truly believe that if you were given sufficient time as you normally would, you would have caught these errors, she said.

Concerns

Sen. Joanne Brown hoped that staff would request any additional time if needed, and that any bills would be prepared correctly in the future.

Thats an expectation, certainly we should have. Its an expectation the public should have in terms of our performance. Were a $7 million legislature, she said.
John Haas was sentenced to serve three years in prison for having sex with a 13-year-old he met online.

Haas appeared before Presiding Judge Alberto C. Lamorena III at the Superior Court of Guam to be sentenced for the charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct as a second-degree felony.

Haas previously entered a plea of guilty to the charge.

Assistant Attorney General Sean Brown argued for an eight year sentence, which was the maximum sentence under the plea agreement, according to a release sent by Carlina Charfauros, spokeswoman of the Office of the Attorney General.

At the time of the incident Haas told investigators that the 13-year-old girl consented to having sex with him. Brown argued this was not a justifiable reason to deviate from giving Haas the maximum sentence.

Even if she was a willing participant, it does not mean she was a consenting participant under Guams law, Brown said.

Brown continued saying Haass actions were quite severe and will cause lifelong emotional trauma to the victim.

Haass attorney, Randall Cunliffe, argued for his client to receive a probation sentence with no jail time because he had already been punished.

Cunliffe explained Haass punishment, before being sentenced, included being under house arrest with no violations and having to register as a sex offender.

After hearing arguments, Judge Lamorena sentenced Haas to eight years with all but three years suspended.

In Sept. 2019, Haas was arrested after having sex with a 13-year-old girl he met online. Haas told authorities he assumed she was of the age to consent, PDN files state.
Fully vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks on Guam military bases, according to an announcement from Joint Region Marianas.

The updated mask policy takes effect immediately.

In light of improving public health conditions, fully vaccinated individuals are not required to wear masks on base, Joint Region Marianas Commander Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson said in the announcement. The use of masks remains mandatory for individuals who are not fully vaccinated or who are unable to be fully vaccinated.

People are fully vaccinated 14 days or more after completing FDA-approved or World Health Organization authorized COVID-19 vaccinations.

However, military and civilians should comply with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and Government of Guam public health requirements when off-base.

Some military facilities continue to mandate masks for safe operation, including medical facilities and Department of Defense Education Activity schools, the announcement stated.

More than 98% of active-duty personnel on Guam have been fully vaccinated, according to the military.

Federal government civilians have until Nov. 22 to get fully vaccinated, in accordance with President Bidens executive order.

Effectively combatting COVID-19 is a matter of readiness, and I encourage everyone to get vaccinated, said Nicholson. The health and safety of the men and women who serve the DoD is a top priority.
A family of 13 was displaced by a fire in Barrigada Wednesday night, according to the Red Cross, which is assisting the family. The wood-and-t




Haiti - FLASH : Gangs are ransoming more and more schools





Amid increasing violence and political instability in Haiti, children in urban classrooms are increasingly becoming the targets of theft or ransoms, UNICEF warns.



Since the start of the school year in September, at least 7 schools in and around Port-au-Prince have already been forced to pay armed gangs in exchange for safety, and others have been threatened. Most of them are located in areas of the city controlled by gangs. The amount of money the gangs are asking for is usually equivalent to the tuition fees of three students per class.



"In areas controlled by the gangs, school directors and teachers are constantly under threat and, if they refuse to pay, their schools come under attack," said Jean Gough, UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. "Across the capital city, more and more fear at school means less and less learning. Gangs are rapidly turning temples of knowledge into theatres of violence."



This year, increased gang criminality has further limited access to schools and prevented hundreds of children from starting or resuming their education. In the past few months, attacks on schools have been reported, mainly in major urban centres. Rising threats and acts of gun violence forced some school directors to relocate their schools to other areas out of control of the gangs.



Gang violence continues to physically and emotionally affect Haitian children. A few days ago, a six-year-old was injured in a shootout in the street, a UNICEF partner reported. Last week, gunmen attacked a center housing victims of gang violence, kidnappings and sexual violence.



UNICEF urges all actors to respect education facilities and calls upon the Government of Haiti to ensure security in and around schools and take firm action to address gang violence against children.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





The diplomatic incident is closed according to the PM

In a telephone interview with Dominican President Luis Abinader, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry declared that the diplomatic incident between the Dominican Republic and Haiti was closed https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35151-haiti-flash-irritated-response-from-claude-jospeh-to-president-abinader.html and that he wished to maintain "the best relations" with the Dominican Republic, informing the sending soon of a special envoy.



Vehicle insurance : compulsory expertise

On Wednesday 3 November 2021, Fritzner Bernadel, General Manager of the Third Party Vehicle Insurance Office (OAVCT) announced that vehicle appraisal is now mandatory for any renewal of the insurance policy.



The fuel crisis continues

The fuel crisis continues and refueling in one of the supply stations is a matter of course for the combatant. Protests continue across the country to continue demanding from the authorities a lasting solution to the fuel crisis. See also : https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-35162-icihaiti-cap-haitien-a-fuel-distribution-barge-to-supply-the-great-north.html



New government in the coming days ?

According to the radical opposition of the so-called "democratic and popular" sector, Prime Minister Ariel Henry is committed to setting up the new so-called consensus government in the coming days...



Shipwreck : New tool 22 dead, 8 survivors

The Directorate of Civil Protection has communicated a new assessment of the sinking of the "Eklezyas" from Anse a Pitre bound for Marigo which occurred during the night from Friday 29 to Saturday 30 October https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35124-haiti-flash-shipwreck-off-grosse-pointe-at-least-39-victims.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-35129-icihaiti-shipwreck-semanah-takes-sanctions.html communicated a new toll of 30 victims revised downwards : 22 dead (11 men, 9 women and 2 babies) and 8 survivors.



Louis-Philippe Dalembert narrowly misses the Goncourt

This year the Goncourt will unfortunately not be awarded to our writer Louis-Philippe Dalembert for his novel "Milwaukee Blues" which was among the 4 finalists. It is the Senegalese writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, who won the 2021 Goncourt Prize for his novel "La plus secrete memoire des hommes" published in, Ed. Philippe Rey / Jimsaan.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















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Korean Movie | 2020

 Drama

Directed by Lee Hwan ()

Written by Lee Hwan ()

127min | Release date in South Korea: 2021/04/15

Synopsis

Se-jin runs into a teenage gang.

Jaepil and Sin-ji accidently help Se-jin and Juyeong out of a dangerous situation. However, Se-jin doesn't appreciate their help, and she shouts at them.

The four teenagers escape to a mountain where no one can find them.

Se-jin asks them to help her terminate her pregnancy, since they ruined her first attempt by saving her. Their blood freezes as graves appear in the darkness.

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In a settlement with conservation groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agrees to prepare a recovery plan for the threatened species

Montana Free Page

by Amanda Eggert

More than 20 years after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed the Canada lynx a threatened species, the agency has agreed to prepare a recovery plan for the elusive, forest-dwelling carnivores. Last week the agency entered into a settlement agreement with six conservation groups that sued USFWS in 2020 over its management of lynx.

The plaintiffs had argued that an agency assessment finding that the animals have recovered and therefore no longer require federal protections was motivated by politics and litigation fatigue rather than scientific evidence of lynx recovery. The lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court in Missoula to order USFWS to prepare a recovery plan, something the conservation groups said should have been done years before.

That recovery plan should start taking shape in the coming months. According to the settlement agreement, the agency no longer intends to submit a proposed rule to delist lynx and will instead prepare a recovery plan for lynx.

Recovery plans are sometimes called roadmaps to recovery. They help the agency identify threats to a species survival and give federal agencies objective criteria for measuring the success of recovery efforts. Per the agreement, USFWS will also review and update its Species Status Assessment, a focused, repeatable and rigorous assessment used to guide wildlife management. The agencys most recent lynx species status assessment argued that federal protections were no longer warranted due in part to an increase in lynx populations in Maine and Colorado. That same document, which was issued in 2017, found that lynx populations may have contracted in other areas, including northwestern Montana and northeastern Idaho.

The settlement indicates a marked shift in the agencys approach to lynx management, which has implications for how agencies like the U.S. Forest Service approach resource extraction  logging, namely  in lynx habitat. Per the settlement, USFWS will draft a lynx recovery plan by Dec. 1, 2023, and issue a final recovery plan within a year of the draft release.

In a press release about the settlement, the plaintiffs said they appreciate the agencys commitment to using current climate science in its decisions and are looking forward to measurable progress toward lynx recovery.

Its nice to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reverse course, apply the best available climate science, and put its time and energy into recovery planning for the species, said Matthew Bishop, a senior attorney with Western Environmental Law Center who has worked on lynx management issues since the late 1990s. This is a victory for lynx, science, and for everyone who values healthy ecosystems.

We are hopeful that this decision is a harbinger of things to come from a Fish and Wildlife Service that will consider how to best protect species in the face of climate change, and will rely on science and not politics in taking bold action to prevent extinction, said Lindsey Larris, wildlife program director with WildEarth Guardians.

Canada lynx live in boreal forests of North America. Their large paws enable them to travel efficiently through deep snow, giving them a hunting advantage over other predators like bobcats. The conservation groups have argued that climate change could compromise their recovery.

USFWS did not provide comment on the development by press time Tuesday afternoon.

The settlement agreement comes less than two weeks after the Biden administration announced its nomination of Martha Williams, a Montanan who had formerly served as director of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, to lead USFWS, which oversees administration of the Endangered Species Act and 567 national wildlife refuges. Williams had been serving in that capacity since January, when she was named the agencys principal deputy director. The nomination still requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate to make the appointment official.
Clashes took place in Basraton, west of Aleppo, after the midnight, causing human losses, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Right, the SOHR.

In the same relation, the Masharee' area in western Hama countryside witnessed mutual targeting by heavy weapons, between the Syrian government forces and the mercenaries affiliated to the Turkish occupation, as reconnaissance aircraft was hovering the so-called "de-escalation Zone".

Yesterday, 3 elements of the Syrian forces were killed by the Turkish occupation mercenaries in the village of Hayr Darqal as another was killed by the bullets of the Turkish occupation mercenaries, in the village of Al Sheikh Aqil, west of Aleppo.

l..a

ANHA
Oct. 28 served as a monumental day for the Challenger Learning Center of Kentucky. The public portion of the Centers Continuing the Mission campaign was announced by Honorary Chair Governor Paul Patton. The Centers staff called it the biggest in the organizations history.

The Challenger Center announced a public campaign tonight, Director Tom Cravens said. Weve set a goal to raise 2.25 million dollars and we need the public to help us do that.

The campaign was announced on the Centers grounds in the presence of community members who support the Centers mission to provide the highest standards of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education opportunities. Gov. Paul Patton, the events keynote speaker, said, This Challenger Center deserves the support of people all over Eastern Kentucky and I want to send that message out tonight, that people all over Eastern Kentucky need to support this center. I have and will continue to because it gives our children the opportunity to look beyond themselvesto begin to understand just how big the world isto begin to understand just how imprtant a part they can play in it.

After the announcement, community members were encouraged to take a look inside the Center. Many took advantage of the opportunity to see and experience the new and innovative exhibits and upgrades.

This place has always been really cool but the new look makes it even better, former student Jody Caudill said. There are some really interesting exhibits set up in the Moon, Mars and Beyond Museum and the mission control looks amazing. The mission simulation program has been fully updated, its so cool.

It is the thought of putting more smiles on the faces of the kids, however, that has Cravens excited for the future. With $1,950,000 raised during the silent fundraising period, the Center is optimistic about the community support for the remaining $300,000.

Were excited about the Centers future and know that we have the support of communities throughout eastern Kentucky. These investments will sustain the Challenger Center over the long run and have us here for another 150,000 students, Cravens said.

As the public portion of the Capital Campaign continues in the coming months, Executive Campaign and Board Member Judy Mitchell said, The Challenger is so grateful for the support we have received over the last 20 plus years and as we enter this new phase, we hope we can inspire a renewed enthusiasm as we serve the students of eastern Kentucky.

For more information, visit, www.clcky.com.
LOCAL BRIEFS: 'A Christmas Memory,' Bounty is back, organ recital

Haire to present Capote story at St. John church

Truman Capotes story, A Christmas Memory, will be presented as a one-man show by actor and theologian E.R. Haire Jr. at the Episcopal Church of St. John in the Wilderness at 2 p.m. will be held Saturday, Dec. 18, and Sunday, Dec. 19. The performance will be in the Wilderness Room on Rutledge Drive across from the sanctuary.

The show is free to the public but attendance is limited to 30 people per performance and RSVP is required. Visit stjohnflatrock.org to sign up. Face masks and physical distancing are required. Temperatures will be taken at the door.

A Christmas Memory takes place during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Until he was 10 years old, Truman Capote lived with elderly relatives in a small town in rural Alabama. The story is a frankly autobiographical account of those years, especially of his relationship with one of the elderly cousins, Miss Sook Faulk.

The greatest examples of Capotes skillfulness as a writer are found among the stories inspired by his early childhood and the relationships he forged growing up in the rural South.

A Christmas Memory first appeared in Mademoiselle magazine in the late 1950s, when Capote was 27 years old, and has since become one of his most beloved and bestselling works.

Capote was a flamboyant figure in both literary and cultural circles. Controversial, colorful and complex, he was a writer of uncommon grace. His best-known works include Breakfast at Tiffanys, In Cold Blood, Other Voices Other Rooms, and The Grass Harp. Mr. Capote died in 1984 at the age of 59.

Earle Ross (E.R.) Haire Jr., PhD, is a native of North Carolina. His professional achievements combine acting and theology. In Los Angeles, he worked as an actor and at Paramount Studios. He earned a Master of Sacred Theology degree from Yale University Divinity School, focusing on drama and worship. In 2017 he earned a PhD. In Theology and Ethics from the University of the Edinburgh in Scotland.

Bounty returns in new location

After restrictions made it impossible for Bounty to serve its annual Christmas dinner in 2020, we are happy to say it has returned. This year brings many changes including a new location. Safety protocols are calling the event to be a take-out only event.

Immaculata Catholic School graciously hosted this ecumenical event for almost all of the 38 years. They have been awarded a grant to create a STEM Lab for the school. This grant will remove the schools commercial kitchen making it impossible to continue to serve as host.

After searching for the right space, we were blessed to find the Salvation Army in Hendersonville, just a few blocks away to carry on our event, organizers said.

Captains Phillip and Sherrie Stokes along with the entire staff have welcomed the organizers and event with open arms.

It just makes sense for us to help in this way and Bounty of Bethlehem seems to be a natural extension of our Christmas Assistance programs already in place, Sherrie said.

While the event may look different with take-out only, the heart remains. The mission of Bounty of Bethlehem has always been to be a meal for the community by the community. In order to serve as safely as we can, the sit-down portion of the meal has been eliminated. However, paring down the sit-down aspect of the day will change some of the volunteers needed. We still need volunteers, says Joanne Mummert, volunteer coordinator for over 15 years. The meal will still need to be prepared taking several days/hours and packaged for pick up. Volunteer signup is 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 4.

Since the mid-1980s Henderson County volunteers and supporters have come together to host the Community Christmas Dinner by Bounty of Bethlehem. for anyone and everyone to enjoy, no matter who they are, how they worship, or from where they come. All are welcome. Meals will be available for pick up only beginning at 12:30 and will be available until 4 p.m. or until they run out. Salvation Army is located at 239 Grove Street. Donations can be mailed to PO Box 742 Horse Shoe, NC 28742.





Organists guild sponsors recital

The Blue Ridge Chapter of the American Guild of Organists will sponsor a Young Artists Recital at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7, at Grace Lutheran Church. Performers include Nolan Anthony, Makena James, Hunter Holbert and Brett Levi.

The national organization of the American Guild of Organists was founded in 1896 as an educational and service organization with a mission to foster a thriving community of musicians who share their knowledge and inspire passion for the organ. It is the goal of the guild members to advance the cause of organ and choral music, to increase their contributions to aesthetic and religious experience and to improve the proficiency of organists and choral conductors.

Organists, pianists, choral directors, church musicians and lovers of church music who are looking for a support group, ideas, opportunities for learning and growth and sharing musical suggestions are invited to become members of the Blue Ridge Chapter. Members will be available to answer questions before and after the program. The public is invited. There is no admission charge, but donations are accepted. Masks are required.
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(New York Jewish Week via JTA)  Imagine arriving at the Pastrami Queen but finding no pastrami, or showing up at Holy Schnitzel to find its signature breaded chicken cutlet off the menu.

To quote Tevye, sounds crazy, no? But that is exactly what will happen if you visit Sherry Herring, the Israeli eatery that recently opened on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It is the first branch of the renowned sandwich bar in the port of Tel Aviv famous for  you guessed it  its herring sandwiches.

But for the moment, to quote Sherry Ansky, the driving force behind Sherry Herring, the New York outpost has no Sherry and no herring.

Thats because Ansky is still waiting for her travel documents to enter the United States  and the herring is still aging at a Dutch processor, patiently soaking up the brine and flavors that must meet Anskys approval.

Ansky is a food celebrity in Israel, where she has written six cookbooks (one of which was translated into English). For decades she was a food columnist for the daily newspaper Maariv. But in 2011 she hit a writers block. It was at that time that her daughter, Michal Ansky, herself a food journalist, opened the farmers market in the port of Tel Aviv, which soon became a draw for tourists, foodies and hipsters. Sherry Ansky decided to create a sandwich shop there that featured herring.

Ansky has had a long-standing love affair with herring, the brined or pickled fish that is a staple of Ashkenazi cuisine. When she was 6 years old, she went to synagogue with her father.

Somebody made a kiddush and brought me a plate filled with lekach [honey cake], kugel and lots of herring, she told The Jewish Week. I ate one piece, then another, until I finished it all. I believe that there is a moment when you understand the power of candy. For me, it happened with herring.

Anskys shop, featuring herring and other fish sandwiches, was an immediate success. Shortly after she opened the sandwich bar, she entered the farmers market to find a line snaking through it and out the door.

I fainted and ran away, she remembers. I told the people to go away! I cant do it.

Even those who arent normally fans of herring may find it hard not be taken by Anskys herring sandwich. It is a carefully constructed work consisting of a fresh baguette, sliced in half and slathered with sour cream and French butter, seasoned with hot pepper, seeds and juice from a tomato, onions and scallions, and finished off with brined herring.

Food celebrity Phil Rosenthal visited the Tel Aviv port for his Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil and declared Anskys herring sandwich was one of the best sandwiches Ive ever had in my stupid life.

The taste is precise, said Ansky. At the end of the day, I feel like I worked on this sandwich all of my life, until the moment I needed it.

During the pandemic, Ansky sent her son-in-law and business partner, Eyal Amir, to New York to scout out a location for the first of what they hope will be several Sherry Herring shops. They chose the Upper West Side, said Amir, because it is a Jewish neighborhood where our penetration to the market will be easiest. Their eatery, said Amir, builds on the culture of appetizing stores in New York, including Russ & Daughters on the Lower East Side and Barney Greengrass less than a mile away.

Like the Tel Aviv sandwich bar, the Manhattan shop offers a choice of smoked fish sandwiches: tuna from a smokehouse in the Hamptons, wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon, mackerel from, according to Amir, the wild waters off of Spain.

So why no herring? Because there is herring and then there is Sherrys herring. During his scouting ventures, Amir brought back samples of all of the herrings he could source in the five boroughs of New York City. None met the approval of Anskys discerning palate. So she flew off to Holland and worked with a fishery there to select the best herring  creamy with a soft bite  and to create the brine that would give her the flavor she was after.

We kept on experimenting until we reached the right flavor in July, said Amir. Then they had to submit the recipe and process to the FDA for approval. They started production last month. But the herring, said Amir, needs 11 weeks in our unique brine to arrive at the flavor, colors and aroma that we want.

So the herring will come, in a first shipment of 15,000 filets, in December. Will that be enough? That, said Amir, depends on how much New Yorkers like it.

Sherry Herring is located at 245 W. 72nd St., between West End Avenue and Broadway.
(JTA) - French President Emmanuel Macron has inaugurated near Paris what is believed to be the world's first museum on the wrongful and antisemitic persecution of the late army captain Alfred Dreyfus.

The new museum, inaugurated on Tuesday in the suburb of Medan, features at least 500 documents including photographs, court papers and personal objects from the 8-year ordeal that ended in 1906 with Dreyfus' exoneration from trumped-up espionage charges and convictions. Some of the documents are displayed on walls in the main space of the Dreyfus museum, hanging against giant text naming concepts such as "Justice," "Treason" and "Innocence." Also on display are copies of antisemitic caricatures that were published in mainstream newspapers in France in connection with the Dreyfus trials.

The Dreyfus Museum is part of the Zola House, a cultural institution devoted to preserving the memory of Emile Zola, the renowned French writer who, though not Jewish himself, had a key role in leading opposition and protests against the injustice done to Dreyfus. Zola had lived in the building where the institution named for him is housed. The Zola House had been closed for renovations for over a decade, and is reopening with the addition of the Dreyfus Museum.

Zola's role in the Dreyfus affair was immortalized in 1898, when he penned an influential article titled "J'accuse," or "I accuse." The open letter criticized the persecution of Dreyfus, ostensibly for spying on France for Germany; the captain, Zola wrote, was prosecuted and convicted on scant evidence because he was Jewish. (Following the article's publication, Zola was put on trial for libel and fled the country.)

The trial had even broader implications on the next century of Jewish thought: Theodore Herzl, who many view as the father of modern secular Zionism, covered the trial as a journalist and later described it as a watershed moment in his ideological development from an assimilationist Jew into a Zionist.

Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images French President Emmanuel Macron, third from right, visits the Dreyfus Museum in Medan near Paris, on Oct. 26, 2021.

The Zola House and the Dreyfus Museum will open to the public on Oct. 28, CNews reported. The Zola House's renovation and the museum's opening cost at least $6 million, largely coming from government subsidies, according to CNews. The Dreyfus museum originally planned to open in 2019, but a series of setbacks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the opening.

The director of the museum and institution, Louis Gautier, told CNews that the new space "will show and tell about the affair but also pose questions on vital issues of tolerance, othering, human rights, women's rights, the separation of church and state and the contract between the republic and its citizens."

In 1899, Dreyfus was pardoned by the French president and released from three years in jail, and in 1906 a military commission officially exonerated him.
Actors Milla Bankowicz and Robert Wieckiewicz portray members of the Chiger family trying to survive the Holocaust during filming in Lviv, Ukraine in 2011.

(JTA) - The dozens of Jews who escaped the Nazis by hiding in the sewers of Lviv became local and international lore almost immediately after World War II.

"In the summer, when the rain seeped in, there was a lot of water everywhere," Krystyna Chiger recalled in testimony in 1947, when she was 11. "Then we had to lean very low on the stones right next to the wall so that the water would not flow on us."

But the location of the underground hideouts remained unknown until recently, when a team of archaeologists who had been inspired by a 2011 Polish movie about the saga discovered a secret chamber where at least 20 Jews lived - and many others died - in awful conditions while the Nazis and their collaborators roamed overhead.

In a medieval chamber under Cathedral Square, researchers found not only a space that could house a large number of people but relics of the time spent there, including beer bottles from the time of the Nazi occupation and a toy likely provided by one of the locals who helped the Jews hide.

The discovery of the hideout last month followed a painstaking sweep of the sewer system by researchers from Lviv University, who used the testimony of the Chigers and other survivors, according to the Ukrainian news site Zaxid.

The researchers had practical questions: They wanted to learn how exactly at least 21 people managed to live for months on end in a disease-infested and damp environment. But they also wanted to document the full scope of a story that has become world-famous because it shows the survivors' inspiring determination to live.

The team began exploring the sewer system after seeing "In Darkness," an award-winning Polish historical drama about the survival in Lviv's sewers that was Poland's 2012 Academy Awards submission.

The film captured the researchers' imagination, but Hanna-Melania Tychka, one of the archaeologists, said the focus on the survivors' emotions left her with questions about how they actually survived. "It was all quite surreal," she said.

Andriy Ryshtun, a seasoned digger who is very familiar with the Lviv sewer system, also had doubts about what he saw in the movie.

"There are almost no places where people can stay for a long time. Water is flowing everywhere," he told Zaxid. Researchers had ventured into the sewer several times over the years to try and corroborate the testimonies of survivors, but found nowhere they felt could match the space described by the Jews who hid there.

Progressing from manholes they knew Jews used to get into the system, they methodically mapped the labyrinth for over a year, starting in 2019.

Eventually, they arrived at a rainwater depository. "The entrance to the left and right was walled up with blocks, so the chamber remained isolated. We finally found the annex," Ryshtun told the news site.

The annex is a rare remnant from medieval times that had been walled off and forgotten about for centuries. "It could accommodate many people," Ryshtun said. "And we found clear evidence that people were hiding there from the Nazis."

Between the cracks in the stones that make up the annex, glass had been stuffed to keep out the rats, the researchers said. There were beer bottles from the time of the Nazi occupation, and a torch and nails had been driven into the stones to allow objects to hang away from the dank floor.

Evidence of heavy digging was also found: The occupants moved tons of earth to conceal the annex in case the Germans, who were digging trenches nearby, entered the tunnels of the sewage system.

There was also an object that probably belonged to the sewer workers - Poles, as Lviv was a Polish city when the Germans invaded it - who led about 70 Jews into the sewer system and fed them there. Only 20 survived the war. The remaining 50 either died of diseases in the sewer system or were caught by the Germans and murdered after deciding to take their chances in the outside world. According to one testimony, one baby was suffocated in the sewer by his mother for fear that the baby's crying would cause the whole group to be discovered.

One of the rescuers had brought to the tunnels a statuette of an Easter lamb, an object connected to the Catholic tradition, for the children to play with.

It was a distraction from a dreadful reality, according to Krystyna Chiger and other survivors who testified about life in the sewer.

"It was very wet and dark. I was very scared and I was shaking, but I tried to be calm and only asked Daddy if we still had far to go," she said in the 1947 testimony. "There were stones with yellow worms crawling all over. We put all our things over the stones and sat on top of them. It was awful there. Water seeped from the walls and it smelled bad. I saw large, red rats, which ran by us just like chickens. At first I was very afraid, but later I got used to it."

Almost all of the 110,000 Jews who lived in Lviv in 1939 were murdered. Today, the city has just a few hundred Jews.

The objects retrieved by the researchers will go on display at Museum in the Footsteps of Galician Jews at the All-Ukrainian Jewish Charitable Foundation, which is exploring the possibility of opening the newly discovered annex to visitors as part of a historical tour.

Olga Lidovska, a representative of the Jewish community in Lviv and the museum's director, told Zaxid that she was moved by the discovery.

"The researchers have done the incredible, and indeed such discoveries rarely occur these days," she said. "But they worked in difficult conditions and closed the case, bringing a very valuable discovery."
(JTA) - Mort Sahl, a Jewish satirist who was credited with making caustic political and social satire popular in stand-up comedy, died Tuesday at 94.

Often walking on stage holding just a rolled up newspaper, Sahl liked to riff on the headlines of the day in extended improvised monologues. At a time when comedians tended to steer clear of politics, Sahl took aim at politicians and was known to end his sets with the line: "Are there any groups I haven't offended?"

Steve Allen, the first host of "The Tonight Show," once introduced Sahl as "probably the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy."

Though Sahl was not religious and did not discuss his Jewishness in routines or often in public, he inspired a wave of fellow Jewish stand-ups. Woody Allen named him as a major influence and commented in interviews how Sahl also influenced the fellow Jewish pioneer Lenny Bruce - who would take Sahl's freeform style and cutting satire to crude new heights.

Sahl was born in Montreal in 1927 to Jewish parents from New York's Lower East Side and eventually moved to Los Angeles. As a teenager, Sahl dropped out of high school there and tried to enroll in the ROTC program by lying about his age, but his mother found him out after two weeks and brought him home. Sahl was married three times and a had a son, Mort Jr., with his second wife. Mort Jr., died of a drug overdose at age 19 in 1996.

The elder Sahl got his break performing in San Francisco years after graduating from college, performing sets at a club known for attracting an intellectual crowd. His jokes about national politics eventually earned him a following and he started appearing on late night shows and performing in clubs across the country.

After appearing in several movies in the 1950s and early '60s, his career took a dive after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, which Sahl came to believe had been orchestrated by the CIA. But he continued to act and perform stand-up into his 90s.

In 1982, Sahl played the role of Werner Finck, a German-Jewish satirist, in a 5-hour TV special. In 2003, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored Sahl with the Alan King Award in American Jewish Humor.

But Sahl explained to J. The Jewish News of Northern California in 2004 that he never emphasized his Jewishness on stage because it wasn't a major part of his upbringing.

"I never stressed it," he says, "because I didn't have those kinds of parents. I grew up in a homogenized neighborhood, and was a kind of a mail-order, cardboard Jew."

Speaking with the paper not long after the premiere of Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," Sahl opined on the movie and antisemitism.

"Terrible movie," he said. "Two hours of unrelieved sadism. But the Romans are nice! I think everyone's second nature is anti-Semitism, so all the anxiety [over the film] is justified."
(JTA)  Fear of antisemitism spurred 40 percent of American Jews to change their behavior over the past year, according to a new survey about antisemitism in America.

The survey, released Monday, is the latest in an annual series commissioned by the American Jewish Committee to understand how Jewish Americans and the general public experience and perceive antisemitism.

A survey of American Jews found that over the last year, 17 percent said they avoided certain places, events, or situations, 22 percent avoided making themselves visually identifiable as a Jew and 25 percent refrained from posting Jewish-related content online.

A companion survey of the general public, meanwhile, found that the proportion of Americans who say they understand what antisemitism is rose sharply in the last year, from 53 percent in 2020 to 65 percent this year.

Last years survey was taken shortly before the presidential election in which Joe Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump, whom many Jews perceived as stoking antisemitism. At the time, just 4 percent of American Jews said they felt more secure than they had in the past; this year that proportion was significantly higher, at 10 percent.

Almost 40 percent of Jews have changed their behavior. This is horrible and heartbreaking data, Holly Huffnagle, the AJCs U.S. director for combating antisemitism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about this years findings.

But I think we cant hide the fact that more Jews feel secure today, she added, noting that when the surveyors asked for an explanation, The change in the administration was by far the biggest response to that.

This years surveys were taken in September and early October and included 1,214 Americans overall and 1,433 Jews. The margin of error for each survey was 3.9 percent. In a shift, the majority of the surveys were completed online, rather than by phone, although Huffnagle said researchers had concluded that the change had not influenced results in any particular way.

Some of the results, including the finding about the proportion of American Jews who changed their behavior out of fear, cannot be directly compared to the AJCs past antisemitism surveys because this years version asked about experiences only in the last year. Previous surveys asked about experiences and perceptions in the past two or five years.

We decided to lose the trend data in favor of accurate information, Huffnagle said.

Other findings are comparable over time, and suggest that much has remained unchanged in American Jewish sentiment. The vast majority of American Jews continue to say that antisemitism is a problem in the United States; antisemitism on college campuses remains a concern for many American Jews; and American Jews continue to say they are more concerned about antisemitism emanating from the extreme right than the extreme left.

Half of American Jews say they extreme political right poses a very serious antisemitic threat, and 91 percent said they believed the far right poses at least some threat, similar to last years finding. In a shift, however, the proportion of American Jews who said they thought the extreme political left represents at least a slight antisemitic threat increased sharply, from 61 percent last year to 71 percent this year.

Huffnagle said she attributed the increase in the general publics awareness of antisemitism to multiple high-profile incidents related to right-wing activity, including penetration of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which has antisemitic overtones, and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, where one participant was photographed wearing a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt.

She also said a broader discourse around combatting discrimination and hate, spurred in part by a response to attacks on Asian Americans, may have played a role.

I think there might have been this national wakeup call, Huffnagle said, adding, at least about how to answer survey questions.

Three quarters of Jews said they had heard a lot or some about Jews being attacked in the United States and abroad during Israels conflict with Hamas in Gaza in May. Three quarters of those respondents  representing a majority of Jews  said those reports had made them feel less safe as Jews in the United States.

Huffnagle said there was little evidence that the incidents of antisemitism reported at the time had contributed to the shift in sentiment within the general public.

Still, she said, the general public remains notably supportive of Israel  perhaps more so than American Jews. She pointed to the fact that the proportion of general-public respondents who said they viewed the statement Israel has no right to exist as antisemitic was higher this year: 85 percent of respondents said the statement is antisemitic, compared to 77 percent last year.
On Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2-4 p.m., JFS Orlando will be hosting the Florida Department of Health, Orange County mobile vaccine unit at its location on 2100 Lee Road, Winter Park, FL 32789. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be available, as well as booster shots for those who had their second dose of Pfizer 6 months ago. Free $10 grocery gift cards will be available for all who receive a vaccine. Vaccines and gift cards are available first come, first served.

(Second doses, if needed, will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 15th 2-4 p.m.)

Call Florida Health Orange County at (407) 858-1498 for more information.

To learn more about JFS Orlando, visit http://www.JFSorlando.org or follow them on social media @JFSorlando.
(JNS)  Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Friday that six Palestinian NGOs will be listed as terror organizations for their close ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Those organizations were active under the cover of civil society organizations, but in practice belong and constitute an arm of the [PFLP] leadership, the main activity of which is the liberation of Palestine and destruction of Israel, he announced.

The security organizations will continue to act and intensify the strikes against terrorism and the terrorist infrastructure everywhere, and by all means, said Gantz. I call on the countries of the world and international organizations to assist in this fight and to avoid contact with companies and organizations that supply materials to terrorism.

The six groups are Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

The announcement by Gantz apparently caught the U.S. off-guard with U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price telling reporters that Israel did not give them advance warning.

We believe respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and a strong civil society are critically important to responsible and responsive governance, said Price, adding that they will be engaging with Israel for more information regarding the basis for these designations.

In addition to Israel, the United States and European Union also consider the PFLP to be a terror organization.

Progressives, left-wing groups call it a repressive measure

American progressive lawmakers criticized the decision.

There must be immediate consequences from the U.S. and the international community for this brazen act, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) posted on Twitter.

Similarly, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) called on Israel to rescind its ban, saying many of these organizations are working to bring peace in the region, and are vocal critics of Hamas & the P.A.

J Street also condemned the move, calling it a repressive measure that seems to be designed to outlaw and persecute important Palestinian human rights groups.

The Biden admin[istration] should make clear to the Israeli government that this is totally unacceptable and anti-democratic, and call on them to reverse the decision, it said.

The United Nations also condemned the announcement by Israel. Counter-terrorism legislation must not be used to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work, the U.N. Human Rights Office in Ramallah said in a statement, adding that Israels decision was based on extremely vague or irrelevant reasons, including entirely peaceful and legitimate activities.

Nevertheless, the six Palestinian NGOs have received considerable funding in the past from E.U. member states and the United Nations. Last May, the Shin Bet announced that it had uncovered a finance network for PFLP where the terror stole millions of euros from European aid organizations and governments to fund terrorist activities.

Those funds served the Popular Front for payments to security prisoners families and martyrs, wages for activists, enlistment of activists, promotion of terror activity, promotion of the Popular Front activity in Jerusalem, and distribution of the organizations messages and ideology, according to Israels Ministry of Defense.

Under Israeli law, the designation now allows authorities to close the nonprofits offices, seize their assets and ban supporting their activities.

NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that tracks anti-Israel nonprofits, said the announcement by the Israeli government confirms what our research has shown yearsthis time six Palestinian NGOs were designated as terrorist organizations as part of the PFLP network. All are funded by European [governments] and deeply involved in political warfare against Israel, the group said on Twitter.
What do you get when you combine a healthy dose of appreciation, a gourmet luncheon with friends, and a one-of-a-kind holiday shopping bazaar? The answer is the Jewish Pavilion's "JP Connections," honoring its dedicated volunteers Gary Becker and Sandi Trainor. "Our annual luncheon on Dec. 2nd at 11 a.m. at the Hilton in Altamonte Springs is a yearly opportunity for us to show our appreciation and to connect with our wonderful volunteers and members who support the Jewish Pavilion in so many ways," noted Nancy Ludin, Jewish Pavilion, CEO. "This year, we celebrate two special people who have touched the hearts and given their time to the seniors we serve in more than 50 elder-care communities throughout greater Orlando."

Becker, who is kind, humble, compassionate and a natural born doer, lives near Village on the Green, a senior residence facility in Longwood. He knows many of the residents and has a brother-in-law who lives there. Becker volunteered to lead Shabbat services monthly for the Jewish Pavilion at Village on the Green and has been doing so since 2017. His role as a voluntary clergy aide at the Congregation of Reform Judaism is one in which he assists clergy in life-cycle functions, periodically leads services and conducts Shiva services when needed, is beneficial to his Pavilion activity. Becker very much enjoys engaging the residents in discussion on the Torah portion of the week and the implications for our current time.

Volunteering for the Pavilion is a good match for Becker. Having been the last of five children, he grew up in an older family and was more aware of the needs, feelings and sensitivities of people as they continue to "mature."

Volunteering has been an important part of Becker's life before and after retirement. He has been involved in community/charitable causes for most of his adult life. Becker's experience lends itself well to his current activities.

Becker grew up in an established Jewish community in Syracuse, New York. His Jewish faith has always been deep-rooted. He is the Congregation of Reform Judaism's representative serving on the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation. Previously, he also served on the Board of the Federation.

Serving in academia has also been one of Becker's passions. He was a career educator, beginning with teaching middle/high school social sciences. He later became a district administrator in the area of instructional technology while an adjunct faculty member at Syracuse University. Becker continued similar activities in Jacksonville and in Orlando. He retired from Seminole County Public Schools as director of Instructional Media and Technology Services. He continues to enjoy teaching in the Adult Education program at Congregation of Reform Judaism. Each semester, he also teaches an overview of Judaism class as part of the course titled "World Religions" at Seminole State College.

Sandi Trainor decided to write her own bio. She writes: My husband and I moved to Orlando Lutheran Towers in 2016. I was introduced to [Program Director] Walter Goldstein from the Jewish Pavilion in 2017. I began to participate in the once a month lunches where Walter would do Shabbat services and entertain the Jewish residents with his beautiful singing voice. I helped with the lunches and when Walter could no longer continue his visits, a Human Resource director took over the program, and I continued to help with the lunches. I also volunteered with another Jewish Pavilion staff member going to several facilities by assisting her with the programs, and meeting and greeting the residents.

Most recently, I have been going with Cantor Nina Fine to Westminster Orlando and Kinneret facilities helping her by greeting and interacting with the residents and assisting with serving food and drinks. I love going with Cantor Nina and watch her bring joy through her music.

I also help the Jewish Pavilion by handing out the special goodie bags provided by them to our Jewish residents at Orlando Lutheran Towers. I work with our activities director, Odalia Santiago, to continue the once a month lunches for the Jewish residents at OLT and any other resident who shows an interest in learning about Jewish traditions. I coordinate and order the food for the lunch and another OLT Jewish resident, Ingrid Goldshmid, helps by finding interesting information about Jewish life to share with the residents at the lunch.

Sandi Trainor

What I love most about volunteering with the Jewish Pavilion is that I can continue learning about my Jewish roots and share what I learn with other Orlando Lutheran Tower residents. Even though we are a small group of Jewish residents, I think it is very important to continue sharing our Jewish traditions and values. The Jewish Pavilion has given me the opportunity to do that. I have been volunteering for the Jewish Pavilion for over four years and I really love that the Pavilion has given me the chance to participate in Jewish holiday celebrations and has helped me share my passion for helping others."

Join with other supporters of the Jewish Pavilion on Dec. 2, 11 a.m. at the Hilton in Altamonte Springs, 350 North Lake Blvd. The Couvert is $30 per person. Enjoy a holiday bazaar, fashions and raffles during a fabulous luncheon.

To receive an invitation, please call 407-678-9363.To register, visit https://jpav.ticketspice.com/lunch-and-bazaar.
(JTA) - Demonstrators posed as the antisemitic white supremacists who led a deadly rally in Virginia in 2017 in a stunt protest against the state's Republican candidate for governor, a sign of the increasing role charges of antisemitism are playing in the close race.

The protest Friday against Glenn Youngkin, who is running for governor against former governor Terry McAuliffe, was organized by the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans. Youngkin and other Republicans condemned the protest as exploiting tragedy. Jewish Democrats called it "inappropriate." The election was Tuesday.

Democrats have made allegations that Republicans are tolerating and at times advancing antisemitism within their ranks a key charge in the race.

Youngkin embraced Donald Trump ahead of the primaries but has sought to distance himself from the former president since becoming the nominee. Trump remains popular among the GOP base but is broadly unpopular in Virginia. In one of the most notorious episodes of his presidency, Trump equivocated about condemning the deadly neo-Nazi march in the state, saying there were "very fine people" on both sides of the events of the day.

In a statement, the Lincoln Project said the protest was intended to remind voters of "what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party's embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin's failure to condemn it."

Youngkin told a talk radio host Saturday that the stunt should backfire and that McAuliffe "owns this."

"For anybody to use white nationalism and racism as a campaign ploy is absolutely disgusting," said Youngkin, who has said that as governor he would establish a "Holocaust, Genocide and Anti-Semitism Advisory Commission" and would seek passage of legislation endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

Five protesters posed near a Youngkin bus at a campaign event in Charlottesville wearing the khaki trousers and white shirts typical of one of the white supremacist groups that joined the 2017 rally. They also carried tiki torches, which the 2017 marchers carried, terrorizing Charlottesville's residents the night before the rally.

Before the Lincoln Project released its statement, a photo of the protesters stirred confusion on social media, with Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of inspiring or organizing the protest.

The protest has extra resonance now as a high-profile civil lawsuit trial is underway in Charlottesville. A number of the victims of the violence in 2017 are suing the groups and individuals who allegedly organized the rally.

Democrats have focused their allegations of Republican antisemitism on Virginia's north, where there is a substantial Jewish population in Washington D.C.'s suburbs. Charges of antisemitism have surfaced against at least three Republicans running for the House of Delegates as well as against Youngkin himself.

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), a Jewish member of the House of Representatives from Virginia Beach, called Youngkin out earlier this month for comments he made at a campaign event accusing George Soros of surreptitiously planting far-left activists on local school boards. Soros, a liberal Jewish billionaire who is frequently the subject of antisemitic invective, is open about his political giving and is not involved in school board races.

"I call it out in my own party and I'm calling it out now," Luria said in a tweet at the time. "Evoking George Soros as a shadowy funder is an antisemitic conspiracy theory. This is an unacceptable statement from Glenn Youngkin."

Democrat Eileen Filler-Corn, who is the first Jewish and first woman speaker of the House of Delegates, earlier this month joined Doug Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a vice president, at a Jewish Democratic fundraising event in northern Virginia where they invoked rising antisemitism as a key reason to vote for Democrats in the state's governor's race as well as in next year's midterms.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America has joined the Lincoln Project in running two web ads aimed at northern Virginia's Jewish voters, emphasizing antisemitism as a threat that they allege Republicans are doing little to counter. It has also run phone banks targeting Jewish voters in the state. One of the phone banks was preceded by a pep talk by Dan Helmer, a Jewish state delegate whose opponent depicted him in a mailer as rubbing his hands while he contemplated piles of gold coins.

The JDCA in a tweet called on Youngkin to "denounce this gross behavior," referring to the tiki-torch-bearing protesters. The JDCA deleted the tweet after the Lincoln Project made its statement.

JDCA CEO Halie Soifer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Lincoln Project stunt was "inappropriate" but said the Youngkin campaign was to blame for allowing antisemitism to feature in the race.

"The outrage over the Lincoln Project's inappropriate campaign stunt should be redirected to Glenn Youngkin and the Virginia GOP's embrace of right-wing extremism, as well as Youngkin's repeated use of antisemitic tropes," she said.

Republicans also have at times made antisemitism an issue. A Virginia state delegate who accused Israel of being behind "fossil fuel wars" drew GOP condemnation; the delegate made his comments after being defeated in a Democratic primary and will no longer be in the legislature come January.

Youngkin weighed in on Twitter when Republicans slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for not immediately objecting when a student at a Virginia university told her Israel committed genocide. "When I'm governor, there will be no place for antisemitism in Virginia," Youngkin said.
(New York Jewish Week via JTA)  Sunrise NYC, the local chapter of a national youth environmental group, rejected a decision by the Washington, D.C. chapter to shun cooperation with Zionist groups.

Sunrise NYC rejects antisemitism in all its forms, and condemns the choices made by the DC hub, Sunrise NYC tweeted Friday, aligning itself with a statement made by the national organization. We stand with our Jewish members and the Jewish community against prejudice, and we will continue to stand arm in arm together during this urgent moment in the climate crisis.

The statement came after the D.C. chapter called for the removal of three Jewish advocacy groups from a voting rights rally. The request led to charges of antisemitism; the D.C. chapter apologized, although it reiterated its opposition to Zionism.

Jewish groups frequently partner with the Sunrise Movement and its affiliates, as the New York-based Jews for Racial and Economic Justice did on Monday morning when protesters shut stretches of Manhattans West Side Highway and FDR Drive to demand action on climate change.

Of the hundreds of protesters, more than 40 people were arrested, including Rabbi Guy Austrian from the Fort Tryon Jewish Center in Upper Manhattan.

JFREJ said it had no second thoughts about working with Sunrise NYC. This was an NYC action and we were proud to do it with local partners, said Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at JFREJ.

Most of the collaboration between the two groups has focused on backing and campaigning for progressive candidates in the upcoming city elections, she said. On Tuesday, JFREJ co-hosted with Sunrise Movement NYC, the Muslim Democratic Club of NY and the Union of Arab Women a Zoom phone bank in support of Democratic City Council candidate Felicia Singh.

Rabbi Austrian did not respond to requests for comment.

The Manhattan highways protest was organized by Sunrise Movement NYC, in collaboration with JFREJ, Extinction Rebellion NYC and Fridays for the Future NYC.

We chose to shut down these highways in part because both flooded during Hurricane Sandy, said Veekas Ashoka, the protests organizer and an activist with Sunrise Movement NYC. This week marked the ninth anniversary of the superstorm that damaged much of the city.

Launched in 2017, the Sunrise Movement aims to mobilize young people around aggressive campaigns to make combatting climate change a political priority. Organizers of the Manhattan highway protest hoped their actions would reach President Biden ahead of the COP26 Climate Change Conference at the United Nations, which starts Sunday.

Protesters gathered around 7 a.m. Monday, and the action started around 8:15 a.m. Activists linked arms and sat on the highway until 10 or 10:30 a.m.

We need government action: a massive investment in federal funding, and clean jobs, Ellman-Golan said.

Shutting down Manhattans major arteries was also a metaphor in its own way, she said. Traffic is a particular point of weakness, Ellman-Golan said. Everyones daily commute is going to change because of the climate.
(JNS)  A Jewish civil-rights group is calling on the University of Massachusetts Boston to investigate an incident that occurred this summer, where pro-Palestinian activists targeted and accosted a journalist over his views on Israel.

The event took place on June 24 in front of the Anti-Defamation Leagues New England Regional Office in Boston.

Dexter Van Zile, a journalist with the watchdog group CAMERA, was accosted, spat at, shoved, and called a Nazi and a pig solely based on his perceived identity as a Zionist, by members of the UMass Boston chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, who were protesting in front of the ADL office, according to the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law.

The group says that the incident was immediately reported to UMass, which has not taken any action.

The videos taken by the CAMERA reporters speak for themselves: Mr. Van Zile was attacked at the UMass Boston SJP event because he has been a vocal supporter of Israel. Unfortunately, it appears the university has done nothing in the three-plus months since Mr. Van Zile filed his complaints, accompanied by this documentation. By its silence, the university has implicitly condoned the conduct of UMass Boston SJP  , wrote the Brandeis Center in its letter on Tuesday to the university.

It added that if the university fails to act, its Jewish students are left to wonder what might happen to them if they were to go anywhere near a UMass Boston SJP rally, let alone dare to voice their objections to the anti-Semitic (sic) discourse of the organizations speakers.

According to the Brandeis Center, the behavior by the pro-Palestinian students directly violates the UMass Student Code of Conduct, which applies to misconduct even at off-campus events that are hosted by or affiliated with student organizations, registered or unregistered.

It also noted that the university is required to investigate and sanction students or groups that violate this code.

The center warned that should the university fail to do so, administrators send a dangerous message that students and student organizations are free to intimidate, harass and assault individuals who attend their events, based on such individuals perceived support of Israel, and that the school is a refuge for students [and student organizations] ready to disregard the rights of others and to inflict physical harm on individuals who belong to out groups.

It is outrageous that participants in a protest hosted by a registered student group would feel free to insult, intimidate and physically assault a reporter silently covering the event simply because he was identified as a Zionist,  Rachel Lerman, vice chair of the Brandeis Center, told JNS. If the university does nothing about attacks like this, it effectively condones them, sending an ugly message and setting a dangerous precedent. Its almost a wink and a nod at groups like SJP that their behavior will be given a pass, even when it violates the law and the university code of conduct, so long as the target is a Zionist. 

Lerman added that we know from our recent survey that Jewish students are already wary of publicly expressing their Jewish identity. Groups like SJP and Sunrise DCcannot be given carte blanche to treat supporters of Israel as racists  marginalizing and excluding Jews who affiliate with Israel as part of their ethnic identity is not just unlawful, history has shown us that it leads to violence, as this instance demonstrates.
(JNS)  Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has designated six major Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. This means that their bank trades and the movements of their leaders and affiliates are now monitored and barred from operating in the country.

The evidence supporting Gantzs move is astounding. The organizations in question  Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees  serve as the civilian arm of the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, by providing it with a hybrid identity. Through this identity, it is able to gain credibility and rake in money from the United Nations and the European Union.

This money, according to Gantz, is spent on efforts to destroy Israel. The organizations in question claim to be filling a charitable role, accusing Israel of persecution and of violating democracy. They profess, of course, to be human-rights groups.

But Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban also tout their care for children, widows and the elderly, as NGO Monitor founder and president Gerald Steinberg, who has long investigated these and other non-governmental organizations, points out.

Ten years ago, we presented the results to the E.U., and Federica Mogherini, the then High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security, told us that the evidence wasnt sufficient, NGO Monitor says on its website.

Meanwhile, today, the U.S. State Department is protesting that it was not informed of Gantzs decision to outlaw the six NGOs, something that he denies.

It worth reminding those defending the NGOs that their mother organization, the PFLP, is responsible for a torrent of terrorist activity, including the 2001 murder of then-Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi; six suicide attacks during the Second Intifada that took the lives of 13 victims, three at the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem; the attempted killing of Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef; and the 2014 ax, knife and gun attack on the Kehilat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalems Har Nof neighborhood, resulting in the murder of five worshipers.

In addition, there was the August 2019 murder of 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and wounding of her father and brother. The murderers are part of the E.U.-funded Union of Agricultural Work Committees  one of the six NGOs targeted by Gantz.

According to Steinberg, the paleo-Marxist, Ramallah-based PFLPin competition with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbass Fatah faction that doesnt dare sideline itwas able to set up an autonomous network of self-legitimizng non-governmental organizations. Documents and photos prove, says Steinberg, that visiting diplomats from various countries have actually met with leaders of the PFLP, which in the last 10 years, has been given some 200 million euros ($232 million).

The administrative director of the UAWC, along with its accountant, was arrested and indicted by an Israeli military court for bomb attacks terrorist recruitment.

Hashem Abu Maria, the leader of Defense for Children International, died in a firefight with Israeli forces in 2014. The organizations president was editor of the PFLP magazine. This NGO is funded directly by Italy.

The leaders of the UAWC are almost all members of the central committee and board of the PFLP. In addition, the vice president of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, already on the list of terrorist organizations, headed the military wing of the PFLP in Gaza and was sentenced to life in prison.

Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin was accused of recruiting and organizing the training of PFLP members. Italy also directly finances Al-Haq.

The list is long, and speaks volumes.

The cloaking of terrorist groups in human-rights garb is an established practice for those who want to destroy Israel, and the cynicism of international politics not only enables pretending not to understand this reality, but helps the system.

So, the law goes to dust; the victim becomes persecutor; and the terrorist who ignores every democratic principle becomes the key protagonist of the NGO era.

It is sad that there are Israeli politicians who are, or should be, aware of the terrorist nature of these organizations, yet prefer to show how much they idolize the cause of human rights.

It is even more tragic that the term human rights has become a trap, creating an absurd inversion of the very real distinction between perpetrators and victims. The ongoing dispute over Gantzs declaration should make the entire world tremble.

Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein was a member of the Italian Parliament (2008-13), where she served as vice president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Chamber of Deputies. She served in the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and established and chaired the Committee for the Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism. A founding member of the international Friends of Israel Initiative, she has written 13 books, including Israel Is Us (2009). Currently, she is a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
(JNS)  Its never a good sign when George Soross name is back in the headlines. The Hungarian-born hedge-fund billionaire has become a touchstone of controversy. Both Republicans and Democrats in Virginian are taking his name in vain this week as the off-year election for governor, as well as various other state and local positions, has become a battleground in an unexpectedly tight race. Each side in the tribal culture war that characterizes contemporary American political discourse views him as a symbol that can help rally support to them.

Virginia Republicans, including gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, are denouncing their opponents who are beneficiaries of donations from Soross foundations and related political action funds as leftist pawns of a malign influence on American life. In response, Democrats are not only responding by saying that the charge is out of bounds but are using it to convince Jewish voters that the GOP is antisemitic.

While he is a figure whose stands and conduct are worth debating, the argument about Soros has become bigger than just one about him. By claiming that the very mention of his name is evidence of prejudice, Democrats who link all criticism of the billionaire to Jew-hatred arent just wrong. They are all undermining the struggle against anti-Semitism at a time when just about everyone agrees that it is on the rise.

That a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust would loom so large over the worlds of high finance and politics is an unlikely story. A man of immense talent and ambition, he parlayed his skill at speculation into an enormous fortune utilizing both his grasp of economics and a gamblers luck. But having acquired great wealth, he decided that his real calling was in using it to support the causes he believed in.

Soross massive donations to various charities, activist groups, political causes and candidates have earned him the title of the most generous giver in Forbes magazines annual ranking of billionaires. He doesnt rank very high on that list these days with only a paltry $8.6 billion to his name. Thats because he has given away the majority of his original fortune to various nonprofits with most of it (reportedly $32 billion) going to his own Open Society Foundations.

Much of his foundations work in its early years when it was funding efforts to promote dissent against Communist tyranny in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe was laudable. But Open Society has since then branched out into other causes that are far less defensible.

For example, in 2010, it gave $100 million of Soross money to Human Rights Watch. But by that time, the group had long since become a bastion of hard-left intersectionalism, devoting most of its energy to causes like demonizing and delegitimizing Israel, which it falsely accuses of being an apartheid state. Open Society is also a major funder of a host of Palestinian and other groups that smear the Jewish state and support the antisemitic BDS movement. He was also the major initial funder of the left-wing J Street lobby that is highly critical of Israel though, at his request, the group kept this a secret for several years.

But Soros is more than just a donor to international left-wing causes. Hes one of the largest donors to Democratic candidates in the United States. Rather than just concentrating on backing a presidential candidate or other major players, Soros and his Open Society crew have taken a far more clever approach to ensure that their preferred policies are enacted. For example, in the last six years, Open Society-created funds have prioritized overhauling the criminal justice system. It has played a central role in the election of left-wing district attorneys from Philadelphia to Los Angeles and San Francisco who have downgraded prosecutions of criminals in favor of policies that have made those cities far less safe for law-abiding citizens.

The wide influence Soros has exerted on U.S. politics and society is sometimes exaggerated by his critics, such as those who wrongly asserted that he funded all Black Lives Matter protests and riots. But it is also true that Open Society money can be found in many places, including backing groups who support the BLM movement  either first or secondhand  and any mention of its efforts in an amazing number of controversies, causes and election battles is often unavoidable.

While Soross influence may be lamentable, there is nothing really underhanded or illegal about it. Nor ought his efforts be banned. He has the same right to use his money to fund political speech as conservative donors or anyone else in a country that values its First Amendment rights.

Its true that talk of shadowy rich Jews manipulating the affairs of nations across the globe is a traditional trope of antisemitic invective. But what those who say that attacking Soross influence is evidence of anti-Jewish prejudice are forgetting is that while it was a myth that the Rothschilds and other wealthy Jews were secretly running the world, Soros and Open Society are involved in trying to impact the way a lot of countries are run.

Some of those who have attacked Soros as an international financier have done so in an antisemitic manner. The same is true of the invective still hurled at him in his native Hungary. To be fair, however, Soross record as a currency speculator has earned him some justified resentment from those who had to pay the price of his big scores. For example, his 1992 bet against the British pound sterling earned him a cool 1 billion pounds in profit while costing the taxpayers of the United Kingdom 3.4 billion pounds. Similarly, his selling local currencies short in Malaysia and Thailand set off the 1997 financial crisis in Southeast Asia giving further ammunition to antisemitic forces in the region.

Some far-right extremists may use Soros to promote their brand of Jew-hatred. And the Republican Party has some problematic members of its own. But the notion that a man who has been investing unprecedented amounts of money in political races across America to promote a brand of left-wing politics must be considered off-limits for criticism is as absurd as it is cynical.

Its also deeply hypocritical for Democrats to play this card in this way. They have their own antisemitism problem in the form of an increasingly loud and influential left-wing faction whose embrace of intersectional ideology has helped fuel the demonization of Israel and the legitimization of attacks on American Jews. The Democratic leadership, including President Joe Biden, continues to court rather than condemn open antisemites like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and the growing number of so-called progressives in the House. So for people like Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to be trotted out as a Democratic Jewish surrogate in Virginia  someone who has never previously been a voice on behalf of Jewish causes or pro-Israel advocacy  in order to label Youngkin as an antisemite is not only outrageous but undermines the credibility of their attempts to stand up against Jew-hatred and renders national unity on the issue impossible.

Ive previously noted how partisanship has led to a situation where both sides of the partisan divide find it easy to accuse those that can be linked to their political foes of anti-Semitism while refusing to be honest about the haters that are their allies. What the Democrats are doing in Virginia isnt just an example of this lamentable trend; its evidence of how doing so has made the discussion merely an excuse for peddling partisan talking points. Those who play this game are damaging the effort to combat antisemitism, not aiding it. Its long past time for them to give up this discreditable ploy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNSJewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
(FLAME via JNS) What seemed a few months ago like just another whim of the overzealous New Guard now running the U.S. State Department seems today like a determined effort to take Israel down a peg.

Since day one, the new administration has talked about reestablishing warm relations with the Palestinian Authority by reopening its Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem. Ha, ha, very funny, thought many of us: Theres no state of Palestine, Jerusalem is the U.S.-recognized capital of Israel, the Palestinians are still paying terrorists to kill Israelis  this idea will vaporize in a few months.

But it didnt, and now State Department functionaries are ratcheting up pressure on Israel. So far, Israels leaders have firmly (but no doubt politely) refused.

Jerusalem is arguably the most contentious issue in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It is a highly symbolic city for Jews, Christians and Muslims, but despite being ruled by the latter for almost 1,300 years, no Muslim ruler ever made it a capital and most left it in disrepair, a neglected backwater.

For Jews, Jerusalem has been their revered capital for thousands of years. It is the focal point of prayer  mentioned during many festive and lifecycle occasions. Every inch of Jerusalem  east, west, north and southhas Jewish history still being discovered just below the surface.

For decades, the United States understood well the position that Jerusalem was the indivisible capital of Jerusalem. With the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, passed by an overwhelming majority of both parties in both houses, Jerusalem was officially recognized as the capital of the State of Israel and was to remain an undivided city.

It took the United States decades to implement that law, but former President Donald Trump made it official in 2018. So, why is President Joe Bidens team seeking to undo this bipartisan and longstanding position?

Indeed, the Biden State Department appears hell-bent on changing U.S. policy. Its persistence in trying to open a new diplomatic office in Jerusalem that would serve the stateless Palestinians appears to be the first salvo in a strike by the administration to extort Israels new government and symbolically divide the Jewish states capital city.

Following the Trump administration directive in 2018, the U.S. moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This embassy services Jews and Arabs, both Israelis and those who define themselves as Palestinians.

There is absolutely no practical reason to open a consulate for Palestinians. According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relationships, a diplomatic mission serves to represent the sending state in the receiving state; protect the interests of the sending state in the receiving state; negotiate with the receiving state; promote friendly relations with the receiving state; and develop their economic, cultural and scientific relations.

None of these things are possible in this case, because the Palestinians do not have a state, and Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory.

Rather, the State Department seems to want to recognize Palestinian claims to the city and place its division back on the table. If State is thinking practicallyrather than politicallythey could open a mission in Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority resides, a scant 11.5 miles from Jerusalem, or Abu Dis, a Palestinian village just outside Jerusalem. When foreign dignitaries today meet with Palestinian officials like Mahmoud Abbas, they go to Ramallah.

Opening a new consulate for the Palestinians on Israeli territory would be a blow to Israels prestige, standing and sovereignty. Even Israels biggest critics on the international stage have not dared to open a new consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians. While some European nations do have consulates that cater to Palestinians in the city, they predated the Jewish state.

Many of those in the Biden administration and on the radical left know well that while the consulate is unnecessary, it would be a hugely symbolic blow to Israel. Not only would it place Jerusalem back on the negotiating table and de facto recognize Palestinian claims to the city, it would symbolize the Jewish states subservience.

However, neither the United States (nor any other nation) can open a diplomatic mission without the Israeli governments permission. Indeed, both Israels current ruling coalition and opposition parties oppose the new consulate, and both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have expressed their robust objection.

The only hope the United States has to open the consulate is to strong-arm or bully Israel. While it is conceivably possible to open a mission, a host country has to agree to many bureaucratic and administrative measures  such as providing visas to officials who work there, beefing up security around the premises and agreeing to work with it on a day-to-day basis on diplomatic and consular issues.

Thus, while Israel itself should resist the opening of the consulate, all Americans who regard the State of Israel as a friend and an ally should call on the administration to end this pressure on the Jewish state. They should call out the tiny but vocal extreme minority in the Democratic Party that sees this issue as a weak spot for undermining Israel, claiming the move is merely a bureaucratic necessity, which it clearly isnt.

In fact, opening a consulate would be the first step toward full recognition of Palestinian claims to Jerusalem. As Israels seat of government, removing a chunk of it will merely embolden the Palestinians.

When the Jewish state feels most isolated and threatened, as it did during the Obama administration, Iran raced ahead in its nuclear-weapons program, and Hamas and Hezbollah gathered strength. Abbas sat recalcitrant in Ramallah and watched mounting pressure on Israel, firm in the knowledge that he did not have to move an inch. The policy may have been a diplomatic failure for the United States, but it was a dangerous and bloody time for Israelis  the effects of which are still felt.

If Biden indeed considers himself a friend of Israel, as he often states, then he must resist pressure from within his administration to open this consulate in Jerusalem.

While some may see it as a relatively minor issue, for Israel it appears to be the start of negating Israels claims to Jerusalem  erasing thousands of years of Jewish attachment to the city, a creeping recognition of Palestinian claims, and a message that the United States and Israel no longer stand side by side. In short, it would be a disaster for both nations.

James Sinkinson is president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), which publishes educational messages to correct lies and misperceptions about Israel and its relationship to the United States.
(JNS)  When Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced on Friday that he is listing six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist groups, all hell broke loose on the left. The outcry, which emanated not only from Washington and Brussels, but from the halls of the Knesset in Jerusalem and Muqata in Ramallah, could have been anticipated.

Theres no sacred cow as holy as a self-described humanitarian organization, especially when its associated with and financed by equally untouchable foundations. Thus, though the impetus behind Gantzs move was perfectly reasonable, he was promptly attacked, including from within the government of which he is a prominent member.

The groups in question  Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Womens Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees  have, according to Gantz, been active under the cover of civil-society organizations, but in practice belong to and constitute an arm of the [PFLP]  the main activity of which is the liberation of Palestine and destruction of Israel.

Most of Gantzs critics dont dispute that the Iran-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a terrorist organization. In fact, it is officially designated as such by the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Israel. Naturally, the thugs in the Palestinian Authority have a different view, as they consider the indiscriminate murder of Jews and enemies of other stripes to be a legitimate form of political, ideological and religious protest.

The controversy, then, has focused not on the PFLP, but rather on a number of different issues, each more disingenuous (and revealing) than the next.

Lets start with U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Prices stern reaction to the news, telling reporters that Israel hadnt given America advance warning, and stating that the administration will be requesting more information regarding the basis for these designations.

He then said, We believe respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and a strong civil society are critically important to responsible and responsive governance.

Right. As if that had anything to do with the matter at hand, which is preventing those specific NGOs from operating freely in Israel thanks to hefty donations from abroad.

No wonder the radicals are happily piling on the anti-Israel rhetoric.

There must be immediate consequences from the U.S. and the international community for this brazen act, tweeted Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), while J Street chimed in to call it a repressive measure  designed to outlaw and persecute important Palestinian human-rights groups.

Meanwhile, back in Israel, Gantz continues to be blasted by the left wing of the coalition and members of the Arab opposition, whose accusations are a combination of all of the above. Health Minister and Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz, for example, was angered both on behalf of the NGOs  demanding proof that theyre actually involved indirectly in terrorist activities  and due the way in which the whole issue complicates things for Israel internationally  [with] implications here for human rights and democracy.

You get the gist. So did Gantz, whose office insists that the evidence against the six NGOs is ironclad.

It also claims that a Foreign Ministry official traveled to Washington last week to notify the State Departments Bureau of Counterterrorism of Gantzs impending announcement and present it with proof of the NGOs links to the PFLP, including video footage, photos and payment receipts.

According to this official, a lack of communication within the State Department is likely responsible for Prices assertion that Foggy Bottom hadnt been informed of the bombshell.

Its hard to believe that Israels defense minister would lie about such an event, the veracity of which would be easy to check. Nor would it make sense for him to have targeted specific groups without evidence. Moreover, the watchdog group NGO Monitor said that Gantzs announcement confirms what its research has shown for years.

Whether the defense minister is right or wrong about the NGOs he singled out, however, the brouhaha brings to light two larger points that the Israeli government keeps trying to deny or sweep under the carpet. One is that false assertion that the diversity of political parties that make up the coalition is an advantage, not a hindrance.

The second is the ridiculous claim that the government  now led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett but squeezed hard by parties to his left  has the Biden administration in the bag. Oh, and that this change government will bridge the partisan Democrat-Republican divide on Israel that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supposedly created and cultivated.

Well, the PFLP-NGO scandal is only the latest among many internecine spats that have been rocking the shaky coalition. This doesnt mean that its going to fall, mind you, as every one of its members still has more to lose than gain by quitting and toppling it.

But the explosion illustrates, yet again, that the only way for it to function is through the capitulation  not compromise, as its champions like to euphemize  of one side to the other. And the right hasnt been winning the tug of war.

The genie that Gantz let out of the bottle belies the similar pipe dream of improved relations with the Democrats across the ocean. As anyone paying attention is aware, the battle in the United States, like that in Israel, is ideological.

Ironically, the left knows this full well. Its about time for Bennett and his buddies to acknowledge that the split within both countries and between the two cannot be mended with masking tape.

Gantz, whos being pummeled by the Palestinians and their apologists at home and around the world, is being forced to learn that lesson. As someone who himself campaigned on a ticket of restoring relations with the Democrats, he ought to be eating his hat  and a hunk of humble pie  while sticking to his guns against those groups whose work and cashflow should be stopped.

Ruthie Blum is an Israel-based journalist and author of To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the Arab Spring.
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Lima, OH (45805)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph with gusts up to 20 mph..

Tonight

A chance of a lone shower in the early evening. Low 29F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
Groundbreaking

4 November 2021

This morning, construction on the soon-to-open Embassy Suites By Hilton Orlando Sunset Walk officially began with a groundbreaking ceremony hosted by Encore Capital Management. Co-Founder and Managing Principal, Arthur Falcone, was joined by Joe Haughney, Hilton Hotels' Director of Residential Development & Operation, Neil Eisner, Managing Director, Encore Capital Management, Joel Lazar, Executive Director of Sales Encore Capital Management, D.T. Minich, President & CEO of Experience Kissimmee and Christina Morris, Director of Economic Development for Osceola County to celebrate not just the start of the hotel's construction, but the continued growth of Osceola County.

Embassy Suites By Hilton Orlando Sunset Walk will offer exceptional vacation condominiums featuring a sophisticated contemporary design and the finest in resort amenities. Among them, the Oasis Beach Club with a beach bar and grill, a fitness center, indoor/outdoor restaurant and lounge where guests can enjoy daily complimentary breakfast and happy hour. Owners will receive two Hilton Honors memberships with their purchase accelerating their ability to earn free night stays in the Hilton reservation system. The hybrid real estate concept will provide peace-of-mind to owners and guests by ensuring the same high standards they come to expect from Encore and the Hilton brands. The resort is slated to open in 2022, but those looking to purchase one of the stylish condos can visit the sales gallery located in the Promenade at Sunset Walk Orlando. Two full-scale models featuring a studio and one-bedroom will be showcased. Interested buyers can browse the offerings in a no-pressure atmosphere and learn how they can own a piece of this great destination. As an owner, the amazing year-round resort offers a turnkey experience that includes furnishings and housewares, linens, cleaning, and maintenance. Pricing starts at $244,900 and up for studios, 1 and 2 bedrooms. A very limited number of 3 and 4 bedrooms with lockouts are available. Reservations to purchase are now being accepted. You can lock in pre-construction pricing and your specific condo selection with a 10% down payment.
Now Open

4 November 2021

The much-anticipated Sofitel Adelaide welcomed its first guests today 4 November 2021, becoming the first new-build, international five-star hotel to open in Adelaide's CBD in 30 years.

A ceremony was held to mark the $150 million hotel's official opening by The Hon. Steven Marshall MP, Premier of South Australia and Minister for Tourism, and Daniel Palumbo, Managing Director of Palumbo, the hotel's owner and developer.

With Sofitel Adelaide located in the heart of Adelaide's most vibrant city quadrant on Currie Street, guests can couple a decadent hotel experience with the very best Adelaide has to offer at their doorstep, including the Adelaide Oval, Adelaide Convention Centre, Riverbank precinct and Rundle Mall. The incredible Adelaide Hills region is also a short 30-minute drive away, and the internationally-renown Barossa Valley wine region less than an hour from the hotel.

Part of a new 32-storey tower by the family-ownedPalumbo Group, the flagship hotel features a spectacular glass exterior set to become a glittering addition to the skyline. The impressive building houses one of the tallest residential developments to ever be unveiled in South Australia, securing its status as 'best in class' for a new generation of modern, mixed-use luxury towers. More than 1100 jobs were created during construction, with the hotel expected to employ around 150 people ongoing.

The first 24 storeys are dedicated to the hotel and its facilities including a selection of 251 luxurious guest rooms and suites (Superior, Deluxe, Luxury, Luxury Club, Prestige and Opera Suites), with a choice of city and Adelaide Hills views. Stunning fully open concept bathrooms with luxurious vanities and free standing bathtubs maximise a sense of space, with Balmain Paris room amenities provide an additional indulgent touch.

The piece de resistanceis Sofitel's palatial Presidential Suite. The embodiment of luxury living, Sofitel Adelaide's Presidential Suite includes an extensive dining room and open living room concept, walk-in wardrobe, private study and a grand bedroom with an additional ensuite bathroom.

All Luxury Club rooms and suites at Sofitel Adelaide provide guests with access to additional complimentary facilities and services as part of Club Millesime. Situated on level 10, Club Millesime features a private lounge serving complimentary a la carte breakfast, afternoon tea and evening drinks and canapes, as well as offering personalised check in and check out.

Sofitel's interiors have been custom designed - from the burgundy coloured chandeliers featured in each guest room to the bespoke vintage-inspired wallpaper commissioned by Sofitel for the hotel's club lounge. In keeping with the hotel's themes of 'light and flow', Sofitel Adelaide's indoor heated pool is also in the spotlight, with spectacular natural light courtesy of floor to ceiling windows, and illumination from four bespoke chandeliers overhead.

Exquisite marble used throughout the Sofitel was sourced personally by owner, Daniel Palumbo, and his family direct from Carrera in Italy, in what was a very personal journey for the proud South Australian developer in bringing the hotel to life. This kind of extravagance extends to the Sofitel Fitness Centre (the hotel's gymnasium), also designed with a luxurious eye for detail to feature state-of-the-art equipment boasting the same leather finishings as used in Ferrari supercars for a world-class workout.

Every Sofitel around the world is culturally linked with a city or region in France that shares similar attributes in terms of culture, landscape and design and Sofitel Adelaide is culturally linked with Bordeaux - a city that epitomes viniculture and gastronomic refinement, as well as history and fine art.

Indeed, art will play an important role at the Sofitel with the hotel preparing to display artwork from more than ten local and international artists, including photographers Emmaline Zanelli and Drew Lenman; painter and ceramicist Michael Carney and glassblower Nick Mount- who all hail from South Australia. In the lobby two striking artworks provide an ultimate sense of arrival for Sofitel guests - an original historic French-inspired piece by Newcastle-based fine-art photographer, Alexia Sinclair, titled Field of Dreams, and a striking flowing red wine-inspired chandelier, representing the flow of wine and meandering of the nearby Torrens River.

Today also marks the soft opening of Garcon Bleu - a French re-imagined restaurant set to become Adelaide's newest gourmet destination. With elevated city views from its location on level nine of the new Sofitel Adelaide, Garcon Bleu's 90-seat dining room boasts an open kitchen, an extensive wine wall, and an up-lit oyster and raw seafood bar. In addition, Sofitel Adelaide has opened a luxurious street-level Champagne bar, Deja Vu, inspired by the romantic sidewalk cafes of Paris to offer a selection of elegant beverages, lighter meals and casual eats seven days a week.

The Sofitel brand, which is world renowned for luxury French-style hospitality and a passion for art de vivre (the art of living), continues to expand its network across Australia and New Zealand. Sofitel Adelaide's opening marks Accor's tenth Sofitel hotel for the region and the luxury brand's debut in South Australia.

The largest hotel operator in Australia, Accor now has 15 hotels across South Australia, with 12 of these in the city of Adelaide. Sofitel Adelaide joins a growing portfolio of six Sofitel hotels and resorts in Australia and more than 120 globally.
Pipeline

4 November 2021

Premier beach-resort brand, Outrigger Hotels and Resorts today revealed the bold design and contemporary dining outlets for its newly branded Outrigger Surin Beach Resort . The boutique property facing the powder-fine sands of Surin Beach in Phuket is scheduled to open on December 15, 2021. This welcome announcement comes as Thailand removes quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated tourists from 63 countries, effective today.

Guests can laze at the resort's two swimming pools, feel pampered at the spa, exercise in the upgraded fitness studio and dine at the unique split-level restaurant and bar.

Nalu Bar & Grill is the property's brand-new restaurant concept that incorporates an open-flame modern BBQ with a global influence and intimate rooftop bar with magnificent ocean views.

The resort transformation, including Nalu Bar & Grill, reception areas, as well as rooms and suites, was designed by Santhaya & Associates (S+A), Thailand's oldest architectural firm, established in 1963.

Based in Bangkok, the award-winning firm is led by Dutch-Thai architect Faun Israsena, whose grandfather founded the agency, alongside Belgian interior designer Sophie Bughin. The company is a long-time partner with Outrigger, having worked on multiple projects for the hospitality brand in Thailand, Mauritius and Fiji.

S+A's designs celebrate local culture, tradition and history, connecting communities and providing inspiration; this is in lock-step with Outrigger's goal of being a place where local culture meets world-class hospitality.

In addition to this property, Outrigger plans to open Outrigger Khao Lak Beach Resort, a 90-minute drive north of Phuket airport, on December 15, as well as Outrigger Koh Samui Beach Resort by Easter 2022.
Appointment

4 November 2021

Atlantis Paradise Island in The Bahamas announces Chef Alan Orreal as Vice President of Culinary. Chef Orreal is the most recent executive appointment to the resort's culinary team. Chef Orreal is responsible for the operation of Atlantis' 40 restaurants, bars, and lounges. He will develop new, innovative menu concepts; lead the resort's culinary team members across food and beverage, Atlantis' convention center, and events and banquets areas; and further solidify Atlantis Paradise Island as a leader in culinary excellence.

Chef Orreal, a certified Master Chef, brings 20 years of executive experience in the culinary and hospitality industries to his position at Atlantis Paradise Island. Notably, Orreal opened the Shanghai Disney Resort and served eight years as Director of Culinary where he led a team of over 1,000 staff members to produce approximately 11 million meals per year.

Orreal also spent five years as an Executive Chef at Resorts World Sentosa, an integrated resort in Singapore. He played a pivotal role in developing the resort's 45 unique food and beverage concepts. His experience also includes three years as the Executive Sous Chef at SATS, the main meal provider to Singapore Airlines.

Originally from Australia, Chef Orreal spent most of his career in Asia at a variety of hotels, resorts, and five-star restaurants across Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Sri Lanka, and China. His global experience has led him to develop a very unique style of modern international cuisine. His dishes have been described as borderlessand dynamic, fusing authentic international recipes with the most contemporary gourmet trends.

Chef Orreal's diverse career has also led him to be well-known for his role as host and judge on the award-winning television series, The Big Break, a reality show which inspires underprivileged teens by teaching them the art of cooking. An advocate for apprenticeships, Chef Orreal frequently serves as a guest lecturer at food schools across Asia and was named an Honorary Distinguished Professor by the All Japan Chefs Association. Chef Orreal also holds the Worldchefs Presidents Medal and is the Chairman of the Young Chefs Development Committee for Worldchefs, which is a global network of chefs societies. Alan had also represented China (2016 & 2020) and Japan (2008) at the Culinary Olympics in Germany.
Appointment

4 November 2021

Officials of The Cornerstone Collective today announced Joanne Gravina has been named senior interior designer. In her new role, she will oversee all aspects of the company's interior design projects, from conceptual designs through completion.

With more than 32 years of experience, Gravina has an established track record of effectively designing, process managing and providing procurement services for multiple hotels, resorts, restaurants and spas at virtually all service levels. Highlight projects from her portfolio include the Al Aziziyah Boutique Hotel in the Doha, Qatar hotel for the royal family of Qatar and Resort World Catskills hotel and casino in Monticello, N.Y. Prior to joining The Cornerstone Collective, she owned and operated her own agency, Joanne Gravina Interior Design. Previously, she held similar senior interior designer positions with JCJ Architecture and J/Brice Design International. Gravina received her degree in Interior Design while attending Mount Ida College.
Press Release

4 November 2021

CHICAGO - Hyatt Hotels Corporation ("Hyatt" or the "Company") (NYSE: H) today reported third-quarter 2021 financial results. Net income attributable to Hyatt was $120 million, or $1.15 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2021, compared to a net loss attributable to Hyatt of $161 million, or $1.59 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2020. Adjusted net income attributable to Hyatt was $241 million, or $2.31 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2021, compared to Adjusted net loss attributable to Hyatt of $150 million, or $1.48 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2020. Refer to the table on page 11 of the schedules for a summary of special items impacting Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted earnings (losses) per share for the three months ended September 30, 2021 and September 30, 2020.

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Mark S. Hoplamazian, president and chief executive officer of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, said, "During the quarter, we again produced results that exceeded expectations and demonstrated the resilience of our business. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter approached 70% of 2019 levels and more than doubled from the prior quarter. Leisure demand continues to lead the recovery and momentum for business and group travel is growing. The recovery is evident in more markets as travel restrictions ease and borders reopen."

Third quarter of 2021 highlights are as follows:

Net income increased compared to the third quarter of 2020 to $120 million.

Adjusted EBITDA increased compared to the third quarter of 2020 to $110 million.

Comparable system-wide RevPAR increased to $93.70 in the third quarter of 2021, and decreased 31.8% compared to the third quarter 2019 on a reported basis.

Comparable owned and leased hotels RevPAR increased to $117.33 in the third quarter of 2021, and decreased 35.5% compared to the third quarter 2019 on a reported basis.

Net rooms growth of 6.9% compared to the third quarter of 2020.

Pipeline of executed management or franchise contracts for approximately 103,000 rooms, an increase of 2.0% compared to the third quarter of 2020.

Mr. Hoplamazian continued, "We made significant progress in the quarter towards executing our long-term strategy through the acquisition of Apple Leisure Group. The transaction closed on November 1st and Im thrilled to welcome the colleagues from this truly unique leisure platform into the Hyatt family. This acquisition significantly expands our leisure offerings and positions Hyatt as a leader in the fast-growing luxury all-inclusive resort segment. We also advanced our capital strategy through the completion of our $1.5 billion asset disposition commitment during the quarter and we announced a new $2 billion commitment for additional asset sales by the end of 2024. Through the acquisition of Apple Leisure Group's asset light platform and expansion of our disposition commitment, we expect to transform our earnings to approximately 80% fee-based by year end 2024.

Click here to view the full release.
Press Release

4 November 2021

Building on IHGs leading Meet with Confidence Programme, the new partnership with WeFrame will offer enhanced technology for hosting virtual and hybrid meetings at 18 IHG Hotels & Resorts in Germany and 6 Hotels in Benelux, with more hotels to be added in future.

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As of November 2021, event rooms in the 24 hotels will be equipped with Weframe technology, specifically designed for collaboration and teamwork, enabling guests to work more efficiently and interactively, regardless of the location of the participants worldwide.

Mario Maxeiner, Managing Director Northern Europe, IHG Hotels & Resorts

commented, "This partnership with Weframe is another important step forward in the rapidly changing event world. I am very proud that IHG Hotels & Resorts, as a trendsetting global hotel company, is leading the way with this new technology to meet the needs of event planners and guests at a number of our hotels."

Weframe technology in place at Holiday Inn Munich  City Centre  Photo: IHG

The benefits for presenters & attendees of the WeFrame technology include:

Access to Weframe collaboration tools such as a whiteboard, sticky notes, video conferencing and much more in to one digital solution.

Use of a digital workspace, a cloud-based platform, that is visible and interactive for every meeting participant in all locations.

Increased participant engagement through all devices, where attendees are able to collaborate interactively and contribute to the meeting via laptop, smartphone, or tablet- whilst all the content from the meeting comes together on the 86" session board.

The ability to work in synchronisation on the visual work surface and via video call making hybrid and online meetings easier and akin to the quality of face-to-face meetings.

Access to Weframe One, helping participants save time, with immediate results digitally available for each participant. Both Weframe One and the session boards are easy and intuitive for everyone to use - no prior registration or installation is required, and remote participation happens via a web browser.

Daniel Steinbichler, Founder & CEO Weframe AG

commented on the partnership At Weframe we believe that people deserve interactive meeting experiences wherever they are. IHG Hotels & Resorts has a commitment to provide excellent meeting environments in all their hotel locations, and we are delighted to work together and make this vision a reality.

Andreas Kohn, Commercial Director, Northern Europe, IHG Hotels & Resorts: "The meetings segment is currently undergoing rapid shifts and fundamental changes are taking place as never before. The last 18+ months showed us that you do not necessarily have to travel to exchange ideas, but the real desire to make meetings more personal and interactive remains with people. I'm delighted that with the Weframe partnership, we are once again showing our customers that we are leading the way to meet these needs."
Harold Hamm, one of the richest and most prominent shale wildcatters, is finally taking a stake in North Americas biggest oil field.

Continental Resources Inc., the shale driller created and controlled by Hamm, agreed to acquire assets in the Permian Basin from Pioneer Natural Resources Co. for $3.25 billion. Continental will pay cash for the assets in the Delaware Basin, a subregion of the massive Permian, Pioneer said in a statement Wednesday.

Acquiring the drilling rights across 92,000 net acres will allow Continental to generate an extra half billion dollars in annual free cash flow next year at current commodity prices, the Oklahoma City-based explorer said in a separate statement.

These Permian assets contain the key strategic components common to all of our assets with significant untapped potential to enhance performance through optimized density development, wellbore placement, operational efficiencies and further exploration, Jack Stark, Continentals chief operating officer, said in the statement.

Record free cash flow in the U.S. shale patch is driving a return to asset sales and corporate consolidation, particularly as private-equity backed producers ramp up output and seek to monetize their holdings. Investors have largely rewarded drillers for deals focused on a singular field, rather than expanding into new territories.

While output from other U.S. oil fields is flatlining or falling, the Permians multi-layered tiers of oil-soaked rock continue to thrive. ConocoPhillips inked a deal in September to acquire Royal Dutch Shell Plcs Permian assets in September for $9.5 billion in cash, a move that will boost the American explorers footprint in the worlds most-prolific shale field.

Continental has dropped more than 6% since Reuters broke the news of the pending deal in the final minutes of Wednesdays regular U.S. equity-trading session. Pioneer shares were unchanged in after-market trading.

Until now, Continental has focused on the Bakken shale in North Dakota, where its the largest operator, and the Scoop and Stack plays in Oklahoma. The company, which trades under the ticker CLR, also recently added drilling rights in Wyomings Powder River Basin to its portfolio.

The market may not like CLR getting into a new basin at this point in the commodity price cycle, Leo Mariani, an analyst at Keybanc Capital Markets Inc., wrote Wednesday in a note to investors.

The Permian wells to be acquired by Continental pump the equivalent of about 50,000 barrels of oil a day, Pioneer said. The Delaware Basin comprises the western half of the Permian; the eastern section is called the Midland Basin.

This transaction returns Pioneer to being 100% focused on its high-margin, high-return Midland Basin assets, where we have the largest acreage position and drilling inventory, Pioneer Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield said in the statement.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
OPEC+ is heading for a politically consequential showdown with President Joe Biden, as Saudi Arabia and its allies must choose whether to heed American demands for more oil.

The cartel looked set to rebuff the request, triggering a bare-knuckle fight with the White House, which is worried that inflation caused by high energy prices could derail its economic agenda.

You take a look at oil prices, Biden told reporters at a news conference at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow on Tuesday. Fuel costs are high because of the refusal of Russia or the OPEC nations to pump more oil.

Its a fight that transcends the oil market and goes deep into Americas alliance with the Middle Eastern kingdom, which has been tense since a U.S. report released in February concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden has so far refused to speak with the crown prince, infuriating the royal palace in Riyadh, which had nearly unfettered access to the White House during the Trump administration.

RELATED: OPEC+ to steal the show in busy week for oil

The U.S. is asking OPEC+ to increase the size of its monthly supply hike to between 600,000 and 800,000 barrels a day, said delegates and diplomats. The White House has also indicated that it would accept, at a minimum, that the cartel sticks to its current plan for a 400,000 barrel-a-day increase, if it comes with a pledge that other members will pump extra to compensate for those nations that are currently struggling to hit their targets, they said, asking not to be named because the information is private.

Despite the presidents arm-twisting, which has been supported by Japan and India, several key members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies show little sign of bending. Iraq and Kuwait, for example, have said publicly that they should stick to the current plan, which would leave the market in deficit for the rest of the year.

That outcome is widely expected by OPEC-watchers, and the delegate didnt expect anyone to propose a change to this plan at Thursdays meeting. Yet OPEC-watchers didnt rule out a potential surprise.

OPEC+ is likely to stick with the 400,000 barrel-a-day tapering plan tomorrow, said Bob McNally, president of consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official. Barring a last minute Washington-Riyadh deal or arm twist.

Either way, the oil market may be in for a volatile few weeks as the conflict between the worlds largest producers and consumers plays out in the aftermath of Thursdays OPEC+ meeting. That was evident on Wednesday, as crude futures dropped 3.6% to $80.86 a barrel in New York, the biggest one-day loss in three months.

Production woes

If OPEC+ does bow to American demands, its unclear how much extra oil beyond the planned 400,000 barrel-a-day increase would be enough for Biden. But if the cartel were to pledge an increase of 600,000 or even 800,000 barrels a day for December, there would be questions about whether the group could follow through.

The group is already struggling to meet its monthly output targets, as lack of investment in oilfields in countries like Angola, Nigeria and even Kuwait hamper production. Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates may be have the capacity to exceed their quotas to compensate for the weaker countries, but doing so would require changes to the existing OPEC+ deal.

One reason for OPEC+ resistance is the risk that, if the extra oil were supplied, it could tip markets swiftly in the other direction. Supply is tight now, but the balance is expected to shift back into surplus early in 2022. If the resumption of nuclear talks between Iran and other world powers later this month results in a deal to lift sanctions, even more crude could flow onto the market next year.

OPEC+ expects a challenging year in 2022, said Matthew Holland, analyst at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. Some members think that any extra barrels added now will only to need to be removed from the market later. The bar for OPEC+ to add more than 400,000 barrels a day in December is extremely high, he said.

If OPEC+ does ignore Bidens request, the U.S. has other tools at its disposal. It could revive antitrust legislation against OPEC+, something unlikely to have any price impact in the short-term. There are more radical measures, such as banning American crude exports, but those could hurt the U.S. domestic oil industry and further disrupt global markets.

The most potent, and perhaps most likely measure would be a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Such action could have an even larger impact on prices if it were done in conjunction with other industrialized nations that are members of the International Energy Agency.

India and China, the largest oil consumers in Asia that have their own strategic reserves outside the IEA system, could also be asked to join.

Since the creation of the IEA in 1974, there have been three coordinated releases from emergency fuel stockpiles. The first was in the buildup to the Gulf War in 1991, after Iraqs invasion of Kuwait shut down a large portion of Middle Eastern crude exports. The second followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which badly damaged offshore U.S. oil facilities in 2005. The most recent action was in 2011, to mitigate the supply disruption caused by the Libyan civil war.

We think the Biden administration is prepared to release crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to cap prices, said Helima Croft, commodities strategist at RBC Capital Markets LLC and a former CIA analyst.
Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer

U.S. crude inventories increased by 3.3 million barrels last week as oil prices fell Wednesday morning, trading at $81.96 at 9:30 a.m. Central.

The nations commercial crude inventories increased to 434.1 million barrels during the week ended Oct. 29 from about 430.8 million barrels the previous week, the Energy Department said Wednesday. With the inventory increase, the country has about 6 percent less crude on hand than the five-year average for this time of year, the Energy Department said.
CenterPoint Energy said Thursday that its profits surged in the third quarter as it rebounded from a pandemic-depressed 2020 and losses from the February winter storm that left more than 1 million of its customers without power for days.

CenterPoint, which is facing several wrongful death suits connected to the extended outages, attributed the increases to Houstons growing population, which means more people hooking up to the utilitys meters. CenterPoint also increased fees for delivering electricity in September, sending higher bills to Houston area residents.

Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said most of the improved profits likely came from increase electric and natural gas use as households and businesses began to shake off the pandemic and return to normal.

They get paid on the through put of electricity and the through put of natural gas in their markets," Hirs said. "Their profits fell during COVID, very much like everybody else.

In the third quarter, CenterPoints profits rose 80 percent to $218 million from $121 million in the third quarter of 2020. Profits allocated to common shareholders nearly tripled to $195 million from $69 million.

Revenues climbed 8 percent to $1.7 billion in the third quarter from $1.6 billion during the same period a year earlier

Dave Lesar, CenterPoints CEO, said the profits mark the sixth straight quarter the company has met or exceeded revenue expectations.

I remain excited about what's to come for CenterPoint, Lesar told analysts Thursday. We have a growing track record of execution, and I believe it more than demonstrates what we can do in the near future.

RELATED: Texas wants to strengthen power grid. Are batteries the answer?

Rate hikes

Lesar said some of the companys profits were buoyed by actions taken by the Texas Legislature. The Texas Legislature allowed utilities to tack on extra costs to ratepayers bills in May through several actions. In a statement, CenterPoint officials said they lobbied the Legislature to give them more tools in our toolbox to provide safe and reliable service to our customers. In all, the company said, newly enacted bills could mean revenues and savings of nearly $1 billion for the utility.

Among those bills: $7 billion in ratepayer-backed bonds to help utilities statewide recover from the storm. Utilities paid exorbitant prices for natural gas during the freeze, accumulating massive amounts of debt that will ultimately be repaid by their customers.

Lawmakers and utility experts at the time agreed the bonds would prevent spikes in customer bills by spreading the costs of the winter storm over a decade or more, instead of trying to recover the money over a shorter period.

Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the state Public Utility Commission from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004, said the extra costs seem tougher to take, given the high profits CenterPoint reported.

It doesnt look good to be funding or to be repaying utility losses at a massive clip when shareholders are raking in the cash, she said. There are certainly are legal rationales for why this is allowed to happen, but it doesnt look good or feel good.

RELATED: CenterPoint customers will pay the price for pipeline company profits during winter storm

The Legislature also gave the green light for utilities to raise their base rates to lease mobile power generation units that can be used as backup in emergencies. Lesar said CenterPoint procured five, five megawatt units and three 30-megawatt generation units, some of which were deployed after of Hurricane Nicholas. Lesar said the company plans to lease more units to have a combined 500 megawatts of mobile units.

One megawatt is enough electricity to power about 200 homes on a hot summer day.

The company has increased its fees for delivering electricity, upping their fee by a penny to about 4.6 cents per kilowatt hour  the second highest rate among the five transmission and distribution utilities in the state. Oncor, which serves Dallas and is the largest such entity, charges its customers about 4.2 cents per kilowatt hour.

And earlier this week, Lesar said CenterPoint asked the PUC to raise its rates by $67.1 million a year, which it said would also be used to offset costs related to the winter storm. The last time CenterPoint asked the PUC for a higher rate of return, companies, including HEB, fought the increase in court.

Asking for more

HEB had complained for years that CenterPoints service was unreliable, so much so the San Antonio-based grocery giant began to install backup generators in its Houston-based stores so power outages would not cause their refrigerated food to spoil.

So, when CenterPoint asked the PUC if it could raise its rates by $161 million in 2019 and boost its rate of return to 10.4 percent, HEB opposed it during the rate-case proceeding. An administrative law judges sided with HEB and several other entities and CenterPoint eventually settled for a $13 million rate increases and a profit of 9.4 percent.

It could take a year or more for the PUC to decide on CenterPoints latest request, and Hirs said he wouldnt be surprised if the PUC would be more willing to approve it especially if its justified as necessary to improve weatherization or make Houstons grid more reliable.

Silverstein, however, wasnt so sure.

If you make that much profit, she said, Its hard to imagine people looking kindly when you come back and ask for more.

A previous version of this story misstated how much the fees CenterPoint and Oncor charge customers for delivering electricity.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

This Saturday, Pepsi hosts its first national 'Dig In Day' initiative, which includes a five-year pledge to drive $100 million in sales to Black-owned restaurants nationwide. To celebrate locally, Seafood Connection, 507 Westheimer, will give the first 300 customers a choice of one of two entrees - the Signature Shrimp Platter or the Surf N Turf Potato Chips - for free. The giveaway starts at 11 a.m.

Seafood Connection's founder Jamie Walker is also making a $15,000 donation to Trae Tha Truth's volunteer group, Relief Gang, which he formed in 2017 in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
A former City of Katy Animal Control Department employee who says her director and colleagues abused and needlessly euthanized animals is now suing the city after an investigation ended with her probation and eventual termination.

Chelsea Gerber earlier this year made the accusations against her former colleagues, Katy Animal Control Department Director David Brown and animal control officer Spencer Antinoro, after she said she witnessed inhumane incidents, including euthanizing animals improperly; treating animals inhumanely; and falsifying records, which she documented, recorded and presented to multiple police agencies.

Now Playing: Katy residents and animal advocates say more needs to be done to fix the Animal Control Department after a whistleblower accused its employees of multiple animal abuse allegations. Video: Laura Duclos, Karen Warren

Gerbers complaints brought national attention to the city as angered animal advocates plagued the department and city council with demands for major overhauls and staff accountability. Only a few changes were made, including moving toward an electronic animal tracking system (all animal intakes were previously done by hand) and establishing agreements with nonprofit rescues to shelter surrendered animals.

Her whistleblowing also resulted in a months-long investigation into the department that cleared Brown and Antinoro of all allegations. Gerber was then placed under investigation and required to stay on unpaid leave.

BREAKING THE CHAINS: Chaining dogs outside will finally be illegal in Texas as Abbott signs animal cruelty bill into law

Brown and Spencer are the only two city employees who run the department and remained employed by the city throughout the two internal affairs investigations.

The suit claims the city retaliated against Gerber in the form of restrained speech, harassment and intimidation for her reports about the department and argues actions taken against her violate the Texas Whistleblower Act.

The City of Katy targeted Mrs. Gerber by attempting to restrain her political speech, placed her on an indefinite leave with no pay, investigated Mrs. Gerber herself for unfounded allegations, and ultimately terminated her, the suit states. Meanwhile, the individuals responsible for the atrocities against the animals at the City of Katy Animal Control continue to be employed to this day.

The city of Katy, animal control department and police department did not respond to a request for comment.

The internal affairs investigation into Gerber accused her of six violations of the departments code of ethics and social media policy. All of the allegations were sustained by a five-person disciplinary advisory board who later voted for her termination.

In a letter dated July 21, Katy Police Detective Lee Hernandez wrote to Gerber that she could return to her job under a six-month probation period even though the violations she sustained justify a much more severe disciplinary action, according to records obtained by the Chronicle. Hernandez wrote in the letter these violations are mitigated by the fact that Gerber believed her actions were protecting animals.

On Aug. 10, Katy Police Chief Noe Diaz terminated her employment, per the suit.

The suit seeks a trial by jury in addition to damages including attorneys fees and court costs.

rebecca.hennes@chron.com
A real estate agent from suburban Dallas who flaunted her participation in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol on social media and later bragged she wasnt going to jail because she is white, has blond hair and a good job was sentenced on Thursday to two months behind bars.

While some rioters sentenced for the same misdemeanor conviction have received only probation or home confinement, prosecutors sought incarceration for Jennifer Leigh Ryan of Frisco, Texas, saying she has shown a lack of candor and remorse for her actions when the pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol building and delayed Congress certification of Joe Bidens Electoral College victory.

They also said Ryans belief that shes shielded from punishment shows she doesnt grasp the seriousness of her crime.

Ryan wasnt facing a felony for more serious conduct, but U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said she was still among the mob who overnumbered police in an attack that led to the deaths of five people and will have a lasting effect on government institutions.

Though Ryan said she was sorry for her actions, Cooper questioned whether she is remorseful and has respect for the law.

Your actions since Jan. 6 make me doubt some of those things, the judge said.

Prosecutors said Ryan traveled to Washington on a jet chartered by a Facebook friend, described Trumps rally before the riot as a prelude to war, livestreamed her entry into the building as alarms sounded, participated in chants of Fight For Trump, tweeted a photo of herself next to broken windows outside the Capitol and later said she deserved a medal for what she did.

Her lawyer responded that she was in the building for only two minutes, didnt act violently and has a First Amendment right to speak up on social media.

The judge then referred to Ryans March 26 tweet in which she wrote, Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and Im not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.

In a letter to the judge, Ryan denied believing she was immune to punishment, saying she was responding to people who made fun of her appearance and called for her to be imprisoned. She said her attorney told her at the time that prosecutors would be recommending a sentence of probation.

I was attacked and I was answering them, Ryan said in court.

She is the 10th person charged in the Jan. 6 attack to get a jail or prison sentence. More than 650 people have been charged for their actions at the Capitol.

Prosecutors said Ryan has since downplayed the violence at the Capitol and falsely claimed to probation authorities that she didnt know there was a riot until she came to the Capitol, even though she had recorded herself in a hotel room watching news coverage of rioters climbing the walls of the Capitol.

After the riot, Ryan said she faced a backlash that included death threats, public heckling and graffiti painted on her real estate signs. She said she had to change her name and disguise herself in public.

Ryan tweeted a photo of herself next to broken windows and holding her fingers in a V sign, with a caption saying, Window at The capital. And if the news doesnt stop lying about us were going to come after their studios next...

Shortly afterward, Ryan posted another tweet about a crowd damaging equipment belonging to news organizations, including The Associated Press. She tweeted it was a cool moment when rioters went to town on the AP equipment.

Ryan is expected to start serving her sentence in January.

Also on Thursday, an Air Force veteran was sentenced to three years of probation for breaching the Capitol and taking photos and videos while inside the rotunda for about 10 minutes.

Jonathan Ace Sanders, 61, of Vincennes, Indiana, served 20 years in the military and was awarded a Purple Heart, but said he failed his training on Jan. 6.

I wasnt tricked, I wasnt pushed, that was my failure ... I am sincerely sorry, he said.

Sanders is among dozens of veterans and active-service members charged in connection with the insurrection. As they have in other cases, prosecutors argued that should mean a tougher sentence for Sanders because his training should have told him to leave as other rioters attacked Capitol police officers and vandalized the building.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols declined to impose the two months of home confinement that prosecutors recommended. The judge said Sanders' military career was commendable service to his country, but also should have kept him away.

In my view, his service cuts both ways, Nichols said. It should have been obvious to him this was a violent riot.

Earlier on Thursday, a Maryland woman who joined the mobs attack also was sentenced to three years of probation, including two months of home detention.

Brittiany Angelina Dillon said her actions at the Capitol were inexcusable and unacceptable. Judge Dabney Friedrich said text messages show Dillon clearly anticipated violence when she went to Washington on Jan. 6 and seemed intent on doing her part to stop Congress from certifying Bidens victory.

According to prosecutors, Dillon pushed through a crowd of rioters to approach an entrance to the Capitol but was pushed back before she could make it beyond the buildings threshold.

The judge said she was troubled by statements that Dillon made before and after the riot, including her reference to law enforcement officers as devils.

The attack she participated in was an attack on our institutions of government, the rule of law and our democratic process, Friedrich said. _____ Billeaud reported from Phoenix and Whitehurst from Salt Lake City. Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman contributed from College Park, Maryland.
Houston Chronicle file

By 1932, seven years after it opened, it was becoming clear that Jefferson Davis Hospital on Elder Street was falling short to meet the medical needs of the community.

The hospital, operated by the city and county, was the first such medical facility set up to provide care for the indigent. Named after the president of the Confederacy, it got that name after it came to light that the site selected for the hospital was on a cemetery that contained the graves of Confederate soldiers.
Jurors in a Harris County civil trial this week must consider whether a Texas spa chain and a Woodlands franchise owner should be held responsible for the sexual assault of a customer by a massage therapist during a 2017 session.

The former therapist, Mario Rubio, was convicted in 2018 and is serving an 18-year prison term in the assault of a Montgomery County client. The customer, a 53-year-old mother of three, sued Massage Heights and Eric Oliver, the owner of several franchises including the now-closed Alden Bridge spa where the assault occurred.

The trial began Thursday morning.

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found at least 24 reports that Massage Heights therapists across the U.S. had made sexual contact with clients since 2010, including at least nine accusations of unwanted contact at seven out of 24 franchises across the Houston area. The Chronicle identified three men who were convicted of having sexual contact with four local customers since 2011 and another three men who had pending cases in four alleged assaults.

The investigation also identified six Massage Heights therapists in Texas who since 2012 have had their licenses revoked or have been fined by the states regulatory agency after allegations they made sexual contact with clients. Another six Massage Heights employees have received disciplinary sanctions in other states since 2010 because of sexual contact with customers.

A spokesperson for Massage Heights Franchising LLC told the Chronicle this year the the company strongly believes that we play a role in assisting franchisees in ensuring the health and safety of the thousands of members and guests and that the company has a zero tolerance policy for conduct that is sexual in nature at franchisees retreats. The company has made similar statements in the wake of various sexual assault charges against its massage therapists around the country, mentioning in these cases the company has a zero tolerance policy about inappropriate touching.

A massage expert testified that after a previous report of inappropriate touching in Alden Bridge, the franchisee should have taken immediate action. He said the company should have trained the franchisee in how to screen and train employees to avoid these situations.

An attorney for Massage Heights Franchising said in her opening statement that the problem was not with the umbrella company.

We have rules and they are clearly defined, she said. We have a rule that there is no breast massage, there is no genitalia massage. It is not permitted.  It just doesnt happen. Not part of business model.

The massage customer will have to show there has been a pattern of negligence and insufficient training and prevention by the company and its franchise.

gabrielle.banks@chron.com
Several school board candidates in the Houston region won their races decrying so-called critical race theory and touting conservative and religious values for positions that are traditionally nonpartisan.

The winning challengers, backed by right-wing political action committees, in Cypress Fairbanks ISD ousted longtime incumbents. One candidate in Klein ISD won a six-person race with the same strategy. In the HISD race, at least one candidate who has expressed dissatisfaction with HISD's mask mandate and CRT forced a runoff.

I am very disappointed and pretty upset, said Tana Lam, a parent of three students in Cy-Fair ISD. Its just disturbing. These positions are non partisan.

The same trend was seen in other public school districts across the state and nation in Tuesdays election. In traditionally nonpartisan races, candidates in states such as Texas, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Minnesota campaigned against political and social ideologies.

Their campaigns echoed the rhetoric and frustration of vocal parents and community members who in recent months have spoken at school board meetings across the nation to voice concerns over curriculum covering racism and inequity and LGBTQ+ matters as well as mask mandates.

In Cy-Fair ISDs at-large election, candidate Lucas Scanlon, who has decried critical race theory, beat incumbent Bob R. Covey, who has served on the board since 2005, to take over the Position 7 seat.

Weve got ideologies that have nothing to do with education in schools and being pushed into the curriculum and hoisted onto students, said Scanlon on Wednesday. Conversations about gender identity and LGBTQ etc., those conversations are parent conversations. Its not right in my view for a teacher or administrator to insert themselves into those conversationsIs it reasonable that a teacher should be talking about safe gay sex?

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Covey did not respond to a request for comment on the results of the race.

Position 6 candidate Scott Henry, who also ran alongside Scanlon to eliminate critical race theory, beat out incumbent Don Ryan, who has been on the board since 2000.

Teaching kids around critical race theory and sex education...thats something parents dont want taught in class, Henry said Wednesday.

Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.

Natalie Blasingame, a former assistant HISD superintendent and outspoken critic of CRT, unseated incumbent Position 5 Trustee John Ogletree, a pastor who served on the board for 17 years.

"The kids of today love each other and are not inherently racist, Blasingame said in a questionnaire published online by the PAC Conservative Coalition of Harris County. ...We must not harm them and our country by teaching them to hate each other...There is power in unity - it's Biblical. If the church will come together in unity and purpose, there IS incredible power in it to change the world. Make no mistake, CRT is antithetical to the Gospel of Peace.

Blasingame said Wednesday that while she is against CRT, it wasnt the only issue she ran on.

Ogeltree, the only Black member of the seven-person board, which represents a highly diverse district, said its disappointing to see a lack of diversity.

For the first time in over 20 years, our board will not have Black or African American representation, he said. That is very disheartening.

Ogeltree said its discouraging that the usually nonpartisan election process for the seat became hyper political this cycle, adding he hopes the new trustees will set aside politics to work together.

The Tea Party and the Republicans pushed crt and people bought into it, he said. Im disappointed but delighted for the opportunity to serve and make an impact in the district.

Scanlon, Henry and Blasingame all campaigned together and said they share similar values. Right wing PACs such as Act in Action, Cherry Tree Republicans and Recover America sent out mailers or created websites in support of the candidates.

The PAC Conservative Republicans of Harris County sent a mailer out to Cy-Fair ISD voters saying that all three trustee candidates are Christians, conservatives (and) patriots who believe in a Biblical World View, Biblical marriage, want to build the wall,and dont want Muslim Sharia law in America.

In Klein ISD, financial adviser Dustin Creager prevailed against five other candidates. He campaigned on conservative values and decried CRT and transgender student athletes.

Critical Race Theory is racism and is illegal, said Creager in his questionnaire published online by CCHC.

When responding to a question about transgender student athletes, Creager said in the questionnaire, Student athletes should compete based on their biological/natural sex. If you are a male, you perform against males. If you are a female, you perform against females.

Bridget Wade, vying for the District 7 seat in HISD, said in August that the school board had "put the children of Houston front and center as pawns in a political game that must stop" with the requirement.

"Parents, not the School Board, should decide whether their child should wear a mask," Wade wrote in an Aug. 13 Facebook post. "I urge the Board to get back to the business it was elected to do and stay out of these partisan political battles. It does nothing to serve our children and everything to diminish a their ability to receive a quality education."

Superintendent Millard House II implemented the mandate, and the board expressed support for it with a unanimous vote.

On Wednesday, Wade said she stood by the mask statement.

Asked about critical race theory, she said in a statement, "I renounce any attempt by our public schools, whether formal or informal, to teach our children that one race is better than the other. I firmly believe in the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that we be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin."

Meanwhile, other candidates were listed on mailers and text blasts that asked voters whether they wanted their kids "learning to hate themselves" and others proclaiming that masks do not belong on kids for 8 hours a day.

The ads, from a political action committee, included a note that they were "not authorized by any candidate."

At least one candidate in the ads, who did not force a runoff, issued a statement about them days before the election.

"Not only are special interests flooding our local race, but now DARK MONEY is pouring in," wrote Matias Kopinsky, who ran for District 1, in a Facebook post Friday. "The timing of this piece was well programmed to stir attention away from the pillars of what we stand for and halt the momentum we have cultivated in these few months across the community."

Lam, the Cy-Fair mother, said she worries the rhetoric in these races will negatively impact children of color and LGBTQ+ students.

I am worried for my children and any child who isnt white and conservative at this time, she said. They set the tone and embolden other parents to think this rhetoric is OK.

hannah.dellinger@chron.com
Four of five Houston ISD trustees up for re-election Tuesday have been pushed into runoffs, perhaps as much for their incumbency as their stances on district issues.

Three incumbents  Elizabeth Santos in District 1, Sue Deigaard in District 5, Holly Flynn Vilaseca in District 6  all were the leading vote-getters in their races, but failed to garner at least 50 percent of the ballots cast. Trustee Anne Sung in District 7 finished about 4 percentage points, or 631 votes, behind challenger Bridget Wade in unofficial returns. Neither passed the 50 percent threshold.

The only HISD race decided by voters Tuesday was for District 9, where Trustee Myrna Guidry fended off two challengers with nearly 61 percent of the vote.

The outcome of the runoffs, which will be scheduled for next month, could alter the board just as the district has reached a sense of stability with new Superintendent Millard House II preparing a multi-year strategic plan and the district considering its first bond referendum in nearly a decade.

The district still faces a potential takeover threat by the Texas Education Agency, but that effort remains tied up in litigation.

Two paths led to runoffs, said Jasmine Jenkins, executive director of education nonprofit Houstonians For Great Public Schools.

First, she said, there have been national conversations led by conservatives to encourage people to run for local office, sometimes by playing to racial divides and appealing to grievances, such as those surrounding mask mandates to fight the spread of COVID-19.

At the same time, and more locally, Jenkins said there may be voters who are happy with the districts direction and current stability but wary of any board members steeped in the dysfunction of years past.

Santos, Vilaseca and Deigaard were elected to the board in 2017. Sung was elected in 2016.

In 2019, state investigators determined five trustees  including Santos, Vilaseca and Sung  had met with former HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra to coordinate installing him as the districts leader and ousting interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan months earlier.

The arrangement constituted a walking quorum, a violation of state law requiring trustees to conduct district business in public, the probe found.

Shortly after replacing Lathan in 2018, the trustees were part of a group that offered a public apology to students, parents and teachers. Lathan was reinstated and remained the interim leader until the current board hired House this spring.

I am still cautiously optimistic about what is to come no matter what the results of the runoffs are, Jenkins said. I am hopeful not just for stability and improved governance, but I am hopeful that the bold ideas of a new superintendent will be really supported and will be given shape by the vision and direction that the board gives him.

In the District 1 runoff, Santos will face Janette Garza Lindner, a management consultant. District 5 incumbent Deigaard will be challenged by Caroline Walter, who has described herself as a stay-at-home mom. Kendall Baker, a pastor and small business owner who previously ran for city office, will try to unseat District 6 Trustee Vilaseca.

Sung in District 7 faces Bridget Wade, who has served as president of Briargrove Elementary PTO.

While the candidates challenging the incumbents have campaigned by sharing what they want to address in the district, some have brushed on or been affiliated with the hot political topics of the last six months.

In a statement issued in August about the districts mask mandate, Wade said parents, not trustees, should decide whether their children wear masks. She urged the board to get back to the business it was elected to do and stay out of these partisan political battles.

House implemented the mask mandate once he learned he did not need the boards approval, and the board voted unanimously to express support for his decision.

Wade said Wednesday she stood firmly by her previous statements on the mask mandate and regarding critical race theory: I renounce any attempt by our public schools, whether formal or informal, to teach our children that one race is better than the other.

Walter has appeared on anti-mask and anti-critical race theory mailers and text message blasts, which say they were paid for a political action committee and not paid for by any candidate.

Matias Kopinsky, a challenger who finished third in the District 1 race, criticized the texts and mailer, which included his name and photograph, calling them unauthorized in a Facebook post last week.

Things are getting really dirty in the HISD District 1 race. Not only are special interests flooding our local race, but now DARK MONEY is pouring in, he wrote. It was reported that some residents have received a text and mailer from a PAC that was created without ever seeking consent from my campaign.  The timing of this piece was well programmed to stir attention away from the pillars of what we stand for and halt the momentum we have cultivated in these few months across the community. WE WILL NOT STAND FOR DIVISIVENESS AND HATE!

The Austin-based PAC, according to Texas Ethics Commission records, was launched in April and lists its treasurer as Cabell Hobbs, who has been affiliated with numerous Republican political action committees across the country..

Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston, said it appears the district is at a crossroads.

They are at a point where they are trying to climb out of decades-long troubles, Rottinghaus said, and the politics of the current moment are, to some degree, getting in the way.

Turnout during Tuesdays election was greater for some of the races than in 2017, according to the unofficial but complete returns, but still remained low.

Roughly 12 percent of registered voters in areas encompassed by Districts 1 and 6 cast ballots; turnout reached about 19 percent in District 5 and 16 percent in District 7. Turnout in District 9 was the lowest at 9 percent.

The turnout is so low in these elections that it is hard to glean much from them, Rottinghaus said. When we talk about like how important these school board elections are and how much people care about it, you contrast that with the fact that most people are not voting in these elections.

alejandro.serrano@chron.com
Relatives of a man once married to Gloria Williams  mother of three abandoned children  say he helped parent her kids, including her son whom police believe was beaten to death in November 2020.

The former husband, Daryl (Wayne) Towner, married Williams in October 2017, records show. He died in August 2019 from underlying health issues, according to the family.

The two met at a Houston homeless shelter following his release from prison, lawyer Jennine Hovell-Cox said in a news release.

Wayne cared for and loved all four of Ms. Williams children, as if they were his own, Hovell-Cox said in the statement.

The relatives expressed shock to the death of Kendrick Lee and the rescue of three other children from a west Harris County apartment in deplorable condition. Deputies rescued the surviving children Oct. 24 from the third-floor apartment after the eldest child called 911 to report the death of his 8-year-old brother.

He died about 11 months prior and his body decomposed in the apartment as the siblings continued to live there.

Williams and her boyfriend, Brian Coulter, moved out in March, leaving the surviving children to fend for themselves.

Coulter has been charged with murder in Kendricks death after the children said he beat the boy to death. Williams also faces criminal charges.

She is expected to return to court Friday for a bail review hearing. After the court appearance, Towners family is expected to gather for a news conference to discuss their loved one and his ties to the Williams family.
Since last year, Harris County has purchased a new fleet of voting machines, created a new elections administration office and hired a new executive to run it.

Why then, many residents wondered, did Tuesdays low-turnout election see the same delays in vote counting that plagued the county in the past?

By 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, just 60 percent of votes had been tallied for the ballot, which included state constitutional amendments, school board races and a handful of municipal contests. The county elections administrators office did not publish the final unofficial tally until 8:30 a.m., 13  hours after the polls closed.

Election Administrator Isabel Longoria blamed the delay on an extremely unlikely glitch in the backup power supply at the vote count headquarters at occurred around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. That triggered a warning on the new voting system, which is sensitive to anything that may resemble a cyberattack, though it is not connected to the internet.

Longoria ordered a test of the system, which took about two hours and delayed the counting of ballots cast during the early vote period, which under Texas law cannot be counted until Election Day. That, in turn, caused delays when election judges began returning Election Day ballot boxes after polls closed at 7 p.m., she said.

I get that its frustrating  but when you trip your new system, you want to be thorough, Longoria said. Thats the most responsible thing to do as an elections administrator, so there are no questions later about why you did not stop when you had the chance to double-check.

Longoria said she does not anticipate the issue in future elections. Higher-turnout contests are no more difficult, she said, since they have the same number of polling places and memory cards that must be processed.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Read more stories from Zach Despart

Texas other largest counties, including Dallas, Bexar, Travis and Tarrant, each finished their unofficial vote tallies by 2 a.m. Longoria predicted Harris County would keep pace with those counties in next Novembers general election, which will include races governor and state leadership posts, as well as scores of Texas legislative, congressional and judicial seats.

County residents may be more skeptical, though, considering recent history. Former County Clerk Stan Stanart, owing to his alliterative name, white hair and a hashtag popular with his critics, became an internet meme each time results trickled in on his watch. His successor, Diane Trautman, bungled the 2019 Houston mayoral election and 2020 presidential primary.

Interim County Clerk Christopher Hollins, who took over after Trautman resigned for health reasons, ran a mostly smooth 2020 presidential contest, buoyed by the countys decision to spend a record amount of money on the election during the pandemic.

Tuesdays delays were unacceptable to Republican Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle, who last year opposed the creation of an independent elections office and the hiring of Longoria as its first leader. Cagle said Wednesday the county should revert to the old model, in which the county clerk oversees elections and the county tax assessor-collector maintains the voter roll.

We have an unelected bureaucrat who was appointed by three members of Commissioners Court, Cagle said. Theres no accountability to the public.

Commissioners Court last year created the election administration office on a party-line vote. Longoria was hired by a committee that included Hidalgo, the county party chairs, tax assessor and county clerk.

Cagle said the three Democratic members of the court, County Judge Lina Hidalgo and commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia, bear responsibility for ensuring Wednesdays delays do not happen again.

Marc Campos, a longtime Houston Democratic strategist, wrote on his blog Wednesday morning that he expect(ed) outrage out of the trio.

This is not about every election watch party that was ruined last night across Harris County, Campos wrote on his blog. This is about botching the reporting of election results and the Harris County Elections Administrators Office folks epic failure.

Hidalgo said in a statement that while running elections is never easy, the county needs to identify any issues with Tuesdays elections and correct them for the future. Ellis echoed that sentiment, saying he trusted that Longorias team acted in the interests of security and accuracy.

Garcia said the elections office needs to improve communication with the public and anticipate problems before they occur.

Not getting timely results is unfair to voters and the candidates, and I expect this will be a one-time glitch rather than a continuance of the reputation Harris County earned when elections were run by Republicans like Stan Stanart, Garcia said in a statement.

Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Odus Evbagharu, whose predecessor supported the adoption of the election administrator model, said low-turnout elections offer a change to correct mistakes for future contests.

Obviously, we want these results to come out earlier, Evbagharu said. To expect it to go 100% smoothly is unfair. Overall, they did a good job. Theyll work on the processes.

Cindy Siegel, the county Republican chairwoman, said Tuesdays outcome was another example of how the Democrats who control county government fail their constituents.

Democrats on Commissioners Court claimed the appointed elections administrator role would improve our voting system and alleviate election results delays, Siegel said in a statement. However, were still seeing the same disastrous outcome.

Some voters also expressed frustration with the new voting machines, which print a paper ballot that then must be scanned into a second machine.

While the power glitch was the primary cause of the delays, Longoria said her office did not complete the final unofficial tally until after 8 a.m. Wednesday because eight election judges failed to return memory cards from their polling places to the vote-counting headquarters at NRG Arena.

Longoria said she dispatched police officers after those election judges, who are appointed by the Democratic and Republican parties, failed to answer their phones early Wednesday. Police found each memory card locked away with other voting equipment at each site.

In one instance, Longoria said she had to wait for a school custodian to arrive for work Wednesday morning to unlock a closet and secure the final memory card.

zach.despart@chron.com
The upcoming launch of NASA astronauts is in flux.

The Crew-3 mission will not launch this weekend due to weather, and the agency might return astronauts currently onboard the International Space Station before sending up its next four-person crew.

Ultimately, the decision to launch Crew-3 or to land Crew-2 (the mission currently on ISS) will come down to weather.

FUTURE HARDWARE: Blue Origin is the latest entrant into commercial space station battleground

These are dynamic and complex decisions that change day by day, Steve Stich, NASAs Commercial Crew program manager, said in a statement. The weather in November can be especially challenging, so our goal is to move forward on the plan with the highest probability of mission assurance and crew safety.

The Crew-3 mission will carry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer to the space station for a six-month stay. They would launch in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule pushed into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

A launch slated for Halloween, but this was pushed to Wednesday due to weather. Then NASA delayed Wednesday's launch due to a "minor medical issue" with one of the crew members. The agency is continuing to monitor this crew member, though the medical issue should be gone prior to launch, the agency said.

Currently onboard the space station are NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is also on the space station, though he will not return home until March. Vande Hei and Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov are spending a year in space.

WHY THEY'RE STAYING IN SPACE: Russian actress, director beat Tom Cruise to space in first-of-its-kind movie filming

Crew-2 could undock with the space station on Sunday and then splashdown off the coast of Florida. Or Crew-3 could launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Monday.

NASA and SpaceX will make a final decision on whether to prioritize the Crew-2 return or Crew-3 launch based on the likelihood of favorable weather for each mission.
SpaceX and NASA can resume working on the human landing system that will lower NASA astronauts to the moon.

On Thursday, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit that had halted work on this system. Blue Origin sued the U.S. in August because NASA had selected SpaceX -- and only SpaceX -- to develop the human landing system. The company had expressed concerns about the procurement process, and it pushed the agency to select two landing systems.

"Not the decision we wanted," Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said Thursday on Twitter, "but we respect the courts judgment, and wish full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract."

This ends a saga that has dragged on since April when NASA first announced it would use the SpaceX Starship being developed in South Texas for its human landing system.

It had been NASA's intent to select two landing systems, which encourages competition and gives the moon program more flexibility should one company suffer a technical setback or delay. However, NASA did not receive its desired level of funding for the human landing system, and it chose to focus its budget on one company (SpaceX) rather than splitting it between two.

Blue Origin and Dyentics protested NASA's decision with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, but the GAO upheld NASA's decision to just select SpaceX.

Bezos also wrote an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson where he offered to waive all payments in the current and next two fiscal years up to $2 billion. And he said the company was willing to accept a firm, fixed-priced contract. Blue Origin would cover any system development cost overruns and shield NASA from partner cost escalation concerns.

That was followed by Blue Origin's lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The lawsuit is sealed, but Judge Richard A. Hertling has ordered the parties to propose redactions by Nov. 18 so the court may release its opinion publicly.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed San Antonio native Robert Santos as head of the Census Bureau, making him the first Latino to lead the countrys largest statistical agency.

Santos currently serves as the president of the American Statistical Association and vice president and chief methodologist at the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute. President Joe Biden nominated him to lead the bureau in April, and a Senate panel gave him a nod of approval in August.

Santos, who is Mexican American, is the first person of color to serve as the permanent director of the Census Bureau. James F. Holmes, who is Black, served as acting director of the bureau in 1998 but was not confirmed by the Senate.

Senators approved Santos nomination by a vote of 58 to 35, with a handful of Republicans  including Sen. John Cornyn of Texas  joining Democrats to confirm him. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas did not vote, after opposing a procedural move earlier in the day to advance the nomination.

In a tweet, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Santos one of the top statisticians in the country. His term will expire at the end of 2026, allowing Santos to oversee both reviews of the 2020 census and preparations for the 2030 count.

Most senators who objected to Santos confirmation did not explain their vote, but Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said last month that he feared Santos would politicize the bureau.

READ MORE: What to know about the San Antonio native tapped to lead U.S. Census Bureau

Diversity and inclusion have been key priorities for Santos throughout his career, and he has spoken often and publicly about the importance of accurately counting minority groups in the census. He told a U.S. House of Representatives committee in December that undercounting those populations only reinforces inequities in political representation, federal funding to local communities, and economic and public health opportunities.

These are key issues for the Census Bureau to tackle this year, as several recent analyses  including one that Santos took part in at the Urban Institute  have found that the 2020 census undercounted Black and Hispanic Americans. The institutes study estimated that Texas had the highest statewide undercount in raw numbers, with nearly 380,000 people left out of the states final tally. Counting all of them would have afforded Texas more than $247 million in 2021 federal Medicaid reimbursements, the groups report states.

Accurate counts influence the once-a-decade process of redrawing the countrys political maps, which has grown increasingly contentious in Texas this year, as the GOP-led Legislature declined to add any new majority-minority districts in the Legislature or Congress. People of color drove 95 percent of Texas 4 million-person population growth over the past decade, and Hispanic Texans accounted for nearly half that total, according to 2020 census data.

Santos confirmation comes as many of Bidens other nominees have stalled in the Senate. Another Texas native, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, has been nominated as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but his nomination has not yet been taken to the Senate floor amid concerns from Republicans.

Santos grew up just south of Woodlawn Lake, attending Little Flower Catholic School and then Holy Cross High School. His parents worked at Kelly AFB.

He attended San Antonio Community College and later earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Trinity University in 1976. He went on to get a masters degree in statistics at the University of Michigan in 1977, launching a career of more than 40 years in research, math and leadership.

Benjamin Wermund contributed reporting from Washington.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
The year is 2031, and the Texas Legislature is divided. Despite the Democratic wave of 2028 that turned the House blue, and the folksy left-of-center governor who won by a hair, the Republicans still control the Senate.

So how will this purple state get anything done? The democratic way, through negotiation and compromise? Or will Democrats, desperate to solidify their hold on state government after 25 years in the wilderness, lean on the once-a-decade redistricting process to skew political maps to their partisan advantage?

Actually, they no longer have that option because, in this future scenario, Texas has finally implemented a nonpartisan redistricting committee to handle the delicate task of political map-drawing. Instead of backroom gerrymandering and preordained outcomes we saw when the lawmakers drew their own districts, the commission has spent weeks hearing testimony  via hologram projection, of course!  from residents and community leaders across the state.

Our goal is simple, the commissions chair declares on the steps of the Capitol. To create maps that foster political competition and give all Texans a fair say in our democracy!

And then we wake up.

Its 2021 again. Texas redistricting is still in the hands of politicians, who use it to protect their own hides and their own agendas, rather than the common good of ordinary Texans. The most recent season of rancorous redistricting is all over, save the inevitable courtroom battles.

Weve watched as Republican lawmakers in Austin ignored the enormous growth in Texas minority population and instead sought to pad their own advantage in the Legislature and Congress.

Weve watched as Democrats on the Harris County Commissioners Court hastened to approve maps that expedite their partys dominance rather than merely reflect voters gradual tilt to the left.

Weve also watched as other states somehow found another way, managing to curb political deck-stacking to give everyday people a seat at the electoral table. Texans should study their examples, and begin agitating for reforms that can be passed before the next round of redistricting.

In Colorado, where voters signed off on a nonpartisan redistricting committee in 2018, the new body recently approved a legislative map that has four solidly Democratic congressional districts, three Republican-leaning seats and one new, competitive district.

Colorado has trended blue over the past 17 years, and some Democrats expressed frustration that they wont have even more political power. But we think thats the point. The Princeton-run Redistricting Report Card gave Texas new congressional map an F grade for partisan fairness, while Colorados new maps got an A.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo last week said she supported a map from fellow Democrat, Commissioner Rodney Ellis, because she was concerned the GOP is on a race to the bottom to literally not be able to pay for lifesaving services such as hospital funding.

We share Hidalgos concern about public hospital funding but redistricting shouldnt be a referendum on policy  or a particular politicians personal thoughts on an opposing party. Redistricting is supposed to ensure that the populations of individual voting districts are roughly equal, so that, for instance, the electoral influence of a growing community isnt diluted. Political boundaries should generally reflect, and protect, everyones constitutionally protected right to one person, one vote.

A coalition of advocacy groups recently presented a precinct map to Commissioners Court that they believe fairly represents Harris County. Houston in Action built the Unity Map after meeting with community leaders from across the county, working to unite people with shared priorities  racial and ethnic considerations, economic status and other cultural touchstones  but not partisanship.

Gerrymandering is not a Democratic or Republican practice. Its a practice of people who are marginalizing and disenfranchising others, said Anusheh Siddique, organizer from Emgage Texas. Eventually, it rots government from the inside out.

Unfortunately, Texans cant put citizen referendums directly on the ballot, which is how Coloradans got redistricting reform approved in 2018, with 71 percent of voters in support.

Here in Texas, well need our own lawmakers to initiate a similar process of nuclear disarmament  which we admit is a tall ask. Its only possible if enough Texas voters register support and apply pressure for change.

.

Perhaps change will only come in Texas after Democrats start winning statewide races and Republicans begin seeing the benefits of limiting partisan influence over redistricting. Indeed, it took significant GOP losses for the party to support eliminating straight-ticket voting in 2017, believing it would help their prospects.

But we cant wait until the ruling party finds selfish motivation to do the right thing. Texans who care about fair elections and fair representation must start now to pester lawmakers for reform and raise awareness about the issue in our circles.

When politicians can routinely pick their own voters to ensure their own victories, the rest of us lose. We need a nonpartisan panel of citizens to oversee redistricting and ensure that Texas government truly represents Texans, of all stripes and all parties.
Duncan McGlynn, STR / Associated Press

With the COP26 climate change conference underway after yet another year of unprecedented (but unsurprising) climate disasters, more and more headlines are calling attention to debates over government policies. However, there remains an uncomfortable silence around the subject of fossil fuel financing. After all, government climate commitments can only go so far when the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into fossil fuel expansion annually come from the private sector. Namely, from banks.

Nowhere is this tense disquiet better reflected than in Houston: the hydrocarbon capital of the country, on the front lines of the climate crisis. Here, the bizarre coexistence of climate destruction and its enablers has woven itself into daily life. Pasted on gas station doors are paper signs with warnings to prepare for hurricane season, often accompanied by a sale on bottled water and batteries  just in case. Down the street, across from the emergency storm drains, sits the neighborhood branch of Chase, Bank of America, Citi or Wells Fargo. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon even swung by Fifth Ward earlier this week under the guise of caring for the communities he seems more than happy to let drown in floodwaters.
AUSTIN  Deputies pulled Joshua Langley over for failing to signal a turn. They stopped John McGills F-150 pick-up because his license plate was faulty. Lisa Woodruff was detained for an expired registration. Larry Turner was pulled over after running a stop sign.

While they were stopped by Henderson County sheriffs deputies last year for different traffic infractions, all four shared something in common: Each ended up on the side of the road while deputies searched their vehicles for contraband. None turned up anything illegal, records show.

Its an unusually common occurrence in the community southeast of Dallas. Deputies conducted roadside searches on nearly 4 of every 10 motorists they pulled over last year, records show - one of the highest rates in Texas.

Thats extraordinary, said Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina professor considered one of the countrys top stop-and-search experts. Its a very, very high number.

Only about one in three Henderson County deputy searches uncovered any contraband, the records showed. Less than one in five resulted in an arrest.

By contrast, troopers at the Texas Department of Public Safety, the states busiest traffic enforcement department, searched about 5 percent of motorists they stopped in 2020, a rate one-eighth as high as Henderson Countys.

A Houston Chronicle investigation has identified the Texas law enforcement agencies most likely to detain and search drivers based mainly on an officers hunch. During traffic stops  the most common interaction between civilians and police  these departments performed discretionary searches at the highest rates, according to data each department submits annually to the state.

In Texline, a small Panhandle community, city marshals searched about one in every three vehicles stopped. In Cleveland, a small city north of Houston, police last year searched nearly every driver they pulled over, according to data the department submitted to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which maintains the filings.

It says they are already making the decision to search before they ever even turn on their red lights. said Patrick OBurke, a former commander within the Department of Public Safety.

Police call investigative traffic stops a valuable tactic, important to interacting with their communities and crucial to interrupting the flow of illegal drugs and other crimes along roadways. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was apprehended during a routine stop.

BIKERS BRAWL: Texas bikers say police have unfairly labeled them as gang members

Yet records show officers in Texass high-search jurisdictions often found nothing, or such inconsequential amounts of contraband that the driver was not arrested. That mirrors national research showing that most discretionary traffic stop searches bear little fruit.

Police say, Look at all the heroin we found! said Derek Epp, a University of Texas government professor who studies traffic stops and searches. They dont mention the other side of the equation, which is they had to stop 1,000 people to find that.

Citizens have been asked to tolerate the roadside investigations as a minor inconvenience for the greater good. Yet in recent years there has been a growing awareness the practice comes at a price.

While it is true that any one stop is a limited intrusion in duration and deprivation of liberty, each stop is also a demeaning and humiliating experience, federal Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in her opinion citing low hit rates and a high proportion of minority targets to declare New York Citys stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional.

Treating mostly innocent motorists with suspicion can erode trust in the police among populations most subjected to them, added Charles Epp, a University of Kansas professor (unrelated to Derek) and author of Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. Without civilian support, police solve fewer crimes, he said.

Studies also have shown searches to be racially biased. In its analysis of more than 200 million traffic stops, the Stanford Open Policing Project concluded police require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than white drivers. This double standard is evidence of discrimination.

NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

Pushed by the Black Lives Matter movement, a growing number of jurisdictions are re-examining the practice of roadside investigations. Several states and cities have limited police authority to conduct discretionary searches, particularly after stops for minor traffic offenses.

Other reformers question the fiscal efficiency of a long-time practice that appears to produce little public safety benefit. If youre a police department and 80 percent of people you stop and subject to investigation end up with fruitless searches, it seems like you need to do more on your end to get better at this, said Michael Burbank, a retired police officer and director of Law Enforcement Initiatives at the Center for Policing Equity.

SPEED TRAP AHEAD: New analysis reveals where police pulled over the most people

If its ineffective, why do it?

Having a police officer occasionally rifle through a vehicle during a traffic stop has long been considered the acceptable cost of aggressive law enforcement. If a driver had nothing to hide, what was the big deal about waiting a few minutes while an officer made sure?

Courts generally have supported the practice. While premises searches typically require a warrant, the U.S. Supreme Court long ago ruled that automobiles are an exception.

Since then, the nations top court also has concluded that as long as a motorist violated a traffic rule, no matter how minor, police can stop the vehicle and initiate an investigation. While the court determined officers must inform arrested civilians of their 5th Amendment Miranda right to remain silent, the justices decided it was unnecessary for police to tell people they have a 4th Amendment right to refuse a search request.

So drivers typically dont. Studies show most vehicle searches are those in which police request and gain the drivers permission.

Yet analyses of millions of traffic stops have shown so-called consent searches to be inefficient. Only about a quarter turn up contraband, said Baumgartner; fewer than 15 percent are serious enough for officers to make an arrest.

All the research on consent searches is they are a tremendous waste of time, added UTs Epp, who has a paper on the subject in review. So if its so ineffective, why do it? Good question.

Even when police declare they have enough reason to conduct a search without permission, a large number of those, too, turn out to be fruitless. Baumgartner calculated that just over half of so-called probable cause searches turned up contraband. Only a quarter were serious enough to result in an arrest.

If the probable in probable cause turns out to only be a half of a half, he said. It makes the phrase meaningless.

To identify the high-search agencies, the Chronicle reviewed traffic data police departments submit annually to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. For agencies that made at least 1,000 traffic stops last year, reporters calculated each departments discretionary searches as a percentage of total traffic stops. For the top-searching departments, reporters reviewed a sampling of traffic tickets.

There is no accepted search rate to assess if a departments actions are tolerable or abusive to citizens. Nor is there a contraband hit-rate benchmark to measure if police are searching efficiently.

Based on his studies, Baumgartner said that searching about 5 percent of stopped vehicles is a common figure for traffic enforcement. The Chronicle identified nearly 30 Texas police agencies whose search rate was at least 3 times that. Officers in 16 departments performed discretionary searches at a rate more than 4 times the benchmark  meaning that at least one out of every five traffic stops resulted in an officer deciding to search the vehicle.

RACIAL PROFILING?: Virtually everyone a Fort Bend police officer stopped was Hispanic. His bosses shrugged.

Practice defended as proactive policing

In Wise County, just northwest of Dallas, records show sheriffs deputies decided to search about one of every four traffic stops, five times higher than Department of Public Safety officers. Sheriff Lane Akin said it ws unfair to compare the two.

DPS is more concerned about crash rates, while we are focused on crime rates, he said. His deputies are dedicated to making this county a safer place to live, work, worship and play.

The vast majority of thefts, robberies, burglaries, assaults, and other criminal acts are committed by meth users, Akin added. Wise County is safer because our officers are lawfully seizing illegal drugs (mostly meth), interdicting violators, and booking criminals into jail. Their actions, I believe, have prevented countless criminal acts.

Yet records show that 60 percent of Wise County deputies nearly 600 discretionary searches last year turned up nothing.

Even departments claiming high contraband finds often ended up making few arrests. Texline, in the northwestern corner of the Panhandle, reported finding contraband in more than 80 percent of its searches. But only 5 percent uncovered enough illegal substances for an arrest, its self-reported numbers show.

Most of the contraband that is discovered during the vehicle searches is personal use THC products purchased out of state then brought through Texline, Marshal Donnie Davis acknowledged in an email. The small amounts of these products that are often found, while illegal in Texas, do not meet the thresholds for prosecution that is set by the prosecutors office.

Still, Davis said he would continue the department's practice of searching about a third of all traffic stops. Deputies are encouraged to look for signs of criminal activity and to go beyond the original traffic stop when signs exist that warrant this, he said. Criminal interdiction is an important part of conducting traffic enforcement.

In Kaufman County, where deputies last year searched just under one in four vehicles stopped, a review of six randomly selected days showed deputies in the county east of Dallas searched 11 of the 42 motorists they pulled over. Two yielded contraband.

Sheriff Bryan Beavers said the practice still is worthwhile. Were trying to find the criminal element, he wrote in an email. The only way to find people (committing crimes) is when you stop them for a violation of law and do interviews on the side of the road.

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Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Agencies of Texas, which represents police, said departments conducting high rates of roadside investigations reflect the priorities of the local community and their elected representatives. Weve got to make sure to remind ourselves who decided this, he said. People in charge have voted to have traffic enforcement.

In Cleveland, the police department's self-reported data showed officers searched between 85 and 90 percent of all traffic stops over each of the past three years. A review of a months-worth of tickets found a much lower number, however, many citations were blank where officers were to indicate if they had performed a search.

Chief Darrel Broussard declined to comment in detail, but said Most of those we stop lead to a search. In an email, he added We have not received any complaints for any motorist about being searched. We serve a great community that support their (law enforcement) officers.

Epp, the Kansas professor, said inefficient roadside investigations historically have prompted little outcry because those most often subjected to them tend not to have much political leverage. If this were to be imposed on upper-middle-class doctors, lawyers and accountants who are white, the practice would be ended pretty quickly, he said.

On Feb. 15 last year, Jardarius Williams, of Carthage, in East Texas, drove his Chevy Tahoe to a nearby gas station hoping to buy some candy. The store was closed, and when he pulled out he noticed a police cruiser behind him.

After explaining Williamss car had an expired registration tag, the Panola County sheriffs deputy said he smelled marijuana and so would like to conduct a search. Williams agreed. He was released after the deputy uncovered just a gram of pot.

What was the point in that? he remembered thinking.

eric.dexheimer@chron.com
WASHINGTON  The U.S. House on Thursday approved legislation that would bar companies from discriminating against job applicants based on their age, an effort to close a loophole that the bills backers say leaves older Americans without the same protections afforded to minorities, women and religious workers.

The legislation, which passed the House on a 224-200 vote and has the backing of the Biden administration, would amend the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 to prohibit employers from limiting, segregating or classifying applicants for employment based on age. While the same protections exist for older workers and other protected classes, federal courts have ruled they only applied to current employees, not job applicants.

Experts say age discrimination is common in hiring. Managers are often on the hunt for younger workers, who tend to be willing to work longer hours for less pay and often dont have families. Some hiring practices, such as moving recruiting and applications online, could also leave some older workers at a disadvantage.

The door is being slammed on them, said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat who wrote the bill. Its great they have protections in the job, but if the door is shut and they cant get past that door, then its really not protecting workers.

NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

The legislation comes as the economy continues to recover from the COVID pandemic, which saw older Americans leaving the workforce in large numbers. According to the Urban Institute, more adults age 65 and older left the labor force in 2020 than in any year since the U.S. began tracking such information in 1948. It amounted to a 13-percent decline in employment for seniors, the largest drop of any age group.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

While some of them have opted to retire, many others are looking for work, and experts say there is clear evidence they are likely to face hurdles that other workers dont.

I think people make the assumption sometimes that once people hit 65 that they want to retire, Garcia said. Thats not true. Many of our seniors want to keep working. Its about the socialization process, its about staying busy, staying alive and well. Theyre not ready.

Republicans, however, argued the bill could scare employers away from longstanding recruiting practices, such as hosting job fairs at high schools and on college campuses and posting job openings online. They say the bill is a boon for trial lawyers, not older workers.

If this bill is enacted into law, a tsunami of lawsuits attacking these valuable and effective programs would follow, putting millions of job opportunities in jeopardy and forcing employers into court to defend them, said U.S. Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who led debate against the bill on the House floor. Endangering hiring practices when there are over 10 million unfilled jobs flies in the face of good governance.

They just have these ways of dismissing you.

A 58-year-old Galveston-based engineer who Garcia mentioned during debate on the bill told Hearst Newspapers hes been passed over repeatedly since 2015, when the startup he worked for went out of business. He said he feels like hes been forced into an early retirement.

He blames his age, and said hes taken to pruning back his resume to only show more recent jobs so employers cant immediately tell how old he is. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because hes worried speaking out would further hurt his ability to find work.

When I have experiences that go back to the mid-80s, thats kind of a red flag for them, he said. They would never ever tell you, We think youre too old  [But] when I see people 20 years younger than me getting hired for positions Ive been passed over for, you start to figure these things out.

Rebecca Danigelis, an 80-year-old anti-ageism advocate, was fired from her job as a Boston hotel manager when she was 75. When she tried to apply for jobs, she found many were online. One asked for the year she graduated high school, but only let her pick from years going back to 1979, well after she was out of high school. She effectively couldnt apply for the job.

They have these ways of just dismissing you, she said. You dont realize this until youre somebody going through it.

Research suggests those experiences are common. A National Bureau of Economic Research study published last year, for instance, found the rate at which applicants aged 40 and older were offered jobs was 46 percent lower than younger applicants.

Study finds older women get fewest callbacks

A 2019 study  in which researchers submitted some 40,000 fake resumes responding to ads for 13,000 jobs that employ large numbers of fairly low-skilled workers of all ages, including administrative assistants, janitors and retail sales  found applicants ages 29 to 31 had the highest callback rates. Older applicants, ages 64 to 66, had the lowest. It was especially bad for older women, whose callback rate for administrative jobs was 47 percent lower than younger applicants. In sales, older women had a 36 percent lower callback rate.

David Neumark, a University of California, Irvine economist who worked on both studies, said there is clear evidence of age discrimination in hiring practices, especially against older women.

All the research, when it directly tests for discrimination, implies more older people would be working if we reduced age discrimination, he said.

But experts are skeptical the legislation will fix the problem, though they see the bill as an important step.

Age discrimination is real, it does exist, it mostly shows up in hiring, said Joanna N. Lahey, an economist at Texas A&M University. But the reason it mostly shows up in hiring is because its really hard to detect in hiring. Unless someone sends you an email, you dont know if youve been discriminated against.

The bill now heads to the evenly divided Senate, where its future is unclear. While it is likely to draw support from Democrats, at least 10 Republicans would also need to vote for the bill to send it to the presidents desk to be signed into law. Just seven House Republicans voted for the bill on Thursday.

Garcia said she has had some preliminary discussions with senators and predicted some Republicans would support the bill.

How can anyone go back to their districts this weekend and tell all the seniors in their district that they voted against a bill that would ensure protections for senior workers? How can you defend that? Garcia said. I mean seniors vote. They need that extra money, just like everybody else.

ben.wermund@chron.com
Chicago, IL (60637)

Today

Cloudy early then partly cloudy and windy this afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 52F. Winds WSW at 20 to 30 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 22F. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
How Spotify royalties actually work

While many in the music community believe that Spotify royalties should be larger, the specifics of how they are calculated arent always well understood. Here, we clear the fog.

Guest post by Juan C Sarassa from Key of B#

Recently theres been a lot of chatter about songwriters battle, represented by the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), with Spotify over the negotiations with the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB). Spotify has proposed a lower payment for songwriting royalties which as understandably upset the songwriting community. However, I thought it would be good to write this article with a detailed explanation of how Streaming payouts work and who is getting what, so that we, as the music industry, can better understand how we can improve the remuneration for artists, songwriters, and producers.

Down to basics

First of all, its important to understand the underlying legal framework that allows artists and songwriters to get paid, and thats Copyright law. In music, there are two separate copyrightable assets when we stream a song and thats the musical composition, a.k.a. the song, and the sound recording, a.k.a. the master.

Theres also a series of exclusive rights that comes with the ownership of a copyright that includes making copies, known as the mechanical right, and performing the work to the public. When we talk about mechanicals, these are royalties paid to the songwriter and their publisher for the right to create individual copies. For example, every time a label manufactures a CD, they must pay the songwriters of all the songs a royalty for every single copy they make of said CD. In the US this rate is statutory, meaning that in the US Congress sets it, while in UK its a percentage of the price of sale. On the songwriting side, it was decided that a stream was a combination of a mechanical use and a public performance. This means that your Performance Rights Organization collects your income from Spotify on account of the songwriting payments.

On the Sound Recording side, Spotify pays the masters rightsholder a license to use that recording on their service. Well dive deeper into how this works in a second. So, to sum up, theres technically 3 payments involved in streaming, one mechanical, one public performance (both to the songwriter) and one to the sound recording rightsholder.

Now whats all this rightsholder stuff were talking about? The rightsholder is the owner of a master recording. As you may know, usually when an artist signs with a record label, they give the label ownership of all their recordings in exchange for money to finance these productions. Because of this, most of the revenue from these master licenses goes to these labels, and the artist receives a negotiated percentage which usually ranges from 15-20%. When you stream music made by an artist signed to a major, Spotify pays the label directly, and then they distribute the money or count it towards the artists recoupment of any money they owe. If its an independent artist and they own their masters, the payment will go to their distributor and they will pass on the money to the artist, minus whatever fees they charge.

The Current Situation

Now lets get into it. The deal is that Spotify pays 75% of their total revenue to songwriters, publishers, and sound recording owners. 15.1% goes to songwriters and publishers, and the other 59.9% going to sound recording owners. The way they distribute these royalties is by adding up the total amount of streams and dividing it by the percentage of the revenue they agreed to pay out, resulting in a payment per-stream. This amount is then multiplied by the times a specific recording has been streamed and pays that amount to the corresponding party. This is called the pro-rata model.

However, this pooling of money isnt global, they pile it up depending on the location of the stream, since every country has a different subscription fee. They also separate streams from paid subscriptions from the ad-supported accounts; streams from the paid subscriptions pay out higher royalties than the ones from free accounts. This makes it very difficult to calculate the exact number of royalties per-stream, and if you already have songs up on Spotify, youll see that every stream has a different rate.

As we know, the pro-rata model yields extremely low per-stream payments for everyone involved, especially artists signed to major labels. However, the majors have so many artists under their wing that they will rack up most of the streams on the services, making it profitable for them. This model makes you, an emerging artist, compete in the same pond against the biggest acts in the world for the same pennies. These big artists will also make a good amount of income through streaming due to the sheer volume of listeners they have.

Alternative Proposals

This pro-rata model seems to be the standard for streaming services, although SoundCloud and Deezer are testing a solution. They call it UCPS, or User Centric Payment System. How this works is that instead of pooling the money from all subscriptions, they divide the users streaming record over their actual subscription amount. In essence, if you pay $10, Deezer will keep $2.5 for themselves, and pay out the other $7.5 proportionally to the music you streamed. That means that in theory, if you only listened to a single artist, theyd get the whole $7.5 in their pocket. This sounds fairer, and arguably it is, but the trials that have run show that the difference isnt much when considering the average users listening habits.

For more information on the impact of UCPS on actual streams, make sure to check out the study made by Centre Nacional de Musique.

So, now what?

In conclusion, the problem for emerging artists with streaming is that they are small fish in the largest pond there could possibly be. Because of this, artists need to become flexible and look for alternate strategies to monetize and profit from their careers, because it doesnt look like streaming income is going to significantly rise any time soon; there is actually no more money to be paid since most services arent even profitable yet. However, I do call on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, and all other DSPs to be transparent on how exactly their payments are made. Currently, Spotify only has a vague article explaining the basics, but artists deserve to know the exact figures to make sure we keep them accountable!

For more information on how to monetize your music career, make sure you check out last weeks post on how to do just that.

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QUICK HITS: Believe + Pay Two  Create Music + Nirvana Digital  FUGA + Beggars Group

Believe has acquired a 25% stake in French indie label Play Two, a subsidiary of the TF1 group. The partnership will reinforce Believes presence in France and accelerate the digital growth of Play Two.

Play Two artists such as Gims, Vitaa, Hatik, Anne Sila, Vincent Niclo, Tayc, Camelia Jordana, Squeezie, Julien Clerc and Gaetan Roussel will diversify Believes roster in France around a wider variety of musical genres.

MBW pegs the investment at about $14M.

 Create Music Group, the US-based privately held music and media company, announced today that they will expand their global footprint with the acquisition of Nirvana Digital, a Mumbai-based company that is one of the largest YouTube Enterprise partners in India.

The two companies now exceed 25 billion streams per month, making Create one of the worlds largest media companies by viewership.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, this is the first of a planned $50 million investment Create is making in India and the broader region in Asia over the next several years.

 FUGA, the full-service B2B music distributor owned by Downtown Music Holdings, today announced a global delivery platform services deal with Beggars Group, the legendary independent label group home to 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade Records, XL Recordings, and Young.

The partnership sees extensive technical integration between Beggars new technology platform and FUGAs proprietary digital supply chain technology, to service all of Beggars global DSP partners with the groups entire catalog and new releases across all five labels.

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The Police Advisory Board is considering to better meet its mission, including how to do community outreach.

Police Advisory Board Looks to Amend Ordinance to Support its Mission

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The Police Advisory and Review Board is considering amending its governing ordinance to improve how it functions.

Three members have agreed to hold a "sub meeting" to begin this discussion: Judge Alfred Barbalunga, Erin Sullivan, and Michael Feldberg.



For some time now, the board has mulled the possibility of amending its ordinance for clarification and empowerment.



In July, members were advised to think about its language to make changes that support its mission. The panel intended to meet in September but the meeting was canceled.



Between the two meetings, Chairwoman Ellen Maxon met with Mayor Linda Tyer and City Solicitor Stephen Pagnotta so they could review and make suggestions on the PARB ordinance.



The current duties and powers of the board include studying policies, practices, and procedures to provide a forum for the public to discuss them, receiving complaints from the public and relaying them to the chief of police, and reviewing final investigative reports regarding citizens' complaints to make policy recommendations.



The review board feels a degree of frustration with the legal constraints that prohibit it from more direct involvement in the oversight of the Police Department. There was a debate at the time the board was modified to its current form to give it a more robust role in investigating and reviewing police operations.



Pagnotta's recommendation applies to PARB's first listed duty in the ordinance, which reads: "To study police-related policies, practices, and procedures and to provide a forum in which citizens may address police matters."



He found it appropriate to add "Where appropriate, the board may advise on purpose and or recommend positions, procedures, regulation, rules, statements, and policies of the Pittsfield Police Department," to the end of the sentence.



The board did not vote on the amendment at this meeting because of the sub-meeting that is planned. There is not a date set for it but Maxon said it will occur before PARB's next regularly scheduled meeting so it can be on the agenda.
First Fridays Artswalk to Feature New Art Shows

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  There will be brand new indoor art shows during the First Fridays Artswalk on Friday, Nov. 5, from 5 to 8 pm.

Download the Downtown Pittsfield app in the App Store or on Google Play to follow a virtual walking tour of art, including all of Pittsfield's Paintboxes, on your cell phone.

Hotel on North, 297 North Street, will feature "WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE" by Scott Taylor for the November Artswalk. "WHEN WORLDS" COLLIDE is a sampling of the work Taylor created during the pandemic.

According to a press release, many of the paintings speak of containment, some visually looking outward, some inward. Some return to a simpler time that we once knew hoping to find comfort in our own existence.

There will be a reception with the artist on Friday, Nov. 5, 5 to 8 pm, as part of First Fridays Artswalk.

The Brothership Building Window at 141 North Street, curated by IS183 Art School of the Berkshires, will feature "Little Kids, Big Issues" by Stephanie VanBramer, Nov. 5-28.

According to a press release, regularly taking inspiration from personal experiences, conversations, thoughts about everyday life, and the lessons she has learned along the way, VanBramer creates artwork that sparks reality checks and speaks out, making it known that it has something to say. She creates little characters with big personalities and even bigger ideas.

Artists in the Guild of Berkshire Artists will show their work in a show entitled "Plein Air in the Berkshires" during the month of November at TKG Real Estate, 137 North St. There will be a reception as part of First Fridays Artswalk on Friday, Nov. 5, from 5 to 8 pm. The work will be up during the month of November and can be viewed when TKG is open. Featured artists are Sally Lebwohl, pastels; Jorie Latham, watercolors and mixed media; and Debbie Schneer, photography.

MCLA Pittsfield at 66 Allen Street will feature an art show of faces by Dana Schildkraut from Nov. 5-30. Schildkraut is an award-winning artist and educator who resides in Southern Vermont, working in mixed media: paper mache, watercolor paint, and polymer clay.

There will be an opening reception as part of First Fridays Artswalk from 5 to 6:30 pm on Nov. 5. After the opening, Schildkraut's work can be viewed by appointment Monday through Friday, 9 am to 4 pm. To make an appointment, please call 413-662-5576 or 413-662-5422.

The Berkshire Art Association will present "DISTILLATIONS," An Art Show, at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, 28 Renne Avenue, through Nov. 28.

"DISTILLATIONS" features work by artists Peg Dotchin, Jesse Tobin McCauley, and Ilene Spiewak.

According to a press release: artists who have met the chaos, confusion and concerns of this moment in their artistic processes with a great passion for art and design. The gallery will be open on Friday, November 5, 5 to 8 pm, during First Fridays Artswalk. Additional gallery hours are Wednesday through Friday, 11 am to 3 pm, or by appointment.

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Pittsfield, 175 Wendell Avenue, will present a show by mother-daughter team, Kerry and Kamille Hylton, for the month of November. Kerry and Kamille enjoy creating artwork targeting all age groups. Works on display will be acrylic paint on canvas. There will be a reception with the artists on Friday, Nov. 5, 5 to 8 pm, as part of First Fridays Artswalk.

The November Artswalk will also highlight art celebrating Cultural Appreciation Week 2021 in the windows of Berkshire Juvenile Court, 190 North Street. The virtual tour will guide you to murals downtown including: "The Sun Will Rise" by Jesse Tobin McCauley, Jay Tobin and Stephanie Quetti at 443 North Street and "Gaia" on Melville Street by Mike Carty. Also highlighted will be all of Artscape's Pittsfield Paintboxes.

All art exhibits are on display in participating venues throughout the month. For more information on First Fridays Artswalk and to view a listing and map of all participating artists and locations, visit www.FirstFridaysArtswalk.com

First Fridays Artswalk is supported in part by a grant from the Pittsfield Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. The Downtown Pittsfield app is made possible by a grant from the Feigenbaum Foundation.
Name: Brian Grayek

Organisation: Cosant Cyber Security

Job title: vCISO & Member of Leadership Team

Date started current role: March 2021

Location: Tempe, Arizona

Brian Grayek builds and leads security teams focusing on Applications Security, Threat Management, Vulnerability Management, and Security Operations Center for some of the largest enterprises on the globe, including Motorola, Apollo Group, Computer Associates, and Verizon. Grayek possess strong capabilities in managing Security Architecture and Engineering, Security Operations, Cyber Security Incident Response (CIRT/SIRT), SIEM, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Risk Assessments, Governance (SSAE18/SOC1, PCI), Vulnerability Management, NAC, DLP, DRP, BCP, MMC, penetration testing, web traffic monitoring, security investigations, forensics, and physical security. Most recently for a large security consulting company, Grayek created a Security Operations Center from the ground up including recruiting and building the team, initiating operations, policy, and procedure development, and established all functions to support major clients all over the United States.

What was your first job? Painting beehives for a beekeeper at 13 years old.

How did you get involved in cybersecurity? While in College, I found out that some students were able to get in to view their student records. I reported it to the IT Professor, who told me I was mistaken. Then I reported it to the Dean and proved to her it was true. She rewarded me by putting me in charge of the schools RACF/ACF2 security.

What was your education? Do you hold any certifications? What are they? I started off getting an Associates Degree in Computers and Engineering, then received what equates to a Masters Degree in high tech from Motorola. During that time, I was also going to night school to get my Bachelors Degree in Business. I have received a LOT of certifications over the years, but the ones most important now are CISSP, CCSK (Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge), ITIL, and Im also a TUF member of the FBI Infragard.

Explain your career path. Did you take any detours? If so, discuss. I started and owned an Upholstery and Automotive custom interior company when I was 15. By the time I was 18 and getting ready to go to college, I had to make the choice between continuing the Upholstery/Car work which was thriving (making a bundle of money at the time) or go to college to pursue my dream of working with computers. To many peoples shock and dismay, I sold the company and went to college.

Was there anyone who has inspired or mentored you in your career? The most important mentor in my life was one of the few, female Executives at Motorola at the time, her name was Randine Hoefer. I was lucky enough to learn so much from her in almost 10 years that I tell people that Motorola (and she) basically made me what I am today. I remember an article years ago about how many Motorolans have later in life led other major companies and its easy to see why. Motorola did such an awesome job of educating us in ways that few other companies have ever or will ever do. I could write a book on how much they did and why its such a good investment in the people.

What do you feel is the most important aspect of your job? I LOVE contributing to National Security or helping a great cause. I was fortunate enough to know some things that I was invited to teach to the FBI at Quantico in 2005. While there, they allowed me to take a course in Personality Profiling which Ive then used to help almost every team Ive managed to learn about themselves. At Computer Associates, we were lucky enough to work with John Walsh, whos famous for the TV series, Americas Most Wanted. John was working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We were able to work with John on building a program to help keep children safe online.

What metrics or KPIs do you use to measure security effectiveness? Every company Ive worked weve maintained security metrics and while theyre important to show to Executive Management, so they know youre constantly improving, the one most important metric is breaches. If you and the security department are keeping your company safe from any breaches, then youre doing a good job.

Next, my focus has always been on looking at a Risk Assessment rather than focusing on security metrics. The analogy Ive used is like protecting your house. Why look at how many people come to the door or how good your door locks are if you keep leaving the garage door open at night? I work with too many companies that are focused too heavily on patch management that they have NO time for doing anything else. While patch management is extremely important, its not the only thing to worry about and while its one of the most prevalent methods of intrusions, its not the only one.

Is the security skills shortage affecting your organisation? What roles or skills are you finding the most difficult to fill? Yes, there is a severe shortage of skilled security professionals, and I dont see it getting better for quite some time. We need a consolidated effort at the highest levels of government, industry, and education if were going to impact this in our lifetime.

Cybersecurity is constantly changing  how do you keep learning? READ, READ, READ!!! I must be on 10-12 security threads, I receive and read 3-4 security/industry magazines, and Im constantly looking at new technology, attending security conferences, and talking with industry leaders about whats on their mind.

What conferences are on your must-attend list? Its been a while since weve had any physical conferences, due to COVID, but Ive been finding more and more online, Web casts that have kept my interest going. The conferences I personally like are the Security Industry Conferences and the FutureCon Security Conferences.

What is the best current trend in cybersecurity? The worst? Best trend in cybersecurity is GRC; Governance, Risk, and Compliance. Im starting to believe that more can be achieved through GRC then through any other single methodology.

The Worst trend is everyone claiming that their AI is the industrys best and will catch it all. No one seems to have yet found the silver bullet and while there are some good AIs out there, they still need to have other layers of a good, security defence.

What's the best career advice you ever received? Randine, my mentor, told me that I was one of the smartest Engineers that shed ever known, because I could talk to people and explain things like most Engineers couldnt. She told me to go back to school and get my business degree, which I did.

What advice would you give to aspiring security leaders? Easy, find someone to mentor. You will be contributing to our industry in ways you cant imagine. I have people contacting me saying that they saw me give a presentation 20+ years ago that was the Ah Ha moment that changed their career path to Security. You can be that Ah Ha moment creator.

What has been your greatest career achievement? I was asked to present with the FBI and industry leaders at the presentation of the White House National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. I got my picture taken with the Presenters and Staff and its one of my most, prized photos.

Looking back with 20:20 hindsight, what would you have done differently? Nothing. 2020 was a year of learning for me and I spent the year learning like Id never done before. While most people were locking themselves away to protect themselves from COVID, I used all my spare time to read and learn more about things that have always interested me.
Citing stress amongst staff and students, Soap Lake School District calls off classes for entirety of Thanksgiving week
DOH: Supply of COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 5-11 will be limited for first couple weeks
A Texas real estate agent who bragged she wasnt going to jail for storming the U.S. Capitol because she is white, has blond hair and good job has been sentenced to two months behind bars
Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary said: This evidence demonstrates that much more needs to be done to tackle the growing scourge of harassment and attacks against journalists. The Action plan endorsed this year by the governments National Committee for the Safety of Journalists is a vital part of that work. We need a cultural change to stop this abuse and unacceptable behaviour from being normalised  this is not, and must not be allowed to become, part of a journalists job. No worker should have to contend with threats of violence and intimidation. We want to see a zero-tolerant approach, with greater reporting, better policing and robust sentencing, to protect journalists and journalism.

Last summer, the Home Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport held a Call for Evidence on Journalist Safety to understand the nature and volume of threats, abuse and violence that they face in the course of their work and their attitudes towards the response provided by employers, social media platforms, and the police and judiciary.

The results have been published and the main findings are:

More than a third of women respondents indicated that they did not feel safe operating as a journalist in the UK.

Just over 4 in 5 journalists experienced threats, abuse or violence as a result of their work. These incidents included abuse, intimidation, threats of violence, violence, death threats, bullying, sexism, racism and homophobia.

The majority of respondents did not report all incidents to platforms, police and employers, due in part to poor confidence they would be taken seriously.

The threats and abuse had an impact on journalists and their behaviour both professionally and personally. This included influence on their journalistic output.

Social media in particular was identified as making journalists more accessible and at risk, leading to precautions such as changing privacy settings to avoid anonymous online abuse.

Journalists reported low confidence in the police and platforms dealing with incidents, with employers seen more ambivalently.

A growing number of protesters and activists now target media and film crews with intimidation and threats of violence.

One in five said they did not report incidents to their employer because they saw receiving threats, abuse or violence as part of their job, and one in 10 because they felt it could harm their career prospects. However, one in six did report all incidents to their employer.

Half of female respondents had also experienced sexism during the course of their work. A third of respondents from ethnic minority backgrounds reported experiencing racism.

The report quoted journalists saying:

Ive stopped working on particular stories as a result of intimidation - not scared off but just dont want to suffer the aggravation so moved on to something else.

And:

I feel less safe in undertaking the work that I do when covering certain demonstrations. It makes me less inclined to cover such events, which, of course, is the intention of those perpetrating the violence and issuing threats.

The report said those surveyed said the police contributed towards threats or abuse towards journalists: This included police physically restricting access to spaces, arresting journalists, and holding negative conceptions about the role of journalists which affect how they treat them.

Respondents called for greater engagement with the police to gain a better understanding of the journalistic profession and journalists role in society.

Journalists also believed that ministers and other politicians contributed to this negative attitude towards journalists.

The report concluded that the evidence confirms that further research is required to build a more robust picture of the issues covered in this Call for Evidence, including analysis of experiences across demographic and other characteristics, and to track change over time.

The Call for Evidence received 360 responses from journalists between 2 June and 14 July 2021 and a further 130 responses later.
Global leader in cybersecurity Trend Micro Philippines is once again bringing together experts from all over the world for DECODE 2021: DEC1DE. DEC0DE from November 10 to 12, 2021.

The annual cybersecurity conference brings leaders and experts from various organizations to engage members of the industry and discuss trends, new technologies, and recent and anticipated threats across the IT landscape. Itself a home of security experts who are #EngineeredToDoGood for Filipinos, Trend Micro has been holding DECODE for five years now, allowing opportunities not only for networking but also for empowering and inspiring cybersecurity professionals to continuously seek growth and new knowledge to enhance the cybersecurity industry as a whole.

Experts from the PH and around the world to share insights and best practices in cybersecurity amidst increased digital acceleration among businesses and organizations

Now in its fifth year, DECODE 2021s lineup will feature six keynote speakers across 32 virtual sessions to cater to some 2,000 participants. With the theme DECODE 2021: DEC1DE. DEC0DE, this years conference will highlight time as a factor in effective decision-making with regard to threat prevention and resolution. It will also equip professionals with the knowledge needed to isolate and assess risks from the get-go.

This years keynote speakers include Alexandru Caciuloiu, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) cybercrime project coordinator from, to talk about how cybercrime is evolving and growing in Southeast Asia, and Shane Cross, Cybercrime Directorate of INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) INTERPOLs head of the Cybercrime Intelligence Unit, who will be discussing cybercrime through the lens of law enforcement.

Other speakers include Jay Yaneza, Trend Micros director of Managed XDR, Mel T. Migrino, Meralcos VP and group chief information security officer (CISO), Christina Lekati, Cyber Risk GmbHs social engineering security specialist, Lauren Seawright, FBI Cyber Division Intelligence Analyst, and David Sancho, Trend Micros senior threat researcher.

Trend Micro is also bringing back its lineup of tracks, titled The Digital Frontier, No More Secrets, Business Unusual, and Securing the Security Landscape. The four tracks cover various topics and will also feature multiple guest speakers. Participants can opt to attend any of the sessions during their designated time slots during the three-day event.

The Digital Frontier track is focused on the risks and threats of the latest technological advancements in cybersecurity such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Under the No More Secrets track, speakers will look into trends and challenges related to data privacy, security, and compliance.

For those interested in cybercrime and forensic techniques across the computing environment, the tracks Business Unusual and Securing the Security Landscape will cater to participants curiosity and introduce the most recent studies in the field and notable cybercrime investigations, respectively.

The third day of this years conference will feature a special itinerary for women and students to highlight women empowerment in the tech industry. The itinerary is made possible through Trend Micros Get IT Girl! program, as well as discussions on Careers in Cybersecurity, and Cybersecurity Fundamentals, which are tailored for students and other individuals looking to shift into the cybersecurity industry.

Following last years transition into a virtual conference, DECODE 2021 will feature virtual lounges for participants to network and meet fellow experts between sessions to simulate the on-site networking from previous DECODE conferences. The sessions will also remain accessible to participants online for up to one year after the conference. Participants will only need to input their registration details to access material from the conference for free.

For the past five years, Trend Micro has been bringing together IT professionals from all over the globe through DECODE, an independent pursuit that aims to contribute and improve the IT and cybersecurity industry without looking to earn any profit. The free conference is an opportunity for experts to broaden their horizons and engage with one another as active members of the industry.

DECODE 2021: DEC1DE. DEC0DE will be held this November 10 to 12, 2021 through 6Connex. Register for free and get more information on DECODE via decodeph.com.
Entrepreneurship is an inherently risky undertaking. Along with the financial, competitive, and reputational risks that all businesses face, the threat of lawsuits also looms large. The per capita lawsuit rate in the U.S. is four times higher than it is in Canada and more than three times higher than Australia and Japan, according to a Harvard University study.

The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that between one-third and one-half of all small businesses are likely to face a lawsuit in any given year. And since most small business owners are personally invested in their companies, litigation can cause not just financial loss, but also substantial emotional hardship.

The first line of defense for small businesses is a risk assessment plan. Start by identifying situations that pose the greatest threat to your business and the scope of the damage they could cause. For example, a retail operation might face slip-and-fall claims. Professionals, like accountants and consultants, might encounter claims of inadequate work or negligent performance of their services.

The next logical step is to obtain business insurance to protect against those threats. However, despite todays highly litigious environment, it is estimated that more than 40 percent of small businesses have never had any type of business insurance, and many more are underinsured.

A mistake to avoid

Most small business owners are constantly juggling multiple responsibilities, so they might not give priority to getting the right insurance. That could prove to be a costly mistake, warns Kevin Kerridge, CEO of Hiscox USA, a leader in small business insurance with more than 600,000 policyholders.

What too many small business owners dont realize is that you dont have to do something wrong in order to be sued, he says. A large percentage of the claims we handle are lawsuits where we are defending our clients where they are not at fault. But for many small businesses without insurance, the cost of defending themselves against such lawsuits could be calamitous.

Increasingly, customers and other stakeholders now require small businesses to have insurance as a prerequisite of doing work for them, often with a minimum of $1 million in coverage. Many also want to be named as an additional insured on the businesss certificate of insurance, which provides them an added level of protection.

Building the right insurance plan

For most small businesses, there are three types of basic coverage that would amount to all-round protection:

General liability covers injury done to a third party or damage to their property. A slip-and-fall injury on a business premises or a window broken by a pebble kicked up by a landscapers lawn mower are examples of general liability claims. Professional liability, also known as errors and omissions (E&O), covers mistakes made in the course of providing professional services that cause financial or other harm to a client. An accountants miscalculation on a tax return that results in a client incurring an IRS penalty or an error made by a real estate agent that delays or derails a closing are examples of E&O claims. Property insurance protects against damage to buildings and equipment, such as computers, printers, and office furniture, that are owned by the business.

Often, general liability and property coverage are combined and offered as a Business Owners Policy (BOP). Some businesses may also benefit from more specific protection that is tailored to their particular industries, such as copyright infringement coverage for marketing consultants. Cyber security insurance, which protects against computer-related crimes and losses, such as malware and phishing, is highly recommended for businesses that accept digital forms of payment, rely on the use of computers and mobile devices, retain confidential customer information, or store medical or financial data.

Digital makes insurance shopping easy

Hiscox has been a pioneer in making insurance more accessible to small businesses through digital channels in the U.S., and the trend has made it easier for business owners to research their insurance needs, compare quotes, and purchase protection. Kerridge notes, however, that the focus on digital doesnt negate or lessen the need for people as part of the experience, but merely enhances it.

More than 80 percent of our business is done completely digitally, but about 15 to 20 percent of our policyholders want to ask some questions after they do their research and get their quotes, he says. Its important that small business owners have access to our friendly licensed agents when they need that additional support and guidance.

Kerridge adds that it is important for small business owners to do their due diligence when shopping for business insurance online. Start with the basics, like checking the insurers AM Best rating. Find out whether it is really focused on small businesses, what kind of claims handling reputation it has, and how good its digital experience is, he says. A good business will include customer reviews on its website, warts and all, for everyone to see.
Brad Baxter is the founder and CEO of Whisker (formerly AutoPets), an automatic litter box maker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. His father, Jim Baxter, is a serial entrepreneur and one of Whisker's first investors. The company has sold more than 700,000 litter boxes and was ranked No.1,576 on the Inc. 5000. --As told to Zack Miller

As a kid, I saw my dad struggle as an entrepreneur--and I didn't realize that I was on that same path until one day, I was down in the basement, cleaning a mess my cats had made because their litter box wasn't clean enough, and I started thinking, how can I make this easier for myself and better for the cats?

There was a self-cleaning litter box already on the market, but it really didn't work. I'd been thinking about a concept that would work with gravity, using a sifting rotational method, and started making some sketches.

As is often the case, I lacked capital; I didn't have enough cash to invest in the tools needed to make a prototype. My dad, though, was willing to take a bet on my idea and refinanced his home to do so.

We launched Whisker (formerly AutoPets) in 1999, and I sold on Amazon for quite some time, because that's what everybody seemed to do. But I grew to believe that the Amazon sales were seriously cannibalizing our direct sales. Still, I was afraid to cut them off. My dad told me not to delay hard decisions. Eventually, they're going to catch up to you, and they're going to take you down. So we pulled the plug on Amazon--and our sales remained steady. Instead, we saw an improvement in our margins--and we simplified our order flow by selling directly to customers.

Since then, we've grown more than 1,000 percent, and have launched an automated feeder, accessory items--we're even expanding into dogs.
The global supply chain is broken. That broken supply chain is costing companies revenue as we can see from the recent financial reports of Apple and Amazon which expect slower sales growth due to their inability to satisfy the demand for their products and services.

This is causing companies to rebuild their supply chains in different ways depending on whether they expect the current problems to persist or to be a temporary inconvenience. Ellen Kullman, chief executive of Carbon, a 3-D printing company, and the former CEO of DuPont, told the Wall Street Journal, Carbon's customers in automotive, medical and consumer durable goods, industries used to depend on manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia.

However, the supply chain collapse is motivating companies to change. How so? Kullman's customers are now looking to how they can "get a presence in the Americas because they're losing business because they're kind of stuck with a very long, very efficient--but very inflexible--supply chain."

This raises urgent questions for business leaders:

Has our broken supply chain hindered our ability to make and deliver to customers what they need on time?

If so, which supply chain links are broken and can they be repaired soon?

If not, what options do we have to rebuild or modify our supply chain?

How will these options alter our costs and delivery times?

How much will it cost and how long will it take to implement the best option?

Here are four things business leaders should do to fix their broken supply chains.

1. Measure the broken supply chain's damage to your business.

You can't manage what you can't measure. Before rethinking your supply chain, make sure you know how well (or poorly) it it performing. For that you need objective data on whether your company is suffering due to

Declines in on-time deliveries of items ordered by customers

Lost revenue due to out-of-stock items

Lost revenue due to unclear or extended delivery times

Deterioration in your company's net promoter scores and customer retention rates

2. Find the causes of your supply chain's collapse.

If your company is experiencing any or all of these problems, you should commission a team to investigate the primary causes of the collapse of your supply chain.

That's what Massimo Renon, CEO of the Italian clothing company, Benetton did in September, according to the Journal. When Renon tried to order a coat through the company's website, he learned it was out of stock. So he asked his team to find out why.

The answer was an out-of-control supply chain. As he told the Journal, "They told me, very openly, raw materials are late, logistic transportation is a mess, production cost is increasing dramatically, control of the supply chain is impossible."

While Renon was no doubt unhappy with the answer, the detailed analysis of the problem was very helpful in helping him to consider options to solve the supply chain problem Benetton faced.

3. Forecast how long it will take to repair the broken links.

Once you know which links in your supply chain are broken, you ought to forecast whether the links will be repaired within, say, three to six months.

In deciding whether to keep struggling with your current supply chain or build a new one, you should weigh the costs of waiting -- most notably the lost revenue and deteriorating customer goodwill -- against the benefits -- net of the upfront investment -- of building a new supply chain over which you have more control.

4. If you can't wait, rebuild your supply chain.

Some companies have decided that they don't want to wait any longer to fix their supply chain problem. They reason that the benefits of increased control outweigh the costs of possibly increasing the cost to make their products or provide their services.

That's because they are realizing that low labor costs and lean inventories are of no value if the workers are quarantined at home or the goods are stuck on a container ship off the coast of California waiting to be unloaded and trucked to your warehouse.

Benetton, for example, decided to step away from that outsourcing to Asia strategy. To that end, it will boost "manufacturing in Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt, away from less expensive but more distant locales such as Thailand," The result will be lower transportation costs and higher merchandise quality.

Delta Air Lines hired its own people to replace contractors who formerly cleaned planes and pushed passengers on wheelchairs. Delta paid more to hire thousands of people because CEO Ed Bastian thinks that many workers have left the labor market for good. As he told the Journal, "I've in-sourced it, and I'm not looking back."
Weekly testing, masks, or mandatory vaccinations, and who pays for the testing? The employees.

Those are the critical parts of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) long-awaited Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). Since the Whitehouse announced a vaccine mandate for employers in September, businesses with 100 or more employees have been sitting on the edge. Here's what we know.

The details

The ETS affects employers with 100 or more employees that are not federal contractors or health care facilities. Both of these are subject to different regulations. However, employees who work from home and have no contact with other employees or customers can be exempted from the requirements.

Employers have two options:

Mandatory vaccinations with exemptions for disabilities and sincere religious beliefs

Weekly testing and face coverings for unvaccinated employees. (If your unvaccinated employees work outside, they do not have to mask)

All covered employers must:

Create and implement a Covid safety plan.

Collect proof of vaccination for employees. You cannot just ask employees--you need to see their official vaccination record or other evidence.

You cannot just ask employees--you need to see their official vaccination record or other evidence. Provide paid time off for vaccinations and side effects. You need to provide four hours of paid time off for each employee to be vaccinated. You also need to provide a reasonable amount of time off if someone has a bad reaction.

You need to provide four hours of paid time off for each employee to be vaccinated. You also need to provide a reasonable amount of time off if someone has a bad reaction. Continue with quarantine policies as set forth by the CDC. Anyone who tests positive must quarantine, even if they are fully vaccinated.

as set forth by the CDC. Anyone who tests positive must quarantine, even if they are fully vaccinated. Report any hospitalizations or deaths to OSHA.

Show OSHA your records, if asked.

For companies that opt for mandatory testing, OSHA says that you can require employees to pay for their own tests--but don't forget your state laws. Employment attorney and HR consultant Kate Bischoff cautions that "California, Illinois, and others will still be required to cover costs of testing." Depending on the collective bargaining agreement, unionized workplaces may also be on the hook for the testing costs.

The ETS will go into effect on December 5, 2021, with the final vaccinations and testing in place by January 4, 2022.

How businesses will respond

First, there will likely be multiple lawsuits. Employment attorney and Wickens Herzer Panza partner Jon Hyman says he doen't believe it will ever go into effect: "I remain skeptical that any employer will ever have to comply with the ETS, as lawsuits seeking to block the rule will be filed, and despite OSHA's best efforts to justify this emergency standard, I still fail to see the 'grave workplace danger' when so many businesses are left out of its coverage."

However, Hyman cautions that businesses should prepare. Employment attorney and Shipman & Goodwin partner Dan Schwartz agrees and says companies should prepare quickly: "Employers will need to survey all employees immediately on their vaccination status, which will be the first big impact of the rule. But the rule will also now provide lots of employers with needed cover to either mandate it completely or offer testing. Employers may decide to go the test route particularly because employees will bear the cost of it."

If you wait until the lawsuits are finalized or until OSHA starts enforcing the ETS, you won't be prepared and could be subject to large fines.
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An inmate housed in the Barnala jail in Punjab has alleged that the prison authorities of torturing him and inscribing attwadi (terrorist) on his back with a heated iron rod.

The inmate, identified as Karamjit Singh made the allegations on Wednesday in front of the judge when he was produced at the Mansa district court.

ANI

Singh who has nearly a dozen criminal cases against him already been convicted to life imprisonment and is facing trial in many others.

The 28-year-old made the allegations against the jail authorities when he was predicted in the court in connection with a drugs case.

"Tortured"

Singh alleged that he was tortured by the jail superintendent a few days ago for raising his voice against the poor quality of food and the ill-treatment of prisoners.

He also showed the inscription on his back to the judge.

BCCL

Following this, Mansa chief judicial magistrate (CJM) Atul Kamboj has written to his Barnala counterpart to get the matter investigated and to get the inmates medical examination done.

A jail inmate in Barnala, Karamjit Singh beaten brutally by Jail Superintendent. The word Attwadi meaning TERRORIST engraved on his back!

This is disgusting and a serious violation of human rights. We demand strict possible action against officials involved @CHARANJITCHANNI Ji https://t.co/mYKcWyPWMh pic.twitter.com/icmiIiBSit  Manjinder Singh Sirsa (@mssirsa) November 3, 2021

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa has also ordered a probe into the claim.

Barnala jail superintendent Balbir Singh however denied the allegations and claimed that the accused was a habitual offender.

BCCL

He added that Singh was trying to form a gang inside the jail and recently during a raid in his cell, mobile phones were recovered by the authorities, following which he started making false allegations.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.
Russian royal jewels smuggled out of the country during the 1917 revolution, alongside rare coloured diamonds, are up for auction next week in Geneva, reported Reuters.

An orange-pink diamond weighing 25.62 carats, estimated at 3.6 million to 5.38 million Swiss francs ($3.9 million to $5.9 million), set in a ring, is the main attraction at auction house Sothebys semi-annual jewellery sale in the Swiss city on Nov. 10.

Reuters

A beautiful crystal, its a fantastic colour with a little bit of orange but not too much, so its a very subtle colour," Olivier Wagner, head of sale and jewellery expert at Sothebys Geneva, told Reuters.

The market is currently very dynamic and after the pandemic people are very keen to buy jewellery today and to buy something tangible they can enjoy," he added.

Other than this, a large oval sapphire and diamond brooch and matching earclips from the jewellery box of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, the aunt of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, is also on offer.

They belonged to the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia who was the queen of social life in St. Petersburg. She was the wife of the Grand Duke Vladimir, so the son of the tsar (Alexander II), and she had a fantastic collection of jewels," Wagner said.

Reuters

The royal set was kept safe by her friend, the British diplomat Albert Henry Stopford, who took them to London for safekeeping along with other jewels, is estimated at 280,000-480,000 francs, the auction house said.

Reuters

Pavlovna escaped from revolutionary Russia and died in France in 1920. Her brooch and earrings are being sold by a European princely family who bought them at auction in 2009, the auction house revealed.
India is a country of festivals, many types of festivals keep coming here throughout the year but Diwali (Deepawali) is one of the biggest ones. This auspicious Hindu festival lasts for five days from the day of Dhanteras and continues till Bhai Dooj and is celebrated by different communities with lots of great joy globally which falls on the new moon of Kartik month. Children and elders wait for this festival throughout the year. The preparations for celebrating this festival start many days in advance.

This year, Diwali falls on Thursday, November 4, 2021. On this day Lord Ram, Mother Sita, and his brother Lakshman returned to their home in Ayodhya after completing fourteen years of exile. In the joy of returning home after so many years, all the residents of Ayodhya welcomed him by lighting a lamp. Since then, Diwali, the festival of lights, started being celebrated. Diwali symbolises positive and happy spirits. Before the arrival of Diwali, people started cleaning their homes, buying new clothes, jewellery and making Rangoli, and removing the darkness by lighting lamps at different places. Goddess Lakshmi, Maa Saraswati, and Lord Ganesha are worshipped on this day and people meet each other and feed each other sweets.

Here are Diwali 2021 best wishes, messages, quotes, images and songs to send out to them on Facebook, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms:

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes:

1. May Maa Lakshmi shower you with her choicest blessings, and may you get rid of all your sorrows and agony this Diwali.

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

2. May the beauty of the Deepavali season fill your home with happiness, and may the coming year provide you with all that brings you joy. Happy Diwali!



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

3. May the lights of Deepavali illuminate your life, and may you be blessed with Goddess Lakshmi's choicest blessings.



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

4. May Maa Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth shower you with the riches. Here's wishing you and your family ahead of Diwali 2021!



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

5. On Diwali, may you get tons of blessings from Goddess Lakshmi. Happy Diwali!



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

6. This Diwali, may Goddess Lakshmi remove all the negativities from your life. May you be showered with happiness, good health, wealth and good luck. A very happy Diwali to you and your family.

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

7. Wish you and your family a sparkling and delightful Diwali!



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

8. May the auspicious day of Deepavali bring you all the goodness in the world. May you be showered with good health, wealth, a happy and prosperous life.



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

9. Shine like sparkles, glow like candles and burn all the negativity like crackers. Wish you a happy and cheerful Diwali!



Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

10. May the beauty of the Deepavali season. Fill your home with Happiness, and may the coming year provide you with all that bring you joy! Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

11. Shoot a rocket of prosperity, Fire a flowerpot of happiness, Wish you and your family a sparkling Diwali!

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

12. Happiness is in the air because it is the ambiance of Diwali, which is everywhere. Shower love, care, and joy on everyone you meet. Rejoice on this blessed occasion and spread sparkles of peace and goodwill. Have a Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

13. On Diwali, may you get tons of blessings from Goddess Lakshmi. Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali 2021 wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

Happy Diwali 2021 Whatsapp messages:

1. This Diwali I pray for good health for our family, our friends and the blessings of God lifetime. Happy Diwali!

2. Let's celebrate the festival in the true sense by spreading joy and light up the world of others. Have a happy, safe, and blessed Diwali!

3. As sweet as mithai, as beautiful as lights and flowers, may your Diwali be as lit as you. Wish you a very happy Diwali 2021!

Happy Diwali 2021 Whatsapp Images and wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

4. May the good always triumph over the evil. This Diwali, celebrate all the goodness that exists in this world. Happy Diwali



5. May these fireworks burn away all our troubles, problems and sorrows, and may these light up our life with happiness, joy, and peace this wonderful Diwali.

6. A festival full of sweetness, a mouth full of sweets, a sky full of fireworks, a house full of diyas and a heart full of enjoyment. Have a safe and happy Diwali this year!

Happy Diwali 2021 Whatsapp Images and wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

7. Wishing you a very Happy Diwali to you and your family. May this auspicious occasion mark an end to all the negativities and threats around you. Happy Diwali!



8. May the beauty of Deepavali season fill your home with happiness, and may the coming year provide you with all that brings you joy!

Happy Diwali 2021 Whatsapp Images and wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

9. Just like the colours of rangoli, hope this Diwali brings new smiles, undiscovered avenues, and different perspectives and unbound happiness. Have a wonderful Diwali and a great New Year!



10. This Deepwali I pray for good health for our family, our friends and blessings of God lifetime. Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali 2021 Whatsapp Images and wishes | Photo: Indiatimes

Happy Diwali greetings 2021

1. May this festive season fill your life with joy, peace, goodness, wealth, good health and prosperity  Happy Diwali to you.

2. May this Diwali bring with it fresh hopes, brighter days, and new dreams! Wishing you and your family a very happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali greetings 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

3. With the shining of diyas and the echoes of the chants, may the prosperity and happiness of this festival of lights fill our lives.



4. Cherish the amazing times and the timeless memories made with friends and family this Diwali. Have a lovely festive time. Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali greetings 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

5. For this special time family and friends gets together for fun. Wish laughter and fun to cheer your days, in this festive season of Diwali and always. Happy Diwali.



6. Say goodbye to worries, sorrows, and welcome light, luck, and lots of sweets. Wish you and your family a very happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali greetings 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

7. May this Diwali fill into our lives new hopes for the future and new dreams for tomorrow. With lots of love, wishing you a very Happy Diwali 2021



Happy Diwali quotes 2021

1. May the diyas light lead you onto the road of growth and prosperity. Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

2. Light a lamp of! Blast a chain of sorrow! Shoot a rocket of prosperity! Fire a flowerpot of happiness! Wish you and your family SPARKLING DIWALI



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

3. No matter how little their light is, they can still light up the whole world and bring us out of our dark agonies. May the lights of Diwali play such a role in your life.



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

4. I hope that the flaming sparks of the lamps of Diwali which burns like a shooting star, guide your way through your dreams.



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

5. "May the joy, cheer, mirth and merriment of this divine festival surround you forever. May the happiness that this season brings"



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

6. "Shine like sparkles, glow like candles and burn all the negativity like crackles. Wish you all a very lovely & cheerful Diwali"



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

7. "May Lord Ganesha take away all your sorrows and bless you with all the bounty. wishing you and your family a joyful Diwali."



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

8. "May Goddess Lakshmi top up your life with peace, serenity, felicity and bring utmost joy in your life. May you always be blessed. Wish you a jovial Diwali."



Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

9. Delightful Laddoos, Incandescent Diyas, Whole lot of Smiles and Laughter, A big stock of Masti, Lots of Mithai, Innumerable Fireworks, Wishing you Fun, Frolic and Endless Celebration. Wishing you and your family a very happy Diwali.

Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

10. Let's celebrate the festival in the true sense by spreading joy and light up the world of others. Have a happy and safe Diwali 2021.

Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

11. Happiness is in the Air, Its Diwali everywhere, Lets Show Some Love and Care, And Wish Everyone out thereHappy Diwali.

Happy Diwali quotes 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

Happy Diwali 2021 Images:

#1.

Happy Diwali Images 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

#2.

Happy Diwali Images 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

#3.

Happy Diwali Images 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

#4.

Happy Diwali Images 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

#5.

Happy Diwali Images 2021 | Photo: Indiatimes

Best Diwali celebration iconic Bollywood songs:

1 . Deep Diwali Ke Jhuthe



This amazing song from Dharmendra starrer movie Jugnu (1973) sung by Kishore Kumar and Sushma Shrestha.

2. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham

Diwali celebration isn't complete without this song from the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

3. Bole Chudiyan

This is another best Diwali celebration song from the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham sung by Amit Kumar, Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan & Kavita Krishnamurthy.
Is this the future for flying cars? Looks like it!

SkyDrive, a Tokyo-based startup's eVTOL (electric vehicle take-off and landing aircraft) flying car concept recently received a safety certificate that could mean a green signal for flying cards.

SkyDrive

According to reports, the company has received the safety certificate from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism (MLIT). The startup showcased its flying car prototype for the first time back in 2018, and the first successful piloted flight test was carried out in 2020.

SkyDrive

The flying car - Named SD-03 - has eight propellers and is capable of hitting a top speed of around 48 kmph. It has a flight time of 10 minutes but this may increase with further development. It also has a payload capacity of 30 kilos.



The SD-03 consists of an open cabin but has space only for one person who would be driving/flying the vehicle. SkyDrive also wants to have a flying taxi service in Osaka Bay area of Japan by 2025. According to the company, this could be handy for those who work in mountainous areas.

SkyDrive

Asia might also have its first Hybrid flying car developed by a startup in Chennai. Vinata Aeromobility unveiled its autonomous hybrid flying car to the world on October 5, at one of the most popular aviation exhibitions in London called Excel.

Civil Aviation Minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia had said in a statement, Delighted to have been introduced to the concept model of the soon-to-become Asias First Hybrid flying car by the young team of Vinata AeroMobility. Once this takes off, flying cars would be used for transporting people & cargo, as well as for providing medical emergency services.


C.S. Venkatakrishnan, head of global markets for the bank, will take over as chief executive. Barclays said succession planning has been in place for some time, and the Indian American executive had been identified as the preferred candidate more than a year ago. (Barclays photo)
Woodbridge, VA (22192)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 56F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with light rain developing after midnight. Low 44F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
A 20-acre estate on Tucsons east side recently sold for $4,080,000, making it the citys most expensive residential real estate sale on the multiple listing service of southern Arizona since 2007. The property on 1416 N. Smokey Springs is a 8,860 square-foot home with six bedrooms, seven ba
This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.

Many insurance organizations see compliance as a challenge to growth, a shackle that keeps them from going too far too fast. But what if, instead, your compliance mechanism was a chamber, giving your rocket-like growth a directionality and creating much-needed thrust to boot?

Although compliance may seem an unlikely organizational superpower, weve seen the ways a digital transformation of insurance compliance can support business growth.

Compliance as an innovation

Data-driven transformations of the regulatory environment are inevitable as consumer pressures and needs meet modern technological tools. From the movements around social justice, climate change, and general consumer protections to rising issues regarding digital identity protection, increased compliance with existing insurance regulations is sure to be a part of the answer insurance businesses have for such complex and numerous questions.

One of the many advantages to automating insurance compliance through smart integrations is that it frees up employee time, allowing them to focus on building out technical knowledge in the industry. By lessening their time spent on repetitive administrative tasks, they can commit their skills and knowledge to more tailored client engagements.

This also means that, through modernizing and digitizing these processes, compliance tools can give new employees  people who dont speak insurance  access to a simplified dashboard for viewing data and analytics. Instead of spending weeks training industry newcomers over highly specialized terminology and walking through how to access numerous legacy systems and individual state portals, the right compliance tools can have new employees ramped up and engaged in your core mission from Day One.

Obviously, as weve covered extensively elsewhere, an efficient license compliance management system can streamline your agent onboarding process through a number of integrations and digital automations. This not only ends the annoying cycle of endlessly re-keying information for both producers and employees; it also gets agents onboarded and selling faster.

Your companys reputation for innovation can only be enhanced by compliance automation  being easy to work with makes you a juicy find for good agents, and an excellent referral for prospects. That in turn drives producer loyalty, leading you to a pipeline that is set for growth.

Lower risk across the board

By modernising risk management, you can hit a number of strategic business goals that all align for a promising future of growth:

Proactively protecting your producers makes you attractive to work with.

Anticipating regulatory changes keeps you from slowing down your business to react to new legislations or legal interpretations.

Reputation management is expensive  ensuring compliance lessens your headline risk, or the risk that a Google search of your business name turns up unsavory associations.

An advanced analytics solution to your compliance management and administration means lessening the risk of manual errors from a single employee or small group.

Robust digital tools also allow you to quickly comply with any regulatory reporting requirements, such as appointment lists or audits without interrupting your flow of business or user experience.

Unfortunately, agencies, carriers, and MGAs often operate without a good understanding of their compliance obligations or their risks. For instance, the MGA Act outlines the duties and responsibilities of Managing General Agencies, and explicitly states that MGAs must appoint agents and take responsibility for ensuring they operate within the scope of their license.

Because many states regulators dont conduct regular audits, many in the industry believe they can fly under the radar or just dont know their responsibilities and are flying under radar. Yet, once an entity draws the attention of a regulator for even a minor complaint, the floodgates open if theyve failed to adhere to basic compliance responsibilities.

By maintaining a resilient risk-management framework, you are raising the bar and ethically doing your best for your producers and, in turn, their clients. And, critically, youre protecting the reputation and bottom line of your business, too.

Grow grow grow

Traditional licensing compliance maintenance practices often feel like deadweight  heightened compliance monitoring in older contexts equates to manpower. It means every level of new producers or agencies requires a corresponding number of compliance personnel. Frankly, in an age where its difficult to attract and retain talent in the insurance industry, this pyramid-shaped growth is an impossible shape to maintain.

Streamlining existing compliance processes is a growth proposition partly because it gives your organization scalability without adding to the stress of your systems  and, more importantly, the people in them. As discussions of corporate responsibility and increased industrial scrutiny dominate headlines, having a demonstrable commitment to modern compliance is an extreme value proposition.

Additionally, enforcing compliance doesnt have to be all stick and no carrot  easy access to understanding where and under what lines of authority your agents are licensed can also give you an easy view to what opportunities youre missing. Using data-driven compliance measures to recognize areas that are ripe for growth, you can help expand the businesses that feed into your funnel, which grows your piece of the pie with very little effort.

If youre interested in seeing specifically how AgentSync can help you turn your license management into your secret weapon for growth, check out a demo.
A Massachusetts man who pleaded guilty to defrauding Texas chicken products companies out of $630,000 through a fake invoice scheme has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison, prosecutors said.

Yannick Minang, 27, of Hingham was sentenced last week, The Patriot Ledger reported Monday.

Minang fooled two Texas companies by submitting false invoices purportedly from chicken parts suppliers in Brazil, prosecutors said. He took some money as cash and transferred much of it overseas, authorities said.

Minang used a type of fraud referred to as business email compromise, in which the fraud is carried out by spoofing legitimate business email accounts, according to court documents.

In addition to prison time, Minang was ordered to pay more than $522,000 in restitution.

Minang pleaded guilty last year to multiple counts of wire fraud, as well as unlawful monetary transactions and money laundering conspiracy.

An accomplice was previously sentenced to a year in prison for helping Minang open bank accounts used for the scheme.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Massachusetts
The owner of a now-defunct Peabody, Massachusetts, construction company pleaded guilty in connection with a scheme to defraud the IRS of payroll taxes and to defraud his workers compensation insurance carrier by failing to disclose how many workers he employed.

Argyrios Eric Mavros pleaded guilty to 10 counts of failure to collect or pay over taxes and one count of mail fraud. U.S. Senior District Court Judge William G. Young scheduled sentencing for Feb. 17, 2022. Mavros was indicted in September 2020.

Mavros, who owned Mavros Construction Inc., cashed more than $3.3 million in customer checks at a Peabody check cashing business and used some of those funds to pay his employees in cash. Mavros failed to report these employees or their wages in quarterly corporate tax filings, in an effort to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on employee wages and withholding federal income taxes.

Overall, it is alleged that Mavros failed to pay and withhold federal taxes on more than $2.5 million in wages, resulting in a tax loss of more than $1 million. Additionally, Mavros failed to report these employees to his workers compensation insurance carrier, thereby defrauding his insurer of premiums.

The charge of failure to collect and pay over taxes provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $10,000. The charge of mail fraud provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Source: U.S. Attorneys Office, District of Massachusetts

Topics Workers' Compensation Fraud Massachusetts Construction
Howden, the international insurance broker, announces the launch of operations in New Zealand with Howden Broking and Howden Care  its local workplace claims management, rehabilitation and wellness business.

The launch reinforces Howdens ambitious growth plans in the region since opening its doors in Australia in March 2021.

Rene Hattingh has been appointed CEO of Howden Broking, New Zealand, having joined from Donaldson Brown where she was a partner. Prior to this, she was head of FinPro New Zealand at Marsh. Hattingh brings a people and client first ethos, backed up by significant broking expertise and an entrepreneurial spirit, said Howden in a statement.

The New Zealand operation also is bolstered by the appointment of Cliff McCord as the CEO of Howden Care. Prior to joining Howden, McCord spent over 20 years at Wellnz  a workplace claims management, rehabilitation and wellness business  where he progressed from case management through to ultimately becoming the CEO. During his six years as CEO, Wellnz experienced extremely strong growth.

The establishment of the Howden operations in New Zealand is another achievement in a very short time frame for our business in the region. Despite the current climate, Howden has gone from strength to strength in Australia, and we feel certain that our New Zealand team will deliver upon the same trajectory, commented Howden Pacific CEO Matt Bacon.

Established in 1994 and headquartered in London, Howden Broking now employs more than 6,500 people worldwide. Together with network partners aligned to its specialty-led proposition, the company operates in more than 90 territories. Howden comprises owned businesses across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Source: Howden
LONDON  Insurers could face European climate stress tests as soon as 2023, the head of the EUs insurance regulator said at the Reuters Future of Insurance Europe conference on Thursday.

The insurance industry faces exposure to climate change risk both through its underwriting of fossil fuels and through the investment portfolios of individual insurers.

Petra Hielkema, chairperson of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), said although the tests will take place by 2024 at the latest it might be we want to do this one quicker.

But Hielkema, who was speaking on a panel on climate change, said there was no concrete planning for 2023 tests yet.

Hielkema said stress tests for pension funds next year were also likely to focus on climate change.

Anna Sweeney, the Bank of Englands executive director for insurance, said the central bank was in the process of conducting its first climate stress tests for banks and insurers, with results due in the first quarter of 2022.

Weve had to ask for resubmissions from some firms where we have felt that there hasnt been enough due diligenceor enough clarity, she told the panel.

The video from the conference can be viewed here.

Hielkema and Sweeney both said their tests would not be focused on capital requirements. Hielkema said the use of a carbon tax was a better way to encourage companies to tackle climate change risk than imposing capital requirements.

Alison Martin, EMEA CEO for Zurich Insurance, also told the panel that a carbon price was needed as part of a suite of mechanisms to help us get to the transition.

We have nearly 70 different versions of carbon price mechanismstheres a challenge to get to something which is harmonized, Martin said.

Delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow https://www.reuters.com/business/cop are wrangling over the rules around Article 6, the section of the U.N. Convention on Climate Change that deals with markets for trading carbon emissions that continue to be emitted.

One of the toughest tasks will be in synchronizing global rules around these markets, as well as in agreeing on a global price for carbon.

Marie Niemczyk, head of insurance relations at investment firm Candriam, told the panel that a carbon price would be a very useful tool in investing, but it needs to be high enough to actually have a deterrent effect.

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn and Huw Jones; Editing by Kirstin Ridley and Alexander Smith)

Topics Carriers Europe
Arch Capital Group Ltd., alongside private equity partners Warburg Pincus and Kelso & Co., announced that Watford Holdings Ltd. and Watford Re Ltd. have been renamed Somers Group Holdings Ltd. and Somers Re Ltd., respectively.

Headquartered in Bermuda, the name Somers Re is a nod to Sir George Somers, who founded Bermuda in 1609.

The name change is part of a strategic repositioning for Somers Re as it builds on the Watford platform, which was originally established in 2014 as a total return reinsurer. Operating as Somers Re, the firm will follow a more traditional reinsurance business model, leveraging Archs underwriting expertise while pursuing a more conservative investment strategy.

Arch Capital acquired Watford Holdings Ltd. in July 2021.

As an important step toward this objective, Somers Re noted that its new strategy and financial backing have resulted in AM Best affirming a financial strength rating of A- stable.

Another element of the reorganization of Somers Re is a change in leadership. Liz Cunningham has been appointed CEO of Somers Re. Cunningham is an actuary who previously served as the chief risk officer for Watford Re and boasts nearly 20 years of experience in insurance and risk management.

Additionally, Sioned Butler has been appointed chief financial officer of Somers Re. Butler most recently served as controller for Watford Re and has over 15 years of finance experience, including serving as an auditor at KPMG.

Earlier this year, the company closed its acquisition of France-based insurance company Axeria IARD. Axeria is an established insurer in the French market and adds additional capabilities to Somers suite of insurance products and managing general agencies (MGA) strategy.

The insurance operations of Somers Group Holdings Ltd. will continue to operate under their existing names. Watford Specialty Insurance Co. and Watford Insurance Co. will serve U.S.-based customers; Watford Insurance Co. (Europe) Ltd. will serve UK-based customers and Axeria IARD will provide capacity to clients across continental Europe.

After seven years operating under the Watford name, re-establishing the company as Somers Re marks a new chapter for the franchise, said Maamoun Rajeh, chairman and CEO of Archs Worldwide Reinsurance Group and a member of the board of Somers Holdings.

Liz and Sioned bring fresh perspectives and strong leadership to the company, while maintaining institutional knowledge and continuity from their time in Watford. I am also pleased to remain engaged with our long-term partner, Highbridge Principal Strategies, as our primary investment manager, Rajeh added.

I am looking forward to continuing the work with our founding sponsor Arch and welcoming the new Warburg Pincus and Kelso board members to Somers Re. We are taking the best parts of Watford and adding new strategies and capabilities, according to Cunningham.

The overall Somers Group platform  with insurance and reinsurance capabilities in Bermuda, U.S. and Europe  has a unique value proposition and is well positioned to deliver bespoke solutions and meaningful capacity to our clients around the world, said Michael Thompson, managing director at Warburg Pincus.

Steve Dutton, partner at Kelso, commented, Ive been very impressed with the teams ability to recognize an opportunity and then reimagine an entire business model to position the company to thrive in the coming years.

About Somers Group Holdings and Arch Capital Group

Somers Group Holdings Ltd. is a privately held, global specialty property/casualty insurance and reinsurance company, headquartered in Bermuda, which is owned by Arch Capital Group Ltd., Kelso & Co., and Warburg Pincus.

Arch Capital Group Ltd., a publicly listed Bermuda exempted company with approximately $16.1 billion in capital at Sept. 30, 2021, provides insurance, reinsurance and mortgage insurance on a worldwide basis through its wholly owned subsidiaries.

Source: Arch Capital Group

Topics Reinsurance
This is part of a series of articles from Insurance Journals annual Insuring Cannabis Summit on Oct. 14. You can find more articles from the summit at the bottom of this one.

Cannabis literally beat COVID-19.

After being declared an essential business in many U.S. states, sales not only stayed steady, they increased during a rough economic patch.

Dont expect that to wind down through the rest of 2021 and into 2022, with established markets continuing to grow  though maybe not at the pace theyve been growing during the lockdowns  and new markets coming online.

That was the word from Cy Scott, co-founder and CEO of the cannabis data and intelligence firm Headset. Scott was speaking at Insurance Journals annual Insuring Cannabis Summit on Oct. 14 on a panel titled Insuring Cannabis market Outlook.

Scott was answering questions from moderator Norm Ives, cannabis practice leader at Nutra Risk, a division of Amwins. The other panelists were Morgan Fox, media relations director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, and Patrick McManamon, founder and CEO of Cannasure Insurance Services LLC, a wholesale broker and managing general agency.

I think, speaking in macro trends, in general, the more mature markets, markets like Colorado, Washington, Nevada, even California somewhat, were seeing a bit of slowing growth, year over year, happening right now, Scott said. Its still growth, but were talking single digit percentages right now. Probably going to end the year in single digit percentages.

But what may drive cannabis sales and growth in the industry are emerging markets, limited license markets, markets in the East Coast and the Midwest that are coming online, according to Scott.

Were seeing very strong growth, even in markets like Michigan that have had some legal sales for a fair amount of time, more and more access, more and more stores are opening up, more and more consumers are coming into the category to purchase cannabis, Scott said. We expect those markets to bring up the averages across the board, but I think the story is still very much growth for this space.

Fox, an avid policy watcher, discussed potential federal legalization, including the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.



Other stories from Insuring Cannabis Summit Insuring Cannabis Summit: Capacity Still a Centerpiece of Concern

The original draft was just a draft and luckily the Senate leadership, particularly Senate majority leader Schumer, as well as Sens. Cory Booker and Ron Wyden, have been very engaged with stakeholders in this process and took a lot of feedback over the months since that has been introduced or was released, Fox said. And now were just waiting to see what the actual bill looks like.

Considering some of the feedback on the draft, particularly the tax structure, which cannabis businesses have warned creates a heavy tax burden on an industry that is still competing with a thriving illicit market, the bill when it comes out will be much different than the draft.

Hopefully well be able to see that introduced sometime before the end of the year so that we can really start the work of lobbying for it and getting more co-sponsors, at the beginning of next year and hopefully get as much movement on it before the Senate starts to go home to campaign, Fox added.

McManamon said legalization would bring more carriers and reinsurers to the market, helping capacity, and adding to coverages and products that are desperately needed.

That would definitely bring in and open up that product set and it would continue to provide innovation insurance, McManamon said. Insurance is going through a huge innovation change right now, spurred by the pandemic and youre seeing a lot of the way the carriers currently onboard customers, underwrite risk, how they secure data, thats changing very quick and I think that this would be really be beneficial to the industry and youd see a lot more change happening quicker, more sophistication coming into the space.

McManamon, along with the rest of the panelists, see legalization as an important step to help the insurance and banking industries  which have been kept largely at bay  start to keep up with the growing sector.

Just how big is the cannabis industry getting?

Fox has seen figures ranging from 10 to 20,000 licenses in the U.S. between cultivation, manufacturing and retail and testing labs.

I think that the potential for growth is really huge, not just among direct to plant businesses, but in ancillary businesses as well, Fox said. And there will be a very strong need for those businesses to be able to obtain insurance products.

Topics Trends Cannabis
The United States will not be able to insure its way out of coming climate disasters, but must focus on mitigation and resiliency  along with insurer solvency  to reduce risk and exposure, insurance regulators said Wednesday.

Insurance commissioners from around the country joined a virtual meeting, dubbed, How are U.S. insurance regulators taking action on climate change risks, held as part of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, now under way in Scotland. The commissioners offered few tangible regulatory changes but said that a number of initiatives are under way at the national, state and local levels.

Mitigation and resiliency are critical to minimizing the scope of loss, said Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier, the president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

To that end, some insurance regulators are now working with state lawmakers and local officials to beef up building and zoning codes to discourage new structures in flood-prone areas and to retrofit existing homes, said Ray Farmer, insurance director for South Carolina.

Studies have shown that every $1 spent on mitigation produces a return of $11 in savings on recovery expenses, said Farmer, who is co-chair of the NAICs climate and resiliency task force.

That being said, the commissioners also noted that the NAIC is exploring new model rules and insurance products that, if adopted by more states, could help ensure that insurance carriers are better able to manage catastrophes as the planet warms and storms intensify. One idea is the use of automated payments after a triggering event. Another is expanding the use of parametric insurance to fill coverage gaps. With parametric, insurers offer lower-priced policies that quickly pay a predetermined amount after a disaster.

There are some regulatory concerns about how these products are designed and whether consumers fully understand how the coverage works, Farmer said. But with the right structure and transparency, parametric can help policyholders recover more quickly from a disaster, he added.

The NAIC also is examining new ways to share and assess insurance carriers risk solvency across state lines. Californias insurance commissioner, Richard Lara, is in Glasgow, Scotland, for the UN conference. Via videoconference, he said Wednesday that most larger carriers are nationwide in coverage. Key data on 80% of the market can now be gleaned from examining insurers financial information in just a few states, Lara said. State regulators can study that to get a better idea of how carriers can weather coming disasters, he added.

Insurance companies also joined the discussion and urged regulators to streamline rules that may make it tricky for carriers to insure environmentally friendly property and systems.

We never want to hear the words, I wanted to make a change to move toward net-zero (emissions) but my insurance wouldnt allow it, there was a blocker in the way,' said Owen Morris, managing director of personal lines at Aviva, a Britain-based multinational insurance company.

Morris spoke at the Net Zero Insurance Alliance virtual meeting, held after the regulators conference Wednesday. Residential solar panels, for example, have run into some insurance and regulatory challenges, including in Florida.

If someone wants to put solar panels on their roof, we need to support that, Morris said.

We need to make sure we are in the vanguard of these changes, he added. We will have significant needs and asks of government and regulators to try and assist us on making these changes.

At the UN conference Wednesday, a coalition of the worlds largest insurers, banks and investment groups pledged to reach net-zero emissions across their portfolios, according to news reports. Environmental groups were skeptical, noting previous pledges that were not realized.

Topics Climate Change
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Thursday it has referred more than three dozen unruly passengers to the FBI for potential criminal prosecution amid a sharp rise in onboard incidents this year.

The FAA and Justice Department said they had established an information-sharing protocol for the FAA to refer unruly passenger cases to the FBI for review.

The Justice Department and FBI are committed to prioritizing the review of the cases referred by the FAA and initiating criminal prosecution where appropriate, the agencies said.

U.S. airlines have reported a record number of disruptive and sometimes violent incidents this year, and the FAA has pledged a zero tolerance approach. The FAA and Justice Department said the increased coordination is part of a broader effort to prevent dangerous unruly passenger incidents.

An FAA spokesman said the agency has initiated 227 enforcement cases and referred 37 to the FBI for review.

Let this serve both as a warning and a deterrent: If you disrupt a flight, you risk not just fines from the FAA but federal criminal prosecution as well, said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson.

On Oct. 8, President Joe Biden said he instructed the Justice Department to deal with the rising number of violent incidents onboard planes.

FBI Acting Assistant Director Jay Greenberg said the agency is working in tandem with our partners to ensure the safety of all passengers and investigate crimes within our jurisdiction aboard commercial flights.

Through Nov. 1, there have been 5,033 reports of unruly passenger incidents, including 3,642 related to pandemic face covering regulations.

In June, a group representing major U.S. airlines, such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, as well as aviation unions, asked the Justice Department to prosecute violent air passengers.

FAA and Justice Department officials began meeting in August to develop an efficient method for referring the most serious unruly-passenger cases for potential criminal prosecution, the agencies said, adding that resulted in a process where the FAA regularly sends cases to the FBI, which forwards those that merit potential prosecution to field offices for further investigation.

On Monday https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-charges-passenger-with-assaulting-american-airlines-flight-attendant-2021-11-01, U.S. prosecutors in Colorado charged a 20-year-old California man with assaulting a flight attendant on an Oct. 27 American Airlines flight bound for Santa Ana, California, that forced the plane to land.

Witnesses and court records said a flight attendant was punched in the nose, resulting in bleeding and a concussion. American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker called it one of the worst displays of unruly behavior weve ever witnessed.

(Reporting by David Shepardson. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Topics Aviation Aerospace
The nations workplace safety agency will officially publish tomorrow emergency guidelines for companies that must implement President Bidens mandatory vaccine policy for employees.

The policy covers employers with 100 or more employees and requires them to enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, or adopt a policy requiring employees to choose to either be vaccinated or undergo regular COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at work.

The deadline for having a mandate and testing plan in place is Jan. 4, which places it after the busiest weeks of the holiday season.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said its emergency temporary standard will protect more than 84 million workers from the spread of the coronavirus on the job. A separate rule requiring federal contractors to have a similar vaccine/testing policy will cover even more workers.

The standard also requires employers to provide paid time to workers to get vaccinated and to allow for paid leave to recover from any side effects.

While vaccination remains the most effective and efficient defense against COVID-19, this emergency temporary standard will protect all workers, including those who remain unvaccinated, by requiring regular testing and the use of face coverings by unvaccinated workers to prevent the spread of the virus, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Jim Frederick. As part of OSHAs mission to protect the safety and health of workers, this rule will provide a roadmap to help businesses keep their workers safe. Determine the vaccination status of each employee, obtain acceptable proof of vaccination status from vaccinated employees and maintain records and a roster of each employees vaccination status.

Require employees to provide prompt notice when they test positive for COVID-19 or receive a COVID-19 diagnosis. Employers must then remove the employee from the workplace, regardless of vaccination status; employers must not allow them to return to work until they meet required criteria.

Ensure each worker who is not fully vaccinated is tested for COVID-19 at least weekly (if the worker is in the workplace at least once a week) or within 7 days before returning to work (if the worker is away from the workplace for a week or longer).

Ensure that, in most circumstances, each employee who has not been fully vaccinated wears a face covering when indoors or when occupying a vehicle with another person for work purposes. The vaccine mandate rule from OSHA also requires employers to do the following:

OSHA estimates that this rule will save thousands of lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations due to workplace exposure to COVID-19.

The emergency standard does not require employers to pay for testing or for masks.

U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said many businesses understand the benefits of having their workers vaccinated against COVID-19, and we expect many will be pleased to see this OSHA rule go into effect.

Unvaccinated Employees Risk Job Losses as Employer Mandates Take Effect

While many businesses have been awaiting the OSHA guidance, a number of large employers including Walt Disney, Procter & Gamble, 3M and several airlines along with state governments have already imposed vaccination or regular testing requirements. In some cases, unions have supported vaccine requirements.

According to The Associated Press, 18 states and the District of Columbia have vaccine mandates for their workers, and 21 states plus D.C. have mandates for health care workers.

But across the country, some unions and workers are resisting vaccine mandates and some state Republican officials are vowing to fight them in court. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) has already filed a lawsuit.

As part of the process of developing the standard, The Biden Administration held meetings with employers and business groups including the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers.

The OSHA standard will cover two-thirds of the nations private-sector workforce. In the 26 states and two territories with OSHA State Plans, it will also cover public sector workers employed by state and local governments, including educators and school staff.

Topics Workers' Compensation Commercial Lines Business Insurance
The University of Alabama is no longer requiring face coverings in most of its facilities for people who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Beginning Friday, masks will be mandated only for unvaccinated people indoors and in crowded outdoor settings or during outdoor activities that involve sustained close contact with others who are unvaccinated, the university said in a statement.

Masks are will remain required for people in patient clinical-care settings at University Medical Center, the Student Health Center, the Capstone Village assisted living and specialty care units, Brewer-Porch Childrens Center and the Working on Womanhood program and for those on Crimson Ride buses, WBRC-TV reported.

The university said unvaccinated people will not have to wear masks when eating or drinking or while maintaining appropriate distancing, when alone in offices with closed doors, while exercising or in residence hall rooms.

Since the pandemic began, 15,573 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in Alabama, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The change was announced just as Alabama lawmakers took steps to fight a federal mandate requiring that most workers get vaccinated for the COVID-19 virus. This week, a state House committee aimed at limiting companies ability to fire workers who say they cant get vaccinated against COVID-19 for religious or medical reasons.

Also this week, an Alabama police chief, on his death bed with COVID, said he regretted his decision against getting vaccinated, his widow said.

Buddy Crabtree, a 10-year veteran of the Ider Police Department in northeastern Alabama, died Saturday of the illness caused by the coronavirus, news outlets reported. He was often seen inside schools in the town of about 650 people.

He loved his job and Ider, widow Kristie Crabtree told WAAY-TV. He loved the community of Ider, his officers, the school kids.

Crabtrees battle with Covid-19 was a surprise to many since he seemed healthy and kept busy. Crabtree said her husband went to Highlands Medical Center in Scottsboro on Oct. 9 and was flown to Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 10 days later.

She said her husband said he wouldve got a vaccine, which health officials say prevents nearly all serious cases of COVID-19 and deaths, if he knew how hard he would have to fight to live.

He actually said, `If I get better, Ill take all three, I dont ever want to go through this again, she said.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Education Alabama Universities
Virgin Media Ireland said it plans to pump in 200m to upgrade all its customers to fibre, as the battle for high-speed broadband services with Eir, and other rivals, hots up.

The company  it has one million customers across its operations, which include broadband, television, landline phone, and mobile  said the plan had been in the pipeline for some time and will be rolled out across its network over the next three years.

For consumers, there will be more choice and flexibility and greater speeds, said Paul Higgins, vice president of Virgin Media Ireland.

The surge in demand for broadband since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis "was not going away", Mr Higgins said.

"Our products and services have never been used more", while many more connected devices were constantly coming onstream, he said.

Virgin Media said the upgrade of its existing network will create 500 more jobs, but that its expansion plans will continue.

During the pandemic it had expanded into Carlow, Louth, and Castlebar, Co Mayo, the company said.

"In short, we are very focused on our own footprint and our own network upgrade, which we think gives our customers a huge scope with a choice of speed," Mr Higgins said.

It has rolled out a full-fibre service to the first batch of 500 premises.

Virgin Media has 387,000 broadband customers, and 288,000 landline phones, connected to its network. Its mobile phone unit, which is provided through the carrier Three, has 124,000 customers.

The investment will be funded from its own resources, the company said.

Virgin Media provided no new details on reports that its Irish operations has been put up for sale.

The company is owned by John Malone's Liberty Global and the parent group had already struck a deal with Spain's Telefonica to merge Virgin Media in the UK with O2. Virgin Media O2 is now Liberty's single largest asset.

Bloomberg reported last month that Liberty is considering splitting off its telecom infrastructure, such as cables and fibre, leaving its remaining businesses to focus on providing mobile, internet, and TV services.

In Ireland, rival Eir, which also owns the GoMo retail brand, earlier this year had hailed its own multi-million investment in fibre to take on Virgin Media in the cities.
Here is a selection of people starting new roles with IDA Ireland, Finance Ireland, Neuromed, Sky Ireland, Benefacts, Boys + Girls.

Michelle Conaghan has been appointed as IDA Ireland's regional business development manager for the North West region, part of the wider Border Region comprising counties Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan. A native of Co Donegal, she joined IDA in 2015 as head of emerging technologies/high growth companies for the UK. She then became a VP of new forms of investment and more recently, VP of green economy. While primarily based in London, Michelle also held responsibility for France and the Benelux region. She holds an MSc in Strategic Management from TUD and a diploma in Business Management from the NCI. IDA Ireland has 66 client companies in the Border Region, employing 8,651 people.

Damien Daly has been appointed as chief operating officer of Finance Ireland, the non-bank lender. Damien has extensive experience in the financial services industry across retail banking, capital markets and treasury management. He is currently director of strategy at Ulster Bank and a member of the Ulster Bank executive committee. Prior to Ulster Bank, Damien worked in senior positions in Bank of Ireland, including as MD of Bank of Irelands financial services partnership with the AA in the UK and as director of marketing and customer analytics in Bank of Ireland Retail in Ireland. Specialising in mortgages, car finance, SME leasing and agri-finance, Finance Ireland's key shareholders include the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and global investment management firm PIMCO.

Teri Minard has been appointed as director for government sales at Neuromod USA, the recently established US arm of Neuromod Devices, the Irish medical device company which specialises in interventions for tinnitus. She joins Neuromod from multinational conglomerate 3M, where she helped drive business growth, with global responsibilities for strategic planning, business development, and sales and marketing. She will oversee Neuromods bid to offer tinnitus solutions to the US public hearing healthcare ecosystem by partnering with government organisations. Neuromods initial area of focus will be to provide tinnitus interventions for US Veterans by building relationships with the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Department of Defence, and other key government stakeholders.

Ben Staves has been appointed the role of head of digital at Sky Ireland. He brings more than 14 years experience in digital media, working across advertiser, media agency and media owner roles. He joins from Journal Media, where he managed digital transformation projects involving data and programmatic enhancements. He was also previously head of programmatic and partnership innovation at DMG Media Ireland, head of programmatic at Maximum Media and JOE, and media and head of campaign activation at AMNET Ireland. He will now lead Sky Ireland's development and delivery of new and existing digital advertising opportunities. He said: I look forward to delivering new and exciting video, display and online content to our Irish consumers.

Jennifer Coyne has been appointed as chief financial officer with non-profit data transparency organisation Benefacts. A fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, Jennifer began her career at PWC before moving on to specialist finance roles in the private and charity sectors, where she has served in senior financial management positions at Gorta and Focus Ireland, as well as working with a variety of non-profits as an independent consultant. She is a native of Blackrock, Co Dublin, and a graduate of both UCD and DCU. Jennifer said: Benefacts work promoting transparency and supporting evidence-based decision making in Irelands 14bn non-profit sector is crucial to the effective functioning of the sector.

Derek Doyle, the executive production director of advertising agency Boys + Girls, has been appointed to the complaints committee of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland. He brings almost 30 years experience in the advertising and production industry to this independent arm of the ASAI, which adjudicates complaints against advertisements. Derek was also previously head of broadcast/AV production in Ogilvy & Mather. He has a wealth of knowledge in advertising, content production and commercial and financial management. Derek is a graduate of both TCD and TUD and is passionate about working at the interface of creative and commerce. The committee is made up of experts from advertising, media, education, consumer and marketing.
Marvels latest big-budget adventure Eternals has been pulled from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait after Disney reportedly refused to cut a same-sex kiss.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the $200m movie will not be released in the Gulf region countries after being removed from local sites.

The studio has yet to comment or confirm but sources claim that the reason is a kiss between Brian Tyree Henrys character and his on-screen husband, played by Haaz Sleiman. It marks the first gay kiss in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Homosexuality is still illegal across much of the region and is punishable by death in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. A local cinema chain confirmed to the trade that the film was banned but had no explanation provided.

This image released by Marvel Studios shows Richard Madden, center, and director Chloe Zhao, right, on the set of "Eternals."

In Singapore, Eternals has become the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film to gain an M18 certificate, which restricts audiences to those aged 18 and older.

A spokesperson for the countrys Infocomm Media Development Authority confirmed that it was a result of homosexual references.

The film also contains a sex scene between two heterosexual characters.

Director Chloe Zhao, who won the Oscar for best director earlier this year for Nomadland, spoke recently about her desire to not tweak any scenes to appease censors.

I dont know all the details, but I do believe discussions were had and theres a big desire from Marvel and myself  we talked about this  to not change the cut of the movie, she said to Indiewire.

Fingers crossed. Lebanese actor Sleiman, who came out as gay in 2017, spoke about the importance of the scene at the films premiere.

Its life-saving, he said to Variety.

Can you imagine how many lives this is going to be saving  kids, young queer folk, who are being bullied, committing suicide, and not seeing themselves being represented? And now they get to see this  its above and beyond.

The news follows a similar ban in 2020 for Pixars Onward which featured a brief scene involving a lesbian cyclops police officer voiced by Lena Waithe.

In Russia, the use of the word girlfriend was changed to partner.

Eternals has started opening in many global territories with a US release on 5 November where its expected to open to around $75m.

- Guardian
A police chief has called for a calming of rhetoric after an outbreak of disorder in Belfast following a protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Simon Byrne condemned the violence at a community interface in west Belfast that saw up to 100 youths and young adults attack police following the loyalist demonstration over the Irish Sea border.

No one wants to see that return to our the streets, said Mr Byrne.

I think we want to see this in terms of a small-scale isolated incident and support the community in trying to dial down the rhetoric of what we saw yesterday, because no one wants to see this escalate and a return to images of the past.

Simon Byrne (Liam McBurney/PA)

Mr Byrne made the comments at a meeting of his oversight body, the Northern Ireland Policing Board, on Thursday.

Wednesday nights disorder came on Lanark Way in the loyalist Shankill Road area. There was also disorder on the nationalist Springfield Road side of the peace wall that divides the two communities.

Police were attacked with fireworks and other missiles during the violence while objects were burned in the road.

Two boys aged 12 and 15 were arrested on suspicion of riotous behaviour and have been released on bail as police inquiries continue.

No officers or civilians were hurt, but three PSNI vehicles were damaged and have had to be taken off the road.

Earlier, PSNI Chief Superintendent Darrin Jones said he was saddened by scenes in which police were attacked with missiles and fireworks.

Mr Jones, the Belfast area commander, told BBC Radio Ulster the violence was fairly serious.

Chief Superintendent Darrin Jones (Rebecca Black/PA)

He said: At one stage there were up to 100 people on both sides of the interface attacking police officers.

Referring to the two arrests, he said: It is shocking and will have life-changing consequences for those children.

Most of the crowd who were attacking police, and attacking them in a sustained way with bottles, masonry, fireworks, were from that age, about early teens to early 20s.

It was a protest, we believe, organised by older people against the protocol.

But where it was, in relation to the interface, in relation to a very volatile area, it could have been reasonably been expected by those organisers that it would increase tension, it would increase onlookers.

Missiles and fireworks were thrown at police (Brian Lawless/PA)

What happened was the protest itself was peaceful, but once it did go in, the onlookers then who had gathered, they put their attention to police and attacked the police.

Mr Jones said he is concerned about future protests against the protocol.

Everyone has the right to protest and we have an obligation to facilitate protest, but there is a time and there is a place and the organisers must have reasonably expected what would happen when the protest was there, he said.

I would appeal to the community, those with influence in the community, to use that influence positively to make the right decisions, try and reduce tensions in the area and appeal for calm.

It saddens me; the officers who were being attacked last night were not providing local policing, they werent dealing with domestic abuse, they werent dealing with anti-social behaviour, they werent dealing with drug dealing, all those things that impact on society.

Many of those officers who were attacked last night were from the local neighbourhood teams.

Earlier this week, a bus was hijacked at gunpoint and burnt out in Newtownards in an attack politicians linked to loyalist opposition to the protocol.

The scene in Newtownards after a bus was hijacked and set alight (David Young/PA)

The attack in the predominantly unionist area happened on the day set by the DUP earlier in the autumn to pull down the institutions at Stormont if major changes to the protocol had not been secured.

It was condemned by unionist leaders.

The DUP has not yet withdrawn ministers from the Executive, insisting progress is being made in efforts to dismantle the Irish Sea border.

Opposition to the protocol that has created trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK was a factor behind rioting that flared in several loyalist areas across the region in April.
A young mother who was catastrophically injured and rendered totally incapacitated when the car driven by her husband collided with a tractor and trailer on a Cork road has settled her action for 14.75 million.

The settlement was announced in the High Court today. Olivia Redmond-OCallaghan was only 28 years of age and left with massive brain damage and needing 24-hour care for the rest of her life after the accident on the old Glanmire to Cork Road in 2011.

Her Counsel, Dr John OMahony SC, at the opening of her legal action said hers is as serious as one can find in brain injury. The woman who gave birth to her third child months after the accident, he said, does not recognise her children and does not recognise photographs of her husband Myles OCallaghan who died in the accident.

In all my decades at the Bar I have not seen somebody so profoundly impaired. Her family has lost the love of a mother and daughter never to be restored, Counsel said.

He added:

The future is a deep dark valley for Olivia. This sad story will continue forever  at every turn it is sad.

Olivia Redmond-OCallaghan who is now aged 37 from, Gowlane South, Donoughmore, Co. Cork, had sued her late husbands estate, the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland (MIBI) and Cork County Council over the accident.

The settlement, the court heard today, is against the MIBI and Cork County Council.

She took her action through her stepfather Liam Power and the court heard she would not be able to attend court or give evidence. Her mental competency, the court heard, is at the bottom of the spectrum.

In court today, Dr John OMahony SC with Patrick Keane SC instructed by solicitor John Henchion, said it was an extremely tragic and sad case and Olivias brain damage is off the scale".

She carried her baby through all the trauma but she never regained awareness of the reality of her environment or home. She doesnt recognise her children. She has no engagement with anybody, Counsel said.

Counsel said Olivias heroic mother, Norma Redmond Power and stepfather Liam Power have stepped in and these grandparents are regarded as parents by the three OCallaghan children.

Family statement

Olivias family outside court said the 14.75 million settlement will ensure they can plan for her future care and gives them hope for her further rehabilitation.

Unfortunately it will never bring our girl back to those of us who still miss her every day, her mother Norma Redmond Power and her stepfather Liam Power said.

In a statement read by their solicitor, John Henchion, they said they were and continue to be most grateful to all those who helped Olivia and her late husband Myles at the scene of the crash that afternoon of October 4, 2011, and afterwards.

We also acknowledge the shock that the tractor driver experienced that day and that he did all he could to try and take evasive action, they said.

The statement added: The staff at the Cork University Hospital did immense work for both Myles and Olivia. Thankfully the skill of Mr George Kaar and his team together with the many supporting doctors and nurses managed to save Olivia's life and that of her unborn child such that we were able to welcome a new addition to the family some months afterwards.

This was obviously a time of huge joy but coupled with enormous sadness as well.

It further said: On October 4, 2011, our grandchildren lost their parents; our daughter lost her big sister and brother-in-law and we lost our eldest daughter and son-in-law. At 3.20pm that afternoon the car in which Olivia and Myles were travelling on the old Dublin to Cork road crossed to its incorrect side colliding with a tractor with devastating consequences. Myles succumbed to his injuries some days after the accident while Olivia was left with permanent and catastrophic brain injuries.

They thanked all those who have cared for Olivia and who had gone way and above the call of duty in their care of her.

At the opening of the case, Dr John OMahony SC said it is a case of most profound sadness and the woman who lost her husband in the crash has had the most appalling repertoire of profoundly serious injuries.

Everything that could be done to her skull was done. She has been left in an appalling sad state where she does not recognise her children and has been in institutional care since the accident on October 4, 2011. he said.

Approving the settlement today, Mr Justice Paul Coffey said it was a most tragic case. He said the offer was very good and the judge conveyed his best wishes to Olivias family particularly Daniel who he said did not know his mother and what she was.

Claims and counter-claims

Against Cork County Council it was claimed it constructed a public roadway which was allegedly defective and dangerous to road users.

The road, it was claimed, was constructed with a very tight bend with a radius of curvature which was allegedly below the minimum acceptable standard. High vegetation, it was further alleged, was permitted to grow on the embankment of the road which allegedly restricted forward visibility.

There was, it was claimed, an alleged failure to warn Mr OCallaghan of the sharp left-hand bend. There was also, it is alleged, a failure to erect any or any proper warning signs including rumble strips.

Cork County Council denied all the claims and contended the bend was visible for 210 metres and there was a camber on the bend that it said benefits drivers negotiating it.

The accident, Cork County Council claimed, was caused by the alleged negligence of the late Mr OCallaghan about the driving, speed, care, management and control of the car in which his wife was a passenger.

The MIBI in its defence claimed Mrs Redmond-OCallaghan allegedly failed to have any regard for her own safety and permitted herself to be carried in a car for which she allegedly knew there was no valid insurance policy in place.
A 57-year-old man who was caught with more than 60,000 worth of heroin when he was living in squalor in a house in Cork in 2015 was arrested recently in Finland on a European warrant.

Kevin Sweeney was brought before Cork Circuit Criminal Court for sentencing, where Detective Garda Jerome Murphy described the circumstances of the detection of the diamorphine (heroin) on July 15, 2015, at his home at the time on Glentrasna Drive, The Glen, Cork.

Now at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Helen Boyle has imposed a five-year sentence on Sweeney and suspended half of it.

Ray Boland, defence senior counsel, had stressed the fact that the defendant had completely distanced himself from addiction and the drug scene and was now in employment and living with his family in Finland.

However, the judge said the seriousness of the charge, combined with the fact the accused effectively fled the jurisdiction, made it impossible for her to impose a fully suspended sentence.

The charge to which Sweeney pleaded guilty was one of having diamorphine for sale or supply when its street value exceeded 13,000. This is the threshold figure which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years unless the judge finds there are exceptional circumstances.

Mr Boland submitted: It is an unusual case in a number of respects. It is very unusual that a man leading an otherwise blameless life would become addicted to heroin in his late 40s. He is now 57.

He managed to rehabilitate himself completely from heroin without any help from outside agencies.

He was in the throes of addiction at the time of the offence.

I should say in relation to the 62,000 worth of heroin, the amount of drugs is less relevant in the case of a storeman than it would be in the case of a distributor.

The evidence was that he previously stored small amounts. Mr Boland said Sweeney developed depression and anxiety following the breakdown of a relationship and became addicted to heroin.

Judge Boyle said people who get the benefit of a fully suspended sentence for drugs are often young people who do not have the wisdom of years.

The judge also said in relation to the application for a fully suspended sentence: He left the jurisdiction for a considerable number of years.

Detective Garda Murphy said gardai went to the defendants home on July 15, 2015.

Sixteen bags of heroin were found in the sitting room and in a lunchbox in the kitchen a further 14 bags of the drugs were found.

More than 1,000 in cash was also found together with a weighing scales.

He made full admissions to storing heroin. He was paid in small quantities of heroin and cash. He said he let another person hide heroin in the house, Det Gda Murphy said.

He was arrested in Finland in July and conveyed back to Ireland on September 16.

Judge Boyle noted from the evidence the accused was addicted to heroin and effectively living in squalor at the time of the offence but was a different man now.

The evidence was that he was playing music and living productively in Finland without any involvement in drugs.
The secretary general of the Department of Health Robert Watt has been described as behaving with an utter disregard for transparency and accountability in the context of his controversial salary.

A draft report on the appointment of Mr Watt in April of this year, at a salary 81,000 in excess of that of other secretary generals to a total of 292,000 per annum, describes his decision not to attend a meeting of the Finance Committee on the matter as further displaying disregard for the work of the committee.

It states that Mr Watt further showed a lack of regard for the committee by, when asked for information on when he planned to draw down his higher salary and pension entitlements, sending the committee a copy of the press release on the issue.

The report, from the joint committee of Finance and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), further criticises the Taoiseach Micheal Martin for being less than co-operative or forthcoming on the issue of Mr Watts new salary when attending a meeting of the Select Committee on Estimates.

Mr Watts salary is especially controversial as, in his previous role as secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, he was central to the design of the new pay package.

The argument made for the heightened salary at the time was that the Department of Health was a body requiring the highest calibre of appointment given the challenges the health service faces.

Its understood that Mr Watt has yet to draw down the higher salary to which he is now entitled.

In its conclusions, the report states that the Committee is unclear as to why the standard procedure of transferring an existing secretary general on the same terms and conditions did not apply, describing the actual process as a very poor way to conduct business.

'Insufficient record-keeping'

It states that it is beyond dispute that the entire process had been dealt with informally from the start and that there was insufficient record-keeping regarding such a significant issue.

It recommends that purely verbal briefings regarding pay and conditions in relation to such future appointments should not be permitted, and that a review body be established to develop processes and procedures governing appointments to senior posts in the civil service.

It also recommends that ministerial power to set individual salaries should be reviewed to ensure adherence to openness, transparency and sufficient oversight, and that potential candidates for roles should not be members of the public services Top Level Appointments Committee (TLAC).

In the wake of Mr Watts appointment, a joint committee of Finance and the PAC issued a questionnaire to people with knowledge of the appointment process for the secretary general role.

Questions included a request for information regarding the apparent lack of an appropriate process in coming to the appointment and a query as to how the salary figure of 292,000 was arrived at given the lack of obvious benchmarking in Ireland or abroad for similar public sector roles.

The committee further asked for information regarding the role of TLAC in the appointment, and whether or not fair and independent processes could be said to apply when the secretary to TLAC was also an official answering to the secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform [Mr Watt] at the time.

Recipients of the questionnaire included the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, and the Minister for Health.

The only person not to respond to the questionnaire was Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan.

None of the respondents completed the questionnaire as set out or provided the precise information sought by the Committee in the form requested, the draft report states.
Insulated initially from the protests and visceral anger pervading the chilly Glasgow air this week, Cop26 delegates got their first sense on Wednesday morning that all is not well among environmental warriors on the ground.

Thousands of delegates  some 25,000 will attend the Glasgow event overall  queued impatiently on Monday and Tuesday for hours on end, herded together with social distancing nowhere in sight and a single line entrance to alleviate the bottleneck.

It was the most middle-class of annoyance, as civil servants, academics, business executives, and media figures moaned at the terrible logistics laid on at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC), oblivious to the real and growing anger throughout the city among foot soldiers of the environmental cause.

The long-time environmental activists protesting with banners and voices couldn't even get past the initial turnstiles into the outside grounds of the SEC on Wednesday.

Climate activists stage a mock ceremony on the Buchanan Street Steps, featuring 'the queen' turning off the oil tap, on the anniversary of the queen inaugurating the flow of North Sea oil on 3 November 3, 1975. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

True environmental warriors may have been persona non grata at the SEC, as style triumphed over substance while world leaders were in the building, but legacy energy companies had no such problems.

Far from being locked out of proceedings, advertising hoardings and stalls from fossil fuel giants were unmissable as attendees meandered their way through the sprawling campus.

Born in 2005, Earth Uprising founder Alexandria Villasenor has become a powerful voice in the climate crisis, along with Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate, and other young champions of action.

Ms Villasenor could barely hide her disgust from inside the SEC.

"First, it's true, there's one entrance for 20,000 attendees, it's like a single file line for everyone to get in and get through security. I've spent four hours in line over the past two days. It's chaos and a failure on the part of the organisers... Inside, it gets even weirder, with civil society literally locked out of negotiation spaces, with no video link or any other way to effectively observe at all," she tweeted.

First, it's true, there's one entrance for 20k attendees, it's like a single file line for everyone to get in and get through security. I've spent 4 hours in line over the past 2 days. It's chaos and a failure on the part of the organizers/2https://t.co/pq0nck4dTL  Alexandria Villasenor (@AlexandriaV2005) November 3, 2021

She pointed to the farcical sponsorship of Australia's Cop26 stand by oil and gas producer Santos, among other anomalies that should have no place at a major summit aimed at fundamentally altering the current disastrous global warming of the planet.

While people of colour and indigenous people of the world protested with righteous anger outside the security barriers at the disproportionate actions of fossil fuel emissions on their communities, members of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) were having a grand time, whisked through barriers to attend their meetings at Cop26.

Members of Extinction Rebellion take part in a Green Rebellion protest on Buchanan Street, during the Cop26 summit in Glasgow. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

IETA has members such as BP, Chevron and Shell, while the IPIECA, formerly known as the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association, also has seats at the best tables at Cop26.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma, who resigned his business secretary position in Boris Johnson's Tory government in order to concentrate on the Glasgow event, was stumped when Irish Independent reporter Caroline O'Doherty asked for a breakdown of fossil fuel firm delegates at the two-week event.

He'd have to get back to her on that, he said, while insisting everything about the event was "pretty transparent".

Yes, it is pretty transparent. Fossil fuel and legacy industries with high emissions will continue to be the loudest voices in the room as the world burns unless a radical shift comes out of Cop26.
Liver fluke is a widespread problem in Ireland and has significant impact on the welfare and productivity of cattle.

Infection may cause reduced and slower liveweight gain and poor carcase formation in growing cattle.

Studies have also shown that subclinical liver fluke infection in breeding stock can result in reduced fertility, increased calving intervals and an increase in metabolic diseases post-calving.

Maura Langan, Norbrook Veterinary Advisor, explains: The risk of fluke is greatest from late summer on and at this time of year as we approach the housing period, many farmers will be thinking about treating their cattle for liver fluke.

"There are a range of different flukicides on the market and we generally classify them based on the stages of fluke that they are effective against.

Solantel Pour-On is the first single-active, pour-on flukicide for cattle to be licensed in the UK and Ireland. Solantel Pour-on contains 200mg/ml closantel and is licensed for the treatment of late immature (>7 weeks) and adult Fasciola hepatica (liver fluke) infestations in cattle.

A fluke-only treatment is likely to be the most appropriate treatment for adult cattle that have good immunity to gut worms or cattle that have received a persistent wormer, such as Taurador (doramectin) five weeks prior to housing.

Concerns around anthelmintic resistance mean that the industry is adopting a more responsible approach to parasite treatment. Rather than treating frequently at set intervals, farmers are being encouraged to treat less often and only where necessary.

Individual treatment plans

Individual treatment plans should be devised for the different management groups according to level of exposure and immunity.

Generally, when treating cattle for fluke in autumn, two approaches are used. Treatment can be delayed for a number of weeks to allow the fluke to mature.

"By waiting seven weeks before treating cattle with Solantel Pour-on, any fluke acquired just before housing will then be susceptible to treatment. Alternatively, if youre worried about a heavy fluke burden, your vet may recommend you treat straightaway at housing.

Solantel Pour-On is a useful fluke treatment option for farmers, who are are being encouraged, due to concerns around anthelmintic resistance, to treat less often and only where necessary.

Solantel Pour-On is easy to apply and non-invasive for cattle, with a meat withdrawal of 63 days. The product should be applied along the midline of the back in a narrow strip between the withers and the tail head.

Animals should be weighed and grouped according to bodyweight to avoid over or under-dosing.

Solantel Pour-On is not suitable for use in dairy cattle but can be used in youngstock and heifers up until the second half of pregnancy.

Because there are limited flukicides licensed for use in dairy cows and concerns about triclabendazole resistance, this may be an opportunity to introduce an alternative active ingredient as part of a whole herd parasite control plan.

www.norbrook.com
Global carbon pollution is set to bounce back in 2021 to almost its pre-pandemic levels, scientists have warned as the Cop26 climate talks continue.

Carbon emissions from fossil fuels fell 5.4% in 2020 from a record high the previous year due to widespread Covid-19 lockdowns.

But they are expected to rise again by 4.9% to 36.4 billion tonnes this year, or about 0.8% below 2019 levels, the annual Global Carbon Budget analysis reveals.

Researchers analysing the figures expressed surprise that carbon emissions had rebounded so quickly, especially as parts of the global economy have not fully recovered.

The possibility of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C  beyond which the worst impacts of climate-related extreme weather, rising seas, and damage to crops and wildlife will be felt  was still alive, but required action now, they said.

Emissions from coal and gas are set to rise to above-2019 levels in 2021, but pollution from oil remains below its pre-pandemic levels, according to the team, which includes researchers from the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia (UEA), the CICERO Centre for International Climate Research and Stanford University.

The rapid rise could be a temporary sugar hit from stimulus packages that focused on industry, such as in China where emissions continued to rise during 2020, and drove an increased use of coal.

But a further rise in emissions in 2022 to new highs cannot be ruled out if road transport and aviation return to pre-pandemic levels and coal use does not drop back again after the over-correction of pandemic stimulus, they said.

What is Cop26? - COP stands for Conference of the Parties - It refers to annual meetings of the 197 countries who are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - The 26th COP is in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12 - COP26 aims to make progress on delivering the objective of the Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 2C above pre-industrial times, and to aim for 1.5C - Each country must submit its climate plans  called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) - The NDCs published in advance of the COP would result in warming of 2.7C - Ireland negotiates as part of the EU at COP meetings

Report's findings 'a reality check'

Professor Corinne Le Quere, from UEA, said the findings were a reality check on the need for rapid action by countries to deliver bigger greenhouse gas emissions cuts to keep the globally agreed 1.5C warming limit within reach.

The figures show that at current levels of emissions, the world has only 11 years left before it has used up the whole budget for the amount of carbon humans can pump into the atmosphere and still stay within the 1.5C limit.

And they show that the world has to cut carbon dioxide emissions by around 1.4 billion tonnes a year  compared with the 1.9 billion-tonne drop in pollution caused by the pandemic.

Prof Le Quere said the fall in emissions during the pandemic was not a structural shift, saying it is the difference between parking your car for a year and switching to an electric vehicle, and was never going to last.

While the latest figures were not fantastic, she said the 1.5C goal is still alive.

This decrease every year of 1.4 billion tonnes is a decrease that is very large indeed but it is feasible with concerted action.

She urged decision-makers and everyone focused on climate change not to be discouraged by the findings, but to tackle the issues one by one, first through commitments and then planning for the immediate implementation after that.

We do not yet see the full effect of the investments that were made during the pandemic and more importantly the climate policy and decisions that will be taken here in Glasgow, which could be a game-changer in the trajectory of the emissions in the next few years, she added.

Dr Glen Peters, from CICERO, added that there was a lot of ambition discussed at UN climate conferences, such as 2050 or 2030 targets.

But the big question is what are governments going to do today and next year to ensure emissions dont rise and will go down?

A key message is focus a little bit less on 2030 and really bring home what you are implementing today and changing today that will avoid emissions going up and making them peak in 2022.

The figures for some of the biggest emitters show that Chinas emissions are projected to rise 4% compared with 2020, up 5.5% on 2019 levels, to contribute 11.1 billion tonnes or 31% of global carbon emissions.

The US will see emissions rise by an estimated 7.6% this year compared with 2020, but will still be 3.7% below 2019 levels, while the EU will see emissions rise 7.6% compared with 2020, but will still be 4.1% below 2019.

The rest of the world as a whole still has carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels that are below 2019 levels, the analysis finds.

Over the past decade, annual global emissions overall from land-use change were 4.1 billion tonnes, with the amount being taken out of the atmosphere by forests and soils growing and emissions from deforestation and other issues remaining relatively stable.

This suggests a recent decline in overall emissions from changes to land use, though the figures are highly uncertain, the researchers said.
Boris Johnson reportedly flew out of the Cop26 climate summit on a private jet to attend a dinner with former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore.

The Daily Mirror says the British Prime Minister left the conference in Glasgow at 6.20pm and arrived at London Stansted at 7.16pm, before heading to the private men-only Garrick Club for a dinner for former Telegraph journalists.

The fashion of Mr Johnsons exit was criticised as staggering hypocrisy by Labour chair Anneliese Dodds, after the Mr Johnson opened the summit by imploring delegates to stop quilting the Earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2.

Ms Dodds said: This is staggering hypocrisy from the Prime Minister. After warning world leaders its one minute to midnight to prevent climate catastrophe, Boris Johnson clocked off from Cop26, jumped in his private jet and flew down to London for dinner at a gentlemans club with a self-confessed climate change sceptic.

It seems that when it comes to taking action to tackle the climate crisis, theres one rule for the Conservatives and another rule for the rest of the world.

A Downing St source said Mr Johnson had always been due to leave Glasgow on Tuesday evening, as the element of the summit involving world leaders drew to a close.

Mr Johnsons flight out of Glasgow was confirmed by his official spokesman on Monday.

Pressed on why Mr Johnson could not go by train for a journey within the UK, the spokesman said it was important he was able to travel round the country while facing significant time constraints.
Huntsville, TX (77320)

Today

Showers this morning then scattered thunderstorms developing during the afternoon hours. High 76F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Ithaca, NY (14850)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun this morning then becoming cloudy with periods of light rain this afternoon. High around 50F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low 37F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Australian teachers have gained digital skills and confidence after participating in Acaras Digital Technologies in focus project, a four-year program funded by the Australian government to help upskill educators and support them to teach Digital Technologies, a new subject.

The project has now been recognised to improve student engagement and achievement in some disadvantaged schools, but also has provided timely tech skills to teachers.

This has been invaluable for many schools and teachers who participated and then found themselves delivering remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, explains Acara CEO David de Carvalho. Teachers told us they strengthened their own digital skills and felt more able to confidently cope with students learning from home.

Rebecca Keough, a teacher from St Marys, a small Catholic primary school in Moruya, New South Wales, admits some staff were initially reluctant to engage but improved in ability and confidence.

Our focus was meeting teachers at their point of need. Some staff are willing to dive in and some are more reluctant, she reveals. A big win was that by the end of it, a lot of staff knew there are so many ways that you can engage with the Digital Technologies curriculum. Now teachers are asking questions and taking on challenges to improve their own practice. Weve grown a lot in that respect.

Our ICT capabilities have needed to really amp up due to COVID, and staff who had participated in the DTiF program were really empowered. It enabled staff to realise that if they need to learn something new, they can, she recalls.

Acara says more than 160 schools participated in the DTiF project, a part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda (Nisa).

There was a particular emphasis on regional and remote schools. 49% of the schools involved were from regional areas, 29% from remote or very remote regions, and 22% in metropolitan locations. The schools were from states and territories across Australia and all sectors.

The need for professional learning nationally was high and particularly so in disadvantaged schools where students often have limited access to digital devices at home, and so the schools role is critical, explains Acara senior manager curriculum Julie King.

Students showed increased engagement in learning computational thinking, design thinking, and problem solving. A lot of teachers told us they saw many students who might normally lack confidence in the classroom, really shine, and every school involved reported positive outcomes for student inclusion and achievement, King says.

Many First Nations Australian students also benefited from learning Digital Technologies through a focus on story, exploring their local language, learning on Country/Place and programming robotic devices, according to King.

The benefits were highlighted in a review by a team of academics at the Deakin University School of Education, which undertook a three-year close-up study of six participating schools, and in a report published by Acara.

A large range of Acara resources, including illustrations of practice, video content, vodcast tutorials, classroom ideas, lesson plans, and assessment tasks can now be accessed by all teachers via the DTiF website.
Holmesglen Institute collaborates with Canadian tech education institute Lighthouse Labs to launch two 12-week bootcamp programs in Web Development and Data Science to help those who want to transition into IT and Analytics with additional support on offer to find employment at the end of the program.

The courses will begin on February 2022.

Holmesglen Institute executive director of international education and enterprise solutions Andrew Williamson notes the alignment of the two was clear from the beginning.

Both institutions care greatly about student experience and personalised learning, being outcomes-obsessed and supporting students into employment in their field of study, Williamson stresses

The collaboration sees Holmesglen Institute and Lighthouse Labs to jointly offer complementary programs, in addition to Holmesglens expansive offerings, with the goal of helping Victorians reskill and move into new technology job roles.

There is a strong demand for technology workers in Victoria, and by offering these public programs, were looking to not only support the communities surrounding the schools, but also support the corporate and government community with reskilling and corporate training, Williamson explains.

Holmesglen Institute is a part of Australias public technical and further education (TAFE) sector and provides skills training for various pathways, including in construction, childcare, healthcare, business, accounting and hospitality.

Through the collaboration with Lighthouse Labs, Holmesglen Institute says, students will now be able to enter Australias tech ecosystem with all the digital and soft skills required for full-time employment.

The collaboration between Holmesglen Institute and Lighthouse Labs will provide students with all the tools and understanding they need to succeed in Australias rapidly changing job market, comments Lighthouse co-founder and CEO Jeremy Shaki.

He says Australia and Canada have similar technology ecosystems, and the partnership will contribute to Australias tech industry and digital economy.

Lighthouse Labs says it has trained and introduced over 40,000 students to the practice of coding and helped 4,000+ graduates begin new careers in web and data, with a 97% employment rate.

With the support of highly trained instructors and mentors who view coding and data as the ultimate craft, Lighthouse Labs graduates have gone on to work at companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Shopify, Salesforce, and Airbnb.

The collaboration was made possible with the support of Invest Victoria, the state government of Victorias (Australia) investment attraction agency, which fosters long term prosperity by enabling business opportunities and job creation and has identified the need for skilled digital workers to aid in economic growth.

Melbourne is the tech capital of Australia and this partnership between global company Lighthouse Labs and Holmesglen TAFE shows strong confidence in our industry, workforce and culture of innovation, concludes Victoria Minister for Economic Development Tim Pallas.

Applications are now open.

For more information, please visit the Web Development and Data Science course pages.
GUEST OPINION: In 2013, research saw the nurse practitioner ranked as the most recruited healthcare role for that year. While this was the first time that nurse practitioners got into the top twenty healthcare roles recruited for, the demand for these healthcare professionals has only grown since. Between 2010 and 2020, the nurse practitioner role was expected to see growth of around 30% - something that it has now exceeded. The growth of nurse practitioners in healthcare over the past ten years has been significantly higher than that of primary care physicians. So, what is behind the rising demand for nurse practitioners, and why do we need them?

Physician shortage

One of the main reasons why an increasing number of healthcare employers are looking to hire nurse practitioners is that it has become increasingly difficult to find primary care physicians. With fewer medical students deciding to focus on primary care, there are simply not enough doctors to go around. With their advanced training and education, nurse practitioners are the ideal alternative. They are professionals who are trained in many of the same things as a primary care physician including examining, diagnosing, and treating patients.

In twenty-two states, they have full practice authority, which allows nurse practitioners to carry out their work and prescribe medication to patients without a doctor to supervise or sign off their decisions. In these states, nurse practitioners can work independently or even start their own practice, which has made it easier for them to take roles that allow them to reduce the shortage of primary care professionals. If youre currently working as a nurse and are interested in this type of role, you can find nurse practitioner programs in Texas from Baylor University.

Aging population

A report conducted by the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMCO) in 2015 found that by 2025, the US population should have grown by around 10%. But within that growth, the demographic that is expected to see the biggest increase is the older generation. The number of seniors in the US is expected to grow by a massive 45%, while the number of people aged eighteen and under is only expected to see a 5% growth, in comparison. By 2035, there will be more older adults than children. Naturally, seniors tend to use healthcare services more than people in other age ranges. Coupled with a shortage of doctors, its clear to see that more older people in the population has led to a bigger demand for healthcare services, driving the demand for skilled professionals such as nurse practitioners.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) would be in place by 2017, providing more affordable health insurance to around twenty-six million Americans. In addition to making it easier and more accessible for citizens to access the care that they need, the Affordable Care Act also included some important investments in healthcare with the purpose of allowing the system to expand the role of nurse practitioners when it came to the delivery of patient care. So far, outpatient clinics that are managed by nurse practitioners have been one of the biggest investments, with millions of dollars spent. Because of this, the need to increase the number of nurse practitioners to ensure that the increasing demand for primary care continued to be met became even more urgent. Another investment made by the PPACA was in colleges and nursing schools to encourage more enrolment in nurse practitioner degree programs and training courses such as the MSN, which is the minimum requirement for a nurse to work as a nurse practitioner.

Retail health clinic growth

In the US, retail health clinics are becoming one of the most popular ways to get quick healthcare and advice. In 2007, there were only three hundred of these clinics in the country but by 2014, there were thousands opened, and today there are even more. Mini-clinics are probably something that by now, most of us are aware of  there might be one at your local store. They are often located in superstores, drugstores, and pharmacies to provide patients with an easy, convenient method of getting the medical attention that they need, when they need it. They are an ideal alternative to the ER, urgent care, or making an appointment with the doctors office for minor concerns, and allow patients to get advice and support from a trained professional while running errands or getting groceries. These clinics, run by brands such as MinuteClinic, tend to work exclusively with nurse practitioners who are hired to run the clinics and provide care.

Why nurses are choosing this career path

Along with the massive demand that is making it easier than ever for nurses to find fulfilling and rewarding work as a nurse practitioner, there are many reasons why this role is also becoming more popular among nurses. It is quickly becoming one of the top career options for nurses who want to progress, with many choosing it as it allows them to continue their nursing role that involves working directly with patients. Some nurses choose to become a nurse practitioner because they are interested in the full practice authority and want to take the opportunity to start their own clinic. Others get into the role so that they can be a better advocate for their patients and play a key role in improving healthcare policy and standards. Nurse practitioners are some of the loudest advocates for patient care today, with many consulting on a regular basis with policymakers due to their unique access to patients and extensive experience in a primary care role. Coupled with the high demand, the role of a nurse practitioner is also one with various specialty areas to consider, a generous average salary, and excellent job security and satisfaction.

The demand for nurse practitioners is steadily growing, and more nurses are deciding that this is the ideal career choice for them. Nurse practitioners are needed more than ever due to an ageing population, fewer primary care physicians, and the growth of healthcare clinics that work mainly with these professionals.
"We are so pleased to welcome Brian as the chairman of our board. Brian is well known in the industry for his track record of building high performing and highly engaged teams, as well as his passion for leadership development," said Reejig CEO and co-founder Siobhan Savage.

"His experience in leading some of Australia's largest and most complex organisations will be invaluable as we seek to deliver our vision of a world with zero wasted potential in people and businesses.

"His personal experience in creating workforce agility within a major corporation, coupled with his commitment to helping companies build diverse, highly engaged teams, will strengthen Reejig as we work to create a better future of work; one without bias, where everyone thrives at work."

Hartzer was previously managing director and CEO of Westpac, and is also chairman of fintech Beforepay, and a senior advisor to Quantium and Sayers Group.

Before joining Westpac he was CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland's UK retail operation, and spent ten years at ANZ, most recently as CEO.

Hartzer holds a BA in European history from Princeton University.

"The move towards organisational agility is here to stay. Many large companies are adopting agile strategies and putting in place agile team structures, processes, and technology. But to maximise outcomes, companies need new tools that help them find, move, reskill and engage their talent," said Hartzer.

"Reejig is a gamechanger for large organisations as they seek to solve workforce agility. It gives management and HR professionals 100% visibility of the skills within a workforce, and uses ethical AI to identify and support talent decisions that are both fair and successful."

He added "I was fortunate to have discovered Reejig's solution at an early stage and have been amazed by the quality of what they've built in a short period of time. I know from personal experience that Reejig solves an issue that so many large companies have historically struggled with. Siobhan and the Reejig leadership team are exceptional, and I couldn't be more excited to support them as they enter this period of rapid growth."
Cybersecurity company Virsec has announced four executive appointments to help lead the company through its next growth phase.

The four executives are

Emmi Nguy, Vice President of Finance & Operations

Marcelo Oliveira, Vice President of Product Management

Thomas Schaeffer, Vice President of People

Jason Stutt, Senior Vice President of North America Sales

"We are on a mission to make cyber-attacks irrelevant. Our ability to map what our customers' software is supposed to do and stop it from doing what it is not, due to ransomware attacks or other anomalies, is unrivaled," said Dave Furneaux, Chief Executive Officer of Virsec.

"Our mission combined with our innovative technology is attracting the top talents in the industry to Virsec. These experienced executives are very highly regarded in their areas of practice and will play a pivotal role in our success as we embark on our hyper-growth journey as a company."

Emmi Nguy pictured) has more than 20 years of experience leading all aspects of financial governance and financial operations. Prior to joining Virsec, she served as VP of Finance, Strategy and Planning at Vectra AI, where she was instrumental in growing and scaling the company to $1B+ in valuation.

Before Vectra AI, she held various finance management positions at global companies, including Juniper Networks and Johnson & Johnson.

Marcelo Oliveira is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in product management, product marketing, business development, and engineering, and has been working as a product management executive for over a decade across Cisco, Symantec, and, most recently, Contrast Security.

Thomas Schaeffer has several decades of experience leading people operations, helping scale six technology companies from startup through IPO and beyond. included Synopsys, StrataCom/Cisco, Juniper Networks, and, most recently, NIO.

Jason Stutt has been working in sales leadership roles for over 25 years and has significant experience scaling hyper-growth go-to-market organisations. Previously, he was Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Business Development for Armorblox and has held management positions at many leading cybersecurity companies, including Duo Security, which Cisco acquired for $2.35b
Another Windows ransomware group, BlackMatter, appears to have shut down operations, according to a message sent out by the people behind the group.

Formerly known as DarkSide, the group said in its message: "Due to certain unsolvable circumstances associated with pressure from the authorities (part of the team is no longer available, after the latest news) - the project is closed."

It added a few more lines with information about the email address to contact for decryptors.

Last month, BlackMatter was reported to have moved some of the cryptocurrency it had been paid to other addresses following the reported takedown of the REvil ransomware outfit.

It wasthat BlackMatter had prevented security company Emsisoft from offering a decryptor for files decrypted using the Windows version of the malware, by fixing a coding defect.

Emsisoft chief technology officer Fabian Wosar said following the leak of a BlackMatter ransom note on Twitter, the private link in that note had been used to hijack ransom negotiations, leading to BlackMatter

locking down access to its website on the dark web.

Several weeks later, an update released by the BlackMatter operators fixed the flaw that Wosar and his employees had been using to decrypt files.

Commenting on the disappearance of BlackMatter, Peter Mackenzie, director of incident response at global security outfit Sophos, said it was likely that the gang would re-appear again under a new name.

"The ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline in the US earlier this year resulted in the shutting down of DarkSide ransomware who had claimed responsibility, this resulted in DarkSide returning under the new name of BlackMatter shortly after," he said.

"While the name was different the core ransomware code was not, and it had the same weaknesses that allowed free decryptors to be produced. In October, a security company announced they had a decryptor for BlackMatter and had been secretly helping victims.

"Taking these factors into account it is likely this is yet another ransomware group pretending to shut down, when in reality it is just a rebrand and launch of a new improved version sometime soon in the future."

Analysts from the security shop Flashpoint also adopted a note of caution, warning that BlackMatters closure could see its affiliates spread to other ransomware groups, or starting their own, as has happened before.

"This announcement comes on the heels of a major Europol operation in Switzerland and Ukraine, conducted in concert with US law enforcement, in which 12 people accused of running ransomware operations were targeted in raids on 29 October," Flashpoint said. "The targets reportedly had more than 1800 victims in 71 countries.

Its important to note that when a ransomware collective goes dark  such as the apparent case here with BlackMatter, or with REvil  it doesnt necessarily mean that the threat actors associated with the group will cease future cyber crime activities.

"Flashpoint analysts have observed on numerous occasions affiliates of a defunct ransomware group quickly reorienting themselves in the threat actor community by associating with active ransomware groups, or by starting their own. Analysts also assess with moderate confidence, based on earlier experiences, that following the fall of BlackMatter (and potentially REvil), new ransomware collectives will be formed.

Flashpoint analysts have observed threat actors discussing the news of BlackMatters apparent demise. They have pointed out that they suspect that Russian authorities involved in the aforementioned diplomatic discussions are potentially making strategic concessions to the US on ransomware.

"Earlier threat actors on top-tier forums also noted that REvil was first forced offline shortly after these talks started in summer 2021.
A blog post published by the security firm Flashpoint on 22 October appears to have been the starting point for the claim that a supposedly new ransomware gang Groove was a hoax and one designed to make both security firms and the media look foolish.

Flashpoint said in the anonymous post: "On October 22, the Groove ransomware collective called on its 'business brothers' to 'stop competing, unite and begin to destroy the US public sector'.

"Shortly thereafter, the threat actor behind Groove Ransomware, whose alias is 'boriselcin' or 'Orange', released a statement in which they highlighted the 'hoax' behind the Groove ransomware: It was never about holding organisations ransom; it was a social engineering experiment."

This statement appears to have been fed to some media outlets, as iTWire can best judge. At least one among them, a site run by former Washington Post employee Brian Krebs, used a sizeable amount of information from the post, but did not acknowledge the source.

Flashpoint is a competitor to both McAfee and Intel471, both of which, as iTWire pointed out inon Wednesday, which acknowledged the fact that we also gave the Groove group some publicity.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Flashpoint post included a link to an earlier post headlined "REvil Continues Its Reemergence, Joins Groove-led RAMP Forum", about the re-appearance of the REvil ransomware group in July. That post actually gave some credibility to the claim that Groove was an actual ransomware gang.

REvil was allegedly attacked by a number of law enforcement groups and disappeared from the dark web in the third week of October. It had earlier disappeared in May but re-appeared in July.

Another site, Data Breaches, took something of a middle path about Groove, saying it was more likely that the group was reframed as a hoax, when its attempts at ransomware operations were not successful.

This "hypothesis seems a bit more plausible than it starting as a total hoax because neither Robinwood, TriValley, nor Hagerstown Police Department have actually refuted claims that they were compromised, have they?" the site, which is claimed to be run by a licensed health care professional, said, referring to three attacks that were claimed by Groove.

The most interesting part of the Data Breaches post was that the site had been given "evidence" to prove that Groove was a hoax. "But in one of the most bizarre stories concerning Groove, DataBreaches.net was given some alleged evidence that Groove were fraudsters," the post said.

"The 'evidence' was provided by someone who purported to be with a top-tier ransomware group. According to this person, when Groove wasnt paid by victims, Groove would pose as a well-known researcher and contact the victim to offer their services.

"I [the person behind Data Breaches] was told that a number of researchers were impersonated that way, with Groove using their names and directing email to a domain Groove allegedly controlled."

Surprisingly, neither Bleeping Computer, the site that led the way on Groove coverage, nor The Record, a site backed by CIA-funded threat intelligence firm Recorded Future which gave Groove oxygen through tweets, have made any mention of the fraud claims.
COMPANY NEWS: Entrust , a global leader in trusted identity, payments and data protection, today announced its expansion to the travel industry with its Seamless Travel Solution, a fully-digital travel service. This solution enables a touchless and seamless experience for travelers by minimizing contact points, while bringing simplicity and greater security for border control, immigration and travel service provider operations.

As travel restrictions and ever-changing policies continue to bring economic uncertainty, the travel and tourism industry is doing everything it can to increase safety and reduce friction for travellers.

Travel & Tourism is working hard to bounce back from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. WTTCs Safe & Seamless Traveler Journey is central both in aiding a swift recovery and defining a new normal for the industry, said Helena Bononi, Vice President Americas of the World Travel and Tourism Council. This important initiative enables mobility and increases safety and security, while always putting the passenger at the centre. Were encouraged by efforts from governments and industry to make this a reality. The new Entrust Seamless Travel Solution and all initiatives focusing on seamless travel are welcome additions to all current efforts.

This announcement closely follows the acquisition of WorldReach Software in April 2021, combining the identity and data protection portfolio of Entrust with the expertise from WorldReach in digital identity verification and onboarding. The new Entrust solution enables an integrated solution to facilitate citizen engagement, digital onboarding, adaptive credentialing and risk-based flow control to the travel continuum.

As citizens of the world begin to travel again, now is the perfect time to bring this solution to the market, said Gordon Wilson, Vice President Identity Verification at Entrust. We are confident that the Seamless Travel Solution will help launch the world into a new era of travel, allowing travellers to feel safer and experience less hassle, while also enabling operational efficiency to both border agencies and the entire travel industry through digital transformation.

Targeted at airlines, train operators, cruise lines, airports, border agencies, and other key operators in the global travel and tourism ecosystem, the Entrust Seamless Travel Solution is a significant step toward a travel experience in which the traveller no longer needs to present travel-related documents such as boarding passes and passports multiple times to a variety of stakeholders at different checkpoints in their journey. Rather, travellers opting in will experience less hassle due to the solutions implementation of contactless biometric corridors that employ facial recognition technology to confirm the travellers identity, removing friction from touchpoints.

TLScontact, a leading provider of visa and consular services for governments around the world, is incorporating the Entrust Seamless Travel Solution into its offering.

TLScontact brings seamless, secure and increasingly digital application processing experience to a wide range of visa and consular services on behalf of governments across the world. said Simon Peachey, Chief Sales Officer for TLScontact. Thats why were partnering with Entrust to incorporate their market-leading Seamless Travel solution into our offering. Entrust capabilities in remote identity verification and digital travel credentials offer significant value both to our government clients and the travelling public.

Gatekeeper Intelligent Security, a leader in inspection and recognition solutions at the border, integrates Entrust digital identity verification into its border recognition systems.

Gatekeeper leads the way in intelligent inspection and recognition solutions at the border. We are committed to developing innovative solutions that augment human ability to perform security functions rapidly and accurately, said Colin Brown, Vice President, Global Sales & Operations at Gatekeeper.

Were teaming with Entrust to take advantage of their best-in-class remote identity verification capability, enabling drivers and passengers to submit biometrically secured identity data before travel or en route. When coupled with Gatekeepers border recognition systems, the result is a world-leading, automated, drive-through border solution.

The Seamless Travel Solution follows all GDPR regulations, does not retain personally identifiable information and encrypts all data in transit and at rest for maximum user security. Each traveller using the service receives the option to store their Digital Travel Credential on their personal mobile device, but this is not required.

To learn more about Entrust and its Seamless Travel Solution, please visit
Cybersecurity risks in the retail industry suggests that the 2021 holiday shopping season will be further disrupted by cybercriminals looking to create chaos and take advantage of an unprecedented global supply chain crisis, according to one security firm.

The alert comes from cybersecurity company Imperva in its 12-month analysis on cybersecurity risks in the retail industry in its State of Security Within eCommerce report.

On the Australian cybersecurity landscape, Imperva says that last year cybersecurity incidents in the Australian retail sector peaked from September 2020 through to January 2021, coinciding with the key holiday shopping season - and retailers should expect the same to happen this year.

According to Imperva Research Labs, while incidents in Australia did drop in February, they have remained higher than 2020 levels - and to date, incidents are 12% higher this year compared to 2020 (comparing Jan-Sep 2020 to Jan-Sep 2021).

Increased levels of cybersecurity activity are a fundamental business risk for retailers. From website outages to online fraud, security incidents lead to loss of sales and unhappy customers, warns Imperva.

Given the widespread impact of the global supply chain crisis, the impact of a single cyber-attack on a retailer in Q4 could be devastating.

Any disruption will delay shipments and could keep physical and digital store shelves empty throughout the holiday season. The unprecedented situation has reached such a fever pitch that some retailers might find themselves out of business altogether.

Imperva highlights concerns about malicious bots, warning that online retail remains a prime target for automated bot activity in 2021.

Bots carry out an array of disruptive, and even malicious, activities on retail sites including: price and content scraping, scalping, denial of inventory and other types of online fraud, warns Imperva.

In 2021, the volume of monthly bot attacks on retail websites rose 13%, compared to the same months of the previous year. This underscores the growing threat retailers and consumers face from bad bot activity. Imperva Research Labs finds that a majority (57%) of attacks recorded on eCommerce websites this year were carried out by bots. In comparison, bad bots made up just 33% of the total attacks on websites in all other industries in 2021.

Imperva notes that Australia is a top target for bots attacks, placing 4th globally, and bots were the top type of security incident in Australia in the past 12 months. with the countrys bot presence significantly higher than the global average (80% compared to 57% globally).

One specific type of fraud, account takeover, is a risk for consumers who have login accounts that store their credit card or payment information on eCommerce sites. Compared to other industries, online retailers experienced a higher volume of account takeover logins (32.8%) in 2021, compared to the average logins (25.5%) across all other industries, warns Imperva.

More worrisome, the proportion of sophisticated bad bots on retail websites reached 23.4% in 2021. This breed of bot is the hardest to stop because theyre capable of producing mouse movements and clicks that closely resemble human behaviour. Sophisticated bots evade simple defences and are responsible for account takeover, fraud or denial of inventory that makes it harder for legitimate shoppers to get the goods they want.

In particular, Imperva Research Labs has monitored elevated levels of denial of inventory bot traffic around the time of pre-order and launch sales for popular gaming systems. Most recently, it was evidenced in the 88% rise in bad bot traffic to global retail sites days before the launch of the Nintendo Switch OLED.

Other key findings for Australian eCommerce from the Imperva report are:
Angelene Falk: The covert collection of this kind of sensitive information is unreasonably intrusive and unfair."

American facial recognition company Clearview AI has breached the privacy of Australians by scraping biometric information from the Internet and releasing it through a facial recognition tool, the information commissioner Angelene Falk says.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Falk, who is also the country's privacy commissioner, said this conclusion had been reached following a joint investigation between the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the UK Information Commissioners Office.

Falk said Clearview has breached the Australian Privacy Act 1988 by:

collecting Australians sensitive information without consent;

collecting personal information by unfair means;

not taking reasonable steps to notify individuals of the collection of personal information;

not taking reasonable steps to ensure that personal information it disclosed was accurate, having regard to the purpose of disclosure; and

not taking reasonable steps to implement practices, procedures and systems to ensure compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles.

The company was ordered to stop collecting data from Australians and to destroy any existing images and templates it had already collected.

The OAIC said Clearview AI had a database of more than three billion images trawled from social media and other sites, adding that there was "lack of transparency around Clearview AIs collection practices, the monetisation of individuals data for a purpose entirely outside reasonable expectations, and the risk of adversity to people whose images are included in their database".

Said Falk: "The covert collection of this kind of sensitive information is unreasonably intrusive and unfair.

It carries significant risk of harm to individuals, including vulnerable groups such as children and victims of crime, whose images can be searched on Clearview AIs database.

By its nature, this biometric identity information cannot be reissued or cancelled and may also be replicated and used for identity theft. Individuals featured in the database may also be at risk of mis-identification.

These practices fall well short of Australians expectations for the protection of their personal information.

The OAIC said Clearview had provided use of its technology to some police forces in Australia in 2019 and 2020 and it was checking to see whether the use of the technology had met requirements under the Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code to assess and mitigate privacy risks.

Clearview AI had argued that it had not been given personal information and as it was based in the US it did not have to conform to the Privacy Act. It also claimed that use of its technology had stopped before the OAIC investigation began.

But Falk batted away these arguments, saying she was satisfied the company had to comply with Australian privacy law and that the information it handled was personal information covered by the Privacy Act.

Clearview AIs activities in Australia involve the automated and repetitious collection of sensitive biometric information from Australians on a large scale, for profit. These transactions are fundamental to their commercial enterprise, she said.

The companys patent application also demonstrates the capability of the technology to be used for other purposes such as dating, retail, dispensing social benefits, and granting or denying access to a facility, venue or device.

This case reinforces the need to strengthen protections through the current review of the Privacy Act, including restricting or prohibiting practices such as data scraping personal information from online platforms.

It also raises questions about whether online platforms are doing enough to prevent and detect scraping of personal information.
Remi Galasso: " Hawaiki Nui has been designed to deliver direct connectivity through new subsea paths and provide optimal diversity."

New Zealand cable operator Hawaiki Submarine Cable has announced a new trans-Pacific cable system Hawaiki Nui, the first spatial division multiplexing cable linking south-east Asia, Australasia and North America.

In a statement, the company, which was acquired by the global maritime firm BW Group in July, said it has selected PT Mora Telematika Indonesia (Moratelindo) as its strategic partner for Indonesia.

Hawaiki owns and operates the Hawaiki Transpacific Cable which went into operation in July 2018, and spans 15,000km. It is claimed to be the fastest and largest capacity link between New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and mainland US, with a design capacity of 67Tbps.

Construction of the Hawaiki Nui cable system, which will span 22,000 km, is expected to begin next year and be completed in 2025.

The company said Hawaiki Nui would have a design capacity of 240 Tbps and connect Singapore, Sydney and Los Angeles. Landings are planned in Jakarta and Batam making the Nui the first cable to offer Indonesia triple connectivity to Singapore, Australia and the US.

Hawaiki Nui will link Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Darwin, while offering these cities direct access to Singapore and LA.

The new Hawaiki Nui submarine cable is in green, and the existing Hawaiki submarine cable is in white. Supplied

Coupled with the existing Hawaiki cable, Hawaiki Nui will significantly expand our subsea network and offer unparalleled connectivity and redundancy to customers operating in the Asia-Pacific region, said Hawaiki founder and executive chairman Remi Galasso.

An all-in-one submarine cable infrastructure with multiple international and domestic routes embedded in the same system, Hawaiki Nui has been designed to deliver direct connectivity through new subsea paths and provide optimal diversity.

Indonesia has become a strategic market in south-east Asia and we look forward to working closely with Moratelindo, which has demonstrated its unique ability to implement and operate subsea and terrestrial fibre networks in Indonesia over recent years.

Moratelindo president director Galumbang Menak said: We are pleased to co-operate with Hawaiki and participate in the development of the Hawaiki Nui cable project.

"This new submarine cable system will provide an alternative low latency route for international connectivity to and from Indonesia, and reduce the countrys dependence on existing connections going through Singapore.

Dr Ir. Ismail, director-general of Frequency Spectrum Management and IT Equipment Standard, Ministry of ICT Indonesia, said: Development of the Hawaiki Nui submarine cable project represents a welcomed initiative for Indonesias telecommunications as it will enable us to greatly improve our international connectivity.
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Staff Writer

Jonathan Roberts is a reporter and photographer for the Johnson City Press covering Jonesborough, healthcare and higher education. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and has been with the Press since 2019.
Carter Giglio, 8, joined by service dog Barney of Hero Dogs, shows off the bandaid over his injection site after being vaccinated, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, at Children's National Hospital in Washington. The U.S. enters a new phase Wednesday in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with shots now available to millions of elementary-age children in what health officials hailed as a major breakthrough after more than 18 months of illness, hospitalizations, deaths and disrupted education.
Betty Jean Pulley, 95, passed away November 4, 2021, at Windridge Nursing Home, Miami, Oklahoma. Betty was born September 7, 1926, at home in Riverton, Kansas, to Albert Petty Cutright and Alta Elizabeth (Newkirk). She graduated from Riverton High School Class of 1944, and attended Joplin Ju
Joe Hadsall is the digital editor for The Joplin Globe. He has been the editor of the former Nixa News-Enterprise and has worked for the Christian County Headliner News and 417 Magazine.

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Living Reporter and Theatre Critic

Tim covers leisure and arts, and he is also a theater critic. He interned for the JI in 2015, and was hired in 2016. Tim graduated from UConn, Central College of McPherson, Kansas, and American Musical & Dramatic Academy. His favorite movie is "Jaws."
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JUSTICEINFO.NET: Between the July 1994 military coup and 2000 you served in different senior positions in the Gambian justice system. You were deputy director of public prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary, before being the Attorney General and Minister of Justice for two years between 1998 and 2000. What was your experience serving a military regime that turned into a formally non-military dictatorship, led by the same Yahya Jammeh?

FATOU BENSOUDA: First and foremost I want to tell you something that is true to every technocrat who continued to work with the government when the coup detat came [in July 1994]. This was a time when all of us really thought we needed a change. The thirty-year rule was there and we didnt seem to have a vision of where we were going. Even though we all respected the then president Sir Dawda [Jawara], he was also surrounded by people who probably did not serve the interests of the country. So, in any given situation like that people want to see a change.

Just to clear the record, when the coup detat came I was already the deputy director of public prosecutions. I was the first occupant of that position. Of course [Jammehs coup] came as a surprise. But eventually we realized that this had really come to stay and we started to look at the positive side of it, that now there was a change. The rhetoric that the new government had was about transparency, accountability, using technocrats to be leading these ministries and not just politicians. We were happy with that and many of us decided to stay. And we worked.

And was there a moment when the feeling changed, where you thought that it was not going exactly how you hoped it would?

I must say it changed, perhaps rather quickly. One of the first things the government wanted to do was to create these commissions of inquiry [into the previous regimes alleged bad governance]. And in my desire to serve my country I was amongst the only Gambians who agreed to serve in the commissions of inquiry. I served in the commission that was dealing with parastatals. I was the leading counsel; the other leading counsels were from Ghana and other places.

Gambia is a small place, we know each other. It was a very difficult time for me to face people I grew up with and knew. What I decided to do was just to do my work with the aim of coming out with results. In fact, in that commission Mr. Faal was my deputy. [Essa Faal has been the Lead Counsel of Gambias Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) from late 2018 to September 2021 and is now a presidential candidate.]

And was there a moment where you thought something wrong was happening?

Yes. I have to say that after a little while I discovered that there were attempts to remove me or recommend that I be removed. I learned later on that some people thought I was not making any benefits from the commission.

You mean financial benefits?

Financial. I was not asking for money, I was not being corrupted, so they actually fabricated stories to remove me from the commission. This is when I knew things were different.

When you serve the government, you expect that after serving in a particular position for a few years you will be promoted to the next one.

But eventually you kept being promoted.

That is also something you are taking out of context. When you serve the government, you expect that after serving in a particular position for a few years you will be promoted to the next one.

Yes, but under Jammeh your career moved up pretty fast and you kept holding more senior positions that were as close as it gets to the political power.

Again, I have to explain the context. Its not that I was stagnant and that when Jammeh came I shot up. I was public prosecutor, then state counsel, then senior state counsel, then principal state counsel, then deputy director of public prosecutions. Then the coup happened. After the coup I occupied two more positions: Solicitor General and Attorney General.

And these are arguably the highest positions in the Ministry of Justice.

People who were under me had been promoted above me to Solicitor General and then to Attorney General, you have to take that. By the time I was promoted to Solicitor General I was in fact the most senior in line. The only person who was senior to me was the then acting registrar.

Because the others had fled?

No, because they were dismissed from office.

Was there any moment during those years where you were aware that serious human rights violations were committed in the Gambia?

No.

During that entire period, from 1994 to 2000?

Not on the scale that we know. At the time, especially as Solicitor General, I was not looking at criminal cases, that was not my responsibility  it was civil issues. I remember we had some serious cases like when the military dumped rice into the sea because they said it was some third-class rice. We went to court and in the end we had to admit that the government did it.

During the entire period you never heard about torture, disappearances, murders, illegal detentions, people dying in prisons? No. Absolutely not.

But during the entire period you never heard about torture, disappearances, murders, illegal detentions, people dying in prisons?

No. Absolutely not. But was it happening then?

Well, according to the Truth Commission, yes.

This is now that we know, I keep repeating that to you.

At the time, you say that you didnt know?

No.

Wasnt there any Amnesty International report?

Not that I am aware of, really.

Human rights organizations were not vocal about it?

I remember that at the time Human Rights Watch once or twice came to the Gambia. And then we went to visit the prisons. That I remember, because I was also concerned. And of course there was overcrowding in the prisons, but this was not new, it was there before Jammeh came. A lot of secrecy was going on and people were not talking.

We heard at the TRRC that other members of the judiciary decided to leave because they thought they could not serve that regime which was violating human rights. Why didnt you leave?

You have to see where I was at any given time. When I was deputy prosecutor, there was the demonstration in 1995 and people were arrested. I was given the file and I took the matter to court. When I saw I didnt have evidence to proceed, I went back to my superiors and recommended that this case should go away. And that was done.

As you know, two individuals charged in this 1995 case testified before the TRRC and claimed that they were tortured, beaten up, that they didnt have access to a lawyer  as it also transpires from media records at the time. The judge at the time acknowledged their suffering and the two victims say you didnt protect them.

This is wrong. This is completely wrong. This is being done to bring me to disrepute.

You didnt know about the abuse they suffered? I didnt know.

What is wrong: that it didnt happen or that you didnt know about the abuse they suffered?

I didnt know. I was not aware. What was I supposed to do? When there are allegations, there is a trial within the trial: its a legal process to verify whether what was said is true or not. And we went through that process.

Do you think that what they say happened to them is not the truth?

No, no, absolutely not! With all that we have heard happened, of course I cannot say that. I am not denying it at all. What I am saying is that I was not aware that this happened, I was not in cahoots with those who tortured them.

What about the long detentions, the absence of a lawyer, you didnt know?

I was not aware. I did this case. There is another case that I did in which I also requested for a no-leave to be entered [i.e. the case should be dropped] because I thought the file was empty. These things cannot be taken out of context today. We cannot use the circumstances of today and apply them to the time it was happening.

I received orders, I was assigned files and I went to court and I did it, like I always do.

Do you understand that the victims perceived it differently?

Well, what I can say for them now is that at the time this was not my only case, this was not my first case, I happened to be the deputy director of public prosecutions, I received orders, I was assigned files and I went to court and I did it, like I always do.

So you followed orders?

I followed the fact that I was requested to go and if at the time it became common knowledge that there was torturing going on, I [would] go back [to my superiors].

In your position as adviser to Jammeh at the time, you never had to advise him against bad laws and policies?

Like what? You have to look at the period. This was a coup detat and at the time all what Gambians would believe is what we heard from them [the military], because things happened in the barracks. They would say these people attacked us, we fought back and some people died. This was the story.

And you had no reason to question that?

I remember there was one time in the killing of one of the soldiers in which I told the Inspector General of Police and Minister of Interior that you needed to open a file and say exactly what happened with the killing of this man. These were my instructions. At that time I was the Attorney General.

Between 1994 and 2000 I have never seen any person who decided to leave because they did not like what the government was doing.

How do you explain that some of your colleagues decided to leave?

I am not aware of those colleagues in the judiciary who decided to leave. Between 1994 and 2000 I have never seen any person who decided to leave because they did not like what the government was doing. Please go back to the records and show me one person who was not sacked but decided to leave. Nobody left because at the time we were just in limbo.

So when did you become aware of the serious human rights violations committed under Jammehs rule?

I became aware when I was at the ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a UN court set up in Arusha, Tanzania]. So that was in 2002. Later on I heard about the killing of a journalist, I heard about many other things that were happening, but that was the first time I became aware that this was happening in the Gambia. If people are honest, they will tell you that if these things were done they were very discreet. Very, very discreet.

And what was your reaction when you heard about it?

Of course I lamented the situation. But I was no longer in a position to say or do anything. I was serving another institution and I did not think I needed to be seen as interfering with what was happening in my country.

Thats another question that people ask: why did you never say anything against the regime when everybody knew, by then, that it was a violent regime?

But where was I? I left and went to the ICTR. You need to ask yourself why Jammeh decided to sack me. I was sacked.

Why?

I dont want to go into that.

Why not?

According to him I was not doing what he wanted me to do.

Which was what?

I dont want to discuss that now. But this is why. When Jammeh sacked me he didnt believe I was working in his interests.

Do you understand that people criticize you because you never spoke out against the regime?

You have to take it in context. When would I speak out?

When you were asked, including back in 2016 when you were interviewed on TV by Tim Sebastian and you refused to answer.

Yes, because at the time I felt I had a responsibility to protect my family and those who depend on me. And I did know that at the time we were all very hopeless, in the sense that there was no protection offered to any victim of Yahya Jammeh. I did not want to expose my family.

Is there anything you wish to say today that you never said about this?

What happened is horrible. And I think its important to start documenting from when it started.

This was the government in place. If I wanted to continue to serve my people I served in that government. Thats why I stayed.

Do you also feel something personal when you reflect on having served that regime?

Again, I will come back to my own conviction which is that I served my people. This was the government in place. If I wanted to continue to serve my people I served in that government. Thats why I stayed.

I keep saying that if we knew what we know now, all that has been revealed, it would be a different thing.

Essa Faal said he didnt have to call you to testify before the TRRC because there wasnt anything against you. He also said: Everyone of us has contributed. Nobody said anything. And this encouraged the dictator. Do you agree with this?

Perhaps we should have said more but again, today it is easy to say that. There was a time when this man [Yahya Jammeh] had really instilled fear in everyone. We were running to serve that government because we said: here is a change. This is how we all started. And many of us today, many senior lawyers that are there, served that government. We thought we would make things better. Even when I served as Attorney General, I was one of the only people who would face Yahya Jammeh and tell him the truth. I think in the end he got fed up with that and thats why he sacked me.

A number of your former colleagues in the judiciary went to testify before the TRRC. Why didnt you?

First the position I occupied [as Prosecutor of the ICC] was not appropriate for me to go. Secondly I didnt have anything to say to the commission. I did not. All the accusations and distorted stories that they told [about me], the commission was wronged. Why should I volunteer and say it? They wronged me; I did not wrong them.

Well the victims were wronged too, dont you agree?

Not by me. When I saw that this case was not to be pursued I recommended it and we stopped this case. Thats what they should have said.

What I see is that there is a group of people who, for one reason or other want to discredit me as prosecutor of the ICC.

But you agree they were victims?

They were victims but not of ICC crimes. What I see is that there is a group of people who, for one reason or other want to discredit me as prosecutor of the ICC, and they have concocted a story and they have tried to make me aware of bad things that were happening and to give a dog a bad name and hang him. And its very unfair.

Given all the positions you held at that time, wasnt it legitimate that people wanted to hear from you?

No, I dont think so. There were many Ministers of Justice. They were targeting me because of my position as ICC prosecutor.

Do you have any regret from that time?

I will never regret serving my people. Because this is who I am. What I do regret is the fact that perhaps most of us genuinely believed  genuinely believed  that this regime had the interests of the Gambian people at heart, and that this regime was going to take us to a better place. Of course, after some time, we know that this was not the case.

Today how would you qualify the Jammeh regime?

Its a bad one. It is a bad regime. The first few years, the impression that was given was that theyve come to save the Gambia. It wasnt true and you see the bad things that they did kept on getting more serious over the years until it was really bad, in 2014-2016. It had got rotten to the core, I would not deny that. Rotten to the core.
An attack on Egyptian peacekeepers by the Central African Republics presidential guard could amount to a war crime, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday, calling for a swift investigation in the war-torn country.

Members of the guard fired on the newly deployed peacekeepers on Monday as they traveled in a bus in the capital Bangui, injuring 10 just two weeks ahead of the end of the UN missions mandate in the impoverished nation.

The secretary-general emphasizes that attacks against United Nations peacekeepers may constitute a war crime, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

He calls on the Central African authorities to spare no effort in investigating and promptly holding accountable the perpetrators of this unacceptable attack, Dujarric said.

The Egyptian police contingent was unarmed and traveling around 120 meters (yards) from the presidential residence in a bus marked UN at the time of the attack, according to the UN.

In its attempt to leave the area, the bus struck a woman who subsequently died.

Guterres expresses his deep condolences to the bereaved family of the Central African civilian who was killed during the incident, Dujarric said.

A spokesman for CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera said the UN bus had driven towards the presidential residence and finally complied with signals to turn back, but one passenger had taken photos of the building, which is strictly forbidden.

Members of the presidential guard had fired warning shots, some of which had wounded the passengers, the spokesman said.

Guterres strongly condemned the attack and wished a speedy and full recovery to the wounded peacekeepers and civilians, Dujarric said.

The secretary-general also reiterated his gratitude to the people and the government of Egypt for their contribution to peace and stability in the Central African Republic.

The second-poorest country in the world, according to UN figures, the CAR has been ravaged by a civil war since 2013, although the level of fighting has fallen off since 2018.

MINUSCA, whose mandate runs out on November 15, has nearly 12,000 troops in the former French colony, and is one of the UNs costliest operations, with an annual budget in excess of $1 billion.
Members of the Latin American Graduate Organization (LAGO) presented to the Student Senate on Oct. 27 to express their concern about the lack of institutional support of the Area Studies Center.

Silvia Sanchez, the Vice President of LAGO and a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology; Taylor Tappan, a LAGO member and a Ph.D. candidate for the department of geology and atmospheric science; and Daniel Bagheri, the LAGO treasurer and a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology presented to the Senate.

KUs Area Studies Center is a part of the universitys Global Awareness Program (GAP). It includes areas of study like the Center for East Asian Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS).

On Oct. 6 we learned that there was an initiative to move the masters program in Latin American Studies and the BA to Global and International Studies, Sanchez said. Were wondering what will happen to the Center for Latin American Studies if it runs out of programs.

The director for CLACS, Marta Caminero-Santangelo, resigned Oct. 12. Caminero-Santangelo cited financial constraints and lack of institutional support.

CLACS is an interdisciplinary place for conducting research. If the center runs out of institutional support, CLACS would run out of those research spaces.

The center offers a lot more than programs. Enrollment numbers cannot be one indicator by which their success is measured, Sanchez said. These spaces have been important for faculty and students of color.

CLACS has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education to be a designated Title VI National Resource Center in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and to provide Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships to students. If the university continues budget cuts, CLACS will most likely lose their Title VI funding, Bagheri said.

While it is unclear what would happen to those with grants and scholarships currently if CLACS were to lose institutional support, they would no longer be able to compete for those awards, Sanchez said.

Most of us have benefitted extensively from those grants, Sanchez said. Incoming students might not have those opportunities in the future.

Other Area Studies prone to discontinuation include German Studies and Slavic Eurasian and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. CLACS, however, is the only Area Study to have their director resign in light of the lack of funding and institutional support.

The institution and the Board of Regents think that the only thing valuable about education is the money that it produces, Graduate Student Senate Vice President Hollie Hall said. Versus the actual research that comes out of [the courses]. Theyre saying education should be monetary based and not value the education itself.

LAGO is working on a resolution that highlights what is happening with the Area Studies Center. LAGO has been working to author it and Sanchez encourages other student organizations to sign onto it as well.
The Overland Park Police Department offense report just came to light, but was filed by Principal David Ewers on Nov. 8 at 1 p.m., a couple of hours after hundreds of students walked out while holding signs saying things like, "Protect the victims, not the assailants," "It's not a joke," and
KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- An off-duty KCPD officer has received an award for capturing the woman who went on a crime spree, primarily in KCK, last week.

According to the KCPD, Sgt. Bobbie King has been with the Kansas City Police Department for 11 years. Now, she has received a Chief's Coin for capturing Alyssa Leanne Arreola.

Sgt. King was working off-duty at Alta Vista High School on Oct. 17 when there was a report of a suspicious person in the parking lot.

Sgt. King investigated and found Arreola sitting in the passenger seat of a Honda CR-V.

I knew the person that owned that vehicle and it wasnt her, King said. So, I knew something was about to happen, but I didnt know what.

When they made contact with each other, Arreola ran to the BP gas station at 1500 Paseo Boulevard.

Sgt. King chased after her and found her in the gas station's back office. She then tried to take her into custody, but a struggle ensued.

During that struggle, Arreola bit Sgt. King's right index finger. That caused nerve damage and multiple punctures.

Ultimately, with the help of a bystander, King was able to get her into handcuffs.

She bit my wrist first, then my finger, King stated. She tried to take off running again while still biting my finger, and he (the Good Samaritan) blocked the way so she couldnt get out.

When Sgt. King was chasing and capturing Arreola, she didn't know she was suspected of committed violent crimes earlier in the day -- including murder.

Im thankful no one else was injured, King said. Im glad I encountered her, and no one else did.

"We commend Sgt. King for her brave service to Kansas Citym," the KCPD said in a statement to the media. "The Chiefs Coin recognizes exemplary efforts and is a tradition continued by Chief Rick Smith when he became Chief in 2017."
Broadcast giant JTBC's newest melodrama, "IDOL: The Coup," unveiled its exclusive behind-the-scenes video featuring Cotton Candy's poster shoot.

Cotton Candy is a fictional girl group designed for the drama, which includes real-life idols EXID Hani, Cosmic Girls Exy, LABOUM Solbin, and more.

EXID Hani, Cosmic Girls Exy, LABOUM Solbin and More on New Roles in 'IDOL: The Coup'

JTBC's "IDOL: The Coup" unveiled its exclusive behind-the-scenes poster filming video.

"IDOL: The Coup" follows the stories of a six-year-old idol group who failed to reach their dreams, and are now waiting for a miracle before they finally let go of their unfulfilled dreams.

The fictional girl group consists of the leader, Je Na (EXID Hani), Hyun Ji (LABOUM Solbin), L (Cosmic Girls Exy), Stella (Han So Eun), and Chae Ah (Redsquare Green).

The newly released video begins with the members posing for their individual photoshoots. Later, Hani introduces herself as Je Na and describes her character as "someone who has a strong sense of responsibility."

She added, "She has a lot of love to give, and she strongly hopes for the genuine happiness of her Cotton Candy members."

Next, Solbin uses syllable poems to describe her character, Hyun Ji. She says, "There is no tomorrow. She drowns herself in alcohol and oftentimes gets in trouble. But she expresses her feelings really well, especially those close to her."

El is described by Exy as "a person with an intense determination who will never accept defeat despite numerous failures."

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: EXID Hani, Cosmic Girls Exy and Laboum Solbin Show Off Beauty and Talent in New JTBC Drama 'IDOL'

On the other hand, Han So Eun, who is playing Stella, said, "Stella is extremely soft and sensitive. Although she is the oldest member, she is indecisive. Emotionally, she's the weakest member, she doesn't know what she wants and what she wants to do, so she relies on Je Na a lot."

Finally, Green said, "Chae Ah is the youngest yet she is good at singing and dancing. However, she is always in the shadow of her pretty members."

After which, the girls start smiling for the camera together for their group photoshoot, filling the air with wide smiles and laughs.

Once they finish, the group takes photos of each other, like regular friends on the weekend.

EXID Hani, Cosmic Girls Exy, LABOUM Solbin and More on New Drama 'IDOL: The Coup'

The actors then talked about their new drama, with Hani sharing first, "I found the drama very interesting. To be honest, I cried a lot when I first read the script."

"It's a project close to my heart as I'm an idol myself," she continues, "I hope this drama warms everyone's hearts and gives them healing and comfort."

When asked about what kind of drama "IDOL: The Coup" is, she answered, "It is an opportunity for people to think about what exactly "failure" is and whether "failure" is actually that bad."

Solbin says, "It's a project where I can grow as an actress. I hope everyone feels the same way after watching it."

Exy, on the other hand, comments, "JTBC's "IDOL: The Coup" is my very first project and it's such an honor."

"I am very happy and working together with them [Hani, Solbin, Exy and more] gives me a different kind of excitement. The director is also gentle so I'm really enjoying filming," Han So Eun adds.

Finally, Green says, "It's a huge honor to work with my seniors. I'm very happy these days."

The girls of Cotton Candy ask viewers to look forward to seeing them portray their characters who are facing difficult paths and how they're able to overcome challenges.

Moreover, "Lovers of the Red Sky" star Kwak Si Yang and rising actor Kim Min Kyu are also part of the drama.

"IDOL: The Coup" is slated to premiere on November 8 at 11:00 p.m. KST on JTBC.

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KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
Lee Won Geun returns to the small screen as a prosecutor with his new drama "One the Woman" after his mandatory military service.

Once again, he's generating a lot of buzz and gaining a stronger fanbase with his amazing acting skills, unmatched visuals and undeniable chemistry with his co-star Lee Honey.

Now that he's older, it is the perfect time to settle down, marry and build a family. Read more to know whether the actor is in a relationship ready to marry now!

Lee Won Geun Dated Jung Eunji - Is It True?

Lee Won Geun, surprisingly, hadn't been involved in many dating rumors during his prime. He appeared in many dramas "Pure Love," "Secret Door," "Hyde Jekyll, Me" and more, but he wasn't reported to be dating his leading ladies despite showing great synergy with each of them.

However, his 2015 KBS romance comedy coming-of-age drama "Cheer Up!" (also known as "Sassy Go Go!"), alongside Apink Jung Eunji, Ji Soo and Chae Soo Bin sparked a lot of buzz.

Not only did it receive critical acclaim from fans worldwide, it also ignited a new flame. Due to the refreshing chemistry he had with his leading lady, Eunji, the two were involved in a dating rumor months after the drama concluded.

The two are commonly seen exchanging comments through their personal social networking accounts, even liking each other's photos.

Lee Won Geun and Jung Eunji never addressed the rumor, nor dropped hints to confirm it. Instead, the two continued to casually interact through their Instagram accounts, symbolizing their great friendship.

The two remained friends up until this writing, and the two actors can still be seen showing their support for each other and their new endeavors.

Lee Won Geun Relationship Status 2021: Is the Actor Dating Someone Today?

The "One the Woman" star admitted that after his military service, he felt himself hit his lowest. Although he feels healthy, the pandemic doesn't help in making him better.

Thankfully, he received the casting offer for the SBS romance comedy drama. He immediately took it without second guessing, and is now reaping the fruit of his own labor as the drama's viewership ratings skyrocket every episode.

According to the actor, he doesn't have any plans on getting married yet, let alone entering a new romantic relationship.

Jokingly, Lee Won Geun said he is, at the moment, content living with his two children, Dduddu and Choco.

The two cute dogs are his amazing companions these days, and the actor said that he would never trade the joy the two dogs give him.

Apart from his dogs and career, Lee Won Geun's current priority is his health as he wishes to be someone who matured yet oozing with positive energy.

On the other hand, Lee Won Won Geun, together with Lee Honey, Lee Sang Yoon and Jin Seo Yeon decorate the screen with "One the Woman". The much anticipated 15th episode of the drama is slated to air on November 5 on SBS TV at 10:00 p.m. KST.

Follow KDramaStars for more KMovie, KDrama, and celebrity updates!



KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
GRANTS PASS, Ore.  Heading into a City Council meeting on Wednesday night, Grants Pass officials were rapidly approaching the approval of an urban campground for the homeless, similar to the one established on Biddle Road in Medford.

As of around 9:20 p.m. Wednesday night, the City Council approved five to three in favor of a social services grant agreement with Allcare Community Foundation to build an urban campground.

NewsWatch 12 learned late Wednesday afternoon that 1750 SE N Street will most likely be the chosen site  a plot just south of the Rogue Valley Youth Correctional Facility across the railroad tracks, and next door to Umpqua Dairy Products. Across the street is a residential neighborhood.

During Wednesday night's meeting it emerged that the SE N Street plot was in fact what AllCare had chosen, but the City Council agreed that the price that lot is too high at this moment.

According to the City Attorney, the property's assessed value came in at $220,520 but the proposed purchasing price is valued at a million dollars. That figure was also backed by a realtor's opinion.

The City Council agreed that they would would like to have at least one to two more assessments done on the property before they agree to the price that was listed in the purchase agreement.

The Council is looking to make several other changes as well to the deal, including the covenant. At this time, the covenant gives most of the power to the City of Grants Pass to cancel their agreement with AllCare whenever they so choose. Several council member stated in tonight's meeting that they would like to make the deal more balanced before final approval.

The City Council also agreed in a vote five to three Wednesday night to notified residents and businesses, within 100 feet of wherever the campground is built, that a urban campground will be coming to their area when an official property is agreed upon.

Grants Pass officials had been working with the AllCare Community Foundation toward the urban campground concept, and it appeared to be rapidly nearing fruition just ahead of Wednesday's meeting, though it was not certain before 6 p.m. whether the matter would come to a vote.

Under the relatively nebulous Grants Pass plan, the City would grant roughly $1.2 million of American Rescue Plan funding to AllCare for purchase of the necessary property. AllCare would then own the property while Rogue Retreat operated the campground and on-site services.

"There's a compassionate need to serve that part of the population, and an urban campground with a nonprofit that is certainly competent in what they do can fulfill a small part of that need," said council member Joel King.

King said that Grants Pass is also somewhat unique in Oregon, and perhaps the nation, in that it is under a federal injunction after its loss in Blake v. City of Grants Pass, with the judgment allowing people to camp on city property due to a lack of local shelter options for the homeless  and the use of public property for camping is reducing quality of life for the Grants Pass population writ large.

RELATED: First transitional housing village comes to Josephine County

Establishing the urban campground will not alleviate the issue of people camping in city parks, King said, from a numbers standpoint alone. There are estimated to be hundreds of homeless people in the Grants Pass area  probably upwards of a thousand, according to filings in the 2018 Blake case.

"And the number since that time has increased dramatically," King said. "The urban campground, at most, will serve  for people willing to go  about 20-40 people at one time. And so you're looking at 4% of the homeless population being served by the urban campground, at a fairly large cost. That is somewhat troubling in terms of the economic viability of this approach."

Nonetheless, King admitted, it's been used successfully in places like Medford. About half of a campground's residents then go on to more stable housing, he said.

Council president Dwight Faszer agreed that the urban campground likely would do little to change the use of city parks for camping and doesn't necessarily mean that the City's obligations under Blake will be impacted. But moreso than King, Faszer sounded pessimistic about the utility of the idea.

"I don't think that, at this point, this is a solution to the issue," Faszer said. "I think that there are other ways that we can do it."

As of a few hours ahead of the Wednesday night meeting that could decide the issue, Faszer said that the City Council did not yet know where the campground would be placed, when it would happen, or how much it would cost the City to support.

"I think this is happening a little quickly," Faszer said, pointing to a survey that the City put out to Grants Pass residents asking how the American Rescue Plan funds should be spent, which has not yet furnished a result. "I would like to caveat that I am not unaware or unempathetic of the people in this community that need social services, and I do believe that the governing body plays an important role in providing those services. But we are merely a piece of the puzzle."
ROSEBURG, Ore.  A tow truck driver was struck and killed while working along I-5 southbound just north of Roseburg on Wednesday, according to Oregon State Police.

Around 10:50 p.m. on Wednesday night, a tow truck driver with Walt's Tow Company was working to recover a vehicle along I-5 southbound when the driver of a semi-truck "failed to move over for an emergency vehicle," OSP said, hitting the tow truck and the driver.

The tow truck driver, 63-year-old Henry Alan Lichtwald of Roseburg, died at the scene.

OSP said that the driver of the semi, 54-year-old Jagraj Singh Sidhu of Abbotsford, British Columbia, quickly pulled over and cooperated with the subsequent investigation. It was not immediately clear whether Sidhu would face citation or charges for the crash.

I-5 was closed for a little more than an hour, which was then restricted to one lane for several more hours. Bill's Towing recovered Lichtwald's damaged truck, while A&S Towing pulled away the damaged semi.
GRANTS PASS, Ore.  Josephine County Public Health announced Thursday that local parents can begin scheduling Covid-19 vaccine appointments for kids 5-11 now that the pediatric Pfizer vaccine has been endorsed for use in Oregon.

Public health officials said that Oregon will receive a small supply of pediatric vaccine this week, with a steady increase expected in the weeks to come. Josephine County received about 200 doses thanks to Yamhill County Public Health, and they are being distributed to local providers.

We are incredibly grateful to Yamhill County for sharing their initial doses so that we could start vaccinating this weekend, said Dr. Leona OKeefe, JCPH deputy health officer. Public Health, local providers and local pharmacies appreciate parents being patient as we wait on federal supply of vaccines to our county.

About 2,400 doses are scheduled to arrive in Josephine County early next week, which will free up availability for more appointments. Currently appointments are being scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

To schedule an appointment, you can call the countys vaccine call center at (541) 916-7030 or visit co.josephine.or.us/COVID19

In neighboring Jackson County, public health officials said that pediatric doses of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to arrive late this week and early next week, though there was no indication about when appointments will be available or how many doses.

Jackson County Public Health underlined that the Covid-19 vaccine was found to be 90.7% effective in preventing infection in kids 5 through 11, with a dosage one-third the strength of those for people 12 and older.

Recorded side effects are the same as for adolescents and adults: generally injection site pain, tiredness, headache, and muscle pain. Rare side effects such as myocarditis were not seen in the trials leading to authorization and are expected to be rare, as they are in older age groups.

It is completely normal and ok for parents and caregivers to have questions about vaccines for their children. Parents and caregivers are trying to keep their kids safe, said Tanya Phillips, Health Promotion Manager for Jackson County Public Health.

Parents and caregivers are encouraged to reach out to their medical provider, pediatrician, or pharmacist if they have questions about the COVID-19 vaccine for their kids.
The name of Arnold Henry Parnell Errington, a farmer from South-East Kelowna, is etched on the side of this imposing memorial in Ypres, Belgium, to 11,386 First World War soldiers who have no known graves. Errington's name is also on one of 227 crosses now set up in Kelowna's City Park to commemorate the city's war dead.
Conservative MP James Bezan rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, June 10, 2021.The Conservative opposition is calling on Liberal government to give money to Kabul safe houses that are providing refuge to 1,700 Afghan interpreters and their families. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
BURLINGTON  The Burlington Haylofters community theater group, which bills itself as "one of Wisconsin's oldest community theaters," is performing "A Good old Fashioned Redneck Country Christmas" in the historic Malt House Theater, 109 N. Main St., Burlington.

Performances are Friday-Sunday, Dec. 3-5 and 10-12. Shows are 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.

Pamela Schroeder is directing the musical, which was written by Kris Bauske.

The comedy asks the question: What if the three wise men werent really all that wise? What if they were just three ordinary guys, avoiding conflicts at home, who happened upon the greatest story ever told?

The story is set in modern day America, and the "wise men" are Bill, Dave and Jimmy.

Even though its Christmas Eve, and tradition dictates they should be home, drinking hot cocoa and singing carols, the men decide to high-tail it into the mountains for a little hunting and a lot of beer.

Back in town, the three women they left behind are not happy. Lou runs Lous Diner. She and Bill and have been trying (unsuccessfully) to have a baby. Barbie Jo, Lous head waitress, is married to Dave, and they have kids, but Daves not interested in family this year. Darlene, the most beautiful girl in three counties, is dating Jimmy, but while shes ready to settle down, Jimmy cant stand the idea of commitment.

Its gonna take a Christmas miracle to get these redneck families back together.

Tickets will be available at a later date online at thehaylofters.com.

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Videos of the shootings that led to the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse were online essentially from the moment the shots were fired.

On Wednesday, with a Kenosha Police detective on the stand, prosecutors played more than a dozen videos that showed the shootings and their aftermath for a jury. The sounds of panicked people at the scene rang out in the courtroom as the videos played on two large monitors for the jury, with two more on the prosecution and defense tables.

Rittenhouse, 18, watched as well from his seat at the defense table, sometimes looking down at the desk.

Seventeen at the time of the shooting, Rittenhouse, shot three men the night of Aug. 25, 2020, during rioting and civil unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha Police officer on Aug. 23, killing Anthony Huber of Silver Lake and Joseph Rosenbaum of Kenosha and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz of West Allis.

Rittenhouse faces two homicide counts and one count of attempted homicide, along with charges of reckless endangering safety and illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18, but he's pleaded not guilty. Rittenhouse and his attorneys claim he acted in self defense in a trial that's become a political lightning rod around the country.

Oh (expletive), oh (expletive), people are getting shot all around us, people are getting shot, you guys, one of the people filming shouted as gunfire rang on on the screen at Kenosha County Courthouse on Wednesday.

Kenosha Police Detective Martin Howard testified that he and fellow detective Ben Antaramian were assigned to investigate the shootings at about 12:30 a.m., about a half-hour after the shooting occurred on Aug. 25, 2020. Howard testified that he began looking for video and found it on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, taken by journalists and people on the scene before, during and after the shootings.

Howard said the detectives also received information about an hour later that Rittenhouse had turned himself in to the Antioch, Ill., police station.

Video evidence has become more and more common in criminal trials because of both social media and the increasing use of business and home security cameras. Because of the high number of journalists and live streamers on the street during the unrest in Kenosha following the shooting of Blake, there are dozens of videos of the hours before the shootings by Rittenhouse, including interviews with Rittenhouse just hours before the shootings.

There is also video of an agitated Rosenbaum arguing with armed men at a car lot, video of Rittenhouse running toward the Car Source lot on Sheridan Road and 63rd Street where the shooting occurred and video of the shootings that followed.

Scene plays out in court

In court Wednesday, jurors watched intently as panicked bystanders were shown on video attempting to treat Rosenbaums wounds after he was shot, carrying him to an SUV to bring him to a hospital. Another video showed people trying to tie a tourniquet around Grosskreutzs arm.

Howard testified that Rittenhouse fired his AR-15 eight times that night, saying his first four shots all hit Rosenbaum, those shots fired 1.5 seconds after another man, Joshua Ziminski, fired a gunshot into the air nearby.

Howard said Rittenhouse fired his fifth and sixth shots at a man who jumped at him, apparently trying to kick him, after Rittenhouse had fallen to the ground while running away from the scene of the Rosenbaum shooting. Rittenhouse them fired his seventh shot at Huber, striking him in the chest and killing him, after Huber hit him with a skateboard and attempted to grab his gun.

The eighth shot hit Grosskreutz in the arm.

Rittenhouse has maintained since the shootings that he was acting in self defense. His attorneys have argued at trial that Rosenbaum was attacking him and trying to steal Rittenhouses gun, and that when Rittenhouse shot the other men, he was protecting himself from a mob.

In his cross examination of Howard, defense attorney Mark Richards asked the detective about one of the videos showing the moments before the Rosenbaum shooting. In the video, someone can be heard yelling, Friendly, friendly, friendly, which Richards said is Rittenhouse.

Howard said the video shows Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse.

It appears Mr. Rosenbaum is gradually gaining ground on Mr. Rittenhouse, Howard said.

Richards said Rittenhouse turns around and shows his AR-15.

That didnt dissuade Mr. Rosenbaum, he continued to attack my client, correct? Richards asks.

Correct, Howard said.

Rittenhouses defense must convince the jury that Rittenhouse reasonably believed that he was in danger of death or great bodily harm at the time he shot the three men. Rosenbaum and Huber were unarmed, although Richards has characterized the skateboard Huber struck Rittenhouse with as a weapon.

Howard said during his questioning by the prosecution that he checked Rittenhouse for injuries when he spoke to him at the Antioch Police Department. He said he had small scratches, a small cut inside his lip and two dime-sized bumps on his head.

During the trial Wednesday, as attorneys argued over evidence being admitted when jurors were out of the room, Judge Bruce Schroeder spoke about the impact of the case, which has become highly politicized outside the courtroom.

It is important for this town, it is important for this country, that people have confidence in the outcome of this trial, no matter what it is, Schroeder said.

Because of the case's high profile, there are 20 jurors seated for the trial rather than the typical 14, to make sure the case will not be disrupted if individual jurors are excused or removed. When all of the evidence is presented and before deliberations begin, the court will randomly choose alternates to narrow the jury to those 12 who will decide the case.

As court was ending for the day Wednesday, after the jury had left the room, Binger asked on the record that Juror 7 be removed for cause because of a joke the juror told a deputy the previous day. Schroeder said the issue would be taken up when everyone returns to court Thursday. Binger did not explain what the juror said to the deputy.

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News

Commonwealth, defense rests their cases in HPD Lt. Alexander perjury trial

The jury trial against retired Hopkinsville Police Officer Jefferson Alexander, who is charged with first-degree perjury, is close to finishing after both the commonwealth and defense rested their cases Wednesday afternoon.

Alexander is accused of providing false or misleading testimony during a Grand Jury hearing that led to the indictment of Ann Cherry in 2012.

The Grand Jury indicted Alexander on his perjury charge in March, 2019 following an FBI investigation into the 2012 case.

According to New Era archives, the Christian County Commonwealths Attorney at the time in 2012, Lynn Pryor, questioned Alexander as a witness before the grand jury in August of 2012, and while sworn under oath, Alexander allegedly provided false or misleading testimony, that led Cherry to being charged with tampering with a witness, tampering with public records and second-degree official misconduct.

The Hopkinsville Police Department alleged that Cherry had hindered HPDs investigation of the Southside Prowler case, which involved a man who committed a string of burglaries and sexually-related crimes.

HPD additionally stated that she used her status as a council member to obtain information and then subsequently hindered its investigation. HPD also made accusations that Cherry had convinced a victim in the prowler case to change her description of the prowler from a white male to a black male.

The commonwealth rested its case Wednesday afternoon after reading a transcript of one of the main victims in the prowler case, of her testimony during a civil case involving Cherry and HPD.

That victim denied that Cherry convinced her to change her description of the prowler from a white male to a black male and stated that she believed at the time that the suspect could have been either black or white.

The victim also stated that she believed Cherry was not intentionally interfering with the investigation, but that she felt Cherrys intent was only to help her and her neighborhood feel safe again by helping get the prowler apprehended.

The commonwealths final witness in their presentation was former HPD Senior Detective Cuch Inman, who testified that his main role in the investigation was simply to review the surveillance footage of the prowler in the case.

He told the jury that when he first viewed the footage, he had also believed the prowler could have been black. He additionally acknowledged that the footage was of poor quality, being that it was only in black and white and was quite grainy.

During his cross-examination by Alexanders defense team, Inman admitted to the jury that he and Cherry had helped each other in political campaigns.

He also denied ever seeing Alexander do anything that would lack integrity and denied ever having known Alexander to lie.

After the commonwealth rested, Alexanders defense attorney Eric Eaton made a motion for Judge John Atkins to direct the verdict, more specifically, give a not guilty verdict in lieu of the jury deliberating on Alexanders guilt.

Eaton argued that the commonwealth did not present enough evidence to show that Alexander did in fact intend to commit perjury or intentionally mislead the jury during the grand jury presentation against Cherry.

This week, yesterday, today and the day before, I believe the commonwealth has been woefully deficient in proving what Alexander intended to say and what Alexander believed to be testifying to, Eaton said to the judge.

Eaton presented several case laws that pertained to perjury and what cannot be used in a trial to prove perjury.

Those laws included using questions asked to a defendant that can be interpreted in more than one way, the answer following that question could not be used to prove perjury as the defendant could have interpreted it in a way that made them believe their answer was correct and not false.

Eaton reiterated to Atkins that FBI Special Agent Sean Miller admitted in Tuesdays portion of the trial that the first question Alexander was asked and is alleged to have committed perjury to could have been interpreted in multiple ways and that it was possible that the way Miller interpreted it, could have been different than the wa Alexander did.

Eaton also referred to case law that stated compound questions that elicit a one-word response are considered to be fundamentally ambiguous and could also not be used to convict a defendant on perjury based on that answer given.

Eaton referred again to the questions Alexander was asked and reiterated that they were compound and confusing questions, just as the case law he spoke of referred to.

Eaton continued to bring in additional case law that outlined the use of ambiguous pronouns could also not constitute perjury. He read case law showing that ambiguous or confusing use of pronouns like she, her, he and him in questions prevent courts from using that question and the following answer as a basis for a perjury charge.

Eaton referred to a question asked of Alexander where the prosecuting attorney in the grand jury presentation referred to two separate women in a question as only she and her and never used specific names. He argued that the question could also not be used to charge Alexander with perjury.

I will submit to you, Your Honor, if there was ever a case that required a directed verdict, its this one, Eaton said to Atkins.

So, if youre not going to throw the whole case out, I would suggest seriously considering whether or not one of these three questions or two of these three questions, if not all three of these questions were failed to be demonstrated with more than a mere scintilla of evidence to the jury to take back there.

Special Prosecutor Jim Lesousky argued against the motion stating that Alexander never expressed any confusion when answering the questions he was asked during the grand jury presentation and answered them with confidence.

He also contended that Alexander had ample opportunity during the questioning as well as when the indictment against him was released to address his confusion and clarify what he meant in the grand jury presentation.

If the defendant was confused about who he, she or you were, had the opportunity when the bill of particulars (explanation of the indictment) came out to realize all that testimony at grand jury that he made (was not clear)  theres no evidence of any confusion on his part both in his response and more particularly in his later testimony and in his conduct as they were leading up to the trial, Lesousky said to Atkins.

Lesousky continued to argue that a jury could draw reasonable conclusions with the evidence provided regarding Alexanders guilt and that enough evidence had been provided to show that Alexander had committed perjury.

These are all matters from which reasonable jurors could draw inferences using their common sense and determine what the questions were about, look at the statements and conduct of Jefferson Alexander to include that there were more than sufficient evidence to consider whether or not he committed perjury, Lesousky said before asking Atkins to deny the motion.

Ultimately, after hearing both arguments, Atkins chose to deny the motion at that time, but stated that he wanted to revisit the motion after the defense had finished presenting its case.

Im going to reserve making a rule on it until Ive heard all of the evidence and we will have a hearing similar to this one at the conclusion of all of the evidence, so for now, its formally denied but subject to be renewed without any sacrifice being made by the defense by making the motion now, Atkins said.

I am going to deny it at this point, but I do want to revisit this just as thoroughly as we have just now.

Following that decision, the defense presented its case to the jury after calling just two witnesses: Army Mjr. Darrell Murton and former Christian County Commonwealths Attorney, at the time of Cherrys charges, Lynn Pryor.

Murton testified to being Alexanders supervisor in the Army Reserves and shared that he believed Alexander to be truthful to a fault, had high integrity and was very professional. He continued to testify that that sentiment was shared by his entire battalion.

Pryor testified recalling her involvement in both the prowler case as well as the case against Cherry before admitting to the jury that she asked bad, compound, convoluted and confusing questions to Alexander during the grand jury presentation.

Ten years later when looking at that transcript, would you describe that question as a good question from a lawyer practice standpoint, Eaton asked Pryor.

Probably not, she said, adding that she asked several questions in one and Alexander was only able to answer in one word.

Pryor admitted that her questioning of Alexander at the time was not her best prosecutorial work and acknowledged that it was possible that Alexander or any other witness testifying would have been confused by her compound questions as well as her unclear use of pronouns.

The trial is set to continue Thursday at 8:30 a.m. with the revisiting of the defenses motion for a directed verdict.
Hopkinsville, KY (42240)

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Ketchikan, AK (99901)

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ROSEBURG, Ore.  A tow truck driver is dead after being struck while recovering a vehicle on Interstate 5 on Wednesday.

Oregon State Police said it happened just before 11 p.m. at milepost 126 in the Roseburg area.

Walts Tow Company employee Henry Alan Lichtwald, 63, of Roseburg died at the scene after being hit by a commercial motor vehicle headed south. Police said the driver, 54-year-old Jagraj Singh Sidhu of Canada, failed to move over to make room for the tow truck.

Sidhu reportedly immediately pulled over after hitting the truck and Lichtwald and cooperated with the investigation.

I-5 was closed for more than an hour and was later restricted to one lane for several more hours as officials worked to clear the vehicles.

The Oregon Department of Transportation, Douglas County Sheriffs Office, Roseburg Police Department, and Roseburg Fire and Fire District 2 assisted state police.

Police said the investigation is ongoing.
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A special event took place in Kilkenny on Friday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Young Irish Film Makers.

Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Roderic OGorman attended the event, where he lauded the efforts of all involved.

The group started out as a local youth club with cameras in 1991 in the heart of Kilkenny. It has now grown to become a national centre of excellence for young people interested in filmmaking and animation. Founder of YIFM, Mike Kelly (creative firector) and Angela Walsh (operations) helped so many young people over the decades who have gone on to do amazing things on screen and stage.

Mayor Andrew McGuinness said that what the YIFM has done for young people in Kilkenny is nothing short of exceptional. He paid special tribute to a member, the late Ross Costigan, and to founder Mike Kelly.

I read an old Kilkenny People article this morning from 2016 where Mike described his younger self as lazy, a bit of a dreamer and a rebel who was very proud of the fact that he came from The Butts, he said.

That rebel from The Butts was never lazy and the dream that he had, became a reality that has facilitated young people in making their dreams a reality since its incarnation as the Kilkenny Childrens Film Project in 1991. I know Mike had an amazing team with him from the start who all deserve great credit but I think its very important to remember where the dream began.

Mike, as Mayor, I want to thank you and everyone who helped you along the way, for making such a positive difference in the lives of so many people in Kilkenny through your work at YIFM.

Young Irish Film Makers are a national organisation responsible for training and supporting generations of young filmmakers and animators both locally in Kilkenny and across the country through several creative programmes.

Over the past 30 years, YIFM has worked with thousands of young people making films and become such an important part of Kilkennys creative heritage, as well as a key player in the national youth arts landscape.
The Government's Climate Action Plan is set to be published today, which will outline ambitious plans to reduce carbon emissions.

Under the plans, there will be a target for car travel to be cut by at least 500,000 journeys a day by 2030.

A new electricity generation scheme is also expected, which will allow farmers, businesses and communities sell renewable energy back to the national grid.

This scheme could be ready as early as next year and will allow people to make money on energy generated from solar panels on barns, warehouse roofs and sheds.

The Climate Action Plan which is due to be published today, will outline a range of measures aimed at encouraging people to use greener modes of transport and will encourage people to walk, cycle or use public transport.

The Cabinet sub-committee on Environment and Climate Change signed off on the plan yesterday. It will be brought to Cabinet by Minister Eamon Ryan today.

The three coalition leaders are expected to officially unveil the document later today.

The Government will be setting a number of targets for industries including a 22-30% reduction in carbon emissions for the agricultural sector and a 44-56% reduction for the housing industry. In addition, the business sector will have to reduce emissions by between 29-41%.

Speaking at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this week, Taoiseach Micheal Martin repeated Irelands pledge to cut emissions by 51%. This will reduce emissions to 2018 levels by 2030 with the aim of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
MASON CITY, Iowa - She's not only a state Senator, but also the executive director of the Community Kitchen of North Iowa. After 25 years, Amanda Ragan is retiring from the position.

Ragan joined the kitchen in 1996, around the time they moved into their current space on Monroe Avenue. Over the last 25 years, she's seen the kitchen grow, through expansion of the space, the increasing number of volunteers, and the people who are looking for their next meal. She says the kitchen's success would not be possible without strong community support.

"They see there's a need and that we continue to serve that need. It's such a basic part of life to have food and good nutrition, whether it's through Meals on Wheels or the Community Kitchen."

Ragan says she will miss the people the most.

"Volunteers wouldn't continue to come back and people wouldn't continue to support it financially if they didn't realize all the good work the people do here. This is a job I'll truly miss and loved doing it."

Ragan's last day will be December 31. As to what she plans to do in retirement, Ragan is not sure yet, but intends on spending more time with family and continue her legislative work in Des Moines.
Minnetonka and Bloomington joined St. Paul, St. Louis Park and Minneapolis in implementing ranked-choice voting during the 2021 election.

Ranked-choice voting is currently adopted in 15 states, however, only nine states have implemented the voting system, according to Ballotpedia.

Almost the entire United States rewards a winner based on the most percentage of votes but not the majority.

Ranked-choice voting gives voters the option to rank their candidates based on preference.

So, if a ballot has five candidates running for a single office, then a voter can rank their candidates based on preference by one, two, three and so on.

If a single candidate does not receive at least 51% of the vote during the first round of tabulations, then a second round commences.

The second round eliminates the candidate with the lowest number of votes, reallocating a second preference vote to that given candidate.

This could result in multiple rounds of vote tabulations, or whenever a candidate has at least 51% of the vote.

Currently in Minnesota, only municipalities can use ranked-choice voting, with state and federal elections prohibited from using the method, according to Ballotpedia.

However, that could change in the near future if the Minnesota Legislature decides to take up House File 89, which aims to authorize ranked-choice voting for the entire state.

Rochester State Representative Liz Boldon is a co-author on the bill and said it could come up in the next legislative session.

"The status of the bill is that it was introduced in the last session. I do not believe it had a hearing, per my recollection, so it is still alive, so to speak, as we go into session next year," Boldon said.

Boldon said she believes ranked-choice voting allows voters to choose who they actually want, instead of worrying about who has the best chance for office.

"It allows for people to vote for who they really want to vote for. They do not have to worry about if a candidate is electable or if my vote is going to be wasted and you can sort of vote from your heart and if your first choice candidate does not rise to the top, then it is sort of like that instant run off voting," Boldon said.

In Rochester, Boldon said she has heard from multiple residents that want to see the voting system implemented.

Olmsted County's Election Team said the City can implement ranked-choice voting.

Below is a sample ranked-choice voting ballot from the City of Minneapolis's website:
ROCHESTER, Minn. - As the dust settles from Election Night in Minneapolis, questions remain about how to best handle policing moving forward.

Last night, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have removed the city's police department and replaced it with a Department of Public Safety overseen by the Minneapolis City Council. The measure, however, did not pass, with 56% of voters rejecting the proposal.

Down the road in Rochester, police and community members are striving to make law enforcement work for everyone. Some residents, though, feel local law enforcement is already doing just fine.

"They do a good job," said Rochester resident Brian Whitcomb. "You know, not a lot happens here, but when it does, they're right on cue."

RPD itself, however, says it's undertaking a number of measures to improve transparency, officer training, and relationships with community members. One of the organizations they're working with - Rochester's Community Engagement Response Team (CERT), which they credit with helping lower crime rates downtown.

"We can get into some of the nooks and crannies that normally wouldn't be gotten into. You know, we can try to explain some things out to the community, we can also explain things out to the police department," said Joseph Phillips, owner of Jersey Jo's.

Phillips is a member of CERT, working to bridge the divide between police and community members.

"The police department faces an uphill battle, because for decades, they've gotten a bad name because of, I think, lack of efficient policies, or lack of following policies through to their extent, to the point that people have serious mistrust. And I think that is both minority and non-minority groups," Phillips told KIMT.

Jo says change is never easy, and while the Minneapolis ballot measure would have been a big one, he's not sure it was a change people were ready for.

"The way our society exists right now, the police and the presence of police has a function. To just remove them out of the equation would be almost anarchy." Phillips continued, "now, in saying that, I'm not saying that there are not better methods that need to be pursued."

But one thing we can always do is talk, something Phillips maintains has been key to CERT stopping situations from getting out of hand.

"It's the biggest thing, you hear me keep saying that because dialogue, the conversation, it is absolutely the most important thing that we have."

Phillips adds officers are all individuals, but he believes RPD is generally made up of some very good and open-minded ones who have a job to do in difficult situations. RPD Chief Jim Franklin told the Rochester City Council earlier this year his department is committed to continuous improvement, and won't shy away from difficult conversations.
DOWS, Iowa - Authorities in northern Iowa are trying to learn more about the death of a man that is being classified as a homicide.

The Iowa DCI said Wright County Communications received a call on Tuesday for a death at 305 Park Ave.

An unresponsive male, later identified as Mario Lopez, was located. His body was sent for an autopsy and is now being listed as a homicide.

"If you have information related to this incident, know anything about Mario Lopez, or have had contact with him, please contact the Wright County Sheriffs Office at 515-532-3722," the DCI said.
DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said Thursday that President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate rule is pitting "Americans against Americans."

Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements, which were first previewed by President Biden in September, will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

President Biden is taking dangerous and unprecedented steps to insert the federal government even further into our lives while dismissing the ability of Iowans and Americans to make health care decisions for themselves," Reynolds said.

Bidens plan pits Americans against Americans, while forcing them to choose between making a living or standing up for their personal beliefs. Bidens actions will only worsen the existing workforce shortages and supply chain issues that hinder our economic recovery. I believe the vaccine is the best defense against COVID-19, but I also firmly believe in Iowans right to make healthcare decisions based on whats best for themselves and their families, and I remain committed to protecting those freedoms. President Biden should do the same."
SMITHS MILL, Minnesota  A wanted man is facing new charges of kidnapping and assault after a Wednesday car chase.

Agents with the Minnesota River Valley Drug Task Force (MRVDTF) say they located a vehicle around 5:30 pm Wednesday being driven by a female and with Peter John Lohre, 24, as a passenger. MRVDTF says Lohre was wanted for violating his parole and agents followed the vehicle as it went west on Highway 14 out of Waseca.

Blue Earth County sheriffs deputies were contacted to stop the vehicle and take Lohre into custody. Deputies say they conducted a traffic stop on Highway 14 near Smiths Mill. The Sheriffs Office says Lohre refused to obey deputies commands to get out of the vehicle and it sped off west on Highway 14. Deputies say after a roughly file mile pursuit, they were able to successfully deploy a tire deflation device while a deputy executed a pursuit termination maneuver near the intersection of Highway 14 and County Road 55. The vehicle was stopped and Lohre and a 19-year-old female from Mankato were apprehended.

The MRVDTF says the female driver told agents Lohre threatened her with a gun during the traffic stop and told her to drive away or he would shoot her and the deputies. The female driver has been released from custody while the investigation into this matter continues. MRVDTF agents say they searched the vehicle and found a loaded 9-millimeter handgun and suspected methamphetamine in the area of the front passenger seat. Investigators say the handgun was reported stolen in another state.

Lohre has been booked into the Blue Earth County Jail for kidnapping, second-degree assault, felon in possession of a firearm, third-degree controlled substance possession, and receiving stolen property.
CHARLES CITY, Iowa  A Halloween argument led to three friends being arrested for assault.

Authorities say it happened around 9:30 pm on October 31 in Charles City. Court documents state a verbal altercation between intoxicated friends to the victim being repeatedly hit, leaving the victim with a severe cut to the left eyebrow, a left orbital fracture, and left orbital muscle damage.

A charge of assault causing serious injury has been filed against Brandon Patrick Starkey, 28 of Charles City, Michelle Lea Keagle, 31 of Morris, Illinois, and Zachary James Starkey, 28 of Charles City. All three suspects were arrested on Tuesday.
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (KMOV.com) -- This week, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced the state will allocate $250 million towards gun violence.

Pritzker signed an executive order declaring gun violence a public health crisis. The $250 million will be spread out over the next three years.

Community organizations will be able to apply for funding in areas including youth intervention programs, trauma recovery and other mental health services.

Illinois governor calls gun violence a public health crisis CHICAGO (AP)  Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared gun violence a public health crisis on M

East St. Louis recorded 36 homicides last year, according to Illinois State Police. East St. Louis pastor Lavelle Tate, of Macedonia Baptist Church, performs outreach activities in places like jails and prisons across the area.

"If I could be a part of something like that, and helping in that manner, I would be more than willing to try to step in and do my part for that," Tate said. "That's very encouraging and I'm glad to hear something like that."

News 4 contacted East St. Louis Mayor Robert Eastern and the police department for comment, but we haven't heard back yet. We also reached out to the Illinois governor's office to see how much money will be allocated to East St. Louis organizations. We're waiting to hear back.
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Kokomo, IN (46901)

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Cloudy with periods of rain. High 47F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

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Partly cloudy. Low 22F. Winds WNW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.




By Anna J. Park







The government is set to revise the country's financial law to ease regulations and procedural pressures on financial companies' overseas advancement.







The Financial Services Commission (FSC), the country's top financial policy regulator, said the move came as the total size of Korea-headquartered financial companies' foreign direct investment (FDI) tripled during the past five years.







FDI refers to when a financial firm either acquires more than 10 percent of a foreign-headquartered entity or sets up a regional office overseas.







While the domestic financial companies' expansion into overseas markets has been on a growth trajectory over the last couple of years, the current regulation obligates financial firms to follow strict procedures, hindering efficient management of overseas business activities.







The revision led by the FSC will eliminate financial companies' obligation to conduct a compulsory prior notification reporting when it comes to foreign investments worth less than $20 million.







In the case of directly acquiring stakes of a foreign entity, financial companies are not obligated to give prior notification in acquisition deals under $30 million. Also, documentation required for such FDIs has been curtailed.







Instead, firms can report to the authorities within a month after such investments are made. In addition, when it comes to investing in overseas fund products, financial companies no longer need to report changes to their invested stakes, as long as there's no increase in the investment amount.







The revisions are set to be confirmed by this year at the earliest, following a two-week period of notifications on the change in regulations in mid-November.


Gen. Paul LaCamera, the chief of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command / UPI-Yonhap



The top U.S. military commander in South Korea hinted Thursday that the two allies could adjust their plan for a conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON).



Speaking at a webinar, Gen. Paul LaCamera, the chief of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, touched on the envisioned OPCON transition, saying, "Most plans never survive first contact."



Seoul and Washington have been working on the bilaterally agreed-upon transfer  a process that has been delayed due in part to a COVID-19-driven scaling-down of an allied program to test South Korea's capabilities to retake the OPCON.



"Just know that there's a plan out there. Most plans never survive first contact," LaCamera said during the webinar hosted by the Korea Defense Veterans Association and the Korea-U.S. Alliance Foundation.



"So as we move forward with our plan, we will adjust," he added without elaborating further.



The commander, who also leads the U.S. Forces Korea and the United Nations Command, stressed that his top priority is to "ensure that we are prepared to defend the Korean Peninsula, enforce the armistice and if required, fight and win."



On the current status of allied efforts for the OPCON transition, the commander refused to go into detail, saying, "Operational security is extremely important to me."



Currently, the U.S. has the wartime operational control over South Korean troops. Under the OPCON transfer plan, a South Korean four-star general is to lead combined forces during wartime with a U.S. general playing a deputy commander role.



The transition plan is based on three conditions  the South Korean military's capabilities to lead allied forces, its capacities necessary for initial responses to North Korea's nuclear and missile threats and the management of the security environment on the peninsula and in the region.



Also during the webinar, the commander noted the new "multi-domain" fighting concept, stressing the importance of joint operations among all armed forces of the allied militaries.



"The new term that we're introducing or that has been introduced is multi domain. This is all fights in the future will be multi domain; space, cyber, air, land, sea, undersea," LaCamera said.



"Don't ever forget the information domain, and more importantly, don't forget the human domain given the density of the populations that are here, the size of the greater Seoul metropolitan area  that we would have to deal with going forward," he added.



LaCamera took office as the head of the three commands in July this year, replacing his predecessor, Robert Abrams. (Yonhap)


President Moon Jae-in speaks during the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday (local time). Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



With no meeting between President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held during the former's visit to Glasgow, Scotland for the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) Monday and Tuesday (local time), attention is now being focusing on whether the two can meet to discuss the future of Korea-Japan relations.



The strained bilateral ties between Seoul and Tokyo have shown no signs of improving in recent years following the Korean Supreme Court's 2018 ruling that ordered Japanese companies to compensate surviving Korean victims of wartime forced laborer and following retaliatory tit-for-tat measures between the countries.



While Moon attended the COP summit Monday and Tuesday, and then headed to Hungary, Kishida arrived in the U.K., Tuesday, returned to Japan, Wednesday. On Tuesday, Kishida held meetings with his counterparts from the U.K. and Australia as well as those of other Asian countries including Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka and Mongolia. Kishida also held a brief meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, but there was no such encounter with President Moon.



Jin Chang-soo, director of the center for Japanese Studies at the Sejong Institute, said there is little chance for Moon to sit down with Kishida for talks before he leaves office in May next year.



"For Japanese Prime Minister Kishida, he needs to prepare for the July 2022 House of Councillors (upper house) election, even though his Liberal Democratic Party won an outright majority in Japan's House of Representatives in Oct. 31 lower house election," Jin said.



"Kishida is urged to put policies into practice, which he had promised during election campaigning, such as financial distribution policy and COVID-19 measures. ... In this regard, Kishida is focused on domestic policies. In terms of diplomatic policy, the Japanese government is emphasizing its relations with the United States but it does not view that improving relations with Korea would bring any political benefits."





Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday (local time). AP-Yonhap
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High around 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 27F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Cloudy with occasional light rain throughout the day. High around 45F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A shower or two around the area early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 26F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
AMITY, Ore. (KPTV)  An eight-hour negotiation between Yamhill County Sheriffs deputies and an Amity man ended in the beginning of a homicide investigation after the suspects father was found dead.

Yamhill County Sheriffs office said on Wednesday they attempted to contact Alex Tombleson, 31, of Amity, around 12:30 p.m. Deputies say Tombleson was having a mental health crisis and they had previous cause to make an arrest on misdemeanor charges related to a domestic harassment incident that occurred several hours earlier.

FBI offering $15K reward to help solve deadly June 2020 shooting of 28-year-old man PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) - The FBI has announced a $15,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in a June 2020 shooting that left a 28-

Yamhill County Sherriffs Office said because of the demeanor Tombleson was in, deputies arranged for a Crisis Intervention Deputy, a Yamhill County Mental Health Community Outreach Specialist, and Tomblesons probation officer to come with them to the residence. Deputies said the hope was the additional help would assist in taking Tombleson into custody without incident.

Upon arrival, deputies found Tombleson had barricaded himself in his residence and began threatening deputies despite attempts from family members to make contact. Deputies then chose to leave the scene and return later with the hope he would calm down.

When deputies returned around 5:00 p.m., additional attempts were unsuccessful and the home was still barricaded. As deputies were preparing to leave again, Tomblesons father, Ross Tombleson, 69, entered the residence through an upstairs window.

All attempts at establishing a connection with Tombleson were unsuccessful. Yamhill County Sheriffs Office contacted the Oregon State Police who agreed to activate their tactical team to assist with the incident.

After roughly 8 hours of negotiation by Yamhill County deputies, Alex Tombleson came out voluntarily and was taken into custody. Ross Tomblesons body was found dead inside the residence. The death is being investigated as a homicide.

Alex Tombleson was booked in the Yamhill County Correctional Facility for violation of probation and misdemeanor harassment and criminal mischief. He is being held without bail as this homicide investigation continues.
Saturday October 10th, 2020

Its been a over a month since a series of massive (mainly forest) fires broke out across western Oregon. It was an event not seen in Oregon for at least 100 years, possibly farther back into the late 1800s. For historical purposes I want to make sure all the information/graphs/charts Ive gathered will be in one place. This is nothing groundbreaking or new, but a summary of the event for future reference. Its a LONG read, but thats the point.

First, my heart goes out to all of you that lost family members, friends, & neighbors in the fires. As far as Im aware, we have not seen a loss of life this great in Oregon from forest/range fires since the Bandon Fire of 1936. As of early October, the official death count is 10.

The loss of homes is staggering and beyond anything experienced in Oregon for at least the past 80 years. I remember when the Canyon Creek Fire in 2015 burned 43 homes just south of John Day; I couldnt believe that many homes could be lost in one fire. But in September 2020, Oregon lost almost 100 times that number! The latest estimate is slightly over 4,000 homes destroyed; over half of those were in the Phoenix/Talent area just south of Medford during the Almeda Fire.

How much of Oregon burned? Just under 1 million acres west of and over the Cascadesmost of that in a week starting Labor Day (Sept. 7th).

A summary of the fires (click for a better view)

HOW WEATHER PLAYED INTO THIS EVENT

A historic easterly wind event (storm) showed up at the worst possible time; early September before fall rains had arrived. The same setup anytime between late September all the way through June likely wouldnt have produced any sort of significant fires.

Weve always known that September CAN produce big fires west of the Cascades in NW Oregon and SW Washington, but it had been a long time since weve seen a huge fire during this period. For years weve looked back to the 1933 Tillamook Burn as an example, although this one started in August. This was the view from (I assume) the west metro area; fields look like Hillsboro or North Plains area.

Of course just three years ago, Labor Day 2017, a dry east wind helped burn 50,000 acres. That was the Eagle Creek Fire which spread along 35 miles west, then east through the Columbia River Gorge.

This year we did not see any late summer or early fall rain by Labor Day. Take a look at Summer 2020 ERC (Energy Release Component) of some weather stations on the west side of the Cascades. It reached a record high just after Labor Day (black line). Red is the highest on record for any date in the warm season.

Next image is a measure of 1000 hour fuel for those same stations. Thats how dry 3-8 dead branches/logs are on any one day. Notice most of the summer (which was very quiet for wildland firefighters) fuels were a bit slower to dry out than normal (gray line). Until the last week of Augustthe red line is lowest fuel moisture on record for any date during the summer. Just a few days with light rain showers at the end of August would have made a significant difference. This weather setup that arrived Labor Day came at the worst possible time; fuels over and west of the Cascades were ready to burn and burn quickly. Fire conditions were extreme.

A hot upper-level ridge was centered over and just offshore the Pacific Northwest over Labor Day weekend. During the last few days of August it appeared this ridge would sit directly overhead, possibly pushing Western Oregon up to around 100 during the holiday weekend. But as the weekend approached, models started forecasting a fast moving upper-level trough diving down the east side of the ridge. That would be an early fall pattern with cool air diving into the Rockies and eastward. As the weekend arrived it became obvious this would be an unusually cool shot of air; Denver was looking forward to snow. And models showed a very strong push of northeasterly flow for Labor Day all across the Pacific Northwest. This was pretty much a warm season version of an arctic front. Heres the ECMWF forecast for Sunday afternoon (the 6th). Hot ridge over and west of us. We had already hit 95 on Thursday in Portland, then onshore flow cooled us Saturday into the 70s. On this day we were back up to around 90 in the metro area.

The forecast for Labor Day evening shows the trough dipping down to the east; hot ridge over and west of us is ready to move back in overhead.

Down around 5,000, the 850mb anomaly chart for Monday afternoon shows an extreme setup for us. Over NE Oregon, temperatures are running about 18 degrees BELOW normal as the cold air plunges south. At the same time temperatures over southwest Oregon are forecast to be 23 degrees ABOVE normal. An incredible contrast!

This leads to a tremendous pressure gradient between the cool high pressure to our east and lower pressure to the southwest. Models were forecasting up to 23 millibars from Eastern Washington down to SW Oregon. Take a look at the cross-section of wind speed forecast over Portland. Ive highlighted the important part. This was from the Sunday morning WRF-GFS model run (UW-Seattle). Note the abrupt change forecast around 5pm Labor Day; strong and deep easterly flow suddenly arrives from 7,000 all the way down to sea level.

Ive never seen 70 kts forecast by this model, even with strong easterly events in the winter. It was obvious this was going to be a historic wind event (or storm). And in this setup EVERYONE west of the Cascades gets the wind, its not like a typical Gorge easterly wind episode. When I saw this Sunday I knew we were headed for something big, especially in the foothills. Thats due to the wind rolling down the west slopes of the Cascades. I figured gusts down at the surface in the valleys would be around 35-45 mph, but they went higher than that in a few spots.

The SPC (Storm Prediction Center) nailed the extremely critical fire weather forecast. Due to high winds and very low relative humidity; remember this started as cool/dry Canadian air.

By midday Labor Day things were looking ominous to our northeast. Numerous fires were started by downed power lines across Eastern Washington (orange areas) and blowing dust (brown streaks) could be seen spreading south toward Oregon in this satellite image.

Then right on schedule, around 4-6pm, strong wind suddenly arrived with a bang. When we get these downslope easterly windstorms that sometimes happens; a very quick start. Often the central part of the metro area gets the strongest wind; from just east of the Interstate Bridge east over PDX to the I-205 bridge. Peak gusts over the next 24 hours show that was the case again this time. 52 mph gust at PDX was the strongest easterly wind gust on record in the month of September.

There arent many observations in the Cascades, but wind was extreme in those locations. Note the 66mph gust at Horse Creek RAWS, I rarely see real strong gusts there. This was right between the Riverside and Beachie Creek fires. Check out the coastal gusts! Ive never seen such strong easterly gusts there at ANY time of the year.

Location Peak Gust Notes Timberline Ski Area (7,700) 106 mph 12 hrs w/peak gusts 90+ Hoodoo Ski Area (5,700) 98 mph Mt. Hebo (Coast Range) 92 mph Horse Creek RAWS (3,400) 66 mph 10 mi. NE Silver Falls SP Lincoln City (tower in city) 62 mph Many hrs. missing obs. Tillamook 52 mph Wind blew hard all night Astoria 51 mph ODOT Newport Airport 45 mph

The strong wind coming from an unusual direction plus fully leafed out trees led to thousands of power outages. PGE was up to 80,000 customers out at one point. But they did cut power to the Hwy 26 corridor from Sandy to Government Camp around 6pm Labor Day; a very good move since no significant fires started in that area.

Dewpoints, a measure of moisture in the air, dropped to mid-winter values. PDX went as low as 20, Tillamook to 18! By Tuesday afternoon relative humidity was in the high single digits and teens as the easterly wind blew; we were in southern California fire conditions Tuesday & Wednesday, the 8th and 9th

Of course we were all hoping we could get through 2-3 days of extreme fire weather with no new fire starts. But Monday night GOES fire detection showed massive growth of the Beachie Creek and Lionshead fires. Later we learned numerous downed power lines in the Santiam Canyon started fires that merged into Beachie Creek Fire. Along with the Big Hollow fire in Skamania County they show up as black areas. Also the Holiday Farm fire started and blew up along the Mckenzie River; presumably also due to downed lines. This is just before sunrise Tuesday morning. Notice the Riverside Fire SE of Estacada was still very small at this point.

Sunrise revealed a startling sight from space; massive plumes spreading westward off those fires; along with streamers of dust blowing of the volcanic peaks due to 100 mph gusts up there. I saw this and knew it was going to be bad since we had two more days of dry easterly wind.

The easterly wind blew all day Tuesday, most of Wednesday, and then retreated back into the Gorge early Thursday. Satellite image midday Wednesday

Wednesday was the day fire plumes spread a bit more to the north; during the afternoon thick smoke moved over the metro area. This reminded me of pics from Yakima the day Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. Keep in mind there are no clouds hereonly smoke. 86 degrees, a dry east wind, and a thick layer of orange/gray smoke moving in.

Thursday was the transition day from low dewpoints and gusty wind back into normal (weak) onshore flow and higher humidity. Just in time because Thursday was the day Molalla was evacuated; fire officials say another day of easterly wind may have burned Estacada, Colton, and Molalla. You can see the smoke spreading eastward across the region that day

Fire intensity diminished rapidly Friday and beyond. The vast majority of acreage burned was Monday night through Thursday.

How rare was this easterly wind event/storm?

Quite rare. Definitely a historic event. Professor Cliff Mass did some research and found this was the strongest 2 day easterly wind event during fire season since at least 1950. Thats July-September over NW Oregon. A similar strong event occurred September 16-18th, 1971. That one was quite a bit cooler with high temps near/under 80 degrees. Relative humidity values were not as extreme. Portland had seen 3 of rain from mid-August to mid-September. Forests were damp; totally different situation 50 years ago.

Were these fires historic?

You bet! I did some research and its a bit disturbing. In the past 100 years, weve seen 11 mega-fires over and west of the Cascades. 3 in the 1930s, one in the 1940s, then 52 years with none! 2 more in 2002/2017. So 5 OF 11 MEGA-FIRES OVER/WEST OF THE CASCADES IN THE PAST 100 YEARS BURNED IN SEPTEMBER 2020

1933 Tillamook Burn 240,000

1936 Bandon Fire 287,000

1945 3rd Tillamook Burn 173,000

1939 2nd Tillamook Burn 217,000

2002 Biscuit 500,000

2017 Chetco Bar 191,125

2020 Riverside 138,000

2020 Beachie Creek 193,000

2020 Lionshead 199,000

2020 Holiday Farm 173,000

2020 Archie Creek 133,000

Why did it happen? Climate Change? Mismanaged Forests? Utility Companies?

Its a loaded question; my personal opinion is that it was a combination of factors. Im sure many studies are on the way

The number one factor is what Ive already outlined. The most dangerous fire weather pattern showed up at exactly the wrong time. And it happened to be an extra-extreme version of that pattern (wind/humidity). Everything lined up just right this year in a very bad way. Even if our climate wasnt warming, at least some of these fires would have exploded out of control. No, they werent climate fires, thats silly. But our warming climate likely played a part. But how much? 10-20% responsible? 50%? No one knows right now. Summers (especially July-September) have been warming/drying for several decades. Im not a forester, but its safe to assume trees are more stressed & drier than they used to be. Fires have been suppressed for many decades, but we know fires were a natural part of Cascade forests in the past. Pioneers that arrived in the late 1800s probably experienced late summer fire smoke almost every year. Forests west of the Cascades were/are going to burn at some point; either this way or with controlled burns. What part did downed powerlines play? Im sure well be hearing more about this in the future.

WORST AIR QUALITY IN MEMORY FOR NW OREGON

As the fires slowed down (Friday the 11th), we were left with light wind and thick smoke throughout the region. It looked like this that first day (Thursday the 10th)

Downtown Portland in the smoke

For most of the next week the Portland metro area experienced the worst air quality seen in modern times. It lasted about 8 days here, but 10-11 days from Salem south since that part of the valley was immediately downwind of the first fire blowups. AQI numbers were regularly in the 300-500 range for most of us. I saw a few 600-700 numbers as well; just unreal. Many of us stayed indoors for most of that week. The numbers from September 8th-14th in Portland. One more reason to refer to this event as historic.

We had a terrible time getting out of the smoke because the weather pattern was just stagnant; nothing unusual for early fall. No strong onshore OR offshore flow to blow the smoke one way or the other. It took a weather system moving through the 17th-18th to finally clear us out.

A few bits of info that still blow my mind; Ill never forget these

Easterly wind pushed the Echo Mountain Complex from Otis just about to the beaches. Almost 300 homes burned just miles from the 55 degree ocean. Parts of Lincoln City, on the cool coastline, was under Level 3 evacuation orders. Labor Day morning, just hours before those 50-100 mph gusts hit the higher elevations of Mt. Hood, a small fire popped up within Mt. Hood Meadows ski resort. If it wouldnt have been doused within those first few hours by multiple water drops, I think we could have seen another mega-fire come racing around the south side of the mountain. Probably right through Government Camp and on down to Rhododendron/Welches. Incredibly lucky! Video here: https://youtu.be/In53N_6ixzg The explosive fire growth the first two days was incredible. The Riverside Fire grew from nothing to 110,000 acres in just 1.5 days! A dewpoint around 20, with a temperature around 90 in Portlandamazing.

Thats about it. One last image showing the burn scars seen from space in early October once skies cleared and fires were pretty much out. You can clearly see the five big fire footprints on the landscape.

Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
(RUSHVILLE, Mo.) A Buchanan County Deputy is working to promote students to perform good deeds in Rushville.

Buchanan County Deputy Scott Vanover, the School Resource Officer at DeKalb Middle and High school, has created a challenge program among the student body with potential rewards.

Vanover was inspired by challenge coins that are used to reward members of an organization, and wanted to implement a similar idea throughout the Buchanan County R-IV School District.

"I wanted to recognize kids who went above and beyond," said Deputy Scott Vanover.

Ultimately, the Above and Beyond program would challenge and reward students for going above and beyond inside and outside the classroom. When recognized for their act of kindness or good deed, the student will receive a special coin.

"This program is not academic based, it's not performance based; it's based on your character," said the SRO. "Kids could have the opportunity to earn a challenge coin as a reward for having good citizenship, demonstrating good behavior, just promoting themselves in a positive role-model throughout the community."

"This program is not academic based, it's not performance based; it's based on your character."

With the help of the Buchanan County Sheriffs Department, Vanover designed coins to handout to the students after performing a good deed.

The face of the coin features the Buchanan County Sheriffs Office badge, while the back of the coin represents the DeKalb Tigers Middle-High School name and logo or the Rushville Tigers Elementary School name and logo.

Rushville Elementary Principal Yvonne Black loved the idea of the program when it was first presented to the district. Black said she and the rest of the staff are excited to reward students in this manor and watch them do good deeds for one another.

Weve been trying to think of ways to acknowledge these kids that go above and beyond, said Black. So when this was presented, it was a way to take it and go with it.

For Black, the younger students will come as a challenge when recognizing what is a rewarding deed, especially for the preschoolers.

Im wondering if were not even going to know until those situations arise, the Rushville Principal explained. Hopefully with the range of education and experience, well be able to pick those kids out and notice those things right away.

The school district liked the idea so much, they plan to take it up a notch and give students incentives if they choose to cash in a coin.

As for rewards, staff members at the middle school and high school are working on appropriate incentives.

"I don't know of any other program in this area or the state of Missouri or even maybe even across the United States, that has something like we're doing here in Buchanan County," said Vanover. "It's pretty unique and I think it's pretty exciting."

Buchanan County Sheriff Bill Puett has worked with Vanover for many years. Puett is excited to see the program take off and hopefully spread throughout other schools in the area.

"I'll tell you this is the first program I've heard of like this," said Sheriff Bill Puett. A collaboration between a law enforcement agency and school doing it this way."

The ultimate goal is to build a strong bond and trust between students and law enforcement, while challenging students to go above and beyond each and every day.

Sheriff Puett shared a Facebook post detailing the "Above and Beyond" challenge coin program, highlighting Deputy Scott Vanover and the impact the program can have on students.
Four nursing home residents died in Tangipahoa Parish at a mass shelter where about 800 residents were reportedly packed into a warehouse for Hurricane Ida. Efforts to evacuate them by ambulance and other vehicles are underway in Independence, Louisiana on Thursday, September 2, 2021. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Minden Police Chief Steve Cropper (second from left) with new police hires Kayla Little (from left), Joel Alex Faulk and Logan Clingan. (Photo by Bonnie Culverhouse, Webster Parish Journal)
FILE: Arkansas workforce building. The number of employed in Arkansas rose 3.5% in September and the number of unemployed fell almost 32% compared with September 2020. (Photo by KATV)
BILLINGS  Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is offering rewards of as much as $1,000 to anyone with information leading to a conviction in two recent criminal cases involving deer that were killed and left to waste in south central Montana.

In one case, game wardens are looking for a person who illegally dumped two mule deer hindquarters into a commercial garbage bin at Adam & Eve Stores on Mullowney Lane in south Billings at about 2:40 p.m. on Oct. 8.

As stated in a release, photos of the illegal activity show that a man and a child, about five years old, pulled up to the garbage bin and illegally dump the deer parts.

FWP says they were in a black Ford F-150 pickup with a large scratch down the passenger side, chrome rocker panels with the back part missing on the passenger side, side steps and a crooked front license plate.

Game wardens also are seeking information on a 3X4 mule deer buck that was shot multiple times with a small-caliber gun and left on the night of Oct. 28 just off of Indian Creek Road, a mile east of its intersection with East Arrow Creek Road east of Billings.

Anyone with information about the truck or the incident off Indian Creek Road should call FWP game warden Connor Langel at (406) 860-7805 or the FWP violation reporting hot line at 1-800-TIP-MONT.
BILLINGS  At the YMCA on Wednesday, Heart and Sole Run organizers presented $10,000 of proceeds from the run to the Billings TrailNet and the YMCA.

Each organization was given $5,000 each.

Since 2011, $200,000 has been donated to both the YMCA and Billings TrailNet.

According to Kim Kaiser, the CEO of YMCA Billings, the money will go toward their financial assistance and scholarship programs.

Often times we have 20% of our members on some kind of financial assistance. It ranges from 500 to 600 thousand dollars per year that we are discounting our memberships and our child care. We never want to turn anyone away, and provide kids the opportunity a safe, fun place to be, Kaiser said.

The 2022 Heart and Sole Run will take place on Father's Day weekend, June 18, 2022.
UPDATE: NOV. 3 AT 7:01 P.M.

Crow Nation News - CNN reports, Angie has been found and is safe.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

BIG HORN COUNTY, Mont. - The Big Horn County Sheriff's Office is investigating a report of a missing woman.

Angie Rose Littlelight, 43, is described as Native American; standing 5-feet, 5-inches feet; weighing 185-pounds; has black hair and brown eyes.

According to the Montana Department of Justice, the date of her last contact was Wednesday, Oct. 27.

Anyone with information is asked to call their local law enforcement office or the Montana Missing Persons Clearing house at (406)444-2800.
UPDATE: NOV. 3 AT 8:12 P.M.

Billings Police have identified the ex-employee of Jake's Downtown who is the suspect of a stabbing incident that took place Wednesday afternoon at the business.

Sgt. Reid reports, 21-year-old Brandon Bird entered Jake's Downtown Wednesday afternoon.

Police say Bird grabbed two knives and attempted to rob two of the employees working at Jake's, chasing them with the knives. Two employees were stabbed and two others were cut.

Two employees were taken to a local hospital for treatment and Bird was arrested at the scene, according to Sgt. Reid.

UPDATE: NOV. 3 AT 6:32 P.M.

Billings Police Sgt. Clyde Reid tells us an employee who had been fired from Jake's Downtown earlier Wednesday returned to the business and stabbed three people.

Sgt. Reid says the employee entered Jake's Wednesday afternoon with a few knives. He allegedly tried to get money from one of the waitresses, but was unsuccessful.

The man then stabbed three people. Two of those people were transported to a local hospital via ambulance.

Eventually, the man was apprehended, Sgt. Reid tells us.

At this time, Sgt. Reid says the three victims appear to be in stable condition.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

BILLINGS  There is a mass presence of emergency vehicles in front of Jake's Downtown on 1st Avenue North in Billings.

KULR8's Jason Burger is at the scene working to bring you more information.
Have a news tip or would like to report a typo? Email Anthony Victor Reyes at areyes@kvoa.com.
Get that "Peaceful Easy Feeling" as soon as you step foot on this Beautiful property, nestled on the Niangua River! Step back in time with this well maintained 4 bedroom, 2 bath, ranch home with 2 living areas & a walk out lower level! Brand new HVAC system in May 2021. Over 2000sq ft of finished living space, sitting on 2.7 acres on the Niangua river. This area of the river is called Lake Niangua due to the expanse of the river in this section. Perfect for John boats, fishing boats, kayaks, & canoes! Grab your favorite floatie for a fun day on the water or just drop a line for the perfect catch! This property has so much to offer and loads to enjoy! Schedule your appointment to view it soon, properties like this rarely hit the open market!
Keefe Real Estate President and CEO, Tom Keefe, announced Thursday, Nov. 4, that Keefe Real Estate is joining Compass, a leading real estate technology company.

The deal is subject to certain standard closing conditions and is anticipated to close later in November.

Under the new Keefe Real Estate Compass brand, the company will continue to operate as a market leading real estate brokerage in Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, maintaining its leadership team, agents and staff, as well as existing offices, with the added resources and technology of Compass, the company stated in a press release.

Over three generations of family ownership, our mission has always been to enhance the lives of our agents and staff through careers in real estate, and go above and beyond for our clients, Tom Keefe, President and CEO of Keefe Real Estate said in the news release. This is a mission we have carried out over the years, and it is one we intend to continue to fulfill, by partnering with Compass.

We are excited to join a company that shares the same philosophy we do and values their agents as customers and trusted partners. Compass has made decisions to create a company that provides its agents with unmatched tools and the strongest platform to run their business. This expansive level of resources will allow our agents to bring an even higher standard of service to our customers and clients, Keefe adds.

Rachael Rohn, Compass Regional President, says, As a Chicagoan, Ive spent the last 16 years taking getaway trips to Lake Geneva and have incredibly fond memories of the people and the experiences Ive had here. Ive been professionally admiring Keefe Real Estate over the years, and I am thrilled to partner together to match Compass technology with Keefes legacy and local expertise to serve our agents and customers.

Adds Keefe, The regional and national exposure of Compass continues to grow stronger by the day, and we are looking forward to partnering with a company with such a strong connection to Chicago, which is our primary feeder market. We are excited for the opportunity to be contributing to a growing company by focusing on doing what we do best: building relationships, going above and beyond for our customers, and growing our business.

In partnering with Compass, Keefe Real Estate will join forces with the nations largest independent brokerage. Compass is currently home to over 23,000 agents, serving hundreds of the top cities across the country, stated a press release issued Thursday afternoon.

Last year Compass agents sold approximately $152 billion in residential real estate and completed 66% more transactions than they did the year before. In Chicago, Compass is now ranked #2 for closed sales volume and market share, up from its #5 ranking at the end of 2020 (source: BrokerMetrics), and is home to more than 1,400 agents.

Earlier this year, Compass also started operations in Wisconsin out of Milwaukee.

Founded in 1943, Keefe Real Estate is a full-service real estate brokerage, specializing in Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois with over 90 agents in Walworth, Racine, Kenosha and McHenry counties. Keefe Real Estate and its associates have been the market leader for decades in Walworth County, as well as the leading seller of lakefront properties, handling nearly 50% of all lakefront transactions in the region.

Keefe Real Estates local expertise and market dominance combined with Compass powerful agent network, real estate technology platform and consumer programs will provide expansive exposure for the companys valued clients, listings and agents locally, in the Chicagoland area and nationally, the press release stated.
Rejecting concerns about continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, Wisconsin utility regulators have approved plans for a $370 million natural gas storage project in southeastern Wisconsin designed to provide fuel when demand spikes.

We Energies and Wisconsin Gas say the dual facilities in Jefferson and Walworth counties are needed to improve reliability and resilience in light of anticipated growth in demand. They estimate the cost will be at least $224 million less than the alternatives.

The Public Service Commission approved the projects despite opposition from some local residents and the Sierra Club, which argued the utilities growth projections are overblown and irreconcilable with state and national carbon reduction commitments. The group argued it would be more cost-effective to reduce demand.

Compliance with the Paris climate agreement  an effort to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change  will require a reduction in gas use, and the groups note that Gov. Tony Evers climate task force recommended against building any new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Commissioners largely rejected those arguments, taking a narrower view of their mandate of ensuring safe, reliable and affordable energy service.

Chair Rebecca Valcq, an Evers appointee, said theres no evidence that demand reduction is a viable alternative and that fossil fuels will continue to be part of the states energy mix  at least for now.

I dont see natural gas going away, Valcq said. Our obligation is to the residents of this state to ensure they have reliable power. It is not appropriate for us to sit back and wait and see if something materializes.

Commissioner Ellen Nowak, appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker, accused the Sierra Club of presenting false choices.

We need to have all available types of energy generation at our hands, Nowak said. I do not believe we should ever be eliminating any type of resources.

The project consists of two storage facilities in Ixonia and Bluff Creek where natural gas would be chilled to minus-260 degrees to reduce its volume. Each system would hold a billion cubic feet of gas for times of high demand, when it would be heated and vaporized.

The utilities say the facility will eliminate the need to contract additional pipeline capacity that would only be needed a few days a year or to pay a premium when demand is high, as it was during a cold snap last winter that caused spot prices to jump by up to 10,000%.

Wisconsins geology does not allow for underground storage, and the utilities underground storage site in Michigan is dependent on pipeline capacity for delivery.

The project is expected to raise revenue requirements by 4.4% to 4.5% once the facilities are completed by 2024, but the utilities said rate increases will be offset by the savings they produce.

Commissioner Tyler Huebner supported the Ixonia facility, which would serve Wisconsin Gas customers in Milwaukee, but said the value of the We Energies project was questionable.

Huebner, another Evers appointee, said he wants to see more data from utilities, such as how many electric heat pumps would need to be installed to reduce demand.

Is there some other solution? I want to see that from our applicants going forward  a portfolio of options ... as opposed to a facility thats one size, Huebner said. Once its there, its there. Its in the rate base.

WEC spokesperson Brendan Conway said the decision will allow us to keep our customers warm on the coldest days of the year with a safe, affordable and reliable heating supply while saving ratepayers money in the long run.

Opponents panned the decision, saying any new investments should reduce carbon emissions.

Investing hundreds of millions of dollars into fossil fuels will only harm our planet and worsen conditions for those on the front lines of the climate crisis here in Wisconsin, said Marco Marquez, state program manager with Action for the Climate Emergency.

The approval comes days after the utilities parent company, WEC Energy Group, announced it would stop burning coal by 2035, converting the states largest coal-fired power plant to burn natural gas, a move that drew mixed reviews from environmental and consumer advocates.

Today is again another recognition that natural gas is here to stay, Nowak said. We need it.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran's powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard troops on Oct. 24 took control of the MV Southys, a vessel that analysts suspect of trying to transfer sanctioned Iranian crude oil to Asia, at gunpoint. U.S. forces had monitored the seizure, but ultimately didn't take action as the vessel sailed into Iranian waters.

Iran celebrated its capture of the vessel in dramatic footage aired on state television, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Officials at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ship-tracking data analyzed by the AP from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessel still off Iran's southern port of Bandar Abbas on Tuesday. A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. also showed the vessel off Bandar Abbas in recent days.

The two U.S. officials on Wednesday spoke on condition of anonymity as the information had yet to be made public amid ongoing attempts to restart talks over Iran's tattered 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Negotiations have stalled in Vienna since the election of hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi in June, allowing Iran to press ahead with its nuclear program and raising alarm in Western capitals.

The European Union, Iran and the U.S. all said late Wednesday that the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri, said in a tweet that talks aimed for the removal unlawful and inhumane" sanctions. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Iran continued to take provocative nuclear steps" and that this window of opportunity will not be open forever.

The officials spoke to AP after Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Iran's assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

It's a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran." He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.

Kirby said Iran's boarding and seizing of the vessel constituted a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.

Tehran also did not provide the ships name, or other details, nor any explanation of why the Navy might target it. Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iranian officials heralded the ship's impoundment as a heroic act, with Raisi lauding the Revolutionary Guard on Twitter. The country's oil minister, Javad Owji, thanked the Guard for rescuing the Iranian oil tanker from American pirates."

State TV released footage showing an Iranian surveillance drone monitoring a hulking red tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Heavily armed Iranian commandos then rappelled onto the boat from a helicopter as small speedboats surrounded the vessel and an Iranian catamaran ship patrolled the waters.

The video appeared to show Iranian Guard troops pointing uncovered deck-mounted machine guns at the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Photos released by the U.S. military show The Sullivans recently in the Arabian Sea near the Gulf of Oman.

The status and makeup of the Sothys' crew wasn't immediately known. A shipping database showed the vessel's last registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. On Thursday, a worker at the office acknowledged an incident involving the Southys but referred questions to another employee who wasn't there. That employee did not immediately return a request for comment.

However, the Southys had been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long suspicious of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated Oct. 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Southy received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.

The U.S. Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. That Iranian oil ends up being sold into East Asia, the Treasury alleged, without identifying a specific country.

Iran's seizure of the Southys would be the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil the Gulf of Oman, which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members earlier this year. Just a few months ago, Iranian hijackers stormed and briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the region's volatile waters since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Irans nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.



Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington and Hau Dinh in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Phil Gruber is the news editor at Lancaster Farming. He can be reached at 717-721-4427 or pgruber@lancasterfarming.com. Follow him @PhilLancFarming on Twitter.
Trichy (Tamil Nadu) [India], November 4 (ANI): Deputy Secretary of Tamil Nadu's Trichy district's Rajinikanth fan club, Karnan has been selling dosa for Rs 1 at his eatery as a token of prayer for actor Rajinikanth's movie 'Annaatthe' which is scheduled to be released on Diwali.

The dosa is named as 'Annaatthe dosa' and is being sold in hope of promotion of the film.

Also Read | Kerala Shocker: Newly-Married Hindu Man Brutally Thrashed by His Brother-in-Law for Refusing To Convert to Christianity.

"I wish and pray that people turn up in large numbers and movie becomes a huge hit," he said.

'Annaatthe' is slated to release on November 4.

Also Read | Chennai Customs Seize 400-Year-Old Nrityaganapathi Idol Being Exported From Kancheepuram.

The action-drama's release has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The director of the film is Siruthai Siva and it is being produced under the Sun Pictures banner. The cast of the film written and directed by Siva, includes Khushbu, Meena, Prakash Raj, Sathish and Soori.

Rajinikanth recently received the esteemed Dadasaheb Phalke Award for his contribution to the cinema. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Tripoli [Libya], November 4 (ANI/Xinhua): The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Wednesday that 357 illegal immigrants were rescued and returned to Libya.

"357 persons were returned last night to Tripoli (90) and to Zawiya (267) in two separate operations. 54 women and 22 children among them," UNHCR tweeted.

Also Read | US, UK, Saudi Arabia, UAE Call for Restoration of Government in Sudan.

"The boat returned to Tripoli with 90 onboard was in distress at sea for two days. UNHCR & IRC provided medical aid & assistance to all survivors," it said.

Many illegal immigrants, mostly Africans, choose to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores from Libya, given the chaos and insecurity that have plagued the North African country since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011.

Also Read | COVID-19 Vaccine Update: Bharat Biotechs COVAXIN Gets Emergency Use Listing Approval From WHO.

According to UNHCR, nearly 28,000 illegal immigrants have been rescued and returned to Libya so far this year.

Rescued migrants were detained inside overcrowded reception centers across Libya, despite repeated international calls for closing those centers. (ANI/Xinhua)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Glasgow, November 4: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, nominated by US President Joe Biden as the country's next ambassador to India, has tested positive for COVID-19 while participating in the UN climate conference here in Scotland.

Garcetti's office announced on Twitter that he tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday. Also Read | US, UK, Saudi Arabia, UAE Call for Restoration of Government in Sudan.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti Tests COVID-19 Positive

Mayor Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today. He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated.  MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) November 3, 2021

Mayor Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today. He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated, the office of the 42nd Mayor of Los Angeles said in a tweet. Also Read | China Intends to Have at Least 1,000 Nuclear Warheads by 2030, Warns Pentagon.

The office of the Mayor of California's largest city and America's second-largest city did not reveal more information immediately.

The 50-year-old mayor, who is fully vaccinated, tested positive on Wednesday in Glasgow, Scotland, where he had been attending a United Nations conference on climate change, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The mayor is currently isolating in his hotel room in Glasgow and has experienced very mild symptoms, the newspaper quoted Garcetti's spokesman Alex Comisar as saying.

Garcetti had been taking rapid antigen tests daily while at the conference, which all came back negative. He took a PCR test Tuesday in preparation for what had been a planned flight home on Thursday; that test came back positive on Wednesday morning, Comisar said.

US President Biden also appeared at the climate conference, but he and Garcetti did not interact, the report quoted a White House representative as saying.

The COP-26 is being held from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow under the presidency of the UK which is partnering with Italy for the event.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the World Leaders' summit of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP-26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the invitation of his British counterpart Boris Johnson.

Modi, who left for home on Tuesday, held numerous bilateral meetings on the sidelines of COP-26, billed as one of the biggest ever congregations of world leaders and experts in combating climate change.

In July, US President Biden nominated Garcetti, who has been the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles since 2013, as his ambassador to India. If confirmed by the Senate, Garcetti would replace Kenneth Juster, who served as India's Ambassador to the US during the Trump administration.

After being nominated, the mayor said that he was honoured to accept the nomination and will bring the same energy, commitment and love with which he served the sprawling city to his new role in the world's largest democracy.

He has travelled several times to India, most recently as a councilman. In college, he spent a year studying Hindi and Urdu.

It's the largest democracy in the world, soon to be the most populous country in the world, one of the top handful of superpowers in the world, Garcetti had said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Moscow [Russia], November 4 (ANI/Sputnik): There were nine people on board of the An-12 plane that crashed on Wednesday near the Russian city of Irkutsk, a spokesperson for the Transport Prosecutor's Office told Sputnik on Thursday.

A transport plane of the Belarusian company Grodno Avia crashed near Irkutsk on Wednesday. Initially, it was reported about seven people on board: three Belarusians, two Russians and two Ukrainians.

Also Read | US, UK, Saudi Arabia, UAE Call for Restoration of Government in Sudan.

"There were seven crew members and two accompanying persons on board. Six bodies and four fragments of bodies have been found at the site," the spokesperson said.

Governor of the Irkutsk Region Igor Kobzev told reporters that CEO of Zapolyarye Airlines Yury Volodin and Deputy CEO of the company Oleg Vishnev had been on board of the crashed plane.

Also Read | China Intends to Have at Least 1,000 Nuclear Warheads by 2030, Warns Pentagon.

An investigation into the incident has been launched. (ANI/Sputnik)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Seoul, November 4: North Korea is finalizing its preparations to reopen the border with China, which was closed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to restore rail freight transportation, Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday, citing a source in the South Korean unification ministry.

"Our assessment is that various preparations for the resumption of goods exchange through train routes are at the final stage," the official said, as quoted by the news agency. Also Read | Diwali 2021: UK Minister Rishi Sunak Releases New 5-Pound Gandhi Commemorative Coin to Mark Festival of Lights.

However, he noted that no specific dates could be given. The official added that additional surveillance was required to assess the feasibility of restoring transportation by other means. Also Read | Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, US' Next Ambassador to India, Tests COVID-19 Positive in Glasgow.

According to the source, North Korea has gradually increased its trade with China since March, but its level is insignificant compared to the scale before the COVID-19 pandemic.

On October 28, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea reported that Pyongyang was in talks with Beijing and Moscow to resume rail traffic across the border. The NIS stated that train operations connecting Sinuiju and Dandong could resume as early as November.

According to Yonhap, North Korea recently reopened its maritime routes to obtain medicines and other assistance from international organizations.

In March, the Presidium of North Korean Supreme People's Assembly adopted a law on compulsory disinfection of all imported goods. After that, disinfection installations were built in the city of Sinuiju on the border with China. In April, a special export processing zone was also reportedly built in Musan County on the border with China. It can presumably be used to process goods transported across the border in both directions.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Paris, Nov 4 (AP) The son of a former al-Qaida hostage struck back Thursday at French government claims that she has put herself and others in danger by slipping back into Mali, where she was held for four years.

Sophie Petronin's return to Mali has sparked criticism and made headlines in her native France, with the government spokesman this week accusing her of irresponsibility toward her own security and also the security of our troops in West African country.

Also Read | Diwali 2021: UK Minister Rishi Sunak Releases New 5-Pound Gandhi Commemorative Coin to Mark Festival of Lights.

But in an interview with French broadcaster BFM-TV, her son Sebastien Chadaud-Petronin said the 76-year-old is living extremely discreetly in an apartment in the Malian capital, Bamako.

He said she has ventured out just once in six months, to shop and under escort, and has someone with her who watches over her security.

Also Read | Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, US' Next Ambassador to India, Tests COVID-19 Positive in Glasgow.

She is not in the desert, he said.

She is not taking risks.

To make believe that she has gone back to her captors in northern Mali, that she is putting our soldiers' lives in danger, is not very responsible, he added.

Petronin apparently crossed a land border back into Mali without a visa in March, about five months after she was freed and flown back to France.

Malian authorities say they are now looking for her and want to question her, but aren't saying why.

Her son said his mother was deeply unhappy back in Europe and wants to live out her years in the country where she worked before her 2016 abduction.

She also wanted to be reunited with her adopted daughter in Mali, he said.

She spent 20 years there. Part of her life is there, said the son, who was speaking from Switzerland.

She is an old lady in the autumn of her life and she just wants to be in the place where she feels most comfortable.

He said that he will travel to Bamako next week to check on her security arrangements and meet French Embassy officials.

He also hopes to meet with Malian authorities.

I hope the Malians will offer her a little place in their community," he said. She just wants everyone to forget about her." (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad [Pakistan], November 4 (ANI): Sheikh Rashid, Pakistan's Interior Minister, has said that the proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)'s chief Saad Rizvi insisted on the closure of the French embassy when he held talks with him, reported local media.

"One person -- who is very respectable and is a major religious figure from Karachi -- (says), when I spoke with Saad Rizvi, he was insistent on (the closure of the) French embassy and he was convinced that this (issue) be brought in the Assembly," Dawn quoted Rashid as saying while addressing a ceremony in Lahore on Thursday.

Also Read | South Korea Believes North Korea Preparing To Reopen Border With China, Say Reports.

The Minister further informed that he has made signatures on this previous agreement and is steadfast on this.

"As for the rest of the problems, two ministers have been appointed and they will answer your queries."

Also Read | Diwali 2021: UK Minister Rishi Sunak Releases New 5-Pound Gandhi Commemorative Coin to Mark Festival of Lights.

Rashid said that he had received instructions from Prime Minister Imran Khan, who advised only one minister to speak on the TLP issue.

Rashid's comments came after Pakistan's top cleric and former chairman of Ruet-e-Hilal Committee Mufti Muneebur Rehman dispelled the impression on Monday that the TLP had demanded the expulsion of the French ambassador and the closure of the embassy. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kyiv [Ukarine], November 4 (ANI/Sputnik): Ukraine and the United States will hold the Strategic Partnership Commission meeting in Washington on November 10, in the course of which a new charter of strategic partnership will be signed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told a briefing on Thursday.

The Presidents of the two countries, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Joe Biden, made an agreement to intensify efforts on the strategic partnership commission during a meeting in Washington in early September.

Also Read | Diwali 2021: UK Minister Rishi Sunak Releases New 5-Pound Gandhi Commemorative Coin to Mark Festival of Lights.

"Strengthening the strategic partnership with the United States, especially in the security field, is one of the key priorities of our foreign policy strategy. Today I am glad to announce that on November 10, together with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, we will hold a meeting of the Ukraine-USA Strategic Partnership Commission in Washington, where we will sign a new charter of strategic partnership," Kuleba said.

The new charter is a document to meet common challenges, create a backbone for the further development of the Ukraine-US relations, strengthen unity "amidst Russian aggression," and give rise to the deepening of bilateral relations.

Also Read | Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, US' Next Ambassador to India, Tests COVID-19 Positive in Glasgow.

Moscow-Kyiv relations deteriorated due to the situation in the Donbas after the Euro-Maidan coup in February 2014. In January 2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a statement calling Russia an "aggressor country." Russia denies the accusations of the Ukrainian party and calls them unacceptable. (ANI/Sputnik)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington, November 3: The US, UK, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia called for the restoration of the Sudanese government after a military takeover of the country in October, the countries said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom affirm their countries' stance with the people of Sudan and emphasize the importance of supporting their aspirations for a democratic and peaceful nation... We call for the full and immediate restoration of its civilian-led transitional government and institutions," the joint statement said. Also Read | COVID-19 Vaccine Update: Bharat Biotechs COVAXIN Gets Emergency Use Listing Approval From WHO.

The countries stressed in the joint statement the importance of commitment to the Constitutional Document and Juba Peace Agreement as the foundations for further dialogue about how to uphold a military-civilian partnership for the remainder of the transitional period prior to elections in Sudan. Also Read | Russia Plane Crash: 4 Dead After Belarusian Cargo Plane Crashes While Trying To Land in Irkutsk.

The joint statement also condemned violence between the parties in Sudan and encouraged effective dialogue that ensures peace and security in the country.

The Sudanese military council will meet on Wednesday to determine the political future of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, a military source told Sputnik. Hamdok was previously detained by military forces during the takeover of the transitional government.

The UN Security Council on Thursday similarly adopted a statement on the situation in Sudan that called on the country's military leadership to restore the civilian-led transitional government.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington [US], November 4 (ANI): US Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday extended her best wishes to everyone celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights and called to honour the light within one another.

"Happy Diwali to everyone celebrating the Festival of Lights here in the United States and around the world. @SecondGentlemanand I extend our warmest wishes for a holiday filled with light, love, and prosperity," the Vice-President tweeted.

Also Read | China's Western Theatre Command Oriented Towards Responding to Conflict With India.

In the video shared by Harris, she said that this year's Diwali holds even deeper meaning in the midst of a "devastating pandemic".

"This year, Diwali arrives with even deeper meaning, in the midst of a devastating pandemic. The holiday reminds us of our nation's most sacred values. Our gratitude for the love of family and friends. Our responsibility is to lend a hand to those in need. And our strength to choose light over darkness, to seek knowledge and wisdom and to be a source of goodness and grace," the VP said.

Also Read | Diwali 2021: New Yorks World Trade Center Lit Up for Deepavali (See Pics).

"Let's remember to honour the light within one another from our family to yours. I wish you a joyous Diwali," she concluded.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden too extended greetings to people celebrating the festivals of Diwali all around the world.

"May the light of Diwali remind us that from the darkness there is knowledge, wisdom, and truth. From division, unity. From despair, hope," Biden said in a tweet.

"To Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists celebrating in America and around the world --from the People's House to yours, Happy Diwali," the tweet added.

Diwali is observed on the 15th day of Kartik, the holiest month in the Hindu lunar calendar and it is believed that on this day Lord Rama returned from a 14-year-long exile during which he fought and won a battle against the demon king Ravan.

Diwali is a festival of lights and one of the major festivals celebrated all over India.

Diwali symbolizes the spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Bharat Biotech's Covaxin received World Health Organisations approval on 3 November for emergency use listing. The technical advisory team of WHO has now recommended the India-made vaccine for emergency use listing for 18 years and above.

Covaxin is Indias indigenously developed, completely 'made in India', vaccine by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research. Therefore, the recent approval marks a major victory for India's journey in vaccination against Covid-19.

The World Health Organisations panel had last week sought additional clarifications from Bharat Biotech while reviewing the Covaxin. So far, Covaxin has demonstrated 77.8 per cent effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 and 65.2 per cent protection against the new Delta variant of coronavirus disease. COVID-19 Vaccine Update: Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN Gets Emergency Use Listing Approval From WHO.

Bharat Biotech stated that it concluded the final analysis of Covaxin efficacy from Phase 3 trials. So far, WHO has approved Covid-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-SK Bio/Serum Institute of India, Johnson 7 Johnson - Janssen, Moderna, and Sinopharm for emergency use.

What Does this Approval Mean for India?

Due to WHOs approval, the emergency use listing of Covaxin will open the door of many countries for Indians who are vaccinated with this vaccine. Infact, many countries like Guyana, Iran, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Paraguay, the Philipines, Zimbabwe, Australia, Oman, Sri Lanka, Estonia, Greece have already approved Covaxin while many others were waiting for WHO's decision before extending approvals. In addition to this, the approval of Covaxin by WHO brings due recognition for Indian scientists as this is the first Made in India Covid-19 vaccine.

In a statement shared on Twitter, the World Health organisation mentioned that the Covaxin vaccine was also reviewed by WHOs Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), and therefore it has recommended the use of this vaccine in two doses, with a dosing interval of four weeks, in all age groups 18 and above. COVAXIN Gets Emergency Use Listing Nod From WHO, Approval Expands Availability of COVID-19 Vaccines.

Covaxin was found to have 78% efficacy against COVID19 of any severity, 14 or more days after the second dose. Moreover, the WHO statement also remarked that the Covaxin is extremely suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements.

Talking about this big move, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandviya expresses his gratitude towards PM Modi and also congratulated scientists at Bharat Biotech, ICMR & all others associated with the development of Covaxin.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 04, 2021 04:42 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Srinagar, November 4: The Indian and Pakistani armies on Thursday exchanged Diwali sweets at two points on the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. Defence sources said the customary exchange of Diwali sweets took place between the two armies at the Aman Setu bridge near the Kaman post in Uri sector of the LoC.

The other point of exchange was Tithwal on the Kishenganga River in Tangdhar sector of the LoC in Kupwara district. Diwali 2021 Wishes for Soldiers: Thank You Messages and Shubh Deepavali Greetings for Indian Army.

Diwali 2021: India, Pakistan Armies Exchange Sweets on LoC in Kashmir

On the occasion of #Diwali and as a gesture for promoting Peace, Harmony & Compassion India & Pakistan Army held a Flag meeting & exchanged sweets at Kaman Aman Setu #Uri & Tithwal Crossing on Kishanganga River in #Tangdhar, #Kupwara in #JammuAndKashmir @PIBKohima pic.twitter.com/WwpM3WQMVk  PRO Kohima, Ministry Of Defence (@prodefkohima) November 4, 2021

"The exchange of sweets was done as a gesture of promoting peace, harmony and compassion in the true spirit of the festival," the army said. "The events have been held when both the armies have been strictly following the Ceasefire Agreement on Line of Control."

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 04, 2021 06:31 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (#UNHCR) said 357 #illegalimmigrants were rescued and returned to #Libya.



"357 persons were returned last night to Tripoli (90) and to Zawiya (267) in two separate operations," UNHCR tweeted. pic.twitter.com/j6DuoNzRBd IANS Tweets (@ians_india) November 3, 2021

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Two Filipino soldiers were killed and four others wounded in a clash with New People's Army (NPA) rebels in the Negros Occidental province, the military said on Thursday.



Photo: IANS (File) pic.twitter.com/TARtOXJyRZ IANS Tweets (@ians_india) November 4, 2021

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
Savory porridges are now trending in urban breakfast spots in America, but theyve long been staples in India. Two writers, Michelle Huneven and Kannan Mahadevan, each returned from recent trips to the subcontinent  Huneven to the south; Mahadevan to the west  with a new favorite breakfast dish.

Huneven, a novelist and former L.A. Times restaurant reviewer living in Altadena, fell for upma, a fragrant savory porridge with a semolina base. Mahadevan, currently at work on a novel and based in one of Brooklyns great food enclaves, Sunset Park, liked a drier, fluffier porridge called poha, made from flaked rice. Eager to share and compare  and possibly to convert the other  the two swapped recipes. So which is more delicious: upma or poha? To decide, you might have to make them both.

Learning to make the Indian porridge upma

Huneven writes:

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Last December, my husband and I were at the Bangalore airport between flights, bleary from 17 hours in the air, excited to be in India, and hungry. We chose the food concession with the longest line  but after perusing the glass case of bhaji, idli and other snacks and then the overhead menu, I realized I couldnt match the words to the items below.

Excuse me, I said to two pilots in front of us. We need some help ordering. What would you suggest?

They conferred and turned back to us. Idli masala, they said. And upma.

Upma (a porridge with green chiles, cashews, and fresh herbs) served with yogurt and a bright green salsa. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times )

Recipe: Upma 

The idli were springy, oval, snow-white rice flour dumplings served with a thick, spicy orange masala sauce for dipping. They had high starch appeal but were quickly, irrevocably upstaged by upma.

A pale, fragrant, savory porridge with an utterly addictive texture, upma is made with coarsely ground toasted wheat called sooji or rava, a few basic Indian spices and herbs, and a scattering of nuts and dried legumes. But upma is greater than the sum of its parts.

As we traveled through Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, we encountered upma on breakfast menus and buffets, sometimes beside its sweet cousin, kesari (also called sheera or halwa), a wheat porridge flavored with raisins, nuts, sugar and occasionally pineapple or banana. Kesari was often too sweet for me, but I never met an upma I didnt adore.

Once home, I set to work to recapture that unforgettable first meal. Unlike so many other firsts, this one was easily replicated  culinarily, at least. I found numerous recipes and variations online, and all the ingredients were easily sourced at Indian grocery stores.

Upma is made from coarsely ground wheat; it can be white if made with farina, which is ground from hard winter heat; or it can be a pale yellow if made from semolina, which is ground from durum wheat, the lower chromosome wheat used for pasta. Recipes often use the terms sooji, rava, cream of wheat, farina and semolina interchangeably, but all suggest a coarse grind. The cereal is first roasted in a dry pan, just to the point where it begins to smell faintly like baking bread, but before it starts to brown.

Fresh curry leaves. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times )

Later, when boiled, the creamy yet granular texture is most reminiscent of Malt-O-Meal and Cream of Wheat and, to a somewhat lesser degree, polenta and grits.

If farina and semolina bring to mind only dull and dreaded porridges of childhood, here they are only the bland, blank pages for upmas complex pleasures. For starters, there are layers of crunch: the soft cellulose crunch of sauteed onions, ginger, garlic and chile; the knuckly, nutty crunch of cashews or peanuts; and the crisp, more precise crunch of tiny fried daals, both chana (dried yellow peas) and urad (dried black lentils). Dried spices (mustard seeds, ground coriander, cumin, fenugreek, asafetida and turmeric) and fresh herbs (cilantro and curry leaves) add flavor and fragrance. A little sugar (optional) gives depth.

Some cooks add peas and carrots or chopped tomatoes just after the onions are sauteed.

The recipe has a lot of give  you can add or subtract elements; those with wheat allergies can substitute instant grits or cornmeal or even oats for the wheat cereal and produce something delicious.

Upma is traditionally finished with a squeeze of lime and served with yogurt, coconut chutney and/or an Indian pickle on the side. My husband likes hot lime pickle; I prefer tender mango pickle, a Kerala specialty made with small mangoes. Although its not traditional, you can also top upma with a poached or fried egg.

Upma quickly absorbs its liquids and sets like polenta and grits. Some cooks press it into a large, decorative mold, or several individual molds, for serving. If you prefer it softer, as I do, it can be reconstituted with a little water. Leftovers can be cooled in a loaf shape and sliced to fry in ghee or oil for yet another layer of crunch. (In his cookbook Plenty More, Yotam Ottolenghi has a recipe for a spicy fried upma with poached eggs.)

Black mustard seeds. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times )

A consideration of the Indian porridge poha

Kannan Mahadevan writes:

Of all the carb-heavy, Indian breakfast foods, I find poha to be the lightest. It is made from (and named for) rice that has been steamed, parched and flattened. These fine flakes need only a quick soaking to soften; the drained poha is mixed into lightly fried seasonings and vegetables, heated through until dry, fluffy and golden from turmeric, then served with any number of toppings and sides.

The rice flakes can also be deep-fried until crisp as potato chips; mixed with other crunchy additions such as peanuts or coconut, they are known as chivda, a popular snack thats homemade, store-bought or served in newspaper cones on the street all over India.

Recipe: Kanda batata poha (pounded rice with onion and potatoes) 

I first ate poha regularly during a long stay with my cousin in Thane, a city in northwestern Maharashtra state that boasts the busiest station in Mumbais sprawling suburban rail network. (Twenty-five miles north of downtown Mumbai and 2 million strong, Thane expanded my definition of a suburb.)

Unable to lure me from sleep with his steaming idlis and kosu (a Tamil curry of pressure-cooked eggplant and tomato) or his ghee-slathered parathas filled with potato or methi leaves, Laxman, my cousins young cook, had to settle for breakfast that tasted good cold. Laxmans staple poha additions were onion, cubed potato and peanuts.

Laxman always began by frying mustard seeds in oil; when they crackled and began to jump in the pan, he threw in asafetida powder, curry leaves, green chiles  slit rather than chopped, because my cousin could not abide too much heat  then the onion and peanuts. When the onions softened, in went the pre-cooked potato and the rinsed rice flakes. After a few fast, light stirs and a quick steaming, the poha was topped with cilantro and bustled to the breakfast table, where I would groggily discover it some hours later. The poha pots inseparable table companion was a little steel bowl of yogurt, fermented overnight from yesterdays milk and already with that sour tang Indians find so refreshing in sultry weather.

Indian porridges and the recipes ingredient include : Asafetida powder. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times )

When I came home and began to research poha recipes online, I saw that any fast-cooking or pre-cooked vegetable could be used with or in place of the potato. I have heard that at the restaurant Prakash, an institution for Maharashtrian vegetarian food in Dadar, Mumbai, they prepare the dish with cubed eggplant and a special masala. Along with the chopped cilantro suggested here, desiccated coconut and a small mountain of sev (deep-fried, crunchy noodles of chickpea flour) are among the more lavish poha toppings in India. A dollop of yogurt is wonderful on the side, along with your favorite Indian pickle or even a poached egg.

All the ingredients for poha are available at an Indian grocery store. If theres an option, buy thick poha rather than thin; it can be soaked and gently stirred without breaking up. Feel free to substitute other grains for poha, but choose ones that cook fast without much water, so that the final dish is dry and not soggy. Cooked, leftover rice, sprinkled with a little water as if for reheating it in the microwave, works well, as does instant oatmeal, rinsed as per the poha recipe. A beautiful marigold yellow, poha is also respectable at the dinner table, where it can take the place of mashed potatoes, pilaf or polenta.

food@latimes.com
The scene can only be described as horrific: On an otherwise unremarkable morning, a woman is riding up a shopping center escalator in central China with her son. When she reaches the top and begins to disembark, she steps onto a metal footplate covering the machinery. The plate collapses, dropping the woman into the gears. She shoves her child into the arms of two mall employees, and is crushed to death.

Security-camera video of the incident (Note: The video contains disturbing images.) hit Chinese social media late Sunday, hours after it occurred, with local media identifying the woman as Xiang Liujuan, 30. In a rapidly urbanizing country still plagued by shoddy construction standards and poor building maintenance, the news spread like wildfire.

But instead of an outpouring of sympathy for Xiang, or questions for the mall or government inspectors about why the escalator -- which was known to be missing some parts -- was still in operation, her family was initially met with a large measure of reproach, skepticism and blame from some official media outlets and Internet users.

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Pay Attention to This Life-Saving Button, the Peoples Daily advised, explaining to readers where the emergency stop button was located on escalators. Others, responding to a Web posting by Xiangs sister-in-law about the incident, questioned whether the family was publicizing the tragedy in an effort to extract financial compensation from the store, or had even scripted the event.

But as news of the Sunday morning incident in the city of Jingzhou, 130 miles west of Wuhan in Hubei province, spread, anger at the mall and safety inspectors mounted. What brand was that escalator? asked one commenter online. Another, describing the incident as heartbreaking, said the store must bear responsibility.

According to Xiangs sister-in-law, Xiang apparently was unaware of any problem with the escalator until she and her son had already stepped onto the moving staircase, which was still in motion and not blocked off in any way.

People questioned why the escalator was allowed to keep running or was not cordoned off if it posed a danger. Two employees, seen in the closed-circuit video circulated online, were standing at the top of the escalator, apparently trying to talk with Xiang as she and her son rode up.

They were the workers who helped Xiangs son escape the gears as his mother was crushed. (Xiangs husband was in the shopping center at the time of the incident but was on another floor when she was killed.) It was unclear whether the workers knew the footplate was insecure, though they are seen standing to the side of the metal panel, near the handrail of the escalator.

The Wuhan Evening News quoted an escalator expert as saying that the conveyors typically have safety mechanisms that should automatically stop the machinery if the metal plate is opened. It was unclear whether this escalator was equipped with such a feature.

The local safety inspection bureau told the Shanghai-based publication The Paper that there was no record of the escalator being under repair at the time of the accident. The state-run New China News Agency said local authorities were investigating.

Xiangs sister-in-law, in a post on the social media platform Weibo, appealed for help from the media, saying that after Xiang was killed, the shopping center continued to function as normal, with customers on lower floors oblivious to the incident and other possible dangers.

China has seen repeated reports of malfunctioning elevators and escalators killing or injuring people. Last September, a video of a student crushed by an elevator in the southern city of Xiamen was widely circulated online. In January, a doctor died after he and a patient got into a physical quarrel and bumped into an elevator door, causing it to open. Both men fell into the shaft and died.

The New China News Agency reported last fall that 11 people had been arrested on suspicion of selling more than 100 counterfeit brand-name elevators across China

Tommy Yang in the Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

Follow @JulieMakLAT for news from China

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U.S. President Joe Biden has commented on the recent loss of Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe against GOP's Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial election.

The president said that "people want us to get things done" when asked about the former governor of Virginia's loss to Youngkin, according to an ABC News Go report.

He added that people will continue to demand to get things done, noting that it was the reason he was pushing very hard the Democratic Party to pass the infrastructure bill and his Build Back Better bill.

Meanwhile, Virginia Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine said that Democrats had let Terry down. He added that if the infrastructure and reconciliation bills in October were done, it would have been "extremely helpful to him."

He said that passing the bills would have meant that Democrats are "doers" and that the party delivers things that people care about.

Kaine said that he and Sen. Mark Warner had warned the caucus that losing Virginia would happen, if they don't act promptly, according to an NPR report.

READ NEXT: Former U.S. President Donald Trump Calls Critics "Perverts"; Says He Does Not Believe in the Integrity of Virginia Elections

Democrats Over Terry McAuliffe's Loss

Kaine noted that not passing the bipartisan legislation sooner blew the timing for McAauliffe.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said that the Virginia gubernatorial election should accelerate the efforts in passing the bills.

Warner said that during their campaigning for the Virginia Democratic, they heard that the people were asking when they are getting more things done, seeing that they have the White House, the Senate, and the House.

However, progressives have rejected claims that the infrastructure bill would have made a difference in the result of the Virginia race.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that there is no way that can say that a 12-point swing in a state is because of Congress not passing a bill.

Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders also said that he does not agree with that.

Biden earlier said that he thinks McAuliffe will be elected governor, but noted that it would be a tight race, according to a Reuters report.

U.S. President Joe Biden's Agenda

U.S. Representative Rick Larsen said on Wednesday that his fellow House Democrats could complete votes on social spending and infrastructure bills as early as midday on Friday, according to another Reuters report.

He said that the vote on the infrastructure bill would come after Biden's social and climate policy agenda.

However, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said that he could not promise an affirmative vote. Larsen said that they are done with the infrastructure bill except for a vote. He added that there would be no more debate, saying that it would be just up or down.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, meanwhile, did not say the exact timeline of the votes. However, he said that he is confident both bills would pass.

Jayapal also expressed confidence that the House could pass both bills in the coming days, saying that they are going to pass the bills this week, according to a CNBC report.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Reacts Negatively to Donald Trump' Toys,' Giant TV Screens Left in the White House: 'What a F------ A--Hole'

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: 'Congressional Dems Hurt Terry McAuliffe': Virginia Senator Blames House For Election Loss - from The Hill






In less than two hours, Border Patrol agents manning the state of Texas arrested Guatemalan and Mexican illegal immigrants with child sex offenses on Monday.

Child Sex Offenders Arrested at U.S.-Mexico Border

According to Fox News, Border Patrol agents apprehended two illegal immigrant child sex offenders in less than two hours, marking the latest apprehension of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions by Customs and Border Protection officers.

READ MORE: More Than $50M of Methamphetamine Being Smuggled Into U.S. Seized by Texas Border Protection Officers

Guatemalan, Mexican Sex Offenders Apprehended in Border Patrol Operations After Blending With Immigrants

CBP said on a statement that agents near Rio Grande City apprehended a Guatemalan national who was previously deported after he came over as part of a group of migrants.

Based on the records check conducted by Border Patrol agents, it was revealed that the man was a registered sex offender. The Guatemalan was arrested in 2019 for lewd or lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14.

The immigrant sex offender was convicted and sentenced to 180 days in jail and five years probation earlier this year.

Also, the Guatemalan has an active warrant in the state of California.

Moreover, based on the report of CBP about an hour later, the Texas Department of Public Safety troopers situated in Brownsville requested help from Border Patrol agents after a suspect fled during a traffic stop.

The agents of the Border Patrol took the man into their custody after the request of the state Public Safety. Later on, authorities have discovered that the suspect was a Mexican national who was convicted in 2011. He was arrested after he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old child. The Mexican national was then sentenced to six years in jail and was deported this year.

Furthermore, the arrests were considered the latest criminals to be apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. The criminals often come across as part of groups of migrants seeking to enter the U.S.

Border Patrol agents in Texas also nabbed three MS-13 gang members last month. The gang members were traveling into the U.S. among groups of migrants with one of them being sought for an alleged sexual assault on a child, U.S. News Lab reported.

Earlier in the month, the CBP also announced further arrests of both gang members and sex offenders who attempted to enter the U.S. border illegally.

There were more than 1.7 million migrant encounters at the southern portion of the U.S.-Mexico border in Fiscal Year 2021. Among those immigrants, 10,763 individuals that authorities encountered were involved in criminal or illegal activities. The number went up from only 2,438 in the Fiscal Year 2020.

In Fiscal Year 2021, the total number included 488 convictions for sex offenses, numbers that came up from 156 in Fiscal Year 2020.

READ NEXT: Drug Kingpin Admits Owning 4,000 Kilos of Cocaine Causing $24m Drug Empire Reaching Alabama and Texas to Crumble

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: 2 Child Sex Fugitives, 2 Deported Sex Offenders Arrested near Border in Texas -Politics 24


President Joe Biden dismissed the report about his administration planning to pay thousands of migrants who got separated on the U.S.-Mexico Border under the Trump-era policy also known as "Zero Tolerance Policy."

It can be recalled that the said Trump policy resulted in the separation of illegal migrant parents to their children when they attempted to cross the U.S. borders using other pathways instead of the official port of entry, as they were detained and criminally prosecuted.

READ NEXT: Biden Administration Makes 2nd Attempt to End Trump-Era 'Remain in Mexico' Migrant Policy Despite Border Surge

Biden Says His Admin Paying Thousands to Migrants 'Not Going to Happen'

On Wednesday, President Biden dismissed the reports about his administration planning to pay separated migrants, calling it "garbage" and underscoring that the plan is "not going to happen."

Biden's comments stemmed out when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked the president in a press conference on Wednesday, about the reports on the plans of his admin regarding the separated immigrant payouts that can amount up to a "million dollars per family" and $450,000 each, The Daily Wire reported.

"Do you think that that might incentivize more people to come over illegally," Doocey asked the president.

Joe Biden calls reports about paying $450,000 to illegal immigrants separated from families during the Trump administration "garbage." pic.twitter.com/LUhUY46ZC9  Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 3, 2021

The president then answered the reporter, calling the report "garbage."

"If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah, but it's not true," Biden responded.

The reporter then clarified if the "garbage" the president was referring to, was the report, Biden responded "Yeah."

"$450,000 per person, is what you said? That's not going to happen," the U.S. chief executive underscored on Wednesday.

ACLU reacts to Biden's Comments

As the president deliberately said that the payouts on separated migrant families on the border due to the Trump policy is "not going to happen," The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Executive Director Anthony Romero said that Biden might not be aware of what his administration was planning.

"President Biden may not have been fully briefed about actions of his very own Justice Department," Romero highlighted, adding that the department "carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy.

It can be recalled that the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and health and Human Services considered payments to illegal immigrants that could reach up to $1 million per family. However, the departments highlighted that the final amount can still be changed contending that other migrant families would likely get smaller amounts depending on their circumstances.

Aside from saying that the president was "out of the loop" about the plans of his administration, The ACLU executive director added that if the president followed on what he said on Wednesday, Biden will abandon a "core campaign" pledge to serve justice for the thousands of immigrants separated from their families.

Romero then urged President Joe Biden to correct the mishaps of Trump's "Zero Tolerance Policy," calling it a national tragedy.

The ACLU director also reminded Biden that he called the policy "criminal" during his debate with former President Donald Trump.

READ NEXT: California: Anti-Abortion Group Wins "Free Speech" Against Gov. Gavin Newsom's Law

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Biden Admin Weighs $450K Payments to Migrants - From Fox Business
A California hoarder home in Koreatown has been bothering neighbors for years, waiting for a resolution.

One neighbor, identified as Leticia Ruiz, said that the smell is just one thing that has upset her. She added that she is also concerned about the health and hazards brought by the trash piles along the back, sides, and front of the home, according to a KRON 4 News report. Ruiz said that it's not sanitary, worrying about what she would do if there's a fire.

Another resident, Mark Mendoza, said that he does see a lot of cockroaches and rats.

Jobin Lim said that the collection of things has gotten worse over the past six months, according to an NBC News report.

Lim said that he tried appealing to the man who lives at the home. However, the homeowner started becoming angry when he tried to talk with him. Lim said he managed to get them to clear the stuff from his driveway when it started to slide over his side. He then started to use potted plants along the driveway to distinguish the property line.

READ NEXT: Chicago, Los Angeles Launch Universal Basic Income

California Hoarder Home

One realtor said that she has not been able to sell a house down the street because of the clutter around the home.

There were plans to redo a house across the street. However, investors are stalling and waiting for the city to do something about the situation.

A man and a woman living inside the home were said to be a mother and son, according to a family friend as reported by CBS Local News report. The path was blocked at the time, which made requests for an interview with the homeowner impossible.

One member of the neighborhood, Sharonda Williams, said that she has noticed the resident coming in and out of his car a few times.

There were concerns about the elderly woman's safety and health from friends, family, and neighbors. They noted that she had already fallen several times due to the clutter.

Los Angeles Department Building and Safety Records said that the home has been cited for code violations by the city multiple times since 2010.

The home was surrounded by an eight-foot junk containing items like old doors, lamps, and laundry baskets.

Meanwhile, the City Attorney's office confirmed that the homeowner signed a form, allowing crews to clean up the junk on Thursday for no cost.

Crews of firefighters and medics visited the home for the homeowner's health check.

Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health was also with the crew to check the homeowner.

The 90-year-old homeowner agreed to have her property cleaned by the city after she was checked.

Lim said that the only main concern he has right now is once they start the clutter around the home, all the "nasties" that were in there will start to come out and said that hopefully, it will not migrate to their houses.

READ MORE: California Health Officials Shut Down Second In-N-Out Chain for Defying Vaccine Mandates for Indoor Dining

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Shocking mess outside Koreatown home has been issue for years - from ABC7






The parents of a 2-year-old girl in North Florida are now facing several charges after the child died from a fentanyl overdose just a few months ago.

According to WFLA, deputies of the Marion County Sheriff's Office were called to the residence of Joseph Tierney, 36, and Jalynn Davis, 36, in Umatilla on June 13 and found the girl unresponsive.

Florida Girl Dies From Fentanyl Overdose

The child, Miya Tierney, was later pronounced dead in a hospital. Based on the reports, the Florida parents were charged for aggravated manslaughter of a child on Tuesday.

The couple initially told investigators that they put their daughter to bed and found her lifeless about 30 minutes later.

However, based on the examination conducted by the Marion County medical examiner, they have determined that the girl died of fentanyl toxicity.

Detectives investigating the case discovered Davis is a drug dealer selling fentanyl, while Tierney is an active drug user.

Since the girl's parents brought drugs into the home and failed to protect the child, authorities determined that Davis and Tierney were responsible for the girl's death.

Tierney was already in Marion County Jail with no bond set for aggravated assault and witness tampering charges when the new arrest warrant was filed.

On the other hand, Davis was in Lake County Jail for separate charges of murder in a death caused by the unlawful distribution of fentanyl, possession of methamphetamine, and possession of drug paraphernalia. A new warrant will be issued once she returns to Marion County.

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said the senseless death of the innocent child was the "ultimate tragedy." Woods added that it should serve as a reminder of why authorities must continue in their fight to keep opiates out of their communities.

The Marion County sheriff promised that if individuals were using drugs or selling drugs, and if somebody suffered an overdose or dies as a result, he and his deputies would do everything they could to hold them "accountable to the fullest extent of the law."

READ NEXT: Drug Kingpin Admits Owning 4,000 Kilos of Cocaine Causing $24m Drug Empire Reaching Alabama and Texas to Crumble

Another 2-Year-Old Child Dies From Fentanyl Toxicity

In August, a mother from Titusville in Florida has also been charged with her son's death. Based on the report of WESH, 29-year-old Jeanetta Lynette Blow was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and tampering with or fabricating evidence after the death of her 2-year-old son.

The Titusville police's attention was called by the Parish Medical Center in June 2020 after the suspicious death of a child.

The affidavit showed that the Florida mom brought her 2-year-old son to the emergency room, where the staff noted that the victim was already unresponsive, not breathing, and had no pulse.

The medical staff attending the victim was not able to save the boy's life. The staff noted that the body temperature of the 2-year-old boy was at 92 degrees upon arrival.

Blow told investigators that she woke up and found that the boy was unresponsive; that's why she drove him to the hospital. She noted that the day before, she took the boy to the park, where he "picked up dirt, licked it, and said 'ew' before she knocked it out of his hands."

However, the results of the investigation conducted by the police did not align with the mom's statement. According to an affidavit, officers found a purple velvet bag containing small plastic baggies usually used to package heroin after a search inside Blow's apartment.

Officers also found clear gloves typically used when handling heroin. Police said Blow's boyfriend was also known to traffic drugs.

After an autopsy was conducted, authorities found that the 2-year-old's cause of death was fentanyl toxicity, which prompted authorities to file charges against the Florida mom.

READ MORE: Florida Couple Charged After Toddler Nearly Died From Cocaine Overdose

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: 'The Ultimate Tragedy': Parents Face Charges in 2-Year-Old Daughter's Fentanyl Overdose, Death - From WESH 2 News
A California middle school teacher has been heard telling students that President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, had sex with his niece and that hospitals steal babies from unvaccinated parents.

In a seven-minute recording captured by an eighth-grader on October 18, the unidentified female history teacher at Anacapa Middle School in Ventura was heard ranting at her eighth-grade class about vaccines, government, child pornography, and the presidency, Daily Mail reported.

The California middle school teacher also went on to imply that former president Donald Trump was still president, which is closely aligned to those conspiracy theories shared by far-right group QAnon.

In the recording, the teacher can be heard saying that people need to wake up and see that the government "has way too much power right now."

She went on to say that Hunter Biden is doing deals with China and Ukraine, and other places where he was funneling money illegally.

The California teacher also claimed that the president's son had child pornography on his laptop and that Hunter Biden was having sexual intercourse with his own niece.

As the educator touched on the topic of COVID vaccines in the class, she noted that if an unvaccinated parent had a baby in a hospital, "they don't want to give" the baby back.

"This is a complete power control threat," she said as reported by the Independent.

READ NEXT: Former U.S. President Donald Trump Calls Critics "Perverts"; Says He Does Not Believe in the Integrity of Virginia Elections

California Teacher Spouting QAnon Theories in Classroom

Sarah Silikula, the mother of the eighth-grader who secretly recorded the teacher's outburst, said she told her son to record anything that made him uncomfortable.

Silikula wondered why does the teacher need to tell these comments in a classroom full of children. She told Los Angeles' CBS 2 that she immediately raised the issue with school officials after her son seemed affected by the rant of the middle school teacher.

Silikula said her son went inside the car, was very upset, and said he would never get vaccinated. He also asked her mother if she knew that "Trump's still president." Silikula further noted that his son "doesn't trust his parents now" because he "thinks we lied to him."

The Hill reported that the Ventura school district had condemned the teacher's comments, adding that they conducted an investigation and will impose its "progressive discipline policy" with the teachers' union.

According to CBSLA, the whole class was also assigned to another teacher in the school. But the teacher was still reportedly employed at the school and had accepted responsibility for her error in judgment.

Silikula said this was not enough, and she wanted to make sure the lesson learned was that a teacher's opinion should never be taught in the classroom.

She noted that she respects anyone's political beliefs, but she does not want teachers to impose those beliefs on their children.

What is QAnon?

QAnon is a completely baseless theory that says Donald Trump is waging war against "elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles" in government, business, and media, BBC News reported.

Supporters of QAnon also speculated that this fight would lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people would be arrested and executed.

Recently, QAnon believers gathered in downtown Dallas, hoping to see John F. Kennedy Jr. and announce that Donald Trump is president.

JFK Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999 at age 38. But QAnon supporters believe that the former president's son has spent the last 22 years in hiding.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Reacts Negatively to Donald Trump' Toys,' Giant TV Screens Left in the White House: 'What a F------ A--Hole'

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: QAnon and the Spread of Conspiracy Theories - From CBS Sunday Morning






The woman who earlier claimed to be Brian Laundrie's ex-girlfriend has admitted that it was all a hoax as she made it all up.

The woman, who has been going by the name of Gabriella Darling on social media, earlier claimed that she had previously dated Laundrie before the latter dated Gabby Petito.

According to The Sun, the woman has seemed to admit that she was lying after stating she's "not involved with anything that has to do with Brian or Gabby."

Darling's statement came after several reports surfaced this week that she was making the whole story up after the Laundrie family said they did not know her, OK Magazine reported.

The Sun reported that the woman was visited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but the bureau declined to comment regarding the visit.

READ NEXT: Brian Laundrie's 'Ex-Girlfriend' Pens Heartfelt Tribute Wishing He's Still Here to Wake up From This 'Nightmare'

Brian Laundrie Family Furious At 'Ex-Girlfriend' of Gabby Petito's Fiance

Brian Laundrie's family was not happy with Gabriella Darling's claim of being the ex-girlfriend of Gabby Petito's fiance. They said she's nothing more than an imposter.

At first, Darling reportedly shared on social media about Laundrie being "narcissistic" and controlling ways. But after Laundrie's remains were found at the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on October 20, she suddenly played the role of a woman who grieves over the death of a man she once loved.

Darling even posted a lengthy post on Instagram after Laundrie's remains were found. But a source close to the Laundrie family told The Sun that Laundrie's parents and her sister, Cassie, have no idea who the woman was.

April Valenzuela, who has a mutual friend with the Laundrie family, told the outlet that she spoke to Darling for two hours over the phone.

Valenzuela, who has a background as a rape crisis counselor who worked with trauma victims, said she believed the woman at first and wanted to help the woman cope with her grief.

And then she learned that the Laundries had never met Darling. Valenzuela said it was not only her mutual friend with the Laundrie family who does not believe in Darling's stories but also Cassie, who was "furious" over the stories of the alleged "fake" girlfriend of Laundrie.

"It was messed up, and it made Cassie so mad," Valenzuela said. She added that Darling suddenly ignored her after confronting her with Cassie's claims that the Laundrie family had never met her.

"She never called me. She messaged me and told me that her family's attorney told her not to talk to anyone," Valenzuela noted.

Aside from the Laundrie family, the North Port police said they were also not familiar with Gabriella Darling.

Investigators Hope Brian Laundrie's 'Digital Footprint' Will Provide 'Clues'

Police were hoping that Brian Laundrie's "digital footprint" and phones would provide clues or contain never-before-seen information about his and Gabby Petito's death.

According to North Port Police Department spokesman Josh Taylor, Laundrie's social media profiles will be included in the investigation.

"Everything that's been gathered in digital information, the digital footprint that's never been revealed that will certainly be a part of [the FBI's] entire case," Taylor noted.

Brian Laundrie was named a person of interest by North Port police after returning home on September 1 or 10 days before Gabby Petito was reported missing by her family.

Petito disappeared on a cross-country road trip with Laundrie. The couple was traveling to Oregon when the YouTuber stopped communicating with her family in Wyoming in late August.

Gabby Petito's body was found at the Spread Creek Dispersed Campground near Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming on September 19.

A Teton County, Wyoming coroner said she was strangled to death by a "human being," and the manner of death was homicide.

READ MORE: Brian Laundrie - Mystery Gun Found in Florida Park Where Dog the Bounty Hunter Searched for Gabby Petito's Fiance

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Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Can Laundrie Family be Held Legally Responsible For Not Letting Police Talk to Brian? - From FOX 4 Now
Portland, TN (37148)

Today

Periods of rain. High 54F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain showers early with clear skies overnight. Low around 30F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Irish Water says any raw sewage flooding onto the streets of Ballybrittas is likely to have come from a septic tank in the village which households should check for.

The State-owned company also claimed it had received no reports of waste getting onto the streets of the village in a reply to a query from the Leinster Express to report by a local councillor that the village had been hit by another episode.

The company issued a reply to recent appeal from Cllr PJ Kelly that from a county councillor. He tabled a motion in October calling on Laois County Council to consider installing a temporary sewage treatment facility in Ballybrittas to cater for 52 buildings, which includes dwellings and business.

"Flash flooding has caused overflowing of septic tanks out on to the Main Street in recent times, he said.

The meeting was told by Laois County Council that wastewater infrastructure issue and is the responsibility of Irish Water. A council official added that it on their Laois Small Towns and Villages Growth Programme.

The Leinster Express asked Irish Water about the situation and what action it intended to take.

"Irish Water is responsible for the delivery of all public water and wastewater services in Ireland. We can confirm there is no public sewer running along the road through Ballybrittas and have not received any reports of raw sewerage spilling onto the street in Ballybrittas.

"If sewage is present there is a possibility a nearby septic tank may be leaking. We would recommend any properties near to where sewage is sighted to check their septic check for leaks," it said.

The utility made no reference to any proposal to upgrade the village's system. Cllr Kelly said at the October meeting that a waste improvement scheme was first planned in the 1970s.

"Irish Water continues to work at this time, with our local authority partners, contractors and others to safeguard the health and well-being of staff and the public and to ensure the continuity of drinking water and wastewater services," it concluded.

A new estate built in the village has a pumping station which has capacity to take the waste from the existing village. However, an long running dispute has prevented this from happening.
Tourists who travel thousands of miles to holiday in Laois could be having their stay spoiled by a big drop in the Grand Canal water level that is leading to barges getting stuck in the mud.

So it was claimed at a recent Laois County Council meeting where responsibility was laid squarely at the door of Waterways Ireland.

Cllr Aidan Mullins, Sinn Fein, tabled a motion at the recent Graiguecullen Portarlington Municipal District meeting.

It called on Laois County Council to contact Waterways Ireland to investigate the cause of the dropping levels and to clear the feeders supplying the canal with water.

Barges and boats are being stuck in the canal at Vicarstown due to low water levels, he said.

Cllr Mullins said the problem was particularly bad in the Vicarstown area on the Monasterevin to Athy stretch.

He said international visitors want to holiday on the canal but its not not navigable. He added that a local business depends on these visitors.

People are coming from Europe and as far away as Australia to hire barges. But this year barges were getting stuck in the canal because the water levels had dropped two metres. This meant you couldnt navigate the canal, he said.

Cllr Mullins said low levels also stop the barges from mooring to the canal bank.

He asked the council to contact Waterways Ireland to carry out a survey to determine why levels have dropped. He added that the weir in Annanough is also in a bad state. He said it feeds the canal but cannot do so properly because of its condition.

He added that other feeder streams are also blocked.

Cllr Paschal McEvoy, Fianna Fail, backed the motion. He said Waterways Ireland is not doing its job.

The lack of maintenance on the canal is probably the biggest problem. We have had strange weather but if the work was done it would return to normal, he said.

Mr Gerry Murphy, Director of Services, said the council would contact Waterways Ireland.

The Leinster Express also raised the issue with Waterways Ireland and is awaiting a response.
A young Laois woman with Down Syndrome is continuing to break down barriers to achieve her life goals.

Katie Flanagan from Stradbally was the first Leaving Cert Applied graduate with Down Syndrome in Laois, at Scoil Chriost Ri in Portlaoise where was selected as the Debs Queen in 2017 (pictured below).

At that time she told the Leinster Express that she hoped to attend the National Learning Network and then work in childcare.

Now 23, Katie has just been offered a full-time paid job, an offer that was won after she first impressed her new employers in a volunteer role.

Katie is a new Sherpa Leader at the Sherpa Kids afterschool club in Portlaoise, beating other interviewees for the job.

She told the Leinster Express what it means to become a full time employee.

"I'm so happy, I'm delighted. I'm just like everyone else, I'm no different. This job is easy for me. I knew some of the kids already from volunteering in The Den playschool. Some of the kids here have Down syndrome as well and I help them. I love it, I help the children with their homework, I'm doing the same job as the rest of the staff," Katie said.

She is looking forward to her first week's wages.

"I've bought two dresses already and I'm going to get my nails done.

Her proud parents are Geraldine and Fergus. Geraldine said that lack of employment opportunities for people with Down Syndrome is a big issue.

"I keep saying, people just need to give them a chance, and let them prove themselves to the employer. A lot of employers are afraid to take the leap. It is huge for us as parents to see Katie get a job. She is so independent, even at home cooking her own meals," said Geraldine.

"I'm always organised, always on time," added Katie.

She is also working on a Level 3 and 4 courses in childcare with Laois Offaly Employment and Training Board in Portlaoise.

"I want to tell everyone to get a job. Keep your head down and get on with it," Katie said.

Her mother is thrilled for Katie, who begun her life fighting for survival, and completed her Junior Cert as a wheelchair user.

"She always just got on with things," she said.

On Friday of last week, when Katie was due to finish her volunteering role, she was given a surprise party with pop-up cards banners music, and was offered the job.

"Katie is over the moon working 5 days a week in meaningful paid employment, treated as an equal member of staff, and doing a job that she loves. We are so happy for her, but most of all, we are happy with Sherpa kids for giving this girl a real chance in life and everything else that comes with it. Anything is possible, never give up," Geraldine said.

Katie was assisted in finding a job by Midland Ability Employment in Mountmellick who are available to support anyone with a disability to find employment.

"I don't think enough people know about them. They spent hours interviewing Katie to find out what she would be good at. Everyone is good at something. And they don't just leave people dumped in jobs. Their support continues for 18 months to keep an eye on them in case they are not being treated well," Geraldine said.

Cassia O'Neill is manager with Sherpa, who run a pop-up afterschool service and in Holy Family schools and Educate Together in Portlaoise as well as camps during holidays.

"I was contacted by Karen and I thought it would be nice to give someone a chance. Since the first day Katie was so enthusiastic about the job and grateful for the opportunity. She motivates us as well, all the staff. We have all been through so much with lockdowns and stopping and starting but her energy and passion actually boosts all our morale. She is well able for the job. She is studying childcare and comes in every day with fresh ideas for us.

"I would say to other employers, go for it, it's worth a try. Katie brings a lot to the job. We have all realised now how important it is for someone to have a job," Cassia said.

Down Syndrome Ireland 'Laois branch' is celebrating for Katie.

"We congratulate Katie on her wonderful achievement. Katie has proven that, given the opportunity, our members can be just as resourceful and talented as anyone else in society.

"We would like to acknowledge the opportunity given by Sherpa to Katie as an employer. This is what the Laois Field of Dreams project is all about, giving our members the skill-sets to hold down meaningful paid employment in the community.

"We would encourage other potential employers to contact us if they have any openings that might suit some of our adults, please ring Mick on 086 0491633 if you are considering becoming involved with our Branch in this way," the group say.

DSI 'Laois branch' has been provided with a site to build a 'field of dreams' training centre of excellence in Abbeyleix by Laois County Council and are fundraising to build it. Text dreams to 50300 to donate 4.
A 21-year-old man has been handed down a five month jail sentence for dangerous driving in March of last year.

Brian Szekely, with an address at 225 River Forest in Leixlip, pleaded guilty to going at 193 km/h in a 100km/h zone on the N7 Road at Greenhills in Kill on March 26 2020 at around 11:30pm.

Solicitor Aisling Murphy represented the defendant, last Wednesday, where she told Naas District Court that her client was on his way to Dublin because he believed his mother was seriously ill, and sped off because the roads were quiet at the time.

However, the garda who tailed and arrested him said that he was accompanied by two other men in his car, and added that the defendant coughed in his direction twice.

Ms Murphy replied that her client did not intentionally mean to cough at the garda's general direction.

The garda officer noted that Mr Szekely admitted to him that he only had a Learner permit.

He also said that the defendant had no previous convictions.

After considering the evidence, Judge Desmond Zaidan said that while no harm was ultimately caused, he felt that he nevertheless put both his passengers and other drivers in danger.

The judge added that he needed to send a deterrent message to would-be dangerous drivers.

He imposed a five-month jail sentence on the defendant, along with a two year disqualification from driving.

The judge also said that Mr Szekely would have to resit his driving test in the event of a successful appeal.
A mother-of-two who posted a photo online of one of the boys convicted of the murder of Ana Kriegel thought it was wrong they are protected when she [Ana Kriegel] was not protected, a court has heard.

Hazel Fitzpatrick (25) posted a screenshot on Facebook of a photo that identified Boy A on the day after both juveniles were convicted of the murder that took place in Dublin in May 2018.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that there was no premeditation, that Ms Fitzpatrick acted out of pure anger and that at the time she had become almost reliant and addicted to social media.

The court heard the accused woman describes the offence as the biggest mistake she has ever made in her life.

Ms Fitzpatrick of Easton Green, Easton Road, Leixlip, Co Kildare, pleaded guilty to posting a picture on her Facebook account which includes a picture of Boy A in contravention of the Children's Act 2001 within the State on or about June 19, 2019. She has no previous convictions.

Sergeant David O'Neil told Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting, that on the day after two juveniles commonly referred to as Boy A and Boy B were convicted of the murder of Ana Kriegel in June 2019, a picture identifying Boy A was published on the Facebook account of the accused.

The court heard this post contained a picture of the boy, as well as the words Name and shame the c*nts, justice was served but they should not be allowed to see daylight again.

The post also called the two convicted juveniles sickos and said that everyone should see who did it.

Sgt O'Neil said the presiding judge of the trial had made an order that nothing could be published that would identify or tend to identify the two convicted juveniles. He said the trial and this order was extensively reported by media outlets.

Snapshots of certain posts made on social media sites were brought to the attention of gardai, including the post made by Ms Fitzpatrick. Gardai were satisfied the image shared was a clear breach of the order and identified the accused's address.

The sergeant said that when gardai attended at her address in July 2019, Ms Fitzpatrick said she had been expecting them, invited them into her home and agreed to an interview, stating that she had nothing to hide.

In interview with gardai, Fitzpatrick said she had followed the case online, that people were talking about it and she was from the locality. She said she was also a mother and this formed a part of her interest in the case.

Ms Fitzpatrick told gardai she could not understood how two juveniles could do something like that. She said she had heard about the judge's order and that people could be brought to court and fined.

She admitted to sharing the material on Facebook, saying she had screenshotted the photo from someone else's page and then shared it. She said she took it down two or three minutes later because people were texting her.

When asked by gardai why she had shared the photo, Ms Fitzpatrick said she questioned why the boys were being hidden when their actions were not the actions of juveniles and that the girl did not get a say in anything.

Ms Fitzpatrick said she thought it is wrong they are protected when she [Ana Kriegel] was not protected. She said she was sorry for the boys' families, but was not sorry for them.

The court heard that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) initially directed a summary disposal in the District Court and that jurisdiction was accepted by a District Court judge, only to later be refused by another judge.

Sgt O'Neil agreed with Kevin Roche BL, defending, that his client posted a screenshot of a photo and she was not the original person who uploaded the photo to Facebook.

He agreed with counsel that there was no premeditation, that it happened out of pure anger and his client was not part of a greater conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He agreed her admissions were important as the case would have been very difficult to prove otherwise.

The sergeant agreed Ms Fitzpatrick was previously of exceptional character who was suffering from anxiety and depression at time. He agreed he did not expect to see her come to garda attention again.

Mr Roche said his client was suffering from post-natal depression at the time of the offence. He said she became almost reliant and addicted to social media, particularly Facebook.

Counsel said that anger within his client's local community led her to make a mistake that is going to follow her around for the rest of her life. He said his client knew her actions were illegal, but did not fully ascertain their severity.

He said the offending behaviour was spontaneous and represented an utterly misguided foray into criminality. He said she describes the offence as the biggest mistake she has ever made in her life.

Mr Roche said a report from the Probation Service describes his client as being at a low-risk of reoffending. He said his client has two small children.

Counsel asked the court to consider utilising Section 100 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006. This section allows the court to impose a fine and defer the passing of a sentence of imprisonment for the offence.

Judge Karen O'Connor remanded Ms Fitzpatrick on continuing bail and adjourned the matter for finalisation to November 18, next.
A Donegal TD has stated that government missing the Mica redress deadline is "just not on".

Deputy Pearse Doherty made the comment yesterday before the reading of the second stage of the Finance Bill 2021.

He said, "I am deeply disappointed, to say the least, that the Government is going to miss the deadline once again to do what is right by the families in Donegal and elsewhere who are suffering as a result of no regulation or light-touch regulation. Their houses are crumbling around them.

"The extended deadline, November 9 is now going to be missed by the Cabinet because you haven't got your act together. That is not acceptable to the many many families who are in mental turmoil waiting for the Government to do the right thing. It is not on."

Details of an enhanced scheme for mica-affected houses was set to come before Cabinet on November 9.

However, according to the Irish Independent, a spokesperson for the Housing Minister stated a memo on the new scheme will not go before ministers next week.

Deputy Thomas Pringle also spoke on the matter and said news of a delay "sickens" him.

He said, "I saw a newspaper report mention 9 December and I thought it was a misprint but it must actually be right. We will now have to wait until then when yet another deadline will pass and this just seems to keep on going and going. What more needs to be discussed other than the fact that 100% redress for these families is necessary?!

The current Defective Concrete Blocks Scheme, known in Donegal as the Mica Redress Scheme, financially assists homeowners with damages caused by the use of defective concrete blocks in construction.

The maximum grant available under the scheme is 275,000 in cases where the entire building needs to be demolished to foundation level and rebuilt.
ICSA president Dermot Kelleher has said the Department of Agriculture must urgently address the fact that so many farmers have yet to receive their payment under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS).

We have been getting a lot of reports from farmers - a lot more than would be normal - who are still waiting on BPS payments more than two weeks after they should have been issued. This is causing enormous difficulties for those affected and needs to be sorted, he said.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that farmers cannot get answers from the Department as to what is causing the delays. Every farmer knows that it is difficult to get through to the relevant Department person at the best of times, but it would appear things have got even worse. Its just not good enough to be left in limbo when it comes to such an important payment. The Department needs to come clean on just how many basic payments are outstanding, why this has happened, and what they intend to do about it.

Mr Kelleher also insisted that all Department of Agriculture offices should fully reopen to farmers. The majority of Covid related flexibilities afforded to farmers have now been lifted. It cannot be one rule for farmers and another rule for Department staff. If it is being demanded of farmers that they get back to normal  despite the ongoing pandemic - then all regional Department of Agriculture offices must reopen their doors to the public.
A man pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting a garda as well as a charge of dangerous parking when his cases came before Carrick-on-Shannon District Court.

Brendan Lynch, with addresses at 11 Sinnan, Marymount, Carrick-on -Shannon and Kilmaddaroe, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, pleaded guilty to the assault charges on August 14, 2019, at The Landmark Hotel, Carrick-on-Shannon and Carrick-on-Shannon Garda Station.

Inspector Emmet Treacy told the court the defendant was in an argument with door staff of The Landmark Hotel where he was refused entry.

Garda Clement McCormack witnessed the argument and directed the defendant to leave the area. Mr Lynch cursed at the garda and then began to walk away. Garda McCormack followed him and Mr Lynch turned and punched the garda on the left shoulder area.



Mr Lynch was arrested and taken to the garda station where he continued to struggle and spat into the face of Garda Tom Currid and kicked out at the garda when he was being taken to the cell, hitting him on the right thigh.

Insp Treacy said the defendant had one previous conviction for no insurance in January 2020 for which he was fined 300.

The other charge before the court, Insp Treacy said, related to a call gardai received of a vehicle causing an obstruction at Drumlumman, Carrick-on- Shannon on April 29, 2020.

Gardai observed a red Audi partially blocking the outbound lane. There was a note on the window saying the car would be moved as soon as possible.

Garda Burke seized the vehicle and spoke to the owner. He said he was driving the vehicle and got a puncture. When he went to tow it the tow rope snapped. He tried to contact a tow company but couldn't get one.



Martin Burke, solicitor, said Mr Lynch had arranged for someone to come and tow the vehicle the morning it was seized. He said Mr Lynch got a blow out and the tow rope broke and he was unable to put the car in off the road.

He said the other matters were serious. He said Mr Lynch is a young man, now 19. At the time he was 17 and he was in a very troublesome state and was engaged with the gardai's juvenile liaison service. He said Mr Lynch had multiple incidents with the gardai that were finalised under the juvenile liaison service.

Mr Burke said he was told that due to the frequency of his interactions with the gardai, Mr Lynch felt he had been dealt with in a very heavy handed manner on a number of occasions.

He made a complaint to the Garda Ombudsman but that complaint has since been withdrawn and he was now accepting a plea to the charges.



He said Mr Lynch is now on a two year outdoor pursuits training course. Mr Burke said earlier this year he was involved in a road traffic incident which left him with life changing injuries to his hand.

Judge Deirdre Gearty said this was a matter where the court would benefit from a probation report. She said it was a very serious incident and she needed to know what was going on in Mr Lynch's life.

The matter was put back to January 28 next. A certificate of legal aid was granted.
Last week some elements of the national media reported that a gun threat had been made against the Dail office of local TD, Martin Kenny.

However, speaking with the Leitrim Observer, Deputy Kenny has clarified that some national media had gotten some elements of the story incorrect.

Some of the national media presented the incident as a threat directly towards my office which wasn't really what happened, he said.

It involved threats against the gardai and Leinster House but not myself or any TD in particular.

He said that regardless this incident was still quite intimidating and his personal assistant, who took the call, was shaken by it.

Deputy Kenny said that the phone call had been received at 11am to his office in Leinster House last week.

The caller was a man from the southern counties of the country who, Deputy Kenny said had a gripe with local gardai in his area.

He also complained about GSOC and other state agencies he felt were not protecting his rights, explained the Sinn Fein TD.

The call was made at 11am and the caller sounded sober and sincere. As the conversation went on the man became more and more agitated and he subsequently made threats against the gardai and Leinster House which involved the use of a gun.

The man provided his details to Deputy Kenny's personal assistant during the call and after the call was finished a decision was made to report the matter to the authorities in the Oireachtas and to the gardai.

Deputy Kenny stressed this wasn't a threat against him personally or his office or towards any TD, but was a more general threat against Leinster House and the gardai.

I understand that the gardai have spoken to the man who made the call as part of an investigation into the matter, said Deputy Kenny.

While this wasn't a direct threat against my office it does highlight the fact that there is a growing number of people who think it is acceptable to ring public representatives or government bodies and level abuse and threats against staff, he said.

Deputy Kenny pointed out that rarely a week goes by where people who, for example, have grievances with the justice system, contact our office. Some get very agitated and become very abrupt and insulting towards my staff. This is not unusual, it is the same for all TDs and their offices.

We often have people who are less than respectful when they are getting their point across. In this instance, this man, went further and we had no option but to report the matter to the authorities.

Deputy Kenny said that the trend towards threatening politicians, their staff, or government officials is become more and more common adding that is both dangerous and disappointing.

He said that a lot of the people who make these sort of calls are also the same people who regularly post insulting or abusive content on social media.

Unfortunately people do this on social media and nothing happens to stop it and then they think it is ok to ring up a public office and treat people in the same disrespectful way, observed Deputy Kenny.

He said that social media platforms have an obligation to ensure that people who post offensive or threatening content are dealt with appropriately and any sort of intimidation should not be tolerated.
Leitrim County councillors have unanimously backed a motion calling on the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan to halt plans to grant a gold and silver prospecting licence in North Leitrim.

The minister recently published a notice of intention to grant the licence which covers 40 townlands.

At Monday's Council meeting, all six Manorhamilton Municipal District councillors brought forward a joint motion on the prospecting licence noting that it was unacceptable and should not go ahead.

Cllr Mary Bohan said that all six municipal district councillors had felt so strongly about the issue that they decided to forgo individual motions in favour of this joint proposal.

There are serious concerns over the environmental and visual impact of any mining in North Leitrim, she said adding that it was frustrating to have to fight this new threat to the area following the lengthy battle against fracking.

Rest assured, she warned, whether there is gold or not this will be of no benefit to the local communities, just to the mining company.

She said that this threat to scenic areas of the county could not be accepted and mining would destroy the area.

She also questioned claims that the prospecting process would be non invasive and have minimal impact before adding this motion should also be sent to the Taoiseach.

Cllr Padraig Fallon agreed there would be little benefit for Leitrim or this country from mining operations adding we're really insistent that this (prospecting licence) not proceed.

He described it as ironic that a Green Party Minister for Environment was even contemplating this sort of licence.

Cllr Justin Warnock said that he did not trust Minister Eamon Ryan not to grant the licence.

There are no votes for the Green Party in Leitrim so they don't really care, he said.

But we must acknowledge the fact that the people of Leitrim have the right to say 'no' to this licence.

He stated this licence is particularly worrying, with the potential for North Leitrim to become a national park, now being considered.

Cllr Felim Gurn said that this prospecting licence had come out of the blue and the fact that 40 townlands were named is just shocking.People want to come back to this area and build a home and they aren't able to and here we are looking at mining in this area, he said.Cllr Sean McDermott noted that a video produced on a gold mining operation in Omagh had been horrifying.We have to go back to the Minister with a firm 'no', he said.Fracking, forestry and wind turbines are put (Leitrim's) way but one off rural housing is not allowed. That doesn't make sense.All councillors show their support for the motion which will now be sent to Minister Ryan and the Taoiseach as well as to neighbouring councils like Cavan.

Call For public to make objections

The Treasure Leitrim group say they are continuing their call for the public to make objections to the proposed license before the November 7 deadline.

They also noted this can be done online using Friends of the Earth's online objection page: www.foe.ie/takeaction/object-to-mining-licences-in-leitrim/ or by posting an objection to Geoscience Regulation Office, Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, 29-31 Adelaide Road, Dublin, D02 X285 or sending it via email: GSRO@DECC.gov.ie

The group says they have received correspondence from the Geoscience Regulation Office in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, confirming that Minister Ryan does not have to issue the license to Flintridge Resources.

Treasure Leitrim are asking the Minister to stand with communities that will be impacted by the decision he makes and not to stand with the extractive mining industry, said Treasure Leitrim this week.
LIMERICK communities have seen the benefit of improvements to local wastewater infrastructure according to a new report.

Investment in the infrastructure at Athea wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) has improved water quality while supporting housing and economic development in the area.

The latest EPA Urban Wastewater Treatment Report shows that progress has been made but continued investment in essential wastewater services is needed.

Once planned projects in Foynes and Glin are completed, Irish Water are on track to end the discharge of raw sewage in County Limerick by 2026.

Other projects that will also enhance wastewater treatment in the future are Hospital, Croom Bunlicky and Castletroy WWTPs.

The WWTP in Hospital was recently announced as one of 21 WWTPs to be upgraded as part of the Small Towns and Villages Growth Programme.

Irish Water has been prioritising areas in the last six years where they can also support housing and development, particularly in locations where raw sewage was discharging into our rivers and seas.

Thanks to the investment, communities are enjoying safer bathing waters, a cleaner environment and opportunities for the development of new homes, businesses and tourism.

New WTTP have been built in 17 locations where raw sewage had been discharged into the sea for decades.

By the end of this year construction will have started in an additional 14 locations, with a further eight projects due to get underway next year and the remaining nine from 2023 onwards.

Margaret Attridge of Irish Water said: Having a modern, sustainable and functional wastewater network in Limerick is critical in order to protect our environment and to support housing and economic growth in the years ahead.

"We continue to work closely with the EPA and our other partners, including local authorities, to ensure this can be delivered in the most efficient and sustainable way through the use of cutting edge technologies, science and engineering expertise, and meaningful engagement with local communities around Limerick.

There is no doubt that challenges remain. Much of the infrastructure for safely collecting and treating wastewater around the country has suffered from decades of under-investment.

"But Irish Water has a plan in place to address these deficiencies and we are making real progress. Continued investment will be required in the coming years to build a modern, fit-for-purpose wastewater network but we are confident that we are on track to achieving that aim.
Today marks Energy Day at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) summit in Glasgow today.

Energy Day focuses on how countries can look to switch to cleaner power in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

COP President Mr. Alok Sharma said Energy Day is central to the efforts at COP26 to keep the Paris Agreement goal within reach.

He said it is important to decarbonize our power sectors as power accounts for 1/4 of global emissions.

The Global Coal to Clean Power Transition statement is being published at COP26 today.

It is a commitment to end coal investment, to scale up clean power, and to ensure a just transition to phase out coal in the 2030s.

The statement includes 77 signatures, including 44 countries, 23 of which are making commitments to ending coal for the first time.

The global transition to clean power needs to progress 4 to 6 times faster than at present to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees, according to the UK government.

The department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said: "With coal being the single largest contributor to climate change, phasing it out and delivering a rapid, inclusive transition to clean energy is essential if we are to keep 1.5 degrees alive."

Alok Sharma said: "The end of coal is in sight."

"We wanted to push to end international coal financing, countries to phase out coal at home, we wanted to build collaboration to support the move to clean power, and to ensure the transition was just." he said.

Doing this will benefit the environment, create good, green jobs and clean up the air, added Mr. Sharma.

Today, countries are beginning to choke off international coal financing and there is a shift away from domestic coal power which was a 'lofty' ambition when the presidency was taken over in 2019, according to the COP President.

At the G7 climate environmental ministerial meeting in May, every G7 nation committed to ending international coal financing this year including South Korea and China.

The group committed to decarbonizing power systems in the 2030s, said Mr. Sharma.

The COP President said progress is welcome but there is more to be done and ultimately it is up to everyone to continue building the momentum through alliances and collaborations.

"A brighter future comes ever closer in this 'vital decade'; a future of cleaner air, cheaper power, and good, green jobs," he added.
FINE Gael councillor Adam Teskey has slammed the 220,000 cost of restoring the Countess Dunraven fountain on Adares Main St and has described it as squandering public money.

220,000 is a mortgage for most people who spend a lifetime of work to accumulate that sort of money and we have spent it on a fountain, he declared at a meeting of Adare Rathkeale councillors where the full costs of the project were revealed.. I dont know how anyone could stand over it.

Pointing out that the project costs had risen from 80,000 to 180,000 and now to 220,000, he demanded: Were we told lies when we were told 80,000?.

I am not against the project, he continued. There has been a fantastic job done. But, he said, councillors had a role to ensure that monies are not wasted and people would be shocked, alarmed and disappointed at this waste of taxpayers money.

Common sense is very, very scarce in this authority, his party colleague, Cllr Stephen Keary said. criticising the costing process which had seen the cost escalate by 150% from the initial estimate. He was also critical of the fact that 160,000 had come from council funds at a time when they were being told there was a 1m gap in the finances.

Executive architect Tom Joyce told councillors that the primary focus at the beginning was the restoration of the fountain. But it then became clear that a more comprehensive project was involved. This included stabilisation of the fountain, removing the railings and greenery and developing a new seating area around the fountain.

Restoration projects are difficult to cost, he reminded councillors and there had been an increase in costs as a result of Covid and Brexit and the evolution of the design. I do feel the project represents value for money, he said.

This is the first time I have seen what this project costs, Cllr John ODonoghue said. It was costing a quarter of a million euro at a time when there is a hole in our finances.

It would want to blow me away, unless Padraig Harrington or Rory McIlroy is going to tee off from it at the Ryder Cup, he said.

Cllr Kevin Sheahan said councillors main objection was the lack of information and accountability on expenditure.

But Cllr Bridie Collins was full square behind the project, the idea for which had originally come from Adare Tidy Towns. This project is absolutely stunning, she declared, praising the beautiful work done.

Everybody in Adare was very very pleased, she said. The village now had an area on the Main St where people could relax and meet, she continued, and already there was demand from bridal parties who wanted to take photographs there.

This is the poster-boy for what could be done all over West Limerick, Cllr Collins said and she urged all the councillors to attend the official unveiling of the fountain at 4pm this Friday.
NEGOTIATIONS are still continuing between Focus Ireland and Limerick City and County Council about the future of 16 houses being built in The Orchard Estate, Pallaskenry.

But local councillors meeting this week said there was a lot of concern locally about the project.

The original plan from the developer was that it would be a private housing estate, Cllr Emmett OBrien pointed out. But then the council proposed to buy 16 houses, eight for rent and eight for affordable purchase.

However, with Focus Ireland now coming in, all houses would be for rental and his concern was that councillors would have no control over who got the houses. We want local people to get those houses, he said.

Why arent some still affordable houses? Cllr Stephen Keary demanded. Are ye going to do a U-turn on this? How could councillors, have any faith in agreements made if they were changed the following day, he argued. And he questioned how planning permission for private houses could all of a sudden be for social housing.

Cllrs John ODonoghue and Bridie Collins were also concerned that the eight houses designated for affordable purchase would no longer be available, but were told that Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) cannot sell to tenants.

The way we are going, AHBs are going to own all the houses, Cllr ODonoghue said.

Last month, Limerick City and County Council said in a statement that it had signed a fixed-price contract with Top Drawer Development for 16 houses but the developer got into difficulties due in part to COVID-19 pandemic, which had led to a delay in the project. As well as the pandemic, the impact of Brexit and other supply chain issues have seen an additional increase in the cost of building materials, a spokesman said.

Because it was a fixed price contract, he explained, the council could not pay any top-up and had approached Focus Ireland with a view to taking over the contract in order to ensure the houses could be secured for people on the housing waiting list.

We are prohibited from increasing the money, director of services for housing, Caroline Curley told the councillors this week. We knew they (Focus Ireland) had greater flexibility on the price.

Are we setting a very dangerous precedent here? Cllr Adam Teskey asked. He argued that the best policy might be to stand back and try to deal with the issue, in time, through the Derelicts Sites legislation.

But, councillors were warned, it was still not a done deal with Focus Ireland and that a contract has not yet been signed. The houses, they were told, would be delivered in turn-key condition with a finish date of March 1 and the houses would be allocated to people from the area on the housing waiting list.
Novartis AG agreed to sell its stake in Roche Holding AG back to its rival for $20.7 billion, ending a two-decade holding that linked the two Swiss drugmakers.

The price is 356.93 Swiss francs ($391) for each bearer share, Novartis said Thursday. Thats 13% lower than the last closing price.

Novartis said it will have a capital gain of about $14 billion on the investment, which it no longer considers a strategic asset. The stake is a remnant of a failed attempt 20 years ago by then-Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella to nudge Roche into a merger.

The company owns 33% of Roches voting shares, and Novartis has made a 10% annual gain on them over the past two decades.

The gap between Roche bearer shares reached a 10-year high against non-voting shares in September.

The transaction will increase the voting power of Roches family pool to 67.5%, Roche said. The family pool wont participate in the purchase. Meanwhile, the percentage of the company held by the public will increase from 16.6% to 24.9%.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.

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The megalodon, which went extinct millions of years ago, was the largest shark ever to prowl the oceans and one of the largest fish on record. The scientific name, Otodus megalodon, means "giant tooth," and for good reason: Its massive teeth are almost three times larger than the teeth of a modern great white shark. The megalodon shark's fossilized bones and teeth give scientists major clues about what the creature was like and when it died off.

When the megalodon went extinct

While the popular 2018 movie, "The Meg," pits modern humans against an enormous megalodon sharks, it's actually more than likely that the beast died out before humans even evolved. But it's difficult to pinpoint the exact date that the megalodon went extinct because the fossil record is incomplete.

In 2014, a research group at the University of Zurich studied megalodon fossils using a technique called optimal linear estimation to determine their age. Their research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that most of the fossils date back to the middle Miocene epoch to the Pliocene epoch (15.9 million to 2.6 million years ago). All signs of the creature's existence ended 2.6 million years ago in the current fossil record, the authors wrote. For comparison, our earliest Homo sapiens ancestors emerged only 2.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

A very small portion of the Zurich study's data  6 out of 10,000 simulations  showed a 1% chance that these giant sharks could still be alive. That chance seems pretty slim, and the researchers wrote in the study that they rejected "popular claims of present-day survival of O. megalodon."

Because no one has discovered any recent evidence of the monster  not even fossils that are any younger than 2.6 million years old  scientists agree that megalodon sharks are long gone.

How big were megalodons?

Megalodon shark size: The megalodon was a gigantic creature, but maybe not as big as you think. There are a lot of arguments in the scientific community about megalodon's size.

Going solely by the size of the teeth, some believe that the fish could grow up to 60 feet long (18 meters), according to the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, while others think that about 80 feet (25 m) long is more likely, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

For comparison, modern great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) reach lengths of 20 feet (6 m), according to Animal Diversity Web. Even larger is the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), which reaches 32 feet (9.7 m). The longest bony fish alive (sharks do not have bones; their skeletons are made of cartilage) is the giant oarfish (Regalecus glesne), which has been known to reach up to 36 feet (11 m), according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.



Related: Oarfish: Photos of World's Longest Bony Fish

"Original calculations greatly overestimated the size of megalodon," Marty Becker, a William Paterson University Professor of environmental science who studies shark paleontology, told Live Science. "This is in part related to the fact that the megalodon fossil record is dominated almost exclusively by teeth. Current calculations indicate that megalodon may have achieved lengths up to 10 meters [around 33 feet] and nothing like what is currently featured in the summer 2018 movie 'The Meg.'"

The largest megalodon tooth measures around 7 inches (17.8 centimeters) in length, which is almost three times longer than those of great white sharks. That giant size led ancient peoples to theorize about the creatures' origins. For example, early discoveries of megalodon shark teeth in western Europe were thought to be the petrified tongues of ancient serpents. People called them "tongue stones."

The impressive teeth are found all over the world in great quantities. "Teeth of megalodon are known to have a global occurrence and are prized among fossil collectors for their assorted colors, serrated edges and large size when compared to other fossil and modern shark teeth," Becker said. "Availability on the internet marketplace has devalued earlier fossil collections of megalodon teeth as investments."

Monster bite: A single Megalodon tooth. (Image credit: Courtesy of the Bertucci family.)

Where did megalodons live?

Like the dinosaurs, the megalodon liked warmth. During its time, it hunted in the warm, shallow seas that covered much of the planet. Megalodon teeth have been found on every continent except Antarctica. Megalodon may have gone extinct when these seas dried up, the ice age began and water was locked up at the poles, according to Discovery. The shark either starved or was frozen into extinction.

What did megalodon eat?

The megalodon was a top-of-the-food-chain predator. It fed on other big marine mammals, like whales and dolphins. It may have even eaten other sharks, according to Discovery.

Researchers think the megalodon would first attack the flipper and tails of the mammals to prevent them from swimming away, then go in for the kill, according to the BBC. The megalodon's 276 serrated teeth were the perfect tool for ripping flesh.

These sharks also had a ferocious bite. While humans have been measured to have a bite force of around 1,317 newtons, researchers have estimated that the megalodon had a bite force between 108,514 and 182,201 newtons, according to the NHM.

"Megalodon co-evolved with whales as a principal food source," Becker said. "As mammals, whales had the ability to thermoregulate and migrate toward colder waters of the poles. While the exact thermoregulatory capabilities are a topic of current study, inability to hunt whales in colder water is believed to be one of the leading causes of megalodon extinction."

Fun facts about megalodon

Cold waters may have killed the megalodon shark: Around 3.6 million years ago, as Earth entered a period of global cooling and drying, megalodons went extinct, according to the Natural History Museum. These sharks resided in tropical waters, but as sea temperatures dropped at the end of the Pliocene epoch, and seas began to freeze, megalodons' habitat may have been greatly restricted, Live Science reported. Meanwhile, much of their prey  primarily smaller whales, seals and sea turtles  died out or relocated to waters that were too cold for their shark predators.

Megalodons had cannibal babies: To ensure survival, megalodon shark babies may have eaten their own siblings, Live Science previously reported. As each embryo would grow to take up significant space, eating them gave the surviving shark more room to grow and reach lengths of 6.6 feet (2 m) at birth.

Megalodons existed for nearly 70 times longer than modern humans have: Megalodons inhabited the oceans for around 20 million years, according to the Natural History Museum, while Homo sapiens appeared around 300,000 years ago. The key to these sharks' long reign is likely their almost-invincible size. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the sharks could make a meal out of the majority of sea-life around at the time.

Megalodon bites were the strongest of any animal: Megalodon bites are estimated to be at least six times as strong as those of Tyrannosaurus rex and more powerful than any known animal, Live Science previously reported. The estimated bite force of megalodons is between 108,514 and 182,201 Newtons (24,395 and 40,960 pound-force), according to the Natural History Museum. This enabled these monster sharks to munch down on large whales and fish. In comparison great white shark bites only manage 18,219 N (4,096 pounds), and humans a measly 1,317 N (296 pounds), the Natural History Museum stated.

Their fossilized remains were mistaken for dragons' tongues: Before people made the connection between fossilized megalodon teeth and modern sharks' teeth, they thought these pointed rocks were the tips of dragons' tongues, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. In the 17th century, it was widely believed that these mysterious rocks had medicinal properties, and people would collect them for good luck, Smithsonian Magazine reported.

Additional resources:

This article was updated on May 17, 2021 by Live Science Reference Editor Kimberly Hickok. Writer Ailsa Harvey contributed to this article.
Denham Springs, LA (70726)

Today

Foggy this morning, then partly cloudy this afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High near 75F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low 58F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
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Bangladeshi filmmaker Rezwan Shahriar Sumits 2020 London and Busan selection The Salt in Our Waters, which will play at the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on Nov. 8, is a stark reminder of the issues the event is trying to highlight.

Sumit shot the film during the monsoon of 2018 in the hamlet of Gangamatir Char, home to 20 fishing families, in Patuakhali district, located at the southernmost tip of Bangladesh.

But, Gangamatir Char does not exist anymore.

Sumit was unable to return to the location for a year and a half due to the pandemic and finally managed to visit in July this year.

When I returned to that beloved place, to those beloved people, all I found were some broken tree branches and the rising tide, Sumit tells Variety. I learned that the sea level in this area has risen dramatically in the last two to three years. The high tide is eroding the land, and Cyclone Amphan last year wreaked havoc.

The families located in the hamlet were forced to relocate to nearby villages and many of them had to find alternate professions as the erratic weather affected the supply of the Hilsa fish, prized in Bangladesh, eastern India and Myanmar.

Bangladesh is often referred to as a ground zero for climate change, says Sumit. We are bearing witness to a primal, elemental conflict between land and sea, man and nature, past and future. Our small time coastal fishers are caught on the frontline of this battle. Their families desperately need tools to adapt to the worst impacts, their natural habitats and ecosystems need immediate protection and restoration.

After having spent many months in their company, I realized that they are a people plagued by disruptions but not defined by it. They are incredibly brave, resilient, resourceful, colorful, full of ideas, hope and potential. These nuances are often missing from the images we see on the international media. Therefore, I took it upon myself to present to the world an unfiltered, immersive and inspired portrait of this community, and The Salt in Our Waters was born.

During his July visit, Sumit met several members of the fishing community who appeared in the film. I discovered that the awful reality of their lives is far more severe than my films story, says Sumit. I want to tell the world about these peoples suffering, which is why I applied for the United Nations Climate Conference COP26. Id want to express my gratitude to the organizers for allowing my film to highlight the narrative of the artisanal fishing community. The Salt in Our Waters has turned out to be an epic story from the front lines of the fight against climate change.

Film Republic is handling international sales on the film and has sold it to HBO for Central Europe. The British Film Institute has acquired U.K. streaming rights for its BFI Player.

The film will be released in Bangladeshi theatres by Star Cineplex, a leader in the local theatrical business, on Nov. 26 and additional global theatrical releases might be possible thanks to Torino Film Labs Audience Design Grant.

The first people in Bangladesh to watch the film, prior to its release, will be the affected fishing community. Sumit is also planning localized screenings via the Shilpokola Academys network of community centers across Bangladesh.

All eyes are on COP26, says Sumit. There is a lot of pressure on the talks to bring about meaningful commitments and, of course, real financing for vulnerable nations. I firmly believe that narrative films with an insider point of view like mine can help create true empathy for climate frontliners at such world events.

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Small but growing production firm Midnight Blur Films has had a strong fall.

Its soft sci-fi feature Journey to the West just won top accolades at Chinas Pingyao Intl. Film Festival, including the Fei Mu prize for best film, the Cinephilia Critics Award, and the youth jury award.

Its rights arm Parallax International Sales is at Tokyo this year looking for buyers for a selection of strong titles including Journey to the West, Asian Future Competition selection The Coffin Painter, director Zhang Lus Japan-set Yanagawa, stylish drama about the life of a Sichuan opera actor in the 80s A New Old Play, and Annular Eclipse, a dark sci-fi second feature from writer-director Zhang Chi.

We hope we can build more connections with Asian buyers this year and expand our network to find buyers, said Cao Liuying, co-founder and head of international sales.

In a year when the American Film Market and TIFFCOMs scheduling collides, her small team decided it would be too hard to split their energy between both markets. Like a growing number of Chinese firms, they have set their sights more firmly on Tokyo this year.

AFM remains important for many of her Chinese colleagues, especially those with commercial projects, but has never been their focus, Cao said.

We had trouble finding people there. Its very costly and for a small company like us, its not worth it, she explained. Distributing films in the U.S. is still quite important for us, but as we know very well that our films need festival exposure first, we mainly work on communicating with programmers. Those communications can be done anytime and it doesnt have to be during the AFM.

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Jeymes Samuels The Harder They Fall, now streaming on Netflix, is an epic Western with a difference.

The all-star cast features Jonathan Majors, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, and Delroy Lindo  an all-Black principal cast leading their way through the West. Nat Love (Majors) seeks revenge on the man who killed his parents, but also finds love along the way.

The filmmaker turned to Jojo Rabbit cinematographer Mihai Malaimare to shoot the film and rather than use traditional imagery, find a new way to present the town and its characters. Malaimare spoke with Variety about working with Samuel and lighting the epic adventure that sets the stage for a train robbery and grand shoot-out, with a chance of riding all the way to the Oscars.

Filming the Towns

We knew we would have to deal with three different towns. Jeymes, our production designer Martin Whist and I talked about our tools and what we could do to make each one interesting and yet different.

I remember Jeymes saying he wanted Redwood City to be like a photograph printed on high glossy paper with a lot of color saturation. We went heavy with street lights and practicals.

When we were lighting the saloon, we struggled a bit. The immediate thought was to fill it with smoke, but when we spoke about it, we realized it would dull the colors down and create an image that wasnt the approach we were after.

In the scene where Idris is sitting at the table, everything there is so great. I told Jeymes, and it was a tough decision, that we should keep the smoke out because we wouldnt be able to get that glossy look we were after. We gained so much more color vibrancy and contrast by not using smoke.

Douglastown was different and like a mining town with barrels, mud and water on the ground, by doing Redwood City with so many streetlights, I ended up using more lights than I have ever used to bring out the colors of that town and make it feel like a prosperous town.

Maysville was all-white and such a contrast in comparison because it had white pebbles and white horses. I hate to shy away from pure black or pure white. I said, Lets go for it. It was challenging to light, but its still one of my favorite sets. That place before was a small Western town with wood buildings and it came to life as soon as they painted it.

For the last scene, the barn was not on location and it was regular wood and wood paneling. Martin couldnt paint it, so we had this idea to make it a textile place. So, he brought in all these fabrics and started hanging them. All of a sudden, that place became so colorful and looked like it was part of Redwood.

We ended up cutting holes in the ceiling to create more skylights that could light the scene more. Again, light brings color saturation.

The Train Robbery

We wanted to do something new, but I remember Jeymes saying, We have to have a train robbery. There were a lot of ideas that we had from the beginning and it was great on paper, but the main problem was how do we get to do it and how to accomplish what we wanted?

The scene was shot over seven days. The train was in Colorado, near the border of New Mexico, so it was pretty far away, and we were got there, we were snowed out. We treated our train cars like a standing set but without having the advantage of it. We couldnt move walls or ceilings, and that restriction meant you couldnt take any shortcuts. It was a tight space and it became crowded, but it forces you into treating the space for what it is.

We storyboarded that scene because we realized when you have so many characters in a tight place, it was about how we wanted to cover them. That scene was about teamwork because it had so many elements. Jeymes had so many ideas about the split scene. We decided to have tight shots and macro shots of the gun. We tried to do as many crazy things as possible. We had a motorized slider screwed on the ceiling that could follow them from one space to another and capture that higher angle. We had a Steadicam in place, and we also incorporated that split-screen into the scene as Jeymes wanted.

My Favorite Shot

The cable camera when Nat Love arrives in Redwood and starts in the Mayors office behind Rufus and goes through the window to Nats close-up is my favorite shot. It was so interesting. I love the POV shots through the rifle. Often when you do that, you create the circle and crosshairs in post-production.

I was talking to Jeymes about the POV shots through the scope. If you look through a scope, you never see black around it. I remember telling him we could shoot through an actual scope. Our prop master brought in a bunch of scopes, and we ended up using the actual scopes that were on the sharpshooters rifle with a special lens, and it ended up creating a beautiful image.

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Actor Tom Holland, set to reprise his web slinging role in December release Spider-Man: No Way Home, has revealed another facet to his acting chops  voicing iconic British character Percy Pig.

The Percy Pig character was created in 1992 by British retailer Marks & Spencer and is the face of a variety of pig shaped confectionery. Holland is the voice of Percy Pig in the Marks & Spencer Christmas commercial, the first time the characters voice has been heard in nearly 30 years of existence.

In the commercial, Percy is awakened in the dead of night by the magic of the Christmas fairy played by Dawn French (Absolutely Fabulous, French and Saunders). Percy excitedly explores the Stratford Foodhall discovering all the food the retailer has has to offer this Christmas, ranging from Christmas pudding to smoked salmon.

The actor said it took him less than a second to say yes to voicing Percy. Ive loved Percy Pigs for as long as I can remember, Holland told Metro. Getting the snort right was a challenge, but I hope I nailed it and you all like what you hear, Holland added. I did consider asking for a lifetime supply of Percy Pigs but I figured Ive got to save room for all of that amazing M&S Christmas food.

The commercial was first aired on Nov. 3 and presented on Nov. 4 during U.K. broadcaster ITVs breakfast show Good Morning Britain. The campaign was created by Grey London with animation by MPC.

Sharry Cramond, director of marketing for M&S Food, said: The M&S Christmas Food range this year is better than ever and who better to tell customers about our delicious Christmas food range than the national treasure and much-loved M&S icon himself, Percy Pig. Of course, he couldnt have just any voice, and having Tom Holland give Percy Pig his first words is about as exciting as it gets. Added to that the voice of the one and only Dawn French as the Christmas fairy  its the stuff of Christmas dreams.

Watch the commercial here:

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MEXICO CITY (AP)  The former head of Mexicos state-run oil company has finally been ordered to jail on Wednesday, a year after he was extradited from Spain but offered to turn states evidence against other ex-officials.

Emilio Lozoya served as director of the state-run oil company Petroleos Mexicanos under former president Enrique Pena Nieto, who governed from 2012 to 2018.

Lozoya offered testimony about bribery and corruption involving opposition legislators and former administration officials, and also acknowledged that he himself received bribes.

But a judge ruled Wednesday that Lozoyas accusations have not done enough to help prosecutors, and that he represents a flight risk, and so should be held in jail while his legal process continues. He faces charges of corruption and money laundering, among others.

Lozoya had previously stayed out of jail because he was considered a cooperating witness. Lozoya's lawyers have also asked for seemingly endless extensions of his legal case.

The case has proved an embarrassment to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has made rooting out corruption the main theme of his presidency. Prosecutors have not yet managed to jail any of the top figures implicated in a big corruption case at the state-run oil company that almost bankrupted the firm.

In October, Lozoya was photographed dining out carefree at a luxury restaurant in Mexico City, drawing criticism.

I believe it is legal, but is immoral that these things happen. It is imprudent, at the very least, Lopez Obrador said in October. That is why there is so much indignation at him eating at a luxury restaurant. Even though he can legally do so, he is a witness to acts of corruption that damaged Mexico a lot.

Lozoya fled to Spain, was arrested there and extradited back to Mexico in 2020.

Once back in Mexico, Lozoya alleged that Pena Nieto and his right-hand man, then treasury secretary Luis Videgaray, directed him to bribe lawmakers, including five senators, to support controversial energy and other structural reforms in 2013 and 2014.

Lozoya also faces corruption charges related to Pemexs overvalued purchase of a fertilizer plant and to millions in dollars of bribes paid by Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. He has said Pena Nieto and Videgaray told him to use $4 million from Odebrecht to pay foreign campaign consultants for work on Pena Nietos 2012 election campaign.

Videgaray has denied the accusations. Pena Nieto, who left office in 2018 and is reported to live abroad, hasnt spoken publicly since the allegations surfaced. Neither man faces any charges.

And the businessman accused of bilking the government on the fertilizer plant deal quickly repaid some of the money and was released.

So the only people prosecutors have really gone after in the case are the opposition politicians who allegedly received the bribes, and that has raised suspicions in a country where the law has long been used only to punish political enemies.
The 2019 lawsuit by Laredo citizen journalist Priscilla La Gordiloca Villarreal against the Laredo Police Department has been revived.

The decision was made by a New Orleans-based 5th circuit court of appeals this week after disagreeing with the previous courts decision regarding qualified immunity, thus giving her the chance for her lawsuit to move forward.

If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned, said Circuit Judge James C. Ho. Yet that is exactly what happened here: Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question.

Villarreal was charged during December 2017 with two counts of misuse of information after publishing names of victims in a suicide and vehicle crash.

Court documents state that the arrest warrants were issued for violating Texas Penal Code 39.06(c), which states that a person commits an offense if, with intent to obtain a benefit or with intent to harm or defraud another, he solicits or receives from a public servant information that: the public servant has access to by means of his office or employment; and has not been made public.

The benefit Villarreal was stated to have gained was more Facebook followers.

In 2018, the charges were thrown out by 111th District Court Judge Monica Zapata Notzon, who ruled that the Texas law used to charge Villarreal was vague and unconstitutional as it denied her due process.

In the 2019 lawsuit by Villarreal over the arrest, the City of Laredo, Webb County, District Attorney Isidro Chilo Alaniz, Chief Assistant District Attorney Marisela Jacaman, LPD Chief Claudio Trevino Jr. and LPD officers Juan L. Ruiz, Deyanira Villarreal, Enedina Martinez, Alfredo Guerrero and Laura Montemayor were all named defendants in the lawsuit.

It was stated during that time that she had received the information from a police officer, but the officer and defendants in Villarreals lawsuit were found to be protected with qualified immunity  protections for their actions as part of their official capacity.

Villarreal did not receive or solicit information with 'intent to obtain' a benefit, the 2019 petition states. Any reasonable official would have understood there was no economic gain or advantage tied to her gathering and publication of the information in the Targeted Publications on her Facebook page. Any reasonable official would have understood that publishing truthful information for wider distribution is protected First Amendment activity and not subject to criminal penalty.

Court documents stated that the district court dismissed her First Amendment infringement claim against the officials on qualified immunity grounds with a violation unable to be clearly established at the time. This is what both Ho and Judge James Graves of the New Orleans 5th circuit court disagreed with recently.

To defeat qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss stage, Villarreal must allege, first, that the officials violated her First Amendment rights, and second, that their actions were objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established laws, the court documents read.  The point is this: The doctrine of qualified immunity does not always require the plaintiff to cite binding case law involving identical facts. An official who commits a patently obvious violation of the constitution is not entitled to qualified immunity.

The court documents also stated that if the government cannot punish someone for publishing the Pentagon Papers, how can it punish someone for simply asking for them?

So, it should be patently obvious to any reasonable police officer that the conduct alleged in the complaint constitutes a blatant violation of Villarreals constitutional rights. And that should be enough to defeat qualified immunity, the court documents state.

With the revival of the lawsuit, Villarreal and her team of lawyers have indicated they will continue to move forward with their lawsuit.

Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question, Ho stated in the court documents. If that is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, its hard to imagine what would be. And as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, public officials are not entitled to qualified immunity for obvious violations of the Constitution.

The decision was made by a 2 to 1 ruling by the court in which both Ho and Graves approved in the reversal.

Villarreal has an upcoming TV series being developed by STARZ based on her life. She previously cited her arrest as being the catalyst to gaining the notoriety to make La Gordiloca famous.

The reason why Hollywood basically called me was because of that, and if it wasnt for them, La Gordiloca wouldnt have been known, and it is the truth, said Villarreal to LMT last month. I want to give thanks to the Laredo Police Department for my arrest, I want to give thanks to the district attorneys office for signing that warrant, I want to give thanks to Judge Notzon for being a fair judge and not playing the political role of who you know, and thanks to my family for being there to support me as well.

cocampo@lmtonline.com
NEW YORK (AP)  Since the day he rode down a golden escalator and announced his candidacy for president, Republicans have struggled with how to deal with Donald Trump.

But after Glenn Youngkin's stunning victory in the Virginia governor's race  a state President Joe Biden won last year by 10 percentage points  and a strong GOP showing in deep-blue New Jersey's, party leaders believe they have a model that can deliver them big wins in next year's midterm elections.

By tapping into culture war fights over issues like school curricula, the GOP can energize Trump's loyal base. But party leaders believe this week's results demonstrate they can also win back suburbanites who abandoned the GOP during the Trump era by talking about local issues like taxes and keeping the former president at arm's length.

Clearly Youngkin's win was a boost to Republicans and gives us momentum going into next year," said Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, who has not ruled out a run for president in 2024. That, combined with the surprisingly competitive race for governor in New Jersey, showed that a Republican in this environment, talking about state issues, talking about education, talking about the future, can even win suburban votes and can win the middle.

As the full extent of Tuesday's voting became clear, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is focused on retaking control of the House, named 13 more Democratic seats it hoped to flip. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, meanwhile, noted next year's map is weighted heavily toward swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, which Biden won by far slimmer margins than he won Virginia and New Jersey.

Other states where Democrats have eyed Senate seats, such as North Carolina and Florida, were carried by Trump in 2020.

It completely changes the dynamics of the map," NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline said.

The results emboldened some Trump critics like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who swept his own blue state and has long stressed the party's need to win back the swing voters and moderates whom Trump alienated.

Thats the way were going to win," Hogan said. "Its a great road map. You can't double down on failure," he said, arguing that voters want to hear what youll do for them, not for Trump.

Of course, it remains unclear heading into the midterms whether Republicans will nominate the kind of candidates with the same appeal as Youngkin.

Many GOP primary contests, from Ohio to North Carolina, have been dominated by contenders who have tried to out-Trump one another, including parroting his lies about a stolen election. And the former president has been wading into races, aiming to crown candidates who have faced serious allegations as he has tried to exact revenge on those who crossed him by voting in favor of his impeachment or opposing his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

One example is Sean Parnell, who is running for the Senate in Pennsylvania with Trump's backing. Parnell's estranged wife this week testified under oath that she had endured years of rage and abuse from him, including being choked until she had to bite him, a newspaper reported. Parnell had emphatically denied her claims.

And while Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor in New Jersey who lost a close vote, made a clear break with Trump, Youngkin did not. Instead, the Virginia Republican deftly handled the former president, persuading him to steer clear of the state, while nonetheless maintaining his support.

Trump endorsed Youngkin and praised him in the race's final stretch, but his involvement in the campaign was limited, including holding a tele-rally on election eve in which he spoke for less than 10 minutes. Trump's allies nonetheless made clear to his supporters that there was minimal daylight between the two men when it came to the issues.

John Fredericks, who served as Trumps campaign chair in the state in 2016 and 2020, hosted Trump on his radio show, and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon appeared at a rally to signal Youngkins MAGA bona fides. One GOP strategist noted how Trump had developed a system of code words  like America first  that candidates like Youngkin could pick up as a means of signaling to Trumps base that he was speaking their language.

Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, meanwhile, flooded the airwaves with ads portraying Youngkin as a Trump acolyte, reminding Republicans that he was one of them.

Thank you, Terry McAuliffe, for spending the money to help me get out our vote in massive numbers, Fredericks said. He got our vote out. We didn't have to."

Beyond Trump, Youngkin tapped into an issue set that appealed both to rural voters in deeply Republican swaths of southwestern Virginia as well as those in the suburbs who agreed with Trump on the economy and other kitchen table issues but were turned off by his tone. He presented himself in chipper campaign ads as a genial, suburban dad in a sweater vest who could appeal to parents.

In particular, he seized on frustrations of parents, many of whom grew incensed over their childrens schools refusal to resume in-person classes during the pandemic, and subsequent mask mandates and attendance policies.

But as he promised to increase teacher pay and school budgets, Youngkin also didnt shy away from the culture war issues that Trump heralded in an effort to portray Democrats as out of the mainstream.

Youngkin sounded the alarm over transgender rights and critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nations institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history. Indeed, he went so far as to release an ad featuring a mother expressing outrage that her child had been assigned to read Beloved, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison.

Fredericks credited Trump for Youngkin's victory, insisting the Republican wouldn't have won without Trump's base.

Glenn Youngkin did nothing but embrace our core policies and voters from Day One. So he did nothing to alienate us," he said. He put together a very simple coalition: Trump voters and angry parents.

Trump predictably agreed.

Without that movement, that race wouldnt have even been close," he said on Fredericks' radio show Wednesday.
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  With pledges for a United Nations climate conference, the world may be ever so slightly receding from gloomy scenarios of future global warming, according to two new preliminary scientific analyses Thursday.

The two reports  one by the International Energy Agency and the other by Australian scientists  focused on optimistic scenarios. If all goes right, they said, recent actions will trim two-or three-tenths of a degree Celsius (0.3 to 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit) from projections made in mid-October.

Instead of 2.1 degrees Celsius (3.8 Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, the analyses project warming at 1.8 (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1.9 degrees (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Still, both projections leave the world far from the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial time that is the goal of the 2015 Paris climate deal. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).

The U.N. planned an announcement for Friday afternoon at climate negotiations about how much actions announced so far at Glasgow helped to bend the curve.

We are now in a slightly more positive outlook for the future, said University of Melbourne climate scientist Malte Meinshausen, whose flash analysis, not peer-reviewed, sees warming at 1.9 degrees, mostly because of late long-term pledges by India and China.

Its still a long way away from 1.5 degrees. We know that some of the ecosystems are going to suffer and were going to notice, for example, the coral reefs and the Great Barrier Reef here in Australia (die) with these temperature levels, Meinshausen said in an interview. It is just scraping below two degrees. So therefore theres a lot more to be done.

The energy agency analysis factored in Indias announcement of short-term carbon dioxide emission curbs and a net-zero pledge by 2070 on Monday, as well as pledges by more than 100 countries Tuesday to reduce the powerful greenhouse gas methane. The intergovernmental agency said it was the first time projections fell below 2 degrees Celsius  a long-standing threshold for tipping points that some scientists say could bring even more dangerous and potentially uncontrolled warming.

If all these pledges were to be implemented, the temperature increase could be limited to 1.8 degrees Celsius. I think this is a very, well-celebrated achievement, agency chief Fatih Birol told leaders at climate negotiations in Glasgow called COP26. Congratulations.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Director Johan Rockstrom, who wasn't part of either research, said small differences at this temperature level are important: "Every tenth of a degree matters because it gets worse and worse.

Both teams emphasize that their projections are based on the most optimistic scenarios possible, using nations mid-century  or in Indias case 2070  pledges of net zero emissions that are far from codified in plans or actions.

Scenarios that look at just short-term pledges, not net-zero ones, put warming at 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit). So some outsider experts say the new projections should be viewed with caution.

This optimistic view must be complemented with the short-term view, which is pointing in the opposite direction, said New Climate Institute scientist Niklas Hohne, who tracks emission pledges for Climate Action Tracker, which will have its own estimates in a few days.

Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based think tank Power Shift Africa and a veteran climate talks observer, said its too early to put too much faith in Glasgow pledges: These announcements may generate headlines but assessing their true worth is hugely difficult, especially at speed during a COP meeting.

___

Associated Press reporter Frank Jordans contributed from Glasgow.

___

For more AP climate coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @ borenbears.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Courtesy of Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra

Residents in Hays County report that letters spreading antisemitic rhetoric have showed up at their homes. The letters showed up at homes in plastic bags filled with pebbles, the Hays Free Press reports. The letters say that Jewish leaders control not only the media, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Every single aspect of the COVID agenda is Jewish," one letter reads.
Lockport, NY (14094)

Today

Partly cloudy early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain this afternoon. High near 50F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A steady light rain this evening transitioning to showers of rain and snow overnight. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of precip 70%.
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
Following the huge success of their Panto Cinderella in 2019, Stray Cat Productions are back this year with the Panto Spectacular Snow White. This Traditional Style Panto is for all the family and is not to be missed.

X-Factor favourite Mary Byrne returns to play Fairy Nuff along with the hilarious Damien Douglas (who played Buttons in Cinderella) playing the lovable Billy Doolittle.

After almost two years of the world interacting on Zoom, the panto will feature a Virtual Magic Mirror. The mirror will be played by Irish comedy legend June Rodgers.

Ugly sister (in Cinderella) Colin Flynn returns to play Daisy Doolittle - no daddy in the audience will be safe! Theres a Longford debut for Jordan Bass as he takes on the role of the handsome Prince Harry. Jordan recently performed in the highly acclaimed West Side Story concerts in The Bord Gais.

Lots of local talent will take to the stage including Valerie Shiels as Queen Evilene, Leia Victory and Niamh OBrien will share the role of Snow White, Davy Flaherty and Iarlaith ORourke play Tik & Tok and Conor McLoughlin plays Igor.

The chorus of dancers includes over forty students from Evolution Stage School. St Mels College will be once again converted into a Panto Theatre with amazing lights, sound, production and over 400 seats.

Snow White is Written and Directed by Pat McElwain, choreographed by Tracey Carty, musically directed by Paul Hennessy, with Gerry McCann as Stage Manager. Tickets are selling very fast so dont delay; you wont want to miss this huge event in Longford Town this Christmas.

Snow White is supported by Longford Tourism and The Longford Arms Hotel. Snow White opens on Dec 20 with a special opening night offer of 15. Tickets available from www.gr8events.ie.

Follow on Facebook & Instagram: @LongfordsTraditionalPanto.
The Community Time Machine initiative, which has been set up in Co Longford, is an age-friendly cross-generational community archive project designed to connect young people with their older neighbours through a series of facilitated interviews, art projects and photography.

It is a simple and fun way to have a positive impact and strengthen your community connections.

Neighbourhood Network is delighted to be launching this initiative in Co Longford this autumn in partnership with The Creative Ireland Programme, Age Friendly Ireland, Longford County Council and the Department of Rural and Community Development.

Community members across Co Longford are now invited to come on board as organisers for this exciting project. The role of community organisers is to gather five or siz young people, aged 12 to 18, to interview senior members of their community over the phone. The interviews give both participants a valuable opportunity to learn from each other and connect with their community.

Each group that takes part will be given 100 towards a charity/group of their choice and a time capsule to store their project in.

A professional portrait photographer will visit each of the seniors involved in the project to take their portrait. The seniors will then receive their printed photo and all of the participants will have their work displayed on the national time machine gallery website.

Ciara Perks has been acting as a Community Organiser, connecting young people and seniors who live in her area by facilitating interviews, inspiring them to create art works and capturing images to show how the community looks now and how it looked in the past.

Ciara says: This project has been a really eye opening experience for the young participants and myself, seeing the joy the area has brought to so many people even in the toughest of times.

On the launch of the Longford Community Time Machine project, Cathaoirleach of Longford County Council Cllr Peggy Nolan said, I warmly welcome this inter- generational initiative which will gather some of the wonderful stories our older citizens have to tell.

We have a very vibrant Older Persons Council and many great Active Age groups around the county who have engaged in exciting intergenerational projects with local schools in the past.

This project provides a great opportunity for them to share their stories with the young people who will be working with them. Longford County Council is delighted to be supporting this project and I am looking forward to reading all the great stories when they are collected in the time capsule.

The Community Time Machine is a great way to get to know more about your community and its history, create something unique and develop community connections. The result is an inspiring collection of insights into the hearts and souls that make up communities all over the county.

If this sounds like a project you would like to see come to life in your area, visit timemachine.neighbourhood network.ie/ to get involved! We would also love to hear from any youth groups, schools or clubs who might be interested in taking part.
The Special Criminal Court has rejected a defence bid to have the verdict in the trial of four men accused of abducting and assaulting Quinn Industrial Holdings executive Kevin Lunney adjourned until after an opinion in Graham Dwyers phone data case is returned later this month.

Father-of-six Mr Lunney (51) had his leg broken, was doused in bleach and had the letters QIH carved into his chest before he was dumped on a roadside in Co Cavan in September 2019.

On Monday Michael OHiggins SC, for the accused man referred to as YZ for legal reasons, applied for an adjournment of the case to wait for a November 11 opinion in the Court of Justice of the European case regarding convicted murderer Graham Dwyer. Dwyer is challenging the use of mobile phone evidence in his trial.

Former architect Dwyer was given a life sentence in 2015 for the murder of childcare worker Elaine OHara (36), in a case that relied on telephone call data records to establish his guilt. Phone evidence was also relied upon in the case of the four accused in Mr Lunneys case.

Dwyer subsequently won a High Court challenge in 2018 over the validity of the law under which his phone data was seized.

However, the State then appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which in turn referred key legal questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Dwyers legal team is arguing that Irelands legal system regarding the use of mobile phone data used in his conviction had minimal protections and was contrary to the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

On Monday at the Special Criminal Court, Michael OHiggins SC applied for the three-judge court to adjourn their verdict, which is due next Monday, November 8.

Mr OHiggins said that should the Special Criminal Court convict his client, there could be implications for that verdict if the CJEU opinion, or ruling, has relevance to his client. Counsel said that situation could take years to unpick.

YZ, along with Luke OReilly (68), from Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan; Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3; and Alan O'Brien (40) of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 1, are all charged with false imprisonment and assault causing serious harm to Mr Lunney (50) at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan on September 17, 2019.

All four men have pleaded not guilty to the assault and imprisonment charges at the trial which eventually got underway in June and sat for 40 days.

In December of last year the court dismissed a bid to halt the trial, which had been scheduled for 12 weeks, over the CJEU case.

Defence counsel Michael OHiggins SC, for the unnamed man, had then argued that the law on the retention and accessing of mobile phone data was in a state of significant uncertainty in Ireland and that the trial should not proceed until the matter was resolved.

Mr OHiggins said that the Dwyer case was likely to be relevant to his client. Representatives for the three co-accused males told the non-jury court that they were supporting Mr OHiggins position.

Prosecution counsel Sean Guerin SC said that the European ruling was not on a fast track and that it had been two years since the Supreme Court in Ireland referred it to Europe.

Mr Justice Hunt said that Mondays application did not do enough to justify an adjournment.

At Mondays hearing at the Special Criminal Court, Mr Justice Hunt, sitting with Judge David McHugh and Judge Gerard Griffin, said the court was refusing the application to adjourn the case and fixed Monday, November 8, as the date to deliver verdicts in all four mens cases.
Local News, Business & Finance

By Chris Boyle Published: November 04 2021

$55 million state investment supports creation of new parking facilities, essential sewer upgrades, and mixed-use space.

Governor Kathy Hochul has announced the groundbreaking for Phase Two of the $700 million state-of-the-art Ronkonkoma Hub, a major mixed-use development in the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County. The $256 million second phase will create 388 housing units, 73,000 square feet of commercial space, 15,500 square feet of office space, and more than 1,200 parking spaces. Empire State Development is supporting this project with a $50 million capital grant as part of the Transformative Investment Program funding allocated to Long Island in 2017 New York State budget. ESD previously provided $5 million, recommended by the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council, to support a new sewage treatment plant and sewer infrastructure improvements.

"The Ronkonkoma Hub will be a major leap forward in building New York's economy and revitalizing the future of Long Island," Governor Hochul said. "This next phase of the Ronkonkoma Hub furthers our commitment to investing in transformative developments to bring residential and commercial spaces to Long Island. New York will continue making bold, strategic investments to support redevelopment and revitalization efforts across the State."

The Ronkonkoma Hub project, developed by TRITEC Real Estate, Inc., is transforming a once-blighted area into a new live-work-play destination located steps from the Long Island Rail Road station, and just minutes away from MacArthur Airport, Long Island's only major commercial airport. Phase one of this project created Alston Square, a nearly-500 unit apartment community that was completed in March 2020. Phase two is anticipated to be completed in late 2024.

Empire State Development Chief Operating Officer and Executive Deputy Commissioner Kevin Younis said, "The Ronkonkoma Hub builds on ESD's commitment to transformational economic opportunities by revitalizing a blighted area to create a vibrant and active community. This project will generate new residential and commercial spaces, supporting thousands of construction and permanent jobs within the community, while helping to catalyze regional economic growth."

The Ronkonkoma Hub will span approximately 53-acres, offering 1,450 residential multi-family homes, 360,000 square feet of office space, 195,000 square feet of retail space, 60,000 square feet of hospitality space, and three new parking facilities. The overall project will support 10,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent jobs. The project complements the 2018 modernization of the Ronkonkoma LIRR station, which received $5.9 million in upgrades to support rider experience including interactive digital signs and LED displays, benches with charge ports, and free customer Wi-Fi.

TRITEC Principal Jim Coughlan said, "Station Square at the Ronkonkoma Hub has been a community-driven effort and would not be possible without the cooperation of all levels of government. New York State's investment in infrastructure and parking has allowed TRITEC to invest more than $425 million in Ronkonkoma in the first two construction phases. We are looking forward to building Station Square and transforming Ronkonkoma into a true transit-oriented mixed-use destination that Long Island can be proud of."

Senator Alexis Weik said, "I look forward to Phase Two as it will bring business and housing to Ronkonkoma. Its proximity to the train station will hopefully encourage business growth for our town."

Assembly Member Doug Smith said, "Following more than a decade of community meetings, I am encouraged to see this beautiful modern development replace a blighted and derelict area in the heart of my district, surrounding Long Island's busiest transit hub. As we enter the second phase, this project has already created jobs and increased property values in our community and will continue to see hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment into Ronkonkoma. I will continue working with my partners in state and local government to make Long Island a more affordable and better place to live, work, raise a family, start a business, and retire."

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said, "Transit-oriented developments, such as the Ronkonkoma Hub, are exactly what we need here in Suffolk County to help retain and attract young people and remain competitive as a region. This project continues to move full steam ahead, transforming a blighted area into a vibrant, pedestrian friendly hub that will serve as a 21st century model for the type of economic development projects that we need to continue to grow our economy in a sustainable way."

Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine said, "Brookhaven Town has worked with the master developer of the Ronkonkoma hub to make this a transformative project by its proximity to the Long Island Railroad Ronkonkoma train station, MacArthur Airport and the Long Island Expressway. It's the ideal location for people to live especially if they commute to work by rail. It also serves as a great example of revitalization for other communities to follow. Once complete, it will vastly improve the quality of life for people who live and work in and around the area and generate substantial economic growth for the region."

Islip Supervisor Angie Carpenter said, "Phase Two of the Ronkonkoma Hub is another step forward in the transformation of this underutilized area into a vibrant, walkable and environmentally conscious destination to live, work and shop."
Crime, Business & Finance

By Chris Boyle Published: November 04 2021

Suffolk County to hire over 700 law enforcement personnel during a 12-month span.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone has announced the largest hiring of police officers and law enforcement personnel in County history. During a 12-month span, Suffolk County will be hiring 705 law enforcement personnel with 462 of them joining the Suffolk County Police Department.

A rush transcript of the County Executives remarks is available below:

Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us here at the Suffolk County Police Academy here at Suffolk Community College. We're always grateful to the college for their partnership and support. I'm joined by a number of my colleagues here today of course our acting Suffolk County Police Commissioner Stuart Cameron. Also our Deputy Commissioner Risco Mention-Lewis. We also have Lisa Black Chief Deputy County Executive, Vanessa Baird-Streeter Deputy County Executive, and Retha Fernandez, who is the County's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.

Again, welcome to the Suffolk County Police Department. This is a location that is particularly active now and will be so for some time. In Suffolk County, we have made investing in public safety a priority. There's nothing more important than ensuring that our friends, families, neighborhoods and communities are safe. We've made investments in the latest technology. And we've invested in enhanced training to ensure that our officers are equipped with the tools that they need to protect our communities.

Despite the challenges that we have seen in other parts of the country, Suffolk County remains among the safest places to live anywhere in America. And I want to thank the men and women of this police department and of law enforcement here in Suffolk County for the work that they do each and every day, to help ensure that that is the case. It's our job to do everything we can to make sure that this department and law enforcement here in the county continues to have the tools that they need to do the effective work that has been happening here. And, I will say we have continued despite the challenges that we have all seen happening, particularly a global pandemic occurring. We have continued to drive crime down to historic levels in Suffolk County, and every year continuing to drive those numbers down further. And despite all of those challenges, the Suffolk County Police Department and law enforcement here has continued to do that, we've seen overall crime drop here another 6.8%. And we're going to make sure that we again, have the resources and provide the tools necessary to continue that critical work.

So today, that is why today I am announcing the largest hiring of police and law enforcement officers in Suffolk County history over a 12-month period. Using funds from the federal government, I want to thank we talked from this specific location, about the importance during this pandemic, as we saw the shutdown, obviously impact the economy revenues coming into government and threatening our ability to protect public health and safety and have the resources necessary to do that.

And I want to thank our partners in the federal government. You know, particularly in our congressional delegation, led by Senator Schumer, for the work they did to help bring funds in. We have applied and utilize those funds in ways that are designed to protect the health and long term security of this county. So we have where it has made sense invested in things like infrastructure to promote the long term economic sustainability of the county and also investing, as we're talking about here today in public safety in protecting communities. So we are utilizing those dollars and the revenues coming in from an economy that has recovered as a result of those investments also, to be hiring more than 700 police officers and law enforcement officers in this county, 705 exactly over a 12-month period graduating and being hired here at this police academy and being trained here at this police academy. Of those 705 law enforcement officers, 462 of them will be joining the Suffolk County Police Department. So in addition to that, in addition to those 462, the breakdown is 146 Correction Officers, 20 Probation Officers, and 77 Deputy Sheriffs, and we aren't just filling retirements here. At a certain point, we'll see about 280 more officers than we did pre-pandemic levels. And even when you account for what we may see in terms of attrition over the next year, we will be seeing higher levels of staffing here in the police department and law enforcement across the board.

As we've talked about, and we've talked about from this location as well, increasing diversity in the police department has been a top priority has been a focus of this administration. We want to make sure that the Suffolk County Police Department and law enforcement in general is a government in general is reflective of the communities that it serves. And I have said many times before, the most important thing we can do, and the most effective way to continue to build upon the success of this department and to bring about further success is to make sure the department is as diverse as possible, reflecting the communities that it serves. And that's the work that we're doing.
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(Alliance News) - Demand for new cars fell by around a quarter last month compared with October last year.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders, which released the preliminary data, said it expects a total of 1.66 million new cars to be registered in the UK this year.

That would represent a 1.9% increase on 2020.

Uptake of plug-in vehicles began to accelerate during 2020 and accounts for more than 16% of all new cars registered in the UK this year.

The SMMT forecasts that some 287,000 of those vehicles will be registered across the whole of 2021, which would be more than every year combined from 2010 to 2019.

SMMT Chief Executive Mike Hawes said: "Massive investment by industry as well as long-standing government incentives have seen us go from just 188 new plug-in cars in 2010 to almost 300,000 in 2021.

"To achieve net zero by the desired date, however, uptake rates must continue to grow.

"This requires ongoing incentives to help consumers make the switch and significant investment in public charging infrastructure. Backed by the ingenuity and innovation of the automotive sector, we can then deliver zero-emission mobility that is accessible and affordable for all."

The UK has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Jim Holder, editorial director of magazine and website What Car?, said: "Against the backdrop of Cop26, perhaps the most positive message from the October new car registrations is the strong battery electric vehicle performance.

"This has been the fastest-growing new car segment in the UK for some time now, and will only continue to grow as manufacturers continue to expand their electric line-ups and offer customers a wider array of exciting new vehicles."

SMMT's Holder added that the industry is continuing to struggle with the global shortage of microchips, which is leading to some manufacturers having waiting times of more than 12 months for new cars to be available.

By Neil Lancefield, PA Transport Correspondent

source: PA

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
OSLO, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Norway's Equinor said on

Thursday it will restart talks with Tanzania's government next

week on the possible revival of plans to develop major natural

gas reserves found in the east African country's waters.

Equinor during the last decade made nine discoveries off

Tanzania and said it was considering a liquefied natural gas

(LNG) development, but in January of this year wrote off the

entire book value of $982 million, citing poor economics.

The Norwegian company is the operator of Tanzania's Block 2,

which it estimated to hold more than 20 trillion cubic feet (0.6

trillion cubic metres) of gas in place, while ExxonMobil

also holds a stake.

Shell, meanwhile, operates Block 1 and Block 4,

which are estimated to hold some 16 trillion cubic feet of

recoverable gas, according to the company's website.

Talks on the future of all three blocks will restart at the

initiative of Tanzania's authorities, with a focus on fiscal,

legal and regulatory frameworks, an Equinor spokesperson said in

an emailed statement.

"We are pleased with the sense of urgency and prioritising

the government of Tanzania has placed on the Tanzania Gas and

LNG Project," he added.

Norwegian business daily Dagens Naeringsliv was first to

report that the talks would restart.

Shell was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo and Shadia Nasralla in

London, editing by Terje Solsvik)
MySale Group PLC - Australia, New Zealand and south east Asia-focused online retailer - Confirms intent to proceed with offering up to AUD60 million, around GBP33 million in CHESS Depositary Interests, as well as a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange.

CDIs over new shares representing ranging from AUD20 million to AUD30 million will be offered under a primary offer, while CDIs worth up to AUD30 million will be offered by subsidiary MySale SaleCo Ltd under a secondary offer.

Number of CDIs under offer and price per CDI will be determined as part of the bookbuilding.

In addition, MySale is proposed to consolidate its share capital on the basis of one consolidated share for every 15 existing shares held. Also, the company is proposing to cancel its listing on AIM on March next year should the transaction proceed.

"We are excited to announce this next step in MySale's journey having made significant strategic, financial and operational progress since the implementation of our ANZ First Strategy to focus activities and opportunities primarily in Australia and New Zealand, and to accelerate development of our Marketplace sales channel," says Executive Chair Carl Jackson.

"We think an ASX listing represents a logical alignment between our strategy and listing location and will assist with broadening our shareholder base in Australia and New Zealand and look forward to welcoming new shareholders onto our register," Jackson adds.

Current stock price: 7.50 pence, down 5.1% on Thursday

Year-to-date change: down 23%

By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Rio Tinto PLC on Thursday said its subsidiary Rio Tinto Finance (USA) Ltd has accepted USD760.0 million in 3.750% notes due 2025 for purchase.

The offer was launched on Thursday last week and closed on Tuesday this week following the issuance of USD1.25 billion 30-year bonds. In addition to funding the purchase of the notes due 2025, the proceeds from the bonds will be used to fund the redemption of Rio Tinto's other outstanding securities, it said.

The London-based metals and mining company said the notes due 2025 will be purchased at a price of USD1,097.32 per USD1,000 principal amount of note. In addition to the payment of the purchase price, each note holder will also be paid accrued interest.

The settlement date for the tender offer of notes due 2025 will be Friday, the company said.

FTSE 100-listed Rio Tinto shares were trading 0.2% higher in London on Thursday at 4,470.86 pence each.

By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Today

Cloudy skies this morning will become partly cloudy this afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High near 75F. Winds light and variable.

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low 58F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

Tomorrow

Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 68F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
Jefferson, GA (30549)

Today

Generally cloudy. High 62F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Manchester Center, VT (05254)

Today

Cloudy with snow showers mainly during the morning. High 48F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 70%..

Tonight

Rain. Low 41F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Manchester, TN (37355)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing this afternoon. High 61F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with rain ending overnight. Thunder is possible early. Low 38F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
MANISTEE TWP.  Its a rumor with a grain of salt that Culvers is coming to Manistee.

According to the Manistee Township Zoning Administrator Karen Clouse, interest in the area was expressed, but no official steps have been taken by the restaurant known for its buttery burgers, cheese curds and cold sweet treats.

There has only been interest expressed via a telephone call from an engineering firm that I am not at liberty to name at this point, said Clouse in an email response to the News Advocates inquiry about whether Culvers was planning to create a location in the area.

She said there have not been any site plans or permits requested.

While a prospective new business may reach out to a local areas chamber of commerce, the Manistee Area Chamber of Commerce has not had contact with Culvers as of Tuesday.

Marc Miller, economic development director with the Manistee Area Chamber of Commerce, responded to the News Advocates inquiry about the possibility of Culvers coming to the area.

Miller noted that he had heard the rumor, but he has not had any contact with anyone on a Culver's location.

A representative from Culvers could not be reached for comment as of Wednesday afternoon.

According to the Culver's website, Manistee County and most of the state are in an area that is only deemed available to existing franchisees that are currently operating. Culver's lists available markets open for franchising in the state include several counties in the eastern and western Upper Peninsula, as well as in southeast Michigan.

WHAT COULD COME NEXT?



If Culvers or another similar company does decide that Manistee County is the right place for a new venture, it would need to start with steps like a special use permit or a land use permit.

Mike Szokola, Manistee County planning director, said usually a business that is interested in an area will reach out to learn about a locations regulations.

If theyre contacting you, theyve already done their homework. So theyre basically contacting you to find out the regulations and the process, Szokola explained.

Then, if it makes sense for the business to proceed at that point, they would submit applications for permits.

Sometimes that never takes place. (They may) look at it and  (be) weighing a couple entities at the same time and (ask) which ones going to be the easiest from their standpoint, Szokola said.

He said sometimes a business may be looking into several areas, at the same time but the processes for bringing a project to fruition might be more burdensome or complicated in one area compared with another municipalitys processes.

Thats why its so important to have a streamlined process that lays out clear guidelines of what they can expect, he said adding that in Manistee County, one hurdle is that each township does things differently with varying regulations.

The ease of a process, the regulations and the responsiveness of entities are each something that Szokola said have an impact on potential developments.

Szokolas office helps some in the county with zoning service contracts, simplified forms that feature flowcharts of the process, timelines for the process and designated staff who reach out to entities and who can answer questions.

Szokolas office does direct service contracts work with the City of Manistee, Arcadia Township, the Village of Bear Lake, Bear Lake Township, Onekama Township, Village of Onekama, Copemish and the Village of Eastlake.
Mankato, MN (56001)

Today

Windy. A mixture of rain and snow this morning will give way to clearing and sunshine for the afternoon. Morning high of 36F with temps falling to near 25. Winds WNW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of precip 100%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 18F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Teacher shortages persist in Oklahoma despite recent salary rises, according to the state's Department of Education.

Oklahoma lawmakers approved hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases in 2018, which officials said were necessary to significantly increase teacher pay and reduce the state's teacher shortage, but new figures from the state's Department of Education show that approach did not achieve the promised results.

At a meeting of the State Board of Education in October, state Department of Education officials reported since the start of the current budget year on July 1, schools have submitted 2,991 requests to use emergency-certified teachers.

The number of emergency-certified teachers now in Oklahoma schools is greater than the number prior to the passage of tax increases and teacher-pay raises.

In the 2017-18 school year, there were 1,851 emergency-certified teachers working in Oklahoma schools, according to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.

During the 2018 debate over tax increases, the number of emergency-certified teachers, who do not hold traditional degrees in a specific teaching field, were declared to be evidence of a chronic teacher shortage.

The growth of emergency certifications does not mean Oklahoma classrooms are staffed by individuals with no background or training in education, however.

There are quite a few in here that are certified teachers who just aren't certified in the subject that they are in

Of the 2,991 requests for emergency certification filed so far this year, 1,543 individuals have been teachers who are certified in areas other than the one they are teaching in today, such as a middle-school teacher who now works in a second-grade classroom.

That fact was noted by State Board of Education member Jennifer Monies.

"There are quite a few in here that are certified teachers who just aren't certified in the subject that they are in," Monies said. "That stood out to me."

The teacher shortage is also centered in a relative handful of districts.

While Oklahoma has more than 500 school districts, nearly one-fourth of emergency-certified teachers are employed in just three school districts: Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Putnam City.

Oklahoma City has far more emergency-certified teachers than any other district with 433, which is more than double the amount requested so far by second-ranked Tulsa.

Oklahoma schools' struggles to hire certified teachers come despite significant pay increases since 2018.

In an October 22 tweet, Oklahoma State School Boards Association executive director Shawn Hime wrote that the average Oklahoma teacher salary has now "increased by almost $10,000" and that the Oklahoma Legislature has increased state appropriations to schools by $750 million.

In fact, in many ways Oklahoma schools are flush with more cash than at any time in recent memory.

At the end of the 2020 state budget year, Oklahoma school districts reported carrying over $982 million, an increase of $320.6 million, or 48 percent, over three years.

School carryover at the end of the 2021 state budget year, which concluded on June 30, has not yet been reported, but is expected to be even larger due to a massive infusion of federal COVID-bailout funds to schools.

Some education officials have blamed COVID-19 for the continued struggle to attract teachers, saying many veteran educators have opted to retire due to health concerns.

Retirement increased significantly this year, with 2,205 Oklahoma teachers retiring in the months preceding the start of the 2021-2022 school year, compared to about 1,600 apiece during the same time periods in 2019 and 2020.

But state officials have also anticipated a significant increase in retirements due in part to a side effect of the pay raises approved in 2018. Because retirement benefits are calculated based in part on a multi-year average salary calculation, working for an extra three years at a significantly higher salary can significantly boost a teacher's retirement benefits.

A state retirement official noted that fact to lawmakers during a November 2019 legislative study.

"As soon as those salaries went up, they delayed their retirements," Tom Spencer, who was then serving as executive director of the Teachers' Retirement System of Oklahoma, told lawmakers.

Oklahoma lawmakers need to continue to invest in our teaching force or we run further risk of hurting our kids' education.

News of schools' increased reliance on emergency-certified teachers has prompted some education officials to call for lawmakers to continue to simply spend more and hope for different results.

Clinton Public Schools Superintendent Tyler Bridges wrote in a tweet that the emergency certification numbers show that Oklahoma lawmakers need to "continue to invest in our teaching force or we run further risk of hurting our kids' education."
Julia A. Johnston, 68, of Wilburton, OK passed away at her home in Wilburton on Sunday, November 14, 2021. Services will be on Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 2 p.m. at the Waldrop Funeral Home Chapel in Wilburton, OK with the burial to follow in the Peachland Cemetery in Bengal, Oklahoma. O
By Karen Lang

This story originally appeared in The Construction User, a publication of The Association of Union Constructors.

The mission of the Northwestern University Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences professionally oriented Executive Management for Design and Construction (EMDC) graduate program is to holistically develop an elite cadre of engineers, construction managers and architects who are uniquely positioned to serve as C-suite executives and leaders in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry in the United States and around the world.

This innovative postgraduate educational program transcends the tactical engineering, design and construction operational skills needed to perform and instead emphasizes the strategic competencies and insights required to lead an organization. It imparts the requisite managerial skills and real-world know-how to midlevel construction and engineering executives, thereby fostering the development of well-rounded future leaders in the AEC industry.

The 12-course online EMDC program consists of four core courses and eight electives (Northwestern is on the quarter system and a course spans 10 weeks). The four core courses are Leadership and Organization, Finance and Accounting for Executives, Human Resource Management, and Communication and Negotiation. Popular EMDC elective courses include Advanced Business Strategy, Construction Law and Risk Management, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Due Diligence Considerations in Engineering, creating a Firm-Ambassador Culture, Information Systems in Construction, Ethics in Construction and Engineering, Systems Thinking for Sustainable Design, Strategy for Corporate Sustainability, Commercial Real Estate Investment and Development, and a number of others.

In addition, it is possible to transfer up to three courses taken at another institution. After matriculation, each student is encouraged to develop a proposed selection of courses for the entire program rather than proceeding course by course each quarter.

A key differentiating factor  and one of the many reasons the EMDC program is considered by many as the preeminent engineering leadership M.S. program in the country  is its distinguished faculty of practicing professionals who are all industry leaders and bring a wealth of business savvy and strategic acumen to their course offerings. Students in the completely online EMDC program are employed and live throughout the United States and the world, including military outposts. The EMDC program specifically, and Northwestern University more generally, have a long history of being military-friendly and attracting veterans. For example, a veteran eligible for 9/11 benefits and supplemented by financial aid from Yellow Ribbon and the EMDC program can earn an M.S. degree with very little out-of-pocket tuition cost.

The EMDC program has been tailored to fit into busy professional lives and has produced noteworthy examples of professional achievement by its graduates. It boasts small class sizes wherein future industry leaders are afforded the opportunity to collaborate and network with professional colleagues. Without exaggeration, almost every student and graduate has explicitly expressed an extremely high degree of satisfaction with the content of the EMDC program, the competence and caring attitude of the faculty, the unanticipated benefits derived, and the role the degree has played in their professional advancement.

Recently Melissa Meade, a current EMDC student halfway through the program, wrote that she had been promoted. In her words, I credit my recent advancement in my company to the executive leadership topics we have been studying in the EMDC program. Ive already implemented leadership techniques, communication skills, financial understanding, and knowledge of the bigger picture strategies quite a bit over the last year  and my C-suite has noticed! Thank you so much for your continued support and for running a program with such amazing content and instructors!

In turn, Mohammed Elkhamissy, a 2020 graduate involved in managing a $1.4 billion international project in Qatar, states: My pursuit of an M.S. degree in the EMDC program was

indeed a long road, but it was worth every sleepless night waking up at 2:30 AM [the interactive class discussions are scheduled at 6:30 PM CST]. The value of the program is definitely geared towards individuals like myself. I have already utilized a lot of the lessons learned about Joint Ventures, Enterprise Resource Planning implementations, facility management, and so forth. This program allows you to understand the company from a global perspective versus a project-based mentality. Im ever so grateful for this opportunity and I am now looking forward to continuing my career in my favorite industry.

An M.S. degree from Northwesterns EMDC program provides the arrows in the quiver of midlevel managers to accelerate their move up to C-suite leadership and provides a preview of the solutions to future AEC problems in addition to the managerial tools needed to address the problems of today. A Northwestern Wildcat M.S. in EMDC education awaits you! Are you ready to accept the challenge?
Meadville, PA (16335)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High 43F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Occasional light rain. Some snow showers mixing in overnight. Low 29F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precip 60%.
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'Its always a perfect day to say thank you': County holds three Veterans Day celebrations
Ambassador of Belarus S.Terentiev meets the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt for European Affairs

On October 26, 2021, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Arab Republic of Egypt Sergei Terentiev met with Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for European Affairs of Egypt Badr Abdel Aty.

During the meeting, the parties discussed the preparation of the 7th meeting of the Belarusian-Egyptian Trade Commission. The issues of interaction in the field of air traffic were also touched upon.

Sergei Terentiev and Badr Abdel Aty exchanged views on plans for joint events for the next year, including the holding of the first meeting of the Commission on Political Dialogue and Bilateral Cooperation at the level of the foreign ministers of Belarus and Egypt, as well as of cultural events timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The interlocutors noted importance of the effective work of interstate interaction mechanisms for the development of the entire complex of Belarusian-Egyptian relations.

print version
On October 8, Ambassador Qin Gang took an interview with Phoenix TV in Washington DC and responded to USTR Ambassador Katherine Tais remarks about US trade policies on China and the recoupling of the US and Chinese economies.

Ambassador Qin said, we have noted Ambassador Tais remarks. China has always believed that our economic and trade relations are mutually beneficial, and this is also the fact. Over the past 40 years of China's reform and opening-up, American companies have been deeply involved in China's development and have gained huge benefits from it. China's development has provided numerous opportunities for American companies, created many jobs for the US and supplied American consumers with inexpensive but quality products. These are undeniable.

China will continue to open itself wider to the world. It will continue to welcome companies worldwide, including American ones, to invest in China and provide a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment. According to the recent report of the US-China Business Council, 95% of the American companies surveyed made a profit in China last year, and 64% saw their revenue grow in the Chinese market. China's development will continue to release huge market potential and vitality, creating greater opportunities for companies from America and other countries. Many American companies are concerned about the current China-US relations and worry about big uncertainties. In fact, China's sustained and stable development, market opportunities, and commitment to reform and opening-up are the largest source of certainty for them. If there is any uncertainty, it does not come from the Chinese side.

Ambassador Qin pointed out that since China-US economic and trade relations are mutually beneficial in nature, we should give full consideration to each other's concerns and follow the principles of mutual respect and mutual benefit. It will simply not work to wantonly pressurize, or incite confrontation, or impose restrictions and suppression. Some people call for decoupling from China. If any American company chooses to do so, it is choosing to decouple from the world's second largest economy, from the huge consumer market of 1.4 billion people, and from Fortune 500 rankings. I have noted that Ambassador Tai mentioned that the US is now seeking to recouple with China, which has some positivity in it. The two sides can sit down and sort out the areas of decoupling and how to get them recoupled. We are willing to have further communication and consultation with the US side, properly manage differences, and jointly create conditions to expand the positive side of our relations on the basis of mutual respect and win-win cooperation, so as to ensure that China-US relations, including our economic and trade relations, can return to the track of healthy and stable development. This is also to implement the important agreement reached by President Xi Jinping and President Biden in their recent phone call.

When asked about his comments about the complicated signals of Ambassador Tais remarks, including the fact that she didnt mention revoking tariffs on China, Ambassador Qin said, the two countries trade frictions over the past few years have once again proved that China and the US both stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. There is no winner in a trade war or tariff war. I believe that more Americans have got to understand it now. As two major economies, China and the United States are one of the most important trading partners for each other. It is just normal for us to have economic competition and trade frictions. The key is how to deal with them. We advocate that we should pursue solutions acceptable to both sides through communication and consultation, based on the principles of mutual respect and mutual benefit.

Ambassador Qin said, China also has its own concerns. In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for Chinese companies to invest and go public in the United States. At present, more than 900 Chinese entities have been included in various lists of restrictions by the United States. Chinese companies face unfair treatment. In particular, the US is increasingly using "national security" as an excuse to suppress Chinese companies and restrict bilateral economic and trade exchanges and cooperation. If this is allowed to continue, it will cause more serious consequences.

When asked about his comments about the US claim that China has not fully implemented the Phase One Trade Agreement, Ambassador Qin pointed out that China has always kept its promises in state-to-state relations. Despite the serious difficulties brought by COVID-19 over the past year, China has sincerely and steadily implemented the agreement. From IPR protection, to expansion of agricultural imports from the US, to opening-up of the financial sector, we have taken tangible steps and made important progress. In contrast, the US has set up multiple obstacles and restrictions on Chinese enterprises and on our economic and trade exchanges and investment cooperation. Recently, the two countries have maintained communication and dialogue at various levels in the economic and trade field. Whatever concerns that the two sides have can be put on the table for discussion, but the US side must take a pragmatic and sincere attitude.
Interview by Margo Kissell, university news and communications

Andrew Casper, associate professor of art history at Miami University, released his latest book, An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy (Pennsylvania State University Press) on Sept. 29. If you follow his Twitter feed, youd think Casper appeared on Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update recently  at least his photo and book cover did. Nope, just clever marketing on his part.

We caught up with Casper  a specialist of Renaissance and Baroque art of southern Europe  for this Q-and-A to learn more.

You nearly had us fooled with the image of co-anchor Colin Jost appearing to be talking about your new book on Weekend Update. Tell us how you came up with the idea for that funny meme or others that youve been tweeting.

This is the latest funny meme Andrew Casper and his colleague, Andrew Offenburger, have tweeted to promote Casper's new book online. Casper's Twitter handle is @AndrewRCasper1.

I wish I could say that this was a premeditated strategy with the goal and eventual outcome of publicizing my books. But to be perfectly honest, Im not sure it was, on either count. Really, its a result of two things: First, I had never been on social media of any sort until a few months before my book was published, and it became clear that I should use Twitter to publicize my book more effectively. Second, I like to think of myself as somewhat of a humorous person (dont ask my students what they think) and just thought it would be fun to make some funny tweets about my book. The SNL meme was generated by a colleague of mine (thank you, Andrew Offenburger), so I cannot take credit for it. But hes clearly better at this than I am!

What impact have they had?

Again, Im not sure its had much of an impact in terms of greater publicity or sales since most people who have seen, liked, and commented on my tweets have been the same people who have already known about and already purchased the book. But at the very least, I do hope that it shows that some of us academics are real people with senses of humor. Dont get me wrong, my work is serious, and I have a serious dedication to my research. But especially these days, who doesnt want something that makes them laugh or smile? If it gets someone new to buy my book, then thats just an added bonus. (Im fighting the urge to say that the only key to happiness is to buy my book  )

Your first book, Art and the Religious Image in El Grecos Italy (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), examined the early career of painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, widely known as El Greco. How did you market that book?

My first book was published in 2014 when I had literally no experience in, and even less interest, in social media. And so I relied entirely on my press, which does do a great job advertising to the main academic target audience. Whatever I did was a result of word of mouth  which is probably not very effective.

All kidding aside, tell us about your latest book. What made you want to write about the Shroud of Turin?

Andrew Casper standing in front of the Palazzo Reale in Turin, Italy (submitted photo).

When I entered academia, this had always been the book I wanted to write. For a variety of reasons though I had to write my first book on El Greco first because it derived from my Ph.D. dissertation. But my interest in the Shroud of Turin goes all the way back to when I was a kid. Even from a non-religious perspective, I had been fascinated by the idea of the Shroud as a religious object and this interest continued through college. When I got to grad school to study for my doctorate in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art history, it became clear that there was a real opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the vast literature that exists on the Shroud. Whereas most attention focuses on the contentious issue of authenticity, relatively little work has been done by scholars to address how or why the Shroud of Turin emerged as such a prominent religious image in the late 1500s and 1600s. My book fills that gap, and does so without having to make a declaration about whether or not it is real.

For those who aspire to write books of their own, what advice would you give?

I can only speak about writing academic books, which are fundamentally different from many other genres. But I do think that everyone who aspires to write should realize that writing books is hard. Its time consuming. And it is a craft that requires far more attention than what many might think. It might seem like people sit down to write a book and a few months later it is done. Thats certainly not how mine are written. My Shroud of Turin book took about a decade of research  many trips to Italy to uncover documents, to examine 17th century copies of the Shroud, etc. It sounds glamorous, but I worked really hard for a very long time! And so I always say that with writing, as many things, if its not hard, youre probably doing it wrong.

Finally, whats your favorite time to write and where? Set the scene for us.

If I cant be in Italy, then my favorite place to write, by far, is Kofenya here in Oxford. Ive always fed off of the energy and stimulation (caffeinated or otherwise) that a good college town coffee shop can provide, especially in the morning. I was awarded a yearlong research leave for the entire 2019 calendar year to complete the full manuscript, and I would say there was rarely a week where I didnt spend the majority of my mornings at Kofenya sipping espressos. So really, I wrote this book right here in Oxfords best coffee shop!
In recent budget cycles, EGLE has consistently advocated for Michigan to dramatically increase its investment in our state's aging and outmoded water infrastructure (across the spectrum of drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater systems).

The centerpiece of this effort is Governor Gretchen Whitmer's now $700 million MI Clean Water plan, which EGLE and partners have been promoting since 2020. The $207 million drinking water component of that plan includes $102 million in targeted investments to assist disadvantaged communities with lead line replacement. In addition to promoting the plan here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer has been working across the Great Lakes States to urge federal leaders to prioritize water infrastructure in its economic recovery, infrastructure, and other spending plans.

As part of the MI Clean Water plan, $35 million has recently been secured for Benton Harbor's water infrastructure needs, including $18.6 million for lead service line replacements (see table below). The latter Benton Harbor lead-service-line figure includes:

A dedicated $10 million State General Fund allocation adopted by the State Legislature and signed by the Governor as part of the fiscal year 2022 budget;

A nearly $5.6 million EPA grant that Benton Harbor secured with support from EGLE, including our team assisting the city in submitting its application and advocating for Benton Harbor's proposal in phone calls and a letter of support;

$3 million from the State Revolving fund.

Current preliminary estimates put the total cost of Benton Harbor's lead line replacement effort at $30 million, leaving an estimated $11.4 million gap to close to achieve Governor Whitmer's goal of removing all lead service lines in Benton Harbor over the next 18 months. Updated cost estimates are anticipated to be available in early 2022 once the City receives bid proposals from potential contractors.
$2.5M MI Tri-Share Child Care Investment Brings Expansion Opportunities

$2.5M MI Tri-Share Child Care Investment Brings Expansion Opportunities

Applications sought for four new regional facilitator hubs, continued investment coming to initial pilot regions

November 3, 2021

Media Contact: Erica Quealy, 517-582-2961

As part of the state's efforts to increase access to high quality, affordable child care for working families, while also helping to retain talent and remove a major barrier to employment, the Michigan Women's Commission (MWC) is accepting proposals to lead regional program management of the MI Tri-Share Child Care (Tri-Share) pilot program expansion thanks to a $2.5M investment included in the FY 22 budget.

Through Tri-Share, the cost of child care is shared equally by an eligible employee, their employer and the State of Michigan, with coordination being provided regionally by a facilitator hub.

"Every family in Michigan deserves access to quality, affordable childcare that meets their needs," said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. "As we emerge from the pandemic and usher in a new era of prosperity for our families, communities and small businesses, we have to understand just how essential childcare is for the economy as a whole. I'm proud of the investments that we have made and continue to make to expand access to childcare so more families can benefit."

The legislature included $2.5M in the FY 22 budget to expand the Tri-Share pilot program following Gov. Whitmer's recommendation. Current pilot regions will receive additional funds to expand their work through Sept. 30, 2022, and a new Request for Proposals (RFP) seeks applications to serve as new regional facilitator hubs for four new pilot regions.

"The staggering cost of child care is one of the biggest economic burdens facing Michigan families," said LEO Director Susan Corbin. "By continuing to invest in child care, we are not only removing barriers for families, we're also investing in the future of our state. We must prioritize this issue today to ensure the flourishing of the next generation while meeting the needs of working parents and the businesses that seek to employ them."

Employees eligible to participate in the Tri-Share pilot must be employed by a participating employer, have an income above 185% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) and below 285% FPL, and not otherwise be eligible for the Child Development and Care Program (commonly called the state child care subsidy). The role of the facilitator hub is to act as a regional intermediary between employers, families, child care providers and the State of Michigan, and to provide overall program management.

"We know that child care is a big issue in getting women back into - and remaining in - the workforce. The pandemic really shines a light on the impacts child care costs have on both employees and employers," said Cheryl Bergman, MWC CEO. "The continued funding for and bipartisan approach to the Tri-Share cost-sharing program has the potential to expand the program to more regions and to help more working families. We look forward to continuing to educate policymakers about the positive impact access to high quality, affordable child care has for both employees and employers."

A coalition of business and advocacy leaders, led by the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and Representative Greg VanWoerkom (R-MI-91), championed funding for the pilot program. "The Tri-Share program is having a meaningful impact on working families," said Rep. VanWoerkom. "I am excited to see more communities, employers and families engage in this program to see how we can continue to create affordable and accessible child care."

"We continue to hear from our members that child care is key in helping families and businesses thrive," said Rick Baker, CEO of the Grand Rapids Chamber. "We continue to support the expansion of Tri-Share and additional investments in child care throughout Michigan."

Last month, Gov. Whitmer signed the state budget for Fiscal Year 2022, which included a historic investment in child care, allocating $1.4 billion of federal COVID funds to help support childcare providers, reduce costs and expand subsidies to another 105,000 Michigan families. The result is that not only will thousands of parents be able to re-enter the workforce after the disruptions of COVID, but the State is laying the foundation for a more equitable and sustainable long-term base of support for early childhood in Michigan.

The MWC is accepting proposals to lead regional program management of the Tri-Share pilot expansion until 12:00PM (Noon) on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021. This RFP seeks applications to serve as new regional facilitator hubs.

Download the full RFP, program description and proposal template.
MIOSHA grants award to Humanetics for exemplary safety and health commitment to employees

MIOSHA grants award to Humanetics for exemplary safety and health commitment to employees

November 3, 2021

Media Contact: Tanya Baker, 517-284-5601

The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) today presented its Consultation, Education and Training (CET) Silver Award for maintaining an exemplary safety and health record with no lost time accidents, while demonstrating a strong commitment to a culture of safety over the past year to The Humanetics Group facility in Farmington Hills, MI. Humanetics is best known around the world as the pioneer of the iconic crash test dummies.

"MIOSHA is thrilled to recognize Humanetics' Farmington Hills facility for their exceptional safety and health performance," said MIOSHA Director Bart Pickelman. "This award honors their well-developed safety and health system and dedication to protecting all employees."

The MIOSHA CET Division recognizes the safety and health achievements of Michigan employers and employees through CET Awards, which are based on excellent safety and health performance. The CET Silver Award recognizes an outstanding safety record of one year without a lost time accident.

"Our mission is to save lives and protect people in critical environments, so the safety and wellbeing of our employees in in our own facilities has always been a cornerstone of our operations," said President and CEO of Humanetics, Christopher O'Connor. "To have been without an incident for over 500 days is a great credit to our employees. We are delighted to accept the award and are very proud of the commitment and focus of our employees that has been recognized by MIOSHA. This is an award for their hard work. Next year we look forward to our opportunity to earn a gold award!"

The CET Silver Award criteria includes:

Developing and implementing a comprehensive Safety and Health Management System (SHMS) - MIOSHA staff consult with silver awardees and evaluate their SHMS to ensure that key elements are implemented;

Establishing a safety and health committee, with both employee and management participation;

Developing an employee training system, with an emphasis on how to do the work in a safe and healthful manner; and

Working diligently to change the workplace culture to reflect the importance of worker safety.

MIOSHA Senior Industrial Hygienist Kristin Osterkamp worked closely with Humanetics for the past three years, providing consultations, conducting exposure monitoring and hazard surveys at the facility, and giving the employer the opportunity to work collaboratively with MIOSHA to correct problem areas. Humanetics has utilized both MIOSHA CET safety and health consultation services at their Farmington Hills location since 2018.

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About The Humanetics Group

The Humanetics Group is a leading provider of crash test systems, computer-aided engineering simulation models, precision sensors and cutting-edge photonic solutions through its subsidiaries Humanetics, HITEC Sensors, Fibercore and OpTek Systems. The group has over 850 employees across 24 facilities strategically located around the world with the global corporate headquarters located in Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA. Although each company operates as a separate entity, they leverage synergies in their relationships, engineering capabilities, research and business systems to support the group as a whole. The Humanetics Group drives the innovations that protect human potential.
First responder media event Nov. 9 to promote Crash Responder Safety Week and Michigan's Move Over Law

Ron Tennant, Grand Rapids Fire Department, 616-456-3981 Transportation

LANSING, Mich. -- The Michigan Traffic Incident Management Action Team and the Delta Township Fire Department are hosting a media event to bring awareness to Crash Responder Safety Week (Nov. 8-14) and Michigan's Move Over Law. The event will highlight the importance of drivers slowing down and moving over for emergency vehicles, as well as safely managing traffic incidents and preventing secondary crashes. First responder vehicles and a traffic incident management demonstration will be available.

WHO:

AAA Michigan

Eaton County Central Dispatch

Delta Township Fire Department

Grand Rapids Fire Department

Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) staff

Michigan State Police staff

Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning staff

Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, State Fire Marshal

Michigan Towing Association

Michigan's Traffic Incident Management Action Team

WHEN:

Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021

10 a.m.

WHERE:

Delta Township Fire Department

811 N. Canal Road

Lansing, MI 48917

BACKGROUND:

Each year across the country, hundreds of emergency responders are struck and injured or killed while responding to traffic incidents. Crash Responder Safety Week (formerly known as National Traffic Incident Response Awareness Week) will focus on teaching everyone that we have a shared responsibility for safely and quickly clearing traffic crashes as well as slowing down and moving over.

Unfortunately, first responders are still being struck and killed or injured at an alarming rate. In 2020, a traffic crash was reported in Michigan every 2 minutes and 9 seconds, resulting in 245,598 traffic crashes. Emergency vehicles were involved in 2,253 of these crashes, including four fatal crashes and 355 injury crashes. Safety, emergency, local, and state groups and organizations around Michigan will use the week to educate drivers and local public safety professionals about the dangers of traffic incident response in an effort to prevent injuries and deaths.

Michigan residents can join the effort by ensuring their vehicle is in good working condition, packing a roadside emergency kit, and remaining in their vehicle until help arrives. When driving near an incident scene, Michigan's Move Over Law requires drivers to slow down to at least 10 mph below the posted speed limit and move over, if possible. This law applies to stationary emergency vehicles with flashing lights activated, including roadside tow trucks and courtesy vehicles operated by MDOT. It also applies to garbage trucks, road maintenance, and utility service vehicles that have amber lights flashing.
AG Nessel Leads Coalition in Protecting Delphi Retirees, Pension Recipients Before U.S. Supreme Court

AG Nessel Leads Coalition in Protecting Delphi Retirees, Pension Recipients Before U.S. Supreme Court

Attorney General

Media contact: Lynsey Mukomel 517-599-2746

Public inquiries: 517-335-7622

November 4, 2021

LANSING - Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel led a coalition with six other attorneys general in filing an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court in Dennis Black et al v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which argues the due process rights of former Delphi Corporation employees were violated when the corporation's bankruptcy resulted in termination of Delphi's pension plan.

Petitioners in the lawsuit are former employees of Delphi, an auto-parts manufacturer and supplier, and were participants in Delphi's pension plan. After Delphi filed for bankruptcy, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) executed an agreement with the pension plan's administrator to terminate the pension plan.

Many participants lost between 30% and 70% of their vested benefits. The affected participants, and petitioners in this case, sued in district court, arguing that the pension plan termination was illegal. The district court and Sixth Circuit rejected their claims, resulting in this appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

"For many of the affected employees, their careers were spent entrusting Delphi to deliver on its pension plan," Nessel said. "Losing vested benefits - through no fault of their own nor with any say in the matter - violated the rights of these employees. Our filing seeks to rectify that grave error."

The question presented is, "Do retirees have a property right in vested but unfunded pension benefits, such that termination of those benefits without adequate procedural safeguards violates due process?"

In Michigan, nearly 6,000 of its seniors were once covered by the salaried pension plan of the former auto parts maker, which once operated plants and offices in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Grand Rapids, and other cities across the state. Nationally over 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees have been affected.

The brief asserts in part, "According to the Sixth Circuit, the retirees had no cognizable legal right to the portion of their pension benefits Delphi had not funded. This was despite the fact that the benefits in question had vested-a term which in ordinary usage, in ERISA, and in caselaw de-notes the conferring of a property right. The Sixth Circuit's broad holding has dire implications within that circuit, as well as anywhere else where the same is adopted. Retirees already occupy a precarious position, reliant for their survival on pensions and other fixed sources of income. It is concerning enough that these individuals can be endangered when their former employers proceed in bankruptcy and are judicially relieved of their commitments. But at least in a bankruptcy proceeding, there is a recognition that creditors have property rights, and there are safeguards in place and a process that ensures that all parties are heard, after which a judge-not a government corporation-makes the final adjudication. Here, retirees had no opportunity to challenge the plan termination before it was terminated, since the bankruptcy court would not hear the challenge, and the respondents then terminated the plan with-out an adjudication. And when the retirees sought post-deprivation relief, the Sixth Circuit held they had no constitutional right to any process at all. The decision below should be reversed because it failed to even recognize that the retirees had a cognizable property interest in the payments they had been promised."

The coalition also notes in the brief, "the fundamental constitutional error the Sixth Circuit committed is not limited to Delphi retirees. The broad holding is precedential in the States of the Sixth Circuit, and, if found persuasive and adopted by other courts of appeals, could wreak economic havoc in other states. Thus, even amici States with a small number of Delphi retirees have an interest in this case and sign onto this brief to protect the constitutional rights of their citizens in future cases."

Joining Attorney General Nessel in this filing are the attorneys general of Delaware, Florida, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
Ypsilanti Paraeducator Named 2021 Michigan Education Support Staff Professional of the Year

Ypsilanti Paraeducator Named 2021 Michigan Education Support Staff Professional of the Year

Martin Ackley, Director of Public and Governmental Affairs 517-241-4395 Education

November 4, 2021



LANSING - Carla Whitsett, a paraeducator at Achieving College & Career Education High School at Ypsilanti Community Schools was named Michigan's 2021 Education Support Staff Professional of the Year, according to the Michigan Department of Education (MDE).

Whitsett, who has worked as a support staff professional for more than 20 years, was selected from among more than 100 nominations for this year's award.

"Working together, it takes an entire school community to help our children achieve their full potential," said State Superintendent Dr. Michael Rice. "Ms. Whitsett has shown devotion and care to Ypsilanti's students for many years as a paraeducator, and I want to offer my appreciation and congratulations to her on being named Michigan's 2021 Education Support Staff Professional of the Year."

Each school community benefits from the contributions of countless individuals who work tirelessly to ensure the needs of the whole child are met. Education support staff professionals play an essential role in a child's education and MDE salutes all educators and support staff as part of its efforts to uplift and honor Michigan's educational staff.

"Ypsilanti Community Schools is so fortunate to have many exceptional educators," said Ypsilanti Superintendent Dr. Alana Zachery-Ross. "Ms. Carla Whitsett is one of these educators who goes above and beyond for each and every student she interacts with. We are extremely grateful for her commitment and service to our students, parents, and community. She has been a consistent pillar in this community. Thank you, Ms. Whitsett for all that you do on behalf of all of our students in YCS."

Lauren Fardig-Diop, a teacher at Achieving College & Career Education High School who nominated Whitsett for this honor, said: "Carla grew up in the community, and her commitment to generations of young people in Ypsilanti is unmatched. She aims to love everyone who walks through our doors, to let them know that they are valued and cared for and deserve to be well-educated."

As part of its ongoing commitment to highlighting and recognizing the contributions of individuals across the state who go above and beyond for their students, MDE is proud to partner with the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, the Michigan Education Association, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 25 to offer this award. This was the third year MDE partnered with Michigan's educational labor organizations to present this award.

For more information about the Education Support Staff Professional of the Year award, please visit https://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-5683_13651_38021---,00.html or e-mail Jennifer Robel at robelj@michigan.gov.
Gov. Whitmer Announces 'Jobs Court' Pilot Program to Keep Communities Safe by Putting Michiganders to Work

Gov. Whitmer Announces 'Jobs Court' Pilot Program to Keep Communities Safe by Putting Michiganders to Work

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 3, 2021

Contact: Press@Michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Announces 'Jobs Court' Pilot Program to Keep Communities Safe by Putting Michiganders to Work

Part of Administration's $75 million MI Safe Communities Framework to reduce crime and protect public safety

LANSING, Mich. -- Today, as part of Governor Whitmer's MI Safe Communities Plan, Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II joined Attorney General Dana Nessel, the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights, Detroit Manufacturing Systems, Goodwill Industries, the United Auto Workers, other businesses across state, and representatives from the law enforcement and criminal justice communities to announce a new proposal called Jobs Court, which would put Michiganders accused of low-level, nonviolent offenses in good-paying jobs to reduce recidivism and help businesses staff up.

"The Jobs Court proposal we unveiled today will make a crucial difference for Michiganders, their families, and communities," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "Jobs Court will help address the backlog in our court system, fill job openings across the state, grow our economy, and connect those in need with critical resources. I'm thankful for the hard work of Attorney General Nessel in putting this proposal together and look forward to working with the legislature to get it done."

The new proposal, part of the larger MI Safe Communities framework the governor laid out in August, would make a $5.5 million investment to establish Jobs Court, a pilot program to give up to 450 eligible defendants in Wayne, Genesee and Marquette counties accused of low-level, nonviolent crimes an opportunity to obtain and maintain gainful employment.

"Today's announcement is an important step forward in our efforts to reform Michigan's criminal justice system so that it is focused on rehabilitation and positioning people for success," said Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II. "Jobs are the key to success, and Jobs Court will support eligible Michiganders by connecting them with good-paying jobs, benefits, and the social services assistance they need to support themselves and their families. With today's proposal we are addressing a root cause of public safety issues by connecting eligible offenders with the support they need to find and maintain employment."

"Jobs Court is an innovative program that checks all of the boxes: it's smart on crime, reduces the burden on our criminal justice system, puts offenders on a permanent path to success, helps our local businesses, and makes our communities safer," said Attorney General Dana Nessel. "I am grateful to Governor Whitmer for including my proposal as part of her MI Safe Communities framework and I look forward to working with the Legislature and our local law enforcement partners on this groundbreaking new initiative."

Individuals who qualify and are selected for Jobs Court would be matched with participating employers to work a good-paying job with benefits, opportunity, and training to learn transferable career skills. They will be required to maintain frequent and open communication with their employer and with the State of Michigan to ensure accountability and compliance with the requirements of the program and will be eligible for wraparound services such as mental healthcare, transportation to and from work, and access to a social worker. Prosecutors will be offered the option to dismiss charges against Jobs Court participants who successfully complete the one-year program.

"Survey after survey tell us that the public wants courts that are engaged with local communities and connected with the people they serve," said Chief Justice Bridget M. McCormack. "Jobs Court provides exactly what the public is asking for - courts that are community resources, helping to connect people with jobs and the support they need to get their lives back on track. This is not a free ride but a common sense approach that solves problems and strengthens communities."

The Jobs Court proposal is modeled in part on the successful programs the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) has launched to provide prisoners with education, skills, and job training in high-demand fields. Since 2016, MDOC programs such as Vocational Village have delivered training in automotive technology, welding, robotics, computer coding, commercial truck driving, forklift operation, carpentry, plumbing, electrical trades, and concrete and masonry work. MDOC's work in this field has resulted in higher employment rates for released prisoners and Michigan's lowest recidivism rate in state history.

"What an amazing opportunity! A good-paying job with benefits is everything," said N. Charles Anderson, President/CEO of the Urban League of Detroit & Southeastern Michigan. "This Jobs Court prosecutorial diversion program will help Michiganders who have committed nonviolent offenses earn a good wage with benefits, learn new employable skills, and get back on their feet, setting them up for success, period. This is a bold initiative that targets criminal justice issues at their roots. We're very appreciative for the partnership of Attorney General Nessel and Governor Whitmer in proposing this crucial, much needed reform to our criminal justice system."

"Today's announcement is a welcome step forward for Michiganders," said Dan Varner, President and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit. "Not only will this proposal help clear up the court backlog and help employers fill job openings, it will mean a path forward for Michiganders who have made mistakes. It's a step towards a healthier, better justice system focused on reducing recidivism. We're thankful for the partnership of Governor Whitmer and Attorney General Nessel in making this proposal."

"Governor Whitmer's Jobs Court proposal will make a difference on the ground for both business owners and Michiganders," said George Wilkinson, President of NorthGate. "By giving Michiganders who have committed low-level, nonviolent offenses a second chance, and helping business owners fill job openings, this groundbreaking program will be beneficial for everyone. NorthGate appreciates the vision and focus of this program and we look forward to continuing to work with legislative representatives to get this program enacted."

"At DMS, we are passionate about helping others reach their full potential to succeed in life," said Bruce Smith, Majority Owner, Chairman & CEO of Detroit Manufacturing Systems (DMS). "Having the opportunity to partner with the MI Jobs Court to provide program participants with an opportunity to obtain gainful employment is exciting because we enjoy helping people grow, rise and give back. Accordingly, we are grateful to be a part of the Governor and Attorney General's MI Jobs Court program."

"Providing people with another chance in life and an opportunity to contribute to society is good for businesses and communities throughout Michigan," said Glenn Stevens, Executive Director of MICHauto and Vice President of Automotive and Mobility Initiatives Detroit Regional Chamber. "MICHauto is proud to support the Jobs Court initiative and applauds Gov. Whitmer and Attorney General Nessel for their leadership in developing the program. Companies throughout our state need talent, and this pilot program has the potential to change the trajectory of people's lives, and help grow Michigan's economy and labor force."

"The Michigan Jobs Court Pilot Program represents a tremendous opportunity to curb recidivism and help fill the gap in Michigan's skilled-trades workforce," said Tom Lutz, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights. "We know the transformative power of giving someone the skills and the opportunity to work for a better life, and we are proud to give this program our full support."

MI Safe Communities

The $75 million MI Safe Communities proposal was the result of hundreds of conversations the governor and her team had with law enforcement officers, community leaders, faith leaders, and families over several months. Based on those conversations, the governor announced the three-pillar MI Safe Communities framework in July.

MI Safe Communities would:

Invest more money into Michigan's police departments to strengthen training policies and programs and foster collaboration between the Michigan State Police and local departments on specialty services.

Increase the number of visiting judges with funding for prosecution and defense to tackle the backlog of criminal cases that has piled up during the pandemic, to protect the rights of defendants and help the justice system operate more efficiently while maintaining public safety.

Make comprehensive investments to expand opportunity through Michigan's education, jobs, and justice system including Collaborative Community Violence Intervention Programs, counseling, peer support, mediation, and social services to hospital patients recovering from violent injuries and prevent further violence and injuries.

The administration will make additional announcements on MI Safe Communities in early November.

Funding Law Enforcement

Since taking office, Governor Whitmer has signed budget bills delivering $1.4 billion to local governments to help them fund local police, fire departments, and emergency medical services. She has also delivered $40 million in COVID hazard pay for local officers and first-responders and over $10 million premium pay for MSP troopers. These dollars help ensure police are better equipped to fight crime today and have the resources to fight crime tomorrow.

Budget

Earlier this month, the governor signed the Fiscal Year 2022 budget bill that delivers more resources to state police to help them hire more troopers and expand and improve training. The latest budget also invests in 911 system upgrades and delivers on the kitchen-table fundamental issues that make our communities stronger: putting 167,000 Michiganders on a tuition-free path to higher-education or skills training, expanding low or no-cost childcare to 105,000 kids, repairing or replacing 100 bridges while creating 2,500 jobs, and more.

Earlier this year, Governor Whitmer and legislature worked together to put Michigan students first and passed the largest significant education investment in state history, closing the funding gap between schools in Michigan and including a historic amount of resources for schools to hire more nurses, counselors, and social workers. Early investments in mental and social health help reduce crime in the long run.

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Visiting the Historical Society of Caseville Museum is always entertaining. The museum, located at 6733 Prospect Street, in Caseville, provides displays and exhibits that bring the history of the area to life. The members of the Historical Society of Caseville have worked hard to make the museum a place youll talk about and revisit numerous times.

As you enter the museum, a portrait of Francis Crawford, an important figure in settling Caseville, hangs on the wall in the entryway. A greeter will be on hand to guide you around the museum, and answer any questions you may have concerning the history of Caseville and the surrounding area.

You will be asked to sign a guest book as you enter the museum proper. After signing in, the greeter will point out another portrait of Mr. Crawford. At this point, something unexpected happens; the portrait begins speaking to you.

Located on a wall near other displays, the Living Portrait of Francis Crawford delivers a two-minute discourse on his accomplishments, including how he helped Caseville become the thriving community you see today.

The brainchild of Rich Bass, an active member of the Historical Society of Caseville, the Living Portrait is actually a video created by members of the museum. It is displayed in a frame with matting, and comes to life on an old television set.

Bass "borrowed" the idea from another museum.

I got it from the Sturgis Museum, in southwest Michigan, Bass said. They had a photo that came to life; a portrait over a desk that came to life. It was of Judge Sturgis, one of the founders in that area. He founded Sturgis, Michigan. In this case, Crawford founded Caseville, Michigan.

He was intrigued by the idea and suggested it to other members of the Historical Society of Caseville. It was discussed, and they decided to go ahead with the implementation of Francis Crawford: A Living Portrait.

About the time they were ready to begin formulating a plan for the project, the pandemic hit. The living portrait idea was shelved, although Bass continued to think about how to do it.

I thought it was a great idea, he said. I mentioned the idea to a couple people.

One of those people was Alan Jones, a friend Bass knew from a sailing club he belongs to.

Turns out, Alan is a retired (information technology) person, Bass said. He spent the last half of his career working in management, so a lot of the new technology went by him. He thought itd be a good project to relearn this stuff. So he took on the project.

As the pandemic subsided, and society opened up a little, members of the historical society began working on the living portrait.

Within a half year, we had it done, Bass said. Its just phenomenal.

Jones, working with Cathy Snider, a member of the Historical Society of Caseville, who Bass calls their "local IT person," worked out the details of making a portrait come to life. Bass donated his old bedroom television set, which they set on end. Historical society member Harold Hoelzle built a frame for the "portrait" and provided matting so it looked like a gallery presentation of a historical portrait. Hoelzle and historical society president, Joyce Miller, wrote the script.

Now all they needed was someone to play Francis Crawford. Dave Vizard, vice president of the historical society, was tasked with finding a suitable actor. Enter Dennis Sturtz, of Pigeon, who is active in the Port Austin Community Players.

We met with Dennis a couple times, Bass said. We tossed around a couple ideas. On the day of the filming, he showed up with a makeup artist; his wife, Kat Sturtz.

When Dennis and Kat arrived at the museum to shoot the video, Dennis resembled Francis Crawford; Kat, who is also involved with the PACP, had done a tremendous job of making "Francis Crawford" come to life using costume material belonging to the PACP. During the production of the video, she took on the dual role of videographer and director. Kat had Dennis redid lines to ensure the video flowed. Afterward, she took the video home for editing. The final product is Francis Crawford: A Living Portrait.

Kat really melded it all together, Bass said. She did a fantastic job.

The "living portrait" was unveiled during the August meeting of the Historical Society of Caseville. The members loved it.

Volunteer greeters are being trained by Bass and Snider to operate the living portrait, which runs through an application on the museums smart phone.

More than a hundred people have viewed Francis Crawford: A Living Portrait so far. The project has been well received.

The Museum is open from noon to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. Historical Society of Caseville monthly meetings are held the third Thursday of the month at 10 a.m., and are open to the public.
Tribune File Photo

Almost 20 months after the start of the pandemic, community events that have become annual fixtures in the Upper Thumb are still falling victim to COVID-19.



The latest is the annual Thanksgiving Blessing Dinner, created by the Bad Axe Jaycees to provide a traditional Thanksgiving dinner to members of the community who are unable to cook, are alone for the holiday or want to enjoy a meal and join in fellowship. The dinner was traditionally held the Thursday prior to Thanksgiving, and an average of 240 meals were served.



Kathy Collings, who co-chairs the event along with Lorraine Keller, said they conferred with the Community Cooks and decided to cancel this years meal for the health and safety of our community due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.



This was a very difficult decision as we know how much the community looks forward to it, Collings said. We went over the pros and cons, and we felt it was best for everyone. We have to put safety first.



Collings added that many of the dinners guests are usually residents of area care facilities and would not be able to attend this year even if the event were held, and high school students have traditionally served as volunteers, so their availability might be in question. With social distancing and other protective measures needed, it just made sense to put the event on pause in 2021.



The whole purpose of the meal was fellowship and to sit down and visit with your neighbor, she said.



Collings said they fully intend to resume holding the dinner in 2022.



The last dinner  which marked the event's 30th anniversary  took place in November 2019 at St. Hubert Catholic Church. Along with the Community Cooks, a group of former Jaycees, a total of 30 volunteers worked together to put on the meal.



Students from Bad Axe Public Schools also got involved, coloring festive placemats for the events guests. The dinner also featured Christmas music played on a piano.



In 2019, the Community Cooks and St. Hubert Parish provided 180 pounds of turkey, and takeout meals were also made available.
On Wednesday, Leafly, a cannabis discovery marketplace, released its inaugural Cannabis Harvest Report, the first look at cannabis crop data, insights and projections across the 11 states where Americans can purchase both adult-use and medical cannabis.

In Michigan, with 487 licenses so far distributed, 189 metric tons of cannabis are produced annually, according to the report, bringing in $736 million to the state and its farmers. That makes the cannabis crop the third most valuable crop in the state, second to corn and soybeans. That's more than the values of the hay and apple crops combined.

Graphic provided/Leafly

In partnership with Whitney Economics, Leaflys investigative team gathered and analyzed crop data from the 11 states with operating legal adult-use and medical cannabis markets and found that cannabis has become a major agricultural commodity that supports thousands of American farmers and farm communities, including 13,042 licensed farms in the aggregate.

On an annual basis, those growers harvest 2,278 metric tons (5,022,990 pounds) of cannabis, making it the 5th most valuable crop in the nation.

With a wholesale harvest value of $6.2 billion, Americas cannabis harvest ranks above cotton and below wheat, based on USDA data for 2020. Only corn, soybeans, hay and wheat bring in more money to American farmers.

In each of the 11 states with adult-use retail stores operating, cannabis ranks no lower than 5th in terms of agricultural crop value  often within two years of the first store opening. Legal cannabis is the single most valuable agricultural crop in Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada and Oregon, the study found, but according to a press release, it remains completely uncounted and ignored by state agriculture officials.

In Alaska, the states cannabis crop is worth more than twice as much as all other agricultural products combined.

"The Leafly Cannabis Harvest Report is an unprecedented national accounting of cannabis as a crop  and what we found was astounding," David Downs, the reports lead author and Leaflys California bureau chief, said in a statement. "Americas adult-use wholesale cannabis crop returned a mind-boggling $6.175 billion to farmers last year, ranking it as the fifth most valuable crop in the United States.

"Yet, due to federal prohibition, America does not treat cannabis farmers like farmers," Downs continued. "They are subject to more state and federal taxes, regulations and stigma than any other type of farmer. These barriers hurt small legacy farmers the most. This plant is helping generate wealth, employment, and community investment around the country, and our legislators need to recognize the opportunity cannabis presents for Americans today."

Only officially state-licensed cannabis farms were counted in the report. Leafly followed the USDA's approach, ascertaining production amounts for the most recent 12-month reporting period in each state, and multiplying that production by wholesale prices in each state to arrive at the crops value.

Leafly has been gathering cannabis employment and sales data since 2015 with its annual Jobs Report, filling an information gap created by a lack of data collection from the U.S. Department of Labor, which does not count cannabis jobs due to federal prohibition. Similarly, the USDA does not account for cannabis crops, and excludes cannabis farmers from all of its programs, due to cannabis status as a federal Schedule I drug.
Over our long shared history, dogs have developed a range of skills for bonding with human beings and now there's evidence to show dogs can sometimes tell when you're lying to them.

Can your dog tell there are more scraps to share and that you didn't really lose the ball?

To help answer this question, researchers at the University of Vienna conducted a study with hundreds of dogs from different breeds.

In their paper published on July 21 in "Proceedings of the Royal Society B," they describe experiments conducted with 260 dogs, and what was learned about their ability to discern truthfulness in humans.

In the experiments, all of the dogs were taught to follow the advice of an unknown human in choosing which of two opaque buckets contained hidden food. By following the advice, they received the food.

Then the researchers changed things.

They allowed the dogs to watch as another unknown human moved the treat from one bowl to another while a second unknown human watched; in other cases, the second human was absent from the switch-up. The researchers then conducted the same experiments with the dogs and the second person in the switch-up to see if the dogs would continue to follow the advice, phys.org reported.

Researchers found that the dogs ignored the human advice if the person had not been there when the bowls were switched  they knew the person did not know which bowl had the treat.

Half of the dogs ignored the human advice when they knew from observation that the human was pointing at the wrong bowlevidence indicating that the dogs knew the humans were lying to them, phys.org reported.

"Overall, we provide evidence that pet dogs distinguish between true beliefs and false belief scenarios, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying sensitivity to others' beliefs have not evolved uniquely in the primate lineage," the paper states.

Note: The same experiments have been conducted with macaques and chimpanzees, which were much more likely than the dogs to follow the advice of the obvious liar over what they knew to be true, according to the researchers.

Read the full study here.
Funds are becoming available for restoration projects in the Saginaw Bay watershed, including in and along the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers, the Natural Resource Trustee Councils for the area announced Thursday.

The trustees are asking people to submit pre-proposals for restoration project ideas.

The Tittabawassee River and the Saginaw River and Bay Natural Resource Trustee Councils also announced that the funds are being made available by two sources, a 2020 settlement with The Dow Chemical Co. and a 1998 settlement with General Motors and others for natural resource damages, according to a press release issued by Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

The two trustee councils will provide approximately $5.7 million to fund restoration projects, in addition to projects already specified in the two settlements.

The trustees are asking people to submit pre-proposals that the councils will then evaluate based on how they fit the restoration project criteria. A web-based application portal will be used to collect project ideas from the public and other stakeholders as pre-proposals. Access to the application portal, the restoration plans and a summary of the criteria to be used to evaluate pre-proposals can be found here.

Restoration projects must provide some benefit to the natural resources that were harmed as a result of the release of contaminants at issue in one of the relevant court settlements. The contaminants at issue in the two settlements are dioxins and furans in the Dow settlement and polychlorinated biphenyls in the General Motors settlement.

Restoration projects may also improve public use or enjoyment of those natural resources, if they meet the requirement that they also benefit the relevant harmed natural resources.

Projects anywhere in the Saginaw Bay watershed may be eligible for funding, but projects most closely linked to the areas in and around the Tittabawassee River, downstream of Midland, the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay that were more impacted by contaminants will tend to rank higher.

Restoration project pre-proposals must be submitted by Dec. 31, 2021. Following evaluation of the pre-proposals submitted, the trustees will jointly develop a restoration plan that includes proposed projects that rank highly based on the trustees criteria.

The trustees will then release a draft of this restoration plan, with specific projects proposed for funding, for public review and comment in mid- to late 2022. Funding for projects selected in the final restoration plan will likely be available in 2023 and may require full proposals or scopes of work be submitted to the trustee agency administering the funding for each project.

Examples of appropriate projects that address injuries to natural resources may be found within the respective restoration plans for these two cases: the Tittabawassee River Restoration Plan and the Saginaw River and Bay Restoration Plan.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  New Jersey's longtime state Senate president, Democrat Steve Sweeney lost reelection, falling to a Republican newcomer who spent little money and underscoring Democratic woes in the Biden era.

Edward Durr, a furniture company truck driver and first-time officeholder, defeated Sweeney in New Jerseys 3rd Legislative District, according to results tallied Thursday.

Sweeneys defeat was unexpected, and has cast the fate of state government into uncertainty.

It is stunning and shocking and I cannot figure it out, said Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg said in an interview.

His loss unfolded in a politically competitive suburban Philadelphia district whose counties split their votes between Democrats and Republicans in the presidential elections in 2016 and again in 2020.

It also coincided with boosted GOP turnout even in an off-year election that saw Republicans make gains across the state. Durrs victory Thursday netted about 3% more votes than Sweeney did in 2017 in unofficial returns.

Sweeney's attention was also focused on tight Senate races elsewhere in the state.

I dont really think it was Steve Sweeney, said incoming Republican Senate Leader Steve Oroho. I think it had to do with the message coming from people who were just annoyed at all the executive orders and all the mandates and being sick and tired of being told what they can and cant do.

The loss says more about the headwinds Democrats are facing after losing the governor's race in Virginia and winning a narrow victory in New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's race against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, experts said.

This was a protest vote against the Biden administration and Murphy, said Montclair State University political science professor Brigid Harrison. Steve was in many ways just how people voiced their dissatisfaction and anger with the larger political structure.

Sweeney said in a statement Thursday he was waiting for more votes to come in before acknowledging the loss.

While I am currently trailing in the race, we want to make sure every vote is counted. Our voters deserve that, and we will wait for the final results, he said.

Sweeney has served as Senate president since 2010 and was responsible for shepherding Democratic Gov. Phil Murphys progressive agenda through the Legislature, including a phased-in $15 an hour minimum wage, paid sick leave and recreational marijuana legalization.

He is also known for his high-profile reversal on opposition to gay marriage. Sweeney said in 2011 that he made the biggest mistake of my legislative career when he voted against marriage equality.

Though Sweeney was a fellow Democrat, he fought Murphy at the start of his administration over raising income taxes on the wealthy and worked closely with Republican Chris Christie during his eight-year term in office ending in 2018.

A deal he worked out with Christie to overhaul public worker pension put Sweeney at odds with public sector unions, who would go on to become key supporters of Murphy.

Sweeney's loss was cheered by progressive Democrats from southern New Jersey, who saw him as a product of transactional, machine politics.

Today is glorious, said Sue Altman, director of New Jersey Working Families, in a tweet. Altman is a longtime critic of Sweeney's and saw him as focused on trying to maintain control of the Democratic party, particularly in southern New Jersey.

His allies say he was open-minded and eventually delivered for the left.

I think he was a remarkable senator and Senate president, and as I have often reminded my progressive friends that we never could have gotten all those bills on Gov. Murphy's desk for him to sign without the cooperation of the Senate president," Weinberg said.

Sweeney had faced electoral opposition before. In 2017, his feud with the states biggest teachers union over retirement benefits among other issues led to a battle in which the New Jersey Education Association spent millions to try to defeat Sweeney. The unions effort failed.

But this year, Durr defeated him, spending $2,300, according to an Election Law Enforcement Commission document filed online on Thursday. Earlier reports had shown he had spent just $153.31 on his campaign.

Messages seeking comment have been left with Durr.

Durr describes himself as a 2nd Amendment rights advocate and fiscally conservative, who wants to lower taxes. In an interview with NJ.com, he described how unlikely he viewed his victory to be. He has previously run unsuccessfully for state Assembly in 2017 and 2019, but this is his first elected position.

I joked with people and I said, Im going to shock the world, Im going to beat this man, Durr said Wednesday afternoon. I was saying it, but really kind of joking. Because what chance did a person like me really stand against this man? Hes literally the second-most powerful person in the state of New Jersey.

Sweeney is an ironworker by trade who has served as an executive with the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. He is also a key ally and friend of Democratic power broker, George Norcross, whos widely considered to be one of the most powerful unelected people in the state.

It's unclear who will become the next Senate president. If Democrats maintain control of the chamber, as incomplete results show they could do, then Democratic senators will meet to choose their next leader.

The 3rd Legislative District covers parts of Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties.

Coming into Election Day, Democrats had controlled the state Assembly with 52 seats to Republicans 28. In the state Senate, Democrats had 25 seats to the Republicans 15.



This article has been corrected to show that Durr is not a first-time candidate. He ran unsuccessfully for state Assembly in 2017 and 2019.
HILO, Hawaii (AP)  A lawsuit alleges that Hawaii officials unlawfully disclosed the COVID-19 vaccination statuses of nearly 300 Department of Public Safety employees.

The Hawaii Government Employees Association and the United Public Workers unions said in a lawsuit filed last week that vaccination statuses were deliberately and intentionally released in violation of medical privacy laws, Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Wednesday.

According to the lawsuit, an internal email in August said, You are receiving this email to notify you that you must upload a negative Covid-19 test every Monday, using a web link.

The email used carbon copy or cc for recipients, instead of blind carbon copy, or bcc, which wouldn't have shown the addresses of others receiving the message, the Hilo newspaper reported.

Department Director Max Otani, in response to a complaint letter, said a review found no unethical actions or violations of medical privacy laws, according to the lawsuit.

Otani said the human resources officer mistakenly placed the email addresses in the cc field instead of the bcc field and immediately but unsuccessfully tried to recall the email and apologized to those who received it.

The department said it doesn't comment on pending litigation.
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP)  Shortly after sunrise on a recent Saturday in Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents began lining up for free bottled water so they could drink and cook without fear of the high levels of lead in the citys tap water.

Free water distribution sites are a fixture of life in the majority Black city, where almost half of the nearly 10,000 residents live below the poverty line. For three years, tests of its public water system revealed elevated levels of lead.

Waiting for bottled water is time consuming and some residents wonder why, in a state that recently dealt with the Flint water crisis, the problem wasnt fixed sooner.

Its tiresome, said Rhonda Nelson, waiting in line at a site run by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton Harbor.

I understand what Flint was going through, I really do, she said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has promised to spend millions of dollars to replace the citys lead service lines within 18 months  a blistering pace for a process that often takes decades. For now, residents have been warned not to cook, drink or make baby formula with tap water.

Residents worry what the elevated lead levels mean for their families health. The problem is inconvenient and stressful. Drivers line up at water distribution sites early, pulling people away from jobs and family, and water must be used carefully so it doesnt run out. Waiting in line has consequences  idling uses gas drivers have to pay to replenish.

Lead exposure can slow cognitive development, especially in young children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and federal officials say no amount of lead in drinking water is considered safe for their consumption. In recent months, activists have pushed for more aggressive action, and the state has ramped up its response.

Some wonder whether the problem would have been handled more quickly if Benton Harbors residents looked more like those in neighboring St. Joseph, who are predominantly white.

Sometimes you just have to call out racism, and thats what it feels like, said Ambie Bell, distributing water to residents.

There are millions of aging underground lead lines connecting buildings to water mains nationwide, mostly in the Midwest but also across other states like New Jersey and Massachusetts. The old pipes can become an urgent public health risk. Newark, New Jersey, saw prolonged lead water problems that led to rapid replacement of thousands of lead pipes. High test results in Clarksburg, West Virginia, raised alarm bells earlier this year. The word Flint is now synonymous with lead water problems.

Replacing lead service lines is costly, stressing tight local budgets. The infrastructure and reconciliation bills pending in Congress include billions to address lead line replacement that activists say could make a significant difference.

Flint's lead water problem started when it switched its water source to the Flint River without proper treatment, corroding lead pipes. But Benton Harbors water source, Lake Michigan, is considered safe and many other places get water there.

Our problem is clearly our own infrastructure, City Manager Ellis Mitchell said.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency identified a range of violations at Benton Harbors water facility  problems so bad that the city needs to consider forfeiting ownership, the EPA said.

The people of Benton Harbor have suffered for too long, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

Water systems occasionally produce high test results, but in Benton Harbor, authorities havent been able to bring them down. The long-term fix involves replacing some 2,400 pipes that may contain lead, state officials said.

After Flints water crisis, Michigan tightened requirements for lead in drinking water in 2018, boasting it had passed the nations most protective law, and mandated that old lead service lines be replaced.

Environmental groups and local activists filed a petition over Benton Harbor in September with the EPA, urging aggressive action.

Michigan officials say they have taken the problem seriously.

In 2019, local officials offered Benton Harbor residents filters designed to reduce the amount of lead in drinking water. Eric Oswald, director of the states drinking water division, told a hearing on the issue last month that officials are studying the filters to make sure they work properly. They have also worked on corrosion control to reduce the lead entering water from pipes. While lead sampling results overall are still too high, the proportion of high readings has decreased, officials said.

EPA inspectors, however, knocked the city for failing to notify water customers in their water bills about the problem.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and professor at Michigan State University who raised early alarms about Flint, gets questions from parents about whether some developmental problem could be linked to lead in water. Its extremely difficult, however, to draw a link between an individuals health problem and lead in the water.

Thats why lead poising has evaded diagnosis, treatment and prevention for so long, she said, adding that exposure to lead isnt safe for children and its too soon to predict what the long-term impact may be. It can depend on factors like poverty, too, making it especially important to address the issue in citys like Benton Harbor, she said.

Sylvester Bownes, who wears a prosthetic on his right leg, said he has consumed bottled water for years because he doesnt trust Benton Harbors water.

Pushing a cart filled with cases of bottled water a half-mile to his home, he said a water main rupture had temporarily shut off the public water supply, so with no running water, he not only needed bottled water for drinking, but for basic needs like filling his toilets.

Water is everything, Bownes said. Its like gold.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/environment
Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements are the Biden administrations boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months  or face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.

Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people working in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing  they will need to be vaccinated.

Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds.

The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors.

Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic.

While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good, he said Thursday in a statement.

Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now.

Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases.

OSHA said companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The agency will face enforcement challenges. Even counting help from states, OSHA has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. An administration official said the agency will respond to whistleblower complaints and make limited spot checks.

The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others.

OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months.

The rules set up potential legal battles along partisan lines between states and the federal government. Several states and Republican governors threatened to sue, contending that the administration lacks the power to make such sweeping mandates under emergency authority.

OSHA's parent agency, the Labor Department, says it is on sound legal footing. The department's top legal official, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that bar employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or face masks.

Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail.

The rules will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees testing positive must be removed from the workplace.

Companies won't be required to provide or pay for tests for unvaccinated workers, but they must give paid time off for employees to get the shots and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. Requirements for masks and paid time off for shots take effect Dec. 5.

Employers covered by the requirements must verify their workers vaccination status by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards, records from doctors or pharmacies, or even an employee's own signed declaration.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a separate rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates  96% or higher  without widespread resignations.

A previously announced requirement for federal contractors to make sure workers are vaccinated was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but the administration delayed that measure until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers. Already, more than a dozen states have sued to block the mandate on contractors.

For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted businesses that announced their own vaccine requirements and urged others to follow their lead.

Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70% of adults fully vaccinated.

Workplace vaccine mandates have become more common recently, with hospitals, state and local governments and some major corporations requiring COVID-19 shots for employees. The mandates have led to overwhelming compliance  in some cases 99% of workers  although a small but vocal number have faced dismissal, filed lawsuits or sought exemptions.

United Airlines required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 are seeking exemptions.

In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. On Thursday, the company said more than 96% of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement.

Walmart, the nations largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and managers who travel within the United States to be vaccinated by Oct. 4. The retailer stopped short of requiring shots for front-line workers, however.

However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in an already-tight labor market.

Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups worried that the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions.

The National Retail Federation suggested the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an emergency and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season, said David French, a senior vice president for the trade group.

The number of new infections in the U.S. is still falling from a summer surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant, but the rate of decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6% from two weeks ago, at more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day.

Cole Stevenson, a 34-year-old autoworker at the Ford Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, said he remains uncomfortable with a vaccine that was developed just a year ago.

He intends to get weekly COVID-19 tests and says he wont reconsider getting the vaccine even if the tests are a financial or logistical burden.

Its getting pretty disgusting how much the government thinks they can be involved in peoples lives, he said. If the whole thing is sort of cooling down and cases are lowering, then buzz off  dont force it on people.

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Associated Press writers Paul Wiseman and Hope Yen in Washington, Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit, Stacey Plaisance-Jenkins in Picayune, Mississippi, and Matt OBrien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed.
CROMWELL  Tuesdays municipal election saw an impressive voter turnout, resulting in Republicans maintaining the mayoral seat, and, therefore, a town council majority, with Democrats gaining an additional spot on the legislative panel.

According to the final report from the head moderator, who tallies votes and verifies results, Republican Allan Spotts is the towns new mayor, after garnering 2,010 votes. Challengers Democrat Aigne Goldsby received 1,857, and Independent Jamin DeProto got 361.

Spotts reflected on his victory Wednesday. Im feeling great, he said. I look forward to continuing to serve residents to the best of my ability.

Hes like to see the other two candidates remain active, and open to collaboration. I hope we can put the Rs and Ds on the shelf and work together for the town, Spotts said.

Three Republicans and three Democrats were elected to the town council. Incumbent Democrats Al Waters and James Demetriades retained their seats, after receiving 2,199 and 2,250 votes, respectively. They were joined by fellow Democrat Paula Luna, who enjoyed 1,909 votes.

Luna expressed her excitement to have earned a spot. I am humbled and honored to be chosen to serve the town of Cromwell and its residents, she said.

All three Republican incumbents retained their seats. Deputy Mayor Jennifer Donohue received 2,246 votes. Stephen Fortenbach, also the Republican Town Committee chairman, took in 2,007 votes; and Jack Henehan, 1,988.

I feel fantastic, Fortenbach said Wednesday. We ran a good, strong race with good candidates.

He did express disappointment at the fact that the council, previously split between four Republicans and two Democrats, is now an even three and three. The other GOP candidate, Lou Menedez, received 1,800 votes, missing out on a council spot by just over 100 votes.

Spotts, as mayor, has the power to break any council votes that end in a tie. Other than being a voting member of the council, the responsibilities of mayor include communicating with other town and state government entities, and performing miscellaneous duties requested by the council on behalf of the town.

The mayor is not just the face of Cromwell, Spotts said. Theres a lot of work to do behind the scenes.

In particular, he said, Spotts is eager to be available for residents to air their views.

A big part is being accessible to them, so they can go through me, and I can direct their concerns to the best person or committee, Spotts said.

Fortenbach said that, across the board, newly elected candidates are ready to get started. As a group, I think everyone is ready to get going to work for the people of Cromwell, he said.

Other races

The rest of election day results favored Republicans. John Ireland and Brian Stermer beat out the two Democrat candidates for the Board of Finance. Conservatives Mark Zampino and John Keithan took both spots on the Zoning Board of Appeals.

It was the same for the Board of Education race, where all four Republicans won. Incumbent Celina Kelleher received 2,306 votes. Matthew S. Zabroski received 2,170, Alan R. Schumann Jr., 2,093; and Kelly Franklin, 2,320.

Kelly Cloutier was the lone Democrat elected to the board with 2,060 votes.

Winning candidates reflected Wednesday on their successful campaigns.

It was a great experience hearing everyone in towns opinions on how to make Cromwell better, Zabroski said.

I want to thank my friends and family for all of their support, Franklin said. Im excited to serve on the board of education.

Im excited to see what new steps well take with the board of ed, Cloutier said.

The swearing-in ceremony for newly elected officials will take place Monday at 5 p.m. in Town Hall, located at 41 West St. The public may attend.
Contributed photo / Bridgeport Hospital

BRIDGEPORT  Bridgeport Hospitals Norma Pfriem Breast Center raised more than $120,000 through its seventh annual Pink Pledge fundraiser. The event takes place throughout October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

A variety of events and activities took place as part of the campaign, including a walk at Seaside Park in Bridgeport and a concert on the Fairfield Green, all in support of the patients and programs of the breast center.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Federal Aviation Administration says it has referred 37 cases involving unruly airline passengers to the FBI for possible criminal prosecution since the number of disruptions on flights began to spike in January.

FAA and Justice Department officials said Thursday that in the last three months they developed a process for the FAA to regularly send cases to the FBI, which forwards those worthy of prosecution to field offices for investigation.

They did not indicate how many of the 37 referrals have led to charges.

The FAA said the cases referred to the FBI are among 227 this year in which it has begun enforcement action that could lead to civil penalties against passengers.

Airlines and their unions have pressed the FAA to push more aggressively for criminal prosecution in severe cases of air rage.

The issue of passenger violence gained new attention last week when a 20-year-old California man was charged with punching an American Airlines flight attendant in the face, sending her to a hospital for treatment. He faces two federal charges.

Airlines have reported more than 5,000 incidents involving unruly passengers this year, with more than 3,600 of those involving people who refused to wear face masks as required by federal regulation.

The FAA said it has launched 950 investigations into passenger behavior on flights this year. That is the highest total since the agency started keeping track in 1995. In the five years from 2016 through 2020, the agency averaged 136 investigations a year.

The Association of Flight Attendants is pushing for a new no-fly list for people who assault crew members or other passengers. Someone banned on one airline could potentially be banned on all.
ATLANTA (AP)  Food banks across the country are pursuing major expansion projects driven in part by their experiences during the pandemic, when they faced an explosion of need.

So many people who had never had to ask for help found themselves in a position of needing it and not knowing where to go, said Ginette Bott, president and CEO of the Utah Food Bank. It was like somebody flipped a switch.

Even though demand for fresh and packaged provisions has dropped from pandemic peaks, the need remains far above pre-pandemic levels.

Feeding South Florida is planning a large new plant to increase its produce supply. Two North Carolina food banks flush with cash from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott are set to build new structures that will double their capacity to store food. The Utah Food Bank is adding space in Salt Lake City and is also set to erect new food warehouses elsewhere in the state.

And in Georgia, the Atlanta Community Food Bank moved into a 345,000-square-foot (32,000-square-meter) warehouse billed as the worlds largest food bank. The move preceded COVID-19, but officials say it was a boon during the pandemic.

We have never, ever, including during the pandemic, been able to touch everyone who needs (help), said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, a national network of most food banks in the U.S. But what weve come to understand better than we ever have before is what were capable of and how do we think through the long game.

In Utah, one of two new warehouses will be near a Native American reservation that was a challenge to serve during the pandemic, said Bott. The second site will offer free dinners to kids, a population that suffered acutely from food insecurity when schools that provided meals went virtual.

Overall, the food bank will more than double its storage capacity after it incurred additional costs for extra space needed during the pandemic, Bott said. She estimated the new projects would cost roughly $40 million.

As part of its own expansion, the Food Bank of the Albemarle in northeast North Carolina is making sure it has enough generators in case a hurricane or tornado knocks out power, said Executive Director Liz Reasoner.

Meanwhile, Feeding South Florida is planning to build a 50,000- to 80,000-square-foot (4,600 to 7,400-square-meter) plant to freeze and package produce. The goal is to take in more crops during the growing season and then make them available year-round, said CEO Paco Velez.

Theres still a lot of produce that goes to waste, he said.

The projects come amid persistent food insecurity in the U.S. despite the country's slow crawl back from the economic fallout of the pandemic. Feeding America's food banks provided a record 6.6 billion meals between July 2020 and June 2021, up from 5.2 billion the year before, the organization said.

On a recent weekday, a dozen cars lined up well before opening time at the Toco Hills Community Alliance, a food pantry in a well-off suburb northeast of Atlanta. Volunteers in masks waited under a white tent to load canned fruit and vegetables, fresh produce and meat and other groceries into trunks as drivers came through one at a time.

Helen Moody, a 60-year-old disabled U.S. Army veteran, has relied on the pantry for groceries since 2017. Moody said she and her husband live off $2,000 a month and do not qualify for federal food assistance.

We're on a real tight budget, she said. When we come over here, then we're able to have just a little bit for other things, just a little leeway because other than that you have no breathing space.

The community alliance buys some of its food from the Atlanta Community Food Bank at deeply discounted prices. The food bank's expansion has given it access to a wider variety of food products, said Lisa Heilig, the alliance's executive director. A few months ago, she was able to offer guava, a fruit familiar to some of the Hispanic immigrants who use the pantry.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank's new facility near Atlanta's international airport has a food storage area equal to roughly five and a half football fields. A tour of the facility last month provided a glimpse of the advantages a larger site provides.

Forklifts carrying large pallets of food moved freely around the expansive floor, their drivers beeping gently to warn passersby. Nearly three dozen docking doors allowed trucks to deliver and pick up food with no wait times. In a separate area, volunteers in masks checked the expiration dates of cereal boxes, canned soup and other groceries.

Food banks rely heavily on volunteers, but many could not safely accommodate them during the pandemic and had to find alternate sources of help.

The new location has allowed the food bank to distribute tens of millions of additional pounds of food.

Theres just a large number of our neighbors, who by virtue of rising housing costs, rising health care costs and other pressures that they face, need help meeting all their basic needs," said Kyle Waide, president of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. And we think that pressure is going to be here indefinitely even without the pandemic.

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Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel's parliament passed a national budget for the first time in three years early on Thursday, avoiding a November deadline that would have brought down the new government and triggered another election.

The marathon overnight voting on budget bills in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, was a major hurdle for the new government headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, whose fractious coalition holds a narrow majority.

Failure to pass the budget by Nov. 14 would have brought down the government that was sworn into office in June and triggered a fifth election in barely three years, giving former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to return to power.

Bennett celebrated on Twitter, writing that after years of chaos -- we formed a government, we overcame the delta variant, and now, thank God, we passed a budget for Israel.

The Knesset began voting on a series of budget bills, including hundreds of amendments, late on Wednesday. The assembly opened with Bennett and Netanyahu delivering speeches attacking one another.

Netanyahu's allies repeatedly heckled and interrupted Bennett. Unruly scenes continued. At one point, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's Likud party was escorted out after calling the parliament speaker a floor rag," and an ultra-Orthodox lawmaker was removed after meowing like a cat.

As the opposition sought to drag the vote out into the early hours of the morning, coalition whip Idit Silman distributed candy to keep lawmakers alert.

Early Thursday morning, the Knesset voted 61-59 in favor of a 2021 budget bill, the first approved by parliament since 2018. Later, parliament approved a bundle of new laws, including a congestion tax for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, eased import regulations and approved a higher retirement age for women. It also backed reforms on kosher certification that have outraged ultra-Orthodox lawmakers.

A vote on a 2022 budget was scheduled to take place later on Thursday.

On the opposite side of the aisle, Israel Katz, Israels former finance minister under Netanyahu, blasted the terrible budget of cutbacks and taxes" in an Army Radio interview.

The ruling coalition headed by Bennett includes eight parties from across the political spectrum and has a razor-thin margin of 61 seats in the 120-member assembly.

Eitan Ginzburg, a coalition lawmaker, told Army Radio that by passing the 2021 budget, we avoided fifth elections, stabilized the political system and the economy as well.

Israel entered a prolonged political crisis after elections in April 2019, when a right-wing party that had been allied with Netanyahu refused to sit in a government with him. The next two years saw three successive deadlocked elections. A short-lived national unity government formed to combat the coronavirus pandemic collapsed last year after failing to pass a budget, triggering a fourth election.

After elections last March, an array of parties from across the political spectrum, many led by former allies-turned-rivals of Netanyahu, succeeded in forming a ruling coalition and ended his record 12 years in power.

The alliance includes ultranationalists, centrists and dovish left-wing parties, and even a small Islamist party that made history by becoming the first Arab party to sit in an Israeli government. But the coalition only holds 61 seats, and agrees on little beyond their opposition to Netanyahu and desire to avoid another round of elections.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes in three cases while serving as prime minister. Israeli law did not require him to resign from office while under indictment, and he refused to step down. He used his platform as prime minister to level scathing attacks on his political opponents, the media and law enforcement.

After the new government was sworn in, Netanyahu vowed in June to topple this dangerous government and return to lead the country." Now that the budget has passed, that task is more difficult. For now, he remains in control of his own party and leader of the opposition.

Katz, a prominent member of Netanyahu's party, said Thursday that I am convinced that when Netanyahu resigns on his own accord... I will be elected head of the Likud party, but said he was focusing on ousting Bennett from office, not Netanyahu.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)  The number of bodies recovered from a collapsed high-rise apartment building in Nigerias most populous city has risen to 36, an emergency official told The Associated Press Thursday.

Ibrahim Farinloye of Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency said 15 bodies more bodies have been recovered from the site in Lagos since Wednesday afternoon, including two earlier reported by AP.

As the rescue effort entered day four Thursday, hopes started to grow thin for dozens of families and residents who lined up at the entrance of the premises and begged to join in the rescue effort, ignoring warnings by gun-wielding soldiers that they should stay away from the scene.

They couldnt allow me to check whether my son is alive or dead, said Abel Godwin, who traveled 722 kilometers (448 miles) from the nations capital, Abuja, to check the hospital where victims are being treated in search of his 18-year-old son who had been employed at the site.

No survivors have been rescued from the pile of debris since Tuesday, with nine of those brought out alive earlier in stable condition.

The 21-story luxury apartment building that was being built toppled Monday while construction workers were on the site, some of whom were artisans who started work that day.

Its unknown how many people could still be trapped inside the rubble, but one construction worker at the scene had estimated that 100 people were working there when it collapsed, meaning that 55 people could still be missing.

Segun Akande of the Nigerian Red Cross has told The AP that though rescue efforts continue, the chances are very slim; very, very slim," that survivors remain.

When the building collapsed, it took about 3 hours for officials to launch the rescue effort. That angered families and residents who further complained that the search for survivors is not fast enough, despite the use of four excavators, life-detecting tools, water and oxygen. Rescue workers are fatigued.

The governor of Lagos has given an independent panel 30 days to unravel the cause of the accident and whether the project developers had fully complied with building laws. The six-member panel is also to examine whether there were any lapses by state regulators in overseeing the project.

We feel a lot of concerns of family members. People are indeed upset," Governor Sanwo-Olu told those present at the site on Wednesday. I can assure you we are doing everything, he said, promising that criminal charges will be filed against those indicted in the disaster.

Building collapses in Nigeria are frequent, including in Lagos which recorded four such accidents last year, resulting in five casualties including three children. Authorities continued to face immense pressure over the latest incident amid accusations that they failed to heed previous warnings and adopt past recommendations.

I think there is only one material testing laboratory in Lagos today. Recommendations were made over 10 years ago, lets have other certified laboratory testing places, said David Majekodunmi, chairman of the Lagos chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Architects.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Energy ministers from around the world will gather in Pittsburgh next year, the U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday, as nations meet to collaborate on ways to advance clean energy and fight climate change.

The 31 nations involved in the three-day Clean Energy Ministerial and the ministerial for Mission Innovation next Sept. 21-23 in Pittsburgh emit the lions share of the worlds greenhouse gases.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Lawyers for Louisiana and the man whose seven nursing homes were evacuated to a warehouse during Hurricane Ida said Wednesday that it will be at least a year before trial can start on an appeal of the nursing homes license revocations.

More than 840 nursing home residents were evacuated to the property also owned by Bob Dean Jr. Days after Ida's Aug. 29 landfall, state inspectors said the warehouse was filthy and unsafe. The Health Department moved patients across the state. On Sept. 7, it revoked the nursing home licenses.

A Louisiana Department of Health attorney told a state administrative law judge Wednesday that he expects to take 30 to 40 sworn statements, including Dean's, during the pretrial process called discovery.

To do that and get documents exchanged  I'm kind of looking at a year to 18 months, Juston Jay OBrien told Administrative Law Judge Karla Coreil during a scheduling teleconference.

I think a year is probably realistic. ... I hate to admit it, but I think that's probably right, responded Dean's lawyer, John McLindon.

He and department attorneys disagreed on scheduling Dean's appeal of a related department decision to cancel the nursing homes' provider agreements for Medicaid, which most nursing homes rely on to pay for patient care.

Since that decision was based on the revocation, its appeal should wait until the license decision is final, McLindon said.

A hearing on the Medicaid provider contracts could be held immediately, department attorney Sarah Aycock said. She and another department attorney said state law doesn't require a final decision on licensing before a hearing about the provider contracts.

Coreil said she and two other judges from the Division of Administrative Law will consider the license revocation, while she will hear the Medicaid cancellation on her own.

What if the three-judge panel holds revocation was wrong? ... It seems like we've got to do that first, then go to the provider issue, McLindon said.

"That was my impression as well," Coreil said.

McLindon and Aycock agreed to discuss the matter out of court and report back to her.

Lawyers for both sides agreed to set up a system to shield the privacy of any individual patients who might be described in court or in documents. One way, the judge suggested, might be to assign hyphenated numbers, with the first number designating a nursing home and the second its individual residents.

As of Thursday, 42 of the 843 residents who were evacuated to the warehouse have died, but the number of deaths linked by coroners to the hurricane has remained at five, Health Department spokeswoman Mindy Faciane said in an email.
MADISON  Incumbent First Selectman Peggy Lyons beat challenger Republican Bruce Wilson by 720 votes, with 55.32 percent of the vote, to Wilsons 44.68 percent, according the secretary of states office.

I am so grateful that the voters of Madison have given me the opportunity to lead our beautiful town for another two years, Lyons said via text.

We ran a campaign focused on a positive message of proven leadership, accomplishments, and progress for our town and I am grateful that resonated with voters, she said.

I am also excited to be working with all the candidates who won their positions, Lyons said. We are here to serve our community and I look forward to all of us coming together to move our town forward with a vision for our future.

Wilson, who will continue to serve on the Board Of Selectmen, said he had no regrets about his campaign.

Quite honestly I feel this was the best run campaign weve run for as long as Ive been involved, he said.

We identified the people we thought we needed to get out to vote, Wilson said. We came out with a consistent message. We sought to keep the campaign talking about the facts and the important issues facing the town.

In the end we did increase the turnout from 2019, but we didnt do it enough. I got more votes than Tom got in 2019, Wilson added, noting that he received more votes than then outgoing Republican incumbent First Selectman Tom Banisch in that election.

This campaign did not devolve to name calling, according to Wilson.

We pointed out some uncomfortable factsbut they were all directly related to a documented statement, a documented claim - so we just stuck to that.

Wilson said he is honored to run for the top spot and is taking his loss in stride.

You have to accept from day one that theres going to be a winner and a loser - you have to be ready for that, he said.

Wilson said hes also ready to get back to business of working in town government and we have a long history and then of separating into our own camps, campaigning hard and then getting back together and getting back to business.

Its always a special honor to have the faith and support of neighbors and members of the community, he said. Its really a special experience  win or lose  winning is better than losing  but its special, nonetheless.

It has always been about service to the community for me and I look forward to serving the community in whatever way I can, he said.

Winners for Madisons Board of Selectmen include Democrats Scott Murphy with 3,612 votes, Al Goldberg, 3,470; Republicans Noreen Kokoruda, 3,301 and Wilson.

Winners for the Board of Finance include: Democrat Cindy Breckheimer, 3,480; Katie Stein, 3,695; and Republican Jean Fitzgerald, 3,352.

Winners of the .Madison Board of Education include: Democrats Maureen Hackett Lewis, 3,545; Steven Pynn, 3519; Emily Rosenthal, 3,619; and Republicans Jennifer Gordon, 3,228, Mary Ann Connelly, 3,284.

In Guilford, Democrat First Selectman Matt Hoey ran unopposed. Democrats Sandra Ruoff, 6,104 and Louis Federici, 5,954 won the two open seats.

In Clinton, for Town Council, Democrats Carrie Allen, 1,356; Christopher Michael Passante, 1,372; and Republican Tom Hollinger, 1,456 won the three spots.

On the Clinton Board of Education, winners include Democrats Erica S Gelven, 1,492 and Jack Scherban, 1,592; Republicans Peter Nye, 1,608 and Mike Hornyak, 1,400.

In Old Saybrook, where the first selectman and Board of Selectmen were in uncontested races, Republican First Selectman Carl Fortuna, won 100 percent of the vote with 2,555; Selectmen Republican Scott M. Giegerich, 1,845, 54.59 percent and Democrat Matthew J. Pugliese won 45 percent of the vote with 1,535 votes.

The Police Commission, which had four seats open for the full term, Democrats picked up all four seats: Renee Root Shippee, 1,869; Jill Notar-Francesco, 1,755; Jessica Calle and Alfred Chub Wilcox, 1,857. For the seat with a two year term, Democrat Carol Manning won with 1,739.

Old Saybrooks Board of Education winners include: Democrats Eileen Baker, 1,950; Karen Brodeur, 2,052; Republicans Steven Beeler, 2,003; Tara Barros, 2,003; and Trevor Nichols, 2,012.

According to officials results in Westbrook, Republican John L. Hall, II, a selectman, defeated Democrat Chet Bialicki, 1,401 to 917. Former First Selectman Noel Bishop did not seek reelection. Republican Joseph Campbell defeated Democrat Vince Gentile, 1,400 to 906.

For Westbrook Board of Education voters could choose two candidates. The winners are Republicans Donald Perreault, 1,319 and Andrew Miesse, 1,167.

Editors note: This story has been updated. Jude H. Friedman, Democrat, was incorrectly listed as winning a seat on Madisons Board of Finance; he did not win the seat.
Venice, FL (34285)

Today

Mostly cloudy early then periods of showers this afternoon. High around 80F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Some clouds. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 68F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
The Marine Corps is poised to radically change how and who it recruits after the commandant released his new Talent Management Plan on Wednesday.

According to the plan, the service must become an older, more agile and talent-driven force with more emphasis on retaining people instead of recruiting replacements.

Gen. David Berger, the Corps' top leader, said that the manpower system the branch has used for the last 35 years isn't working anymore.

"It was built on a set of conditions that were existing in the '80s and '70s. They don't exist today," he told reporters Tuesday.

The report announcing the new plan noted that the service currently holds onto a meager 25% of Marines after their first tour. A staggering 75%, or about 36,000 Marines per year, do not reenlist, and the service must recruit replacements.

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"We can't replace talent like that going forward," Berger said.

He wants to pivot to recruiting more mature and experienced people who bring a greater ability to handle a variety of skills and tasks.

"I think the machine gunner who's also a ... medic also has to be able to talk to MQ-9 UAVs and bring in orders, and understand the satellite connection is required to do that," Berger said.

The planned changes to recruiting, and the commandant's examples of multitasking Marines, come directly from the other major strategy shift for the branch -- Force Design 2030.

It calls for a redesigned infantry battalion that would be more flexible and capable of conducting operations such as island-hopping or running advanced base operations with little or no support.

"Our assumption is they're going to have to be more mature than the four-year sergeant that we have today," Berger said.

Bringing that maturity and talent into the Corps, however, will mean putting more focus on retention and targeting recruitment at different groups -- and allowing people to enter the service in new ways.

"We should have an open door for exceptionally talented Americans who wish to join the Marine Corps, allowing them to laterally enter at a rank appropriate to their education, experience, and ability," according to the plan.

Although Berger admitted he's not sure yet how that will work, he did reference the ways the military recruits lawyers and doctors as a possible starting point.

Meanwhile, to help retain talent, the plan suggests making changes to improve Marines' career flexibility and quality of life.

"We have to treat people like human beings instead of inventory," Berger said.

Some of the suggested changes include giving Marines more visibility into assignments available to them, beefing up parental leave, digitizing the reenlistment process, and putting forward programs that encourage staying in the service with more career incentives.

Specifically, Berger noted that if a Marine's choice is between a family or a military career, "we have to pull out all the stops to try to find ways where we can keep them."

The commandant pushed back on the notion that this effort would diminish the lethality of the military's famously rough and tough branch.

"The physical, the toughness ... will be at least as demanding as it is today or has been in the past. I think it'll be actually more so," Berger said.

Instead, he stressed that the changes are necessary for the Marines to be competitive with adversaries like China.

"You better have smarter, more capable leaders," Berger said. "It's not going to be numbers, and I'm not counting on a technological edge. It's gonna be the people."

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: The Marine Corps Is Experimenting with a Concept that Could Reshape the Infantry
The White House this week rolled out a strategy to prevent military and veteran suicides with a focus on gun safety. But neither the Pentagon nor the Department of Veterans Affairs had provided much detail as of Wednesday on what specific actions they will be taking.

Under the White House plan unveiled Tuesday, several agencies, including the Defense Department and VA, are being tasked with crafting a "plan for addressing lethal means safety awareness, education, training and program evaluation."

"In the coming months, agencies will collaborate to raise awareness among service members, veterans, and their families; educate and train health care providers and crisis responders; and evaluate the effectiveness of existing and new programs that may reduce access to lethal means," the White House said in a fact sheet on the strategy. "This will include designing and launching a campaign to increase the safe storage of firearms and medications, and the use of safety planning interventions by providers."

In addition to the Pentagon and VA, the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice and Transportation's office of emergency medical services will help create the plan, according to the White House.

Asked for comment on what specifically the Pentagon will do as part of the new strategy, a department spokesperson deferred to the White House since "the strategy is part of a cross-sector, interagency effort."

The VA, meanwhile, said the White House's new road map "aligns well" with its existing suicide prevention efforts.

"In the coming weeks, the administration will be moving forward with a series of executive actions designed to advance the priority goals," the VA added in a statement to Military.com, without elaborating on what the executive actions will be.

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The White House strategy, officially called "Reducing Military and Veteran Suicide: Advancing a Comprehensive, Cross-Sector, Evidence-Informed Approach," outlines five priority areas for the administration, including improving crisis care, increasing access to mental health care, minimizing risk factors and boosting research into prevention programs.

But it is the gun safety element -- described as an "unprecedented focus" by the White House -- that is garnering the most attention and could prove to be the most controversial, since gun advocates routinely link discussion of firearms dangers to Second Amendment rights.

In a message accompanying the plan, President Joe Biden called for a "public health strategy that unites us around a common mission to reduce military and veteran suicide."

"We increasingly know what works, whether it's ensuring that firearms are stored safely, expanding access to suicide hotlines and mental health providers, or sending caring letters to people after a crisis," he wrote.

In 2019, nearly 24,000 suicide deaths, or about 70% of total suicides in the United States, used a firearm, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics.

Meanwhile, suicides among service members and veterans continue at troubling rates. In 2020, 580 service members died by suicide, compared with 504 the previous year, according to a Pentagon report released last month. Between 64% and 80% of suicides were carried out by firearms.

In September, the VA said 6,261 veterans died by suicide in 2019, down by 399 from 2018. But the suicide rate for veterans -- 31.6 per 100,000 -- still far outpaced the rate for non-veterans -- 16.8 recorded per 100,000. Firearms were used in about 70% of veteran suicides in 2019.

"Suicide crises are often brief, so strategies that create 'time and space' between a person in crisis and their access to a firearm are lifesaving," the White House said Tuesday.

The VA has already ramped up education efforts on firearm safety and gun storage in recent months, including launching a public health campaign during Suicide Prevention Month in September that included public service announcements.

"We are gearing our messaging and campaign towards safety. Safety, in this context, is defined as time and space between person, firearm and ammunition," Matthew Miller, executive director of the VA's suicide prevention program, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee in September. "Ten to 20 minutes can be life-saving."

According to the White House road map released Tuesday, the "lethal means safety" campaign that the DoD, VA and other agencies are being tasked with creating will involve public service announcements; ads on social media and search engines; toolkits developed with industry partners, as appropriate, to amplify calls to action; multi-state maps of where people can safely store firearms outside the home; and lethal means safety training opportunities for counselors, crisis responders, health care professionals, family members and others.

The administration also plans to "significantly increase" lethal means safety training for VA Community Care Network providers and expand the VA's Safety Planning in the Emergency Department (SPED) program, which aims to create safety plans for at-risk veterans, into community health care systems.

Despite the lack of details from agencies on what new things they will do after the White House's rollout, leading congressional Democrats hailed the Biden administration's efforts to combat military and veteran suicides.

"Today's announcement makes it clear that President Biden is committed to backing up his priorities with action, and I look forward to working with the administration to pass many of these proposals in our upcoming mental health legislative package," House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., said in a statement. "As long as even one veteran dies by suicide each day, our work will not be finished."

If you are a service member or veteran who needs help, it is available 24/7 at the Veterans and Military Crisis Line, 800-273-8255 (press 1), by texting 838255, or through the online chat function at www.veteranscrisisline.net.

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

Related: Suicides Among US Troops Rose 15% in 2020, With Firearms Closely Tied to Deaths
The Defense Department began shipping pediatric doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to military health facilities Tuesday, shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the shots for children ages 5 to 11.

Defense Health Agency spokesman Peter Graves said Thursday that multiple sites in 15 states have received the vaccine and the agency anticipates "continued deliveries throughout the rest of the week."

The DoD on Wednesday authorized military treatment facilities and other defense immunization sites to begin offering the vaccine. The move followed an emergency use authorization issued by the Food and Drug Administration on Oct. 29 and a recommendation Tuesday from the CDC that children be vaccinated against the illness.

Millions of doses have been packaged and shipped across the country already, with the children's vaccination program expected to be completely up and running next week, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

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The vaccine for young children is the same formulation given to those ages 12 and up but one-third of the dosage; it is packaged separately from shots for teens and adults.

"This is an exciting and long-awaited moment for parents and for our vaccination program," Fauci said Wednesday during a press call with reporters.

The vaccines will be available at military hospitals and clinics for Tricare beneficiaries, as well as through network pharmacies and local public health initiatives. Walgreens -- a Tricare network pharmacy -- announced it will start appointments beginning Saturday in certain locations across the country; scheduling has already begun.

Tricare beneficiaries overseas will have a slightly longer wait for the pediatric vaccine. According to Graves, the Defense Logistics Agency has ordered the vaccine for military families overseas and will ship it when received.

There are roughly 1.2 million children of active-duty service members who are ages 18 and under.

According to CDC data, 1.9 million American children ages 5 to 11 have contracted the disease and more than 8,000 have been hospitalized. There have been 2,000 cases of COVID-related multisystem inflammatory disease -- a life-threatening condition that affects multiple organs and bodily functions -- among those children and at least 94 deaths.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday said that the expansion of vaccine eligibility marks a turning point in the fight against COVID-19. Since February 2020, 46.2 million Americans have contracted the illness and 750,424 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

"It will allow parents to end months of anxious worrying about their kids, and reduce the extent to which children spread the virus to others," Biden said.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that, although the risk of severe complications from COVID-19 is low in children, it still remains "too high and too devastating for our children," and she encouraged parents to immunize their kids.

She added that the vaccine has been proven safe in clinical trials, carries few side effects and is nearly 91% effective in preventing COVID-19 in children ages 5 to 11.

"The safety of our children is of utmost importance to me, and I believe these vaccines will help us to better protect our children from COVID-19," Walensky said.

As of Wednesday, 80% -- four out of five -- of all adult Americans had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, Biden said.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

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Lauren Sanford knew her family's permanent change of station move from a Navy base in Japan to Virginia over the summer would likely be harder due to the pandemic.

Sanford and her husband, a Navy surgeon, had been through overseas PCS moves before. With the coronavirus still causing havoc, they estimated the two months they had waited in the past to finally receive their household goods shipments after moving into a new home would likely stretch into three months in Virginia.

But she wasn't expecting her family, including their 5-year-old and 3-year-old children, would be forced to live four months without any of the trappings of home due to shipping delays.

"We were without our belongings for an extra four weeks beyond what we anticipated," Sanford said. "We're being strung along, and we're being told, 'You're so close, you're so close to receiving your household goods,' when in reality we aren't close and we are being inconvenienced even longer."

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The pandemic delays and worker shortages that have ratcheted up the misery of military family moves, already an arduous process before the chaos of the past two years, likely won't be going away anytime soon, despite a new contract worth up to $20 billion awarded Thursday by U.S. Transportation Command to HomeSafe Alliance LLC of Houston, Texas, aimed at improving the troubled system.

Families could again see delays for moving out and days or weeks longer without their belongings when they arrive at new homes during next summer's peak moving season as the U.S. moving industry girds for continued labor shortages.

"This is not going to improve for 2022," said Katie McMichael, director of the Moving and Storage Conference at American Trucking Associations, which represents the industry. "We need to start thinking of solutions now for how we make 2022 go better, with the understanding that we're still going to have these capacity constraints."

Megan Harless, a military spouse and PCS advocate, said the pandemic has created a "perfect storm" of problems for family household moves.

"It feels like a lot of people are just stuck and there isn't a whole lot you can do, because you can't just make packers appear and make a driver with a truck appear," said Harless, who runs a website with PCS advice. "You can't just snap your fingers and have the port clear and operations moving steadily again."

Some families were forced into a Plan B, where they put belongings into storage themselves until they could be picked up and shipped later, she said.

"A lot of people aren't expecting until late 2022 or early 2023 for these issues to kind of smooth out in some way," Harless said.

The volume of PCS moves began to fully rebound in the summer of 2021, the second peak military moving season during the pandemic after stop-movement orders the previous year. But the network of about 950 independent moving companies that handle household goods shipments struggled to manage the demand after being hit by labor shortages of 20% to 30%.

"Nobody anticipates getting the workforce back in time for the 2022 peak season," McMichael said.

That means the industry will not be able to move as many families per week as it has in the past, and will need to discuss shifting that demand with the military, she said. About 325,000 troops and their families PCS annually.

The persistence of the pandemic has created a deeper hole for the already troubled military moving system. There was widespread dissatisfaction among service members long before the coronavirus caused a lack of workers and ballooning costs for plywood shipping containers.

An online petition drive in 2018 calling for accountability for poor-quality PCS moves quickly drew more than 100,000 signatures. Complaints included missing family heirlooms and a "child's entire room never making it to the final destination," according to four U.S. senators who sent a letter to Transportation Command that year demanding changes in how shipments are tracked and managed.

The command was already planning a major overhaul to its family moves system when the pandemic hit. The Global Household Goods Contract, or GHC, award announced Thursday is the culmination of that effort. It marks a historic shift from military to privatized management of the 950 moving companies that handle global household shipments.

The initial award value is $6.2 billion, but the contract is worth nearly $20 billion including all options and extensions. It was originally awarded to American Roll On Roll Off Carrier Group of New Jersey in April 2020, but that was successfully challenged by HomeSafe Alliance LLC and the original contract was cancelled in October of 2020.

But the landmark contract won't help with the pandemic problems looming next summer, according to Col. Joel Safranek, director of Transportation Command's Defense Personal Property Management Office.

"I'm a believer in that GHC contact, but the reality is it will not be in full swing until the 2023 moving season," he said in a recent interview.

Safranek called the existing household goods shipment system "fractured" and said having a single manager under the new GHC contract can make a "massive difference," citing the military's separate personal vehicle shipping system that is run by a private entity. The vehicle shipping system has a 99% satisfaction rate from customer surveys, while household goods shipments have a 95.5% satisfaction rate.

That means about 13,000 families who took the time to fill out the satisfaction surveys were not happy with their household shipments, he said.

"I don't think the pandemic was the sole reason for things to be bad," Safranek said. "I would argue you go back to that fractured system and our status quo. Our status quo has flaws, and those flaws are being shown right now a little bit more than maybe normal."

The contract is designed to put management in the hands of an entity that the Defense Department can hold accountable, rather than the current system that has Transportation Command trying to manage hundreds of separate companies.

But the long-awaited overhaul to private management could take nearly another two years. It has also been met with some skepticism.

"I was very cautious of it. The idea of it briefs well," Harless said. "Looking at just the general idea and construct of it, it reminds me of privatized housing. We've seen how well that's gone in the military community."

The military privatized 99% of its housing beginning in 1996. That eventually led to families testifying to Congress in 2019 about dangerous living conditions in the privately managed homes, such as mold, rats and lead paint. Two former managers at one private management company responsible for Air Force housing pleaded guilty to falsifying maintenance reports earlier this year.

"Are we going to be back in that same situation but with our household goods instead of our houses?" she said.

Safranek says no. The GHC contract could cover nine years in total if all extensions are signed, but the winning company must meet performance goals in the first three years or the contract can be rebid. That means the military won't necessarily be stuck with a manager that doesn't live up to expectations.

In the meantime, Safranek said the command is making changes ahead of 2023 aimed at improving some of the moving difficulties, such as a new Transportation Command website dashboard showing performance of individual moving companies and more user-friendly satisfaction surveys that can be done easily on cellphones.

However, service members who find they were assigned a moving company with a poor performance record may have limited options to choose another, and the survey changes aren't expected until next year.

Safranek's advice to military families planning to move next year: "Plan, plan and plan."

"Be aware of what's in the news and how it may impact you," he said.

Sanford, the military spouse who moved from Japan this year, began planning for her family's move back to the States after hearing about delays from other spouses. She was able to schedule an earlier pickup of her household goods in Japan in an attempt to compensate, which also meant her family had to live longer out of suitcases before leaving.

Despite the extra effort, the move hit delays that the military had not adequately prepared the family to handle. Their time in Virginia without belongings required spending that was a financial hardship and only eligible for reimbursement later, she said.

Sanford said she's not surprised the outlook for PCS moves next year is just as bleak, and she urged the military and moving companies to communicate that on "every website, every form of communication" to families.

"They're painting a rosy picture, but the reality is not rosy," she said.

-- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten.

Related: Pandemic Exposed Flaws in Military Family Moves, General Tells Congress
Service members who refuse the coronavirus vaccine would receive only honorable discharges from the military under Republican-sponsored legislation introduced Thursday.

The proposed amendment to the pending 2022 National Defense Authorization Act was introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said it would protect troops who object to the vaccine mandated earlier this year by the Pentagon. Marshall said it was especially important to protect thousands of service members who have applied for religious-based exemptions to the vaccine, none of which have been approved to date by military officials.

"Think about the consequences of a dishonorable discharge," Marshall said Thursday, listing off several including the loss of medical and education benefits, gun-ownership rights, and the ability to reenlist in another military branch. "This is a big issue. It is a big deal."

Marshall's bill largely matches language included in the House-passed version of the NDAA, the annual must-pass bill that authorizes Pentagon spending and sets policy priorities. The amendment Thursday was endorsed by 10 additional Republican senators -- Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ted Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Shelley Moore-Capito of West Virginia, and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi.

''Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a member of the armed forces subject to discharge on the basis of the member choosing not to receive the [coronavirus] vaccine may only receive an honorable discharge," reads the amendment to the NDAA, which the Senate has yet to vote on.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear what will happen to those service members who ultimately decline the vaccine and are not granted an exemption. Pentagon officials have said such individuals would likely face administrative actions or noncriminal punishments, such as rank reductions, long before commanders moved to court-martial them for failure to follow orders. A conviction for failing to follow orders could lead to a dishonorable discharge and up to two years in prison, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has called for "compassion and understanding" from commanders as they deal with subordinates who decline the vaccine, John Kirby, Austin's top spokesman, said this week.

Republicans speaking alongside Marshall on Thursday said they worried the Pentagon would not grant any waivers for service members who cite religious objections to the vaccine. They cited some 40 Navy SEALs seeking an accommodation based on "sincere religious objection to the vaccine," according to their attorney Mike Berry of the First Liberty Institute, a Christian conservative legal group based in Texas.

"When you join the United States military, you certainly give up some of your freedoms. We all recognize that," said Berry, a Marine and Afghanistan war veteran who now serves in the Marine Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. "You do not give up your religious freedoms when you serve our country. And yet that is exactly what [the SEALs] are dealing with today -- being forced to choose between their faith and serving their country."

Berry declined to provide specifics about his clients' objections or whether they had objected to any of the other 17 vaccinations required by the Pentagon for military troops.

He said the SEALs had differing reasons for their objections, but each had spent time reflecting and praying on the issue and determined the vaccine "violates their conscience and their sincerely held religious beliefs."

"I can tell you that these Navy SEALs each take their faith very, very seriously," Berry said. "And they don't want to be kicked out of the military."

The legislation introduction comes just days after the first of the Pentagon's military services passed its vaccine deadline. The Air Force passed its mandate deadline for active-duty airmen and Space Force guardians on Tuesday. The services said 96% of active-duty airmen and guardians had been fully vaccinated by Tuesday and only 3% of the about 330,000 active airmen and guardians had not received any shots or been approved for an exemption.

Service officials have approved 1,886 waivers of the vaccine mandate, primarily for medical reasons, the Air Force said Wednesday. It will spend the next month considering the cases of almost 5,000 troops who submitted religion-based exemption requests. Service officials said 800 airmen and guardians outright refused the vaccine without seeking an exemption.

The other services have later deadlines and have not disclosed how many service members have sought exemptions.

Defense Department civilians must be vaccinated by Nov. 22, while active-duty troops in the Marine Corps and Navy must be vaccinated by Nov. 28, and soldiers have until by Dec. 15. National Guard and reservists have later deadlines in each of the services.

More than 250,000 military troops have been diagnosed with the coronavirus since the pandemic's start last year, according to the Pentagon. To date, 73 service members have died of complications related to the virus.

Marshall's amendment does nothing to end the Pentagon's mandate for the coronavirus or other vaccines. However the senator, a physician and former Army doctor, said he opposes the mandate, though he chose to get vaccinated.

"I support the vaccine," Marshall said Thursday. "I don't support mandates. I don't support one-size-fits-all."
When it came time for Laura Sexton to choose an elective during her freshman year of high school, she ruled out taking a physical education course.

Sexton wanted something else, anything else. So she selected a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps course. Four years later, she said it turned out to be one of the best decisions she could have made.

It got better this year when her unit at Space Coast Junior/Senior High School in Cocoa, Florida, converted from the Air Force to Space Force.

"It's kind of cool that I get to be part of this happening, because we're paving the way," Sexton, a cadet lieutenant colonel, told Military.com. "We're making history."

Sexton is a corps commander for her unit, one of 10 nationally in JROTC to agree to change its affiliation from Air Force to Space Force. On Tuesday, Durango High School in Las Vegas became the first unit to make the switch official. Space Coast's changeover ceremony is scheduled for January. The other eight JROTC programs moving over to the Space Force are:

Arlington Career Center, Virginia

Del Norte High School, New Mexico

Falcon High School, Colorado

Huntsville High School, Alabama

Klein High School, Texas

Shadow Mountain High School, Arizona

The Academy for Academic Excellence, California

Warren County High School, North Carolina

Three primary criteria were used to select the units to switch, Col. Johnny R. McGonigal, director of Air Force Junior ROTC, said in an email.

All units had to volunteer for the conversion, be dispersed regionally and reside close to space-related agencies, he said. Space Coast Junior/Senior High is about 40 miles east of Orlando and 15 miles southwest of Kennedy Space Center, where the space shuttle missions were launched.

About 1,200 cadets are spread across the 10 units that converted.

Retired Lt. Col. Joseph Stevens and retired Senior Master Sgt. John Werner lead Space Coast's JROTC program, which began during the 2008-2009 school year. Stevens said coming under the auspices of the Space Force, which was created in December 2019, has been a smooth transition for the program's 123 students.

"The principles are basically identical," Stevens said. "We wear different uniforms, but what this program is about is making better people, better citizens for our country and nation. That is the common theme, common denominator for all programs, so whether it's Air Force, Space Force, any of the other branches, we're all going to have the same mission of making better students, better citizens."

Besides coursework, cadets are required to participate in community service projects. Space Coast's JROTC currently is collecting canned goods to donate to a local food bank. Cadets participate in drills and ceremonies, are subject to uniform inspections, and undergo fitness training. They study military history and customs.

"The core curriculum, in general, for the day-to-day operations right now is still the same Air Force JROTC curriculum, which incorporated space concepts within it," Werner said. "Our headquarters, in coordination with Space Force Delta 13 [at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama] and the Space Force leadership team, is in the process of looking at our overall curriculum, and we'll make the adjustments when we get to that point as it continues to evolve down the road."

The Air Force JROTC curriculum currently consists of about 40% instruction on leadership, 40% aerospace science and 20% on fitness and wellness, McGonigal said.

"Both Air and Space Force concepts will continue to be integral content in the new curricula," he said.

McGonigal said transitioning more Air Force JROTC units to the Space Force remains in the discussion stage, but this initial class has created a buzz.

It's one of the more notable changes since 20 JROTC units moved under the auspices of the Air Force in 1966. The first Army JROTC unit was formed at Fort Leavenworth High School, Kansas, in 1917, and the 1964 Reserve Officer Training Corps Vitalization Act expanded JROTC to all military branches.

Sexton is thrilled to be a small part of this new frontier.

"We're doing great things, and I'm excited to see where we go," she said.

-- Editor's note: Where Space Coast Junior/Senior High is in relationship to Kennedy Space Center was fixed from an earlier version of this story.

-- Stephen Ruiz can be reached at Stephen.Ruiz@monster.com.
As the Union Army approached Avery Island, Louisiana in 1863, the McIlhenny family abandoned their farm and fled. When they returned after the war, the farm was bare. Its crops were seized by the Union troops and, presumably, kept the Army running.

All the crops, that is, except its spicy tabasco peppers. Necessity is the mother of invention and the McIlhenny family needed to sell something from the farm to make ends meet. They made a delicious sauce from the peppers, bottled it and sold it to the masses.

Hot sauces have come and gone, but Tabasco has been sold continuously since 1868. That was just its first contact with the U.S. military.

Fast forward to 1935, where Walter Stauffer "Tabasco Mac" McIlhenny transferred from the Virginia National Guard to the Marine Corps Reserve. McIlhenny was a gourmet chef and president of the McIlhenny Company by then. He was still filling shelves with his famous and time-honored pepper sauce.

When World War II broke out, he shipped out to the Pacific Theater with his Marines of the 1st Marine Division. He landed at Guadalcanal and led a team to help evacuate some wounded Marines further inland on the island. As the company commander, he held off a Japanese counterattack and took out a machine gun nest to protect his wounded and corpsmen.

Brig. Gen. Walter "Tabasco Mac" McIlhenny after World War II. (U.S. Marine Corps)

After clearing out the machine gun, Tabasco Mac hopped into the enemy position and found, to his surprise, a Japanese officer still alive. The officer picked up his katana and tried to split McIlhenny's head open, but the sword was in its scabbard and only dented Mac's helmet. The hit knocked McIlhenny out, but not before he shot his attacker.

When Mcllhenny woke up, he was on a stretcher with his gun, dented helmet and the katana, being carried off the battlefield. He kept the sword and helmet. McIlhenny would receive the Navy Cross for defending his Marines. He spent 31 months in the Pacific during World War II.

The experience of long stretches of time eating rations stuck with Mac, and when he returned to running his company, he got a great idea -- use Tabasco to improve the quality of food in the field for future troops.

U.S. troops in the field during World War II had the same problems with rations that we have today: eating the same foods over and over again can wear you down. McIlhenny wanted to market his sauce to the U.S. military to help improve the quality of rations. By the time the United States got involved in Vietnam, he didn't have an official deal, but he tried something novel.

McIlhenny created "The Charlie Ration Cookbook or No Food Is Too Good for the Man Up Front," a recipe book for troops in Vietnam to use so they could mix and match different ration components to make something entirely different and new. The best part was that each cookbook came wrapped in a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

The recipes in "The Charlie Ration Cookbook" weren't universally appreciated, and some were regarded better than others, but the Tabasco sauce was welcomed by all who could get their hands on one.

Someone seemed to remember the force multiplier Tabasco sauce was in Vietnam, because when C-Rations were replaced in 1981 with Meals, Ready-to-Eat, the new MRE condiment packs came with a tiny bottle of Tabasco. "Tabasco Mac's" idea had finally come to fruition.

Visitors to Louisiana's Avery Island can still visit the original Tabasco farm and its country store. (U.S. Army/Chuck Cannon)

Today's MREs come with some kind of off-brand hot sauce, which might be good enough for government work, but Tabasco sauce itself has a special place in the hearts of U.S. troops who had to live off rations for the better half of the 20th century and beyond.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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Although the National Veterans Resource Center at Syracuse University (NVRC) has been completed for the past 20 months, the dedication of the building had to wait due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The wait allowed for the namesakes of the building that houses the NVRC, billionaire businessman Dan D'Aniello and his wife Gayle, to be on hand for the dedication ceremony on Nov. 2, 2021. When it came time for D'Aniello to speak, he announced another gift for the Institute of Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), which is housed within the NVRC

Billionaire investor and Navy veteran Dan D'Aniello announces a $30 million endowment to continue IVMF programming. (Courtesy of Syracuse University)

.

"Syracuse University, for decades, has dedicated itself to veterans and to their service," D'Aniello said. "The NVRC stands as a jewel box to improve the lives of students and veterans alike, and into this jewel box, I am thrilled to announce that my wife and I will be establishing a $30 million endowment for the IVMF to ensure the sustainability and growth of its program."

D'Aniello is a Syracuse University graduate and a U.S. Navy veteran who was on campus during the American involvement in Vietnam. He served in the Navy as a supply officer aboard the USS Wasp from 1968 until 1971. He recalled the life of military-connected students on college campuses during the Vietnam War.

After his military service ended, D'Aniello went into corporate finance, working for PepsiCo and Trans World Airlines before forming the Carlyle investment firm in 1987. His endowment gift follows the $20 million he donated toward the construction of the building that now bears his name.

"I vividly remember the dismissive and even hostile environment for veterans on campuses across the country," he said at the dedication ceremony. "We've come a long way since then, but Chancellor Kent Syverud has demonstrated the resolve to stand fast in reaffirming valuing the education and welfare of current and future veterans."

With D'Aniello already serving as co-chairman of the IVMF with his gift, Syverud announced that the IVMF will now be known as the D'Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families.

Along with housing the IVMF, the National Veterans Resource Center is where Syracuse University ROTC students receive military instruction, is home to SU's Office of Veteran Success, Veteran Career Services and Office of Veteran and Military Affairs.

The National Veterans Resource Center at Syracuse University. (Blake Stilwell)

The NVRC is a public-private partnership designed to promote academic research and design real-world programs to improve the lives of veterans across the United States, whether they attended Syracuse University or not.

NVRC's centerpiece is the IVMF, which conducts research and analysis on the lives of veterans during their service and in their post-military careers. It uses that research to provide training programs and career services in entrepreneurship, education opportunities and employment in many sectors, including veterans seeking political office.

Most recently, the IVMF was awarded $5 million in federal grants as part of the Biden administration's Community Navigator Pilot Program. The grants will be disbursed to help small, veteran-owned businesses in their pandemic recovery efforts.

The IVMF was thrilled to learn of U.S. Navy veteran and University Life Trustee Dan DAniellos commitment to a $30 million gift this week, Mike Haynie, vice chancellor and IVMF executive director and founder, said in a statement. [The gift] will support the creation of an endowment to provide annual operational support for the IVMF, ensuring it remains the nations leading academic institute focused on the concerns of Americas more than 20 million veterans and their families.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III speaks at the change of command at U.S. Southern Command, Doral, Fla., Oct. 29, 2021. Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson assumed command from retiring Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller.
Naval Air Station Sigonella Commanding Officer Capt. Kevin Pickard speaks with Pizzarotti housing contractors regarding clogged drain during the early hours of an expected storm hitting NAS Sigonella, Oct. 29, 2021.
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U.S. and Indonesian military personnel join during the opening ceremony for Cooperation Afloat and Readiness at Sea Training (CARAT) Indonesia 2021.
Fort Madison, IA (52627)

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Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen provided details on two of the teams three option decisions, as Hazen told The Arizona Republics Nick Piecoro that the DBacks will exercise their $5.25MM club option on righty Merrill Kelly and decline their $9MM club option on outfielder Kole Calhoun. The fate of Tyler Clippards $3.5MM mutual option (with a $500K buyout) is still undecided, Hazen said.

There wasnt much suspense in either decision, as Kelly had a pretty solid year in his return from thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. Kelly posted a 4.44 ERA over 158 innings, delivering his usual quality walk rate to help offset a lot of hard contact and a below-average strikeout rate. The Diamondbacks are hoping Kelly can match or better this performance in 2022 as the team looks for more stability in the rotation.

Next season will be the final year of Arizonas control over Kelly, as per the two-year, $5.5MM contract with two club options that he signed back in December 2018. With this final option year now exercised, the deal will work out to a four-year, $14.5MM pact.

Calhoun signed a two-year, $16MM free agent to join his hometown DBacks during the 2019-20 offseason, and hit .226/.338/.526 with 16 home runs over 228 plate appearances in the shortened 2020 season. That solid performance was followed up by an injury-plagued 2021, as Calhoun underwent a knee surgery in Spring Training and then a left hamstring surgery less than two months later. His rehab from that second procedure was extended by a setback, and Calhoun also spent another month on the IL with a strain in that same left hamstring late in the year.

All told, Calhoun appeared in only 51 games and hit .235/.297/.373 over 182 PA. Calhoun might have been a trade chip had he been healthy, either back in July at the trade deadline or perhaps this winter, if hed hit well enough for the Diamondbacks to exercise that club option. Instead, the DBacks will buy out that $9MM option for $2MM and Calhoun will hit the market in advance of his age-34 season.

A return to Arizona could be unlikely, as while Hazen praised Calhoun for being awesome for us in and out of the clubhouse, the DBacks already have quite a few left-handed outfield options. Calhoun hit both left-handed and right-handed pitching pretty evenly for a lot of his career, but over the last three seasons has developed more traditional splits. It seems likely that Calhoun will catch on with another team in need of some veteran pop from the left side of the plate, and Calhouns right field glovework has remained pretty good, even amidst all his leg injuries in 2021.
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For the past 17 months, its been my great honor to serve on the local Covid Task Force. Local leaders from all walks of life  health care, business, government, non-profits, churches, first responders, and more  work together so that we can better respond to the real world effects of the 
November 04, 2021

Russiagate's Steele Dossier - Paid For By Clinton - Had Clinton Operative As Key Source

Russiagate is again coming back to haunt its authors.

The New York Times reports:

Federal authorities on Thursday arrested an analyst who in 2016 gathered leads about possible links between Donald J. Trump and Russia for what turned out to be Democratic-funded opposition research, according to people familiar with the matter. The arrest of the analyst, Igor Danchenko, is part of the special counsel inquiry led by John H. Durham, who was appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation for any wrongdoing, the people said. Mr. Danchenko, was the primary researcher of the so-called Steele dossier, a compendium of rumors and unproven assertions suggesting that Mr. Trump and his 2016 campaign were compromised by and conspiring with Russian intelligence officials in Moscows covert operation to help him defeat Hillary Clinton. The people familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity because the indictment of Mr. Danchenko had yet to be unsealed. A spokesman for Mr. Durham did not respond to a request for comment.

The indictment has now been unsealed and it is quite a bombshell.

Danchenko had made several claims about Trump and Russia for which his only source were not some Russian contacts but the public relations executive Chuck Dolan with whom he also worked on a different project. Next to his PR job at Kglobal the PR-executive Chuck Dolan is also a Democratic party operative with deep relations to the Clintons:

President Bill Clinton appointed Chuck to two four-year terms as the vice-chairman of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. This seven-member commission is a bipartisan panel established by the Congress to advise the President, the Secretary of State, and the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs on press and information activities of U.S. missions abroad, and the governments international radio and television operations. During the 2008 Democratic nomination process, Chuck served as an advisor to Senator Hillary Clintons presidential campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire. He was also a senior communications consultant for Senator John Kerrys presidential campaign in 2004. He was state chairman of the Virginia Clinton-Gore Campaigns in 1992 and 1996, and a member of President Clintons Presidential Exploratory Committee. Prior to that, he was executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, where he supported the election and re-election of Democratic governors in all fifty states. Before joining kglobal, Chuck was a Senior Vice President at Ketchum, one of the worlds largest public relations firms. He also worked as a Senior Vice President at the government relations firm Cassidy and Associates, where he coordinated joint public affairs projects for universities involving the U.S. House and Senate as well as the White House and Federal Agencies.

Dolan also had many contacts with Russian officials including with the Kremlin's press office lead.

To recap:

The 2016 Clinton campaign paid the legal firm Perkins Coie to find dirt about Donald Trump. A Perkins Coie lawyer hired Fusion GPS, a shady 'research' firm run by a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Fusion GPS hired the British private spy company Orbis to find (or makeup) the Trump dirt it needed. The 'former' British MI6 spy Christopher Steele of Orbis was tasked with developing a dossier about Trump. Steele hired Igor Danchenko, a Russian living in the United States, to come up with Trump-Russiagate stories. Danchenko's problem was that he had no sources. But he also worked for Chuck Dolan, a Clinton operative who was also working to hold a business conference in Moscow and knew some Kremlin related people.

(Fiona Hill, a later witness during the Trump impeachment, had introduced Danchenko to Dolan.)

Clinton operative Dolan fed Danchenko several stories which Danchenko then dramatized and sent to Steele. Steele revised those stories and put them into his 'dossier'. This was then peddled by Fusion GPS and Steele to the media and the FBI. Some of the tales Dolan fed to Danchenko were simply taken from media reports.

In October 2016 The FBI used the Steele dossier to get a wiretap application to snoop on the Trump campaign. It continued to use the Steele dossier to renew its snooping application even when it already knew that the dossier was nothing but nonsense.

One example cited in the indictment of Danchenko is that Chuck Dolan talked with a hotel manager in Moscow where his planned business conference were to be held. The hotel manager told Dolan that Trump had once slept in their presidential suite. Dolan later told this to Danchenko. Danchenko then tells Steele about it. Either Dolan, Danchenko or Steele add prostitutes and a 'pee tape' to the 'Trump in a Russian hotel' story. Steele writes that up and ships it to Fusion GPS from where it gets peddled throughout Washington DC.

The FBI knew all this in early 2017 when it talked to Danchenko. But Danchenko denied that he had the stories from Chuck Dolan and insisted that he had original Russian sources.

Danchenko lied to the FBI on several points and occasion. That is the reason why he is now being indicted.

But the bigger revelation is that Danchenko source, if we are to believe the indictment, was some innocent PR executive who also happened to be a big Clinton fan.

That however may not be the whole story. The Democratic party operative and good friend of the Clintons did know that Danchenko was also working for Christopher Steele whom the Clinton campaign paid indirectly to write up a dirty dossier about Trump.

It does not require much fantasy to assume that Chuck Dolan was in on the whole Clinton campaign plot to make up dirty rumors about Trump and Russia and that he intentionally fed vague or made up Trump-Russia stuff to Danchenko to get it into the Steele dossier and from there into the media.

When did Hillary know all this?

The indictment of Danchenko is exonerating another figure in the Russiagate affair. Sergei Millian is a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce who had been associated with Donald Trump. Danchenko had claimed that Millian had been one of his sources for several 'reports' in the Steele dossier. The indictment clearly states that this was a lie. Millian, who had been taking much flak during the whole Russiagate affair, is now fully exonerated.

The whole story again puts a bad light onto the FBI. The transcript excerpt above makes it obvious that the FBI knew by mid 2017 that Danchenko was lying about his sources and that the dossier was pure nonsense. But the FBI held back on that because its leadership was anti-Trump. It took four years and two special investigations for this to come out. The FBI, special counsel Mueller or even the current special counsel Durham could have revealed all this much earlier.

But that would have exonerated not only Sergei Millian but also Donald Trump.

Posted by b on November 4, 2021 at 18:16 UTC | Permalink

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SASD in search of certified STEM teacher

SAYRE  During the personnel portion of the Sayre Area School Districts board of education meeting on Monday, the board approved Mary Cole as head of the business/tech department beginning Nov. 30, a move which Superintended Dr. Jill Daloisio explained is in response to the resignation of John Brander in STEM.

Board member Margaret Barry inquired as to whether or not the district has any applicants to fill the vacancy left by Brander, who will be leaving after Thanksgiving.

We do not have one applicant, Daloisio said. Weve pushed out across the state for the industrial arts position and have not received any, so it will be a sub until we find someone with that degree.

Barry questioned if it would be a longterm or day-to-day sub, and who will be planning the curriculum. Daloisio explained that Brander will be leaving behind a teaching plan that goes beyond his time in the district, and the type of substitute will depend on availability.

If we can get a certified teacher, then itll be somebody for long term, said Daloisio. Right now the individuals subbing for us day-to-day do not have teaching certificates, theyre guest teachers at the state level.

Barry went on to ask if the students currently enrolled in Branders classes should transfer into different courses at the start of the new semester.

Instead of sitting either in study hall or having no one to teach them  should we not put a plan in place that if we dont have someone by the end of the semester, those kids should be transferring into other electives, Barry said. Thats a lot of down time. Theyd be better off somewhere else.

Daloisio said the district would look into that possibility, but reiterated the hope that they will find a certified teacher to fill the need.

Even if it is a certified teacher in another field that can teach, said Daloisio.

Barry, who teaches managing personal finance and advanced computer classes in Towanda, countered by saying a certified English teacher cant teach what I teach.

I dont think we should put a band aid on it, Barry continued. I think that we should at least survey parents and explain the situation  I would move my child to a different elective. Thats a waste of their time.

Tarah Ramsey and Ashley Koopman were also approved for the positions of SADD advisor and Future Teachers of America advisor, respectively, starting Jan. 3 after the retirement of school counselor Stacy Richmond who currently holds both positions. Vika Shpolyansky was approved for the position of school counselor in the junior/senior high school, effective Nov. 30.
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Black Rifle Coffee Company in jumping on the latest investment trend and going public by way of a merger with another company. The Utah-based coffee company, which has a store in San Antonio (and a square on the Alamo City Monopoly board), announced that it was going public via a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called SilverBox Engaged Merger Corp, according to a November 2 news release.

A SPAC is a company created to raise capital though an initial public offering and then acquires a private company, which in this case will be Black Rifle. Once the acquisition is complete Black Rifle will be known as BRC Inc.
NEW YORK (AP)  Greg Kinnear was just a month away from making his Broadway debut in the play To Kill a Mockingbird when the pandemic shut theater down in March 2020. He's not giving up: Early next year, he'll try again.

The two-time Emmy Award-winner and Oscar nominee is slated to take over the role of Atticus Finch from Jeff Daniels beginning Jan. 5, 2022.

There is nothing in the Greg Kinnear IMDb credits that you will find that will suggest that I am in any way an obvious choice for for taking on this role, he tells The Associated Press. This will all be a new endeavor for me. I welcome it and Im thrilled about it.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and has been widely praised as a sensitive portrait of racial tension in 1930s Alabama. At its core is Atticus Finch, a lawyer called upon to defend a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.

Lees iconic book has been adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin, who won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for his screenplay for The Social Network. The play is directed by Bartlett Sher.

Sorkin's script  which cuts the undergrowth of minor characters and enhances others, particularly the maid Calpurnia and Tom Robinson, the man falsely accused of rape  was the thing that really grabbed Kinnear.

It just moved me so emotionally. Its such a beautiful, slight modernization of the material to make it relevant in a way that that is so resounding right now," he said.

I feel like he humanizes Atticus in a way that needed to happen. And, at the same time, all the texture and the power of the book I dont feel is lost in any way.

Kinnear has visited New York to discuss the role with the creative team and while he hasn't yet seen the show, he has walked onto the empty 1,435-seat Shubert Theatre stage. I did feel a little catching my breath, he says.

He is scheduled to start rehearsals in December and hasn't yet decided whether or not he'll see Daniels in the role during his four weeks of preparation.

Im sure Ill be amazed if I do go and see it. But theres part of me that also feels like maybe keeping some distance from it frees up the creativity a little bit by not looking back, he says.

Kinnear earned an Oscar nod for As Good As It Gets and his additional credits include Youve Got Mail, Little Miss Sunshine, Sabrina and Baby Mama. He also has two Daytime Emmy Awards, both for Talk Soup.

He admits his theater experience is limited but he did perform in a 2012 production at the New York Stage and Films Powerhouse Theater. He says he trusts the To Kill a Mockingbird cast and crew. I'm just happy to get to join the ride, he said.

___

Mark Kennedy is on Twitter as KennedyTwits
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Prosecutors working to convict Kyle Rittenhouse in the shootings of three people during a protest against police brutality in Wisconsin have introduced as evidence surveillance video taken from an FBI airplane circling thousands of feet above the chaos.

Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz during the demonstration in Kenosha in August 2020. His trial began Monday. Rittenhouse argues that he fired in self-defense after the men attacked him; prosecutors say he inserted himself into a volatile situation and that video from the plane will show he chased Rosenbaum.

Here's a look at government efforts to track people's activities from the air:

HAS THE GOVERNMENT USED PLANES TO MONITOR PAST PROTESTS?

Yes. Aerial surveillance of protests is actually very common. According to an August 2020 Air Force inspector general report, the National Guard used surveillance planes to watch over demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Minnesota, Arizona and California after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis that May.

The FBI used aircraft to monitor protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown and in Baltimore to track protests following Freddie Gray's death in police custody in 2015. Democrat Barack Obama was president during both of those events. Law enforcement also used aerial surveillance to monitor a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that turned deadly. Republican Donald Trump was president at that time.

An Associated Press investigation in 2015 found that the FBI had built a fleet of at least 50 surveillance planes that flew more than 100 flights over 11 states during a one-month span in the spring of that year under the Obama administration. The AP traced the planes to at least 13 fake companies designed to obscure the identity of the aircraft and the pilots.

The AP review also found that the Drug Enforcement Administration had at least 92 surveillance aircraft as of 2011 under Obama. The U.S. Marshals Service also has operated its own aerial surveillance program.

Ashley Gorski, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who specializes in surveillance issues, said government agencies clearly flew more aerial surveillance missions during Black Lives Matter protests last year, when Trump was president.

The result here was particularly aggressive, she said. It does seem the response was unusual and unprecedented.

WHAT KIND OF TECHNOLOGY DO THE PLANES USE?

Pilots can shoot video of the scenes below them using standard cameras, infrared sensors that pick up body heat and light sensors with enough resolution to show building features, basic vehicle features and movements such as people walking or riding bicycles. The planes also can carry technology that mimics cellphone towers, enabling agencies to track people's cellphones even if they're not making a call or in public. Much of the technology was developed for use by the U.S. military in Iraq as part of a project dubbed Gorgon Stare after the mythical Greek monster that could turn men to stone with a glance.

Even if the video images are blurry, agencies can still use them in combination with other data to discover people's identities.

IS THIS LEGAL?

Generally, yes. Aerial surveillance of people in public places is legal and is no different than a video camera mounted on a light pole, said William McGeveren, a University of Minnesota law professor who specializes in data privacy and free speech. Government agencies do not need a warrant to conduct such surveillance, he said.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that extended surveillance of an individual over a large area is illegal. And the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that the Baltimore Police Department's six-month trial aerial surveillance program was unconstitutional because the planes' wide-angle cameras put virtually all city residents under surveillance for 12 hours a day. The ruling came after Black activists sued the city.

Government agencies can impose limitations on their own programs as well. The Air Force report found that the National Guard never got the required authorization from the secretary of defense or the secretary of the Army to launch aerial surveillance of the Floyd protests. A spokesman for the FBI's Milwaukee field office, which is responsible for Kenosha, didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The FBIs national press office also didn't reply to an email.

IF AERIAL SURVEILLANCE IS LEGAL, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Such surveillance can help police respond in real time to demonstrations that turn violent and identify and arrest bad actors after the fact, protecting public safety.

But civil rights advocates fear that such surveillance leads to government agencies tracking people's every move, making people afraid to leave their homes or be seen associating with others at political functions and amounting to violations of constitutional freedom of speech and association guarantees. The mere presence of government aircraft can intimidate those on the ground; two military helicopters buzzed protesters at a Floyd protest in Washington last summer, blasting protesters with high-speed wind from their rotors.

And the programs' very existence can erode trust in the government, especially among Black leaders. One of the Black plaintiffs in the Baltimore case, for example, argued that she routinely visits murder scenes and was afraid that the surveillance program would result in police gathering specific information about her.

WHAT SORT OF IMPACT COULD THE AERIAL VIDEO HAVE ON RITTENHOUSE?

It's too early to tell. Prosecutors contend that the video will show Rittenhouse chased Rosenbaum before the situation reversed itself and Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse  possibly chipping away at Rittenhouse's self-defense claims. Portions of the infrared video prosecutors played in court on Tuesday  shot from nearly 9,000 feet  showed dozens of small, fuzzy and indistinct images of people standing or moving along the streets and sidewalks.

But on Wednesday, with superimposed images identifying the two men, a Kenosha police detective testified under questioning from defense attorney Mark Richards that it appeared at one point that Rosenbaum had been hiding as Rittenhouse arrived at that location. Richards called the confrontation the classic ambush  words that were struck after the prosecution objected, but were heard by the jury.

___

Associated Press reporter Michael Tarm in Kenosha and Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
McALLEN, Texas (AP)  For about four months before President Joe Biden took office, advisers engaged in intense internal debate about how quickly they should undo his predecessors hardline border policies.

The answer, almost always, was not soon enough. Immigration advocates on the transition team shot down a detailed memo circulated among top aides that called for turning back some migrants who cross illegally by making them seek protection in other countries. They pushed back against estimates of soaring migration flows if Donald Trumps policies were dismantled.

In the end, Biden recognized predictions that more migrants could come but was firm that policies instituted by Trump were inhumane and had to be jettisoned.

Almost immediately, the numbers exceeded expectations.

Children traveling alone shattered previous highs in March. The Border Patrol encountered migrants in South Texas more often than ever in June and July.

In September, about 15,000 mostly Haitian refugees were camped under a bridge in the border town of Del Rio, Texas. For days, migrants waded back and forth across a river for supplies and slept in squalor. Images of agents on horseback corralling refugees went viral.

The administration veered between permissive and restrictive responses, leaving it politically isolated and underscoring consequences of not having a new asylum system in place when it rescinded Trumps policies.

Some developments could not have been predicted, and pre-dating Biden was immigration courts taking nearly four years on average to decide a case of someone not in custody.

But a close review of the last year  based on internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas and dozens of interviews with current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, among others  shows how an administration stacked with immigration advocates was unprepared for the huge increase in people seeking refuge at the border. Many interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized or comfortable discussing private deliberations.

The White House defended its record when presented with specifics of the reconstruction.

After four years of the Trump administrations chaos, cruelty and misplaced priorities, the work to build a fair, orderly and humane immigration system will take time and wont happen overnight, said spokesman Vedant Patel. In a short period of time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress delivering on its plan.

From the start, Biden was adamant about reversing Trumps Remain in Mexico policy, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, under which about 70,000 asylum-seekers were made to wait outside the country for hearings in U.S. immigration court. He wanted to admit those already subject to the policy into the United States to pursue their claims. Despite daunting logistical challenges and early technical hiccups, thousands returned.

Mexico popped a surprise that severely undermined Title 42, which had been the biggest victory for enforcement-minded aides who fought during the transition to temporarily maintain it. Advocacy groups have repeatedly called to end the public health measure, which was invoked on grounds of preventing the coronavirus from spreading.

There was great frustration and irritation at the administrations highest levels when authorities in the state of Tamaulipas resisted taking expelled Central American families, according to one person with direct knowledge of discussions with Mexican officials. The change was linked to a child welfare law that took effect in January.

U.S. officials asked Mexico to delay it but got nowhere. They concluded Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca was trying to stymie President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a political rival.

Biden had exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42 after a court authorized immediate expulsion. As a father and grandfather, he couldnt go forward with it.

Title 42 became largely a tool for removing single adults.

By midsummer, the pendulum swung to enforcement as patience wore thin in Biden's inner circle. Dramatic increases in migration flows bucked a pattern of declines during summer heat. The number of unaccompanied children reached a new high in July, breaking the previous record in March, when more than 4,500 mostly unaccompanied children were crammed into a holding facility built for 250 under COVID-19 guidelines.

The Rio Grande Valley came alive each night with inflatable rafts carrying families across the river.

The Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector stopped more than 20,000 migrants for the first week ever from July 18-24.

Brian Hastings, who heads the sector, wrote senior Border Patrol officials on July 26 that Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley was full and could no longer provide temporary shelter to migrants, which forced the agency to release thousands at a McAllen, Texas, bus station.

In September, the chaotic scene emerged in Del Rio, Texas, as thousands of mostly Haitian migrants converged in a makeshift encampment.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said their arrival was unusually swift, but people with direct knowledge say Colombia provided intelligence that large numbers were moving toward Panama on their way to the U.S. border.

The U.S. flew about 8,000 Haitian migrants back to strife-ridden Haiti since Sept. 19, one of its swiftest, large-scale expulsions of refugees or migrants in decades. Thousands of others were allowed to remain in the U.S.

The uneven response after months of rising arrivals sparked sharp criticism from both the right and left.

The administration has taken modest steps to reform border policies, such as establishing a rocket docket for asylum-seeking families at the border and restoring an Obama-era program for unaccompanied children to apply in Central America to join their parents in the U.S. Its most ambitious proposal  adapted from the Migration Policy Institute think tank  is to assign asylum officers to the border to more quickly decide cases than immigration judges. Seemingly technical, it may have impact.

Despite that proposal, published in August, the administration has yet to release detailed plans of the humane asylum system that Biden promised during his campaign.

___

This report is a collaboration between The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas, publisher of The (McAllen) Monitor and other newspapers. Spagat, a San Diego correspondent, leads APs U.S. immigration team. Gonzalez is an investigative reporter for The Monitor.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  All insured Michigan drivers will be getting refunds due to a $5 billion surplus in a fund that reimburses insurers medical and other costs for people seriously injured in crashes.

The Michigan Catastrophic Fund Association's board said Wednesday that it voted unanimously to support issuing checks. The move came two days after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for refunds, citing excessive premiums along with savings under a 2019 law that curbed medical expenses and made mandatory unlimited health coverage optional.

Details on the specific refund amount per vehicle, along with a proposed timeline and logistics, will be announced in the next several weeks, the board, comprised almost entirely of insurance companies, said in a statement. The goal is to issue the largest possible refunds to consumers while maintaining sufficient funds to ensure high-quality care to those who have been catastrophically injured.

Under the 2019 law, the state insurance director must hire an independent actuary starting next July and every third year after to audit the MCCA, a state-created nonprofit that reimburses car insurers for personal injury protection medical claims surpassing $600,000. If the review  due by September  shows the MCCAs assets exceed 120% of its liabilities, the difference must be refunded.

Under the Democratic governor's proposal, the entire $5 billion surplus would be returned  $675 per car. MCCA Executive Director Kevin Clinton said this week that having no surplus would be too risky, saying the law could require an estimated $100 per-vehicle refund.

Whitmer called the pending refunds great news.

Many motorists currently are paying $86 a vehicle annually to the MCCA. The fee was $220 in 2019-20 but has been dropping due to the law.

Its important for the MCCA board to do its due diligence and land on a refund amount that balances giving insured drivers back the money they deserve while protecting the longevity of a fund that pays for the cost of medical care for Michiganders seriously injured in car accidents," said Insurance Alliance of Michigan Executive Director Erin McDonough.

Critics of the law said people absolutely are owed a refund because insurance companies have been gouging them for years. But they also renewed a push for stalled legislation to help catastrophically injured motorists who they said are losing care because of slashed reimbursements to rehabilitation facilities and other providers.

Michigan Brain Injury Provider Council President Tom Judd urged Whitmer to show bold leadership. Republican legislative leaders have not embraced the policy bills. In July, the governor and Legislature did approve $25 million in aid for providers that can show financial losses, though some lawmakers have said it is inadequate.

We wrote this law to include an automatic refund next year, and Im glad our reforms have produced large enough savings for the MCCA to act immediately and return that money to the people even sooner, House Speaker Jason Wentworth said.

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Follow David Eggert at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection Wednesday, eking out a victory that spared Democrats the loss of a second gubernatorial seat.

Hes the states first Democratic governor to get a second straight term in 44 years, defeating Republican former Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli.

AP called the race Wednesday evening when a new batch of votes from Republican-leaning Monmouth County increased Murphys lead and closed the door to a Ciattarelli comeback.

Ballots remaining to be counted included a significant number of votes from predominantly Democratic Essex County, along with mail-in votes spread across other counties. Murphy has won the mail-in vote by a wide margin even in Republican leaning counties like Monmouth.

Ciattarelli spokesperson Stami Williams disputed the call because of the close margin, calling it irresponsible.

Murphy delivered a brief speech in Asbury Park's boardwalk convention hall, nodding to the race's narrow margin by saying he would work for both those who voted for and against him. But there was no trace he planned to scale back the left-leaning positions he's taken during his first term.

We shall be judged in the long run not by how we fared in elections, but by what we did as an administration, Murphy said, quoting Brendan Byrne, the last Democratic governor to be reelected in the state. Those words will always remind us to always, always, always keep moving forward.

Ciattarelli waged a formidable campaign in heavily Democratic New Jersey, his spending nearly equaling the governors and outpacing the GOPs performance four years ago. But Murphys advantages, including 1 million more registered Democrats, proved too much for the Republican to overcome.

The victory gives Democrats a silver lining after GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe in Virginias gubernatorial race  exacerbating worries that President Joe Bidens sagging approval ratings are hurting the party. This years elections were the first major tests of voter sentiment since Biden took office and pointed to a potentially painful year ahead for Democrats as they try to maintain thin majorities in Congress.

The closeness of the race has surprised experts, who watched public polls showing Murphy leading comfortably and looked to his party's registration advantage.

If you asked anybody several months ago within the state, I think anyone would have predicted a high double digit landslide for Murphy, said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.

Voters came out at much higher rates for Ciattarelli this year than they did for his GOP predecessor in 2017. While campaigning, he walked a line between standing up for the moderate stances he had in the Legislature  like supporting Roe v. Wade  and appealing to Republicans who embraced Trump, particularly on cultural issues that have captured attention across the country.

Ciattarelli, who stepped down as state Assembly member in 2018 to run for governor, founded a medical publishing company called Galen Publishing, and held local and county positions in Somerset.

Murphys win also ends the more than three-decade-old trend of the party opposite the presidents winning in New Jerseys off-year governors race.

The 64-year-old governor said he was acutely aware of the political trends, calling them an animating force for his reelection effort that spurred him to run as if he were 10 points behind.

Murphy built his campaign around the progressive accomplishments he signed into law  like a phased-in $15 an hour minimum wage and paid sick leave along with taxes on the wealthy  and brought on Democratic allies, like progressive U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, to campaign for him.

With a Democrat-led Legislature, Murphy achieved most of the promises he made in his first run four years ago when he vied to succeed Republican Chris Christie. Taxpayer-financed community college and some pre-K, tighter gun laws, expanded voting access, recreational marijuana, more state aid for schools and a fully funded public pension  all promised and all delivered during the first term. A proposal for a public bank to finance projects went unfulfilled.

Murphy is a former Goldman Sachs executive and served as ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Murphy in the weeks before Election Day.

He has said his next term will be about enacting a Reproductive Freedom Act aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade in the state as well as additional gun control laws and the expansion of taxpayer-financed pre-K for 3-year-olds.

Headwinds facing Democrats, like President Joe Biden's falling approval ratings and congressional Democrats' struggles to enact their agenda, didn't factor heavily enough into some experts' preelection analysis, said Ben Dworkin, the director of Rowan Universitys Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. He counted himself among them.

A spokesperson for Ciattarelli said Wednesday that the campaign was focused on the vote count and said a possible legal pursuit of a recount was on the table. Murphy also called Wednesday morning for every vote to be counted.

New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates are permitted to request one. The party that wants a recount must file a suit in State Superior Court in the counties where they want to contest tallies. That has to be done within 17 days of Election Day.

___

Associated Press writer Christina Paciolla contributed to this report.
Private 1st Class Ashton Lee graduated from Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Oct. 29.

Ashton, a Greenwood native, joined the delayed entry program for the United States Marines in July of 2020 between his junior and senior year at Greenwood High School, where played football. Ashton also showed livestock throughout high school.

He has spent the last four months in boot camp in San Diego. While at boot camp, Ashton frequently thought of Whataburger, and it was the first thing he wanted when he returned to Texas. On Sunday that is exactly what happened, but to his surprise he was greeted by his name on the marquee and several of his close friends and family. Whataburger agreed to host a welcome home party and sectioned off a portion of the restaurant for him, as well as setting up the area with balloons and tablecloths. Whataburger also presented him with a gift bag full of goodies. Ashton and his family are truly humbled by Whataburgers generosity and its exceptional customer service.

Source: Community submission.
Both David Wilson and the family of Midland Police Officer Nathan Hayden Heidelberg have filed civil suits against the companies that installed and monitored Wilsons alarm system, claiming the companies mistakenly alerted police on the day Heidelberg was shot and killed.

Nathan and Glendene Heidelberg, Heidelbergs parents, first filed their suit on Feb. 19, and Wilson filed a separate suit on Feb. 26, according to court records. Amended versions of the lawsuits were filed in Midland County on June 3 and June 9, respectively.

Wilson is named as a defendant in the Heidelbergs suit along with the companies linked to his alarm system, Lydia Security Monitoring and Bams Security. The two companies are also named as defendants in Wilsons suit, as well as two former employees of Lydia Security Monitoring.

According to the lawsuits, Wilsons home alarm system had not been armed on March 5, 2019, when the events surrounding Heidelbergs death unfolded. The plaintiffs claim that Lydia Security Monitoring ran an automated test on the alarm system, and the system sent an error response back to the company.

When the company received the error message, employees with Lydia Security Monitoring contacted law enforcement and reported a burglary in progress, according to the lawsuits. The documents state that the employees did not contact the Wilsons.

About 90 seconds after police were dispatched, Lydia Security Monitoring ran another test that showed the alarm system was functioning correctly. The company did not contact police again to cancel the first alarm, according to the suits.

But for the defendants failures, [Wilson] would not have had to discharge his firearm at what he believed to be a burglar, or worse, attorneys for Wilson state in his lawsuit.

Wilson also claims that police entered his home without invitation or permission before he fired a single shot from a 9-mm handgun and killed Heidelberg. Officials have not confirmed whether Heidelberg or any other officers went inside Wilsons residence, and the Heidelbergs lawsuit states that Heidelberg was standing on the front porch.

Additionally, the Heidelbergs claim that Wilsons home was equipped with a night-vision video security system which enabled [him] to view the front porch area from inside the residence.

Both the Heidelbergs and Wilson are seeking more than $1 million in damages.

Wilson was arrested and charged with manslaughter following the shooting and released on $75,000 bond; that charge was upgraded to murder last month. His criminal jury trial is expected to begin this week.

Jury selection for the murder trial began Tuesday and continued Wednesday. Wilson is facing five to 99 years or life in prison if convicted of murder.
Texans voting Tuesday passed all eight proposed amendments to the state's constitution, including two COVID-19-era related propositions, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State. The measures were passed as bills during the state's legislative session but required voter approval. Since the Texas Constitution was adopted in 1876, voters have adopted 507 amendments and rejected 180, according to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas.

Voter turnout this year was lower than the last constitutional amendment election in 2019, with only about nine percent of registered Texas voters casting a ballot, according to the Texas Tribune.

Proposition 3, which was approved by 63 percent voters in favor to 37 percent dissenting, bans governments from taking any action that "prohibits or limits religious services" of religious organizations, even during disasters like the coronavirus pandemic. The amendment was drafted in response to governing bodies closing churches at the start of the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Critics of Prop 3 said it could potentially have serious future consequences for public health responses since it bars the state from taking steps to mitigate disease spread.

Proposition 6, also created in response to COVID-19 restrictions, was approved 88 percent to 12 percent. The amendment allows residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities to designate an "essential caregiver" who could not, under most circumstances, be prohibited from in-person visits. Nursing homes have been among the institutions hit hardest by COVID-19. Many nursing home residents endured long periods of isolation after visitations were shut down to prevent the spread of the virus. As of August, 9,095 nursing home residents have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, according to the Texas Tribune.

Other new amendments include Proposition 1, which allows the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Women's Professional Rodeo Association to hold charity raffles at rodeo events. Currently, unauthorized raffles can be considered illegal gambling. Proposition 2 authorizes counties to issue bonds to fund transportation or infrastructure projects in underdeveloped areas. Cities are already allowed to issue these bonds.

Proposition 7 and 8 both passed with 87 percent approval. Prop 7 limits school district property taxes incurred by a surviving spouse of a person with disabilities who is older than 65 and has died, as long as the surviving spouse is at least 55 years old at the partner's time of death. Prop 8 expands eligibility for residential homestead property tax exemptions to include spouses of military members who succumbed to injuries sustained during their service, combat-related or otherwise.

Proposition 4 and 5 both passed with 59 percent of votes in support. Prop 4 changes the eligibility requirements to serve as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals and intermediate appeals courts. Under the amendment, candidates must be a practicing lawyer or judge in Texas for at least 10 years under a law license that has not been revoked or suspended during that time. District Court judges are also required to have served as a lawyer or judge in Texas for eight years, also under a license that had not been revoked or suspended. Proposition 5, allows the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to accept complaints, conduct investigations and take other action against judicial candidates.
79, formerly of Muskogee left us November 15, 2021 in Nebraska. Her Service of Memory will be on Tuesday, 12pm at Worship Community Center 820 E. Okmulgee. Keith D. Biglow Funeral Directors, Inc- Muskogee
Hospitals in Horry County are now offering the COVID-19 vaccine to children between the ages of 5 and 11.

This comes after Tuesdays announcement from the Centers for Disease Control formally recommended that the Pfizer vaccine could be administered to children 5 to 11.

Tidelands Health will begin offering vaccines for children starting Thursday, the health system announced Wednesday.

Our team is excited to begin administering the COVID-19 vaccine to this newly eligible age group, said Gayle Resetar, chief operating officer at Tidelands Health. This family vaccine clinic was designed with young kids unique needs in mind, and were holding the event after business hours to accommodate hectic schedules.

The family vaccination clinics are a great opportunity to get the entire family vaccinated and get booster doses for those who are eligible, Resetar said.

The clinic will be held at Tidelands' Myrtle Beach location, at 4320 Holmestown Rd., from 4:30 to 7 p.m. The release said pediatricians will be on hand during the clinic to talk with parents one on one and answer any questions they may have regarding the vaccine.

For those who cant make Thursdays clinic, there are more vaccination events scheduled until mid-December. According to the release, Tidelands Health Family Medicine at Holmestown Road will continue to offer the special clinic from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on the following Thursdays: Nov. 11, Nov. 18, Dec. 2 and Dec. 9.

Adults may also receive their vaccines during these clinics as well, according to Tidelands.

On Monday, Nov. 8, Tidelands three regional vaccination sites will begin administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children between the ages of 5 and 11, the release said. The Georgetown and Market Common locations will be offering extended hours to accommodate family schedules. Here are the locations and hours for Tidelands three regional sites:

 Tidelands Georgetown Memorial Hospital, Harris Medical Pavilion entrance, 606 Black River Rd., Georgetown, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every Monday, Tuesday and Friday, as well as new hours on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Journal-Courier

BEARDSTOWN  Police are reminding those waiting in line during school drop off and pick up times not to park and wait on railway tracks.

Vehicles should always stop prior to the railroad lines unless ample space is available to cross and park beyond, according to police. Train conductors will not have enough time to stop a moving train by the time they notice a vehicle stopped in its path.
Springfields Memorial Holiday Fest is gearing up for its seasonal opening on Nov. 27, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

The festival, organized by Springfield Memorial Foundation, will feature community events and family activities on Saturdays and on Wednesday evenings from Nov. 27 through Dec. 22 in downtown Springfield. The foundation is partnering with Downtown Springfield Inc.s Old Capitol Holiday Walks on the event, which is an update of Memorials Festival of Trees that ran for more than 30 years on the Illinois State Fairgrounds.

Were excited to share the Memorial Holiday Fest with our community, said Melissa Hansen Schmadeke, foundation executive director. Families will discover a host of familiar activities as well as exciting new offerings.

Using the theme A Season for Caring, the festival will feature decorated trees displayed in downtown storefronts, restaurants and banks; wreaths on display at the Illinois State Museum, 502 S. Spring St.; and student-decorated trees spotlighted at Illinois National Bank, 322 E. Capitol Ave.

A map with tree locations and other event sites will be available on the foundations website at bit.ly/3BMkmmm.

Nearly all festival events will be free

Visits with Santa Claus will be on the lawn of the Old State Capitol from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. and from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturdays and from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays. Parents can take their own photos of their children with Santa. Social distancing and masking guidelines will be followed.

A Gingerbread Village will be on display in the lobby of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, 212 N. Sixth St. The museum will extend its hours of operation to 7 p.m. on the Saturdays and Wednesdays of the festival. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on those days, admission to the museum will be free with a donation of personal care items that will benefit the Springfield Salvation Army Warming Center.

Families attending the Memorial Holiday Fest can pick up Polar Passports for their children. Participants can receive a stamp on their passports for visiting the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Old State Capitol, Kidzeum and the Illinois State Museum. With all four stamps, children can turn their passports in at the Hoogland Center for the Arts, 402 S. Sixth St., to be entered in a drawing for free passes to the Kidzeum.

The Hoogland Teens will create a living window display  based on Disneys Frozen  at the Hoogland Center for the Arts at 10 a.m., 1 and 4 p.m. Saturdays and 5 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays. Carolers will sing outside the Hoogland for those dropping off their Polar Passports.

Free carriage rides will be available from 2 to 7 p.m. Saturdays and from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays. People can catch the rides, which leave every 10 minutes, at 1 North Old State Capitol Plaza.

Kidzeum also will have several festival-related activities, which are free with paid museum admission, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays.

 Angela Bauer


GULFPORT, Miss. (AP)  The Mississippi Department of Public Safety has abruptly rescinded a policy that would have simplified the process for people to change their gender listing on their driver's license or state-issued identification card.

The Sun Herald reported Thursday the department reversed course only days after Kevin Raymond, director of the department's Driver Service Bureau, issued a memo that said people could change their gender designation on a driver's license or ID from male to female or female to male by filling out a form and having it signed by a health care provider or social service provider.

The change would have erased the requirement for an amended birth certificate.

The newspaper first reported on the state's simplified policy Tuesday. But by Wednesday, some transgender people said they found out the new form was not being accepted.

Department of Public Safety spokesperson Chris Vignes sent a statement to the Sun Herald, saying Raymond's memo about a policy change was not authorized by Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell and was sent without Tindell's knowledge. Because of that, Vignes said the new forms for changing a gender designation are no longer being utilized.

It is my understanding that there is still pending litigation, so we cannot offer any additional comments at this time, Vignes said.

Vignes declined to say when Raymonds memo was rescinded and whether the department will reissue the form. He also did not explain how Tindell could not have known about the form and memo, which were issued after a lawsuit that named Tindell as a defendant. Both documents were endorsed by at least one member of Tindells top leadership team and a Department of Public Safety attorney.

Mississippi law specifies that the commissioner of public safety may set reasonable rules and regulations about drivers licenses.

Ashley Williams, who is transgender, said she went to a driver's license bureau in northern Mississippi on Wednesday with her completed form to change the gender listing on her license. Williams said she waited two hours before receiving a call from a regional higher-up who told her that legal had rescinded the form.

I missed a few hours of work today to do this, Williams told the Sun Herald. I sat there for hours. ... Everyone was as nice as they could be to me about it. Im just upset with the system.

Raymonds memo followed a lawsuit filed Oct. 21 by Alexandra Dogwood, a transgender woman who was denied a license transfer in Hattiesburg because the gender marker on her Missouri license differed from that on her birth certificate.

The Sun Herald listened to a recording of a phone call last Friday between Dogwood, her attorney Matthew Lawrence, and Deputy Commissioner of Operations Keith Davis, who was hired by Tindell and is a member of his six-person leadership team.

Davis said he believed Dogwood had been the first person to file a legal complaint over the issue.

Because of this case, as of yesterday, we have changed our policy, Davis said.

Department of Public Safety attorney Eric Brown also participated on the call. He said Raymonds memo had been sent out to everybody and that the state was adopting a policy that other states already have in place.
Morgan County

Sheriff

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Casey J. Kline, 45, of 105 E. Superior St., Murrayville, was arrested at 12:29 p.m. Monday on a battery charge.

Jacksonville Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Carl B. Alexander, 36, homeless, was arrested at 10:53 a.m. Wednesday on a charge of criminal trespass to state land. He was accused of being on property at 800 Hoagland Boulevard from which he was prohibited.

 Toney L. Prather, 24, of 650 S. Prairie St. was arrested at 6:54 a.m. Wednesday on a Morgan County warrant accusing him of domestic battery.

 Mark A. McFarland, 62, of 925 N. Clay Ave. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 3:59 p.m. Sunday on a battery charge.

 Carol A. Carl, 67, of 19 Sunnydale Ave. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 5:54 p.m. Saturday on a retail theft charge.

THEFTS, BURGLARIES

 A trash can was stolen from a residence in the 900 block of West College Avenue, according to a report filed at 1:17 p.m. Wednesday.

 A television set was stolen from a residence in the 500 block of North Church Street, according to a report filed at 10:57 a.m. Wednesday.

 A debit card was used between 2 and 4 p.m. Sunday to withdraw money from a Jacksonville womans bank account, according to a report filed at 10:24 a.m. Wednesday.

Compiled by David C.L. Bauer
Illinois soon will offer free state identification cards to those released from prison.

Secretary of State Jesse White was joined Wednesday by first lady M.K. Pritzker and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in announcing the plan. Whites office and the Illinois Department of Corrections launched a pilot program in December to explore how it would work across state agencies. That pilot program was expanded in April and has been rolled out to 18 corrections facilities.

It gives people who have served their time in prison a necessary tool as they reenter their communities, White said. A state ID card is essential to transition back into society.

By April, the program is expected to serve 27 correctional facilities. The Illinois Department of Corrections average daily population is 27,323. As of October, 346 state ID cards had been processed.

To obtain a card, an applicant will work with the Illinois Department of Corrections to gather and maintain necessary documents. The corrections department will photograph applicants  using equipment and methods required by the Secretary of States office  and electronically transmit documentation, photo and signature to the secretary of states office. If eligibility requirements are met, the state will process the request and send the identification card to the Illinois Department of Corrections for distribution to the corresponding facility and to the person upon release.

A successful justice system is one that makes sure those who leave it are equipped to make the most of their second chance, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. A job opportunity, a roof over your head, stability  these fundamentals are so much easier to secure with a state ID card in hand.

Stratton said people should never be defined by the mistakes theyve made and that the pilot program is about compassion and common sense because it allows us to support the people who are released from IDOC facilities to best prepare for their return to their communities.
HANOI, Vietnam (AP)  Vietnam was seeking more information Thursday about a Vietnamese oil tanker that was seized at gunpoint last month by Iranian soldiers in the Gulf of Oman, while vowing to ensure the safety and humane treatment of the ship's crew members.

Irans powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard troops on Oct. 24 took control of the MV Sothys, a vessel that analysts suspect of trying to transfer sanctioned Iranian crude oil to Asia. U.S. forces had monitored the seizure but ultimately didnt take action as the vessel sailed into Iranian waters.

The episode was the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehrans nuclear program.

Vietnamese officials "continue to closely follow the developments and work closely with Iranian authorities to resolve this issue in accordance with the law and enact necessary measures to safeguard the rights and interests of Vietnamese nationals, Pham Thu Hang, deputy spokesperson in Vietnams Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Thursday.

The captain of the MV Sothys told the Vietnamese Embassy in Iran that all 26 crew members were being treated well and were in normal health, Hang told reporters at a scheduled briefing.

Iran celebrated its capture of the vessel in dramatic footage aired on state television Wednesday, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Ship-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessel still off Irans southern port of Bandar Abbas on Tuesday. A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. also showed the vessel off Bandar Abbas in recent days.

Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navys Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Irans assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

Its a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran. He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.

Kirby said Irans boarding and seizing of the vessel constituted a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.

Tehran also did not provide the ships name, or other details, nor any explanation of why the Navy might target it. Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

State TV released footage showing an Iranian surveillance drone monitoring a hulking red tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Heavily armed Iranian commandos then rappelled onto the boat from a helicopter as small speedboats surrounded the vessel and an Iranian catamaran ship patrolled the waters.

The video appeared to show Iranian Guard troops pointing uncovered deck-mounted machine guns at the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Photos released by the U.S. military show The Sullivans recently in the Arabian Sea near the Gulf of Oman.

A shipping database showed the Sothys' last registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. On Thursday, a worker at the office acknowledged an incident involving the Sothys but referred questions to another employee who wasnt there. That employee did not immediately return a request for comment.

However, the Sothys had been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long suspicious of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated Oct. 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Sothys received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.

The U.S. Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Guards expeditionary Quds Force. That Iranian oil ends up being sold into East Asia, the Treasury alleged, without identifying a specific country.

Irans seizure of the Sothys would be the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil the Gulf of Oman, which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members earlier this year. Just a few months ago, Iranian hijackers stormed and briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the regions volatile waters since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Irans nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.

___

This story corrects the name of the ship to MV Sothys instead of Southys.

___

Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Cities across the country are witnessing one of the pandemics long-term consequences: reduced workforce in city centers. With many companies electing to downsize or not renew their office leases, thousands of small businesses that were sustained by the flow of the 9-to-5 workforce have had no choice but to close their doors for good  leaving workers out of a job, and entrepreneurs out of luck. If not remedied quickly, these closures could imperil the cultural vibrancy of downtownsalong with their small businessesfrom coast to coast.

Fortunately, Congress is working on a solution that would help stabilize city centers and downtown communities to help them rebound, revamp, and come back even stronger.

Introduced by Sens. Debbie Stabenow, DMich., and Gary Peters, DMich., along with Reps. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., Dan Kildee, D-Mich., and John Larson, D-Conn., the Revitalizing Downtowns Act would provide a new federal tax credit for converting empty or obsolete office structures into mixed-use residential or business spaces. The bill proposes a 20 percent tax credit to help incentivize and offset the costs of conversion. If developers choose to construct housing, a portion of new units must be available as affordable housing.

This new legislation is important because, even though many of these older downtown buildings may be under-occupied or even vacant, market forces alone typically do not lead developers to invest in large-scale conversions. Converting obsolete office structures into modern living or retail spaces can be challenging and expensive  just imagine the costs of completely renovating an office space to residential units complete with showers, kitchens, and living areas that did not previously exist.

Now is the time to reshape the downtown space for a more prosperous future. Across the country employee visits to the office have fallen to roughly a quarter of pre-pandemic levels. Converting older and excess office buildings into affordable housing or restaurants represents a unique chance to maintain the economic stability of Americas downtowns, ultimately helping create more thriving communities and resilient cities. It is a sentiment shared by the members of the Revitalize Our Cities Coalition, a group of national and regional economic development organizations across 37 states, dedicated to strengthening urban centers and increasing the resiliency of downtowns post-pandemic.

While the pandemic has devastated our downtowns, it has also presented us with an opportunity to reshape them. Organizations, small business owners, and urban advocates across the country have brainstormed new ways to ensure that downtown remains as vibrant as ever, even with the influx of vacant office space. The Revitalizing Downtowns Act can serve as the foundation for this reimagining by offering incentives to developers to grow the city centers we know and love.

The International Downtown Association recognizes that fostering vibrant centers across the nation requires innovative, tireless work. As we continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, urban place management organizations must prioritize economic competitiveness and fiscal resiliency. For years, downtown has been synonymous with the office. It has been a place to commute to during the week, but leave each night after a long day. COVID upended the status quo and with it the business of so many restaurants, shops, bars, and hotels that relied on office employees.

It is clear then that business, professional, and civic leaders must work collaboratively to create innovative and achievable solutions for cities across America as it aims to Build Back Better from COVID-19. Passing the Revitalizing Downtowns Act would be an encouraging first step and our organization is proud to support it.

David Downey is president and CEO of the International Downtown Association. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
Active social media users are likely to assure you that bipartisanship is dead  and for good reason. These platforms have ensured that the most extreme partisans have the biggest megaphones. Politicians trying to curry their favor very often dont just argue that their opponents are wrong on any given issue, but that they are inherently bad.

Yet when it comes to many actual public policy questions, there is far more bipartisan agreement than indicated by your Twitter feed.

Americans on both sides of the aisle have long wanted workers who need paid time off from work to have better options. The question has always been how to do so, without undermining existing paid leave benefits, adding big tax burdens, reducing peoples take-home pay, or eliminating flexible work options and opportunities, particularly for women. A bipartisan paid leave proposal sheds light on a potential answer: Senators Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana, and Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat of Arizona, introduced legislation to allow new parents the option of taking a $5,000 advance on their child tax credit to fund paid leave at the time of their childs birth or adoption. Importantly, this benefit would be voluntary, wouldnt require new taxes or spending, and wouldnt discourage companies from offering paid leave benefits. It would go a long way to providing targeted relief for those who need it and would make the safety net better, rather than just bigger.

Both Republicans and Democrats also both want policies that encourage the use of clean energy and improve the environment, but without tanking the economy and needlessly driving up energy prices. At the end of last year, a bipartisan vote in Congress passed and President Trump signed the Energy Act of 2020, which encouraged American innovation and the development of new technologies that will combat climate change while also growing our economy as well. This  not radical measures like the Green New Deal  is the approach most Americans want.

Education is another area of potential bipartisan agreement. In the wake of COVID, there is growing recognition that parents need and deserve more leverage over schools  and thats not just true for conservatives. According to recent polling by RMG Research, 54% of independents and 41% of Democrats  and 59% of Black Democrats  believe parents have too little control. A full 77% of parents believe that if a school fails to offer in-person learning, parents should be free to enroll their child at another school at no cost. Sixty-two percent believe that should also apply to parents unhappy with their schools mask policies.

We should be able to make progress on these issues  to increase parental choice in education, pursue smart and environmentally friendly energy policies, and provide targeted, fiscally responsible support to workers who need it  but todays media environment discourages people from coming together on these issues.

Traditionally nonpartisan, mainstream media sources in particular have shifted left and too often joined the chorus of progressives in labeling anyone outside of the progressive caucus not just wrong, but evil. Why should anyone moderate work with the other side when that other side has been written off as unworthy of consideration?

This hasnt just stymied conservatives, but liberals too. Rather than advancing their policy agenda, congressional leaders have been held hostage by radicals who think that $3.5 trillion is too modest a spending bill to pass. Americans disagree. Fifty-two percent of respondents in a recent Gallup poll believed that government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. The bipartisan divide on that question was great, with 80% of Republicans agreeing that government was overreaching, compared to just 18% of Democrats. But 57% of independents  up from 38% last year  shared the conservative view.

Given this skepticism of government, its no wonder that a recent AFP/YouGov poll found that more Americans oppose the administrations $3.5 trillion spending bill than support it. The mainstream media would never encourage the left to recognize its own role in this overreach. The media define bipartisanship as conservatives caving to whatever progressives want. But thats simply not how most Americans see it. Indeed, bipartisanship still exists, just not among todays power brokers in Washington or in the media that covers them.

Carrie Lukas is president of Independent Womens Forum. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
For the third time this year, all 50 Senate Democrats voted to advance major voting rights legislation, and all Senate Republicans voted against allowing a public debate. On Oct. 20, they blocked the Freedom to Vote Act, a bill with common-sense reforms and widespread support. Its a compilation of tried-and-true solutions empowering voters in states  bipartisan reforms that help ensure our elected officials represent we the people, not secret special interests.

Today, many Americans are skeptical about who our elected officials are working for. Seven in 10 of us believe the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful and traditional parties and politicians dont care about people like me. Yet for three years, Senate Republicans have refused to allow even public debate on a bill to protect our freedom to vote and get big money out of politics. This marks a huge, and troubling, change. Since the earliest days of our country, government by the people has been something Americans agreed on  regardless of party.

The Voting Rights Act is a good example of how the work of keeping our Republic has historically crossed party boundaries. Each time it has been updated, a Republican president signed it into law:

 Richard Nixon signed an extension because The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has opened participation in the political process.

 Gerald Ford supported expanding the act because the right to vote is at the very foundation of our American system, and nothing must interfere with this very precious right.

 Ronald Reagan signed an extension because Ive pledged that as long as Im in a position to uphold the Constitution, no barrier will come between our citizens and the voting booth.

 George H.W. Bush signed an expansion.

 And George W. Bush signed the most recent update (which passed the Senate 98-0) saying, In the America promised by our Founders  every generation has a responsibility to add its own chapter to the unfolding story of freedom.  Weve made progress toward equality, yet the work for a more perfect union is never ending.

How is it that, today, Senate Republicans view protecting the freedom to vote as a partisan issue?

Getting big money out of politics helps ensure that our government works for the people, not for special interests. As with voting rights, that effort has historically crossed party lines. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, legislation passed in 1974 to limit campaign donations and incentivize small donations for presidential elections, a 1976 law expanding disclosure of political donations, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 were all bipartisan and signed by Republican presidents. More important, these reforms werent just bipartisan  they advanced nonpartisan interests of the people.

How is it that, today, Senate Republicans view protecting our government from special-interest influence as a partisan issue?

Gerrymandering  the scheme of designing legislative districts to give some voters more power and other voters less  has been scorned by leaders in both parties. Gerrymandering has become a national scandal, Reagan said in 1987.

How is it that, today, allowing voters to choose their elected officials  rather than enabling politicians to pick their voters  has become a partisan issue?

Large majorities of voters  Democrats, Republicans and independents  support reforms contained in the Freedom to Vote Act. In fact, when Americans get to vote directly on these reforms, theyve largely approved them the last several years. Bold reforms to protect our voices and our freedom to vote like the Freedom to Vote Act, John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and D.C. Statehood are supported by Republican voters, just not elected Republicans.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., reached out to Senate Republicans to try to win support for his compromise voting rights bill. However, Democrats cannot throw up their hands and walk away because of continued Republican intransigence. The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which granted citizenship, voting rights and equal protection of the law to formerly enslaved people, were passed on party-line votes, but no one would toss them aside on that basis.

Its time for congressional Republicans to learn from the states, listen to the voters, and find their way back to the principle of a government by the people. Our generation has a responsibility to add our own chapter to the unfolding story of freedom. Its beyond time for Senate Republicans to advance the Freedom to Vote Act. If they dont, Senate Democrats must reform the filibuster to protect our sacred freedom to vote.

Karen Hobert Flynn is the president of Common Cause. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
Watertown, SD (57201)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. Gusty winds diminishing during the afternoon. Morning high of 34F with temps falling to near 20. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 18F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Youd like to think one civil war was more than enough
Tiger King Joe Exotic says he has aggressive cancer View Photo

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  The man known as Tiger King, who gained fame in a Netflix documentary following his conviction for trying to hire someone to kill an animal rights activist, says he has cancer.

It is with a sad face that I have to tell you  that my prostate biopsys came back with an aggressive cancer, Joe Exotic, who is being held at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, wrote on a Twitter post Wednesday.

The blond mullet-wearing former Oklahoma zookeeper, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is known for his expletive-laden rants on YouTube and a failed 2018 Oklahoma gubernatorial campaign.

He was prominently featured in the popular documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.

He was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2020 after being convicted for violating federal wildlife laws and a failed murder-for-hire plot targeting Carole Baskin, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida.

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver in July ordered Maldonado-Passage be resentenced to a shorter term, finding that the trial court wrongly treated the two convictions separately in calculating his prison term.

The panel said his advisory sentencing range should be between 17 1/2 years and just under 22 years, rather than between just under 22 years and 27 years in prison used by the trial court.

Maldonado-Passage wrote on Twitter for prayers and the world to be my voice to be released, saying there is no evidence he committed crimes.
Facebook removes Ethiopian PMs post for inciting violence View Photo

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Facebook says it has removed a post by Ethiopias prime minister that urged citizens to rise up and bury the rival Tigray forces who now threaten the capital as the countrys war reaches the one-year mark.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmeds post on Sunday violated the platforms policies against inciting and supporting violence, spokeswoman Emily Cain for Facebooks parent company, Meta, told The Associated Press. It was taken down on Tuesday morning, she said.

The obligation to die for Ethiopia belongs to all of us, Abiy said in the now-deleted post that called on citizens to mobilize by holding any weapon or capacity.

Abiy is still regularly posting on the platform, where he has 3.5 million followers. The United States and others have warned Ethiopia about dehumanizing rhetoric after the prime minister in comments in July described the Tigray forces as cancer and weeds.

Facebook has removed posts from world leaders before, although in rare circumstances. Earlier this year, the company deleted a video from U.S. President Donald Trump in which he peddled false claims about election fraud following a deadly skirmish at the U.S. Capitol. Facebook said at the time the video contributed to the risk of ongoing violence. Just last week, the tech platform yanked a live broadcast from Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro because he made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Spokeswoman Cain did not say how Facebook was made aware of the Ethiopia post, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister made as Tigray forces took control of key cities over the weekend that put them in position to move down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa.

Alarmed, Abiys government this week declared a national state of emergency with sweeping powers of detention and military conscription. The prime minister repeated his call to bury the Tigray forces in public comments on Wednesday as he and other officials marked one year of war.

Meanwhile, Ethiopias highly polarized social media this week saw a number of high-profile posts targeting ethnic Tigrayans and even suggesting they be placed in concentration camps.

Thousands of people have been killed in the war between Ethiopian and allied forces and the Tigray ones who long dominated the national government before Abiy took office. The United Nations human rights chief said Wednesday they had received reports of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans being rounded up for detention in recent months.

Former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen last month singled out Ethiopia as an example of what she called the platforms destructive impact on society. My fear is that without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning, she told the Senate consumer protection subcommittee. What we saw in Myanmar and are seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it.

Meta spokeswoman Cain declined to say how many staffers they have on the ground in Ethiopia or dedicated to detecting violent speech in Ethiopia on its platform, but she said the company has the capability to review posts in Somali, Amharic, Oromo, and Tigrinya. She also said it has a team that includes people from Ethiopia or who have spent time in the country.

But Berhan Taye, a researcher in digital rights based in neighboring Kenya who tracks social media on Ethiopia and regularly escalates questionable posts to the Facebook platform, told the AP last week the platform wasnt moderating in the Tigrinya language, the language of Tigrayans, as recently as April.

Overall in Ethiopia, if you report (posts) on the platform, its very highly likely to get no reply at all, she said. From the amount we escalate, and the number of replies we get, that tells you their internal system is really limited.

___

Seitz reported from Columbus, Ohio.

By CARA ANNA and AMANDA SEITZ

Associated Press
Stranger charged with abducting 4-year-old Australian girl View Photo

CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Cleo Smith was back to her laughing, bubbly self as she played in the backyard of her Australian west coast family home on Thursday, hours before a 36-year-old stranger was charged with abducting the 4-year-old from a camping tent more than two weeks ago.

Police charged Terry Kelly, a local resident, with forcibly taking a child among other offenses, a police statement said.

Kelly, referred to in his charge sheet as Terence Darrell Kelly, appeared briefly in court in the town of Carnarvon where a magistrate refused to release him on bail.

Police visited Cleos family in Carnarvon as they prepared to gather crucial eyewitness evidence involving Kelly, who is suspected of snatching her from a campground north of the town of 5,000 people on Oct. 16.

I can only see her on the outside, but from that point of view, Im amazed that she seems to be so well-adjusted and happy, and it was really  heartwarming to see that shes still bubbly and shes laughing, Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine said.

Im sure that it has had an impact, but just to see her behaving quite naturally like a 4-year-old girl should do and just enjoying being in the presence of her little sister and her family was good, Blaine added.

Blaine was part of a four-member police team that used a battering ram to smash into a locked house early Wednesday and rescue Cleo. The lights were on and she was alone playing with toys in a house less than a 10-minute drive from her own, police said.

My name is Cleo, the smiling girl told the police officers who rescued her and asked her name as confirmation that they had found the right child.

Kelly was arrested in a nearby street at about the same time, police said.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde, who heads the police investigation, said specialist child interviewers had traveled to Carnarvon from the state capital Perth, 900 kilometers (560 miles) to the south.

The main concern around that is Cleos welfare, Wilde said of the interview.

We have experienced people that will undertake that and itll take as long as it takes. Well sit down with the family and work out the appropriate time, Wilde added.

Police would not comment on whether Cleo was interviewed before Kelly was charged.

Media have reported Kelly raised suspicion among other residents when he was seen buying diapers and was known to have no children, but police have disclosed little information about what made the man a suspect.

It wasnt a random tip or a clairvoyant or any of the sort of things that you might hear, Police Minister Paul Papalia said. It was just a hard police grind.

Kelly was taken from police detention to a hospital late Wednesday and again on Thursday, with what media reported were self-inflicted injuries.

Asked about reports Kelly was injured after banging his head against a cell wall, Western Australia Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch only replied that there were no serious injuries.

A police statement said Kellys medical matter does not relate to any police involvement with him.

Wilde said Kelly had since returned to the police station and was speaking to officers.

Wednesday was the first full night Cleo spent at home with her mother, Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon and her baby half-sister Isla Gliddon since the familys ordeal began.

As they slept, public buildings in Perth were illuminated with blue lights to celebrate the success of the police investigation. In Carnarvon, balloons were raised on buildings and signs were posted welcoming Cleo home.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan also visited the family on Thursday and commented on how well-adjusted the child and her parents seemed.

Shes bubbly, playing, friendly, sweet. She was eating an icy pole, she spilt it every way. She told me it was very, very sticky, which I believed, and she was just delightful, McGowan said.

McGowan said he gave her two teddy bears dressed in police uniforms, but she seemed unimpressed with his suggestion that she name them Cameron and Rod after the senior detectives leading her investigation.

Blaine, a homicide investigator, said he was uncertain whether Cleo recognized him from their first meeting when they met again on Thursday. He described his reaction to finding Cleo alive as shock, followed by elation.

Wed always hoped for that outcome, but were still not prepared for it, Blaine said.

Xanthe Mallett, a criminologist at Australias Newcastle University, said finding a victim of stranger abduction alive after more than two weeks was rare.

Sadly, theyre normally killed quickly, usually during the first three hours, Mallett said.

The Carnarvon communitys willingness to help police find Cleo was likely a key factor in the investigations success, she said. Police had offered a 1 million Australian dollar ($743,000) reward for information, but dont expect the money will be claimed.

I always thought that this was going to be somebody with local connections because it was somebody who knew that campsite, so the fact that she was so close to that campsite and so close to Cleos home wasnt a surprise to me, Mallett said.

Police engaged so well with that community and had them on board, they had the whole communitys eyes on everyone, reporting anyone suspicious. I think that was really key in this investigation  just great, old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground police work, Mallett added.

By ROD McGUIRK

Associated Press
CA Redistricting Visualization View Photos

Sonora, CA  The California Citizens Redistricting Commission continues to work toward creating a proposed redistricting map that must be released ahead of November 15.

It will redraw the lines for Congressional, state Senate and Assembly seats.

The commission has been updating its proposal and releasing what they refer to as visualizations ahead of the November 15 date. Over the weekend, the commission released its first proposed visualization that would have expanded House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthys district from Bakersfield up through Tuolumne County.

However, a second, revised, visualization was just now released that puts Tuolumne and Mariposa counties back into McClintocks district. He would also continue to represent nearby counties like Calaveras and Amador. The commission has been receiving input from state residents and will continue to review comments and revise the plan ahead of November 15. At that point, more public comment will be received, and a final map will be adopted in late December. The boundaries will take effect in 2022. The maps are redrawn every 10 years.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)  A police standoff with the driver of a reportedly stolen truck snarled Thursday morning rush hour traffic in Orange County after an hours-long pursuit through Southern California.

The driver of the big rig finally gave up after a police SWAT team surrounded the truck on State Route 55 in Santa Ana, north of Interstate 405.

Were grateful that he did come out peacefully and hes being taken into custody right now, California Highway Patrol Officer Florentino Olivero told KTLA.

The pursuit began after 8 p.m. Wednesday and went on for hours until spike strips blew out some of the trucks tires, eventually bringing it to a stop.
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  The first man shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was hyperaggressive that night, threatened to kill Rittenhouse and later lunged for his rifle just before the 17-year-old fired, witnesses testified Thursday.

The testimony at Rittenhouse's murder trial came from two witnesses who had been called to the stand by the prosecution but gave accounts often more favorable to the defense in the politically polarizing case.

Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with shooting three men, two of them fatally, in the summer of 2020. The aspiring police officer had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from violent protests that broke out over the police shooting of a Black man.

Richie McGinniss, who was recording events on a cellphone that night for the conservative website The Daily Caller, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot that night, was killed after chasing down Rittenhouse and making a lunge for the gun.

I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon, McGinniss said.

Ryan Balch, a former Army infantryman who carried an AR-style rifle that night and walked around patrolling the streets with Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum was hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner, including trying to set fires and throwing rocks.

Balch said he got between Rosenbaum and another man while Rosenbaum was trying to start a fire, and Rosenbaum got angry, shouting, If I catch any of you guys alone tonight Im going to f- kill you!

Balch said that Rittenhouse was within earshot and that he believed the threat was aimed at both of them.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

The killing of Rosenbaum, 36, has emerged as one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video.

In an attempt to undo some of the damage done by his own witness, prosecutor Thomas Binger said McGinniss' testimony about what Rosenbaum was intending to do was complete guesswork.

Isn't it? he asked.

Well, McGinniss replied, he said, `F- you.' And then he reached for the weapon.

But McGinniss also appeared to boost the prosecutions case when he said he had a sense that something bad could happen that night because of all the guns in the area. The prosecutor also elicited testimony from McGinniss and Balch that affirmed Rosenbaum was not armed that night and did not actually hurt anyone.

In his testimony, McGinniss said that as Rosenbaum lunged, Rittenhouse kind of dodged around with his weapon and then leveled the gun and fired.

Binger repeatedly tried to get McGinniss to say Rosenbaum was not lunging but falling when he was shot, as McGinniss said in a media interview days after the shooting.

But McGinniss said: He was lunging, falling. I would use those as synonymous terms in this situation because basically, you know, he threw his momentum towards the weapon.

As prosecutors played footage of Rosenbaum lying fatally wounded in a car lot, McGinniss struggled to keep his composure on the stand, rapidly inhaling and exhaling, then averting his eyes from a video monitor. The prosecutor apologized for playing it, saying he had to do it.

Across the room, Rittenhouse appeared to look away from his desktop monitor and cast his eyes downward as the video showed Rosenbaum bleeding from the head, groaning loudly.

The defense also has said that a shot fired by someone in the crowd moments before Rittenhouse began shooting made the young man believe he was under attack.

Kenosha Detective Martin Howard testified that video shows that a protester, Joshua Ziminski, had fired the first shot into the air. Howard said he used a stopwatch and timed five or six videos to determine that 2.5 seconds later, Rittenhouse began firing at Rosenbaum.

A wealth of video has been played in court that captured the tumultuous demonstration and the series of shootings.

The shooting of Rosenbaum set in motion the bloodshed that followed moments later. Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wisconsin, who was seen on bystander video hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard.

Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a protester from West Allis, Wisconsin, who had a gun in his hand as he stepped toward Rittenhouse.

Before testimony resumed Thursday, the judge dismissed a juror who had made a joke to a court security officer about the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the Black man whose wounding triggered the Kenosha protests. The juror, a retired man, declined to repeat the joke for the judge.

It is clear that the appearance of bias is present and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said.

Prosecutors also replayed widely seen video of the interview that The Daily Caller did with Rittenhouse before the shooting.

It began with Rittenhouse, a former police youth cadet, in front of a boarded-up building, where he said he and other men were there to protect this business, and part of my job is theres somebody hurt, Im running into harms way. He also said he was there to provide medical aid.

Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted in the politically and racially polarizing case that has stirred furious debate over self-defense, vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the racial unrest that erupted around the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other cases like it.

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Forliti reported from Minneapolis; Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press writer Dave Kolpack contributed from Fargo, North Dakota.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
BANGKOK (AP)  Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson left Myanmar on Thursday after finishing a private humanitarian mission in which he sought to boost the Southeast Asian countrys efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic and facilitate the delivery of aid.

The main focus of my discussions was to identify specific ways to speed the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility to Myanmar and to help mitigate a possible fourth wave of COVID-19, he said, according to a statement issued by his Richardson Center for Global Engagement.

COVAX is a U.N.-backed effort to even out global vaccine distribution by supplying doses to low- and middle-income countries. Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia.

During his visit, Richardson met with the leader of Myanmars military government and other top officials, members of the foreign diplomatic corps and representatives of the United Nations and other international organizations, the statement said.

It said he recommended a range of specific humanitarian measures, mainly to facilitate the delivery of assistance to remote areas.

The situation has been worsened by armed conflict following the militarys seizure of power in February, when it ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Opposition to the takeover has grown into an incipient insurgency that some U.N. officials have warned could turn into a civil war.

Richardson, who has also served as secretary of energy and governor of New Mexico, also encouraged Myanmar authorities to engage with the U.N. and ASEAN Special Envoys, suggesting creative solutions to break the current impasse, the statement said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, has sought to mediate a solution to the violent conflict, but Myanmars leaders have been uncooperative.

Richardson said he was able to secure the release from prison on Wednesday of a woman, Aye Moe, who used to work with his center. The military-installed government has arrested more than 9,700 people on political charges since it took power, though many have since been freed.

Richardson is known for his past efforts to gain the freedom of Americans detained in countries with which Washington has poor relations, such as North Korea. His visit had raised hopes that he might obtain the release of U.S. journalist Denny Fenster, who has been jailed for more than five months on political charges, but the statement did not mention his case.

The U.N.s top humanitarian official in Myanmar, Andrew Kirkwood, said at the end of September that Myanmar's severe crisis is the result of increasing communal strife, the military ouster of the countrys democratically elected government and the coronavirus pandemic, which had a devastating third wave of infections this past summer.

The per capita death rate in Myanmar was the worst in Southeast Asia during one week in July, when bodies were lined up outside overwhelmed crematoriums. Even before the surge, the countrys central health care system was collapsing as the military attacked and drove underground many medical workers who were early opponents of the February takeover.

As of Nov. 2, about 13.5 million of Myanmars roughly 55 million people had received at least one vaccination dose.
LONDON (AP)  British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons government is facing allegations of favoritism and corruption amid a backlash from lawmakers and the public over efforts to rewrite lobbying rules and shield a member of Johnson's party from censure.

The Conservative Party lawmaker at the center of the dispute resigned Thursday after the government was forced to shelve plans to overhaul the disciplinary process for members of Parliament and block his suspension. Owen Paterson, a former Cabinet minister, insisted he was totally innocent but couldnt defend himself under the current system.

But the angry argument raged on, threatening to dent the integrity of the House of Commons, the democratically elected chamber of the British Parliament.

This has been an unbelievable 24 hours even by this governments chaotic standards, Keir Starmer. leader of the opposition Labour Party, said after Patersons resignation. Only yesterday Boris Johnson was forcing his MPs to rip up the rules on standards in public life in a truly damning indictment of this prime minister and the corrupt government he leads."

Starmer argued that Johnson "must now apologize to the entire country for this grubby attempt to cover up for the misdemeanor of his friend.

The furious dispute came after lawmakers voted Wednesday not to suspend Paterson after he was found to have broken lobbying rules. Following the vote, it seemed Paterson was set to avoid the 30-day suspension recommended by the House of Commons' standards committee.

It was the first time in decades that lawmakers hadnt accepted the standards committees decisions. Opposition parties responded with fury and threatened to boycott future standards actions.

The lobbying episode is the latest to fuel allegations that Johnson and his government dont follow rules that apply to everyone else. Home Secretary Priti Patel was allowed to keep her job after she was found to have bullied members of staff. Johnson himself has been criticized for allowing a Conservative Party donor to fund renovations of the prime ministers residence.

Jonathan Evans, a former director of Britains domestic intelligence service who now leads the governments Committee on Standards in Public Life, criticized the governments handling of the Paterson case as deeply flawed.

Attempting to rewrite the rules to protect an individual member of parliament was a retrograde step that threatens Britains reputation for good governance, Evans said in a speech Thursday.

Its not inherent in the nature of the country that we will not be corrupt, he said. We could slip into being a corrupt country, and thats why we need to be vigilant around these issues. Its also quite possible that we could slip in terms of international perceptions of us.

Newspaper headlines reflected the anger, with the Daily Mail proclaiming that Shameless MPs Slink Back Into Sleaze, and the Guardian saying that PM Accused of Corruption as Rules on Sleaze Torn Up.

By Thursday morning, the government was changing course. House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said he would look for cross-party consensus on overhauling the disciplinary process and that the link between the Paterson case and the future system for lawmakers must be severed.

I fear last nights debate conflated an individual case with the general concern, Rees-Mogg said. This link needs to be broken.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone said last month that Paterson lobbied the government in 2016 and 2017 on behalf of two companies that were paying him  the clinical diagnostics company Randox and the meat-processing firm Lynns Country Foods.

The Commons Standards Committee said Patersons actions were an egregious case of paid advocacy. It recommended that he be suspended from the House of Commons for 30 sitting days.

But Paterson, a former environment minister who has been a member of Parliament since 1997, called the investigation biased and wanted to appeal. He said he hadnt been allowed to present his own evidence and that anxiety about the probe played a part in the death of his wife Rose, who killed herself in 2020.

With integrity of disciplinary procedures in the House of Commons being called into question, Paterson said it was time to leave politics.

I maintain that I am totally innocent of what I have been accused of and I acted at all times in the interests of public health and safety, Paterson said in a statement. I, my family and those closest to me know the same. I am unable to clear my name under the current system.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Louisville Democrat Charles Booker promised Wednesday to take his message about the shared interests of all Kentuckians to every corner of the state as he filed to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in next years elections.

Booker submitted his paperwork a day after Democrats suffered a stinging loss in the governor's race in neighboring Virginia. The defeat escalated alarms within the party about its broader prospects in next year's midterm elections.

Booker, a former state lawmaker, already faces a daunting task in trying to unseat Paul, who is seeking a third term in a state trending solidly toward the GOP.

A Paul-vs.-Booker contest would present Bluegrass State voters with starkly different philosophies. Paul is a libertarian-leaning conservative who denounces deficit spending, foreign aid and government overreach. Booker promotes a progressive agenda with racial and economic justice themes.

Booker on Wednesday faulted Democrats for a willingness to concede the narrative to Republicans in rural parts of the nation. Looking to build an urban-rural coalition, the Black former lawmaker promised to take his hood to the holler themes to regions of Kentucky that have become GOP strongholds. The emphasis will be on our common bonds, Booker said.

We have to show up and earnestly engage folks and listen to them, he told reporters. When I stood on the tracks with miners, they talked to me about sustainable energy. When I stood with teachers in western Kentucky, they told me how they want to fully and equitably fund public schools. When I speak to farmers, they're understanding that climate change is real.

Paul has tried to portray Booker as being out of step with the state's electorate. The senator, who ran for president in 2016, has drawn attention to law enforcement and school governance issues seized on by other Republican candidates nationwide.

Paul's deputy campaign manager, Jake Cox, said Wednesday that the senator "will continue his fight for fully funding our law enforcement and for parents rights.

Booker rose to prominence as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2020 by touting racial and economic justice themes that coincided with protests erupting in Louisville and other cities across the country after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans in encounters with police. Booker touts Medicare for all, anti-poverty programs, a clean-energy agenda and criminal justice changes he says would help white Appalachians as well as people living in Louisville.

Paul was first elected to the Senate in the tea party-driven wave of 2010. He rails against socialism and big-government programs he says encroach on individual liberties and drive up the nations debt.

Booker narrowly lost last years Democratic Senate primary to Amy McGrath, an establishment-backed rival who was trounced by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in the general election.

Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Wendell Ford in 1992.
Hugs with friends. Birthday parties indoors. Pillow fights. Schoolchildren who got their first COVID-19 shots Wednesday said these are the pleasures they look forward to as the U.S. enters a major new phase in fighting the pandemic.

Health officials hailed shots for kids ages 5 to 11 as a major breakthrough after more than 18 months of illness, hospitalizations, deaths and disrupted education.

Kid-sized doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine cleared two final hurdles Tuesday  a recommendation from CDC advisers, followed by a green light from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At a Decatur, Georgia, pediatricians office, 10-year-old Mackenzie Olson took off her black leather jacket and rolled up her sleeve as her mother looked on.

I see my friends but not the way I want to. I want to hug them, play games with them that we dont normally get to, and have a pillow fight with her best friend, Mackenzie said after getting her shot at the Childrens Medical Group site.

With the federal government promising enough vaccine to protect the nations 28 million kids in this age group, pediatricians offices and hospitals began inoculating children. Schools, pharmacies and other locations plan to follow suit in the days ahead.

The atmosphere surrounding the launch of shots for elementary-age students was festive in many locations. California vaccine sites welcomed children with inflatable animals and handed out coloring books and prizes. Vehicles lined up before dawn at an Atlanta site.

Many pediatricians offices expected strong interest in the shots at least initially, but health officials are worried about demand tapering off. Almost two-thirds of parents recently polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they would wait or not seek out vaccines for their kids.

Brian Giglio, 40, of Alexandria, Virginia, brought his 8-year-old son, Carter, in for vaccination at Childrens National Hospital in Washington, where kids with underlying conditions got first dibs. Carter has Type 1 diabetes that puts him at risk for complications if he were to become infected.

Giglio said the vaccine was like a hallway pass for us to begin living life again. And Carter said he cant wait to leave masks behind once hes fully vaccinated, so he can smell the things he used to be able to smell without it.

Im ready to trash it, he said, though the CDC still recommends masks in schools and indoor public spaces where virus activity is high, even for the fully vaccinated.

Cate Zeigler-Amon, 10, was first in line Wednesday for a drive-through vaccination at Viral Solutions in Atlanta. The girl enthusiastically bounced around the car before the shot, which she broadcast live on her computer during morning announcements at her elementary school.

Afterward, Cate said she was looking forward to hugging her friends and celebrating her birthday indoors next month instead of having a freezing cold outside birthday party.

Hartford Hospital in Connecticut vaccinated seven youngsters Tuesday night, minutes after the CDCs director gave the OK, and three more early Wednesday. As they got their shots, one girl squeezed her eyes shut and a boy barely flinched, and other waiting kids applauded.

The vaccine  one-third the dose given to older children and adults and administered with kid-sized needles  requires two doses three weeks apart, plus two more weeks for full protection. That means children who get vaccinated before Thanksgiving will be covered by Christmas.

The timing before winter holidays is very fortunate, said Dr. Jennifer Shu, whose Childrens Medical Group office in Decatur, Georgia, began vaccinating first thing Wednesday. This age group will be able to spend holidays with friends and family more safely than they have been able to since the start of the pandemic.

Thousands of pediatricians pre-ordered doses, and Pfizer began shipments soon after the Food and Drug Administrations decision Friday to authorize emergency use. Pfizer said it expects to make 19,000 shipments totaling about 11 million doses in the coming days, and millions more will be available to order on a weekly basis.

Authorities said they expect a smooth rollout, unlike the chaos that plagued the national one for adults nearly a year ago.

Asked about parents having trouble finding vaccine appointments, White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said the vaccines.gov website will be updated by Friday for parents to search for locations near them. He said the kid vaccination campaign will be at full speed next week as Pfizer continues to ship millions more doses to locations around the country.

More than 6,000 vaccination clinics are being planned at schools around the country before the winter holiday break, he said.

Walgreens planned to start kids vaccinations Saturday and said parents could sign up online or by calling 1-800-Walgreens. CVS was also accepting appointments online and by phone at select pharmacies starting Sunday.

Despite the initial enthusiasm, not everyone is rushing out to get shots.

Hannah Hause, a Colorado mother of four children ages 2, 5, 7 and 8, is herself vaccinated, but wants to see how the child vaccines play out and are studied in the larger childhood population.

Its not studied long-term. It just makes me nervous, she said. As long as I can wait, I will wait.

At a White House briefing Wednesday, Walensky said authorities thoroughly reviewed all available data on the vaccines safety, efficacy and the immune response it generates before recommending shots for kids.

Dr. Ada Stewart, a Black family physician in Columbia, South Carolina, and past president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said shes seen the toll the virus has taken on younger children  not just in family illness and death but with school disruptions, slipping grades and mental strain.

School closures throughout the pandemic have disproportionately burdened children of color, widening academic gaps and worsening mental health, according to data presented Tuesday to CDC advisers. It showed more than 2,000 COVID-related school closures in just the first two months of the current school year.

A Pfizer study of 2,268 children found the vaccine was almost 91% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections. The FDA examined 3,100 vaccinated kids in concluding the shots are safe.

Some skeptics have questioned the need for kids to get vaccinated since they are less likely than adults to develop severe COVID-19. But with the delta variant, they get infected and transmit just as readily as adults do, Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a recent White House briefing.

Infected kids have also contributed to the U.S. toll  almost 46 million infections and more than 740,000 deaths.

Since the pandemic began, at least 94 children ages 5 to 11 have died from COVID-19, more than 8,300 have been hospitalized and over 5,000 have developed a serious inflammatory condition linked to the coronavirus. Black and Latino youngsters and those with chronic conditions are among the hardest hit.

Kyevontay Jordan, 7, who is Black, has diabetes and got his shot at Childrens National Hospital in Washington. The vaccine gave his dad peace of mind.

Now I can sleep not worrying about him going to school, said Brian Jordan. Being exposed to the coronavirus could really affect him and mess him up.

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Associated Press writers Patty Nieberg in Denver, Angie Wang in Washington, Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia, and Kate Brumback and Ron Harris in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at https:(backslash)(backslash)twitter.com(backslash)LindseyTanner.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
McALLEN, Texas (AP)  For about four months before President Joe Biden took office, advisers engaged in intense internal debate about how quickly they should undo his predecessor's hardline border policies.

The answer, almost always, was that Donald Trump's mark couldn't be erased soon enough.

Immigration advocates on the transition team defiantly shot down a detailed memo circulated among top aides that called for turning back some migrants who cross illegally by making them seek protection in other countries. They pushed back against estimates of soaring migration flows if Trumps policies were dismantled.

In the end, Biden recognized predictions that more migrants might come to the border, but he was firm that policies instituted by Trump were cruel and inhumane and had to be jettisoned.

Biden took office on Jan. 20. Almost immediately, numbers of migrants exceeded expectations. Plans outlined in a December document to fully resume asylum processing at land crossings were soon overtaken by events.

Children traveling alone shattered previous highs in March, making up most of the more than 4,500 people housed in temporary tents that were designed for 250 under COVID-19 standards. The Border Patrol encountered migrants in South Texas more often than ever in June and July, dashing expectations for a common summer slowdown.

In September, about 15,000 mostly Haitian refugees were camped under a bridge in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas. The chaotic scene stretched on for days as migrants waded back and forth across a river for supplies and families slept in squalor. Images of agents on horseback corralling refugees went viral.

The administration began a massive expulsion of Haitians while allowing thousands to remain in the U.S. Its uneven response after months of rising arrivals sparked sharp criticism from both the right and left, illustrating the consequences of scrapping Trump's policies without a new asylum system in place.

Some key developments could not have been predicted by any administration, and predating Biden was a major structural problem of immigration courts taking nearly four years on average to decide cases of immigrants not in custody.

But a close review of the last year  based on internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas and dozens of interviews with current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, migrants, shelter managers, advocates and others  shows how an administration stacked with seasoned immigration advocates was unprepared for the huge increase in people seeking refuge at the border. Many interviewed for this reconstruction spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized or comfortable discussing private deliberations.

When presented with specifics of the reconstruction, the White House defended its record.

After four years of the Trump administrations chaos, cruelty and misplaced priorities, the work to build a fair, orderly and humane immigration system will take time and wont happen overnight," said spokesman Vedant Patel. "In a short period of time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress delivering on its plan.

BROKEN ASYLUM SYSTEM

While the Biden administration would work to undo policies put in place during and after a 2019 spike in arrivals at the border, it inherited an asylum system that has been broken for years. It sorely tested Bidens immediate predecessors.

In the summer of 2014, large numbers of unaccompanied children from Central Americas Northern Triangle countries  Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras  showed up along the Texas border in the Rio Grande Valley, a profound demographic shift from predominantly Mexican men that created what then-President Barack Obama called a humanitarian crisis and left a deep impression on more enforcement-minded aides who went on to serve in the Biden administration. Spikes have since occurred periodically.

Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras accounted for about two of every three border arrests and people who came in families made up more than half in the governments 2019 fiscal year, both all-time highs. In a throwback to earlier times, encounters with single adults soared during Trumps final year in office after the launch of Title 42 authority, which allowed migrants to be expelled without a chance to seek asylum on the basis of coronavirus. They also faced no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts.

Against that daunting backdrop, Biden took office surrounded by immigration experts steeped with advocacy backgrounds. Esther Olavarria, an immigration attorney who worked for former Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Obama administration but spent much of her career as a Miami-based organizer, took a top spot on the White House Domestic Policy Council with Tyler Moran, who was then executive director of The Immigration Hub, a group of pro-immigration strategists.

Influential, more enforcement-minded voices included David Shahoulian, who resigned last month for personal reasons as assistant Homeland Security secretary for border security and immigration, and Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and career diplomat in Latin America who agreed to serve 100 days on the National Security Council as coordinator for the Southwest border.

REMAIN IN MEXICO WINDS DOWN

Despite concerns, Biden was adamant about his campaign promise to start reversing Trumps border policies by ending Remain in Mexico, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, under which about 70,000 asylum-seekers were made to wait outside the country for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

Crossings fell sharply after Trump expanded the policy in 2019, but migrants were forced to wait in dangerous and unfamiliar Mexican border cities where finding steady work was difficult and finding attorneys was nearly impossible. Human Rights First, an advocacy group, documented 1,544 examples of violent assaults, including murder, rape, torture and kidnapping.

During the transition, advocates pushed for the policys immediate reversal, but consensus emerged for a more gradual winding down.

The complicated logistics of allowing up to 26,000 asylum-seekers with active cases to return to the United States and remain free while their cases wound through the courts was a high priority in the administrations first weeks.

All records were on paper, with few working phone numbers or addresses listed, posing a challenge on how to get the word out. U.S. authorities, working closely with United Nations organizations, worried about a rush to the border exacerbating public health and security concerns  and at the same time, sending a message to asylum-seekers who had returned to Central America to make the dangerous journey back north.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights website for asylum-seekers with active cases went live Feb. 12 and was overwhelmed with technical glitches. Multiple dropdown boxes created confusion and led to a site redesign.

Despite the early hiccups, more than 11,000 asylum-seekers had returned to the United States by June 1, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas officially declared the policy was over after a review found it yielded only mixed effectiveness on border security. Others whose asylum cases were dismissed or denied under Trump were allowed in starting in late June.

As border crossings soared beyond expectations, Amy Pope joined the White House staff in March after having advised Biden on immigration during the campaign and working closely with him in 2014 when he was tasked by Obama with the unaccompanied children on the Texas border. Her mandate was to bridge internal rifts between advocacy- and more enforcement-minded aides while her nomination to the second-highest position at the International Organization for Migration awaited approval from other member nations at the U.N. agency.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS

Some White House and Homeland Security officials were frustrated by how woefully unprepared the Department of Health and Human Services was to handle unaccompanied children. As required by law, it was supposed to take custody within 72 hours and then place them in a home, usually with a parent or close relative.

Participants in early interdepartmental meetings said Health and Human Services officials raised few warnings. On Feb. 7, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened a large complex of white tents in the Rio Grande Valley, cramming more than 500 children into spaces designed for 32 under COVID-19 guidelines. Thick plastic curtains replaced chain-link fences used as barriers in the Obama and Trump administrations, but massive overcrowding was the same or worse.

If (Health and Human Services) were able to take these kids off our hands, then it would be better for everybody, Oscar Escamilla, acting executive officer of the Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector, said during a media tour of the Donna, Texas, facility on March 30. At the time, unaccompanied children were being held an average of 61 hours over the 72-hour limit and as long as 20 days. Were forced into the (child detention) business because we cant turn them over to anybody.

Health and Human Services belatedly sprang into action, aided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It opened about a dozen emergency holding centers within about a month to process unaccompanied children, renting space at a San Antonio concert venue and at military bases and convention centers in Dallas, San Diego and Long Beach, California.

By late April, the department had more than 22,000 children in its custody, but even more arrived as others were released to family in the United States during asylum proceedings. July broke Marchs record number of unaccompanied children.

On March 19, the Border Patrol for the first time ever began releasing families with notices to report to an immigration office within 60 days, instead of releasing them with more time-consuming notices to appear in immigration court. With processing taking up about 40% of Border Patrol resources, the agency concluded it had no choice. Troy Miller, the acting CBP commissioner, said in congressional testimony that the change cuts the paperwork in half.

As of Sept. 10, CBP had released 107,817 people without formal notices to appear in court, according to an internal document. Of those, 29,863, or 28%, did not report to ICE by their deadlines.

SUMMER INCREASE IN CROSSINGS

Once in office, Biden attended weekly meetings to discuss the border. However, the high-level gatherings became less frequent as COVID-19 travel restrictions eased and arrivals of unaccompanied children fell after March. Any sense of relief evaporated when the Border Patrols daily reports showed dramatic increases in migration flows in late June, bucking a pattern of declines during the summer heat.

The Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector stopped more than 20,000 migrants for the first week ever from July 18-24, smashing previous highs. Four of its five busiest weeks on record were in late June and July, the other one coming in March.

Brian Hastings, who heads the sector, wrote senior Border Patrol officials on July 26 that Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley was full and could no longer provide temporary shelter to migrants, which forced the agency to release thousands at a McAllen, Texas, bus station. He also said Health and Human Services was prioritizing children who would be easiest to place in homes over those who had been in Border Patrol custody the longest, specifically older teens and pregnant girls.

I know that you are overwhelmed there, but we need to get (unaccompanied children) moving, the Border Patrols deputy chief of operations wrote the same day. This issue is reaching the top level of this Administration again. Just want to make sure we are full court press on (unaccompanied children). (I get it ... along with everything else.)

MEXICO SURPRISE

The Biden administration underestimated migration flows, but Mexico popped a surprise that severely undermined Title 42, which had been the most significant victory for enforcement-minded aides who fought during the transition to temporarily maintain it. Advocacy groups have repeatedly called to end the public health measure, which was invoked on grounds of preventing the coronavirus from spreading.

On Jan. 23, U.S. authorities were taken aback when Mexican officials in the state of Tamaulipas said they would no longer accept Central American families expelled from the United States.

Mexican officials in other border states continued taking expelled families, but Tamaulipas borders most of South Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings by far. It resulted in crossings being even more concentrated in South Texas. The Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio sectors accounted for more than half of all migrant encounters in August, compared with less than one-third a year earlier.

There was great frustration and irritation with Mexico at the administrations highest levels, according to one person with direct knowledge of discussions with high-ranking officials. Border Patrol officials who work with Mexican authorities on more routine operational issues also pressed for change in long, daily conversations. U.S. authorities had trouble getting on the phone with Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca.

Mexican diplomats were sympathetic but said the change was linked to a child welfare law that took effect in January. The law prohibited its immigration agency from detaining children and required state officials to determine in each case what was in a childs best interest.

U.S. officials asked Mexico to delay implementation and consider adding more shelters for child migrants to meet its detention ban. When their pleas went unheeded, U.S. officials concluded Garcia Cabeza de Vaca was trying to stymie President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a political rival.

Hastings, a career Border Patrol official, contacted other sector chiefs about sending families to them. On a Sunday in early March, he secured twice-daily flights to El Paso, Texas, for families to be expelled to the adjoining Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. But that number was cut back within days because Mexican authorities there said they could take only 100 people a day. Once-daily charter flights continued from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso and to San Diego, where families were sent across the border to Tijuana, Mexico.

Tamaulipas authorities quickly relented by agreeing to accept families with children 7 years or older, but the impact was limited. In July, only 12% of the more than 83,000 family encounters on the border resulted in expulsion under Title 42 authority.

TOUGH TALK BUT INCREASED ARRIVALS

On Jan. 29, a federal appeals court authorized immediate expulsion of unaccompanied children under Title 42. As a father and grandfather, Biden couldnt go forward with it, unable to bear sending minors to dangerous Mexican border cities without their parents, even while recognizing the vast majority were 15 to 17 years old.

Mexicos reluctance to take families and Bidens exemption of unaccompanied children largely turned Title 42 into a tool for removing single adults.

The Rio Grande Valley, a citrus-growing delta of 1.3 million people, came alive each night with inflatable rafts carrying families across the meandering river.

Smugglers lifted families into knee-deep water  some spanning three generations and with infants and toddlers  careful not to step on U.S. soil where Border Patrol agents could arrest them. Agents watched rafts go back and forth between patches of sand on gnarly riverbanks, then escorted passengers to vans that carried them to an international bridge in Hidalgo, Texas, to await processing.

If there were no agents, migrants walked under cool, moonlit skies on dirt paths amid thick brush with scorpions and snakes, looking to surrender.

Biden and senior officials talked tough  Do not come, Vice President Kamala Harris warned on a June visit to Guatemala, repeating herself for emphasis  but migrants who kept coming spoke of the change in presidential administrations and stories from friends and relatives who were quickly released in the United States.

Jenny Clemente, a 29-year-old Salvadoran mother, said she left home Aug. 1 after seeing TV reports showing lots of families entering the United States. Maria Serrano, a 40-year-old Salvadoran mother departed her hometown with a 10-year-old daughter on July 18 after she was told Biden would let families cross with minors. Another mother from El Salvador, who preferred not to share her name for safety reasons, packed up and left a week later with her 12-year-old daughter after hearing a neighbor was allowed into the U.S. with her child.

All of them would end up expelled to Mexico by Aug. 21, struggling to determine their next steps.

ENFORCEMENT INCREASED

By midsummer, the pendulum swung to enforcement as patience wore thin in the presidents inner circle. The White House regularly consulted with pro-immigration groups, but relations deteriorated to the point that advocates abruptly ended an off-the-record call with Olavarria on a Saturday morning in October.

In August, the U.S. began flying Central Americans deep into Mexico to hand them off to Mexican authorities who, in turn, deported them to Guatemala. U.S. authorities initially decided on 24 such flights a month, but Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flights, tallied 36 in August and 44 in September.

The administration then faced the arrival of nearly 15,000 migrants, mostly Haitians in Texas. Mexico refuses to take back anyone who is not from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, giving rise to growing numbers from other countries. Ecuadorians surpassed El Salvadorans as the fourth-largest nationality arriving at the border in July.

Mayorkas said the Haitians arrivals was unusually swift, but people with direct knowledge say Colombia provided intelligence that large numbers were moving on to Panama on their way to the U.S. border. One U.S. official said the Border Patrols acting chief in Del Rio, Robert Garcia, asked headquarters for reinforcements 2 weeks before the Haitian crowd peaked on Sept. 18.

The U.S. has flown about 8,000 Haitian migrants back to Haiti since Sept. 19, one of its swiftest, large-scale expulsions of refugees or migrants in decades. The mass expulsions, along with treatment of some migrants at the border, led to sharp criticism of the Biden administration, even from fellow Democrats.

WHAT BORDER REFORM?

Immigration doesnt command the attention with Biden that it did with Trump, and there is no parallel to Stephen Miller, Trumps powerful aide whose relentless focus on immigration prompted him to call career officials several times a day for updates. Pope, a close Biden confidante, left in July for her post at the U.N. migration agency in Geneva.

A December 2020 internal document estimated the authorities could process 3,000 asylum-seekers a month at land crossings with Mexico and 12,000 a month within 180 days. It never happened.

The administration has taken modest steps, such as establishing a rocket docket for asylum-seeking families at the border and restoring an Obama-era program for unaccompanied children to apply in Central America to join their parents in the U.S. instead of making the perilous journey to the border. Its most ambitious proposal  adapted from the Migration Policy Institute think tank  is to assign asylum officers to the border to more quickly decide cases than immigration judges. Seemingly technical, it may have impact.

Despite that proposal, which wasnt published until August, the administration has yet to release detailed plans of the humane asylum system that Biden promised during his campaign.

___

This report is a collaboration between The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas, publisher of The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, and other newspapers. Spagat, a San Diego correspondent, is the AP's U.S. immigration beat team leader. Gonzalez is an investigative reporter for The Monitor.
Robin Jerstad /Contributor

San Antonio Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez has landed on the list of the most influential African Americans in the U.S. The Root ranked McKee Rodriguez at No. 71 on its annual list of the 100 most influential African Americans ages 25 to 45 known as The Root 100.

The list ranks people by scoring their reach and substance out of 10, and using those scores to determine their influence. The 26-year-old councilman and former teacher was given a reach score of 7.98 and substance score of 7.5 for an influence score of 158.9.
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, announced Thursday that he is not seeking reelection after three decades in the upper chamber.

He made the announcement during a news conference in Harlingen, saying he wanted to focus on family and other opportunities.

Lucio's decision comes as a surprise  earlier this year he announced he was running for reelection, and his office confirmed that remained his plan during the redistricting process this fall.

Lucio, vice chair of the Senate Education and Finance committees, has served in the Senate since 1991. He became known as a stalwart advocate for the needs of the Rio Grande Valley  and for breaking with his party on some major issues, making him easily the most moderate Democrat in the Senate.

Lucio opposes abortion and voted in support of Texas' new abortion restriction law that went into effect in September. He supports school choice, putting him at odds with fellow Democrats who believe it harms public schools. And he infuriated the LGBTQ community in 2017 when he voted for the "bathroom bill" that would have restricted transgender Texans access to certain public facilities.

Lucio's independence has endeared him to GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who regularly compliments him and has even campaigned for him.

Lucio said Thursday he urges "those in public service today to be bipartisan, to work together as brothers and sisters in Christ." He also highlighted his abortion views, saying he has "never made a secret of my pro-life convictions."

Lucio faced his first real primary opposition in a while in 2020 and got forced into a runoff, which he won by a comfortable margin. Lucio was facing the prospect of another competitive primary next year, with state Rep. Alex Dominguez, D-Brownsville, exploring a run for the seat in Senate District 27.

Redistricting made SD-27 less safe for Democrats, changing it from a district that President Joe Biden won by 16 percentage points to one he would have carried by 6 points.

Lucio's son, Eddie Lucio III, serves in the House and recently announced he would not seek reelection. A spokesperson said at the time that he did not plan to run for any other office this election.

Eddie Lucio Jr. has nonetheless spoken openly about his hopes for his son's political future and devoted a section of his speech Thursday to praising him.

"He's taught me, a much older man, what it is about commitment and unconditional love," Eddie Lucio Jr. said.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Jay Janner/Associated Press

Austin's youngest ever city council member is trying to make history again, this time in Washington, D.C. Greg Casar announced on November 4 that he's running for Congress. Despite being just 32 years old, Casar has already spent three terms on Austin City Council, building a reputation (and taking a few shots from the governor) as a progressive Democrat.

If elected, Casar will represent Texas 35th District. Earlier this year, the Texas lege gerrymandered - er, redrew - the 35th district and knocked down the percentage of Hispanic voters from 53 percent to just 48 percent, according to the Texas Tribune. District 35 includes parts of Bexar, Comal, Hays, and Travis counties. Lloyd Doggett, who has served in Congress since 1995, currently represents District 35, but is now running for reelection in District 37, which is concentrated solely in Austin.
Michele Sandberg/Getty Images

Republican Party of Texas chairman and 2022 gubernatorial hopeful Allen West was involved in a physical altercation at the Dallas Fort-Worth International Airport Wednesday. The incident allegedly stemmed from West's refusal to wear a mask on the premises, according to a press release from his campaign.

The statement alleges the GOP candidate was approached by a man who yelled at him for not wearing a mask. West allegedly responded by "flicking" the man's mask off. The man responded by raising his fists at West, per the statement. West took to Twitter afterward to provide his own account of the incident, saying the man called him an "idiot." West said he pulled down the man's mask and said "see, nothing happened."
The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind The Atlantic (dk).

Jay Powell urges patient approach to rate rises as taper begins FT

Opioid makers win major victory in California trial The Hill

The nations last uranium mill plans to import Estonias radioactive waste High Country News (GF).

COP26/Climate

Remember your living beyond your means, you need to cut back on carbon and you are the problem! pic.twitter.com/pVgVXGzWhp

Water

#COVID19

We have had vaccination drive successes, but apparently it is impossible to learn from them:

Mandates. A well-organized campaign. No politics. How Puerto Ricos vaccine drive turned into a success STAT

How a Group of Black Doctors Got Philadelphia Vaccinated Bloomberg

* * *

Covid didnt vote Politico. Were going to need drugs to dig our way out of this. Not a word on ventilation, naturally.

Molnupiravir: another Covid-19 treatment, another opportunity to recognize inequity STAT. Were going to need drugs.

* * *

Why scientists worldwide are watching UK COVID infections Nature. As one of the first countries to trust high vaccine coverage and public responsibility alone to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the United Kingdom has become a control experiment that scientists across the world are studying.

SARS-CoV-2 indoor air transmission is a threat that can be addressed with science PNAS. This article summarizes a National Academies of Science held in August 2020. Fundamentally, nothing will change.

SARS-CoV-2 Dose, Infection, and Disease Outcomes for COVID-19  A Review (Accepted Manuscript) Clinical Infectious Diseases. Review of the literature. We conclude that while there is an association between SARS-CoV-2 dose and infection, data do not support a relationship between dose and COVID-19 severity. Non-pharmaceutical interventions may limit the inoculum dose from an exposure, thereby reducing the risk of infection, but they are unlikely to individually have an impact on COVID-19 severity.
Yves here. Our Richard Smith has been dogging the sordid dealings of Scottish limited partnerships for years. Its gratifying to see more experts recognizing their role in facilitating crime and calling for crackdowns. So its disheartening to see, just as the UK is making reforms, that Ireland is stepping into this bad role.

Im a bit perplexed that the author so prominently features UK limited partnerships. If you were to search for earlier reporting and legislative discussions, thats not the target of concern. The offending ones are Scottish limited partnerships. Even though they are obviously also technically UK limited partnerships and can be reined in via UK-level reforms, as the article eventually explains, Scottish limited partnerships have special features that make them particularly abuse-friendly.

By Elspeth Berry, a Reader in Law at Nottingham Law School. Originally published at openDemocracy

UK limited partnerships have a sorry record at the forefront of international money laundering, corruption, tax evasion and other criminal activities. These corporate structures have been used in all sorts of cases  from complex financial structures used to commit fraud involving the theft of one-eighth of Moldovas annual GDP to masking foreign investment in opaque deals in Uzbekistan.

But while investigative journalists, international organisations and academics have highlighted the misuse of limited partnerships in the UK, often referred to as LPs, now, new developments in Ireland have allowed Irish limited partnerships to be used in the same way, enabling great harm at home and abroad.

This means its time for real reform  not just in terms of legal disclosure requirements, restricting use of opaque corporate partners, and more active policing of LPs, but in the very ethics that are meant to guide those who set up and operate these structures, including the partners themselves, lawyers, accountants and business formation agents.

UK LPs are attractive to wrongdoers because they are subject to minimal disclosure requirements. For example, they are not required to disclose their accounts. Yet, unlike general partnerships, they are required to register at Companies House (the UKs official registrar of businesses). This means that they can provide a certificate evidencing their existence, which may also suggest a degree of government recognition or approval.

In addition, LPs themselves are not taxable. Only the partners are liable to pay tax  and those partners are often resident in offshore locations where they pay little or no tax.

Scottish LPs  which have gained a particular reputation for misuse  are especially attractive because, unlike LPs in the rest of the UK, these structures have a separate legal personality to their partners. This enables the LP itself to enter into contracts and own property directly, further insulating their partners from risk.

The UK governments response so far has been to apply its beneficial ownership regime  i.e. companies have to reveal who owns over 25% in control rights in their organisation  to Scottish LPs. In official language, these individuals are referred to as people with significant control (PSC).

But this is not enough. Not only are PSC requirements not enforced, they do not apply at all to English, Welsh or Northern Irish LPs. Moreover, LP accounts are not disclosed, suspicious LPs cannot be terminated, and an LP may have no real connection with the UK and thus little opportunity for interaction with UK criminal enforcement agencies or its tax authorities. Further reforms in some but not all of these respects are the subject of an ongoing consultation by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Now, it appears that Irish limited partnerships (LPs) are following in the footsteps of UK LPs  something of a walk of shame. The Irish Times has detailed the growing use of Irish limited partnerships to facilitate international wrongdoing in a way which sadly mirrors the misuse of UK LPs. As criminology professor Kristian Lasslett puts it: [P]eople in the UK and Ireland might think of offshore as being the Cayman Islands, but people in Uzbekistan think of offshore as being Ireland and Scotland.

Yet this development could have been predicted by the Irish government, given the UKs experience. Indeed it was predicted by Irelands Business Post newspaper, which sounded the alarm in 2019 about obscure ownership structures and insufficient transparency requirements facilitating abuse.

Worryingly  but unsurprisingly  The Irish Times notes that the misuse of Irish LPs developed only after the UK government introduced the PSC reforms for Scottish LPs. This whack-a-mole effect was observed with the increased use of English and Northern Irish LPs after the introduction of those UK reforms.

Parallels between the UK and Ireland go beyond the lack of transparency in LPs. They also include signs that the private equity industry  direct investment firms that regularly use LPs  in both jurisdictions are influencing government to reduce regulation, rather than increase it. While the majority of those using LPs use them for legitimate purposes, reduced regulation favours those who do not.

It remains to be seen whether the UKs ongoing consultation on LP reform will accept the many legal reforms that are still required. However, it is likely that there will continue to be significant gaps in the legal regulation of LPs, as well as significant failings in its enforcement.

What is therefore also required is the development of a strong ethical framework with mandatory application  via Companies House  to all those involved in forming and operating LPs. This would set out values that are already widely shared, such as honesty, integrity and fairness, but that can easily be suppressed as a result of economic pressures.

This new ethical framework would also enshrine the importance of considering the common good rather than narrow self-interest. Such an ethical code could reduce the tension between regulation and the desire of businesses to avoid it, and thus promote both compliance with the law and ethical conduct where the law is ambiguous or silent.

Ultimately, what is needed is a change of individual and collective attitudes in UK limited partnerships and those who promote them  not just a change in the rules.
Yves here. I thought readers might enjoy a change from our regular programming. Here in the US, there isnt much mention of Diwali, unlike other important holidays and festivals for major religions. Is Diwali higher profile in the UK?

And for those of you in the subcontinent or with strong connections to it, how are you celebrating Diwali this year?

By Natasha Mikles, Lecturer in Philosophy, Texas State University. Originally published at The Conversation

Sometimes called the Indian festival of lights, Diwali is arguably the most important holiday of the year for South Asian families.

The festival, which is observed by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, lasts five days in its entirety. Traditionally the third day is considered the most important. During this day, families gather to light candles, eat sweets and place lit lamps in their public-facing windows.

As a scholar of Asian religion and popular narratives, Im interested in Diwali because it demonstrates how ancient tales in epics become part of religious practice.

Popular Stories from Hinduism

There are many stories around what exactly Diwali commemorates and why it is celebrated.

Among Hindu families, many claim the festival celebrates the defeat of the evil demon king Ravana by Rama  an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu and the hero of Indias Ramayana epic. In the most famous part of this epic tale, Ramas wife is abducted by the demon Ravana, and Rama must journey to the land of Lanka to save her with the assistance of his brother.

A different tradition states that the festival commemorates the defeat of the demon Narakasura by Lord Krishna. Like Rama, Krishna is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who has come to assist humanity in its time of need.

Stories tell of Krishnas efforts to rid the world of demons. In this particular story, the King Naraka gains extraordinary abilities through a deal with a demon and becomes intoxicated with power.

Narakasura, as he is now called, destroys the kingdoms around him and eventually plans to assault even the heavens. Krishna appears and uses his divine powers to neutralize Narakasuras weapons, eventually beheading him with a multi-pronged discus.

Other traditions associate the festival with the birth of the goddess Lakshmi and her marriage to Vishnu. In the Hindu tradition, Lakshmi is worshipped as the goddess of wealth, while Vishnu is seen as the preserver of humanity.

While there are many stories of her birth, the most prevalent is that Lakshmi appeared during the churning of the divine ocean of milk from which the nectar of immortality comes during a fight between the gods and demons. After appearing, she chooses to marry Vishnu and to assist him in working for the benefit of humanity.

In southern India, Hindu families commemorate the defeat of the demon Hiranyakshipu by Narasimha, the lion-headed incarnation of Vishnu. Like many Indian stories, Hiranyakshipu is a demi-god who believes he is immortal after receiving a divine blessing from the Hindu creator-god Brahma that lists the conditions for his death.

According to the boon, he cannot be killed at day or at night, inside or outside, by human or by animal, by projectile weapons or by hand weapons, and neither on the ground nor in the sky.

In response to Hiranyakshipus terrorizing of the heavens and Earth, Vishnu then incarnates as the lion-headed god Narasimha to kill the demon. He kills him at dusk, on the step of his house, as a chimeric lion with his claws as he lies on Narasimhas lap  all conditions that satisfy the elements of the boon.

The Diwali tradition is celebrated by Jains and Sikhs as well, who have their own interpretations of the festival. For Jains, Diwali celebrates the nirvana, or enlightenment, of Mahavira, the 24th spiritual teacher of the Jain path and the contemporary traditions founder.

Sikhs consider Diwali a commemoration of the release of Guru Hargobind, the sixth of 10 spiritual leaders, and 52 other men who were imprisoned by the Mughal Empire that ruled the Indian subcontinent from 1526 to 1857.

After the public execution of his father by Mughal leaders, Guru Hargobind became increasingly passionate about forming an independent Sikh homeland through military action if necessary. He was eventually jailed by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, but was released two years later on the day of Diwali.

Popular legends state that when he was freed, Guru Hargobind tricked the Mughal emperor into allowing him to bring out as many men as could hold onto the hem of his cloak and, in this way, helped release 52 other prisoners who held onto 52 threads coming off of his garment.

Origins of Diwali

The multiplicity of interpretations for why Diwali is celebrated and questions regarding the festivals exact origins may have one potential answer: that the narrative of origins is an afterthought to rituals.

This problem is illustrated in a well-known episode of the sitcom The Office, where the Dunder Mifflin team attends a Diwali celebration at a local Hindu temple. Before they go, they ask Kelly  the Hindu office worker who is playing hostess  to explain the origins of the festival.

She demurs, stating I dont know; its really old, I think, before excitedly discussing the beautiful clothes everyone wears, the dancing and the food. Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly and wrote the episode, explained that she based Kellys cluelessness on her own, noting that  despite identifying as Hindu  she had to do significant research into her own religious tradition to write the episode.

In other words, while she was aware of and excited about the rituals, the narrative explanation was secondary to joining with her community in celebration.

But this does not mean that narrative may be inconsequential. It is important to think what these multiple narratives about Diwalis origins may be able to tell us about the Indian culture.

Asian religions scholar Robert Ford Campany suggests that narratives entail a subtle form of argument that reveal, argue, or assume something significant about the world, about spirits, about relations between humans and other beings, or about the afterlife and the dead.

Perhaps these diverse origin stories of Diwali point to a shared argument that Indian culture is making about the world: that good  whether as one of the many avatars of Lord Vishnu, an enlightened Jain prince, or an imprisoned guru  will necessarily triumph over the evils of demons, injustice and ignorance.

Certainly thats an argument worth celebrating, especially in the chaotic times we live in today.
Yves here. So you cant say nothing came out of COP26, just not nearly enough. As this article shows, reducing methane emissions is the climate change low hanging fruit, not hard, not costly, and potentially even net profitable for producers. This action appears to follow an earlier UN report, which we discussed in May: Reducing Methane Is Crucial for Protecting Climate and Health, and It Can Pay for Itself  Yet Emissions Are Still Rising Fast, A New UN Report Warns.

So why wasnt this done years ago? For instance, in 2014, Thomas Neuburger criticized the Obama climate plan for giving a big green light to fracking by ignoring methane emissions.

One therefore has to wonder what if anything is being done about emissions from fracking. One of Neuburgers 2014 posts exposed how an official measure greatly undercounts methane emissions. Quoting in turn a Forbes story:

Methane emissions are worse than the conventional wisdom would have you believe, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University. Methane, which is the primary component of natural gas, is an especially powerful greenhouse gas, packing more than two dozen times as much global warming potential than carbon dioxide. Traditionally, environmental regulators and energy industry groups have estimated methane emissions by multiplying the amount of methane emitted by a specific source  e.g., belching cattle or methane leaks at natural gas processing plants  by the number of that source type in a geographic region. For example, imagine that a cow emits 1/10 of a metric ton of methane every year. If the United States has 10 cows, the total methane emissions attributable to cattle is one metric ton annually. By adding the total methane emissions from cattle with the totals from every other source of methane emissions, we can derive the total methane emissions for the United States. That is how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has traditionally calculated methane emissions since the 1990s. If the methane emissions rates (e.g., how much methane does a cow emit in a year?) are wrong, the total estimated methane emissions are also wrong. Several studies have tested the accuracy of these traditional methane emissions estimates by using airplanes and towers to measure actual methane in the air. The new study, Methane Leakage from North American Natural Gas Systems, evaluated more than 200 of these atmospheric studies and concluded that the EPAs methane emissions estimates are too low. The key take-away: the EPA is likely underestimating U.S. methane emissions from natural gas by at least 50% or more.

And if this initiative is serious, why arent there incentives to plug leaks in home/apartment gas lines and bar the use of gas lines in new construction? As we wrote recently, they are a far more significant source of methane leaks than generally recognized.

By Dr. Cyril Widdershoven, a long-time observer of the global energy market. Presently, he holds several advisory positions with international think tanks in the Middle East and energy sectors in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Dr. Widdershoven worked on M&A operations in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Iran, he studied the pipeline operations in Libya, Algeria, Nigeria and Turkey, and he assessed risk for institutional investors and banks in Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Iraq, all while advising the Dutch government and international organizations on related issues. Originally published at OilPrice

The Biden administration has unveiled a plan to slash methane emissions, bringing one of the biggest and most solvable problems into the limelight at COP26

The Biden decision comes on the heels of the IMEO which was unveiled at the G20 conference in Rome as European countries aimed to tackle global methane emissions

For major oil and gas producers, finding and fixing methane leaks and cutting methane flaring can also be an economically sound move, especially with gas prices so high

After decades of discussing the negative impact of methane emissions on climate and the environment, COP26 in Glasgow appears to have finally triggered some meaningful action. In an expected but bold move, the US Biden Administration has unveiled a plan to slash methane emissions across the country. This move will focus on oil and gas wells, pipelines, and other infrastructure as part of a larger overall crackdown on climate change. The announcement of the U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Plan is expected to be a major part of the ongoing discussions at COP26, where Biden is trying to regain a global leadership position for the US. The methane reduction proposal is going to be one of the cornerstones of Bidens overall pledge to cut greenhouse emissions by more than 50% by 2030, a pledge that continues to face strong opposition in Congress. U.S. oil and gas companies are responsible for around 30-33% of the countrys methane emissions, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is determined to stop methane leaks from oil and gas operations. EPA Administrator Michael Regan described the proposal as absolutely bold, aggressive and comprehensive. The EPA proposal requires hydrocarbon producers to continuously monitor 300,000 of their biggest well sites and other infrastructure for methane leaks and repair them quickly when found. EPA rules will also require upgrades to equipment such as storage tanks, compressors, and pneumatic pumps to reduce leaks. Critics of the EPA proposal argue that it could increase flaring, but it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. The EPA could well go a step further and expand its methane rules and actions to include abandoned oil and gas wells, gas flares, and pigging. The U.S. plans to have the rules implemented by 2023, reducing methane levels from hydrocarbon operations by 74% from 2005 levels by 2035. The year 2005 was selected as it was before the onset of the methane-heavy shale revolution in the U.S. It remains to be seen just how realistic this target is, but it is clear to see the U.S. is taking methane emissions seriously. European countries have also stepped up their methane strategies. The EU and the UN Environment Program (UNEP) unveiled the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) at the G20 in Rome as part of the plan to drive global action on reducing methane emissions and fulfilling the Paris Agreement. By providing transparent methane reporting globally based on satellite observations, the IMEO will give governments the tools to tackle methane emissions. The observatory was set up to support the Global Methane Pledge  a US and EU-led effort by over thirty countries to slash methane emissions by 30% by 2030, the EU Commission said. Methane is slated to be more than 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time horizon when it comes to climate change issues. A major difference between methane and CO2 is that methane has an atmospheric lifespan of 10 to 12 years. The IMEO will have a budget of around 100 million over five years. Global oil and gas producers should be able to meet the set targets as technologies to cut methane emissions already exist. At the same time, methane reduction technology is inexpensive and will often pay for itself. The main focus for the industry should be on improving the detection and repair of methane leaks at oil and gas facilities and flooding abandoned coal mines that leak the gas. Even during the COVID pandemic, overall oil and gas operations emitted around 70 million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere. The IEAs Methane Tracker report stated at the beginning of 2021 that emissions were 10% lower than estimates amid production cuts and the introduction of new methane regulations. If methane emissions can be reduced by 70% worldwide in the next 10 years, it would be the equivalent of eliminating CO? emissions from all cars and trucks across Asia. Major oil and gas producers, especially in the USA, Middle East (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE), and Russia should all be in support of the methane strategies. Fixing methane emissions and leaks in the system is cost-effective, as captured methane can be sold as natural gas. When looking at the satellite images done by ESA, S&P, and Payne Institute of the Colorado School of Mines, the potential is immense. If combined even with an end to flaring, again in the same regions, it is a win-win-win situation. The projected higher gas prices globally are definitely going to be an additional support factor to implement these plans. Incorporating a methane-gas flaring commitment to any COP26 agreement seems like a no-brainer for industry and governments.
(Natural News) The United States is just days away from the Biden regime rolling out what it described as a fully operational Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccination program for children as young as five.

The plan is to mass inject the nations youth with Operation Warp Speed syringes containing child-sized doses of whatever it is these non-vaccines contain. Doing this, the Biden regime insists, will help to flatten the curve and supposedly get the failing economy back up and running as normal.

Jeff Zients, Bidens coronavirus injection czar, announced in a press briefing that the federal government now has enough supply of Pfizer-BioNTech to inject all 28 million eligible children with them. The first 15 million doses are right now being shipped to pediatric offices, hospitals and pharmacies in anticipation of the warp speed rollout.

This will give parents a broad range of options to get their kids vaccinated and ensure all children, including those without primary care doctors  those most at risk  have easy and convenient access to vaccines, Zients said, noting that each state is allowed to choose where to send new supplies of the injection each week.

Kaiser Family Foundation survey says 27 percent of families planning to inject their children for covid right away

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) unanimous authorization of the jabs late last week served as the trigger to begin the packing and shipping process, Zients said.

The jabs were ready and waiting, in other words, and it appears as though the Biden regime knew full well that they would be authorized without a hitch, launching the country into the next phase of the plandemic.

While it will take some time for all of the available injections to reach their final destinations, Biden and his people are confident that millions of them will make it into childrens arms at warp speed in the coming days.

Weve been planning and preparing for this moment and are ready to execute, pending CDCs decision, Zients said. And starting the week of November 8, our vaccination program for kids ages five through 11 will be running at full strength.

A recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that around 27 percent of parents with children between the ages of five and 11 are planning to get their little ones injected right away once the jabs become available to them.

The New York Times is really excited about all this. A feminist writer by the name of Tara Parker-Pope wrote up an instruction manual explaining how parents can best strategize getting their children to the front of the line as soon as possible.

Like a religious cult, these Branch Covidians are eager to reformat childrens DNA in the image of Tony Fauci and whomever else was behind these things. Once injected, childrens genetic blueprints will be forever altered to continue producing spike proteins.

Why the hell would you put a needle into children that has side effects like blood clots, myocarditis, increase in miscarriages, increased cancer, increased autoimmune diseases, most likely infertility and then the dreaded antibody-dependent enhancement reaction  all for a disease that children have a 99.998% chance of recovery? asked one thoughtful commenter at The Hill, the comment section of which typically leans lunatic.

Christians: pray for Gods judgment upon those that poisoned, or aided and abetted in poisoning, our children with the (fake) vaccine, wrote another about the power of prayer.

Lets go, Brandon, commented yet another, cutting right to the chase and getting his point across with three simple words.

The latest news about the Biden regimes Chinese Virus injection push can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheHill.com

NaturalNews.com

NYTimes.com
(Natural News) A Hillary Clinton campaign operation to plant a false rumor about Donald Trump setting up a secret hotline to Moscow through a Russian bank was much broader than known and involved multiple U.S. agencies, according to declassified documents and sources briefed on an ongoing criminal investigation of the scheme.

(Article by Paul Sperry republished from RealClearInvestigations.com)

In addition to the FBI, the 2016 Clinton campaign tried to convince the Obama administrations State Department, Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to look into the hoax, and continued pressing the issue even after Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

The goal was to trigger federal investigative activity targeting her Republican rival and leak the damaging information to the media.

The Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure from a number of angles until investigations of Trump were opened and reopened, said one of the briefed sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement matter. The deception was wide-ranging.

Special Counsel John Durham outlined the FBI part of the scheme in a felony indictment of Michael Sussmann. The former Clinton campaign lawyer was charged last month with making a false statement to the former general counsel of the FBI when he claimed he was not working for any client in bringing to the FBIs attention allegations of a secret channel of communication between computer servers in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia.

According to the indictment, Sussmann was in fact acting on behalf of clients including the Clinton campaign, and an unnamed tech executive who RCI has previously reported is Rodney L. Joffe, a regular adviser to the Biden White House on cybersecurity and infrastructure policies.

Internal emails reveal the Clinton operatives knew the links they made between Trump and Russia were weak, even describing them as a red herring, but fed them to investigators anyway.

After Sussmanns meeting with the FBI in September 2016, the Clinton campaign approached the State Department the following month with the same lead, this time using paid Clinton campaign subcontractor Christopher Steele to feed the rumors. A former British intelligence officer, Steele was offered as a reliable source to help corroborate the rumors. On Oct. 11, 2016, Steele gave his contact at Foggy Bottom documents alleging that a supposed hidden server at Trump Tower was pinging Moscow.

Two days later, a State official who previously worked under former secretary Clinton funneled the information to the FBIs then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock, according to recently declassified notes and testimony. Laycock, in turn, forwarded the information to Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who led the investigation of Trump and his campaign and had just weeks earlier texted a bureau lawyer, Well stop [Trump from being elected].

I informed Peter Strzok and another supervisor, Laycock testified last year in a closed-door Senate hearing.

Steele, who later confessed he was desperate to defeat Trump, was the author of the debunked dossier claiming Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. He even misspelled the name of the Russian bank as Alpha. Still, the FBI took his rumors seriously enough to interview tech vendors working for the Trump Organization and obtain warrants to search Trump Tower servers. Within days of receiving the State Department tip, Strzok also used Steeles dossier to secure a wiretap on Trump adviser Carter Page.

Clinton foreign policy adviser and current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would put out a written statement trumpeting the Trump-Alfa Bank story, which was shared by then-candidate Clinton on Oct. 31, 2016, after Slate reported on it. Fusion GPS, the Washington opposition-research group that worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent, and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI, reportedly pressed Slate to publish the story by the account of its author, journalist Franklin Foer.

This was a highly sophisticated operation using enablers in both the media and federal agencies, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RealClearInvestigations.

The Clinton campaign did not let up even after Trump won the election.

In mid-November 2016, it enlisted top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr  whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS  to add credibility to the Alfa rumors. That month, Ohr advised the FBI that Steele had told him that the Alfa Bank server was a link to the Trump campaign. Then in early December, Ohr met with the FBI case supervisor who worked for Strzok at least twice. Declassified notes and other records show that during those meetings, Ohr provided him with thumb drives he had received from paid Clinton opposition researcher and Fusion GPS co-founder, Glenn Simpson, and Ohrs wife and Simpsons colleague, Nellie. Quoting his Clinton sources, Ohr insisted the alleged backdoor computer channel between Trump and Alfa was real.

The FBI spent months investigating the claim, eventually dismissing it as baseless. After the FBI closed the case, Sussmann turned to the nations top intelligence agency for assistance, as RCI first reported.

In December 2016, Sussmann called then-CIA Director John Brennans general counsel  Caroline Krass  to set up a meeting to brief her about the same Alfa Bank rumors. Krass expressed interest in the tip. Then in early February 2017, officials from her office formally sat down with Sussmann for more than an hour to discuss the Trump-Russian bank rumors. Sussmann provided them updated versions of the materials he had handed off to the FBI.

The CIA, in turn, referred the rumors to an FBI liaison for further investigation, according to the sources briefed on his case. Strzok was the lead FBI liaison to the CIA at the time.

Among the documents Durham has obtained is a CIA memo memorializing the meeting with Sussmann, according to the sources. In his grand jury indictment, Durham accused Sussmann of also misleading the CIA, which he referred to only as Agency-2. The special counsel alleges that Sussmann, as he did when meeting with an FBI official, had also failed to inform contacts at Langley that he was representing a client  in the latter case specifically Joffe  tied to the Clinton campaign operation and who had been promised a high-level job in a Clinton administration.

Billing the Democrats campaign for his work on the confidential project, Sussmann recruited Joffe and a team of federal computer contractors to mine proprietary databases containing vast quantities of sensitive, nonpublic Internet data for possible dirt on Trump and his advisers. In a new court document filed last week, Durham revealed his team has obtained more than 80,000 pages of documents in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to more than 15 targets and witnesses, including the computer contractors. Among others receiving subpoenas: political organizations, private firms, tech companies and other entities, including a major university  Georgia Tech  which allegedly participated in the Clinton conspiracy as a Pentagon contractor. Some witnesses have been granted immunity and are cooperating with prosecutors, the sources close to the probe said.

While Sussmann may have hidden his work for the Clinton campaign, this was obviously a useful attack on Trump, Turley said. One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus. But as with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager officials to move on any such allegation.

The CIA is largely barred from collecting information inside the United States or on American citizens.

The CIA has no business involving itself in a domestic political issue, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told RCI. The evidence suggests the primary purpose of the meeting was political.

Fitton said his watchdog group has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA demanding all records generated from the contacts Sussmann had with the agency in December 2016 and February 2017.

The CIA did not return requests for comment.

For good measure, old Clinton hands tried another pressure point. In early February 2017, Clintons foreign policy adviser Sullivan huddled with Fusion GPSs Simpson and Daniel Jones, an FBI analyst-turned-Democrat-operative, to reboot the same smear campaign against Trump. (As RCI previously reported, Sullivan, who spearheaded the campaigns effort to promote the narrative of a disturbing Trump-Russia relationship via the Alfa Bank story, is under scrutiny for possibly lying to Congress about his role in the operation.) Jones, in turn, reached out to his former colleagues at the FBI, who reopened the investigation into the old allegations of a cyber-link between Trump and Alfa Bank.

The next month, acting on Jones recycled tip, FBI agents visited the offices of the Pennsylvania company that housed the Trump server, which was actually administered by a third-party hotel promotions firm  Cendyn, based in Florida. But their second investigation proved to be another dead end. The sinister communications Jones claimed were flowing between an alleged Trump server and Alfa Bank were found to be innocuous marketing emails. In other words, spam.

Sources say it is odd that FBI headquarters continued to pursue the allegations, because internal FBI communications reveal that the bureaus own cyber sleuths had pooh-poohed them within days of Sussmanns briefing, RCI has learned.

Strzok himself had been briefed on that assessment of the materials Sussman dropped off at headquarters on Sept. 19, 2016. In fact, in a Sept. 23, 2016, internal message to Strzok, an FBI official relayed his preliminary findings following an interview with Cendyn, the Florida marketing firm that managed the alleged Trump server.

Followed up this morning with Central Dynamics [Cendyn] who confirmed that the mail1.trump-email.com domain is an old domain that was set up in approximately 2009 when they were doing business with the Trump Organization that was never used, according to the message.

Reacting to the Durham indictment, Strzok recently tried to distance himself from the Alfa scandal, insisting in a Lawfare blog: I had a minor role in the events in question, insofar as I transferred the material Sussman gave to Jim Baker, the FBIs general counsel at the time, to the personnel who ultimately supervised and looked into the allegations.

Echoing other critics, Strzok complained that Durham  who originally was tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion investigation by Trumps Attorney General Bill Barr  is conducting a partisan witch hunt on behalf of Trump.

Strzoks claims notwithstanding, Barrs successor, the President Biden-nominated Attorney General Merrick Garland, testified last week that he has renewed funding and staffing for Durhams far-reaching investigation for the next fiscal year. [Y]ou can readily assume his budget has been approved, Garland assured Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

Read more at: RealClearInvestigations.com
(Natural News) Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) has joined 40 other Republican senators who aim to formally disapprove and nullify fake president Joe Bidens Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine mandate.

Under the Congressional Review Act, the conservative cohort says it is an official process for Congress to eliminate an executive branch edict when it violates the constitutional rights of Americans.

I hope President [sic] Biden was listening to the people in the state of Virginia yesterday, in a state that he won [sic] by double digits, a Democrat governor lost, Marshall, a medical doctor, is quoted as saying.

I think the Virginia people were telling the president [sic] we still value our freedoms, our individual liberties.

Marshall went on to compare Biden to a predator who is trying to get between a mama bear and her cubs by forcing workers in both the public and private sectors to roll up their sleeves for a never-ending procession of Operation Warp Speed injections.

Whether the issue is guardrails for our school curriculum or the issue is a vaccine for our children, or maybe making that choice between a jab or a job for those childrens parents  we still value our individual liberties, Marshall went on to state.

Are Republicans making a comeback because of Bidens covid jab mandates?

Marshall promised his own constituents in Kansas that he and his cohorts plan to use every tool in our toolbox, every arrow in our quiver to stop Bidens unlawful jab mandate.

If they have to, Marshall and his cohorts will stop cloture on the government funding bill unless the disastrous mandate language is removed from it. (RELATED: This same type of thing did not happen in 2019 when Congress and Donald Trump enacted a law redefining the word vaccine to accommodate the Chinese Virus injections that would arrive one year later.)

In other words, the government will not be funded any longer, at least if Republicans have anything to say about it, unless Biden removes the covid injection mandate from the funding bills contents.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ill.) is credited with spearheading the move, which came about after the fiasco in Virginia that resulted in Democrat candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe losing the race to moderate Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin.

Republicans dominated the state of Virginia politically, taking all statewide offices and the Virginia House of Delegates, reported National File. The Republican Party also picked up key positions across the United States.

The Biden regime is already hanging its head in shame over the multiple upsets in Virginia and elsewhere. Perhaps the political ramifications alone will cause it to backtrack on trying to force Americans to get injected with experimental drugs in order to continue living their lives.

Roger Marshall, like John Kennedy and Rand Paul, is one of the few Republican senators I respect, wrote a commenter at National File about the news. He gave Fauci a good grilling, although it was technical, and most people wouldnt have understood the details of what they talked about.

What a political opportunist, wrote another with a contrarian view about Marshall. He announces the plan after the momentum gained from the Virginia election win. In other words, if the Republicans didnt win in Virginia, this plan would never have seen the light of day.

Another echoed this by stating that Marshall isnt doing anything but pretending hes doing something, which is often the case with politicians on both sides of the aisle.

If he wants to do something, pass a law that stops vaccine mandates, passports, and vaccine discrimination nationwide.

The latest news about the partisan fight over whether or not to mandate Fauci Flu shots can be found at VaccineWars.com.

Sources for this article include:

NationalFile.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich pushed back on the notion that it was Republicans who were embracing the Big Lie about election theft, during an interview last week with Mollie Hemingway for his Newts World podcast.

(Article by Coleman Hopkins republished from HeadlineUSA.com)

The last time Democrats actually accepted the legitimacy of losing in a presidential campaign was in 1988 when George H.W. Bush won by a huge margin, he said.

The next Republican victorythat of Bushs son, George W. Bush, laid the framework for Democrats pattern of denial as they attempted to use court challenges to count votes in Floridas Broward County ad infinitum until a favorable outcome emerged.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court shut that effort down. However, it helped inspire billionaire oligarch George Soros to begin targeting down-ballot elections for positions like secretary of state, sheriff and district attorney. Once elected, his hand-picked candidates would then be able to exercise their discretion in pushing a radical leftist agenda.

The strategy came to fruition when Soros-linked secretaries including Michigans Jocelyn Benson and Arizonas Katie Hobbs acted in overtly partisan ways to promote vote fraud during the 2020 election and then certify their states before GOP-led challenges could succeed.

SUE TILL BLUE

The Bush vs. Gore challenge of the 2000 election also may have helped influence the rise of Democrat mega-lawyer Marc Elias, who had begun implementing his sue till blue strategy as early as 1996.

Elias is believed currently to be a subject of Special Counsel John Durhams Russia-hoax investigation due to his role in helping engineer the Steele Dossier on behalf of Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign.

Nonetheless, he was recently secured by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, who has been plummeting in polls against GOP contender Glenn Youngkin.

Hemingway, currently promoting her book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, said that the purpose of such lawsuits and election challenges was simply to sow confusion.

The chaos is the point, she said, noting that Elias was also the guy who led the effort on mail-in balloting last year.

In fact, Eliaswho a month earlier had secured a settlement between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and activist Stacey Abramspushed for an expansion of mail-in voting on the very day that then-President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic to be a national emergency.

Doing so allowed left-wing activists potentially to expand the sphere of litigation, Hemingway told Gingrich.

Elias gloated about his dubious list of election reversals in a now-deleted tweet from Nov. 4, 2018:

During my career handling recounts, we have averaged one statewide recount-able election (excluding for president), he wrote. Not all of these have resulted in recounts, but almost all have involved some post election legal activity.

PROPAGANDIST PRESS

Hemingway told Gingrich that a key factor in the success of such blatant malfeasance was the gaslighting of a propagandist mainstream media, which was now working in overt collusion with the Democrats and their deep-state allies.

The 2016 situation really deserves focus, she said.  That was one where they could not accept that they lost to the point that they spread this completely insane conspiracy theory that they had not lost, that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia.

While talking pointswhich Elias himself may have had a hand in craftingnow claim challenges to the 2020 race are conspiracy theories, that stands in stark contrast with the actual conspiracy theory that the Left spent years promoting as factand still does in some cases.

The Russia hoax was not something that was a fringe that some people held to, Hemingway said.

It was embraced by the entire corporate media environment, the entire Democrat Party, she continued.  They kept that drumbeat going for years, it was based on nothing, and it was extremely damaging to the republic.

However, after they engineered a Biden victory in 2020, Democrats flip-flopped yet again from vociferously staging election challenges to complaining that skepticism was tantamount to terrorism.

The same individuals who [amplified these conspiracies] and gave each other awards for four years then said that 2020, an election unlike any one that we have seen in this countrythen they said you cannot have any questions about the election, Hemingway noted.

A TREACHEROUS PATH

Gingrich noted Democrat efforts to codify their pandemic practices in the controversial HR1 voting overhaul. If passed, he said, it would make the entire election process more corrupt.

But the measures they now endorse were denounced by Democrats not long agowhen they were trying to push the narrative of a stolen election during George W. Bushs 2000 victory and subsequent 2004 landslide.

According to Gingrich, the changes that Democrats want to institutionalize via HR1 fly in the face of the findings of both the CalTech-MIT Voting Technology Project back in 2001  and in 2005 a bipartisan commission co-chaired by Jimmy Carter which found that the greatest risk of fraud occurs when voting absentee.

And yet, Gingrich concluded, Democrats new strategy is to maximize the likelihood of people voting absentee.

Hemingway concurred that the sudden change of heart didnt pass the smell test.

Up until about a year ago, everyone acknowledged that mail-in balloting was the largest source of fraud or just election irregularities, she said.  The Washington Post and The New York Times acknowledged this; it was true in France where they banned it because of problems with fraud.

Hemingway concludes by stating that the 2020 election was determined months in advance by several factors, including but not limited to:

a number of partisan lawsuits

a lack of funding and organization for GOP lawyers

inaction/counterproductive moves by foolish GOP state officials

Democrats successful commandeering of nonpartisan election offices via massive donations by Mark Zuckerberg

media collusion

general Republican pusillanimity and unwillingness to engage in the pre-election legal circus

Hemingway, who interviewed former President Donald Trump for her book, said that contrary to what Trump has said about the election being stolen, the procedure was rigged before the voting ever started.

Only if Republicans organize, focus, and acquire more resources will they be able to combat these tactics, she warned.

Read more at: HeadlineUSA.com
(Natural News) Former intelligence officer Jeffrey Prather and chiropractor Dr. Eric Nepute talked about their God-given missions with host John Diamond during the Nov. 1 episode of America Unhinged on Brighteon.TV.

Diamond quoted a passage from the Apostle Pauls letter to the Philippians: In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

The theologian shared that he started his platform America Unhinged because theres a lot of good people out there who have gone unrecognized for many, many years. My platform exists to lift these people up and to help you know what it is theyre doing.

Prather said: Were probably both old enough, as fellow veterans and brother Christians, to know that God has really brought us to this point. And I think its a great idea  lifting up everybody and bringing everybody together.

The host of Prather Point every airs Friday morning on Brighteon.TV recalled his first experience with the deep state following his expose of an illicit deal between the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Mexican drug cartel. The deal involved the Sinaloa Cartel running drugs in the U.S. in exchange for the DEA running guns in Mexico. That expose made him a target of the deep state. (Related: Prather Point: Deep State sacrificing informants for their own nefarious ends  Brighteon.TV.)

As I talked to other whistleblowers and started to understand and apply my background and intelligence in federal law enforcement and special operations, I started to see what was happening. Once I finally figured that out, I wanted to help people expose that, Prather said.

Were both old enough now to see that God has led us to a point where we can be of most use to Him and our fellow Christians, and connect everyone back through Christ to God  which leads to ultimate freedom.

Fighting misinformation with common sense

Diamond also interviewed Nepute, host of Real Talk with Dr. Eric Nepute that airs every Tuesday afternoon on Brighteon.TV.

Im a doctor of chiropractic [and] a doctor of natural medicine. I dont tell people that to impress them but to impress upon them that I think  and act differently. Therefore, we get different results because of that, Nepute said.

Over the last 20 years of [my] private practice, Ive been really preaching about common sense approaches. Its all about finding the cause of a problem  whats the why behind the how.

Nepute said his God-given mission became clear when the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic arrived. He said that 2020 is the year of vision, clarity and purpose and that he and other doctors have been anointed and appointed to blaze the trail for those that arent awake to what is really happening.

People were looking for common sense approaches to whats really going on. With all the confusion and delusion thats out there in the mainstream, everybody was so hungry for some common sense and some certainty. I believe thats what we brought to the table, noted Nepute.

John, its been a blessing. You know as well as I do that when youre over the target, youre not only the first to be praised  but [also] the first to be shot at. Weve had our fair share of bombs thrown at us along the way. But God has put us in this position to help inspire, motivate, educate and help the world get out of this  funk that were in right now.

Diamond commented that the suppression by authorities will only lead to more people waking up to the truth. The more that these tyrants put their grip down on people, the more theyre losing people, Diamond said.

People are abandoning the common media, theyre abandoning the schools [and] theyre abandoning the medical system. Everything thats going to end up taking place is basically a revolution. (Related: Dr. Eric Nepute: Americans losing faith in the hospital system  Brighteon.TV.)

Nepute agreed with Diamonds statement. Youre 100 percent right. The thing that I want you to know, and I know that your viewers know this, is that we already have enough people awake [and] that theyre never going to be able to fulfill their complete agenda. We just have to continue to educate, keep the pressure on and let people know that there is truth out there.

Watch the full Nov. 1 episode of America Unhinged with guests Jeffrey Prather and Dr. Eric Nepute below. America Unhinged with John Diamond airs from Monday to Friday at 9-10 a.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Truth.news has more articles about people fighting to make Americans aware of the truth.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

BibleGateway.com
(Natural News) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is spearheading a new lawsuit against the Biden administration over its unlawful vaccine mandate. The lawsuit takes aim at Bidens vaccine mandate for federal contractors, which requires vaccination against Covid no later than Dec. 8.

(Article by Kyle Becker republished from BeckerNews.com)

The lawsuit argues that the executive order is a dramatic infringement upon individual liberties, principles of federalism and separation of powers, and the rule of law. Texas lawsuit was filed Friday evening in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

The Biden Administration has repeatedly expressed its disdain for Americans who choose not to get a vaccine, and it has committed repeated and abusive federal overreach to force upon Americans something they do not want, Paxton said in a statement.

If the President thinks his patience is wearing thin, he is clearly underestimating the lack of patience from Texans whose rights he is infringing, Paxton proclaimed.

President Biden has previously admitted that the federal government does not have such authority, but now he seeks to impose this unprecedented expansion of federal power and encroachment upon individual liberty by forcing employers to require vaccine mandates as a condition of doing business with the federal government, Attorney General Paxton noted.

The governor previously banned vaccine passports implemented after emergency use authorizations and the states ban on mask mandates prompted an investigation by the Department of Education, Axios reported.

Earlier this month, Abbot issued an executive order prohibiting vaccine mandates by any entity, including employers, if someone objects to the vaccine for any reason of personal conscience.

The Texas lawsuit unwinds a litany of grievances against the Biden administration for its lawless usurpation of state and individual rights.

Countless Texans and other Americans are being forced to choose between their livelihoods and their fundamental constitutional rights, the lawsuit argues. The State of Texas and its officials have sought to protect individual rights while also encouraging and promoting effective public health techniques to combat the spread of COVID-19. The federal government, however, has launched a coordinated effort to decide for itself whether and when Americans must receive the vaccine, regardless of individual preference, healthcare needs, or religious beliefs.

Our Constitution provides for a federal government of limited powers, and it does not and has never had a general police power that would give it the right to dictate any and every facet of its citizens lives, the lawsuit continues. But Defendants have no regard for the limits that the Constitution and federal statutes impose upon them. Defendants actions are nothing short of a dramatic infringement upon individual liberties, principles of federalism and separation of powers, and the rule of law.

Even worse, the federal governments cowardice has led it to have federal contractors do their dirty work, the lawsuit added. Rather than impose a vaccine mandate directly, Defendants are coercing federal contractors into demanding that the millions of Americans they employ get vaccinated or lose their jobs. Defendants also require contractors to dictate the lives of not only those performing work connected to federal contracts, but also those employees who may not perform any federal work at all. Simply due to the misfortune of working for a company that may have a federal contract, an American may be forced to receive a vaccine they do not want or else lose their job.

The federal governments overreach must come to an end. Defendants are using subterfuge to accomplish what they cannot achieve directlyuniversal compliance with their vaccine mandates, regardless of individual preferences, healthcare needs, or religious beliefs, the suit goes on. And Defendants effectively claim for themselves a general police power to control American life, infringing on states sovereignty and usurping the powers reserved to the states under the Constitution.

President Biden himself has expressed little tolerance for those who do not share his views, as he put on public display when he announced that his patience was wearing thin with Americans who choose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the lawsuit notes. The President has further singled out Texas as an enemy because of its stance in favor of individual liberty. Speaking about Texas Governor Greg Abbott, President Biden threatened that [i]f theyll not helpif these governors wont help us beat the pandemic, Ill use my power as President to get them out of the way.2 And yet, then-President-Elect Biden previously vowed not to demand any mandatory vaccinations.

Through a conflicting, vague, and confusing web of executive orders, task force directives, and contract requirements, Defendants have made it obvious that they will accept nothing less than complete obedience and compliance with their vision for how to fight COVID-19, the lawsuit continued. Defendants apparently have no concern for the disastrous potential effects of Defendants coercive tactics on the economy or the erosion of Americans liberties. Even one American being forced by their government to receive a vaccine that they do not want out of fear of losing their job is an irreparable injury and a stain on Defendants records. But the broader implications of these unlawful vaccine mandates, if they are not stopped, portend a dark future for the economy and the American way of life.

The State of Texas respectfully requests that the Court put an end to these unlawful and coercive tactics and stop this pernicious erosion of fundamental rights, it stated.

Plaintiff State of Texas is a sovereign State of the United States of America and has the authority and responsibility to protect its sovereign interests, its public fisc, and the health, safety, and individual liberties of its citizens, the lawsuit added.

The defendants listed in the lawsuit are: Kiren Ahuja, as Director of the Office of Personnel Management and as co-chair of the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force; the General Services Administration; Robin Carnahan, Administrator of the General Services Administration and as co-chair of the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force; the Office of Management and Budget; the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force; Jeffrey Zients, in his official capacity as co-chair of the Safer Federal Workforce Task force and COVID-19 Response Coordinator; Lloyd J. Austin, III, in his official capacity as the Secretary of the Department of Defense; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Bill Nelson, in his official capacity as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the Federal Acquisitions Regulation Council; United States Department of Agriculture; Tom Vilsack, in his official capacity as Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture; and Joe Biden.

Read more at: BeckerNews.com
(Natural News) Former Sheriff Richard Mack of Graham County, Arizona and Sheriff Scott Williams of Coryell County, Texas believe sheriffs who swear to uphold the Constitution must lead the way and help the rest of America wake up to the tyranny of the federal governments overreach.

Mack and Williams made these comments during the Nov. 2 episode of The Sheriff Mack Show on Brighteon.TV.

Back in February, Williams attended a meeting of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an organization of law enforcement officers dedicated to upholding the Constitution and defending their constituents against federal encroachment. The sheriff said attending meetings with the CSPOA lit a fire in him that he cant put out.

When you posed the questions to me, Do you take your oath seriously? What are you doing to protect peoples Constitutional rights? What are you doing to protect their God-given rights?' said Williams. Ive never had a feeling like that. And that was in February. And I have lived and breathed it every day.

Youre almost talking like you went through a conversion process, said Mack.

Conversion? I would say, a reassuring process. A clarifying process. It woke me up, answered Williams.

Both Williams and Mack believe that all sheriffs and other law enforcement officers should know the Constitution by heart, especially if they have taken an oath to uphold it.

I have always maintained that if youre going to swear an oath of allegiance to something, you probably ought to know why you took that oath, said Mack. But it also presupposes that were going to actually keep our word. Theres no way you can keep an oath to something that youve never read or studied and youre completely ignorant of.

Mack pointed out that everyone who attended the CSPOAs conference in February, including Williams, has been busy studying the Constitution. Because they know and understand the significance of the oath of office, and that everything really generates from that oath, said Mack.

As law enforcement officers, Mack and Williams believe that they need to lead the way to help America wake up and resist the encroachment of the federal government.

We the people have got to wake up as well and work with our sheriffs and find a peaceful and effective solution to whats going on today in our country, said Mack. We have never seen in our world history  especially in our nations history  a greater threat to our God-given Constitutional American liberty than we are now from our own federal government.

Constitutional sheriffs are standing up to government overreach

Constitutional sheriffs like Mack and Williams, as they are now known by mainstream media outlets, have become a powerful force defending Americans against government overreach.

Sheriffs who have embraced this new ideology have now declared their intention to refuse to enforce mask mandates. They are even planning to resist President Joe Biden and the federal governments impending rule that all businesses with 100 or more employees must have fully vaccinated employees or force them to submit to weekly COVID-19 testing. (Related: Sheriffs all over the US say they will not enforce Bidens COVID-19 vaccine mandate.)

We will not become the mandate police, declared Knox County, Tennessee Sheriff Tom Spangler. He made the same declaration in an Oct. 25 letter to Biden that called the vaccine mandate government overreach and unconstitutional.

Many more sheriffs all over the country are declaring their allegiance to the Constitution first.

Sheriffs Mack and Williams have a lot more to say about sheriffs and other law enforcement officers upholding the Constitution. Watch the full Nov. 2 episode of The Sheriff Mack Show here:

The Sheriff Mack Show with Sheriff Richard Mack airs every Tuesday from 10 to 11 a.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Learn more about what law enforcement officers are doing to protect the individual liberties of Americans against government overreach by reading the latest articles at BigGovernment.news.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

TheCrimeReport.org

SeattleTimes.com
(Natural News) Supply chain executives are bracing for a chaotic holiday peak as massive e-commerce volume becomes the new normal and persistent lack of truck drivers and other fulfillment workers continue to hurt the supply chain.

Last year, the peak holiday season showed U.S. carriers posting similar or slightly better on-time delivery rates compared to the 2019 peak  but that was largely because there wasnt much of a peak in 2020.

Consumers at the time were still adjusting to the e-commerce explosion. Despite sales reaching record heights, they werent too far off from the levels retailers saw in April and May when the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic started started to spread across the globe.

Carriers already struggling with driver shortages pre-pandemic

While the shortage of truck drivers already existed pre-pandemic, the pandemic definitely exacerbated the issue. (Related: Shortage of truck drivers in the US forces companies to look overseas.)

Bill Thayer, co-founder and co-CEO of logistics-as-a-service company Fillogic, said that lack of drivers was always a problem before the pandemic because they are aging out. It has just become more acute, because those folks that were driving during the pandemic, in many cases they just aged out, and nobodys been able to replace them.

When the pandemic happened, drivers and other workers left their jobs in search of better pay and working conditions. Thayer said the pandemic made hiring drivers more difficult because carriers have been limited in their ability to train and recruit them face-to-face.

Chris Kane, CEO of Florida-based courier service Drivv and a member of the Customized Logistics and Delivery Association (CLDA), believes that the enhanced unemployment benefits from the government have played a role in the lack of drivers entering the workforce.

As the unemployment benefits ended, the industry is coming back as well. However, Kane said that the checks changed the drivers expectations for wages, which led to greater competition from local carriers who are offering increased pay. The U.S. unemployment benefits helped people be less desperate to accept mediocre offers while giving people the ability to feed themselves.

Shortages in other fulfillment roles were also old problems, and retailers took in seasonal hiring to fill gaps in their warehouses. While companies like Walmart, Target, Amazon and UPS are doing the same this year, they may get different results.

I think brands and retailers are quite accustomed to being able to hire seasonal labor to ramp up staff around the holidays. And of course, that would be both younger employees as well as people who didnt regularly participate in the labor force. But in these last few years, and certainly this holiday, we see that sort of ancillary labor participation significantly impacted, said Brian Walker, chief strategy officer of commerce platform at Bloomreach.

Walker noted that the shortages are more acute this year as retailers are not only trying to staff their warehouses but their physical stores as well. Meanwhile, workers are also fed up with working conditions when they have other choices.

Better wages and benefits waiting

Many carriers are now informing clients of raising prices due to the lack of drivers. Others are even firing clients because they can no longer afford to do business.

Steve Howard, board president of the CLDA, explained that the lack of drivers also negatively impacted master contractors  those who hire independent contractors such as drivers to work for them and supply the carriers with drivers and trucks. They are also struggling to bring in drivers.

Howard believes the crisis will resolve itself as local companies are providing higher wages and better benefits. In some ways, Howard said, driver shortages require people to charge a little bit more and pass that along  so wages are better.

Kane agreed, noting that treating drivers better is crucial in attracting and retaining them in the post-pandemic landscape.

Read more about the supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic at Bubble.news and Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

FreightWaves.com

Bloomberg.com
(Natural News) The White House is claiming that 80 percent of U.S. adults have now received at least one dose of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine, while 70 percent are supposedly now fully vaccinated.

Jeff Zients, the Biden regimes Chinese Virus response coordinator, gave a briefing in which he presented the progress that has been made in the plandemic. One major milestone for the regime is gradually increasing compliance with the jab mandates.

These are important milestones, Zients said about the regimes mandates and jab passport schemes. We know vaccines are the very best tool we have to accelerating [sic] our path out of the pandemic.

The supply chain, meanwhile, is in freefall because of Bidens Wuhan Flu tyranny. Some trade associations are begging the regime to relent so as to prevent a total breakdown.

The White House did respond to this in part by relaxing some of the mandates for contractors, offering them expanded flexibility.

A covered contractor should determine the appropriate means of enforcement with respect to its employee at a covered contractor workplace who refuses to be vaccinated and has not been provided, or does not have a pending request for an accommodation, the guidelines at the Safer Federal Workforce website now state.

No, the government does not care  and never has  about your health

Some government contractors such as Boeing and IBM, however, are still expected to obey Bidens dictates. Employees of these contractors who refuse to submit could face significant actions, and the companies themselves a potential termination of the contract.

In the same announcement, Zients revealed that the federal government now has in its possession a trove of child-size doses of Fauci Flu injections, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently authorized for use in children as young as five years old.

On November 8, the Biden regime says it will be ready to go fully operational with its child injection scheme.

On Friday, within minutes of FDAs authorization, we began the process of moving 15 million doses from Pfizers freezers and facilities to distribution centers, Zients stated.

The bottom line is weve been planning and preparing for this moment.

There is one last hurdle with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which still needs to convene its Committee on Immunization Practices for final approval. The CDC is expected to fully authorize Chinese Flu jabs for children.

Once this occurs, Biden plans to warp speed the drug doses to pediatricians, pharmacies and other health centers all across the country so they can be injected into childrens bodies as quickly as possible.

We are not fighting flesh and blood, wrote one commenter at The Epoch Times. We are fighting demonic principalities and powers whose only desire is to kill, steal and destroy, and control the whole globe with their reset.

It is time to arise and FEAR our MAKER, whose name is the sound of your breath.

Others questioned the 80 percent and 70 percent compliance statistics, suggesting that they might be greatly overblown. How many people have really gotten Chinese Flu shots, they wonder?

I have a rule that has always served me well: Never, never believe anything the government tells you, wrote another.

What I want to know is when did these politicians start caring about me so much? These are the people who are willing to send you off to war at a drop of a hat.

Many others expressed similar sentiments of skepticism towards the governments sudden interest in protecting us all from Chinese Germs with forced chemical injections from Big Pharma.

Chinese Virus fascism seems to be the top agenda item for the Biden regime. To keep up with the latest, visit Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheEpochTimes.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Texas chiropractor Dr. Bryan Ardis talked about his fight against the murderous Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) agenda pushed on Americans during the Nov. 2 episode of America Unhinged with Dr. John Diamond on Brighteon.TV.

Ardis guesting on America Unhinged was part of the shows Brighteon.TV week.

Diamond said: Its become pretty popular that its actually going to be two weeks now. Ive had so many of the hosts respond and want to be a part of this. My primary objective for these two weeks is to let my audience know of all the great hosts that are out there.

The America Unhinged host added that by having Brighteon.TV hosts on the program, his audience will understand the amount of people that are rising up to push back tyranny.

Diamond then gave the floor to Ardis, host of The Dr. Ardis Show every Wednesday morning on Brighteon.TV. Ardis told the theologian: The purpose of my show is to actually educate and bring inspiration to individuals in making healthy decisions for themselves. Thats really the primary reason why I do what I do.

I have been in practice  since 2004 and all I did was spend every day, one-on-one, with patients helping to analyze and look for the underlying cause for their symptoms and their diseases. These actual patients, these innocent Americans were already told that the symptoms or the diseases that they lived with were going to be lifelong. Most of them were inherited [or] genetic, [and] there was nothing they could do but just drug those symptoms or have their organs removed.

The truth was 95 percent of the time, those are all lies. I actually had to re-educate the patient on how their God-created body had the ability to either [detoxify or] kill off infections that were causing their symptoms and then repair their organs. Thats what I did for the last 20 years.

Death of father-in-law pushed Ardis to stand up

According to Ardis, the death of a relative pushed him to stand firm against medical tyranny. He told Diamond: All of this came to light as a result of what happened to my father-in-law in early February 2020, when he was murdered with ill-advised hospital protocols that were unrelated to COVID-19.

That was just a few months before [Dr.] Anthony Fauci introduced what the protocols in hospitals for COVID-19 were going to be. I knew immediately that these were set up to be murderous protocols. So when the COVID-19 pandemic started, when the mandated protocols and treatments in hospitals were started, I knew that there was going to be a great cover-up and a conspiracy to injure a lot of people. (Related: Dr. Ardis reveals hospitals COVID death protocol to Jeff and Shady  Brighteon.TV.)

Fauci could promote that this virus was deadly on the world, which is was never as deadly as he promoted. He was going to use innocent Americans as an example to promote a new vaccine. They were going to come out with that.

The chiropractor also voiced out his opposition to COVID-19 vaccination for children, a sentiment he first said during his Oct. 25 appearance on America Unhinged.

He told Diamond that time: The Food and Drug Administration is deciding to vote on and mandate COVID-19 vaccines [on] all children in America  and its horrific. You should not be okay with them actually pumping these vaccines and mandating [them for] children. They try to coerce, they try to bully and they have been attempting to shame everyone in America into getting these COVID-19 shots. (Related: Dr. Bryan Ardis: FDA approved COVID-19 vaccine for kids despite being aware of its risks  Brighteon.TV.)

Ardis reiterated his stance during his Nov. 2 appearance on Diamonds show.

Theres not a single shred of belief, observation or data, that these are completely 100 percent safe and effective. They are murdering children and they dont care. I just cannot stand child abuse, the maiming and injuring of children. These people are innocent; these children are. God put them on this earth [and He] created them perfectly, Ardis said.

How many Christians in this country right now are putting more faith in men and what they create in a lab to inject into your body? You should have way more faith in God. Shame on anybody  who thinks man can make their grandchilds immunity better. Really, you think God screwed up on day six? He never did.

Watch the full Nov. 2 episode of America Unhinged with guest Dr. Bryan Ardis below. America Unhinged with John Diamond airs every weekday morning from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Brighteon.TV.

MedicalTyranny.com has more articles about the medical systems tyranny Dr. Bryan Ardis is fighting against.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com 1

Brighteon.com 2
(Natural News) Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from at least four countries are voicing their opposition to violations of basic human rights, as forced vaccinations and COVID restrictions are imposed across the continent.

Starting this November, MEPs and staff working at the institution are required to present a COVID green digital pass before entering its premises. This pass proves that a person is either fully vaccinated or recently recovered. They can also opt to show a negative PCR result carried out in the last 48 hours.

Belgium re-imposed some pandemic measures as the number of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and hospitalizations increased in the country.

However, some MEPs are opposed to these measures. Led by Christian Terhes of Romania, a handful of MEPs delivered speeches during a recent press conference with footage from media in Brussels going viral.

Terhes condemned fellow European Union officials who claimed to represent the most democratic institution while stripping Europeans of their fundamental rights.

According to the European Center of Disease and Prevention Control (ECDC), Romania has a 246 per million death rate over the course of 14 days. Previously, Romanian authorities announced that 574 people have lost their lives due to COVID over a span of 24 hours, the highest ever for a nation with only 19.3 million inhabitants.

MEP Francesca Donato of Italy echoed Terhes sentiments, saying that the rights of Europeans are being crushed by compulsory health passports. (Related: UK vaccine records to be linked with travel passports, but they dare not call them vaccine passports.)

Croatian MEP: Europeans are entitled to choose their own therapies

MEP Ivan Sincic of Croatia quoted medical freedom in asserting that Europeans are entitled to choose their own therapies. He also called for financial penalties imposed upon those who violate COVID restrictions to be removed, and refunds to be provided to all those who have been previously fined. I call upon all the free people of Europe to resist the digital green certificate wherever you can. Fight for your rights, he said.

Sincic also noted that the digital green certificate was designed to blackmail people and erode their rights. This is not going to stop by itself. It will spread, it will come to your door. It will blackmail your life, he said.

MEP Christine Anderson of Germany would rather get jailed than get vaccinated. She also refused to get tested despite onsite stations with extended opening hours offering PCR tests for free.

I will not be reduced to a mere guinea pig by getting vaccinated with an experimental drug. And I will most assuredly not get vaccinated because my government tells me to, and promises, in return, I will be granted freedom, Anderson said.

Lets be clear about one thing: No one grants me freedom, for I am a free person. So I dare the European Commission and the German government to throw me in jail. Lock me up and throw away the key for all I care, but you will never be able to coerce me into being vaccinated if I, the free citizen that I am, choose not to be vaccinated.

Anderson warned that health passports are the first step towards an insufferable Chinese social credit system.

There have been over 360,000 reports of suspected adverse events following COVID vaccination.

The MEPs said that the pass would discriminate against those who do not wish to be or cannot be vaccinated. The European Parliament does not actually require people to get vaccinated. Negative PCR tests and those who have proof that they recently recovered from the virus are also granted access.

Follow Pandemic.news for more news and information related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources include:

Europe.InfoWars.com

EUObserver.com
(Natural News) Once again, the FBI has proven that it is an agency not badly in need of an overhaul or reforms but of being shut down completely because it is incapable of being trusted at this point.

You may recall the story of Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man currently on trial under charges that he murdered two people in Kenosha, Wis., during rioting last year and severely wounded a third man.

There is no doubt that Rittenhouse shot and killed the two men or that he wounded the third one; those acts are widely available online and went viral the night they happened.

But Rittenhouse has always claimed that he acted in self-defense, a claim that also appears to be supported by the original videos that were posted online. And now, additional footage has been revealed that significantly bolsters his case.

People are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business, and part of my job is also to help people. If theres somebody hurt, Im running into harms way. Thats why I have my rifle, because I need to protect myself obviously. But I also have my med kit, Rittenhouse said in footage recorded before the incident.

Zero Hedge notes:

Before the shooting began, Rittenhouse, 17 at the time, had arrived in Kenosha in order to help keep order and protect businesses from looting and arson.

During the course of the evening, protesters became increasingly violent against Rittenhouse and the group he was with  eventually chasing the teen down the street when protester Joseph Rosenbaum was shot dead in the parking lot of a used car dealership. Shortly thereafter, Rittenhouse could be seen defending himself on the ground from multiple attackers  when he fatally wounded another, and shot the bicep of protester Gaige Grosskreutz who had drawn a pistol and was in the process of aiming it at the teen.

I will. In the first photo, we see one of the men bludgeoning Kyle Rittenhouse with his skateboard. In the other two photos, we see a man whoas Rittenhouse is laying on the grounddraws a pistol in an attempt to murder Rittenhouse, only to be shot himself. pic.twitter.com/RPQw8cpQqS  Francis Curt ?? (@fcXXXIII) November 2, 2021

Initially, video footage taken by journalist Brendan Gutenschwager was all anyone really had in terms of documentation.

.@TuckerCarlson is airing never-before-seen footage of the shooting incidents in Kenosha. The footage comes from the non-profit of Rittenhouses defense attorney. pic.twitter.com/0RrlnFNMJa  Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 23, 2020

Now, Human Events editor Jack Posobiec is revealing that the FBI  yes, that FBI, the same one that entraps people and targeted President Donald Trump  sat on evidence that potentially exonerates Rittenhouse. The video shows that there are clear threats being made against Rittenhouse, as well as what seem to be muzzle flashes from people who were taking shots at him (play full screen for best effect).

This comes, again, as his trial for murder begins.

BREAKING: Human Events Daily has obtained never-before-seen FBI footage of the Kyle Rittenhouse Shootinghttps://t.co/QFAfI7mmJp pic.twitter.com/J8vOOoD3rg  Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) November 2, 2021

To be clear: The footage released by Human Events today clearly shows for the first time that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and this case never should have been brought to trial, Posobiec, a former naval intelligence analyst, added. This is malicious prosecution.

To be clear: The footage released by Human Events today clearly shows for the first time that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and this case never should have been brought to trial This is malicious prosecution  Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) November 2, 2021

WOWthey have FLIR footage of Rosenbaum chasing Kyle Rittenhouse from the FBI. You can clearly see the muzzle flashes from the 9mm fired at Rittenhouse.  Selfless Thoughtful Human Delight (@SavageNoMore) November 2, 2021

Holy shit. He should have never been charged.  Ray Epps FBI (@SeaLevel18) November 2, 2021

Why would the FBI sit on evidence like this? You know the answer to that.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Dr. Jane Ruby talked about the presence of graphene oxide in Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines during Nov. 1 episode of The Dr. Hotze Report on Brighteon.TV. Ruby showed host Dr. Steven Hotze proof of the toxic substance found by a doctor who examined the shots.

Ruby has been involved with pharmaceutical companies for over 20 years, bringing up the approval of new drugs into the regulatory process. Shes been inside of the beast, she knows it like the back of her hand and shes exposing it today, Hotze said.

In July, Ruby revealed that the COVID-19 vaccines, specifically the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, contain the toxic substance. She also disclosed that a group of scientists had earlier discovered the shocking truth.

She told Hotze: Back around spring of [2021], we saw a lot of different videos on social media of people having all kinds of metal-like objects sticking to them. At first, I didnt make a lot of it but eventually it was happening so often. When it started happening to people who had not taken these injections  I got very, very curious.

I started digging around  [and] in the course of that search, I found a Spanish group of researchers. They go by the name La Quinta Columna  the fifth column  and they got their hands on a Pfizer [vaccine] vial with a chain of custody. They had a police officer whos anonymous bring that to them and verify the source.

What they did was they put it under a regular light microscope to begin with. They saw something very unusual  what looked like a piece of towel with paint poured over it, sort of that thickness. They had an industrial chemical expert who said You know, thats what graphene oxide looks like under the microscope.'

Further scrutiny of the vaccine confirmed the presence of graphene oxide in the shots. The La Quinta Columna scientists took the vaccine to the University of Almeria in Spain to analyze its composition. Upon observation under an electron microscope, they saw very evil-looking black spots with a black mesh running through them. (Related: Spanish study finds Pfizer vaccine contains high levels of TOXIC graphene oxide.)

South African doctor corroborates presence of graphene oxide in COVID vaccines

Aside from the La Quinta Columna scientists, some other doctors confirmed the presence of graphene oxide in the vaccines through the blood of vaccinated individuals  including Dr. Zandre Botha of South Africa.

The South African integrative practitioner analyzed a vial of COVID-19 vaccine and confirmed that graphene oxide was indeed in the shots. In that vial, she saw those big, black disks. Now, people [said] those were air bubbles  and she said absolutely not. Theyre too uniform, theyre symmetric and they have these metal connectors [that] self-assemble and self-disassemble, Ruby said of Bothas findings.

A report by Cairns News also touched on what the South African doctor discovered in the blood of vaccinated people. The red blood cells were so deformed you could not make head nor tail of it, Botha said. She also pointed out the black structures in the blood that she found in the samples of injected individuals.

I found these graphene oxide structures in every single vaccinated person with symptoms. I was so shocked because what I saw in the patients blood, I also saw in the vial, Botha added. (Related: Dr. Steven Hotze warns about the dangerous ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines, including graphene oxide  Brighteon.TV.)

Ruby also shared to Hotze about her exchange with her South African colleague. Botha reached out to me directly and walked me through her finding. When the black disks appeared, I did not sleep for two or three days.

Hotzes guest continued: I was so sick to my stomach that this was happening in this world  and that this could possibly be going into children, as well as innocent human beings all over the world. It was very disturbing to Botha. She had never seen anything like it.

Watch the full Nov. 1 episode of The Dr. Hotze Report below. Tune in to The Dr. Hotze Report with Dr. Steven Hotze every Monday at 5-6 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

DangerousMedicine.com has more articles about graphene oxide in COVID-19 vaccines.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

CairnsNews.org
(Natural News) New York City just lost one-third of its firefighters due to Mayor Bill de Blasios Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine mandates, and now the Big Apple is desperately searching for fully vaccinated volunteer firefighters to take their place.

Some 26 firehouses across the city have closed due to this mass walkout, leaving some areas prone to blazing infernos since there is nobody left to fight them.

Everyone who was paying attention knew this would happen because it was promised late last year when Donald father of the vaccine Trump first unveiled the jabs under Operation Warp Speed.

Some 72 percent of Fire Department of New York (FDNY) workers agreed to get jabbed prior to the deadline. However, the other 22 percent still represents about 4,000 employees who were either terminated or forced to resign.

Good morning all, reads an email message that was sent out by the city to about 350 potential volunteer firefighters.

We need to start identifying members of the service who are active volunteer firemen in both Long Island and Upstate counties in anticipation of the impending shortage for the FDNY due to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The goal is to have qualified members on standby to backfill firehouses if necessary, the email went on to read, petitioning its recipients to consider filling the void.

Please get back to me as soon as possible with rank, years of fire service and training qualifications.

Seven-year-old boy dies in deadly inferno left unattended because of de Blasios jab mandates

The disastrous impact of de Blasios jab mandates is already being seen after a seven-year-old boy named Robert Resto died in a fire that engulfed their home around 1:30am on Saturday morning.

Reports indicate that Restos grandmother was seriously hurt, but that Resto himself was burned alive. de Blasio now has at least one childs blood on his hands for refusing to respect health freedom.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) issued a statement explaining that numerous fire stations, including six in Manhattan, nine in Brooklyn, three in Queens, four in the Bronx and four in Staten Island, had to close due to no manpower.

FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro also issued a statement warning that these closures could be catastrophic because they endanger the lives of the citys residents.

An FDNY spokesman claims that Restos death was not caused by a lack of response time, however, firefighters just the day before reportedly called in sick in order to avoid being forced into unpaid leave for not being vaccinated.

Is there a sickout? Not to my knowledge, no, said Andrew Ansbro of the UFA.

Numerous others inside the same building as Resto reportedly got injured by the blaze. They were all taken to New York Presbyterian-Columbia Hospital.

As of Friday, all other municipal workers in NYC have been ordered to procure proof of at least one injection or else be forced into unpaid leave.

Even after a surge in vaccines before the mandates deadline on Friday 10,951 firefighters; about 36,000 cops; and 10,000 emergency responders  around 4,300 of whom are employed by the fire department  have yet to get jabbed, reported the DailyMail Online.

Nigro expressed further frustrations about the excessive sick leave, calling it unacceptable. He did not, however, state that de Blasios mandates are the thing that is unacceptable in this whole scenario.

Out on the streets, meanwhile, NYPD and FDNY union members were seen holding up placards of protest that said things like: FDNY against tyranny (and) if we lose medical choice we lose all freedom.

The breakdown of society due to Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine mandates appears to be accelerating. To keep up with the latest, visit Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) How can adults sit idly by, as pharmaceutical companies claim ownership over their childrens minds, bodies and future? Nearly two years have gone by since the first acts of medical tyranny were brought down upon the world, yet children are still being subjugated by oppressive school mask mandates, anti-social behavioral training and on-off paranoid quarantines that do not make any sense, whatsoever.

Now Pfizer and the rest of the Big Pharma cabal are doing exactly what they have planned all along. They are targeting the mentally abused, the physically restrained and the socially isolated schoolchildren, lumping them into age groups, then using them as guinea pigs in a global experiment gone tyrannically awry. Not only have these pharmaceutical companies converted regulatory agencies into their personal propaganda-pushing lackeys, but they have also indemnified themselves from judicial accountability, denying families any legal recourse when these experimental vaccines damage children.

Pfizer continues to deceive parents and abuse children

Pfizer has yet to demonstrate that children are at risk to the infection they advertise. Instead, Pfizer makes children believe they are going to suffer and die if they do not take part in this never-ending, oppressive, undignified experiment. Children are being held down, their wills broken, their spirit crushed, just so Pfizer can promise them superhero status if they follow along and take their vaccines. Pfizer is now marketing directly to kids and telling them the vaccines make them more altruistic and give them superpowers.

There is no shred of science to support the false sense of altruism that Pfizer is manipulating children to accept. Pfizer has yet to show that their vaccines stop transmission of SARS-CoV-2. One Oxford study showed that vaccinated healthcare workers actually carry 251 times the viral load of unvaccinated people.

Even if a real vaccine was available  an efficacious and safe immunization  children are not at any severe risk to the advertised infection. Because of this, children do not need to fear the air they breathe or the people they meet.

Pfizer has yet to demonstrate that their lifesaving product strengthens human immunity. The evidence shows that these vaccines destroy the cytotoxic T-cell, T-helper-1 and T-helper-2 human immune response, weakening long term antibody responses and making immune systems more susceptible to severe infection.

Researchers at the Salk Institute have shown that the spike protein (now being replicated in human cells) damages the endothelial cells and causes acute cardiovascular issues, strokes, myocarditis, pericarditis and blood clots.

Pfizer disregards and censors children who were injured in clinical trials

Pfizer is preying on the psychology of children, setting them up for lifelong dependence on government decrees and pharmaceutical interventions that do more harm than good. Parents who have lost the courage to speak up for their children are now going along with Pfizers false authority, believing that their freedom will return if they just follow the next Big Pharma mandate. Lacking courage, parents are setting their children up for a lifetime of depression, mental fragility, subservience to medical tyranny, and health complications. Pfizer is now mocking these parents and telling their abused and terrorized children that it is courageous to line up and take all the shots. This deception will lead many children to suffer, as various vaccine injuries, disabilities, strokes and immunosuppression becomes normalized.

Nothing is more sinister than the recent censorship of 13-year-old Maddie de Garay who volunteered for Pfizers experimental covid-19 vaccine trial that was targeted toward 12-15-year-olds. Comcast colluded with Pfizer to block the girls video testimony. Within twelve hours of the second Pfizer covid-19 vaccine, Maddie started to experience severe symptoms that included swollen limbs, severe abdominal pain, spasms, severe headache, nausea, fever, vomiting, blood in her urine and tachycardia. She did not get better over the months; in fact, she lost feeling below her waist and had to walk hunched over with her toes up, as pain and misery overtook her young body. Pfizer disregards the children harmed in their clinical trials and works to censor them at every turn, with power over Big Tech and the corporate media.

Parents can no longer turn a blind eye to this monstrosity, and must do everything in their power to protect their children against these child predators.

Sources include:

BlacklistedNews.com

Papers.SSRN.com

NaturalNews.com

AHAJournals.org

NaturalNews.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new law that benefits workers who lost their jobs by refusing to get Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines.

The new law makes an exception to the rules for individuals who claim religious or medical exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination requirements. The Iowa House and Senate passed the bill on Thursday, Oct. 28.

This is a major step forward in protecting Iowans freedoms and their abilities to make healthcare decisions based on whats best for themselves and their families. This legislation also gives employees the assurance that they will still receive unemployment benefits despite being fired for standing up for their beliefs, the Republican governor said in a statement on her website. (Related: COVID vaccine: A complete failure.)

Reynolds said no Iowan should be forced to lose their job or livelihood over the COVID-19 vaccine. As Ive stated publicly numerous times, I believe the vaccine is the best defense against COVID-19 and weve provided Iowans with the information they need to determine whats best for themselves and their families, but no Iowan should be forced to lose their job or livelihood over the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Iowa governor stressed that the law is only the first step to push back against federal overreach. This is only the first step. We will be taking other legal actions against the Biden Administrations vaccine mandate, she said.

Reynolds said Iowa was also against the Biden administrations requirement that all workers employed by a federal contractor be vaccinated.

Today, Im announcing that the state of Iowa is joining a federal lawsuit to challenge President [Joe] Bidens unprecedented use of the government to force every employee of every federal contractor in America, including thousands of Iowans, to take a vaccine against their wishes, she said. As long as I am governor, the state of Iowa will always stand alongside Iowans and to be sure their freedoms are protected.

According to the Daily Iowan, Bidens vaccine mandate for contractors pits Americans against Americans and it will only worsen the workforce shortage and supply chain issues that hinder economic recovery.

Employers dont want to fire their employees here in the state of Iowa, Republican state Rep. Henry Stone said. Theyre struggling to hire people in the first place, and this bill now allows employers to keep their workforce by accepting medical and religious exemptions.

Opposition against Bidens vaccine mandate grows

Bidens mandate to vaccinate millions of Americans in the workforce is being met with considerable opposition. Last September, Biden instructed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to begin writing rules that would require companies of 100 or more employees to either require vaccines or test employees once a week.

Weve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us, Biden said.

Private business owners are now trying unconventional methods to at least stall the mandate. Business owners and critics are using the lobbying method in attempts to slow down the policy process, according to Reuters.

Ive never seen anything like it, said Eric Conn, who met with Biden officials on behalf of the Employers COVID-19 Prevention Coalition.

Normally, lobbying is used in Washington so that powerful and well-connected groups can meet with senior policy analysts in order to gain political advantage for interested parties. But in this case, its simply individual critics who are scheduling meetings with policy analysts to voice their opposition. This is highly unusual for individuals to get involved in lobbying like this.

Its generally the province of Washington lobbyists, Rutgers University professor Stuart Shapiro said.

Along with big businesses, Republican governors and officials have voiced their opposition. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott already issued an executive order that will not allow any entity to mandate vaccines.

When Biden first announced his plan to mandate the vaccine in businesses, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster immediately spoke out against it. Biden and the radical Democrats [have] thumbed their noses at the Constitution, he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Republican attorneys general from 24 states sent a letter to Biden in opposition of his vaccine mandate. (Related: Now 27 states are fighting Bidens aggressive COVID-19 vaccine mandate.)

Your plan is disastrous and counterproductive. From a policy perspective, this edict is unlikely to win hearts and minds  it will simply drive further skepticism. And at least some Americans will simply leave the job market instead of complying, they wrote in the letter.

This will further strain an already-too-tight labor market, burdening companies and threatening the jobs of even those who have received a vaccine. Worse still, many of those who decide to leave their jobs rather than follow your directive will be essential healthcare workers.

Follow Immunization.news for more news and information related to vaccine mandates.

Sources include:

Wnd.com

Reuters.com
(Natural News) Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit on Friday, Oct. 29, against the Biden administrations federal vaccine mandate.

The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed its disdain for Americans who choose not to get a [COVID-19] vaccine, and it has committed repeated and abusive federal overreach to force upon Americans something they do not want. The federal government does not have the ability to strip individuals of their choice to get a vaccine or not, Paxton said.

The lawsuit stated that President Joe Bidens executive order is a dramatic infringement upon individual liberties; principles of federalism and separation of powers; and the rule of law. According to the lawsuit, Americans are being forced to choose between their livelihoods and their fundamental constitutional rights.

The federal government  has launched a coordinated effort to decide for itself whether and when Americans must receive the vaccine  regardless of individual preference, healthcare needs or religious beliefs. [It is] using subterfuge to accomplish what [it] cannot achieve directly  universal compliance with vaccine mandates. It effectively [claims for itself] a general police power to control American life, infringing on states sovereignty and usurping the powers reserved to the states under the Constitution, the suit added.

Paxtons lawsuit follows a complaint filed by ten AGs on the same day against the vaccine mandate. Led by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, the coalition argued in their complaint that the Biden administration has exercised power far beyond what was delegated to the federal government by constitutional mandate or congressional action.

Neither Article II of the U.S. Constitution nor any act of Congress authorizes defendants to implement their vaccine mandate. The power to impose vaccine mandates, to the extent that any such power exists, is  reserved to the states, Schmitts suit said.

Schmitt said in a statement: My office has led the nation in taking action to fight back against attempts by petty tyrants to impose their control through mask mandates. Now, were leading the nation in fighting back against this absurd federal overreach. (Related: Dr. Eric Nepute lauds Missouri AG for eleventh hour move against mask mandate  Brighteon.TV.)

Paxton: Biden clearly underestimating Texans lack of patience

The Texas AG also took a swipe at Bidens remarks about Americans pushing back against mandatory vaccination: If the president thinks his patience is wearing thin, he is clearly underestimating the lack of patience from Texans whose rights he is infringing.

Paxtons statement was in response to remarks Biden delivered during a Sept. 9 White House press conference. Biden announced vaccine mandates for federal contractors, alongside other measures, during the press briefing.

Biden made a thinly veiled threat to Americans who turn down the vaccine: Weve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us. So please, do the right thing.

Paxton noted this threat in his lawsuit. Biden himself has expressed little tolerance for those who do not share his views, as he put on public display when he announced that his patience was wearing thin with Americans who choose not to receive the vaccine, he wrote.

While not mentioning them by name, Biden denounced governors who oppose vaccine mandates during his Sept. 9 White House press conference.

A distinct minority of Americans  supported by a distinct minority of elected officials  are keeping us from turning the corner. These elected officials are actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19, Biden said.

Instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated and mask up, theyre ordering mobile morgues for the unvaccinated dying in their communities. This is totally unacceptable. If theyll not help  if these governors wont help us beat the pandemic, Ill use my power as president to get them out of the way.

Given this, the Texas AG pointed out how Biden singled out Republican governors as enemies just because they are standing up for health freedom. The president has further singled out Texas as an enemy because of its stance in favor of individual liberty, Paxton stated in his lawsuit. (Related: Lawfare with Tom Renz: Gov. Abbotts executive order banning vaccine mandates came too late  Brighteon.TV.)

Resist.news has more articles on lawsuits against the federal vaccine mandate.

Sources include:

BeckerNews.com

TexasAttorneyGeneral.Gov

FoxNews.com

AGO.MO.gov

WhiteHouse.gov
On Monday, young climate activists from around the world flocked to the streets of Glasgow to urge that world leader coming for the Cop26 climate conference take action sooner rather than later.

Young Environmental Activists from Around the World

Fridays for Future activists making their voices heard outside #cop26 right now!



Chants calling for #ClimateJustice pic.twitter.com/uAY9ZmOYQ4  Daisy Dunne (@daisydunnesci) November 1, 2021

Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate were among those who participated in a wave of protests in Glasgow. Young environmentalists from Argentina, the Philippines, Mexico, and Colombia were among those who joined them.

Criticizing the UN Climate Summit

Fridays for Future protestors slammed Boris Johnson and other politicians who took part in the opening day of the UN climate summit, which drew 25,000 people. "Inside Cop, there are politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously," Ms. Thunberg told Glasgow demonstrators. Officials confirmed that Mr. Johnson would fly back to London on a private jet on Tuesday, barely a day after urging people to take urgent measures to rescue the globe.

Related Article: COP26 Climate Summit: Everything You Need to Know About Glasgow Climate Conference



Source of Hope

The voices of the children need to be heard, says 12-year-old Francisco Vera from Colombia @Fridays4future #ClimateJustice pic.twitter.com/jxrsdYN61d  Daisy Dunne (@daisydunnesci) November 1, 2021



"The solution to the climate crisis is not there - because the hope is not there," Nicki Becker, an Argentine campaigner, stated. "The movement is the source of hope."

Francisco Vera, a 12-year-old who has previously received death threats for speaking out about the need to protect the environment, was among those who took part in the protests.

"The voices of children need to be heard," he said. "We also need to be part of the decision-making process because it is our present and our future."

Reflecting on the IPCC Climate Report

Filipino activist Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Mexican-Chilean indigenous activist Xiye Bastida, and Ugandan activist Evelyn Acham called on politicians to stop investing in new fossil fuels and implement "creative carbon accounting."

They also urged governments to commit to the carbon reductions required to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as stated in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

A critical climate assessment released in August cautioned that the prospects of keeping global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius are dwindling as international emissions climb year after year.

In addition, according to a UN report released before Cop26, nations' most recent pledges will cut CO2 emissions by just 7.5 percent by 2030, compared to earlier commitments. A 55 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be required to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Personal Stories

Many of the speakers from the south shared personal stories of how they have been affected by the climate catastrophe.

"The climate catastrophe is occurring right now, and the global south is being sacrificed," said Jon Bonifacio, a Fridays for Future Philippines organizer.

Also Read: Sponsors Criticizes COP26 Claiming the Climate Summit is "Mismanaged"

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A 55-year-old man attending a Fira de Onda festival in eastern Spain bled to death after getting ran over and gored down by a bull. The fatality was the first to be recorded in the country since COVID-19 restrictions were relaxed and bull running have resumed after hiatus during summer.

The town's council said on Saturday that the man was attacked repeatedly and attempts to entice the animal away has not succeeded. Unfortunately, the man's left thigh perforated an artery causing his immediate death in a hospital near the town of Villarreal. He reportedly sustained head injury as well.

The council of Onda cancelled further plans for bull running, while other events continue.

A traditional annual event

Bull running has been a traditional event held in Spain but also poses grave danger to people. Over the past seven years, 17 people had been killed by this event, with 2015 being the worst year with seven deaths.

The 'bous al carrer' (running bulls) event in Valencia region of eastern Spain is being celebrated throughout the month of August, but was held later this year following the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions.

In the events, bulls are normally set free in a sectioned-off part of a town to show the locals what it is like to face wild beasts. In the afternoon prior to the event, testing is performed with cows or untamed bull before the big night entry.

These events are held by around 300 towns in eastern Spain every year.

Also read: Scientists Finally Unlocked Weird Origins of Tusks From Ancient Mammals

Frowned upon by non-locals

It is tradition in these towns that bulls are released in different portions during the event and participants run in front of the herd.

Many have questioned the morality of such event, usually by outsiders who have not lived through the same belief and tradition. Many have also alleged that bulls are treated unfairly to create a twist and more entertaining event.

In addition to human fatalities, bulls are also violently killed in bullrings across Europe, as they taunt, exhaust, and stab each other. They are generally used in bullfights later the same day until they are weakened from blood loss or get paralyzed.

It has been widely debated that the violence of such events is uncalled for and the government must end it completely. In fact, 93% of 16-to-24-year-olds in Spain say they don't support bullfighting, and around 100 towns have banned it.

When Catalonia banned bullfighting in 2010, Spain's top court overruled the ban in 2016 noting that "authorities generally could regulate such public spectacles, and even ban them, but in this case the national parliament's ruling that bullfighting is part of Spain's heritage must prevail."

Despite of occasional casualties and opposition from animal rights groups, the racing of bulls or cows remains a popular tradition.

Two more people were reported to have gotten injured during a similar bull-run in another town.

For more news and updates about nature and similar topics, don't forget to follow Nature World News!

Also read: CGI Dinosaur Gives Speech on Climate Change to World Leaders in UN Video
The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Coronavirus Resource Center have held that pfficial COVID-19 deaths reported globally had surpassed 5 million.

Since the deadly virus was first detected in the city of Wuhan, China, the number of cases recorded reached 246.7 million. In the past 28 days, 197,116 died of Covid-19 worldwide. However, JHU's tally of coronavirus deaths reached 5,000,425, Monday.

World Health Organization (WHO) said that number of cases and deaths globally are increasing for the first time in two months, "driven by ongoing increases in Europe," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"It's another reminder that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over," he said. "The pandemic persists in large part because inequitable access to tools persists."

Tedros noted that high-income countries have accessed and administered COVID-19 tests and vaccines 80 and 30 times more, respectively, than that in poorer countries.

Worst outbreak of the century

After almost two years since the first coronavirus death was reported, the world has never been the same. The virus that originated at a Wuhan seafood market caused far more damages than that one might imagine. In the farthest depths and corners of Earth, someone had died, lost a family, or lost a job, among other things.

Subsequently after the coronavirus death from the Philippines - the first recorded case outside of China, different other countries followed, with United States as the worst hit.

According to JHU data, US had reported around 46 million cases and more than 745,800 deaths, the highest numbers around the world, surpassing the deadliest pandemic in US history.

Meanwhile, Russia battles its 'worst-ever' phase, with 40,096 cases and 1,159 deaths less than a week ago. The country's capital city of Moscow had launched new Covid-19 restrictions since, with hopes that coronavirus cases and deaths across the country will plummet.

Also read: Breast Cancer Vaccine: Human Trials Testing Designed for Triple-Negative Breast Cancers

Wide gap in access to vaccines





While Covid vaccines have become available around the world, several low-income countries are still having wide gaps in access to vaccines. Out of 7 billion doses distributed worldwide, only 3.6% were administered to these nations.

Tedros said that every country would have reached our 40% target by now if vaccines were distributed equally.

"As it is, health workers and vulnerable people in low and middle-income countries remain unprotected, oxygen isn't getting to those who need it, and a lack of testing is leaving many countries blind to how the virus is circulating, and the world blind to emerging variants," he said in a news briefing.

Apart from that, some countries remain hesitant in getting vaccine, particularly in the US. "It's the unvaccinated that is driving this current surge that is resulting in many hospitalizations, the need for intensive care units and the record number of deaths we're seeing," said Dr. Henry Bernstein, former member of the CDC advisory committee on immunization practices.

As a matter of fact, access to vaccines made gradual changes of making countries normal again, with lighter restrictions than before but with wider awareness.

Also read: Palm Oil: The Common Household Ingredient that Harms the Climate
30 years ago, a triad of meteorological variables combined to generate a cyclone so hazardous and strong that its captivating growth can only be defined as perfect. George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Diane Lane headed a team that helped the movie become a blockbuster hit and entrenched the storm's reputation in mainstream media.

The hurricane was recreated on the feature film three years just after book's release in a film adaptation.

The Perfect Storm After Three Decades

Now with Perfect Storm lowering to 28.70 inches of pressure and a powerful high-pressure formation to the north, an extreme pressure differential emerged, pushing up gusty winds from the Carolina coastline northward, causing tremendous surges.

"The entrapment of Grace into the Perfect Storm resulted further by deepening owing to the degree disparity between hot humid instability air inside Grace's rotation and the cooler flow inside the growing storm," AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski explained.

"The factors may have caused a major hurricane on their own," Case said via chat with The Associated Press in 2000, mostly around time the series aired. "A high-pressure pattern formed across southeast Canada, permitting a low-pressure system that tracked front to swiftly strengthen."

Grace was drawn into the emerging Perfect Storm when Cyclone Grace faded and the vortex that became the Perfect Storm strengthened.

An all-out investigation again for sailors and the Andrea Gail, concerning US and Canadian forces, took place on October 31, after vessel's proprietor, Robert Brown, declared it missing from a sea voyage the day before.

Upon redeeming the Satori personnel, the Tamaroa had to alter direction and travel four hours to Long Island to assist in the evacuation of the crew of a New York Air National Guard chopper that had to abandon its operation owing to a botched refilling effort about 90 miles south of Montauk, New York.

Also read: Sinkholes Are Appearing in Dead Sea's Receding Coast Line

Perfect Storm or Disastrous Weather Event?

On November 6, merely days prior the quest was called off, representatives of Canada's air recovery efforts discovered a fishing net, a propane cylinder, and an Emergency Stance Specifying Radio Beacon on the southwest corner of Sable Island, a tiny piece of land in the northwest Atlantic roughly 185 miles south of Halifax.

On October 30, the Coast Guard initially rescued the three sailors of the Satori, a 32-foot yacht traveling from New Hampshire to Bermuda when it got overtaken by high seas south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.

The Perfect Storm finally did become a complete cyclone by November 1991, however the National Hurricane Center never designated it because the NHC worried identifying the cyclone would be misleading because much of the Northeast was still extracting from preceding intense tropical structure.

According to Kottlowki, overall, monitors reported 101-foot tides, including surges inflicting significant destruction to maritime zones around the United States' East Coast.

30 years ago, meteorological factors joined to generate a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe, but is it conceivable that such a hurricane will arise once more?

"Considering that ocean conditions are significantly higher than they were in 1991," Kottlowski added, "that would not be shocking if a comparable scenario as what occurred in 1991 occurred again within the next few years."

Strong surges and tidal waves wreaked havoc on buildings from North Carolina to Maine, destroying a wharf as far south as Florida and tossing a man ashore in Puerto Rico.

30 years later, the disaster maintains a distinct place in the American psyche as an outcome of the unusual convergence of atmospheric circumstances and the accompanying novel and hit film and a similar storm was being tracked by AccuWeather meteorologists during the final week of October 2021.

Also read: Palm Oil: The Common Household Ingredient that Harms the Climate
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flown out of Glasgow and the COP26 climate talks with Australia's international reputation in shambles and the rest of the world skeptical of Australia's commitment to meaningful climate action.

Morrison arrived in Glasgow with a fresh pledge to a net-zero emissions target for 2050 but no plans to do anything more by 2030. He will leave Glasgow, further isolating Australia from a global community that mainly attempts to build momentum for urgent climate action.

Morrison on Glasgow

Morrison's ability to gain credibility for Australia's position on climate change was always going to be a struggle, given that it was so based mainly on as-yet-unknown technology and lacked any commitments to improve medium-term emissions targets.

The primary purpose of the COP26 discussions, which mark the commencement of the Paris Agreement's emissions reduction pledges, was for countries to 'ratchet up' their 2030 ambitions, which Morrison declined to do.

The US, the UK, and the European Union have all sought to use the Glasgow talks to secure fresh promises on ending deforestation, reducing methane emissions, sharing technology, and supporting business.

These initiatives, introduced during the first week of COP26, are intended to generate momentum for a successful conclusion to the summit.

Related Article: Thousands of Environmental Scientists and Academics are Calling for a "Non-Proliferation Treaty" on Fossil Fuel



Australia's Climate Action

Australia has generally avoided this drive, preferring to pursue its agenda during the talks, including openly promoting the Australian gas industry through its official pavilion at the COP26 location.

Due to the need to keep a dissident Nationals party room onboard, Morrison refused to allow Australia to sign on to a big new worldwide promise to limit methane emissions, led by the United States and the European Union.

Morrison had been scheduled to speak at the inauguration of a new global commitment to end deforestation by 2030, which Australia had signed up to, but he instead chose to return to Australia early.

Being Classified with Other Countries

It effectively lumps Australia in with a group of countries, including China, Russia, and Brazil, that have largely shied away from Biden, Johnson, and the European Union's efforts to promote further action.

Morrison's chances of appearing to an Australian audience at the COP26 conference as adopting a renewed commitment to climate action have been completely shattered by his lack of follow-through pledges and severe mismanagement of the ongoing diplomatic situation with France.

Rising Tensions

Morrison's approach has exacerbated tensions rather than defusing French dissatisfaction with Australia's abrupt rejection of a $90 billion submarine agreement.

The disclosure of text messages between Morrison and French President Emmanuel Macron can only be described as low-rent politicking, a practice that would be dubious at best if used against a domestic political opponent, let alone a key ally's head of state.

Morrison's normal response to criticism is to attack and smear rather than reflect and demonstrate repentance, as evidenced by the leak.

It has fallen to others to clean up Morrison's foreign messes.

Also Read: OPEC Member Calls for Change, Urges Oil Producers to Invest More on Renewable Energy

For more news about making the environment sustainable, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
All things considered, the COVID-19 vaccinations which is currently accessible are quite good however there are approaches to develop.

While others have far more valid fears aside those "valid issues." Trypanophobia, or strong fear of syringes, may be a crippling illness, leading one in every six Americans to forego their yearly flu vaccination.

No Pain Patch Vaccination for Covid-19

However, a novel COVID-19 vaccination currently studied by the University of Queensland in Australia may have the answer as it only takes the form of a patch rather than a syringe.

"It's a lot easier to use versus a syringe," said Dr David Muller of the University of Queensland's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.

"You just tap a device on the body, and 5,000 miniscule extensions transmit vaccination very invisibly through skin."

Muller and colleagues showed how the patch vaccination effectively safeguarded mice from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in a report today in the journal Science Advances.

Perhaps even better, the immunological reaction elicited by the patch was greater than that elicited by the identical vaccination supplied via injection.

"Once the vaccination is supplied through HD-MAP device instead of a syringe," Muller added, "it causes greater and quicker immunogenicity."

"It also neutralizes several variations, particularly versions from the United Kingdom and South Africa."

Besides from fear of needles, the experts believe this might be a huge advance for individuals in impoverished and emerging nations.

The antibody utilized in the experiment was HexaPro, a contender designed by the University of Texas with the goal of producing reduced and broadly available vaccinations.

Also read: Breast Cancer Vaccine: Human Trials Testing Designed for Triple-Negative Breast Cancers

Availability of Covid-19 Immunization

It could be preserved at air temperature as strong as 8C, eliminating necessity for specialized fridge, and it is produced in eggs, very much like vaccines, implying that the power grid to generate them is now in location worldwide.

"Humans are experiencing extraordinary discrepancies in COVID-19 flu shot availability worldwide," stated Ilya Finkelstein, one of several crew who created HexaPro, in a proclamation back in April.

"We devised HexaPro to give us one step closer to resolving the large discrepancy in vaccination availability," the report says.

"The vaccination proteins remain sustainable on the patch for roughly a month at 25C, and a week even at temperatures exceeding as 40C."

"This accommodates itself towards advances in vaccination carriage and distribution to patient populations, particularly in a last-mile scenario when adequate facilities could be lacking." This is especially important in low-to-middle-income countries in which there is an immediate necessity promote SARS-CoV-2 immunization of communities."

Nowadays, roughly half of the planet's population has had one does of COVID-19 immunization, but then that figure is massively tilted in best interest of strong nations like the US. While three-quarters of Canadians and Europeans are fully vaccinated and one in ten Brits has already obtained a third shot. Nearly 96% of people in low-income countries have yet to acquire an immunization.

"The findings are incredibly obvious, vaccination with HD-MAP induces far firmer and far more effective immune responses towards COVID-19 in preclinical studies than immunization with syringe," stated Vaxxas President and CEO David Hoey.

"Creating a single immunization which is conveniently delivered and self-administered will considerably increase disease outbreak immunization capacity."

Also read: Ancient Metropolis "The White City" Dedicated to Monkey God Worshipped by Pre-Columbian Civilization
Global warming already has a significant influence on the geographical area, and its effects will likely to increase as the speed of global warming increases, posing significant livelihood issues.

Modification is prominently covered on the COP26 action plan, along with the Glasgow Transformation Expedient, which assesses actions made and intervention required to satisfy the Paris Agreement goal of acclimation and advertise a much lower carbon years ahead for all, especially the most disadvantaged populace and ecologies.

The United Nations Climate Summit (COP26) is now proceeding in Glasgow, where international representatives are debating what needs done to solve the environmental issue and making promises to undertake particular steps.

Despite this, coastal villages are collapsing under pressure of billions of dollars in destruction, and they are concerned that global warming may exacerbate the situation. The Great Lakes region contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water, and far more than 34 million reside there, sustaining a $5 trillion economy if it were a sovereign, it is one of the biggest in the planet.

The Threat of Global Warming

Global warming is expected to completely change the variety and dissemination of some marine species, boost the occurrence and intensity of toxic algal blooms, intensify flood plain damage, develop new risks from exotic species, degrade beach safety, and displace or eradicate native wildlife.

Sea levels are up by two meters in certain sections of the Great Lakes basin, eroding coastlines, sweeping away dwellings, ruining roadways, endangering facilities such as water systems, and disturbing Native Peoples' age-old customs.

According to the 2019 Audubon Report Survival by Degrees, 64% of migratory birds throughout reproduction and non-breeding periods are immensely prone to climatological transition. This implies extra open water throughout cold season, narrower ice, and less of the fishing that is so prevalent with ice fishermen.

Elevated floodwaters blocked roadways, swamped primitive campsites, and deferred 60 wedding ceremony at the renowned Boat House, a more than 100-year-old sculling hub, on the 398-hectare Belle Isle State Park in 2019. In rebuttal, the government paid $2 million in 2020 on tiger dams, huge, provisional, water-filled berms, to maintain water from swamping residences.

Detroit is a historic metropolis with integrated stormwater and sewer pipes that spill with runoff and untreated wastewater after severe rain storms.

Also read: Disastrous 'Perfect Storm' on Halloween Still Remains a Haunting Weather Event After 30 Years

Preparing in Adapting to Climate Change

By the turn of the era, Detroit is expected to see a considerable rise in the frequency of hotter days, as many as 65 days over 32.2C. High temperature and bad air condition will adversely impact the town's most disadvantaged in society as a result of the climate crisis.

An interconnected, basin-wide ecology strategy might enable cost-sharing of scientific investigations and adequate policy intervention at the federal and sub-national tiers, resulting in improved resilience.

The Great Lakes Water Quality Contract calls for primarily consisted to foresee and inhibit environmental damage by adhering to the protection of the environment: when industrial emissions may cause undesirable damage that is scientifically possible but unsure, efforts must be made to minimize or avoid that injury.

Various towns, territories, and jurisdictions in the Great Lakes region have been putting massive response strategies to domains mentioned implications of environmental disruption.

Also read: Climate Scientist Warns About 5 Feet Increase in Sea Levels Due to Global Warming
The California condor is North America's biggest flying bird, with a 10-foot wingspan that allows it to soar to 15,000 feet - roughly half the height of a commercial airliner. Aside from their amazing flying capabilities, female condors are also highly-regarded for their rare ability to procreate without a male partner.

It has been discovered that their females can procreate without a male partner, a rare phenomenon referred to as parthenogenesis.

Determining the Sex of Wild Condors

The recent discoveries have been described as a "eureka moment" by Oliver Ryder, director of conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Many scientists have experiences like this when they view the world in a different way, says Ryder, who co-authored a paper documenting the finding, which was published in late October.

For almost a century, condors have been endangered. As Europeans colonized the west, they shot, poisoned, and trapped condors, gathered their eggs, and depleted the condors' food source of antelope, elk, and other big wild animals.

Their population decreased until just 22 animals remained in 1982, but a state-led recovery effort has successfully bred the creatures back from the brink since then.

The San Diego Zoo was charged with creating a test to detect the sex of the few surviving wild condors, which were finally all taken into the care of two captive breeding areas, and the road that led to the discovery of the condor's asexual reproduction started in the 1980s as well.

Also Read: Giant California Condors Trashes House in Tehachapi

Parthenogenesis in Condors

In order to minimize inbreeding, Ryder said the zoo continues to employ DNA testing to establish the condors' family links. Scientists recently decided to carry out a full genetic investigation of the population, which had risen to over 900 birds.

Condor samples, including blood, eggshell membrane, tissue from dead birds, and feathers, were gathered during the course of the program's 30-plus-year lifespan.

There were two obvious incidents after the scientists finished their examination that suggested something was wrong.

Both featured chicks that were born from an egg that did not contain any genetic material from the male that shared the enclosure and was assumed to be the father. Multiple samples confirmed the outcomes, indicating that it wasn't an accident.

Role of Solo Reproduction in Conservation Efforts

Ryder recalls discussing the shocking incidents with his coworker. He felt chills when he discovered the condors had reproduced through parthenogenesis, which is a kind of reproduction in which an egg may grow into an embryo without being fertilized by sperm.

Parthenogenesis is derived from the Greek words for "virgin birth," and it has been seen in aphids, bees, and ants, however it is uncommon in birds.

He claims that the notion that these are "virgin births" is incorrect: the females that reproduced in this manner had previously had numerous chicks via sexual reproduction. Ryder believes that this phenomenon occurs in more species than is currently recognized.

The condor is a vulnerable species, and it's uncertain what role solo reproduction will play in conservation efforts.

Related Article: Flight of the Condor: Yurok Tribe to Return Captive-Bred Bird to California Coast

For more news, updates about condors and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
According to a tweet published by Mhmiranusa on November 3, 2021, an Iranian Navy's Shahid Soleimani class frigate reportedly begins sea trials near Qeshm island.

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Shahid Soleimani class frigate during sea trials (Picture source: Twitter account of Mhmiranusa)

HARTH Shahid Soleimani-class is 65 m (213 ft 3 in) long, and its design has been compared to the Chinese Type 22 missile boat and the Taiwanese Tuo Chiang class.

At least three were confirmed to be under construction through commercial satellite imagery as of April 2021, one at the Shahid Mahallati Shipyard in Bushehr, one in Qeshm Island and the other at small boatyard near Bandar Abbas.

A high-aspect-ratio twin-hull vessel (acronymed HARTH) refers to a certain design of catamaran vessels with small waterplane area. These vessels are built and used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran. Such design is considered relatively rare in military usage.

The design of vessels is being described as looking "almost like a pond skater" because of the superstructure sitting above tall legs.

Due to the large length of the hulls in the water (also known as pontoons) and also the high height of the deck above the surface, it has a high length-to-width ratio (and is thus called high-aspect-ratio).

This design enables small speedboats to move under the ship, which can technically make certain tactical scenarios possible. The structure is made of aluminum.

Lateral view of Shahid Soleimani class frigate (Picture source: Marinepress)
Weather Alert

...FREEZING FOG ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM PST SUNDAY... * WHAT...Visibility less than one mile in freezing fog. * WHERE...In Washington, Lower Columbia Basin of Washington and Foothills of the Blue Mountains of Washington. In Oregon, Lower Columbia Basin of Oregon. * WHEN...Until 10 AM PST Sunday. * IMPACTS...Hazardous driving conditions due to low visibility and potential frost on bridges. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Current observations through the Lower Columbia Basin indicate areas of a quarter mile visibility or less and the potential for freezing temperatures tonight into Sunday morning. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... If driving, slow down, use your headlights, and leave plenty of distance ahead of you. Also, be alert for frost on bridge decks causing slippery roads. &&
NEW YORK (AP)  Many government workers who have defied New York City's COVID-19 vaccine mandate won't be fired and will even keep getting paid, for now, if they've applied for a religious exemption under a labor deal announced Thursday.

The agreement, similar to one already in effect for teachers, affirms the city's legal right to impose the mandate on unvaccinated workers in four unions. But it also lets those employees go on an unpaid leave through at least the end of June while keeping their health benefits.

The deal covers about 75,000 people who work in settings from parks to school lunchrooms to trash trucks  but not police or firefighters. Firefighters unions said Thursday they had been offered the same pact and made the city a counterproposal, including a permanent option for weekly coronavirus testing instead of inoculation.

Were still not agreeing to a flat-out mandate, Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro said at a news conference.

His union, which represents rank-and-file firefighters, and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association are also asking for more time for their members to apply for exemptions to the requirement, as it currently stands. The unions are challenging it in court.

The city reached a pact with District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Teamsters Local 237; Uniformed Sanitationmens Association Local 831, and Local 300 of the Service Employees International Union.

Their members who applied for a religious or medical exemption by Nov. 2 will stay on the payroll with weekly testing while those requests and any appeals are adjudicated, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Those unions agreed to drop litigation against the mandate.

Some 92% of the city's more than 320,000 employees are now vaccinated, de Blasio said.

Vaccinations are critical to our recovery and our city workforce is leading the way, the Democrat said in a statement.

District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido said the agreement lets members "make choices based on what is best for them and their families and know they will have health benefits available during this critical time.

About 9,000 city workers went on unpaid leave when the mandate took effect Monday.

Thousands of police officers have declined the vaccine, but most of those have applied for a religious exemption and are continuing to work. Only a few dozen have been suspended, according to the police commissioner.

At the Fire Department, where 1 in 5 firefighters remain unvaccinated, more than 2,000 firefighters requested sick leave when the mandate took effect Monday, about twice the number who are normally out sick.

De Blasio and Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro have acknowledged that some fire companies have been short-staffed, but they said response times remain normal and firefighting robust.

Four of the city's 350 firefighting units were out of service Thursday morning, fewer than usual, Nigro said. He said about 20 are out on an average day because of maintenance, training and other reasons.

But union leaders said the city is managing by having firefighters work exhausting amounts of overtime.

The morale out there is pretty low, said James Slevin, who works out of a Manhattan firehouse and is an officer in the International Association of Firefighters, the UFA's parent union.

Unvaccinated firefighters just want to get back to work, he said, while their colleagues are working long hours.

Nobody's head is in the right place right now because of the stress of the mandate, he said.

The city hasn't immediately responded to the unions' counterproposal.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  Manuelito Wheeler isn't sure exactly why Navajo elders admire Western films.

It could be that many of them were treated to the films in boarding schools off the reservation decades ago. Or, like his father, they told stories of gathering around a television growing up to watch gunslingers in a battle against good and evil on familiar-looking landscapes.

Whatever the reason, Navajo elders have been asking Wheeler to dub a Western in the Navajo language ever since Star Wars IV: A New Hope was translated into Navajo and released in 2013.

The result? Beeso Dah Yinijaa or A Fistful of Dollars, an iconic Western starring Clint Eastwood who plays a stranger  known as The Man With No Name  entering a Mexican village among a power struggle between families. The 1964 flick is the first in a trilogy of spaghetti Westerns produced and directed by Italians.

Unlike many other Westerns produced in the U.S., it has no Native Americans in it. That appealed to Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum.

"Usually in Westerns, there are inaccurate if not offensive depictions of Native people, so this one had no Natives, period, Wheeler said. That just eliminated that aspect for me.

A premiere for the crew and all-Navajo cast of voice actors is scheduled Nov. 16 at the movie theater in Window Rock, Arizona  the first showing since the venue shut down in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Limited seats are available to members of the public who are vaccinated against COVID-19 and consent to a rapid test on site.

It will be screened for free later this month at other places on or near the Navajo Nation, which extends into Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Other popular films dubbed in Indigenous languages include Bambi in Arapaho, Frozen 2 in Sami, and Moana in Maori. The cartoon series The Berenstain Bears was translated into the Dakota and Lakota languages.

At least 20 Indigenous languages are spoken in films that are being showcased by the National Museum of the American Indian in November during Native American Heritage Month, program manager Cindy Benitez said Thursday. Indigenous people increasingly are producing and directing their own stories, she said, including some entirely in Indigenous languages.

We have films from all gamuts, from all places, she said. It really gives me hope that these filmmakers are using that as a tool for language revitalization.

A Fistful of Dollars is the third major film dubbed in Navajo, an effort financed by the tribe to preserve the language. Elbert Jumbo voiced Bruce the shark and another fish in the Navajo version of Finding Nemo, released in 2016.

Jumbo, who retired from the U.S. Army and lives in Many Farms, also voices Ramon in the Western film. The character calls the shots, terrorizes the town and believes he's untouchable. Jumbo said he nailed the over-the-top super villainous laugh that is characteristic of spaghetti Westerns.

Jumbo speaks, writes and reads Navajo, a result of growing up in a home where that was the only option.

People feel a little more pride in knowing that we've come a long way with our language, said Jumbo, 47. It's sad to say but some of it we're losing to the younger generation. But at the same time, I think movies like this inspire them to learn, even if it's just a little word here and there.

It was supposed to be released last year, but it was delayed because of the coronavirus.

The Navajo Nation Museum teamed up with the New York-based Kino Lorber film distribution company and the Indigenous-owned Native Stars Studios in Gallup, New Mexico, for the film.

I cant wait for my uncle to see this, for my dad to see this," Wheeler said. The other feeling is I wish that those who have gone would be here to see this.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  The public will weigh in on proposed changes to New Hampshires legislative districts next week, though maps still werent widely available Wednesday.

The House Special Commission on Redistricting discussed proposed maps for county commission seats and state House districts for four of the states 10 counties, with Republicans and Democrats offering their own versions of each.

Members will discuss the remaining House seats Thursday, along with proposals for redrawing the states two congressional districts.

Public hearings are scheduled for Tuesday morning and the following Wednesday evening at the Statehouse. But while there were some paper copies of the proposed maps available at this Wednesdays meetings, Committee Chair Barbara Griffin said she didnt know when theyd be posted online, as there have been technical issues following a recent update to the Legislatures website.

In discussing the county commissioner districts, Rep. Israel Piedra, D-Manchester, questioned whether lawmakers should consider whether incumbents would remain in the same districts under the new plans.

This was not an objective in creating these maps, but in my lay opinion, if we have two maps and theyre both constitutionally permissible and I havent heard why one map is better for any other reason, it seems to me that its something that can at least be discussed as a factor, he said.

Others committee members rejected that idea.

This situation were trying to go through in a very compact period of time is complicated enough, and I would hope that we focus our discussion only on the very core issues in terms of what is constitutional and what is required by federal and state law, and not include in our discussion issues which might be interesting if we were at the end of the day and sharing a cup of tea but are not absolutely relevant and essential to our decision, said Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham.

As they do now, Republicans also controlled the Legislature when the current plan was approved in 2012. But the map was vetoed by former Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who argued it was unconstitutional because it denied 62 towns and wards their own seats in the House and that it needlessly broke up municipalities.

The Legislature overrode the veto, and the state Supreme Court later found the plan constitutional.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed bills in 2020 and 2019 that would have created an independent redistricting commission, saying it was unnecessary because gerrymandering is rare in the state and the current redistricting process was fair. The GOP-led Legislature killed similar bills this year.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. trade deficit hit an all-time high of $80.9 billion in September as American exports fell sharply while imports, even with supply chain problems at American ports, continue to climb.

The September deficit topped the previous record of $73.2 billion set in June, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The deficit is the gap between what the United States exports to the rest of the world and the imports it purchases from foreign nations.

In September, exports plunged 3% to $207.6 billion while imports rose 0.6% to $288.5 billion.

Part of the weakness reflected a 15.5% drop in petroleum exports related to the drilling rig and refinery shutdowns during Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico. Economists expect that decline to reverse in coming months with petroleum production coming back on line.

The politically sensitive goods deficit with China shot up 15% in September to $36.5 billion. Through the first nine months of this year America's deficit with China, the largest with any country, totaled $255.4 billion, an increase of 14.9% over the same period in 2020.

The overall trade deficit through September hit $638.6 billion, a 33.1% increase over the same period last year. That big jump reflects the surge in U.S. demand for imports compares to last year when many parts of the economy were shut down because of the coronavirus.

In September, the deficit in goods rose to $98.2 billion, up a sharp 10% from the August deficit. The surplus in services, which covers such things as airline travel and financial services, rose 10.5% to $17.2 billion, still well below the levels seen before the pandemic hit. The surplus in services is expected to rise further as COVID-19 cases retreat and travel restrictions are eased.

The rising trade deficit subtracted 1.1 percentage points from growth in the July-September quarter, a period when the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, slowed to an annual growth rate of just 2%, sharply lower than a GDP growth rate of 6.7% in the April-June period.

As COVID-19 cases retreat and the supply chain becomes untangled, the U.S. trade deficit should start to improve in coming months although the improvement may be modest, economists say.

We look for the trade balance to remain historically elevated through year-end, but moderation in domestic demand will cool import volumes while steady vaccine diffusion and slower virus spread should underpin stronger export growth," Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics, said.
Friday, Nov. 5, at their regular, weekly, and in-person meeting, the members of the New Canaan Mens Club will hear from Wendy Kaufman, who is the executive director of the Waterstone Luxury Senior Living Community in Stamford.

Kaufman will provide guidance, and advice on senior living options and the considerations that go into making the decision to move into senior living facilities.

The Mens Club meeting begins at 10 a.m. at the St. Marks Episcopal Church at 111 Oenoke Ridge in New Canaan. After the business portion of the programs, the meetings feature speakers, who cover a range of topics, ranging from history, to music and art, as well health and financial issues that retirees face.

As its executive director, Waterstone says Kaufmans overarching responsibility is to ensure residents have what they need to feel healthy, engaged and secure.

Kaufman, who has more than 25 years of experience in the field, was named to her current position at Waterstone in December 2020.

Located at 215 High Ridge Road in Stamford, Waterstone has 146 residences with apartments ranging from one-bedroom, and one-bedroom plus, to two-bedroom, and two-bedroom plus. Thirty-six assisted living residences include studio, one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments.

In addition to being a licensed nursing home administrator with a certificate from the Quinnipiac University in Hamden. Kaufman has completed several courses in management training, and previously received a bachelor's in economics from the University of Connecticut.

She has also served in a number of management, sales, and marketing distinctions serving seniors citzens. She is affiliated with the Senior Provider Network of Greenwich, Partners in Elderly Services of Stamford, the Alzheimer's Association of Connecticut, and is a member of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce, and the Norwalk Chamber of Commerce, and the Kiwanis Club of Wilton.

The Mens Club more than 350 members, has openings for new members 55-years old, and above. Any person wanting further information about the openings may email ncmens@ncmens.club.
GENEVA (AP)  Top officials at the World Health Organization said Thursday that Europe has seen a more than 50% jump in coronavirus cases in the last month, making it the epicenter of the pandemic despite an ample supply of vaccines.

There may be plenty of vaccine available, but uptake of vaccine has not been equal, WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said during a press briefing on Thursday.

He called for European authorities to close the gap in vaccinations. However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries that have immunized more than 40% of their populations should stop and instead donate their doses to developing countries that have yet to offer their citizens a first dose.

No more boosters should be administered except to immuno-compromised people, Tedros said.

He called for vaccine-makers to prioritize supplying COVAX, the U.N.-backed effort to share doses globally; Pfizer has sold just 1% of its supply to COVAX, Moderna had provided just 1 million doses to the developing world as of late October.

Still, despite poorer countries receiving fewer than 1% of the world's COVID-19 vaccines, cases in Africa and Southeast Asia fell by 9% last week.

More than 60 countries have started giving booster doses to combat waning immunity before winter, when another COVID-19 wave is expected. In the United States, children ages 5 to 11 started getting COVID-19 shots this week after authorities decided the benefits outweighed the risks.

Earlier on Thursday, the director of WHO's 53-country Europe region, Dr. Hans Kluge, said the rising COVID-19 case counts are of grave concern.

Europe is back at the epicenter of the pandemic, where we were one year ago, said Kluge from WHO's Copenhagen offices. Wearing a mask - unlike his colleagues in Geneva - Kluge warned that coronavirus hospitalization rates more than doubled in the last week and predicted that on that trajectory, the region could see another 500,000 pandemic deaths by February, he said.

WHO Europe says the region, which stretches as far east as the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, tallied nearly 1.8 million new weekly cases, an increase of about 6% from the previous week, and 24,000 COVID-19 weekly deaths  a 12% gain.

Kluge said the countries in the region were at varying stages of vaccination rollout and that regionwide an average of 47% of people were fully vaccinated. Only eight countries had 70% of their populations fully vaccinated.

The increase in Europe's COVID-19 marks the fifth consecutive week cases have risen across the continent, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing. The infection rate was by far the highest in Europe, which reported some 192 new cases per 100,000 people.

We are clearly in another wave, Swedens chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said Thursday. The increased spread is entirely concentrated in Europe.

Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have seen daily case numbers shoot up in recent weeks.

At an online briefing Thursday by the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency, experts urged people to get vaccinated.

The epidemiological situation in Europe is very concerning now as we head into the winter with increases in infection rates, hospitalization and we can also see the increase in fatalities, said Fergus Sweeney, the EMAs head of clinical studies and manufacturing task force.

He stressed that its very important that everybody gets vaccinated or completes their dose of vaccination if theyve already had a first dose but not a second dose. Its really important that were all vaccinated because we are not all protected until everyone is protected in that respect.

___

Follow AP's pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
New Castle, PA (16103)

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Eco-activists call on Diocese of Norwich to divest Eco-activists call on Diocese of Norwich to divest

Church eco-activists are calling on the Diocese of Norwich to withdraw from fossil fuel investments and plan to stage a small prayer vigil outside Norwich Cathedral before the diocesan Synod meets on Saturday to take a decision on the matter.

The Diocese of Norwich Synod is meeting at Norwich Cathedral on November 6, the same day that worldwide climate change protests are due to take place to coincide with the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Glasgow.



Amongst the items being discussed is one which has caught the eye of some Norwich church eco-activists, who plan to stage a small prayer vigil outside the cathedral before the Synod meets on Saturday at 9am.



Jim Green, of Norwich Christian Climate Action and a Lay Minister at St Francis church, Heartsease, Norwich, and who will be participating in the vigil, said: The Synod will be discussing whether or not it should divest from its portfolio some investments it still has with companies which support the production and exploration of fossil fuels.



It is believed that Norwich Diocese has around 512,000 invested in fossil fuel companies  which, according to some church-goers  does not fit with the church's mission to protect the earth for all its inhabitants, he said.



I was planning to be in Glasgow but decided that it was more important to be in Norwich for this vote. On a worldwide day of action connected to the COP26 climate talks, it would be wonderful if Norwich joined four other English dioceses, and most major UK denominations, in the growing divestment movement. We want to pray in solidarity with those who suffer most already from climate change and with those who have to make this vital decision.



As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in 2014, People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.

A small group of members of various Norwich churches will be outside the south entrance of Norwich Cathedral from 8.20am on Saturday morning, standing in a silent prayer vigil as members of the Synod make their entrance for the meeting.



A spokesperson from the Diocese of Norwich said: Currently the Norwich Diocesan Board of Finance Limited has direct identifiable holdings in gas and oil amounting to 236,000, this equates to 1.18% of the entire portfolio. We are aware that we are invested in other pooled funds that expose us to indirect holdings in the gas and oil sector.



We will be responding to the result of the Diocesan Synods vote in a measured and responsible way as part of a wider asset review.



https://ukcop26.org/



Read our story on the result of the vote here.





Keith Morris, 04/11/2021
Authorities have found human remains in the same general area of a river where a car was found that had been driven by a 17-year-old Massachusetts girl who disappeared nearly 40 years ago
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WASHINGTON (AP)  Two vacant Ohio congressional seats were filled Thursday after Republican Mike Carey, a coal lobbyist from Columbus, and Democrat Shontel Brown, a Democratic Party leader from Cleveland, were sworn in as members of the House after Tuesday's special election.

Brown will represent the Cleveland-area seat vacated by former Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge, who stepped down to join President Joe Biden's cabinet as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Carey takes over for former Republican Rep. Steve Stivers, who resigned in April to become CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

I take this responsibility seriously, Brown said from the House floor shortly after she and Carey were jointly sworn in. I ran for Congress because I believe in the resiliency of the community I love and call home.

Carey paid homage to his roots in small-town Sabina, Ohio, and said he was humbled to stand here today to serve in the peoples' House.

Later, Brown, Carey and their families took turns making small talk while posing for photographs with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against a backdrop of American flags.

The swearing-in ceremonies leave Democrats with a 221-213 advantage over Republicans in Congress, with Brown and Carey each retaining a seat that was held by their respective parties.

Carey, 50, was backed by former President Donald Trump. He bested two-term Democratic state Rep. Allison Russo, a public health policy consultant, in the 15th Congressional District after the most competitive race there in years.

Carey told celebrants at a victory party Tuesday, We have too many career politicians in Washington. Thats the last thing that I will ever be.

Brown, 46, coasted to victory in the heavily Democratic 11th District that stretches from Cleveland to Akron, defeating Republican Laverne Gore, a business owner and activist. For Brown, who also chairs the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, the real contest was the Democratic primary in which she bested Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who was a top surrogate for Bernie Sander's presidential campaign. The race drew an intense media spotlight and millions of dollars in spending.

I am committed to going to Washington as a unifier, and will work with President Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress to lead a swift health and economic recovery from the pandemic for Ohioans, Brown said Tuesday.

Both winners will fill the remainder of their predecessors terms, which run until January 2023. They must face reelection again next year under a congressional map thats being redrawn to hold onto the seat.
In an effort to keep as many children in school as possible, the state on Thursday launched a new program called screen and stay that would prevent COVID quarantines by providing the option for exposed unvaccinated students to be evaluated instead of staying home for days.

In announcing this new optional program, state Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said the data has shown that transmission between masked students and staff has been low both here and nationwide, even with the highly infectious delta variant.

The main idea here is try to keep as many people in school as possible, Juthani said.

Eligibility for screen and stay, instead of quarantine, is limited to exposure in school, on school transportation, or outside under school supervision, officials said, as long as the student is asymptomatic. It would not extend to exposure from school sports, social interactions outside school, at home, or if proper safety guidelines like masking and social distancing had not been followed.

What this says now is if theres an exposure in the classroom, we will notify your parents, we will notify somebody at home and then we ask you: Look, if you are showing symptoms, if you are showing COVID/flu-like symptoms ... dont come into the class because there's a risk you are exposed and could be spreading it. Otherwise, this allows you to stay in the classroom, Gov. Ned Lamont said.

Officials said Thursday the program is optional for schools, but stressed it may be the most effective way to prevent prolonged, repeated quarantines.

Lamont, who has kept a school mask mandate in place, said spread, and resulting quarantines, among students is happening less frequently in Connecticut than in other states where students returned without a requirement they cover their face.

Every once and a while, we do have exposures. We are exposed to somebody in the classroom and some people have to take some time off for quarantine. That is what this change is all about, its about screen and stay. You can stay in the classroom. Its an example of the fact that we are all wearing masks, all of you are eligible to get vaccinated, Lamont said.

It was not immediately known how many schools would participate in the program, but it was lauded by top education officials, including leaders with the Connecticut Education Association, Connecticut Association of School Superintendents and Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.

Cases in schools have been declining since the first weeks of the academic year, the latest figures from the state show. In the last week, 402 students tested positive for COVID, 350 of whom were unvaccinated, the state reported Thursday. This was roughly half the number of cases reported during the first week of September.

Cases among staff, including teachers, have also been steadily declining since a peak early in the academic year.

While cases in schools have been trending down, overall COVID metrics across the state have remained relatively stable. On Thursday, the state reported a positivity rate of 2.25 percent for new COVID-19 tests. Hospitalizations dropped a net of six patients over the past day for a total of 209 statewide. There were 25 new deaths in the past week.

Despite COVID cases in schools, education officials have remained committed to keeping children in the classroom full-time this academic year, unlike earlier in the pandemic when students were learning remotely.

But without vaccines available to all students, Lamont used his emergency authority to maintain the mask mandate for all students and staff into this academic year, believed to be a key measure to stop the spread of the virus in the classroom.

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the final approval Tuesday for children ages 5 to 11 to receive a modified version of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Some Connecticut vaccine providers started administering doses immediately, but many did not start taking appointments until Thursday. Some are planning clinics in the next several weeks.

There are an estimated 278,000 children ages 5 to 11 in Connecticut. Some health experts expect about one-third of these children will quickly get vaccinated, and another one-third will have parents who are unwilling to take their child to get it.

The majority of students who were previously eligible to get vaccinated have received their doses. As of last week, 80 percent of children ages 16 and 17 were fully vaccinated, and 71 percent of children ages 12 to 15 were fully vaccinated.

Under guidelines from the state, vaccinated students and staff do not have to quarantine if they were potentially exposed to an individual with a COVID-19 infection.

Officials used the announcement of screen and stay to again urge everyone to get vaccinated.

The No. 1 way to not get quarantined is if you are vaccinated, Juthani said.
To see how Christmas has changed over the last century, Stacker explored how popular traditions, like food and decorations, emerged and evolved from 1920 to 2020. Click for more.
Champaign, IL (61820)

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As more states legalize cannabis (now 37) for medical or recreational purposes its use during pregnancy is increasing, along with the potential for abuse or dependence.

A new study, co-led by researchers from Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine, has captured the magnitude and issues related to cannabis use disorders during pregnancy by examining diagnostic codes for more than 20 million U.S. hospital discharges. Most of those hospitalizations were for childbirth.

The study, "Association of Comorbid Behavioral and Medical Conditions with Cannabis Use Disorder in Pregnancy," published in the online edition of JAMA Psychiatry Nov. 3, found that the proportion of hospitalized pregnant patients identified with cannabis use disorder-;defined as cannabis use with clinically significant impairment or distress-;rose 150 percent from 2010 to 2018.

"This is the largest study to document the scale of cannabis use disorder in prenatal hospitalizations," said Claudia Lugo-Candelas, PhD, assistant professor of clinical medical psychology in Columbia's Department of Psychiatry and one of the study's co-authors. She notes the study found that pregnant patients with the condition had sharply higher levels of depression, anxiety, and nausea-;results warranting clinical concern.

"It's a red flag that patients may not be getting the treatment they need," Lugo-Candelas said.

Cannabis legalization has likely lessened fears about its risks in pregnancy. Some pregnant patients use cannabis instead of prescribed medications, thinking it's a safer choice. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have recommended against using cannabis while pregnant, chiefly because of known and unknown fetal effects. Concerns for maternal effects focus on smoking or vaping risks, not mental health.

The study identified 249,084 hospitalized pregnant patients with cannabis use disorder and classified them into three sub-groups: those with cannabis use disorder only; those with use disorders for cannabis and other substances, including at least one controlled substance; and those with cannabis use disorder and other substances (alcohol, tobacco) not related to controlled substances. Data from hospitalized pregnant patients without any substance use disorders were analyzed for comparison.

Those with the cannabis condition were more likely to be younger (ages 15 to 24), Black non-Hispanic, and covered by Medicaid rather than private insurance.

Patients' records were analyzed for depression, anxiety, trauma, and ADHD, and a broader category of mood-related disorders. Medical conditions measured included chronic pain, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, nausea, and vomiting.

All disorder sub-groups had elevated rates of nearly every factor studied. Patients with cannabis use disorder alone had levels of depression and anxiety three times higher than patients with no use conditions. Mood-related disorders affected 58 percent of cannabis disorder patients but only 5 percent of those without any substance use disorders.

The least other substance use you have, the more that cannabis use makes a difference. That's really striking." Claudia Lugo-Candelas, PhD, assistant professor of clinical medical psychology in Columbia's Department of Psychiatry

Nausea was also high in the cannabis use disorder hospitalizations. Whether that was due to patients using cannabis to mitigate nausea, or due to cannabis use, which can cause a vomiting syndrome, or a symptom of pregnancy is unknown. Study co-author Angelica Meinhofer, PhD, assistant professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, noted that many states allow medical use of cannabis for nausea and vomiting.

Screening for cannabis use during pregnancy could help, but state mandatory reporting requirements may deter some clinicians from asking about use. Better patient education could reduce the problem and get treatment to patients sooner, especially for those identified with co-occurring cannabis dependency and psychiatric disorders.

"Hopefully these findings will motivate better conversations between pregnant patients and their health care providers," said Meinhofer.

The authors emphasize they aren't arguing for or against cannabis use in pregnancy. The science on prenatal effects of the disorder is still largely unknown, although frequent use has been linked to low birth weight and other adverse outcomes. Their study, the researchers say, instead underscores the need to further explore the disorder and its links to psychiatric and medical conditions.

The rising rate of cannabis use by pregnant patients shows that such investigations are needed now. "This is a population that's showing a level of distress that is very, very high," said Lugo-Candelas. "Care and attention need to be rolled out."
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been caused by the rapid outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). SARS-CoV-2 has undergone mutations, which have led to the evolution of variants. Some of these variants are more virulent than the original strain and labeled as variants of concern (VOC). Due to VOCs' rapid transmission, there is a need for widespread nucleic acid testing outside of centralized clinical laboratories.

Now, a new study published on the medRxiv* preprint server describes and benchmarks SHINEv2, a Cas13-based nucleic acid diagnostic for SARS-CoV-2 detection. SHINEv2 combines temperature sample processing and lyophilized reagents to simplify the test procedure and assay distribution immensely.

Background

Frequent and widespread testing is crucial to prevent and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, such as COVID-19. Frequent diagnostic testing can aid in identifying new cases and isolating infected individuals, thereby preventing further viral spread. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) is the gold standard for COVID-19 diagnosis, but it requires specialized equipment and expertise. Lateral flow antigen-capture tests and isothermal nucleic acid diagnostics are promising alternatives for decentralized SARS-CoV-2 testing. However, they are too costly for single use and may be difficult to manufacture on a large scale. Thus, alternative diagnostic technologies that enable quick and decentralized testing are crucial to respond to current and future pandemics.

CRISPR-based diagnostics (CRISPR-Dx) are promising technologies for SARS-CoV-2 testing with minimal equipment requirements. They combine isothermal nucleic acid amplification methods and an RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas nuclease. This considerably enhances specificity and sensitivity, but at the expense of increasing assay complexity. Scientists previously developed Streamlined Highlighting of Infections to Navigate Epidemics (SHINEv1), a diagnostic assay that did not require nucleic acid extractions or custom equipment. However, SHINEv1 had certain limitations, such as frequent heating steps and requiring reagent mixtures needing cold storage. SHINEv2 is an improved version of SHINEv1 and is a fast, user-friendly, and widely deployable technology for detecting SARS-CoV-2 VOCs.

Performance of SHINEv2 on clinical samples. a, Schematic of side-by-side clinical sample testing using SHINEv2, BinaxNow, CareStart and RT-qPCR. NP, nasopharyngeal swab . b, SHINEv2, BinaxNow and CareStart test results for a subset of clinical NP swab samples with different Ct values (CDC EUA N1 RT-qPCR). C = control band; T = test band. No Amp., no amplification detected. For all test results, see Supplementary Fig. 8-10. c, Side-by-side clinical performance of SHINEv2, BinaxNow and CareStart versus RT-qPCR. d, Positive and negative test results for SHINEv2, BinaxNow and CareStart tests for RT-qPCR-positive clinical samples relative to viral RNA concentration and Ct value.

SHINEv2

As mentioned, this study develops SHINEv2, a widely deployable CRISPR-Dx for SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection. It is also capable of VOC identification from unextracted samples with a straightforward workflow, unlike previous methods. SHINEv2 also does not require a cold chain and auxiliary equipment. In addition, the assay is considerably simplified by lyophilization, which also helps in transportation and storage.

SHINEv2 is capable of being distributed overseas without a loss in performance. Further, the user-friendliness of the assay is significantly bolstered as this technology is equipment-free and uses an ambient-temperature sample lysis method. As a result, SHINEv2 involves very few steps from the user and provides a 50-fold boost in sensitivity. Another salient feature of SHINEv2 is that it perfectly aligns with RT-qPCR in samples with RNA levels above our analytical LoD of 200 copies/L. This level of sensitivity is quite impressive as it could enable the detection of every potentially infectious individual, even those missed by antigen-capture tests.

Enhancing the accessibility of SHINEv2. a, SHINE fluorescence of the RNase P SHINEv2 assay on synthetic DNA target after 90 minutes; NTC, no target control. b, Lateral flow based detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA using SHINEv2 with different polyethylene glycol (i.e. PEG) compositions; with or without dilution after a 90 minute incubation. NTC, no target control. c, Lateral flow based SHINEv2 detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA after a 90 minute incubation in a heat block or using body heat (underarm incubation). NTC, no target control. d, SHINE fluorescence on SARS-CoV-2 RNA after 90 minutes at 37C or 25C; NTC, no target control. For d, center = mean and error bars = s.d. for 3 technical replicates.

SHINEv2 is a significant improvement over previous methods as it can identify several mutations in the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta VOCs. It is also quite versatile as it can adapt to emerging viral variants and other viruses in current and future outbreaks. Therefore, SHINEv2 could inform public health responses by providing critical information.

SHINEv2 could also be used to prioritize testing and vaccine rollout in highly affected communities. It could also help doctors in selecting the right treatment for patients with severe COVID-19. Overall, scientists believe that SHINEv2 will be extremely valuable for community surveillance testing. The user-friendly and equipment-free nature of this technology makes it particularly attractive.

Conclusion

Although SHINEv2 is a significant improvement over SHINEv1, more research and advancements are needed for CRISPR-based diagnostic testing to take place in any location, including domestic settings. Ideally, such a test would not require any specialized equipment and involve a few simple, ambient temperature steps to provide a fast and accurate visual readout. Current nucleic acid diagnostics do not meet all the above-listed criteria simultaneously.

Liquid handling steps could be reduced by combining sample processing, nucleic acid amplification, and CRISPR-based detection into a single, ambient-temperature reaction. Further, the assay could be simplified, and the risk of contamination could be reduced by incorporating solution-based colorimetric readouts. Additional improvements will be needed to boost SHINEv2s performance at ambient temperature and the addition of auxiliary proteins could bring about this change.

Collectively, these improvements could provide a critical tool in the fight against current and future pandemics. By reducing assay complexity and simplifying test distribution, researchers have taken steps towards developing a viable diagnostic tool.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
The Centre for Health Protection today said it is investigating seven additional imported COVID-19 cases, with all of them coming from high-risk places.

Six of the cases involved mutant strains, five linked to L452R, one linked to N501Y. The viral load of the remaining case was insufficient for a mutation test.

The patients comprise three men and four women. Two of them arrived from Pakistan via the United Arab Emirates, and three flew in from Nepal and Indonesia. The other two are sea crew members arriving from India, with their specimen collected on the vessel testing positive for the virus.

As Nepal Airlines flight RA409 from Kathmandu, Nepal, arriving on November 2 had two passengers on board infected with COVID-19, and one passenger who failed to comply with the requirements under the Prevention & Control of Disease (Regulation of Cross-boundary Conveyances & Travellers) Regulation, the Department of Health invoked the law to prohibit the landing of the carriers passenger flights from Kathmandu from November 4 to 17.

Additionally, four schools are covered in the compulsory testing notice due to an outbreak of upper respiratory tract infection or influenza-like illness.

Mobile specimen collection stations will be set up at various districts tomorrow to provide free service for those subject to compulsory testing.

A total of 47 cases were reported in Hong Kong in the past 14 days, all of which are imported.

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Governments dedicated webpage.
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)

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Cloudy with periods of rain. High 49F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

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Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 29F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
Local

Coram ejected while addressing board

News Argus/KEITH TAYLOR Register of Deeds Constance Coram addresses the Wayne County commissioners Tuesday. News Argus/KEITH TAYLOR Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce, front left, approaches Register of Deeds Constance Coram to lead her away from the lectern at Tuesdays meeting of the Wayne County commissioners. With them is Capt. Ray Brogden of the Wayne County Sheriffs Office.

Register of Deeds Constance Coram refused to yield the lectern Tuesday after exceeding a three-minute limit on public comments to the Wayne County commissioners, prompting the chairman to ask the sheriff to do your duties.

Coram was not on the agenda, but she spoke during the portion of the meeting set aside for public comments. She continued to speak beyond the allotted time limit, despite repeated admonishment from Chairman Wayne Aycock that she was out of order.

Aycock ultimately asked Sheriff Larry Pierce to come forward, and the sheriff led Coram away from the podium. As she walked away, Coram said to the board, I am leaving, but I ask that you respect me as an elected official.

At the outset, Aycock declared the public comment period open and said each speaker is limited to three minutes.

I might just be a minute longer, Coram said. I ask that you please indulge me.

Maam, Aycock said, the time limit is fair for everyone. Its three minutes.

Coram began her comments, saying, I have come to speak to you today to give you a report of my activities.

Three staff members had resigned before she took office, she said.

The day I entered, I had no seal, nor any other tools to work with for nearly two weeks, she said. Then came the holidays and two COVID shutdowns, she said. We were down three major staff members for 14 days including myself.

She said that within two weeks she had lost three remaining staff members of the old regime.

The assistant who I did not realize had books that should have been presented to me when I entered the office, she held them for her own personal usage and power, Coram said. As I found out the materials that were in the binders, she vacated her seat.

Coram said the Office of the Register of Deeds had generated $1.8 million as of June 21. Thats over $400,000 more than last year, she said.

She began to provide an overview of the offices activities including real estate instruments, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses and notary oaths.

Im not going to continue with that because youre telling me Im not going to be able to speak, Coram said, but I am asking that you allow me to speak as an elected official, that you give me a little bit more time.

She said the Board of Commissioners had devised a plan to hire an account specialist to assist her with reports. I did not ask for this help, nor was I asked if I was interested in the help, she said. That $40,000 could have gone into my budget.

She said that in the past three months, almost all reports have been on target.

She said that earlier this week, she had been told that the Finance Department would be inputting her bills into a new system.

I was affronted with several bills from finance for me to sign off on, she said. I have been in this office for 10 months, and no one informed me these bills ever existed. Some of these had late charges applied to them.

She said she had been waiting for an updated invoice so she could pay it.

At that point, Aycock struck the gavel and said, Ms. Coram, your time is up.

Sir, Coram said, Im asking you to please respect me as an elected official.

Maam, Aycock said, this is the public comment section.

I am not one of your department heads, Coram said. I am an elected official. Please, sir.

Ms. Coram, Aycock said, your time is up.

Coram resumed her comments, saying, My platform has been to take the register of deeds to the 21st century.

While she spoke, Aycock said, Sheriff, take care of it, please.

Commissioner Bevan Foster said he wanted the chairman to be sure he was on solid legal ground before having Coram removed from the podium.

Im just saying we might want to take precautions in doing things the right way, Foster said.

Coram said, I am asking that you allow me, but Foster interjected.

Im asking you personally to please stop right now at this point and just let it be said that what it is, Foster said. Next meeting ask to be put on the agenda to come and speak and to say what you may.

You all dont allow me to do this now, I will find another way to get it out, Coram said.

Maam, you can request to be on the agenda, but this is the public comment section, Aycock said.

This is the public comment section, Coram said, and I am speaking to my constituents.

Yes, maam, Aycock said, and the public comment section is three minutes for everyone.

Coram said public officials could request emails to find out the communication that has been going on between me and my staff and that she had 25 plats I cannot get recorded because I cant get anybody.

Ms. Coram, youre out of order, Aycock said, banging the gavel again. Sheriff.

Im leaving, but Im just trying to let it be known to the public of Wayne County that I am going to the attorney general to get some information, Coram said as the sheriff approached and stood beside her.

Ms. Coram, youre out of order, Aycock said.

I am asking that the community realize and help me do something by contacting the county managers office and help me get my office back intact, Coram said.

Sheriff, do your duties, please, Aycock said. The sheriff touched her upper back to lead her away.

Please, Mr. Pierce, dont do that, Coram said.

To the board, she said: I am leaving, but I ask that you respect me as an elected official.

After she and the sheriff walked away, Coram continued to address the board.

You are doing things underhanded, and you shouldnt be doing them, she said. Its not fair to me.

Im just following the procedure, maam, Aycock said.

At the end of the meeting, Aycock said he wanted to apologize to the board for the actions I had to take while ago.

I was just trying to go by the procedures that we go for the public comment time, Aycock said. Im sorry that that had to happen, but Ive got a job to do, and I try to go by the rules.

Aycock said that if Coram wanted to address the board during a meeting, thats fine.

At the public comments section, I was trying to keep it fair to everyone, Aycock said. Sheriff, sorry to put you in a position like that, but I did what I felt had to be done at the time.
Goldsboro, NC (27530)

Today

Mainly cloudy. A few peeks of sunshine possible. High 68F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low around 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Anne Risku, Wayne County elections director, checks over paperwork Wednesday morning from Tuesdays nonpartisan municipal and sanitary district board elections. Only 1,117 voters, a minuscule 3.49% of the 32,047 people who were eligible to vote, did so. The results are unofficial until the canvass on Nov. 9.
(Newser)  A government minister was talking with leaders of New Zealand's gangs about how to persuade reluctant people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. The result is a four-minute video in which members of the Head Hunters, Black Power, King Cobras, and Mongrel Mob gangs encourage everyone to receive the COVID-19 vaccines, the Guardian reports. Denis O'Reilly says in the video that he's "taken a few shots" as a member of Black Power. Now, he says, "I've taken my two shots against COVID, and I'm asking you to do the same."

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Members of at least three gangs have contracted the coronavirus, which prompted Cabinet discussions about how to reach gang members to encourage them to have the shots. To engage them, some leaders were given status as essential workers. The Cabinet discussions led the minister for Maori development to talk with gang leaders. "This is not all about gangs, this is all about our whanau (family)," Harry Tam of the Mongrel Mob says in the video. "One thing we need to be clear about is that this is not about the government telling us, it is about the experts telling the government, that is getting us to vaccinate to protect ourselves."

A New Zealand criminologist likes the idea. "This is an example of what needs to happen if we're going to reach hard-to-reach communitiesby using people who are respected in those communities," Jarrod Gilbert said, per the New Zealand Herald. "We need links into these communities for the welfare of everybody." The gangs provided video to the minister, who had his son edit it. "Not one cent of taxpayer money went into this," said the minister, Willie Jackson. Maori and Pacific New Zealanders, who together make up about 27% of the total population, account for about 70% of the nation's 3,634 COVID-19 cases. (Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)
(Newser)  After seven years in an Indonesian prison, Heather Mack returned home to Chicago Wednesdayand was promptly arrested. The 26-year-old, who was released early from a 10-year sentence for helping then-boyfriend Tommy Schaefer kill her mother in Bali in 2014, now faces federal charges in the US connected to the murder, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. According to a 2017 indictment unsealed before Mack landed at O'Hare International Airport, Mack and Schaefer have been charged with conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, conspiracy to commit foreign murder of a US national, and obstruction of justice, reports Fox. Schaefer is still serving an 18-year sentence in Indonesia.

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According to the indictment, Mack and Schaefer plotted with Chicago man Robert Bibbs, a cousin of Schaefer's, to kill Mack's mother, wealthy socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the AP reports. Her body was found stuffed in a suitcase left in a Bali taxi. Bibbs, who was promised $50,000 from Mack's inheritance, pleaded guilty in 2016. Mack was freed from a Bali prison Friday and held in immigration custody until her flight to the US. Her Indonesian attorney, Yulius Benyamin Seran, told People that she was looking forward to starting a new life with Stella, the 6-year-old daughter born months after her arrest.

Brian Claypool, Macks US attorney, described the new charges as a "witch hunt" and said the conspiracy charge was covered in the Indonesian charges, per the AP. According to court records, a Cook County judge issued an emergency order appointing another Mack attorney, Vanessa Favia, as the guardian of Stella, who returned to the US with her mother. Mack pleaded not guilty to the federal charges at a hearing Wednesday afternoon. She was ordered to remain in custody until another hearing on Nov. 10. (Read more Heather Mack stories.)
(Newser)  The judge in the trial over the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, will seat a jury consisting of 11 white members and one Black member. This despite the fact that Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley found, he said Wednesday, "that there appears to be intentional discrimination" on the part of the defense team during jury selection, CNN reports. But Walmsley said, per the AP, that Georgia law limits what he can do about that. "All the defense needs to do is provide that legitimate, nondiscriminatory, clear, reasonably specific and related reason" why each potential juror was struck, and the defense did so, he said. The race of the four alternate jurors was not disclosed, but an attorney for the Arbery family says none of them are Black.

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Prosecutors accused the defense of striking some jurors based on race and disproportionately striking Black jurors, but, as one defense attorney said, "I can give you a race-neutral reason for any one of these." The defense says the jurors who were struck expressed strong opinions about the case, with one telling attorneys she already believed the defendants were guilty. The defense had also expressed concerns about the demographics of the jury; less than half of the 1,000 who were summoned showed up, and last week a defense attorney told the court, "It would appear that white males born in the South, over 40 years of age, without four-year college degrees, sometimes euphemistically known as 'Bubba' or 'Joe Six Pack,' seem to be significantly underrepresented. ... And if it is, then we have a problem with that."

Another defense attorney raised the same issue this week, saying "the accused can't look across the courtroom and see persons that are similarly situated to themselves." But juries must only be representative of race and gender, not socioeconomic background, one legal analyst tells CNN. Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, are accused of pursuing Arbery as he ran in their neighborhood Feb. 23, 2020; their neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, is accused of joining the chase and filming Travis McMichael as he allegedly shot and killed the unarmed man. They face a host of charges including murder. The jury selection process, which CNN calls "contentious," took two and a half weeks. Opening statements are set for Friday. (Read more Ahmaud Arbery stories.)
(Newser)  A 14-day hunger strike may have helped rescue New York City's yellow taxi drivers from crushing debt. City officials announced Wednesday that a deal was reached with the largest holder of taxi loans in the city to reduce the amount owing for each owner of a medallion, a city permit allowing a yellow cab to operate, to no more than $170,000, down from an average of $500,000, and reduce monthly payments to no more than $1,122, the New York Times reports. The city will make up for this by providing a $30,000 cash payment for each driver and by guaranteeing every loan, meaning it will repay the balance in case of default.

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Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio had in March announced a relief plan, said to cost $65 million, that gave medallion owners up to $29,000 each in grants. But drivers, who have long complained about unaffordable loans and artificially inflated medallion priceswhich spiked to $1.2 million before a market collapse in 2014; theyre now worth about $100,000, per the New York Daily Newssaid that didn't go far enough. Some blamed the city, which had promoted the medallions as an investment "better than the stock market." About a dozen drivers launched the hunger strike on Oct. 20 as the Taxi Workers Alliance, representing 20,000 drivers, camped out at City Hall.

De Blasio and Sen. Chuck Schumer secured the new deal, expected to cost $100 million or more, with Marblegate Asset Management, which holds about 40% of loans taken out to buy medallions. But the city says it "will work with all other medallion lenders to achieve the same terms." The Taxi and Limousine Commission tells Gothamist that negotiations with 12 different lenders meant 173 driver-owners saw their combined debt reduced from $52.3 million to $30.9 million. The Taxi Workers Alliance is hailing "a new beginning." "It means everything to me," adds driver Mouhamadou Ailyuwho, who owes $650,000 on his medallion loan, per Gothamist. "I'm free." (Read more New York City stories.)
(Newser)  Soldiers who gunned down Lakota women and children in one of the worst massacres in American history do not deserve the nation's highest military honor, 17 senators argued in a letter to President Biden this week. The lawmakers16 Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanderssaid it was "a persistent shame on the nation" that 20 medals awarded to soldiers who took part in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota have not been revoked, the New York Times reports. The letter was organized by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also tried to have the medals rescinded with 2019's Remove the Stain Act. With that bill stalled, the lawmakers have asked Biden to revoke the medals through executive action.

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Historians say between 200 and 400 Lakota Sioux people, most of them women and children, were killed by 7th Cavalry troops after a shot was fired while soldiers were disarming a group that had surrendered. Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, a commander who was not involved in the incident, described it as a "brutal, cold-blooded massacre," the Washington Post reports. Victims included "women with little children on their backs, and small children powder-burned by the men who killed them being so near as to burn the flesh and clothing with the powder of their guns, and nursing babies with five bullet holes through them," he wrote in an 1891 letter.

The medals awarded to 7th Cavalry troops praise their bravery and "gallant conduct in battle," though historians believe most of the casualties on the US side were the result of friendly fire. Historians also note that the number of medals was unusually high for a "battle" that only lasted around an hour. More than 900 Medals of Honor were rescinded after a new set of criteria introduced in 1916 was made retroactive, but the Wounded Knee medals were not affected. In their letter to Biden, the senators said revoking the medals would have a "profound and lasting impact" on the descendants of the victims. (Read more Wounded Knee stories.)
(Newser)  A Jordanian prince who was put under house arrest by his half-brother, King Abdullah II, in the spring is still not free, his mother alleged Wednesday, per the AP. The rift between Abdullah and Prince Hamzah erupted in April, when the king confined the popular younger royal to his home, alleging he had conspired with others to destabilize the kingdom. Hamzah denied the claims and alleged corruption at the highest levels. Despite declaring loyalty to the king, he hasn't been seen in public for months. The king has said the matter is being dealt with by the family, and that Hamzah is under his care. Hamzah's purported co-conspirators were convicted of sedition by Jordan's state security court this summer and each sentenced to 15 years in prison.

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Late Wednesday, Hamzah's mother Noor, a former queen, made a rare public comment about the scandal in a tweet marking the birthday of her granddaughter Zein. "[God willing], her father will be justly freed ASAP, and able to provide a natural, hopeful and uplifting and genuine Jordanian upbringing for her and all the family," wrote Noor, the fourth wife of the late King Hussein, Abdullah's father. She has lived outside Jordan for years, mostly in the United States, and did not provide details about Hamzah's situation. Hamzah's role in the royal rift has been at the center of clashing narratives. He is either a popular champion of ordinary Jordanians suffering from economic mismanagement and corruption, or a disgruntled royal who never forgave Abdullah for taking away his title of crown prince in 2004.

(Read more Jordan stories.)
(Newser)  Scientist Sergey Zimov lives 80 miles from Russia's Arctic coast, yet he can't find any of the permanently frozen ground that once covered much of Siberia. The melting of permafrost has also been observed in Arctic regions in Canada and Norway, where temperatures are rising at more than three times the global average. Homes, roads, and pipelines are sinking, but more significant to Zimov is the potential release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases from the decay of animals and plants long trapped in permafrost. Indeed, "one or two percent of permafrost carbon is equivalent to total global emissions for a year," Chris Burn, president of the International Permafrost Association, tells Reuters.

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That's to say nothing of large amounts of methane, which reportedly causes 80 times as much warming as the same amount of carbon dioxide, which is also leaking from Russia's Arctic, per Smithsonian. Luckily, Zimov of the Northeast Science Station in Siberia's Sakha region may have found a localized solution. Since 1996, he and his son, Nikita, have been populating a nature reserve, Pleistocene Park, with 200 species of large herbivoresincluding bison, horses, and camelsthat flatten the thick snow cover, allowing heat in the ground to escape more easily in winter. A 2020 study carried out at the preserve found the animals cut snow depth in half for "an approximately 44% reduced subsoil warming and a 37% reduced loss in permafrost area."

Lead author Christian Beer of Universitat Hamburg noted the "tremendous potential" of the strategy. "It may be Utopian to imagine resettling wild animal herds in all the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere, he said last year, per Discover. "But the results indicate that using fewer animals would still produce a cooling effect." The study did note that the animal density at Pleistocene Park114 per square kilometerwas achievable across the Arctic, per Reuters. "We're working to prove that these ecosystems will help in the fight," Nikita tells the outlet, which reports the park is opening to accepting cloned mammoths. "But, of course, our efforts alone are not enough." (Read more permafrost stories.)
(Newser)  The 61-year-old principal of a school in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood was hospitalized Wednesday after being knocked unconscious in what police describe as a "very violent attack" witnessed by students, staff, and parents. Sources tell CBS Boston that Upper Campus Principal Patricia Lampron of the Dr. William W. Henderson Inclusion School suffered a head injury and broken ribs in the attack during dismissal, which also injured another staff member. A 16-year-old female student was arrested and faces charges including assault and battery.

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Witnesses told police that the student repeatedly punched Lampron while grabbing her hair, WCVB reports. According to a police report, the student's mother had threatened the principal the night before the attack. Police say that when a Boston police officer arrived at the scene, Lampron was unconscious and the teen was being held down by two school safety officers. Classes at the school's Upper Campus, which serves students from grades 2 to 12, were canceled Thursday. Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius called the incident "completely unacceptable" and said violence "will not be tolerated in the Boston Public Schools."

"This absolutely unbelievable violence against a headmaster should be condemned in the strongest possible terms, and what is more tragic is this is the tip of the iceberg," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, founder of the Violence Reduction Task Force, per the Boston Herald. Rivers, who is Black, urged Mayor-elect Michelle Wu to "visit some of the schools in the poorest Black sections of the city to see what is happening and to listen to what the Boston Police deal with on a day-to-day basis." (Read more Massachusetts stories.)
(Newser)  Hundreds of thousands of women around the world are killed annually by cervical cancer, the fourth most common cancer. Now, a new study offers hope that those fatality numbers could one day be drastically slashed, thanks to what researchers are calling "historic" findings regarding the human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine, reports the BBC. In research published Wednesday in the Lancet journal, scientists found that the HPV vaccine decreased rates of cervical cancerfor which human papillomaviruses cause the vast majority of casesby nearly 90% in young women who'd received the vaccine years earlier.

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Over an 11-year period, the study tracked young women in the UK who'd received the Cervarix-branded vaccine (in the US, Gardisil 9 is the only HPV vaccine used) between the ages of 12 and 18, starting in 2008, per CBS News. Study results showed that the earlier the vaccine was administered, the better: Women who'd gotten inoculated at ages 12 or 13 saw an 87% reduction in cervical cancer rates, with a 62% drop for the 14-to-16 set, and a 34% decrease for girls 16 to 18.

The study also found a reduction in precancerous growths among those who'd been vaccinated. "It's a historic moment," Michelle Mitchell, CEO of Cancer Research UK, says in a statement. "We have the chance to save many lives." Researchers hope their findings on the vaccinewhich is also offered to boys in the UK and US to help fend off genital warts, penile and anal cancer, and the spread of the virus to sex partnerswill soon lead to it being used more in low- to middle-income nations, where most HPV-related deaths take place, and where access to screening for cervical cancer is hard to find. (Read more HPV stories.)
(Newser)  There's renewed urgency to Joe Exotic's push to be freed from prison in Florida: The Tiger King star, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, says he's been diagnosed with a "very" aggressive form of prostate cancer. "It is with a sad face that I have to tell you  that my prostate biopsy came back with an aggressive cancer," Maldonado-Passage writes in a letter provided by attorney John M. Phillips, who says his client has been receiving treatment for a number of issues, per CNN. Maldonado-Passage, who writes that he's still awaiting another test result, notes animal rights activist Carole Baskin, his longtime rival and victim in a murder-for-hire plot, "will have her own party over this," per USA Today.

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Maldonado-Passage is awaiting resentencing after his 22-year sentence in the murder-for-hire plot was overturned in July. An appeals court found two separate 2019 convictions should've been grouped together, meaning Joe Exotic is likely to receive a shorter sentence. But the 58-year-old calls instead for compassionate release in his letter, asking for "the world to be my voice to be released." "There is no reason for the US Attorney to drag this out so I can go home and get treatment on my own or enjoy what life I have left with my loved ones," he writes, per USA Today. "Say a prayer please." You'll likely be hearing more about Joe Exotic as Tiger King 2 is arriving Nov. 17 on Netflix. (Baskin is suing over her inclusion in it.)
(Newser)  Britain granted conditional authorization on Thursday to the only pill shown to successfully treat COVID-19 so far. It is the first country to OK the treatment from drugmaker Merck, although it wasn't immediately clear how quickly the pill would be available, the AP reports. The pill was licensed for adults 18 and older who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have at least one risk factor for developing severe disease, such as obesity or heart disease. Patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 would take four pills of the drug, known as molnupiravir, twice a day for five days. Initial supplies will be limited. Merck has said it can produce 10 million treatment courses through the end of the year, but much of that supply has already been purchased by governments worldwide. In October, UK officials announced they secured 480,000 courses.

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Health secretary Sajid Javid said the government was working with the National Health Service "to set out plans to deploy molnupiravir to patients through a national study as soon as possible." Preliminary results, not yet peer reviewed, showed the drug cut hospitalizations and deaths by half among patients with early COVID-19 symptoms. Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency noted studies in rats showed molnupiravir "may cause harmful effects to the unborn offspring, although this was at doses which were higher than those that will be given to humans, and these effects were not observed in other animals." Participants were instructed to use contraception or abstain from sex during trials, which excluded pregnant women. The US FDA will convene a panel of independent experts to scrutinize the pill later this month.

(Read more COVID-19 stories.)
(Newser)  Ever since the famous cut-to-black scene in the Sopranos finale, show creator David Chase has been asked the same question over and over and over: Is Tony dead? In a new interview with the The Hollywood Reporter Awards Chatter podcast, Chase all but confirms the character did indeed get whacked. Those who enjoy the debate can find some wiggle room, however, because while Chase "intimated" that Tony is dead, he doesn't explicitly say so, per the Guardian. See for yourself:

Not a slip: First, interviewer Scott Feinberg points out that Chase himself referred to the finale as a "death scene" a few years ago, and he asked Chase if that was a slip of the tongue. "No," Chase responds.

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The kernel: About two years before the finale, "I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant," says Chase. "It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, 'Tony should get it in a place like that.' Why? I don't know." But even prior to that, Chase said he envisioned that the "last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed."

About two years before the finale, "I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant," says Chase. "It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, 'Tony should get it in a place like that.' Why? I don't know." But even prior to that, Chase said he envisioned that the "last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed." Annoyed: "I had no idea it would cause that much ... of an uproar," Chase says of the finale. "What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. ... They wanted to see him go facedown in linguini, you know? ... That bothered me."

(Read more The Sopranos stories.)
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(Newser)  A juror in Kyle Rittenhouse's murder trial was dismissed Thursday after a court security officer reported that the man told a joke about the police shooting of Jacob Blake, which set off protests in the Wisconsin city where Rittenhouse is accused of shooting three people. Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said the security officer reported the remarks earlier this week, per the AP. Prosecutor Thomas Binger said the remarks as shared showed racial bias. Blake, who is Black, was shot by a white Kenosha police officer and left partially paralyzed. When Schroeder called the juror into the courtroom to discuss what he said, the juror said he didn't want to repeat his comments.

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"It was my understanding it was something along the lines of, 'Why did the Kenosha police shoot Jacob Blake seven times?'" said prosecutor Binger, per NPR. "It's my understanding that the rest of the joke is: 'Because they ran out of bullets.'" The judge said it was clear that the appearance of bias is present and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case." The juror responded: It wasnt anything to do with the case. It wasnt anything to do with Kyle." The juror is a retired white man, and he made the joke Wednesday to a court officer escorting him to the man's vehicle.

Twenty jurors were seated this week for Rittenhouse's trial on homicide and other charges, with Schroeder saying he would decide later which 12 would decide the case and which would be alternates. Rittenhouse, 18, of Antioch, Illinois, killed two people and injured a third during an August 2020 protest against police brutality in Kenosha. The protests started after the police officer shot Blake in the back while responding to a reported domestic disturbance. Blake had been fighting with officers and had a knife. The county prosecutor later declined to charge the officer.

(Read more Kyle Rittenhouse stories.)
(Newser)  Update: "All votes have been fairly counted, and I, of course, accept the results." So conceded longtime New Jersey State Senate President Stephen Sweeney on Wednesday in officially accepting his defeat by a truck driver with no political experience. He described his loss by around 2,000 votes as a "red wave," per the AP. Republican Edward Durr will assume the seat Sweeney has held for 20 years, and Senate Democrats will meet within days to select a new Senate president. Sweeney says he's out, but not done: "I'm not going away," he said on the subject of running again. NJ.com notes that within hours of the AP calling the race for Durr last week, his Twitter history was picked over, with one 2019 tweet referring to Muhammad as a "pedophile" getting attention; he has since deleted his account and apologized. Our original story from Nov. 4 follows:

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The Republican Party did nothing to help Edward Durr's race for the state Senate. But he still gave them something to celebrate Thursday, when the AP called New Jersey's 3rd Legislative District race for Durr. The political novice didn't beat just anybody, Politico reports: He upended New Jersey politics by unseating Steve Sweeney, a Democrat who's been president of the Senate for 12 years. Financial disclosure reports show that Durr, a 58-year-old truck driver for a furniture store, spent about $2,200 on his campaign. "Hahaha no way," tweeted Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas.

"I kept telling myself and telling people I was going to do it, but in the back of my mind I was like, 'You know, how am I going to beat the Senate president?'" Durr said Wednesday. His campaign efforts consisted of an 80-second video, lawn signs, and knocking on doors, per the New York Times. The video showed him at his truck, which he was driving when the race was called. Durr, who says he's a "constitutional conservative," did not run a campaign of fresh ideas; he mostly complained about Sweeney, career politicians, and especially the state's handling of the pandemic. "You have the debacle of unemployment. The masking of the kids in school," Durr said. "You have Senator Sweeney trying to take away peoples medical freedom rights."

Larger efforts to beat Sweeney have previously failed. The state teachers union poured more than $5 million into defeating him in 2017; Sweeney still won by 18 percentage points. With the Senate leader's loss on top of Gov. Phil Murphy barely winning reelection, New Jersey Democrats have issues. But progressives who saw Sweeney as an obstacle to their policies, and Murphy's, aren't unhappy that he's outprecisely because he's had such clout. "He has tried to torpedo almost every important piece of legislation going back over 10 years," said the executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance. "I just tapped into the right focus," Durr said. (Read more New Jersey stories.)
(Newser)  A Texas woman who participated in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and later boasted that she'd never be sent to jail because of it is, yes, going to jail. A judge sentenced real estate broker Jennifer Leigh Ryan, aka Jenna Ryan, to 60 days for joining the group that stormed the Capitol, reports NBC News. Ryan made no secret of her participation, posting multiple photos of herself on social media and proclaiming it "one of the best days of my life." Her attorney maintains that she spent only two minutes in the Capitol building, but Ryan apparently didn't help her own case with a tweet to her critics on March 26.

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Definitely not going to jail," she wrote, per the AP. "Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and Im not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong. Prosecutors requested jail time in part because of the tweet, saying it suggested she had no remorse. Ryan did, in fact, express remorse to the judge and said the tweet was just her way of responding to brutal online attacks. I was attacked and I was answering them, Ryan said in court. Previously, Ryan publicly requested a pardon from former President Trump. She is expected to begin her sentence in January. (Read more Capitol riot stories.)
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Mentorship Forum Middle East (MFME) 2021 announced that the Minister of Finance and National Economy Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa will open its second edition with a keynote address on this years theme Prioritising Mentorship in a New World.

The event will be held on November 11 as a hybrid event with expected participation from more than 400 C-Suite leaders, HR and mentorship experts and up-and-coming professionals across sectors.

The minister will address a local, regional and international audience on the importance of mentorship following significant workplace changes that have resulted in the wake of COVID-19 and how mentorship can be leveraged to keep training and development goals and ultimately business and economic goals on track.

We couldnt be more proud to announce Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, Bahrains Minister of Finance and National Economy, as our keynote speaker.

His interest and support for the event underscore the important nature of mentorship and the prominent role it can play in supporting human capital development and in turn broader economic advancement and growth, which go hand in hand, said Zahraa Taher, Managing Director of FinMark Communications, the forums founder and organiser.

Strong human capital and talent pools are key drivers of economic progress and expansion and we look forward to hearing his remarks and giving our attendees this unique opportunity to benefit from his vast experience and insights.

The forums interactive sessions and workshops, which will follow Shaikh Salmans address, will look to closely examine a range of topics relating to changes in the workplace that have resulted from the pandemic, gaps in training and development that have occurred and the role mentorship can play in ensuring talent development goals stay or get back on track in the new working order.

Panel discussions will cover Mentorship and Meeting Talent Development Gaps in the Hybrid Workplace, Mentorship for Boards, Cross Mentorship and the Leveraging of Diverse Talent Pools, Technology-Focused Mentoring, Mentorship for Entrepreneurs and SMEs and Speed Mentoring.

The events high-level speakers and panellists will soon be announced.


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3 1 of 3 Keith Birmingham / Associated Press Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Joseph Cress / Associated Press Show More Show Less 3 of 3





NEW FAIRFIELD  With eligibility recently expanded to children as young as 5, the town will be teaming up with local pharmacy Candlewood Drugs for two upcoming COVID-19 vaccination clinics in town.

The first clinic will take place Nov. 13, in the New Fairfield High School cafeteria, and the second will take place Dec. 5, in the New Fairfield Middle School cafeteria.
The filing of U.S. charges against a Chicago woman convicted of killing her wealthy mother during a luxury vacation in Bali has raised questions about how someone who has spent time in an overseas prison can be hauled into an American court on similar charges.

Heather Mack, 26, was arrested Wednesday on her return to Chicago, after spending more than seven years in an Indonesian prison for murder. She's now charged in the U.S. with conspiring with a former boyfriend to kill her socialite mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in 2014 on the island of Bali, where they stuffed her body in a suitcase and left it in a taxi outside a hotel.

The U.S. Constitution prohibits prosecuting someone twice for the same acts, commonly known as double jeopardy. But the allegations in Von Wiese-Macks death involve two countries with their own laws and their own claims to jurisdiction, an expert said.

Its a federal crime to kill a U.S. citizen abroad, said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney in Detroit.

The United States government is a different sovereign than the government of Indonesia, she explained.

The U.S. must believe there is some substantial federal interest that was not vindicated by the prior case, McQuade said. I dont know what all the reasons are. But this appears to be a very premeditated plot. This could be the kind of thing where they say: Seven years? That is just not enough.

The 2017 grand jury indictment publicly revealed this week in Chicago was sealed while Mack and Tommy Schaefer were imprisoned overseas. The U.S. Justice Department has always had discretion to dismiss the case or stick with it.

If the new administration had wanted to put the brakes on it, they certainly could have done that, McQuade said Thursday.

Mack and Schaefer plotted to kill Von Wiese-Mack before they traveled to Indonesia in August 2014, according to the indictment.

In 2017, a cousin of Schaefer was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for advising the couple on how to kill Mack's mother. Their motive apparently was to inherit money from Von Wiese-Mack, who was the widow of jazz and classical composer James L. Mack.

Mack's attorney, Brian Claypool, said U.S. authorities simply want to pound her into the cement some more with the new case. Schaefer is also charged in the U.S. though he's still in prison in Indonesia.

They already had their one bite at the apple. ... Were going to fight this to the end, Claypool said.

McQuade predicted that a double jeopardy claim will be a losing argument. She noted the 1993 trial of two Los Angeles police officers who were convicted of federal civil rights violations in the beating of Black motorist Rodney King. It came a year after the officers were cleared of state crimes arising from the same attack.

In Minneapolis, former police officer Derek Chauvin is facing federal civil rights charges in the 2020 death of George Floyd, while already serving a 22 1/2-year state prison sentence for Floyds murder.

In Mack's case, McQuade said it's possible that a judge might give her some credit for time spent in prison overseas if she's convicted in Chicago.

Maybe a judge is very sympathetic and says, 'She's guilty but I'm not giving her any more time, seven years is enough.' ... Seven years strikes me as quite lenient for a carefully plotted murder of a U.S. citizen, McQuade said.

___

Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  The princes, presidents and prime ministers have left, and now the real mask-to-mask climate negotiations start.

For the next 10 days, maybe more, the professional diplomats at the crowded United Nations climate conference must convert marching orders left by their heads of government into compromises and agreements. The talks happen in a limited number of meeting rooms in Glasgow, with a Friday, Nov. 12, deadline and a record long agenda listing 104 items that must be settled.

The negotiations are restricted by the pandemic but aided by a year and a half of virtual meetings, instant soup brought from Norway and chocolates from Swiss and Australian diplomats.

By next week, the deadline pressure is sure to intensify. Meetings will go around the clock. Food and sleep will be put aside, except when someone dozes off in a seat or on a colleagues shoulder.

We have meals together and spend hours cooped up in conference centers with little sleep and bad food. It is a bit of a mad bonding experience, but it builds trust. And trust is key to compromise, said Environmental Defense Fund Vice President Kelley Kizzier, who spent 15 years as a European Union negotiator.

At least 120 meetings were scheduled for Wednesday, with more likely to be added. But only 25 meeting rooms are available in the sprawling conference complex where half of the structures are temporary, with makeshift roofs and rows of spotless but chilly portable toilets. And those rooms permit a limited number of people inside because of social-distancing rules designed to keep everyone 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) apart.

Between meetings, everyone has to get out for 15 minutes of cleaning, something the Scottish government insists on, said Laura Lopez, the conference administrator for the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, which runs the negotiations on a site that is technically U.N. property.

The problem is our people arent that disciplined, Lopez said. They keep talking and wont leave the room.

The rooms where it happens are often the rooms next to where it happens.

The deals are made very often outside of the room, said longtime negotiator Yamide Dagnet, now head of negotiations for the World Resources Institute. Countries give their positions at the table, but it is in the hallways, during coffee breaks, snatches of meals and other away time that compromises emerge, she said.

Thats why in-person meetings cant be replaced by virtual ones, said veteran negotiator Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, who chairs one of the two main negotiating groups for the U.N.

In the hallway, you meet someone, and thats where you agree on that comma versus that semicolon, and thats whats missing in virtual meetings, he said.

The 18 months of virtual negotiations have brought people closer and made them work together more. But they need to seal the deal in person, said Mpanu Mpanu and Marianne Karlsen, who heads another negotiating group for the U.N.

People need to sit eye-to-eye, Karlsen said.

They both credit the pandemic and the months of virtual meetings for improvements over previous meetings.

I really think the pandemic brought an extra deal of flexibility, Mpanu Mpanu said.

In past years, the U.N. would put beanbag chairs in meeting rooms and offices for catnaps during the final crunch, Lopez said. But the pandemic killed that this year.

Karlsen said one key to survival is having a supply of snacks, chips, chocolate and fruit  as well her personal contribution.

I always bring extra luggage with instant soups, Karlsen said. The Australians and Swiss finance negotiating teams are well known for bringing chocolate.

And theres no strings attached, Mpanu Mpanu said.

When talks go late and people get tired, bigger, richer countries that have extra negotiators have a leg up on smaller nations, he said.

If you are not on top of your game, people will take advantage of that, Mpanu Mpanu said.

In the past, negotiators were often joined in the rooms by observers, often from nonprofits. But the talks are now closed to those groups and to the media.

Because of the virus, the U.N. climate office has tried to offer more remote meeting access. With several poorer island nations unable to send negotiators and room occupancy severely limited by health rules, the remote system is crucial, but it has been filled with glitches.

Observers and activists have complained that they cant get into meetings or watch them online.

The United Kingdoms largest-ever diplomatic event had the U.N. apologizing for the video glitches, the lack of disability accessibility for an Israeli cabinet member, and for long, slow security lines.

The security lines were slow because 25,000 people have picked up passes. But at any given time, only 10,000 people can be present because of the pandemic, and the lines must be wider and fewer for social distancing, Lopez said. The conference briefly had to stop allowing people in because of the 10,000-person limit.

But hardships are just part of the deal with negotiators, Karlsen said: There is no easy borne children at this process.

___

Follow APs climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate. Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at https://twitter.com/borenbears.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  South Africa's voters have delivered a significant rebuke to the governing African National Congress, the party of late anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, which got less than 50% of ballots cast in local government elections.

Widespread corruption, persistently high rates of unemployment, crippling power blackouts and ineffective delivery of government services were burning campaign issues.

In results announced Thursday night, the ANC saw an erosion of its support and as a result will control fewer councils and have fewer mayors in big and small cities across the country.

President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged that the party will have to form coalitions to govern key metropolitan areas.

If we are to make this a new and better era, we as leaders must put aside our differences and work together in a spirit of partnership, of cooperation and collaboration and common purpose in the interest of the people of South Africa, said Ramaphosa, announcing the results at the election center in Pretoria.

Not only did voters not support the ANC, most did not bother to vote. Although voting day was declared a public holiday, turnout was 47% of registered voters, more than 10% lower than in previous elections.

The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, failed to take advantage of the ANC's declining support, seeing its share of votes decline by about 5% since the previous local elections in 2016.

More than 60 urban councils have no party holding a clear majority, meaning that coalitions will need to be formed. Some new parties won significant minority shares, such as ActionSA which won 16% of the vote in Johannesburg, and will have strategic leverage in the coalitions that the major parties will have to form in the coming days.
Also in 2023, travelers will have more opportunities to explore Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands with added sailings to both destinations. Bookings open to the public on Nov. 12, 2021. More details on Adventures by Disney Expedition Cruises can be found on the Expedition Cruising with Disney page of AdventuresByDisney.com.

Sailing aboard intimate, purpose-built ships specially designed to access remote destinations, guests will experience pristine natural wonders and diverse wildlife throughout the adventure on Adventures by Disney Expedition Cruises. With nature at the heart of every experience, these ships and a broad range of excursions enable expert naturalists and Adventure Guides to bring the stories of these regions to life, both on land and at sea.

New Family Expedition Cruises to the Arctic

With the introduction of the Arctic Expedition Cruise, Adventures by Disney now offers family vacation experiences to both polar regions, each with its own distinctive landscape and wildlife. Scheduled for two departures in 2023 (June and July), the 10-day, nine-night, Arctic Expedition Cruises will sail on a charted adventure with PONANT, a leader in luxury polar expeditions.

Former Imagineer Joe Rohde will join the July 2023 sailing and will delight guests with amazing tales from his Disney career and share his passion for nature and conservation. Rohde will also host fun sketching sessions for guests, even those with no artistic experience.

Following a welcome dinner and overnight stay in Oslo, Norway, adventurers fly to Svalbard to board Le Boreal to explore Northern Norway and the Arctic. Unlike its polar opposite, the Arctic is home to permanent residents and has a fascinating history of human inhabitants. While in Longyearbyen, the largest town of Norway's Svalbard archipelago and the northernmost settlement on the planet with a permanent population of more than 1,000, guests will further explore this former mining town.

Guests will view the breathtaking glaciers of this region's most beautiful fjord, Kongsfjorden and embark on daily boat excursions where they may see some of the region's unique wildlife including polar bears, reindeer, arctic foxes and walruses.

Family Expedition Cruises to Antarctica

Adventures by Disney has added three departures for the 12-day, 11-night Antarctica and Patagonia Expedition Cruises which will sail with PONANT. The added itineraries will depart in December 2022 and early 2023.

This adventure takes travelers to the southernmost tip of Argentine Patagonia, to visit the resort town of Ushuaia before boarding their vessel to travel through the Drake Passage. As the journey continues, guests will soak in the awe-inspiring landscapes of Antarctica, where each day brings a new adventure. Daily boat excursions and hikes along the continent's shorelines, provide the opportunity to catch glimpses of native wildlife like seabirds, penguins and seals in their natural habitat. With offshore activities defined by nature, every wildlife viewing will be unique to the sailing.

Pre-cruise Experience in Buenos Aires

Travelers booked on an Antarctica and Patagonia Expedition Cruise can add even more adventure with the Buenos Aires Escape. This four-day, three-night guided group experience will highlight must-see attractions as well as the hidden gems of Argentina's capital. Guests will learn to dance the tango with a private demonstration, enjoy the countryside tradition of horseback riding while visiting a local estancia and experience the epicurean delights and cosmopolitan culture of Buenos Aires.

Family Expedition Cruises in the Galapagos Islands

Also returning for a second year of sailing in 2023, the Adventures by Disney Galapagos Islands Expedition Cruise is an adventurous nine-day, eight-night sailing aboard the boutique expedition ship, the Galapagos Legend. Five departures have been added for 2023 which will explore the diverse islands and ecosystems of the Galapagos Islands. This cruise is operated in collaboration with Go Galapagos.

On excursions led by naturalists, adventurers will discover the archipelago's spectacular vistas and remarkable diversity of plant and animal species, with possible sightings of the albatross, frigate bird, blue-footed booby, giant tortoise, marine iguana and Galapagos penguin. Trip highlights include snorkeling in turquoise waters inhabited by sea lions, reef fish and sea turtles; hiking across the islands' diverse terrain; and paddling in transparent kayaks along sheltered coves.

Pre-cruise Experience in the Amazon

The Adventures by Disney Amazon Escape can add even more adventure to a Galapagos Islands Expedition Cruise. Following an overnight stay in Quito, travelers will spend three or four nights on the Anakonda river boat and see the Amazon rainforest up close from the ground and the tree tops. Guests will explore the Napo River by motorized canoe in search of the elusive pink river dolphin, enjoy a guided nocturnal rainforest walk to witness animals that would go unseen during daylight and more.

With exceptional service, storytelling and authentic cultural experiences, all Adventures by Disney vacations are designed to appeal to the interests and needs of the entire family, allowing parents, grandparents and young adventurers to discover the world together. On all Adventures by Disney expedition cruises, families will relax and play together aboard an intimate expedition ship as a team of Adventure Guides lead engaging programming for adults and Junior Adventurers alike.

To learn more about Adventures by Disney or to book a vacation, guests can visit AdventuresByDisney.com, call 1-800-543-0865 or contact a travel agent.

ABOUT ADVENTURES BY DISNEY

Adventures by Disney provides immersive, hassle-free group guided vacation experiences to destinations on all seven continents. Families traveling with Adventures by Disney receive exceptional service while taking part in extraordinary experiences at locations including the South African plains, the grand cities of Europe, Costa Rica's rich rainforest, the ruins of Pompeii and Machu Picchu, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Great Wall of China, Antarctica's awe-inspiring sites and some of America's most iconic destinations.

Adventures by Disney has been recognized by numerous travel organizations for its excellence in family tourism. Adventures by Disney was honored in Cruise Critic's annual Editors' Picks awards as the Best River Cruise Line for Families in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. It has also garnered many other awards of excellence over the past decade.

Offering Disney-trained Adventure Guides on each trip, engaging activities, VIP experiences and personal touches throughout, Adventures by Disney vacations are crafted to excite and delight everyone. Visit AdventuresByDisney.com to learn more.

SOURCE Adventures by Disney

For further information: Walt Disney World Public Relations, 407-566-6397
GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - The call for action on reducing emissions from coal-fired electricity generation has never been more urgent, with science showing that it is vital for countries do more and on a faster timeline to address climate change and keep the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C within reach. Ending coal-fired electricity is one of the single most important steps the world must take in the fight against climate change. Canada and the United Kingdom, as co-leads of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), continue to drive the global momentum towards that end.

Building on Canadian initiatives announced earlier this week to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired electricity, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, today participated in the Powering the World Past Coal event at COP26 to announce 28 new members, bringing the global Alliance to a total of 165 members, with 50 sign-ups in 2021 alone.

He was joined by the Right Honourable Greg Hands, UK Minister of State for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, and Co-Chair of the Powering Past Coal Alliance; Alok Sharma, COP26 President; Dr. Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency; Selwin Charles Hart, UN Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Climate Action and Assistant Secretary-General for the Climate Action Team; and ministers and business leaders from around the world.

Canada is proud to welcome new members from around the world, including Chile and Ukraine. Several organizations from the private sector are also joining the Alliance: TransAlta, a major Canadian-based power generator and environmental, social, and governance service provider; Export Development Canada, the first export credit agency to join the Alliance; Vancity Credit Union, an independent Vancouver-based credit union targeting net zero by 2040; and the United Church of Canada's investment arm.

These new membersincluding businesses, provinces, and citieshave committed to powering their operations without coal, restricting financing to new coal-fired power stations, and supporting clean power. Together, these Canadian members will help move markets and financial flows to cleaner energy choices. The Powering Past Coal Alliance is now home to over 30 finance members from all parts of the world, representing US$17 trillion in assets under management.

Canada has already implemented a plan to phase out coal-fired electricity generation by 2030 and announced earlier this week a commitment to achieve a net-zero emissions electricity sector by 2035. This will help Canada reach net-zero emissions by 2050, since a net-zero electricity sector will allow Canada to decarbonize other parts of its economy. Phasing out coal also reduces exposure to harmful air pollutants, protecting human health by improving the quality of the air we breathe.

To ensure a cleaner and healthier future for countries around the world, Canada announced earlier this week its intention to ban thermal coal exports by 2030. Ending thermal coal exports is the right thing to dothe impacts of climate change are already being seen, with the most severe impacts happening in the developing world. Moving away from exporting thermal coal also makes good economic sense, as the costs of renewables and low-carbon energy options continue to fall.

Recognizing challenges faced by developing countries in phasing out coal, the Prime Minister also announced at COP26 that Canada will provide up to $1 billion to the Climate Investment Funds Accelerated Coal Transition initiative. This investment will lead to the successful implementation of country-level strategies and associated kick-start projects, build support at the local and regional levels, and accelerate the retirement of existing coal mines and coal power plants, while enabling new economic activities and contributing to a socially inclusive and gender equal transition. In addition, the Prime Minister announced $25 million in funding to the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program, a partnership with the World Bank. This will help develop and implement clean energy alternatives, and support low- and middle-income countries in the transition to a cleaner economy.

Canada is proud to co-lead the Powering Past Coal Alliance. Through the Alliance, Canada is bringing together all those who have a role to play: finance, industry, labour, civil society, and subnational and national governments. Today's announcement of 28 new members is a meaningful leap towards a fairer, safer, healthier world.

Quotes

"Phasing out unabated coal-fired power is one of the most important steps that we can take to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Any credible climate plan requires governments and businesses to eliminate coal emissions, and to do it on timelines that meet our established net-zero goals. Coal phase out is inevitable. It is now mainstream, it makes economic sense, and the transition is undeniable."

 The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Co-Chair of the Powering Past Coal Alliance

"The Alliance is a fantastic example of how bringing together nations, regions, and financial institutions can drive change so we can consign coal to history and deliver the historic Paris Agreement. The increase in global commitments to phase out coal is a huge victory to celebrate at COP26 in Glasgow. Welcoming new members today such as Chile and Singapore will bring us another step closer to securing a greener future that is powered by clean, renewable energy."

 The Right Honourable Greg Hands, United Kingdom's Minister of State for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, and Co-Chair of the Powering Past Coal Alliance

"EDC is committed to playing an ambitious role in the transition to a low-carbon and clean energy-fueled economy, and we know this will require a global commitment to phasing out unabated coal power generation. We are proud of our longstanding efforts to phase out support for coal and to be the first export credit agency in the world to join the PPCA. We stand ready to work with like-minded organizations to build additional momentum towards a more sustainable future."

 Mairead Lavery, President and CEO of Export Development Canada

"TransAlta Corporation's decision to join the Powering Past Coal Alliance is a natural extension of our company's commitment to delivering clean energy solutions for our customers, strong returns for our investors, and reliable energy for the communities we serve. Our company will end our remaining coal generation in Canada in 2021 and the United States in 2025. Our growth plan will expand our renewable electricity fleet by two gigawatts over the next five years and deploy energy storage at a much larger scale. We look forward to continuing our contribution to global efforts to deliver an accelerated clean energy transition."

 John Kousinioris, CEO of TransAlta Corporation

"Though Vancity has never provided financing for coal or other fossil fuels, we are very happy to join a global effort that not only seeks to phase out coal power, but has committed to doing so in a sustainable and economically inclusive way, including appropriate support for workers and communities. The financial sector holds critical keys to reducing emissions across the economy and we hope that the PPCA helps deepen the role that financial institutions play in building a clean economy that works for everyone and safeguards our planet."

 Christine Bergeron, President and CEO of Vancity Credit Union

Quick facts

Coal is responsible for 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is the largest single source of global temperature increase.

A recent analysis found that more than 800,000 people around the world die each year from the pollution generated by burning coal. Moving away from coal improves overall public health by creating cleaner, more breathable air.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance was co founded by Canada and the UK in 2017 to bring together governments and the private sector to accelerate the phase-out of unabated coal power.

and the UK in 2017 to bring together governments and the private sector to accelerate the phase-out of unabated coal power. Since then, the coalition has grown to more than 160 members, including 48 national countries from around the world, 48 subnational governments, and 69 organizationsranging from financial institutions to energy producers and consumers.

The full list of new members joining during COP26 is as follows:

is as follows: Countries:



Azerbaijan





Chile





Estonia





Mauritius





Singapore





Slovenia





Ukraine



Subnational governments:



Guimaras, Philippines





Negros Occidental, Philippines





Ormoc City, Philippines





Koszalin, Poland





Walbrzych, Poland





Durban City, South Africa

City,



New Mexico , United States

,

Businesses and finance sector



DTEK (Ukrainian utility)





Ethos Foundation





Export Development Canada





Fidelity International





Generation Investment Management





HSBC





Impax Asset Management





Indika Energy (Indonesian utility)





Lloyds Bank





NatWest





SCOR Global Investments





TransAlta (Canadian utility)





United Church of Canada





Vancity (Canadian based credit union)

Associated links

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Facebook page

SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada

For further information: Contacts: Joanna Sivasankaran, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-790-1907, [email protected]; Media Relations: Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll-free), [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ec.gc.ca


OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Climate change represents one of the biggest threats to global security, environmental protection and economic prosperity. It's also an enormous economic opportunity for businesses and workers in Canada and around the world. This is why the Government of Canada remains committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and supports the decarbonization of heavy-emitting sectors and clean technology that reduce emissions at home and abroad, including in the oil and gas sector.

Today, Canada joined other major economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom and 21 other countries in signing the Statement on International Public Support for the Clean Energy Transition at the COP26 (Conference of the Parties) climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Building on the June 2021 G7 Leaders commitment, Canada and other signatories will further prioritize support for clean technology and end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The Government of Canada will develop policy direction that will define the scope of this policy.

Joint efforts like this one help support the transition to a prosperous net-zero emissions economy. Canada will continue to work with its domestic and international partners to address climate change, while ensuring sustainable, resilient and inclusive global economic development.

Quote

"Building clean energy systems across the world will help us achieve our climate goals and build a prosperous future for everyone. In signing this declaration, Canada is aligning its international investments with its climate ambition."

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson

Minister of Natural Resources

"Canada can lead in the low-carbon world if we keep putting our investments, innovations and brain power behind ambitious climate action. That means quickly winding down new public international investments in unabated fossil fuels and powering up the shift to clean sources of energy. I have every confidence in Canada's ability to blaze a trail and win the jobs and economic prosperity that will come to those who lead the global transition to net zero no later than 2050."



The Honourable Steven Guilbeault

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada

Quick Facts

Earlier this week At COP26 , the Government of Canada committed to assist low and middle income countries transition away from coal-fired electricity by providing up to $1 billion in climate finance to expand access to clean energy and to support a fair and inclusive transition for coal workers and affected communities. This new commitment will be part of Canada's recent announcement to double its international climate finance from the $2.65 billion , announced in 2015, to $5.3 billion over the next five years to help developing countries transition to low-carbon, resilient economies.

, the Government of committed to assist low and middle income countries transition away from coal-fired electricity by providing up to in climate finance to expand access to clean energy and to support a fair and inclusive transition for coal workers and affected communities. This new commitment will be part of recent announcement to double its international climate finance from the , announced in 2015, to over the next five years to help developing countries transition to low-carbon, resilient economies. In June 2021, Canada and other G7 countries committed to phase out new direct government support for international carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy as soon as possible, with limited exceptions consistent with an ambitious climate neutrality pathway, the Paris Agreement, the 1.5 C goal and best available science.

and other G7 countries committed to phase out new direct government support for international carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy as soon as possible, with limited exceptions consistent with an ambitious climate neutrality pathway, the Paris Agreement, the 1.5 C goal and best available science. In July 2021 , Export Development Canada (EDC), Canada's export credit agency, committed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across their business lines and in their own global operations.

, Export Development Canada (EDC), export credit agency, committed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across their business lines and in their own global operations. On November 1 2021 , at COP26 , Prime Minister Trudeau announced that Canada is the first major oil-producing country moving to capping and reducing pollution from the oil and gas sector to net zero by 2050. To help do this at a pace and scale needed to achieve Canada's goal of net zero by 2050, the government will set 5-year targets, and will also ensure that the sector makes a meaningful contribution to meeting Canada's 2030 climate goals. In a letter sent from Ministers Guilbeault and Wilkinson, the government is seeking the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body on how best to move forward on this approach.

, at , Prime Minister Trudeau announced that is the first major oil-producing country moving to capping and reducing pollution from the oil and gas sector to net zero by 2050. To help do this at a pace and scale needed to achieve goal of net zero by 2050, the government will set 5-year targets, and will also ensure that the sector makes a meaningful contribution to meeting 2030 climate goals. In a letter sent from Ministers Guilbeault and Wilkinson, the government is seeking the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body on how best to move forward on this approach. Since 2015, the Government of Canada has invested over $100 billion in clean growth. The Government of Canadas existing climate actions put Canada on a path to exceed its previous target and allowed the government to set an ambitious new target of 40%45%reductions below 2005 levels by 2030 earlier this year. With new 2030 mitigation targets this year from Canada, Japan and the United States, combined with ambitious action from the EU countries and UK, more than half of the worlds economy have now committed to the pace of emission reductions required globally to limit warming to 1.5C..

Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan (http://twitter.com/nrcan)

SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

For further information: Ian Cameron, Senior Communications Advisor, Office of the Minister of Natural Resources, 613-447-3488, [email protected]; Natural Resources Canada, Media Relations, 343-292-6100, [email protected]; Joanna Sivasankaran, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-790-1907, [email protected]; Environment and Climate Change Canada, Media Relations, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll-free), [email protected]

Related Links

www.nrcan.gc.ca


Mandatory pre-departure PCR testing for fully vaccinated Canadian travellers is proving prohibitively expensive for Canadian families

Travel & Tourism Roundtable calls on the federal government to remove the pre-departure PCR test and amend the discriminatory child policy for travelling minors

OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Together with the Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable ("The Roundtable"), speaking on behalf of families and the business community across Canada are calling on the federal government to remove unnecessary and non-science-based obstacles to international travel, such as the pre-departure PCR test for fully vaccinated travellers, that disproportionately impact average Canadian families. Further, the Roundtable is calling on the government to amend the discriminatory child policy for travelling minors.

For the average Canadian family, travel is becoming increasingly difficult. The burdensome cost of a PCR test can add over CAD 200 per person or an additional $800 for a family of four for a round trip cross-border flight. This fee is proving cost-prohibitive to many Canadian families. Unvaccinated minors travelling with their fully vaccinated parents are also unable to attend school, daycare and camp for two weeks after travel, potentially adding the cost of two additional weeks of private childcare, adding to the disincentive to travel. Until a vaccine for minors under 12 is approved, children should return to school using testing, not quarantine.

These policies were intended to be temporary and run counter to the recommendations made by the federal government's COVID-19 Testing and Screening Expert Advisory Panel Report ("The Expert Panel") in May of this year.

Many countries have recognized that easing restrictions for unvaccinated children is low risk, and they, therefore, exempt unvaccinated children travelling with fully vaccinated adults from any quarantine. For example:

In France , the measures applicable to vaccinated adults also apply to any minors accompanying them, regardless of vaccination.

, the measures applicable to vaccinated adults also apply to any minors accompanying them, regardless of vaccination. In the United Kingdom , rules for fully vaccinated people also apply to travellers under 18 who reside in the UK or one of the listed countries with approved vaccination programs.

France, Portugal, Germany and the United Kingdom also recognize that requiring pre-departure and arrival tests for vaccinated travellers is redundant and have exempted fully vaccinated travellers from pre-departure testing requirements.

Although many had travel bookings lined up over the November-December period, the travel and tourism industry is bracing for cancellations, with Canadian families looking to either cancel or delay long-awaited winter trips and family visits.

The pandemic, vaccination status, and available science have changed; so too should the response and measures to keep Canadians safe while allowing the travel and tourism industry to re-open.

Quotes

"Canadian families deserve to be treated equally when travelling. In France and the United Kingdom, children can travel with their fully vaccinated parents, making travel to see family and friends more accessible to the middle class. Many other countries have implemented science-based policies, including the exemption of fully vaccinated travellers from testing requirements. Canada should follow suit."

- Perrin Beatty

President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce

"The pandemic took a real toll on our family. We have been looking forward to bringing our children to visit family members across the border. We've done our part. My wife and I got vaccinated. But it is almost impossible for us to do this. The cost of the PCR test adds almost an additional $1000 to our trip, and then our kids can't go to school for two weeks, resulting in additional childcare costs. We need the government to change the rules so we can see our loved ones again."

- David Schwartz

Ottawa based Father of two

"The PCR test is a major barrier for middle-class families hoping to travel across the border. The result is that families simply aren't travelling. The cost and inconvenience is too high, and until the federal government takes action to reduce the obstacles to travel, small Canadian tourism businesses like mine will not be able to recover fully."

- Sheila Gallant-Halloran

Owner, Lush Life Travel

About the Canadian Tourism Roundtable

The Canadian Tourism Roundtable is a cross-Canadian coalition of leaders in the tourism and travel sector  including representatives from airports, airlines, hotels, and chambers of commerce across the country  committed to working together to restart the sector smoothly and safely. Travel and Tourism is a $102 billion sector, employing millions of Canadians across the country and accounting for 2.1% of the country's gross domestic product. It advocates for a safe and prosperous tourism and travel sector across Canada.

SOURCE Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable

For further information: For media inquiries, please contact: Randi Rahamim, [email protected]
TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Diabetes Canada and Walmart Canada are pleased to partner together to highlight the importance of taking action to address the diabetes epidemic during Diabetes Awareness Month. One simple action includes screening for type 2 diabetes.

Every November, during Diabetes Awareness Month, the diabetes community and its supporters, come together to shine a light on the disease and its affects. This year, Diabetes Canada is working with partners such as Walmart Canada to urge Canadians to take action to end diabetes. Every action, no matter how big or small, brings us closer to a future without diabetes.

On November 14, 2021World Diabetes DayWalmart Canada will take action by facilitating an in-store event where they will be providing free type 2 diabetes screening and consultations at all Walmart pharmacies (excluding Acces Pharma Quebec) and vision centres throughout the day. Walmart pharmacists will be providing a blood sugar screening and the opportunity for customers to complete a CANrisk questionnairea survey to access if you are at higher risk of having *prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Walmart opticians will be providing self-assessments for general eye health and diabetic retinopathy and assisting with scheduling routine eye exams as needed.

"We are pleased to see Walmart Canada providing this free, type 2 diabetes screening day to Canadians around the country," said Laura Syron, President and CEO for Diabetes Canada. "It is the collective efforts, such as this screening day, that will continue to drive awareness and progress to help end diabetes."

Type 2 diabetes is a disease in which your body cannot make enough insulin (a hormone that helps control the amount of glucose or sugar in your blood) or does not properly use the insulin it makes. It is found in approximately 90 per cent of Canadians living with diabetes, therefore, screening is particularly important as nearly 11.5 million Canadian are living with diabetes or prediabetes. Canada has one of the highest rates of diabetes among developed countries, with someone being diagnosed every three minutes.

"We are very proud to partner with Diabetes Canada to help educate and inform about diabetes prevention," said Shelly Kiroff, Senior Vice-President, Health and Wellness, Pharmacy, Walmart Canada. "Our trusted pharmacists and opticians always want to help as many customers as possible and our commitment to our customers' health and well-being is stronger than ever. We invite Canadians to take part in our in-store screening event on Nov.14 and to speak with one of our many Certified Diabetes Educator pharmacists for more information on diabetes management and prevention strategies."

Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes:

high blood pressure

high levels of cholesterol or other fats in the blood

a high BMI or are overweight (especially if that weight is mostly carried around the tummy)

prediabetes (impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder)

obstructive sleep apnea

darkened patches of skin called acanthosis nigricans

Diabetes Facts:

Close to 11.5 million Canadians are living with diabetes or prediabetes.

Diabetes is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in those 20-65 years of age.

Diabetes contributes to 30% of strokes, 40% of heart attacks, 50% of kidney failure requiring dialysis.

Diabetes is the cause of 70 per cent of all non-traumatic limb amputations.

Having diabetes can shorten one's lifespan by five to 15 years.

Diabetes costs the healthcare system $30 billion dollars to treat.

to treat. According to Stats Canada, not including accidents, diabetes is a leading cause of death for all ages in Canada .

Throughout November, Diabetes Canada is aiming to achieve 100,000 actions to help end diabetes. Those visiting diabetes.ca/takeaction can join the community mosaic and share what they are doing to take action this November.

* Prediabetes is a condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes.

About Diabetes Canada

Diabetes Canada is the registered national charitable organization that is making the invisible epidemic of diabetes visible and urgent. Diabetes Canada partners with Canadians to End Diabetes through:

Resources for health care professionals on best practices to care for people with diabetes;

Advocacy to governments, schools and workplaces; and

Funding world-leading Canadian research to improve treatments and find a cure.

For more information, visit diabetes.ca or call 1-800-BANTING (226-8464).

About Walmart Canada

Walmart Canada operates a chain of more than 400 stores nationwide serving 1.5 million customers each day. Walmart Canada's flagship online store, Walmart.ca is visited by more than 1.5 million customers daily. With more than 100,000 associates, Walmart Canada is one of Canada's largest employers and is ranked one of the country's top 10 most influential brands. Walmart Canada was recently recognized as a LinkedIn Top Company of 2021 and was also named one of Canada's most popular brands (based on Google searches). Walmart Canada's extensive philanthropy program is focused on supporting Canadian families in need, and since 1994 Walmart Canada has raised and donated more than $500 million to Canadian charities. Additional information can be found at walmartcanada.ca and on Walmart Canada's social media pages  Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

SOURCE Walmart Canada Corp.

For further information: To schedule an interview: Pilar Iglesias, National Communications Manager, Diabetes Canada, [email protected]; Felicia Fefer, Corporate Affairs, Walmart Canada, [email protected]

Related Links

www.walmart.ca


The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is seeking a solution to access encrypted data for investigation purposes

OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

The Government of Canada is looking for innovative ways to help Canadian small businesses succeed.

Today, Innovative Solutions Canada launched a new challenge led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Along with other Canadian law enforcement agencies, the RCMP is facing challenges in accessing encrypted data seized during the course of criminal investigations. Individuals engaging in illegal behaviours have been using sophisticated encryption techniques to bypass legal prosecution. The RCMP is looking for an artificial intelligence decryption system that can process the seized data files and generate specific word lists to try and access the encrypted material.

Quick facts

Small businesses will have until December 16 to apply to the challenge.

Through the Innovative Solutions Canada program, government departments are inviting small businesses to come up with a new innovative product, service or solution that answers a specific challenge they face. Winning small businesses may receive up to $150,000 to refine their research and development and, if accepted into phase 2, receive up to $1 million to develop a working prototype. The government can then act as a first customer, helping these businesses commercialize their innovations, scale up their business and create good middle-class jobs across Canada .

to refine their research and development and, if accepted into phase 2, receive up to $1 million to develop a working prototype. The government can then act as a first customer, helping these businesses commercialize their innovations, scale up their business and create good middle-class jobs across . Innovative Solutions Canada is a key component of the government's Innovation and Skills Plan, a multi-year plan to make Canada a global innovation leader and prepare Canadians to succeed in tomorrow's economy.

a global innovation leader and prepare Canadians to succeed in tomorrow's economy. There are hundreds of programs and services that offer everything from funding to expert advice in order to help businesses innovate, create jobs and grow Canada's economy. Using a simple, story-based user interface, the Innovation Canada platform can match businesses with the most fitting programs and services in about two minutes.

Associated links

Stay connected

Find more services and information at Canada.ca/ISED.

Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on social media.

Twitter: @ISED_CA, Facebook: CanadianInnovation, Instagram: @cdninnovation and LinkedIn

SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

For further information: Contacts: John Power, Senior Manager, Communications and Media Relations, Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, [email protected]; Media RelationsInnovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, 343-291-1777, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/icgc.nsf/eng/home


Simply Sweet has a portfolio of five proprietary formulations made from natural ingredients that are healthy, vegan, low-sugar and free from sugar-alcohols. These include Blueberry Buzz, Peach Dream, Watermelon Adventure, Sour Cherry Blast, and Strawberry Chill. In addition, Simply Sweet's products will be free of soy, gluten, nuts, and genetically modified organisms containing less than 1 gram of sugar per packet.

"Simply Sweet is right in the sweet spot of two major consumer trends: low-sugar sweets is the fastest growing segment in the confectionery market and edibles is the fastest growing in the cannabis market," said Kiran Sidhu, Chief Executive Officer of Halo. "Adding Simply Sweet to Halo's portfolio makes Halo an early mover in what we expect to be a rapidly growing space. We intend to strengthen our position in our California and Oregon markets by using Simply Sweet's base formulas for most our infused gummy and candy production."

Pursuant to the Share Exchange Agreement, in consideration for all of the issued and outstanding shares of Simply Sweet, which holds assets and formulations (including US$1 million in cash), Halo has agreed to issue 2,700,000 common shares in the capital of Halo ("Common Shares") to the current shareholders of Simply Sweet. Halo has also agreed to issue 202,500 Common Shares to an arm's-length finder. Simply Sweet has no long term debt obligations.

Closing of the Acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including the approval of the Neo Exchange Inc. The Company expects the Acquisition to close in November 2021.

About Simply Sweet Gummy LTD

Simply Sweet is a health-conscious, low-sugar cannabis infused alternative confectionery company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Simply Sweet has a portfolio of proprietary recipes made from natural ingredients that are healthy, vegan, low-sugar and free from sugar-alcohols. All of its products will be free of soy, gluten, nuts, and genetically modified organisms making them appealing to a wide market.

About Halo Collective Inc.

Halo is a leading, vertically integrated cannabis company that cultivates, extracts, manufactures, and distributes quality cannabis flower, oils, and concentrates and has sold approximately eleven million grams of oils and concentrates since inception. The Company continues to expand its business and scale efficiently, partnering with trustworthy leaders in the industry who value Halo's operational expertise in bringing top-tier products to market.

Halo currently operates in the United States in Oregon and California and Canada. The Company sells cannabis products principally to dispensaries in the U.S. under its brands Hush, Mojave, and Exhale, and under license agreements with Papa's Herb, DNA Genetics, Terphogz, and FlowerShop*, a cannabis lifestyle and conceptual wellness brand that includes G-Eazy as a partner and key member.

As part of continued expansion and vertical integration in the U.S., Halo boasts several grow operations throughout Oregon and two planned in California. In Oregon, the Company has a combined 11 acres of owned and contracted outdoor and green house cultivation, including East Evans Creek, a six-acre grow site in Jackson County with four licenses owned and operated by Halo and two third-party licenses under contract to sell all of their product to Halo; Winberry Farms, a one-acre grow site located 30 miles outside of Eugene in Lane County with a license owned and operated by Halo; and William's Wonder Farms, a three-acre grow site in Applegate Valley, under contract to sell all of its product to Halo pending the closing of Halo's acquisition of its licenses and business assets. Halo has recently acquired Food Concepts LLC, a master tenant of a 55,000 sq.ft. indoor cannabis cultivation, processing, and wholesaling facility in Portland, Oregon operated by the Pistil Point entities.

In California, the Company is building out Ukiah Ventures, a planned 30,000 sq. ft. indoor cannabis grow and processing facility, which will include up to an additional five acres of industrial land to expand the site. Recently, Halo partnered with Green Matter Holding in California to purchase a property in Lake County, developing up to 63 acres of cultivation, comprising one of the largest licensed single site grows in California. Halo also plans to expand its operations in California by opening three dispensaries in North Hollywood, Hollywood, and Westwood.

In Canada, Halo acquired three KushBar retail cannabis stores located in Alberta as a first in its planned entry into the Canadian market, leveraging its Oregon and California brands. With the KushBar retail stores as a foundation, the Company plans to expand its foothold in Canada.

Halo has also acquired a range of software development assets, including CannPOS, Cannalift, and, more recently, CannaFeels. In addition, Halo owns the discrete sublingual dosing technology, Accudab. The Company intends to spin-off these assets and its intellectual property and patent applications into its subsidiary Halo Tek Inc. and expects to complete a distribution to shareholders on a record date to be determined by Halo.

Halo has recently announced the reorganization of its non-U.S. operations into Akanda Corp., whose mission is to provide high-quality and ethically sourced medical cannabis products to patients worldwide. Akanda will seek to deliver on this promise while driving positive change in wellness, empowering individuals in Lesotho, and uplifting the quality of the lives of employees and the local communities where it operates, all while limiting its carbon footprint. Akanda will combine the scaled production capabilities of Bophelo Bioscience & Wellness Pty. Ltd., Lesotho-based cultivation and processing campus located in the world's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) containing a cannabis cultivation operation, with distribution and route-to-market efficiency of Canmart Ltd., UK-based fully approved pharmaceutical importer, and distributor that supplies pharmacies and clinics within the U.K. With a potential maximum licensed canopy area of 200 hectares (495 acres), Bophelo has scalability that is arguably unmatched in the world today. Following the reorganization, Halo is the largest shareholder of Akanda Corp.

For further information regarding Halo, see Halo's disclosure documents on SEDAR at www.sedar.com

Connect with Halo Collective: Email | Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This press release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and may also contain statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current condition, but instead represent only Halo's beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of Halo's control. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "will continue", "will occur" or "will be achieved". Forward-looking information may relate to anticipated events or results including, but not limited to the closing of the Acquisition, the expected size and growth of the edible and confectionary markets, the number of Common Shares to be issued, the expected closing date of the Acquisition, Halo's expectations regarding the expansion of processing, production and distribution operations and the financial performance thereof, the Company's plans to expand in Canada and California, the expected size and capabilities of the final facility planned at Ukiah Ventures, the size of Halo's planned cultivation facility in Northern California, the ability of Bophelo and Canmart to serve the U.K. market and the proposed spin-off with Halo Tek Inc.

By identifying such information and statements in this manner, Halo is alerting the reader that such information and statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such information and statements. In addition, in connection with the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release, Halo has made certain assumptions. Although Halo believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. Among others, the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information and statements are the following: unforeseen delays in obtaining the required regulatory approvals for the Acquisition, the outcome of Halo's ongoing diligence investigations, changes in the consumer market for cannabis products, changes in the expected outcomes of the proposed changes to Halo's operations, delays in obtaining required licenses or approvals necessary for the build-out of Oregon operations or the proposed spin-out with Halo Tek Inc., delays or unforeseen costs incurred in connection with construction, the ability of competitors to scale operations in Northern California, delays or unforeseen difficulties in connection with the cultivation and harvest of Halo's raw material, changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; and the other risks disclosed in the Company's annual information form dated March 31, 2021 and other disclosure documents available on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information or statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.

The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and Halo does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and/or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking information and statements attributable to Halo or persons acting on its behalf is expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice.

Non-Solicitation

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell nor the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or 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 jurisdiction.

SOURCE Halo Collective Inc.

For further information: Halo Collective, Investor Relations, [email protected], www.haloco.com/investors

Related Links

https://haloco.com/


First units of the IONIQ 5 will start arriving in Canadian showrooms in December. They will be distributed across Canada and prioritized to over 2,000 Canadians who have submitted pre-orders.

2022 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Canadian Pricing:

MODEL ESTIMATED RANGE M.S.R.P. ($CAD) Essential 354 kilometres $44,999 Preferred 354 kilometres $46,999 Preferred Long Range 480 kilometres $51,999 Preferred AWD Long Range 415 kilometres $54,999 Preferred AWD LR w/Ultimate Package 400 kilometres $59,999

Freight and PDI: $1,825

"The IONIQ 5 offers the hallmark traits found in the popular crossover segment: utility, space, cutting-edge design, advanced safety technology and available all-wheel drive. With IONIQ 5's arrival, Canadians have all that in addition to the added benefit of a vehicle designed to be fully-electric, and from the ground-up," says Don Romano, president and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada. "We've seen an unparalleled level of excitement surrounding IONIQ 5 from customers and dealers, and we're thrilled to bring to market an EV presenting tremendous overall value, and also a variety of battery and drivetrain options."

IONIQ 5 fast facts:

IONIQ 5 rides on Hyundai Motor Group's Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP) that allows for more interior space and optimized performance.

IONIQ 5 is part of Hyundai Motor Group's plan to introduce 23 BEV models and sell 1-million BEV units worldwide by 2025.

Ultra-fast, 800-volt multi-charging available (10 to 80 per cent in 18 minutes).

Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) function can power small appliances, devices and even charge other EVs.

Driving range target of up to 480 kilometres.

New E-GMP platform improves performance, enhances driving dynamics and optimizes interior volume (spaciousness of a large car in a compact CUV).

Eco-friendly materials and nature-inspired colours at many touchpoints.

IONIQ 5 is the first model in Hyundai's new family of IONIQ electric vehicles.

Extended 3,000 mm wheelbase - IONIQ 5 has the longest wheelbase in Hyundai's North American product lineup.

Cutting-edge Parametric Pixel LED lighting elements.

Eye-catching V-shaped front bumper incorporates distinctive daytime running lamps (DRLs).

Flush door handles provide clean surface styling and enhanced aerodynamics.

Front and rear forms merge together at the doors, another example of Hyundai's 'Parametric Dynamics' design.

IONIQ 5 in Canada is available with two battery pack options (58 kWh or 77.4 kWh) and a range of drive combinations to fit the needs of every customer.

is available with two battery pack options (58 kWh or 77.4 kWh) and a range of drive combinations to fit the needs of every customer. Customers can mate the 77.4 kWh battery pack to two electric motor layouts, either with a rear motor only or with both front and rear motors.

The top-of-the-line dual motor setup is an all-wheel drive (AWD) option producing a combined power output of 320 horsepower and 446 lb-ft. of torque. An IONIQ 5 with this configuration can go from 0 to 100 kilometres in only 5.1 seconds.

The single-motor layout with a rear motor and long range, offering 225 horsepower, 258 lb-ft. of torque and two-wheel drive (2WD).

IONIQ 5 is the first Hyundai model to offer Highway Driving Assist 2 (HDA 2) which makes highway driving more convenient. HDA 2 helps maintain a set distance and speed from the vehicle ahead when driving on a highway.

For the first time in a Hyundai, IONIQ 5 features a Head-Up Display (HUD) with Augmented Reality (AR) mode, essentially turning the windshield into a display screen.

To learn more about IONIQ 5, please visit:

The IONIQ 5 Canadian newsroom

The IONIQ 5 Canadian consumer site

About Hyundai Auto Canada Corp.

Hyundai Auto Canada, established in 1983 and headquartered in Markham, Ontario, is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout Canada by Hyundai Auto Canada and are sold and serviced through more than 221 dealerships nationwide. Hyundai is also the first to offer a second-generation zero-emissions Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle to Canadian customers, called the NEXO. More information about Hyundai and its vehicles can be found at www.HyundaiCanada.com.

For more information about Hyundai and its products, please visit www.hyundainews.ca or contact:

Contacts:

Jenn McCarthy

National Manager, PR

Hyundai Auto Canada Corporation

[email protected]

416-770-0842

Mohga Hassib

Coordinator, PR

Hyundai Auto Canada Corporation

[email protected]

905-948-6882

Laura Linden

Associate Director, PR

Middle Child

[email protected]

647-207-6608

SOURCE Hyundai Auto Canada Corp.

Related Links

www.hyundaicanada.com


Key industry leaders come together to discuss insurance in a post-pandemic world

TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - KPMG in Canada will hold its 30th annual insurance conference, Reimagining Insurance, on Wednesday, November 17. The virtual conference brings together thought leaders from KPMG and the insurance industry to share their perspectives on the transformation of the sector.

The conference will offer an in-depth exploration of the issues affecting insurers today, including the rapid pace of digitization, consolidation, regulation, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities.

"Whether it's improving customer experience, leveraging disruptive technologies or preparing for IFRS 17, Reimagining Insurance is a one-stop shop for stakeholders to learn about, understand and reimagine the future of the insurance sector," says Chris Cornell, National Sector Leader, Insurance, KPMG in Canada.

This year's lineup includes a keynote address from Kevin D. Strain, President and CEO of Sun Life. Other guest panelists include: Eric Herbelin, President & Chief Executive Officer of Manitoba Public Insurance; Celyeste Power, Chief Strategy Officer at Insurance Bureau of Canada; and Neville Henderson, Assistant Superintendent, Insurance Supervision Sector, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).

The conference will be presented in English.

Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Time: 12 pm to 5 pm EST

Registration: Media are invited to attend and can register here.

CONFERENCE AGENDA

Opening Remarks | 12:05pm - 12:10pm

Chris Cornell , Partner, Audit, and National Sector Leader, Insurance, KPMG in Canada

A vision for Sun Life as it emerges from the pandemic | 12:10pm - 12:55pm

Kevin D. Strain , CEO, Sun Life

Plenary 1 | 12:55pm - 1:45pm

Reimaging Insurance: Global view on the state of the industry

Laura J Hay, Global Head of Insurance, KPMG International

Breakout Session 1 | 1:55pm - 2:40pm

IFRS 17 - Embracing Change - Planning for transition

Alison Rose , Partner, Life & Pensions Actuarial Practice, KPMG in Canada

, Partner, Life & Pensions Actuarial Practice, Cathy Yuan , Senior Manager, Financial Services, KPMG in Canada

, Senior Manager, Financial Services, Anthony Buonaiuto , Senior Manager, KPMG in Canada

Breakout Session 2 | 1:55pm - 2:40pm

Reimagining operations

Paul Jones , Senior Manager, KPMG in Canada

, Senior Manager, Gavin Lubbe , Partner and National Leader, Management Consulting  Operations; GTA Lead, Data & Analytics, KPMG in Canada

, Partner and National Leader, Management Consulting  Operations; GTA Lead, Data & Analytics, Jonathan Weir , Partner, KPMG in Canada

, Partner, Jonathan Wong , Director, Advisory  C&O Financial Services, KPMG US

Breakout Session 3 | 1:55pm - 2:40pm

Post pandemic risks and opportunities

Doron Melnick , Partner Management Consulting, Leader Transformation Delivery Services, Leader, People and Change Services, KPMG in Canada

Plenary 2 | 2:50pm - 3:35pm

Reimagining customer experience

Veronique Dorval , SVP, Chief Client Experience Officer, Sun Life

, SVP, Chief Client Experience Officer, Eric Herbelin , President & Chief Executive Officer, Manitoba Public Insurance

, President & Chief Executive Officer, Celyeste Power , Chief Strategy Officer at Insurance Bureau of Canada

, Chief Strategy Officer at Peter Hughes , Partner and National Leader, Customer Practice, KPMG in Canada

Breakout Session 4 | 3:45pm - 4:30pm

Reimagining tax

Will McCallum , Managing Director, Crown House, Bermuda , KPMG Bermuda

Managing Director, Crown House, , Penelope Woolford , Partner, National Service Line Leader, International Corporate Tax, KPMG in Canada

Partner, National Service Line Leader, International Corporate Tax, Marcus Heyland , Managing Director, Tax, Washington National Tax Office, KPMG

Breakout Session 5 | 3:45pm - 4:30pm

Transformative forces shaping the industry

Zaid Hoosain , Partner, Management Consulting  Operations, KPMG in Canada

Breakout Session 6 | 3:35pm - 4:30pm

Reimagining Insurance: Fresh approach to the Board of Directors' mandate

Dana R. Chaput , Partner and Insurance Accounting Change Leader, KPMG in Canada

, Partner and Insurance Accounting Change Leader, Stephen D. Smith , Partner, Audit, Financial Services, KPMG in Canada

, Partner, Audit, Financial Services, Alexander Rau , Partner, Advisory Services  Cyber Security, KPMG in Canada

Regulator point of view | 4:35pm - 5:00pm

Neville Henderson , Assistant Superintendent, Insurance Supervision Sector, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI)

, Assistant Superintendent, Insurance Supervision Sector, Amit Chalam , Partner, Risk Consulting, Financial Services, KPMG in Canada

, Partner, Risk Consulting, Financial Services, Chris Cornell , Partner, Audit, and National Sector Leader, Insurance, KPMG in Canada

About KPMG in Canada

KPMG LLP, a limited liability partnership, is a full-service Audit, Tax and Advisory firm owned and operated by Canadians. For over 150 years, our professionals have provided consulting, accounting, auditing, and tax services to Canadians, inspiring confidence, empowering change, and driving innovation. Guided by our core values of Integrity, Excellence, Courage, Together, For Better, KPMG employs nearly 8,000 people in over 40 locations across Canada, serving private- and public-sector clients. KPMG is consistently ranked one of Canada's top employers and one of the best places to work in the country.

The firm is established under the laws of Ontario and is a member of KPMG's global organization of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International, a private English company limited by guarantee. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. For more information, see home.kpmg/ca

SOURCE KPMG LLP

For further information: Roula Meditskos, National Communications & Media Relations, KPMG in Canada, (416) 549-7982, [email protected]
OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 3, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - CrownIndigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada

The Government of Canada is working to renew relationships with Indigenous Peoples, including by supporting Indigenous groups that are working to rebuild their Nations or Inuit communities in a manner that responds to their unique needs and priorities . This was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and is an objective outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of CrownIndigenous Relations, announced today that the annual call for proposals is now open to eligible First Nations, Inuit and Metis groups seeking to rebuild their Nations. Successful applicants will receive funding to support activities such as constitution development, community engagement and consultation toward rebuilding their nations. The Nation Rebuilding Program can help to advance reconciliation and self-determination for Indigenous Peoples, improve well-being and economic prosperity, and develop healthier and more sustainable communities.

In Budget 2018, the government invested $100 million over five years to support the efforts of Indigenous groups in developing their own path to reconstituting their Nations. The Nation Rebuilding Program is an important step forward on the path toward self-determination by supporting Indigenous groups in rebuilding their governance structures and capacity at the Nation level.

Quote

"Supporting Indigenous groups through this innovative program helps each Nation respond to the unique needs and priorities of their communities. We are committed to working with Indigenous partners on a Nation-to-Nation, InuitCrown and government-to-government basis, and to supporting them on their path to self-determination. We encourage all eligible Indigenous groups to apply to this important program."

The Honourable Marc Miller

Minister of CrownIndigenous Relations

Quick facts

A total of $20 million in Nation Rebuilding Program funding was made available annually for five years starting in 201819.





in Nation Rebuilding Program funding was made available annually for five years starting in 201819. Recipients eligible to receive funding under this program are the following:

Indigenous Nation entities (as self-defined and representing Nation-based collectives, could be linked by cultural or linguistic background, geographical area or historical treaty lines)



Nation member communities or member organizations on behalf of Nation entities



Section 35 rights-bearing First Nations, Inuit and Metis entities



National and regional Indigenous organizations



Self-governing Indigenous governments





Associated links

Nation Rebuilding Program

Nation Rebuilding Program Guidelines

Terms and conditions of the Indigenous Nation Rebuilding Program

Stay connected

Join the conversation about Indigenous Peoples in Canada:

Twitter: @GCIndigenous

Facebook: @GCIndigenous

Instagram: @gcindigenous

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SOURCE Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada

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Last year, PM Modi while celebrating Diwali with soldiers at Longewala in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan had said that as long as the Indian soldiers are present, this country's Diwali celebrations would continue in full swing and be luminescent.

Continuing his annual tradition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday arrived in Nowshera, Jammu to celebrate Diwali with soldiers. Last year, PM Modi while celebrating Diwali with soldiers at Longewala in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan had said that as long as the Indian soldiers are present, this countrys Diwali celebrations would continue in full swing and be luminescent.



In 2019, the Prime Minister had celebrated Diwali with soldiers in the Rajouri district along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. He had called soldiers as his family and lauded them for guarding the borders even during festivals. He had exchanged Diwali greetings with the Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel at Pathankot Air Force Station.



In 2018, Prime Minister Modi had celebrated Diwali with jawans of the Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), at Harsil in Uttarakhand. Following that he had offered prayers at the Kedarnath shrine.

In 2017, the Prime Minister celebrated the festival of light with army soldiers and Border Security Force (BSF) personnel in the Gurez Valley of Jammu and Kashmirs Bandipora District.



In 2016, the PM went to Himachal Pradesh to celebrate the festival with Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel at an outpost.

He visited the Punjab border to celebrate Diwali with soldiers in 2015.



In 2014, Prime Minister Modi spent Diwali in Siachen with soldiers.



Notably, PM Modi has been visiting soldiers on Diwali, ever since he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Chinese state-affiliated newspaper Global Times on Tuesday blamed India for targeting "China's multiple sectors as well as individuals in the past two years during the epidemic."

Chinese state-affiliated newspaper Global Times on Tuesday blamed India for targeting Chinas multiple sectors as well as individuals in the past two years during the epidemic. The news story cited experts from Chinese tech giant 360 Security Technology as the source of the unsubstantiated allegations. These experts told Global Times that Indian hacker groups used trendy affairs and topics to launch attacks on systems of Chinese organizations and individuals. The newspaper also claimed that the alleged attacks have been detected over the last two years during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The newspaper had published a similar news story on Monday where it was claimed that Anity Labs, Chinese anti-virus company, had busted attempts by Indian hackers to launch attacks on Chinas defense and military units as well as state-owned enterprises. The news story titled China busts cyberattacks from India targeted at Chinas defense and military departments referred to the statements by an official of Anity Labs, Li Bosong, who accused India of launching cyberattacks against Chinese organizations since April 2019.

The spate of such news stories from the Chinese state media comes at a time when India and China are in the middle of a longstanding border dispute. In a recent security event, NSA Ajit Doval raised concerns about deliberate weaponisation of dangerous pathogens. This apparent dig on China came from the person at the helm of the Indian security and intelligence apparatus. During the event, he was also quoted as saying, The new areas of warfare have shifted from merely territorial frontiers to the civil societies.

Earlier this year, Indias power ministry responded to a story published in The New York Times that linked last years grid failure in Mumbai to the Chinese cyberattacks. The ministry admitted that a failed attempt was made by Chinese hackers to break into the countrys power infrastructure systems. The statement also clarified that no data breach was detected.
Talks have been stalled for long months following the election of a hardline new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi. The US government under former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018.

Iran and European Union (EU) on Wednesday agreed to resume nuclear talks on November 29 in Vienna. The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will convene in a physical format on 29 November in Vienna, the EUs European External Action Service says in a statement, adding that it will be chaired by Enrique Mora on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, reported The Times of Israel. In Tehran, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri, Irans lead negotiator, confirmed the Nov 29 resumption of talks in Vienna. He tweeted that the date had been set in a phone call with Mora.



The EU statement said that the remaining parties to the deal  Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and Iran  would be represented.

Participants will continue the discussions on the prospect of a possible return of the United States to the JCPOA and how to ensure the full and effective implementation of the agreement by all sides, it said. Bagheri tweeted, We agreed to start the negotiations aiming at the removal of unlawful and inhumane sanctions on Nov 29 in Vienna.



Meanwhile, in reaction, the US said that a deal is possible quickly if Iran is serious in the Vienna talks, reported The Times of Israel. Talks have been stalled for long months following the election of a hardline new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi. The US government under former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran. In response to actions undertaken by US, Iran gradually stopped implementing parts of its JCPOA commitments.
LONDON (AP)  South African writer Damon Galgut won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction on Wednesday with The Promise, a novel about one white familys reckoning with South Africas racist history.

Galgut had been British bookmakers runaway favorite to win the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize with his story of a troubled Afrikaner family and its broken promise to a Black employee  a tale that reflects bigger themes in South Africas transition from apartheid.

Galgut took the prize on his third time as a finalist, for a book the judges called a tour de force. He was previously shortlisted for The Good Doctor in 2003 and In a Strange Room in 2010, but lost both times.

Despite his status as favorite, Galgut said he was stunned to win.

Galgut said he was accepting the prize on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard, from the remarkable continent that Im part of. He noted that this years Nobel literature laureate, Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was also African.

Please keep listening to us  more to come, Galgut added.

His novel paints a troubling picture of modern-day South Africa, though Galgut said he did not set out to be negative.

I didnt plan for the overall trajectory of the book to be a downward one, he said  though thats how it turned out.

I think the portrait it paints of modern South Africa is not a happy one, he said. I had no agenda in describing it that way, but things are not great with us right now. You could read that as a warning or a portrait, I dont know, but South Africa has seen better days.

Historian Maya Jasanoff, who chaired the judging panel, said The Promise was a profound, forceful and succinct book that combines an extraordinary story, rich themes -- the history of the last 40 years in South Africa -- in an incredibly well-wrought package.

Galguts ninth novel traces members of the Swart family  the word is Afrikaans for black  haunted by an unkept promise to give their Black maid, Salome, her own house. The book is structured around a series of funerals over several decades; Galgut has said he wanted to make readers fill in the narrative gaps themselves.

He is the third South African novelist to win the Booker Prize, after Nadine Gordimer in 1974 and J.M. Coetzee, who won twice, in 1983 and 1999.

The Promise was selected over five other novels, including three by U.S. writers: Richard Powers Bewilderment, the story of an astrobiologist trying to care for his neurodivergent son; Patricia Lockwoods social media-steeped novel No One is Talking About This and Maggie Shipsteads aviator saga Great Circle.

The other finalists were Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasams aftermath-of-war story A Passage North and British/Somali writer Nadifa Mohameds The Fortune Men, about a Somali man falsely accused of murder in 1950s Wales.

Jasanoff said many of the shortlisted novels, including Galguts, reflected on the relationship between past and present.

This is a book thats very much about inheritance and legacy, she said of the winner. Its about change over a period of decades. And I think its a book that invites reflection over the decades and invites and repays rereading.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers careers and was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the U.K.

The judging panel winnowed their list from 158 novels submitted by publishers. Only one British writer, Mohamed, made the final six, a fact has renewed debate in the U.K. about whether the prize is becoming U.S.-dominated.

Last year there also was only one British writer on a U.S.-dominated list of finalists, Scotlands Douglas Stuart. He won the prize for Shuggie Bain, a gritty and lyrical novel about a boy coming of age in hardscrabble 1980s Glasgow.

For a second year, the coronavirus pandemic has scuttled the prizes usual black-tie dinner ceremony at Londons medieval Guildhall. The winner was announced in a ceremony broadcast live on BBC radio and television.
A Kansas woman who used a 134-year-old state law to convene a citizen grand jury after a prosecutor declined to file rape charges against a man she accused of attacking her said Wednesday she was angry but not surprised that jurors didn't bring charges in the case.

Madison Smith, 23, of McPherson, gathered hundreds of signatures to empanel the grand jury after she said a fellow student at Bethany College slapped and strangled her during a sexual encounter in his dorm room in February 2018. The student, Jared Stolzenburg, was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to aggravated battery.

The grand jury convened on Oct. 18 and Smith was told of its decision Tuesday.

Smith said the grand jury's refusal to bring rape charges reinforces society's reluctance to deal honestly and fairly with sexual assault victims.

I was very angry that people just don't see rape for what it is and refuse to be educated about it, Smith said. I was also angry that I had to take so many steps that victims should not have to take and it still didn't work out as we wanted it to.

Defense attorney Brent Boyer said Wednesday he had not represented Stolzenburg for some time and declined to comment on the grand jury's decision.

Kansas is one of six states that allow citizens to petition for grand juries, using a law that was passed in 1887. Smith's case is believed to be the first time the law was used by someone claiming sexual assault.

Smith said her encounter with Stolzenburg was consensual until he started slapping and strangling her to the point where she began to lose consciousness and she feared he was going to kill her. She said she couldnt verbally withdraw consent because she was being choked.

When McPherson County Attorney Gregory Benefiel declined to file rape charges, Smith used the Kansas law to call her own grand jury. She stood on street corners and told her story to strangers in order to gather hundreds of signatures on petitions. And she did it twice after the first petition was declined because of technicality.

Despite the grand jury's decision, Smith said she does not regret publicizing her case and hopes it will bring changes to how sexual assault victims are treated by law enforcement officials and society in general.

I'm just sick and tired of people being all hush-hush about rape, she said. I wanted to bring awareness not only to my case but to the fact that victims of rape and sexual assault do not get justice or the treatment they should.

Benefiel did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the grand jury's decision. In an interview in May, he said sex crimes are extremely challenging to prosecute because jurors are looking for that CSI type of evidence.

He said he believed he and Smith were both seeking truth and justice but had different ideas on what that would be in this case.

Smith's mother, Mandy, who works at Bethany College in Lindsborg, about 70 miles (112.65 kilometers) north of Wichita, said she was proud of her daughter's determination to stand up for herself and shine a light on how poorly sexual assault victims are treated by the legal system.

She was not treated with any empathy or dignity, Mandy Smith said. Prosecutors do not understand how to do their jobs in a trauma-informed way and that is a huge part of the problem in these cases  This case should help get consent education out there. It should be everywhere and it's not.

Justin Boardman, a retired detective who trains police and prosecutors on investigating sexual crimes, said law enforcement officers and prosecutors often are speaking a different language than sexual assault victims, largely because of cultural biases about such crimes.

He said law enforcement officers and the public often question why a victim didnt scream, or fight back, or why victims sometimes struggle to tell their stories or dont cry. All those responses are related to how the brain reacts to trauma, he said, and there is a huge gap in miscommunication between victims and law enforcement.

Madison Smith, who graduated in May and is working as a medical assistant while applying to nursing schools, said she was encouraged by the support she received from family, friends and strangers during the process.

We swung the bat as hard as we could and unfortunately we missed, she said. I just had to know that I tried everything I could.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico already has among the highest U.S. unemployment rates and state Republican legislative leaders said Thursday that they fear President Joe Bidens plan to require vaccinations or COVID-19 testing for large employers could do more damage to the job market of the poverty-stricken state.

New Mexico Senate Republican Leader Greg Baca said the mandate is sowing more distrust of the federal government and he urged Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to push back against what he called federal overreach.

We are already facing a significant worker shortage, he told The Associated Press in an email. "This excessive policy may very well be the final nail in the coffin for many more local businesses.

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements made public Thursday call for workers of companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Failure to comply could result in penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

Federal officials also left open the possibility of expanding the mandate to smaller employers.

More than a dozen Republican attorneys general in other states have said they would fight the requirements.

In New Mexico, the legislative session that begins in January is limited to budget issues. Republican lawmakers said it's possible that one or more bills could be introduced to provide relief for local businesses being forced to comply with federal and state mandates.

New Mexico's Democrat-dominated state government was among the first to push hard for vaccinating adults.

Interest in inoculation has since tapered off and the state's vaccination rate has been stagnant at less than 73%. State officials announced Wednesday they aim to have more than 50% of children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated as part of the latest campaign.

Lujan Grishams public health order already requires shots for state employees, health care workers and educators, accounting for much of the state's workforce. But some critics have raised questions about whether her administration might go further and require booster shots since immunity in the state appears to be waning.

Our focus right now is on MLG (the governor) and the mandates she has already imposed and potential mandates she has yet to announce, said House GOP Leader Jim Townsend of Artesia. "New Mexicans simply want to get back to their lives, but continue to run into power hungry politicians at every turn.

The governor's office did not comment directly on the federal vaccine requirement. Officials with the state Health Department have said any discussions on whether the state would consider reimposing stricter public health mandates or expanded vaccine requirements have not yet occurred.

Nora Meyers Sackett, a spokesperson for the governor, said Thursday that New Mexico continues to have one of the highest vaccination rates in the West. Sackett said the state's goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible and that vaccinating younger children will be a big step.

Steve Pearce, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, described the federal vaccine mandate for employers as a blatant infringement on our civil liberties.

To threaten employees who dont comply is even more dangerous and insulting, he said. "Americans have the right to choose, and this is another violation of our constitutional rights.

Confirmed COVID-19 cases are creeping back up in New Mexico despite higher vaccination rates and a mask mandate for indoor public spaces. State data shows more than 22,000 confirmed infection cases have been reported over the past month, including infections among vaccinated people.

State Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase on Wednesday pointed to the infectious nature of the delta variant as a factor driving the surge. He said all regions of the state are seeing an uptick in infections and that community spread remains high statewide.
NEW YORK (AP)  The spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians was staying overnight in a New York City hospital after having a stent placement Wednesday afternoon at the conclusion of his U.S. visit, according to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, 81, of Constantinople underwent the procedure at Mount Sinai Hospital following an angiogram that determined the need for the stent, according to the archdiocese. A stent is a tube placed in a clogged blood vessel to increase blood flow.

He was expected to be released Thursday, it said. Further details were not immediately released.

The hospital treatment delayed Bartholomew's return home to Turkey, which had been scheduled for Wednesday at the conclusion of a busy 12-day U.S. itinerary.

The trip, his first to this country in several years, also began with an overnight hospital stay in Washington when he felt unwell a day after his arrival, church officials said.

He resumed his itinerary, meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House and receiving awards from Catholic and Jewish organizations.

On Tuesday, he spoke with a firm voice and did not appear fatigued as he stood for an hour-long ceremony at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine near the World Trade Center in New York, which is replacing a church destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. He then attended an evening celebration of his 30th anniversary as patriarch, the longest tenure on record.

As patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew is considered first among equals among Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, which gives him prominence but not the power of a Catholic pope. He does oversee Greek Orthodox and some other jurisdictions, although large portions of the Eastern Orthodox world are self-governing under their own patriarchs.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky's attorney general pushed back Thursday against President Joe Biden's coronavirus vaccination mandate for private employers, filing a lawsuit claiming the requirement amounts to government overreach.

The suit, filed in federal court in Kentucky, takes aim at the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for federal contractors, Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron said. Ohio and Tennessee joined in filing the suit, which claims the vaccination requirement is unlawful and unconstitutional.

The federal government contracts with private businesses and public agencies in states across the country, and the commonwealth is no exception, meaning that numerous Kentuckians are subject to the Biden administrations unconstitutional vaccination requirement, Cameron said.

We are taking the issue of federal overreach seriously and will protect the livelihoods of countless Kentuckians and Kentucky businesses from overbroad mandates, he added.

The legal action comes in advance of the Jan. 4 deadline requiring vaccines for employees who work for federal contractors.

The attorneys general in the three states also claim the vaccine mandate violates state sovereignty by preventing the states from exercising power to establish laws regarding workforce vaccination policies. They also contend the mandate is unconstitutional because Congress did not give the president authority to issue such a broad mandate.
WEST HAVEN  City Hall employee John Bernardo was arrested Thursday morning and was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal authorities said.

Barnardo is listed as a principal in Compass Investment Group LLC with former state Rep. Michael DiMassa in January, according to records from the secretary of the state. DiMassa was arrested and charged with wire fraud last month.

Bernardo surrendered to law enforcement Thursday. He appeared before U.S. District Judge Robert M. Spector in New Haven and was released on a $250,000 bond.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

Here are the details of the case against Bernardo, according to the FBI:

- John Bernardo is listed in the City of West Haven Employee Directory as a Housing Specialist in the office of Community Development Administration. He is currently on administrative leave from his position.

- Michael DiMassa was employed as an Administrative Assistant to the City Council and was a Connecticut State Representative elected to represent West Haven and New Haven.

- DiMassa has resigned from both of those positions. On October 20, 2021, he was arrested on a criminal complaint charging him with wire fraud for the scheme described in the affidavit. See United States v. Michael Dimassa, 3:21mj1036(RMS).

- According to records at the State of Connecticut-Office of the Secretary of State, the business Compass Investment Group, LLC was formed January 27, 2021. The business has two principals, John Bernardo and Michael Dimassa. The listed business address appears to be the home address of John Bernardo.

- On February 5, 2021 a bank account for Compass Investment Group, LLC was established at Webster Bank. The listed address appears to be the residence of John Bernardo. Both Michael Dimassa and John Bernardo are listed as authorized signatories.

- A review of the bank account was conducted for the period of February 5, 2021 through April 30, 2021. This review revealed that from February 12, 2021 through April 30, 2021, seven checks that were made payable to Compass Investment Group, LLC from the City of West Haven and were deposited to the business account

- The checks ranged in value from $11,847.50 to $87,650.0. These funds were then used for twenty-one cash withdrawals that were conducted by Michael Dimassa, ranging from $8,000 to $10,000, for a total of $178,150. Nine of the withdrawals were in the form of checks made out to himself and twelve were via withdrawal slips.

Examples of Fraudulent Claims for Payment involving John Bernardo

1. Voucher 6022509. On or about February 17, 2021 City of West Haven Payment Voucher No. 602250 was submitted for payment by the COVID Department. Attached to this voucher was an invoice listing alleged services provided to the West Haven Health Department. The voucher described the services as COVID-19 Legal + Site work. The invoice listed charges that included 180 hours of Consulting Service-COVID 19 Site Support, 24 hours of Consulting Service-Legislative Review Executive Orders COVID-19, and 38 hours of Consulting Service-Support Staff Services.

The amount billed to the City of West Haven was $14,256.00

- The next day, February 18, 2021, Check Number xxxxx7092 was issued by the City of West Haven Accounts Payable bank account in the amount of $14,256.00. The check was issued to Compass Investment Group, LLC . On February 19, 2021, the check was deposited into the Webster Bank account of Compass Investment Group. This transaction caused the transmission of an interstate wire.

- On February 22, 2021, a check made payable to michael dimassa was negotiated for $8,000 cash. On February 26, 2021, a second check made payable to Michael Dimassa was negotiated for $8,000 cash.

- On February 26, 2021, a cash deposit of $3,000.00 was made into the personal bank account of John Bernardo.

2. Voucher 60223113. On February 24, 2021 West Haven Payment Voucher No. 602231 was submitted for payment by the COVID-19 Department. Attached to this voucher was an invoice listing alleged services provided to the West Haven Health Department. The voucher described the services as COVID-19 Site work + legal work consulting services. The invoice listed items which included 225 hours of Consulting Service-COVID 19 Site Support, 164 hours of Consulting Service-Legislative Review Executive Orders COVID 19, and 74 hours of Consulting ServiceSupport Staff services.

The amount billed to the City of West Haven was $41,667.50.

- On March 1, 2021 Check Number xxxxx7222 was issued by the City of West Haven Accounts Payable bank account in the amount of $41,667.50. The check was issued to Compass Investment Group, LLC . On March 1, 2021, the check was deposited into the Webster Bank account of Compass Investment Group. This deposit caused the transmission of an interstate wire.

- On March 4, 2021, $10,000 was withdrawn from the Webster Bank account by Michael DiMassa. On that same date, a Webster Bank Official check in the amount of $10,000 was issued made payable to John F. Bernardo. On March 5, 2021, the official check was deposited into the personal Wells Fargo bank account of John Bernardo. This transaction caused the transmission of an interstate wire.

3. Vouchers 60300 and 6032116. On June 15, 2021 City of West Haven Payment Voucher No. 603000 was submitted for payment by the COVID -19 Grant Department. Attached to this voucher was an invoice listing alleged services provided to the West Haven Health Department. The voucher described the services as COVID-19 Grant Services IT Transport + Clinic Services Cleaning/Lobby work. The invoice listed charges that included 205 hours of Consulting Service-Legislative Review Opening Guidelines, 125 hours of Consulting Service-Support Staff Services, 180 hours of Consulting Service-Lobbying Service COVID 19 Federal, and135 hours of Economic ConsultingEconomic Site Plan Assessment/Review. The amount billed to the City of West Haven was $85,225.00.

- On June 17, 2021 Check Number xxxxx0075 was issued by the City of West Haven

Accounts Payable bank account in the amount of $85,225.00. The check was issued to Compass Investment Group, LLC . On June 21, 2021, the check was deposited into the Webster Bank account of Compass Investment Group. This deposit caused the transmission of an interstate wire.

- On August 19, 2021 City of West Haven Payment Voucher No. 603321 was submitted for payment by the COVID -19 Department. Attached to this voucher was an invoice listing alleged services provided to the West Haven Health Department. The voucher described the services as COVID-19 Public Health Services Legal Review +Outdoor dining regulations support. The invoice listed charges that included 50 hours Consulting Service-Legislative Review Mask Guidelines, 375 hours of Consulting Service-Support Staff Services, 10 hours of Consulting Service-Legislative Review-Boost Shots, and 45 hours of Economic ConsultingBusiness Plan Development-ARPA Program Outdoor Dining Regulations Review. The amount billed to the City of West Haven was $20,200.00.

- On August 20, 2021 Check Number xxxxx1696 was issued by the City of WestHaven Accounts Payable bank account in the amount of $20,200.00. The check was issued to Compass Investment Group, LLC

- On August 23, 2021, the check was deposited into the Webster Bank account of Compass Investment Group. This deposit caused the transmission of an interstate wire.

- On August 27, 2021, an automated withdrawal for an ADP wage pay was made from the Webster Bank account of Compass Investment Group in the amount of $64,454.50. On that same day, a wire deposit of $32,227.25 was made into the personal bank account of John Bernardo. Also on that same day, a wire deposit of $32,227.25 was made into the personal bank account of Michael Dimassa.

- Compass Investment Group Never Provided Any Services to the West Haven Public Health Department

- The invoices requesting payment to Compass Investment Group, LLC refer to services provided to City of West Haven, Health Department. According to the West Haven Corporation Counsel, the West Haven Health Director never used, selected, approved, or otherwise engaged Compass Investment Group for any work or services concerning the West Haven Public Health Department.

- From in or about February, 2021 through September, 2021, a total of $636,783.70 was paid to the Compass Investment Group, LLC by the City of West Haven.
WEST HAVEN  It took less than 10 minutes for 11 delegates to decide that Councilwoman Trenee McGee, who won a second term on the council less than 24 hours earlier, would be the Democratic candidate in the special election for the 116th District House seat.

The seat was left empty by the resignation of former Democratic state Rep. Michael DiMassa, who recently was arrested on a federal wire fraud charge connected to his alleged misuse of federal pandemic relief funds allocated to the city.

Eleven city Democrats met at party headquarters to make official a decision that party leaders had indicated last week could be the outcome. One delegate, a New Haven resident from the small portion of that city included in the 116th Districts boundaries, did not attend the nominating convention.

Im passionate about racial justice, Im passionate about family and faith, the arts  these things drive me, encourage me and inspire me, McGee said after receiving the nomination.

McGee is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College. When she ran for City Council in 2019, she said, I come from a family of artists, performers, preachers and activists. This led me to obtaining a BFA in acting and a heart for community service.

Im excited about her candidacy and her future in the General Assembly, Democratic Town Chairman Michael Last has said. I think shell do a great job.

DiMassa, who held the House seat since 2017, resigned last month from both his statewide position and his job in West Haven City Hall after being arrested and charged with one count of wire fraud. He is alleged to have diverted $636,000 of federal pandemic relief funding from the city to a separate bank account that he could access.

At 27, McGee is slightly older than the 30-year-old DiMassa was when he first took office, but she believes her youth would be an advantage in the General Assembly.

Im young, Im Black and a woman. Those identities intersect, she said, which she added gives her a unique perspective for the legislature. More than anything, I want to learn.

McGee opened an acting studio on Campbell Avenue last month for local actors between 5 and 18 years old. She has been acting since she was a child, she said, and had been traveling around the state to provide private coaching for several years. She said she hopes acting lessons at TDM Productions and Actors Studio encourages young people to become more confident and creative.

She also co-organized West Havens first Juneteenth celebration in 2021, which she said represents a shift from West Haven residents crossing city boundaries into New Haven for cultural events.

A similar convention was planned at the Republican Town Committees headquarters late Wednesday about three miles away. But RTC Chairman Dave Riccio said the convention was rescheduled to Saturday to better suit delegates schedules.

The Republicans interested in the seat include former City Councilman Richard DePalma and Planning and Zoning Commission member Steven R. Mullins, Riccio has said. DePalma ran against DiMassa in 2016 after defeating fellow Republican Roman Khondker in a primary. Mullins previously has run both for the 116th District seat and for mayor.

Election officials Sunday will conduct a recount of Tuesdays municipal election results  Democrat Mayor Nancy Rossis 29-vote lead over Republican Councilman Barry Lee Cohen is a smaller margin than one-half of one percent, which automatically triggers a recount, per state statute.

The special election for the 116th District will be held Dec. 14 and the winner will be sworn in Jan. 6, 2022.

DiMassas arrest took many officials and residents by surprise and became an issue in this weeks election.

City Clerk Patricia Horvath has said its important for people to know that there are many people in city government who work hard every day to earn and maintain the publics trust.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
Although they were still above pre-pandemic levels, the number of residential real estate sales in much of Connecticut was substantially lower last month than in 2020, a new report shows.

October 2020 was a month of record sales, when buyers moved out of New York City during the pandemic, according to a report released this week from William Pitt-Julia B. Fee Sothebys International Realty.

Many sought more space during lockdowns and others tried to get out of the city as COVID case numbers spiked. This migration has continued for months, although at a slower rate, experts said.

It was a lifetime year, a career year. It was the highest the bar has ever been, said Paul Breunich, president and chief executive officer at Sothebys International.

The rise in number of buyers paired with low housing stock caused significant price increases nationwide. Connecticut was among the states that saw higher rises, federal data show.

Were still seeing multiple offers, we still have more buyers than we have sellers at this point, said Tammy Felenstein, president-elect of the Connecticut Association of Realtors.

Fairfield County, which has been particularly affected by housing price hikes, saw a 35 percent drop in the number of closed sales in October  858  compared to the same month last year. But it also saw the largest increase in sales compared to 2019, at 23 percent.

In October 2019, Fairfield County had 698 house sales. In October 2020, there were 1,329, according to the report.

The countys proximity to New York City has made it desirable for many in the people moving out to areas where they can get more space, although Connecticut counties farther from the city have also seen the migration, Breunich said.

Theres a migration that has shifted from the cities back to the suburbs and I think remote working is the big wild card, he said.

The largest drops were in Middlesex and Litchfield counties, at 39 percent each. Both also saw small increases from 2019  2 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

The only county to see drops compared to 2019 was New London County, which had a 5 percent decrease, the report says.

The report examines sales in the real estate firms territory, including parts of New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. It excludes Tolland and Windham counties in Connecticut.

Inventory is also lower than this time last year.

Every county saw drops in the amount of inventory in October, compared to 2020 and 2019. Fairfield Countys was the largest, at a 54 percent decrease  from 5,327 in 2019 to 2,432 in October.

Were still desperate for more inventory, Felenstein said.

Part of the issue is that people have been hesitant to put their houses on the market because they dont know where theyre going to go, Breunich said.

The costs of construction materials have also been elevated during the pandemic, slowing the building of new homes in many cases, experts have said.

Felenstein cautioned that one month of data  even when compared to the same months in years past, doesnt constitute a trend.

If we see this continue over the next two months, and we see a full quarter with the decreases, then I think were looking at a trend, she said.
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain during the afternoon. High 49F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Light rain early. Then remaining cloudy. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing this afternoon. High 49F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Light rain early. Then remaining cloudy. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A Niagara County Court jury deliberated for just over 6 1/2 hours on Monday, but did not appear to be close to returning a verdict in the murd
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Ondo State chapter has accused Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of playing politics with the lives of the p...





The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Ondo State chapter has accused Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of playing politics with the lives of the people of the state.

According to the party, the lackadaisical attitude of the governor in securing the state led to the withdrawal of the soldiers from checkpoints across the highways in the state.

It was reported that insecurity looms in the State following the withdrawal of soldiers from various checkpoints across the state.

Also, PDP on Wednesday had alleged that the failure of Akeredolu to pay the soldiers their allowances was the reason for the withdrawal from the checkpoints, with Akeredolu through his Information Commissioner accusing the party of politicising the issue.

PDP in a statement issued by its Publicity Secretary, Kennedy Peretei on Thursday, emphasised that with the festive season approaching, Akeredolu should be more concerned in beefing up security across the state.

While lashing out at the governor over his excuse that the withdrawal of soldiers at checkpoints was due to cold war with the Amotekun Corps, Peretei stated that the excuse was laughable and unreasonable.

Peretei added that the soldiers of 32 Artillery Brigade, Akure, the State capital who had also been providing security in Ekiti State did not withdraw from checkpoints in the state where Amotekun also operates.

In the first place, what has been the spectacular achievements of the Ondo Amotekun? Is there no Amotekun in Ekiti State, a juridiction covered by 32 Artillery Brigade, stationed in Akure? Are soldiers not at the checkpoints in Ekiti State? Why does he think that it is the Ondo Amotekun that must be sabotaged of all the States in the South West?

Governor Rotimi Akeredolu should own up to his failure to live up to his responsibility in this regard. Of all the six states in the South West, it is only in Ondo State that Amotekun is led by a man who has no military background. This is not far fetched, Akeredolu is simply patronizing his kinsman from Owo.
The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has denied calling for the boycott of the Anambra State governorship election, barely 48 hours to t...

The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has denied calling for the boycott of the Anambra State governorship election, barely 48 hours to the poll.

IPOB said its members are not interested in the Anambra governorship election.

The group stressed that reports claiming it called for a boycott of Saturdays election are false and unfounded.

Spokesman of IPOB, Emma Powerful, said the groups focus is the release of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, and not the conduct of the election.

According to Powerful: We are the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) under the command and leadership of our great Leader, Mazi Nnamdi KANU. We wish to correct some misconceptions, unfounded speculations, and outright falsehood concerning our position on the forthcoming November 6 governorship election in Anambra State.

First of all, we wish to reiterate that IPOB did not at any time issue an order or call for the boycott of the said election contrary to misconceptions in certain quarters. In fact, IPOB has nothing to do with the Anambra election. Nobody should therefore link us with the election.

The priority of IPOB is to secure the unconditional release of our Leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who has been illegally detained since his rendition to Nigeria. All we said was that if by November 4 those who abducted, renditioned, and illegally detained him fail to release him unconditionally, Biafrans shall embark on civil disobedience of one-week sit-at-home beginning from November 5 to November 10.

This action has nothing to do with the Anambra election. As a matter of fact, we are not concerned if anyone wishes to participate or not to participate in the Anambra election.

The group also denied ordering the shutting down of all hotels in Anambra State.

That voice note ordering all hotels in Anambra State to shut down must stop. We now order all our volunteers to unravel the monster behind this wicked voice note. Its now very obvious that some traitors are out to demonise IPOB, he added.
Anambra State Government has raised the alarm over alleged plot to arrest its officials on trumped-up charges, as a plot to weaken the cha...

Anambra State Government has raised the alarm over alleged plot to arrest its officials on trumped-up charges, as a plot to weaken the chances of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Saturdays election.

A press release by the Anambra State government, signed by the commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Mr C. Don Adinuba said the plot was being hatched by an unnamed political party.

He said some actors in the unnamed political party planned to use instrument of state to carry out their plot, even without the knowledge of the security chiefs in the State.

The release, which was made available said: The Anambra State Government has received credible intelligence reports about moves by members of a certain political party to use the instrumentality of the state to arrest key officials of the State Government anytime on trumped-up charges, so as to hijack the gubernatorial election holding on Saturday, November 6, 2021.

One of the meetings was on how to use the coercive apparatus of the state to carry out this plot has just been held in Awka, the Anambra State capital.

None of the heads of national security agencies is aware of this plot. The desperate politicians want to use certain compromised operatives working without the knowledge, let alone the support, of the national heads of the security agencies to perpetrate this act.

It added that: This announcement is to bring the evil plans to the knowledge of all Anambra people but also to the attention of all relevant authorities for prompt action.

All our people are enjoined to go about their normal business while the State Government takes every necessary action to ensure a free, fair and transparent election on Saturday. The elections in the State in the last few years have been very free and fair. We will continue to do everything possible to maintain the new tradition of free and fair polls.
Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagos state governor, has inaugurated a tribunal to probe the collapse of a 21-storey building in Gerrard Road, Ikoyi....

Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagos state governor, has inaugurated a tribunal to probe the collapse of a 21-storey building in Gerrard Road, Ikoyi.

He inaugurated members of the tribunal at an event held on Thursday in Falomo, Ikoyi.

The governor also signed an instrument legitimising the panel and empowering it to invite or summon parties useful to the investigation.

Sanwo-Olu described the building collapse as a sad one for Lagos, adding that the public deserves to know what went wrong.

He said: We are gathered here to perform a sad but necessary duty, which is the inauguration of a 6-member panel of inquiry into the collapse of the 21-storey building at Gerrard Road, Ikoyi, on Monday. It is a solemn moment for me personally, but this is an important assignment. Indeed, the generation coming after will not forgive us if we dont do the right thing in this incident.

The inauguration of this panel shows sincerely that the state government is interested in unravelling and getting to the root cause of what happened to the building, so that everyone concerned, including the Government, will learn from the very unfortunate incident. Lagosians and the world will be watching and waiting keenly, with the full expectation that the immediate and remote causes of this tragedy will be uncovered.

Sanwo-Olu said he is counting on the expertise and professionalism of the tribunal members in unravelling the cause of the incident.

What this tribunal will be doing over the course of the next few weeks will have important implications for building safety and for emergency response, not just in Lagos, but in the entire country. It will also go a long way towards ensuring that the families of the innocent victims of this avoidable tragedy experience some sort of closure and get justice, Sanwo-Olu said.

Toyin Ayinde, president of Nigeria Institute of Town Planners (NITP), is the chairman of the panel, while Ekundayo Onajobi, a lawyer in a private law firm, is the secretary.

Other panel members are a structural engineer, Akintilo Idris Adeleke; an architect, Yinka Ogundairo; representative of Institute of Builders, Godfrey O. Godfrey, and Bunmi Ibrahim, a real estate lawyer.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Rain and snow showers this morning changing to mainly rain showers for the afternoon. High 49F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Rain. Low around 35F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
After its 10th season was canceled last year due to the pandemic, New Orleans Fashion Week is returning this week for a three-day showcase of local and regional style.

"COVID affected us in such a hard way, especially for the designers," said Tracee Dundas, the founder and executive producer of NOFW. "Most local designers are creating pieces for clients for events like Mardi Gras. When all of that stopped, when the need to wear fashion for special occasions stopped, fashion stopped."

New Orleans' typically jam-packed annual calendar of galas, debutante events, Carnival balls and other gatherings has been virtually halted since March 2020, when the coronavirus arrived in the city. A hoped-for revival planned for this summer succumbed to the wave of infections spurred by the delta variant.

But now, with case counts low, all signs are pointing to a return of Carnival early next year and the revival of events, which the city's designers hope means a renewed interest just as Fashion Week is kicking off.

The fashion renaissance, is usually a week long. But it's been shortened this year and will run from Thursday through Saturday (Nov. 4-6). Its main showcase will take place at Gallier Hall Saturday. Throughout the event, Dundas and her team aim to showcase the creativity and talent of New Orleans and Southern-based designers.

+2 Former Meauxbar in French Quarter is becoming a new bistro inspired by classics The French Quarter building at North Rampart and St. Philip streets that was long home to the restaurant Meauxbar will soon be coming back to 

Our goal is to uplift the local designers, to give them a platform to showcase their work, and to remind everyone that your local designers are still here, Dundas said.

Currently, NOFW has 17 local designers participating in the showcase, with styles ranging from ballroom to streetwear to vintage.

Some designers said to look out for bold designs with blasts of color, which may be a welcome turn for fashion watchers after almost two years of virtual get-togethers and remote work.

Harold Fedison, founder of Ward And Parish retail in New Orleans, will be one of this year's local designers. He said this year's show is important for increasing his brand's exposure, especially after the hit the fashion industry sustained due to COVID-19.

I wouldnt consider myself a streetwear designer or an urban designer. Im a ready-wear designer, said Fedison. I design for both men and women who love to dress easily. I like creating styles that give off a sense of easy sophistication."

Being a creative, we need things to pulse us and affect us, and to be isolated from that is tough. In fact, to continue working when isolated was almost impossible, Fedison said.

Adrianna Moore, founder of Batu Collections, echoed Fedison's struggles with adjusting to a noncontact society.

It was hard because I am an in-your-face type of person, Moore said. I had to adjust and do things online and learn to work social media a lot more than usual. That was the only way to get my clothing and jewelry designs out there, Moore said.

Moore had been a part of NOFW since 2016, where she had released her first collection, Batu.

Fashion Week begins Thursday with WARdrobe- Fashion on the Rations, in partnership with The National WWII Museum. The event includes a vintage fashion presentation and a viewing of pieces from the museums collection of wartime style. There will be hair and makeup demonstrations by the Paul Mitchell School of cosmetology.

On Friday, NOFW will partner with Diamonds Direct, a local jeweler. The Giving Back with Style event will feature Aaron Michael, a NOFW alumnus and a participant on Project Runway Season 19. Michaels designs will be auctioned, and the proceeds will be donated to local nonprofits Dress for Success, Second Harvest Food Bank and Son of a Saint.

The final featured event, the Designer Showcase runway show, will take place on Saturday at Gallier Hall.

This years fashion week is going to be one of my favorites," said Christian Suarez, a local streetwear designer and founder of Gods Eye Apparel. I love doing things that are different. Its not about just sending my models out on the runway one by one wearing my clothes. There needs to be a story behind it, and there needs to be a mood, Suarez added.

On the three evenings, an After the Runway Affair will be hosted as a way for designers and fashionistas alike to enjoy more fashion and music.

For tickets and full event details go to neworleansfashionweek.com.
Like so many New Orleanians who evacuated for Hurricane Ida, Larissa Littleton-Steib, the chancellor of Delgado Community College, found herself crammed in a crowded, slow-moving vehicle, trying to make the best of a stressful situation.

I had my kids in the car, and I also had my mother-in-law and my mother evacuating with us as well, Littleton-Steib explained. And just to keep everyone sane, my kids and I began to count the number of Delgado decals on the backs of cars. And it was almost as if every other car had a Delgado decal.

Even after they entered Texas, they spied the familiar stickers.

We counted over 150 Delgado Community College decals in Texas, said Littleton-Steib, noting that many belonged to cars without Louisiana license plates.

Some of those decals were old and tattered, but what it said to me was that Delgado Community College is a recognized brand, not only in the state of Louisiana, but in other places as well, she said. Those indicate that at some point in that individual's life, they came to Delgado Community College.

Since Delgado recently marked its centennial, Littleton-Steib has spent time reflecting on the schools evolution and the role it plays for the city of New Orleans.

Isaac Delgado  a Jamaican immigrant, sugar planter and successful businessman  opened the Isaac Delgado Central Trades School on Sept. 13, 1921. The school, at 615 City Park Ave., welcomed 150 students who were all White males. They learned in-demand skills for the time, such as carpentry, printing, cooking and sign painting, along with aircraft design.

Delgado now boasts a student body of about 20,000, representing different races and cultures from around the world. Female students outnumber males. And out-of-state students participate in the schools online courses.

The schools academic programs extend beyond technical education, offering programs focused on health care, business and culinary arts, among other disciplines.

However, Delgados priority was and still is workforce development.

We have programs guided by an advisory board that consists of individuals that work in the industry. They are telling the college what is needed and what is relevant, Littleton-Steib said. So at the end of the day, when a student decides that they want to go and work, they have the skill set that immediately allows them to do so.

Delgado offers courses in conjunction with regional companies, so their employees can learn how to use new technologies.

We are constantly communicating with our business and industry partners to ensure that we remain relevant and provide world-class training, Littleton-Steib said.

I don't want our health care industries to feel that they need to go outside of the state, she said. I look to the future of Delgado being that premier training and education provider for the city of New Orleans and beyond, one that our workforce partners will look to us and say, We need 1,500 nurses in the next three years, and Delgado Community College being able to say, We got that. We can do that. Have a seat at the table and we'll figure out how we're going to get you your 1,500 nurses.

Delgado opened with 30 instructors but now employs nearly 900 full- and part-time faculty and staff. Most hold advanced degrees spanning a wide variety of subjects  from carpentry and computer science, to health care and physiology.

+2 Counselors create book to help kids cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida A Category 4 hurricane and its aftermath can traumatize anyone  especially kids. The howling wind and widespread devastation, along with the 

The college began as one campus with one building, but now accommodates seven campuses spread throughout Jefferson and Orleans parishes.

Although Littleton-Steib became the chancellor in July 2019, she has held various roles at the college for nearly 20 years and witnessed its ability to weather major storms  in both a literal and metaphorical sense  from up close.

+4 Three local teens earn college scholarships from M.S Rau art competition In addition to winning substantial college scholarships, three local teens can now say their artwork hangs in a world-class gallery, alongside

In March 2020, we had a global pandemic that shut the world down. And I often tell family and friends when they ask me, How did you do it, Larissa? Your first six months on the job as the chancellor of the largest institution in the state, how did you do it? I say, There is no other place that I would rather be than Delgado, because it just means so much to me. It was a blessing to lead an institution that is so near and dear to my heart.

Despite delays due to Hurricane Ida, Delgado is marking its centennial by hosting celebratory events and highlighting noteworthy figures and moments from the schools history. (For example, an airplane called the Delgado Flash, built by Delgado students, set a world speed record in 1938.)

We have a tremendous legacy and we want to take this entire year to celebrate, Littleton-Steib said, underscoring the schools local significance.

I was here for (Hurricane) Katrina. When Delgado decided to come back in the Lakeview area and decided to begin construction, we began to see homeowners say, Delgado's coming back; I'm coming back and I'm going to rebuild,' she said. Delgado Community College has always been that sort of anchor for the community.
The flames shooting from the old French Opera House on the night of Dec. 4, 1919, were by all accounts spectacular.

Gone is the glory which has marked the building for more than half a century  gone in a blaze of burning gauze and tinsel, a blaze more splendid and terrible than Walpurgis Night  (in) the opera Faust, read the front page of the next days Daily Picayune.

Those words reflected the feeling of the city as a whole, which was thrust into mourning over the twilight destruction of the building that had been the center of Creole social life in the city for decades.

When the smoke cleared, silver linings were few, but there was at least one: Somehow, the old Olivier mansion  almost immediately next to the Opera House, and which predated it by 20 years  was singed but otherwise unharmed.

That might have been cold comfort for some, given the prominent role of the opera house in New Orleans, but it was something  and something is better than nothing.

It wouldnt, however, be the Olivier mansions last brush with destruction.

The house  at 828 Toulouse St., between Bourbon and Dauphine streets  got its name from Madam Marianne Bienvenu Olivier de Vizin, the well-heeled, high-society widow of Revolutionary War veteran Nicholas Joseph Godfroi Olivier de Vezin, with whom she had eight children.

A family that size, of course, required quite of bit of space, and so, two decades after her husbands death, Madame Olivier in 1836 contracted noted New Orleans sibling architects J.N.B. de Pouilly and J.I. de Pouilly to design for her a suitably roomy home.

What the de Pouillys came up with was a four-story Greek Revival structure  completed in 1839 for $24,000  with a walled courtyard accessed by a carriageway on its side closest to Dauphine Street.

Inside the main building, an entry hall, dining room and double parlor occupied the first floor. Just off the flagstone-paved courtyard was a kitchen building. Closer to the back of the property was a livery.

Upstairs in the main house were a second-story master bedroom and ballroom, with some additional bedrooms  accessed by a winding staircase  on the floors above. All were elegant and highly finished, according to one description.

Outside, the brick-and-stucco building featured wrought iron balconies that were later traded out for cast iron around the middle of the century.

Early sketches show the house featured a central main entrance flanked by large, Creole-style arched entrances. That was later modified, perhaps as early as the 1840s, to its current design, which is dominated by a large, marble-framed Greek Gothic doorway  dotted with intricate rosettes  on its Bourbon Street side, with two shuttered windows on its Dauphine Street side.

Sadly, Madame Olivier enjoyed her new home for only a few years. In 1843, just four years after the buildings completion, she died at the age of 70.

From there, it changed hands a few times, eventually becoming the Locoul family home for three generations, including during the Civil War, when it was commandeered to house Union officers. It reportedly took a beating in this period, but it survived.

In subsequent years, and through various owners, it was used as a funeral home and, later, a boardinghouse.

By the 1950s, the Olivier House once more found its existence threatened. It wasnt fire this time, though. It was progress.

Specifically, the Dallas-based Centex Corp. announced plans in 1959 to build a hotel on the old French Opera House site, which for decades prior had been used as a parking lot.

While the hotel would be designed to fit in architecturally with its French Quarter neighbors, the venerable Olivier mansion would be razed and the property would become part of the hotels parking garage.

Preservationists howled.

A few years earlier, in 1938, their burgeoning movement had failed to rescue the adjacent Formento house at 826 Toulouse, the only building separating the Olivier House from the opera house site.

They wouldnt be denied again.

As opposition grew, Centrex bailed. Another company stepped up, however, and  giving up on razing the Olivier house  built what is today the Four Points by Sheraton.

The old Olivier house would undergo renovations and become an apartment building, with a new structure built over the old courtyard in 1965 to add square footage.

Enter Jim and Kathryn Danner, owners of a farm supply business in Missouri who, after honeymooning in New Orleans years earlier, decided to chuck it all and transform the Olivier House into a boutique hotel but with an eye toward maintaining its historic significance.

We thought, What a fun way that would be to make a living, Kathryn Danner told The Community Standard magazine in a 1975 interview.

Their 42-room Olivier House hotel, which over the years has incorporated three adjacent historic homes into its footprint, opened in September 1970.

It is still in operation today, run by the Danners children.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archives; The Community Standard magazine; the Historic New Orleans Collections Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carre Digital Survey

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.
At 32 years old, local artist Katherine Klimitas is applauded for her detailed watercolor paintings of dogs, cats and wild animals. With the careful stroke of a paintbrush, she defines their fur, their whiskers  even the mischievous glimmer in their eyes.

In addition to publishing a book of pet portraits and running a graphic design business, the Loyola University graduate's first public art exhibit, Louisiana Birds, is on display at the West Baton Rouge Museum (845 Jefferson Ave., Port Allen). The exhibit runs through Jan. 2.

But there's something else about Klimitas that casual admirers of her artwork would never guess. The Metairie artist paints lying on her side due to osteogenesis imperfecta  brittle bone disease, which stems from a lack of collagen and leads to broken and deformed bones.

Due to OI, by the time she was 10 Klimitas had broken bones more than 500 times. At 2 feet, 7 inches tall, Klimitas has never been able to walk. Instead, she zips around in an electric wheelchair and jokes that shes been driving since the age of 2.

She also discovered early on that  with a bit of maneuvering  she could paint.

It's hard for me to sit up for a really long time, and it's hard to hold my arm up for any length of time. So when I lie on my side, my arm is resting on my body, so I can paint for much longer, Klimitas said.

Klimitas began dabbling in art projects as a toddler.

When she was young, she couldn't go out and play with her friends very much because she 'broke' so easily, said Adriana Sagrera, Klimitass mother. She was extremely smart, so we had to entertain her in other ways. By the time she was 2 or 3 years old, we were teaching her to play with clay and use a paintbrush, and encouraging her to do things that she could do in a very small space, without a lot of physical activity.

When Katherine turned 5, her mom gave her a watercolor set.

I went through it in two days, Klimitas recalled. Art was something I really liked, and I actually turned out to be pretty good at it.

All about perspective

Klimitas parents, both veterinarians, enrolled her in art lessons that covered painting along with glass blowing and printmaking. As a teen, she honed her craft alongside a college professor who taught her how to counterbalance the perspective from which she paints.

When you lie on your side, it looks very different, Klimitas said. Things that look straight are actually not straight. If I was to draw something on the side without compensating, you pick the drawing up and its crooked; the angles are wrong.

Although Klimitas' father passed away nine years ago, he and Sagrera passed down to their daughter their love for animals. The family always had pets, and today Klimitas has four dogs. She says she hopes to highlight the challenges animals face, whether by abuse or habitat loss, and she loves birds.

"With studies of pelicans, egrets, herons, and other birds, I hope each painting in the collection captures the same elegance and grace that I see when I look at these magnificent creatures, Klimitas said in a news release for her exhibit. The show also includes dog portraits.

Local media personality Angela Hill is a fan, and a friend. She commissioned the artist to paint portraits of her cats.

These are some of the greatest animal portraits I've ever seen. And now that she's into birds, oh my word, she just continues to get better and better, Hill said. She's just so motivated to succeed and continue her creativity. That's what I so admire about her.

She is hilarious. If anybody could have a bad day, its her, but you would never know, Hill said. She's somebody you want in your life because she's uplifting.

'I have run over many feet'

Aside from influencing her favorite subject matter, Klimitas parents emphasized a strong work ethic and a can-do attitude.

We didn't put her in handicapped classes. We found a way to make sure she could attend regular school, Sagrera said. If her classmates had a field trip and she couldn't go, we came up with something else for her to do that day that was positive and fun. Whatever it cost, whatever it took, however much time we had to take off our jobs, if we could make it physically safe for her to do something, we just helped her do it.

Klimitas attended Louise S. McGehee School and St. Paul's Episcopal and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans before studying graphic design at Loyola University. For her senior thesis, Klimitas detailed her disability and wrote about life from her perspective  sometimes in a literal sense. The work of witty essays was the basis of her first book, Looking Up (Arthur Hardy Enterprises 2011).

My wheelchair has almost become a part of me; I drive it fairly unconsciously just as you walk unconsciously, she writes in one section. I have run over many feet in my lifetime, both intentionally and unintentionally.

On the blog linked to her website, kakartnola.com, Klimitas writes about her love for live music, her support network, and her annoyance with people who gawk at her.

We stare at things that are different. My personal opinion is that I would rather a kid come up to me and ask a question, than stare or point or ask their parents, Klimitas said. I would rather give them the right answer the first time. Getting rid of that ignorance is really important.

Owning a business

Not long before Katherine graduated, the graphic design major launched her business, KAK Art & Designs. She creates logos, websites, flyers and posters, among other materials. When she's not painting or designing, she's promoting her most recent book, Breed All About It  a compilation of dog portraits, joined by quirky breed descriptions written from the pups perspectives.

She also creates and sells jewelry and speaks at conferences about her experience with OI. She mostly works from home, however.

Owning my own business just seems like the logical decision, because I can make my own hours when I feel bad, she said. I don't have to get dressed and go into an office every day if I'm not feeling well. If you have a broken rib, putting on work-appropriate clothes is not always an option.

As busy as Klimitas may be, she still finds time to dine with friends or catch a concert.

Katherine is a well-rounded person, and she's an example of what somebody could be, even with a severe disability, Sagrera said. When people look at her, they see a little person in a wheelchair and, if they don't know her, they immediately start talking to her as if she's a child. They need to know that she's probably got a higher IQ than they do. She's got a great sense of humor. She's very upbeat. She is well worth getting to know.

Email Suzanne Pfefferle Tafur at suzpfefferle@gmail.com.
No one keeps track of exact attendance figures. But the annual Mexican Day of the Dead parade in the St. Roch neighborhood Tuesday seemed bigger than in past years. A wave of hundreds of marchers flooded St. Claude Avenue from curb to curb.

The parade was presented by the Krewe de Mayahuel, a marching group named for the Aztec goddess of the agave plant, the main ingredient in tequila. The joyously macabre parade is meant to celebrate the spirits of those who have died in the past year. A glowing golden mini-float in the shape of a tiered Mesoamerican pyramid led the procession. On the steps of the pyramid rested photographs of lost loved ones and celebrities.

When the drum-led, candle-lit parade reached its destination, the gates of the St. Roch cemetery, founder Roberto Carrillo led the crowd of costumed participants in singing Cielito Lindo, as the parades centerpiece, a giant sombrero-wearing puppet named Catrina, bobbed and swayed.

Carrillo produced the first procession in 2018, as a way to blend the Mexican Day of the Dead costuming tradition with the Crescent Citys penchant for street parades. The event was an antidote to the anti-immigrant sentiment that ran high in certain sectors at the time. This years procession included a handful of activists whose banners called for Latin and Native American rights.

Tuesdays parade was a great contrast to last years procession, a lightly publicized, pared-down affair meant to keep the tradition alive while minimizing the crowd during the COVID pandemic. The popularity and vitality of this years parade was a happy post-quarantine comeback.

On St. Roch Avenue, near the cemetery, a group of Carnival float decorators had produced a colorful Day of the Dead-themed house float like those that popped up across New Orleans during Carnival 2021 when parading was impossible due to the pandemic. The house was designed by Mexico City artist Paulina Suarez and crafted by New Orleans artists Joey Mercer, Dana Beuhler, Demi Francois, Ariel Troxclair, and Caroline Thomas, sponsored by the Krewe of Red Beans.

In a pre-parade conversation, Thomas, who led the creation of some of Carnival 2021s most striking house floats, said that she and the other artists would probably not be decorating homes this Mardi Gras season, because they are busy producing the parades that seem more and more likely to be permitted in 2022.

+17 With Mardi Gras on the line, Dr. Jennifer Avegno's Krewe of BOO! COVID survey is crucial The Krewe of BOO! Halloween parade, which rumbled through the French Quarter and CBD Oct. 23, was more than just a spooky celebration of the s
As ships by the hundreds await berths at major world ports and consumers worldwide endure delayed deliveries, locals might ponder why we havent seen such logjams at the Port of New Orleans  and whether problems elsewhere might represent an opportunity here.

In many regards, those maritime traffic jams are the product of the sheer success  and vulnerability  of the globalized economy, which itself is partly traceable to two breakthroughs from the 1960s and 1970s.

One was containerization, and the other was just-in-time manufacturing.

Containerization entails the pre-packing of cargo into standardized boxes designed for intermodal transportation  from truck to train to ship and back again  with a minimum of human handling.

While containerization predates World War II, the concept accelerated in the late 1950s, when a former trucker named Malcolm McLean honed the process through his company, Sea-Land Service, and started making profits in 1960.

In subsequent years, McLean set the standards for containerization, and ports worldwide adopted the new technology. Soon, shipping firms moved their wharves from historic waterfronts to align with new interstates and rail lines. They retooled themselves with giant gantry cranes and front-loaders to lift the containers, replacing the longshoremen who formerly handled crates.

While thousands of dockworkers would eventually lose their jobs, millions of consumers benefited, as shipping times and costs plummeted, prices on imports dropped, demand increased and trade increasingly globalized.

The Port of New Orleans readied itself for the transformation. Shippers around 1970 envisioned a mega-facility named Centroport to be built in eastern New Orleans, where trucks, trains and vessels could travel the just-completed Interstate 10, myriad rail lines and the newly excavated Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal.

Competing ports made similar changes, and world shipping revolutionized.

Enter OPEC

Then, in 1973, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo, effectively snapping supply chains across the globe. Nightly newscasts featured scenes of frustrated motorists lined up at gas stations, not unlike the social-media images today of fleets of ships anchored offshore.

One consequence of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo was that world oil prices would remain high for years to come, catalyzing an economic boom in Louisiana  but also setting the stage for a painful bust in the 1980s.

Another consequence came out of Japan, whose economy was gravely threatened by the oil shortage. Few firms felt the crisis worse than the Toyota Motor Corp., which strove to make its manufacturing process leaner and more efficient.

An engineer named Taiichi Ohno led the way in developing what would later be called the just-in-time production model, which endeavored to eliminate all forms of waste  in time, money or materials. Instead of making parts and paying to warehouse them until needed, Toyota made them as needed, or outsourced them and scheduled their delivery just in time for installation.

The just-in-time approach reduced costs and streamlined manufacturing. But it needed suppliers, who in turn needed efficient means of shipping the parts to the right place at the right time. Toyota needed containerized shipping  and so did every other manufacturer adopting lean, fast production models.

Shippers responded in kind, and so did ports, trains and trucks  all of which enticed more industries to operate just in time. Savings were passed on to consumers, even as profits mounted.

China becomes an export giant

The intertwined rise of containerization shipping and lean manufacturing fueled a rise in global productivity which further burgeoned as China became an industrial powerhouse. Exports from throughout Asia, many of which were high-tech products heavily reliant on intricate just-in-time supply chains, flowed particularly to those importation ports on the American west and east coasts that were located closest to the nations largest population centers.

+9 Photos: Port of New Orleans, an inside look Louisiana's biggest ports felt the sting of trade wars in 2019, as falling shipments of steel, petrochemicals and some other commodities weigh

New Orleans got its fair share, and its containerization capacity also grew dramatically, even after it abandoned the Centroport idea and returned to wharves on the Mississippi River, where the blue cranes and intermodal lines operate today.

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Then came the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.

Assembly lines ground to a halt, and parts could no longer be manufactured just in time. Goods piled up in warehouses or on storage lots, awaiting key components like computer chips, which forced incoming shipments to wait for space to open up.

+6 The radical idea of connecting the river to the lake: Industrial Canal was an engineering marvel Hardly anyone living today remembers New Orleans before the Industrial Canal, and the rest of us have grown accustomed to seeing its wharves a

To make matters worse, trucking companies, like so many other employers during the pandemic, found themselves short of drivers. That led to more backlogs and logjams.

Demand remained strong  think of all those online purchases people made to avoid going to the store  but the supply chain behind it was broken. The worst vessel jams occurred at precisely those ports that catered the most to containerized imports derived from the broadest just-in-time supply chains.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans

Which brings us to the Port of New Orleans, where officials report zero waiting time for arriving ships to berth.

The reason largely reflects the broad trade geography of the Port of New Orleans. Its position on the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico enables it to be both a river and sea port, serving a vast hinterland as well as a global foreland.

This means our port attains a substantial share of its business from bulk cargo, like grain or coal, coming from the interior. These piled commodities move on barges and other river vessels, not oceangoing containerized ships, and they are exported from places like Ohio and Kentucky, not imported from China or Japan.

Current international shipping disruptions are primarily import-driven, and being primarily in the domestic export business allows the Port of New Orleans to have greater control of its own destiny.

The Port of New Orleans also handles lots of breakbulk cargo, like metals, rubber, and specially shaped items transported as individual units. Like bulk products, breakbulk tends to be at the beginning of supply chains, not at the end, and it does not require shipping containers  which are also in short supply across the world. As container shipping costs have spiked in recent months, breakbulk is becoming a more attractive alternative.

Another strength of the Port of New Orleans is its multimodal capacity. At many major import-dominant facilities, the long lines to get cargo in to the port are due to their limited ability to get cargo out. This is less of a problem at New Orleans, where six Class 1 rail lines access the various wharves, more than any other deep-water port in the country.

Barges offer yet another option. Bulk and breakbulk cargo may be offloaded directly from vessel to barges, which frees up limited warehouse and silo space. More robust barge and rail traffic means less reliance on trucks  thus circumventing the nationwide trucker shortage.

Diversity in cargo is vital

Shipping companies have taken notice. Those that call exclusively at West or East Coast ports are learning the hard way about over-relying on a singular business blueprint, and are looking for better options.

Port officials here are currently in contact with retail importers seeking an alternate transfer point for their cargo headed to inland hubs both on and off the river, like Memphis, St. Louis, Dallas and Chicago. As the putative gateway to the Mississippi Valley, New Orleans is well-positioned for this role.

Make no mistake, containerization is absolutely critical to regional shipping, and facilities are currently expanding, as evidenced by the four new 150-foot-tall gantry cranes en route to local wharves.

But in a few years they may not be enough. Demand for container shipping is growing so fast that authorities with both the Port of New Orleans and the Port of Plaquemines are planning on creating new facilities downriver, to avoid the low air draft of the Crescent City Connection.

If such new capacity is built, it may well attract shippers who are looking for an alternative to those backlogged ports youre seeing on the news.

Increasing container capacity is one way to keep regional shipping relevant in global commence. Retaining diversity in cargo and operations is equally vital. Dealing with multiple kinds of cargo (bulk, breakbulk, and container) and investing in multimodal transport (rail, truck, and barge) are good ways for New Orleans to hedge its bets in anticipation of the next supply chain breakdown.

Kenneth Kolb was born and raised in New Orleans and is a sociologist at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina; he may be reached at ken.kolb@furman.edu. Richard Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane School of Architecture, is the author of The West Bank of Greater New Orleans  A Historical Geography (LSU Press) and other books; he may be reached at rcampane@tulane.edu.
A Lafayette woman dropped her constitutional challenge Wednesday to the states judicial bypass law, which allows judges to approve abortions for pregnant minors without a parent's consent, after it was revealed that her daughter received approval last week from a juvenile court judge for the procedure in spite of the lawsuit.

The end of the case also means dissolution of a temporary restraining order that 15th Judicial District Court Judge Thomas Frederick had granted last week, barring the state from approving any request by a minor for an abortion over the objection of the minors parent.

Advocates for abortion access argued that Fredericks order was unconstitutional, but said abortion clinics in Louisiana had been adhering to it statewide.

+2 Louisiana law allows pregnant minors to get an abortion without parental consent. A mom is suing. A Lafayette woman is suing the state to prevent her teenage daughter from having an abortion, in an unusual case that takes new aim at the sta

The woman sued the state and a New Orleans abortion clinic on Oct. 12, aiming to stop her 17-year-old daughter from having the procedure under a decades-old law that allows judges to approve an abortion for a pregnant minor who is sufficiently mature and well enough informed, or if its in her best interest.

The law was written to mirror U.S. Supreme Court precedent, but the mother of the Lafayette minor argued that it was too vague, and that judges fail to properly vet pregnant girls. She sought a restraining order barring a judicial bypass for her daughter, as well as an injunction against the state and an order to require juvenile courts to consider evidence other than the applicants own testimony.

According to the lawsuit, the pregnant teen had an abortion that was approved by a judge early this year in New Orleans, then told her mother in September that she was pregnant again. Her mother responded by suing the state.

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Solicitor General Liz Murrill, of the Attorney General's Office, defended the state in the lawsuit, though Murrill lent support last week to the mothers cause, arguing that a judge should hear out her concerns before approving her daughter's abortion. Murrill recently indicated she will run for attorney general as long as her boss, incumbent Jeff Landry, does not seek re-election. Last year, she unsuccessfully defended before the U.S. Supreme Court a Louisiana law that required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

But word came in recent days that a juvenile court judge had, in fact, granted the teen a judicial bypass order on Oct. 25, and that she had filed the next day for legal emancipation from her mother. The mother dropped her lawsuit at the start of a hearing on Wednesday.

+2 Supreme Court questions Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy A majority of the Supreme Court signaled Monday they would allow abortion providers to pursue a court challenge to a Texas law that has virtua

Michelle Erenberg, executive director of Lift Louisiana, which advocates for abortion access, praised the result. She said the suit was asking for the court to essentially rewrite the Louisiana law in terms of how these judicial bypass cases would be handled and what kind of evidence these judges would be required to consider."

Todd Gaudin, the mother's attorney, declined to discuss the recent judicial bypass order approved for the minor, instead crediting the suit with prodding Landrys office to update forms and guidance for judges on the judicial bypass law.

The lawsuit did not attempt to restriction abortion. It really was about where do parental rights begin and end in a judicial bypass procedure, Gaudin said. This is part of a much, much bigger landscape.

It wasn't the only recent attempt to limit judicial bypass in Louisiana. A new law this year restricts the options for pregnant minors to judges in their home parish or in some cases nearby. Before this year, minors could also apply for a judicial bypass in the parish where they would undergo the abortion.
Big Easy Bucha, the beverage manufacturer founded by husband-and-wife team Austin Sherman and Alexis Korman seven years ago in New Orleans, has been sold to Latin American drinks company Beliv, a health-focused drinks division of the Central American Bottling Co., based in Guatemala City.

Big Easy, a private company, declined to disclose financial terms of the deal but said initial plans are to expand production at the company's New Orleans manufacturing plant and more than double the workforce there, from 47 to almost 100.

The sale of Big Easy Bucha is the latest in a string of New Orleans startups to be swallowed up this year by larger companies, though most of the others have been in the technology sector.

The food industry is one that has not had the same kind of attention as sectors such as technology, health sciences or distribution, but some local economic boosters think it should get more support.

Before starting their company, Sherman and Korman were graduates of the Edible Enterprises food business incubator in Norco, a collaboration between the New Orleans Food & Farm Network and St. Charles Parish to help local food brands develop.

Sherman said the sale to Beliv, which is headquartered in Puerto Rico and sells 28 beverage products in 35 countries, was necessary in order to take Big Easy Bucha to the next level.

"This is a dream come true," Sherman said. "My wife and I started this company with a bucket and a straw and $700 from a studio apartment off Bourbon Street, and to have the resources that this deal brings is a dream. This is not Silicon Valley, where there are investors lined up to come in and take you to the next level."

The Big Easy acquisition brings Beliv into the probiotics product line for the first time and is the first company it has bought in the U.S. Big Easy said it has been expanding rapidly since its founding, though it declined to provide any recent revenue or profit figures.

Carlos Sluman, Beliv's founder and CEO, said he sees Big Easy as the platform from which his company will grow its U.S. healthy drinks portfolio. He said Sherman and Korman will be partners in the company and retain their current roles as CEO and head of marketing.

"We can help them a lot, but it is impossible to replace that founder mentality so the company can continue to grow and prosper into the future," Sluman said.

Sherman, originally from Tampa, Florida, and Korman, a Canadian and former journalist, met in New Orleans two years before they founded Big Easy Bucha with the idea of selling "healthy beverages spiked with New Orleans flavor" to consumers trying to kick soda habits.

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Current brands of carbonated kombucha include Jazz Juice Tea, with pineapple and elderflower flavorings; Bayou Berry, with strawberry and honeysuckle; and Jammin' Ginger, with ginger, lemon, and hibiscus.

The company expanded into a range of probiotic juice shots and tepache, a Mexican-made fermented fruit soda in flavors such as prickly pear and mango. It also started the first and as yet only kombucha "brewery" in the state, serving both the teas and cocktails derived from them.

Beliv was founded in 2009 as a unit of CBC by Sluman, who previously had been a long-time marketing executive at Ambev, the beer and drinks conglomerate that grew out of Brazil's oldest brewer.

The Louisiana Department of Economic Development said it agreed to an incentive package with the new owner, which will include FastStart, the workforce training program, and Quality Jobs, which rebates as much as 6% of annual payroll for a decade, as well as some capital expenditures.

"I am particularly proud to say that the company is committed to hiring from underemployed populations," Gov. John Bel Edwards said.

That was presumably a reference to Big Easy Bucha's participation for the past five years in the STRIVE jobs program run by the New Orleans Business Alliance, which trains people with particular difficulties entering the workforce, including formerly incarcerated people.

Big Easy Bucha and its new owners are aiming to capture a share of a market that grew from about $1 million 2014 to about $2 billion in 2020. It is expected to continue to grow at a rate of 20% a year to reach $7 billion worldwide by 2027, according to Market Research Future, a forecasting firm. The U.S. is forecast to account for half of that market.

Big beverage companies have bought into the growing market, with Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola Co. and Molson Coors among those that have bought kombucha makers in the last few years.

Sluman said expansion of Big Easy Bucha is needed to compete in this market. "The current capacity is not enough to ensure success," he said. "We are also going to create an innovation lab to expand the product line which we have to do in order to grow the company."
Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules that took effect Thursday.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said companies that fail to comply could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The new requirements, which were first previewed by President Joe Biden in September, will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing and will need to be vaccinated.

It was unclear how OSHA planned to enforce the rules. A senior administration official said the agency would target companies if it gets complaints.

Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds.

The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others. The regulations form the cornerstone of Biden's most aggressive effort yet to combat the spread of COVID-19, which has killed more than 740,000 people in the U.S.

OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. Senior administration officials said the rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that ban employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or the wearing of face masks.

The administration will face an immediate challenge from Republican state officials who are eager to fight Biden in court. More than two dozen Republicans serving as state attorneys general have indicated they plan to sue, arguing that only Congress can enact such sweeping requirements under emergency authority.

Last week, 19 states sued to stop Biden's narrower mandate that employees of federal contractors be vaccinated. That requirement was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but the administration said Thursday it will be delayed until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers.

Workers will need to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4. Unvaccinated employees must submit a verified negative test to the company at least once a week and wear face masks on the job.

Employees who test positive must be removed from the workplace.

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OSHA will require businesses to provide paid time off for employees to get vaccines and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. The requirements for masks and paid time off for shots will take effect Dec. 5.

Because vaccines are free, OSHA said, companies do not have to provide or pay for tests.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said that several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates  96% or higher  without widespread resignations.

The White House sees the new requirements as a potent tool to winnow down the ranks of the tens of millions of Americans who have thus far refused to get a shot.

For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for the OSHA rule to take effect. He has touted businesses that have already announced their own vaccine mandates and urged other companies to follow their lead.

Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70% of the nation's adults now fully vaccinated.

However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in what is already a tight labor market.

Several large business groups complained about the timing of the mandate. Retail groups worried that the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions.

The mandate on federal contractors led to demonstrations by opponents, including workers at a NASA rocket engine test site in Mississippi. Some said they are immune because they contracted COVID-19. Others said vaccines violated their religious beliefs and constitutional rights.

"No one should be forced to take a medical treatment just to keep their job," said Nyla Trumbach, an engineer at the site. "There's years and years of experience and skill out here, and I just want anyone who's watching to see what we stand to lose here if these people don't keep their jobs."

Dozens of groups sought meetings with administration officials to air their concerns and objections to likely provisions of the OSHA rule, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the AFL-CIO and anti-vaccine organizations.

___

Associated Press Writer Stacey Plaisance-Jenkins in Picayune, Mississippi, contributed to this report.
A New Orleans murder suspect  accompanied by a woman accused of trying to hide marijuana inside her body  led deputies on a high-speed car chase through the north shore before authorities disabled his stolen car with a spike strip and arrested him early Thursday.

Alphonse Dorsey, 26, was wanted in connection with a Sept. 24 shooting that killed 30-year-old Terrence Clayton in Central City when deputies in Hancock County, Mississippi, spotted him driving a stolen 2006 Toyota Highlander west on Interstate 10 Thursday morning, according to various authorities.

Dorsey allegedly sped off and, with Hancock deputies pursuing him, made his way to the Slidell area. St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office deputies were notified of the pursuit and set up a spike strip just past westbound I-10s exit to Oak Harbor Boulevard. The Highlander's tires were punctured, forcing it to a stop, St. Tammany Sheriff's Capt. Lance Vitter said in a statement.

Deputies booked Dorsey as a fugitive wanted on a warrant accusing him of second-degree murder in Claytons slaying. Also, he was booked on separate warrants obtained by New Orleans police that accused him of domestic abuse battery as well as child endangerment.

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Meanwhile, deputies booked him into St. Tammanys jail in Covington with aggravated flight from authorities, possession of stolen things, aggravated obstruction of a highway, driving without a license, not wearing a seatbelt, and a slew of counts pertaining to marijuana, cocaine and a gun Vitter said was found in the car.

Dorseys passenger, 25-year-old Valicia Johnson, was also booked in connection with the stolen car and the alleged drugs. But while being processed into the St. Tammany jail, deputies discovered small amounts of marijuana in one of her socks as well as in her vagina, and she was also booked with introducing contraband into a correctional facility and obstruction of justice, Vitter said.

Bail was not immediately set for either Johnson or Dorsey.

Police havent disclosed how they linked Dorsey to Claytons death.

On the day he was killed, Clayton and another man were in an alley in the 2600 block of Fourth Street when a third man walked up and demanded their belongings. That man shot Clayton and pistol-whipped Claytons companion before fleeing, police said.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives investigating two West Bank homicides that occurred last weekend have arrested a suspect in one of the cases. Authorities have also identified the victims killed in each shooting.

Reshawan Jones, 21, of Marrero was booked Sunday with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice, said Capt. Jason Rivarde, a Sheriff's Office spokesperson.

Jones is accused in the shooting death of Cornelius Bullock Jr., 20. Bullock was found slain about 12:20 p.m. in Harvey on Sunday, Rivarde said.

The Sheriff's Office 911 center received calls of gunfire in the area and reports that someone had been wounded. Deputies found Bullock inside a parked vehicle near the intersection of 38th Street and Ester Drive, according to authorities.

Bullock had been shot multiple times and died at the scene, the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office said.

Man found shot to death in vehicle in Harvey, JPSO says A man was found shot to death Sunday afternoon in a vehicle at 38th Street and Ester Drive in Harvey, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said.

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The Sheriff's Office did not disclose any details about how they linked Jones to the homicide or a motive for Bullock's killing.

Jones was being held Thursday at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna on a $525,000 bond.

Detectives are still working to identify a suspect in a Terrytown homicide that occurred a day earlier.

JPSO investigating homicide in Terrytown shooting Saturday evening, police say A deputy was on patrol near Farmington Place, when they heard multiple gunshots, according to the report.

Jaquan Benn, 19, was shot and killed outside a home in the 600 block of Farmington Place on Saturday.

A sheriff's deputy driving in the area overheard gunfire about 5 p.m., Rivarde said. The deputy arrived and found Benn suffering from a gunshot wound to his chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Anyone with information about the death of Jaquan Benn is asked to call the Sheriff's Office investigations bureau at 504-364-5300. The public can also call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-7867. Callers do not have to give their names or testify and can earn a reward of up to $2,500 for information that leads to an indictment.
Dat Dog's flagship location on Freret Street sustained major structural damage" after a Jeep crashed into the restaurant's courtyard Wednesday night, according to marketing director Laurie G. Fisher.

Smashed benches, an uprooted fire hydrant, shattered bricks, an askew roof and empty nitrous oxide canisters are evidence on the scene of the hit-and-run, Fisher said.

The driver of a green Jeep backed up hard and fast into the hot dog chains courtyard. New Orleans police say the accident happened at 9:48 p.m. Wednesday. The driver fled.

Watch surveillance video of the crash below. Can't see the video? Click here.

Passersby reported seeing the green Jeep struggling to park. I think (the driver) was under the influence, Fisher said. They almost hit pedestrians. Thank God we were closed and no one was here.

NOPD said the investigation is in its early stages. No other information, including whether police have a suspect, whether the driver was intoxicated, how many people were in the vehicle when it crashed and whether anyone was injured was immediately available.

Owner Constantine Georges opened the gourmet hot dog shop in a tiny building just across Freret Street in 2011, and later expanded to its current location, which had once been a gas station. It was among the first restaurants to revitalize the former retail corridor and cement its position as a foodie destination.

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Dat Dog now has locations in the Marigny Triangle and on Magazine Street, with plans to expand. Its downtown Lafayette location shuttered last year amid a wave of COVID-19 restrictions.

The Freret Street courtyard sustained the bulk of the damage from the crash, but both the restaurant and courtyard will reopen Friday. Fisher said it's another blow in a year where the hits just keep coming.

After COVID-19, it was pretty bad, and then the hurricane, and now this," Fisher said.

Dat Dog picks architect to design 'prototype' restaurant for multi-state expansion Dat Dog, the eight-year-old gourmet hot dog chain, has picked an architect to design a "prototype" restaurant as it plots a multi-state expans

Editor's note: Dat Dog founder and owner Constantine Georges is the brother of John Georges, the owner of The Advocate and The Times-Picayune.

Ian McNulty contributed to this report. This is a developing story, and it has been updated.
Tropical Storm Wanda weakened slightly in the Atlantic on its way to Ireland, hurricane forecasters said Thursday morning.

Wanda is expected to reach Ireland next week as a tropical storm.

It's the last regularly named storm before the National Hurricane Center moves to a supplemental list, if needed. Unlike in previous years, forecasters won't use Greek names.

The Atlantic hurricane season ends Nov. 30, but storms can form any time.

Last year's hurricane season holds the record for the most named storms in a season - 30. The previous record of 28 was set in 2005. Official records date to 1851.

Where is Tropical Storm Wanda?

As of 10 a.m., Tropical Storm Wanda was 720 miles northwest of the Azores and was moving north at 6 mph.

The storm has winds of 45 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Slow strengthening is expected Friday night and Saturday.

It's expected to turn southeast in the next day or two before turning again and heading for Ireland. The current forecast has it reaching land on Tuesday or Wednesday.

No coastal watches or warnings are currently in effect.

No other systems are expected to develop within 48 hours in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean or Atlantic, forecasters said.

Read the full advisory.

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Next available name

The next available storm name is Adria.

Systems are named when they strengthen into tropical storms. Storms Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Elsa, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Julian, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, Sam, Teresa and Wanda 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. They include:

Adria

Braylen

Caridad

Deshawn

Emery

Foster

Gemma

Heath

Isla

See the full list.

Storm categories

The categories, in order of increasing strength, are tropical depression, tropical storm and hurricane (categories 1 through 5). Systems are named when they develop into a tropical storm.

On the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, the wind categories are:

Tropical storm: 39 to 73 mph

Category 1 hurricane: 74 to 95 mph

Category 2 hurricane: 96 to 110 mph

Category 3 hurricane (major hurricane): 111 to 129 mph

Category 4 hurricane: 130-156 mph

Category 5 hurricane: 157 mph and higher

Don't miss a storm update this hurricane season. Sign up for breaking newsletters. Follow our Hurricane Center Facebook page.
A Hollywood economic development executive could be the newest leader of the agency charged with improving New Orleans' Central Business District.

Davon Barbour, vice president of advocacy and economic development for the Hollywood Partnership, was named the sole finalist Wednesday for CEO of the Downtown Development District, after a search firm vetted more than 100 candidates over almost a year.

The district's governing board asked Barbour, 44, to lay out his vision for the CBD ahead of voting on his candidacy, which is expected Tuesday. Barbour said he would rely on his more than 20 years of experience working at development agencies in Los Angeles, Baltimore and Florida to guide the district through challenges caused by shifts in the retail industry and COVID-related economic constraints.

Since the pandemic began, for example, an increasing number of CBD employees have abandoned the office, likely for health or convenience reasons, he said.

"As recently as last week, we were looking at occupancy levels of about 35%," Barbour told the 11-member governing board. "There's a lot more work to do."

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Barbour would be the agency's first permanent leader since Kurt Weigle resigned in 2020 after 17 years on the job. The position has recently been held by two interims, Richard McCall and John Pourciau, who had been Mayor LaToya Cantrell's chief of staff.

The Downtown Development District was created by the Louisiana Legislature in 1974 as the first taxing business improvement district in the United States. It is tasked primarily with attracting businesses to the area bounded by Iberville Street, the Pontchartrain Expressway, Claiborne Avenue and the Mississippi River. The agency also works to improve security in CBD and to address graffiti and other quality-of-life issues.

Barbour said a revitalization of Canal Street, the retail magnet of New Orleans in the early and mid-20th century, could start with the realization that big department store chains are building fewer brick-and-mortar outlets, given the popularity of online shopping. Instead, the district could seek smaller businesses more closely aligned with residents' needs, such as convenient health care services, small bakeries and clothing stores.

+8 Mayor LaToya Cantrell sees chance to move past crises if voters give second term Mayor LaToya Cantrells first term was marked by unforeseen crises, fights with interest groups and, despite general support for her handling 

The district also could work to cultivate better relationships with the region's 13 colleges and universities, which offer a wealth of "intellectual capital" that could be used to benefit the area, he said.

And he said the district should offer incentives to create mixed-income housing, to ensure affordable places to live for the area's many workers. One potential tool is a new federal tax credit that would encourage real estate developers to convert unused office space into residential or mixed-use space, he said.

"You often hear the tagline, 'Downtown is for everyone'," Barbour said. "From a housing standpoint, we have opportunities there as an organization to advocate for additional resources."
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Washington, D.C. -- On October 23, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) hosted its 21st National Prescription Drug Take Back Day with the help of its partners across the nation. Thanks to the efforts of these organizations and the participation of the public, DEA has removed nearly 745,000 pounds of unwanted prescription drugs from circulation. Collectively, Drug Take Back Days have collected over 15.2 million pounds of medications, according to the DEA.

National Drug Take Back Days were established in part to try and combat the country's opioid epidemic. Many drug problems start with raiding a family member or friend's medicine cabinet, according to a report published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Related reading: Join the fight against prescription drug and opioid abuse this Saturday

Last year, over 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. - the largest number of drug related deaths recorded in a single year. Of those deaths, 75 percent were opioid-related.

On DEAs National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, communities across America came together to rid medicine cabinets of unneeded medications, helping to prevent prescription drug misuse, said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. Take Back Day is a critical effort to curb the historic surge in U.S. overdoses. We know prevention starts at home. The simple step of clearing out medications that are no longer needed makes our homes safer, prevents prescription drug misuse, and, ultimately, can help save lives.

In addition to Take Back Days, the DEA launched a "One Pill Can Kill" campaign to inform the public about fake prescription pills created by traffickers keen on exploiting the opioid epidemic and prescription pill misuse. Substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine are pressed into surprisingly convincing-looking fake prescription pills and sold for profit.

Known fakes include fentanyl or meth pressed into pills nearly identical to Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderall, Xanax and other medicines. Criminal drug networks are selling these pills through social media, e-commerce, the dark web, and existing distribution networks.

In addition to the warning, the DEA advises that medications should be prescribed by a trusted medical professional and dispensed by a licensed pharmacist.

Additional data from DEAs 21st National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is available at www.DEATakeBack.com. For those who missed DEAs Take Back Day, there are opportunities to regularly and safely dispose of unneeded medications at more than 13,000 pharmacies, hospitals, police departments, and businesses working to help clean out medicine cabinets throughout the year.




Middleburg, Pa. -- Each year, the president of the United States, along with the First Lady, take part in the tradition of the lighting of the National Christmas Tree.

When President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden light the tree in the nation's capital in December, the country will be viewing a product hailing directly from northcentral Pa.

Hill View Christmas Tree Farm in Middleburg has been bustling with excitement over the most recent selection by the National Park Service.

According to WNEP, Darryl Bowersox, owner of Hill View, grew the 28-foot Concolor Fir which will be on its way to the southern portion of the White House this weekend. According to the National Park Service, the National Christmas Tree tradition dates back to 1923 when First Lady Grace Coolidge gave permission for a Christmas tree to be placed on the Ellipse south of the White House. Months ago the search began for this year's tree. The National Park Service conducted a national search for a tree provider, and chose the Snyder County farm for the honor.

"It's been very gratifying to know that it will come from our farm. It's also been humbling," said Bowersox. The Bowersox family will be in Washington, D.C. for the lighting of the national tree.
Williamsport -- Gerald C. English, 68, of Williamsport died at home on Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021.

Gerry was born in Williamsport on June 27, 1953, the son of Louis C. and Teresa A. (Cavanaugh) English.

He was a graduate of Williamsport High School and was employed at the former GTE Sylvania in Montoursville and later at the Williamsport Hospital.

He was a member of St. Joseph the Worker Parish. Gerry enjoyed traveling with family  his trips to Hawaii and Ireland were among his favorites  and family gatherings. He was an avid fan of Notre Dame and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Surviving are his brother, Donald M. English and his wife Ana Fe English; and a sister, Ann M. Miller all of Williamsport; and many cousins.

In addition to his parents, a brother-in-law, Randy Miller preceded him in death.

The family will receive friends in the churchs portico from 9:15 to 10 a.m. on Thursday.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021 at St. Joseph the Worker Parish, 702 W. Fourth St., Williamsport with his pastor, Rev. David W. Bechtel, officiating, followed by burial at St. Basils Cemetery in Dushore.

Please visit www.crousefuneralhome.com to sign a register book or share a memory.

To plant a tree in memory of Gerald English as a living tribute, please visit Tribute Store.




According to new rumours, Samsung Display is currently supplying 8.3-inch panels to Apple for a new iPad mini. While IPS like the iPad mini 6, these panels are also 120 Hz, which could minimise the current tablet's 'jelly scrolling' problem.

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Apple only unveiled the iPad mini 6 in September, but there are already rumours about another model. The iPad mini 6 has a different design from its predecessors, with the compact tablet bearing a closer resemblance to the iPad Air 4 than the iPad mini 5. Similarly, the iPad mini 6 supports the Apple Pencil 2, which it can recharge wirelessly from the side of its chassis.

Now, a report from Taiwan claims that Samsung Display is already supplying panels to Apple for another iPad mini model. Reputedly, this tablet will have an 8.3-inch display, matching the current model. However, the display will also operate at 120 Hz, double the refresh rate of the iPad mini 6 and the iPad Air 4. In fact, Apple has only brought ProMotion technology to its 'Pro' devices so far, such as the new MacBook Pro 14 and MacBook Pro 16.

Correspondingly, Apple is tipped to launch the tablet as the iPad mini 6 Pro. Presumably, doubling the refresh rate will help reduce the jelly scroll effect that some people have noticed occurring on the iPad mini 6. Additionally, the iPad mini 6 Pro is thought to feature an A15 Bionic SoC, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of flash storage.
The American Iron and Steel Institute has named two new board members.

The Washington D.C.-based trade association representing the steel industry elected Cleveland-Cliffs chairman, president and CEO Lourenco Goncalves as a vice-chairman of its board. The board also voted to add Phil Piggott, vice president of sales and marketing at Carmeuse, the Pittsburgh-based company that supplies limestone to the steel industry, including from its operation in Buffington Harbor in Gary.

Phil and Lourenco are experienced leaders in our industry. I look forward to continuing our successful work together to advocate for the interests of the American steel industry, our workers, and our customer and supplier partners, said AISI Chairman Leon Toplalian, who also serves as Nucor president and CEO.

Piggott chairs the AISI Associate Member Committee and will represent the American Iron and Steel Institute's associate members after joining the board.

Lourenco and Phil are both strong advocates, and they will serve as important assets to the Institute as we navigate this critical period in the history of our industry," AISI President and CEO Kevin Dempsey said.
Financial aid professionals will be on site Sunday to help college-bound students and their families apply for financial aid.

They will be at Purdue University Northwests Hammond and Westville campuses. The Hammond program is in the library on the second floor of the Student Union and Library Building, 2233 173rd St. The Westville program will be in Room 219 of the Technology Building, 200 Central Drive, Westville.

College Goal Sunday is also being held at 2 p.m. Hawthorn Room 454 on the Gary campus of Indiana University Northwest from 2-4 p.m. at the Ivy Tech campus in East Chicago.

FAFSA essential for financial aid consideration

Completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is required for students to be eligible for state and federal grants, scholarships and student loans offered by most colleges, universities and vocational schools across the U.S.

The deadline for FAFSA submission to be eligible for Indiana financial aid is April 15, 2022.
GARY  A 51-year-old Hammond man was taken to a hospital Tuesday after a four-vehicle crash near West 25th Avenue and Grant Street, police said.

The man was driving a Ford F-150 pickup south on Grant Street about 8:40 p.m. when he struck two vehicles, one of which was pushed into a fourth vehicle, police Cmdr. Jack Hamady said.

The second vehicle was occupied by a couple, and the third vehicle was occupied by a couple and their 4-year-old child, he said.

The driver of the pickup truck was the only person transported by ambulance, police said.

The crash remained under investigation.

Anyone with information is asked to call Sgt. Ryan Martens at 219-881-7485. To remain anonymous, call 866-CRIME-GP.

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PORTAGE  An 18-year-old Illinois woman wound up behind bars and was issued a trespass warning after allegedly showing up at the workplace of her former boyfriend claiming to be his sister and seeking house keys in the wake of their aunt's stroke, police said.

The boyfriend told Portage police the woman was mad because he is now dating someone else and she wants to break them up.

Tiauna Lee, of Chicago Heights, was taken to Porter County Jail early Wednesday on charges of false informing and possessing marijuana.

Two men in a vehicle with Lee were also arrested on a marijuana possession charge. They were identified by police as Jayden Hudson, 18, and Dezmond Barner, 19, both of Chicago Heights.

Police said they were called shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday to a company at the AmeriPlex at the Port business park for suspicious people entering the building without permission seeking an employee.

While the group initially left, they returned while police were there and Lee told an officer she was seeking the employee, who she claimed to be her brother, in order to get house keys since their aunt had a stroke, the incident report says.
"I've heard of about three other young people who died from gun violence since," Lopez said. "I reached out to the 13-year-old's mom to offer my condolences. I don't know what's going on. I know police are doing everything they can. I know that I will try and help others. Something has got to happen."

Every week since her son's death, Lopez talks to the detective on the case, Hammond Sgt. Joe Munoz.

"I know deep in my heart they will solve this," Lopez said. "Detective Munoz has been very good, calling once a week, saying, 'Don't lose faith in me, something's going to happen.' I do believe that there will be justice served."

Hunter was found dead from gunshot wounds inside a vehicle at 5 p.m. Aug. 24 in the 500 block of Lewis Street, said Hammond Police Department Lt. Steve Kellogg.

Lopez said Hunter decided to stay a few extra days after the funeral to be there for his other cousin and her two young children. He was in a vehicle about to go to the store to pick up groceries for them when he was shot.

The investigation is ongoing and the search for a suspect continues.
A Gary police officer encountered Crews while investigating the sound of gunfire in the area, charging documents state.

Crews, who was sweating and out of breath, claimed he was knocking at his ex-girlfriend's door when another man traveled across two parking lots and started shooting at him, court records say.

Crews' ex-girlfriend told police he was the shooter, not the victim, and police stopped Crews as he left the scene carrying a backpack. Officers recovered an AK-style pistol and magazine from inside the backpack, records state.

Following Sunday's shooting in Hammond, Crews was captured by an officer after a parent began following him as he fled the scene, court records state.

Crews told detectives he was riding in a car with several other men, one of whom "exchanged words" with a trick-or-treater in a clown mask and become angry.

Crews said the man pointed out the child in the mask, others in the car handed him a gun, and he and others got out and began shooting, court records state.

Crews claimed he "felt like he had to shoot" when others in his group started firing shots, but that he aimed over the children's heads.
She described Filby as a heavy drinker, who spends most of his time drinking in a pole barn on his property and likes to drive around his 15 acres in a golf cart, police said.

The woman said during a visit to the site in March or April 2020, Filby sexually attacked her in the pole barn, according to investigators. The woman said she did not initially tell anyone because she did not want to cause division.

The woman's daughter, who is now 21 and the alleged victim in the child molest charge, said she was at Filby's home in 2013 when he touched her inappropriately while watching a movie. The young woman said she got up to stop the abuse.

"She remembered Filby snapped and said, 'What are you doing?' before dismissing the incident," police said.

The same young woman also claims Filby exposed himself to her while at his residence in 2013 or 2014, records show.

The young woman's sister told police that in the summer of 2014, she was at Filby's residence with friends to ride four wheelers when he walked in on her in the shower. He made several attempts to touch her inappropriately, police said.

"Filby eventually walked out and both pretended that nothing happened," police said.

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LAKE STATION  One person has died after a vehicle pursuit ended in a crash Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 94 near the Ripley Street exit, Indiana State Police said.

The driver and front seat passenger were both ejected from the vehicle.

The chase was sparked by a stolen vehicle, Indiana State Police Sgt. Glen Fifield said.

A total of four vehicle occupants were injured in the crash, with one of them suffering serious injuries requiring transport from a medical helicopter, police reported.

The driver died at the scene of the wreck, police said.

Indiana Department of Transportation cameras showed a white SUV appeared to have struck an interstate median.

A large police presence could be seen about 1:20 p.m. at the scene of the crash, which appeared to be stalling traffic in both directions.

Porter County sheriff's police said they were assisting LaPorte County sheriff's police with the pursuit.

INDOT initially advised drivers to seek alternate routes, because all lanes on the eastbound side of the expressway were closed just west of Ripley Street and westbound traffic was getting by on the right shoulder.
HAMMOND  A Hammond police officer shot a motorist, who after initially refusing to exit his vehicle, stepped out holding a handgun, according to Indiana State Police.

"A large capacity drum magazine was also located in the driver's area of the vehicle," police said. "Officers immediately began to render first aid to the suspect."

No officers were injured in the Thursday incident, and the suspect, who has not yet been identified, was taken to the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago for treatment and is currently in stable condition, police said.

The officer-involved shooting is the second in the Region in two days, following one involving Porter County police Wednesday afternoon.

Hammond police and fire officials were called about 3:30 a.m. Thursday to the area of Orchard Drive and Rhode Island Avenue for a welfare check and possible vehicle fire following a crash, state police said.

Officers found a blue 2013 Infiniti SUV with a lone man inside, police said. The man reportedly refused several attempts to have him exit the vehicle.

"During this encounter, the suspect eventually exited the vehicle while holding a handgun and was subsequently shot by an officer," state police said.
Nevertheless, the Hoosier senator  who consistently has refused to acknowledge whether he's vaccinated against COVID-19  said he won't be deterred by the near-impossible odds of successfully repealing the OSHA standard.

"Since the announcement of President Bidens vaccine and testing mandate in September, I have led the charge to strike down this vast overstep of authority by the federal government," Braun said.

"Today, we are one step closer to protecting the liberties of millions of Americans in the private sector workforce under the Congressional Review Act. I urge my Senate colleagues to vote in favor of this disapproval resolution in the coming weeks."

Braun said 40 Senate Republicans already are on board with his plan, including U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and he expects the remaining GOP senators will sign on once the language of Biden's proposal, and the resolution of disapproval, are finalized.

"Most businesses took COVID serious from the get-go. They wanted to keep their employees and their customers safe," Braun said.
HAMMOND  A Portage man who was wanted for the murder of two men in Hammond was arrested in California, police said.

Jorge Garza, 24, was arrested Wednesday in Bakersfield, California, said Inspector Nicolas Gonzalez of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Gonzalez said the arrest was the culmination of efforts from the Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force, the Hammond Police Departments Detective Bureau and the Pacific Southwest Fugitive Task Force. Garza will be extradited to Northwest Indiana to be held in police custody.

Two people were shot and killed in the early morning hours of Oct. 7 in southwest Hammond.

Lt. Steve Kellogg said officers from the Hammond Police Department were called to the 700 block of Locust Street, a residential block just west of Calumet Avenue. There, they found a 27-year-old man slumped over in the passenger side of a vehicle with a bullet wound in his head.

Nearby, officers found a second man, a 26-year-old from East Chicago, lying in the yard of a residence with multiple gunshot wounds to his abdomen and chest area.
A recurrent theme at a lavish Washington dinner marking the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea was how great it would be if the committee 20 years from now had outlived its usefulness. By that time, Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director, would hope the conditions that make North Korea the worlds worst violator of the rights of its citizenry would have vanished.

A stellar cast of guests at the dinner, talking live or videotaped, spoke of the suffering of the mass of North Koreans living in poverty under the constant threat of arrest, torture, jailing, and worse, but what to do about it? As a former diplomat in Pyongyang told the gathering, even if youre not on a tour organized by North Korean authorities, you really cannot go anywhere there without being followed. Someone will always lie in wait to report where you are and what youre doing,

That system might appear spectacularly foolish and counter-productive, but it shows the power of the ruling elite over all its citizens. South Korean culture has penetrated North Korea thanks to the overwhelming power and appeal of K-pop as well as news and views spread via illicit broadcasts, tapes, DVDs, and even telephone and internet links that operate beneath the radar of the all-seeing security apparatus of the ruling Workers Party.
Every business in Northwest Indiana is complaining about "staff shortages." Setting aside the current unemployment situation and boosts in UI benefits, let's look at it from a worker perspective for a moment.

I openly challenge any hiring manager, company owner, or other higher-up in a company to try living on what you're paying your average 1-plus year tenured worker making $16 an hour, and tell me what you think. I should say try to live on it. Pay rent and health insurance  if you're fortunate enough to have health insurance. Buy groceries, make utility payments and put gas in your car.

If you can't make it, you should just go get a second job. Isn't that how it works? Just make sure to get the kids to school on time in between your two jobs you have to work.

Steven LaRock, Lowell

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The companys president, Justin Ladner, said he is happy Illinois American Water can help departments throughout the state.

We know the importance and value water has in protecting homes and businesses, Ladner said in a news release. We also understand the need to support our local heroes. This program allows us to provide support to the local departments we serve.

Last year, Orland Park used the $1,000 it got to purchase full turnout gear for 10-15 cadets in the Junior Cadet Training Camp.

Other communities receiving grants in the Chicago area are Bolingbrook, DesPlaines, Elmhurst, Elgin, South Elgin, Lemont, Lombard, Mt. Prospect, Oswego, Plainfield, Prospect Heights, Romeoville and Warrenville.

Their planned purchases include a 7-tool combo kit for squad and rescue units, personal protective equipment for a SWAT medic, a dry suit for a water rescue team, a tablet computer and software for sending smoke awareness messages to the community, a thermal imaging camera and tripod lights.

Aside from the grants, the company also partners with local firefighters daily. As a private water utility, the company is required to test and operate every fire hydrant annually. According to Ladner, Illinois American Water maintains more than 32,000 fire hydrants in the state.
TEHRAN  Riding a large turnout from Irans urban middle classes, President Hassan Rouhani won re-election in a landslide on Saturday, giving him a mandate to continue his quest to expand personal freedoms and open Irans ailing economy to global investors.

Perhaps as important, analysts say, the resounding victory should enable him to strengthen the position of the moderate and reformist faction as the country prepares for the end of the rule of the 78-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Of the 41 million votes cast, the Interior Ministry said, Mr. Rouhani won 23 million (or 57 percent), soundly defeating his chief opponent, Ebrahim Raisi, who received 15.7 million (38.5 percent). Iranian state television congratulated Mr. Rouhani on his victory.

Turnout was heavy, with more than 70 percent of Irans 56 million voters casting ballots.

Despite the healthy margin of victory, Mr. Rouhani, 68, will face considerable headwinds, both at home and abroad, as he embarks on his second term. He badly needs to demonstrate progress on overhauling the moribund economy.
An international deal to end coal use

A coalition of 18 countries, plus dozens of banks and other institutions, will pledge to phase out coal-fired power plants domestically and to end funding for international coal projects. The burning of coal is the single greatest contributor to climate change, and ending support for it has been a key focus at the U.N. climate change conference COP26.

The new campaign, which is expected to be announced by British officials today in Glasgow, declares that the end of coal is in sight because of the new coalition. The group will commit to ending all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally. The time frame was not specified.

The agreement also promises a just transition away from coal power in a way that benefits workers and communities and a rapid scaling up of the deployment of clean energy like wind and solar power.

Details: The full list of 18 countries includes developed and developing countries like Poland, Vietnam, Egypt, Chile and Morocco, according to the British government. It was unclear whether the U.S. was part of the agreement.
In October, New Yorks Republican and Conservative Parties went nuclear.

Eager to rally their bases in an off-year election, and concerned about ballot initiatives that they considered a threat, the parties devised a two-pronged offensive. The Conservative Party spent about $3 million, according to its chairman, on television and radio ads arguing that the initiatives were tantamount to corruption. Republicans mounted a whistle-stop Just Say No tour that traversed 40 counties in 10 days. By comparison, Democrats spent and did little.

At issue were three of five proposed constitutional amendments listed on the back of voters ballots. The first would have required that, for redistricting purposes, incarcerated New Yorkers be counted at their last place of residence. But the League of Women Voters of New York and the Conservative Party argued the measure would have also reduced the power of minority parties in the redistricting process.

Another proposal would have eliminated a rule requiring voters to register at least 10 days before an election, while yet another would have removed a rule requiring voters to provide an excuse  such as that they are leaving town or incapacitated  when requesting an absentee ballot.

All three measures failed on Election Day, according to The Associated Press.

Voters opposed the three proposals from Niagara County in Western New York to Nassau County on Long Island. They passed in four of New York Citys five boroughs, but not by particularly large margins. Many New York City voters did not vote on the ballot questions at all. Staten Island, as usual, was the odd borough out. All three measures failed there.
In fact, the frenzy around critical race theory is just the latest in a long line of manufactured outrages meant to tap into this same fear, and the strategy has proved depressingly effective.

There was the fear of race-mixing among children  including the notion that Black boys might begin dating white girls following the desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. (By the way, this was a variation on the ancient and dusty fear peddled during Reconstruction that not only were Black men incapable of governing, but their rapacious nature also put white women at risk of rape and devilment.)

There was the fear of a collapse of the Southern way of life and society following the successes of the civil rights movement. That gave rise to the Republicans Southern strategy.

Richard Nixon used the fear of a lost generation to launch his disastrous war on drugs, which was not really a war on drugs at all but yet another way to ignite white racial anxiety.

Nixons aide John Ehrlichman would later tell the journalist Dan Baum:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what Im saying? We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

Ronald Reagan employed the myth of the welfare queen to anger white voters.

As The New Republic put it, the welfare queen stood in for the idea that Black people were too lazy to work, instead relying on public benefits to get by, paid for by the rest of us upstanding citizens.
But these attempts to sketch the womens lives and the ethos of the eras they live through are unconvincing, laced as they are with hasty anthropology and a whiff of Wikipedia.

So when Claudette gets a job in the haberdashery department at Macys in 1947 or Charley attends a Beatles concert in 1965, the specifics seem paradoxically generic. The skipped-over patches necessitated by the plays chronological format likewise become little more than name-checks: Leonard Bernstein, AIDS, Valerie Solanas, Sept. 11, Jane Jacobs, poor demolished Penn Station.

Those last two are a tipoff to what Stephens, whose earlier plays The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Heisenberg were crackling fun, may be up to here. Rather than adding to the catalog of works in which monsters prevail and little lives go unnoticed, Stephens seems to prefer, in Morning Sun, to eulogize the loss of a quieter idea of civic life, and also of theater. The New York City he offers  admittedly from afar; hes British  feels relentlessly sepia, like 1930s social drama but without the social disruption. Its a place that can be modest about its grandeur, where work is honored and sadness is part of the light.

That Hopperesque quality  Morning Sun takes its name from Edward Hoppers 1952 portrait of a woman staring out a sun-filled window  is the plays most attractive trait. Neugebauers staging doesnt pick up on it, though; the set, by the design collective called dots, references a painterly spareness but leaves out the beauty part. (Its just a big, ugly room, less like a fifth-floor walk-up than a basement, with barely any sunlight at all.) And since the women are mostly speaking from different eras, or from some unspecified time beyond time, the home they all occupy comes off less as a real place than as a purgatory.

Under these conditions, a lot is asked of the actors; all three deliver. Brown, in her snappish mode, is wonderfully entertaining, and Ireland brings a sparkly, neurotic wit to the weakest material. (Tessa seems to have been reverse engineered from a list of plot necessities.) But Falco, perhaps because she is the only one who plays no other characters, offers the richest portrait; even if you dont quite believe in Charley, you believe that she does, and thats often enough.

Even when its not, the play is no disaster, just strangely becalmed and unresponsive. Only rarely can you detect its pulse, let alone the feeling Stephens describes as the sadness in your chest. Claudette, speaking for Charley after the end of a relationship, says of that feeling, Whats odd is there is no reason that you can understand why people should feel sadness or shame in their actual heart, an organ the primary function of which is to maintain the distribution of blood around the body. But you do.

Its a beautiful line, but also an unintentional diagnosis. In Morning Sun you mostly feel the heartbreak in your head.



Tickets Through Dec. 19 at Manhattan Theater Club; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
In February, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead in the south Georgia neighborhood of Satilla Shores. In the two months that followed, no arrests were made. But local residents and lawmakers protested what they said was a deadly combination of racial profiling and flawed self-defense laws. When they stop you, make sure you got your cameras on. Make sure you got a video. Police did eventually arrest 2 suspects, but it was days after this video of the fatal shooting emerged. Gregory McMichael and his son Travis were charged with murder and aggravated assault. The case has reignited the national debate over racial violence. Im sure you saw the news about Ahmaud Arbery. It looks like murder. The American public saw the video. What exactly happened in the last moments of Mr. Arberys life? Using security camera footage, cellphone video, and 911 calls and logs, The Times has reconstructed the critical 12 minutes from when Mr. Arbery appeared on Satilla Drive to his death, less than 300 yards away. Its around 1 p.m. on Feb. 23 when Ahmaud Arbery is out, less than 2 miles from his home. A security camera at 219 Satilla Drive is recording when Mr. Arbery enters the frame at around 1:04 p.m. He may have been jogging in the area, but he stops on the front lawn of 220 Satilla, a house being built across the street. Arbery glances around and wanders into the open construction site. Inside, security footage briefly captures him looking around. Meanwhile outside, a neighbor walks from Jones Road towards Satilla Drive and calls 911. The neighbor waits by the street corner. He will later tell the dispatcher that Arbery resembles a recent trespasser in the area. On multiple occasions before Feb. 23, several trespassers were caught on camera at 220 Satilla. The owner routinely alerted the police. On four occasions, what appears to be the same man was filmed. Its unclear if this was Arbery, but even if it were, this does not justify his shooting by neighbors outside on the street. The sites owner says nothing was ever stolen from the house during these incidents or on Feb. 23, and no property was ever damaged. But neighbors were aware of the trespasses and the community was on alert. Now, back to the day in question. Its 1:08 p.m. and Arbery is walking around inside the house. Four minutes after he entered, he walks out and runs off. In the top corner of the security footage, we can see down the street to 230 Satilla, the home of Travis McMichael. At 1:10 p.m., Travis and his father, Gregory, grab their guns, jump in a white truck, and leave the house to pursue Mr. Arbery. We dont have footage showing the next 3 minutes, but testimony Gregory McMichael gave police at the scene, and interviews by another witness, Roddy Bryan, indicate what happened. Gregory and Travis McMichael follow Arbery onto Burford Road. Their neighbor Roddy Bryan sees the pursuit, gets in his car and follows. The McMichaels try to cut Arbery off. Arbery doubles back and passes them. Bryan tries to block Arbery, but Arbery runs past him and toward Holmes Road. Gregory McMichael climbs from the cab to the bed of the truck armed with a handgun. We dont know exactly what happens next. But Bryan and the McMichaels end up following Arbery on Holmes Road. And we next see Arbery at 1:14 p.m. running back down Holmes Road away from Roddy Bryan and toward the McMichaels. Roddy Bryan is filming and  a warning  these scenes are distressing. Gregory McMichael dials 911 at this time. Lets watch this back and break down what happens. This is Arbery. He has been running from the vehicles for almost 4 minutes. Travis is standing by the drivers side of the truck, armed with a shotgun. Gregory is in the bed of the truck on the 911 call. Arbery doesnt know where to run. He veers right, then left and then darts around the right side of the vehicle. Arbery comes around the front of the truck. We see his white T-shirt through the windshield and here is Travis now leaning toward him. This is the instant the first shot is fired. Arbery is hit in the chest, his right lung, ribs, and sternum are injured. The two men wrestle over the gun. Gregory shouts: Travis! Arbery punches Travis. In the back of the truck, Gregory drops the cellphone. A second blast goes off out of frame. But we see the shotgun smoke here. Arbery is heavily bleeding. He throws another punch. Travis fires a final shot, which hits Arbery in his left upper chest. Travis walks away holding his gun. Gregory gets off the truck clutching his .357 Magnum. According to the police report, Gregory rolled Arbery over to see if he had a weapon. He did not. Police officers arrive within seconds of the shooting, and a minute or so later at 1:16 p.m., Police Officer R. Minshew reports: Two subjects on Holmes Road. Shots fired. Male on ground bleeding out. The police took Gregory McMichaels testimony and let the two men go. But now the McMichaels both face serious charges. Hi, this is Malachy and I reported this story. For transparency, a note about the security footage used in this video, which was first published by The Atlanta Journal Constitution. The time code you see here is incorrect. We know this because we lined up what we see in this video with what we hear in two 911 calls and we confirmed the time of those calls. These details and police logs also allowed us to determine that Gregory McMichael called 911 from his sons phone just before the fatal shooting. So in this video, we used the real time that events happened. Thank you for watching.
Mr. Murphy was far ahead in most public polling before Tuesdays contest, but he won narrowly instead. As of around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, when The Associated Press called the race in his favor, the partial vote count showed him ahead of Mr. Ciattarelli by less than one percentage point  though, because most of the ballots that remain to be counted are in heavily Democratic parts of the state, that margin is likely to increase somewhat.

New York City

In the citys mayoral race, Eric Adams, a former police captain and Brooklyn borough president, easily dispatched the long-shot Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, to become only the second Black person elected mayor in the citys history.

And Alvin Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney. He will become the first Black person to lead the influential office, which handles tens of thousands of cases a year and is conducting a high-profile investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.

Boston mayors race

Michelle Wu easily defeated City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George to become the first woman, first person of color and first person of Asian descent to be elected mayor in Boston. The city has been led by an unbroken string of Irish American or Italian American men since the 1930s.

Minneapolis police ballot item

Minneapolis residents rejected an amendment that called for replacing the citys long-troubled Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety, The Associated Press projected.
Signaling that Hawaii is eager to jump-start its battered tourism and hospitality industries, Gov. David Y. Ige said that his state would ease Covid restrictions this month and welcome international travelers again, under new federal guidelines that go into effect on Nov. 8.

The governors decision was a turnaround for a state that only two months ago was advising travelers not to visit, as it dealt with the worst surge of coronavirus cases it had seen, a wave of illness driven by the highly contagious Delta variant that overwhelmed hospitals and halted Hawaiis economic recovery.

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, Hawaii endured months of lockdown, imposing strict, 14-day quarantine protocols and suffering the economic consequences to its tourism economy.

Now, with low rates of hospitalizations and new cases, the islands are again ready for business, officials say. On Sept. 2, the states seven-day daily average of new cases was 910. As of Tuesday, it had dropped to 116, according to a New York Times database.
But the results in Minneapolis, where a proposed amendment would have replaced the Police Department with a new agency focused on public health, showed how the strongly held views that policing needs to change clashed with concerns about rising gun violence and homicides. The proposed safety agency in Minneapolis would have almost certainly still employed police officers, but the measure would have dismantled the existing system and eliminated minimum staffing requirements.

The undeniable factor in that victory in Minneapolis  and I think it shows through in elections nationwide at every level  is a growing concern on the part of the electorate over the rising violent crime rate in the United States, said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, a law enforcement union. I believe, in terms of these draconian proposals to reduce or even eliminate police departments in this so-called defunding effort, that ship has sailed.

F.B.I. statistics showed the steepest year-to-year homicide increase on record from 2019 to 2020, though killings remained below the levels seen in the 1990s and major crimes overall dropped about 5 percent last year.

Supporters of the Minneapolis amendment said that they were disappointed but that their campaign had succeeded in shifting the debate around policing, perhaps in a lasting way. That a large American city held an election on getting rid of its Police Department, and that more than 40 percent of voters supported it, they said, showed how much the discourse had broadened since only a few years ago, when far narrower changes, such as requiring body cameras or tightening use-of-force policies, were hotly debated.

Were doing the work and people are not ready yet, said Rashad Robinson of the Color of Change PAC, which supported the Minneapolis amendment. I fundamentally believe that we are on the right track. We would have not even been part of the conversation a couple of years ago.
WASHINGTON  President Biden on Wednesday said migrants separated from family members at the border would not receive hundreds of thousands of dollars for the damage inflicted by the Trump-era policy, rejecting an option for monetary compensation that had been floated in negotiations with lawyers representing the families.

Representatives of the migrant families and government officials had discussed giving families $450,000 for each member affected by former President Donald J. Trumps zero tolerance policy, which led to the separation of about 5,500 children from their parents, according to people familiar with the matter. But when asked on Wednesday about compensating the migrants, Mr. Biden denied the option was on the table.

$450,000 per person? Is that what youre saying? Mr. Biden said when asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy about the payments. Thats not going to happen.

Mr. Biden made the comment as he took questions after touting the forthcoming availability of vaccines for children. The remark was swiftly condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is negotiating on behalf of the separated families.
At first, vaccine hesitancy was a problem in the Philippines, with a large part of the public rejecting vaccines produced only by Chinese manufacturers. But as more vaccines from Western drug makers became available, the inoculation campaign has shifted its focus to eliminating supply bottlenecks at the local level.

Mr. Duterte noted that, with adequate vaccine supplies on hand, there should be no reason vaccinations could not be increased to an average of about a million per day. The current average is around 500,000.

Mr. Duterte said that he had ordered punishments against local officials who were underperforming or who were failing to use the doses given to them, but he did not specify what criteria would be used to assess them or which sanctions might be imposed against them.

It is not the first time that Mr. Duterte has used threats to address the pandemic. He has previously said that vaccine refusers should be forcibly detained at home, an unconstitutional proposal that his aides later sought to play down as an outburst.

The Philippines is among the Southeast Asian countries hit hardest by Covid. It has been in various stages of lockdown since last year, though the government has announced that nightly curfews will be lifted this week as part of efforts to revive the sagging economy.
American and Iranian officials both said Wednesday that Iran had seized an oil tanker in the Sea of Oman last month after an encounter with the U.S. Navy, but the two sides gave widely differing accounts of whose tanker it was and what, exactly, had happened.

Iranian officials said the United States had seized a tanker carrying Iranian oil on Oct. 24 and that an assault by Iranian commandos had taken the tanker back.

A statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that the brave I.R.G.C. naval unit landed on the tanker that had the stolen oil, seized it and brought it back to Iranian waters.

Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments, said that Iran had seized a Vietnamese-flagged tanker, the MV Southys.
James Danziger, whose gallery represented Leibovitz for over a decade, was the first to show her fashion images in 2006. Its likely that historically these images, which are great fashion photographs, will best stand the test of time, he said. This is the way it is in photography. Most celebrities are forgotten but fashion lasts.

Leibovitz continued at Vogue for the next 23 years, creating a substantial body of work but thought it was too soft for a book. Then Covid-19 happened, and she found herself quarantined with her three daughters at her 200-acre farm in Rhinebeck, N. Y. Shes owned the property for 25 years; its where her large family gathers  shes one of six children  and where Sontag often used to write.

In lockdown with her daughters for nearly a year, she was grateful for the time together. Two of her most fanciful photo essays in the book, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, were shot when her daughters were young  the oldest is now 20, the twins 16. At the time I was reading fairy tales to them, so I was really living in that world, she said.
The New Museums fifth Triennial exhibition, titled Soft Water Hard Stone, is largely a product of lockdown. Much of the work by 40 international artists and collectives was made during the past two pandemic-strapped years. And it has, overall, a hoarded, shut-in feel. Colors are muted. Materials are scrappy, unpretty. (Concrete turns up a lot). Scale is generally small, and of the few monumental pieces, most are sculptures or installations in break-downable formats.

Certain themes recur: impermanence, erosion, disease, survival. Political vibes are buzzing everywhere, but are rarely instantly readable as such. The eye-candy suavity found in the heavily marketed current wave of figure painting seen a lot in galleries finds no place here. Nor, for that matter, does any other single look. Yet, despite being a grab bag of forms and styles, the 2021 Triennial is that rare thing, a big contemporary survey  it fills three floors of the museum, plus its lobby  with a cohesive texture and mood.

The exhibitions theme is adapted from a Brazilian proverb Soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole (Agua mole em pedra dura, tanto bate ate que fura). That piece of pop wisdom  the notion that persistent pressure eventually wears down resistance and creates change  is, of course, a staple of many cultures. And the show supplies a range of visual matches for it.
Ivy Nicholson was a working-class girl from New York City who lit up the 1950s as one of Europes top fashion models, married a French count, posed topless for Salvador Dali and became one of the first superstars in Andy Warhols Factory. It was a flashbulb life built on bravado and sheer magnetism.

But it was not a solid life, and when the 1960s ended and the big checks stopped coming, she was left on her own. She spent her last decades in or near poverty, sometimes homeless, telling anyone who would listen that she was on her way back up.

Ms. Nicholson died on Oct. 25 at an assisted living facility in Bellflower, Calif., outside Los Angeles. She was 88.

Her son Sean Bolger confirmed her death. He said Ms. Nicholson had recently been weakened by seizures.
People vote based less on their income and more on their cultural attitudes, as my colleague Nate Cohn has explained. Sometimes, these attitudes are related to specific matters of policy, like immigration or abortion. Other times, they involve more personal subjects, like religion or patriotism.

As theyve grown in numbers, college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic Party to the left, Nate wrote. Partly as a result, large portions of the partys traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans.

The defections have increased over the past decade. Barack Obama won voters without a bachelors degree in both of his presidential victories. Biden lost them narrowly last year. In Virginia this week, McAuliffe was trounced  by between 10 and 20 percentage points, depending on the exit poll  among voters without a bachelors degree. He particularly lost ground with white working-class women, according to CNN.

Race plays an important role here. Republicans  including Donald Trump, but not limited to him  have won more working-class votes partly by appealing to white identity. In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor-elect, used a version of this strategy. He went so far as to release an ad in which a white mother complained about her sons high school class reading a classic novel by Toni Morrison.

But many Democrats have made the mistake of believing that the working-class shift is all about racism. Its not. Consider that the contemporary Democrat who fared best with the white working class was Obama. Or that some divisive cultural debates, like those involving religion, dont map neatly onto race.

The clearest sign that the shift involves both racial and other causes comes from recent election results: Democrats are no longer doing as well as they once did in Asian, Black and Latino communities. Trump fared better with voters of color in 2020 than in 2016. In Virginia, some of McAuliffes most disappointing totals came in heavily Hispanic precincts, according to Nates analysis.

This years mayoral election in New York offered a similar lesson. Eric Adams beat more liberal Democratic candidates with an anti-crime message that appealed to a multiracial coalition of working-class voters across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The only borough Adams lost in the primary was affluent, highly educated Manhattan.
Britain became the first country on Thursday to authorize the use of an antiviral pill for Covid-19, an easy-to-use treatment that could help tame the pandemic.

The drug, known as molnupiravir and sold by the pharmaceutical company Merck, was shown in a key clinical trial to reduce by half the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk Covid patients who were treated early in their infections. Dispensed from a pharmacy and taken at home, the drug is expected to reach many more people than treatments like monoclonal antibodies, which are typically administered intravenously at a hospital or clinic.

Britain, which has already ordered enough supplies of the pill for 480,000 people, is one of a growing list of wealthy countries that have raced to lock up supplies of the drug. Merck said last week it has reached deals to sell the pills to the governments of the United States, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Serbia and Singapore.

The drug is expected to become available in the United States as soon as December, after a panel of experts meets at the end of this month to make a recommendation to the Food and Drug Administration about whether it should be authorized for high-risk Covid patients. The United States has ordered enough supply of the drug for 1.7 million patients, at a cost of about $700 per person.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has released its rule requiring companies with 100 or more employees to mandate coronavirus vaccinations or weekly testing. Companies will have until Jan. 4 to begin enforcing the mandate, the Biden administration said on Thursday. Read more about the rule 
SPRINGDALE, Ark.  When Tyson, one of the worlds largest meatpacking companies, announced in early August that all of its 120,000 workers would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or lose their jobs, Diana Eike was angry. Ms. Eike, an administrative coordinator at the company, had resisted the vaccine, and not for religious or political reasons like many others here in her home state.

It was just something personal, she said.

Now, Ms. Eike is fully vaccinated, and she is relieved that Tyson made the decision for her. The company, she said, took the burden off of me making the choice.

Across the country, workers have reacted to vaccine mandates with a mix of emotions. Employer requirements are taking effect without major controversy in many areas. But in some cities, government workers have marched through the streets in protest, while others have quit. Numerous companies, fearing a wave of resignations, have hesitated on mandates, even as they struggled with new coronavirus outbreaks.

Tysons announcement that it would require vaccinations across its corporate offices, packing houses and poultry plants, many of which are situated in the South and Midwest where resistance to the vaccines is high, was arguably the boldest mandate in the corporate world.
Chinas crackdown on its big tech companies continues to have reverberations around the world. On Thursday, Uber said it lost $2.4 billion in its most recent quarter, largely because of its investment in the Chinese ride-hailing company Didi.

The Didi investment weighed heavily on what was otherwise a fairly upbeat quarter for Uber, as both customers and drivers increasingly returned to the road. The loss was 123 percent more than the same quarter a year ago, when Ubers business was reeling from the pandemic.

Since Didi, Chinas largest ride-hailing company, went public in July, it has faced increasing pressure from Beijing on data security, privacy and worker protections. The crackdown caused Didis stock price to tumble and led to a $3.2 billion hit for Uber, which sold its Chinese business to Didi in 2016 in exchange for equity. That loss was offset by other investments.

Aside from its loss on Didi, Uber, whose headquarters are in San Francisco, said its business continued to recover from the pandemic. Its revenue was $4.8 billion, a 72 percent increase from the same period a year ago, which exceeded analyst expectations. Ubers gross bookings, the total amount it brings in before fees and payments to drivers, increased 57 percent to $23.1 billion.
Read our latest coverage of the COP26 climate change summit.

GLASGOW  The United Nations climate conference in Scotland has become a venue for world leaders and business executives to pretend they are taking action on climate change without following through, the climate activist Greta Thunberg said on Thursday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the summit meeting, known as COP26, the 18-year-old Ms. Thunberg said the event was sort of turning into a greenwash campaign, a P.R. campaign, for business leaders and politicians.

Since we are so far from what actually we needed, I think what would be considered a success would be if people realize what a failure this COP is, Ms. Thunberg said.

At panel events Thursday at The New York Times Climate Hub in Glasgow, Ms. Thunberg and other young female activists, including Vanessa Nakate and Malala Yousafzai, also spoke about the critical role that young women have played in rallying protesters and pressuring world leaders to take action.
For the first time at a major United Nations climate conference, human health is emerging as a leading issue, a reframing that brings climate changes far-reaching and long-lasting effects to the forefront.

Although health has been addressed at conferences going back to the first U.N. environmental summit in 1992, never before has it held such a central role. The 2015 Paris accord, the global agreement among nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was billed foremost as a historic environmental moment.

However, the Paris Agreement is not an environmental treaty, said Dr. Maria Neira, the director of the World Health Organizations department on environment, climate change and health. It is a basic public health treaty.

There is a growing body of research showing that climate change is contributing to a wide range of health risks around the world. It is exacerbating heat waves, intensifying wildfires, heightening flood risks and worsening droughts. These are, in turn, increasing heat-related mortality, pregnancy complications and cardiovascular disease. And as with many things climate-related, the risks and harms are particularly severe in places that are the least able to respond.
We imagine most peoples Thanksgivings to be long meals that may begin with snacks and noshes, extend through appetizers and main courses and end, perhaps hours later, with desserts.

The liveliness that comes with good acidity is in effect a survival strategy. Such wines will rejuvenate, even as all that food pushes you toward a comatose state.

The French naturally have a term for this characteristic in wines, digestibilite, wines that are delicious and easy to drink without being freighted with excess or weighing too heavily in the gut.

Heres what you dont want:

 Overly tannic wines. Tannins are not necessarily bad, but over the long haul of a holiday feast the astringency that comes with them can be fatiguing. Which wines will reliably be tannic? Young reds that are intended for aging, for the most part. Save that young Barolo for another occasion.

 Oaky wines. Overt oak flavors can clash with many foods, and oak tannins can be more obtrusive than grape tannins. Oakiness can appear in many different sorts of wines. You either must know your producer or consult with your wine merchant.

 High-alcohol wines. Its a long day  the higher the alcohol, the quicker the trip to the couch. You can easily find high-alcohol wines, say, those above 14 percent, that taste good. But this isnt the day for them. How can you tell? Alcohol content is right on the label.

 Transgressive wines. Thanksgiving is a time for making people happy, not for persuading them to drink avant-garde styles that you love but that may bewilder mainstream drinkers. You dont have to sacrifice principles or suppress your own tastes, just look for styles that can be easily understood by most people.
So why are you striking? Im striking for us to take the climate crisis seriously and treat it like a crisis. Yes, but what do you want the politicians to do? I want them to listen to and act on the science. How are we going to solve this climate issue? Just the fact that this question is asked to me, a teenager, over and over is absurd but not as absurd as the fact that the climate and ecological emergency is being reduced to a problem that needs to be fixed. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. We demand a safe future. Is that really too much to ask? I dont want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. All political and economic systems have failed, but humanity has not yet failed. A year before my U.N. speech, the thought of seeing pictures of myself everywhere would have been unthinkable. If you would care about this kind of attention, then youd probably develop a self-image that is far from sane. Presidents, prime ministers, kings and princesses suddenly see their opportunity to get a selfie, which later they can post on their Instagram with the caption hashtag #savetheplanet. Perhaps it makes them forget the shame of their generation letting all future generations down. You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. Yet Im one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. The world is waking up. And change is coming whether you like it or not. On the subway home, some come forward to congratulate me. Someone suggests that we should celebrate. But I dont understand what their congratulations are for. And I understand even less what were supposed to be celebrating. Yet another meeting is over. And all that is left are empty words. It gets a bit repetitive after a while. Politicians are pretty much the same no matter where you are in the world. I urged them to listen to the science and act now before its too late. They say that they think its so amazing that Im so active and committed and that, when I grow up, I too can become a politician and make a real difference. I then explain that when Ive grown up, it will be too late to act if we are to stay below the 1.5 or even 2 degree Celsius target. Then they laugh nervously and start talking about something else. Washington, D.C. Im called to testify in the U.S. Congress. I am submitting this report as my testimony because I dont want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists. Thank you. In the latest update from the I.P.C.C., scientists underline keeping the global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. We have today already passed about 1.2 degrees of global heating. On January 1, 2018, we had 420 gigatons of CO left to emit globally. This is the carbon budget which gives us the best odds of staying below the 1.5 degree target. We emit about 42 gigatons of CO every year. So today, the world is down to lower than 280 gigatons of CO left. That is the equivalent of less than six and a half years of todays business-as-usual emissions until that budget completely runs out. Do you remember Gangnam Style? That happened about eight years ago. Thats longer than the amount of time we are talking about. And that is to give us the best possible chance to avoid passing tipping points or feedback loops, irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. The climate crisis is not a fair crisis. The ones wholl be hit hardest from its consequences are often the ones who have done the least to cause the problem in the first place. The climate crisis cannot be solved within todays political and economic systems. Thats not an opinion. Thats a fact. And since the truth is uncomfortable, unpopular and unprofitable, the truth doesnt stand much of a chance. The emperors are naked, every single one. It turns out our whole society is just one big nudist party. And if you belong to that small group of people who feel threatened by us, then we have some very bad news for you. This is only the beginning. Every Friday, I continue to strike wherever I find myself to be at that moment. Everywhere, lots of people show up, people of all ages. We are facing the need to make changes which are unprecedented in human history. Things may look dark, but Im telling you there is hope. And that hope comes from the people, from democracy, from you. What do we want? Government action. When do we want it? Now! We have passed a social tipping point. We can no longer look away from what our society has been ignoring for so long. It is an existential crisis. We must now do the seemingly impossible. And that is up to you and me because no one else will do it for us. But who really is Greta? I think people want to get to know Greta. Im not important. This has got nothing to do with me. Im simply doing this because no one else is doing it.
At the beginning of the shoot for The Power of the Dog, the ominous new psychodrama from Jane Campion, the director brought the actors and crew together on a remote and magnificent site on New Zealands South Island, which was standing in for the storys Montana setting. After a Maori blessing, Campion began to introduce everyone. This is Phil Burbank, she said as Benedict Cumberbatch stepped forward. Benedict is really nice and youll meet him at the end of the shoot.

Phil, the clever, bullying, angry character played by Cumberbatch, is the elder of two brothers who run a thriving cattle ranch, and he isnt nice at all. He dominates and insults his quiet, mild-mannered sibling, George (Jesse Plemons), and his perpetually simmering hostility finds a soft target when George marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a local widow with an effete teenage son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil is an alpha-male cowboy, dark and dirty (literally). But slowly we begin to understand that Phil, who studied Greek and Latin at Yale, is also playing a role.

In her dry way, with that introduction, Jane gave me permission to be Phil, Cumberbatch said in a video interview from his home in England. With rather more exuberant hair than Phil and minus the characters fearsome stare, he was relaxed and articulate as he discussed the role. He behaves abhorrently, but there is a deep well of pain there, this life not lived, an arrested development that informs the way he behaves. If we dont understand the monsters in our world, what motivates this behavior, if we cant look at someone beyond being a baddie or a goody, then were in trouble.
The spare, tightly wound drama Hive opens with the movie equivalent of a hand grabbing your throat. An unsmiling woman with a hard, monumental profile stands alone next to a truck. People mill around nearby, murmuring indistinctly. Abruptly, the woman ducks under some police tape and into the truck, where she hastily begins unzipping one white body bag after another and just as quickly scanning their contents, her nose wrinkling at the exposed bundles of tattered clothing, remnants of missing persons. Shes soon ejected by a worker, but her search continues.

The woman, Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), is looking for her husband, one of the missing, who disappeared years ago during the Kosovo War. Now, with her two children and a disabled father-in-law, she struggles to keep the family going. She labors with the beehives that her husband once managed, selling jars of honey at a local market. Sales are modest and sometimes close to nonexistent, but the bees are her only means of scraping together a meager living. Every so often, she meets up with a womens collective whose members face the same hurdles under the unhelpful watch of the towns men. And she keeps looking for her husband  a haunting, troubling phantom.

A liberation story told with easy naturalism and broad political strokes, Hive tracks Fahrije on her path to independence. (Its based on the experiences of an Albanian Kosovo woman of the same name.) Like its protagonist, the movie is stern, direct and attentive to ordinary life. The writer-director Blerta Basholli doesnt bludgeon you with the characters miseries, or hold your emotions hostage. Fahrije isnt lovable; sometimes shes scarcely likable, which means shes more of a human being than an emblem of virtuous suffering. She has her charms, though these tend to emerge in the intimacies she shares with her family and female friends like Naza (a piquant Kumrije Hoxha).

With her husband presumably dead but with no corpse in the graveyard, Fahrije is stuck in a cruel limbo, an uncertain status shared by others in the collective. Prevailing norms mean that these women arent allowed to remarry, and theyre not allowed to do much of anything else, other than care for their families, socialize with other presumptive widows and display subservience to men. Even Fahrijes more seemingly innocuous efforts to support her family  selling her husbands old table saw, for one  are treated like scandalous affronts to him, their life and their world. Shes shamed at home and in public, harassed and demoralized, simply for stepping into the role of provider.
Look the part.

Streep had a hand in devising Orleans fashion sensibility, which she said communicated something essential about the character: So what if shes 70 years old and dresses like shes 35? she explained. No one told her you cant be 35 forever. That meant attire modeled after TV news anchors who, Streep said, tend to pick these broad swaths of bright, happy colors to put on themselves  no prints, no polka dots or plaids or, God forbid, florals. None of the things that other people wear. Just these power suits and pencil skirts. It also called for a specific hair regimen: When I was in high school, youd set your hair in rollers, then take it out and brush it 100 times, Streep said. This is the kind of hair where you take it out of rollers and just leave it like that  the longer the better. And then those are sprayed and crisped and the ends curl out in weird ways. And thats a thing. It has always escaped me why this was good. So I thought, well, Im going to try to that  God knows I wont do it in my real life.

Get ready to face the crowds.

All that advance planning may still not fully prepare you for the demands of the presidency, as Streep discovered on her first day of shooting. She had spent several weeks in isolation, as screen actors have been required to do during the pandemic. Then, on the appointed day, she said, I bundled up in my big down coat, put the dog in the back of my car, drove through a snowstorm to Worcester, Mass., and got out at a stadium and parked. Once there, Streep said, They tried to turn me away at several points to get into the set. I said no, Im in it. After getting into hair, makeup and costume, Streep took to the stage where she saw her face on a Jumbotron and heard the delayed echo of her voice as she spoke to a crowd of several hundred extras. And I just lost it, she said. I thought, well, I clearly have to retire. I cant do this. I actually cant do this. It was really a crisis of confidence. Needless to say, Streep did find her bearings, but, she said, it took a while.

Ad-lib as necessary.

As he did on his movies like Step Brothers and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, McKay allowed for some improvisation in Dont Look Up, and the director said Streep had a talent for extemporaneous dialogue and reactions. Her character is almost never bothered by horrible things that people say to her or how horrible she is, McKay said. She has an utter shamelessness that could almost be misconstrued as confidence.

Streep  who had just completed Let Them All Talk, a Steven Soderbergh movie with entirely improvised dialogue, before filming Dont Look Up  isnt immediately thought of as an ad-libber. But she enjoys the process and admires colleagues who can expertly riff. Actors get a raw deal, she said. People think theyre dopey. But most of the good actors I know are really, really smart  I havent seen their math SATs, but I dont care. Being able to pull that brilliance out of the air, really, its a form of writing. Its an amazing thing when people are good at it.
We cant take our electorate for granted and just assume that because were in a blue state that all voters will follow us, said Sochie Nnaemeka, the New York State director of the left-leaning Working Families Party. We have to always be fighting.

Still, the broader contours of the next City Council remain unchanged from expectations. As it has been for decades, the 51-member body will be dominated by Democrats, many of them new faces from the partys left wing. The city is poised to have one of the most diverse councils in its history, with at least 30 women holding office.

The showing from Republicans is unlikely to alter the citys immediate political direction. If Republicans picked up the final three races, they would have seven seats  their largest faction since the mid-1990s, but likely not enough to pose a major threat to Democratic priorities. Eric Adams, the Democratic candidate, handily won his election for mayor, and four of the five borough presidents will also remain Democrats, with Staten Island, a conservative stronghold, the exception.

Among the still undecided races was a re-election bid by Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is a contender to become City Council speaker next year and whose Brooklyn district includes Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Bath Beach. On Tuesday night, he was 255 votes behind his opponent, Brian Fox, though at least 1,456 returned absentee ballots, about 1,000 from registered Democrats, have yet to be counted.

In an interview on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Brannan said that he believed that low turnout  about 24,000 people voted in person and 3,300 requested absentee ballots in a district where 105,000 are registered  was a factor in the tight margin of his race.

But he also said the close race was demonstrative of the headwinds that Democrats had faced nationally and accused his opponent of trying to harness these national culture wars over hot-button issues like policing and vaccine mandates.

During the campaign, Mr. Fox staunchly opposed vaccine mandates. His campaign also seized on the slogan Justin Brannan defunded the police, a reference to the budget negotiations last year in which city officials agreed to shift roughly $1 billion from the Police Department. Most council members, including Mr. Brannan, voted for that budget. He also voted for this years budget, which added $200 million back to the police budget.
One of the most unsettling revelations in the cache of internal documents leaked by the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen has been just how little we know about Facebook, and consequently how unprepared our political culture is to do anything about it, whatever it is.

Thats the first problem in fixing Facebook  there isnt much agreement about what, exactly, the problem with Facebook is. The left says its Facebooks amplification of hate, extremism and misinformation about, among other things, vaccines and the last presidential election. President Biden put it bluntly this summer: Theyre killing people.

Former President Donald Trump and others on the right say the opposite: Social media giants are run by liberals bent on silencing opposing views. In a statement last week, Trump called Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks co-founder, a criminal who altered the course of a Presidential Election.

Beyond concerns about the distortion of domestic politics, there are a number of other questions about Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp  all of which, Zuckerberg announced last week, are now under a new corporate umbrella called Meta. Is Instagram contributing to anxiety and body-shaming among teenagers? Are Facebooks outrage-juicing algorithms destabilizing developing countries, where the company employs fewer resources to monitor its platform than it does in its large markets? Is Facebook perpetuating racism through biased algorithms? Is it the cause of global polarization, splitting societies into uncooperative in-groups?
To the Editor:

In Military Jurors Rebuke Torture as Moral Stain (front page, Nov. 1), you report that seven out of eight senior American military officers dispatched to Guantanamo Bay to sentence a terrorist, Majid Khan, sent a clemency letter denouncing the torture he suffered in custody as a stain on the moral fiber of America.

This is a heartening indication that decency and respect for the rule of law are valued highly by Americas armed forces. Senior officials in the George W. Bush administration endorsed the torture of terrorist suspects. President Donald Trump tried to make a hero of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who stabbed to death a sedated detainee and then held him up by the hair for a photo.

It is good to have this evidence that such civilian officials do not represent the thinking of many American military leaders.

Aryeh Neier

New York

The writer, president emeritus of the Open Society Foundations, was the founding executive director of Human Rights Watch and, earlier, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In Lloyd Neck, N.Y.: a five-bedroom, three-bath, ranch-style house built in 1960, with transom windows and a window seat in the living room, floor-to-ceiling windows in the great room, a second window seat and high-end appliances in the eat-in kitchen, a wood-burning fireplace, central air-conditioning, a finished basement with a laundry room, and an attached two-car garage, on two acres.
Making a move from one city to another? Youre not alone. Populations in metropolitan areas are constantly shifting: Residents may be drawn in while jobs are plentiful, or forced out by rising rents. Maybe theyre starting a family or reaching retirement age and looking for a more suitable city.

The U.S. Census Bureau shed light on intercity moves in its recent data release spanning 2015 to 2019, which was analyzed by CommercialCafe to find the U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest average annual population gains at the expense of others. The analysis also revealed the top source metros  where people came from  as shown in this weeks chart.

To reach the results, annual population losses were subtracted from gains to arrive at an average net figure for each statistical metropolitan area in the contiguous United States. (Statistical metropolitan areas include cities and surrounding communities that share the local economy). People who arrived from rural areas or other countries were not counted, nor were changes from births and deaths.

Metros with warmer climates dominate the list. Phoenix came out on top with an average net population gain of nearly 50,000 a year, with the largest group arriving from Los Angeles. The City of Angels was also the biggest source of growth for Las Vegas, which finished fifth, and the second-biggest source for Dallas-Fort Worth, in third.
On Thursday, the astronomers also urged NASA to embark on a new Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program that would develop a series of astrophysics spacecraft over the next 20 to 30 years. The first would be an optical telescope bigger than the Hubble Space Telescope and capable of finding and studying Earthlike planets  potentially habitable exo-Earths  in the nearby cosmos. Only NASA could accomplish this, the astronomers said, noting that it could be ready in 2040 and would cost $11 billion.

Those two recommendations were the biggest in a long-awaited, 614-page report, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s, released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on Thursday.

Every 10 years for the last 70, the academy has sponsored a survey of the astronomical community in order to set priorities for big-ticket items over the next decade. The Decadal Survey, as it is known, commands the attention of Congress, NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

This years effort  chaired by Fiona A. Harrison of the California Institute of Technology and Robert C. Kennicutt, Jr., of the University of Arizona and Texas A&M University  took three years and entailed dozens of meetings and discussions among 13 subpanels spanning every branch of astronomy. In all, 860 White Papers were submitted to the survey, describing telescopes that might be built, space missions that should be launched, experiments or observations that should be done, and issues such as diversity that the astronomical community should address.

In an interview, Dr. Harrison said their committee had tried to balance ambition against the amount of time and money these projects would take. For instance, several ideas were floated for planet-prospecting spacecraft. Some were too big, some were too small; some would take a century to execute. Rather than choose one of these, the group asked the community and NASA to come back with ideas for a space telescope six meters in diameter. (Hubbles main mirror is 2.4 meters in diameter.)
A federal judge on Thursday rejected Jeff Bezos latest legal attempt to overturn NASAs multibillion-dollar moon lander contract with Elon Musks SpaceX. The decision ended a monthslong battle between the space companies of two of the worlds richest men that posed a significant obstacle to NASAs plans for returning humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

The ruling makes it all but certain that whenever American astronauts return to the lunar surface, they will be traveling in a spacecraft built by Mr. Musk's company. That adds another victory for SpaceX, a company that has become a dominant player in orbital spaceflight, including serving as a primary partner of NASA in carrying astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station.

But NASA has been unable to work on the program with SpaceX for the duration of Blue Origins legal challenges, which may delay the return to the moon.

Its been disappointing to not be able to make progress, said Pam Melroy, NASAs deputy administrator, in an interview on Wednesday before the ruling was released. She added that meeting with the company to assess the timeline for the moon mission was a very high priority for NASA, now that the litigation ended in its favor.
Many other countries where most people own smartphones  including Britain and South Korea  are ruled by Apple and Samsung, too. But in other places, there tends to be more choice and competition in smartphone shopping, often from Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme and (until recently) Huawei.

Why is the U.S. like this?

Its complicated, but Ill offer two explanations: Americas wireless providers like AT&T are the kingmakers of which phones win in the U.S., and theyre fine with the status quo. Second, smartphone sellers other than Apple and Samsung arent trying very hard, sometimes because they know its tough to break through in the U.S.

Wireless carriers sell about three-quarters of the phones that Americans buy, and they have a good thing going with Apple and Samsung.

Apple and Samsung pay phone service providers huge sums to help advertise their new devices. Sometimes they offer commissions so that the salesperson in a Verizon store will push their models to shoppers. Phone companies also require extensive testing of new phones and technical requirements specific to the U.S.

This isnt necessarily nefarious or unusual. But this system favors the established smartphone makers, which can afford the costs and rigmarole of teaming up with the wireless providers. Its also a risk to buy a smartphone from a brand were unfamiliar with, and many Americans who buy a new device stick with whatever smartphone theyre used to.

Some potential smartphone challengers are also pretty meh. LG, which had been a solid No. 3 in the U.S., recently gave up on smartphones. Chinese smartphone brands have an extra hard time in the U.S. at times because of government sanctions and fears by U.S. officials that their phones might be gateways to Chinese spying.

Google is (maybe) starting to put more oomph into hawking its five-year-old line of Pixel smartphones with wireless carriers, and the company slashed prices to far less than comparable iPhones. (Did you know that Google makes smartphones? Yeah, exactly.)
Ms. McCorducks powers of observation and conversational style raised her book above others that have in the years since tried to explain artificial intelligence to a broad audience, Philip Mirowski wrote in AI Magazine in a review of the 25th-anniversary edition of Machines Who Think, which included a long addendum updating A.I.s history through 2004.

Image Ms. McCorduck's Machines Who Think, published in 1979, chronicled the early history of artificial intelligence.

Pamela Ann McCorduck was born on Oct. 27, 1940, in Liverpool, England, as the city was being bombed by the German Luftwaffe. When she was 6 she left for the United States with her parents, Jack and Hilda (Bond) McCorduck, and her two younger siblings, who are twins.

Her father owned beauty colleges, where her mother was a beautician and teacher. The family settled first in Stamford, Conn., before moving several times. She graduated from high school in Rutherford, N.J., and received a bachelors degree in English composition and literature from Berkeley in 1960. Ten years later she earned a masters in English literature at Columbia University.

Computers & Thought, the result of her work with Professors Feigenbaum and Feldman, was published in 1963. She called herself a gofer to them, but Professor Feigenbaum said that she had been essential to their project. She continued her association with Professor Feigenbaum as his executive assistant for several years after he left Berkeley for Stanford University in 1965 to help start its computer science department and to direct the Stanford Computation Center.

She met Professor Traub at Stanford, and they married in 1969. (Her first marriage, to Thomas Tellefsen, had ended in divorce.) The next year they moved to Seattle, where he taught at the University of Washington; a year after that they moved to Pittsburgh. Around that time she published two novels: Familiar Relations (1971), the story of a family set in Liverpool in 1944, and Working to the End (1972), about a brilliant woman scientist in a love triangle with her brother-in-law.

At Carnegie Mellon, where she taught in the English department, Ms. McCorduck got to know the computer scientists working on artificial intelligence and became particularly close with Professor Simon, who helped pioneer the idea that computers can exhibit artificial intelligence that mirrors human thinking.

She often offered Professor Simon a glass of sherry when he walked past her house in Pittsburgh on his way home, and they discussed artificial intelligence, linguistics, music and art, she said in an oral history interview with Carnegie Mellon in 2019.
SAN JOSE, Calif.  In 2014, Dan Mosley, a lawyer and power broker among wealthy families, asked the entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes for audited financial statements of Theranos, her blood testing start-up. Theranos never produced any, but Mr. Mosley invested $6 million in the company anyway  and wrote Ms. Holmes a gushing thank-you email for the opportunity.

Bryan Tolbert, an investor at Hall Group, said his firm invested $5 million in Theranos in 2013, even though it did not have a detailed grasp of the start-ups technologies or its work with pharmaceutical companies and the military.

And Lisa Peterson, who handles investments for Michigans wealthy DeVos family, said she did not visit any of Theranoss testing centers in Walgreens stores, call any Walgreens executives or hire any outside experts in science, regulations or legal matters to verify the start-ups claims. In 2014, the DeVos family invested $100 million into the company.

The humiliating details of bad investments like Theranos are rarely displayed so prominently to the public. But they have been laid bare in recent weeks at the trial of Ms. Holmes, 37, who faces a dozen counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud; she has pleaded not guilty. She and Theranos fell from grace  with investor money evaporating and the company shutting down in 2018  after claims about its blood-testing technology were shown to be false.
Testing results regularly show that math students in the United States are lagging behind those in other industrialized nations. And within the country, there is a persistent racial gap in achievement. According to data from the civil rights office of the Education Department, Black students represented about 16 percent of high school students but 8 percent of those enrolled in calculus during the 2015-16 school year. White and Asian students were overrepresented in high-level courses.

We have a state and nation that hates math and is not doing well with it, Dr. Boaler said.

Critics of the draft said the authors would punish high achievers by limiting options for gifted programs. An open letter signed by hundreds of Californians working in science and technology described the draft as an endless river of new pedagogical fads that effectively distort and displace actual math.

Williamson M. Evers, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and a former official with the Education Department during the administration of George W. Bush, was one of the authors of the letter and objected to the idea that math could be a tool for social activism.

I think thats really not right, he said in an interview. Math is math. Two plus two equals four.

Distress over the draft made it to Fox News. In May, Dr. Boalers name and photograph were featured on an episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, an appearance she did not know about until she began receiving nasty letters from strangers.

Like some of the attempted reforms of decades past, the draft of the California guidelines favored a more conceptual approach to learning: more collaborating and problem solving, less memorizing formulas.
With coronavirus vaccinations of children aged 5 to 11 beginning in the United States this week, parents may be wondering whether their families will now be able to gather safely for the holidays.

The dosing schedule for Pfizer-BioNTechs vaccine  the one that federal regulators endorsed on Tuesday for use in those younger children  requires two shots three weeks apart. Individuals are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after the second shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That means that even children who get the Pfizer-BioNTech shots right away will not be considered fully immunized until the first week in December  too late for Thanksgiving on Nov. 25, or the start of Hanukkah on Nov. 28.

Still, the first shot provides some protection even before the second shot is due, and there remains plenty of time for the 29 million children in that age group to get fully immunized before Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Years Day.
A decision by the University of Florida to bar three professors from testifying in a lawsuit against the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis has ballooned into a political and public relations firestorm, one that could grow as other professors consider whether to step forward with stories of university pressure.

Since Friday, when the universitys decision was disclosed in a federal court filing, five more professors have offered accounts of being barred from testifying or ordered to omit mention of their university positions in court statements.

The body that accredits the university has opened an inquiry into whether its orders violate long-established principles of academic freedom or involve undue political influence. On Monday, the universitys president and provost ordered a review of its policy on conflicts of interest, the stated rationale for the decisions to silence the professors.

The University of Florida stands firmly behind its commitment to uphold our most sacred right as Americans, the right to free speech, and to faculty members right to academic freedom, they said in a statement. Nothing is more fundamental to our existence as an institution.
ATLANTA  The mayoral election in Atlanta produced a surprise result, as Kasim Reed, a former two-term mayor once considered a front-runner in the race, failed to finish in either first or second place, denying him the chance to compete in the Nov. 30 runoff and ending his surprising political comeback bid.

Felicia Moore, the City Council president, finished first in Tuesdays race with about 41 percent of the vote, followed by Andre Dickens, a city councilman, who narrowly bested Mr. Reed with about 23 percent of the vote. Both Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens had attacked Mr. Reed for the series of corruption scandals that unfolded on his watch at City Hall, resulting in numerous indictments and guilty pleas from high-ranking city officials.

Amid the controversy, Mr. Reed, who had been one of the most high-profile politicians in the state, virtually disappeared from the political stage after leaving office in January 2018. He officially returned to the scene in June, announcing that he would seek a third term after the current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, declared she would not run for a second term.

Mr. Reed led a crowded field of contestants in early polling with a message heavily focused on a promise to fix the citys violent crime problems. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, he thanked Atlanta voters and congratulated Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens.
Donor grousing is nearly as old a tradition as campaigning itself. Wealthy and entitled contributors always want more influence and access than they have. But the sheer breadth of complaints about the Biden White Houses operation is striking, and a source of growing concern among allies and Democratic officials who fear it could cause a backlash among contributors that the party will need to mobilize soon for the 2022 midterm elections.

There is a basic chorus, which is were forgotten and discarded, said John Morgan, a major bundler who hosted Mr. Biden at his home in Florida in May 2019. Its very discouraging. We dont exist.

Donors who have made suggestions or recommendations for lower-level jobs in the Biden administration complain they never heard back from anyone. The typical courtesy thank you cards or calls to people who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even those who contributed $1 million or more, have largely not arrived. And the pandemic has put on hold any glad-handing gatherings.

Of course, whining from the well-to-do is hardly going to draw any public sympathy. But Democrats close to the Biden administration still see the griping as a worrying sign of disorganization from the White Houses political operation, especially after so much of the party infrastructure eroded during an Obama presidency that saw historic down-ballot losses.

The rise of small online donors has somewhat lessened the power and sway of bundlers, who gather larger checks from friends and associates for campaigns. But the Biden operation still raised vast sums from its top fund-raisers, counting more than 800 people who collected at least $100,000 last year.
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Ever since Barack Obama swept into the White House on the strength of record turnout, it has been an article of faith among Democrats that the more people who vote, the better the party will fare.

When turnout sagged, during the 2010 and the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans won wave elections. In 2016, fewer people voted than in 2012 and Donald J. Trump won the presidency, shocking Democrats and turbocharging a more explicit Republican argument that making voting harder would make it easier for the G.O.P. to win elections.

Then turnout jumped again in the Trump years  in Virginia four years ago, in special elections and in the 2018 midterms. Joseph R. Biden Jr. ousted Mr. Trump in a national election with record-high turnout. Republicans spent the next year, in states they control, fighting to make it harder to vote and promoting lies that the 2020 turnout had been stocked with fraudulent Democratic votes.

How then to explain the election on Tuesday in Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin, now the Republican governor-elect, beat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a contest in which at least 25 percent more votes were cast than in any governors race in the states history? (The number will go up; mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted as long as they are received by this Friday.)
Most of the important claims in the dossier  a series of reports written by Mr. Danchenkos employer, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent  have not been proven, and some have been refuted, including by Mr. Mueller. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko several times in 2017 when they were seeking to run down the claims.

The first false statement charge in the indictment concerns Mr. Danchenko's interactions with a person the indictment describes as a public relations executive with strong ties to the Democratic Party.

The indictment said Mr. Danchenko falsely told the F.B.I. that he had not discussed the claims in the dossier with the public relations executive. But, the indictment said, the executive  who in his professional career frequently interacted with Eurasian clients, with a particular focus on Russia  was a source for some of the claims, including gossip about the ouster of Paul Manafort as Mr. Trumps campaign chairman.

The indictment did not name the person it called PR Executive-1, but its description matched the career of Charles Dolan Jr., who was the state chairman of the Clinton-Gore campaigns in Virginia in 1992 and 1996 and was appointed to a position in the State Department in the Clinton administration.

Mr. Dolan was earlier named in a declaration by Olga Galkina, one of Mr. Danchenkos sources, as someone to whom Mr. Danchenko had introduced her; the indictment also said that the executive and a source who appears to be Ms. Galkina had regular interactions, including in ways that indicated they supported Mrs. Clintons campaign.

Mr. Dolans lawyer, Ralph D. Martin, confirmed in an email that his client was the executive named in the indictment, but said that Mr. Dolan, as a potential witness in the case, would have no comment.

The indictment linked Mr. Dolan to Mr. Danchenko in several other ways. It said he had lunch with Mr. Danchenko in Moscow in June 2016. At the time, Mr. Dolan was staying in the same Moscow hotel where the dossier claimed that Russian intelligence made a blackmail tape involving Mr. Trump and prostitutes.
The former president has rights, he said. Theres a constitutionally based privilege that the former president can assert over documents.

It was unclear how quickly the judge might rule. Any decision is likely to result in an appeal. Democrats have worried that Mr. Trump is trying to delay their inquiry until Republicans have the chance to retake control of the House in 2022 and end the investigation into the attack.

Mr. Trump last month filed suit against the National Archives seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 riot. In a 26-page complaint, a lawyer for Mr. Trump said the Constitution gave the former president the right to demand their confidentiality even though he was no longer in office  and even though Mr. Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over them.

The outcome of the lawsuit will carry consequences for how much the panel can uncover about Mr. Trumps role in the riot, pose thorny questions for the Biden administration and potentially forge new precedents about presidential prerogatives and the separation of powers.

Elizabeth J. Shapiro, a Justice Department lawyer representing the National Archives, noted that the case was a rare instance in which a court had been asked to settle a dispute between a former president and current president over which presidential documents can be made public. But given the subject matter, Ms. Shapiro argued, Mr. Trump clearly had the weaker claim.
Ketamine on Demand

Ketamines success in early trials has surprised and excited researchers who study mood disorders, a field where drugs like Prozac and Zoloft, paired with talk therapy, have been the main treatment options for decades. But, as with Mr. Gathman, interventions dont work for up to 30 percent of those suffering from major depression.

Moreover, it can take up to two months to determine whether these interventions have any effect at all  a dangerously long time for those suffering from suicidal thoughts and other mood disorders, said Dr. Joshua Berman, the medical director for interventional psychiatry at Columbia University, who helps lead the development of the departments ketamine program. Ketamines effects, on the other hand, are often immediate.

Though relatively new in the field of mental health, ketamine has been used in hospitals and on battlefields as an anesthetic since 1970. While the drugs clearance by the Food and Drug Administration does not yet extend most ketamine treatments to mood disorders, any physician can prescribe it off-label to patients whom they believe might benefit  allowing the commercial ketamine business to flourish.

Chris Walden, the co-founder of Ketamine Media, a public relations firm that works with ketamine providers, said that ketamine clinics have grown from a few dozen to many hundreds in the United States but couldnt give exact numbers.

Some of these providers are associated with academic institutions conducting clinical trials. Others operate out of private boutique-like clinics such as Nushama, which was recently opened on Park Avenue in New York City by designer Jay Godfrey.

And some patients skip the clinic entirely. Mindbloom, which launched in late 2018, is a telemedicine platform whose users get home delivery of ketamine lozenges. The company  among the fastest growing of several services enabling at-home ketamine therapy, like My Ketamine Home and TrippSitter  pairs its clients with psychiatric clinicians certified to prescribe drugs, who determine if the drug is appropriate for them. Then other employees, called psychedelic guides, meet with patients virtually before and after sessions to process the experience. There are no formal requirements to becoming a psychedelic guide, but most have completed training in fields such as mental health, life coaching or crisis management.

Dylan Beynon, Mindblooms chief executive and founder, said over 80 percent of his clients suffering from depression or anxiety experience significant improvement after four sessions  and that just 5 percent of patients experience side effects, which were mostly mild.
Its a Tigrayan house, said a woman standing in a crowd of onlookers gathered across the street. Other residents confirmed that the family were ethnic Tigrayans and said they had no known ties to Tigrayan politics.

Hours later, in the same neighborhood, women gathered at the gate of a local youth center, bringing food and water to male relatives who had been detained in recent days and were being held inside.

One woman said her husband, a trader who sells traditional cloth, had been arrested at his store two days earlier. The authorities seemed to be pursuing every Tigrayan, especially the men, she said, declining to give her name to avoid being arrested herself.

Security was tight outside the citys Bole International Airport, where police officers and soldiers closely inspected vehicles and travelers entering and leaving the airport, which is the headquarters of Ethiopian Airlines and one of Africas busiest aviation hubs.

It is not just Tigrayans who are being targeted. The Tigrayan fighters have linked up in recent days with the Oromo Liberation Army, a group fighting for greater rights for the ethnic Oromos who make up about 35 percent of Ethiopias 110 million people. Tigrayans make up about 6 percent.

The O.L.A. has seized control of several towns on a major highway leading to the capital, and holds patches of the surrounding countryside, Western officials said. The government has declared the group a terrorist entity and jailed many suspected supporters. The O.L.A. claimed that 400 Ethiopian soldiers in the city had defected to their side. The claim could not be independently verified.
JOHANNESBURG  The African National Congress, South Africas once-vaunted liberation movement, suffered its worst election showing since coming to power in 1994, according to the results of municipal elections released Thursday.

Facing widespread anger over corruption and collapsing services, the party won less than 50 percent of the vote nationally on Monday, the first time in its history that it has failed to cross that threshold.

Voters went to the polls on Monday to choose councilors and mayors to govern towns and cities, but they used the opportunity to vent their grievances over national issues, including record unemployment and anger over the handling of Covid. The result was a resounding rebuke for the A.N.C., particularly in urban areas. Significantly low voter turnout was a further indictment of the A.N.C. and of the main opposition parties, with voters choosing smaller, identity-driven parties.

After municipal setbacks in 2016, A.N.C. leaders promised to learn from our mistakes, and they staked their hopes this year on polling that found President Cyril Ramaphosa with a higher approval rating than that of his party.
Hundreds of thousands of people traveled around India this week as the country prepared to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights and one of the countrys major holidays, on Thursday.

Bazaars and malls across India filled up with shoppers as India reported its lowest number of daily coronavirus cases since February. The crowded scenes stood in stark contrast to last years festival, which was observed without the usual fanfare of prayers and fireworks. A year ago, the authorities deployed police officers in residential areas to restrict large gatherings and group prayers.

This year, the festival seemed to be back in full swing, prompting the mass movement of Indian migrant workers from cities and towns back to their village homes to celebrate with family.

More than 680,000 people flew from airports across the country on Monday in the lead-up to the festival, according to government officials. The surge in traffic was an apparent sign of confidence in the countrys inoculation campaign, which has successfully administered more than a billion doses of coronavirus vaccines, with 54 percent of the population having received at least one shot and 25 percent fully inoculated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.
MELBOURNE, Australia  The Australian police charged a man on Thursday over the abduction of a 4-year-old girl who was found after an 18-day search that had transfixed Australia since her disappearance from her familys tent in the dead of night.

The Western Australia police said in a statement that the 36-year-old man, whom local media identified as Terence Darrell Kelly, had been charged with various offenses relating to the abduction of 4-year-old Cleo Smith.

One of the charges is forcibly taking a child under 16, said the statement, which did not detail what or how many other charges were laid.
OTTAWA  The Canadian military will turn over investigations and prosecutions of sexual misconduct cases to the civilian police and courts, the countrys new defense minister announced Thursday.

The announcement came from Anita Anand, a former law professor whose appointment as defense minister last week was widely seen as part of an attempt by the government to get a handle on the sexual assault problem in the military. It grew out of a recommendation from a retired Supreme Court of Canada justice who was asked in April to review the militarys handling of sexual assault and sexual misconduct cases.

The move came in the midst of a crisis for Canadas armed forces.

Since February, 11 of its leaders in positions up to the highest rank have come under investigation, been pushed out of their roles or been forced to retire. Other senior military officers have been put on leave over their mishandling of sexual misconduct investigations.

Current and former servicewomen have spoken out about what they describe as a military culture that both enables and covers up inappropriate sexual behavior by senior officers.
The French have been open in saying, You cant have the same benefits if youre not in the E.U, Mr. Ricketts said. One of their biggest grievances is that the Johnson government wants to have its cake and eat it, too.

At the same time, Brexit has sundered the bonds that held Britain and France together as partners in the European project, injecting a more competitive element into their relationship and increasing the temptation to use each other as a foil.

Sylvie Bermann, who recently served as Frances ambassador to Britain, likened Brexit to a divorce and said it was only natural that it would take time for the wounds to heal. Each side is nursing those wounds in different ways.

Mr. Johnson, she said, has made France a scapegoat for problems that were aggravated by Brexit, like the shortage of truck drivers that has caused filling stations to run out of gas. Mr. Macron, who was stung when Australia jilted France for the submarine alliance with Britain and the United States, wants to show that France is stronger inside the European Union than it would be alone, as Britain is.

We didnt ask them to become a third country, Ms. Bermann said. We would have liked them to stay. They made their choice, and we respect it. But now they cant enjoy both the advantages and a total freedom.
The region is reporting an average of more than 30 new cases a day for every 100,000 people, a rate that has almost doubled since mid-September. Eighteen of the 20 countries around the world that are reporting the most new cases per day, relative to their populations, are in Europe or the part of Central Asia that the W.H.O. includes in its European region.

New reported cases reached a record high in Germany on Wednesday, when the nation recorded 33,949 new infections in a 24-hour period. Only 67 percent of the country is fully vaccinated.

Covid-related deaths in Europe are also increasing.

If we stay on this trajectory, we could see another half a million Covid-19 deaths in Europe and Central Asia by the first of February next year, Dr. Kluge said.

The surge in infections, driven by the Delta variant, is affecting all age groups, Dr. Kluge said, but it has been deadliest among older people. Three-quarters of those who died last week were over 65, and most were not fully vaccinated, he said.

Hospitals are being flooded with Covid patients across the region; in 43 of the 53 countries, hospitals are likely to face high to extreme stress in the next three months, the W.H.O. projected.
TRIESTE, Italy  When Italy introduced Europes toughest and most expansive health pass last month, the northeastern port city of Trieste became the epicenter of protests as vaccine skeptics marched alongside dock workers who shouted that the measure infringed on their right to work.

Now, two weeks later, Trieste has emerged as a center of something else: a Covid outbreak linked directly to those protests that threatens to burden intensive care units and mar the reputation of a city that was once a cosmopolitan hub of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today has vast ambitions to revitalize its port.

The situation in Trieste is particularly worrisome, said Dr. Fabio Barbone, the epidemiologist leading the effort against the spread of Covid in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, where Trieste is the capital.

The regions president, Massimiliano Fedriga, was more blunt, saying, It is the moment to say with clarity: Enough idiocy.
Since taking power in 2019, Britains prime minister, Boris Johnson, has often reversed course, changing his mind on everything from lockdown rules and school examinations to free meals for children and coronavirus restrictions at Christmas.

This week, Mr. Johnson finds himself retreating again.

On Wednesday he intervened to stop the suspension from Parliament of Owen Paterson, a fellow Conservative Party lawmaker found to have broken rules on political lobbying. The government also pushed through contentious plans to change the system that investigated Mr. Paterson.

By Thursday that effort had collapsed and Mr. Paterson resigned following a backlash from politicians, news organizations and even the former head of the intelligences services.

The furor risks denting Mr. Johnsons authority, but it has also raised fresh questions about the ethical stance of a prime minister whose Conservative Party has faced a string of other allegations of influence-peddling, conflict of interest and profiteering.
Make sure you have a good internet connection when you take the test because you will have to connect to a telehealth service that verifies your identity and provides supervision during testing.

The F.D.A. has authorized eight home-tests, but not all of them provide digital supervision and prompt results.

The Abbotts BinaxNOW Covid-19 AG Card Home Test usually produces results within 15 minutes and comes with a digital app called NAVICA, which can be helpful for travel as it facilitates easier access to results. Once you receive a negative test result, the app will generate a QR code that is renewed each time you take a new test.

How much does a rapid-self test cost?

A six-pack of the BinaxNow tests costs $150 and can be purchased online at eMed. Packs of two home tests are also available at select pharmacies for around $25.

The Ellume home test, another popular option for international travel, costs between $30 and $40. The home-tests are in high demand, so make sure to order them well in advance of your trip.

Will I need a digital vaccine certificate to travel?

While most countries accept the white paper C.D.C. vaccination card, some places, like the Cayman Islands, require digital certificates and impose quarantine restrictions on people who are unable to provide them.

There are several digital health passes in the United States that are convenient for travel, but make sure you check country-specific requirements before your departure. The Smart Health Card is a verifiable digital proof of vaccination that generates a QR code, which only shows the individuals name, date of birth and vaccination status. It can be obtained in states using the Smart health system or through the retail pharmacy program.
Can employers mandate Covid vaccines before Jan. 4?

Yes, employers may create their own vaccine rules before OSHAs deadline.

Do workers who recently tested positive for the coronavirus still have to comply?

OSHA has determined that it would not be feasible for employers to permit exemptions based on prior infection.

Who can claim an exemption? Who will determine those exceptions?

Employers are required to give two kinds of exemptions to the vaccine mandates: medical and religious. Exemptions for people with certain medical conditions are protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Many employers require people to present a doctors note to qualify for this exemption. Exemptions for people with sincerely held religious beliefs are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. So far, no major religion has barred its members from taking the coronavirus vaccine. People with exemptions from being vaccinated still must mask and be tested regularly.

What constitutes a sincerely held religious belief? Are there tests or criteria that can be applied?

It is up to employers to determine who qualifies for a religious exemption from getting the vaccine on a case-by-case basis. Typically this involves an inquiry about whether an employees stated belief is consistent with their behaviors.

Will employees be given time off to get vaccinated or to recover from side effects?

Employers have to provide paid time off for their workers to get vaccinated, up to four hours, as well as paid sick leave for them to recover from side effects. They are required to provide this leave starting Dec. 5.

Do employers have to provide their workers with paid time to get booster shots?

Booster shots are not currently required under OSHAs rule, so employers most likely dont have to provide paid time for workers to get them.

Can employers fire workers who dont comply?

The religious and medical exemptions will come into play here  but when it comes to people who do not have exemptions, employers are generally free to discipline people who dont follow their rules. They may face pushback, though, under collective bargaining agreements.

If workers are fired for not following the rules, are they eligible for unemployment?

A workers eligibility for unemployment is determined on a state-by-state basis. Typically, people qualify for unemployment if theyre terminated through no fault of their own, but each state has its own standards and what that means is up to highly varying interpretations.
A 26-year-old man in Nigeria was recently arrested by the Islamic police known as Hisbah for trying to sell himself to anyone who would pay the 20 million Nigerian nara ($49,000) fee.

Aliyu Na Idris first made national news headlines at the end of October, when he was spotted walking through the city of Karo with a cardboard sign that read this man is for sale, 20,000,000N. At the time, the 26-year-old man, who works as a tailor, told news reporters that he had first tried selling himself in the city of Kaduna, but couldnt find a buyer, so he moved to Karo. He also explained that he had resorted to selling himself because of what he called poverty, claiming that he planned to give most of the money to his parents and keep the rest for daily expenses.

Photo: Aliyu Na Idris/Facebook

The decision to sell myself was due to poverty, Aliyu said. I plan to give my parents 10 million naira when I eventually get a buyer, pay five million naira as tax to the government, give two million naira to anyone who helped me get a buyer, and keep the remaining for daily upkeep.

Its unclear what selling himself actually entailed, but the 26-year-old said he had found a few interested parties, only they didnt agree to his requested 20-million-nara fee. Sadly, he couldnt go through with his plan, as after news of his intentions went viral on social media he was picked up by a Hisbah brigade for breaking the rules of Islam.

Yes we arrested him on Tuesday and he spent the night with us. What he did is forbidden in Islam, you cant try to sell yourself no matter your condition or situation, Hisbah Commander, Harun Ibn Sina, told the BBC.

Aliyu Na Idris arrest sparked outrage online, with many people calling for his release, claiming that his apprehension by the Islamic police was unnecessary and that some counseling would have been much more appropriate.

The young tailor was released the day after he was arrested and told local reporters that he was not mistreated in any way by the Hisbah, and that the Islamic police only preached the word of God and gave him advice.
Prince Charles

Though the UN Climate Change Conference may ultimately produce more hot air verbiage than solid plans to cool global warming, the confab provided a valuable platform for PR people to polish the green credentials of their clients.

Prince Charles used the Glasgow conference to announce the first winners of the Terra Carta Seal.

Its the royal seal of approval awarded to companies that commit to taking actions to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

In announcing the first 45 winners, The future King of England touted the PR benefits of his award. The Terra Carta Seal allows consumers to see which companies are taking genuine actions in the right direction, said the Prince of Wales.

IBM, LOreal, Bank of America, Xerox and Unilever were among companies to bag the award.

Terra Carta derives its name from the Magna Carta, which inspired the belief that people have fundamental rights and liberties.

It aims to reunite people and the planet by giving fundamental rights and value to Mother Earth.

The PR community says thanks, Chuck. If the king gig doesn't work out, give Hill+Knowlton a call.

News flash: Newsmax says it strongly believes and has reported that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.

It does not believe that the vaccines contain any toxic materials or tracking markers and has never reported such false claims.

The network issued that statement following a Nov. 1 tweet from its Washington correspondent, Emerald Robinson, that the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called Luciferase so you can be tracked.

Luciferase is an enzyme found in fireflies. I remember catching fireflies as a kid. Some of my friends put the fireflies in glass jars with airholes punched into the lid. Is that the fate of those who got the COVID-19 shot, Emerald?

Eliot Jacobson, Newsmax EVP and chief content officer, shot down that marker nonsense via a Nov. 2 statement to Mediaite. We have seen no evidence to suggest Luciferase or Luciferin are present in any vaccines or that they are used as any sort of bioluminescent marker.

Robinsons tweet has been deleted. But she has many other gems on Twitter to keep her more than 437K followers happy.

Here's one from Halloween:

The Biden Administration is not inept or incompetent or making lots of mistakes because its real goal is to demoralize the nation.

Thats why biological men dressed as women who flood nursing homes with COVID patients are chosen as 4-star admirals.

That's a doozy.

Sorry, Donald. Following Glenn Youngkins whipping of Democratic retread Terry McAuliffe, the Republican Study Committee issued a roadmap for GOP candidates based on lessons learned from the Virginia race.

Though Donald Trump endorsed Youngkin, the candidate maintained his distance from the former president.

Likewise the GOP memo does not mention Trump.

Although, it teasingly says a conservative agenda trumps Bidens agenda among swing voters.

The Democrats' best hope of retaining the White House may depend on their secret weapon: The Donald running for his old office.
The role of the ESB in the "exacerbating" the energy crisis was questioned by Deputy Barry Cowen in the Dail this week.

Deputy Cowen also asked if a cosy arrangement between national grid operator EirGrid and the energy supplier is giving the ESB an unfair advantage over other firms.

Deputy Cowen claimed EirGrid is running a tender process for energy supply which has a strong bias towards an ESB power station in Dublin.

Speaking in the Dail, he said: I have learned that the technical criteria and timelines swing very much in favour of the ESB.

"One example is the six-month delivery timeframe between the contract's award in March 2022 and the commencement of service provision by quarter three of that year.

Mr Cowen also claimed EirGrid paid a 10m down payment to the ESB on a 110m contract which subsequently did not transpire.

That is highly unusual, I would say, he added. It was sanctioned and paid in the midst of a process that could not subsequently be defended in the courts and was, therefore, withdrawn.

He asked Green Party Minister Ossian Smyth to respectfully find out if this money has been repaid.

He also raised concern over ESB withdrawing significant generation capacity this year which led to the company facing fines of 4m.

"Last December, it shut down the West Offaly power station and the Lough Ree power station in the midlands, removing 228 MW of generation capacity," Deputy Cowen said.

Will the Minister of State please explain why the ESB, a semi-state, is being rewarded handsomely despite exacerbating the supply shortage? Could the ESB have orchestrated this crisis by exercising its market power knowing that it would be rewarded, as I have outlined? he added.
One of the most inspiring responses to the Lions Clubs Hooves 4 Hospice fundraising appeal came from the pupils and teachers of a small primary school in County Offaly. St. Kieran's NS, Broughall is located on the outskirts of Kilcormac.

Pupils benefit massively from the low pupil-teacher ratio which exists in the school. Three full-time teachers afford the pupils the opportunity to engage with all elements of the curriculum as well as engaging in various different exciting initiatives and projects.

School Principal, Helena Dunne, explained why the school decided to participate in the Hooves 4 Hospice project. Broughall is a rural community which has lost many of its loved ones to cancer. We felt that the efforts to build a hospice facility in the midlands region is something our school wanted to add our support to. Hooves 4 Hospice' was the perfect opportunity for us to do something which would honour the memories of all those people in Broughall who lost their lives from cancer as well as being able to help in a practical way to put a much-needed hospice facility in the midlands region.

In March 2019 we were in the process of organising a family-sponsored walk-in Boora. We thought that this was a nice way to bring people from the school community and the local community together and raise money for a good cause, at the same time. When the restrictions came in, our fundraiser was put aside but not forgotten. When we returned to school in September, we did have to scale back our fundraiser a bit, so we held a fancy dress, farmer sponsored, walk within the school grounds. We raised enough money from the walk to purchase a calf and an extra 1244 euros which we were in a position to donate directly to the Hooves 4 Hospice fundraiser. Michael Carroll, the Chairperson of our Board of Management, is a beef farmer and he offered to host and rear the calf we bought on his farm.

The fundraiser was brought to a very successful conclusion at Birr Mart recently when the animal, generously reared by Michael Carroll, was sold for 1,030. Teachers and pupils from the school attended the mart and were impressed by the keen interest there was in the animal and the fine price the sale realised. Pat Lalor, Chairperson of the Hooves 4 Hospice project expressed his gratitude and appreciation to the entire Broughall School community for their support of the project. He thanked the school for their very generous 2,274 financial contribution to the Hooves 4 Hospice project.

Ms Dunne said: The whole project has been a hugely positive experience for our pupils, staff and wider school community. We, as a community, have been devastated by the negative effects of cancer, so it was wonderful to be part of a project where we can help people who are affected by this awful illness. Our school is all about providing for our children's future. In the future we want to see a state of the art hospice facility which people from our community can access. To be part of a project which makes this facility a reality was simply a no brainer for us.
Tullamore TradFest have announced their first not-to-miss live event since February 2020.

In terms of live traditional events the TradFest Committee are making their comeback statement with the arrival of Carlos, Sweeney, & McCartin in concert to Fergies Bar on Friday, 12th November next. This powerful trio are famous for their perfect mix of driving rhythms with sublime technical ability.

Featuring Roscommon fiddler Dylan Carlos, flute player Cein Sweeney from Cavan and guitar player John McCartin from Leitrim, all three musicians come from families with deep roots in the traditional music scene. Between them, they also have achieved a fine collection of accolades including All Ireland Senior Fleadh Cheoil winning medals, and Masters in Traditional Irish Music from the Academy of Irish Music and Dance from the University of Limerick. Support on the night will be provided by local fiddle and guitar player Michael Buckley (Ballyboy) and Sean Bourke (Nenagh) on banjo.

Dylan Carlos, in looking forward to the event said Myself and the boys are delighted to be back playing again after a quiet 18 months. We are especially looking forward to playing in Tullamore as we heard great reports from the first Tullamore TradFest in 2019. It is also a town with a great respect and appreciation for traditional music, with the All Ireland Fleadhs in the late 2000s being brilliant events.

Tommy Craven, Chairperson of Tullamore Tradfest indicated that the committee are delighted to be back promoting and supporting live events We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us to date and we look forward to bringing Tullamore alive with music, song, dance and all the fun that goes with it for our next Tullamore TradFest in 2022 which takes place April 8th  10th.

Full Gig Details:

Carlos, Sweeney, McCartin with support by Michael Buckley & Sean Bourke

Date: Friday, November 12

Time: 8pm

Venue: Fergies Bar, Market Square, Tullamore

Tickets: 15 (10 for students & OAP) available via www.tullamoretradfest.com or (087) 993 7373 Please note that current government public health guidelines will be adhered to.

Tullamore TradFest Committee are actively working on Tullamore TradFest 2022 with dates set from April 10  12 (inclusive). We have had hugely positive support from our sponsors and patrons and look forward to building on those relationships to provide and expanded festival weekend early next year.
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Biden administration sues Texas over new voting restrictions

AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  The Biden administration on Thursday sued Texas over new election laws that outlasted a summer of dramatic protests by Democrats, who remain unable in Congress to pass legislation they say is needed to counteract a year of Republicans adding restrictive voting measures nationwide.

The lawsuit does not go after the entirety of a sweeping bill signed in September by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, which already has some of the nation's toughest voting rules. Instead, the challenge filed in a San Antonio federal court targets provisions surrounding mail-in voting requirements and voter assistance, which the Justice Department argues violate federal civil rights protections.

It now puts two of the Texas GOP's biggest conservative victories this year in court against the federal government, as the Justice Department is simultaneously trying to stop a new Texas law that has banned most abortions since September.

Our democracy depends on the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot and to have that ballot counted, Attorney General Merrick Garland said. The Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society.

Georgia's new voting laws also drew a lawsuit this summer from the Biden administration, which is under pressure from the Democratic base to take greater action on voting rights, a top priority for the party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. But time is running out and Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked federal legislation to change election laws, including another attempt Wednesday.

US mandates vaccines or tests for big companies by Jan. 4

Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements are the Biden administrations boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months  or face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.

Analyst who aided Trump-Russia dossier charged with lying

WASHINGTON (AP)  A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was arrested Thursday on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information, among them a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton.

The case against Igor Danchenko is part of special counsel John Durham's ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI's probe into whether Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year's presidential campaign.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought by Durham and the second in a two-month span, is likely to boost complaints from Trump allies that well-connected Democrats worked behind the scenes to advance suspicions about Trump and Russia that contributed to the FBIs election-year investigation.

The case does not undercut investigators findings that the Kremlin aided the Trump campaign  conclusions that were not based on the dossier, which was barely mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller's report. But the indictment does endorse a longstanding concern about the Russia probe: that opposition research the FBI relied on as it surveilled a Trump campaign adviser was marred by unsupported, uncorroborated claims.

The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was financed by Democrats.

Several Ethiopian armed opposition groups to form alliance

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Ethiopias Tigray forces are joining with other armed and opposition groups in an alliance against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to seek a political transition after a year of devastating war, organizers said Thursday evening.

The signing in Washington on Friday includes the Tigray forces that have been fighting Ethiopian and allied forces, as well as the Oromo Liberation Army now fighting alongside the Tigray forces and seven other groups from around the country.

The alliance is forming as U.S. special envoy Jeffrey Feltman is in Ethiopias capital meeting with senior government officials amid calls for an immediate cease-fire and talks to end the war that has killed thousands of people since November 2020.

The new United Front of Ethiopian Federalist Forces seeks to establish a transitional arrangement in Ethiopia so the prime minister can go as soon as possible, organizer Yohanees Abraha, who is with the Tigray group, told The Associated Press. The next step will be, of course, to start meeting and communicating with countries, diplomats and international actors in Ethiopia and abroad.

He said the new alliance is both political and military. It has had no communication with Ethiopias government, he added.

Biden's big bill on brink of House votes, but fights remain

WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrats in the House appear on the verge of advancing President Joe Bidens $1.85 trillion-and-growing domestic policy package alongside a companion $1 trillion infrastructure bill in what would be a dramatic political accomplishment  if they can push it to passage.

The House scrapped votes late Thursday but will be back at it early Friday, and White House officials worked the phones to lock in support for the president's signature proposal. After months of negotiations, House passage of the big bill would be a crucial step, sending to the Senate Biden's ambitious effort to expand health care, child care and other social services for countless Americans and deliver the nation's biggest investment yet to fight climate change.

Alongside the slimmer roads-bridges-and-broadband package, it adds up to Biden's answer to his campaign promise to rebuild the country from the COVID-19 crisis and confront a changing economy.

But they're not there yet.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked furiously into the night at the Capitol Thursday and kept the House late to shore up votes. The party has been here before, another politically messy day like many before that are being blamed for the Democrats' dismal showing in this week's elections. On and off Capitol Hill, party leaders declared it's time for Congress to deliver on Biden's agenda.

Optimism from climate talks: Warming projections down a bit

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  With pledges for a United Nations climate conference, the world may be ever so slightly receding from gloomy scenarios of future global warming, according to two new preliminary scientific analyses Thursday.

The two reports  one by the International Energy Agency and the other by Australian scientists  focused on optimistic scenarios. If all goes right, they said, recent actions will trim two-or three-tenths of a degree Celsius (0.3 to 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit) from projections made in mid-October.

Instead of 2.1 degrees Celsius (3.8 Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, the analyses project warming at 1.8 (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1.9 degrees (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Still, both projections leave the world far from the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial time that is the goal of the 2015 Paris climate deal. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).

The U.N. planned an announcement for Friday afternoon at climate negotiations about how much actions announced so far at Glasgow helped to bend the curve.

2 dead in dramatic shootout near upscale Mexican resorts

MEXICO CITY (AP)  A commando of drug gang gunmen on Thursday stormed ashore at a beach on Mexico's resort-studded Caribbean coast in front of luxury hotels and executed two drug dealers from a rival gang.

The dramatic shooting attack sent tourists scrambling for cover at the resort of Puerto Morelos, just south of Cancun.

The two suspected drug dealers killed Thursday had apparently arrived at the beach in front of the Azul Beach Resort and the Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun earlier in the day, claiming it was now their territory.

About 15 people arrived on the beach to assassinate two men who had showed up saying they were the new dealers in the area, the head prosecutor of Quintana Roo state, Oscar Montes de Oca, told the Radio Formula station.

Montes de Ocas office said earlier there was a clash between rival groups of drug dealers on a beach near the hotels. Several cartels are fighting for the areas lucrative retail drug trade, including the Jalisco cartel and the a gang allied with the Gulf cartel.

EXPLAINER: Murphy wins after mail ballots extend lead

WASHINGTON (AP)  New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was declared the winner in his reelection campaign Wednesday after results from mail ballots and Democratic-leaning counties helped the Democrat extend his lead over Republican Jack Ciattarelli.

The Associated Press declared Murphy the winner Wednesday evening after a new batch of votes from Republican-leaning Monmouth County increased Murphys lead and closed the door to a Ciattarelli comeback.

Ciattarelli won Monmouth by nearly 20 percentage points. However, in keeping with a statewide trend, Murphy carried the mail vote in Monmouth by about 40 percentage points.

Democrats across the country have dominated mail-in voting since the 2020 presidential election, after former President Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, that they were susceptible to fraud. Since then, Republicans have been much less likely to vote by mail, even in states where they traditionally won the mail vote.

The mail ballots made up a little more than 20% of all votes in New Jersey. Those votes broke in Murphy's favor, even in counties he did not win, such as Monmouth, Gloucester and Cumberland.

Rittenhouse juror dismissal shows risk of bias in big cases

The juror dismissed from Kyle Rittenhouses murder trial apparently was trying to be funny when he cracked to a court security officer about a police officer's shooting of Jacob Blake, the event that set off the protests where Rittenhouse shot three people, two fatally.

Blake, who is Black, was shot by a white officer three months after the murder of George Floyd by a white officer in Minneapolis prompted protests over racial injustice nationwide. When Judge Bruce Schroeder said Thursday that the joke  which the juror didnt want to repeat in open court  showed bias that would seriously undermine the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial, the man objected.

It wasnt anything to do with the case, the juror told Schroeder Thursday. It wasnt anything to do with Kyle.

The moment captured the bias  sometimes explicit, but often implicit or unconscious  that experts say is especially damaging in criminal proceedings. Jurors who may not see their biases as problematic or even realize they exist are asked to weigh witness testimony and ultimately decide a defendants fate. And while the juror in Kenosha, Wisconsin, may have vocalized his beliefs, sharing the joke while being escorted to his car after jury duty, in most cases these biases are difficult or impossible to detect.

Its one of the most significant problems facing the criminal justice system in both state and federal courts, said Mark Bennett, a retired federal and state judge who directs the Institute for Justice Reform & Innovation at Drake University Law School in Iowa.

Scientists find fossil of early hominid in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG (AP)  The fossil remains of an early hominid child have been discovered in a cave in South Africa by a team of international and South African researchers.

The team announced the discovery of a partial skull and teeth of a Homo naledi child who died almost 250,000 years ago when it was approximately four to six years old. The remains were found in a remote part of the cave that suggests the body had been placed there on purpose, in what could be a kind of grave, said the announcement Thursday.

The placement adds mystery as to how these many remains came to be in these remote, dark spaces of the Rising Star Cave system, said Professor Guy Berger of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who led the team and made the announcement Thursday.

Homo naledi is a species of archaic human found in the Rising Star Cave, Cradle of Humankind, 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. Homo naledi dates to the Middle Pleistocene era 335,000236,000 years ago. The initial discovery, first publicly announced in 2015, comprises 1,550 specimens, representing 737 different elements, and at least 15 different individuals.

Homo naledi remains one of the most enigmatic ancient human relatives ever discovered, said Berger. It is clearly a primitive species, existing at a time when previously we thought only modern humans were in Africa. Its very presence at that time and in this place complexifies our understanding of who did what first concerning the invention of complex stone tool cultures and even ritual practices.
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Infrastructure monitoring is gaining momentum, but not all companies are ready with confidence to declare which part of their infrastructure will work effectively. Are you sure your IT environment is prepared to meet unusual behavior or mass traffic? Do you think you are fully aware of your service's downtimes? Israel, Tel Aviv - November 2021 - InsightCat - delivering infrastructure monitoring and downtime prevention to get real-time insights into any 
Oskaloosa, IA (52577)

Today

Some clouds early. Mostly sunny skies along with windy conditions this afternoon. High 53F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 24F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
Ottumwa, IA (52501)

Today

Partly cloudy early. Mostly sunny with gusty winds developing this afternoon. High 52F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 23F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
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A member of the white nationalist group The Base pleaded no contest Nov. 4 to charges he was facing in Tuscola County.

Thomas Francis Denton, 32, of Bad Axe stood in Tuscola County Circuit Court before visiting retired Sanilac County Judge Donald Teeple and pleaded no contest to two felony charges. The felonies stem from charges issued by Tuscola County Prosector Mark Reene in cooperation with Michigan Assistant Attorney General Sonita Doddamani.

The state alleged Denton, along with 19-year-old Tristan Webb and self-proclaimed leader of The Base Justen Watkins, broke into two former Michigan Department of Corrections sites  MDOC Camp Tuscola Annex and MDOC Tuscola Residential ReEntry Program  both of which were vacant in the city of Caro on Oct. 3, 2020 when the events reportedly occurred.

The three were each charged with larceny of a building, a four-year felony; gang membership, a 20-year felony; conspiracy to commit teaching use of firearms for a civil disorder, four-year felony; and felony firearm, two-year felony.

Denton pleaded no contest to the charges of conspiracy to commit teaching use of firearms for a civil disorder and the felony firearm charge for committing larceny while in possession of a weapon. As a result of his plea, prosecution dismissed his charges of larceny of a building and gang membership.

Teeple asked Denton's defense attorney what the basis of his no contest plea was, and his attorney cited potential civil liability if a guilty plea was entered.

After reviewing the case file, which included case information regarding The Base, Teeple agreed there was enough basis to find Denton guilty for the charges he pleaded no contest to.

Teeple then revoked bond at the request of Reene, remanding Denton to jail. Sentencing for Denton should occur in approximately six weeks. The charges Denton faces could have a maximum of four years in prison. However, Reene said preliminary sentencing guidelines score Denton to a maximum of nine months on his four-year felony. Should that happen, Denton would be required to serve a flat two-year sentence on his felony firearm charge.

The cases against Webb and Watkins are ongoing. However, recent comments during Washtenaw County proceedings in Watkins' case suggest plea agreements are on the horizon.

Watkins is currently being held without bond in Washtenaw County Jail on charges in connection to a December 2019 incident in Dexter.

Watkins and his co-defendant Alfred Gorman were charged in Washtenaw County last year by Attorney General Dana Nessel on that incident.

Watkins was arrested following the execution of an arrest warrant Oct. 29, 2020 at a Sullivan Road address where he was living. The home was owned at the time by Eric Webb, Tristan's father.

The Tuscola County charges were the first brought against Denton and Tristan Webb. Tristan Webb spoke to the Tribune last November about how he became involved in The Base and how his family's heritage property became a location for the group.

Tristan Webb said he wanted to build a community of like-minded individuals, settle down and get married, so he asked to move to the home in the spring of 2019 with Eric Webb's ex-wife. Tristan Webb moved away from Bad Axe shortly before Watkins' original arrest.

During Watkins' original arrest, authorities reportedly found tactical gear, surveillance equipment, and various items adorned with Nazi symbolism.

The original charges alleged Watkins, Denton and Webb broke into the MDOC properties and stole state-issued clothing from one of the locations. It is also alleged the sites were assessed as potential future training grounds for hate camps, which is what the group named its paramilitary firearms training exercises.

According to Nessel and other agencies throughout the country, The Base is a white supremacy organization that openly advocates for violence and criminal acts against the U.S., and purports to be training for a race war to establish white ethnonationalist rule in areas of the U.S., including Michigans Upper Peninsula. The group also traffics in Nazi ideology and extreme anti-Semitism.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  The leaders of four Central European nations met Thursday in Hungarys capital, where they urged visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in to consider investing in a rapid train line connecting Budapest and Poland's capital, Warsaw.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was the host of the prime ministers of the Visegrad Group of four Central European nations, said at a joint news briefing that the potential rail investment was the largest common enterprise of the V4 countries"  a pact which includes Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland.

South Korea has developed technology in this field, and a south to north travel corridor in Europe cannot be achieved if the (V4) capitals are not connected with a rapid train, Orban said, adding that the rail investment aims to reduce travel time on the 800-kilometer (500-mile) line from 12 hours to five.

We really hope that South Korean industry will be interested in this development, Orban said.

The summit of V4 leaders came as Moon neared the end of a nine-day tour of Europe, where he earlier attended the Group of 20 summit in Rome and U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.

At the media briefing in Budapest, each of the leaders emphasized growing bilateral trade relations between South Korea and the V4, which Orban said had increased 40% in the last five years and reached a record of $20 billion last year.

Moon called the V4 a newly emerging manufacturing hub in Europe, and noted that the group is the second-largest trading partner and largest investment destination for South Korea in the European Union.

The manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles is the main driver of our bilateral cooperation that is growing stronger, Moon said, adding that South Korea would take a leading role in the development of transport, energy and infrastructure in the V4 countries.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who was also present at the summit, said that South Korea should look at the V4 as the most important partner in the EU.

More than 30% of total South Korean exports to the EU end up in the V4 countries, Morawiecki noted, adding that "we are open economies and we expect our partners to be open as well.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis urged South Korea to bid on a project to renew a nuclear power plant in Dukovany, Czech Republic, saying that the East Asian nation has excellent technology and that the two countries had already conducted quite intensive talks.

Prime Minister Eduard Heger of Slovakia said that the V4 aims to develop further cooperation with South Korea in the battle against COVID-19, including the sharing of testing equipment, vaccines, ventilators and other medical devices.
Northwood University is bringing Swedish author, lecturer and documentary filmmaker Johan Norberg to campus next week for an enlightening discussion, "Corporate Welfare: Where's the Outrage?"

Norberg, the executive editor for Free To Choose Network, and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11 in Northwood's Griswold Lecture Hall. Northwood welcomes all those who would like to attend this free event.

Norberg will personally introduce his documentary "Corporate Welfare: Where's the Outrage?" This impactful video examines topics ranging from Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and big oil subsidies to government policies and tax breaks for big businesses. After the program, Norberg will also entertain questions from the audience.

"Many government programs begin with good intentions, but they result in unintended consequences," stated Norberg. "From what I've observed, it's better to let the economy evolve in its natural way, rather than rely on government intervention."

The event is sponsored by Northwood University's McNair Center for the Advancement of Free-Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, a premier think-tank generating information focused on the study, advocacy, and expansion of the market process and the creation and cultivation of entrepreneurs.

Northwood economics professor Dale Matcheck will introduce Norberg and serve as moderator.

"Our students will benefit from the ability to interact with and learn from a free-market thought-leader of Mr. Norberg's caliber. His talk should prove to be thought-provoking and enlightening. Mr. Norberg gets beyond the surface on policy issues to the fundamental issues at hand. It's a must-attend event for anyone interested in what's going on with welfare at the corporate level," stated Matcheck.

Norberg has been a writer and host of nearly a dozen documentaries for public television through Free To Choose Network, including "Free or Equal?"; "Economic Freedom in Action"; "Power to the People"; "The Real Adam Smith"; "Sweden: Lessons for America?"; and "Corporate Welfare: Where's the Outrage?" For two years, Norberg concurrently hosted a weekly online series, "Dead Wrong," which cleverly dispelled commonly heard statements, myths, and opinions about free-market principles. He is currently developing a new online series, launching soon.

He has written books on a broad range of topics, including global economics and popular science. His book, In Defense of Global Capitalism, has been published in more than 25 countries. "Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future" was called "a blast of good sense" by The Economist, and a "book of the year" in The Guardian, The Economist, and The Observer.

Norberg has received several awards for his work, including the Distinguished Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award from the Atlas Foundation, the Walter Judd Freedom Award, the Julian Simon Memorial Award, and the gold medal from the German Hayek Stiftung, that year shared with Margaret Thatcher. He received his M. A. in the history of ideas from the University of Stockholm.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Andrew Mullin.

Tuesday, Nov. 2:

11:12 p.m.  Officers responded to someone receiving harassing communications on Fournie Street.

9:06 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Greendale Township residence for a disorderly 16-year-old Greendale Township male. The male reportedly was stabbing his phone with a knife and threatening his foster mother, a 73-year-old Greendale Township female. Deputies arrived on scene and interviewed both parties and witnesses. The 16-year-old juvenile was placed in custody and transported to the Midland County Juvenile Care Center without incident.

8:38 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Larkin Township residence for a harassment complaint. The deputies contacted a 54-year-old Larkin Township female who advised her ex-boyfriend, a 58-year-old Midland male, was persistently contacting her. The deputies advised the female to block the male on all social media platforms and block his number. The female was also advised to seek a personal protection order at the courthouse. The male was contacted by the deputies and told him to leave the female alone.

8:45 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of East Airport and Stark roads.

6:21 p.m.  Officers responded to a suicide attempt on Edgewood Street.

5:23 p.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash in the area of East Wackerly Street and Whiffletree Lane.

5:31 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Larkin Township residence regarding an alleged domestic assault. A 63-year-old male assaulted his 61-year-old wife during an argument. The male was subsequently arrested for domestic assault and lodged at the Midland County Jail. This report will be sent to the Midland County Prosecutors Office.

12:23 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash on Airport Road.

12:15 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of East Buttles and George streets.

3:45 a.m.  Officers responded to an obstruction of justice and a conditional bond violation on Bay City Road.

12:54 a.m.  Deputies responded to a Jerome Township location for a 36-year-old Jerome Township male who advised that he woke up and he believed he heard gun shots in the area. Deputies checked the area and did not locate nor hear any gun shots.
MILAN (AP)  A rescue ship carrying nearly 400 migrants picked up another 400 people from a two-tier wooden boat that had started to sink overnight in the central Mediterranean Sea, a German charity that operates the ship said Thursday.

The nongovernmental organization Sea-Eye said a distress call from the crowded boat originated in Malta's search and rescue area, and that Maltese authorities failed to respond. The island nation's search and rescue area covers a broad swath of the central Mediterranean, including the waters surrounding Italys southernmost island of Lampedusa and part of the corridor between Libya and Sicily.

Seeing that no other help was available to people in acute danger, the rescue ship Sea-Eye 4 traveled for about six hours to reach the rickety boat, which had a leak and was taking on water, the Germany charity said. Another ship, Rise Up, also responded but did not take on any migrants.

Several people were in the water without life jackets and had to be rescued directly from the sea, said Sea-Eye, which operates the rescue ship along with the NGO German Doctors. It said one person had to be resuscitated while a lifeboat.

Sea-Eye 4 was en route Thursday to Lampedusa, the closest safe port, although the charity said it still had not received confirmation from Italy's rescue coordination center in Rome that the vessel would be permitted to dock

A state of emergency is now in effect on the Sea-Eye 4, Sea-Eye Chairman Gorden Isler said. Any delay by the authorities endangers the health and lives of the rescued people and our crew.

He accused Malta of shirking its duty and ignoring distress calls.

Separately, the Italian coast guard said it rescued nearly 200 migrants in two separate operations off Calabria, the southern toe of Italy's mainland, on Wednesday night.

The coast guard said a sailboat with about 74 migrants, including 15 children, on board ran into difficulty in shallow water. Elsewhere, coast guard personnel rescued about 120 passengers from a fishing boat that was in distress at sea in bad conditions.

Dr. Christine Winkelmann, a German Doctors board member, said rescue crews operating in the dangerous central Mediterranean Sea migration route between North Africa and Southern Europe are reaching the edge of their capacities.

Migrant arrivals in Italy are up dramatically in 2021 compared to the previous two years but still far below the highs of 120,000-180,000 recorded during 2014-2017.

So far this year, nearly 54,000 migrants have arrived in Italy, up from more than 29,000 last year and under 10,000 in 2019, according to Interior Ministry officials. More than a quarter are from Tunisia, which has a pact to accept those sent back from Italy, while many more arrive from Libya.

While most migrants brought to Sicily or its tiny islands after rescue in the central Mediterranean started out on boats launched from northern Africa, sailboats and other vessels carrying migrants have made it to offshore the Italian mainland after sailing from Turkey.

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Frances D'Emilio contributed reporting from Rome.

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Follow AP's migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
A former security guard was sentenced to at least 50 years in prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to fatally stabbing a Timberland marketing director at the outerwear company's New Hampshire headquarters last year.

Eight family members of Catherine Cassie" Heppner told the court how much they have missed her since her death on Feb. 9, 2020.

I know Ill never fully understand the pain Ive caused, Robert Pavao, 22, said in a written statement that was read in court by his lawyer as he sat shackled with his head lowered.

I'm sorry from all my soul taking away one of your loved ones," Pavao's statement said. I can't imagine losing a sister, a mother, or a wife ... I hope one day I can be forgiven for what I've done."

Heppner, 46, had worked for Timberland for over 13 years and was considered a high performing talent with the potential to lead the company's global marketing operation in the future," according to a statement from a vice president of human resources.

Heppner had gone into the office on a Sunday afternoon to retrieve some product samples and finish up a presentation for a planned business trip to Dallas the next day. She needed access to a storage closet, but it was locked. Pavao, who was working that day, had the key.

Security camera footage shows both Heppner and Pavao going into the closet, and that Pavao closes the door at one point. After a half hour, Pavao is seen leaving the closet. Prosecutors said he was covered in blood. He called his mother and sister, said he had blacked out, and they told him to call 911.

Pavao, formerly of Berwick, Maine, originally was charged with both first- and second-degree murder and had pleaded not guilty to killing Heppner at the Stratham-based company.

He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Wednesday as part of a negotiated plea deal with prosecutors. The terms called for a prison sentence of 55 years to life, with five years of the sentence deferred for 20 years on conditions. A first-degree conviction would have called for a life sentence without the chance for parole.

A lawsuit filed in federal court against Securitas by Michael Cormier, Heppners husband, says that the company negligently hired Pavao, despite alleged red flags about his psychological state. It said he allegedly used marijuana and psychedelic drugs at work, and allegedly had mental breakdowns at work that went unreported by a supervisor.

In its response, Securitas said it bears no responsibility for Heppners death. Securitas said it didnt cut any corners in hiring Pavao, and that it didnt receive any reports concerning him and the alleged drug use. Securitas also said no employee reported any troubling information about Pavao.

Nothing at Wednesdays hearing was discussed about Pavaos state of mind at the time. Much of the hearing was devoted to family members who wrote and spoke of Heppner's infectious laugh, her work ethic and her kindness.

I feel sad that I will not be able to see Mom again," Heppner's 10-year-old son, Jack, said in a statement read by a family member. I can no longer ski with Mom, which is something that we did together since I was barely walking. I can no longer go to the lake with Mom. I miss the days hiking at Sunday River with Mom," a ski resort in Newry, Maine.

When asked what he'd like to see happen to the person who took his mom's life, Jack wrote, I think he should be in jail for the rest of his life so he cannot hurt anyone else."

Rockingham County Superior Court Judge Daniel St. Hilaire called what happened a senseless and brutal act," and said to Pavao, I don't know why you did what you did. Nobody will ever know."

He said Heppner's family came to court to express their remorse, anger, and hurt.

I want you to keep their words in mind for the rest of your life," he said.
A Midland County Commissioner has reached out to the Midland Daily News to clarify her comments made during Tuesday's board meeting in the County Services building.

At the Tuesday meeting, the commissioners' agenda included a regularly scheduled meeting to discuss the 2022 budget. But when four members of the community presented various COVID-19 concerns before the commissioners during the public comment period, it prompted two commissioners to make their own comments about the pandemic.

I've heard people in the community, Ive done my own research and we are giving COVID way too much attention, said Commissioner Jeanette Snyder of District 1 on Tuesday.

During the meeting, Snyder added that she spoke with a Midland-based physician about differences between individuals who are vaccinated for COVID-19 and those who are not vaccinated. She said the physician told her there is no difference whether or not people are vaccinated for COVID, "right now."

Now, she would like to clarify her statements. Instead of the above statement, Snyder said she meant the following:

"Just to be clear, I meant to say, 'the physician said there is no difference between the vaccinated & the unvaccinated when it comes to exposure & spreading. This mandate is for the unvaccinated exposure and that is one reason why it is wrong. I did not have my thoughts written down, and when it comes time to speak in that situation, there are added pressures and I ... may (have) misspoke."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 vaccines can reduce the risk of people spreading the virus. In terms of exposure to the virus, the CDC recommends unvaccinated or not fully-vaccinated individuals to begin quarantine immediately after a close-contact exposure and continue to quarantine throughout the isolation period of the person with COVID-19. Whereas the CDC recommends vaccinated individuals to isolate immediately only if they develop symptoms of COVID or test positive.

Vaccinated individuals in close contact to an exposure of COVID-19 should get tested 5-7 days after their first exposure. The CDC said a person with COVID-19 is considered infectious starting 2 days before they develop symptoms, or 2 days before the date of their positive test if they do not have symptoms. And unvaccinated individuals should get tested immediately when they are identified as a close contact, per the CDC.

Commissioner of District 3 Steve Glaser said he agreed with Snyder's remarks during the Tuesday meeting. At the time of publication, he has not reached out to the Daily News regarding his board meeting comments about COVID-19.

District 1 on the Midland County Board of Commissioners' areas of representation include the City of Coleman, the Village of Sanford as well as Edenville, Geneva, Jerome and Warren townships.

District 3 includes Greendale, Homer, Jasper, Lee and Porter townships.

Related Content:

Midland commissioner: 'We're giving COVID way too much attention'
As worker shortages sweep across the countries, one industry has been in a stranglehold for years with low staffing.

Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) for people with disabilities have long been difficult to access for many looking to have help at home, advocates say. This includes many Midland area parents and residents who struggle to access and retain people to help them.

Matthew Ivan is director of communications and fund development at the Disability Network of Mid-Michigan, a federally funded center that provides independent living assistance for people with disabilities. He said HCBS provides services in the home of people with disabilities to help them live independently. These involve direct care workers help people getting ready for work, going to doctor appointments, going shopping, making food, or bathing.

The alternative solution historically is to put people with disabilities in institutions, with advocates since the 1960s and 1970s working towards shift to home-based care, Ivan said.

When you provide these services, so that people can be able to stay in their own home by whatever support services they need They can then be an active member of their community, Ivan said. By being able to maintain their home and if they have help getting out of the community, then they can go to a movie or they can go bowling.

Currently, there is a bill in Congress titled S.2210, or the Better Care Better Jobs Act, that aims to improve HCBS. Ivan said people working and requiring HCBS face multiple obstacles and issues, including those in Midland. He said access is a big problem, with about 800,000 people with disabilities on wait lists for these services. This is causing more people to end up in institutions.

Saginaw resident Sandi Moe has four adult children with disabilities, including two who require regular or constant at-home services. One of them is her Midland son, who has fetal alcohol syndrome (he was fostered by Moe when he was six weeks and later adopted by her) and needs 24-hour staff. Her Hemlock daughter uses a wheelchair due to spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and needs many hours of service a week.

Finding services for them has always been challenging, but it is 10 times more difficult now, Moe said. Normally, her son has nine direct care workers, but lately, they have only three lined up, plus Moe once he returns to his home.

Currently, Moes son is in a Pontiac hospital for behavioral issues and medication changes and will soon be released. If his parents couldnt take care of him, Moe, who is about 70 years old, doesnt know what will happen with him since assisted living facilities will not take him.

I am scared for when I die, Moe said. What is going to happen to our kiddos? I have no idea who's going to find the staff and who is going to care for them. I have no idea and there's no place for them to go.

Midland resident Tracey Hennigar was born with spina bifida, so she uses a wheelchair. She said the pandemic and labor shortage has made it much more difficult to get caretakers because they are pulled from houses if they are exposed due to the pandemic. She also believes unemployment funds kept people from working, preventing people with disabilities accessing the care they need.

All of Moes children need some level of home services, leaving Moe and her husband to fill in the financial holes for the things they cannot pay for. It can be quite a financial burden, she said. For example, Moe and her husband bought and renovated a duplex for three of their children. However, Community Mental Health out of Saginaw would not help pay for the renovations without Moe and her husband taking guardianship of Amber. This could have jeopardized their daughters custody of her child, causing the parents to eat the renovation costs themselves.

Workers also lack benefits and some workers even lack proper training, with seven states not even requiring training, Ivan said. Pay also tends not to be high for direct care workers. Moe agrees, and said many direct are workers are overworked and move on to jobs that pay better.

One of the biggest reasons there is a lack of direct care workers is the lack of financial compensation and benefits, Ivan said. It is rare to find a direct care worker program where they would have actual benefits associated with it.

However, Ivan said that direct care work saves money at the state and federal level through Medicaid. He said Medicaid can support three people through HCBS rather than putting them in places like nursing homes.

To Ivan, there needs to be funding for better training and compensation for direct care workers. There should also be federal standards that all states should follow, and people should be able to move from state to state without having to worry about access to HCBS, he said.

But Ivan said not every state is equal in funding, eligibility and access to HCBS. Hennigar said she has been thinking about moving to Utah, but when she did her research, she found hardly any services for people with disabilities, apart from assisted living facilities.

That is not fair, Hennigar said. Everybody else can move to Utah, except for people with disabilities. People with disabilities do not receive the same opportunities.
Two days after the world hit a gloomy milestone of 5 million deaths from COVID-19, tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements will apply to about 84 million workers, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated, according to reporting by AP.

Bidens most aggressive effort yet to combat the spread of COVID-19 will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees who test positive must be removed from the workplace.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace, according to reporting by AP.

The 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that get money from Medicare and Medicaid will not have an option for testing  they will need to be vaccinated, according to a statement by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Exemptions can be asked for on medical or religious grounds. The rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that ban employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or the wearing of face masks.

Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic, according to reporting by AP.

"While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good," he said Thursday in a statement.

Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now.

Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases.

The administration is facing immediate challenge from Republican state officials who are eager to fight Biden in court and in Congress.

For instance, Michigan Republican Party Communications Director Gustavo Portela said, "The newest vaccine mandate from President Biden continues to show the disconnect between the White House and the American people. Vaccine mandates cause hesitancy among those that are unvaccinated. Everyone should get this life saving vaccine but mandates are not the way to get people vaccinated, its a way to force people into poverty," in a statement following Biden's announcement Thursday.

Additionally, Congressman John Moolenaar has introduced the No Vaccine Mandate Act to block Biden from using the Department of Labor and OSHA to issue the order. Moolenaar's legislation prohibits the Department of Labor from using federal funds to administer a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to a press release.

"President Bidens arbitrary COVID vaccine mandate on businesses with 100 or more employees, burdens businesses with the responsibility to pay for expensive tests or force their employees to be vaccinated. Theres simply nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to impose this mandate on private businesses and my bill will cut off funding for the Department of Labor to enforce it," Moolenaar said in the release.

"The last thing businesses need is the federal government burdening them with more costs and making it harder for them to retain and hire workers," Moolenaar added.

American Medical Association urges widespread vaccination

The American Medical Association, American Hospital Association and American Nurses Association jointly issued the following statement Thursday:



"Today we mourn the loss of 750,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19. This devastating milestone should serve as a reminder to everyone that the COVID-19 pandemic is not over and still poses a major threat to our society, particularly to the unvaccinated. The only way to truly end this pandemic is to ensure widespread vaccination and continue taking the preventive public health measures that we know work in curbing the spread of this virus."

"We continue to urge everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated as soon as possible to protect themselves and their loved ones from this disease. With the FDAs authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11 and CDCs recommendations for use of the vaccine in this population, we strongly encourage all parents to get their children vaccinated as soon as they are eligible. To help protect those who arent yet eligible for vaccination, we also urge the public to continue taking evidence-based public health precautions, such as physical distancing and wearing face masks. Please do your part."

National Retail Federation says the new rules are not needed

Some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in what is already a tight labor market. Several large business groups complained about the timing of the mandate, worrying that it could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions according to reporting by AP.

The National Retail Federation suggested that the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an emergency and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season, David French, a senior vice president for the trade group, told AP.

How will OSHA enforce the rules?

OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months.

Even counting allied regulators at the state level, the agency has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. A senior administration official said OSHA will target companies if it gets complaints, according to reporting by AP.

Employers don't need to pay for testing and companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation, per OSHA.

In the future, the requirement may be expanded to smaller businesses, per OSHA. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.


Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The requirements

The new requirements, which were first previewed by President Joe Biden in September, will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees who test positive must be removed from the workplace.

The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors.

The rules will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses. The Biden administration says 70% of all adult Americans are now fully vaccinated. The new rules are aimed at the tens of millions who remain unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that workers who remain unvaccinated after Jan. 4 to test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

Companies wont be required to pay for the tests. However, they are required to offer paid time off for workers to get vaccinated and sick leave if workers experience vaccine side effects starting Dec. 5.

Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic.

"While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good," he said Thursday in a statement.

Midlands top employers prepare to follow mandate

MidMichigan Health, Midland Countys largest employer with 4,878 employees in Midland County alone, will review the mandate in the near future in its entirety in order to issue the right, best plan for its employees and health care system, officials said Thursday.

Dow, the second-largest employer in Midland County with 4,003 employees, emailed a response to the Daily News regarding the impact of the vaccine mandate on the company and its employees.

"We are reviewing the written rules to understand what further actions are required of our company and of individuals," wrote Kyle Bandlow, corporate media relations director for Dow. "Following this review, we will share detailed plans with our employees on how Dow will implement this policy in the U.S. to be in compliance with the new OSHA safety standards. Dow continues to strongly encourage all our colleagues to get vaccinated and already offers employees paid time off to receive vaccinations and to recover from any side effects; the company also has many tools and processes in place to ensure the health and safety of our colleagues and their families."

The vaccine mandate applies to all school districts that have 100 or more employees, one of which is Midland Public Schools, the third-largest employer in Midland County with 1,039 employees.

MPS Superintendent Michael Sharrow told the Daily News in an email that, now that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has released its rules governing the vaccine mandate, the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) has 30 days to release its own rules.

"I expect (the MIOSHA rules) will be about the same  (that employees must) vaccinate or test weekly and mask up all day," Sharrow said.

In regard to what percentage of MPS employees has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Sharrow said the district is not allowed access to that information.

He said that effective Jan. 4, 2022, every MPS employee will be required to show proof of vaccination, and MPS will know at that point what percentage of employees has been vaccinated.

MPS repeals mask mandate for K-6 as of Dec. 13

Sharrow announced Thursday morning that MPS will lift the current mask mandate for grades K-6 on Monday, Dec. 13.

On that date, MPS will return to recommended masking for all grades, which was its policy for the first week of the school year before the district implemented the K-6 mandate.

The announcement came two days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved Pfizer's COVID vaccine for children aged 5-11.

Sharrow's special edition communique on Thursday announced the Dec. 13 lifting of the mandate as well as the scheduling of COVID vaccination clinics by the Midland County Department of Community Health (MCDPH) that are specifically for ages 5-11 and will be held at both Siebert and Central Park elementary schools.

The first-dose clinic will be on Wednesday, Nov. 10, and the second-dose clinic will be on Wednesday, Dec. 1  both from 3 to 6 p.m.

Vaccinations are not mandatory, the communique noted, and signed parental consent is required in order for a student to be vaccinated at the two clinics. Any child between the ages of 5 and 11 can be vaccinated at the clinics, including non-MPS students.

"Midland (Public Schools') intent to wait until Dec. 13 to return to recommended masking will allow for those students who have received both doses to have close to two weeks following the second dose for the student's body to build up immunity against the virus that causes COVID-19," Sharrow explained in the communique.

Even after the K-6 mask mandate is lifted, masks will still be required on school buses for all students, per federal law.

Sharrow wrote in the communique that school protocols may change based on changing health conditions.

"We must continue to be flexible and prepared to respond to constant changes due to COVID-19," Sharrow wrote. "Please note that district COVID protocols will change if we receive public health orders from the CDC, (Michigan Department of Health and Human Services), the MCDPH, or (if) the COVID metrics cause us to pause and reflect on the need to update the district's safety precautions. Future outbreaks in a classroom or school building will result in a review of safety protocols and possible masking requirements by classroom or school building.

"We have heard your voices and respect each of the COVID protocol opinions we have received," he continued. "The uniting message that has come through loud and clear in each and every communication the district has received is the priority of the safety, health and wellbeing of OUR CHILDREN! Midland Public Schools is honored and grateful to be your family's school district and will continue to do everything we can to support the health and safety of our students and staff."

Moolenaar introduces legislation to challenge vaccine mandate

The administration faced an immediate challenge from Republican officials who are eager to fight Biden in court and in Congress. Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail.

Among the Republicans against the mandate was Congressman John Moolenaar. Moolenaar introduced the No Vaccine Mandate Act to block President Biden from using OSHA to issue the vaccine mandate. Moolenaar's legislation prohibits the Department of Labor from using federal funds to administer a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

President Bidens arbitrary COVID vaccine mandate on businesses with 100 or more employees, burdens businesses with the responsibility to pay for expensive tests or force their employees to be vaccinated, said Moolenaar.

The legislation is cosponsored by 17 Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, including Ranking Member Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Congressman Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), the ranking member of the House Committee on Rules and the top Republican on the Labor-H subcommittee.

Midland County COVID cases increase, vaccine rates idle

Dr. Cathy Bodnar, medical director for the Midland County Department of Public Health, has one simple request for all residents ages 5 and up: get vaccinated.

Midland County has seen COVID case numbers increase over the past few days, with 83 cases and two deaths reported on Monday and 115 cases and four deaths reported on Wednesday, according to the states website. Bodnar explained the county health department has also seen a spike of COVID presence in wastewater treatment levels based on data from Nov. 1; the wastewater treatment levels tend to predict the number of clinical cases for the next two or three weeks.

According to Bodnar, about 20% of the countys COVID cases are school-related. Meanwhile, there are two outbreaks in long-term care facilities.

The bulk of it seems to be general community (transmission), Bodnar stated. Theres too many places for the virus to go and its going there.

Meanwhile, the countys vaccination rate for individuals ages 16 and over around 65%. Bodnar stated that everyone who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago is eligible for a booster shot. Booster shots for the Pfizer and Moderna doses are available to those who are either ages 65 and older, have a high risk of severe COVID-19 or at increased risk of exposure and transmission because of their occupational or institutional setting. Booster doses can be mixed and matched.

In the meantime, Bodnar cautions against gathering in packed crowds indoors and encourages following mitigation measures.

People are done with COVID-19, but COVID-19 isnt done with us, Bodnar said.
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP)  A guilty plea is likely in federal court in the fatal stabbing of a young woman at a central Michigan apartment building, records show.

Kaden Gilbert, 21, has been in custody for about a year since the death of Nangonhs Massey, 21, in Mount Pleasant. A man was also stabbed.
Potter and Graphics Artist Paula Cadle, bottom right, will hold a Gallery Talk at The Gallery at the Redlands, and will be featured at there during Saturdays Art Walk. These plates are both designed and handcrafted by Cadle.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - A total of 280 illegal migrants from various African countries were rescued by a Libyan coastguard patrol boat while heading to the European coast on board 4 wooden boats and 1 rubber dinghy, a statement from the Libyan Naval Forces headquarters said on Thursday
Dakar, Senegal (PANA) - Algeria is moving on a dangerously slippery slope in its relations with Morocco that could plunge the already unstable region into more anarchy, observers of the Maghreb political scene said Thursday
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - All Libyans unanimously agree to holding elections on 24 December in accordance with the roadmap drawn up by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum as the only solution to get the country out of its crisis
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Libya's technical team of the Ministry of Labour and Rehabilitation signed, on Thursday in Tripoli, the electronic link protocol with its Egyptian counterpart after meetings held throughout this week to prepare the return of Egyptian labour to Libya
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Libyan Prime Minister Abdelhamid al-Dbaiba has asked ministers of the Government of National Unity (GNU) to take the necessary steps to preserve and protect the environment, in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow
Paris, TN (38242)

Today

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. High near 55F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Cloudy early, becoming mostly clear after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 31F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
Do you have any old items in your home and would like to find out how much theyre
Kim Kardashian West had a "little fashion emergency" at the WSJ Innovator Awards.

The 41-year-old reality star-and-businesswoman was named WSJ. Magazine's 2021 Brand Innovator at the awards ceremony at the Musem of Modern Art in New York earlier this week, and fortunately Fendi's Kim Jones was on hand to assist Kim when her Fendi x SKIMS brown leather gown became unzipped, revealing her nude shapewear.

The mother-of-four - who has North, eight, Saint, five, Chicago, three, and Psalm, two, with 44-year-old rap legend Kanye West - quipped: "Thank you to Kim Jones because I just had a little fashion emergency.

"Thank god I had SKIMS on, or this would have been a very different kind of show tonight."

The 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' star was honoured for the success of her shapewear brand - which launches a collection with luxury fashion house Fendi on November 9.

She said on stage collecting the prize: "Fifteen years ago when I was starting my career I could have never dreamed that I would have been getting an innovator award for brands.

"Back in the day, I would have been the face of any brand if they would have asked me."

The law student also admitted that she felt like a fraud promoting weight loss pills while wearing shapewear in the past.

She confessed: "I did cupcakes to weight loss pills all at the same time. I'm just so grateful that I have my own brand now. I would do all of that and then wear shapewear on top. It was all contradictory.

"I've always liked to come up with solutions and I'm just really thankful."

The collection, which drops on the new website fendiskims.com, comes in a range of "bold colourways, including a fuschia pink shade.

Meanwhile, Kim recently revealed that her estranged husband has a hand in her businesses.

The KKW Beauty and KKW Fragrance founder told WSJ. Magazine: "He has a piece of Skims himself and gives [the team] inspiration but also information."

Kim - who recently joked that she split from the 'Stronger' hitmaker because of his personality while hosting 'Saturday Night Live' -declared: "Kanye will always be the most inspirational person to me."
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 Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions
On Day 2 of the Web Summit in Lisbon, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, was the last guest speaker. His topic was on the proposed EU Digital Market Act and in particular to the dangers of the App Store being forced to accept sideloading.

Federighi carefully made Apple's case step by step that the company provides sophisticated on-device protection and a central app store with human review. Below is Federighi's full presentation on the matter.

UPDATE 2:11 p.m. PST: While Federighi was making his case today, Microsoft's President Brad Smith stated to Reuters on the sidelines of the Web Summit that the tech sector needs to compromise with regulators and take governments and peoples concerns seriously, Microsoft president Brad Smith said in an interview on Wednesday.

While Smith didn't mention Apples recent campaign against a provision of the EUs Digital Markets Act that would oblige the iPhone maker to let customers install software from outside its App Store, a practice called sideloading  he did state that "Tech is going to have to lean in ... with real concrete ideas ... even make concessions, so that we can all compromise and build a common platform that better protects people than ... the internet as a whole has in recent past."

Though, let's not be naive. Microsoft supported Epic Games against Apple and the App Store and so there's a clear motive behind Microsoft's "I've seen the light" malarkey.
Although its not one of our favorite SSDs, Amazon is selling the speedy 1TB Kingston A2000 for $80, which is an all-time low.

When we reviewed the A2000 SSD, we gave it a four out of five stars. Its a real bargain even at regular price. Its plenty fast enough for the average user, and what little you lose in performance youll likely never notice, we said.

Kingston says the A2000 supports up to 2,200 megabytes per second sequential read speeds and up to 2,000 MB/s sequential writes. Our tests, using the 1TB model, supported those claims with sequential writes actually being about even with read speeds at 2,200 MB/s.

One thing to note, however, is that we did see significant slowdown during the 450GB write test. Thats really more of a torture test than a reflection of real world usage. Rarely do users grab that much data at once. The 48GB transfer test, which is more realistic but still quite large, found the Kingston A2000 performing very well.

The bottom line is this is an excellent budget NVMe drive, and the top notch performance should be more than enough for most people except, perhaps, those who have a habit of transferring massive sets of video files in one go.

[Todays deal: 1TB Kingston A2000 for $80 at Amazon.]
The founder and former Chief Executive Officer of the defunct Capital Bank William Ato Essien has told the High Court in Accra that, he is a destiny and nation builder.



Ato Essien who was unable to conclude negotiations with the state to pay compensation under section 35 of the Courts Act and was ordered to open his defence, said, he is a true entrepreneur who created something out of nothing.



While being led by his counsel, Baffour Gyau Bonsu Ashia, to give his testimony to the court presided over by Justice Eric Kyei-Baffour, the accused said, he is a risk-taker.



Asked to tell the court what he does for a living he said, I am a true entrepreneur that creates out of nothing, a businessman with a capacity to assume risk in other jurisdiction.



He went on to add that, What I do is called a risk taker and in other common references, they refer to what I do as the engine of growth for economies. And so my lord, I could have easily said I am an entrepreneur but what I do is bigger than that.



My lord I couldve said Im a businessman but what I do is more than that. My lord, I couldve said Im one of the anchors as an active player, as an engine for the Ghanaian economy, but my lord, I rather submit to refer to myself as a destiny carrier for this nation.



According to him, Im a determined Ghanaian who believes that the true test of nation-building cannot happen without the businessman, deep risk-taker, deep entrepreneur but a destiny carrier and a nation builder carries and all these.



My Lord my answer is taking time and with the greatest of respect, I will like you to permit me to finally say I am a destiny and a nation builder. That is what I live for, that is what I pant for and that is what I stand for.



EIB Networks Court Correspondent Murtala Inusah reports that the case has been adjourned to November 11 for continuation.



The former CEO of the Capital Bank, William Ato Essien together with Tetteh Nettey and Fitzgerald Odonkor have been asked to open their defence to respond to some 23 charges including stealing.



About Section 35 of the Courts Act -Offer of Compensation or Restitution



(1) Where a person is charged with an offence before the High Court or a Regional Tribunal, the commission of which has caused economic loss, harm or damage to the State or any State agency, the accused may inform the prosecutor whether the

accused admits the offence and is willing to offer compensation or make restitution and reparation for the loss, harm or damage caused.



(2) Where an accused makes an offer of compensation or restitution and

reparation, the prosecutor shall consider if the offer is acceptable to the prosecution.



(3) If the offer is not acceptable to the prosecution the case before the Court shall proceed.



(4) If the offer is acceptable to the prosecution, the prosecutor shall in the presence of the accused, inform the Court which shall consider if the offer of compensation or restitution and reparation is satisfactory.



(5) Where the Court considers the offer to be satisfactory, the Court shall accept a plea of guilty from the accused and convict the accused on his own plea, and in lieu of passing sentence on the accused, make an order for the acCused to pay compensation or make restitution and reparation.



(6) An order of the Court under subsection (5) shall be subject to such conditions as the Court may direct.



(7) Where a person convicted under this section defaults in the payment of any money required of the person under this section or fails to fulfil any condition imposed by the Court under subsection (6), any amount outstanding shall become due and payable and upon failure to make the payment, the Court shall proceed to pass a custodial sentence on the accused. [As substituted by the Courts(Amendment) Act, 2002 (Act 620).







Source: kasapafmonline.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 Makers Electronics Company Ltd. has won the Promising Company of the year award at the 2021 Ghana Business Awards held at the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel in Accra on Friday, October 29, 2021.



The Makers Electronics deals in the sale of electronics and home appliances and offers services to Ghanaians from all walks of life.

The company, which is about a year old, beat competition from four other companies in that category. This years awards, which shortlisted over a hundred and twenty companies and individuals, is the 4th edition of the awards scheme.



The nominees were shortlisted out of the 385 companies and individuals that submitted their nominations to be considered for the awards.



In the end, seventy individuals and organizations were recognized for their excellent performances and impact within the business space and on the Ghanaian economy.



In barely a year of its operations, The Makers Electronics has five branches, three in the Greater Accra Region, and two in Kumasi and Takoradi respectively.



The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr. Stephen Essoun, told B&FT that although the company started amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it braved the odds to stay afloat.



I give thanks to God for such wonderful recognition. Gaining such recognition from this prestigious organisation feels like Heaven on Earth. Sincerely, we started operating at a time Covid had taken over the activities of the world. My wife, Mrs. Akua Saah Essoun, and I did not give up. We decided to grow the company irrespective of the world challenge and under a space of one year, we have been able to solve the home appliances and consumer electronics needs of the good people of Ghana as well as reducing the unemployment rate in the country.



Mr. Essoun said the company is committed to expanding its branch network whiles offering competitive prices and discounts to customers.



I see this award as a challenge to do more by opening more branches to continue to reduce unemployment, as well as helping solve the home appliances and consumer electronics needs of the good people of Ghana. Currently operating in Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi, we hope to extend our branches to every corner of the country. Its our fervent hope that Ghanaians will continue to patronize our wide range of products, with undoubtedly the highest discount ever (up to 67%). We decided to give this discount because we want to make our products easily affordable by all.



I want to use this medium to inform Ghanaians about our Black Friday promotion starting November 26 to 5th December 2021. All our products will be sold at factory prices.



The awards, which was organised by Globe Productions in partnership with the Institute of Directors (IoD), Nobel International Business School (NiBS), Ipag Business School, Swiss Business School, and the Lincoln University with support from the Graphic Communications Group Limited and Media General, sought to promote business excellence nationally and internationally, as well as provide an unparalleled opportunity for networking among industry players.



Members of the awarding board included award-winning Broadcast Journalist Kwame Sefa Kayi, former Chairperson of the Convention Peoples Party, Samia Nkrumah, and Kwesi Abease, former CEO of the African Business Roundtable/GIPC.

The others were Prof. Akilagkpa Sawyerr, former Council of State Chairman and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, and Prof. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, Founder, President & Executive Dean and Distinguished Professor of Innovation Management and Marketing at the Nobel International Business School, NIBS.



The 4th Ghana Business Awards recognized and rewarded excellence across all sectors of industry in Ghana, and provided the platform for individuals and companies that played significant roles in the growth and development of the business sector.



It also promoted open dialogue between relevant stakeholders in public and private sectors on adopting the right strategies to stimulate post-Covid-19 economic recovery and ensure a future of hope and shared prosperity for all Ghanaians.

Themed The Digital Economy, Making More Winners, with a team of technical expertise (Awarding Board) and independent consultants, the award categories were modeled to recognise important commercial and industrial players that contribute significantly to the economy.



Mr. Latif Abubakar, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organisers of the awards, Globe Productions, said the awards are a benchmark of excellence.



He explained that the benchmarks for shortlisted nominees performance were based on key performance indicators (KPIs) in the standards of excellence, including information technology and competitive pricing.



Business summit



This years awards was preceded by a business summit, and an exhibition in the morning, which was climaxed with the awards night and dinner.

In attendance were the Canadian and Spanish High Commissioners to Ghana, Kathleen Csaba, and Mr. Javier Gutierrez, the South African High Commissioner to Ghana, H.E. Grace Mason, and the President of Ghana Journalists Association, Affail Monney.



There was also an address by Ms. Stephanie Hutchison, the US Embassy Economic Chief.

Source: Hi-Lynks Communication Ltd









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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Members of the Ghana National Cocoa Farmers Association (GNACOFA) have threatened to demonstrate against the government over poor implementation of the Cocoa Farmers Pension Scheme.



The cocoa farmers say they are not convinced about the genuineness of the scheme's implementation even though COCOBOD has inaugurated a Board of Trustees for the scheme.



According to them, the Chairman of the association who was supposed to represent them as a member of the Board was not invited during the inauguration of the Board and, therefore, they have no faith in COCOBOD.



Addressing a press conference today in Kumasi, the President of the Association, Mr Stephenson Anane Boateng said the farmers, being the beneficiaries of the scheme, have been left out without being consulted in the scheme's implementation.



He said they are also disappointed with the way and manner the scheme's implementation is ongoing which is being done on a pilot basis instead of rolling it out nationwide for the benefit of all cocoa farmers.



Mr Anane, however, indicated that if the government fails to consult them and ensure smooth implementation of the scheme and also resolve some welfare issues with regards to farmers by December 1, 2021, they will stage a demonstration against it.



He said as part of the protest, they will not sell their cocoa beans to the government agencies and also boycott the National Farmers' Day event.













Source: classfmonline.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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Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has applauded the government's efforts to digitally transform Ghana.



The Minister, on Thursday, November 4, 2021, in an interview on Peace FM's morning show ''Kokrokoo'' outlined some major digital interventions and strides made by the Akufo-Addo government.



He touched on the tax system where, according to him, before the digitization era under the Akufo-Addo administration, only 4 percent of Ghanaians were paying tax.



As the country primarily depends on taxes in distributing the nation cake, four percent of Ghanaian taxpayers is disturbing as it attributed to the underdevelopment of Ghana.



Hon. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah expressed excitement that the digitalization programmes introduced by the government has helped to correct the system.



''Four (4) percent of Ghanaians were on the tax database...Today, by the help of Dr. Bawumia and the Government of Ghana, because we have advanced our national ID, digital property address system, interoperability and currently started to merge our databases, we have moved from 4% to 86%," he said.



He disclosed that the 86 percent represented 15.5 million Ghanaians on the tax database.



He urged Ghanaians to embrace the digital initiatives by the Akufo-Addo government stating, ''the poverty gap has always been a technology gap''.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Design and Technology Institute (DTI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Takoradi Technical University (TTU) to strengthen the implementation of the Precision Quality (PQ) training programme towards improving Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) delivery in Ghana.



DTI also upgraded and handed over an ultra-modern TVET workshop equipped with state-of-the-art precision hand tools to the Takoradi Technical University, as part of the MoU.



The MoU with the Takoradi Technical University forms part of DTIs collaborative strategy to work with stakeholders to reach the objective under the Transforming youth TVET livelihood for sustainable jobs project in partnership with the Mastercard Foundations Young Africa Work strategy, which seeks to enable three (3) million young people, particularly women to access dignified and fulfilling work opportunities by 2030.



The three-year project seeks to create 40,000 direct and indirect work opportunities for the youth, especiallyyoung women, through TVET.



Under this project, DTI will recruit and train 1,000 youth in Precision Fabrication and work readiness, improve the work skills and practices of 5,000 master craft persons and 1,000 SMES through the Precision Quality (PQ) training programme. 5,000 students and 100 instructors in selected TVET Universities will also benefit from the training programme which will benefit many young apprentices in trade and businesses.



DTI out-doored the Precision Quality (PQ) programme to policy makers, Academia and key industry players at a conference in Accra on 11th February 2021. At the conference, stakeholders agreed that Precision Quality will be key to enhancing the skills and work of master craft persons and artisans to meet global industry standards.



A Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop was also organized from 29th March to 2nd April for 12 Academic and Business Scale Advisors from Ho, Kumasi and Accra. The workshop equipped participants with the requisite knowledge and skills in Precision Quality ahead of the PQ training programme to Mastercraft Persons, SMEs, and Students in selected TVET University.



Ho Technical University later signed an MoU with DTI on 29th April, 2021 to serve as the first model and demonstration centre to implement the Precision Quality curriculum. The University has since then imbedded the curriculum into the academic studies.



DTI in fulfilling its commitment to the partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, has unveiled Takoradi Technical University as the second model and demonstration centre to roll-out the implementation of the Precision Quality programme. This initiative will be scaled-up to other TVET institutions in the coming years.



The PQ training programme was developed by industry players and certified by the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) for introduction into the academic studies of technical Universities.



The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder of DTI, Ms. Constance Elizabeth Swaniker stated that, the PQ curriculum will help position and equip young people with the requisite skills to create value and secure better jobs in the future. The handing over of the curriculum to the University is therefore a major step to ensuring that we maintain the same level of standards in TVET education delivery across the country.



At DTI, we are on a journey to work with stakeholders to nurture and develop the next generation of human capital to champion Ghanas economic growth by adhering to industry standards, Ms Swaniker added.



The Vice Chancellor of Takoradi Technical University, Rev. Prof. Frank Eshun was very happy about the collaboration with the Design and Technology Institute (DTI). In fact, TTU takes this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as a critical component of our vision to become a Centre of excellence in technical and vocational education both in Ghana and Sub-Sahara Africa, he said.



I have strong conviction that this MoU will go a long way to address the issue of Precision Quality facing our manufacturing industry today so far as international quality standards are concerned. I also believe this partnership will offer job opportunities to our students and make them competitive in the world of work, he added.



The Western Regional Minister, Hon. Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, who was the guest of honour welcomed DTI to the region and charged the University to leverage the partnership to train the next generation of human capital for the country. The partnership with the Design and Technology Institute is the needed game changer for the youth who are undergoing training at the University. It is my hope that this will unlock the needed skills for the myriads of private sector companies to create wealth for Ghana."



Trained Academic Scale Advisors (ASA) and instructors will train the students extensively in Precision Quality to ensure they gain relevant industry skills and adhere to global industry standards when they graduate to enter the world of work.

The PQ curriculum consists of five training modules namely, Change to Grow, Process Integration, People and Team Development, Health and Safety in the Workplace and Managing Quality and Customer Relations.







Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Ashanti Regional capital of Kumasi will be a beehive of activities among the youthful population seeking to land jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities this Thursday and Friday as the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) partner the SNV International to host Ashantis maiden Regional Job Fair.



This Jobs and Entrepreneurship Pitch session is the third in series of the Regional Fairs earmarked by the Agency to climax the launch of the maiden Job Fair held in September this year in Accra.



Dubbed Jobs Career and Entrepreneurship Fair, the two-day event is scheduled to take place on Thursday 4th November and Friday 5th November 2021 at the Prempeh Assembly Hall in Kumasi from 7:00a.m. to 5:00p.m. each day



The Fair anchored on the theme Bridging the Job Gap in Partnership with the Private Sector seeks to bring business owners and companies with declared vacancies together with the youth (both graduates and non- graduates) seeking to land jobs.



Again persons with viable business ideas or proposals shall be taken through an Entrepreneurship Pitching where viable proposals will be given the necessary financial and technical support or both.



As usual, there will be Resource persons to take participants, start-ups and job seekers through Career Guidance, Capacity Building and entrepreneurship Pitch contest.



There will also be live recruitment for the declared vacancies and Job Matching to supplement the Career sessions.



All participants are required to register while prospective entrepreneurs are expected to register with their business ideas and proposals at the Fair.



The COVID-19 Safety and Preventive Protocols will be strictly observed owing to the anticipated number of people likely to converge on the venue. As a result, the Agency will manage the activities by holding the event in sessions to avoid overcrowding with the social distancing protocol in mind.



Following from the assurance for participation, about One hundred (100) companies and businesses have declared over (700) job vacancies to be filled at the Fair.



The Ashanti Regional YEA Director Mr. Seth Twumasi noted that the Fair will no doubt attract a large number of the youth in attendance owing to the region being the second most populous in the country. He expressed the hope that the Fair will serve as a turning point for the youth who will attend with the lucky ones filling the vacancies available.



He was also optimistic that the number of the youth with business ideas will sail through the entrepreneurial pitch successfully to receive the necessary support to engage other job seekers. He prayed that businesses that are participating in the fair shall meet their human resource needs and likewise prospective entrepreneurs to also meet their job needs.



To that end, he called on all businesses and job seekers to help create an enabling environment before, during and after the Fair and make this great history together.



He also appealed to companies with vacancies or job seekers who wish to participate to call the following numbers for enquiries 0207196400/02027197600/0207218665.



He finally called on all stakeholders who are interested in jobs and jobs creation to make their way to the two day event from Thursday 4th November to Friday 5th November 2021.











Source: Fred Abrokwa/YEA Corporate Affairs









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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Eleven police officers who passed on in the line of duty this year were yesterday remembered at a Remembrance Day ceremony held at the precinct of the cenotaph at the Police Training School at Tesano in Accra.

Many of them died through vehicular accidents and targeted shooting incidents.



Eight of them would have their names engraved on the Wall of Honour while the remaining three will be in the Roll of Honour.



They are Chief Inspector Abednego Kofi Kechire, Chief Inspector James Issaka Aroma, General Constable Iddrisu Gafaru, General Sergeant Moses Tetteh Nartey, General Corporal Charles Adjei Osekere, General Lance Corporal Martin Baba and General Constable Kwarteng Abebrese Nantwi Collins.



The rest are General Lance Corporal Emmanuel Osei, General Constable Francis Odoi, General Constable Amos Maatey Niganoko and General Constable Ernest Newton Dwamena.



Perpetual flame



The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, lit the perpetual flame to set the stage for the ceremony.



He later signed the remembrance book.



In attendance at the ceremony, which lasted almost an hour, were the Minister for the Interior, Mr Ambrose Dery; the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr George Akuffo Dampare; former IGPs, representatives of heads of other security services, traditional rulers, senior police officers and families of the deceased officers.



Wreaths



The Vice-President laid the first wreath for the government and people of Ghana while the IGP laid another for the Police Administration.



Other wreaths were laid by a representative of the bereaved families and the Otublohun Mantse, Nii Duodu Nsaki II, on behalf of the Ga Traditional Authority.



Exhortation



In an exhortation, the Director-General of the Police Department of Religious Affairs, DCOP Very Rev. Father George Arthur, reminded everyone about the inevitability of death and said: The reality is that we will all exit the world in different circumstances and so no one can escape the reality of death.



He said the death of a police officer was not only a loss to the family but to the nation as well and asked about measures being instituted to prevent such deaths.



He also questioned the lessons learnt from such adversarial killings of police officers and advised those living that life was short and, therefore, they must strive to leave a mark of positive remembrance.



These officers died as gallant officers and their names will be engraved on the cenotaph.



They have left an indelible mark on the strong walls of the service, Very Rev. Father Arthur added.



Background



The Remembrance Day had been singled out by the Police Administration to give special recognition to serving police officers who lose their lives while on duty, be it in the country or while on peacekeeping duties.



It is a day to recognise the contributions and the sacrifices made by the officers at their peril.



Once police officers paid the ultimate price in the course of performing their duty, the Police Memorial Day celebrates such heroes and engraves their memories on a permanent monument.



The idea for the observation was conceived in November 24, 2014 but the maiden event took place on a bare floor at the time.



The cenotaph was first used to mark the Remembrance Day for officers who perished in November 2015 and 2016.



The day has been permanently fixed for November 2 to coincide with all Souls Day of the Catholic Calendar.



The Police Administration also uses the occasion to visit families of the bereaved families and offer them some support while church services and muslim prayers are held after the ceremony in honour of the dead.









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Government has announced plans to digitalize the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) as part of the ongoing digitisation of the nations economy.



According to the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, a digital School Feeding Programme will ensure efficiency, speedily transfer of data and transparency in the social intervention programme.



Dr. Bawumia made the announcement during his address on the digital economy held at the Ashesi University in the Eastern Region on Tuesday 2nd November, 2021.



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He was of the view that the digital system will largely address most of the challenges of GSFP especially the alleged issues of ghost schools and ghost children.



Meanwhile, the Management of the Ghana School Feeding Programme led by Dr. Mrs. Gertrude Quashigah in line with the governments vision has already procured some 300 brand new Tablets to pilot the digital system in some selected districts in all the 16 regions of Ghana which was fully funded by the World Food Programme (WFP).



GSFP Management and their partner, WFP, have also finished the practical training of key stakeholders in all the regions including headteachers, circuit supervisors and school feeding staff at national and regional levels on the use of the tablets for monitoring and evaluation purposes.



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The piloting of the GSFP digital monitoring system commenced on 1st November in the selected districts; and it will be followed by the digitalisation of the entire school feeding programme by the Government in earnest.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Exactly forty-six years ago  on November 6, 1975  King Hassan II of Morocco made a historic speech calling on the Moroccan people to undertake a long, peaceful march to the south to liberate the Sahara which was under Spanish occupation.



It is famously known as the Green March, an unprecedented event in the history of the 20th century and the African continent, which gathered 350,000 volunteers in a bid to put an end to the Spanish occupation without resorting to violence.



About 45 years earlier, on the Asian continent, Mahatma Gandhi started the Salt March, an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, in colonial India to wrest independence from the British.



On the occasion of the anniversary of the Green March, we look back at two historic moments, when peaceful actions changed the destiny of a Nation.



This spectacular action has some striking similarities to the Salt March started by Gandhi, on March 12, 1930, real concretisation of his doctrine of non-violence.



Indeed, on February 15, 1930, Gandhi announced to his companions of the Congress, the Indian independence party that he had chosen as the objective of the civil disobedience campaign the abrogation of the law that forced them to pay a tax on salt.



It was then an offence to make salt, possess it, sell it, buy it or even to take away natural salt left on a beach.



On the morning of March 12, 1930, Gandhi, then 61-years-old, left the city of Ahmedabad with 79 companions.



They proposed to reach by foot the village of Dandi located at the edge of the Indian Ocean, at 380 kilometers of distance.

This history-making activity attracted global attention as international press covered the event with keen interest.



After 25 days of walking and meetings, Gandhi picked up on the beach a little salt forgotten by the waves.



However, it took many more years of struggle before India's independence was finally achieved on August 15, 1947, but this Salt March was a significant event because it was peaceful, but ultimately a key process of gaining independence.



Back to Morocco, the Moroccan Kingdom began the process of completing its territorial integrity in 1956, the official year of independence.



Decolonization of the Western Sahara territory took place in a completely different context from the other decolonisation phases of the Moroccan Kingdom.



On one hand, Franco's Spain had no intention of retroceding the disputed semi-metropolitan Western Sahara province, especially after the discovery of phosphate deposits in the region in 1972.



On the other hand, the Algerian regime, aided by the Eastern bloc, had undeclared claims to the territory, motivated by the Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.



The idea for the Algerian regime and its allies was, and still is today, to set up a republic under its absolute control in the image of the old Syrian/Lebanese governance model.



Faced with this challenge, King Hassan II developed an exceptional idea, which was an echo of the Salt March.



On November 6, 1975, he made a historic speech calling on the Moroccan people to undertake a long, peaceful march to the South to liberate the Western Sahara from Spanish occupation.



This call triggered an immense popular fervour.



During his speech, he concluded by asking the Moroccans to be courteous when meeting the Spanish, to greet them and to invite them to share their meal.



He added that the Moroccans did not feel any resentment and that if they had wanted to fight against Spain, it would not be unarmed civilians who would show up but rather a military force.



He concluded by saying that their intentions were not at all warlike and that they were reluctant to shed any blood.



There were 350,000 Moroccans, including 35,000 women, who marched in joy and prayer towards the southern provinces to recover the Moroccan Sahara.



King Hassan II insisted on the participation of women, as a symbol of pacification of the Green March.



Dozens of foreign personalities and delegations from different countries participated in the march.

The number of volunteers was not left to chance:



It was the number of people born in Morocco every year. It was a real Morocco in a nutshell, where all provinces and social conditions were represented.



Unlike the Salt March in India, the Green March was a real logistical nightmare and a human challenge for Morocco at the time.



It required the mobilisation of 7,800 trucks and means of transport, 17,000 tons of food, 63,000 tons of water, 5,500 tons of fuel, 500 doctors and health assistants, 220 ambulances, and more than 10,000 people to organise and supervise the 350,000 marchers.



The Green March started from the region of Tarfaya braving the Spanish military and the barbed wire at the borders.



Confronted by the determination of the marchers, Spain had no choice but to disengage from the region.



This was made concrete by an official letter sent by its permanent representative to the UN on February 26, 1976.

Following this, a handover ceremony was organised between Morocco and Spain.



The Green March and the Salt March, unique in their kind, are national epics characterised by a fierce patriotism that have marked the national destinies of Morocco and India.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Minister for Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has reiterated the governments determination to achieve universal access to electrification by 2025 in accordance with the countrys commitment to its Sustainable Development Goals 7 (SDG7).



Dr. Prempeh, who is also the Minister for Energy, made this announcement on Ghana Energy Day during the ongoing UN Climate Conference also known as COP26 in Glasgow.



He noted that the subject of energy has become one of the most important global issues for discussion from industrialization, social and economic development and climate change viewpoints and stated that the countrys drive in this direction shall include the development of an eco-friendly energy supply chain, double access to clean cooking fuels and technologies.



Touching on the governments progress in the energy sector, the Minister laid emphasis on the achievement of a national electricity access rate of 86.63% by the end of the third quarter of 2021 and a 120MWe grid-connected installed solar PV capacity representing 2.4% renewable energy in the national generation mix.



He also alluded to the creation of the first-ever renewable energy park in the subregion which has the capacity to hold up to about 650MWe capacity at Bui, with the potential for up to 250MW solar PV plant which would be hybridized with the existing Bui 400MW hydropower plant.



Dr. Prempeh stated We are fast transitioning the Volta River Authority to increase its renewable energy asset portfolio. Some 20MW of solar has been completed by the VRA and construction of 50MWe solar PV by the Volta River Authority is ongoing which is to be hybridized with the Pwalugu Multipurpose Hydropower plant.



In the household sector, the Minister noted that its often either forgotten or little attention is paid to it and revealed that energy for cooking in households account for more than 35% of the total energy supply.



The Minister further highlighted Ghanas commitment to achieving its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, investment opportunities in utility-scale and distributed generation as well as clean cooking, including promotion and distribution of LPG and biomass end-user technologies.



Ghanas delegation to the COP26 event is led by President Akufo-Addo

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Private legal practitioner, Mr Kofi Bentil, has said the Police have the right under the laws of Ghana to arrest anyone they suspect to have acted in ways that go contrary to the laws of the land.



He called on all Ghanaians irrespective of their status in the society, to submit themselves to the laws and law enforcers in the country.



Speaking in an interview with journalists on Wednesday November 3 in relation to the attempt to arrest Madina Lawmaker Francis Xavier Sosu after his alleged involvement in a violent protest in his constituency, Mr Bentil who is also the Vice President of Imani Africa said To the extent that the Police feel the need to invite any member of the this society to question them about the probable cause that a crime has been committed or something wrong has been done, that person ought to respond to the Police positively, and that person ought to submit to the Police processes. If the police do anything untoward we will all come and defend that person .



It is just not right for any person to assume any kind of immunity that effectively poses them above the law .



In this particular matter, we think that at this point the Police have a right to effect arrest and to effect an investigation. If they think that they have to proceed they will go ahead and proceed, if anybody has a problem we will all back that person to court to the court and vindicate themselves.



The Police were seeking to arrest Sosu for allegedly involving in a violent protests in is constituency.



The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP had led some of his constituents to embark on a demonstration against deplorable roads in his constituency.



The demonstration started peacefully at Danfa around 6:00am but later saw demonstrators burning tyres and mounting roadblocks on the Ayi Mensah-Danfa Road.



Sosu has however denied saying That any allegation of the Police about my involvement in unlawful blockade of road and destruction of public property is false and an afterthought carefully manufactured by the police to shift attention of the people of Ghana from the key issues of bad roads raised by our protest and demonstration.



The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin also denied a request by the Police to release Mr Sosu to them for arrest.



In a letter dated October 28, addressed to the Deputy Director-General of Criminal Investigation Division, F.K. Agyei, the Speaker indicated that due to limitations of Articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution, Mr Sosu could not be released.



I am directed by the Rt. Hon. Speaker to inform you that proceedings of the 3rd Meeting of the 1st Session of the 8th Parliament commenced on Tuesday 26th October, 2021 and having regard to the limitations of articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic, he is unable to release the Member of Parliament as requested in your letter, Deputy Director of Legal Services, Nana Tawiah Okyir wrote on behalf of the Clerk of Parliament.



The Police have officially charged Madina Member of Parliament, Francis-Xavier Sosu for causing damage to public property.



The Director General, Public Affairs Directorate of the Police Service, ACP Kwasi Ofori, said on Wednesday November 3 that he is expected to appear in court on November 8,



The Police has obtained a criminal summons and has been duly served for him to appear in court on November 8as we enumerated the charges includes obstructing the highway, causing damage to public property, he said.







Source: 3news.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 Helping Africa Foundation (www.helpingafrica.org) under the leadership of its President, Dr Deborah Rose, has provided Asare Bediako SHS in Akrokerri, Ashanti Region; Bomaa community in the Ahafo Region, and Tuobodom community in the Bono East Region of Ghana with ultramodern ICT centers to promote the teaching and learning of ICT under the foundations flagship program, the Yamoransa Model Labs Program.



All projects comprise a 48-seater educational lab (known as EDULab) and powered by an ASANKA device (www.myasanka.com) that enables students to access educational materials without the internet. The labs are built by TECHAiDE (www.techaide.global), a Ghanaian technology company working in Africa for over a decade using ICTs to improve Education, support Youth Development, and facilitate Health Delivery.



Among robotics facilities provided in the MakerSpace for innovation and creativity are tools for 3D Design and Printing; Coding withLegos andArduinos; and Virtual and Augmented Reality. BothYM Labs 9 and 10 have a conference room and Center managers office.



Speaking at the dedication ceremony of the respective projects, the Project Manager & CEO of TECHAiDE, Mr. Kafui Prebbie, disclosed that the facilities in Bomaa and Tuobodom are powered by solar as part of the sustainable model of the projects.



"The computers installed in these facilities are of low voltage. This means they consume only 10% of the power used by the everyday computer and this is to ensure that the communities are not burdened with utility bills and no student is to be charged for using the facility", he remarked.



At the dedication ceremony of the centre in Akrokerri dubbed YM Lab 3.1, the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament and MP for Fomena Adansi, Mr Andrew Amoako Asiamah assured the Asare Bediako Senior High school that he will adopt the school and develop as it is one of the most deprived schools in the Region.



He also encouraged teachers and students to make good use and properly maintain the facilities provided by the Helping Africa Foundation.



Executive Director of the Helping Africa Foundation, Mr. Japhet Aryiku stated that the vision of the Foundation is to equip every Ghanaian school-going child with the skills needed to be globally competitive.



"The vision of the HAF is to bring quality and accessible education to all Ghanaian children to ensure they acquire the right skills in order to be competitive in the global market regardless of the location", Mr. Aryiku said.



He further added that these 3 labs bring to a total of 10 labs out of the 16 labs HAF intends to build in all 16 regions of Ghana.



At Bomaa in the Tano North Municipality, the Municipal Chief Executive, Mr. Ernest Kwarteng admonished the community to handle the facility with care and ensure it is maintained well.

In a related development, the Promoter of the Yamoransa Model Lab 10, Honourable Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare, MP for Techiman North at the dedication ceremony in Tuobodom expressed her gratitude to the Helping Africa Foundation for their sterling intervention in providing the community with such a facility. According to her, the facility puts Techiman North ahead of the government's plan to introduce Robotics and Coding into the Ghanaian educational curriculum. She extolled the virtues of robotic education.



Robotic education creates an environment that embraces people with varied talents. It promotes creative thinking, strategic thinking, logical reasoning, computational and analytical skills, which are undeniably essential skills required from the 21st century citizen in this competitive globe.



The Yamoransa Model Labs is an initiative started by the Helping Africa Foundation, aimed at providing opportunities for students to expand their knowledge in STEM education through practical experience. The model is a partnership between HAF, the District Assemblies and the District Education Directorate.



It is managed by Implementers (www.TheImplementers.org), a project management non-profit organization that partners with charitable organizations, philanthropists and corporate institutions to positively impact communities.



Implementers will manage these projects for the next two years before handing it over to the local authorities through a sustainable plan.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The National Youth Organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Henry Nana Boakye, aka Nana B, has called on the rank and file of the party to channel their energies into promoting party peace, unity and harmony.

He also urged them to desist from actions that sought to ruin their electoral fortunes ahead of the 2024 polls.



He said the government was working assiduously to accelerate socio-economic development across the country, hence it behoved party members to embrace unity and work harder to improve the lot of the people.



"As a democratic party, we must stand firm and commit ourselves to our common goal to build a new Ghana we all desire under the able leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu-Addo.



"In every election, there will always be winners and losers and, therefore, we should be able to appreciate the fact that we are a party with a common destiny.



Let's see it as such and stay united in the supreme interest of the NPP, he stressed.



Mr Boakye, who doubles as a member of the Governing Board of the National Youth Authority (NYA), gave the advice at the Assin North Delegates Conference.



He urged party folks to bury their differences, saying the NPP had a team that was solidly knitted together with a focus on pragmatic socio-economic policies and had stayed true to the people by delivering most of its promises.



Battle ready



Touching on the embattled Assin North Member of Parliament's legal battle, he expressed the readiness of the party to convincingly win the seat in a possible by-election.



According to him, the election of a legislator for the constituency will significantly ease the rising political tension and apprehensions in the area to accelerate rapid socio-economic development.



"President Akufo-Addo won the 2020 election in the Assin North Presidential election, however the NPP parliamentary candidate, Abena Durowaa Mensah, lost the seat to the embattled NDC candidate, James Gyakye Quayson, hence our determination to work hard to win the seat.



From all indications, the good people of Assin North are ever ready to give the seat back to the NPP.



All that is required is for us to promote cohesion among the rank and file.



I, therefore, urge all of you to be united with a common purpose and prepare yourself adequately for the looming by-election he added.



Court ruling





A Cape Coast High Court at its sitting on Wednesday, July 28, ordered a fresh election to be conducted in the constituency after restraining Mr Quayson from holding himself out as the MP for the area.



In its ruling, the court, presided over by Justice Kwasi Boakye, declared the election of the MP as illegal and void in contravention of article 94 (2) of the 1992 Constitution and ordered the EC to organise a new election to elect an MP.



This is because Mr Quayson, during the 2020 Parliamentary elections still held allegiance to the Canadian government.



Mr Benjamin Essah, Assin North Constituency Chairman of the NPP, said "we are battle-ready for the possible by-election.



We are putting our acts together to take the seat by all legal means to reaffirm the party's political dominance in the area.





















Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Former Aspiring CPP General Secretary, James Kwabena Bomfeh, has urged the Member of Parliament(MP) for Madina constituency, Francis-Xavier Sosu to avail himself for Police interrogation over his involvement in a violent protest within the constituency.



The Madina MP joined a group of people to demonstrate at Madina on Monday, October 25, 2021 and, in the process, the protesters blocked roads at the vicinity impeding vehicular and human movements.



He is also reported to have angrily driven his vehicle through some civilians and two Police officers nearly injuring them as he sped off from the scene of the protest.



He has since been invited for interrogation but has turned down the Police invite.



As a result, the Police made a request to the Speaker of Parliament for Hon. Francis-Xavier Sosu to honour their invite but the Speaker has refused to release him on grounds of Articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 constitution.



The Speaker of Parliament, in a letter signed by the Deputy Director of Legal Services of Parliament, said; I am directed by the Rt. Hon. Speaker to inform you that proceedings of the 3rd Meeting of the 1st Session of the 8th Parliament commenced on Tuesday 26th October 2021, and having regard to the limitations of articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic, he is unable to release the Member of Parliament as requested in your letter.



James Kwabena Bomfeh, popurlarly called 'Kabila', condemned the MP's behaviour as well as the Speaker's refusal to direct him to the Police.



According to him, inasmuch as he recognizes Parliament's immunity, he believes the right thing is for the MP to respect the Police by assisting in the investigations.



He emphasized that the MP shouldn't think that he is immune to arrest.



"That honourable Member of Parliament can be arrested by the Police, investigated and if the Police feels to prosecute him, if they are convinced; they will go to the Attorney General for the right to prosecution," he said during Peace FM morning show 'Kokrokoo'.



He subtly advised the MP to exhibit the right leadership to his constituents.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Police have formally filed charges, including causing damage to public property, against Francis Xavier Sosu in court over a demonstration he led in his constituency in Madina.



The embattled MP is supposed to show up in court to answer the charges on November 8, the Director General of the Police Service, ACP Kwasi Ofori, told Joy News.



The Police has obtained a criminal summons and has been duly served for him to appear in court on November 8as we enumerated the charges includes obstructing the highway, causing damage to public property, he said.



According to him, the Service has not received any invitation from Parliament regarding contempt of Parliament served on some officers who allegedly manhandled the MP.



More soon

Source: Joy News









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Former Central Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has vehemently condemned the New Juaben MCE nominee, Alex Sarfo Kantanka, over a video that surfaced on social media showing the nominee angrily requesting refund of bribes he paid to some Assembly members.



Mr. Sarfo Kantanka was rejected twice during Assembly elections to determine his confirmation.



He was captured in a viral video threatening some members to return a sum of GHC 1000 he paid to them for their endorsement or face his wrath.



Following the incident, the Police arrested him and he was later granted bail.



The Special Prosecutor is said to have also taken the matter up and invited the MCE nominee to assist in his investigations.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, the Minister complimented the Assembly members for rejecting Alex Sarfo Kantanka.



He bemoaned the nominee's behavior explaining his demeanor tells that he would have disgraced the President if appointed.



"The Assembly was right. The Assembly was right, first, rejecting him and, second, rejecting him," he exclaimed.



He advised the MMDCEs to exhibit a good character as they represent the President in their various districts.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A youth activist of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a former confidante of the late Former President Jerry John Rawlings, Mr Dela Coffie, has questioned a claim by former President John Dramani Mahama, that there was ballot-stuffing during the 2020 General Elections.



Dela Coffie wondered why this claim was not part of Mr Mahamas election petition at the Supreme Court, a petition that was dismissed by the court on the basis that it was without merit.



Mr Mahama has recently alleged that the Electoral Commission (EC) thumb printed one million ballot papers in favour of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 2020 presidential election.



The Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in last years elections added And, so, all these things dented the credibility of the polls and caused an embarrassment.



The EC however, has dismissed this allegation. A Deputy Chair of the EC Dr Bossman Asare asked the Police to investigate a claim.



Dr. Asare said at a press conference that: We see that our silence on this matter has dire consequences on public confidence in the Commission, and we want the police to investigate it, he stressed.



Distinguished citizens, in the last few weeks Former President Mahama has made a number of allegations against the EC and the 2020 elections. As Officials charged with the responsibility of conducting elections in Ghana, we owe it a duty to provide Ghanaians with the facts and the truth about the elections and the allegations raised. We are of the view that our silence on these false allegations could have dire consequences as it could undermine citizens confidence our dear country.



The Former President has said the EC thumb printed 1million ballots in favor of the president. This is untrue. This is a grave matter that undermines the credibility of our electoral process and should not be ignored. We call on him to provide evidence to support his claim. This is not a matter to be ignored and we call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate this.



The Transparency of our process makes it totally impossible for this to happen. At the polling stations, prior to the start of the elections, the empty ballot boxes are opened and displayed in the presence of everyone, and thereafter they are sealed. There are serial numbers on the ballot papers for each region and constituency. This is made known to the Agents before the elections. Our ballot papers also have security features; so any trace of new material will be clearly visible.



Again, at the end of the poll, the ballots cast are crosschecked against the voters who were verified and issued the ballot papers. This ensures that over-voting is detected immediately. Nationwide, we had no issue with over-voting at all our 38,622 polling stations except in Savelugu in the parliamentary election where there was one and I repeat one over-voting.



The transparency of our processes from the beginning to the end makes this impossible. Ballot Stuffing cannot be done-it is impossible. We call on the Former President in the interest of our democracy to provide evidence of the stuffing of the ballot boxes by the EC.



The Police should investigate this as a matter of urgency due to its potential to derail and undermine our democracy, and lead to a lack of confidence in our systems and processes.



Sharing his thoughts on this development, Dela Coffie said The postmortem debate over Mahamas 2020 election loss is still raging. Its been some 11 months after the last elections, and the loser keeps yelling and telling bizarre election fraud story that has already been debunked both in court and in the public space.



Heres the more important part of Mahamas claims  But for the militarization of the 2020 elections, and ballot stuffing, I would have won.



Indeed, former President Mahama has been on and on about this for the umpteenth time. So one would think that party elders would step in and instruct him to shush, but no one seems to care.



Lets assume without admitting that these things happened, how come it didnt form part of the NDCs case in court? In any event, where is NDCs own collation figures? Isnt it embarrassing that for two consecutive elections- (2016- 2020) the NDCs internal collation system failed? Isnt it even more embarrassing that the NDC cant boast of its own collated figures for both 2016 and 2020 elections as we speak? Its astonishing that after repeated claims of electoral malfeasance and the worst performances at the Supreme Court, former President Mahama is still not learning lessons from his mistakes  hes still alleging fraud on the street but not in court.



This same Mahama took everyone on a wild goose chase at the Supreme Court and he continue to deflect blame in any direction he can throw it without reflecting on his own failures. The man doesnt exactly make it easy to stick with him. His stories are literally so outrageous and demonstrably false that you have to be wilfully blind to keep going along.



It seems to me that Mahama and his advisors are unaware of the fact that the finger-pointing at the electoral commission (EC) has important implications for how the NDC moves forward.



The point must be made clear that Election 2020 has long been over. Attempting to rewrite the rules in order to maintain relevance rather than letting the winners get on with running the business is quite irritating and nauseating. I appreciate the fact that there could be legitimate electoral grievances, but quite frankly, NDC leaders ought to up their game.



Truly, it is beyond comprehension that the NDC is so poorly led that side-lining the current crop of leaders and devolving their responsibilities to fresh leadership seems to be the only way forward.



"Everything ought to change, and that means that Mahama must lead the way and stop the rambling and the irrational drivel that comes from him every now and then.



The NDC needs to move on and deal with weightier matters of party reorganisation and get the party back on proper footing with a fresh leadership ahead of election 2024. We need to also push the NDC to a much needed progressive direction. Above all, our leaders needs to differentiate between those things that are worth challenging and those that are not. If you are always carping incessantly about everything, you lose even more relevance than if you had focussed on the real key issues. I shall be back.



Meanwhile, the NDC had said Mr. Mahama made the 1 million vote fraud claim on solid grounds.



At a press conference in Accra on Thursday October 28, the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia said We take note with satisfaction Bossman Asares call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate the fact put out by President Mahama, given that President Mahama was on solid grounds when making this statement. The NDC stands ever prepared to assist in any credible investigation into the matters raised,



We are aware however that Bossman Asares call is only a red herring because he cannot feign ignorance of the fact that the Police Service is already seized with all the evidence on this matter.



On the specific printing of 1 million excess ballot papers and arrest of persons with thumb-printed ballot papers, the Ghana Police Service carried out the arrests and therefore should be providing updates on the status of investigations to the population.



All that Bossman Asare needs to do is to call on the Attorney General to ask the police to prosecute the offenders.





Source: 3news.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Former Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has commended the Vice President of the Republic, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, over his public lecture on the theme TRANSFORMING AN ECONOMY THROUGH DIGITALIZATION- THE GHANA STORY on Tuesday, November 2, 2021 at the Ashesi University.



Dr. Bawumia underscored some important digital initiatives and successes of the Akufo-Addo government in digitizing the economy.



He touched on areas like the biometric national ID card, property address system, mobile money interoperability, security and education, health system; outlining what the government has done and is doing to digitally transform these areas among others.



On health, Dr. Bawumia spoke extensively on how the government is using technology to improve the health system, hence highlighting the digitization of hospitals and medical records, digital renewal of national health insurance, delivery of medical supplies to rural communities through drones, among others.



On mobile money interoperability, he said; ''When we assumed office in 2017, we decided to use digitization to solve this problem. The data showed that 70% of people in Ghana had no bank accounts but 80% of the adult population had mobile phones with 30 million mobile money accounts.



It was also not possible to send money to customers of different telecom companies. So we asked the questions: why cant we make it possible to send mobile money across different telecom companies and also why cant the mobile money account function like a bank account by making it interoperable with bank accounts? The answer to these questions was the implementation of the ground-breaking mobile money interoperability system .



Thanks to the Bank of Ghana and Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlement System (GhIPSS) the mobile money payments interoperability has made it possible to transfer money seamlessly across different mobile money providers and between bank accounts and mobile wallets.



It has also solved the major problem of the over 70% of people not having bank accounts. Today, because of mobile money interoperability (MMI), you can transfer money from a customer of one telco to a customer of a different telco and also make payments from your mobile money account into any bank account and you can receive payments from any bank account into your mobile money account. You can receive interest on savings, acquisition of loan (e.g. qwick loan) on your mobile wallets. As a result of MMI over 90% of the adult population now have access to a 'bank account'.



The Vice President further threw more light on the progress of the government's digitization drive.



Commenting on the public lecture during Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', Kwamena Duncan was elated about the government's moves to digitize the economy.



According to him, the Vice President gave Ghanaians what he termed as the ''software of the economy''.



He stressed that digitization is the way forward for Ghana's development.



To him, he (Dr. Bawumia) has clipped the wings of the opposition parties, particularly the National Democratic Congress (NDC) by dealing extensively with all sectors of the economy.



" . . they have no clue and do not understand that, in order to build a very bouyant economy, what you have to do is that you make the economic system efficient and to make the economic system efficient; it will not require queues in offices. It will not require 3-day, 1-week, 1-month application for a particular service. It is just by way of your mobile phone, quickly then you do it," he stated.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Majority in Parliament have criticised the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, for the way and manner he handled the issues involving Madina Lawmaker Francis-Xavier Sosu.



Mr Alban Bagbin had denied a request by the Police to release Mr Sosu to them for arrest.



Sosu had led some of his constituents to embark on a demonstration against deplorable roads in his constituency.



The demonstration started peacefully at Danfa around 6:00am but later saw demonstrators burning tyres and mounting roadblocks on the Ayi Mensah-Danfa Road.



Sosu, who has since been charged by the Police, however denied the allegation saying That any allegation of the Police about my involvement in unlawful blockade of road and destruction of public property is false and an afterthought carefully manufactured by the police to shift attention of the people of Ghana from the key issues of bad roads raised by our protest and demonstration.



In a letter dated October 28, addressed to the Deputy Director-General of Criminal Investigation Division, F.K. Agyei, the Speaker indicated that due to limitations of Articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution, Mr Sosu could not be released.



I am directed by the Rt. Hon. Speaker to inform you that proceedings of the 3rd Meeting of the 1st Session of the 8th Parliament commenced on Tuesday 26th October, 2021 and having regard to the limitations of articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic, he is unable to release the Member of Parliament as requested in your letter, Deputy Director of Legal Services, Nana Tawiah Okyir wrote on behalf of the Clerk of Parliament.



But a statement issued by the Majority in Parliament on Thursday November 4 regarding the Speakers response said  The Majority Leadership views the foregoing response by Speaker Bagbin as a troubling departure from how his predecessors handled such requests. To avoid doubt, when both Rt Hons Joyce Bamford Addo and Edward Doe Adjaho received those requests during their days in office, they responded by inviting the relevant MPs, held discussions with them, and then asked them to report to the requesting Police or investigative authorities.



It added Now the Speaker of Ghanas Parliament, Rt Hon Bagbin, appears to be instituting new rules that seem to undermine the Rule of Law without any prior discussions with the Leadership of the House. We ask: What exactly has changed?



Below is their full statement



MAJORITY CAUCUS

PARLIAMENT OF GHANA

Parliament House  Accra (Chana)

PARLIAMENT OF GHANA



PRESS STATEMENT BY THE MAJORITY LEADERSHIP PARLIAMENT HOUSE, ACCRA, GHANA, 04 NOVEMBER 2021



The Majority Leadership in Parliament notes with extreme concern the refusal of the Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Alban S.K. Bagbin, to release the Member of Parliament (MP) for Madina, Hon Francis Xavier Sosu, to the Ghana Police Service to assist with investigations into alleged offences committed during a recent demonstration in his constituency.



In a letter dated 27 October 2021, the Ghana Police Service officially identified Hon Sosu as a person of interest and, therefore, requested the Speaker to release him to assist with investigations.



However, in a response dated 28th October 2021, the Speaker said: Proceedings of the 3rd Meeting of the 1st Session of the 8th Parliament commenced on Tuesday 26th October 2021 and having regard to the limitations of articles 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic, he is unable to release the Member of Parliament as requested



The Majority Leadership views the foregoing response by Speaker Bagbin as a troubling departure from how his predecessors handled such requests. To avoid doubt, when both Rt Hons Joyce Bamford Addo and Edward Doe Adjaho received those requests during their days in office, they responded by inviting the relevant MPs, held discussions with them, and then asked them to report to the requesting Police or investigative authorities.



Again, during his tenure as Speaker, Rt Hon Professor Mike Oquaye modified the arrangement, including making the Speakers Conference Room available to the Police to meet with MPs they were interested in and to conduct initial investigations. He did this to protect the dignity of MPs while at the same time ensuring that MPs are not put above the law. At all these times, Hon Bagbin, as he then was, had been part of the leadership of the House.



Now the Speaker of Ghanas Parliament, Rt Hon Bagbin, appears to be instituting new rules that seem to undermine the Rule of Law without any prior discussions with the Leadership of the House. We ask: What exactly has changed?



As a group, the Majority believes firmly that constitutionally guaranteed immunity for MPs in our democracy must not only be protected always but jealously guarded as well. However, never should we, as a Parliament, make the mistake of allowing immunity to be construed to mean impunity.



We take a firm view that in the particular case under reference, Parliament, as the law-making arm of our democracy, has a constitutional, legal and moral duty to cooperate and collaborate with the Police to ensure that the Rule of Law prevails. Further, Parliament must not be seen to be creating a false regime of two separate laws in Ghana  one for MPs and another for non-MPs. Instead, Parliament must ensure the equality of all citizens, including MPs, before the law.















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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Marilyn Gladu addresses the crowd at a federal Conservative leadership forum during the annual general meeting of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative party in Halifax on Saturday, February 8, 2020. Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu says she and other colleagues are forming a "mini-caucus" within the existingTory caucus to advocate for Canadians concerned about the impacts of vaccine mandates. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
FILE - In this Sept. 30, 2013, file photo, Britain's Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, speaks during the opening session of the Japan-UK security cooperation conference in Tokyo. A 2008 settlement agreement that a lawyer for Prince Andrew says would protect him against claims that he sexually abused an American when she was 17 can remain secret, a New York judge ruled Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)
Logansport, IN (46947)

Today

Cloudy with rain ending for the afternoon. High 48F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 22F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
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Judge Timothy Walmsley presides over the jury selection process in the trial of Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and their neighbour, William "Roddie" Bryan, charged with the February 2020 death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, at the Gwynn County Superior Court, in Brunswick, Ga., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (Octavio Jones/Pool Photo via AP)
WEST SALEM  A West Salem day care provider was arrested after a child in her care was critically injured.

On Oct. 27, Bobbie Jo Sanders, 44, of West Salem, was arrested for first-degree assault and first-degree criminal mistreatment after a Polk County grand jury issued an indictment.

Sanders is the owner and operator of Bobbie Jos Daycare in west Salem. According to a press release, the case stems from an investigation conducted by the Salem Police Department and the Oregon Department of Human Services after a child under six years of age was critically injured while in Sanders care in August.

The Salem Police Investigations Division asks anyone with information about the case, or other unreported incidents involving Sanders or Bobbie Jos Daycare, to contact Detective Scotty Nowning at 503-540-2482.
Information for the report comes from law enforcement agencies. Not all calls for service are included. The status of arrests reported may change after further investigation. Individuals arrested or suspected of crimes are considered innocent until proven guilty.

Dallas Police Report

Thursday, Oct. 21

At 12:19 a.m., Alyssia Myers was lodged into the Polk County Jail for assault II, domestic violence, unlawful use of a weapon, and restraining order violation.

At 1:51 a.m., a vehicle window was smashed out in the 100 block of West Ellendale Avenue.

Friday, Oct. 22

At 10:47 a.m., Tyler Oldham was lodged in the Polk County Jail for violation of a restraining order.

At 2:53 p.m., a log truck lost part of its load, hitting another vehicle on South Kings Valley Hwy. The truck made it to Highway 22 before being located.

At 8:58 p.m., Walmart reported the theft of merchandise cabinet keys. The Keychain also contained a spider key that unlocks cable locked merchandise.

At 10:09 p.m., the theft of five bags of cans was reported stolen from the side of a house on Southwest Birch Street. The cans were worth around $50.

Sunday, Oct. 24

At 6:44 a.m., a person reported that his ring and wallet was stolen in the 700 block of East Ellendale Avenue.

At 3:46 p.m., a loud boom was heard near Southeast Walnut Avenue. Multiple gunshots were heard.

At 9:01 p.m., a criminal mischief case was reported at Safeway. A male had punched and broken the self checkout computer screen. Police were unable to locate anyone matching the description of the person.

At 9:11 p.m., Xavier Frantrilla was lodged into the Polk County Jail for felony parole violation.

Monday, Oct. 25

At 10:23 a.m., a theft was reported at Dallas High School. An unknown suspect stole a tan Sportsman generator and a yellow gas powered cement mixer from the greenhouse shed.

At 4:09 p.m., a theft was reported on Fairview Avenue. A package had been stolen from the location.

At 5:03 p.m., a sex offense was reported on Main Street. Under investigation.

At 5:56 p.m., a sex offense was reported on Southwest Academy Street. Under investigation.

Tuesday, Oct. 26

At 9:26 a.m., report of a fraudulent AT&T account being opened under the victims name. The victim was charged $1,099 for new phone. No suspect or location information.

At 9:39 a.m., Shawn Shrive-Tharp was lodged into the Polk County Jail for violating retraining order.

At 1:14 p.m., a hit and run was reported in the Safeway parking lot. Under investigation.

At 4:48 p.m., Codie Ott was lodged into the Polk County Jail for hindering prosecution and for two felony warrants.

At 8:18 p.m., a vehicle vs. pedestrian crash was reported in the 100 block of West Ellendale Avenue.

Wednesday, Oct. 27

At 5:36 a.m., a person had her Facebook account hacked with debit card attached to it. A fraudulent purchase of $360.10 was made by someone in New York State.

At 10:19 a.m., Stephanie Early was lodged into the Polk County Jail for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and theft I.

At 1:03 p.m., Stephanie Early was lodged into the Polk County Jail for unauthorized entry of a motor vehicle and theft II.

At 1:05 p.m., a sex offense case was reported in the 100 block of Southeast Court Street.

At 1:18 p.m., Stormi Luploi was lodged into the Polk County Jail for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and theft I.

At 5:29 p.m., a possible burglary was reported on Southwest Oakdale Avenue.

At 7:37 p.m., a person had been locked in a tanning booth for roughly one hour in the 200 block of West Ellendale Avenue. Staff were concerned she was having a medical emergency as she was not responding when they knocked on her door. She was found to be alright, and had been wearing noise canceling head phones.

Thursday, Oct. 28

At 1:07 p.m., a hit and run was reported in the 200 block of West Ellendale Avenue.

At 1:37 p.m., a report of a theft of a package from a doorstep on Northwest Foxglove.

At 2:29 p.m., the theft of Milwaukee power tools was reported on Southwest Washington Street.

Polk County Sheriffs Office

Monday, Oct. 25

At 7:59 a.m., a report of two powerlines down, blocking the roadway in the 4300 block of Gibson Road.

At 11:46 a.m., a report of a three-vehicle accident in the 16700 block of Oakdale Road. A driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed over the center divide and struck a dump truck. The first motorist was cited for careless driving. The driver of the dump trump was cited for driving while suspended and driving uninsured. The occupants of the third vehicle in the accident were uninjured.

At 12:15 p.m., Rickreall Dairy employees reported two incidents. First, a subject tried to twice steal fuel. The second incident was illegal dumping of trash on the dairys burn pile.

At 12:37 p.m., a subject reported having $7,200 stolen from his vehicle in the 17200 block of Falls City Road sometime between Aug. 7-9.

At 3 p.m., deputies investigated a report of a minor sexually abusing a younger sibling in the 13000 block of Webb Lane.

At 5:37 p.m., a resident in the 5800 block of Merrill Lane reported being scammed out of $2,500 by someone claiming to be from the Multnomah County Sheriffs Office who told him he had court fees he needed to pay.

At 7:07 p.m., a motorist pulling a trailer loaded with a pickup was cited for speeding 76 mph in a 55-mph zone on Highway 22 near Van Well Road.

Tuesday, Oct. 26

At 11:28 a.m., a deputy received a report from Clay County Sheriffs Office in Florida that a resident had been scammed out mailing $20,000 buying Apple products and mailing them via FedEx to 341 Bridge St.

At 11:33 a.m., a report of the theft of four bicycles and two generators sometime between Oct. 24-26 in the 10300 block of Orrs Corner Road.

At 11:34 a.m., a report of an abandoned vehicle that has been blocking the intersection of Oak Hill and Corvallis roads for the last 5 days.

At 12:32 p.m., a neighbor watching a home in the 12100 block of Smithfield Road while the owners were in Arizona reported the home was broken into and a safe, containing $6,000-$7,000 in valuables, and a 2004 Chevy Impala were stolen.

At 1:25 p.m., McMinnville Police arrested a female subject on a Poke County warrant for parole violation. She was taken into custody by the PCSO and lodged at the Polk County Jail.

At 2:54 p.m., a school bus owned by Mid-Columbia Bus Company, but leased by the Falls City School District, had its fuel line cut, valued at $200, and $50 in fuel stolen sometime overnight in the 100 block of Main Street.

At 4:04 p.m., a resident in the 26700 block of Salmon River Highway reported there had been several trespassers on the property stealing items.

At 4:12 p.m., a motorist was cited for speeding 88 mph in a 55-zone on Highway 22 near Edgewater Street.

At 6:24 p.m., a deputy responded to a Dallas Police report of a suspect that ran while being apprehended. The deputy located and apprehended the suspect who was hiding in vehicle in the 100 block of Ellendale Avenue.
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HAMPTON  A grand jury has indicted Alex Murdaugh and Curtis Edward Smith in connection with Murdaugh's shooting over the Labor Day weekend.

Both men were indicted Nov. 4 on the charges of conspiracy and false claim for payment of $10,000 or more, according to a press release from S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Murdaugh was also indicted on the charge of filing a false police report, while Smith was indicted on charges of pointing and presenting a firearm, assisted suicide and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.

Authorities allege Smith shot Murdaugh on Sept. 4 on a rural road in Hampton County as part of a suicide plot Murdaugh concocted so his son could collect on his $10 million life insurance policy.

Smith complied with the request, according to authorities, and then ditched the gun in an unknown location.

The attorney survived the shooting and called 911. In recordings of the phone call released by State Law Enforcement Division, Murdaugh told a dispatcher that somebody shot him after his car blew a flat tire.

Somebody stopped to help me, and when I turned my back they tried to shoot me, Murdaugh says in the call.

Murdaugh was airlifted to a Savannah hospital for treatment.

Both men were later arrested on criminal charges and released on bond.

Smith, 61, has denied shooting Murdaugh, telling The Associated Press that Murdaugh asked to meet with him but didnt give a reason. When they got to the road, Murdaugh asked Smith to shoot him. Smith refused, they wrestled over the gun and it fired once.

The indictment contains the same allegations that led to the men's arrests in September, but before a case can proceed to trial, prosecutors must prove probable cause.

One way to do that is to hold a preliminary hearing, an open-court proceeding where the prosecutor must present sufficient evidence to a judge to show that a trial is warranted.

Another method is to present the evidence to a grand jury, which can then choose to indict the defendant on the charges. Grand juries are secret proceedings that are not open to the public.

Jim Griffin, one of Murdaugh's attorneys, said he skimmed the indictments and did not see any allegations that were different from what was initially charged.

He said they had requested a preliminary hearing in the case, but the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to holding in-person court hearings, so he could understand why the attorney general's office chose to indict by grand jury.
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COLUMBIA  It was when the three red dots appeared on the marquee of a former dry cleaners at 3014 Broad River Road that community activist Javar Juarez realized that another business he considers detrimental was coming to the neighborhood.

A liquor store opening soon on this stretch of Broad River Road near St. Andrews Road has prompted the community advocate to seek stronger protections for the area.

"Right now, we don't need a liquor store," he said.

Juarez, president of the Broad River Business Alliance, believes that the community needs a special zoning overlay from Richland County to regulate more tightly what businesses can locate there. County Council Chairman Paul Livingston said he could back the idea.

The Broad River Road area northwest of downtown Columbia already has too many liquor and convenience stores, pawn shops and other businesses that undermine a healthy community, Juarez said.

Legal ads announcing the pursuit of a new liquor license for the site were placed in a weekly newspaper and website. Many people in the community don't have home computers except for their phones, and the listing went unnoticed, Juarez said.

Broad River Road already has several businesses that sell alcohol in a stretch of not much more than a mile, according to local resident Sara Pearson.

Other liquor and convenience stores nearby have been a problem in the neighborhood, with people hanging around, leaving trash near the stores and fighting, she said. The owners tend not to keep up their properties. Pearson said she and other neighbors have periodically cleaned up the road and nearby parking lots to help the area.

A concentration of liquor and convenience stores can keep other businesses away, she said: "If I owned a restaurant chain, I definitely would not be on that stretch."

The new liquor store site sits on a part of Broad River Road that is in Richland County, not the city.

A liquor license application for a new location in the city of Columbia has to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals. There is no similar level of review for county properties.

An overlay district adding to the current county zoning at least could give the community a better understanding of what businesses are being proposed and other chances for input, said Livingston, the county council chairman.

That review and the need for focused attention is one reason that Juarez believes the long-term answer for the area is annexation into the city.

That would fix the problem of "donut holes," places where the city borders surround an area that still operates under the county's supervision.

"We are disenfranchised because of Richland County Council," Juarez said.

Instead of more liquor stores, the Broad River Road area needs another full-service grocery store, he said.

The Harveys grocery store nearby closed in 2018, part of Bi-Lo's departure from the South Carolina market. The nearby Walmart on Bush River Road closed earlier this year.

Juarez has reached out to grocery chains, but they have not decided to bring a store to the area.

Instead, he is seeking to create a fresh produce market in the area, with plans to use a converted shipping container and stock it with fruits and vegetables from Black farmers.

Livingston said he is hoping to create an incentive program to help corridors such as Broad River Road, one that would help with beautification and even possibly incentives for certain businesses to come.

Ultimately, however, locations are up to grocery stores and not the county, Livingston said.

Juarez talks to people around Columbia who seek to avoid the Broad River Road area, perceiving it as run-down.

"They don't see what we see," he said.

He instead sees his neighborhood as a place of historic significance dating back to Colonial times, of impressive homes and natural beauty.

Juarez hopes that changes along the Broad River Road corridor could change the perception of its nearby neighborhoods.

"People don't realize that we are a community," he said.

Pearson said her neighborhood, Emerald Valley, has been an area where many residents were retirees or professionals like her, a school administrator who holds a doctorate.

But the nearby blight on Broad River Road, she said, is a major factor prompting some of those longtime residents to look elsewhere. Another loss for a struggling part of the city.
COLUMBIA  The two remaining candidates for Columbia's next mayor are familiar faces with contrasting politics who are coming from different places in the race as they prepare for a runoff later in November.

Daniel Rickenmann and Tameika Isaac Devine have worked alongside each other on City Council for most of the past 19 years, each a vote on a public body that deals in decidedly local issues such as road and sewer projects and approving costs for city vehicles.

But in the capital city and state government hub that often becomes a flashpoint for national issues, Devine has been a consistently progressive voice supporting gun control and LGTBQ rights, while Rickenmann has represented the limited government, law-and-order platform associated with conservatives.

Voters will be faced with those choices during a runoff Nov. 16 after a field of four was narrowed to two on Election Day.

Rickenmann finished the night well ahead of Devine, earning 43.5 percent of the vote to Devine's 30.2 percent. Rickenmann's campaign feels the difference will prove too significant to make up in the runoff.

"I think that reflects on the kind of campaign we ran; I think it reflects on the kind of candidate that Daniel was," said Walter Whetsell, a political strategist working with Rickenmann's campaign. "I think it reflects on the vision he outlined and his focus on public safety and his focus on turning Columbia into something into a place that everyone can succeed in and thrive in, rather than just a few select folks. I think it resonated."

Meanwhile, Devine's campaign said it will seek to drive voter turnout for the special election and convince the 20 percent of voters who chose former mayor's aide Sam Johnson to return to the polls and vote for Devine.

"We knew that this was the most likely scenario," said Christina Cue, Devine's campaign manager. "We're just excited for the opportunity to continue to share Tameika's vision with Columbia. She has a diversity of support and we're just looking forward to engaging even more supporters."

The runoff showdown, though a nonpartisan election in the state's second-largest city, pits contrasts in candidates and their political platforms: a Black woman progressive candidate with deep support among local Democrats versus a White male conservative who enjoys broad support from traditional Republicans.

While Devine and Rickenmann each have enclaves of the city they might expect strong support, each has proven the ability to win a citywide election  Devine as an at-large council members since 2002 and Rickenmann with two terms in an at-large seat before winning his District 4 post in 2017.

While Devine will need Johnson's voters to have a chance in a runoff, Rickenmann's campaign says Johnson's message of a new vision for Columbia and a move away from the status quo resonates more with their candidate's message. Whetsell said he feels the final numbers will show Rickenmann performed well with Black voters and White voters in diverse areas of the city.

Rickenmann and Devine have refrained from publicly traded barbs during the campaign, holding to an agreement to focus on issues.

But a series of mailers attacking Devine for alleged nepotism and advocating a pay raise for council members amid the aftermath of the historic 2015 flood drew a sharp rebuke from Devine, who has said the attacks must have originated from supporters of one of her opponents though her campaign hasn't named names.

Rickenmann denied involvement in the mailers. Political strategist Mark Knoop, working on the campaign to reelect Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and has worked with GOP state Attorney General Alan Wilson, is behind the Forward Columbia organization that paid for the fliers. Knoop declined comment when reached on Nov. 3.

Cue, who worked on President Barack Obama's campaigns and later in the Obama administration before returning to her native South Carolina, said such attacks were expected and disproportionately target women who run for office.

Also a question during the next two weeks will be whether Johnson or the three members of City Council who endorsed his campaign  Mayor Steve Benjamin and council members Sam Davis and Ed McDowell  will now rally support for one of the runoff candidates. All three have Democratic ties. Devine already won an endorsement from U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia.

Cue noted that the capital city tends to elect Democrats to the mayor's office and that Devine and Johnson are similar enough candidates to draw the same voters. But she said Devine's campaign courted support from throughout the city.

In a lengthy statement Nov. 3, Johnson expressed support for his proposals that the city hire a health chief to address public health concerns and offer a 10-year contract to police and firefighters aimed at addressing retention issues. He encouraged residents to vote in the runoff but didn't indicate support for either remaining candidate.

"To Councilwoman Devine and Councilman Rickenmann, let me ask simply that you take this opportunity not just to win an election, but to lead a people," Johnson said in the statement. "We can't get lost in old arguments and petty rivalries. We cant be distracted by trifling talking points and we cant ignore good ideas just because they arent our own. Too much is at stake."
COLUMBIA  The former head of Richland Countys Recreation Commission was acquitted Nov. 4 of allegations he coerced a female employee into having sex during his time running the office.

James Brown III, who resigned in 2016, was cleared on charges of attempted third-degree sexual conduct after a two-day jury trial in Richland County Circuit Court.

A living nightmare," Browns attorney, Dayne Phillips, said during closing arguments Nov. 4. "A literal living nightmare to be falsely accused of a sex crime, to be accused of something you didn't do, to wear the scarlet letter of being arrested and having this shame put upon you and your family.

Brown, 65, declined to comment following the jurys decision.

Charging documents allege Brown coerced or attempted to coerce women who worked at the commission to have sex between 2012 and 2015, and that in 2014 he grabbed a female employees arm and tried to pull her into his office bathroom.

Jurors deliberated for 90 minutes before returning a not-guilty verdict on the charge that carried up to 10 years in prison.

In a case built exclusively around circumstantial evidence, Phillips attacked the credibility of Browns accuser and several co-workers she spoke with about the alleged incident. On the stand, she couldnt recall the year when the assault purportedly happened, and Phillips asked her about discrepancies on a job application.

This is a credibility case, Phillips said during the trial. He pointed to a felony domestic violence charge Brown's accuser had from 1999 that was not disclosed on a 2013 job application.

Prosecutors called to the stand one of three people who spoke about the incident with Brown's accuser. The friend testified that Brown often made sexually charged jokes in a group setting, but acknowledged to Phillips that while they made her uncomfortable, she ever felt as if she'd be harmed.

On the stand, Browns accuser said he repeatedly made sexually charged comments to her and offered to buy her clothes and other gifts in exchange for sex inside a bathroom attached to his office.

I felt bad. I didnt like the comments. I felt grossed out," the woman testified.

Prosecutor Kinli Abee with the S.C. Attorney Generals Office said Browns accuser didnt go to police or human resources officials following the confrontation because she feared losing her job. The prosecution painted Brown as a tyrant and control freak.

If you give a man power, you see who he is. James Brown was appointed executive director of the Richland County Recreation Commission, he gained power, Abee said. The power to hire, the power to fire the power to make monetary decisions, but he wanted more power than that.

Browns legal problems arent over. He faces other counts of misconduct in office, witness intimidation and criminal sexual conduct, but Phillips asked a judge to separate the indictments and focus the trial on one alleged victim.

Multiple workers sued Brown, the agencys governing board and other top-ranking department officials in 2016 over allegations that include sexual harassment, nepotism and retaliatory behavior. A probe by federal and state investigators led to the charges.

While the commission receives funding from the county, the agency is a special-purpose district overseen by the state, with board members recommended by the countys legislative delegation and approved by the governor.

A newly installed board in 2018 hired a new director, Lakita Watson, a 20-year parks and recreation administrator from Virginia.
COLUMBIA  The University of South Carolina has had more than 50 applicants wanting to fill the top job at the state's largest university.

The committee charged with conducting the search for the school's next president is expected to begin narrowing down the candidate pool soon, said USC board Vice Chairman Thad Westbrook, who is leading the search committee.

Westbrook said he hopes the 21-member committee will come away from the Nov. 5 meeting with a list of candidates who will receive initial interviews before the end of the year.

"Those interviews, I hope, will take place before Thanksgiving," Westbrook told members of the USC Faculty Senate.

In an interview with The Post and Courier, Westbrook said the applicant pool includes college presidents, chancellors, provosts and deans.

A majority of the candidates have higher education experience, a question raised after the previous president, retired Army Gen. Bob Caslen, was hired despite a lack of traditional academic experience.

And nearly half the candidates were women or people of color, Westbrook said. USC did not have a female among its finalists during the school's last search for a president in 2019 but did have an African American in the pool.

The committee will have some hard decisions to make, he said.

The search committee does not have a set deadline to take applications, Westbrook said, allowing for the possibility of a qualified late applicant.

He also does not have a timetable for interviews or reaching a list of finalists, though the goal remains trying to name a new president who can start work at the beginning of the next academic year.

Westbrook told the Faculty Senate that the committee is monitoring searches at other schools across the country looking for a chief executive and is mindful that some of the candidates may be interviewing at multiple institutions.

"We want to identify the right person to lead the university but also not let great candidates slip away because they were picked up in other searches," Westbrook added.

Faculty Senate Chairwoman Audrey Korsgaard said she has confidence in the search committee to find the right candidate. Faculty has said they are hoping for a president who is highly qualified with past college leadership experience.

"And it's my understanding that's what we're getting," Korsgaard said.

The search committee put out criteria in September saying the next president should come from an academic background with an ability to fundraise and boost research at South Carolina's largest university, which has 52,000 students on eight campuses and a $1.8 billion annual budget.

USC has been under the leadership of Interim President Harris Pastides since Caslen resigned amid a plagiarism scandal during the college's graduation ceremonies in May.

Pastides, a Yale-educated epidemiologist and former dean of USCs public health school, had served as president prior to Caslen's 2019 hiring and was a popular figure on campus during his 11 years at the helm.

When he took back over the presidential seat he told The Post and Courier he expected to be in the interim job about a year as the school looked for its new leader.

Andy Shain contributed from Columbia.
GEORGETOWN  A ceremony to rename the Georgetown Post Office after Georgetown-native U.S. Rep. Joseph Rainey, the first African American U.S. Representative, will be held on Nov. 9.

U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, R-Myrtle Beach, sponsored the bill to rename the post office back in December 2020 after every member of South Carolinas delegation to the House of Representatives endorsed changing the name.

I never heard of Rep. Rainey until I was in Congress, and I saw a portrait of him in a stairway up to the House of Representatives, Rice previously said. I did more research on him and I was really proud of the fact that the first African-American representative in the history of our country came right here from our district.

Rainey was born enslaved in 1832, but his father Edward Rainey was allowed to work as a barber and keep part of his earnings, which he eventually used to buy the family's freedom in the early 1840s.

Joseph Rainey never received a formal education because of South Carolina's African American education laws, so he learned his fathers trade and became a barber.

After the Civil War, he helped found the South Carolina Republican Party and represented Georgetown on the partys central committee, and in 1868 he was elected to the state senate, where he chaired the senate finance committee.

In 1870, Rainey was elected to a U.S. House of Representatives. During his eight years in the House, he spoke out against white supremacists and intimidation, advocated for civil rights and promoted public education.

Rainey's childhood home also still stands in Georgetown and is a National Historic Landmark. The renaming ceremony will be held at Joseph Rainey Park in downtown Georgetown at 1:30 p.m. Nov. 9.
GEORGETOWN  The city of Georgetown, a cemented Democratic hub on South Carolina's Grand Strand for decades, is now controlled by Republicans.

Aggressive community outreach and melting away party lines by focusing on fiscal issues is how the four GOP candidates say they turned a 5-2 Democratic council majority to a 4-3 GOP edge in a single night.

The switch was cheered by national Republican leaders.

"Republican momentum is stronger than ever in South Carolina!" Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted Nov. 3, noting the Georgetown results.

The Georgetown Republicans campaigned together, calling themselves "The J Team" since all their names contain the letter, in a show of unity that they had a better shot of delivering on their promises in the state's third-oldest city.

"Some of our (campaign) management people were like, 'I don't think (running together) is a good idea, it's going to be tough getting two (of the three open) seats,' " said Jonathan Angner, a Republican who won a special election in April and won a full term Nov. 2. "And I was like 'No, if we brand ourselves and we don't fracture ... I think we can pull this off.' "

Angner joined now Mayor-elect Carol Jayroe and new council members Jim Clements and Jimmy Morris in the GOP sweep.

Angner said "The J Team" held at least six community meetings during the campaign. This engagement, plus an added focus on reducing the city's budget while paying city employees better, swayed some traditionally Democratic voters to side with them, he said.

It is unclear how many, if any, community meetings the Democrats held separately or together, but Democrat council incumbent Tupelo Humes, who lost his seat on Nov. 2, admitted they didn't do enough of them.

"The Democratic Party has the numbers here in Georgetown, and due to low turnout it's somewhat our fault," Humes said.

Turnout in the two precincts voting heavily for GOP candidates on Nov. 2 was 52 percent versus 36 percent in the two main Democratic precincts, according to an analysis of Georgetown polling data.

The city of 8,400 has a non-White population of 59 percent, usually a base for the Democratic Party, but also lost 16 percent of its Black population in the past decade, according to Census data.

All of the GOP candidates running in Georgetown on Nov. 2 were White, while all Democratic candidates were Black.

Jayroe, who will become the city's first Republican and woman mayor, said focusing on the budget and fiscal conservatism helped the Republicans capitalize on residents' frustrations with poverty and dilapidation in the city under recent Democratic administrations.

Despite stark differences in party goals and platforms though, Jayroe said she and the other GOP candidates stayed focused on unifying council rather than political alignment.

"You can go back to past meetings and see the rants that go on and you see there's no respect (on council), so I certainly hope to bring that back because our council and mayor positions are coveted positions in the city," Jayroe said.

Turnout for Republicans was particularly strong on Nov. 2 in Georgetown, located between Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

Jayroe performed better than former-President Donald Trump last year in GOP-heavy precincts.

The new mayor won 75 percent of the vote in the Georgetown 5 precinct in Maryville to Trump's 60 percent. And Trump won the Georgetown 1 precinct in downtown by 11 votes in 2020. Jayroe beat Democratic Mayor Brendon Barber there by nearly 300 votes.

The city went for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, who received 538 more votes than Trump. A year later, Jayroe beat Barber by 266 votes.

Ronald McInnis, one of the Democrats who lost the race, said he was unsure why Democrat turnout was so low. Efforts to reach Barber were not successful.

Georgetown County Democratic Party Chair Marianne Mackey said it was difficult for the Democratic candidates to overcome the $90,000 raised by the Republicans, along with their alliances with business groups, including the S.C. Association of Realtors. Jayroe has been involved with real estate sales for decades and owned Prince George Sothebys International Realty in Pawley Island for 14 years.

This rapid shift from Democrat leadership to Republican means beautifying Georgetown will become easier and happen quicker with fiscally responsible minds in charge, Jayroe said. By making Georgetown more attractive, the city could boost its population that fell by 8 percent in the past decade.

"A city located where we are should not be losing population, we should be gaining population," Jayroe said.
Greenville could become the first city in South Carolina to use its business license fees as an economic development incentive for certain types of businesses.

When first proposed nearly two months ago as part of a state-mandated overhaul, the incentives could involve five-year rebates on fees to attract corporate headquarters, manufacturing, commercial annexations, retail in the central business district and West End, as well as artists in those two districts and the Village of West Greenville. Two weeks ago, the financial department crafting the proposal added to the list grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods, which often lack sufficient healthy and fresh food options.

Now, ahead of a City Council vote in November on the overhaul and incentives, another type of business has been proposed by elected and business leaders: child care.

"I know access to child care is a huge barrier to workforce access," City Councilwoman Dorothy Dowe told The Post and Courier. "COVID put it under a magnifying glass, and we saw how a household can collapse."

Dowe proposed the amendment as the council delayed a vote on the overall revamp of the business license structure two weeks ago.

In the initial presentation, Dowe suggested grocery stores in what are deemed by the city as "special emphasis neighborhoods." In those areas, quality grocery stores aren't within walking distance or sometimes pricier options pop up where those neighborhoods are being gentrified.

The delay came at the request of Councilman John DeWorken.

The incentives proposal and the overall new structure of business licenses are two separate pieces of legislation progressing in tandem.

The incentives would involve giving eligible businesses a five-year rebate on fees. Businesses in those categories that already exist within the city would get a 50 percent rebate over the same time span. The broader overhaul, which would lower fees for 85 percent of businesses, is a lengthy document and DeWorken said there wasn't enough time for the council or business owners to review.

"Typically, our ordinances are simple and a few pages, so when the 76-page ordinance landed, I had a lot of questions, DeWorken told The Post and Courier.

One question was new requirements related to private transportation services. After review, DeWorken said the new structure is meant to help taxi businesses have fees more in line with ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, which follow state regulations.

The Greenville Chamber of Commerce is still reviewing the ordinance but has responded generally favorably, said Jason Zacher, the chamber's senior vice president of business advocacy. The chamber, Zacher said, "applauds the city for thinking outside the box for using business license fees as a tool."

Dowe said she proposed adding child care in the incentive structure, as she thought back to being a mother of young children in 1993 trying to find care. It was difficult then, she said, and can only be even more so now.

In its survey of businesses, the chamber found access to child care as a key hindrance to business growth along with factors like transportation, Zacher said.

The availability and accessibility and affordability of child care is always in the top five of problems for employers and employees, Zacher said. We need to make sure weve got the ability for kids to be in a safe nurturing environment. Weve got to get some of these folks back in the workforce.

Like other cities across South Carolina, the city of Greenville is required to repeal the structure of its business license fees and replace it with a standard model required by the state legislature. The S.C. Business License Standardization Act has been negotiated for years between businesses seeking uniform standards and cities trying to maintain a vital source of revenue.

State lawmakers passed the act last year, which requires cities and counties who impose business license fees to implement changes by the end of this year.

In Greenville, about 9,500 businesses operate with licenses. Of those, about 8,100 will see a decrease next spring in how much they paid compared to 2020, city budget director Matt Efird said.

Among the 85 percent who will see a decrease, the average drop in fees is $205. Among those who will see smaller bills are retailers, restaurants, manufacturers and professional services. Restaurants will see the largest average annual decrease at $110.

The remaining 1,400 businesses will see an average increase of $1,270 per business, though the vast majority will see increases of no more than 10 percent, he said. Those seeing increases include auto dealerships and professional services that gross $5 million or more annually, he said.

The varying changes are a result of an aspect of the new law that requires local governments to receive no more in business license revenue than they received in 2020.
GREENVILLE  When Vanessa Wyche heard her alma mater was holding an event for young women interested in STEM fields, she had to be there.

Before arriving at the Greenville Convention Center for Clemson University's inaugural Women's Roundtable event on Nov. 3, Wyche was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, working on the space agency's next mission to the moon.

She has worked more than 30 years at NASA to get to where she is today: the director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, which houses the astronaut corps, Mission Control Center, and the International Space Station and Orion Gateway Programs. She is the first Black woman to oversee the center, where she leads a workforce of 10,000.

The Womens Roundtable featured speeches full of advice from Wyche, journalist Soledad OBrien and poet Tanaya Winder for middle school, high school and college students to learn about pathways into STEM careers. The event was initially to be paired with Clemson's annual Men of Color Summit, but that event was postponed until April 2022 due to the pandemic.

Wyche was raised in Conway in Horry County, the youngest of five children and the daughter of two educators. Her parents encouraged her to pursue all of her interests: tap dancing, gymnastics and Girl Scouts.

In grade school, her biology teacher motivated her to find a career in science because it was clear she liked it so much, propelling her to pursue a degree in bioengineering at Clemson.

She recalled being one of only two women in her engineering program, but powered through with the help of her professors.

When she got her first job at NASA, she worked as a project engineer developing hardware tests alongside various university professors to run tests on astronauts. She noticed there weren't many other women around. When she asked her then director about it he replied, "Yes, you're the first one."

Diversity at NASA has since improved but Wyche said that the agency "can do better.

Its about increasing the pipeline, Wyche said, adding that NASA has internship and post-doctorate programs.

Wyche excelled despite being in a male-dominated field. She acknowledged that most of her mentors were men and credited her early mindset to her father, who raised four girls and one boy. He taught night school, and ran both a community center and her grandfather's farm, with his children often coming with him.

"I did all of the mechanical things that my brother did, so that didn't seem foreign to me," Wyche said.

The young people at the roundtable made Wyche excited for the future.

"This is very special," Wyche said. "I can see in them what I was at their age, just very eager to learn about the world and about what you can and cannot do."

NASA is currently working toward putting the first person of color and woman on the moon with its Artemis missions. More than 50 years ago, the Apollo missions only included white men. In Greek mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the moon and the twin sister to Apollo.

"We will be launching a rocket larger than any that the United States has ever had," Wyche said.

Wyche showed a video explaining NASA's Artemis mission and talked about the intricacies of space exploration, including what it is going to take for the agency to get there.

After a weather and medical delay, Wyche said her team will soon launch a SpaceX team to the International Space Station and bring the current team home that has been there for six months. The official NASA Commercial Crew Program Twitter last updated that the NASA and SpaceX Crew-3 mission aims to launch late on Nov. 6.

Soledad OBrien was the keynote speaker at the Womens Roundtable. She talked about her upbringing, career at CNN and how she handles discrimination inside and outside of the workplace. The attendees also broke out for smaller roundtables and the event closed with a speech from poet Tanaya Winder.
Summerville, SC (29483)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 72F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 51F. Winds light and variable.
MYRTLE BEACH  With Myrtle Beachs tourism industry rebounding in 2021 with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, business leaders said they expect the economy to remain strong as the holidays approach.

As the Myrtle Beach International Airport sees historically high passenger numbers this year, data released by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce similarly shows that occupancy rates were nearly 20 percentage points higher this October over last year and 30 percentage points higher than in 2019.

Occupancy bookings for the next 60 days leading into the holidays also remain higher than average, pacing at nearly 7 percentage points ahead of 2019 and 2 points ahead of 2020, according to the latest Lodging Metrics report provided by the Myrtle Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Our chamber members are immensely encouraged by these findings as we enter our holiday season, because a strong, year-round economy ensures that our businesses and workforce can thrive, said Karen Riordan, who leads the organzation. This is true not only for our hospitality and leisure industry employees, but those who work for the multitude of ancillary businesses who depend on the tourism industry.

One key sector that leaders said they are counting on is the return of Canadian visitors. On Nov. 8, fully vaccinated Canadians were allowed to cross into the United States by land for leisure trips, according to White House officials. The Canada-U.S. border had been closed to non-essential travel since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Historically, many Canadians arrive in early January and stay through April but with travel allowed again, leaders said they are seeing reservations earlier than usual with some stays starting this month.

Online travel agencies Tripadvisor and Expedia also echo the trend that Myrtle Beach is a popular place for holiday visitors.

Tripadvisor recently revealed that Myrtle Beach is the fourth most-popular destination Americans are visiting, followed only by Las Vegas, New York City and Orlando in its 2021 Fall Travel Index. Likewise, Expedia recently announced that Myrtle Beach was the No. 7 U.S. destination to visit for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Myrtle Beach tourism leaders have heavily marketed a new holiday festival that is coming to downtown at Burroughs and Chapin Pavilion Place for 37 consecutive days from Nov. 26 through Jan. 2.

The first-time event will feature a covered, outdoor ice-skating rink, a walk-through holiday lights experience and other holiday-themed offerings in an effort to bring in more visitors.

Winter Wonderland at The Beach ... will further solidify the Grand Strand as a year-round destination, Riordan said. We are excited to partner with the city on this festival and know it will add to the holiday events, attractions and theater shows already available to our residents and visitors.
CAROLINA FOREST  An Ocean Bay Middle School math teacher's education certificate was suspended following a deadly two-car crash on Carolina Forest Boulevard Oct. 25, according to S.C. State Board of Education.

Police charged Michael Oerther, 52, with felony driving under the influence after his vehicle allegedly struck and killed Carolina Forest resident Leza Watts, one of three people inside the other vehicle. She was 27.

South Carolina's school board stated their reasoning for the temporary suspension is due to the serious nature of the allegations against Oerther. Adding, "Oerther may pose a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of students, who may be under his instruction."

Oerthers bond was set at $40,000, which he posted on Oct. 26, according to court records.

Prior to the suspension, Oerther was placed on administrative leave on Oct. 26, according to Horry County Schools spokeswoman Lisa Bourcier.

The crash happened at 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 25 at the intersection of Carolina Forest Boulevard and Stafford Drive, which is near a recreation center and library.

The victims Honda was stopped at a traffic light when a Jeep struck the rear end of the vehicle, according to S.C. Highway Patrol.
Olympic silver medalist and Charleston native Raven Saunders will lead Charleston's annual Jan. 1 Emancipation Parade, city of Charleston officials announced Nov. 4.

A Burke High School graduate, Saunders made a name for herself after securing a silver medal in the women's shotput at the Tokyo Olympics held this summer.

Shes an extraordinary athlete and a hometown hero here in Charleston, Mayor John Tecklenburg said.

She used her platform to speak openly about her struggles with mental health and on the podium raised her arm in an "X" above her head to symbolize the intersection of oppressed people.

For Saunders, the parade gives her a chance to bring her advocacy home.

Saunders was unable to attend the press conference announcing the parade details at Charleston City Hall but spoke with The Post and Courier about her participation.

"I remember growing up, literally every year going to the New Year's Day parade and being in awe of it," Saunders told the newspaper. "Being able to see myself as the grand marshal is a huge accomplishment."

The parade, which takes place annually on New Year's Day, is recognized as the country's oldest celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing enslaved people. It began in 1866.

"I am a history nut. Knowing the people who laid the foundation for me to be able to speak up and use my platform to help others is really amazing," Saunders said. "It's really amazing to be able to carry on their legacy and keep laying the foundation for those who come after me."

City and community leaders said they believe Saunders will help attract a solid crowd on New Year's Day.

We believe she will be a major crowd-drawer in our city as well as a pleasant person to work with, said Robert Crawford, president of the Emancipation Proclamation Association of Charleston.

Crawford reflected on the importance of recognizing the proclamation as a turning point in Charleston and U.S. history.

The proclamation also announced the acceptance of Black men in our Union Army  The liberated became liberators, Crawford said.

Although Saunders no longer lives in Charleston, she said she still calls the city home.

"I am very proud to be from Charleston and I carry it everywhere I go," Saunders said.

Instead of ending at Mother Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street, where it has in recent years, the parade will conclude at the site of the International African American Museum on Charleston Harbor, which is under construction. The museum is slated to open in the spring of 2022. The site is on Gadsden's Wharf, where 40 percent of all enslaved people brought to the U.S. first entered the country.

Tonya Matthews, president and CEO of the International African American Museum, said the space will be a fitting ending point of the parade to both honor history and inspire future generations.

The museum is here to amplify the African American story, Matthews said. For those of us that need some encouragement, to see a bit of progress is a really important factor. Being part of a celebration reminds you that you can also be a part of progress."

In 2020, the parade was replaced with a virtual, livestreamed event as a part of the citys COVID-19 pandemic precautions. Its return for the 156th year marks another chapter of perseverance, Matthews said.

[Parades] are about reclaiming joy and reclaiming festivity so I think that it's another sign that, yet again. we have made it through. Its part of that bigger story and I am excited that the museum is included, she said.

The parade will be held at 11 a.m. on Jan. 1 and be livestreamed by WCSC-TV.

There is still time to sign up to participate in the parade and sponsor it, Crawford said.

Proceeds from the parades enrollment fee will benefit the Emancipation Proclamation Association of Charleston's Albert W. Hunt Education Scholarship Program.

More information can be found at www.chsepa.wordpress.com.
Aiken County Board of Education Superintendent King Laurence is in favor of COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 5-11.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday for children ages 5-11.

"I encourage parents to strongly consider having their children vaccinated, just like any other childhood vaccination, whether its a flu shot or chicken pox or anything else," Laurence said. "I think that if we have the ability to prevent a disease, then we should do it."

Laurence added he is not in favor of a mandate for the vaccine but encourages anyone eligible to get it.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control also supports this decision. Beginning Wednesday, children are able to get the vaccine in South Carolina.

Pediatric vaccinations are being distributed this week to more than 250 vaccine providers in South Carolina including many pediatricians and family practice providers, according to DHEC.

Just like a measles or polio shot, the COVID-19 vaccine will stave off this deadly virus and allow our children to safely attend school and focus on bettering themselves in the classroom, DHEC Director Dr. Edward Simmer said. We strongly urge parents to learn more about this vaccine and protect their children by taking advantage of this life-saving opportunity.

The Pfizer vaccine was approved by the CDC and has a 91% effectiveness in preventing COVID-19 among children 5-11, according to DHEC. The federal government has enough doses for 28 million children within this age group.

We are encouraged by this news and are excited to offer this vaccine to the 436,352 South Carolinian children in this age group, Simmer said.

According to DHEC, it is best to contact the childs provider for availability before visiting a vaccination site.

Vaccines for children will be available at pediatric health care provider offices, pharmacies, federally qualified health centers and more, according to the CDC.
As owners of the property at 295 Calhoun St. that was the topic of a recent editorial in The Post and Courier, we were disappointed that the editorial represented only one point of view, that of the Preservation Society of Charleston.

Here are some relevant facts that were not included in the editorial:

All adjoining property owners are in support of the proposed development.

The project would provide critically needed quality housing adjacent to the regions highest concentration of employment (medical district).

There are no historic residences in the immediate surroundings or adjacent vicinity of the property.

The planned improvements to Alberta Long Lake would provide major relief to the flooding conditions of the Calhoun West Basin.

The design provides new public park areas giving direct public access to Long Lake.

The development would provide for aesthetic improvement around Long Lake to include landscape improvements and a public walking trail.

The development would be positive relative to traffic issues, as residents of the property could walk to work rather than commute to this area from other parts of Charleston.

The only residents who would be impacted by the development are those living in the Halsey Park Townhomes, which supports the development.

The fundamental issue here is that those opposing the project are not in favor of how the property is zoned (MU-1). As property owners, we went through two rezonings, and were approved unanimously at the Planning Commission and City Council both times.

The new zoning gave us the right and parameters to develop our property. If we had not received it, we would not have purchased the site. Within the MU-1 zoning, our zoning provides unlimited density and zero setbacks from the street. Our project provides generous setbacks from Calhoun Street, even more generous setbacks from Halsey Boulevard, and a side setback that provides a public park on the west side.

We have far exceeded the standard setbacks. But the preservation groups continue to push for more. Simply put, if our project was not wanted, it should not have been rezoned. Once property rights are granted, they cannot be taken without fair compensation.

To provide further history on the site, when we put the property under contract to purchase from MUSC, we met with various interested parties to confirm the best use prior to development. We met with city staff, neighborhood groups and council members for input.

The feedback we received was that office use was discouraged due to traffic at peak hours. Use as a hotel was discouraged due to a transient population. A standalone parking deck was deemed unsightly. High-end residential apartments were the desired use: Housing would reduce traffic given that many residents would work in the medical district and would not need to drive to work. Also, residential architecture is more desirable than more contemporary office architecture.

This project also provides beneficial amenities to the surrounding area, including a walking trail around Long Lake and a boardwalk there. Most importantly, local flooding would be reduced through the use of Long Lake, a tidal lake. We plan to install a system that would not allow water to enter the lake before or during major weather events through a valve system. By dropping the water level by 1 foot, we can create enough capacity to serve many surrounding blocks. This was described as low-hanging fruit by the Waggoner Ball engineering firm, which is a major contributor to the Dutch Dialogues. Any time the private sector is able assist with public projects it is a win-win.

Our project is a beautiful, well-designed building by a very talented architect. We have met with, and have the support of, every adjoining property. We are located in the medical district, and by Board of Architectural Review ordinance, our building should relate to our surroundings, which include Roper Hospital and MUSC. Finally, our zoning provides property rights, and this zoning may not be unreasonably restricted by the BAR.

Vic Mills is founder and CEO of Southeastern Real Estate Group.
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.
Weve learned a lot lately about the failures of the water system in the tiny Clarendon County town of Summerton  about the nasty drinking water that resulted from pumps broken down, safety equipment removed, weed killer and ant poison scattered near wells and water tanks coated with inches of sludge.

But while the unresolved conflicts of interest and absent oversight that nurtured them might be unique to Summerton, those sorts of problems with public water systems definitely are not.

Although most South Carolinians get our water from large systems such as the city-owned utility that serves Charleston, about 1 in 6 rely on nearly 600 smaller water systems, run by local governments, trailer parks and private companies such as Blue Granite. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control reports that water systems that serve 9% of South Carolinas population violated state or federal regulations in 2020. And that wasnt atypical.

A 2019 investigation by Columbias State newspaper found more than 200 small water systems, serving about 90,000 people, had failed annual state inspections in the previous two years. Water systems serving more than 360,000 South Carolinians weren't using an additive to prevent lead from leaching from old pipes into the water, resulting in 41 systems that serve more than 20,000 people exceeding federal lead standards. Small systems serving more than 150,000 people had violated safe-drinking laws multiple times since 1990.

As the paper explained at the time: Poorly staffed and lightly regulated, small S.C. utilities regularly make decisions  and mistakes  that imperil the drinking water used by tens of thousands of the states most vulnerable and forgotten residents. Disease-carrying bacteria, cancer-causing chemicals, toxic nitrates and brain-damaging metals have shown up in small water systems from the foothills to the coast.  State inspectors report seeing fire ants and roaches on public wells, vulture droppings coating the ground below water tanks and cracked wells that allow bacteria into water systems.

Even beyond how this affects those who pay for contaminated water, a problem of this scale hurts all of us, because for our state to succeed we need everybody in our state to succeed  or at least a lot more than are succeeding now. Although we dont have the same constitutional requirement to provide safe water as we do to provide a decent education, the economic imperative is similar.

Contaminated water causes health problems that someone has to pay for  and usually all of us, through our taxes that pay for Medicare, Medicaid and health insurance for state and local government employees and members of the military. Lead exposure stunts childrens brain development, which can render them unable to grow into the successful adults we need to get decent jobs that allow them to pay taxes and raise the next generation and lead our communities. Businesses wont locate or expand in areas without adequate water and sewer systems; when we lack either, we reduce the options economic recruiters can pitch to companies with 49 other states to consider.

In some cases, the contaminated water results at least in part from ethical conflicts and a lack of state oversight. In most cases, money plays a role: Many aging water systems can't maintain, much less upgrade, or they cant afford experts who know what should be done. Or both. Whatever the cause, its a problem that holds our state back.

So we were encouraged to hear state legislators and members of Gov. Henry McMasters AccelerateSC task force zero in on this problem, punctuated last week when Mr. McMaster proposed using $500 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to improve our water and sewer systems.

That money would cover only about a quarter of the states needs, but its impact could be much greater, since at least some would be targeted at systems that can't afford even minimal matches to tap into the states revolving rural infrastructure fund.

Since all the states towns, cities and counties are receiving large pots of money under another section of the federal COVID-19 relief package, lawmakers should scrutinize Mr. McMasters proposal to make some of the funding available without a match. That might be the best approach, but we'd like to see a way to make sure governments have spent that money on needs rather than wants before handing them more.

More significantly, money alone wont solve the problems of utilities that lack the competent oversight or economies of scale needed to run safe water systems; even if the systems replace aging infrastructure, theyll still have to maintain them once the federal funds run out, and theyll still need people with the expertise to do the job right.

DHEC has recommended consolidating smaller water systems or absorbing them into regional systems, and we believe that should be a condition of most if not all new funding. Additionally, any significant new state investment in water systems should ensure that recipients comply with our states too-often-ignored ethics and transparency requirements, along with stricter DHEC enforcement of water regulations. Lawmakers should see to it that DHEC has the tools it needs to require consolidations of small systems that continue to fall short of our states minimal requirements.

If South Carolina is going to invest significant funding in small water systems  and we should  we need to do all we can to ensure that we get cleaner, safer tap water in return.
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.
COLUMBIA  Gov. Henry McMaster has issued an executive order barring his Cabinet-level agencies  including the states departments of the military, corrections and public safety  from enforcing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, a move he characterized as a preemptive strike against overreach by the Biden administrations own vaccination policies for federal employees.

During a Nov. 4 press conference in Columbia, McMaster said he would require all state agencies he has direct control over to report any communication with the federal government on vaccine mandates to prepare for an upcoming lawsuit with Georgia and six other states against the federal government.

We have been stunned by what we have seen  stunned, McMaster told reporters. I have never seen a president go as out of bounds of the law as this one.

Text of the executive order was released late Thursday saying it applies to the 19 state agencies that make up the governor's Cabinet.

The list of Cabinet-level agencies is extensive, including everything from the S.C. Department of Revenue, the State Law Enforcement Division and the Department of Social Services. The number of workers involved was not immediately available.

The move comes as the Biden administration has begun requiring federal contractors and subcontractors receiving federal dollars to vaccinate their employees by Dec. 8. Because many state agencies receive federal dollars, McMaster said he was concerned the administration could seek to deploy similar requirements on state agencies receiving federal funding.

McMaster noted South Carolina has joined a lawsuit with Georgia and six other states to fight those requirements. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson also co-signed an Oct. 27 letter opposing the federal government's vaccine requirements on federal contractors with 20 other red state Attorneys General.

It is unclear what state agencies draw the largest shares of federal funding or how many state employees would be affected.

The Medical University of South Carolina, which operates a public university in Charleston and hospitals across the state, receives state money, but is not considered a Cabinet agency. MUSC put a vaccine mandate in place months ago and fired a few employees this past summer who refused to comply with the policy.

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MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine said she was not aware that McMaster's office voiced any objections when MUSC issued its mandate earlier this year.

In the coming months, McMaster added his administration would pursue a lawsuit against new OSHA guidelines released Thursday requiring private businesses with 100 or more workers to implement mandatory vaccinations or weekly COVID-19 testing protocols by Jan. 4, 2022.

We will fight that aggressively, McMaster said. We will, we have been, and will continue to fight these unlawful regulations, acts and intrusions on the rights of our people with all the strength we have.

"This is garbage, and it's unconstitutional, so we will be fighting it," Wilson added in his own statement.

The Legislature issued similar guidelines to school districts through the state budget in June 2021 threatening to withhold funding from districts that required students to wear masks in schools. That ban was put on-hold after an October decision by an appellate court to allow districts to continue requiring masks while a larger lawsuit against the states COVID-19 policies filed by the ACLU continued.

The full list of the agencies covered includes:

The Department of Administration;, Office of the Adjutant General; Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services; Department of Commerce; Department of Corrections; Department of Health and Human Services: Department of Insurance; Department of Juvenile Justice; Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation; Department of Motor Vehicles; Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism; Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services; Department of Public Safety; Department of Revenue, Department of Social Services; Department of Transportation; Department of Employment and Workforce; Department on Aging; and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Lauren Sausser contributed from Charleston.
U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn said the GOP's victory in the Virginia governor's race should have been expected amid a fractured Democratic Party and is a wake-up call ahead of the 2022 midterms.

"It didn't come as a surprise to me," Clyburn, D-S.C., told The Post and Courier on Nov. 3. "We need to get outside of our comfort zones. The moderates need to be more trusting of the progressives and the progressives need to be more most trusting of the moderates."

Clyburn's comments come after the Democratic elder statesman of South Carolina politics spent the past week campaigning in Virginia to help Terry McAuliffe against GOP rival Glenn Youngkin on Nov. 2.

Youngkin, however, pulled the upset, defeating McAuliffe by a 51 percent to 48 percent margin. A year ago President Joe Biden won Virginia by double digits.

Additionally, South Carolina native and former Senate candidate Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has been spending months orchestrating massive party support in the Old Dominion in a race considered a lead-in for the midterms.

"Virginia, its all on the line on Tuesday," Harrison tweeted ahead of the what would be a disastrous race. "Republicans want to roll back all our progress on better schools, affordable health care, voting rights and so much more."

S.C. Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson, who also spent time in Virginia campaigning for McAuliffe, said two roadblocks Democrats faced include vocal moderates in the Senate and what he believes to be incompetent campaign leadership that Biden appointed to work alongside Harrison at the DNC.

"This should send a loud message to the White House to clean house at the DNC and empower Jaime Harrison to bring in people who know what the hell they're doing," Robertson told The Post and Courier on Nov. 3.

S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick, meanwhile, was celebrating the Virginia victory. He pointed out that Clyburn and Harrison's pull with the African American community is strong but said Virginia voters showed that Republicans seem to deliver more for a minority agenda overall.

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"The fact that they would bring them in (and that the GOP still won) goes to show that Republicans have made a lot of ground in the minority community," McKissick said.

Political experts in South Carolina said the loss in Virginia says less about Clyburn and Harrison's influence and more about the necessity for unity in the Democratic Party.

"It's a wake-up call," said Gibbs Knotts, dean of the College of Charlestons School of Humanities. "To have these two prominent South Carolinians play a role and still have this defeat, this is a disappointing day."

Furman University political scientist Danielle Vinson said Clyburn and Harrison's decision to regroup after the Virginia election is wise, especially as the GOP prepares to broadcast the winning themes and issues of the Virginia election into races in 2022 and 2024.

"I don't think it says too much about Clyburn and Harrison as much as it shows that it's just an awful environment for Democrats right now," Vinson said. "It does give them an idea of some of the battles they need to face in the upcoming election."

In a post-results statement Nov. 3, Harrison expressed optimism and quoted the South Carolina state motto.

"Make no mistake, Democrats turned out in huge numbers last night, and while it did not get the job done, Democrats across the country will not be deterred," Harrison said in a statement. "We will get right back to work. As we say in South Carolina: While we breathe, we hope."
News circulated last month that the Biden administration was planning a payoff scheme whereby illegal border crossers would get $450,000 apiece, or $1 million per family, from U.S. taxpayers. To be fair, this was a contemplated settlement of a frivolous ACLU lawsuit that would implicitly (or rather, explicitly) repudiate President Trumps Zero Tolerance policy toward illegal immigration. Still, the bottom line is that illegals would be grotesquely rewarded by American taxpayers for violating our laws, with no defense to the ACLUs lawsuit mounted by our alleged representatives at the Department of Justice.

One can only imagine the feedback that those who run the Biden administration received to this proposal. It must have been so grim that Joe Biden has now backtracked: Joe Biden Backs Off $450K Payouts to Border Crossers: Not Going to Happen.

On Wednesday, while promoting vaccines for the Chinese coronavirus, Biden claimed reports about the $450,000 payouts were garbage and called them not true.

More likely, Bidens handlers just didnt like the political fallout when the absurd scheme was exposed.

Thats not going to happen, Biden said, though the West Wing of the White House has little-to-no role in negotiating and settling lawsuits for various federal agencies.

Good point! The sue and settle collusion strategy has been one of the Lefts most powerful, and most corrupt, tools. No doubt the Democrats hope that once no one is paying attention, they can pay out a billion dollarsThe total cost of the payouts would reach $1 billionwithout paying a political price. And Merrick Garland is just the man to do it.

It will be a while before we know how this issue turns out. Will the Democrats get away with paying a billion dollars of American taxpayer money to illegal immigrants? And if so, will they be held accountable at the next election cycle? Time will tell.
But at least he is working. Federal authorities today arrested Igor Danchenko, an analyst who in 2016 gathered leads about possible links between Donald Trump and Russia for Democratic-funded opposition research. Danchenko was what Christopher Steele, who put the phony dossier together, has described as his primary sub-source.

Gathering leads for opposition research can be a nasty business but, without more, its not a crime. However, lying to federal authorities is. This, according to the Washington Post, is what Danchenko is being charged with.

Convicting Danchenko of lying to the FBI would be very small potatoes. Its possible, however, that as part of plea deal, Danchenko might provide Durham with something, or someone, bigger.

Ed Morrissey points out that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, in a 2019 report, suspected Danchenko of having been a Russian spy. If nothing else, this adds spice to this story. It may also add context to Steele dossier.

Its usual to end a post like this with the word developing. Ill end mine by saying developing slowly.
I dont think any of us on Power Line has commented on the outcome of the runoff election to fill a vacant seat in the Texas House. That race pitted Democrat Frank Ramirez against Republican John Lujan. The Republican won by a little more than two points.

Why is this worth noting? Because the district in question, located in San Antonio, is heavily Latino and, until last night, pro-Democrat. Joe Biden carried it by 14 points last year.

According to this report in the Texas Tribune, Lujan, a veteran firefighter, former Bexar County sheriffs deputy, and owner of an IT company, centered his campaign on the issues of public safety, including border security, and jobs. Ramirez ran a negative campaign in which, according to the same report, he sought to make Lujan answer for his support from Gov. Greg Abbott and [for] the staunchly conservative turn the state has taken this year under him.

To this end, Ramirez campaigned with Beto ORourke and other prominent state Democrats. The point was driven home, but apparently did not have its intended effect.

In a statement, the Associated Republicans of Texas declared that Lujans election marks the beginning of Republicans winning Democrat-held seats in South Texas in the 2022 election cycle. However, this report in TexasMonthly attributes Lujans win to low turnout in an off-year election. It notes that Lujan won a special election for the same seat in January 2016, only to lose it in that years general election.

Maybe Lujan will suffer the same fate next year when he has to defend the seat. But maybe not. The New York Times senses Democratic vulnerabilities among Latino voters in South Texas and suggests that concerns over public safety (homicides were up last year in San Antonio, as they were throughout America) and rising taxes are the main causes.

The Times points out that Republicans have made progress in South Texas since 2016 when Lujan lost at the second time of asking:

Although Mr. Biden won Hidalgo County, which includes McAllen on the Mexican border, by 17 percentage points last year, it was a considerably closer contest than Hillary Clintons 40-point victory. In nearby Zapata County, Mr. Trump won by five points. The decline among progressives in majority Latino enclaves has pushed the G.O.P. to expand its base beyond an overwhelmingly white political coalition, buoying them to challenge Democrats on their turf. The Republican National Committee now runs offices in San Antonio, McAllen and Laredo, another border city, to court more Latino voters. Republicans are doing a much better job at outreaching to Latinos, said Sharon Navarro, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

And Democrats seem to be doing a better job of playing into Republican hands when it comes to Latino voters.
Global food commodity prices rose in October reaching their highest level since July 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has said.

The rise was led by vegetable oil and cereals, according to details highlighted in the FAO Food Price Index report released on Thursday.

The index tracks the international prices of the most commonly traded food commodities.

The FAO Food Price Index averaged 133.2 points in October 2021, up 3.0 per cent from September and 31.3 per cent from October 2020.

After rising for a third consecutive month, the Food Price Index in October stood at its highest level since July 2011.

The latest month-on-month increase was primarily led by continued strength in the world prices of vegetable oils and cereals, it said.

The report said the FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 184.8 points in October, up 9.6 per cent month-on-month and marking an all-time high.

The increase was driven by firmer price quotations for palm, soy, sunflower and rapeseed oils. International palm oil prices increased for a fourth consecutive month in October, largely underpinned by persisting concerns over subdued output in Malaysia due to ongoing migrant labour shortages, the report said.

In the meantime, world prices of palm, soy and sunflower oils received support from reviving global import demand, particularly from India that lowered import tariffs further on edible oils. As for rapeseed oil, the continued strength in international values chiefly stemmed from protracted global supply-demand tightness.

Noticeably, it said rising crude oil prices also lent support to vegetable oil values.

According to the report, the FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 137.1 points in October, up 3.2 per cent from September and 25.1 points (22.4 per cent) above its level one year ago.

Other indices rise

In the report, the FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 120.7 points in October, up 2.2 per cent from September and 15.5 per cent above its level in the corresponding month a year ago.

In October, international price quotations for butter, skim milk powder and whole milk powder rose steeply for the second consecutive month, underpinned by firm global import demand amid buyers efforts to secure supplies to build stocks.

Seasonally low milk supplies and tight inventories in Europe and a slower start than earlier anticipated to the new milk production season in Oceania also lent support to world milk prices.

By contrast, cheese prices remained largely stable, as supplies from major producers were adequate to meet global import demand, it said.

According to the report, the FAO Meat Price Index averaged 112.1 points in October, down 0.7 per cent from its revised value in September, marking the third monthly decline, though still 22.1 per cent above its value in the corresponding month last year.

In October, international quotations for pig meat fell, principally underpinned by reduced purchases from China.

Bovine meat prices also fell, reflecting a sharp decline in quotations for supplies from Brazil amid market uncertainty surrounding import suspensions by its leading trading partners over mad-cow disease concerns.

By contrast, the report said poultry meat quotations rose, boosted by high global demand, while production expansions remained weak due to high feed costs and avian flu outbreaks, especially in Europe.

READ ALSO:

World ovine meat prices also increased slightly on continued supply limitations from Oceania due to high demand for flock rebuilding, the report said.

It said the FAO Sugar Price Index averaged 119.1 points in October, down 1.8 per cent from September, marking the first decline after six consecutive monthly increases.

International sugar quotations remained, however, more than 40 per cent above their levels in the same month of last year, mainly underpinned by concerns over reduced output prospects in Brazil.

The recent monthly decline in international sugar prices was triggered by limited global import demand and prospects of large export supplies from India and Thailand.

The weakening of the Brazilian Real against the US dollar also contributed to lowering world sugar prices in October.

Higher ethanol prices in Brazil, however, prevented more substantial sugar price declines, it said.
Five discontented stakeholders, representing minority shareholders interests, asked Lekoil Limited, the London-listed parent company of Lekoil Nigeria Limited, to provide details of the moves it is making to avert a potential delisting from the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) section of the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

The group failed to meet two deadlines to file its audited financial report for 2020, and trading in its shares and is now under suspension from regulators after a three-month extension that ended September, which shareholders fear could hasten its ejection from the LSE, a letter directed to Chairman Tony Hawkins seen by PREMIUM TIMES on Wednesday showed.

The Company will provide updates on the suspension when it has further information, Lekoil said in a document dated October 18, 2021.

Since January, Lekoil has been stuck in a morass that triggered an upheaval in its leadership when Metallon Corporation, owner of the biggest stake in the company, got assent from most of the shareholders to appoint three new directors to the board, a decision fiercely contested by Lekan Akinyanmi, Lekoils founder and CEO.

Metallon offloaded its 15.1 per cent holding in the group thereafter, citing Lekoil Nigerias meddling in the everyday running of Lekoil Group.

Mr Akinyanmi took an unsecured loan from Lekoil totalling USD $1.6 million (including accrued interest) as of June 30, 2021, which the group has been trying to recover, the companys earnings report for half-year 2021 says.

Lekoil Group, which is based in the Cayman Islands, holds a 40 per cent interest in Lekoil Nigeria.

All the five stakeholders who endorsed the letter are board and management team members of Lekoil Nigeria Limited. Three of them Mr Akinyanmi, Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode, and Gloria Iroegbunam were part of the board of the parent company until June when they left in a joint resignation.

The Board of Directors of Lekoil Cayman continue to show a blatant disregard for the Shareholder Agreement, a legally binding agreement which governs the relationship between Lekoil Cayman and Lekoil Nigeria and which was implemented at the time of Lekoil Caymans listing to meet the requirements in Nigerian law in respect of control of indigenous strategic assets, Mrs Muhammed-Oyebode said at the time.

A nominated adviser informed Lekoil the bar on trading in its shares, going by AIMs rules, would not be lifted until the group shed light on its relationship with its Nigerian subsidiary.

The stakeholders said Lekoil has not made any known effort to clarify the issue or contact Lekoil Nigeria for that purpose.

The consent given at the last annual general meeting was to allow Lekoil settle accumulated but unpaid fees shares to third party advisors or contractors who agreed to take part of their fees in ordinary shares, the five said, noting that contractors in this context does not include directors.

Lekoil Nigerias indebtedness to the Lekoil Group as of the middle of the year surpassed $350 million, according to the latters half-year financials.
The Nigerian Stored Products Research Institute (NSPRI) on Thursday distributed post-harvest storage facilities to 10 farmers groups in Ogun, to reduce post-harvest losses and boost food production.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the facilities include fish smoking kiln, ice fish box, and hermetic steel drums.

The Executive Director of NSPRI, Patricia Pessu, said the empowerment programme was to support farmers with improved post-harvest storage facilities at no cost.

Ms Pessu, represented by Funmilayo Ilesanmi, zonal coordinator NSPRI, Ibadan, said the gesture was aimed at adding value and boosting the socio-economic development of farmers in the state.

She appealed to the farmers to utilise the facilities judiciously to boost food production, adding that effective use would encourage the government to continue its support to them.

The states Commissioner for Agriculture, Adeola Odedina, was represented by the Programme Manager, Ogun State Agricultural Development Programme (OGADEP). Taiwo Ayansanwo.

Mr Odedina commended the NSPRI for the kind gesture extended to the state adding that it would boost food production.

He said the initiative would complement the effort of the state government in increasing food production and supporting smallholder farmers in the state.

The Director of Agricultural Extension Service at OGADEP, Solape Awe, thanked the federal government for the initiative and support for Ogun rural farmers.

Ms Awe noted that the 10 farmers groups selected as beneficiaries, comprised of women farmers, youth farmers, fish farmers, rice farmers and other value chain farmers.

She pledged that the officials of OGADEP would monitor the farmers to make sure the facilities were used accordingly.

Responding on behalf of the beneficiaries, Olorin Waleola, from Ilaro, Mr Adekunle Odedina, from Shode Village, and Mr Omotayo Solomon, from Remo, thanked the federal government, NSPRI and OGADEP.

They said the gesture would boost food production, add more income and encourage more of the youth to go into farming in the long run.

The beneficiaries promised to make judicious use of the facilities.

(NAN)
Hanatu Abubakar was full of hope when she gained admission to the Federal Government Girls College (FGGC), Monguno, Borno State, in 2009. According to her uncle, Garuba Ashru, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Hanatu wanted to become a healthcare worker.

But in 2020, she died without fulfilling that dream, leaving behind a son, who is now under two-year-old.

In fact, she died of the same unfortunate circumstance she had aspired to join hands to address, Mr Ashru told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview in September, in Maiduguri.

According to the don, Hanatu became disoriented after Boko Haram terrorists attacked her school in 2011, raping and killing some of her schoolmates.

The attack, which occurred when she was in junior secondary school 3, made her and many other survivors leave their ancestral home.

When she came back from Monguno, we were faced with difficulty of where to really fix her because of the trauma she was going through. Schools were also shut for about two years and things became very difficult for her and for all of us in the family.

When we subsequently enrolled her in another school in Maiduguri here, she had already lost the fire burning in her. This was somebody who lost her friends, so adjusting in a new school was not easy, Mr Ashru narrated.

According to him, when Hanatu completed secondary school, her result was not good. Soon, social pressure began to impinge on her because the delay made her to be older by the time she finished secondary school.

After she got married, she enrolled for a remedial programme at UNIMAID and was eventually admitted as a full-time student in the department of Physical and Health Education (PHE).

But shortly after she was delivered of a baby in 2020, complications set in. She was already a 300-level student when she died from the complications, the professor said.

Bukars story

In the afternoon of Thursday, September 2, this reporter met Kala Bukar, a former assistant head teacher at Doro Primary School in Abadam Local Government Area of Borno State, in a tiny makeshift office at the Mohammed Goni College of Legal and Islamic Studies (MOGCOLIS), Maiduguri alongside his colleagues and fellow IDPs camp mates. The office also serves as their living room, bedroom and prayer room.

He said since 2014 when the local government was sacked by the insurgents, residents were yet to return home. He said the insurgents destroyed the 20 primary schools, three junior secondary schools and two senior secondary schools in the area.

I lost some of my colleagues and pupils to the attacks. While some of us moved to Maiduguri, others ran to Bosso in Niger Republic and have remained there till date, Mr Bukar said.

After Governor Babagana Zulum returned the IDPs home, the camp at MOGCOLIS was relocated to Auno in Konduga Local Government Area of the state where Mr Bukar is now the head teacher.

It is difficult leaving Maiduguri for Auno, but we have no choice since the government insisted that it is part of the process to resettle us in our villages, Mr Bukar, who now shuttles between Auno and Maiduguri, said.

A head teachers ordeal

Goni Kale was the head teacher at Arge primary school, also in Abadam Local Government Area of the state. He witnessed the attacks on his school and communities in the area, including the murder of the education secretary of the local government, Usuwar Umara, by the terrorists in October 2014.

He was killed while offering his prayers. They killed him because he was the one in charge of education in the local government. In the local government area, we were more than 300 teachers that were displaced. In fact, till date, some come to teach at the IDPs camp for two weeks and return to their families in Niger Republic to spend another two weeks. Some are not even coming back at all, Mr Kale, who also teaches at Auno IDPs camp, said.

The situation at the Muna Garage IDPs camp in Maiduguri was depressing when our reporter visited in September. School-aged children roamed about the densely populated camp aimlessly, the makeshift schools built by development partners in the camp being of no interest to them.

Clinics in the camp also struggled to contain cases of malnutrition. According to Yakaka Babagana, 752 cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) were presented at one of the clinics between January and August 31.

At the second clinic in the camp, 722 patients were on admission within the same period.

Mrs Babagana, a community manager of SAM, said residents of the camp are more concerned by hunger than schooling. The children were clad in dirty clothes. When the reporter approached them for conversation, they ran away.

Grim statistics

In an interview with our reporter, the Chief of Maiduguri Field Office for the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), Phuong Nguyen, said the terrorists destroyed 1,400 schools, forced more than one million children out of school, and killed 2,295 teachers between 2009 and 2020.

According to Ms Nguyen, the conflict forced all schools in Borno State to close from December 2013 to June 2015. In Yobe and Adamawa states, schools were closed for shorter periods on an ad hoc basis.

The Education-in-Emergency Working Group Nigeria Joint Education Needs Assessment (JENA), November 2019 found that conflict continues to affect the ability of schools to remain open and provide lessons across north-east Nigeria. The JENA 2019 also reports that most schools assessed in Adamawa and Borno states had stopped functioning at some point since 2012 due to the emergency (71 per cent and 68 per cent respectively), as had 43 per cent of schools in Yobe.

In the first half of 2021, Borno faced a drastic reduction in humanitarian access with an escalation of actions of Non State Armed Groups (NSAGs) targeting teachers and threatening those who support educational activities, Ms Nguyen said.

Like North-east like North-west

Nigerias North-east region has been most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency. However, schools in other parts of the country, particularly the North-west, North-central and South-east, are also under attack.

In its recent statement as part of activities to mark the second anniversary of the International Day to Protect Education from Attacks, the Save the Children International, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), said more than 1,000 students have been abducted from Nigerian schools in 2021 alone.

The country director of Save the Children International Nigeria, Mercy Gichuhi, who signed the statement, said a recently released report by Save the Children, titled: Build Forward Better, revealed that education systems in Nigeria and other countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Mali, and Libya are at extreme risk, worse than Syria and Yemen.

In Nigeria, the number of out-of-school children, according to UNICEF, was at 10.5 million before the effects of the conflict, humanitarian crisis and COVID-19 pandemic were felt. With the total or partial closure of schools in Zamfara, Katsina, Adamawa, Kaduna, Niger and other states due to kidnapping and abduction of school children, the number of children that would be prevented from accessing education in Nigeria could be on the increase.

In Kaduna State for instance, the commissioner for education, Shehu Makarfi, said the third term for the 2020/2021 session could not be held as a result of violent attacks on schools.

Mr Makarfi, while speaking with PREMIUM TIMES in September, said schools would not open in five local government areas  Birni Gwari, Kajuru, Sambo, Giwa, and another.

We shut down the schools because we dont have enough personnel to provide security for all of them. We have 512 public secondary schools in Kaduna State, 4,260 public primary schools, and we have over 5,000 private primary schools and more than 1,000 private secondary schools. If you put them together and you want to provide four or three policemen per school, they will not go round. We just have a little above 10,000 policemen in the state so we dont have enough, Mr Makarfi said.

The situation is similar in Zamfara, Katsina and Niger states, where scores of students have been abducted in the past few months.

The North-central states of Benue, Plateau and even Kogi have also recorded violent attacks on schools.

Different stories from southwestern, southeastern schools

At Iwoye-Ketu in Yewa area of Ogun State, South-west Nigeria, the perennial herders-farmers crisis has forced teachers and pupils to abandon schools.

Joel Ademola, the traditional ruler of Iwoye-Ketu, said cattle sometimes take over classrooms in his domain.

The monarch, who spoke with our reporter at Imeko, the headquarters of Imeko-Afon Local Government Area of Ogun State, said schools were sometimes attacked by herders during their crises with communities.

Sometimes, we close schools for weeks because even if we dont, no parent would allow their children to attend schools in such an atmosphere of violence, Mr Ademola said.

The situation is the same at Eggua in Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State. A palace chief, Adeyanju Adegbenro, said clashes between farmers and herders started more than 10 years ago but escalated in 2020 due to the growing culture of impunity on the part of the herders.

He said in 2021 alone, at least 50 people were killed in the Ketu-Yewa axis of Ogun State.

Those of us left in the community are talking in hushed tones out of fear. More than 70 per cent of residents have fled. This is an ancient community that is fast turning into a ghost town, Mr Adegbenro told our reporter at Eggua palace.

The police spokesperson in the state, Abimbola Oyeyemi, a deputy superintendent of police (DSP), could not give the number of the victims of the crisis but said as of February 25 when our reporter visited him in Abeokuta, the state capital, 13 deaths had been reported.

The situation is similar in Igangan, a rural community in Oyo State, where frequent farmers-herders clashes have claimed many lives with properties worth millions of naira destroyed.

In March, 2016, three students from Babington Macaulay Seminary School, a model private missionary secondary school in Ikorodu area of Lagos, were abducted by kidnappers.

The incident was followed by another attack on the Turkish International School, located within the borderline of Lagos and Ogun State around Isheri Area of Lagos State, and in May 2017, six students of the Lagos Model College, Igbonla, Epe, were also abducted.

Separatists on the rampage in South-east

In September, while students of Comprehensive Secondary School, Nkume, in Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, were writing their West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), gunmen allegedly enforcing the sit-at-home order of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) set the school ablaze.

Apart from stopping the students from writing their English Language examination that day, the attackers also set ablaze the motorcycles they found on the schools premises.

The secessionists have declared Mondays a sit-at-home day with gunmen violently enforcing the order.

Consequences

It is unclear what the current figure of the out-of-school-children is in Nigeria, as the last statistics of 10.5 million provided by UNICEF predated the latest escalation of attacks on schools.

However, there is now a reluctance by many parents to send children to schools far away from home.

For instance, during the entrance examination into the 104 federal government colleges in Nigeria, many parents who spoke to our reporter at a centre in Abuja, the federal capital territory, said their wards were participating in the examination only to test their ability as they would not allow them to attend schools outside their vicinity.

A pupil, Naheema Adisa, was offered admission to the Federal Government College in Bwari, FCT, but her father, an information technology expert, Olawale Adisa, who also resides in Abuja, said she would not take the offer.

We have the admission letter already but she is not going. My landlords child schools there and not long ago he, alongside other parents, received distress calls that the school was being targeted for attacks. He rushed to the school to pick his child. Though there was nothing at the end of the day, since then, his mind has always been there, Mr Adisa said.

A teacher at Kings College, Lagos, who does not want to be quoted, said everyone now wants to attend the school because it is located in the heart of the city, where people believe their children are safe.

This year alone, more than 4,000 applied to our school but we cannot admit more than 350. That is why people are insinuating that their childrens slots are being taken by some people. It is a lie. The fact is that to gain admission here is like a camel passing through the eye of a needle, the teacher said.

The head of data desk for the National Examinations Council, Abdulrashid Abdulrazak, said he could not provide details of how applications to schools in the hinterland may have been affected by the attacks. He, however, said statistics do not show a decline in enrolment for the common entrance examination.

Stakeholders react

The registrar and chief executive officer of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Olusegun Ajiboye, said the government was working with individuals and organisations to protect schools.

Mr Ajiboye, who spoke at a virtual lecture to mark the 2021 annual World Teachers Day, said the government was introducing many measures not only to encourage engagement of quality teachers but to also protect them against all forms of hazards.

We have witnessed continued attacks on schools and while the government is working through the various security operatives to nip the problem in the bud, we are also working round the clock to ensure that protection is provided for our schools, Mr Ajiboye said.

But the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Emmanuel Osodeke, does not attach seriousness to official statements like those of Mr Ajiboye.

The university lecturer said the best way to judge a government about its commitment to the future of the younger ones is by the investment it makes in education and health.

He said nothing has shown that President Muhammadu Buhari prioritises education in his agenda.

According to the professor, since his emergence as President in 2015, Mr Buhari has not devoted up to eight per cent of national budget to education, saying the bulk of the paltry allocation to education even goes to recurrent expenditure.

The special adviser to Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on education, Tokunbo Wahab, urged the authorities to convene a national education summit on the best ways to tackle insecurity in schools.

According to Mr Wahab, beyond the violent attacks by bandits and insurgents, are also the challenges of violent cultism at all levels of education, flooding of classrooms and encroachment of school lands to build properties.

Schools must be safe for learning to take place and it cannot be restricted to one region. As long as Nigeria is still together, we must ensure that every child is protected and is allowed to get quality education in a conducive atmosphere. Anything short of that is like sitting on a keg of gunpowder. That is what is happening currently, Mr Wahab said.

This report was facilitated by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under its Regulators Monitoring Programme.
By Ronak Gopaldas

Do recent coups in Chad, Mali, Guinea and Sudan mean that democracy in Africa is failing? This notion is fuelled by internet shutdowns, muzzling of the opposition and rising third termism. But evidence suggests that while there are pockets of concern, a robust democratic culture is in fact growing in many parts of the continent.

In 2017, elections delivered peaceful power transfers in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Protest action was channelled through the courts, and government control was handed over without incident, reflecting a democratic maturity in countries with bloody recent pasts.

Nigeria experienced a peaceful handover to the opposition in 2015 for the first time since the advent of democracy in 1999. Ghana has done so over the past two decades, and The Gambias long-serving ruler was pressured into vacating his post after losing the election in 2016.

Meanwhile, the judiciary stands firm against abuses of power and executive overreach in several countries (Kenya in 2017 and Malawi in 2019), where election results were annulled due to misconduct and irregularities. An independent judiciary also prevailed in South Africa, where former president Jacob Zuma was forced to serve prison time in 2021 for contempt of court.

In Zambia, attempts by the ruling party to subvert democracy failed as citizens flocked to the polls and elected a new president. In the August 2021 youthquake, power was handed from incumbent to opposition in a decisive result that made rigging impossible. With biometric voting being used across Africa and greater civic engagement and demands for accountability, manipulating elections is becoming harder. And in Tanzania, the peaceful transition after President John Magufulis death in March facilitated a reformist agenda.

Compared to Poland and Hungary or even emerging market heavyweights such as India and Turkey  where significant democratic erosion has occurred  these examples suggest that Africas democratic trajectory is not that grim.

On the contrary, says Jakkie Cilliers, Head of African Futures at the Institute for Security Studies, Africa is more democratic than other regions relative to its level of development. He argues that since democracy generally follows development, Africas early start means the continent must achieve both simultaneously, which is difficult without quality leadership. The continents premature democratisation leads to instability as it is not accompanied by the institutions required to move from personalisation to institutionalisation.

Although the continent is not regressing, there is certainly cause for concern in several countries and regions. In 2020, the Mo Ibrahim Foundations Index of African Governance reported the first-ever decline in average governance since its inception. Freedom House also observed a decrease in freedom in 22 African states in 2020.

In Egypt and Zimbabwe, democratic transitions were stillborn. The optimism of seeing long-serving despots replaced by new leaders turned out to be false dawns. And the outsized role of the military in political affairs has arguably installed even more repressive regimes. In Southern Africa, liberation movements have not matched their electoral promises with reform, and most countries political economies are uncompetitive, unstable and dominated by factionalism.

Authoritarian tendencies are evident in the physical and digital domains too. Rwandan and Ugandan opposition figures are routinely jailed on spurious charges, and in Nigeria and Eswatini, draconian measures to curb dissent through Twitter bans and internet blackouts are prevalent.

Perhaps most worrying is the tendency towards constitutional coups and third termism that sees politicians manipulating the law to remain in power, as in Cote dIvoire. Linked to this is the growth of dynastic democracy (Gabon and Mauritius), where political transitions are stage managed in favour of family members.

Coups during 2021 in Mali, Guinea, Chad and Sudan ignite memories of big man rule and chronic instability. Military interventions seldom result in improved outcomes and reflect a breakdown of trust in governments and society.

Africas democratic trajectory is neither linear nor smooth. Several themes emerging in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely impact the picture. First, COVID-19 has magnified governance problems. Amid rising nationalism, isolationism and authoritarianism, is democracy fit for purpose? Across the world, and not just in Africa, trust in democratic governments is slipping, and alternative systems are attracting attention.

Enamoured by the Beijing consensus and Chinas economic success, African leaders have advocated its authoritarian model for the continent. Their oversimplified argument is that China became prosperous without western democratic prescriptions, and African countries should do the same. Democracy, with all its checks and balances, impedes growth, they suggest.

This logic is used to justify clampdowns on civil liberties, transparency and dissent in the name of safety and economic efficiency. But the argument misses a key point: to maintain this grand bargain with citizens, governments must improve the lives of their people, otherwise the centre does not hold. African leaders may want to have their cake and eat it too, but that doesnt resonate with their citizens, as the second trend below shows.

Africa is facing a growing mismatch in values between old and young. A 2019 Afrobarometer report found that large majorities of Africans continue to support democracy and reject authoritarian alternatives. Africas young Facebook generation want better and more accountable governance and insist on democracy and development simultaneously, rather than one or the other.

Yet despite these demands, the supply side of democracy is lacking, creating many dissatisfied democrats. This is seen in the wave of recent youth-led protests  including #endSARS in Nigeria, anti-monarchy demonstrations in eSwatini, #Fixthecountry in Ghana and #FreeSenegal. Unless the disconnect between the continents frustrated youth and their unresponsive leaders is resolved, a collision course is inevitable.

Last, technology has added to an already complex political dynamic. Digital democracy and digital dictatorship have emerged as two sides of the same coin, with politicians and citizens vying to exploit technology to further their agendas. This tension will shape whether countries adopt open, transparent systems or take the repressive, surveillance state route. Both have significant implications for social cohesion.

As Africa navigates internal and external threats to democracy, the pressing issue is not the system of governance but the quality of leadership. Leadership vacuums create fertile ground for anti-democratic tendencies and disorderly regime changes.

Younger, more responsive and inclusive leaders are needed to reduce the vulnerability of political systems to despots and coup plotters. The message from Africas youth is clear  the status quo is simply not good enough.

Ronak Gopaldas, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Consultant, Director at Signal Risk and CAMM fellow at the Gordon Institute of Business Science

(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
The death toll in the 21-storey building that collapsed on Monday on Gerrard Road in the Ikoyi area of Lagos State has risen to 36.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Coordinator, South-west, Ibrahim Farinloye, gave the update on Thursday.

The building crumbled around 2 p.m. when workers were on the site.

Mr Farinloye said the bodies include 33 males and three females. He said nine people which included one female and eight males have been rescued.

During his visit to the scene on Wednesday, the Lagos governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, noted that of the nine survivors, six are still in the hospital while three with minor injuries have been discharged.

He said the numbers of persons buried in the debris are still unconfirmed.

As I have said, we dont have a manifest, anybody you think that came here to work or is a worker here, we would take down the names, he said.

If you have a photograph of the person, it would be very useful. We also want your name and contact of who is presenting. We do not want more than one or two family members.

The search and rescue operations are still ongoing as distraught relatives gathered at the help desk to put down names of their family members trapped in the debris.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Thursday inaugurated a six-member panel of inquiry to investigate the cause of the collapse of the 21-storey building in Ikoyi, Lagos. Mr Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the panel at the headquarters of the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) at Falomo where members of the panel would be sitting.

The governor also signed an executive bill to give legal backing to the panel during their period of sitting. The panel will be chaired by Toyin Ayinde, the president of the National Institute of Town Planners. Other members of the panel are Akintilo Idris; Yinka Ogundairo, an architect; Godfrey Godfrey, a builder; Bunmi Ibraheem, and Ekundayo Onajobi, the secretary of the panel. Mr Sanwo-Olu urged the panel to be professional and factual in their findings, in order to give closure to the families of those who lost their lives in the incident.

36 deaths were reported a few hours earlier. As of Thursday afternoon, the death toll from the collapsed building had risen to 38, with nine survivors so far. Abouta few hours earlier.

READ ALSO: Ikoyi Building Collaps

The governor said members of the panel should not hesitate to seek an extension, if the 30 days term of reference given is not enough.

The Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, who was also present at the inauguration, said the panel of inquiry has the mandate to unravel the circumstances surrounding the collapsed building with a view to bringing all culprits to justice to avert a recurrence of such incident.

Mr Ayinde, the panel chair, assured the state executives of a thorough investigation of the incident without fear or favour.

The panel would commence sitting on Friday.
The Nigerian Navy on Thursday deployed 13 warships, two helicopters and 1,500 troops in a special military exercise against pirates in the Gulf of Guinea.

The Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Awwal Gambo, announced the deployment at the flag-off of Exercise Grand African NEMO 2021 in Onne, Rivers.

Represented by Obi Egbuchulam, the Flag Officer Commanding Central Naval Command, Mr Gambo said that three foreign navies would also participate in the exercise.

He said the six-day exercise also sought to contain spates of attacks by oil thieves on critical oil and gas installations as well as other criminalities in Nigerias territorial waters.

The CNS said: Exercise Grand African NEMO 2021 is an initiative of the French Navy in collaboration with the Nigerian Navy and allied partners, to improve maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea.

The exercise involves a multifaceted deployment at sea and ashore of naval assets drawn from the three operations commands of the Nigerian Navy.

The exercise aims at ensuring the freedom of navigation in the nations maritime environment and the Gulf of Guinea by strengthening coordination in the fight against maritime insecurity.

According to Mr Gambo, the criminalities include piracy, sea robbery, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing as well as illegal oil bunkering and illicit trafficking in persons, weapons and narcotics.

He said the exercise would enhance the policing of the nations Exclusive Economic Zone and the navys capabilities and capacity to secure the nations waterways.

To this end, the exercise will involve a total of 13 ships, about 1,500 personnel, two helicopters and three foreign naval ships, including the French Navy and the Royal Navy.

READ ALSO:

The Nigerian Navy Maritime Awareness Domain facilities and elements of Special Boat Service (navy special forces) will also participate in the exercise.

The exercise will also cover anti-piracy, protection of oil facilities as well as conducting search-and-rescue operations, among others, he said.

Threats

The navy chief said the nations economic zone had witnessed recent threats by criminal gangs, hence current re-strategising by the navy to deny criminals freedom of action.

He said that the morale of troops had been boosted with the recent signing of the Anti-Piracy Law.

According to him, the special military exercise will be used to consolidate on the gains of `Exercise Beni Kekere, conducted three months ago, and the ongoing `Operation Calm Waters II. (NAN)
The Lagos State emergency responders and their federal counterparts clashed at the site of the building collapse in Ikoyi Thursday when Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu opposed the casualty figures provided by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

A 21-storey building, still under construction, crumbled on Monday afternoon, burying dozens of people under its rubble.

Mr Sanwo-Olu, often described as the incident commander of the state, told journalists that 32 bodies have been recovered from the rubble and taken to the morgue. He said nine persons have been rescued and taken to hospitals.

The governors figures failed to tally with that of NEMA, with the latter stating the number of recovered bodies as 38  35 males and three females. The agency, however, said nine people, comprising eight males and one female, have been rescued.

Lets understand what the chain of command is. This is a Lagos state site, so the chain of command and control lies with the ministry of health, they are the ones that have taken corpses to the morgue, so they are accountable. And the people who are moving morgue are staff of the Lagos State, Mr Sanwo-Olu said.

We understand and appreciate that there are other agenciesgovernment agencies that are collaborating with us. We said that we have only one official channel of communication.

Clashes between federal and state government officials at incident sites are common in the state, especially in the past when both governments were controlled by different political parties.

For instance, in 2013, Lagos government officials chased Mr Farinloye and other NEMA officials out of a collapsed building site in Surulere for granting interviews to journalists.

On Thursday, Mr Sanwo-Olu inaugurated a six-man panel to investigate the cause of the building collapse.

He also said they would conduct an integrity test on the two 15-storey buildings in the premises of the incident.

He said that 17 families have approached the help desk so far to fill the missing persons form.
The dead body of the developer of the collapsed 21-storey building at Gerrard Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, Femi Osibona, was retrieved from the rubble on Wednesday.

A source told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that Mr Osibonas body was among dead bodies exhumed from the collapsed building on Wednesday and taken to public mortuary at Yaba.

There is no official confirmation yet on Mr Osibona, but a close friend of his, Dele Momodu, the publisher of Ovation Magazine, mourned him on his Instagram page on Thursday night.

Mr Momodu posted: Good night, my very dear friend and brother, Femi Fourscore OsibonaRIP.

On Tuesday, Mr Momodu shared a video of his wife, Mobolaji, in the company of the deceased and three Italians at the top floor of the collapsed building.

MOBOLAJI and I have been inundated with calls from families, friends and others asking if we were fine We thank everyone for their concerns but we cant be exactly fine when we have friends and staff who are still being rescued from the site of the building collapse, Mr Momodu captioned the video.

NAN gathered that more than 39 dead bodies had so far been retrieved from the rubble as of Wednesday evening.

Many people are still believed to be trapped in the rubble, including a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Ola Ogunfuwa.

The RCCG pastor in-charge of Living Water Parish in Ibafo, Ogun State, was working as a contractor on the project, but had been missing four days after the building collapse.

The South-west Coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Ibrahim Farinloye, earlier confirmed that 32 dead bodies had been recovered, and nine others rescued with injuries.

Who is Femi Fourscore

In an interview with THISDAY in 2019, Mr Osibona said he sold shoes before venturing into real estate development.

I started selling shoes in July, 1991 after I finished my HND in the UK, and later sold suits but I stopped in 1998 and I started real estate development and purchase of property in 1997. I also noticed that many Nigerians at that time were reluctant to go into construction but I believed anything was possible with God on my side, Mr Osibona said.

I built over 50 projects in London and Manchester and from there, went to South Africa where I built several estates.

In all the projects abroad, we buy land and develop and I am the builder, I dont engage any builder. I was in Atlanta for only four months before I decided to buy land. It is the same procedure in housing development and if you have done it in one country, then you can do it in another because it is the same principle.

Meanwhile, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has declared three days of mourning over the Ikoyi building collapse.

At least 32 persons died when the 21-storey building on Gerrard Road, Ikoyi, crumbled on Monday afternoon. Emergency responders have, so far, rescued nine people from the rubble.
The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has confirmed that gunmen have attacked Nuku village in Kaiama Local Government Area of Kwara.

This is contained in a statement signed by the Spokesman of Kwara Command of the corps, Babawale Afolabi, and made available to newsmen in Ilorin on Thursday.

Mr Afolabi said that the gunmen abducted two minors of the same family and injured the head of the family and one other person with machete.

He said that the abducted girls were later released after the abductors raped them.

In the early hours of November 3, some yet to be identified gunmen invaded Alhaji Hassan Yunusas settlement, at Nuku village in Kaiama.

Investigation revealed that the assailants were actually looking for money, as they ransacked the whole place and could not find anything.

They attacked Alhaji Yunusa and Woru Yunusa with multiple machete wounds and went away with two girls, but later released them few hours later.

It was discovered that the abductors had canal knowledge of the innocent girls, he said.

The spokesman said that the two victims were receiving medical treatment at a medical facility and series of medical tests were carried out on them.

He said that security operatives had started investigation to apprehend the evil men for prosecution to seve as a deterrent. (NAN)
The commander, Training and Doctrine Command of the Nigerian Army, Stephen Olabanji, a major general, says the force is expected to commission about 3,885 cadets into the officers cadre in 2022.

He also said the army would enlist about 18,000 other ranks and a further special forces training of about 4,800 among those commissioned and other ranks cadre.

Mr Olabanji disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Army to defend its 2022 budget proposal.

He said the essence of the special training is to further give the personnel some specialised training in the aspect of watermanship, deep-diver, airborne and leaving off the land.

He stated that other aspects of the training would be in the areas of target acquisition, tracker, assailing and rappelling, counter terrorism and counter insurgency training, among others.

These are all geared towards beefing up the personnel strength of the Nigerian Army and further increase her fighting capabilities in order to bring a lasting solution to the insecurity challenges in our country, Mr Olabanji said.

He said the training command is requesting the sum of N43.3 billion for the year 2022 budget appropriation.

Mr Olabanji, however, said the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning had proposed N26.2 billion for the training command.

He said his prayer was that the sum of N30.8 billion should be approved for the training as against the N25.5 billion in the appropriation bill.

Mr Olabanji also said that N4.9 billion should be approved for the training command for the year 2022 overhead as against N200 million in the appropriation bill.

According to him, the sum of N7.4 billion should be approved for the training command for the 2022 capital projects as against N544 million in the appropriation bill

.I therefore, humbly request this honourable committee to kindly approve the total sum of N43.3 billion, which covers the personnel emolument, trainees/instructors allowances, capital and overhead, he said.

He said the training command was committed to training very mobile, dynamic, fierce, gallant and ever ready Nigerian youths into the Nigerian Army who wish to defend the territorial integrity of the country.

Chairman of the Committee, Abdularzaq Namdas, urged the training command to focus on training of officers in counter terrorism considering the security challenge of the country.

Mr Namdas said the National Assembly had passed a resolution, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to designate bandits as terrorists.

He urged the training command to continue to do all the assignment given to it, assuring that the committee will continue to support their quest.

(NAN)
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says it registered one additional death from the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday.

The NCDC also said it recorded 209 additional infections across 11 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The public health institute made these known via its official website, noting that the 209 new infections was an increase from the 99 infections reported on Tuesday.

The agency noted that the fatality toll in the country now stood at 2,890, with total number of 212,359 confirmed cases in the country.

According to the centre, a total of 204,010 Nigerians have been discharged across the country.

It stated that Gombe State topped the Wednesday chart with 109, while the FCT and Rivers had 21 cases, followed by Lagos State with 13 cases.

Others were; Bauchi (9), Ondo (9), Plateau (9), Enugu (7), Benue (5), Oyo (4), Ekiti (1), and Ogun (1).

The NCDC also noted that Delta, Edo, Kaduna and Osun states reported no cases on Wednesday.

It added that the country currently has 5,688 active coronavirus cases, while a total of 3,340,313 blood samples tested since the pandemic started across the country.

It noted that a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2 has continued to coordinate the national response activities.

The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that available COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria are; AstraZeneca, Pfizer, modena and Johnson and Johnson.

The country has an eligibility list which does not prioritize non-Nigerians or tourists. Travelers who desire a COVID-19 vaccine should be vaccinated prior to arrival.

Eligible Nigerians can both register and find additional vaccination information at: https://nphcda.gov.ng

Government of Nigeria requires a negative COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test within three days (72 hours) before departure.

The PCR tests must be administered within this time frame (not results received). Passengers must upload the test results to the Nigeria International Travel Portal (nitp.ncdc.gov.ng) and present documentary evidence of the negative test result prior to boarding.

Passengers not meeting this requirement may be denied boarding and/or entry, while passengers arriving without a valid PCR test may face prolonged placement at a government isolation centre.

Children under the age of 10 are exempted from providing negative PCR test results.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 had said that the Nigeria International Travel Portal (www.nitp.ncdc.gov.ng) would undergo system upgrade between November 2 and November 4, 2021.

It, however said that the public should note that an alternative arrangement had been made to manually register passengers who were not able to register on the portal upon arrival into the country.(NAN)
A bill to legalise the medical use of cannabis, on Wednesday, suffered a setback at the House of Representatives as the committee charged with navigating the bill to fruition expressed open opposition to it.

The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Drugs and Narcotics, Francis Agbor, said the committee will not support the bill.

Mr Agbor stated this during the budget defence of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

The Chairman of NDLEA, Buba Marwa, appeared before the committee to defend the budget of his agency.

Miriam Onuoha (APC, Imo) had sponsored a bill to legalise the cultivation and medical use of cannabis in Nigeria.

Also, the Leader of the House, Ado Dogwa (APC, Kano), sponsored another bill prescribing tougher sanctions on traders, dealers and users of cannabis.

Both bills are at different stages of legislation.

The spokesperson of the House, Ben Kalu (APC, Abia), has also been advocating for the use of recreational and medical cannabis. In May, while speaking in Akure, Ondo State, Mr Kalu made a case for cannabis on economic grounds.

However, the committee charged with pushing the bill through public hearing and committee of the whole to legalise cannabis says it is not supporting it.

According to Mr Agbor, cannabis contributes to insecurity in Nigeria, noting that legalising the substance will lead to more crises.

We are not supporting the so-called legitimisation of Cannabis, he said, adding that If there is so much madness, killings and so in the country now, if we legitimise Cannabis, the madness would quadruple.

The committee also assured Mr Marwa, that the amendment to the NDLEA Act will ensure that the agency is added to the Police Trust Fund. The committee is also considering amending the Police Trust Fund to include NDLEA as one of its beneficiaries.

READ ALSO:

Since we have humongous amount of money stashed in the Police Trust Fund, we are proposing a bill. It has passed the first reading. The bill seeks to ensure that the NDLEA is made to be a beneficiary of that trust fund, he stated.

In his reaction, Mr Marwa explained to the committee that drug barons are using boats to bring narcotics into the country, adding that the NDLEA has been collaborating with the Navy for boats to tackle the traffickers.

The reason for patrol boats is because the cartels are becoming wary of our airports and the Seme border and other places and now they are using boats and for this reason, we have just established a marine, which needs boats and these boats are from the Navy. They build boats now so they will be able to help us, he said.

He lamented the poor funding of the agency, describing it as inadequate.
The Nigerian Army has appealed to the National Assembly to help facilitate the exclusion of the Army and other security agencies from the envelope budgeting system.

With the envelope budgeting, agencies like the army are exempted from first-line charge status. This means they get their appropriations through the Ministry of Finance.

The army said the budgeting system often leads to the reduction of its annual appropriation by the Ministry of Finance  a development which could impede its operational efficiency.

The Chief of Army Staff, Farouk Yahaya, made the plea on Wednesday when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Army for the 2022 budget defence.

He complained that the Armys budget size has drastically reduced from the N710 billion it proposed to N579 billion approved by the Ministry of Finance and Budget Office for the 2022 fiscal year.

In preparing for year 2022 budget, the Nigerian Army proposed about the sum of N710 billion but the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning budget ceiling reduced it to a total sum of N579 billion.

This reduction would impede the capacity and tempo of the Nigerian Army in carrying out its constitutional duties, particularly the ongoing war against Boko Haram terrorists and other criminalities across the country.

The Army chief also asked that Finance Ministry begins release of the Armys 2022 budget in the first quarter of next year.

I therefore appeal to this committee to impress it on the Federal Ministry of Finance to begin the release of year 2022 Nigerian Army capital budget in the first quarter of 2022.

This would help the Nigerian Army to rehabilitate dilapidated accommodations in over 138 barracks and training facilities across Armys units/formations as well as procure the needed equipment and platforms to prosecute the war against terrorism and other criminalities across the country.

the National Assembly should prevail on the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning to exempt the Nigerian Army from the current budget ceiling or envelope allocation system, he said.

Mr Yahaya demanded that N642.7 billion be approved for the Army as personnel cost, while N29.6 billion be approved for overhead and N37.6billion for 2022 capital projects in the 2022 Budget.

He also noted that despite the inadequate funding, the Nigerian Army is committed to securing the territorial integrity of Nigeria from any violation. He said clearance operation to rid the country of Boko Haram terrorists and other criminal groups are still ongoing.

The timely and complete implementation of the year 2022 budget will thus enhance the fulfilment of the Armys constitutional mandate and thus engender peace for socio-economic development of our country Nigeria, he added.

The army chief, alongside other senior military officers, thereafter went into an executive session with the committee.

Addressing journalists afterwards, chairman of the panel, Ali Ndume (APC, Borno), said the provision for the army to combat insurgency and banditry in the country was grossly inadequate.

He assured the army chief that his committee would seek audience with the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to ensure front loading of the fund meant for the Nigerian Army.

We found out that what is given is quite inadequate. You cant give them a ceiling when actually the security challenges is beyond the ceiling. There is no price tag for peace. The situation of putting them in an envelope under the situation we found ourselves dont arise.

We must give them the resources in order to prosecute this war and also have a well equipped army formations. We are also going to meet with the Minister of Finance to ensure front loading of their fund.

We shall push for their exclusion from the system and inclusion in the first-line charge.

Not the first time

The Armys request for inclusion in the first line charge is one of many and has lingered for years.

The former Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, had made a similar appeal in 2019 when he asked the House of Representatives to prevail on the finance ministry to exclude the Nigerian Army from the current envelope budgetary system.

He had asked that the budget ceiling be removed in view of the ongoing reforms in the Nigerian Army.

Mr Buratai had also noted that the army had struggled with insufficient fund for years but remained resilient and dedicated to the discharge of its constitutional roles.

This plea comes amid promises for increased funding for the military.

These promises have in the past months, been echoed by both President Muhammadu Buhari and the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan.
MTN Nigeria Communications Plc will open a public offering for its shares and a bid from institutional investors in a transaction totalling 575 million units, the telecom heavyweight said Thursday.

The corporate action marks the first time the local unit of Johannesburg-based MTN Group will welcome subscription from the public roughly two and a half years after it debuted on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) by way of introduction.

The offer window closes in December.

This is the first step in MTN Groups previously communicated statement of intent to sell down approximately 14 per cent of its shareholding in MTN Nigeria, the wireless carrier told the NGX in a note seen by PREMIUM TIMES.

MTN Nigerias shares, listed in Lagos, have returned 19.46 per cent in the last one year as of 09:54 WAT on Thursday.

Institutional investors get a chance to purchase the stock through book build, which allows bidders to apply for shares in large quantities in order to arrive at a price fairer than a pre-determined one.

But those wanting to go the way of the public offer option will obtain theirs at a fixed price.

The move is part of a broader arrangement by the group to fully divest sell down parts of its stakes in markets within Africa including Zambia and Uganda.

MTN Nigeria, the flagship operation of the MTN Group, contributes around one-third of its turnover, and is currently the countrys biggest public company by revenue.
The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) has set up nine committees to verify the assets declared by public officers, the chairperson of the bureau, Mohammed Isah, said on Thursday.

The CCB is the constitutional body empowered to receive public officers asset declarations, verify them, and prosecute whoever breaches the code of conduct for public officers at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).

Addressing journalists at a media briefing in Abuja, on Thursday, Mr Isah said some public officers who were contacted over the asset verification exercise could not give encouraging response to the bureaus request for information on their declared assets.

He said the bureau had been receiving complaints from some of the public officers about being targeted. But he maintained the claim was untrue as the bureau was only discharging its constitutional duties.

In our efforts to discharge our mandate, CCB inaugurated nine committees to verify assets declaration of public officers.

In the light of the above, letters were sent to the concerned public officers asking for information but response is not so far encouraging.

Instead, we have been receiving complaints from different quarters where some public officers believe the bureau is merely targeting personalities.

Let me use this opportunity to state clearly that the bureau as a constitutional body, will never allow itself to be used by anyone against anybody or authority.

We are merely discharging one of our constitutional mandates. So we need to allay the fears but emphasised that the cooperation of public officers is mandatory, he said.

At the news press conference with the theme, CCB Assets Verification Exercise: Our Mandate, Our Objective, the bureau solicited the cooperation of public officers on effective conduct of verification of asset declaration.

He said the law had made it mandatory for public officers to declare their assets before taken the oath of office.

He added that the bureau was working towards having an independent unit that would to monitor the lifestyle of public officers.

Mr Isah added that the bureau had started developing an action plan that would lead to the establishment and implementation of the unit.

Pandora Papers

On the Pandora papers, Mr Isah said the bureau was on top of the situation as those whose offshore assets were exposed would be investigated and prosecuted if found guilty.

He said the bureau had received briefing on the progress of investigation process and would act accordingly.

PREMIUM TIMES, which is among 151 media outlets partnering in the ICIJ-led Pandora Papers project, has exposed some Nigerian former and current governors, lawmakers, and other senior officials, including a judge, as having secret, usually suspicious, financial dealings tucked away in secrecy and tax havens.

The CCB had, in a letter to this newspaper, expressed a commitment to open investigations into the allegations.

The CCB is the Nigerian public agency dealing with issues of corruption, conflict of interest, and abuse of office by public servants.

In an October 12 letter to PREMIUM TIMES, the bureau acknowledged the Pandora Papers project and what it portends as well as how the landmark global investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has created ripples across the globe.

It then sought cooperation to facilitate its investigations and where possible prosecution of Nigerians involved.

Sadly, it is no longer news that some current and former public officials in Nigeria featured prominently in the acquisition of secret properties, which they failed to declare to the Code of Conduct Bureau as enshrined in the Fifth Schedule to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, the Code of Conduct Bureau said in its letter.

Consequent upon this and also noting your passion for the pursuit of integrity, accountability, and transparent society, the Bureau seeks to partner with you in the area of information sharing to enable it to investigate and where possible prosecute those found guilty at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.

In a reply, PREMIUM TIMES Editor-in-Chief, Musikilu Mojeed, welcomed the CCBs request.

The primary motivation for our work is to help the public obtain the information they need to ask questions and make informed decisions and for law enforcement agencies to have the leads they require for necessary actions, Mr Mojeed said in a letter dated October 18.

Past and current officials exposed by PREMIUM TIMES in the ongoing Pandora Papers series include former Anambra State Governor and former Vice Presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi; acting Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mohammed Bello-Koko; and former Minister of Aviation and serving senator, Stella Oduah.

Others are Governor Abubakar Bagudu of Kebbi State, Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun State as well as his associates including former Lagos Bola Tinubu, and Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun.

Dont make false declaration of assets

Mr Isah urged public officers to guard against false declaration, saying that such public officers could easily be convicted and their property confiscated by the Federal Government.

The beautiful aspect of this is that the bureau can play its role as the constitution states.

The principle of double jeopardy in the breach of code of conduct does not apply in the principle of criminal law.

Once you are convicted, you are banned from contesting for office for 10 years and the president and state governors cannot permit you, he said.

He, therefore, called for more manpower and financial resources to handle the influx of cases in the bureau.
The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), on Thursday, spoke on its efforts at investigating past and current public officials suspected to have committed offshore assets and investment violations following a recent Pandora Papers revelations.

Mohammed Isah, the chairperson of CCB, told journalists at a media briefing in Abuja, that the bureau was collaborating with members of the civil society organisations (CSOs) who participated in the revelation.

The CCB has already initiated investigation on both public officers in Nigeria that appeared in the Pandora Papers leaks, Mr Isah revealed on Thursday, adding, There are other public officers whom we are looking for more details about their roles in the Pandora Papers investigation.

PREMIUM TIMES, which is among 151 media outlets partnering in the ICIJ-led Pandora Papers project, has exposed some Nigerian former and current governors, lawmakers, and other senior officials, including a judge, as having secret, usually suspicious, financial dealings tucked away in secrecy and tax havens.

Past and current officials exposed by PREMIUM TIMES in the Pandora Papers series include former Anambra State Governor and former Vice Presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi; acting Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mohammed Bello-Koko; and former Minister of Aviation and serving senator, Stella Oduah.

Others are Governor Abubakar Bagudu of Kebbi State, Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun State as well as his associates including former Lagos Bola Tinubu, and Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun.

In an October 12 letter to PREMIUM TIMES, the bureau acknowledged the Pandora Papers project and what it portends as well as how the landmark global investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has created ripples across the globe.

It then sought cooperation to facilitate its investigations and where possible prosecution of Nigerians involved.

Sadly, it is no longer news that some current and former public officials in Nigeria featured prominently in the acquisition of secret properties, which they failed to declare to the Code of Conduct Bureau as enshrined in the Fifth Schedule to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, the CCB said in its letter.

Consequent upon this and also noting your passion for the pursuit of integrity, accountability, and transparent society, the Bureau seeks to partner with you in the area of information sharing to enable it to investigate and where possible prosecute those found guilty at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.

In a reply, PREMIUM TIMES Editor-in-Chief, Musikilu Mojeed, welcomed the CCBs request.

The primary motivation for our work is to help the public obtain the information they need to ask questions and make informed decisions and for law enforcement agencies to have the leads they require for necessary actions, Mr Mojeed said in a letter dated October 18.

Pandora Papers suspects wont get away like Saraki

The CCB boss delved into the acquittal of Bukola Saraki, a former Senate President, who stood trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) over allegations of false declarations.

Mr Isah said unlike the case of Mr Saraki who was acquitted based technical grounds, public individuals in Nigeria who are found to be involved in the Pandora Papers expose would have no escape route around the law.

Unlike Saraki who escaped justice on technical grounds, Nigerians found to be involved in the Pandora Papers investigation will have a straightforward trial, the CCB boss said.

The CCT had in June 2017, dismissed the case of false asset declaration against Mr Saraki.

In a ruling, the tribunal chairman, Danladi Umar, said the prosecution had failed to prove its allegations.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that the CCB had in September 2015 charged Mr Saraki with 13 counts of assets declaration breaches.

In charge number ABT/01/15, dated September 11 and filed before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Mr. Saraki is accused of offences ranging from anticipatory declaration of assets to making false declaration of assets in forms he filed before the Code of Conduct Bureau while he was governor of Kwara state.

According to the charges, the Senate President was also accused of failing to declare some assets he acquired while in office as governor.

Among other offences, including allegedly acquiring assets beyond his legitimate earnings, Mr. Saraki was also accused of operating foreign accounts while being a public officer  governor and senator.

Akpabios N100 million bribery allegation

The CCB chair also said Nigerians would know the outcome of its investigation into a bribery allegation involving the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio.

Mr Akpabios was accused of bribing the bureaus officials to the tune of N100 million so as to assist the sole administrator of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Akwa Effiong, to fill in and backdate his assets declaration forms from 2012 till date.

Addressing journalists at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, the Chairman of the CCB, Mohammed Isah, said the State Security Service (SSS) was drafted into the investigation.

Mr Isah, a professor of law, noted its probe in the bribery allegation was wide-ranging with a view to establishing the veracity or otherwise of the claims.

It will be recalled that the bureau announced an enquiry into the bribery saga in February this year following media report on the alleged sleaze.

A federal commissioner of the CCB, Ehiozuwa Agbonayunma, who chaired the sub-committee set up by CCB to investigate the matter, had described the allegation as grievous.

Flanked by all the federal commissioners of the CCB at the press conference, Mr Isah said: The CCB went extra-miles and brought in other security operatives, and those suspected to have taken part in the said bribery allegation were invited by the various security agencies, particularly the SSS.

He added: The outcome of the investigation is in the pipeline; whatever the findings are after the deliberations, they will be made public to Nigerians.

The bureaus many woes

The event on Thursday offered a platform for the CCB to ventilate its operational encumbrances.

Top on the list was poor manpower for an intractable problem of corruption in Nigerias public service.

Our staff are poorly paid, the CCB chairman began.

We have less than 800 personnel across the country for 10 million public officers whom we are investigating their assets, Mr Isah lamented, warning of the danger ahead if new persons are not recruited to replace the deceased and retired.

On budgetary allocations, Mr Isah said some persons were out to strangulate the bureau by starving it of funding.

We get N36 million as overhead per release, and this year, we have received nine releases of N297 million, he explained.

Monitoring more than 10 million public officers is not easy, Mr Isah revealed of the manpower shortage.

Of all its mandate, verification is one of the most, of not the most tedious exercise. It is capital intensive. Despite the above, and the fact that the bureau is poorly funded considering our budgetary allocation, we are determined to go ahead with the process to ensure the success of the fight against corruption, he assured.
The Independent Investigative Panel on human rights violations perpetrated by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the Nigerian police, on Thursday, ordered three police officers linked to an extra-judicial killing case to appear.

The panel directed that the Nigerian police must produce the officers to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the death of Ovoke Onomrerhino in the Abraka area of Delta State in 2019.

The deceaseds father, Godwin Onomrerhino, had accused the police of killing his son extra-judicially.

But the police had said the deceased person, who was allegedly arrested for armed robbery, jumped off a moving police vehicle in a bid to escape. The police said he died of the injuries sustained from the jump.

Chaired by a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, Suleiman Galadima, the panel, commonly referred to as #EndSARS panel, said three police sergeants, namely, Musa, Lucky Kehinde, and Lucky Okuku, named in the case had to appear to clarify some issues in respect of the victims death.

Previous orders of the panel for the three police officers to appear were not honoured.

On March 15, the panel went to the extent of ordering the Inspector-General of Police to arrest the three officers and produce them before it.

Mr Galadima, in addition to asking the police authorities to produce the three respondents, directed on Thursday that the 1st respondent, Isah Hassan, a chief superintendent of police, who previously testified in the case, had to re-appear to produce documents showing how Mr Onomrerhino died in the hospital and how his body was subsequently taken to the mortuary.

The complainants counsel, Onome Okoroze, told the panel that Mr Hassan, had in his testimony stated that the three sergeants were in the police vehicle when the deceased jumped off and sustained serious injuries, which led to his death in the hospital.

She added that the panel was right to order Mr Hassan to re-appear before the panel with the necessary documents to prove the deceased received treatment in the hospital courtesy of the police before he died and that the body was deposited in the mortuary.

Defence

Defending the respondents, the police legal team led by James Idachaba informed the panel that some of the police officers needed at the panel were around shortly before the panel went on a six-month break.

He told the panel that the police had been cooperating with the panel, recalling that Mr Hassan had left Abraka Police Division in Delta State when he was traced and brought to testify before the panel.

He added that an assistant commissioner of police named Mantu, who is another respondent in the case, had been transferred from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Police Command to Rivers State.

According to him, Mr Mantu is currently on a national assignment in Anambra State. But he promised to make efforts to reach him.

The panel then directed the police legal team to ensure that the affected officers were brought for the defence hearing scheduled for November 24.

Petition

The petitioner, Godwin Onomrerhino, the father of the deceased, had told the panel that his son (Ovoke Onomrerhino) was extra-judicially killed by the police.

He said he wrote a petition to Nigeria Police Force Zone 5 in Delta State, demanding an investigation.

He told the panel that the police had yet to release the remains of his son for burial because they were still investigating the matter.

But the police authorities had given different account about how the deceased died.

Isah Hassan, a chief superintendent of police and former Division Police Officer (DPO), Abraka, Delta State, and Tambari Kambari, an inspector and investigative police officer, both testified on December 3, 2020, describing Mr Onomrerhino, the deceased, as an armed robbery suspect.

Mr Hassan said the deceased was arrested on June 29, 2019, by the Igun Vigilante Group for an armed robbery incident on the Eku-Igun Highway in Delta State the previous day.

He said the victim had taken policemen to where his gang kept their weapons, adding that as they were returning to the police station, the suspect jumped off a police vehicle while in motion and sustained injuries.

They claimed that the suspect was taken to Abraka General Hospital where he was said to have died afterwards.

The panel had then ordered the police to produce documents relating to the treatment of the deceased and the movement of his corpse to the mortuary.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Independent Investigative Panel on allegations of human rights violations by the defunct Special Anti  Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the Nigerian Police, retired Justice Suleiman Galadima on Thursday reminded the police of their duty to account fo individuals arrested and detained.

He made this statement at the hearing of the alleged violation of the right to personal liberty and enforced disappearance of one Eric Ezeala who was arrested in 2017 by members of the SARS and has yet to be accounted for to his family.

Expressing his frustrations on the continued absence of police officers at the sittings, he told the respondents counsel led by James Idachaba that the police cannot run away from answering questions on the enforced disappearance of Eric Ezeala and others.

We must get to the bottom of this case as quickly as possible, he added.

The leader of the defence team, Mr Idachaba assured the panel that he will get involved personally to find out the whereabouts of Eric Ezeala.

He disclosed to the panel that from a preliminary investigation carried out personally, he found out that Eric Ezeala was arrested by the Inspector General of Police, Intelligence Response Team (IGP-IRT) and not SARS as alleged by his family.

According to the testimonies of the petitioner, Hilda Ezeala, mother to the victim, Eric was arrested in July 2017 by some policemen. She said she was informed to come with her lawyer to Owerri Special Anti-Robbery Squad Office where she was later informed that her son, Eric has been transferred to Abuja.

The case was adjourned to the 23rd of November, 2021 for the defences report on Erics whereabouts.
Africa is at a crossroad again and it will require firm resolutions of the African Union and United Nations to isolate countries involved in unpopular and authoritarian changes of government, while treating associated rebellious leaders with contempt. But it goes beyond condemnation only. Such countries and leaders should be sanctioned and deprived of aides and foreign direct investment, if any.

Africa is once again going through a turbulent time in the form of violent overthrow of governments. However, unlike the decades after independence when such enterprises were greeted with enthusiasm, people are now generally coup weary. Military incursion into the civil space is so derided now that whenever it happens, the actors have the world to contend with and their country treated as a pariah state.

According to a BBC report, which quoted two U.S. researchers, Jonathan Powel and Clayton Thyne, there have been 200 coup attempts in Africa since the late 1950s, half of them successful. And just when we thought Africa had come of age, and ready to put its ugly past behind her in 21st century, there has been the resurgence of coups; mainly engendered by endemic poverty, corruption and bad governance. In slightly over a year, there have been five coups and attempted coups in Africa  two military takeovers in Mali, a failed one in Niger Republic, that of Guinea and now Sudan. Burkina Faso has had the most successful coups, with seven takeovers and one failed attempt.

In April this year, there was a semi successful coup in Chad, when Idriss Deby was killed in controversial circumstances, but his supporters rallied round his son, a military man, and installed him in the fathers stead. Sudan has had 18 coups and attempted coups, of which five were successful. Nigeria has had eight, Burundi 11, Sierra Leone eight, while Ghana has also had eighth. The political instability arising from uprisings, rebellions and the frequent change of government are some of the factors holding the continent down. Unfortunately for Africa, the incessant coups have not engendered the development of the continent. Instead, government institutions have suffered retrogression, while some individuals have become powerful and wealthy at the expense of the state.

However, notwithstanding the militarys foray into politics again, authoritarian rule is no longer fashionable and the excuses for this are no longer tenable, because the question of starting a revolution does not even arise, as most of such ideals ended in the dustbin of history and ignominy. The dichotomy between capitalism/communism and the bipolar war between the West and the former USSR, as represented by Russia, have all fizzled out; the world has become largely unipolar and the line between both worlds have become thin. The world still fights but todays wars are no longer based on ideologies; that is, if there was ever any. Support from Russia and Cuba to African countries and would-be coup makers are also no longer available. Russia itself now tries hard to ape the Western type of capitalism.

Here lies the bane of Africa  the strongman syndrome. The notion that only one man can solve a nations problems, even without visible progress, and when that strongman abdicates power, dies or is removed, there are always challenges of how and where to start from. Examples can be found with the situaitons in Egypt, Cote dvoire and Sudan, which recently experienced another coup.

Besides the death of ideologies and dearth of ideologists, records of previous military regimes were even more abysmal than those they sought to supplant. The mantra today is that the worst democracy is still better than the most benevolent dictatorship. So, any ambitious military politician wishing to get into government through the barrel of the gun would have to do a thorough job of it, to avoid a backlash.

Sadly, civilian governments have not fared any better as most are preoccupied with self-perpetuation plans, even under the guise of democracy. Cameroon strongman, Paul Biya has been in government since November 6, 1982. He is 88 years. Biya who initially subscribed to a more open, more tolerant and more democratic political society, is today the most reclusive and isolated African leader. Bereft of any democratic codes, he has amended his countrys constitution specifically to eliminate presidential term limits, while Cameroon battles insolvent economy, endemic corruption, and oppression of the Anglophone side of the country. With people like Paul Biya, many might wish for a populist intervention, which can become another trap.

Such was the case with Uganda. Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 after a military rebellion. Touted as a revolutionary and liberator, he was part of the gang that toppled Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Sadly, he did not leave the scene when the ovation was loudest and has since turned into a military democrat, having amended the constitution to make him life president, standing for election six times and winning all to sit-tight as president for the past 35 years, and still counting. Meanwhile, the situation in Uganda neither inspires confidence in the military, nor their form of democratic regime. Other than the monarchical arrangement in the Middle East and some parts of Asia, any government that ignores or removes term limits for its leaders cannot be said to mean well for them; such as the case of Museveni. His friend and advisor, 82-year-old John Nagenda, has had this to say about Museveni: he was prepared to die for Uganda. I would say that we are very lucky to have him.

Here lies the bane of Africa  the strongman syndrome. The notion that only one man can solve a nations problems, even without visible progress, and when that strongman abdicates power, dies or is removed, there are always challenges of how and where to start from. Examples can be found with the situaitons in Egypt, Cote dvoire and Sudan, which recently experienced another coup. Two years ago, Omar al-Bashir, after 33 years in office, was toppled by the Sudanese army, after a series of protests. The country began a power-sharing formula between the military and civilians, which threw up Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and General Abdel Fattah Burhan as head of the power-sharing transition deal to steer Sudan towards civilian rule, before it was again truncated last week. Egypt had this kind of military-civilian deal but it broke down and the military took over the mantle of leadership again. In fact, Sudan appears to be a playground for coup making, as there have been many attempts in the last two years and even before Al-Bashir was toppled.

In September, the military struck in Guinea after 11 years of Alpha Condes rule, another sad commentary on Africa. Colonel Mamady Daumbouya, the coup leader, accused Condes government of corruption and mismanagement. These are old tactics and excuses for coups, but Conde, after a controversial third-term victory at the polls and at age 88, must have done himself in

When a country is badly run, the people wish for a change in whatever form. So was Guinea, a classic example of peoples wish, in contrast to democratic norms. In September, the military struck in Guinea after 11 years of Alpha Condes rule, another sad commentary on Africa. Colonel Mamady Daumbouya, the coup leader, accused Condes government of corruption and mismanagement. These are old tactics and excuses for coups, but Conde, after a controversial third-term victory at the polls and at age 88, must have done himself in, as activists and opposition viewed his austere outlook as a just dessert for his infractions. But whatever may be his faults, the authoritarian regime is no replacement for a democratically elected civilian government.

Coming after Guineas post-independence leader, Ahmadu Sekou Toures long tenure from 1958 to his death in 1984, Guineas democratic credentials have not been enviable. Already, the junta leaders have told the African Union to stop interfering in the affairs of Guinea and have established what they called constitutional charter, comprising of 81 members, headed by a civilian Prime Minister and a transition council, to act as president. The next few months or years would unravel the true intents of the khaki men in Guinea.

Africa is at a crossroad again and it will require firm resolutions of the African Union and United Nations to isolate countries involved in unpopular and authoritarian changes of government, while treating associated rebellious leaders with contempt. But it goes beyond condemnation only. Such countries and leaders should be sanctioned and deprived of aides and foreign direct investment, if any.

zainabokino@gmail.com
The clock seems to tick faster as the day silently approaches. All eyes are on the panel of judges, which comprises some elders of the profession  the high priests of journalism. Most of them were in practice, at the very top, before some of the contestants for the award were born.

The scarcity of easy smile on their faces signposts the undisputable assumption that they mean business. Last week, these elders made the long expected announcement. On December 10, 2021, the first winner of Ray Ekpu Award for Investigative Journalism in Akwa Ibom State would be unveiled.

Whoever wins the prestigious award will go home with half million naira. Something tells me that this is one of the highest financial attachments to journalism award in Nigeria.

When you examine the calibre of people in the award committee, you can be sure a winner will not emerge cheaply. Most of them are old school journalism veterans with truck loads of professional reputation to protect. They would even be ready to declare the contest as a no -winner event instead of compromising or settling for anything less than excellence.

On the part of the journalists, the race is gathering momentum. Everyone wants to win the high prize. In Nigeria of today, five hundred thousand naira in cash seems like something big enough to take someone to the moon. Think about school fees, house rents, and hospital bills, among others. I can even hear someone mentioning Christmas celebration. Its certainly a big deal.

Lets refresh our minds a little. On the last Friday in July this year, during the congress of the Akwa Ibom Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Udom Inoyo, the urbane immediate past executive vice chairman of Exxonmobil, announced the institution of Ray Ekpu Award for Investigative Journalism. He made the award exclusive to journalists in Akwa Ibom State.

This is how he made the announcement: I have thought of what I could do as my little contribution to the NUJ in Akwa Ibom State with regard to this matter (investigative reporting). Anywhere that I have gone in this world when people talk about journalism, one individual comes to my mind first.

He is a great son of Akwa Ibom State, an international award-winning journalist, who rose from a position of insignificance to that of global prominence. It is in honour of this high priest of quality reporting that I hereby request the Executive Committee (of NUJ) to accept the institution of an annual award to be called: Ray Ekpu Award for Investigative Journalism.

This award, to be given out annually by a panel of five first-class journalists comprising: two celebrated veteran journalists; one national officer of the Nigerian Guild of Editors; a nominee of the award sponsor; and the State Chairman of the NUJ, is aimed at encouraging quality, factual investigative reporting in Akwa Ibom State and Nigeria at large.

He went ahead to mention the prize money, five hundred thousand naira yearly for the winner, and added: But the journalist must be operating from Akwa Ibom State. That automatically disqualified some of us.

As I stepped out of the Press Centre that evening, I put a call to Ray Ekpu to tell him about the award. His response, in his trademark deep baritone, after a few seconds of reflection, stunned me.

He said, I know Udom Inoyo closely. But Sam, I have never done anything special for him to deserve this kind of honour. This is purely from a heart of love. Im glad to be so honoured by someone who has never placed a demand on me. I am greatly delighted.

Shortly after the announcement, there was a perceived long silence. People started wondering when the award would begin. Some of us actually knew that something was unfolding in the background.

A few weeks ago, the Award Committee, led by the former editor of the defunct Concord newspaper, Nsikak Essien, met. The appointment of Nsikak was well received by professionals who know something about his professional pedigree.

Other members are Kayode Komolafe (we call him KK), a sound gentleman columnist and deputy managing director of Thisday newspaper; Akpandem James, a veteran of the Concord, Punch and Daily Independent newsrooms; Professor Ini Uko of the University of Uyo; Amos Etuk, the NUJ Chairman and Mrs Emem Nkereuwem, from Inoyo Toro Foundation which has Udom as advisor.

The Committee has already issued guidelines. It says each entry for the award would be assessed based on depth of investigation; conformity with the ideals of journalistic excellence; style and language of presentation; its contribution to good governance in public office; and its impact on the fight against corruption and impunity.

Other criteria are: contribution of the report to national unity and ethnic cohesion in the state; promotion of human and individual rights; its relevance to the fight against societal ills like rape and girl child abuse; efforts to check poverty and abuse of the environment; and attempts to check drug abuse, cultism and general insecurity.

So, who wins this award? Is someone ready to cook up something in the mould of what a certain Janet Leslie Cooke did in 1981 to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize while working for the Washington Post newspaper? Cooke, a black American reporter, born on July 23, 1954, fabricated a story about an eight-year old boy claimed to be a heroin addict.

The story was so beautifully cooked up with all the best ingredients of sound journalism, except factuality, that not even the legendary editor of Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, noted for his professional dexterity in handling the Watergate Scandal, could detect foul play. Eventually Ms Cooke was found out. For the first time in history, a winner of the legendary Pulitzer Award was forced to return it.

The Cooke case should serve as an object lesson to the Committee for the kind of things it must guard against. Somebody somewhere is ready to win this award by all means. I would rather advise that if nobody qualifies for the award at the end, it must be so declared. The rules must be adhered to.

Both the Committee and those vying for this high profile award must respect the man whose name this award bears. That name must not be corrupted. The Committee members themselves must protect their integrity. We are watching. We are monitoring. Nothing must be done to devalue the award in anyway.

Another concern! Journalists working for online newspapers are exempted from this award. In this age and time, the Committee must have strong reasons for doing that. If there is any, for some reasons, we deserve to know. Why should online newspapers be exempted?

Despite noticeable professional waywardness, Nigeria boasts some credible online newspapers. Some of them are published by former editors of national newspapers. I do not need to mention names here. But if certain international and local journalism award-giving bodies recognise and give awards to outstanding reporters from these online newspapers, why should our case be different?

I am not aware that Udom, who instituted the award, asked the Committee not to recognise credible, fully registered online newspapers. I think there is need for a rethink here. For avoidance of doubt, I do not operate any online newspaper.

Sam Akpe is a journalist and editor.
A Quranic teacher has been arrested by the police in Katsina State for allegedly kidnapping the four-year-old son of his uncle.

The police paraded the suspect on Wednesday at the State Command headquarters in Katsina. Responding to questions at the event, 39-year old Jamilu Idris said he abducted the boy to extort money from his father.

I went to Funtua where my uncle lives with his family. When Umar Faruk, mu cousin, came out to tell me that his father was not around, I used the opportunity to kidnap the boy. Because he knows me, he did not refuse to follow me. I took him with me, bought him Viju milk and eventually took him to the motor park where I took him to Abuja, he said.

In Abuja, he said he took the boy to a woman and told her that Umar is his friends son who would be taken back to Funtua.

When I returned home, I changed my voice to that of a Fulani man and called Umars father, my uncle and told him that his son had been kidnapped. I told him to give us five million but he said he had only N500,000, he said.

The police spokesperson in the state, Gambo Isa, said the father of the child, however, refused to pay the ransom and instead involved the police.

I want to use this opportunity to call on everyone to be involving the police in issues like this. We are against payment of ransom to kidnappers.

Arrest of teenager armed robbery suspects, others

Also paraded were four suspected members of an armed robbery gang the police said was operating in Jibia Local Government Area of the state.

Mr Isa said the teenagers suspects were arrested after killing two and injuring four people in a house they attacked in Dan Tudu area of Jibia town.

One of the suspects, Anas Dahiru, said they did not have the intention to kill but rather to steal when they entered the house.

When we entered the house, an old woman saw Muhammadu (one of them) and wanted to shout for help but he used a pestle to beat her on the head, while I killed one of the children, he said.

In the morning, one of the suspects attended the funeral prayers for the deceased and one of the children in the house they attacked identified him and raised an alarm.
Candidates and political parties participating in the 6 November governorship election in Anambra State have signed a peace accord, ahead of the poll.

At the signing ceremony held at the Professor Dorothy Akunyili Womens Development Centre, Awka, the state capital on Thursday, the candidates pledged to ensure peace during and after the election.

The peace accord was facilitated by the National Peace Committee (NPC) headed by a former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar.

It comes amid the security concerns in Anambra State following recent violent activities by some gunmen in many parts of the state.

The candidates who signed the accord include Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress, Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Ifeanyi Ubah of the Young Progressives Party (YPP).

Others are Etiaba Chukwuogo of the Action Alliance (AA), Uzo Godwin of the Social Democratic Party, Godwin Maduka of the Accord Party (AP), Nwankwo Chidozie of the African Action Congress (AAC), Okonkwo Francis of the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), Onyejegbu Okwudili of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), and Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Ohajimkpo Emeka of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Ezenwafor Victor of the National Rescue Movement (NRM), and Nnamdi Nwawuo of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) also signed the accord.

Mr Abubakar, in his address at the event, said NPC had organised the event to support the peaceful electoral process in Anambra State.

We are all aware of the consistent history of political and electoral violence in Nigeria. Almost every election in Nigeria is accompanied by violence, ballot box snatching, vote buying, outright disruption of the process and in some cases, the intimidation of ordinary citizens who simply want to select a leader that will govern them, Mr Abubakar said.

This violence has gone beyond just the period of election. Every day we hear stories of kidnapping, banditry, terrorism and in most cases, outright criminality. This ugly trend continues to threaten the peace, security and stability of our dear country. The question is when will all this stop? How can we work together to ensure peace and stability both during and after the election cycle?

We the members of the National Peace Committee have come to Anambra State to support a peaceful electoral process. We cherish Anambra State, and we cherish the peace and unity of Nigeria. Most importantly, we want to contribute our own quota to see that the governorship election in Anambra State is devoid of violence.

We call on candidates, their parties and supporters to accept the outcome of the vote as long as it is adjudged to be free, fair and credible. In the letter and spirit of the Accord, any aggrieved party should not resort to violence, but follow a judicial process.

Mr Abubakar said the signing of the peace accord was not a mere exercise, stressing It is a clarion call for all the candidates and the political parties to commit themselves to a peaceful process.

Also speaking, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, said the outcome of the election would not be different from those of Edo and Ondo States.

The two elections were held in September and October 2020 amidst similar uncertainty but they largely turned out peaceful.

Faced with the current situation in Anambra State, the Commission once again appealed to the NPC to bring parties and candidates to commit to peace before, during and after the election. We believe that Anambra cannot be different from Edo and Ondo.

For this reason, we are also confident that just like Edo and Ondo, the election on Saturday will be peaceful and the outcome will reflect the will of the Anambra voters, Mr Yakubu said.

Unlike Edo and Ondo States which were predicted may be susceptible to clashes among contesting parties among other violence, the electorates fear for the forthcoming Anambra revolves highly around the threats from secessionists group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

The group recently issued a seven-day sit-at-home order which will be effective from Friday to the residents of the state.

IPOB has since suspended the sit-at-home order.
One person has been reportedly killed at Ile Iwe bus stop, Abule-Egba, Lagos, on Thursday morning as police officers allegedly clashed with tricycle riders.

A source said the clash ensued while a police officer was trying to collect N100 from one of the tricycle riders.

An unidentified police officer allegedly stabbed a tricycle operator in the process, followed by a reprisal attack by the riders.

Reacting to the incident, Adekunle Ajisebutu, the spokesperson of the police in Lagos, said patrol teams have been sent to the area to restore normalcy.

He said he was yet to get the details of the alleged killing.

The CP has dispatched adequate Police patrol teams to maintain law and order there. No cause for alarm. Details soon.

As soon as I get details of the incident, I will react, Mr Ajisebutu said.
The Chairman of Ijebu East Local Government, Wale Adedayo, has lashed out at the Ogun State Government over an act of arson and destructions against people in the council.

Mr Adedayo, who posted on Facebook on Thursday, expressed displeasure with the governments demolition of structures in the forest reserves in the local government.

We cannot continue like this in Ijebu East Local Government. These are the poorest of the poor being dehumanised by destroying their farms and houses, he said.

The Commissioner for Forestry, Tunji Akinosi, on Thursday, explained that the government has embarked on the removal of what he called illegal shanties and enclaves from its forest reserves.

The commissioner said the exercise started last week at J1 and J3 forest reserves and would be continuous. He noted that the demolition was aimed at ridding the forest reserves of illegal occupants and loggers.

It (the demolition exercise) is the removal of illegal shanties and enclaves in our forest reserves. It is not peculiar to Ijebu East J3.

We were at J1 reserve on Thursday last week and it will be continuous as the government is desirous in ridding all our reserves.

But Mr Adedayo, who belongs to the same All Progressives Congress as Governor Dapo Abiodun, criticised the demolition.

He said the arson and other destructions had been happening in J3, near Ogbere, since four days ago.

The council boss, who shared photos of the destroyed structures on his Facebook page, called on inhabitants of the community to return home and fight.

A prince doesnt fight like a slave. Go back to tradition. If they dont return, lets seek spiritual intervention, Mr Adedayo wrote, in the Yoruba language.

May their children die. May they themselves begin to see bad things. Go back home. Lets return to our fathers. Its time to go home.

Drama

Mr Akinosi described Mr Adedayos comment as dramatic, saying this is drama.

He asked the Local Government boss to contact the Ministry if he has any questions or needs any clarification.

Please ask the chairman to get in touch with the Ministry of Forestry if he has questions or clarifications as I can inform you categorically that he has not informed or gotten in touch with us.

Contacted, Mr Adedayo said he had reached out to the ministry.

Yes I have contacted the ministry and I spoke with the permanent secretary and he confirmed that it was the government, from the ministry of forestry that carried out the act.
Plattsburgh, NY (12901)

Today

Snow showers this morning. Peeks of sunshine later. High around 45F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 90%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low near 40F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Plattsburgh, NY (12901)

Today

Rain ending this morning. Breaks of sun in the afternoon. High 46F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 41F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
The tourism industry is highly fragmented, with developing countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) being most reliant on tourism for their economies. More than 40 million tourism businesses  or 80 percent of the whole industry  are small or medium sized. The STGC aims to support people and the planet by reforming tourism's contribution to climate change, in a bid to protect the environment and support those who need it most.

At a special session on the future of the STGC at COP26, His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia, was joined by former President of Mexico and Chair of New Climate Economy, and the World Resources Institute, Felipe Calderon; David Livingston, Senior Advisor, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and other leaders.

The Center's strategy will be shaped by a coalition of governments, international organizations, academia, multilateral and financing institutions and industry associations.

The countries invited to be part of this important coalition in phase one, are the UK, USA, France, Japan, Germany, Kenya, Jamaica, Morocco, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. These countries have prioritized climate, tourism and SMEs which will allow for synergies for this important initiative

The top organizations that will help to shape the center and provide the services in phase one are WRI (World Resource Institute), UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), ICC (International Chamber of Commerce), WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council), World Bank, and SYSTEMIQ. In addition to Harvard University, which will provide support to the STGC through research and capacity-building, while the UNFCCC will guide the Center to accelerate industry action on climate neutrality.

The Center will deliver services and products across three core pillars, including knowledge creation and sharing, measurement and monitoring, and industry enablement. Across these pillars, the STGC will focus on at least in nine areas of industry support, including developing standards and resource provision for the tourism sector, capability building, and project funding and investment.

The Center will be headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and plans to open regional offices in other countries, with a strong multilingual online presence.

Other countries and organizations will be invited to join in phase two. In addition, a group of global experts in tourism and climate is being assembled to support this important effort.

His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism, Saudi Arabia, said:

"The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world the interconnectedness of humanity and nature, and the fragility of communities dependent on tourism to external shocks. We must act now to make the industry and local communities far more resilient and to help solve the challenge of climate change. That requires engaging with business, governments, and international organizations to accelerate action. Saudi Arabia is committed to contributing to this critical effort."

President Felipe Calderon, Former President of Mexico and Chairman, World Resources Institute, said:

"We share this initiative with global leaders who joined our mission to make tourism a lever toward achieving the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. There is a window of opportunity for business and governments to come together to drive these critical objectives, and the STGC will serve as a 'north star' to achieve this mission."

Hon. Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism of Jamaica, said:

"The Government of Jamaica, as a Small Island Developing State and vulnerable economy, remains committed to resilience building for sustainable development, including through sustainable tourism. In this regard, Jamaica welcomes the opportunity to partner with the Sustainable Tourism Global Center to contribute to and benefit from this collaborative effort to secure a better planet for future generations."

Janet Rogan. United Kingdom COP Regional Ambassador for Middle East and Africa, said:

"We are proud to be hosting COP26. Humanity has run down the clock on climate change. It is now time to take action. Tourism is a key sector that supports jobs and growth and we are pleased to be part of this important new initiative to accelerate the sector's transition to net zero."

Her Excellency Fatim-Zahra Ammor, Minister of Tourism, Handicrafts and Social Economy Morocco said:

"Under the guidance of his Majesty King Mohammed VI, may God bless him, The Kingdom of Morocco made sustainability one of the main pillars of its former sectorial strategies as well as its new development model. During the last two years, the whole world has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and tourism is one of the most affected sectors. It is crucial to join our efforts to build and co-design a sustainable recovery plan related to travel and tourism activities. The Sustainable Tourism Global Center is an important step towards this goal."

Hon. Najib Balala, Cabinet Secretary of Tourism and Wildlife, Kenya said:

"As one of Africa's most popular destinations for international visitors, Kenya has felt the full impact of the global tourism downturn as a result of the pandemic. We therefore agree that there is an urgent need for a new sustainable approach to global tourism. Along with our recently launched Wildlife Strategy 2030 which will ensure a thriving natural ecosystem under pressure from climate change, we are strong supporters of the Sustainable Tourism Global Center."

Her Excellency Maria Reyes Maroto, Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Spain said:

"COP26 provides an ideal setting to confirm our commitment to help tourism contributing to the global challenge of climate change. As a world leader in tourism, Spain is promoting initiatives in sustainable tourism aiming to preserve the natural environment, to improve energy efficiency in the sector and to adopt the principles of the circular economy. This will accelerate the contribution of tourism to the green transition drawn by the European Green Deal. Spain is an active member in international initiatives such as Planet's Sustainable Tourism Programme, and it will remain an active partner working at a global level with other countries, in particular developing countries, as well as with international institutions and business representatives."

Julia Simpson, World Travel & Tourism Council President and CEO, said:

"At a time where leadership is most needed to address the climate emergency, we commend Saudi Arabia's initiative that will support the sector to achieve the global goals and ensure a sustainable future. WTTC is delighted to contribute to the Center through its unique data, research and expertise from businesses across the globe."

John W. H. Denton AO, International Chamber of Commerce Secretary General, said:

"I applaud the  multi-country and multi-stakeholder effort  to accelerate sustainability within the global tourism sector. Given the impacts of COVID-19 on the strength of the sector, partnerships will be vital to ensure small tourism operators can genuinely build back better  and become a powerful force for local communities and our planet.

"The International Chamber of Commerce  as the institutional representative of more than 45 million companies in over 100 countries and as official UNFCCC Focal Point for Business and Industry  looks forward to supporting the development of the Hub in the coming months  and to connecting its work with our global business network, in particular the millions of small businesses in the tourism sector."

Gloria Guevara, Chief Special Advisor to HE Ahmed Al Khateeb, said:

"The tourism sector has been through so much throughout this pandemic and combined with the urgency of a response to climate change, it needs a global solution. SMEs in our sector  like a travel agency or tour operator  might not know their carbon footprint and how to contribute to the race to zero. Every time we go on holiday, we create jobs and reduce poverty, it would be great if we reach a point that the more, we go on holiday, the better it is for the planet. The multi-country, multi-stakeholder coalition will bring tourism's fragmented stakeholders together and provide knowledge to drive action now."

Dr. Ramon Sanchez, Principal Investigator, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University, said:

"To create a truly sustainable global tourism industry, all community, business, and government stakeholders require the tools, frameworks, and best practices necessary to contribute to reaching this objective. The team at Harvard is excited to collaborate with the STGC on research that will play a critical role in building the foundation and driving the industry toward net-zero".

Jeremy Oppenheim, founder, SYSTEMIQ, a global advisory and investment firm which specialises in Paris Agreement-aligned sectoral transformations and is supporting the STGC, said:

"The STGC aims to bring together the many tourism-related sectors - aviation, hospitality, transport and catering services  into a world-class, multi-stakeholder coalition that can help transform the industry especially SMEs, from one that generates 8% of global greenhouse emissions to one that is a driver of a net-zero, regenerative world."

Niclas Svenningsen, Manager for Global Climate Action - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

"Tourism is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change and one of the sectors that has most to contribute with to the 2030 sustainable development agenda. Climate action offers a win-win opportunity to recover economies, communities and countries in a sustainable and climate friendly fashion."

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678329/STGC_1.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678330/STGC_2.jpg

SOURCE Sustainable Tourism Global Center (STGC)
HARRISBURG, Pa., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- November is National Family Caregivers Month, and AARP Pennsylvania is proud to honor the nearly 1.6 million family caregivers in the state who provide unpaid care and support to their loved ones.

Every day, across the county, some 48 million Americans help aging parents, spouses, friends, and other relatives with medical care, meals, bathing, dressing, chores, and much more. These acts of love, commitment, and compassion enable them to live independently and in the comfort of their own home.

Even in ordinary times, family caregivers undertake a daunting set of daily tasks. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, however, these responsibilities expanded and became more complex for many. As we continue to weather these unprecedented times, AARP Pennsylvania remains supportive of family caregivers and the loved ones they care for by advocating for more support and access to resources.

AARP Pennsylvania successfully fought earlier this year for the passage of House Bill 464, which was designed to expand eligibility and allow flexibility in the administration of Pennsylvania's Caregiver Support Program. The bill was signed into law by Governor Wolf on June 11. Now known as Act 20 of 2021, the program provides support to caregivers  including caregivers of older adults, grandparents raising grandchildren, and older caregivers of adults with a disability. The Pennsylvania Department of Aging is responsible to for administering the program, which is accessed at the community level through your local area agency on aging.

AARP has additional resources for family caregivers, including a dedicated, toll-free family caregiving line. While our agents can't provide specific advice to callers, they can suggest resources on a variety of topics, including care for the caregiver, caregiving and work, financial issues, home care, legal issues, long-distance caregiving, long-term care, medical care, and veteran caregiving. Agents are available to take calls Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET, at 1-877-333-5885.

AARP also recognizes that no matter where someone is in their caregiving journey, having resources at their fingertips can make the process easier. To this end, AARP has developed a Family Caregiver Guide with the caregiver in mind. The Guide is designed to serve as a starting point to help caregivers find the services and supports that may be needed. It features important resources in the areas of health, finances, legal aid, housing, transportation, and more by providing program descriptions, website information, and, where available, address, phone, and contact information. To order a free print copy of the online guide, simply call the AARP Family Caregiving Resource Line at 1-877-333-5885 and indicate the state guide you would like to receive along with your mailing address and a copy will be mailed to you.

"Taking on the responsibility of being a caregiver is an extraordinary task," said AARP State Director Bill Johnston-Walsh. "To often caregivers can be overwhelmed and unprepared. AARP Pennsylvania is laser-focused on serving as a wise friend and fierce defender to all family caregivers and is committed to ensuring they receive the support and services needed as they care for their loved ones while maintaining their own well-being."

ABOUT AARP

AARP is the nation's largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. With nearly 38 million members  including 1.8 million in Pennsylvania  and offices in every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, AARP works to strengthen communities and advocate for what matters most to families with a focus on health security, financial stability, and personal fulfillment. AARP also works for individuals in the marketplace by sparking new solutions and allowing carefully chosen, high-quality products and services to carry the AARP name. As a trusted source for news and information, AARP produces the nation's largest circulation publications, AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin. To learn more, visit www.aarp.org or follow @AARP and @AARPadvocates on social media.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Teresa Osborne, [email protected], 717-237-6482

Angela Foreshaw Rouse, [email protected]. 267-825-9922

SOURCE AARP Pennsylvania

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PHOENIX, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Advisor Group, the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, today announced the successful recruitment to its network of James Putnam and Babak "Bobby" Payvandi, a pair of financial advisors based in the greater Sacramento, Calif. area that collectively oversee $174 million in total client assets.

Mr. Putnam and Mr. Payvandi join Advisor Group through the firm's subsidiary Securities America and Iron Point Advisors, a fast-growing Super-OSJ based in Folsom, Calif. Advisor Group's network also includes FSC Securities, Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial, Triad Advisors and Woodbury Financial Services.

Jim Nagengast, CEO and President of Securities America, said, "It's my pleasure to welcome Jim Putnam and Bobby Payvandi to Advisor Group and the Securities America family. More than ever, financial advisors seeking to accelerate their organic growth are turning to Advisor Group for the resources, scale and expertise they need to deliver holistic wealth management and financial planning solutions that can help their clients achieve their goals. We look forward to working with Jim and Bobby to take their business to the next level by leveraging our best-in-class resources, practice management support and technology."

Mr. Putnam, MBA, CFP and Mr. Payvandi, CPA, CFP specialize in retirement and tax planning with a concentration in the real estate industry.

The two advisors will also leverage the practice management support and supervision of Iron Point Advisors, which oversees 53 financial professionals with over $2 billion in client assets between them.

Rob Santoriello, President and CEO of Iron Point Advisors, said, "James Putnam and Bobby Payvandi are outstanding additions to the Iron Point Advisors team, and we look forward to supporting their needs and those of their clients, as well as collaborating with them on the continued growth of their business."

Mr. Putnam said, "After 37 years with our former broker-dealer, we undertook an extensive search of other broker-dealers. After filtering the search to three finalists, partnering with Advisor Group, Securities America and Iron Point Advisors was the best fit."

Mr. Payvandi said, "The technology, dedicated transition support, and support after transition from Rob Santoriello's team at Iron Point Advisors was a big factor in our decision-making process."

Greg Cornick, Advisor Group's President, Advice & Wealth Management, said, "It's our pleasure to bring aboard two professionals with as strong a track record as James Putnam and Babak "Bobby" Payvandi, who have provided their clients with exceptional service and guidance for decades. We are committed to their success and will continue to invest in capabilities and solutions to help them grow."

About Securities America

Securities America is part of Advisor Group, the nation's largest networks of independent wealth management firms. Headquartered in Omaha and founded in 1984, Securities America supports approximately 3,200 independent financial professionals with innovative technology and wealth management platforms, practice management and business growth tools and a personalized service culture. The firm's flexible, multi-custodial approach supports a range of business models including Super OSJs, independent RIAs, RIA-only advisors, hybrid advisors and financial institutions. For more information visit https://www.securitiesamerica.com/.

Securities offered through Securities America, Inc., member FINRA / SIPC. Advisory Services offered through Securities America Advisors, Inc. and Arbor Point Advisors, LLC.

About Advisor Group

Advisor Group, Inc. is the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, serving approximately 10,100 financial professionals and overseeing over $475 billion in client assets. The firm is mission-driven to support the strategic role that advisors can play in the lives of their clients. Cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship and independence, Advisor Group champions the enduring value of financial professionals and is committed to being in their corner every step of the way. For more information visit https://www.advisorgroup.com.

Securities and investment advisory services are offered through the firms: FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., Triad Advisors, LLC, and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, and members of FINRA and SIPC. Securities are offered through Securities America, Inc., a broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services are offered through Arbor Point Advisors, LLC, Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, Inc., Securities America Advisors, Inc., and Triad Hybrid Solutions, LLC, registered investment advisers. Advisory programs offered by FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., are sponsored by VISION2020 Wealth Management Corp., an affiliated registered investment adviser. Advisor Group, Inc. is an affiliate of these firms. 20 E. Thomas Rd., Ste. 2000, Phoenix, AZ, 85012. 866.481.0379.

Media Inquiries

Joseph Kuo / Chris Clemens

Haven Tower Group

[email protected] or [email protected]

424 317 4851 or 424 317 4854

SOURCE Advisor Group

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CHICAGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Aptamers Market by Product Type (DNA, RNA, XNA), Technology (SELEX), Application (Therapeutics, Diagnostics, R&D), End Users (Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies, Academic & Government Research Institutes, CROs) - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global market was valued at an estimated USD 151 million in 2021 and is projected to reach USD 342 million by 2026, at a CAGR of 17.7% during the forecast period.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Aptamers Market"

196  Tables

38  Figures

183  Pages

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=1167

Growth of aptamers market is attributed to factors such as increase in number of clinical trials for development of aptamer-based therapeutics, increase in awareness about advantages of aptamers as compared to antibodies, rising investment in pharmaceutical R&D, and rising prevalence of chronic and rare diseases to increase the demand for aptamer-based therapeutics and diagnostics.

Growth in the venture capital funding for research on aptamers and growing collaborations with research institutes and pharmaceutical companies are also expected to offer a wide range of growth opportunities to players in the market. On the other hand, low market acceptance as compared to antibodies is likely to restrain the market growth while shortage of skilled & trained professionals may challenge market growth to a certain extent.

Lower production cost and higher stability will drive the DNA-based aptamers segment growth

Based on type, the aptamers market is segmented into DNA aptamers, XNA aptamers, and RNA aptamers. The DNA-based aptamers segment dominated the market in 2020. The large share of this segment is attributed to their lower production cost and higher stability compared to other nucleic acid-based aptamers and the wide availability of DNA aptamers.

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Others segment is expected to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on technology, the aptamers market is segmented into SELEX and other technologies. The SELEX technology segment dominated the market in 2020. The segment accounts for a large share of the aptamers market as SELEX is one of the most widely used technologies. The other technologies segment is expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period due to the increasing focus on developing technologies for aptamer selection.

North America was the largest regional market for aptamers market in 2020

The global aptamers market is segmented into five major regions, namely, North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. In 2020, North America accounted for the largest share of the market. The largest share of North America is attributed to the availability of funds to develop innovative technologies, the presence of prominent market players, and growing collaborations among companies.

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Some of the prominent players operating in this market include Aptamer Group (UK), Raptamer Discovery Group (US), SomaLogic Inc. (US), Aptamer Sciences, Inc. (South Korea) and Aptagen, LLC (US).

Browse Adjacent Markets: Biotechnology Market Research Reports & Consulting

Browse Related Reports:

Oligonucleotide Synthesis Market by Product (Drug, Synthesized Oligos (Primer, Probe), Reagents), Type (Custom, Predesign), Application (Therapeutic (ASO, siRNA), Research (PCR), Diagnostic), End User (Hospital, Pharma, CROs) - Global Forecast to 2026

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/oligonucleotide-synthesis-market-200829350.html

Next-generation Sequencing (NGS) Market by Product & Service (Consumables, Platforms, Services, Bioinformatics), Technology (SBS, SMRT), Application (Diagnostic, Drug Discovery, Agriculture), End User (Pharma, Biotech, Academic) - Global Forecast to 2026

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/next-generation-sequencing-ngs-technologies-market-546.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:

Mr. Aashish Mehra

MarketsandMarkets INC.

630 Dundee Road

Suite 430

Northbrook, IL 60062

USA: +1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]

Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/aptamers-market.asp

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Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/aptamers-technology.asp

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
PHOENIX, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- An Arizona-based CEO's mother's battle with triple-negative stage 3 breast cancer inspired a move from real estate to cannabis. Four years later, she's cancer-free and he's running a multi-million dollar cannabis empire.

Once she was diagnosed in 2016, Phoenix entrepreneur Andrew Bowden began searching for something to help her through treatment and it was through his connections at Item 9 Labs that he found a product to help her eat and sleep through the pain. Thanks to the support of her family, her determination and Item 9 Labs product, she survived three different, arduous routes of cancer treatment.

After seeing the positive effects cannabis had on his mother's battle with breast cancer, Bowden joined Item 9 Labs Corp. (OTCQX: INLB) (the "Company")a vertically integrated, cannabis dispensary franchisor and operator that produces premium, award-winning productsas a board member in 2018 and was appointed to CEO in 2019. His goal is to give the same opportunities to others who need help.

"Cannabis is truly a medicine," said Bowden. "This is what will help future cancer patients thrive and enjoy the rest of their lives. I want to see everyone live life to their fullest, pain free."

Bowden's mother explains how cannabis helped her overcome cancer: https://vimeo.com/462706131

Since Bowden's appointment to CEO, Item 9 Labs Corp. has seen seven consecutive quarters of growth; most recently, posting quarterly revenue up 203% year-over-year. The Company is developing the national footprint of its dispensary franchise brand, Unity Rd. , and Item 9 Labs cannabis products; construction is more than 75% completed at its Nevada cultivation site and the Company will soon begin the master site development of its Arizona operations . Further, the first Unity Rd. franchised shop opened in June 2021.

Went Pink by Giving Green for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Item 9 Labs, the 20-plus-time award-winning cannabis product brand from Item 9 Labs Corp., gave back this October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The elevated mainstream Arizona brand sold limited-edition pink boxes with non-strain-specific broad-spectrum cartridges to raise money and awareness for breast cancer.

For every pink cartridge box sold, Item 9 Labs made a donation to the American Cancer Foundation and the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk that took place on October 23. In total, Item 9 Labs donated $5,000. JARS Cannabis also matched every 50-cent donation.

About Item 9 Labs

Item 9 Labs cultivates the highest quality cannabis products while providing transparency, consistency and well-being for an enhanced cannabis experience. With more than 20 podium finishes in Arizona marijuana competitions, Item 9 Labs is a trusted source for premium cannabis products. Starting with intentionally grown flower, the Item 9 Labs product catalogue spans 75-plus active cannabis strains and more than 150 differentiated cannabis vape products as well as premium concentrates and Apollo & Orion vape technologies. Currently, Item 9 Labs is the most in demand brand at more than 60% of Arizona's dispensaries, according to LeafLink. For additional information, visit item9labs.com.

About Item 9 Labs Corp.

Item 9 Labs Corp. (OTCQX: INLB) is a vertically integrated cannabis operator and dispensary franchisor delivering premium products from its large-scale cultivation and production facilities in the United States. The award-winning Item 9 Labs brand specializes in best-in-class products and user experience across several cannabis categories. The company also offers a unique dispensary franchise model through the national Unity Rd. retail brand. Easing barriers to entry, the franchise provides an opportunity for both new and existing dispensary owners to leverage the knowledge, resources, and ongoing support needed to thrive in their state compliantly and successfully. Item 9 Labs brings the best industry practices to markets nationwide through distinctive retail experience, cultivation capabilities, and product innovation. The veteran management team combines a diverse skill set with deep experience in the cannabis sector, franchising, and the capital markets to lead a new generation of public cannabis companies that provide transparency, consistency, and well-being. Headquartered in Arizona, the company is currently expanding its operations space up to 640,000+ square feet on its 50-acre site, one of the largest properties in Arizona zoned to grow and cultivate flower. For additional information, visit item9labscorp.com.

Media Contact:

Lisa Sass

Serendipit Consulting

[email protected]

602-283-5209

Investor Contact:

Item 9 Labs Corp.

[email protected]

800-403-1140

SOURCE Item 9 Labs

Related Links

www.item9labs.com


NEW YORK and BASEL, Switzerland, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Aruvant Sciences ("Aruvant"), a private company focused on developing gene therapies for rare diseases, announced that an abstract demonstrating the clinical benefit of the company's lead product candidate ARU-1801 has been published online and will be the subject of a poster presentation at the 63rd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. The meeting will take place in Atlanta, Georgia from December 11 to 14, 2021. Punam Malik, M.D., Director of the Cincinnati Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center and Program Leader of the Hematology and Gene Therapy Program at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, will present the data at 6:00 to 8:00 PM EST on December 13, 2021.

"Clinical data from our ongoing MOMENTUM study has shown 100 percent resolution of vaso-oclusive events (VOE) in our recently treated SCD patients at 18 and 12 months of follow up," said Will Chou, MD, Aruvant chief executive officer. "In addition, we are excited to be sharing additional clinical data at ASH that demonstrates how the unique anti-sickling potency of ARU-1801 translates to these robust clinical outcomes."

Dr. Malik will present data from the ongoing MOMENTUM study, an open label Phase 1/2 clinical trial examining ARU-1801 as a one-time potentially curative gene therapy for individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD). The MOMENTUM study examines ARU-1801, an autologous lentiviral cell therapy with a modified, highly potent gamma globin payload, in individuals with severe SCD. Unlike investigational gene therapies that require fully myeloablative conditioning, ARU-1801 is given with reduced intensity conditioning (RIC), which is a lower dose chemotherapy. ARU-1801 is designed to address the limitations of current curative allogeneic transplant options, such as low donor availability, the risk of graft-versus-host disease and toxicity from myeloablative chemotherapy. The data to be presented at ASH highlights clinically meaningful reduction in participants' VOEs and the unique attributes that contribute to the potency of ARU-1801.

"The emerging clinical data shows that ARU-1801 holds promise for achieving durable responses in patients with severe SCD using only reduced intensity conditioninga key differentiator from other investigational gene therapy regimens," said Dr. Malik. "Given the advantage for patients, providers and payers a reduced conditioning regimen offers, ARU-1801 has the potential to be an important option for SCD patients seeking gene therapy, including those in low resource settings."

Abstract and Poster Presentation Information

Title: Safety and Efficacy of ARU-1801 in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease: Early Results from the Phase 1/2 MOMENTUM Study of a Modified Gamma Globin Gene Therapy and Reduced Intensity Conditioning

Publication Number: 3970

Session Name: 801. Gene Therapies: Poster III

Date: Monday, December 13, 2021

Presentation Time: 6:00 to 8:00 PM EST

Location: Georgia World Congress Center, Hall B5 or online through the ASH website.

About Aruvant Sciences

Aruvant Sciences, part of the Roivant family of companies, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing gene therapies for the treatment of rare diseases. The company has a talented team with extensive experience in the development, manufacturing and commercialization of gene therapy products. Aruvant has an active research program with a lead product candidate, ARU-1801, in development for individuals suffering from SCD. ARU-1801, an investigational lentiviral gene therapy, is being studied in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial, the MOMENTUM study, as a one-time potentially curative treatment for SCD. Preliminary clinical data demonstrate engraftment of ARU-1801 and amelioration of SCD is possible with one dose of reduced intensity chemotherapy. The company's second product candidate, ARU-2801, is in development to cure hypophosphatasia, a devastating, ultra-orphan disorder that affects multiple organ systems and leads to high morbidity and mortality when not treated. Data from pre-clinical studies with ARU-2801 shows durable improvement in disease biomarkers and increased survival. For more information on the ongoing ARU-1801 clinical study, please visit www.momentumtrials.com, and for more on the company, please visit www.aruvant.com. Follow Aruvant on Facebook, Twitter @AruvantSciences and on Instagram @Aruvant_Sciences.



SOURCE Aruvant Sciences

Related Links

https://www.aruvant.com


WESTPORT, Conn., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Balance Point Capital Advisors ("Balance Point"), the manager of Balance Point Capital Partners, a leading provider of debt and equity capital solutions to lower middle market companies, today announced it has received a strategic investment from Nassau Financial Group ("Nassau"), a Hartford, CT-based financial services company with assets of more than $27 billion. Nassau's investment will take the form of a non-controlling minority interest in Balance Point. Balance Point will continue to operate on a stand-alone basis under its present executive leadership. Financial terms of this transaction were not disclosed.

In addition to a strategic investment, Nassau will make a series of capital commitments to certain future funds managed by Balance Point. These commitments will support the continued growth of Balance Point's existing core strategy as well as the development of new strategies, further positioning Balance Point as an attractive partner to lower middle market companies.

Seth Alvord, Managing Partner of Balance Point, said, "Over the last 15 years, we have earned our reputation as a creative, flexible credit and equity manager in the U.S. lower middle market. We are delighted to welcome Nassau to the Balance Point family, alongside our longstanding institutional and individual investors, as our partner in enhancing our current capabilities as well as aiding in our growth. We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to partner with Nassau and appreciate their confidence in our ability to deliver strong returns as we continue to grow."

Justin Kaplan, Partner of Balance Point, said, "Nassau is a terrific institutional partner for Balance Point. Nassau supports our ability to provide capital solutions to the lower middle market and supplements our existing capital base with growth capital for new initiatives."

Phil Gass, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Nassau, said, "Balance Point has built a solid reputation and track record delivering investment solutions to the lower middle market and garnering a top-notch institutional investor base across their funds. As a strategic minority investor alongside Seth and Justin, we see this as an exciting opportunity to help accelerate their growth plans, while aligning nicely with Nassau's strategy to expand our third-party asset management business."

Advisors

Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Piper Sandler & Co. acted as financial advisers to Balance Point. Foley Lardner LLP and Proskauer Rose LLP served as legal counsel to Balance Point.

About Balance Point Capital

Balance Point Capital is an alternative investment manager focused on the lower middle market. With approximately $1.7 billion in assets under management as of September 2021, Balance Point invests debt and equity capital in select lower middle market companies across a variety of investment vehicles. We take a long-term, partnership approach to investing and are committed to building lasting relationships with our partners, management teams and intermediaries.

Balance Point Capital Advisors, LLC (referred to herein as Balance Point Capital) is a registered investment advisor. Further information is available at www.balancepointcapital.com.

Contact

Justin Kaplan

[email protected]

T. 203-652-8264

SOURCE Balance Point Capital

Related Links

http://www.balancepointcapital.com


LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, a national plaintiffs' trial law firm, was chosen for three Metropolitan Tier 1 rankings in Los Angeles by U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" of 2022:

Aviation Law

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs

U.S. News  Best Lawyers has recognized Baum Hedlund since 2015, highlighting the firm's continued respect among peers and clients alike.

In choosing listees for "Best Law Firms," U.S. News  Best Lawyers requests professional and client feedback for each qualifying firm. The highest-scoring firms for each legal practice area and region are then placed along three tiers. Tier 1 showcases the firms that have scored the highest among all that year's candidates.

U.S. News  Best Lawyers only considers firms that have at least one attorney recognized in that year's The Best Lawyers in America as eligible for review. Since only 6% of the nation's private practice lawyers are named to this guide, the "Best Law Firms" candidate pool is quite limited.

As part of the review, a record number of Baum Hedlund clients and peers submitted their comments about the trial law firm. Former client A. P. wrote:

"Some of the most caring people in the business. I felt so loved and taken care of by the people here."

David Rapoport, Esq. of the esteemed Rapoport Law Offices also submitted his comments about the firm, writing, "I have known the work of this firm for over thirty years and during that time they have consistently delivered top quality work for their clients."

Mark Burton, Esq. of Audet & Partners, another distinguished attorney, described Baum Hedlund as "One of the top trial firms in the US."

A board-certified neurologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, also vouched for the firm:

"Baum Hedlund is a phenomenal law firm, at the cutting edge of product liability litigation. I have worked with them as a medical expert for decades. They do a masterful job leaving no stone unturned in discovery, crossing all the Ts and dotting all the Is (sic). The lawyers are so intelligent and so committed to advocating for their clients."

Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman has an established track record of success with numerous awards and accolades. Last year, attorney R. Brent Wisner was part of a team of lawyers from several firms that helped thousands of plaintiffs recover $10.9 billion in Monsanto (now Bayer) Roundup cancer settlements. He and other Baum Hedlund attorneys were also integral in winning the first three Roundup cancer lawsuits to go to trial:

The Pilliod verdict ranked No. 1 in California and No. 2 in the U.S. in 2019; it has remained the 9th highest verdict in United States history. As a result, The National Law Journal inducted Baum Hedlund into the Verdicts Hall of Fame.

Within the same vein, Law360 recognized Baum Hedlund's groundbreaking legal work in 2021 with a California Powerhouse award. Only five firms were granted this award.

Based in Los Angeles, Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman represents clients across the nation in a wide range of personal injury and wrongful death cases. It has won more than $4 billion in client recoveries since 1973. If you or a loved one have suffered injury, find out how Baum Hedlund can advocate for you. Learn more at baumhedlund.com . For more information about U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms," visit bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

*The jury verdicts in Johnson, Hardeman, and Pilliod were later reduced.

SOURCE Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman
FREMONT, Calif., Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Privacy gives our lives dignity and yet we find ourselves in a digital world where too many companies choose to track us without our consent.

This has led to a backlash. Every other user blocks trackers. Apple killed third-party cookies and bet its brand on privacy. Regulators, finally catching up, are passing stringent privacy laws. In 2022, California will drop the distinction between selling or sharing data  enterprises need your permission if they're going to share your data with any third party SaaS.

This is great for users. It's a disaster for digital measurement. Most companies use third-party trackers to measure and monetize. But the coming impact is so severe that Google's own research suggests that publishers will lose 64% of revenue after third-party cookies are gone.

That's why we're thrilled to announce a $3 million seed round for our customer data platform that solves data loss and builds trust by capturing and activating customer data in your own infrastructure.

From our CEO, Mandar Shinde:

There's a real opportunity for independent players like Blotout to play a role in customer data management by taking on outdated and untrustworthy multi-tenant platforms while providing the same ease of SaaS."

The round was led by First Rays Venture Partners and includes Y Combinator, Pascal Capital, Launchpad Capital, and Sung Ho Choi (co-founder of fuboTV).

According to Alok Nandan, Partner at First Rays Ventures,

It is a reality of this decade that technological innovation is outpacing privacy protections, creating a mandate to include privacy as a central component of your overall security posture. First Rays firmly believes in the thesis that leaders are looking at data privacy as one of the top 3 areas of investment. Blotout enables trustworthy data journeys for consumers. I'm excited for Blotout that enables us to build an internet that we can trust."

Enabling customer data management via Infrastructure as code

An enterprise today needs engineering and legal expertise nearing seven figures in cost and months of work to properly build their own customer data infrastructure. Blotout meets that need with infrastructure as-code that deploys a lossless, compliant, and trusted platform in five minutes to any of 250+ data centers around the world.

At the enterprise CDN edge, Blotout gives you no-code tech that collects, processes, and analyses data while ensuring compliance on a region-by-region basis (before data is shared or used). Our serverless infra-as-code solution deploys as your infrastructure, letting you accurately capture and process every customer data point, giving you lifetime customer journeys based on relationships of trust.

This opens new possibilities like 100% measurement accuracy, marketing attribution, server-side data activation, online and offline customer journeys, and clean rooms for advertising. Within a trusted framework, you no longer use third-party measurement stacks from companies like Google or Twilio because you have those capabilities in-house.

A trusted relationship comes with obligations and we built Blotout to get that right from the start: it only captures consented data, audits every interaction, and ensures that usage follows the purpose limitations that users agreed to.

Blotout lets you harness the power of your data without compromising user trust.

What's next

Our customers are companies like Razer and Uphold who understand that the future of martech and customer engagement will be predicated on trust and a one-to-one relationship with users. By going with Blotout, they're turning that fact into a competitive advantage.

About Blotout, Inc.

The customer data platform reimagined for the trusted enterprise.

PRESS CONTACT

NAME

Matthew Boulos

PHONE

312-522-7105

WEBSITE

https://blotout.io/

SOURCE Blotout, Inc.

Related Links

https://blotout.io


NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until November 15, 2021 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM), if they purchased the Company's securities between April 22, 2021 and September 8, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Get Help

Boston Beer Company investors should visit us at https://claimsfiler.com/cases/nyse-sam/ or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options.

About the Lawsuit

Boston Beer and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On July 22, 2021, post-market, the Company disclosed a reduced full year 2021 guidance, from a prior range of earnings per share of between $22 and $26 to between $18 and $22 due to softer-than-expected sales in the hard seltzer category and overall beer industry and also that it had "overestimated the growth of the hard seltzer category in the second quarter." On this news, the Company's share price fell $246.54, or 26%, to close at $701.00 per share on July 23, 2021, on unusually heavy trading volume.

On September 8, 2021, post-market, the Company withdrew its 2021 financial guidance due decelerating sales of hard seltzer products, and also stated that it "expects to incur hard seltzer-related inventory write-offs, shortfall fees payable to 3rd party brewers, and other costs" for the remainder of fiscal 2021. On this news, the Company's share price fell $21.09, or 3.7%, to close at $538.31 per share on September 9, 2021, on unusually heavy trading volume.

The case is Siegel v. The Boston Beer Company, Inc., et al., 21-cv-7693.

About ClaimsFiler

ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations.

To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com.

SOURCE ClaimsFiler
ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- St. Paul-based architecture firm BWBR is proud to announce the appointment of Stephanie McDaniel, AIA, LEED AP, to President and CEO effective December 15th.

McDaniel, a 25-year veteran of the firm, represents the 8th generation of home-grown BWBR leadership and brings a passion for people and design. With an undergraduate degree from Washington University and a Master of Architecture from University of Texas-Austin, McDaniel is a registered architect in Minnesota, Iowa, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. As a skilled planner with excellent communication and facilitation skills, her work has focused on complex laboratory and higher education projects.

Under McDaniel's leadership, BWBR will continue to operate under its guiding principle of transforming lives through exceptional environments. This commitment has sustained the firm through the decades, bolstered by a sense of community and a growing dedication to equity and sustainability in the built environment, which McDaniel will carry forward.

McDaniel says, "I'm so honored to be taking on this role. BWBR's talented team is deeply committed both to serving our clients and to design excellence, and I look forward to supporting them in every way I can. Architects and designers have the expertise to create spaces that make our clients better--to transform the lives of those who use our buildings. As the designers of our future communities, together we can create spaces and environments that are sustainable and equitable."

Outgoing President and CEO Peter Smith, FAIA, retiring after nearly 35 years with firm, said: "This transition has been a long time in the planning, but now the baton is being passed to the next generation and I'm excited to see where the firm goes next. Under Stephanie's guidance, BWBR is poised to do something transformational within the business itself, for our clients, and for the industry at large. I'm most excited for the things to come that I can't even imagine."

Heading into its 100th anniversary, the firm is embracing change while still relying on the deep commitment to community and culture that is the bedrock of BWBR. McDaniel said, "The heart of BWBR's mission has always been our commitment to serve, empowering our clients to achieve their missions. To meet that challenge, we must innovate to meet our clients' evolving goals while at the same time reducing our collective impact on the environment."

Find more information at BWBR.com.

CONTACT: Katie Nordenson, [email protected]

SOURCE BWBR
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, the Ironworkers Union filed a petition to organize employees at a site in Chester, SC, involving a NC-based construction company. We urge all contractors doing work in this areaand throughout the Carolinas as wellto alert their project managers to be especially vigilant and sensitive to early-warning signs of union activity.

Carolinas AGC (CAGC) also wants our contractor membersand the construction industry throughout the Carolinasto be aware that union-organizing activity targeting the construction industry is on the rise not just in the Carolinas but across the country. The federal vaccine mandates for federal contractors and those employers with over 100 employees are contributing to the heightened union- organizing effort  more details here on related webinars next week from AGC of America. The publication of the Emergency Temporary Standard from OSHA, expected any day now, could trigger even more union activity.

CAGC stands ready to help contractors prepare for union-organizing tactics by giving our members access to an array of resources to help keep their companies open shop and avoid labor related legal claims. These resources include an initial free legal consultation with one of the nation's top labor attorneys experienced in maintaining a contractor's union-free status. Our Open Shop/Pro Employee webpage for CAGC members provides downloadable materials that include a webinar on how to protect your company against union activity. CAGC members also have access to our Build Your Career program and the CAGC Human Resources Committee's unmatched expertise on the issue.

For over 100 years, CAGC has been active in successfully keeping the Carolinas construction industry open shop. We have the resources, training programs and staff to help members maintain a highly skilled workforce, implement an effective open shop program and cultivate a pro-employee atmosphere.

"CAGC stands ready to do everything we can to maintain our excellent and open-shop business climate in North and South Carolina," said Dave Simpson, CAGC President & CEO.

Carolinas AGC (CAGC) is a construction trade association made up of contractors and construction-related firms that perform work in North Carolina and South Carolina. CAGC is a chapter of the AGC of America (AGC) and the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA). Our members are both small and large general contractors, specialty contractors, material/equipment suppliers, and service providers.

For more information please contact CAGC's Government Relations Directors Betsy Bailey (in North Carolina) or Leslie Clark (in South Carolina).

SOURCE Carolinas AGC
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Penske Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:PAG), a diversified international transportation services company and one of the world's premier automotive and commercial trucks retailers, announced today the opening of its eighth U.S.-based CarShop (www.carshop.com) location (and 23rd worldwide) in Scottsdale, Arizona, part of the Phoenix metropolitan area that ranks fifth in the U.S. in total population. The new dealership represents CarShop's latest expansion as a global brand that makes car buying easy and fun.

(PRNewsfoto/Penske Automotive Group, Inc.)

The brand new, 45,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility is located at the Scottsdale AutoShow on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Shoppers can select from hundreds of cars in inventory or choose from CarShop's thousands of makes and models across the country, available for home delivery with a 5-day, 500-mile money-back guarantee.

The dealership features a modern indoor area where shoppers can buy hassle-free from CarShop's no-pressure sales team, as well as a fully equipped service center staffed with ASE-certified technicians trained to care for all makes and models, regardless of where the vehicles were purchased.

The Scottsdale location benefits from CarShop's 20-year legacy of customer service. The company proudly offers high-quality Certified vehicles that undergo rigorous inspection, and promise no dings, dents or scratches with industry-leading warranties. Additionally, CarShop's no-haggle pricing model makes shopping a pressure-free and pleasant experience for customers, whether buying in-store or online. Roger Penske, Penske Automotive Group Chair and CEO remarked on the CarShop expansion, "We are certain that our new Scottsdale location will become a trusted destination for car shoppers looking for an easy, fair, and dependable place to purchase quality vehicles. With our well-established reputation, competitive warranties, enjoyable shopping experience, and top vehicle selection, our customers can be confident in their purchase from CarShop."

The new location has created 50 rewarding jobs in the local community, with several positions still available to be filled (www.carshop.com/careers). For nine years in a row, CarShop has been named a Top Workplace in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and out of over 800,000 businesses nationwide, was listed among the Top 50 small- to medium-size companies to work for in 2019 by Glassdoor. CarShop President, Kirk Schrader, said "At CarShop, we put people first. We want every customer to have the best possible experience in our stores, working with people who genuinely have their best interest at heart."

To learn more about CarShop, or for more information on the new Scottsdale location, visit www.carshop.com.

About CarShop

CarShop offers high-quality used vehicles with transparent, up-front, no-haggle pricing and a money-back guarantee. Customers shopping online can use innovative digital tools to choose from thousands of vehicles, obtain customized, personalized payments on every vehicle, and schedule a delivery to the customer's preferred location, either at home or at one of CarShop's 23 current locations in the U.S. and U.K. Whether purchasing at one of its used-vehicle locations or completely (100%) online at www.carshop.com, CarShop offers car buyers a seamless shopping experience. CarShop is a wholly owned subsidiary of Penske Automotive Group (NYSE: PAG). The CarShop logo is a trademark of Penske Automotive Group, Inc.

About Penske Automotive Group

Penske Automotive Group, Inc., (NYSE:PAG) headquartered in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is a diversified international transportation services company and one of the world's premier automotive and commercial truck retailers. PAG operates dealerships principally in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan and is one of the largest retailers of commercial trucks in North America for Freightliner. PAG also distributes and retails commercial vehicles, diesel and gas engines, power systems, and related parts and services principally in Australia and New Zealand. Additionally, PAG owns 28.9% of Penske Transportation Solutions, a business that manages a fleet of over 350,000 vehicles providing innovative transportation, supply chain, and technology solutions to North American fleets. PAG is a member of the Fortune 500, Russell 1000, and Russell 3000 indexes and is ranked among the World's Most Admired Companies by Fortune Magazine. For additional information, visit the company's website at www.penskeautomotive.com.

Inquiries should contact: Shelley Hulgrave Anthony R. Pordon Executive Vice President and Executive Vice President Investor Relations Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Development Penske Automotive Group, Inc. Penske Automotive Group, Inc. 248-648-2812 248-648-2540 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Penske Automotive Group, Inc.; CarShop

Related Links

https://www.carshop.com

http://www.penskeautomotive.com


STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Among the 80+ films showing both online and in-person at the Centre Film Festival centrefilm.org, more than 14 films celebrate first-time ever Pennsylvania premieres.

Filmmakers are premiering their films in Pennsylvania at the Centre Film Festival, this week only Nov. 1-7.

Penn State alum, Patrick Fabian ("Better Call Saul") returns in person to his mother's hometown, Philipsburg, for the premiere of Driver X at the Rowland Theatre, where his mom was an usher. It will be their first time back in the theatre since she was a teen. In Driver X, Fabian plays a stay-at-home dad who drives for a rideshare app.

The Independent Lens documentary, Home From School: The Children of Carlisle, directed by Geoff O'Gara, premiered in partnership with WPSU, as an in-person screening at The State Theatre to honor Indigenous People's Heritage Month. "Kill the Indian to save the man" was the catchphrase of The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school opened in Pennsylvania in 1879. It became a grim epitaph for numerous native children who died there. The film can be viewed anytime online in PA during the festival.

Lady Buds is screening in-person only on Thurs. Nov. 4 7:00pm at the Mishler Theatre, Altoona. CJ Russo's films have screened all over the world, including Sundance and Netflix. Lady Buds tells the story of six courageous women who come out of the shadows of the cannabis underground and risk their livelihoods to enter the newly legal market in California.

We Burn Like This can be streamed online and will be in-person at The Rowland on Sun. Nov. 7th 2:00pm. When Rae, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, is targeted by Neo-Nazis in Montana, her ancestors' trauma becomes real.

Other films the festival is proudly premiering in Pennsylvania include Death and Bowling, My So-Called Selfish Life, Sisters Rising, The War of Raya Sinitsina, Americanized, The Forbidden Strings, and Shredded.

The Centre Film Festival also awards "Made in PA'' films. One such film, The Automat, the 100-year story of the iconic Horn & Hardart, the inspiration for Starbucks, screens on Saturday 8:00pm at the Rowland Theatre.

The festival awards ceremony on Sun. Nov. 7 at 6:00pm at the Rowland Theatre will honor Penn State alum, Keegan-Michael Key, and PA native, Madeline Anderson.

The award ceremony is free to everyone.

www.centrefilm.org

#centrefilmfestival

SOURCE Happy Valley Studios

Related Links

www.happyvalleystudios.com


"We will not change our resolve to open wider at a high standard; we will not change our determination to share development opportunities with the rest of the world; and we will not change our commitment to an economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all," Chinese President Xi Jinping said when delivering a keynote speech via video at the 4th China International Import Expo (CIIE).

Launched in 2018, the annual CIIE is the first dedicated import exhibition in the world. This year's expo is scheduled from Friday to next Wednesday in Shanghai, east China.

20th anniversary of China's WTO accession

This year marks the 20th anniversary of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Xi reviewed the country's progress in deepening reform and expanding openness during the past two decades.

"China has fully delivered on its accession commitments," he said. "Its overall tariff rate has been cut from 15.3 percent to 7.4 percent, lower than the 9.8 percent accession commitment."

China's central government has reviewed and revised over 2,300 laws and regulations, and local governments have reviewed and revised 190,000, he added.

To facilitate the global fight against COVID-19, China has provided about 350 billion masks and over 1.6 billion doses of vaccines to the international community, he noted.

China has grown from the world's sixth-largest economy to the second largest over the past two decades; meanwhile, its trade in goods has grown from the sixth to the largest in the world, and trade in services from the 11th to the second, according to Xi.

"The past 20 years have witnessed a China deepening reform and pursuing all-round opening-up, a China seizing opportunities and rising to challenges, and a China stepping up to its responsibilities and benefiting the whole world," he said, describing opening as the "hallmark of contemporary China."

China to 'lay more emphasis on expanding import'

The CIIE is an important platform to promote global free trade and international cooperation. From 2018 to 2020, the intended turnover of the previous three expos reached about $201.6 billion. The 4th CIIE is expected to attract nearly 3,000 businesses from 127 countries and regions.

China has been the world's second-largest importer for 11 consecutive years, according to the Ministry of Commerce. And Xi said the country will make more efforts to boost import.

"China will open more demonstration zones for creative promotion of import trade, optimize the catalog of retail imports via cross-border e-commerce, encourage the on-site processing of imported goods from trading between border residents, and increase imports from neighboring countries," he announced.

China's total imports and exports expanded 22.7 percent year on year to 28.33 trillion yuan (about $4.38 trillion) in the first three quarters of 2021, data from the General Administration of Customs showed. Both exports and imports continued double-digit growth in the first nine months of the year, surging 22.7 percent and 22.6 percent from a year earlier, respectively.

"Going forward, China will lay more emphasis on expanding import, and pursue balanced development of trade," Xi said.

The country will firmly safeguard true multilateralism, share market opportunities with the rest of the world, promote high-standard opening-up, and uphold the common interests of the world, he stressed.

China will shorten the negative list for foreign investment, and revise and enlarge the encouraged industry catalog to guide more foreign investment toward sectors such as advanced manufacturing, modern services, high and new technology, energy conservation and environmental protection, he said.

China will "work actively for joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)," he said. The country has officially applied to join the CPTPP, a free trade agreement between 11 countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam.

Xi added that China will promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation to bring more benefits to countries taking part in the initiative.

"China stands ready to work with all countries to build an open world economy so that the spring breeze of openness will bring warmth to all parts of the world," he said.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-11-04/Xi-Jinping-addresses-opening-ceremony-of-CIIE-14V5bYl3lny/index.html

SOURCE CGTN

Related Links

www.cgtn.com


ATLANTA, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chicken Salad Chick , the nation's only fast casual chicken salad restaurant concept, announced today the opening of its newest restaurant in Rock Hill, South Carolina that will feature a drive-thru and indoor seating area. This marks the 11th restaurant in the state, following the reopening of the Mount Pleasant location in October. Located at 760 Herlong Avenue, the Rock Hill restaurant will celebrate its grand opening on Tuesday, November 16 by offering free chicken salad for a year to the first 100 guests.

During grand opening week, guests will experience the Southern hospitality that Chicken Salad Chick is known for with giveaways and specials that include:

Tuesday, November 16  Free Chicken Salad for a year to the first 100 guests! The first 100 guests will receive one free large Quick Chick per month for 12 months. *

Free Chicken Salad for a year to the first 100 guests! The first 100 guests will receive one free large Quick Chick per month for 12 months. * Wednesday, November 17  The first 100 guests to purchase a Chick Special will receive their next Chick Special for free on their next visit. **

The first 100 guests to purchase a Chick Special will receive their next Chick Special for free on their next visit. ** Thursday, November 18  All day long, Chick fans can enjoy buy two Quick Chicks, get one free. ***

All day long, Chick fans can enjoy buy two Quick Chicks, get one free. *** Friday, November 19  The first 50 guests to purchase a Chick special will receive a free Chick cooler. **

Continuing the expansion of Chicken Salad Chick in the Carolinas are multi-unit franchise owners Julie Beville and Michelle Singleton of Sing Bev Hospitality, LLC. The two opened their first Chicken Salad Chick in Greenville in 2013 and have since grown the brand opening 13 locations across North and South Carolina. Beville and Singleton had been longtime patrons of Chicken Salad Chick, each having previous careers in sales and marketing and time spent as stay-at-home moms before joining the brand. When they had the opportunity to meet with Chicken Salad Chick's founder, Stacy Brown, they felt connected to the brand's mission of "spreading joy, enriching lives, and serving others" and were inspired to take a leap of faith and join the Chicken Salad Chick family.

"Michelle and I are so excited to bring Chicken Salad Chick to Rock Hill as our love for Chicken Salad Chick just keeps growing," says Julie Beville. "From our first location in Greenville to now opening and operating our 13th restaurant in the Carolinas, we have treasured getting to know the Chick fans in each community and bringing them our made from scratch chicken salad. We believe Chicken Salad Chick is a perfect fit to Rock Hill's historic charm and Southern culture, and we look forward to creating a space where friends and family can gather together over a fresh meal, whether they choose dine-in or on-the-go."

Chicken Salad Chick in Rock Hill will be open Monday  Saturday from 10:30 a.m.  8 p.m. For more information, visit www.chickensaladchick.com . Follow Chicken Salad Chick on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram for the latest news and trends.

* Guests should arrive at Chicken Salad Chick between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Grand Opening Day to get checked In. The first 100 people will be assigned a number and a designated return time between 10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. While waiting, guests will need to download the Chicken Salad Chick App and get registered. Upon arrival, guests will grab their spot in line, make a purchase of "The Chick" or anything of greater value, and once inside, scan a special code to make the "First 100 Spot" official. If a guest is late or misses their designated return time, the spot will automatically be awarded to the next guest in line.

** Dine in or take out only. Limit 1 reward per Guest Present. Not valid with any other offers.

*** Free item must be equal or lesser value. Not valid with any other offers.

For more information on giveaways and specials, visit https://www.facebook.com/ChickenSaladChickRockHillSC .

About Chicken Salad Chick

Chicken Salad Chick serves full-flavored, Southern-style chicken salad made from scratch and served from the heart. With more than a dozen original chicken salad flavors as well as fresh side salads, gourmet soups, signature sandwiches and delicious desserts, Chicken Salad Chick's robust menu is a perfect fit for any guest. Founded in Auburn, Alabama by Stacy and Kevin Brown in 2008, Chicken Salad Chick has grown to more than 205 restaurants in 17 states. Today, under the leadership of Scott Deviney and the Chicken Salad Chick team, the brand is continuing its rapid expansion with both franchise and company locations. Chicken Salad Chick has received numerous accolades including rankings in the 2021 Entrepreneur Franchise 500, Franchise Times' Fast & Serious for the second consecutive year, Fast Casual.com 's top Movers and Shakers from 2018 to 2021, QSR's Best Franchise Deals in 2019 and 2020, and Franchise Business Review's Top Food Franchises in 2020. See www.chickensaladchick.com for additional information.

Contact:

Paige Alonso

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

SOURCE Chicken Salad Chick

Related Links

https://www.chickensaladchick.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chinese 3D printer manufacturer Creality 3D (Creality) will showcase its latest offerings at the Brazil Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai on November 4, 2021 as the only 3D printing brand to have been invited by a national pavilion of the exhibition. This marks the first time that the 3D printing brand has joined hands with the Brazilian government on the international stage.

This cooperation stems from Creality's ongoing goal of spreading warmth around the world with its 3D printing technology.

In June 2021, the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) signed an agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to join the Artemis program, setting off among the Brazilian populace a sudden surge of interest in outer space and space travel. Through a comprehensive evaluation of potential partners worldwide, a representative of the program who gave his name as Alex explained that he found Creality to have deep expertise in the domain of 3D printing technology in addition to an ongoing commitment to corporate social responsibility. After an informative chat with Creality CEO and cofounder Ao Danjun, Alex spoke highly of the 3D printing brand. Notably, this exchange facilitated the establishment of the Space Robotics project.

Launched by Creality in cooperation with the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Brazilian Space Agency and the University of Brasilia, the Space Robotics project is meant to improve education across Brazil by promoting 3D printing applications that have been implemented in 250 schools across the country. Creality has provided all the 3D printers needed for the project, including, in the mix of models, the Ender-3, Ender-7, CR-30, CR-6 SE, Sermoon D1, CR-200B and HALOT-ONE in addition to polylactic acid (PLA) filament and CRScan 01 3D modeling scanners. The aim is to enhance the interest among students in 3D printing and stimulate their creative abilities by teaching them how to print through the application of the space robotics model. In addition, Creality has been recognized by the local community as the "Creator of Capsules" following the reporting on the project by several authoritative Brazilian media outlets, including TV Brasil.

During the exhibition in Dubai, Creality will display a wide range of new models in concert with the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency and Funetec, including the Ender-3 S1, CR-10 Smart Pro and Sermoon V1.

Creality, the world's No. 1 consumer 3D printing brand, backed by a portfolio comprising the CR series, the Ender series the fully-enclosed series, resin series alongside Creality Cloud APP and the ecosystem of 3D printing accessories, has continued enhancing the user experience while putting in place a strategy and roadmap for the firm's future growth and expansion.

Going forward, Creality plans to continue its commitment to spreading warmth around the world with its 3D printing technology based on the mission of making its easy-to-use, high-tech 3D printers accessible to thousands of households, with the aim of delivering a tangible 3D printing experience.

Website: www.creality.com

Facebook

Name: @OfficialCreality3d

Link: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialCreality3d/



Instagram

Name: creality3d

Link: https://www.instagram.com/creality3d/



Twitter

Name: Creality3dP

Link: https://twitter.com/Creality3dP



YouTube

Name: Creality

Link: https://www.youtube.com/c/Creality3D/videos



Tiktok

Name: crealityofficial

Link: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZSJnYEvvx/

SOURCE CREALITY
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Clubhouse Media Group, Inc. (OTCMKTS: CMGR) ("Clubhouse Media"), an influencer-based social media firm and digital talent management agency, today announced that it has entered into a $15 million Equity Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") and Registration Rights Agreement with Peak One Opportunity Fund, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership.

Clubhouse Media will have the right to sell up to $15 million of its Common Stock to Peak One over a 24-month period, upon satisfaction of certain terms and conditions contained in the Agreement and Registration Rights Agreement, which includes but is not limited to filing a registration statement with the SEC, registering the resale of any shares sold to Peak One. Pursuant to certain terms and conditions contained in the Agreement and Registration Rights Agreement, Peak One is obligated to purchase shares upon receiving notice from Clubhouse Media as to the amount of shares and timing of the purchase. Further, any Common Stock that is sold to Peak One will occur at a purchase price of 95% of the closing bid price on the trading day immediately preceding the respective Put Date.

Amir Ben-Yohanan, CEO of Clubhouse Media, commented, "This $15 million financing with Peak One provides us with strong capital backing to continue to execute on our strategic plans. Having reliable capital backing will enable us to build on our momentum with the flexibility to bring in capital in an opportunistic manner. Clubhouse Media has many exciting opportunities available for growth, and with this capital in place, we believe that we are well positioned for the future."

A complete and detailed description of the Agreement and Registration Rights Agreement, as well as other details are set forth in the Company's Current Report on Form 8-K filed on November 4, 2021 with the S.E.C. This Press Release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.

About Clubhouse Media

Clubhouse Media represents the future of influencer media and marketing, with a global network of professionally run content houses, each with its brand, influencer cohort, and production capabilities. Collectively, Clubhouse Media reaches more than 400 million followers. Clubhouse Media offers management, production, and deal-making services to its handpicked influencers, a management division for individual influencer clients, and an investment arm for joint ventures and acquisitions for companies in the social media influencer space.

Follow Clubhouse Media on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClubhouseCMGR

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements also may be included in other publicly available documents issued by Clubhouse Media and in oral statements made by our officers and representatives from time to time. These forward-looking statements are intended to provide management's current expectations or plans for our future operating and financial performance, based on assumptions currently believed to be valid. They can be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "goal," "seek," "believe," "project," "estimate," "expect," "strategy," "future," "likely," "may," "should," "would," "could," "will" and other words of similar meaning in connection with a discussion of future operating or financial performance.

Examples of forward-looking statements include, among others, statements relating to future sales, earnings, cash flows, results of operations, uses of cash and other measures of financial performance.

Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Clubhouse Media's actual results and financial condition to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others such as, but not limited to economic conditions, changes in the laws or regulations, demand for Clubhouse Media's products and services, the effects of competition and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or represented in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking information provided in this release should be considered with these factors in mind. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

SOURCE Clubhouse Media Group, Inc

Related Links

clubhousemediagroup.com


FRANKFORT, KY., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WellCare of Kentucky hosted the second annual Community Health Champions Awards, recognizing extraordinary health advocates across the commonwealth with grants and awards. This year nine winners were honored, one from each of the eight Kentucky Medicaid regions and one statewide winner. WellCare awarded $3,000 grants to the regional winners and a $5,000 grant to the statewide winner.

The most prominent, statewide award went to Charlie Gries, a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

"Charlie represents exactly the type of service, commitment, and passion that we want to support in Kentucky," said Ben Orris, chief operating officer for WellCare of Kentucky. "We know that people like Charlie help make Kentucky communities healthier."

In Gries' nomination, he was described as someone who has a passion for serving those that need a place to live. For over 20 years with Habitat for Humanity, Gries has volunteered between 750 and 1,000 hours per year. Gries has continued his life's work over the past few years while fighting cancer.

"I see our Community Health Champions as examples of the best of Kentucky," Orris said. "Each of these individuals has worked to ensure that Kentuckians are physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy  and they did it in deeply personal ways, giving their time, talent, and heart in the process."

Regional winners Included:

Region 1: Gregg Knight, West Kentucky Allied Services, breaks down barriers and provides help to those in need. That includes finding grant money to help individuals in halfway homes get identification documents, creating a laundromat fund so clients could wash their clothes and being a trusted friend and ally to all her clients.

Region 2: Rev. Andre Bradley, Mount Calvary Baptist Church, creates vital partnerships to provide support, including working with Owensboro Health Regional Hospital to distribute COVID vaccines and connecting with the USDA to bring fresh food boxes to hungry families. He shares his faith to help as many Kentuckians as he can through prayer and fellowship.

Region 3: Dr. Patricia Bautista-Cervera, La Casita Community Center, has been a voice, teacher and leader for unserved communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic. She has also brought comfort and compassion to over 900 individuals referred to La Casita with positive COVID-19 cases.

Region 4: Dr. Azurdee Garland, Phoenix Rising, is a researcher, educator and survivor of child sex trafficking. She has developed programs and resources to help children overcome trauma and consults national and international organizations on improving their services to victims of exploitation and trafficking.

Region 5: Tanya Torp, Step by Step, is a community advocate helping vulnerable families in the Lexington area. This includes helping individuals that have faced financial instability during the pandemic to pay their monthly expenses and serving hot meals two days a week from her own front porch.

Region 6: Laura Dumancic and Beth McIntire, Go Pantry, founded their company out of a desire to help seven kids. This turned into an organization that feeds more than 750 children weekly and includes more than 2,000 faithful volunteers. These women are dedicated mothers, respected community members, and role models to the children they see each day.

Region 7: Linda Firebaugh, Hillcrest-Bruce Mission, has secured $500,000 in grant money to provide items such as dentures, filling, vision services, hearing aids, prescription co-pay assistance, and so much more. Firebaugh has volunteered over 1,200 hours of volunteer time, helped over 1,400 people over the last five years, and enabled more than 100 people receive dentures just this year.

Region 8: Chris Doll, Housing Development Alliance, has been helping eastern Kentuckians find affordable housing for the last 25 years. He has been instrumental in developing the eastern Kentucky region, helping more than 310 families purchase affordable homes and more than 800 families repair their homes. His service equates to approximately $40 million of investment in the region.

Winners also received an original piece of artwork created by Jennifer Robertson, an eastern Kentucky welder and artist. The award was a metal sculpture that depicts Kentucky with a rising mountain and sun behind it.

Hi-resolution photos are available for use at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hrqlcdfdjzbd1ky/AAC86lNJSL-YQg7AqJyicXVBa?dl=0

About WellCare of Kentucky

WellCare of Kentucky provides government-sponsored managed care services to families, children, seniors and individuals with complex needs primarily through Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and Medicare Prescription Drug Plans across the state. WellCare is a wholly owned subsidiary of Centene Corporation, a leading multi-national healthcare enterprise committed to helping people live healthier lives. For more information, please visit www.wellcare.com/kentucky .

SOURCE WellCare of Kentucky

Related Links

https://www.wellcare.com/kentuck


COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, Compassion International was honored as one of America's Favorite Charities by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Colorado Springs-based nonprofit organization is ranked number eight in the report's list of 100 top fundraising charities in the United States, up from number 11 in 2019.

According to the Chronicle, the goal of the report is to identify cause-driven charitable organizations that most successfully raise direct financial support from individuals, foundations, and corporations. The data excludes government grants and donated products.

Compassion raised a total of $992,898,748 in cash support (tax deductible-donations) or fundraising in 2020, an increase of nearly 5% from 2019, the last time the Chronicle conducted the report.

Santiago "Jimmy" Mellado, president and CEO of Compassion, reflects, "Despite the many challenges, disruptions, and uncertainty we all experienced in 2020, Compassion is grateful beyond words for the deep commitment our supporters demonstrated to the vulnerable children and families we serve together. This ongoing generosity is a beautiful blessing that has allowed us to provide consistent care at a time when the needs of the poor are only growing."

With the COVID-19 global health crisis reversing decades of progress in curbing global poverty, Compassion was able to use funds from charitable giving to meet pressing needs and provide relief services.

Hunger was one need. Many caregivers lost their income due to pandemic closures and lockdowns and couldn't afford to feed their families. Compassion's 8,000+ church partners and delivered food packs (with weeks full of essentials such as rice, beans, flour, and oil) to hungry families in their communities. In the first year of the pandemic alone, more than 10.6 million food packs were distributed.

In addition to food, hygiene was essential. Compassion's church partners put together hygiene kits, including items such as soap, hand sanitizer, shampoo, and washcloths. More than 7.1 million hygiene kits protected families from COVID-19 and preventable disease.

And in places where food pack and health kit distributions weren't possible, Compassion's church partners facilitated more than 330,000 cash transfers, empowering families to purchase their own supplies and cover basic expenses. They also offered medical support for more than 970,000 children and adults, providing access to health screenings and paying healthcare providers for diagnosis and treatment.

Mellado concludes, "Throughout this very difficult season, I've been amazed by God's strong hand of provision, the faithful giving of Compassion's supporters, and the deep dedication and advocacy of our staff and frontline heroes all across the global ministry."

About Compassion International

Compassion International is a Christian child development organization working to release children from poverty in Jesus' name. Founded in 1952, Compassion partners with more than 8,000 local churches in 25 program countries to deliver spiritual, economic, social, and physical care to over two million babies, children, and young adults in poverty. Ranked No. 8 in Forbes' America's Top Charities List in 2020, Compassion is a founding member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and an accredited charity with the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. For more information, visit compassion.com or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Allison Wilburn

219-384-8177

[email protected]

SOURCE Compassion International

Related Links

www.compassion.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Concord Acquisition Corp III (the "Company"), today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 30,000,000 units, upsized from 25,000,000 units, at a price of $10.00 per unit. The units are expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") and trade under the ticker symbol "CNDB.U" beginning November 4, 2021. Each unit consists of one share of the Company's Class A common stock and one-half of one redeemable warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. Once the securities comprising the units begin separate trading, the Company expects that its Class A common stock and warrants will be listed on the NYSE under the symbols "CNDB" and "CNDB.WS," respectively.

The Company was formed for the purpose of entering into a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses. While the Company may pursue a merger opportunity in any industry or sector, it intends to capitalize on the ability of its management team and sponsor to identity, acquire and manage a business in the financial services and financial technology sectors, including payments, enterprise software, and data analytics.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Cowen and Company, LLC are serving as the joint book running managers for the offering. The Company has granted the underwriters a 45-day option to purchase up to an additional 4,500,000 units at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments, if any.

The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus may be obtained, when available, from Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at (800) 831-9146 or by email at [email protected]; or Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, Attn: Prospectus Department, by telephone at (833) 297-2926 or by email at [email protected].

A registration statement relating to the securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and became effective on November 3, 2021. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or 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 jurisdiction.

The offering is expected to close on November 8, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements," including with respect to the proposed initial public offering and the anticipated use of the net proceeds thereof. No assurance can be given that the offering discussed above will be completed on the terms described, or at all, or that the net proceeds of the offering will be used as indicated. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company's registration statement and preliminary prospectus for the Company's offering filed with the SEC. Copies of these documents are available on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Contact:

Concord Acquisition Corp III

Jeff Tuder

[email protected]

SOURCE Concord Acquisition Corp III
Cullan & Cullan's ranking for 2022 have come after Dr. Samuel K. Cullan, M.D., J.D. was chosen as a listed lawyer in The Best Lawyers in America 2022 , a Best Lawyers register in which only the top 6% of the nation's premier attorneys are listed. Further, this is not the first time Dr. Cullan or the firm has been ranked by U.S. News  Best Lawyers. Dr. Cullan has been named the Lawyer of the Year for medical malpractice on three occasions. A ranking from U.S. News  Best Lawyers is no small feat. Each candidate is required to undergo a rigorous review in which their quality of service, level of expertise, case results, community impact, among other criteria, are evaluated. Peers and clients must also provide honest but glowing feedback about the firm; peer regard and client satisfaction are crucial to receive a high "Best Law Firms" score. And only the top-scoring firms are selected as finalists.

Congratulations to Cullan & Cullan on another year of regional rankings! Cullan & Cullan has four lawyers who are also doctors: Dr. Sam Cullan, Dr. Gene Cullan, Dr. Joe Cullan, and Dr. Pat Cullan. By utilizing their skills as lawyers and doctors, the team is uniquely qualified to represent families who have had their lives turned upside down by serious injury. the firm has won over 350 million for its clients.

For more than three decades, Cullan & Cullan has helped victims of negligence in Missouri and Kansas. The firm accepts select cases nationwide. Its doctor-lawyers offer legal services on a contingency basis: There is no fee unless they win. To book a free consultation, visit doctorspracticinglaw.com . For more information about "Best Law Firms," go to bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

SOURCE Cullan & Cullan
CRANBURY, N.J., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CURE Media Group, the industry-leading multimedia platform devoted to cancer updates, research and education that reaches over 1 million patients, survivors and caregivers, is excited to announce the addition of nine new partners to its Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program.

"We are honored to welcome nine prominent organizations to our SAP program," said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences, parent company of CURE Media Group. "These new alliances will lead to outstanding collaborative efforts and positive results that will help us optimize patient care."

The new partners are:

The SAP program brings together advocacy organizations, medical associations and institutions, and community cancer centers with national reach and visibility. By utilizing the MJH Life Sciences oncology communications platform, they are able to showcase cutting-edge initiatives, content, research and thought leadership. The SAP program fosters collaboration and an open exchange of information among trusted peers for the benefit of patients and their families. As part of this joint effort, CURE Media Group will work with these partners to share information and highlight the different cancer communities they support.

For a full list of CURE Media Group's SAP partners, click here.

About CURE Media Group

CURE Media Group is the leading resource for cancer updates, research and education. It combines a full suite of media products, including its industry-leading website curetoday.com ; innovative video programs, such as "CURE Connections"; a series of widely attended events; and CURE magazine, which reaches more than 1 million readers. CURE Media Group is a brand of MJH Life Sciences , the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America, dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels.

Media Contact

Alyssa Scarpaci, 609-716-7777

[email protected]

SOURCE CURE Media Group
MONTREAL and CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Datavalet Technologies Inc. is excited to announce the acquisition of SecurEdge Networks' managed Wi-Fi business unit. Both Datavalet and SecurEdge have long supported the large-scale network needs of businesses across North America.

With the acquisition, Datavalet strengthens its portfolio of managed network services with incremental expertise and best practices. It also expands its U.S. presence with a growing team of network engineers and professionals who will continue to support day-to-day activities.

As agreed upon in the transaction, the Charlotte, NC-based SecurEdge will focus on developing its Network as a Service platform, while Datavalet will take over the delivery, management, and support of networks for all its existing and prospective customers across the U.S.

"Datavalet is a leading managed network services provider that shares our values, vision, and focus on customer experience," says SecurEdge CEO Philip Wegner. "With the Datavalet team already supporting 240 million user sessions per year, our customers' networks will be in good hands."

For SecurEdge and Datavalet customers, the acquisition means new opportunities to boost the business value of their Wi-Fi networks. Datavalet customers will now have access to SecurEdge's Network as a Service (NaaS) platform, which offers custom network subscriptions with flexible consumption options for enhanced scalability. Meanwhile, newly acquired customers from SecurEdge can now add Datavalet's software solutions to their existing Wi-Fi network  enabling them to capture Wi-Fi user data and put it to more profitable marketing and operational use. All clients will be supported by the Datavalet team.

All customers will now benefit from:

Proactive 24/7/365 monitoring and support from Datavalet's network operations center

Larger team of industry and technology certified engineers

Broader portfolio of technology and hardware vendors

Digital support in orchestrating of the Network as a Service platform

Full suite of Wi-Fi software solutions, including custom-branded Guest Wi-Fi captive portals, proximity marketing engagement, location analytics, and advanced multi-dwelling Wi-Fi capabilities

Dedicated customer experience manager support

Consistent local presence in the U.S. and extended service coverage across the U.S. and Canada

"SecurEdge is a natural partner for Datavalet, given our complementary expertise" says Datavalet CEO Daniel Forest. "Our respective clients will now benefit from more value-building network services and solutions to take business growth further, all delivered and supported by a world-class team with decades of expertise."

About Datavalet Network, LLC: Datavalet is a managed networks and SaaS provider for large and multi-location businesses. For over 24 years, it has helped clients increase customer engagement and loyalty while maximizing network performance and containing costs. It is a single responsive point of contact supporting over 10,000 customer locations across all industry sectors. Its end-to-end services meet managed branch and campus network needs, allowing customers to concentrate on their core business. www.datavalet.com

About SecurEdge Networks, LLC: SecurEdge is a Network as a Service platform that enables businesses to consume enterprise-grade networking as a utility. SecurEdge orchestrates network subscriptions including equipment, licensing, professional services, managed services, internet access, and appsall in one platform. www.securedgenetworks.com

Photo(s):

https://www.prlog.org/12891891

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Datavalet

Related Links

https://datavalet.com/


LONDON and AMSTERDAM, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Deloitte Risk Advisory B.V. today announced that it has partnered with leading ESG software provider, Datamaran, to enhance its Sustainability External Assurance process using patented technology.

The partnership allows Deloitte Risk Advisory B.V. to expand its research and analytics capabilities, byconducting assurance of sustainability disclosure by providing evidence-based insights.

"With more companies expected to require Limited Assurance under the proposed Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in the EU, we are proud to empower some of Deloitte's Assurance professionals with data-driven information." said Datamaran's CEO Marjella Lecourt-Alma.

Powered by artificial intelligence, Datamaran is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that provides a data-driven process for identifying and monitoring external ESG risks and opportunities. The Datamaran platform enables evidence-based insights and a near real-time assessment of material ESG risks that can be tailored to a client's sector, geography, or stakeholder context.

"We are positive that Datamaran's capabilities will support our ESG risk scanning as we plan and conduct our sustainability assurance engagements. With the CSRD fast approaching, it will keep us on top of our clients' sector specific risks, and support our staff in their work." said Vanessa Otto-Mentz, partner in Deloitte Risk Advisory Sustainability Services.

About Datamaran

Datamaran is the only software analytics platform in the world that identifies and monitors external risks, including ESG. Trusted by blue-chip companies and top-tier partners, it brings a data-driven business process for external risk and materiality analysis. In-house - at any time. Datamaran's patented technology offers real-time analytics on strategic, regulatory, and reputational risks, specific to your business and value chain.

SOURCE Datamaran
TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Denison Mines Corp. ('Denison' or the 'Company') (TSX: DML) (NYSE American: DNN) today filed its Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis ('MD&A') for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. Both documents will be available on the Company's website at www.denisonmines.com or on SEDAR (at www.sedar.com) and EDGAR (at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). The highlights provided below are derived from these documents and should be read in conjunction with them. All amounts in this release are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. View PDF version

David Cates, President and CEO of Denison commented, "Our recent In-Situ Recovery ('ISR') field test results reflect several years of progress made towards systematically de-risking the use of the ISR mining method at the high-grade Phoenix deposit  culminating in the successful, and first of its kind, field test of a commercial-scale well pattern located in the expected first phase of the Phoenix orebody. Our accomplishments in the field and the laboratory have significantly increased our confidence in the use of the ISR mining method and support our landmark decision to advance the planned Phoenix ISR operation to the Feasibility Study design stage.

With increased interest in the uranium market and a recent lift in both spot and long-term uranium prices, we are encouraged that future utility customers are returning to the market and looking at Denison's Wheeler River project as a potentially viable source of reliable and low-cost future supply. Taken together with our effective 95% interest in Wheeler River and strong balance sheet, which, as of today, includes 2.5M lbs U 3 O 8 of physical uranium holdings acquired at a price under US$30/lb U 3 O 8 , we believe Denison is well positioned to become an intermediate supplier of choice in the second half of the decade at a time when market fundamentals are predicted to be favourable as a result of growing demand for uranium and a relative shortage of advanced low-cost uranium development assets in stable jurisdictions.

Our team is focused on advancing Phoenix in the coming months and years to realize on our vision of becoming the next new uranium producer in the Athabasca Basin region."

HIGHLIGHTS

Successful completion of ISR field test activities at Phoenix



The initial results of the 2021 ISR field test program ('2021 ISR Field Test') completed at the Phoenix uranium deposit (' Phoenix ') include (1) the achievement of commercial-scale production flow rates consistent with those assumed in the pre-feasibility study ('PFS') prepared for the Wheeler River Project ('Wheeler River' or the 'Project') in 2018; (2) the demonstration of hydraulic control of injected solution during the ion tracer test; and (3) the establishment of breakthrough times between injection and recovery wells, spaced 5 to 10 metres apart, that are consistent with the hydrogeological model prepared by Petrotek Corporation ('Petrotek') in 2020 demonstrating "proof of concept". In addition, the Company completed the clean-up phase following the tracer test, demonstrating the ability to remediate the commercial scale well ('CSW') test pattern, reducing tracer concentrations to as low as 4% of peak test levels, with eight days of remediation.





The initial results of the 2021 ISR field test program ('2021 ISR Field Test') completed at the uranium deposit (' ') include (1) the achievement of commercial-scale production flow rates consistent with those assumed in the pre-feasibility study ('PFS') prepared for the Wheeler River Project ('Wheeler River' or the 'Project') in 2018; (2) the demonstration of hydraulic control of injected solution during the ion tracer test; and (3) the establishment of breakthrough times between injection and recovery wells, spaced 5 to 10 metres apart, that are consistent with the hydrogeological model prepared by Petrotek Corporation ('Petrotek') in 2020 demonstrating "proof of concept". In addition, the Company completed the clean-up phase following the tracer test, demonstrating the ability to remediate the commercial scale well ('CSW') test pattern, reducing tracer concentrations to as low as 4% of peak test levels, with eight days of remediation. Advancement of Phoenix to feasibility study ('FS') stage and selection Wood PLC as independent lead author



In September 2021 , the Wheeler River Joint Venture ('WRJV') approved the initiation of an independent FS for the ISR mining operation proposed for Phoenix . The completion of the FS is a critical step in the progression of the project and is intended to advance de-risking efforts to the point where the Company and the WRJV will be able to make a definitive development decision. The Company also selected leading global consulting and engineering firm Wood PLC to lead and author the FS in accordance with Canadian Securities National Instrument 43-101 ('NI 43-101').





In , the Wheeler River Joint Venture ('WRJV') approved the initiation of an independent FS for the ISR mining operation proposed for . The completion of the FS is a critical step in the progression of the project and is intended to advance de-risking efforts to the point where the Company and the WRJV will be able to make a definitive development decision. The Company also selected leading global consulting and engineering firm Wood PLC to lead and author the FS in accordance with Canadian Securities National Instrument 43-101 ('NI 43-101'). Initiated exploration drilling programs at Wheeler River and Moon Lake South



In early September, Denison's exploration team initiated diamond drilling exploration programs at Wheeler River, and the Moon Lake South project. Approximately 6,500 m of diamond drilling is planned for Wheeler River, with regional exploration drilling expected to be focused on expanding mineralization encountered in 2020 at K West and M Zone, plus additional exploration drilling at Phoenix Zone A to test the extents of high-grade mineralization encountered in drill hole GWR-045. Moon Lake South is a Denison-operated joint venture with CanAlaska Uranium Ltd., in which Denison holds a 75% interest. Drilling planned for Moon Lake South is expected to consist of 2,400 metres focused on testing geophysical targets.





In early September, Denison's exploration team initiated diamond drilling exploration programs at Wheeler River, and the Moon Lake South project. Approximately of diamond drilling is planned for Wheeler River, with regional exploration drilling expected to be focused on expanding mineralization encountered in 2020 at K West and M Zone, plus additional exploration drilling at Phoenix Zone A to test the extents of high-grade mineralization encountered in drill hole GWR-045. Moon Lake South is a Denison-operated joint venture with CanAlaska Uranium Ltd., in which Denison holds a 75% interest. Drilling planned for Moon Lake South is expected to consist of 2,400 metres focused on testing geophysical targets. Completed acquisition of 50% of JCU ( Canada ) Exploration Company, Limited ('JCU') for $20.5 million



In August 2021 , Denison completed the acquisition of 50% of JCU from UEX Corporation ('UEX') for cash consideration of $20.5 million , following UEX's acquisition of 100% of JCU from Overseas Uranium Resources Development Co., Ltd. for $41 million . JCU holds a portfolio of 12 uranium project joint venture interests in Canada , including a 10% interest in Wheeler River, a 30.099% interest in the Millennium project (Cameco Corporation 69.901%), a 33.8123% interest in the Kiggavik project (Orano Canada Inc. 66.1877%), and a 34.4508% interest in the Christie Lake project (UEX 65.5492%).





In , Denison completed the acquisition of 50% of JCU from UEX Corporation ('UEX') for cash consideration of , following UEX's acquisition of 100% of JCU from Overseas Uranium Resources Development Co., Ltd. for . JCU holds a portfolio of 12 uranium project joint venture interests in , including a 10% interest in Wheeler River, a 30.099% interest in the Millennium project (Cameco Corporation 69.901%), a 33.8123% interest in the Kiggavik project (Orano Canada Inc. 66.1877%), and a 34.4508% interest in the Christie Lake project (UEX 65.5492%). Completed the sale of shares and warrants of GoviEx Uranium Limited ('GoviEx) for proceeds of up to $41,600,000



In October, the Company sold, by private agreement, 32,500,000 common shares of GoviEx, held by Denison for investment purposes, and 32,500,000 common share purchase warrants, entitling the holder of the warrant to acquire one additional common share of GoviEx owned by Denison at an exercise price of $0.80 for a term of up to 18 months. Denison received gross proceeds of $15,600,000 on the sale of the shares and warrants and continues to hold 32,644,000 common shares of GoviEx. If the GoviEx warrants are exercised in full, Denison will receive further gross proceeds of $26,000,000 and will transfer a further 32,500,000 GoviEx common shares to the warrant holders.





In October, the Company sold, by private agreement, 32,500,000 common shares of GoviEx, held by Denison for investment purposes, and 32,500,000 common share purchase warrants, entitling the holder of the warrant to acquire one additional common share of GoviEx owned by Denison at an exercise price of for a term of up to 18 months. Denison received gross proceeds of on the sale of the shares and warrants and continues to hold 32,644,000 common shares of GoviEx. If the GoviEx warrants are exercised in full, Denison will receive further gross proceeds of and will transfer a further 32,500,000 GoviEx common shares to the warrant holders. Recorded significant mark-to-market fair value gains on the Company's long-term investments in uranium



During the nine months ending September 30, 2021 , the Company acquired 2,400,000 pounds of uranium at a weighted average cost of $36.59 (US$29.62) per pound U 3 O 8 to be held as a long-term investment. Due to significant activity in the uranium spot market in the third quarter, the spot price appreciated from US$32.10 per pound U 3 O 8 to US$43.00 per pound U 3 O 8 resulting in mark-to-market gains for the three months ended September 30, 2021 of $36,138,000 on these uranium investments.

About Wheeler River

Wheeler River is the largest undeveloped uranium project in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin region, in northern Saskatchewan and is a joint venture between Denison and Denison's 50%-owned JCU. Denison is the operator of the project and holds an effective 95% ownership interest. The project is host to the high-grade Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits, discovered by Denison in 2008 and 2014, respectively, estimated to have combined Indicated Mineral Resources of 132.1 million pounds U 3 O 8 (1,809,000 tonnes at an average grade of 3.3% U 3 O 8 ), plus combined Inferred Mineral Resources of 3.0 million pounds U 3 O 8 (82,000 tonnes at an average grade of 1.7% U 3 O 8 ).

The PFS was completed in late 2018, considering the potential economic merit of developing the Phoenix deposit as an ISR operation and the Gryphon deposit as a conventional underground mining operation. Taken together, the project is estimated to have mine production of 109.4 million pounds U 3 O 8 over a 14-year mine life, with a base case pre-tax net present value ('NPV') of $1.31 billion (8% discount rate), Internal Rate of Return ('IRR') of 38.7%, and initial pre-production capital expenditures of $322.5 million. The Phoenix ISR operation is estimated to have a stand-alone base case pre-tax NPV of $930.4 million (8% discount rate), IRR of 43.3%, initial pre-production capital expenditures of $322.5 million, and industry leading average operating costs of US$3.33/lb U 3 O 8 . The PFS was prepared on a project (100% ownership) and pre-tax basis, as each of the partners to the Wheeler River Joint Venture are subject to different tax and other obligations.

Further details regarding the PFS, including additional scientific and technical information, as well as after-tax results attributable to Denison's ownership interest, are described in greater detail in the NI 43-101 Technical Report titled "Pre-feasibility Study for the Wheeler River Uranium Project, Saskatchewan, Canada" dated October 30, 2018 with an effective date of September 24, 2018. A copy of this report is available on Denison's website and under its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml.

Given the social, financial and market disruptions related to COVID-19, and certain fiscally prudent measures, Denison temporarily suspended certain activities at Wheeler River starting in April 2020, including the formal parts of the EA program, which is on the critical path to achieving the project development schedule outlined in the PFS Technical Report. While the formal EA process resumed in early 2021, the Company is not currently able to estimate the impact to the project development schedule, outlined in the PFS Technical Report, and users are cautioned that certain of the estimates provided therein, particularly regarding the start of pre-production activities in 2021 and first production in 2024 should not be relied upon.

About Denison

Denison Mines Corp. was formed under the laws of Ontario and is a reporting issuer in all Canadian provinces and territories. Denison's common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the 'TSX') under the symbol 'DML' and on the NYSE American exchange under the symbol 'DNN'.

Denison is a uranium exploration and development company with interests focused in the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan, Canada. In addition to its effective 95% interest in the Wheeler River Uranium Project, Denison's interests in Saskatchewan include a 22.5% ownership interest in the McClean Lake Joint Venture, which includes several uranium deposits and the McClean Lake uranium mill, which is contracted to process the ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement, plus a 25.17% interest in the Midwest Main and Midwest A deposits and a 66.90% interest in the Tthe Heldeth Tue ('THT,' formerly J Zone) and Huskie deposits on the Waterbury Lake property. The Midwest Main, Midwest A, THT and Huskie deposits are located within 20 kilometres of the McClean Lake mill.

Through its 50% ownership of JCU, Denison holds additional interests in various uranium project joint ventures in Canada, including the Millennium project (JCU 30.099%), the Kiggavik project (JCU 33.8123%) and Christie Lake (JCU 34.4508%). Denison's exploration portfolio includes further interests in properties covering approximately 280,000 hectares in the Athabasca Basin region.

Denison is also engaged in mine decommissioning and environmental services through its Closed Mines group, which manages Denison's Elliot Lake reclamation projects and provides post-closure mine and maintenance services to a variety of industry and government clients.

Technical Disclosure and Qualified Person

The technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by David Bronkhorst, P.Eng, Denison's Vice President, Operations and/or Andrew Yackulic, P. Geo, Denison's Director, Exploration, each of whom is a Qualified Person in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101.

Follow Denison on Twitter @DenisonMinesCo

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes 'forward-looking information', within the meaning of the applicable United States and Canadian legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Denison.

Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as 'plans', 'expects', 'budget', 'scheduled', 'estimates', 'forecasts', 'intends', 'anticipates', or 'believes', or the negatives and/or variations of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results 'may', 'could', 'would', 'might' or 'will be taken', 'occur', 'be achieved' or 'has the potential to'.

In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to the following: projections with respect to exploration, development and expansion plans and objectives, including the plans and objectives for Wheeler River and the related evaluation field program activities and exploration objectives; the interpretation of the results of the ISR field test activities at Wheeler River; the interpretation of the results of its exploration drilling programs; its plans for the feasibility study; its use of proceeds of recent financings; its investments in uranium; the impact of COVID-19 on Denison's operations; the estimates of Denison's mineral reserves and mineral resources or results of exploration; expectations regarding Denison's joint venture ownership interests; expectations regarding the continuity of its agreements with third parties; and its interpretations of, and expectations for, nuclear energy and uranium demand. Statements relating to 'mineral reserves' or 'mineral resources' are deemed to be forward-looking information, as they involve the implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions that the mineral reserves and mineral resources described can be profitably produced in the future.

Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Denison to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For example, the results and underlying assumptions and interpretations of the PFS as well as de-risking efforts such as the ISR field programs discussed herein may not be maintained after further testing or be representative of actual conditions within the applicable deposits. In addition, Denison may decide or otherwise be required to extend the EA and/or otherwise discontinue testing, evaluation and development work if it is unable to maintain or otherwise secure the necessary approvals or resources (such as testing facilities, capital funding, etc.). Denison believes that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be accurate and results may differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information. For a discussion in respect of risks and other factors that could influence forward-looking events, please refer to the factors discussed in Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 26, 2021 under the heading 'Risk Factors'. These factors are not, and should not be, construed as being exhaustive.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Any forward-looking information and the assumptions made with respect thereto speaks only as of the date of this press release. Denison does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this press release to conform such information to actual results or to changes in Denison's expectations except as otherwise required by applicable legislation.

Cautionary Note to United States Investors Concerning Estimates of Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves: This press release may use terms such as "measured", "indicated" and/or "inferred" mineral resources and "proven" or "probable" mineral reserves, which are terms defined with reference to the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves ("CIM Standards"). The Company's descriptions of its projects using CIM Standards may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements under the United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of measured or indicated mineral resources will ever be converted into mineral reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource exists, or is economically or legally mineable.

SOURCE Denison Mines Corp.

Related Links

http://denisonmines.com/s/Home.asp


DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 The award-winning law firm of Denver Trial Lawyers  has been met with acclaim again, this time in the 2022 edition of "Best Law Firms" by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers. The firm earned scores high enough to place in Metropolitan Tier 1, the highest of three tiers, for the following practice areas in Colorado:

Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs

Founded in 1981, Best Lawyers garnered national attention for its highly selective attorney ranking guide, The Best Lawyers in America. Then, in 2009, it partnered with U.S. News in a joint effort to develop a ranking guide of law firms using its patented "purely peer review" process.

Selection to "Best Law Firms" is a highly coveted distinction for a few reasons. First, each ranked firm must have at least one attorney listed in that year's The Best Lawyers in America, which lists no more than 6% of attorneys. Second, a law firm must successfully make a case for itself as to why it should be ranked in "Best Law Firms," detailing past case results, qualifications, etc. Finally, the respect of a firm's peers and clients is integral to a "Best Law Firms" listing.

Denver Trial Lawyers  is honored to have been listed in the 12th edition of "Best Law Firms." To date, the firm has represented thousands of clients in cases of personal injury, medical negligence, and sexual abuse. Backed by this extensive experience, its acclaimed attorney team will stop at nothing to win justice for its clients  it has even been known to influence legislation and change laws along the way.

Visit the award-winning law firm online at denvertriallawyers.com . Or visit the official "Best Law Firms" website at bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

Contact: Michael Nimmo

(303) 647-4902

SOURCE Denver Trial Lawyers
New Interactive Experience Includes Activities Based on the Popular Watt Watchers of Texas STEM Program

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Disco Learning Media, a subsidiary of Upstryve Inc, formerly ProBility Media Corp. ("ProBility") (OTCPK: PBYA), has supported the development of a new, interactive energy literacy experience in collaboration with The DoSeum, San Antonio's Museum for Kids.

The "What is Energy?" passport is a booklet that will help children become energy-savers and provide fun activities for families to learn about sustainability and conservation. Several lessons and actives from the beloved Watt Watchers of Texas energy-saving STEM program were adapted for use in the passport, which was co-authored by members of The DoSeum and Disco. Disco created the refreshed curriculum for Watt Watchers, and currently manages the program on behalf of The University of Texas at Austin. The passport and pop-up experience is sponsored by CPS Energy.

"We are incredibly proud to partner with The DoSeum and CPS Energy on this unique opportunity to bring energy literacy to children and their families. The Watt Watchers of Texas program has a wealth of energy-saving activities for children of all ages, so when it was time to bring these lessons to life, we welcomed the chance to work with a world-class organization such as The DoSeum," stated Juan Garcia, President of Disco Learning Media and Chief Learning Officer for Upstryve. "This partnership represents the next chapter in how we're bringing Watt Watchers to a new generation of students, and hopefully will spark students' interest in energy and energy careers."

The "What is Energy?" experience launches on November 6 at the DoSeum. The museum will host a conservation-themed scavenger hunt inside the building and families can pose with life-sized versions of the Watt Watchers Lil' Tex and Ann.

Watt Watchers of Texas is sponsored by the State Energy Conservation Office (SECO), Itron, Inc., and CPS Energy in distributed partnership with The University of Texas at Austin, the Webber Energy Group, and KLRN Public Television.

About Disco Learning Media

Disco Learning Media specializes in eCourse development, program management, and consulting. The company also offers instructional design and media production services. Their mission is to enhance learning experiences through integrated design and data. With over 20 years of media production and educational design experience, their vision is to create a fundamental shift in teaching and learning through innovative, high quality educational products.

About Upstryve Inc., formerly ProBility Media Corp

Upstryve is an international education, training, and career advancement company with a focus on vocational and skilled trades headquartered in southern Florida. Upstryve owns four brands including Upstryve, One Exam Prep, North American Crane Bureau Group and Disco Learning Media.

Upstryve is the only tutoring platform dedicated to providing aspiring trade professionals an affordable all-encompassing learning experience. Upstryve provides 1 on 1 contractor license exam preparation for professionals to confidently pass their state or national exams and obtain their contractor license. One Exam Prep provides licensing assistance and online test preparation for contractors throughout the United States. North American Crane Bureau Group (NACB) conducts over 400 safety programs each year all over the world for safety, rigging and crane training. NACB holds a federal accreditation under 29CFR part 1919, Cal/OSHA accreditation under Title 8, and is recognized by several states entities as being qualified to conduct lift equipment inspection / certification and / or operator training. Disco Learning Media specializes in eCourse development, program management, and consulting for learning experiences. For more information, visit www.upstryve.com/investors

Forward-Looking Statements

This Press Release may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements reflect the Company's current beliefs and are based upon information currently available to it. Accordingly, such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or advise in the event of any change, addition or alteration to the information included in this Press Release including such forward-looking statements, except as required by federal securities laws.

SOURCE Probility Media Corp.

Related Links

http://www.ProBilityMedia.com


EASTAMPTON, NJ., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A transition from paper to digital processes is underway in Eastampton Township, New Jersey where local officials have sought greater efficiency in municipal operations and constituent services. The township recently partnered with GovPilot , a Hoboken, New Jersey based provider of cloud-based government management software.

Officials from Eastampton will work with GovPilot to implement a number of digital capabilities and public facing forms that aim to make operations more efficient and services more convenient for constituents. Officials have initially utilized GovPilot for Certificate of Continued Occupancy Inspections, Business Registration, and Contract Management. The township will add several more digital processes in the near future including pet licenses, landlord registrations, marriage licenses, vital record requests, a digitized planning and zoning board, and others.

Eastampton has also deployed GovPilot's Report-a-Concern feature which enables residents to report non-emergency concerns such as potholes or general code violations directly via a digital form on the township website, or through an app on their phone, called GovAlert. The app, available to residents on Android and iOS devices is easy to use, and routes citizen concerns directly to the relevant municipal department so that the issue can be resolved quickly.

"Initially we implemented a few GovPilot processes to enable more efficient operations and provide convenient constituent services in certain departments. After replacing those paper processes with GovPilot, we realized how effective the platform is, and decided to deepen our relationship with the vendor by deploying all of the 200+ processes across our government", said Kim White, Eastampton's Township Manager. White added, "Prior to GovPilot, employees had to search for paper records filed in the basement and relay that information to a colleague or resident. Now, digital records are accessible in seconds by government employees, from any device at any time. GovPilot is the partner best suited to meet our objectives of delivering responsive constituent services and greater efficiency."

Michael Bonner, the founder and CEO of GovPilot said, "We are excited to work with Eastampton Township on its early stages of digital transformation. Federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act has spurred local governments to implement digital services and operations. In partnering with local governments across the country we have found that digital processes generate significant increases in efficiency and productivity that have a positive impact on local budgets, services, and constituent experience. We expect to see similar results in Eastampton."

About GovPilot:

GovPilot - named a GovTech 100 company for four consecutive years - is the leader in digital transformation for local governments. GovPilot's cloud-based platform was built with the sole purpose of enabling local governments to operate at their full potential by standardizing, digitizing, and unifying more than 100 operational and constituent service processes on one system.

To learn more visit www.govpilot.com . Follow @GovPilot on Social.

GovPilot Media Contact:

Evan Achiron, Director of Marketing & Communications

[email protected], (929) 299-7969

SOURCE GovPilot

Related Links

govpilot.com


SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based in Salt Lake City, Eisenberg Cutt Kendell & Olson has received the two following Tier 1 Metropolitan rankings in Utah by U.S. News  Best Lawyers for "Best Law Firms" 2022:

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs

A joint effort by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers, "Best Law Firms" is curated on an annual basis to celebrate the nation's premier law firms.

The "Best Law Firms" candidate pool is created in reference to that year's The Best Lawyers in America , a register by Best Lawyers of the top 6% of American attorneys in the private sector. Next, all eligible firms are scored based on feedback from their peers and clients, as well as the results of law firm surveys. Legal expertise, quality of service, community impact, past verdicts and settlements are thoroughly assessed and evaluated. The firms that earn the highest scores during review are placed along three tiers for the published edition of "Best Law Firms." Tier 1 holds those who scored the best of the best; then comes Tier 2 with the second-highest scorers; then Tier 3.

Eisenberg Cutt Kendell & Olson qualified for "Best Law Firms" review after 6 of its attorneys were selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2022. Another attorney at the firm also earned recognition in Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, the equivalent of The Best Lawyers in America for early career attorneys. What's more, the firm has been ranked by U.S. News  Best Lawyers in previous editions of "Best Law Firms."

The Salt Lake City plaintiff's trial law firm of Eisenberg Cutt Kendell & Olson accepts cases involving brain injuries , back and spine injuries , car and truck crashes , sexual assault , defective products , wrongful death , and more. To ensure each client is given the attention they deserve, the firm limits its caseload to a select few. This has resulted in a flood of glowing testimonials and over $400 million in client recoveries. To schedule a free consultation, please visit Eisenberg Cutt Kendell & Olson at eckolaw.com . Or to find out more about U.S. News  Best Lawyers and its annual rankings, kindly visit bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

SOURCE Eisenberg Cutt Kendell & Olson
DALLAS, Nov. 4, 2021 National optical retailer Eyemart Express announces the promotion of Katy Hanson to Chief Marketing Officer, effective immediately. Hanson has served on the organization's leadership team as interim CMO since January 2021. Prior to this, she spent two years as the retailer's Vice President of Strategy and Planning. As CMO, she will continue to lead Eyemart Express' marketing operations, including strategy development and implementation of multichannel media plans such as advertising, digital marketing, local store marketing, and brand initiatives.

"Katy has shown the ability to adapt in an ever-changing environment and engage customers with our brand in new ways," says Michael Bender, Eyemart Express CEO. "I am excited that she is officially joining our senior leadership team and look forward to the positive impact she will continue to have on our company. As Eyemart Express grows and evolves, Katy's understanding of our customers, culture, and Eyemart Family is invaluable."

Hanson offers three decades of experience working in strategic marketing and communications. Prior to joining Eyemart Express in 2016, Hanson held leadership roles at Blockbuster and Michaels Stores. She served as the craft retailer's Vice President of Marketing, overseeing marketing initiatives across channels, including digital marketing, advertising, brand management, and the retailer's in-store experience.

"This is an exciting time at Eyemart Express and I look forward to continuing the momentum we have built to innovate our position in the optical industry," says Hanson. "I am thrilled to have this opportunity to amplify our ability and services to improve people's lives by helping them see better and deepen our connections with the communities that we serve across the country."

About Eyemart Express

Eyemart Express (EyemartExpress.com), is a national optical retailer known for providing high-quality prescription eyewear in as little as 30 minutes. Eyemart Express ranks among the top 10 optical retailers in the country with its family of brands: Vision 4 Less, Visionmart Express, and Eyewear Express. The company is based in Farmers Branch, Texas, and has 232 stores in 42 states. Eyemart Express offers a robust frame selection for the whole family with more than 2,000 frames in every store from brands such as Ray-Ban, Coach, Nike, and Disney. On-site lens labs and skilled lab techs in stores can deliver high-quality glasses in as little as 30 minutes.

SOURCE Eyemart Express
At the Exhibition, the Company held its first new EZGO branded product launch event where four ultra-high-speed electric motorcycle models, the "Devil," "Little Angel," "M9," and "Zhuque," (model names may be subject to change) and three new national standard electric bicycles were released. With the launch of these seven new products, EZGO's portfolio of brands now include EZGO, Cenbird and Dilang.

The new EZGO branded line of products feature a sleek, high-quality exterior design and boast superior vehicle performance. The Company anticipates sales and marketing promotions for the four ultra-high-speed electric motorcycles to be focused in American, European and other markets. The trademark of EZGO used on e-bicycles is still under application.

Management Commentary

Mr. Jianhui Ye, Chief Executive Officer of EZGO, stated, "We are thrilled to have launched our newly developed EZGO brand and new line of products at the Exhibition, which is one of the most influential and well-regarded events for the electric vehicle industry. This launch is yet another step forward in EZGO's growth strategy as we remain focused on becoming China's leading short-distance transportation solutions provider. We look forward to bringing our premier line of ultra-high-speed electric motorcycle products to overseas markets as we seek to expand our international following."

About EZGO Technologies Ltd.

Leveraging an Internet of Things (IoT) product and service platform and three E-bicycle brands, "EZGO", "Dilang" and "Cenbird", EZGO has established a business model centered on the manufacturing and sale of two- and three-wheeled electric vehicles, complemented by the E-bicycle charging pile business. For additional information, please visit EZGO's website at www.ezgotech.com.cn. Investors can visit the "Investor Relations" section of EZGO's website at www.ezgotech.com.cn/Investor.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are other than statements of historical facts. When the Company uses words such as "may, "will, "intend," "should," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "estimate" or similar expressions that do not relate solely to historical matters, it is making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations discussed in the forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to uncertainties and risks including, but not limited to, the following: the Company's goals and strategies; the Company's future business development; product and service demand and acceptance; changes in technology; economic conditions; the growth of the short-distance transportation solutions market in China and the other international markets the Company plans to serve; reputation and brand; the impact of competition and pricing; government regulations; fluctuations in general economic and business conditions in China and the international markets the Company plans to serve and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing and other risks contained in reports filed by the Company with the SEC. For these reasons, among others, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements in this press release. Additional factors are discussed in the Company's filings with the SEC, which are available for review at www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forwardlooking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof.

For more information, please contact:

At the Company:

Shawn Wen

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (+86) 13502829216

Investor Relations:

Carolyne Sohn

The Equity Group Inc.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (415) 568-2255

SOURCE EZGO Technologies Ltd.
Dr. Kuldeep Neote recruited for his decades of US-based pharma industry expertise

TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - FACIT, a commercialization-venture firm, announced the appointment of Dr. Kuldeep Neote, as an Executive-in-Residence (EIR) to accelerate emerging investment and management activities in cancer therapeutics. Dr. Neote joins FACIT's team of EIRs that possess strong leadership, commercial and industry experience in various technology sectors in life sciences. The appointment of Dr. Neote broadens the available expertise to provide critical senior management and leadership to create and nurture FACIT start-ups in Ontario.

"Given the surge in entrepreneurial innovation in Ontario, recruiting executives and advisors with strong clinical development, commercial and cross-border fundraising experience in the life sciences sector is a key component of our provincial strategy," said Dr. David O'Neill, President of FACIT. FACIT creates and seeds biotechnology companies in Ontario, including companies such as Turnstone Biologics, Fusion Therapeutics and Triphase Accelerator. "We welcome Kuldeep to the team and look forward to benefitting from his extensive experience and international networks."

Prior to joining FACIT, Dr. Neote was Vice President, External Innovation at Eli Lilly and Senior Director, New Ventures at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. He began his career as a Discovery Scientist at Pfizer Inc., where he initiated the chemokine receptor drug discovery platform that led to the discovery and further development of several clinical candidates. Earlier in his career, Dr. Neote cloned one of the first chemokine receptors while at Genentech. Through the partnership with FACIT, Dr. Neote returns to his Canadian roots, having earned his bachelor's degree in Microbial and Cellular Biology at the University of Calgary, and a doctorate in Human and Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto.

"FACIT has made insightful and strategic investments in Ontario's rapidly developing biotech sector," said Dr. Neote. "I am excited to join the team and contribute to FACIT's unique commercialization-venture model, where Ontario realizes the full value of its IP, leading to a thriving ecosystem and better care for patients with cancer."

About FACIT

FACIT is an award-winning commercialization-venture firm that builds companies with entrepreneurs to accelerate oncology innovation, with a portfolio that has attracted more than $1 billion in investment to Ontario. Blending industry experience, capital and the unsurpassed clinician-scientist network of its strategic partner the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), FACIT capitalizes on the province's investment in research and healthcare to the benefit of the local economy and patients worldwide. FACIT's commercialization portfolio includes Turnstone Biologics, Fusion Pharmaceuticals, Triphase Accelerator and other biotechnology organizations. Cancer Breakthroughs. Realized. facit.ca.

SOURCE FACIT Inc.

Related Links

http://facit.ca/


CHICAGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For the fifth year in a row, Combined Insurance has been named a "Best for Vets" employer by Military Times. This year, Combined ranks 27th out of 161 honored organizations in the U.S., second in the state of Illinois, and third within the insurance industry. The list recognizes organizations for "efforts to recruit, retain, and support current and former service members, military spouses, and military caregivers."

"This honor means a great deal to us at Combined, as U.S. military veterans have made important contributions to our growth and success," said Combined Insurance President Rich Williams. "Those who have served our country are strategic thinkers who work diligently and bring a wealth of resources to the company. Quite simply, veterans and their family members make Combined stronger."

Combined Insurance launched its veteran recruiting program in 2010, hiring more than 5,500 veterans, military spouses, and their family members since then. Combined also is a strong supporter of military and veteran-focused nonprofit organizations, including the USO of Illinois; Luke's Wings; and Heartland AllianceSupport Services for Veteran Families (SSVF).

Now in its twelfth year, the Military Times "Best for Vets: Employers" voluntary survey was conducted online from July 6 through Sept. 21, 2021. Critical to inclusion on the list were a company's "recruitment and employment practices, retention and support programs, and generally-inclusive workplace policies."

Military Times publishes the Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Times, and Navy Times for current and former U.S. military personnel. The organization also produces newsletters, video content, podcasts, and special reports focused on the military community.

About Combined Insurance

Combined Insurance Company of America is a Chubb company and a leading provider of supplemental accident, health, disability, and life insurance products in the U.S.* and Canada. Headquartered in Chicago with a tradition of nearly 100 years of success, we are committed to making the world of supplemental insurance easy to understand. The company has an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau and an A + (Superior) financial strength rating by A.M. Best. We are ranked by VIQTORY as the number one Military Friendly Employer in 2021 (over $1 billion revenue category), marking Combined's tenth consecutive year on the Top 10 list. For more information, please visit www.combinedinsurance.com.

* In New York, products are underwritten by Combined Life Insurance Company of New York (Latham, NY).

SOURCE Combined Insurance, a Chubb company
Levenger is presenting exclusive new products in partnership with the Museum, which will receive a portion of proceeds from their sales through the Levenger Partnering for Good program. The ongoing initiative joins with libraries, museums and other institutions to create products from their collections and share the sale proceeds with them.

Two new products were created to celebrate this wonderful partnership and are available for preorder now. The Emily Dickinson Notebook and Emily Dickinson Pen (designed in conjunction with Levenger partner Retro51) were inspired by the Collection of the Emily Dickinson Museum and feature the floral design of wallpaper from the poet's bedroom in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. The recreated wallpaper, designed by Marylou Davis, courtesy of the Emily Dickinson Museum, is based on original fragments found in the home. The notebook also features original manuscript detail of Emily Dickinson's poem Tell all the truth but tell it slant (Fr 1263), courtesy of Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.

Purchasers will receive a note of thanks for "doing good in the world of reading" when they buy the products, available for preorder now at Levenger.com

"We're excited to join with the Emily Dickinson Museum in our shared mission of promoting reading and literacy," said Margaret Moraskie, CEO of Levenger. "It's an honor to bring our customers these beautiful new creations inspired by a poet who is revered by so many."

Levenger was also a sponsor of the Museum's ninth annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, held online September 20-26. The Museum, located in Amherst, Massachusetts, was the home of Emily Dickinson, whose poems were discovered in her bedroom after she died. The Festival is named for the same poem featured on the Emily Dickinson Notebook, Tell all the truth but tell it slant , which, the Museum explains, celebrates "the revolutionary power of poetry to shift our perspective and reveal new truths."

For information about Levenger products or to place an order, visit www.levenger.com and for more information about the Museum, please visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org

Media Contact: Britt Bradford

[email protected]

SOURCE Levenger
MONTGOMERY, Ala., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- He may have been Alabama's top crime fighter, but now former Attorney General, Troy King, is Nashville's newest hit. King recently announced his widely anticipated podcast, CASHback.

CASHback is the only podcast in the world dedicated exclusively to the songs, the sounds, the stories, and the sessions, the history and the hi-jinks, the friends and the fans, the music and the Man . . . the Man in Black that is.

Please visit www.thecashbackshow.com for the best stories featuring Johnny Cash and friends. Welcome to the Cashback Show featuring Troy King. The best stories and music from Johnny Cash and friends. Take a step back in history and relive some of the greatest Johnny Cash moments at www.thecashbackshow.com

Each week, CASHback takes listeners on a wild, bumpy, boom chicka booming ride through Johnny Cash music history. Maybe you have never heard of CASHback. The dictionary defines a "flashback" as a sudden, vivid memory of the past. When those memories are of Johnny Cash though, they are too special to be just another flashback. They are called CASHbacks.

No matter how remote from Johnny Cash a particular story seems when it starts, by the end, it always ties back to Johnny Cash. The first episodes are as varied as Cash himself and feature his famous friends like David Allen Coe, Bruce Springsteen, Ernest Tubb, and Ray Charles; his heroes like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams; infamous outlaws like Charles Guiteau who gunned down President James Garfield, and, of course, no Johnny Cash show would be complete without a train wreck.

Troy's King's Mama taught him to love a Sun Drop and he earned a graduate degree in Cashology at his Daddy's knee. His Dad often instructed him, "It's not COUNTRY music, son. It's just music. There is no other kind." In the years that have followed, King has become an amateur historian and a captivating storyteller. His first and lifelong passion was and remains all things that boom chicka boom.

King said, "This is my passion project. I love this music and these stories. So many of Johnny Cash's fans met him late in his career so they have no idea about all that came before the "Walk the Line" movie and the American Recordings albums. We strive in every episode to tell our stories in a way that will be familiar for old fans (and include stories even they may not have heard) while remaining accessible to new fans."

CASHback started ten years ago when King was asked by the operators of JohnnyCashRadio to combine his extensive knowledge of country music and his passion for history to host a show on the Johnny Cash Museum's internet radio channel. It struck a chord with Cash's international fanbase who have been asking for new episodes for years. CASHback has since been updated for the new podcast platform, but it retains the same quirky sense of humor of the original and never takes itself too seriously.

Visit www.thecashbackshow.com to subscribe to the podcasts and shop The Station Store for CASHback gear and swag.

Press Contact:

Jonathan Barbee

(205) 582-0090

[email protected]

SOURCE TheCashBackShow.com

Related Links

https://www.thecashbackshow.com


SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fountain , the world's leading all-in-one applicant tracking system for high volume hiring, today announced $85 million in Series C financing, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2* with participation from B Capital Group and Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and existing investors DCM, Origin Ventures, Commerce Ventures, SemperVirens Venture Capital and Uncork Capital. This new round follows strong company momentum in 2021 as revenue grew 220% year-over-year. Fountain now has more than 250 customers including Chipotle Mexican Grill, John Lewis & Partners and Just Eat Takeaway. With the Series C, Fountain has now raised $119 million to date. Fountain will use the new funding to continue to invest in innovation of its hiring platform, as well as to grow its sales and engineering teams and its operations and presence in EMEA and APAC regions.

"With labor acquisition being one of the top challenges companies face today, Fountain provides an all-in-one hiring platform to help enterprises streamline their hiring for high volume, hourly workers," said Andrew Zloto, Director at SoftBank Investment Advisers. "We are delighted to partner with Sean and the Fountain team to support their mission of helping companies find and hire the right people quickly to meet today's labor needs."

High volume hiring -- defined as needing to fill over 1,000 positions in a short period of time or receiving more than 1,000 applications per position -- is proving to be a daunting task for recruiters to meet. More than 6 in 10 companies have high volume recruitment needs according to research done by Aptitude, a leading human capital management research and advisory firm and Fountain. And almost 7 in 10 companies stated that they are getting fewer candidates applying for jobs this year than last year for positions including gig workers and hourly roles, customer service and call center representatives, healthcare staff, seasonal financial services, data entry specialists and statisticians. The rebound from COVID has exacerbated hiring challenges, as the demand for hourly workers has greatly exceeded supply. Employers spend millions on sourcing candidates, but screen them with phone calls and emails, leading to poor, impersonal candidate experiences.

Fountain's mission is to open opportunities for the global hourly workforce by helping employers like Chipotle Mexican Grill and Liveops who have high volume hiring needs, find and hire the right people in a smart, fast and seamless manner. Fountain has helped companies process over 16 million applicants in the past 12 months alone, and helped hire more than 2 million so far in 2021. It takes the average Fountain user 8.70 median days to hire, as opposed to the industry average of 36 days.

"Many companies are struggling to hire hourly workers, which number around 82 million and represent more than half of all wage and salary workers in the US alone," said Sean Behr, CEO of Fountain. "Fountain's solutions have enabled businesses to make more than two million hires so far in 2021 by simplifying, optimizing and automating as much of the candidate journey as possible to decrease time-to-hire."

"The hiring of both hourly and gig workers have become mission-critical to companies worldwide. Fountain solves this problem by automating every stage of the hiring process, from recruiting to onboarding, which significantly reduces time-to-hire. B Capital Group is excited to work with Sean and the team at Fountain to support customers in this fight for talent, not just in the US, but globally," said Sami Ahmad, General Partner at B Capital Group.

About Fountain

Fountain's all-in-one high volume hiring platform empowers the world's leading enterprises to find and hire the right people through smart, fast and seamless recruiting. Candidates can apply anytime, anywhere in minutes, right from their phone. Automated and customizable processes streamline the candidate experience and save time for recruitment teams so they can scale with growing hiring needs. Advanced analytics provide end-to-end process visibility so managers can make swift, data-driven decisions. Throughout the candidate journey the openly integrated platform enables companies to find, qualify and convert more applicants. Fountain's global customers hire over 2 million workers annually in 78 countries.

Learn more at www.fountain.com or connect via Twitter , LinkedIn or the Fountain blog .

*As of the date of this press release, SoftBank Group Corp. has made capital contributions to allow investments by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 ("SVF 2") in certain portfolio companies. The information included herein is made for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy limited partnership interests in any fund, including SVF 2. SVF 2 has yet to have an external close, and any potential third-party investors shall receive additional information related to any SVF 2 investments prior to closing.

Media Contact:

Jessica Jaffe

415-497-9474

[email protected]

SOURCE Fountain
DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gates Industrial Corporation plc (NYSE:GTES), a global manufacturer of innovative, highly engineered power transmission and fluid power solutions, today announced that the Company will participate virtually in the Baird 2021 Global Industrial Conference on Wednesday, November 10, 2021. Ivo Jurek, Chief Executive Officer, will present at 2:35 p.m. Eastern Time.

To access the webcast and presentation materials, please visit the Events & Presentations section of the Gates Investor Relations website at investors.gates.com, and click on the event webcast link.

About Gates Industrial Corporation plc

Gates is a global manufacturer of innovative, highly engineered power transmission and fluid power solutions. Gates offers a broad portfolio of products to diverse replacement channel customers, and to original equipment ("first-fit") manufacturers as specified components. Gates participates in many sectors of the industrial and consumer markets. Our products play essential roles in a diverse range of applications across a wide variety of end markets ranging from harsh and hazardous industries such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing and energy, to everyday consumer applications such as printers, power washers, automatic doors and vacuum cleaners and virtually every form of transportation. Our products are sold in 128 countries across our four commercial regions: the Americas; Europe, Middle East & Africa; Greater China; and East Asia & India.

SOURCE Gates Industrial Corporation plc
DUBLIN, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Continuous Glucose Monitoring Device Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Component (Transmitters, Sensors), by End Use (Hospitals, Homecare), by Region (Asia Pacific, North America), and Segment Forecasts, 2021-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global continuous glucose monitoring device market size is expected to reach USD 10.36 billion by 2028. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.1% from 2021 to 2028.

Growing cases of diabetes and the introduction of novel and advanced diabetes care devices are the major factors driving the market growth. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices provide an efficient method to measure body glucose levels in real time. Data recorded by these devices is transmitted through a wireless network to receivers; this helps keep a track of glucose levels over a designated period.



These devices also help manage diabetes while reducing individual insulin dosages. Integrated software within these devices provides users with insights about food consumption, medication, physical activity, and illnesses. Thus, an increasing number of diabetic patients are using these devices to manage and treat diabetes, which, in turn, is accelerating market growth. With the advent of digital therapeutics, a rising number of continuous glucose monitoring devices are being incorporated with apps and software to help patients with diabetes mellitus. Rise in the number of diabetes mellitus has been contributing toward continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems market growth.



Continuous Glucose Monitoring Device Market Report Highlights

Growing cases of diabetes is anticipated to propel market growth, with increasing number of patients opting for simplified CGM devices

CGM devices provide analysis of blood glucose levels from the tissue fluid at regular intervals of time, which is also driving their demand

Sensors was the largest component type segment and is anticipated to maintain its dominance owing to their integral nature in these devices

Asia Pacific is the leading regional continuous glucose monitoring device market, with Japan , China , and India on the forefront

is the leading regional continuous glucose monitoring device market, with , , and on the forefront North America led the global market in the past owing to wide usage of CGM devices as a result of higher number of target patients in the region

led the global market in the past owing to wide usage of CGM devices as a result of higher number of target patients in the region The European region followed the North American closely in terms of market revenue due to rise in the adoption of these devices in key countries such as U.K., Germany , France , Italy , and Spain

, , , and Some of the key companies present in the market are Pfizer Inc.; Baxter International, Inc.; Abbott Laboratories; Medtronic PLC; Animas Corporation; and Novo Nordisk A/S.



Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1 Methodology and Scope



Chapter 2 Executive Summary

2.1 User Perspective Analysis by Stage

2.2 Regulatory Framework

2.3 Reimbursement Scenario

2.4 Market Dynamics

2.4.1 Market Driver Analysis

2.4.1.1 Increasing number of diabetes patients globally

2.4.1.2 Easy and efficient monitoring of current glucose values

2.4.2 Market Restraint Analysis

2.4.2.1 High treatment cost

2.4.2.2 Lack of reimbursement policies

2.5 Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices: Market Analysis Tools

2.6 Company Market Share Analysis

2.7 Covid-19 Impact Analysis



Chapter 3 Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices Market: Component Estimates & Trend Analysis



Chapter 4 Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices Market: By End-use Estimates & Trend Analysis



Chapter 5 Regional Business Analysis



Chapter 6 Company Profile

Medtronic

Dexcom, Inc.

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

ABBOTT

Novo Nordisk A/S

Ypsomed

GlySens Incorporated

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gx3uxh

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

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SOURCE Research and Markets

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DUBLIN, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Industrial Cybersecurity - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Global Industrial Cybersecurity Market to Reach $22.3 Billion by 2026

The global market for Industrial Cybersecurity estimated at US$15.2 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$22.3 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 6.6% over the analysis period.

Services, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 7.3% CAGR to reach US$10 Billion by the end of the analysis period.

After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Software segment is readjusted to a revised 6.3% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 36.1% share of the global Industrial Cybersecurity market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the need for remote operations of industrial facilities and production floors across the globe. The major economic impact of this pandemic has compelled businesses to reset their budgets. The `Work from Home` trend required establishment of an array of procedures and security tools for ensuring that industrial facilities can perform remote operations.

For manufacturers, the importance of cybersecurity has grown considerably with industrial companies connecting plant-level devices and software to internet-connected enterprise systems. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has greatly strengthened operations on the plant floor. However, it has also introduced many novel vectors for possible cyberattacks. Increasing movement of data from plants could boost the vulnerability of localized networks.

Such new loopholes are being exploited by criminals for stealing sensitive information such as intellectual property for extortion purposes. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated such kinds of attacks owing to the adoption of `work from home` approach. Home offices lack robust cybersecurity protections. Remote access also provided hackers a wider surface to attack.

Additionally, attackers have also exploited the sense of uncertainty and fear of this pandemic to carry out phishing attacks as well as other kinds of social engineering for tricking users to provide access to various proprietary information and systems. Supply chains, healthcare sector and manufacturing facilities are becoming vulnerable to cyberattacks.

At present, the biggest risk faced by the healthcare sector is phishing attacks wherein attackers employ an array of techniques and tactics for gaining access to private information of people involved.



Amidst heightened cyber threat levels, industries are investing increasingly on deploying a wide range of security solutions like firewalls, antivirus, and intrusion detection systems (IDS) for securing assets, and to prevent any operational disruption due to cyberbreaches. Spending is also on the rise on security appliances and software solutions to ensure security of industrial control system networks, critical infrastructure facilities and data centers.

Rise in government funding and increased spending by organizations to tackle rise in cyber threats will continue to present favorable growth opportunities for the industrial cybersecurity market. The growing adoption of big data, 5G network technology and artificial intelligence in industrial settings will influence market growth in the coming years.

The market will also be impacted by the rising demand for advanced solutions like firewalls, intrusion detection systems and antivirus, as industrial facilities focus on boosting cybersecurity in their units. Routers and Ethernet switches are widely used in industrial cybersecurity market, due to the growing number of security breaches targeting sensitive data in industrial processes and manufacturing operations.

Growing penetration of Internet connectivity, trend towards IIoT, continuous advances in connected systems are all driving use of various components for cybersecurity. With incidents of cyberattacks continuing to grow, vendors are focusing efforts on the development of advanced hardware with enhanced security features. Demand for various components will also benefit from the rising number of connected devices and remotely managed industrial systems.



Key Topics Covered:



I. METHODOLOGY



II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



1. MARKET OVERVIEW

Shift towards Digital Technologies Enhances Prospects for Cybersecurity Technologies & Solutions

COVID-19 Outbreak Heightens Cyber Risk for Industrial Control Systems, Driving Need for Cybersecurity Solutions

Potential Threats to Industrial Facilities during the Pandemic

An Introduction to Industrial Cybersecurity

Global Market Prospects & Outlook

Application Security Segment Poised for High Growth

Power Industry Emerges as the Largest End-Use Market

Developed Regions Lead the Global Industrial Cybersecurity Market

Competition

Recent Market Activity

2. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS (Total 98 Featured)

ABB Group

Bayshore Networks, Inc.

Broadcom, Inc.

Cisco Systems, Inc.

CyberX

Forescout Technologies, Inc.

Honeywell International, Inc.

IBM Corporation

Tenable, Inc.

Kaspersky Lab

McAfee LLC

Rockwell Automation, Inc.

Schneider Electric S.A.

3. MARKET TRENDS & DRIVERS

Notable Trends in Industrial Cybersecurity Market

Increasing Threats of Cyberattacks on Industrial Control Systems Fuels Market Growth

Market Benefits from the Rapidly Growing Magnitude and Increasing Cost of Cybercrime in Industries

Rapid Growth in Number of Connected Devices and Increasing IoT Adoption in Industrial Control Systems Enhance Need for Effective Cybersecurity Solutions

Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Continues to Gain Prominence

Leading Sources of ICS Computer Attacks

Poor Security Measures Primarily Responsible for Most ICS Cyberattacks

Could Automation in ICS Security Combat Cyberattacks

IT-OT Convergence Exposes Networks to Targeted Attacks, Necessitating Deployment of Cybersecurity Solutions

Rising Use of AI Solutions for Industrial Cybersecurity Data

With 5G Devices Poised for Commercialization, Cybersecurity Assumes Criticality

Rising Threat of Disruptionware Attacks on Industrial Systems

With Windows 7 Reaching End of Life in 2020, Industrial Systems with Outdated OS Vulnerable to Cyberattacks

Amidst Rapidly Changing and Evolving Cyber Threats, Energy Sector Adopts Cybersecurity Solutions to Enhance Security

COVID-19-Led Digitalization Trend Drives Need for Robust Cybersecurity Measures in Energy Sector

As a Prime Target for Cyber Criminals, Power Sector Witnesses High Demand for Cybersecurity Solutions

Threat of Cyberattacks on the US Electric Power Sector: Assessing the Impact of Attacks by Various Actors for Power Utilities

Evolution of Cyberattacks on Industrial Control Systems in Power Sector: A Historical Timeline

IT/OT Convergence Brings Forth Cybersecurity Gaps in Manufacturing Industry

Chemical Processing Industry at High Risk of Cyber Crimes, Driving Need for Cybersecurity Solutions

With Transportation Systems Worldwide Facing High Risk of Cyberattacks, the Need for Effective Cybersecurity Solutions Grows

Rising Risk of Cyber Threats in Auto Industry: An Opportunity for Cybersecurity Vendors

As Threat of Cyberattacks on Industrial HazMat Safety Grows, Cybersecurity Comes into the Spotlight

Rising Threat of Cyberattacks Raises Importance of Cybersecurity in Oil & Gas Industry

Healthcare Networks Confront Growing Threat of Cyberattacks

Pandemic Highlights the Imperative Need for Cybersecurity Solutions in Healthcare Industry

Increased Government Funding to Address Cybersecurity Breaches Supports Industrial Cybersecurity Market

Emergence of Cyber-Physical Attacks on Critical Infrastructure Raises Importance of Cybersecurity

Outsourcing of Cybersecurity Operations Enhances Effectiveness and Value of Security Measures

Threat of Cybersecurity Breaches: A Growing Concern for Small Manufacturers

Shift towards Smart Factories and the Potential Risk of Cyberattacks Fuels Importance of Cybersecurity for Intelligent Factories

Cyberattacks on Industrial Sector Become Increasingly Destructive

As SCADA Assumes Significance in Critical Infrastructure, Cybersecurity Concerns Come into Spotlight

Industrial Cybersecurity as a Service (ICSaaS): The Future of Industrial Cybersecurity

Internet Opens Up a Range of Online Security Issues for Industries, Bringing to Light the Importance of Cybersecurity

Transforming Industrial Digital Capabilities Necessitate Adoption of New Industrial Cybersecurity Strategies

Compliance with Government Regulations Drives Adoption of Industrial Cybersecurity Solutions

Innovative Solutions Transform Industrial Cybersecurity Market

Industrial Cybersecurity Vs Traditional Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Standards and Frameworks: Pivotal Role in Implementation of Effective Cybersecurity in Industrial Facilities

Challenges Facing Industrial Cybersecurity Market

4. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE



III. REGIONAL MARKET ANALYSIS

IV. COMPETITION

Total Companies Profiled: 98

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/z17871

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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DUBLIN, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Industrial Robots Market 2021-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global industrial robots market is anticipated to register growth at a CAGR of 10.35% through the projected period of 2021-2028.



Factors such as rising R&D investments in robots, rising adoption of industrial robots, and emerging smart factories are stimulating the growth of the studied market. Robots are widely adopted in the F&B industry as they comply with stringent hygiene regulations, meeting growing demand. Additionally, the employment of cobots in workplaces, coupled with the implementation of AI in industrial robots, creates new opportunities for the industrial robots market.



However, the high cost, lack of skilled labor, and resistance among employees are restricting the development of the industrial robots market to a large extent.



The global industrial robots market covers North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa regions.



Globally, the Asia-Pacific is likely to witness the fastest growth in the industrial robots market over the forecasted period. The region is among the strongest market for industrial robots as governments are investing heavily in robotics and AI research. As a result, AI, high investments, and tax incentives at the national level have paved the way for robot adoption across various industries. Among major industries, robots are widely adopted in the electrical and electronics industry. Several manufacturers opt for robotic automation to improve productivity and output quality, which drives the progression of the industrial robots market across the region.



The major companies in the industrial robots market include Nachi Fujikoshi Corporation, Kuka AG, Rethink Robotics, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd, Omron Adept, ABB Ltd, Schunk GmbH, Fanuc Corporation, Universal Robots, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Staubli International AG, Rockwell Automation Inc, Aurotek Corporation, Yamaha Robotics, and Seiko Epson Corporation.



ABB Ltd is a global provider of power and automation technologies. It offers products, systems, solutions, and services to enhance productivity, increase power reliability, and improve energy efficiency. Additionally, it provides digitally connected industrial equipment and systems to consumers across transport, utilities, and infrastructure industries, among others. ABB has operations across Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, North America, and Middle East and Africa. It is headquartered in Switzerland.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Global Industrial Robots Market - Summary



2. Industry Outlook

2.1. Impact of Covid-19 on Industrial Robots Market

2.2. Key Insights

2.2.1. Growing Industrial IoT 4.0

2.2.2. Use of Robots to Reduce Carbon Footprint

2.2.3. Incorporating Human-Robot Interaction in Industrial Robots

2.3. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

2.3.1. Threat of New Entrants

2.3.2. Threat of Substitutes

2.3.3. Bargaining Power of Buyers

2.3.4. Bargaining Power of Suppliers

2.3.5. Threat of Competitive Rivalry

2.4. Market Attractiveness Index

2.5. Vendor Scorecard

2.6. Key Market Strategies

2.6.1. Contracts & Agreements

2.6.2. Product Launches

2.6.3. Investments & Expansions

2.7. Market Drivers

2.7.1. Rising R&D Investments in Robots

2.7.2. Increasing Adoption of Industrial Robots

2.7.3. Emerging Smart Factories

2.8. Market Challenges

2.8.1. Scarcity of Skilled Workforce

2.8.2. Resistance Among Employees

2.8.3. High Cost of Industrial Robots

2.9. Market Opportunities

2.9.1. Employing Cobots in Workplaces

2.9.2. Adoption of Autonomous Mobile Robots (Amrs)

2.9.3. Utilization of Ai in Industrial Robots



3. Global Industrial Robots Market Outlook - by Type

3.1. Articulated Robots

3.2. Cartesian Robots

3.3. Scara Robots

3.4. Cylindrical Robots

3.5. Other Robots



4. Global Industrial Robots Market Outlook - by Application

4.1. Material Handling

4.2. Assembling & Disassembling

4.3. Welding & Soldering

4.4. Dispensing

4.5. Processing

4.6. Other Applications



5. Global Industrial Robots Market Outlook - by Verticals

5.1. Automotive

5.2. Electronic & Electric

5.3. Machinery Products & Metal

5.4. Chemical, Plastics, & Rubber

5.5. Food & Beverage

5.6. Other Verticals



6. Global Industrial Robots Market - Regional Outlook

7. Competitive Landscape

7.1. Abb Ltd

7.2. Aurotek Corporation

7.3. Fanuc Corporation

7.4. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd

7.5. Kuka AG

7.6. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

7.7. Nachi Fujikoshi Corporation

7.8. Omron Adept

7.9. Rethink Robotics

7.10. Rockwell Automation Inc

7.11. Schunk GmbH

7.12. Seiko Epson Corporation

7.13. Staubli International AG

7.14. Universal Robots

7.15. Yamaha Robotics



8. Research Methodology & Scope



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/529nk5

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


COVINGTON, Ky., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gravity Diagnostics, a leader in COVID-19 and other innovative laboratory testing, has partnered with the Commonwealth of Kentucky to provide reliable, convenient and quick-turnaround COVID-19 PCR testing in Florence, Kentucky. This newest drive-thru location is in the old Sears building at the Florence Mall, which is located at 2028 Florence Mall. The drive-thru is open Monday through Friday from 3 pm to 9 pm.

The launch of this new and exciting site could not have happened without the strong support of the Mayor of the City of Florence, Florence Mall management, the local fire and police departments, and the Northern Kentucky Health Department.

"Our Florence Mall location is ideal for individuals who need to get a COVID-19 test after work or school hours," says Brian Lawrence, General Manager and Chief Technology Officer of Gravity Diagnostics. Lawrence added, "It's also our only drive-thru site located in a covered building so it's less likely to close due to weather."

Gravity has also opened 25 other drive-thru sites within the past year in Kentucky and Indiana. All COVID-19 testing sites are open to anyone and there is no appointment necessary. You can view all testing site locations and schedules at this website page.

"We want to give everyone the chance to get back to their normal lives. Our goal is to provide widespread access to reliable and free COVID-19 gold standard PCR testing services," said Tony Remington, CEO and co-founder of Gravity Diagnostics.

For live updates on drive-thrus and to track weather closures for other sites, please follow Gravity on Twitter.

About Gravity Diagnostics

Gravity Diagnostics is a state-of-the-art CAP-accredited and CLIA-certified laboratory licensed in all 50 states providing innovative laboratory testing in the areas of COVID-19, upper respiratory, toxicology, pharmacogenomics, sexually transmitted infections, and blood hematology. We are an advocate for physicians, patients, and our communities, supporting them with unsurpassed integrity, regulatory compliance, and clinical expertise. Gravity currently serves over 1,000 customers from small private practices to universities to Fortune 500 companies. Learn more at gravitydiagnostics.com.

Contact: [email protected]



SOURCE Gravity Diagnostics

Related Links

https://www.gravitydiagnostics.com/


The Co-Founder of EDGE Sound Research, Ethan Castro, invented this new format of sound reproduction by learning how to compensate for his hearing loss. Working as a hard-of-hearing audio engineer in Los Angeles, Ethan touches the diaphragms of speakers to feel the frequencies allowing him to have a more intimate relationship with sound.

To share this experience with others, EDGE Sound Research joined up with J'Bez , a barbershop that just opened a new location on campus at University of California, Riverside (UCR). Since EDGE Sound Research started at UCR, both founders saw this as an opportunity to share the next evolution in sound experiences with their alma mater.

The barbershop features a handcrafted audio system by EDGE Sound Research that provides an immersive and full-bodied sound experience that captivates the interest of customers as soon as they walk into the shop.

Sharing his vision for the retail sound experience, Ethan explains,"We wanted to create a one-of-a-kind experience for them that allowed their customers to enjoy incredible high fidelity sound wherever they were in the facility, but still be able to enjoy a conversation with their talented barbers. We also wanted to give a balls-to-the-wall experiment of what is capable, so we hooked them up with the worlds most brutal custom sound bar featuring 8 balanced mode radiators (BMR) which, combined with our ResonX-powered custom couch, delivers up to 800 watts of full-range tactile and audible experience to unsuspecting clients waiting for their cut."

Sharing his thoughts on the new sound experience, Co-Founder of J'Bez, Gerson Lemus, commented, "It's one of the best features of our new shop and we love explaining it to people. The reaction we get when customers experience it for the first time is our favorite part. It's exciting knowing we have an exclusive audio system from EDGE Sound Research in our business."

EDGE Sound Research looks forward to creating more sound experiences at other retail locations while gearing up to launch public sales of their first product, ResonX.

Media Details

Company: EDGE Sound Research

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://edgesoundresearch.com/

SOURCE EDGE Sound Research

Related Links

www.edgesoundresearch.com


AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Harte Hanks, Inc. (OTCQX: HRTH), a leading global customer experience company, today announced that it will release financial results for the third quarter ending September 30, 2021 on Thursday, November 11, 2021 after the close of the market.

Management will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss these results on the same day at 4:30 p.m. ET. To access the live call, please dial (888) 506-0059 (toll free) or (973) 528-0048 and if requested, reference conference ID 663451. The conference call will also be webcast live in the Investors Events section of the Harte Hanks website https://investors.hartehanks.com/.

Following the conclusion of the live call, a telephonic replay will be available for 72 hours by dialing (877) 481-4010 or (919) 882-2331 and using the replay passcode 43515. The replay will also be available for at least 90 days in the Investors Events section of the Harte Hanks website.

About Harte Hanks:

Harte Hanks (OTCMKTS: HRTH) is a leading global customer experience company whose mission is to partner with clients to provide them with CX strategy, data-driven analytics and actionable insights combined with seamless program execution to better understand, attract, and engage their customers.

Using its unparalleled resources and award-winning talent in the areas of Customer Care, Fulfillment and Logistics, and Marketing Services, Harte Hanks has a proven track record since 1923 of driving results for some of the world's premier brands including Bank of America, GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, Pfizer, HBOMax, Volvo, Ford, FedEx, Midea, Sony, and IBM among others. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Harte Hanks has over 2,000 employees in offices across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.

As used herein, "Harte Hanks" or "the Company" refers to Harte Hanks, Inc. and/or its applicable operating subsidiaries, as the context may require. Harte Hanks' logo and name are trademarks of Harte Hanks.

Investor Relations Contact:

Rob Fink

FNK IR

[email protected]

646-809-4048

SOURCE Harte Hanks, Inc.

Related Links

www.hartehanks.com


LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Heifer USA, the U.S. program of global development organization Heifer International, today announced its new status as an accredited Savory Global Network Hub with the Savory Institute, furthering the organization's role in bringing science backed methods to improve regenerative, small-scale farms. The accreditation qualifies Heifer USA's Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas to serve as a training, learning and demonstration site for the Savory Institute's Holistic Management framework, cementing the organization's overall commitment to ecosystem health and the fight against climate change.

"The training and services Heifer International provides to farmers are key to building effective systems that can be replicated over time," said Heifer International President and CEO Pierre Ferrari. "Joining the Savory Global Network enhances our efforts to transform agriculture's relationship with the natural environment in the United States and our responsibility as global land stewards to create local solutions to land degradation."

The announcement follows President Joe Biden's speech at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the UN Climate Change Conference, which emphasized the vitality of "farmers who will not only help fight global hunger but will also use the soil to fight climate change." Transitioning the agriculture sector to more regenerative methods will support the U.S.'s commitment to reducing emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030.

"At Heifer USA, we work across the entire ecosystem - from the land to farmers' profits," said Donna Kilpatrick, Heifer Ranch Manager and Land Steward. "As a Savory Hub, Heifer USA is applying best-in-class expertise to the farms and cooperatives it works with across the South and making its knowledge available to more farmers across the country. By showcasing the financial and social benefits of regenerative agriculture for farmers and their communities, we are promoting green jobs and sustainable development."

As one of 33 accredited Savory Hubs across the globe, Heifer USA is establishing itself as a best-in-class agriculture institution that is uniquely positioned to transform rural Arkansas and America's heartland into thriving, self-sustaining communities. Heifer USA will be instrumental in scaling up regenerative agriculture to meet U.S. climate commitments, training farmers across the country in methods that will generate healthy farmland, while creating more economically viable farm businesses that connect farmers with new markets. By deploying the Savory Institute's Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) monitoring protocol, Heifer USA is using Heifer Ranch as a training and testing site and supporting other farms to validate landscape and soil health improvement.

"Having been in partnership with Heifer International for nearly a decade, it is a great joy and privilege for the Savory Institute to welcome Heifer Ranch to our global network of Hubs," said CEO and Co-Founder of Savory Institute, Daniela Ibarra-Howell. "Their dedication to regenerative agriculture through Holistic Management and their excellence in the implementation of their educational and market programs will be invaluable to their community. Furthermore, it will serve as inspiration to the whole regenerative movement, demonstrating a robust and authentic grassroots model that meets the local needs while addressing the global food and climate crises."

Heifer USA aims to be able to show that Grass Roots Farmers' Cooperative, which the organization helped establish, is tracking regeneratively across all farms and to label some Grass Roots products with the Savory Institute's Land to Market certification that indicates it was sourced from verified regenerating land. Four members of the Heifer Ranch team are now trained in EOV to do short and long-term monitoring of soil and landscape health on other farms. Kilpatrick is accredited in Holistic Management, equipping her to host other farmers at Heifer Ranch to learn holistic land management, holistic planned grazing and holistic financial planning. Heifer USA will host its first group EOV training in spring 2022 and has already started EOV testing at other farms.

About Heifer USA

Heifer USA works with small-scale farmers to help transform their farms into strong, community-focused businesses that support their families and spark economic growth in rural America. With hands-on learning and access to livestock and horticulture experts at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, Heifer USA teaches farmers how to grow sustainable farm enterprises and connect to steady markets, while caring for the Earth.

About the Savory Institute

The Savory Institute, a U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable organization, facilitates large-scale regeneration of the world's grasslands through Holistic Management. Together with Savory's global network of Hubs, the Savory Institute equips farmers and ranchers around the world with education, training, and implementation support to achieve success within their cultural and ecological contexts. Savory Institute also removes barriers and creates enhanced conditions for large-scale progress by informing policy, engaging the marketplace, and increasing public awareness. Savory's long-term goal is to positively influence the management of 1 billion hectares of grasslands by 2025, thereby contributing to global climate, water- and food-security.

SOURCE Heifer Project International

Related Links

http://www.heifer.org


The first lesson in the limited series will center around the three R's (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), and will premiere on Henkel's YouTube channel at 6 p.m., ET, on November 8, and available on demand afterward. Tune in on the second Monday of each month through January for additional lessons at 6 p.m. or view on demand afterwards. Participants can access the lesson and view the experiment materials needed on Henkel's website. Lessons are free and no registration is required.

The series is part of Henkel's signature education initiative Henkel Researchers' World, launched in North America in spring 2021. The lessons, presented in partnership with Mill River Park Collaborative, are specifically tailored to children ages 8 to 10, and take a holistic approach toward teaching and learning by putting children in the role of an actual researcher. Since its inauguration at Henkel's Dusseldorf headquarters in April 2011, more than 62,000 children around the world have taken part in Henkel's Researchers' World programs.

"We're pleased to continue to grow our Henkel Researchers' World program here in North America, to help inspire the next generation of scientists in our communities. STEM Day is the perfect opportunity to launch our new virtual series, expanding access opportunities online with unique science lessons each month," said Jenny Schiavone, Vice President Corporate Communications Americas, and co-executive sponsor of Henkel Researchers' World in North America. "We invite all parents, relatives, neighbors and friends, with children ages 8-10, to join in on this free and fun scientific educational opportunity."

To learn more about Henkel Researchers' World, as well as Henkel North America's broader commitments to sustainability, please visit Henkel's dedicated sustainability webpage.

About Henkel in North America

In North America, Henkel operates across its three business units: Adhesive Technologies, Beauty Care, and Laundry & Home Care. Its portfolio of well-known consumer and industrial brands includes Schwarzkopf hair care, Dial soaps, Persil, Purex, and all laundry detergents, Snuggle fabric softeners as well as Loctite, Technomelt and Bonderite adhesives. With sales of around 6 billion US dollars (5 billion euros) in 2020, North America accounts for 27 percent of the company's global sales. Henkel employs approximately 9,000 people across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.henkel-northamerica.com, and on Twitter @Henkel_NA.

About Henkel

Henkel operates globally with a well-balanced and diversified portfolio. The company holds leading positions with its three business units in both industrial and consumer businesses thanks to strong brands, innovations and technologies. Henkel Adhesive Technologies is the global leader in the adhesives market  across all industry segments worldwide. In its Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care businesses, Henkel holds leading positions in many markets and categories around the world. Founded in 1876, Henkel looks back on more than 140 years of success. In 2020, Henkel reported sales of more than 19 billion euros and adjusted operating profit of about 2.6 billion euros. Henkel employs about 53,000 people globally  a passionate and highly diverse team, united by a strong company culture, a common purpose to create sustainable value, and shared values. As a recognized leader in sustainability, Henkel holds top positions in many international indices and rankings. Henkel's preferred shares are listed in the German stock index DAX. For more information, please visit www.henkel.com.

Photo material is available at www.henkel-northamerica.com/press

Contact Brian Godette Phone 860-471-4762 Email [email protected]

SOURCE Henkel
SAVANNAH, Ga., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Heritage Capital Group is pleased to announce that its client, Celia Dunn Sotheby's International Realty ("Celia Dunn" or "the Company"), has been acquired by Daniel Ravenel Sotheby's International Realty. The merger combines two exceptionally successful real estate agencies, located in coastal Georgia and South Carolina, which will provide clients with unparalleled access to the Lowcountry's luxury real estate market.

Celia Dunn Sotheby's International Realty has been acquired by Daniel Ravenel Sotheby's International Realty

Celia Dunn founded her real estate firm, Celia W. Dunn Realty, in 1981 as the sole principal broker and salesperson in Savannah, Georgia. Her husband, J. Laurence "Larry" Dunn, joined the agency the next year in 1982, and, together, they grew the firm to include over 80 agents and expanded to two additional offices located in Bluffton and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. In 2006, Celia W. Dunn Realty affiliated with Sotheby's International Realty as a franchisee which further strengthened the Company's position by combining its local success with the international marketing and referral power of the Sotheby's brand.

The Daniel Ravenel Real Estate Company was founded in 1983 in Charleston, South Carolina, and in 2007 became Daniel Ravenel Sotheby's International Realty when the firm became an affiliate of the Sotheby's brand. The firm continues to serve the Lowcountry and has closed over $2 billion in real estate sales, all without litigation.

The Sotheby's International Realty brand was created in 1976 and boasts a worldwide network of 24,000 sales associates in 74 countries, focused on the luxury real estate market.

Bill Skinner, a principal at Heritage Capital Group, served as the exclusive financial advisor to Celia Dunn.

"I was impressed with Bill Skinner's ability to manage the sale of our great company from start to finish in such a professional manner," commented Celia Dunn. "It gave us the comfort and confidence that the sale would be a success for all parties involved. If you are considering the sale of your company, I would highly recommend that you trust your transaction with Bill and the Heritage team."

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Media Contact:

Katie Quackenbush

Heritage Capital Group

[email protected]

904-354-9600

SOURCE Heritage Capital Group
NEW YORK and TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. ("iAnthus" or the "Company") (CSE: IAN) (OTCPK: ITHUF), which owns, operates and partners with regulated cannabis operations across the United States provides an update with respect to the Company's Annual General Meeting. As disclosed in the Company's news release dated June 16, 2021, the BC Registrar of Companies (the "BC Registrar") granted a further extension extending the deadline to hold the Company's Annual General Meeting for the year 2020 (the "2020 AGM") from June 30, 2021 to October 31, 2021. The BC Registrar has granted the Company a further two-month extension extending the deadline to hold the 2020 AGM from October 31, 2021 to December 31, 2021.

The Company also provides an update on its recapitalization transaction (the "Recapitalization Transaction"). As previously disclosed, securityholder approval and Court approval were two of the primary conditions for closing the Recapitalization Transaction, both of which conditions have been satisfied. The closing of the Recapitalization Transaction remains subject to certain closing conditions as set forth in the Restructuring Support Agreement dated July 10, 2020, as amended (the "RSA").

Specifically, certain of the transactions contemplated by the Recapitalization Transaction have triggered the requirement for an approval by state-level regulators in certain U.S. states with jurisdiction over the licensed cannabis operations of entities owned, in whole or in part or controlled directly or indirectly, by iAnthus in such states.

As disclosed in the Company's news release dated October 13, 2021, regulatory approvals in Florida, Massachusetts, New York and Maryland necessary to close the Recapitalization Transaction were outstanding. The Company announces that the Florida Department of Health (Office of Medical Marijuana Use) has by notice dated October 29, 2021 approved the variance request pursuant to section 381.986(8)(e) of the Florida Statutes by the Company's subsidiary, McCrory's Sunny Hill Nursery, LLC (dba GrowHealthy) to approve the change of ownership transactions contemplated by the Recapitalization Transaction. Regulatory approvals in Massachusetts, New York and Maryland are still outstanding.1

About iAnthus

iAnthus owns and operates licensed cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensary facilities throughout the United States. For more information, visit www.iAnthus.com.

COVID-19 Risk Factor

The Company may be impacted by business interruptions resulting from pandemics and public health emergencies, including those related to COVID-19. An outbreak of infectious disease, a pandemic, or a similar public health threat, such as the recent outbreak of COVID-19, or a fear of any of the foregoing could adversely impact the Company by causing operating, manufacturing, supply chain, and project development delays and disruptions, labor shortages, travel, and shipping disruption and shutdowns (including as a result of government regulation and prevention measures). It is unknown whether and how the Company may be affected if such a pandemic persists for an extended period of time, including as a result of the waiver of regulatory requirements or the implementation of emergency regulations to which the Company is subject. Although the Company has been deemed essential and/or has been permitted to continue operating its facilities in the states in which it cultivates, processes, manufactures, and sells cannabis during the pendency of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no assurance that the Company's operations will continue to be deemed essential and/or will continue to be permitted to operate. The Company may incur expenses or delays relating to such events outside of its control, which could have a material adverse impact on its business, operating results, financial condition, and the trading price of the Company's common shares.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this news release contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made on the basis of the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of management, are not guarantees of performance and are subject to significant risks and uncertainty. These forward-looking statements should, therefore, be considered in light of various important factors, including those set forth in Company's reports that it files from time to time with the SEC and the Canadian securities regulators which you should review including, but not limited to, the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. When used in this news release, words such as "will," could," plan," estimate," expect," intend," may," potential," believe, "should" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements relating to the Company's financial performance, business development and results of operations and the timing and outcome of the closing of the Recapitalization Transaction.

These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as predictions of future events, and the Company cannot assure you that the events or circumstances discussed or reflected in these statements will be achieved or will occur. If such forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. You should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by the Company or any other person that it will achieve its objectives and plans in any specified timeframe, or at all. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release. The Company disclaims any obligation to publicly update or release any revisions to these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this news release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

_______________________

1 In New Jersey, a change of control approval is not required at the present time because the Company is awaiting approval by the Cannabis Regulatory Commission ("CRC") for the Company to close its acquisition of 100% of the equity interests in New Jersey license holder MPX New Jersey, LLC ("MPX NJ"), pursuant to certain contractual agreements (the "Agreements", and the approval application before the CRC, the "Amended Permit Application"). Upon any such approval thereof and the closing of the acquisition of all equity interests of MPX NJ within no later than five (5) business days thereafter, as set forth in the Agreements, a prior regulatory approval for the change of beneficial ownership of MPXNJ that would result from the Recapitalization Transaction will be required as a condition to closing under the RSA.

SOURCE iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.ianthus.com/


CHICAGO, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A settlement has been reached in a class action antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs with Defendants Tyson Foods, Inc., Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc., Tyson Prepared Foods, Inc., and the Hillshire Brands Company ("Tyson" or "Settling Defendants"). The Settlement requires Tyson to pay $1,750,000. There will be no payments to the Settlement Class at this time. You will be notified later of an opportunity to file a claim. Before any money is paid, the Court will hold a hearing to decide whether to approve the Settlement.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois authorized this notice. This Court ordered notice may affect your rights. Please read this notice carefully.

WHO IS INCLUDED?

For settlement purposes, members of the Settlement Class are defined as all commercial and institutional purchasers in the United States and its territories that purchased turkey, once or more, other than directly from Defendants, entities owned or controlled by Defendants, or other producers of turkey, from January 1, 2010 to January 1, 2017, products in the United States and its territories. Excluded from the Class are the Court and its personnel, and any Defendants and their parent or subsidiary companies.

For purposes of the Settlement, "Turkey" means turkey meat, which may be sold in a variety of forms, including fresh or frozen, ground or parts, and raw or cooked. "Turkey" includes, but is not limited to, the following products: breasts, wings, drums, legs, thighs, tenderloins, necks, tails, gizzards, feet, trim, tenders, mechanically separated turkey ("MST"), ground turkey, and further processed and value-added turkey products such as lunch meat, deli meat, sausage, franks, bacon, and corn dogs.

If you are not sure you are included, you can get more information, including a detailed notice, at www.TurkeyCommercialCase.com or by calling toll-free 1-800-403-3089.

WHAT IS THIS LAWSUIT ABOUT?



Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs allege that Defendants and their co-conspirators conspired and combined to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the price of Turkey, from January 1, 2010 to January 1, 2017, in the United States and its territories with the intent and expected result of increasing prices of Turkey in the United States, in violation of federal antitrust laws and various state antitrust, consumer protection, and unjust enrichment laws. Tyson denies it did anything wrong. The Court did not decide which side was right, but both sides agreed to the Settlement to resolve the case and get benefits to the Settlement Class. The case is still proceeding on behalf of the Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs against other Defendants who may be subject to separate settlements, judgments, or class certification orders.

WHAT DOES THE SETTLEMENT PROVIDE?



The Settlement Agreement provides that Tyson will pay $1,750,000 to resolve all Settlement Class members' claims against Tyson for the Released Claims (as defined in the Settlement Agreement). In addition to this monetary benefit, Tyson has also agreed to provide specified cooperation in the Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs' continued prosecution of the litigation. No money will be distributed at this time. Settlement Class Counsel will continue to pursue the lawsuit against the other Defendants. Settlement Class Counsel may request that the Court award attorneys' fees, permit the reimbursement of certain litigation costs and expenses, set aside funds for future expenses, and grant the class representatives service awards. If such a request is made, it will be filed at least fourteen days before the objection deadline and posted on the Settlement Website www.TurkeyCommercialCase.com. Settlement Class Counsel intend to ask the Court at a later date for attorneys' fees in relation to possible future settlements based on their services in this litigation, but Settlement Class Counsel do not intend to request an award of attorneys' fees in relation to this Settlement. In relation to this Settlement, Settlement Class Counsel will request a future expense set-aside not to exceed 50% of the Settlement Fund and may ask to be reimbursed for existing costs not to exceed $200,000. All Settlement funds that remain after payment of the Court ordered attorneys' fees, costs, expenses, and service awards will be distributed at the conclusion of the lawsuit or as ordered by the Court. You will be notified later, if and when there is an opportunity to make a claim to receive a payment.

WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS AND OPTIONS?



You do not need to take any action to remain a member of the Settlement Class and be bound by the Settlement Agreement. As a Settlement Class member, you may be able to participate in (or exclude yourself from) any future settlements or judgments obtained by Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs against other Defendants in the case.

If you do not want to be legally bound by the Settlement Agreement, you must exclude yourself. Your exclusion request must be postmarked by January 4, 2022, or you will not be able to sue or continue to sue Settling Defendants for the Released Claims (as defined in the Settlement Agreement). If you exclude yourself, you cannot get money from the Settlement. If you do not exclude yourself from the Settlement Class, you may object to the Settlement. Your objection must be postmarked by January 4, 2022. The detailed notice explains how to exclude yourself or object. Details may also be found on the FAQs page of the Settlement Website www.TurkeyCommercialCase.com.

While this Settlement is only with Settling Defendants at this time, the Settlement Class includes all commercial and institutional purchasers of Turkey products (as defined in the Settlement Agreement) who purchased the products other than directly from Defendants, entities owned or controlled by Defendants, or other producers of Turkey products. If you are a member of the Settlement Class and do not exclude yourself, you may be eligible to participate in (or exclude yourself from) any additional settlements which may arise with any other Defendants in the case.

The Court will hold a hearing in this case Sandee's Catering, et al. v. Agri Stats, Inc. et al., (Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Actions), Case No. 1:20-cv-02295 (N.D. Ill.) on February 22, 2022, at 10:00 a.m., via video conference to consider whether to approve the Settlement Agreement. You may ask to speak at the hearing, but you do not have to.

This notice is a summary only. You can find more details about the Settlement at www.TurkeyCommercialCase.com or by calling toll-free 1-800-403-3089. Please do not contact the Court.

SOURCE United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
"This PFS confirms that the Livengood Gold Project is the one of the largest, highly leveraged gold projects in North America. This study is the culmination of years of work and greatly enhances our understanding of the deposit. We have now thoroughly evaluated, optimized, and de-risked all major elements of the Project and have an excellent foundation on which to build shareholder value. International Tower Hill's estimated 13.6 million ounces, together with our favorable jurisdiction and proximity to infrastructure, offers our investors great leverage to the gold price," said Karl Hanneman, CEO.

The Company invites you to attend a conference call and webcast hosted by CEO Karl Hanneman to discuss the Company and this news release.

Conference Call & Webcast Details:

Date: November 5, 2021 at 12:00 pm ET Webcast: https://services.choruscall.com/links/thm211105.html North American callers: 1-877-270-2148 International callers: 1-412-902-6510

Pre-Feasibility Study Overview

The Project configuration evaluated in the PFS is a conventional, owner-operated surface mine that will utilize large-scale mining equipment in a blast/load/haul operation. Mill feed would be processed in a 65,000 tons per day comminution circuit consisting of primary and secondary crushing, wet grinding in a single semi-autogenous (SAG) mill and single ball mill followed by a gravity gold circuit and a conventional carbon in leach (CIL) circuit.

Whittle Enterprise Optimization

Prior to beginning the PFS, the Company retained Whittle Engineering and BBA Engineering to collaborate on an enterprise optimization study (the "Whittle and BBA Study") to review various technologies and project configurations and to recommend the optimum configuration for the PFS. The Whittle and BBA Study reviewed secondary crushing with SAG and ball mill, tertiary crushing with ball mill, gravity/CIL at P 80 of 90 micron to 250 micron, stand-alone and auxiliary heap leach configurations, gravity only gold recovery, gravity/flotation with pressure oxidation and CIL of flotation concentrate. These configurations were evaluated at various combinations of project ramp up strategy, annual throughput, primary, secondary, and tertiary grind size, as well as mining fleet size and stockpile management strategies. Tailings technologies reviewed included conventional tailings and pressure filtered tailings.

The Whittle and BBA Study determined that the gravity/CIL plant at P 80 250 micron with conventional tailings provided the highest NPV, which is the configuration detailed in the PFS.

Pre-Feasibility Study Summary

The PFS was prepared by independent third-party consultants and provides information on the optimized Project with higher throughput, an updated resource estimate, and capital and operating cost estimates as compared to the project evaluated in the National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") April 2017 Technical Report (the "2017 Report"). The final version of the NI 43-101 technical report containing the PFS will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days. As a result of the changes to the Project as evaluated in the PFS, including differences in the mineral resource estimation methodology and changes to the economic parameters applied to the geologic block model (gold price, recovery, CAPEX, and OPEX), all of which resulted in a change in the mineral resources, the Project as evaluated in the 2017 Report is no longer considered current and the 2017 Report should therefore not be relied upon by investors.

The Company cautions that the PFS is preliminary in nature, and is based on technical and economic assumptions which would be further refined and evaluated in a full feasibility study. The PFS is based on an updated Project mineral resource estimate effective as of August 20, 2021 using a different mineral resource model than what was used in the 2017 Report.

The following is a summary of the material aspects and assumptions of the PFS. Investors are urged to review the complete NI 43-101 report following its filing on SEDAR for complete details of the PFS.

The engineering design to estimate capital costs used in the PFS are within a -20%/+25% accuracy.

Project Location

The Project is connected by an existing paved highway to the city of Fairbanks, 70 miles to the southwest in central Alaska. The Project is located in an active mining district that has been mined for gold since 1914. The State of Alaska land use plan designates mining as the primary surface land use for the area in which the Project is located. Employees would be bussed daily to the site from Fairbanks.

Infrastructure

The Project would include a lined tailings management facility, an administration office/shop/warehouse complex, and would also include construction of a 50-mile 230kV electrical transmission line to the mine site from the existing grid power near Fairbanks, Alaska.

Environmental and Community Relations

Twelve continuous years of baseline environmental work continues to indicate that all aspects of the Project can be successfully and safely managed. The design of the tailings facility incorporates best practices including a lined rock fill structure with a lined tailings basin. The Project development team has considerable experience working with Alaska's large mine permitting process and has a proven and respected track record of developing mining projects safely and in an environmentally sound manner. The Project has already and will continue to provide local economic opportunities with local access to a highly skilled and available work force. The Company is also working to seek early input on the Project and to explore ways to maximize economic benefits to the local communities.

Summary of Results of the 65,000 Tons Per Day PFS



OPERATING METRICS 2021 PFS



Mill Throughput 65,000 tons/day

Head Grade  Year 1-5(1) 0.79 g/tonne

Head Grade  LOM(1) 0.65 g/tonne

Gold Recovery  LOM 71.4 %

Mine Life 21 years

Total Ounces Produced 6,430,178 Troy ounces

Average Annual Production  Year 1-5 388,600 Troy ounces

Average Annual Production  LOM 306,200 Troy ounces

Total Ore Processed 474 Million tons

Total Waste(2) 547 Million tons

Annual Mining Rate 52 Million tons

Waste Rock to Mill Ore (ton) Ratio  LOM during production 0.98:1 Waste to Ore

Waste Rock to Mill Ore (ton) Ratio  LOM 1.15:1 Waste to Ore

Low Grade Stockpile  Total Placed/Maximum Size 105/88 Million tons (1) Diluted grade

(2) Includes 84 million tons pre-production



FINANCIAL METRICS 2021 PFS US$

CAPEX  Initial 1.93 $Billion

CAPEX  Sustaining 658 $Million

Reclamation & Closure 322 $Million

OPEX  Mining 2.05 $/ton mined

OPEX  Processing 7.72 $/ton ore

OPEX  General &Administrative (G&A) 1.35 $/ton ore

OPEX - Operating Cost  Year 1-5 887 $/Ounce

OPEX - Operating Cost  LOM 1,068 $/Ounce

All-In Sustaining Cost of Production  Year 1-5 1,038 $/Ounce

All-In Sustaining Cost of Production  LOM 1,171 $/Ounce









Gold Price Sensitivity Analysis

The following table shows the average annual free cash flow and EBIDTA generated by the Project at various gold prices.

(US$M) FREE CASH FLOW EBIDTA Gold Price

($/Oz) Average Annual

(Year 1-5) Average Annual

(LOM) Average Annual

(Year 1-5) Average Annual

(LOM) $1,500 $159 $108 $229 $142 $1,680 PFS

Base Case $225 $154 $296 $197 $1,800 $269 $184 $342 $234 $2,000 $332 $232 $417 $295 $2,500 $482 $349 $605 $449

The following table shows the after-tax economics at various gold prices.

Gold Price ($/Oz) AFTER TAX

NPV 0% ($M) AFTER TAX

NPV 5% ($M) IRR (%) Payback (Years) $1,500 $202 ($512) 1.00% 16.2 $1,680 (PFS Base

Case) $1,137 $45 5.30% 10.4 $1,800 $1,741 $400 7.70% 8.2 $2,000 $2,729 $975 11.20% 6.3 $2,500 $5,102 $2,351 18.50% 3.9

Capital Costs



Key capital expenditures for initial and sustaining capital requirements are identified in the following table.



US$ Million Description Initial Sustaining Process Facilities $433

Infrastructure Facilities 459 $514 Power Supply 87

Mine Equipment 200 139 Mine Development 230

Owners Costs 296 5 Contingency 220

Total $1,925 $658

Rounding of some figures may lead to minor discrepancies in totals.

All-in Sustaining Costs

The table below highlights the all-in sustaining costs and the all-in cost over the life of the Project:





Year 1-5 LOM



US$/Ounce US$ Million US$/Ounce US$ Million

Operating Costs $887 $1,724 $1,068 $6,870

Sustaining Capital Expenditures 151 292 102 658

All-In Sustaining Costs(1) $1,038 $2,016 $1,171 $7,529

Capital Expenditures (2) (3) 0 0 299 1,925

Funding of Reclamation Trust Fund (4) 30 58 42 268

All-In Costs(1) $1,068 $2,075 $1,512 $9,722 Rounding of some figures may lead to minor discrepancies in totals.

















(1) All-In Sustaining Costs and All-In-Costs are non-IFRS

measures. See reference to "Non-IFRS Measures" below. (3) Excludes US$40 million of recoverable initial stores

inventory. (2) Includes initial capital expenditures only. (4) Total US$322 million estimated costs.

Annual Gold Production

The chart below highlights the anticipated production schedule. Total life-of-mine production is anticipated to be 6,430,178 ounces. Mill feed will consist of reclaimed ore from the low-grade stockpile during Years 18 through 21.

Year Mill Feed Grade (g/tonne) Ounces Produced (000) 1 0.76 321 2 0.69 388 3 0.93 482 4 0.93 437 5 0.61 314 6 0.61 328 7 0.64 340 8 0.64 329 9 0.69 357 10 0.58 306 11 0.61 296 12 0.72 336 13 0.77 339 14 0.77 322 15 0.71 308 16 0.73 316 17 0.65 293 18 0.36 188 19 0.36 188 20 0.36 188 21 0.37 54 LOM 0.65 6,430 Rounding of some figures may lead to minor discrepancies in totals.

Project Mineral Reserves

The table below presents the Mineral Reserve estimate for the Project (effective as of October 22, 2021). These Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves formed the basis of the economic evaluation of the Project and are based on a gold price of US$1,680 per ounce. The economic assumptions and parameters used for the calculation of reserves are the same as those used for the PFS financial model. Note that tonnages presented are in the metric system.

Livengood Gold Project Mineral Reserve Estimate

Classification Tonnes (Mt) Au (g/tonne) Contained Au

(000's) Proven 411.5 0.64 8,492 Probable 18.5 0.86 512 Total P & P 430.1 0.65 9,004

(1) Mineral Reserves are reported using the 2014 CIM Definition Standards and are estimated in accordance with 2019 CIM Best Practices Guidelines.

(2) Mineral Reserves are estimated using a gold price of US$1,680 per ounce, and consider a 3% royalty, 1.80/oz for smelting, refining, and transportation costs, and a gold payable of 99.9%

(3) Metallurgical recovery curves were developed for each rock type, with the Mineral Reserves having the following tonnage weighted averages; 83.3%, for Rocktype 4, 79.8% for Rocktype 5, 73.5% for Rocktype 6, 66.4% for Rocktype 7, 58.7% for Rocktype 8 and 57.1% for Rocktype 9, including 22% for massive stibnite mineralization.

(4) As a result of the complex metallurgical recovery equations, it is difficult to determine specific cut-off grades. The following presents the lowest gold grades for each rocktype that are processed in the life of mine plan; 0.26 g/t for Rocktype 4, 0.28 g/t for Rocktype 5, 0.31 g/t for Rocktype 6, 0.31 g/t for Rocktype 7 and 0.42 g/t for Rocktype 8 and 0.42 g/t for Rocktype 9.

(5) The strip ratio for the open pit is 1.2 to 1.

(6) The Mineral Reserves are inclusive of mining dilution and ore loss.

(7) The reference point for the Mineral Reserves is the primary crusher.

(8) Totals may not add due to rounding.

(9) The foregoing mineral reserves are based upon and are included within the current mineral resource estimate for the Project.

Project Mineral Resources



The mineral resource estimates set forth in the PFS ("2021 MRE") have been prepared by Resource Development Associates Inc. ("RDA"). Compared to the mineral resource estimates in the 2017 Report, the 2021 MRE included spatial modelling of the occurrence of antimony throughout the deposit as well as modelling of the locations of massive stibnite veins within the deposit. These details add valuable contributions to the reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction of gold for the Project. Gold mineralization has been interpolated into 10 x 10 x 10-meter blocks using inverse distance cubed (ID3) estimation techniques, believed to more conservatively support future production schedules as compared to the 2017 Report, which was based on Multiple Indicator Kriging of 15 x 15 x 10-meter blocks parceled into 7.5 x 7.5 x 10-meter selective mining units.

Table 1 Mineral Resource Estimate  Open Pit Constrained  Economic Parameters at Gold Selling Price of US$1,650 per Troy Ounce. Resources Estimated at Variable Au Cutoff Grades  as described in Table 2

(Qualified Person: Scott Wilson CPG; Effective August 20, 2021)

Classification Tonnes

(Mt) Au (g/t) Contained

Au

(000's) Measured 646.0 0.60 12,482 Indicated 58.5 0.61 1,142 Total M & I 704.5 0.60 13,624 Inferred 16.0 0.40 207

Mineral resources for the Project were determined based upon a combination of 776 reverse circulation and diamond drillholes comprising 147,658 assays of which 125,450 assays measured detectable Au mineralization. High grade Au outliers were capped prior to compositing. Assays were composited to nominal ten-meter lengths, yielding 20,806 individual samples which were used for the estimation of mineralization. Mineralization was determined using inverse distance cubed estimation techniques, adhering to geological constraints throughout the mineral deposit.

In order to define the quantities of Au with "reasonable prospects for economic extraction" by open pit methods, RDA determined pit constraining limits using the Lerchs-Grossman economic algorithm which constructs lists of related blocks that should or should not be mined. The final list defines a surface pit shell that has the highest possible total value, while honoring the required surface mine slope and economic parameters. Mineral resources were determined at a gold selling price of US$1,650.

The parameters listed in Table 2 define a realistic basis to estimate the mineral resources for the Project and are based on the extensive scientific, metallurgical and engineering based analyses that have been completed by Tower Hill Mines since 2006. Mineral resources for the Project have been limited to mineralized material that occurs within the pit shells and which could be scheduled to be processed based on the defined cut-off grades. All other material within the constraining pit, which was not classified according to CIM Definition Standards, was characterized as non-mineralized material.

Table 2 Pit Constraining Parameters

Parameter Unit Rock

Type 4 Rock

Type 5 Rock

Type 6 Rock

Type 7 Rock

Type 8 Rock

Type 9 Mining Cost

Unprocessed

Rock US$/tonne 1.76 1.74 1.74 1.68 1.76 1.76 Processing

Cost US$/

process

tonne 9.27 9.15 9.17 9.50 9.71 9.71 G & A US$/process

tonne 1.55 1.55 1.55 1.55 1.55 1.55 Au Recovery Avg %1 84 80 71 67 55 56 Royalty % 3 3 3 3 3 3 Au Selling

Price US$/oz 1,650 1,650 1,650 1,650 1,650 1,650 Au Cut-Off g/tonne 0.21 0.20 0.25 0.25 0.33 0.33 Overall Slope

Angle Degrees 45 45 45 45 45 45

1 Average % Au Recovery includes massive stibnite at 22% recovery

Grade and Tonnage Sensitivity to Cutoff Grade

Mineral resources at Livengood are sensitive to the selection of the reporting cutoff grade. To illustrate this sensitivity, the block model quantities and grade estimates within the constraining pit are presented in Table 3 at linear increases in the cutoff grades for measured, indicated and inferred mineral resources at Livengood. The same results are presented graphically in Figure 1. Mineralization is constrained to the pit using the parameters in Table 2. The numbers presented in Table 3 should not be misconstrued with a mineral resource statement. The figures are only presented to show the sensitivity of block model estimates to the selection of a cutoff grade. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.

Table 3 Sensitivity of Mineral Resources to cutoff used.

Effective Date: August 20, 2021.

QP Scott Wilson CPG



Measured Indicated Measured & Indicated Inferred Cutoff

Au g/t Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) Tonnes (000) Grade Au

g/t Au

Oz. (000) 0.2 816,569 0.53 13,914 73,263 0.53 1,248 889,832 0.53 15,162 20,423 0.37 243 0.3 626,843 0.61 12,293 55,069 0.63 1,115 681,912 0.61 13,409 13,359 0.43 185 0.4 464,710 0.71 10,608 37,347 0.76 913 502,057 0.71 11,520 6,017 0.52 101 0.5 332,891 0.81 8,669 25,437 0.91 744 358,328 0.82 9,413 2,142 0.65 45 0.6 234,524 0.92 6,937 17,976 1.06 613 252,500 0.93 7,549 1,079 0.75 26 0.7 164,938 1.03 5,462 13,645 1.19 522 178,583 1.04 5,984 614 0.84 17 0.8 117,098 1.15 4,329 10,648 1.31 448 127,746 1.16 4,778 335 0.92 10 0.9 83,825 1.26 3,396 8,372 1.44 388 92,197 1.28 3,783 180 0.98 6 1.0 61,474 1.38 2,727 6,479 1.58 329 67,953 1.40 3,057 59 1.04 2

























































Sensitivity of Mineralization to Gold Price

The sensitivity of the Livengood Project mineralization to the gold price was performed at selling prices of US$1,320/oz (- 20%),US $1,650/oz (the 2021 MRE selling price) and US$1,980/oz (+ 20%). The input technical parameters, defined in Table 2, were used in the analysis.

Table 4 Sensitivity of Pit-Constrained Mineralization Inventory at Gold Prices +/- 20% of US$1,650

WhittleTM

Pit Gold

Price Classification Tonnes

(Mt) Au

(g/t) Contained

Au (000's) US$1,320 Measured 423.84 0.70 9,496.30 Indicated 24.35 0.85 666.13 Total M & I 448.19 0.71 10,162.43 Inferred 2.02 0.11 7.15 US$1,650 Measured 646.00 0.60 12,482.49 Indicated 58.51 0.61 1,141.61 Total M & I 704.51 0.60 13,624.10 Inferred 15.98 0.40 206.98 US$1,980 Measured 845.60 0.54 14,668.81 Indicated 108.98 0.49 1,717.27 Total M & I 954.58 0.53 16,386.08 Inferred 31.97 0.37 377.99

The mineral resource estimate for the Project is inclusive of the mineral reserves for the Project. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral resource estimates do not account for mineability, selectivity, mining loss and dilution. These mineral resource estimates include inferred mineral resources that are normally considered too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves. There is also no certainty that these inferred mineral resources will be converted to measured and indicated categories through further drilling, or into mineral reserves, once economic considerations are applied.

Metallurgy Recovery by Rock Type

The Company has completed extensive metallurgical test work on the rock types that comprise the current estimated mineral resource. Recovery rates by rock type using gravity and carbon-in-leach recovery of gravity tail are shown in the table below:

Rock Type Gold Recovery %1 RT4 Cambrian 83.3 RT5 Sunshine Upper Sediments 79.8 RT6 Upper Sediments 73.5 RT7 Lower Sediments 66.4 RT8 Volcanics-Sunshine Zone 58.7 RT9 Volcanics-Core Zone 57.1

1- Weighted average recovery within reserve pit at p80 250 micron based on Au grade/geologic domain/Sb concentration/massive stibnite occurrence.

Detailed Report

A NI 43-101 compliant technical report that summarizes the results of the PFS will be filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com within 45 days of this news release and will be available on the Company's website www.ithmines.com at that time.

Qualified Persons

The PFS was prepared by the following Qualified Persons (as defined under NI 43-101), each of whom is independent of the Company under NI 43-101, and each of whom has reviewed, verified, and approved the scientific and technical data for which they have responsibility contained in this news release pertaining to the PFS. No limitations were imposed on the verification process.

Qualified Person Company Scope of Responsibility Colin Hardie, P. Eng (Ontario APEO No.

90512500) BBA Inc. Financial model, Process

Plant and Infrastructure

CAPEX, G&A OPEX,

Environmental Studies

and Permitting, Overall

NI 43-101 Integration Jeffrey Cassoff, P. Eng. (Quebec OIQ No.

5002252) BBA Inc. Mineral Reserves Melanie Turgeon, Eng. (Quebec OIQ No.

5028478) BBA Inc. Process Engineering and

Process Plant OPEX,

Mineral Processing and

Metallurgical Testing Ryan T. Baker. (Nevada No. 11172) NewFields Companies, LLC Geotechnical Engineering,

Waste Rock and Water

Management, TMF

CAPEX Mike Levy, P.E. (Colorado No. 40268) JDS Energy and Mining Inc. Mine Slope Stability Scott Wilson, CPG #10965 Resource Development

Associates Inc. Geology, Drilling,

Resource Estimation

Mr. Colin Hardie is a Senior Process Engineer and the Director of Non-Ferrous Metal Markets at BBA. He joined the BBA team in 2008 and has over 20 years of experience as an operations metallurgist, engineering consultant and in process research and development. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Geological and Mineral Engineering (1996). Mr. Hardie also has a Master of Engineering degree in Metallurgy from McGill University (1999) as well as a Master Degree in Business Administration from HEC Montreal (2008). He is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario, Canada. He has acted as a Qualified Person and lead study integrator for numerous North American gold, base metal and industrial mineral projects.

Mr. Jeffrey Cassoff is a Senior Mining Engineer and the Team Leader for Mining Engineering at BBA. Mr. Cassoff has over 20 years of experience in the mining industry working for both mining operations and as a consultant. Mr. Cassoff is a graduate of McGill University with a Bachelor of Mining Engineering (1999). Mr. Cassoff is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of Quebec, Canada. He has acted as a Qualified Person for numerous gold projects.

Mrs. Melanie Turgeon is a Process Engineer at BBA and has worked in consulting engineering since 2013. She is a graduate of the Universite de Sherbrooke with a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (2011) and a registered Engineer in the province of Quebec, Canada. She has been involved in the development of metallurgical testwork campaigns and in the writing of technical reports in accordance with standards governing NI 43-101.

Mr. Ryan T. Baker is a Principal Engineer with NewFields Mining Design & Technical Services, LLC, located in Lone Tree, CO. He is a graduate of Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering (1993) and a registered Professional Engineer in Nevada (#13947), Alaska (#11172), Idaho (#10226), Colorado (#36988), Missouri (PE2008000049), and New Mexico (#22110). He is also a Registered Member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME, #4204584) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, #307827) with relevant experience pertaining to heap leach, tailings and mine overburden storage facilities, and mine surface infrastructure design and inspection since 1994.

Mr. Michael Levy is Geotechnical Manager with JDS Energy & Mining Inc. in Denver, CO. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and a Master of Science degree in Civil-Geotechnical Engineering. He is a registered Professional Engineer with the states of Colorado (#40268) and a current member of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Mike has practiced for 22 years and has undertaken numerous mining and civil geotechnical projects ranging from conceptual through feasibility design levels, mine construction and operations support. He is skilled in both soil and rock mechanics engineering and specializes in the design and management of underground and open pit mine excavations.

Mr. Scott E. Wilson, CPG (10965), Registered Member of SME (4025107) and President of Resource Development Associates Inc., is an independent consulting geologist specializing in mineral reserve and resource calculation reporting, mining project analysis and due diligence evaluations. He is acting as the Qualified Person, as defined in NI 43-101, and is an author of the technical report which will be filed by the Company for the mineral resource estimate and has reviewed and approved the mineral resource estimate and the PFS summarized in this news release. Mr. Wilson has over 32 years of experience in surface mining, resource estimation and strategic mine planning. Mr. Wilson is independent of the Company under NI 43-101.

On behalf of

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

(signed) Karl Hanneman

Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements with respect to the mine plan, economic analysis (including capital expenditures, operating expenditures, all-in-sustaining costs and all-in costs) and production and design details described in the PFS; the potential to convert mineral resources to mineral reserves; additional optimization and exploration efforts and the results thereof; the ability of the Company to satisfy the derivative liability and the consequences of any failure to do so; the ability of the Company to potentially include refined and updated results in a subsequent full feasibility study; the ability of the Company to advance environmental baseline work in support of future permitting; the ability of the Company to advance the Livengood Project either as projected or at all; the potential for the Company to make a construction decision, whether when warranted by market conditions or at all; the potential for market conditions to be such that they warrant the making of a production decision; the potential development of any mine at the Livengood Project; business and financing plans and business trends are forward-looking statements. Information concerning mineral reserve/resource estimates and the economic analysis thereof contained in the PFS also may be deemed to be forward-looking statements in that it reflects a prediction of the mineralization that would be encountered, and the results of mining it, if a mineral deposit were developed and mined. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, proposed, planned, potential and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the inability of the Company to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital (including, as required, to satisfy the derivative liability) or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's Annual Information Form filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), and other information released by the Company and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and its United States public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sec.gov, and readers are urged to review these materials, including the 2017 Report and the technical report to be filed with respect to the Company's Livengood property within 45 days hereof.

Non-IFRS Measures

The Company has included certain non-IFRS measures in this news release, as discussed below. The Company believes that these measures, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, provides investors with an improved ability to evaluate the underlying performance of the Company. These non-IFRS measures are intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. These measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and therefore may not be comparable to other issuers.

All-In Sustaining Costs ("AISC") and AISC/oz

AISC is a performance measure that reflects the expenditures that are required to produce an ounce of gold from current operations. While there is no standardized meaning of the measure across the industry, the Company's definition is derived from the definition, as set out by the World Gold Council in its guidance dated June 27, 2013 and November 16, 2018, respectively. The World Gold Council is a non-regulatory, non-profit organization established in 1987 whose members include global senior mining companies. The Company believes that this measure is useful to external users in assessing operating performance and the ability to generate free cash flow from operations. The Company defines AISC as the sum of total cash costs, sustaining capital (capital required to maintain current operations at existing production levels), capital lease repayments, exploration expenditures designed to increase resource confidence at producing mines, amortization of asset retirement costs and rehabilitation accretion related to current operations. AISC excludes general corporate and administrative costs incurred at the non-project level, capital expenditures for significant improvements at existing operations deemed to be expansionary in nature, exploration and evaluation related to resource growth, rehabilitation accretion not related to current operations, financing costs, debt repayments, and taxes. Total AISC is divided by gold ounces sold to arrive at a per ounce figure.

All-In Costs ("AIC") and All-In-Costs/oz

The Company defines AIC as the sum of AISC costs plus initial capital expenditures. Total AIC is divided by gold ounces sold to arrive at a per ounce figure.

Cautionary Note Regarding References to Resources and Reserves

National Instrument 43101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators which establishes standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. Unless otherwise indicated, all resource and reserve estimates contained in or incorporated by reference in this news release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (the "CIM") Standards on Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the CIM Council on May 10, 2014 (the "CIM Standards") as they may be amended from time to time by the CIM.

Accordingly, information in this press release providing descriptions of the Company's mineral deposits in accordance with NI 43-101 may not be comparable to similar information made public by other U.S. companies subject to the United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.

Pursuant to CIM Definition Standards, "Inferred mineral resources" are that part of a mineral resource for which quantity and grade or quality are estimated on the basis of limited geological evidence and sampling. Such geological evidence is sufficient to imply but not verify geological and grade or quality continuity. An inferred mineral resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to an indicated mineral resource and must not be converted to a mineral reserve. However, it is reasonably expected that the majority of inferred mineral resources could be upgraded to indicated mineral resources with continued exploration. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, except in rare cases. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource is economically or legally mineable. Disclosure of "contained ounces" in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures.

Effective February 25, 2019, the SEC adopted new mining disclosure rules under subpart 1300 of Regulation S-K of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "SEC Modernization Rules"), with compliance required for the first fiscal year beginning on or after January 1, 2021. The SEC Modernization Rules replace the historical property disclosure requirements included in SEC Industry Guide 7. As a result of the adoption of the SEC Modernization Rules, the SEC now recognizes estimates of "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources". In addition, the SEC has amended its definitions of "Proven Mineral Reserves" and "Probable Mineral Reserves" to be substantially similar to corresponding definitions under the CIM Definition Standards. While the SEC Modernization Rules are purported to be "substantially similar" to the CIM Definition Standards, readers are cautioned that there are differences between the SEC Modernization Rules and the CIM Definitions Standards. Accordingly, there is no assurance any mineral reserves or mineral resources that the Company may report as "proven mineral reserves", "probable mineral reserves", "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "inferred mineral resources" under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the reserve or resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules.

This news release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.

SOURCE International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.towerhillmines.com


iRocket is a New York startup building 100% fully reusable rockets since 2018 to cargo micro, nano, cube, and constellations to LEO orbit on its Shockwave launch vehicle. The company develops cost-effective launch vehicles that can support rapid launching within 24 hrs. for 400kg and 1500 kg payloads for satellite constellation providers for National security satellites, 5G internet constellations, the Internet of Things (IoT), Biotech Research, and Space exploration. In addition, there reusable upper stage will target space junk removal in LEO orbit. iRocket is currently funded by the U.S. Space Force  Space Systems Command, The M&J Engineering Group, & Village Global a venture capital firm backed by Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Abby Johnson.

Said Turion Space CEO Ryan Westerdahl, "Turion Space looks forward to a strong partnership with iRocket for access to space and for providing us with a pipeline of future customers that will utilize the final orbit delivery services our Droid spacecraft can provide."

Turion Space is building spacecraft to remove orbital-debris and provide orbit-modification and domain-awareness services to existing space assets. Solving space debris is a crucial problem that must be solved to ensure a sustainable LEO economy and is the first technological step towards mining Asteroids. Turion Space plans to launch their D-1 satellite in October 2022. Solving this problem is crucial to ensure a sustainable space economy and is the first step towards our longer-term vision of mining Asteroids. Turion Space is funded by Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Forward VC, Pi Campus, FoundersX Ventures, Harvard Management Company, Imagination VC, among several others.

The two companies also hinted at possible future collaborations on in-orbit servicing. Westerdahl suggested that Turion could work with iRocket to perform final in-orbit deliveries for a fraction of the launch company's payload, combined with space junk removal.

CONTACT: iRocket, [email protected]

SOURCE iRocket
RARITAN, N.J., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson announced today that more than 45 company-sponsored abstracts, including 11 oral presentations, plus more than 35 investigator-initiated studies will be featured at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. ASH is taking place at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta and virtually from December 11-14, 2021.

"We are committed to advancing the science and treatment of hematologic malignancies and look forward to presenting the latest research from our robust portfolio and pipeline during ASH 2021," said Peter Lebowitz, M.D., Ph.D., Global Therapeutic Area Head, Oncology, Janssen Research & Development, LLC. "We continue to deepen and accelerate our understanding of blood cancers as we strive toward our vision  the elimination of cancer."

"As evidenced by our presence at ASH, we are continuously pushing boundaries to treat cancer," said Serge Messerlian, U.S. President, Oncology, Janssen Biotech, Inc. "At ASH, we look forward to working with the oncology community to advance the understanding and use of novel treatments and address unmet patient needs, with the ultimate goal of developing curative therapies. Our commitment to the blood cancer community is driven and inspired by our mission to reimagine care so patients can redefine living."

Transforming treatment paradigms for patients with multiple myeloma

Through years of research and community engagement, Janssen continues to build upon its knowledge of multiple myeloma and the challenges faced by patients at all stages of this complex disease. During ASH 2021, Janssen will present data that represents its multipronged approach to treating multiple myeloma in both the frontline and relapsed or refractory settings through the development of cell and biologic therapies.

Featured data on CAR-T and Bispecific therapies

Updated, longer-term results from the pivotal Phase 1b/2 CARTITUDE-1 study evaluating the B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeted chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) in heavily pre-treated patients who have relapsed and/or become refractory will be featured in an oral presentation (Abstract #549). Another oral presentation will report comparisons of patient outcomes with cilta-cel in the CARTITUDE-1 study with standard-of-care therapies from real-world clinical practice (Abstract #550).

Other data from the CARTITUDE program at ASH 2021 will provide data on the earlier use of cilta-cel, with updated results from Cohort A of the Phase 2 CARTITUDE-2 study, which included patients who were refractory to lenalidomide with progressive multiple myeloma after 1-3 lines of therapy (Abstract #3866) and the first data from Cohort B of the Phase 2 CARTITUDE-2 study which enrolled patients following early relapse after initial therapy that included proteasome inhibitors and immunomodulatory drugs (Abstract #2910). Both sets of results will be featured in poster presentations.

Separately, data being presented as a poster presentation will highlight the potential use of anakinra as a treatment for cytokine release syndrome associated with CAR-T therapy treatment (Abstract #2812).

Janssen will present the results from the Phase 1 and 2 MajesTEC-1 (Abstract #896) studies evaluating teclistamab (BCMAxCD3), an investigational, off-the-shelf, T-cell redirecting bispecific antibody in heavily pre-treated patients with multiple myeloma.

Updated results from the Phase 1 MonumenTAL-1 (Abstract #158) study, evaluating talquetamab (GPRC5DxCD3)  an investigational, off-the-shelf, T-cell redirecting bispecific antibody and the first directed at this novel target for heavily pre-treated patients with multiple myeloma  will be featured in an oral presentation. In addition, results from the TRiMM-2 study of talquetamab (Abstract #161) and teclistamab (Abstract #1647) in combination with DARZALEX FASPRO (daratumumab and hyaluronidase-fihj) will also be presented.

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO featured data

Janssen continues to explore treatment combinations in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. An oral presentation of updated results from the randomized Phase 2 GRIFFIN trial (Abstract #79) will present updated response rates, including minimal residual disease (MRD), as well as progression-free survival (PFS), with DARZALEX as part of an investigational quadruplet therapy regimen; a second oral presentation (Abstract #118) will examine the impact that clinical sequencing scenarios with DARZALEX-based combinations in frontline versus second-line. In the maintenance setting, an oral presentation (Abstract #82) will share updated MRD results from the two-part Phase 3 CASSIOPEIA study of DARZALEX in combination with bortezomib, thalidomide and dexamethasone (VTd) and autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) followed by DARZALEX maintenance therapy.

In real-world evidence, a poster presentation (Abstract #1965) examining potential healthcare disparities will highlight patient characteristics, treatment patterns and outcomes for Black and White patients with multiple myeloma who initiated treatment with DARZALEX.

Janssen also continues to evolve the treatment approaches for rare hematologic diseases including newly diagnosed light chain (AL) amyloidosis. An oral presentation will feature updated data from the Phase 3 ANDROMEDA study (Abstract #159), which supported the accelerated approval of DARZALEX FASPRO in combination with bortezomib, cyclophosphamide and dexamethasone (D-VCd) as the first U.S. FDA-approved treatment for this rare and serious blood cell disorder.

Exploring new regimens in CLL/SLL treatment to address unmet patient needs

Through a comprehensive development program, Janssen continues to research additional IMBRUVICA-based regimens to meet the range of needs of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), including options that have the potential to provide treatment-free remissions.

At ASH 2021, new data for the investigational use of IMBRUVICA in combination with venetoclax as an all-oral, fixed-duration therapy for the treatment of frontline CLL/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) will be presented. Oral presentations of this combination will feature MRD outcomes from the Phase 3 GLOW study (Abstract #70). It will also feature long-term data regarding disease-free survival from the Phase 2 CAPTIVATE study MRD cohort (Abstract #68), evaluating IMBRUVICA plus venetoclax as a time-limited first-line treatment for patients with CLL/SLL that include a broad range of age and fitness groups.

Poster presentations of real-world data will reinforce the efficacy of IMBRUVICA in patients with CLL/SLL treated in routine practice (Abstract #4112).

Advancing and delivering new insights around antithrombotic care

Blood clots, or venous thromboembolism (VTE), represent the second leading cause of death in people with cancer.1 Janssen is committed to delivering new data to further validate and inform the use of XARELTO (rivaroxaban) in patients at risk for cancer-associated thrombosis, helping evolve the standard of care for patients at risk for VTE. During ASH, Janssen will present data from CALLISTO, a comprehensive program of research on cancer-associated thrombosis (CAT), which included three randomized trials of XARELTO versus low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) for the treatment of venous thrombosis in patients with solid and hematological cancers (SELECT-D, CASTA-DIVA and CONKO-11). The results of this pooled analysis (Abstract #1068) suggest XARELTO may be an alternative treatment option for the prevention of VTE recurrence in cancer patients with VTE.

Janssen will also present data that further advances understanding and provides new insights in the antithrombotic space, including OSCAR-US, evaluating patient characteristics and temporal changes in anticoagulation treatment patterns in patients diagnosed with cancer-associated thrombosis (Abstract #2132) and RIVA-DM, an analysis of thromboembolism, bleeding, and vascular death among older and younger nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients with type 2 diabetes receiving XARELTO or warfarin (Abstract #3234).

Advancing science for patients with wAIHA

Janssen continues to advance clinical trials exploring nipocalimab, an FcRn antagonist, in warm Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia (wAIHA), an autoimmune disease characterized by the premature destruction of healthy red blood cells. A Trial in Progress (TiP) poster presentation of the ENERGY study (Abstract #1999) will highlight the rationale and study design for an adaptive, Phase 2/3 multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in patients with wAIHA whose aim is to evaluate the efficacy, safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) of nipocalimab compared with placebo.

In real-world evidence, a poster presentation (Abstract #2000) will highlight the use of predictive analytics of a known clinically profiled patient cohort to support the identification of patients with wAIHA.

The above two abstracts were previously accepted and presented at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 2021 Annual Congress.

A complete list of Janssen-sponsored abstracts is available at Janssen.com/ASH2021.

About Cilta-cel

Cilta-cel is a BCMA-directed, genetically modified autologous T-cell immunotherapy, which involves reprogramming a patient's own T cells with a transgene encoding a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that identifies and eliminates cells that express BCMA. BCMA is primarily expressed on the surface of malignant multiple myeloma B-lineage cells, as well as late-stage B cells and plasma cells. The cilta-cel CAR protein features two BCMA-targeting single domain antibodies designed to confer high avidity against human BCMA. Upon binding to BCMA-expressing cells, the CAR promotes T-cell activation, expansion, and elimination of target cells.

In December 2017, Janssen Biotech, Inc. entered into an exclusive worldwide license and collaboration agreement with Legend Biotech USA, Inc. to develop and commercialize cilta-cel.

In addition to U.S. Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) granted in December 2019, by the U.S. FDA, Janssen also received Orphan Drug Designation for cilta-cel, in February 2019. In December 2020, Janssen announced initiation of a rolling submission of its BLA to the U.S. FDA for cilta-cel, which was accepted under Priority Review in May 2021. In November 2021, Janssen announced the extension of the PDUFA date.

Cilta-cel received a PRIority MEdicines (PRIME) designation from the European Commission in April 2019, and the Orphan Drug Designation for cilta-cel from the European Commission in February 2020. A Breakthrough Therapy Designation for cilta-cel was granted in August 2020, for China. In April 2021, Janssen announced its submission of a Marketing Authorisation to the European Medicines Agency seeking approval of cilta-cel for the treatment of patients with relapsed and/or refractory multiple myeloma.

About Teclistamab

Teclistamab is an off-the-shelf, T-cell redirecting, bispecific antibody targeting both BCMA and CD3, a primary component of the T-cell receptor. CD3 is involved in activating T cells, and BCMA is expressed at high levels on multiple myeloma cells. Teclistamab redirects CD3-positive T cells to BCMA-expressing myeloma cells to induce killing of tumor cells. Results from Phase 1 studies demonstrated deep and durable response in heavily pretreated patients with multiple myeloma.2

Teclistamab is currently being evaluated in several studies both as monotherapy (NCT04557098) and is also being explored in combination studies (NCT04586426, NCT04108195, NCT04722146, NCT05083169). In 2020, the European Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration each granted teclistamab Orphan Drug Designation for the treatment of multiple myeloma. In January 2021 and June 2021, teclistamab was granted PRIME designation by the European Commission and BTD by the U.S. FDA, respectively. PRIME offers enhanced interaction and early dialogue to optimize drug development plans and speed up evaluation of cutting-edge, scientific advances that target a high unmet medical need.3 The U.S. FDA grants Breakthrough Therapy Designation to expedite the development and regulatory review of an investigational medicine that is intended to treat a serious or life-threatening condition and is based on preliminary clinical evidence that demonstrates the drug may have substantial improvement on at least one clinically significant endpoint over available therapy.4

About Talquetamab

Talquetamab is a first-in-class, investigational T-cell redirecting bispecific antibody targeting both GPRC5D, a novel multiple myeloma target, and CD3, a primary component of the T-cell receptor and is involved in activating T cells, and GPRC5D is highly expressed on multiple myeloma cells. Results from the Phase 1 MonumenTAL-1 study demonstrated durable responses that deepen over time in heavily pre-treated patients with multiple myeloma.5

Talquetamab is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 clinical study for the treatment of relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma (NCT03399799) and is also being explored in combination studies (NCT04586426). In January 2021, talquetamab was granted PRIME designation by the European Commission.

About DARZALEX FASPRO and DARZALEX

DARZALEX FASPRO received U.S. FDA approval in May 2020 and is approved for six indications in multiple myeloma (MM), two of which are for frontline treatment in newly diagnosed patients who are transplant ineligible.6 DARZALEX FASPRO is the only subcutaneous CD38-directed antibody globally approved to treat patients with MM. DARZALEX FASPRO is co-formulated with recombinant human hyaluronidase PH20 (rHuPH20), Halozyme's ENHANZE drug delivery technology. In January 2021, DARZALEX FASPRO became the first FDA-approved therapy for light chain amyloidosis. In August 2012, Janssen Biotech, Inc. entered into an exclusive global license and development agreement with Genmab A/S to develop, manufacture, and commercialize DARZALEX.7 DARZALEX has been approved in eight indications, three of which are in the frontline setting, including for newly diagnosed patients who are transplant eligible as well as those who are ineligible.8

DARZALEX (daratumumab) is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with multiple myeloma:

In combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone in newly diagnosed patients who are ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant and in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior therapy

In combination with bortezomib, melphalan, and prednisone in newly diagnosed patients who are ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant

In combination with bortezomib, thalidomide, and dexamethasone in newly diagnosed patients who are eligible for autologous stem cell transplant

In combination with bortezomib and dexamethasone in patients who have received at least one prior therapy

In combination with carfilzomib and dexamethasone in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received one to three prior lines of therapy

In combination with pomalidomide and dexamethasone in patients who have received at least two prior therapies including lenalidomide and a proteasome inhibitor

As monotherapy in patients who have received at least three prior lines of therapy including a proteasome inhibitor (PI) and an immunomodulatory agent or who are double-refractory to a PI and an immunomodulatory agent

DARZALEX FASPRO (daratumumab and hyaluronidase-fihj) is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with multiple myeloma:

In combination with bortezomib, melphalan, and prednisone in newly diagnosed patients who are ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant

In combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone in newly diagnosed patients who are ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant and in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior therapy

In combination with bortezomib, thalidomide, and dexamethasone in newly diagnosed patients who are eligible for autologous stem cell transplant

In combination with pomalidomide and dexamethasone in patients who have received at least one prior line of therapy including lenalidomide and a proteasome inhibitor

In combination with bortezomib and dexamethasone in patients who have received at least one prior therapy

As monotherapy in patients who have received at least three prior lines of therapy including a proteasome inhibitor (PI) and an immunomodulatory agent or who are double-refractory to a PI and an immunomodulatory agent

For more information, visit www.DARZALEX.com.

About IMBRUVICA

IMBRUVICA (ibrutinib) is a once-daily oral medication that is jointly developed and commercialized by Janssen Biotech, Inc. and Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie company. IMBRUVICA blocks the Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) protein, which is needed by normal and abnormal B cells, including specific cancer cells, to multiply and spread. By blocking BTK, IMBRUVICAmay help move abnormal B cells out of their nourishing environments in the lymph nodes, bone marrow, and other organs.9,10,11

IMBRUVICA is approved in more than 100 countries and has been used to treat more than 250,000 patients worldwide. There are more than 50 company-sponsored clinical trials, including 18 Phase 3 studies, over 11 years evaluating the efficacy and safety of IMBRUVICA.12,13,14

IMBRUVICA was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November 2013, and today is indicated for adult patients in six disease areas, including five hematologic cancers. These include adults with CLL/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) with or without 17p deletion (del17p) and adults with Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (WM), as well as adult patients with previously treated mantle cell lymphoma (MCL)*, adult patients with previously treated marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) who require systemic therapy and have received at least one prior anti-CD20-based therapy*  and adult patients with previously treated chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) after failure of one or more lines of systemic therapy.13

*Accelerated approval was granted for relapsed/refractory (R/R) MCL and R/R MZL based on overall response rate. Continued approval for R/R MCL and R/R MZL may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

Since 2019, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), recommends ibrutinib (IMBRUVICA) as a preferred regimen for the initial treatment of CLL/SLL and has Category 1 treatment status for treatment-naive patients without deletion 17p. In 2020, the NCCN Guidelines were updated to recommend IMBRUVICA, with or without rituximab, as a preferred regimen for the treatment of R/R MCL, and as a Category 1 preferred regimen for both untreated and previously treated WM patients.

For more information, visit www.IMBRUVICA.com.

About Nipocalimab

Nipocalimab is a high affinity, fully human, aglycosylated, effectorless anti-FcRn IgG1 monoclonal antibody being studied for autoantibody-driven conditions including myasthenia gravis, hemolytic diseases of the fetus and newborn (HDFN), and warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia.15 Nipocalimab targets FcRn, which plays a central role in prolonging the halflife of IgG autoantibodies.16 Antagonism of this receptor reduces overall IgG autoantibody levels without widespread immune suppression. In 2019, nipocalimab received Fast Track Designation for wAIHA.17

In 2020, Johnson & Johnson acquired Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc., including full global rights to nipocalimab.

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

DARZALEX AND DARZALEX FASPRO: CONTRAINDICATIONS

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO are contraindicated in patients with a history of severe hypersensitivity to daratumumab, hyaluronidase (for DARZALEX FASPRO), or any of the components of the formulations.

DARZALEX: Infusion-Related Reactions

DARZALEX can cause severe and/or serious infusion-related reactions including anaphylactic reactions. These reactions can be life-threatening, and fatal outcomes have been reported. In clinical trials (monotherapy and combination: N=2066), infusion-related reactions occurred in 37% of patients with the Week 1 (16 mg/kg) infusion, 2% with the Week 2 infusion, and cumulatively 6% with subsequent infusions. Less than 1% of patients had a Grade 3/4 infusion-related reaction at Week 2 or subsequent infusions. The median time to onset was 1.5 hours (range: 0 to 73 hours). Nearly all reactions occurred during infusion or within 4 hours of completing DARZALEX. Severe reactions have occurred, including bronchospasm, hypoxia, dyspnea, hypertension, tachycardia, headache, laryngeal edema, and pulmonary edema.

Signs and symptoms may include respiratory symptoms, such as nasal congestion, cough, throat irritation, as well as chills, vomiting, and nausea. Less common symptoms were wheezing, allergic rhinitis, pyrexia, chest discomfort, pruritus, and hypotension.

When DARZALEX dosing was interrupted in the setting of ASCT (CASSIOPEIA) for a median of 3.75 months (range: 2.4 to 6.9 months), upon re-initiation of DARZALEX, the incidence of infusion-related reactions was 11% for the first infusion following ASCT. Infusion-related reactions occurring at re-initiation of DARZALEX following ASCT were consistent in terms of symptoms and severity (Grade 3 or 4: <1%) with those reported in previous studies at Week 2 or subsequent infusions. In EQUULEUS, patients receiving combination treatment (n=97) were administered the first 16 mg/kg dose at Week 1 split over two days, ie, 8 mg/kg on Day 1 and Day 2, respectively. The incidence of any grade infusion-related reactions was 42%, with 36% of patients experiencing infusion-related reactions on Day 1 of Week 1, 4% on Day 2 of Week 1, and 8% with subsequent infusions.

Pre-medicate patients with antihistamines, antipyretics, and corticosteroids. Frequently monitor patients during the entire infusion. Interrupt DARZALEX infusion for reactions of any severity and institute medical management as needed. Permanently discontinue DARZALEX therapy if an anaphylactic reaction or life-threatening (Grade 4) reaction occurs and institute appropriate emergency care. For patients with Grade 1, 2, or 3 reactions, reduce the infusion rate when re-starting the infusion.

To reduce the risk of delayed infusion-related reactions, administer oral corticosteroids to all patients following DARZALEX infusions. Patients with a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may require additional post-infusion medications to manage respiratory complications. Consider prescribing short- and long-acting bronchodilators and inhaled corticosteroids for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

DARZALEX FASPRO: Hypersensitivity and Other Administration Reactions

Both systemic administration-related reactions, including severe or life-threatening reactions, and local injection-site reactions can occur with DARZALEX FASPRO. Fatal reactions have been reported with daratumumab-containing products, including DARZALEX FASPRO.

Systemic Reactions

In a pooled safety population of 832 patients with multiple myeloma (N=639) or light chain (AL) amyloidosis (N=193) who received DARZALEX FASPRO as monotherapy or in combination, 9% of patients experienced a systemic administration-related reaction (Grade 2: 3.5%, Grade 3: 0.8%). Systemic administration-related reactions occurred in 8% of patients with the first injection, 0.4% with the second injection, and cumulatively 1% with subsequent injections. The median time to onset was 3.2 hours (range: 9 minutes to 3.5 days). Of the 129 systemic administration-related reactions that occurred in 74 patients, 110 (85%) occurred on the day of DARZALEX FASPRO administration. Delayed systemic administration-related reactions have occurred in 1% of the patients.

Severe reactions included hypoxia, dyspnea, hypertension, and tachycardia. Other signs and symptoms of systemic administration-related reactions may include respiratory symptoms, such as bronchospasm, nasal congestion, cough, throat irritation, allergic rhinitis, and wheezing, as well as anaphylactic reaction, pyrexia, chest pain, pruritus, chills, vomiting, nausea, and hypotension.

Pre-medicate patients with histamine-1 receptor antagonist, acetaminophen, and corticosteroids. Monitor patients for systemic administration-related reactions, especially following the first and second injections. For anaphylactic reaction or life-threatening (Grade 4) administration-related reactions, immediately and permanently discontinue DARZALEX FASPRO. Consider administering corticosteroids and other medications after the administration of DARZALEX FASPRO depending on dosing regimen and medical history to minimize the risk of delayed (defined as occurring the day after administration) systemic administration-related reactions.

Local Reactions

In this pooled safety population, injection-site reactions occurred in 8% of patients, including Grade 2 reactions in 0.6%. The most frequent (>1%) injection-site reaction was injection-site erythema. These local reactions occurred a median of 5.5 minutes (range: 0 minutes to 6.5 days) after starting administration of DARZALEX FASPRO. Monitor for local reactions and consider symptomatic management.

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO: Neutropenia and Thrombocytopenia

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO may increase neutropenia and thrombocytopenia induced by background therapy. Monitor complete blood cell counts periodically during treatment according to manufacturer's prescribing information for background therapies. Monitor patients with neutropenia for signs of infection. Consider withholding DARZALEX or DARZALEX FASPRO until recovery of neutrophils or for recovery of platelets.

In lower body weight patients receiving DARZALEX FASPRO, higher rates of Grade 3-4 neutropenia were observed.

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO: Interference With Serological Testing

Daratumumab binds to CD38 on red blood cells (RBCs) and results in a positive indirect antiglobulin test (indirect Coombs test). Daratumumab-mediated positive indirect antiglobulin test may persist for up to 6 months after the last daratumumab administration. Daratumumab bound to RBCs masks detection of antibodies to minor antigens in the patient's serum. The determination of a patient's ABO and Rh blood type are not impacted. Notify blood transfusion centers of this interference with serological testing and inform blood banks that a patient has received DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO. Type and screen patients prior to starting DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO.

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO: Interference With Determination of Complete Response

Daratumumab is a human immunoglobulin G (IgG) kappa monoclonal antibody that can be detected on both the serum protein electrophoresis (SPE) and immunofixation (IFE) assays used for the clinical monitoring of endogenous M-protein. This interference can impact the determination of complete response and of disease progression in some patients with IgG kappa myeloma protein.

DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO: Embryo-Fetal Toxicity

Based on the mechanism of action, DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. DARZALEX and DARZALEX FASPRO may cause depletion of fetal immune cells and decreased bone density. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females with reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with DARZALEX or DARZALEX FASPRO and for 3 months after the last dose.

The combination of DARZALEX or DARZALEX FASPRO with lenalidomide, pomalidomide, or thalidomide is contraindicated in pregnant women because lenalidomide, pomalidomide, and thalidomide may cause birth defects and death of the unborn child. Refer to the lenalidomide, pomalidomide, or thalidomide prescribing information on use during pregnancy.

DARZALEX: ADVERSE REACTIONS

The most frequently reported adverse reactions (incidence 20%) were: upper respiratory infection, neutropenia, infusion-related reactions, thrombocytopenia, diarrhea, constipation, anemia, peripheral sensory neuropathy, fatigue, peripheral edema, nausea, cough, pyrexia, dyspnea, and asthenia. The most common hematologic laboratory abnormalities (40%) with DARZALEX are: neutropenia, lymphopenia, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, and anemia.

DARZALEX FASPRO: ADVERSE REACTIONS

In multiple myeloma, the most common adverse reaction (20%) with DARZALEX FASPRO monotherapy is upper respiratory tract infection. The most common adverse reactions with combination therapy (20% for any combination) include fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, dyspnea, insomnia, pyrexia, cough, muscle spasms, back pain, vomiting, upper respiratory tract infection, peripheral sensory neuropathy, constipation, and pneumonia. The most common hematologic laboratory abnormalities (40%) with DARZALEX FASPRO are decreased leukocytes, decreased lymphocytes, decreased neutrophils, decreased platelets, and decreased hemoglobin.

IMBRUVICA IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Warnings and Precautions

Hemorrhage: Fatal bleeding events have occurred in patients who received IMBRUVICA. Major hemorrhage ( Grade 3, serious, or any central nervous system events; e.g., intracranial hemorrhage [including subdural hematoma], gastrointestinal bleeding, hematuria, and post procedural hemorrhage) occurred in 4% of patients, with fatalities occurring in 0.4% of 2,838 patients who received IMBRUVICA in 27 clinical trials. Bleeding events of any grade including bruising and petechiae occurred in 39%, and excluding bruising and petechiae occurred in 23% of patients who received IMBRUVICA, respectively.

The mechanism for the bleeding events is not well understood.

Use of either anticoagulant or antiplatelet agents concomitantly with IMBRUVICA increases the risk of major hemorrhage. Across clinical trials, 3.1% of 2,838 patients who received IMBRUVICA without antiplatelet or anticoagulant therapy experienced major hemorrhage. The addition of antiplatelet therapy with or without anticoagulant therapy increased this percentage to 4.4%, and the addition of anticoagulant therapy with or without antiplatelet therapy increased this percentage to 6.1%. Consider the risks and benefits of anticoagulant or antiplatelet therapy when co-administered with IMBRUVICA. Monitor for signs and symptoms of bleeding.

Consider the benefit-risk of withholding IMBRUVICA for at least 3 to 7 days pre- and post-surgery depending upon the type of surgery and the risk of bleeding.

Infections: Fatal and non-fatal infections (including bacterial, viral, or fungal) have occurred with IMBRUVICA therapy. Grade 3 or greater infections occurred in 21% of 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. Cases of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) and Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) have occurred in patients treated with IMBRUVICA. Consider prophylaxis according to standard of care in patients who are at increased risk for opportunistic infections.

Monitor and evaluate patients for fever and infections and treat appropriately.

Cytopenias: In 645 patients with B-cell malignancies who received IMBRUVICA as a single agent, Grade 3 or 4 neutropenia occurred in 23% of patients, Grade 3 or 4 thrombocytopenia in 8% and Grade 3 or 4 anemia in 3%, based on laboratory measurements.

Monitor complete blood counts monthly.

Cardiac Arrhythmias and Cardiac Failure: Fatal and serious cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac failure have occurred with IMBRUVICA. Grade 3 or greater ventricular tachyarrhythmias occurred in 0.2% of patients, Grade 3 or greater atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter occurred in 4%, and Grade 3 or greater cardiac failure occurred in 1% of 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. These events have occurred particularly in patients with cardiac risk factors, hypertension, acute infections, and a previous history of cardiac arrhythmias.

At baseline and then periodically, monitor patients clinically for cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac failure. Obtain an ECG for patients who develop arrhythmic symptoms (e.g., palpitations, lightheadedness, syncope, chest pain) or new onset dyspnea. Manage cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac failure appropriately, and if it persists, consider the risks and benefits of IMBRUVICA treatment and follow dose modification guidelines.

Hypertension: Hypertension occurred in 19% of 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. Grade 3 or greater hypertension occurred in 8% of patients. Based on data from 1,124 of these patients, the median time to onset was 5.9 months (range, 0.03 to 24 months).

Monitor blood pressure in patients treated with IMBRUVICA and initiate or adjust anti-hypertensive medication throughout treatment with IMBRUVICA as appropriate.

Second Primary Malignancies: Other malignancies (10%), including non-skin carcinomas (4%), occurred among the 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. The most frequent second primary malignancy was non-melanoma skin cancer (6%).

Tumor Lysis Syndrome: Tumor lysis syndrome has been infrequently reported with IMBRUVICA. Assess the baseline risk (e.g., high tumor burden) and take appropriate precautions.

Monitor patients closely and treat as appropriate.

Embryo-Fetal Toxicity: Based on findings in animals, IMBRUVICA can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with IMBRUVICA and for 1 month after the last dose. Advise males with female partners of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during the same time period.

ADVERSE REACTIONS

B-cell malignancies: The most common adverse reactions (30%) in patients with B-cell malignancies (MCL, CLL/SLL, WM and MZL) were thrombocytopenia (54.5%)*, diarrhea (43.8%), fatigue (39.1%), musculoskeletal pain (38.8%), neutropenia (38.6%)*, rash (35.8%), anemia (35.0%)*, and bruising (32.0%).

The most common Grade 3 adverse reactions (5%) in patients with B-cell malignancies (MCL, CLL/SLL, WM and MZL) were neutropenia (20.7%)*, thrombocytopenia (13.6%)*, pneumonia (8.2%), and hypertension (8.0%).

Approximately 9% (CLL/SLL), 14% (MCL), 14% (WM) and 10% (MZL) of patients had a dose reduction due to adverse reactions. Approximately 4-10% (CLL/SLL), 9% (MCL), and 7% (WM [5%] and MZL [13%]) of patients discontinued due to adverse reactions.

cGVHD: The most common adverse reactions (20%) in patients with cGVHD were fatigue (57%), bruising (40%), diarrhea (36%), thrombocytopenia (33%)*, muscle spasms (29%), stomatitis (29%), nausea (26%), hemorrhage (26%), anemia (24%)*, and pneumonia (21%).

The most common Grade 3 or higher adverse reactions (5%) reported in patients with cGVHD were pneumonia (14%), fatigue (12%), diarrhea (10%), neutropenia (10%)*, sepsis (10%), hypokalemia (7%), headache (5%), musculoskeletal pain (5%), and pyrexia (5%).

Twenty-four percent of patients receiving IMBRUVICA in the cGVHD trial discontinued treatment due to adverse reactions. Adverse reactions leading to dose reduction occurred in 26% of patients.

*Treatment-emergent decreases (all grades) were based on laboratory measurements.

DRUG INTERACTIONS

CYP3A Inhibitors: Co-administration of IMBRUVICA with strong or moderate CYP3A inhibitors may increase ibrutinib plasma concentrations. Dose modifications of IMBRUVICA may be recommended when used concomitantly with posaconazole, voriconazole, and moderate CYP3A inhibitors. Avoid concomitant use of other strong CYP3A inhibitors. Interrupt IMBRUVICA if strong inhibitors are used short-term (e.g., for 7 days). See dose modification guidelines in USPI sections 2.3 and 7.1.

CYP3A Inducers: Avoid coadministration with strong CYP3A inducers.

SPECIFIC POPULATIONS

Hepatic Impairment (based on Child-Pugh criteria): Avoid use of IMBRUVICA in patients with severe hepatic impairment. In patients with mild or moderate impairment, reduce recommended IMBRUVICA dose and monitor more frequently for adverse reactions of IMBRUVICA.

Please see full Prescribing Information.

INDICATIONS

IMBRUVICA (ibrutinib) is a kinase inhibitor indicated for the treatment of adult patients with:

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) who have received at least one prior therapy.

This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on overall response rate. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in a confirmatory trial(s).

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/Small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/Small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) with 17p deletion.

Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (WM).

Marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) who require systemic therapy and have received at least one prior anti-CD20-based therapy.

This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on overall response rate. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in a confirmatory trial(s).

Chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD) after failure of one or more lines of systemic therapy.

XARELTO IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

XARELTO may cause serious side effects, including:

Increased risk of blood clots if you stop taking XARELTO  . People with atrial fibrillation (an irregular heart beat) that is not caused by a heart valve problem (nonvalvular) are at an increased risk of forming a blood clot in the heart, which can travel to the brain, causing a stroke, or to other parts of the body. XARELTO  lowers your chance of having a stroke by helping to prevent clots from forming. If you stop taking XARELTO  , you may have increased risk of forming a clot in your blood.

Do not stop taking XARELTO  without talking to the doctor who prescribes it for you. Stopping XARELTO  increases your risk of having a stroke. If you have to stop taking XARELTO  , your doctor may prescribe another blood thinner medicine to prevent a blood clot from forming.

. People with atrial fibrillation (an irregular heart beat) that is not caused by a heart valve problem (nonvalvular) are at an increased risk of forming a blood clot in the heart, which can travel to the brain, causing a stroke, or to other parts of the body. XARELTO lowers your chance of having a stroke by helping to prevent clots from forming. If you stop taking XARELTO , you may have increased risk of forming a clot in your blood. If you have to stop taking XARELTO , your doctor may prescribe another blood thinner medicine to prevent a blood clot from forming. Increased risk of bleeding. XARELTO can cause bleeding which can be serious, and may lead to death. This is because XARELTO is a blood thinner medicine (anticoagulant) that lowers blood clotting. During treatment with XARELTO you are likely to bruise more easily, and it may take longer for bleeding to stop. You may be at higher risk of bleeding if you take XARELTO and have certain other medical problems.

You may have a higher risk of bleeding if you take XARELTO and take other medicines that increase your risk of bleeding, including:

Aspirin or aspirin-containing products

Long-term (chronic) use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)

Warfarin sodium (Coumadin  , Jantoven  )

, Jantoven ) Any medicine that contains heparin

Clopidogrel (Plavix  )

) Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs)

Other medicines to prevent or treat blood clots

Tell your doctor if you take any of these medicines. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you are not sure if your medicine is one listed above.

Call your doctor or get medical help right away if you develop any of these signs or symptoms of bleeding:

Unexpected bleeding or bleeding that lasts a long time, such as:

Nosebleeds that happen often



Unusual bleeding from gums



Menstrual bleeding that is heavier than normal, or vaginal bleeding

Bleeding that is severe or you cannot control

Red, pink, or brown urine

Bright red or black stools (looks like tar)

Cough up blood or blood clots

Vomit blood or your vomit looks like "coffee grounds"

Headaches, feeling dizzy or weak

Pain, swelling, or new drainage at wound sites

Spinal or epidural blood clots (hematoma). People who take a blood thinner medicine (anticoagulant) like XARELTO  , and have medicine injected into their spinal and epidural area, or have a spinal puncture, have a risk of forming a blood clot that can cause long-term or permanent loss of the ability to move (paralysis). Your risk of developing a spinal or epidural blood clot is higher if:

People who take a blood thinner medicine (anticoagulant) like XARELTO , and have medicine injected into their spinal and epidural area, or have a spinal puncture, have a risk of forming a blood clot that can cause long-term or permanent loss of the ability to move (paralysis). Your risk of developing a spinal or epidural blood clot is higher if: A thin tube called an epidural catheter is placed in your back to give you certain medicine



You take NSAIDs or a medicine to prevent blood from clotting



You have a history of difficult or repeated epidural or spinal punctures



You have a history of problems with your spine or have had surgery on your spine

If you take XARELTO and receive spinal anesthesia or have a spinal puncture, your doctor should watch you closely for symptoms of spinal or epidural blood clots.

Tell your doctor right away if you have:

back pain

tingling

numbness

muscle weakness (especially in your legs and feet)

or loss of control of the bowels or bladder (incontinence)

XARELTO is not for use in people with artificial heart valves.

XARELTO is not for use in people with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), especially with positive triple antibody testing.

Do not take XARELTO if you:

Currently have certain types of abnormal bleeding. Talk to your doctor before taking XARELTO  if you currently have unusual bleeding.

if you currently have unusual bleeding. Are allergic to rivaroxaban or any of the ingredients of XARELTO.

Before taking XARELTO, tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, including if you:

Have ever had bleeding problems

Have liver or kidney problems

Have antiphospholipid syndrome (APS)

Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if XARELTO  will harm your unborn baby.

will harm your unborn baby. Tell your doctor right away if you become pregnant during treatment with XARELTO  . Taking XARELTO  while you are pregnant may increase the risk of bleeding in you or in your unborn baby.

right away if you become pregnant during treatment with XARELTO . Taking XARELTO while you are pregnant may increase the risk of bleeding in you or in your unborn baby.

If you take XARELTO  during pregnancy, tell your doctor right away if you have any signs or symptoms of bleeding or blood loss. See "What is the most important information I should know about XARELTO  ?" for signs and symptoms of bleeding.

during pregnancy, right away if you have any signs or symptoms of bleeding or blood loss. Are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. XARELTO may pass into your breast milk. Talk to your doctor about the best way to feed your baby during treatment with XARELTO.

Tell all of your doctors and dentists that you are taking XARELTO. They should talk to the doctor who prescribed XARELTO for you before you have any surgery, medical or dental procedure.

Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

Some of your other medicines may affect the way XARELTO works, causing side effects. Certain medicines may increase your risk of bleeding. See "What is the most important information I should know about XARELTO?"

HOW SHOULD I TAKE XARELTO?

Take XARELTO  exactly as prescribed by your doctor.

exactly as prescribed by your doctor. Do not change your dose or stop taking XARELTO  unless your doctor tells you to. Your doctor may change your dose if needed.

Your doctor may change your dose if needed. Your doctor will decide how long you should take XARELTO  .

. XARELTO  may need to be stopped for one or more days before any surgery or medical or dental procedure. Your doctor will tell you when to stop taking XARELTO  and when to start taking XARELTO  again after your surgery or procedure.

may need to be stopped for one or more days before any surgery or medical or dental procedure. Your doctor will tell you when to stop taking XARELTO and when to start taking XARELTO again after your surgery or procedure. If you need to stop taking XARELTO  for any reason, talk to the doctor who prescribed XARELTO  to you to find out when you should stop taking it. Do not stop taking XARELTO  without first talking to the doctor who prescribes it to you.

for any reason, talk to the doctor who prescribed XARELTO to you to find out when you should stop taking it. Do not stop taking XARELTO without first talking to the doctor who prescribes it to you. If you have difficulty swallowing XARELTO  tablets whole, talk to your doctor about other ways to take XARELTO  .

tablets whole, talk to your doctor about other ways to take XARELTO . Do not run out of XARELTO  . Refill your prescription of XARELTO  before you run out. When leaving the hospital following a hip or knee replacement, be sure that you will have XARELTO  available to avoid missing any doses.

. Refill your prescription of XARELTO before you run out. When leaving the hospital following a hip or knee replacement, be sure that you will have XARELTO available to avoid missing any doses. If you take too much XARELTO, go to the nearest hospital emergency room or call your doctor right away.

If you take XARELTO for:

Atrial Fibrillation that is not caused by a heart valve problem:

Take XARELTO  1 time a day with your evening meal .

.

If you miss a dose of XARELTO  , take it as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

, take it as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time. Blood clots in the veins of your legs or lungs:

Take XARELTO  1 or 2 times a day as prescribed by your doctor.

as prescribed by your doctor.

For the 10-mg dose , XARELTO  may be taken with or without food.

, XARELTO

For the 15-mg and 20-mg doses, take XARELTO  with food at the same time each day.

take XARELTO

If you miss a dose:



If you take the 15-mg dose of XARELTO  2 times a day (a total of 30 mg of XARELTO  in 1 day) : Take XARELTO  as soon as you remember on the same day. You may take 2 doses at the same time to make up for the missed dose. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

Take XARELTO as soon as you remember on the same day. You may take 2 doses at the same time to make up for the missed dose. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.



If you take XARELTO  1 time a day: Take XARELTO  as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

Take XARELTO as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time. Hip or knee replacement surgery:

Take XARELTO  1 time a day with or without food.

1 time a day with or without food.

If you miss a dose of XARELTO  , take it as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

, take it as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time. Blood clots in people hospitalized for an acute illness:

Take XARELTO  1 time a day, with or without food, while you are in the hospital and after you are discharged as prescribed by your doctor.

1 time a day, with or without food, while you are in the hospital and after you are discharged as prescribed by your doctor.

If you miss a dose of XARELTO  , take it as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

, take it as soon as you remember on the same day. Take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time. Reducing the risk of serious heart problems, heart attack and stroke in coronary artery disease:

Take XARELTO  2.5 mg 2 times a day with or without food.

2.5 mg 2 times a day with or without food.

If you miss a dose of XARELTO  , take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

, take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

Take aspirin 75 to 100 mg once daily as instructed by your doctor.

Reducing the risk of a sudden decrease in blood flow to the legs, major amputation, serious heart problems or stroke in people with peripheral artery disease, including those who have recently had a procedure to improve blood flow to the legs:

Take XARELTO  2.5 mg 2 times a day with or without food.

2.5 mg 2 times a day with or without food.

If you miss a dose of XARELTO  , take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

, take your next dose at your regularly scheduled time.

Take aspirin 75 to 100 mg once daily as instructed by your doctor.

WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF XARELTO?

XARELTO may cause serious side effects:

See "What is the most important information I should know about XARELTO?"

The most common side effect of XARELTO was bleeding.

Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. You may also report side effects to Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., at 1-800-JANSSEN (1-800-526-7736).

Please read full Prescribing Information, including Boxed Warnings, and Medication Guide for XARELTO.

About the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson

At Janssen, we're creating a future where disease is a thing of the past. We're the Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, working tirelessly to make that future a reality for patients everywhere by fighting sickness with science, improving access with ingenuity, and healing hopelessness with heart. We focus on areas of medicine where we can make the biggest difference: Cardiovascular & Metabolism, Immunology, Infectious Diseases & Vaccines, Neuroscience, Oncology, and Pulmonary Hypertension.

Learn more at www.janssen.com. Follow us at www.twitter.com/JanssenUS and www.twitter.com/JanssenGlobal. Janssen Research & Development, LLC and Janssen Biotech, Inc. are part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Cautions Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding development of teclistamab, talquetamab, cilta-cel (BCMA CAR-T), DARZALEX (daratumumab), DARZALEX FASRO (daratumumab and hyaluronidase-fihj), IMBRUVICA (ibrutinib), XARELTO (rivaroxaban), and nipocalimab. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections of Janssen Research & Development, LLC, Janssen Biotech, Inc., any of the other Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies and/or Johnson & Johnson. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: challenges and uncertainties inherent in product research and development, including the uncertainty of clinical success and of obtaining regulatory approvals; uncertainty of commercial success; manufacturing difficulties and delays; competition, including technological advances, new products and patents attained by competitors; challenges to patents; [product efficacy or safety concerns resulting in product recalls or regulatory action;] changes in behavior and spending patterns of purchasers of health care products and services; changes to applicable laws and regulations, including global health care reforms; and trends toward health care cost containment. A further list and descriptions of these risks, uncertainties and other factors can be found in Johnson & Johnson's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2021, including in the sections captioned "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and "Item 1A. Risk Factors," and in the company's most recently filed Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and the company's subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of these filings are available online at www.sec.gov, www.jnj.com or on request from Johnson & Johnson. None of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies nor Johnson & Johnson undertakes to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events or developments.







1 Khorana A. A. (2010). Venous thromboembolism and prognosis in cancer. Thrombosis research, 125(6), 490493. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.thromres.2009.12.023. Accessed November 2021 2 Janssen Biotech, Inc. "Janssen's Updated Phase 1 Results for Teclistamab Suggest Deep, Durable Responses in Patients with Heavily Pretreated Multiple Myeloma." Issued May 24, 2021 3 European Medicines Agency. PRIME Factsheet. Available at: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/research-development/prime-priority-medicines. Accessed November 2021 4 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "Expedited Programs for Serious Conditions." Available at: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM358301.pdf. Accessed November 2021. 5 Janssen Biotech, Inc. "Janssen Presents Updated Data on First-in-Class Talquetamab at ASCO Suggesting Deep and Durable Responses in Heavily Pretreated Patients with Multiple Myeloma." Issued May 24, 2021. 6 DARZALEX Prescribing Information, March 2021. 7 Janssen Biotech, Inc. "Janssen Biotech Announces Global License and Development Agreement for Investigational Anti-Cancer Agent Daratumumab." Issued August 30, 2012. 8 Janssen Biotech, Inc. "U.S. FDA Approves New DARZALEX (daratumumab)-Based Combination Regimen for Patients with Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma." Issued August 21, 2020 9 Genetics Home Reference. Isolated growth hormone deficiency. http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/isolated-growth-hormone-deficiency. Accessed November 2021. 10 Turetsky A, et al. Single cell imaging of Bruton's tyrosine kinase using an irreversible inhibitor. Scientific Reports. 2014;6:4782. 11 de Rooij MF, Kuil A, Geest CR, et al. The clinically active BTK inhibitor PCI-32765 targets B-cell receptor- and chemokine-controlled adhesion and migration in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Blood. 2012;119(11):2590-2594. 12 Burger JA., et al. Long-term efficacy and safety of first-line ibrutinib treatment for patients with CLL/SLL: 5 years of follow-up from the phase 3 RESONATE-2 study Leukemia. 2020;34:787-798. 13 Byrd JC., et al. Ibrutinib versus ofatumumab in previously treated chronic lymphoid leukemia. N Engl J Med. 2014;371(3):213-223. 14 IMBRUVICA U.S. Prescribing Information, December 2020. 15 Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "Momenta Pharmaceuticals Reports Second Quarter 2020 Financial and Operating Results" Issued August 10, 2020 16 Gable K., Guptill J. Frontiers in Immunology. 2019; 10: 3052 17 Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "Momenta Pharmaceuticals Launches Phase 2/3 Trial of M281 for the Treatment of Warm Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia and is Granted." Issued August 1, 2019

Media Contacts:

Brian Kenney

(215) 620-0111

Caroline Pavis

(610) 357-3121

Investor Relations:

Jennifer McIntyre

(732) 524-3922

U.S. Medical Inquiries:

+1 800-526-7736

SOURCE Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson
CHICAGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As "fake news" continues to plague journalism  and arguably, democracy itself  journalists are pessimistic that their own efforts, self-policing by Big Tech and government efforts are enough to turn the tide, according to a new study released today by strategic communications firm Greentarget.

In Fake News 2021, Greentarget surveyed more than 100 journalists, 35 percent of whom have worked in the profession for more than 20 years. It's the second edition of the report, the first of which was released just days before the 2020 presidential election. But journalists' optimism when it comes to fake news hasn't changed much despite last year's contentious political system fading into history.

Instead, 2021 has been a year in which facts around COVID-19 vaccines have been fodder for intense political debate. That's likely part of the reason why journalists were about as pessimistic about fake news  broadly defined as misinformation and disinformation  as they were a year ago and why they think the term itself is overly political and doing harm to their profession.

"With the term 'fake news' so widely weaponized and disinformation and misinformation so common in everyday life, it's hard to say how much of this year's results reflect standard journalist cynicism or correctly gauge a very urgent threat," said Betsy Hoag, Greentarget's director of Research & Planning and Paul Wilson, vice president of Content & Editorial. "Journalists also certainly aren't bullish about any of the methods available to combat fake news  but we think it's critical that something, or perhaps many 'somethings,' be done for the sake of our democracy."

Fake News: 2021's Top Findings

How Fake News Hurts Journalism: 84 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the term "fake news" is contributing to the delegitimization of traditional journalism and news sources.

84 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the term "fake news" is contributing to the delegitimization of traditional journalism and news sources. Muddying of the Term Itself: 41 percent of journalists noted that when they hear the phrase "fake news," it's referring to traditional/qualified news sources, compared to 38 percent who said it relates to actual fake news.

41 percent of journalists noted that when they hear the phrase "fake news," it's referring to traditional/qualified news sources, compared to 38 percent who said it relates to actual fake news. Last Defense Against Fake News: 93 percent, up from 85 percent last year, of journalists said they have an ethical responsibility to vet fake news and identify misleading information

93 percent, up from 85 percent last year, of journalists said they have an ethical responsibility to vet fake news and identify misleading information Top-Tier Media Gains Trust in the Eyes of Journalists: 84 percent of respondents in 2021 said they use publications like The Wall Street Journal to vet information, a sizable jump from the 56 percent in 2021.

84 percent of respondents in 2021 said they use publications like to vet information, a sizable jump from the 56 percent in 2021. Journalists' Relationship With Social Media: Despite the low opinion of social media and Big Tech the journalists surveyed expressed, two-thirds of them said they use social media in their jobs at least a quarter of the time

Despite the low opinion of social media and Big Tech the journalists surveyed expressed, two-thirds of them said they use social media in their jobs at least a quarter of the time The Future of Section 230: While 55 percent of respondents said social media poses the single greatest threat to the spread of misinformation, they didn't have strong feelings about reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a possible way to regulate Big Tech. Fewer than half believe reforms are necessary.

While 55 percent of respondents said social media poses the single greatest threat to the spread of misinformation, they didn't have strong feelings about reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a possible way to regulate Big Tech. Fewer than half believe reforms are necessary. The Effectiveness of Media Literacy: Just over one-third of the journalists surveyed (35%) said media literacy efforts had a high or moderate impact when it comes to lessening the spread of fake news  and nearly 1 in 5 said they had no impact.

"We support journalists in their efforts and know the value of what they do for a free society," said Lisa Seidenberg, Greentarget's vice president of Media Relations. "That said, we think  and we certainly hope  they're being overly cynical about fighting fake news. Media literacy efforts, which have proven effective, are increasing across the country. We find these efforts encouraging  and we hope journalists and the broader public get behind them more fully.

A full version of Fake News 2021 is available here.

About Greentarget

Greentarget is a strategic public relations firm that helps leading law, accounting, management consulting, real estate and financial services organizations create unique positions of authority through skillful participation in the conversations that matter most to their key stakeholders. With 60 professionals in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, Greentarget combines earned media, research and market intelligence, content and publishing, digital strategy and amplification, and special situations counsel to help clients grow market share, attract leading talent and achieve a higher purpose. For more information, visit www.greentarget.com.

SOURCE Greentarget Global Group

Related Links

https://greentarget.com


FAIRFAX, Va., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Knowesis Inc. (Knowesis) recently received a direct award contract for data consolidation services by the Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation (AFSAC) Directorate utilizing the 8(a) Small Business set-aside. The additional services complement data visualization and analytics support Knowesis currently provides AFSAC.

Recognizing that AFSAC had an enterprise goal to develop a data consolidation strategy, Knowesis staff developed a plan for the design, development, and implementation of technical solution.

"Knowesis looks to solve overarching challenges to analytic services: the architecture, engineering and analytic expertise as a package," said Steve Flowers, Knowesis Operations Principal. "Each of these services work in concert to provide a comprehensive capability."

The AFSAC data consolidation contract began on September 21, 2021.

Knowesis is a Center for Veterans Enterprise (CVE) certified Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and Woman Owned Small Business (WOSB), providing a full range of professional consulting services to federal and state government agencies to include Computational Sciences, Information Management and Technology, Operations and Management, Policy and Program Evaluation, Scientific and Medical Research, and Communications. We currently support multiple entities within the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and United States Agency for International Development.

Knowesis maintains offices in Fairfax, Virginia, with staff at locations across the United States. More information about the company can be found at https://www.knowesis-inc.com/ as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Knowesis Inc.

Related Links

http://www.knowesis-inc.com


BOSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Liberty Mutual Holding Company Inc. and its subsidiaries (collectively "LMHC" or the "Company") reported net income attributable to LMHC of $721 million and $2.346 billion for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, increases of $324 million and $1.750 billion over the same periods in 2020, respectively.

"Despite an elevated level of catastrophe losses, net income attributable to LMHC for the quarter improved to $721 million, up 81.6% from the prior year," said David H. Long, Liberty Mutual Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We continue to experience extraordinary returns in our partnerships, LLC and other equity method investment portfolio which generated $1.0 billion of pre-tax net investment income, up from $467 million, primarily driven by private capital investments. Pre-tax catastrophe losses net of reinsurance in the quarter were $1.2 billion compared to $980 million in the third quarter of 2020 with losses stemming from Hurricane Ida totaling $812 million.

"Topline growth was strong across both of our businesses as net written premium increased 6.5%. Global Retail Markets premium in the quarter grew 5.4% over the same period in 2020, driven by U.S. personal lines where personal auto and homeowners policies in force increased 5.9% and 6.5%, respectively. Global Risk Solutions premium grew 11.3% driven by a combination of rate increases and exposure growth. Core underwriting results in this segment continued to improve, with a 6.5 point decrease in the core loss ratio to 61.1% for the third quarter driven by rate execution, improved risk selection, and lower large loss activity."

The tables below outline highlights of LMHC's consolidated financial results for the three months and nine months ended September 30, 2021.

Net Written Premium ("NWP") by Business:



Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, $ in Millions 2021 2020 Change 2021 2020 Change Global Retail Markets $7,757 $7,358 5.4% $22,082 $20,728 6.5% Global Risk Solutions 3,834 3,445 11.3 10,771 9,917 8.6 Corporate and Other (186) (93) 100.0 (202) (116) 74.1 Total NWP $11,405 $10,710 6.5% $32,651 $30,529 7.0% Foreign exchange effect on growth



0.4



0.9 NWP growth excluding foreign exchange1



6.1%



6.1%

1 Determined by assuming constant foreign exchange rates between periods.

Consolidated Results of Operations:



Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, $ in Millions 2021 2020 Change 2021 2020 Change Revenues $12,370 $11,371 8.8% $35,979 $32,000 12.4% PTOI before catastrophes, COVID-19, net incurred losses attributable to prior years and partnerships, LLC and other equity method income $824 $871 (5.4%) $2,995 $3,093 (3.2%) Catastrophes1 (1,214) (980) 23.9 (2,914) (2,164) 34.7 COVID-192 - - - - (565) (100.0) Net incurred losses attributable to prior years:











- Asbestos and environmental3 1 2 (50.0) - 2 (100.0) - All other4 177 (51) NM 231 (146) NM Pre-tax operating (loss) income before partnerships, LLC and other equity method income (212) (158) 34.2 312 220 41.8 Partnerships, LLC and other equity method income5 1,000 467 114.1 2,792 217 NM Pre-tax operating income 788 309 155.0 3,104 437 NM Net realized gains 20 219 (90.9) 83 375 (77.9) Unit linked life insurance (7) (22) (68.2) (95) 21 NM Ironshore acquisition & integration costs (4) (5) (20.0) (13) (16) (18.8) Restructuring costs (36) (28) 28.6 (147) (30) NM Pre-tax income 761 473 60.9 2,932 787 NM Income tax expense 39 70 (44.3) 584 170 NM Consolidated net income from continuing operations 722 403 79.2 2,348 617 NM Discontinued operations, net of tax - (6) (100.0) - (19) (100.0) Consolidated net income 722 397 81.9 2,348 598 NM Less: Net income attributable to non-controlling interest 1 - NM 2 2 - Net income attributable to LMHC 721 397 81.6 2,346 596 NM Net income attributable to LMHC excluding unrealized impact6 634 356 78.1 2,079 648 NM Cash flow provided by continuing operations $1,814 $2,788 (34.9%) $4,681 $4,906 (4.6%)





1 Catastrophes are defined as a natural catastrophe, civil unrest, or terror event exceeding $25 million in estimated ultimate losses, net of reinsurance, and before taxes. Catastrophe losses, where applicable, include the impact of accelerated earned catastrophe premiums and earned reinstatement premiums. 2 Includes Global Risk Solutions estimated loss activity directly related to COVID-19 in 2020. 3 Asbestos and environmental is gross of the related adverse development reinsurance (the "NICO Reinsurance Transaction"). 4 Net of earned premium and reinstatement premium attributable to prior years of $101 million and $153 million for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, and $114 million and $218 million for the same periods in 2020. 5 Partnerships, LLC and other equity method income includes LP, LLC and other equity method income within net investment income in the accompanying Consolidated Statements of Income and revenue and expenses from direct investments in natural resources. 6 Excludes unrealized gains on equity securities, unit linked life insurance, and the corresponding tax impact.

NM = Not Meaningful

Combined Ratio:



Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, CONSOLIDATED 2021 2020 Change

(Points) 2021 2020 Change (Points) Combined ratio before catastrophes, COVID-19 and net incurred losses attributable to prior years











Claims and claim adjustment expense ratio 65.1% 65.2% (0.1) 63.4% 62.2% 1.2 Underwriting expense ratio 29.5 28.1 1.4 29.3 29.5 (0.2) Subtotal 94.6 93.3 1.3 92.7 91.7 1.0 Catastrophes1 11.5 9.8 1.7 9.5 7.6 1.9 COVID-192 - - - - 2.0 (2.0) Net incurred losses attributable to prior years:











- Asbestos and environmental - - - - 0.1 (0.1) - All other3 (1.7) 0.5 (2.2) (0.9) 0.4 (1.3) Total combined ratio4 104.4% 103.6% 0.8 101.3% 101.8% (0.5)





1 Catastrophes are defined as a natural catastrophe, civil unrest, or terror event exceeding $25 million in estimated ultimate losses, net of reinsurance, and before taxes. Catastrophe losses, where applicable, include the impact of accelerated earned catastrophe premiums and earned reinstatement premiums. 2 Includes Global Risk Solutions estimated loss activity directly related to COVID-19 in 2020. 3 Net of earned premium and reinstatement premium attributable to prior years. 4 The combined ratio, expressed as a percentage, is a measure of underwriting profitability. This measure should only be used in conjunction with, and not in lieu of, underwriting income and may not be comparable to other performance measures used by the Company's competitors. The combined ratio is computed as the sum of the following property and casualty ratios: the ratio of claims and claim adjustment expense less managed care income to earned premium; the ratio of insurance operating costs plus amortization of deferred policy acquisition costs less third-party administration income and fee income (primarily related to the Company's involuntary market servicing carrier operations) and installment charges to earned premium; and the ratio of policyholder dividends to earned premium. Provisions for uncollectible premium and reinsurance are not included in the combined ratio unless related to an asbestos and environmental commutation and certain other run off. Restructuring and Ironshore acquisition and integration costs are not included in the combined ratio.

Equity:



As of

September 30, As of

December 31,

$ in Millions 2021 2020 Change Unassigned equity $28,054 $25,708 9.1% Accumulated other comprehensive (loss) income (987) 218 NM Non-controlling interest 32 31 3.2 Total equity $27,099 $25,957 4.4%

NM = Not Meaningful

Subsequent Events

Management has assessed material subsequent events through November 3, 2021, the date the financial statements were available to be issued.

Financial Information

The Company's financial results, management's discussion and analysis of operating results and financial condition, accompanying financial statements and other supplemental financial information for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 are available on the Company's Investor Relations website at www.libertymutualgroup.com/investors .

About Liberty Mutual Insurance

At Liberty Mutual, we believe progress happens when people feel secure. By providing protection for the unexpected and delivering it with care, we help people embrace today and confidently pursue tomorrow.

In business since 1912, and headquartered in Boston, today we are the sixth largest global property and casualty insurer based on 2020 gross written premium. We also rank 71st on the Fortune 100 list of largest corporations in the U.S. based on 2020 revenue. As of December 31, 2020, we had $43.8 billion in annual consolidated revenue.

We employ over 45,000 people in 29 countries and economies around the world. We offer a wide range of insurance products and services, including personal automobile, homeowners, specialty lines, reinsurance, commercial multiple-peril, workers compensation, commercial automobile, general liability, surety, and commercial property.

For more information, visit www.libertymutualinsurance.com.

Risks and Uncertainties

The extent to which the coronavirus impacts our future results will depend on developments which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, including litigation developments, legislative or regulatory actions and intervention, the length and severity of the coronavirus (including of second waves), the level of acceptance of the vaccines, and the actions of government actors to contain the coronavirus or treat its impact, among others. Possible effects on our business and operations include:

disruptions to business operations resulting from working from home or from closures of our corporate or sales offices and the offices of our agents and brokers and quarantines of employees, customers, agents, brokers and suppliers in areas affected by the outbreak;

disruptions to business operations resulting from travel restrictions and reduced consumer spending on new homes or new automobiles which could reduce demand for insurance;

disruptions to business operations resulting from our customers having lower payrolls and revenues which could have an impact on insurance revenue;

increased claims related to trade credit, general liability, workers compensation, and event cancellation coverage, among others;

executive or legislative mandates or court decisions expanding property insurance policy coverage to cover business interruptions resulting from COVID-19 notwithstanding any exclusions set forth in such policies or conditions precedent generally required for liability under such policies; and

disruption of the financial markets resulting in reductions in the value of our investment portfolio.

A significant rise in the number of COVID-19 infections, infections in a wide range of countries and regions, or a prolongation of the outbreak, could create an adverse economic effect on the Company.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This report contains forward looking statements that are intended to enhance the reader's ability to assess the future financial and business performance of the Company. Forward looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements that represent the Company's beliefs concerning future operations, strategies, financial results, investment market fluctuations, or other developments, and contain words and phrases such as "may," "expects," "should," "believes," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends" or similar expressions. Because these forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions that are subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control or are subject to change, actual results could be materially different.

Contact: Investor Relations Media Relations

Edward Pena Rich Angevine

857-224-6655 617-833-0926

SOURCE Liberty Mutual Insurance

Related Links

www.libertymutual.com


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The New Mexico trial law firm of McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry (MMLC) earned five Metropolitan Tier 1 rankings in U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" 2022 for the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico:

Criminal Defense: General Practice

Criminal Defense: White-Collar

Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs

In 2009, U.S. News & World Report joined forces with Best Lawyers to develop the "Best Law Firms" guide, aiming to highlight the nation's most illustrious law firms. Peer and client feedback is collected for each firm vying for a spot in the annual guide. However, a firm is only eligible for consideration if it has one or more attorneys listed in that year's edition of The Best Lawyers in America by Best Lawyers. Like that of "Best Law Firms," the selection process for The Best Lawyers in America follows Best Lawyers' trademark "purely peer review" methodology. With no more than 6% of the nation's private practice attorneys recognized in each edition of The Best Lawyers in America, few law firms qualify for "Best Law Firms" consideration.

McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry has three Best Lawyers-acclaimed attorneys on its team: Randi McGinn, Kathleen J. "Kathy" Love, and Katie Curry. And with a reputation for securing multimillion-dollar case results and improving legislation and policy for the public good, the firm passed the rigorous "Best Law Firms" peer review with flying colors.

Now, we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate each legal staff member at McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry on their outstanding work! It is very rare for a firm to earn one ranking in "Best Law Firms," let alone five in the highest of three tiers.

McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry is a New Mexico law firm based in Albuquerque. It accepts complex personal injury and criminal defense cases  the common thread of its practice being to fight to ensure everyone's rights are protected. If you need trusted, capable legal counsel, visit the firm online at mcginnlaw.com . More information about U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" can be found at bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

Contact: Elicia Montoya

[email protected]

(505) 633-8796

SOURCE McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry, P.A.
AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

Dodge will share initial stages of its "Never Lift" campaign, which will launch a variety of new Dodge models and initiatives over the next two years

Brand will announce two new performance programs, including Direct Connection, and preview additional Dodge enthusiast news

"Never Lift" launch video announcement can be viewed at Dodge.com on November 8, 2021 , at 1 p.m. ET

The Dodge brand will share the first phases of its "Never Lift" campaign, which will rollout a lineup of new Dodge models and initiatives over the next two years. The brand will announce two new performance programs, as well as preview two additional new enthusiast-inspired initiatives.

WHERE: Online at Dodge.com

WHEN: Monday, November 8, 2021, 1 p.m. ET

WHO: Tim Kuniskis, Dodge Brand Chief Executive Officer, Stellantis



Dodge//SRT

For more than 100 years, the Dodge brand has carried on the spirit of brothers John and Horace Dodge. Their influence continues today as Dodge shifts into high gear with muscle cars and SUVs that deliver unrivaled performance in each of the segments where they compete.



Dodge drives forward as a pure performance brand, offering SRT versions of every model across the lineup. For the 2022 model year, Dodge delivers the drag-strip dominating 807-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Super Stock, the 797-horsepower Dodge Charger SRT Redeye, the most powerful and fastest mass-produced sedan in the world, and the Dodge Durango SRT 392, America's fastest, most powerful and most capable three-row SUV. Combined, these three muscle cars make Dodge the industry's most powerful brand, offering more horsepower than any other American brand across its entire lineup.



In 2020, Dodge was named the "#1 Brand in Initial Quality," making it the first domestic brand ever to rank No. 1 in the J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS). In 2021, the Dodge brand ranked No. 1 in the J.D. Power APEAL Study (mass market), making it the only domestic brand ever to do so two years in a row.



Dodge is part of the portfolio of brands offered by leading global automaker and mobility provider Stellantis. For more information regarding Stellantis (NYSE: STLA), please visit www.stellantis.com.



Follow Dodge and company news and video on:

Company blog: http://blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com

Media website: http://media.stellantisnorthamerica.com

Dodge brand: www.dodge.com

DodgeGarage: www.dodgegarage.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/dodge

Instagram: www.instagram.com/dodgeofficial

Twitter: www.twitter.com/dodge and @StellantisNA

YouTube: www.youtube.com/dodge, https://www.youtube.com/StellantisNA

SOURCE Stellantis
BOSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MedicaMetrix, Inc. (the "Company") an innovator in medical device development, launched a Regulation A, Tier 2 equity financing ("the Offering"). In addition, the Company has launched an online investor portal containing information and resources for both public and accredited investors.

MedicaMetrix is a growing entity in the medical device and technology fields with multiple products in development. The Company's initial product introductions are ProstaMetrixTM, an innovative prostate measuring device, and SureSetTM, a line of IV securement products. The Company also has additional products in the pipeline, with further announcements coming soon.

"We believe the time is right to invite investors to MedicaMetrix," said CEO Robert Rudelius. "We have seen significant progress in the development of both ProstaMetrixTM and SureSetTM and I am confident that the Company will further build its reputation as an emerging force in the medical device industry."

In recent months, MedicaMetrix has received multiple clearances and certifications that will allow the manufacturing, distribution, and sales of its products both domestically and internationally. The company has operations in both the United States and India, with clinical trials of both ProstaMetrixTM and SureSetTM in progress in multiple locations.

We are excited to offer public investors the opportunity to invest in the future of our company," said CFO Paul Edwards. "We have strategically built MedicaMetrix with a strong executive team, high-quality operations, and most importantly innovative products and brands. This Offering, along with our investor portal, are the first steps in our journey to build upon our strong foundation and deliver long-term shareholder value."

MedicaMetrix is offering up to 4,000,000 shares of fully voting common stock ("Shares of Common Stock"), for US$5.00 per Share. The Shares are being offered pursuant to Regulation A of Section 3(b) of the Securities Act, as amended, for Tier 2 offerings, by management on a "best-efforts" basis directly to purchasers who satisfy the requirements set forth in Regulation A.

The Company encourages all interested investors to visit investor.medicametrix.com for information on how to invest in the Offering, as well as a link to the Offering Circular. The company can also be reached by calling 617.488.9233.

About MedicaMetrix

MedicaMetrix develops innovative medical technologies and device solutions that transform the healthcare status quo, leading to better medical outcomes, streamlined care and an enhanced patient experience.

MedicaMetrix is leading the development of a new paradigm that transforms the diagnosis, treatment, and management of prostate health by filling the gap between PSA testing and biopsies and surgery.

MedicaMetrix plans to continue to acquire and develop additional, new medical devices with the goal to bring them to market rapidly by leveraging its production facilities in the U.S. and India.

Cautionary Statements Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

Some of the statements in this press release may be forward-looking statements or statements of future expectations based on currently available information. Such statements are naturally subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors such as the development of general economic conditions, future market conditions, unusual catastrophic loss events, changes in the capital markets and other circumstances may cause the actual events or results to be materially different from those anticipated by such statements. MedicaMetrix Inc. does not make any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or updated status of such statements. Therefore, in no case whatsoever will MedicaMetrix Inc. and its affiliate companies be liable to anyone for any decision made or action taken in conjunction with the information and/or statements in this press release or for any related damages.

SOURCE MedicaMetrix, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.medicametrix.com


Kingsly's career spans over 20 years within the publishing world having worked for titles such as Bon Appetit, and most recently, publisher of award-winning culinary title Saveur. She is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and founded athlEATS UNWRAPPED, a content marketing company that looks at pro athletes through the lens of their food journeys. As part of that venture, Merri created a television show that focuses on the stories of these sports icons that is currently being further developed.

"I've been fortunate to have had so many rich experiences during my tenure in the media world, and I've been looking to start a new chapter that would feed my soul and reignite my passion for all things food and culture. I immediately fell in love with the co-publishers, Jennifer Solow and Tom Jacoby, and their extraordinary creative vision will continue to elevate and energize the Edible brand," said Kingsly.

Kingsly's hire comes during a transformative and expansive period for the Edible Manhattan Group as award-winning Publisher and Creative Director of Edible Hudson Valley and Edible Westchester, Jennifer Solow recently acquired the Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn titles.

"Merri's expertise in publishing and passion for the culinary industry will be a tremendous asset to our Edible titles as we expand and proliferate the Edible brand in Manhattan and Brooklyn," said Solow. "Our immediate goal is to tap into her experience to gain a deep understanding of what the market is searching for, and how we can satisfy those unique and evolving needs  which is particularly important now as the New York metro food community has faced many challenges, and in some cases devastation, over the past nearly two years. With Merri on our team the potential for impact and growth is exponential."

To learn more, visit Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn online.

SOURCE Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn
Managed by the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the SNS is part of the federal medical response infrastructure and can supplement medical countermeasures needed by states, tribal nations, territories and the largest metropolitan areas during public health emergencies. The supplies, medicines and devices for lifesaving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term, stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of necessary materials may not be available or sufficient.

The MSA respirator to be manufactured for the SNS is the Advantage 290 Air-Purifying Respirator (APR). Featuring a silicone rubber facepiece, the respirator covers a wearer's nose and mouth and utilizes twin-filters to provide respiratory protection.

Over the past year and a half, MSA LLC has made a number of capital investments in Jacksonville to expand its APR manufacturing capacity and to modernize equipment. These investments, which include the opening of a new 85,000 square-foot warehousing facility, have enhanced overall plant efficiency and will enable the company to easily integrate the added SNS manufacturing work with the company's production of APR products used by industrial customers.

Nish Vartanian, MSA Safety President, Chairman and CEO, said the company is proud to support the federal government's efforts to protect frontline healthcare workers with a reliable and sustainable supply of PPE. He noted the Advantage 290 Respirator and its components are predominantly sourced from a domestic supply chain.

"We have learned much over the past year-and-a-half, and near the top of that list is the criticality of providing our healthcare workers with a reliable and adequate supply of PPE when a pandemic strikes," Mr. Vartanian said. "Throughout our 107 years of business, MSA's mission of protecting people's health and safety has never changed. The work we're doing to support U.S. healthcare workers aligns perfectly with that mission. We're grateful for the opportunity to serve as a partner in nationwide efforts to help protect healthcare workers throughout the country."

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, MSA worked closely with healthcare professionals and gathered feedback that led to a unique feature of the Advantage 290 model. In use, industrial respirators help protect wearers from breathing in outside contaminants by filtering the air through various filter media. These devices traditionally include an exhalation valve through which exhaled air is released. The Advantage 290 Respirator filters both inhaled and exhaled air through the respirator filter media, thereby eliminating the need for an exhalation valve. This modification helps to mitigate the potential for COVID-19 spread by providing personal protection for the healthcare provider while also protecting the patient, in the event a provider is infected.

In November 2020, the MSA respirator became the first half-mask elastomeric respirator with this advanced filtration feature to receive approval from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Given the reusable nature of elastomeric respirators, there are many benefits of having them used in healthcare settings noted Greg Martin, MSA Vice President of Product Strategy and Development.

"Deploying a respiratory protection program that incorporates elastomeric respirators provides a number of benefits, including cost-efficiency, reduced space requirements for PPE warehousing, and environmental sustainability," Mr. Martin said. He added that because of their extended use and reuse capability, elastomeric respirators like the Advantage 290 model can work hand-in-hand with disposable respirators, greatly reducing concerns over supply-chain interruptions and the resulting insecurity associated with PPE shortages during a public health crisis

For general information about elastomeric mask use in healthcare settings, please visit www.MSASafety.com/healthcare. To learn more about the Advantage 290 Respirator, please visit www.MSASafety.com/Advantage290.

About MSA Safety

Established in 1914, MSA Safety Incorporated is the global leader in the development, manufacture and supply of safety products that protect people and facility infrastructures. Many MSA products integrate a combination of electronics, mechanical systems and advanced materials to protect users against hazardous or life-threatening situations. The company's comprehensive product line is used by workers around the world in a broad range of markets, including the oil, gas and petrochemical industry, the fire service, the construction industry, mining and the military. MSA's core products include self-contained breathing apparatus, fixed gas and flame detection systems, portable gas detection instruments, industrial head protection products, firefighter helmets and protective apparel, and fall protection devices. With 2020 revenues of $1.35 billion, MSA employs approximately 5,200 people worldwide. The company is headquartered north of Pittsburgh in Cranberry Township, Pa., and has manufacturing operations in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. With more than 40 international locations, MSA realizes approximately half of its revenue from outside North America. For more information visit MSA's web site at www.MSAsafety.com .

SOURCE MSA Safety

Related Links

http://www.msasafety.com


SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nam Tai Property Inc. ("Nam Tai" or the "Company") (NYSE Symbol: NTP) today announced its unaudited financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2021.

SUMMARY

PRC government continued to roll out restrictive measures to curb speculation in the domestic property market in the reporting period. The real estate sector is experiencing an extremely challenging financing and operating environment, and there have been a number of high profile defaults reported in the media. Loans to the real estate sector decreased 8.4% year-on-year for the first nine months of 2021. The Company is also facing similar difficulties, including a slowdown in demand, declines in housing and office price and liquidity crunch.

Amid the challenging operating environment, in the third quarter of 2021, the Company recorded progress both financially and operationally, including the following: (i) the revenue increased by $4.7 million year-on-year to reach $5.8 million; (ii) the pre-sale permit for Nam Tai Longxi was obtained and the Company attracted customers to purchase a total of 78 units; (iii) the occupancy rate of Nam Tai Inno Park increased by 10 percentage points quarter-on-quarter to 69%; (iv) the construction of Nam Tai Technology Center is underway and the Company completed the masonry work on all the four towers; (v) a loan facility of $164 million was secured from Bank of Guangzhou, and (vi) amounts due to the Bank of Beijing and the Industrial Bank were repaid in full.

With the success in securing new financing from Bank of Guangzhou Co., Ltd., the Company is confident it will restore the normal operations of the Company and its subsidiaries gradually. The board of directors and management will make every endeavor to act for the best interest of the Company and all shareholders.

Highlights:

Revenue was $5.8 million in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of $4.7 million year-on-year.

in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of year-on-year. Net loss from operations was $3.3 million in the third quarter of 2021, reduced from net loss from operations of $5.8 million in the third quarter of 2020.

in the third quarter of 2021, reduced from net loss from operations of in the third quarter of 2020. Consolidated net loss was $4.3 million in the third quarter of 2021, reduced from consolidated net loss from operations of $4.9 million in the third quarter of 2020.

in the third quarter of 2021, reduced from consolidated net loss from operations of in the third quarter of 2020. Real estate properties under development, net was $317.9 million as of September 30, 2021 , an increase of $5.7 million from the end of 2020.

as of , an increase of from the end of 2020. Real estate properties held for lease, net was $151.7 million as of September 30, 2021 , an increase of $59.5 million from the end of 2020.

In addition:

The Company (through its wholly owned indirect subsidiary, Nam Tai Investment ( Shenzhen ) Co., Ltd. ("Nam Tai Investment")) secured a loan facility of up to RMB1.06 billion (approximately $164 million ) from Shenzhen Branch of Bank of Guangzhou Co., Ltd. ("Bank of Guangzhou ") for a term of five years. As of September 30, 2021 , Nam Tai Investment drew down approximately RMB575 million (approximately $88.6 million ) under such loan facility.

) Co., Ltd. ("Nam Tai Investment")) secured a loan facility of up to (approximately ) from Branch of Bank of Guangzhou Co., Ltd. ("Bank of ") for a term of five years. As of , Nam Tai Investment drew down approximately (approximately ) under such loan facility. The Company repaid the amount due to the Shenzhen Branch of Bank of Beijing Co., Ltd ("Bank of Beijing ") and Shenzhen Branch of Industrial Bank Co., Ltd. ("Industrial Bank") in full in September 2021 .

Branch of Bank of Beijing Co., Ltd ("Bank of ") and Branch of Industrial Bank Co., Ltd. ("Industrial Bank") in full in . The occupancy rate of Nam Tai Inno Park reached 69% by the end of the third quarter of 2021, an increase of 10 percentage points quarter-on-quarter.

The Company commenced the pre-sale of units of Nam Tai  Longxi in August 2021 and received earnest money from purchasers for a total of 78 units, or 9,144 square meters in gross floor area as of September 30, 2021 .

and received earnest money from purchasers for a total of 78 units, or 9,144 square meters in gross floor area as of . The Company has completed the masonry work for Towers A, B, C and D of Nam Tai Technology Center. The Company is conducting interior decoration for Towers A, B, C and working on plastering for Tower D.

In October 2021 , Nam Tai Inno Park was awarded the Gold Winner for lighting design of MUSE Design Awards, which represents a strong endorsement of the Company's commitment to high-quality technology park.

The following tables set forth key highlights of the financial information for the periods indicated:

(In thousands of US dollars, except per share data, percentages and as otherwise stated)





Quarterly Results



Nine Months Results





Q3 2021



Q3 2020



YoY(%)(a)



9M 2021



9M 2020



YoY(%)(a)

Revenue

$ 5,791



$ 1,067





442.7%



$ 84,385



$ 2,609





3134.4%

Gross profit

$ 2,141



$ 241





788.4%



$ 52,580



$ 483





10786.1%

Net (loss) income from operations

$ (3,274)



$ (5,775)











$ 32,660



$ (13,986)









% of revenue



(56.5)) %



(541.2) %











38.7 %



(536.1) %







per share (diluted)

$ (0.08)



$ (0.15)











$ 0.83



$ (0.36)









Consolidated net (loss) income

$ (4,311)



$ (4,850)











$ 21,028



$ (11,810)









% of revenue



(74.4) %



(454.5) %











24.9 %



(452.7) %







Basic (loss) income per share

$ (0.11)



$ (0.12)





(8.3)%



$ 0.54



$ (0.30)







Diluted (loss) income per share

$ (0.11)



$ (0.12)





(8.3)%



$ 0.54



$ (0.30)







Weighted average number of shares ('000)















































Basic



39,258





39,072













39,227





38,950









Diluted



39,258





39,072













39,288





38,950











Notes:

(a) Percentage change is not applicable if either of the two periods contains a loss or no amount.





Financial Position





As of September 30,



As of December 31,



As of September 30,





2021



2020



2020

Cash and cash equivalents(a)

$ 70,378



$ 60,980



$ 72,075

Short-term investments(b)

$ 51,374



$ 150,150



$ 

Restricted cash

$ 114,892



$ 2,065



$ 1,975

Real estate properties under development, net

$ 317,939



$ 312,185



$ 385,227

Real estate properties held for sales type lease

$ 7,434



$ 31,558



$ 

Real estate properties held for lease, net

$ 151,705



$ 92,207



$ 30,375

Property, plant and equipment, net

$ 25,788



$ 26,568



$ 25,779

Total assets

$ 770,779



$ 701,210



$ 536,561

Amount due to a shareholder

$ 146,869



$ 146,869



$ 

Current portion of long term bank loans

$ 109,539



$ 122,883



$ 6,639

Accounts payable

$ 70,672



$ 61,559



$ 52,573

Advance from customers

$ 5,564



$ 69,722



$ 122,012

Contract liabilities

$ 14,173



$ 



$ 

Long term bank loans

$ 88,636



$ 



$ 126,565

Total shareholders' equity

$ 271,535



$ 248,828



$ 211,761

Total number of common shares issued



39,258





39,198





39,198



Notes:

(a) Cash and cash equivalents included all cash balances and certificates of deposit having a maturity date of three months or less upon acquisition.

(b) Short term investments included investments with original maturities of three months and less than 12 months, and investments that were expected to be realized in cash in the next 12 months. As of September 30, 2021, the Company had short term investments of principal amount of $51.4 million, which were from the proceeds of a private placement completed on October 5, 2020 (the "Private Placement"), investing into a supply chain finance fund managed by Credit Suisse (the "Fund") with underlying notes insured by insurance companies with a credit rating of at least A by Standard & Poor's or A2 by Moody's, which was terminated with effect as of March 4, 2021 due to some of the fund's assets being subject to considerable valuation uncertainty and reduced availability of insurance coverage for new investments, and was subsequently in liquidation. The Company was notified by Credit Suisse that the liquidation proceeds were to be repaid by instalments.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION (UNAUDITED) IN THE THIRD QUARTER OF 2021

Key Highlights of Financial Position





As of September 30,



As of December 31,

As of September 30,







2021



2020

2020



Current ratio(a)

1.11



0.87

1.01



Debt ratio(b)

64.8 %

64.5 % 60.5 %

Return on equity(c)

8.1 %

6.8 % (7.4) %

Ratio of total liabilities to total equity

1.84



1.82

1.53





Notes:

(a) Current ratio is calculated with all current assets divided by all current liabilities.

(b) Debt ratio is calculated with all total liabilities divided by total assets.

(c) Return on equity is calculated with consolidated net income (loss) divided by average of total shareholders' equity at beginning and end of the period.

FINANCIAL RESULTS

Revenue

Revenue for the third quarter of 2021 was $5.8 million, compared to $1.1 million for the third quarter of 2020. Revenue for the third quarter of 2021 mainly consisted of the lease income of $1.4 million recognized following the delivery of the dormitory units and operating lease income of $2.2 million from Nam Tai Inno Park, operating lease income of $1.0 million from existing buildings located on the sites of Inno Valley, Wuxi, Shanghai, and the leased space at Nam Tai  Tang Xi Technology Park, and property service income of $1.2 million. Revenue for the third quarter of 2020 mainly consisted of rental income of $0.6 million from existing factory buildings located on the sites of Inno Valley and Wuxi, $0.2 million from Nam Tai  U-Creative Space (Lujiazui) and Nam Tai  Tang Xi Technology Park, and $0.1 million from Nam Tai Inno Park.

Gross Profit

Gross profit for the third quarter of 2021 was $2.1 million compared to $0.2 million in the third quarter of 2020. Gross profit for the third quarter of 2021 mainly consisted of revenue of $5.8 million, offset by cost of $3.7 million for the period. Gross profit for the third quarter of 2020 mainly consisted of revenue of $1.1 million, offset by cost of $0.8 million for the period.

Net (Loss) Income from Operations

Net loss from operations for the third quarter of 2021 was $3.3 million, compared to net loss from operations of $5.8 million for the third quarter of 2020. Net loss from operations for the third quarter of 2021 mainly consisted of gross profit of $2.1 million, offset in part by general and administrative expenses of $3.7 million and selling and marketing expenses of $1.7 million for the period. Net loss from operations for the third quarter of 2020 mainly consisted of general and administrative expenses of $3.8 million and selling and marketing expenses of $2.2 million, offset in part by gross profit of $0.2 million for the period. The decrease in selling and marketing expenses of $0.5 million in the third quarter of 2021 was mainly due to the decrease in marketing and commission fees.

Consolidated Net Income (Loss)

Consolidated net loss for the third quarter of 2021 was $4.3 million, compared to consolidated net loss of $4.9 million for the third quarter of 2020. Consolidated net loss for the third quarter of 2021 mainly consisted of net loss from operations of $3.3 million and other expenses of $1.8 million, offset in part by interest income of $0.1 million and income tax benefits of $0.6 million. Consolidated net loss for the third quarter of 2020 mainly consisted of net loss from operations of $5.8 million, which was offset in part by interest income of $0.3 million from time deposits, deferred income tax credit of $0.6 million and other net income of $0.04 million.

Cash and Cash Equivalents

Cash and cash equivalents increased by $9.4 million in the nine months of 2021 from $61.0 million as of December 31, 2020 to $70.4 million as of September 30, 2021. The increase was primarily attributable to net cash provided by investing activities of $98.3 million and financing activities of $75.2 million, offset by net cash used in operating activities of $52.3 million, an exchange rate effect of $1.0 million and the increase in restricted cash of $112.8 million. The net cash provided by investing activities was primarily attributable to proceeds from the redemption and distribution of short term investments of $98.8 million in the first nine months of 2021.

Restricted Cash

Restricted cash increased by $112.8 million from $2.1 million as of December 31, 2020 to $114.9 million as of September 30, 2021, because the Company's lending banks have restricted the remittance from the bank accounts of some of the Company's subsidiaries in the PRC in connection of the freezing orders issued by the relevant PRC courts regarding some lawsuits filed by the Company's suppliers in the PRC and an injunctive order was imposed on the Company by the High Court of Justice of the British Virgin Islands of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in March 2021, which has restricted the Company from dealing with the proceeds raised from the Private Placement. The Company repaid the amount due to the Bank of Beijing and Industrial Bank in September 2021, and relevant bank accounts have been released.

Contract Assets

Contract assets were $0.05 million as of September 30, 2021, which was the prepaid commission for Nam Tai  Longxi.

Real Estate Properties under Development, Net

Real estate properties under development, net increased by $5.7 million from $312.2 million as of December 31, 2020 to $317.9 million as of September 30, 2021, primarily attributable to the increase of $29.0 million for the construction of Nam Tai Technology Center, $21.0 million for the construction of Nam Tai  Longxi, partially offset by the decrease of $45.8 million for the construction of Nam Tai Inno Park. During the nine months of 2021, the Company completed Tower 3 and 5 of Nam Tai Inno Park which was then transferred to real estate properties held for lease, net.

Real Estate Properties Held for Sales Type Lease

Real estate properties held for sales type lease are stated at the lower of carrying amounts or fair value less selling costs. Real estate properties held for sales type lease decreased by $24.2 million from $31.6 million as of December 31, 2020 to $7.4 million as of September 30, 2021. The decrease was mainly due to delivery of part of Towers 8, 9 and 10 during the nine months of 2021.

Real Estate Properties Held for Lease, Net

Real estate properties held for lease, net are recorded at cost less accumulated depreciation. Real estate properties held for lease, net increased by $59.5 million from $92.2 million as of December 31, 2020 to $151.7 million as of September 30, 2021. The increase was mainly due to the transfer of Tower 3 and 5 of Nam Tai Inno Park from real estate properties under development to real estate properties held for lease during the nine months of 2021.

Accounts Payable

Accounts payable increased by $9.1 million from $61.6 million as of December 31, 2020 to $70.7 million as of September 30, 2021. The increase was mainly due to the increase of project payable of $3.6 million, $0.01 million and $5.7 million for Nam Tai Technology Center, Nam Tai Inno Park and Nam Tai  Longxi, respectively, offset partially by the decrease of project payable of $0.2 million for other subsidiaries.

Advance from Customers

Advance from customers decreased by $64.1 million from $69.7 million as of December 31, 2020 to $5.6 million as of September 30, 2021. The decrease was mainly attributed to the recognition of revenue of $74.8 million from the prepaid rent for the units delivered to customers of Nam Tai Inno Park during the period, offset partially by $10.7 million of rent and other fees received in advance during the period.

Contract liabilities

Contract liabilities were $14.2 million as of September 30, 2021, which was comprised of advance payment from customers for Nam Tai  Longxi.

Current Portion of Long Term Bank Loans

The current portion of long term bank loans decreased by $13.3 million from $122.9 million as of December 31, 2020 to $109.5 million as of September 30, 2021, due to loan repayments of $14.2 million and exchange loss of $0.8 million as of September 30, 2021. In March 2021, the Company received demand letters from Bank of China, Bank of Beijing, Industrial Bank, and Xiamen International Bank (the "Lending Banks"), regarding payment in full of amounts due under the respective loan agreements with the banks. Following the demand letters, the Lending Banks have restricted the remittance from the accounts of the subsidiaries of the Company in their banks in the PRC. All bank borrowings were re-classified as current liabilities as of December 31, 2020. The Company repaid the amount due to the Bank of Beijing and Industrial Bank in September 2021. The Company continues to negotiate with the Lending Banks.

Long Term Bank Loans

Long-term bank loans were $88.6 million as of September 30, 2021, which was mainly due to the withdrawal of $88.6 million from Bank of Guangzhou.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

As of September 30, 2021, the Company had a total cash and cash equivalents of $70.4 million. As of December 31, 2020, the Company had a total cash and cash equivalents of $61.0 million.

Going Concern

The unaudited consolidated financial information of the Company for the third quarter of 2021 has been prepared on the assumption that the Company will continue as a going concern which contemplates the realization of assets and the satisfaction of liabilities in the normal course of business. As of September 30, 2021, the Company had current portion of long term bank loan of $109.5 million which, among other conditions and uncertainties, raised substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

According to the Company's announcement dated September 14, 2021 Nam Tai Investment has entered into a loan agreement with Bank of Guangzhou for a loan facility of up to RMB1.06 billion (approximately $164 million) with a five- year term. As of September 30, 2021, Nam Tai Investment drew down approximately RMB575 million (approximately $88.6 million) under such loan facility.

However, there are uncertainties pertaining to the management of the Company as a result of a special meeting of shareholders ordered to be convened on November 30, 2021. For more information, see "Recent Developments  Dispute with IsZo Capital LP". The current board of directors and management of the Company are committed to taking actions to preserve the best interests of all shareholders.

Please see the Company's Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income for further details. The information contained herein has also been published on the Company's website at https://www.namtai.com/quarterly/index.html.

BUSINESS OVERVIEW

Leasing and Pre-sale Progress

As of September 30, 2021, the Company had leasable area of approximately 365,000 square meters, of which around 85% was located in Shenzhen and 15% was located in Wuxi and Shanghai. The occupancy rate of the Company's Shenzhen projects reached approximately 67%, and that of the Company's Wuxi and Shanghai projects reached approximately 99% by the third quarter of 2021. The occupancy rate of Nam Tai Inno Park was 69%, an increase of 10 percentage points from the quarter ended June 30, 2021. The Company attracted 39 new corporate tenants to settle in the Inno Park in the third quarter of 2021, mostly from healthcare, technology and related industries. The Company will continue to promote the leasing of the industrial offices and commercial spaces of Nam Tai Inno Park.

The Company (through its subsidiary) obtained the pre-sale permits for Towers 1, 2 and 6 of Nam Tai  Longxi on July 30, 2021 and commenced the pre-sale of the first batch of 260 residential units which are equivalent to 27,899 square meters in gross floor area on August 4, 2021. As of September 30, the Company received earnest money from purchasers for a total of 78 units, or approximately 9,144 square meters in gross floor area. Although the Company will continue to make every endeavor to facilitate the pre-sale amid the liquidity issues, a success of the pre-sale is not guaranteed. Further, there is no assurance that the Company will receive payments regarding the pre-sale in a timely manner from the purchasers and/or their respective mortgagees, which may adversely affect the Company's liquidity and financial condition.

Projects

Leasable Area as of September 30, 2021 Leased Area as of September 30, 2021 Occupancy Rate Shenzhen

310,193 207,665 67% Nam Tai Inno Park

264,337 181,096 69% Nam Tai Inno Valley

38,270 19,814 52% Nam Tai  Tang Xi Technology Park

7,586 6,755 89% Wuxi & Shanghai

54,809 54,315 99% Wuxi facilities

50,828 50,828 100% Nam Tai  U-Creative Space (Lujiazui)

3,981 3,487 88% Total

365,002 261,980 72%

Project Construction and Development Progress

For Nam Tai Technology Center, the masonry work for Towers A, B, C and D has been completed. Currently, the Company is conducting interior decoration for Towers A, B, C and working on plastering for Tower D. The pre-sale permit for the project has not been obtained.

For Nam Tai Inno Valley , the Company is in the process of obtaining approval for the Company's urban renewal application. Before obtaining the approval from the local authorities, the Company will continue to lease the units in Inno Valley for short-term tenancy. The occupancy rate of Inno Valley was 52% as of September 30, 2021 .

, the Company is in the process of obtaining approval for the Company's urban renewal application. Before obtaining the approval from the local authorities, the Company will continue to lease the units in Inno Valley for short-term tenancy. The occupancy rate of Inno Valley was 52% as of . For Nam Tai  Longxi, the main structures of Towers 1, 2 and 6 was capped and masonry work is under way while the main structures of Towers 3, 4 and 5 are under construction.

Industrial Operation Progress

In the third quarter of 2021, the Company continued to implement a comprehensive industry chain model and provided value-added services to the Company's corporate tenants through a number of industry events, which covered talent recruitment, technology facilitation, financing and policy consulting, aiming to support the growth of the Company's corporate tenants and the technology community.

In respect of talent recruitment, the Company arranged a campaign with the theme "Month for Talent Service" in September 2021 , under which a number of relevant activities were arranged to support the Company's corporate tenants in hiring talents and retaining employees. For example, in cooperation with Tongdao Liepin Group, the Company conducted a live webcast to help recruitment for 25 high-end job openings, attracting more than 12,000 online participants in September 2021 .

, under which a number of relevant activities were arranged to support the Company's corporate tenants in hiring talents and retaining employees. For example, in cooperation with Tongdao Liepin Group, the Company conducted a live webcast to help recruitment for 25 high-end job openings, attracting more than 12,000 online participants in . In respect of technology facilitation, in August 2021 , the Company established the "QATIC Lean Production Empowerment Center" (in collaboration with Shenzhen Anche Shenghui Testing Technology Co., Ltd, a company listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange), which as a platform will provide the Company's corporate tenants with reliability and failure analysis services for electronic components and product quality improvement services. In the same month, the Company built the "Biological Product Research and Development Platform" jointly with Shenzhen Tuopu Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Research Institute of Xiamen University to provide biomedical enterprises with fundamental research and technical services involving synthetic biology.

, the Company established the "QATIC Lean Production Empowerment Center" (in collaboration with Shenzhen Anche Shenghui Testing Technology Co., Ltd, a company listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange), which as a platform will provide the Company's corporate tenants with reliability and failure analysis services for electronic components and product quality improvement services. In the same month, the Company built the "Biological Product Research and Development Platform" jointly with Shenzhen Tuopu Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Research Institute of University to provide biomedical enterprises with fundamental research and technical services involving synthetic biology. The Company's unique industrial service strategy and exceptional performance have been highly recognized by the local authorities. During the third quarter of 2021, a number of officials from the local authorities, including the Deputy Secretary of Guangming District Committee and members of the Guangming District Standing Committee, visited Nam Tai Inno Park and the branch of Guangming District Administration Service Center and praised the achievements of the Company's industrial services and corporate tenant attraction.

Awards

The Company is pleased to announce that in September 2021 Nam Tai Inno Park was awarded Gold Winner in lighting design of MUSE Design Awards, an award system created by the International Awards Association with a mission to honor, promote and encourage creativity. The awarding institution commented on the nighttime view of Inno Park, that "Combined with the overall architectural features, referring to many landmarks as the design intention, fully considering the commercial, office and residential night lighting design needs, precise control of color temperature, once again to achieve the state of light but not light." This award represents a strong endorsement of the Company's commitment to high-quality technology park and acknowledges the efforts Nam Tai has made on this important project.

Real Estate Market Update

China's property sector was cooling down in terms of sales and investment in the third quarter of 2021. The nationwide transacted gross floor area and the sales in September 2021 recorded a drop of 13% and 15.8% year-on-year, respectively. With respect to the real estate development expenditures, it grew by 8.8% for the first nine months of 2021 year-on-year, which was the lowest this year.

The performance of office and residential markets vary. The absorption of office space in gross floor area in Shenzhen increased by 86.5% quarter-on-quarter to approximately 307,000 square meter, which drove down the vacancy rate by 2.6 percentage points to 23.9%, according to a research institution's report. With respect to Dongguan's residential market, there was a decline in supply with stiffened selling prices in the third quarter of 2021. The transacted gross floor area for new residential units in Dongguan City decreased by 53.8% to approximately 1.09 million square meter while the average selling price increased by 12% to approximately RMB27,600 per square meter.

From the policy perspective, in order to promote the healthy development of the housing market, the PRC government has been rolling out restrictive measures with the objective to curb the rapid price increase in housing and speculation activities. In the first half of 2021, PRC government implemented two policies in relation to real estate financing, among others, to regulate the financing activities of real estate developers, which are the "Three Red Lines" policy (liability to asset ratio (excluding advance receipt) being less than 70%, net gearing ratio being less than 100% and cash to short-term debt ratio being more than 1 multiple) and the "Two Red Lines" concentration policy for financial institutions, respectively. Under these policies, the domestic real estate loans for the first nine months of 2021 dropped by 8.4% year-on-year to RMB1.877 trillion.

In Dongguan's housing market, local government has also promulgated restrictive measures to curb the rapid rise in housing price. On August 2, 2021, Dongguan Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau issued the Notice on Further Regulating and Controlling the Real Estate Market to regulate the real estate market in terms of tightening residential unit buyer's restrictions, monitoring capital inflow to the property market, strengthening real estate tax supervision and regulation, establishing a second-hand housing transaction guidance price system, and strengthening commodity housing sales supervision. Further, in September 2021, Dongguan Natural Resources Bureau issued the Notice on Further Strict Bidding for Residential Land which stipulated that measures will be strictly carried out to examine the qualifications of land purchasers and strengthen the examination of the sources of funds for land purchase. In addition, in October 2021, Dongguan Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the Notice on the Establishment of a Mechanism for Issuing Reference Prices of Second-hand Housing Transactions, which stipulated that relevant institutions involved in second-hand housing transactions should take the reference prices of second-hand housing transactions as one of the reference bases for business development.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Financing Update

According to the Company's announcement dated September 14, 2021, Nam Tai Investment has entered into a loan agreement with Bank of Guangzhou for a loan facility of up to RMB1.06 billion (approximately $164 million) with a five- year term. As of September 30, 2021, Nam Tai Investment drew down approximately RMB575 million (approximately $88.6 million) under such loan facility.

In addition, the Company repaid the amount due to the Bank of Beijing and Industrial Bank in full in September 2021. The Company will continue its efforts to cure the defaults with other existing lenders and address the Company's liquidity issues progressively.

Dispute with IsZo Capital LP

On October 4, 2021, the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal in the British Virgin Islands (the "Court of Appeal") handed down a judgment (the "Appeal Judgment") dismissing the Company's appeal against the BVI Commercial Court's finding that, among other things, the Private Placement was void. The Court of Appeal upheld the Company's appeal against the finding of the BVI Commercial Court that the Company's directors acted in breach of section 120(1) of the BVI Business Companies Act 2004. Further, the Court of Appeal ordered the Company to hold a special meeting of shareholders regarding the removal and appointment of directors on November 30, 2021 (the "Proposed Special Meeting").

A consequential hearing regarding the Appeal Judgment was held on October 6, 2021 at which the Court of Appeal stayed its order directing the holding of the Proposed Special Meeting on condition that the Company file any application which it determined to make by October 18, 2021 for: (i) conditional leave to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom (the "Privy Council"); (ii) a stay of execution to stay the Proposed Special Meeting pending the judgment on the Company's appeal to the Privy Council; and (iii) a variation of the order of the Court of Appeal dated October 4, 2021 (the "Three Applications"). Accordingly, the Company filed the Three Applications to the Court of Appeal on October 18, 2021 as directed. Further, on October 22, 2021, IsZo Capital LP filed application to the Court of Appeal for conditional leave to cross appeal to the Privy Council ("IsZo's Application"). The hearing by the Court of Appeal for the Three Applications and IsZo's Application is scheduled for November 8, 2021.

Supply Chain Finance Fund Managed by Credit Suisse (the "Fund")

The Company has placed $150 million out of the proceeds from the Private Placement to the Fund with the objective of seeking a stable and enhanced return through an insured cash management solution. In January 2021, the Company received a redemption amount of $15 million (the "Redemption") from the Fund. The Fund was terminated with effect as of March 4, 2021 due to some of the Fund's assets being subject to considerable valuation uncertainty and reduced availability of insurance coverage for new investments, and was subsequently in liquidation. The Company has been notified by Credit Suisse that the liquidation proceeds will be repaid by instalments. As of September 30, 2021, the Company had received five instalments in aggregate of $84.0 million (the "Repaid Sum") from the Fund in addition to the Redemption. The Company is restricted from dealing with the Repaid Sum as it belongs to the proceeds from the Private Placement. See "Financial Results  Restricted Cash" for more information.

The Company will continue to negotiate with Credit Suisse and is committed to act in the best interest of the Company. The Company will take all necessary steps to recover the rest of the principal invested where appropriate and as advised by the Company's external counsel. However, there is no assurance that the Company can fully recover the Company's principal from the Fund.

Lawsuits filed by the Company's suppliers

As at the date of this announcement, relevant subsidiaries of the Company has received a total of nine writs of summons from our suppliers in the PRC seeking orders from the relevant PRC courts to settle the alleged outstanding construction fees/payments amounting to an aggregate of approximately RMB92.5 million, in which the respective PRC courts have issued rulings to freeze the bank accounts of the relevant subsidiaries of the Company amounting to approximately RMB21.4 million in relation to three of the aforementioned writs of summons. We are negotiating with the relevant suppliers, and seeking legal advice from external counsel to prepare for the upcoming hearings. Due to the continuous effort of the Company, two of our suppliers withdrew their respective lawsuits against the Company after negotiations, involving an amount of approximately RMB14.8 million, and we have reached a settlement with one of our suppliers.

OPERATING RESULTS





As of September 30, 2021 (By Floor Area)

(in square meter) Project Completed

331,701 Project Under Development

309,115 Project For Future Development

170,200 Total

811,016

Project Portfolio - As of September 30, 2021

Project



Nam Tai Inno Park

Nam Tai Technology Center

Nam Tai Inno Valley

Nam Tai  Longxi



City



Shenzhen

Shenzhen

Shenzhen

Dongguan



Type(a)



Office and Dormitory

Office and Dormitory

Office and Dormitory

Residential and Commercial Property



Site Area (sq.m.)



103,739

22,364

22,367

33,763



Capacity GFA



265,139

139,746

N/A

84,408



Total GFA (sq.m.)



331,701

194,595

170,200(b)

114,520



Total GFA Completed(c)



331,701

-

-

-

Under Development (sq.m.)



-

194,595

-

114,520

Future Development (sq. m.)



-

-

170,200(b)

-

Interest Attributable To Us



100%

100%

100%

100%



Address



Fenghuang Community, Guangming District, Shenzhen

Namtai Road, Baoan District, Shenzhen

Dongtai Village, Machong Town, Dongguan



































Notes:

(a) The types of the Company's projects are based on its development plans or certificates issued by the relevant authority subject to adjustment upon the final approval.

(b) The gross floor area is based on the assumption that the Company will receive M-0 zoning approval for the entire Inno Valley site prior to its redevelopment. If the Company does not receive the M-0 zoning approval, the Company will be required to develop Inno Valley under the M-1 zoning requirements. In that case, appropriate adjustments to the Company's plan will have to be made. The existing gross floor area of Inno Valley is 41,927 square meters. According to "Shenzhen Industrial Block Range Line Management Measures", the location of Nam Tai Inno Valley is within the designated industrial block range, of which the government strictly controls the proportion of M-0 zoning on industrial land. Therefore, the proportion of M-0 zoning, floor area ratio and construction area of Inno Valley are subject to the final approval of the government which is uncertain at this time. The Company cannot guarantee that the Company will be able to develop Inno Valley according to the floor area currently disclosed.

(c) Properties completed refer to the status following the completion of the construction of the properties, the registration of the completion acceptance and the internal acceptance criteria.

Properties Completed

The table below sets forth certain information of the Company's property projects completed as of September 30, 2021, comprising properties for which the registration of the completion acceptance was completed and the internal acceptance was satisfied.



Project

Nam Tai Inno Park City

Shenzhen Total GFA (sq. m.)

331,701 Leasable GFA (sq. m.)

264,337 Saleable GFA (sq. m.)

- Commencement of Construction

May 2017 Status of Pre-sale Permit

Not eligible Completion Time

July 2021 Interest Attributable to Us

100%

Properties Under Development

The table below sets forth certain information of the Company's property projects under development as of September 30, 2021, comprising properties under development with the foundation work construction permits obtained but the construction work was still in progress.



Project

Nam Tai Technology Center

Nam Tai  Longxi City

Shenzhen

Dongguan (Estimated) Total GFA (sq. m.)

194,595

114,520 (Estimated) Leasable GFA (sq. m.)

-

- (Estimated) Saleable GFA (sq. m.)

130,166

64,408(a) Commencement of Construction

December 2018

July 2020 Status of Pre-sale Permit

To be obtained

Obtained(b) (Estimated) Completion Time

2022

2022 Interest Attributable to Us

100%

100%

Notes:

(a) Excluding parking space and construction area that needs to be handed over to the local government free of charge. The final floor area is subject to the approval of the government.

(b) The Company obtained the pre-sale permits for Towers 1, 2 and 6 of Nam Tai  Longxi on July 30, 2021.

Properties for Future Development

The table below sets forth certain information of the Company's property projects held for future development as of September 30, 2021, comprising properties for which the Company has obtained the land use right certificate and is in the process of obtaining the foundation work construction permits, or the Company has entered into land grant contracts or is in the process of applying for special planning although the land use right certificate is not yet obtained.

Project

Nam Tai Inno Valley

City

Shenzhen

Estimated Total GFA(1) (sq. m.)

170,200

Estimated Completion Time

2025



Note:

(1) The figures are subject to adjustment upon the final approval of the relevant authority.

Projects for Operation and Management

The table below sets forth certain information of the Company's projects leased from third parties for operation and management as of September 30, 2021.



Project

Location

Contracted Floor Area (sq. m.)

Operation Model 1 Nam Tai  Tang Xi Technology Park

Shenzhen

7,586

Tenant Recruitment and Operation 2 Nam Tai  U-Creative Space (Lujiazui)

Shanghai

3,981

Tenant Recruitment and Operation

The information contained in, or that can be accessed through, the website mentioned in this announcement does not form part of the announcement.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND FACTORS THAT COULD CAUSE THE COMPANY'S SHARE PRICE TO DECLINE

Certain statements included in this announcement, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "might", "can", "could", "will", "would", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "intend", "plan", "seek", or "timetable". These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, may include projections of the Company's future financial performance based on the Company's growth strategies and anticipated trends in its business and the industry in which the Company operates. These statements are only predictions based on the Company's current expectations about future events. There are several factors, many beyond the Company's control, which could cause results to differ materially from the Company's expectation. These risk factors are described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F and in the Company's Current Reports filed on Form 6-K from time to time and are incorporated herein by reference. Any of these factors could, by itself, or together with one or more other factors, adversely affect the Company's business, results of operations or financial condition. There may also be other factors currently unknown to the Company, or have not been described by the Company, that could cause the Company's results to differ from its expectations. Although the Company believes the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, the Company cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. Investors should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements apply only as of the date of this announcement; as such, they should not be unduly relied upon as circumstances change. Except as required by law, the Company is not obligated, and the Company undertakes no obligation, to release publicly any revisions to these forward-looking statements that might reflect events or circumstance occurring after the date of this announcement or those that might reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

CONFERENCE CALL INFORMATION

The Company will hold a conference call at 8 a.m. (Eastern Time) on November 8, 2021, in which the senior management will discuss the results for the third quarter of 2021. Investors may register and get access to the listen-only webcast through the link which can be found under "Investor News  Information and Activities  Investor Relations" on the Company's website at https://www.namtai.com/investornews/index.html. Please note that no question-and-answer session will be arranged during the call and investors are welcome to make enquiries by writing to the media and investor relations department of the Company by email at [email protected] or by contacting the Company's US-based public relations agent Edelman at [email protected].

ABOUT NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

Nam Tai is a real estate developer and operator, mainly conducting business in Mainland China. The Company's main land resources are located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area ("Greater Bay Area") and Wuxi, the PRC, of which the three plots of land in Shenzhen will be developed into the technology parks of Nam Tai Inno Park, Nam Tai Technology Center and Nam Tai Inno Valley. The Company plans to build these technology parks into landmark projects in the region, and provide high-quality industrial offices, industrial service spaces and supporting dormitories to the park tenants. Based on the experience of developing and operating technology parks, and the industrial relationship network accumulated over the past 40 years, the Company has also exported the operation mode of technology parks to other industrial properties using the asset-light model to rent industrial properties for repositioning and business invitation. Nam Tai will also expand the commercial and residential property business in the PRC as an auxiliary development strategy of the Company. As the growth prospects of the PRC maintain, the Company will actively seize development opportunities in the Greater Bay Area and other first- and second-tier cities in the PRC, and continue to strengthen and expand the business of industrial real estate, and commercial and residential properties.

Nam Tai Property Inc. is a corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: "NTP"). Please refer to the Nam Tai website (www.namtai.com) or the SEC website (www.sec.gov) for the Company's press releases and financial results.

NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

FOR THE PERIODS ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 AND 2020

(In Thousands of US dollars except share and per share data)





Three months ended September 30,



Nine months ended September 30,





2021

2020



2021

2020





(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)

Revenue

$ 5,791





1,067



$ 84,385



$ 2,609

Cost of revenue



(3,650)





(826)





(31,805)





(2,126)

Gross profit

$ 2,141



$ 241



$ 52,580



$ 483

Expenses































General and administrative expenses



(3,746)





(3,808)





(15,507)





(9,356)

Selling and marketing expenses



(1,669)





(2,208)





(4,413)





(5,113)

Total operating expenses

$ (5,415)



$ (6,016)



$ (19,920)



$ (14,469)

Net income (loss) from operations

$ (3,274)



$ (5,775)



$ 32,660



$ (13,986)

Other income (expense), net



(1,756)





43





(1,420)





(16)

Interest income



120





273





294





1,052

Income (Loss) before income tax

$ (4,910)



$ (5,459)



$ 31,534



$ (12,950)

Income tax (expense) benefit



599





609





(10,506)





1,140

Consolidated net income (loss)

$ (4,311)



$ (4,850)



$ 21,028



$ (11,810)

Other comprehensive income (loss) (1)



(1,372)





6,607





825





4,113

Functional currency translation adjustment



(1,372)





6,607





825





4,113

Consolidated comprehensive income (loss)

$ (5,683)



$ 1,757



$ 21,853



$ (7,697)

Earnings (loss) Per Share































Basic

$ (0.11)



$ (0.12)



$ 0.54



$ (0.30)

Diluted

$ (0.11)



$ (0.12)



$ 0.54



$ (0.30)

Weighted average number of shares ('000)































Basic



39,258





39,072





39,227





38,950

Diluted



39,258





39,072





39,288





38,950



Notes:

(1) Other comprehensive loss was due to foreign exchange translation.

NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

AS AT SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 AND DECEMBER 31, 2020

(In Thousands of US dollars)





September 30, 2021



December 31, 2020





(Unaudited)



(Audited)

ASSETS















Current assets:















Cash and cash equivalents

$ 70,378



$ 60,980

Restricted cash



114,892





2,065

Short term investments



51,374





150,150

Rental deposits



5





156

Accounts receivable



4,778





3,965

Real estate properties under development, net



142,740





121,693

Real estate properties held for sales type lease



7,434





31,558

Prepaid expenses and other receivables



11,175





7,141

Total current assets

$ 402,776



$ 377,708

Rental deposits



340





287

Real estate properties under development, net



175,199





190,492

Property, plant and equipment, net



25,788





26,568

Real estate properties held for lease, net



151,705





92,207

Contract assets



50







Right of use assets



9,341





9,695

Deferred income tax assets



5,480





4,154

Other assets



100





99

Total assets

$ 770,779



$ 701,210

LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY















Current liabilities:















Current portion of long term bank loans



109,539





122,883

Accounts payable



70,672





61,559

Rental deposits from customers



853





1,498

Accrued expenses and other payables



28,865





30,136

Advance from customers



5,564





69,722

Amount due to a shareholder



146,869





146,869

Amount due to a related company



950





161

Current portion of lease liabilities



1,101





1,064

Total current liabilities

$ 364,413



$ 433,892

Long term bank loans



88,636







Long term rental deposits



2,584





300

Financing lease payable



18





19

Contract liabilities



14,173







Deferred income tax liabilities



20,770





8,927

Noncurrent portion of lease liabilities



8,650





9,244

Total liabilities

$ 499,244



$ 452,382

EQUITY















Shareholders' equity:















Common shares



393





392

Additional paid-in capital



265,937





265,084

Retained earnings (accumulated deficit)



10,206





(10,822)

Accumulated other comprehensive loss(1)



(5,001)





(5,826)

Total shareholders' equity

$ 271,535



$ 248,828

Total liabilities and shareholders' equity

$ 770,779



$ 701,210



Notes:

(1) Accumulated other comprehensive loss represented conversion differences in foreign currency statements.

NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

FOR THE PERIODS ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 AND 2020

(In Thousands of US dollars)





Three months ended September 30,



Nine months ended September 30,

2021

2020



2021



2020





(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)



(Unaudited)

CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES































Consolidated net (loss) income

$ (4,311)



$ (4,850)



$ 21,028



$ (11,810)

Adjustments to reconcile consolidated net (loss) income to net cash provided by operating activities:































Depreciation and amortization



1,543





526





3,826





1,303

Amortization of right of use assets



418





455





1,389





1307

Share-based compensation expenses



96





(372)





289





730

Unrealized exchange loss (gain)



315





16





212





(12)

Deferred income tax benefit



(667)





(766)





10,517





(1,281)

Changes in assets and liabilities:































Increase in accounts receivable



(348)





(96)





(813)





(102)

(Increase) decrease in prepaid expenses and other receivables



(2,012)





(3,504)





(4,034)





2,738

Decrease (increase) in deposit



155





(10)





98





(188)

Increase in real estate properties under development



(24,398)





(5,045)





(34,689)





(107,857)

Increase (decrease) in accrued expenses and other payables



(207)





3482





(1,845)





(2,003)

Increase in accounts payable



1,402





825





426





239

Increase (decrease) in lease liabilities



241





(248)





(1,062)





(1,099)

Increase (decrease) in advance from customers



322





26,128





(64,158)





54,370

Decrease in contract assets



(50)











(50)







Increase in rental deposits from customers



247





503





1,639





973

Increase in contract liabilities



14,173











14,173







Increase in financing lease payable









7











7

Increase in amount due to a related company



9











789







Total adjustments

$ (8,761)



$ 21,901



$ (73,293)



$ (50,875)

Net cash (used in) provided by operating activities

$ (13,072)



$ 17,051



$ (52,265)



$ (62,685)

CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES































Payment of real estate properties under development









(29,315)











(40,860)



Purchase of property, plant & equipment



(161)





(280)





(477)





(677)

Decrease in short term investments



15,288











98,776





2,166

Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities

$ 15,127



$ (29,595)



$ 98,299



$ (39,371)

CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES































Repayment of bank loans



(11,639)





(30,362)





(14,223)





(38,497)

Proceeds from bank loans



88,847





34,971





88,847





73,245

Proceeds from shares issued for option exercise









1,744





565





3,793

Net cash provided by financing activities

$ 77,208



$ 6,353



$ 75,189



$ 38,541

Net increase (decrease) in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash

$ 79,263



$ (6,191)



$ 121,223



$ (63,515)

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at beginning of period



104,960





69,225





63,045





130,218

Effect of exchange rate changes on cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash



1,047





11,016





1,002





7,347

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at end of period

$ 185,270



$ 74,050



$ 185,270



$ 74,050

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION ON CASH FLOWS































Cash and cash equivalents

$ 70,378



$ 72,075



$ 70,378



$ 72,075

Restricted cash

$ 114,892



$ 1,975



$ 114,892



$ 1,975























































NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

NOTES TO CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

FOR THE PERIODS ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 AND 2020

(In Thousands of US dollars)

These financial statements, including the consolidated balance sheet as of December 31, 2020 , which was derived from audited financial statements, do not include all of the information and notes required by U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for complete financial statements and should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes included in the Company's annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 . In the opinion of management, all adjustments (consisting of normal, recurring adjustments) considered necessary for a fair presentation have been included. Operating results for the interim periods presented are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the full year ending December 31, 2021 . Accumulated other comprehensive loss represents foreign currency translation adjustments. The consolidated comprehensive income was $21.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and the consolidated comprehensive loss was $7.7 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 . A summary of the operating income, other (expenses) income, net (loss) income and long-lived assets by geographical areas is as follows:





Three months ended September 30,



Nine months ended September 30,





2021



2020



2021



2020

RENTAL INCOME WITHIN:































-PRC, excluding Hong Kong

$ 5,791



$ 1,067



$ 84,385



$ 2,609

NET (LOSS) INCOME FROM OPERATIONS WITHIN:































- PRC, excluding Hong Kong

$ (2,314)



$ (2,970)



$ 31,460



$ (7,243)

- Hong Kong



(1,997)





(1,880)





(10,432)





(4,567)

Total net (loss) income

$ (4,311)



$ (4850)



$ 21,028



$ (11,810)







September 30, 2021



December 31, 2020

LONG-LIVED ASSETS WITHIN:















- Real estate properties under development in PRC, excluding Hong Kong

$ 175,199



$ 190,492

- Property, plant and equipment in PRC, excluding Hong Kong



25,608





26,389

- Hong Kong



180





179

- Real estate properties held for lease in PRC, excluding Hong Kong



151,705





92,207

- Right of use assets in PRC, excluding Hong Kong



8,859





9,511

- Hong Kong



482





184

Total long-lived assets

$ 362,033



$ 318,962



SOURCE Nam Tai Property Inc.
Speaking at the launch of the DSO in Kano on Tuesday November 2, Malam Ilehah said NBC is keying into the agenda of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to democratize information in digital broadcasting, empower the people and create millions of jobs along the value chain. "Three days ago,100 artisans from the 44 Local councils were trained on FreeTV dealership, installation and activation," Malam Ilelah, said.

He said the beneficiaries are Kano state indigenes being empowered to take up the task of dealership, installation and activation of the set-top boxes in the homes, and those who end up as dealers may engage more hands to work with them which is in tandem with the vision of President Muhammadu Buhari on job creation.

Also speaking at the Kano DSO launch Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said: "the key benefits of digital television broadcasting are- wider choice in TV and radio channels, improved picture quality, for example, High Definition (HD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD), high-fidelity sound, greater flexibility with the potential for portable and mobile reception, enhanced information services including the electronic programming guide or enhanced 'teletext' services, potential for interactivity and increased market competition," Alhaji Mohammed , said.

"We have also instituted a number of reforms, some of them necessitating amendments to the broadcasting code which we have since carried out, with a view to encouraging investments in the broadcast industry in particular and the creative industry in general", the Minister of Information said.

A digital switch over is the migration of television broadcast technology from analogue to digital system. Kano is the second state in the phase two of the DSO roll out after Lagos in April this year. With Plateau state pioneering the DSO in Nigeria, other states that followed phase one roll out plan were Kaduna, Enugu, Kwara, Osun, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Commenting further Mohammed said: "I want to use this opportunity to implore state governments to be at the vanguard of providing set-top boxes to their people. This is because the provision of set-top boxes is a social service that will take governance to the grassroots and bridge the information gap between the government and the governed, among other advantages", adding, "for Kano state in particular, with a population of over 15 million people, governance will be revolutionised if each of the 2.4million television households can have a set-top box."

Host Governor, Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje said his administration has studied the DSO and has identified areas it could use to promote digital technology in broadcasting.

With the Federal Government determined to achieve a nationwide coverage of the digital switch over, the NBC has listed Rivers State in the South as the next in line to enjoy the new experience in broadcast content consumption that the digital broadcasting technology offers.

SOURCE National Broadcasting Commission
COSTA MESA, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The term "Don't drink the Kool-Aid" was coined in 1978 following the gruesome discovery of the mass murder scene in Jonestown Guyana. Cult leader Jim Jones instructed hundreds of children to be eliminated first, stripping the parents and adults of any hope, after assassinating Congressman Leo Ryan and his crew. On November 18, 1978, the world was shocked by the disturbing scene of bloated bodies and mounds of decaying corpses rotting in the unrelenting tropical heat of the jungle sun. In the camp's pavilion were vats of cyanide-laced Flavor Aid that Jones ordered his followers to drink at gunpoint or face immediate execution. There, over the dead bodies, a sign hung with a quote from George Santayana that read: "Those that do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Read the five-star reviews! No giant or dream is impossible. Get your copy of "Be A Giant Killer" today!

At only 5'10,'' Jim Jones was a murderous giant. He intimidated, manipulated, lied to, terrorized, and killed his followers in one of the largest single-loss U.S. civilian events in American history. Jim Jones was a false prophet who created false hope, dreams, and miracles to deceive people. He led his members away from, instead of toward God. Jonestown proved how the wrong relationships can be fatal in life.

Ed Norwood, President of ERN/The National Council of Reimbursement Advocacy, invites readers to learn about how he overcame his biggest giant in life: the traumas he experienced rooted in the Jonestown Tragedy 43 years ago. In his new book, Be A Giant Killer: Overcoming Your Everyday Goliaths, Norwood exposes Jim Jones' influence and leadership as a "giant" who killed the dreams and potential of over 918 people in a single day. As a result of Jim Jones' teachings, the author lost twenty-seven relatives to the mass murder in 1978. After this tragedy, Ed Norwood spent his years devoting his life to Christianity and hopes to inspire readers to become historic giant killers in their family, generation, and industry. Understanding both the wounds and the healing process that comes with loss, Ed encourages readers not to carry their own traumas and fears to the next generation.

Our family history is stronger than we think it is.

Be A Giant Killer is a book of timeless biblical truths and personal stories aimed to inspire readers how to face giants from their past that keep them achieving their wildest dreams.

"In Be a Giant Killer, Ed Norwood equips the reader to be able to readily identify the enemies that hinder us, and then conquer them. Defining the problem is half the battle. This is gold to those who are ready to be victorious warriors."

- Bishop Dale C. Bronner, D. Min

Founder/Senior Pastor at Word of Faith Family Worship Cathedral

Be A Giant Killer: Overcoming Your Everyday Goliaths is now available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Target.

Read the five-star reviews on Amazon below: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Giant-Killer-Overcoming-Everyday/dp/1950948927

About the Author

Ed Norwood is President of ERN/The National Council of Reimbursement Advocacy. He has been recognized as a unique and distinctive authority in transitional leadership and administrative laws that govern the healthcare delivery process. Ed has done hundreds of media interviews and lectures worldwide, focusing on public policy, healthcare advocacy, leadership development, and the lessons of the Jonestown Tragedy. Multi-faceted, with a creative ability to inspire his audience, Ed combines his business influence and expertise with his passion for ministry to help people flow in their dreams, destiny, and authority in life.

Websites:

www.ednorwood.com

www.ernenterprises.org

Juliana Trang

714-995-6900 ext. 6917

[email protected]

SOURCE Ed Norwood
This report shows we can tackle barriers to postsecondary opportunities and open doors to socioeconomic advancement. Tweet this

Funded by the Lumina Foundation, Equivolve facilitated programs in Indiana and Alabama to help address the systemic issues that can derail the pursuit of postsecondary education or attainment of professional skills and knowledge. In the postsecondary environment, people can often be stymied by an array of factors, including untapped financial aid eligibility, difficulties transferring college credits between institutions, barriers to accessing apprenticeships, geographic gaps between available resources and the people who could benefit from them, and racism or low awareness of community needs.

"In a time when millions of people need new skills to fill open jobs across the country, the learnings from this report can help guide educators, employers, and government agencies on ways to work together, and help solve the nation's critical labor shortage," said Wendy Sedlak, PhD, Strategy Director for Research and Evaluation, Lumina Foundation.

Over the course of both programs, the Equivolve team worked with partners to identify challenges in improving the path to postsecondary education and professional development. In both Indiana and Alabama, the two-year effort has generated outcomes that signal the power of partnerships.

In Alabama , state-based organizations recognized that many students graduate high school without knowing if they are eligible for financial aid. The partners successfully advocated for an update of state school board policy requiring students to complete their financial aid assessment form in order to graduate, to help more eligible students access aid.

, state-based organizations recognized that many students graduate high school without knowing if they are eligible for financial aid. The partners successfully advocated for an update of state school board policy requiring students to complete their financial aid assessment form in order to graduate, to help more eligible students access aid. In Indiana , advocates recognized that a lack of data was hindering the ability of the Indiana Talent Network (ITN) to invest in the greatest needs. ITN coordinated with partners around the state to build a new data dashboard that could help illustrate opportunities and inform more targeted grantmaking.

"We know we must establish better postsecondary opportunities for people during the transformative post-high-school years. This report provides the template for success," said Love. "With the right partnerships in place between advocacy organizations, educational organizations and state governments, we can make sure that a graduating student doesn't need to be headed for a four-year college to be headed for success."

The two partnerships will continue with ongoing funding from Lumina Foundation and will serve as a template for other states and regions seeking to replicate the success of the partnership model.

About Equivolve Consulting

Equivolve Consulting is a black-owned, Baltimore-based strategy firm that uses innovative research and evaluation approaches to help leaders and organizations to drive equitable results in the United States and around the world. Equivolve believes in the abundance of human potential existing around the globe, and we understand that everyone does not have access to the resources and opportunities to fully activate this potential. Research, evaluation, and strategy are tools for building systems and structures that facilitate access to these important resources and opportunities. For more information about Equivolve, visit equivolveconsulting.com.

About Lumina Foundation

Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. The organization envisions a system that is easy to navigate, delivers fair results, and meets the nation's need for talent through a broad range of credentials. The goal is to prepare people for informed citizenship and for success in a global economy. www.luminafoundation.org

SOURCE Equivolve Consulting

Related Links

http://www.luminafoundation.org

www.equivolveconsulting.com


ATLANTA, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- nView Health, the premier provider of evidence-based behavioral health solutions, is pleased to announce its solution has been named a finalist of the 2021 Fierce Healthcare Innovation Awards in the Clinical Information Management category. According to Fierce Healthcare, entries were judged on the ability of the applicant to "demonstrate effectiveness, technical innovation, competitive advantage, financial impact, and true innovation."

nView Health has been selected as a finalist for #FierceHealthcareAwards for its innovative, digital solutions that help providers better screen, monitor, and measure mental health outcomes for measurement-based care.

nView Health's behavioral health solutions enable healthcare providers to electronically screen, interview, monitor, and measure outcomes for the 17 most diagnosed adult DSM-5 mental health disorders, the 24 most diagnosed pediatric disorders, and other related mental health disorders, all on one comprehensive digital platform. Throughout the entire mental healthcare process, nView solutions gather necessary data to enable measurement-based care (MBC). The data gathered at each step of the patient journey is fully documented to provide validation of the patient outcome for providers, healthcare systems and payers.

"Measurement-based care is the standard of care for behavioral health providers and is increasingly becoming a point of focus for healthcare providers in general," said Jim Szyperski, Chief Executive Officer at nView Health. "Measurement-based care fundamentally drives the badly needed change to the broken processes our healthcare system currently uses to identify, assess, and treat mental health conditions. Being named a finalist for the Fierce Healthcare Innovation Award honors the work nView is doing every day to make MBC a reality in mental healthcare."

#FierceHealthcareAwards winners will be announced in an Innovation Report on December 6.

About nView Heatlh

nView Health is the premier provider of evidence-based software and solutions used by research organizations and healthcare professionals around the world to help them identify, treat, and monitor mental health disorders, a critical requirement for measurement-based care. nView is the worldwide exclusive licensee for a broad array of behavioral health screening solutions, structured interviews, and postdiagnosis severity measurement scales to monitor patient outcomes. To learn more, visit nview.com or follow nView Health on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Holly Wilson

404-966-2328

[email protected]

SOURCE nView Health
GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Onion Global Limited (NYSE: OG) ("Onion Global" or the "Company") today announced the closing of its previously announced private placement of 472,583 Class A ordinary shares and warrants to purchase up to an aggregate of 4,725,830 American Depositary Shares of the Company (the "ADSs"), at a purchase price of US$5.30 per 0.1 of a Class A ordinary share and associated warrant. The private placement resulted in gross proceeds to the Company of approximately US$25 million before the deduction of placement agent fees and expenses and offering expenses payable by the Company. The warrants have a term of three and one-half years, are exercisable immediately upon issuance, and have an exercise price of US$5.30 per ADS. Each Class A ordinary share represents ten ADSs.

H.C. Wainwright & Co. acted as the exclusive placement agent for the offering.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the private placement for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The offer and sale of the foregoing securities were made in a transaction not involving a public offering and the securities have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), or applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the securities may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and such applicable state securities laws.

Under an agreement with the investors, the Company agreed to file an initial registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") covering the resale of the Class A ordinary shares to be issued to the investors (including the ADSs underlying the warrants) no later than 30 days and to use best efforts to have the registration statement declared effective as promptly as practical thereafter, and in any event no later than 90 days in the event of a "full review" by the SEC.



This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.

About Onion Global

Onion Global Limited (NYSE: OG) is a next-generation lifestyle brand platform that incubates, markets and distributes the world's fresh, fashionable and future brands, which we refer to as "3F brands," to young people in China and across Asia. The Company's mission is to be the dream factory of lifestyle brands for young people. The Company's platform offers an integrated solution to develop, market and distribute new and inspiring branded products, thereby reshaping the lifestyle shopping and consumer culture in China. Onion Global Limited has been listed on New York Stock Exchange since May 2021.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the intended use of net proceeds from the private placement, as well as the Company's beliefs and expectations, the Company's forecasts, general observation of the industry and business outlook, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties and a number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including market and other conditions. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "expects," "anticipates," "target," "aim," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "potential," "estimates" "continue," "is/are likely to," or other similar statements. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Onion Global's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and Onion Global does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

Investor Relations Contact

In China:



Onion Global Ltd.

Investor Relations

E-mail: [email protected]

Christensen

Mr. Eric Yuan

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: +86-10-5900-1548

In United States:

Christensen

Ms. Linda Bergkamp

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: +1-480-614-3004

SOURCE Onion Global Limited

Related Links

http://ir.msyc.com/


ATLANTA, Ga. and WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Parallel (the "Company") today announces that it has formed a Strategic Alternatives Committee ("Committee") of its Board of Directors to explore and evaluate a range of strategic alternatives to enhance stakeholder value. These strategic alternatives include, among others, a potential sale of all or part of the Company or other business combination transactions and potential capital raise transactions.

The Company and the Committee do not intend to make any additional comments regarding these discussions until it deems further disclosure is appropriate or required.

Perella Weinberg Partners LP is serving as financial advisor and Mayer Brown LLP is serving as legal advisor to the Committee.

About Parallel

Parallel is one of the largest privately-held, vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis companies in the United States with a mission to pioneer well-being and improve the quality of life through cannabinoids. Parallel has ongoing operations in five medical and adult-use markets under the retail brands of Surterra Wellness in Florida; goodblend in Texas and in Pennsylvania; New England Treatment Access (NETA) in Massachusetts, and a joint venture with Cookies retail brand in Nevada. It will add a sixth market upon the pending regulatory approval of the planned acquisition of six Windy City Cannabis licenses in Illinois. Parallel has a diverse portfolio of high quality, proprietary and licensed consumer brands and products including Surterra Wellness, Coral Reefer, Float and Heights offered through its retail wholesale business. Parallel operates approximately 50 locations nationwide, including 44 retail stores, and cultivation and manufacturing sites. Through its wholly-owned Parallel Biosciences subsidiary, it conducts advanced cannabis science and R&D for new product development in its facilities in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas and a facility in Budapest, Hungary through an exclusive license and partnership. Parallel follows rigorous operations and business practices to ensure the quality, safety, consistency, and efficacy of its products and is building its business by following strong values and putting the well-being of its customers and employees first. Find more information at www.liveparallel.com, or on Instagram and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Parallel

Related Links

www.liveparallel.com


PHOENIX, Ariz., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN) ("Renren" or the "Company"), today announced that it will hold its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "AGM") at 2400 East Missouri Avenue, Phoenix AZ, 85016, at 9:00 a.m. local time on December 17, 2021. The purpose of the AGM is for the Company's shareholders to consider, and if thought fit, approve the change of the Company's legal name from "Renren Inc." to "Moatable, Inc." and the adoption of the Company's 2021 Share Incentive Plan.

The board of directors of the Company has fixed the close of business on November 15, 2021 as the record date (the "Record Date") in order to determine the shareholders entitled to receive notice of the AGM or any adjourned or postponed meeting thereof.

Holders of record of the Company's ordinary shares at the close of business on the Record Date are entitled to attend, and to vote at, the AGM and any adjournment or postponement thereof in person. Beneficial owners of the Company's American depositary shares ("ADSs") who wish to exercise their voting rights for the underlying shares represented by the ADSs must act through Citibank, N.A., the depositary of the Company's ADS program.

About Renren Inc.

Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN) operates several US-based SaaS businesses including Chime, a CRM and Marketing Automation platform, and Trucker Path, a trip-planning and business app for long-haul truckers. Renren's ADSs, each currently representing 45 Class A ordinary shares of the Company, are traded on NYSE under the symbol "RENN".

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Renren may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Renren's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are not a guarantee of future events, and that actual events may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in our annual report on Form 20-F and other documents filed with the SEC. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and Renren does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

SOURCE Renren Inc.

Related Links

www.renren.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Several market players such as Vir Biotechnology are utilizing ML and AI in the influenza drug development. Besides, companies are also focused on the integration of AI and ML for the development of drugs for influenza and common cold. This factor is projected to help in the expansion of the global respiratory virus infection drugs market in the years to come.

A research report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) highlights that several pharmaceutical companies are growing focus on performing a sustained study on the drug susceptibility of influenza viruses. This strategy is helping them in addressing the issue of drug resistance in case of continuous mutation of influenza virus.

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Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market: Key Findings

Increased Adoption of Combination Therapy Fuels Product Sales

In opposition to using bronchodilator and corticosteroid therapies separately, major healthcare professionals today are increasing the use of combination therapy in order to increase the effectiveness of disease treatments.

Several government authorities, including the European Commission, the FDA, and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) have given approval for the use of combination drugs in treating various respiratory diseases such as COPD and asthma. Moreover, a notable growth in the success rate of the combination therapy is observed in recent period.

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Surge in Spending on Immunization and Healthcare Boosts Product Demand

Major government bodies across the globe are growing healthcare spending in order to provide advanced healthcare infrastructure. Moreover, they are focused on improving operational efficiency. In addition, there is a significant growth in the number of awareness programs that focus on providing information about the available treatment options and vaccinations for various diseases. These factors are projected to create lucrative avenues in the respiratory virus infection drugs market.

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market: Growth Boosters

With consistent growth in the prevalence of different respiratory virus infections around the world, there is a significant growth in the demand for advanced therapeutics. This factor is projected to push the sales opportunities in the global respiratory virus infection drugs market in the near future.

TMR offers custom market research services that help clients to get information on their business scenario required where syndicated solutions are not enough, Request for Custom Research - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=30551

It is observed that several infectious diseases have developed resistance to different antibiotics. Considering this fact, several startups from the respiratory virus infection drugs market are growing attention toward the use of different advanced technologies such as AI and ML in order to develop drugs on diseases such as influenza and common cold.

Several companies are focused on finding promising solutions to address the issue of antibiotic resistance in several strains of SARS-CoV-2, tuberculosis, and influenza A. For instance, enterprises are growing adoption of multi-program and multi-platform approaches to develop successful candidates and deal with the issue of antibiotic resistance.

Many players are increasing R&D activities in order to innovate varied T cell platforms and antibody platforms. One of the key focus on these researches is the isolation of rare antibodies and their utilization in strengthening the immune system.

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Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market: Regional Analysis

North America is expected to maintain its dominant position in the respiratory virus infection drugs market

is expected to maintain its dominant position in the respiratory virus infection drugs market The growth of North America market can be attributed to many factors such as presence of sturdy healthcare infrastructure, increased product approvals and launch activities, and early acceptance of advanced therapeutics in the region

market can be attributed to many factors such as presence of sturdy healthcare infrastructure, increased product approvals and launch activities, and early acceptance of advanced therapeutics in the region The market in the Asia Pacific region is expected to expand on the back of existing R&D facilities, surge in number of product approvals, and rise in focus on managed care, specifically among the geriatric population across many countries, including Japan and China

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market: Key Players

Some of the key players in the respiratory virus infection drugs market are:

Merck & Co., Inc.

GlaxoSmithKline plc

Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH

AstraZeneca

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

Cipla, Inc.

Sanofi

Orion Corporation

CHIESI Farmaceutici S.p.A.

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market Segmentation

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market, by Drug Type

Antibiotics



Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDS)



Cough Suppressants



Nasal Decongestants



Others

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market, by Infection Type

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection



Influenza Virus Infection



Parainfluenza Virus Infection



Adenovirus Infection



Rhinovirus Infection



Others

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market, by Route of Administration

Oral



Parenteral

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market, by Mode of Purchase

Prescription-based Drugs



Over-the-counter Drugs

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market, by Distribution Channel

Hospital Pharmacies



Drug Stores



Retail Pharmacies



Clinics



Others

Respiratory Virus Infection Drugs Market, by Region

North America



U.S.





Canada



Europe



Germany





U.K.





France





Italy





Spain





Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific



China





India





Japan





Australia & New Zealand

&



Rest of Asia Pacific



Latin America



Brazil





Mexico





Rest of Latin America



Middle East & Africa

&

GCC Countries





South Africa





Rest of Middle East & Africa

Modernization of healthcare in terms of both infrastructure and services have pushed the healthcare industry to new heights, Stay Updated with Latest Healthcare Industry Research Reports by Transparency Market Research:

Antiviral Drugs Market: The global antiviral drugs market is projected to rise at a significant pace in the coming few years. This is mainly due to the increasing prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) across the globe. Further availability of strong product pipeline is another factor expected to propel the growth of the global antiviral drugs market in the coming years.

Respiratory Tract Infection Market: The global respiratory tract infection market is driven by rise in prevalence of respiratory disorders, increase in geriatric population, and surge in focus on development of technologically advanced products. In terms of infection type, the global respiratory tract infection market can be bifurcated into upper respiratory tract infection and lower respiratory tract infection

Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market: The respiratory monitoring devices market is largely fragmented, with several market players accounting for ~60-70% of the market share. This creates lucrative opportunities for emerging players to innovate in smart peak flow meters that detect asthma exacerbations and connects with the headphone jack of smartphones.

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NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of Lightning eMotors, Inc. f/k/a GigCapital3, Inc. (NYSE: ZEV, ZEV.WS) between May 7, 2021 and August 16, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period") of the important December 14, 2021 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Lightning eMotors securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Lightning eMotors class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2155.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than December 14, 2021. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the Company would record a substantially greater net loss per share in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the second quarter of 2020 and would pull its full year guidance for the remainder of 2021; (2) accordingly, the Company materially overstated its financial position and/or prospects; and (3) as a result, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

To join the Lightning eMotors class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2155.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.

Phillip Kim, Esq.

The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.

275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor

New York, NY 10016

Tel: (212) 686-1060

Toll Free: (866) 767-3653

Fax: (212) 202-3827

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.rosenlegal.com



SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A.

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KRAKOW, Poland, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ryvu Therapeutics (WSE: RVU), a clinical-stage drug discovery and development company focusing on novel small molecule therapies that address emerging targets in oncology, announced today that it will present new data demonstrating clinical and preclinical activity of its selective CDK8/19 inhibitor RVU120 (SEL120) and its selective PIM/FLT3 inhibitor SEL24 (MEN1703) during the 63rd American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition, being held on December 11  December 14, 2021, in Atlanta and at the 44th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) being held on December 7  December 10, 2021.

An acceptable safety profile and early signs of efficacy will be presented for RVU120, a selective CDK8/19 inhibitor being developed in hematologic and solid tumors, in the first-in-human (FIH) Phase Ib dose-escalation trial (CLI120-001) currently ongoing in patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (HR-MDS). The preliminary signs of efficacy for RVU120 include a Complete Response (CR) in an AML patient and an erythroid response (ER) in a HR-MDS patient who had relapsed after several lines of previous treatment.

Translational research will be presented that potentially links the clinical response in an AML patient to DNMT3A-mutations via evidence in DNMT3A-mutated AML patient-derived cells (PDCs). Further translational research shows evidence that the clinical erythroid response in an MDS patient is potentially a result of strong erythroid differentiation potential of RVU120 in preclinical models. Enrollment is ongoing in cohort 4 at seven clinical sites in the US and Europe to gather additional safety data in the study.

An additional poster on the potential efficacy of RVU120 in hormone-negative breast cancer models will be presented at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Ryvu licensee Menarini Group will be presenting SEL24/MEN1703 data from the First-in-Human, Dose Escalation (DE) and Cohort Expansion (CE) CLI24-001 trial (DIAMOND-01, ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03008187).

"We are excited to present data from our ongoing Phase Ib dose escalation study of RVU120 in AML and HR-MDS, where we have seen clinical responses, and in solid tumors with strong translational data in breast cancer," said Pawel Przewiezlikowski, Chief Executive Officer at Ryvu Therapeutics. "It is a true milestone for Ryvu and our collaborators from MD Anderson Cancer Center and Menarini to have six posters accepted for presentation on RVU120 and SEL24."

The abstracts accepted for poster presentation at the 63rd ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition include:

CLI120-001 Phase Ib Study of RVU120 (SEL120) in Patients with AML and High-Risk MDS: Updated Safety/Efficacy Results from Initial Dose Escalation (Publication Number: 3418), Camille Abboud Sr., MD (Washington University in Saint Louis/ Washington University School of Medicine) et al.

Session Name: 616. Acute Myeloid Leukemias: Investigational Therapies, Excluding Transplantation and Cellular Immunotherapies: Poster III

Date: Monday, December 13, 2021

Presentation Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

RVU120 (SEL120) CDK8/19 Inhibitor - a Drug Candidate for the Treatment of MDS Can Induce Erythroid Differentiation (Publication Number: 1518), Tomasz Rzymski, Ph.D. (Ryvu Therapeutics) et al.

Session Name: 636. Myelodysplastic SyndromesBasic and Translational: Poster I

Date: Saturday, December 11, 2021

Presentation Time: 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Inhibition of Cyclin Dependent Kinase 8 (CDK8): A Novel Approach to Target the Leukemia Initiating Cells (LICs) in T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-ALL) (Publication Number: 2250), Sujan Piya, Ph.D. (MD Anderson Cancer Center) et al.

Session Name: 605. Molecular Pharmacology and Drug Resistance: Lymphoid Neoplasms: Poster II

Date: Sunday, December 12, 2021

Presentation Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Preclinical and Clinical Signs of Efficacy of RVU120 (SEL120), a Specific CDK8/19 Inhibitor in DNMT3A-Mutated AML (Publication Number: 2371), Tomasz Rzymski, Ph.D. (Ryvu Therapeutics) et al.

Session Name: 617. Acute Myeloid Leukemias: Biomarkers, Molecular Markers and Minimal Residual Disease in Diagnosis and Prognosis: Poster II

Date: Sunday, December 12, 2021

Presentation Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

SEL24(MEN1703) Inhibits PIM/FLT3 Downstream Target in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Patients: Results of the Pharmacodynamics (PD) Assay and Genomic Profiling in the First-in-Human Diamond-01 Trial (Publication Number: 3436), Alessandro Paoli (Menarini Group) et al.

Session Name: 617. Acute Myeloid Leukemias: Biomarkers, Molecular Markers and Minimal Residual Disease in Diagnosis and Prognosis: Poster III

Date: Monday, December 13, 2021

Presentation Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

All of the abovementioned abstracts are available on-line at: https://www.hematology.org/meetings/annual-meeting/abstracts

The abstract accepted for the poster presentation at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, taking place on December 7-10, 2021, at Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Centre in San Antonio, Texas:

Selective CDK8/CDK19 inhibitor RVU120 demonstrates efficacy against hormone-independent breast cancer cells in vitro and in vivo (#1766), Tomasz Rzymski, Ph.D. (Ryvu Therapeutics) et al.

Program Number: P5-17-13

Poster Session 5: December 10 , 2021: 7:00 AM  8:30 AM



About Ryvu Therapeutics

Ryvu Therapeutics is a clinical stage drug discovery and development company focused on novel small molecule therapies that address emerging targets in oncology. Internally discovered pipeline candidates make use of diverse therapeutic mechanisms driven by emerging knowledge of cancer biology, including small molecules directed at kinase, synthetic lethality, and immuno-oncology targets. RVU120 is a selective CDK8/CDK19 kinase inhibitor with potential for the treatment of hematological malignancies and solid tumors currently in Phase I clinical development for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome, and Phase I/II for the treatment of r/r metastatic or advanced solid tumors. SEL24 (MEN1703) is a dual PIM/FLT3 kinase inhibitor licensed to the Menarini Group, currently in Phase II clinical studies in acute myeloid leukemia.

The Company was founded in 2007 (until 2019 operating under the name Selvita S.A.) and currently employs over 170 associates, including more than 80 PhDs. Ryvu is headquartered in Krakow, Poland, listed on the main market of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and is a component of sWIG80 index. For more information, please see www.ryvu.com .

SOURCE Ryvu Therapeutics
LEHI, Utah, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Entrata , the multifamily industry's most comprehensive technology platform, has been awarded a Top Workplaces 2021 honor by Salt Lake Tribune Top Workplaces Top Workplaces. The list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by employee engagement technology partner Energage LLC. The anonymous survey uniquely measures 15 culture drivers that are critical to the success of any organization: including alignment, execution, and connection, just to name a few.

"During this very challenging time, Top Workplaces has proven to be a beacon of light for organizations, as well as a sign of resiliency and strong business performance," said Eric Rubino, Energage CEO. "When you give your employees a voice, you come together to navigate challenges and shape your path forward. Top Workplaces draw on real-time insights into what works best for their organization, so they can make informed decisions that have a positive impact on their people and their business."

"This award really honors the incredible people who have made Entrata into what it is today by providing the best possible service and product for our clients each and every day," said Adam Edmunds, CEO at Entrata. "The backbone of Entrata has always been our culture, which permeates every aspect of the business. We're known for and live by key tenets such as communicating to empower, showing respect to customers, team members, partners and more."

Entrata provides its employees with access to several leading programs and resources designed to make their lives better. These consist of a comprehensive benefits program for both employees and their families, an inclusive company culture, and a host of wellness options. Other benefits include:

Onsite gym, ping pong, foosball, pool tables and karaoke bar

Fully stocked snack hubs and Coca-Cola freestyle machines

Leadership development program

401k with matching

with matching Health, dental, vision and life insurance, flexible spending account

Short-term and long-term disability

Open positions can be found at entrata.com/careers .

About Entrata

Founded in 2003, Entrata is the only comprehensive property management software provider with a single-login, open-access platform. Offering a wide variety of online tools including websites, mobile apps, payments, lease signing, accounting, smart home, and resident management, the Entrata platform currently serves more than 20,000 apartment communities nationwide. The Utah-based company has seen exponential growth since its founding in 2003 and recently secured $507M in its first-ever institutional round of funding.

About Energage

Making the world a better place to work together.TM

Energage is a purpose-driven company that helps organizations turn employee feedback into useful business intelligence and credible employer recognition through Top Workplaces. Built on 14 years of culture research and the results from 23 million employees surveyed across more than 70,000 organizations, Energage delivers the most accurate competitive benchmark available. With access to a unique combination of patented analytic tools and expert guidance, Energage customers lead the competition with an engaged workforce and an opportunity to gain recognition for their people-first approach to culture. For more information or to nominate your organization, visit energage.com or topworkplaces.com.

SOURCE Entrata
OTCQX: SHWZ

DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Schwazze, (OTCQX: SHWZ) ("Schwazze" or the "Company"), announces that it will host a third quarter 2021 conference call and webcast on August 16, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. ET.

Q3 2021 Webcast

Investors and stakeholders may participate in the conference call by dialing 416 764 8650 or by dialing North American toll free 888-664-6383 or listen to the webcast from the Company's website at https://ir.schwazze.com/. The webcast will be available on the Company's website and on replay until November 22, 2021 and may be accessed by dialing 888-390-0541 / 807433#.

Following their prepared remarks, Chief Executive Officer, Justin Dye and Chief Financial Officer, Nancy Huber will answer investor questions. Investors may submit questions in advance or during the conference call itself through the weblink: https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1506871&tp_key=909a00d089 This weblink has been posted to the Company's website and will be archived on the website. All Company SEC filings can also be accessed on the Company website at https://ir.schwazze.com/sec-filings

About Schwazze

Schwazze (OTCQX: SHWZ) is building the premier vertically integrated cannabis company in Colorado and plans to take its operating system to other states where it can develop a differentiated leadership position. Schwazze is the parent company of a portfolio of leading cannabis businesses and brands spanning seed to sale. The Company is committed to unlocking the full potential of the cannabis plant to improve the human condition. Schwazze is anchored by a high-performance culture that combines customer-centric thinking and data science to test, measure, and drive decisions and outcomes. The Company's leadership team has deep expertise in retailing, wholesaling, and building consumer brands at Fortune 500 companies as well as in the cannabis sector. Schwazze is passionate about making a difference in our communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, and doing our part to incorporate climate-conscious best practices. Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. was Schwazze's former operating trade name. The corporate entity continues to be named Medicine Man Technologies, Inc.

Schwazze derives its name from the pruning technique of a cannabis plant to enhance plant structure and promote healthy growth.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "plan," "will," "may,", "predicts," or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future events or performance, are based on certain assumptions, and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control and cannot be predicted or quantified. Consequently, actual events and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) our inability to manufacture our products and product candidates on a commercial scale on our own or in collaboration with third parties; (ii) difficulties in obtaining financing on commercially reasonable terms; (iii) changes in the size and nature of our competition; (iv) loss of one or more key executives or scientists; (v) difficulties in securing regulatory approval to market our products and product candidates; (vi) our ability to successfully execute our growth strategy in Colorado and outside the state, (vii) our ability to consummate the acquisition described in this press release or to identify and consummate future acquisitions that meet our criteria, (viii) our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses and realize synergies therefrom, ({ix) the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, * the timing and extent of governmental stimulus programs, and (xi) the uncertainty in the application of federal, state and local laws to our business, and any changes in such laws. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law.

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SOURCE Medicine Man Technologies, Inc.
OTCQX: SHWZ

DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Schwazze, (OTCQX: SHWZ) ("Schwazze" or the "Company"), announces that it will host a third quarter 2021 conference call and webcast on November 15, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. ET.

Q3 2021 Webcast

Investors and stakeholders may participate in the conference call by dialing 416 764 8650 or by dialing North American toll free 888-664-6383 or listen to the webcast from the Company's website at https://ir.schwazze.com/. The webcast will be available on the Company's website and on replay until November 22, 2021 and may be accessed by dialing 888-390-0541 / 807433#.

Following their prepared remarks, Chief Executive Officer, Justin Dye and Chief Financial Officer, Nancy Huber will answer investor questions. Investors may submit questions in advance or during the conference call itself through the weblink: https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1506871&tp_key=909a00d089 This weblink has been posted to the Company's website and will be archived on the website. All Company SEC filings can also be accessed on the Company website at https://ir.schwazze.com/sec-filings

About Schwazze

Schwazze (OTCQX: SHWZ) is building the premier vertically integrated cannabis company in Colorado and plans to take its operating system to other states where it can develop a differentiated leadership position. Schwazze is the parent company of a portfolio of leading cannabis businesses and brands spanning seed to sale. The Company is committed to unlocking the full potential of the cannabis plant to improve the human condition. Schwazze is anchored by a high-performance culture that combines customer-centric thinking and data science to test, measure, and drive decisions and outcomes. The Company's leadership team has deep expertise in retailing, wholesaling, and building consumer brands at Fortune 500 companies as well as in the cannabis sector. Schwazze is passionate about making a difference in our communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, and doing our part to incorporate climate-conscious best practices. Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. was Schwazze's former operating trade name. The corporate entity continues to be named Medicine Man Technologies, Inc.

Schwazze derives its name from the pruning technique of a cannabis plant to enhance plant structure and promote healthy growth.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "plan," "will," "may,", "predicts," or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future events or performance, are based on certain assumptions, and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control and cannot be predicted or quantified. Consequently, actual events and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) our inability to manufacture our products and product candidates on a commercial scale on our own or in collaboration with third parties; (ii) difficulties in obtaining financing on commercially reasonable terms; (iii) changes in the size and nature of our competition; (iv) loss of one or more key executives or scientists; (v) difficulties in securing regulatory approval to market our products and product candidates; (vi) our ability to successfully execute our growth strategy in Colorado and outside the state, (vii) our ability to consummate the acquisition described in this press release or to identify and consummate future acquisitions that meet our criteria, (viii) our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses and realize synergies therefrom, ({ix) the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, * the timing and extent of governmental stimulus programs, and (xi) the uncertainty in the application of federal, state and local laws to our business, and any changes in such laws. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law.

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SOURCE Medicine Man Technologies, Inc.
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Peak Fintech Group Inc. ("Peak" or the "Company") (OTCMKTS: PKKFF). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980.

The investigation concerns whether Peak and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

On October 4, 2021, market researcher Grizzly Research published a report alleging discrepancies in Peak's business practices. The report alleged, in relevant part, that: (1) Peak's acquisition of Heartbeat, a Chinese insurance product management and brokerage platform, was mired in suspicious dealings, in which Peak paid a company that was not the registered owner of Heartbeat; (2) the actual registered owner of Heartbeat reported zero revenues in 2019 and 2020; (3) Peak's statements regarding Heartbeat's growth since 2020 were not substantiated by basic facts, including the fact that Heartbeat's website did not go live until 5 days after Peak's acquisition; (4) there was evidence that Peak inflated its reported revenue by up to 112% in recent fiscal years; (5) the CEO of Peak Group China was previously associated with several companies listed on government blacklists in China.

On this news, Peak's stock price fell $1.31 per share, or 17.4%, to close at $6.19 per share on October 4, 2021.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

888-476-6529 ext. 7980

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

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GUILDFORD, England, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SiSaf Ltd, a company developing RNA therapeutics for rare genetic skeletal disorders, today announced that it has exercised its option under its collaboration with the University of L'Aquila, Italy. The license enables SiSaf to develop small interfering RNA (siRNA) targeted via its Bio-Courier next generation silicon stabilized hybrid lipid nanoparticles (sshLNP) to regulate the expression of a mutant gene expressed by osteoclasts and other cell types responsible for causing the therapeutically neglected rare autosomal dominant disorder type 2 Osteopetrosis (ADO2) in adults.

SiSaf and the University of L'Aquila entered into the research collaboration and licensing agreement last year. The exercise of its option follows 12-months intensive pre-clinical collaborative research between the parties to demonstrate that Bio-Courier targeting addresses the drawbacks seen with viral vectors that has been the current standard in gene therapy delivery to date.

Specifically, results from the pre-clinical studies demonstrated that SiS-101-ADO2, an ADO2-specific siRNA combined with SiSaf's Bio-Courier platform, downregulates the expression of the mutant CLCN7 gene and rescues bone mass and quality to nearly normal levels. The treatment was well tolerated, inducing no adverse events.

SiSaf is now committed to developing SiS-101-ADO2 for the treatment of autosomal dominant osteopetrosis type 2 and is preparing data for its IND package with the aim of submitting an application to the US FDA during H2 2022. Given the urgent medical need in autosomal dominant osteopetrosis type 2 patients and the lack of any existing therapies, SiSaf intends to file for Orphan Drug Designation for its therapy.

"The translation of positive pre-clinical results into a clinical reality has been impeded by the requirement to repeatedly eliminate the mutant copy of the mRNA without affecting the healthy copy, a challenge in all autosomal dominant disorders" said Professor Anna Maria Teti leader of the team at the University of L'Aquila and recognised leaders in genetic bone disorders.

Professor Teti's team had demonstrated that a siRNA-based experimental treatment for adult Osteopetrosis type 2 is feasible in human cells and transgenic mice (1). Further, the study suggested that similar strategies could be applied to other autosomal dominant bone diseases, opening an avenue for wider use of RNA interference therapy in rare genetic disorders.

"The formulation of an ADO2-specific siRNA with SiSaf's Bio-Courier next generation sshLNP technology has enabled repeated safe systemic administration, sufficiently stabilizing and protecting the siRNA in the circulatory system to demonstrate sustainable transfection and phenotypic reversion to restore healthy bone architecture" Professor Teti said.

Michael Econs, MD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana State University Medical School and a world-leading expert in metabolic bone disease will lead the planned Phase I clinical study and is supporting the trial design.

Dr Econ's lab is currently performing translational studies in ADO2 using its mouse model of this disease and has initiated a natural history study in ADO2 patients, which will support endpoint design and study evaluation.

Autosomal dominant osteopetrosis type 2 (ADO2), also known as marble bone disease or Albers-Schonberg disease, affects one in every 20,000 individuals. It is marked by increased bone density due to a defect in bone resorption by osteoclasts, a type of bone cell that breaks down bone tissue. This process is critical to maintaining healthy bone and the defect leads to bone that is brittle and susceptible to fracture, which is often accompanied by bone pain and skeletal abnormalities significantly impairing the patient's quality of life. At present, there is no effective medical treatment.

Dr Suzanne Saffie-Siebert, PhD, founder and Chief Executive Officer at SiSaf said, "ADO2 is a severe and debilitating disease for which there is no treatment. We are very encouraged to have made positive progress in demonstrating that our technology can overcome the inherent constraints of both viral delivery systems and lipid nanoparticles, especially in recurrent systemically delivered autosomal dominant disorders, an area with huge potential.

"Our lead programme to substantially alleviate autosomal dominant osteopetrosis type 2 would be life changing for patients with this incurable condition and we are excited to be developing the siRNA therapy towards clinical trials".

SiSaf has an ongoing collaboration with Professor Teti's group and is working to extend its pipeline of Bio-Courier targeted siRNA therapies to cure other genetic skeletal disorders. Its strategy is to develop its pipeline of novel therapies through clinical studies and then seek collaborative partnerships with marketing expertise in genetic skeletal disorders and rare diseases.

1. A. Maurizi et al. Bone 110 (2018) 343354

About SiSaf

SiSaf is delivering on the promise of RNA therapeutics to transform the treatment of genetic diseases. It has pioneered the development of Bio-Courier, patented next generation silicon stabilized hybrid lipid nanoparticles (sshLNP) that is safe, effective and accessible. It is using the technology to advance an in-house pipeline of RNA therapeutics for rare genetic skeletal disorders. Its strategy is to work with leading academic groups to identify innovative targets for RNA therapies and with leading clinicians to evaluate human efficacy of its RNA therapeutics.

Being a bioabsorbable silicon-lipid hybrid, Bio-Courier optimises the delivery of gene therapeutics, offering superior stability and protection of its payload and lipids while reducing the potential of adverse immune events.

Founded by entrepreneur and leading biomaterials specialist Dr Suzanne Saffie-Siebert, SiSaf is headquartered in Guildford, UK, with fully integrated state-of-the-art research labs, pilot manufacturing and bioanalytical facilities. SiSaf partners with speciality pharmaceutical companies to maximize the potential applications of its Bio-Courier platform.

SiSaf is a private company supported by venture capital investors including Vickers Venture Partners & UK Future Fund.

To learn more, please visit www.sisaf.com

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF L'AQUILA

The University of L'Aquila ( www.univaq.it) is a public body based in the region of Abruzzo, Central Italy. It is globally significant for its research expertise in many disciplines, including medicine and biotechnology. The group headed by Prof Teti is recognised worldwide for their research on bone physiology and pathology, including osteoporosis, bone oncology and the rare genetic bone disease osteopetrosis.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Scius communications (for SiSaf)

Sue Charles  [email protected]

Katja Stout  [email protected]

SOURCE SiSaf
VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pozio is on a mission to help people take back their privacy without compromising the convenience afforded by their smart devices. The company today launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the production of its Cradle and Shield products, as well as support the development of new privacy-enhancing solutions.

"Smart speakers and smartphone assistants provide users with an incredible amount of convenience, but that convenience costs us our privacy," David Nickel, CEO at Pozio. "Our smart devices are always listening and sometimes recording and storing what we say around them. While concerning, this can open us up to cyberthreats and unwanted sharing of sensitive information, as has been well documented by the media."

Pozio delivers a suite of secure products that enable users to easily block their smart devices from listening to them. Beautifully designed, these docks and cradles block unwanted listening by using patented digital signal processing to prevent these always-listening microphones in smart devices from hearing your private conversations. Pozio does its blocking discreetly without disturbing anyone else, until you give them permission to listen again. Using embedded wake word recognition[1], users can say, "Pozio Stop," to turn off the sound blocking technology for 30 seconds, allowing them to then access, summon and speak commands to their smart assistants as they normally would. Because Pozio values user privacy, Pozio devices aren't connected to the internet and don't have a hard drive so they don't record or store any data.

"We're here to provide smart speakers and smartphone owners peace of mind by giving them control of when these devices can and can't hear them, without impacting the convenience of a voice-only experience," Nickel continued.

Not only are Pozio devices secure and private, but they are also equipped with highly desirable features. Pozio Cradle products for example all come equipped with a wireless smartphone charging pad. Available in three configurations, Cradle Block blocks listening when the phone is charging/resting in it, Cradle Block & Talk takes things a step further by adding voice control, and Cradle Block, Talk & Rock amplifies things further by adding voice control and an integrated Bluetooth speaker.

Pozio products selling on Kickstarter include:

Pozio Cradle: a great looking listening blocker that also provides wireless charging for smartphones when the phone is in the Cradle. Cradle products can be optioned with voice control and a Bluetooth speaker.

a great looking listening blocker that also provides wireless charging for smartphones when the phone is in the Cradle. Cradle products can be optioned with voice control and a Bluetooth speaker. Pozio Shield: a smart speaker dock with integrated voice-controlled listening blocking technology. Pozio Shield is available in two sizes, fitting nearly all of today's popular smart speakers.

Press Kit: pozio.com/pages/presskit

For more information about Pozio, please visit the company's website at www.pozio.com , or on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and LinkedIn .

About Pozio

Founded with a goal of helping people take back their privacy when using smart assistant devices. Pozio products allow people to use smart devices as intended while providing peace of mind that their activities are not being perpetually monitored. Secure and totally private by design, Pozio devices are simple to set up, do not require an internet connection and never record or store user data.

[1]The listening blocking technology on all Pozio devices, except for the base model Cradle Block, can be deactivated using the "Pozio Stop" wake word.

Media Contact:

Lightspeed PR/M

[email protected]

SOURCE Pozio
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Table of Content

Executive Summary

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Category Management Enablers

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Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

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SOURCE SpendEdge
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, The Evolved Traveler, curator of worldwide luxury travel experiences designed to promote a sense of global community and sustainable tourism, announced Egypt: Exclusive Access.

In response to renewed interest in travel, and the desire for more authentic and awakening experiences, The Evolved Traveler, introduced Egypt: Exclusive Access, a new 13-day itinerary that brings the ancient wonders of Egypt to life in contemporary new ways. Highlights include a visit to the Bubasteion Necropolis, prominently featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary, "Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb," plus a private evening opening of the tombs of The Valley of the Kings.

"We could not be more thrilled with this itinerary. It offers fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities such as entering a tomb only just discovered last year. Our guests will be accompanied by an archaeologist seen in the Netflix documentary. They'll then be lowered into the tomb while carrying torches to help shed light on coffins still containing mummies, gaze upon several hieroglyphics, and encounter other artifacts from over 4,000 years ago!" says Justin Smith, president of The Evolved Traveler, excitedly. "This is something right out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it raises our guests experience in Egypt to a whole new level."

Additional highlights include standing between the paws of The Great Sphinx of Giza, a tour of the recently restored Nefertiti's tombconsidered to be one of the most opulent in Egypta visit to Abu Simbel, and a two-night stay in the Fayoum Oasis.

The bespoke itinerary is inclusive of 5-star accommodations, most meals, the services of an Egyptologist guide on private tours throughout, and intra-tour flights.

True to the company's sustainable and charitable ethos, each journey includes a portion of proceeds being donated to organizations that support local environmental and humanitarian efforts in the destination chosen. "This itinerary is representative of what we want to provide our guests," says Smith. "The very best possible experience they could imagine, all while giving back in an altruistic way they might not have previously known was an option."

For additional information, contact The Evolved Traveler at

323.505.4415 or [email protected]

Social Media Contacts

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-evolved-traveler

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/theevolvedtraveler/

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/evolvedtraveler

For product information, visit:

www.evolvedtraveler.com

SOURCE The Evolved Traveler

Related Links

www.evolvedtraveler.com


DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based in Denver, The Gilbert Law Group has been named a Tier 1 Metropolitan "Best Law Firm" for 2022 by U.S. News  Best Lawyers for the below legal practice areas in Colorado:

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs

The Gilbert Law Group earned its first ranking by U.S. News  Best Lawyers in the very first edition of "Best Law Firms" in 2010. Since then, the firm has received several other rankings in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2021.

While being selected to any edition of "Best Law Firms" is a major accomplishment, it does not give a firm a competitive advantage for subsequent editions. All firms, regardless of how many times they have been ranked before, must score highly during a comprehensive annual review. Verdicts, settlements, case history, legal skill, expertise, and quality of service are some of the areas dissected in the review, which relies heavily on peer and client feedback. Several rankings in Tier 1 (the highest of three tiers) by U.S. News  Best Lawyers is, therefore, a significant honor, and one that is very difficult to obtain.

Qualifying for "Best Law Firms" review is just as hard as scoring well in it, with each firm required to have one attorney in The Best Lawyers in America to be eligible. A mere 6% of the nation's attorneys in private practice are chosen as listed lawyers for this Best Lawyers guide.

The Gilbert Law Group met this eligibility requirement with the selection of James L. Gilbert , firm founder and senior partner, to the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America by Best Lawyers. His first listing in this guide dates back to 1997.

With a reputation of acclaim and effective advocacy, The Gilbert Law Group scored highly for its chosen practice areas and region. To date, its attorneys have successfully taken on many major corporationssuch as Ford and General Motorsand, overall, recovered more than $1 billion in client compensation. It remains the only law firm in the nation to have an in-house engineering team, which has proven integral to winning cases involving defective products.

The Gilbert Law Group is very honored to have received rankings by U.S. News  Best Lawyers for 2022, and its attorneys look forward to another year of fighting tooth and nail for the victims of negligence.

Please visit The Gilbert Law Group online at thegilbertlawgroup.com to learn more. Its acclaimed attorney team accepts cases from coast to coast. For further information on "Best Law Firms," visit bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

SOURCE The Gilbert Law Group
Measuring 34 critical workplace strengths such as resilience, grit, growth mindset, ambiguity, agility, accountability, empathy, optimism and collaboration, The Thriving Index is at the forefront of assessing critical attributes of individuals, teams and organisations to prepare them for the future of work.

The powerful tool has demonstrated significant impact across the employee lifecycle, including:

90% accuracy in candidate selection and fitment decisions

Over 36% variance in employee engagement

44% variance in happiness and wellbeing

Significant impact in identifying high potential leaders, with 22% greater resilience, 37% higher self efficacy, 23% more growth mindset and 4x times more accountability

Over 70% variance in measuring client specific behavioural and leadership competencies

Radhika Punshi, Managing Director at The Talent Enterprise commented "while COVID-19 has put the spotlight on the importance of employees and leaders being resilient, being agile, being empathetic, being optimistic and so on, The Talent Enterprise has truly been ahead of the curve. We have been successfully measuring and developing these attributes for employees, leaders and teams for over a decade. The impact of our work has been tremendous, and this is a testament to our clients and partners who have had the foresight to choose The Thriving Index as their preferred assessment tool for their most critical selection and development projects."

With over 1 million assessments conducted every year, The Thriving Index is used by over 250+ clients and partners on their critical assessment priorities, including DHL, DXC Technology, Jardines Matheson Group, Boehringer, Sanofi, Tata Communication, Vedanta Group, Dubai Holding, Chalhoub Group, Al Futtaim Group, Dubai Airports, Dubai Tourism, ADQ, Abu Dhabi School of Government, Petroleum Development of Oman, Kuwait Oil Company, NEOM, SAMI, Ministry of Tourism Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology Saudi Arabia, Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Investment Bank, KPMG, Deloitte and Harvard Business Publishing.

"The Thriving Index is grounded in the latest research and application of positive psychology and behavioural science and has many firsts. It's the first and only tool to be validated and developed in the MENA region, now being used extensively by our clients and partners in the Middle East and Africa region, in Asia Pacific, the Americas, as well as UK & Europe. It is also only 1 of 4 workplace strengths tools globally. And finally, the BPS test registration status makes it 1 of 20 tests in the world to receive this status in the assessment of personality traits," added Gauri Gupta, Chief Data Scientist and Ehsan Fahmi, Director Client Success and Lead Psychologist at The Talent Enterprise.

Comprising of 100+ questions on a 6 point scale and taking approximately 15 minutes to complete, this tool helps employees, leaders, teams and organisations identity their individual and collective strengths and blindspots. Understanding and measuring these factors are imperative for the future of work as they are instrumental in impacting employee performance, productivity, engagement and wellbeing and in identifying the future talent and leadership pipeline.

About The Talent Enterprise

The Talent Enterprise is a global human capital management company providing extensive and exceptional insights into the intricacies of behaviour in individuals, teams, and organisations through our leading-edge technology-enabled talent assessment and capability development solutions. This makes us the first and only company in the world to pioneer the Science of Behaviourmetrics. Working with clients on their most critical talent, assessment, and capability solutions, powered by the Lighthouse technology platform with the latest developments in AI and machine learning.



Headquartered in Dubai, with a fast-expanding global network of offices and partners, we work with over 250 clients across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, UK and Europe as well the Americas; partnering with policy-makers, employers and educators.

For additional information, visit www.thetalententerprise.com/the-thriving-index/ or follow us on LinkedIn @TheTalent Enterprise.

SUMMARY: The Talent Enterprise's newest, BPS-registered psychometric assessment tool, The Thriving Index , is redefining recruitment and development.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1679022/The_Talent_Enterprise_Masterminds.jpg

SOURCE The Talent Enterprise
SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tapella & Eberspacher Law Firm has been chosen for inclusion in "Best Law Firms" of 2022 by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers, earning a Regional Tier 2 ranking for Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs in Springfield, Illinois.

To qualify for "Best Law Firms" consideration, at least one of the firm's attorneys must have been honored in The Best Lawyers in America. With only 6% of all U.S. attorneys selected for this Best Lawyers guide, few firms are considered eligible. Firm partner William R. Tapella helped The Tapella & Eberspacher Law Firm meet this eligibility requirement, however: He was listed in The Best Lawyers in America 2022 for his work in Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs.

Once a firm qualifies for consideration, it must pass a rigorous review process. Client and peer feedback are considered, as well as information provided by the firm in its "Best Law Firms" submission packet. U.S. News  Best Lawyers then uses this information to calculate a "Best Law Firms" score for the firm. The highest-scoring candidates are listed in the published guide along a three-tier ranking system. A spot in any of these tiers is a highly coveted, noteworthy distinction.

Based in Charleston, The Tapella & Eberspacher Law Firm is known for its unwavering commitment to advocating for the victims of negligence  no matter how high the stakes are, the firm does not falter in its advocacy. The genuine care and compassion the firm's team has for its clients further sets it apart from the competition. To date, it has recovered over $50 million in compensation on behalf of its clients.

To learn more about The Tapella & Eberspacher Law Firm, visit tapellalaw.com online. Or go to bestlawfirms.usnews.com for more information about U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms."

Contact: Bill Tapella

(217) 639-7800

[email protected]

SOURCE The Tapella & Eberspacher Law Firm

Related Links

https://www.tapellalaw.com


ANCHORAGE, Alaska and NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tiger Infrastructure Partners ("Tiger Infrastructure") announced today the acquisition of a controlling interest in IC Alaska Airport LLC, which has secured a 120-acre, 55-year lease at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport ("ANC"). ANC is the fourth busiest air cargo airport in the world and a vital conduit for trans-Pacific air cargo. IC Alaska Airport LLC will be renamed NorthLink Aviation ("NorthLink" or the "Company"). With equity capital from Tiger Infrastructure, NorthLink will develop and construct a purpose-built air cargo terminal located on the south campus of ANC consisting of:

11 hardstands designed to allow aircraft to power-in and power-out

Modern air cargo warehouse with temperature-controlled facilities

Dual-hydrant fueling system at each hardstand

Infrastructure to recover and recycle glycol used for deicing aircraft

LEED-certified office space for customers and operations team

NorthLink's strategy is to construct and operate a world-class air cargo terminal and partner with service providers to ensure that air carriers can safely and efficiently refuel, deice and exchange cargos at ANC, capitalizing on the airport's strategic location and unique commercial opportunities. As air cargo volumes continue to grow, NorthLink will provide an essential infrastructure solution for cargo airlines delivering high-value goods between Asia and North America.

Simultaneous with Tiger Infrastructure's investment, NorthLink executed a 55-year lease with the State of Alaska for the 120-acre south campus property at ANC. Jim Szczesniak, ANC's Airport Director commented: "By supporting projects that expand the infrastructure for cargo airlines, we are supporting Alaska's economy. Air cargo volumes continue to grow and this important development project will keep ANC firmly in place as one of the top hubs for the industry."

Emil W. Henry, Jr., CEO and Managing Director of Tiger Infrastructure, commented: "We believe that cargo volumes at ANC will continue to grow significantly, driven by factors such as the strong outlook for trans-Pacific air cargo, rising e-commerce volumes, increases in the share of cargo volumes carried by dedicated cargo freighters and ANC's strategic location. We are delighted to have the opportunity to build world-class infrastructure at ANC which will address global logistics and supply chain issues."

Sean Dolan has joined NorthLink as Chief Executive Officer in conjunction with Tiger Infrastructure's investment in the Company. Sean brings decades of infrastructure experience along with a track record of working successfully with customers and strategic partners. Sean commented: "NorthLink Aviation is one of the most exciting infrastructure businesses I have seen in my career. I have known the leaders of Tiger Infrastructure for more than a decade and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with this team to build and operate a world-class air cargo terminal for customers, ANC and the Anchorage community."

The original sponsor of the project is the Investment Company of Alaska LLC (a subsidiary of the C Change Group LLC), an Anchorage-based investment firm led by Dr. Russell Read, who previously served as Chief Investment Officer of the Alaska Permanent Fund and Dr. John Tichotsky, who previously served as Chief Economist for the State of Alaska. "We are pleased Tiger Infrastructure is making this investment. We were seeking a team with the experience in infrastructure and growth investments to develop this unique project alongside our local connectivity. I have known the Tiger team for over a decade and we found them uniquely qualified to succeed with this project." said Russell Read, NorthLink's Chairman. "For Alaska to achieve world-class growth rates, based on its locational advantage, all it takes is diligent business planning, structuring, and implementation with world-class global investors. This is a long overdue project that will benefit our State and the Nation," said John Tichotsky, a managing member for the Investment Company of Alaska. "Tiger Infrastructure's commitment to the environment and the local community is an essential feature for developing Anchorage's world-class cargo hub," added Tichotsky, who will be the Company's Chief Strategy Officer.

As NorthLink moves forward with the development of the south campus air cargo terminal, the Company is proud to team-up with Anchorage-based businesses, including MCG Explore Design (for engineering and design) and Cornerstone General Contractors (general contractor).

Tiger and NorthLink are committed to building and operating the south campus terminal in a manner that promotes the highest standards of safety, service, environmental protection, stakeholder inclusion and responsible corporate practices.

ABOUT NORTHLINK AVIATION

NorthLink Aviation is developing a world-class air cargo terminal at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. For more information on NorthLink, please visit www.northlinkaviation.com.

ABOUT TIGER INFRASTRUCTURE PARTNERS

Tiger Infrastructure Partners is a middle-market private equity firm that invests in growing infrastructure platforms. Tiger Infrastructure targets investments in communications, energy transition, transportation, and related sectors, primarily located in North America and Europe. For more information, please visit www.tigerinfrastructure.com.

ABOUT THE C CHANGE GROUP

The C Change Group is focused on infrastructure initiatives and game-changing technologies which can materially transform the world's use of energy, raw materials and other natural resources. C Change operates with a US team based in Alaska (as IC Alaska) as well as international teams located in Europe and the United Arab Emirates. For more information, please visit www.cchangegroup.com

SOURCE Tiger Infrastructure Partners

Related Links

www.tigerinfrastructure.com


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Treasure Data, the leading enterprise customer data platform (CDP), today announced it has secured $234 million in funding, becoming the largest-ever single funding round for a CDP. The investment is led by SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434), the Japan-based operating company, with participation from Carbide Ventures, an investment firm founded by Treasure Data founders and long-time executives. The new capital will be used to execute on CDP innovation and accelerate global growth.

Per McKinsey, the percentage of digital customer interactions has tripled over the last two years, largely fueled by the pandemic. In parallel, increasing security, privacy and global data governance requirements are limiting usage and availability of data. In this environment, companies require a customer data foundation that allows marketing, service and sales organizations to work together to drive a seamless customer experience across both digital and physical channels. Treasure Data provides a scalable and secure CDP that enables companies to deliver this data-driven customer experience in a secure and privacy-compliant way.

"We are in the age of the digital customer and now more than ever, it is critical for businesses to leverage the power of data to drive exceptional experiences," said Kazuki Ohta, co-founder and CEO of Treasure Data. "This investment by SoftBank Corp. will help us execute on our vision of bringing the CDP enterprise-wide, whether it is in marketing, service, sales or beyond. By enhancing our ability to unlock customer-centricity for brands around the world, we continue our long-standing commitment to enable success for Treasure Data's clients."

Founded in 2011, Treasure Data connects all data into one smart customer data platform, uniting teams and systems to power purposeful engagements that drive value and protect privacy for every customer, every time. Trusted by over 450 organizations worldwide across industry verticals, Treasure Data is the top-rated CDP on TrustRadius and a Fall 2021 Leader for Customer Data Platforms on G2.

"Companies are embracing digital transformation with an urgency and CDPs are a critical tool for businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve," added Eric Gan, executive vice president with SoftBank Corp. "SoftBank Corp. and Treasure Data are engaged in collaborations around the world and we are excited to lead this investment to further drive synergies across our group companies in the digital marketing sphere."

To learn more about Treasure Data, visit www.treasuredata.com

About Treasure Data

Treasure Data is a best-of-breed enterprise customer data platform (CDP) that powers the entire business to reclaim customer-centricity in the age of the digital customer. We do this by connecting all data into one smart customer data platform, uniting teams and systems to power purposeful engagements that drive value and protect privacy for every customer, every time. To learn more, visit www.treasuredata.com.

SOURCE Treasure Data
PHOENIX, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Trutankless, Inc. (OTCQB: TKLS) today announced its intention to spin-off its wholly-owned subsidiary, Notation Labs, Inc. The subsidiary company is preparing to file a Form 10 Registration Statement in connection with the planned spin-off. Following the consummation of the transaction, each of the two companies will be fully-reporting with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

On a date determined by the Board of Directors of the Company, (the "Distribution Date"), each Shareholder having common stock as of the Distribution Date will be entitled to receive shares of the common stock of Notation Labs, Inc. pro rata based on a 4:1 ratio. So that for each four (4) shares of Common Stock of Trutankless, Inc. held by a Shareholder on the record date, the Shareholder will receive one share of common stock of Notation Labs, Inc. Immediately following the Distribution, those stockholders will own 100% of the outstanding common stock of Notation Labs.

No action will be required of Trutankless, Inc. stockholders to participate in the distribution and receive shares of Notation Labs common stock.

About Trutankless, Inc.:

Trutankless, Inc. (OTCQB: TKLS ) is a technology-driven developer of accessible, next-generation home automation and efficiency systems. The Company's primary products are a line of electric tankless water heaters that surpasses traditional tank water heaters in energy efficiency, output, dependability and environmental sustainability. The Company sells its products to plumbing wholesale distributors and dealers throughout the United States. Trutankless, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Please visit www.trutankless.com or call 855-TO-BUY-TRU.

Connect on social media:

www.houzz.com/pro/trutankless

www.facebook.com/trutankless

www.twitter.com/trutankless

www.youtube.com/trutankless

About Notation Labs, Inc.:

Notation Labs, Inc. was incorporated as a Nevada corporation on August 28th, 2020 and has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Trutankless, Inc. Notation Labs mission is to innovate water technologies that conserve water and to produce products for consumers which are engineered to provide comfort and peace of mind. Pacific Stock Transfer is the transfer agent for Notation Labs, Inc.

www.notationlabs.io

Forward-Looking Statement: The statements in this press release regarding any implied or perceived benefits from the release by Trutankless of its line of electric tankless water heaters or added key strategic sales and distribution partners are forward-looking statements. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, risks of the key strategic sales and distribution partners ability to sell our product, and effects of legal and administrative proceedings and governmental regulation, especially in a foreign country, future financial and operational results, competition, general economic conditions, and the ability to manage and continue growth.

Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes may vary materially from those indicated. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we make in this news release include the introduction of new technology, market conditions, and those set forth in reports or documents we file from time to time with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to revise or update such statements to reflect current events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. There is no guarantee that any specific outcome will be achieved. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

SOURCE Trutankless, Inc.

Related Links

http://trutankless.com


BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats), the leading company in the cultivated meat, poultry and seafood industry announced today the completion of its Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC). The 53,000 square foot campus located in Emeryville, California, is the most advanced cultivated meat production facility in the world. It is designed to produce any species of meat, poultry, and seafoodin both ground and whole cut formatsdirectly from animal cells instead of relying on raising and slaughtering animals. The opening represents a major milestone in UPSIDE's journey to bring real, delicious meat to the world in a more humane and sustainable way.

EPIC, which contains custom-made, patented cultivators, can produce over 50,000 pounds of finished product, with a future capacity of over 400,000 pounds per year. Located in an urban area filled with residences and restaurants, it establishes meat production as a proud part of the community and will enable neighbors and the public to see first-hand how cultivated meat is made. Today, UPSIDE is celebrating this historic accomplishment in a virtual grand opening ceremony.

Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods said, "When we founded UPSIDE in 2015, it was the only cultivated meat company in a world full of skeptics. When we talked about our dream of scaling up production, it was just that  a dream. Today, that dream becomes a reality. The journey from tiny cells to EPIC has been an incredible one, and we are just getting started."

At the state-of-the-art Innovation Center UPSIDE will develop new product formats, types of meat, and production processes. At full capacity EPIC will employ approximately 50 UPSIDERs in roles across production, maintenance, quality & food safety, engineering, and general plant management.

"Today, our team at UPSIDE has made history," said Dr. Konrad Muller-Auffermann, Senior Director of Engineering at UPSIDE. "This facility is a gamechanger not just for UPSIDE Foods, but also for the entire food system. I'm so proud of our team for helping to define the future of food, and I can't wait to share our delicious, real meat with the world. "

EPIC also includes industry-leading quality assurance facilities, where products are tested to ensure safety and quality. Like all meat and poultry facilities in the US, it includes an office for federal inspectors to oversee the process. EPIC has areas to mill and mix the cell feed and to formulate, package and test products, a modern kitchen for tastings, and office and conference spaces for the UPSIDE staff.

The opening of EPIC is the latest in a series of developments as UPSIDE prepares to bring its products to consumers. Earlier this year, the company rebranded from Memphis Meats to UPSIDE Foods, announced investment from John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and a partnership with three Michelin Star chef Dominique Crenn , and brought on veterans of the food, biotech and technology industries including Amy Chen (Chief Operating Officer) and Kyle Vogt (Board Member) . Most recently, they hired Dr. Bob Kiss , who has over three decades of industrial biotechnology experience, as Executive Vice President of Technology.

The first consumer tours of the facility will occur in January 2022. For information on how to win a tour of the facility, visit upside.support . For videos and photos of EPIC, please visit UPSIDE's press kit . To watch the virtual ribbon cutting ceremony, visit www.upsidefoods.com .

About UPSIDE Foods

Based in Berkeley, CA, UPSIDE Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats) is reimagining meat for the 21st century  developing new delicious new sources of meat, fish, and poultry that also address environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and public health concerns. By cultivating meat directly from animal cells, without the need to raise or slaughter animals, the company released the world's first cultivated meatball in February 2016 and the world's first cultivated poultry in March 2017. It aims to bring to the market delicious, real meat that is significantly better for the environment, animals, and public health, while claiming a share of the $1.4 trillion global market for meat. UPSIDE Foods has raised over $200 million, including a $186 million series B round. For more information, please visit www.upsidefoods.com.

Media Contact

Brooke Whitney

[email protected]

SOURCE UPSIDE Foods
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lynn Thurber, the Chairman of JLL Income Property Trust and former Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Chair, has donated $500,000 to support the efforts of the ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance's Net Zero Imperative, a multi-year initiative to accelerate decarbonization in the built environment.

Urban Land Institute

Thurber, a member of the advisory board and past Chair for ULI's Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance, said her donation was motivated by the need to avert catastrophic climate change. "We must develop and implement the changes necessary to take each and every building on the journey to net zero carbon emissions, if we want to leave our planet in a livable position for our grandchildren and for the generations to come after them," she explained.

Thurber, a ULI Trustee, also cited the inspiration of Owen Thomas, a member of the ULI Foundation's board of directors and chief executive of Boston Properties, who through his family foundation recently donated $1 million to launch the Net Zero Imperative.

"When Owen Thomas shared with me his plan to launch a Net Zero Imperative at ULI with a very generous personal gift, I was thrilled and motivated to help," Thurber said.

Thurber sees the program, which will organize technical assistance panels in cities to assist building owners in all categories and local governments in developing decarbonization strategies, as building upon ULI Greenprint's prior work in improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon output.

The Net Zero Imperative "will provide practical guidance to building owners, tenants, and residents on how to decarbonize effectively, efficiently and in a financially prudent manner," she explained.

Panel recommendations for specific buildings will be repurposed to create reference materials that can be shared and utilized by building owners and communities worldwide. Thurber said that spreading information and expertise in that manner "will put us on the journey to achieving Net Zero carbon for our planet and our communities."

"ULI is uniquely positioned to lead, connect, and inspire this project, totally aligned with ULI's mission statement," Thurber said. "And our members have the knowledge and skill to accomplish this huge and important undertaking."

The gift establishes Thurber as a member of the ULI Foundation's Charles Fraser Society, which honors those with lifetime contributions to ULI exceeding $1 million.

About the Urban Land Institute

The Urban Land Institute is a non-profit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide. Established in 1936, the Institute has more than 45,000 members worldwide representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines. For more information on ULI, please visit uli.org, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

About the Urban Land Institute Foundation

Dedicated to advancing Urban Land Institute's capacity to connect, inspire, and lead, the ULI Foundation leverages its charitable 501(c)3 organizational status to secure and manage philanthropic assets and partnerships. This extraordinary tradition of ULI member altruism and goodwill serves to benefit and grow the ULI mission, changing millions of lives and improving communities around the globe. For additional information, please visit foundation.uli.org .

MEDIA CONTACT:

Brigit Wolf

[email protected]

202-471-4228 ext. 104

SOURCE Urban Land Institute
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Voler Strategic Advisors is a recipient of multiple awards from the 17th Annual Davey Awards in the categories of Public Service & Activism, Print Campaign-Non-Profit, Film/Video-Social Good and Film/Video Craft-Editing.

The winning media projects feature critical updates regarding COVID-19 safety and community resources. COVID-19 safety has been a top priority for our partners, and Voler Strategic Advisors has continually provided communications expertise to create multi-media campaigns across California.

"We are proud to create impactful messaging that keeps the community informed, safe and thriving," says Perla Rodriguez, CEO, Voler Strategic Advisors. "As an organization, we are committed to public service by providing leadership and strategy that best position our clients to respond to their community's need for clear, accurate and timely communications. Our team is proud of our contributions during such an extraordinary time, and it is an honor to be recognized for this meaningful work to save lives."

With over 2,000 entries from across the U.S. and from around the world, the Davey Awards honor the finest creative work from the best small shops, firms, and companies worldwide. The Daveys are judged and overseen by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA). The AIVA is an invitation-only member-based organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media.

About Voler Strategic Advisors: Voler Strategic Advisors is a full-service strategic communications firm offering public relations, crisis management, and communications strategies that help organizations achieve their full potential. At Voler, we believe that great communications drive great results. We offer solutions that are client-inspired, success driven and always inclusive of the communities that you serve.

For more information: www.volersa.com

About the Davey Awards: The Davey Awards exclusively honor the "Davids" of creativity, the finest small shops, firms, agencies, and companies worldwide. David defeated the giant Goliath with a big idea and a little rock - the sort of thing small agencies do each year. The annual International Davey Awards honors the achievements of the "Creative Davids," who derive their strength from big ideas rather than big budgets. The Davey Awards is the leading awards competition specifically for smaller agencies as they compete with their peers to win the recognition they deserve.

For more information: www.daveyawards.com

SOURCE Voler Strategic Advisors

Related Links

volersa.com


WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The following statement was issued by Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), regarding yesterday's election results around the country.

"The gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey are capturing most of the media attention, but the outcomes in down ballot races and referendums may be even more indicative of the public's mood. From Seattle to Minneapolis to Long Island, voters overwhelmingly rejected far-left candidates and initiatives that are making their communities more dangerous and wreaking havoc on local economies.

"While voters punished politicians who want to abolish the police and turn criminals loose on the streets of their communities, the Biden administration is promoting lawlessness at the nation's borders and abolishing the agency that enforces immigration laws in the interior of the country. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress remain relentless in their efforts to sneak a massive illegal alien amnesty provision into an already radical, unpopular, and frightfully expensive, social spending measure.

"Our lawless immigration system was not on the ballot yesterday, but it is clear that even in some of the deepest blue parts of the country, the public overwhelmingly opposes the radical left's assault on laws and law enforcement.

"It is time for President Biden to end the chaos his administration has created at our southern border, and restore effective enforcement policies and agreements that were in place when he took office. He must not only overrule Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' recent directives that have effectively abolished U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but replace him with someone who will honor his or her oath to protect the security of the nation.

"Likewise, it is time for Democratic leaders in Congress to stand up against their party's radical fringe and abandon efforts to amnesty millions of illegal aliens as part of the 'Build Back Better' budget reconciliation proposal. Blowing up long-standing Senate rules in order to enact the largest amnesty in American history would not only exacerbate the border crisis, but also deeply harm our nation for decades.

"The American public does not like what it is seeing, and the midterm elections are now only 370 days away."

Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [email protected]

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)

Related Links

http://www.fairus.org


TOLEDO, Ohio, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL) or the "Company" today announced that it has entered into definitive agreements to acquire four distinct seniors housing portfolios for a pro rata gross investment amount of $1.3 billion, subject to customary closing conditions. The execution of these transactions, along with Welltower's previously announced completion of $4.3 billion of pro rata gross investments exclusive of development funding, will bring the Company's total pro rata gross investments to $5.6 billion since October 2020.

"Since pivoting to offense 13 months ago, Welltower is pleased to have executed on its value-driven investment thesis, largely through granular and off-market transactions completed at a significant discount to estimated replacement cost," commented Shankh Mitra, Welltower's CEO and CIO. "We expect these investments to drive significant per share cash flow growth and generate high single-digit to mid-teens unlevered IRR's to Welltower. Additionally, we have recently observed a meaningful uptick in potential investment opportunities as the level of motivation from various sellers has risen, coinciding with further industry disruption due to the Delta variant and challenging labor environment. With $5.3 billion of current near-term liquidity, including $1.0 billion of efficiently raised unsettled equity proceeds, we are well positioned to capitalize on the robust near-term capital deployment pipeline and continue to create significant per share value for our shareholders."

Welltower most recently entered into definitive agreements for a pro rata gross investment amount of approximately $1.3 billion, which are expected to generate high single-digit unlevered IRR's, across the following four portfolios:

$580 million acquisition of 14 property Seniors Housing portfolio

The portfolio is comprised of eight rental and six entrance fee communities located in attractive markets across the United States , including Bellevue, WA , Data Point, CA, and Alexandria, VA

, including , Data Point, CA, and Watermark Retirement Communities will be retained to manage the portfolio under a highly aligned RIDEA 3.0 management agreement

Transaction price represents a 40% discount to estimated replacement cost

$475 million acquisition of Nine Seniors Apartment communities

The Class "A" portfolio is 100% private pay and located in highly attractive markets

An existing Welltower operator will assume operations upon acquisition of the portfolio

$172 million acquisition of Five Class "A" Seniors Housing properties across Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States

Recently developed and operated by a best-in-class operator and developer which will be retained to operate the portfolio under a highly incentivized contract

Initiated a long term exclusive strategic partnership agreement to develop Class "A" Seniors Housing properties across the Southeast

$119 million acquisition of Three Seniors Housing properties

Recently developed portfolio carries an average age of 2 years with properties located in fast growing micro-markets in the Midwest

New Perspective, an existing Welltower operator, will assume operations under a strongly aligned RIDEA 3.0 management contract

Portfolio has further development and densification opportunities

Welltower's strong balance sheet and recent capital markets activity provides the Company with ample capacity to fund its robust pipeline of investment opportunities. Since June 30, 2021, Welltower has issued approximately $1.0 billion of equity through its at-the-market program via forward sale agreements at an average price of $84.36 per share. Additionally, the Company's near-term liquidity totals $5.3 billion, inclusive of $1.3 billion of the aforementioned unsettled forward equity proceeds and expected proceeds from assets classified as held for sale and anticipated loan payoffs as of September 30, 2021, in addition to $4.0 billion in cash and cash equivalents and available capacity under its line of credit.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release may contain "forward-looking" statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When Welltower uses words such as "may," "will," "intend," "should," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "estimate" or similar expressions that do not relate solely to historical matters, it is making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause Welltower's actual results to differ materially from Welltower's expectations discussed in the forward-looking statements. This may be a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, those factors discussed in Welltower's reports filed from time to time with the SEC. Welltower undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements.

About Welltower

Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL), an S&P 500 company headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, is driving the transformation of health care infrastructure. The Company invests with leading seniors housing operators, post-acute providers and health systems to fund the real estate and infrastructure needed to scale innovative care delivery models and improve people's wellness and overall health care experience. Welltower, a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), owns interests in properties concentrated in major, high-growth markets in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, consisting of seniors housing, post-acute communities and outpatient medical properties. More information is available at www.welltower.com.

SOURCE Welltower Inc.

Related Links

http://www.welltower.com


"Generating an equitable and sustainable clean energy transition requires a diversity of talents, perspectives, and ideas," said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "I'm proud to honor the winners of this year's C3E awards who are an exemplary group of innovators and trailblazers working to achieve the cleaner, greener future of our dreams. Collaborative initiatives, like C3E, that advance women's leadership in clean energy are critical to building the workforce of tomorrow and increase our solutions to reaching net-zero by 2050."

The 2021 award winners are rising and established leaders who are having an impact across clean energy fields:

Business  MEGHAN NUTTING is executive vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Sunnova Energy Corporation, a U.S. residential solar and storage services provider. She works with industry leaders, nonprofits, state legislators, federal policymakers, and regulators to craft and implement policies that provide a more stable and sustainable business environment for solar electricity generation. She has worked with stakeholders to move critical pieces of policy and legislation forward in more than 20 states, including Arizona, California, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico.

Education and Advocacy  MARINA BADOIAN-KRITICOS is a research scientist at the Houston Advanced Research Center and assistant director of the DOE Upper-West Combined Heat and Power Technical Assistance Partnership (CHP TAP), where she engages with utilities, regulators, and policymakers to provide no-cost independent engineering support to help advance technical solutions using CHP.

Entrepreneurship  STEPH SPEIRS is co-founder and CEO of Solstice, a company focused on expanding the number of U.S. households that can take advantage of clean energy through community-shared solar programs. Solstice has created innovative financing solutions, advocated for the creation of inclusive solar policy across multiple states, and enrolled customers in more than 25 community renewable projects across Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Government  FAITH CORNEILLE is a global Power Sector Program manager at the Bureau of Energy Resources at the U.S. Department of State, where she leads technical assistance to foreign partner governments to strengthen electricity markets and power systems, and advance power sector decarbonization, resiliency, and clean energy investment.

International  RHONDA JORDAN ANTOINE is a senior energy specialist at the World Bank, where she works on energy investment and advisory projects across Sub-Saharan Africa. She also leads modeling and geospatial electrification planning efforts, using cutting-edge geographic information system analytics to inform World Bank energy engagements in 30 countries and underpin comprehensive electrification strategies and plans in 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Law and Finance  JOHANA AFENJAR was most recently a senior director of capital markets at Clearway Energy Group, where she was the transaction lead in the financing of Clearway's 140 MW Hawaii portfolio, raising over $500 million in debt, tax equity, and investor capital.

Social, Economic, and Policy Innovation  KATE ANDERSON is chief of staff for Energy Systems Integration at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), supporting activities focused on power systems, systems analysis, decision science, energy security and resilience, and energy justice.

Technology Research and Innovation  MARYAM SAEEDIFARD is an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where she conducts research into technologies that can address challenges in large-scale grid integration, storage, and transmission of renewable energy.

Lifetime Achievement  CHERYL A. LAFLEUR was one of the longest-serving commissioners on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), nominated in 2010 and serving until 2019. At FERC, she helped lead the evolving transformation of U.S. energy markets and infrastructure, working to remove barriers to clean energy technologies such as demand response, storage, and renewable energy. She is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors at ISO New England and an adjunct senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, where she focuses on the adaptation of the electric and natural gas sectors to the challenges of climate change.

Learn more about the U.S. C3E Initiative at c3e.org. To learn more about the nine awardees' clean energy journeys, visit c3e.org/winners , c3e.org/lifetime-achievement-award , or contact [email protected] . Tune in to view awardees' acceptance remarks November 3-4, 2021, at c3e.org/2021 .

SOURCE U.S. Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Initiative (U.S. C3E Initiative)

Related Links

http://c3e.org/2021


JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA, Spain, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The House of Lustau, one of the world's leading producers of sherry wine, is celebrating this year's Sherry Week from November 8-14 by welcoming sherry back to the bar!

Bodegas Lustau

The House of Lustau dates back to 1896 when Mr. Jose Ruiz-Berdejo began cultivating the vines of his family's state in his spare time. In 1931, his daughter Maria Ruiz-Berdejo Alberti, acquired a small winery and from there, The House of Lustau came to be. Since then, they have been awarded multiple medals and trophies, including Best Sherry Producer twice by the International Wine & Spirits Competition. Today, Bodegas Lustau is imported by Europvin USA and considered a world-class benchmark for top-quality wines.

International Sherry Week is a global festival and the world's largest celebration of wines from Southern Spain, now in its 8th year. The annual event brings together sherry lovers from four continents through a multitude of innovative and inspirational events both on and off line.

This Sherry Week, The House of Lustau is delighted to announce a new, one-of-a-kind event for sherry lovers and restaurant goers alike. Head chefs and bartenders at ten restaurants across the United States are teaming up to create a food and sherry cocktail pairing in honor of the celebration. In addition to the pairings, which will be offered all week long, the chefs and bartenders will create short videos explaining their creations to their guests.

Two restaurants in New York (Ernesto's and Gage & Tollner), Washington DC (Service Bar and Serenata), Massachusetts (Taberna de Haro and Yvonne's) and Illinois (Jaleo and Mercat a la Planxa) and one in Washington (Mamnoon) and Texas (The Esquire Tavern) will be participating in the festivities. Visitors of these restaurants during Sherry Week will be able to order the pairing and scan the QR codes on coasters and table tents to watch their restaurant's chef and bartender discuss the elements of the dish and cocktail. The QR codes will also give visitors the opportunity to watch the videos created by the other restaurants to get a better sense of sherry's diversity.

With 125 years of history, Bodegas Lustau continues to place amongst the world's most admired and awarded wineries.Their upcoming Sherry Week celebration will offer an experience that showcases their passion and dedication to sherry wine.

Contact: Janet Mick

[email protected]

212.941.5595

SOURCE Bodegas Lustau
LONG BEACH, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fans of XLNT Beef Tamales and Chili Con Carne can now order online from the new XLNT Foods online store. The beloved Mexican food brand now offers shipping throughout the contiguous United States for orders placed through its new website.

XLNT Foods - Tamales, Chili and Chili Con Carne XLNT Foods New Online Store Offerings include beef tamales 8oz-12pack, Tamales and Chili Con Carne Combo Pack and Chili Con Carne 5-Pack

XLNT Foods is one of the oldest Mexican food companies in Southern California and has produced delicious, home-style Mexican foods for more than 125 years. XLNT Foods has been locally owned and has provided quality beef tamales and chili con carne throughout Southern California. But, this year, XLNT is expanding its reach.

In an effort to make its mouthwatering menu selections available to people throughout the United States, XLNT Foods has launched a new website that offers online ordering and shipping. Now, anyone can enjoy the renowned flavors of XLNT Beef Tamales and XLNT Chili Con Carne even if they've moved away from the West Coast. Shoppers around the nation can easily order their favorite XLNT menu selections and have them shipped to their doorstep using the company's new, user-friendly website.

XLNT Foods offers competitive shipping prices and illustrates this point by publishing its shipping comparison charts online for customer to see. The charts compare the combined product and shipping prices offered by XLNT Foods side by side with those offered by competitors. XLNT Foods ships customer orders using UPS 2nd Day Air services during the warmer months of the year but in the cooler, winter months ships UPS 3 Day Select.

Those who take advantage of XLNT Food's new online ordering and shipping option have the choice of three different food selections: XLNT Beef Tamales (12-pack, 8 oz. each), XLNT Chili Con Carne (5-pack), and a Chili and Tamale Combo pack. Customers can also find branded XLNT Foods gear (such as t-shirts, mugs, hoodies, and tote bags) in the company's newly launched online store.

XLNT Foods encourages anyone interested in ordering home-style Mexican foods or purchasing branded gear to find more information online. Current and potential XLNT Foods fans can learn about available items and shipping policies on the new XLNT Foods website (https://www.xlntfoods.com/xlnt-store).

About XLNT Foods

XLNT Foods is the oldest continuously operating Mexican food brand in the United States, and one of the oldest companies in Southern California. For more than 125 years, its produced delicious, home-style Mexican foods which include small batch tamales and Chili Con Carne.

Media CONTACT: Vincent Passanisi of XLNT Foods +1-562-437-7775 [email protected]

SOURCE XLNT Foods
The 7,400 members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7600 in Southern California and 3,400 members of Oregon Federation of Nurses and Healthcare Professionals (OFNHP) will also strike against Kaiser Permanente beginning the same day.

The strike would affect 366 facilities in Southern California, including hospitals and medical centers in Anaheim, Antelope Valley, Baldwin Park, Downey, Fontana, Harbor City, Irvine, Los Angeles, Ontario-Vineyard, Panorama City, Riverside, San Diego, West Los Angeles and Woodland Hills, as well as hundreds of clinics, quick care clinics in Target stores, and medical office buildings from Bakersfield down to San Diego and Los Angeles out to the Inland Empire.

Registered nurses and health care professionals are striking over Kaiser Permanente's proposals to depress wages for current employees and slash wages for incoming workers during a national health care staffing crisis. Other health care systems across the nationsome not as fiscally strong as Kaiser Permanenteare making the right choices for patients by attracting the best caregivers with large wage increases and special incentives, from signing bonuses to onsite childcare. Meanwhile, KPsitting on billions of cashhas failed to address union proposals that would tackle pressing problems such as staffing shortages, racial justice, and equal health access.

UNAC/UHCP President Denise Duncan, RN, said:

"The lives of our patients and the health of our communities are dependent on the outcome of these negotiations. For weeks, we've been beating back a two-tier wage package which would impact our ability to hire, recruit and retain during a severe shortage of nurses, health care workers and professionalswage proposals that resemble those of a slash-and-burn corporation, not the leading health care provider that our members helped build. For health care providers, a strike is always a last resort, but it's clear from the employer's latest proposals that this is the path they've chosen. Nurses and health care professionals have one priority: delivering the best possible care to our patients. Kaiser's actions are destructive to that priority. These next few weeks will define us."

Kaiser Permanente's most recent proposal, delivered in bargaining on Tuesday, November 2, was something of a trojan horse maneuver to push through its two-tier wage proposal, poorly camouflaged by sub-par wage increases and bonuses. They raised their 1% wage proposal for current employees to 2%. In the first two years, an additional 2% lump sum would temporarily pad workers' take-home pay. In year three of a four-year contractunder the guise of partneringworkers would be asked to take another lump sum payment in exchange for a 15% slash to the wages and benefits of future members.

Charmaine Morales, RN, UNAC/UHCP Executive Vice President, addressed Kaiser's two-tier wage proposal and its justification:

"In all honestyand others might use different wordsI call baloney. We're saying no to a two-tier system and we mean it. Great health care is based on teamwork. A two-tier wage system would destroy team morale and be disastrous for recruiting new nurses and caregivers."

Report: Two-Tier Wage Systems: A Costly and Extreme Wage Scheme With Dangerous Impacts on Patient Safety.

Kaiser will claim that its workers are overpaid, citing a fatally flawed wage study conducted unilaterally, in violation of its 2018 agreement with UNAC/UHCP and the other unions in the Alliance of Health Care Unions. The study compares KP to small rural hospitals, rehab nursing homes, and non-union employers, while leaving out comparable, large health care systems like Sharp, Scripps, and the University of California.

In actuality, in the past three years Kaiser Permanente grew by 591,000 new health plan members. Kaiser Permanente has more health plan members in California than its competitors: 9.2 million. KP has solid financial ratings because of the strength and diversity of its health plan membership: KP reported to Fitch Ratings that 65% of the nation's Fortune 100 companies actually contract with Kaiser for their employees' health care, and no single employee or employer represents more than 5% of Kaiser Permanente's total membership. Fortune 100 companies are not going to start-ups for the level of care their employees need and expect.

Get the facts on KP's proposals and their impacts here.

California's top two legislative leaders came out against Kaiser Permanente's two-tier proposals earlier this week:

"We are very much concerned with Kaiser's demands to establish a two-tier wage structure for new employees," reads the letter from Toni G. Atkins, Senate President Pro Tempore and Anthony Rendon, Speaker of the Assembly to Greg Adams, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente Hospitals and Health Plan, Inc. "We understand this issue had been the primary reason these negotiations have stalled during a period when good labor and management relations are critical to address the increased demand for quality health care services throughout California. Installing a two-tiered hiring and wage system would undermine this relationship."

Read and download the full letter here.

Kaiser has also alleged that workers going on strike would be abandoning their patients.

Kim Mullen, RN, Kaiser South Bay, addressed that charge head-on:

"The whole reason I'm going on strike is because of my patients. I believe my patients deserve the best care and attracting the best nurses is what's best for them, and I need to make sure that we continue to attract the best nurses who want to stay at Kaiser in order for my patients to get the best care."

Alaa Abou-Arab, OT, Kaiser LAMC, also addressed that charge:

"My son was born at Kaiser. My doctor is at Kaiser. The reality is: we're not just Kaiser staff, we're Kaiser patients. This stuff is real for us. We're relying on the future generation of nurses to take care of us too. We're striking in solidarity with those nurses and for our own families."

More on the strike authorization votes and the issues involved:

https://www.unacuhcp.org/press-releases/

https://www.investinpatientcare.com/strike

https://www.investinpatientcare.com/

https://www.ahcunions.org/

###

United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) represents more than 32,000 registered nurses and other health care professionals in California and Hawaii, including optometrists; pharmacists; physical, occupational and speech therapists; case managers; nurse midwives; social workers; clinical lab scientists; physician assistants and nurse practitioners. UNAC/UHCP is affiliated with the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO.

Contacts:

Jeff Rogers | [email protected] | 909-263-7230

Anjetta Thackeray |[email protected] | 909-455-5146

[email protected]

SOURCE United Nurses Associations of California / Union of Health Care Professionals

Related Links

https://www.unacuhcp.org/


WASHINGTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The digital ad industry reached a milestone accomplishment in its decade-long battle against ad fraud by holding invalid traffic (IVT), a key measure of such fraud, below 1% in US supply chain channels where multiple participants had adopted the same high anti-fraud standards, according to a new study released by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) today.

Ad Fraud Held Below 1% in Industry-Certified Channels For First Time

The 2021 US Fraud Benchmark Study showed that IVT in TAG Certified Channels fell to a record-low 0.86% this year, a fourth straight year of improvement and a nearly 50% drop from the rate measured in the study in 2018. TAG Certified Channels are those in which a campaign runs through multiple companies that have achieved the TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal.

"A sub-1% fraud rate has been our industry's four-minute mile, a psychological and operational barrier that has seemed nearly impossible to break," said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. "Unlike an individual record in sports, however, achieving that milestone in advertising has required close collaboration across the supply chain. When multiple participants in every ad transaction set the same high and consistent standards, there are few cracks left for criminals to exploit, and ad fraud can be reduced to low and sustainable levels."

The study, conducted by The 614 Group, also involved interviews with executives at agency holding companies and others who helped put those results in context, with many ad buyers expressing comfort with a sustained fraud rate around the 1% level or lower. In the words of one agency executive, "We don't have clients asking about fraud anymore. They see the 1% number over and over again, and they're aware of all the levers we're pulling on their behalf."

During those interviews -- which included dentsu international, DoubleVerify, Horizon Media, Integral Ad Science, Interpublic's Kinesso, OMG, Publicis Media, and WPP's GroupM -- agency executives also noted that advertisers now understand that their partners have established dedicated teams, processes, certifications, technology and partnerships to fight the issue, and that the industry continues to be vigilant about looking for and combatting new forms of IVT as they arise. As a result, they have a high level of confidence in traffic quality.

"The changes in the industry since we conducted the first US Fraud Benchmark Study five years ago have been nothing short of remarkable," said Rob Rasko, CEO of The 614 Group. "In those days, major market participants often struggled with high levels of IVT in their client campaigns, and there was acrimony and finger-pointing over whose responsibility it was to fix it. Today, it is clear that TAG established standards across hundreds of key participants in the supply chain, and it has delivered confidence to ad buyers -- as evidenced by the commentary -- and data in today's released research on the results of their process of certification."

The TAG Certified Against Fraud Program was launched in 2016 to combat invalid traffic in the digital advertising supply chain. Companies that are shown to comply with the Certified Against Fraud Guidelines are awarded the Certified Against Fraud Seal, which they can use to publicly communicate their commitment to combating fraud.

The full study and report can be found here . Additional information about TAG's Certified Against Fraud Program and how companies from across the advertising ecosystem can receive the TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal can be found at www.tagtoday.net/fraud.

Methodology

This report uses the methodology established by The 614 Group in 2017 for the first US benchmark study and used in all TAG Fraud Benchmark studies undertaken around the globe from that point forward.

From January 1, 2021 to June 30, 2021, The 614 Group analyzed data from leading agency holding companies -- along with their MRC-accredited measurement vendors -- to collect and aggregate impressions for campaigns that were executed in the United States of America. These impressions included display media and video ads in desktop, mobile web and in-app environments, as well as connected television (CTV). The analysis did not use sampling of any kind, as 100% of the impressions received from the agencies who shared data were analyzed. Upon receipt, all data was aggregated within a secure database in order to create the proper reporting.

The 614 Group used the categorization of the ad impressions by the agencies' measurement vendors, including DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science (IAS) and Moat by Oracle Data Cloud (Moat). These three - ad verification vendors are all TAG Certified Against Fraud and hold accreditations from The Media Rating Council (MRC) that include invalid traffic (IVT) measurement for both SIVT and GIVT.

About the Trustworthy Accountability Group



The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is the global certification program designed to fight against criminal activity and protect brand safety in the digital advertising industry. TAG advances its mission of eliminating fraudulent traffic, facilitating the sharing of threat intelligence, and promoting brand safety by connecting industry leaders, analyzing threats, and sharing best practices worldwide. The 600+ member TAG community includes the world's largest and most influential brands, agencies, publishers, and ad tech providers. For more information on TAG, please visit tagtoday.net .

Contact:

Andrew Weinstein

202-667-4967

[email protected]

SOURCE Trustworthy Accountability Group

Related Links

http://tagtoday.net


NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital media entrepreneurs are producing ground-breaking journalism and achieving significant impact on their societies, in spite of often tiny budgets and constant online threats and attacks, a new global report revealed today.

The Inflection Point International report, published by SembraMedia, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurial journalists in partnership with the global philanthropic organisation Luminate, carried out more than 200 global interviews and interviewed 49 independent digital native media organizations in Africa, in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

The researchers found that more than 85 percent of the media interviewed had contributed to significant political and societal changes, in a report that comes just a month after the award of Nobel Peace Prizes to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their achievements in defending freedom of speech and upholding democracy.

African media entrepreneurs reported achieving enhanced civic engagement, criminal investigations, and changes in the law through their coverage. Almost half said they were engaged in some form of solutions journalism - compared with 15 per cent in Asia - citing solutions reporting and investigative journalism as key factors in achieving social change.

"This report shines a light on a new generation of creative and courageous media entrepreneurs, developing solutions to Africa's social and economic challenges and strengthening the workings of democracy and issues of governance," said Abdul Noormohamed, Director, Africa of Luminate.

Download the full report

The full report is available on the Inflection Point International website, and can be downloaded in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Executive Summary is available in 12 other languages, including French.

The report found that 57 per cent of the African digital newsrooms interviewed had won national awards and 28 per cent had won international awards in recognition of their work. However, they had done so in the face of ongoing harassment, with more than a third reporting cyber-attacks on their news platforms.

Some of the entrepreneurs also reported a degree of self-censorship, in avoiding stories that could lead to legal challenges, because they could not afford attorneys to defend themselves. Media in Nigeria and Ghana reported significantly higher incidences of lawsuits and legal attacks than the media organisations interviewed in other countries.

Yet most of the entrepreneurs appear to have survived the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"While there are differences across the three regions, what struck us most as we reviewed the data were the similarities that emerged among these news organizations as they strive to cover their communities and build sustainable business models," said Janine Warner, co-founder of SembraMedia.

Some of the outlets were established news sites, such as the Daily Maverick in South Africa, but many were much smaller, with 60 per cent of the outlets interviewed globally earning less than US$50,000 in revenue.

Overall, the African digital media reported higher levels of advertising revenue than Latin American and South-east Asian digital media, with advertising contributing around 29 per cent of incomes for the African media in 2019, falling to 26 per cent in 2020. The top tier digital media on the continent was also found to be earning more for smaller audiences - measured as page views - than equivalent media in Latin America and South-east Asia.

However, the African entrepreneurs had the most limited financial records with around half unable to identify their total revenues or revenue sources. Those that shared financial details were also benefitting from a lower proportion of grant funding than digital media elsewhere, at 16 per cent of revenue in 2019. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, grants to African media rose, to account for more than 19 per cent of revenues in 2020.

About SembraMedia

SembraMedia's mission is to empower diverse voices in media to publish news and information with independence, journalistic integrity, and a positive impact on the communities they serve. We help digital media entrepreneurs build more sustainable, independent news organizations by offering business and technical training, market intelligence, networking opportunities, specialized consulting, and direct financial support. Our work is driven by an international team of journalists, entrepreneurs, consultants, and academics with deep knowledge of global political, economic, and media markets. We are guided and supported by a distinguished Advisory Board whose members contribute their expertise as journalists, media executives, professors, and consultants. To learn more, visit Sembramedia.org.

About Luminate

Luminate is a global philanthropic organization focused on empowering people and institutions to work together to build just and fair societies. We support innovative and courageous organizations and entrepreneurs around the world, and we advocate for the policies and actions that will drive change across four impact areas: Civic Empowerment, Data & Digital Rights, Financial Transparency, and Independent Media. We work with our partners to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in and to shape the issues affecting their societies, and to make those in positions of power more responsive and accountable. Luminate was established in 2018 by philanthropists Pierre and Pam Omidyar. The organization was founded by The Omidyar Group. www.luminategroup.com

SOURCE Luminate; SembraMedia
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ApartmentAdvisor (www.apartmentadvisor.com), a proptech startup that aims to improve the apartment rental experience for consumers, today announced the launch of its new apartment search platform. The company is using proprietary analytics technology to make the rental search process easier and more transparent, evaluating hundreds of thousands of listings daily and providing objective guidance on which offer the best value. The platform includes listings from both small and large property owners nationwide.

ApartmentAdvisor was started by co-founder and chairman, Langley Steinert, who also founded CarGurus and was a co-founder of TripAdvisor. The company's other co-founders include CEO Tom Gilmore, founder and former CEO of VacationHomeRentals (sold to TripAdvisor); CTO Josh Arnold, former lead engineer at TripAdvisor and former director of data science at Mineral Tree; and Oliver Chrzan, former CTO at CarGurus. Greg Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of real estate startup, Tomo, and former President of Media and Marketplaces at Zillow, serves on the company's Board of Directors. The company is privately funded.

"The traditional classified rental listings model is optimized for property owners, but not for renters," said Tom Gilmore, co-founder and CEO of ApartmentAdvisor. "We see an opportunity to reinvent that model with a more consumer-centric approach, and the release of our new search platform is a core part of that. Renting an apartment is a big commitment, and we want to make the process as easy and transparent as possible for renters and for property owners from the start."

Unlike classified sites that display apartment listings based on a landlord's paid advertising, ApartmentAdvisor ranks search results based on which apartment is the best value relative to the consumers' search parameters. The company's search engine is powered by a property valuation model that factors data on size, quality, amenities, and location to rate and rank each available listing from "Great Deal" to "Overpriced." ApartmentAdvisor is also developing a community engagement capability that incorporates reviews and insights from residents and provides renters with first-hand knowledge of local neighborhoods.

"Technology innovation in home rental search has lagged other categories, and yet the need to better serve renters and property owners has never been more critical," said Langley Steinert, co-founder and chairman of ApartmentAdvisor. "ApartmentAdvisor is addressing that gap. Our founding team not only has an exciting vision, but also brings deep experience building Tripadvisor and CarGurus from startups into major marketplace platforms. We see a similar path for ApartmentAdvisor as we work to revolutionize how renters find and lease their next apartment."

The U.S. apartment rental industry is worth an estimated $174 billion based on revenues1, and the services industry that assists property managers with listings, advertising and listings services is valued at nearly $45 billion. ApartmentAdvisor is entering the market with a freemium model for property owners and managers, enabling them to list inventory on the platform at no charge. Owners and managers cannot pay to influence the rank of their listings' organic search results. However they will have options to upgrade to a paid service for additional services. The company says the improved search experience for renters will drive higher conversions for property owners and managers from informed, ready-to-sign applicants. The platform is free for renters.

Property owners can find more information on how to list inventory for free on ApartmentAdvisor by contacting [email protected].

About ApartmentAdvisor

ApartmentAdvisor (www.apartmentadvisor.com) helps renters easily find the right apartment at the right price. The company is building a rental search platform that combines rigorous rent price analytics with neighborhood insights, empowering renters with a more transparent way to compare prices, features and locations of available apartments.

ApartmentAdvisor was founded in December 2020 by a team of founders and engineers from Tripadvisor and CarGurus, including Langley Steinert (also co-founder of Tripadvisor and founder and executive chairman at CarGurus); Tom Gilmore (founder and former CEO of VacationHomeRentals, sold to Tripadvisor); Josh Arnold (former engineering lead at Tripadvisor and former director of data science for MineralTree); and Oliver Chrzan (former CTO at CarGurus). The company is based in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA.

Contact:

Amy Mueller

[email protected]

+1 617-216-2900

1 IBIS World, "Apartment Rental Industry in the US," May 2021

SOURCE ApartmentAdvisor

Related Links

https://www.apartmentadvisor.com/


LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Aptitude Software, the specialist provider of finance transformation and automation software, announces the release of the IDC InfoBrief, All eyes on Finance, sponsored by Aptitude Software. The release of the paper coincides with its third annual community event, AptConnect.

The key research findings include:

All eyes are on the CFO to become more of a transformation enabler, with the function becoming less controlling and more supporting. The CFO will have two sides to their role - controller and business transformer. The finance team will need to support a wide array of business objectives as almost every business process touches the finance function. Revenue management is an example of an area that is changing with the growth of the subscription economy which is expected to expand from close to USD 650 billion in 2020, into a USD 1.5 trillion market by 2025*, and technology will be key in adapting to this change. The finance function will consist of three main pillars: self-service processes, advisory, and automation.

These findings support the strategic thinking behind Aptitude Software's recent acquisition of MPP Global Solutions Limited, an international provider of cloud-based subscription management and billing technology (eSuite) for a total enterprise value of 37.1 million.

Jeremy Suddards, CEO, Aptitude Software commented, ''The IDC InfoBrief findings support the strategic investment we've made in MPP Global Solutions and I know the expansion of our solution portfolio will allow us to further support the CFO office in creating a world of financial confidence. AptConnect is a fantastic venue to share both the IDC research findings and more about MPP Global's solutions with our community."

Tom Seal, Senior Research Director, Enterprise Applications at IDC commented, "Finance functions are investing in technology to support their evolving role in areas such as sustainability, where there is a need to track and report a new array of metrics."

The virtual AptConnect event will bring together Aptitude's global client base, partner, and prospect community as well as industry and thought leaders from organizations like KPMG, AWS, PwC, Chartis Research, and IDC. Content will range from high-level, thought-provoking discussions on the future of the finance department, to in-depth looks at Aptitude products, and case studies from some of the largest organizations in the world.

*UBS, Investing in digital subscriptions, 10 March 2021

About Aptitude Software

Aptitude Software provides software solutions that enable finance professionals to run their global businesses, forecast decision outcomes and comply with complex regulations. Uniquely combining deep finance expertise and IP rich technology, Aptitude gives finance leaders the tools they need to transform their business and achieve their ambitions. Aptitude is proud to have served the office of finance for over 20 years, delivering financial control and insight to create a world of financial confidence for our global clients. Headquartered in London, Aptitude Software is an operating company of Aptitude Software Group plc.

For more information, please visit www.aptitudesoftware.com

SOURCE Aptitude Software Limited

Related Links

https://www.aptitudesoftware.com


thierry Ehrmann, CEO and Founder of Artmarket.com and of its Artprice department: " Art is usually considered a low volatility investment the value of which evolves over the long term with a gradual change in tastes and preferences. But in recent years, this theory has been shaken by the 'red-chip' phenomenon: collectors have become very enthusiastic about the very latest stars of the Art Market, to the point of rapidly raising the price of their works from a few thousand to several million dollars. "

Buying before they are known...

If you don't yet know Flora Yukhnovich (1990) or Jade Fadojutimi (1993), that's normal! In fact, it appears to be precisely one of the reasons their works are so expensive today...and it could well be that as soon as you know them, they will be a little less fashionable. It might sound counter-intuitive, but it would appear that what makes these artists so instantly valuable is that they are not on the books of the most prestigious Contemporary art galleries. Works by these young artists are therefore offered in sales at Phillips, Sotheby's and Christie's without any points of reference.

In fact, since it was painted in 2020 (less than two years ago), the canvas I'll Have What She's Having has already been sold by the Parafin Gallery and resold at Sotheby's in London. The Artsy online platform presents the young English painter (31 years old) as a blue-chip artist, because Flora Yukhnovich is "represented by internationally recognized galleries." However Artprice considers her more like a 'red-chip' artist, a notion coined by journalist Scott Reyburn (The Art Newspaper) in January 2021, in reference to a number of very young artists who have suddenly emerged on the international art scene.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/01/08/blue-chip-artists-move-over-here-come-the-red-chips

Very recent works on the secondary market

With the health crisis, the auction houses have pushed back the limits of the secondary market to which they have been historically dedicated. Today, six- or seven-digit amounts sometimes seem easier to achieve for super-fresh works (created less than two years before resale) than for Modern classics and the major auctioneers are increasingly getting involved in the flipping game, i.e. the very rapid resale of works fresh out of the studios of young fashionable artists.

This practice is regularly criticized by galleries and artists themselves, in whose eyes overly rapid price evolutions destabilize the fragile balance between supply and demand. Last year, the painter Amoako Boafo (of Ghanaian origin) confided to Bloomberg his fears and disapproval regarding the highly speculative resale of his paintings at auction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-12/hot-new-artist-laments-that-his-work-is-being-flipped-for-profit

A new strategy...

In H1 2021, auction houses took a further step by selling NFTs by Beeple, Larva Labs, PAK, Mad Dog Jones, etc. none of whom are as yet represented by major galleries. The auction houses collaborated directly with these artists, but also with specialized platforms (like Nifty Gateways or Opensea) to benefit from all of the available technological support. However, as the NFT market had no history, the estimates provided by the auction houses were somewhat arbitrary: the starting price for Beeple's 5,000 days was set at $100, but the work fetched nearly $70 million!



Of course this is not the first time auction houses have entered the primary market. They regularly offer fresh pieces during charity sales where artists donate one or two 'unseen' works to a good cause. There have also been a number of special cases, such as Damien Hirst's and Sotheby's Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale in 2008.

With NFTs, auction houses have been able to inject into the market works that by-pass galleries, but for which an immense demand already exists and has even been bottled up for too long. This paradigm shift fits in perfectly with a broader strategy by the auction majors of presenting works capable of attracting new buyers towards works whose prices can rocket. In fact, the 'NFT' and the 'red-chip' phenomena can be seen as a materialisation of this new strategy.

Images:

[https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/11/image1-artists-under-35.png]

[https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/11/image2-artprice-2021-contemporary-art-market-report.jpg]

Copyright 1987-2021 thierry Ehrmann www.artprice.com - www.artmarket.com

Don't hesitate to contact our Econometrics Department for your requirements regarding statistics and personalized studies: [email protected]

for your requirements regarding statistics and personalized studies: Try our services (free demo): https://www.artprice.com/demo

Subscribe to our services: https://www.artprice.com/subscription

About Artmarket:

Artmarket.com is listed on Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF.

Discover Artmarket and its Artprice department on video: www.artprice.com/video

Artmarket and its Artprice department was founded in 1997 by its CEO, thierry Ehrmann. Artmarket and its Artprice department is controlled by Groupe Serveur, created in 1987.

See certified biography in Who's who :

https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/06/Biographie_nov2020_WhosWho_thierryEhrmann.pdf

Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 770,000 artists.

Artprice Images allows unlimited access to the largest Art Market image bank in the world: no less than 180 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians.

Artmarket with its Artprice department accumulates data on a permanent basis from 6300 Auction Houses and produces key Art Market information for the main press and media agencies (7,200 publications). Its 5.4 million ('members log in'+social media) users have access to ads posted by other members, a network that today represents the leading Global Standardized Marketplace to buy and sell artworks at a fixed or bid price (auctions regulated by paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 321.3 of France's Commercial Code).

Artmarket with its Artprice department, has been awarded the State label "Innovative Company" by the Public Investment Bank (BPI) (for the second time in November 2018 for a new period of 3 years) which is supporting the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the market art.

Artprice's 2020/21 Contemporary Art Market Report by Artmarket.com:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2021

Artprice by Artmarket's 2020 Global Art Market Report published in March 2021:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2020

Index of press releases posted by Artmarket with its Artprice department:

serveur.serveur.com/press_release/pressreleaseen.htm

Follow all the Art Market news in real time with Artmarket and its Artprice department on Facebook and Twitter:

www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom/ (over 5 million followers)

twitter.com/artmarketdotcom

twitter.com/artpricedotcom

Discover the alchemy and universe of Artmarket and its artprice department https://www.artprice.com/video headquartered at the famous Organe Contemporary Art Museum "The Abode of Chaos" (dixit The New York Times): https://issuu.com/demeureduchaos/docs/demeureduchaos-abodeofchaos-opus-ix-1999-2013

L'Obs - The Museum of the Future: https://youtu.be/29LXBPJrs-o

www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999

(4.4 million followers)

https://vimeo.com/124643720

Contact Artmarket.com and its Artprice department - Contact: [email protected]

Contact: thierry Ehrmann, [email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678428/image1_artists_under_35.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678429/image2_artprice_2021_contemporary_art_market_report.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1009603/Art_Market_logo.jpg

SOURCE Artmarket.com
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), the new, independent company listing on the New York Stock Exchange today announced that Automated Financial Systems, Inc. (AFS), a global leader in commercial lending to top-tier financial institutions, is working with Kyndryl to containerize their commercial lending software to allow customers to run it anywhere.

Kyndryl is focused on delivering the most advanced business solutions for customers across more than 60 countries. Kyndryl is investing in new partnerships with the world's premier technology organizations and cloud hyperscalers. The joint solutions developed from these partnerships, in areas such as AI, 5G, edge computing, hybrid cloud, and security, are enabling customers to tackle their most pressing business objectives in modern ways.

As many financial industry customers make the move to cloud-based platforms, AFS turned to Kyndryl to tap RedHat's OpenShift to containerize AFSVision so that it can run on multiple cloud environments. This move will grant customers more options of where they would like to run the software - from private or public cloud environments, no matter the vendor. With the increased options for accessing AFSVision, AFS is extending their U.S. customer base as well as tapping new global markets with the benefit of multiple cloud delivery options.

"AFS innovates, on a daily basis, to keep customers in touch with the latest functionality and analysis," said John Dubil, Chief Technology Officer, AFS. "Our average client has been with us for more than 20 years and trusts us to evolve with them era to era. Kyndryl has been an amazing partner to us for more than a decade helping our business advance to offer the best-performing, most stable, and most secure products."

"As financial services businesses increasingly move to cloud, we know it's essential that these migrations deliver operational stability, security, scalability, and reduced costs  all within the context of regulatory compliance," said Harish Grama, Cloud Practice Leader, Kyndryl. "Kyndryl's technology, global reach, and industry expertise can assist these businesses along their digital transformation journey, no matter what stage they're in."

Headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, AFS is a leader in lending and risk management solutions. Their AFSVision software provides two thirds of the top 25 U.S. banks with real-time, fully integrated, full-service loan processing capabilities, 24 hours a day.

About AFS

AFS is the global leader in providing digital, real-time, end-to-end lending solutions to the world's top-tier institutions. Solely dedicated to the financial industry, AFS is uniquely positioned to support our client's business and technology objectives, evidenced by our solutions processing more than $2.5 trillion in small business, commercial, CRE, wealth management, and syndicated loans daily. AFS clients have achieved measurable results in customer expansion, revenue increases and efficiency gains that outpace their competition. AFS is headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, with an office in Brussels, Belgium. Please visit www.afsvision.com.

About Kyndryl

Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world's largest IT infrastructure provider. The company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. Kyndryl's 88,449 employees serve over 4,000 customers in more than 60 countries around the world, including 75 percent of the Fortune 100. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com.

SOURCE Kyndryl

Related Links

http://www.kyndryl.com


MUSKEGON, Mich., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AvaSure and its partner Sierra7 today announced they have been named an awardee of a $65 million, 10-year contract to provide TeleCare Companion solutions across the U.S. Veteran's Affairs (VA) national healthcare system.

The Veterans Affairs Health Administration (VHA) Office of Health Informatics (OHI) awarded the contract, which enables the teaming partners to deliver and support TeleCare Companion solutions in VA patient environments. Under the agreement, AvaSure's TeleSitter Solution can be deployed as a safe and cost-effective patient observation, communication, and analytic solution for the VHA TeleCare Companion initiative.

AvaSure pioneered its TeleSitter solution in 2008 as a fall-prevention tool that is now placed in all top 10 U.S. health systems and 826 hospitals across 48 states and Canada. AvaSure's solution enables one trained VA employee to monitor up to 38 patients simultaneously, preventing not only falls, but elopement, violence against caregivers and other adverse events. The TeleSitter solution serves as a workplace multiplier to optimize staffing efficiencies and has been proven in clinical literature as a superior intervention for patient safety.

AvaSure Telesitter systems are already in use in 21 VA hospitals across the country, with the first installation dating to 2017 at the Cincinnati VA Medical Center. AvaSure holds a national Memorandum of Understanding-Interconnection Security Agreement (MOU-ISA) and national Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with the VA.

"The VA, like many healthcare providers, is seeking effective, innovative ways to meet rising demand while fulfilling new mandates for remote-enabled care. We are grateful for this opportunity to expand our partnership with Sierra7 in supporting their established commitment to patient safety," said AvaSure's Chief Clinical Innovation Officer, Lisbeth Votruba. "AvaSure is proud to be one of a very small group of telecare providers approved through the VA Technical Reference Model (TRM), which subjects systems to a vigorous review of quality, reliability and suitability to purpose. Every member of our team understands the importance of taking care of those who serve and defend our nation."

About Veterans Affairs Health Administration

VHA is the nation's largest integrated health care system, providing care at over 1,200 healthcare facilities, serving 9 million enrolled Veterans each year. VHA is a national leader in the delivery of telemedicine and using technology to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes for Veterans. The TeleCare Companion initiative seeks to utilize technology solutions to improve patient safety and facilitate patient care by centralizing monitoring of patients who require continuous observation.

About AvaSure

AvaSure's continuous care virtual technology is found in over 800 clinical environments, including the most prestigious hospitals across the United States and Canada. AvaSure telehealth products and solutions are manufactured and assembled in the United States at AvaSure's headquarters in Belmont, Michigan. The company has a staff of approximately 200 full-time employees. For more information, visit www.avasure.com.



About Sierra7

Based in Falls Church, Va., Sierra7 is a leading consultant to healthcare and federal clients providing IT, consulting, solutions, and citizen engagement services to federal agencies across the United States. As a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), Sierra7 holds critical Prime contracts including T4NG, VECTOR, VHA-IHT, GSA VETS 2, NIH CIO-SP3, NASA SEWP V, and several GSA schedules. Learn more at www.sierra7.com.

Contact:

Jeremy Witt

[email protected]

269-370-1097

SOURCE AvaSure
SEATTLE, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pacific Northwest drugstore chain Bartell Drugs (Bartell's) today announced its 68th location is opening in Kirkland, with a grand opening day planned for Saturday, November 13. The store will be the first new addition to the Bartell's brand since it was purchased by Rite Aid in late 2020.

Located in Kirkland's Moss Bay neighborhood, the new store will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday, November 8 at 2 p.m. PST to celebrate the opening of the business. The event will include comments from Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, members of the Kirkland Chamber of Commerce and leaders from the Bartell's team.

"Our customers are like family, so we're thrilled to have a chance to expand that family in Kirkland with our newest location," said Ken Mahoney, division vice president of retail for Rite Aid and Bartell Drugs. "Bartell's has been serving the Puget Sound region for more than 130 years, and our team feels honored to continue that tradition as we keep growing and finding new ways to help keep our community healthy."

Bartell's invites the Kirkland community to join its official grand opening on Saturday, November 13 from 7 a.m.  12 p.m. PST. The first 200 customers through the doors that morning will receive a limited-edition travel mug plus a surprise gift card ranging in value from $5 to $250. The opening will be celebrated with special product highlights and deals, gift basket giveaways, local product sampling and even an on-site caricature artist. All COVID-19 precautions will be observed for the ribbon-cutting and grand opening events.

The store is located at 312 Central Way, Kirkland, Washington 98033. For more information on the store's November 13 grand opening, visit https://www.bartelldrugs.com/events/.

About Bartell Drugs

Operating 68 locations in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties and serving the Northwest since 1890, Bartell Drugs is dedicated to providing extraordinary service that empowers customers to achieve whole health for life. Bartell Drugs is owned by Rite Aid Corporation. For more information on Bartell Drugs, visit www.bartelldrugs.com.

Media Contacts:

Aaron Blank and Nikki Arnone

206-838-9204

[email protected]

SOURCE Bartell Drugs

Related Links

http://www.bartelldrugs.com


NEW YORK and LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BC Partners, a leading international investment firm, has today announced its plans to join the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), a global collaboration between financial institutions to develop a global, standardized methodology to measure and disclose financed emissions. With this commitment, the firm will report GHG emissions across its private equity, credit, and real estate portfolio according to the PCAF Standard within the next three years.

BC Partners will become the first private equity firm to join PCAF, following on becoming one of the first PE firms to sign the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2009. As a part of this partnership, the firm will promote PCAF to other private markets participants and work with the secretariat's asset class and regional groups.

Chairman of BC Partners Raymond Svider said: "Our belief is clear: thoughtful ESG strategy drives strong investment outcomes and serves the broader interests of our investors. Joining PCAF is a pivotal step for our firm, allowing us (and our investors) to better understand and manage the risks of climate change. We are also incredibly proud to be able to once again be early adopters of an important ESG initiative, and encourage our peers in private markets to join us to improve GHG calculation and disclosure"

BC Partners' Head of ESG Colin Etnire added: "Understanding financed emissions is vital for investors to navigate climate change. We are particularly excited to join PCAF and take advantage of their emissions factor database and technical support from Guidehouse, which will help us more precisely calculate GHG exposure in our portfolio, and use it to inform how we can improve emissions management at our portfolio companies."

PCAF is a global partnership of more than 170 financial institutions across five continents that are actively working together to develop and implement a uniform approach to assess and disclose greenhouse gas emissions financed by loans and investments. The partnership was launched in Europe in 2015 and globally in 2019, and currently represents over $54.5 trillion in total financial assets.

About the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF)

The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) was launched globally in September 2019. Currently, more than 170 banks and investors have subscribed to the PCAF initiative. PCAF participants work together to jointly develop the Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry to measure and disclose the greenhouse gas emissions of their loans and investments. By doing so, PCAF participants take an important step to assess climate-related risks, set targets in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and develop effective strategies to decarbonize our society. For more information see https://carbonaccountingfinancials.com/

About BC Partners

BC Partners is a leading international investment firm with over 33 billion of assets under management in private equity, private credit and real estate strategies. Established in 1986, BC Partners has played an active role in developing the European buyout market for over three decades. Today, BC Partners executives operate across markets as an integrated team through the firm's offices in North America and Europe. Since inception, BC Partners has completed 123 private equity investments in companies with a total enterprise value of over 161 billion and is currently investing its eleventh private equity fund.

For more information, please visit www.bcpartners.com .

BC Partners Media Contact:

Prosek Partners

[email protected]

Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials Media Contact:

Angelica Afanador, Program Managers, PCAF Secretariat

[email protected]

SOURCE BC Partners

Related Links

http://www.bcpartners.com


The chain bears the names of those who have served as president and represents the authority and responsibility bestowed by the Board of Trustees. President-emeritus Andrew Westmoreland assisted with the investiture to represent continuity of the university's Christ-centered mission since 1841.

"The names of 18 presidents on this chain of office I now proudly wear, including the names of two Samford presidents I've known and loved, Drs. Corts and Westmoreland, don't just point to a line of presidential succession," Taylor said in his inaugural address. "No, they also give us confidence that from one season of leadership to the next, God has important plans to accomplish in and through all of us here at Samford."

Taylor, who most recently served as president of Whitworth University, a position he assumed in 2010, is no stranger to the Samford community. He served as dean and professor of economics for Samford's Brock School of Business from 2005-2010.

Ahead of the service, Taylor led a procession of delegates from more than 65 higher education institutions and associations, Samford's Board of Trustees, deans, members of the executive leadership team, faculty members, representatives of student organizations, administrative officers, and 112 flags representing the states, territories and countries that are home to Samford's 55,000 alumni.

Ephesians 3:16-19 was the theme of Taylor's inaugural address with a focus on being "rooted and grounded in love."

"I challenge us to make such love the cornerstone of all we do at Samford, to make love the foundation of any vision that we might cast together in the coming months and years," Taylor said. "Some might think it too abstract, or too emotional, or too self-evident to claim as the foundation of all we do at an academic institution, at a modern university. But, if our efforts aren't rooted and grounded in love, in the love of Christ, I contend that we will fail."

As a Christian university, Taylor explained how love is at the heart of Samford's mission of "For God, for learning, forever."

"It should be no surprise to us now that Christ's commandment to us is rooted and grounded in love  a commandment to love God with all of ourselves (heart, mind, body, soul, spirit) and to love others fiercely, devotedly, sacrificially, even as we love ourselves," Taylor said. "I'm not sure that the mission and vision of Samford could be articulated more succinctly or more inspirationally."

Looking ahead to the future, Taylor encouraged the Samford community to "complete the work that the Lord has given us while carrying the solemn duty to plant new seeds of hope, healing, justice, mercy and love" through our actions.

"We will be confident that the Good Lord will protect our humble offerings, nurturing those tiny seeds  those acts of love we will produce  until great timbers of goodness, and truth and beauty are established and graciously provide their welcome shade to future generations, and generations beyond those, until the Lord comes again," Taylor said. "May some future president and Samford congregation gathered on a day like today remember us fondly in posterity for being faithful in this next season of growth. May they remember us for our love."

A reception for delegates and honored guests was held after the ceremony.

Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The Wall Street Journal ranks Samford 1st nationally for student engagement and U.S. News & World Report ranks Samford 37th in the nation for best undergraduate teaching and 97th nationally for best value. Samford enrolls 5,758 students from 48 states and 22 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference, and ranks 1st nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.

SOURCE Samford University

Related Links

www.samford.edu


DALLAS, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Berkshire Biomedical Corporation ("Berkshire" or "the Company"), focused on developing drug delivery devices designed to accurately and precisely deliver oral liquid drugs only to the biometrically authenticated Intended User, provide remote monitoring and enhance patient wellness, announced today that John Timberlake, Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Biomedical, will showcase the Company and its Computerized Oral Prescription Administration (COPA) System as they participate in the LSX 6th Annual Investment Showcase Hybrid taking place from November 8-15, 2021, both in person from the Hilton Waldorf in London and virtually.

As part of its participation in the conference, Mr. Timberlake will deliver a corporate presentation that can be accessed via the internet here and on the Company's website at www.berkbiomed.com, where it will be archived in the News section.

"We are looking forward to participating in this Investor Showcase as it gives the Company an opportunity to introduce our proprietary COPA System, which was designed to provide an accurate and precise personalized medication delivery of oral liquid drugs to the authenticated Intended User. We look forward to discussing the variety of benefits COPA could provide to patients and healthcare providers among an audience of leading investors and potential strategic partners," said Mr. Timberlake.

"There is a growing need for better and secure ways to deliver important drugs to only those authenticated Intended Users, and we look forward to advancing the COPA System to address these growing unmet medical needs and enhance patient outcomes," added Mr. Timberlake.

For those attending the Showcase and who are interested in scheduling a one-on-one virtual meeting with Berkshire Biomedical management, please contact Anne Marie Fields at [email protected].

About the LSX 6th Annual Investment Showcase

The Investment Showcase is an international showcase of early, growth stage and public life science and health technology companies, Investment Showcase provides an unrivalled opportunity to pitch, profile and connect with investors and partners brought together during the biggest fortnight in European life sciences investment. The company showcases will highlight and promote the most exciting and innovative biotech, medtech, health technology and consumer health companies across Europe and beyond.

The Investment Showcase continues its exclusive partnership with global investment bank Jefferies, running the days before the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference.

About Berkshire Biomedical Corporation

Berkshire Biomedical Corporation is a privately held medical device company. Berkshire is developing drug delivery devices designed to accurately and precisely deliver oral liquid drugs by pioneering the use of biometric technologies, combined with cloud-based and physician-enabled remote management systems to provide accurate personalized medication delivery to the authenticated Intended User. The Company's lead product under development, the Computerized Oral Prescription Administration (COPATM) System, is an authenticated Intended User automated oral liquid dispensing system designed to deliver controlled and non-controlled liquid oral medications to only the Intended User upon confirmation of dual biometric identifications (fingerprint and dentition). Three overarching features combine to make the COPA technology unique: security, compliance support (metrics) with remote monitoring and precise liquid dispensing. Chronic pain and opioid addiction medication assisted therapy have been identified as potential indications with the greatest need for the benefits of these features.

The Company intends to initially seek opportunities to leverage COPA in the delivery and remote management of controlled liquid oral medications and to expand COPA use in broader medical markets, drug applications, and businesses that manage the commercialization and data analytics provided by the electronic devices to improve outcomes and reduce risk.

Additional information about Berkshire Biomedical and the COPA System can be found at www.berkbiomed.com.

CONTACT:

Berkshire Biomedical Corporation

[email protected]

Anne Marie Fields

Managing Director

Rx Communications Group, LLC

[email protected]

SOURCE Berkshire Biomedical, LLC
BOSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bookkeeping automation provider Botkeeper announced today it has raised $42 million in Series C financing. The round was led by Grand Oaks Capital, an investment firm founded by Paychex founder and chairman Tom Golisano. Golisano will take a seat on Botkeepr's six-member board of directors.

We remain hyper-focused on delivering solutions to the accounting profession to improve the client experience. Tweet this Enrico Palmerino, CEO and Founder of Botkeeper

Led by CEO and founder Enrico Palmerino, Botkeeper provides an automated bookkeeping solution to accounting firms, using a unique combination of technology and team members. The company intends to use the funds for the expansion of its platform, customer success teams, and strategic partnership initiatives.

"I couldn't be more thrilled to partner with and learn from someone as legendary as Tom. This partnership, the capital, and adding Tom to our board will help accelerate our growth and product strategy," said Palmerino. "We remain hyper-focused on delivering solutions to accountants and the industry as a whole that maximize capacity, increase accuracy, assist with retention, accelerate growth, and improve client experience."

Golisano has a serial track record of success in starting and investing in businesses that have achieved extraordinary outcomes. As the entrepreneur behind the company Paychex, Golisano's growth strategy focused on selling automated payroll, then later automated human resources and 401K offerings, many of which were offered to businesses directly through accounting firms.

"I'm excited to be part of the next phase of Botkeeper's growth. Enrico has built an incredibly disruptive company that has a tremendous amount of market potential," said Golisano.

Botkeeper allows accounting firms to increase productivity and capacity by experiencing better efficiencies, while supporting more clients, at a higher frequency with fewer resources. Repetitive and predictable tasks like transaction categorization and reconciliations have successfully been automated by Botkeeper's machine learning and software, while the complex and unpredictable tasks that require critical thinking, are augmented by skilled accountants. Botkeeper accounting partners typically experience 50 percent efficiency gains on average, allowing them to offer new services, scale their client base, or simply do more of what they love.

Since its launch in July 2015, Botkeeper has seen rapid growth, having expanded its services to approximately 200+ accounting firms and 5000+ small businesses throughout the United States. The Botkeeper Operating System (BOS) has drastically improved archaic accounting processes through machine learning, integrations, and software workflow optimization. Processing more than one million lines of transactions per month, the Botkeeper Operating System is currently responsible for saving firms millions of dollars annually and providing them with hundreds of thousands of incremental hours in billable capacity.

Today, the company is expanding on its accomplishments by taking the next step into its evolution, having built a reliable, innovative business foundation, while leaning into future growth. With this recent funding round, the team will be doubling down on its automation and platform roadmap while continuing to collaborate with industry leaders to help firms of all sizes support their clients and communities, and of course, providing a world class experience.

About Botkeeper

Botkeeper is a leading automated bookkeeping solution that provides accounting firms and their clients a powerful combination of skilled accountants, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The various packages provide full-suite bookkeeping & pre-accounting solutions, a consolidated platform consisting of tools to optimize firm processes, and the highest quality support, all designed to meet our clients' unique needs at any stage of growth. Accounting firms running on Botkeeper are able to grow their book of business, diversify their service offerings, increase capacity, and reduce stress during tax timeall while improving their overhead costs. The powerful and easy-to-use solution has helped firms across the United States to maximize their potential, better serve their clients, and do more of what they love. Learn more about Botkeeper here !

Contact:

Della Copp

[email protected]

179 South St., Fl 2

Boston, MA

(800) 388-3323 x7108

SOURCE Botkeeper

Related Links

botkeeper.com


Cantourage has signed a supply agreement with MHI Cultivo Medicinal, the Portuguese subsidiary of international pharmaceutical company MediCane Health Inc. MHI Cultivo Medicinal grows the flowers in its Alto Alentejo-based greenhouses.

Cantourage will use its fast track access platform to provide Relecan to pharmacies in Germany. The partnership reflects a convergence of two respective leaders in cultivation and manufacturing that will benefit patients. Of particular note is Cantourage's unique process to reduce the microbiological load of the product which avoids the ionizing radiation used by most other cannabis companies and which is a perfect fit with MediCane's technological leadership in cultivation.

Relecan flowers are grown by MHI Cultivo Medicinal's specialist agronomists, who have drawn on the cannabis cultivation techniques developed over more than a decade by MediCane's experts in Israel. The country has a long track record of medical cannabis expertise, with Israeli scientists having conducted research into the medical applications of cannabis for more than five decades. The new Relecan product is particularly high quality and distinctive for three reasons.

Climate conditions in Portugal are considered the most favourable in Europe for medical cannabis in terms of temperature and humidity levels throughout all four seasons.

are considered the most favourable in for medical cannabis in terms of temperature and humidity levels throughout all four seasons. The flowers are protected during cultivation using Canna-Wave, a radio frequency technology that was integrated into the cannabis pest management practice (IPM). Canna-Wave innovative technology eliminates the use of pesticides and its resulting contaminants, as commonly applied by other cultivators in Europe , while ensuring that the key characteristics of the plant remain pure.

, while ensuring that the key characteristics of the plant remain pure. Cantourage treats the product with its unique microbiological reduction process, which allows the reduction of microbiological load without the use of irradiation, enhancing the product quality without the need for additional regulatory steps. This accelerates the production and delivery timeline further.

Philip Schetter, Co-CEO of Cantourage, said: "Our new partnership with MHI Cultivo Medicinal and the launch of Relecan in Germany represent a significant milestone for the advancement of medical cannabis in Europe. The record imports of dried flower products into Germany last year show the real demand for this segment. Cantourage is excited to be meeting this growing need with such a high-quality product and in partnership with such a technologically innovative and environmentally-conscious cultivator."

Vera Broder, CEO of MHI Cultivo Medicinal, said: "German patients deserve affordable high-quality European grown, environmentally sustainable medical cannabis, and we are pleased to introduce our products to German pharmacies today together with Cantourage."

Cantourage's agreement with MHI Cultivo Medicinal sees the company joining the Cantourage fast track access platform. The platform was launched in June 2021 to enable medical cannabis cultivators worldwide to enter those markets swiftly and compliantly. Cantourage has signed contracts with 15 companies worldwide. MHI Cultivo Medicinal is the third partner to successfully launch its products, which are available in German pharmacies as of today.

MHI Cultivo Medicinal has been operating since 2019 and was designated a "Project of National Interest" (PIN), by the Portuguese government in March 2021 in recognition of its key role in supplying medical cannabis products to patients in Europe.

About Cantourage

Cantourage is a leading European medical cannabis company. The Berlin-based company was founded in 2019 by industry pioneers Dr Florian Holzapfel, Norman Ruchholtz and Patrick Hoffman. Cantourage enables producers from across the world to bring their product into the growing and profitable European market more quickly and cheaply, while guaranteeing and further developing highest European quality standards. It offers products in all relevant market segments: dried flowers, extracts and Dronabinol.

About MHI Cultivo Medicinal

MHI Cultivo Medicinal operates one of the most technologically advanced medical cannabis cultivation facilities in Europe. It is located in the sunny Alto Alentejo region on the Portuguese-Spanish border, combining ideal cannabis growing climate with innovative agronomy. The company is recognized as a Portuguese Project of National Interest by the government due to its contributions to medical cannabis patients.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1679026/Cantourage_Medicane_flag.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1679024/MediCane_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Cantourage
CHICAGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe: CBOE), a leading provider of global market infrastructure and tradable products, today announced plans to introduce a new dealer-to-dealer electronic trading platform for On-The-Run U.S. Treasuries. The platform ("Cboe Fixed Income") will be Cboe's first cash U.S. Fixed Income product offering, further diversifying and expanding its products, services and technology offerings into new markets and geographies around the world. Cboe Fixed Income is planned for launch in the second quarter of 2022, subject to regulatory approvals.

The new trading platform is designed to better enable dealers in U.S. Treasuries to efficiently source liquidity and trade in size, while reducing market impact. This new platform will leverage the expertise and proven track record of Cboe FX, a global leader in electronic trading for 20 years with a reputation for world-class technology, cutting-edge liquidity solutions, product innovation and trading reliability and efficiency.

"We are excited to bring the best of what we do in the global FX market to the U.S. Treasuries space," said Jonathan Weinberg, Senior Vice President and Head of FX and U.S. Treasuries at Cboe Global Markets. "Cboe Fixed Income is designed to address some of the biggest challenges that dealers face today, including flow segmentation, information leakage and high hedging costs. We believe the new trading platform will provide a unique solution that enables liquidity providers to interact directly with high-quality order flow, reduce market impact and receive opportunities for price improvement."

Cboe Fixed Income will bring Cboe's Full Amount technology  which enables large order risk transfer with low impact  together with its liquidity curation and analytics capabilities to further enhance trading in U.S. Treasuries. The powerful combination of these capabilities is expected to create a high-value offering that differs from other interdealer trading models in the marketplace.

Through the Full Amount matching protocol, liquidity consumers will be able to transact against the best quote from a single liquidity provider, while satisfying the full amount of the order to help minimize information leakage and slippage. Trades also will print in single executions, reducing ticket costs.

In addition, Cboe Fixed Income will provide customized liquidity curation services to help participants effectively manage liquidity segmentation. Cboe expects to actively engage with customers to analyze flows, provide valuable insights to make better-informed trading decisions, and continuously optimize the trading experience for liquidity consumers and providers.

"With our footprint covering the world's largest and most liquid marketplaces, we are excited to enter the U.S. Treasuries market and further broaden Cboe's market operations on a global scale," said Ed Tilly, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cboe Global Markets. "Fixed Income represents an untapped market for Cboe with many exciting product possibilities, and we look forward to extending our innovative technology and trading solutions to this asset class to serve an even broader base of market participants."

Cboe Fixed Income is in the process of registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a government securities broker-dealer and becoming a member firm of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Participants can code to the Cboe Fixed Income technology specifications, and access to the platform is also expected to be made available through key vendors in the marketplace. For additional information, please contact [email protected].

About Cboe Global Markets, Inc.

Cboe Global Markets (Cboe: CBOE), a leading provider of market infrastructure and tradable products, delivers cutting-edge trading, clearing and investment solutions to market participants around the world. The company is committed to operating a trusted, inclusive global marketplace, providing leading products, technology and data solutions that enable participants to define a sustainable financial future. Cboe provides trading solutions and products in multiple asset classes, including equities, derivatives and FX, across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. To learn more, visit www.cboe.com.

Cboe, VIX and Cboe Volatility Index are registered trademarks and Cboe Global MarketsSM is a service mark of Cboe Exchange, Inc.

Cboe Global Markets, Inc. and its affiliates do not recommend or make any representation as to possible benefits from any securities, futures or investments, or third-party products or services. Investors should undertake their own due diligence regarding their securities, futures, and investment practices. This press release speaks only as of this date. Cboe Global Markets, Inc. disclaims any duty to update the information herein.

Nothing in this announcement should be considered a solicitation to buy or an offer to sell any securities or futures in any jurisdiction where the offer or solicitation would be unlawful under the laws of such jurisdiction. Nothing contained in this communication constitutes tax, legal or investment advice. Investors must consult their tax adviser or legal counsel for advice and information concerning their particular situation.

Cboe Global Markets, Inc. and its affiliates make no warranty, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties as of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness or timeliness, the results to be obtained by recipients of the products and services described herein.

Futures trading is not suitable for all investors and involves the risk of loss. That risk of loss can be substantial and can exceed the amount of money deposited for a futures position. You should, therefore, carefully consider whether futures trading is suitable for you in light of your circumstances and financial resources. You should put at risk only funds that you can afford to lose without affecting your lifestyle. For additional information regarding futures trading risks, see the Risk Disclosure Statement set forth in Appendix A to CFTC Regulation 1.55(c) and the Risk Disclosure Statement for Security Futures Contracts.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. You can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as "may," "might," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential" or "continue," and the negative of these terms and other comparable terminology. All statements that reflect our expectations, assumptions or projections about the future other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us, may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

We operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible to predict all risks and uncertainties, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements.

Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the impact of the novel coronavirus ("COVID-19") pandemic, including changes to trading behavior broadly in the market; the loss of our right to exclusively list and trade certain index options and futures products; economic, political and market conditions; compliance with legal and regulatory obligations; price competition and consolidation in our industry; decreases in trading or clearing volumes, market data fees or a shift in the mix of products traded on our exchanges; legislative or regulatory changes or changes in tax regimes; our ability to protect our systems and communication networks from security risks, cybersecurity risks, insider threats and unauthorized disclosure of confidential information; increasing competition by foreign and domestic entities; our dependence on and exposure to risk from third parties; fluctuations to currency exchange rates; factors that impact the quality and integrity of our indices; our ability to operate our business without violating the intellectual property rights of others and the costs associated with protecting our intellectual property rights; our ability to attract and retain skilled management and other personnel; our ability to minimize the risks, including our credit and default risks, associated with operating a European clearinghouse; our ability to accommodate trading and clearing volume and transaction traffic, including significant increases, without failure or degradation of performance of our systems; misconduct by those who use our markets or our products or for whom we clear transactions; challenges to our use of open source software code; our ability to meet our compliance obligations, including managing potential conflicts between our regulatory responsibilities and our for-profit status; our ability to maintain BIDS Trading as an independently managed and operated trading venue, separate from and not integrated with our registered national securities exchanges; damage to our reputation; the ability of our compliance and risk management methods to effectively monitor and manage our risks; our ability to manage our growth and strategic acquisitions or alliances effectively; restrictions imposed by our debt obligations and our ability to make payments on or refinance our debt obligations; our ability to maintain an investment grade credit rating; impairment of our goodwill, long-lived assets, investments or intangible assets; and the accuracy of our estimates and expectations. More detailed information about factors that may affect our actual results to differ may be found in our filings with the SEC, including in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and other filings made from time to time with the SEC.

We do not undertake, and we expressly disclaim, any duty to update any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

SOURCE Cboe Global Markets, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cboe.com


NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) today announced it has set science-based targets with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reduce absolute Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030 from a 2019 base year. The approved targets have been classified by SBTi as being in line with a long-term global temperature increasing trajectory of 1.5C. Cross-functional stakeholders and third-party experts are actively developing the path forward for achieving and monitoring the company's science-based targets.

Chipotle sets science-based targets to reduce absolute Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030

"We are passionate about Cultivating a Better World and as a company with nearly 3,000 restaurants and approximately 95,000 employees, we have a responsibility to drive meaningful change," said Laurie Schalow, Chief Corporate Affairs & Food Safety Officer. "We are committed to continuous improvement and will actively do our part to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and protect the planet."

To achieve these targets, Chipotle identified the four most carbon intensive functions of its business to reduce emissions:

Restaurants: With a long-term goal of having 6,000 restaurants in North America , the brand is continuing to identify more sustainable design and development. An ongoing pilot program explores scalable construction diversion to reclaim and recycle building materials for use in future remodels and buildouts. Chipotle also aims to reduce emissions through smart Energy Management Systems (EMS) at its restaurants and partner with like-minded tenants to find efficiencies. The brand is also exploring purchasing renewable energy and integrating more efficient restaurant equipment.

With a long-term goal of having 6,000 restaurants in , the brand is continuing to identify more sustainable design and development. An ongoing pilot program explores scalable construction diversion to reclaim and recycle building materials for use in future remodels and buildouts. Chipotle also aims to reduce emissions through smart Energy Management Systems (EMS) at its restaurants and partner with like-minded tenants to find efficiencies. The brand is also exploring purchasing renewable energy and integrating more efficient restaurant equipment. Transportation and Warehousing: Chipotle will leverage partners and innovation to reduce emissions associated with the transportation and warehousing of its ingredients and products. Additionally, with Chipotle's digital business increasing, the company will identify emissions reduction strategies for third-party and white label delivery.

Chipotle will leverage partners and innovation to reduce emissions associated with the transportation and warehousing of its ingredients and products. Additionally, with Chipotle's digital business increasing, the company will identify emissions reduction strategies for third-party and white label delivery. Food Supply Chain: In pursuit of its Food with Integrity ethos, Chipotle will explore protein and animal management solutions and promote carbon-reducing practices for produce and other products within the supply chain.

In pursuit of its Food with Integrity ethos, Chipotle will explore protein and animal management solutions and promote carbon-reducing practices for produce and other products within the supply chain. Waste and Packaging: The brand will pursue closed-loop packaging solutions and leverage new market innovations to reduce its end-of-life impact. To further optimize responsible waste management, Chipotle is utilizing data to reduce overall waste, increase landfill diversion programs, and enhance food waste solutions.

ESG Goals

Earlier this year, Chipotle announced a new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metric that ties a portion of annual incentive executive compensation to ESG goals. The objectives, which are categorized by Food & Animals, People, and the Environment, will hold Chipotle's executive leadership team responsible to make business decisions that Cultivate a Better World. Sharing Chipotle's Scope 3 emissions fulfills one of the brand's goals, which was originally announced for 2025 and later accelerated to 2021. Today, the company announced its 2019 Scope 3 GHG emissions were 1,419,298 MT CO2e.

Real Foodprint

In 2020, Chipotle partnered with HowGood, an industry-leading agency with the world's largest sustainability database to further its transparency efforts and better understand the carbon footprint associated with its menu items. Chipotle launched Real Foodprint on the Chipotle app and Chipotle.com, which compares average values for each of its real ingredients to their conventional counterparts against five key metrics: Less Carbon in the Atmosphere, Gallons of Water Saver, Improved Soil Health, Organic Land Supported, and Antibiotics Avoided. The brand later introduced a cumulative extension of its Real Foodprint feature that allows guests to view the cumulative potential impact of all their Chipotle orders, as compared to orders using conventional ingredients, in one comprehensive dashboard on the Chipotle app and Chipotle.com.

ABOUT CHIPOTLE

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE: CMG) is Cultivating a Better World by serving responsibly sourced, classically-cooked, real food with wholesome ingredients without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Chipotle had nearly 2,900 restaurants as of September 30, 2021, in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany and is the only restaurant company of its size that owns and operates all its restaurants. Chipotle is ranked on the Fortune 500 and is recognized on the 2021 lists for Forbes' America's Best Employers and Fortune's Most Admired Companies. With nearly 95,000 employees passionate about providing a great guest experience, Chipotle is a longtime leader and innovator in the food industry. Chipotle is committed to making its food more accessible to everyone while continuing to be a brand with a demonstrated purpose as it leads the way in digital, technology and sustainable business practices. For more information or to place an order online, visit WWW.CHIPOTLE.COM .

SOURCE Chipotle Mexican Grill

Related Links

www.chipotle.com


AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Citizens, Inc. (NYSE: CIA) today announced Q3 2021 financial results showing ($0.06) loss per share, a $0.10 improvement over the prior year. The increase is boosted by lower operating expenses due to the Change-in-Control expenses in 2020 and higher realized gains this year, partially offset by higher hurricane losses and adverse mortality during the third quarter due partly to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

Gerald W. Shields, Vice-Chairman of the Board and interim CEO, said, "Our Life Insurance segment produced strong first year premiums during the third quarter. Underlying performance was driven by a continued focus on sales with over 1000 new policies totaling $64 million insurance issued."

Mr. Shields went on to say, "While both first year and renewal premiums in our Home Service segment increased, there is still work to do to transform the business. Premium revenue was negatively affected by Hurricane Ida, and expenses were negatively affected by higher death claims due to the COVID-19 Delta variant. Our growth strategy remains focused on the introduction of new products and processes--all core to our value proposition."

Financial Condition on September 30, 2021

Total Investments of $1.6 billion ; comprised of 91.4% fixed maturity securities

of ; comprised of 91.4% fixed maturity securities Total Assets of $1.8 billion

of Total Stockholders' Equity of $0.3 billion

of $4.6 billion of direct insurance in force

of No Debt

Q3 Highlights (versus Q3 2020)

Net loss per share of Class A common stock of $0.06 ; $0.10 improvement per share vs. the prior year

per share of Class A common stock of ; improvement per share vs. the prior year Revenue up 3% on higher realized gains

up 3% on higher realized gains Claims and surrenders down 3% on improved surrenders in Life Insurance segment

down 3% on improved surrenders in Life Insurance segment General expenses down 46% on lower Change-in-Control expenses

Net loss of ($0.06) per Class A earnings share improved by $0.10 versus last year, mainly on lower general expenses due to executive severance costs and professional fees paid in 2020 in connection with a change in control of the Company. Higher realized gains related to our limited partnership investments in 2021 were negatively offset by higher death claims due to COVID-19 and the impact of Hurricane Ida on premiums and claims in the current year.

Revenue increased by 3% over the prior year, primarily driven by realized gains, reflecting changes in the fair value in the limited partnership portfolio, as well as a property sale gain.

Life insurance premiums increased due to increases in first year premiums in both segments and renewal premiums in the Home Service Insurance segment. However, total premium revenue decreased by 2% on a decline in property insurance premiums related to purchasing additional catastrophic reinsurance due to Hurricane Ida.

In the Life Insurance segment, third-quarter sales were strong as new targeted campaigns and lower sales in the prior year due to COVID-19 impacts contributed to a 19% increase in policies issued over the prior year. Premium revenue was slightly below last year as a 36% increase in first year premiums largely offset the 3% decrease in renewal premiums mainly due to a decline in the in force business due to an aging block of business and changes made to distribution. Prior-year surrenders negatively impacted renewal premiums even though total surrender benefits paid declined in the current period.

In the Home Service Insurance segment, total premium revenue decreased by 6% compared to the prior year despite increases in both first year and renewal life insurance premiums, primarily due to additional catastrophic reinsurance premiums paid as a result of Hurricane Ida. Hurricane Ida negatively impacted sales efforts for the quarter and, in addition, the COVID-19 Delta variant has largely affected the southeastern part of the country, where this segment has a heavy concentration of business. Despite these challenges, this segment had a 16% increase in first year premiums due to sales campaigns that focused on increasing the face amount of insurance sold and introducing a new product with a higher maximum face value. The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted sales during the 2020 period, while strong collection efforts supported renewal premiums during the quarter.

Claims and surrenders benefits decreased by 3% versus the prior year on improvement in surrender benefits offset by an increase in death claim benefits.

In the Life Insurance segment, claims and surrenders were down by 10% versus the prior year on decreased surrenders offset to a degree by higher death claims. This segment experienced an 88% increase in death claims, including COVID-19 claims, and a 23% decrease in surrenders. As previously disclosed, surrender benefits have been higher than usual in the last several years as many policies have reached the age where surrender charges have expired. However, policy surrenders decreased in the third quarter as new programs were instituted to curb surrenders.

In the Home Service Insurance segment, claims and surrenders increased by 17%, on an 83% increase in property claims due to Hurricane Ida and a 10% increase in death claim benefits during the third quarter compared to the prior year. The COVID-19 Delta variant significantly impacted key markets within this segment.

General expenses were down 46% from the prior year driven by severance and legal costs relating to a Change-in-Control during the third quarter of 2020. In addition, employee benefits are down as the Home Services segment transitioned to independent agents in 2020.

Selected Consolidated Financial Data

For the periods ended as of Q3 2021 Q3 2020 YTD

09/30/21 YTD

09/30/20 (In thousands except share data)







Balance sheet data







Total assets $ 1,831,498 1,844,338 $ 1,831,498 1,844,338 Total liabilities 1,566,467 1,547,584 1,566,467 1,547,584 Total stockholders' equity 265,031 296,754 265,031 296,754 Life insurance in force $ 4,168,925 4,138,914 4,168,925 4,138,914 Operating items







Insurance premiums $ 43,327 44,108 $ 125,185 126,921 Net investment income 15,454 14,997 46,018 45,081 Realized investment gains 2,126 527 7,277 669 Total revenues 61,584 59,825 180,625 173,888 Claims and surrenders 31,816 32,958 91,701 87,161 Other general expenses 10,542 19,391 33,427 42,003 Total benefits and expenses 64,311 67,996 180,500 183,856 Net income (loss) before federal income taxes (2,727) (8,171) 125 (9,968) Net loss (2,799) (7,915) (1,350) (12,526) Per share data







Book value per share $ 5.34 5.87 $ 5.34 5.87 Basic and diluted loss per Class A share (0.06) (0.16) (0.03) (0.25)

Segment Operations

The Company is comprised of two operating business segments and other non-insurance enterprises as detailed below. The insurance operations are the Company's primary focus and are the lead income generators of the business.

Life Insurance

The Life Insurance segment primarily issues U.S. dollar-denominated ordinary whole life insurance and endowment policies predominantly sold to non-U.S. residents located principally in Latin America and the Pacific Rim. These products are sold through independent marketing consultants. A new whole life product was introduced in Florida in 2021.

Home Service Insurance

The Home Service Insurance segment provides final expense life insurance and limited liability property insurance policies marketed to middle- and lower-income households, and whole life products with higher allowable face values in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. These products are sold through independent agents and funeral homes.

Other Non-Insurance Enterprises

Other Non-Insurance Enterprises primarily include the Company's IT and Corporate support functions. Their data is included in the segment data table to properly reconcile the segment information with the consolidated financial statements of the Company.

Selected Segment Financial Data

For the periods ended as of Q3 2021 Q3 2020 YTD

09/30/21 YTD

09/30/20 (In thousands except share data)

















LIFE SEGMENT







Total assets $ 1,379,666 $ 1,349,923 $ 1,379,666 $ 1,349,923









Operating items







Insurance premiums $ 32,198 $ 32,265 $ 89,399 $ 92,146 Net investment income 11,991 11,507 35,468 34,332 Realized investment gains 1,205 133 5,741 1,259 Total revenues 46,070 44,094 132,750 128,932 Claims and surrenders 22,565 25,023 69,366 66,071 Other general expenses 4,900 1,915 15,273 11,309 Total benefits and expenses 44,384 38,586 124,043 119,219 Net income (loss) before federal income taxes 1,686 5,508 8,707 9,713









HOME SERVICE SEGMENT







Total assets $ 399,183 $ 416,271 $ 399,183 $ 416,271









Operating items







Insurance premiums $ 11,129 $ 11,843 $ 35,786 $ 34,775 Net investment income 3,238 3,200 9,826 9,788 Realized investment gains (losses) (36) 388 393 (405) Total revenues 14,332 15,432 46,008 44,177 Claims and surrenders 9,251 7,935 22,335 21,090 Other general expenses 4,146 4,524 12,024 13,431 Total benefits and expenses 18,431 16,458 50,327 47,374 Net income (loss) before federal income taxes (4,099) (1,026) (4,319) (3,197)









OTHER NON-INS ENTERPRISES







Balance sheet data







Total assets $ 52,649 $ 78,144 $ 52,649 $ 78,144









Operating items







Net investment income 225 290 724 961 Realized investment gains (losses) 957 6 1,143 (185) Total revenues 1,182 299 1,867 779 Claims and surrenders - - - - Other general expenses 1,496 12,952 6,130 17,263 Total benefits and expenses 1,496 12,952 6,130 17,263 Net income (loss) before federal income taxes (314) (12,653) (4,263) (16,484)

About Citizens, Inc.

Citizens, Inc. is a financial services company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CIA. The Company utilizes a three-pronged strategy for growth based upon worldwide sales of U.S. dollar-denominated whole life cash value insurance policies, life insurance product sales in the U.S. and final expense and limited liability property product sales in the U.S.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which can be identified by words such as "may," "will," "expect," "anticipate", "believe", "project" "intends," "continue" or comparable words. Such forward-looking statements may relate to the Company's expectations regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, business performance, operational strategy, capital expenditures, technological changes, regulatory actions, and other financial and operational measures. In addition, all statements other than statements of historical facts that address activities that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those matters expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. The risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are involved in our forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to the risk factors discussed in our most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. The Company undertakes no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of new information, future events or changes in the Company's expectations. Accordingly, you should not unduly rely on these forward-looking statements. The Company also disclaims any duty to comment upon or correct information that may be contained in reports published by the investment community.

For further information CONTACT:

Investor Relations [email protected]

SOURCE Citizens, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.citizensinc.com


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather & Littky-Rubin is proud to announce that it has been named "Best Law Firm" in U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms," for the 11th consecutive year.

The U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" rankings are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading attorneys confidentially evaluate their professional peers. To be eligible for a ranking, a law firm must have at least one lawyer listed in The Best Lawyers in America  a recognition the Clark Fountain team has received for 22 consecutive years and in which all nine of its attorneys are included on the list.

Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather & Littky-Rubin has been ranked in the following practice areas in the 2022 Edition of U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms."

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs - Tier 1

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs - Tier 1

Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs - Tier 1

To be included in the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession speaks to the firm's commitment to client satisfaction and the constant pursuit of excellence. The recognition is just one example of the hard work and dedication the firm provides for every client.

About Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather & Littky-Rubin

The attorneys at Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather & Littky-Rubin, a West Palm Beach personal injury law firm, have been representing injured clients in Florida and throughout the United States for three decades. The firm represents clients in all areas of personal injury litigation, including automobile and trucking accidents, products liability, wrongful death, and medical malpractice. Clark Fountain attorneys have secured more than one billion dollars for their injured clients.

Medic Contact:

Celia Quitugua

Marketing Director

Phone: 561-899-2144

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather & Littky-Rubin
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Connect, by Stars On Board Technologies, announced exciting news to the public today. The company launched its official app in Turkey on the 28th of August 2021. This event attracted many celebrities and influencers from the Arabic world. The event was held in one of the luxuries resorts in the city of Antalya, Turkey. For three days and four nights both audience and celebrities with fun beach activities by the day and concerts by the nights to celebrate the release of the app.

Get Connected with Celebrities

Connect is already getting the support of large community of celebrities who are endorsing and promoting "Connect App," among them is the Bollywood legendary Sanjay Dutt, and a group of A-List celebrities like: Najwa Karam, Nancy Ajram, Ragheb Alame, and Kosai Khauli. But also, the app is popular among talents and influencers from various countries.

Connect App is an on-Demand social monetization platform company based in Los Angeles, California. It's an app to enable users and fans to connect, engage and communicate with the world's best talents and celebrities of all kinds. Connect; it's an opportunity with endless earnings for everyone on the platform.

"Our company enjoys strong board of advisors and commitments from celebrities and influencers in Hollywood, Bollywood and Middle East," said Ray Fares, Founder and CEO.

Currently the company is raising funds via equity regulated crowdfunding platform StartEngine in the US. Connect App currently valued at $33M and started the regulated crowdfunding this month. To invest; please visit: https://www.startengine.com/stars-on-board.

"Connect is a US technology startup, with a promising business model and interesting niche market growing rapidly with high margins. Connect App is a new era in engagement between Brands, Celebrities and the Community. Everyone on Connect wins, promotors reach strong and real engagements with the community due to the rewards concept. Brands can easily reach out to celebrities and influencers using promotions capabilities and users and fans for the first time get rewarded for being on Connect and Connected with Brands and Celebrities," said Youssef Harb, Co-founder and President.

Users and fans can use Connect App to watch live events exclusively hosted on the platform, earn rewards for connecting with brands and at same time get in personal engagement with celebrities from all over the world. One of the key features of Connect, is content subscriptions, which enable users and fans to get exclusive view of never-seen before contents hosted by large community of celebrities and influencers available only on Connect. This is a great opportunity to watch, learn and engage with your favorite content creators. But that's not all, we do have the best plastic surgeons so in case you have questions you can still contact the best for an advice.

Influencers and talents are encouraged to download the app via https://qrco.de/bcT01a to start earning and building communities. We welcome all kinds of influencers to engage and get connected with their vast social presence anytime, anywhere and start earning using the OnDemand services.

Contact: Maya Perez, Office, +1 (310) 975-7133, [email protected]

Twitter @starsonboardapp, Instagram @connect.starsonboard

SOURCE Stars On Board
PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Under the guidance of Tyfone, a leading provider of consumer and commercial digital banking services for community financial institutions, Credit Union of Colorado ($2.2 billion in assets; 147,000 members) has integrated Tyfone's nFinia omnichannel digital banking platform with Zendesk, Inc.'s customer service platform.

Tyfone and Zendesk's existing relationship allows the integration between Tyfone's nFinia and Zendesk at the institutional level, to further enhance the customer experience. However, once Credit Union of Colorado recognized the full potential of Zendesk with customers, it began deploying the solution internally across the enterprise.

"We had a series of different systems that didn't integrate," said Mitch Rosenbaum, Credit Union of Colorado's Vice President of Marketing and eCommerce. "That all changed with Zendesk."

Now, the Credit Union has a centralized ticketing system for all member communications and can get a holistic view of all the interactions every agent has with membersincreasing both agent and member satisfaction.

"Members are now getting all of their emails from one address, with the same look," Rosenbaum said. "All messages are displayed in the same secure center within all digital banking channels, which has had a huge impact on customer satisfaction."

A complete case study on Credit Union of Colorado's success with nFinia and Zendesk is available here .

About Tyfone Inc.

Based in Portland, Ore, Tyfone is a leading provider of consumer and commercial digital banking services for community financial institutions throughout the United States. The company understands that an elegant, engaging, intuitive user experience is the minimum requirement for any digital banking provider. What differentiates Tyfone is its unwavering commitment to exceptional collaboration and communication. The company considers each customer a true partner and places the highest value on every relationship. Additional information is available at www.tyfone.com .

Contact: John San Filippo

Phone: (619) 467-0431

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Tyfone Inc.
PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CTL is excited to announce that Loren Hrabak has been promoted to the role of National Sales Manager. As National Sales Manager, Loren will directly manage CTL's Account Development, Account Management, and Online Customer Success teams across the United States as CTL continues to grow its Chrome device market share in education and enterprise markets. Hrabak previously served as the Sales Manager of CTL's Digital Sales Team whose efforts contributed to over 700% year over year growth in the company's online sales. Prior to joining CTL, Hrabak held Senior Account Executive positions at Staples Technology Solutions, Linbit, and Antec where he worked with government and education organizations to deploy technology solutions. Hrabak holds a BA from California State University - Fullerton and an MBA from George Fox University.

Loren Hrabak

Mike Mahanay, CTL's Chief Revenue Officer, said, "We are thrilled for Loren to take on his new role as National Sales Manager. In his previous positions at CTL, Loren has done an outstanding job of driving revenue growth and is an excellent example of what a leader should look like. We have high confidence that Loren will excel in his new nationally focused role, and will help CTL to achieve our ambitious growth goals."

About CTL

CTL has been manufacturing best-in-class Chromebooks, Laptops, Desktop PCs, Computer Displays, Workstations, and High-End Servers since 1989. CTL's rugged Chromebooks for Education, Chromebox, and Chromebook Tablets have received widespread recognition from noted tech publications such as PC Magazine, ChromeUnboxed.com, Android Police, Android Central, CNET, and Laptop Magazine. CTL's headquarters, sales, and support teams are located in the United States. CTL is a Google for Education Premier Partner, and an Intel Technology Program Platinum Partner. For more information about CTL and to purchase CTL products, visit us at ctl.net .

Contact: Mike Mahanay

Email: [email protected]

Number: 800-642-3087

SOURCE CTL
DALLAS, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The publishers of U.S. News & World Report and The Best Lawyers in America have selected Perry Law P.C. for the annual Best Law Firms listing. An honor the firm has achieved since 2020.

Perry Law earned top honors for its work in insurance litigation in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, along with additional recognition for the firm's expertise in insurance law.

Extensive client and attorney evaluations contribute to the Best Law Firms selection process as well as peer review and independent editorial analysis. For the full 2022 Best Law Firms list, visit https://bestlawfirms.usnews.com.

Best Law Firms eligibility requires that at least one attorney is recognized individually in the current Best Lawyers in America guide. Firm founder Meloney Perry earned that recognition earlier this year for her work in insurance law and insurance litigation. Best Lawyers is the oldest peer-review lawyer guide in the U.S. and one of the most respected.

Ms. Perry was also honored by this year's Texas Super Lawyers listing for her work in insurance coverage.

With more than 30 years of experience, Ms. Perry is well-known in the legal industry as a top-rated insurance coverage attorney who defends insurance companies and business owners in coverage disputes, bad faith and class-action litigation in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. She also serves as primary counsel for a national insurance firm.

An active member of the legal community, Ms. Perry is a member of the State Bar of Texas Insurance Law Section with previous leadership roles in the State Bar of Texas Council of Chairs Committee. She conducts seminars that focus on insurance law and coverage issues and is also an advocate on women's issues.

Perry Law P.C. is certified by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council as a woman-owned law firm focused on insurance coverage and litigation. Our group of attorneys invests in lasting relationships, takes time to understand your business, and makes you the priority. For more information, please visit our website, http://www.mperrylaw.com.

Media Contact:

Sophia Reza

800-559-4534

[email protected]

SOURCE Perry Law P.C.

Related Links

https://mperrylaw.com


Dalriada has worked with Dunad since its inception to support the development of its novel small molecule protein degradation modality

TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Dalriada is pleased to congratulate Dunad Therapeutics on its strategic collaboration and license agreement with Novartis potentially worth $1.35 billion, to generate orally bioavailable covalent and protein degrading small molecule drugs. This leading-edge technology has the potential to deliver next-generation therapeutics with advantages over traditional drugs against a wide range of diseases by unlocking access to disease-causing and often undruggable targets.

Since its inception Dunad's R&D has been supported by Dalriada, a contract research organization to enable the development of their novel therapeutic modality that uses mono-valent small molecules to induce selective degradation of proteins via direct modification of the target.

"We are very pleased to see the impact and application of Dunad's technology amplified through the collaboration with Novartis," says Dr. Charlie Younger, Chief Operating Officer, Dalriada. "It takes an agile and innovative team to advance a novel therapeutic modality. We've had the privilege of supporting Dunad to rapidly scale and further validate their platform technology, and to continue supporting the quick advancement of their pipeline."

Dunad's unique platform offers a target-class agnostic mechanism of action that is clearly differentiated from other targeted protein degradation technologies. As part of their Turn-keyTM model, Dalriada has been providing integrated drug discovery support for Dunad across medicinal chemistry, biophysics, cell and molecular biology and proteomics.

"Dalriada has provided the perfect model to support a rapidly growing company like Dunad. To scale up at the pace we have, proactive communication and quick turn-around times from resource deployment to the design-make-test-analyse cycles are critical," says Dr. Graham Simpson, Senior Vice President Drug Discovery, Dunad. "Dalriada has consistently invested in the science and focused on meeting our objectives. Their team has become a most trusted partner for Dunad."

"We consider the unique science and needs of each of our partners to create a highly tailored approach that includes everything from custom assays to full program design," says Jeff O'Meara, Vice President Drug Discovery, Dalriada. "It's great to see that our team's focus on the fastest possible turn-around times in the design-make-test-analyse cycle is achieving significant outcomes for our clients."

"Drug discovery and the biotech industry are in a very exciting, disruptive period. As we shift towards novel therapeutic modalities, we are paving the way to better treat complex diseases and modulate previously inaccessible targets," adds Younger. "Unchartered territory requires a new way of thinking that isn't one size fits all. Dalriada understands that to break new ground in the evolving drug discovery space, biotech companies need tailored, comprehensive support right from the start to most rapidly and effectively advance their technologies and pipelines."

Dalriada is not a traditional CRO:

Dalriada is a leading Canadian contract research organization specialized in small molecule therapies. Purposely built as an agile, co-located and uniquely integrated drug discovery partner, Dalriada accelerates the discovery and development journey of high value new small molecule therapeutics from concept to IND. Our partners have access to and support from a team of more than 60 drug discovery scientists (>70% PhD) specialized across all aspects of medicinal & computational chemistry, cell & molecular biology, biophysics & biochemistry, ADME and proteomics. Our unique Turn-KeyTM operational model offers the global biotechnology industry a full suite of drug discovery, preclinical development, intellectual property, and business expertise to manage and execute tailored R&D programs. To date Dalriada has supported integrated programs of public and venture capital-backed companies, including Antibe, Janpix, Canopy Growth and Dunad Therapeutics. Learn more: www.dalriadatx.com

SOURCE Dalriada Drug Discovery
DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DaVita Clinical Research (DCR) will present eight research abstracts from company representatives and medical professionals during the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Kidney Week occurring Nov. 47, 2021.

ASN Kidney Week 2021 will convene more than 13,000 kidney care professionals from around the world in a virtual format to discuss advancements in the field of nephrology.

"For decades, clinicians and researchers have come together during Kidney Week to share new knowledge and build collaborations that translate discoveries into clinical care," said Dr. Steven Brunelli, vice president for DCR. "We're eager to share our research contributing to the lives and care of people living with kidney disease."

DaVita researchers will report on findings from multiple retrospective and prospective studies, with a particular focus on COVID-19 prevention and predictive tools for improving clinical outcomes.

This year's poster and presentation titles, along with selected study highlights, include:

Development and Validation of an Algorithm to Predict Risk of 90-Day Hospitalization for Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Real-World Effectiveness and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 in Dialysis Patients (Moderna)

Real-World Effectiveness and Immunogenicity of BNT162b2 in Dialysis Patients (Pfizer)

Associations between Loop Diuretic Use and Outcomes among Patients Treated with Peritoneal Dialysis

A Novel Approach to Identify Nonclinical Factors that Impact Outcomes in Dialysis Patients

Safety of Bamlanivimab Treatment for COVID-19 Administered in Dialysis Centers to Hemodialysis Patients

Comparative Effectiveness of BNT162b2 and Ad26.COV2.S in the Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Infection among Dialysis Patients

Perception of COVID-19 Risk among In-center Hemodialysis Patients

Kidney Week attendees can view ePosters and pre-recorded presentations from DCR and DaVita Kidney Care clinical leaders at https://www.asn-online.org/kidneyweek/ beginning Nov. 4. All meeting content will be posted online until Jan. 7, 2022.

DaVita representatives will be available to discuss collaboration opportunities in the Kidney Week digital exhibit hall. Updates will be shared throughout the meeting on Twitter at @DaVitaDoc and @DaVitaResearch. Attendees, as well as those who cannot participate in the virtual sessions, are encouraged to join or view the conversation by using #KidneyWk.

To learn more about DCR, visit www.DaVitaClinicalResearch.com.

About DaVita Clinical Research

DaVita Clinical Research (DCR), a wholly owned subsidiary of DaVita Inc., is the research arm of DaVita. DCR innovates through retrospective research aimed at improving clinical outcomes. DCR assists pharmaceutical and medical device companies in the design, recruitment and completion of clinical trials using its renal research site network. To learn more about DCR, visit DaVitaClinicalResearch.com.

About DaVita Kidney Care

DaVita (NYSE: DVA) is a health care provider focused on transforming care delivery to improve quality of life for patients globally. The company is one of the largest providers of kidney care services in the U.S. and has been a leader in clinical quality and innovation for more than 20 years. DaVita cares for patients at every stage and setting along their kidney health journeyfrom slowing the progression of kidney disease to helping to support transplantation, from acute hospital care to dialysis at home. As of September 30, 2021, DaVita served 203,000 patients at 2,822 outpatient dialysis centers in the United States. The company also operated 333 outpatient dialysis centers in ten countries worldwide. DaVita has reduced hospitalizations, improved mortality, and worked collaboratively to propel the kidney care industry to adopt an equitable and high-quality standard of care for all patients, everywhere. To learn more, visit DaVita.com/About.

Contact Information

Media:

Halie Peddle

(303) 550-6349

[email protected]

SOURCE DaVita Clinical Research
ATLANTA, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Being a strategic leader requires asking the right questions and understanding the best way to measure success. Leaders must be able to obtain insight into the state of the business and reinforce strategic focus. One of the most important questions a leader must be able to answer is, "What do my customers think of our business, and would they recommend our services?"

A customer's experience with a brand determines not just whether they would purchase an item from them again, but also whether they will become brand supporters or detractors. Word-of-mouth has long been seen as a vital marketing strategy, and former customers' opinions can also have a significant impact on sales. According to research conducted by Referral Candy , 88% of Americans trust word-of-mouth reviews and recommendations.

Deepak "Dee" Agarwal , c-suite business leader and long-time entrepreneur, recommends "getting a feel of how people talk about and advocate for any brand is vital in obtaining and retaining loyal clients."

"This data not only tells us which products and services are most important to customers," he continues, "but also where marketing and client acquisition initiatives should be made."

While social media listening and customer review monitoring can provide insightful information into what customers think of a brand, measuring sentiment via Net Promoter Scores is one of the most powerful tools available to organizations. Net Promoter Score or NPS is a management tool that gives data and visibility into the strength and depth of a brand's relationship with its customers, as well as their likelihood of suggesting a brand to their peers. NPS scores vary from 1 to 10, with scores of 9-10 indicating promoters/advocates and 1-6 indicating detractors. Scores of 7-8 are regarded as neutral.

Dee Agarwal notes, "Net Promoter Scores not only provide visibility into the health of client relationships but also vital insights into the company's growth prospects." According to studies, a 7-point rise in NPS corresponds to a 1% gain in revenue.

Earning a high score, on the other hand, is not necessarily a guarantee of success. In times of industry upheavals or retraction, even businesses with high NPS might face reductions. Having a solid client base becomes even more crucial in those times, which is why NPS should be utilized to inform customer acquisition initiatives and improve customer retention.

"The most important component in running a successful business is acquiring new customers. It's also usually the most expensive, and it's a never-ending process," said Dee Agarwal . "Brands shouldn't become complacent just because of a strong net promoter score. Maintaining strong brand sentiment is crucial for longevity. If companies want to establish and sustain a strong customer base of ambassadors, they must be committed to consistently delivering a 'wow' experience to every single client with every single interaction."

For more business insights from Dee Agarwal , check out Dee Agarwal on Test and Learn Strategy for Success.

Contact:

Andrew Mitchell

[email protected]

678-490-4649

SOURCE Deepak Agarwal

Related Links

https://deeagarwal.com


BRENTWOOD, Tenn., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --- Delek Logistics Partners, LP (NYSE: DKL) ("Delek Logistics") today announced its financial results for the third quarter 2021. For the three months ended September 30, 2021, Delek Logistics reported net income attributable to all partners of $43.6 million, or $1.00 per diluted common limited partner unit. This compares to net income attributable to all partners of $46.3 million, or $1.26 per diluted common limited partner unit, in the third quarter 2020. Net cash from operating activities was $74.8 million in the third quarter 2021 compared to $62.3 million in the third quarter 2020. Distributable cash flow was $55.5 million in the third quarter 2021, compared to $59.1 million in the third quarter 2020.

For the third quarter 2021, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") was $69.9 million compared to $67.8 million in the third quarter 2020.

Uzi Yemin, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Delek Logistics' general partner, remarked: "DKL continues delivering stable performance. Strong demand for oil and oil products is driving healthy utilization rates of both refining and logistics assets thereby benefiting the DKL portfolio."

"The recent increase in the quarterly distribution to $0.95/unit, keeps us on-track for a 5% distribution increase on a full-year basis in 2021. Even with a long history of continuous distribution growth to shareholders, our leverage and coverage ratios remain healthy and broadly in-line with most midstream peers. DKL units recently traded at an all-time high reflecting investor confidence in our company and leading to a lower cost of capital."

Distribution and Liquidity

On October 26, 2021, Delek Logistics declared a quarterly cash distribution of $0.95 per common limited partner unit for the third quarter 2021, which equates to $3.80 per common limited partner unit on an annualized basis. This distribution will be paid on November 10, 2021 to unitholders of record on November 5, 2021. This represents a 1.1% increase from the second quarter 2021 distribution of $0.94 per common limited partner unit, or $3.76 per common limited partner unit on an annualized basis, and a 5.0% increase over Delek Logistics' third quarter 2020 distribution of $0.905 per common limited partner unit, or $3.62 per common limited partner unit annualized. For the third quarter 2021, the total cash distribution declared to all partners was approximately $41.3 million, resulting in a distributable cash flow coverage ratio of 1.34x.

As of September 30, 2021, Delek Logistics had total debt of approximately $901.4 million and cash of $4.9 million. Additional borrowing capacity, subject to certain covenants, under the $850.0 million credit facility was $589.1 million, which was enhanced by the recent notes offering. The total leverage ratio was well within the requirements of the maximum allowable leverage ratio under the credit facility.

Financial Results

Contribution margin in the third quarter 2021 was $67.2 million compared to $67.3 million in the third quarter 2020. Overall performance benefited from higher pipeline throughput offset by expenses related to pipeline integrity work.

Pipelines and Transportation Segment

Contribution margin in the third quarter 2021 was $47.4 million compared to $46.4 million in the third quarter 2020. Compared to year-ago levels, pipeline throughput was higher, partially offset by higher expenses related to pipeline integrity work.

Wholesale Marketing and Terminalling Segment

During the third quarter 2021, contribution margin was $19.8 million compared to $21.0 million in the third quarter 2020. Overall performance was broadly in line with year-ago levels.

Third Quarter 2021 Results | Conference Call Information

Delek Logistics will hold a conference call to discuss its third quarter 2021 results on Friday, November 5, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. Central Time. Investors will have the opportunity to listen to the conference call live by going to www.DelekLogistics.com. Participants are encouraged to register at least 15 minutes early to download and install any necessary software. An archived version of the replay will also be available at www.DelekLogistics.com for 90 days.

Investors may also wish to listen to Delek US' (NYSE: DK) third quarter 2021 earnings conference call on Friday, November 5, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. Central Time and review Delek US' earnings press release. Market trends and information disclosed by Delek US may be relevant to Delek Logistics, as it is a consolidated subsidiary of Delek US. Investors can find information related to Delek US and the timing of its earnings release online by going to www.DelekUS.com.

1|

About Delek Logistics Partners, LP

Delek Logistics Partners, LP, headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, was formed by Delek US Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: DK) to own, operate, acquire and construct crude oil and refined products logistics and marketing assets.

Safe Harbor Provisions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Statements concerning current estimates, expectations and projections about future results, performance, prospects, opportunities, plans, actions and events and other statements, concerns, or matters that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements," as that term is defined under the federal securities laws. These statements contain words such as "possible," "believe," "should," "could," "would," "predict," "plan," "estimate," "intend," "may," "anticipate," "will," "if," "expect" or similar expressions, as well as statements in the future tense, and can be impacted by numerous factors, including the fact that a substantial majority of Delek Logistics' contribution margin is derived from Delek US, thereby subjecting us to Delek US' business risks; risks relating to the securities markets generally; risks and costs relating to the age and operational hazards of our assets including, without limitation, costs, penalties, regulatory or legal actions and other effects related to releases, spills and other hazards inherent in transporting and storing crude oil and intermediate and finished petroleum products; the impact of adverse market conditions affecting the utilization of Delek Logistics' assets and business performance, including margins generated by its wholesale fuel business; the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the demand for crude oil, refined products and transportation and storage services; uncertainties regarding future decisions by OPEC regarding production and pricing disputes between OPEC members and Russia; an inability of Delek US to grow as expected as it relates to our potential future growth opportunities, including dropdowns, and other potential benefits; the results of our investments in joint ventures; adverse changes in laws including with respect to tax and regulatory matters; and other risks as disclosed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other reports and filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding future growth at Delek Logistics; distributions and the amounts and timing thereof; potential dropdown inventory; expected earnings or returns from joint ventures or other acquisitions; expansion projects; ability to create long-term value for our unit holders; financial flexibility and borrowing capacity; and distribution growth of 5% or at all. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results and will not be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which such performance or results will be achieved. Forward-looking information is based on information available at the time and/or management's good faith belief with respect to future events, and is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in the statements. Delek Logistics undertakes no obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur, or which Delek Logistics becomes aware of, after the date hereof, except as required by applicable law or regulation

Non-GAAP Disclosures:

Our management uses certain "non-GAAP" operational measures to evaluate our operating segment performance and non-GAAP financial measures to evaluate past performance and prospects for the future to supplement our GAAP financial information presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. These financial and operational non-GAAP measures are important factors in assessing our operating results and profitability and include:

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") - calculated as net income before net interest expense, income tax expense, depreciation and amortization expense, including amortization of customer contract intangible assets, which is included as a component of net revenues in our accompanying condensed consolidated statements of income.

Distributable cash flow - calculated as net cash flow from operating activities plus or minus changes in assets and liabilities, less maintenance capital expenditures net of reimbursements and other adjustments not expected to settle in cash. Delek Logistics believes this is an appropriate reflection of a liquidity measure by which users of its financial statements can assess its ability to generate cash.

EBITDA and distributable cash flow are non GAAP supplemental financial measures that management and external users of our condensed consolidated financial statements, such as industry analysts, investors, lenders and rating agencies, may use to assess:

Delek Logistics' operating performance as compared to other publicly traded partnerships in the midstream energy industry, without regard to historical cost basis or, in the case of EBITDA, financing methods;

the ability of our assets to generate sufficient cash flow to make distributions to our unitholders;

Delek Logistics' ability to incur and service debt and fund capital expenditures; and

the viability of acquisitions and other capital expenditure projects and the returns on investment of various investment opportunities.

Delek Logistics believes that the presentation of EBITDA, distributable cash flow and distributable cash flow coverage ratio provide useful information to investors in assessing its financial condition, its results of operations and the cash flow its business is generating. EBITDA, distributable cash flow and distributable cash flow coverage ratio should not be considered in isolation or as alternatives to net income, operating income, cash flow from operating activities or any other measure of financial performance or liquidity presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

Non-GAAP measures have important limitations as analytical tools, because they exclude some, but not all, items that affect net income and net cash provided by operating activities. These measures should not be considered substitutes for their most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measures. Additionally, because EBITDA and distributable cash flow may be defined differently by other partnerships in its industry, Delek Logistics' definitions of EBITDA and distributable cash flow may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other partnerships, thereby diminishing their utility. See the accompanying tables in this earnings release for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

2|

Delek Logistics Partners, LP Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Unaudited) (In thousands, except unit and per unit data)



September 30, 2021

December 31, 2020 ASSETS







Current assets:







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 4,864



$ 4,243

Accounts receivable

18,421



15,676

Accounts receivable from related parties





5,932

Inventory

2,222



3,127

Other current assets

1,081



331

Total current assets

26,588



29,309

Property, plant and equipment:







Property, plant and equipment

704,905



692,282

Less: accumulated depreciation

(256,696)



(227,470)

Property, plant and equipment, net

448,209



464,812

Equity method investments

251,919



253,675

Operating lease right-of-use assets

22,911



24,199

Goodwill

12,203



12,203

Marketing contract intangible, net

118,380



123,788

Rights-of-way

37,062



36,316

Other non-current assets

13,271



12,115

Total assets

$ 930,543



$ 956,417











LIABILITIES AND DEFICIT







Current liabilities:







Accounts payable

$ 7,441



$ 6,659

Accounts payable to related parties

44,574





Interest payable

17,037



2,452

Excise and other taxes payable

3,798



4,969

Current portion of operating lease liabilities

7,364



8,691

Accrued expenses and other current liabilities

7,830



5,529

Total current liabilities

88,044



28,300

Non-current liabilities:







Long-term debt

901,404



992,291

Asset retirement obligations

6,361



6,015

Operating lease liabilities, net of current portion

15,489



15,418

Other non-current liabilities

23,998



22,694

Total non-current liabilities

947,252



1,036,418

Total liabilities

1,035,296



1,064,718

Equity (Deficit):







Common unitholders - public; 8,713,195 units issued and outstanding at September 30, 2021 (8,697,468 at

December 31, 2020)

165,281



164,614

Common unitholders - Delek Holdings; 34,745,868 units issued and outstanding at September 30, 2021 (34,745,868 at December 31, 2020)

(270,034)



(272,915)

Total deficit

(104,753)



(108,301)

Total liabilities and deficit

$ 930,543



$ 956,417



3|

Delek Logistics Partners, LP Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (Unaudited) (In thousands, except unit and per unit data)

Three Months Ended

September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30,

2021

2020

2021

2020 Net revenues:













Affiliate $ 123,519



$ 95,410



$ 308,435



$ 289,739

Third-party 66,108



46,858



202,583



133,567

Net revenues 189,627



142,268



511,018



423,306

Cost of sales:













Cost of materials and other 105,129



60,692



274,995



205,877

Operating expenses (excluding depreciation and amortization presented below) 16,830



13,694



45,201



39,271

Depreciation and amortization 9,666



8,931



29,393



22,957

Total cost of sales 131,625



83,317



349,589



268,105

Operating expenses related to wholesale business (excluding depreciation and

amortization presented below) 515



536



1,741



2,152

General and administrative expenses 6,141



6,122



17,018



16,973

Depreciation and amortization 490



528



1,469



1,495

Other operating expense (income), net 273







54



(107)

Total operating costs and expenses 139,044



90,503



369,871



288,618

Operating income 50,583



51,765



141,147



134,688

Interest expense, net 14,529



10,360



35,924



32,854

Income from equity method investments (7,261)



(4,860)



(17,952)



(16,875)

Other (income) expense, net (115)



105



(118)



103

Total non-operating expenses, net 7,153



5,605



17,854



16,082

Income before income tax (benefit) expense 43,430



46,160



123,293



118,606

Income tax (benefit) expense (194)



(168)



156



67

Net income attributable to partners $ 43,624



$ 46,328



$ 123,137



$ 118,539

Comprehensive income attributable to partners $ 43,624



$ 46,328



$ 123,137



$ 118,539

















Less: General partner's interest in net income, including incentive distribution rights 











18,724

Limited partners' interest in net income $ 43,624



$ 46,328



$ 123,137



$ 99,815

















Net income per limited partner unit:













Common units - basic $ 1.00



$ 1.26



$ 2.83



$ 3.30

Common units - diluted $ 1.00



$ 1.26



$ 2.83



$ 3.30

















Weighted average limited partner units outstanding:













Common units - basic 43,454,535



36,889,761



43,447,739



30,290,051

Common units - diluted 43,468,289



36,894,043



43,457,857



30,292,261

















Cash distribution per limited partner unit $ 0.950



$ 0.905



$ 3.800



$ 2.695



4|

Delek Logistics Partners, LP Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Unaudited) (In thousands)



Nine Months Ended September 30,



2021

2020 Cash flows from operating activities







Net income

$ 123,137



$ 118,539

Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities:







Depreciation and amortization

30,862



24,452

Non-cash lease expense

6,967



2,236

Amortization of customer contract intangible assets

5,408



5,408

Amortization of deferred revenue

(1,475)



(1,418)

Amortization of deferred financing costs and debt discount

2,169



1,786

Income from equity method investments

(17,952)



(16,875)

Dividends from equity method investments

14,849



17,572

Other non-cash adjustments

1,413



1,495

Changes in assets and liabilities:







Accounts receivable

(2,745)



(4,268)

Inventories and other current assets

109



12,714

Accounts payable and other current liabilities

12,323



(7,638)

Accounts receivable/payable to related parties

47,483



(19,002)

Non-current assets and liabilities, net

(272)



(347)

Changes in assets and liabilities

56,898



(18,541)

Net cash provided by operating activities

222,276



134,654

Cash flows from investing activities







Asset acquisitions from Delek Holdings, net of assumed liabilities





(100,527)

Purchases of property, plant and equipment

(12,352)



(6,918)

Proceeds from sales of property, plant and equipment

275



107

Purchases of intangible assets

(746)





Distributions from equity method investments

6,245



2,723

Equity method investment contributions

(1,393)



(11,804)

Net cash used in investing activities

(7,971)



(116,419)

Cash flows from financing activities







Proceeds from issuance of additional units to maintain 2% General Partner interest





10

Distributions to general partner





(27,635)

Distributions to common unitholders - public

(24,153)



(23,653)

Distributions to common unitholders - Delek Holdings

(96,246)



(46,220)

Distributions to Delek Holdings unitholders and general partner related to Trucking Assets Acquisition





(47,558)

Distribution to general partner for conversion of its interest and IDR elimination





(45,000)

Proceeds from revolving credit facility

236,000



515,900

Payments on revolving credit facility

(721,700)



(343,600)

Proceeds from issuance of senior notes

400,000





Deferred financing costs paid in connection with debt issuances

(6,216)





Payments on finance lease

(1,369)





Net cash used in financing activities

(213,684)



(17,756)

Net increase in cash and cash equivalents

621



479

Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the period

4,243



5,545

Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period

$ 4,864



$ 6,024

Supplemental disclosures of cash flow information:







Cash paid during the period for:







Interest

$ 19,170



$ 26,895

Income taxes

$ 



$ 141

Non-cash investing activities:







Increase (decrease) in accrued capital expenditures and other

$ 1,638



$ (948)

Equity issuance to Delek Holdings unitholders in connection with Big Spring Gathering Assets Acquisition

$ 



$ 109,513

Non-cash financing activities:







Sponsor contribution of property, plant and equipment

$ 



$ 1,378

Non-cash lease liability arising from obtaining right of use assets during the period

$ 8,750



$ 16,644



5|

Delek Logistics Partners, LP Reconciliation of Amounts Reported Under U.S. GAAP (In thousands)

Three Months Ended

September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30,

2021

2020

2021

2020 Reconciliation of Net Income to EBITDA:













Net income $ 43,624



$ 46,328



$ 123,137



$ 118,539

Add:













Income tax (benefit) expense (194)



(168)



156



67

Depreciation and amortization 10,156



9,459



30,862



24,452

Amortization of customer contract intangible assets 1,802



1,803



5,408



5,408

Interest expense, net 14,529



10,360



35,924



32,854

EBITDA $ 69,917



$ 67,782



$ 195,487



$ 181,320

















Reconciliation of net cash from operating activities to distributable cash flow:













Net cash provided by operating activities $ 74,752



$ 62,273



$ 222,276



$ 134,654

Changes in assets and liabilities (16,256)



(2,458)



(56,898)



18,541

Non-cash lease expense (2,460)



(1,596)



(6,967)



(2,236)

Distributions from equity method investments in investing activities 845



1,033



6,245



2,723

Maintenance and regulatory capital expenditures (850)



(27)



(3,712)



(760)

Reimbursement from Delek Holdings for capital expenditures 11



26



1,588



81

Accretion of asset retirement obligations (116)



(106)



(346)



(320)

Deferred income taxes (138)



(47)



(203)



(990)

Other operating (expense) income, net (273)







(54)



107

Distributable Cash Flow $ 55,515



$ 59,098



$ 161,929



$ 151,800





Delek Logistics Partners, LP Distributable Coverage Ratio Calculation (In thousands)

Three Months Ended

September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30, Distributions to partners of Delek Logistics, LP 2021

2020

2021

2020 Limited partners' distribution on common units $ 41,286



$ 39,307



$ 122,100



$ 87,536

General partner's distributions 











986

General partner's incentive distribution rights 











17,632

Total distributions to be paid (1) $ 41,286



$ 39,307



$ 122,100



$ 106,154

















Distributable cash flow $ 55,515



$ 59,098



$ 161,929



$ 151,800

Distributable cash flow coverage ratio (2) 1.34x



1.50x



1.33x



1.43x



(1) The distributions for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2020 reflect the impact of the distribution waiver that waived all of the distributions for the first quarter

of 2020 on the 5.0 million Additional Units, related to the Big Spring Gathering Assets transaction, with respect to base distributions and the IDRs. In addition, the distributions

for the three months ended March 31, 2020 reflect the waiver of distributions in respect of the IDRs associated with the Additional Units for at least two years. Subsequently, the

IDRs were eliminated in the Restructuring Transaction on August 13, 2020. (2) Distributable cash flow coverage ratio is calculated by dividing distributable cash flow by distributions to be paid in each respective period.



6|

Delek Logistics Partners, LP Segment Data (unaudited) (In thousands)

Three Months Ended

September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30,

2021

2020

2021

2020 Pipelines and Transportation













Net revenues:













Affiliate $ 70,879



$ 68,444



$ 199,591



$ 168,285

Third party 5,323



3,035



12,021



14,587

Total pipelines and transportation 76,202



71,479



211,612



182,872

Cost of sales:













Cost of materials and other 15,170



14,342



42,595



31,622

Operating expenses (excluding depreciation and amortization) 13,680



10,749



34,710



31,936

Segment contribution margin $ 47,352



$ 46,388



$ 134,307



$ 119,314

Capital spending $ 2,570



$ 2,552



$ 9,946



$ 3,424

















Wholesale Marketing and Terminalling













Net revenues:













Affiliates (1) $ 52,640



$ 26,966



$ 108,844



$ 121,454

Third party 60,785



43,823



190,562



118,980

Total wholesale marketing and terminalling 113,425



70,789



299,406



240,434

Cost of sales:













Cost of materials and other 89,959



46,350



232,400



174,255

Operating expenses (excluding depreciation and amortization) 3,665



3,481



12,232



9,487

Segment contribution margin $ 19,801



$ 20,958



$ 54,774



$ 56,692

Capital spending $ 1,566



$ 676



$ 4,580



$ 3,494

















Consolidated













Net revenues:













Affiliates $ 123,519



$ 95,410



$ 308,435



$ 289,739

Third party 66,108



46,858



202,583



133,567

Total consolidated 189,627



142,268



511,018



423,306

Cost of sales:













Cost of materials and other 105,129



60,692



274,995



205,877

Operating expenses (excluding depreciation and amortization presented below) 17,345



14,230



46,942



41,423

Contribution margin 67,153



67,346



189,081



176,006

General and administrative expenses 6,141



6,122



17,018



16,973

Depreciation and amortization 10,156



9,459



30,862



24,452

Other operating expense (income), net 273







54



(107)

Operating income $ 50,583



$ 51,765



$ 141,147



$ 134,688

Capital spending $ 4,136



$ 3,228



$ 14,526



$ 6,918







(1) Affiliate revenue for the wholesale marketing and terminalling segment is presented net of amortization expense pertaining to the marketing contract intangible we acquired in

connection with the Big Spring acquisition.

7|

Delek Logistics Partners, LP Segment Capital Spending (In thousands)

Three Months Ended

September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30, Pipelines and Transportation 2021

2020

2021

2020 Maintenance capital spending $ 215



$ 28



$ 1,141



$ 467

Discretionary capital spending 2,355



2,524



8,805



2,957

Segment capital spending $ 2,570



$ 2,552



9,946



3,424

Wholesale Marketing and Terminalling













Maintenance capital spending $ 674



$ 118



1,394



1,480

Discretionary capital spending 892



558



3,186



2,014

Segment capital spending $ 1,566



$ 676



4,580



3,494

Consolidated













Maintenance capital spending $ 889



$ 146



2,535



1,947

Discretionary capital spending 3,247



3,082



11,991



4,971

Total capital spending $ 4,136



$ 3,228



$ 14,526



$ 6,918





Delek Logistics Partners, LP







Segment Data (Unaudited)









Three Months Ended

September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30,

2021

2020

2021

2020 Pipelines and Transportation Segment:













Throughputs (average bpd)













El Dorado Assets:













Crude pipelines (non-gathered) 81,929



78,244



60,344



76,750

Refined products pipelines to Enterprise Systems 62,263



55,740



42,733



55,315

El Dorado Gathering System 14,086



13,659



14,056



13,520

East Texas Crude Logistics System 18,644



22,591



24,045



15,705

Big Spring Gathering System 84,325



90,719



79,251



85,845

Plains Connection System 131,571



104,314



120,905



96,961

















Wholesale Marketing and Terminalling Segment:













East Texas - Tyler Refinery sales volumes (average bpd) (1) 71,847



73,417



72,791



70,376

Big Spring marketing throughputs (average bpd) 81,880



78,659



76,680



73,701

West Texas marketing throughputs (average bpd) 10,560



9,948



10,033



11,718

West Texas gross margin per barrel $ 3.33



$ 3.42



$ 3.64



$ 2.37

Terminalling throughputs (average bpd) (2) 144,355



160,843



142,959



145,240



































(1) Excludes jet fuel and petroleum coke.

(2) Consists of terminalling throughputs at our Tyler, Big Spring, Big Sandy and Mount Pleasant, Texas, El Dorado and North Little

Rock, Arkansas and Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee terminals.



Information about Delek Logistics Partners, LP can be found on its website (www.deleklogistics.com), investor relations webpage (ir.deleklogistics.com), news webpage ( www.deleklogistics.com/news) and its Twitter account (@DelekLogistics).

8|

SOURCE Delek Logistics

Related Links

www.deleklogistics.com


LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital media entrepreneurs are producing ground-breaking journalism and achieving significant impact on their societies, in spite of often tiny budgets and constant online threats and attacks, a new global report revealed today.

The Inflection Point International report, published by SembraMedia, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurial journalists, in partnership with the global philanthropic organisation Luminate, is based on interviews with 201 independent digital native media organizations across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Coming a month after the announcement of journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov as 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the report found that more than 85 percent of the media outlets interviewed had produced journalism that had led to significant political and societal changes.

"This report shines a light on a new generation of creative and courageous media entjrepreneurs, who, like Nobel Laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, are having a real impact on their societies, strengthening the workings of democracy and holding power to account," said Stephen King, CEO of Luminate.

The top three ways media outlets reported having achieved impact were:

Contributed to increased civil engagement (76%)

Inspired audience members to participate in protest demonstrations in person or through online activism (42%)

Contributed to a change in laws or the legal system (38%)

Download the full report

The full report is available on the Inflection Point International website, and can be downloaded in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Executive Summary is available in 12 other languages, including French, Thai, and Filipino

Janine Warner, co-founder of SembraMedia said the 2021 findings built on those of the first Inflection Point report, which focused only on Latin America and was released in 2017.

"While there are differences across the three regions, what struck us most as we reviewed the data were the similarities that emerged among these news organizations as they strive to cover their communities and build sustainable business models," she said. "Our goal with this report is to draw lessons from the innovative media organizations we studied so others can learn how to build stronger and more sustainable organizations without compromising their journalistic ethics."

Grant funding offers media lifeline through pandemic crash

While 60 per cent of the digital news outlets interviewed made less than US$50,000 in revenue, they suffered less from the 'pandemic crash' than traditional media as they were less reliant on advertising revenue.

Grant funding, notably from international philanthropic organizations and corporations, was their largest source of income, growing from 16 per cent in the 2017 study, to 28 per cent in 2019, and 31 per cent in 2020. It was highest in Latin America. Beyond grants and advertising, media organizations also earned income from consultancy services, content production and reader revenue.

Stephen King of Luminate said: "This report demonstrates the vital role that grant funding is playing in supporting digital media organizations through this pivotal moment of change. This is not about funding without end - it's about helping a vibrant new generation of media entrepreneurs to evolve their business models so they can build pathways to sustainability while continuing to produce important journalism in the public interest."

In spite of their impact, the report found many digital native outlets still operate under an unthinkable barrage of threats and attacks, especially those reporting on hot-button issues such as human rights, corruption and abortion. Across all three regions, 51 per cent of the media organizations in this study said they were the victim of digital attacks, and 40 per cent said they had been threatened for their work - often weekly if not daily.

About SembraMedia

SembraMedia's mission is to empower diverse voices in media to publish news and information with independence, journalistic integrity, and a positive impact on the communities they serve. We help digital media entrepreneurs build more sustainable, independent news organizations by offering business and technical training, market intelligence, networking opportunities, specialized consulting, and direct financial support. Our work is driven by an international team of journalists, entrepreneurs, consultants, and academics with deep knowledge of global political, economic, and media markets. We are guided and supported by a distinguished Advisory Board whose members contribute their expertise as journalists, media executives, professors, and consultants. To learn more, visit Sembramedia.org.

About Luminate

Luminate is a global philanthropic organization focused on empowering people and institutions to work together to build just and fair societies. We support innovative and courageous organizations and entrepreneurs around the world, and we advocate for the policies and actions that will drive change across four impact areas: Civic Empowerment, Data & Digital Rights, Financial Transparency, and Independent Media. We work with our partners to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in and to shape the issues affecting their societies, and to make those in positions of power more responsive and accountable. Luminate was established in 2018 by philanthropists Pierre and Pam Omidyar. The organization was founded by The Omidyar Group. www.luminategroup.com

SOURCE Luminate; SembraMedia
RICHMOND, Va., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) today announced changes affecting the leadership at two of its operating segments: Gas Distribution and Dominion Energy South Carolina.

Effective Jan. 1, 2022, Donald R. "Don" Raikes will retire as president-Gas Distribution. P. Rodney Blevins, president-Dominion Energy South Carolina, will rotate to a new role, replacing Raikes. Succeeding Blevins will be W. Keller Kissam, president-Electric Operations at Dominion Energy South Carolina, who is being promoted.

At Gas Distribution, Blevins will be responsible for operating the company's natural gas utilities in Ohio, Utah, North Carolina, West Virginia, Wyoming and Idaho. They serve about 3 million gas utility customer accounts. Kissam will oversee the operations of Dominion Energy South Carolina, a natural gas and electric utility serving a combined 1.1 million customer accounts in the Palmetto State.

Blevins will continue to report to Diane Leopold, executive vice president and chief operating officer, as will Kissam and the company's other operating segment presidents: Edward H. "Ed" Baine (Dominion Energy Virginia) and Daniel G. "Dan" Stoddard (Contracted Assets).

Robert M. Blue, chair, president and chief executive officer, said:

"Don has served Dominion Energy and our predecessor company, Consolidated Natural Gas, with distinction for 36 years. Don has been a titan in the natural gas field  leading in transmission marketing, LNG, midstream operations, distribution operations and more  most recently as chairman of the Southern Gas Association. He has been an outstanding contributor to Dominion Energy's success. We wish Don well in his retirement.

"Rodney and Keller have worked together to guide Dominion Energy South Carolina through a transition from SCANA to Dominion Energy and through a recent rate case that allows the utility to focus on serving our South Carolina customers safely, reliably and efficiently. Rodney's experience in running a regulated utility and Keller's exceptional leadership abilities will serve them well in their next roles."

Raikes joined Consolidated Natural Gas in 1985. In 2006, he became vice president-Transmission Marketing & Business Development, and in this role he skillfully led the team that was responsible for the commercial growth of the Cove Point LNG terminal in Lusby, Md. In 2014, he was named vice president-Pipeline Customer Service & Business Development. Three years later, Raikes was promoted to senior vice president-Dominion Midstream Operations, and in February 2019 began overseeing operations of the company's portfolio of natural gas terminaling, processing, storage, transportation and related assets. He was named president of the Gas Distribution operating segment in October 2019.

Blevins came to the company in 1987 as an associate engineer at what is today known as Dominion Energy Virginia, after graduation from Virginia Tech. In 2006, he was promoted to vice president-Electric Operations at Dominion Energy Virginia, where he oversaw operations of the utility's electric distribution assets. He became senior vice president and chief information officer in 2014. Blevins has led the Dominion Energy South Carolina natural gas and electric utility since 2019. He serves on the board and executive committee for the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, as well as the boards for the Charleston Chamber of Commerce and the South Carolina Manufacturers' Alliance.

Kissam joined one of Dominion Energy's predecessor companies, SCANA, in 1988 as a new utility professional and has held numerous positions in both electric and gas operations. At SCANA, he led gas operations from 1996 to 2004, and electric operations for South Carolina Electric & Gas since 2003. Kissam assumed his current position in 2019. Kissam holds a bachelor's degree from The Citadel, where he served as Regimental Commander of the South Carolina Corps of Cadets. He is a board member and past president of the Southeastern Electric Exchange and the immediate past president of the South Carolina Independent Schools Association, and serves as chairman of the board of The Central South Carolina Economic Development Alliance.

For biographies of these executive officers, please click here.

More than 7 million customers in 16 states energize their homes and businesses with electricity or natural gas from Dominion Energy (NYSE: D). The company is committed to sustainable, reliable, affordable and safe energy and to achieving net zero carbon dioxide and methane emissions from its power generation and gas infrastructure operations by 2050. Please visit DominionEnergy.com to learn more.

SOURCE Dominion Energy

Related Links

http://www.dominionenergy.com


Edly, Inc. Partners with FinWise Bank to Offer Income Based Repayment Loans for Students Tweet this

Edly uses historical data about student outcomes from sources such as the Department of Education, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, private databases, and Edly's proprietary data to underwrite the likely success of student borrowers. Edly does not underwrite using traditional credit scores because the firm believes that most students have not had sufficient time to establish a meaningful credit score. Edly also does not require co-signers because many students do not have access to a co-signer. In this way, Edly provides greater access to higher education for promising students who lack funding access.

"FinWise has a history of providing innovative financing solutions that enable borrowers to take control of their financial lives," said David Tilis, Chief Strategy Officer, FinWise Bank. "Together with Edly, we are excited to now bring student borrowers a new solution that we expect will help remove a significant barrier to education faced by many Americans."

Edly asks student borrowers to pay only a small percentage of their gross monthly salary and payments are paused if they cannot find a job. The total amount a student will pay is capped both in absolute terms and as an APR cap. Edly's IBR Student Loans are private student loans offered by FinWise Bank. They are currently offered in 46 states.

For more information on the goals of the Edly IBR Loan program, please see our Impact Statement and our Guiding Principles. Students looking to check IBR Loan terms & eligibility should go to https://student.edly.co/student. Investors looking to support investments in student IBR Loans should go to https://www.edly.co/

About Edly

Edly is a platform which connects students looking to fund college tuition with investors looking to support social impact investments in education. Edly focuses on a type of tuition funding known as Income Based Repayment Loans ("IBR Loans"). IBR Loans have been used successfully in many countries throughout the world to finance higher education. They are also used to restructure US Federal student loans into more affordable payment plans for students who find themselves with unaffordable debt. Edly is the first and only provider of this product as a primary tuition funding method in the U.S.

About FinWise Bank

FinWise Bank is a wholly owned subsidiary of FinWise Bancorp headquartered in Murray, Utah and is a Utah state-charted non-member bank. Founded in 2000, as Utah Community Bank, FinWise is an online bank focused on using technology to deliver a range of products and services, especially for the "unbanked" and consumers who have limited access to credit. FinWise currently operates one full-service banking location in Sandy, Utah and a loan production office in Rockville Centre, New York. FinWise is a nationwide lender and takes deposits from consumers and small businesses. For more information, please visit www.finwisebank.com.

SOURCE Edly, Inc.
CHICAGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Enova International (NYSE: ENVA), a leading financial technology company powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase plan for up to $150 million of its common stock. This new program will be in place until December 31, 2022. The existing $50 million repurchase program will terminate and be replaced by this new program. Through November 3, 2021, Enova had repurchased $23 million in common stock under the existing program.

"The significant expansion in our share repurchase program demonstrates our confidence in the continued strength of our business relative to our current valuation," said David Fisher, Enova's CEO. "Our strong balance sheet and liquidity position gives us the flexibility to deliver on our commitment to long-term shareholder value through both share repurchases and investment in our business to drive meaningful, sustainable and profitable growth."

Repurchases will be made in accordance with applicable securities laws from time to time in the open market, through privately negotiated transactions or otherwise. The share repurchase program does not obligate the Company to purchase any shares of its common stock. The authorization for the share repurchase program may be terminated, increased or decreased by the Company's Board of Directors in its discretion at any time.

About Enova

Enova International (NYSE: ENVA) is a leading financial technology company providing online financial services through its artificial intelligence and machine learning powered lending platform. Enova serves the needs of non-prime consumers and small businesses, who are frequently underserved by traditional banks. Enova has provided more than 7 million customers with over $40 billion in loans and financing with market leading products that provide a path for them to improve their financial health. You can learn more about the company and its brands at www.enova.com.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 about the business, financial condition and prospects of Enova. These forward-looking statements give current expectations or forecasts of future events and reflect the views and assumptions of Enova's senior management with respect to the business, financial condition and prospects of Enova as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. The actual results of Enova could differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements because of various risks and uncertainties applicable to Enova's business, including, without limitation, those risks and uncertainties indicated in Enova's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q and current reports on Forms 8-K. These risks and uncertainties are beyond the ability of Enova to control, and, in many cases, Enova cannot predict all of the risks and uncertainties that could cause its actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. When used in this release, the words "believes," "estimates," "plans," "expects," "anticipates" and similar expressions or variations as they relate to Enova or its management are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Enova cautions you not to put undue reliance on these statements. Enova disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

SOURCE Enova International, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.enova.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BizVibe has made available 1,000+ company profiles for the investment management category on its B2B platform. Companies listed in this category are primarily engaged in providing various types of investment management services (such as stock investment, pension fund management, etc.).

Get Free Access to These 1,000+ Profiles

Snapshot of BizVibe's investment management company profiles and categories.

Each profile is free to view and packed with high-quality insights, providing businesses with detailed company information. Users can take advantage of these insights to identify, target, and connect with the right companies who provide investment management services. This company information includes employee insights, company competitors, the impact of emerging trends and challenges, the latest news, and more.

Free Insights Included for all Investment Management Company Profiles:

List of product and service category offerings and primary operating industries

Risk of doing business score across four different metrics

List of key executives and their roles within the company

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Global, national, and regional competitors

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Top trends and challenges within operating industry and expected influence on business impact

Latest company news with the ability to sign up for timely news alerts

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Investment Management Companies on BizVibe

BizVibe's platform contains 30M+ company profiles, spanning across 200+ countries, categorized into 40,000+ products and services. There are 1,000+ company profiles related to investment management services on BizVibe, covering 5+ related categories. Each company profile contains detailed insights dedicated to helping procurement and sales teams find trusted suppliers and target sales prospects.

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About BizVibe

BizVibe has been conceptualized and built by a team based out of Toronto, Bangalore, and London. We are a branch of Infiniti Research and have dedicated units in all three locations. BizVibe helps buyers find the most relevant suppliers from around the world and help sellers target prospects who need their products and/or services. For more information, please visit www.bizvibe.com and start for free today.

Contact

BizVibe

Jesse Maida

Email: [email protected]

+1 855-897-5880

Website: https://www.bizvibe.com/

SOURCE BizVibe
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Ernst & Young LLP released the 2021 Gen Z Segmentation Study, which tracks the generation's personal and professional interests, as well as their outlook on issues ranging from mental health and climate change to social media and the workplace. This second iteration of the survey looks to measure changes in Gen Z's sentiment after navigating an unprecedented year, uncovering shifts across interests and issues to help predict future business impact.

The world is changing faster than ever, and this digitally native and globally conscious generation, born between 1997 and 2007, is prepared to adapt to the rapidly transforming environment. Businesses should prioritize understanding Gen Z to maintain engagement with future employees and customers  developing a strong "Plan Z."

Gen Z is the most racially diverse generation yet, even more so than millennials, and has strong opinions and unique experiences that will help shape our future society. Key insights from the survey include:

Mental Health: 67% are moderately to extremely worried about their physical and mental health, with 42% frequently feeling anxious or depressed during the COVID-19 pandemic. That anxiety is not evenly distributed from a gender perspective, with more than half (51%) of women feeling anxious or depressed compared to only 34% of males. During the pandemic, nearly a fifth (19%) of Gen Z report rarely or never receiving the social and emotional support they need.

67% are moderately to extremely worried about their physical and mental health, with 42% frequently feeling anxious or depressed during the COVID-19 pandemic. That anxiety is not evenly distributed from a gender perspective, with more than half (51%) of women feeling anxious or depressed compared to only 34% of males. During the pandemic, nearly a fifth (19%) of Gen Z report rarely or never receiving the social and emotional support they need. Skepticism: 60% say most people can't be trusted, and 48% say most of the time people are just looking out for themselves. Trust may be improving though, as these levels are slightly lower than in 2019, which found 67% and 52%, respectively. Relatedly, 57% feel life will be the same or worse for future generations.

60% say most people can't be trusted, and 48% say most of the time people are just looking out for themselves. Trust may be improving though, as these levels are slightly lower than in 2019, which found 67% and 52%, respectively. Relatedly, 57% feel life will be the same or worse for future generations. Basic needs insecurity: 69% of Gen Z worried about running out of food since the onset of COVID-19, and over a fifth (21%) worried about it most of the time; notably, 28% lost their job, or someone in their family lost a job in the same time period.

69% of Gen Z worried about running out of food since the onset of COVID-19, and over a fifth (21%) worried about it most of the time; notably, 28% lost their job, or someone in their family lost a job in the same time period. Entrepreneurialism: 45% of Gen Z report being very or extremely likely to start their own business one day; and since the pandemic began, 44% are more interested in starting a business.

45% of Gen Z report being very or extremely likely to start their own business one day; and since the pandemic began, 44% are more interested in starting a business. Since the pandemic began, males are more likely than females to have become more interested in entrepreneurialism (48% and 40%, respectively). Additionally, those already working are more likely (49%) to start their own business someday compared with those not in the workforce (43%).

High confidence in change: Gen Z is most confident that significant progress will be made regarding LGBTQ rights (85%), gender inequality (79%) and economic equality (68%).

Gen Z is most confident that significant progress will be made regarding LGBTQ rights (85%), gender inequality (79%) and economic equality (68%). Low confidence in change: Gen Z is least confident in progress happening toward the federal budget deficit (35%) and immigration policy (51%).

The five segments of Gen Z

As established in the inaugural report, the 2021 findings reiterate the importance of treating members of Gen Z as individuals with unique characteristics, goals and values. In 2019, the EY study uncovered five distinct groups within this generation. A comparison of where each member of Gen Z falls into each segment from 2019 until today finds that the biggest shift came from Carefree Constituents becoming Authentic Activists and/or Secluded Perfectionists. See breakdowns and segment descriptions here:

Authentic Activists: 22% (2021) vs. 16% (2019)

(2021) vs. (2019) Motivated by the obligation to save the world  and the fear of what will happen if they don't.

Carefree Constituents: 5% (2021) vs. 16% (2019)

(2021) vs. (2019) The definition of "go with the flow"; may not drive change, but will be the ones who adopt it into the mainstream.

Secluded Perfectionists: 20% (2021) vs. 15% (2019)

(2021) vs. (2019) Focused on being the best, not for money or accolades, but for the love of what they do.

Big Dreamers[1]: 18% (2021) vs. 18% (2019)

(2021) vs. (2019) Expect to do well and make money, but aren't necessarily willing to put in the effort.

Stress Strivers: 35% (2021) vs. 35% (2019)

(2021) vs. (2019) High achievers, driven by a fear of not being good enough.

"This latest research reinforces that companies need to make and continually evaluate their 'Plan Z,' acknowledging the different personas within the generation," says Marcie Merriman, EY Americas Cultural Insights & Customer Strategy Leader. "As more Gen Z move from being Carefree Constituents to Authentic Activists, we can glean that it has become less acceptable to be a bystander. The events of 2020, from COVID-19 to the social justice movements and more, reflect a loss of innocence for the generation and something that will shape their futures."

Processing the pandemic's impact

Unquestionably, the pandemic has changed everyone's life one way or another, and for a generation going through pivotal life moments  high school, college, first jobs, forming mature relationships, entering adulthood  this couldn't be truer. Nearly half (46%) of Gen Z surveyed in 2021 report feeling very or extremely worried about a host of issues, up from 31% in 2019. While the Stressed Strivers remain the persona with the highest percentage feeling extremely worried (54% in 2021 vs. 42% in 2019), Authentic Activists demonstrated the largest increase in percentage points (49% in 2021 vs. 29% in 2019).

Gen Z's relationships with family and friends felt the effect of quarantine, banding together to weather the uncertainty of lockdown. According to the survey, 51% say their relationship with their family has become stronger since the start of the pandemic. When it comes to friendships, 65% of Gen Z report these relationships to be the same or to have become stronger since March 2020.

It is possible that changes in social media and digital communication habits have led to some changes in relationships too. Since COVID-19 arrived, 65% of Gen Z have been video chatting with friends more frequently, and 74% have used social media apps to communicate more often with their friends. Using social media for communication is not new for Gen Z; the previous EY report found that 80% of Gen Z use social media to connect with family and friends.

Work life defined by value, not money

As companies look to hire more Gen Z employees, it is a necessity for them to understand the generation to attract and retain the new talent. Almost two-thirds (63%) of Gen Z feel it is very or extremely important to work for an employer that shares their values. In a future job or career, most Gen Z prioritize enjoying the work they do (69% in 2021 vs. 62% in 2019); other priorities are to be the best at what they do (40% vs. 37%) and to make a difference in the world (39% vs. 33%). Notably, since the last report, Gen Z places less importance on making a lot of money in their career (32% vs. 38%). Employers need to demonstrate their shared values and to position Gen Z staff to be impactful through their careers.

Gen Z careers may also follow a trajectory different from that of prior generations. Outside of working, Gen Z is also planning for their personal futures, which may look different from the traditional path. The survey finds less than half (48%) feel getting married someday is very or extremely important. Similarly, only 48% feel having children someday is very or extremely important, and the median age they would like to be when they have children is 30.

Using their voice and getting involved

Gen Z is the newest voting generation, and even after a great deal of polarization in politics in 2020, more Gen Z still label themselves moderates (40%) compared with being liberal (32%) or conservative (22%), which is a consistent spread to the 2019 findings (39%, 28%, 25%, respectively).

But despite the bulk of the generation self-declaring themselves as moderate, Gen Z collectively still shifts toward activism when it comes to issues that matter to them. When asked how much of a problem certain issues are in the country, the majority agrees drug addiction/abuse (87%), racism (85%), climate change (81%) and gun violence (80%) are significant problems. Additionally, more than a third (36%) have participated in a political rally or protest, signed a petition for a cause they agree with, or supported a political movement.

Protecting the planet's future

Environmental issues and sustainable practices are growing in importance for Gen Z and are something that can't be ignored by any business trying to connect with the generation. The majority (55%) of Gen Z said they are very or extremely interested in environmental issues, up from 40% in 2019, and a striking 81% believe climate change is a problem for the United States.

Gen Z is doing more than voicing their opinion too; they are taking action and putting their money where their mouth is to make a difference. Six in 10 (61%) recycle regularly, and, most notably for businesses, 57% think it is very or extremely important to buy from brands that protect and preserve the environment. Additionally, 71% report buying or having bought for themselves at least one used clothing item since March 2020.

"Youth have historically been the drivers of cultural change, whether it's fashion, music, the adoption of new technology or business. Social and cultural change is often determined through how they spend their money, where they decide to work and the opinions they voice. Businesses seeking to understand which changes are fleeting trends and which will become cultural norms need to look no further than Gen Z," says Marcie Merriman. "The research shows us that concerns related to mental health, climate change and social justice will remain top of mind for this outspoken group, and companies looking to attract this dynamic generation will need to find a way to share the voice on these critical issues."

Implications for businesses

Acceleration is happening in seven key areas, and Gen Z is squarely in the center of it all. As these societal changes take place  if companies understand Gen Z, they'll understand what's "next." Looking at these implications through the lens of Gen Z begins to show where these things are going, how society at large will be affected and how the other generations will have to learn to adapt to Gen Z's speed.

Digital acceleration: Gen Z will be early adopters and will push new technologies further into the mainstream. Businesses must embrace digital transformation and disruptive technologies in order to meet appropriately the needs of the digitally native Gen Z. Intentional consumerism: Given their unprecedented access to information and the innate ability to use it, Gen Z not only influences family purchase decisions more than youth of past generations, but they are driving purchases in key categories, from automobiles to furniture and groceries. They will flock to brands that share their values. Purpose and ESG: For Gen Z, sustainability is now a matter of trust. Companies must consider Gen Z's role in every part of the business  from sourcing and packaging, to operations, footprint and investments. Trust, transparency and authenticity: Gen Z sniffs out inauthenticity with ease. They won't overtly demand trust and transparency, but they will silently block a person or brand (literally and figuratively) from their lives and will have distaste for anything that looks, feels or is, to them, "fake." Health matters: Members of Gen Z are admittedly high-stress, anxiety-ridden and untrusting of the world around them, but they are open and willing to address mental health as an issue. Companies that understand this will recognize the need for Gen Z to find holistic outlets for mind and body in all aspects of their lives, not just in terms of fitness or nutrition. Workplace culture: Gen Z puts higher stakes into finding fulfilling careers where they are valued, vs. making money. They will remain loyal to companies that align with their personal values and make them feel their contributions are appreciated. Connected experiences: Brands and employers will need to be cognizant of this generation's deeply intertwined digital and physical identities and consider the life cycle of the connected experience both virtually and in-person.

Gen Z continues to influence the workplace, economy and society, and understanding how they see and approach the world will remain important for employers, marketers, technologists, business leaders and more. Additional Gen Z insights are available here.

2021 Gen Z Segmentation Study methodology

Ernst & Young LLP surveyed a representative sample of 1,509 members of Gen Z from across the United States. The online survey was completed between March 24, 2021, and April 8, 2021. To be considered a member of Generation Z, a person had to have been born between January 1, 1997 (age 24 in 2021) and December 31, 2007 (age 14 in 2021). The survey recruited 40% ages 1417 and 60% ages 1824.

About EY

EY exists to build a better working world, helping create long-term value for clients, people and society and build trust in the capital markets.

Enabled by data and technology, diverse EY teams in over 150 countries provide trust through assurance and help clients grow, transform and operate.

Working across assurance, consulting, law, strategy, tax and transactions, EY teams ask better questions to find new answers for the complex issues facing our world today.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more of the member firms of

Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. Information about how EY collects and uses personal data and a description of the rights individuals have under data protection legislation are available via ey.com/privacy. EY member firms do not practice law where prohibited by local laws. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com .

This news release has been issued by Ernst & Young LLP, a member firm of EY serving clients in the US.

[1] The segmentation name, "Big Plans, Low Energy" from the report released on January 29, 2020, has been renamed to "Big Dreamers."

SOURCE EY

Related Links

http://www.ey.com


SEATTLE, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DigniFi, a leading fintech platform for the automotive industry, today announced that Neeraj Mehta has been named Chief Executive Officer, replacing Richard Counihan whose guidance and expertise were instrumental in significantly growing the company during his five-year tenure by expanding to 32 states, launching a revolving line of credit program with WebBank called DigniFi ExpressWay, and cementing a partnership with industry giant AutoNation.

Richard Counihan will support Neeraj Mehta and continue serving DigniFi by taking a seat on its board of directors.

Mehta, who helped lead the spinoff of Synchrony from GE Capital, joins DigniFi with an outstanding track record in consumer fintech, payment solutions, and nonprofit leadership. He will build upon DigniFi's mission of delivering access to financing for consumers in need and revenue growth to small businesses.

"Neeraj has significant domain expertise in the industries that fuel DigniFi's mission and strategy," said Lanham Napier, co-founder and CEO of BuildGroup, DigniFi's lead investor. "Under his leadership, DigniFi has the potential to become a multifaceted fintech platform that aligns the interests of consumers, businesses, and lenders. We have tremendous respect for Neeraj's accomplishments and value the experience he brings to DigniFi."

A results-focused chief executive with vast financial services experience, Mehta is best known for his work at GE Capital and Synchrony. After serving as CEO of GE Bank Loans (2007-2012) and Commercial Distribution Finance (2012-2015), Mehta joined the executive team that separated Synchrony from GE Capital with a $20B IPO in 2015.

As EVP of Corporate Strategy and Development for Synchrony, Mehta launched key digital products and point-of-sale initiatives and completed two acquisitions, plus 10 venture investments, to drive growth. Later, as CEO of Payment Solutions and Chief Commercial Officer (2018-2021), he was responsible for an approximately $20B consumer finance portfolio that represented close to $500M in net income.

Mehta comes to DigniFi from United Way, where he served as Interim President and CEO, focused on strengthening the culture and digitizing its service model to drive community impact. Neeraj has had a long association with United Way, serving as a volunteer, donor, and corporate campaign chair while also serving on the Metropolitan Chicago Board of Directors, the Worldwide Board of Trustees, and the USA Board of Trustees.

Mehta earned his Master's degree in Finance and Banking at Syracuse University and a Bachelor's in Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. In addition to serving on several for-profit startup boards, Mehta is a member of the Advisory Board at Teach for America and a partner of the Acumen Fund, a global nonprofit that supports third-world entrepreneurs.

"DigniFi's investors, executives, and partners are dedicated to the critical combination of taking care of our customers and driving growth. I was enthralled by this opportunity to join a thoughtful team that reflects the diversity of the communities it serves." said Mehta. "DigniFi is meeting a deep need among underserved consumers and small businesses that are often overlooked. DigniFi has the technology, talent, and vision to ethically provide access to funding for consumers' critical purchases. Leading a mission-driven company in the fintech and automotive industries aligns with my values, experience, and skillset."

About DigniFi

DigniFi is a platform company that connects consumers to financing that can be used for auto repairs, parts and accessories, warranty, and maintenance packages, and more. The automated, contactless process serves up financial products through the point of sale at auto dealerships and independent repair shops. All credit products are originated by WebBank. To date, DigniFi has helped consumers access almost $200 million USD in financing through partnerships with over 6,000 vehicle service centers across the nation. For more information, visit DigniFi.com.

Contact:

Amy Dardinger

[email protected]

SOURCE DigniFi
The products are high dosage, full spectrum formulations derived from FoliuMeds proprietary genetics, produced under Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and commercialized with the customers brands. Oral solutions remain the main form in which medical cannabis is being prescribed in South America, a market which consultancy Prohibition Partners expect to grow to 750 M USD with Brazil and Colombia accounting for about half of the expected patient numbers.

"As the deregulation of Latin America accelerates, we decided to offer turnkey, white label solutions," says FoliuMed founder and CEO Oliver Zugel. "By growing in Colombia and manufacturing in Germany, we combine German pharma quality with proven therapeutic benefits at an affordable price  which is essential when dealing with skeptical doctors and patients who simply cant afford to pay 100 USD for a monthly dose."

FoliuMeds product portfolio currently includes 15 products including oral solutions, soft gels and topicals. "By 2022, we will be able to also add medical cannabis flower to the portfolio which until now was not permitted to be exported from Colombia," says FoliuMeds co-founder and Latam CEO Diego Navarro.

About FoliuMed

FoliuMed is a privately owned medical cannabis company founded in 2018 providing affordable, efficacious medical cannabis products "made in Germany, grown in Colombia". Since its inception, it has exported to 8 countries and works as a contract manufacturer and white label producer for some of the leading cannabis players in Germany, Australia, the US and South America.

SOURCE FoliuMed
The Disinterested Members of the Board of Directors of Gage Growth Unanimously Recommend Shareholders Vote "For" the Arrangement

DETROIT and TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Gage Growth Corp. ("Gage" or the "Company") (CSE: GAGE), a leading high-quality premium cannabis brand and operator in Michigan, today reminds the shareholders (the "Company Shareholders") of Gage to cause their subordinate voting shares ("Company Subordinate Voting Shares") and super voting shares to be voted in connection with the upcoming special meeting of Company Shareholders (the "Meeting") on November 11, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. (Toronto time). The Meeting will be held via live webcast at http://web.lumiagm.com/252578815. The deadline for Company Shareholders to vote by proxy is 10:00 a.m. (Toronto time) on November 9, 2021.

At the Meeting, Company Shareholders will be asked to vote on the proposed acquisition by TerrAscend Corp. ("TerrAscend") of all of the outstanding Company Subordinate Voting Shares by way of a plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") under Section 192 of the Canada Business Corporations Act based on an arrangement agreement between the Company and TerrAscend dated August 31, 2021, as amended effective October 4, 2021 (the "Arrangement Agreement"). If the Arrangement becomes effective, the Company Shareholders will ultimately be entitled to 0.3001 of a TerrAscend common share for each Company Subordinate Voting Share held (the "Exchange Ratio"), subject to adjustment in accordance with the Arrangement Agreement. For more information regarding the Arrangement, please see the management information circular of the Company dated October 12, 2021 prepared in connection with the Meeting (the "Circular"), which is available on the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

The Circular contains certain important information, including a description of the key terms and conditions of the Arrangement and a summary of certain risk factors relating to the Arrangement. The Circular also includes the background, the main benefits and transaction rationale that led to the disinterested members of the Gage board of directors (the "Gage Board") to recommend the Arrangement to the Company Shareholders and their reasons for doing so.

After consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and on the unanimous recommendation of the independent special committee of the Gage Board (the "Company Special Committee"), the disinterested members of the Gage Board unanimously: (i) determined that the Arrangement is in the best interests of the Company; (ii) determined that the consideration payable to the Company Shareholders pursuant to the Arrangement is fair, from a financial point of view, to the Company Shareholders; (iii) approved the Arrangement, the Arrangement Agreement and the Company's performance of its obligations thereunder; and (iv) resolved to recommend that the Company Shareholders vote FOR the resolution authorizing the Arrangement.

In order for the Arrangement to be effective, the Arrangement must be approved by at least two-thirds (66 2/3%) of the votes cast by Company Shareholders, present or represented by proxy at the Meeting and entitled to vote. In addition, the Arrangement must be approved by a simple majority of the Company Shareholders present or represented by proxy at the Meeting and entitled to vote, excluding Gage shares directly or indirectly held or controlled by Mike Hermiz, Jason Wild and Richard Mavrinac in accordance with Multilateral Instrument 61-101  Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Arrangement is also subject to certain other conditions, including (i) the approval of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List), (ii) approval of a simple majority of the TerrAscend shareholders (excluding for these purposes any TerrAscend shares directly or indirectly held or controlled by Jason Wild and Richard Mavrinac) in accordance with MI 61-101, and (iii) the receipt of certain cannabis regulatory approvals in the State of Michigan.

It is expected that the Arrangement will be completed as soon as possible after receipt of the applicable shareholder, court and other regulatory approvals and satisfaction or waiver of all other conditions in the Arrangement Agreement. However, it is not possible to state with certainty when or if the closing of the Arrangement will occur.

If you have any questions or require assistance with voting your proxy, please contact Gage at 1-(833)-455-4243 or by email at [email protected].

Supplemental Disclosure

In addition to the disclosure set out in the Circular regarding the background and transaction rationale that led to the disinterested members of the Gage Board to recommend the Arrangement, the Company would like to provide the following additional disclosure.

As discussed under the heading "The Arrangement  Background to the Arrangement" in the Circular, during the months of February and March 2021, Gage and TerrAscend (the "Parties") had initial discussions around various strategic transaction alternatives and performed initial site visits at certain of their respective cultivation facilities; however, discussions remained preliminary in nature at this stage as Gage was focused on completing its direct listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE"). Following the listing of the Company Subordinate Voting Shares on the CSE, representatives from Gage, including Fabian Monaco, David Watza, Mike Hermiz and Rami Reda, reengaged in discussions with representatives from TerrAscend. Gage was provided with a draft non-binding letter of intent on May 10, 2021 (the "Letter of Intent"), which included certain indicative terms of the proposed Arrangement. Upon receipt of the draft Letter of Intent, management of the Company disclosed the draft Letter of Intent to the disinterested members of the Company Board.

The discussions between TerrAscend and Gage continued in meetings held in-person on May 12 and 13, 2021 in Michigan, with representatives of Gage and TerrAscend in attendance. During these meetings, the merits of a proposed acquisition of Gage by TerrAscend were discussed, as were the proposed indicative terms of the Letter of Intent, including a preliminary proposed pro-forma ownership calculation, in the context of a potential acquisition of all of the outstanding securities of Gage by TerrAscend in an all-stock transaction. Given the non-binding and speculative nature of the draft Letter of Intent, the Gage Board was comfortable with aforementioned persons taking the primary responsibility for the negotiation of the Letter Intent, with the appropriate oversight and approval from the rest of the disinterested members of the Gage Board.

Promptly following the execution of the Letter of Intent, the Company Board formed the Company Special Committee, consisting of Bruce Linton and Dr. Rana Harb, who were independent directors of Gage, to supervise the negotiation of the proposed Arrangement. As further disclosed in the Circular, the Company Special Committee closely oversaw the extensive negotiations over the course of the following three and half months, which culminated with the execution of the Arrangement Agreement on August 31, 2021.

Prior to the Arrangement Agreement being signed by the Parties, the Company Special Committee (including Dr. Harb, the independent member of the Company Special Committee with respect to Mr. Linton) was provided with and assessed information relating to the value of the benefits that certain related parties of Gage (including Mr. Linton) are entitled to receive as a result of the Arrangement. The information reflected the fact that the 30,000 restricted units of Company (the "Company RSUs") held by Mr. Linton would, in accordance with the terms of the Arrangement Agreement, automatically vest (regardless of other vesting conditions) on the closing of the Arrangement (along with all other Company RSUs issued and outstanding as of the closing date). Such benefit was calculated, using customary methodology, to be less than 5% of the consideration that Mr. Linton is entitled to receive pursuant to the Arrangement. In connection with its recommendations regarding the approval of the Arrangement, the Company Special Committee determined that the only person expected to receive a "collateral benefit" pursuant to the Arrangement was Mike Hermiz (all as further disclosed in the Circular). Given that the value of the benefit to be received by Mr. Linton was below the requisite threshold discussed above, Mr. Linton was not determined to be receiving a "collateral benefit" in reliance on clause (c)(iv)(B) of the definition of "collateral benefit" set out in MI 61-101. No value was ascribed to the anticipated repayment of the C$1.4 million unsecured debentures (the "Company Debentures") held by Mr. Linton, as such Company Debentures were expected to be repaid in accordance with their terms prior to the closing of the Arrangement. Subsequent to the execution of the Arrangement Agreement, the repayment period of such Company Debentures was extended (and is now expected to occur concurrent with the closing of the Arrangement). No additional benefits were conferred on the holders of the Company Debentures in connection with such extension and all holders of Company Debentures will continue to be treated pari passu.

For more information regarding the Company Special Committee's determinations with respect to the value of the benefits that certain related parties of Gage, other than Mr. Linton, are entitled to receive as a consequent of the Arrangement, see the sections entitled "The Arrangement  Interests of Certain Persons in the Arrangement" and "Securities Law Matters  Securities Laws  Application of Multilateral Instrument 61-101" in the Circular.

About Gage Growth Corp.

Gage Growth Corp. is innovating and curating the highest quality cannabis experiences possible for cannabis consumers in the state of Michigan and bringing internationally renowned brands to market. Through years of progressive industry experience, the firm's founding partners have successfully built and grown operations with federal and state licenses, including cultivation, processing and retail locations. Gage's portfolio includes city and state approvals for 19 "Class C" cultivation licenses, three processing licenses and 15 provisioning centers (dispensaries).

For more information about Gage Growth Corp., visit www.gagecannabis.com or www.gageinvestors.com.

Instagram: @gagecannabis

Facebook: @gageusa

Twitter: @gagecannabisco

Caution Regarding Cannabis Operations in the United States

Investors should note that there are significant legal restrictions and regulations that govern the cannabis industry in the United States. While legal in certain states, cannabis remains a Schedule I drug under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, making it illegal under federal law in the United States to, among other things, cultivate, distribute or possess cannabis. Financial transactions involving proceeds generated by, or intended to promote, cannabis-related business activities in the United States may form the basis for prosecution under applicable U.S. federal money laundering legislation.

Explanatory Note Regarding the Company's Operations

References in this news release to the Company and its operations and portfolio are inclusive of the operations and assets of certain licensed cannabis operators that operate under the Gage brand pursuant to contractual arrangements with the Company. For additional information, please refer to the Company's long form prospectus dated March 26, 2021 and other disclosure documents available on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

Forward Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as, "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "expect", "anticipate", "believe, "intend", "plan", "forecast", "project", "estimate", "outlook" and other similar expressions, and include, but are not limited to statements with respect to the anticipated completion of the Arrangement and the satisfaction of closing conditions of the Arrangement which include, without limitation: (i) required court and Gage and TerrAscend shareholder approvals, (ii) obtaining the necessary approvals from the CSE for the listing of the TerrAscend securities issuable in connection with the Arrangement; (iii) the required state and municipal regulatory approvals; and (iv) other approvals and closing conditions contained in the Arrangement Agreement; and statements with respect to the anticipated effects and benefits of the Arrangement. Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and is based upon a number of estimates and assumptions of management in light of management's experience and perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors relevant in the circumstances, including assumptions in respect of current and future market conditions, the current and future regulatory environment; and the availability of licenses, approvals and permits.

Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information including, but not limited to, those risks disclosed in the Company's most recently filed management's discussion and analysis and other disclosure documents available on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Gage Cannabis Co.
"We feel very honored to work with renowned winemaker Julien Fayard again," said John Bagan, Chief Operating Officer for Gelson's. "He has an outstanding reputation earning high acclaim from his native France to the Napa Valley. It is our privilege to have him be part of the Gelson's family. We are excited that Gelson's will continue to make superior quality wines from Julien available exclusively to thousands of our wine-loving customers across Southern California."

Gelson's customers will have the rare opportunity to meet and participate in a virtual Zoom wine presentation with Fayard, the highly respected winemaker, on November 16th at 6pm. Fayard will share his knowledge and vast experience with attendees. The wines will be paired with a Gelson's custom cheese and charcuterie plate. To RSVP visit gelsons.com/julien. Signups close November 12th at 10pm. Marking his fourth collaboration with Gelson's, Fayard said, "Striving for excellence in all areas resonates with the long history of Gelson's. The Gelson's customer knows quality and appreciates the finest products."

The new wines include:

Epicure Series Cabernet Sauvignon - Howell Mountain

This limited-release, single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon comes from grapes grown on Howell Mountain in Napa Valley. The distinctive terroir  particularly the mountain altitude  results in a wine that is rich and luscious yet elegant and beautifully layered. You'll find ripe black fruit on the nose and on the palate, complemented by dark spices and licorice. Aging for 20 months in new French oak creates polished tannins and balanced structure.

Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon - Mt. Veeder

Known for its unique climate, Mt. Veeder in Napa Valley has hillside vineyards that produce fine wines with great ripeness and maturity. The palate reveals good acidity, supple texture, and graceful balance. A classic expression of the Mt. Veeder AVA in a modern style, this Cabernet Sauvignon is fermented in tanks and aged in new French oak for 20 months, highlighting spice notes and lending subtle layers.

Other wines created by Fayard under the Gelson's brand include a Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon- Coombsville, Reserve Sauvignon Blanc-Rutherford, Reserve Cabernet Franc-Oakville, Red Cuvee, Malbec and Rose.

SOURCE Gelsons
"We are pleased to announce our new investments in diagnostics for tuberculosis, a vaccine and drug for malaria, and drug discovery for Chagas diseases," said GHIT's acting CEO Kio Yamabe. "Even in the midst of a pandemic, we are committed to advancing product development for patients suffering from neglected diseases by strengthening partnerships with R&D and funding partners."

A Diagnostic for Tuberculosis

GHIT will invest 83.4 million yen (US$733K) in evaluating the performance of the Lung Flute/Lung Flute ECO to improve sputum-based TB diagnosis primarily in vulnerable groups in a TB-endemic setting. The Lung Flute, invented in the early 2000s, is a positive expiratory pressure (PEP) device that creates sound waves that, when blown, loosens phlegm in the lungs and enables individuals to increase the quantity and quality of sputum they can produce. The Lung Flute ECO is a more recently developed paper-based version of the Lung Flute that is inexpensive enough to be used as a disposable, point-of-care tool to aid in sputum production in low-resource settings.

A Vaccine and Drug for Malaria

GHIT will also invest 469 million yen (US$4.1M) in clinical development of two Placental Malaria (PM) vaccine candidates known as PAMVAC and PRIMVAC. PM constitutes a major health problem, causing an estimated 10,000 maternal and 200,000 infant deaths annually. Animal immunization and clinical trial data and results show lasting immune responses and have demonstrated that both adjuvanted vaccine candidates are safe and well-tolerated. However, further optimization of the current candidates is essential to address emerging different variants. GHIT will make another investment of 83.8 million yen (US$737K) in malaria drug development for a new drug design approach known as PROteolysis-TArgeting Chimeras or PROTACs. PROTACs acts not as an inhibitor of target functions, but as a protein degrader hijacking the proteasome to destroy target proteins.

Chagas Drug Discovery

GHIT will also invest 98.9 million yen (US$870K) in further development of novel anti-Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) drugs acting against the selected target identified in a previous GHIT-invested study: the T. cruzi autophagy-regulating factor that is essential to the T. cruzi life cycle.

Finally, GHIT will invest 19.8 million yen (US$170K) for drug screening programs. In collaboration with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited will conduct a screening for hit identification for Chagas disease by utilizing their compound libraries.

As of November 4, there are 63 ongoing projects, including 29 discovery, 24 preclinical and 10 clinical trials, in the GHIT portfolio (Appendix 3). The total amount of investments since 2013 is 26.9 billion yen (US$236 million).

* USD1 = JPY113.68, the approximate exchange rate on October 29, 2021. ** These awarded projects were selected from a number of proposals to the RFP2021-001 for Target Research Platform, Screening Platform, Hit-to-Lead Platform, and Product Development Platform, which was open for applications from November 2020 to July 2021. The GHIT board conducted in July 2021 approved these new investments.

The GHIT Fund is a Japan-based international public-private partnership fund (PPP) between the Government of Japan, multiple pharmaceutical companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The GHIT Fund invests and manages an R&D portfolio of development partnerships aimed at neglected diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases that afflict the world's vulnerable and underserved populations. The GHIT Fund mobilizes the Japanese industry, academia, and research institutes to create new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases, in collaboration with global partners.

Appendix.1 New Investments

ID/Status Project Title Collaboration Partners Disease/Intervention Stage Awarded Amount G2021-114 New project Viability & Value of the Lung Flute ECO for Sputum Sample Collection and Tuberculosis Testing in Vulnerable Groups (3V Trial) Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Acoustic Innovation (AI), Institute for Tropical Medicine (ITM), Center for Health Promotion and Research (CHPR) also known as the TB Reference Laboratory Bamenda (TRLB) Tuberculosis Diagnostics Product Development 83,373,809 (US$733,408) G2020-214 New project Clinical development of placental malaria vaccine candidates Ehime University (Ehime), European Vaccine Initiative (EVI), University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Institut national de la sante et de la recherche medicale (Inserm), Institut de recherche pour le developpement, Groupe de Recherche Action en Sante (GRAS), Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research Malaria Vaccine Pre-Clinical Development 469,292,404 (US$4,128,188) S2021-121 New project Screening project between Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and DNDi Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Chagas Disease Drug Hit Identification 8,994,695 (US$79,123) S2021-122 New project Screening project between Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited and DNDi Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Chagas Disease Drug Hit Identification 10,976,301 (US$96,554) T2021-152 New project Identification and Validation of potential Plasmodium E3 Ligases for PROTAC Platform FIMECS, Inc., National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC) Malaria Drug Target Identification 83,858,773 (US$737,674) T2021-153 Continued project Autophagy as a novel drug-development target for Chagas disease National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Chagas Disease Drug Target Identification 98,920,080 (US$870,163)



*All amounts are listed at the exchange rate of USD1 = JPY113.68, the approximate exchange rate on October 29, 2021.

Appendix.2 Project Details

G2021-114

Project Title Viability & Value of the Lung Flute ECO for Sputum Sample Collection and Tuberculosis Testing in Vulnerable Groups (3V Trial) Collaboration

Partners Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Acoustic Innovation (AI), Institute for Tropical Medicine (ITM), Center for Health Promotion and Research (CHPR) also known as the TB Reference Laboratory Bamenda (TRLB) Disease Tuberculosis Intervention Diagnostics Stage Product Development Awarded Amount 83,373,809 (US$733,408) Status New project Summary [Project objective] The primary objective is to evaluate the proportion of presumptive TB clients who test positive for TB after using the Lung Flute ECO or the Lung Flute HR, as compared to the standard of care with no device to aid in sputum production. The secondary objectives are: 1. To compare the proportion of presumptive TB clients who are able to submit sputum samples for testing after using Lung Flute ECO prototype, Lung Flute HR and the standard of care 2. To compare average quality and quantity of sputum samples submitted using Lung Flute ECO prototype, Lung Flute, and the standard of care 3. To assess the feasibility, safety, user satisfaction, and cost effectiveness of the Lung Flute ECO prototype and the Lung Flute HR as compared to the standard of care [Project design] We will evaluate performance of the Lung Flute ECO and the Lung Flute HR across multiple sites in Cameroon. The study focuses on evaluating test access and accuracy in patient groups with documented challenges to produce sputum on demand, including children 6-14 years of age, women, the elderly, people living with HIV, people admitted to hospital, and asymptomatic persons screening positive for TB by digital chest x-ray. Project Detail https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfoliodetail/detail/194/en

G2020-214

Project Title Clinical development of placental malaria vaccine candidates Collaboration

Partners Ehime University (Ehime), European Vaccine Initiative (EVI), University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Institut national de la sante et de la recherche medicale (Inserm), Institut de recherche pour le developpement, Groupe de Recherche Action en Sante (GRAS), Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research Disease Malaria Intervention Vaccine Stage Pre-Clinical Development Awarded Amount 469,292,404 (US$4,128,188) Status New project Summary [Project objective] This project will advance and accelerate the development of a PM vaccine by establishing a global portfolio of vaccine candidates that will be evaluated according to the following objectives: 1. Objective 1: to assess the longevity of the immune response induced by PRIMVAC through an extended follow up of PRIMVAC vaccinated women in Burkina Faso 2. Objective 2: to assess the capacity of adjuvanted PRIMVAC to boost naturally acquired VAR2CSA specific immune responses 3. Objective 3: to assess the potential of a capsid-like particle (CLP) based vaccine formulation to increase vaccine induced immune responses 4. Objective 4: to evaluate cross-reactivity of the immune responses induced by VAR2CSA antigens Generated data will inform the next steps of PM vaccine development, will allow a decision on the formulation for further development and the preparation of a larger phase II immunogenicity study. [Project design] Recombinant soluble proteins are often thought to induce an immune response of insufficient strength and breadth to confer full protection. However, we have observed that our vaccine candidates, especially PRIMVAC, produced a lasting immune response. We propose therefore to further characterize the longevity of the PRIMVAC-induced immune response in women in malaria-endemic areas, as well as the capacity of the vaccine to boost and broaden a natural acquired immune response. We will also undertake an in-depth analysis of the cross-reactivity against the different haplotypes by the immune response elicited by the PM vaccine candidates. Additionally, we propose to undertake the pre-clinical development of PAMVAC-CLP. PAMVAC-CLP is an improved version of PAMVAC, where a capsid-like particle (CLP) has been added as backbone, thereby potentially improving immunogenicity, cross-reactivity and longevity of the induced immune response. Taken together, PRIMVAC and PAMVAC-CLP, together with additional PRIMVAC variants in early pre-clinical evaluation constitute a promising portfolio of PM vaccine candidates. Project Detail https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfoliodetail/detail/195/en

S2021-121

Project Title Screening project between Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and DNDi Collaboration

Partners Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Disease Chagas Disease Intervention Drug Stage Hit Identification Awarded Amount 8,994,695 (US$79,123) Status New project Summary This is a screening project between Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and DNDi. Project Detail https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfoliodetail/detail/198/en

S2021-122

Project Title Screening project between Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited and DNDi Collaboration

Partners Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Disease Chagas Disease Intervention Drug Stage Target Identification Awarded Amount 10,976,301 (US$96,554) Status New project Summary This is a screening project between Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited and DNDi. Project Detail https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfoliodetail/detail/199/en

T2021-152

Project Title Identification and Validation of potential Plasmodium E3 Ligases for PROTAC Platform Collaboration

Partners FIMECS, Inc., National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC) Disease Malaria Intervention Drug Stage Target Identification Awarded Amount 83,858,773 (US$737,674) Status New project Summary [Project objective] To identify a chemical warhead(s) that can recruit a parasite ubiquitin E3 ligase(s) to degrade a target parasite protein, which will constitute a platform for the design of protein degrader antimalarials. [Project design] We will design and synthesize a library of protein degraders for degradation experiments. The test compounds will be designed with various chemical warheads against a variety of ubiquitin E3 ligases joined to a warhead specific to the Plasmodium parasite bifunctional dihydrofolate reductase-thymidylate synthase, a well-studied parasite protein. The protein degrader that trigger target protein degradation will be used for designing follow-on compounds, including probe compounds for biochemical characterization of Plasmodium ubiquitin E3 ligase(s) that interact with the ubiquitin E3 ligase warhead and those protein degraders for optimizing the degradation of target. Project Detail https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfoliodetail/detail/196/en

T2021-153

Project Title Autophagy as a novel drug-development target for Chagas disease Collaboration

Partners National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Disease Chagas Disease Intervention Drug Stage Target Identification Awarded Amount 98,920,080 (US$870,163) Status Continued project Summary [Project objective] The overall goal of this project is to obtain initial hit compounds amenable for further development as novel anti-T. cruzi drugs acting through inhibition of the parasite autophagy-regulating factor. [Project design] To achieve the goals of the project, we use two different but complementary screening approaches, a Fragment-Based Drug Discovery (FBDD) approach and a "classical" screening of an anti-T. cruzi compound library (the DNDi library) against the autophagy-regulating factor target. For the FBDD approach, we employ the DNA-encoded library (DEL) technology, where two fragments are intended to bind simultaneously to the protein in the same vicinity. On the other hand, the DNDi library consists of compounds already confirmed to have promising intracellular anti-T. cruzi activity in whole cell-based assays. In this project, we will require that both the identified hits and the target protein be druggable. We consider that the ideal initial hit compound should not only bind to the drug target and inhibit enzyme activity, but also have a protein-compound binding state that will facilitate subsequent modification during Hit-To-Lead and Lead Optimization steps. Since this requires a structural understanding of the compound-protein interactions, determination of the three-dimensional structures of the hit compound-target molecule complexes will be a critical part of this project, as well. Notably, hit compounds obtained from the FBDD approach will be initially selected based only on their target-binding and enzyme inhibition activity independently of their pharmacological activities. The identified compounds must have the potential to evolve and be optimized during the subsequent development stages to acquire the required properties. Project Detail https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfoliodetail/detail/197/en



*All amounts are listed at the exchange rate of USD1 = JPY113.68, the approximate exchange rate on October 29, 2021.

Appendix.3 Investment Overview (As of November 4, 2021)

1. Investment to date

Total investments 26.9 billion yen (US$236 million*)

Total invested projects 111active projects 63, completed projects 48

Portfolio analysis (active projects + completed projects)

To know more about GHIT investments, please visit

Investment Overview: https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/overview/en

Portfolio: https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/portfolio/en

Advancing Portfolio: https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/advancingportfolio/en

Clinical Candidates: https://www.ghitfund.org/investment/clinicalcandidates/en

For more information, contact:

Katy Lenard at +1-301-280-5719 or [email protected]

Bumpei Tamamura at +81-36441-2032 or [email protected]

SOURCE GHIT Fund

Related Links

https://www.ghitfund.org


DUBLIN, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Offshore AUV and ROV - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Global Offshore AUV and ROV Market to Reach $7.2 Billion by 2026

The global market for Offshore AUV and ROV estimated at US$3.3 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$7.2 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 14.3% over the analysis period.

ROV, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 13.6% CAGR to reach US$6 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the AUV segment is readjusted to a revised 16.4% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 25% share of the global Offshore AUV and ROV market.

The rising use of ROVs in a variety of industries, including search & rescue, marine biology, military, oil and gas, submerged infrastructure, and aquaculture, as well as advancements in ROV technology, is anticipated to drive growth in the segment. The need for big AUVs for military and defense applications, as well as oil and gas exploration, is driving the expansion of the AUV market segment.

Offshore AUVs are utilized extensively for mapping seafloor by surveying the platforms or to distinguish the chemical, biological, or physical properties of the water. Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) have become more important in the offshore sector of the oil and gas industry for subsea construction and drilling support to allow deep-water exploration and development projects throughout the world.

From decommissioning projects to exploration drilling, ROVs are widely used in the offshore sector. End-users are increasingly adopting AUV and ROV as a result of the high utilization of fossil fuels. The ever-increasing need for hydrocarbons has prompted corporations to concentrate their efforts on offshore drilling to boost green energy.

In recent years, the importance of AUVs in researching seafloors before the installation of subsea infrastructure has driven demand for AUVs. Incorporating technologies like sensor-based steering and intelligent control systems are also expected to contribute to market growth.



The U.S. Market is Estimated at $597.6 Million in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $522.3 Million by 2026

The Offshore AUV and ROV market in the U.S. is estimated at US$597.6 Million in the year 2021. The country currently accounts for a 16.7% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$522.3 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 13.7% through the analysis period.

Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 10.8% and 11.5% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 11.3% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$605.1 Million by the end of the analysis period.

The rising usage of ROV & AUV in the oil and gas industries has been instrumental in the growth of the offshore ROV and AUV market in the Middle East, the largest regional market. Another factor boosting the market in the area is the growing global demand for oil and gas-based goods.

Presence of several oil-producing countries in the Middle East and Latin America is a key factor for large markets of offshore ROV and AUV in these regions. North America is another key market, due to growing number of oil & gas projects, particularly in the United States and Mexico.

Key Topics Covered:



I. METHODOLOGY



II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



1. MARKET OVERVIEW

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic and Looming Global Recession: 2020 Marked as a Year of Disruption & Transformation

Amidst the COVID-19 Outbreak, Oil & Gas Sector Confronts Challenging Times

Defense Cuts amid COVID-19 Crisis Slows Down the Demand for Offshore AUVs and ROVs in 2020

An Introduction to Offshore AUV & ROV

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)

Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV)

Global Market Prospects & Outlook

Analysis by Product

Analysis by Application

Competitive Scenario

Recent Market Activity

2. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS (Total 48 Featured)

AtlasElektronikGmbh

Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc.

Deep Ocean Group

DOF Subsea AS

Fugro NV

General Dynamics Mission Systems, Inc.

Helix Energy Solutions Group

Houston Mechatronics Inc.

Kongsberg Maritime AS

Oceaneering International, Inc.

SAAB AB

Saipem SpA

Subsea 7 S.A.

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated

3. MARKET TRENDS & DRIVERS

Established Role in Defense Applications Sustains Market Momentum

Fast Evolving Role of Unmanned Vessels in Military Applications to Drive Market Expansion

Critical Importance of UAVs & ROVs in Oil & Gas Sector Augurs Well

Sluggish Tide in Oil & Gas Sector Niggles Market Momentum

Scientific Research: High Growth Vertical

UAVs & ROVs Seek Role in Commercial Diving Applications

Rise of Environmental Monitoring as Mainstream Concept Enthuses Market

Hydrography Survey Made Easier with UAVs and ROVs

Rising Emphasis on Marine Biotechnology Bodes Well

Technology Advancements & Innovations Widen the Addressable Market

Engineered Plastics Enhance Performance of ROVs & UAVs

4. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE

III. REGIONAL MARKET ANALYSIS

IV. COMPETITION

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/p05dim

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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SOURCE Research and Markets

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All new gorjana storefronts are outfitted with signature details including light, mango wood finishes, brass hardware details, live greenery and blue, bohemian shibori fabrics reminiscent of the Pacific Ocean. The welcoming, airy spaces will help to display the brand's latest and greatest collections from best-selling layering sets to power gemstones.

"We have recently been taking the steps to prioritize brick and mortar as we've seen great results over the last year. We really are seeing customers wanting to shop in-store more than ever.

In the holiday season of 2017, we only had three stores and this holiday season we will end the year with 26. To open 24 stores in just 4 years is unbelievable and we are thrilled to be on this adventure. It's really special to be able to bring our unique retail experience to different parts of the country  we like to say we're bringing a piece of our home, Laguna Beach, to every new location." - Jason Griffin Reidel, CEO

gorjana retail opening dates and locations for 2021:

Saturday, November 6th, 2021 - 3200 Sepulveda Blvd, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266, Size: 1,412 sq ft.

- 3200 Sepulveda Blvd, 90266, Size: 1,412 sq ft. Friday, November 12th, 2021 - 209 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116, Size: 1,205 sq ft.

- 209 Newbury Street, 02116, Size: 1,205 sq ft. Wednesday, November 17th, 2021 - Relocation to 1419 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291, Size: 1,150 sq ft.

- Relocation to 1419 Abbot Kinney Blvd, 90291, Size: 1,150 sq ft. Wednesday, December 15th, 2021 - Pendry Residences Park City Plaza, 2417 W High Mountain Road, Park City, UT 84098, Size: 765 sq ft.

- Pendry Residences Park City Plaza, 2417 W High Mountain Road, 84098, Size: 765 sq ft. More locations to be announced in 2022

These new locations will continue expansion of the brand's retail reach which will continue to add exciting new locations throughout 2022.

Guests will be able to take advantage of on-site complimentary engraving while shopping the latest gorjana collections, including fine jewelry as well as their leading core items with prices ranging from $38 to $700.

About gorjana

Based in Laguna Beach, California, the gorjana brand was founded in 2004 on the apartment floor of husband and wife duo Jason and Gorjana Reidel. The couple drove 50,000 miles to sell and market their collection and hit the trade show circuit. Through their own separate strengths and combined creative vision, the brand grew rapidly from an idea into a full-fledged business that is still owned and operated by both Gorjana and Jason. The eponymous line is intentionally designed to mix, match and layer. Many of the designs are versatile and feature adjustable clasps and sliding beads, which allows the wearer to make each piece their own.

SOURCE gorjana
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Graybar, a leading distributor of electrical, communications and data networking products and provider of related supply chain management and logistics services, today announced the following leadership changes that will take effect on January 1, 2022.

Bill Mansfield will take on a new role as Senior Vice President - Strategy and Business Development. He is currently Senior Vice President - Marketing and will continue to lead Graybar's marketing organization in his expanded role.

will take on a new role as Senior Vice President - Strategy and Business Development. He is currently Senior Vice President - Marketing and will continue to lead Graybar's marketing organization in his expanded role. David Meyer will take on a new role as Vice President - North American Subsidiaries. He is currently Vice President and Chief Information Officer.

will take on a new role as Vice President - North American Subsidiaries. He is currently Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Andy Ciccone will be Vice President and Chief Information Officer. He is currently Vice President - Comm/Data and Commercial, Institutional and Government (CIG).

will be Vice President and Chief Information Officer. He is currently Vice President - Comm/Data and Commercial, Institutional and Government (CIG). Brian Delaney will take on a new role as Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Planning at Corporate. He is currently District Vice President in Richmond .

will take on a new role as Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Planning at Corporate. He is currently District Vice President in . Tom Twitty will be District Vice President in Richmond . He is currently District Vice President - Business in the Southwest District.

will be District Vice President in . He is currently District Vice President - Business in the Southwest District. Jeff Wanner will be District Vice President in the Southwest District. He is currently District Vice President - Sales there.

will be District Vice President in the Southwest District. He is currently District Vice President - Sales there. Steve Cray will be District Vice President in California . He is currently District Vice President in Seattle .

will be District Vice President in . He is currently District Vice President in . Danna Stone will be Vice President, Category Management at Corporate. She is currently District Vice President in St. Louis .

will be Vice President, Category Management at Corporate. She is currently District Vice President in . Andy Ipson will be District Vice President in St. Louis . He is currently Vice President - Strategic Accounts.

will be District Vice President in . He is currently Vice President - Strategic Accounts. Vern Dirnberger will be Vice President - Strategic Accounts. He is currently Strategic Accounts National Sales Manager.

will be Vice President - Strategic Accounts. He is currently Strategic Accounts National Sales Manager. Rose McDaniel will take on a new role as Vice President, Field Operations and Administration. She is currently Director National Operations.

will take on a new role as Vice President, Field Operations and Administration. She is currently Director National Operations. Todd Mueller will take on a new role as Vice President, Business Transformation. He is currently Vice President - Pricing.

"Graybar is investing in its future through acquisitions, technology, supply chain capabilities and people. For these investments to have a lasting impact, we need strong leaders with the knowledge and experience to move our company forward," said Kathleen M. Mazzarella, Graybar's chairman, president and chief executive officer. "These individuals are proven leaders, and I am confident that they will continue to make a positive difference for our company, our employees and all those we serve. We congratulate them and wish them success in their new roles."

Graybar, a Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest employee-owned companies in North America, is a leader in the distribution of high quality electrical, communications and data networking products, and specializes in related supply chain management and logistics services. Through its network of more than 300 North American distribution facilities, it stocks and sells products from thousands of manufacturers, helping its customers power, network and secure their facilities with speed, intelligence and efficiency. For more information, visit www.graybar.com or call 1-800-GRAYBAR.

Media Contact:

Tim Sommer

(314) 578-7672

[email protected]

SOURCE Graybar

Related Links

http://www.Graybar.com


LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawk Ridge Capital Management LP, one of the largest shareholders of Intertrust N.V. ("Intertrust" or the "Company"), with an ownership stake of approximately 4.1% of the Company's outstanding shares, sent the following letter to the Supervisory Board of Intertrust today:

November 4, 2021

Intertrust N.V.

Prins Bernhardplein 200

1097 JB Amsterdam

Netherlands

Attn:

Helene Vletter-van Dort, Supervisory Board Chairperson

Shankar Iyer, Chief Executive Officer

Dear Members of the Intertrust Supervisory Board,

Hawk Ridge Capital Management is a $2.2Bn investment firm that has been in business over 14 years. We own approximately 4.1% of Intertrust as of today. We have been a patient and long-term oriented shareholder for nearly four and a half years, maintaining a frequent dialogue with the Executive Board throughout our time as Intertrust investors.

Some of our fellow large and long-time shareholders have already publicly voiced to you the urgent need for change at Intertrust. We write to you in the same veinwe could not agree more.

As one of Intertrust's largest shareholders, it should go without saying that we see the opportunity in front of the company very favorablya highly-defensible leadership position in fund and corporate services that should enable capture of sizeable industry growth opportunities. However, over our time as shareholders, we have been disappointed time and time again over our time as shareholders by the performance of the company and its inability to properly capitalize on this opportunity, including (but certainly not limited to):

Paltry organic growth: Intertrust's quarterly average organic revenue growth has been just 2.8% going back to 2016, despite having targeted medium-term mid-single digit growth for most of its time as a public company and having grown in excess of that as a private company. This growth also pales in comparison to many publicly traded peers.

Intertrust's quarterly average organic revenue growth has been just 2.8% going back to 2016, despite having targeted medium-term mid-single digit growth for most of its time as a public company and having grown in excess of that as a private company. This growth also pales in comparison to many publicly traded peers. Margin deterioration: Intertrust adjusted EBITA margins were 41.3% in 2014. Today, the company is guiding to 31.5% at the midpoint of FY21 guidance. 1 While we appreciate there are some natural sources of margin dilution (e.g. from acquisitions), we do not believe those even come close to accounting for this massive degradation in margin. We also note that post the Viteos acquisition, adjusted EBITA margins were >36% in H2'19 versus ~32% in 2021 YTD. 2 This performance appears particularly poor when considering Intertrust guided to 400bps of margin expansion post-acquisition. 3

Intertrust adjusted EBITA margins were 41.3% in 2014. Today, the company is guiding to 31.5% at the midpoint of FY21 guidance. While we appreciate there are some natural sources of margin dilution (e.g. from acquisitions), we do not believe those even come close to accounting for this massive degradation in margin. We also note that post the Viteos acquisition, adjusted EBITA margins were >36% in H2'19 versus ~32% in 2021 YTD. This performance appears particularly poor when considering Intertrust guided to 400bps of margin post-acquisition. Massive share underperformance: given the results detailed above, it is perhaps unsurprising that share performance has been extremely poor. As a basic benchmark, the MSCI World Index has outperformed Intertrust by 125%+ since IPO and nearly 40% over the last year.

Today, Intertrust trades under 9x EBITDA on consensus NTM estimates. This is many turns cheaper than any public peer or comparable transaction4 we have come across. A business of this quality has no business being valued anywhere near this low of a multiple.

We appreciate that both the Executive and Supervisory Board share our opinion that the company is significantly undervalued.5 We also view the recently announced share repurchase program as a positive first step in correcting this valuation disparity.

However, we are convinced more can and should be done to unlock value. We urge the Supervisory Board to promptly:

Appoint new independent members to the Supervisory Board: five of six members of the supervisory board have been in their seats since 2017, over which time operating performance has dramatically underperformed targets, the stock has dramatically underperformed the market, and the regulators have uncovered major regulatory deficiencies (e.g. CIMA fines & remediation charges). We believe the appointment of multiple new independent members would go great lengths to rejuvenate oversight, hold management accountable to higher standards, better align incentives and drive long-term shareholder value. We would view shareholder representation in those seats as a significant positivewe think whoever is appointed should be materially economically aligned with shareholders. Explore strategic alternatives: Intertrust has not found success under its current governance and ownership structure over a multi-year time horizon. We think that there may be a more attractive future for Intertrust under new ownership and a sale of the company could be an attractive alternative for stakeholders, given the substantial undervaluation of the company's shares. We therefore recommend the company engage advisors to explore potential interest from strategic acquirers and financial sponsorsinterest we believe should be robust given the volume and valuations of recent M&A activity in the industry. We believe that a well-executed sale process would result in a sale of the company at a substantial premium to the current valuation.

While we continue to believe in the long-term opportunity in front of Intertrust and appreciate hard work and good intentions of the Management and Supervisory Boards, it has become increasingly clear that a low level of performance has persisted for too long. We believe urgent action is necessary to create value for all shareholdersa view we trust many other shareholders hold as well.

We will continue to be constructive shareholders and hope to productively engage with you and other fellow shareholders ahead of the November Capital Markets Day.

Sincerely,

David Brown

Portfolio Manager

Hawk Ridge Capital Management LP

About Hawk Ridge

Hawk Ridge is an investment firm founded in 2007 focused on investing in high quality, misunderstood small-to-mid cap equities with $2.2 billion in assets under management.

1 Or 34.5% before FY2021 guidance was impacted by remediation expenses.

2 Excluding remediation expenses.

3 Intertrust guided to at least 40% adjusted EBITA margins in FY2021 after announcing the Viteos acquisition.

4 Since 2015.

5 As voiced in both the September 27, 2021 press release as well as the Q3 2021 earnings results.

SOURCE Hawk Ridge Capital Management
LOS GATOS, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- iMerit , a leading AI data solutions company, today announced the launch of its new customer-facing product, iMerit Self Serve API. The new offering represents the fastest way for engineers to integrate iMerit into their data pipelines. This is the first step the company is taking in order to automate and streamline data submissions to increase productivity amongst its core end-users.

iMerit built this API product to offer customers a more secure, technology-based tool to share data, project information, project guidelines, and more with their dedicated iMerit project team. Customers will be able to use iMerit Self Serve API to prepare projects for annotation and build project configurations, which will facilitate deeper conversations with iMerit solution architects on the best ways to move forward with the overall annotation strategy. This allows for faster data sharing and faster scalability as customers validate their machine learning initiatives.

"The need for iMerit's annotation services is rapidly growing and our customers want to move even faster with us," said Sudeep George, Vice President of Engineering at iMerit. "The iMerit Self Serve API gives our customers the fastest and most direct way to integrate iMerit capabilities directly into their machine learning data pipelines."

iMerit Self Serve API is organized around REST, an architectural pattern for creating web services. It has predictable resource-oriented URLs, accepts JSON-encoded request bodies, returns JSON-encoded responses, and uses standard HTTP response codes, authentication, and verbs.

The iMerit Self Serve API is currently in closed Beta. For additional information and to reserve a place on iMerit's invite list for the next round of invites, please visit www.iMerit.net/API

About iMerit

iMerit is a leading AI data solutions company providing high quality data across computer vision, natural language processing and content services that powers machine learning and artificial intelligence applications for large enterprises. iMerit provides end-to-end data labeling services to Fortune 500 companies in a wide array of industries including agricultural AI, autonomous vehicles, commerce, geospatial, government, financial services, medical AI and technology. iMerit employs more than 5,500 full-time data annotation experts in Bhutan, Europe, India and the United States. Raising $23.5 million in funding to date, iMerit investors are CDC Group, Khosla Impact, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Omidyar Network. For more information, visit imerit.net .

SOURCE iMerit Technology

Related Links

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SHANGHAI, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Noah Holdings Limited ("Noah" or the "Company") (NYSE: NOAH), a leading and pioneer wealth management service provider in China offering comprehensive one-stop advisory services on global investment and asset allocation primarily for high net worth investors, announced in its announcement dated October 22, 2021 that the AGM was to be held at Wanda Vista Guilin, No.398 Dayan Road, Yanshan District, Guilin, Guangxi Province, People's Republic of China, on November 29, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (local time). Considering the Covid-19 situation in China, the AGM will now be held at the Building 2, 1687 Changyang Road, Shanghai, People's Republic of China at 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (local time) on the same day, November 29, 2021. All other arrangements in relation to the AGM remain the same.

We will continue to monitor the situation as the AGM approaches and may, if necessary, make further changes to the venue of the AGM. Any further changes will be made with health and safety as a priority.

Shareholders and ADS holders should continue to monitor our website at http://ir.noahgroup.com as well as our stock exchange announcements for any important updates in relation to the AGM.

The record date (the "Record Date") for determining the shareholders entitled to receive notice of the AGM or any adjournment or postponement thereof has been set as the close of business on November 2, 2021.

Holders of record of our Ordinary Shares at the close of business on the Record Date are entitled to attend the AGM and any adjournment or postponement thereof in person. Beneficial owners of the Company's ADSs are also welcome to attend the AGM in person. In order to assist us in our preparation for the AGM, please RSVP by email to [email protected]

Shareholders and ADS holders may obtain a copy of the Company's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2020, free of charge, from our website at http://ir.noahgroup.com, or by sending an email to [email protected]

ABOUT NOAH HOLDINGS LIMITED

Noah Holdings Limited (NYSE: NOAH) is a leading and pioneer wealth management service provider in China offering comprehensive one-stop advisory services on global investment and asset allocation primarily for high net worth investors. In the first half of 2021, Noah distributed RMB52.1 billion (US$8.1 billion) of investment products. Through Gopher Asset Management, Noah had assets under management of RMB155.9 billion (US$24.1 billion) as of June 30, 2021.

Noah's wealth management business primarily distributes private equity, private secondary, mutual fund and other products denominated in RMB and other currencies. Noah delivers customized financial solutions to clients through a network of 1,268 relationship managers in 81 cities in mainland China, and serves the international investment needs of its clients through offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan, United States and Singapore. The Company's wealth management business had 397,235 registered clients as of June 30, 2021. As a leading multi-asset manager in China, Gopher Asset Management manages private equity, real estate, public securities, multi-strategy and other investments denominated in RMB and other currencies. The Company also provides other businesses.

For more information, please visit Noah at ir.noahgroup.com.

Noah Holdings Limited

Sonia Han, Melo Xi, Ryan Teng

Tel: +86-21-8035-8294

SOURCE Noah Holdings Limited

Related Links

www.noahwm.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Global enterprises across industries including financial services, travel, healthcare, logistics, insurance, automotive, professional services and materials sciences have chosen the world's largest IT infrastructure provider, Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), to lead IT transformation initiatives that accelerate modernization in an increasingly digital global economy.

Kyndryl, the new, independent company listing on the New York Stock Exchange today, is focused on delivering the most advanced business solutions for customers across more than 60 countries. Kyndryl is investing in new partnerships with the world's premier technology organizations and cloud hyperscalers. The joint solutions developed from these partnerships, in areas such as AI, 5G, edge computing, hybrid cloud, and security, are enabling customers to tackle their most pressing business objectives in modern ways.

Kyndryl's employees have vast experience and trust from the world's leading businesses in running mission-critical systems. With more than 3,000 patents issued and 800 patents pending, Kyndryl delivers worldclass expertise, with 90,000 employees who have an average of 10 years of industry experience.

Kyndryl is working with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies, and its 4,000 global customers already account for 45 percent of all passenger cars made, 61 percent of assets under management at the top 50 banks, and approximately half of all mobile connections.

Industry leaders including Dow, Pitney Bowes, Michelin, EY, Bangalore International Airport, BBVA, ABN AMRO, CaixaBank, Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros, Automated Financial Systems, and NASCO have tapped Kyndryl to help transform their IT environments for today's evolving digital needs:

Dow, one of the world's largest material sciences companies, has worked with Kyndryl for 16 years to support mission-critical IT infrastructure globally. Kyndryl is helping Dow build foundational capabilities for its digital journey, powered by data, analytics, and artificial intelligence integrated into core business processes and connected through a flexible network with advanced security.

"Digital transformation is all about re-architecting the business to fully exploit digital technologies. We are excited to partner with Kyndryl on this journey," said Fareed Mohammed, Chief Architect at Dow.

Pitney Bowes has selected Kyndryl for an ambitious technology transformation aimed at advancing its global business objectives. Pitney Bowes, which moves more than 222 million parcels and facilitates the sending of billions of mail pieces each year, has tapped Kyndryl to implement an agile technology infrastructure that harnesses its hybrid cloud IT investments for greater business outcomes. Kyndryl experts are harnessing artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and hybrid cloud capabilities to help Pitney Bowes create and implement an agile IT infrastructure environment and governance model designed to unleash the potential of its hybrid cloud environments.

Michelin, the leading tire company, has worked with Kyndryl for 18 years to support mission-critical IT infrastructure globally. Kyndryl is supporting Michelin to improve efficiency by transforming their IT infrastructure through automation.

EY teams and Kyndryl each deliver complementary transformation, risk management and technology services to clients. Kyndryl provides EY with a variety of technology services across 28 countries, in areas including: transition and transformation, hosting, networking, incident management and engineering. As one of the largest professional services organizations globally, the EY purpose is building a better working world through four service lines - Assurance, Consulting, Strategy and Transactions, and Tax. At EY, deep industry knowledge helps clients to address their most pressing challenges, capitalize on new opportunities, and assess and manage risk to deliver long-term growth.

Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) has turned to Kyndryl to power its IT and operational transformation.

"As one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, BIAL needed a nimble, scalable and cost-competitive technology and operations environment that can increase its agility and operational flexibility to handle future growth in passenger traffic. To achieve this goal, BIAL is leveraging Kyndryl hybrid cloud capabilities, to design and implement a next generation architecture with a robust and dynamic delivery model  one that is highly efficient, with advanced security, and will enable a seamless travel experience for its passengers. The new platform solution, 'airport in a box,' will also enable BIAL to improve employee productivity, better utilize IT assets, reduce costs through streamlined inventory control and improve incident management," said Hari Marar, Managing Director & CEO of Bangalore International Airport Limited.

BBVA, a leading Spanish financial institution and one of the largest in the world, has tapped Kyndryl to manage its technological infrastructure in most of the countries where the bank operates. Kyndryl's services help the bank in its technological strategy aimed at providing the best possible service to its customers. Specifically, Kyndryl provides data center services, operation and management of critical environments and technological security. As a result, most of the business transactions of the different banks pass through environments managed by Kyndryl.

ABN AMRO, one of the Netherlands' leading banks, is engaging Kyndryl to transform and modernize its IT operating model, based on a more responsive and client-centric way of working that enables faster, flatter, more focused, and more flexible operations with more degrees of freedom. This can help ABN AMRO realize its goal of developing and delivering more personal services to its customers in the digital age.

"This agreement is core to achieving our IT operating model goals for the current decade. ABN AMRO will take end-to-end control and responsibility for platform services while maintaining close support from essential, embedded capabilities provided by Kyndryl. More parties in the complex ecosystem will have controlled access to production environments enabling true multi-party Agile and DevOps. We will integrate the teams into a single service delivery model in order to ensure speed, flexibility and consistency for our consumer community," said Jan van Groningen, ABN AMRO Chief Technology Officer.

CaixaBank, Spain's largest retail bank and the country's leading digital financial services provider, selected Kyndryl as a multi-cloud integrator for the next 5 years. This work builds on a decade-long joint venture with ITNow.

Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros, the Spanish public insurance compensation consortium, tapped into Kyndryl to transform the organization's IT infrastructure in order to deliver new and innovative services to citizens. Kyndryl will supply, host and maintain the consortium's technological infrastructure.

Automated Financial Systems, Inc. (AFS), a global leader in commercial lending to top-tier financial institutions, is working with Kyndryl to containerize its commercial lending software to allow customers to run it anywhere.

NASCO  a leading provider of healthcare technology solutions  is working with Kyndryl to migrate NASCO's critical infrastructure to a new, shared mainframe environment, driving improved efficiency, flexibility and scale for NASCO's operations. The company tapped Kyndryl to help manage the seamless migration of its mission critical infrastructure to a new zCloud mainframe. By moving to a shared mainframe environment, NASCO can now drive new operating efficiencies that have resulted in improved scale and flexibility to support business growth and faster innovation.

"This migration was challenging because most migrations are performed in phases, but because of NASCO's intricate environment and the number of plan applications, this migration had to be done in one big bang," said Leo Ladaga, Director of Technical Operation, NASCO. "The success of the project was made evident when a user asked when the migration would be taking place and our team was able to report that it had already happened."

About Kyndryl

Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world's largest IT infrastructure provider. The company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. Kyndryl's nearly 90,000 employees serve over 4,000 customers in more than 60 countries around the world, including 75 percent of the Fortune 100. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com .

SOURCE Kyndryl

Related Links

https://www.kyndryl.com


DUBLIN, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Soft Tissue Repair Market 2021-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global soft tissue repair market is expected to rise with a CAGR of 6.16% in the estimated period 2021-2028.



The growing incidence of soft tissue-related diseases is primarily driving the growth of this market. Along with this, the rising occurrence of diseases related to soft tissue damage, particularly in the aging population, is another factor contributing to this growth.



On the flip side, an indistinct regulatory environment for this industry and the unfavorable reimbursement policies are hindering its growth. However, the demand for soft tissue repair products for sports-related injuries and the high potential of developing economies are creating lucrative opportunities for market development.



Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, the Asia-Pacific, and North America together shape the global market for soft tissue repair.



The market in the Asia-Pacific is expected to showcase the fastest growth rate, globally, in the years to come. Several emerging economies, such as India, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc., are present in this region. With the increase in healthcare expenditures by the governments of these nations, the healthcare infrastructure in these countries is being developed.



Also, countries like China, India, and Indonesia, among others, have a very large population, which forms a huge patient base for soft tissue repair. All these factors have increased the demand in this region, which is expected to boost the soft tissue repair market growth in the projected period.



Some of the major players operating in the soft tissue repair market include Bard Peripheral Vascular Inc, Becton Dickinson and Company (BD), Allergan, Zimmer Biomet Inc, Integra Lifesciences Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific Corporation, Stryker Corporation, Baxter International Inc, Medtronic Plc, Organogenesis Inc, WL Gore and Associates, Cryolife Inc, Smith & Nephew Plc, and Athersys Inc.



Becton Dickinson and Company (BD) is a globally renowned medical technology company. It develops, manufactures, and sells medical devices, diagnostic products, and laboratory equipment. The company's major products include Bard Mesh, Pre-Shaped Bard Mesh, Bard Composix E/X Mesh, and CapSure Permanent Fixation System. BD offers its products to healthcare institutions, the pharmaceutical industry, clinical laboratories, life science researchers, and the general public.



Its research and development activities focus on enhancing the performance and reliability of its existing products, along with developing new ones. Founded in 1897, BD operates across North America, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. Worldwide operations insulate the company from the risks of overdependence on a particular geographic market.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Global Soft Tissue Repair Market - Summary



2. Industry Outlook

2.1. Impact of Covid-19 on the Soft Tissue Repair Market

2.2. Key Insights

2.3. Porter's Five Forces Model

2.3.1. Threat of New Entrants

2.3.2. Threat of Substitute Products

2.3.3. Bargaining Power of Buyers

2.3.4. Bargaining Power of Suppliers

2.3.5. Competitive Rivalry

2.4. Market Attractiveness Index

2.5. Vendor Scorecard

2.6. Key Strategic Developments

2.6.1. Contracts and Partnerships

2.6.2. Business Expansions, Announcements, and Divestitures

2.6.3. Acquisitions & Mergers

2.6.4. New Product Launches & Developments

2.7. Market Drivers

2.7.1. Incidence of Soft Tissue-Associated Diseases Driving the Market Growth

2.7.2. Occurrence of Soft Tissue Damage-Related Diseases Diagnosed More Frequently in the Aging Population

2.7.3. Adverse Effects of Obesity on the Musculoskeletal System

2.8. Market Challenges

2.8.1. Indistinct Regulatory Environment

2.8.2. Unfavorable Reimbursement Hindering the Market Growth

2.9. Market Opportunities

2.9.1. Opportunities for the Soft Tissue Repair Market in Developing Economies

2.9.2. Demand for Soft Tissue Repair Products Catering to Sports-Related Injuries



3. Global Soft Tissue Repair Market - by Product Type

3.1. Laparoscopic Instruments

3.2. Tissue Mesh

3.2.1. Biological Mesh

3.2.1.1. Allograft

3.2.1.2. Xenograft

3.2.2. Synthetic Mesh

3.3. Fixation Devices

3.3.1. Interference Screw

3.3.2. Suture Anchors



4. Global Soft Tissue Repair Market - by Application

4.1. Orthopedic Repair

4.2. Hernia Repair

4.3. Skin Repair

4.4. Dental Repair

4.5. Dural Repair

4.6. Breast Reconstruction

4.7. Head and Neck Products

4.8. Pelvic and Vaginal Prolapse Repair



5. Global Soft Tissue Repair Market - Regional Outlook



6. Company Profile

6.1. Allergan

6.2. Athersys Inc

6.3. Bard Peripheral Vascular Inc

6.4. Baxter International Inc

6.5. Becton Dickinson and Company (Bd)

6.6. Boston Scientific Corporation

6.7. Cryolife Inc

6.8. Johnson & Johnson

6.9. Integra Lifesciences Corporation

6.10. Medtronic plc

6.11. Organogenesis Inc

6.12. Stryker Corporation

6.13. Smith & Nephew plc

6.14. Wl Gore and Associates

6.15. Zimmer Biomet Inc



7. Research Methodology & Scope



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/y7g4yw

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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Intercare Awarded US Captive Review's "Claims Handler of the Year" Tweet this

US Captive Review rewards providers of captive insurance products and services who have outperformed their competitors and demonstrated the highest levels of excellence. Subrogation, loss, and claim adjustment services were of particular focus to the judges. Growth and retention of clients were also considered by the panel when evaluating finalists for 2021.

"Claims Handler of the Year" exemplifies high-quality service to both claimants and clients. Intercare's personalized commitment to clients' financial stability, organizational strength, and their business partners and customers are what elevates them above the competition. Intercare's "Extraordinary People, Extraordinary Results" pledge is evidenced in its continued success in the industry and 91% overall customer satisfaction rating.

Intercare Holdings, Inc. is a privately-held company with offices nationwide, specializing in providing best-in-class Workers' Compensation and Liability Claims Administration, Managed Care Services, and Risk Management Solutions. For more information, please visit: www.intercareins.com

Media Contact:

Intercare Holdings,

Inc.Alan Avriett

[email protected]

SOURCE Intercare Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://intercareins.com/


GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

Important events during the third quarter

In August, Vicore announced a strenghtened management team with three senior recruitments; Jessica Shull , Head of Digital Therapeutics, Asa Magnusson, Chief Commercial Officer and Mikael Nygard, VP Business Development.

, Head of Digital Therapeutics, Asa Magnusson, Chief Commercial Officer and Mikael Nygard, VP Business Development. In September, Vicore announced that the first patients in the global phase 3 trial with C21 in COVID-19 (ATTRACT-3) were dosed.

In September, Vicore announced that the company was granted a patent in the US covering the use of C21 to treat infections caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus (CoV), including SARS CoV-2.

Important events after the period

In October, Vicore announced that the results from the phase 2 trial in COVID-19 (ATTRACT) were published in EClinicalMedicine, a scientific journal published by the Lancet.

In November, Vicore announced results from the ATTRACT phase 2 extension trial showing that C21 reduced long-term lung injury after COVID-19.

Financial overview for the period

July 1  September 30, 2021

Net sales amounted to 0.0 MSEK (0.0)

The operating loss was -97.8 MSEK (-34.4)

Loss for the period amounted to -97.6 MSEK (-36.0)

Loss per share, before and after dilution, was -1.36 SEK (-0.65)

(-0.65) On September 30, 2021 , cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments amounted to 446.9 MSEK (318.7 MSEK as of December 31, 2020 )

January 1 - September 30, 2021

Net sales amounted to 0.0 MSEK (0.0)

The operating loss was -213.7 MSEK (-90.7)

Loss for the period amounted to -216.1 MSEK (-88.6)

Loss per share, before and after dilution, was -3.13 SEK (-1.70)

Financial summary of the group

Amounts in MSEK 2021 Jul- Sep 2020 Jul-Sep 2021 Jan-Sep 2020 Jan-Sep 2020 Jan-Dec Net sales 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Operating loss -97.8 -34.4 -213.7 -90.7 -149.5 Loss for the period -97.6 -36.0 -216.1 -88.6 -146.9 Loss per share, before/after dilution (SEK)1 -1.36 -0.65 -3.13 -1.70 -2.71 Research and development costs/ operating costs (%)2 93.5 85.2 92.2 84.8 84.7 Equity at the end of the period 462.6 412.0 462.6 412.0 354.5 Cash flow from operating activities -68.4 -25.7 -189.9 -80.8 -119.9 Cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments at the end of the period 446.9 361.4 446.9 361.4 318.7 1 There is no dilution effect for potential ordinary shares for periods where earnings have been negative. 2 Alternative performance measure (APM). Defined on page 21 in the interim report.

1 There is no dilution effect for potential ordinary shares for periods where earnings have been negative.

2 Alternative performance measure (APM). Defined on page 21 in the interim report.

CEO Comments

Vicore made significant progress during the third quarter of 2021 in the clinic, in preclinical studies and in building its patent estate. The company stands at the threshold of a new phase.

The company is expanding in many ways. In August, we welcomed both Asa Magnusson as Chief Commercial Officer and Mikael Nygard as VP of Business Development. They join a strengthened Vicore management team along with Jessica Shull, our Head of Digital Therapeutics who joined the company in May 2021.

Our clinical programs are gaining momentum. In September, the first patients were recruited to Vicore's ATTRACT-3, phase 3, multinational, multi-centre placebo-controlled pivotal study in COVID-19. Vicore has so far activated clinical trial sites in the US, Czech Republic, Ukraine, South Africa, India and Philippines.

The commercial value of ATTRACT-3 to Vicore was strengthened in September when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the company a patent covering the use of C21 for treating all SARS coronavirus infections. Vicore now has patent protection in the US market until December 2040 for C21 as a symptomatic treatment improving lung function for SARS-CoV-2, including any variants that arise in the present pandemic and any newly emergent SARS coronaviruses that underlie future diseases.

After the completion of the quarter, Lancet's EClinicalMedicine, a peer-reviewed journal, published the full results of the phase 2 clinical trial, ATTRACT, that preceded the ATTRACT-3 study. The study showed how a 7-day treatment with C21 significantly reduced the proportion of patients requiring supplemental oxygen and aided faster patient recovery.

In November, we published the results from the extension trial, ATTRACT-2, where C21 continues to present good effects, 3-6 months after end of treatment. The results show nearly 50% reduction in lung injury in the C21 group compared to the placebo group, further strengthening evidence that C21 can accelerate recovery after COVID-19.

There have been further exciting developments in Vicore's key clinical indication of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). The first patients have completed treatment in the ongoing multinational, open-label phase 2 clinical trial with C21, the AIR study. AIR is on track for read-out in Q4 2022, with clinical centres activated in all the countries involved in what has been described by clinical experts as a patient-friendly clinical trial, easy to recruit.

Vicore's other programs encompassing our 'suite of products' for IPF are also on track. The company expects to start a GLP toxicology study with VP02, the inhaled thalidomide product for IPF and IPF cough, by the end of 2021. Vicore's proprietary digital therapeutic, VP04, designed as a channel for cognitive behavioural therapy for patients suffering from IPF will enter clinical studies during Q2, 2022. VP03, our C21 follow-on program, is expected to enter into the clinic during H1 2022, we will provide details in the near future. The new molecule is a modulator of AT2R  the target on which C21 acts. AT2R is the inducible arm of the Renin-Angiotensin-System (RAS), an unexploited regenerative biological system with great potential for pharmaceutical development in a wide range of disease areas. Our C21 R&D programs have provided Vicore with an understanding of the biology of the receptor and the physiological consequences of targeting it. With C21 in clinical trials, we have shown that AT2R is druggable and have established broad intellectual property protection around the class of AT2R stimulating drugs.

As we enter this new and expansive phase, I would like to thank our growing group of employees, participants in our clinical trials, our clinical collaborators around the world and our shareholders for their continued support of Vicore's work.

Carl-Johan Dalsgaard

Interim report July-September, 2021; https://vicorepharma.com/investors/financial-reports/

For further information, please contact:

Carl-Johan Dalsgaard, CEO, tel: +46 70 975 98 63, [email protected]

Hans Jeppsson, CFO, tel: +46 70 553 14 65, [email protected]

This information was submitted for publication on November 4, 2021 at 08:00 CET.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/vicore-pharma-holding-ab/r/interim-report-july---september-2021,c3446729

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/15668/3446729/1491299.pdf Interim report Q3 2021 - ENG

SOURCE Vicore Pharma Holding AB
Company continues to leverage strong cash position to reduce debt,

bringing year-to-date total to $3.2 million of convertible debentures repurchased.

MONTREAL, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - IOU FINANCIAL INC. ("IOU" or "the Company") (TSXV: IOU), a leading online lender to small businesses (IOUFinancial.com), announced today that, pursuant to its announcement on September 3, 2021, it is repurchasing approximately $0.9 million of its convertible debentures in the capital of the Company (the "Debentures") at a discount per $1,000 of aggregate principal amount per Debenture. Such transactions are being carried out pursuant to repurchase agreements entered into with individual holders of Debentures.

Today's move to repurchase $0.9 million of Debentures brings the total year-to-date repurchases to $3.2 million.

"IOU's strong cash position gives us the opportunity to further reduce corporate debt and maximize our exposure to the economic recovery," said Robert Gloer, CEO. "Our focus is on originating loans via our marketplace strategy to small businesses that are investing in new growth opportunities."

About IOU Financial Inc.

IOU Financial Inc. is a wholesale lender that provides quick and easy access to growth capital to small businesses through a network of preferred brokers across the US and Canada. Built on its proprietary IOU360 technology platform that connects underwriters, merchants and brokers in real time, IOU Financial has become a trusted alternative to banks by originating over US$1 billion in loans to fund small business growth since 2009. IOU trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol IOU (TSXV: IOU), and on the US OTC markets as IOUFF. To learn more about IOU Financial's corporate history, financial products, or to join our broker network please visit www.IOUFinancial.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of IOU including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, dependence upon regulatory and shareholder approvals, the execution of definitive documentation and the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. IOU does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE IOU Financial Inc.

Related Links

https://ioufinancial.com/en-ca/


Researchers and VAD coordinators invited to apply by 31 January, 2022 Tweet this

Grady looks forward to expanding and improving ISHLT grants and awards in support of research and career development. "I am very excited about the expanding opportunities for researchers from a wide variety of clinical fields," Grady said. "We invite researchers from across the globe to submit applications for our research grants, which are made possible through existing and new partnerships with industry."

Both grants are supported by industry partners Abbott and Medtronic. More details about the grants can be found below, or at ishlt.org/research-data/grants-awards.

ISHLT/O.H. FRAZIER AWARD IN MCS TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH

Sponsored by Medtronic and Abbott

Award Amount: Up to $65,000 USD

This award supports rising stars in the field of mechanical circulatory support (MCS) at a critical time in their career. The recipient will have already established a track record in the field of MCS, and will aim to further develop their career in this area.

The Frazier Award is given to research utilizing MCS that could result in an increased understanding of the biologic effects, use as sole combined therapy, insights into patient/MCS management, innovative use/application, or improved outcomes for the treatment of heart failure.

ISHLT/ICCAC VAD COORDINATOR CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARD

Co-presented by ISHLT and ICCAC, Sponsored by Medtronic and Abbott

Award Amount: Up to $20,000 USD

Presented jointly by ISHLT, the International Consortium of Circulatory Assist Clinicians (ICCAC), Abbott, and Medtronic, this award is designed to enhance the professional growth and development of VAD coordinators to ensure the MCS community has the capacity to provide this advanced therapy and improve patient outcomes.

This award supports research with the goal of enhancing patient/caregiver decision making and improving the VAD experience, patient survival, and patient and caregiver quality of life.

About ISHLT

The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation is a not-for-profit, multidisciplinary professional organization dedicated to improving the care of patients with advanced heart or lungdisease through transplantation, mechanical support and innovative therapies. With more than 3,800 members in more than 45 countries, ISHLT is the world's largest organization dedicated to the research, education and advocacy of end-stage heart and lung disease. ISHLT members represent more than 15 different professional disciplines. For more information, visit www.ishlt.org.

About ICCAC

The International Consortium of Circulatory Assist Clinicians (ICCAC) is a professional mentoring organization of mechanical circulatory assist device clinicians whose mission is to share information, educate and support individuals in this field to achieve optimal outcomes for patients requiring mechanical circulatory support, and to support efforts in the area of device clinical research and development. iccac.global

About Medtronic

Medtronic plc (www.medtronic.com), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is among the world's largest medical technology, services, and solutions companies  alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for millions of people around the world. Medtronic employs more than 90,000 people worldwide, serving physicians, hospitals, and patients in more than 150 countries. The company is focused on collaborating with stakeholders around the world to take healthcare Further, Together.

About Abbott

Abbott (www.abbott.com) is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 109,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

SOURCE The International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation

Related Links

www.ishlt.org


According to statistics tabulated in a market poll by Mordor Intelligence, the size of the market for semiconductor measurement and testing equipment in 2020 was US$4.1647 billion, and it is expected to reach US$5.3734 billion by 2026, highlighting the enormous potential for development. The DoIT stressed that based on Taiwan's cutting edge in its complete semiconductor industry chain and 2 nm manufacturing technology, the collaboration between ITRI and Oxford Instrument constitutes a milestone in the advanced measurement of semiconductors and will accelerate the development of inspection technologies. Oxford Instruments is a world-renowned multinational instrument and equipment manufacturer, providing advanced products and service around the world, while ITRI possesses world's leading semiconductor measurement technology.

ITRI Executive Vice President Alex Y.M. Peng stated that ITRI has been dedicated to R&D projects spanning across semiconductor and optoelectronic industry chains. Presently, it has developed excellent technical inspection capabilities in the scale-down to 2-3 nm wafer manufacturing. ITRI and Oxford Instruments commenced technology cooperation in 2017 in the development of semiconductor optoelectronic components and equipment. The two sides forged a strong cooperative relationship and leveraged the strengths of each other, he added, which set the basis for a new round of cooperation. "This time we will work on cutting-edge measurement technology for advanced manufacturing processes and key tools in monitoring yields in mass production. We hope that the cooperation between Taiwan and the UK will accelerate the technological progress of both sides and open new horizons for the semiconductor industry," he said.

John Dennis, Representative of British Office Taipei, said, "I welcome the signing of this MoU with great excitement. The importance of semiconductors has now become abundantly clear to people around the world. The UK has several world-leading semiconductor companies ranging from ultra-low-power IC design to Compound Semiconductor design and production. Furthermore, we have important specialist companies like Oxford Instruments providing high tech equipment and services to the world's leading industrial companies and scientific research communities such as ITRI in Taiwan. Taiwan is already well known as a world leader in semiconductors, having both the world's most advanced processes and the majority of the world's semiconductor foundry production capacity. And ITRI is playing an instrumental role in developing Taiwanese semiconductor industry. I look forward to seeing this collaboration leading to ever increasing innovation and partnership."

Oxford Instruments Director of Product Christian Lang remarked that it is vital to have insight into development opportunities in the industry. The development of semiconductor technology is focused on miniaturization, high performance, and low power consumption. In particular, 3D chip stacking design has been a profound breakthrough. By relying on the well-established inspection capabilities of ITRI, Oxford Instruments will continue to develop state-of-the-art technology for the next generation of semiconductor materials, he said. Mr. Lang hopes this cooperation will further generate semiconductor-related innovations to address the future challenges of industry.

Besides the signing of the cooperative MoU, Oxford Instruments will also move its Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to the joint laboratory at ITRI for more applications. The AFM can speed up key dimension inspections of semiconductor wafer structures by up to 10 times, can be applied to the measurement of semiconductor 3D structures.

Amid the ever-changing development of semiconductor technology, advanced measurement technology will be seen as a key to success in semiconductor manufacturing. The cooperation between ITRI and Oxford Instruments will highlight the role of measurement technology in system integration and cross-field innovation, further assisting industry in transition and upgrading.

About ITRI

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the world's leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan's industries from labor-intensive into innovation-driven. To address market needs and global trends, it has launched its 2030 Technology Strategy & Roadmap and focuses on innovation development in Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment. It also strives to strengthen Intelligentization Enabling Technology to support diversified applications.

Over the years, ITRI has been dedicated to incubating startups and spinoffs, including well-known names such as UMC and TSMC. In addition to its headquarters in Taiwan, ITRI has branch offices in the U.S., Europe, and Japan in an effort to extend its R&D scope and promote international cooperation across the globe. For more information, please visit https://www.itri.org/eng.

SOURCE Industrial Technology Research Institute

Related Links

https://www.itri.org/eng


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kasa, a pioneer of tech-enabled hospitality, continues its run of re-opening and reimagining hotels by recently adding four new properties to its growing portfolio: The Maverick in Pittsburgh, PA, The Row Hotel in San Jose, CA, The Catrina Hotel in San Mateo, CA and The Addison, in San Francisco, CA. At each, Kasa has applied its proprietary technology and differentiated labor-light operating model to optimize financial performance for its owners while creating enticing destinations for the contemporary traveler. Kasa remains highly focused on the guest experience by providing technology-enhanced hospitality that is rarely seen but always felt.

These four properties join La Monarca in San Francisco, CA, The Duffy Times Square in New York, NY, The Oxford in Seattle, WA, and The Perry and The Comma in Denver, CO in Kasa's fast-growing portfolio of boutique hospitality offerings, along with the soon-to-open, brand new luxury destination The Hotel Castro in San Francisco, CA.

"Kasa's operating model is a win-win by providing guests with a tremendous and distinctive experience while significantly improving our bottom line," said Hiten Suraj, CEO of Stay Cal Hospitality and owner of The Row and Catrina hotels. "We are excited to partner with a truly innovative brand like Kasa and have been blown away by their team, technology and operation."

In addition to adding these four properties, Kasa is expanding their hotel acquisition and development capabilities with the recent hires of Luke Callinan and Tom Riley.

Callinan joins to lead Kasa's independent and boutique hotel investment efforts following a 14-year career at The Chartres Lodging Group, an industry leading hotel owner-operator where he led acquisition and development activities. Callinan was directly responsible for $2 billion of total transaction activity, investing alongside partners such as KKR, Elliott Management Corporation, and Morgan Stanley.

Riley joins with over two decades of investment experience in the boutique hotel industry, including over 16 years focused in development and acquisitions at Kimpton Hotels and over a decade at Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International.

"We're thrilled to welcome Luke and Tom to the Kasa team to lead our expansion into the hospitality sector, specifically in sub-100 key independent properties in the primary lodging markets. Their joining further demonstrates the strong industry appetite for Kasa's brand, our efficient technology-enhanced operating model, and the growing travel trends fueling alternative accommodations. We look forward to articulating our story to industry participants at The NYU Hospitality Investment Conference next week," said Jordan Calaguire, VP and Head of Real Estate and Growth at Kasa.

About Kasa: Kasa Living, Inc. is a real estate technology company that is building a global accommodations brand. The company partners with owners of multifamily and boutique hospitality properties, transforming underutilized real estate into stylishly-furnished, professionally managed units that cater to business and leisure travelers seeking trustworthy and comfortable accommodations. Kasa was founded in 2016 by a team that includes technology and real estate professionals who previously drove growth at firms including Airbnb, KKR, and Apollo. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.

SOURCE Kasa Living
Knock makes buying and selling homes certain, convenient and cost effective by turning all buyers into cash buyers. Tweet this

"With fewer homes available for sale and those that are selling fast, it's a challenging time to be a buyer, so we are excited to give Michigan homebuyers a new way to compete and win in today's competitive market," said Knock Co-Founder and CEO Sean Black. "Both the Knock Home Swap and Knock GO provide the power of cash and are tailored for how today's consumer shops with their phone and agent by their side. The Home Swap provides homeowners with the convenience to buy first and sell later, and Knock GO gives first-time homebuyers the certainty of both a guaranteed closing and appraisal protection."

With the Knock Home Swap, a homeowner is pre-funded for a competitively priced mortgage and an interest-free bridge loan, which covers the down payment on the new home, home prep and up to six months of mortgage payments on the old house. Home Swap customers are able to sell their home on the open market for the maximum sale price without the hassle of living through repairs or showings. They also receive Knock's 30-day closing guarantee 1,2, Home Prep Concierge and backup offer on the old house in the unlikely event that it doesn't sell within six months. Ninety-eight percent of Knock homes sell in 90 days or less, with 90 percent selling in 30 days or less.

Designed specifically for first-time buyers and others who don't have a home to sell, Knock GO combines a cash-backed, competitively priced conventional mortgage with a closing guarantee and appraisal protection, giving buyers and their agents the ability to make an offer that will stand out from other offers. Knock GO is backed by the company's guarantee that it will fund the loan in the event it isn't 100% clear to close in 30 days and help offset the difference between the sale price and the home's appraised value3 at no additional cost.

Knock is partnering with agents at five local leading brokerage firms to bring its innovative home loan solutions to homeowners throughout Southeast Michigan, including The Perna Group Realtors - Keller Williams, Keller Williams|Jeff Glover and Associates Realtors, The Integrity Team and Keller Williams Paint Creek, Weichert Realty St. Clair Shores and House Want Realty.

"My goal is to provide the best opportunities and tools to my agents to service their clients at the highest level. Partnering with Knock does exactly that. It allows our agents to reduce the stress and uncertainty for our clients of being in a double payment situation while holding two mortgages, or worse, selling their home without finding one at all. Knock is a game changer," said Michael Perna, CEO of The Perna Group Realtors - Keller Williams.

Nationwide, the Knock Home Swap and Knock GO are available through 270 real estate brokerage firms with over 107,000 agents in approximately 5,200 ZIP codes nationwide. Homebuyers also can learn more and see if they qualify for the Knock Home Swap or Knock GO at knock.com.

1Mortgage loans offered by Knock Lending LLC. NMLS 1958445. Equal Housing Lender. For licensing information go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org.

2Terms and conditions apply. See https://knock.com/closing-guarantee for more information regarding the Knock Closing Guarantee.

3Terms and conditions apply. See knock.com/guaranteed-offer/terms for more information regarding the Knock GO (Guaranteed Offer).

About Knock

Knock makes home buying simple and certain by transforming all buyers into cash buyers and giving them complete control of the process from their phone. Knock's flagship Home Swap product empowers consumers with a cash-like offer to buy the home they want before selling the home they have, providing the convenience of not having to live through repairs or showings in the process. Knock GO (Guaranteed Offer) is a cash-backed home loan solution for first-time homebuyers looking to compete in today's hot housing market.

Launched in 2015 by founding team members of Trulia.com, Knock has raised more than $600 million in debt and equity from top-tier investors, including RRE Ventures, Foundry Group, Redpoint, Greycroft, Corazon Capital, Correlation Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and FJ Labs. The National Association of Realtors, through its investment arm Second Century Ventures, is a strategic investor in Knock, giving its 1.5 million members the ability to market Knock's homeownership solutions to their clients. Knock currently operates in 69 markets nationwide and plans to be in over 100 markets by 2023.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Knock

Related Links

www.knock.com


HOUSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As a founding member, ENGIE joined today the First Movers Coalition (FMC), officially launched at the COP 26. The coalition is a partnership between the World Economic Forum and the U.S. Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. By joining the coalition, ENGIE aims to bolster demand and supply for low-carbon technologies, crucial to reducing global emissions and reaching the 2050 climate goals.

Focusing on hard-to-abate sectors, where green gases and green fuels are required - in particular aviation, shipping, trucking, steel - the First Movers Coalition is a new collective initiative aiming at accelerating by 2030 the development at scale of competitive net zero carbon supply chains. Member companies are to spur net zero demand and supply by committing to purchasing zero-emission solutions for a portion of their value chains.

Committed to making the FMC a success and in line with the Group's existing commitment to have 100% of its preferred suppliers SBTi1 certified by 2030, ENGIE aims at setting clear targets to support the decarbonization of its customers and of the global economy.

The Group intends to also fully embrace its role as a net zero solutions supplier for hard-to-abate sectors, in line with its ambitions in renewable energy and distributed infrastructure, targeting especially 4 GW of renewable hydrogen capacity by 2030.

Catherine MacGregor, ENGIE CEO, said: "ENGIE is very proud to be a founding member of the First Movers Coalition. As a leader of the energy transition and an industrial player, ENGIE is committed to supporting the development of competitive net zero supply chains at scale. Joining this cross-sectoral coalition is one more step in ENGIE's longstanding commitment to net zero and is in line with the Group's purpose to accelerate the energy transition."

About ENGIE North America

ENGIE North America Inc. offers a range of capabilities in the United States and Canada to help customers decarbonize, decentralize and digitalize their operations. These include comprehensive services to help customers run their facilities more efficiently and optimize energy and other resource use and expense; clean power generation; energy storage; and retail energy supply that includes renewable, demand response, and on-bill financing options. Nearly 100% of the company's power generation portfolio is low carbon or renewable. Globally, ENGIE S.A. is a global reference in low-carbon energy and services, that relies on their key businesses (gas, renewable energy, services) to offer competitive solutions to customers. With 170,000 employees, customers, partners and stakeholders, the group is committed to accelerate the transition towards a carbon-neutral world, through reduced energy consumption and more environmentally-friendly solutions.

Media Contacts:

ENGIE North America: Sandrine Deparis, [email protected], (202) 855 3705

ENGIE HQ Press contact: [email protected], Tel. +33 (0)1 44 22 24 35

1 The Science Based Targets initiative is a set of methodologies which make it possible to confirm on a scientific basis that the GHG emissions trajectory of a given organization is compatible with the objective of limiting the average global temperature increase to 2 C or 1.5 C. Some of these methods make use of the notion of a carbon budget divided between different economic sectors.

SOURCE ENGIE North America

Related Links

engie-na.com


SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lear Corporation ("Lear",NYSE: LEA) announced today that it has commenced a cash tender offer (the "Tender Offer") for up to $200,000,000 aggregate principal amount, as may be increased or decreased by Lear (the "Maximum Amount"), of its 3.800% Senior Notes due 2027 ("Notes"). Lear intends to fund the repurchase of notes accepted for payment in the Tender Offer through its proposed offering of senior unsecured notes due 2032 and 2052.

The Maximum Amount represents the aggregate principal amount of Notes subject to the Tender Offer and excludes any Accrued Interest (as defined below) or Early Tender Payment (as defined below). Lear expressly reserves the right, in its sole discretion, subject to applicable law, to increase or decrease the Maximum Amount, without extending withdrawal rights and/or terminate the Tender Offer at any time prior to the Expiration Date (as defined below). If Holders (as defined below) tender more Notes in the Tender Offer than they expect to be accepted for purchase by Lear based on the Maximum Amount and Lear subsequently accepts more than such Holders expected of such Notes tendered as a result of an increase of the Maximum Amount, such Holders will not be able to withdraw any of their previously tendered Notes. Accordingly, Holders should not tender any Notes that they do not wish to be accepted for purchase.

The Tender Offer is summarized in the table below:































Title of Notes

CUSIP

Number

Principal

Amount

Outstanding

Maximum

Amount(1)

UST

Reference

Security

Bloomberg

Reference

Page (2)

Fixed

Spread

(bps)

Early

Tender

Payment (3) 3.800% Senior Notes due

2027

521865 AY1

$750,000,000

$200,000,000

1.125% UST due 10/31/2026

FIT1

+65

$30

(1) The Maximum Amount of $200,000,000 represents the aggregate principal amount of Notes that will be purchased in the Tender Offer. Lear may increase or decrease the Maximum Amount as described in the Offer to Purchase (as defined below).

(2) The page on Bloomberg from which the Dealer Managers (as defined below) will quote the bid side price of the U.S. Treasury Security. In the above table, "UST" denotes a U.S. Treasury Security.

(3) Per $1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase.

The Tender Offer is being made upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase dated November 4, 2021 (as amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Offer to Purchase"), which sets forth a detailed description of the Tender Offer. The Tender Offer is open to all registered holders (individually, a "Holder" and collectively, the "Holders") of Notes. The purpose of the Tender Offer is to repurchase a portion of Lear's outstanding indebtedness and to extend the average maturity of Lear's long-term indebtedness during a time of favorable market conditions.

Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on November 18, 2021 (the "Early Tender Date") will be eligible to receive the Total Consideration, which includes the Early Tender Payment. Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Date but at or prior to 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on December 3, 2021 (the "Expiration Date") will be eligible to receive the Maximum Tender Offer Consideration, which is equal to the Total Consideration minus the Early Tender Payment.

The Total Consideration payable by Lear for Notes will be a price per $1,000 principal amount based on the yield to maturity of the U.S. Treasury reference security specified in the table above (the "UST Reference Security"), as determined at 9:00 a.m., New York City time, on November 19, 2021 (unless otherwise extended by us as described in the Offer to Purchase), plus a fixed spread, calculated in accordance with the Offer to Purchase. For the avoidance of doubt, if the Total Consideration determined is less than $1,000 per $1,000 principal amount of Notes, then the Total Consideration will be calculated to the stated maturity date and not to the first par call date for Notes.

The settlement date for Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase is expected to be November 22, 2021, the second business day after the Early Tender Date (the "Early Settlement Date"). The settlement date for Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Date but at or prior to the Expiration Date and accepted for purchase is expected to be December 7, 2021, the second business day after the Expiration Date (the "Final Settlement Date," and along with the Early Settlement Date, each a "Settlement Date"), if the Maximum Amount is not purchased on the Early Settlement Date.

In addition to the Total Consideration or Maximum Tender Offer Consideration, as applicable, Holders of Notes accepted for purchase will receive accrued and unpaid interest ("Accrued Interest") on those Notes from the last interest payment date with respect to those Notes to, but not including, the applicable Settlement Date.

Holders who tender their Notes at or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on November 18, 2021 (such date and time, as it may be extended, the "Withdrawal Deadline") may withdraw such tendered Notes at any time at or prior to the Withdrawal Deadline. Following the Withdrawal Deadline, Holders who have tendered their Notes (whether before, on or after the Withdrawal Deadline) may not withdraw such Notes unless Lear is required to extend withdrawal rights under applicable law.

The Tender Offer is not conditioned on any minimum principal amount of Notes being validly tendered; however, Lear's obligation to accept for purchase, and to pay for, Notes validly tendered pursuant to the Tender Offer is subject to, and conditioned upon, the satisfaction of or, where applicable, Lear's waiver of the conditions, including a financing condition and certain other general conditions, as described in the Offer to Purchase.

Lear has retained Barclays Capital Inc., BofA Securities, Inc. and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. to act as Dealer Managers (the "Dealer Managers", and each a "Dealer Manager") for the Tender Offer. Global Bondholder Services Corporation has been retained to act as the Tender and Information Agent for the Tender Offer. Requests for assistance relating to the procedures for tendering Notes may be directed to the Tender and Information Agent either by email at [email protected], or by phone (212) 430-3774 (for banks and brokers only) or (866) 470-3900 (for all others toll free). Requests for assistance relating to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer may be directed to Barclays Capital Inc. at (212) 528-7581 (collect) or (800) 438-3242 (toll free) or via email at [email protected], BofA Securities, Inc. at (980) 387-3907 (collect) or (888) 292-0070 (toll free) or via email at [email protected] and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. at (212) 723-6106 (collect) or (800) 558-3745 (toll free) or via email at [email protected]. Beneficial owners may also contact their broker, dealer, commercial bank, trust company or other nominee for assistance.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to sell or purchase, or the solicitation of tenders with respect to, Notes. No offer, solicitation, purchase or sale will be made in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful. The Tender Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Offer to Purchase made available to Holders of Notes. None of Lear, the Dealer Managers, Tender and Information Agent or the trustees with respect to Notes, or any of their respective affiliates, is making any recommendation as to whether or not Holders should tender or refrain from tendering all or any portion of their Notes in response to the Tender Offer. Holders are urged to evaluate carefully all information in the Offer to Purchase, consult their own investment and tax advisers and make their own decisions whether to tender Notes in the Tender Offer, and, if so, the principal amount of Notes to tender.

About Lear

Lear, a global automotive technology leader in Seating and E-Systems, enables superior in-vehicle experiences for consumers around the world. Lear's diverse team of talented employees in 38 countries is driven by a commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and sustainability. Lear is Making every drive better by providing the technology for safer, smarter, and more comfortable journeys. Lear, headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, serves every major automaker in the world and ranks #179 on the Fortune 500. Further information about Lear is available at lear.com, or follow us on Twitter @LearCorporation.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding anticipated financial results and liquidity. The words "will," "may," "designed to," "outlook," "believes," "should," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "intends," "estimates," "forecasts" and similar expressions identify certain of these forward-looking statements. Lear also may provide forward-looking statements in oral statements or other written materials released to the public. All statements contained or incorporated in this press release or in any other public statements that address operating performance, events or developments that Lear expects or anticipates may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are discussed in Lear's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 3, 2021, and its other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Future operating results will be based on various factors, including actual industry production volumes, the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on Lear's business and the global economy, supply chain disruptions, actual industry production volumes, commodity prices, the impact of restructuring actions and Lear's success in implementing its operating strategy.

The forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date hereof, and Lear does not assume any obligation to update, amend or clarify them to reflect events, new information or circumstances occurring after the date hereof.

SOURCE Lear Corporation

Related Links

http://www.lear.com


PITTSBURGH, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Biden Administration announced that OSHA's Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on COVID-19 vaccination and testing, applying to private businesses with 100 or more employees, will take effect November 5, 2021. All ETS requirements except testing must be met by December 5, 2021. The testing requirements must be complied with by January 4, 2022.

Leech Tishman Fuscaldo & Lampl, LLC. (Leech Tishman) will be hosting a webinar on Friday, November 5, 2021 to discuss the newly-released ETS and what steps employers should take to effectively prepare for the new rule. National Employment & Labor Chair, Philip A. Toomey, along with employment attorney Leah K. Sell will be presenting a complimentary 1-hour briefing regarding what this means for covered employers.

Interested employers should register here. Please submit any questions in advance to [email protected].

ABOUT LEECH TISHMAN

Leech Tishman Fuscaldo & Lampl is a full-service law firm dedicated to assisting individuals, businesses, and institutions. Leech Tishman offers legal services in business restructuring & insolvency, corporate matters, employment & labor, estates & trusts, intellectual property, litigation & alternative dispute resolution, and real estate. In addition, the firm offers a wide range of legal services to clients in the aviation & aerospace, cannabis, construction, energy & natural resources, healthcare, and hospitality industries. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, Leech Tishman also has offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Sarasota, Washington, D.C. and Wilmington, DE.

Contact:

Mala Mason

Director of Marketing & Business Development

[email protected]

412.225.9568

SOURCE Leech Tishman
PITTSBURGH, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Capriotti's Sandwich Shop, known for its award-winning, hand crafted cheese steaks, turkey subs and more, will debut a new location in Pittsburgh at 3903 Forbes Ave. on Monday, November 8. Capriotti's brings the Pittsburgh community its 45-year tradition of slow-roasting whole, all-natural turkeys in-house and hand-pulling them every morning and other favorites like the made-from-scratch meatballs using premium, fresh ingredients.

Capriotti's is known for its wide array of sandwiches including The Bobbie, made with fresh oven-roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing and mayo, the Capastrami, made with hot pastrami, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing and homemade coleslaw and the cheesesteak is made with premium steak, chicken or Impossible plant-based meat and melted cheese plus hot or sweet peppers. The Pittsburgh Capriotti's will offer a convenient order-ahead option, in addition to third-party delivery services. The new shop will bring 20 new jobs to the Pittsburgh community.

The new location is locally owned and operated by two friends, Jeremy Tuckfelt and Brian Manni. The two met through their business ventures 12 years ago and have remained best friends since. Jeremy first got a taste of Capriotti's while attending The University of Delaware, where his interest in the brand grew. Years later, Jeremy's visit to Capriotti's on Wilshire in Los Angeles re-sparked his interest to own a location, and soon after brought the idea to Brian. After signing a multi-unit deal, the two are set to open their first location in the historic Original Hot Dog Shop building bringing a new taste to "the O."

"We are honored to be able to open up an award-winning sandwich shop in a historic location that has seen 70 years of happy visitors," said Tuckfelt. "We are excited to introduce Capriotti's to the Pittsburgh community and hope to live up to the long history that came before us. We know the community will love the high-quality, diverse options that Capriotti's has to offer."

Pittsburgh Capriotti's fans can download the CAPAddicts Rewards app on iOS and Android to earn and redeem rewards and score free food. The restaurant also features online ordering. Capriotti's in Pittsburgh offers catering for any event from corporate events to birthday parties with items such as party trays with cold subs, box lunches or a hot homemade meatball bar.

Capriotti's is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Sunday. For additional information, visit www.capriottis.com or call the location at 412-586-7383.

About Capriotti's Sandwich Shop

Founded in 1976, Capriotti's Sandwich Shop is an award-winning national franchised restaurant chain that remains true to its 45-year tradition of slow-roasting whole, all-natural turkeys in-house every day. Capriotti's fresh ingredients, homemade subs and unique menu items have won numerous accolades including being named one of the "10 Great Places for a Surprising Sandwich" by USA Today and many "Best of" awards across the country. Capriotti's cold, grilled and vegetarian subs, cheese steaks and salads are available at more than 100 locations across the U.S. Capriotti's signature sub, The Bobbie, was voted "The Greatest Sandwich in America" by thousands of readers across the country and reported by AOL.com. Capriotti's fans can also download the CAPAddicts Rewards app for iOS and Android, where they can earn and redeem rewards. For more information, visit capriottis.com. Like Capriotti's on Facebook, follow on Twitter or Instagram.

Media Contact: Leah Trice, Fishman PR | [email protected] | 615-887-3815

SOURCE Capriotti's Sandwich Shop

Related Links

https://www.capriottis.com


"The Dallas Cowboys organization is one of the most renowned and influential sports teams in the world, and we are thrilled to announce this powerful partnership" said Katie Lucas, Vice President of Strategy and Philanthropy, Lucas Oil. "We look forward to our expanded presence in the NFL with the addition of the Dallas Cowboys to our dynamic partnership with the Indianapolis Colts and of course, Lucas Oil Stadium. The Dallas Cowboys and Lucas Oil share common values - family, community and a commitment to excellence - values that equate to making an impact both on and off the field."

In addition to special game day activations at AT&T Stadium, Lucas Oil will be integrated into television, radio and online broadcast coverage of the team, all of Cowboy's social media channels, and will be included in digital features appearing on the team's website and custom mobile app.

The partnership also includes a Lucas Oil presence at The Star and Ford Center in Frisco, Texas. The Star is a 91-acre campus complete with 1-million square feet of office space, state-of-the-art medical facilities, luxury apartments, a 5-star hotel and is home to the Dallas Cowboys' World Headquarters. More than 1.9M people visit The Star and Ford center annually.

"Lucas Oil is a tremendous organization known for making the best automotive products in the world, which is why we are incredibly excited about this partnership," said Jerry Jones Jr., Executive Vice President of the Dallas Cowboys. "They share the same drive for excellence as the entire Dallas Cowboys organization, and we are proud to partner with Lucas Oil in bringing a unique experience to our visitors, viewers and fans throughout the 2021 season and beyond."

As part of this partnership, Lucas Oil is working closely with the Cowboys organization on conducting several different philanthropic projects over the next five years. Both organizations have a long history of giving back to their communities and will be teaming up for several future projects and initiatives.

For more information or to schedule an executive interview, please contact [email protected] .

About Lucas Oil

Founded in 1989 by Forrest and Charlotte Lucas, Lucas Oil Products was created with the simple philosophy of producing only the best line of lubricants and additives available anywhere. Today, it encompasses the most diversified range of products in the automotive, powersports, marine, industrial, outdoor, and motorsports marketplaces, many of which were created by Forrest Lucas himself. In total, the company boasts more than 300 premium products, representing the largest variety of shelf products of any oil company in the United States with a distribution network across 48 different countries. For more information please visit www.LucasOil.com.

Contact: Lucas Oil Corporate Communications

310-374-6177

[email protected]



SOURCE Lucas Oil Products Inc.
HOUSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Main Street Capital Corporation (NYSE: MAIN) ("Main Street") is pleased to announce that it recently completed a new portfolio investment to facilitate the recapitalization of YSN Imports, LLC d/b/a Flame King ("Flame King" or the "Company"), a leading supplier of propane storage solutions and accessories. Main Street, along with its co-investor, partnered with the Company's existing owners and management team to facilitate the transaction and provide growth capital, with Main Street funding $31.6 million in a combination of first-lien, senior secured term debt and a direct equity investment. Main Street and its co-investor also provided Flame King with a revolving line of credit to support the Company's future growth initiatives and working capital needs.

Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Pico Rivera, California, Flame King (www.flameking.com) is a leading supplier of propane storage solutions and accessories. The Company sells its products to recreational consumers indirectly through retailers, propane tank exchangers, RV OEMs and directly to consumers through eCommerce platforms. The Company also supplies commercial and industrial customers and offers a complete line of steel propane cylinders including refrigerant, buffer, and forklift cylinders available in various sizes ranging from 1 lb. to 420 lbs. for recreational, commercial, industrial, and home applications.

ABOUT MAIN STREET CAPITAL CORPORATION

Main Street (www.mainstcapital.com) is a principal investment firm that primarily provides long-term debt and equity capital to lower middle market companies and debt capital to middle market companies. Main Street's portfolio investments are typically made to support management buyouts, recapitalizations, growth financings, refinancings and acquisitions of companies that operate in diverse industry sectors. Main Street seeks to partner with entrepreneurs, business owners and management teams and generally provides "one stop" financing alternatives within its lower middle market portfolio. Main Street's lower middle market companies generally have annual revenues between $10 million and $150 million. Main Street's middle market debt investments are made in businesses that are generally larger in size than its lower middle market portfolio companies.

Main Street, through its wholly owned portfolio company MSC Adviser I, LLC ("MSC Adviser"), also maintains an asset management business through which it manages investments for external parties. MSC Adviser is registered as an investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

Contacts:

Main Street Capital Corporation

Dwayne L. Hyzak, CEO, [email protected]

Jesse E. Morris, CFO & COO, [email protected]

713-350-6000

Dennard Lascar Investor Relations

Ken Dennard | [email protected]

Zach Vaughan | [email protected]

713-529-6600

SOURCE Main Street Capital Corporation

Related Links

http://www.mainstcapital.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- From $2.4 million in 2020, the Malaysian micromobility market size is expected to rise to $4,549.8 million by 2030, exhibiting a CAGR of 99.9% from 2021 to 2030.

The major growth drivers for the market are:

Surging Demand for Better First- & Last-Mile Connectivity: Micromobility services are usually availed of for traveling shorter distances (less than 3.1 miles or 5 km). Further, they are generally provided via a station-less or dockless model, which enables riders to drop off their vehicles at any location, as per their convenience. For instance, the popularity of bike sharing has grown massively in urban areas in recent years as it is a low-cost and highly convenient means of transport, especially for short distances. Affordable Nature of Services: The other major factor fueling the advance of the Malaysian micromobility market is the highly affordable nature of such services. Unlike personal vehicle ownership, which is usually an expensive affair owing to the exorbitant fuel costs, parking costs, insurance costs, and maintenance charges, micromobility services are highly cost-effective. Commuters are charged just on the basis of the duration or distance they use the vehicle for, after a miniscule unlocking fee.

Get the sample pages of this report at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/malaysia-micromobility-market/report-sample

The COVID-19 pandemic has positively impacted the progress of the Malaysian micromobility market. Although the pandemic initially caused disruptions in the market owing to the announcement of lockdown and restrictions on the movement of people and goods, service providers are expected to recover in the forthcoming years. This will be because of the increasing preference of people for micromobility over public transit, as the latter is being seen as a major health risk. Hence, the surging demand for single-occupancy mobility solutions is predicted to support the expansion of the market in the coming years.

The e-mopeds category is predicted to demonstrate the fastest growth in the Malaysian micromobility market in the coming years, under the vehicle type segment. The extensive deployment of e-mopeds on account of their economical nature is the primary factor driving the advance of this category. Furthermore, these automobiles are highly convenient for daily commuters.

The first- and last-mile category dominated the Malaysian micromobility market in the past, based on model. The soaring adoption of these services for first- and last-mile connectivity is because people usually do not avail of conventional shared mobility services, such as carsharing, ride sharing, and ride hailing, for shorter distances, as they are quite expensive in this regard.

Browse detailed report on Micromobility Market in Malaysia Size and Growth Forecast to 2030

The dockless category contributed the higher revenue to the Malaysian micromobility market historically, within the sharing system segment. This sharing system is highly convenient, and it provides excellent flexibility in parking. Moreover, it helps market players save on the initial investment by eliminating the requirement for setting up docking stations.

The leading players in the Malaysian micromobility market are Neuron Mobility Pte. Ltd., Anywheel Pte. Ltd., Beam Mobility Holdings Pte. Ltd., Grab Holdings Inc., Falcon Ride WLL, Giant Co. Ltd., Tryke Transportation Sdn. Bhd., Merida & Centurion Germany GmbH, Yadea Technology Group Co. Ltd., and Ecocana Sdn. Bhd.

Malaysian Micromobility Market Segmentation

By Type

E-scooters

E-bikes

E-mopeds

E-pods

Bikes

Scooters

By Model

First- and Last-Mile

Multimodal

By Sharing System

Docked

Dockless

Browse Other Related Reports

Micromobility Market in Australia - The Australian micromobility market revenue stood at $16.9 million in 2020, and it is set to surge to $19,185.6 million by 2030.

Micromobility Market in New Zealand - The New Zealand micromobility market revenue stood at $9.5 million in 2020, and it will grow to $2,395.1 million by 2030, demonstrating a healthy CAGR of 64.3% from 2021 to 2030.

Micromobility Market in South Korea - The South Korean micromobility market value is predicted to increase to $11,178.5 million by 2030 from $120.3 million in 2020, at a 52.2% CAGR between 2021 and 2030.

About P&S Intelligence

P&S Intelligence is a provider of market research and consulting services catering to the market information needs of burgeoning industries across the world. Providing the plinth of market intelligence, P&S as an enterprising research and consulting company, believes in providing thorough landscape analyses on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness.

Contact:

Prajneesh Kumar

P&S Intelligence

Phone: +1-347-960-6455

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.psmarketresearch.com

Follow Us: LinkedIn Twitter

SOURCE P&S Intelligence
C$ unless otherwise stated TSX/NYSE/PSE: MFC SEHK: 945

TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Manulife Financial Corporation ("Manulife") today announced its intention to redeem all of its outstanding 8,000,000 Non-cumulative Rate Reset Class 1 Shares Series 5 ("Series 5 Preferred Shares") for cash on December 19, 2021. The Series 5 Preferred Shares (TSX: MFC.PR.G) are redeemable at Manulife's option on December 19, 2021, at a redemption price per Series 5 Preferred Share equal to C$25.00 for an aggregate total of C$200 million. Formal notice will be delivered to holders of Series 5 Preferred Shares in accordance with the terms outlined in the share provisions for the Series 5 Preferred Shares.

Separately from the redemption price, the final quarterly dividend of C$0.243188 per Series 5 Preferred Share will be paid in the usual manner on or after December 19, 2021 to shareholders of record on December 1, 2021. After the Series 5 Preferred Shares are redeemed, holders of Series 5 Preferred Shares will cease to be entitled to distributions of dividends and will not be entitled to exercise any rights as holders other than to receive the redemption price.

About Manulife

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we provide financial advice and insurance, operating as Manulife across Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. Through Manulife Investment Management, the global brand for our global wealth and asset management segment, we serve individuals, institutions and retirement plan members worldwide. At the end of 2020, we had more than 37,000 employees, over 118,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 30 million customers. As of September 30, 2021, we had CAD$1.4 trillion (US$1.1 trillion) in assets under management and administration, and in the previous 12 months we made CAD$31.6 billion in payments to our customers.

Our principal operations are in Asia and Canada, and the United States, where we have served customers for more than 155 years. We trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges and under '945' in Hong Kong. Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulife.com.

SOURCE Manulife Financial Corporation

Related Links

http://www.manulife.com


WINNIPEG, MB, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Medicure Inc. ("Medicure" or the "Company") (TSXV: MPH) (OTC: MCUJF), a cardiovascular pharmaceutical company, is pleased to announce the results from the SAVI-PCI clinical trial demonstrating that the use of short infusion AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) injection was non-inferior to label-dosing INTEGRILIN (eptifibatide) or long-infusion AGGRASTAT in a primary endpoint of combined efficacy and major bleeding.

SAVI-PCI was a randomized, multicenter, open-label study enrolling 535 patients at 13 sites in the United States comparing a bolus plus short (1  2 hour) infusion AGGRASTAT to label-dosing (double-bolus plus 12  18 hour infusion) INTEGRILIN. A third arm of bolus plus long (12  18 hour) infusion AGGRASTAT was later added to the study. The primary endpoint was the non-inferiority (margin 19.1%) of a composite of death, periprocedural myonecrosis (PPM), urgent target vessel revascularization (uTVR) or in-hospital, non-CABG related REPLACE-2 defined major bleeding within 48 hours following PCI or hospital discharge, whichever came first (NCT01522417). This study was sponsored by Medicure.

The study showed that short infusion AGGRASTAT was non-inferior to both label-dosing INTEGRILIN (34.2% vs 30.9%, Risk Difference = 0.0323, 95% CI [-0.0599  0.1245]) and long-infusion AGGRASTAT (34.2% vs 39.0%, Risk Difference = -0.0487, 95% CI [-0.1569  0.0595]) with respect to the primary endpoint. The primary endpoint was driven by the occurrence of PPM, defined as a troponin value  3 times the upper limit of normal when compared to baseline. There was only a single death in the study (INTEGRILIN arm) and 2 uTVR events (1 in each of the short and long AGGRASTAT arms, respectively). There was no significant difference in REPLACE-2 major bleeding events between the short infusion AGGRASTAT or label-dosing INTEGRILIN arms (0 vs 0.5%, p = 0.2457); however, there was a significant reduction when compared to the long AGGRASTAT arm (0 vs 3.2%, p = 0.0093).

"We are very pleased to announce that the SAVI-PCI study met its primary endpoint, demonstrating the non-inferiority of a bolus plus short-infusion of AGGRASTAT when compared to longer infusion regimens. We believe that these results reflect the contemporary use of AGGRASTAT in the United States and are pleased to provide clinical evidence for its use", said Albert Friesen, PhD, CEO of Medicure. When asked for comment on behalf of the executive steering committee, Dr. Jorge Saucedo, lead author of the manuscript and Division Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, stated that "We're pleased that SAVI-PCI has reached its final completion. This data represents the first randomized clinical trial comparing tirofiban with long infusion glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors and demonstrates that a short infusion strategy may mitigate some of the bleeding risks associated with longer infusions, while still providing a high level of ischemic protection."

The key results were shared today at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) Annual Meeting. Additionally, the manuscript has been submitted for publication and is currently under scientific peer review.

AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) injection is a non-peptide antagonist of the platelet glycoprotein (GP) IIb/IIIa receptor and inhibits the final common pathway in platelet aggregation. AGGRASTAT is indicated to reduce the rate of thrombotic cardiovascular events (combined endpoint of death, myocardial infarction, or refractory ischemia/repeat cardiac procedure) in patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS).1

About Aggrastat

Aggrastat is an IV antiplatelet medication indicated to reduce the rate of thrombotic cardiovascular events (combined endpoint of death, myocardial infarction, or refractory ischemia/repeat cardiac procedure) in patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS). Aggrastat is currently the most widely used GP IIb/IIIa inhibitor in the U.S. and has several administration benefits including room temperature storage, a 3-year shelf life and is available in pre-mixed formats. Please refer to the IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION below.

About Medicure Inc.

Medicure is a pharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of therapies for the U.S. cardiovascular market. The present focus of the Company is the marketing and distribution of AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) injection and ZYPITAMAG (pitavastatin) tablets in the United States, where they are sold through the Company's U.S. subsidiary, Medicure Pharma Inc. Medicure also operates Marley Drug, Inc. ("Marley"), a pharmacy located in North Carolina that offers an Extended Supply mail order drug program serving all 50 US states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Marley Drug is committed to improving the health status of its patients and the communities they serve while reducing overall health care costs for employers and other health care consumers. For more information visit www.marleydrug.com. To learn more about The Extended Supply Generic Drug Program call 800.286.6781 or email [email protected]. For more information on Medicure please visit www.medicure.com. For additional information about AGGRASTAT, refer to the full Prescribing Information. For additional information about ZYPITAMAG, refer to the full Prescribing Information.

Medicure is a pharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of therapies for the U.S. cardiovascular market. The present focus of the Company is the marketing and distribution of AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) injection and ZYPITAMAG (pitavastatin) tablets in the United States, where they are sold through the Company's U.S. subsidiary, Medicure Pharma Inc. For more information on Medicure please visit www.medicure.com.

Important Safety Information for AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride)

Indications and Usage

AGGRASTAT is indicated to reduce the rate of thrombotic cardiovascular events (combined endpoint of death, myocardial infarction, or refractory ischemia/repeat cardiac procedure) in patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS).

Dosage and Administration

Administer intravenously 25 mcg/kg within 5 minutes and then 0.15 mcg/kg/min for up to 18 hours. In patients with creatinine clearance 60 mL/min, give 25 mcg/kg within 5 minutes and then 0.075 mcg/kg/min.

Contraindications

Known hypersensitivity to any component of AGGRASTAT, history of thrombocytopenia with prior exposure to Aggrastat, active internal bleeding, or history of bleeding diathesis, major surgical procedure or severe physical trauma within previous month.

Warnings and Precautions

AGGRASTAT can cause serious bleeding. Most bleeding associated with AGGRASTAT occurs at the arterial access site for cardiac catheterization. Minimize the use of traumatic or potentially traumatic procedures such as arterial and venous punctures, intramuscular injections, nasotracheal intubation, etc. Concomitant use of fibrinolytics, anticoagulants and antiplatelet drugs increases the risk of bleeding. If bleeding cannot be controlled, discontinue AGGRASTAT.

Thrombocytopenia: Discontinue AGGRASTAT and heparin.

Adverse Reactions

Bleeding is the most commonly reported adverse reaction.

For more information on AGGRASTAT, please refer to Full Prescribing Information available at www.aggrastatHDB.com.

To be added to Medicure's e-mail list, please visit: medicure.mediaroom.com/alerts

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Information: Statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact, including, without limitation, statements containing the words "believes", "may", "plans", "will", "estimates", "continues", "anticipates", "intends", "expects" and similar expressions, may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. federal securities laws (such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are hereinafter collectively referred to as "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements, include estimates, analysis and opinions of management of the Company made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors which the Company believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances. Inherent in forward-looking statements are known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors beyond the Company's ability to predict or control that may cause the actual results, events or developments to be materially different from any future results, events or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, and as such, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Such risk factors include, among others, the Company's future product revenues, stage of development, additional capital requirements, risks associated with the completion and timing of clinical trials and obtaining regulatory approval to market the Company's products, the ability to protect its intellectual property, dependence upon collaborative partners, changes in government regulation or regulatory approval processes, and rapid technological change in the industry. Such statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to, assumptions about: general business and economic conditions; the impact of changes in Canadian-US dollar and other foreign exchange rates on the Company's revenues, costs and results; the timing of the receipt of regulatory and governmental approvals for the Company's research and development projects; the availability of financing for the Company's commercial operations and/or research and development projects, or the availability of financing on reasonable terms; results of current and future clinical trials; the uncertainties associated with the acceptance and demand for new products and market competition. The foregoing list of important factors and assumptions is not exhaustive. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements or the foregoing list of factors, other than as may be required by applicable legislation. Additional discussion regarding the risks and uncertainties relating to the Company and its business can be found in the Company's other filings with the applicable Canadian securities regulatory authorities or the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and in the "Risk Factors" section of its Form 20F for the year ended December 31, 2018.

AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) is a registered trademark of Medicure International Inc.

References

1AGGRASTAT (tirofiban hydrochloride) injection prescribing information:

www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/020912s019s020lbl.pdf

SOURCE Medicure Inc.

Related Links

www.medicure.com


RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael Baker International, a global leader in engineering, planning and consulting services, announced today that Ali Seyedmadani, Ph.D., P.E., has joined the firm as Office Executive for Rancho Cordova, California. Mr. Seyedmadani will focus on implementing strategies to accelerate business growth across the West Region, including adding new markets, developing clients and expanding the capabilities of the office.

"Ali is a proven leader with a history of managing complex transportation projects, project pursuits and delivery for more than 30 years," said Malcolm Dougherty, West Regional Director at Michael Baker International. "His experience in project management, design, quality control and constructability review of major projects will be invaluable as he steers the Rancho Cordova office and helps execute quality projects for our clients in the West Region."

Mr. Seyedmadani joins Michael Baker after 34 years at WSP (formerly Parsons Brinckerhoff), including overseeing staff, project pursuits and delivery in six states, including California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii, as well as in Guam. He has also been involved in major Design-Build and alternative delivery projects and has managed all phases of project delivery including planning, environmental, final design and design services during construction. His work has also included close coordination with state, city and local agencies, as well as Federal Highway Administration staff. In his most recent role as Project Manager and Senior Technical Director at WSP, Mr. Seyedmadani actively pursued and managed transportation projects in Northern California and was instrumental in marketing, developing pursuit strategies, and assisting in proposal development, as well as working closely with senior management teams to achieve companywide goals, work sharing, training and staff mentorship.

Mr. Seyedmadani holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering, with a major in Structures and minor in Geotechnical Engineering, from Arizona State University.

About Michael Baker International

Michael Baker International is a leading provider of engineering and consulting services. The firm's Practices encompass all facets of infrastructure, including design, civil engineering, planning, architecture, environmental, construction and program management. For more than 80 years, the company has been a trusted partner, providing comprehensive services and solutions to commercial clients and all branches of the military, as well as federal, state and municipal governments. Embracing emerging technologies and the latest innovations  like intelligent transportation and design-build project delivery  Michael Baker is an industry leader that delivers expertise and quality. The firm's more than 3,000 employees across nearly 100 locations are committed to Making a Difference for clients and communities through a culture of innovation, collaboration and technological advancement. To learn more, visit https://mbakerintl.com/.

Contact: Julia Covelli

[email protected]

(866) 293-4609

SOURCE Michael Baker International
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mission Bio, the pioneer in high-throughput single-cell DNA and multi-omics analysis, has signed an agreement with Alliance Global (AGBL Group), distributors of innovative biomedical technology and products. The agreement will allow Mission Bio to expand its product offerings into the Middle East and Africa, two key regions for Mission Bio's growth strategy as it expands a global reach.

Darrin Crisitello, Chief Commercial Officer of Mission Bio, said, "AGBL has a history of bringing new and innovative technologies to Middle East and African countries -- as evidenced by their previous success in commercializing hundreds of next-generation sequencers, and supporting all the national population genetics projects in the region. We look forward to working with their teams to bring the Tapestri platform to users throughout the region, helping meet demand for single-cell analysis and innovation."

"Mission Bio's Tapestri single-cell sequencing platform is an important addition to AGBL's portfolio of genomics products, and we are very excited about the possibilities the Tapestri platform shall give our customers in developing applications for both DNA and protein research on a single cell level," said Tamer Degheidy, MD, CEO and co-founder of AGBL. "Access to multi-omic, single-cell sequencing technology is key to the continued enablement of our research and clinical customers across our geographies. We are very excited about developing the use of the Tapestri platform in our clinical laboratories."

The latest partnership builds on Mission Bio's commitment to providing high-quality single-cell multi-omics with the Tapestri platform globally, recently demonstrated through a strategic partnership with Sequanta Technologies Co., Ltd. to provide services to cell and gene therapy companies in mainland China. To learn more, visit missionbio.com .

About Mission Bio

Mission Bio is a life sciences company that accelerates discoveries and cures for a wide range of diseases by equipping researchers with the tools they need to better measure and predict our resistance and response to new therapies. Mission Bio's multi-omics approach improves time-to-market for new therapeutics, including innovative cell and gene therapies that provide new pathways to health. Founded in 2014, Mission Bio has secured investment from Novo Growth, Cota Capital, Agilent Technologies, Mayfield Fund, and others.

The company's Tapestri platform gives researchers around the globe the power to interrogate every molecule in a cell together, providing a comprehensive understanding of activity from a single sample. Tapestri is the only commercialized multi-omics platform capable of analyzing DNA and protein simultaneously from the same sample at single-cell resolution. The Tapestri Platform is being utilized by customers at leading research centers, pharmaceutical, and diagnostics companies worldwide to develop treatments and eventually cures for cancer. To learn more, visit missionbio.com .

About Alliance Global

Alliance Global is a member of the AGBL group of companies, the largest biomedical distribution group in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia region. The group is dedicated to bringing innovative technologies and products to researchers, clinicians, and diagnostic centers in emerging healthcare markets. To learn more, visit www.agbl.net .

Media Contact

Consort Partners for Mission Bio

[email protected]

SOURCE Mission Bio

Related Links

http://www.missionbio.com/


SEATTLE, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The first lawsuit brought on behalf of the Estate of Lorenzo Anderson and father Horace Anderson filed today holds Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin, Councilmember Kshama Sawant, and the City of Seattle responsible for the wrongful death of Lorenzo Anderson, the 19 year old special needs teen that was killed near the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) Zone on June 20, 2020. The bombshell lawsuit, as reported by the Seattle Times, was filed by Evan M. Oshan of Oshan and Associates (Oshan Law) in King County Superior Court today and can be viewed at https://pdfhost.io/v/sfFcQB1vU_Complaint. This follows on a previously announced Notice of Claims in May of this year.

The 40-page complaint provides a chronology of events which encourage the CHOP Zone- A seven block police-free protest zone that the Mayor, City Council and other government entities allowed to develop creating a lawless environment. Over 2400 pages of exhibits provide ample evidence to support the 11 causes of action outlined in the complaint which shows how the actions and inactions by the defendants were directly responsible for the chaos promoted and encouraged that lead to the wrongful and preventable death of Lorenzo Anderson.

Some key exhibits include a judicial reprimand of Councilmember Kshama Sawant, over 300 pages of invoices showing funds mismanaged to promote the CHOP Zone where lawlessness reigned. Additional exhibits show how Seattle Emergency Medical Service personnel and Seattle Police officers were nearby and available to help the dying Lorenzo when 911 calls were received yet they failed to perform their duties as public servants and render aid as a result of failed Seattle leadership. Other exhibits further show the extreme suffering that Lorenzo endured before his death and establish that he would have survived the shooting if help was rendered.

"In order for Justice to be served, all responsible parties regardless of their position in government must be held accountable," said Evan M. Oshan, attorney for the Lorenzo Andersons' Estate. "We entrust our leaders to protect public safety, and there is no excuse for the willful indifference and pattern of inaction that lead to Lorenzo's wrongful death. The lawlessness that was allowed to reign in Seattle is not acceptable and will not go unpunished." Oshan asserts "this complaint is brought in King County so a Seattle Jury can hear the facts and evidence, Washington law supports our claims and is the correct venue for justice to be served!"

Oshan asserts: "This case is about freedom from the tyrannical rule of incompetent government leadership. I am a firm believer in our American legal system and have confidence that justice will prevail!"

Attorney Evan M. Oshan & Horace Anderson- Father of The Late Lorenzo Anderson are available for in studio or zoom interview.

Exhibits available upon request.

Press Contact

Evan M. Oshan

[email protected]

206 335 3880- Text or Voice

SOURCE Oshan & Associates, P.C.

Related Links

oshanandassociates.com


DOVER, Del., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alzheimer's Caregivers Network (ACN), a non-profit organization for family members and care providers of those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, launched this week. The launch was set to coincide with National Family Caregivers Month, which is all of November. The free resource website can be viewed at www.alzheimerscaregivers.org.

ACN provides resources for those who are currently caring for someone with Alzheimer's disease, as well as those who may be predisposed to the disease. Through the website, caregivers are provided with cutting-edge information and treatment options, checklists and helpful tips regarding activities, behaviour management, financial and legal help and other related information for both patients and those responsible for their care.

A person who finds themself responsible for the care of someone with Alzheimer's disease is no easy task. Most family caregivers have never received medical training on how to care for someone with Alzheimer's. The mission of the Alzheimer's Caregivers Network is to educate and empower caregivers to provide the highest level of care possible to their loved ones, while protecting themselves against the burnout that can come with caregiving.

Currently, website visitors can browse articles regarding the different aspects of caregiving and sign up for the network's email newsletter, which will deliver more helpful information straight to your email inbox. In the future, the network plans to compile databases for caregivers, including information about care facilities and doctors who specialize in Alzheimer's disease research and treatment.

Please visit www.AlzheimersCaregivers.org to learn more about caring for someone with Alzheimer's disease.

About Alzheimer's Caregivers Network

The Alzheimer's Caregivers Network is a non-profit corporation pending application to the IRS as a tax-exempt entity described under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code. Caregivers can rely on the information, support and resources provided by ACN, and can strive to protect themselves against burnout while gaining the confidence and knowledge required to improve the quality of life for themselves and their loved one.

SOURCE Alzheimers Caregivers Association

Related Links

http://www.AlzheimersCaregivers.org


PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- James-Charles Noonan, bestselling author of The Church Visible : The Ceremonial Life and Protocol of the Catholic Church (1996. Viking Penguin), has released a three-book epic biography, Alix & Minnie: A Royal Trilogy , that tells the true story of Danish royal sisters from modest beginnings; one becoming the Queen of England and the other the Empress of Russia.

James-Charles Noonan Three detailed and engrossing narratives reveal secrets of sisters who each led empires at the turn of the 20th century. Alix & Minnie: A Royal Trilogy, tells the true story of Danish royal sisters from modest beginnings; one becoming the Queen of England and the other the Empress of Russia. The three volume biography includes Book One: Royal Sisters Preparing for Greatness; Book Two: Adventure, Wealth, Power and Scandal; and Book Three: Widowhood, War, Revolution and Exile

The three books of Alix & Minnie reveal the lives and historical impact  depicted through previously unmined archival information  of Princess Alexandra of Denmark, known as Alix, who would become Queen of the United Kingdom, Empress of India and the British Dominions and great-grandmother to Queen Elizabeth II of England, and Princess Dagmar of Denmark, known as Minnie and destined to become Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia, and mother to the doomed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and grandmother to Grand Duchess Anastasia.

"After spending several years doing research in The Secret Vatican Archives and coming across letters from kings, princesses, and various royals throughout Europe, I decided I wanted to write a royal biography," said Noonan. "I sought a story that would both interest me and capture a pivotal time in history through the personal stories of powerful women. I found that strong narrative in the story of Alix and Minnie. Their lives display an often unbelievable wealth of drama, history, tragedy, treachery, and familial love." He added that he felt the influence of women on historical events was too often neglected.

"I intentionally wrote in the style of a novel to engage the reader with the amazing history of these women," Noonan explained. "It's all true, based on their letters that I uncovered in the archives. And I was fortunate to have numerous research agents who spent untold hours in the great archives at Windsor and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg and Moscow, Vatican City, Greece, and numerous German royal house archives, many of which had not previously been made public."

The result of Noonan's research is three detailed and engrossing narratives: Book One: Royal Sisters Preparing for Greatness ; Book Two: Adventure, Wealth, Power and Scandal ; and Book Three: Widowhood, War, Revolution and Exile .

The lives of Alix & Minnie cover the period from 1844 when Alexandra, the elder of the sisters, was born, to 1928 when Minnie died. As a historian, Noonan's period of expertise is 1800-1950 or modern European history from Napoleon forward. Noonan chose to highlight the exploits and incredible accomplishments of women who had a role in world history during a tumultuous transition for royal families around the world.

Book One of Alix & Minnie chronicles the early beginnings of the sisters, as well as the historical significance and the intricate protocol of royal names and reigning houses of which Noonan is a renowned expert. Noonan includes an extensive and invaluable collection of biographical data about members of the British, Russian, Danish, and Greek royal families. Book Two delves into the lives of the women's growing families and the humiliations each suffered despite their positions and renowned beauty. In Book Three, Alix becomes queen and changes the face of the British monarchy and revolution brings an end to Imperial Russia, and the women endure.

All three books of Alix & Minnie: A Royal Trilogy are now exclusively available on Amazon and on Noonan's website both in print and in digital format.

About the Author

James-Charles Noonan is a historian, international protocolist, and author who wrote the bestselling book The Church Visible: The Ceremonial Life and Protocol of the Catholic Church, which was commissioned by Pope John Paul II, who was also a personal friend. Noonan spent several years in the Vatican, where he was given access to The Secret Vatican Archives and conducted years of research. He was raised in the Philadelphia area, attended LaSalle University, and was educated at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He later attended the Pontifical Gregorian University in Vatican City in Rome, and Catholic University in Washington. Noonan recently released A Church of Tradition: What Every Catholic Should Know . He lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Contact: Kellyann Zuzulo, Fireworks, 1.215.287.7291, [email protected]

SOURCE James-Charles Noonan
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Next Glass, a leading global provider of commerce solutions, software, content, and experiences to the beverage alcohol industry, welcomes its newest board member, Angela Cearns, CEO of TrueTwins, a blockchain-based authentication platform located in Copenhagen, Denmark that develops Digital Passports proving brands' footprint and authenticity at the product level.

Along with her TrueTwins leadership experience, Cearns brings deep eCommerce technology experience from her time spent at Amazon, where she played a key role in driving the expansion of Amazon's Emerging Markets Fulfilment business. Cearns also served as the GM of Amazon Global Selling marketplace business, holding a US patent on custom product processing developed for Amazon, and headed up Product Management for the Amazon Prime Technology Platform that powers Amazon global Prime membership.

Prior to Amazon, Cearns spent close to a decade in Silicon Valley with Symantec and the Norton Antivirus brand in a number of leadership positions, including Director of Customer Retention, Worldwide eCommerce. Recently, she also served as the Chief eCommerce Officer for Pizza Hut

Digital Ventures, leading Pizza Hut International through its digital transformation from a physical restaurant franchise business to a world leader in online ordering and delivery services.

Cearns holds a Master of Software Engineering degree from the University of Colorado and an Advanced Project Management certificate from Stanford University. As a respected speaker she has shared stages internationally with former presidents and tech leaders alike on "Driving Change'' and "Digital Transformation" to audiences of over 10,000 people. Currently she is also a professor for the European Institute of eCommerce Executive Program at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

"I am delighted to welcome Angela Cearns to the Next Glass Board," said Next Glass CEO, Trace Smith. "As we formed and began to scale our Next Glass Commerce business, we sought to add a leader with deep and varied eCommerce experiences. Angela's eCommerce expertise, developed during impressive career stops at Amazon, Pizza Hut, and Symantec, will be hugely valuable to our team."

Emerging from ongoing economic and industry hardships caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Next Glass, which acquired three businesses in the beverage alcohol industry in 2020, continues to build its suite of services, acquiring Ollie Order in July 2021. Ollie is an omnichannel alcohol marketplace platform headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, that facilitates transactions between buyers, logistics providers and suppliers in the beverage-alcohol industry. As a result of the acquisition, Next Glass brands now operate in two distinct divisions; Next Glass Commerce combines the power of Ollie and Oznr's direct-to-consumer solutions for beverage producers to the craft technology space, while Next Glass Software, Events and Services (SES) delivers SaaS menu publishing software, live events, data and insights, and a marketing platform to serve the beverage alcohol industry through the award-winning Untappd app, Untappd for Business, LIVE!, and Beer Advocate and Hop Culture brands.

Building a team with diverse leadership experience is an important part of the Next Glass mission of becoming a valued partner to the beverage alcohol industry, from producers to retailers, as the digital and regulatory landscape continues to evolve. Cearns' deep eCommerce experience across several verticals, including in the Food & Beverage space, will be paramount in helping the Next Glass Commerce business unit scale.

"The beverage alcohol industry is a highly regulated, traditional and complex ecosystem that is going through rapid transformation. Not only is Next Glass the leading global provider of software with in-depth knowledge of the industry, its group of companies also has the richest content and biggest audience of beer enthusiasts. I'm honored to be part of the team to help guide its digitization and integration," said Cearns.

Cearns joins Rick Fernandes, founder and former CEO of webloyalty.com, as independent members of the Next Glass Board of Directors. Next Glass is headquartered in Charlotte, NC with offices in Wilmington, NC, Enschede, The Netherlands, and Vancouver, Canada.

About Next Glass

Founded in 2013, Next Glass provides software, experiences, services, and commerce solutions that connect enthusiasts, retailers, and producers in the beverage-alcohol industry. Its award-winning Untappd mobile application and BeerAdvocate website are used by millions of beer enthusiasts around the world and its menu publishing software tool, Untappd for Business, enables venues to streamline publication and promotion of their beer, wine, cocktail, and food menus. In late-2019 the Company added its Live! division to produce world-class festivals and events and in 2020, Next Glass welcomed Hop Culture and Oznr to the family, offering lifestyle engagement and producer-to-consumer commerce opportunities to the industry. In 2021, Vancouver, CA-based Ollie Order joined Next Glass to provide omnichannel eCommerce solutions to producer and retailers in the beverage-alcohol space. For more information, please visit www.NextGlass.co.

SOURCE Next Glass

Related Links

http://nextglass.co


COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Next PR, an award-winning public relations firm, is committed to recruiting and retaining the industry's most creative and productive talent, which is why the firm invested in a thoughtfully designed wellness package. With a focus on the whole person, Next PR's emphasis on wellness is intended to provide benefits and perks to help employees and their families thrive.

Recognized for its innovative approach to PR and communications by inclusion in the 2021 Agency Elite Top 100 list, Next PR was also named a 2021 Winner for Top Places to Work by PR NEWS for providing a work environment that facilitates professional growth while ensuring employees feel valued and motivated. The PR NEWS profile cited Next PR's leadership development programs as well as the flexibility and support provided to team members.

The firm provides free healthcare coverage to all full-time employees and the firm boasts a 100% participation in its 401(k) program with a generous match to support financial wellness. To promote a healthier workplace, Next PR offers a $500 bonus to every team member who shows proof of receiving a COVID-19 vaccination. The team currently sits at 100% vaccination completion.

Understanding parental leave is about family bonding and wellness, not solely physical recovery from childbirth, the firm provides parental leave benefits for mothers, fathers and adoptive parents. Next PR has been recognized as an adoption-friendly workplace by the Dave Thomas Foundation for the seventh year running for its support of team members who want to provide a loving home to a child through adoption.

Recognizing peak productivity hours may differ among team members, Next PR provides flexible work schedules, offering team members the ability to design their schedules to meet client needs while accommodating their personal lives and preferences.

The firm also offers a Winter Wellness Week, giving all staff a paid week off at the end of the year for a mental health break. This perk allows team members to recharge and prepare for the new year ahead, as well as conserve their paid time off around the holidays. To further promote employee wellness, Next PR provides generous end-of-year gifts. Last year, each team member received a Peloton bike while the company's health insurance provider covered subscription fees to support employees' physical health.

To keep team members refreshed during the summer and fall, the team works half days on Fridays with a no-meeting rule in place. Additionally, Next PR offices sponsor informal meetings at the end of the day on Wednesdays, giving team members a chance to socialize and connect, even while remote.

"We believe we get the best results when team members bring their whole selves to work, so we provide support for the whole person in every way we can," said Next PR CEO Heather Kelly. "This means promoting wellness across the spectrum, from competitive pay and benefits to perks that make life easier and more fun. Our talented team members drive our business success, so we're committed to their personal wellbeing."

About Next PR

Next PR is an award-winning public relations firm with one major focus: results. Next PR is agile, fresh and hyper-focused on helping clients achieve their next big PR goals. Founded in 1978, the company has offices across the nation in San Francisco, Denver, Colorado Springs, Chicago and Philadelphia. Next PR boasts the best and brightest in public relations, but more than that, it brings the fun  and the motivation  to the daily grind. The company has been named a Top Place to Work by PR News and is consistently recognized by the Dave Thomas Foundation as an Adoption-Friendly Workplace for seven years running, with many stellar employees selected as PR Rising Stars, Agency Elite winner for two consecutive years and Communicators of the Year. To inquire about job opportunities at Next PR, check out the open positions across all five of its office locations. Learn more about how Next PR pushes boundaries to help clients launch brands, disrupt industries and engage with the audiences that matter most at nextpr.com.

CONTACT:

Julianne Weinman

(267) 629-9954

[email protected]

SOURCE Next PR

Related Links

https://www.nextpr.com


ALBANY, N.Y., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The demand for electroplating and batteries has increased substantially over the years. Nickel sulfate is a prime component in the manufacturing of batteries and electroplating. Therefore, the demand for nickel sulfate is estimated to increase during the forecast period of 2021-2031. Based on all these factors, the nickel sulfate market is expected to observe steady growth.

Properties of nickel sulfate such as high solubility in any aqueous solutions and others are projected to lead to substantial growth of the global market. Furthermore, the use of nickel sulfate in applications such as electroplating, dyeing and printing, medical, catalysts, and ceramics other than batteries is anticipated to present an array of growth opportunities for the global market.

Transparency Market Research (TMR) has conducted an extensive analysis on various factors of growth associated with the nickel sulfate market. The analysts from TMR expect the global market for nickel sulfate to expand at a CAGR of 14.7% during the forecast period of 2021-2031. The nickel sulfate market is expected to surpass US$ 8.82 Bn by 2031.

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There is a need for high quality feedstock materials such as intermediary nickel products, powders, and briquettes for the production of batteries utilized in EVs. Manufacturers in the nickel sulfate market are gaining a robust research base in converting nickel laterite ores to NPI and further to nickel matte for innovating in batteries used for EVs. The growing popularity of electric vehicles is also expected to result in substantial growth of the nickel sulfate market during the forecast period. The increasing focus on environmental concerns around the world is compelling many countries to impose strict regulations on vehicular emissions and promote electric vehicles. These factors will ultimately contribute to the growth of the nickel sulfate market.

Key Findings of Report

Extensive Demand for Electric Vehicles to Support Market Growth Trajectory

High CO2 emissions generated through transportation is resulting in increased adoption of electric vehicles. The transition from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric vehicles to decrease the pollution levels is anticipated to have a profound impact on the growth of the nickel sulfate market. The emergence of nickel sulfate as a prime component in the manufacturing of various batteries is likely to invite exponential growth for the global market.

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High Focus on Li-Ion Batteries to Drive Nickel Sulfate Market

The demand for Li-ion batteries has increased considerably due to the growing popularity of electric vehicles. These batteries require nickel sulfate in cathode form. In addition, Li-ion batteries are also used in consumer electronics on a large scale. Furthermore, large-scale investments in the Li-ion manufacturing sector is also estimated to ensure promising growth for the nickel sulfate market.

Asia Pacific to Emerge as Dominant Region

Asia Pacific is estimated to lead the nickel sulfate market during the forecast period of 2021-2031. The nickel sulfate market in the region is expected to expand at a CAGR of 15.6% during the forecast period. China may serve as a prominent growth-generating country in the region. Europe is also estimated to be a key region for the nickel sulfate market. The growing demand for nickel sulfate from the automotive sector is contributing to the growth of the market in the region.

Some key players into the nickel sulfate market are Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd., Green Eco-manufacture Hi-tech (GEM), Palm Commodities International, Indian Platinum Pvt. Ltd., Vizag Chemical, Zenith, and Univertical.

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Global Nickel Sulfate Market  Segmentation

By Form

Crystal

Solution

By Grade

En Grade

Plating Grade

High Purity Grade

Others (Technical Grade)

By Application

Battery

Electroplating

Chemicals

Dyeing & Printing

Others (Medical, Ceramics, and Catalysts)

By Region

North America

Latin America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

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Chemicals & Materials Industry battles Tangible Impact of Economic and Cultural changes, Explore Transparency Market Research's award-winning coverage of the global Chemicals & Materials Market:

Stamping Foils Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/stamping-foils-market.html

Feldspar and Nepheline Syenite Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/feldspar-nepheline-syenite-market.html

About Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Our experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyse information.



Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.

For More Research Insights on Leading Industries, Visit our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8e-z-g23-TdDMuODiL8BKQ

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Transparency Market Research

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Press Release Source: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/nickel-sulfate-market.htm

SOURCE Transparency Market Research
SUGAR LAND, Texas, Nov. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Noble Corporation (NYSE: NE, "Noble", or the "Company") today announced it has completed the sale of four jackup rigs to a subsidiary of ADES International Holding Ltd. ("ADES"). The Company expects to generate approximately $285 million in cash from the transaction net of fees, expenses, and the settlement of working capital. Ownership of the Noble Roger Lewis, Noble Scott Marks, Noble Joe Knight, and Noble Johnny Whitstine as well as employment of the crews has been transferred and the drilling contracts have been novated to ADES. Noble will continue to provide certain customary transition support services for a limited period of time.

"We are very pleased to have completed this transaction, which further bolsters our already strong balance sheet, is accretive to our shareholders, and supports our sustainable return of capital strategy." said Robert Eifler, President and CEO of Noble Corporation. Mr. Eifler continued, "Our crews in the Kingdom have delivered excellent safety and operating performance for many years. I would personally like to thank the Noble employees who will transfer to ADES for their professionalism and dedicated service and wish them continued success."

About Noble Corporation

Noble is a leading offshore drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry. The Company owns and operates one of the most modern, versatile, and technically advanced fleets in the offshore drilling industry. Noble and its predecessors have been engaged in the contract drilling of oil and gas wells since 1921. Currently, Noble performs, through its subsidiaries, contract drilling services with a fleet of 20 offshore drilling units, consisting of 12 drillships and semisubmersibles and 8 jackups, focused largely on ultra-deepwater and high specification jackup drilling opportunities in both established and emerging regions worldwide. Noble is an exempted company incorporated in the Cayman Islands with limited liability with registered office at P.O. BOX 309, Ugland House, S. Church Street, Grand Cayman, KY1-1104.

For additional information, visit www.noblecorp.com or email [email protected]

Craig Muirhead

Vice President - Investor Relations and Treasurer

+1 713-239-6564

Aaron Campbell

Director - Investor Relations

+1 713-417-9112

Forward-looking Disclosure Statement

This communication includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this communication, including those regarding the expected net proceeds from the transaction, the impact of the transaction, strong balance sheet, accretion to our shareholders and return of capital, are forward-looking statements. When used in this report, or in the documents incorporated by reference, the words "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "project," "should," "shall" and "will" and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot assure you that such expectations will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this communication and we undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law. We have identified factors, including, but not limited to, uncertainties relating to our emergence from bankruptcy, the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of acquisition or disposition transactions, the effects of public health threats, pandemics and epidemics, such as the recent and ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, and the adverse impact thereof on our business, financial condition and results of operations (including but not limited to our growth, operating costs, supply chain, availability of labor, logistical capabilities, customer demand for our services and industry demand generally, our liquidity, the price of our securities and trading markets with respect thereto, our ability to access capital markets, and the global economy and financial markets generally), the effects of actions by, or disputes among OPEC+ members with respect to production levels or other matters related to the price of oil, market conditions, factors affecting the level of activity in the oil and gas industry, supply and demand of drilling rigs, factors affecting the duration of contracts, the actual amount of downtime, factors that reduce applicable dayrates, reset of dayrates under the commercial enabling agreement with our client for rigs operating in Guyana, operating hazards and delays, risks associated with operations outside the US, actions by regulatory authorities, credit rating agencies, customers, joint venture partners, contractors, lenders and other third parties, legislation and regulations affecting drilling operations, compliance with regulatory requirements, violations of anti-corruption laws, shipyard risk and timing, delays in mobilization of rigs, hurricanes and other weather conditions, and the future price of oil and gas, that could cause actual plans or results to differ materially from those included in any forward-looking statements. These factors include those "Risk Factors" referenced or described in the Company's most recent Form 10-K, Form 10-Q's, and other filings with the Commission. We cannot control such risk factors and other uncertainties, and in many cases, we cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. You should consider these risks and uncertainties when you are evaluating us.

Investors and others should note that we may announce material information using Securities and Exchange Commission filings, press releases, public conference calls, webcasts, and the "Investor" section of our website. In the future, we will continue to use these channels to distribute material information about the company and to communicate important information about the company, key personnel, corporate initiatives, regulatory updates, and other matters. Information that we post on our website could be deemed material; therefore, we encourage investors, the media, our customers, business partners and others interested in our company to review the information we post on our website.

SOURCE Noble Corporation
In addition to empowering children, adults, and families to change their lives and build stronger communities, Northern Rivers is also committed to supporting renewable energy, which they view as vitally important to the future of our communities  and our planet. Northern Rivers leadership saw community solar as an appealing solution because it reflects the spirit of collaboration and action of the member agencies that comprise Northern Rivers.

Community solar farms are off-site collections of solar panels that produce and feed clean energy to the community through the existing power grid  and they're a fast-growing way for homeowners, renters, nonprofit organizations, businesses, schools, and municipalities to access and afford to support solar energy use. By subscribing to New York community solar with Nelnet Renewable Energy, Northern Rivers receives solar credits that reduce their monthly utility bill, saving them up to 10%1 on their monthly energy costs.

In addition to the potential for cost savings that will benefit the nonprofit organization, Northern Rivers has the opportunity to help educate their staff and clients about the importance of sustainability, and help their youth learn about community solar from both environmental and market-based perspectives.

"Northern Rivers Family of Services is committed to empowering people to build stronger communities. That includes understanding the impact we have on the environment and taking an active role in protecting the planet. This partnership with Nelnet Renewable Energy works for Northern Rivers on all levels. It helps our bottom line, allowing us to invest more of our resources in programs; it enables us to connect our great workforce to the benefits of community solar; and it makes the planet a greener place for our children," said William T. Gettman, Jr., chief executive officer of Northern Rivers.

"As a purpose-driven organization with 40-year-old roots, Nelnet Renewable Energy is happy to bring locally produced clean energy to residents and to organizations such as Northern Rivers, helping them save money on their monthly energy costs in the process," said Melissa Marks, managing director of community solar at Nelnet Renewable Energy. As an early adopter of community solar, Northern Rivers hopes to set an example for others in the community  and Nelnet Renewable Energy is excited about working with Northern Rivers to help educate others about the sustainability and cost savings benefits of community solar.

Learn more about community solar and consider joining a community solar farm in New York.

About Nelnet and Nelnet Renewable Energy: Nelnet (NYSE: NNI) is a diversified financial services and technology company focused on offering educational services, technology solutions, professional services, telecommunications, and asset management. A Nelnet company, Nelnet Renewable Energy specializes in community solar subscriber acquisition and management services. In addition, the organization helps bring solar to campuses, supports clean technology start-ups, has invested over $200 million of tax equity in 100+solar projects, and provides a co-investment platform to help others invest in solar. For more information, visit https://nelnetinc.com/businesses/nelnet-renewable-energy/.

About Northern Rivers Family of Services

Along with member organizations Northeast Parent & Child Society, Parsons Child & Family Center, and Unlimited Potential, Albany, NY-based Northern Rivers Family of Services empowers a staff of 14,000 professionals to serve more than 18,000 children, adults, and family members across 40 counties throughout upstate New York. To learn more about the mission and work of this human services nonprofit organization, please visit https://www.northernrivers.org/.

1 As a community solar subscriber, you can expect to see savings of up to 10% on your energy costs. For more on how cost savings are determined, see NelnetEnergy.com/sources/.

SOURCE Nelnet Renewable Energy

Related Links

https://nelnetenergy.com


EAST HANOVER, N.J., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis today announced that a Phase II study of investigational iptacopan (LNP023)  a first-in-class, oral, selective factor B inhibitor  in patients with C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) met primary endpoints in both patient cohorts1. The data were presented at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2021 Annual Meeting.

In the final analysis from the open-label, two-cohort Phase II study (NCT03832114), patients were treated with 200mg of iptacopan twice daily for 12 weeks, in addition to background therapy1. Patients in cohort A (16 with C3G, but who have not had a kidney transplant [native C3G]) showed a significant 45% reduction in proteinuria (protein in urine) compared to baseline, as measured by 24-hour urinary protein to creatine ratio (UPCR 24h; P=0.0003)1. Patients in cohort B (7* whose C3G had returned following a kidney transplant) showed significantly reduced C3 protein deposits compared to baseline, as measured by C3 deposit score (based on immunofluorescence microscopy) from kidney biopsy (P=0.0313)1.

"The data presented at ASN provide a detailed picture of the potential of iptacopan for the treatment of patients with C3G and, for the first time, in patients whose C3G had returned following kidney transplantation," said lead study investigator Edwin Wong, Consultant Nephrologist at the National Renal Complement Therapeutics Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle University, UK. "These results are important for patients with C3G because proteinuria is a key risk predictor for kidney disease progression, and deposits of C3 protein ultimately cause inflammation and kidney damage."

Additionally, both cohorts of this Phase II study showed strong and sustained inhibition of alternative complement pathway activity and normalization of serum C3 levels over 12 weeks1. In combined data from both cohorts, kidney function remained stable after 12 weeks, as assessed by estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR, average increase of 1.04 mL/min compared to baseline)1. Previously presented data from the long-term extension study (NCT03955445) showed kidney function was maintained in the seven patients that were treated for a total of six months at that time, suggesting extended iptacopan treatment may prolong the time to, or even potentially prevent, the development of kidney failure5,6.

Iptacopan showed a favorable safety and tolerability profile in the Phase II final analysis, with no serious adverse events suspected to be related to iptacopan1.

"C3G is a devastating disease where people can end up facing life-altering and often exhausting kidney dialysis or transplantation at a time when they might otherwise be focused on building their lives, careers, and families. With currently no approved treatments, there is a major unmet need for therapies that can delay progression to kidney failure," said John Tsai, Head of Global Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer at Novartis. "These data demonstrate the ability of iptacopan to strongly and specifically inhibit the key driver for C3G  the alternative complement pathway. The results also show the potential for iptacopan to provide the first targeted treatment for people living with C3G, and we are actively recruiting for our pivotal Phase III APPEAR-C3G study."

*11 patients were recruited into cohort B, but only 7 patients had data to analyze for the C3 protein deposits primary endpoint.

About the study

NCT03832114 is a Phase II, open-label, two cohort, non-randomized study evaluating the efficacy, safety and pharmacokinetics of iptacopan in patients with C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) (cohort A) and patients who have undergone kidney transplantation and have subsequent C3G recurrence in the transplanted organ (cohort B)1,7. The primary endpoint for cohort A was reduction in proteinuria (as measured by UPCR 24h) from baseline to week 121,7. The primary endpoint for cohort B was change in C3 deposit score (based on immunofluorescence microscopy) from kidney biopsy from baseline to week 121,7. On completion of the study, all patients had the option to receive ongoing iptacopan in a long-term extension study (NCT03955445)1.

About iptacopan

Iptacopan is an investigational, first-in-class, orally administered factor B inhibitor of the alternative complement pathway, targeting one of the key drivers of CDRDs8-10. It is the most advanced asset in the Novartis nephrology pipeline and has the potential to become the first targeted therapy to delay progression to dialysis in C3G9. Discovered at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, iptacopan is currently in development for a number of CDRDs where significant unmet needs exist, including C3G, IgA nephropathy (IgAN), atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS), and idiopathic membranous nephropathy (iMN), as well as the blood disorder paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH).

Phase III studies in IgAN (APPLAUSE-IgAN) and aHUS (APPELHUS), and a Phase II study in iMN, are actively recruiting. Two Phase III studies in PNH (APPLY-PNH and APPOINT-PNH) are also actively recruiting. Based on disease prevalence and positive data from Phase II studies, iptacopan has received EMA PRIME designation for C3G, orphan drug designations from the FDA and EMA in C3G and PNH, EMA orphan drug designation in IgAN, and FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation in PNH.

While Novartis has a 35-year history in kidney transplantation treatments, iptacopan is the first treatment in the nephrology pipeline addressing CDRDs. Our aim is to transform treatment by targeting one of the key drivers of these rare and often progressive diseases and, in doing so, potentially extend dialysis-free life for people with CDRDs8-10.

About C3 glomerulopathy (C3G) and complement-driven renal diseases (CDRDs)

In C3G, an overly-active alternative complement pathway  part of the innate immune system  causes deposits of C3 protein to build up in kidney glomeruli (a network of blood vessels that filter waste and remove extra fluids from the blood)2,4,11-13. This triggers inflammation and glomerular damage that results in proteinuria (protein in urine), hematuria (blood in urine) and reduced kidney function2,4,11-13. Approximately 50% of C3G patients progress to kidney failure within 10 years of diagnosis2,3,13,14. Among patients who have undergone kidney transplantation, disease recurrence is not uncommon, with one study seeing an estimated 30% and 70% risk of transplant loss at 5 and 10 years, respectively2,13,14-16.

Each year, there are approximately 1-2 new cases of C3G per million people worldwide17. People with C3G have reported that their symptoms limit their physical and functional ability to perform day-to-day activities and also cause emotional stress18.

CDRDs, which include C3G, are thought to arise from an overactivation of the alternative complement pathway, which creates inflammation and leads to tissue and kidney damage9,19-21. CDRDs mainly affect teenagers and young adults and can progress to kidney failure, which requires dialysis or transplantation and can lead to premature death2-4,19-21.

There is a need for effective and well-tolerated, targeted therapies for C3G that can delay disease progression.

Disclaimer

This media update contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "may," "could," "would," "expect," "anticipate," "seek," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this media update, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this media update will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this media update as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this media update as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Located in East Hanover, NJ Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation  an affiliate of Novartis  is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis employs nearly 15,000 people in the United States. For more information, please visit https://www.novartis.us.

Novartis and Novartis US is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at https://twitter.com/novartisnews and @NovartisUS at https://twitter.com/NovartisUS.

For Novartis multimedia content, please visit https://www.novartis.com/news/media-library.

For questions about the site or required registration, please contact [email protected].

References

Wong E, Nester C, Cavero T, et al. Iptacopan, a novel oral complement alternative pathway Factor B inhibitor, significantly reduces urinary protein excretion and C3 Deposit Scores in native and transplanted kidneys in patients with C3 glomerulopathy. Presented at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2021 Annual Meeting. Smith RJH, Appel GB, Blom AM, et al. C3 glomerulopathy - understanding a rare complement-driven renal disease. Nat Rev Nephrol. 2019;15(3):129-143. Nester CM, Smith RJ. Treatment options for C3 glomerulopathy. Curr Opin Nephrol Hypertens. 2013;22(2):231237. Ravindran A, et al. C3 glomerulopathy associated with monoclonal Ig is a distinct subtype. Kidney Int. 2018;94:17886. Wong E, Praga M, Nester C, et al. Iptacopan (LNP023): a novel oral complement alternative pathway factor B inhibitor safely and effectively stabilises eGFR in C3 glomerulopathy. Presented at the ERA-EDTA 2021 congress. Wong, E et al. LNP023, a novel, oral complement alternative pathway Factor B inhibitor, safely and effectively reduces proteinuria in C3 glomerulopathy. Presented at the American Society of Nephrology Annual Meeting 2020. Clinicaltrials.gov. Study on Efficacy and Safety of LNP023 in C3 Glomerulopathy Patients Transplanted and Not Transplanted. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03832114. Accessed October 2021. Merle NS, et al. Complement System Part II: Role in Immunity. Front Immunol. 2015;6:257. Schubart A, et al. Small-molecule factor B inhibitor for the treatment of complement-mediated diseases. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019;116(16):79267931. Harris CL. Expanding horizons in complement drug discovery: challenges and emerging strategies. Semin Immunopathol. 2018;40(1):125140. Caravaca-Fontan F, et al. Update on C3 Glomerulopathy: A Complement-Mediated Disease. Nephron. 2020;144:27280. Schena F, et al. A Narrative Review on C3 Glomerulopathy: A Rare Renal Disease. Int J Mol Sci. 2020;21:525. Medjeral-Thomas N, et al. C3 glomerulopathy: clinicopathologic features and predictors of outcome. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014;9:4653. Goodship THJ, Cook HT, Fakhouri F, et al. Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome and C3 glomerulopathy: conclusions from a "Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes" (KDIGO) Controversies Conference. Kidney Int. 2017;91(3):539-551. Regunathan-Shenk R, et al. Kidney transplantation in C3 glomerulopathy: a case series. Am J Kidney Dis. 2018:73:31623. Zand L, et al. Clinical Findings, Pathology, and Outcomes of C3GN after Kidney Transplantation. J Am Soc Nephrol 2014;25:11107. Estimated by Decision Resources Group Epidemiology. National Kidney Foundation. Voice of patient C3G report. August 2019. ukawska E, Polcyn-Adamczak M, Niemir ZI. The role of the alternative pathway of complement activation in glomerular diseases. Clin Exp Med. 2018;18(3):297318. Koscielska-Kasprzak K, Bartoszek D, Myszka M, Zabinska M, Klinger M. The complement cascade and renal disease. Arch Immunol Ther Exp (Warsz). 2014;62(1):4757. De Vriese AS, Sethi S, Van Praet J, Nath KA, Fervenza FC. Kidney disease caused by dysregulation of the complement alternative pathway: An etiologic approach. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2015;26(12):29172929.

# # #

Novartis Media Relations E-mail: [email protected]



Julie Masow Head, US External Engagement +1 862 579 8456 [email protected] Jamie Bennett Director, US External Engagement +1 862 217 3976 [email protected]



Novartis Investor Relations E-mail: [email protected]

North America Sloan Simpson +1 862 778 5052

SOURCE Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation

Related Links

http://www.pharma.novartis.com


Header Ad appears instantly at the top of the mobile screen, and resizes once users start to interact with the content on the page. As users scroll down, Header Ad downsizes to 100 pixels and when the ad comes to an end, it collapses. Users can also expand the ad in full screen mode, or they can simply close the ad via an exit button. As with all Ogury formats, users are given choice and control over their ad experience.

As with the rest of the Ogury ad portfolio, Header Ad is non-intrusive and ephemeral, as it collapses at the end of the video or after a short time period of display. In practice, the new format elegantly blends into the header to engage users while respecting their experience. This non-intrusive format has been created to improve the user's advertising experience whilst increasing yield for publishers.

The unique format yields higher CPMs than the traditional top of the screen ads - up to three times higher than display banners placed at the top of pages. Header Ad is filled by premium demand only, from top brands who have exclusive agreements with Ogury.

M Publicite, the advertising arm of Le Monde Group (gathering major news publications in France such as Le Monde, L'Obs, Telerama, Courrier International and HuffPost) is an early beneficiary of the format. "As an innovative premium publisher, we are always seeking new ways to improve our readers' advertising experience." said Daniel Soares, Ad Operations Director at M Publicite. "We are honoured to have co-created this format with Ogury."

Most important to brands is to understand the real impact of their ads. Header Ad provides full-creative visibility just like Ogury's all other proprietary formats, such as Thumbnail Ad and Ad Chooser, launched in 2020. The format is always viewable with 100 percent of its pixels in full view and is available in display and video. As a fully visible format, Header Ad offers View Through Rate and Video Completion Rate based on reliable viewability metrics. This is groundbreaking compared to in-content ad formats.

The mobile-native format has been certified by the Coalition for Better Ads which develops standards for the online ad industry to better address consumer preferences. The format is available via header bidding or direct tag integration.



"Like all the ad formats we create and develop at Ogury, Header Ad is non-intrusive, ephemeral, 100% visible and most importantly, high impact. It is in our DNA as a company, and we believe that full-creative visible formats should become the main standard of the market." said Fabien Magalon, Chief Publisher Sales Officer, Ogury. "With this format and the ability to finally achieve the viewable video metrics advertisers demand, publishers can access top CPMs on mobile."

About Ogury

Ogury, the Personified Advertising company, has created a breakthrough advertising engine that delivers precision, sustainability and privacy protection within one technology stack, built and optimized for mobile. Advertisers working with Ogury benefit from fully visible impactful ads, future-proof targeting and unwavering protection. Publishers enjoy the rewards of a respectful user-experience, incremental revenues and premium demand with Ogury's solutions. Founded in 2014, Ogury is a global organization with 450+ people, including 100 engineers across 11 countries.

SOURCE Ogury LTD

Related Links

www.ogury.com


ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Uroflowmetry is a simple yet essential screening procedure that is used to assess bladder and sphincter function. It measures the rate of urine flow to determine the potential existence of diseases  prostate hyperplasia, bladder cancer, prostate cancer, neurogenic bladder dysfunction, and urinary blockage, to name but a few.

Even though the uroflowmetry is an uncomfortable procedure for the patient, there have been no advancements in how it's performed  not until now, at least.

Oruba's Uroflowmetry Innovation

Oruba , an IoT based point-of-care medical device manufacturer, developed the world's first self-operating uroflowmeter, Oruflow, that makes the screening procedure as hygenic, safe, comfortable, and streamlined as can be  for both the patients and providers.

Oruba has developed an innovative, IoT-supported uroflowmeter Oruflow that increases patient comfort and allows for contactless, time-saving screenings.

Traditional uroflowmetry tests require, the patient urinate into a funnel-shaped device that measures the amount of urine passed, the speed expressed in milliliters per second, and the length of time it takes to empty the whole bladder.

While it's a simple, non-invasive screening, it can be time-consuming and uncomfortable for everyone involved. First, the medical technician needs to register the patient then guide them on how to use the uroflowmeter. They need to manually start and finish the screening, print out the report, give the report to the patient, send a copy to the doctor, then thoroughly clean the device for the next patient.

A screening that shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes turns into a half-an-hour process at the very least. However, with Oruba Oruflow, the entire experience is completely streamlined.

The device is fully automatic, requiring no human intervention. It has a built-in barcode scanner that registers the patient and collects all the necessary information. It boasts textual, audio, and visual tutorials on using the device to ensure that the patient is adequately informed. Oruflow starts the screening automatically, prepares the report while the patient is finishing up, prints it out for patient convenience, and sends a digital version to the hospital information system (HIS). Most importantly, it self-cleans and, sanitizes, and prepares the device for the next patient in under a minute.

It is fully automated, contactless, and provides patients with the utmost privacy during the screening, making uroflowmetry convenient and comfortable.

Conclusion

Oruba is guided by innovation, ethics, and discipline. The company is devoted to creating advanced medical devices that capture all bioinformation in human excreta and that improve patient and provider experience.

Oruba's medical devices are used in prominent institutions around 10 countries, and Oruba continues its mission to expand its products and services to all patients and providers around the world.

About Crabsmedia

Having reached hundreds of customers since 2007, our company continues to produce professional solutions by expanding its team every year.

Since June 2014, Crabs Media has renewed its name and delivers Google Advertising, Web Development

PRESS CONTACT

Burak Onal

+90 530 870 57 90

https://www.crabsmedia.com/

SOURCE Oruba

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) today announced it will report its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, after the close of the U.S. capital markets on Wednesday, November 10, 2021.

In addition, the Company will host a conference call and webcast on Thursday, November 11, 2021, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, during which management will discuss the financial results in further detail. The call and a replay of the conference call and webcast may be accessed as follows:

Dial-in Numbers: 1-877-665-5564 (Domestic); 1-470-495-9522 (International); Conference ID: 3375993

Call Replay Dial-in Numbers (available until November 25, 2021): 1-855-859-2056 (Domestic); 1-404-537-3406 (International); Replay ID Number: 3375993

Participants can access the conference via webcast at the following link (replay available until November 10, 2022):

https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/fuwtdp2a

The earnings release, transcript of the earnings call and presentation will also be available in the Investor Relations section of the corporate website at www.otcmarkets.com/investor-relations/overview.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for over 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through our regulated OTC Link Alternative Trading Systems, the Company connects a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for their investors.

OTC Link ATS, OTC Link ECN and OTC Link NQB are each an SEC regulated ATS, operated by OTC Link LLC, a FINRA and SEC registered broker-dealer, member SIPC.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Investor Contact:

Antonia Georgieva

Chief Financial Officer

Phone: 212-220-2215

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.

Related Links

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Wallbridge Mining Company Limited ("Wallbridge") (TSX: WM;OTCQX: WLBMF), a mineral exploration and development company, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Wallbridge upgraded to OTCQX from the Pink market.

Wallbridge begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "WLBMF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

Upgrading to the OTCQX Market is an important step for companies seeking to provide transparent trading for their U.S. investors. For companies listed on a qualified international exchange, streamlined market standards enable them to utilize their home market reporting to make their information available in the U.S. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws.

Marz Kord, CEO of Wallbridge, commented: "trading on the OTCQX Market will broaden access to the Company's common shares to a range of US-based institutional and retail investors as Wallbridge continues to advance its flagship Fenelon Gold property and other projects in Quebec and Ontario."

Nauth LPC acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor.

About Wallbridge Mining Company Limited

Wallbridge is currently advancing the exploration and development of its 100%owned Fenelon Gold property located along the DetourFenelon Gold Trend, an emerging gold belt in northwestern Quebec. The Company completed approximately 102,000 metres of drilling in 2020 and is currently conducting a fullyfunded 2021 program of approximately 150,000 metres of drilling and 2,000 metres of underground exploration development (Phase 1 of a 10,000metre program). The Company will announce the maiden mineral resource estimate on the Fenelon Gold System and host a webcast to discuss the results on November 10, 2021.

Wallbridge's land holdings in Quebec along the DetourFenelon Gold Trend cover 910.0 km2.This includes property adjacent to its Fenelon and Martiniere deposits which provides room for expansion of these deposits as well as providing options for placement of future mine infrastructure. There is also potential for further discoveries along the 97 kilometres of strike length in this underexplored belt.

Wallbridge is also the operator of, and a 17.8% shareholder in, Lonmin Canada Inc., a privatelyheld company with a portfolio of nickel, copper, and platinumgroup metals (PGM) projects in Ontario's Sudbury Basin.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN, we connect a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for investors.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com.

OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN are SEC regulated ATSs, operated by OTC Link LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Media Contact:

OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP is LLC is investigating whether Owlet, Inc. ("OWLT or the "Company") (NYSE: OWLT) complied with federal securities laws.

On October 4, 2021, the Company disclosed through an SEC filing that it received a warning letter from the FDA. The FDA's letter informed Owlet that the Company's marketing for its Owlet Smart Sock in the United States "renders the Smart Sock a medical device requiring premarket clearance or approval from FDA, and that the Company has not obtained such clearance or approval in violation of the Federal, Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act." The FDA has requested that the Company take "prompt action" to remedy the alleged violations.

On this report, the price of the Company's stock declined over 33%.

If you purchased whether Owlet, Inc. shares and suffered lossoves, please call Gregory Stone at (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774, email [email protected] or submit this form:

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO CONTACT THE FIRM

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP has extensive experience in the prosecution of securities class actions and derivative litigation in state and federal trial and appellate courts across the country. The firm has attorneys in various practice areas; and offices in New York, Chicago and San Diego. The reputation and expertise of this firm in shareholder and other class litigation has been repeatedly recognized by the courts, which have appointed it to major positions in complex securities multi-district and consolidated litigation.

If you wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions regarding your rights and interests in this matter, please immediately contact Wolf Haldenstein by telephone at (800) 575-0735, via e-mail at [email protected], or visit our website at www.whafh.com.

Contact:

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP

Gregory Stone, Director of Case and Financial Analysis

Kevin Cooper, Esq.

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Tel: (800) 575-0735 or (212) 545-4774

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome.

SOURCE Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PA Consulting (PA), the consultancy that's bringing ingenuity to life, publishes first of its kind research which reveals that leading global organizations could save 86 billion cubic meters of water  equivalent to the yearly water consumption of Japan  and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 12 million tons by 2030. This would provide up to a quarter of the annual GHG emissions cuts needed between now and 2030 to reach the 1.5C global temperature climate goal set out in the Paris Agreement.

PA's report, The big drop: The untapped potential of water on decarbonization, surveyed leaders from 73 global organizations across sectors where water demand is intensive: drinks, fast-moving consumer goods, high-tech manufacturing, traditional manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals. Almost all respondents said it would be possible to improve water efficiencies by at least 5%, and 36% said they could increase water efficiency by 10-19%.

Key findings from the report show that:

Across all sectors, the potential extrapolated total water saving would result in 12 million tons GHG reduction, which could provide up to one quarter of the 7.6% annual GHG emissions cut needed between now and 2030 to reach the 1.5C global temperature climate goal set out in the Paris Agreement.

Organizations face real challenges in improving awareness of the potential of water on decarbonization, with just one fifth of respondents (22%) extremely aware of the relationship between water and carbon.

Over a quarter (28%) of leaders were either not at all aware or only slightly aware of the relationship between water and carbon. More than two thirds (68%) did not understand their organizations' water usage importance by region or country and 39% did not understand where water usage is highest across their supply chain.

More than a third of businesses (38%) say it's too difficult to know where to target action to achieve the biggest reduction in water usage and the associated carbon footprint.

Over a third (35%) of leaders said the other barriers to driving improvements included the low uptake of new technologies, difficulties accessing the right data from across the supply chain, and a lack of incentives and support from government. \

To address these issues, global leaders need to treat water as a high priority  looking to access water in greener ways, using less water and reducing their carbon footprint from water use. To achieve results leaders should:

Understand their water and decarbonization challenges and opportunities. Determine greener ways to access water. Innovate for water and energy efficiency. Green your core business strategy and partner for everything else.

Jonquil Hackenberg, head of climate response at PA Consulting, says: "Collaboration is key to solving our global water and carbon challenges. There really is a virtuous circle where reducing water consumption and using water more efficiently reduces energy use and costs, resulting in lower carbon emissions and wider benefits to the environment. To progress further, faster, it's imperative that leaders treat water as a high priority area of opportunity and think about the water-carbon relationship holistically across the entire supply chain."

Jonquil adds: "But it will require focused attention on sustainability strategy and focus areas, in improving data, implementing and scaling new technologies such as green desalination, and looking into opportunities to partner and collaborate to achieve greater value and impact. Organizations can start small by investigating new and existing solutions that could easily slot into their water and carbon strategy, or they could take inspiration from the consumer sector which is ahead of the curve when it comes to delivering water efficiencies in design and product. The big carbon drop will only come through cleaner, greener, smarter water use and progress."

Methodology

PA conducted qualitative research with leaders from organizations in the following sectors: drinks, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), high-tech manufacturing, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical. They operated across Africa, the US, South America, the UK, the Nordics and Australasia. We also surveyed water companies. Half of our respondents had annual revenues of at least 1 billion. We looked across each organization's value chain, to examine water use across four common processes: plan and source; make; deliver; return. The bulk of our findings were based upon the results of in-depth analysis of 52 respondents from larger multi-nationals. We also factored in observations from additional analysis of 21 organizations of smaller revenue size (below 10m) to ascertain whether the challenges were the same and to unearth further opportunities.

To understand how the water efficiency targets indicated by our respondents translated to wider water-carbon reductions, PA identified average water usage from published company reports (dating no further back than 2019) of the four largest global organizations in these sectors. We extrapolated the approximate sector impact using an uprate factor based on the share of market revenue of companies in each sector. Then, we calculated potential GHG emission savings across the sector using the UK Government's most recent GHG emission factors for water use as an indicative benchmark.

About PA Consulting

We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future in a technology-driven world.

As strategies, technologies and innovation collide, we create opportunity from complexity. Our diverse teams of experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough use of technologies to progress further, faster. Our clients adapt and transform, and together we achieve enduring results.

An innovation and transformation consultancy, we are over 3,300 specialists in consumer and manufacturing, defence and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government, health and life sciences, and transport. Our people are strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers and technologists. We operate globally from offices across the UK, US, Netherlands and Nordics. Discover more at paconsulting.com and connect with PA on LinkedIn and Twitter PA. Bringing Ingenuity to Life.

SOURCE PA Consulting

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CRE financial firm, Axylyum Charter, has announced that they have appointed Rachel G. Packer as their Chief Legal Officer. The firm changed the landscape of lending earlier this year with the introduction of their exclusive product, AXY Wrap. A first for the industry, this portfolio-wide engagement option enables lenders to grow their businesses by the removal of default risk.

The company has seen exponential growth with the recruitment of numerous new hires and partnerships. The addition of a Chief Legal Officer will enable the firm to increase their already sizable legal department and to better support their growing client base.

"We are very pleased to welcome Rachel to the organization. She is highly respected in the industry and has a tremendous amount of experience in both litigation and operations. Her exceptional track record of fostering business growth will help support Axylyum during this time of rapid expansion," stated Steven Amshen, chief general counsel at Axylyum Charter.

Rachel's legal career spans more than a decade, during which she led teams with extensive experience in residential mortgage lending, financial institutions, and state and federal litigation. Prior to joining Axylyum, Rachel was a partner with Parker Ibrahim & Berg LLP, where she represented large financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and default servicers.

In addition, she represented securitized trusts in matters involving complex commercial litigation, consumer finance matters, and bankruptcy in both state and federal courts, as well as the trial and appellate levels. Other career highlights include prior tenures with Day Pitney LLP and Blank Rome LLP, and a judicial clerkship with the Hon. David B. Katz in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County, Family Division.

"When Axylyum approached me with the opportunity to be their Chief Legal Officer, I didn't think twice. Within a brief period of time, Axylyum has become widely known in the private lending space and has developed an excellent reputation. I am excited to be a part of the growth of such a dynamic company, and to bring my years of knowledge and experience in mortgage lending to the organization," stated Rachel.

In her new role, Rachel will be responsible for the litigation and operational direction on all regulatory issues at both a state and federal level. As part of Axylyum's executive team, she will be establishing effective operational processes and compliance programs.

Active in the legal community, Rachel is a member of the New York City Bar Association and the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey. She is also a Barrister of both the Bankruptcy Inn of Court and the Brennan-Vanderbilt Inn of Court. An avid writer, she has been featured in such notable publications as Mortgage Daily and the New Jersey Law Journal, where she was awarded the 2019 'New Leaders of the Law' award.

For more information, please visit www.axylyum.com.

ABOUT AXYLYUM CHARTER:

Axylyum Charter has disrupted the commercial lending space with their growth enablement product, AXY Wrap. Specifically designed for private money lenders, AXY Wrap supports portfolio expansion by the removal of default risk.

SOURCE Axylyum

Related Links

https://www.axylyum.com


Best Logo Design/Usage: Pep Boys Centennial Rebrand

Pep Boys Centennial Rebrand Best Television Commercial; Best Digital Display Ad: Pep Boys Celebrating 100 Years

Pep Boys Celebrating 100 Years Best 360-Degree Marketing Campaign: Pep Boys Centennial Road Trip

Pep Boys Centennial Road Trip Best Consumer/Community Event: Pep Boys Centennial Road Trip Events

The Pep Boys Centennial Celebration has enabled customers and Team Members to reconnect with one of the automotive industry's most iconic brands through both media executions and in-person activities, including the #PepBoysRoadTrip, featuring a branded bus that has traveled across the U.S. to affirm the Company's commitment to the thousands of communities it serves. Other elements of the Centennial Celebration have included the restorations of a 1946 Pep Boys ramp truck and 1921 Ford Model T Runabout, which are on display at the 2021 SEMA Show.

About Pep Boys

Pep Boys is driven by its promise to its customers: We go further to help you go farther. Founded in 1921 by military veterans, generations of drivers have counted on Pep Boys ASE-certified Pros to care for their cars. With a national network of Service and Tire Centers, millions of vehicles pass through Pep Boys bays each year. Our commitment to being the ONE our communities count on is demonstrated through our exceptional customer experience and support of the critical technical training initiatives needed to close America's skills gap. For more information, visit www.pepboys.com.

Media Contact

Arianna Stefanoni Sherlock, Pep Boys

609-969-8349, [email protected]



Drew Shippy, Pinnacle Media

330-687-4053, [email protected]

SOURCE Pep Boys

Related Links

www.pepboys.com


Best Logo Design/Usage: Pep Boys Centennial Rebrand

Pep Boys Centennial Rebrand Best Television Commercial; Best Digital Display Ad: Pep Boys Celebrating 100 Years

Pep Boys Celebrating 100 Years Best 360-Degree Marketing Campaign: Pep Boys Centennial Road Trip

Pep Boys Centennial Road Trip Best Consumer/Community Event: Pep Boys Centennial Road Trip Events

The Pep Boys Centennial Celebration has enabled customers and Team Members to reconnect with one of the automotive industry's most iconic brands through both media executions and in-person activities, including the #PepBoysRoadTrip, featuring a branded bus that has traveled across the U.S. to affirm the Company's commitment to the thousands of communities it serves. Other elements of the Centennial Celebration have included the restorations of a 1946 Pep Boys ramp truck and 1921 Ford Model T Runabout, which are on display at the 2021 SEMA Show.

About Pep Boys

Pep Boys is driven by its promise to its customers: We go further to help you go farther. Founded in 1921 by military veterans, generations of drivers have counted on Pep Boys ASE-certified Pros to care for their cars. With a national network of Service and Tire Centers, millions of vehicles pass through Pep Boys bays each year. Our commitment to being the ONE our communities count on is demonstrated through our exceptional customer experience and support of the critical technical training initiatives needed to close America's skills gap. For more information, visit www.pepboys.com.

Media Contact

Arianna Stefanoni Sherlock, Pep Boys

609-969-8349, [email protected]



Drew Shippy, Pinnacle Media

330-687-4053, [email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1679030/Pep_Boys_ACA_Award.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1494449/Pep_Boys_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Pep Boys

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NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) today announced that Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI) has selected Kyndryl for an ambitious technology transformation aimed at advancing its global business objectives. Pitney Bowes moves more than 222 million parcels and facilitates the sending of billions of mail pieces each year and has tapped Kyndryl to implement an agile technology infrastructure that harnesses its hybrid cloud IT investments for greater business outcomes.

Kyndryl, the new, independent company listing on the New York Stock Exchange today, is focused on delivering the most advanced business solutions for customers across more than 60 countries. Kyndryl is investing in new partnerships with the world's premier technology organizations and cloud hyperscalers. The joint solutions developed from these partnerships, in areas such as AI, 5G, edge computing, hybrid cloud, and security, are enabling customers to tackle their most pressing business objectives in modern ways.

For more than 100 years, Pitney Bowes has focused on innovating and delivering technologies that remove the complexity of getting commerce transactions precisely right. Today, the company is focused on technology transformation to better serve its clients around the world  including 90 percent of the Fortune 500  who rely upon the accuracy and precision of the company's solutions, analytics, and APIs in the areas of ecommerce fulfillment, shipping and returns; cross-border ecommerce; office mailing and shipping; presort services; and financing.

Kyndryl experts are harnessing artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and hybrid cloud capabilities to help Pitney Bowes create and implement an agile IT infrastructure environment and governance model designed to unleash the potential of its hybrid cloud environments.

Additionally, the Kyndryl team is managing core infrastructure including servers, storage systems, end-user computing, and networking for Pitney Bowes, while helping to keep mission-critical business systems running efficiently.

"At Kyndryl, we are applying our digital transformation expertise, IT infrastructure knowledge, and transformation techniques to advance the progress of our customers," said Matt Milton, President of Kyndryl U.S. "We are applying the power of technology, people and processes to support Pitney Bowes ambitious hybrid cloud vision that is enhancing its operations and delivering new innovations to its customers."

About Pitney Bowes

Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI) is a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services to more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500. Small business, retail, enterprise, and government clients around the world rely on Pitney Bowes to remove the complexity of sending mail and parcels. For additional information visit Pitney Bowes at www.pitneybowes.com .

About Kyndryl

Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world's largest IT infrastructure provider. The company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. Kyndryl's nearly 90,000 employees serve customers in more than 60 countries around the world, including 75% of the Fortune 100. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com .

SOURCE Kyndryl

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TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pickle fanatics who live near a PizzaForno, one of North America's only 24/7 automated pizzerias can snag a pickle pizza from now till the end of November.

The artisanal masterpiece includes a sour cream base on stone fired sourdough pizza crust topped with freshly sliced crisp pickles, mozzarella cheese, and garlic salt and dry dill. The $12 gourmet creation is available at the 34 operating locations spread across Canada and Michigan.

To celebrate National Pickle Day on November 14, the specialty pizza will be 50 percent off.

There are currently three U.S. locations in Jackson, MI with a University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus location in development. The revolutionary brand with exclusive distribution rights has also announced expansion into Southern California.

Serial entrepreneurs will be launching five licensee units in Q1 to start and currently touring prime real estate locations ready for this fresh baked on-the-go meal option.

The turn-key fully automatic gourmet pizza system is designed to fit perfectly in prime high-foot traffic areas, maximizing use of space with only 65 square feet and zero on-site labor. Scalability is endless with the Pizza Topping Operations, conveniently located, serving as the hub where the fresh pizza is made and then delivered to nearby units.

Once restocked with fresh local product as volume demands, each unit can hold up to 70 pre-baked, pre-boxed pizzas in a refrigerated section. As soon as the customer selects their preferred menu item, the state-of-the-art oven begins baking and serves the 12" premium artisanal pizza in under three minutes.

"PizzaForno is easy to manage, so more people can experience quality ingredients with the click of a button everywhere, without having to wait 30 minutes for delivery or make reservations at an understaffed restaurant," said Les Tomlin, Co-Founder and President of PizzaForno. "This efficient business model is designed to combat the current challenges facing business owners and cater to consumers."

To learn more about PizzaForno and their licensing opportunities, visit https://www.pizzaforno.com/become-a-licensee/.

ABOUT PIZZAFORNO

Founded in 2018 by Canadian entrepreneurs William Moyer and Les Tomlin, PizzaForno is North America's only automated pizza oven which introduces gourmet artisanal pizzas in less than three minutes. Accessible 24/7 at the tap of a digital screen, PizzaForno offers a selection of innovative menu options, each made fresh, with an authentic approach. This year, PizzaForno was honored with the Restaurants Canada 2020 Innovation Award. Utilizing technology made popular in France by ADIAL, PizzaForno exclusively owns all North American distribution rights for the technology. The brand is rapidly growing throughout North America and backed by a landmark partnership with one of the leading food service providers, Aramark. The agreement is set to bring cutting-edge food innovation and a quality meal solution to various facilities with technology, sustainability, safety, and convenience at the forefront. PizzaForno currently has 22 operating locations and additional 88 sold  with the first U.S. locations already established in Michigan. To learn more about PizzaForno, visit https://www.pizzaforno.com/. To inquire about the licensee opportunity, visit https://www.pizzaforno.com/become-a-licensee/.

SOURCE PizzaForno

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HAMPTON, N.H., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Planet Fitness, Inc. (NYSE:PLNT) reported financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2021.

"We are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic stronger than ever. In the third quarter, we returned to positive system-wide same store sales growth and achieved the highest sequential net member growth of any third quarter in company history as well as our highest franchise segment revenue on record," said Chris Rondeau, Chief Executive Officer. "As we look ahead to our 30th anniversary next year, I am more enthusiastic than ever with several factors driving both near- and long-term growth opportunities including: our franchisees' enthusiasm to continue to invest in the brand, the transition to one agency for both our local and national advertising, and the world's growing appreciation for the importance of improving overall health and wellness. With so much potential given the changing market dynamics and industry tailwinds, we believe that our non-judgmental and affordable model will be even more differentiated."

Third Quarter Fiscal 2021 results

Total revenue increased from the prior year period by 46.4% to $154.3 million .

. System-wide same store sales increased 7.2%.

Net income attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc. was $17.4 million , or $0.21 per diluted share, compared to a loss of $3.1 million , or $0.04 per diluted share, in the prior year period.

, or per diluted share, compared to a loss of , or per diluted share, in the prior year period. Net income increased $21.9 million to $18.6 million , compared to a net loss of $3.3 million in the prior year period.

to , compared to a net loss of in the prior year period. Adjusted net income (1) increased $20.4 million to $22.0 million , or $0.25 per diluted share, compared to $1.6 million , or $0.02 per diluted share, in the prior year period.

increased to , or per diluted share, compared to , or per diluted share, in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA (1) increased $30.2 million to $62.2 million from $32.0 million in the prior year period.

increased to from in the prior year period. 24 new Planet Fitness stores were opened during the period, bringing system-wide total stores to 2,193 as of September 30, 2021 .

. Cash of $585.5 million , which includes cash and cash equivalents of $527.3 million and restricted cash of $58.1 million .

(1) Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP measures. For reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted net income (loss) to U.S. GAAP ("GAAP") net income (loss) see "Non-GAAP Financial Measures" accompanying this press release.

Operating Results for the Third Quarter Ended September 30, 2021

For the third quarter 2021, total revenue increased $48.9 million or 46.4% to $154.3 million from $105.4 million in the prior year period, which included system-wide same stores sales growth of 7.2%. By segment:

Franchise segment revenue increased $15.6 million or 26.1% to $75.4 million from $59.8 million in the prior year period, and franchise segment same store sales increased 7.4%. The increase in franchise segment revenue for the third quarter 2021 is primarily due to a $10.0 million increase in franchise royalty revenue, a $1.3 million increase in NAF revenue, and a $3.2 million increase in franchise and other fees, primarily attributable to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period;

or 26.1% to from in the prior year period, and franchise segment same store sales increased 7.4%. The increase in franchise segment revenue for the third quarter 2021 is primarily due to a increase in franchise royalty revenue, a increase in NAF revenue, and a increase in franchise and other fees, primarily attributable to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period; Corporate-owned stores segment revenue increased $15.6 million or 55.2% to $43.9 million from $28.3 million in the prior year period, and corporate-owned same store sales increased 3.1%. The increase was primarily due to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period, as well as the opening of seven new corporate-owned stores since July 1, 2020 ; and

or 55.2% to from in the prior year period, and corporate-owned same store sales increased 3.1%. The increase was primarily due to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period, as well as the opening of seven new corporate-owned stores since ; and Equipment segment revenue increased $17.6 million or 101.7% to $35.0 million from $17.3 million in the prior year period, driven by higher equipment sales to existing franchisee-owned stores in the three months ended September 30, 2021 compared to the three months ended September 30, 2020 . Also contributing to the increase was the 15% discount provided to franchisees on equipment sales in the prior year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the third quarter of 2021, net income attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc. was $17.4 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, compared to a net loss attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc. of $3.1 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, in the prior year period. Net income was $18.6 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to a net loss of $3.3 million in the prior year period. Adjusted net income increased $20.4 million to $22.0 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, from $1.6 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, in the prior year period. Adjusted net income has been adjusted to reflect a normalized federal income tax rate of 26.6% and 26.8% for the current and prior year period, respectively, and excludes certain non-cash and other items that we do not consider in the evaluation of ongoing operational performance (see "Non-GAAP Financial Measures").

Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined as net income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, adjusted for the impact of certain non-cash and other items that we do not consider in the evaluation of ongoing operational performance (see "Non-GAAP Financial Measures"), increased $30.2 million to $62.2 million from $32.0 million in the prior year period.

Segment EBITDA represents our Total Segment EBITDA broken down by the Company's reportable segments. Total Segment EBITDA is equal to EBITDA, which is defined as net income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (see "Non-GAAP Financial Measures").

Franchise segment EBITDA increased $20.9 million to $52.0 million . The increase in franchise segment EBITDA for the third quarter 2021 was a result of higher royalty and national advertising fund collections in the three months ended September 30, 2021 consisting of a $10.0 million increase in franchise royalty revenue, a $1.3 million increase in NAF revenue, and a $3.2 million increase in franchise and other fees, primarily attributable to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period. Additionally, NAF expense was $4.6 million lower in the three months ended September 30, 2021 due to higher advertising and marketing expenses in the prior year period as a result of increased marketing efforts as stores reopened from COVID-19 related closures;

to . The increase in franchise segment EBITDA for the third quarter 2021 was a result of higher royalty and national advertising fund collections in the three months ended consisting of a increase in franchise royalty revenue, a increase in NAF revenue, and a increase in franchise and other fees, primarily attributable to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period. Additionally, NAF expense was lower in the three months ended due to higher advertising and marketing expenses in the prior year period as a result of increased marketing efforts as stores reopened from COVID-19 related closures; Corporate-owned stores segment EBITDA increased $8.4 million to $14.1 million . The increase was primarily due to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period, as well as the opening of seven new corporate-owned stores since July 1, 2020 ; and

to . The increase was primarily due to temporary store closures as a result of COVID-19 in the prior year period, as well as the opening of seven new corporate-owned stores since ; and Equipment segment EBITDA increased by $5.6 million to $7.9 million driven by higher equipment sales to existing franchisee-owned stores in the three months ended September 30, 2021 compared to the three months ended September 30, 2020 . Also contributing to the increase was the 15% discount provided to franchisees on equipment sales in the prior year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021 Outlook

For the year ending December 31, 2021, assuming there is no significant worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic that seriously impacts performance, including prolonged store closures or other mandated operational restrictions, the Company is raising its full year outlook as follows:

New store openings in the 110-120 range

Full-year revenue will be between $570 million and $580 million

and Selling, General & Administrative expenses will be in the low-to-mid $90 million dollar range

range Adjusted EBITDA will be between $210 million and $220 million

and Adjusted net income per share, diluted, will be between $0.75 and $0.80

Presentation of Financial Measures

Planet Fitness, Inc. (the "Company") was formed in March 2015 for the purpose of facilitating the initial public offering (the "IPO") and related recapitalization transactions that occurred in August 2015, and in order to carry on the business of Pla-Fit Holdings, LLC ("Pla-Fit Holdings") and its subsidiaries. As the sole managing member of Pla-Fit Holdings, the Company operates and controls all of the business and affairs of Pla-Fit Holdings, and through Pla-Fit Holdings, conducts its business. As a result, the Company consolidates Pla-Fit Holdings' financial results and reports a non-controlling interest related to the portion of Pla-Fit Holdings not owned by the Company.

The financial information presented in this press release includes non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, Segment EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, to provide measures that we believe are useful to investors in evaluating the Company's performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are supplemental measures of the Company's performance that are neither required by, nor presented in accordance with GAAP. These financial measures should not be considered in isolation or as substitutes for GAAP financial measures such as net income or any other performance measures derived in accordance with GAAP. In addition, in the future, the Company may incur expenses or charges such as those added back to calculate Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted. The Company's presentation of Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, should not be construed as an inference that the Company's future results will be unaffected by similar amounts or other unusual or nonrecurring items. See the tables at the end of this press release for a reconciliation of EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Total Segment EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss), and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measure.

Same store sales refers to year-over-year sales comparisons for the same store sales base of both corporate-owned and franchisee-owned stores, which is calculated for a given period by including only sales from stores that had sales in the comparable months of both years. We define the same store sales base to include those stores that have been open and for which monthly membership dues have been billed for longer than 12 months. We measure same store sales based solely upon monthly dues billed to members of our corporate-owned and franchisee-owned stores. As a result of the closure of all of our stores due to COVID-19 in March 2020, a majority of stores remained closed for a portion of the nine months ended September 30, 2020. Because less than 50% of our stores in the same store sales base had membership billings in all of the months included in the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we are not providing same store sales comparisons for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020. For the three months ending September 30, 2021 and 2020, since more than 50% of our stores in the same store sales base billed monthly membership dues in all three months, we have provided same store sales comparisons for those stores that were open during both the current and prior year periods.

The non-GAAP financial measures used in our full-year outlook will differ from net income (loss) and net income (loss) per share, diluted, determined in accordance with GAAP in ways similar to those described in the reconciliations at the end of this press release. We do not provide guidance for net income (loss) or net income (loss) per share, diluted, determined in accordance with GAAP or a reconciliation of guidance for Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted net income per share, diluted, to the most directly comparable GAAP measure because we are not able to predict with reasonable certainty the amount or nature of all items that will be included in our net income and net income per share, diluted, for the year ending December 31, 2021. Accordingly, a reconciliation of the Company's guidance for Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted net income per share, diluted, to the most directly comparable GAAP measure cannot be made available without unreasonable effort. These items are uncertain, depend on many factors and could have a material impact on our net income and net income per share, diluted, for the year ending December 31, 2021.

Investor Conference Call

The Company will hold a conference call at 8:00 AM (ET) on November 4, 2021 to discuss the news announced in this press release. A live webcast of the conference call will be accessible at www.planetfitness.com via the "Investor Relations" link. The webcast will be archived on the website for one year.

About Planet Fitness

Founded in 1992 in Dover, NH, Planet Fitness is one of the largest and fastest-growing franchisors and operators of fitness centers in the United States by number of members and locations. As of September 30, 2021, Planet Fitness had more than 15.0 million members and 2,193 stores in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Panama, Mexico and Australia. The Company's mission is to enhance people's lives by providing a high-quality fitness experience in a welcoming, non-intimidating environment, which we call the Judgement Free Zone. More than 95% of Planet Fitness stores are owned and operated by independent business men and women.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include the Company's statements with respect to expected future performance presented under the heading "2021 Outlook," those attributed to the Company's Chief Executive Officer in this press release, including with respect to the Company's growth opportunities and long-term targets for U.S. store locations, and other statements, estimates and projections that do not relate solely to historical facts. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "goal," plan," "will," "prospects," "future," "strategy" and similar references to future periods, although not all forward-looking statements include these identifying words. Forward-looking statements are not assurances of future performance. Instead, they are based only on the Company's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding the future of the business, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the economy and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of the Company's control. Actual results and financial condition may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties associated with the duration and impact of COVID-19, which has resulted and may continue to result in store closures and a decrease in our net membership base and may give rise to or heighten one or more of the other risks and uncertainties described herein, competition in the fitness industry, the Company's and franchisees' ability to attract and retain members, the Company's and franchisees' ability to identify and secure suitable sites for new franchise stores, changes in consumer demand, changes in equipment costs, the Company's ability to expand into new markets domestically and internationally, operating costs for the Company and franchisees generally, availability and cost of capital for franchisees, acquisition activity, developments and changes in laws and regulations, our substantial increased indebtedness as a result of our refinancing and securitization transactions and our ability to incur additional indebtedness or refinance that indebtedness in the future, our future financial performance and our ability to pay principal and interest on our indebtedness, our corporate structure and tax receivable agreements, failures, interruptions or security breaches of the Company's information systems or technology, general economic conditions and the other factors described in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and the Company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of the significant risks and uncertainties inherent in forward-looking statements, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect the Company's views only as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, neither the Company nor any of its affiliates or representatives undertake any obligation to provide additional information or to correct or update any information set forth in this release, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

Planet Fitness, Inc. and subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (Unaudited) (Amounts in thousands, except per share amounts)





For the three months ended September 30,

For the nine months ended September 30,



2021

2020

2021

2020 Revenue:















Franchise

$ 61,481



$ 47,171



$ 173,419



$ 112,296

Commission income

39



48



381



483

National advertising fund revenue

13,863



12,538



38,493



26,509

Corporate-owned stores

43,899



28,289



122,355



78,224

Equipment

34,973



17,337



68,735



55,335

Total revenue

154,255



105,383



403,383



272,847

Operating costs and expenses:















Cost of revenue

27,097



15,302



53,579



45,625

Store operations

27,751



21,371



82,088



62,209

Selling, general and administrative

22,969



18,295



67,248



51,143

National advertising fund expense

15,586



20,157



41,868



46,240

Depreciation and amortization

16,248



13,636



46,758



39,436

Other (gain) loss

57



580



(2,363)



606

Total operating costs and expenses

109,708



89,341



289,178



245,259

Income from operations

44,547



16,042



114,205



27,588

Other expense, net:















Interest income

233



349



645



2,635

Interest expense

(20,350)



(20,686)



(60,719)



(61,394)

Other income (expense)

677



(24)



695



(784)

Total other expense, net

(19,440)



(20,361)



(59,379)



(59,543)

Income (loss) before income taxes

25,107



(4,319)



54,826



(31,955)

Provision (benefit) for income taxes

6,475



(1,035)



14,988



(7,069)

Net income (loss)

18,632



(3,284)



39,838



(24,886)

Less net income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests

1,189



(173)



2,804



(1,205)

Net income (loss) attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc.

$ 17,443



$ (3,111)



$ 37,034



$ (23,681)

Net income (loss) per share of Class A common stock:















Basic

$ 0.21



$ (0.04)



$ 0.45



$ (0.30)

Diluted

$ 0.21



$ (0.04)



$ 0.44



$ (0.30)

Weighted-average shares of Class A common stock outstanding:















Basic

83,274



80,221



83,194



79,763

Diluted

83,879



80,221



83,808



79,763



Planet Fitness, Inc. and subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Unaudited) (Amounts in thousands, except per share amounts)





September 30, 2021

December 31, 2020 Assets







Current assets:







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 527,346



$ 439,478

Restricted cash

58,128



76,322

Accounts receivable, net of allowance for bad debts of $0 and $7 at September 30, 2021 and December

31, 2020, respectively

11,137



16,447

Inventory

4,099



473

Deferred expenses  national advertising fund

1,162





Prepaid expenses

12,827



11,881

Other receivables

9,453



16,754

Income tax receivables

4,960



5,461

Total current assets

629,112



566,816

Property and equipment, net of accumulated depreciation of $140,738 and $107,720 at September 30,

2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively

162,378



160,677

Investments

35,949





Right of use assets, net

177,733



164,252

Intangible assets, net

204,598



217,075

Goodwill

227,821



227,821

Deferred income taxes

510,255



511,200

Other assets, net

1,851



1,896

Total assets

$ 1,949,697



$ 1,849,737

Liabilities and stockholders' deficit







Current liabilities:







Current maturities of long-term debt

$ 17,500



$ 17,500

Accounts payable

21,703



19,388

Accrued expenses

33,042



22,042

Equipment deposits

20,889



795

Deferred revenue, current

31,120



26,691

Payable pursuant to tax benefit arrangements, current

12,456





Other current liabilities

23,475



25,479

Total current liabilities

160,185



111,895

Long-term debt, net of current maturities

1,668,054



1,676,426

Borrowings under Variable Funding Notes

75,000



75,000

Lease liabilities, net of current portion

183,942



167,910

Deferred revenue, net of current portion

31,641



32,587

Deferred tax liabilities

724



881

Payable pursuant to tax benefit arrangements, net of current portion

485,906



488,200

Other liabilities

2,650



2,511

Total noncurrent liabilities

2,447,917



2,443,515

Stockholders' equity (deficit):







Class A common stock, $0.0001 par value - 300,000 authorized, 83,342 and 82,821 shares issued and

outstanding as of September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively

8



8

Class B common stock, $0.0001 par value - 100,000 authorized, 3,263 and 3,722 shares issued and

outstanding as of September 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively

1



1

Accumulated other comprehensive income

12



27

Additional paid in capital

53,970



45,673

Accumulated deficit

(714,544)



(751,578)

Total stockholders' deficit attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc.

(660,553)



(705,869)

Non-controlling interests

2,148



196

Total stockholders' deficit

(658,405)



(705,673)

Total liabilities and stockholders' deficit

$ 1,949,697



$ 1,849,737



Planet Fitness, Inc. and subsidiaries Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Unaudited) (Amounts in thousands, except per share amounts)





For the nine months ended September 30,



2021

2020 Cash flows from operating activities:







Net income (loss)

$ 39,838



$ (24,886)

Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to net cash provided by (used in) operating activities:







Depreciation and amortization

46,758



39,436

Amortization of deferred financing costs

4,753



4,801

Amortization of asset retirement obligations

55



48

Dividends accrued on investment

(949)





Deferred tax expense (benefit)

12,774



(7,506)

Gain on re-measurement of tax benefit arrangement

(348)



(502)

Provision for bad debts

10



(45)

Gain on disposal of property and equipment

(46)





Equity-based compensation

6,267



3,564

Other

(1)



(93)

Changes in operating assets and liabilities, excluding effects of acquisitions:







Accounts receivable

5,321



28,146

Inventory

(3,625)



(929)

Other assets and other current assets

9,618



(11,364)

National advertising fund

(1,162)



3,446

Accounts payable and accrued expenses

9,413



(11,148)

Other liabilities and other current liabilities

(3,540)



461

Income taxes

452



(1,885)

Payable pursuant to tax benefit arrangements





(18,396)

Equipment deposits

20,099



(1,486)

Deferred revenue

3,483



(5,052)

Leases and deferred rent

320



1,275

Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities

149,490



(2,115)

Cash flows from investing activities:







Additions to property and equipment

(31,791)



(36,719)

Proceeds from sale of property and equipment

19



282

Investments

(35,000)





Net cash used in investing activities

(66,772)



(36,437)

Cash flows from financing activities:







Principal payments on capital lease obligations

(146)



(118)

Proceeds from borrowings under Variable Funding Notes





75,000

Repayment of long-term debt

(13,125)



(13,125)

Proceeds from issuance of Class A common stock

916



1,881

Dividend equivalent payments





(227)

Distributions to Continuing LLC Members

(670)



(1,658)

Net cash (used in) provided by financing activities

(13,025)



61,753

Effects of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents

(19)



(394)

Net increase in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash

69,674



22,807

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, beginning of period

515,800



478,795

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, end of period

$ 585,474



$ 501,602

Supplemental cash flow information:







Net cash paid for income taxes

$ 1,683



$ 2,319

Cash paid for interest

$ 56,231



$ 56,750

Non-cash investing activities:







Non-cash additions to property and equipment

$ 5,507



$ 7,629



Planet Fitness, Inc. and subsidiaries

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

(Unaudited)

(Amounts in thousands, except per share amounts)

To supplement its consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP, the Company uses the following non-GAAP financial measures: EBITDA, Total Segment EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted (collectively, the "non-GAAP financial measures"). The Company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures, when used in conjunction with GAAP financial measures, are useful to investors in evaluating our operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures presented in this release are supplemental measures of the Company's performance that are neither required by, nor presented in accordance with GAAP. These financial measures should not be considered in isolation or as substitutes for GAAP financial measures such as net income or any other performance measures derived in accordance with GAAP. In addition, in the future, the Company may incur expenses or charges such as those added back to calculate Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted. The Company's presentation of Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted net income (loss), and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, should not be construed as an inference that the Company's future results will be unaffected by unusual or nonrecurring items.

EBITDA, Segment EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA

We refer to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA as we use these measures to evaluate our operating performance and we believe these measures provide useful information to investors in evaluating our performance. We have also disclosed Segment EBITDA as an important financial metric utilized by the Company to evaluate performance and allocate resources to segments in accordance with ASC 280, Segment Reporting. We define EBITDA as net income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Segment EBITDA sums to Total Segment EBITDA which is equal to the Non-GAAP financial metric EBITDA. We believe that EBITDA, which eliminates the impact of certain expenses that we do not believe reflect our underlying business performance, provides useful information to investors to assess the performance of our segments as well as the business as a whole. Our board of directors also uses EBITDA as a key metric to assess the performance of management. We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, adjusted for the impact of certain additional non-cash and other items that we do not consider in our evaluation of ongoing performance of the Company's core operations. These items include certain purchase accounting adjustments, stock offering-related costs, and certain other charges and gains. We believe that Adjusted EBITDA is an appropriate measure of operating performance in addition to EBITDA because it eliminates the impact of other items that we believe reduce the comparability of our underlying core business performance from period to period and is therefore useful to our investors in comparing the core performance of our business from period to period.

A reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income (loss), the most directly comparable GAAP measure, is set forth below.





Three months ended September 30,

Nine months ended September 30,



2021

2020

2021

2020 (in thousands)















Net income (loss)

$ 18,632



$ (3,284)



$ 39,838



$ (24,886)

Interest income

(233)



(349)



(645)



(2,635)

Interest expense

20,350



20,686



60,719



61,394

Provision (benefit) for income taxes

6,475



(1,035)



14,988



(7,069)

Depreciation and amortization

16,248



13,636



46,758



39,436

EBITDA

$ 61,472



$ 29,654



$ 161,658



$ 66,240

Purchase accounting adjustments-revenue(1)

72



70



269



216

Purchase accounting adjustments-rent(2)

110



130



324



400

Severance costs(3)





830







990

Pre-opening costs(4)

455



699



1,302



1,214

Insurance recovery(5)









(2,500)





Tax benefit arrangement remeasurement(6)









(348)



(502)

Other(7)

55



598



743



691

Adjusted EBITDA

$ 62,164



$ 31,981



$ 161,448



$ 69,249







(1) Represents the impact of revenue-related purchase accounting adjustments associated with the acquisition of Pla-Fit Holdings on November 8, 2012 by TSG (the "2012 Acquisition"). At the time of the 2012 Acquisition, the Company maintained a deferred revenue account, which consisted of deferred ADA fees, deferred franchise fees, and deferred enrollment fees that the Company billed and collected upfront but recognizes for U.S. GAAP purposes at a later date. In connection with the 2012 Acquisition, it was determined that the carrying amount of deferred revenue was greater than the fair value assessed in accordance with ASC 805Business Combinations, which resulted in a write-down of the carrying value of the deferred revenue balance upon application of acquisition push-down accounting under ASC 805. These amounts represent the additional revenue that would have been recognized in these periods if the write-down to deferred revenue had not occurred in connection with the application of acquisition pushdown accounting. (2) Represents the impact of rent-related purchase accounting adjustments. In accordance with guidance in ASC 805  Business Combinations, in connection with the 2012 Acquisition, the Company's deferred rent liability was required to be written off as of the acquisition date and rent was recorded on a straight-line basis from the acquisition date through the end of the lease term. This resulted in higher overall recorded rent expense each period than would have otherwise been recorded had the deferred rent liability not been written off as a result of the acquisition push down accounting applied in accordance with ASC 805. Adjustments of $44, $43, $127, and $124 in the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, reflect the difference between the higher rent expense recorded in accordance with U.S. GAAP since the acquisition and the rent expense that would have been recorded had the 2012 Acquisition not occurred. Adjustments of $64, $87, $197 and $276 in the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, are due to the amortization of favorable and unfavorable leases. All of the rent related purchase accounting adjustments are adjustments to rent expense which is included in store operations on our consolidated statements of operations. (3) Represents severance expense recorded in connection with an equity award modification. (4) Represents costs associated with new corporate-owned stores incurred prior to the store opening, including payroll-related costs, rent and occupancy expenses, marketing and other store operating supply expenses. (5) Represents an insurance recovery of previously recognized expenses related to the settlement of legal claims. (6) Represents gains related to the adjustment of our tax benefit arrangements primarily due to changes in our effective tax rate. (7) Represents certain other charges and gains that we do not believe reflect our underlying business performance.

A reconciliation of Segment EBITDA to Total Segment EBITDA is set forth below.





Three months ended September 30,

Nine months ended September 30, (in thousands)

2021

2020

2021

2020 Segment EBITDA















Franchise

$ 52,047



$ 31,111



$ 144,983



$ 71,386

Corporate-owned stores

14,102



5,711



35,164



11,376

Equipment

7,917



2,271



15,355



9,948

Corporate and other

(12,594)



(9,439)



(33,844)



(26,470)

Total Segment EBITDA(1)

$ 61,472



$ 29,654



$ 161,658



$ 66,240







(1) Total Segment EBITDA is equal to EBITDA.

Adjusted Net Income (loss) and Adjusted Net Income (loss) per Diluted Share

Our presentation of Adjusted net income (loss) assumes that all net income (loss) is attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc., which assumes the full exchange of all outstanding Holdings Units for shares of Class A common stock of Planet Fitness, Inc., adjusted for certain non-recurring items that we do not believe directly reflect our core operations. Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, is calculated by dividing Adjusted net income (loss) by the total shares of Class A common stock outstanding plus any dilutive options and restricted stock units as calculated in accordance with GAAP and assuming the full exchange of all outstanding Holdings Units and corresponding Class B common stock as of the beginning of each period presented. Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, are supplemental measures of operating performance that do not represent, and should not be considered, alternatives to net income and earnings per share, as calculated in accordance with GAAP. We believe Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, supplement GAAP measures and enable us to more effectively evaluate our performance period-over-period. A reconciliation of Adjusted net income (loss) to net income (loss), the most directly comparable GAAP measure, and the computation of Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted, are set forth below.





Three months ended September 30,

Nine months ended September 30, (in thousands, except per share amounts)

2021

2020

2021

2020 Net income (loss)

$ 18,632



$ (3,284)



$ 39,838



$ (24,886)

Provision for income taxes, as reported

6,475



(1,035)



14,988



(7,069)

Purchase accounting adjustments-revenue(1)

72



70



269



216

Purchase accounting adjustments-rent(2)

110



130



324



400

Severance costs(3)





830







990

Pre-opening costs(4)

455



699



1,302



1,214

Insurance recovery(5)









(2,500)





Tax benefit arrangement remeasurement(6)









(348)



(502)

Other(7)

55



598



743



691

Purchase accounting amortization(8)

4,159



4,211



12,477



12,635

Adjusted income (loss) before income taxes

$ 29,958



$ 2,219



$ 67,093



$ (16,311)

Adjusted income taxes(9)

7,969



595



17,847



(4,371)

Adjusted net income (loss)

$ 21,989



$ 1,624



$ 49,246



$ (11,940)



















Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted

$ 0.25



$ 0.02



$ 0.56



$ (0.14)



















Adjusted weighted-average shares outstanding(10)

87,204



86,512



87,194



86,618







(1) Represents the impact of revenue-related purchase accounting adjustments associated with the 2012 Acquisition. At the time of the 2012 Acquisition, the Company maintained a deferred revenue account, which consisted of deferred ADA fees, deferred franchise fees, and deferred enrollment fees that the Company billed and collected upfront but recognizes for U.S. GAAP purposes at a later date. In connection with the 2012 Acquisition, it was determined that the carrying amount of deferred revenue was greater than the fair value assessed in accordance with ASC 805Business Combinations, which resulted in a write-down of the carrying value of the deferred revenue balance upon application of acquisition push-down accounting under ASC 805. These amounts represent the additional revenue that would have been recognized in these periods if the write-down to deferred revenue had not occurred in connection with the application of acquisition pushdown accounting. (2) Represents the impact of rent-related purchase accounting adjustments. In accordance with guidance in ASC 805  Business Combinations, in connection with the 2012 Acquisition, the Company's deferred rent liability was required to be written off as of the acquisition date and rent was recorded on a straight-line basis from the acquisition date through the end of the lease term. This resulted in higher overall recorded rent expense each period than would have otherwise been recorded had the deferred rent liability not been written off as a result of the acquisition push down accounting applied in accordance with ASC 805. Adjustments of $44, $43, $127, and $124 in the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, reflect the difference between the higher rent expense recorded in accordance with U.S. GAAP since the acquisition and the rent expense that would have been recorded had the 2012 Acquisition not occurred. Adjustments of $64, $87, $197 and $276 in the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, are due to the amortization of favorable and unfavorable leases. All of the rent related purchase accounting adjustments are adjustments to rent expense which is included in store operations on our consolidated statements of operations. (3) Represents severance expense recorded in connection with an equity award modification. (4) Represents costs associated with new corporate-owned stores incurred prior to the store opening, including payroll-related costs, rent and occupancy expenses, marketing and other store operating supply expenses. (5) Represents an insurance recovery of previously recognized expenses related to the settlement of legal claims. (6) Represents gains related to the adjustment of our tax benefit arrangements primarily due to changes in our effective tax rate. (7) Represents certain other charges and gains that we do not believe reflect our underlying business performance. (8) Includes $3,096, $3,096, $9,288 and $9,288 of amortization of intangible assets, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, recorded in connection with the 2012 Acquisition, and $1,063, $1,115, $3,189 and $3,346 of amortization of intangible assets for the three months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, recorded in connection with historical acquisitions of franchisee-owned stores. The adjustment represents the amount of actual non-cash amortization expense recorded, in accordance with U.S. GAAP, in each period. (9) Represents corporate income taxes at an assumed effective tax rate of 26.6% for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 26.8% for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2020, applied to adjusted income before income (loss) taxes. (10) Assumes the full exchange of all outstanding Holdings Units and corresponding shares of Class B common stock for shares of Class A common stock of Planet Fitness, Inc.

A reconciliation of net income (loss) per share, diluted, to Adjusted net income (loss) per share, diluted is set forth below for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020:





For the three months ended September 30, 2021

For the three months ended September 30, 2020 (in thousands, except per share amounts)

Net income

Weighted

Average

Shares

Net income

per share,

diluted

Net loss

Weighted

Average

Shares

Net loss

per share,

diluted Net income (loss) attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc.(1)

$ 17,443



83,879



$ 0.21



$ (3,111)



80,221



$ (0.04)

Assumed exchange of shares(2)

1,189



3,325







(173)



6,291





Net income (loss)

18,632











(3,284)









Adjustments to arrive at adjusted income (loss) before income taxes(3)

11,326











5,503









Adjusted income (loss) before income taxes

29,958











2,219









Adjusted income tax expense (benefit)(4)

7,969











595









Adjusted net income (loss)

$ 21,989



87,204



$ 0.25



$ 1,624



86,512



$ 0.02







(1) Represents net income (loss) attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc. and the associated weighted average shares, diluted, of Class A common stock outstanding. (2) Assumes the full exchange of all outstanding Holdings Units and corresponding shares of Class B common stock for shares of Class A common stock of Planet Fitness, Inc. Also assumes the addition of net income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests corresponding with the assumed exchange of Holdings Units and Class B common shares for shares of Class A common stock. (3) Represents the total impact of all adjustments identified in the adjusted net income (loss) table above to arrive at adjusted income (loss) before income taxes. (4) Represents corporate income taxes at an assumed effective tax rate of 26.6% and 26.8% for the three months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, applied to adjusted income (loss) before income taxes.





For the nine months ended September 30, 2021

For the nine months ended September 30, 2020 (in thousands, except per share amounts)

Net income

Weighted

Average

Shares

Net income

per share,

diluted

Net loss

Weighted

Average

Shares

Net loss

per share,

diluted Net income (loss) attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc.(1)

$ 37,034



83,808



$ 0.44



$ (23,681)



79,763



$ (0.30)

Assumed exchange of shares(2)

2,804



3,386







(1,205)



6,855





Net income (loss)

39,838











(24,886)









Adjustments to arrive at adjusted income (loss) before income taxes(3)

27,255











8,575









Adjusted income (loss) before income taxes

67,093











(16,311)









Adjusted income tax expense (benefit)(4)

17,847











(4,371)









Adjusted net income (loss)

$ 49,246



87,194



$ 0.56



$ (11,940)



86,618



$ (0.14)







(1) Represents net income (loss) attributable to Planet Fitness, Inc. and the associated weighted average shares, diluted, of Class A common stock outstanding. (2) Assumes the full exchange of all outstanding Holdings Units and corresponding shares of Class B common stock for shares of Class A common stock of Planet Fitness, Inc. Also assumes the addition of net income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests corresponding with the assumed exchange of Holdings Units and Class B common shares for shares of Class A common stock. (3) Represents the total impact of all adjustments identified in the adjusted net income (loss) table above to arrive at adjusted income (loss) before income taxes. (4) Represents corporate income taxes at an assumed effective tax rate of 26.6% and 26.8% for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, applied to adjusted income (loss) before income taxes.

SOURCE Planet Fitness, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.planetfitness.com


MIAMI, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Premier CBD Hub, seller of a variety of hemp-derived THC-Free Cannabidiol (CBD) Isolate products such as oils, drops/tinctures, creams, moisturizers, chews, and capsules, is pleased to announce its new retooled 2.0 website and branded products launch.

Premier CBD Hub made a name for itself earlier this year by launching a one-stop shop "hub" for all things Hemp CBD, premiercbdhub.com . Founder/COO John Hurley commented, "we found that many people were tired of looking on multiple e-commerce sites for reliable CBD products that addressed different needs from the top manufacturers. Consumers wanted one trustworthy place that carried products from different suppliers at the best prices".

Premier CBD Hub did just that. With the launch of their new 2.0 site, they're well-positioned to take over the market just in time for the holiday shopping season. "Nobody ever thinks about giving CBD products as holiday gifts yet, most people would appreciate the thoughtful gesture. People are turning to CBD more and more. We want to provide the best user experience available to our customers in an industry that's still not the most polished or professional." - John Hurley, COO

In addition, Premier CBD Hub is shaking up the status quo with the launch of its self-branded product line for pets, pain, sleep and relaxation. CEO Alex Malagon was quoted as saying "based on our metrics and research, we knew exactly what the marketplace was lacking and our initial product launch is indicative of just that. We tasked our best manufacturer suppliers to bring consumers products we know they want and will enjoy."

For more information on Premier CBD Hub, please visit:

https://premiercbdhub.com

Follow them on:

Instagram @premier.cbd.hub and Twitter @cbd_hub

About Premier CBD Hub, LLC

Premier CBD Hub is a reseller of non-THC CBD Hemp (cannabinoid) products from various respected manufacturers and suppliers in the CBD marketplace. They offer a "one-stop-shop" approach where consumers can find the best products from top manufacturers at competitive prices, all in one place.

SOURCE Premier CBD Hub

Related Links

https://premiercbdhub.com


NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rebag, the authority for buying, selling and trading luxury, announces a new store location in Beverly Hills, California. Located on Brighton Way, the Rebag store is 800 square feet and joins existing luxury retailers in the area including Berluti, Escada, Wolford, Isaia, and Creed; shopping mecca Rodeo Drive is just steps away.

"At Rebag, we aim to provide a unique and personalized shopping experience for consumers," says Charles Gorra, Found & CEO of Rebag. "With the opening of our Beverly Hills store, we're excited to continue to modify the traditional retail model, integrating high-tech touchpoints throughout the in-store experience in order to meet the needs and wants of today's shoppers."

Aimed at providing consumers with a truly immersive retail experience, the Beverly Hills store will offer all the elements of a Rebag store in a more compact format. All product categories including bags, watches, fine jewelry and accessories will be on display. Additionally, Rebag's 25,000-item large inventory will be available for purchase at The Rebag Bar digitally, and customers can expect a tailored clienteling approach to assist them. Just in time for the holiday season, customers can sell a once-loved item within 60 minutes by leveraging Rebag's unique upfront payment offering, or buy and sell an item in a single, combined transaction via Rebag's recently launched service: Clair Trade.

At the "Clair Corner," consumers can use a self-service kiosk to receive an instant price quote on the item they are selling via the Clair by Rebag software suite. Launched in 2019, Clair by Rebag is a powerful, proprietary software tool backed by seven years of data and millions of image references that instantly determines the resale value of more than 15,000 styles. Annually, Rebag releases the Clair Report , a consumer resource covering shifts within the luxury resale market pertaining to retained brand value, pricing trends, and trend forecasting.

For shoppers not located in New York, Florida, California or Connecticut, buying, selling and trading at Rebag is accessible through its mobile app and rebag.com. Rebag offers a unique process that provides payment for eligible luxury goods accepted within one to two business days for online transactions, and less than 60 minutes in stores.

Rebag Beverly Hills is located at 9619 Brighton Way, open Monday through Saturday from 11am - 6pm. For more store information and hours, visit www.rebag.com .

Press Contact:

FACTORY PR

[email protected]

212.941.9394

About Rebag:

Rebag, the authority on buying, selling and trading luxury goods, is currently one of the fastest growing retailers in the US and has established itself as a leader in the luxury re-commerce space. Founded by Charles Gorra, what makes Rebag unique is that for the first time in the industry, it is possible to sell your designer goods and receive instant payment. Since 2014, the digitally native company has opened retail locations in New York, Los Angeles, Greenwich and Miami. In 2020 and 2021, Rebag was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies. Rebag has been featured in the New York Times, Business of Fashion, VOGUE, TechCrunch and more.

SOURCE Rebag

Related Links

http://www.rebag.com


WASHINGTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Urban School Food Alliance, a coalition of the largest school districts in the United States that includes New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Dallas, is pleased to announce that it will expand its membership to 17 districts with the addition of San Diego Unified School District and Shelby County Schools (Memphis, TN). These new members broaden the Alliance's impact to more than 4 million children nationwide and the group's total annual purchasing power to more than $875 million in food and food supplies.

"These two districts are leaders in school food service and exemplify our mission of providing healthy meals to all students through sustainable and socially responsible practices," said Dr. Katie Wilson, Urban School Food Alliance Executive Director. "Their membership will expand the geographic reach of the Alliance and strengthen the collective voice of our members in sharing industry best practices and pushing for systems level change."

The Alliance is a data-driven non-profit organization focused on advancing material changes to school nutrition in the United States. Its achievements include helping school districts adopt an antibiotic-free standard for poultry, even before many of the nation's leading restaurants called for healthier poultry on their menus, and removing 225 million polystyrene trays from landfills every year by implementing compostable round plates in school cafeterias.

San Diego Unified School District is the second largest public school district in California, serving more than 103,000 students across 226 educational facilities. Shelby County Schools is Tennessee's largest public school district. Formerly comprised of two smaller districts, Shelby County Schools serves over 110,500 students in more than 214 schools.

"San Diego Unified Food & Nutrition is very excited to join the Urban School Food Alliance," said Frederick Espinosa, Interim Food Service Director. "Joining the Alliance will supply another valuable source of resources for us to utilize to help steer our program and reach our goal of providing healthy food to support successful students."

"Under our current strategic plan at Shelby County Schools, we are reimagining education, our schools, and our community of Memphis," said Eugene Bradford, Executive Director of Nutrition Services. "The Urban School Food Alliance's mission and vision align seamlessly with our efforts. However, as we reimagine our district, our work would not be complete without taking additional steps to support the health and wellness of our students. We look forward to partnering with our member districts to strategize, advocate, and share best practices."

About the Urban School Food Alliance

Founded in 2012, the Urban School Food Alliance consists of 17 of the nation's largest school districts. Together, its members represent approximately 4 million students and serve more than 690 million meals annually. The Alliance was created by school foodservice professionals to address the unique needs of the nation's largest school districts. As a nonprofit 501c3 group, USFA shares best practices, crafts bids and policies that focus on elevating school meals, and advocates for the health and wellness of all students. Learn more about the Urban School Food Alliance at www.urbanschoolfoodalliance.org.

Media Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE Urban School Food Alliance

Related Links

www.urbanschoolfoodalliance.org


For lead investor COFRA, a sixth-generation family-owned business, this is a first investment into sustainable food systems and agritech as part of its strategy to contribute to the food system transition. The investment is part of COFRA's broader commitment to contribute positively to society and the environment through its businesses and investments.

COFRA, Cleveland Avenue and DC Thomson were joined by existing institutional investors Ospraie Ag Science (New York City), S2G Ventures (Chicago), venture capital firm AgFunder (San Francisco); and Scottish Enterprise in the Series B investment round, with private shareholders and IGS staff also contributing.

Donald Brenninkmeijer, Director appointed by COFRA, commented: "With a growing population putting ever greater strain on resources and the environment, there is an urgent need for sustainable, high-yield forms of food production. We're excited to support IGS on its journey to resolve the dual challenge of food insecurity and environmental degradation through its vertical farming technology.

"IGS's technology is unique, its growth plan solid and we are confident in its potential to rethink the future of agricultural food systems. This first investment in sustainable food systems is consistent with COFRA's longstanding commitment to using business and capital as a force for good and I look forward to working with the IGS Board and management team to further support their growth."

Donald Brenninkmeijer and Jason Mraz from Ospraie Ag Science LLC have both been appointed to the IGS Board as non-executive directors.

IGS designs and builds award-winning vertical farms for farmers and growers in food, pharmaceutical and fragrance markets around the world. It has deployed its technology to customers across four continents to date, with a sales pipeline that has quadrupled in the past 12 months.

IGS Chief Executive Officer David Farquhar said: "The conclusion of a hugely over-subscribed Series B round represents another exciting step for IGS and our investors. We have been supported with this investment by well-established, globally recognised and highly ethical investors in COFRA, Cleveland Avenue and DC Thomson, who understand the transformational potential of our technology for controlled environment agriculture."

About IGS:

Founded in 2013, IGS brought together decades of farming and engineering experience to create an agritech business with a vision to revolutionise the indoor growing market. Its commitment to innovation has continued apace to develop patented plug-and-play technology which delivers solutions designed to drive efficiency and create an indoor environment with economy and simplicity at its heart.

IGS launched its first crop research centre in August 2018 and has since deployed to customers across four continents.

About COFRA:

COFRA is a privately held group of companies active in various business sectors, including asset management (Anthos Fund & Asset Management), private equity investment management (Bregal), apparel retail (C&A), real estate investments (Redevco) and renewable energy (Sunrock). Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, the group employs more than 74,000 people across its business operations in Europe and the Americas. Each business operates independently in a spirit of engaged entrepreneurship while striving to be a "force for good" in the world  a guiding principle that has characterised the Brenninkmeijer family owners' activities for six generations, since the founding of C&A in 1841. For more information, see www.cofraholding.com.

About Cleveland Avenue, LLC:

Founded by Don Thompson, the former President and CEO of McDonald's Corporation, Cleveland Avenue is a venture capital firm that invests in food and beverage brands, and technology companies that positively disrupt large and growing markets. Learn more about Cleveland Avenue at clevelandavenue.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

About DC Thomson:

DC Thomson a leading media and technology group in the UK with a proud heritage of creating trusted brands that enlighten and entertain audiences across the globe. Established in 1905, it is a privately owned, family-run business with people, customers and communities at its heart. DC Thomson Capital invests in pre-IPO and future facing industries on behalf of the group with specific focus on E-commerce/Retail, Agtech, the Circular and Blue Economies and Water. Consistent with the company's values, our desire is to collaborate and invest alongside other family offices and professional investors and to actively support the companies we invest in over the long-term.

About Ospraie Ag Science:

Ospraie Ag Science LLC (OAS) identifies solutions to help farmers "Do More With Less". By increasing profitability, improving quality-adjusted yield, and reducing environmental impact, OAS's companies not only benefit producers, but generate smarter, healthier, and more efficient food for consumers globally. Utilizing its extensive network and 25 years of experience investing in agriculture, OAS is positioned to help farmers achieve a sustainable future.

About S2G Ventures:

S2G Ventures is a multi-stage venture fund investing across the food, agriculture, oceans and seafood markets. The fund's mission is to catalyze innovation to meet consumer demands for healthy and sustainable food systems. S2G has identified sectors across the food system that are ripe for change, and is building a multi-stage portfolio including seed, venture and growth stage investments. Core areas of interest for S2G are agriculture, oceans, ingredients, infrastructure and logistics, IT and hardware, food safety and technology, retail and restaurants, and consumer brands. S2G Ventures is a part of Builders Private Capital, the direct investment arm of Builders Vision, an impact platform dedicated to building a humane and healthy planet. For more information about S2G, visit s2gventures.com, tune-in to our podcast, or connect with us on LinkedIn.

About AgFunder

AgFunder is a global Venture Capital Platform investing in the bold and exceptional entrepreneurs transforming our food and agriculture system. Our in-house technology enables us to invest globally and at scale, make better investment decisions, and support our portfolio companies. Through media and research, AgFunder has built a community of over 90,000 members and subscribers, giving us the largest and most powerful network in the industry.

Stay up-to-date with Food Tech and AgTech startup news, and other reports, by signing up to our newsletter here.

About Scottish Enterprise

Scottish Enterprise is Scotland's national economic development agency. We're committed to growing the Scottish economy for the benefit of all, helping create more quality jobs and a brighter future for every region.

SOURCE IGS Limited
MECHANICSBURG, Pa., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Select Medical Holdings Corporation ("Select Medical," "we," "us," or "our") (NYSE: SEM) today announced results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2021 and the declaration of a cash dividend.

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, revenue increased 7.8% to $1,534.2 million, compared to $1,423.9 million for the same quarter, prior year. Income from operations was $150.3 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $156.1 million for the same quarter, prior year. Income from operations included $1.7 million of other operating income related to the recognition of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to a reduction of other operating income of $1.2 million related to payments received under the Provider Relief Fund for the same quarter, prior year. Refer to "CARES Act Provider Relief Fund" for further discussion. Net income was $100.2 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $104.5 million for the same quarter, prior year. Net income included pre-tax gains on sales of businesses of $5.1 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was $208.6 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $213.2 million for the same quarter, prior year. Earnings per common share was $0.57 for both the third quarters ended September 30, 2021 and 2020. Adjusted earnings per common share was $0.57 for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $0.56 for the same quarter, prior year. Adjusted earnings per common share excluded the gains on sales of businesses and related tax effects for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020. The definition of Adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA are presented in table IX of this release. A reconciliation of earnings per common share to adjusted earnings per common share is presented in table X of this release.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, revenue increased 14.1% to $4,644.7 million, compared to $4,071.2 million for the same period, prior year. Income from operations increased 57.4% to $636.2 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $404.3 million for the same period, prior year. Income from operations included $115.8 million of other operating income related to the recognition of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $53.8 million for the same period, prior year. Refer to "CARES Act Provider Relief Fund" for further discussion. Net income increased 78.9% to $433.6 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $242.4 million for the same period, prior year. Net income included pre-tax gains on sales of businesses of $12.7 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2020. Adjusted EBITDA increased 39.6% to $808.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $579.3 million for the same period, prior year. Earnings per common share increased to $2.61 for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $1.35 for the same period, prior year. Adjusted earnings per common share was $2.61 for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $1.31 for the same period, prior year. Adjusted earnings per common share excluded the gains on sales of businesses and related tax effects for the nine months ended September 30, 2020. The definition of Adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA are presented in table IX of this release. A reconciliation of earnings per common share to adjusted earnings per common share is presented in table X of this release.

Please refer to "Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Select Medical's Results of Operations" below for further discussion regarding the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 ("COVID-19") pandemic on Select Medical's operating results.

Company Overview

Select Medical is one of the largest operators of critical illness recovery hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation clinics, and occupational health centers in the United States based on number of facilities. Select Medical's reportable segments include the critical illness recovery hospital segment, the rehabilitation hospital segment, the outpatient rehabilitation segment, and the Concentra segment. As of September 30, 2021, Select Medical operated 100 critical illness recovery hospitals in 28 states, 30 rehabilitation hospitals in 12 states, and 1,850 outpatient rehabilitation clinics in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Select Medical's joint venture subsidiary Concentra operated 519 occupational health centers in 41 states. At September 30, 2021, Select Medical had operations in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Information about Select Medical is available at www.selectmedical.com.

CARES Act Provider Relief Fund

On March 27, 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act ("CARES Act") was enacted. The CARES Act provided additional waivers, reimbursement, grants and other funds to assist health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, including appropriations for the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, also referred to as the Provider Relief Fund, to be used for preventing, preparing, and responding to COVID-19, and for reimbursing eligible health care providers for health care related expenses and lost revenues that are attributable to COVID-19.

For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, Select Medical recognized $1.7 million and $115.8 million of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund as other operating income, respectively.

For the three months ended September 30, 2020, Select Medical recognized a reduction to other operating income of $1.2 million related to payments received under the Provider Relief Fund. This resulted from changes in the terms and conditions associated with the Provider Relief Fund program. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Select Medical recognized $53.8 million of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund as other operating income.

Critical Illness Recovery Hospital Segment

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the critical illness recovery hospital segment increased 2.2% to $530.6 million, compared to $519.5 million for the same quarter, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the critical illness recovery hospital segment was $57.2 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $88.8 million for the same quarter, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the critical illness recovery hospital segment was 10.8% for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to 17.1% for the same quarter, prior year. Certain critical illness recovery hospital key statistics are presented in table VII of this release for both the third quarters ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the critical illness recovery hospital segment increased 8.4% to $1,669.6 million, compared to $1,539.6 million for the same period, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the critical illness recovery hospital segment was $243.4 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $267.1 million for the same period, prior year. For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, Adjusted EBITDA included $17.9 million of other operating income related to the outcome of litigation with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the critical illness recovery hospital segment was 14.6% for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to 17.4% for the same period, prior year. Certain critical illness recovery hospital key statistics are presented in table VIII of this release for both the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

Rehabilitation Hospital Segment

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the rehabilitation hospital segment increased 13.0% to $212.4 million, compared to $188.1 million for the same quarter, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the rehabilitation hospital segment was $44.1 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $44.6 million for the same quarter, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the rehabilitation hospital segment was 20.7% for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to 23.7% for the same quarter, prior year. Certain rehabilitation hospital key statistics are presented in table VII of this release for both the third quarters ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the rehabilitation hospital segment increased 17.5% to $632.9 million, compared to $538.8 million for the same period, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the rehabilitation hospital segment increased 31.2% to $145.4 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $110.8 million for the same period, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the rehabilitation hospital segment was 23.0% for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to 20.6% for the same period, prior year. Certain rehabilitation hospital key statistics are presented in table VIII of this release for both the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

Outpatient Rehabilitation Segment

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the outpatient rehabilitation segment increased 14.4% to $274.5 million, compared to $240.0 million for the same quarter, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the outpatient rehabilitation segment increased 26.6% to $38.8 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $30.6 million for the same quarter, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the outpatient rehabilitation segment was 14.1% for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to 12.8% for the same quarter, prior year. Certain outpatient rehabilitation key statistics are presented in table VII of this release for both the third quarters ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the outpatient rehabilitation segment increased 21.8% to $806.9 million, compared to $662.4 million for the same period, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the outpatient rehabilitation segment increased to $110.7 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $51.5 million for the same period, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the outpatient rehabilitation segment was 13.7% for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to 7.8% for the same period, prior year. Certain outpatient rehabilitation key statistics are presented in table VIII of this release for both the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

Concentra Segment

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the Concentra segment increased 12.8% to $442.2 million, compared to $391.9 million for the same quarter, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the Concentra segment increased 23.9% to $99.8 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $80.5 million for the same quarter, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA included other operating income of $1.6 million related to the recognition of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $0.4 million for the same quarter, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the Concentra segment was 22.6% for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to 20.6% for the same quarter, prior year. Certain Concentra key statistics are presented in table VII of this release for both the third quarters ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, revenue for the Concentra segment increased 19.8% to $1,321.4 million, compared to $1,102.7 million for the same period, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the Concentra segment increased to $318.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $183.5 million for the same period, prior year. Adjusted EBITDA included other operating income of $33.8 million related to the recognition of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $1.1 million for the same period, prior year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin for the Concentra segment was 24.1% for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to 16.6% for the same period, prior year. Certain Concentra key statistics are presented in table VIII of this release for both the nine months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020.

Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Select Medical's Results of Operations

Beginning in March 2020, state governments placed significant restrictions on businesses and mandated closures of non-essential or non-life sustaining businesses, causing many employers to furlough their workforce and temporarily cease or significantly reduce their operations. State governments also implemented restrictions on travel and individual activities outside of the home, closed schools, and mandated other social distancing measures. At the same time, hospitals and other facilities began suspending elective surgeries. In an effort to ensure hospitals and health systems had the capacity to absorb and effectively manage surges of COVID-19 patients, a number of waivers and modifications of certain requirements under the Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program ("CHIP") programs were authorized in March 2020, including certain regulations under the Medicare program which govern admissions into Select Medical's critical illness recovery hospitals and rehabilitation hospitals. Specifically, Select Medical's critical illness recovery hospitals which are certified as long-term care hospitals ("LTCHs") became exempt from the greater-than-25-day average length of stay requirement for all cost reporting periods that include the COVID-19 public health emergency period. Select Medical's rehabilitation hospitals which are certified as inpatient rehabilitation facilities ("IRFs") could exclude patients admitted solely to respond to the emergency from the calculation of the "60 percent rule" thresholds to receive payment as an IRF. The COVID-19 public health emergency period has been extended and is currently in effect through January 15, 2022.

The adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the actions of governmental authorities and those in the private sector to limit the spread of COVID-19, caused disruptions in each of Select Medical's segments; these disruptions were most significant within the outpatient rehabilitation and Concentra segments. By mid-March 2020, Select Medical's outpatient rehabilitation clinics began experiencing significantly less patient visit volume due to declines in patient referrals from physicians, a reduction in workers' compensation injury visits resulting from the temporary closure of businesses, and the suspension of elective surgeries which would have required outpatient rehabilitation services. Select Medical's Concentra centers experienced similar declines in patient visit volume due to businesses furloughing their workforce and temporarily ceasing or significantly reducing their operations. Since March 2021, Select Medical's outpatient rehabilitation clinics and Concentra centers have experienced patient visit volumes which approximate or exceed the levels experienced in the months prior to the widespread emergence of COVID-19 in the United States. Although they have experienced temporary disruptions in their core businesses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Select Medical's outpatient rehabilitation and Concentra segments have been able to expand their services to provide COVID-19 screening and testing.

Select Medical's critical illness recovery hospitals have played a critical role in caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the relaxation of certain admission restrictions have contributed to volume increases in certain of its hospitals. The revenue of Select Medical's critical illness recovery hospitals and rehabilitation hospitals has also benefited from the temporary suspension of the 2.0% cut to Medicare payments due to sequestration, which began May 1, 2020 following the enactment of the CARES Act, and has been extended through December 31, 2021. Certain of Select Medical's rehabilitation hospitals experienced temporary declines in patient volume, beginning in March 2020, in areas more significantly impacted by the spread of COVID-19, and as a result of the suspension of elective surgeries at hospitals and other facilities, which consequently reduced the demand for inpatient rehabilitation services. Additionally, some of Select Medical's rehabilitation hospitals temporarily restricted admissions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, both Select Medical's critical illness recovery hospitals and rehabilitation hospitals modified certain of their protocols in order to follow the guidelines and recommendations for patient treatment and for the protection of their patients and staff members. This has resulted in increased labor costs, including increased contracted labor usage, as well as additional costs resulting from the purchase of personal protective equipment.

The unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the duration and extent of disruption on Select Medical's operations, creates uncertainties about Select Medical's future operating results and financial condition. Select Medical has provided revenue and certain operating statistics below for each of its segments for each of the periods presented. Please refer to our risk factors previously reported in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 for further discussion.





Critical Illness Recovery Hospital



























































Revenue



Patient Days



Occupancy Rate



Number of Hospitals

Owned(1)



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



(in thousands)









































January

$ 149,799



$ 163,238



$ 199,611





86,238



90,783



100,933





69%

69%

75%



96

100

99 February

145,586



165,375



190,703





80,806



87,844



92,036





71%

72%

75%



96

100

99 March

162,149



171,908



204,558





91,085



91,831



100,149





73%

70%

74%



96

100

99 Three Months Ended March 31

$ 457,534



$ 500,521



$ 594,872





258,129



270,458



293,118





71%

70%

75%



96

100

99























































April

$ 156,231



$ 171,445



$ 185,934





88,357



90,710



91,506





70%

71%

70%



99

100

99 May

156,422



178,223



183,471





89,350



95,191



93,708





69%

72%

70%



99

100

99 June

148,490



169,958



174,654





85,153



90,988



87,767





68%

71%

68%



99

100

99 Three Months Ended June 30

$ 461,143



$ 519,626



$ 544,059





262,860



276,889



272,981





69%

72%

69%



99

100

99 Six Months Ended June 30

$ 918,677



$ 1,020,147



$ 1,138,931





520,989



547,347



566,099





70%

71%

72%



99

100

99























































July

$ 151,416



$ 175,253



$ 171,483





87,143



94,144



88,119





67%

71%

65%



99

99

100 August

155,485



173,967



178,240





86,553



93,964



91,756





66%

71%

68%



99

99

100 September

155,991



170,234



180,923





84,393



90,955



92,579





67%

71%

71%



99

99

100 Three Months Ended

September 30

$ 462,892



$ 519,454



$ 530,646





258,089



279,063



272,454





67%

71%

68%



99

99

100 Nine Months Ended

September 30

$ 1,381,569



$ 1,539,601



$ 1,669,577





779,078



826,410



838,553





69%

71%

70%



99

99

100





Rehabilitation Hospital



























































Revenue



Patient Days



Occupancy Rate



Number of Hospitals

Owned(1)



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



(in thousands)







































January

$ 50,615



$ 61,673



$ 68,297





27,434



32,111



34,404





74%

79%

82%



17

19

20 February

48,080



60,690



64,202





25,442



31,813



32,178





76%

84%

84%



17

19

20 March

55,863



59,656



75,305





29,940



30,644



35,857





78%

76%

85%



18

19

20 Three Months Ended March 31

$ 154,558



$ 182,019



$ 207,804





82,816



94,568



102,439





76%

79%

84%



18

19

20























































April

$ 51,991



$ 45,878



$ 70,295





28,266



23,553



34,861





76%

61%

85%



18

19

20 May

56,019



57,815



71,190





29,730



29,787



35,604





75%

73%

84%



19

19

20 June

52,364



64,974



71,181





28,529



30,741



34,483





73%

78%

84%



19

19

20 Three Months Ended June 30

$ 160,374



$ 168,667



$ 212,666





86,525



84,081



104,948





75%

71%

85%



19

19

20 Six Months Ended June 30

$ 314,932



$ 350,686



$ 420,470





169,341



178,649



207,387





76%

75%

84%



19

19

20























































July

$ 57,077



$ 62,312



$ 70,467





30,054



31,986



34,894





75%

81%

83%



19

18

20 August

58,072



63,673



71,682





30,228



32,518



34,835





75%

83%

83%



19

18

20 September

58,220



62,090



70,285





29,172



31,176



33,224





75%

82%

81%



19

18

20 Three Months Ended

September 30

$ 173,369



$ 188,075



$ 212,434





89,454



95,680



102,953





75%

82%

82%



19

18

20 Nine Months Ended

September 30

$ 488,301



$ 538,761



$ 632,904





258,795



274,329



310,340





75%

77%

84%



19

18

20





Outpatient Rehabilitation













































Revenue



Visits



Working Days(2)



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



(in thousands)

























January

$ 83,185



$ 90,924



$ 76,763





687,007



757,171



625,964





22



22



20

February

78,573



88,239



77,063





658,610



739,061



641,942





20



20



20

March

85,147



76,086



98,135





708,866



626,433



832,248





21



22



23

Three Months Ended March 31

$ 246,905



$ 255,249



$ 251,961





2,054,483



2,122,665



2,100,154





63



64



63











































April

$ 90,230



$ 49,084



$ 95,251





762,914



386,108



810,314





22



22



22

May

90,272



51,186



89,030





759,829



409,703



758,773





22



20



20

June

81,389



66,868



96,128





680,762



546,456



835,774





20



22



22

Three Months Ended June 30

$ 261,891



$ 167,138



$ 280,409





2,203,505



1,342,267



2,404,861





64



64



64

Six Months Ended June 30

$ 508,796



$ 422,387



$ 532,370





4,257,988



3,464,932



4,505,015





127



128



127











































July

$ 89,267



$ 77,793



$ 90,352





754,102



636,826



780,118





22



22



21

August

90,687



79,034



93,056





743,813



651,738



798,459





22



21



22

September

85,376



83,215



91,132





706,413



694,808



768,493





20



21



21

Three Months Ended

September 30

$ 265,330



$ 240,042



$ 274,540





2,204,328



1,983,372



2,347,070





64



64



64

Nine Months Ended

September 30

$ 774,126



$ 662,429



$ 806,910





6,462,316



5,448,304



6,852,085





191



192



191







Concentra

















































Revenue



Visits



Working Days(2)





2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021



2019

2020

2021





(in thousands)



























January

$ 133,507



$ 141,236



$ 127,103





985,598



1,032,069



867,793





22



22



20



February

126,309



133,690



132,349





919,065



965,741



869,910





20



20



20



March

136,505



123,609



163,388





1,006,944



879,585



1,057,871





21



22



23



Three Months Ended March 31

$ 396,321



$ 398,535



$ 422,840





2,911,607



2,877,395



2,795,574





63



64



63















































April

$ 140,050



$ 91,178



$ 152,143





1,040,543



610,555



999,622





22



22



22



May

143,183



99,228



142,228





1,073,763



674,629



956,250





22



20



20



June

130,218



121,932



162,001





988,783



865,896



1,074,206





20



22



22



Three Months Ended June 30

$ 413,451



$ 312,338



$ 456,372





3,103,089



2,151,080



3,030,078





64



64



64



Six Months Ended June 30

$ 809,772



$ 710,873



$ 879,212





6,014,696



5,028,475



5,825,652





127



128



127















































July

$ 142,385



$ 132,465



$ 146,509





1,057,809



930,427



1,033,266





22



22



21



August

144,452



130,291



150,333





1,087,165



933,555



1,106,356





22



21



22



September

135,063



129,103



145,348





1,005,929



963,065



1,084,009





20



21



21



Three Months Ended

September 30

$ 421,900



$ 391,859



$ 442,190





3,150,903



2,827,047



3,223,631





64



64



64



Nine Months Ended

September 30

$ 1,231,672



$ 1,102,732



$ 1,321,402





9,165,599



7,855,522



9,049,283





191



192



191





______________________________ (1) Represents the number of hospitals owned at the end of each period presented. (2) Represents the number of days in which normal business operations were conducted during the periods presented.

Stock Repurchase Program

The board of directors of Select Medical previously authorized a common stock repurchase program to repurchase up to $500.0 million worth of shares of its common stock. On November 2, 2021, the board of directors increased the capacity of the program from $500.0 million to $1.0 billion worth of shares and the program has been extended until December 31, 2023. The common stock repurchase program will remain in effect until then, unless further extended or earlier terminated by the board of directors. Stock repurchases under this program may be made in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions, and at times and in such amounts as Select Medical deems appropriate. Select Medical funds this program with cash on hand and borrowings under its revolving credit facility.

During the quarter ended September 30, 2021, Select Medical repurchased 1,383,508 shares at a cost of approximately $47.5 million, or $34.34 per share, which includes transaction costs. Since the inception of the common stock repurchase program through September 30, 2021, Select Medical has repurchased 39,964,416 shares at a cost of approximately $404.1 million, or $10.11 per share, which includes transaction costs.

Dividend

On November 2, 2021, Select Medical's board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.125 per share. The dividend will be payable on or about November 29, 2021 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 16, 2021.

There is no assurance that future dividends will be declared. The declaration and payment of dividends in the future are at the discretion of Select Medical's board of directors after taking into account various factors, including, but not limited to, Select Medical's financial condition, operating results, available cash and current and anticipated cash needs, the terms of Select Medical's indebtedness, and other factors Select Medical's board of directors may deem to be relevant.

Business Outlook

Select Medical is updating its business outlook for 2021 following the reporting of its third quarter 2021 results. Select Medical now expects revenue for the full year of 2021 to be in the range of $6.05 billion to $6.15 billion and Adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2021 to be in the range of $980.0 million to $1.0 billion. Select Medical now expects fully diluted earnings per common share for the full year of 2021 to be in the range of $2.98 to $3.09. A reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2021 is presented in table XI of this release.

Select Medical reaffirms its target compound annual growth rates, provided most recently in its August 5, 2021 press release, for revenue, Adjusted EBITDA, and earnings per common share. Select Medical continues to expect its compound annual growth for revenue to be in the range of 4% to 6% and compound annual growth for Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of 7% to 8% from 2021 through 2023. Select Medical continues to expect compound annual growth for earnings per common share to be in the range of 17% to 20% from 2021 through 2023.

Conference Call

Select Medical will host a conference call regarding its third quarter results, as well as its business outlook and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on each of its reportable segments, on Friday, November 5, 2021, at 9:00am ET. The domestic dial in number for the call is 1-866-440-2669. The international dial in number is 1-409-220-9844. The conference ID for the call is 2359393. The conference call will be webcast simultaneously and can be accessed at Select Medical Holdings Corporation's website www.selectmedicalholdings.com.

For those unable to participate in the conference call, a replay will be available until 12:00pm ET, November 12, 2021. The replay number is 1-855-859-2056 (domestic) or 1-404-537-3406 (international). The conference ID for the replay will be 2359393. The replay can also be accessed at Select Medical Holdings Corporation's website, www.selectmedicalholdings.com.

Certain statements contained herein that are not descriptions of historical facts are "forward-looking" statements (as such term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995), including statements related to Select Medical's 2021 and long-term business outlook. Because such statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements due to factors including the following:

developments related to the COVID-19 pandemic including, but not limited to, the duration and severity of the pandemic, additional measures taken by government authorities and the private sector to limit the spread of COVID-19, and further legislative and regulatory actions which impact healthcare providers, including actions that may impact the Medicare program;

changes in government reimbursement for our services and/or new payment policies may result in a reduction in revenue, an increase in costs, and a reduction in profitability;

the failure of our Medicare-certified long term care hospitals or inpatient rehabilitation facilities to maintain their Medicare certifications may cause our revenue and profitability to decline;

the failure of our Medicare-certified long term care hospitals and inpatient rehabilitation facilities operated as "hospitals within hospitals" to qualify as hospitals separate from their host hospitals may cause our revenue and profitability to decline;

a government investigation or assertion that we have violated applicable regulations may result in sanctions or reputational harm and increased costs;

acquisitions or joint ventures may prove difficult or unsuccessful, use significant resources or expose us to unforeseen liabilities;

our plans and expectations related to our acquisitions and our ability to realize anticipated synergies;

private third-party payors for our services may adopt payment policies that could limit our future revenue and profitability;

the failure to maintain established relationships with the physicians in the areas we serve could reduce our revenue and profitability;

shortages in qualified nurses, therapists, physicians, or other licensed providers, or the inability to attract or retain healthcare professionals due to the heightened risk of infection related to the COVID-19 pandemic, could increase our operating costs significantly or limit our ability to staff our facilities;

competition may limit our ability to grow and result in a decrease in our revenue and profitability;

the loss of key members of our management team could significantly disrupt our operations;

the effect of claims asserted against us could subject us to substantial uninsured liabilities;

a security breach of our or our third-party vendors' information technology systems may subject us to potential legal and reputational harm and may result in a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 or the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act; and

other factors discussed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" of the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and of the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 .

Except as required by applicable law, including the securities laws of the United States and the rules and regulations of the SEC, we are under no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of any new information, future events, or otherwise. You should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results or performance.

Investor inquiries:

Joel T. Veit

Senior Vice President and Treasurer

717-972-1100

[email protected]

I. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations For the Three Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, except per share amounts, unaudited)





2020

2021

% Change Revenue

$ 1,423,869



$ 1,534,221



7.8 % Costs and expenses:











Cost of services, exclusive of depreciation and amortization

1,180,951



1,297,682



9.9

General and administrative

35,516



37,885



6.7

Depreciation and amortization

50,110



50,128



0.0

Total costs and expenses

1,266,577



1,385,695



9.4

Other operating income

(1,160)



1,729



N/M

Income from operations

156,132



150,255



(3.8)

Other income and expense:











Equity in earnings of unconsolidated subsidiaries

8,765



11,452



30.7

Gain on sale of businesses

5,143







N/M

Interest expense

(34,026)



(33,825)



(0.6)

Income before income taxes

136,014



127,882



(6.0)

Income tax expense

31,557



27,665



(12.3)

Net income

104,457



100,217



(4.1)

Less: Net income attributable to non-controlling interests

27,511



23,289



(15.3)

Net income attributable to Select Medical

$ 76,946



$ 76,928



0.0 % Basic and diluted earnings per common share:(1)

$ 0.57



$ 0.57







______________________________ (1) Refer to table III for calculation of earnings per common share.



N/M Not meaningful.

II. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations For the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, except per share amounts, unaudited)





2020

2021

% Change Revenue

$ 4,071,219



$ 4,644,704



14.1 % Costs and expenses:











Cost of services, exclusive of depreciation and amortization

3,463,778



3,882,579



12.1

General and administrative

102,808



109,025



6.0

Depreciation and amortization

154,133



150,702



(2.2)

Total costs and expenses

3,720,719



4,142,306



11.3

Other operating income

53,828



133,837



N/M

Income from operations

404,328



636,235



57.4

Other income and expense:











Equity in earnings of unconsolidated subsidiaries

19,677



33,180



68.6

Gain on sale of businesses

12,690







N/M

Interest income





4,749



N/M

Interest expense

(117,499)



(102,115)



(13.1)

Income before income taxes

319,196



572,049



79.2

Income tax expense

76,805



138,410



80.2

Net income

242,391



433,639



78.9

Less: Net income attributable to non-controlling interests

60,670



81,271



34.0

Net income attributable to Select Medical

$ 181,721



$ 352,368



93.9 % Basic and diluted earnings per common share:(1)

$ 1.35



$ 2.61







______________________________ (1) Refer to table III for calculation of earnings per common share.



N/M Not meaningful.

III. Earnings per Share For the Three and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, except per share amounts, unaudited)

Select Medical's capital structure includes common stock and unvested restricted stock awards. To compute earnings per share ("EPS"), Select Medical applies the two-class method because its unvested restricted stock awards are participating securities which are entitled to participate equally with its common stock in undistributed earnings.

The following table sets forth the net income attributable to Select Medical, its common shares outstanding, and its participating securities outstanding for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2020 and 2021:





Basic and Diluted EPS



Three Months Ended September 30,

Nine Months Ended

September 30,



2020

2021

2020

2021



(in thousands) Net income

$ 104,457



$ 100,217



$ 242,391



$ 433,639

Less: net income attributable to non-controlling interests

27,511



23,289



60,670



81,271

Net income attributable to Select Medical

76,946



76,928



181,721



352,368

Less: net income attributable to participating securities

2,666



2,550



6,254



11,781

Net income attributable to common shares

$ 74,280



$ 74,378



$ 175,467



$ 340,587



The following tables set forth the computation of EPS under the two-class method for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2020 and 2021:





Three Months Ended September 30,



2020



2021



Net Income

Allocation

Shares(1)

Basic and

Diluted EPS



Net Income

Allocation

Shares(1)

Basic and

Diluted EPS Common shares

$ 74,280



129,882



$ 0.57





$ 74,378



130,594



$ 0.57

Participating securities

2,666



4,662



$ 0.57





2,550



4,477



$ 0.57

Total

$ 76,946













$ 76,928















Nine Months Ended September 30,



2020



2021



Net Income

Allocation

Shares(1)

Basic and

Diluted EPS



Net Income

Allocation

Shares(1)

Basic and

Diluted EPS Common shares

$ 175,467



129,616



$ 1.35





$ 340,587



130,441



$ 2.61

Participating securities

6,254



4,620



$ 1.35





11,781



4,512



$ 2.61

Total

$ 181,721













$ 352,368











______________________________ (1) Represents the weighted average share count outstanding during the period.

IV. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (In thousands, unaudited)





December 31, 2020

September 30, 2021 Assets







Current Assets:







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 577,061



$ 747,983

Accounts receivable

896,763



898,823

Other current assets

120,176



132,535

Total Current Assets

1,594,000



1,779,341

Operating lease right-of-use assets

1,032,217



1,069,953

Property and equipment, net

943,420



936,695

Goodwill

3,379,014



3,399,794

Identifiable intangible assets, net

387,541



378,433

Other assets

319,207



335,257

Total Assets

$ 7,655,399



$ 7,899,473

Liabilities and Equity







Current Liabilities:







Payables and accruals

$ 800,918



$ 919,976

Government advances

321,807



159,505

Unearned government assistance

82,607



2,414

Current operating lease liabilities

220,413



226,419

Current portion of long-term debt and notes payable

12,621



18,059

Total Current Liabilities

1,438,366



1,326,373

Non-current operating lease liabilities

875,367



909,950

Long-term debt, net of current portion

3,389,398



3,384,164

Non-current deferred tax liability

132,421



120,274

Other non-current liabilities

168,703



167,770

Total Liabilities

6,004,255



5,908,531

Redeemable non-controlling interests

398,171



627,330

Total equity

1,252,973



1,363,612

Total Liabilities and Equity

$ 7,655,399



$ 7,899,473



V. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows For the Three Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, unaudited)





2020

2021 Operating activities







Net income

$ 104,457



$ 100,217

Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities:







Distributions from unconsolidated subsidiaries

10,497



8,388

Depreciation and amortization

50,110



50,128

Provision for expected credit losses

28



(40)

Equity in earnings of unconsolidated subsidiaries

(8,765)



(11,452)

Gain on sale of assets and businesses

(16,842)



(581)

Stock compensation expense

6,962



8,194

Amortization of debt discount, premium and issuance costs

542



560

Deferred income taxes

(11,140)



(3,642)

Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of effects of business combinations:







Accounts receivable

(104,592)



32,396

Other current assets

(23,528)



11,034

Other assets

4,831



8,860

Accounts payable and accrued expenses

133,748



17,795

Government advances

1,124



(91,767)

Unearned government assistance

21,433



(1,684)

Income taxes

(34,328)



(29,452)

Net cash provided by operating activities

134,537



98,954

Investing activities







Business combinations, net of cash acquired

(7,115)



(16,749)

Purchases of property and equipment

(34,319)



(48,944)

Investment in businesses

(11,108)



(5,182)

Proceeds from sale of assets and businesses

70,919



1,794

Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities

18,377



(69,081)

Financing activities







Borrowings of other debt

3,599



10,600

Principal payments on other debt

(7,087)



(7,596)

Dividends paid to common stockholders





(16,940)

Repurchase of common stock

(4,827)



(64,440)

Proceeds from issuance of non-controlling interests





14,238

Distributions to and purchases of non-controlling interests

(14,536)



(21,245)

Net cash used in financing activities

(22,851)



(85,383)

Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents

130,063



(55,510)

Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period

509,737



803,493

Cash and cash equivalents at end of period

$ 639,800



$ 747,983

Supplemental information







Cash paid for interest

$ 54,050



$ 51,615

Cash paid for taxes

77,025



60,763



VI. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows For the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, unaudited)





2020

2021 Operating activities







Net income

$ 242,391



$ 433,639

Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities:







Distributions from unconsolidated subsidiaries

21,720



27,772

Depreciation and amortization

154,133



150,702

Provision for expected credit losses

281



172

Equity in earnings of unconsolidated subsidiaries

(19,677)



(33,180)

Gain on sale of assets and businesses

(24,723)



(87)

Stock compensation expense

20,828



22,002

Amortization of debt discount, premium and issuance costs

1,635



1,655

Deferred income taxes

(14,556)



(11,965)

Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of effects of business combinations:







Accounts receivable

(91,413)



645

Other current assets

(22,815)



(1,822)

Other assets

16,335



(3,124)

Accounts payable and accrued expenses

142,027



107,710

Government advances

318,116



(165,470)

Unearned government assistance

66,938



(80,193)

Income taxes

9,415



13,524

Net cash provided by operating activities

820,635



461,980

Investing activities







Business combinations, net of cash acquired

(14,076)



(26,830)

Purchases of property and equipment

(105,572)



(125,386)

Investment in businesses

(25,857)



(16,367)

Proceeds from sale of assets and businesses

83,320



11,257

Net cash used in investing activities

(62,185)



(157,326)

Financing activities







Borrowings on revolving facilities

470,000





Payments on revolving facilities

(470,000)





Payments on term loans

(39,843)





Borrowings of other debt

35,086



19,515

Principal payments on other debt

(42,820)



(22,910)

Dividends paid to common stockholders





(33,816)

Repurchase of common stock

(14,242)



(66,050)

Proceeds from issuance of non-controlling interests

1,686



19,926

Distributions to and purchases of non-controlling interests

(28,196)



(50,397)

Purchase of membership interests of Concentra Group Holdings Parent

(366,203)





Net cash used in financing activities

(454,532)



(133,732)

Net increase in cash and cash equivalents

303,918



170,922

Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period

335,882



577,061

Cash and cash equivalents at end of period

$ 639,800



$ 747,983

Supplemental information







Cash paid for interest

$ 140,174



$ 118,570

Cash paid for taxes

81,945



136,857



VII. Key Statistics For the Three Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (unaudited)





2020

2021

% Change Critical Illness Recovery Hospital











Number of hospitals  end of period(a)

100



100





Revenue (,000)

$ 519,454



$ 530,646



2.2 % Number of patient days(b)(c)

279,063



272,454



(2.4) % Number of admissions(b)(d)

9,380



9,250



(1.4) % Revenue per patient day(b)(e)

$ 1,845



$ 1,931



4.7 % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 88,830



$ 57,245



(35.6) % Adjusted EBITDA margin

17.1 %

10.8 %



Rehabilitation Hospital











Number of hospitals  end of period(a)

29



30





Revenue (,000)

$ 188,075



$ 212,434



13.0 % Number of patient days(b)(c)

95,680



102,953



7.6 % Number of admissions(b)(d)

6,443



7,243



12.4 % Revenue per patient day(b)(e)

$ 1,775



$ 1,881



6.0 % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 44,637



$ 44,076



(1.3) % Adjusted EBITDA margin

23.7 %

20.7 %



Outpatient Rehabilitation











Number of clinics  end of period(a)

1,777



1,850





Revenue (,000)

$ 240,042



$ 274,540



14.4 % Number of visits(b)(f)

1,983,372



2,347,070



18.3 % Revenue per visit(b)(g)

$ 104



$ 102



(1.9) % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 30,623



$ 38,762



26.6 % Adjusted EBITDA margin

12.8 %

14.1 %



Concentra











Number of centers  end of period(b)

523



519





Revenue (,000)

$ 391,859



$ 442,190



12.8 % Number of visits(b)(f)

2,827,047



3,223,631



14.0 % Revenue per visit(b)(g)

$ 121



$ 124



2.5 % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 80,547



$ 99,832



23.9 % Adjusted EBITDA margin

20.6 %

22.6 %





______________________________ (a) Includes managed locations. (b) Excludes managed locations. For purposes of the Concentra segment, onsite clinics and community-based outpatient clinics are excluded. (c) Each patient day represents one patient occupying one bed for one day during the periods presented. (d) Represents the number of patients admitted to Select Medical's hospitals during the periods presented. (e) Represents the average amount of revenue recognized for each patient day. Revenue per patient day is calculated by dividing patient service revenues, excluding revenues from certain other ancillary and outpatient services provided at Select Medical's hospitals, by the total number of patient days. (f) Represents the number of visits in which patients were treated at Select Medical's outpatient rehabilitation clinics and Concentra centers during the periods presented. (g) Represents the average amount of revenue recognized for each patient visit. Revenue per visit is calculated by dividing patient service revenue, excluding revenues from certain other ancillary services, by the total number of visits. For purposes of this computation for the Concentra segment, patient service revenue does not include onsite clinics and community-based outpatient clinics.

VIII. Key Statistics For the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (unaudited)





2020

2021

% Change Critical Illness Recovery Hospital











Number of hospitals  end of period(a)

100



100





Revenue (,000)

$ 1,539,601



$ 1,669,577



8.4 % Number of patient days(b)(c)

826,410



838,553



1.5 % Number of admissions(b)(d)

28,080



28,135



0.2 % Revenue per patient day(b)(e)

$ 1,850



$ 1,982



7.1 % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 267,143



$ 243,421



(8.9) % Adjusted EBITDA margin

17.4 %

14.6 %



Rehabilitation Hospital











Number of hospitals  end of period(a)

29



30





Revenue (,000)

$ 538,761



$ 632,904



17.5 % Number of patient days(b)(c)

274,329



310,340



13.1 % Number of admissions(b)(d)

18,489



21,734



17.6 % Revenue per patient day(b)(e)

$ 1,777



$ 1,861



4.7 % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 110,811



$ 145,378



31.2 % Adjusted EBITDA margin

20.6 %

23.0 %



Outpatient Rehabilitation











Number of clinics  end of period(a)

1,777



1,850





Revenue (,000)

$ 662,429



$ 806,910



21.8 % Number of visits(b)(f)

5,448,304



6,852,085



25.8 % Revenue per visit(b)(g)

$ 105



$ 103



(1.9) % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 51,463



$ 110,724



115.2 % Adjusted EBITDA margin

7.8 %

13.7 %



Concentra











Number of centers  end of period(b)

523



519





Revenue (,000)

$ 1,102,732



$ 1,321,402



19.8 % Number of visits(b)(f)

7,855,522



9,049,283



15.2 % Revenue per visit(b)(g)

$ 123



$ 125



1.6 % Adjusted EBITDA (,000)

$ 183,510



$ 318,907



73.8 % Adjusted EBITDA margin

16.6 %

24.1 %





______________________________ (a) Includes managed locations. (b) Excludes managed locations. For purposes of the Concentra segment, onsite clinics and community-based outpatient clinics are excluded. (c) Each patient day represents one patient occupying one bed for one day during the periods presented. (d) Represents the number of patients admitted to Select Medical's hospitals during the periods presented. (e) Represents the average amount of revenue recognized for each patient day. Revenue per patient day is calculated by dividing patient service revenues, excluding revenues from certain other ancillary and outpatient services provided at Select Medical's hospitals, by the total number of patient days. (f) Represents the number of visits in which patients were treated at Select Medical's outpatient rehabilitation clinics and Concentra centers during the periods presented. (g) Represents the average amount of revenue recognized for each patient visit. Revenue per visit is calculated by dividing patient service revenue, excluding revenues from certain other ancillary services, by the total number of visits. For purposes of this computation for the Concentra segment, patient service revenue does not include onsite clinics and community-based outpatient clinics.

IX. Net Income to Adjusted EBITDA Reconciliation For the Three and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, unaudited)

The presentation of Adjusted EBITDA is important to investors because Adjusted EBITDA is commonly used as an analytical indicator of performance by investors within the healthcare industry. Adjusted EBITDA is used to evaluate financial performance and determine resource allocation for each of Select Medical's operating segments. Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance under generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"). Items excluded from Adjusted EBITDA are significant components in understanding and assessing financial performance. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered in isolation or as an alternative to, or substitute for, net income, income from operations, cash flows generated by operations, investing or financing activities, or other financial statement data presented in the consolidated financial statements as indicators of financial performance or liquidity. Because Adjusted EBITDA is not a measurement determined in accordance with GAAP and is thus susceptible to varying definitions, Adjusted EBITDA as presented may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures of other companies.

The following table reconciles net income to Adjusted EBITDA for Select Medical. Adjusted EBITDA is used by Select Medical to report its segment performance. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as earnings excluding interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, gain (loss) on early retirement of debt, stock compensation expense, gain (loss) on sale of businesses, and equity in earnings (losses) of unconsolidated subsidiaries.



Three Months Ended September 30,

Nine Months Ended September 30,

2020

2021

2020

2021 Net income $ 104,457



$ 100,217



$ 242,391



$ 433,639

Income tax expense 31,557



27,665



76,805



138,410

Interest expense 34,026



33,825



117,499



102,115

Interest income 











(4,749)

Gain on sale of businesses (5,143)







(12,690)





Equity in earnings of unconsolidated subsidiaries (8,765)



(11,452)



(19,677)



(33,180)

Income from operations 156,132



150,255



404,328



636,235

Stock compensation expense:













Included in general and administrative 5,600



6,457



16,488



17,537

Included in cost of services 1,362



1,737



4,340



4,465

Depreciation and amortization 50,110



50,128



154,133



150,702

Adjusted EBITDA $ 213,204



$ 208,577



$ 579,289



$ 808,939

















Critical illness recovery hospital(a) $ 88,830



$ 57,245



$ 267,143



$ 243,421

Rehabilitation hospital 44,637



44,076



110,811



145,378

Outpatient rehabilitation 30,623



38,762



51,463



110,724

Concentra(b) 80,547



99,832



183,510



318,907

Other(c)(d) (31,433)



(31,338)



(33,638)



(9,491)

Adjusted EBITDA $ 213,204



$ 208,577



$ 579,289



$ 808,939



______________________________ (a) For the nine months ended September 30, 2021, Adjusted EBITDA included other operating income of $17.9 million. The other operating income related to the outcome of litigation with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (b) For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, Adjusted EBITDA included other operating income of $1.6 million and $34.0 million, respectively. For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2020, Adjusted EBITDA included other operating income of $0.4 million and $1.1 million, respectively. The other operating income is primarily related to the recognition of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund. (c) For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, Adjusted EBITDA included other operating income of $0.1 million and $82.0 million, respectively. For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2020, Adjusted EBITDA included a reduction to other operating income of $1.5 million and other operating income of $52.7 million, respectively. The other operating income is related to the recognition of payments received under the Provider Relief Fund. (d) Other primarily includes general and administrative costs and other operating income, as discussed further above.

X. Reconciliation of Earnings per Common Share to Adjusted Earnings per Common Share For the Three and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020 and 2021 (In thousands, except per share amounts, unaudited)

Adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share are not measures of financial performance under GAAP. Items excluded from adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share are significant components in understanding and assessing financial performance. Select Medical believes that the presentation of adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share are important to investors because they are reflective of the financial performance of Select Medical's ongoing operations and provide better comparability of its results of operations between periods. Adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share should not be considered in isolation or as alternatives to, or substitutes for, net income, cash flows generated by operations, investing or financing activities, or other financial statement data presented in the consolidated financial statements as indicators of financial performance or liquidity. Because adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share are not measurements determined in accordance with GAAP and are thus susceptible to varying calculations, adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share as presented may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures of other companies.

The following tables reconcile net income attributable to common shares and earnings per common share on a fully diluted basis to adjusted net income attributable to common shares and adjusted earnings per common share on a fully diluted basis.



Three Months Ended September 30,

2020

Per Share(a)

2021

Per Share(a) Net income attributable to common shares(a) $ 74,280



$ 0.57



$ 74,378



$ 0.57

Adjustments:(b)













Gains on sales of businesses, net of tax effects of $234 (1,189)



(0.01)









Adjusted net income attributable to common shares $ 73,091



$ 0.56



$ 74,378



$ 0.57





Nine Months Ended September 30,

2020

Per Share(a)

2021

Per Share(a) Net income attributable to common shares(a) $ 175,467



$ 1.35



$ 340,587



$ 2.61

Adjustments:(b)













Gains on sales of businesses, net of tax effects of $3,272 (5,089)



(0.04)









Adjusted net income attributable to common shares $ 170,378



$ 1.31



$ 340,587



$ 2.61



______________________________ (a) Net income attributable to common shares and earnings per common share are calculated based on the weighted average common shares outstanding, as presented in table III. (b) Adjustments to net income attributable to common shares include estimated income tax and non-controlling interest impacts and are calculated based on the diluted weighted average common shares outstanding. The estimated income tax impact, which is determined using tax rates based on the nature of the adjustment and the jurisdiction in which the adjustment occurred, includes both current and deferred income tax expense or benefit.

XI. Net Income to Adjusted EBITDA Reconciliation Business Outlook for the Year Ending December 31, 2021 (In millions, unaudited)

The following is a reconciliation of full year 2021 Adjusted EBITDA expectations as computed at the low and high points of the range to the closest comparable GAAP financial measure. Refer to table IX for the definition of Adjusted EBITDA and a discussion of Select Medical's use of Adjusted EBITDA in evaluating financial performance. Each item presented in the below table is an estimation of full year 2021 expectations.



Range Non-GAAP Measure Reconciliation Low

High Net income attributable to Select Medical $ 402



$ 417

Net income attributable to non-controlling interests 98



98

Net income 500



515

Income tax expense 162



167

Interest income (5)



(5)

Interest expense 137



137

Equity in earnings of unconsolidated subsidiaries (44)



(44)

Income from operations 750



770

Stock compensation expense 29



29

Depreciation and amortization 201



201

Adjusted EBITDA $ 980



$ 1,000



SOURCE Select Medical Holdings Corporation
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of S&P Global Inc. (" S&P Global" or the "Company") (NYSE: SPGI). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980.

The investigation concerns whether S&P Global and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

On October 4, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was expanding its probes into misconduct in the global commodities market by investigating suspected manipulation of energy pricing benchmarks published by London-based Platts, a part of S&P Global. Specifically, U.S. prosecutors are probing suspected manipulative behavior by individual traders when submitting those deal prices to Platts' price assessments for oil and other energy benchmarks.

On this news, S&P Global's stock price fell $12.51, or 2.92%, to close at $415.85 on October 4, 2021.

Pomerantz LLP, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tel Aviv, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, Pomerantz pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 85 years later, Pomerantz continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomlaw.com.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

888-476-6529 ext. 7980

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

www.pomerantzlaw.com


SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Shopoff Realty Investments and Praelium Commercial Real Estate in partnership with an affiliate of Dune Real Estate Partners, successfully acquired the three-story, 175,000-square-foot, former Nordstrom property at the Paseo Nuevo mixed-use shopping center in Downtown Santa Barbara.

"An amenity-rich and highly walkable location, this property is one of the best located and largest spaces available in Downtown Santa Barbara," explained Shopoff President and CEO William Shopoff. "The property's strong fundamentals will provide our team a fantastic opportunity to work with the City to determine the highest and best use for this vacant space, with the ultimate goal of a lasting positive impact on the surrounding community and businesses."

A vacant former Nordstrom, the property is connected to the north end of the Paseo Nuevo mixed-use shopping center. Paseo Nuevo is a more than 450,000-square-foot Spanish-style, open-air mixed-use shopping center originally constructed in 1924. The property underwent a wholesale redevelopment between 1989 and 1994 into its current form, and more recently underwent a $20 million renovation to enhance the outdoor lifestyle shopping experience. The leasehold interest on the property is with the City of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency.

Scott G. San Filippo, founding principal of Praelium Commercial Real Estate added, "Our team has a high level of respect for, and is very much looking forward to working with the City. Through smart redevelopment we believe we are poised to aide in the revival of this end of State Street."

Shopoff added, "We are proud to partner once again with Praelium and inaugurally with Dune, and believe our partnership's combination of best-in-class development experience coupled with extensive real estate expertise will make this a successful project for our respective teams, and most importantly for the City of Santa Barbara."

About Shopoff Realty Investments

Shopoff Realty Investments is an Irvine, California-based real estate firm with a 29-year history of value-add and opportunistic investing across the United States. The company primarily focuses on proactively generating appreciation through the repositioning of commercial income-producing properties and the entitlement of land assets. The 29-year history includes operating as Asset Recovery Fund, Eastbridge Partners and Shopoff Realty Investments (formerly known as The Shopoff Group). Performance has varied in this time frame, with certain offerings generating losses. For additional information, please visit www.shopoff.com or call (844) 4-SHOPOFF.

Disclosures

This is not an offering to buy or sell any securities. Such offer may only be made through the offerings memorandum to qualified purchasers. Any investment in Shopoff Realty Investments programs involves substantial risks and is suitable only for investors who have no need for liquidity and who can bear the loss of their entire investment. There is no assurance that any strategy will succeed to meet its investment objectives. The performance of this asset is not indicative of future results of other assets. Securities offered through Shopoff Securities, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC, 2 Park Plaza, Suite 770, Irvine, CA 92614, (844) 4-SHOPOFF.

About Praelium Commercial Real Estate

Praelium is a commercial real estate advisory firm founded in 2015, and headquartered in Orange County, California. Led by Michael E. Meyer and Scott G. San Filippo, over the past decade the partners have worked on the acquisition and stabilization of 5 million square feet of real estate. Utilizing its proprietary, research-guided, and data-driven approach, the company focuses on acquiring exceptional commercial property investments with a primary focus on office projects located in the Southeast and Western US.

About Dune Real Estate Partners

Dune Real Estate Partners is a New York City-based real estate investment firm executing an investment strategy that focuses on distressed, deep value-add and contrarian investing balanced by region, sector, and risk profile. Dune manages the Dune Real Estate Funds, which were launched by Mr. Daniel M. Neidich in 2005 and have raised approximately $4.2 billion of equity capital to date. Dune invests on behalf of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and other large institutions and individuals.

Contact:

Julie Leber

Spotlight Marketing Communications

949.427.1391

[email protected]

SOURCE Shopoff Realty Investments

Related Links

http://www.shopoff.com


TSX: SVM

NYSE AMERICAN: SVM

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Silvercorp Metals Inc. ("Silvercorp" or the "Company") (TSX: SVM) (NYSE American: SVM) reported its financial and operating results for the second quarter ended September 30, 2021 ("Q2 Fiscal 2022). All amounts are expressed in US Dollars, and figures may not add due to rounding.

Q2 FISCAL 2022 HIGHLIGHTS

Mined 292,468 tonnes of ore and milled 271,816 tonnes of ore, up 9% and 3% compared to the prior year quarter.

Sold approximately 1.7 million ounces of silver, 800 ounces of gold, 17.3 million pounds of lead, and 7.6 million pounds of zinc, representing decreases of 1%, 64%, and 7% in silver, gold and lead sold, and an increase of 3% in zinc sold, compared to the prior year quarter.

Revenue of $58.4 million , up 4% compared to $56.4 million in the prior year quarter.

, up 4% compared to in the prior year quarter. Net income attributable to equity shareholders of $9.4 million , or $0.05 per share, compared to $15.5 million , or $0.09 per share in the prior year quarter. The decrease was mainly due to an unrealized loss of $4.1 million on investments in the current quarter compared to a gain of $2.8 million in the prior year quarter.

, or per share, compared to , or per share in the prior year quarter. The decrease was mainly due to an unrealized loss of on investments in the current quarter compared to a gain of in the prior year quarter. Adjusted earnings attributable to equity shareholders of $13.6 million , or $0.08 per share, compared to $15.4 million , or $0.09 per share in the prior year quarter. The adjustments were made to remove impacts from non-recurring items, share-based compensation, foreign exchange gain/loss, gain/loss on investments, and the share of associates' operating results.

, or per share, compared to , or per share in the prior year quarter. The adjustments were made to remove impacts from non-recurring items, share-based compensation, foreign exchange gain/loss, gain/loss on investments, and the share of associates' operating results. Cash flow from operations of $30.9 million , up 4% or $1.3 million compared to $29.6 million in the prior year quarter.

, up 4% or compared to in the prior year quarter. Cash cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, of negative $1.65 compared to negative $2.09 in the prior year quarter.

compared to negative in the prior year quarter. All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, of $7.35 , compared to $6.99 in the prior year quarter.

, compared to in the prior year quarter. Strong balance sheet with $221.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments, up $6.7 million or 3% compared to $214.4 million as at June 30, 2021 and up $22.0 million or 11% compared to $199.1 million as at March 31, 2021 . This does not include the investments in associates and equity investment in other companies, having a total market value of $172.8 million as at September 30, 2021 ( $243.2 million as at June 30, 2021 ).

CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL RESULTS



Three months ended September 30,

Six months ended September 30,

2021 2020 Changes

2021 2020 Changes Financial













Revenue (in thousands of $) $ 58,435 $ 56,372 4%

$ 117,254 $ 103,077 14% Mine operating earnings (in thousands of $) 23,612 26,672 -11%

49,116 45,957 7% Net income attributable to equity shareholders 9,393 15,472 -39%

21,605 30,963 -30% Earnings per share - basic ($/share) 0.05 0.09 -44%

0.12 0.18 -33% Adjusted earnings attributable to equity shareholders 13,609 15,385 -12%

29,380 24,951 18% Adjusted earning per share - basic ($/share) 0.08 0.09 -11%

0.17 0.14 21% Net cash generated from operating activities (in thousands of $) 30,854 29,601 4%

67,306 59,743 13% Capitalized expenditures (in thousands of $) 14,151 11,098 28%

25,323 21,318 19% Cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments (in thousands of $) 221,050 200,056 10%

221,050 200,056 10% Working capital (in thousands of $) 193,306 169,336 14%

193,306 169,336 14% Metals sold













Silver (in thousands of ounces) 1,729 1,740 -1%

3,371 3,612 -7% Gold (in thousands of ounces) 0.8 2.2 -64%

1.8 3.3 -45% Lead (in thousands of pounds) 17,319 18,551 -7%

34,129 39,436 -13% Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 7,626 7,411 3%

14,881 14,369 4% Average Selling Price, Net of Value Added Tax and Smelter Charges













Silver ($/ounce) 18.97 18.99 0%

19.82 16.40 21% Gold ($/ounce) 1,483 1,371 8%

1,497 1,362 10% Lead ($/pound) 0.89 0.78 14%

0.87 0.73 19% Zinc ($/pound) 1.03 0.71 45%

1.02 0.65 57%

Net income attributable to equity shareholders of the Company in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $9.4 million or $0.05 per share, compared to $15.5 million or $0.09 per share in the three months ended September 30, 2020 ("Q2 Fiscal 2021").

Adjusted earnings attributable to equity shareholders of the Company in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $13.6 million, or $0.08 per share, compared to $15.4 million, or $0.09 per share Q2 Fiscal 2021. The adjustments were made to remove the impacts from non-cash and unusual items, including elimination of share-based compensation, foreign exchange loss, share of loss in associates, gain or loss on investments, and one-time items.

Compared to Q2 Fiscal 2021, the Company's consolidated financial results in the current quarter were mainly impacted by i) an increase of 8%, 14%, and 45%, respectively, in the realized selling prices for gold, lead and zinc; offset by ii) a decrease of 1%, 64%, and 7%, respectively, in silver, gold, and lead sold; iii) a loss of $4.1 million on investments reported in profit; iv) an average 8% appreciation of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar, resulting in higher costs presented in US dollar; v) an overall 14.5% increase in mining contractors' fee rate at the Ying Mining District as previously reported in the Company's news release on May 20, 2021; and vi) an average 7% increase in employees' pay rate and the contribution rate to employees' social welfare funds in China returned to the normal rate from a reduced rate granted by the Chinese government in Fiscal 2021 due to Covid-19.

Revenue in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $58.4 million, up 4% or $2.0 million compared to $56.4 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. The increase was mainly due to an increase of $4.7 million arising from the increase in the gold, lead and zinc net realized selling metal prices; offset by a decrease of $3.3 million arising from the decrease in the quantities of silver, gold, and lead sold. Revenues from silver, gold, and base metal were $32.8 million, $1.2 million, and $24.4 million, respectively, compared to $33.0 million, $3.0 million, and $20.3 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Revenue from the Ying Mining District was $47.1 million, up 3%, compared to $45.7 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Revenue from the GC Mine was $11.3 million, up 24%, compared to $9.2 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Revenue from the BYP Mine was $nil, compared to $1.5 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021 as the Company sold all remaining gold concentrate inventories produced by the mine before it was placed on care and maintenance in 2014 in prior year quarter.

Income from mine operations in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $23.6 million, down 11% compared to $26.7 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Income from mine operations at the Ying Mining District was $19.3 million, down 16% compared to $23.1 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Income from mine operations at the GC Mine was $4.5 million, up 55% compared to $2.9 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021.

Cash flow provided by operating activities in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was $30.9 million, up 4% or $1.3 million, compared to $29.6 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021.

The Company ended the quarter with $221.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, up $6.7 million or 3% compared to $214.4 million as at June 30, 2021 and up 11% or $22.0 million, compared to $199.1 million as at March 31, 2021.

Working capital as at September 30, 2021 was $193.3 million, up 5% or $9.3 million, compared to $184.0 million as at March 31, 2021.

CONSOLIDATED OPERATIONAL RESULTS



Three months ended September 30,

Six months ended September 30,

2021 2020 Changes

2021 2020 Changes Ore Production (tonne)













Ore mined 292,468 267,853 9%

523,703 522,408 0% Ore milled 271,816 263,933 3%

514,893 526,259 -2% Metal Production













Silver (in thousands of ounces) 1,696 1,707 -1%

3,169 3,459 -8% Gold (in thousands of ounces) 0.8 1.1 -27%

1.8 2.2 -18% Lead (in thousands of pounds) 17,613 19,086 -8%

33,491 39,163 -14% Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 7,483 7,133 5%

14,681 14,666 0% Cash Costs













Cash cost per ounce of Silver, net of by-product credits($) (1.65) (2.09) 21%

(1.54) (1.77) 13% All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits ($) 7.35 6.99 5%

7.41 6.28 18% Cash production cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 84.75 69.82 21%

81.60 68.47 19% All-in sustaining cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 135.76 124.24 9%

133.90 118.46 13%

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, on a consolidated basis, the Company mined 292,468 tonnes of ore, up 9% or 24,615 tonnes, compared to 267,853 tonnes in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Ore milled in Q2 Fiscal 2022 was 271,816 tonnes, up 3% or 7,883 tonnes, compared to 263,933 tonnes in Q2 Fiscal 2021, but 20,832 tonnes lower than mined as a result of transportation interruptions caused by lengthy heavy rains at Ying Mining District in Q2 Fiscal 2022.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, the Company sold approximately 1.7 million ounces of silver, 800 ounces of gold, 17.3 million pounds of lead, and 7.6 million pounds of zinc, representing decreases of 1%, 64%, and 7% in silver, gold and lead sold, respectively, and an increase of 3% in zinc sold, compared to approximately 1.7 million ounces of silver, 2,200 ounces of gold, 18.6 million pounds of lead, and 7.4 million pounds of zinc sold in Q2 Fiscal 2021. Gold sold in Q2 Fiscal 2021 included 1,200 ounces from the BYP Mine.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, the consolidated cash production costs per tonne of ore processed was $84.75, up 21% compared to $69.82 in Q2 Fiscal 2021. The consolidated all-in sustaining production cost per tonne of ore processed was $135.76, up 9%, compared to $124.24 in Q2 Fiscal 2021, but within the Company's current annual cost guidance.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, the consolidated cash cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, was negative $1.65, compared to negative $2.09 in the prior year quarter. The increase was mainly due to the increase in per tonne cash production costs, offset by an increase of $1.42 in by-product credits per ounce of silver. Sales from lead and zinc in Q2 Fiscal 2022 amounted to $23.2 million, up $3.6 million, compared to $19.6 million in Q2 Fiscal 2021.

The consolidated all-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, was $7.35, compared to $6.99 in Q2 Fiscal 2021. The increase was mainly due to the increase of cash cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, offset by a decrease of $2.0 million in sustaining capital expenditures, mainly resulting from less tunneling development.

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, on a consolidated basis, a total of 124,544 metres or $6.2 million worth of diamond drilling were completed (Q2 Fiscal 2021  71,274 metres or $2.5 million), of which approximately 91,970 metres or $2.4 million worth of underground drilling were expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  71,274 metres or $2.5 million) and approximately 32,574 metres or $3.8 million worth of drilling were capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  nil). In addition, approximately 9,953 metres or $3.4 million worth of preparation tunnelling were completed and expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  7,693 metres or $1.9 million), and approximately 20,501 metres or $8.3 million worth of tunnels, raises, ramps and declines were completed and capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  25,678 metres or $8.5 million).

INDIVIDUAL MINE OPERATING PERFORMANCE

Ying Mining District Q2 2022 Q1 2022 Q4 2021 Q3 2021 Q2 2021

Six months ended September 30,

September 30, 2021 June 30, 2021 March 31, 2021 December 31, 2020 September 30, 2020

2021 2020 Ore Production (tonne)















Ore mined 206,933 142,907 112,561 182,268 181,020

349,840 355,196 Ore milled 182,173 155,407 131,725 162,905 179,083

337,580 356,772 Head grades















Silver (gram/tonne) 283 279 280 297 288

281 290 Lead (%) 4.0 4.2 3.9 4.3 4.4

4.1 4.5 Zinc (%) 0.7 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.7

0.8 0.8 Recovery rates















Silver (%) 95.4 94.7 93.7 93.9 94.4

95.1 94.6 Lead (%) 95.5 95.7 95.1 96.4 96.1

95.6 96.1 Zinc (%) 56.0 59.7 65.0 63.3 57.9

57.8 60.9 Cash Costs















Cash cost per ounce of Silver, net of by-product credits($) 0.71 0.80 1.20 (1.12) (0.14)

0.75 (0.52) All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits ($) 6.88 6.54 10.00 5.24 6.63

6.71 5.34 Cash production cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 96.59 92.79 98.13 83.09 80.06

95.10 78.18 All-in sustaining cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 141.26 138.55 155.14 133.07 132.36

140.27 124.74 Metal Production















Silver (in thousands of ounces) 1,517 1,283 1,083 1,464 1,525

2,800 3,068 Gold (in thousands of ounces) 0.8 1.0 0.3 0.9 1.1

1.8 2.2 Lead (in thousands of pounds) 14,671 13,278 10,504 14,361 16,080

27,949 33,021 Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 1,584 1,519 1,496 1,857 1,643

3,103 3,563

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, a total of 102,905 metres or $5.0 million worth of diamond drilling were completed (Q2 Fiscal 2021  59,540 metres or $2.0 million) at the Ying Mining District, of which approximately 72,844 metres or $2.2 million worth of underground drilling were expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  59,540 metres or $2.0 million) and approximately 30,061 metres or $2.8 million worth of drilling were capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  nil). In addition, approximately 7,528 metres or $2.9 million worth of preparation tunnelling were completed and expensed as part of mining costs (Q2 Fiscal 2021  5,316 metres or $1.6 million), and approximately 16,676 metres or $7.1 million worth of horizontal tunnels, raises, ramps, and declines were completed and capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  21,278 metres or $7.5 million).

GC Mine Q2 2022 Q1 2021 Q4 2021 Q3 2021 Q2 2021

Six months ended September 30,

September 30, 2021 June 30, 2021 March 31, 2021 December 31, 2020 September 30, 2020

2021 2020 Ore Production (tonne)















Ore mined 85,535 88,328 50,511 97,177 86,833

173,863 167,212 Ore milled 89,643 87,670 48,949 97,743 84,850

177,313 169,487 Head grades















Silver (gram/tonne) 73 80 87 82 81

77 87 Lead (%) 1.7 1.5 1.7 1.4 1.8

1.6 1.8 Zinc (%) 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.5 3.4

3.3 3.4 Recovery rates















Silver (%) 84.4 84.1 81.9 82.6 82.5

84.2 82.7 Lead (%) 89.5 89.3 89.7 89.6 89.2

89.4 89.5 Zinc (%) 89.6 89.3 88.2 89.7 87.3

89.5 87.3 Cash Costs















Cash cost per ounce of Silver, net of by-product credits($) (22.51) (17.96) (12.80) (14.43) (12.70)

(20.12) (9.52) All-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits ($) (11.61) (7.98) 0.52 (1.05) (1.78)

(9.70) 0.40 Cash production cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 55.81 52.90 58.56 54.07 48.47

54.33 47.80 All-in sustaining cost per tonne of ore processed ($) 73.76 71.67 87.69 78.63 69.07

72.69 67.49 Metal Production















Silver (in thousands of ounces) 179 190 112 212 182

369 384 Lead (in thousands of pounds) 2,942 2,600 1,652 2,750 3,006

5,542 6,072 Zinc (in thousands of pounds) 5,899 5,679 3,176 6,816 5,490

11,578 10,948

In Q2 Fiscal 2022, approximately 19,126 metres or $0.7 million worth of underground diamond drilling (Q2 Fiscal 2021  11,734 metres or $0.5 million) and 2,425 metres or $0.4 million of tunnelling (Q2 Fiscal 2021  2,377 metres or $0.3 million) were completed and expensed as mining preparation costs at the GC Mine. In addition, approximately 3,825 metres or $1.2 million of horizontal tunnels, raises, and declines were completed and capitalized (Q2 Fiscal 2021  4,400 metres or $1.0 million).

Updates

In October 2021, the SGX Mine at the Ying Mining District suspended production temporarily as a precautionary measure due to the heavy rainfall experienced in the Yellow River region. The water level at the nearby reservoir that discharges into the Yellow River reached an all time high, causing the operations at the SGX Mine to be suspended for ten days, impacting production and ore head grades. Despite this interruption, the Company expects to maintain a similar mining production rate as achieved in Q2 Fiscal 2022 and increase the milling tonnage at the Ying Mining District in the third quarter of Fiscal 2022.

As announced on October 13, 2021, the Company, through a 100% owned subsidiary of Henan Found, won an online auction to acquire the Kuanping Project for a total of $13.5 million (RMB86.8 million) (the "Consideration"). The acquisition is not subject to the national security clearance as Henan Found's subsidiary is considered as a domestic company in China. The Company paid the consideration in October 2021 and expects to complete the acquisition in November 2021.

CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS

A conference call to discuss these results will be held tomorrow, Friday, November 5, at 9:00 am PDT (12:00 pm EDT). To participate in the conference call, please dial the numbers below.

Canada/USA TF: 888-664-6383

International Toll: 416-764-8650

Conference ID: 03881964

Participants should dial-in 10  15 minutes prior to the start time. A replay of the conference call and transcript will be available on the Company's website at www.silvercorp.ca.

Mr. Guoliang Ma, P.Geo., Manager of Exploration and Resources of the Company, is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") and has reviewed and consented to the technical information contained in this news release.

This earnings release should be read in conjunction with the Company's Management Discussion & Analysis ("MD&A"), Financial Statements and Notes to Financial Statements for the three and six months ended September 30, 2021, which have been posted on SEDAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and are also available on the Company's website at www.silvercorp.ca under the Investor section. This earnings release refers to various alternative performance (non-IFRS) measures, such as adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share, cash cost and all-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver, net of by-product credits, cash production cost and all-in sustaining production cost per tonne of ore processed and working capital. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have standardized meanings under IFRS as an indicator of performance and may differ from methods used by other companies with similar description. The detailed description and reconciliation of these alternative performance (non-IFRS) measures have been incorporated by reference and can be found on page 24, section 11  Alternative Performance (Non-IFRS) Measures in the MD&A for the three and six months ended September 30, 2021.

About Silvercorp

Silvercorp is a profitable Canadian mining company producing silver, lead and zinc metals in concentrates from mines in China. The Company's goal is to continuously create healthy returns to shareholders through efficient management, organic growth, and the acquisition of profitable projects. Silvercorp balances profitability, social and environmental relationships, employees' wellbeing, and sustainable development. For more information, please visit our website at www.silvercorp.ca.

CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER - FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain of the statements and information in this news release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian provincial securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Any statements or information that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects", "is expected", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "projects", "estimates", "assumes", "intends", "strategies", "targets", "goals", "forecasts", "objectives", "budgets", "schedules", "potential" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to, among other things: the price of silver and other metals; the accuracy of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates at the Company's material properties; the sufficiency of the Company's capital to finance the Company's operations; estimates of the Company's revenues and capital expenditures; estimated production from the Company's mines in the Ying Mining District and the GC Mine; timing of receipt of permits and regulatory approvals; availability of funds from production to finance the Company's operations; and access to and availability of funding for future construction, use of proceeds from any financing and development of the Company's properties.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks relating to: global economic and social impact of COVID-19; fluctuating commodity prices; calculation of resources, reserves and mineralization and precious and base metal recovery; interpretations and assumptions of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates; exploration and development programs; feasibility and engineering reports; permits and licences; title to properties; property interests; joint venture partners; acquisition of commercially mineable mineral rights; financing; recent market events and conditions; economic factors affecting the Company; timing, estimated amount, capital and operating expenditures and economic returns of future production; integration of future acquisitions into the Company's existing operations; competition; operations and political conditions; regulatory environment in China and Canada; environmental risks; foreign exchange rate fluctuations; insurance; risks and hazards of mining operations; key personnel; conflicts of interest; dependence on management; internal control over financial reporting; and bringing actions and enforcing judgments under U.S. securities laws.

This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements about the future and are inherently uncertain, and actual achievements of the Company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation, those referred to in the Company's Annual Information Form under the heading "Risk Factors". Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, described or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

The Company's forward-looking statements are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management as of the date of this news release, and other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's assumptions, beliefs, expectations or opinions should change, or changes in any other events affecting such statements. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Silvercorp Metals Inc

Related Links

www.silvercorp.ca


Sizzle Acquisition Corp. Announces Pricing of Upsized $135 Million Public Offering Tweet this

Sizzle is led by Chairman and CEO Steve Salis. In addition, Sizzle's management team is comprised of: Jamie Karson, Nestor Nova and Daniel Lee; board directors, comprised of: Karen Kelley, David Perlin and Warren Thompson; and board advisors, comprised of: Carolyn Trabuco, Rick Camac and Geovannie Concepcion.

Cantor Fitzgerald & Co ("Cantor") is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering. The Company has granted the underwriters a 45-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,025,000 units to cover over-allotments, if any.

Registration statements relating to these securities were declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on November 3, 2021. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or 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 jurisdiction.

The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus relating to this offering, when available, may be obtained for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, copies of the preliminary prospectus, when available, may be obtained from the office of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Attention: Capital Markets, 499 Park Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, New York, 10022; Email: [email protected] .

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements," including with respect to the initial public offering. No assurance can be given that the offering discussed above will be completed on the terms described, or at all. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company's registration statement and preliminary prospectus for the offering filed with the SEC. Copies are available on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions of changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Press Contacts:

Bullfrog + Baum

Jennifer Baum / Alyce Bonnar

[email protected]

SOURCE Sizzle Acquisition Corp.
SMITHFIELD, Va., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Smithfield Foods, Inc. has been recognized by the Military Times as a Best for Vets Employer for a third consecutive year. The publication's 2021 ranking, announced today, acknowledges companies that recruit, retain and support current and former service members, military spouses and military caregivers.

Military Times recognizes Smithfield on its 2021 Best for Vets Employers list.

"We're honored to be recognized alongside companies who are actively prioritizing support for military families and veterans in their hiring and career development models," said Keira Lombardo, chief administrative officer for Smithfield Foods. "Smithfield has a history of championing the military community. We are tremendously grateful to our service families and consider it a privilege to welcome them into our Smithfield Family and support them in their careers and communities."

Smithfield's Helping Our Heroes initiative is aimed at prioritizing veteran employment and career development while strengthening the community and family support systems veterans rely on. In addition to supporting veteran causes in its charitable giving and philanthropic efforts, the company has committed to hire 4,000 veterans by 2025 and has launched various programs to support military-to-civilian life transition.

Smithfield's employee business resource group, Smithfield Salutes, also provides resources for current team members with prior military service.

To learn more about veteran career opportunities with the company visit smithfieldfoods.com/veterans.

About Smithfield Foods, Inc.

Headquartered in Smithfield, Va. since 1936, Smithfield Foods, Inc. is an American food company with agricultural roots and a global reach. Our 63,000 team members are dedicated to producing "Good food. Responsibly." and have made Smithfield one of the world's leading vertically integrated protein companies. We have pioneered sustainability standards for more than two decades, including our industry-leading commitments to become carbon negative in U.S. company-owned operations and reduce GHG emissions 30 percent across our entire U.S. value chain by 2030. We believe in the power of protein to end food insecurity and have donated hundreds of millions of food servings to our communities. Smithfield boasts a portfolio of high-quality iconic brands, such as Smithfield, Eckrich and Nathan's Famous, among many others. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

SOURCE Smithfield Foods, Inc.
DULUTH, Ga. and Royal PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Specialty Building Products, LLC ("SBP" or "the Company"), a leading distributor of specialty building products in North America, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Millwork Sales. Millwork Sales is a leading wholesale distributor of Doors, Door Components, Moulding and Millwork products with locations in Royal Palm Beach and Orlando, Florida. The transaction represents a continuation of SBP's efforts to expand its door manufacturing and distribution capabilities and expand the Company's presence in Florida and the Southeast. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1998, Millwork Sales is an established, high-performing, millwork-focused distributor with an experienced and knowledgeable team, excellent products, operations and logistics, and a deep focus on delivering best-in-class customer satisfaction. Following SBP's recent acquisition of DW Distribution in Texas and Reeb Millwork in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, this transaction builds upon SBP's efforts to invest in high-performing and complementary businesses that enable geographic and market category expansion.

"We are excited to bring Millwork Sales into the SBP family," said Jeff McLendon, President and CEO of Specialty Building Products. "Millwork Sales has a strong reputation and an outstanding team focused on delivering superior value to customers in Florida with products and services that are complementary to our offerings. SBP is pleased to collaborate with Millwork Sales and serve dealers and door shops more extensively in the Florida market and elevate our combined business to new heights."

David Sutherland, Millwork Sales CEO, added: "Since 1998, our people have dedicated themselves to building a high-performing business that benefits both our customers and partners. Combining Millwork Sales with SBP validates their hard work and success and ensures that our team will have a clear and well-defined opportunity and path for long-term growth. This is a terrific outcome for both companies and for the industry at large. We look forward to partnering with Jeff and the entire SBP team."

The acquisition is expected to close in 2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Croft & Bender LP facilitated the transaction for Millwork Sales.

About Specialty Building Products

Specialty Building Products is a critical link in the value chain between manufacturers and customers of specialty building products. Our operating brands  U.S. LUMBER, Alexandria Moulding, Reeb, and DW Distribution  provide sales, marketing, and logistic solutions that bring a wide range of high value, SKU-intensive, and logistically complicated specialty building products to dealers serving the repair and remodel ("R&R") and new construction marketplaces. Our brands' best-in-class operations are managed under a centralized strategy and informed by big data and analytics, serving the most respected manufacturers of the best and most innovative brands in the building products industry and local, regional, and national building material dealers, national one step distributors, national retail chains, and industrial and OEM manufacturers. More information can be found at www.specialtybuildingproducts.com.

About Millwork Sales

Millwork Sales is a wholesale distributor that was established in 1998 to supply quality millwork products to building material dealers, door shops and millwork houses across the state of Florida. Operating from Royal Palm Beach and Orlando, Florida, Millwork Sales offers a complete selection of moulding and door components as well as fully assembled interior and exterior doors. The company represents prominent market brands such as Plastpro, Steves and Sons, RSL, Woodgrain, and Schlage. Millwork Sales is committed to providing outstanding customer service and consistently exceeding expectations. More information can be found at www.millworksales.com.

SOURCE Specialty Building Products, LLC
BRIDGETON, Mo., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SSM Health Rehabilitation Hospital in Bridgeton, MO was awarded a grant by the Parkinson Voice Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The 2021 Speak Out! & Loud Crowd Grant Program, provides specialized training for therapists who treat people with Parkinson's disease.

Under the grant, SSM Health Rehabilitation Hospital will receive free training for its speech-language pathologists and graduate students as well as therapy supplies. The hospital will offer the Parkinson Voice Project's speech therapy program to its patients in the greater St. Louis community. Speak Out! is a therapy regimen tailored to people with Parkinson's disease to improve their voice and swallowing ability. Loud Crowd is the group therapy component of the program allowing patients to maintain the skills obtained with Speak Out!

"We are pleased to have been awarded this grant as we are constantly seeking to advance the knowledge and skills of our clinical staff and offer programs to meet the needs of our patients and community at large," said Dana Read, director of rehabilitation at SSM Health Rehabilitation Hospital - Bridgeton.

"Up to 90 percent of people with Parkinson's are at high risk of losing their ability to speak, and swallowing complications account for 70 percent of the mortality rate in this patient population. Our vision at Parkinson Voice Project is to make our highly effective speech therapy program accessible to people with Parkinson's worldwide," said Parkinson Voice Project's Founder and CEO Samantha Elandary.

SSM Health Rehabilitation Hospital, a joint venture partnership between Select Medical and SSM Health, provides highly specialized care, advanced treatment and leading-edge technologies that help individuals rebuild their lives following injury or illness.

About Select Medical

Select Medical is one of the largest operators of critical illness recovery hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation clinics, and occupational health centers in the United States based on number of facilities. As of September 30, 2020, Select Medical operated 100 critical illness recovery hospitals in 28 states, 30 rehabilitation hospitals in 12 states, and 1,850 outpatient rehabilitation clinics in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Select Medical's joint venture subsidiary Concentra operated 519 occupational health centers in 41 states. Concentra also provides contract services at employer worksites. As of September 30, 2020, Select Medical had operations in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Information about Select Medical is available at www.selectmedical.com.

About Parkinson Voice Project

Parkinson Voice Project is the only 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the world solely dedicated to helping individuals with Parkinson's improve their speech and swallowing. The organization runs a speech therapy clinic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and hosts the World's Largest Parkinson's Chorus. Parkinson Voice Project's hosts daily online speech practice sessions to support and encourage people with Parkinson's globally. These sessions are available on the organization's website at www.ParkinsonVoiceProject.org. Parkinson Voice Project has trained more than 3500 speech-language pathologists in its SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd program, including clinicians in Australia, Canada, Israel, Italy, Greece, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

Media Contact

Mary Leddy, [email protected] or 717-972-8150

SOURCE Select Medical Corporation

Related Links

http://www.selectmedicalcorp.com


SPRINGFIELD, Mo., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Strong-Garner-Bauer P.C. has earned a total of five Metropolitan Tier 1 rankings for Springfield, Missouri in the 2022 edition of "Best Law Firms" by U.S. News  Best Lawyers:

Insurance Law

Litigation - Insurance

Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation - Plaintiffs

"Best Law Firms" is a dual effort by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers, which partnered in 2009 to create this annual register of the nation's top-rated law firms. Building off Best Lawyers' patented peer-review process, these renowned organizations utilize lawyer ballots, law firm surveys, and peer and client testimonials to select "Best Law Firms" finalists.

It is very difficult to obtain a ranking in "Best Law Firms"; the rigorous selection process and strict eligibility requirements ensure this. For example, a law firm is only eligible if it has an attorney recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, a legal ranking guide for which only 6% of all private practice attorneys are chosen.

Strong-Garner-Bauer P.C. qualified for consideration after six attorneys at the firm were honored in The Best Lawyers in America 2022. And with a proven track record of success and exemplary legal representation and professionalism, the firm promptly scored well in several legal practice areas. The firm's rankings in the highest of three tiers, Metropolitan Tier 1, is a direct result of the staff's tireless work to provide unmatched legal services to injured Springfield residents.

The award-winning attorneys at Strong-Garner-Bauer P.C. have helped countless Springfield clients through some of the hardest times of their lives. They have resolved over 130 cases worth more than $1 million each in just the past 11 years; their recoveries since the firm's establishment amount to billions of dollars. To learn more about the firm, visit stronglaw.com. Or go to bestlawfirms.usnews.com for more information about "Best Law Firms."

Contact: Neil Chanter

(417) 887-4300

[email protected]

SOURCE Strong-Garner-Bauer P.C.
STAMFORD, Conn., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Synchrony (NYSE: SYF), together with Connecticut non-profits District Arts & Education (DAE), the University of Connecticut's Engineering Ambassadors and Future5, today announced a first-of-its kind program in Stamford to equip high school students from underrepresented backgrounds with digital and software skills.

"Access to skills training is essential to growing our digital economy and building a more inclusive future." - DJ Casto Tweet this On Tuesday, November 2nd, Synchrony kicked off its STEM Immersion Day with dozens of Stamford youth at its new skills center. Local high school students learned coding fundamentals by programming mini robots to run through a maze. Students also engaged in interactive STEM activities and learned more about the Synchrony Skills Academy High School Program in collaboration with District Arts & Education, UConn Engineering Ambassadors and Future5. (All participants of the program are vaccinated). (Photo credit: Synchrony)

Synchrony and the Synchrony Foundation will donate grants totaling $300,000 to the three non-profits in support of the Synchrony Skills Academy High School Program. Twenty-five students will gain real-world experience through an eight-month training program and receive college and technology career assistance and an additional 25 students will participate in a summer immersion program. The Program will launch in early 2022 at the company's new state-of-the art skills center located in its Stamford headquarters when the center officially opens its doors.

In the next decade, one billion jobs almost one-third of jobs worldwideare expected to be transformed by technology [1]. Nearly 40 percent of Connecticut employers cited the lack of needed skills and expertise as the key challenge to finding qualified young workers [2].

"Access to skills training is essential to growing our digital economy and building a more inclusive future," said DJ Casto, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Synchrony. "Investing in these public-private partnerships will help unlock career opportunities for underrepresented youth and grow the next generation of Connecticut leaders."

Earlier this week, Synchrony kicked off its STEM Immersion Day at its skills center where dozens of youth from Stamford High School, Westhill High School and the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering engaged in interactive group activities around coding, engineering and virtual reality. The students also learned more about what the new High School Program entails and how to apply.

Through a robust curriculum developed and taught by instructors from DAE, the Program's first cohort of high school students will tackle real-world projects and hone critical skills in web development, UX design and data analytics. The program, aimed at high school juniors and seniors, will take place after school at Synchrony's skills center. DAE will also provide career support to help students apply for entry-level tech roles, prepare for interviews or complete college applications. Next summer, Synchrony and DAE will also host an eight-week intensive program focused on web development and digital content creation for social media and marketing.

"The Synchrony Skills Academy High School Program perfectly aligns with our mission to bridge the gap between the world of corporate America and the needs and realities of underserved communities," said A.M. Bhatt, co-founder and CEO of DAE. "The opportunity to help reverse a decades-long trend in radical underrepresentation in tech careers is just as important to us as the development of the tech workforce and we're delighted to collaborate with Synchrony on this dual mission."

Student representatives of the University of Connecticut's School of Engineering will help raise awareness of this new initiative through its Engineering Undergraduate Ambassadors who inspire and empower high school students to pursue engineering and tech fields. Stamford-based non-profit Future5 will serve as the program's vital connection to local resources, high schools and the Stamford community and will help guide the program's first cohort after they graduate high school as they navigate their future paths. Both UConn Engineering Ambassadors and Synchrony employees will mentor students throughout the program.

"As engineers, we make things that help people and we try to change the world," said Justin Rastinejad, UConn Engineering Ambassadors. "Through this partnership, we want to open students' eyes to the opportunities that are out there so they can see themselves in STEM-related industries, and in the process teach them critical social skills and build their self-esteem."

"Future 5 believes there is a path to success for every young person," said Amanda Dubois-Mwake, Executive Director of Future5. "We help connect motivated young people to their community, themselves and the tools they need to unlock their full potential. This program will help directly impact our local high school students and the community at large, as well as companies in Stamford."

Synchrony's new skills center will also support programs for local community college students and workers with the support of General Assembly  a pioneer in education and career transformation specializing in today's most in-demand skills. Synchrony will collaborate with local governments, schools, and skills-credentialing organizations to prepare students and individuals seeking to reskill or reenter the workforce.

This program is part of Synchrony's Education as an Equalizer initiative designed to expand access to higher education, skills training in high-growth fields, and financial literacy for underserved communities and its own workforce. The company will invest more than $50 million during the next five years, including more than $20 million in philanthropic grants from the Synchrony Foundation to help increase educational and reskilling opportunities for individuals and students from low-income and underrepresented communities, particularly Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities. The remaining funds  approximately $30 million  will go toward training and upskilling opportunities for the company's workforce, as well as programs to build a diverse talent pipeline and strengthen financial literacy skills for all.

About Synchrony

Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a premier consumer financial services company. We deliver a wide range of specialized financing programs, as well as innovative consumer banking products, across key industries including digital, retail, home, auto, travel, health and pet. Synchrony enables our partners to grow sales and loyalty with consumers. We are one of the largest issuers of private label credit cards in the United States; we also offer co-branded products, installment loans and consumer financing products for small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as healthcare providers. Synchrony is changing what's possible through our digital capabilities, deep industry expertise, actionable data insights, frictionless customer experience and customized financing solutions. For more information, visit www.synchrony.com and Twitter: @Synchrony

About Districts Art & Education (DAE)

District Arts and Education is a Connecticut non-profit providing educational, developmental, and creative opportunitiesincluding technical and professional training and certificatesthat serve as a catalyst for transformation in the lives of individuals and communities that have been historically and systemically under-resourced.

About UConn Engineering Ambassadors

UConn Engineering Ambassadors engage a diverse student population, our university and the greater community in activities that inspire them to explore a variety of creative solutions to the problems facing humanity. We develop ourselves as passionate engineers of the future with the power to express engineering concepts through fundamentals of science and mathematics.

About Future5

Future 5 helps motivated, under-resourced students in Stamford connect to their full potential, leading to independence and productive citizenship. Our goal is to connect our students to the people, resources, and experiences essential to making the transition to post-secondary education and careers.

[1] World Economic Forum, January 22, 2020

[2] 2020 Survey by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association

Media Contact



Angie Hu

Synchrony

[email protected]

SOURCE Synchrony Financial

Related Links

www.synchrony.com


SUGAR LAND, Texas, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Systel, Inc., an industry leader in rugged computer hardware solutions, announced today that it is has joined The Open Group SOSA (Sensor Open Systems Architecture) Consortium.

Systel intends to bring SOSA aligned and conformant rugged computing products and solutions to market, reaffirming its commitment to deliver leading and reliable capabilities to the warfighter in accordance with the Department of Defense's Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) mandate.

Systel joins the SOSA Consortium, reaffirming its commitment to deliver next-gen computing solutions to the warfighter. Tweet this

"We are very excited to join the SOSA Consortium and actively participate in the technical and business working groups, contributing our expertise and helping to further development of modular, open system architectures and technologies," said Aneesh Kothari, vice-president of marketing at Systel.

The SOSA Consortium is creating open system reference architectures applicable to military and commercial sensor systems and a business model that balances stakeholder interests. The architectures employ modular design and use widely supported, consensus-based, nonproprietary standards for key interfaces.

"We are very pleased that Systel has joined The Open Group SOSA Consortium as our newest Member", said Judy Cerenzia, vice-president of forum operations at The Open Group. "We welcome their expertise and look forward to their contributions to the SOSA Technical Standard and Business Strategy, as we continue to evolve the SOSA ecosystem."

About Systel

Systel, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of rugged computer products and solutions Founded in 1988, Systel's pedigree of capabilities spans numerous advanced platforms with thousands of successful deployments in the defense and commercial sectors. Systel's rugged computing solutions are designed and manufactured for continuous operation under the most extreme and austere environmental conditions. All Systel products are proudly made in the USA in the company's headquarters in Sugar Land, TX. Systel is AS9100:2016 and ISO 9001:2015 certified. To learn more, visit systelusa.com, contact our Sales team, or follow us on Linkedin.

About The Open Group

The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards. Our diverse membership of more than 850 organizations includes customers, systems and solutions suppliers, tool vendors, integrators, academics, and consultants across multiple industries. More information can be found at www.opengroup.org and www.opengroup.org/sosa.

2021 Systel, Inc. All rights reserved. All marks are property of their respective owners.

Contact: Aneesh Kothari

Phone: 281.207.7781

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Systel, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.systelusa.com


TAIZHOU, China, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, the 12th China (Taizhou) International Medical Expo was held in China Medical City in Taizhou, China. Starting from the needs of normalized prevention and control of the epidemic, this year's expo made an "online+on-site" integrated exhibition, through the policy seminars, industry summits, cutting-edge technology promotion, innovative product display, talent exchanges, and roadshow activities. It will build a platform for international exchanges and cooperation in the pharmaceutical and general health industries to further gather innovative resources and talents and promote the accelerated development of the biomedical health industry, according to the organizing committee of China (Taizhou) International Medical Expo.

During the exhibition, China Medical City issued a series of preferential policies for investment promotion, covering the fields of R&D, production, sales, application, and increased support from the innovative development of pharmaceutical companies, the development of project industrialization, and high-level talents. At the scene, a total of 20 projects were contracted collectively, with a total investment of 5.342 billion yuan.

China Medical City, located in Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province, has a planned core area of 30 square kilometers, consisting of functional areas such as scientific research and development zone, manufacturing zone, exhibition and trading zone, health and health care zone, education and teaching zone, and comprehensive supporting zone. Up to now, China Medical City has gathered more than 1,200 well-known domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies, including 14 well-known multinational companies such as AstraZeneca, Nestle, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Arabindo; more than 2,100 "world-class, The domestically leading" pharmaceutical innovation results have been applied for landing; more than 4,300 high-level talents at home and abroad have settled in innovation and entrepreneurship.

After more than ten years of development, China Medical City has closely focused on the two themes of "medicine" and "medicine", accelerated the construction of characteristic industrial clusters, and basically formed biological drugs (vaccine, antibody drugs), diagnostic reagents, high-end medical devices, and chemical drugs. The "3+2" industry chain supported by the three leading industries of new preparations, the special medical formula food and the two characteristic industries of animal protection.

SOURCE China (Taizhou) International Pharmaceutical Expo Organizing Committee
According to Selling Power publisher and CEO Gerhard Gschwandtner, "Sales training has shifted drastically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the sales training companies included on our Top Virtual Sales Training Companies was able to successfully pivot their business model to deliver best-in-class, engaging sales training virtually. Their efforts and expertise helped their clients reach and exceed sales goals during a difficult economy."

All companies on the list submitted a comprehensive application that included a detailed listing of their offerings for both training and retention, delivery methods, and their response to changing market conditions.

The main criteria used when comparing applicants and selecting the companies to include on this year's list were:





Strategies to keep participants engaged

The scope and breadth of virtual sales training offerings

Methodologies for supporting participant retention

Innovation in offerings and/or delivery as a response to customer needs or changes in the marketplace

Strength of client satisfaction and general client feedback

To evaluate client satisfaction, the Selling Power team surveyed and considered feedback from more than 250 clients of the applicants. Here is a brief selection of comments from their clients:

"Usable, to-the-point training delivered effectively and supported well. What more could you want?"

"Close, professional, and absolutely satisfying collaboration  they know what they are doing and perform at the highest level."

"The overall experience and professionalism demonstrated, accompanied with great training, was well received and worthwhile."

"In just three months since our conclusion, we've seen our pipeline grow by 14% in dollars, and, more importantly, by 34% in number of opportunities."

"Very responsive and always deliver above and beyond expectations."

Selling Power magazine editors say CROs, sales VPs, and sales enablement leaders can leverage this list to find the right sales training partner to deliver best-in-class virtual sales training.

See Selling Power's Top Virtual Sales Training Companies in 2021 list at: https://bit.ly/3EiBmCd

About Selling Power

In addition to Selling Power, the leading digital magazine for sales managers and sales VPs since 1981, Personal Selling Power, Inc., produces the Sales Management Digest and Daily Boost of Positivity online newsletters, as well as videos featuring interviews with top executives. Selling Power is a regular media sponsor of the Sales 3.0 Conference, which is attended by a total of more than 4,500 sales leaders each year. www.sellingpower.com

SOURCE The Brooks Group

Related Links

http://www.sellingpower.com

thebrooksgroup.com


SAN DIEGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The McClellan Law Firm has been named to the latest edition of the U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" rankings.

The San Diego-based civil trial law firm earned Best Lawyers' highest Metropolitan Tier 1 ranking in the Personal Injury Litigation  Plaintiffs and Commercial Litigation categories. It received additional recognition in the Product Liability Litigation  Plaintiffs category.

"Best Law Firms" Rankings

To be named among the "Best Law Firms," a law firm must have at least one attorney included in the current edition of The Best Lawyers in America (both of The McClellan Law Firm's attorneys were selected to Best Lawyers this year).

Eligible firms are also evaluated based on submitted surveys, representative cases, and professional references from clients and colleagues. Firms that receive the highest scores during the selection process are ranked using a Tiered system and featured in the annual "Best Law Firms" list.

The Tier 1 ranking is the highest ranking available.

The McClellan Law Firm

The McClellan Law Firm's latest selection to the list of "Best Law Firms" is one of many distinctions earned by the firm and its award-winning attorneys.

This year alone, Firm Founder Craig R. McClellan was named to The Best Lawyers in America, the Lawdragon 500, and the Southern California Super Lawyers list, which additionally named him among the Top 10 Super Lawyers in San Diego. In August, McClellan was honored as the latest inductee of the Consumer Attorneys of San Diego Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame.

Recognition like this is par for the course for McClellan and his team. Since its founding over 30 years ago, The McClellan Law Firm has successfully represented clients in complex civil litigation against some of the world's largest corporations. The firm's record of success includes over 140 separate verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million each, as well as noteworthy recoveries in high-profile auto defect cases against Porsche, Ford, Mercedes Benz, and other automakers.

Today, The McClellan Law Firm continues to hold true to its roots as a boutique trial practice capable of taking on the most formidable opponents and helping injured victims, families, and wronged parties seek justice for their losses. Visit www.mcclellanlaw.com to learn more.

Media Contact:

Carlie Ramos

[email protected]

SOURCE The McClellan Law Firm

Related Links

http://www.mcclellanlaw.com


SAN JOSE, Calif, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - TPCO Holding Corp . ("The Parent Company" or the "Company") (NEO: GRAM.U) (OTCQX: GRAMF), today announced it will report financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, on Monday, November 15, 2021, after market close. The Company will host a conference call to discuss the results at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS DATE: Monday, November 15, 2021 TIME: 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time WEBCAST: Click Here DIAL-IN NUMBER: 1-(800) 437-2398 CONFERENCE ID: 8862639 REPLAY: 1 (888) 203-1112 or 1 (647)-436-0148

Available until 12:00 midnight Eastern Time Monday, November 22, 2021 Replay Code: 8862639

About The Parent Company:

Formed in January 2021, The Parent Company is a leading vertically integrated California cannabis company. The company's three manufacturing facilities guarantee unparalleled access to high-quality, low-cost cannabis, while its vast wholesale distribution network of more than 450 California dispensaries, a direct-to-consumer omnichannel platform, six consumer delivery hubs and eleven omni-channel retail locations, currently service approximately 80% of the largest legal cannabis market in the country. The Company's curated product portfolio includes eight of the most valuable and scalable brands in cannabis, including Monogram by Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter, Caliva, Deli, Fun Uncle, and Mirayo, which sets the tone for The Parent Company's industry leadership in California and beyond.

In addition to its vast manufacturing infrastructure, consumer reach and cultural influence, The Parent Company is committed to using its resources and status to play a significant role in molding a more equitable cannabis industry. Its social equity ventures initiative, established by Chief Visionary Officer Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter, was created to break down the systematic barriers Black and other minority entrepreneurs face as they endeavor to secure meaningful participation, growth and leadership in the multibillion-dollar legal cannabis industry.

Shares of The Parent Company common stock are traded on NEO Exchange under the ticker symbol "GRAM.U" and on the OTCQX under the ticker symbol "GRAMF".

For the latest news, activities, and media coverage, please visit www.theparent.co or connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

SOURCE The Parent Company
BRUNSWICK, Ga., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Transformative Justice Coalition denounces the racist jury strikes of 11 of the 12 Black jurors by the attorney defense team for the 3 White Men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery while "jogging while Black" in their predominantly White neighborhood. "Given the highly racialized and aggressive questioning of potential jurors by the defense which TJC has actively criticized since the beginning of this trial, we were not surprised that the defense attorneys would use their strikes to exclude almost every Black juror," said TJC President Barbara R. Arnwine, Esq. "Infamous Wednesday will go down in history for this outrageous and racist exclusion of Black jurors during this trial.



"We firmly believe the defense attorneys targeted Black jurors, subjected them to racially disparate treatment as compared to White jurors and were disingenuous and pretextual in asserting "race neutral' grounds for eliminating Black jurors." Although the Judge saw the racial discrimination in the actions of the defense, he ruled against the State's motion to reseat 8 of the Black jurors based on limitations in Georgia law.



TJC calls on immediate law reform in Georgia and throughout the nation to prevent the racially discriminatory abuse of peremptory strikes.



TJC, Black Voters Matter, Georgia NOW and the Arbery Family will sponsor a Protest March Demanding Justice for Ahmaud on Thursday, November 4th, at 2:00 PM from the Glynn County Courthouse, through the streets of Brunswick to the Ahmaud Arbery Mural and the Dixiville Neighborhood. A National TeleTown Hall will be broadcast live from Brunswick on Facebook,com/TJC.DC, Thursday evening at 8:00 PM EDT.



The Transformative Justice Coalition will continue its daily vigils at the Glynn County Courthouse until a verdict is reached in this case

Founded in 2015 by Barbara Arnwine, president emeritus of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights, the Transformative Justice Coalition seeks to be a catalyst for transformative institutional changes that bring about justice and equality in the United States and abroad. Learn more at tjcoalition.org.

Lynn Whitfield, Esq.

Email: [email protected]

Cell: (561) 856-6757

SOURCE Transformative Justice Coalition
MISGAV, Israel, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Trendlines Group Ltd. ("Trendlines") is pleased to announce the 100% acquisition ("Acquisition") of its 26.9%-owned (fully diluted) portfolio company, OrthoSpin Ltd. ("OrthoSpin"), by Synthes GMBH (part of DePuy Synthes, the Orthopaedics company of Johnson & Johnson) for a total of US$79.5 million in cash, payable in full upon closing. The total net proceeds for Trendlines from the Acquisition will be US$15.8 million after expenses, representing a 165% internal rate of return (IRR) on Trendlines' total cash investment in OrthoSpin of US$1.3 million.

OrthoSpins FDA-cleared Generation 2 robotic system enables automation of external fixation orthopedic treatments (credit: OrthoSpin).

The fair value of Trendlines' holdings in OrthoSpin was approximately US$ 6.6 million as of 30 June 2021. The Acquisition will have a material positive impact on the net tangible assets per share and earnings per share of Trendlines for the financial year ending 31 December 2021. For the financial year ending 31 December 2021, Trendlines will report a US$9.2 million gain from the Acquisition; this is in addition to the increased value in the holding of OrthoSpin in H1 2021 of US$3.9 million.

OrthoSpin's automated, digitally-enabled strut system, the AutoStrut G2 System, offers an exciting new solution to the external circular fixation market used in bone lengthening, setting complex fractures, and correcting limb deformities. With this cutting-edge technology, circular frame strut adjustments are automated and can be broken down into smaller, more frequent intervals, eliminating the need for patients to perform complex manual strut adjustments.

OrthoSpin's concept was first brought to Trendlines by Liraz Shlomoff and Yoni Epstein, serial entrepreneurs in the medical device field. OrthoSpin received FDA clearance for its latest device in January 2021 and has completed initial clinical cases in the U.S. and Israel. Johnson & Johnson Innovation ("JJDC") led two investment rounds. Trendlines was OrthoSpin's founding investor and participated in additional financings for the Company. OrthoSpin also received support from the Israel Innovation Authority.

Trendlines Chair and CEO Todd Dollinger commented, "We're extremely proud of all that OrthoSpin has achieved culminating in an acquisition by a world leader in healthcare. Oren Cohen as CEO and Dr. Assaf Dekel as Active Chair of OrthoSpin did a remarkable job leading the Company and creating a technology that transforms treatment. The OrthoSpin success story is part of our mission of investing to improve the human condition."

OrthoSpin CEO Oren Cohen commented, "I am delighted to announce this news. I'm extremely proud of the team that succeeded in meeting critical and complex tasks during a worldwide pandemic and wish to thank all our partners who supported us throughout the journey. I look forward to continuing our journey with DePuy Synthes to bring a real revolution to the hexapod bone deformity market."

Dr. Assaf Dekel, Active Chairman of OrthoSpin, remarked, "I would personally like to also thank JJDC. JJDC's continuous support and early investment led to this acquisition and important step for the orthopedic market."

About The Trendlines Group

Trendlines is an innovation commercialization company that invents, discovers, invests in, and incubates innovation-based medical and agricultural technologies to fulfill its mission to improve the human condition. As intensely hands-on investors, Trendlines is involved in all aspects of its portfolio companies from technology development to business building. Trendlines' shares are traded on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX: 42T) and in the United States as an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) on the OTCQX (OTCQX: TRNLY).

Forward Looking Statement

Statements in this press release that are not statements of historical or current fact constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other unknown factors that could cause the Company's actual operating results to be materially different from any historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In addition to statements that explicitly describe these risks and uncertainties, readers are urged to consider statements that contain terms such as "believes," "belief," "expects," "expect," "intends," "intend," "anticipate," "anticipates," "plans," "plan," to be uncertain and forward looking. The forward-looking statements contained herein are also subject generally to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investor Contact Information

Israel:

Shira Zimmerman, The Trendlines Group

[email protected]

Tel: +972.72.260.7000

SOURCE The Trendlines Group Ltd.
"UGG has made so many strides over the last year identifying key pillars to create a brand that makes positive impact through tangible results," said Dave Powers, President & CEO of Deckers Brands. "We will continue putting the people, the planet, and our products at the forefront of our decision-making. UGG is committed to being a more regenerative brand  one that prioritizes long-term value over short-term gain by restoring the health of people, communities, and the planet."

DO GOOD FOR PLANET

UGGrenew:

UGG is proud to create durable products made to last. The brand's surveys show that most of its customers wear their Classic Boots for years, and UGGrenew allows them to love their Classic Boots* even longer. UGG has partnered with NuShoe, a premium shoe repair company, to offer three levels of dedicated service.

RENEW ($80)

A complete, handcrafted restoration, NuShoe updates the pair of Classic Boots with new bindings and a fresh Treadlite by UGG outsole. Additionally, the service carefully steam cleans the shoe inside and out with naturally derived detergents, helping lift stains, remove odor, and condition the leather.

RESTORE ($60)

Carefully steam cleans the shoe inside and out with naturally derived detergents, helping lift stains, remove odor, and condition the leather. Additionally, the old sole is replaced with a brand-new Treadlite by UGG outsole.

REFRESH ($40)

Carefully steam cleans the shoe inside and out with naturally derived detergents, helping lift stains, remove odor, and condition the leather.

Part of FEEL GOOD, the UGG brand's journey towards a more regenerative world, the program is dedicated to extending the life of its customers' favorite boots, restoring them by hand with authentic UGG materials. Because of the handcrafted nature of this service, NuShoe's capacity is currently limited to 100 pairs per day, but they intend to scale the program to enable service of almost a quarter million pairs per year by 2023. The online service is exclusively available to customers in the United States. To take advantage of the service, customers can visit UGG.com, use the scheduling tool to book an appointment, pay the corresponding fee to NuShoe, and ship out their Classic Boots via the shipping label provided by UGG.

UGG views this as a great opportunity to build a long-lasting direct relationship with its loyal customers.

Science-Based Targets:

Today, the UGG brand's parent company, Deckers Brands announced that it filed science-based targets which were approved by the Science-Based Targets Initiative. Deckers Brands worked with The Carbon Trust to calculate a Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions baseline (FY19) and has set robust greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Over 99% of Deckers' carbon footprint occurs at Scope 3, and the majority is due to raw material extraction and raw material manufacturing. Knowing that materials are our greatest impact, UGG adopted its own internal goals to support Deckers' efforts towards achieving its science-based targets. These internal UGG goals include a targeted greenhouse gas reduction by 40% per pair (footwear) and a targeted energy reduction by 35% per pair (footwear) by 2030.

MAKE GOOD PRODUCTS

Material Innovation:

UGG is committed to increasing its use of recycled, repurposed, regenerated (plant-based), renewable (bio-based), and certified/preferred natural fibers by 35%. UGG is also working towards the goal of replacing 100% of all faux fur with plant-based faux fur, bio-based faux fur, or recycled synthetic fibers within all material categories for its footwear products by 2027. These material innovations led to the launch of the Plant Power Collection in March 2021, which was followed by the Icon-Impact Collection in September 2021. Both collections featured low-impact materials and offsets were purchased for the small number of emissions they created  making them carbon-neutral.

BE GOOD TO PEOPLE

UGG has bold goals to create impactful change, nurture an inclusive and diverse workforce, and promote diverse communities. Through thoughtful partnerships, increasing awareness, and in-house learning and development, UGG has taken tangible steps to create an inclusive brand for all with the focus on continuing this journey.

UGG believes its products must be accessible to the broadest possible range of customers. From committing to the Valuable 500, a global movement that brings together brands who are putting disability inclusion at the forefront of their business, to its launch of the Universal Collection for Zappos, a collection which features special modifications to heritage styles, UGG has continued to showcase its commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion. Additionally, UGG will continue its monetary support of non-profit organizations that champion social and racial justice, including a recurring scholarship donation to the UNCF (United Negro College Fund).

UGG is proud to support its larger parent company efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion  promoting self-awareness, growth, allyship, and creating one culture of belonging. UGG believes that together, we can create the change we want to see.

To explore more about FEEL GOOD, please visit: www.feelgoodfuture.ugg.com.

UGG aims to be as transparent as possible with consumers. For more details, from full material breakdowns to waste diversion percentages to carbon accounting, please review the Deckers Brands' CR Report here.

About UGG

Founded in 1978 by an Australian surfer on the coast of California, UGG is a global lifestyle brand renowned for its iconic Classic Boot. First worn by Hollywood royalty, fashion editors, and then the world, UGG designs and retails footwear, apparel, accessories, and homeware with an uncompromising attitude towards quality and craftsmanship. UGG strives to be socially just, economically inclusive, and environmentally restorative. Delivering more than $1.5 billion in annual sales, UGG partners with the best retailers globally and owns concept and outlet stores worldwide in key markets including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Beijing. For more information, please visit www.ugg.com @ugg #FeelUGG

About Deckers Brands

Deckers Brands is a global leader in designing, marketing, and distributing innovative footwear, apparel, and accessories developed for both everyday casual lifestyle use and high-performance activities. The Company's portfolio of brands includes UGG, Koolaburra by UGG, HOKA, Teva, and Sanuk. Deckers Brands products are sold in more than 50 countries and territories through select department and specialty stores, company-owned and operated retail stores, and select online stores, including company-owned websites. Deckers Brands has over 40 years of history building niche footwear brands into lifestyle market leaders attracting millions of loyal consumers globally. For more information, please visit www.deckers.com.

About The Carbon Trust

The Carbon Trust is a purpose-led, global organisation with the mission to accelerate the move to a decarbonised future. The Carbon Trust has been partnering with businesses, governments, and organisations around the world for over 20 years to drive change and turn intent into impact. The Carbon Trust draws on the experience of over 300 experts internationally, accelerating progress and providing solutions to the climate crisis. The Carbon Trust has supported over 3,000 organisations in 50 countries with their climate action planning, collaborated with 150+ partners in setting science-based targets, and supported cities across 5 continents on the journey to Net Zero.

*Only UGG Classic Boots  specifically the Classic Ultra Mini, Classic Mini, Classic Short, and Classic Tall in Chestnut, Black, and Grey  are eligible for the UGGrenew refurbishment program at this time.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements may relate to our future sustainability targets, business operations and operations of our business partners or other future events. You can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "may," "will," "could," "anticipate," "expect," "intend," "believe," "continue," or the negative of such terms, or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements include the assumptions underlying or relating to such statements. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The outcomes of the events described in these forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors described in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," and elsewhere, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2021, or the Annual Report. We cannot assure you that the events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur, and actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made in this press release relate only to events as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made.

Press Contact:

Matty Magnin

PR Manager, UGG

Mobile: (917) 842-2391

[email protected]

[email protected]

HIGH-RES CONTENT

Photography credit: UGG

SOURCE UGG
TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Andrew Faas, founder of the Faas Foundation, is pleased to announce a continuation of the Foundation's partnership with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence with "Emotion Revolution In The Workplace"  an initiative established in 2016 to share the benefits of emotional intelligence as a core competency.

In 2017 the partners polled 14,000 workers across all sectors asking both how they currently feel and how they want to feel. The result? Some 50 percent of the emotions that people report feeling each day at work are negative.

In terms of what people want, respondents listed: (1) mutual trust and respect; (2) stability, security and safety; (3) a sense of purpose; (4) a sense of efficacy; and (5) the ability to speak truth to power. Very few people felt that they work under these conditions.

These findings have been validated through three annual polls conducted by Mental Health America and the Faas Foundation under the 'Mind the Workplace' initiative.

It's clear that employers continue to rely on engagement surveys to gauge the mood of their employees. The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence/Faas Foundation initiative will delve deeper into understanding why those results continue to show disengagement on the part of employees.



Whether organizations are truly committed to inclusive cultures will become clear as the workplace transitions to a post-pandemic world. Those organizations that fail to include employees in decision-making, to take their feelings into account, cannot claim to be inclusive. They will lose the war for talent, which is emerging to be the biggest challenge for an economic recovery.



Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence noted, "our first hypothesis is that it is not possible to have engagement, equity, and diversity without inclusion. Further, where emotional intelligence is a core competency, it is possible to create an inclusive culture. Finally, we expect that people make more rational decisions and choices in inclusive cultures."



Note on the data: In addition to polling people in the United States and Canada, we include Norway because it is the top country in the World Economic Forum Inclusiveness Index. We also will be recruiting a number of organizations in these three countries to poll their employees.

If you would like to have your organization be considered, please contact Patrick Mundt at [email protected]



SOURCE The Faas Foundation

Related Links

http://www.faasfoundation.org/


HONOLULU, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Davis Levin Livingston has been named a Tier 1 Metropolitan "Best Law Firm" in 5 practice areas in Hawaii by U.S. News  Best Lawyers in 2022. The Honolulu-based law firm also received Second and Third Tier rankings.

Overall, Davis Levin Livingston's effective advocacy in Hawaii resulted in 7 rankings in the 12th Edition of U.S. News  Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms":

Metropolitan Tier 1

Commercial Litigation



Criminal Defense: General Practice



Insurance Law



Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs



Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

Metropolitan Tier 2

Criminal Defense: White-Collar

Metropolitan Tier 3

Litigation - First Amendment

U.S. News  Best Lawyers uses a three-tiered system to rank firms according to legal practice area and geographic location. Only those that scored the highest during the selection process are sorted into these tiers, with the very highest scorers taking spots in Tier 1.

To qualify for "Best Law Firms" consideration, a firm must have an attorney who has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, an exclusive directory of lawyers. Then, U.S. News  Best Lawyers evaluates each eligible candidate using client feedback, lawyer ballots, and law firm surveys. A firm's level of expertise, quality of service, accessibility, and case results are all taken into account. Thus, it is hardly an easy feat to receive a tiered ranking in "Best Law Firms."

Six Davis Levin Livingston attorneys were chosen to The Best Lawyers in America 2022 with two of these attorneys named Best Lawyers 2022 "Lawyer of the Year" awardeesqualifying the firm for consideration.

The evaluation of Davis Levin Livingston, no doubt, yielded impressive results: The attorney team has achieved numerous record-breaking verdicts and settlements, and its client recoveries amount to tens of millions of dollars. The firm is also known for its exceptional client experience, with attorneys remaining available day and night to answer their clients' questions.

In the past 40 years, Davis Levin Livingston has risen to the top, but one thing has remained the same: Its clients have and always will be its top priority.

Davis Levin Livingston represents Hawaii residents in various types of complex litigation, such as medical malpractice , health care fraud , auto accidents , consumer rights , and class actions . If you need legal representation you can count on, visit davislevin.com to schedule a free consultation. To learn more about U.S. News  Best Lawyers"Best Law Firms," go to bestlawfirms.usnews.com .

SOURCE Davis Levin Livingston
CHICAGO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, it's never too early to begin making your list and checking it twice. Whether it's for a loved one, a friend or a co-worker, UScellular recommends getting a head start on your shopping, which is the best way to make sure you don't miss out on the hottest items, especially the latest tech gifts.

For those that are shopping on a budget or are looking to splurge for the holidays, let UScellular bring some holiday joy to your friends and family with these hot tech gifts.

In fact, customers are looking to shop earlier than ever. According to the National Retail Federation, November 2020 saw an 8% increase in holiday shopping versus 2019, while December sales remained roughly the same. In addition, a Deloitte study forecasts that holiday retail shopping in 2021 is likely to increase between 7% and 9%, indicating that shoppers will be buying quickly and buying often this season.

If you're eyeing a portable charger, the latest audio accessories or the newest Apple, Samsung or Google smartphone, UScellular has tech gift options for any wish list.

"Getting your holiday shopping done early is the best way to make sure you get everything on your list," said Courtland Madock, vice president of marketing at UScellular. "UScellular has something to offer everyone this holiday season, from stocking-stuffers like PopSockets, to bigger-ticket items like wireless earbuds or smart watches."

UScellular wants to spread some locally grown joy this holiday season and is offering a variety of tech gifts for those that are shopping on a budget or are looking to splurge for the holidays:

About UScellular

UScellular is the fourth-largest full-service wireless carrier in the United States, providing national network coverage and industry-leading innovations designed to elevate the customer experience. The Chicago-based carrier is building a stronger network with the latest 5G technology and offers a wide range of communication services that enhance consumers' lives, increase the competitiveness of local businesses and improve the efficiency of government operations. To learn more about UScellular, visit one of its retail stores or www.uscellular.com. To get the latest news, promos and videos, connect with UScellular on Facebook.com/uscellular, Twitter.com/uscellular and YouTube.com/uscellularcorp.

For more information, contact:

Anthony Garcia

Media Relations Specialist

773-387-5217

[email protected]

SOURCE UScellular

Related Links

http://www.uscellular.com


LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Village for Vets, a non-profit organization filling critical gaps in services for homeless and at-risk veterans, announced they have provided 25 tiny shelters for homeless veterans on the West LA VA campus (GLAVAHS) with support from their generous partner GHC Housing Partners. Change Reaction, a supporter of Village for Vets Emergency Fund since the onset of Covid-19, also pledged $100,000 to assist those veterans as they move into permanent housing.

Veterans who are eligible to move into the tiny shelters are enrolled in the VA's Care Treatment and Rehabilitation Program (CTRS). CTRS provides homeless veterans with wraparound services including three meals a day, showers, bathrooms and laundry, as well as medical and mental health treatment and housing and employment assistance. Village for Vets has been coordinating the meals at this program with the partnership of Brentwood School and UCLA since last year.

"With this generous gift we have moved from a village of people helping veterans into a true village for veterans. These tiny shelters will provide warmth and stability to our homeless veterans and allow them to live with dignity while VA staff and other service providers help them to secure their long term home," said Marcie Polier Swartz, founder of Village for Vets. "We are thrilled that when that time comes, thanks to Change Reaction, we'll be able to support them in successfully making that transition."

"We greatly appreciate the generosity and assistance of Village for Vets, GHC Housing Partners and Change Reaction," said Dr. Steven Braverman, Director, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. "These Tiny Shelters will enable us to expand our services at our Low-Barrier-To-Entry CTRS site and help more Veterans to transition from street homelessness to permanent supportive housing."

"The Change Reaction has been providing direct grants to help veterans with housing through Village for Vets for the past year," said Gregory Perlman, CEO of GHC Housing and Founder of the Change Reaction. "GHC Housing is honored to provide this necessary housing for our veterans and thank Village for Vets and the VA for making it happen."

Village for Vets will continue to work with the community and donors to provide 40 more tiny homes for veterans in need. Please visit villageforvets.org for more information.

About Village for Vets

Village for Vets fills gaps in critical services for homeless and at-risk veterans on their journey to stability and independence, providing meals, emergency grants, support for basic needs, and links to additional services. In the four years since it was founded, Village for Vets has grown tenfold, expanding from providing a few dozen sandwiches to ease the out-of-pocket burden on a VA case manager, to a dozen programs in partnership with major homeless- and veteran-service organizations in Los Angeles. Village for Vets has provided nearly 60,000 meals to homeless and at-risk veterans, nearly $300K in emergency financial assistance, and an array of other services to veterans in need in greater Los Angeles.

About Change Reaction

Founded in 2019 by Greg and Jodi Perlman, The Change Reaction is a platform of high impact direct giving focused on meeting the basic needs of hardworking Angelenos. With a growing network of over 500 social workers, nurses, teachers, faith leaders and so many others dedicated to making a difference in the lives of the people they serve The Change Reaction's group of Los Angeles based donors are using their wealth to lift up Los Angeles, one Angeleno at a time

About GHC Housing Partners

GHC Housing Partners is one of the country's largest affordable housing owners and operators with over 10,000 affordable units in 16 states. With over 30 years of experience and offices in Sherman Oaks, CA, Cleveland, OH, and Greenville, SC , GHC Housing sets the industry standards for providing the highest quality housing and services for its residents.

CONTACT:

Kelly Susco/Jackie Crystal

Crystal Susco PR

[email protected]

[email protected]

SOURCE Village for Vets

Related Links

http://villageforvets.org


LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vision Films Inc. ("Vision") announces the VOD release of the quirky comedy Ashley Jones Is Perfectly Normal on November 23, 2021. Executive produced by Skip Short and from director and writer Thomas Bangert, co-writer and producer Kev Stock, and producer and star Hana Yuko Sano. With humor and a whimsical style, Ashley Jones explores serious themes including acceptance, diversity, mental health, and the enigmatic question "what is normal?" Both Bangert and Sano brought their own firsthand experiences as immigrants to the film, including speaking English [as a second language] with accents; Sano is Japanese and Bangert is from Germany. Sano is the comedy's strong, female, Asian lead.

Ashley Jones Is Perfectly Normal Movie Vision Films, Inc. Logo

Synopsis : TV reporter Ashley Jones is a perfectly normal young woman, enjoying her perfectly normal life. Her boyfriend, Larry, her job, and her best friend, Tiffany are all perfectly normal, and Ashley couldn't be happier: until one day when she is stricken by a mysterious affliction, Foreign Accent Syndrome. Not sure of the cause or how to treat it, Ashley doesn't know how to react to this strange new world of mistaken identities and her new friend who claims to be 500,000 years old. Can she get back to her comfortable, normal old life, or will she be forced to leave all of that behind as she journeys through the fantasies in her heart and the depths of her own soul to discover more about the world, about herself, and what "normal" really means.

Watch the trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=tYN7YjsKAr0

Starring: Hana Yuka Sano (Love), Loa Allebach (Who Killed the Bible Salesman?), Chris Yeschenko (Your Colours Kiss My Eyes), Coby J. Marcum (Matchmaker), Hallie Newcomer (Connected Killer), Marc Herrmann (Deadly Mile High Club)

Lise Romanoff, CEO and Managing Director of Vision Films says, "Ashley Jones is one of the most delightful comedies with heart and soul to come along in quite a while. The important themes of cultural stereotyping, discrimination, and mental health are cleverly and smartly handled yet remain poignant. It is a film for our times."

Writer/Director, Thomas Bangert shares, "In recent years the public debate on almost any given topic has grown increasingly violent. We have become accustomed to building walls between us and them, between right and wrong, between normal and different. When, of course, the truth is much more complex than that. I believe that comedy, if done tactfully, is a fun way of bringing people together and getting us one step closer to celebrating our differences."

Producer/Star Yuko Sano adds, ""Working on Ashley Jones was a true blessing. We were a varied group of people from all walks of life and backgrounds that grew to become a family making this film. It really shows in the film, and we look forward to sharing this labor of love and its important message with audiences everywhere."

Ashley Jones Is Perfectly Normal will be available November 23 on major streaming and cable platforms across the U.S. and Canada and on DVD at major online retailers. Canadian cable providers include Rogers, Shaw and Teles.

About Vision Films

Vision Films is a leading independent sales and VOD aggregator specializing in the licensing, marketing, and distribution of over 800 feature films, documentaries, and series from some of the most prolific independent film producers in the world. Led by Lise Romanoff, Managing Director/CEO Worldwide Distribution, Vision Films releases 2-4 films a month across Theatrical, VOD, DVD, and television platforms. Visionfilms.net

Contact:

Andrea McKinnon

(818) 415-9442

[email protected]

SOURCE Vision Films, Inc.
TSX | NYSE | LSE: WPM

Designated News Release

THIRD QUARTER 2021 FINANCIAL RESULTS

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - "Wheaton's diversified portfolio of high-quality, long-life assets continues to deliver strong results, including record revenue, earnings and cash flow in the first nine months of 2021. In addition, the Company declared a dividend of $0.15 per common share, a 25% increase relative to the prior year," said Randy Smallwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Wheaton Precious Metals. "Strong year to date production, particularly driven by silver, has led the Company to narrow its annual guidance to 735,000 to 765,000 gold equivalent ounces, consistent with the previous midpoint of guidance."

Third Quarter 2021 Highlights:

Over $200 million in operating cash flow during the third quarter and a record $650 million in the first nine months of 2021.

$269 million in revenue during the third quarter and a record $923 million in the first nine months of 2021.

$137 million in adjusted net earnings during the third quarter and a record $460 million in the first nine months of 2021.

Signed a non-binding term sheet with Rio2 Limited to enter into a precious metals purchase agreement in connection with the Fenix Gold project located in Chile .

Strong financial position with approximately $372 million in cash on hand and $2 billion of additional capacity through the revolving credit facility as of September 30, 2021 .

in cash on hand and of additional capacity through the revolving credit facility as of . Declared quarterly dividend 1 of $0.15 per common share .

Operational Overview

(all figures in US dollars unless otherwise noted)

Q3 2021

Q3 2020 Change Units produced









Gold ounces

85,941

90,500 (5.0)% Silver ounces

6,394

6,028 6.1 % Palladium ounces

5,105

5,444 (6.2)% Cobalt pounds

370,522

- n.a. Gold equivalent ounces 2

184,918

181,184 2.1 % Units sold









Gold ounces

67,649

90,101 (24.9)% Silver ounces

5,487

4,999 9.8 % Palladium ounces

5,703

5,546 2.8 % Cobalt pounds

131,174

- n.a. Gold equivalent ounces 2

152,432

166,611 (8.5)% Revenue $ 268,957 $ 307,268 (12.5)% Net earnings $ 134,937 $ 149,875 (10.0)% Per share $ 0.300 $ 0.334 (10.2)% Adjusted net earnings 1 $ 137,087 $ 152,007 (9.8)% Per share 1 $ 0.304 $ 0.338 (10.1)% Operating cash flows $ 201,287 $ 228,099 (11.8)% Per share 1 $ 0.447 $ 0.508 (12.0)%

All amounts in thousands except gold, palladium & gold equivalent ounces and cobalt pounds produced & sold, per ounce/pound amounts & per share amounts.

Reiterating Gold Equivalent Production Guidance

Wheaton's estimated attributable production in 2021 is now forecast to be approximately 735,000 to 765,000 gold equivalent ounces2 ("GEOs") in line with previous guidance of 720,000 to 780,000 GEOs. However, given strong performances at Penasquito, Antamina and Voisey's Bay, coupled with production being lower than expected at Salobo, Wheaton is adjusting the production mix by metal as per the table below. Longer term guidance remains unchanged at an average production of 810,000 GEOs for the five-year period ending 2025 and 830,000 GEOs for the ten-year period ending in 20303.



Updated Guidance Original Guidance Gold Ounces 330,000 to 345,000 370,000 to 400,000 Silver Ounces('000s) 25,500 to 26,500 22,500 to 24,000 Other Metals2(GEOs) 45,000 to 55,000 40,000 to 45,000 Total GEOs2 735,000 to 765,000 720,000 to 780,000

Corporate Development

Fenix Gold Project: On July 20, 2021, the Company signed a non-binding term sheet with Rio2 Limited ("Rio2") to enter into a precious metals purchase agreement ("PMPA") in connection with the Fenix Gold project located in Chile. Under the terms of the proposed Fenix PMPA, the Company will acquire 6% of the gold production until 90,000 ounces have been delivered and 4% of the gold production until 140,000 ounces have been delivered, after which the stream drops to 3.5% for the life of mine. In addition, under the proposed Fenix PMPA, the Company will pay a total upfront cash consideration of $50 million, $25 million of which is payable upon closing, subject to certain conditions, and $25 million payable subject to Rio2's receipt of its Environmental Impact Assessment for the Fenix Gold project, and certain other conditions. In addition, the Company will make ongoing delivery payments equal to approximately 18% of the spot price until the value of gold delivered less the production payment is equal to the upfront consideration of $50 million, at which point the production payment will increase to 22% of the spot gold price. The entering into of the Fenix PMPA is subject to, among other matters, the negotiation and completion of definitive documentation.

Financial Review

Revenues

Revenue was $269 million in the third quarter of 2021 representing a 12% decrease from the third quarter of 2020 due primarily to a 9% decrease in the number of gold equivalent ounces sold, primarily the result of a large build-up of payable ounces produced but not yet delivered ("PBND") at Salobo; and a 4% decrease in the average realized gold equivalent price.

Cash Costs and Margin

Average cash costs in the third quarter of 2021 were $410 per gold equivalent ounce as compared to $421 in third quarter of 2020.This resulted in a cash operating margin of $1,354 per gold equivalent ounce sold, a decrease of 5% as compared with the third quarter of 2020.

Balance Sheet (at September 30, 2021)

Approximately $372 million of cash on hand.

The Company's $2 billion revolving term loan (the "Revolving Facility") remains fully repaid.

Third Quarter Asset Highlights

Salobo: In the third quarter of 2021, Salobo produced 55,200 ounces of attributable gold, a decrease of approximately 13% relative to the third quarter of 2020 due to lower throughput and grade. On October 22, 2021, Vale S.A. ("Vale") announced the resumption of conveyor belt operations at Salobo, that was halted for 18 days due to a fire. Other activities, including mine and maintenance operations, continued as usual during this period but concentrate production was interrupted. Concentrate production resumed on October 22, 2021 and ramped up over a three day period. Vale further reports that physical completion of the Salobo III mine expansion was 81% at the end of the third quarter and is on track for start-up in the second half of 2022.

Penasquito: In the third quarter of 2021, Penasquito produced 2.2 million ounces of attributable silver, an increase of approximately 9% relative to the third quarter of 2020, with throughput, grades and recoveries all being higher.

Antamina: In the third quarter of 2021, Antamina produced 1.5 million ounces of attributable silver, an increase of approximately 2% relative to the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to higher recoveries. Subsequent to the quarter, as per Compania Minera Antamina S.A.'s (the operating company of Antamina) news release dated October 31, 2021, operations at Antamina have been temporarily suspended to ensure the health and safety of its workforce and other stakeholders following recent protests in Peru.

Constancia: In the third quarter of 2021, Constancia produced 0.5 million ounces of attributable silver and 8,500 ounces of attributable gold, an increase of approximately 21% and 126%, respectively, relative to the third quarter of 2020. Silver production was higher primarily as a result of higher grades. The increase in gold production was primarily due to higher grades resulting from the commencement of ore production from the Pampacancha satellite deposit and the increase in fixed recoveries from 55% to 70%, partially offset by the receipt of 2,005 ounces in the third quarter of 2020 related to delays in accessing the Pampacancha deposit while no delay payment was received in 2021.

Sudbury: In the third quarter of 2021, Vale's Sudbury mines produced 500 ounces of attributable gold, a decrease of approximately 88% relative to the third quarter of 2020, which was primarily due to lower throughput, as operations at the mine were suspended due to a labour dispute, which lasted from June 1, 2021 to August 9, 2021. Vale announced on August 3, 2021 that a new five-year collective bargaining agreement had been ratified with mine workers. The Sudbury PMPA had an effective date of February 28, 2013 with a term of 20 years. Under the provisions of the Sudbury PMPA, should the facilities at Sudbury be shut down for 60 or more cumulative days, exclusive of scheduled maintenance or shutdowns for periods of 20 days or less, the term of the Sudbury PMPA shall be extended for the same duration. As a result, the term of the agreement was extended by 69 days.

Stillwater: In the third quarter of 2021, the Stillwater mines produced 2,900 ounces of attributable gold and 5,100 ounces of attributable palladium, a decrease of approximately 7% for gold and 6% for palladium relative to the third quarter of 2020 due to lower grades.

San Dimas: In the third quarter of 2021, San Dimas produced 11,900 ounces of attributable gold, an increase of approximately 29% relative to the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to higher throughput coupled with the impact of changing the silver to gold conversion ratio from 70:1 to 90:1 from April 1, 2020 to October 15, 2020, at which time it reverted to 70:1.

Voisey's Bay: In the third quarter of 2021, the Voisey's Bay mine produced 371,000 pounds of attributable cobalt. As at the end of the third quarter 2021, approximately 488,000 pounds of cobalt were held in inventory by Wheaton and 638,000 pounds were produced but not yet delivered. As per Vale's Third Quarter 2021 Performance Report, physical completion of the Voisey's Bay underground mine extension, which includes developing two underground mines - Reid Brook and Eastern Deeps - was 70% at the end of the third quarter.

Rosemont: Hudbay announced on September 22, 2021, the intersection of additional high-grade copper sulphide and oxide mineralization on its wholly-owned patented mining claims located within close proximity of its Rosemont copper project in Arizona ("Copper World"). To date, seven deposits have been identified at Copper World with a combined strike length of over seven kilometres. As of June 30, 2021, approximately 166 holes were completed totaling over 91,000 feet of drilling. Hudbay expects to publish an initial inferred mineral resource estimate for Copper World before the end of 2021, and these mineral resource estimates will form the basis for a preliminary economic assessment ("PEA") expected to be released by Hudbay in the first half of 2022. The Copper World discovery is included in Wheaton's area of interest under the PMPA.

Produced But Not Yet Delivered4

As at September 30, 2021, payable ounces and pounds attributable to the Company produced but not yet delivered amounted to:

81,200 payable gold ounces, an increase of 15,000 ounces during Q3 2021 , primarily due to an increase during the period at the Salobo mine.

4.1 million payable silver ounces, virtually unchanged during Q3 2021, as decreases during the period at the Penasquito mine were offset by an increase at the Yauliyacu mine.

5,600 payable palladium ounces, a decrease of 1,200 ounces during Q3 2021.

638,000 payable cobalt pounds, a decrease of 139,300 pounds during Q3 2021.

Detailed mine-by-mine production and sales figures can be found in the Appendix to this press release and in Wheaton's consolidated MD&A in the 'Results of Operations and Operational Review' section.

Sustainability

COVID-19 Community Support and Response Fund: In the second quarter of 2020, Wheaton announced the launch of a $5 million Community Support and Response Fund (the "CSR Fund") to support global efforts to combat the social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CSR Fund is designed to meet the immediate needs of the communities in which Wheaton and its mining partners operate. This fund is incremental to Wheaton's already active Community Investment Program that currently provides support to over 50 programs in multiple communities around the world. As of September 30, 2021, the Company has made donations totaling approximately $4 million through the CSR Fund.

ESG Ratings: Following recent rating updates, Wheaton's Sustainalytics5 score further improved from 9.2 to 7.9 indicating reduced risk exposure and maintained its AA rating from MSCI5 demonstrating Wheaton's continued leadership in ESG practices. Wheaton is currently ranked in the Global Top 50 out of more than 14,000 companies and #1 for precious metals out of 122 companies by Sustainalytics5.

Partner CSR Program: Wheaton continues to support a wide range of programs with mining partners including Vale, Glencore, Hudbay and First Majestic Silver focused on education, health, entrepreneurial support, and community engagement opportunities in the communities near the mines from which Wheaton receives precious metals. In the third quarter of 2021, a solar panel installation project was completed at a Knowledge Station run by the Vale Foundation in the community of Maraba, Brazil.

Webcast and Conference Call Details

A conference call and webcast will be held on Friday, November 5, 2021 starting at 8:00am PT / 11:00 am ET to discuss these results. To participate in the live call please use one of the following methods:

Dial toll free from Canada or the US: 1-888-664-6383

Dial from outside Canada or the US: 1-416-764-8650

Pass code: 61024959

Live audio webcast: Webcast URL

Participants should dial in five to ten minutes before the call.

The accompanying slideshow will also be available in PDF format on the 'Presentations' page of the Wheaton Precious Metals website before the conference call.

The conference call will be recorded and available until November 12, 2021 at 11:59 pm ET. The webcast will be available for one year. You can listen to an archive of the call by one of the following methods:

Dial toll free from Canada or the US: 1-888-390-0541

Dial from outside Canada or the US: 1-416-764-8677

Pass code: 024959#

Archived audio webcast: Webcast URL

This earnings release should be read in conjunction with Wheaton Precious Metals' MD&A and Financial Statements, which are available on the Company's website at www.wheatonpm.com and have been posted on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Mr. Wes Carson, P.Eng., Vice President, Mining Operations, is a "qualified person" as such term is defined under National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information disclosed in this news release.

Wheaton Precious Metals believes that there are no significant differences between its corporate governance practices and those required to be followed by United States domestic issuers under the NYSE listing standards. This confirmation is located on the Wheaton Precious Metals website at http://www.wheatonpm.com/Company/corporate-governance/default.aspx

About Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. and Outlook

Wheaton is the world's premier precious metals streaming company with the highest-quality portfolio of long-life, low-cost assets. Its business model offers investors commodity price leverage and exploration upside but with a much lower risk profile than a traditional mining company. Wheaton delivers amongst the highest cash operating margins in the mining industry, allowing it to pay a competitive dividend and continue to grow through accretive acquisitions. As a result, Wheaton has consistently outperformed gold and silver, as well as other mining investments. Wheaton is committed to strong ESG practices and giving back to the communities where Wheaton and its mining partners operate. Wheaton creates sustainable value through streaming for all of its stakeholders.

Wheaton's estimated attributable production in 2021 is forecast to be 330,000 to 345,000 ounces of gold, 25.5 to 26.5 million ounces of silver, and 45,000 to 55,000 GEOs of other metals, resulting in production of approximately 735,000 to 765,000 GEOs, in line with previous guidance. For the five-year period ending in 2025, the Company estimates that average production will amount to 810,000 GEOs3. For the ten-year period ending in 2030, the Company estimates that average annual production will amount to 830,000 GEOs3.

In accordance with Wheaton Precious Metals Corp.'s ("Wheaton Precious Metals", "Wheaton" or the "Company") MD&A and financial statements, reference to the Company and Wheaton includes the Company's wholly owned subsidiaries.

End Notes

________________________________ 1 Please refer to non-IFRS measures at the end of this press release. Dividends declared in the referenced calendar quarter, relative to the financial results of the prior quarter.

2 Commodity price assumptions for the gold equivalent production and sales in 2021 and long-term forecasts are $1,800 / ounce gold, $25 / ounce silver, and $2,300 / ounce palladium and $17.75 / pound cobalt. Other metal includes palladium and cobalt.

3 Gold equivalent guidance based on the commodity prices outlined in note 2 above. Five- and ten-year guidance do not include optionality production from Pascua Lama, Navidad, Cotabambas, or additional expansions at Salobo outside of project currently in construction. In addition, five-year guidance also does not include any production from Rosemont, Toroparu, Kutcho, or the Victor project at Sudbury.

4 Payable gold, silver and palladium ounces and cobalt pounds produced but not yet delivered are based on management estimates only and rely upon information provided by the owners and operators of mining operations and may be revised and updated in future periods as additional information is received.

5 Rating current as of October 7, 2021, for Sustainalytics and as of September 23, 2021, for MSCI.

Condensed Interim Consolidated Statements of Earnings





Three Months Ended

September 30 Nine Months Ended

September 30 (US dollars and shares in thousands, except per share amounts - unaudited)

2021

2020

2021

2020 Sales

$ 268,957 $ 307,268 $ 923,468 $ 810,012 Cost of sales

















Cost of sales, excluding depletion

$ 62,529 $ 70,119 $ 219,757 $ 202,238 Depletion



54,976

60,601

195,458

184,104 Total cost of sales

$ 117,505 $ 130,720 $ 415,215 $ 386,342 Gross margin

$ 151,452 $ 176,548 $ 508,253 $ 423,670 General and administrative expenses



13,595

21,326

44,030

56,307 Earnings from operations

$ 137,857 $ 155,222 $ 464,223 $ 367,363 Other (income) expense



1,108

2,624

(2,194)

(1,340) Earnings before finance costs and income taxes $ 136,749 $ 152,598 $ 466,417 $ 368,703 Finance costs



1,379

2,766

4,309

14,519 Earnings before income taxes

$ 135,370 $ 149,832 $ 462,108 $ 354,184 Income tax (expense) recovery



(433)

43

955

(3,601) Net earnings

$ 134,937 $ 149,875 $ 463,063 $ 350,583 Basic earnings per share

$ 0.300 $ 0.334 $ 1.029 $ 0.782 Diluted earnings per share

$ 0.299 $ 0.332 $ 1.026 $ 0.779 Weighted average number of shares outstanding

















Basic



450,326

449,125

449,977

448,484 Diluted



451,717

451,999

451,369

449,892

Condensed Interim Consolidated Balance Sheets



As at

September 30 As at

December 31 (US dollars in thousands - unaudited) 2021 2020 Assets







Current assets







Cash and cash equivalents $ 372,450 $ 192,683 Accounts receivable

10,392

5,883 Other

9,874

3,265 Total current assets $ 392,716 $ 201,831 Non-current assets







Mineral stream interests $ 5,505,663 $ 5,488,391 Early deposit mineral stream interests

34,741

33,241 Mineral royalty interest

6,606

3,047 Long-term equity investments

71,741

199,878 Convertible notes receivable

15,489

11,353 Property, plant and equipment

5,790

6,289 Other

13,994

13,242 Total non-current assets $ 5,654,024 $ 5,755,441 Total assets $ 6,046,740 $ 5,957,272 Liabilities







Current liabilities







Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 14,514 $ 13,023 Current portion of performance share units

13,348

17,297 Current portion of lease liabilities

801

773 Other

154

76 Total current liabilities $ 28,817 $ 31,169 Non-current liabilities







Bank debt $ - $ 195,000 Lease liabilities

2,258

2,864 Deferred income taxes

276

214 Performance share units

8,667

11,784 Pension liability

2,369

1,670 Total non-current liabilities $ 13,570 $ 211,532 Total liabilities $ 42,387 $ 242,701 Shareholders' equity







Issued capital $ 3,685,032 $ 3,646,291 Reserves

50,769

126,882 Retained earnings

2,268,552

1,941,398 Total shareholders' equity $ 6,004,353 $ 5,714,571 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 6,046,740 $ 5,957,272

Condensed Interim Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows



Three Months Ended

September 30 Nine Months Ended

September 30 (US dollars in thousands - unaudited) 2021 2020 2021 2020 Operating activities















Net earnings $ 134,937 $ 149,875 $ 463,063 $ 350,583 Adjustments for















Depreciation and depletion

55,445

61,050

196,869

185,542 Interest expense

30

1,795

324

11,289 Equity settled stock based compensation

1,315

1,319

3,946

4,127 Performance share units

2,824

9,325

(7,128)

11,734 Pension expense

294

265

710

533 Income tax expense (recovery)

433

(43)

(955)

3,601 Loss (gain) on fair value adjustment of share purchase warrants held

1,246

1,107

2,392

845 Fair value (gain) loss on convertible note receivable

490

1,095

(4,136)

(1,382) Investment income recognized in net earnings

(178)

(23)

(275)

(178) Other

(9)

567

685

513 Change in non-cash working capital

4,434

3,656

(5,341)

2,771 Cash generated from operations before income taxes and interest $ 201,261 $ 229,988 $ 650,154 $ 569,978 Income taxes recovered (paid)

-

-

(51)

70 Interest paid

(31)

(1,912)

(401)

(12,745) Interest received

57

23

154

177 Cash generated from operating activities $ 201,287 $ 228,099 $ 649,856 $ 557,480 Financing activities















Bank debt repaid $ - $ (153,000) $ (195,000) $ (387,000) Credit facility extension fees

(54)

(6)

(1,727)

(1,373) Share purchase options exercised

183

2,763

5,719

20,779 Lease payments

(196)

(132)

(583)

(438) Dividends paid

(57,235)

(37,309)

(160,784)

(120,312) Cash (used for) generated from financing activities $ (57,302) $ (187,684) $ (352,375) $ (488,344) Investing activities















Mineral stream interests $ (1,055) $ (40) $ (216,845) $ (40) Early deposit mineral stream interests

(750)

(750)

(1,500)

(1,500) Mineral royalty interest

-

-

(3,571)

- Acquisition of long-term investments

(5,076)

(10,671)

(7,453)

(10,671) Proceeds on disposal of long-term investments

-

49,454

112,188

49,577 Dividends received

110

-

110

- Other

(171)

(363)

(691)

(691) Cash generated from (used for) investing activities $ (6,942) $ 37,630 $ (117,762) $ 36,675 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents $ (39) $ 25 $ 48 $ 37 Increase in cash and cash equivalents $ 137,004 $ 78,070 $ 179,767 $ 105,848 Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period

235,446

131,764

192,683

103,986 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 372,450 $ 209,834 $ 372,450 $ 209,834

Summary of Units Produced



Q3 2021 Q2 2021 Q1 2021 Q4 2020 Q3 2020 Q2 2020 Q1 2020 Q4 2019 Gold ounces produced 















Salobo 55,205 55,590 46,622 62,854 63,408 59,104 62,575 74,716 Sudbury 3 465 4,563 7,004 6,659 3,798 9,257 7,795 6,468 Constancia 8 8,533 5,519 2,453 3,929 3,780 3,470 3,681 4,757 San Dimas 4, 8 11,936 11,478 10,491 11,652 9,228 6,074 11,318 11,352 Stillwater 5 2,949 2,962 3,041 3,290 3,176 3,222 2,955 3,585 Other

















Minto 6 1,703 3,206 2,638 789 1,832 2,928 2,124 2,189

777 9 4,717 5,035 6,280 2,866 5,278 4,728 4,551 3,987

Marmato 433 1,713 - - - - - - Total Other 6,853 9,954 8,918 3,655 7,110 7,656 6,675 6,176 Total gold ounces produced 85,941 90,066 78,529 92,039 90,500 88,783 94,999 107,054 Silver ounces produced 2















Penasquito 8 2,180 2,026 2,202 2,014 1,992 967 2,658 1,895 Antamina 8 1,548 1,558 1,577 1,930 1,516 612 1,311 1,342 Constancia 8 521 468 406 478 430 254 461 632 Other

















Los Filos 8 12 26 31 6 17 14 29 55

Zinkgruvan 658 457 420 515 498 389 662 670

Yauliyacu 8 432 821 737 454 679 273 557 358

Stratoni 8 164 165 185 156 148 183 147

Minto 6 25 33 21 16 15 19 18 18

Neves-Corvo 362 408 345 420 281 479 377 385

Aljustrel 314 400 474 440 348 388 352 325

Cozamin 199 183 230 - - - - -

Marmato 10 39 - - - - - -

Keno Hill 44 55 27 - - - - -

777 9 81 83 130 51 96 108 96 81 Total Other 2,145 2,669 2,580 2,087 2,090 1,818 2,274 2,039 Total silver ounces produced 6,394 6,721 6,765 6,509 6,028 3,651 6,704 5,908 Palladium ounces produced 















Stillwater 5 5,105 5,301 5,769 5,672 5,444 5,759 5,312 6,057 Cobalt pounds produced 















Voisey's Bay 370,522 379,757 1,162,243  - - - - - GEOs produced 7 184,918 193,927 191,308 189,682 181,184 146,857 194,901 196,850 SEOs produced 7 13,314 13,963 13,774 13,657 13,045 10,574 14,033 14,173 Average payable rate 2















Gold 96.2% 95.8% 95.0% 95.2% 95.3% 94.7% 95.1% 95.6% Silver 86.6% 87.0% 86.6% 86.3% 86.1% 81.9% 85.6% 85.3% Palladium 94.5% 95.0% 91.6% 93.6% 94.0% 90.8% 91.0% 92.2% Cobalt 93.3% 93.3% 93.3% n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. GEO 7 91.2% 91.7% 90.4% 91.1% 91.1% 89.8% 90.4% 91.5%

1) All figures in thousands except cobalt pounds and gold and palladium ounces produced. 2) Quantity produced represent the amount of gold, silver, palladium and cobalt contained in concentrate or dore prior to smelting or refining deductions. Production figures and payable rates are based on information provided by the operators of the mining operations to which the mineral stream interests relate or management estimates in those situations where other information is not available. Certain production figures and payable rates may be updated in future periods as additional information is received. 3) Comprised of the Coleman, Copper Cliff, Garson, Creighton and Totten gold interests. Operations at the Sudbury mines were suspended from June 1, 2021 to August 9, 2021 as a result of a labour disruption by unionized employees. 4) Under the terms of the San Dimas PMPA, the Company is entitled to an amount equal to 25% of the payable gold production plus an additional amount of gold equal to 25% of the payable silver production converted to gold at a fixed gold to silver exchange ratio of 70:1 from the San Dimas mine. If the average gold to silver price ratio decreases to less than 50:1 or increases to more than 90:1 for a period of 6 months or more, then the "70" shall be revised to "50" or "90", as the case may be, until such time as the average gold to silver price ratio is between 50:1 to 90:1 for a period of 6 months or more in which event the "70" shall be reinstated. Effective April 1, 2020, the fixed gold to silver exchange ratio was revised to 90:1, with the 70:1 ratio being reinstated on October 15, 2020. For reference, attributable silver production from prior periods is as follows: Q3-2021 - 472,000 ounces; Q2-2021 - 467,000 ounces; Q1-2021 - 429,000 ounces; Q4-2020 - 485,000 ounces; Q3-2020 - 420,000 ounces; Q2-2020 - 276,000 ounces; Q1-2020 - 419,000 ounces; Q4-2019 - 415,000 ounces. 5) Comprised of the Stillwater and East Boulder gold and palladium interests. 6) The Minto mine was placed into care and maintenance from October 2018 to October 2019. 7) GEOs and SEOs, which are provided to assist the reader, are based on the following commodity price assumptions: $1,800 per ounce gold; $25.00 per ounce silver; $2,300 per ounce palladium; and $17.75 per pound cobalt; consistent with those used in estimating the Company's production guidance for 2021. 8) Operations at these mines had been temporarily suspended during the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the second half of 2020, all of the operations were restarted. Additionally, operations at Los Filos were suspended from September 3, 2020 to December 23, 2020 as the result of an illegal road blockade by members of the nearby Carrizalillo community and had been temporarily suspended from June 22, 2021 to July 26, 2021 as the result of illegal blockades by a group of unionized employees and members of the Xochipala community. 9) Operations at 777 were temporarily suspended from October 11, 2020 to November 25, 2020 as a result of an incident that occurred on October 9th during routine maintenance of the hoist rope and skip. 10) Effective January 1, 2021, the Company was entitled to cobalt production from the Voisey's Bay mine. As per the Voisey's Bay PMPA with Vale, Wheaton is entitled to any cobalt processed at the Long Harbour Processing Plant as of January 1, 2021, resulting in reported production in the first quarter of 2021 including some material produced at the Voisey's Bay mine in the previous quarter.

Summary of Units Sold



Q3 2021 Q2 2021 Q1 2021 Q4 2020 Q3 2020 Q2 2020 Q1 2020 Q4 2019 Gold ounces sold















Salobo 35,185 57,296 51,423 53,197 59,584 68,487 74,944 58,137 Sudbury 2 1,915 6,945 3,691 7,620 7,858 7,414 4,822 7,394 Constancia 7 8,159 2,321 1,676 3,853 4,112 3,024 3,331 5,108 San Dimas 7 11,346 11,214 10,273 11,529 9,687 6,030 11,358 11,499 Stillwater 3 2,820 2,574 3,074 3,069 3,015 3,066 3,510 2,925 Other

















Minto 4 1,907 2,359 2,390 1,540 - - - -

777 5,879 5,694 2,577 5,435 5,845 4,783 2,440 4,160

Marmato 438 1,687 - - - - - - Total Other 8,224 9,740 4,967 6,975 5,845 4,783 2,440 4,160 Total gold ounces sold 67,649 90,090 75,104 86,243 90,101 92,804 100,405 89,223 Silver ounces sold















Penasquito 7 2,210 1,844 2,174 1,417 1,799 1,917 2,310 1,268 Antamina 7 1,502 1,499 1,930 1,669 1,090 788 1,244 1,227 Constancia 7 484 295 346 442 415 254 350 672 Other

















Los Filos 7 12 42 27 - 19 25 37 26

Zinkgruvan 354 355 293 326 492 376 447 473

Yauliyacu 7 182 601 1,014 15 580 704 9 561

Stratoni 41 167 117 169 134 77 163 120

Minto 4 24 29 26 20 - - - -

Neves-Corvo 193 215 239 145 201 236 204 154

Aljustrel 155 208 257 280 148 252 123 121

Cozamin 170 168 173 - - - - -

Marmato 10 35 - - - - - -

Keno Hill 51 33 12 - - - - -

777 99 109 49 93 121 100 41 62 Total Other 1,291 1,962 2,207 1,048 1,695 1,770 1,024 1,517 Total silver ounces sold 5,487 5,600 6,657 4,576 4,999 4,729 4,928 4,684 Palladium ounces sold















Stillwater 3 5,703 3,869 5,131 4,591 5,546 4,976 4,938 5,312 Cobalt pounds sold















Voisey's Bay 131,174 394,623 132,277 - - - - - GEOs sold 5 152,432 176,700 175,419 155,665 166,611 164,844 175,154 161,066 SEOs sold 5 10,975 12,722 12,630 11,208 11,996 11,869 12,611 11,597 Cumulative payable units PBND 6















Gold ounces 81,246 66,250 70,072 70,555 75,750 79,632 88,383 98,475 Silver ounces 4,056 3,975 3,738 4,486 3,437 3,222 4,961 4,142 Palladium ounces 5,619 6,822 5,373 5,597 4,616 4,883 4,875 4,872 Cobalt pounds 637,986 777,304 819,819 - - - - - GEO 5 151,056 137,835 136,933 140,008 129,391 130,623 163,521 162,225 SEO 5 10,423 9,372 9,277 10,081 9,316 9,405 11,774 11,680 Inventory on hand















Cobalt pounds 488,324 134,482 132,277 - - - - -

1) All figures in thousands except cobalt pounds and gold and palladium ounces sold. 2) Comprised of the Coleman, Copper Cliff, Garson, Creighton and Totten gold interests. 3) Comprised of the Stillwater and East Boulder gold and palladium interests. 4) The Minto mine was placed into care and maintenance from October 2018 to October 2019. 5) GEOs and SEOs, which are provided to assist the reader, are based on the following commodity price assumptions: $1,800 per ounce gold; $25.00 per ounce silver; $2,300 per ounce palladium; and $17.75 per pound cobalt; consistent with those used in estimating the Company's production guidance for 2021. 6) Payable gold, silver and palladium ounces as well as cobalt pounds produced but not yet delivered ("PBND") are based on management estimates. These figures may be updated in future periods as additional information is received. 7) Operations at these mines had been temporarily suspended during the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the second half of 2020, all of the operations were restarted.

Results of Operations

The operating results of the Company's reportable operating segments are summarized in the tables and commentary below.

Three Months Ended September 30, 2021

Units Produced Units

Sold Average

Realized

Price

($'s

Per Unit) Average

Cash Cost

($'s Per

Unit) 3 Average

Depletion

($'s Per

Unit) Sales Net

Earnings Cash Flow

From

Operations Total

Assets Gold































Salobo 55,205 35,185 $ 1,795 $ 412 $ 374 $ 63,154 $ 35,504 $ 50,404 $ 2,455,567 Sudbury 4 465 1,915

1,794

400

1,024

3,436

708

2,242

308,158 Constancia 8,533 8,159

1,795

411

315

14,645

8,723

11,487

101,741 San Dimas 11,936 11,346

1,795

618

322

20,365

9,693

13,351

171,617 Stillwater 2,949 2,820

1,795

326

397

5,061

3,024

4,144

220,949 Other 5 6,853 8,224

1,794

590

38

14,755

9,586

9,887

64,985

85,941 67,649 $ 1,795 $ 464 $ 337 $ 121,416 $ 67,238 $ 91,515 $ 3,323,017 Silver































Penasquito 2,180 2,210 $ 24.09 $ 4.29 $ 3.55 $ 53,259 $ 35,932 $ 43,776 $ 328,470 Antamina 1,548 1,502

23.99

4.80

7.53

36,000

17,503

28,993

589,816 Constancia 521 484

24.09

6.05

7.56

11,668

5,076

9,033

208,537 Other 6 2,145 1,291

22.97

6.33

4.49

29,660

15,686

24,011

602,796

6,394 5,487 $ 23.80 $ 5.06 $ 5.21 $ 130,587 $ 74,197 $ 105,813 $ 1,729,619 Palladium































Stillwater 5,105 5,703 $ 2,426 $ 468 $ 442 $ 13,834 $ 8,644 $ 11,168 $ 234,883 Cobalt































Voisey's Bay 370,522 131,174 $ 23.78 $ 5.15 $ 8.17 $ 3,120 $ 1,373 $ 159 $ 218,144 Operating results













$ 268,957 $ 151,452 $ 208,655 $ 5,505,663 Other



























General and administrative

















$ (13,595) $ (6,432)



Finance costs





















(1,379)

(1,039)



Other



















(1,108)

103



Income tax





















(433)

-



Total other















$ (16,515) $ (7,368) $ 541,077





















$ 134,937 $ 201,287 $ 6,046,740

1) Units of gold, silver and palladium produced and sold are reported in ounces, while cobalt is reported in pounds. All figures in thousands except cobalt pounds produced and sold, gold and palladium ounces produced and sold and per unit amounts. 2) Quantity produced represent the amount of gold, silver, palladium and cobalt contained in concentrate or dore prior to smelting or refining deductions. Production figures are based on information provided by the operators of the mining operations to which the mineral stream interests relate or management estimates in those situations where other information is not available. Certain production figures may be updated in future periods as additional information is received. 3) Refer to discussion on non-IFRS measure (iii) at the end of this press release. 4) Comprised of the operating Coleman, Copper Cliff, Garson, Creighton and Totten gold interests and the non-operating Stobie and Victor gold interests. 5) Comprised of the operating 777, Minto and Marmato gold interests as well as the non-operating Rosemont and Santo Domingo gold interests. 6) Comprised of the operating Los Filos, Zinkgruvan, Yauliyacu, Stratoni, Neves-Corvo, Aljustrel, Minto, Keno Hill, Cozamin, Marmato and 777 silver interests as well as the non-operating Loma de La Plata, Pascua-Lama and Rosemont silver interests.

On a gold equivalent and silver equivalent basis, results for the Company for the three months ended September 30, 2021 were as follows:

Three Months Ended September 30, 2021

Ounces

Produced 1, 2 Ounces

Sold 2 Average

Realized

Price

($'s Per

Ounce) Average

Cash Cost

($'s Per

Ounce) 3 Cash Operating Margin

($'s Per Ounce) 4 Average

Depletion

($'s Per

Ounce) Gross

Margin

($'s Per

Ounce) Gold equivalent basis 5 184,918 152,432 $ 1,764 $ 410 $ 1,354 $ 361 $ 993 Silver equivalent basis 5 13,314 10,975 $ 24.51 $ 5.70 $ 18.81 $ 5.01 $ 13.80

1) Quantity produced represent the amount of gold, silver, palladium and cobalt contained in concentrate or dore prior to smelting or refining deductions. Production figures are based on information provided by the operators of the mining operations to which the mineral stream interests relate or management estimates in those situations where other information is not available. Certain production figures may be updated in future periods as additional information is received. 2) Silver ounces produced and sold in thousands. 3) Refer to discussion on non-IFRS measure (iii) at the end of this press release. 4) Refer to discussion on non-IFRS measure (iv) at the end of this press release. 5) GEOs and SEOs, which are provided to assist the reader, are based on the following commodity price assumptions: $1,800 per ounce gold; $25.00 per ounce silver; $2,300 per ounce palladium; and $17.75 per pound cobalt; consistent with those used in estimating the Company's production guidance for 2021.

Three Months Ended September 30, 2020

Units Produced Units

Sold Average

Realized

Price

($'s

Per Unit) Average

Cash Cost

($'s Per

Unit) 3 Average

Depletion

($'s Per

Unit) Sales Net

Earnings Cash Flow

From

Operations Total

Assets Gold































Salobo 63,408 59,584 $ 1,902 $ 408 $ 374 $ 113,319 $ 66,700 $ 91,917 $ 2,529,258 Sudbury 4 3,798 7,858

1,929

400

831

15,161

5,485

12,018

327,352 Constancia 3,780 4,112

1,902

407

338

7,819

4,758

6,147

106,870 San Dimas 9,228 9,687

1,902

612

315

18,423

9,442

14,309

185,835 Stillwater 3,176 3,015

1,902

345

449

5,734

3,341

4,695

225,688 Other 5 7,110 5,845

1,929

423

305

11,278

7,022

8,804

9,184

90,500 90,101 $ 1,906 $ 428 $ 404 $ 171,734 $ 96,748 $ 137,890 $ 3,384,187 Silver































Penasquito 1,992 1,799 $ 24.55 $ 4.26 $ 3.24 $ 44,154 $ 30,660 $ 36,492 $ 355,167 Antamina 1,516 1,090

24.55

4.67

8.74

26,758

12,139

21,666

641,521 Constancia 430 415

24.55

5.99

7.63

10,190

4,538

7,704

220,417 Other 6 2,090 1,695

24.98

8.37

1.94

42,332

24,859

24,333

475,613

6,028 4,999 $ 24.69 $ 5.89 $ 4.36 $ 123,434 $ 72,196 $ 90,195 $ 1,692,718 Palladium































Stillwater 5,444 5,546 $ 2,182 $ 383 $ 428 $ 12,100 $ 7,604 $ 9,977 $ 243,354 Cobalt































Voisey's Bay - - $ n.a. $ n.a. $ n.a. $ - $ - $ - $ 227,510 Operating results













$ 307,268 $ 176,548 $ 238,062 $ 5,547,769 Other



























General and administrative

















$ (21,326) $ (7,239)



Finance costs





















(2,766)

(2,820)



Other



















(2,624)

96



Income tax





















43

-



Total other















$ (26,673) $ (9,963) $ 543,418





















$ 149,875 $ 228,099 $ 6,091,187

1 Units of gold, silver and palladium produced and sold are reported in ounces, while cobalt is reported in pounds. All figures in thousands except cobalt pounds produced and sold, gold and palladium ounces produced and sold and per unit amounts. 2 Quantity produced represent the amount of gold, silver, palladium and cobalt contained in concentrate or dore prior to smelting or refining deductions. Production figures are based on information provided by the operators of the mining operations to which the mineral stream interests relate or management estimates in those situations where other information is not available. Certain production figures may be updated in future periods as additional information is received. 3) Refer to discussion on non-IFRS measure (iii) at the end of this press release. 4) Comprised of the operating Coleman, Copper Cliff, Garson, Creighton and Totten gold interests as well as the non-operating Stobie and Victor gold interests. 5) Comprised of the operating Minto and 777 gold interests as well as the non-operating Rosemont gold interest. 6) Comprised of the operating Los Filos, Zinkgruvan, Yauliyacu, Stratoni, Neves-Corvo, Aljustrel, Minto and 777 silver interests as well as the non-operating Keno Hill, Loma de La Plata, Pascua-Lama and Rosemont silver interests.

On a gold equivalent and silver equivalent basis, results for the Company for the three months ended September 30, 2020 were as follows:

Three Months Ended September 30, 2020

Ounces

Produced 1, 2 Ounces

Sold 2 Average

Realized

Price

($'s Per

Ounce) Average

Cash Cost

($'s Per

Ounce) 3 Cash Operating Margin

($'s Per Ounce) 4 Average

Depletion

($'s Per

Ounce) Gross

Margin

($'s Per

Ounce) Gold equivalent basis 5 181,184 166,611 $ 1,844 $ 421 $ 1,423 $ 364 $ 1,059 Silver equivalent basis 5 13,045 11,996 $ 25.61 $ 5.85 $ 19.76 $ 5.05 $ 14.71

1) Quantity produced represent the amount of gold, silver, palladium and cobalt contained in concentrate or dore prior to smelting or refining deductions. Production figures are based on information provided by the operators of the mining operations to which the mineral stream interests relate or management estimates in those situations where other information is not available. Certain production figures may be updated in future periods as additional information is received. 2) Silver ounces produced and sold in thousands. 3) Refer to discussion on non-IFRS measure (iii) at the end of this press release. 4) Refer to discussion on non-IFRS measure (iv) at the end of this press release. 5) GEOs and SEOs, which are provided to assist the reader, are based on the following commodity price assumptions: $1,800 per ounce gold; $25.00 per ounce silver; $2,300 per ounce palladium; and $17.75 per pound cobalt; consistent with those used in estimating the Company's production guidance for 2021.

Non-IFRS Measures

Wheaton has included, throughout this document, certain non-IFRS performance measures, including (i) adjusted net earnings and adjusted net earnings per share; (ii) operating cash flow per share (basic and diluted); (iii) average cash costs of gold, silver and palladium on a per ounce basis and cobalt on a per pound basis, with the Company receiving its first deliveries of cobalt from Voisey's Bay during the first quarter of 2021; and (iv) cash operating margin. The Company has removed the non-IFRS measure associated with net debt as Wheaton fully repaid its debt during the first quarter of 2021.

i. Adjusted net earnings and adjusted net earnings per share are calculated by removing the effects of non-cash impairment charges,non-cash fair value (gains) losses and other one-time (income) expenses as well as the reversal of non-cash income tax expense (recovery) which is offset by income tax expense (recovery) recognized in the Statements of Shareholders' Equity and OCI, respectively. The Company believes that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, management and certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance.





The following table provides a reconciliation of adjusted net earnings and adjusted net earnings per share (basic and diluted).



Three Months Ended

September 30 (in thousands, except for per share amounts)

2021

2020 Net earnings

$ 134,937

$ 149,875 Add back (deduct):











(Gain) loss on fair value adjustment of share purchase warrants held



1,246



1,107 (Gain) loss on fair value adjustment of convertible notes receivable



490



1,095 Income tax expense (recovery) recognized in the Statement of Shareholders' Equity



(269)



(92) Income tax expense (recovery) recognized in the Statement of OCI



627



(9) Other



56



31 Adjusted net earnings

$ 137,087

$ 152,007 Divided by:











Basic weighted average number of shares outstanding



450,326



449,125 Diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding



451,717



451,999 Equals:











Adjusted earnings per share - basic

$ 0.304

$ 0.338 Adjusted earnings per share - diluted

$ 0.303

$ 0.336

ii. Operating cash flow per share (basic and diluted) is calculated by dividing cash generated by operating activities by the weighted average number of shares outstanding (basic and diluted). The Company presents operating cash flow per share as management and certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance in comparison to other companies in the precious metal mining industry who present results on a similar basis.





The following table provides a reconciliation of operating cash flow per share (basic and diluted).



Three Months Ended

September 30 (in thousands, except for per share amounts)

2021

2020 Cash generated by operating activities

$ 201,287

$ 228,099 Divided by:











Basic weighted average number of shares outstanding



450,326



449,125 Diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding



451,717



451,999 Equals:











Operating cash flow per share - basic

$ 0.447

$ 0.508 Operating cash flow per share - diluted

$ 0.446

$ 0.505

iii. Average cash cost of gold, silver and palladium on a per ounce basis and cobalt on a per pound basis is calculated by dividing the total cost of sales, less depletion, by the ounces or pounds sold. In the precious metal mining industry, this is a common performance measure but does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. In addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, management and certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance and ability to generate cash flow.





The following table provides a calculation of average cash cost of gold, silver and palladium on a per ounce basis and cobalt on a per pound basis.



Three Months Ended

September 30 (in thousands, except for gold and palladium ounces sold, cobalt pounds sold and per unit amounts)

2021

2020 Cost of sales

$ 117,505

$ 130,720 Less: depletion



(54,976)



(60,601) Cash cost of sales

$ 62,529

$ 70,119 Cash cost of sales is comprised of:











Total cash cost of gold sold

$ 31,405

$ 38,570 Total cash cost of silver sold



27,782



29,426 Total cash cost of palladium sold



2,667



2,123 Total cash cost of cobalt sold



675



- Total cash cost of sales

$ 62,529

$ 70,119 Divided by:











Total gold ounces sold



67,649



90,101 Total silver ounces sold



5,487



4,999 Total palladium ounces sold



5,703



5,546 Total cobalt pounds sold



131,174



- Equals:











Average cash cost of gold (per ounce)

$ 464

$ 428 Average cash cost of silver (per ounce)

$ 5.06

$ 5.89 Average cash cost of palladium (per ounce)

$ 468

$ 383 Average cash cost of cobalt (per pound)

$ 5.15

$ n.a.

iv. Cash operating margin is calculated by subtracting the average cash cost of gold, silver and palladium on a per ounce basis and cobalt on a per pound basis from the average realized selling price of gold, silver and palladium on a per ounce basis and cobalt on a per pound basis. The Company presents cash operating margin as management and certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance in comparison to other companies in the precious metal mining industry who present results on a similar basis as well as to evaluate the Company's ability to generate cash flow.





The following table provides a reconciliation of cash operating margin.



Three Months Ended

September 30 (in thousands, except for cobalt pounds sold, gold and palladium ounces sold and per unit amounts)

2021

2020 Total sales:











Gold

$ 121,416

$ 171,734 Silver

$ 130,587

$ 123,434 Palladium

$ 13,834

$ 12,100 Cobalt

$ 3,120

$ - Divided by:











Total gold ounces sold



67,649



90,101 Total silver ounces sold



5,487



4,999 Total palladium ounces sold



5,703



5,546 Total cobalt pounds sold



131,174



- Equals:











Average realized price of gold (per ounce)

$ 1,795

$ 1,906 Average realized price of silver (per ounce)

$ 23.80

$ 24.69 Average realized price of palladium (per ounce)

$ 2,426

$ 2,182 Average realized price of cobalt (per pound)

$ 23.78

$ n.a. Less:











Average cash cost of gold 1 (per ounce)

$ (464)

$ (428) Average cash cost of silver 1 (per ounce)

$ (5.06)

$ (5.89) Average cash cost of palladium 1 (per ounce)

$ (468)

$ (383) Average cash cost of cobalt 1 (per pound)

$ (5.15)

$ n.a. Equals:











Cash operating margin per gold ounce sold

$ 1,331

$ 1,478 As a percentage of realized price of gold



74%



78% Cash operating margin per silver ounce sold

$ 18.74

$ 18.80 As a percentage of realized price of silver



79%



76% Cash operating margin per palladium ounce sold

$ 1,958

$ 1,799 As a percentage of realized price of palladium



81%



82% Cash operating margin per cobalt pound sold

$ 18.63

$ n.a. As a percentage of realized price of cobalt



78%



n.a.

1) Please refer to non-IFRS measure (iii), above.

These non-IFRS measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS, and other companies may calculate these measures differently. The presentation of these non-IFRS measures is intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. For more detailed information, please refer to Wheaton's MD&A available on the Company's website at www.wheatonpm.com and posted on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance of Wheaton and, in some instances, the business, mining operations and performance of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties. Forward-looking statements, which are all statements other than statements of historical fact, include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the successful negotiation and entering into of definitive documentation by Wheaton International with Rio2, payment by Wheaton International of US$50 million to Rio2 and the satisfaction of each party's obligations in accordance with the Fenix PMPA, the receipt by Wheaton International of gold production in respect of the Fenix Gold project, statements with respect to the future price of commodities, the impact of epidemics (including the COVID-19 virus pandemic), including the potential heightening of other risks, the estimation of future production from Mining Operations (including in the estimation of production, mill throughput, grades, recoveries and exploration potential), the estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources (including the estimation of reserve conversion rates) and the realization of such estimations, the commencement, timing and achievement of construction, expansion or improvement projects by Wheaton's PMPA counterparties at mineral stream interests owned by Wheaton (the "Mining Operations"), the ability of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties to comply with the terms of a PMPA (including as a result of the business, mining operations and performance of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties) and the potential impacts of such on Wheaton, the costs of future production, the estimation of produced but not yet delivered ounces, the impact of the listing of the Company's common shares, any statements as to future dividends, the ability to fund outstanding commitments and the ability to continue to acquire accretive PMPAs, future payments by the Company in accordance with PMPAs, including any acceleration of payments, projected increases to Wheaton's production and cash flow profile, projected changes to Wheaton's production mix, the ability of Wheaton's PMPA counterparties to comply with the terms of any other obligations under agreements with the Company, the ability to sell precious metals and cobalt production, confidence in the Company's business structure, the Company's assessment of taxes payable and the impact of the CRA Settlement for years subsequent to 2010, possible audits for taxation years subsequent to 2015, the Company's assessment of the impact of any tax reassessments, the Company's intention to file future tax returns in a manner consistent with the CRA Settlement, and assessments of the impact and resolution of various legal and tax matters, including but not limited to outstanding class action and audits. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "projects", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", "potential", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Wheaton to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to specific risks relating to the completion of documentation and diligence for the Fenix PMPA with Rio2, the satisfaction of each party's obligations in accordance with the terms of the Fenix PMPA with Rio2, risks associated with fluctuations in the price of commodities (including Wheaton's ability to sell its precious metals or cobalt production at acceptable prices or at all), risks of significant impacts on Wheaton or the Mining Operations as a result of an epidemic (including the COVID-19 virus pandemic), risks related to the Mining Operations (including fluctuations in the price of the primary or other commodities mined at such operations, regulatory, political and other risks of the jurisdictions in which the Mining Operations are located, actual results of mining, risks associated with the exploration, development, operating, expansion and improvement of the Mining Operations, environmental and economic risks of the Mining Operations, and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined), the absence of control over the Mining Operations and having to rely on the accuracy of the public disclosure and other information Wheaton receives from the Mining Operations, uncertainty in the estimation of production from Mining Operations, uncertainty in the accuracy of mineral reserve and mineral resource estimation, the ability of each party to satisfy their obligations in accordance with the terms of the PMPAs, the estimation of future production from Mining Operations, Wheaton's interpretation of, compliance with or application of, tax laws and regulations or accounting policies and rules being found to be incorrect, any challenge or reassessment by the CRA of the Company's tax filings being successful and the potential negative impact to the Company's previous and future tax filings, assessing the impact of the CRA Settlement for years subsequent to 2010 (including whether there will be any material change in the Company's facts or change in law or jurisprudence), potential implementation of a 15% global minimum tax, counterparty credit and liquidity, mine operator concentration, indebtedness and guarantees, hedging, competition, claims and legal proceedings against Wheaton or the Mining Operations, security over underlying assets, governmental regulations, international operations of Wheaton and the Mining Operations, exploration, development, operations, expansions and improvements at the Mining Operations, environmental regulations and climate change, Wheaton and the Mining Operations ability to obtain and maintain necessary licenses, permits, approvals and rulings, Wheaton and the Mining Operations ability to comply with applicable laws, regulations and permitting requirements, lack of suitable infrastructure and employees to support the Mining Operations, inability to replace and expand mineral reserves, including anticipated timing of the commencement of production by certain Mining Operations (including increases in production, estimated grades and recoveries), uncertainties of title and indigenous rights with respect to the Mining Operations, Wheaton and the Mining Operations ability to obtain adequate financing, the Mining Operations ability to complete permitting, construction, development and expansion, global financial conditions, and other risks discussed in the section entitled "Description of the Business  Risk Factors" in Wheaton's Annual Information Form available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, Wheaton's Form 40-F for the year ended December 31, 2020 and Form 6-K filed March 11, 2021 both on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on EDGAR (the "Disclosure"). Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management currently believes to be reasonable, including (without limitation):the completion of documentation and diligence in respect of the Fenix PMPA with Rio2, the payment of US$50 million to Rio2 and the satisfaction of each party's obligations in accordance with the terms of the Fenix PMPA with Rio2, that there will be no material adverse change in the market price of commodities, that neither Wheaton nor the Mining Operations will suffer significant impacts as a result of an epidemic (including the COVID-19 virus pandemic), that the Mining Operations will continue to operate and the mining projects will be completed in accordance with public statements and achieve their stated production estimates, that the mineral reserves and mineral resource estimates from Mining Operations (including reserve conversion rates) are accurate, that each party will satisfy their obligations in accordance with the PMPAs, that Wheaton will continue to be able to fund or obtain funding for outstanding commitments, that Wheaton will be able to source and obtain accretive PMPAs, that any outbreak or threat of an outbreak of a virus or other contagions or epidemic disease will be adequately responded to locally, nationally, regionally and internationally, without such response requiring any prolonged closure of the Mining Operations or having other material adverse effects on the Company and counterparties to its PMPAs, that the trading of the Company's common shares will not be adversely affected by the differences in liquidity, settlement and clearing systems as a result of multiple listings of the Common Shares on the LSE, the TSX and the NYSE, that the trading of the Company's common shares will not be suspended, and that the net proceeds of sales of common shares, if any, will be used as anticipated, that expectations regarding the resolution of legal and tax matters will be achieved (including ongoing class action litigation and CRA audits involving the Company), that Wheaton has properly considered the interpretation and application of Canadian tax law to its structure and operations, that Wheaton has filed its tax returns and paid applicable taxes in compliance with Canadian tax law, that Wheaton's application of the CRA Settlement for years subsequent to 2010 is accurate (including the Company's assessment that there will be no material change in the Company's facts or change in law or jurisprudence for years subsequent to 2010), and such other assumptions and factors as set out in the Disclosure. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and even if events or results described in the forward-looking statements are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Wheaton. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and are cautioned that actual outcomes may vary. The forward-looking statements included herein are for the purpose of providing readers with information to assist them in understanding Wheaton's expected financial and operational performance and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made, reflects Wheaton's management's current beliefs based on current information and will not be updated except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Although Wheaton has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in forwardlooking statements, there may be other factors that cause results, level of activity, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended.

SOURCE Wheaton Precious Metals Corp.

Related Links

https://www.wheatonpm.com/


COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- White Castle, the well-known fast-food and consumer packaged-goods company, is celebrating Veterans Day by offering a free Combo Meal #1-#6 or Breakfast Combo Meal to all veterans and active duty service members who dine at a participating White Castle restaurant. The special offer is valid on Thursday, Nov. 11.

"Both past and current members of the U.S. military have put their lives on the line to protect us and the freedoms we all hold dear," said Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle. "Offering a complimentary meal is a small but very genuine token of our appreciation for the sacrifices they've made on behalf of our country."

White Castle has special offer for veterans and active duty military on Veterans Day. Tweet this

Veterans and those on active duty are encouraged to visit their local White Castle to receive this offer in recognition of their service. No purchase is necessary, but veterans and active duty personnel are requested to show a military ID.

For more information, visit www.whitecastle.com.

About White Castle

White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain, has been making hot and tasty Sliders as a family-owned business for 100 years. Based in Columbus, Ohio, White Castle started serving The Original Slider in 1921. Today, White Castle owns and operates more than 350 restaurants dedicated to satisfying customers' cravings morning, noon and night. Through its retail division, which launched in 1987, White Castle also offers its famous fare in freezer aisles of grocery, convenience and club stores nationwide. The Original Slider, named in 2014 as Time magazine's "Most Influential Burger of All Time," is served alongside a menu of creatively crafted Sliders and other mouthwatering food options, including White Castle's Impossible Slider, named by Thrillist in 2019 as the "Best Plant-Based Fast-Food Burger." White Castle's commitment to maintaining the highest quality products extends to the company owning and operating its own meat processing plants, bakeries and frozen-food processing plants. In 2021, 100 years after the first Slider was sold, Fast Company named the fast-food pioneer one of the "10 Most Innovative Dining Companies." White Castle is known for the legendary loyalty of its team members, more than 1 in 4 of whom have worked for White Castle for at least 10 years, and also for its faithful fans ("Cravers"), many of whom compete each year for entry into the Cravers Hall of Fame. The official White Castle app, available at iTunes App Store or Google Play, makes it easy for Cravers to access sweet deals and place pickup orders at any time. They can also have their orders delivered using one of White Castle's delivery partners. For more information on White Castle, visit whitecastle.com.

SOURCE White Castle

Related Links

http://www.whitecastle.com


BOSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts (WWCMA) is pleased to announce the winners of its sixth annual WorkWell Massachusetts Awards, powered by Healthiest Employers. The awards program recognizes achievements in developing, implementing, and participating in corporate health improvement and wellness programs.



"We know that the well-being of employees and developing a culture to support them can help organizations not only achieve better business outcomes, but also encourage employees to be their best selves. Due to the many recent challenges facing employers today such as the COVID-19 pandemic, now more than ever, well-being has become a main focus," says Jenna Carter, WWCMA Board Director and Awards & Recognition Committee Co-Chair. "We are excited to recognize those organizations that are prioritizing a culture of well-being and providing best-in-class programs to meet the needs of their diverse workforce."

"It's imperative that organizations maintain their competitive advantage by providing employees with an environment they can thrive in with supportive resources across all dimensions of well-being (particularly mental and financial well-being). In doing so, it will help them attract and retain staff and be one of the best places to work," explains Archana Kansagra, WWCMA Board Director and Awards & Recognition Committee Co-Chair. "We commend these award-winning employers for putting their people first. Their employees are empowered, connected, and engaged in their health, well-being, and community. Let's learn from these best practices as we figure out the new normal."

WorkWell Massachusetts Awards is a corporate award program created by the Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts (WWCMA), a not-for-profit member organization dedicated to the advancement of worksite wellness programs. WWCMA is partnering with Healthiest Employers, a trusted national awards program that recognizes people-first organizations taking a proactive approach to employee health.

The judging is based on each organization's Healthiest Employers Index  a metric based on six categories: Culture and Leadership Commitment, Foundational Components, Strategic Planning, Communications and Marketing, Programming and Interventions, and Reporting and Analytics. The questionnaire, scoring, and benchmarking were formed with the help of a national, non-biased group of representatives from the academic, medical, and wellness communities. The assessment is scored rubric style on a 1100 scale, with each question totaling .253 points.

"We are proud to recognize these innovative employers for their outstanding wellness programs focusing on the health and well-being of their employees, especially now with the challenges brought on by COVID-19," states Kristie Howard, WWCMA Board Chair. "These challenges are changing the business environment. Investing in employee well-being as a top priority is what sets these companies apart."

This year's awarded companies will be recognized for their best practices in employee health and well-being and receive their WorkWell Massachusetts Award on December 15, 2021 at WWCMA's 10th Anniversary Celebration event at MOLTI on Moody in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The 2021 WorkWell Massachusetts Award Winners (by size category):

SMALL (under 1,000 employees)

Babson College

Borislow Insurance

Boston College High School

Health New England LARGE , continued

CBIZ

Gilbane, Inc.

Ocean State Job Lot

South Shore Health

ZOLL Medical Corporation



MID-SIZE (1,000-2,499 employees)

College of the Holy Cross

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

Ocean Spray Corporation

Philadelphia Insurance Companies

Walker & Dunlop

ZoomInfo LARGEST (5,000+ employees)

Boston Medical Center

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Eversource Energy

U-Haul

Ultimate Kronos Group



LARGE (2,500-4,999 employees)

AAA Northeast

athenahealth

Berkshire Health Systems

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Brightview Senior Living

Cambridge Health Alliance HONORABLE MENTION

ALKU (SMALL)

EverQuote (SMALL)

Gentle Giant Moving Company (SMALL)

The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod (SMALL)

MAPFRE Insurance (MID-SIZE)

Tufts Health Plan (LARGE)

About Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts

The Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts (WWCMA) is the preeminent, independent and objective resource for well-being in the workplace. A not-for-profit member organization, WWCMA champions wellness strategies that help employers encourage healthy employees, healthy families and healthy communities across the Commonwealth. The Council offers innovative wellness best practice education, networking and training along with insightful resources for use by Massachusetts organizations and their corporate wellness teams. Visit us at wwcma.org and follow us @WorkWellMass.

About Healthiest Employers

Healthiest Employers is a trusted awards program that recognizes people-first organizations taking a more proactive approach to employee health. Our goal is to be a resource for organizations focused on improving their employees' health, creating a community invested in their populations' health and wellbeing. Since 2009, Healthiest Employers has been the leading recognition program for employer wellness. Healthiest Employers has attracted over 10,000 employers from all 50 states, including 72% of the Fortune 100. Today, the Healthiest Employers community represents over 60 million employees or roughly one-third of the U.S. working population.

SOURCE Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts
TOKYO and NAGOYA, Japan, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NORITAKE CO., LIMITED (Noritake), Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. (Tokyo Gas) and Tokyo Gas Engineering Solutions Corporation (TGES) have announced the development of the world's first hydrogen combustion-type continuous combustion furnace (*1) "C-SERT-RHK-Nero (*2)" (Nero) for making lithium-ion battery (LiB) electrode materials. The furnace has achieved zero carbon emission for making lithium-ion battery electrode materials by adapting a special ceramic radiant tube burner.

Nero, created by the fusion of Noritake's firing furnace technology (*3) and Tokyo Gas/TGES hydrogen combustion technology, (*4) is an innovative device to realize zero carbon emission at firing.

Image1: World's first hydrogen burning-type roller hearth kiln for lithium-ion battery electrode materials (C-SERT-RHK-Nero) https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106099/202110282452/_prw_PI1fl_62Q2l98c.jpg

Nero performs stable heat treatment using hydrogen as fuel at the high temperature (1,000 degrees C or higher) required in the manufacturing process of LiB electrode materials which are in high demand in recent years. High-temperature firing by hydrogen mono-fuel combustion does not generate CO2, but there are issues to be cleared such as stable heating and suppression of NOx (nitrogen oxides) generation especially in narrow space. However, by combining the three companies' technologies, they have overcome the problems and succeeded in commercializing this product.

Noritake, Tokyo Gas and TGES intend to use the highly efficient heating technology of Nero not only for LiB electrode materials, but also for applications such as automobile manufacturing fields (i.e. hot stamping) and 5G electronic parts that require stable heat treatment at high temperature. Three companies will also apply this technology in other fields of applications to contribute to decarbonization of heating processes for various products.

Features of this product

Image2: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106099/202110282452/_prw_PI4fl_2IIyV4iv.jpg

Achieve zero carbon by adapting hydrogen combustion type Suppress NOx (nitrogen oxides) generation at hydrogen combustion Since the combustion speed is fast and the flame temperature is high for high-temperature firing by hydrogen mono-fuel combustion, suppression of NOx generation is possible by original combustion technology while NOx tends to be generated especially in narrow space. Achieve temperature accuracy equivalent to natural gas combustion by original firing technology and high-durability burner Three companies have solved the issue of durability which was a problem for the conventional electric heating type by adapting special ceramic with high heat-proof and corrosion resistance (active oxidation resistance (*5), lithium attack resistance (*6)) to the burner as a heating element (radiant tube). With original firing technology, stable heating such as leveling of temperature distribution, smooth temperature follow-up, and maintenance of oxygen concentration becomes possible and thus temperature accuracy equivalent to that at natural gas combustion is achieved by hydrogen combustion. Applicable to heat treatment at various high temperatures

- LiB field: Cathode material, anode material, next-generation battery material

- Automobile field: Super high-tensile steel plate (hot stamp), sintered parts, plug, sensor, catalyst, magnetic material

- Communication field: 5G electronic parts, ferrite, ceramic circuit board, target material, etc. Correspondence to firing mixture of hydrogen and natural gas By firing a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen that is still high in price, CO2 emissions can be reduced while reducing energy cost compared with firing of natural gas alone.

Image3: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106099/202110282452/_prw_PI3fl_Tj73HZ2f.jpg

Detail video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uZcaQGXxviY

For QR code: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106099/202110282452/_prw_PI5fl_mEzv0D1u.png

RHK lineup for LiB electrode material

Natural gas type: C-SERT-RHK

- Capable to reduce maximum 40% energy cost, compared with electricity type

- Achieve high durability by adapting special ceramic radiant tube burner in same way as Nero

Electricity type: C-SERT-RHK-Fos (*7)

- High durability, compared with conventional electric type, by adapting special ceramic radiant tube burner in same way as Nero

- Capable with electricity when securing natural gas and hydrogen utility is difficult.

Notes:

(*1) Continuous hydrogen combustion-type furnace: Roller-type furnace that performs high-quality heat treatment by processing products to pass through the set temperature continuously by roller conveyance (*2) C-SERT-RHK-Nero: Hydrogen combustion-type C-SERT-RHK C: Ceramic, SERT: Single-end radiant tube burner, RHK: Roller hearth kiln Nero: Means water in Greek (hydrogen combustion type) (*3) Noritake's firing furnace technology: World's leading track record in firing furnaces for manufacturing LiB electrode materials. Noritake's consistent, high-speed and atmosphere-controlled heating technology for roller hearth kilns cultivated in tableware manufacturing contributes to the development of advanced industries with high quality and equipment technology essential for mass production. (*4) Tokyo Gas/TGES hydrogen combustion technology: They have developed regenerative burners and ceramic radiant tube burners (C-SERT) as pioneers of energy-saving burners in Japan and are proud of their track record of selling 1,200 C-SERTs. (*5) Active oxidation resistance: an oxidation phenomenon that occurs in an environment with a very small amount of oxygen concentration at high temperature (aka production environment for negative electrode materials). Since this phenomenon exhausts the atoms that make up the ceramic, the life of the general-purpose ceramic heater is shortened significantly. (*6) Lithium attack resistance: a phenomenon in which highly corrosive lithium contained in the cathode material melts, adheres to, and damages walls and heating equipment (gas burners and electric heaters) (*7) Means light in Greek, high corrosion-resistance heater type

For company information, please visit: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106099/202110282452/_prw_PA1fl_6tf7L8c9.pdf

SOURCE NORITAKE CO., LIMITED, Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd., Tokyo Gas Engineering Solutions Corporation
LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Yondr Group, a global leader, developer, owner operator and service provider of data centers today confirmed plans to develop the largest data center campus located in Slough. The initial phase will see the development of a 30MW facility, which is expected to be ready for service by the first quarter of 2023. The data center campus will have a total capacity of 100MW when fully developed.

Located on the outskirts of London, Slough, a major data center hub for the United Kingdom, represents a key strategic site in the company's rapidly growing portfolio of global data centers. Yondr recently announced a $2 billion investment to expand its operations into the Americas, with the acquisition of 270 acres of prime real estate in Northern Virginia and a $1 billion joint venture partnership with the Everstone Group to develop and operate data centers in India.

"The M4 Corridor connects London to the heart of Britain and is home to some of the world's leading organisations. Being located in Slough will allow us to serve our clients in the most sought after metro in the United Kingdom," said Paul Hood, Managing Director of Operations, EMEA at Yondr Group. "We are excited to bolster our growing global presence with the addition of Slough, while continuing to transform the data center industry."

Yondr took a unique and creative approach to ensuring it is able to meet the future power demands of its data centers. With a close partnership with the local municipality and energy infrastructure partners, Yondr is able to deliver power and capacity at scale, solving a known constraint in this metro.

The company has also made several biodiversity and community development commitments, which include working with the wildlife Trust and supporting STEM UK Learning's ENTHUSE programme by partnering with local schools.

About Yondr Group

Yondr Group is a developer, owner operator and service provider of data centers. The company's mission is to meet growing businesses' data center capacity and technical real estate needs faster, more elegantly and with better performance outcomes than anyone else. As an organisation, Yondr self-funds, designs, delivers and operates hyperscale data center facilities globally. For more information, visit www.yondrgroup.com

SOURCE Yondr Group

Related Links

http://www.yondrgroup.com


Tripoli, Nov 4 : The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said 357 illegal immigrants were rescued and returned to Libya.

"357 persons were returned last night to Tripoli (90) and to Zawiya (267) in two separate operations. As many as 54 women and 22 children among them," UNHCR tweeted.

"The boat returned to Tripoli with 90 onboard was in distress at sea for two days. UNHCR & IRC provided medical aid and assistance to all survivors," it said.

Many illegal immigrants, mostly Africans, choose to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores from Libya, given the chaos and insecurity that have plagued the North African country since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to UNHCR, nearly 28,000 illegal immigrants have been rescued and returned to Libya so far this year.

Rescued migrants were detained inside overcrowded reception centers across Libya, despite repeated international calls for closing those centers.
Tripoli, Nov 4 : A day after a group of 91 illegal immigrants, mostly children, were voluntarily repatriated from Libya to their home country Niger.

"Based on instructions from the Interior Minister regarding resumption of voluntary repatriation flights for illegal immigrants, a flight deported from Misurata International Airport to Niger's Niamey airport through the International Organization for Migration (IOM)," Hussain Attorki, Head of Migrants Deportation department in Misurata International Airport, told Xinhua.

"The flight carried 91 illegal immigrants, including six men, 25 women, and 60 children and infants," he added.

Libya has been suffering insecurity and chaos since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, making the North African country a preferred point of departure for illegal immigrants who want to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Voluntary Humanitarian Return program, run by the IOM, arranges the return of illegal immigrants stranded in Libya to their homeland.

Since 2015, more than 53,000 illegal immigrants have been repatriated from Libya through the program, which is carried out under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration and through the Italian foreign ministry's Migration Fund.
Washington, Nov 4 : The US services sector posted strong growth in October despite persistent hiring challenge, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has reported.

The Services Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) registered all-time high of 66.7 per cent, 4.8 percentage points above September's reading, according to the latest Services ISM Report on Business on Wednesday. Any reading above 50 per cent indicates the services sector is generally expanding.

The composite index, which eclipsed the previous record of 64.1 per cent in July, indicated growth for the 17th consecutive month after a two-month contraction in April and May 2020, the report noted. Previous records were set in May (64 per cent) and March (63.7 per cent).

"Activity has never been more fast-paced, demand shows no signs of slowing, prices show no signs of falling, good help is hard to find and the wait time for supplies is everlong," Tim Quinlan and Shannon Seery, Economists at Wells Fargo Securities, said in an analysis.

The Business Activity Index reached 69.8 per cent, an increase of 7.5 percentage points compared to the reading in September, and the New Orders Index hit 69.7 per cent, up 6.2 percentage points from October figure, which both set all-time high, the ISM report showed.

Demand shows no signs of slowing, reflected by the Backlog of Orders Index, which set a record of 67.3 per cent, 5.4 percentage points higher than the September reading, and the Prices Index, which reached its second-highest reading ever at 82.9 per cent, up 5.4 percentage points from the September figure, according to the report.

"In response, services businesses are struggling to stock up," as the Inventories Index 42.2 per cent, down 3.9 percentage points from September's reading, said Anthony Nieves, Chair of the ISM's Services Business Survey Committee.

Quinlan and Seery noted that businesses continue to face "persistent labor challenges," as exhibited by the decline in the ISM services employment component to a four-month low of 51.6.

This is "contradictory" to this morning's separately reported data by payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) that private sector employment rose by a better-than-expected 5,71,000 in October with service-provider employment up 4,58,000, or the most since June, according to Quinlan and Seery.

"The primary challenge to the labor market's recovery continues to be the supply of workers," they added.
Glasgow, Nov 4 : The end of coal -- the single biggest contributor to climate change -- is in sight thanks to the UK securing a 190-strong coalition of countries and organisations at the UN climate negotiations (COP26), with countries such as Poland, Vietnam, Egypt, Chile and Morocco announcing clear commitments to phase out coal power.

Wednesday's commitments, brought together through UK-led efforts, including the new 'Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement', encompass developed and developing countries, major coal users and climate vulnerable countries.

This includes 18 countries committing for the first time to phase out and not build or invest in new coal power, including Poland, Vietnam, and Chile, marking a milestone moment at COP26 in the global clean energy transition.

This statement commits nations across the world to: end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally; rapidly scale up deployment of clean power generation; phase out coal power in economies in the 2030s for major economies and 2040s for the rest of the world; and make a just transition away from coal power in a way that benefits workers and communities.

This is on top of China, Japan and Korea, the three largest public financiers of coal, committing to end overseas finance for coal generation by the end of 2021, announced in 2020 during the UK's incoming COP26 Presidency.

Agreements at the G7, G20 and OECD to end public international coal finance send a strong signal that the world economy is shifting to renewables. This could end over 40GW of coal across 20 countries, equivalent to over half of the UK's electricity generating capacity.

Business and Energy Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng said: "Today marks a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change as nations from all corners of the world unite in Glasgow to declare that coal has no part to play in our future power generation." "Spearheaded by the UK's COP26 Presidency, today's ambitious commitments made by our international partners demonstrate that the end of coal is in sight. The world is moving in the right direction, standing ready to seal coal's fate and embrace the environmental and economic benefits of building a future that is powered by clean energy." To meet the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees, the global transition to clean power needs to progress four to six times faster than at present.

With coal being the single largest contributor to climate change, phasing it out and delivering a rapid, inclusive transition to clean energy is essential if we are to keep 1.5 degrees alive.

Twenty-eight new members on Wednesday signed up to the world's largest alliance on phasing out coal, the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) launched and co-chaired by the UK.

Chile, Singapore and Durban joined over 150 countries, sub-nationals and businesses, including finance partners NatWest, Lloyds Banking, HSBC and Export Development Canada. This accounts for more than $17 trillion assets now committed to PPCA coal phase-out goals.

There has also been a 76 per cent cut in the number of new coal plants planned globally over the last six years which means the cancellation of 1,000GW of new coal plants since the Paris Agreement, roughly equivalent to around 10 times the UK's total peak generating capacity.

Responding to the UK government securing coalition with commitments to phase out coal power, Jonathan Sims, Carbon Tracker Senior Analyst, told IANS: "Fresh country pledges to end the construction of new coal plants, which is vital if long-term climate goals are to be achievable, send a strong signal that coal is out for the count." Dave Jones, Ember's global lead, said: "Today's commitments will help to shift whole continents on their journey to phase out coal. This is such a big moment because by far the biggest gap in ambition to get to 1.5 degrees is a rapid collapse in coal generation i.e. for major economies to phase-out coal power by 2030 and the rest of the world by 2040."
Kanpur, Nov 4 : With 25 more people having tested positive for Zika in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur, the city has now emerged as a hotspot for the virus.

The total number of cases in the city are now 36.

Kanpur District Magistrate, Vishal G Iyer, who held an emergency meeting on Wednesday evening with health officials, said: "The condition of all 25 patients is stable, and there is no need to panic. All the new patients are in home isolation and special teams have been constituted to monitor their health.

"One patient from the earlier cases has been shifted to Kanshi Ram Trauma Centre from home isolation." The latest Zika virus cases were reported from the civilian as well as Army base in Chakeri area of Kanpur.

An alert has been announced in the radius of 30 km of area and a massive vector control drive has also been launched.

The District Magistrate said: "I personally appeal to all residents to ensure that there is no stagnant water collecting in their house or periphery. Fogging exercise and sample collection is on in full swing. We all have to cooperate with each other to overcome this." The first Zika virus case was reported from Pardewanpurwa in Chakeri on October 23 after a 57-year-old Indian Air Force officer tested positive for the virus.

Later, he was admitted to Air Force hospital where the doctors said his condition to be stable.
Mumbai, Nov 4 : It's been a busy year for Vijay Varma. The actor often utilises his shooting breaks by visiting his family back in Hyderabad. This time around too, Vijay has managed to come home for Diwali, just in time as returned from a two-month-long schedule in Varanasi for an upcoming project.

Speaking about the same and celebrating the festival with his family, the actor shared, "I am really excited to be back with my family for Diwali. I always looked forward to this festival as a child so I really wanted to celebrate it back home. When I had got my schedule for the shoots earlier, I was so worried that I won't get to go back to Hyderabad for Diwali but luckily, I was able to wrap my schedules on time so I got these two days off." "Diwali is no fun without family and I had been missing my family a lot when I was stationed in Varanasi these past two months for a shoot. The real fun of festivities comes in your own hometown and with your loved ones around so I am just super glad to be here," he added.

The actor has a slew of interesting projects in the pipeline which include 'Darlings' with Alia Bhatt, 'Fallen' where he will be sharing screen space with Sonakshi Sinha, 'Hurdang' with Nushrratt Bharuccha and Sunny Kaushal and another untitled project.

Vijay has been shooting non-stop in places like Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to fulfill his work commitments.

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Washington, Nov 4 : Healthcare providers in the US are gearing up for a fresh round of inoculation against Covid-19, this time featuring children between the ages of five to 11.

On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children aged 5 to 11, the first that a jab has been greenlighted for kids in this age group, reports Xinhua news agency.

The decision was in line with that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which on October 29 authorized emergency use of the paediatric dose for the roughly 28 million children in that age group.

The vaccine for young children is one-third the adult dose and would be given in two doses, three weeks apart.

The lower dose was chosen to minimize side effects and still produce strong immunity, according to Pfizer.

A total of 172 children aged 5-11 have died from Covid-19 in the US and more than 8,300 have been hospitalised, said the CDC data.

On Wednesday, the CDC updated that 221,961,370 people have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, making up 66.9 per cent of the whole US population; while fully vaccinated people stood at 192,726,406, accounting for 58.1 per cent of the total.

A total of 19,783,921 people, or 10.3 per cent of fully vaccinated group, have received booster shots.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Geneva, Nov 4 : Robert Mardini, Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has called on the more than 100 world leaders attending the ongoing UN climate summit, to prioritise the planet's most vulnerable populations who face the dual challenge of armed conflicts and the dire consequences of climate change.

Mardini spoke to Xinhua news agency on the sidelines of the ongoing 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Glasgow, Scotland. He identified three main priorities for the participants.

"The first one is for the international community to acknowledge that actually people living in armed conflicts and in contests affected by climate change are the most vulnerable and are to be really prioritized. The second one is the collective bold effort from the international community to focus on genuine and meaningful mitigation measures to reduce carbon emissions and to avert the climate crisis in the first place," he said.

"And the third one is really linked to the most vulnerable (populations). They should be top of the list in terms of support, (but) the fact of the matter today (is) they are totally neglected." Between 2018 and 2020, Mardini was head of the ICRC's delegation and permanent observer to the UN in New York. During his 22 years with the ICRC, he also led the ICRC's Water and Habitat Unit, which managed projects in over 40 countries, such as Rwanda and Iraq.

On the eve of the current COP26 meeting, he visited Mali, where he gained first-hand experience of how climate change is pushing families to the brink in a country also battered by nearly a decade of conflict.

"I think Mali and many of the countries in the Sahel region exemplify really the 'perfect storm,' where communities find themselves being at the intersection of conflicts, violence, and also the consequences of climate change that are more and more visible," he said.

"I was in Mali last week and I could see first-hand how those double challenges are hitting hard communities... I spoke with a woman for instance in a (displaced) camp, and she told me how she lost her house twice. The first time she lost it to floods, the second time she lost it to violence because of armed competition and violence around shrinking water resources and grazing lands," he said.

"This is the story of millions of people living across the Sahel, in Niger, in Burkina Faso, including in places like Afghanistan. Out of the 25 countries that are today the most vulnerable to climate change, 14 are actually countries that are torn by armed conflict. So, you can imagine how challenging it is for those populations to face this double adversity," he noted.

According to the UN, climate hazards have already damaged around 80 per cent of the farmlands in the Sahel region, drastically reducing food sources.

Some 29 million people in the region were reported to need humanitarian assistance and protection, more than ever before.

Whether in Mali, Niger or Afghanistan, where the ICRC is present, "if I put really myself in the shoes of ordinary people who are struggling with the consequences of climate change, with the more frequent floods, drought, desertification, declining of water tables and hardship, I think that we are reaching a point where ... the collective action needs to be taken by all states today".

Mardini said that the ICRC has witnessed conflicts that are more fragmented, more deadly for the civilian population, and are harder and harder to solve politically.

"So the key here is for the international community and the warring sides to reach settlements, to really create political consensus to solve conflicts in the long term," he said, urging the international community to "put everything in place to ensure respect for the rules and for international humanitarian law, which when respected, will reduce human suffering".
Jaipur, Nov 4 : Former SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhary, jailed in the loan scam, has been admitted to Jawahar Hospital after he complained of restlessness, officials said on Thursday morning.

"He was brought to Jawahar Hospital on Wednesday evening after he complained of restlessness and hypertension in jail," they added.

Chaudhary was jailed on Monday evening after the CJM Court of Jaisalmer ordered him to be sent to judicial custody for 14 days in the loan scam case.

Jawahar Hospital's Principal Medical Officer JR Panwar said that Chaudhary is suffering from hypertension and undergoing treatment.

The former SBI chairman has been accused of misusing his position to sell Jaisalmer's Hotel Fort Rajwada against the rules.

The CJM Court of Jaisalmer issued an arrest warrant against him.

On Sunday, the Jaisalmer Police nabbed him from Delhi and brought him to Jaisalmer.

The following day, the court ordered to send him to judicial custody for 14 days.
Liverpool, Nov 4 : Diogo Jota, and Sadio Mane scored as former Champions Liverpool have secured their place in the knockout rounds of the Champions League with a 2-0 victory over Atletico Madrid at Anfield.

Jota opened the scoring in the contest with a header after 13 minutes and Mane followed it up eight minutes later with a reactive finish inside the box.

Atletico then had Felipe sent off towards the end of the first half as Juergen Klopp's men easily overcame a dangerous side on Wednesday night to confirm their status as Group B winners, with two fixtures remaining.

With AC Milan held to a draw by FC Porto earlier in the day, the win at home secured Liverpool the top spot in the group and a place in the Round of 16.

Brazilian midfielder Fabinho returned to the starting XI after a three-match absence through injury and was among five changes for the evening. The other changes saw Kostas Tsimikas, Joel Matip, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Jota handed starting berths.

Both teams begin cautiously and it was a fairly even start to the contest, unlocked by some patient play from Liverpool down the right flank.

Jordan Henderson rolled the ball to Trent Alexander-Arnold, who sent a whipped, first-time cross into the penalty area and Jota was there on the edge of the six-yard box to head the ball home. making it 1-0.

Another superb delivery from the Reds' right-sided full-back produced the team's second goal.

Mane brushed off several Atletico defenders on a run as the ball made its way towards the right-hand side once again.

From there, Alexander-Arnold fired at the goal from distance. Mane intercepted the shot inside the box and redirected it into the back of the net.

Oxlade-Chamberlain nearly made it 3-0 a minute later but was inches off target with a great effort.

It then got worse for the visitors when Felipe was dismissed following a cynical foul on Mane. Quickly looking to capitalise on the one-man advantage, Mohamed Salah and Jota were denied by smart saves from Jan Oblak in the visitors' goal.

Mane was replaced by Roberto Firmino at half-time and the attacks on Atletico citadel continued.

Three minutes into the second period, Portuguese forward thought he had netted his second and the Reds' third when he calmly slotted past Oblak from Matip's brilliant threaded pass, but a VAR review ruled the goal off for offside.

It continued to be all Liverpool in the second half. A charging run from Salah ended with a save from Oblak and vital clearance from Rodrigo De Paul to stop Jota from converting the rebound. From the resulting corner kick, Matip sliced a shot wide.

Jota then didn't connect properly with Tsimikas' fine cross as he watched the ball drift just past the wrong side of the post.

Atletico believed they had pulled one back when Luis Suarez's effort from distance deflected off Matip and wrong-footed Alisson Becker. But again, VAR ruled it out for offside in the build-up.

The visitors showed they were still a danger with 10 men when they launched a threatening counter-attack, which ended with a tame shot from Hector Herrera.

Liverpool continued to dominate proceedings but couldn't add the third goal.
Lagos, Nov 4 : Rescuers found more bodies from the rubble of a 21-storey building that collapsed earlier this week in the city of Lagos, Nigeria's economic hub, bringing the death toll to 22.

So far nine people have been rescued since the collapse on Monday of the building under construction, in the Ikoyi area of Lagos, but an unknown number of people remain unaccounted for, Ibrahim Farinloye, coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Lagos state, said in an update on Wednesday.

Rescue operations are still underway, and an investigation into the cause of the collapse is ongoing, Xinhua news agency quoted Farinloye as saying.

Residents living in the area told Xinhua that the building had been under construction for more than one year and over 50 people, mostly construction workers, were trapped under the rubble.

Earlier on Tuesday, Governor of Lagos Babajide Sanwo-Olu said the state government is setting up an independent panel to find out what caused the collapse.

"It will independently investigate the remote and immediate causes of the incident and make recommendations on how to prevent future occurrences," he said.

"The investigation is not part of the internal probe already being conducted by the government." Local media said the owner of the building did not adhere to building regulations and that the structure was supposed to be only 15 stories tall.
Chennai, Nov 4 : The Greater Chennai Corporation is expecting fireworks waste of around 22 tonnes to be disposed of after the Deepavali festival.

The corporation has arranged nine lorries and 10 battery-operated vehicles(BOV) to dispose of the waste generated during the festivities of Deepavali.

Chennai Corporation officials told IANS that the corporation has been creating awareness since October 2 on the cleanliness required after the fireworks and to remove the waste.

The GCC has been conducting awareness campaigns in association with residential associations in all areas of the corporation. Pamphlets were distributed on the necessity of a clean and green Deepavali and posters pasted across the wards to make people aware of the disposal of waste.

A senior official with the corporation while speaking to IANS said, "We want the residents to segregate the cracker waste from household waste and hand it over to conservation workers who collect in BOVs. Two BOVs will be put in use in each ward to collect the waste." The waste would be transported to the corporation's Gumidipoondy facility after collecting from the wards. Fire extinguishers and all other emergency equipment are ready in all the wards, according to corporation officials.

Water lorries are also stationed at the corporation's Kodungayiur and Peringudi facilities as a backup for any emergency during the festivals and with strict monitoring enforced for bursting only green crackers, the corporation expects that the pollution level would be less especially the noise pollution levels.

The corporation has also created awareness among the residents to segregate household waste and fireworks waste.

While restrictions have been put in place in Tamil Nadu to burst crackers between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. and evening 7 p.m. to 8 p.m, people are not taking this seriously and crackers have been burst all day on Wednesday.

Kannan. K.R, a businessman in Pammal, while speaking to IANS said, "After the pandemic crushed human lives and economy, there is enjoyment and we are expressing our happiness as markets are open, schools are open and pandemic is under control. So naturally, people will celebrate Deepavali with pomp and grandeur and the government and police officials should not enforce these restrictions strictly."

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Rampur, Nov 4 : A leopard that terrorised the residents of Arsal Parsal village in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur district was finally caught by forest officials after a massive search operation that lasted 45 days.

The leopard was first spotted by a villager in September. Later, its frequent sightings led to fear and panic among the residents of the area.

The forest department had sounded an alert and started combing operations.

After several attempts, the leopard was caught.

Forest officials said that the big cat will be released into the forest area in Bijnor district after medical examination.

In September, it was a CCTV camera grab procured from the farmhouse of Satnam Singh, the village head, that confirmed the presence of the animal in the area.

DFO, Rajiv Kumar, said that "villagers had been living under constant fear and had even stop going to their fields. After medical examination, the leopard will be released into the protected forest area in Bijnor district".
Seoul, Nov 4 : Kim Song, North Korea's Ambassador to the UN, has called for the dismantlement of the US-led UN Command (UNC) on the Korean Peninsula, claiming it is only serving the political and military interests of Washington.

The envoy made the remarks at the fourth committee meeting of the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on October 27, accusing the US of using the command for the "occupation" of South Korea and exerting influence in the region, Yonhap News Agency reported late Wednesday night.

"My delegation holds that immediate measures should be taken to dismantle the UNC in South Korea, which abuses the name of the UN," he said.

Established in 1950 under a UN mandate in response to North Korea's military provocations, the UNC has played a role as the enforcer of the armistice agreement that halted the 1950-53 Korean War.

The Ambassador's remarks came as Pyongyang remains unresponsive to Washington's overtures for dialogue, demanding the US first retract what it calls "hostile policy" against the North.

The denuclearisation negotiations have been stalled since the Hanoi summit between the US and North Korea failed to produce a deal in February 2019.

During last week's meeting, the North Korean envoy also criticized Israel for what he called a crime against humanity on Palestinians.

The attending Israeli representative slammed back, saying Kim should focus on his own country that "blocks the provision of aid to its own suffering people".
Mumbai, Nov 4 : Malvika Raj, who is making her debut with the action-thriller 'Squad', says she underwent training sessions stretching for over six month to master combat action and self-defence techniques in order to prepare for her character.

Talking about her experience, Malvika said: "We trained with a trainer who came from Poland and stayed here for six months. All this was very new to me. We were also trained how to act like snipers. In addition, we were also trained to use real guns, employing proper techniques and ensuring safety." She added: "I started from A and got to B and then we managed to shoot an entire action film. I must mention our stunt director Kier Beck, who made it all seem easy. For someone who has been associated with 'Mad Max Fury Road', he was absolutely amazing and it shows in the film as it finally shaped up." The film 'Squad' has been produced, directed and written by Nilesh Sahay. It is the debut film as well of Rinzing Denzongpa, son of veteran actor and entrepreneur Danny Denzongpa. Releasing on November 12 on ZEE5, 'Squad' also features Pooja Batra, Mohan Kapur, Amit Gaur, Tanisha Dhillon and Dishita Jain.
Hyderabad, Nov 4 : Governors and Chief Ministers of the two Telugu states on Thursday greeted people on the occasion of Diwali.

Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan conveyed her heartiest greetings to the people of the state on the auspicious occasion of Deepavali.

She stated in her message that the festival of lights signifies the victory of righteousness over the evil and dispelling of darkness to herald a new light of happiness and prosperity.

She appealed to people to buy the local products and celebrate the festival so as to bring new light into the lives of the indigenous manufacturers in the true spirit of 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat'.

"May this Deepavali usher in new thoughts and promote new ideals to further the brightness, happiness, and prosperity in the lives of the people all around us," the Governor said.

She urged the people to celebrate the festival in a safe manner with care, caution, and gaiety following the Covid-19 protocols.

Andhra Pradesh Governor Biswa Bhusan Harichandan also conveyed his greetings and wished the divine lights of Diwali bring peace, prosperity and happiness to all.

"Deepavali signifies triumph of good over evil and occasions like these inspire us to conquer the calamities and build a society filled with peace, amity and communal harmony," he said.

The Governor appealed to people to celebrate the festival by adhering to the Covid-appropriate behaviour by wearing a mask, washing hands regularly and maintaining social distance.

"Those who have not yet taken the Covid vaccine should take it without any delay as the vaccine protects against the virus," he added.

In his message, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said that Diwali is celebrated by the people of the country as a festival of lights to dispel darkness. He prayed that the festival would shed more light of progress in the lives of the people of Telangana.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy prayed for people's lives to be filled with light. He pointed out that this festival signifies the victory of good over the bad, dispelling darkness to bring light and the victory of divine forces over evil forces.

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Seoul, Nov 4 : North Korea on Thursday called for thorough preventive measures against Covid-19 for the winter season.

The Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North's Workers' Party, highlighted the importance of remaining vigilant against the pandemic, saying the virus can be transmitted even through falling snow, reports Yonhap News Agency.

"In the winter season, it is important to be aware as ever to make thorough anti-virus measures," it said.

The newspaper described virus control and prevention steps during the winter as an "important political" project to determine whether progress would be made in the first year of the North's five-year economic plan.

At the country's eighth party congress in January, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un unveiled a new development scheme focusing on self-reliance amid strict border controls against the virus and global sanctions on its economy.

The reclusive regime has claimed to be coronavirus-free and has so far reported no cases to the World Health Organization.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Mumbai, Nov 4 : National Award-winning actress Divya Dutta, who is all set to release her second book 'The Stars In My Sky', recalls her first meeting with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. She also shares how painful it was for her to revisit the memories of actor Irrfan Khan post his sudden demise.

In a conversation with IANS, Divya shared that the idea behind writing the book that is filled with memories of some of the iconic filmstars, including the late Rishi Kapoor, late Irrfan Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Gulzar, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra - was to express her gratitude towards these people who contributed to her journey as an acting professional.

Revisiting the chapter on Shah Rukh Khan from the book, Divya told IANS : "I think Shah Rukh is one of the most charming and compassionate human beings I have ever come across; he has a very deep caring nature, especially towards youngsters, towards newcomers because he understands where we are coming from." "I wanted to do 'Dil Se' and I wanted to meet him regarding that. He was shooting in Delhi and thousands of people gathered to see him. Eventually, when I met him in the car escorted by his manager, he was so sweet to me, talked to me very politely and also offered me a cup of tea. See, these are small things and being a superstar, he might not have done any of this and I would have still been okay with it. But SRK really knows how to treat people with respect." The actress added, "Even though we could not work in 'Dil Se', one of the big breaks that I got that gave me a lot of recognition was 'Veer Zaara' and that is when we worked together. When I was revisiting those memories of us working together or even now when I am talking about it, I am smiling...because that is the effect SRK leaves on you. He makes you smile even in his absence." The book 'The Stars In My Sky' was also an interesting exercise for her to understand the power of the subconscious mind.

"When I sat down and started thinking about when I first met any of the personalities I have written about, it was so magical. At times, we forget some of the little details of a bigger incident but when we sit down to write, we realise that everything we are experiencing, remains in our subconscious mind. It all surfaces in a miraculous way," she said.

Divya, who acted with Irrfan Khan in films like 'Aaja Naach Le' and 'Hisss', mentioned how painful it was for her to revisit the memories of the late actor and that his sudden demise was almost like a personal loss.

"I think that is why it is so important for us to say our friends and family more than often how much they mean to us, how much we love them. We have done films together but more than that, Irrfan was a very extraordinary human being. So as co-actors the time that we spent brought a smile to my face because that is how I want to remember him." "As a co-actor, he added so much to my craft. When I met him for the last time, I actually did not know that that was the last time we are meeting...he also came to our house on one of my birthdays where our other colleagues and friends were present. None of us ever imagined Irrfan will leave us so suddenly. It feels like 'Koi aapna tha, jo chala gaya...'" Divya signed off.

The book 'The Stars In My Sky' is published by Penguin Random House India and the foreward is written by Amitabh Bachchan.
Los Angeles, Nov 4 : Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is attending the UN climate conference in Glasgow, has tested positive for Covid-19, his office announced.

"He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room," the office said in a tweet late Wednesday, adding that Garcetti is fully vaccinated against the virus, reports Xinhua news agency.

"It's a real reminder that when you let your guard down, even when you follow everything right... There's still a chance with breakthroughs, which is why the vaccine is so important," Garcetti told KABC-TV, a station of the ABC television network, during a Zoom interview.

In accordance with the UN guidelines for the conference, Garcetti conducted self-administered nasal swab tests frequently throughout the trip and tested negative, including receiving negative results twice.

On Tuesday, the Mayor and his staff took PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests to get back into the US, and Garcetti's positive test result was received on Wednesday, KABC-TV reported.

The city of Los Angeles is the seat of Los Angeles County, which is the nation's most populous county with around 10 million residents.

Once a pandemic epicentre, the county's case rates have dropped dramatically since late August.

However, local public health officials noted earlier this week that transmission is still "substantial" in the county.

Los Angeles public health officials on Wednesday confirmed 22 new deaths and 1,605 new cases of, bringing the countywide counts to 26,683 and 1,496,593, respectively.
Tehran, Nov 4 : Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran's senior nuclear negotiator, said that the Vienna nuclear talks for the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will resume on November 29.

"In a phone call with Enrique Mora, we agreed to start the negotiations aiming at the removal of unlawful and inhumane sanctions on Nov. 29 in Vienna," Bagheri Kani tweeted late Wednesday.

After meetings between Bagheri Kani and Mora, deputy secretary-general of the European External Action Service, in Tehran and Brussels, Iran and the European Union had agreed on the resumption of talks in November, reports Xinhua news agency.

Iran has said the issue of lifting sanctions and the related parties' full implementation of obligations to the JCPOA will be the main agenda of the talks which has been suspended since June following a shift in Iran's administration.

US and Iranian officials began indirect talks in Vienna this April to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement, but their disagreements remained significant after six rounds of negotiations, which have been interrupted due to Iran's government transition.

To pressure Tehran, US President Joe Biden's administration has recently reiterated the window for negotiations on a return to the JCPOA will not be open forever and warned of turning to other options if diplomacy fails.

The US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 when Donald Trump was in office, and imposed sanctions on Iran.

In response, Iran has gradually stopped implementing parts of its commitments to the deal since May 2019.
Film: 'Red Notice' (Streaming on Netflix). Duration: 118 minutes.

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber. Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Ritu Arya, Chris Diamantopoulc and Ivan Mbakop.

IANS Rating: ***A 'Red Notice' is a warrant issued by the Interpol (International Criminal Police Organisation) that alerts the police forces of its member-states about internationally wanted fugitives. This film, a light, breezy action-comedy, is a cat-and-mouse chase between the Interpol, assisted by FBI's top profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson), and high-profile art thieves.

At the very beginning, we are informed about how the three bejewelled eggs of the famed Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, which were given to her by her Roman lover Mark Anthony, had resurfaced and that thieves were out to get them.

The first egg is in a museum in Rome, the second in the private collection of a businessman, and the third is rumoured to be missing.

The narrative opens with Inspector Das (Ritu Arya) of the Interpol, along with John Hartley, crashing into the museum in Rome to check out the displayed bejewelled egg, which they are sure is the target of the heist planned by "the most wanted art thief in the world" -- The Bishop (Gal Gadot). But, after realising that the displayed egg in the museum is a fake, Hartley spots another art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) on the premises and chases him till he partners him till they reach The Bishop.

The high-flying adventure that ensues takes them to Rome, Bali, Russia, Valencia in Spain, and Cairo. They cross paths across dance floors, trapped in a secluded prison and in the jungle, but the worst of all is being in the constant company of each other.

Sounds predictable? It is. Sounds boring? For the most part, it's not. The film thoroughly outshines most of its big-budget counterparts with its wit and style.

While the basic plot is pretty standard, cops-and-thieves fare, with the usual twists and turns, two features set it apart. The first is the humour, which is loaded with double-entendres, especially Reynold's dry wisecracks, which run throughout. The second is that the leading quartet of actors here seem to be having a good time and, as a result, so does the audience.

Even though the script is formulaic, the action and the comedy frequently work here because of the characters and their shared chemistry. Johnson and Reynolds are both charming in their own ways, and the occasionally good action and comic scenes between them keep you glued to the screen.

British actress Ritu Arya as Inspector Das, 'Wonder Woman' Gal Gadot as The Bishop, and Chris Diamantopoulc as the International arms dealer Sotto Voce are impressive during their moment of on-screen glory.

It is only in the final act that the narrative loses balance. It appears to be a bit frivolous and forced.

(Troy Ribeiro can be contacted at troy.r@ians.in)
Hyderabad, Nov 4 : According to doctors, people, especially those vulnerable to the Covid-19 infection in India, should be mentally prepared to take a booster dose of Covid-19 vaccine to protect themselves from new variants and help complete the fight against the virus.

While India is on track to fully vaccinate its adult population, advanced nations like the US are preparing ground to administer a booster dose to ensure new variants of Covid-19 virus do not mutate and emerge into a major cause of worry. Doctors presume there could be newer varieties of this virus which would germinate in the society, and vulnerable groups must be prepared to take a booster dose of the vaccine to ensure the fight against the virus is complete.

"According to various studies, immunity against coronavirus developed by vaccination might wane over time. While the younger and healthy sections of the population might have a lower risk, those in the high-risk category must be well prepared to tackle the danger. Many in India took their second dose more than six months back, which is a considerable time to reassess antibodies levels among them. No vaccine manufactured to date has assured 100 per cent protection against this virus, and like in the West, Indians too must be prepared to take an additional booster dose if necessitated," said Dr. M Sai Sudhakar, Chief Interventional Cardiologist, Gleneagles Global Hospital.

India recently achieved the remarkable feat of administering over one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to its citizens. While nearly 80 per cent of the adult population received at least one shot, approximately 40 per cent of the population has received both doses of either Covishield or Covaxin.

This is a remarkable achievement in the fight against deadly pandemic, positive result of which can be seen in the ever-falling numbers of daily infection cases in the country.

While research into the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines longer-term is still being carried out, there has been some suggestion that protection levels against infection begin to deteriorate after around six months, although levels of protection against serious illness from the virus decline at a slower rate. According to Britain's ZOE Covid-19 study, the effectiveness of the Pfizer jab against infection in the months after the second dose fell from 88 per cent to 74 per cent at around the five to six-month mark. For those who received the AstraZeneca jab, protection levels against infection fell from 77 per cent to 67 per cent in the same period.

"The existing evidence suggests that the vaccines administered currently are holding up extremely well to protect against severe disease, hospitalization, or even death. Though there is no strong evidence leading to a need to provide a third dose for people who have already been vaccinated; there is nothing wrong in staying mentally prepared to take a third dose as and when the healthcare community feels a large section of the population would require a booster dose to protect against a possible spread of virus in future," said Dr. Aarathi Bellary, HoD - Internal Medicine, SLG Hospitals.

According to Dr. Suresh Reddy, Consultant Neuro Physician, Aware Gleneagles Global Hospital, those who are seriously immunocompromised might be at a high risk of suffering more due to coronavirus infection, even after taking two doses of Covid-19 vaccine.

"Such people need extra care and constant medical attention to ensure the risk is mitigated to the best possible extent. These high-risk category or seriously immunocompromised people must surely be prepared to take a booster dose as and when the scientific and medical fraternity feel it is time," he said "Vaccines are being administered for the past eight months in India, and there is a popular belief that the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccination might wane after a certain period. While India is yet to vaccinate more than 20 per cent of the adult population even once, there is nothing wrong in talking about booster dose and even preparing ground for the same. The booster dose will help extend the protection gained from the first two doses and provide a longer-term protection," concluded Dr. Aravindan Selvaraj, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Kauvery Hospital, Chennai.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Chennai, Nov 4 : Heavy rains that lashed Tamil Nadu for the past few days have dampened the festive spirit of Diwali in the state.

In several districts of the state, the government had to put a backup of even National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) anticipating rain-related catastrophe.

Tamil Nadu education department had declared holidays for schools in 18 districts of the state on Wednesday following heavy rains.

The death of a woman police constable, Kavitha after a tree fell on her while on duty at the Tamil Nadu secretariat gate was due to the tree getting uprooted following heavy rains.

In the busy Ranganathan street of T Nagar in Chennai, there was heavy rush in the earlier days of the Diwali week but during the past two days due to heavy rains, the footfall reduced.

With strong restrictions in place on bursting only green crackers, the firecracker sale also has come down. Heavy rains have also dampened the sale of firecrackers.

In Chennai, heavy rains led to water clogging and in some wards like Prakash Colony in Chennai, sewage water got mixed with rainwater and inundated the place.

Sujatha Mani, a resident of Prakash colony in Chennai said, "Our Diwali celebrations are gone as rainwater mixed with sewage water have entered our homes due to heavy rains. The corporation had not replaced the old sewage pipes and hence, whenever it rains heavily, the rainwater gets mixed with sewage water creating misery to the residents." In Dindigul, Ramanathapuram, Kanniyakumari, Theni and Madurai too heavy rains have dampened the spirit with people staying indoors.

However, with the IMD predicting cloudy sky and intermittent rains, there is hope for children and elders alike as they would be able to celebrate the festival with reduced pomp and grandeur.

Gangadevi, a homemaker from Ashok Nagar, while speaking to IANS said that rains have dampened the spirit of the festival. However, on Diwali day, there is a relief as rains have taken a back step and children are enthused but the restrictions of bursting the crackers only for an hour during the night have reduced the spirit of bursting crackers.

"We had done our purchase well in advance and hence have all the necessary materials required to celebrate the festival adequately at home. " However, Tasmac liquor shops did brisk business and people thronged the shops in large numbers. The Tasmac has already announced that the target for the Diwali is Rs 1,000 crore business and sources in the corporation told IANS that the collection would cross the targeted amount.

With government offices and schools getting a holiday on Friday also, the state will open fully only on Monday as Saturday and Sunday being holidays for most of the offices.

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 4 : A battle royale is on the cards as Kerala Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal ruled out that the state government will reduce taxes on petroleum products, after the Centre handed a Diwali gift to the nation and out came the daggers when the BJP and Congress state presidents warned that strong protests will break out.

Following the reduction effected by the Centre, petrol price per litre came down by Rs 12.27 while diesel prices fell by Rs 6.30 and the average price of one litre petrol in the state was Rs 103.80 and diesel stood at Rs 91.59 per litre.

Speaking to the media here on Thursday Balagopal said the Centre has only reduced a very minimum rate and we are not going to reduce it as the state is passing through huge financial stress.

"What has happened is the Centre has done what a pickpocket does. After picking the pocket of a person, he then gives back the bus fare and that's what the Centre has done. Kerala is passing through tough times and hence we are unable to reduce," said Balagopal.

State Congress president K. Sudhakaran said even though the Centre's decision came a bit late, we welcome it.

"We warn the state government, here, if they fail to do a matcher, then it will be strongly dealt. Hitherto if our protests against rising fuel prices was against the Centre, from now on, if the state government doesn't do it, it will see huge protests by us," said Sudhakaran.

State BJP president K. Surendran said all through the Kerala government was blaming the Centre for the fuel prices and now that they have done it, the Kerala government has to follow suit.

"The State Finance Minister should keep his word as he had earlier said, if the Centre reduces, the state will follow, but if that doesn't happen, then it could be difficult for us to sit idle. We will launch a massive protest," said Surendran.

And with the assembly session in progress, if Balagopal fails to revise his decision, starting Monday, Kerala could well see a huge protest.

Economist Mary George said, the Pinarayi Vijayan government has nothing to fear as elections are not round the corner, while nationally for the BJP things are not like that as crucial polls are coming up in a few big states and hence it was due to that, there was a downward revision.
London, Nov 4 : London's iconic Tower Bridge has won a coveted gold accolade in Visit England's excellence awards, it was announced.

The exhibition at the bridge over the River Thames gives tourists the chance to experience panoramic views of London from a high-level walkway with a glass floor, as well as visit the drawbridge's Victorian engine room, reports Xinhua news agency.

The tourist attraction was one of 26 Gold winners in Visit England's 2021 awards, which also give accolades for hidden gems, the best-told stories, quality of welcome and food quality.

The awards are based on the scores gained by tourist attractions in their annual assessments by VisitEngland, which were nevertheless delayed this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The latest forecasts by VisitBritain show that domestic spending on tourism is estimated at 51.4 billion pounds ($70 billion) this year, only a little more than half the amount spent in 2019 before the pandemic struck.

A spokesperson for VisitBritain said: "Last year alone saw about two-thirds of the value wiped off the domestic tourism industry in Britain, a 58 billion pound loss to the economy." VisitEngland Director Andrew Stokes said: "Now more than ever we need these attractions to encourage and remind us to get out and explore the amazing tourism on offer across England, driving recovery and economic benefits through the regions." Other Gold award winners included the King Richard III visitor centre in Leicester, the National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket, Chester Zoo, Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, the World War II code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park, the National Arboretum at Tetbury, the World of Wedgwood (pottery), and for chocolate lovers, Cadbury World in Birmingham.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : Beijing seeks to reshape the international order to better align with its authoritarian system and national interests, as a vital component of its strategy to achieve the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation", as per a report by the US Department of Defense.

According to this worldview, the accrual of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) comprehensive national power, including military power, is necessary to set the conditions for Beijing to assert its preferences on a global scale.

The PRC's national strategy to achieve "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" by 2049 is deeply integrated with its ambitions to strengthen the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The PRC has long viewed the United States as a competitor and has characterised its view of strategic competition in terms of a rivalry among powerful nation states, as well as a clash of opposing systems.

As expressed in the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the PRC is the only competitor capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system. The PRC is increasingly clear in its ambitions and intentions, the report said.

In 2017, President Xi Jinping laid out two PLA modernization goals during his speech to the 19th Party Congress: to "basically complete" PLA modernisation by 2035 and to transform the PLA into a "world class" military by 2049.

Throughout 2020, the PLA continued to pursue its ambitious modernization objectives, refine major organisational reforms, and improve its combat readiness in line with those goals.

This includes the PLA developing the capabilities to conduct joint long-range precision strikes across domains, increasingly sophisticated space, counterspace, and cyber capabilities, and accelerating the large-scale expansion of its nuclear forces.

In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a new milestone for PLA modernisation in 2027 broadly understood as the modernization of the PLA's capabilities to be networked into a system of systems for "intelligentised" warfare.

If realised, the PLA's 2027 modernisation goals could provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.

The PRC's strategy to achieve "national rejuvenation" is not limited to domestic efforts. This strategy entails efforts to change international conditions to suit the CCP's concept of a "community of common destiny".

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 4 : The Kerala Congress will set up study circles, palliative and legal aid centres across the state to rejuvenate the party, Congress state president K. Sudhakaran said here on Thursday.

He made the statement after chairing a two-day, meeting of the newly constituted organisational committee.

To build a strong party, a research and academic centre -- similar to one in the state capital - The Rajiv Gandhi Centre, is a must, Sudhakaran said.

"We will set up similar centres in each of the 13 districts, where study classes and seminars for workers would be held. Likewise, all the 140 Assembly constituencies will also house Palliative care centres." On the anvil are opening of 14 legal aid centres, which will provide legal help to workers who get legal notices while taking part in party protests," he added.

As part of the membership drive launched on November 1, party leaders will now reach out to every home in the state.

On the reconstitution of the party, he said, "We have the high command's permission to go ahead with reconstitution of the party at all levels. Though the opinion was divided on the issue, majority were in favour so we will soon go ahead with it. It is also the need of the hour," he added.

He said the meeting also decided to take strict action against those indulging in "wrong practices and indiscipline." It has been noticed that despite numerous warnings, a section of workers is engaging in smear campaign against party leaders on social media. Strong action will be taken against them, said Sudhakaran, who is also the party's Lok Sabha member from Kannur, the citadel of the CPI-M in Kerala.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Bangladesh liberation war, the party will honour all war veterans in the state in a special programme on November 19, which will also coincide with the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sachin Pilot will be the chief guest at the event.
Damascus, Nov 4 : Syria's Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Minister Amr Salem has blamed the Western sanctions for the suffering of the people as the country is going through an unprecedented economic crisis.

At a press conference held in the capital Damascus, Salem said the suffering of the Syrian people is not from internal factors but external ones, in reference to the US and European sanctions imposed on the Syrian government, reports Xinhua news agency.

He said such sanctions are having a negative impact on the lives of the Syrians, stressing the sanctions are hindering the import of oil derivatives, including gas.

The Minister said the countries that impose sanctions want concessions from the Syrian government.

"I can assure you that we will not surrender in exchange for lifting the sanctions," he noted.

As for the internal situation, Salem said "the segment that could be excluded from getting subsidies doesn't exceed 20 per cent, and the materials saved from the rich segment will be given to the segment that needs the support".

The Minister's remarks came at a time the Syrian people are suffering greatly from the tough economic situation with skyrocketing prices of all goods amid the lack and scarcity of some basic materials.

According to the World Bank, the Syrian economy has shrunk by more than 60 per cent since 2010, and the Syrian pound has devaluated a lot.
Washington, Nov 4 : Private companies in the US added 571,000 jobs in October, indicating a renewed momentum in the labour market recovery, payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported.

"Service sector providers led the increase and the goods sector gains were broad based," said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP.

Service sector saw a job gain of 458,000 in October, with 185,000 jobs added in leisure and hospitality, according to the report, which was produced by the ADP Research Institute in collaboration with Moody's Analytics, reports Xinhua news agency.

Richardson noted that large companies fuelled the stronger recovery in October, with a job gain of 342,000.

Medium and small businesses added 114,000 and 115,000 jobs, respectively.

"The labur market showed renewed momentum last month, with a jump from the third quarter average of 385,000 monthly jobs added, marking nearly 5 million job gains this year," said Richardson.

In the second quarter, the private sector saw an average monthly job growth of roughly 748,000 due to vaccination progress and continued economic recovery.

But amid a Delta variant-fuelled Covid-19 surge, there was a marked slowdown in job growth in the third quarter.

The number of Covid cases had been going up since June with the rapid spread of Delta, before the national outlook started to improve since early September, when case levels began to fall.

"The job market is revving back up as the Delta wave of the pandemic winds down," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, noting that job gains are accelerating across all industries.

"As long as the pandemic remains contained, more big job gains are likely in coming months," Zandi added.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) evolving capabilities and concepts continue to strengthen Chinas ability to "fight and win wars" against a "strong enemy" , a likely euphemism for the US, coerce Taiwan and rival claimants in territorial disputes, counter an intervention by a third party in a conflict along the Beijing's periphery, and project power globally, according to a report by the US Department of Defense.

With a force that totals approximately two million personnel in the regular forces, the PLA has sought to modernise its capabilities and improve its proficiencies across all warfare domains so that as a joint force it can conduct the range of land, air, and maritime operations as well as space, counterspace, electronic warfare (EW), and cyber operations, the report said.

The PLA has approximately 975,000 active duty personnel in combat units. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, border clashes with India, and other significant events in 2020, the PLA accelerated its training and fielding of equipment from the already fast pace of recent years, the report said.

The PLA also strove to increase the realism of its training and the effectiveness of Opposition Force (OPFOR) units.

The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has numerically the largest navy in the world with an overall battle force of approximately 355 ships and submarines, including approximately more than 145 major surface combatants.

As of 2020, the PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-role platforms. In the near-term, the PLAN will have the capability to conduct long-range precision strikes against land targets from its submarine and surface combatants using land-attack cruise missiles, notably enhancing the China's global power projection capabilities.

The country is enhancing its anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities and competencies to protect the PLAN's aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines.

The People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and PLAN Aviation together constitute the largest aviation force in the region and the third largest in the world, with over 2,800 total aircraft (not including trainer variants or UAVs) of which approximately 2,250 are combat aircraft (including fighters, strategic bombers, tactical bombers, multi-mission tactical, and attack aircraft), according to the report.

In October 2019, China signaled the return of the airborne leg of its nuclear triad after the PLAAF publicly revealed the H-6N as its first nuclear-capable air-to-air refuelable bomber, it added (Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Chandigarh, Nov 4 : A prisoner in a jail in Barnala in Punjab has accused the jail superintendent of torture and inscribing the word 'terrorist' on his back with an iron rod.

Taking cognizance of the incident, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Randhawa has ordered a thorough inquiry and a medical examination of prisoner Karamjit Singh, 28. DIG Ferozepur, Tajinder Singh Maur, will conduct the inquiry.

The prisoner, who is facing life sentence in a murder case, has alleged that a word 'aatwadi' or terrorist is inscribed on his back.
Paris, Nov 4 : French President Emmanuel Macron presented the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour to Germany's outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel during her farewell visit to France.

This visit by Merkel "comes to close years of fruitful work between the President and the Chancellor in order to strengthen Franco-German bilateral cooperation", Xinhua news agency quoted the French presidential office, the Elysee as saying.

The farewell visit by Merkel to Beaune in central-eastern France "comes to close years of fruitful work between the President and the Chancellor in order to strengthen Franco-German bilateral cooperation", said the Elysee.

The Grand Cross is the highest distinction of the order of the Legion of Honour, which "embodies the strength of Franco-German friendship, maintained by Angela Merkel", it added.

On Wednesday, Macron and Merkel visited the Hospices de Beaune, a former hospital famous for its wine estate and where former French President Francois Mitterrand and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met in June 1993 for the 63rd Franco-German summit.

After 16 years in power, Merkel chose France as the last stop on her farewell tour before leaving office.
Seoul, Nov 4 : South Korea is willing to hold talks with Japan, including a summit, and will continue to make efforts to improve bilateral ties, a senior presidential official said on Thursday.

The official made the remarks after President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida did not hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a UN climate summit this week in Glasgow, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Kishida arrived in Glasgow hours before Moon left for Hungary for a state visit.

"We will look at whether there is an opportunity for talks or a meeting between leaders of Korea and Japan," the official told reporters.

During phone talks last month, Moon told Kishida that South Korea is willing to improve ties with Japan.

Relations between South Korea and Japan have been stuck in a row over Japan's wartime forced labour since Japan imposed export curbs against the South in 2019 in retaliation against South Korean Supreme Court rulings that Japanese firms should pay compensation to forced labour victims.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : Chinas strategy aims to achieve "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" by 2049 to match or surpass US global influence and power, displace .S alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and revise the international order to be more advantageous to Beijings authoritarian system and national interests, a report by US Defence Department said.

This strategy can be characterized as a determined pursuit of far-ranging efforts to expand the PRC's (People's Republic of China) national power, the report said.

The PRC has characterised China's view of strategic competition in terms of a rivalry among powerful nation states, as well as a clash of opposing ideological systems.

Beijing views the US as increasingly determined to contain the PRC, creating potential obstacles to its strategy. Additionally, the PRC's leaders are increasingly willing to confront the United States and other countries in areas where interest diverge.

The PRC's foreign policy seeks to build a "community of common destiny" that supports its strategy to realize "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". Beijing's revisionist ambition for the international order derives from the objectives of its national strategy and the Party's political and governing systems.

In 2019, the PRC recognised that its armed forces should take a more active role in advancing its foreign policy, highlighting the increasingly global character that Beijing ascribes to its military power.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was a driving force behind the PRC's foreign policy efforts, as Beijing sought to deflect any culpability for the virus and its initial spread, and to capitalise on its narrative of domestic success and foreign assistance.

The PRC's military modernisation objectives are commensurate with, and part of, Beijing's broader national development aspirations. The PRC's economic, technological, political, social, and security development efforts are mutually reinforcing and support Beijing's strategy to shape international and regional environments that accept and facilitate Beijing's interests.

The PRC's leaders stress the imperative of strengthening the PLA into a "world-class" military by the end of 2049 as an essential element of its strategy to rejuvenate the PRC into a "great modern socialist country".

In 2020, the PLA added a new milestone for modernization in 2027, to accelerate the integrated development of mechanization, informatisation, and intelligentisation of the PRC's armed forces, which if realised would provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Manila, Nov 4 : Two Filipino soldiers were killed and four others wounded in a clash with New People's Army (NPA) rebels in the Negros Occidental province, the military said on Thursday.

The military said the fighting, which broke out around 3.40 p.m. on Wednesday lasted about an hour, reports Xinhua news agency.

The army sent troops to the area after villagers complained about the rebels' presence, the military added.

No casualties were reported on the side of the rebels, but the military claimed troops saw the rebels drag at least four comrades as they fled.

Last weekend, the military confirmed having killed NPA's high-ranking commander George Madlos, a "topmost wanted" rebel leader, during a clash in the southern Bukidnon province.

The NPA rebels have been fighting the government since 1969.

They concentrate their attacks on rural areas and small-scale skirmishes with the military.

President Rodrigo Duterte restarted the talks to end the decades-old insurgency when he came to power in 2016, but the negotiations faltered.

The NPA estimated strength is at 3,000, significantly lower than its peak strength in the 1980s.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : The US Defence Department has said in a report that People's Republic of China (PRC) officials, through official statements and state media, had also sought unsuccessfully to prevent India from deepening its relationship with Washington during and subsequent to the standoff, while accusing India of being a mere "instrument" of American policy in the region.

As the standoff continues, the PRC has expressed its aim to prevent the standoff from worsening into a wider military conflict. Additionally, Beijing has voiced its intent to return bilateral relations with New Delhi to a state of economic and diplomatic cooperation it had perceived to be improving since the 2017 Doklam standoff.

PRC state-controlled media forcefully asserted China's intent to refuse any territorial concessions demanded by India, the report said.

As of June 2021, the PRC and India continue to maintain large-scale deployments along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and make preparations to sustain these forces while disengagement negotiations have made limited progress.

Beginning in May 2020, the PLA (People's Liberation Army) launched incursions into customarily Indian-controlled territory across the border and has concentrated troops at several standoff locations along the LAC. In addition, a substantial reserve force from the Tibet and Xinjiang Military Districts were deployed to the interior of Western China to provide a rapid response.

The June 2020 skirmish in Galwan Valley, which led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers, marked the first loss of life on the LAC since 1975.

In February 2021, the Central Military Commission (CMC) announced posthumous awards for four PLA soldiers, though the total number of PRC casualties remains unknown.

Despite the ongoing diplomatic and military dialogues to reduce border tensions, the PRC has continued taking incremental and tactical actions to press its claims at the LAC.

Sometime in 2020, the PRC built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the PRC's Tibet Autonomous Region and India's Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC. These and other infrastructure development efforts along the India-China have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media, the report said.

In contrast, PRC has attempted to blame India for provoking the standoff through India's increased infrastructure development near the LAC. Asserting that its deployments to the LAC were in response to Indian provocation, Beijing has refused to withdraw any forces until India's forces have withdrawn behind the PRC's version of the LAC and ceased infrastructure improvements in the area, the report said.

As of April 2021, PLA and Indian Army representatives have held eleven rounds of Corps-level negotiations since the beginning of the standoff in May 2020, consisting of meetings between the commanders of the PLA's South Xinjiang (Nanjiang) Military District and the Indian Army's 14th Corps.

The negotiations have yielded limited disengagement at specific areas along the LAC.

In addition to military negotiations, on 10 September, the PRC's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, met with India's Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Foreign Ministers' meeting in Moscow.

The two ministers released a plan, which has yet to be carried out, for resolving the dispute and expressed a desire to resolving the standoff peacefully while maintaining dialogue, the Defence Department report said.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Paris, Nov 4 : Russia's Daniil Medvedev did a lot of good to his faint hopes of preventing Novak Djokovic from taking the year-end No 1 spot in the ATP world rankings, by securing a hard-fought win against Ilya Ivashka of Belarus in the Paris Masters.

Medvedev squandered a commanding first set lead and was forced to work harder than he wanted on Wednesday night as he remained on course for the title. The reigning US Open champion has a faint hope of denying Novak Djokovic a record seventh finish as year-end No. 1 in the ATP Rankings. At a minimum, by winning the Paris title the World No. 2 can ensure that Djokovic won't clinch World No. 1 honours before the ATP Finals in Turin. Medvedev needs to win at Paris and in ATP Finals and hope that Djokovic does poorly in both.

Medvedev, the defending champion in Paris, had three set points and a 5-1 lead before allowing the Belarusian to claw back to even terms in the opening set at 5-all. But after doing all the hard work to push back into the match, Ivashka, the World No. 46, sprayed four unforced errors to drop serve to love to cede momentum back to Medvedev, who would eventually claim a 7-5, 6-4 victory.

"The last time we played he beat me at Davis Cup. I've known him since the Futures and I knew t'at he's a great player on the rise, so I knew it would not be easy," Medvedev said. "At the beginning of the match [my level] was good but in the middle of the match, there were some things I could do better. The most important thing is victory.

"It doesn't matter how you play in the first round. The one who raises his level throughout the tournament is the one who will win it." Medvedev will next face American Sebastian Korda, who defeated last week's St. Petersburg champion Marin Cilic 6-2, 6-4. Korda did not face a breakpoint and dropped just seven points on serve.

"It's always exciting to play someone for the"first time," Medvedev said. "We've never even practised together. He just had a great win over Marin who is coming off a tourname't win, so I'm very excited to play him tomorrow." In other matches, lucky loser Alexei Popyrin of Russia advanced third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas after the Greek retired with an injury with the score 4-2 in the first set.

Taylor Fritz of the United States beat fifth seed Andrey Rublev of Russia; fourth seed Alexander Zverev of Germany beat Dusan Lajovic of Serbia 6-3, 7-6(5); Sixth seed Casper Ruud of Norway defeated Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan 6-4, 6-0.
Congress party will give 40% ticket to women in UP Vidhan Sabha elections, Thousands of women jumped on hearing this announcement. Image Source: IANS News

Barabanki : Congress Leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra along with UP Congress President Ajay Kumar Lallu participating in Congress Pratigya Yatra in Barabanki on Saturday,October 23, 2021.(PHOTO:IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Lucknow, Nov 4 : Even as Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra works overtime to put the Congress on the political centre stage for the upcoming Assembly elections, early next year, the bigger challenge she faces is to save party bastion Rae Bareli, her mother Sonia Gandhi's Parliamentary constituency.

The BJP, after wresting the Amethi seat in 2019, is now eyeing the Rae Bareli seat.

The party has been quietly working on dislodging the Gandhi family from Uttar Pradesh.

Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had defeated Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in 2019, has been working in Rae Bareli to widen the party base.

Of the total ten Assembly seats in two Lok Sabha constituencies - Amethi and Rae Bareli, six are already with the BJP.

Two Congress legislators from Rae Bareli -- Aditi Singh and Rakesh Singh - have switched over to the BJP, and so has Congress MLC Dinesh Pratap Singh from Rae Bareli.

The BJP has also won the control of Zila Panchayats in the two districts.

In Rae Bareli, Irani replaced Sonia Gandhi as chairperson of Rae Bareli District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committee in July.

Sonia Gandhi's prolonged absence from her constituency-mainly due to her health issues-has dampened the morale of Congress workers.

The desertion of some senior leaders, including two sitting MLAs, has damaged the party in the region that was once a Congress stronghold.

Priyanka Gandhi, who oversees Rae Bareli and Amethi, has also not been able to devote much time to the two constituencies due to her preoccupation with state level issues.

The BJP, on the other hand, has deployed a well-oiled machinery to widen its reach.

The Congress does not have a single MLA in Rae Bareli and Amethi.

Indresh Vikram Singh, a senior Congress leader from Rae Bareli, explains the prevailing state of affairs for the Congress in the two constituencies.

"It is high time the party leadership recognised and gave weightage to the loyalists. Those who once worked with former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi are still in the Congress. But our leaders now induct leaders from other parties and bring new faces from outside. Such leaders dump the party for their own interest.

"Moreover, the party has to firm up its stand on all issues and leaders have to make themselves accessible. After the much hyped '27 saal UP behal" campaign before 2017 Assembly elections, the party leadership decided to align with the SP. Party leaders should be seen fighting for issues concerning the people consistently," said Singh.
Jammu, Nov 4 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi told army soldiers on Thursday that he has brought wishes of 130 crore Indians for them as he celebrated Diwali with soldiers in J&K's Rajouri district.

Paying rich tribute to heroes of Nowshera, Brig Usman, Naik Jadunath Singh, Lt R.R. Rane and others, he said, "I have brought the wishes of the 130 crore Indian for you".

"Today's India, in the 'Amrit Kaal' of the freedom is alert about its capabilities and resources.

"Connectivity in border areas from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, from Jaisalmer to Andaman Nicobar has been established with modern infrastructure, leading to unprecedented improvement in the infrastructure and convenience for soldiers.

"Participation of women in the country's defence is touching new heights.

"Indian Armed forces are as professional as the top armed forces of the world, but its human values make it distinct and extraordinary.

"We don't perceive the nation as government, power or empire, for us, it is living, present soul, defending this is not limited to defending just the geographical boundaries.

"For us, national defence means defending national vibrancy, national unity, and national integration", Modi said while addressing soldiers in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district.

Like all his previous years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated this Diwali also with armed forces.

The Prime Minister said that spending Diwali with the Armed Forces, for him, is in the same spirit as to celebrate Diwali with his family. He said, that is why, he has spent all his Diwali with the armed forces at the border after assuming constitutional post.

He said he has not come alone, but has brought with him the wishes of 130 crore Indians. He said, this evening, every Indian will light one 'diya' to convey his or her wishes for the brave soldiers of the country.

"Serving the country as being done by the brave sons and daughters of the country, is a good fortune that is not available to everyone", he said.

From Nowshera, Modi greeted the countrymen on Diwali and other upcoming festivals such as Goverdhan Puja, Bhaiyya Dooj and Chatth Puja. He also wished Gujarati people for their new year.

He said Nowshera's history celebrates the bravery of India and its present is the embodiment of the bravery and determination of the soldiers. The region has stood strongly against the aggressor and encroachers.

He paid rich tribute to the heroes of Nowshera, Brigadier Mohammad Usman and Naik Jadunath Singh who made the supreme sacrifice for defending the motherland.

He saluted Lt R.R. Rane and other bravehearts who set unprecedented examples of valour and patriotism. The Prime Minister also described his feelings for taking blessings of Baldev Singh and Basant Singh who supported armed forces steadfastly.

He also praised the Brigade stationed there for their role in the surgical strike. He recalled the moment of relief when all the brave soldiers returned safely from the strike.

The Prime Minister said that the responsibility of protecting the freedom of the county vests with everyone and today's India, in the Amrit Kaal of the freedom is alert about its capabilities and resources. He also talked about the growing 'Aatmnirbharta' in defence resources as opposed to earlier time of dependence on the foreign countries.

He said 65 per cent of the Defence Budget is being used inside the country. A list of 200 products, a positive list, that will be procured only indigenously has been prepared. The list is going to be expanded soon, he said. He also talked of the 7 new Defence companies launched on Vijaya Dashmi as the old ordnance factories will now make specialized sector specific equipment and ammunition.

Defence Corridors are also coming up. India's youth is involved in vibrant defence related startups. All this will strengthen India's position as defence exporter, he said.

The Prime Minister emphasized that Indian Military power needs to be expanded and transformed according to the changing needs. He said fast changing technology landscape has demanded new changes, that is why it is critical to ensure coordination in the integrated Military leadership. CDS and Department of Military Affairs are steps in that direction. Similarly, modern border infrastructure will enhance the country's military muscle, he said.

He remarked that connectivity in border areas from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, from Jaisalmer to Andaman Nicobar has been established with modern infrastructure, leading to unprecedented improvement in the infrastructure and convenience for soldiers.

The Prime Minister expressed happiness that the participation of women in the country's defence is touching new heights. After being deployed on the frontlines in Navy and Air Force, now women's role is being expanded in Army also.

Along with opening up of the Permanent Commission, NDA, National Military School, National Indian Military College for women, the Prime Minister mentioned his Independence Day announcement of opening up Sainik Schools for the girls.

The Prime Minister said that in the armed forces, he not only sees boundless capabilities but also unwavering service spirit, strong determination and incomparable sensitivity. This makes Indian armed forces, unique among the armed forces of the world. Indian Armed forces are as professional as the top armed forces of the world but its human values make it distinct and extraordinary, the Prime Minister said.

"For you, this is not just a job for salary, for you this is a worship, in which you channel the spirit of 130 crore people," the Prime Minister said. He continued, "empires come and go but India was eternal thousands of years ago and remains so today and will remain eternal after thousands of years later. We don't perceive the nation as government, power or empire, for us, it is living, present soul, defending this is not limited to defending just the geographical boundaries. For us national defence means defending this living national vibrancy, national unity, and national integration".

The Prime Minister concluded, "if our armed forces are blessed with sky touching valour, their hearts are ocean of human kindness also, that is why our armed forces not only defend the borders but are also always ready to help during calamity and natural disasters. It has grown as a strong trust in the heart of every Indian. You are the custodians and defenders of India's unity and integrity and the emotion of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat. I am fully confident that with the inspiration of your bravery, we will take India to the zenith of growth and progress".

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Patna, Nov 4 : Despite not winning the two Assembly bypolls in Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has said alarm bells are ringing for the NDA government in the state.

A party leader said that the RJD had contested the bypolls to Kusheshwar Asthan and Tarapur bypolls alone for the first time in several years.

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav had taken a strong decision of putting the Congress aside.

"The RJD has had a long-term alliance with the Congress since Lalu Prasad emerged as a national leader in 1990. He contested all elections in alliance with the Congress. On one occasion in 2010, the RJD broke the coalition with Congress but contested the election with the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP)," the party leader said.

The RJD never contested election from Kusheshwar Asthan. It had always given the seat to the Congress. In the 2010 Assembly polls, the party had given the seat to the LJP.

Despite that, it put an impressive performance, with its candidate only losing by a margin of 12,000 odd votes but its vote percentage at 36 per cent - two per cent higher than what Congress candidate Ashok Ram got in 2020 Assembly elections.

In Tarapur, RJD candidate Arun Shah lost the seat to Janata Dal-United candidate Rajiv Kumar Singh by a narrow margin of 3,800 votes. In 2020, the margin of defeat between RJD candidate Diyva Jyoti and then JD-U candidate Mewalal Chaudhary was 7,200 votes. Then, the RJD candidate could only garner 32.8 per cent votes, while this time it got 44.35 per cent.

The RJD gained political ground among other sections apart from its traditional Muslim-Yadav (MY) vote bank.

In Kusheshwar Asthan, RJD gained 36 per cent votes of all communities, while the MY constitutes only 25 per cent. Similarly in Tarapur, the party has gained 44 per cent votes, against the constituency's 26 per cent MY voters.

Tejashwi Yadav's decision to separate the party from Congress may open the gate for him to join other forces like the LJP-Ram Vilas or Mukesh Sahani's VIP.

In the 2020 Assembly elections, the RJD faced pressure from the Congress and gave it 70 seats, though it was not even ready to concede 50.

According to a top official of the party, the RJD came under pressure of Congress' assurance of Muslim votes. Tejashwi Yadav wanted to allocate the seat to Mukesh Sahani's VIP but as Congress demanded it, RJD had to give way.

In 2021 bypolls, as the Muslim community eluded Congress again, and its candidate lost badly, being unable to even save his deposit.

Tejashwi Yadav could try other options like LJP-Ram Vilas. He is exploring prospects of joining hands with Chirag Paswan who has a traditional vote bank in backward class communities in Bihar.
Patna: Women light up earthen lamps at their residence on the occasion of Diwali in Patna on Nov 14, 2020. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Chennai, Nov 4 : Even as rains have hampered extensive Diwali celebrations in Tamil Nadu, the North Indian community in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Trichy, and other major cities of the state celebrated the festival of lights with pomp and grandeur.

The Marwari community hailing from Rajasthan in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, and other towns celebrated the festival.

In Ashok Nagar, Marwari community members gathered at a hall. Dressed in their best, enjoying vegetarian food, they were seen dancing to the tune of Bollywood numbers.

Talking to IANS, Hemant Kumar, a pawnbroker in Parry's, Chennai, and who stays in Sarvamangala Colony, Ashok Nagar, said: "Diwali was not celebrated properly last year due to Covid but this year we are celebrating it with pomp and grandeur. Both children and adults are dancing to the tune of good music and we are having a bash.".

The Jain community, scattered in several areas of Coimbatore, also joined the festivities at the uptown plush area of Saibaba Colony in Coimbatore.

Ajit Jain, who runs a textile distribution company in Coimbatore, said: "Diwali, the festival of lights, is one festival we never miss and we celebrate it with maximum pomp. While our roots are in Delhi, I and my siblings were born and brought up here as our family is into traditional textile distribution. The entire community has assembled at this colony to celebrate it. Dance, music, feast, bursting of crackers, and feast are an indispensable part of the celebration in addition to special prayers." While there are restrictions in force regarding bursting of crackers, most of the communities are bursting crackers within the stipulated time frame.

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 4 : With their conciliation talks with the Kerala government failing to find a solution, the three recognised trade unions of the state-run Kerala State Road Transport Corporations have decided to go ahead with their strike, following which bus operations will stop from midnight on Thursday.

While the Congress-backed union has announced a 48 hour strike, the Left-affiliated union and the BJP-backed BMS has announced a 24 hour protest, in all likelihood, bus services of the KSRTC are likely to be affected on Friday and Saturday.

The KSTRC is one of the biggest employers in the state government with over 35,000 employees, but the employees complain that they have not had a pay revision in the past nine years.

Consequent to the strike, around 5,000 buses of KSRTC which operates around 5,100 schedules, covering, on an average every day around 16 lakh kilometres across the state, will not ply, hitting people dependent on this mode of transport.

State Transport Minister Antony Raju said the strike is due to the tough stand taken by the unions.

"The state government is committed to the pay revision and it would cost the exchequer an additional Rs 30 crore. We only asked the unions for some more time for implementation, but they were not willing to listen," he said.

However, the unions note that it is more than five months since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had assured them on this aspect, but nothing has happened and hence, they have no other option but to go ahead with the strike.
Seoul: This photo shows Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, where Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Kun-hee has been hospitalized since he suffered a heart attack in 2014. (Yonhap/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Seoul, Nov 4 : South Korea's top two chipmakers -- Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are expected to submit information on their chip businesses to the US government by the November 8 deadline, industry sources said.

In late September, the US Department of Commerce asked major chip companies and automakers to "voluntarily" share business information to address the global chip crisis, following President Joe Biden's executive order to secure and strengthen America's supply chains for key products.

Kim Ki-nam, Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung's device solutions division, said the company was "calmly" preparing answers to the request during a meeting with reporters at the Korea Electronics Show (KES) last week.

"We are internally reviewing the matter and are in close talks with the (South Korean) government," said SK hynix CEO Lee Seok-hee, who also attended the event.

The information request by Washington has immediately spawned concerns about the possible leak of what chipmakers consider as major trade secrets, as questions touch upon a wide range of issues, including investment, inventories, pricing, customers and sales, reports Yonhap news agency.

It also raised questions on how to answer those sensitive questions while complying with filings and information disclosure rules required for publicly traded companies.

While the US government said the information sharing is "voluntary", South Korean companies are under pressure to file the information as requested.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : The Congress is on an overdrive since the bypoll results on Tuesday and is saying that the results are an indication of change which will be reflected in upcoming Assembly elections slated to be held early next year and it is due to this, the government has been compelled to reduce taxes on fuel.

P. Chidambaram, senior observer for Goa and former Finance Minister said, "In states where the Congress won, it did so with a significantly higher vote share. In Himachal Pradesh, the Congress vs BJP was 48.9 per cent to 28 per cent. In Maharashtra, it was 57 per cent to 35 per cent, in Rajasthan, it was 37.51 per cent to 18.8 per cent." But, "in states where the Congress lost to the BJP, the spread was narrow, e.g., in MP, the Congress' vote share was 45.45 per cent and BJP's vote share was 47.58 per cent. In Karnataka, where the two parties won one seat each, the vote share of the Congress was 44.76 per cent against BJP's 51.86 per cent." "There is a new wind behind the sails of the Congress. Will it gather strength and speed?" he added.

But going by the recent bypoll results after the UP assembly elections in 2017, two Lok Sabha seats were vacated -- one by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Maurya in Phulpur. In subsequent bypolls in 2018, both seats were won by Samajwadi Party. It registered victories in Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bypolls, supported by the BSP.

But a year later in the general elections of 2019, the situation was different and despite SP-BSP alliance, the BJP swept the polls.

In Bihar, the RJD won the Araria Lok Sabha seat and the assembly by-election in Jehanabad, but in 2019 general elections it could not even open its account in the Lok Sabha polls.

BJP leaders in Delhi admit that candidate selection and price rise have played an important role in the bypolls. Some also feel infighting at local units also worked against the party candidates.

Chidambaram said, Congress won eight seats, while non-BJP parties won 7 of which only one seat was won by a crypto ally of the BJP, namely YSR Congress. The other six seats were won by parties opposed to the BJP.

Results of the bypolls to three Lok Sabha seats and 29 Assembly constituencies, announced on Tuesday, have been encouraging for the Congress in the states of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka where the party is now better placed than the BJP.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : The Western Theatre Command is oriented towards India and counter-terrorism missions along China's Central Asia borders.

The Western Theatre Command is geographically the largest theatre command within China and is responsible for responding to conflict with India and terrorist and insurgent threats in western China.

PLA units located within the Western Theatre Command include two group armies, two military districts, three air force bases, and one rocket force base.

PAP units responsible for Xinjiang operations are also likely under the control of the Western Theater Command, a report by the US Defence Department said.

Within China, the Western Theatre Command focuses on Xinjiang and Tibet Autonomous Regions where the CCP perceives a high threat of separatism and terrorism, particularly among Uyghur populations in Xinjiang.

According to the US Department of State's 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, in the PRC, "genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang." Authorities were reported to have arbitrarily detained more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslims in extrajudicial internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identifies.

PRC government officials justified the camps under the pretence of combatting terrorism, separatism, and extremism.

Beginning in early May 2020, tensions along the India-China border dominated the Western Theatre Command's attention. Differing perceptions of border demarcations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) joined with recent infrastructure construction, led to multiple unarmed clashes, an ongoing standoff, and military buildups on both sides of the India-China border. In response to an unarmed skirmish in June 2020 between PRC and Indian patrols in Galwan Valley -- the most violent clash between the two countries in 45 years -- the Western Theatre Command led a large-scale mobilization and deployment of PLA forces along the LAC, the report said.

Throughout the standoff, PRC officials sought to downplay the severity of the crisis, emphasizing Beijing's intent to preserve border stability and prevent the standoff from harming other areas of its bilateral relationship with India. The PRC seeks to prevent border tensions from causing India to partner more closely with the United States. PRC officials have warned US officials not to interfere with the PRC's relationship with India, the report said.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Seoul, Nov 4 : Hyundai Motor on Thursday released a teaser for the electric SUV concept "Seven" ahead of its unveiling in the US this month.

The large-size SUV concept built on Hyundai Motor Group's dedicated EV platform, called E-GMP, comes with the group's IONIQ battery EV brand's signature design elements, the company said in a statement.

The IONIQ brand's design elements include Parametric Pixels, the smallest unit of digital imaging.

Hyundai plans to unveil the concept car at the LA Auto Show to be held from November 19-28.

Prices and other details about the new vehicle will be released later, reports Yonhap news agency.

In April, Hyundai launched the IONIQ 5 midsize crossover utility vehicle, the first model embedded with the E-GMP platform to strengthen its presence in the eco-friendly vehicle market.

It also plans to introduce the IONIQ 6 midsize sedan in 2022 and the IONIQ 7 large SUV in 2024. It will begin using alphanumeric names like its bigger rivals, such as BMW, whose models are named Series No. 1-8.
Los Angeles, Nov 4 : Pakistan-origin actor-comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who plays a Hindi film star and a superhero named Kingo in Marvel's upcoming movie 'Eternals', says the hardest part in the movie for him was dancing for a Bollywood dance sequence in the film.

Talking about a scene, Kumail said during a global press conference: "Oh, by far the hardest thing was the dancing. I'm gonna put Chloe on the spot. I can't swear, so put in a swear word here. Chloe lied to me." He recalled how the film's director Chloe Zhao talked to Nanjiani about doing a dance sequence.

Nanjiani said: "When we first talked about the movie, she was like, 'There's a Bollywood dance sequence', and I was like, 'Chloe, I don't think I can do that'. She's like, 'Okay, we'll make it a Bollywood action scene'. And then soon as I got to London, she's like, "It's a dance sequence." The actor wanted to have a dance teacher.

He said: "And I was like, 'Get me a dance teacher right now then.' And Nileeka who did the choreography was wonderful. Worked with me for months and months to do that because it was so outside my comfort zone. But really, you know, ultimately, for me, all that came down to trust." "It really did.You know, on the macro level, trusting Kevin because he's made so many MCU movies, and they're all great. I mean what a-what a... What a run." He added: "Um, and then with Chloe, from the first time I met, I met her and Nate Moore who's one of the producers who's-who's not here today. And immediately, you know, usually my instinct would be an opportunity like this.There would be a moment of excitement." "And then, like, fear. But just in meeting her, I was like, oh, she's not going to let me suck in this thing. So, if she wants me to do something, I'm going to do it." The actor said he "completely trusted her".

"I didn't always see, you know, she had this whole movie, this whole universe in her head. I didn't understand it until I watched the movie, but I knew enough to trust her. So for me, I was like, 'Yeah, this doesn't, this doesn't feel like something I would do, but if Chloe thinks I can do it...'" 'Eternals' is the 25th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is releasing on November 5.

It also stars Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, with Kit Harington, Salma Hayek and Academy Award-winner Angelina Jolie.

The film is produced by Kevin Feige and Nate Moore, and directed by Chloe Zhao, who won this year's Best Director Oscar for 'Nomadland'.
New Delhi, Nov 4 : Madhya Pradesh bypoll results came as a breather for Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan amid strong speculation of a change of guard in the state. Many senior BJP leaders believe that Madhya Pradesh bypoll results are now likely to delay any possible leadership change in the state government, at least for some time.

Retaining Khandwa Lok sabha and winning two assembly constituencies out of three has consolidated Chief Minister Chouhan's position in the party and in the state.

Sources in the saffron party said that after favourable results in bypolls, Chouhan will not be removed immediately as he worked hard and delivered. "Chief Minister Chouhan is undoubtedly the most popular leader or face of BJP in Madhya Pradesh. Chouhan, knowing that the bypolls will be crucial and will play decisive role for his continuation as the chief minister, put extra efforts in these constituencies. And results show his popularity and hard work," they said.

A senior party functionary said that the bypoll results have extended the term of the Chief Minister when there was strong buzz of his removal after the party replaced Tirath Singh Rawat in Uttarakhand and Vijay Rupani in Gujarat.

"It seems that no change of guard in the Madhya Pradesh government is going to take place soon," he said.

The BJP has won two out of three Assembly constituencies and the lone Khandwa Lok Sabha seat in state which went for bypolls on October 30 and counting of votes took place on November 2.

The BJP won Prithvipur and Jobat assembly constituencies, both Congress strongholds. The Congress, however, managed to win Raigaon, a BJP stronghold. Winning Jobat, which have around 90 per cent tribal population, gave a boost to BJP's massive outreach programme aiming to bring Dalit and tribal people closer to the party before 2023 assembly elections.

Chief minister Chouhan addressed over three dozen rallies in these three assembly and one Lok Sabha constituencies where bypolls were held. He held maximum eight in Prithvipur and minimum five public meetings in Jobat. He also held 17 rallies in eight assembly seats in the Khandwa Lok Sabha constituency.

Another senior party functionary claims that it will be the biggest folly of the BJP to replace Chouhan being so popular with the masses. "There are many big leaders in the state but no one matches the popularity of the chief minister," he said.
Amaravati, Nov 4 : Farmers and women from Amaravati continued their 'Mahapadyatra' for a fourth day on Thursday to press for their demand that the city be retained as the only state capital of Andhra Pradesh.

Titled 'court to temple', the walkathon from Amaravati to Tirupati resumed Thursday morning from Pulladigunta in Guntur district. The farmers and women continued their march even on Diwali.

The participants said there was no festival for them till they achieve their goal to save Amaravati. "Our situation is that we can't celebrate any festivals. It doesn't matter if we don't have light in our homes this Deepavali but we want to see the light in the entire state and this is possible if Amaravati is developed as the only state capital," said one of the women participating in 'Mahapadyatra'.

The participants will walk 11 km on Thursday to reach Prathipadu in the same district and after the night halt, will resume the foot march.

Some farmers from neighbouring Telangana also joined 'Mahapadyatra' in a show of solidarity with Amaravati farmers. Some leaders of opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) participated in the march.

The mega walkathon began from Thulluru on November 1 and is scheduled to conclude at Tirupati on December 17.

The Amaravati Parirakshana Samithi and Amaravati Joint Action Committee (JAC) are organising the foot march. The participants will walk 10-15 km every day for the next 45 days to reach Sri Venkateswara temple at Tirumala, passing through 70 major villages in Guntur, Prakasam, Nellore, and Chittoor districts.

Barring the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), all political parties are extending support to the 'Mahapadyatra'. The YSRCP has, however, described the foot march as a ploy by TDP President and Leader of Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu.

With 'Mahapadyatra', the agitation by Amaravati farmers entered a new phase. They have been continuing their campaign for 660 days to protest against the State government's plans for trifurcation of the state capital.

Farmers and other residents of Amaravati villages have been demanding that Amaravati be retained as the only state capital.

After coming to power in 2019, the YSR Congress Party government led by Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has decided to shift the administrative capital to Visakhapatnam and the judicial capital to Kurnool while retaining Amaravati as only the legislative capital.

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Glasgow, Nov 4 : Over 200 simultaneous events are set to take place as part of a 'Global Day of Action for Climate Justice' this Saturday -- with a march through Glasgow expected to attract tens of thousands of people.

The organisers of the events, the COP26 Coalition, are expecting people from across the world to attend the Glasgow demonstrations -- which will see a march through the city and a number of rallies with high-profile speakers like Greta Thunberg, Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Vanessa Nakate and Darren McGarvey. Other demonstrations will take place in every corner of the world -- with people taking action in every continent. The marches take place as the first week of the global climate conference comes to a close, and will give people a chance to have their voices heard on what's been happening at the UN climate change summit (COP26).

Asad Rehman, a spokesperson for the COP Coalition, said: "We are taking to the streets across the world this weekend to push governments from climate inaction to climate justice. This has been the least accessible climate summit ever -- with so many people sidelined at the talks or not able to make it in the first place. Today those people are having their voices heard." "The climate crisis has resulted from our broken, unequal societies and economies. We must transform our global economies into ones that protect both people and our planet instead of profit for a few," he said.

Brianna Fruean, a Samoan member of the Pacific Climate Warriors delegation and a speaker at the rally on Saturday, said: "As someone from one of the regions most threatened by climate breakdown I know just how important this climate summit is, and how crucial it is that voices are heard on the streets as well as the corridors of power. "For a decade now, the storms in the Pacific have been getting more violent, the droughts have been longer and the floods deeper. Fishers cannot feed their families. Family-owned shops that are flattened in a cyclone are rebuilt, only to be destroyed by rising water.

"That's why I'm marching today -- with people right across the world -- because it can't go on like this. We refuse to be just victims to this crisis. We are not drowning, we are fighting and on Saturday the world will hear us."
London, Nov 4 : An international team of researchers has, in a new study, claimed that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, does not infect human brain cells, raising hopes that Covid-related damage to sense of smell may be more superficial than previously feared.

The study, published in the journal Cell, showed that the virus infects sustentacular cells -- associated with structural support -- but not olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), which are responsible for initiating smell sensations, as thought earlier, the Guardian reported.

The study challenges previous research that suggested the Covid virus infects neurons in the membrane that lines the upper recesses of the nose. This membrane, called the olfactory mucosa which contains OSNs, is where the virus first lands when it is inhaled.

Olfactory dysfunction affects an estimated half of all Covid-19 patients. In one in 10 of those, the loss or change of smell is long-term, perhaps permanent.

But if the virus only infects the sustentacular cells, then the damage could be less long-lasting, the report said.

According to Peter Mombaerts, Director at the Max Planck Research Unit for Neurogenetics in Frankfurt, this could be the result of support for the OSNs breaking down, even if they themselves are not infected. They may function below par, or stop functioning altogether, until the sustentacular cells regenerate, the report said.

For the study, the team adapted a form of skull base surgery to remove tissue from the olfactory mucosa and bulb of Covid-19 patients within about an hour of their death.

In 30 of the patients, the researchers were able to detect that the virus was still replicating -- meaning the patients had died in the acute, contagious phase of the disease.

The results did "not show any OSNs as being damaged or there being fewer of them, or the OSNs near infected sustentacular cells as being different in any way from those not near infected cells," said Stuart Firestein, a neurobiologist at Columbia University in New York City.

In only six of the 30 patients was the virus detectable in the olfactory mucosa itself. "Overall the numbers are thus really low to make any strong conclusions," said Debby Van Riel, a virologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

If the study results are confirmed, people experiencing Covid-related loss of smell can be reassured that the virus has not infected their brains, and that future therapies targeting the understudied sustentacular cells could alleviate or cure their condition.

--IANS rvt/vd

A
Washington, Nov 4 : NASA has announced that its ice-mining experiment, due to launch in 2022, will land on a ridge on the lunar South Pole, not far from Shackleton crater -- a location engineers and scientists have assessed for months.

NASA data from spacecraft orbiting the Moon indicate this location, referred to as the "Shackleton connecting ridge", could have ice below the surface.

The area receives sufficient sunlight to power a lander for roughly a 10-day mission, while also providing a clear line of sight to Earth for constant communications. It also is close to a small crater, which is ideal for a robotic excursion.

To select this final landing location, experts from NASA, Arizona State University, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, Nokia, and Intuitive Machines created "ice-mining" maps of the lunar surface using lunar remote sensing data.

The Polar Resources Ice-Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) will land on the lunar surface attached to a robotic lander.

PRIME-1 consists of a drill paired with a mass spectrometer -- a 4G/LTE communications network developed by Nokia of America Corporation, and Micro-Nova, a deployable hopper robot developed by Intuitive Machines.

After landing, the PRIME-1 drill using The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) instrument will attempt to drill up to three feet deep, extract lunar soil -- called regolith -- and deposit it on the surface for water analysis.

The Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo) will measure volatile gases that readily escape from the material excavated by TRIDENT.

PRIME-1 will be the first demonstration of finding and extracting resources on the Moon. Advancing these types of technologies are critical to establishing a robust, long-term presence in deep space, including at the Moon as part of the agency's Artemis missions.

While PRIME-1 will investigate the resources below the lunar surface, Nokia will set out to test its space-hardened 4G/LTE network. A small rover developed by Lunar Outpost will venture more than a mile away from the Nova-C lander and test Nokia's wireless network at various distances. The rover will communicate to a base station located on Nova-C, and the lander will communicate data back to Earth.

This demonstration could pave the way for a commercial 4G/LTE system for mission-critical communications on the lunar surface. This includes communications and even high-definition video streaming from astronauts to base stations, vehicles to base stations, and more, NASA said.

"These early technology demonstrations employ innovative partnerships to provide valuable information about operating on and exploring the lunar surface," said Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"The data will inform the designs for future in-situ resource utilisation, mobility, communication, power, and dust mitigation capabilities," Werkheiser added.
The move by US lawmakers led by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney from New York to get a new draft law that would declare Diwali as a federal holiday is a landmark event of our time.

After Yoga, we now have Diwali - the festival of Light and Sound -- as a symbol of India's Soft Power.

Statesmanship, mutual benefits, and strategic significance, not necessarily in that order, decide foreign policy ball games in the contemporary settings. Now, it is time to add 'Soft Power' as a major tool. The emphasis is bigger and more thrustful in the post pandemic era.

Without realising much, we now know that the world is changing pretty fast. The 'great resignation' saga as witnessed by MNCs is a case in point.

For beginners, a Microsoft study says nearly 40 per cent of professionals are keen to give up their existing jobs in the current calendar year. Welcome to a new world era wherein the civilisational and cultural prisms too could prove to be effective tools in the changed world order.

Perhaps this can be underlined better also in the context of developments in Afghanistan and some roles played by Pakistan. Religiosity can have a soothing impact for someone who uses these occasions to gaze in within oneself. These virtues are appreciated in advanced societies as materialistic achievements have made people lonely and friendless.

More than creating 'segments' like Hindu culture or fest, certain things are emerging now as a global phenomenon. The timing of Diwali festival in between autumn and winter is not something to be lost. The light and sound kill some bacteria in the air - that's for the rational school; and in pursuing this argument, one knows the problems lay in overdoing things.

Bursting of firecrackers would have been pleasant and a tasteful experience had not this become a symbol of showmanship. If firecrackers are bad for the environment, so is gambling and the so-called gift-exchange culture of Delhi for human behaviour. Here too, the problem is in overdoing things; not ordering a blanket ban as a presumed corrective strategy.

The global recognition by the UN and ongoing craze for Yoga and a renewed zeal for festivals such as Deepawali have some messages. Of these, the big picture message is - the international game can be no longer about pushing a single-agenda item.

Soft power games also means persuasive diplomacy. It may be out of the box, but not something to be dismissed as out of the blue. Life is often like standing in the dusk, to use poetic jargon. It is all about optimism. Optimism leads to patience. The storm would pass off eventually, no matter how long it is.

This is a major takeaway from oriental teachings and India's perspectives. That's the essence of India's civilisational "soft power" strength too. Diwali symbolises glory of virtues over vices like most festivals and rituals across the globe.

Switching on to another chapter now, there are observers who say that Indians thrive on self pity and that's why we Indians often continue to curse ourselves. The polarization of India's intellectual class is so deep that it is difficult to express an opinion and that would still be considered an objective one.

If one writes a few lines on Hindu festivals and oriental traditions and values, he is in danger of being called a communal! But the fact of life is that some Indian and, for that matter, Hindu fests have attracted attention and excitement globally. This has not happened because Indians can influence the outcome in an US election, this is also because people see merit in some of these festivals and practices.

The festival of light and sound which essentially marks the victory of Good over Evil and Knowledge over Ignorance is being celebrated with religious zeal in countries such as the UAE, Canada, the African nations and Malaysia. In many countries, Diwali has made a mark as a festival of share and care. People also do charity work at orphanages and old age homes.

It is worth mentioning that in 2016 in the context of Art of Living's World Culture Festival in Delhi, none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, "We (Indians) can make contribution (of India's soft power) only when we ourselves feel proud of our culture. But if we continue to curse ourselves, then how will the world look towards us. The world is not only united by concerns of economic growth, but also by human values and India can play a vital role in it." The motive of building a predefined narrative against Hindu fests and practices, if any, has thus fallen flat.

(Nirendra Dev is a New Delhi-based journalist. He is also author of books, 'The Talking Guns: North East India' and 'Modi to Moditva: An Uncensored Truth' )

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021

-- Syndicated from IANS
New Delhi, Nov 4 : The United States is concerned about the People's Republic of China (PRC's) interest in pharmaceutical-based agents (PBAs) and toxins because these agents have utility for chemical weapons applications.

Further, based on available information, the United States cannot certify that China has met its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) due to concerns regarding the PRC's research of pharmaceutical-based agents (PBAs) and toxins with potential dual use applications.

The United States has compliance concerns with respect to PRC military medical institutions' toxin research and development because of the dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat.

The PRC has engaged in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raise concerns regarding its compliance with the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a report by the US Defence Department said.

Studies conducted at PRC military medical institutions discussed identifying, testing, and characterizing diverse families of potent toxins with dual-use applications.

Scientists at a PRC military institute have expressed interest in military applications of PBAs and are engaged in research involving the synthesis, characterization, and testing of PBAs with potential dual-use applications. In addition, available information on studies conducted at PRC military medical institutions indicates that researchers identify, test and characterize diverse families of potent toxins-which raises questions about the intended purposes of the work conducted by the researchers.

Based on available information, the United States cannot certify that the PRC has met its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) due to concerns regarding the PRC's research of pharmaceutical-based agents (PBAs) and toxins with potential dual-use applications.

The PRC has engaged in biological activities with dual-use applications, which raise concerns regarding its compliance with Article I of the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC), to which the PRC became a party in 1984. According to the US Department of State's April 2021 report "2021 Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Non-proliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments," available information shows the PRC engaged in activities that raise concerns with regard to its obligations under Article I of the BWC, which requires States Party "never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, or otherwise acquire or retain... microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes," as well as "weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict." In addition, the US does not have sufficient information to determine whether the PRC eliminated its assessed historical biological warfare (BW) program, as required under Article II of the Convention.

The United States assesses that the PRC possessed an offensive biological warfare program from 1950s to at least the late 1980s. Although the PRC has submitted BWC Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) each year since 1989, the PRC's CBM reporting has never otherwise disclosed it ever pursued an offensive BW program, and the PRC has never acknowledged publicly or in diplomatic channels its past offensive program.

As part of its historical BW program, the PRC had probably weaponized ricin, botulinum toxins, and the causative agents of anthrax, cholera, plague, and tularemia.

The PRC continues to develop its biotechnology infrastructure and pursue scientific cooperation with countries of concern. Available information on studies conducted at PRC military medical institutions has included information that discusses identifying, testing and characterizing diverse families of potent toxins with dual-use applications.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Brussels, Nov 4 : Even as Covid virus cases continue to mount in Europe and Central Asia, the regions are likely to see about 500,000 additional deaths before February 1, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

Over the last four weeks, the region saw a 55 per cent increase in new Covid-19 cases, while Europe and Central Asia together accounted for 59 per cent of global cases and 48 per cent of reported deaths.

Dr Hans Kluge, WHO's European regional director attributed the increased risk to low mask use and vaccine hesitancy, the euronews reported.

Kluge also blamed the surge on other factors such as the winter season, including people gathering in confined closed places, and the Delta variant.

According to WHO experts, across the region there is a "huge variation in uptake" of the Covid-19 vaccines.

While around one billion vaccine doses have been administered in the region, only about 47 per cent of people in the region are fully vaccinated, the report said.

But Kluge said if Europe and Central Asia had 95 per cent of people wearing masks, they could save up to 188,000 lives of the half a million that could be lost before February 2022.

Kluge also defended the use of the Covid-19 pass, stating that it was a "tool towards individual liberty" instead of something that restricted freedom.

"Transmission is high in many countries across the European region... not just in one country," Dr Catherine Smallwood, from the WHO's emergencies team, was quoted as saying.

"Of course, Europe as a continent is highly interconnected, more so maybe than other regions, and this may also be a factor in the way that the pandemic evolves," she added.

In Eastern Europe, where vaccination rates remain low, many countries are struggling to contain deadly waves of the virus.

Smallwood added that there are "far too many pregnant women hospitalised with Covid-19 across the region at the moment" and that experts needed to do more to explain the benefits and risks of Covid-19 vaccination to them.

While the Delta variant dominates the region, offshoots such as AY. 4.2 and AY.4.3 has also been detected from many countries in Europe.

More than 26,000 cases of the Delta Covid subvariant AY.4.2, considered up to 15 per cent more transmissible than the original Delta, has been reported from 42 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Although AY.4.3 is not as widespread as AY.4.2 yet, it has been growing in Denmark, France, Belgium and Germany and the UK.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Nov 4 : China has likely considered a number of countries including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Seychelles as locations for People's Liberation Army (PLA) facilities.

China is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances.

Beyond its base in Djibouti, the PRC is pursuing additional military facilities to support naval, air, ground, cyber, and space power projection. The PRC has likely considered a number of countries, including Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan, as locations for PLA facilities. The PRC has probably already made overtures to Namibia.

A global PLA military logistics network and PLA military facilities could both interfere with US military operations and support offensive operations against the United States as the PRC's global military objectives evolve, a US Defence Department report said.

China is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances. Beijing may assess that a mixture of military logistics models, including preferred access to commercial infrastructure abroad, exclusive PLA logistics facilities with prepositioned supplies colocated with commercial infrastructure, and bases with stationed forces, most closely aligns with the PRC's overseas military logistics needs.

Currently, the PRC uses commercial infrastructure to support all of its military operations abroad, including the PLA's presence in other countries' territories, such as at its base in Djibouti.

Some of the PRC's OBOR projects could create potential military advantages, such as PLA access to selected foreign ports to pre-position the necessary logistics support to sustain naval deployments in waters as distant as the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Atlantic Ocean to protect its growing interests.

As a means of creating numerous options, the PRC is attempting to develop access in multiple African countries on the continent's Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Mediterranean coasts.

PRC military academics assert that bases abroad can enable forward deployment of PLA forces and support military conflict, diplomatic signaling, political change, bilateral and multilateral cooperation, and training. They also suggest that a military logistics network could enable intelligence monitoring of the US military, the report said.

Beyond its base in Djibouti, China is very likely already considering and planning for additional military bases and logistics facilities to support naval, air, and ground forces projection. The PLA's approach likely includes consideration of many different sites and outreach to many countries, but only some will advance to negotiations for an infrastructure agreement, status of forces or visiting forces agreement, and/or basing agreement.

Critical organizations involved in planning and negotiating for military logistics facilities are the Central Military Commission (CMC) Joint Staff Department, CMC Logistic Support Department, and service headquarters. The PRC's overseas military basing will be constrained by the willingness of potential host nations to support a PLA presence.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
New Delhi, Nov 4 : The bypoll results have made Congress go on overdrive in two states of Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan where party swept the elections.

The Congress insiders say that the result may impact the internal rift in the party and the G-23 leaders might remain dormant for some time as loyalists and centrists are happy with the results.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi gave full credit for the victory to party workers and asked them to keep up the fight without fear.

But the G-23 in the party may have to rethink their strategy as one of the important member Bhupinder Singh Hooda could not ensure win in his state where in Ellanabad, INLD's Abhay Chautala won the seat. He had resigned from the seat in solidarity with the farmers demand.

But Congress swept the polls where family loyalists Rajeev Shukla and Ajay Maken were in charge -- Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.

However in Himachal Pradesh, Anand Sharma who is one of the dissenting leaders, put up strong campaign and pitched for the party. Sharma after the result said, "The clean sweep and victories for Pratibha Singh and wins by Rohit Thakur, Sanjay Awasthi and Bhawani Singh Pathania despite the massive use of power, authority and resources, are a clear rejection of anti-people policies of the BJP and betrayal of the mandate." "The tide has turned, and the countdown of the BJP has begun," Sharma said.

Similarly in Karnataka where Randeep Surjewala is General Secretary In-charge, party managed to win one seat at the Chief Minister's home turf and came second on other seat where it was the third last time.

But the party was wiped out in Assam, Telangana and Bihar. Rahul Gandhi's close aide Jitendra Singh is General Secretary In charge in Assam, while Manickam Tagore is of Telangana and Bhakta Charan Das is In-charge of Bihar.

But the dissenting group might be waiting for the assembly polls in 2022 where the Congress hopes to retain power in Punjab, win in Uttrakhand, Goa and Manipur and put up a good show in UP.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Kolkata, Nov 4 : The infighting between different groups of the ruling Trinamool Congress is disturbing the law and order situation in Murshidabad district, Congress' West Bengal President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has told Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

"I wish to draw your kind attention to the pathetic and disturbing situation in Kumarpur-Sujapur Panchayat under Beldanga Assembly segment in my Parliamentary Constituency Baharampur. There is palpable tension in the area because of constant infighting among different local groups of the Trinamool Congress. Because of this infighting, the local population has been very badly affected. The residents are scared and feeling insecure. Fear has gripped the entire area," Chowdhury, who is the Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, said in a letter to the Chief Minister.

He has also alleged of police excess in the locality leading to problems for the common people.

"The local people of Tatlapara village under Sujapur-Kumarpur Gram Panchayat are predominantly Muslim. It has come to my knowledge that police excesses in the area have increased, including ransacking of homes. The ransacking by the police has resulted in damaging of the properties of the local population. Further, criminal cases are being registered against women and some women have also been arrested," he said.

"Because of the above, there is a strong resentment against the police and local administration. The situation resembles Jammu & Kashmir as the shops and local markets are closed. The women are being forced to migrate to neighbouring villages. They have nothing to do with the rival fighting groups and are merely incidental victims of the two warring factions," he added.

"The epicentre of the infighting between the two factions of the ruling regime infighting Tatlapara which has been bearing the brunt of this mindless violence. The worst victim of this senseless infighting is the local population, especially the purdah observing women," Chowdhury said.

The senior Congress leader appealed to the Chief Minister to ensure that normalcy returns to the areas soon. "I would appeal to you to take strict action against the local ruffian groups and bring peace in the area," he said.
Patna, Nov 4 : A total of 18 persons died in Bihar after consuming spurious liquor -- 10 in Gopalganj and 8 in West Champaran's Bettiah district.

Dr Nawal Kishore Chaudhary, the district magistrate of Gopalganj confirmed 10 deaths in three villages -- Mohammadpur, Kushar and Tuhra Tola under Mohammadpur police station. They consumed liquor on Tuesday evening and fell ill. They died in the last two days while 7 others are critically ill. Four of them lost their eyesight.

"We have been announcing through loudspeakers to come forward if they consumed liquor. The timely treatment can help save lives," Chaudhary said.

In Bettiah, the district administration confirmed 8 deaths due to consumption of spurious liquor.

Following mass deaths in Bihar due to consumption of illicit liquor, the opposition RJD mounted a scathing attack on the Nitish Kumar government.

"Is the Nitish Kumar government not responsible for mass deaths?" Bihar opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav said.

"The Nitish Kumar government is hiding the number of deaths. As per our information, 20 persons died in Gopalganj, 13 in Bettiah and 10 in Muzaffarpur district a week ago. The district administration is cremating dead bodies without any postmortem to hide facts," Tejashwi said.

"During bypolls, the JDU leaders had distributed liquor to voters with the connivance of Nitish Kumar. It also reached to other districts too. Therefore Nitish Kumar is directly responsible for mass deaths due to consumption of spurious liquor. He is claiming a liquor ban in the state which has completely failed," Tejashwi Yadav said.

"The liquor mafias are running a parallel economy to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore in the state. Nitish Kumar is the kingpin of it. He should clarify before the people of the state," Tejashwi said.

"The Nitish-BJP government has broken the back of people through high prices of commodities and other items and now 50 persons have died due to spurious liquor in the last one week in Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj and West Champaran districts. Despite that, Nitish Kumar had not said a single word to console family members of the victims," Lalu Prasad tweeted.

Meanwhile, Patna police managed to seize a huge cache of liquor worth Rs 50 lakh from Patna city area on Thursday.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 4 : A young Kerala mother, anxious to get back her one-year-old boy, on Thursday expressed anguish over the course of the ongoing police probe and threatened to begin a protest, if things don't improve.

"I am least happy in the way the probe is going on as those at the helm of affairs at the Kerala State Child Welfare Council and Child Welfare Committee continue to sit in their posts, which means they can easily thwart the probe. Already what we hear is crucial CCTV visuals have gone missing from these places, which clearly means, those at the helm at these places are playing games. If this is the way, then we will have to think of launching another protest," said Anupama.

The 22-year-old SFI activist and granddaughter of one of the topmost yesteryear CPI-M leaders in the state capital, and her husband Ajith, a worker of the CPI-M-backed youth wing has been in the news since last month, when the media took up their case.

The couple was forced to approach the media, after their pleas to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the state police chief, their party leaders and several other agencies went in vain. It was only after the media took up the case, did the government and the police began to act.

According to the information, it is now alleged that the Child Welfare Committee has given the baby boy of the couple to an Andhra Pradesh couple for adoption last year.

In a related development, a family court in the state capital, which last week stayed all the adoption procedures of the baby boy to the Andhra couple, asked the CWC to file an affidavit on what exactly had happened in the case and posted it for further hearing for November 20.

The court also pointed out that if required, a DNA test also can be done and came down heavily on the CWC, which admitted that its license for adoption had expired and the process for renewing it is underway.

Incidentally, it was following a day long protest by Anupama and her husband in front of the State Secretariat last month, the Vijayan government decided to act and took appropriate measures.
Colombo, Nov 4 : Amidst mounting island-wide protests by farmers demanding fertiliser following the government's sudden decision to go fully organic and ban chemical fertiliser usage, two Indian Air Force planes have airlifted a consignment of nano nitrogen fertiliser to help Sri Lanka.

"On the request of the Government of Sri Lanka, the two IAF C-17 Globemaster aircraft arrived at Bandaranaike International Airport with 100,000 kg of nano nitrogen. The deployment was essentially to support the Government of Sri Lanka's initiative towards

organic farming and to expedite availability of nano nitrogen fertiliser to the Sri Lankan farmers," the Indian High Commission in Colombo said in a statement.

"The Government of India has continued to support Sri Lanka in times of critical requirement as part of its 'Neighbourhood First' policy and has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity and role as the 'First Responder' in the region," it said.

The High Commission added that the C17 aAircraft operations were coordinated in close liaison with Sri Lanka Air Force and the quick deployment of IAF aircraft and expeditious disembarkation overnight was indicative of close coordination between the two services.

Sri Lanka Air Force's Chief of Staff, AVM Prasanna Payoe, who received the aircraft crews, had thanked the IAF for their prompt response and continued support in essential

matters.

Since June thousands of famers are on streets on daily basis demanding that fertiliser be provided for paddy cultivation during the North-East Monsoon season or Maha season, the major paddy cultivation period starting from September/October in the island nation.

The protests came following President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's sudden decision in April to ban import of chemical fertiliser claiming that agrochemical has severe health hazards, including a mysterious kidney disease causing thousands of deaths every year.

However, the opposition claimed that the real reason for the fertiliser ban was due to the ongoing financial crisis due to lack of foreign reserves and drop in foreign currency. The country's annual expenditure for fertiliser import is $400 million.

Sri Lanka is facing one of the biggest financial blows in her history following the Easter Sunday attack in 2019 and Covid-19 pandemic that had been going on for last two years. The terrorist attack and the pandemic in turn had hit major foreign income earners like tourism.
Bengaluru, Nov 4 : The BJP is up in arms against Karnataka opposition leader Siddaramaiah's comments that many Dalit leaders joined the BJP just for the sake of livelihood.

The BJP leaders who seem to be offended by his remarks have launched an all out attack on Siddaramaiah on the ground as well as on social media.

Siddaramaiah had said that many Dalit leaders have joined BJP merely for a livelihood. This has not gone down well with the BJP leaders and they have launched protests against him all across the state.

Siddaramaiah had earlier commented on RSS and defended his stance during the bypolls in the state. Following his comments, former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy was also forced to issue statements against the RSS. The war of words between BJP and opposition hit a new low with statements being issued against former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The Congress had attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then apologised.

After his blitzkrieg against RSS, Siddaramaiah got a call from Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The attacks on RSS seems to have helped the Congress as the party secured victory in Hangal and improved performance in Sindgi bypolls. The Congress was able to retain the minority vote bank despite JD(S) fielding Muslim candidates in both the constituencies.

Party sources explain that Siddaramaiah is trying to disturb the Dalit vote base of the BJP and attract them towards the Congress party by issuing statements against leaders of oppressed classes in BJP.

The BJP, which is aware of this move, has launched full fledged attack on Siddaramaiah. The party leaders are burning his effigies all across the state. The party has started campaign on social media under the hashtag 'anti-Dalit Siddaramaiah.' The BJP has chided Siddaramaiah that he has ignored his own Dalit leaders like Dr G. Parameshwara, Dr H.C. Mahadevappa. The BJP also said that, they are being kept away from Siddaramaiah for his livelihood.

BJP has further challenged Siddaramaiah to announce that he would support a Dalit candidate if Congress came to power. The ruling party has also blamed him for keeping Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge out of state politics.
Amaravati, Nov 4 : TDP President and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday slammed the State Election Commission (SEC) for receiving nominations for local body elections on Diwali.

He came down heavily on the state poll panel, claiming it was not taking independent decisions and was "blindly following the orders" of the YSRCP government.

He questioned the rationale behind the SEC continuing the election process even on Diwali day.

"How can the candidates be asked to file their nominations when all others were celebrating the festival? The anarchic regime was deriving sadistic pleasure by hurting religious sentiments as well. Would they hold an election on Christmas," he asked.

He demanded an explanation from the SEC and the DGP on the ruling YSRCP's threats to prevent the opposition candidates from filing nominations in the civic body elections.

The TDP chief alleged that just like before, the YSRCP was trying to turn the present election to the 12 municipalities and one municipal corporation into a farce.

The ruling party leaders, the police and the officials were directly threatening and asking the opposition candidates not to file nominations. In some cases, nomination papers were being torn off, he said.

Naidu showed a video and pointed out how a village vice president belonging to the YSRCP was directly threatening the rival candidate not to file nomination.

"The YSRCP village leader was behaving locally just like how Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has been behaving like an unlawful person at the state level. With their uncontrolled sadism and offences, the YSRCP leaders have turned Andhra Pradesh into a 'State of lunatics'," he said.

Naidu cautioned the opposition candidates to take maximum precautions to ensure that their nominations would remain valid. As the officials were trying to invalidate nominations at various stages, the candidates should take the help of advocates and get proper acknowledgements after filing nominations, he said, adding that copies of their nominations should be mailed to the District Collectors, the SEC and the election observers.

Naidu asserted that if the election officials committed any election fraud, the TDP would approach the courts and seek the required relief. The opposition candidates were receiving threats from the ruling party and they should record all such calls for evidence before the courts. The general public should also join the fight to prevent the anti-social elements and the YSRCP goondas from taking democracy for a ride, he said.

Referring to Kuppam polls, he alleged that Punganur Commissioner Lokeshwar Varma was appointed special officer for Kuppam in order to rig the elections. This officer has started ordering all the Government staff on duty in elections to ensure the YCP victory. He alleged that Varma behaved in a criminal way and got all 24 wards in Punganur declared unanimously for the YSRCP in the past.

Naidu asked how the SEC could appoint a tainted officer like Varma for Kuppam polls.

"The TDP got 25 percent more votes in Kuppam in the 2019 elections. Minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy along with his officials were scheming to reverse this trend with their anarchic activities. The YSRCP leaders were indeed desperate to win all elections so as to cover up their Government's miserable failures and rising unpopularity," he said.

The TDP chief warned that if the officials continued to support the 'Tughlaq' rule, it would be the beginning of their end. "The TDP would surely form a commission to probe and punish all such officers who colluded with the lawless regime of Jagan Reddy," he said.

Naidu also claimed that the CM and his MLAs were getting terrified of the rising discontent and resentment of all sections of the people against their government. Instead of showing his frustration in the civic polls, Jaganmohan Reddy should dissolve the Assembly and face the public, he demanded.

Latest updates on Diwali Festival 2021
Seoul, Nov 4 : South Korean girl group BLACKPINK urged the world to join efforts to tackle climate change in its video message to the World Leaders Summit at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

The summit was held on Monday and Tuesday as part of the COP26 under way in Glasgow, Scotland, with world leaders from more than 100 countries attending. According to the video available on the group's YouTube channel, the quartet opened the joint speech by stressing the importance of the issue and urgency to address it, reports Yonhap, the South Korean news agency.

"Six years ago in Paris, you (world leaders) pledged to limit global warming ideally to 1.5 degrees. The recent UN panel on climate change warned that this opportunity may be slipping from our grasp," Rose said.

"The changes that we feared are already beginning to transform our planet," Lisa said, specifying what could happen if the world temperature rises.

Jennie said, "Almost all warm water coral reefs would be destroyed and sea ice would melt and devastate wildlife." She toned up her voice, adding, "We must act now urgently to prevent much, much worse." Jisoo said, "We do not want to get there. The most important thing is that we all take responsibility because it just won't be achieved without collective action." She urged world leaders to take actions to prevent the crisis and expressed the hope that "you will make the decisions necessary to protect our planet now and forever."
Kolkata, Nov 4 : A bride's father has started getting threat calls from different people and fundamental organisations after he decided to break away from the custom and wrote on the wedding invitation card: "Kanya is not an object to given as daan (A daughter is not an object to be given as charity)".

The bride - a resident of Nadia in south Bengal -- is supposed to get married to a government employee in Kolkata in the second week of December.

In the invitation, the father also wrote "Kanya daan noi - Rakta daan (Daughter is not charity - blood donation is)".

With the invitation card seen as breaking away from the traditional Hindu custom of kanyadaan, where the father "gives away" his daughter, the man's strong take at the age-old, traditional custom that challenged the patriarchy has met with strong reactions from fundamental Hindu organisation as well as from individuals.

The day the invitation card was circulated among friends and relatives, the family started getting several threat calls where the bride's father was even given death threats.

Contacted on the phone number printed on the invitation card, the bride's father, who requested several times not to reveal the identity of the family, told IANS: "My daughter's marriage is purely a family function and I had no intention to invite any controversy. What I wrote was purely from my personal belief and I had the support of the family. I never thought that this would lead to a kind of a controversial situation." Asked whether they have approached the police, he said: "I didn't go to the police because my daughter's life is involved in it. I am also worried about my family. I can't do anything now because all the cards have been distributed and I cannot take them back even. I only wanted to say that my daughter is not an object and that was my intention behind writing that in the card." Earlier, an advertisement for a lehenga brand featuring Bollywood star Alia Bhatt as the much-indulged daughter and granddaughter, fired debate on social media platforms and elsewhere on the age-old tradition of giving away the daughter after it showed Alia asking: "Why must a woman be commodified through the custom of kanyadaan? literally donating a daughter." The advertisement sparked widespread debate from Hindutva activists forcing the brand to remove the advertisement after receiving threats.

Asked whether he was inspired by the advertisement, the father said: "It was an advertisement where there is an involvement of crores of money but this is purely a family function where the life of my daughter is involved. I did it from my belief and progressive thinking." Though there has been no police complaint, police have started taking information in their own way. Asked about it, a senior district police officer said: "We cannot say anything at this point of time. We are trying to establish contact with the family."
Bengaluru, Nov 4 : Dalit organisations took out a rally in Bengaluru Rural district on Thursday demanding arrest of those who allegedly attacked a Dalit youth for questioning the use of mobile inside the temple by the temple trust committee chief in the district's Vijayapura town.

The incident had taken place in Sri Anjaneya temple in Vijayapura near Doddaballapura near Bengaluru on Oct 30. According to the protesters, a gang of people allegedly abused him, tried to strangulate him with a piece of cloth used by priests, and assaulted him severely in front of his brother.

The protestors alleged that Vijayapura police have arrested only three persons and are not making any effort to nab the rest behind the attack on the youth, who is still being treated at the government hospital.

They also demanded that the police should withdraw the case against the victim and extern the accused from the district.

The victim Dilip Kumar, son of an advocate and a college student, visited Anjaneya temple every day before going to college.

On the day of the incident, his mobile rang while he was inside. When the priest objected, he had stepped outside. While returning, he noticed the temple trust President Prakash talking over his cellphone, and questioned him, Muni Anjinappa, a Dalit leader of the Praja Vimochana Chaluvali, said At this, Prakash had abused him and tried strangulate him. He had dragged him from temple to the office and along with five others, attacked him. He claimed that he had built the temple and he could do anything and also abused him for being a Dalit, he stated.

Victim's mother Manjula said that her son was still alive as his elder brother, who was waiting outside the temple on bike to drop him to college, rushed in and rescued him.
Kolkata, Nov 4 : West Bengal Panchayat Minister and former Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation Subrata Mukherjee died at a city hospital on Thursday evening. He was 76.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who considered Mukherjee to be her political mentor, rushed to the SSKM Hospital on getting the information.

Announcing the death of the veteran politician, she said: "I cannot believe in the midst of the festival of lights, such darkness will set in." Mukherjee was admitted to the SSKM Hospital with some heart ailments and a stent was placed but his condition started to deteriorate and he was shifted to ICCU in Woodburn Ward due to shortness of breath a couple of days before. Sources in the hospital said that he died of stent thrombosis at 9.25 p.m.

Joining politics in the 1960s, he became a cabinet minister in Congress leader Siddhartha Shankar Roy's government when he was only 26. He was in charge of the state's Information and Culture Department during the controversial state of emergency.

Leaving Congress, Mukherjee joined the Trinamool Congress in 2000 and was the Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation 2001 and 2005 but developed distance from Banerjee, left the party and formed his own outfit. He contested the election under the banner of his new party, but despite his own victory, his party did not perform. Mukherjee then went back to Congress in 2007.

Mukherjee, who was not only considered to be an able administrator but also a clever politician, rejoined Trinamool in 2010. He won the Assembly election in 2011 when Banerjee registered a historic victory ending the 34-year-long Left Front rule.

He was made the Panchayat Minister and till his death, he handled the charge efficiently and successfully.

Mukherjee was also a colorful character in the political arena. Despite pursuing anti-Left politics, he maintained good relations with Left leaders at all levels in the state.
Dakshina Kannada : , Nov 4 (IANS) Four youths have been arrested for defiling a place of worship by entering the premises of Karinjeshwara temple located on the Karinja hill near Bantwal in Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district with footwear last month, police said on Thursday.

The arrested were identified as Busher Rehman (20), Ismail Arhamaz (22), Mohammed Tanish (19), and Mohammad Rashad (19), all hailed from surrounding areas of Ullal town near Mangaluru city. District Superintendent of Police Rishikesh Bhagvan Sonawane said all four have been sent to judicial custody.

The accused had entered the hilltop temple with footwear and uploaded the video on October 7. The video had gone viral on social media in communally sensitive Dakshina Kannada district and Hindu outfits demanded immediate arrest of the accused.

Bantwal's BJP MLA Rajesh Naik had urged the police to take immediate action, while the Hindu Jagaran Vedike said that the youths have deliberately desecrated the temple and uploaded the video.

A case was registered in Punnalakatte police station by temple authorities on November 3 under Section 295 (destruction, damage or defilement of a place of worship or an object held sacred, with intent to insult the religion of a class of persons) of the IPC.
Manila, Nov 5 : The alert level in the Philippine capital region will be eased further to 2 on a scale of 5 starting Friday as Covid-19 infections slows and vaccination rate increases, Philippine presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque has said.

The downgrading of the alert level in Metro Manila will remain until November 21, Roque said in a brief statement on Thursday, adding that starting December 1, the alert level assignments will be determined every 15th and 30th of each month.

"Escalations, on the other hand, may be done at any time in the middle of the implementation period as warranted, while de-escalations can only be done at the end of the two-week assessment period," he said.

On Thursday, the Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 1,766 Covid-19 infections, pushing the number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,795,642, Xinhua news agency reported.

The DOH has reported less than 2,000 daily cases for two days since Wednesday when 1,591 cases were recorded, the lowest since February 24.
Washington, Nov 5 : Gun violence costs the United States $280 billion a year, according to ABC News.

"From hospital bills and lost wages to lost productivity, advocates estimate gun violence costs America almost $300 billion a year, according to research by government groups and activists who have collected and reviewed available public data," ABC News said in a report.

Citing data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US TV network also reported that more than 1,94,000 were killed by gun violence in America over the past five years, averaging about 39,000 deaths annually, Xinhua news agency reported.
Beirut, Nov 5 : Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has urged Information Minister George Kordahi to resign from his position for the national interest, the Lebanese National News Agency reported.

"I repeat my call for the Information Minister to use his conscience, assess the circumstances, take the necessary position, and give priority to the national interest," Mikati said on Thursday.

I am planning on solving the row with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, he added.

"We will never allow this issue to be the subject of political bickering and we will seek, in cooperation with all the faithful people, to reverse the decisions taken by the kingdom in a way that restores the smoothness of Lebanon's relations with its Arab neighbours," Mikati said.

Lebanese-Saudi relations have worsened over the comments made by Kordahi criticizing Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.

Last Friday, Saudi Arabia expelled the Lebanese Ambassador and banned all imports from Lebanon in protest against his remarks.

Kordahi had said in a televised interview recorded weeks before his appointment as the Minister that the Houthis in Yemen have been defending themselves in the face of external aggression for years.
af&co., one of the countrys leading boutique restaurant and hospitality consulting firms, and Carbonate, a boutique creative services and brand communications agency, are thrilled to debut this years hospitality trends report: Through The Looking Glass: Finding Your Way In A New Era Of Hospitality. Now in its 14th edition, the af&co./Carbonate trends report has become an anticipated industry resource for hospitality professionals. Compiled from extensive year-long research, the report provides a comprehensive overview of the trends and practices that will shape the hospitality industry in 2022 by identifying key influences in food, beverage, hotels & travel, sustainability, business & marketing, and design.

This years theme "Through The Looking Glass" reflects the topsy-turvy nature of the last two years, with the ground constantly shifting beneath our feet, and the need to chart a new path forward in this seemingly upside-down reality. As Alice herself said, "It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." - Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)

This year was supposed to be a year of recovery, yet it feels like weve all gone down the rabbit hole and must figure out how to adjust to this strange new world, says Andrew Freeman, Founder of af&co.While the unknown can feel daunting, it also presents opportunities to create a more equitable, efficient, and profitable hospitality industry, and weve seen some incredible innovation and progress on these fronts.

The challenges of 2021 have inspired quite a bit of soul-searching as hospitality businesses have to determine how they want to operate going forward, says Candace MacDonald, Co-Founder of Carbonate. What is the right pricing structure and labor model that will allow for profitability and retention of top talent in the industry? What additional emergency revenue streams that were launched during the pandemic need to be refined and properly marketed? How can we create a strong digital presence in order to communicate directly with our audience? What are our values, and how do we reflect these in our actions? These are all questions that need to be addressed in order to create stable, long-lasting businesses.

This year af&co. and Carbonate will use the release of the trends report to raise funds for two charitable organizations that support hospitality professionals, specifically, women in the industry: The LEE Initiatives Women Culinary and Spirits Program and the James Beard Foundations Womens Entrepreneurial Leadership Program. af&co. and Carbonate have committed to matching up to $5,000 in donations per charity, which means a possible $10,000 donation to each organization. Donations can be made directly to either organization through custom links at: https://www.carbonategroup.com/insights

Freeman and MacDonald will present Through the Looking Glass in entirety in a webinar on Wednesday, November 10 at 11am PT / 2pm ET. A second presentation will be held on Thursday, November 18 at 11am PT / 2pm ET.

Here is a preview of several top trends you can expect to see in the report:

Food City of the Year: Nashville, TN

After reeling from tragedies including a tornado and a holiday bombing (not to mention a global pandemic), Music City has demonstrated its resilience, and its already stellar food scene is only getting better thanks to a spate of new openings, and its ability to attract some of the top food and beverage talent in the country. The best of both worlds, its a destination where southern food and hospitality meets urban sophistication and culinary innovation.

Ex: Audrey, renowned chef Sean Brocks most ambitious project to-date celebrates his heritage growing up in the rural South, Appalachian cuisine, his love of Japanese culture, and the traditions impressed on him from his grandmother; at Yolan, Michelin-starred chef Tony Mantuano and his wife, wine and hospitality expert Cathy Mantuano, brought their signature Italian fine dining from Chicago to Nashville; Drusie & Darr, legendary chef Jean-Georges Vongerichtens new restaurant in the Hermitage Hotel will showcase Tennessees rich culinary heritage, and its abundance of regional produce.

Hottest Dish of the Year: Laksa

One of Singapores best-known signature dishes, Laksa (which can also be attributed to Malaysia, but Singapore has their own unique style) combines the best of the Far and South East in an amalgam of flavors. Slurpable noodles, fragrant aromatics, creamy coconut curry, a bit of funky spice paste, and some underlying heat, all topped with tasty garnishes from hard boiled eggs, to fresh prawns, or fried tofu.

Ex: Lion Dance Cafe (Oakland, CA) is a hugely popular pop-up-gone-permanent, plant-based restaurant whose signature dish is a vegan Laksa Lemak; Dabao Singapore (San Francisco, CA) is a popular Singaporean pop-up with a bi-weekly changing menu, but the laksa is the dish upon which they built their reputation (and available every week).

Cuisine of the Year: Caribbean

Caribbean Cooking is Hot! - and were not talking about the chilis. Caribbean cuisine is taking the stage as chefs explore the diverse range of flavors, ingredients, and culinary influences of this region. Caribbean is a catch-all term for the islands of the West Indies and the Caribbean Sea, as well as coastal countries like Belize and Guyana. The area encompasses a melange of culinary traditions including African, Creole, Cajun, European, Latin American, and more.

Ex. Canje (Austin, TX) from the renowned Emmer & Rye team focuses on Guyanese, Puerto Rican, and Jamaican cuisines; Caribbean restaurant Kokomo (Brooklyn, NY) employs staff and chefs from over 29 countries, highlighting the various cultures and traditions found within the West Indies; Chao Pescao (San Francisco, CA) offers Latin-Caribbean home cooking based on the chefs Cuban-Colombian heritage; Sobre Mesa (Oakland, CA) features Afro-Latino cooking influenced by the chefs Dominican roots, Cuba, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean countries.

Cuisine on the Rise: Indian

Whether spotlighting the culinary nuances of Indias many diverse regions, putting a modern spin on time-honored dishes, or showcasing traditional recipes and cooking techniques, Indian cuisine is rising in prominence across the country. Chefs are delving deeply into its rich and vibrant foodways, boldly championing lesser-known dishes or ingredients that push the boundaries of what many in the States have tastedsuch as Gurda Kapoora at Dhamaka (NYC), a dish of goat kidney & testicles, red onion, and pao.

Ex: Aurum (Los Altos, CA) Chef Manish Tyagis menu highlights the best of forgotten traditional recipes regularly showcasing varied dishes from different regions of India, while using local California produce; Unapologetic Foods (New York, NY) Restaurateur Roni Mazumdar and chef Chintan Pandya are on a mission to redefine Indian food and have created a mini-empire of restaurants showcasing regional Indian cuisine (including Adda, Semma, Dhamaka, Rahi and Masalawala); Amber India (multiple locations, San Francisco Bay Area) credited with introducing Butter Chicken to the Bay Area over 30 years ago, Amber India continues to preserve Indian culinary traditions, bringing in highly trained chef artisans well versed in Indian culinary history.

Would you Like Some History With That?

Questions about where our food comes from have gotten much more complex as chefs and artisan food producers of color have started to dig deep into very specific regional culinary traditions to bring back ingredients and techniques that have been misappropriated or all-but disappeared.

Ex. Roux40 (Oakland, CA) will focus on Black heritage cuisine with modern interpretations of traditional dishes and a farm-to-table sensibility, with most produce sourced from farms owned by people of color; Owamni by The Sioux Chef (Minneapolis, MN) serves modern indigenous cuisine without colonial ingredients such as wheat flour, cane sugar and dairy to present a decolonized dining experience; at Barrio Bread (Tucson, AZ) Don Guerra is known as a pioneer in the  local-grain movement, working with southern Arizona grain growers, the Indigenous San Xavier Cooperative Farm, and other groupsbaking exclusively with grains grown in southern Arizona, and helping revive types of indigenous grains. Hes even traced wheat to its deepest roots in North America, the Sonoran region.

Empanadas: The New Hot Pockets

From Argentina, with its flaky pastry wrapping, to Colombia with its cornmeal masa coating fried to a golden crisp, empanadas have taken hold, grabbing the 8th top spot in GrubHubs "State of the Plate" report on the most popular foods during the first half of 2021. With fillings that showcase regional flavors like braised beef with raisins and olives in Argentina, and Aji de Gallina in Peru, empanadas are appearing as both appetizers and the main event.

Ex. Claudys Kitchen (New York, NY) offers 9 flavors of empanadas, including Chicharon, Aji de Gallina, and Lomo Saltado; Chao Pescao (San Francisco, CA) offers 4 flavors of Colombian Empanadas de Vallunas; Empanola (New Orleans, LA) offers 10 different empanada flavors from Latin like Beef Argentina or Chicken Peruvian to Nola Crawfish Etouffee or Gumbo; Frizata, a Latin American frozen foods company about to launch in the US, offers four signature empanadas including Spinach & Cheese or a vegetarian beef version.

Global Gins, Local Flavors

It might not carry the cache of whiskey with its barrel aging, but Gin is gaining steam and distillers around the world are producing unique gins based on their own local flavor profiles.

Ex. Jin Jiji (India) is distilled with wild Himalayan juniper berries, tulsi (an aromatic leaf popular in Ayurvedic tradition), and local cashew nuts; Four Pillars Bloody Shiraz Gin (Australia) combines gin with shiraz grapes; Song Cai (Vietnam) incorporates green turmeric, jungle pepper, black cardamom, heirloom pomelo, and white licorice root into its gin.

The Smoothie in the Cuzzi

After years of hazy IPAs, some beer makers are looking for something a little smoother with smoothie or slushy style beers that have a thicker texture. These sweet sounding brews are actually based on sours and packed with fruit puree after the first fermentation, creating a thick smoothie or slushy-like consistency with a lot of fruit flavor.

Ex. Great Notion (Portland, OR) produces Mellifluous, a strawberry, raspberry, banana, apricot, and blood orange smoothie sour; 450 North Brewing Company (Columbus, Indiana) offers 10 slushy style beers including Hawaiian Dole Whip with pineapple, pineapple soft serve, marshmallow, vanilla, and rum flavor; 903 Brewers (Dallas, TX) Tikki Room Slushy is a Berliner Weisse with flavors of passionfruit, pineapple, coconut, and guava.

A House Divided Cannot Stand

Restaurants are adopting more flexible service models, even eschewing the traditional division between front and back of house in some cases and cross-training staff to take on multiple roles. The new service model helps encourage equality, eliminating hierarchy while helping protect against being short staffed especially during a labor shortage.

Ex: Flea Street Cafe (Menlo Park, CA) eliminated tips for a shared service charge and trains front and back-of-house on tasks throughout all parts of the restaurant; LeBlanc + Smith Hospitality Group (New Orleans, LA) designed a new work structure where everyone completes each task, so whoever makes the food or cocktail, for example, serves it to the table rather than handing it off to the waitstaffthe result is fewer positions, but employees receive higher pay.

Employer Branding Becomes Essential

The Great Resignation is upon us, with many leaving the hospitality industry workforce in droves. In order to attract and retain top talent, operators must both create competitive compensation packages, and foster a positive company culture rooted in empathy and opportunity. Knowing what you stand for as a business, and how youll help your employees thrive, are vital to continued success.

Ex: According to a recent survey by Culinary Agents, 31% of hospitality workers are looking for career growth opportunities in a job description, and that 30% want more transparency in job details; The Alinea Group (Chicago, IL) has begun offering a 401K program with a 4% employer match, DEI training, generous PTO, and major holidays off.

Who Let The Dogs In?

In 2020, pet ownership in the U.S. rose from 67% of households to an all-time high of 70%. A four legged friend served as a great companion during lockdown, and the rise of remote work afforded more people the time to care for, and travel with, their pets for extended lengths of time. Plus, the increase in outdoor dining means more restaurants are able to accommodate our furry friends. With that, many (even Michelin-starred establishments) are introducing dog-focused events, packages, and accommodations to ensure every pooch is well-pampered, and can accompany its owner wherever they go.

Ex: Michelin-starred Angler (San Francisco, CA) recently partnered with dog food brand Jinx to launch a two-item menu just for dogsa complimentary salmon or chicken biscuit topped with caviar made with canine-friendly ingredients; River Terrace Inn (Napa, CA) launched a Yappy Hour series at the property's riverside restaurant, ALBA; Hilton Hotels and Mars Petcare (Nationwide) have teamed up to 'set a new standard' for pet-friendly hotels. As part of the partnership, all Homewood Suites and Home2 Suites will be pet-friendly by January 1, 2022.

Retro Motels For The Modern Age

With the increased popularity of road trips in lieu of flying, and no crowded lobbies, corridors, or elevators in which to congregate, motels have suddenly become the perfect pandemic-era lodging. Both individual operators and major hotel brands have taken to restoring mid-century motor-lodges, and building new ones decked out in retro decor, to tap into the nostalgia of the great American road trips of the 1950s, 60s & 70s.

Ex: Kimpton converted the 1960s property The Goodland (Santa Barbara, CA) into a boutique retro motor-lodge with record players in each room; Lark Hotels recently launched Bluebird, a sister brand focused on the development of boutique roadside lodges throughout New England. Their first project, Spa City Motor Lodge (Saratoga Springs, NY), transformed an iconic 1950s roadside motel into a stylish destination inspired by old-school Americana.

ABOUT af&co.:

af&co. is an innovative restaurant and hospitality consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco with clients across the country. The company has developed and launched concepts for more than 100 restaurants and hotels and provided ongoing marketing, public relations, and operations consulting for more than 200 others. af&co. has created unique culinary events of all sizes from intimate dinners to food and wine festivals drawing more than 10,000 people. The team does whatever it takes to help their clients achieve their goals and focus on what they are passionate about: hotels, restaurants, food, wine, spirits and travel. Follow along @afandco.

ABOUT CARBONATE:

Carbonate is a brand communications and creative services agency specializing in food, beverage, hospitality and food tech. Services include: brand strategy, market positioning, concept development, naming, visual and verbal identity development, websites, content development and strategic public relations. Prior to launching as an independent company, Carbonate was a division of San Francisco-based af&co., a hospitality consulting firm that specializes in restaurants and hotels. Using industry insights, strategic thinking, and creative vision, Carbonate helps clients rise to the top of a competitive marketplace. Follow along @carbonategroup.
SkillSurvey Career Readiness Awards Were thrilled to honor institutions that are innovative in supporting career readiness using SkillSurveys solution, which provides students and campus leaders with hard data on soft skills said Randy Bitting, Head and Co-Founder of Career Readiness at SkillSurvey.

SkillSurvey, the leading provider of talent intelligence and career readiness solutions, announced its first ever Career Readiness Leader & Innovator Awards to recognize institutions that demonstrate success in career readiness. SkillSurvey Career Readiness uses proven HR technology developed by I/O Psychologists based on behavioral science and job competency modeling so that students are rated on behaviors key to employers and to workplace success. Participating institutions obtain feedback from supervisors and co-workers following internships, co-ops, student employment, or other work experiences using behaviors mapped to the eight NACE competencies.

Over 170 Higher Education institutions have used SkillSurveys Career Readiness platform developed in partnership with the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) to evaluate their students. SkillSurvey reviewed the student ratings of these schools and now recognizes the top performers with the highest-rated students from this group. These colleges and universities have taken the lead to measure students career readiness in the competency areas that employers value most.

Congratulations to the winners! Were thrilled to honor institutions that are innovative in supporting career readiness using SkillSurveys solution, which provides students and campus leaders with hard data on soft skills said Randy Bitting, Head and Co-Founder of Career Readiness at SkillSurvey. More than 170 higher ed partners are using SkillSurvey to bring consistency in measuring students readiness for the workforce, and we want to highlight the Leaders and Innovators for their results and commitment to student success.

SkillSurvey Career Readiness provides career services, student employment, and academic programs with individual Career Readiness Reports and first-of-its-kind data to discover insights into how career ready their institutions students are compared to students nationally and to actual job candidates.

Employers providing supervisor ratings and evaluative feedback via SkillSurvey encompass 20,000+ companies, government agencies and non-profits. Amazon, Apple, Daimler, Google, International Paper and Northwestern Mutual are among the top-20 companies submitting the most feedback on students.

2021 CAREER READINESS LEADERS

*Note institutions are listed in alpha order for each category

**Students rated by Supervisors on 30 behaviors tied to 8 NACE competencies

Top 10 Career Ready Institutions**



Brigham Young University

Concordia University St. Paul

DePaul University

Emory University

ONeill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University

Seton Hall University

State University of New York at Oswego

Temple University College of Liberal Arts

University of Maryland College Park

University of Virginia

Top 10 Institutions for Critical Thinking (Students rated by Supervisors on the NACE competency Critical Thinking)

Brigham Young University

Emory University

Florida State University

Regis University

Seton Hall University

State University of New York at Oswego

Temple University College of Liberal Arts

University of Florida

University of Virginia

Wellesley College

Top 5 Career Ready Business Schools**

Jack C. Massey College of Business - Belmont University

David Nazarian College of Business and Economics - California State University, Northridge

Fowler College of Business - San Diego State University

Heavener School of Business - University of Florida

Williamson College of Business Administration - Youngstown State University

Top 5 Career Ready Engineering Schools**

Stevens Institute of Technology

The Ohio State University

University of South Alabama

University of South Carolina

Wichita State University

Top 10 Institutions with Career Ready Feedback for First-Generation College Students

Arizona State University

Cedar Crest College

Concordia University St. Paul

The City University of New York

George Mason University

Regis University

Santa Rosa Junior College

Schreiner University

University of North Carolina, Greensboro

University of Houston

2021 INNOVATOR AWARDS

Best Career Readiness Student Landing Page

Spelman College

Most Innovative Career Readiness Marketing

University of Miami  Marketing Theme: Get Performance Feedback

University of Toledo  Marketing Video

First Institutions Tying Career Readiness Ratings to Accreditation

Auburn University Samuel Ginn College of Engineering | ABET

Brigham Young University Communications Internships | Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC)

University of Toledo | The Higher Learning Commission

Purdue University Fort Wayne | AACSB

Oregon State University | AACSB

Most students posting Career Readiness Reports as LinkedIn certificates

Auburn University  Samuel Ginn College of Engineering

Emory University

State University of New York at Oswego

University of Maryland, College Park

University of Virginia

First Institution to Publicly Promote Career Readiness Results

University of Toledo

Early Start Innovator for Starting Career Readiness Awareness in Freshman Year

Purdue University Krannert School of Management

The dataset to identify top institution categories contained a total of 39,135 students across 175 institutions of Higher Education that had supervisor evaluations for at least 100 students. For each student, percentiles were computed based upon their average numeric ratings as compared against the distribution of ratings of all students. Institutions with the highest percentage of students falling at or above the 90th percentile for each educational institution were selected.

About SkillSurvey SkillSurvey provides a talent intelligence platform you can trust  trust inspired by great data, proven science and actionable information to empower the best possible talent decisions. Our platform delivers measurable data at critical touch points of the employee lifecycle, from hiring to employee exit. Visit SkillSurvey at http://www.skillsurvey.com.

 2021 SkillSurvey Inc. and its affiliates.
Thank you to U.S. News  Best Lawyers as well as our colleagues in the New Jersey Metro area for recognizing us in this prestigious list.

For the ninth consecutive year Szaferman, Lakind, Blumstein and Blader, P.C. has been included in the 2022 Edition of U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms* list. For 2022, the firm was recognized as a New Jersey - Metropolitan Tier 1 law firm in the following practice areas:



Commercial Litigation

Family Law

Land Use & Zoning Law

Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs

According to U.S. News  Best Lawyers, The U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms rankings are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes the collection of client and lawyer evaluations, peer review from leading attorneys, and review of additional information provided by law firms as part of the formal submission process.

Also noted, All of the quantitative and qualitative data were combined into an overall Best Law Firms score for each firm. This data was then compared to other firms within the same metropolitan area and at the national level. Because firms were often separated by small or insignificant differences in overall score, we use a tiering system rather than ranking law firms sequentially.

Each firm recognized on the Best Law Firms list, must have at least one attorney who is recognized in the current edition of The Best Lawyers in a Best Law Firms ranked practice area/metro area. In the 2022 edition of Best Lawyers*, five (5) Szaferman Lakind attorneys were recognized in five (5) practice areas including Co-Managing Partner Barry Szaferman for Family Law, Co-Managing Partner Brian Paul for Family Law, Founding Partner Arnold Lakind for Commercial Litigation and Land Use & Zoning, Partner Craig Hubert for Personal Injury Litigation - Plaintiffs and Of Counsel attorney Jeffrey Hall for Land Use & Zoning and Real Estate Law.

Thank you to U.S. News  Best Lawyers as well as our colleagues in the New Jersey Metro area for recognizing us in this prestigious list, remarked Co-Managing Partner Barry Szaferman. We are honored to be included for the ninth consecutive year and we are grateful to the attorneys and staff at the firm for their continued dedication to our clients.

Founded in 1977, Szaferman Lakind is a full-service, Martindale-Hubbell AV-Preeminent law firm that was listed among U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms from 2014 through 2022. Based in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, Szaferman Lakind has 30+ attorneys who provide legal representation to businesses, investors, professionals, families and individuals in several areas, among them family law, general and commercial litigation, personal injury, estate and business planning and business law. To contact Szaferman Lakind please call 609.275.0400 or visit http://www.szaferman.com.

*The Best Lawyers in America list is issued by BL Rankings, LLC. A description of the selection methodologies can be found at bestlawyers.com/methodology. Szaferman Lakind was selected to U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms list. The Best Law Firms list is issued by U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers. A description of the selection methodologies can be found at bestlawfirms.usnews.com/methodology.aspx. No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
The ability to coalesce the most synergistic and powerful relationships in the dental sleep medicine business within one organization is by far the most unique opportunity to combat the debilitating problem of OSA.

Deepit Anand, Founder and Fund Manager of Sapphire Group of Funds, is amortizing his experience running a successful Dental Support Organization (DSO) by adding deep financial experience to Nexus Dental Systems, the newly formed conglomerate providing a turn-key solution for Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

After being a part of the dental industry for over a decade, we decided that now was the right time to develop a comprehensive ecosystem for all aspects of Dental Sleep Medicine, says Anand. We ended up creating a Nexus of several successful companies to cater to the current industry needs.

Motivated by long-term growth, the innovative visionaries of Nexus Dental Systems bring an all-encompassing solution for OSA to the marketplace, providing dentists with the first-of-its-kind comprehensive tools needed to run a successful dental sleep practice.

The muscle behind Anands backing includes fellow founders, Brett Brocki, creator of proprietary software for OSA medical billing, and Patrick Kircher, orthodontic, TMJ, and pediatric and adult airway expert.

The ability to coalesce the most synergistic and powerful relationships in the dental sleep medicine business within one organization is by far the most unique opportunity to combat the debilitating problem of OSA, says Brocki. Deepits prowess and financial depth allow Nexus Dental Systems to immediately stand supreme in the arena.

Nexus also brings Frank Mahony to the plate as Senior Technology Advisor. From start-ups to merger acquisitions and turn-arounds, Mahony has successfully managed technology-based organizations including those in healthcare, ecommerce, point-of-sale, warehouse, logistics, manufacturing, and accounting.

A collaborative approach from the sleep healthcare community as it relates to OSA is a long-needed step to evolve toward the resolution of issues the disorder brings. Select members of the founders impressive team include Dr. Lee Surkin, MD, FACC, FCCP, FASNC, FAASM, Board Certified in Cardiology Nuclear Cardiology and Sleep Medicine, and Founder of the American Academy of Cardiovascular Sleep Medicine; Lisa Moler, Chief Marketing Officer, brings 30 years of marketing acumen, having founded Medmark LLC and Dental Sleep Practice Magazine, amongst other niche dental properties; John Peterson DDS, who holds unique National Medical payor contracts, advantageous to providers working within the Sleep Apnea space, and Mel Blount, former Pittsburgh Steeler cornerback, a five-time Pro-Bowler and four-time Super Bowl Champion as National Health & Wellness Spokesperson.

About Nexus Dental Systems: Nexus Dental Systems is the only company in the market with a true end-to-end solution. Our conglomerate has the B2B expertise that fulfills the needs of a dental practice to: Identify, Screen, Treat and Monitor Sleep Treatment Compliance for Oral Appliance Therapy. Our mission is to raise public awareness of sleep apnea, train dentists to implement dental sleep medicine, create sleep apnea programs for the industry, and connect patients with providers by creating sustainable and resilient systems for providers and the public.

About Deepit Anand: Founder, Investor, and Fund Manager of Sapphire Group of Funds, over $100M+ AUM Deepit brings wealth of experience running a successful Dental Support Organization (DSO) covering the full spectrum of proficiencies including insurance claims, dental supplies, labs, payroll, bookkeeping, 401k setups, digital marketing, website, SEO, PPC etc. This DSO model is built on a consolidation philosophy within the healthcare space. By strategic selection of dental offices at the right EBITDA, and creating a hub spoke model of 4-5 offices within a 20 miles radius and repeating this in several states, the core of the model is constructed. After that, focus is turned to improving operational efficiencies, thereby increasing revenue and net profitability at each location making the DSO attractive to PE firms within his existing network and space.

For more information please contact:

support@Nexusdentalsystems.com

866.579.9496
Tight teamwork is integral to increasing productivity. "I like the fact that you were able to put my messages in front of people who may never have searched for my information but proved to be interested in my product."

Around this time last year, Actual SEO Media, Inc. had certain hierarchical structures that most businesses have. However, after evaluating some positions and rearranging managerial processes, there was a rise in overall productivity.

Most businesses keep some semblance of hierarchy between management and teams. For most, it helps with workflow, passing relevant information between the company and the teams. At the heads of these teams are team leads that help facilitate what management wants to their team members, essentially acting as a middle man.

Until around the end of last year and the beginning of this one, Actual SEO Media, Inc. also had a similar structure. However, the company made some adjustments to the previous arrangements and moved people to more appropriate positions. After pulling their team together again and becoming comfortable with the new workflow, management actually saw a rise in their teams' productivity.

Without a Head Writer, the team members could directly ask management any questions about projects, removing the possibility of anything being lost in transit. And vice versa, management can now directly assign projects to team members with specific instructions.

It wasn't only the company's hierarchical structure that saw changes. Managerial operations also saw some upgrades. Now, even if someone were absent from the administrative lineup, information wouldn't get lost in the gap. The new procedures allow the entire administration team to always be on the same page.

With more efficiency and communication on both ends, much more work is getting done. The team can get more than their usual workload done and can now take on more additional side projects for clients. Questions and answers aren't a matter of interpretation anymore and are a team decision.

It's now possible for the writers to directly speak with the clients concerning relevant projects. Without a middle man passing information between them, projects are being completed faster to their specifications. Because of this, Actual SEO Media, Inc. has seen an increase in clients in the past year.

Their customers, like Robert, who comes all the way from Canada, speak to Actual SEO Media, Inc.'s services stating, "thank you for helping me to make my advertising campaign a success. I have been marketing my program through pay-per-click engines mostly, but they all have limited traffic, especially for my keywords. I like the fact that you were able to put my messages in front of people who may never have searched for my information but proved to be interested in my product."

The company's increasing productivity has allowed them to expand its services to the community further. They've helped over 40 new businesses this year and expect that number to increase by the end of the year.

As a leading SEO company in Houston, Actual SEO Media, Inc. helps clients to expand their online presence. By using a variety of techniques, the company aims to maximize clients' search engine optimization and widen their clients' scope of recognition. For more information, contact the office at (832) 834 - 0661 or by email at: info@actualseomedia.com.
The HeroZona Foundation is excited to announce it will host the 2021 American Legion Department of Arizona Breakfast on Tuesday, November 9 from 9 to 10 a.m. in honor of Veterans Day. This years event, located at Travis L. Williams American Legion Post 65 (1624 E. Broadway Rd.) in Phoenix, will focus on understanding mental health, the withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan and other important issues that Arizonas veteran community is facing. The breakfast will be streamed live on HeroZona.org and Facebook.com/HeroZona.

Event panelists include Arizona Department of Veterans Services and retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Wanda A. Wright, Blue Cross Blue Shield Chief Medical Officer Dr. Cara Christ, Arizona Coalition for Military Families Director and U.S. Marine Corps and Army National Guard Veteran Thomas Winkel, Phoenix VA Health Care System Post-9/11 Military2VA Program Manager Shilo Catlett and Equality Health Medical Director and U.S. Army Veteran Dr. Edmond Baker.

The event will be moderated by former Special Assistant to President Donald Trump on Veterans Issues, former advisor to U.S. Senator John McCain and Arizona State University Strategic Initiatives Assistant Vice President, Drew Trojanowski. Former Minority Leader of Arizona House of Representatives Art Hamilton will serve as master of ceremonies.

This is such an important time for the community to not only understand how we can support those who served in Afghanistan, but all Arizona veterans, said Alan AP Powell, Chairman of AP & Associates - Strategic Alliances and U.S. Army Desert-Storm Veteran. We are bringing together government and community stakeholders to discuss mental health and well as educate and raise awareness around the issues that veterans, service members and their families face so we can increase their accessibility to services and benefits.

We all know that mental health is an important component of ones overall health, said Dr. Christ. While serving our country, our veterans experience some of the most challenging physical and emotional situations. Thats why it is important to have these discussions, so they are aware of the services and resources that are available to them.

Special guests of the breakfast include U.S. Representative for District 7 Ruben Gallego, Maricopa County District 5 Supervisor Steve Gallardo, City of Phoenix District 8 Vice Mayor Carlos Garcia and The American Legion Department of Arizona Commander and U.S. Air Force Veteran Benjamin Headen.

For many of the veterans who served in Afghanistan, the past few months have been deeply saddening and traumatic, said representative Gallego. As two decades of war have now come to a close, we must pay special attention to the mental well-being of those who served. Events like this are important as we bring together government, veterans and healthcare organizations to ensure all veterans live full and healthy lives. I look forward to continue working with everyone here to deliver the best care, resources, and opportunities for our veterans.

The event is supported in part by Arizona Department of Veterans Services, APS, Andrew & Amy Cohn and many more.

The American Legion has been on the fore front of veterans issues for the past 102 years and will continue. National Commander Paul Dillards theme No Veteran left behind inspires organizations like HeroZona to support programs that improve the community for our veterans.

HeroZona Foundation has launched a variety of community programs including The Bridge Forum Time for Change Summits, which bring leaders from across the country together to discuss racial inequality, police relations, veterans issue, mental health and more. Other initiatives include Phoenix Tools 4 School, Holiday Bike Giveaways, MLK Celebrating the Dream, Play It Forward: Engaging Our Youth Through the Arts, Veterans Reach to Teach and the HeroZona Forgotten Heroes Breakfast.

For more information about the Bridge Forum and to stream its upcoming event on Tuesday, November 9, visit Facebook.com/HeroZonaOrg.

About the HeroZona Foundation

The HeroZona Foundation is a non-profit organization that empowers Heroes in the community through entrepreneurship, employment, and education. The group works with veterans, first responders and those that bring social good to future generations and under-served communities. The foundations mission is to create opportunities for the brave men and women who serve their country, and community, every day. For more information, please visit HeroZona.org.

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Arriello Auditing & QA Director Arriello is a service provider with big ambitions, which still retains a culture of being very personable and approachable for clients that need its support. The company has an impressive knowledge base, and the chance to expand and build on its Auditing and QA service operations was very appealing.

November 3rd, 2021 - Arriello, a provider of Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance and Auditing & QA solutions and services, has announced the appointment of leading GVP Audit and Quality Assurance (QA) expert Helen Lowe to its rapidly-expanding global Quality & Pharmacovigilance operations.

The move to bolster and grow these services comes as Arriello experiences a sharp surge in international demand for help with comprehensive independent auditing and quality management services, as well as for support with intensifying international Pharmacovigilance (PV) and Safety workloads.

Helen Lowe, based in the Isle of Man and working as part of Arriellos Irish operations, is the companys new Auditing & QA Director, bringing two decades of experience to the role. During an illustrious career to date she has worked at the heart of the life sciences industry, in drug safety roles at Mayne Pharma, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson and Biogen, before becoming an independent GVP consultant and then moving into third-party service provision with remits spanning quality assurance and auditing.

Her experience spans pharmaceutical R&D, quality assurance, PV and clinical site auditing, quality management systems (QMS), clinical drug development, post marketing drug safety /PV, and regulatory compliance. She has a strong track record of participating in and managing/hosting numerous health authority inspections (including FDA, BfArM, MHRA, AEMPS), in undertaking mock inspections, providing inspection readiness training / support and performing gap analysis assessments. She is also an active member of the Research Quality Association (RQA), tracking developments in the industry and keeping up to date with what inspectors are focusing on.

Commenting on her move to Arriello, Helen said: Arriello is a service provider with big ambitions, which still retains a culture of being very personable and approachable for clients that need its support. The company has an impressive knowledge base, and the chance to expand and build on its Auditing and QA service operations was very appealing. I very much relish this new challenge.

Welcoming Helen to Arriello, Alan White, CEO at the company, said: We are thrilled to have such deeply experienced QA and PV talent joining the business, and delighted for our clients  current and future  who will feel the benefit of all of this additional experience and expertise. I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Helen, whose contribution to our future success is much anticipated. We have an exciting and ambitious vision for this side of the company, so watch this space!

[ENDS]

About Arriello

Arriello is a leading consultancy and solutions provider of risk management and compliance services to the pharmaceutical industry. Since 2008, pharmaceutical and biotech companies have turned to us to deliver a successful development-to-market process with our proven expertise, global coverage, and technology.

Our ISO:9001 compliant global solutions span the product life cycle from Clinical to post-submission Regulatory Affairs and Pharmacovigilance, Quality Assurance and Auditing, and innovative automation solutions.

Headquartered in Ireland, with operations across Europe, we serve clients across the EU, North America, LATAM, CIS, MENA, Asia, and South Africa.

More at http://www.arriello.com and @Arriello

Media contact:

Carina Birt

Sarum PR for Arriello

carina@sarumpr.com

+44 7970 006624
What all of these brands have in common is an excellent product that needed some attention, and thats where ChicExecs strategic retail team came into the picture.

ChicExecs, the retail-focused marketing agency, announces it recently secured placements with major retailers for four brands for the upcoming holiday season and beyond. The teams retail strategy wins further the companys commitment to bringing the hottest new brands to store shelves.

The ChicExecs Retail Strategy group forged relationships with key buyers for Pink Papyrus, Cubby Love Bears, Hanz De Fuko and Lunii while building brand awareness for each client. The team worked closely to place products in such major retailers as Target, PetSmart, Walmart, Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, Dillards Walgreens, Pottery Barn Kids and Kroger.

The award-winning agency combines retail strategy, public relations, digital marketing, social media and influencer marketing all under one roof. Founded by Nikki Carlson and Kailynn Bowling, each division is known for its hands-on approach, often with departments collaborating on behalf of their diverse clientele.

What all of these brands have in common is an excellent product that needed some attention, and thats where ChicExecs strategic retail team came into the picture, said Nichole Evans, Senior Director of Retail Strategy. Frequently, clients come to us with no retail placements. They know they have products that consumers want but have no idea where to begin to get the attention of merchandise directors. With strategic outreach, we develop a tailored plan of action geared towards each brands needs.

ChicExecs works with various industries, including health & wellness, beauty, baby, pet, baby, lifestyle, tech and education.

We have proven relationships with all major retailers helping to secure shelf space and sell-through assistance, adds Evans. Many of the brands we work with are small businesses, so nothing brings us more joy than to see them blossom into major players in the retail market. Weve enjoyed helping several international brands enter the U.S. marketplace successfully and have built a major retail presence for thousands of U.S. companies.

For more information on ChicExecs retail strategy, visit https://chicexecs.com/retail-strategy-and-product-placement/.

About ChicExecs:

Based in San Marcos, California, ChicExecs Retail Marketing Agency is an award-winning firm founded by Nikki Carlson and Kailynn Bowling, encompassing their backgrounds in marketing, public relations, business management, retail and sales. By creating a cohesive strategy for brands with PR, Social Media, and Retail Strategy, the team of more than 70 employees develops innovative ways to generate retail sell-through and brand awareness on both regional and national levels. They know what it takes to turn a napkin idea into a household name.
Owners who are considering selling, now or in the future, will be interested in our proven strategies for making their companies more valuable to a potential buyer.

Cogent Growth Partners CEO and Managing Partner Rick Murphy will be presenting as part of Marketopias 4U2GROW Conference at ConnectWise IT Nation Connect 2021 being held November 10  12 in Orlando, Florida. Murphy will be explaining to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) how to maximize selling price when they sell their company. Cogent Growth Partners, the leading buy-side firm in the IT Services merger and acquisition (M&A) space, has been helping IT Companies by bringing buyers and sellers of MSPs together.

Murphys presentation, M&A: Secrets to Maximizing Your Selling Price When You Sell, explains the often overlooked factors that significantly impact a selling companys purchase price. The presentation will take place November 10 from 2:00 pm to 2:30 pm at the Hyatt Regency Orlando.

I look forward to sharing what we have learned about the key areas that buyers focus on when determining purchase price and what you can do to improve your companys value, and well provide an update on the current state of the M&A market for IT Companies, said Murphy. Owners who are considering selling, now or in the future, will be interested in our proven strategies for making their companies more valuable to a potential buyer.

Murphy will be meeting with other attendees while participating in ConnectWises IT Nation Connect, the top annual conference for MSPs that offers owners and executive teams an opportunity to learn from industry luminaries and network with their peers. This years conference theme, Wise Together, Rise Together, underscores the importance of MSPs sharing knowledge of market trends, customer requirements and best practices.

For more information, visit https://www.connectwise.com/theitnation/connect-na

About Cogent Growth Partners

Cogent Growth Partners, LLC, is the leading buy-side intermediary for mergers and acquisitions in the IT Services space. Cogent has brought buyers and sellers together for over a decade, closing >140 transactions, and still counting. We accelerate the M&A timeline using a set of proprietary tools and processes that enable buyers and sellers to stay focused on running their respective businesses, while Cogent does the heavy lifting. Anyone who wants to know why Cogent is different, need look no further than our business card: Providing Transaction Therapy for IT Business Owners Since 2010. For more information on M&A in the IT Services sector and buy-side intermediary services, please visit http://www.cogentmergers.com, or email us at info@cogentmergers.com, or call 678-820-5288.
Cory Watson Attorneys recognition for this award marks 12 years of ranking among the nations best law firms. On behalf of our thousands of clients nationwide, the team at Cory Watson Attorneys is honored to accept this distinction of commitment and well-deserved recognition.

Cory Watson Attorneys is proud to receive top-tier rankings from U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms 2022 edition that recognizes four of the firms practice areas.

Firms included in the Best Law Firms list are recognized for professional excellence with persistently impressive ratings from clients and peers. Achieving top-tier ranking signals a unique combination of high-quality law practice and dominant legal expertise.

Cory Watson is regionally ranked by Best Law Firms in four practice areas:

METROPOLITAN RANKINGS

Birmingham  Tier 1:



Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions  Plaintiffs

Personal Injury Litigation  Plaintiffs

Product Liability Litigation  Plaintiffs

Birmingham  Tier 2:



Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs

Cory Watson Attorneys recognition for this award marks 12 years of ranking among the nations best law firms. On behalf of our thousands of clients nationwide, the team at Cory Watson Attorneys is honored to accept this distinction of commitment and well-deserved recognition.

The U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms 2022 rankings are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes the collection of client and lawyer evaluations, peer review from leading attorneys, and the Law Firm Leaders Survey, which incorporates 8.2 million evaluations of more than 115,000 lawyers.

About U.S. News  Best Lawyers Best Law Firms

Each recognized practice area must have at least one lawyer who is recognized in the current edition of Best Lawyers, which recognizes less than five percent of practicing attorneys nationwide.

About Cory Watson Attorneys

Cory Watson Attorneys is a nationally recognized personal injury law firm with offices in Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, and Nashville, Tennessee. The firm has recovered more than $3 Billion for clients across the country. Cory Watson attorneys are frequently at the forefront of major class actions and multidistrict litigations involving dangerous pharmaceuticals and product liability and are often appointed to leadership positions in national cases. Firm practice areas include Personal Injury, Product Liability, Class Action, Asbestos, Business & Commercial Litigation, Dangerous Pharmaceuticals, Defective Medical Devices, and Environmental/Toxic Torts.
Whether used on the battlefield or in the pre-hospital EMS setting, the Compression Works device helps save lives by controlling difficult bleeding conditions. This multi-functional life-saving device was designed for the military, has been battlefield tested, widely studied and is optimized for both military and civilian use applications to stop bleeding and save lives," said Scott Dodson, President and CEO, Compression Works, Inc.

The Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (CoTCCC) has recently included the Abdominal Aortic and Junctional Tourniquet-Stabilized (AAJT-S) by Compression Works for use in junctional hemorrhage bleeding for U.S. warfighters and our allied partners around the world.

The Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (CoTCCC) is the pre-hospital arm of the Joint Trauma System for the Department of Defense. The CoTCCC and the TCCC Working Group focus all of their efforts on providing the best recommendations for training and equipment for our individual service members, combat medics, corpsman, pararescue and med techs going into harm's way.

The AAJT-S by Compression Works is used to treat non-compressible hemorrhages by U.S. special operations units, army units and allied special operations partners globally. It is the only device that has been proven to save lives in both upper and lower junctional (axilla and groin) bleeding conditions and to treat pelvic bleeding.

The AAJT-S is cleared by the FDA, meets the CoTCCC criteria, and has been vetted, studied and published by the Institute for Surgical Research (ISR) and the 59th Med Wing of the U.S. Air Force researchers in San Antonio, Texas. The Compression Works device is also featured in over 64 peer reviewed publications in the literature.

In two independent research studies, the U.S. military found that the AAJT-S was equivalent to Zone 3 REBOA (Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta), a resuscitation technique used by trauma surgeons in the hospital. The AAJT-S is the only device that has been shown to be equivalent to Zone 3 REBOA at the point of injury. The device is also able to be easily applied in the field by first responders, helping to stop bleeding and stabilize patients until they can reach definitive care. Whether used on the battlefield or in the pre-hospital EMS setting, the Compression Works device helps save lives by controlling difficult bleeding conditions.

We are delighted to receive the support of the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care for the use of the AAJT-S for junctional hemorrhages and difficult bleeding situations, said Scott Dodson, President and CEO, Compression Works, Inc. This multi-functional life-saving device was designed for the military, has been battlefield tested, widely studied and is optimized for both military and civilian use applications to stop bleeding and save lives, said Dodson. We look forward to the AAJT-S becoming the standard of care for our warfighters and accident victims who would otherwise potentially bleed out from their injuries without this technology.

The CoTCCC Committee chair explained in correspondence with Compression Works Inc., the manufacturer of the AAJT-S, that the device will be included and supported as products that are cleared by the FDA to treat non-compressible hemorrhages.

The AAJT-S by Compression Works is made in the United States of America and has thousands of devices in the market with U.S. special operations forces, allied special operations units and in the pre-hospital EMS segment around the world. For more information, visit or contact us at http://www.compressionworks.com.

About Compression Works

Compression Works is the developer and manufacturer of the Abdominal Aortic and Junctional Tourniquet-Stabilized (AAJT-S) medical device. The company delivers innovative solutions to meet the most pressing and unmet needs of emergency healthcare providers. Compression Works is committed to hemorrhage control research, identifying capability gaps and developing technologies and products to help facilitate the delivery of quality life saving care. The solution is used by the military, trauma centers, rural emergency departments, EMS and federal and local law enforcement agencies. The AAJT-S device is proudly manufactured and assembled in the USA. Compression Works is a veteran owned business dedicated to saving lives on and off the battlefield.
Cybereason, the leader in operation-centric attack protection, today announced it has been named to The Herd 100, D.A. Davidsons ranking of the Top 100 private technology companies. The Cybereason operation-centric security approach enables defenders to outthink and outpace sophisticated cyber threats from nation-state attackers and cybercriminal groups.

I couldn't be more impressed with Cybereason as they experience record growth and including them in The Herd 100 is indicative of the traction they are receiving as one of the top private innovators in North America, said Greg Thomas, managing director, technology investment banking at D.A. Davidson. Cybereason's differentiator in a crowded endpoint security industry is the use of its patented Malicious Operations (Malop) engine, giving security professionals visibility into full cyberattacks across organizations.

Cybereason is experiencing hypergrowth across North America with 200 percent growth in new and upsell annual contract value (ACV) bookings. In addition, the company recently announced its strategic partnership with Google Cloud to deliver Cybereason XDR powered by Google Chronicle. This powerful partnership will bring to market unprecedented Extended Detection and Response (XDR) capabilities--across endpoints, networks, cloud and workspaces--at record-setting speed.The joint solution combines Google Cloud expertise to hunt through petabytes of data with Cybereasons ability to analyze that data in real-time to stop malicious operations before damage occurs.

The Cybereason operation-centric security approach is disrupting the cybersecurity industry across North America and the world by enabling defenders to combat sophisticated and persistent threats to their organizations, including ransomware. Being named to The Herd 100 further validates Cybereason growth and our goal to deploy the Cybereason Defense Platform in all businesses as the gold-standard for endpoint solutions replacing existing legacy endpoint solutions, said Lior Div, CEO and Co-founder, Cybereason.

Cybereason is one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity companies in the world, having raised more than $700 million in funding and a rapidly expanding customer base. Additional hypergrowth key indicators for the company include:

Launch of a U.S. Government subsidiary Cybereason Government Inc., dedicated to the prevention, detection and response to malicious operations targeting U.S. Government agencies on the federal, state and local level.

$275 Million in crossover financing led by Liberty Strategic Capital, with additional backing provided by Irving Investors, certain funds advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC, and Softbank.

Acquisition of security analytics company empow added innovative predictive response technology and a library of out-of-the-box data integrations to Cybereason XDR, along with top-tier engineering and product talent.

Taking a premier spot on the 2021 CNBC 2021 Disruptor 50 list showcasing the top 50 private companies whose innovations are revolutionizing their industries and our everyday lives.

Debut in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Platforms and was positioned furthest to the right in the Visionary Quadrant for Completeness of Vision in the endpoint protection space.

Recognized in the debut Forrester XDR Wave Report for Extended Detection and Response. Cybereason won over customers with its product vision and the concept of the MalOp.

Exposing Iranian state-sponsored cyber espionage campaign targeting global aerospace and telecommunications companies resulted in the identification of a new Iranian threat actor dubbed MalKamak that has operated since at least 2018.

Exposing Chinese state-sponsored espionage campaign compromising global telecommunications companies through several previously unidentified cyber attack campaigns infiltrating major telecommunications providers across Southeast Asia.

About D.A. Davidson Companies

D.A. Davidson Companies is an employee-owned financial services firm offering a range of financial services and advice to individuals, corporations, institutions and municipalities nationwide. Founded in 1935 and headquartered in Montana, with corporate offices in Denver, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle, the company has approximately 1,400 employees and offices in 28 states.

Subsidiaries include: D.A. Davidson & Co., the largest full-service investment firm headquartered in the Northwest, providing wealth management, investment banking, equity and fixed income capital markets services, and advice; Davidson Investment Advisors, a professional asset management firm; D.A. Davidson Trust Company, a trust and wealth management company; and Davidson Fixed Income Management, a registered investment adviser providing fixed income portfolio and advisory services.

About Cybereason

Cybereason is the champion for todays cyber defenders, providing operation-centric attack protection that unifies security from the endpoint, to the enterprise, to everywhere the battle moves. The Cybereason Defense Platform combines the industrys top-rated AI-powered detection and response (EDR and XDR), next-gen antivirus (NGAV), Anti-Ransomware Protection and Proactive Threat Hunting to deliver context-rich analysis of every stage of a MalOp (malicious operation). Cybereason is a privately held, international company headquartered in Boston with customers in more than 50 countries.

Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/

Follow us: Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Media Contacts:

Bill Keeler

Senior Director, Global Public Relations

Cybereason

bill.keeler@cybereason.com

(929) 259-3261
Carriers, freight brokers, shippers, and other stakeholders of the supply chain use dexFreight's blockchain-based technology to handle shipments from booking to payment in one place We offer a higher level of collaboration and network optimization for industry participants because our blockchain logistics platform is decentralized and neutral.

dexFreight, providers of a blockchain-based logistics market network, today announced increases in key growth metrics during the third quarter of 2021. Additionally, the company reported on new technology developments in support of expanded use of its blockchain solution.

During Q3 2021, dexFreight exceeded 3,000 companies registered on its blockchain-based logistics platform. That activity drove increases of 29% more loads, 17% more truckload bookings and 51% more drayage bookings than in Q2 2021. Overall, carriers posted 43% more capacity on the platform than during the previous quarter.

dexFreights growth is more than a reflection of the success of our technology, said Jim Handoush, president & CEO. It also showcases the realization among stakeholders that we have the answer to current and long term supply chain issues, including port congestion and the driver shortage. We offer a higher level of collaboration and network optimization for industry participants because our blockchain logistics platform is decentralized and neutral. Unlike other siloed solutions, its the best approach to the industrys challenges.

Interest in dexFreight is also seen in expanding support for the companys crowdfunding campaign, which has reached 30% of its goal with funding from 37 states and four countries. Over 720 potential investors are now following the campaign.

dexFreights development team recently unveiled improvements to the platforms matching engine, allowing users to receive more accurate load and truck suggestions. Also released was a new option to search for capacity and loads from a map view as an alternative to the standard list view.

dexFreight was built from the ground up to empower freight and logistics companies with the right tools and information to make better decisions for handling loads more efficiently, Handoush said. As we enter the last quarter of 2021, we are excited about our ongoing growth potential and new technological developments that will connect the entire logistics industry, reduce shipment processing times, and increase margins for all its stakeholders.

About dexFreight

dexFreight is a logistics market network with fintech capabilities for freight companies to handle shipments from booking to payment in one place using smart contracts. dexFreight connects carriers, freight brokers, shippers, and other stakeholders of the supply chain through an open logistics network, built on decentralized protocols. For information, visit http://www.dexfreight.io

Media Contact:

Susan Fall

LaunchIt Public Relations

858-490-1050

susan@launchitpr.com
Entrepreneurs should be thinking about the intellectual property contained in their mobile app, early and often to protect their brand now and into the future.

Building and launching a mobile application today entails much more than simply delivering a service. Today, developers must consider the security of user data, compliance as well as protecting intellectual property. To make sense of this rapidly shifting development environment, entrepreneurs asked Marc Fischer, CEO and co-founder of Dogtown Media - a leading app development firm - how to approach app development successfully with these considerations in mind. As app fraud and app mimicking run rampant, Mr. Fischer addresses the current state of the mobile application development space and leans on challenges in the space.

Entrepreneurs should be thinking about the intellectual property contained in their mobile app, early and often. Everything from their logo, catchphrases, to brand name and style guide needs to be thought through and accounted for to protect their brand now and into the future" said Marc Fischer.

To address protecting app intellectual property, Founder and CEO of Dogtown Media, Marc Fischer is set to speak at a conference this coming Friday, November 5h hosted by ACT | The App Association in partnership with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) to address what the future of mobile app development.

Aimed to foster a healthy discussion addressing some of the rising concerns around app development, Mr. Fischers previous talk urged software developers and entrepreneurs of the Philippines to consider some of the major technological changes that will influence the future of app development, and how to stay ahead of this rapidly shifting development landscape.

ACT | The App Association is a non-profit trade association that represents over 5,000 small businesses that power the $1.7 trillion app economy. As an advocate for small technology companies ACT aims to build an environment for entrepreneurs that inspires innovation and collaboration. Providing resources and support, ACT is committed to helping small technology businesses raise capital, create jobs, and continue driving innovation.

The World Intellectual Property Organization or WIPO is a global forum that addresses topics and policies related to intellectual property. As part of the United Nations, WIPO aims to drive the development of a balanced IP system that enables innovation for the benefit of all.

Fischer is CEO and Co-Founder of Dogtown Media, a California-based mobile technology studio that leverages disruptive design strategies and dynamic development to deliver industry-leading apps. To date, Dogtown Media has created over 250 mobile apps in industries including Healthcare app development, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence.


Dr. Gabrielle B. Davis Her philosophy is that while aging is a normal process of life and scientifically we can not stop the process, we can definitely redefine the concept of aging gracefully."

Gabrielle B. Davis, MD is a practicing Plastic Surgeon in Beverly Hills. Dr. Davis redefines aesthetic medicine by implementing her unique research background in tissue regeneration into her medical practice to reduce the effects of aging on the body. Dr. Davis graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Houston with a degree in Biochemistry and minors in Chemistry and Spanish. Her academic achievement led her to be awarded as the student commencement speaker for the university. She went on to obtain her medical degree at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas, and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to complete General Surgery training at the University of Southern California. During her General Surgery training, she was awarded a competitive 3- year research fellowship through the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. The focus of her research was investigating the regenerative properties of stem cells derived from fat on tissue injury. She was awarded by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons the Young Researcher Award in Geneva, Switzerland for her research.

Upon completion at USC, she attended the prestigious Stanford University Plastic Surgery Program. At Stanford, she authored book chapters and peer-reviewed publications. She was also fortunate to become involved in ReSurge International, a humanitarian organization, founded by a former chair of the program. ReSurge Internationals mission is to educate and empower physicians in developing countries to improve their medical infrastructure to create sustainable, high-quality surgical care. Dr. Davis was a member of the first team to travel to Cuba to establish an ongoing relationship with the teaching hospital in Havana.

After completion at Stanford, she traveled abroad to complete aesthetic fellowships in France and Spain. Dr. Davis mission is to create natural-appearing results implementing scientific principles of aging with the sound surgical technique. Her philosophy is that while aging is a normal process of life and scientifically we can not stop the process, we can definitely redefine the concept of aging gracefully. Dr. Davis was recently featured on Medium and Thrive Global, in their SHEROS series, recognizing distinguished women of influence in their respective fields.

Learn more about Dr. Davis by visiting: https://hauteliving.com/hautebeauty/member/dr-gabrielle-davis/

ABOUT HAUTE BEAUTY NETWORK:

Haute Beauty is affiliated with the luxury lifestyle publication Haute Living. As a section of Haute Living magazine, Haute Beauty covers the latest advancements in beauty and wellness, providing readers with expert advice on aesthetic and reconstructive treatments through its network of acclaimed doctors and beauty experts.

For more about Haute Beauty, visit https://hauteliving.com/hautebeauty/
Weve learned a lot about the industry in working with the great people at Focal Pointe Outdoor Solutions, and we are confident we can provide a compelling case to professional landscaping companies about what we can do for them.

EnVue Telematics, a consultative resource that helps fleets use advanced technology to boost productivity, reduce risk and lower CPM, will participate in the Next Level Leadership Summit on Nov. 8-10, 2021, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

The summit allows a select group of companies the chance to showcase their products and services to representatives of the major commercial landscape services companies through the United States. The event is attended by more than 150 leaders from the commercial landscaping industry who influence more than $20 million in annual purchases.

Focal Pointe Outdoor Solutions, a client of EnVue Telematics, will host the event. Operating in the St. Louis metro area and the Springfield/Branson, Missouri, communities, Focal Pointe has been ranked as the fifth fastest growing and 130th largest U.S. landscape company by Landscape Management Magazine.

The team at EnVue is excited for the opportunity to meet with professional landscaping business leaders at the Next Level Leadership Summit.

First off, were all happy that were getting back to face-to-face meetings in 2021. Were looking forward to seeing so many of the people we already know, as well as meeting those who may not be familiar with what we offer, said Randy Read, Co-founder of EnVue Telematics. Weve learned a lot about the industry in working with the great people at Focal Pointe Outdoor Solutions, and we are confident we can provide a compelling case to professional landscaping companies about what we can do for them.

Connected Solutions That Improve Safety and Productivity

EnVue offers a range of advanced technology for use in fleets of all types, as well as consulting services for how to get the best return out of an investment in telematics. The focus is primarily in one of six key areas.



Productivity. Boosting dispatch and routing efforts, managing dynamic dispatch in real-time, producing fleet management reports and optimizing driver and asset tracking

Safety. Improve driver scoring training and monitoring, document aggressive driver behaviors, automate remedial driver training enrollments, improve bad driving habits, provide MVR background checks with an option for continuous driver monitoring with near real-time alerts when employees receive violations.

Optimization. Lower fleet CPM and net life cycle costs using telematics data, enhance vehicle maintenance and fuel management capabilities, lower CPM operating costs, and reduce/eliminate unexpected breakdowns that disrupt operations.

Sustainability. Reduce fleet carbon emissions through telematics platforms, identify opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, receive data insights to guide fleet conversion to EV models, and better manage EV and vehicles that become part of your fleet.

Compliance. Ensure drivers meet DOT/FMCSA compliance requirements for logging hours and maintain compliance for vehicle safety inspections and IFTA reporting, among other issues.

Expandability. Use advanced camera technology to improve safety and performance, including video telematics/dash cameras that enhance risk management oversight, reduce vehicle insurance rates and reduce workers compensation insurance rates.

The Next Level Leadership Summit focuses on sharing and learning best business practices, as well as the value of continuous improvement. The EnVue Telematics team is proud to be a part of the event and looks forward to speaking with landscaping industry leadership on how they can improve their business performance.
"Nouredine's extensive experience and knowledge of banking, finance, and technology will help us continue to uncover new opportunities and build new relationships."  Philip Anklin, Head of Business Development, Fides

Fides Treasury Services Ltd., the global leader in multibank connectivity and communications, has announced the expansion of its business development team, hiring Nouredine Embarek as a business development manager.

Earlier this year, Fides restructured its client-facing teams under Chief Revenue Officer Simon Kaufmann, separating the responsibilities for business development and client relations. In this new role focused on partner and customer acquisition, Embarek will report to Philip Anklin, Fides Head of Business Development.

Nouredine is a valuable addition to my team, and to Fides, said Anklin. His extensive experience and knowledge of banking, finance, and technology will help us continue to uncover new opportunities and build new relationships.

Embarek brings 20 years of banking and wealth management sales and business development experience to Fides. Most recently, he was responsible for business development, acquisition and customer relationship management at Expersoft Systems AG. Prior to that, he held positions at WealthArc, BlackRock Asset Management Schweiz AG, Bank Vontobel AG, and Credit Suisse. Embarek graduated from Zurich University of Applied Science, School of Management, Winterthur, with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a major in banking and finance.

I am excited to be able to contribute to Fides business growth, said Embarek. Fides is known for its industry-leading multibanking solutions and customer-centric values, and I look forward to sharing those messages and Fides solutions with a broader audience.

Fides recently held its annual Community Conference, featuring presentations from Fides executives, product management, client team, and industry guest speakers. More than 200 customers and partners registered for the online event, which was held virtually and livestreamed.

ABOUT FIDES

Fides is the global leader in multibank connectivity and transaction communications, enabling corporates to connect to any bank, in any region, through any channel. With Fides, you can reach further, and connect faster. Our solutions deliver critical multibank account statement, payment workflow and reporting capabilities for treasury and finance teams, helping more than 3,500 clients communicate with over 13,000 banks and payment providers across 200 countries. Whether you are using a TMS, ERP, the Fides Multibanking Suite, or any combination, Fides is the only connectivity platform you need.
Owning a classic or vintage car can make anyone happy. However, in order to protect a classic or a vintage vehicle, drivers should ensure they are getting the proper car insurance coverage, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Compare-autoinsurance.org has launched a new blog post that explains how drivers can obtain the right car insurance for classic and vintage cars.

For more info and free car insurance quotes online, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/how-to-insure-classic-and-vintage-cars/

Drivers that own classic and vintage cars will do everything to order to protect them. These types of vehicles are regarded as investments. These cars should be well-maintained, cleaned often, and parked in a garage when not in use. Also, owners of these types of vehicles should purchase the right insurance policy. Classic and vintage cars can be insured by large national insurance providers or by smaller, specialized insurers.

Drivers who are looking to insure a classic or vintage car should consider the following:



Determine if they own a vintage or classic vehicle. There is no clear universal definition among the insurers regarding what vehicle can be seen as a classic or vintage car. Usually, a classic car is considered to be a vehicle that is 19 to 24 years old, is restored or in good working condition, and has a value that is larger than the average value of the cars made by the same manufacturer and model year.

Classic cars have restrictions. Owners of classic cars cant use them to do their daily routines. Insurance companies will impose some restrictions on how owners can use their classic or vintage vehicles. In most cases, classic car owners are allowed to use their vehicles at rallies, parades, car shows, or weddings.

Determine the value of the vehicle. In order to obtain coverage, classic car owners and insurers have to agree upon the value of the vehicle. In most cases, the services of a professional appraiser are required. If something bad happens to the vehicle, the classic car owner will be paid with the agreed value of the classic car.

The costs of the insurance policy. Usually, the costs to insure classic cars are lower than insuring normal vehicles. Classic cars are rarely driven, are kept in the garage most of the time, and are well maintained.

Exclusive classic cars options. Specialized insurers can offer special options like specialized roadside assistance, no attendance required, and spare parts coverage.

For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.
We are pleased to offer Cafes and Coffee Bars by HUNGRY as a fresh and modern alternative to the tired, old corporate cafeteria model.

Office catering powerhouse HUNGRY announces the arrival of a new cafe & coffee bar service set to launch in cities across the nation.

Cafes & Coffee Bars by HUNGRY reimagines the corporate cafeteria experienceproviding permanent, highly flexible food service solutions that do not require the expensive build-out and operating costs associated with onsite commercial kitchens. Cafes by HUNGRY leverages food produced offsite by top local chefs, providing authentic full and self-serve meals with adjustable layouts and an onsite hospitality team.

We are pleased to offer Cafes and Coffee Bars by HUNGRY as a fresh and modern alternative to the tired, old corporate cafeteria model, said the companys CEO and founder Jeff Grass. Our company has quickly become corporate Americas top back-to-office solution. Our new people-centered, local chef powered cafe & coffee bars are just another way were ensuring teams are welcomed with delicious, quality food options as they return to in-person work.

Cafes by HUNGRY saves clients money, scales easily with variable daily demand, and wows guests with delicious foodall while ensuring a memorable look and experience with which teams will be welcomed as they reenter the office.

A successful test-run of HUNGRYs fresh new model, the very first Cafe by HUNGRY was recently piloted the White House grounds with positive reception. The company plans to kick off dozens of additional locations in major cities across the country in 2022. HUNGRY plans to work with clients to implement stylized fixtures, premium finishes, wall art, and localized messaging to foster pride in your company, your city, your community, and local and independent chefs.

As with all HUNGRY experiences, our cafes prioritize high quality and sustainability, said HUNGRYs National Director of Sales Hayley Schellhaas. Each cafewhether in Texas, DC, or Atlantawill highlight favorite local chefs in both menu offerings along with photography and storytelling within each space.

Since HUNGRY talent will be making the food offsite, the company doesnt have to worry about the associated costs that come with an onsite commercial kitchen. Plus, HUNGRY will partner with local chefs and coffee roasters highlighting the platforms commitment to the communities it serves.

Cafes & Coffee Bars also maintain HUNGRYs commitment to fighting hunger by providing 1 meal for each 2 purchased to help reduce food insecurity in the local community. Cafes & Coffee Bars also utilize materials that are recyclable, reusable, or fully compostable and biodegradable whenever possible, continuing HUNGRYs commitment to Environmental Sustainability. For more information, visit tryhungry.com/cafes.

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ABOUT HUNGRY

HUNGRY was founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneurs Eman Pahlavani, Shy Pahlevani and Jeff Grass as a revolutionary platform engaging the $60 billion business and events catering market. The technology-enabled marketplace provides curated experiences to groups and businesses throughout the US via catering, chef pop-ups, snack packs, virtual cooking experiences, and food delivery services.

Notable investors in HUNGRY include Jay-Zs Marcy Venture Partners, Kevin Hart, Usher, Todd Gurley, Bobby Wagner, Ndamukong Suh and celebrity chefs Tom Colicchio and Ming Tsai. Through its partnerships, HUNGRY has donated more than half a million meals to people in need. The company also promotes environmental waste reduction through its Food Solutions programs.

HUNGRY is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has rapidly growing operations in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston, New York City, Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.tryhungry.com.
Broken, but Not Crushed: a potent example of the power of faith in the face of adversity. Broken, but Not Crushed is the creation of published author Freddy Gordon.

Gordon shares, The author of this book is a Christian that describes a relationship with the Lord that is highly unusual for someone who goes from owning a building maintenance cleaning business. To jail, to becoming a Christian dealing with a crack addition, but his experiences do fall in line with the scripture in the Bible found in Romans 11:29 which says, Because Gods gifts and His call are irrevocable. He never withdraws them when once they are given, and He does not change His mind about those to whom He gives His grace or to whom He sends His call.

You will find yourself enveloped in his experiences and his encounters with the Lord and their conversations. As well as the multiple things that the Lord taught him on different occasions over time, which some are baffled by. But one thing is for certain, while reading this book and afterward, you should find yourself encouraged and motivated to believe that God doesnt criticize us the way we do ourselves. And because of our own self-perception, we dont think God is willing to use us, especially when so many ignorant Christian leaders and ministers are telling us that lie as well.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Freddy Gordons new book shares a private look into the authors spiritual and personal growth.

Gordons story is one of hope and perseverance shared in hopes of reaching others that may feel they are unworthy of salvation through Gods word.

Consumers can purchase Broken, but Not Crushed at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Broken, but Not Crushed, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
We are excited about this opportunity to expand our outreach within the community and to offer this important service to more patients and families in the Detroit area."

Heart to Heart Hospice, a leader in hospice services since 2003, will soon be opening a new Hospice Inpatient Center in the Detroit area. The facility, scheduled to begin taking patients winter 2021-2022, will be located in Troy, Mich.

Kelly Mitchell, Heart to Hearts Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said the hospice provider will be leasing space inside the Belmar Oakland Assisted Living facility at 5990 N. Adams Road in Troy. We are excited about this opportunity to expand our outreach within the community and to offer this important service to more patients and families in the Detroit area, Mitchell said. We expect to be open to accept eligible hospice patients shortly.

The new Hospice Inpatient Center will be designed to create a home-like environment for hospice patients in the event of a medical crisis or when caregivers need a break from their duties. Although most hospice care is provided in the home, a patient may qualify for inpatient care to control acute pain and other symptoms, or to provide a respite for caregivers.

Our goal is to provide comfort and dignity, said Mitchell, and our new Inpatient Center will include a full array of amenities to meet the needs of both patients and their loved ones.

The Inpatient Center will be staffed by healthcare professionals specially trained in hospice care. The Heart to Heart Hospice interdisciplinary team consists of physicians, nurses, hospice aides, social workers, chaplains, volunteers, and bereavement specialists. Together, they provide the specific medical, emotional, spiritual, and practical support patients and their families need.

About Heart to Heart Hospice

Heart to Heart Hospice, founded in 2003, is one of the largest private providers of hospice care in the United States. Headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Heart to Heart provides a broad range of hospice services to patients with life-limiting illnesses across 52 locations in Texas, Michigan, and Indiana. At Heart to Heart, we understand both the physical and emotional challenges for our patients and their loved ones and our compassionate care team is committed to providing them with what they need most: comfort, support, and dignity. Learn more about Heart to Heart Hospice.


Postlab for Media Composer brings the best of the cloud to Avid editors Postlab for Media Composer extends facilities on-premise storage investment by providing much-needed secure remote editing for a small incremental cost. Its fast, secure remote editing that delivers the same great experience of being in the facility.

Hedge, the creator of modern, intelligent software for video professionals, today officially released Postlab full support for Media Composer, a cloud-native solution to enable collaborative remote editing workflows for Avid editors. Postlab serves as an extension to an on-premise Nexis or other Avid-compatible NAS/SAN storage. Eliminating cumbersome access gateways and high latency associated with cloud-media workflows, Postlab for Media Composer provides a great user experience, regardless of available bandwidth. A flexible pricing model lets post facilities and media businesses use the Postlab platform without upfront commitment, and scale and shrink team sizes when needed.

Media companies need a way to collaborate remotely right now. Given the uncertainty around the pandemic, many do not want to make significant investments or sweeping infrastructure changes, states Paul Matthijs, co-founder and CEO of Hedge. Postlab for Media Composer extends facilities on-premise storage investment by providing much-needed secure remote editing for a small incremental cost. Its fast, secure remote editing that delivers the same great experience of being in the facility.

Postlab for Media Composer is intrinsically secure and doesn't rely on slow and hard-to-configure VPNs, allowing editors to begin working immediately from anywhere, with no minimum requirement for an internet connection. Postlab keeps existing workspaces in sync and makes Avid's incredibly useful Bin Locking feature work in the cloud so users can seamlessly collaborate on projects without overwriting each other's work, a crucial component of any workflow, on-premise or in the cloud.

Postlab for Media Composer is an Avid Nexis in the cloud with the benefits of a local station, states Rich Camp, assistant editor at Jax Media, a production company that has worked on shows like Russian Doll, Search Party, and Emily in Paris. Someone in Los Angeles can work on a show with someone in New York seamlessly. On a recent production, we were working in bins back and forth across the Atlantic, in real-time. Its a great workflow.

Postlab for Media Composer brings the best of the cloud with none of the drawbacks:



Immediate onboarding - Postlab has no middleware, storage restrictions or other limiting factors. Its a seamless transition from on-premise to cloud, with essential features and characteristics of your Nexis (or Avid compatible NAS/SAN) workflow intact.

Edit Even on Lightweight Connection - Postlab works with both fast and slow connections and where bandwidth is insufficient for real-time cloud operation, media files are prefetched and intelligently cached, so theyre available for immediate editing. Postlabs Workspace feature also allows editors to cache a complete folder and its content locally, so only metadata and lock files require syncing, which is instantaneous.

Familiar Workspace and Collaboration - Postlab for Media Composer extends Nexis and traditional Avid NAS/SAN storage workflows into the cloud, providing editors a familiar workspace, and capabilities like Bin Locking ensure that editors can collaborate without overwriting important work - just as theyre used to.

Low Cloud Costs - Moving media files in and out of the cloud is often time-consuming and costly due to egress fees. Postlab for Media Composer cuts the costs along with the complexity of using the cloud through metadata and a zero egress policy; no hidden costs related to cloud storage - a rarity in a world dominated by Azure and AWS.

Scalable, Without Vendor Lock-In - Pay-as-you-go based model allows facilities to pay a basic monthly fee and then add additional Postlab users for as little as one day, increasing or decreasing both storage and users on an as-needed basis - essential for facilities working on dynamic productions and employing varying numbers of freelancers.

Postlab for Media Composer works for all Avid Media Composer Ultimate editors, whether theyre working on-premise or from home, and supports all types of storagean on-prem Nexis system, NAS or SANor no on-prem storage at all. Hedges 15-day fully functional trial lets facilities put Postlab for Media Composer to the test with zero upfront commitment.

Seamless Extension to Avid Nexis

Moving to Postlab is an easy step for facilities with an Avid Nexis, with no training required and no change to the existing workflow. Media Composer editors will see their familiar workspaces and workflows, with the added benefit of being able to work anywhere.

Support for Avid-Compatible NAS/SAN Shared Storage

Avid Bin Locking is what allows editors to collaborate using shared storage. This is built natively into Postlab and works alongside Avid-compatible local shared storage whether its a NAS or SAN.

No NAS or SAN?

Media Composer Ultimate customers who do not have a centralized NAS/SAN storage solution can fully leverage Drive, Postlabs shared storage in the cloud. An integral part of the Postlab platform, Drive allows for editing straight from the cloud without requiring to download all media first. Drive scales with a teams needs, ensuring you never pay for storage thats being used.

For more background on Postlab for Media Composer, read the latest blog post here. To learn more about Hedge's new offering, please visit https://hedge.video/postlab-avid.

About Hedge

Founded in 2016, Hedge is a Netherlands-born startup that simplifies complex media workflows from acquisition and asset creation to post-production. The Hedge team are informed by Dutch Design, as they prioritize the user experience, where ease of use goes hand-in-hand with its technical efficiency. The companys flagship application, Hedge, set new standards for media backup, while Canister demystified the previously arcane process of LTO archiving. With the release of Postlab in 2019, Hedge made remote collaboration affordable for every editor working from home, and in the studio. Hedges products are in daily use by over 30,000 customers all over the world, from Hollywood productions to wedding shoots, and everything in between.
Operating in support of all the Holman businesses, this newly established team will focus on driving key commercial initiatives forward, ensuring we continue to align our organization with what truly matters to our customers, and fueling our shared success for many years to come, said Tousaw.

Holman Enterprises, a global automotive services organization, today announced a series of key leadership appointments designed to help drive the organizations continued evolution and further align Holmans unrivaled automotive core competencies.

Rick Tousaw, Holmans Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, will now lead the newly created Holman Commercial Team. The Holman Commercial Team is comprised of four fundamental areas  Market Development, Product & Service Development, Customer Experience, and Marketing  and will support the companys strategic vision for sustained growth and strengthen Holmans position as a prominent leader in the automotive industry.

Operating in support of all the Holman businesses, this newly established team will focus on driving key commercial initiatives forward, ensuring we continue to align our organization with what truly matters to our customers, and fueling our shared success for many years to come, said Tousaw. The Holman Commercial Team is poised to play a vital role in our companys mission to provide the industrys best automotive-related services and exceed our customers expectations each and every day.

In support of this teams mission, company veteran Joe Foster has been named Vice President, Market Development and will now oversee Holmans Market Development and Product & Service Development teams. Under Fosters guidance, these teams will further optimize Holmans existing products and services while also developing new automotive solutions that align with the ever-evolving needs of the companys customers. Foster and his team are also tasked with ensuring Holman continues to leverage and maximize the natural synergies of the organizations various automotive service divisions.

Additionally, Emily Graham has been promoted to Director of Sustainability. In her new role, Graham will spearhead companys ongoing sustainability programs and look to accelerate Holmans various electrification as a service initiatives. As this segment of the industry rapidly matures and becomes increasingly important for Holmans customers, Graham will lead the organizations efforts to enhance its electrification and alternative fuel solutions with a particular focus on bringing innovative new strategies to the market.

We are extremely excited to elevate Joe and Emily to these tremendously important new roles within the Holman Commercial Team, continued Tousaw. Their keen business acumen and profound understanding of the needs of our customers will be invaluable as we strive to foster an environment of truly seamless collaboration across our entire organization to deliver the holistic automotive strategies and thoughtful customer experience that have long been hallmarks of the Holman family of businesses.

For additional information about Holman Enterprises, please visit HolmanEnterprises.com.

About Holman Enterprises

Holman Enterprises is a global automotive leader that serves both commercial and consumer clients The Holman Way by always doing the right thing for our people, our customers, and the community since 1924. Headquartered in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, our automotive-centric businesses include Holman Automotive, one of the largest privately owned dealership groups in the U.S. with 41 dealership franchises representing 20 brands; Holman Insurance Services, a commercial and consumer insurance services company; Holman Parts Distribution, a national distributor of OEM powertrain solutions and logistics leader; Auto Truck Group, a vehicle fabrication and upfitting business; Kargo Master, a manufacturer of truck and van productivity solutions; ARI, the largest privately-owned fleet leasing and management company in North America; and Holman Strategic Ventures, Holmans corporate venture capital and innovation team. For additional information, please visit HolmanEnterprises.com.
Branch Manager, Tim Murphy I started looking around for the next level of mortgage lending. InterLinc popped to the top  I'm amazed by the systems, strategies and efficiencies that this company offers my team.

InterLinc Mortgage has seen a large increase in headcount over the past few months in large part due to their latest branch onboarding in Waldorf, MD. Led by Branch Manager, Tim Murphy, the Waldorf team is 21 members strong with no plans on slowing down. Along with this new branch come three new state licenses for InterLinc in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

When asked why InterLinc was a fit for his team, Tim Murphy responded, The whole key was efficiency and getting the deal done. I love InterLinc because they have the ability to make the special deals work and the ability to get things done fast, which is the critical part.

Bringing the Murphy group onboard represents another step toward the vision set forth by InterLinc CEO, Gene Thompson, for the company: InterLinc Mortgage will be a top 100 national mortgage lender by 2025 with $7B in annual production through aggressive yet sustainable growth. The production capacity that the Murphy team has is a huge value-add to InterLinc as well as the new market presence that the InterLinc brand is spreading to in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Prior to coming to InterLinc, Murphy had been with his previous employer for 17 years. As to what inspired him to make the jump to InterLinc, Murphy responded, I got to that point in time where I started looking around for the next level of mortgage lending. InterLinc popped to the top  I'm amazed by the systems, strategies and efficiencies that this company offers my team.

Throughout the recruitment process, CEO, Thompson, and Senior Vice President, James Durham, were continually inspired by Murphy and his team, including their extensive expertise, and were determined to bring them on board in this new market. I couldnt be more excited to be part of what [Murphy] is going to do here. His leadership qualities combined with his subject-matter expertise as it relates to the mortgage business are just exciting, says Durham.

One of the things I'm excited about is our team getting behind [Murphy] and his vision for growth in this market that were just now entering. He certainly emulates InterLinc culture and we couldnt be more excited about having him, says Thompson. As a company, InterLinc cant wait to see what the Murphy group accomplishes and is looking forward to expanding the InterLinc footprint even further with Tim and his team on board.

In total, the Waldorf branch brings an average of over $215MM in closed loans annually and the prestige of being a top-performing group year after year at their former employer. Together, they will oversee the mid-Atlantic region of the US through multiple state licenses they hold in the area.

About InterLinc

InterLinc Mortgage Services, LLC is a Houston-based full-service mortgage banking firm with approvals from the three largest issuers of mortgage-backed securities: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. The Company affords clients access to enhanced mortgage product offerings, pricing competitiveness, loan efficiency, and servicing. InterLinc is licensed in 25 states throughout the Midwest and Southeast. More information is available online at https://interlincmortgage.com.
ISA has long been a provider of certification for automation professionals through its Certified Controls System Technician (CCST) strategy.

The International Society of Automation (ISA) and Endress+Hauser announce their collaboration efforts to provide expanded training and certification course offerings to customers. ISA will offer select certified training courses in conjunction with Endress+Hausers instrumentation training courses at Endress+Hausers PTUs (Process Training Units) located across the United States. In an effort to advance training for process industry professionals, Endress+Hauser has built 11 full-scale process units. These process units offer hands-on, real-world experience with the types of configurations, operations, diagnostics, and troubleshooting found in modern-day process plants.

We are thrilled to collaborate with Endress+Hauser and leverage the strengths of our respective organizations, says Geri McGrath, director of global education and outreach at ISA. The combination of Endress+Hausers PTUs and ISAs training services offers increased workforce development opportunities for industrial automation and control professionals.

Through this collaboration, ISA brings its renowned expertise in controls, valves, and drives to more students in a real-world setting. ISA will send a representative to the Endress+Hauser PTUs to teach ISAs existing, widely available vendor-agnostic course materials using a seamless, holistic approach. This joint effort helps provide a one-stop shop where automation professionals can propel their education and careers forward.

Combining a selection from the deep ISA training offering with the many choices of instrumentation training provided at Endress+Hausers world-class PTUs provides a powerful set of options for instrument technicians who need help with their professional development, says Jerry Spindler, customer training manager, Endress+Hauser USA.

ISA has served as a long-time provider of certification for automation professionals through its Certified Controls System Technician (CCST) strategy. The CCST program provides a non-biased, third-party, objective assessment and confirmation of skills for control systems technicians. ISA and Endress+Hauser will focus on providing training for Level 1 certification, which affirms that technicians possess extensive knowledge of calibration, maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting.

In an effort to provide more customizable training options to organizations, ISA and Endress+Hauser have also co-developed an online assessment tool. The assessment tool generates a report highlighting personnel strengths and knowledge gaps, allowing representatives to work with organizations to develop a training plan to meet their specific needs. The tool is being developed based on ISAs CCST Body of Knowledge, and will be offered through both the ISA and Endress+Hauser websites in 2022.

For more information about ISA certifications and training offerings, please visit http://www.isa.org.

To learn more about Endress+Hauser training offerings, please visit: http://www.us.endress.com/Training.

About ISA

The International Society of Automation (ISA) is a non-profit professional association founded in 1945 to create a better world through automation. ISA advances technical competence by connecting the automation community to achieve operational excellence. The organization develops widely used global standards; certifies industry professionals; provides education and training; publishes books and technical articles; hosts conferences and exhibits; and provides networking and career development programs for its members and customers around the world.

ISA created the ISA Global Cybersecurity Alliance (https://isa.org/ISAGCA) to advance cybersecurity readiness and awareness in manufacturing and critical infrastructure facilities and processes. The Alliance brings end-user companies, automation and control systems providers, IT infrastructure providers, services providers, system integrators, and other cybersecurity stakeholder organizations together to proactively address growing threats.

ISA owns Automation.com, a leading online publisher of automation-related content, and is the founding sponsor of The Automation Federation (https://www.automationfederation.org/), an association of non-profit organizations serving as The Voice of Automation. Through a wholly-owned subsidiary, ISA bridges the gap between standards and their implementation with the ISA Security Compliance Institute (https://www.isasecure.org/en-US/) and the ISA Wireless Compliance Institute (https://isa100wci.org/).

Contact:

Geri McGrath

Director, Global Education & Outreach

International Society of Automation

Phone: 919-395-2270

gmcgrath@isa.org

https://www.isa.org/

About the Endress+Hauser Group

Endress+Hauser is a global leader in measurement and automation technology for process and laboratory applications. The family company, headquartered in Reinach, Switzerland, achieved net sales of over 2.6 billion euros (2.89 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020 with a total workforce of 14,000.

Endress+Hauser devices, solutions and services are at home in many industries. Customers thus use them to gain valuable knowledge from their applications. This enables them to improve their products, work economically and at the same time protect people and the environment.

Endress+Hauser is a reliable partner worldwide. Own sales companies in 50 countries as well as representatives in another 70 countries ensure competent support. Production facilities on four continents manufacture quickly and flexibly to the highest quality standards.

Endress+Hauser was founded in 1953 by Georg H. Endress and Ludwig Hauser. Ever since, the company has been pushing ahead with the development and use of innovative technologies, now helping to shape the industrys digital transformation. 8,000 patents and applications protect the Groups intellectual property.

Contact:

Jackie Renforth

Content Team Manager

Endress+Hauser

2350 Endress Place, Greenwood, IN 46143

Phone: 317-535-1306

Jackie.renforth@endress.com

http://www.us.endress.com
School Is as Fun as Can Be: a thoughtful story for young readers coping with the changes caused by Covid. School Is as Fun as Can Be is the creation of published author K. A. McMillan, a loving wife and mother who is a native of Colorado and enjoys camping and hiking.

McMillan shares, School Is as Fun as Can Be was written for my son, Cooper. He was unsure and afraid what in-school learning was going to be like with the changes happening due to COVID-19. I wrote this to help ease his mind and give him comfort that he will be okay. Even though he may face new challenges, he will get through this with the help of his family, classmates, and teachers. I hope that this storybook will help your kiddos get through this unsure time and most importantly know that school can still be fun.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, K. A. McMillans new book is an engaging opportunity to discuss a topic that may be frightening to many young ones.

McMillans positivity radiates from the narrative found within this charming childrens work.

View a synopsis of School Is as Fun as Can Be on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase School Is as Fun as Can Be at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about School Is as Fun as Can Be, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Matthew Cambo Matthew Cambo, an associate attorney with Leinoff & Lemos, P.A., was recently recognized for the first time by Best Lawyers in America for his work in Family Law.

Matthew Cambo, an associate attorney with Leinoff & Lemos, P.A., was recently recognized for the first time by Best Lawyers in America for his work in Family Law. This is a particularly impressive honor, considering recognition by Best Lawyers is based primarily on peer review.

Best Lawyers annually captures the leading lawyers overall consensus regarding their colleagues who are located in the same geographical region.

To be recognized for the Best Lawyers Award, Matthew Cambo was selected from a range of nominations that went through a rigorous process. First, lawyers are nominated by other colleagues. Then, the nominations go through a peer-review process where the organization gains feedback on the nominees work. The peer-review process ensures that the actual best lawyers are being nominated for the award and being recognized as well.

Results are then calculated while the feedback is being reviewed. Finally, before a final decision is made on those who will be recognized, the nominees are confirmed to be in good standing with their local bar associations.

I am very pleased by the nomination. Its an honor to be recognized by my colleagues and such a prestigious publication for providing great counsel to our clients at Leinoff & Lemos, P.A., said Matthew.

Working for Leinoff & Lemos, P.A, Cambo devotes all of his time to litigation practice in family law. He covers cases such as divorce, relocation, alimony and child support, business valuations, child custody, paternity disputes, business valuations, and other family law and marital matters.

Before coming to Leinoff & Lemos, P.A., he clerked for the felony division of the Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office. While there, he assisted in the offices prosecution of defendants with a wide variety of charges, including vehicular homicide, attempted murder, and armed robbery.

Matthew is also a member of the Florida Bars Family Law, Trial Lawyers, and Young Lawyers sections. To learn more about Matthew and the services he offers, visit http://www.matthewcambo.com.

About Matthew Cambo

Matthew Cambo is an associate attorney with Leinoff & Lemos, P.A. He has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2022 due to his exceptional focus on serving clients in family law matters. Mr. Cambo has a degree in Political Science and a J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law. He is licensed to practice in Florida and is a member of the Family Law and Young Lawyers sections of the Florida Bar.
MIAMI Realtors CEO Teresa King Kinney We are excited to continue our commitment to bring the best tools and services to our MIAMI members by providing MLS Offers to all members for all their transactions"

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS (MIAMI) has upgraded its partnership and integration with MLS Offers to empower its members with even more robust offer management technology so they can better serve their clients and manage their offers. In todays record-setting sales and multiple-offer market, its paramount for all members to have a transparent and agent-friendly offer management system. This upgraded partnership means the process of buying or selling a home with a MIAMI Realtor will be an even more efficient process.

We are excited to continue our commitment to bring the best tools and services to our MIAMI members by providing MLS Offers to all members for all their transactions, MIAMI Realtors CEO Teresa King Kinney said.

This upgrade makes MLS Offers patented technology the default method of offer submission and negotiation for every MIAMI member listing.

MIAMI 52,000 members now have an active MLS Offers account and every listing added to the MLS now defaults to requiring buyer agents to submit their offers digitally through the MLS Offers platform. Additionally, MIAMI members will have the ability to login to MLS Offers directly from the MLS through a single-sign-on integration. For more info: http://www.miamirealtors.com/mlsoffers

MIAMI Members to Better Serve Homebuying and Selling Public with Upgraded Partnership

MLS Offers, an industry-leading offer management platform, facilitates an agent-friendly online offer submission process and the subsequent sharing of all offer terms, documents, and back-and-forth correspondence between agents in an organized online environment.

Buyer agents can view their offer status and even amend their offer at any time. Listing agents can provide offer instructions, easily compare offers, reply to multiple agents at once, request highest and best and even create detailed offer reports for their sellers.

All communication between the parties is logged and time and date stamped, creating a transparent audit trail that all parties appreciate. MLS Offers eliminates the risk of missed offers, messages or documents due to cluttered inboxes or emails going to spam. Managing all offers online in one central location also allows for easy collaboration around offers among teams, especially those working virtually.

I am extremely excited to be taking our partnership with MIAMI to the next level, MLS Offers Founder and CEO Alan Fenn said. This upgrade gives all their members a seamless offer process, regardless of what side of the transaction they are on. I believe our patented process will soon become the industry standard for agent-to-agent offer communication and this partnership moves us closer to that becoming a reality.

About the MIAMI Association of Realtors

The MIAMI Association of Realtors was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 101 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward-MIAMI Association of Realtors, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS-MIAMI) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents 52,000 total real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S. and has official partnerships with 223 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.MiamiRealtors.com

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agilon health agilon health is proud to receive this recognition once again through NBRI as it underscores our companys approach in truly understanding what our employees and customers  our physician partners  need and want.

The National Business Research Institute (NBRI) is pleased to welcome agilon health, inc. (NYSE: AGL) to the NBRI Circle of Excellence. This is the second consecutive year that agilon health has won the prestigious award.

The NBRI Circle of Excellence Award recognizes organizations that demonstrate high levels of Employee Experience (EX) through rigorous, scientific, psychological research of their Employees. Organizations must score at or above Stretch Performance at the 75th percentile of their industry, or the organization must improve statistically significant 5 or more percentiles at the Total Company level. It is no small feat to move an entire Companys EX score 5 or more percentiles, or to reach Stretch (75th) or Best in Class (90th) Performance levels within six to twelve months!

agilon health is compared to, or benchmarked against its industry, which is a subset of NBRIs Big Data of 10.5 billion survey answers. agilon health is currently performing at 5% percent above their previous scores for the second year in a row. NBRI commends the leadership of agilon health for their commitment to scientific, psychological research of its Employees and continuous improvement of its Employee experience.

agilon health also embraces the Best Practice of continually assessing Employee Experience (EX), and targeting the variables that drive EX, including job satisfaction, management style, culture, and fairness. NBRIs root cause analysis, including linear regressions and random forest models of agilon health raw data, provide agilon health with the keen insight and actions necessary for the continuous improvement of Employee thinking, behavior, and experience.

Great business leaders manage the people, processes, and products of their organizations. They understand that the rich information NBRI obtains from their Employees enables them to manage how people experience their organization in a highly accurate, effective, and targeted manner. Those experiences drive the financial performance of every organization, whether for the better or for the worse. Understanding thinking and managing experiences for maximum performance is what we do at NBRI, says Dr. Jan G. West, Ph.D., CEO & Psychologist at NBRI. Earning this prestigious award is a direct result of agilon healths dedication to measuring and improving their Employee experience.

agilon health is proud to receive this recognition once again through NBRI as it underscores our companys approach in truly understanding what our employees and customers  our physician partners  need and want, says Mat Varghese, chief people officer at agilon health. At agilon health, we are committed to building trusted, long-term partnerships with community-based primary care physicians, enabling them to improve the experience for their senior patients and transform care delivery in their communities.

About agilon health

agilon health is transforming health care for seniors by empowering primary-care physicians to focus on the entire health of their patients. Through our partnerships and our platform, agilon is leading the nation in creating the system we need  one built on the value of care, not the volume of fees. We honor the independence of local physicians and serve as their partners so they can be the doctors they trained to be. agilon health provides the capital, data, payor relationships, executive experience and contract support that allow physician groups to take on the risk of total care for their most vulnerable patients. The result: healthier communities, and doctors who can devote the right amount of time with the patients who need it most. With rapidly growing appeal, agilon is scaled to grow and is here to help our nations best independent physician groups have a sustained, thriving future. Together, we are reinventing primary care. For more information about agilon health, visit https://www.agilonhealth.com/ and connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

About NBRI

NBRI conducts psychological Employee, Customer, and Market Research for businesses, and uses this data to help organizations leverage these human factors to make improvements to operations and strategy. With its extensive experience across all industries, NBRIs research teams bring their clients a combination of deep industry knowledge and expert advice. NBRIs mission is to help their clients set new standards of excellence in their industries. NBRI product offerings, such as benchmarking and deep, inferential analyses like random forest with artificial intelligence and machine learning ensure NBRI clients focus on the most impactful issues in the most effective ways.

National Business Research Institute, Inc.

2701 Dallas Parkway, Suite 650

Plano, TX 75093

972-612-5070

800-756-6168

https://www.nbrii.com

agilon health, Inc.

1 World Trade Center, Suite 2000

Long Beach, CA 90831

media@agilonhealth.com

https://www.agilonhealth.com
Were pleased to have the opportunity to offer EIF managers operating in Gibraltar -- and our clients who may have an interest in domiciling funds there -- our proven administration solutions, backed by 30 years of global experience in the industry, NAV COO Ambuj Garg said.

The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) has approved NAV Fund Services (Cayman) Ltd. to act as an external fund administrator for Experienced Investor Funds (EIFs) domiciled in Gibraltar.

One of only nine external fund administrators operating in Gibraltar under GFSC consent, NAV Fund Services Cayman will offer full fund administration services including fund accounting, financial accounting, compliance support, registrar, transfer agency, and client services.

Were pleased to have the opportunity to offer EIF managers operating in Gibraltar -- and our clients who may have an interest in domiciling funds there -- our proven administration solutions, backed by 30 years of global experience in the industry, NAV COO Ambuj Garg said. Our expertise, superior client service, and proprietary technology enable us to provide comprehensive solutions and a very competitive pricing structure.

Gibraltar is an internationally competitive market, offering a focus on regulatory compliance, favorable tax status, and a streamlined process that supports rapid set up of funds. Gibraltars diverse and strong economy has made it a leading international financial services center. We look forward to bringing our services to such a strategically well-positioned business environment, Garg said.

NAV Fund Services Cayman is registered with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) as a mutual fund administrator and is an affiliate of NAV Fund Administration Group, a privately-owned U.S.-based fund administrator founded in 1991. NAVs team of 1,500 professionals provide services to 1,600+ Hedge Funds, Private Equity & Real Estate Funds, Cryptocurrency Funds, CTA, and Managed Account clients across the globe and ranks among the top 10 global hedge fund administrators by number of funds, servicing more than $125 billion AUA.
Re-engagement is becoming a mission-critical campaign type for most major brands. Its far easier and cost effective to re-engage an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

Globally recognized martech SaaS company, Netcore Cloud has collaborated with industry-leading email data solutions provider, AudiencePoint, to enhance the Transactional Email API with the power of real time automation.

Netcore Cloud has been leading transactional emails for over two decades in 22 markets globally. With its focus on revenues through customer retention, conversion, activity, and sales, the company today is contributing to the marketing success stories of 5,000+ brands including Canon, Disney, McDonald's, Nexxt, Puma, Westin Hotels & Resorts, and others. While Netcore Cloud competes globally with several other transactional API providers, none of them offer a data integration layer with the power of real-time signals. With its constant pulse on consumer behavior, Netcore Cloud was quick to identify the need for readtime automation.

Transactional email APIs have long been the workhorse of email marketing, but rarely serve a strategic marketing purpose. Our partnership with AudiencePoint enables clients to leverage our global sending infrastructure with real-time precision to drive engagement-based campaigns, not just confirmations and receipts. says Matthew Vernhout, VP, Deliverability for Netcore Cloud.

The partnership taps AudiencePoints RTO (real time optimization) product, an always-on set of event listeners, indexing and relaying signals flowing through their proprietary email dataset. It's a massive amount of data, says Paul Shriner, Chief Innovation Officer at AudiencePoint. We monitor a depersonalized set of over 500 million subscriber profiles, and index engagement data as it happens. We can then relay those signals back to our clients, allowing them to initiate automations, CRM actions, or a variety of other activities. And we do it in near real-time.

The integration of AudiencePoint RTO Data with Netcore Clouds Transactional API opens new possibilities for subscriber engagement, not typically associated with transactional content.

Matthew continued; Re-engagement is becoming a mission-critical campaign type for most major brands. Its far easier and cost effective to re-engage an existing customer than to acquire a new one. And when paired with the affordability and scalability of a Transactional API, our solution can create revenue opportunities in a layer of the marketing stack typically associated with the cost side of the business. Its a true win-win.

Currently in closed beta, both companies plan on a full public release of the integration in late Q4 2021.

About AudiencePoint

AudiencePoint empowers brands to connect with their customers through engaging, valuable, and personalized email messaging. We've analyzed billions of emails and built over 500 million privacy- compliant subscriber profiles. Each new client contributes to our curated data pool, creating a virtuous cycle of more effective software for customers and a defensible moat for our business. Over 150 global brands have leveraged our Send Time Optimization SaaS product, resulting in one the world's largest pools of email engagement data.

About Netcore Cloud

Netcore Cloud Inc. is a globally recognized marketing technology SaaS company. It offers full-stack Martech products that help product and growth marketers deliver AI-powered intelligent customer experiences across all touchpoints of the user journey. The platform is an all-in-one solution for building unified customer views, orchestrating omnichannel communication journeys, personalizing the apps and websites, optimizing user experience, real-time reporting, and actionable analytics. All the products are designed to scale, with a focus on ROI. Netcore Cloud delivers 12+ billion emails and tracks 100+ billion marketing events every month for the world's top marketers.

Netcore Cloud serves over 5000 clients spread across 18 countries. Industry-leading brands like Canon, Flipkart (a Walmart company), Disney+ Hotstar, Jockey, Puma, The Body Shop, Jack & Jones, Tommy Hilfiger, Gas Jeans, Tobi, Standard Chartered, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's trust Netcore Cloud to power their customer acquisition, engagement, and retention goals.

Netcore Cloud has been in business for 20+ years and operates out of India, the USA, Germany, UK, Spain, Nigeria, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and UAE.

For additional information, please contact

Timothy Moran, Vice President, Enterprise Sales

M: 570.885.2495; timothy.moran@netcorecloud.com
Conga, the global leader in Commercial and Revenue Operations transformation, today announced Ott Law Firm has automated its document creation and signature processes with Conga Composer and Conga Sign. As a result, Ott can generate documents faster while leveraging Salesforce for accuracy and a digital paper trail. It also benefits from a simplified contract execution process with Congas modern eSignature solution.

Ott Law Firm works with several clients across the areas of litigation, business services, estate planning and intellectual property. As a technology-forward law firm, Ott Law engages a broad range of assistive technologies and leverages well-developed trial litigation and strategic insights to practice successfully in a wide variety of areas. The firm utilizes human and technological assets to pursue objectives in litigation, finance and conflict management on a large scale for a broad set of client types.

Given the nature of its business, Ott generates a myriad of documents, ranging from client agreements to discovery documents and more. The firm must complete onboarding paperwork and several other documents each time Ott takes on a new client, and some cases also require generated medical record requests and case numbers. In addition, Ott needs to leverage Salesforce as its source of truth and obtain a digital paper trail for all cases in its system. Conga offered the right set of solutions to address all of Otts needs.

Our cases involve a lot of paper, but having the necessary documents is critical to ensuring we dont run afoul of the court. Because of this, digitizing our documents was a necessary step and no-brainer, but we needed the right partner to help with doing so. With Congas technology, we have gained flexibility combined with the ability to scale without bottlenecks, said Joseph Ott, Owner, Ott Law Firm. Our business moves fast, but Conga helps us keep up the pace. Were appreciative of the teams support and know Conga will be an imperative partner as we expand to more cities and grow in the coming years.

Ott has already experienced improvements to its contract generation and signing process with Conga Composer and Conga Sign. Benefits with Conga Composer include error-free digital documents and the ability to easily build, manage and work on documents online. Ott can also merge data from Salesforce into documents with accuracy and consistency and automate each templated documents creation. With Conga Sign, Ott can streamline its workflow processes and business by receiving secure and legally binding signatures, tracking clients signing progress, and easily integrating contract data with Salesforce. Paper-based processes are oftentimes one of the biggest contributors to inefficiencies and slowdowns across legal teams. Theyre also cause for headaches across legal departments simply due to the large volume of documents law firms generate. Were excited to help Ott Law Firm solve for these common challenges by digitizing documents and paper-based processes, said Noel Goggin, CEO, Conga. Like Ott Law Firm, many law firms and legal teams are benefitting from leveraging Salesforce and Conga. But this is just the beginning of our support for the legal industry. Those who adapt and embrace digitization will realize success in 2022 and long-term benefits for years to come.

For more details on Conga Composer and Conga Sign visit https://conga.com/.

About Conga

Conga, the global leader in Commercial Operations transformation, helps businesses simplify and automate their approach to the essential quotes, contracts, and documents that drive commerce. We help our customers become more agile, so they can adapt quickly to change and create a fluid, connected customer experience. Companies choose Conga for the most comprehensive solution set in the market and expert guidance, enabling them to transform the processes and documents surrounding customer engagement, configure price quote (CPQ), contract lifecycle management (CLM), and the complete commercial operations lifecycle. With Conga, businesses evolve their commercial operations to streamline their revenue processes and derive the meaningful insights that lead to sustained growth.

Conga has global operations across North America, Europe and Asia. Learn more at conga.com or follow Conga on Twitter: @congahq.

About Ott Law Firm

Ott Law Firm zealously advocates for clients from all walks of life. We use cutting edge technology, litigation savvy and a dedicated strategic vision to get our clients the best possible results.

Our nationwide practice has offices in St. Louis and coming soon to Chicago and Miami. Our dynamic legal practice strives to provide zealous advocacy for all.

Media Contact:

Shelby Armstrong

Finn Partners for Conga

Conga@finnpartners.com
The Beryl Institute announces the publication of Volume 8, Issue 3 of Patient Experience Journal (PXJ), an international, open access, peer-reviewed journal focused on research and proven practices related to understanding and improving the patient experience. Read in over 220 countries and territories, PXJ articles have been downloaded over 850,000 times and reflect the journals commitment to disseminating rigorous knowledge and expanding the global conversation on evidence and innovation in patient and human experience.

Published in association with The Beryl Institute, Volume 8, Issue 3 includes 18 articles representing commentaries, personal narratives, research studies and case studies covering topics such as :



In divided times, a focus on human experience connects us

Rebuilding a foundation of trust: A call to action in creating a safe environment for everyone

How to address fear: A patients perspective of seeking care during COVID-19

Co-production development of a decision support tool for peers and service users to choose technologies to support recovery

The tensions between healthcare providers and patient and family advisory committees (PFACs): A comparative health system analysis between England and Ontario

Submissions represent diverse views from the lenses of patient, family & community

Patients experiences and satisfaction with health care in the Salah Azaiez Institute of cancer in Tunisia in 2020

Using a multidisciplinary data approach to operationalize an experience framework

The research represents a broad range of global organizations and institutions including Johns Hopkins University, Unidade Local de Saude de Castelo Branco e Instituto Politecnico de Castelo Branco, Portugal, Washington State University, University of Calgary, Simmons University, Westem Sydney Local Health District, University of Toronto, Stanford Childrens Health, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Providence Health Center, Northwestern University, University of British Columbia, Salah Azaiez Institute, Universite de Montreal and Baylor Scott & White Health

This issue addresses the breadth of the human experience and how a focus on experience in healthcare can lead us forward, said Jason Wolf, Founding Editor of PXJ and President & CEO of The Beryl Institute. Through our authors contributions we are seeing how organizations have traversed the pandemic and how they are planning for what is next. From learning through the stories of patients and care partners, to rebuilding our healthcare workforce on a foundation of trust, to measuring what matters and taking action, this issue of PXJ begins to shed light on where healthcare can and must go from here.

To access Volume 8, Issue 3 of PXJ, visit: http://pxjournal.org/journal

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About Patient Experience Journal:

Patient Experience Journal (PXJ) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published in association with The Beryl Institute. Read in over 220 countries and territories, PXJ is committed to disseminating rigorous knowledge and expanding the global conversation on evidence and innovation on patient experience.

About The Beryl Institute:

The Beryl Institute is a global community of professionals and experience champions committed to transforming the human experience in healthcare. As a pioneer and leader of the experience movement and patient experience profession for more than a decade, the Institute offers unparalleled access to unbiased research and proven practices, networking and professional development opportunities and a safe, neutral space to exchange ideas and learn from others.

We define the patient experience as the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organizations culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care. We believe human experience is grounded in the experiences of patients & families, members of the healthcare workforce and the communities they serve.


Successful organizations take the time to understand the tools and challenges and create Microsoft 365 governance strategies to support business needs.

Messaging Architects, an eMazzanti Technologies Company, Microsoft expert, and information governance consultant discusses Microsoft 365 governance in a new article. The informative article first asserts that increasingly complex tools require proactive Microsoft 365 governance to achieve optimal results.

The author then argues that organizations must balance productivity with control to avoid a rise in shadow IT. He also advocates clarifying business needs and goals and then building a governance plan around those goals on a foundation of policies.

Successful organizations take the time to understand the tools and challenges and create Microsoft 365 governance strategies to support business needs, stated Greg Smith, Vice President of Services Delivery at Messaging Architects.

Below are a few excerpts from the article, Proactive Microsoft 365 Governance Balances Productivity and Control.

Balancing Productivity with Control

In addition to increasingly complex tools, administrators must balance the need for productivity with a constantly evolving threat landscape and regulatory pressures. Microsoft 365 governance allows administrators to strictly control user access and automate policies for data sharing and retention.

These controls aid security and compliance. However, too much structure can lead to reduced productivity when users must deal with multiple logins and strict controls over sharing. This frustration may spark a rise in shadow IT as employees find ways to collaborate outside the approved applications.

Planning Leads to Success

That sweet spot of good governance looks different for each organization. Ideally, Microsoft 365 assists companies with solving business problems and meeting organizational objectives. To that end, administrators need to take a proactive approach to designing and implementing an information governance strategy.

Build Information Governance on a Foundation of Policies

A key tool for governing information to reach business goals and achieve compliance involves policies. In the case of data retention, for instance, Microsoft 365 Records Management allows organizations to define data retention at both the folder level and the file level.

Partner with Experts to Optimize Microsoft 365 Governance

Microsoft 365 provides organizations with powerful tools that connect teams, protect data assets and support innovation. But powerful tools require fine-tuning and careful management. Understanding the options available and configuring them properly can prove challenging.

The information governance consultants at Messaging Architects bring extensive experience in Microsoft 365. From initial assessment to creating effective policies, understanding the nuances of Microsoft Groups, and navigating security and compliance, they provide the expertise business leaders need for success.

Have you read?

Exchange Server Breaches Show Its Not Just About Uptime

Microsoft Read Aloud Feature Improves both Accessibility and Productivity

About Messaging Architects

Messaging Architects specializes in effectively managing and securing an organizations most precious asset, its information. With over 20 years of information management and technology consulting experience, the Messaging Architects team has provided corporations, educational intuitions, health care facilities and nonprofits with methodologies, procedures, and technology to keep their data organized, compliant and secure.

About eMazzanti Technologies

eMazzantis team of trained, certified IT experts rapidly deliver increased revenue growth, data security and productivity for clients ranging from law firms to high-end global retailers, expertly providing advanced retail and payment technology, digital marketing services, cloud and mobile solutions, multi-site implementations, 247 outsourced network management, remote monitoring, and support.

eMazzanti has made the Inc. 5000 list 9X, is a 4X Microsoft Partner of the Year, the #1 ranked NYC area MSP, NJ Business of the Year and 5X WatchGuard Partner of the Year! Contact: 1-866-362-9926, info@emazzanti.net or http://www.emazzanti.net Twitter: @emazzanti Facebook: Facebook.com/emazzantitechnologies.


ShippingEasy, the leading online shipping software solution for growing e-commerce merchants, today announced a new integration with Buy on Google, which allows shoppers to purchase products directly from retailers without leaving Google Search Results. The integration will automatically pull commission-free orders from Google directly into merchants ShippingEasy platform, alongside their other integrated stores, where merchants can apply shipping rules, save with discounted USPS and UPS shipping rates, and batch print orders with ease.

ShippingEasy is focused on giving small businesses the tools they need to succeed in e-commerce by giving them time and money back on their shipping, said Rob Zaleski, Brand Manager at ShippingEasy. Our partnership with Google opens up a new avenue of merchants that ShippingEasy can help, as well as creates new opportunities for current ShippingEasy customers to expand their business within the platform they already use.

For small-medium size businesses, its a critical time to invest in their online presence. According to a recent study by ShippingEasy, 65% of respondents said the pandemic made them more aware of small, local, and independent brands to support. Buy on Google makes it easy for online customers to find their favorite brands and buy products without leaving the search page and without charging retailers commission fees. The integration with ShippingEasy will allow merchants to ship orders quickly and easily, after automatically importing the orders from Google.

The new integration will be a win-win for both ShippingEasy and merchants using Google. The integration offers another selling channel for ShippingEasys small-business merchants to increase product sales and brand awareness and allows Google to add thousands of new ShippingEasy merchants to its selling platform.

ShippingEasy customers can add Buy on Google to their integrations right away.

About ShippingEasy

Every day, tens of thousands of e-commerce retailers rely on ShipStation to solve the day-to-day challenges of importing orders and processing shipments. The trusted leader in shipping software since its founding in 2011, ShipStation helps online sellers scale their businesses and deliver exceptional customer experiences, with an intuitive online solution that allows them to efficiently ship orders -- wherever they sell and however they ship. The multi-channel and multi-carrier platform offers the most integrations of any e-commerce solution, with more than 300 partnerships with leading shopping carts, marketplaces, carriers and fulfillment services, including FedEx, USPS, UPS, Amazon, Shopify, and BigCommerce. ShipStation is headquartered in Austin, TX, with offices in Sydney and London. For more information, visit https://www.shipstation.com.
Music4ClimateJustice is a rallying cry for all sectors of society. Focusing on the most marginalized is the most important thing we can do to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals - Paul Polman, Honorary Chairman, former CEO of Unilever and Co-Founder and Chair of Imagine

Social impact company HealRWorld announced today that Music4ClimateJustice (M4CJ), a non-profit (501c3) concert and events series platform gathering more than 350 artists from around the world, will be taking place during the global climate change summit COP26. The eight-day event, beginning Nov 4th through Nov 12th will feature top performers, breakout musicians, and indigenous artists who've come together to shine a light on climate justice. Educational interviews and panels with business and thought leaders, athletes, and activists are also a part of the platform.

The event series will launch live from the Glasgow Marriott at 7:00 PM GMT on November 4th with themed performances occurring every night through the end of COP on November 12th. Performances will be broadcast through the Music4ClimateJustice event site starting at 7:00 PM GMT on November 4th.

An exclusive theme song for the event has been created by Bootsy Collins, Steven Van Zandt and Chew Fu. Available through digital marketplace E-NFT by Emmersive, the song will drop on November 4, 2021 at 12pm ET and marks the first in a series of NFTs designed to raise money for the non-profit.

Additional fundraising will be conducted through a charitable sweepstakes at WinTogether.org/M4CJ, operated by Lottery.com and initiated by 5th Element Group, a global impact consultancy. Prizes include a signed Bootsy Collins original prototype bass guitar, a grand prize eco-tour adventure to Belize, and more. WinTogether.orgs Music4ClimateJustice campaign starts on November 4, 2021 and runs through March 2022. To donate to M4CJ and enter to win, go to http://www.wintogether.org/M4CJ

Music4ClimateJustice was founded and is sponsored by HealRWorld, a for-profit social impact company dedicated to fostering a regenerative global economy by helping businesses and consumers channel spending and investments designed to support a sustainable world. HealRWorld is producing and sponsoring the event in partnership with climate justice advocate Warren Senders of the New England Conservatory. Award-winning creative agency TBWA\Chiat\Day developed the global brand design for the platform and Fintech.TV serves as co-founder and media partner. Other top sponsors include ZASH Global Media and Lomotif.

In addition to streaming on Music4ClimateJustices site, the event will run live on the broadcast and digital platform Lomotif and the global media network Fintech.TV will syndicate to Bloomberg, CNBC, and other networks. After the event, the music and performances will live on within the platform on demand. Additional events and content launches will be added to the platform on an ongoing basis through 2030.

Funds raised through Music4ClimateJustice will support a combination of non-profit and social impact organizations dedicated to tackling climate change challenges through projects and initiatives designed to limit global warming and support climate refugees and those most impacted by climate change. Beneficiaries include The Climate Justice Alliance, Guardians of the Forest, Conservation International, the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative, and The Music4Climate Impact Fund.

Everyone talks about how the world is going to be destroyed by climate change in twenty years or so, but the indigenous black and brown communities, as well as women and children, are already suffering the worst effects, says Michele Bongiovanni, CEO/Founder of HealRWorld and Founder of Music4ClimateJustice. We need to use music to spotlight their plight and raise capital to make a real difference right now.

According to Denise Roberson, Chief Purpose Officer of TBWA\Chiat\Day and Co-founder of Music4ClimateJustice, M4CJ is the embodiment of UN SDG 17 and the radical collaboration it will take from all of us to actually move the needle. Just like an army of voices joining a chorus, we need every company on the planet to realize this is their fight, enact some bravery, and help us change the way business is done. With employee, customer and investor values shifting daily, the time is now to stand up and help fight for climate justice and those most impacted by climate change.

Bongiovanni added, "This global event is not just another concert, it's the start of a movement to ignite radical collaboration between musicians, artists, athletes, changemakers, activists, brands, and organizations to save our planet. To drive measurable activation, we will also link to HealRWorld's new SDG-focused community and eCommerce platform supporting global ESG-committed small businesses as a vehicle for people to vote with their wallet for a better world.

For more information on the initiative, to donate, and to take the pledge, visit https://music4climatejustice.org.

# # #

About Music4ClimateJustice

Brought to you by HealRWorld in partnership with Warren Senders and The New England Conservatory, FINTECH.TV, and TBWA\Chiat\Day, Music4ClimateJustice (501c3) is a new hybrid event platform launching live at the United Nations Climate SummitCOP26, in Glasgow, Scotland (the biggest climate event ever) on November 4th to bring greater awareness to the fact that the most marginalized in our society--indigenous, brown and black communities, women and childrenare the most impacted by climate change. Further, our goal is to raise financial support for climate refugees and those suffering the most. @Music4CJ on all available on all platforms. Subscribe on YouTube.

About HealRWorld

HealRWorld is a social impact company dedicated to fostering a more just and regenerative global economy by leveraging our proprietary ESG data on private companies to help businesses and consumers channel spending and investments to foster a more sustainable world. Funds raised from the event through our Music4ClimateImpactFund (501c3) will directly benefit these Climate Justice organizations and innovative climate action initiatives. @HealRWorld on all platforms. CEO, Michele Bongiovanni @HealRWorldCEO

More:

https://vimeo.com/610414030

COP26 Launch registration https://events.music4climatejustice.org/
By creating a localized presence of the data, CloudBridge makes it easier to share information in varying formats consistent with applications that are traditionally all on-premise.

Square 9 Softworks announces the release of CloudBridge, a new tool for facilitating SaaS integration included in the GlobalSearch Fall 2021 release. This standard new feature for GlobalSearch Cloud creates an encrypted tunnel between Square 9s SaaS digital transformation platform and localized applications to allow secure data sharing.

A lightweight, premise side service, CloudBridge creates an AES-256 encrypted tunnel between the GlobalSearch Cloud and your on-premise resources with far less configuration or IT services than would usually be required. Cloud access to premise databases, SMTP mail gateways, and other services can now be securely provisioned with little to no IT involvement at all.

CloudBridge provides a much more powerful tool for creating GlobalSearch Cloud integrations than a standard CSV or Excel export with its inherent flexibility. By creating a localized presence of the data, CloudBridge makes it easier to share information in varying formats consistent with applications that are traditionally all on-premise. Cloud Bridge also delivers a means for the bidirectional flow of information between applications which is required in most instances.

We typically dont see integrations where direct output to CSV or XML adequately addresses the needs of our clients, stated Brian Banet, Square 9s Chief Technology Officer. Integrations with financial or ERP systems, for example, require interactive list binding to support changing customer or general ledger information. This is impossible to facilitate unless you have the means to communicate from the cloud to the localized application as if you were both on-premise, Banet added.

Originally designed as an integration tool for the Square 9 Professional Services Group, CloudBridge is now available to Square 9 resellers and customers looking to easily create an integrated flow of information from the GlobalSearch Cloud.

For more information, please contact Square 9 or your Square 9 Authorized reseller.

About Square 9 Softworks

As a trendsetting software development firm, Square 9 is a creative force in the next generation of both on-premise and cloud-enabled Content Management solutions. Intensely customer-focused and highly responsive, Square 9 delivers effective, value-driven solutions and has achieved a reputation for excellence in meeting its customers rapidly evolving needs. In addition to GlobalSearch, the award-winning Content Management solution platform, Square 9 has been widely recognized for its diverse portfolio of products, including solutions for Document Capture Automation, Business Process Automation, and Web Forms Management. Square 9 Softworks distributes its solutions internationally through a network of highly skilled Channel Resellers from its corporate office in New Haven, Connecticut. http://www.square-9.com.
A huge thanks to all our guests for sharing their expertise and advice on our show. - Mark Ainley Past News Releases RSS Straight Up Chicago Investor...

Straight Up Chicago Investor (SUCI) celebrated its 100th episode with a live event on October 14 at Navigator Taproom in Chicago. More than 120 members of the Chicago Real Estate community attended the event, resulting in one of the best Chicago real estate networking events in recent memory. The live recording of the 100th episode drops on Thursday, November 4.

Hosts Tom Shallcross (Investor) and GC Realty & Developments Mark Ainley launched the podcast to highlight Chicagos diverse neighborhoods and investment trends. They focus exclusively on the Chicago real estate market, throwing in a little city trivia at the end of each show.

Since its launch in May 2020, the Straight Up Chicago Investor (SUCI) podcast has seen tremendous growth. It has more than 88,000 episode downloads, nearly 2,300 Facebook followers on its Straight Up Chicago Investor Club group, and has hosted more than 80 guests (some multiple times).

Guests have included realtors, bankers, attorneys, property managers, neighborhood community leaders, and fellow investors who specialize in real estate investment specifically in the Chicago area.

A huge thanks to all our guests for sharing their expertise and advice on our show, Ainley said. They brought the Chicago real estate investing market to life for our audience. We look forward to the next 100 episodes.

All of the Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcasts are available at https://www.straightupchicagoinvestor.com/ and can also be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, and the YouTube Channel Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast.
We are looking forward to participating in the GAWP 2021 Fall Conference in Athens, and to be showcasing our services.

Synagro Technologies, Inc., the preeminent provider of biosolids and residuals solutions services in the United States, is pleased to announce its participation in the Georgia Association of Water Professionals (GAWP) 2021 Fall Conference, Laboratory Symposium & Expo in Athens, Georgia, November 9 to 11, 2021, at the Athens Classic Center.

Join us inside the Athens Classic Center at Booth 22 to learn about the many ways Synagro can assist you with biosolids and organic feedstocks management. From thermal drying and energy generation to digester cleaning, when it comes to biosolids, our mission is to be the most trusted provider of resource recovery solutions. We help our customers identify their needs and the solutions that are best tailored to most economically address those needs.

We are looking forward to participating in the GAWP 2021 Fall Conference in Athens, and to be showcasing our services, announced Pam Racey, vice president, Business Development, Synagro. Were equally excited to have Synagros Doris Magouirk presenting during the technical sessions.

I am pleased to be participating in the technical program, said Doris Magouirk, area director, Operations, Synagro. I will be presenting Requirements and Considerations for Land Application on Tuesday, November 9, during Session 2  Biosolids & Residuals  from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m."

About Synagro

Founded in 1986, Synagro Technologies, Inc. works to turn waste into worth by helping more than 600 municipal and industrial water and wastewater facilities in North America move toward safer, cleaner and more environmentally beneficial practices. For some, its simply cleaning the water supply. For others, its much more  we partner with them to process their waste for compost or energy pellets, creating healthy soil and sequestering carbon in the process. As the largest recycler of organic by-products in North America, were trusted because we remove risks while keeping the logistics clean. Because we have the most experienced team in the industry, we can offer tailored solutions that ensure no waste goes to waste. Much of our work isnt pretty. But a greener world emerging from a cleaner one  worth coming from waste  and we think thats pretty beautiful. Visit synagro.com to learn more.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.


We are proud to collaborate with forward-looking Texas institutions that prioritize closing equity gaps, accelerating degree or certificate achievement and decreasing transfer credit loss - CollegeSource CEO Kerry Cooper CEO

As initiatives like 60x30TX and the Texas Transfer Alliance aim to create a more educated Texas workforce and streamline students pathways to degree completion, more Texas institutions are relying on CollegeSources solutions to drive these efforts. The higher education industrys most trusted provider of transfer and degree achievement solutions, CollegeSource has seen increased adoption in Texas this year with institutions such as Texas A&M University-Commerce, Lone Star College System and Lamar University using CollegeSources Transfer Evaluation System (TES) and Transferology solution. Focusing on degree achievement initiatives, University of North Texas and Colin College tapped CollegeSources uAchieve Cloud to transform their student academic success.

Increasingly we are seeing states across the country pass laws and form new strategic higher ed alliances that highlight the importance of post-secondary education and streamlining the process by providing intentional support and engaging experience while removing institutional barriers, said Kerry Cooper, CEO, CollegeSource. We are proud to collaborate with forward-looking Texas institutions that prioritize closing equity gaps, accelerating degree or certificate achievement and decreasing transfer credit loss.

As more regions, states and regional accreditation boards invest more deeply in initiatives and regulations that will yield a more skilled, educated and equitable workforce, CollegeSources collective student mobility solutions are sought after for their time-tested yet innovative approach in empowering students academic success. CollegeSource uAchieve Cloud is a comprehensive, cloud-based degree audit solution that ensures students and advisors have the information needed to make informed education decisions along their path of earning degrees and credentials. The solution provides tailored reports illustrating each students progress and outlines the remaining courses and other requirements needed to graduate. It also offers robust transfer articulation and evaluation capabilities to ensure all transfer credits are captured and accurately represented.

An all-in-one institution-facing solution, TES enables researching transfer credit, tracking evaluations and managing equivalencies for registrars, enrollment managers and transfer coordinators. Transferology is a nationwide, open transfer network with access to millions of course-to-course equivalencies and program-to-program pathways. This information helps college advisors, students and parents make more informed decisions when transferring higher education credit.

About CollegeSource

CollegeSource is the higher education industrys trusted provider of transfer and degree achievement solutions. For 50 years, CollegeSource has led market-changing transformation by inventing and investing in technology solutions that aid the staff and students of higher education in their quest to plan and complete academic careers. As the archiver of the nations extensive higher education course catalogs, CollegeSources degree audit, academic planning, and transfer credit evaluation solutions are depended on by more than 2,000 institutions and millions of individuals worldwide. Founded and led by higher education and technology veterans, CollegeSource is a privately-held company based in San Diego with offices in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, please visit collegesource.com.
Since joining The 20, Donna has played a critical role in the growth and success of our company, demonstrating her expertise in business, human resources and financial strategy. Her promotion is reflective of her dedicated leadership and contributions, said Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20.

Leading MSP organization The 20 proudly announces the promotion of Donna Pebworth to Chief Financial Officer.

Donna joined The 20 in August 2018 as Financial Controller, with responsibilities of financial reporting, accounting, budgeting, and HR/payroll within the organization. She brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in accounting and finance, and previously served as Controller for companies including The Gough Group, Brown+Company, Elevate Group Holdings, Spirit International and Urology Clinics of North Texas.

Since joining The 20, Donna has played a critical role in the growth and success of our company, demonstrating her expertise in business, human resources and financial strategy. Her promotion is reflective of her dedicated leadership and contributions across finance and accounting, said Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20.

As CFO, Donna will continue to lead and directly manage the overall planning of The 20s financial affairs.

Its exciting to be part of this new chapter in The 20s successful journey, Pebworth said. The company is growing into expanded markets, and there will be new systems implemented and new people to collaborate with as we continue to optimize our financial operations.

Donna Pebworth rounds out The 20s executive leadership team, which includes Tim Conkle - Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ken Pecot  Chief Operating Officer (COO), Jeff Griffin - Chief Information Officer (CIO), Crystal McFerran  Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Mark Elliott - Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), and Ciera Cole - Chief Experience Officer (CXO).

About The 20

The 20 is an exclusive business development group for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) aimed at dominating and revolutionizing the IT industry with its standardized all-in-one approach. The 20s robust RMM, PSA, and documentation platform ensures superior service for MSP clients utilizing their completely US-based Help Desk and Network Operations Center. Extending beyond cutting-edge tools and processes, The 20 touts a proven sales model, a community of industry leaders, and ultimate scalability. To learn more, visit The20.com.
Vistatec CMO Simon Hodgkins discusses storytelling and keeping customers engaged at the CMO Alliance Chief Marketing Officer Summit event on November 3, 2021. Vistatec is a leading global content solutions provider, HQ in Europe, with operations worldwide. Joining Simon in conversation is - Gaston Tourn, CMO of Appear Here, the worlds leading marketplace for retail space.

Gaston was previously the CMO at Badoo (now Bumble), one of the largest dating app groups, and Emma, a leading sleep tech player that became the fastest-growing startup in Europe. Gaston has held positions at Google across several international markets.

Topics include what do we mean when we say The Art of Storytelling? Is it art, science, a set formula or a combination of all of these areas? Simon and Gaston discuss real-world examples, including several successful storytelling campaigns.

During the event, the speakers explain how many global brands must successfully communicate into many sectors internationally while touching on other important factors.

With social media in overdrive, the world of NFTs, decentralized finance and the initial steps into the metaverse, this event explores how vital storytelling will be as the landscape develops.

About Vistatec

Vistatec has been supporting some of the worlds most iconic brands to optimize their global commercial potential since 1997. Vistatec is one of the worlds leading localization and content solutions providers headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with operations worldwide.

https://vistatec.com

About CMO Alliance

The CMO Alliance is a collective of passionate Chief Marketing Officers worldwide. CMOs are integral to the success of organizations, large and small. They are at the centre of strategy, execution, and growth.

https://cmoalliance.io

About Appear Here

Appear Here is the leading global marketplace for short-term retail space. It connects brands, retailers, designers and entrepreneurs with available space seamlessly online. Appear Here has become the go-to destination to make creative retail ideas happen. Thousands of major brands like Supreme, Loewe, Coca-Cola, Net-a-Porter and Kanye West, as well as independents and entrepreneurs, use Appear Here.

https://www.appearhere.co.uk
This bold new commitment from GHC members, the largest announced by a private sector coalition, will bring global green hydrogen production in line with International Energy Agency production targets for net zero, as it adds to the existing project pipeline of 25GW.

Members of the Green Hydrogen Catapult (GHC), a coalition of leaders in green hydrogen development, today announced a commitment for 45 GW of electrolyzers to be developed with secured financing by 2026, with targeted commissioning in 2027.The initial target set by the coalition at the time of its launch in December 2020, was 25GW.

Green hydrogen is a critical part of a sustainable energy future and one of the largest business opportunities of our time, said Jules Kortenhorst, CEO at RMI. Its the key to decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors like steel manufacturing, shipping and aviation, and I applaud GHC members for their commitment to accelerating the transition.

Electrolyzers, use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and are the leading technology for synthesizing zero-carbon hydrogen fuel using renewable energy, known as green hydrogen. Green hydrogen and derivatives are an essential solution to the decarbonization of heavy industry sectors and will constitute up to 25% of total final energy use in a net-zero economy.

"With 80% growth in their capacity commitment in one year, the Catapult and its members demonstrate the near-term potential for exponential growth in green hydrogen, enabled by local and global policy support and rapidly growing customer interest," says Nigel Topping, UN High Level Champion for Global Climate Action.

This bold new commitment from GHC members, the largest announced by a private sector coalition, will bring global green hydrogen production in line with International Energy Agency production targets for net zero, as it adds to the existing project pipeline of 25GW. It will play a central role in delivering the Glasgow Breakthrough on Green Hydrogen to stimulate enabling policy measures on the necessary timeframe. As part of a broader adoption strategy, this announcement represents a significant contribution to deploying green hydrogen at the scale and speed required to reduce costs to well below the tipping point of US$2 per kilogram. This will enable green hydrogen to be a cost-competitive, zero-carbon solution in the near term.

We are not waiting. The time is now to build the green hydrogen industry, and Fortescue Future Industries is aiming to supply 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen to the world by 2030, Julie Shuttleworth, CEO of Fortescue Future Industries.

GHC members made an additional call for policy and business leaders to facilitate and accelerate green hydrogen adoption through the following actions:



Matching GHCs ambitions by setting and regularly updating five-year targets instead of longer-term, 2030-focused goals

Ensuring at least equal market conditions for all fuels (conventional and green) to create fair competition in energy markets

Providing near-term incentives to enable heavy industry sectors with long capital cycles to adopt green hydrogen and contribute to rapid cost reductions

Establishing market support for green hydrogen through investing in the infrastructure required for the energy systems of the future, including hydrogen pipelines to connect production and consumption hubs

The key to the energy transition will be to move vast amounts of renewable energy through space and time  from sunny and windy areas to cities and industrial clusters, and from sunny and windy times to dark, windless days  through the existing gas infrastructure. Green hydrogen will enable us to do so, at scale and competitively, contributing to an energy system that will be cheaper and more secure than the one we have today, added Marco Alvera, CEO of Snam.

Media Inquiries please contact:

RMI  Dina Cappiello, at COP26, T: +1 202-415-5642, E: dacppiello@rmi.org

RMI  Nick Steel, in U.S., T: +1-347-574-0887, E: nsteel@rmi.org

Notes to the Editor

The Green Hydrogen Show, Nov. 4, 2021, 15:00 - 15:30 GMT at the Climate Action Hub

Join us in the Action Hub for the Green Hydrogen Show, as we introduce the Green Hydrogen Catapult, discuss the criticality of green hydrogen in meeting 1.5C targets, and show how the Catapult is materially contributing to this effort. This interactive panel, moderated by Jules Kortenhorst (CEO of RMI), will invite commentary on the barriers in achieving cost parity and the opportunities that a green hydrogen economy will unlock.

Participants will include:



Jules Kortenhorst, CEO, RMI

Alex Hewitt, CEO, CWP Global

Gonzalo Saenz de Miera, Director for Climate Change, Iberdrola

Julie Shuttleworth, CEO, Fortescue Future Industries

To register for the event please contact Dina Cappiello E:dcappiello@rmi.rog

Additional statements from Green Hydrogen Catapult founders and members:

Paddy Padmanathan, CEO of ACWA Power, agreed, We will already produce hydrogen below $2/kg within the next five years, and now we need to educate the heavy industry sectors and policymakers on the economic benefits of this new low-cost fuel, including benefits of reduced air pollution and other health and safety considerations.

Henrik Henriksson, CEO of H2 Green Steel, shared that his company already sees demand for our green steel product growing faster than we can build out our commercial production assets.

The new green hydrogen targets will also have significant implications across regional markets. Alex Hewitt, CEO of CWP Global, shared, Australia and countries that are similarly rich in renewables in Africa and Latin America are perfectly positioned to drive and lead the production of green hydrogen, monetizing valuable renewable energy resources and creating millions of sustainable jobs. Green hydrogen offers a real economic leapfrog opportunity for developing countries that boast world-leading sun and wind.

Agustin Delgado, Chief Innovation and Sustainability Officer of Iberdrola agreed, Europe is in a leading position for green hydrogen, both as a perfect complement to renewable electricity to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors and to reduce reliance of volatile natural gas.

Bo Cerup-Simonsen, CEO of Mrsk Mc-Kinney Mller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, said, Apart from the markets where biofuels can be sourced sustainably at scale, hydrogen will be required for every single zero-carbon fuel for the shipping industry.

Green ammonia is a very efficient green hydrogen carrier, while being an essential product to decarbonize the worlds food through green fertilizer, as well as being a shipping fuel solution with no well-to-wake GHG emissions. Deploying clean ammonia at scale in the near future is therefore top priority for Yara, said Magnus Ankarstrand, President of Yara International.

About the Green Hydrogen Catapult

The Green Hydrogen Catapult is a global initiative convened with the support of the UN High Level Champions for Global Climate Action and hosted by RMI. It was founded and is led by a group of leading global industrials aiming to accelerate green hydrogen adoption at scale. Members include ACWA Power, CWP Global, Fortescue Future Industries, H2 Green Steel, Iberdrola, Mrsk Mc-Kinney Mller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, Snam, Yara and rsted.

About RMI

RMI is an independent nonprofit founded in 1982 that transforms global energy systems through market-driven solutions to align with a 1.5C future and secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all. We work in the worlds most critical geographies and engage businesses, policymakers, communities, and NGOs to identify and scale energy system interventions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent by 2030. RMI has offices in Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New York City; Oakland, California; Washington, D.C.; and Beijing.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today published detailed guidance to help the worlds cities address warming, which is occurring at twice the global average rate in urban areas.

Beating the Heat: A Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities, prepared with RMI, states that by the end of this century, many cities could warm as much as 4C if GHG emissions continue at high levels. Even at 1.5C of warming, 2.3 billion people could be vulnerable to severe heat waves.

Launched at the ongoing UN Climate Conference (COP26) by the Cool Coalition, UNEP, RMI, the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), Mission Innovation and the Clean Cooling Collaborative, the new guide offers planners an encyclopaedia of proven options to help cool cities.

Science tells us that to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5C, we need to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. Sustainable and equitable urban cooling must be a part of cities efforts to reach net-zero energy targets, said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director.

In outlining the problem, the Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities describes how cities are warming quickly due to the heat island effect, caused by a combination of diminished green cover, the thermal properties of the materials commonly used in urban surfaces, and waste heat from human activities.

The Handbook notes that:



Demand for space cooling is increasing. The energy requirement for space cooling is predicted to triple from 2016 to 2050 as millions of households in developing countries acquire air conditioners in the coming decades.

Impacts of urban heat are not evenly distributed. Cooler cities, homes and streets are key to ensuring climate justice. Lower-income districts and communities are usually the most vulnerable to heat, placing the negative impacts of excess warming disproportionately on those least likely to be able to afford or access thermal comfort. We need to transition to more equitable and sustainable ways of cooling our cities and make them liveable for all.

The benefits of sustainable urban cooling are far reaching, including improved health and productivity, reduced power energy requirements, lower emissions, and economic benefits.

Cooling strategies can be optimized to work together efficiently. The report calls for a whole-system approachthat is, reduce heat at urban scale, reduce cooling needs in buildings and serve cooling needs in buildings efficientlyto benefit from integrative effects.

City officials working to make their cities cooler and more liveable are faced with a wide range of approachesthe challenge is where to start.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive overview of ways to cool cities sustainably and equitably, said RMI CEO Jules Kortenhorst. Based on systems-level thinking, this handbook includes actionable guidance to help cities make progress towards sustainable and equitable urban cooling, while also cutting emissions and increasing city resilience."

The guides 80 supporting case studies and examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategies outlined and can help cities find an approach best suited to their unique contexts.

In collaboration with the Cool Coalition, the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, an initiative of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) at the Atlantic Council, announced plans to disseminate the new Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities to their partner cities and countiesincluding Athens, Greece; Freetown, Sierra Leone; and Miami-Dade County, United States. The newly announced Athens, Freetown and Miami-Dade Chief Heat Officers will be the first to benefit from this comprehensive guide.

To meet the energy- and building-related emissions target of their nationally determined contribution under the Paris Climate Agreement, Vietnam will also pilot the handbook in three cities, Can Tho, Tam Ky and Dong Hoi City.

Similarly, 10 Indian cities will collaborate with UNEP, Indias National institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), RMI and the Royal Danish Embassy of India to integrate cooling into their city masterplans.

Example case studies



United States: Heat reduction services from urban tree cover in the United States are estimated to be worth USD 5.3 billion to USD 12.1 billion annually. Globally, investing USD 100 million annually in street trees would give 77 million people a 1C reduction in maximum temperatures on hot days.

Seoul, South Korea: An effort to restore the Cheonggyecheon stream that runs through the city replaced 5.8 kilometres of elevated expressway covering the stream with a mixed-use waterfront corridor. The waterfront corridor decreased temperature by 3.3C5.9C compared to a parallel road a few blocks away.

Medellin, Colombia: Green corridors were created that follow and restore the geography of the area prior to recent development. From 2016 to 2019, the city created 36 corridors, 18 along major roads and 18 along waterways, covering over 36 hectares. The areas with green corridors have already seen temperature reductions of up to 4C.

Paris, France: Paris is home of the first and largest district cooling system in Europe. When the water temperature in the Seine River that cuts through the city is below 8C, this water is used to provide free cooling.

Toronto, Canada: The municipal government implemented the largest lake-source cooling system in the world. Commissioned in 2004, Enwaves 264 MW of refrigeration Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system uses Lake Ontarios cold water as a renewable energy source.

Guangzhou, China: The municipal government adopted regional centralized cooling as part of a green and environmentally friendly modern urban center in the core area of the Pearl River New City development. The local environmental temperature in the core area of Zhujiang New Town was reduced by 2C3C compared with using distributed cooling systems.

Additional Quotes

The Global Covenant of Mayors is the worlds largest alliance of cities taking action on climate, representing over 11,000 cities and one billion people. No matter how large or small a city, introducing sustainable urban cooling will both cut emissions and build resilience. We look forward to taking this handbook and sharing it across our worldwide network of cities so they can take immediate steps to make urban spaces cooler. Andy Deacon, Acting Managing Director, Global Covenant of Mayors.

Cities are at the forefront of the climate crisis, so its vital that local governments urgently adopt sustainable urban cooling solutions to protect their communities from rapidly rising temperatures while also limiting further global warming, said Noah Horowitz, Director of the Clean Cooling Collaborative. "This guide is an invaluable tool for cities wanting to take meaningful action for both people and the planet.

I am delighted to see how Mission Innovation has brought together the community to develop the Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities. This is a great example of what we mean by catalyzing clean energy solutions for all. We look forward to playing a role in its deployment in the next phase. Lee McDonough, Director General, Net Zero Strategy and International, UK Representative on MI Steering Committee.

About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

For further information please contact:

Keisha Rukikaire, rukikaire@un.org, Head of News & Media, UNEP

Terry Collins, tc@tca.tc, +1-416-878-8712

About RMI

RMI is an independent non-profit founded in 1982 that transforms global energy systems through market-driven solutions to align with a 1.5C future and secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all. We work in the worlds most critical geographies and engage businesses, policymakers, communities, and NGOs to identify and scale energy system interventions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent by 2030. RMI has offices in Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New York City; Oakland, California; Washington, D.C.; and Beijing.

More information on RMI can be found at rmi.org or follow us on Twitter @RockyMtnInst.

Dina Cappiello, MD of Communications, at COP26, T: +1-202-415-5642, E: dcappiello@rmi.org

Nick Steel, Director of Public Relations, in U.S., T +1-347-574-0887, E: nsteel@rmi.org

About the Clean Cooling Collaborative

Clean Cooling Collaborative is making climate-friendly cooling accessible to all. A philanthropic initiative of ClimateWorks Foundation launched in 2017 as the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP), the Clean Cooling Collaborative focuses on super-efficient refrigeration and space cooling equipment, climate-friendly refrigerants, passive cooling, and integrated solutions that cool people and the planet.

Christina Hayes, christina.hayes@climateworks.org, Communications Officer +44-7881-813-825

About the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy

GCoM is the largest global alliance for city climate leadership, uniting a global coalition of over 10,000 cities and local governments and 100+ supporting partners. The cities and partners of GCoM share a long-term vision of supporting voluntary action to combat climate change and towards a resilient and low-emission society. GCoM serves cities and local governments by mobilizing and supporting ambitious, measurable, planned climate and energy action in their communities by working with city/regional networks, national governments, and other partners to achieve our vision. Led today by Michael R. Bloomberg and European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans, the coalition comprises cities across 6 continents and 139 countries, representing over 900 million people or more than 10% of the global population.

About Mission Innovation

Mission Innovation is a global initiative to catalyze action and investment in research, development and demonstration to make clean energy affordable, attractive and accessible to all this decade. This will accelerate progress towards the Paris Agreement goals and pathways to net zero.
Being able to integrate a solution like SAP Solution Manager with so many tools in the software delivery value stream is a great opportunity to help our customers see, measure, and automate their value streams.

ConnectALL LLC today announced that its Value Stream Management (VSM) adapter for SAP Solutions Manager is now available on SAP Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. ConnectALLs VSM adapter enables organizations to connect any tool with SAP Solution Manager to visualize the workflow, capture data for analytics, and interoperate with other tools easily, leading to limitless connectivity, real-time reporting, and undisrupted flow of information.

Lance Knight, President & COO of ConnectALL, is excited to introduce the VSM adapter to the companys large value stream management ecosystem, extending ConnectALLs capabilities, enabling customers to connect SAP Solution Manager with unlimited tools in their software delivery value stream. Being able to integrate a solution like SAP Solution Manager with so many tools in the software delivery value stream is a great opportunity to help our customers see, measure, and automate their value streams. This added capability can provide organizations more visibility into optimization opportunities at the planning stage and further establish ConnectALL as a leader in value stream management.

With this new capability, organizations will be able to manage the flow of work between SAP Solution Manager and other project management, application lifecycle management, design, testing, release, IT service management (ITSM) and CRM tools, connecting business ideas to their technology implementation. Using this solution, organizations can now include SAP Solution Manager in their efforts to:



Optimize software delivery lifecycle and identify roadblocks, bottlenecks, and vulnerabilities in processes and take action to address them

Enable end-to-end integration, orchestration, and governance across the entire software delivery value stream

Enable streamlined collaboration, bi-directional synchronization, and automated event triggering

Map out the end-to-end software value stream, and outline the tools, people, and processes that transform work items into working software

Gain visibility with real-time metrics to measure the health of the software delivery value stream

SAP Solution Manager is a solution to manage the lifecycle of SAP solutions in a distributed environment, from initial implementation up to continuous operations. Ideas that begin in SAP Solution Manager can be executed in tools like Jira Software, Azure DevOps and Rally Software; tested in tools like Tricentis Tosca, qTest, Micro Focus ALM and SmartBear; and supported in ITSM tools like Jira Service Desk, ServiceNow and BMC Remedy. Connecting the tools through a VSM adapter can rapidly improve flow and visibility from the idea through its development, release and subsequent feedback loops.

SAP Store, found at store.sap.com, delivers a simplified and connected digital customer experience for finding, trying, buying and renewing more than 1,800 solutions from SAP and its partners. There, customers can find the SAP solutions and SAP-validated solutions they need to grow their business. And for each purchase made through SAP Store, SAP will plant a tree.

ConnectALL is a partner in the SAP PartnerEdge program. The SAP PartnerEdge program provides the enablement tools, benefits and support to facilitate building high-quality, disruptive applications focused on specific business needs  quickly and cost-effectively.

About ConnectALL

ConnectALL is a value stream management company dedicated to helping customers achieve higher levels of agility, traceability, predictability and velocity. ConnectALLs services and solutions help organizations to connect people, processes and technology across the software development and delivery value stream, enabling companies to align digital initiatives to business outcomes and improve the speed at which they deliver software. ConnectALLs value stream management solutions and services allow companies to see, measure and automate their software delivery value streams. ConnectALL has been recognized as "Best in Show" in the Value Stream Management category of the 2020 and 2021 SD Times 100 and recognized by numerous third-party analyst firms as a key player in value stream management. Visit us at https://www.connectall.com.

This content is copyright of ConnectALL LLC  2021 ConnectALL LLC All rights reserved. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of this material is prohibited.

Any statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties described in SAPs filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 20-F, that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. SAP cautions readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which SAP has no obligation to update and which speak only as of their dates.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.
It would be unrealistic to assume that international travel will return to normal immediately after a year and a half of closed borders.

VisitorsCoverage, a global travel insurance marketplace, advised travelers that beginning in November, they should expect overbookings, flight cancelations and delays, long lines at the airport, and more due to the upcoming surge in demand for both domestic and international travel.

The Biden administrations decision to lift the ban on international travel is welcomed and long-awaited by travelers and the industry alike, said Rajeev Shrivastava, CEO of VisitorsCoverage. Its also a strong indicator that the global efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 are working. However, it would be unrealistic to assume that international travel will return to normal immediately after a year and a half of closed borders.

International Holiday Travel in 2021 Likely to Be More Stressful

As a general rule there are many uncertainties when it comes to international holiday travel, but this year in particular, travelers face even more unpredictability.

In fact, the day after the Biden administration set a reopening date, Skyscanner, a travel booking site, recorded an 800% surge in reservations. The sudden influx of international travelers coupled with industry-wide staffing shortages will put stress on the entire travel infrastructure, from Airline CEOs to rideshare drivers. This will create additional frustrations for travelers, but careful planning can reduce this stress.

While travelers race to schedule flights, some airlines are already experiencing wide-spread delays and cancelations. Hotel bookings and vacation home rentals are on the rise. The sudden surge in demand for everything from tourist visas to food at the airport means shortages, long lines, and overbookings for international holiday travelers. As airlines and hotels grapple with limited staff, common travel challenges like weather-related delays and cancellations will cause even more stress for travelers.

Travelers Can Reduce Their Travel Anxiety

These challenges shouldnt deter travelers from international travel; it just means that they should use extra caution.

With so much beyond travelers control today, the best recourse is to focus on what can be controlled,'' adds Shrivastava. The key to traveling during the busy holiday period will be for travelers to carefully plan trips in advance, set realistic expectations and find ways to manage their travel anxiety.

Plan for the Unexpected

One of the best practical tools for reducing travel stress is trip insurance. Trip insurance with Cancel For Any Reason coverage can limit financial impact if flights are canceled or delayed, baggage is lost or damaged, or travelers simply do not wish to stand in long lines with no social distancing as they wait in the airport for everything from security and COVID-19 vaccination checks to flight information and fast food options.

Get Covered for Medical Emergencies

Travel medical insurance can give travelers a peace of mind that lasts throughout the entire trip. Depending on your destination, a suitable travel medical insurance policy may even be required. For those traveling to the United States, travel medical insurance may not be mandatory, but is still recommended as medical costs in the U.S. are high. If travelers incur an injury or contract an illness like COVID-19 while abroad, a comprehensive travel medical plan can help defray these costs.

About VisitorsCoverage Inc:

VisitorsCoverage helps travelers make informed decisions about their travel safety options. Were on a mission to simplify the complex world of travel insurance through the power of technology. Our award-winning innovative market-demand products and customer success team have helped over a million global travelers in over 175 countries get the travel insurance coverage they need. Our extensive portfolio of top-rated Covid-covered products includes bestselling CoverAmerica-Gold, ChoiceAmerica, EuropeTravelPlus and SafeCruise.
At the end of 2020, between 37 and 44 percent of Americans stated that they would not accept a COVID-19 vaccine, whatever the cost.

In 2019, the WHO identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats. At the end of 2020, between 37 and 44 percent of Americans stated that they would not accept a COVID-19 vaccine, whatever the cost. The exceptionally fast pace of development, the seemingly new mRNA technology of some of the vaccines, the accelerated approval process and the mistrustful attitude of the population have created a unique regulatory setting where pharmacovigilance and safety have become cornerstone. Of note, the rates of (re-) infection post-vaccine do not appear in any of the risk management plans (RMP) of vaccine makers.

ICON can provide differentiated service in ensuring vaccine safety through:



Provision of safety monitoring after approval, including:

Post-marketed signal detection utilizing MAH specific data and data from public databases, literature

Tracking of signals and Risk Minimization Measures

Facilitate drafting and submission of aggregate safety reports

Post-authorization safety studies conducted by the vaccines manufacturers, as well as other longitudinal observational studies

Results of an in-house study on rates of COVID (re-)infections post-vaccine amongst patients with a critical disease

Using modern technologies and methods is paramount in fulfilling the complete lifecycle of these vaccines and building confidence in our healthcare systems.

Join experts from ICON Plc, Florent Richy, Director, Pharmacovigilance & Patient Safety; Bettina Rillmann, Director, Operations, Real World Solutions; and Robina Azam, Director, Patient Safety, Pharmacovigilance & Patient Safety, in a live webinar on Monday, November 29, 2021 at 10am EST (3pm GMT/UK).

For more information, or to register for this event, visit What is the Link Between Pharmacovigilance and Building Confidence Around COVID-19 Vaccines?

ABOUT XTALKS

Xtalks, powered by Honeycomb Worldwide Inc., is a leading provider of educational webinars to the global life science, food and medical device community. Every year, thousands of industry practitioners (from life science, food and medical device companies, private & academic research institutions, healthcare centers, etc.) turn to Xtalks for access to quality content. Xtalks helps Life Science professionals stay current with industry developments, trends and regulations. Xtalks webinars also provide perspectives on key issues from top industry thought leaders and service providers.

To learn more about Xtalks visit http://xtalks.com

For information about hosting a webinar visit http://xtalks.com/why-host-a-webinar/
Were thrilled to fund Dirty Jane and help make biking more accessible to women.- Andrew DSouza, CEO and co-founder, Clearco.

Clearco, the worlds largest e-commerce investor and the company revolutionizing the way founders grow their businesses, today announced that its ClearAngel program is funding Dirty Jane, an exclusive online retailer of curated bike apparel and gear for women. ClearAngel gives early-stage founders access to revenue share capital, data-driven advice, and Clearcos extensive network of apps, agencies, and investors.

When Dirty Jane founder Amy Remark discovered the thrill of mountain biking in 2002, she struggled to find any apparel or gear that werent mens hand-me-downs. Rather than letting this barrier deter her, Amy decided to make biking more accessible and inclusive for women. Nearly 20 years later, Dirty Jane has made its mark as the only online retailer of bike apparel and gear that caters specifically to women. Now, with ClearAngels backing, Dirty Jane plans to expand inventory management, take it in-house, and invest in channels that will minimize returns related to womens sizing.

ClearAngel, one of a few equity-free, flexible capital options for early-stage founders who do not have the network to raise an angel round or join exclusive accelerators, has already funded over 250 companies since its February 2021 launch.

Were thrilled to fund Dirty Jane and help make biking more accessible to women, said Andrew DSouza, CEO and co-founder, Clearco. This latest ClearAngel participant signals our move towards more unique markets that have been previously untapped.

Supplementary to $10,000 of flexible capital, Dirty Jane will also get access to a network of 500+ investors, growth teams, agencies, apps, lawyers, and buyers; and data-driven advice designed to help scale and hit new revenue milestones. In addition to inventory and investment opportunities, Dirty Jane aims to amplify its ambassador program and support the LGBTQ+ with a custom line of t-shirts.

Nearly 20 years ago, I was one of only five women at the bike park wearing mens shorts and a cotton t-shirt, said Dirty Jane founder Amy Remark. Today, I can proudly say Dirty Jane has made this sport more accessible for women, and theres only more progress with ClearAngels support.

To learn more about Dirty Jane or purchase their women's-focused bike products, visit dirtyjane.com.

ClearAngel is currently onboarding E-commerce and product companies, and has limited spots available for SaaS, Apps, marketplace and stealth companies. To learn more about applying, visit angel.clearbanc.com.

About Clearco:

Co-founded as Clearbanc in 2015 by Michele Romanow from Canadas Shark Tank (Dragons Den), Andrew DSouza, Ivan Gritsiniak, Charlie Feng, and Tanay Delima, Clearco offers the most founder-friendly capital solutions for e-commerce, mobile apps, and SaaS founders as well as a full suite of products and access to a powerful global network, insights and data, and recommendations. Clearco has invested over $2 Billion in over 4,500 companies to date, including Leesa Sleep, fashion-rental service Le Tote, home goods company Public Goods, shirtmaker UNTUCKit, online speech therapy practice Expressable, and digital real estate marketplace SetSchedule. For more information visit clear.co and @getClearco.
By upgrading the quality of the data collected, more features can be extracted, which supports more detailed analysis and modeling and more accurate products.

Woolpert has been contracted to collect topographic lidar data and provide ground control survey to support the third phase of the Ohio 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). This phase will cover roughly 13,000 square miles in the southwest portion of the state, including Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton.

This contract to collect Quality Level 1 lidar data was awarded by the U.S. Geological Survey through its Geospatial Product and Service Contract 3 and directly supports 3DEP. The Ohio 3DEP contract is being administered by the Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program, an office within the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, with funding support from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Ohio Department of Administrative Services and the Ohio Department of Transportation. The lidar data will be publicly available and can be used by agencies, governments and individuals throughout the state.

Woolpert Geospatial Project Manager Jennifer Sturges said the firm is collecting QL1 lidar data for this contract because local governments and state agencies have found greater value in high-resolution lidar data. She said higher-quality data generates expansive benefits and provides ongoing returns on investment.

By upgrading the quality of the data collected, more features can be extracted, which supports more detailed analysis and modeling and more accurate products, Sturges said. Higher-quality data also can contribute to the future use of that information through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Woolpert has also collected lidar data and imagery as part of all three phases of the Ohio Statewide Imagery Program and has been actively engaged with state agencies to develop use cases and applications for this data. Woolpert Vice President Brian Stevens said that, due to the point density of the data and the oversight of the USGS, the data collected will be published to The National Map. The National Map is a collaborative effort between the USGS and other federal, state and local partners to improve and deliver topographic information across the country for uses ranging from recreation to scientific analysis to emergency response.

USGS does a full quality assurance/quality control review of the data collected, benefiting both them and the state, making it a win-win, Stevens said. This contract also is a win for Woolpert, both personally and professionally. We were founded in Dayton 110 years ago and conducted the first statewide lidar data collection in Ohio in 2006. Ohio has been progressive in its use of data and GIS, helping advance multiple technologies and encouraging agencies to collaborate and work better together. This is our home, and were honored to support it.

The lidar data for this contract will be acquired this winter and will be delivered in summer 2022.

About Woolpert

Woolpert is the premier architecture, engineering, geospatial (AEG) and strategic consulting firm, with a vision to become one of the best companies in the world. We innovate within and across markets to effectively serve public, private and government clients worldwide. Woolpert is an ENR Top 150 Global Design Firm, recently earned its sixth-straight Great Place to Work certification, and actively nurtures a culture of growth, inclusion, diversity and respect. Founded in 1911 in Dayton, Ohio, Woolpert has been Americas fastest-growing AEG firm since 2015. The firm has more than 1,600 employees and 60 offices on four continents. For more, visit woolpert.com.
That so many former spies became novelists is not surprising. To resort to an easy aphorism, both professions tell lies to tell truths. However, that childrens literature has also attracted its fair share of intelligence practitioners is more than a little unexpected. Espionage, among the most pragmatic of professions, is not known for its whimsy. If truth be told, espionage credibly ranks among the least whimsical of professions.

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it, Graham Greene, WWII spy and author, wrote in The Quiet American, though he also surprisingly penned a series of delightful childrens books The Little Train (1946); The Little Fire Engine (1950); The Little Horse Bus (1952); and The Little Steamroller (1953), all featuring anthropomorphic heroes. The books were a collaboration with his mistress, Dorothy Glover, a theater costume designer and the landlady of his London writing studio; a single name, Dorothy Craigie, appeared on the books, presumably a pseudonym for Glover who illustrated them.

In particular, The Little Train contains echoes of Greeneland familiar to his readers. Bored with laboring on the quiet branch line, the Little Train longs for the world outside, where the great expresses go. But when he finally escapes his quiet town of Little Snoreing and travels to the citycalled Smokeoverallhes presented with a frightening landscape and station stops with names like High Yelling, Tombe Junction, and Grimborough. At the end of the tale, and after some tribulation, the Little Train returns home to a welcoming celebration.

The first of the books was likely written during the V-2 attacks, following Greenes overseas work for British intelligence while his wife, Vivien, was safely living with their children in the country, and he was volunteering as a London fire warden with Glover. It wasnt until a 1952 and a re-issue of The Little Fire Engine that he stepped from the shadows as a childrens book author. The books jacket announced, IT CAN NOW BE REVEALED that Graham Greene was not only the author of the book which you now have in your hand, but, also its predecessor, The Little Train. Greene would later send an inscribed copy of The Little Train to his new mistress, Lady Catherine Walston. That Greene would send a current mistress a copy of a book written with a previous mistress is no less Greene-like than his insistence that Glovers drawings remain in the books to provide her with royalty income. It wasnt until her death in the 1970s that he allowed for the popular illustrator Edward Ardizzones drawings to be used in subsequent editions.

However, there may have been more to the Glover collaboration than Greene ever openly acknowledged. Some scholars speculate the collaboration may have included at least three additional titlesa childrens book and two young adult science fiction workswritten under the Craigie pseudonym: Summersalts Circus (1947), The Voyage of the Luna I (1948). and Dark Atlantis (1953).

Roald Dahl, beloved author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and many other works for children, began his writing career while working for British intelligence in Washington during WWII. Assigned to the British Security Coordination, the organization made famous by William Stevensons A Man Called Intrepid and later by Jennet Conants The Irregulars, Dahl worked under the cover of an assistant air attache.

Dahl represented a marked departure from the more traditional British diplomats who were often perceived as stuffy by their American cousins. His youth, irreverent sense of humor, and relaxed manner earned him invitations to some of the most exclusive dinners and cocktail parties in the nations capital. At a time when American opinion was sharply divided as to whether to enter another European war, Dahl had the ear of Washingtons power brokers. It was also reported he was tasked as a male honey trap, called a Romeo Spy in intelligence parlance. At six feet six inches and dashingly handsome in his RAF uniform, he was among a small cadre of British intelligence officers and civilians who practiced what is sometimes referred to as sexpionage.

It was while working in intelligence that Dahl launched his writing career. The August 1, 1942 Saturday Evening Post carried the story Shot Down Over Libya, in which an RAF pilot recounted his wartime efforts. The story included no byline, just the brief description, The author of this factual report on Libyan air fighting is an RAF pilot at present in this country for medical reasons.  The Editors. In fact, Dahl was not shot down. Flying a biplane, a Gloster Gladiator, on which he was not adequately trained, Dahl became lost over the desert. Forced to make an emergency landing, he sustained serious injuries, though he was fully recovered by the time he arrived in Washington.

Among the lesser-known credits of Dahls writing career was as co-author of the screenplay for another writer spys work for children, Ian Flemings Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The book was originally published in three volumes, the first appearing in 1964, well after James Bond had been introduced to the world; Flemings departure from his usual work was prompted by his wanting to tell a tale to his young son. The movie, made as a musical starring Dick Van Dyke, was brought to the big screen by Bond film producer Albert Cubby Broccoli.

As with Flemings Bond novels, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang includes elements of his personal interests. Fleming was a lifelong car enthusiast; the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car is most likely based on the Chitty Bang Bangs developed in the 1920s by Louis Zborowski, a British race car driver and engineer. The Chitty Bang Bangs were, in fact, a series of four cars with very large engines of the type used on WWI Zeppelin airships and advanced features. He combined these exotic cars with a Standard Tourer he once owned. Sadly, they had none of the kind of high-tech features Fleming installed in his magical car or those driven by Bond. However, the patriarch of the family, Commander Pott, does advise his children with very 007-style advice: Never say no to adventures. Always say yes, otherwise youll lead a very dull life.

A.A. Milne, future author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, worked as a World War I propagandist after contracting trench fever on the front lines. Recruited into the secretive Military Intelligence Section 7b (MI7b) established in 1916, the division is credited with producing more than 7,500 stories portraying a positive view of the war, profiles of Victoria Cross recipients, optimistic news from the front, and treacherous Germans. The unit was deactivated in 1918 and the material thought destroyed until a trove was found in 2013, which included a commemorative booklet called The Green Book, that was distributed to members of the unit. In the booklet, Milne contributed a poem, a parody of Under the Greenwood Tree from Shakespeares As You Like It:

In MI7B, / Who loves to lie with me / About atrocities / And Hun Corpse Factories. / Come hither, come hither, come hither, / Here shall he see / No enemy, / But sit all day and blether.

And in one of the stranger literary episodes of espionage and childrens literature intersecting, Whittaker Chambers, Soviet spy turned government witness, produced the first English translation of Bambi: A Life in the Woods by German author Felix Salten. It was from this translation, published by Simon & Schuster in 1928, that the 1942 Disney movie was created.

Disillusioned with communism, Chambers dropped out of the movement in the 1930s, though not before secreting a life preserver of incriminating material that later became known as the Pumpkin Papers. By the late 1930s, he was working for Time magazine, then later found himself at the center of a firestorm following his accusation against Alger Hiss and others who acted as spies for the Soviet Union.

Greene, always one to surprise, would return to childrens literature later in life. Writing to his grandsons, Jonathan and Andrew Bourget, he told the story of The Monster of Capri on 11 postcards sent through the mail with a sequel, The Monsters Treasure, written on eight postcards, following a short time later. Alimited edition of 500 signed copies of The Monster of Capri was brought out by Eurographica Helsinki in 1985.

That Greene and others held childrens literature in high regard is without question. In his well-known essay, Lost Childhood, he wrote: Perhaps it is only in childhood books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in our minds already: as in a love affair it is our own features that we see reflected flatteringly back.... What do we ever get nowadays from reading equal to the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?

See our roundup of new and noteworthy titles about espionage for children and teens.

Henry R. Schlesinger, an NYC-based author, has been writing about real-life espionage for nearly 20 years. His most recent book, Honey Trapped, is scheduled for publication next spring by Rare Bird Books.
Action and espionage take center stage in our roundup of nonfiction and fiction titles for children and teens published in 2021.

Nonfiction

Code Breaker, Spy Breaker: How Elizebeth Friedman Changed the Course of Two World Wars

Laurie Wallmark, illus. by Brooke Smart (Abrams, Mar. 2021, $18.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-3963-7). Ages 812.

Wallmark celebrates the lifesaving contributions of Friedman, the creator of the CIAs first cryptology unit whose story only came to light upon the declassification of her secret papers in 2015. Read our In Conversation between Wallmark and fellow STEM author Sandra Nickel.

Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall

Heather Demetrios (Atheneum, Sept. 2021, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-5344-3187-4). Ages 14 and up.

In this biography, Demetrios showcases the life of progressive and disabled Allied spy Hall, known as the Fighting Blade. When she was denied a place with the State Department, Hall became a spy for the British and helped arm and train the French Resistance while organizing sabotage missions.

Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown

Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook, Sept. 2021, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-250-14901-5). Ages 1014.

In his follow-up to 2012s Bomb, Sheinkin turns his attention to the Cold War, exploring the worlds closest call with a third world war and neck-and-neck competition between the United States and Russia to build even more destructive bombs. Read our starred review.

Passport

Sophia Glock (Little, Brown, Nov. 30, $24.99, ISBN 978-0-316-45898-6). Ages 12 and up.

In this graphic memoir, Glock recounts her teenaged discovery that her parents were agents working for the CIA. Per our review, Glocks subtly crafted, emotive graphic memoir explores themes of belonging, identity, and loyalty in a highly specific context.

Top Secret: Spies, Codes, Capers, Gadgets, and Classified Cases Revealed

Crispin Boyer (National Geographic Kids, Apr. 6, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-4263-3912-7). Ages 812.

This nonfiction title offers a wide-ranging look at the spy trade, from sleuthing skills, information about cold cases and hidden places, cool disguises, and codes; tongue-in-cheek How to Be a Spy activities are included.

The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life

Amy Butler Greenfield (Random House, Oct. 2021, $18.99, ISBN 978-0-593-12719-3). Ages 12 and up.

Greenfield chronicles the life and contributions of pioneering codebreaker Friedman, who played a major role in decoding messages sent during the world wars and during the Coast Guards efforts against smugglers. Per our starred review, B&w photographs help round out the history, alongside primary sources such as news stories and even Friedmans own handwritten notes.

VIP: Lydia Darragh: Unexpected Spy

Heather Alexander, illus. by Jennifer Bricking (Harper, Sept. 7, $15.99, ISBN 978-0-06-288962-1). Ages 812.

The Very Important People middle grade biography series continues with Darragh, a midwife, mortician, devout Quaker, and Revolutionary War spy who helped saved George Washingtons army from a surprise attack by the British. Includes full-color illustrations and fun facts, like how to write with invisible ink.

Fiction

Code Name Danger: Unmasking a Villain

Brian Hawkins, illus. by Anthony Pugh (Jolly Fish, $7.99, ISBN 978-1-63163-523-6). Ages 810.

Will Washington plays a secret agent on the hit kids book-turned-television show Code Name Danger, but hes also a real-life undercover spy, juggling filming, missions, and homework. When a villain from the book shows up in real life, will must work with friends and Spymaster Z to uncover the identity of the villain.

Faceless

Kathryn Lasky (HarperCollins, June 22, $16.99, ISBN 978-0-06-269331-0). Ages 812.

Growing up in wartime England, sisters Alice and Louise are part of a small group of spies called Tabula Rasa, who pass unseen through enemy lines becoming other people without being recognized. When Louise chooses to leave the agency, Alice must face her most dangerous assignment yettaking down Hitlerwhile grappling with the possibility of losing her sister. Read our review.

Golden Gate

James Ponti (Aladdin, Mar. 2021, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-5344-1494-5). Ages 812.

A group of young spies working for the British Secret Intelligence Services MI6 division return for a second adventure in this sequel to 2020s City Spies. In this installment, 14-year-old Sydney, a surfer from Australia and a field ops specialist, goes undercover on a marine research vessel while the rest of the organization investigates a possible mole.

The Secret Life of Kitty Granger

G.D. Falksen (Carolrhoda Lab, $18.99, ISBN 978-1-5415-9796-9). Ages 1118.

Sixteen-year-old neurodivergent Kitty Granger accidentally uncovers a Russian spy ring and is approached by secret agents working for Her Majestys government with an offer to aid their espionage investigation. With help from a team of fellow spies, Kitty goes up against a prominent, secretly fascist politician.

Spy School at Sea

Stuart Gibbs (Simon & Schuster, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-5344-7943-2). Ages 812.

In this ninth book in Gibbs popular Spy School series, which began with 2012s Spy School, CIA agent Ben Ripley tracks his nemesis Murray Hill to Central America where hes about to board the worlds biggest cruise ship for its maiden voyage around the world. Posing as a family with fellow spies, Ben is tasked with finding out what Murray is plotting.

The Spy Who Raised Me

Ted Anderson, illus. by Gianna Meola (Lerner/Graphic Universe, Apr. 6, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-7284-1291-7). Ages 13 and up.

In this graphic novel, Josie Black finds out that her mother, who works for a covert agency, has given her the skills of a superspy: she can infiltrate any building, speak a dozen languages, and fight like a martial arts master. After panicking and running off, she has to figure out who she wants to be, no matter who she was raised to be.
In All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told, Douglas Wolk distills 60 years and 27,000 issues of Marvel Comics (the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created) into a fascinating guide that will resonate with true believers and neophytes alike. His infectious zeal for the Marvel universe shines in his insightful analysis of everything from the genres cultural impact and symbolismexamining, for instance, how the X-Men have served as proxies for those ostracized by societyto the saga of the Black Panthers creation, which spanned years and writers. No page is left unturned or character left behindeven the radical Squirrel Girl, who values compassion over violence, gets an honorable mention. Comic fans will be riveted.

Marvel has been publishing comic books since 1939, but it was only in the late '80s that they hit upon the idea of collecting recent issues into books that could stay in print indefinitely. Some of their books are perennial backlist itemsfor instance, Infinity Gauntlet, Civil War, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Ms. Marvel: No Normal, and, more recently, House of X/Powers of X. Others disappear quickly or are perpetually repackaged in new forms.

Since I read 27,000 issues for All of the Marvels, I know all the deep cutsso I've pulled out some lesser-known jewels from the Marvel catalogue for this list. (Note that Marvel's book catalogue is currently in flux, thanks to their recent distribution shift; the titles I've listed here appear to be in print at the moment, at any rate.)

1.Warlock by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection Writer/artist Jim Starlin's original Adam Warlock sequence, serialized between 1975 and 1977, is a heady, trippy sci-fi epic about what happens when a lab-created "perfect man" discovers that the evil messiah of the cruel intergalactic church he's been battling is, in fact, his own future self. A number of Starlin's creations who appear here, including Thanos and Gamora, went on to prominent roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; so did the mysterious green gem on Warlock's forehead.

2. Marvel Masters of Suspense, Vol. 2 Before writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko collaborated on the earliest Spider-Man and Doctor Strange stories, they specialized in three-to-five page twist-ending tales that appeared in nearly every issue of Marvel's sci-fi/horror anthologies for years. The two Masters of Suspense hardcovers collect them all; the second volume (covering 19611963), in particular, shows off Ditko at his assured, grotesque peak, opening every story with an utterly uncanny full-page image.

3. Master of Kung Fu Epic Collection: Fight Without Pity Shang-Chi's original stomping ground was Master of Kung Fu, a thoughtful, thrilling martial-arts/espionage series that has aged much better in some ways than in others (its recurring antagonist is literally Fu Manchu). This 19751977 sequence is one of its peaks, featuring superb artwork by Paul Gulacy, some of Shang-Chi's weirdest and most indelible adversaries, and a spectacular sequence set in Hong Kong.

4. The Ultimates by Al Ewing: The Complete Collection There have been various series called The Ultimates, but this 20162017 incarnation concerns a team of heroes (including Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Monica Rambeau) who address problems so cosmic and abstract they're essentially metaphysical. The wild, psychedelic artwork is by a rotating crew including Travel Foreman, Christian Ward, Kenneth Rocafort, and Aud Koch; the plot involves, among other things, the personifications of multiple instances of the multiverse.

5. Omega: The Unknown The original Omega the Unknown, from 1976, was a weird, not entirely successful, abruptly truncated experimental superhero series by writers Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes and artist Jim Mooney. Novelist Jonathan Lethem and artist Farel Dalrymple's superb 2007 take on Omega begins as a surreal, wobbly remake of the original version's openinginvolving an alienated young boy's mysterious connection to a mute, caped hero from outer spaceand then speeds off in a direction of its own.

6. You Are Deadpool Deadpool's got his own legion of Deadpool-specific fans, and stars in a ton of books, but this one, from 2018, is a bit different. It's a grandly silly choose-your-own-path adventure that's also a tabletop role-playing gameand spirals from the character's usual fourth-wall breaking into a head-spinning piece of metafiction, incorporating dead-on parodies of Marvel's comics from decades past. (Personal to Loki fans: the T.V.A. is involved.)

7. Nick Fury: Deep-Cover Capers Jim Steranko's visually groundbreaking 1960s run as writer/artist of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be out of print right now. This 2017 project by writer James Robinson and artists ACO and Hugo Petrus, starring the original Fury's son (who conveniently looks just like Samuel L. Jackson), is both an extended tribute to Steranko's design innovations and a feast for the eyes in its own right.

8. Untold Tales of Spider-Man Omnibus Kurt Busiek and Pat Olliffe's 1995 series Untold Tales of Spider-Man was an incredibly clever feat of storytelling: a set of self-contained, single-issue stories about Peter Parker's high school days that not only flowed into a complete, continuous narrative on their own but were set between issues (and sometimes between pages) of the first few dozen issues of Amazing Spider-Man, from three decades earlier.

9. Captain America and the Falcon: Secret Empire Steve Englehart's sharply satirical early-1970s run as the writer of Captain America peaked with the sequence collected here. "I was writing a man who believed in America's highest ideals at a time when America's president was a crook," Englehart has noted. The climax of Secret Empire is the head of a villainous conspiracy being unmasked as (a very thinly disguised) Richard Nixon, who then kills himself in the Oval Officein an issue published three months before Nixon resigned.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  World leaders and scientific experts are gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference to discuss what collective action must be taken to decrease fossil fuel emissions that lead to warming and extreme weather events.

With these discussions happening on the world stage, the Purdue Climate Change Research Center released animations to illustrate what is happening in Indiana.

Jeff Dukes, Purdue forestry and natural resources professor and director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center, explained why thinking about your home state should be an important outcome of the Glasgow conference.

Every region of the world is contributing to climate change in some way, he said. These animations provide local context to the Glasgow negotiations. There are many things we can do in our own state that will minimize our contribution to climate change and help insulate us from the impacts.

Andrea Nebhut, a graduate student in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources and one of Dukes advisees, studies the intersection of climate change, plant invasion and ecosystem services. She explained her motivation for creating the animations.

Carbon dioxide and other gases that cause climate change are invisible, and so their impact on climate change is something we cant see as theyre happening, she said. With these animations, I hope to communicate the causes and consequences of climate change on a scale that feels personal and actionable to Indiana residents.

See YouTube animations in links below for more information. More information also can be viewed here.

Climate Change Impacts Indianas Corn Production

Hot weather and drought stress associated with climate change could reduce Indiana corn yields by 12% or more by mid-century.

Countries actions to reduce heat-trapping gas emissions will help determine the severity of future yield losses.

Countries are discussing their commitments to action at the U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow.

Indianas carbon emissions across time

Human activities in Indiana emitted 192 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018.

Indiana had the eighth-highest emissions of carbon dioxide of any state that year despite being ranked only 17th in population.

Depending on policy decisions, changes in our energy system could rapidly reduce these emissions over the coming decade.

The sources of Indianas carbon emissions

The greatest share of Indianas carbon dioxide emissions comes from electricity generation, because most of our electricity plants still burn coal and gas.

Industry generates the second-largest share of emissions, followed by transportation.

Changes in the sources of energy used in our electricity, manufacturing, and transportation sectors will largely determine the magnitude of future carbon emissions from our state.



Media contact Maureen Manier, mmanier@purdue.edu

Sources: Jeff Dukes, jsdukes@purdue.edu

Andrea Nebhut, anebhut@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: 765-494-8415;

Maureen Manier, Department Head, mmanier@purdue.edu

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Climate change activists from the Purdue Student Sustainability Council held a march on Friday to show their support for changing climate policy. The activists gathered on Memorial Mall and marched to Hovde Hall, where several members gave speeches on the importance of addressing climate change.

As featured on Students march for Purdue carbon neutrality Purdue is one of only two Big Ten schools without an institutional plan for addressing clima
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Jo Wallace (pictured), formerly of MDM Props, has created a space that is now setting its sights on building its advertising and production clientele on the back of its success in the music industry.

Sugar Studios has four diverse and flexible shoot spaces, including one of the largest infinity coves in London, easy access, and has already hosted the likes of Nandos, the British Paralympic Association and Mercury Prize winner Arlo Parks. The warehouse location also has a roof terrace and an in-house cafe.

Wallace has brought in former colleague Stephanie Smith, as she looks to grow the Sugar Studios team. Smith will hold the positions of head of events, studio and catering manager.

Wallace and her team have worked to ensure the Sugar Studios experience delivers both practically and culturally. The attention to detail covers everything from the decor to their commitment to sustainability to an emphasis on homemade food. Sugar Cafe, headed up by Smith who is also one half of DJ-duo Raw Silk, is an old food truck found in a layby in Wales. It serves a range of healthy foods, such as salad bowls, homemade granola and artisan coffee as well as brownies.

Wallace has a vision for the studio space to become part of the local community. With this in mind, she has applied to the local council for change of use, so that it can become a creative hub for the area. Residents will be able to pop in for food and drink and to choose from a selection of activities and courses.

Wallace commented: Sugar Studios came about not because we came up with a great idea, but because our customers gave us a great idea. They were the ones who asked why cant we shoot here? and we thought why not!

Sugar Studios is pretty unique. From homemade breakfasts to unmatched facilities and an incredible location, we aim to provide a personal and exceptional service. We can even help out with the props. But most importantly we want somewhere that clients can be comfortable and creative. The range of spaces available means we have the flexibility to cater for pretty much every type of shoot.

And the proof is out there in some of the incredible end products that we have played a part in delivering. Now after concentrating on the music industry, Sugar Studios is expanding into the advertising world. We have already started working with several large ad agencies and brands on TVCs. That is not to say though that we only want to play with the big boys. We want to stay true to our roots, and be as inclusive as we can, offering great value for money for both large and small shoots. So if you want to film a car ad, or have a small intimate photoshoot, we have the facilities for you.
Tens of thousands of government representatives, negotiators, businesses, and advocates are meeting at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, over two weeks  including House and Senate Republicans.

A GOP presence in international climate efforts is nothing new. In fact, President George H.W. Bush helped kick off the United Nations climate efforts in 1992, when the Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed.

Yet, this is the first year that we are seeing a group of Republican lawmakers assembled like this to attend the annual United Nations climate summit  the most vital intergovernmental forum for tackling carbon emissions. Why? Because the stakes, along with anticipation and tensions, have never been higher.

At the top of this years agenda is the Paris Agreementdrafted in 2015 at COP21which required member nations to return with updated plans every five years that reflect their highest possible ambitions for reducing emissions. As the world is not on track to achieve the Paris Agreements goals, this will be the first COP in which certain countries may be singled out to update or strengthen their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and commit to going even greater lengths.

America, naturally, will be in the hot seat. President Biden has pledged the United States will again lead, announcing in April that the United States would cut its emissions in half by 2030 against its 2005 baseline.

Alas, my organization analyzed his proposal and concluded, given available technologies, that target cannot be achieved without catastrophic costs to the U.S. economy and workforce. Additionally, this feat would necessitate shifting our emissions to countries with far weaker regulationsand if his randomly chosen benchmark proves wholly unattainable, Americas leadership will be undermined.

A better strategyespecially amid great pressureis to renegotiate or amend the Paris Agreement in recognition of the sobering reality that, by the end of the decade, 90 percent of emissions will originate outside the U.S. If meaningfully addressing climate change for the Earths sake is President Bidens priority, rather than the empty promises to date, he must ensure all major emitters are held to higher standards and fight for policies that foster what America does bestinnovate.

It is correct to think big, but 21st Century trends suggest the narrow-minded methods our U.N. allies always rely onstricter mandates, increasingly ambitious timeframes, exponentially greater spendingare really counterproductive and render total decarbonization of the planet infeasible by 2050.

When the first COP took place in 1995, the U.S. produced one quarter of worldwide emissions, while another quarter was attributable to about three dozen mostly western, industrialized countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The U.S. and Europe could pursue bilateral policy back then and reasonably expect to make a major dent in global emissions.

Indeed, those efforts have made a significant difference. America has led the world in cutting carbon, boasting an annual reduction of 758 million metric tons since 2005. European Union member countries were also successful, averaging a combined decrease of 770 million metric tons.

Unfortunately, China and Indias joint annual emissions grew by four billion metric tonsmeaning weve taken one step forward and two steps back. Still, the impressive results in the West prove that investing in R&D and supporting aggressive private sector deployment moves the needle.

There are four established goals for COP26 negotiations: secure global net-zero emissions by mid-century; adapt to protect people and natural habitats; mobilize finance, including $100 billion in annual climate funding for every developed country; and work together by finalizing the controversial Paris Rulebook.

The brutal truth is none of those goals is credible if COP26 merely levies further onerous mandates designed to hinder advanced economies.

To the contrary, the way forward is to double down on approaches that have demonstrated success the past two decadescompetitive markets and voluntary frameworks. This includes cutting bureaucratic red tape, driving down costs of new technologies through economies of scale, and forging international trade policies that incentivize innovation in clean energy.

Americas unique contribution to reducing worldwide emissions must remain inventing and proving concepts that can be readily exported to emerging economies. Therefore, U.S. climate policy should eschew subjective emissions caps in favor of fostering commercialization pathways emerging economies can easily adopt.

Climate change cannot be solved by focusing on green premiums that wealthy countries take on while others focus on poverty eradication and basic energy access. Likewise, stark realities like Chinas ever-expanding emissions can no longer be ignored, because if we dont reverse the current global emissions trajectory soon, we might as well settle on adaptation and resiliency.

This is exactly why Republicans are headed across the pond to COP26. We want durable solutions to the climate crisis that work as well for Indiana as they do for India. And we know this will require policies that support private sector innovation, accelerate competitive markets to drive down the cost of energy, increase energy choices, and ensure transparency, fairness and respect for the rule of law among international partners.

Hopefully, President Biden will not simply rubber-stamp the U.N.s initiatives. Instead of high-cost regulatory schemes, he needs to remind the world that America is the single greatest creative force in historyand its ingenuity will be the sole determinative factor in winning the climate battle.

Heather Reams is Executive Director for Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES), a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization founded in 2013 to engage Republican policymakers and the public about responsible, conservative solutions to address our nations energy, economic, and environmental security while increasing Americas competitive edge.
AMC+ released first-look photos from its upcoming series Firebite. The series premieres Dec. 16 on AMC+.

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Firebite stars Rob Collins and Shantae Barnes-Cowan as Indigenous Australian vampire hunters. Yael Stone and Callan Mulvey also star.

Warwick Thornton created the original series. Firebite postulates that the British sent vampires to Australia in 1788 to eradicate the indigenous population.

Now, the South Australian Desert is the sight of the final battle between humans and vampires. Some photos show Collins and Barnes-Cowan in caves hunting for vampires.

AMC previously aired the vampire series NOS4A2 based on the Joe Hill book. They have future vampire series planned two.

The network is building an entire universe based on the Anne Rice novels. They have acquired the rights to Rice's vampire and witch books and are developing an Interview with the Vampire series first.

Firebite is an eight episode series. New episodes premiere every Thursday on the streaming service.
Bad Bunny discussed competing at WWE's WrestleMania 37 event while appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

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Bad Bunny teamed up with Damian Priest to battle The Miz and John Morrison in a winning effort at WrestleMania 37, WWE's biggest event of the year, which took place in April.

The Latin music star pulled off a number of impressive moves during the bout and set a new standard for celebrity matches.

"I've always been, since I was a kid, a wrestling fan and that was a dream come true. I can't believe it yet you know," Bad Bunny told Fallon on Wednesday.

"I spent like three months training, physically working hard on my body and working on the technique in the ring," he continued.

Bad Bunny said he was kicked in the chest during his time with WWE and that he is still feeling the effects from the move. Fallon played highlights from Bad Bunny's match which included the 27-year-old jumping off the top rope to take out The Miz and Morrison.

"I deserve the main event next year," Bad Bunny said before admitting that he has rewatched the match multiple times.

"After WrestleMania I watched like the whole month, every night before I go to bed I watched the fight," he said before also stating that sometimes he cried during his rewatches.

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Bad Bunny will be going on tour in North America starting in February in support of his latest album El iltimo Tour Del Mundo. Bad Bunny told Fallon he is working on a new album but has no release date.

Bad Bunny is making his acting debut in the third and final season of Narcos: Mexico, which comes to Netflix on Friday.

"It's something new for me but I like and I enjoy it. I'm learning and practicing," he told Fallon about acting.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 11/03/2021



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

star Michelle Young has clapped back at Jamie Skaar for claiming she was in "spring-break mode" when dating her remaining bachelors in Week 2 of the process.During Tuesday night's episode of 's eighteenth season, Jamie appeared frustrated and annoyed when Michelle overlooked him and decided to give her group-date rose to Brandon Jones instead. Jamie assumed he had the rose "in the bag."Jamie then pulled a producer aside and complained, "I think the problem with Michelle right now is that she's basically in f-cking spring-break mode.""It's a little bit of a turnoff. If you genuinely thought your husband was in the room, do you go spring-break mode?" added the 32-year-old biotech CEO from San Diego, CA."I'm not going to judge it, but it doesn't mean I can't make fun of it! I gotta wait for five weeks to get to the end of this? I really thought it'd be a stronger group of guys."While watching the episode unfold on ABC, Michelle, 28, took to Twitter and gave Jamie a piece of her mind."What can I say...teachers truly do love Spring Break," the fifth grade teacher tweeted, before adding to her post, "No more grading papers," "nap time" and "I can pee when I want to."Jamie believed he was on a totally different level from the other men. He said none of the suitors were in "the same league" and no one else was "worthy" of Michelle's attention.Jamie, who bragged about how Michelle was "captivated" by him, scoffed at producers' "nationwide search" for the best bachelors to date Michelle.But Michelle ended up eliminating Jamie -- whom the other men called "a rat" and "a snake" -- by the end of the episode.Jamie had created a mistrust between Michelle and the rest of the guys in the house by informing Michelle that speculation had been swirling in regards to whether she and frontrunner Joe Coleman dated or knew each other before began filming.Jamie claimed he didn't personally care but the speculation had taken on "a life of its own" -- and that even viewers would probably be concerned about Michelle's past, which made Michelle feel like some of the men had been questioning her character and integrity.During a cocktail party preceding 's third Rose Ceremony, Nayte Olukoya said Jamie had totally made up a story and presented his own insecurities as insecurities other men had.The bachelors were angry about Jamie not holding himself accountable, and Casey Woods called Jamie "conniving" and "manipulative."An emotionally-exhausted Michelle -- who only exchanged a few messages with Joe on social media prior to the show -- then approached Jamie, who attempted to backtrack and explain that no specific individual had challenged Joe or Michelle's character."It was the open speculation in the house of people talking about the potential of you knowing each other that essentially created its own monster and that had the potential to challenge both of your characters long-term," Jamie announced in front of everyone.Michelle, however, recalled how Jamie had brought up how one of his friends allegedly spotted her in Minnesota walking with "a tall, light-skinned dude," which fueled the rumor she and Joe had a pre-existing relationship.Michelle said Jamie supposedly trying to be preventative and proactive by sharing such a story essentially backfired and made a non-issue an issue.Michelle then asked to speak with Jamie outside, and she accused him of telling her something that was inaccurate and created unnecessary drama around her character."You brought up that second story. You put that out there, Jamie, you did! That's not protecting me whatsoever," Michelle told the bachelor."I'm very hurt by you right now. I don't trust you at this moment, and I have to be done with it. So I think it's best if I walk you out tonight."Interested in more The Bachelor news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
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Flashes of bright color and loud music were on display in the Memorial Hall Ballroom on the evening of Oct. 29 as the University of Georgia's Indian Student Association celebrated Diwali.
Olivia is a junior journalism major at the University of Georgia. Her love for writing and sharing stories from the community led her to The Red & Black. She loves being able to highlight the people who make up the Athens community.

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A close friend once described an argument he heard between an instructor and a commander inside a Navy flight repair school. The instructor was complaining that Cadet Norris skips the reading, Jenson sasses me and Philips comes in late. The commander replied, Lieutenant, you are a pump, not a filter.

In other words, the instructor should not assess the cadets training but simply show them slides for two months, then push them out to repair aircraft engines. Consider this training process the next time you board an airplane.

In universities, instructors are expected to be the opposite. We are filters, not pumps. It's a responsibility that dates back centuries, and one that is being threatened by the University System of Georgias attack on tenure.

The history of tenure

Universities began around 1200 AD, shortly after knights returned from the crusades with gold and manuscripts stolen from the Middle East. The university, paid with the gold, translated and reproduced the useful knowledge collected, exposed fakes and passed the gleanings on to students. Universities became a funnel for collecting Eastern inventions that would revolutionize Europe  Islamic algebra, Arabic numerals, the compass, Chinese sailing ships.

Universities took ancient Greek texts, preserved only in Arabic translation, and translated them. Universities sent spies around the world to capture animals, steal the seeds of valuable plants and copy old manuscripts. Students were expected to master this collected knowledge.

Universities set their own standards and chose their own researchers. Why? Because they trained lawyers, doctors and ministers while giving European kings and queens the tech they needed to dominate their neighbors. Universities soon began making discoveries of their own. Universities collecting of ancient discoveries and then expanding beyond those discoveries is called the Renaissance.

Tortuous self-examination was baked into universities. Students and professors were forced to fiercely defend hard-won discoveries before a group of grey-haired professors called the opposition committee. A would-be doctorate would write out a new discovery, defend it publicly in front of them, and then be judged.

The principle of preserving good critics, no matter how disagreeable to monarchs or ministers, is key to what we now call tenure, though the principle goes back eight hundred years.

Doctorates then and now jump through smaller and smaller hoops in the tenuring process. In most cases at least a hundred Ph.D.s will apply for a single position. Once hired, a tenure-track professor goes through further examination. After six years their work is sent out to prestigious professors at other institutions who  in confidential letters  judge whether our publications are careful or sloppy, solid or flimsy, real or fake. Colleagues inspect their teaching for flaws. Just one negative letter from one of the five outside examiners can end a career.

Passing this examination brings tenure and promotion to associate professor, another apprenticeship along the road to full professor and possibly named chair. At each stage professors at other universities judge us. Does the work have national or international significance? It is a grueling and sometimes unfair process. Faculty are reviewed each year and then go through a post-tenure review every five years after. Again, senior colleagues judge the research and teaching. Are you still at the top of your field?

Professors, then, are all about testing: not just our students but each other. We believe employers will trust the degree, the major and grades alongside other factors when hiring graduates. Employers expect us to have been filters, just as the public needs rigorously trained doctors, chemists, historians or flight engineers.

The future of tenure

Our ethic of difficulty is now endangered in the University System of Georgia. (It is interesting that the less white and male tenure has become, the more it comes under attack from outside.) Georgias Board of Regents recently created a new position: chief academic officer of the USG System. The CAO is Tristan Denley, a mathematician who has patented a simple process to fix universities.

It scours confidential registrars records for grades, by course and instructor. You can enter a students SAT and desired major and a program will show the easiest path to graduation. These shortcuts used to be branded Degree Compass, but, after ethical complaints were raised in 2016 about driving women and people of color away from the sciences, these metrics were re-branded as Gateways to Completion, or G2C.

The point of G2C is not to pick a major but to change the university, and it is antithetical to its eight hundred-year history. G2C asks what General Education Requirement courses give out the most As. In other words, which courses are pumps? It then identifies which give out a lot of Ds  which ones are filters?

Using unrestricted access to your student records, the G2C algorithm, created by the Gardner Institute, aims to make each university easier. Denley, though employed at USG since May 2017, was also working at the Gardner Institute through January 2018.

In this quest to turn filters into pumps, G2C focuses not on majors but on faculty. Hard courses with Ds, Fs, Withdrawals, and Incompletes  called DFWI rates  have low student success. With DFWI rates in hand administrators will then target the hard instructors to improve their pass-rates, turning instructors from filters into pumps. Such a pilot program began in recent years at Georgia State University.

The assumption is not that the course is hard and students need more assistance to prepare for it  including prerequisites and tutoring  but that the professor is misbehaving. Getting faculty, a contentious and argumentative lot, to buckle under requires weakening professorss tenure, particularly at the stage of post-tenure review, to scare them into compliance.

The Board of Regents instituted changes to post-tenure review last month to bring this about in every Georgia university. New rules make it easier to fire faculty who have a weakness in teaching, research, service, or student success. Faculty with low success scores will be enrolled in a Teaching and Learning Academy, which appears to be a series of tedious YouTube lectures by education experts, to redesign their courses to make them easier.

Some professors, threatened with losing their jobs, will simply give up and make their classes easier, bumping up their Student Success scores until the entire university system becomes a large pump: a gateway to completion. The excruciating defense of first principles in front of peers will slowly dribble under the doorway. Soon we will all be pumps.

Anyone who has taught in K-12 schools after No Child Left Behind will be familiar with this hellscape of improving student success. Indeed, many of the architects of this new system call themselves experts in K-20. They profess to be trained in all the processes leading to the Ph.D  all, that is, except for disputation, argument and struggle. I worry that in Georgia, the pump will be all that remains.
As the COVID-19 delta variant continues to spread across the nation, questions about booster shots, hospitalizations and vaccine hesitancy leave many frustrated. As part of The Red & Blacks health news coverage, we are publishing weekly reports on news relating to COVID-19 and its recent statistics.

Major updates

COVID-19 cases decreased by six at the University of Georgia from last week, according to the universitys reporting system. UGA reported 21 new cases over the week of Oct. 25-31, a decrease from the 27 cases during the week of Oct. 18-24. This has been the lowest number of cases documented by UGA since classes started this semester. The surveillance testing positivity rate was about 0.17%.

Three of the positive tests were conducted at the University Health Center. There was one positive test through UGA surveillance testing, four positive tests from UGA community members reported from testing sites in Athens and 13 positive tests from UGA community members reported from other testing sites.

Students that test positive for COVID-19 off-campus are required to report it to DawgCheck, UGAs monitoring tool. Because students may have tested positive off-campus and not reported it, the actual number of COVID-19 cases may be higher.

On Oct. 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for COVID-19 prevention in children aged 5 to 11 years old. The approval was based on the FDA's review of the data, which included participation from an independent advisory committee of experts who decided to make the vaccine available to children in this age range.

The Georgia Department of Public Health and health districts across the state will provide the Pfizer pediatric COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 5 to 11 years old, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Vaccination will commence after the DPH obtains clinical guidelines from the CDC, which is expected in the coming days.

Since Oct. 25, UGA faculty, staff, students, retirees and dependents 18 and up who have completed a complete vaccine series and meet the DPH and the CDC's eligibility requirements may schedule appointments at the UHC to receive a booster shot.

Eligible patients must have received two doses of Pfizer or Moderna more than 6 months ago or a single dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine more than 2 months ago.

Appointments may be scheduled here. Due to vaccination status being verified on-site, individuals should bring their original vaccine card to the appointment.

Certain UGA employees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8 in accordance with an executive order issued by President Joe Biden, according to an ArchNews email sent on Oct. 26.

Employees covered by this policy include those who work on or in connection with a federal contract, or who work in a covered contractor workplace.

Georgias hospitals have about 17% of their intensive care unit beds left for sick patients. From Oct. 24-20, about 99% of COVID-19 cases in the Southeastern U.S. were delta variant cases, according to the CDC.

The majority of people who are hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Georgias case data by age shows children aged 0-17 are contracting the virus at the second-highest rate of all age groups. The highest rate is in those aged 30-59.

Databreakdown: University of Georgia

The university conducted 575 surveillance tests during the week of Oct. 25, a decrease from the 628 tests during last week. With fewer tests occurring, fewer cases are able to be detected.

Of the total positive cases this week, six of them belonged to employees and 15 belonged to students.

For the week of Oct. 25-31, the UHC administered 581 vaccines, an increase from the 406 administered last week. Cumulatively, the UHC has administered 28,842 vaccines.

Students and faculty may book a vaccine appointment at the UHC Vaccine Portal or get vaccinated at any University System of Georgia school. Students may also get tested for COVID-19 at the UHC with walk-in appointments.

Data breakdown: Athens-Clarke County

From Oct. 29-Nov. 3, the county reported 85 new confirmed cases, compared to 54 from Oct. 23-28, according to the Georgia DPH. The countys seven-day average positivity rate was 6.3%. The World Health Organization recommends communities maintain a positivity rate below 5%.

This week, ACC reported zero confirmed COVID-19 deaths.

According to the Georgia Geospatial Information Office, the number of current hospitalizations in Region E  which includes ACC and several surrounding counties  decreased last week. On Nov. 3, there were 44 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, compared to 63 on Oct. 28.

According to the Georgia DPH, about 46% of the county is fully vaccinated.

Data breakdown: Georgia

Statewide, the weekly rate of new confirmed COVID-19 cases has decreased.

According to the DPH, Georgia reported 6,144 confirmed COVID-19 cases between Oct. 29-Nov. 3. This is a decrease of about 1,700 from the 7,837 cases between Oct. 23-28. The states seven-day average positivity rate decreased to 4.6% on Nov. 3, according to current data.

The number of confirmed deaths in the state remained about stagnant  Georgia recorded 308 confirmed COVID-19 deaths between Oct. 29-Nov. 3 compared to the 316 between Oct. 23-28.

According to the DPH, about 5.2 million Georgians have been fully vaccinated, or about 50% of the state. In comparison, the U.S. has a current full vaccination rate of 57%. Approximately 5.8 million Georgians, or 56% of the state, have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

According to the CDC, even fully vaccinated people should wear a mask indoors if in an area of substantial or high transmission. Currently, the CDC says Clarke Countys level of community transmission is substantial, along with many other counties in Georgia. The CDC has also released guidelines advising vaccinated individuals to still wear masks when in public, indoor settings.
While masks are mandatory on all UGA buses, face coverings are not required inside campus facilities, according to the University System of Georgias COVID-19 policies. This has raised questions from some UGA students who see buses and other campus facilities as equally unsafe.
Athens residents gathered around City Hall on Tuesday evening to voice their opinions on the proposed Public Safety Oversight Board, which would create a civilian board to oversee police activity in the city.
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AP PhotoA vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years old is shown at the Viral Solutions vaccination and testing site in Decatur, Ga.,Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. The U.S. enters a new phase Wednesday in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with shots now available to millions of elementary-age children in what health officials hailed as a major breakthrough after more than 18 months of illness, hospitalizations, deaths and disrupted education.(AP Photo/Ben Gray)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Ruhollah Parazideh, a wiry 38-year-old with a thick mustache and hair flecked with gray, was desperate for a job. The father of three in southern Iran walked into a local office of a foundation that helps war veterans and their families, pleading for assistance.

Local media reported that Parazideh told officials he would throw himself off their roof if they couldn't help. They tried to reason with him, promising a meager loan, but he left unsatisfied.

He soon returned to the gates of the building, poured gasoline over himself, and put a lit match to his neck. He died from his burns two days later, on Oct. 21.

Parazideh's suicide in the city of Yasuj shocked many in Iran, and not just because he was the son of Golmohammad Parazideh, a prominent provincial hero of the country's 1980-88 war with Iraq that left hundreds of thousands dead.

It put a spotlight on the rising public fury and frustration as Iran's economy sinks, unemployment soars and the price of food skyrockets.

His death occurred outside the local office of the Foundation for Martyrs and War-Disabled People, a wealthy and powerful government agency that helps the families of those killed and wounded in Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent wars.

I was shocked when I heard the news, said Mina Ahmadi, a student at Beheshti University north of Tehran. I thought that the families of (war) victims enjoyed generous support from the government.

Iran valorizes its war dead from the conflict with Iraq, known in Tehran as the Sacred Defense, and the foundation plays a big role in that. After the revolution installed the clerically run system, the foundation began providing pensions, loans, housing, education and even some high-ranking government jobs.

Following Parazidehs suicide, the foundation fired two of its top provincial officials and demanded the dismissal of the governor's veteran affairs adviser as well as a social worker, lambasting their failure to send the distressed man to a medical facility or others for help, local media reported.

The fallout reached the highest levels of government. Ayatollah Sharfeddin Malakhosseini, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the case a warning that officials should get rid of unemployment, poverty and the disruption of social ties.

In 2014, parliament launched an investigation into one of the main banks affiliated with the foundation for allegedly embezzling $5 million. Its findings were never revealed.

The foundation is known to funnel financial support to Islamic militant organizations in the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza, leading the U.S. to sanction it in 2007 for supporting terrorism.

Parazideh's suicide was one of several in recent years that appear driven by economic hardships.

Self-immolations killed at least two other veterans and injured the wife of a disabled veteran outside branches of the foundation in Tehran, Kermanshah and Qom in recent years.

As the coronavirus pandemic wreaked economic havoc, suicides in Iran increased by over 4%, according to a government study cited by the reformist daily Etemad.

For many in the Middle East, the act of self-immolation  the protest used by a fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia that became a catalyst for the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings  evokes broader discontent with economic woes and the lack of opportunity.

I dont know where we are headed because of poverty, said Reza Hashemi, a literature teacher at a Tehran high school.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew America from Tehrans landmark nuclear agreement with world powers and brought back sanctions on Iran, pummeling an oil-dependent economy already hobbled by inefficiencies. The pandemic has aggravated the economic despair. About 1 million Iranians have lost their jobs, and unemployment has climbed over 10%  a rate that is nearly twice as big among youths.

Capital flight has soared to $30 billion, chasing away foreign investors.

Negotiations to revive the atomic accord stalled in the five months since hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi took office, allowing Tehran to press ahead with its nuclear program. On Wednesday, the European Union announced that talks between world powers and Iran on reviving the deal would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna. The announcement stoked modest hopes that the Biden administration can resuscitate the accord.

Its impossible to hide people's discontent with the economy, said Mohammad Qassim Osmani, an official at the Audit Organization Services, a government watchdog. The structure of the country is faulty and sick. We need an economic revolution.

Irans currency, the rial, has shriveled to less than 50% of its value since 2018. Wages havent grown to make up the loss, and the Labor Ministry reported that over a third of the population lives in extreme poverty.

About 40 million people in the country need immediate and instant help, said lawmaker Hamid Reza Hajbabaei, the head of the parliamentary budget committee, in a televised debate last week  referring to nearly half the population.

The deepening poverty goes beyond just numbers, becoming a visible part of daily life. On Tehrans streets, more people are seen searching through garbage for something able to be sold. Children sell trinkets and tissues. Panhandlers beg for change at most intersections  a rare sight a decade ago.

Petty theft has surged, testing the already-tough justice system. Last week, a Tehran court sentenced a 45-year-old father of three to 10 months in prison and 40 lashes for pocketing a few packs of peanuts.

Gen. Ali Reza Lotfi, Tehran's chief police detective, blamed the economy for the spike in crime, noting that over half of all detainees last year were first-time offenders.

It has fallen to Raisi to handle the economic pressures. He frequently repeats campaign promises to create 1 million jobs through construction and tourism projects.

But many low-wage workers, bearing the brunt of Iran's crisis, have no hope.

Last month, in another case that drew huge attention, a 32-year-old teacher facing crushing debt hanged himself in the southern city of Guerash after a bank rejecting his request for a $200 loan.

___

Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
A state that's often viewed as reliably blue appeared more purple after Connecticut Republicans on Tuesday won seats in traditionally Democratic communities and often with a pro-parent and tough-on-crime message that seemed to resonate with some voters.

GOP leaders listed more than 20 successful flips from around the state following this year's election. They include gaining control of local town councils, as in Montville; defeating incumbent Democrats, like in Windsor Locks; and winning open seats previously held by a Democrat, as in Bethlehem.

Republicans are hoping this year's local victories will finally translate into success in next year's general election. That's when the governor, other statewide offices and legislative seats are up for grabs. Former Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, who left office in 2011, were the last Republicans to hold statewide office, while the Democrats have maintained control of the General Assembly for years.

The map, after last night, sets up pretty well for 2022 for Republicans, said Ben Proto, chair of the Connecticut Republican Party, who feels especially optimistic after seeing how successful GOP governor candidates were in Virginia and New Jersey.

Youre going to be hard-pressed to find someplace where Republicans didnt do well last night, whether it was a planning and zoning seat in Connecticut or the governors office in Virginia and New Jersey, said Proto, who criticized the Democrats who tried to make their races about former President Donald Trump.

Nancy DiNardo, chair of the Connecticut Democrats contends theres a big difference between winning a seat on a local planning and zoning commission and winning statewide office, which brings out a much larger number of voters.

Yes, we did lose some. But its local elections and I dont think they make any comparison to the state or the national (elections), she said.

I think all politics is local and every race is its own race. I mean, we have seen this over and over, again and again. A day is a lifetime in politics and the 2022 election is a long way off, DiNardo said. Granted there were some flipped seats in some Republican-leaning towns, but Republicans have always controlled more of the municipalities than the Democrats have."

DiNardo and state Democrats claimed their own significant victories" following Election Day, including electing the first female mayor in Stamford and flipping control of executive and legislative boards from Republican to Democrat in Avon, Coventry, Enfield, Roxbury, Tolland and Fairfield. Also, along with unaffiliated candidates, Democrats defeated conservative Republican school board candidates who had made critical race theory in schools a top issue in a highly publicized race.

Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont, who has yet to announce whether he'll seek a second term, took the GOP wins in stride, downplaying any possible ramifications for 2022.

Here in the state some towns went blue, some towns went red. A lot of those were very local in terms of whats going on, town by town, he told reporters on Wednesday. I think were fine. I think Connecticut feels like theyre in a pretty good place right now. Were doing well in terms of jobs, doing well financially and most importantly doing well in terms of COVID.

Two of his potential Republican opponents, however, see the local election results as a positive sign for the GOP. Bob Stefanowski, who unsuccessfully ran against Lamont in 2018, tweeted how voters' concerns were validated at the polls. He wrote: "Residents want to feel safe. They want a say in their kids education. They want lower taxes, adding how the state Republicans can bring it back home!

Former House Minority Leader Themis Klarides wrote in a message posted on Twitter that she was "encouraged: by the GOPs showing.

Now, more than ever," she wrote, the people of Connecticut have made it clear they want a new direction for our state."
Robert Santos was confirmed Thursday as the next U.S. Census Bureau director, becoming the first person of color to lead the nations largest statistical agency on a permanent basis.

The Senate approved Santos, a third-generation Mexican American statistician from San Antonio, Texas, for the job overseeing a bureau that conducts the once-a-decade census, often described as the nations largest civilian mobilization, as well as surveys that create the data infrastructure of the nation.

The new director inherits a Census Bureau workforce recovering from the execution of the most difficult head count of U.S. residents in recent memory. The 2020 census was challenged last year by the pandemic, natural disasters, delays and attempts at political interference by the Trump administration.

The pandemic also disrupted one of the Census Bureaus most important programs, the one-year American Community Survey, which provides a wide-ranging picture of the U.S. on everything from commute times to education levels. Bureau officials announced earlier this year that the 2020 survey wont be released in its usual format this fall because of troubles collecting data during the pandemic.

In his new job, Santos, 66, will be responsible for leading the agency as it lays the groundwork for executing the next census in 2030, as well as shepherding the last releases of data gathered during the 2020 census and supervising other bureau programs.

During his confirmation hearing, Santos told senators that his duel passions were statistics and helping people. He is a former president of the American Statistical Association and was vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute.

Those opportunities that Ive had allowed me to believe that I should pay it forward, and Ive tried to do that every day of my life, Santos said. Census Bureau data helps weave us together to form a more perfect union. Although this is a political position, Im not a politician.

Santos predecessor, Steven Dillingham, resigned last January, in the middle of data crunching for the 2020 census, while facing criticism that he was acceding to President Donald Trumps demand to produce citizenship information at the expense of data quality.

Bureau workers were under significant pressure from two Trump political appointees to figure out who was in the U.S. illegally using federal and state administrative records, and Dillingham, also a Trump appointee, set a deadline for bureau statisticians to provide him with a technical report on the effort, according to the Office of Inspector General. The effort to gather citizenship information was abandoned a short time later.

At the time, Dillingham described the events as a misunderstanding and said there were no potential violations of laws or regulations.

During Dillinghams tenure, the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire and named a handful of political appointees that statisticians and Democratic lawmakers worried would politicize the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. The president also issued two directives that advocacy groups said were part of efforts to suppress the participation of minorities and immigrants in the 2020 census.

After Dillingham resigned, the agencys chief operating officer, Ron Jarmin, assumed the directors duties on an interim basis. Santos will fill the remainder of Dillinghams term, which expires at the end of the year, and then start a new five-year term.

After Santos was confirmed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described him as a perfect fit" for the job.

He is exactly the kind of person our country needs overseeing our Census  an impartial, highly experienced professional from outside politics," Schumer said.

Santos told senators during his confirmation hearing that the Census Bureau needs more independence and transparency to build public trust in the statistical agency and that the agencys career staff needed nurturing after enduring a tumultuous 2020.

The 2020 census experienced unprecedented obstacles because of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. The pandemic forced the Census Bureau to delay until April the release of state population numbers used to apportion congressional seats. The release of redistricting data used for drawing congressional and legislative districts was postponed until August.

Looking ahead to the next census in 2030, Santos said he would be in favor of a proposal that never got off the ground before the last census  combining the questions about race and Hispanic origin. A previous study by the Census Bureau showed that doing so would increase response rates by Hispanics, who may be unsure how to answer the race question because they often are from mixed race and ethnic backgrounds.

The Office of Budget and Management had considered pairing the questions for the 2020 census, but the Trump administration decided to keep the race question separate from the ethnicity one.

I can use my own personal perspective as a Latino, and I can use my research experience and my leadership position, to work with OMB to make sure that the proper attention is given to that specific issue, Santos said.

Santos is the first person of color to be confirmed as Census Bureau director on a permanent basis. James Holmes, who is African American, was named acting director on a temporary basis in 1998 after the resignation of Martha Riche.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  An Indianapolis police officer killed a dog and shot a person in the hand when he opened fire as a group of dogs charged at officers late Tuesday, police said.

Officers had responded to a reported disturbance involving animal destruction at a residence about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday when police said multiple dogs charged at the officers" near the home, police said Wednesday.
PINEVILLE, La. (AP)  A Baptist institution of higher learning in central Louisiana is changing its name.

Louisiana College in Pineville will formally announce its new name  Louisiana Christian University  on Nov. 16 during a meeting of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, according to a Wednesday news release.

Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Cheryl Clark said the change will increase the institutions prominence and marketability.

It reflects who we are, affirms our strategic plan, and positions us for long-term success, Clark said. Being a university speaks of the breadth and depth of learning already happening for both our undergraduate and graduate students, aligns our name with our comprehensive academic offerings in both liberal arts and applied sciences, including our expansion to masters programs, and enables us to attract and recruit more students.

Louisiana College opened in 1906 with enrollment of 19 students. It lists current enrollment at 1,250.

The institution offers dozens of bachelor's degree programs. It also offers a Master of Arts in Teaching, Master of Education, Master of Science in Nursing and Master of Social Work. It plans to begin offering a Master of Business Administration program next fall.

We are not throwing away our past, President Rick Brewer said of the name change. "We are recognizing this school has always been Christian.
COLLIER TOWNSHIP, Pa. (AP)  A former neighbor of a U.S. Postal Service worker has been indicted on a murder charge after he told authorities he thought the mail carrier had poisoned him and his family with cyanide, federal prosecutors said.

Eric Kortz, 53, is charged with murder of a U.S. employee and firing a gun during a crime of violence in the indictment handed up Wednesday by a federal grand jury in western Pennsylvania. He remains jailed and could face a life sentence if convicted.
Moderna is scaling back expectations for the number of COVID-19 vaccine deliveries it expects to make this year and the revenue it will record from them.

Issues including longer delivery lead times for exports and a temporary impact from expanding the company's capacity to fill vials with vaccine and package them for shipping, which may shift some deliveries to early 2022, the drugmaker said Thursday. The company now expects full-year, 2021 product sales of between $15 billion and $18 billion.

Thats down from a prediction for $20 billion in sales that it made in August.

CEO Stephane Bancel told analysts on Thursday that his companys issues stemmed from scaling up production so quickly. He also said the problems are short-term and can be fixed.

Our supply chain became more complex with increased deliveries to countries around the world, Bancel said.

Modernas work on expanding its capacity is complete and it should see a positive impact from that soon, Bancel said.

The company now expects to deliver between 700 million to 800 million doses this year, down from a previous forecast for 800 million to 1 billion.

Modernas COVID-19 vaccine is the drugmaker's only product on the market. It's also developing and testing several other vaccines including a combination that protects against both COVID-19 and the flu.

The COVID-19 vaccine brought in $4.81 billion in sales during Moderna's third quarter, which fell well short of analyst expectations overall.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company earned $3.3 billion on about $5 billion in total revenue, which includes some grants and collaboration revenue. Earnings per share totaled $7.70.

Analysts expected $9.09 per share on $6.2 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

Company shares tumbled 19% to $280.14 Thursday afternoon, still two and a half times higher than the stock's price at the start of the year.

Moderna Inc. makes one of three COVID-19 vaccines currently being used in the United States to fight the pandemic. The others are made by Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson.

Next year, Moderna expects to pick up production and will be able to make 3 billion doses of its vaccine if needed, Bancel said.

The company expect 2022 revenue to range between $17 billion and $22 billion, with the market for COVID-19 booster shots in the U.S. next fall totaling up to $2 billion.

Analysts expect, on average, about $21.38 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

Moderna has an emergency use authorization for the vaccine in adults but is still waiting for U.S. regulators to grant a similar authorization for 12- to 17-year olds. Regulators are studying the rare risk of a heart inflammation that has shown up in some people who have received the shots.

The company said recently that review could last until January.

An analyst asked Moderna executives on Thursday why regulators seem more concerned about this risk from their vaccine in younger age groups than from Pfizer's shot, which is already authorized for adolescents.

Moderna President Dr. Stephen Hoge said it was mostly a matter of timing.

Hoge noted that Pfizers vaccine was authorized before there was any substantial discussion of the condition as a risk. He added that Modernas shots have already been approved for that age group in several countries, and their global database of 1.5 million people below age 18 who have received their vaccination does not show an increased risk of the issue.

We think over time the substantial benefits of our vaccine will ultimately win out, Hoge said.

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Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thpmurphy
Contributed Photo / Connecticut State Police

EAST HARTFORD  A Manchester man died after crashing into the back of a truck near East Hartford Wednesday night, according to state police.

Just before 8 p.m. Wednesday, a Maryland man was driving a truck west on Interstate 84 and Blake Burrows, 27, was driving his 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis GS directly behind him. Burrows struck the rear of the truck for an unknown reason near East Hartford, resulting in fatal injuries, police said.
HONOLULU (AP)  A former Maui police officer was sentenced Wednesday to two-and-a-half years in prison for fraud charges resulting from when he solicited sex from a woman he pulled over.

Brandon Saffeels pleaded guilty in May to seven counts of honest services wire fraud. He said he offered to help the woman by botching his testimony in the 2019 traffic stop and eventually wanted to pursue a sexual relationship with her.
HARTFORD  The state Supreme Court Thursday upheld the murder conviction of a Bridgeport man accused of fatally shooting a construction worker because he wanted the mans job.

Gregory Weathers claimed he had been insane when he killed 31-year-old Jose Araujo of Milford, while Araujo was digging a ditch at a work site in Bridgeport. But a panel of three Superior Court judges in 2017 rejected the testimony of two psychiatrists and found Weathers guilty of murder.

He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

We often hear the term senseless crime but in nearly 40 years as a prosecutor, I cant recall anything more senseless than the murder of Mr. Araujo, now-retired Bridgeport States Attorney John Smriga, who prosecuted the case in 2016, told Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday.

According to testimony at trial, the then 34-year-old Weathers walked into a construction site on Chopsey Hill Road on March 26, 2015 and inquired if there were any job openings.

When the foreman told Weathers he would have to go and fill out an application if he wanted a job, Weathers pulled out a handgun, stated what about this one, and shot Araujo.

At trial, Weathers didnt deny shooting Araujo but claimed he was suffering from a mental disease or defect.

He goes out and kills someone, someone he didnt know. There appears to be no upside to this, Yale University Psychiatrist Paul Amble testified in Weathers defense.

But what the 3-judge panel did find credible was Ambles testimony that while in prison Weathers exaggerated his symptoms in an effort to appear insane.

In his appeal, Weathers claimed the judges did not seriously consider his insanity defense.

The trial courts principal findings in support of its determination that the defendant had not met his burden of proving the defense of mental disease or defect were supported by the record, and provided a reasonable basis for that determination, as the defendants conduct immediately following the shooting did not reflect an inability to control his conduct, the defendants motivation for shooting the victim was not borne out of psychosis but out of frustration and anger, the Supreme Court ruled.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Ukraine on Thursday reported another record high number of new coronavirus infections, part of an infection surge amid widespread reluctance among the population to get vaccinated.

The Health Ministry reported 27,377 new infection cases over the past day, about 500 more than the previous high tallied last week. The ministry said 699 people died, bringing the overall toll to 70,146 deaths and more than 3 million cases in the country of 41 million.

Although four vaccines are available in Ukraine  Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac  only about 17% of the population has been fully vaccinated, which is Europes second-lowest rate after Armenia.

More than a thousand people blocked streets in the center of the capital Kyiv on Wednesday, protesting against COVID-19 vaccine certificates and other measures aimed at halting the spread of the virus.

The rally was in response to restrictions that require teachers, government employees and other workers to get fully vaccinated by Nov. 8 or have their salaries suspended.

Last week, Ukrainian authorities also started requiring proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test results for people boarding airplanes, trains and long-distance buses.

New government regulations and restrictions have spawned a booming black market for counterfeit documents. Fake vaccination certificates are selling for the equivalent of $100-300, and there have been reports of a fake version of a government digital app with fake certificates already installed.

Authorities have opened 1,065 criminal cases over the distribution of fake certificates involving 80 doctors and 35 travel agencies. Police have blocked 40 websites that offered fake certificates.

Parliament has proposed to make the use and production of fake certificates a separate criminal offence, punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine of about $6,460.

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Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Ashley Berner, Johns Hopkins University

(THE CONVERSATION) Few areas of American life have experienced more conflict of late than public education. The conflict has largely revolved around how public schools should deal with the difficult subjects of race and racism. The situation has become so inflamed that a national school board group asked the federal government to step in and protect school officials and educators from what they said were a growing number of attacks from angry citizens.

As a historian who specializes in education policy, I believe it is worth asking: Is the United States the only place where debates rage about what should and shouldnt be taught in public schools?

My experience studying school systems throughout the world tells me that the U.S. can learn a lot from how other countries handle divisive issues.

Put simply, other countries dont necessarily view studying different ideas as the same as being forced to believe in them. That is to say, they dont conflate exposure with indoctrination.

Exposure vs. indoctrination

Indoctrination happens when one set of claims about the world is presented to the exclusion of others. An example would be presenting the Marxist take on a historical event as if it were the only perspective, without naming it as a Marxist view and providing alternative understandings.

It is easy for Americans to associate indoctrination with religious fundamentalist schools in the U.S., but indoctrination can also be secular and tacit. A school that avoids discussing religious beliefs across human history, or engaging with thorny topics of bioethics, for instance, is teaching young people something, too: that such questions are either unimportant or too divisive to discuss.

Exposure, by contrast, happens when students encounter competing ideas about the world and have a chance to discuss them together. Exposure works against indoctrination, by opening up new concepts and experiences for consideration. It also builds students civic capacities and their participation in what University of Virginia education professor E.D. Hirsch calls a democratic speech community  a community in which a common body of knowledge is widely shared.

Students have to learn to make and respond to reasoned arguments. This ability doesnt come naturally. Yet the habit of disagreeing with respect supports participation in democratic life in adulthood  a finding that has held steady for 40 years.

How other countries handle divisive issues

Some high-performing school systems, such as those in the Netherlands, Singapore and Alberta, Canada, promote exposure through mandatory curricular frameworks. They require a content-rich curriculum that all students must learn, regardless of the type of school they attend. This means that they separate the ethos of the schools  which vary considerably  from the curricular framework that all schools must teach.

For instance, England has funded religious schools since 1834 and secular schools since 1870. But all students in all English schools must learn about diverse religions and philosophies.

To put it bluntly, an English mother might enroll her child in a secular school, but that child still needs to understand the tenets and practices of Islam and Judaism.

The legal requirements for religious education, as it is known, have not diminished despite the growing secularism of the English population. Learning what people deeply believe, and why, is seen as fundamental to exercising responsible democratic citizenship.

Most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development  an international association that supports economic growth  follow suit and have increased requirements around learning about different religions and philosophies in the past two decades.

Heres a more pointed example.

The Netherlands ministry of education funds 36 different kinds of schools, including creationist schools. Yet students in creationist schools must still demonstrate understanding of evolutionary theory on national exams. They cannot be forced to believe that evolution is true, of course, but they have to master what evolutionary theory posits about the natural world. Other examples abound.

Limits to exposure

This widely used approach to curriculum and assessments can work well for students academic and civic success. But it raises questions: How much exposure? At what age?

While the precise limits of exposure will need to rest on national and local contexts, a few broad principles might help clarify the what and the when.

First, there should be limits to exposure according to childrens age and developmental concerns. For instance, very young children may not be emotionally prepared to manage details about the Holocaust or see graphic images of the 14th-century Black Death that wiped out a third of Europe.

Second, teachers should not entertain debates about what the University of Wisconsins Diana Hess calls settled issues. Whether human enslavement and racial discrimination are ever warranted, whether the Holocaust actually occurred, or whether climate change is happening should not be brought to the classroom table.

Rather, debate should center on why particular events happened or are happening. For example, what factors contributed to Hitlers rise to power? What, if anything, should governments do to remedy social and economic inequality? What are the economic trade-offs of different policy responses to climate change?

Learning to disagree

Beyond these guardrails, school and board policies matter a great deal in setting the expectation that students will encounter ideas with which they and their parents disagree  even profoundly. The Miami-Dade school board puts it this way:

Students are encouraged to participate in discussions, speeches, and other expressions in which many points of view, including those that are controversial, are freely explored. A controversial issue is a topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated by responsible opinion or likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community.

The Miami-Dade policy goes on to specify that the controversial conversations must serve an instructional purpose, and that teachers may not promote personal views in the classroom.

Another example comes from an independent school in Baltimore, McDonogh School. Its Freedom of Expression and Civil Discourse policy acknowledges a clear democratic rationale for viewpoint diversity, even when it leads to discomfort:

[Preparation for democratic participation]  requires the hard work of analysis, perspective-taking, debate, reflection, and application. Through such methods, we honor the diversity of thought in a pluralist culture as we work towards sound, evidence-based positions and conclusions. Members of our community may find certain ideas that emerge when wrestling with sensitive topics untenable  even offensive  from time to time; in such moments of friction, however, we can help our students learn to resolve conflict, to reason well, and to communicate their own positions.

Both of these policies ask a lot of teachers, students and parents  patience, among them. But they simultaneously protect teachers efforts to teach young people to reasonably disagree. They also signal to parents that their children will be exposed to many opinions  and that thats a good thing for the next generation.

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/what-american-schools-can-learn-from-other-countries-about-civic-disagreement-169332.
Cannon Rivers Senior Living's new Wall of Honor honoring residents and their family members who served in the military. Some of those residents pose in front of the memorial. Pictured, from left to right, are Donald Woodward, Oscar Quittem, Marlyce Quittem, Joan Hemmah, Bernard Holm, Jean Barsness, Mary Haugen, Marguerite Judge, Howard Hunt, Lorraine Johnson, Doris Rapp and Betty Johnson.
On Thursday, a slew of international leaders, ambassadors and prominent personalities took to social media to express their best wishes to those celebrating the Diwali festival. Some leaders commended India's bilateral relations with their countries, while a few cautioned against celebrating during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Nikolay Kudashev, Russian Ambassador to India, tweeted, "Happy #Diwali! Wish all of you good health, prosperity and many new successful achievements! #Diwali2021."

Happy #Diwali! Wish all of you good health, prosperity and many new successful achievements!#Diwali2021 pic.twitter.com/qur8bXrfIR  Nikolay Kudashev  (@NKudashev) November 4, 2021

Barry OFarrell AO, Australias High Commissioner to India, wrote on Twitter, "Its the time of the year again when the High Commission family gets together to celebrate #Diwali. Pleased that we were able to hold a COVID-safe #Diwali event this year. My best wishes to all those celebrating, may this festival bring you happiness & good fortuneFireworks. #ShubhDiwali.

Its the time of the year again when the High Commission family gets together to celebrate # . Pleased that we were able to hold a COVID-safe #Diwali event this year. My best wishes to all those celebrating, may this festival bring you happiness & good fortune. # pic.twitter.com/NFMNNfDypx  Barry OFarrell AO (@AusHCIndia) November 4, 2021

Alon Ushpiz, Director-General of Israel Foreign Ministry, tweeted, "Happy #Diwali to all who are celebrating today, sending my best wishes from Israel."

Happy #Diwali to all who are celebrating today, sending my best wishes from #Israel  https://t.co/nUKJvGYHPH  Alon Ushpiz (@AlonUshpiz) November 4, 2021

Apple CEO Tim Cook also extended his warm wishes to India on the occasion of Diwali. He wrote on Twitter, "Wishing a happy and safe Diwali to all those celebrating around the world. May the Festival of Lights fill your home with happiness and health. Stunning #ShotOniPhone13ProMax photos by @coffeekarma."

Wishing a happy and safe Diwali to all those celebrating around the world. May the Festival of Lights fill your home with happiness and health. Stunning #ShotOniPhone13ProMax photos by @coffeekarma. pic.twitter.com/09O2GkMcMN  Tim Cook (@tim_cook) November 4, 2021

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet, extended his best wishes to the Republic of India saying, "Happy Diwali to everyone celebrating the festival of lights! (Look for the Diya lamp when you search for "Diwali" on Google:)"

Happy Diwali to everyone celebrating the festival of lights! (Look for the  when you search for "Diwali" on Google:) https://t.co/7Lzc3FvDNl  Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) November 4, 2021

Fons Stoelinga, Dutch Ambassador to India, tweeted a video on his social media account, where the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen wishing India "Shubh Diwali." "its very simple, Britain would be a lesser country today, without the huge contribution of Indians living here. Shubh Diwali," Stoelinga quoted Johnson in the caption. Meanwhile, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom wrote on Twitter, "Happy Diwali and Bandi Chhor Divas to everyone celebrating here in the UK and around the world!"

Boris Johnson: its very simple, Britain would be a lesser country today, without the huge contribution of Indians living here. Shubh Diwali. pic.twitter.com/i3BeBW3Sz2  Fons Stoelinga (@FonsStoelinga) November 3, 2021

Happy Diwali 2021

Deepavali, or Diwali, is a five-day festival that begins with Dhanteras and finishes with Bhai Dooj. This year's festival takes place on November 4th. The day is commemorated across the country with great zeal and intensity, and it also recalls the triumph of good over evil. People light diyas in their homes and honour Goddess Lakshmi on the day of Diwali, also known as the festival of lights. Goddess Kali is also revered in several parts of India. Aside from that, people burn firecrackers on Diwali. In most Indian states, however, firecrackers have been restricted because of the COVID-19 crisis and the damage they pose to air quality.

Image: AP, Twitter/@AUSHCIndia
On the festival of Diwali, Border Security Force (BSF) troops exchanged sweets with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troops along the India-Bangladesh International Border on Thursday.

"On the auspicious occasion of Diwali, the border guards of @BSF_Guwahati Ftr exchanged sweets and greetings with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) along the Indo-Bangladesh International Border," tweeted the official handle of Guwahati Frontier (BSF) in Hindi.

Such ceremonies highlight and deepen the existing bonds between the two countries and their border security personnel. The BSF also wished all civilians a happy Diwali and continues to protect the borders by maintaining a high level of vigilance.

BSF officers celebrate Diwali with locals at the international border along J&K

On Tuesday, officers of the Border Security Force (BSF) celebrated the Diwali festival near the international border in Jammu and Kashmir's RS Pura sector. BSF personnel are unable to return home due to their duty and dedication to protect the nation's border, stating that Constable Randeep Singh stated during an interview with ANI that they are enjoying Diwali around the border region because of the country's affection. He also wished for the country's positive environment to continue.

Locals were also in attendance at the celebrations. They even commended the BSF for always keeping the borders safe, no matter what time of year it was. One of the local villagers, Gurvind, said, "It felt really good celebrating our Diwali with BSF."

PM Modi celebrates Diwali with Indian Army in Nowshera

On the occasion of Diwali, Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with Indian Army personnel in Nowshera, Jammu and Kashmir, saying the country's soldiers are the 'Suraksha Kawachh' (protection shield) of 'Maa Bharti.' PM Modi expressed his gratitude for Army jawans' selflessness, saying that it is only because of them that "the people of the country can sleep peacefully and there is happiness during festivals."

PM Modi, while maintaining the Diwali tradition of visiting with the Indian military for the eighth year in a row, remarked, "I have spent each Diwali with soldiers guarding our borders. Today, I did not come to Nowshera alone, I have brought along with me the blessings of 130 crores Indians for our soldiers here. Blessings of 130 crore people are with forces."

(with inputs from ANI)

Image: @BSF_Guwahati/Twitter
In a key development, India on Thursday, raised the issue of overflight clearance for the Srinagar-Sharjah flight with Pakistan through diplomatic channels and has asked them to grant them in the larger interest of the common people, sources said Thursday. In the latest instance of the Imran Khan-led government obstinance, India's Srinagar-Sharjah flight was denied use of Pakistan's airspace.

Sources said Pakistani authorities had granted overflight clearance to GoFirst flights to operate the Srinagar-Sharjah sector on October 23, 24, 26, and 28. Subsequently, sources said Pakistan put the clearance for the same flight on hold for the period 31 October to 30 November 2021.

This matter was promptly taken up with Pakistan through diplomatic channels and we have requested Pakistan to grant overflight clearance for this flight in the larger interest of the common people who have booked tickets on this route, the source said.

Pakistan denies airspace to Srinagar-Sharjah flight

Since the airspace has been denied, the Srinagar-Sharjah flight will have to take a longer route. The flight from Srinagar to Sharjah will be more than an hour longer as planes will have to fly via Udaipur, Ahmedabad, and Oman. The flight will also be more expensive. Union Home Minister Amit Shah flagged off the flight from the Sheikh Ul-Alam international airport in Srinagar on October 23. The flight revived the direct air link between the valley and the UAE after 11 years. Earlier, an Air India Express flight from India- Dubai had met the same fate when in 2009-2010, Pakistan had denied usage of airspace.

Flagging off the flight, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said, "This will help in boosting tourism and bring more investment in the Union Territory."

Image: PTI/AP
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while interacting with Indian Army personnel at Nowshera in Jammu and Kashmir, on the occasion of Diwali, asserted that soldiers of the country are 'Suraksha Kawachh' (protective shield) of 'Maa Bharti'. Extending his gratitude to the selflessness of Army jawans, PM Modi affirmed that it is only because of them "that people of the country can sleep peacefully and there is happiness during festivals."

While continuing the Diwali tradition and meeting with Indian soldiers for the eighth consecutive year, PM Modi said, "I have spent each Diwali with soldiers guarding our borders. Today, I did not come to Nowshera alone, I have brought along with me the blessings of 130 crores Indians for our soldiers here. Blessings of 130 crore people are with forces."

"This evening (Diwali), in the name of your sacrifice, every citizen will keep wishing you with the light of the lamp," PM Modi affirmed.

The Prime Minister lauded the Army unit for their contribution to the 2016 surgical strike and said, "It fills every Indian with pride in the role this brigade played during the surgical strike."

PM Modi speaks on Indian defence sector at Nowshera in Jammu & Kashmir

While stating that over 200 equipment will be homegrown and 'Made in India', PM Modi admitted that earlier it used to take prolonged years to procure defence equipment for the security forces but advanced connectivity has improvised the situation.

"The commitment to self-reliance in the defence sector is the only way to change old methods," PM Modi said.

"Connectivity in border areas has improved- be it from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, Jaisalmer to Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This has helped the country enhance the deployment capability," he added.

Also, while hinting at China and Pakistan's attempt to thwart the peace, security and stability in Jammu and Kashmir, PM Modi put his foot down that the country is ready to take on the disturbing elements and hold the fort.

"There were many attempts to disturb the peace in Jammu & Kashmir but each time a befitting reply has been given." PM Modi said.

PM Modi celebrates 8th consecutive Diwali with Indian jawans

PM Modi is celebrating the festival of Diwali with the armed forces in J&K's Rajouri. In 2020 as well, the Prime Minister had celebrated the occasion with jawans, in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer. Earlier in 2019, Prime Minister had celebrated Diwali with troops at the Army Div headquarters in Rajouri itself.

Following Diwali, PM Modi is set to visit the holy site at Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand on November 5. PM Modi's visit to Kedarnath comes days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah had paid a visit to Uttarakhand. The PM will offer prayers at the temple and unveil the samadhi and statue of Sri Adi Shankaracharya. As per the ground report of Republic TV, the temple is heavily decked up ahead of PM Modi's visit and preparations are underway in his welcome.
Stoking a controversy, Uttar Pradesh Minister Anand Swarup Shukla claimed that SP president Akhilesh Yadav glorified Muhammad Ali Jinnah on the instructions of ISI. Speaking to the media on Tuesday, he asserted that Yadav is getting support from the "Islamic world" which he claimed was apprehensive of UP CM Yogi Adityanath. In a shocking communal statement, Shukla also claimed that the ex-UP Chief Minister may convert to Islam just to appease Muslims. Moreover, he called upon Yadav to express regret for comparing Pakistan's founder to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

UP Minister AS Shukla was quoted as saying by PTI, "Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has become a challenge for the Islamic world. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is getting all support from them. Akhilesh is getting patronage and advice from the ISI. It is possible that he might also be getting economic support from it". The BJP leader added, "On the directions of the ISI, Yadav is glorifying Jinnah. He is issuing such statements that Pakistan and the Taliban want".

Akhilesh Yadav's Jinnah reference draws ire

Addressing a public rally in Hardoi on October 31 ahead of the UP Assembly polls, Akhilesh Yadav claimed that Jinnah fought for India's independence. On this occasion, he mentioned Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Jinnah in the same breath citing that they all became barristers after studying in the same place- a reference to the UK. Speaking on the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, the former UP CM contended that they all struggled for an independent India.

The SP chief opined, "Sardar Patel Ji, father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jinnah studied in the same institute and became a barrister. They studied at the same place. They became barristers. They fought for India's freedom. They didn't refrain from taking part in any kind of struggle."

Demanding an apology from Yadav, Yogi Adityanath commented, "Yesterday, his divisive mindset came to the fore once again when he tried to glorify Jinnah by likening him to Sardar Patel. I think that the people of Uttar Pradesh and India will never accept this divisive mindset. This is the Talibani mindset".
In Faux Cap in the southern tip of Madagascar, sand dunes have covered much of the landscape.

It's down to a climate phenomenon known here as tiomena or red storm.

The sand, blown by fierce winds, has significantly changed the Indian Ocean coastline, destroying crops and stifling development.

The strong winds mean fishermen are unable to take to the sea for long periods, meaning they have to often borrow money to survive.

Many people simply pack up and leave in desperation.

The United Nations has described Madagascar as the first country threatened with famine brought on by climate change.

Only 15% of the population have electricity and many cut down trees and use the wood for fuel.

They also use it to make charcoal, which they sell in the marketplace.

But this only provides a meagre living.

A woman, speaking to British broadcaster Sky News, said that the sweet potatoes she sells would likely only generate enough to feed her baby and buy water.

The rest of her children would have to go hungry.

According to a UN report, severe hunger has affected over 1.1 million people with 14,000 one step away from famine.

Madagascar has rich natural resources but the felling of trees is leading to significant deforestation, with 40% of forests lost since the 1950s.

It's a huge threat to the island's unique wildlife.

A rare radiated tortoise, which could fetch thousands of dollars on the black market, made an appearance out in the open, where it was at risk of poaching, it's shelter reduced by the constant felling of trees.

Tsindray Gauttier, who has worked as a forest guide for two decades, said he has seen conditions become more extreme.

The situation, already alarming, is set to worsen by the end of year with the number of people in famine-like conditions expected to double, according to the World Food Programme.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Ethiopian military personnel and the public commemorated federal soldiers killed by forces loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) at the start of the conflict a year ago, during a ceremony in Addis Ababa.

Lieutenant-General Bacha Debele of the Ethiopian National Defense Force joined current and former troops and other attendees at the event, vowing to "never kneel to the force of the enemy."

The ceremony continued into the evening with a candle-lit service.

The conflict that has killed thousands began in November 2020 after a political falling-out between the Tigray forces that long dominated the national government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmeds current government.

The United Nations human rights chief said Wednesday that all sides in Ethiopia's yearlong war in the Tigray region have committed abuses marked by "extreme brutality" that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ethnic Tigrayans across the country have reported being targeted with arbitrary detentions, while civilians in Tigray have described gang rapes, human-caused famine and mass expulsions.

The investigation, a rare collaboration by the U.N. human rights office with the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, was hampered by authorities intimidation and restrictions, and didnt visit some of the wars worst-affected locations.

The U.N. told The Associated Press the collaboration was necessary for its team to gain access to a troubled region that Ethiopian authorities have largely prevented journalists, rights groups and other observers from entering.

The report was released a day before the first anniversary of the start of the war and as Africas second most populous country enters a new state of emergency, with rival Tigray forces threatening the capital, Addis Ababa.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Police expected to bring charges Thursday over the abduction of a four-year-old girl from her family's camping tent 18 days before police smashed into a locked house and rescued her in an outcome celebrated around Australia.

The 36-year-old man was arrested early Wednesday around the time that police found Cleo Smith alone in the house in the town of Carnarvon.

"My name is Cleo," the smiling girl told the police officers who rescued her and asked her name as confirmation that they had found the right child.

Police said the suspect, a Carnarvon local, would likely be charged on Thursday.

"It (charges laid) will probably be later today, but there is still some work that's being undertaken, some interviews that are occurring," Western Australia Police Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde told reporters.

Cleo had disappeared with her sleeping bag on October 16, the second day of a family camping trip at a campground on Australia's remote western coast north of Carnarvon, a community of 5,000 people where her family lives less than 10 minutes' drive from the house where she was found.

Media have reported he raised suspicion among locals when he was seen buying diapers and was known to have no children, but police have disclosed little information about what made the man a suspect.

Wednesday was the first full night Cleo spent at home with her mom Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon and her baby half-sister Isla Gliddon since the family's ordeal began.

IMAGE: AP

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Taking a huge step forward in the shift to cleaner fuels, more than 20 governments will suspend all financial support for fossil fuel development abroad and redirect funds to green energy from next year. According to The Guardian, the countries engaged include the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and certain underdeveloped countries that would benefit from such funding, such as Costa Rica. One of the financial entities engaged is the European Investment Bank. Diverting financing from fossil fuels to Low Carbon Emissions will create an estimated $8 billion per year for clean energy worldwide.

Collin Rees, programme manager for the Oil Change International campaign organisation, said the plan, which will be announced on Thursday, November 4, during the COP26 meeting, will mark a significant shift in the outlook for fossil fuel investment worldwide, The Guardian reported. He was quoted by the media agency, saying, "This is a massive step forward. This represents a serious chunk of the current international public finance for fossil fuels. Its a really big thing, though there may be some devil in the detail." Rees cited a May report from the International Energy Agency, which stated that all new fossil fuel resource development must cease by the end of this year if global warming is to be kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

China and Japan shunned the initiative

The pact forbids the funding of any fossil-fuel development, including gas exploration, however, there are exemptions. However, China and Japan, two of the world's largest backers of fossil fuel development, have snubbed the idea. The countries involved will also be free to develop their own fossil fuel resources, such as oil and gas reserves, in their own territories. There are at least 24 pending fossil fuel projects in the United States, with a total potential greenhouse gas emissions of more than 1.6 gigatons.

Despite hosting the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, the UK is licencing new oil and gas developments in the North Sea. Because the project is already in the works and the programme only covers new investments, the UK will be free to proceed with funding a contentious gasfield in Mozambique. The accord will have no impact on private-sector funding for fossil fuels. As president of the G7 and host of COP26 this year, the UK has made strenuous steps to prohibit coal financing from outside.

(With inputs from agencies)

Image: AP
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met on Wednesday with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi for talks in Rome.

Abbas and Draghi exchanged views on Italy's commitment to the reinforcement of Palestinian institutions and support for the Palestinian people, a note from Draghi's office said.

Talks also focused on the perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, according to the note.

Draghi expressed his support for a prompt resumption of bilateral dialogue, emphasizing that a just, sustainable and negotiated two-state solution remained key to a durable stability in the region, the press release stated.

Abbas was scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted unanimously on Wednesday to extend the mandate of the European Union military force in Bosnia. The agreement came after Russia blocked members from hearing a warning from Bosnia's top international official that the war-torn Balkan nation faces an "existential threat" from separatist actions by Bosnian Serbs. Russia, a close ally of the Bosnian Serbs, has repeatedly attempted to terminate the role of Bosnia's high representative, currently Christian Schmidt, and has succeeded in preventing him from delivering his latest report to the council, which warns that if the international community does not rein in the Bosnian Serbs, Bosnia and Herzegovina will face renewed division and conflict.

However, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres forwarded Schmidt's report to 15 council members, and following the vote on EU force, his warnings were echoed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Estonia, and other council nations that emphasised the importance of retaining the high representative. According to Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, the high representative was chosen in contravention of international law in Moscow and the position is still vacant. He was outraged that a report from a private person was being sent to council members, calling it an extremely prejudiced and anti-Serb paper the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time, AP reported. In 2004, the EU Force in Bosnia took over from a NATO peacekeeping mission.

The Bosnian conflict

The Bosnian conflict, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, pitted the country's ethnic Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats against each other and ended with the US-sponsored Dayton peace treaty, which established two areas, the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The two areas were granted broad autonomy while retaining some common institutions, including an army, top judiciary, tax administration, and a presidency that rotates among the three ethnic groups. Following the war, more than 60,000 troops were stationed across the country to ensure peace. The EU was given the peacekeeping mission in 2004, and the French-drafted resolution passed on Wednesday extended the term of the currently 600-strong force for another year.

(With inputs from AP)

Image: AP
In another embarrassment for Pakistan, Chief Minister of Sindh, Syed Murad Ali Shah wished the Hindu population in his province a 'Happy Holi' on the occasion of Diwali. In a now-deleted post, the Chief Minister's official Twitter handle 'CM House Sindh' shared a Holi message on Thursday posting a picture of Murad Ali Shah with colours of Holi and oddly a crane, photoshopped in the background. A screenshot of the tweet was shared by Pakistani journalist Murtaza Solangi, who captured the blunder before it was taken down.

The journalist condemned the Pakistan politician's ignorance and cited how Sindh was a region where Hindus were in an overwhelming majority. Solangi remarked that the fact that the staff of the CM did not know the difference between Diwali and Holi showed the 'sad state of affairs.' It is important to mention that there are over 4.18 million Hindus in Sindh constituting 8.73% of its population, as per a 2017 census.

"Sindh has the largest number of Hindu population in Pakistan with areas where Hindus are in overwhelming majority. One can only be sad at the state of affairs if the staff at the CM House Sindh doesnt know the difference between Diwali and Holi. Sad indeed," tweeted Murtaza Solangi.

Sindh has the largest number of Hindu population in Pakistan with areas where Hindus are in overwhelming majority. One can only be sad at the state of affairs if the staff at the CM House Sindh doesnt know the difference between Diwali and Holi. Sad indeed. pic.twitter.com/QdpDe6f3Pl  Murtaza Solangi (@murtazasolangi) November 4, 2021

While the blunder has been deleted, the CM House of Sindh has neither issued a clarification or an apology nor has it shared a message with the correct wishes. It is important to mention that Sindh not only has the largest Hindu population in Pakistan but also harbours some ancient temples like Ramapir temple and Umarkot Shiv mandir. The Minister who committed the blunder belongs to Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Earlier today, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto had also extended Diwali greetings to the Hindu community.

"We need to understand the message of Diwali, which teaches us that no matter how powerful evil is, its defeat at the hands of unwavering determination and constant struggle is inevitable, he said in a statement. The PPP chairman further stated the philosophy of his party is also "to fight against darkness, injustices and inequality in the country."
An independent UN expert, Mary Lawlor warned on Wednesday that human rights defenders in Afghanistan are seeing a "climate of fear," threats, and growing despondency. Defenders asked for an immediate and concerted response from the international community, stating that the threat is extremely genuine.

She said that the defenders have informed her about the direct threats against women, as well as beatings, arrests, disappearances and the assassination of defenders. According to Lawler, they explain how they live in a fearful environment.

Documentarians of alleged war crimes, women, criminal lawyers, cultural rights defenders, particularly those working in forbidden fields in Afghanistan like music, and members of minority groups are among the most vulnerable. Lawlor has been informed that the defenders have deleted their online data history in order to avoid being identified and that the Taliban are looking for them in various ways.

The Taliban have stormed the offices of human rights

The Taliban, she claims, have stormed the offices of human rights and civil society organisations, looking for names, addresses, and contacts. She further said that many human rights defenders are well-known in their communities, particularly in rural regions, and have fled to the anonymity of cities. However, they are still obliged to move frequently.

According to her, most have also lost their source of income, narrowing their possibilities of finding safety. Lawlor demanded quick international assistance, as well as an immediate strategy for evacuating individuals in danger, as well as their families.

She also stated that they are the ones who have been working for human rights in the country for the past 20 years. Lawler remarked that many people report feeling abandoned. States that have supported their work for the previous two decades must do more to offer visas, travel permits, and sanctuary for the hundreds of human rights defenders who have been left behind and are in danger.

"There is no freedom of assembly and no freedom of expression"

One of the human rights defenders (WHRD) in Western Afghanistan said that there is no freedom of assembly and no freedom of expression. According to UN OHCHR, she further said that members of the family are afraid of being identified. According to her, human rights activists and others are being chased, detained, and killed.

(Inputs from ANI)

Image: Twitter/@MaryLawlorhrds, Pixabay
Haiti has become the leading country of origin for people seeking asylum in Mexico this year, surpassing Honduras which had recently led migration figures.

The number of annual refugee requests from Haiti has climbed to almost 38,000, with the rate increasing after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July and a magnitude-7.2 earthquake that struck the country's southwest in mid-August.

However, many of the migrants are arriving at Mexico's southern border, where the system has become strained.

Delays in asylum processing, especially in the Tapachula offices where almost 69% of applications have been received, have led to a series of protests and thousands of Haitians leaving the city to try to continue their journey north.

Outside the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) on Wednesday, a crowd of people waited for updates on their requests.

Asylum Access, together with Amnesty International, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, and the Mexican Human Rights Center Fray Matias de Cordova, said countries in the Americas are turning their backs on Haitians while the political and economic situation continues to deteriorate in their country.

"Mexico should look for solutions to regularize this population," said Daniel Berlin, deputy director of Asylum Access Mexico, "they should not participate in deportations for this population to Haiti, nor to other countries that are not voluntary."

Those who remain in Mexico find it difficult to regularize their situation.

According to data from COMAR, only 40% receive some type of protection, compared to the massive acceptance given to Venezuelans, of whom 97% of their requests are approved, or 87% of those of Hondurans.

Thimoti Ansy, a 27-year-old Haitian nurse from Gonaive, spent four years in Chile before deciding to head north.

"I'm the hope of my family," he said, adding he must support his relatives back at home.

So far, thanks to the opening of additional offices in a stadium in Tapachula, appointments have been scheduled for more than 36,000 Haitians in the last five weeks, the first step in a regularization process which, once attended, may take months to conclude.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
India has strongly condemned the terror attack on a maternity hospital in a Shia-dominated area of Kabul that killed two newborns and a dozen others. Taking to its official Twitter handle, the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations at New York outlined the need of holding the terror factions, financiers, and sponsors accountable as India expressed deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims. The deadly explosions and heavy gunfire at Afghanistans largest military hospital claimed the lives of at least 19 civilians and wounded several others earlier on Tuesday. The bombs were detonated at the entrance of the Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan military hospital, interior ministry sources revealed.

#IndiainUNSC



The security council issues a statement strongly condemning the terrorist attack at the Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital in #Afghanistan



Underlines need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors accountable. pic.twitter.com/44KdVybpxO  India at UN, NY (@IndiaUNNewYork) November 4, 2021

India condemns terrorism 'in all its forms & manifestations', calls it threat to security

Wising speedy recovery" to those injured in the attack, India at UN, New York cited the members of the Security Council as reaffirming that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constituted one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. India condemned the deliberate targeting of the hospital and the medics asserting that such abhorrent acts must be called out and those behind the attacks must be held accountable. The Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), a globally recognised terror group, claimed the responsibility for the bombing in a statement released on its Telegram channels. It released a statement later saying that five Islamic State group fighters carried out simultaneous coordinated attacks, reports confirmed.

A Taliban official meanwhile confirmed a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated an explosive belt at the hospital and gunmen later opened fire at the hospital entrance. Reports suggest that the attack was carried out at the former diplomatic zone in the Wazir Akbar Khan area in central Kabul, and targeted healthcare workers, many of whom managed to escape the site. The Deputy Minister of Information and Culture in the Taliban government later confirmed to the Afghan press that Taliban special forces pursued five assailants all of whom were killed on the spot. Member of hardline Haqqani network, Badri Corps special forces officer, and Taliban's top military commander Hamdullah Mukhlis alias Qari Hamdullah was also killed in the terror attack.

The UNs mission in Afghanistan, meanwhile, denounced the attack in a statement saying that the health facilities should never be a target and that all civilians must be protected. Photos and videos circulating online depicted plumes of smoke billowing out of the building and sounds of gunfire as healthcare workers ran for cover. A witness Sayed Ahad told to EVN broadcaster that he saw one of the blasts was carried out by a suicide bomber. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told a prominent news agency that the Taliban military immediately reached the spot in helicopters and stopped the attackers at the gate, killing them all outside in the courtyard.
Iran and the European Union have agreed to resume nuclear talks on 29 November in Vienna. In a statement issue on Wednesday, 3 November, the EUs European External Action Service said that the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will convene in a physical format at the end of this month in Vienna. The statement added that the talks will be chaired by Enrique Mora on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Josip Borrell.

The talks will be attended by representatives of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and Iran. Participants will continue the discussions on the prospect of a possible return of the United States to the JCPOA and how to ensure the full and effective implementation of the agreement by all sides, the statement read.

After consultations with all #JCPOA participants and the United States, there is agreement to resume talks in Vienna on November 29.

- European External Action Service https://t.co/DX0aBn9XxI  Enrique Mora (@enriquemora_) November 3, 2021

Separately, Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri, who is also Tehrans lead negotiator, confirmed the date for the resumption of talks. Taking to Twitter, Bagheri said that the 29 November date had been set in a phone call with Mora. Meanwhile, according to The Times of Israel, the US, in reaction to the latest development, said that a deal is possible quickly if Iran is serious in the Vienna talks.

In a phone call with @enriquemora_ , we agreed to start the negotiations aiming at removal of unlawful & inhumane sanctions on 29 November in Vienna.    (@Bagheri_Kani) November 3, 2021

2015 nuclear deal

Vienna has been hosting talks aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear agreement since April. However, the negotiations have hit a deadlock as Iran has insisted that its nuclear steps are reversible if Washington lifts all sanctions. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi even said that Tehran is after goal-oriented talks with the West and noted that his country never left the negotiation grounds. Lifting sanctions is an indication of the seriousness of the other party, Raisi had said in a broadcast on state-run TV, as per AP.

Raisi also added Iran is serious in this issue, we should see the seriousness in the other party as well. Due to the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran drastically reduced the enrichment of uranium in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. However, the deal signed during former US President Barack Obama administration did not last for too long as his successor Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the deal and reimposed the crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Trumps 2018 move resulted in an increase in tensions in the Middle East with Tehran breaching its limits on uranium enrichment set under the deal. It is to mention that Iran is presently enriching brief amounts of uranium at the closest-ever levels to weapons-grade purity. Meanwhile, its stockpile reportedly continues to develop.

(Image: AP)
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariate has announced that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, the world's largest trade deal, will come into force on January 1, 2022.

ASEAN applauds the early ratification of the RCEP, Secretary-General Dato Lim Jock Hoi said, adding that the deal will fuel the post-pandemic recovery.

The ASEAN Secretariat has received ratification documents from six ASEAN members including Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Additionally, Australia, China, Japan, and New Zealand have also confirmed their participation in the deal.

'RCEP Agreement to boost post-COVID economic recovery efforts': ASEAN

Secretary-General of ASEAN Dato Lim Jock Hoi had on Tuesday said that the rapid ratification process by signatory States is a true reflection of the association's strong commitment to a fair and open multilateral trading system for the benefit of the people in the region and the world. He said that the agreement will boost post-COVID economic recovery measures.

#RCEP will enter into force on 1 January 2022.



The implementation of the RCEP Agreement starting 1 January next year will give tremendous boost to the post COVID-19 economic recovery efforts, stated Secretary-General of ASEAN Dato Lim Jock Hoi.



 https://t.co/jQetlgzCMT pic.twitter.com/bse3ieqJpM  ASEAN (@ASEAN) November 3, 2021

On the other hand, preparatory work for the implementation of RCEP will continue. The preparatory work undertaken by signatories who aim to lay a solid ground for the full and effective implementation of the agreement through finalisation of the technical and institutional aspects of the Agreement, an ASEAN statement stated.

Australia confirms RCEP trade deal agreement

Meanwhile, the government of Australia confirmed that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement will go into force on January 1, with the goal of facilitating trade liberalisation and economic integration throughout Asia and the Pacific, as per the reports of Kyodo News.

According to the statement released by the Australian government, after ratification by at least six ASEAN countries and at least three non-ASEAN countries, the RCEP will enter into force 60 days later. Australia and New Zealand ratified the agreement on November 2, 2021, paving the road for the RCEP to take effect on January 1, 2022. According to Kyodo News, New Zealand's minister of state for trade and export growth, Phil Twyford, confirmed the pact's approval by Wellington on Tuesday, calling it a step that will speed up the country's recovery from the coronavirus outbreak.

Businesses to benefit from RCEP's potential

Twyford also said that from early next year, businesses will be able to take advantage of RCEP's potential. According to him, this agreement will also allow the businesses to be better connected through regional supply chains, giving exporters greater stability in what remains an uncertain global environment. According to Kyodo News, he further stated that New Zealand and Australia's dual ratification of the ASEAN-led RCEP agreement reflects the strong partnership they share with ASEAN.

Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne also confirmed by stating that the criterion has been met now that Australia and New Zealand have both ratified the deal, according to Nikkei Asia News.

RCEP to eliminate tariffs on 91% of imports

The RCEP aims to eliminate tariffs on 91% of imports and harmonise laws on investment, intellectual property, and e-commerce, among other things. It also seeks to improve supply chain efficiency within the free trade zone, which accounts for around 30% of global output, commerce, and population, according to Kyodo News. The Japanese government stated that the agreement will boost the world's third-largest economy's gross domestic product by around 2.7%.

(Inputs: ANI)

(Image: PTI)
Following diplomatic rift with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Moscow has now engaged in beefing up military ties with neighbouring Belarus, the Associated Press reported on Thursday. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu meet Belarusian counterpart and top brass military personnel to discuss the modernisation of shared army infrastructure. Both the countries extended agreements on two Russian Facilities in Belarus and a naval communication centre as of now, Shoigu said in a statement.

The countries have agreed to share an early warning radar in the Brest region near Poland and Naval communications centre in Vileyka near Minsk (capital of Belarus), Shoigu mentioned. It is to be noted that Moscow has remained a strong ally of Belarus due to Kremlin's unhindered support to Belarusian authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. The former had also stood by Lukashenko during Western impositions after Belarus' crackdown on protestors after the president's re-election.

Russian Defence Minister raises concern over NATO exercise near borders

Defence minister Shoigu expressed concerns about NATO exercised near Russian borders, dubbing it to be a threat to security. On Wednesday, Shoigu accused the alliance of performing drills depicting confrontation scenarios with Russia. He also pointed out NATO deployment in borders along with Poland and the Baltics, in addition to, nuclear missile defence facilities in Romania and Poland. Meanwhile, NATO has also blamed Russia for conducting "destabilizing" military exercises near borders.

Russia suspends NATO mission

In a retaliatory move to counter the expulsion of eight members of the Russian military alliance, Moscow on October 18 announced disengagement with the intergovernmental military alliance saying that the NATO Mission in Moscow would be stripped of their accreditation from November 1.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, These NATO actions have shown that the bloc is not interested in an equal dialogue or joint efforts to defuse military-political tension. Its policy towards Russia is becoming increasingly more aggressive. The myth about the alleged Russian threat is being promoted, in part, to strengthen the blocs internal affinity and to make it look important in the current geopolitical circumstances.

It is to be noted that NATO had suspended practical operations with Russia in 2014 after it annexed the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine. As per The Guardian, although, NATO kept channels open for high-level military talks, both the parties had only met "sporadically."

(With inputs from AP)

(Image: AP/representative image)
India and US on Wednesday, 3 November, agreed to take a comprehensive look at ways to expand the bilateral trade relationship between the two nations. According to a press release, the latest development comes after US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Indias Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal met virtually. Both the leaders agreed to take a comprehensive look at ways to expand the bilateral trade relations and ensure the future success of the India-US Trade Policy Forum.

They also shared perspectives on how to reach meaningful outcomes at the upcoming WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12), the press note read.

Katherine Tai to visit New Delhi later this month

The release also informed that Tai and Goyal are now looking forward to their upcoming meetings in New Delhi from November 22-23. It is to mention that the MC12 was originally scheduled to take place in June 2020 in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, but was postponed due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. According to the WTO, MC12 will take place from 30 November to 3 December 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland.

It was great to meet with Minister @PiyushGoyal today - I look forward to meeting him in New Delhi later this month and to continue expanding the U.S.-India trade relationship. pic.twitter.com/b8MvdBczo1  Ambassador Katherine Tai (@AmbassadorTai) November 3, 2021

The WTO Ministerial Conference is the highest decision-making body of the WTO and it is attended by trade ministers and other senior officials from the organisations 164 members. The conference will be chaired by Kazakhstan's Minister of Trade and Integration, Bakhyt Sultanov, as approved by WTO members in 2019. Under the Marrakesh Agreement, the conference is held once every two years. MC11 was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2017.

(Image: PTI/AP)
Scavenger hunts and blow-up animals greeted children at some of California's vaccination sites Wednesday as children aged 5 to 11 got their first COVID-19 shots a day after the federal government approved kid-size doses of the vaccinations.

As part of an ambitious plan to offer coronavirus vaccinations to California's 3.5 million children in that age group, the state intends to offer the vaccines at locations including school clinics, pharmacies, pediatrician offices and county sites, many of which will launch in the coming days. Health officials said they are expecting 1.2 million initial doses of the pediatric vaccine.

Santa Clara County, the home of Silicon Valley, starting doling out shots early Wednesday, and appointments quickly booked up. The county expects to receive about 55,000 doses this week and will open additional clinics at 80 school sites and send out mobile vaccine teams to low-income neighborhoods.

Many of Santa Clara's county sites were decorated with kid-friendly motifs like animals and included games like scavenger hunts, while others handed out coloring books and prizes, officials said.

Pop-up clinics in Los Angeles County also started giving doses to children on Wednesday, the county department of health said. The county is the nation's most populous with 10 million residents, including about 900,000 children between 5 and 11 years old.

California has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, and has also had some of the strictest masking and vaccination requirements, but new cases and hospitalizations have plateaued recently after a steady two-month decline that saw California boast the nation's lowest infection rate. State models show a gradual increase in hospitalizations in the next month as colder weather and holidays drive people inside.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last month that California would have the nation's first coronavirus vaccine mandate for schoolchildren - about 6.7 million public and private school students in the nation's most populous state - once the federal government has given final approval for the shots. The mandate will be phased in and will likely not take full effect until next July.

Newsom hailed the new availability Wednesday, saying the pandemic "has taken a heavy toll on the well-being of our kids."

Kid-sized doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine cleared two final hurdles Tuesday: a recommendation from advisers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, followed by a green light from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC.

The federal government has promised enough vaccine to protect the nation's 28 million kids in this age group, with many enthusiastic parents rushing to get their younger children inoculated before the holiday season.

Some Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California will start offering the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to children as soon as Monday, officials said.

Kaiser, one of the nation's largest health care providers, participated in the Pfizer pediatric vaccine trial in Northern California, which found the vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 had an efficacy rate of over 90%, said Dr. Nicola Klein, director of the chain's vaccine study center.

Many counties planned to begin their rollout at mass vaccination sites this weekend.

In Marin County, officials expect to be able to vaccinate 1,000 children per day at rotating sites, while Contra Costa County plans to open county clinics Saturday to start doling out the 20,000 doses of the pediatric vaccine expected this week.

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The US Embassy in Addis Abeba said on Thursday, November 4, that a part of the US staff in Ethiopia, as well as their family members, can leave the country voluntarily amid internal armed conflict and civil instability. The embassy advised US residents to leave the country as the incidents of civil turmoil and ethnic violence may occur without warning. In a statement, the embassy advised US residents who choose to stay to ensure they have sufficient resources packed in case they need to hide in place, stressing that further escalation is likely, and may entail supply chain bottlenecks, communications blackouts, and transport difficulties.

The US Embassy in Ethiopia said in a statement, "On November 3, the Department authorised the voluntary departure of non-emergency US government employees and family members of emergency and non-emergency employees from Ethiopia due to armed conflict, civil unrest, and possible supply shortages."

The Ethiopian Conflict

The Ethiopian government and TPLF rebels have been fighting for control over the country's northern region for almost a year now. The insurgents are marching south, having taken control of the town of Kombolcha on 31 October, which is less than 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of Addis Abeba. Ethiopia announced a state of emergency on Tuesday, with soldiers from Tigray's northern province threatening to march on towards the capital. Britain advised its people on Wednesday to reconsider their need to remain in Ethiopia and consider leaving while commercial opportunities were available.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has lately expressed his alarm about the surge in violence in Ethiopia, as well as the Ethiopian administration's recent declaration of a state of emergency across the country. According to a UN report, Guterres Spokesperson said in a statement issued on Tuesday in New York, "The stability of Ethiopia and the wider region is at stake." The UN Secretary-General has reiterated his call for an immediate cessation of violence and unrestricted humanitarian access to the northern territories of Tigray, Amhara, and Afar to give life-saving supplies. Guterres has also called for an open public conversation to address this issue and establish the groundwork for national stability and peace.

Image: AP
Climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, moved into the negotiating phase on Wednesday.

The heads of state are gone, their opening statements have set the course, but now it's the nitty-gritty technical talks that will determine the success of the COP26.

Long time climate negotiator Yamide Dagnet knows first-hand how it works, having negotiated for the UK and EU.

"Deals are made very often outside the room when countries are going to have some, will reach out to each other to better understand, you know where they're coming from and to identify whether there's possibility for convergence, for middle ground, for landing zones," Dagnet told The Associated Press.

For the next 10 days, if things don't go perfectly - and they rarely do - it's time for the professional diplomats to convert marching orders left by their heads of governments into compromises and agreements.

Technically it's done in a limited number of meeting rooms, with a Friday Nov. 12 deadline and a record long agenda with 104 items that have to be settled.

It's pretty hectic now, but next week with that deadline, limited rooms and even more disappearing time things get crazy, veteran negotiators and United Nations officials say.

Meetings go around the clock, food and sleep get put aside, except when someone dozes off in their seats or on their colleague's shoulder.

But it's the kind of crazy that somehow works, negotiators say.

Dagnet, who now works for the World Resources Institute, has taken stock of the past two days at the COP.

Asked about US President Joe Biden's criticism of China, Dagnet said the issue wasn't that President Xi Jinping didn't make it to the conference in person, it was more about Xi's lack of new ambition.

"We were disappointed that the national climate plans, their NDCs (nationally determined contributions) were not as ambitious as they could be. We know that China can do better," she said.

As for the US itself, Dagnet said that while it has come a long way from President Donald Trump's taking the nation out of the Paris agreement, it mustn't grow complacent.

"What needs to be done domestically is challenging," she said.

"It's not going to be a piece of cake for any country and certainly not for the United States. So this is why the accountability mechanism that is being discussed here matters because yes, we heard you, you're going to do that, we're going to hold you accountable for what you said."

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday while attending the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, an event that has drawn world leaders and tens of thousands of other people from around the world.

His office announced a positive test result in a tweet, adding only: He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated.

The climate summit is taking place at a time of very high coronavirus rates in the United Kingdom. The conference's United Nations organizers laid down rigid rules to guard against infection, including requiring each attendee to wear a mask and show daily proof of a negative result to enter the venue each morning.

Garcetti arrived Monday on a train with other mayors from around the world, including from London, Paris, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Garcetti has been among countless political and science leaders giving speeches, appearing on panels, posing for group photos and conferring with others at the climate talks.

Like many other participants, Garcetti varied between wearing a mask and not, photos from the summit show.

Efforts to reach the conference's U.N. spokesman by phone and email were not immediately successful late Wednesday afternoon.

About 25,000 people picked up badges at the summit, Laura Lopez, conference affairs director for the summit, said Wednesday before news of Garcetti's positive test. Of them, 97% have been vaccinated.

Lopez said there had been roughly eight COVID cases, including one U.N. employee.

On Monday, the day world leaders spoke at the summit, about 1,000 people came to the front turnstiles without doing their lateral flow tests, she said. They were taken to a separate site and tested before being allowed in.

Organizers briefly closed the entry points that same day when the number of people inside hit 10,000, another precaution against infection.

Britains government recorded 33,865 infections Tuesday and 293 deaths, the highest daily death figure since February. While the number of cases have been coming down from a peak of around 46,000 a day in October, the countrys case rates are still much higher than in most of Europe.

So-called breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated people are rare, although vaccinated people can spread the virus to others.

IMAGE: AP

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Glasgow, Nov 4 (PTI) Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, nominated by US President Joe Biden as the country's next ambassador to India, has tested positive for COVID-19 while participating in the UN climate conference here in Scotland.

Garcetti's office announced on Twitter that he tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday.

Mayor Garcetti tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today. He is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room. He is fully vaccinated, the office of the 42nd Mayor of Los Angeles said in a tweet.

The office of the Mayor of California's largest city and America's second-largest city did not reveal more information immediately.

The 50-year-old mayor, who is fully vaccinated, tested positive on Wednesday in Glasgow, Scotland, where he had been attending a United Nations conference on climate change, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The mayor is currently isolating in his hotel room in Glasgow and has experienced very mild symptoms, the newspaper quoted Garcetti's spokesman Alex Comisar as saying.

Garcetti had been taking rapid antigen tests daily while at the conference, which all came back negative. He took a PCR test Tuesday in preparation for what had been a planned flight home on Thursday; that test came back positive on Wednesday morning, Comisar said.

US President Biden also appeared at the climate conference, but he and Garcetti did not interact, the report quoted a White House representative as saying.

The COP-26 is being held from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow under the presidency of the UK which is partnering with Italy for the event.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the World Leaders summit of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP-26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the invitation of his British counterpart Boris Johnson.

Modi, who left for home on Tuesday, held numerous bilateral meetings on the sidelines of COP-26, billed as one of the biggest ever congregations of world leaders and experts in combating climate change.

In July, US President Biden nominated Garcetti, who has been the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles since 2013, as his ambassador to India.

If confirmed by the Senate, Garcetti would replace Kenneth Juster, who served as Indias Ambassador to the US during the Trump administration.

After being nominated, the mayor said that he was honoured to accept the nomination and will bring the same energy, commitment and love with which he served the sprawling city to his new role in the world's largest democracy.

He has travelled several times to India, most recently as a councilman. In college, he spent a year studying Hindi and Urdu.

Its the largest democracy in the world, soon to be the most populous country in the world, one of the top handful of superpowers in the world, Garcetti had said. PTI CPS AKJ CPS

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In a bid to increase engagement in South Asia amid soaring tensions with China, US President Joe Biden on Monday said that he is looking forward to strengthening ties with Indonesia, one of Beijing's biggest trading partners in the region. During his first in-person meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Joko Widodo, Biden said that he is looking forward to building more on the bilateral relationship between the two nations. From addressing the climate crisis to ending the COVID-19 pandemic to upholding freedom of the seas, the US President said that there is no global challenge today that doesnt benefit from Indonesia and the US working together.

"I'm looking forward to building more on our bilateral relationship because we have so much that we can work together on and so much in common," Biden said during his meeting with Widodo on the sidelines of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

I had a great meeting with President Joko Widodo of Indonesia this afternoon. Were committed to strengthening the partnership between our two nations  and I look forward to the work ahead under Indonesias forthcoming G20 Presidency. pic.twitter.com/nz9T0hIvfK  President Biden (@POTUS) November 1, 2021

Indonesia would become reliable partner to US

According to Radio Free Asia, the two leaders, during their meeting, also talked about freedom of navigation, economic cooperation, the political crisis in Myanmar and the coronavirus pandemic. In response to Bidens remarks, Widodo said that Indonesia would become a reliable partner to Washington. Widodo even invited his American counterpart to invest in environmentally sustainable sectors in the archipelago nation.

"I'm looking forward to US support by investing in our energy transition, especially in low-carbon technology," Widodo said.

Separately, in a series of tweets, Widodo informed that they both exchanged ideas on various international issues, including the Afghanistan situation and climate change. Expressing his appreciation for the cooperation with the US in the health sector., he stated that Indonesia is interested in being part of the global supply chain in the health sector.

Meanwhile, it is to mention that the Biden administration has been making efforts to engage in the South Asian region amid Chinas increasing economic influence in the region. According to ANI, back in October, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai had lambasted Beijing for unfair trade policies. She said that Chinas lack of adherence to global trading norms had undercut the prosperity of the US and other countries in the world.

(With inputs from ANI)
Amid Chinas growing military aggression, US Senator Josh Hawley introduced the Arm Taiwan Act of 2021 in a bid to strengthen Taipeis defences against a possible Chinese invasion. According to a press release, Hawleys new bill calls for allocating $3 billion annually for a new Taiwan Security Assistance Initiative to accelerate the islands deployment of asymmetric defence capabilities. It also conditions future conventional arms sales on Taiwans progress preparing its military and fielding the weapons required to defeat Chinas war plans.

Taiwan is in grave danger, but the future is not yet written, the US Senator said, adding that the Arm Taiwan Act will ensure Taiwan has the asymmetric defenses it needs to deter a Chinese invasion  so long as Taiwan is prepared to make the difficult choices required to defend itself in the hard years ahead.

We should do everything in our power to help Taiwan urgently strengthen its defenses. If Chinas recent actions have shown the world anything, its that Beijing will stop at nothing in its quest to dominate the Indo-Pacific and then the world. We must not let them succeed, Hawley said.

As per the press note, the Arm Taiwan Act of 2021 comes amid a surge in Chinese military threats and warning by the US and Taiwanese officials that China may try to invade the island in the next few years. It read that the military balance in the Taiwan Strait is rapidly deteriorating, resulting in growing concern that China may conclude that it can, or actually be able to, invade and seize control of the island in the forthcoming future.

Tensions over Taiwan

Tensions between China and Taiwan have gained momentum since 1 October after Beijing flew over 100 fighter jets into Taiwan's Air Defence zone. This was followed by the latter's dependence on the US for military support. Self-ruled Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has repeatedly expressed willingness to remain independent against the Chinese goal of 'reunification'.

On the other hand, the US and China have remained geopolitical rivals for decades and relations between them have further frayed due to Beijing's aggressive claims of sovereignty along the South China Sea fuelled by Chinese engagement in testing high-tech projectiles. China has repeatedly asked America to not only recognise the sensitivity of the China-Taiwan issue but also warned Washington to abide by the one-China principle. Previously as well, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin had said that Beijing has no room for compromise on issues involving its core interests. The US should act and speak cautiously on the Taiwan issue, he had said.

(Image: AP)
Tony Chung, 20, is charged in connection with social media posts and for collecting donations from supporters.

A former student activist on Thursday pleaded guilty to charges of secession under Hong Kongs draconian national security law, while the city's highest court ruled that people can't be charged with "rioting" or "illegal assembly" if they weren't actually present at the scene of a protest.

Tony Chung, 20, pleaded guilty to publishing "seditious messages" on social media, and to holding protests and activities in 2020 with "secessionist intent," prosecutors told the District Court.

Chung, who once headed the now-disbanded pro-independence group Studentlocalism, told the court: "I have nothing to be ashamed of."

A further charge of "money-laundering" relates to his use of a Paypal account to collect donations from supporters to fund "illegal actions."

According to prosecutors, Chung continued to publish posts to his group's Facebook page even after the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed the national security law on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020, providing links for donations, despite Chung's claim that his group had stopped all Hong Kong-based activities.

Police had seized pro-independence flags, leaflets, and books about Hong Kong independence at Chungs home, they told the court.

"Secession" charges carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, but the District Court can only hand down jail terms of up to seven years.

Chung has been denied bail since his initial arrest at a coffee shop near the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong on Oct. 27, 2020.

He is standing trial under Article 21 of the national security law, which prohibits anyone from "actively organizing, planning, implementing or participating in acts aimed at dividing the country and undermining national unity in Hong Kong."

Chung's plea came as Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal knocked back a decision allowing the legal principle of "joint enterprise" to be applied to people who supported protesters, but who weren't present at the scene.

Five judges made the ruling following a request from the department of justice to clarify the law.

A lower court had ruled that people who encourage others to join illegal protests through social media, provide resources, or provide transportation to help protesters leave the scene of a protest were liable to charges of "illegal assembly" or "rioting," despite not being physically present.

"A defendant who is not present at the scene of an unlawful assembly or riot cannot be found guilty as a principal offender because 'taking part' in the criminal assembly is a centrally important element of these statutory offences. That requirement cannot be overridden by the common law doctrine of joint enterprise," the panel of five judges said.

Other charges possible

They said such people could potentially still be guilty of other offenses, such as conspiracy or incitement to take part in "illegal assembly" or "rioting."

They said anyone who assists an offender remains liable under section 90 of the Criminal Procedure Ordinance.

One of the appellants in the case was Tong Wai-hung, who was earlier acquitted of rioting in July 2019 - one of more than 10,000 people arrested during months of sometimes-violent anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong that year.

While Tong's acquittal wasn't under threat, the department of justice wanted a ruling showing that a person could be convicted of "rioting" or "illegal assembly" even if they weren't present.

Social worker and rights activist Jackie Chen told RFA that she is currently awaiting a ruling after the Attorney General appealed her acquittal in relation to a protest on Aug. 31, 2019.

"The earlier judgment from the [lower court] had been very worrying ... and we have seen a number of cases prosecuted [under joint enterprise]," Chen said. "The latest ruling is more reasonable, from the point of view of those awaiting sentencing."

"A number of people have been prosecuted just for existing, not because they went somewhere," she said. "At least now, there is the hope of appeal."

Barrister Johnny So said the ruling could affect some cases in the pipeline.

"Some people are saying it means people should be released ... but even if they can't say you took part in a riot, they can accuse you of inciting or assisting others to do so," So said.

"This just clarifies what they will regard as breaking the law."



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Dozens of Chinese researchers have been turned away over links to the People's Liberation Army and government.

China's foreign ministry has hit out at Washington after U.S. officials refused entry to dozens of its overseas students and visiting fellows with valid visas.

Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said nearly 30 students and visiting scholars were repatriated following interrogation in August 2021, despite holding visas to enter the U.S.

"In August 2021 alone, nearly 30 Chinese students and visiting fellows to the U.S. suffered similar unjust treatment, with many more reporting rough handling during harassment, interrogation, and searches," Wang told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Nov. 3.

He said officials asked the students whether they or their parents were members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and whether they had been assigned any task by the Chinese government before leaving.

Wang said officials had taken cellphone snapshots of routine military training in colleges and universities as evidence of connections to China's People's Liberation Army (PLA).

"Such practices ... undermine mutual trust and cooperation [and] jeopardize the steady and healthy development of bilateral relations," Wang said.

President Trump issued an executive order on May 29, 2020, accusing Beijing of engaged in "a wide-ranging and heavily resourced campaign to acquire sensitive United States technologies and intellectual property, in part to bolster the modernization and capability of its military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA)."

"The [Chinese] authorities use some Chinese students, mostly post-graduate students and post-doctorate researchers, to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property," the order said.

"Students or researchers from [China] studying or researching beyond the undergraduate level who are or have been associated with the PLA ... provide particular cause for concern," it said.

According to a number of media reports, many of those affected are from seven universities believed to have close ties with the PLA: Beihang University; the Beijing Institute of Technology; the Harbin Institute of Technology; Northwestern Polytechnical University; Harbin Engineering University; Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

'Specific tasks and missions'

U.S.-based commentator Wu Zuolai said the CCP has long required its overseas students to help satisfy their country's thirst for new technology.

"They organize them and send them out with specific tasks and missions," Wu told RFA. "These people will go on to do military industrial or national defense research after returning from the U.S."

"Some of these [visiting students and fellows] are not there in good faith, and not just as academics," he said. "Their aim is to get hold of technological secrets fast and hand them over to the Chinese government, or to state-owned companies and military-industrial firms."

"That's why ... a lot of PLA-linked universities have been blacklisted ... and why students and scholars with a particular background are being subjected to severe scrutiny, and are being refused entry," he said.

Some 370,000 Chinese students are currently estimated to be in the U.S., around 40 percent of whom are in science and engineering.

Australia-based researcher Song Wendi said the U.S., as a more open society, could afford to show more tolerance.

"The U.S. needs to show a more open and tolerant attitude, out of self-confidence, because it's a democracy rather than an authoritarian regime," Song said. "Only then can it demonstrate the superiority of its system."

"It can only attract talent from other countries if it remains open to those countries," she said. "That way, overseas students from China or anywhere will likely ... choose not to return ... and the U.S. will have even more talent when it comes to competition with China."

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Rights groups say troops have used detainees as cover in the region at least four times.

Government troops in Myanmar are using civilians as human shields in clashes with anti-junta militias in Kayah state, according to family members of detainees and human rights groups, who said such tactics are increasingly used against residents of areas that have demonstrated support for the militarys opponents.

A photo of a group of men being led along a road, blindfolded and with their hands tied, recently went viral on social media in Myanmar.

According to the Karenni Human Rights Group, the photo shows 19 residents of Ka-the village in Shan states Pekhon township who were abducted by the military on Oct. 28 to be used as human shields in neighboring Kayah state.

The photo was taken by a soldier and posted on social media, Banyar, the groups director, told RFAs Myanmar Service on Wednesday.

During an operation, they arrested people they found in the villages and took them away with them. Its clear that the military is using civilians as human shields, as they are in constant fear of being ambushed.

Banyar said that the military has an encampment on a hill west of nearby Shwe Pyay Aye village from where soldiers have been firing heavy weapons almost daily and suggested that the men might have been taken there.

As far as we know, there were only 19 villagers [abducted], he said.

Residents of Pekhon township told RFA that the military and Karenni armed groups have repeatedly clashed in the area since Oct. 26. They said more than 400 inhabitants of Ka-the had since fled the village and that the 19 men in the photo had been among only a few elderly people behind.

One resident whose family member had gone missing told RFA she only learned he had been abducted when she recognized him in the photo. She said his whereabouts remain unknown.

When we left [Ka-the village], he remained with my grandmothermy husbands grandmother, said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

She is more than 90 years old and could not go anywhere. We found out he was taken away only after we saw the picture.

A member of the Karenni National Defense Force militia told RFA that junta troops from the militarys 66th, 77th, and 88th divisions are conducting operations against Karenni armed groups, including the Karenni Army and the local branch of the Peoples Defense Force (PDF). The units that abducted the villagers were from the 88th Brigade, the person said.

A PDF fighter who declined to be named said members of his group attempted to intercept a convoy that included the 19 detainees on Oct. 28 but were forced to abandon the operation when they saw that the men had been placed in the lead to act as human shields.

They forced the men to lead so that if we attacked, they would be hit, the fighter said. Our ethnic armed groups are in the area, but we could not attack them and so the villagers are still being held.

Refugees flee fighting in Shan state's Pekhon township, Nov. 3, 2021. PKPF Multiple occurrences

Banyar of the Karenni Human Rights Group said that the abduction of the 19 men marks the fourth time villagers were detained and used as human shields in Kayah state.

Some were released on bail by the military but dare not talk about what had happened to them, he said.

The detainees were also subjected to human rights abuses, such as beatings and starvation, while in captivity, according to their family members.

When asked about reports of civilians being used as human shields by the military, junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that media outlets and so-called PDFs have made fake claims in various ways.

He suggested that PDF groups and ethnic armed organizations are the ones using unlawful tactics by carrying out attacks on security forces in the area and using nearby monasteries and schools for cover.

When there are deaths in the military, they say they killed them, but when they suffer casualties, they say the victims were villagers, Zaw Min Tun said.

According to the Karenni Human Rights Group, a total of 88 civilians have been killed by the military in Kayah state since the military seized power from Myanmars democratically elected National League for Democracy government in a Feb. 1 coup.

Nine months after the takeover, security forces have killed 1,233 civilians and arrested at least 7,012 nationwide, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisonersmostly during crackdowns on anti-junta protests.

Evidence for international court

Human rights activist Nikky Diamond told RFA that local organizations need to gather evidence of the juntas war crimes for international arbitration.

Those who commit war crimes can be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court, he said of The Hague-based tribunal.

Human rights groups should learn how to gather valid evidence of human rights violations for domestic courts and international tribunals.

The ICC is the only international criminal tribunal that can prosecute individuals convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. In order for the ICC to prosecute human rights abuses by a military or government, the country must be a signatory to the Rome Statute.

The Rome Statute, which established the ICC, was signed on July 1, 2002, and currently has 123 member states. Forty-two countries, including Myanmar, have yet to sign the treaty.

Sources say that when the military conducts an operation in an area where it believes residents are supporting the PDF, its troops typically burn down villages and arrest the people who live there.

Human rights groups say rights abuses such as arresting locals and using them as human shields regularly take place throughout Myanmar.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Mytel financial chief Thein Aung and his wife Theint Aung Thu are shown in an undated photo.

A top executive of Myanmars military-owned telecommunications company Mytel was shot dead in an attack outside his home in Yangon on Thursday that also left his wife seriously injured, RFA has learned.

Thein Aung, a retired navy lieutenant commander who served as Mytels chief financial officer, died instantly in the early morning attack on Tay Nu Yin Road as he and his wife left their house in Yangons Mayangone township, witnesses said.

He was shot four times as he and his wife left their house in the morning at the 7th mile bus stop in Ward 7, one township resident said.

Thein Aungs wife Theint Aung Thu was injured in the attack and is receiving treatment at an area hospital, a press statement by Myanmars ruling State Administration Council, calling the killing of Thein Aung, 56, an attack by an armed terrorist.

Junta forces arrived shortly after the shooting and cordoned off the neighborhood.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the shooting, and the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) set up to oppose rule by the countrys military, which overthrew civilian rule in a Feb. 1 coup, was unavailable for comment.

In addition to being an executive at Mytel, a joint venture between the military and Vietnamese Defense Ministry-owned Viettel, Thein Aung also served as the general manager of the conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and its subsidiary Star High Co., Ltd,, the online news outlet Myanmar Now reported.

The MEC was one of two big Myanmar military holding companies that were hit with sanctions by the United States and Britain last March to squeeze the junta that deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government on Feb. 1 and had at the time killed nearly 300 people in fierce attacks on daily protests.

Rights groups and analysts quickly deplored the killing of Thein Aung, who was reportedly close to Gen. Maung Maung Kyaw, commander in chief of the countrys Air Force and Admiral Moe Aung, commander in chief of the Navy.

The targeted killing of an executive of a company is something that cannot be condoned from a human rights perspective, Phil RobertsonAsia division director for New York-based Human Rights Watchtold RFA Thursday.

Obviously, this person was close to the military. But such tacticsassassinating a man while he is out on a walk with his wifejust show how bad the situation has become in Myanmar, Robertson said.

Robertson noted that ongoing abuses that are being perpetrated by the military and the police have radicalized people in a very significant way, and that reaction to the violence was not surprising.

But doing so in this way is just going to create more tit-for-tat violence that will make all the people of Burma suffer," he said.

[People] should not be able to decide who should live and who should die. This is only tribalism, added Sai Kyi Zin Soe, a political and human rights analyst based in Yangon.

But is has been nine months now since the military coup, and there has been no change. People feel suffocated, and more and more have been experiencing poverty and hardship. It is becoming harder to survive, and the state of security for everyone is in decline.

The killing in Myanmars commercial hub and former capital comes a month after anti-junta forces claimed they had damaged or destroyed 120 telecom towers owned by Mytel in attacks across Myanmar between Sept. 4 and Oct 7.

Engineers have estimated the loss at 20 billion kyats (U.S. $10.3 million) in attacks a Mandalay anti-junta militia member told RFA were in retaliation for the militarys extrajudicial killings and indiscriminate arrests and torture of pro-democracy civilians.

Mytel makes money that benefits the military, and the latter buys weapons with that money, so if we attack Mytel, we would block the flow of money, the fighter told RFA last month.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Richard Finney.
The move threatens younger Tibetans' connection to their religion and culture, some analysts say.

Authorities in northwestern Chinas Qinghai province are forcing young Tibetan monks to leave their monasteries, sending them back to their family homes in a drive that threatens their connection to Tibets traditional religion and culture, sources say.

The move, announced in a Religious Affairs Regulation on Oct. 1, has already seen monks aged 11 to 15 years expelled from Dhitsa monastery in Qinghai, historically a part of northeastern Tibets Amdo region, a source in the area told RFA in a written message.

Also, young monks in Jakhyung monastery and other monasteries in Qinghai have been forced to give up their robes and are being sent back home, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Government officials are now inspecting these monasteries to make sure the regulation is being obeyed.

Enforcement of the new rule was launched on Oct. 20, and higher-up officials have been very strict in implementing it, the source said, adding that the number of young monks expelled so far under the regulation is still unclear.

But they are being told they cant return to the monasteries or wear monks robes anymore, and whether they will now be sent to government schools or not is also unclear, he said. None of them were forced to become monks, and they enrolled in the monasteries with their parents consent.

The new regulation says that monasteries in Qinghai may no longer admit underage boys as monks or allow them to take part in religious activities, but doesnt specify the age limit required, the source said.

Authorities in Tibetan-populated regions of neighboring Sichuan had already begun three years ago to remove young monks from their monasteries so they could return to government-run schools and learn to serve society, Tibetan sources told RFA in earlier reports.

Many had enrolled in the monasteries courses in Buddhist philosophy and logic and some were top students in their class, sources said.

Chinese authorities have long sought to restrict the size and influence of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, traditionally a focus of Tibetan cultural and national identity, sources in the region say.

Before 2008, according to a government regulation passed in the capital city of Lhasa, no one there was allowed to enroll as a monk under the age of 18, said Tenzin Phentok, a researcher at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibet Policy Institute.

So now the same kind of regulation is being implemented and forced upon Tibetans [in other places], Phentok said, calling the campaign an attempt to further eradicate Tibetan religion and culture as China moves to Sinicize the region.

Pema Gyal, a researcher at London-based Tibet Watch, added that Chinese authorities say that young Tibetans should complete their education in regular schools before coming of age.

But in reality, this is just an attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to assimilate Tibetan religious institutions, and to disconnect younger Tibetans from learning their own religion by instilling Chinese communist beliefs in them from a young age, he said.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Dozens of member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have invoked the so-called Vienna Mechanism to request answers from Belarus on serious human rights violations and abuses taking place in the country following a disputed presidential election in August 2020.



In a letter dated November 4 and sent to the Belarusian permanent representative to the OSCE in Vienna, the United States, Canada, all EU member states except Poland, and seven other European countries said the situation in Belarus has deteriorated over the past year.

The 35 countries asked Minsk to provide answers on the use of excessive force against peaceful protesters, arbitrary or unjust arrests or detention, and more than 1,500 cases of credible reports of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, among other things.



The Belarusian authorities are requested to respond to the demand within 10 days.



Authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka has cracked down hard on the pro-democracy movement and civil society after unprecedented anti-government protests erupted across Belarus following the August 2020 election in which he claimed reelection to a sixth term.



Thousands of people have been arrested, dozens of news websites blocked, and independent media shuttered as part of the sweeping clampdown, which has pushed most of the top opposition figures out of the country.



The opposition and the West say the presidential vote was rigged to keep Lukashenka in power. The European Union, the United States, and other countries have refused to recognize Lukashenka as Belarus's legitimate leader.



More than a month after the election -- in September 2020 -- 17 OSCE member states triggered the so-called Moscow Mechanism to establish a mission of experts to report on human rights violations and abuses occurring before, during, and after the vote.



The report concluded that the elections results were neither free nor fair, and massive and systematic violations and abuses of human rights and fundamental freedoms had been committed by the security forces.



The document also provided recommendations to the Belarusian authorities to help end the political crisis in the country, including establishing a dialogue with representatives of the opposition and civil society.
Belarusian soldiers bringing illegal migrants to the border of Poland "threatened to open fire" on Polish troops, the Polands Defense Ministry said on November 4, in what it described as the latest attempt by Minsk to escalate the situation at the frontier.

The incident comes as thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa in recent months have attempted to illegally enter Poland and fellow EU members Latvia and Lithuania from Belarus.

The EU accuses Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka of flying in migrants and funneling them to the bloc's borders to retaliate against Brussels for sanctions imposed over a sweeping crackdown on the political opposition, civil society, and independent media since last years disputed presidential election.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said that on November 3 Polish soldiers located around 250 migrants near a border fence and Belarusian troops guarding them, threatened to open fire on our soldiers.

The actions of Belarusian soldiers looked like an attempt to escalate the situation, but also an attempt to conceal the fact that a group of migrants had entered the territory of [the] Republic of Poland, the Defense Ministry said.

A day earlier, Poland accused Belarus of staging an armed intrusion when unidentified uniformed men crossed into its territory overnight on November 1-2. The ministry summoned the Belarusian charge d'affaires to protest deliberate escalation on the border.

In response, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said it had made a "strong protest" to a Polish diplomat over claims of the border breach.

"Belarus has never provoked and does not intend to provoke border incidents, therefore it categorically rejects such provocations," the Foreign Ministry said in a November 4 statement.

Poland has imposed a state of emergency at the border, put up razor wire, and increased the number of soldiers and guards to stem the flow of migrants crossing from Belarus. Lawmakers last week also approved the building of a $407 million wall on its eastern border.

Last month, the Polish Border Guards said Belarusian forces fired shots -- possibly blank ammunition -- at its soldiers. In other cases, Poland accused Belarusian forces of destroying a razor-wire barrier on the border or encouraging migrants to do so.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters
BUDAPEST -- A top official in Hungary's governing party has confirmed for the first time that the government had bought spyware that was allegedly used to monitor journalists, lawyers, businesspeople, and opposition figures in dozens of countries around the world.

Lajos Kosa, the chairman of the parliament's Committee on Defense and Law Enforcement, told journalists on November 4 following a closed committee session that the Interior Ministry had bought Pegasus software produced by Israels NSO Group.

The company became the center of controversy after an international media consortium reported in July that its Pegasus spyware was used in attempts to hack smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives, and officials in some 50 countries.

Hungary was named in the reports as one of the countries trying to infiltrate the digital devices of a number of targets, triggering protests in Budapest.

Smartphones infected with Pegasus enable operators to record phone calls, access text messages, photos, e-mails, and passwords, track GPS data, and secretly activate microphones and cameras.

Kosa, a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orbans ruling Fidesz party, said that in all cases of surveillance authorities acted legally after receiving the permission of a judge or the Justice Ministry.

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto had previously denied knowing about such data collection, joining other ruling party members in dismissing allegations that the government illegally spied on citizens.

Opposition lawmakers are demanding a probe into the use of Pegasus. They complain that the findings of two special committee sessions examining the case have been classified by the governing party until 2050.

Hungary's government is at odds with many other European Union member states over issues regarding the rule of law and democracy.

The admission comes a day after the United States put the NSO Group on a trade blacklist, saying its software was behind the transnational repression carried out by some foreign governments.

With reporting by AP and ATV
Thousands of Iranians have attended the government-organized commemorations of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," and burning U.S. and Israeli flags.



The embassy takeover sparked a 444-day hostage crisis and a break in diplomatic relations between the two countries that continues today.



State television on November 4 said that 800 cities across Iran staged demonstrations. Last year, the authorities canceled the event due to the coronavirus pandemic.



General Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), delivered a speech to the crowds in Tehran condemning what he called the U.S. aggression in the region over the past decades. A large U.S. flag was spread on the street so protesters could stomp on it.



The commemoration marks the events on November 4, 1979, when hard-line Iranian student demonstrators overran guards and pushed into the embassy compound, enraged that U.S. President Jimmy Carter had allowed Iran's exiled and fatally ill Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to receive cancer treatment in the United States.



The November 4 commemorations across Iran came a day after the European Union, Iran, and the United States announced that indirect talks to resuscitate the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and the Islamic republic would resume on November 29 in Vienna after months of hiatus.

In comments broadcast on state TV, ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi reiterated that Iran wants "result-oriented" nuclear talks and would "stand against excessive demands which could damage our nation's interests."



Former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the landmark accord in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions.



Trump's successor, Joe Biden, who took office in January, has pledged to rejoin the deal if Iran returns to full compliance. But talks that resumed in April in Vienna were halted after Raisi's election in June.

With reporting by AP and AFP
Thirty years after Lithuania achieved independence from the Soviet Union, it is requesting that Greece hand over a man from Ukraine who was involved in a Soviet military intervention. Oleksandr Radkevic was a tank driver when Soviet troops entered Vilnius in January 1991 to suppress the independence movement, an operation that led to 14 civilian deaths. Lithuania gained statehood months later and the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Russian and Belarusian leaders have signed off on a series of road maps aimed at deepening the integration of the two neighbors as part of a decades-old plan to create a Union State, state media reported on November 4, as Minsk faces growing international pressure following last year's disputed presidential election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed an agreement providing for a total of 28 integration programs at an online meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State.

The document focuses mainly on economic and regulatory issues, including common policies on taxation, banking, industry, agriculture, and energy. In addition, the two leaders approved a joint military doctrine.

There was no mention of issues surrounding political integration.

Moscow and Minsk signed a Union State treaty in 1999 and have been negotiating on and off since then.

The project would be a major step toward uniting the two countries economies and political structures, but also could undermine Belarus's sovereignty, something Lukashenka has strenuously resisted for years.

But the authoritarian leader has been increasingly isolated and shunned by much of the international community since a presidential election in August 2020 in which he claimed reelection to a sixth term.

The vote was condemned by Belaruss opposition and the West as rigged, and prompted months of street protests that Belarusian security forces have harshly cracked down on.

The European Union, the United States, and other countries have not recognized Lukashenka as Belaruss president and imposed several rounds of sanctions over a sweeping crackdown on the political opposition, civil society, and independent media.

Amid the isolation, Lukashenka has moved closer to Russia, seeking loans and military support from Putin.

Speaking during the televised video meeting with Lukashenka on November 4, Putin promised Moscow's continued backing.

"We will together resist any attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of our sovereign states and Russia will, of course, continue to provide assistance to the brotherly Belarusian people," the Russian president said from Crimea, a Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.

Lukashenka thanked Putin for his support.

"The unprecedented external pressure has become a serious test of strength for the relations between our countries. We can say with confidence that we have passed that test," he said.

Exiled opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Lukashenka no longer had the legitimacy to sign such documents and said people were being kept in the dark about the details involved.

In 2020 our people denied authorization for Lukashenka to sign anything on their behalf, she tweeted.

With reporting by AFP
The United States has announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any individual holding a key leadership position in DarkSide, a cybercrime group believed to be tied to Russia.

The State Department said in a statement on November 4 that it was also offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction in any country of an individual conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide ransomware incident earlier this year.

The FBI identified the DarkSide syndicate behind the largest publicly disclosed cyberattack against critical infrastructure in the United States.

The group disbanded after its ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline disrupted fuel service to the U.S. East Coast for six days in May.

Colonial Pipeline officials eventually paid a ransom of more than $4 million. The Justice Department later said it had recovered most of the bitcoin ransom.

At the time, President Joe Biden said that U.S. officials do not believe the Russian government was involved in the hack but added: We do have strong reason to believe that the criminals who did the attack are living in Russia. Thats where it came from.

In offering this reward, the United States demonstrates its commitment to protecting ransomware victims around the world from exploitation by cyber criminals, the State Department said in its statement.

It added that the United States looks to nations who harbor ransomware criminals that are willing to bring justice for those victim businesses and organizations affected by ransomware.

In September, another ransomware attack believed to be the work of Russian hackers forced an association of corn and soy farmers based in the U.S. state of Iowa to take its systems offline.

The attack was attributed to a group called BlackMatter, which security researchers believed may be a reconstituted version of DarkSide.
Russia on November 4 registered a new record number of daily COVID-19 deaths for the third day in a row.

Russia's coronavirus task force reported a record high of virus deaths -- 1,195 -- despite the imposition of a nationwide workplace shutdown and the introduction of restrictions in several regions.

It also reported 40,217 new infections in the past 24 hours, including 6,305 in Moscow.

Several Russian regions have opted to extend a one-week workplace shutdown that took effect nationwide on October 30 in response to a surge in infections.

Authorities in the Kursk and Bryansk regions, which border Ukraine; the Chelyabinsk region near the Ural Mountains; Tomsk in Siberia; and the western region of Smolensk said on November 3 that their shutdowns would continue after November 8.

The Novgorod region already announced on November 1 that it was extending its shutdown by a week.

President Vladimir Putin gave regional authorities the option of extending the workplace shutdown.

Moscow authorities, meanwhile, said businesses there would reopen on November 8. Other measures, including a requirement that companies have at least 30 percent of their staff work from home, would remain in place, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

"The spread of the disease has stabilized in terms of its detection and its severe forms requiring hospitalization," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Mayor Sergei Sobyanin as saying.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
A Dutch newspaper says Russian authorities have expelled its correspondent who has lived in the country since 2015 -- the second such decision against a Western journalist in months.

The De Volkskrant daily said in its report on November 3 that its correspondent Tom Vennink's residence permit in Russia was canceled two days earlier due to what authorities called "two administrative violations."

According to the newspaper, Vennink was informed that he was barred from entering Russia until January 2025 and ordered to leave the country in three days.

Russia's Interior Ministry explained the decision by citing two alleged violations -- Vennink's failure to inform authorities in Moscow in a timely manner about his new address in 2019, for which he was ordered to pay a fine, and the journalist visiting the Far Eastern Chukotka Peninsula in January 2020 without obtaining preliminary permission from the region's authorities.

"It is a mystery to us why the Russian government has decided this now," De Volkskrant's Editor in Chief Pieter Klok said, adding that in previous years "such administrative violations were never an obstacle to extending the residence permit."

In an interview with RFE/RLs Russian Service, Vennink said there were already some issues in getting a new accreditation from the Foreign Ministry.

I [usually] get an accreditation for one year. But [last] time, I only got an accreditation for seven weeks. And there was no explanation for this given to me, he said from Amsterdam.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry expressed regret about the Russian authorities' decision.

"It is not acceptable for the Netherlands if a journalist has to leave a country against his will. Press freedom is a great asset," outgoing Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Knapen said.

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In its report about the expulsion of its correspondent, De Volkskrant wrote that Dutch-Russian relations have been tense since the downing of MH17 by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard, mostly Dutch citizens, in 2014.

The plane was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

The newspaper also said that the decision to deport Vennink came days after an appeals court in the Netherlands ruled that Ukraine has legal control over a trove of ancient artifacts from Crimea that was on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia seized the peninsula in 2014.

The decision was hailed by Ukraine and slammed by Russia.

On November 5, the Dutch Supreme Court is expected to rule in a long-running conflict over the defunct Yukos oil company, in which the Russian government and former shareholders are facing each other.

An adviser to the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the Permanent Court of Arbitration had correctly concluded that Russia owes 47 billion euros ($54.4 billion) to the former shareholders of the energy giant.

"There are a lot of problems, diplomatic problems, and it is possible that Russia has decided to expel me because of this," Vennink told RFE/RL.

In late August, Russian authorities expelled a BBC correspondent, Sarah Rainsford, after Moscow accused London of discriminating against Russian journalists working in the United Kingdom.

The British broadcaster called Rainsfords expulsion an assault on media freedom, while Rainsford wrote: "Russia is entering a dark period in which it no longer pretends to be a democracy."

With reporting by De Volkskrant and Mark Krutov from RFE/RL's Russian Service
Two former inmates of the penal colony in Russia's Vladimir region have described what they said were the penitentiary administration's methods used to put pressure on jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.



Nariman Osmanov and Yevgeny Burak told Dozhd TV in an interview broadcast on November 4 that the colony administration placed Navalny in a group of inmates that had been specially formed to deal with the opposition leader.



According to Osmanov, all the inmates in the brigade had been instructed not to talk to Navalny and record each of his steps on a daily basis.



Burak said that at least 10 inmates always followed Navalny, even in bathrooms, constantly trying to provoke the politician to hit them, which Navalny managed to avoid.



Osmanov and Burak said that a purported documentary film was shown in the colony insinuating that Navalny was gay.



Homosexual inmates in jails and prisons across Russia and most of the former Soviet republics face daily humiliation and torture and are forced to do menial work.



Osmanov also said that when Navalny was on hunger strike in the colony, prison guards moved next to his bed the bed of an inmate who was said to be suffering from tuberculosis -- a rumor later proven to be not true.



Osmanov said that during Navalny's hunger strike, some inmates brought a bag of sausages to the barrack and started roasting the sausages on the premises, which is usually not permitted.



According to Osmanov, all the actions were ordered by the penitentiary administration.



Navalny was arrested in January on his return to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for a nerve-agent poisoning he claims was carried out by Russian security agents at President Vladimir Putin's behest, which the Kremlin has denied.



Navalny was subsequently sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on a parole violation on a conviction that he denounces as absurd and politically motivated.



Thousands of Russians were detained during nationwide protests calling for his release.

With reporting by Dozhd
The number of coronavirus infections in Ukraine has exceeded 3 million with more than 70,000 deaths, the Health Ministry said on November 4, as Eastern Europe continues to struggle with a surge in COVID-19 cases amid low inoculation rates prompted by vaccine skepticism and disinformation.

The ministry said it had registered a record daily high of 27,377 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, exceeding the previous high of 26,870 on October 29.

RFE/RL's Coronavirus Coverage Features and analysis, videos, and infographics explore how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the countries in our region.

The country of some 40 million people also reported 699 new coronavirus-related deaths.

Ukraine, one of Europe's poorest countries, has been hit by a huge rise in infections with the more contagious Delta variant.

The spike in new infections and deaths prompted authorities to implement strict restrictions and urge people to get vaccinated. But the tough restrictions have sparked protests.

More than 1,000 people rallied in central Kyiv on November 3. Demonstrators gathered near the parliament building and blocked roads, holding posters reading, "No to vaccination," "Say no to COVID passports," and, "Say no to COVID genocide."

No incidents were reported amid a strong police presence.

Only about 17 percent -- or 7.6 million people -- have been fully vaccinated with four available shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Sinovac.

Some Ukrainians prefer to pay for fake vaccination certificates, and police have opened hundreds of cases into false inoculation documents.

Vaccinations have become mandatory for some state employees, and in areas with high infection rates, such as Kyiv, only vaccinated people or those with negative COVID-19 test results are allowed into restaurants, gyms, and on public transport.

Last week, the government also started requiring proof of vaccination, recovery from infection, or negative COVID-19 tests for people boarding airplanes, trains, and long-distance buses.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko told RFE/RL this week that a large number of people are getting severely sick and that the capacity of hospitals is more than 80 percent full.

With hospitals reaching full capacity, the Health Ministry predicts that the greatest load on medical facilities will fall from mid-November until the beginning of next year.

Widespread vaccine skepticism has been blamed on a lack of trust in state institutions and on disinformation that spreads on social media.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week pleaded with Ukrainians to ignore fake news and get inoculated.

"Switch off social networks and turn on your brain," Zelenskiy said.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, AP, AFP, and Reuters
KYIV -- The Ukrainian parliament has approved the appointment of the former deputy prime minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, to the post of defense minister.

A total of 273 lawmakers voted for Reznikovs appointment to the post on November 4, a day after parliament accepted Reznikov's resignation as deputy prime minister for the reintegration of eastern regions controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Some 74 lawmakers abstained.

The 55-year-old Reznikov represented Ukraine on the working political subgroup at the Trilateral Contact Group, which meets to try and resolve the ongoing conflict in parts of Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, commonly known as the Donbas.

Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea region and began backing fighters in parts of the two eastern provinces after months-long protests in Kyiv prompted Kremlin-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych to flee in February 2014.

The resulting seven-year war has taken the lives of more than 13,200 people and, along with the forcible annexation of Crimea, devastated Ukraines economy.

The Ukrainian governments parliamentary envoy, Taras Melnychuk, said on November 3 that lawmakers will vote on November 4 to fill four vacant ministerial posts after a series of resignations this week.

Iryna Vereshchuk has been nominated to take Reznikovs former post; Pavlo Ryabikin to the post of minister for strategic industries; while Yulia Svyrydenko is the candidate to the post of the first deputy prime minister and minister of economy.
For months, critics have accused Russia of withholding additional natural-gas shipments to Europe via Ukraine in order to pressure Brussels to fast-track its new Baltic Sea export pipeline, Nord Stream 2.

Once it receives final approvals, the pipeline to Germany will enable Russia to reroute gas exports to Europe around Ukraine, depriving the cash-strapped country of billions of dollars a year in transit fees.

In the meantime, the energy crunch in Europe has helped drive natural-gas prices to record highs, denting energy-intensive economies like that of Ukraine, which imports one-third of its gas needs.

Now Russia's energy fight with Ukraine appears to be spilling over into the coal and electricity sectors, potentially setting Kyiv up for an energy crisis this winter, particularly if it's a cold one.

Russia announced on October 29 that it would temporarily halt shipments of anthracite, a cleaner coal used for heating, to Ukraine starting on November 1. Russia's Economy Ministry said the coal was needed for domestic consumption even as Moscow ramps up exports of the commodity to other countries in Europe as well as Asia.

The suspension of coal deliveries comes as Ukraine's own stockpiles are already low heading into winter, depleted by greater-than-expected demand during the hot summer and slightly lower domestic production than usual.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been deeply antagonistic since Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and backed separatists whose war against government forces in the coal-rich Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 13,000 people since that April.

But Russia remains the largest exporter of thermal coal to Ukraine, accounting for two-thirds of imports by volume, and imports from Russia have accounted for one-third of Ukraine's coal consumption this year.

Ukraine has increased imports of coal from Russia since the Moscow-backed fighters seized control of swaths of the Donbas in 2014. The territory they hold includes dozens of the region's coal mines, many of which produce the cleaner anthracite grade that fuels several of Ukraine's power plants.

In other words, some of the thermal coal Ukraine buys from Russia is likely produced in Ukraine.

Prices And Pressure

With its largest foreign supplier now out of the picture, Ukraine is scrambling to buy more coal from the United States, Kazakhstan, Poland, and South Africa. It won't be cheap, and it will pile more pressure on Ukraine's struggling economy.

Coal prices have skyrocketed as power plants around the world turn to the dirty energy source amid record prices for natural gas. China, the world's second-largest economy, has tripled its thermal coal imports from Russia this year due to the global energy crunch.

At the start of November, coal reserves at Ukrainian thermal power plants stood at 578,000 tons, just one-fifth of the government's plan for 2.9 million tons, according to data from the Energy Ministry and national statistics service. That has raised some concern inside the country about a potential crisis.

Amid the coal shortage, meanwhile, Ukraine announced in October that it would end a ban on imports of electricity from Russia and northern neighbor Belarus, now Moscow's close ally, to help balance its power system. However, Russia canceled a power auction that had been scheduled for October 21 while Belarus has delayed its most recent auction.

As part of its geopolitical shift westward, Ukraine is due to complete the synchronization of its power system with the European electricity grid in 2023. But for now, it's still connected to the Russian and Belarusian grids, a legacy of the Soviet Union that gives Moscow and Minsk potential leverage.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has sought to keep Ukraine in its orbit, opposing closer integration with the European Union and particularly NATO. Analysts and Kremlin critics say Russia has used its massive energy resources as a lever of influence over Kyiv.

Ilya Ponomaryov, a former Russian lawmaker and staunch Putin critic who is now an executive for a Kyiv-based energy and mining firm, asserts that Moscow's suspension of coal shipments and the power auction cancelation are not a coincidence, but an attempt to drive tariffs higher.

"Somebody in Moscow believes that Ukraine will run into serious energy-supply difficulties throughout the winter season. Obviously, Russia wants additional leverage to press on Ukraine's government," Ponomaryov told RFE/RL.

Energy tariffs are a very sensitive political issue in Ukraine, where a large portion of the population struggles to make ends meet. Ukrainian presidents regulate electricity prices for households -- sometimes below cost -- in hopes of preserving or boosting their popularity.

Policy Problems?

Ukrainian government regulation of its power industry partially prepared the groundwork for the current energy crunch, analysts say.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's ratings have fallen sharply since his landslide election in April 2019, and his government has maintained heavy-handed regulation of the power market despite the introduction of Western-backed reforms for the wholesale sector in July 2019, months after he took office. That has only mired the industry in greater debt.

Olena Pavlenko, president of DiXi Group, a Kyiv-based think tank specializing in energy research, told RFE/RL that the administration's price caps on the wholesale market were "too low" for thermal power producers, crimping their ability to buy coal.

Coal-fired power plants are high-cost producers of electricity compared with nuclear and hydroelectric plants, and thus are more sensitive to price caps.

DTEK, a vertically integrated energy company that dominates the power sector and is owned by Ukraine's richest man, tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, cut output and coal production during the summer, citing the low prices.

State-owned coal mines also cut production.

Centrenergo, which buys a significant portion of its coal from state-owned mines, quickly depleted its reserves during the summer and did not generate enough cash to rebuild them.

Centrenergo, which accounts for 14 percent of Ukraine's installed electric power capacity, is currently operating only three of its 23 energy blocs, with the rest offline due to a combination of maintenance work and low coal reserves.

The company's coal reserves currently in storage are about 1/10th of the state's plan.

However, Centrenergo's management said it would be ready for winter. The company has ordered more coal after receiving financial help from other state-owned companies.

Analysts say mismanagement at Centrenergo, which has been mired in scandal over the years, is also to blame for its current problems.

But the coal shortage doesn't just lie at the feet of companies. Pavlenko says it also appears the government and energy regulators did not properly prepare for the heating season. "The main task of the government and regulator is to find prices that would allow [thermal energy producers] to reserve some money to buy coal," she said.

Zelenskiy's administration recently raised the price cap on the wholesale market, prompting DTEK to begin ramping up coal output.

Crisis, What Crisis?

Nonetheless, the government has looked to place blame in the other direction, with National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov raising the question of possible "sabotage" of the state's energy-security plans by "oligarchic circles."

As a result, the government plans to carry out surprise inspections of power companies in the coming weeks.

Ukraine's Energy Ministry sought to calm nerves about a possible winter crisis, telling RFE/RL that following the power price increase, thermal power companies had enough money to buy coal.

The ministry also said that Energoatom, the state-owned nuclear power operator, was ready to ramp up production to meet any shortage. Nuclear power currently accounts for half of Ukraine's electricity production.

The ministry said Energoatom was ready to operate 14 of its 15 nuclear reactors this winter, a record high. Only 10 operated last winter. The ministry said that Energoatom could run all 15 blocks this winter if needed after it carried out extensive maintenance work.
The UN Security Council extended a peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina in a unanimous vote on November 3 that came after any mention of the office of an international peace envoy was removed from the text of the resolution to win support from Russia and China.



The vote authorizes the 600-strong European Union-led peacekeeping force, known as EUFOR, for another year.



The removal of any reference to the Office of the High Representative came after its current occupant, Christian Schmidt, said in his first report to the Security Council that the Balkan nation faces an existential threat from separatist actions by Bosnia Serbs.



Schmidts report warned that the prospects for further division and conflict in Bosnia are very real" and said threats by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik to withdraw Serb troops from the Bosnian Army and create a separate Serb force and other moves would "ultimately undermine the states ability to function and carry out its constitutional responsibilities.

Schmidt, who assumed the Office of the High Representative in August, did not brief the council on November 3 in what diplomats said was another move to placate Russia and China. But UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent his report to the 15 members of the Security Council.



Russia has long backed Republika Srpskas request to shut down the Office of the High Representative, which was set up as part of the 1995 peace deal to ensure compliance with civilian aspects of the accords.



During the debate on the resolution, Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Western representatives of having a "dismissive attitude" toward Bosnia's sovereignty.



There was a "lack of desire to step outside of the image of a guardian of Bosnia and Herzegovina who has a right to dictate how Bosnians are to build their state and govern their country, he said.



Nebenzia told the council that Moscow believes the high representative was appointed in violation of international law" and strongly objected to the report from what he called a private person being circulated to council members.



The report is an extreme biased and anti-Serb document the likes of which we haven't seen for a long time, he said.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for an end to the heated rhetoric from Dodik and agreed with Schmidts assessment that Dodiks talk of Republika Srpskas possible withdrawal from Bosnia is a dangerous path not only for Bosnia but for the wider Western Balkan region.



She also said Dodik's talk of drafting a new constitution for Republika Srpska would pose a serious threat to the Dayton accords, the 1995 peace deal that ended the war.



Thomas-Greenfield called for protection of the role of the high representative, whose office serves as a foundation of stability for the country. She also said Bosnia needs electoral and "limited constitutional" reform and stepped-up efforts to combat corruption so it can move forward on its EU path.



France's UN ambassador, Nicolas De Riviere, backed the high representative's role and condemned all forms of questioning of the territorial integrity and the existence of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state."



He called on the country's political leaders to overcome their divisions and make progress toward EU membership.



Sven Alkajal, Bosnias ambassador to the UN, said he agreed with Schmidts assessment that Bosnia currently is facing its greatest existential threat since the war.



He said Dodiks plan is not only problematic and not possible under the existing constitution and would take Bosnia back 15 years.

With reporting by AP and Reuters
TASHKENT -- Sergei grew up in Namangan, the eastern Uzbek city where Islamic traditions persisted despite decades of atheist Soviet rule.

As a young communist in high school in the 1980s, Sergei was ordered to a nearby bazaar to forcibly remove burqas -- known locally as "paranjas" -- from any Uzbek woman who dared wear one.

The authorities demonized and ridiculed the heavy, black, and shapeless paranjas with horse-hair veils that made women look eyeless as a sign of "medieval obscurantism."

State campaigns against such Islamic dress went hand in hand with efforts to give women access to higher education and economic independence -- and were hailed as "the awakening of the Oriental woman."

"There was a lot of yelling and protests," said Sergei -- a gaunt, mustachioed bookstore owner -- in his apartment in Tashkent. "I never thought they'd be back."

But some four decades later, they are the most vivid visual example of the breakneck speed of Islamization that is taking place in Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous country of some 36 million.

Coupled with the real or presumed threat of a resurgent Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, the Islamization has alarmed many and sown panic among Uzbekistan's ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking community.

Some of them -- including Sergei, who owns a small bookstore and for decades dismissed the idea of moving to Russia or elsewhere -- want to leave because of it.

Revival Or Radicalization?

While paranjas are a rare sight in the capital, Tashkent, many women -- including teenage girls -- are seen sporting hijabs and dressing conservatively. Their numbers have increased manyfold since President Shavkat Mirziyoev's government lifted a ban on the wearing of head scarves in public places in July.

And many men grow full beards -- something deemed impossible and even perilous during the 1991-2016 rule of first Uzbek President Islam Karimov, a former Communist Party apparatchik who initially resisted the Soviet Union's dissolution.

His government even instructed police to detain and forcibly shave full-bearded men and interrogate them about their alleged "Islamic radicalism." Thousands of Muslims who practiced their faith outside government-approved mosques were jailed, according to rights groups and Western observers.

After coming to power in 2016, Mirziyoev initially amnestied many jailed Muslims and secular dissidents and gradually eased religious freedoms -- a policy that was recently reversed with suspected Islamists being jailed, as was outlined in a report for the U.S. Council on International Religious Freedom.

These actions are no doubt being taken because of the speed of Islamization in the country. "One can witness the growing number of radical youth, and the government [indirectly] encourages it [with its policies]," Nigara Khidoyutova, who was forced out of Uzbekistan after co-founding the opposition Free Farmers Party in 2005, told RFE/RL.

"Coupled with the growing corruption, a weak civil society, the illiteracy of the youth, omnipresent lawlessness and injustice, it creates a combustive mix that only needs a spark," she said.

Inspired By The Taliban

Another recent event -- the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August -- made the Islamization look more worrisome to Uzbekistan's ethnic Russian community of some 720,000 (there were about 1.65 million ethnic Russians in the Uzbek S.S.R. in 1989).

Some religious Uzbeks hailed the Taliban's triumph, saying on Telegram channels and social networks that they were inspired by the "expulsion" of the Americans from the war-torn country and supported Afghan society being based on Shari'a law.

Timir Karpov, a human rights advocate and founder of the 139 Documentary Center art gallery, told RFE/RL that "ideas of the Taliban" have gained real traction in Uzbekistan. "That's why [so many ethnic Russians and Russian speakers] are tense and have their suitcases ready," he said.

The Taliban sent delegations to the Central Asian countries and Moscow to assure them that their ethnic Pashtun movement no longer embraces international jihadists such as Osama bin Laden and will treat Afghanistan's minorities -- including Uzbeks and Tajiks -- fairly.

But many Uzbeks remember the panic caused in 1999, when a squad of Taliban-backed Uzbek Islamists briefly seized a village in southern Kyrgyzstan and demanded passage to Uzbekistan's section of the Ferghana Valley.

Even though Bishkek and Tashkent said the insurgents had eventually been "liquidated," the raid spurred a small exodus of ethnic Russians, Russian speakers, and even progressive ethnic Uzbeks.

Creating 'Mankurts'

Famous Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov created the term "mankurt" for his 1980 novel The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years to describe an unthinking slave -- a condition created by a form of torture involving a shrinking camel hide tied around one's shaved head.

Nationalists all over Central Asia use the macabre term to describe their ethnic kin -- Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Uzbeks -- who grew up speaking Russian. And the communists did everything they could to breed generations of "mankurts."

Soviet Uzbekistan absorbed several massive migrations, including the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews who were evacuated to its warmer, warless climes during the World War II Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R.

Many opted to stay -- and witnessed the arrival of entire deported ethnic groups -- Crimean Tatars, Pontic Greeks, Volga Germans, and Koreans from Russia's Far East. After the 1966 earthquake that leveled parts of Tashkent, tens of thousands more people arrived from all over the Soviet Union to help rebuild the city.

The "Sovietization" equaled the Russification of locals and the newcomers. Many urban Uzbeks sent their children to Russian-language schools -- while almost every Uzbek male went through two years of compulsory military service in which they spoke compulsory Russian.

Another major factor that deprived Uzbeks of their immense cultural heritage was when Moscow replaced their Arabic-based alphabet in the 1920s with a Latin one -- and then a Cyrillic one in the 1930s.

The teaching of Arabic in Uzbekistan was reduced to one university, while the U.S.S.R.'s only theological school functioned in the ancient city of Bukhara -- and was shown to foreign Muslim dignitaries such as Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri or champion boxer Muhammad Ali as proof of "religious freedom."

Theological works by Muslim renaissance men such as Avicenna were no longer available to generations of Uzbeks, and their religiosity was reduced to the knowledge of basic prayers and rituals.

Breeding Jihadism

But in places like the densely populated Ferghana Valley, Islam remained entrenched in many walks of life. One of the valley's main cities, Namangan, played a crucial role in the birth of Uzbek jihadism.

The 1981-91 Soviet-Afghan war gave thousands of Central Asian conscripts a chance to see a deeply religious Muslim society.

Two war veterans and Namangan natives, Tohir Yuldash and Juma Namangani, declared Shari'a law in Namangan -- their hometown -- in 1991 and publicly humiliated President Karimov when he arrived for talks and made mistakes in the Islamic prayer ritual.

Yuldash and Namangani later fled to Afghanistan to launch the militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) that organized the 1999 incursion into Kyrgyzstan and later fought against the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Years after the IMU founders' death, many of its members pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and morphed it into the Islamic State-Khorasan group that is currently battling the Taliban.

Uzbekistan's Russians are not always familiar with the intricacies of their fight in Afghanistan -- but see how it influences religious Uzbeks. "The Taliban may not come here today, but they affect the minds of locals," Fyodor, Sergei's son-in-law, told RFE/RL. He is also packing up to leave for Russia, citing Islamization as the main reason. He is ready to sell his small publishing company and apartment in a luxurious building.

Fyodor is worried about the future of his 5-year-old daughter, Polina, who is the only ethnic Russian in her kindergarten class. "She has no one to play with," he said as she quietly watched a Russian cartoon on his phone.
Richmond, KY (40475)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain for the afternoon. High around 55F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

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Light rain early. Decreasing clouds overnight. Low 31F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Weather Alert

...WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 9 PM CST THIS EVENING... * WHAT...Northwest winds 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 45 mph expected. * WHERE...Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, Washington and Ozaukee Counties. * WHEN...From 1 PM this afternoon to 9 PM CST this evening. * IMPACTS...Gusty winds could blow around unsecured objects. Tree limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Use extra caution when driving, especially if operating a high profile vehicle. Secure outdoor objects. &&
Rocky Mount, NC (27804)

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Some early morning breaks in the overcast, otherwise cloudy. High 63F. Winds light and variable..

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Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low 47F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Roanoke Rapids, NC (27870)

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A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 61F. Winds light and variable..

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Cloudy with occasional light rain late. Low 46F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Danvers, MA (01923)

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Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. High 54F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Cloudy. Some light rain is likely. Low 47F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
By the time Kim Martellos body was found in the Palm Springs desert, investigators had to use dental records to identify her. The Orange County woman had gone missing in July 1991, and was found three days later by two transients.

When local forensic entomologist David Faulkner was brought on to the case, he found something that didnt belong.

He said the maggots crawling on Martellos remains werent all desert dwellers, and if she had been killed in Palm Springs, they should have been.

There was an initial infestation of urban insects, and a second infestation in the desert, Faulkner explained.

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Because the corpse bore city bugs, the specialist was able to determine shed been killed somewhere else. Her body had been in that first location long enough for insects to find it before her corpse was brought to the desert, where more bugs descended. That clue and others led investigators from the desert to Martellos business partner in Fullerton. They determined hed strangled the woman in a warehouse there and dumped her body in the desert.

Forensic entomology, the study of insects in death and other legal cases, helps solve some of homicide detectives most mysterious cases. It has become a more mainstream profession with help from television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which regularly showcase insect professionals.

Insects are diverse, said Dr. Jason Byrd, president elect of the North American Forensic Entomology Association. They are masters of camouflage, mimicry and self defense. They communicate with sounds, colors, chemicals and touch.

And theyre everywhere, he explained. Because of their behaviors and specificity to given areas, they can offer clues few criminals watch out for.

David Faulkner with some of his specimens. These murders dont make sense, he says. So I focus on the insects. (Nancee E. Lewis photography )

Faulkner, a research associate at the San Diego Natural History Museum, said while most people know insects can be used to help determine when a person died, they can shed light on a lot more than that.

A variety of insects swarm dead bodies  ants, silverfish, beetles  but flies and their maggot offspring are arguably the most helpful in determining about how long someone has been dead.

Once someone dies, the bodys tissues begin to break down and produce fluid and gas. Its a smelly process that signals to a fly that there is a protein-rich place to lay eggs nearby.

Following death, flies are everywhere, even indoors, Faulkner said. A fly could almost immediately land on a body. In 20 minutes, you could have eggs.

Danielle van Dam

Child killer David Westerfield has been on Death Row for a dozen years. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)

Although forensic entomology can be traced back to ancient China, it was thrust into the modern spotlight during the trial of David Westerfield, who was convicted of murdering Danielle Van Dam of Sabre Springs. Faulkner was called in to work on the case the day the 7-year-olds decomposing body was found near a Dehesa trail in 2002.

Cases like that are very difficult especially if youre at the crime scene. Youre more aware of the people involved, he said. These murders dont make sense. They dont. So I focus on the insects.

Faulkner and four other entomologists helped with the Van Dam investigation. And they all had different conclusions, he said.

It was a circus of forensic entomology, Faulkner said.

That case and other cases led to the creation of the North American Forensic Entomology Association, which has helped establish guidelines for the craft. Theres still no national standard, but thats what the organization is working toward, Byrd said. There is also a board certification available.

Prosecutor Jeff Dusek, left, questioned Robert Hall, a forensic entomology expert from Missouri, as he testified in the trial of David Westerfield, in 2002. (U-T file )

Jan Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Sheriffs Department, said its investigators call in entomologists to help on one to three homicide cases a year, particularly when a body is badly decomposed. Crime scene investigators also send bugs to entomologists for study. A San Diego homicide lieutenant said the department also uses entomologists for death investigations, but declined to say how often or for what kinds of cases.

Part of an entomologists job is to figure out what bugs are on the corpse and how old they are. Then they use that information to estimate for investigators how long someone has been dead.

Its not time of death to the minute, but its an estimate that can be very helpful, Faulkner explained.

Insects can whisper other secrets to entomologists, he said, as in the Martello case, when they revealed a body had been moved. Insects can reveal clues as to whether the body was covered, buried, had been outside or indoors, and how hot, cold or humid the weather was. All of these factors affect the infestation of a corpse.

Byrd said insects can also be alibi-busters.

Before murdering five members of his family, including his infant, toddler sons and 2-year-old daughter, Vincent Brothers, a former Bakersfield elementary school vice principal, booked a trip to Ohio.

The 2003 trip to visit his brother during the Fourth of July holiday was meant to serve as an alibi for the mass killing. How could he have slaughtered his family if he was more than 2,000 miles away?

Hundreds of insects stuck to his rental car would be his undoing, Byrd explained.

After arriving in Ohio, Brothers rented a car and drove it back to Bakersfield, killed his family, then drove back to Ohio. But, while driving, he picked up some hitchhikers.

A UC Davis entomology professor testified that some of the insects found on the rented car, in the radiator and other places, could only be found west of the Rocky Mountains. She even noted butterflies werent found on the car, which indicated Brothers likely traveled at night.

This and other evidence, including the mileage on the car, led to Brothers conviction. He received the death penalty.

Theyll remember the hair net, theyll think about wearing their gloves, but they wont think about washing their car real good, Byrd said.

Faulkner said forensic entomology has gotten more sophisticated over the years and some of the most exciting developments involve DNA.

Say theres a crime scene, but no body. Just blood and maggots. Scientists can now retrieve human DNA from inside the insects.

Basically its the victim, Faulkner said of whats extracted. That wont tell you who the victim is, but if you later find a body, you can verify that the body and the crime scene match up. That the body was there.

Byrd said the method can also be used to pull DNA when a normal DNA swab fails. He said investigators once tested blood on an ax for the victims DNA. The test was inconclusive, but the ants that swarmed the bloody weapon had ingested DNA that scientists were able to retrieve, implicating the suspect.
Sanford, NC (27330)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 63F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain developing after midnight. Low 47F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Is it possible that some individuals around the globe are still uninformed of the pandemic? Yes. COVID-19 has left an area in Peru unspoiled, not only in mind. Last month, a remote "forgotten" ethnic community in Peru's Amazon forest heard the phrase "coronavirus."

These indigenous inhabitants of the Mangual hamlet, located in the Loreto area of northern Peru, still do not have access to power or the internet. They live in wooden stilt houses and rely on their hunting and fishing abilities.

According to official mortality figures, all of the members are Urarina, an indigenous ethnic tribe with just 5,800 individuals living on the planet. A community leader in a remote Peruvian town was informed how Covid had decimated most of the world more than a year and a half after the worldwide pandemic began. However, the pandemic affected some individuals residing in areas other than Mangual village, with five people dying due to COVID-19.

Amazon's 'Forgotten' Tribes Discovered About COVID-19 Last Month

According to a Reuters report, Mariano Quisto, the chief of a tribal group in Peru's deep Amazon jungle, learned about the pandemic only when health experts arrived to vaccinate the locals in October 2021.

He told Reuters that he had no idea what COVID-19 meant and that this was the first time he had heard of the virus that was sweeping the globe.

After a three-day boat voyage via rivers that began in the Amazonian city of Iquitos, the world's largest metropolis inaccessible by road, Reuters landed at Quito's Urarina indigenous settlement alongside government health officials and International Red Cross members.

Julio Mendigure, the country's health ministry's head of health strategy for the tribes, said Indigenous communities - particularly in the Amazon - have among of Peru's lowest immunization rates. He claims that just about 20 percent of them have been fully vaccinated, compared to about half of the country.

ALSO READ: Nipah Virus Outbreak Eyed as Trigger of the Next Pandemic; Is Our Healthcare Sector Ready to Face Another Zoonotic Disease?

Shortage of Health Professionals An Issue In Rural Areas

Warren Record said that rural communities have issues not seen in metropolitan regions regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to Warren County Commission Chairman Davis, there are disparities in healthcare availability between urban and rural communities.

Former North Carolina Congresswoman Eva Clayton believes that focusing on rural communities is critical since suffering and vulnerability exist.

Minorities in rural regions, according to Clayton, are the most averse to getting the vaccination. Rural folks with no health insurance are the least likely to obtain the vaccination, she noted.

COVID-19, experts claim, has worsened difficulties that rural communities already suffer. These include loneliness, particularly among the elderly, and a lack of broadband internet connection in many regions.

Warren County Health Director Brake added that community education and outreach have been critical, particularly in delivering information about the COVID-19 vaccination.

For the Amazon tribes' case, Quisto said headaches, diarrhea, malaria, and conjunctivitis are common problems in the town without physicians. He is also worried about taking care of their patients due to the shortage of health professionals in their area.

The native language, which evolved through hundreds of years of isolation from the rest of Peru, is substantially distinct from the Spanish spoken throughout the rest of the country. According to a story in the Daily Star, campaigner Gilberto Inuma stated that brigades haven't visited the area in many years. He went on to say that these areas are truly neglected.

RELATED ARTICLE: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Could Cause Text Anxiety, Expert Recommends Communication Boundaries

Check out more news and information on COVID-19 in Science Times.
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP)  In the fight to curb climate change, several major coal-using nations announced steps Thursday to wean themselves  at times slowly  off of the heavily polluting fossil fuel.

The pledges to phase out coal come on top of other promises made at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that the head of an international energy organization said trimmed several tenths of a degree from projections of future warming. But outside experts called that optimistic.

Optimism also abounded in relation to the promises on coal, which has the dirtiest carbon footprint of the major fuels and is a significant source of planet-warming emissions.

"Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight," said Alok Sharma, who is chairing the conference of nearly 200 nations, known as COP26.

Critics say that vision is still obscured by a lot of smoke because several major economies still have yet to set a date for ending their dependence on the fuel, including the United States, China, India and Japan  which was targeted outside the summit venue Thursday by protesters clad as animated characters.

What nations have promised varies. Some have pledged to quit coal completely at a future date, while others say they'll stop building new plants, and even more, including China, are talking about just stopping the financing of new coal plants abroad.

The British government said pledges of new or earlier deadlines for ending coal use came from more than 20 countries including Ukraine, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and Chile.

Some came with notable caveats, such as Indonesia's request for additional aid before committing to bring its deadline forward to the 2040s.

Meanwhile, Poland, the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, appeared to backtrack on any ambitious new commitments within hours of the announcement.

Energy security and the assurances of jobs is a priority for us," Anna Moskwa, Poland's minister for climate and environment, said in a tweet, citing the government's existing plan which provides for a departure from hard coal by 2049." Earlier in the day, it had seemed that Poland might bring that deadline forward by at least a decade.

Campaigners reacted angrily to the apparent U-turn.

Moskwa has underscored that her government cannot be trusted to sign a postcard, let alone a responsible climate pledge, said Kathrin Gutmann, campaign director of the group Europe Beyond Coal.

Separately, more than two dozen countries, cities and companies joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, whose members commit to ending coal use by 2030, for developed countries, and no later than 2050 for developing ones. Banks that are members pledge not to provide loans for the worst types of coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Denmark and several other nations signed a different pledge to prioritize funding clean energy over fossil fuel projects abroad.

While not completely ruling out financial support for coal-fired power plants, the countries said they would refrain from any new direct public support" for coal except in limited circumstances.

That move was seen as a significant step by environmental campaigners, who said that it could push international lenders to stop providing loans for new fossil fuel projects.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss officials thinking, said that while the U.S. hadnt opted to join the coal phase-out pledges, its commitment to a clean energy future was clear. The Biden administration wants to reach 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.

Underlining the urgent need for action on coal, a new analysis by scientists at Global Carbon Project found emissions from the fuel increased dramatically in 2021, not just from pandemic-struck 2020 levels, but even when compared to pre-pandemic 2019 levels. The world spewed 14.7 billion metric tons (16.2 billion tons) of carbon dioxide from coal burning, 5.7% more than last year, said the group, which tracks annual carbon pollution.

That was mostly spurred by a dramatic increase in China, which hit a new peak of coal emissions this year of 7.6 billion metric tons (8.4 billion tons) of carbon dioxide, more than half the globe's coal emissions, the report said.

Still, experts said the announcement and others made so far at the summit showed the growing momentum to ditch coal.

Todays commitments will help to shift whole continents on their journey to phase out coal," said Dave Jones of the energy think tank Ember.

Ukraine, the third-biggest coal consumer in Europe, is bringing forward its coal deadline, from 2050 to 2035.

Coal production in Ukraine has already dropped significantly over the past few years: From 40.9 million metric tons in 2016 to 28.8 million in 2020 (45 million tons to 32 million), according to the Energy Ministry.

The figures do not include production in the coal fields of separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine, which accounted for about half of Ukraines mines prior to the 2014 uprising.

The progress on coal being shown at COP26 demonstrates that the conditions are ripe for a global coal exit, said Leo Roberts, a senior researcher at the environmental think tank E3G.

We now need to see the incoming massive scale-up in clean energy finance made available quickly to ensure all countries can confidently move from coal to clean, he added.

But some environmental activists said the commitments didn't go far enough.

Emissions from oil and gas already far outstrip coal and are booming, while coal is already entering a terminal decline, said Murray Worthy of the campaign group Global Witness. "This is a small step forwards when what was needed was a giant leap.

The agreements on coal are not part of the formal negotiations at the U.N. talks in Glasgow. But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose country is hosting the conference, had said he wanted to see deals on coal, cars, trees and cash.

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, said Thursday that a new analysis by the Paris-based body shows that fully achieving all the emissions-reduction pledges made on previous days  including for the potent greenhouse gas methane  could allow the world to limit warning to 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

The goal that countries set at a previous conference in Paris is to limit temperature increases to 1.5C (2.7F). A United Nations analysis showed that before Glasgow the world was heading to a 2.7C (4.9F) increase while other analyses showed warming in the mid- to upper-2-degree range also.

Niklas Hohne, of the New Climate Institute and Climate Action Tracker, called Birol's figure optimistic and noted it was based on countries achieving pledges to only emit what can be absorbed  so called net-zero plans  when they haven't yet implemented any actions that would get them there.

___

Associated Press writers Sylvia Hui in London and Ellen Knickmeyer in Glasgow, Scotland, contributed.

___

Follow AP's coverage of the climate conference at http://apnews.com/hub/climate.
Eager King County parents looking to get school-age children vaccinated against COVID-19 should be prepared for high levels of demand in the first few weeks.

Earlier this week, the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine was approved by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee, making over 180,000 children under the age of 12 in King County finally eligible to receive their shot. With shipments of the vaccine now on the way, King County expects to receive doses for 48,000 children in the first week, covering about a quarter of eligible children.

Vaccine appointments for children ages 5 to 11 with the county are currently not available, but parents should expect those appointments to open within the next few days as the shipments arrive. Parents will also be able to register for a waitlist to receive a callback when appointments become available.

Public Health vaccination sites are unable to accommodate drop-in vaccinations.

King County Public Health Officer Dr. Jeff Duchin said to expect a surge of people seeking the vaccine for their children in the coming weeks, making it harder to get an appointment. However, he doesn't expect a shortage of doses.

"I advise parents to not only check our King County sites, but vaccines will also be available in pharmacies community health centers and some health care providers are able to administer it, primarily some of the larger practices," said Dr. Duchin in a Thursday news briefing. "Keep looking, but understand that as with any roll out, demand often exceeds supply initially."

The pediatric vaccine contains the same active ingredients as the adult vaccine, but in a smaller dose. Children must receive two doses over a period of three weeks to be considered fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus. Pfizer's study found the vaccine is more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19.

Although supply will be limited in the first few weeks, there is currently no prioritization scheme based on risk factors for childhood vaccination in King County. Duchin said that the county will work to ensure equitable access to the vaccine for areas in South King County which have been the most impacted by the pandemic.

It is currently unclear if the state Board of Health will require the vaccine for children attending school. Individual school districts in Washington do not have authority to impose vaccine requirements, although the Seattle School Board  the largest school district in the state  has expressed support for making a vaccine mandatory.

While acknowledging that parents might have some hesitancy, state health officials emphasized that the vaccine was the best protection against the virus.

"Its thrilling to know that the strongest form of protection is now available to school-aged kidsand thats the vaccine," said State Secretary of Health Umair A. Shah in a news release Wednesday. "The more children who are vaccinated, the fewer outbreaks and cases well see in the younger age groups and the less spread among their families."

For adults in Washington, booster doses are now recommended and widely available. Those who have received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine are recommended to receive a booster dose two months after completing their initial vaccination cycle, while those who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine should receive it six months after vaccination.
A federal appeals court has upheld a judge's ruling that Baltimore city officials cannot ban a conservative Roman Catholic media outlet from holding a rally at a city-owned pavilion during a U.S. bishops meeting.

St. Michael's Media Inc. signed a contract with a city vendor Thursday for its Nov. 16 prayer rally only hours after a three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the group's favor late Wednesday, according to the Michigan-based media outlet's attorney, Marc Randazza.

Baltimore hopefully learned a lesson in First Amendment law that its taxpayers now have to pay for," Randazza told The Associated Press.

Cal Harris, a spokesperson for Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, said city officials are disappointed by the 4th Circuit's decision and remain concerned about the potential public safety threat to Baltimore City property posed by the rally."

Protecting Baltimore residents and their property is our top priority, however, we will abide by the direction of the courts, Harris said in a statement.

St. Michael's has said its rally will include speeches by former President Donald Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos.

The city argued that the gathering poses a threat to public safety. City attorneys noted that Yiannopoulos speaking engagements have attracted counterprotesters and led to violence and property damage, while Bannon regularly calls for violence against government officials.

The 4th Circuit panel didn't explain its decision to uphold U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander's Oct. 12 ruling that St. Michaels, also known as Church Militant, is likely to succeed on its claims that the city discriminated against it on the basis of its political views and violated its First Amendment free speech rights.

Hollander said city officials could not prohibit the pavilions manager from contracting with St. Michael's, but she refused to set any court-ordered contractual terms.

The waterfront pavilion is across from a hotel where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is scheduled to hold its national meeting from Nov. 15 to Nov. 18. St. Michaels said it deliberately picked the date and location for its rally to coincide with the bishops meeting. The group also said it held a peaceful, city-permitted rally at the same site during the bishops national meeting in 2018.

In 2017, a confidant of Pope Francis specifically mentioned ChurchMilitant.com in an article condemning the way some American evangelicals and Roman Catholics mix religion and politics. The Rev. Antonio Spadaros article in a Vatican-approved magazine said the media outlet framed the 2016 presidential election as a spiritual war and Trumps ascent to the presidency as a divine election.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California's attorney general said Wednesday he is putting a new emphasis on trying to alleviate the state's seemingly intractable affordable housing problem, including by creating a strike force to focus on tenant protections, on local governments that don't comply with state housing laws, and related issues.

The 12-member strike force will draw on attorneys from four existing sections within the state Department of Justice, said Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat who took office in April and must run for reelection next year.

"This is, I believe, something unique in the history of the California Department of Justice to have the priority and emphasis and focus on housing, law enforcement, that we have" with the new approach, Bonta said.

He noted that a new law clarifies and increases his authority to enforce state housing and zoning laws alongside the state Department of Housing and Community Development. That includes added authority to file lawsuits if local governments don't boost their housing supply, including fair and affordable housing and rental properties, or meet other requirements.

We are certainly looking at local jurisdictions responsibilities to build more housing, Bonta said, adding later that there will be consequences, there will be accountability if communities willingly refuse to comply.

The department sets the number of new housing units that a region is projected to need to provide homes for all income levels, and also recently created a new Housing Accountability Unit to compel compliance.

What weve tried to do is put more teeth into these important laws that have been around sometimes for as long as 40 years, and now empowering the attorney general to take action to enforce them, said Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco and a proponent of expanded housing.

League of California Cities executive director and CEO Carolyn Coleman said local governments have been making significant progress and by 2023 will have planned for more than two million units of additional housing statewide.

Cities for years have endured whiplash from the states scattershot approach to passing housing laws that are often in direct conflict with each other, she said. Officials instead should pause these unproven top-down state mandates and enforcement policies in favor of working cooperatively with local governments to solve a decades-in-the-making housing crisis.

In one example, the department last week said it is investigating the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' recent rejection of a proposed 495-unit apartment building, though director Gustavo Velasquez said Wednesday that so far his department is just gathering facts and seeing if the city violated state law.

Bonta said his office is acting as the department's legal counsel in that inquiry.

California also just enacted two high-profile housing laws, including one requiring cities to approve up to four housing units on what was a single-family lot.

The attorney general's lawyers will also focus on tenant rights, mortgage and other consumer protection laws, Bonta said.

He announced a new housing portal on the departments website with resources and information for homeowners and renters. Those with housing complaints or tips can send them to housing@doj.ca.gov.

Bonta said it's part of his effort to "advance Californians fundamental right to housing, something he has long held should be a legally enforceable right.

His move is the latest step in state officials' efforts to address housing affordability and the most populous state's massive homeless population.

An estimated 150,000 of the state's residents are sleeping in shelters, in their cars, or on the street, he said, while another 700,000 Californians are at risk of eviction.

The median price of a single-family home now tops $800,000, which he said has led to the lowest homeownership rates since the 1940s.

Bonta said one major emphasis will be on housing equity, noting that nearly half of the state's Black households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, in contrast to about a third of white households.
DENVER (AP)  Colorado voters appear headed to rejecting a marijuana sales tax hike to fund out-of-school programs, such as tutoring, technical skill training, mental health counseling and enrichment programs in the arts.

That question was one of several posed to voters around the state on ballot initiatives this year that also include a measure that would limit how many unrelated adults can live together in Denver and another that would limit governors' power to spend funds from outside sources such as the federal government.

A look at a few of the most interesting ballot initiatives:

MARIJUANA SALES TAX INCREASE

The measure to increase the states retail marijuana sales tax rate from 15% to 20% over the next three years was losing according to unofficial results provided by the Colorado secretary of state on Wednesday.

The measure sought to create a governor-appointed board to administer the program, which aims to provide educational and enrichment opportunities with after-school programs and tutoring. It would prioritize eligible Colorado children 5 to 17 years old whose families are at or below the poverty line.

Proponents of the initiative said it was timely and necessary due to the educational gaps worsened by the pandemic and even more so for students of color, those from low-income families and students with special needs.

The group No on Prop 119 said it would take already-limited funds away from public schools and it would create a private-run board with no oversight or accountability with out-of-state interests.

ROOMMATE LIMIT

A Denver ballot initiative that sought to repeal an increase in the number of unrelated adults who can live together was losing by a large margin in unofficial results from the city clerk from late Tuesday. At issue is an amendment, passed by the city council, which increased the number of unrelated adults who can live together. The amendment changed the citys zoning code to allow up to five unrelated adults to live together in a single home rather than the current limit of two. The amendment also allowed residential care facilities such as halfway houses for substance abuse programs to operate in more parts of Denver.

Groups like the grassroots campaign Safe and Sound Denver raised concerns that an increase in roommates and residential care homes would negatively impact the quality of life in neighborhoods, bringing more congestion, overcrowded parking and more trash. Keep Denver from becoming like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, the campaigns website states.

But those who opposed the repeal argued that the amendment takes away affordable housing options and makes it harder to live in Denver, one of the most expensive booming cities with a continuously increasing population over the last decade.

GOVERNORS' POWER TO SPEND FEDERAL FUNDS

Although some ballots were still being counted, a constitutional amendment that would require legislative approval for the state to spend money received from outside sources, such as the federal government or legal settlements, appeared to have been defeated. Only about about 44% of the votes counted so far were in favor of the measure. It needs at least 55% support because it would add an amendment to the state's constitution.

A conservative group sponsored the initiative after Democratic Gov. Jared Polis used his executive powers to distribute nearly $1.7 billion of federal COVID-19 relief funds in May 2020.

Michael Fields, executive director of Colorado Rising Action, an organization promoting conservative policies, spearheaded the measure, arguing that Polis allocation of federal pandemic funds were not transparent. In a Colorado Politics opinion piece, Fields calls for an elimination of executive branch slush funds.

However, opponents argued that limiting the appropriation of federal money puts more work on the part-time Legislature and creates more bureaucracy, which could delay the states spending in an emergency such as a pandemic.

HOMELESS CAMPS

A Denver ballot initiative that sought to allow residents to sue the city for a slow response to homeless encampment cleanups was losing in unofficial results as of Tuesday night.

The measure said that people would be able to sue the city if officials dont clean up an encampment within 72 hours of a complaint. However, a judge ruled Sunday that time limit was unlawful.

Given the ruling, the city said the part of the measure that would have allowed residents to sue wouldn't be enforced if it passed, said Jacqlin Davis, a spokesperson for the city attorneys office.

The remaining part of the ballot question would create up to four city-funded camping locations authorized on public property with required running water, restrooms and lighting. But local homelessness advocates say four sanctioned sites still isnt enough to address the scale of the problem.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  The head of a European Parliament delegation on its first official visit to Taiwan said Thursday that its high time for the European Union to step up cooperation with the self-ruled island, which is also claimed by China.

Seven lawmakers from the Parliaments committee on foreign interference in democratic processes met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on the second day of their three-day visit.

We came here with a very simple, very clear message. You are not alone, said Raphael Glucksmann, the French chair of the committee. Europe is standing with you, by you, in the defense of freedom and the defense of rule of law and human dignity.

It is high time for the European Union to step up its cooperation with Taiwan, he said.

Tsai kept her welcome remarks short, calling the visit highly significant and saying Taiwan was willing to share its experience in combating disinformation and that it wants to build a democratic alliance against disinformation.

Last month, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for the body to intensify EU-Taiwan political relations. The non-binding resolution also called for changing the name of the representative office in Taiwan to the European Union Office in Taiwan, and to establish a bilateral investment agreement with the island.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spoke out against the visit Thursday, saying it "urges the European side to correct its mistakes and not to send any wrong signals to the separatist forces of Taiwan independence, so as to avoid serious impact on China-EU relations.

Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing that the fact that Taiwan is part of China cannot be changed.

The visit comes amid growing support among Western countries for the democratic island, which China claims as part of its territory to be annexed by force if necessary, and rising negative perceptions toward Beijing.

China has sent an increasing number of fighter jets toward the island in a prolonged campaign of military harassment since at least last year, when Taiwan began publicly releasing the data.

___

Associated Press video producer Liu Zheng contributed to this report.

This story was first published on November 4, 2021. It was updated on November 6, 2021 to correct the number of parliamentarians in the delegation. There were seven, not 13. The story also incorrectly used the pronoun she in referring to Raphael Glucksmann, the head of the delegation. Glucksmann is male.
LONDON (AP)  A British-registered scallop boat caught up in a post-Brexit spat between the U.K. and France over fishing licenses has been released by French authorities, its owner said Wednesday.

Andrew Brown, head of public affairs for Macduff Shellfish, which owns the scallop dredger, said the Cornelis Gert Jan had departed Le Havre in northern France. French maritime police seized the vessel off the Normandy coast last week and detained its skipper and crew.

The boat, which was detained over a paperwork infraction, has become a symbol of a bigger feud between the U.K. and France over fishing rights in the English Channel since the U.K. withdrew from the European Union..

We are pleased to have this matter resolved and delighted that our crew and vessel are now able to return home, Brown said. The crew have acted with calmness and professionalism throughout the entire incident. They are in good spirits, looking forward to return to their loved ones and are grateful for all the messages of support received from the British public.

The French and British governments have traded threats and allegations for weeks over French demands for licenses to fish in U.K. waters. France complained that dozens of its boats were denied licenses to fish in waters around Britain and the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, which are self-governing British Crown dependencies close to the coast of northern France.

Fishing is a tiny industry economically for both countries but with outsized political importance, and the dispute has mushroomed into an important test for Britains relations with the European Union after Brexit.

France has threatened to close its ports to some British boats and to impose strict checks on boats and trucks carrying U.K. goods, if more licenses are not granted. Paris also at one point suggested it might restrict energy supplies to the Channel Islands, which are heavily dependent on French electricity.

The French government originally said it would impose the sanctions if no resolution on the license dispute emerged by Tuesday. It pushed back the deadline, and then said Wednesday that the measures were on hold at least through Friday, while talks involving French, British and EU officials continue.

Britain says a blockade would breach the Brexit withdrawal agreement and that the issue behind the dispute is is a technical one related to some French boats lack of paperwork to prove they have traditionally fished in the areas where they want to keep working.

But France sees it as a matter of principle, and has accused Britain of breaching its legally binding divorce deal with the European Union, which sets the rules for fishing in the post-Brexit era..

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson were peppered with questions about the diplomatic dustup as they attended a Group of 20 summit in Rome and the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow over the past week.

The impounded trawler is not one of the vessels involved in the licensing dispute, according to the captain's lawyer. Mathieu Croix, the lawyer for skipper Jondy Ward, said a French court on Wednesday ordered the boat's release.

The court in Rouen annulled last weeks seizure, Croix told The Associated Press. French maritime authorities, who seized the boat in the Le Havre port last week, did not immediately respond to the ruling.

Croix said the dredger was caught in a political game

There is a whole story spun around this entire case, whereas in fact, it is a rather mundane affair over fishing in an area that is supposedly out of bounds and about licenses that may or may not have been given and catch amounts that are relatively modest, Croix said.

From then on, given the current political climate, the case blew up to levels that in our view are totally disproportionate, he said.

___

Charlton reported from Paris.

___

Follow AP's Brexit coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/brexit
BEIRUT (AP)  Lebanons prime minister on Thursday again urged the information minister to do what needs to be done, an apparent appeal for him step down over an unprecedented diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia.

The spat has threatened to destabilize the new Lebanese government and escalate the country's economic tailspin.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati cannot dismiss the minister without approval of at least two-thirds of the Cabinet and Lebanon's president. The information minister George Kordahi had refused to apologize or resign a position that was supported by Hezbollah and allies in the Cabinet.

Mikati said he had agreed with Lebanese President Michel Aoun on a way out of the crisis that is threatening to split his government, sworn in less than two months ago. He called Kordahis decision would be a priority and the natural road map to get out of the crisis, and preserve relations with the Gulf.

But in a sign that there was no letting up to the crisis, Hezbollah on Thursday said in a brief statement that it rejects and condemns what it called foreign dictation to the way the government works - indirectly reiterating its continued support for Kordahi.

Beirut-based TV station al-Mayadeen quoted Kordahi saying that he will not resign.

On the eve of Mikati's speech, the deputy leader of Hezbollah Naim Qassim also said that it was Saudi Arabia that must apologize to Lebanon for its unjustified attack."

Mikati also had stern words for his partners in government  the militant Hezbollah group and its allies.

The spat was triggered by Kordahi's remarks aired last week about the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Lebanese officials have said that Kordahi's remarks do not represent official government views.

Riyadh has withdrawn its ambassador from Beirut and asked the Lebanese envoy to leave the kingdom. It has also banned Lebanese imports, undermining the small nations foreign trade and depriving it of millions of dollars even as it struggles amid an economic meltdown.

The country cant be managed with the language of challenge and obstinacy," said Mikati, who returned to Beirut on Wednesday night from the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. We must unite behind one word to work on saving our country.

Lebanon had sought French and U.S. mediation with Saudi Arabia.

Mikatis message appears to be directed mostly at his government partners from the Iran-allied Hezbollah. Local media said some ministers allied with Hezbollah have threatened to resign if Kordahi goes.

Kordahi was named to the government by a Hezbollah-allied party. Hezbollah members have called the Saudi campaign extortion.

Kordahi has refused to resign, insisting Yemens Houthis have the right to defend themselves and saying that he did not mean to offend with his comments, which were recorded before he became minister.

Gulf Arab countries have joined Saudi Arabia in pulling out their diplomats from Lebanon, deepening the diplomatic spat.

The row has tested Mikati's new government, sworn in after more than a year of deadlock among Lebanese politicians over the composition of the government.

The Cabinet has not been able to convene for weeks, mostly over a separate crisis, triggered when Hezbollah protested the course of the investigation into the Beirut Port explosion last year.

Hezbollah has criticized the judge leading the investigation, saying his probe was politicized and called on the government to ensure he is removed.

In the latest challenge to face the probe, an appeals court has accepted a lawsuit by a former minister - a defendant in the case - asking to remove judge Tarek Bitar. That automatically suspends the investigation until a decision is reached. Similar temporary suspensions have plagued the course of the probe over the past weeks but previous cases to remove the judge have been turned down.

But in a sign that the suspension may be prolonged, the court, this time headed by a known critic of Bitar, asked Bitar to hand over the details of the case to enable it to review the lawsuit, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press.

The Beirut-based right group Legal Agenda warned that the court's request to see the full content of the investigation violates the secrecy of the probe. The group also said the head of the court's known opinions critical of Bitar may constitute bias.
In the months before he was charged with storming the Capitol, Doug Jensen was sharing conspiracy theories he'd consumed online. But it hadnt always been that way, says his brother, who recalls how he once posted the sort of family and vacation photos familiar to nearly all social media users.

A world away, Wahab hadn't always spent his days immersed in jihadist teaching. The product of a wealthy Pakistani family and the youngest son of four, he was into cars and video games, had his own motorcycle, even studied in Japan.

No two ideologues are identical and the gulf between different kinds of extremists, including in how deeply they embrace violence in the name of their cause, is as wide as it is obvious. But to dwell only on the differences obscures the similarities, not only in how people absorb extremist ideology but also in how they feed off grievances and mobilize to action.

For any American who casts violent extremism as a foreign problem, the Jan. 6 Capitol siege held up an uncomfortable mirror revealing the same conditions for fantastical thinking and politically motivated violence as any society.

The Associated Press examined the paths of radicalization through case studies on two continents: a 20-year-old man rescued from a Taliban training camp on Afghanistan's border, and an Iowa man whose brother watched him fall sway to nonsensical conspiracy theories and ultimately join the mob of Donald Trump loyalists that stormed the Capitol.

Two places, two men, two different stories as seen by two relatives. But strip away the ideologies, says John Horgan, a researcher of violent extremism, and look at the psychological processes, the roots, the experiences.

All of those things, Horgan says, tend to look far more similar than they are different.

THE AMERICAN

America met Doug Jensen, 42, via a widely circulated video that exposed the mob mentality inside the Capitol. Jensen's the man in a dark cap and black Trust the Plan" shirt, leading a crowd chasing a Capitol Police officer up the stairs.

William Routh of Clarksville, Arkansas, had an unsettled feeling even before the riot. I said, if you go down there and you're going to do a peaceful thing, then that's fine. But I said keep your head down and dont be doing something stupid.

In interviews with the AP days and months after his younger brothers arrest, Routh painted Jensen, a Des Moines father of three whod worked as a union mason laborer, as a man who enjoyed the trappings of a conventional American existence.

This was a shock to me more than anything, because I would not have thought this from my brother Doug, because he's a very good, hardworking family man and he has good values.

Precisely how Jensen came to absorb the conspiracies that led him to the Capitol is bewildering to Routh. But in the months before the riot, the brothers communicated about QAnon as Jensen shared videos and other conspiracy-laden messages he purported to find meaning in.

Before Jan. 6, Routh says, We have been being told for the last  what?  seven, eight months that if the Democrats get control, were losing our country, OK? That scares a lot of people.

A Justice Department memo that argued for Jensen's detention cites his criminal history and his eagerness to drive more than 1,000 miles to hear President Trump declare martial law." It notes that when the FBI questioned him, he said he'd gone to Washington because Q, the movements amorphous voice, had forecast that the storm had arrived.

His lawyer, Christopher Davis, countered by calling Jensen a victim of numerous conspiracy theories and a committed family man whose initial devotion to QAnon was its stated mission to eliminate pedophiles from society."

In July, a federal judge agreed to release Jensen on house arrest, citing a video showing Jensen referring to the Capitol building as the White House as a likely indication he couldn't have planned an attack in advance when he had no basic understanding of where he even was that day.

But in September, Jensen was ordered back to jail for violating the conditions of his freedom. A federal officer visiting Jensen found him in his garage using an iPhone to watch news from Rumble, a streaming platform popular with conservatives.

THE PAKISTANI

Wahab had it all. The youngest son of four from a wealthy Pakistani family, he spent his early years in the United Arab Emirates and for a time in Japan, studying. Wahab liked cars, had his own motorcycle and was crazy about video games.

His uncle, who rescued the 20-year-old from a Taliban training camp on Pakistans border with Afghanistan earlier this year, asked that his full name not be used because militants have deep-reaching tentacles in the northwest where the family lives. He agreed to be quoted using his middle name, Kamal.

Kamal is one of five brothers who runs the family-owned import/export conglomerate. Each brother has groomed their sons for the business.

Wahabs future was to be no different. He returned to Pakistan in his early teens from abroad.

His uncle blamed his slide to radicalization on the neighborhood teens Wahab socialized with in their northwest Pakistan hometown, plus video games and Internet sites his friends introduced him to that told of Muslims being attacked, women raped and babies killed.

He felt like he hadnt known what was going on, that he had spent his life in darkness and he felt he should be involved. His friends insisted he should. They told him he was rich and should help our people, his uncle said.

To his uncle, Wahab seemed to become increasingly aggressive, fixated on violence.

Earlier this year, Wahab abruptly disappeared. When Wahabs father discovered his son was at a training camp, he was furious, his uncle said.

He told the people Leave him there. I dont accept him as my son anymore. But I took it on myself to bring him back, Kamal said.

Today, Wahab is back in the family business, but is being closely watched.

We are watching all the young boys now, and most nights they have to be home  unless they tell us where they are," Kamal said.

___

Moral outrage. A sense of injustice. A feeling that things can only be fixed through urgent, violent action.

Those are what tend to motivate people who gravitate toward extremism, says Horgan, who directs the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University.

Those similarities you will find repeated across the board, whether youre talking about extreme right-wing militias in Oklahoma or youre talking about a Taliban offshoot in northwest Pakistan, Horgan says.

Research shows people who espouse conspiracy theories tend to do poorer on measures of critical thinking, reducing complex world problems to reassuring answers, says Ziv Cohen, an expert on extremism at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

That's where the stories of Jensen and Wahab seemingly intersect. Both were seeking something. Both found answers that were enticing, attractive  and distorted versions of reality.

For reasons he does not even understand today, he became a true believer and was convinced he (was) doing a noble service by becoming a digital soldier for Q," Davis, Jensen's lawyer, wrote in a June court filing. Maybe it was mid-life crisis, the pandemic, or perhaps the message just seemed to elevate him from his ordinary life to an exalted status with an honorable goal.

But is that goal ever reached? Perhaps counterintuitively, research has shown that when extremists' conspiracy theories are reinforced, their anxiety levels rise rather than fall, Cohen says.

People seem to not be able to get enough of a conspiracy theory," he says, "but theyre never quite satisfied or really reassured.

___

Associated Press writer David Pitt in Des Moines contributed to this report.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP)  Recreational pot sales in Illinois are smoking.

Sales have reached $1.12 billion over the first 10 months of the year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday.

Recreational cannabis sales in October were more than $123 million -- the second highest monthly sales since it was legalized in January 2020 for people 21 and older in Illinois, according to the newspaper.

Illinois dispensaries sold a record $127.8 million in recreational marijuana this July, with a big boost coming from out-of-state fans who converged on Chicago for the Lollapalooza music festival.

Dispensaries also sold just shy of $300 million in medical marijuana products from January through September of this year. Last months medical cannabis sales figures have not yet been released.

Illinois is one of 18 states that have legalized recreational marijuana use, which is still illegal under federal law.

Total sales in Illinois reached $1.03 billion last year, including $669 million in recreational weed and more than $366 million in medical marijuana sales.
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Keene, NH (03431)

Today

Light snow this morning. Then remaining cloudy this afternoon. High near 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 90%..

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Rain likely. Low 43F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Keene, NH (03431)

Today

Showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon. High around 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Rain. Low 42F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
The Academy of Art University in San Francisco has settled a 12-year-old federal fraud lawsuit with four former recruiters whose case had threatened to cripple the huge for-profit school if it had lost in court.

The amount of the settlement was not immediately disclosed. Announced Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, the settlement is the final chapter in a lawsuit the Academy of Art tried to get thrown out for more than a decade, even asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in in 2019. The court declined.

At the heart of the 2009 lawsuit was whether the private school used illegal tactics to attract students and cheat the federal government out of millions of dollars in financial aid. Nearly 10,000 students from 108 countries are enrolled in the Academy of Art.

This is indeed good news, said Judge Phyllis Hamilton, who appeared surprised when Stephen Jaffe, attorney for the ex-employees, reminded her of how many years she has presided over the case.

The settlement is the latest costly legal drama for the company-cum-art school run by Elisa Stephens, 62, the society figure from Hillsborough also known for her extensive collection of Bugattis, Packards, Duesenbergs and other classic autos. Passersby can often be seen gaping at the cars through gleaming showroom windows along Van Ness Avenue.

Stephens oversees a family fortune estimated at $800 million in 2015 by Forbes magazine. The granddaughter of the founder of the 92-year-old school, Stephens is also one of San Franciscos largest private property owners, with dozens of Academy of Art University-owned buildings throughout the city.

For years, the city accused the Stephens Institute, which does business as the Academy of Art University, of operating those buildings out of compliance with city planning codes: illegally transforming affordable residential units into student housing, breaking rules on historic preservation and improperly installing its signs. Then-City Attorney Dennis Herrera eventually sued the school and settled in 2016 for $60 million.

But the Academy of Art was unable to comply with the terms, the city said. So in January 2020, the school agreed to pay $20.4 million in fines and fees, and another $37.6 million for the city to build affordable housing units the Academy of Art had removed from the market, convert nine school properties back to lawful use, and restore 12 historic buildings.

Over the years, the school also incurred the wrath of many former students who racked up tens of thousands of dollars  sometimes hundreds of thousands  in student loan debt. Several have spoken out, claiming the Academy of Art pressured them to stay enrolled and continue paying tuition they couldnt afford. The Academy of Art did not respond to requests for comment in 2018 when The Chronicle covered this issue.

The Academy of Art accepts all comers and depends on students for its income. Between 2006 and 2018, the school collected more than $1.5 billion in federal student loans and $171 million in Pell and other federal grants, according to a Chronicle analysis of federal records.

One method the school used to attract more of this revenue violated federal law, according to the four former recruiters, who in 2009 took their concerns to Jaffe, a San Francisco lawyer. Three of them still worked at the Academy of Art at the time.

Scott Rose, Mary Aquino, Mitchell Nelson and Lucy Stearns told Jaffe that the school raised recruiters salaries by as much as $30,000 based on how many students they enrolled, cut their pay if they blew recruitment goals and dangled trips to Hawaii as another carrot for hauling in more tuition-payers.

The federal government bans such incentive compensation to discourage colleges from enrolling unqualified people who are unlikely to graduate or pay back their government-backed student loans.

The four recruiters sued, alleging their employer had been cheating the federal government out of millions of dollars a year in student loans and grants since 2003.

To encourage such whistle-blowers, the government awards triple damages to people who bring fraud cases under the federal False Claims Act  but no such damages are awarded when cases settle. At one point in the Academy of Art case, Jaffe said he would seek up to $150 million in damages. Tripled, that would have amounted to $450 million for his clients, perhaps crippling the school.

The Academy of Art had argued in court that although it used incentive compensation, the tactic was legal at the time under a safe harbor provision created by the Bush administration in 2002 and rescinded by the Obama administration in 2010.

The school has largely relied on bold ad claims to dazzle prospective students, such as describing graduates as some of the most successful and sought-after professionals in art and design today.

The schools numbers often tell a different story.

With a graduation rate of 37%, the Academy of Art received a notice of concern in 2016 from its accreditor, the WASC Senior College and University Commission. The commission removed the notice in 2018, visited again this April and issued a new report that provides no overall graduation rate. But the U.S. Department of Educations scorecard for the school says that just 27% of students graduate from the Academy of Art within eight years.

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Undergraduates pay $26,399 in annual fees and materials, the schools website says. The federal scorecard calculates a higher net price, at $34,000 a year, and paints a bleak picture of what recent graduates can expect to earn: $13,702 to $53,810 a year, depending on which of the schools two dozen fields of study they choose.

Before the pandemic, when the Academy of Art had tried four times to get the recruiters case thrown out and exhausted all possibilities, Judge Hamilton at last set a trial date: April 27, 2020.

Meanwhile, The Chronicle spoke with 17 former Academy of Art students who had independently contacted the paper after reading stories about the lawsuit. Students were not part of the suit, but protecting their interests is why the government regulates recruitment schemes.

Of those ex-students, 12 said they owed more than $50,000 in student loan debt, including eight above $100,000.

One of them was Shaun Dunn, a 2019 graduate who earned two degrees from the Academy of Art over many years, including a masters in animation and visual effects. Unable to find a job in his field, Dunn, 40, owed more than $431,000 in student loans. He said he felt tricked by the school, which he described as persistently urging him to stay even though he couldnt afford it and enticing him with promises of a lucrative career.

Its ruined my life, Dunn said.

Academy of Art officials declined to comment for that story.

The coronavirus pandemic canceled the trial in 2020. Settlement talks derailed a second trial date set for September this year, three months short of the 12th anniversary of the case.

The final deal is expected to wrap up on Nov. 18.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
The U.S. Labor Department has released its long-awaited national coronavirus vaccine requirements for workers at companies with 100 or more employees, setting a Jan. 4 deadline for them to get the shots or undergo weekly testing and wear masks indoors.

Companies are also required to determine the vaccination status of each of their employees, including getting proof from vaccinated workers in the form of a government-issued vaccination card, record from a health care provider or other forms of proof. Companies will also have to keep records of who has and has not gotten a shot, the Labor Department said.

Employees are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

President Biden originally announced the plan in September. The rules are directed at private sector employees and are expected to affect more than 80 million workers nationwide.

It was not immediately clear what fines companies could face if they did not comply, but fines from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration can range from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending if offenses are repeated or intentional.

Attorney Ashley Brightwell of the law firm Alston & Birds Labor and Employment Group said that the fine scheme would likely follow similar outlines as other OSHA violations.

Employers can also be cited for not having a policy in place in time, said attorney Travis Vance of the law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP. Vance noted people who work entirely outdoors were exempted from the requirements. Workers at companies where everyone works remotely are also not affected by the new requirements.

Lawyers also said it wasnt clear exactly how gig and contract workers would be affected by the rules. Attorney Krista Mitzel of the Mitzel Group said while the order did not address independent contractors specifically, companies could choose not to work with any who remain unvaccinated.

OSHA has indicated that some part-time and seasonal workers will be counted toward the 100-employee threshold.

The administration is also requiring employees of Medicare or Medicaid funded-facilities to be vaccinated by the Jan. 4 deadline and has already imposed vaccine mandates on federal workers and contractors.

Earlier this year, the Californias Department of Public Health issued a mandate requiring that all health care workers in the state be vaccinated. That covers many of the states largest employers.

Other large California employers said they would comply with the mandate despite previously encouraging but not requiring vaccines.

We will comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations requirements and will communicate more with our employees soon, Yahaira Garcia-Perea, Wells Fargo assistant vice president of corporate communications, wrote in an email. The company previously urged employees to get the shots but hadnt required it.

Not speaking about a company in particular, Mitzel, the employment attorney, said some large companies have encouraged workers to get a vaccine but stopped short of requiring it with many people working from home, and to avoid any workplace dustups over the issue. Now companies have the backing of federal rules and can say it is not up to them anymore whether to require the shots.

Under Cal/OSHA requirements, employees in California can take off their masks at work in most circumstances if they are vaccinated, but local rules vary, and masking is still encouraged.

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The federal rules also preempt state or local rules that set less stringent requirements, although cities, counties and states can set their own rules as long as they are stricter than the federal mandate.

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on workers, and we continue to see dangerous levels of cases, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a statement. We must take action to implement this emergency temporary standard to contain the virus and protect people in the workplace against the grave danger of COVID-19.

Workplace safety groups, including the nonprofit National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, mostly welcomed the announcement. Jessica E. Martinez, the groups co-executive director, said in a statement that requiring paid time off for employees to get the vaccine and recover from any side effects was the right approach.

The new rules do not require employers to pay for testing, according to the Labor Department. Martinez lamented that, noting that employers are required to cover the costs of other health and safety requirements.

Brightwell, the labor attorney, said under the rules the tests cannot be self-administered unless observed by the employer or an authorized telehealth provider. She said employers can also ignore the testing option and require employees to get vaccinated outright if they so choose, as many companies have done already.

Many large employers like United Airlines had already implemented vaccine requirements ahead of the announcement, but the move is already taking political fire and legal challenges are expected.

There will certainly be legal challenges, but you have to operate under the assumption that at least for now the deadlines will hold, Brightwell said.

Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice
The first project of Geoff Monks career as a wildlife biologist was also the most dangerous.

He was 24 years old and working for the Bureau of Land management in Ukiah (Mendocino County) when he volunteered to be lowered from a helicopter to snatch peregrine eggs from a large nest fiercely guarded by a female falcon.

The pesticide DDT, which had built up in the mother birds body, caused her to lay thin, damaged eggs, and she was at risk of crushing them.

Instead they were incubated and hatched in a lab at UC Santa Cruz. Monk performed this harrowing act again to return the chicks and remove the porcelain decoy eggs hed left in their place.

The switch worked, and Monk was soon recognized as a top falcon spotter, flying up and down the state collecting eggs as the peregrine population slowly recovered and was removed from the endangered species list in 1999.

Monk, 67, had a long career as a wildlife biologist and environmental consultant in Walnut Creek. He died Oct. 14 at his Alamo home of glioblastoma, a fast-growing brain tumor. Monk fought for 18 months through two surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy, said his wife, Sarah Lynch, also a wildlife biologist.

When Monk started out in 1977, there were only four known falcon nesting sites in California. After his first year, spent either dangling from helicopters or climbing down from cliffs where aircraft could land, there were nine.

Geoff would get in helicopters flown by Vietnam vets, and they would go to these crazy cliffs in Yosemite to find these eggs, Lynch said. Theyd fly as close to the nest as they could without crashing and Geoff would rappel out to get the eggs. He and the pilots used to say they enjoyed the risks. It was a thrill for him to rescue those eggs.

Monk worked for the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and at UC Santa Cruz as a full-time researcher in the Predatory Bird Research Group.

Geoffs research was fundamental to documenting the fact that there was a peregrine falcon population in Northern California and that they were indeed still reproducing, said wildlife biologist Pete Bloom. In 1979, Bloom and Monk were the first to be granted a permit to band nesting peregrine falcons in the state so they could be identified and tracked.

He was a passionate natural historian and a pleasure to work with in the field, Bloom said. We went over some very tall cliffs, dropping 300 feet. The falcons were always surprised and animated to see us. That animation involved screaming bloody murder and striking any body part that happened to be available, at great speed.

Monks talent was recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which hired him away from the Bureau of Land Management and then sent him to UC Berkeley for his masters degree in wildland resource science. He arrived at Berkeley with work experience and stories that not even faculty members could match.

Geoff was a key player in the history of peregrines in California, said environmental scientist Bob Risebrough, who worked with him at the Bodega Marine Laboratory. His work contributed significantly to the repopulation of the species.

James Geoffrey Monk was born Feb. 2, 1954, in San Francisco. He and twin brother Sydney grew up in Pleasant Hill and Lafayette. The family home backed up to Buckeye Ranch, which later became Briones Regional Park. Monks earliest wildlife studies came from trapping foxes and opossums in a box with a stick propping it open. He always released what he caught.

His interests turned to falconry and keeping birds of prey: a red-tailed hawk, a Coopers hawk, an American kestrel. He ended up letting these go, too.

At Acalanes High School in Lafayette, he discovered a second calling as a Plymouth troubleshooter in an auto shop. In timed competitions he could break down an engine, fix it and rebuild it in record time.

He was the handiest person I ever met, Lynch said. He could fix anything. It was an extra bonus. I didnt realize that when I met him.

After graduating from high school in 1972 he entered Sonoma State University as a pre-med student, but soon transferred into wildlife management at Humboldt State. After his junior year, he took a summer job with the Canadian Wildlife Services in Alberta, where he learned how to breed peregrines in captivity. The peregrines there were dying off from eating smaller birds toxified by DDT they absorbed from the insects they ate.

That was causing the eggshell thinning that Monk set out to cure. The first study he undertook involved flying low in fixed-wing aircraft over peregrine habitats in California, Oregon and Washington state. He had special dispensation from the Department of the Interior to fly in close enough to spot peregrine nests. Hed then return by helicopter.

None of this sat well with the resident peregrines. The species is known as the fastest bird alive and can reach speeds of up to 200 mph.

Shed dive-bomb his head as he was spinning around on the rope, Lynch said. Peregrines kill their prey with their feet. If he hadnt worn a helmet, he would have been seeing stars.

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After four years there were 100 nests in Northern California. Monk continued until 1989, when his success restoring the peregrine population induced a career change. He left his position at UC Santa Cruz to become a wildlife consultant in Novato.

A year later, he met Lynch when she was hired as a staff biologist working with Monk after graduating from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. They started doing field jobs together, looking for spotted owls at night.

In 1992, Monk formed Monk & Associates in Walnut Creek, helping businesses obtain open-space preserves to compensate for the impact of development. A few years later he had enough business to hire staff. Lynch was the first employee.

They were married in 2002, in a ceremony held on a friends cabin cruiser motoring out under the span of the Golden Gate Bridge. After living in Walnut Creek, where their son, Ethan, and daughter, Megan, were born, they moved to an old horse property in Alamo.

Every year, his falcon egg rescue partner Monte Kirven joined the family for Thanksgiving, bringing along his pet peregrine to perch on his wrist and watch the dinner preparation. They were looking forward to Thanksgiving in October 2017 when Kirven went silent. He was living on a hilltop in Santa Rosa when the Tubbs Fire burned through. Monk called the sheriff to check on Kirven, who was found dead at age 81 in his bed. His falcon was dead, too.

Monks last big cause was saving the California tiger salamander, which was listed as a threatened species in 2004. Housing developers in Sonoma County hired Monk & Associates to find the amphibians, who live underground and only come out in the rain.

Geoff never stopped doing all of the fieldwork even though he was the head of the company, Lynch said. He once found 98 tiger salamanders in one day.

Monks memorial will be held at 11 a.m. Nov. 13 at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in the hills of Lafayette, down the road from where he had grown up and fallen in love with soaring birds of prey.

Monk is survived by his wife, Lynch, and their children, Ethan and Megan, all of Alamo; his mother, Diana Monk of Santa Rosa; his sisters, Kelly Monk of Ashland, Ore., and Anne Monk of Santa Rosa; and brother, Eric Monk, also of Santa Rosa.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF
SACRAMENTO  During her more than two decades as an elected official in California, Wilma Chan rose to become one of the most powerful female Chinese American leaders in state and Alameda County politics.

But her success came with little fanfare. Chan was known for keeping a low public profile, focusing instead on the issues she cared most about: health care, children and helping the most vulnerable.

Chan, a Democrat, died Wednesday after she was struck by a motorist in Alameda.

She began her political career as an Oakland school board member and was first elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in 1994. Like with many of the seats she would eventually hold, Chan was the first Asian American on the board.

She established herself as a political powerhouse in the county and a voice for the states quickly growing Chinese American community. Chan was credited for pushing to ensure Alameda County was first in line for tobacco tax money that helped fund programs for preschool children. She also worked to expand in-school health clinics.

David Kakishiba, executive director of the East Bay Asian Youth Center, a youth development center in her district, said Chan was instrumental in getting clinics established at Roosevelt Middle School and Oakland High School and getting funding for the countys First 5 program to boost early childhood education.

More for you This is a dangerous intersection: Death of Wilma Chan raises tensions over traffic safety in Alameda

Shes always been a pretty rock solid source of information and advice and support on a myriad of issues, he said. For many of us in the neighborhood, people felt very well-represented by her work.

After less than two terms as a supervisor, Chan set her sights on the state Capitol.

Chan was elected to the state Assembly in November 2000, when she handily defeated incumbent Audie Bock, an independent. Chans campaign was fueled by a large number of individual donors, the majority of whom were Asian American.

Im pretty ruthless about getting things done, Chan told a Chronicle reporter during her first campaign for the Assembly. I work the system to get the thing done. You wont actually see me, because Im doing it.

She quickly rose to prominence in Sacramento with an appointment as majority whip in the Democrat-led Assembly, one of the top leadership positions. She joined six committees, focused on issues she had championed, including health, the elderly and human services.

Chans ascension helped solidify the clout of East Bay Democrats. Among the high-profile legislation she carried were measures to cap greenhouse gas emissions, fund career-oriented high school academies, ban toxic chemicals in flame retardants and impose a no-lead standard for drinking water pipes and fixtures.

Within two years, she was appointed Assembly majority leader, a post in which she oversaw fundraising and helped run floor sessions. Chan was the first woman and Asian American to hold the position.

If you work hard in a Legislature, you rise quickly, said Don Perata, the former state Senate president pro tem from Oakland who served alongside Chan. Its really hard to not admire somebody that works hard.

Chan served six years in the Assembly before she was termed out in 2006. Sandre Swanson, a friend of Chan who replaced her in the Legislature, said he quickly learned how widely respected she was for her subtle, determined approach.

It was a quiet power, Swanson said. She was, in Sacramento, considered a no-nonsense legislator that worked hard and got things done.

Chan unsuccessfully ran for the state Senate in 2008, but she returned to public office two years later when she won her old seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. She was re-elected twice, most recently in 2018.

Her district includes Alameda, San Leandro and Oaklands Chinatown, Jack London, Fruitvale and San Antonio neighborhoods.

Chans reputation in Alameda County was as a fierce advocate for those who needed help most  including children, lower-income residents and immigrants  and a role model for aspiring Asian American leaders.

She has done so much, said Alice Lai-Bitker, who served 10 years on the Board of Supervisors between Chans two terms after working for her as an aide. She was always a great voice for the low-income, for the needy and for families and children and recently for affordable housing.

San Leandro Mayor Pauline Cutter credited Chan with saving San Leandro Hospital, which had been threatened with closure, saying her innovative approach, which involved $3 million in city investments, kept the health care facility  including the much-needed emergency room  open.

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She worked behind the scenes but she got things done, said Cutter. She was very determined.

But Cutter was most impressed with Chans work on First 5, the early childhood education initiative.

What she did with First 5, she made such a huge difference in the lives of our residents that they will never know, she said. I cant say enough how much weve lost someone who supports families, supports children and supports health care, family care.

Ted Lempert, executive director of Children Now, a statewide child advocacy group based in Oakland, said he worked with Chan in Sacramento on issues including health insurance for children. She later worked for Children Now as policy director during the two-year gap between the Assembly and her second stint as a supervisor.

That really showed her passion for kids, he said.

Chan was also a leader in mentoring and supporting aspiring political leaders, especially Asian Americans.

She was a huge leader for the Asian American community, Lempert said. Ive had so many people reach out in last half day talking about how much she was a mentor, how they owe their public service careers to her. Her legacy will live on for a long time. She inspired so many people to get involved in advocacy and politics.

In 2019, Chan helped lead the effort to put Measure C, the half-cent sales tax that funds child care and childrens health programs, on the ballot. County voters overwhelmingly approved the measure last year.

State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who knew Chan for decades, said the measure is one example of how her vision to provide equitable access to health care and education, particularly for children, will live on.

Were going to forever reap the benefits of that work, Skinner said. She cared deeply about children and wanted to make sure that every kids need was met.

Dustin Gardiner and Michael Cabanatuan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com, mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner, @ctuan
Controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greenes fundraiser Saturday in the Bay Area has been canceled  but organizers say the Georgia Republican wants to reschedule it.

Organizers and promoters hadnt publicly expressed any reservations about Greenes previous advocacy of conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks and the Parkland, Fla., school shooting  nor her since-apologized-for comparison of mask-wearing rules at the Capitol to the Holocaust when they booked the event, nor did they now.

Greene, a former QAnon adherent who once mused that a space laser might have ignited a California wildfire, canceled the San Francisco Republican Party fundraiser because she said she needed to be in Washington to vote on the Democrats infrastructure spending bills, which may come before the House this week.

That uncertainty made it impossible to assure the congresswomans travel, San Francisco Republican Party Chairman John Dennis said in an e-mail to supporters this week.

Dennis wrote, however, that Greenes chief of staff told him that MTG would like to work out a later date.

Dennis confirmed to The Chronicle in a text that She, and we, want to reschedule.

The party will refund money to those who purchased tickets. Prices started at $175 apiece.

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There was always an air of mystery surrounding the event  like where it would be held. A San Francisco venue was likely out since Greene has declined to reveal whether she has been vaccinated. Her event was likely going to be held somewhere in San Mateo County.

Greene remains in demand as one of the partys top fundraisers.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
Flair Airlines, a low-cost Canadian airline, will be starting direct flights to San Francisco International Airport from Vancouver, British Columbia, and Edmonton, Alberta, starting in spring 2022.

The new routes could foster a connection between San Francisco and Canada, airline and San Francisco tourism officials said.

Canada was one of the San Francisco Bay Areas top visitor markets for visitor volume in 2019. With the U.S. border opening to all international travelers meeting CDC requirements this coming Monday, were excited to see new air service being added to SFO, said Lori Lincoln, vice president of media relations at the San Francisco Travel Association.

Flairs new flights to SFO will provide even more options for Canadians wanting to visit San Francisco in 2022, she added.

Nonstop flights from Edmonton start on April 14, 2022, and will fly twice a week, while flights from Vancouver start May 17 and will fly three times a week.

The airline offers a low base fare but charges extra for services like seat selection and carry-on items, as well as for checked bags, priority boarding or bringing specialty items.

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Traveling and reconnecting with friends will be among the top priorities for many Canadians in the coming months, said Stephen Jones, president and CEO of Flair Airlines, in a press release.

The airline also will start nonstop flights to Nashville and Denver in the spring. The new destinations will bring the airlines total locations served to 28.

Danielle Echeverria is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev
When a blind Bay Area woman couldnt dine at her local Jack in the Box at night because it was open only to drive-thru customers, she sued for discrimination based on her disability. But a divided federal appeals court has concluded the fast-food chain is treating her no worse than others who dont drive.

A refusal to serve food to pedestrians at drive-through windows does not impact blind people differently or in a greater manner than the significant population of non-disabled people who lack access to motor vehicles, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling Wednesday. The court upheld a judges dismissal last year of the lawsuit, a proposed class action on behalf of blind people denied late-evening service at any of Jack in the Boxs more than 2,200 outlets.

The case tests the scope of disability laws and their application to cost-cutting measures by retail businesses. Similar suits have been filed against other fast-food companies, including one against Wendys, by the same law firm, that was dismissed in 2019 by a federal judge in Chicago.

Wednesdays ruling involved a suit by Judy Szwanek of El Sobrante, joined later by another blind plaintiff, James Lopez II of Montebello (Los Angeles County). Both said they regularly patronized Jack in the Box restaurants within walking distance of their homes, but found out when they made nighttime visits  Szwanek in 2018, Lopez in 2019  that the lobby was closed, and only customers in motor vehicles were being served.

Only modest accommodations would be needed to serve blind people, the suit said: reopening the lobby, installing a walk-up window, or letting them order by phone and delivering the food at the restaurants front door.

Instead, visually-impaired people must hope for a companion with a car or paid taxi services to assist them, the suit said. Otherwise, it said, the blind are being denied full and equal access to Jack in the Box restaurants.

Lawyers for the company denied discriminating, noting in a court filing that there are numerous reasons why a person might not be able to drive, and disability is not uniquely among them. The appeals court majority agreed.

Would-be customers without cars who want service at night face precisely the same burden as blind people  they must arrive at the drive-through window in a vehicle driven by someone else, said the opinion by Judge Andrew Hurwitz and M. Miller Baker, a judge from the U.S. Court of International Trade temporarily assigned to a vacant position on the Ninth Circuit.

In dissent, Judge Paul Watford said the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled, even if that requires accommodations not available to other customers.

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The drive-thru-only policy unduly burdens the blind because, as a result of their disability, they are unable to drive, Watford said. The blind (and others whose disabilities preclude them from driving) are entitled to a reasonable modification of the drive-thru-only policy because that is whats necessary to afford them full and equal enjoyment of the goods Jack in the Box offers.

The plaintiffs could ask the full appeals court for a new hearing before a larger panel. Roberto Costales, one of their lawyers, said the case illustrates how perceived advancements in technology and convenience in our society often fail to account for the disabled.

Unless courts keep a more open mind about the application of a 40-year-old law to our increasingly technological world, the promises enshrined in the ADA will go unredeemed, Costales said.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
For Nawf Abuelgasim, an eighth-grader at AIMS College Prep Middle School in Oakland, the best thing about her year in online learning exile may have been the dress code.

Like plenty of remote-working adults, the 13-year-old spent countless weekday hours glued to her computer screen in a socially acceptable top and oh-who-cares pajama bottoms. The rest of seventh-grade was pretty much a soul-sucking wash of technical difficulties, hands-off learning, withering friendships, and the kind of turf battles that occur when you, your little brother and your parents all work out of the same two-bedroom apartment.

It was mentally challenging, Nawf said. I guess we just adjusted.

According to educators and youth advocates, the traumas of last year have carried over into a delta-hobbled fall semester and could manifest for years to come, particularly for female, LGBTQ and nonbinary learners, and all students of color.

We broke last year as a society in a big way, said Emma Mayerson, founding director of Alliance for Girls, an Oakland nonprofit. If we dont respond with culture and gender holistic services ... were going to see a slide back in a lot of the progress weve made.

If that happens, Mayerson warned, Its going to take decades to recover.

Don Feria/Special to The Chronicle

The alliance was one of two youth-centric Bay Area organizations that signaled how challenging the 2021-22 school year would be during the early days of the fall semester.

In August, the alliance and YouthTruth, a national nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco, released separate studies built on the perspectives of youth and delivering sobering prognoses: Students felt overwhelmed and under-supported during remote learning, and the pandemic metastasized existing inequities for young learners.

In the YouthTruth survey, which analyzed responses from more than 200,000 third- to 12th-graders in 19 states, 83% of nonbinary students and 60% of female students said stress and anxiety were obstacles to learning last spring, when many schools had reopened in some fashion. Those numbers were part of an overall increase in student depression compared with last fall, when schools were closed.

The Alliance for Girls survey of more than 1,200 girls, LGBTQ and nonbinary youth  or what the organization terms gender-expansive youth  mostly from the Bay Area found large pluralities among those who said the pandemic created more stress (66%) and caregiving responsibilities (44%) that kept them from learning from March 2020 to March 2021.

Buttressing these findings are troubling national indicators: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the number of adolescent girls admitted to emergency departments after attempting suicide spiked 50.6% this year when compared with a similar one-month span in 2019. A national pediatric study estimated that more than 140,000 children experienced the death of a parent or grandparent during the pandemic, with Black and Latino youths particularly affected.

If you were marginalized before COVID, its been exacerbated during the pandemic, said Iminah Ahmad, program manager at the Oakland Unified School Districts Office of Equity. Were seeing really, like, an explosion, or an implosion, now that were back in school.

At Bay Area schools, the most visible consequence has been a rise in behavioral issues as isolated students returned to campuses with pandemic restrictions and fewer experienced teachers. In the Oakland Unified School District, for instance, Ahmad said shes been alarmed by the disproportionate number of suspensions going to Black students and Black girls in particular.

Don Feria/Special to The Chronicle

According to district figures, Black students have accrued more than half of the falls suspensions through Oct. 1, despite representing less than a quarter (22%) of the roughly 34,000 students currently enrolled.

As for whether the disproportionate suspensions reflect a change in student behavior or a problem with how schools are disciplining Black students, the district said in a statement that it does not collect data on why students are experiencing a discipline action.

Ahmad, whose office oversees the African American Male Excellence and African American Female Excellence initiatives, said shes seeing signs that the students who had it toughest before COVID have it even harder now.

Pre-existing financial hardships grew more dire. Some students put off internships or fellowships so they could get part-time jobs or care for younger siblings. The fact that a quarter of California households lack reliable internet access meant many couldnt navigate the transition to virtual classrooms and after-school programs as smoothly as their peers. English-language learners had less support, too.

Pandemic disruption has been blamed for a sharper 2.6% dip in California school enrollment last year, largely in non-charter schools and hitting kindergartens and sixth grades the hardest. It all amounted to a loss of 160,000 students statewide, the California Department of Education noted in April.

Oakland Unified and other districts found ways to get free or subsidized meals and feminine hygiene products to students who needed them, but the margins grew deeper for the already marginalized. And the resumption of in-class learning didnt suddenly mean that students could leave the outside world at the school door, Ahmad noted.

A lot of the girls we work with had already been going through so much, she said. A lot of students are acting out or lashing out because they dont feel like theyve had a place to be listened to.

In many ways, the pandemic showed how important schools are, especially to students who lack firm footholds outside of them, Mayerson said. Her organization called on education officials to figure out how to provide uninterrupted support regardless of severe environmental and personal disruptions, such as the pandemic, and to collaborate with students on making that vision happen.

What if the way we rebuild puts  girls of color and youth on the margins at the center? Mayerson said. When you serve those most impacted, it lifts all boats.

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.

Don Feria/Special to The Chronicle

Ahmad said Oakland Unified has already adopted this approach, even as it deals with a pandemic of teacher shortages that has required her and other district staff to interrupt their primary duties to staff classrooms.

The districts African American Female Excellence initiative, which typically focuses on academic achievement, has become more of a safe listening space this year, Ahmad said. The district is also partnering with the Alliance for Girls on a Black Girl Power Healing Circle, designed and led by youth, which will start in December.

Whats happening so far to Black girls has sparked a fire within me, Ahmad said. A lot of the issues that COVID-19 highlighted had been present due to legacies of racism and enslavement. ... COVID has shown the fruit of these issues.

Nawf is still adjusting to whats new after a year of remote learning. Last months military coup in Sudan, where her family is from, has added to the stress. Getting her temperature taken twice a day, compulsively sanitizing her hands, breathing through fabric, and seeing all her teachers and classmates half-masked still feel unfamiliar. Now, the political strife looming over her cousins in northeastern Africa also weighs on her, Nawfs mother said.

Nawf said some students have had a harder time acclimating to in-person classes than others and that everyone has had to relearn how to speak to each other in real life.

For the first few weeks of school, we were struggling to talk to each other again, she said.

She said she wished her school made the transition from computer work to paperwork more slowly, but otherwise thinks this year is going better than last. Science and art are definitely way more rewarding in a classroom, where she and her classmates can once again perform experiments and get glue on their hands. Nawf even found herself appreciating paper cuts.

Still, theres a touch of resignation in her voice when she considers what the future holds.

I dont think well ever be a hundred percent back to normal, she said.

Raheem Hosseini is a San Francisco Chronicle editor. Email: raheem.hosseini@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @raheemfh
When Chesa Boudin ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2019, he promised to approach crime differently than his predecessors, in part by no longer prosecuting lower-level offenses like recreational drug use. He also pledged to take more rape cases to trial, even if that meant he would lose those cases more frequently.

Less than two years after taking office, Boudin faces a likely recall election after critics of his administration garnered more than 83,000 signatures from residents who believe he has made the city less safe. To explore that claim, the Chronicle conducted a comprehensive review of how often his office decides to prosecute arrested individuals and how often it secures convictions in selected types of crime.

Boudins overall charging rate is 48%, slightly lower than predecessor George Gascons 54% in his last two years and on par with Gascons charging rates in 2016 and 2017. But overall charging rates can be misleading because the types of cases the D.A. receives from police can change significantly from year to year, especially during abnormal periods such as the current global pandemic.

A review of charging rates for specific crime types, which allows a more accurate assessment of what Boudins administration has done differently, shows that charging rates have increased for rape and drug cases under his watch, while they have decreased for theft and other lower-level offenses.

The Chronicle also reviewed yearly conviction rates for specific crimes. The conviction rate refers to the share of cases charged by a D.A. that lead to a conviction, including cases that are resolved ahead of a trial, such as by negotiating a plea deal. (Despite popular perception, only a small share of criminal cases ever gets tried by a jury, and that number has decreased even further during COVID-19 due to reduced court capacity.)

The data shows that homicide conviction rates have increased from 67% of 39 cases during the final two years of Gascons leadership to 83% of 42 cases under Boudin, while rape conviction rates have decreased from 81% of 48 cases under Gascon to 70% of 40 cases under Boudin (The conviction data is from Jan. 1, 2018, to Dec. 31, 2019, for Gascon and from Jan. 1, 2020, to Oct. 20, 2021, for Boudin. Mayoral appointee Suzy Loftus also served as D.A. briefly from Oct. 19, 2019, until Jan. 8, 2020).

But charging rates offered the most revealing look at how Boudin has changed the office. The Chronicle requested charging rates for 64 case types since 2011. The charging data, provided by the District Attorneys Office through Oct. 10, 2021, shows the yearly breakdown of how many arrests of each type Boudin and his staff attorneys charged, dismissed or took alternative actions, such as asking the police to investigate further.

The Chronicle then compared charging rates in 2018 and 2019, just before Boudin took office, to rates in 2020 and 2021.

Charging rates for some case types have not changed under Boudin. For instance, his offices rate for homicide cases is 75%, virtually the same as the 73% rate of Gascon, now the Los Angeles County district attorney, in 2018 and 2019.

Several other case types, including assaults, burglaries and DUIs, have been charged at slightly lower rates during Boudins tenure, but these differences are small enough that they could be explained by variations in the cases presented.

However, the analysis found an increase in rape and narcotics charging rates and a decrease in rates for lower-level offenses like theft and disorderly conduct.

D.A.s and their staff attorneys must weigh multiple, sometimes-conflicting factors when deciding whether to prosecute each case, according to Greg Totten, a Republican and the former longtime chief prosecutor of Ventura County.

The most important factor is whether police provide the office with what it sees as sufficient, legally admissible evidence to convince a jury unanimously, beyond a reasonable doubt, of the defendants guilt, said Totten, who described himself as a law-and-order D.A. Sometimes that means a D.A. has to dismiss a case even if its likely the person committed the crime; other times it means prosecutors must request police officers investigate the case further, releasing the arrested person in the meantime.

Beyond this standard, Totten said, district attorneys must consider how to allocate their departments resources and prioritize more serious cases (in his view, violent and/or repeat offenders). They have to consider how to balance diverting people from jails and prisons when possible with what they see as seeking justice for crime victims families.

Finally, politics and personal philosophy both play a significant and often-intertwined role.

[Boudin and I have] joked with one another that I couldnt get elected in San Francisco and he probably couldnt get elected in Ventura County, said Totten, who is now the CEO of the California District Attorneys Association (of which Boudin is a member). That doesnt mean that were bad district attorneys. It doesnt mean that were doing something beyond the law and evidence that is presented to us. It just means were trying to reflect the priorities of the jurisdiction we serve.

But the reaction to Boudins administration has exposed sharp disagreement in San Franciscos priorities. Recall supporters argue that Boudins stance on misdemeanors has made the city less safe by creating an atmosphere of no consequences for some types of criminal activity. They also say that, far from focusing on serious crimes, his office has consistently failed to charge and win cases against higher-level offenders. Finally, they point to reports of high turnover within his office and reports of chaotic management.

He refuses to adequately prosecute criminals and fails to take drug dealing on our neighborhood streets seriously, San Franciscans for Public Safety Supporting the Recall of Chesa Boudin, one of the largest groups supporting the recall, states on its website. He doesnt hold serial offenders accountable and has released them from custody without consequences.

But Boudins supporters see backlash against him as motivated by conservative, tough-on-crime politics that have historically failed crime victims, perpetrators and city residents. They believe hes being unfairly blamed for individual crimes as well as perceived trends in property crime, with which the city has long struggled.

Theft and petty theft charging rates have dropped

For years, San Francisco has been debating how to reduce property crimes like auto break-ins and shoplifting, which arent always reported and not often solved.

Boudin maintains that the drop in charging rates for theft is mainly due to the reduced operation of San Franciscos court system caused by COVID-19 restrictions. The charging rate for both types of theft increased between 2020 and 2021 as the city reopened, the data shows.

We had clear instructions from courts to delay and defer anything we could delay and defer, [and] from the medical director to drastically reduce the (jail) population, he said. In the context of those really difficult decisions, we did make intentional decisions to delay or defer charging low-level nonviolent cases.

Some San Franciscans and public figures believe that Boudins stance on theft is to blame for the citys problems with organized property crime and shoplifting.

He has vowed from the beginning to not prosecute quality of life crimes. So we would look at a petty theft as being a quality of life crime, Richie Greenberg, former Republican mayoral candidate and spokesperson for the Committee Supporting the Recall of DA Chesa Boudin, told The Chronicle. (Greenbergs committee supported one of two recall campaigns this year; his campaign did not gather the signatures required.)

Quality of life is ... the basis of a society, of our city. If youre not going to hold people responsible for that youre basically destroying the fabric of our city.

Totten said theft arrests dropped in nearly every California county in the first year of the pandemic. Its likely the pandemic affected charging rates, too, he said, because many counties court systems were operating at limited capacity and because county governments wanted to keep their jail populations low to reduce disease spread.

Theres no question that COVID has impacted, for a period of time, both arrest rates [and] some level of filing rates, he said. It also certainly impacts case processing...because we cant try the volume of cases that were accustomed to trying.

Boudin added that a law enacted this year, Assembly Bill 3234, has affected his theft-charging decisions. AB3234 made it possible for judges to seek alternatives to jail or prison time for first-time offenders charged with most misdemeanors. In these kinds of situations, Boudin said, his office has leaned on diversion programs like Neighborhood Courts, where trained volunteers instruct people charged with crimes to complete tasks or programs focused on accountability, like entering drug treatment or completing community service.

Totten said that while he doesnt have concrete data, its likely the charging rates for theft cases for other D.A.s went down this year because of AB3234  particularly because judges can divert a case over the objections of the prosecuting attorney.

When you take a swath of crimes and you say these are now eligible for diversion, it can impact charging rates, he said.

For the theft cases Boudins office does charge, convictions have decreased, the data shows.

Rape charging rates have gone up

Boudins charging rate for rape cases in 2021 was the highest of any year since at least 2011, and he says its the highest on record. The Chronicle requested data for earlier years but has not received it yet.

This higher charging rate confirms Boudin has followed through on the pledge he made in 2019 to do just that, even if that meant his office would lose more of those cases. Sure enough, conviction rates for rape cases have decreased in 2020 to 2021, compared with 2018 to 2019.

These are cases that are unbelievably difficult to prove, Boudin said. Even without sufficient evidence, he said, Police tend to want to present the case to the D.A.

Charging rates for weapons-related arrests have dropped

Boudin said his office is charging fewer weapons-related cases because many of the cases brought to him have lacked the evidence needed to win a conviction.

I would guess that the [most common] scenario for gun cases that we get are a group of people and a gun found in a car. That always presents an at least potentially viable defense that they didnt know the gun was in the car, it wasnt their car or theyd given a friend a ride in the car, he said. This is a defense, by the way, that works with San Francisco juries all the time.

In such cases, Boudin said his office generally asks the police to investigate the case further instead of charging. He added that video footage is often far less reliable [as evidence] than it was two years ago, because people caught on tape are usually wearing masks. The data does show that requests for further investigation have increased for weapons cases under Boudins administration.

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Boudin has used this type of argument often to explain why his office does not charge a case, a contention challenged by the San Francisco Police Officers Association, which says Boudin is not charging some cases even if they have sufficient evidence; they allege his decisions are motivated by a desire to shield crime perpetrators at the expense of victims. In one case, after Boudin initially dropped charges against a man who allegedly attempted to assault police officers with a glass bottle and whom the police then shot, the officers union called the offices decision dangerous, and requested federal prosecutors to step in.

Chesa Boudin is protecting criminals and suspects over crime victims, union leader Tony Montoya said in a statement.

Boudin's office said at the time that the prosecution conflicted with a concurrent case against officers involved in the incident, and the D.A. has subsequently brought charges again against the alleged perpetrator.

The Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the decreased charging rates for weapons-related cases during Boudins tenure and the pandemic, and how that relates to the quality of evidence the department has presented in such cases.

Boudins office has not secured more convictions in the weapons cases it charges than the office did under Gascon. However, weapons-related conviction rates did increase in 2021 compared with 2020.

Charging rates for narcotics cases have increased

Boudin said the bump in narcotics charging rates likely has two primary causes. First, his office is charging defendants in more serious selling operations and people with large volumes of fentanyl and other hard drugs.

Were living through an historic number of fatal overdoses, he said. I dont know if charging 100% of narcotics offenses is a 100% effective way to address that, but its one of the tools we have at our disposal.

Second, Boudin said, police are arresting fewer lower-level drug offenders. It used to be SFPD would arrest and charge someone for a pipe or recreational use. Thats changed. What were seeing from SFPD is arresting people with possession and intent to sell, he said.

According to the charging data, police presented about a third fewer narcotics cases to the D.A.s office in 2020 than in 2019. As of Oct. 10 of this year, theyre on track to present even fewer cases for 2021.

Totten said police departments sometimes change how they make or present arrests based on a D.A.s stated priorities  for instance, Boudin saying he will not prosecute quality-of-life crimes including street drug use.

Lets just hypothetically say a D.A. has a policy that they will not charge certain types of narcotics offenses, Totten said. Law enforcement is going to think twice before they arrest somebody for a narcotics offense.

However, he said that police statewide have long de-emphasized arresting lower-level drug offenders to conserve resources: Thats been going on since the beginning of time. That is not anything new.

Matt Dorsey, a Police Department spokesperson, provided data showing that the SFPDs drug arrest numbers have not changed significantly year over year in the Tenderloin, where the vast majority of drug arrests take place and where fatal fentanyl overdoses have been at epidemic levels.

But total arrests citywide have decreased significantly during Boudins time as D.A., according to data Dorsey provided. Police made about 21,000 arrests in 2019, fewer than 14,000 in 2020 and, as of late October, had made just over 10,000 this year.

Charging rates for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace arrests have decreased

Boudin said that many of the disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace arrests that his office declined to charge were those presented to his office during the summer 2020 protests that followed the death of George Floyd. His office had issued a statement saying it would not prosecute such cases unless the perpetrator had committed an additional offense, such as assault or vandalism.

He added that even when unrelated to protests, such cases would have generally fallen under the kinds of lower-level offenses his office usually tries to refer to diversion programs.

Police incident data from 2020 does not show a spike in incidents related to disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace for May and June 2020, though that doesnt mean police didnt present a higher share of incidents to the D.A.s office during those months. The Chronicle requested monthly data on disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct arrests that police brought to the D.A.s office but has not received it.

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson
Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan, a passionate activist for civil rights, education and health care who rose to become the first Asian American elected to the board, died Wednesday afternoon after a motorist struck her as she was out walking her dog in Alameda, officials said.

Chan, 72, was hit at about 8 a.m. while crossing the street along the citys waterfront, at Shore Line Drive and Grand Street  an area popular with pedestrians and bicyclists. Emergency responders found Chan, unresponsive, in the roadway and took her to Highland Hospital, where she died at 2:30 p.m.

The woman driving the car that hit Chan stayed at the scene and was cooperating with investigators, police said in a statement that did not name Chan as the victim. Chans office confirmed she was the victim.

At this time, the cause of the collision has yet to be determined, police said. In the coming weeks, city personnel from APD, Public Works, and the Transportation Planning Department will conduct a review of the collision site and details from the investigation to discuss any potential safety interventions.

Born in Boston to Chinese immigrant parents, Chan attended public schools, then received a bachelors degree from Wellesley College and a masters degree in administration and policy analysis from Stanford University, saying in an alumni testimonial that she would always remember watching tapes of civil rights demonstrations in one class and the awed expressions of younger classmates who had not lived through it, as I did.

Before launching what would become an illustrious political career, Chan did not envision herself holding office, she said in a biographical video on her website. She was the first Asian American in many seats that she won, including on the Alameda County Board of Superviors, to which she was elected in 1994. She later served in the state Assembly from 2000 to 2006, and was the first Asian American Assembly majority leader.

In 2010, she successfully ran for her former seat on the Board of Supervisors, and had served since then, representing Alameda, San Leandro, and part of Oakland, as well as the unincorporated communities of San Lorenzo, Hayward Acres and a portion of Ashland.

During her 30-year career in public service, Supervisor Chan had been a staunch advocate for children, families, the elderly, affordable housing, and health care for the uninsured, the supervisors chief of staff, Dave Brown, wrote in a statement released Wednesday afternoon.

Chan is survived by two children and two grandchildren. Her family thanks the first responders and medical staff that provided wonderful care to Supervisor Chan, and they request privacy at this time, Brown said. Chans beloved dog, Maggie, survived the accident and is being cared for in a kennel.

Now Playing: Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan, a passionate activist for civil rights, education and health care who rose to become the first Asian American elected to the board, died Wednesday afternoon after a motorist struck her as she was out walking her dog in Alameda, officials said. Video: Yalonda M James The Chronicle

Politicians and community leaders from throughout the East Bay expressed shock and grief Wednesday, and many highlighted Chans long career as an advocate for social justice.

Alameda Vice Mayor Malia Vella wept on the phone Wednesday afternoon, recalling how she first met Chan as a high school student and kept in touch with her for years.

As an Asian American woman, we dont have many people who serve in the capacity that she has served, Vella said of the supervisor. I know she has mentored so many people.

Vella praised Chan for a lifelong commitment to early childhood education and equal access to quality health care. She said that anyone who has worked on these issues in Alameda County or at the state level knows Wilma Chan, and knows what she stood for.

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu hailed Chan as an icon of the Asian American community and called for an end to senseless traffic violence.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a Democrat from Oakland, recalled meeting Chan in the 1980s when they worked on Jesse Jacksons presidential campaign. Lee described her colleague as a brilliant and principled woman who truly believed in giving a voice to the most marginalized to make their lives better.

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By Wednesday night, a small group of East Bay residents had gathered at the intersection where Chan was hit and placed candles and flowers on a pedestrian island.

She wasnt anybody to be pushed around; she was a tough lady, said Tyler Dragoni, an Ashland resident who serves on the Eden Area Municipal Advisory Council and worked with Chan. Dragoni noted how she had recently cross-examined Oakland As ownership and Oakland officials during discussions about the baseball teams future in the city.

She was the one with the most incisive questions, he said.

Some see Chans death as a potential catalyst for safety improvements in Alameda, a city working toward a Vision Zero action plan to end serious crashes by 2035.

But at this time, its still just a plan, Denyse Trepanier, board president of the advocacy group Bike Walk Alameda said in a statement, noting that the intersection where Chan was hit is known for a high number of injuries from vehicles.

Trepanier argued that its long past time to take action and make the safety improvements that we know, with certainty, will reduce the likelihood and severity of crashes like this.

Rachel Swan and Andres Picon are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com, andy.picon@hearst.com. Twitter: @rachelswan, @andpicon
A huge facility designed to produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of cultured meat opened Thursday in Emeryville  a significant step forward in a nascent yet rapidly growing industry where meat is grown from animal cells without any need for slaughter.

The facility, part of a new, $50 million, 53,000-square-foot campus for Berkeley food tech company Upside Foods, is billed as the first of its kind in the world and ready for commercial scale. While other companies have made cultured meat, also known as cultivated meat or lab-grown meat, theyve typically worked out of smaller laboratories.

The U.S. government still hasnt approved the sale of cultivated meat, but Upside Foods Chief Operating Officer Amy Chen said the new facility is proof that the technology is ready.

Its not a dream, said Chen, who left a senior vice president role at PepsiCo to join Upside in June. Its not science fiction. Its reality today.

Until the meat is legal to sell, the company will be hosting tours and testing products. Once it gains approval, Upsides plan is to start supplying restaurants, specifically Dominique Crenns three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn in San Francisco. After introducing the meat to the public through chefs, the next move is into grocery stores  similar to the rollout followed by Impossible Foods, the Redwood City maker of the convincingly beefy burgers made from soybeans. Unlike plant-based meats, cultivated meat is actually animal-based, fleshy meat.

Cayce Clifford/Special to The Chronicle

Located in a residential neighborhood near the Public Market Emeryville, Upsides new space looks like a brewery on steroids. Its capable of producing 50,000 pounds of meat per year, with room to eventually expand to 400,000 pounds.

Huge tanks known as bioreactors line the main room, where cells harvested from live animals will be bathed in nutrients such as glucose, vitamins and amino acids. The bioreactors create an environment similar to an animals body, and the nutrients feed the cells until they get bigger, forming an unstructured, ground-meat-like product. An additional, more complicated step involves creating a scaffolding that allows the cells to grow together and form the fibers and texture expected from a whole cut of meat, like a steak or chicken breast.

Advocates say the process not only avoids killing animals but, because it requires less water and land, is a more efficient, climate-friendly way to produce meat. Thats partially because the process is significantly faster, shrinking the one to three years it takes for a cow to mature to a matter of weeks.

That sales pitch has led to enormous interest in the industry, with Upside drawing more than $200 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. San Francisco cultured-meat competitor Eat Just, which is also known for its plant-based egg substitute Just Egg, has nabbed more than $450 million.

Audrey Gyr, a startup specialist with the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for plant-based and cultivated meat, said Upsides new facility is a testament to how much the industry has grown over the past few years  and how much it will continue to grow. A 2021 McKinsey & Company report predicts the market for cultivated meat could reach $25 billion by 2030.

The technology and innovation has advanced considerably to enable them to build this kind of facility and move beyond the lab, said Gyr, who is not affiliated with Upside.

When Upside Foods, previously known as Memphis Meats, started in 2015, it was the first cultured-meat company in the world. Now, there are at least 80, according to the Good Food Institute.

Cayce Clifford Special to The Chronicle

Gyr said there are other cultivated-meat companies planning production facilities similar to Upsides, which has rooms for harvesting meat, cooking meat, working with raw meat and testing recipes. For example, cultured salmon startup Wildtype has announced plans for a facility and sushi tasting room in San Francisco, though it will produce just 50,000 pounds per year.

In addition to being the first to construct a facility, Upside is also showing off some notable advances in the industry, according to Gyr. The Berkeley company can grow cuts of meat  chicken breast is the companys first planned product  while many others are able to produce only ground meat. And, given the right cells to culture, its facility can produce any kind of meat, from duck to lobster.

Cayce Clifford/ Special to The Chronicle

Upside says it is ready to start production as soon as it gets a green light from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, which agreed to jointly regulate the new industry in 2019 but havent approved the sale of any cultured meat yet. So far, the only country to allow the sale of cultivated meat  specifically chicken from Eat Just  is Singapore.

The two U.S. agencies have been mostly silent about the industry since 2019, apart from an announcement in September soliciting comments on how to label cultivated meat. The USDA and FDA could approve specific products like Upsides chicken breast on a case-by-case basis before determining industrywide language, according to Gyr. Regardless, theres no established timeline.

Chen declined to say how much Upsides first meat will cost whenever its sold, but suggested it would be on par with higher-end chicken such as pasture-raised birds.

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Despite the climate-focused missions of cultivated-meat companies, its still unclear whether growing meat from cells is better for the environment than animal agriculture. Thats because there hasnt yet been a commercial-scale production facility for researchers to examine; the few available studies are based on speculation.

An often-cited 2015 study in Environmental Science & Technology, for example, agreed with food tech companies that cultured meat would require less land and water but stated, Those benefits could come at the expense of more intensive energy use. Other speculative studies determined that the greenhouse gas emissions of cultured meat would likely be less than traditional beef but not necessarily poultry or pork.

More recently, a 2019 study by two University of Oxford researchers suggested this greenhouse gas comparison might be misleading because cows produce methane, and a factory would likely produce carbon dioxide because of electricity usage. Methane lingers in the atmosphere for about 12 years, much less than carbon dioxides long life of as much as 1,000 years.

Upsides new facility, Gyr said, represents an amazing opportunity to learn more about what the reality will be.

Chen said Upsides facility uses 100% renewable energy and is already working through an analysis of its total environmental impact, with the hope that a third party will verify the companys sustainability claims by mid-2022.

One of the biggest challenges, though, will be persuading the masses to buy cultivated meat. Chen said Upside will need to demystify the process to the public, which she called a key goal of the new production facility.

The company plans to give virtual tours beginning this week, then host in-person tours starting next year. Visitors will be able to peer into the facility from large windows all over the building.

Anyone who didnt think this could be a reality has a chance now to see a vision come to life, Chen said.

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Senor Sisig, the hit Filipino food truck, is opening a new restaurant in Oakland  owner Evan Kideras first with a full bar.

The restaurant, Kideras third brick-and-mortar establishment, will open at 330 17th St. at the new Zo apartment complex near Lake Merritt in 2022. It will replace Senor Sisigs current Oakland location, which opened in January around the corner on Webster Street, with a short-term lease.

Expect its popular sisig burritos, the restaurants relatively new vegan menu  which will be exclusively available in Oakland  and some new dishes. Cocktails havent been finalized yet, but Kidera is thinking about tequila (a nod to Senor Sisigs Mexican influence) and boozy slushies, perhaps named after Oakland rappers or athletes. The space has high ceilings and two huge garage doors that will roll up to create an indoor-outdoor feel.

The new location reflects a pandemic-forced shift away from Senor Sisigs founding bread-and-butter  roving food trucks that were busiest during office lunch hours  to brick-and-mortar restaurants. When the pandemic swept the Bay Area, its fleet of six food trucks had to shut down, but Kideras 4-month-old restaurant in the Mission saw sales pick up. Even when he relocated two trucks to permanent locations in Oakland and Daly City, business for daily lunch and dinner wasnt as strong as pre-coronavirus lunchtime demand in areas like San Franciscos Financial District or food truck events like Off the Grid.

Looking down the line, well still have our food trucks, but who knows when those locations will come back, if ever, to where they were, said Kidera. (Im) looking to continue our growth ... and right now that looks like more brick-and-mortar locations.

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A Senor Sisig with more permanent restaurants in the Bay Area would be a major change from a decade ago, when Kidera and chef Gil Payumo started out of a truck they bought on Craigslist. Their eventual six trucks often drew long lines at Off the Grid and other events.

Elena Kadvany is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: elena.kadvany@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ekadvany
HAMILTON, Ga. (AP)  A shooting that left one person dead marks the first homicide of 2021 in Georgia's Harris County, authorities said.

Dylan Eldridge, 29, died at Columbus Piedmont Regional at 1:35 a.m. Tuesday, Harris County Coroner Joe Weldon told the Ledger-Enqurier.
The juror dismissed from Kyle Rittenhouses murder trial apparently was trying to be funny when he cracked to a court security officer about a police officer's shooting of Jacob Blake, the event that set off the protests where Rittenhouse shot three people, two fatally.

Blake, who is Black, was shot by a white officer three months after the murder of George Floyd by a white officer in Minneapolis prompted protests over racial injustice nationwide. When Judge Bruce Schroeder said Thursday that the joke  which the juror didnt want to repeat in open court  showed bias that would seriously undermine the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial, the man objected.

It wasnt anything to do with the case, the juror told Schroeder Thursday. It wasnt anything to do with Kyle.

The moment captured the bias  sometimes explicit, but often implicit or unconscious  that experts say is especially damaging in criminal proceedings. Jurors who may not see their biases as problematic or even realize they exist are asked to weigh witness testimony and ultimately decide a defendants fate. And while the juror in Kenosha, Wisconsin, may have vocalized his beliefs, sharing the joke while being escorted to his car after jury duty, in most cases these biases are difficult or impossible to detect.

Its one of the most significant problems facing the criminal justice system in both state and federal courts, said Mark Bennett, a retired federal and state judge who directs the Institute for Justice Reform & Innovation at Drake University Law School in Iowa.

In some places, courts and judges have taken steps to educate jurors, attorneys and others about implicit bias. Questions to potential jurors go well beyond asking if they can be impartial, instead asking about stereotypes they may hold or their interactions with others.

In part of Washington state, potential jurors are shown a video about implicit bias, and attorneys are encouraged to ask questions during jury selection such as what they thought about the video. It's not clear whether that happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where 20 people were seated for the Rittenhouse jury in one day. The 12 who decide the case will be announced later, the judge said.

Bennett, who wrote a jury instruction on implicit bias and has studied bias in judges, said Schroeder did the right thing in dismissing the juror. Any person who would joke about Blake while at the courthouse during jury duty doesn't have the kind of mindset a judge would want on the case, he said.

But Bennett also said a one-day jury selection isnt enough time to root out people with explicit or implicit biases, particularly in racially polarizing cases. In one major federal trial, Bennett took 14 days to select a jury. He also has had potential jurors fill out a questionnaire  one as long as 99 questions  at home, where theyre more likely to answer candidly, before coming to the jury selection.

You cannot do it in one day, he said. Im sorry, you just cannot.

Margaret Russell, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-founder of the Equal Justice Society, agreed, saying the jury selection seems astonishingly quick for a case that involves some of the most contentious, inflammatory issues of our day.

Rittenhouse is white, as are the three men he shot in August 2020. But the case has raised questions about racial justice, policing, firearms and white privilege that have polarized people far outside Kenosha.

Blake, who was shot by the officer two days before Rittenhouse shot the three men, was partially paralyzed in the shooting. Police say it occurred while they responded to a domestic disturbance call and that Blake was holding a knife. The county prosecutor later declined to charge the officer.

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Protests following the Blake shooting at times turned violent and destructive, with rioters setting fires and ransacking businesses. Rittenhouse, then 17, traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois, just across the Wisconsin state line. The former police youth cadet said he went to Kenosha to protect property. As he walked the streets he carried an AR-style rifle.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the three shootings, while his lawyer says Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

After his arrest, conservatives called Rittenhouse an American patriot, with people contributing millions of dollars to a legal defense fund and helping the now 18-year-old post a $2 million bail to leave jail.

Russell said she also believed Schroeder was correct to dismiss the juror Thursday, saying his actions show a shockingly ignorant sense of the case and the issues involved. The fact that the man didnt want to repeat his joke in open court suggests he knew it was inappropriate, she said.

Russell also was troubled by the jurors use of Rittenhouses first name as he referred to the defendant. Calling him Kyle, she said, showed a sense of familiarity that perhaps means hes not viewing the case through an unbiased lens.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
As Dave Chappelle takes center stage Thursday night at San Franciscos Chase Center, I cant say Ill be as excited as I used to be.

As a Black man who grew up a half-hour from the comedians Ohio hometown, I have long identified with his blistering critiques of racism. His comedy, at its best, reveals biting truths about the African American experience and, for Black people, wrings laughter from the pain of discrimination.

But just because Chappelles right about one thing, it doesnt mean hes right about everything.

Much of The Closer, Chappelles latest Netflix special, was painful to watch. Over the course of 72 minutes, one of the countrys most incisive comedians used his craft to lay out a critique of the entire LGBTQ community as if Black LGBTQ folks like me didnt exist or didnt matter.

In the show, Chappelle imagines a contest between LGBTQ people and Black people. He asserts that, Gay people are minorities until they need to be white again, and that, I have never had a problem with transgender people. My problem has always been with white people. As a Black gay man, its obvious to me these lines make no sense. With over a million Black Americans self-identifying as LGBTQ, it is disingenuous to talk about LGBTQ people as if we are all white. That erasure only feeds into the very real and unique problems Black LGBTQ people face.

A 2020 survey found that because of the burden of social stigma and racial bias, Black LGBTQ Americans face higher incidents of police stops and arrests, workplace mistreatment and economic difficulty. Findings from a 2019 study further confirmed the specific challenges the community faces: 30.8% of Black LGBTQ people live in poverty compared to 25.3% of Black cisgender straight people and 15.4% of White LGBTQ people.

Black transgender people also face particular hardships. According to a study by the National LGBTQ Taskforce, 34% of Black transgender people live in extreme poverty  an annual income of less than $10,000 a year  compared to 15% of transgender people of all races and 9% of the general Black population. Moreover, the number of transgender people being killed in the country increases every year, many of whom are Black and brown. Given these dire statistics, I cant understand why Chappelle would not even acknowledge their existence.

Early in the special, Chappelle states: Im jealous of gay people ... look at how well that movement is going. And weve (Black people) been trapped in this predicament for hundreds of years. I understand his sentiment. The marriage equality movement traded on the moral authority of the Black civil rights movement and minimized the persistence of racial oppression. What Chappelle is saying, although ineptly, is that white privilege has fueled the mainstream LGBTQ rights movement. This is true. And racism within the white LGBTQ community is real. Some white gay men think being gay gives them a pass to mock Black women. Studies on sexual racism show that white gay men are more likely to prefer white partners than their straight male counterparts.

Chappelle tells stories in the special about white women and white gay men following and confronting him in public to demand an explanation of his comedy that bring to mind the entitlement of all the Karens who believe their whiteness authorizes them to question Black people. The most incisive line in The Closer, though, follows Chappelles story about a white gay man picking a fight and then calling the cops on him: A Black gay person would have never done that to me because they could have been shot, too.

Hes right. But its also telling that the only other reference to Black LGBTQ people in the show is a passing and stereotypical one, referencing two big, buff, gay, Black dudes. For someone who has made his career pointing out the injustices of the Black experience, why not take the opportunity to highlight the very real traumas often endured by this community?

Most people are not either completely oppressed or completely privileged. White LGBTQ people are disadvantaged based on gender and sexuality. But they also have white privilege. As an African American, Chappelle faces racial discrimination but also enjoys privilege as a straight, cisgender man who is wealthy and famous. We are not all just one thing.

I was particularly struck by how some of Chappelles moves mimic those of white people deflecting charges of racism. Chappelle ends the special with a story about Daphne Dorman, a San Francisco-based, white transwoman, comedian and Chappelle fan. Chappelle seems to suggest that his friendship with her, which lasted until her suicide in 2019, proves he is not transphobic, much like when white people cite their Black best friend to prove they arent racist. Comedian Jon Stewart defended Chappelle saying, I know his intention is never hurtful. Hes not that kinda person,  a common refrain we hear from white people when defending other white folks who are caught on camera using n.

We cannot know for certain what Chappelle intended. But, ultimately, that does not matter as much as the impact of his words on LGBTQ people. The numerous callouts of Chappelles transphobia are necessary and important, but we shouldnt erase his racial critiques of the LGBTQ community in the process.

I remain a fan of Chappelles best work because of his courageous racial critiques, his commitment to an authentic self and his love for Black people. But that love should require him to use his talent to recognize, respect and champion all Black people, including the Black LGBTQ community.

Russell K. Robinson is the Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law and faculty director of the Center for Race, Sexuality and Culture at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
Comedian Dave Chappelle is opening his latest tour at San Franciscos Chase Center, despite receiving fierce criticism for his recent comments about the transgender community.

Many say his views are transphobic and harmful at a time of record-breaking anti-trans legislation. Chronicle culture critic Tony Bravo and Aria Said, the executive director of San Franciscos Transgender District, join host Cecilia Lei to discuss the controversy and whether Chappelle can redeem himself in the eyes of the LGBTQ community.

Photo above: Comedian Dave Chappelle is being criticized for being transphobic over the content of his latest Netflix special.


SACRAMENTO  Growing tension over state intervention in local housing policy is likely to further escalate in the coming year as state officials ramp up their enforcement of laws that aim to boost construction while opponents pursue a constitutional amendment to wrest back authority.

Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Wednesday a new housing strike force within the California Department of Justice, a 12-member team that he said would address the states affordability crisis by enforcing development and tenant rights laws.

That could include more lawsuits against local governments that state officials believe are not making a genuine effort to plan for and approve enough housing to accommodate future growth  a strategy first pursued with a 2019 case to force the Orange County city of Huntington Beach to set aside additional sites for low-income housing.

Thats certainly an area of interest and an area where we can be more involved, Bonta said during a virtual news conference. We will be looking at cities to see if they are meeting their obligations under the law.

He declined to discuss any potential or pending investigations, but added, Stay tuned. This is a strike force of action with an intent to be involved and to use the tools that we have in our toolbox.

Starting in January, Bonta will have expanded authority to pursue legal action against local governments that violate recent laws to speed up regulatory reviews; require cities that have not fulfilled their state housing targets to approve projects that meet certain zoning, design and affordability standards; prohibit policies to reduce development in communities without enough housing; and make it easier to build services-oriented navigation centers for homeless people, among others.

Major legislation over the past few years has aimed to streamline the approval process for massive developments, backyard cottages and duplex conversions, removing some veto power from local governments in an effort to make it easier and cheaper to produce all types of housing that California needs to address its shortage.

Many of these measures were the subject of intense legislative battles between supporters who believe the state must intervene to lower the barriers to building much-needed housing when local officials refuse to act, and cities and homeowner groups, particularly in suburban and coastal areas, who fear losing control over how their communities develop.

As the state has ramped up pressure on local governments to build more homes, with dozens of new laws passed in recent years, the backlash has intensified.

The Secretary of States Office on Monday cleared proponents to begin gathering signatures for a state constitutional amendment to give local land-use decisions precedence over state law when they are in conflict. They must collect signatures from more than 997,000 registered voters by May to place their measure on the November ballot next year.

John Heath  co-founder of a homeowners association for the wealthy, predominantly Black neighborhoods of Windsor Hills, View Park and View Heights in Los Angeles County, which submitted the constitutional amendment  said he was concerned about the state obliterating single-family communities by jamming in more development over their objections. He said requiring density everywhere would not lead to the affordability that lawmakers are seeking.

What is so bad and whats going on where the folks in Sacramento think we have to silence all of the folks in the community here? Heath said.

The campaign is supported by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles nonprofit behind unsuccessful statewide rent-control ballot initiatives in the past two election cycles, which has fought some of the new housing laws for not including stricter requirements for affordable or homeless units.

The announcement of the attorney generals housing strike force comes just weeks after the formal launch of an accountability unit within the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which will provide technical assistance to cities and counties as they zone for and permit new housing, while taking enforcement steps against those that fall short of their state goals. These programs reflect the heightened seriousness with which Gov. Gavin Newsoms administration now regards stagnant development rates that continue to be about half what the state estimates is necessary each year.

We are not asking people to do the impossible, Bonta said. When you dont do the very possible simply because you dont want to do it, theres going to be consequences.

Carolyn Coleman, executive director and CEO of the League of California Cities, slammed Bonta for demonizing all cities for things they do not control and characterized his strike force as part of the states scattershot approach to housing policy that has only made it more difficult to increase supply.

If the state is looking for a real solution to this decades-in-the-making housing crisis, we urge a pause on unproven top-down state mandates and enforcement policies and call on the state to work as a true partner with local governments to get housing built for all Californians, she said in a statement.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
Alameda County District 3 Supervisor Wilma Chan was struck by a motorist and killed Wednesday afternoon, according to a statement first obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. (SFGATE and the Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.)

A representative for Chan's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE.

Chans death took place at about 2:30 p.m., after she had been walking her dog, Maggie, according to the statement. She was hit by a vehicle, according to the statement from her office, and sustained a serious head injury. She was transported to Highland Hospital, where she succumbed to the injury.

Chan was first elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in 1994, becoming the first Asian American to do so, and following time in the California State Assembly, she was re-elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010. She was the first Asian American and first woman to serve as the majority leader in the Assembly.

"During her 30-year career in public service, Supervisor Chan had been a staunch advocate for children, families, the elderly, affordable housing and health care for the uninsured," read a memo sent out by staffers following her death.

Chan lived in Alameda, and is survived by her two children and two grandchildren.

Alameda police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.
Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

The campaign to recall three members of the San Francisco Board of Education received a major endorsement from state Sen. Scott Wiener  a prominent San Francisco Democrat  on Thursday.

In a Twitter thread, Wiener, who represents all of San Francisco County part of San Mateo County in the state Senate, said he was supporting the recall of Alison Collins, Gabriela Lopez and Faauuga Moliga because, "Not only did these commissioners fail to do their jobs adequately, they engaged in abusive and disruptive behavior, interfered with the Superintendents ability to do his job, & caused the school district to deteriorate during the pandemic."
A driver traveling south on Highway 1 near Pacifica went over a cliff and into the water Thursday morning and survived, officials said.

Cal Fire said that the driver is in "stable condition."

The incident occurred at Devil's Slide south of the Tom Lantos Tunnel, which is about 11 miles south of San Francisco, at 8 a.m., Cal Fire and the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office said. The highway was temporarily closed at the scene of the incident and reopened just after 9:30 a.m.

The sheriff's office said the driver lost control of the vehicle and went over the side and into the water below.

"It sounds like it may have been slick out there and his tires came out from under him and he overcorrected," Lt. Eamonn Allen with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office told KCBS.

The driver extricated himself from the vehicle and climbed back onto the cliffs, the sheriff's office reported.

A California Highway Patrol officer came to the rescue when he noticed fresh skid marks on the highway. The officer looked over the cliff where he saw the vehicle in the water and the driver clinging to rocks below the road.
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. (AP) _ CSG Systems International Inc. (CSGS) on Wednesday reported third-quarter earnings of $16.1 million.

On a per-share basis, the Greenwood Village, Colorado-based company said it had profit of 50 cents. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 88 cents per share.

The provider of support services for the communications industry posted revenue of $263.2 million in the period. Its adjusted revenue was $247 million.

CSG Systems expects full-year earnings in the range of $3.16 to $3.34 per share, with revenue in the range of $946 million to $964 million.

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This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on CSGS at https://www.zacks.com/ap/CSGS
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Sharp rent increases in many parts of the country are eating up a bigger share of Americans monthly income, squeezing tenants already grappling with rising prices for gasoline, food and other necessities.

Households with a median U.S. rent of $1,179 in August tapped 30.3% of their monthly income to pay their rent, up from 29.4% a year earlier, according to an analysis by Zillow. The real estate information company examined data on median rents and household incomes across 50 of the nations biggest cities.

Economists generally define housing as affordable when rent is less than 30% of tenants' monthly income. Renters who go above that threshold likely have a tough time making ends meet on other costs, like groceries, clothing, transportation and utilities, to say nothing of saving for a down payment on a home.

Earlier on in the pandemic we saw rent burdens actually decreasing in a lot of markets as rents were stagnating or even dropping as a result of the pandemic, but now that rents have recovered, were starting to see the affordability become a challenge again, said Nicole Bachaud, economist at Zillow.

Apartment rents fell during the last three quarters of 2020 after the coronavirus recession kicked in. The national vacancy rate ticked up through the second half of 2020, reaching 5.3% in the second quarter of this year, according to data from Moodys Analytics REIS.

In the third quarter, the U.S. vacancy rate declined to 4.8%, while rents increased 7.4% from a year earlier to $1,585, according to Moodys, which is forecasting rents could increase nationally by nearly 10% by the end of this year.

Concessions have burned off, pricing power has returned to landlords, and there is increasing evidence that populations that may have left larger cities for safer refuge during the height of COVID are returning, Victor Canalog, chief economist at Moodys Analytics REIS, wrote in a recent report. All of these factors contribute to the sense that there is runway to this recovery.

Rents are climbing again as economic growth and hiring have picked up following the loosening of pandemic-related restrictions and a ramp-up in coronavirus vaccine distributions.

In August, the median U.S. rent jumped 6.1% from a year earlier, according to Zillow, which tracks a wide swath of rental properties, including those owned by individual investors.

In some metropolitan areas in Florida and California the annual increase in median rent for August grew even faster.

In the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, the median rent vaulted 8.6% in August to $1,639. That meant households were spending 40.3% of their monthly income on rent, Zillow found. A year earlier, it was 38.3%.

And in Sacramento, California, where the median rent surged 8% in August to $1,571, renters spent 34% of their monthly income on rent, up from 32.3% a year earlier, according to Zillow.

The Zillow analysis looked at median rents, or the midpoint between the highest and lowest rents. This means many U.S. renters are spending more on rent, and perhaps a bigger share of their income as a result, while others are spending less.

Zillow also found large disparities among white, Asian, Black and Latino renters when it comes to the percentage of income they had to put toward rent in August. The nations white and Asian renters typically spent 28.6% and 26.0% of their monthly income on rent, respectively, while Black and Latino communities typically spent 34.0% and 32.1%, respectively, Zillow said.

We see that Black renters and Hispanic renters have a significantly harder time affording rent, even in affordable areas theyre still having the highest rent burden, Bachaud said. And thats really putting a lot of pressure on those households to try to be able to afford rent as prices increase much faster than their incomes.

The trend is more glaring in some metropolitan areas. Zillow found that Black tenants in San Diego spent 52% of their monthly income to cover the median rent of $1,934 in August. For tenants overall, regardless of ethnicity or race, making that rent payment required 37% of renters monthly income, Zillow found.

Orlando, Florida, was the least affordable market for Latino households, costing them 42% of their income to cover the median rent of $1,452 in August, Zillow found. That compares to 34.8% for all tenants.

Regardless of where they live, even in more affordable places, they have the highest rent burden, Bachaud said.
You can tell Eternals is going to be epic right from the opening crawl line: In the beginning... That's right, the film actually swipes language from the Book of Genesis. The Marvel Cinematic Universe just got biblical.

The reach sort of fits, in a way: Eternals isn't just another origin story for a clutch of new superheroes but the creation myth for the entire Marvel universe itself. The film spans from 5,000 B.C. to present day and describes god-like, gigantic beings shaping the galaxies. One almost longs for the good old days when a Marvel movies biggest drama was hoping Spider-Man could stop Doctor Octopus from wrecking New York.

It all starts simply enough. Directed by Academy Award-winner Chloe Zhao, Eternals introduces 10 members of a race of immortal beings who have spent 7,000 years on Earth defending it from rivals known as Deviants, who look a lot like the beasts from Aliens on steroids.

The film jumps back and forward in time to key moments in human history  Mesopotamia in 5000 B.C., Babylon in 575, Tenochtitlan in 1521 and Nagasaki in 1945, among them. The Eternals watch warily from the sidelines as violence reigns, forbidden to interfere, helped along with a soundtrack of clever songs that includes Pink Floyds Time and Foreigners Feels Like the First Time.

Marvel has reached deep into its archives for this film  the 26th film in the universe, after all  but has to be applauded for its inclusion. Four of the Eternals are white, three are Asian  one is the first Asian American woman protagonist  two are Black, and one is Latina. One is gay and one is deaf.

Theres more: Eternals contains the first gay kiss in the Marvel film universe, a kiss between superheroes and  remarkably quickly thereafter  the first superhero sex. Its a pity all these firsts have taken so long and are now crammed into an arguably third-tier bunch of characters.

They are: Sersi (Gemma Chan), who can transmute matter; Ikaris (Richard Madden), with the gift of flight and laser eyes; Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), who shoots energy blasts from his hands; and Sprite (Lia McHugh), who can cast illusions but is trapped in a tweens body.

Theres also Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), a superhuman inventor; Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), who has super speed; Druig (Barry Keoghan), with mind control powers; Gilgamesh (Don Lee) with super punching strength, and Thena (Angelina Jolie), who can summon weapons from thin air. Leading the bunch is Ajak (Salma Hayek), a sort of Den Mother to the others who possesses healing powers.

Their names  especially Gilgamesh, Thena and Ikaris  resemble names from ancient myths and the film thrillingly hints that they may be the real figures behind our ancient legends.

Eventually, each Eternal goes their own separate way. One goes to a run-down South Dakota farmhouse, a pair end up on a dusty spot in Australia, another teaches history in London. Nanjiani's Kingo becomes a vain Bollywood star who explains away his lack of aging by hiding in a false lineage of actors.

A new wave of Deviant attacks prompts the band back together and reveals some love triangles and unresolved issues. (Even eternal aliens need to talk stuff out.) In a running gag, each time an Eternal reunites with another, they explain them to the humans in their lives as friends from college.

The final third of the film  and with a 157-minute run time, Eternals feels sometimes eternal  elevates all the Earth-based stuff into another dimension with the re-introduction of the Celestials, which first appeared in "Guardians of the Galaxy." These are massive cosmic beings looking like giant toy robots that consider humans and Eternals mere playthings and have a hidden agenda.

Zhao, whose film Nomadland was everything this is not  spare, naturalistic, moody  struggles with so much going on. The fight scenes are repetitive and the dialogue often stilted ("When you love something, you must protect it," one Eternal says). The use of tendrils of light connecting the superheroes is impressive and the special effects at the end are truly mind-blowing, but the film is mostly saved by Nanjiani, whose humor and delivery makes him seem like he's in another movie. Without him, there's a lot of superheroes standing around in cool suits squinting a lot.

The film never really finishes, merely setting up the next installment, as Marvel fans are used to by now. Eternals is like the vegetables we need to eat before we can get to the dessert. And if you stick around during the credits, you'll find it: Harry Stiles. Stand by.

Eternals, a Walt Disney Co. release that hits theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for fantasy violence and action, some language and brief sexuality. Running time: 157 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Online: https://www.marvel.com/movies/eternals

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his partner, Lauren Sanchez, have purchased a sprawling estate in Hawaii.

Located along Mauis southern shoreline, four miles from the Makena Resort in Kihei, the La Perouse Bay property was previously home to Doug Schatz, the co-founder of Colorados Advanced Energy.

Pacific Business News first reported the story.

Schatz reportedly sold the estate to Bezos, currently the worlds second-richest man after Elon Musk, in a private transaction for $78 million. The approximately 14-acre estate includes a 4,500-square-foot house, a 1,700-square-foot guesthouse, and a 700-square-foot swimming pool, Dirt reports. According to a feature in Maui Magazine, the main home has an outdoor kitchen, complete with a teak deck, a waterfall feature, and ocean views.

Because the property includes the remains of a Hawaiian fishpond, there is also a private white sand beach.

Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for TOM FORD: AUTUM

Hawaii has long been a magnet for Silicon Valleys wealthiest tycoons, and Bezos joins other billionaires such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who owns 1,300 acres in Hawaii, including 600 acres on the island of Kauai  and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, also bought an oceanfront home in nearby Makena on Maui for what was then a record-breaking $27 million.
AP

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A shooting in broad daylight killed one man and wounded another Thursday in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood, an area popular with young homeless people and with tourists seeking to visit the center of the city's hippie heritage.

The shooting occurred at around 1 p.m. near the corner of Haight and Masonic streets, police said.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  A Roman Catholic priest facing child pornography charges in Rhode Island was released on unsecured bond and will be allowed to travel to Kansas to stay with a family member while he awaits trial.

The Rev. James W. Jackson, 66, made an initial appearance in federal court in Providence on Wednesday.

Prosecutors sought to have Jackson detained, saying he was a flight risk and a danger to the community. But Jackson will be allowed to travel to Kansas with home detention and GPS monitoring. Authorities did not specify exactly where in Kansas he would stay.

Jackson was arrested on Saturday by state police after a court-authorized search warrant was executed at St. Mary's church and rectory in Providence.

According to an affidavit, the investigation began on Sept. 4 after police identified an IP address sharing files of child sexual abuse materials through a peer-to-peer network.

The IP address was linked to St. Marys, according to authorities.

Investigators found hundreds of images and videos of child pornography on an external hard drive owned by Jackson, according to court documents.

An email seeking comment was left with Jackson's attorney.

Diocese of Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin in an earlier statement said Jackson has been prohibited from performing the duties of a priest.

Jackson came to the diocese in August from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, which has cared for St. Mary's since June 2018. He had previously passed a background check, the organization said.

Jackson also faces arraignment on related state charges on Nov. 15.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday advanced legislation aimed at limiting companies ability to fire workers who say they can't get vaccinated against COVID-19 for religious or medical reasons.

The House Health Committee approved an amended version of the Senate-passed bill designed to shield workers facing federal vaccination mandates. It would create a standard process for workers to claim a religious or medical exemption and make a legal presumption that the employee is entitled to the exemption.

People are in great fear of losing their jobs. Im hearing it from my community, people who have worked at plants since the 90s, said Republican Rep. Mike Jones, who was shepherding the bill in the House.

The revised bill would mandate businesses requiring COVID-19 vaccinations to distribute a form where employees could claim a religious or medical exemption through a standardized state form. A company that wanted to fire the employee over vaccination status would have to appeal to the Alabama Department of Labor where an administrative law judge would make a determination as to whether the employee is entitled to the exemption. The judge's decision could be appealed to circuit court.

The legislation comes as Republican leaders in many states try to find ways to resist the federal vaccine mandate they call an infringement on personal liberties. The bill drew opposition from a business group who said it would put federal contractors in a no-win situation. And a Democratic committee member said it would jeopardize the health of other workers.

Here we sit in the middle of one of the worst pandemics that Ive ever had in my lifetime. Were trying to protect the rights of those who are not complying but disregarding the rights of those who want to be safe, Democratic Rep. Pebblin Warren said.

Alabama has seen at least 15,629 COVID-19 related deaths, and has the second-highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 among states, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

One of the states largest business groups opposes the bill, saying it interferes with private business decisions and puts federal contractors in a difficult situation that could cost jobs.

Robin Stone of the Business Council of Alabama said it would cause confusion and "place Alabama employers in a no-win situation by forcing them to comply with conflicting code in the state legislation and existing federal orders."

During debate Republican Rep. Joe Lovvorn of Auburn said he is opposed to vaccination mandates, but is concerned the state might be trying to fight a huge overstep by the federal government by over-governing ourselves.

Jones said he was trying to mediate changes to the bill to make it more palatable. He acknowledged it is a carve-out to existing state law that otherwise allows employers to fire workers at will.

The committee-passed bill had several changes, such as requiring the employee to provide relevant information about a conflicting health condition. It also said an administrative law judge would hear appeals. However, Jones said he thought most employers would just file the exemption away.

The committee also approved a separate bill that gives the state attorney general authority to enforce the states existing vaccine passport law that prohibits businesses from refusing service to unvaccinated customers.

House Speaker Mac McCutcheon said he believes the bills have the support to win approval Thursday. He said in his tech-heavy district in north Alabama, there are thousands of workers at federal contractors upset about the vaccination mandate.

They feel like the federal government has done an overreach . . . and tell them what they can and cannot do with their bodies. And because of that, the public outcry has just been enormous," he said.

Warren said her colleagues pitch the bill as protecting the rights of people to make their own health decisions, but several years ago tried to take away the right of rape victims to get an abortion. Alabama lawmakers approved legislation banning almost all abortions but the law was blocked by a federal judge.

Its very confusing to me that we sat in this body and passed a bill that would not protect a female who was impregnated by rape, but we can sit here and have the rights of those who dont want to keep themselves and other folks healthy, Warren said.

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Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
ALAMEDA, Calif. (AP)  Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan died Wednesday after being hit by a car while walking her dog, her office said. She was 72.

Chan was struck by the vehicle while crossing a street in Alameda with her dog, Maggie, and was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where doctors pronounced her dead, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Chan, a Democrat, was first elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in 1994. She later served in the state Assembly from 2000 to 2006, and was the first Asian American Assembly Majority leader.

In 2010, she successfully ran for her first seat on the Board of Supervisors, and has served since then.

During her 30-year career in public service, Supervisor Chan had been a staunch advocate for children, families, the elderly, affordable housing, and health care for the uninsured, the supervisors chief of staff, Dave Brown, said in a statement.

Chan is survived by two children and two grandchildren. Her family thanks the first responders and medical staff that provided wonderful care to Supervisor Chan, and they request privacy at this time, Brown said.

Alameda police said in a statement that the crash was under investigation and that the driver of the car was cooperating with investigators.

In a statement, Denyse Trepanier, board president of the advocacy group Bike Walk Alameda, noted that Chan was hit near an intersection known for a high number of injuries from vehicles. Officials had cited the roadway in Alamedas Vision Zero Action Plan, which aims to end serious crashes in the city by 2035.

But at this time, its still just a plan, Trepanier said. Its long past time to take action and make the safety improvements that we know, with certainty, will reduce the likelihood and severity of crashes like this.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The hazard lights are blinking for President Joe Biden after Democratic setbacks in this week's elections, but the president professes to see no reason for panic.

Just one year after he rode to the White House with a record 81 million votes, Biden saw Democratic stalwart Terry McAuliffe fall to first-time Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin in the governor's race in Virginia, a state that Biden had won by 10 percentage points. In New Jersey, incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy barely won in a state that Biden had won by 16 percentage points.

But with some on the left warning that Democrats face a five-alarm fire, Biden is making the case that the electorate's mood  and Democratic fortunes  will improve when he gets Congress to pass his domestic agenda.

People need a little breathing room. Theyre overwhelmed. And what happened was I think we have to just produce results for them to change their standard of living and give them a little more breathing room, Biden said Wednesday.

The president parsed the election results after delivering remarks at the White House to showcase federal approval of COVID-19 shots for young children, pronouncing it a day of relief and celebration for families.

But even as he argued that his administration was making progress in moving past the coronavirus pandemic and that his domestic spending plan is the balm to soothe an angry electorate, the president rejected the idea that the Democrats' poor showing at the polls was linked to intraparty delays in advancing a stalled $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a 10-year, $1.75 trillion package of social and environmental initiatives.

Instead, Biden said, even if the bills had passed ahead of Tuesday's election, it probably wouldnt have mattered much for McAuliffe, who drew more votes than any Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the commonwealths history.

Im not sure that I would be able to have changed the number of very conservative folks who turned out in the red districts who were Trump voters, Biden said. "But maybe. Maybe.

Voter surveys tell a different story. Three-quarters of voters said drawn-out negotiations in Washington over Bidens governing agenda were an important factor in their vote. Those voters were more likely to back Youngkin, according to preliminary results from AP VoteCast, a survey of Virginia voters.

The president now sees his support diminished, with 47% of Virginias voters approving of his job performance and 53% disapproving  a split similar to U.S. adults nationwide in recent AP-NORC polling.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, said the results in Virginia, where GOP candidates also won statewide races for lieutenant governor and attorney general, should be a wake-up call for Democrats  and Biden  ahead of 2022 midterm elections in which they are looking to protect razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate.

I think the presidents tanking approval rating really made it very difficult for the ticket to rise above that, Connolly said,

But in making the case that things aren't as bad as they seem, White House officials pointed to established historic patterns in the two states that suggested the races would be uphill climbs for Democrats no matter what.

Even as Virginia has trended Democratic in recent years the sitting presidents party has lost the governors race in 11 of 12 elections there. In New Jersey, Murphy's slim victory marked the first time an incumbent Democratic governor was reelected in 44 years.

Biden looked at the results and suggested no reset was necessary for his White House.

He spoke with certitude of the many factors grinding on Americans  the lingering pandemic, rising costs at the gas pump, uncertainty about the economy  as problems that would go away if he could just get his agenda passed.

If Im able to pass, sign into law my Build Back Better initiative, Im in a position where youre going to see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly, the president said.

While not exactly congruous, the moment harks back to 2010 when Democrats took what President Barack Obama called a shellacking in the midterm election. The party lost 63 seats in the House, while Republicans also netted six gubernatorial seats and flipped control of 20 state legislative chambers.

At the time, the economy was improving after the Great Recession. But for many Americans, it was not fast enough even though the Obama administration had pushed through more than $800 billion in stimulus. Obama had also managed to get his signature health care legislation passed into law.

Still, for much of America the rebound wasn't enough. And Republicans seized on the linchpin of the legislation  the requirement that every American be insured or pay a fine  as government overreach.

Similarly, the pandemic-jarred economy continues to make progress after hitting bottom in the early days of the pandemic, and a relative sense of normalcy has returned even as the delta variant continues to claim hundreds of lives each day.

White House officials insist they are optimistic that the problems for Biden and Democrats will be short-lived, that political pain will recede as COVID-19 cases decline and kids get shots, and Democrats move closer to passing the infrastructure bill and the president's domestic agenda.

But if past is prologue, the burdens of the moment on the electorate could prove too heavy a lift even if Biden gets what he wants.

"Historically speaking, passing big legislation does not lead to electoral success," said Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "Voters just often wont reward those things and sometimes they punish aggressive legislating.

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EDITOR'S NOTE  Aamer Madhani has covered the White House for The Associated Press since 2019. Colleen Long has covered criminal justice and government for The Associated Press since 2006.

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Associated Press writers Alexandra Jaffe and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi State University says it has already taken all the cheese orders it can handle for the holiday season.

The Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station's dairy processing plant has been making cheese for 83 years. The original plan was to take this year's holiday orders until mid-November.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  The body of a Louisiana man who wanted it donated for science was dissected before paying viewers at an Oddities and Curiosities Expo in Oregon, news agencies report. His wife is aghast.

As far as Im concerned, its horrible, unethical, and I just dont have the words to describe it, Elsie Saunders of Baker, a Baton Rouge suburb, told The Advocate. I have all this paperwork that says his body would be used for science  nothing about this commercialization of his death.

Saunders' husband, World War II and Korean War veteran David Saunders, died of COVID-19 at age 98. She said she learned his dissection had been watched by people paying up to $500 a seat when she was called Tuesday by Seattle station KING-TV.

The station had sent an undercover reporter to an Oct. 17 dissection organized by DeathScience.org when the traveling expo stopped at a hotel in Portland, Oregon. The photojournalist spotted a bracelet with the typed name David Saunders on one wrist of the body described as that of an 86-year-old man.

A similar event scheduled for Halloween in Seattle was canceled after KING-TV's reports.

Elsie Saunders told the Baton Rouge newspaper Wednesday that Louisiana State University's medical school had declined to take her husband's body because he had died of COVID-19. After that, she said, she was connected with Med Ed Labs of Las Vegas.

Med Ed's website says it was established to provide medical and surgical education and training for the advancement of medical and surgical innovation.

The company had never before worked with Death Science, which promised professional use of the body, manager Obteen Nassiri told The Advocate. He told KING-TV that Death Science founder Jeremy Ciliberto claimed it would be used for a medical class.

Ciliberto did not immediately respond to on email sent Thursday to Death Science Club or to a chat message sent through the Death Science website by The Associated Press.

He told KING-TV he pays Med Ed more than $10,000 each for cadavers, but would not give the exact amount.

He told the newspaper in an emailed statement Wednesday that Med Ed, which also supplied the anatomist who performed the autopsy, knew attendees would not be exclusively medical students.

Ciliberto told KING-TV that Med Ed had not told him Saunders had died from COVID-19 and he would no longer work with that company.

The Death Science website advertises hyper-realistic death science courses to educate in a unique, fun & captivating way. It also sells anatomical models, death-themed artwork and branded merchandise with slogans like Support your local cadaver lab.

Med Ed's Nassiri said he apologized Wednesday to Elsie Saunders.

We respect our donors and their families, and appreciate their generous gift, Nassiri said. I told Ms. Saunders: Im sorry, Im on her side.

He said the body tested negative for the coronavirus before it was turned over to Med Ed. The virus probably had died by then, he said, and the test meant nobody present for the dissection was at risk.

Death Science recently sent an email recommending everyone at the Oct. 17 session get tested for the virus as a precaution though embalming would have killed it, KING-TV reported.

Greg Clark, owner of south Louisiana-based Church Funeral Services, which prepared Saunders' body, said he was disgusted to learn about the ticketed public dissection and has stopped working with Med Ed.

Were extremely sad for his widow because this is not what her intentions were, he told the newspaper.

Saunders said she hopes people will honor her husband's life after hearing the story of his death.

The two were married for 10 years and had known each other more than six decades. They moved to Baker from Chalmette, which is outside New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, Elsie Saunders said.

She said they wore masks in public and generally stayed home because of the pandemic, but her husband was infected during the delta variant's summer surge.

He was very patriotic, she said. He figured his body donation was an act of patriotism, too, because it would be used to help somebody else maybe.

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This version of the story corrects Saunders first name to David, not Donald as reported earlier.
PARIS (AP)  British and French negotiators looking to untangle a post-Brexit spat over fishing licenses expect to continue talking into next week after resuming discussions Thursday in Paris.

Although fishing is a tiny industry economically for both Britain and France, the issue of boats' access to waters that divide the two maritime powers has flared into a major irritant.
BEIJING (AP)  A seemingly innocuous government recommendation for Chinese people to store necessities for an emergency quickly sparked scattered instances of panic-buying and online speculation: Is China going to war with Taiwan?

The answer is probably not  most analysts think military hostilities are not imminent  but the posts on social media show the possibility is on peoples minds and drew out a flurry of war-mongering comments.

Taiwan is a self-governing island of 24 million people China regards as a renegade province that should come under its rule. Tensions have risen sharply recently, with China sending a growing number of warplanes on sorties near the island and the U.S. selling arms to Taiwan and deepening its ties with the government.

Most residents interviewed in Beijing, the Chinese capital, thought war was unlikely but acknowledged the rising tensions. They generally favored bringing Taiwan under Chinese rule by peaceful means, the official position of China's long-ruling Communist Party.

I dont feel panic but I think we should be more alert about this than in the past, said Hu Chunmei, who was taking a neighborhood walk.

War fears or not, there were scattered reports of runs on rice, noodles and cooking oil in some Chinese cities, according to local media. The more immediate worry for some was the possibility of neighborhood lockdowns as a COVID-19 outbreak spreads in several provinces.

The government moved quickly to try to tamp down fears with assurances of sufficient supplies. A bright yellow sign in an aisle of a Beijing supermarket asked customers to buy reasonably and not to listen to rumors or stockpile goods.

The online speculation started with a Commerce Ministry notice posted Monday evening about a plan to ensure the supply and stable price of vegetables and other necessities for the winter and spring. A line in it encouraged families to store some necessities for daily life and emergencies.

That was enough to set off some hoarding and a discussion on social media that the ministry could be signaling people should stock up for war.

China's state media has covered the rising tensions with Taiwan heavily, including the often-tough words exchanged between China on one side and the U.S. and Taiwan on the other.

It is natural to have aroused some imagination, social commentator Shi Shusi said. We should believe the governments explanations, but the underlying anxiety deserves our thought.

He said the populist views cheerleading for war don't represent majority opinion but do send a signal or warning to Taiwan.

Other developments fueled the war speculation. One person shared a screenshot of a list of recommended emergency equipment for families issued in August by the government in Xiamen, a coastal city near an outlying Taiwanese island. An unverified report  denied Wednesday by a military-affiliated social media account  said veterans were being called back to service to prepare for combat.

It's difficult to gauge how many people interpreted the notice as a possible prelude to war, but the reaction was strong enough to prompt a state media response the next day.

The Economic Daily, a government-owned newspaper, said people's imagination shouldn't run so wild, explaining that the advice was meant for people who may find themselves suddenly locked down because of a COVID-19 outbreak.

Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times newspaper, blamed the the online speculation on the amplification of public opinion during a time of tension.

I do not believe that the country wants to send a signal to the public at this time through a notice from the Commerce Ministry that people need to hurry up and prepare for war," he wrote.

Zhang Xi, another Beijing resident, ruled out the possibility of war and counseled patience in a dispute extending to when Taiwan and China split during the civil war that brought Mao Zedong's Communists to power in 1949.

This is a leftover from history, and its impossible to solve this right away," she said.

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Associated Press researcher Yu Bing, video producers Olivia Zhang and Caroline Chen and photographer Ng Han Guan contributed to this report.
LONDON (AP)  Dozens of climate change activists blocked roads outside the Parliament in London on Thursday, some gluing themselves to the ground as part of the group's ongoing protests.

About 60 supporters of the group Insulate Britain sat on the ground holding banners, blocking two roads around Parliament. Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said it was totally unacceptable that the group was interfering with democracy" after a lawmaker was delayed from entering Parliament to take part in a session on transport.
AP

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP)  A Colorado woman accused of killing her 11-year-old stepson pleaded not guilty Thursday to first-degree murder and a dozen other charges.

Letecia Stauch was in court for the first time in months after opting to appear virtually for earlier hearings, The Colorado Springs Gazette reported. In addition to murder, her charges include child abuse and tampering with evidence related to the slaying of Gannon Stauch, whose body was found in the Florida Panhandle in March 2020.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced a new policy Thursday allowing many unvaccinated students to stay in school  even if they had close contact with someone who has COVID-19.

Under the Screen and Stay policy, students and staff who may have been exposed to the virus under certain circumstances, but show no symptoms of having caught it and were wearing a mask at the time of the potential exposure, will be allowed to remain in the classroom without a test for the virus. The state already allows vaccinated students who were in close contact with someone with COVID-19 to stay in school.

Lamont, a Democrat, said students who show symptoms will still have to quarantine for 10 days under the new policy.

Otherwise, this allows you to stay in the classroom, and what a difference that makes, Lamont said.

Dr. Manisha Juthani, the states public health commissioner, said similar programs have been effective in other states, and are much less expensive than requiring students to take a COVID-19 test before being allowed back in class.

Republican state lawmakers welcomed the new program but questioned why it wasnt implemented sooner. They said they've been pushing state officials for weeks to find ways to reduce the amount of missed school days for students, citing quarantine policies in neighboring states like Massachusetts as examples.

Our students are going to compete nationally for colleges, in the workforce, said Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington, during a news conference at the state Capitol. "We have be careful not to create a competitive disadvantage to them with the achievement gap that were creating in this state.

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, called the Screen and Stay program an incremental step.

Candelora urged the state Department of Education to put together a rapid response team that includes legislators, teachers, and parents. They would be tasked with figuring out how to address the problem of lost learning, lack of tutors to get students back up to speed, the need for mental health support, and the impact of mask-wearing for young children trying to learn language skills.

The governor has said individual school districts will have the final say on whether to implement the policy. Candelora, however, said he believes it should be mandatory statewide.

A student learns the same way in New Haven as they do in North Branford, and so why the governor would leave it up to each district to make the determination is troubling to me, Candelora said.

Lamont said with the onset of vaccinations for younger children and if the state maintains a low COVID-19 transmission rate through the holidays, hes hopeful he'll be able to make other policy changes, such as eliminating mask requirements in schools.

The governor's emergency executive powers are tentatively set to expire in February, but he said that will have no bearing on his decisions.

I'm going to look at the community spread, see if we got through Thanksgiving well, see whether older brothers and sisters are vaccinated, and we'll make a decision December-January, Lamont said.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Cranley said Thursday he will fire Ohio's entire utility regulatory board if elected, part of changes he proposes to curb future abuses amid a sweeping, unresolved bribery scandal.

The Cincinnati mayor called for sitting members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to be replaced by those with three years experience in a relevant field and proof that they have no financial ties to the electric, gas and other utility companies they regulate.

The people of Ohio lost faith in their elected leaders," he said. "Job one of Ohios next governor is to restore public trust. I will do that by cleaning house at the PUCO to restore faith in Ohios leaders.

The announcement came two days after the election of Cranley's successor as mayor, Aftab Pureval. It was the first major policy proposal in his run to replace Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, which he announced in August. Cranley faces Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley in next years Democratic primary.

Whaley unveiled her own anti-corruption platform in June, pledging to create a bipartisan Public Accountability Commission to investigate questionable ethics, bolster funding to existing state ethics agencies and set new ethical standards for the governor and their appointees. She said she would also work with the Legislature to close dark money loopholes.

Both proposals come as the actions of DeWine's appointee as commission chair, Sam Randazzo, have been under scrutiny in a federal probe that alleges former Republican House Speaker Larry Householder orchestrated a $60 million bribery scheme that included the passage of a nuclear plant bailout bill that benefited Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.

As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, FirstEnergy said it paid Randazzo $22 million over the years, including the $4.3 million for future work on FirstEnergys behalf that rolled in just before DeWine made him head of the commission.

Householder has denied wrongdoing, and Randazzo has said he executed his duties as commission chair conscientiously, lawfully, and mindful of striking the right balance between competing interests. DeWine, who was warned Randazzo had FirstEnergy ties, has stood by the appointment.

Cranley's proposal would require utility commissioners to have at least three years of experience in one or more relevant fields: economics, law, finance, accounting, engineering, physical or natural sciences, natural resources, or environmental studies.

Under his plan, commission appointees would be precluded from holding stocks or bonds in a regulated utility or receiving any compensation, direct or indirect, from a regulated utility for at least a year. Those people would also have to pass a background check.
DENVER (AP)  The Denver Police Department's first therapy dog was originally trained to be a guide dog, but she turned out to be too friendly to focus on helping one person.

Now the department is counting on the Black English Labrador Retriever's outgoing nature to help it break down barriers and start conversations with people in high-crime areas and those wary of the police.

Shelby, an eager 19-month-old who will work with the downtown area's community resource officer, Teresa Gillian, was officially sworn onto the force Thursday by Judge Renee Goble. Goble crouched down in her black robe to get on dog level for the quick ceremony as Shelby's tail wagged.

Denver joins about 300 law enforcement agencies around the United States that have acquired therapy dogs for a range of duties, said Sgt. Jason Ratcliff of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office in Ohio. The department was believed to be one of the first agencies to use therapy dogs when it first acquired them in 2017, he said.

Some agencies use therapy dogs to accompany officers assigned to work in schools while others use the dogs to help officers who have suffered trauma or to help in community outreach, he said. Franklin County's dogs are mainly used to work with victims of crimes, including accompanying children to court, he said.

Since arriving in Denver late last month, Shelby has already been accompanying Gillian on her work in the community, which involves visiting schools and senior residents and attending meetings and community events.

Chief Paul Pazen said Shelby would also be used in five areas of the city identified as hotspots for violent crime.

Having her on the team and on the streets adds a level of comfort for our residents who may otherwise be hesitant to engage with a police officer," Pazen said.

On a visit to an alternative school, one girl who said she had PTSD was interested in Shelby but a little scared, Gillian recalled. Seeming to sense the girl's mood, the dog turned over on her back, offering up her belly to be scratched, and the girl relaxed, she said.

Gillian hopes the dog will help people get to know police as part of their community, rather than a group apart from it, following protests over the killing of George Floyd last year.

Shelby is the tool to help us bridge that gap, she said.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Three people are suing Oklahoma County jail employees who investigators found forced them to stand handcuffed for hours and listen to the childrens song Baby Shark on repeat.

Attorneys for three former inmates filed the civil rights lawsuit Monday in Oklahoma City federal court, according to The Oklahoman.

Daniel Hedrick, Joseph Joey Mitchell and John Basco are suing Oklahoma County commissioners, Sheriff Tommie Johnson III, the jail trust and two former jailers, describing the discipline tactics as torture events.

A criminal investigation last year determined at least four inmates were secured to a wall with their hands cuffed behind them while the song played on a loop at a loud volume for hours in two separate incidents in November and December 2019.

In the lawsuit, attorneys called repeatedly playing Baby Shark a known device to torment. They pointed out how in West Palm Beach, Florida, the childrens song was blasted outside an event center in 2019 to keep the homeless from sleeping there at night.

The fourth former jail inmate, Brandon Newell, did not join the lawsuit as he was convicted of first-degree murder a month after the torture incident and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Two former detention employees, Gregory Cornell Butler Jr. and Christian Charles Miles, both 21, and their supervisor, Christopher Raymond Hendershott, 50, were charged with misdemeanor counts of cruelty to a prisoner and conspiracy as a result of the investigation.

A jury trial in the criminal case is set for February.
BANGKOK (AP)  A top executive of Myanmars military-linked telecommunications company was fatally shot Thursday near his home in Yangon, the countrys commercial capital, in an apparent assassination linked to the country's violent political unrest.

Thein Aung, chief finance officer of Mytel Telecommunications Co., was shot by three men on bicycles at 7:30 a.m. while walking with his wife near their home in Mayangone township, ward administrator Ye Win Aung said. His wife, Theint Aung Thu, was wounded and taken to a hospital.

The militarys information office confirmed the attack on the 56-year-old executive, who was a former naval officer. It said no one had claimed responsibility.

Mytel, Myanmars fourth-largest telecoms operator, is a joint venture between the Myanmar military and Vietnams Defense Ministry and was launched in 2018.

The shooting was apparently carried out by militant opponents of Myanmars military-installed government, which took power in February when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mytel, as an enterprise that provides revenue to the government, is a major target of the governments foes. It is the focus of a consumer boycott, and local media have reported more than 80 of its cellphone towers have been destroyed by sabotage. Videos of some being damaged have been posted on social media.

Militants have carried out frequent targeted killings, sabotage, arson and small bombings in recent months. If their involvement is confirmed, Thein Aung would be their highest-profile victim.

Those usually targeted for killing are people believed to be informers or collaborators with the government. Often they are local officials. Many have quit their posts in response to threats.

The government also employs violence on a larger scale, with the military using artillery to attack villages believed to harbor armed opponents. An investigation published last week by The Associated Press provided credible accounts of torture carried out by the security forces, which have also been accused of disappearing activists.

The violent resistance is an outgrowth of a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that was launched shortly after the military takeover. When security forces began using lethal force to quash demonstrations, some protesters responded with homemade weapons such as slingshots and firebombs.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, security forces have killed more than 1,200 civilians.

Violence escalated as the positions of both sides hardened.

In addition to the consumer boycott of Mytel, activists have urged foreign investors and suppliers to shun the company.

A Mytel director reached by phone Thursday declined to comment on the attack or on criticisms of the company. Calls to a spokeswoman's phone went unanswered.

The government said last month that there were 986 terror attacks, 2,344 bomb attacks and 312 arson attacks from February to late October.

Due to their terrorist attacks, 1,155 civilians died and 765 people were injured. Moreover, a total of 182 persons including 75 military personnel, 93 police personnel and 14 civil servants died, while 602 were injured," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "A total of 251 schools and education buildings were torched and bombed by the terrorists. They destroyed roads and railways for 536 times and 76 bridges were also damaged.

The governments claims, like those of the opposition, could not be independently checked.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  A large tree fell in a parking lot near the Greek Theatre on Wednesday night, injuring one person and damaging about 30 empty cars, fire officials said.

The estimated 40- to 50-foot tree fell shortly after 8 p.m. near the Griffith Park amphitheater. A 35-year-old woman was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening leg injury, according to a Fire Department tweet.
HELSINKI (AP)  Finlands capital city says it will no longer serve meat at seminars, staff meetings, receptions and other events to reduce Helsinkis carbon footprint.

Instead, the city government plans to offer vegetarian dishes and sustainable local fish.

Liisa Kivela, Helsinkis communications director, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the change takes effect in January and excludes school and workplace cafeterias run by the city of about 650,000 residents.

Kivela said the the policy adopted by the City Council also allows deviations for certain high-level visits or similar events organized by Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen or the citys senior managers.

The policy also stipulates that coffee, tea and items like bananas offered at events will have to be sourced from fair trade producers. In addition, oat milk would replace regular milk, and snacks and refreshments no longer can be served in single-use containers.

The local government said in a statement that the measure is part of a broader effort which aims to reduce the climate impact of food and reduce the amount of natural resources used by the city.

The mayor, who assumed Helsinkis top post in August, said he was glad the city retains the option of serving meat on some occasions.

For example, should the king of Sweden arrive for a visit, then domestic game can be offered. Or some group for whom it would be natural to offer meat, then there must be discretion and common sense, Vartiainen told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.

The City Councils decision announced this week sparked fierce debate on the social media for and against the meat ban among citizens and politicians.

Lawmakers with constituents in rural Finland, where hunting is popular and game dishes are often served, were particularly perturbed. Meat from domestically raised reindeer is often served to visiting foreign dignitaries.

Finlands Natural Resources Institute said earlier this year that meat consumption in the country of 5.5 million has fallen for two years in a row, as more people decided to make their burgers, sausages and mince from plant-based products rather than animals.

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BERLIN (AP)  A 28-year-old mother in Germany was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the murder of five of her six children at their home in the western city of Solingen, German news agency dpa reported.

The regional court in Wuppertal established the particular gravity of the crime in its verdict. In most cases, such a finding rules out release from prison after 15 years, the amount of time often served by people given live sentences in Germany.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP)  Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan initially expressed support in a private message to his former chief of staff when a severance payment to him now at the center of a federal indictment first became public, but Hogans spokesman said Thursday the message was sent before the governor learned how the payment was obtained.

The Washington Post first reported on the message sent by the governor, after Roy McGrath provided the undated message to the newspaper.

I know you did nothing wrong. I think it is unfair. I will stand with you, Hogan wrote to McGrath after it became public in the middle of August 2020 that McGrath received a $233,647 severance package from Maryland Environmental Services.

Michael Ricci, Hogan's spokesman, confirmed to The Associated Press that the message was authentic. Hogan has repeatedly told reporters that he was unaware of the details about the severance before he hired McGrath on June 1, 2020, and Ricci said Thursday that the private message doesn't contradict that.

This is consistent with what the governor has previously said: that he was told this severance package was customary, Ricci said in an interview.

McGrath has said the Republican governor approved the payment.

McGrath was indicted last month on nearly three dozen federal and state charges, including wire fraud and embezzlement, mostly relating to the severance pay. Federal prosecutors say he encouraged the MES board of directors to approve the money by falsely telling them that the Governor was aware of and approved the payment.

McGrath has denied any wrongdoing. His attorney, Bruce Marcus, has said his client vigorously and categorically denies the allegations. Marcus did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday. McGrath could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Post also reported Thursday that McGrath provided the newspaper with a copy of a memo dated May 18, 2020, that McGrath says was a confidential agreement between himself and Hogan about the severance payment.

The newspaper reported that McGrath drafted the memo himself and presented it to Hogan for approval. The memo included two boxes  one labeled Approved and one labeled Disapproved. Needs further discussion. The Approved box contains a blue check mark.

But Ricci said the memo was a complete fabrication and bears no resemblance to the memos or documents submitted to the governor."

All documents related to personnel onboarding are processed by the Governors Office of Financial Administration, Ricci wrote in an email.

McGrath ended up resigning from the chief of staff job in less than three months, after The Baltimore Sun first reported on the severance payment.

In Hogan's personal message to McGrath, which The Sun also obtained Thursday, Hogan expressed concerns that Democrats would try to tear us down on this thing," and he described oversight hearings called by the Maryland General Assembly's presiding officers as a legislative witchunt.

The governor also expressed concern in the text message that Keiffer Mitchell, an aide to Hogan, "thinks legislators going to try to make it a bridge gate, in reference to a scandal involving former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is a friend of Hogan's. That scandal related to former Christie aides in the affair involving traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 engineered for political retribution.

Ricci declined to comment on that part of the message Thursday.

Doug Mayer, a former Hogan staffer who advises the governor, said he spoke to McGrath in a phone call days before his resignation and repeatedly asked him whether Hogan had approved the severance.

I asked him repeatedly if the governor had approved or knew about any of his severances or payments, and Roy repeatedly refused to say that was the case," Mayer said Thursday.
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greeces powerful Orthodox Church Thursday urged members of its congregations to attend services with vaccination or test certificates, as the country's daily number of confirmed new infections hit a record high for the second time in a few days.

The governing Holy Synod of the church made the recommendations in a directive sent to all parishes in the country. Church officials did not say whether implementation of the guidelines was obligatory.

Religious services were canceled for several months due to the pandemic last year, but the government has refused to mandate vaccinations or tests for church attendance in 2021  despite having introduced tough access restrictions for other indoor venues including movie theaters and restaurants.

Church leaders routinely urge Greeks to follow medical guidelines but have been reluctant to respond to bishops who are openly skeptical about vaccination or who have even urged public defiance of safety restrictions.

On the other hand, on Wednesday a bishop who presides over parishes on the island of Lesbos, in the eastern Aegean Sea, signed an order to suspend unvaccinated clergymen without pay, starting next week.

Greek public health authorities on Thursday reported 6,808 new COVID-19 infections, the highest daily total since the start of the pandemic. The previous record high was on Tuesday, with 6,700 infections.

The surge was attributed in part to increased testing levels but health officials said the situation was deteriorating, with average occupancy at ICU wards used for COVID-19 treatment now rising to 87% from 70% three weeks ago.

The message from today is that we have a lot of new cases and the more cases we have the harder hospital treatment gets, Deputy Health Minister Mina Gaga said. No health system in any country in the world has (resources) that are inexhaustible.

The pandemic has killed more than 16,000 people in Greece, a country of about 11 million. Nearly 62% of the total population is currently fully vaccinated, a little below the European Union average.

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BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  A senior official in Hungary's governing party acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that the government purchased a powerful spyware tool, which was allegedly used to target journalists, businesspeople and an opposition politician.

Lajos Kosa, chairman of parliament's Committee on Defense and Law Enforcement, confirmed to journalists following a closed committee session that Hungary's Interior Ministry had bought the military-grade spyware Pegasus, produced by Israel-based NSO Group.

It was the first time a Hungarian official openly acknowledged the government's use of the malware, which infiltrates phones to collect personal and location data and can surreptitiously control the phones microphones and cameras.

An investigation by a global media consortium published in July said that Pegasus was used in Hungary to infiltrate the digital devices of a range of targets  including at least 10 lawyers, one opposition politician and several government-critical journalists.

Subsequent investigations by Hungarian investigative journalism outlet Direkt36 have suggested that at least two publishers of government-critical media as well as a former state secretary were also targeted with the software.

Kosa, a vice-president of Hungary's governing Fidesz party, insisted that Hungary's security services and Interior Ministry had acted legally in every case of surveillance, receiving permission either from courts or the Ministry of Justice.

But opposition lawmakers have demanded an inquiry into the government's use of Pegasus, and complained that the findings of two special committee sessions examining the case  including Thursday's meeting of the Committee on Defense and Law Enforcement  had been classified by the governing party until 2050.

The alleged use of the malware against critical journalists in Hungary comes amid enduring condemnation of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban from the European Union, of which Hungary is a member.

Orban's critics say he has systematically wrested Hungary's media into government control, and brought the country under increasingly autocratic rule.

In October, a spokeswoman for an EU fact-finding delegation to Hungary told journalists that the governments refusal to confirm or deny whether it was responsible for the spying was of great concern for the European Parliament, but that there was a clear sign that it was done by the government itself.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced it would place new export limits on Israels NSO Group, the maker of Pegasus, saying its tools have been used to conduct transnational repression.

But Kosa told journalists on Thursday that he saw no reason to object to the government's use of Pegasus. According to Hungarian state news agency MTI, he argued that tech giants conduct much wider surveillance on their users than the Hungarian government had.
HAMMOND, Ind. (AP)  A man was charged with murder Wednesday in the death of a 13-year-old boy who was killed when shots were fired at a group of trick-or-treaters on Halloween in northwestern Indiana.

Desmond Crews, 23, of Gary is also charged with attempted murder in the shooting Sunday in Hammond that killed Thomas DeLaCruz Jr., of East Chicago, and wounded another 13-year-old, the (Northwest Indiana) Times reported. It wasn't immediately known Wednesday if Crews has an attorney.
A judge says attorneys for a former suburban Minneapolis police officer on trial for fatally shooting a Black motorist can call a witness at trial to testify about behavior errors.

Defendant Kim Potter said she meant to use a Taser instead of a handgun when she shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright after he was stopped in April for a traffic violation. Potter is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter.
KEARNEY, Mo. (AP)  A western Missouri police department has fired an officer after he pleaded guilty to two felony sex crimes involving children that occurred nearly 20 years ago.

The Kansas City Star reports that 40-year-old Alan Hale of Kearney entered the plea Tuesday. Sentencing is scheduled for January. Prosecutors are recommending a suspended sentence and five years of probation.
A juror in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse was dismissed Thursday after making a joke to a police deputy about the 2020 shooting of Jacob Blake, which set off protests in the Wisconsin city where the teen is accused of shooting three people.

Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said in court that the incident occurred when the White male juror was being escorted to his car earlier this week. Prosecutors said the joke the juror made about the number of shots fired at Blake - a Black man who was shot by a White police officer in Kenosha, Wis., and left partially paralyzed - showed racial bias.

After "Juror 7," who has not been publicly identified, confirmed Thursday he said the joke but declined to repeat what he told the deputy about Blake, Schroeder agreed with prosecutors, saying it was "clear that the appearance of bias is present, and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case."

"The best thing under the circumstances is I'm going to dismiss you from the jury, sir," Schroeder said. Both the prosecution and defense agreed to dismiss the juror.

The juror argued that what he said was not related to Rittenhouse, 18, who is charged with killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27, with an AR-15-style weapon amid the unrest that erupted in Kenosha. Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty to all counts, and his attorneys are expected to argue that he acted in self-defense.

The juror, a middle-aged White man, spoke through a multicolored mask and appeared nervous while holding a microphone and mentioning Rittenhouse by his first name, according to a pool reporter in court.

"It wasn't anything to do with the case," the juror responded. "It wasn't anything to do with Kyle."

Schroeder said keeping the man on the jury would compromise the fairness of the murder trial.

"The public needs to be confident that this is a fair trial," Schroeder said. "At the very most, it was bad judgment to tell a joke of that nature."

The judge's decision now leaves the jury panel with 19 people - 11 women and eight men - only one of whom is a person of color. The judge said the jury will be cut to 12 when deliberations begin.

The juror's dismissal comes days into Rittenhouse's homicide trial in Kenosha - one that highlights a polarizing, high-profile case in which the teen has been hailed by supporters as a hero who defended himself and assailed by opponents as a violent vigilante.

The jury was seated on Monday evening, capping a day-long process that saw 150 possible jurors whittled down to 20 people. Schroeder noted that it was possible all 20 jurors would not make it to the conclusion of the case, saying there could be family emergencies or medical issues and that some jurors might be discharged.

Throughout the proceedings, Schroeder has emphasized the importance of the jury trial system, like he did Thursday.

The case's unusually high profile was a significant factor during jury selection. At one point, Schroeder asked jurors for a show of hands from anyone who had not heard about the case, and no one lifted a hand. He also dismissed jurors who said their minds were already firmly made up on the case. Schroeder repeatedly asked jurors if they felt they could be fair.

Schroeder has also emphasized that the case has been heavily documented in the news, at some points criticizing the media for what he said were inaccurate depictions. He also argued that despite the divisive nature of the case, it "is not a political trial."

On Thursday, Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger told the court that the joke said by the juror this week was "in bad taste."

"There are a plethora of bad jokes out there with everything to do with all this. This is one of them," Binger said. "But I think the rest of this joke, as it were, suggests some sort of racial bias which I think comes into play."

Justin Blake, uncle of Jacob Blake, told the Chicago Tribune that he was disturbed over how the juror in question was able to be selected to be on the jury panel.

"It gives you an insight to what kind of people we're dealing with and how racist they are and the thoughts that they have in their mind. And the audacity that [he] was sitting in the jury box says a lot," Justin Blake said. "It shows that this process of picking a jury in one day is flawed."
LAS VEGAS (AP)  Las Vegas City Councilman Stavros Anthony said Thursday he intends to run for state lieutenant governor in 2022.

Anthony, a Republican who lost a bid for Clark County Commission last year pointed in a statement to what he called catastrophic" state policies about the coronavirus pandemic and the state economy. He said he wants to "lay out competing visions on how to best move Nevada forward.

The lieutenant governor post is vacant after Democrat Kate Marshall resigned in September to join President Joe Bidens administration. Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, hasn't named a replacement.

Anthony joins two other announced Republican candidates, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported: Former state treasurer Dan Schwartz and business consultant Mack Miller, who has run previously for state Assembly and Las Vegas mayor.

Candidate filings are in March.

Anthony is in his final four-year term on the Las Vegas City Council.

He lost his 2020 bid for County Commission to Ross Miller, a Democrat, by 10 votes. The state Supreme Court in June upheld a lower court ruling rejecting Anthonys bid to force a new election.

Anthony is a retired Las Vegas police captain. He served two terms on the state Board of Regents and dropped out of a race for Congress in 2018, citing health reasons.
FARMINGTON, Mo. (AP)  State health officials said Thursday a case of Legionnaires' disease has been confirmed in a patient from the Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center in Farmington.

Debra Walker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Mental Health, said the mental health center was told about the case on Wednesday after a 66-year-old man was taken to a hospital.
A Montreal man pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday in Vermont to being part of an effort to smuggle 1,500 kilos (3,300 pounds) of cocaine from Peru to Vermont and then to Canada in a plot that prosecutors say was connected to the kidnapping of an older New York couple last year.

During a U.S. District Court video hearing Thursday, prosecutors said the conspiracy plot that involved Georges Yaghmour, 40, was part of the same plan that resulted in the kidnapping of the Moira, New York, couple in September 2020, although prosecutors did not allege Yaghmour took part in the kidnapping.

The couple were held for ransom after 50 kilos (110 pounds) of cocaine failed to reach its intended destination in Canada. The other conspirators did not realize the cocaine had been seized in South Burlington, Vermont, by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents. The couple were taken to Canada and later rescued by Quebec police.

Yaghmour was arrested in Florida in November 2020, where he had traveled to discuss why the cocaine had not been delivered as scheduled, authorities said.

The charge to which Yaghmour pleaded, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine, carries a maximum sentence of up to 40 years in prison. The plea agreement calls for a sentence of just over 11 years. Sentencing is scheduled for March.

During the 40-minute hearing, Yaghmour acknowledged he participated in the cocaine conspiracy but he said he did not take part in the kidnapping.

U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford outlined to Yaghmour the consequences of entering a guilty plea, including that as a Canadian citizen he could be prohibited from reentering the United States after he returns to Canada.

My biggest punishment is I cannot come back to the States, Yaghmour said.

Prosecutors say Yaghmour, at the direction of others, was involved in a meeting in Burlington in December 2019 to discuss the plan to move cocaine between Peru and Canada via Vermont.

At the meeting, which included an undercover DEA operative and another person who was cooperating with law enforcement, Yaghmour asked about shipping the drugs from South America to Mexico, but the DEA agent proposed shipping the drugs to Vermont for further distribution, according to the plea agreement.

A couple weeks later, an unnamed co-conspirator delivered $150,000 to the undercover agent as a down payment. In spring 2020, the DEA undercover operation took delivery of cocaine in South America for shipment to Canada via Vermont, according to the plea agreement.

Two controlled deliveries were conducted, one in Massachusetts and the other in Vermont, but none of the drug reached its intended destination in Canada.

It was after the Vermont shipment failed to arrive at its Canadian destination that the New York couple  ages 70 and 76, and the grandparents of one of the Vermont couriers  were kidnapped by others involved in the conspiracy, authorities said.

They were taken across the border and moved to a house in Magog, Quebec. The kidnappers asked for a ransom of the 50 kilos of cocaine that had been seized in Burlington or a payment of $3.5 million.
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP)  A riverside memorial was held for a Maine man shot and killed by police after he threatened and injured a fellow resident of a shelter with a knife.

Dustin Paradis, 34, was living at the Bread of Life Shelter in Augusta last month when two police officers shot and killed him, the Kennebec Journal reported. Responding to a call, police said they found a man with injuries outside the shelter and then found Paradis inside where he waved the knife he was holding.
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  Thousands of immigrants working on southern Oregon illegal marijuana farms that authorities say are run by foreign cartels are living in squalid conditions and are sometimes being cheated and threatened by their gangland bosses.

The situation has gotten so bad in the largely rural region near the state line with California, amid a violent crime surge and water theft for the growing operations during a severe drought, that Jackson and Douglas counties declared a state of emergency last month.

They requested state funding and other resources, including deployment of the National Guard, to properly enforce cannabis laws.

On Thursday, commissioners in neighboring Josephine County said they are preparing their own emergency declaration. A draft document cites rampant violations of county codes, state water laws and criminal laws. They previously wrote a letter to Oregon's senate president saying the county is experiencing a tragic surge in narco-slavery.

A spokeswoman for Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, Elizabeth Merah, has said that there are no immediate plans to deploy the National Guard.

Many of the zone's illegal marijuana farms operate under the guise of being legal hemp farms, but the crops that they grow have amounts of THC  the component that gives pot its high  far above the legal levels allowed for hemp.

State regulators and local law enforcement officers have been overwhelmed by the amount of industrial-scale growing sites, which they say number in the hundreds and possibly thousands.

There aren't enough inspectors to test for THC content at each site to determine which ones are legal and which are not, officials have said. Some sites, frequently with armed guards, have refused entry to state inspectors. Police have said they do not have the capacity to raid all the suspicious sites because each raid requires an investigation and search warrants.

And some managers of the illegal operations are refusing to pay workers and have threatened them with violence if they go to the authorities or try to quit, according to law enforcement officials and a group that advocates for the migrant and farm worker rights.

Weve had several cases in Josephine County, where they were threatened with guns to their heads, 'If you guys tell anybody, we're going to harm your family in Mexico,' or Were going to shoot you," said Kathy Keesee-Morales, co-director of Unete, an immigrant and farmworker advocacy group based in Medford, Oregon.

Some of workers who say they were cheated have contacted Unete, which has tried to help by calling the pot-farm managers and warning them that they could face complaints filed with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry if they don't pay the workers what they are owed, Keesee-Morales said.

"Many times theyll just pay them because they dont want any kind of interaction with the state, Keesee-Morales said.

The number of illegal marijuana farms in the region, which are not part of Oregon's legal and regulated marijuana system, surged this year, with some even emerging alongside state highways.

They produce tons of marijuana that is sold outside the state. Officials believe the cartels selected southern Oregon because it's considered part of the the fabled marijuana-growing Emerald Triangle, a zone in which Californias Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties form the major part.

The region produces top-quality weed that is the microbrew of cannabis, said state Rep. Lily Morgan, a Republican from the small city of Grants Pass, the county seat of Josephine County.

You can ask a high dollar around the world for it, she said.

Local landowners often rent or sell their property to the illegal growers at prices much higher than normal rates. In one case, an owner went to her land to negotiate a lease renewal and discovered that the manager of the illegal marijuana farm was gone  and had left the growing equipment and workers behind.

Morgan said the owner told county officials: "These people have been left, there are workers who have no I.D., they do not speak English, they have no food.

Oregon's labor bureau is investigating wage complaints from workers at illegal marijuana farms, said Sonia Ramirez, administrator of the bureau's wage and hour division.

Workers have had to use holes in the ground for toilets, bathe with makeshift showers, cook in unsanitary kitchens and live in tents and sleep on cots in shipping containers and in marijuana greenhouses, said Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler.

Sickler said his deputies do not arrest the workers on alleged immigration violations and instead hand out cards, in Spanish, provided by Unete that list agencies that provide free services for migrants.

The workers are reluctant to talk to law enforcement officials because they are terrified that cartel enforcers might discover that they have done so and harm them or their relatives living elsewhere, Sickler and Keesee-Morales said.

There is a fear factor, the sheriff said. "These individuals know that they could be at risk for talking to the police about several things, including the conditions, the lack of being paid.

While colder weather now coming to Oregon spells the end of the growing season for many of the marijuana growing sites, indoor illegal operations continue operating through the winter because they are outfitted with heat lamps that allow pot plants to grow.

Sickler doesn't expect a letup of the criminal activity because a lot of cash is involved, creating a tempting target for robbers.

In raids conducted by Sickler's deputies on one day in September on two pot farms, officers found $650,000, 7.5 tons of processed marijuana and 20,000 pot plants.

Last month, men with guns tried to rob an illegal marijuana growing site and processing facility in the small Jackson County city of Eagle Point. Three men from Sacramento, California were arrested on charges of robbery, unlawful use of a weapon and assault.

Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel predicted no immediate resolution to the problem of illegal marijuana farms.

This summer was absolutely out of control, he said. "We're anticipating next year being just as bad, if not worse.

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Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Minnesota health and education officials have joined in an effort with school districts and charter schools to assist in administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children over the next few days before many more doses are expected to arrive in Minnesota next week.

State officials are expecting Minnesota to receive more than 250,000 child doses next week that will go to more than 1,000 providers across the state. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday approved the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

The first 500 doses for children that age in Minnesota were administered on Wednesday at a community vaccination clinic at the Mall of America in Bloomington, where an additional 1,500 doses are expected to be administered Thursday.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, alongside the commissioners of the state health and education departments, visited an elementary school in Brooklyn Center that had 175 appointments scheduled for kids to get the vaccine on Thursday. Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said much of the recent increase in virus cases statewide has been happening in younger children, making the availability of the vaccine in schools an important step toward mitigating spread of the virus.

Too often last year, we seemed to be debating whether we were going to prioritize health or learning and this is a perfect combination in bringing those two things together, Malcolm said. They were never in conflict, but this is our best way to support not only the health of our children and our teachers but the broader community as well.

Minnesota health officials reported 32 more people have died from complications of COVID-19, and more than 3,700 new cases on Thursday as hospitalizations due to COVID-19 across the state climbed back above 1,000, including 232 in intensive care. Walz urged parents to get their kids vaccinated to help mitigate rising case numbers and help protect other children and the rest of their community.

This surge has been pretty relentless, Walz told reporters. The numbers are not encouraging at this point in time and it's at a point where if we do things right  vaccinations and layered mitigations  we can make sure that we're not reporting 41 people dying and over 1,000 people in the hospital because of COVID.

More than 3.3 million Minnesotans have been fully inoculated as of Tuesday.

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Mohamed Ibrahim is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
YAZOO CITY, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi man has been sentenced to life in prison without parole after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to shooting five people to death  one in 2016 and four in 2017.

Court records show Bridell Barber, 32, of Yazoo City, pleaded guilty to capital murder, and Judge Barry Ford sentenced him in Yazoo County Circuit Court.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A judge appointed Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt as a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against a state lawmaker accused of having sex with a drunk woman while on duty as a cop years ago, Schmitt's office confirmed Thursday.

An office spokesman said Schmitt, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, is reviewing whether to press charges against GOP state Rep. Chad Perkins, of Bowling Green.

The Missouri Highway Patrol launched an investigation after the allegations became public in May, and a patrol spokesman in October said the agency turned over a report on the claims to Pike County Prosecuting Attorney Alex Ellison.

Ellison said he asked a special prosecutor to take over the case because he knows Perkins personally. Pike County Circuit Judge Patrick Flynn last month ordered Schmitt's office to take on that role.

Weve been made aware of the Courts order and are reviewing the matter," Schmitt spokesman Chris Nuelle said in a statement.

Perkins worked in law enforcement in northeast Missouri before he won election to the state House in 2020.

Just a few months after Perkins assumed office, a local police chief sent documents detailing allegations against him to the Missouri Highway Patrol, the House speaker and other law enforcement agencies.

The woman involved told The Associated Press in June that she had fallen asleep in her car at a park around April 2015 when she was 20 years old and woke up to Perkins knocking on her car window.

She said Perkins drove her around in his police car for what seemed like a long time before he had sex with her in the backseat. She said she was still drunk and remembers only bits and pieces.

Perkins has said the relationship was consensual but denied they had sex when he was on duty or she was drunk.

The Missouri House is also investigating the claims against Perkins.
TOKYO (AP)  Cars already know how to park themselves, warn drowsy drivers, steer back into the right lanes and propose map routes to destinations. The cars Mazda has in the works for next year in Japan know when drivers have a stroke or heart attack.

By 2025, the cars will even know when drivers are about to have a sudden health problem and warn them, according to the Japanese automaker.

Whats involved are data from cameras inside the car, without resorting to laser sensors or other more obtrusive technology. And its going to be offered in affordable models, not just luxury vehicles. The technology holds promise for one of the most advanced aging societies in the world.

Mazda told reporters recently it has been working with medical experts, including Tsukuba University Hospital, researching the collected image data to figure out what a healthy driver looks like, as opposed to an incapacitated driver, suddenly slumped forward over the steering wheel.

Once recognizing a problem, Co-Pilot Concept, which has yet to have an official name, will bring that car to a stop in a safe spot, such as the curb of the road, as quickly as possible.

The car will be honking, with blinker and hazard lights flashing, according to Mazda, although the exact warning signals are still undecided. An emergency call to the ambulance and police will also get relayed.

Other major automakers, including Volkswagen of Germany and Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp., are working on similar technology.

Mazda plans to offer the technology in Europe after Japan. Mazda wants to wait and see before offering it in the U.S., because it believes questions remain about their social acceptance, although similar systems that stop vehicles are already being offered by rivals.

As for privacy concerns, the personal data does not leave the car, according to Mazda.

Takahiro Tochioka, the engineer in charge, said Mazda is working on ways to predict a health problem that may be coming even if the driver may not be conscious of it.

What the car will be looking for are the ways people focus their vision, the swaying of their heads, slight aberrations in driving habits and other subtle changes, he said.

And it will warn drivers even before actual symptoms appear, he told reporters proudly.

But understanding and cooperation from the drivers around that car is crucial for this technology to work.

Mazda is hoping the Japanese public will see a driver in distress and help them, since an assumption of widespread public goodwill is characteristic of Japan.

The technology will empower people to keep driving through their lifetime, and will help reassure families and friends not to be worried, Tochioka said. Offering Co-Pilot will also allow Mazda to get feedback from real-life users, he said.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP)  State environmental regulators have cleared the way for work to continue on a multimillion-dollar ventilation shaft at the federal governments underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico.

Ventilation has been an issue since 2014, when a radiation release contaminated parts of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal governments cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S.

The state Environment Department last week approved a permit modification requested by the U.S. Department of Energy to build and use the utility shaft. Temporary authorization previously was granted but work stopped in November 2020 after state officials opted not to renew the authorization, citing a rise in COVID-19 infections among workers at the repository.

Estimated to cost about $100 million, the shaft will be a key part of the repository's revamped ventilation system. With more airflow, officials have said more employees can be in the underground space working on mining and waste operations simultaneously.

The project is expected to be completed in 2025 and would triple the available air flow, the Carlsbad Current-Argus reported.

In the notice of approval, New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney said more airflow was needed for the repository to achieve its mission.

Donavan Mager, a spokesman for Nuclear Waste Partnership  the contractor that manages the facility  said it was unclear when construction would resume.

Subcontractor Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers was awarded a $75 million contract to build the shaft in 2019. When complete, it will reach a depth of about 2,275 feet (693 meters) and will include two access drifts to connect the shaft with the rest of the WIPP underground.

The project saw intense criticism from environmental and government watchdog groups that argued it was part of a larger plan to expand the repository beyond its presently permitted mission, which allows for disposal of 6.2 million cubic feet of waste. Officials have said it would take congressional action to increase the volume of waste permitted at WIPP.

The DOE is seeking a separate permit change to allow the mining and use of two additional disposal rooms to replace space that was lost to due contamination in 2014.

Still, in public comments submitted to state, opponents voiced concerns that the project could lead to further expansions of the facility.

We object to NMEDs refusal to explain the true purpose of the shaft in their required notification documents for the public, wrote Virginia Necochea, executive director at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center. In order to provide informed public comments, the public must be able to review DOEs entire plan.

The project was supported by members of the Carlsbad City Council, the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce and local business owners. They defended WIPP, a major employer in the community, and argued that the shaft was needed to improve worker safety.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  The newest member of the Mississippi House of Representatives used to be in control of security on the other end of the state Capitol.

Democratic Rep. Robert Sanders of Cleveland took his oath of office during a small ceremony Wednesday in the House chamber. He served as sergeant-at-arms for the Mississippi Senate from 2000 to 2004.

Sanders succeeds former Rep. Abe Hudson of Shelby, a Democrat who resigned in late August from the District 29 seat in Bolivar and Sunflower counties.

Sanders will serve the rest of the four-year term that ends in January 2024. He said Thursday that he intends to continue serving as a member of the Cleveland Board of Aldermen while serving in the House. That is allowed under state law because both jobs are in the legislative branch of government.

In addition to working as Senate sergeant-at-arms, Sanders has been police chief for the city of Shaw and for Mississippi Valley State University.

Sanders and one other person, Keveon L. Taylor, signed up to run in a Nov. 2 special election to succeed Hudson in the House. The Mississippi Board of Election Commissioners ruled Sept. 14 that Taylor did not meet the two-year residency requirement because he switched his voter registration to Lafayette County, where he is a University of Mississippi law school student.

The commissioners said no election was needed with only one candidate, and they declared Sanders the winner.

Taylor challenged the decision, saying he is a lifelong resident of Bolivar County and intends to return there after law school. A Hinds County circuit judge ruled in his favor, but the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned that decision. On Wednesday, a Hinds County chancery judge dismissed Taylor's request for another review of his claim.

Republicans hold a wide majority in the 122-member Mississippi House.
BOSTON (AP)  A Rhode Island man charged with abducting and killing a woman who had been celebrating her 23rd birthday at a Boston nightclub will not face the death penalty, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Louis Coleman III, 35, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of kidnapping resulting in death in connection with the February 2019 death of Jassy Correia, a Boston mother of a young girl.

Coleman kidnapped Correia outside the nightclub, authorities said. Police said he was later captured on surveillance video in the early morning carrying her limp body into his Providence apartment.

Coleman was stopped on Interstate 95 in Delaware four days later with Correias body in the trunk. Authorities said she died from strangulation and blunt force trauma.

The United States hereby provides notice that it will not seek the death penalty against defendant Louis Coleman, said Thursday's brief filing from acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendells office.

No reason was given.

An attorney for Coleman said he was "pleased" with the decision.

The defense team has felt from the outset that this case was not appropriate for a capital prosecution," David Hoose wrote in a statement. "Mr. Coleman now looks forward to focusing on his trial which is scheduled at the end of February.

Coleman, who is being held without bail, is due back in court on Nov. 12.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem contradicted her own labor secretary Thursday about a meeting last year in her office, saying it didn't include any discussion about how her daughter could still win a real estate appraiser license after a state agency moved to deny it.

The Republican governor answered questions from South Dakota reporters on the episode for the first time Thursday, more than a month after The Associated Press first reported on it. While a Republican-dominated legislative committee and state government ethics board have looked into the matter, she called AP's reporting on the meeting twisted and manipulated.

Noem's secretary of labor defended her department's actions to lawmakers last week by explaining that state regulators before the meeting had already reached an agreement to provide Noem's daughter, Kassidy Peters, with an opportunity to fix issues with her application. She said the meeting mostly consisted of potential fixes to a shortage of licensed appraisers.

However, Secretary of Labor Marcia Hultman told lawmakers it also included a brief discussion at the end of the meeting about a possible plan forward for Peters to obtain her license.

But when Noem was asked by the AP at a Thursday news conference if she was aware of that plan headed into the meeting, she responded by saying, We didn't even talk about that and insisted the meeting was not to discuss Peters' application.

She gave her personal experiences through the program," Noem said. Of course, she gave her perspective and how long it took to go through the program and how difficult it was.

However, Sherry Bren, the longtime director of the Appraiser Certification Program, told the AP she was presented at the meeting with a letter from Peters' supervisor that slammed the agency's move to deny her the license.

Four months after the meeting, Peters received the license.

Noem once again insisted Peters went through the exact same process that other appraisers did in the state of South Dakota. She at no time received special treatment.

Noem has also defended her conduct in the episode by saying she was working to solve a shortage of appraisers in the state. However, she has faced backlash from the organization that represents appraisers after Hultman pressured Bren to retire late last year, shortly after Peters received her license. Bren filed an age discrimination complaint and received a $200,000 payment from the state to withdraw the complaint and leave her job.

I came in to fix the program. And so we are fixing it, she said. But also we recognize that some people that have been involved in the industry for a long time dont like that.

The Legislature's Government Operations and Audit Committee, which is looking into the agency at the center of the episode, has requested copies of the agreements between Peters and the agency, but Noem said doing so would set a precedent of opening personnel files to the public.

Thats why for consistency and to make sure that Im being fair  because thats exactly what Im focused on  I would have to set that same precedent for everybody," she said.

When asked if she would allow the documents to be opened because the agreements themselves state they are open to public inspection, she said she would let her attorneys decide what should be deemed an open record.

Attorneys for the Department of Labor and Regulation have already denied a public records request from the AP for the records. An appeals office later ruled that the department was right to deny the records request.

While Bren declined an invitation from the Legislature to speak last week, she has said she is working with her lawyer to communicate with lawmakers and correct any factual inaccuracies from Hultmans testimony.
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. (AP)  A North Carolina sheriff's deputy accused of assaulting a man with a flashlight has resigned from his job, authorities said.

A spokesperson for the district attorney's office said Michael Hal Shaw II, 39, of Elizabethtown, was booked into the Brunswick County jail after he was indicted by a Bladen County grand jury on Monday on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, news outlets reported.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  The North Carolina General Assembly completed redistricting maps Thursday for the next decade, carving boundaries that would likely give Republicans at least two more U.S. House seats and help the GOP retain its state legislative majorities.

The House and Senate voted along party lines for districts drawn on the basis of 2020 census figures. Each of the three maps  for the House, the Senate and the congressional delegation  had already passed one chamber by Wednesday.

Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers veto stamp cant block redistricting plans, leaving Democrats and their allies with lawsuits as their remaining tool to fight them. In the 2010s, they successfully challenged GOP maps as illegal partisan and racial gerrymanders  problems they believe exist again now. One lawsuit already has been initiated.

Is it going to come down to litigation being filed? Yes  and what the courts have to say about it, said state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri of Wake County, the Democrats' No. 2 leader. If the maps are upheld, they would get first use for the March 8 primary. Candidate filing begins Dec. 6.

The congressional boundaries contain a new 14th seat for North Carolina thanks to population growth. Analyses estimate that Republicans likely would win 10 of those seats, instead of eight they currently hold. North Carolina is otherwise a closely divided state politically  former President Donald Trump won the state in 2020 by just 74,500 votes, for example.

First-term Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro would face an uphill battle to return to Congress in 2023. Her current central North Carolina district would be fractured into boundaries for four seats, none of which would be Republican-leaning.

And a shifting district for veteran Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield of Wilson, who represents northeastern North Carolina, would make the seat highly competitive  giving the GOP an 11-3 seat advantage in the right political environment. Butterfield, a former Congressional Black Caucus chair, has represented many majority-Black counties over the years.

What were experiencing now is what I would call extreme, extreme gerrymandering, Butterfield told The Associated Press in an interview this week. Not only does it give Republicans a partisan advantage, it also disadvantages African American communities all across North Carolina. And so its unacceptable.

Other reviews of legislative maps by the Princeton Gerrymander Project estimate Republicans winning roughly 70 of the House's 120 seats and 30 of the 50 Senate seats. Republicans currently hold a 69-51 seat advantage in the House and 28-22 margin in the Senate.

Republicans said the process wasn't overtly partisan, or that they worked to dilute minority voting. Redistricting committees barred the use in the state's redistricting software of partisan data like election results and race-based data in evaluating results.

I'm not considering political data, electoral data, in the drafting of these maps, so I have no idea what their outcome is going to be, said Rep. Destin Hall, a Caldwell County Republican and House Redistricting Committee chairman. Mapmakers said they complied with other redistricting criteria such as minimizing the number of counties that are divided between districts and the municipalities that are split.

I feel that we have complied with the law, said Sen. Ralph Hise, a Mitchell County Republican and a redistricting committee co-chairman. Mapmaking in committee rooms were live-streamed for weeks.

But Democrats said it's obvious Republicans drew maps to enrich their own partisan advantage, ignoring pleas from the public for a congressional plan that reflects the state's 50-50 political environment. Black voters also are losing out in the process, one Democrat said.

It appears that theres an attack on the African American vote, said Rep. Kandie Smith, a Pitt County Democrat. People dont want gerrymandering  thats what we have. People dont want packing  thats what were doing."

The state NAACP and others already sued in state court last week, challenging the Republican refusal to consider race-based data in drawing legislative districts. Other litigation is likely ahead.

Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has an arm that helped bankroll lawsuits that successfully challenged North Carolina congressional and legislative districts, criticized the finished maps. Republicans passed maps heavily manipulated in favor of their party and that will deny real political power to the most populous and diverse areas of the state, Holder said in a news release.

The maps reflect population growth in North Carolina  the nation's ninth largest state with more than 10.4 million people  over the past decade in counties in and around Raleigh and Charlotte. More lawmakers will represent top urban areas. Meanwhile, many rural areas that saw overall population declines between 2010 and 2020 will have fewer legislators representing them.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Norways largest pension fund said Thursday that it has divested from 14 companies involved in producing nuclear missiles and other weapons.

Oslo-based KLP, which manages more than 300 billion kroner ($35.4 billion), said it made the decision after reviewing companies that may violate its guidelines on weapons.

Those excluded are mainly companies that directly or indirectly contribute to the continuing existence of nuclear weapons, said Kiran Aziz, KLP's head of responsible investments. Companies do not need to produce the actual weapons components themselves. It is sufficient that they contribute in other ways.

The fund said in a statement that the weapons by their nature violate fundamental humanitarian principles.

As of this month, KLP wont do business with companies including Britains Rolls Royce Holdings PLC, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Technologies Corp. and Frances Thales.

A U.N. treaty on eliminating nuclear weapons took effect in January, so investors like KLP must apply more stringent standards to companies that contribute to making those weapons, Aziz said.

KLP said Rolls Royce produces components for a number of vessels capable of launching nuclear weapons, Raytheon develops missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, and Thales develops and produces components for nuclear missiles.

In recent years, pension and wealth funds around the world have divested stocks, bonds or investment funds from companies that they have deemed unethical or morally ambiguous.

Earlier this year, KLP divested from 16 companies that operated in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. They appeared on a U.N. list of 112 companies that it said were complicit in violating the human rights of Palestinians by operating in the West Bank.

Last year, KLP excluded Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone because of its ties to Myanmars military, which staged a coup. It also previously cut investments in British security company G4S, saying the group was operating in countries such as Qatar and United Arab Emirates where there is a risk of violating international labor norms.

Thursday's exclusions mean that KLP has sold shares worth just over 1 billion kroner ($117 million) and debt securities in the form of bonds worth around 200 million kroner ($23.5 million).

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This story has been corrected to show that debt securities in the form of bonds are worth $23.5 million, not billion.
SANAA, Yemen (AP)  At least 200 fighters were killed in clashes between Yemen's government forces and Houthi rebels in and around the strategic central province of Marib over the last two days, security officials from both sides said Thursday.

Most of the casualties belonged to the Houthi forces, who have recently wrestled from their rivals most of Marib's 14 districts, according to the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

They added that hundreds were wounded in the same clashes.

The Houthis have for years attempted to take oil-rich Marib to complete their control over the northern half of Yemen. The Iran-backed Shiite Houthis have stepped up their push in the oil-rich province in recent weeks, while also escalating cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is leading a military coalition that has been fighting on the government side against the Houthis.

In recent days, Houthis have been advancing towards the capital of the province, which is also named Marib. As of Thursday, the rebels were stationed in the district of Sirwah, less than 30 miles (about 48 kilometers) west of the city of Marib, said the officials.

Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014 when the Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north of the country, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi-led coalition entered the war in March 2015, backed by the United States, to try restore the government to power. Despite a relentless air campaign and ground fighting, the war has deteriorated largely into a stalemate and spawned the worlds worst humanitarian crisis.

Also on Thursday, Saudi-owned Al-Hadath television quoted the Saudi-led military coalition as saying that their troops have carried out 25 military attacks on Houhi outposts in Al-Jawf province and Marib's western district of Sirwah over the past 24 hours. The channel reported that 115 Houthis were killed in the attacks.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky State Police are investigating a fatal shooting involving a trooper, authorities said.

The shooting happened early Wednesday in Grant County, police said in a statement. Troopers were responding to a 911 call asking for law enforcement, authorities said.

A male subject was taken to the hospital and was later pronounced dead, police said. No one else was injured.

The Kentucky State Police Critical Incident Response Team is investigating the shooting. No further information was immediately released.
PHOENIX (AP)  Most Arizona Public Service customers will see a small decrease in their bills after state regulators slashed the rates that the state's largest electric utility can charge.

The Arizona Corporation Commission on Tuesday gave final approval to a plan that will reduce APS base rates by about $119 million, according to The Arizona Republic. The company vowed to sue, calling the decision shortsighted and warning it will increase consumer costs in the long run.

The rare rate reduction reflects a significant change of fortunes for the politically influential utility, which in 2017 was granted a large rate hike that was billed as an average increase of 4.5% but amounted to a much larger spike for many of its customers.

APS had originally asked for a $187 million rate increase, which it later reduced to $169 million, ABC15 reported. Instead, commissioners voted 3-2 to reduce the company's return on equity from 10% to 8.7%. The commissioners also voted not to allow APS to bill its customers for hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to a coal plant in New Mexico, which the regulators determined was an imprudent expenditure.

The commissioners did allow APS to increase revenue for adjusters that charge customers for specific items like power plant fuel and renewable-energy programs, the Republic reported. Altogether, APS will see a slight increase in revenue but significantly less than it would have without a cut in its base rates.

Lea Marquez Peterson, the commission's Republican chairwoman, said APS rates haven't been reduced since 1996, providing relief to captive customers that have struggled with multiple challenges with APS previous management and a global pandemic. She voted for the changes along with Republican Jim O'Connor and Democrat Anna Tovar.

Under retired CEO Don Brandt, APS spent lavishly on political contributions, including millions to elect its favored members of the Corporation Commission. Some of the spending was funneled through dark money political groups and wasn't acknowledged by APS executives for years.

Our most important responsibility is to our customers, who depend on APS for the energy infrastructure that will power Arizonas prosperity far into the future, said a company statement released after the vote. Todays short-sighted decision by the Arizona Corporation Commission ignores that crucial responsibility."

APS argues the Commission's actions will raise the utility's borrowing costs for future investments, including renewable energy projects, and the higher costs will ultimately be paid by customers.

The new rate plan also reduces the number of peak hours when customers on some plans pay higher rates. The new hours will be 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. instead of 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

APS said about 69% of customers would see a bill reduction of 2% or less. About 21% of customers will see an increase of less than 1%, and 7% are projected to see bill increases from 1-3%. The exact impact on customers will depend on their rate plans and the time of day when they use electricity.

The changes will begin affecting bills in December, but the company says it will take months to fully implement them.
The juror dismissed from Kyle Rittenhouses murder trial apparently was trying to be funny when he cracked to a court security officer about a police officer's shooting of Jacob Blake, the event that set off the protests where Rittenhouse shot three people, two fatally.

Blake, who is Black, was shot by a white officer three months after the murder of George Floyd by a white officer in Minneapolis prompted protests over racial injustice nationwide. When Judge Bruce Schroeder said Thursday that the joke  which the juror didnt want to repeat in open court  showed bias that would seriously undermine the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial, the man objected.

It wasnt anything to do with the case, the juror told Schroeder Thursday. It wasnt anything to do with Kyle.

The moment captured the bias  sometimes explicit, but often implicit or unconscious  that experts say is especially damaging in criminal proceedings. Jurors who may not see their biases as problematic or even realize they exist are asked to weigh witness testimony and ultimately decide a defendants fate. And while the juror in Kenosha, Wisconsin, may have vocalized his beliefs, sharing the joke while being escorted to his car after jury duty, in most cases these biases are difficult or impossible to detect.

Its one of the most significant problems facing the criminal justice system in both state and federal courts, said Mark Bennett, a retired federal and state judge who directs the Institute for Justice Reform & Innovation at Drake University Law School in Iowa.

In some places, courts and judges have taken steps to educate jurors, attorneys and others about implicit bias. Questions to potential jurors go well beyond asking if they can be impartial, instead asking about stereotypes they may hold or their interactions with others.

In part of Washington state, potential jurors are shown a video about implicit bias, and attorneys are encouraged to ask questions during jury selection such as what they thought about the video. It's not clear whether that happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where 20 people were seated for the Rittenhouse jury in one day. The 12 who decide the case will be announced later, the judge said.

Bennett, who wrote a jury instruction on implicit bias and has studied bias in judges, said Schroeder did the right thing in dismissing the juror. Any person who would joke about Blake while at the courthouse during jury duty doesn't have the kind of mindset a judge would want on the case, he said.

But Bennett also said a one-day jury selection isnt enough time to root out people with explicit or implicit biases, particularly in racially polarizing cases. In one major federal trial, Bennett took 14 days to select a jury. He also has had potential jurors fill out a questionnaire  one as long as 99 questions  at home, where theyre more likely to answer candidly, before coming to the jury selection.

You cannot do it in one day, he said. Im sorry, you just cannot.

Margaret Russell, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-founder of the Equal Justice Society, agreed, saying the jury selection seems astonishingly quick for a case that involves some of the most contentious, inflammatory issues of our day.

Rittenhouse is white, as are the three men he shot in August 2020. But the case has raised questions about racial justice, policing, firearms and white privilege that have polarized people far outside Kenosha.

Blake, who was shot by the officer two days before Rittenhouse shot the three men, was partially paralyzed in the shooting. Police say it occurred while they responded to a domestic disturbance call and that Blake was holding a knife. The county prosecutor later declined to charge the officer.

Protests following the Blake shooting at times turned violent and destructive, with rioters setting fires and ransacking businesses. Rittenhouse, then 17, traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois, just across the Wisconsin state line. The former police youth cadet said he went to Kenosha to protect property. As he walked the streets he carried an AR-style rifle.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the three shootings, while his lawyer says Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

After his arrest, conservatives called Rittenhouse an American patriot, with people contributing millions of dollars to a legal defense fund and helping the now 18-year-old post a $2 million bail to leave jail.

Russell said she also believed Schroeder was correct to dismiss the juror Thursday, saying his actions show a shockingly ignorant sense of the case and the issues involved. The fact that the man didnt want to repeat his joke in open court suggests he knew it was inappropriate, she said.

Russell also was troubled by the jurors use of Rittenhouses first name as he referred to the defendant. Calling him Kyle, she said, showed a sense of familiarity that perhaps means hes not viewing the case through an unbiased lens.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
Mikhail Metzel/AP

MOSCOW (AP)  The presidents of Russia and Belarus signed an array of measures Thursday to deepen the integration of the two countries but stop short of a full merger.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko approved the integration measures during a meeting in Minsk of the bilateral Supreme State Council for the union state; Putin participated by video link from Russia-annexed Crimea.
HONOLULU (AP)  The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved President Joe Biden's nomination of Clare Connors to be the next U.S. attorney for Hawaii.

The nomination now goes to the full Senate.

Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii spoke briefly in support of the appointment before the vote, hailing Connors' experience as an assistant U.S. attorney, state attorney general and lawyer in private practice.

So obviously she comes exceptionally well qualified for this position, said Hirono, a Democrat.

Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Lee of Utah opposed Connors' nomination.

Hawley and Blackburn also voted against the other four U.S. attorney nominations up for consideration, for the districts of Colorado, Rhode Island, Vermont and southern Ohio.

Some Native Hawaiians objected to Connors' appointment, saying she treated dozens of elders like criminals when the office she oversees as Hawaii's attorney general prosecuted them for blocking a road while protesting the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

The protesters believe the summit of Mauna Kea, where the Thirty Meter Telescope has a permit to build a new observatory, is sacred. They say building there would further desecrate a place already defiled by a dozen other telescopes.

Hawaiis other U.S. senator, Democrat Brian Schatz, previously expressed support for Connors nomination, as have Hawaii Gov. David Ige and previous U.S. attorneys for Hawaii.

U.S. attorneys are the federal governments top law enforcement officer in a district.
HAMER, S.C. (AP)  South of the Border, a popular South Carolina tourist attraction, is receiving some upgrades.

General Manager Timmy Townsend told The Sun News that three of the shops have been torn down to make room for new projects, and several others are being renovated.

A lot of people are wondering if South of the Border is closing down, the answer is no, we are still open for business," he told the Myrtle Beach Sun News in an email.

The corny Mexican-themed attraction is located in Hamer, South Carolina, with a huge sombrero towering over the intersection of Interstate 95 and U.S. highways 301 and 501. Thousands of drivers take detours every year to visit the shops and restaurants.

So far, they have torn down the motel, the T-shirt shop, and the Ice Cream Fiesta. They're upgrading the elevator at the Tower Arcade, putting in charging stations for electric vehicles and remodeling the Sombrero Restaurant. At the arcade, Pedro's iconic sombrero also is being refurbished.

With the pandemic causing shortages in supplies and labor, Townsend said he doesn't know when the renovations will be completed.

It seems that COVID causes problems with everything now, as far as getting materials etc. and people to do the work, he said. Our elevator was supposed to be operational June 1, 2021 and at this time it still is under construction."
KINGSVILLE, Texas (AP)  A southern Texas police officer has died three days after being shot while responding to a reported domestic disturbance, police said Thursday.

Kingsville Police Department Senior Patrolman Sherman Otto Benys Jr. died Thursday morning at a Corpus Christi hospital, according to a post on the department's Facebook page.
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP)  Central and Eastern Europe grappled with spiraling coronavirus cases on Thursday with several countries hitting new daily records in the regions, which have lower vaccination rates than the rest of the continent.

Ukraine, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia reported their highest ever numbers of daily cases, while other countries registered the most infections in months.

Most Central and Eastern European countries have vaccinated about half of their populations or less, which is lower than the European Union average of some 75%.

Anti-virus restrictions have also varied as governments sought to boost vaccination rates rather than reimpose lockdowns and other strict measures that are widely unpopular and could hurt the economy.

In Croatia, authorities reported a record daily high of 6,310 new cases and 32 deaths. Doctors warned that pressure on hospitals was rising in the country of 4.2 million.

Croatian officials said they will announce wider use of COVID passes on Friday but no lockdown. Authorities also ordered an extension of intensive and emergency care capacity.

The best measure against the virus remains vaccination, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.

Alarmed by the surge, many Croats rushed to vaccination points in the capital Zagreb to get jabbed, or receive booster shots.

In neighboring Slovenia, the official STA news agency said hospitals were filling up fast, and a new record of 4,511 daily infections was reported Thursday.

Hospitals in the nation of 2 million already have scrapped non-urgent interventions to make space for COVID-19 patients. The country has introduced COVID-19 passes for the working population but the government has said surging infections could force a lockdown.

Jelko Kacin, the pandemic response coordinator, described the situation as a dictatorship of a minority of the unvaccinated and irresponsible over the majority who have been vaccinated on time and who are complying with the measures, STA reported. He announced tightening of COVID pass rules.

Serbia's government pandemic crisis team met Thursday as medical experts urged a 10-day lockdown and requiring COVID passes for all indoor venues. But authorities decided only to prolong a fall vacation for school children and extend COVID passes for two additional hours, starting from 8 p.m., rather than 10 p.m. in bars, restaurants and night clubs.

Serbia's populist government has been reluctant to tighten pandemic regulations, focusing on getting more people vaccinated. In Serbia, as in Slovenia, vaccination rates are just over 50%.

The Balkan nation of 7 million has reported more than 1 million cases and over 10,000 deaths so far. Some 6,100 new cases were recorded on Thursday, while 64 people died. Serbian doctors in the past weeks have said that even small babies were among the patients on artificial ventilation.

In North Macedonia, authorities said they were doing virus testing in schools after three teenage girls died recently of COVID-19.

North Macedonias vaccination rate stood at 39% of the 2 million people  among the lowest in Europe, along with Ukraine with just 17% vaccinated people among the population of 41 million.

Ukraines Health Ministry on Thursday reported 27,377 new infections, about 500 more than the previous high tallied last week. Ukraine has faced protests against vaccination certificates for teachers and other public employees, as well as for passengers on airplanes, trains and buses.

Slovakia also reported a record of 6,713 new infections on Thursday. Slovakia has one of the lowest COVID-19 inoculation rates in the EU, with slightly more than 2.4 million people in the nation of 5.4 million fully vaccinated.

The government said it would extend already tight restrictions to almost half of the country next week. Starting Monday, 36 of the countrys 79 counties will need to close hotels, bars, restaurants, and fitness, wellness and aquatic centers.

Public gatherings in those counties will be limited to 100 fully vaccinated people. Face coverings will become mandatory both indoors and outdoors.

In the neighboring Czech Republic, the day-to-day increase reached more than 9,000 cases for the second day on Wednesday, the highest numbers since March. The number of hospitalized people has rocketed.

Were in a quite serious situation, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said Thursday. The only solution ... is vaccination.

Cases also are rising in Poland and Hungary, while a weeks-long surge persisted in Bulgaria.

Poland reported more than 15,000 new cases in the nation of 38 million, and 250 deaths, numbers last seen in April. Nearly 53% of Poland's population is fully vaccinated.

Hungary said 107 people died from COVID-19 between Wednesday and Thursday, the highest daily total since May 5. Authorities confirmed 6,268 new infections, roughly 2.5 times more than last Thursday.

Bulgaria on Thursday reported 4,922 new cases, and authorities said 86% involved unvaccinated people. Only 28.5% of Bulgarias population of 7 million has been fully vaccinated.

After battling a major outbreak for weeks, doctors in Romania said they were exhausted and finding it hard to cope with both full hospitals and anti-vaccination propaganda.

Cristian Oancea, a physician at Victor Babes Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Timisoara, told The Associated Press Thursday that many unvaccinated patients regret not getting jabbed when they find themselves in hospital beds.

He said they tell him: Im a fool for not getting vaccinated.

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AP reporters throughout Central and Eastern Europe contributed to this report.

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Follow APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Inmates in Wisconsin state prisons will receive photocopies of their personal mail and not the originals beginning next month.

The Department of Corrections is implementing the new policy to stop the infiltration of paper laced with a synthetic drug called K2 or spice which is smoked and can cause violent behavior, symptoms of psychosis and other problems.

Corrections officials say there have been 182 negative incidents related to the drug in state prisons during the month of September, including 16 medical emergencies.

By stopping the original pieces of paper from entering the institutions, we can greatly reduce the amount of drugs coming in and create a safer environment, Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr said.

The Fox Lake Correctional Institution implemented the policy on a trial basis. Fox Lake prisoners complained about months-long delays in receiving mail which in some cases had been altered, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

To address those concerns, corrections officials have hired an outside company to process the photocopying instead of doing it themselves.

Hiring a group that specializes in this type of work should minimize any issues with the photocopies, DOC Division of Adult Institutions Administrator Sarah Cooper said.

The Department of Corrections is contracting with TextBehind, a mail management service that already provides mail photocopying for the corrections agency in North Carolina.

The photocopying policy begins Dec. 6. when inmate mail will be sent to TextBehind, photocopied and forwarded. Legal, medical and other protected mail are exempt from the new policy.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  A Delaware judge is weighing whether a medical facility violated the states equal accommodation law by refusing to complete a sports physical for a boy with Down syndrome who wanted to compete in Special Olympics.

The judge heard arguments Thursday in an appeal filed by the boys parents after the State Human Relations Commission determined that businesses do not have to provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities under Delawares Equal Accommodations Law.

The law prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation based on race, age, marital status, creed, religion, color, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

According to court records, Michelle Ray took her 12-year-old son to a MedExpress Urgent Care facility in Wilmington in February 2019 so he could get the required physical. The family was told that the boy, who has a speech disorder, could not pass the vision test because medical staff could not understand his responses when asked what he saw on an eye chart, and that the physical could therefore not be completed.

The statute says that a business cannot deny a service on the basis of disability, said Tony Sierzega, an attorney with the Community Legal Aid Society who is representing the Ray family. What happened here was very clear. The Rays child was denied a service.

Maria Granaudo, an attorney for MedExpress, argued that there was no refusal of service.

It was just, we cant provide the service, not that we dont want to, she told Superior Court Judge Vivian Medinilla. It was that we unfortunately, werent able to do it, despite the fact that mom and the family members were there.

After the incident at MedExpress, the Ray family was able to get the boys primary care physician to conduct the exam, and he was able to compete in Special Olympics.

The Rays later filed a discrimination complaint with the state, but Division of Human Relations Director Romona Fullman recommended that the commission dismiss the complaint because it failed to state claim on which relief could be granted.

Commission chairwoman Gail Tarlecki agreed, dismissing the complaint in February 2020 and rejecting a request for reconsideration five months later. Tarlecki wrote, incorrectly, that the General Assembly chose to include a specific requirement for reasonable accommodation based on gender identity but chose not to include the same requirement based on disability.

I think requirement is probably not the best word to use, Deputy Attorney General Daniel Mulveny acknowledged when the judge questioned the language used by Tarlecki.

Tarlecki referred in her July 2020 decision to a 2013 amendment that allows, but does not require, a business to provide reasonable accommodations based on gender identity in areas where disrobing is likely, such as locker rooms. No similar permissive allowance is spelled out for the disabled or any other protected class.

Tarlecki suggested in her order that the Ray family could seek relief in federal court under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Sierzega, the attorney for the Rays, said forcing Delawareans with disabilities to file federal lawsuits to get their rights enforced is unfair. He noted that the Delaware law is explicitly intended to prevent discrimination against any person based on disability or a host of other factors, including race, age and religion, and includes language stating that it shall be liberally construed.

Not interpreting the law as requiring reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities makes it useless for them, Sierzega suggested.

Its sad that the state and DHRs interpretation effectively says ... that Delaware doesnt protect you, he said.

Mulveny, the attorney for the Human Relations Commission and Division of Human Relations, said there are valid policy arguments to be made on both sides, but that any policy decisions must be made by the General Assembly. He also argued that, in the context of equal accommodation, reasonable accommodation asks for people with disabilities to be treated differently, as opposed to equally.

If there is such a requirement, it should be spelled out, and in this case, the General Assembly didnt put it in the statute, Mulveny said, adding that the requirement that the law be liberally construed is not a license to rewrite it.

By making a reasonable accommodation, youre in fact treating one class differently, he added.

That prompted the judge to question whether allowing reasonable accommodations based on gender identity but not on other factors such as race or disability, as the law currently does, is discriminatory.

Doesnt that then carve out a special place for gender identity? Medinilla asked.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Cleo Smith was back to her laughing, bubbly self as she played in the backyard of her Australian west coast family home on Thursday, hours before a 36-year-old stranger was charged with abducting the 4-year-old from a camping tent more than two weeks ago.

Police charged Terry Kelly, a local resident, with forcibly taking a child among other offenses, a police statement said.

Kelly, referred to in his charge sheet as Terence Darrell Kelly, appeared briefly in court in the town of Carnarvon where a magistrate refused to release him on bail.

Police visited Cleo's family in Carnarvon as they prepared to gather crucial eyewitness evidence involving Kelly, who is suspected of snatching her from a campground north of the town of 5,000 people on Oct. 16.

I can only see her on the outside, but from that point of view, Im amazed that she seems to be so well-adjusted and happy, and it was really ... heartwarming to see that shes still bubbly and shes laughing, Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine said.

Im sure that it has had an impact, but just to see her behaving quite naturally like a 4-year-old girl should do and just enjoying being in the presence of her little sister and her family was good, Blaine added.

Blaine was part of a four-member police team that used a battering ram to smash into a locked house early Wednesday and rescue Cleo. The lights were on and she was alone playing with toys in a house less than a 10-minute drive from her own, police said.

My name is Cleo, the smiling girl told the police officers who rescued her and asked her name as confirmation that they had found the right child.

Kelly was arrested in a nearby street at about the same time, police said.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde, who heads the police investigation, said specialist child interviewers had traveled to Carnarvon from the state capital Perth, 900 kilometers (560 miles) to the south.

The main concern around that is Cleos welfare, Wilde said of the interview.

We have experienced people that will undertake that and itll take as long as it takes. Well sit down with the family and work out the appropriate time, Wilde added.

Police would not comment on whether Cleo was interviewed before Kelly was charged.

Media have reported Kelly raised suspicion among other residents when he was seen buying diapers and was known to have no children, but police have disclosed little information about what made the man a suspect.

It wasnt a random tip or a clairvoyant or any of the sort of things that you might hear, Police Minister Paul Papalia said. It was just a hard police grind.

Kelly was taken from police detention to a hospital late Wednesday and again on Thursday, with what media reported were self-inflicted injuries.

Asked about reports Kelly was injured after banging his head against a cell wall, Western Australia Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch only replied that there were no serious injuries.

A police statement said Kelly's medical matter does not relate to any police involvement with him.

Wilde said Kelly had since returned to the police station and was speaking to officers.

Wednesday was the first full night Cleo spent at home with her mother, Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon and her baby half-sister Isla Gliddon since the familys ordeal began.

As they slept, public buildings in Perth were illuminated with blue lights to celebrate the success of the police investigation. In Carnarvon, balloons were raised on buildings and signs were posted welcoming Cleo home.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan also visited the family on Thursday and commented on how well-adjusted the child and her parents seemed.

Shes bubbly, playing, friendly, sweet. She was eating an icy pole, she spilt it every way. She told me it was very, very sticky, which I believed, and she was just delightful, McGowan said.

McGowan said he gave her two teddy bears dressed in police uniforms, but she seemed unimpressed with his suggestion that she name them Cameron and Rod after the senior detectives leading her investigation.

Blaine, a homicide investigator, said he was uncertain whether Cleo recognized him from their first meeting when they met again on Thursday. He described his reaction to finding Cleo alive as shock, followed by elation.

Wed always hoped for that outcome, but were still not prepared for it, Blaine said.

Xanthe Mallett, a criminologist at Australias Newcastle University, said finding a victim of stranger abduction alive after more than two weeks was rare.

Sadly, theyre normally killed quickly, usually during the first three hours, Mallett said.

The Carnarvon communitys willingness to help police find Cleo was likely a key factor in the investigations success, she said. Police had offered a 1 million Australian dollar ($743,000) reward for information, but dont expect the money will be claimed.

I always thought that this was going to be somebody with local connections because it was somebody who knew that campsite, so the fact that she was so close to that campsite and so close to Cleos home wasnt a surprise to me, Mallett said.

Police engaged so well with that community and had them on board, they had the whole communitys eyes on everyone, reporting anyone suspicious. I think that was really key in this investigation  just great, old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground police work, Mallett added.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Tennessee officials are proposing a $183 million facelift to turn the former complex for state lawmakers into a Capitol visitors center, state war museum, office space and a conference center.

Department of General Services Commissioner Christi Branscom said during a budget hearing Wednesday that the project for the Legislative Plaza building would create a proper "front door" for groups visiting the Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Justice Department is stepping up actions to combat ransomware and cybercrime through arrests and other actions, its No. 2 official told The Associated Press, as the Biden administration escalates its response to what it regards as an urgent economic and national security threat.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said that in the days and weeks to come, youre going to see more arrests," more seizures of ransom payments to hackers and additional law enforcement operations.

If you come for us, were going to come for you, Monaco said in an interview with the AP this week. She declined to offer specifics about who in particular might face prosecution.

The actions are intended to build off steps taken in recent months, including the recent extradition to the U.S. of a suspected Russian cybercriminal and the seizure in June of $2.3 million in cryptocurrency paid to hackers. They come as the U.S. continues to endure what Monaco called a steady drumbeat of attacks despite President Joe Biden's admonitions last summer to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after a spate of lucrative attacks linked to Russia-based hacking gangs.

We have not seen a material change in the landscape. Only time will tell as to what Russia may do on this front, Monaco said.

But Monaco added: We are not going to stop. Were going to continue to press forward to hold accountable those who seek to go after our industries, to hold our data hostage and threaten national security, economic security and personal security.

Another official, National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, painted a rosier picture, telling lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. had seen a discernible decrease in attacks emanating from Russia but that it was too soon to say why.

Monaco is a longtime fixture in Washington law enforcement, having served as chief of staff at the FBI to then-Director Robert Mueller and as head of the Justice Department's national security division. She was a White House official in 2014 when the Justice Department brought a first-of-its-kind indictment against Chinese government hackers.

Monaco's current position, with oversight of the FBI and other Justice Department components, has made her a key player in U.S. government efforts against ransomware. That fight has defied easy solutions given the sheer volume of high-dollar attacks and the ease with which hackers have penetrated private companies and government agencies alike. How much lasting impact the latest government response will have is also unclear.

Though not a new phenomenon, ransomware attacks  in which hackers lock up and encrypt data and demand often-exorbitant sums to release it to victims  have exploded in the last year with breaches affecting vital infrastructure and global corporations.

Colonial Pipeline, which supplies roughly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast, paid more than $4 million after a May attack that led it to halt operations, though the Justice Department clawed the majority of it back after identifying the virtual currency wallet of the culprits, known as DarkSide. The public should expect to see more such seizures, Monaco said.

JBS, the world's largest meat processor, said in June that it had paid $11 million following a hack by a Russian group known as REvil, which weeks later carried out a massive ransomware attack that snarled businesses around the world.

The splashy attacks elevated ransomware as an urgent national security priority while the administration scrambled to stem the onslaught.

Inside the Justice Department, officials in April formed a ransomware task force of prosecutors and agents, and they've directed U.S. attorney offices to report ransomware cases to Washington just as they would terrorism attacks.

It has also tried prosecutions, extraditing from South Korea last month an accused Russian hacker, Vladimir Dunaev, who prosecutors say participated in a cyber gang whose malicious software  known as Trickbot  infected millions of computers.

You're going to see more actions like you saw last week in the days and weeks to come," Monaco said.

Still, holding foreign hackers accountable in the U.S. is notoriously difficult, and ransomware gangs are abundant. Even if recent attacks haven't generated the same publicity as the ones last spring, Monaco said there's been no discernible change in behavior by opportunistic hackers still targeting a range of industries with attacks that threaten to paralyze crucial business operations  or force multimillion-dollar payouts.

Monaco said she's sympathetic to the hard decisions companies must make, in part because she's had experience confronting criminals' monetary demands.

As homeland security and counterterrorism adviser in the Obama administration, she helped craft new policy on Americans held hostage overseas. The policy reiterated that ransom payments for hostages were discouraged and illegal, but also made clear that prosecutors didn't plan to criminally charge families who made such payments.

What it reflects, and frankly what the whole endeavor reflected, was a sense on Lisas part that this was an area where you needed an extraordinary balance between policy and humanity, said Joshua Geltzer, the Biden administrator's deputy homeland security adviser who worked with Monaco in the Obama White House.

The U.S. government has publicly discouraged ransomware payments but Monaco  who during the Obama administration faced criticism from hostage families about the government's response to their plight  says the administration is trying to listen to and work with victimized companies.

Officials have shown no interest in prosecuting companies that pay ransom to hackers, though Monaco did announce last month that the department was prepared to sue federal contractors who fail to disclose that they've been hacked or who fail to meet cybersecurity standards.

We have experienced where companies do not pay the attention they need to on this front," Monaco said.

Ransomware attacks have flourished even as the federal government grapples with more old-fashioned, albeit sophisticated, cyber espionage. The Justice Department was among the agencies hit hard by the SolarWinds breach, in which Russian government hackers exploited a supply chain vulnerability to gain access to the networks of federal departments and private companies.

The Justice Department has said more than two dozen U.S. attorneys' offices had at least one employee whose email account was compromised during the hacking campaign.

It was a reminder, she said, that no one is immune from a sophisticated breach.

We need to practice what we preach and be doing the same type of vigilance on our cybersecurity that we are asking companies to do, she said.

____

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP.
Evan Vucci/AP

WASHINGTON (AP)  A person traveling with President Joe Biden to Europe this past week received a positive test result for the coronavirus, the administration confirmed Thursday, saying the individual did not have close contact with the president.

The fully-vaccinated person is asymptomatic and is remaining in Scotland to quarantine while undergoing additional tests after testing positive on a lateral flow rapid test issued by the UK government required for all attendees at the UN climate summit underway in Scotland. Biden tested negative for the virus on Tuesday, the White House said.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Ethiopia's government marked a year of war by lashing out Thursday in response to international alarm about hate speech, comparing the rival Tigray forces to a rat that strays far from its hole and saying the country is close to burying the evil forces."

The statement from the government communication service, posted on social media and confirmed by a government spokesman, came amid urgent new efforts to calm the escalating war as a U.S. special envoy arrived and the president of neighboring Kenya and others called for an immediate cease-fire.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that we are speaking as starkly as we can in urging U.S. citizens to leave the country.

The war that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions since November 2020 threatens to engulf Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. Tigray forces seized key cities in recent days and linked up with another armed group, leading the government of Africas second-most populous country to declare a national state of emergency with sweeping detention powers.

U.S. special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, who this week insisted that there are many, many ways to initiate discreet talks toward peace, met Thursday with Ethiopias deputy prime minister and ministers of defense and finance, and his visit continues Friday.

Efforts to engage Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, on peace talks have failed. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he spoke with Abiy on Wednesday to offer my good offices to create the conditions for a dialogue so the fighting stops.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled a open meeting followed by closed consultations Friday afternoon on the escalating violence in Ethiopia at the request of Ireland, Kenya, Niger, Tunisia and St. Vincent & The Grenadines.

Council members are considering a press statement calling for an immediate cessation of the expanding and intensifying military clashes, an end to hate speech, and unrestricted access to tackle the worlds worst hunger crisis in a decade in the Tigray region, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.

But last week a congressional aide told The Associated Press there have been talks of talks with officials, but when it gets to the Abiy level and the senior (Tigray forces) level, the demands are wide, and Abiy doesnt want to talk.

Instead, the prime minister has urged citizens to rise up and bury the Tigray forces who long dominated the national government before he came to power. On Wednesday, Facebook said it had removed a post by Abiy with that language, saying it violated policies against inciting violence. It was a rare action against a head of state or government.

The government statement on Thursday took aim not only at Facebook, accusing it of showing its true colors, but also at media, humanitarian groups and others allegedly working hand in hand with the enemy in propagating its false narrative.

But Ethiopia's government aimed its harshest language at the Tigray forces. TPLF and its puppets are being encircled by our forces. As the saying goes, a rat that strays far from its hole is nearer to death, the statement said, referring to the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front.

The U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, told an online event Thursday that dehumanizing speech in Ethiopia is of extreme concern, and she warned that the risk exists of the war spilling across borders and becoming something completely unmanageable. She warned that ethnic-based militias are so dangerous in this context.

Kenya increased security along its borders amid fears of a wave of Ethiopians fleeing as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises spreads, while its foreign ministry said statements inciting ordinary citizens into the conflict must be shunned. Ugandas president called for a meeting of East African leaders, and the European Union warned of fragmentation and widespread armed conflict.

Tigray forces spokesman Getachew Reda said the fighters had joined hands with another armed group, the Oromo Liberation Army, to seize the city of Kemisse, even closer to the capital.

Joint operations will continue in the days and weeks ahead, he tweeted.

A security source confirmed the claim and said Tigray forces were pushing east as well as south toward the capital. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

All sides in the war have committed abuses, a joint U.N. human rights investigation said Wednesday, while millions of people in the government-blockaded Tigray region are cut off from the world. The U.N. says no humanitarian aid has entered Tigray since Ethiopian military airstrikes resumed there on Oct. 18, and 80% of essential medication is no longer available.

The Tigray forces say they are pressuring the government to end the blockade, but the spreading insecurity as they push south through the neighboring Amhara region has hampered aid delivery to hundreds of thousands of hungry people.

A university staffer who fled the Amhara town of Woldiya before Tigray forces arrived weeks ago said friends there were climbing nearby hillsides to call the outside world with reports of low food supplies and people drinking from rivers, while electricity is cut. There is no aid in the occupied areas, Alemayehu said, giving only his first name for his security.

I wish the war ends before it moves to the capital, thats my prayer to God," he said, adding that he opposes the Tigray fighters.

With the government statements and the new state of emergency, ethnic Tigrayans in the capital told the AP they were hiding in their homes as authorities carried out house-to-house searches and stopped people on the streets to check identity cards, which everyone must now carry.

One lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, estimated that thousands have been detained this week, citing conversations with many people from the four corners of the city. He said Tigrayan lawyers like him were powerless to help because of their ethnicity.

Our only hope now is the (Tigray forces), said one young woman, Rahel, whose husband was detained on Tuesday while going to work as a merchant but has not been charged. They might not save us, to be honest. I've already given up on my life, but if our families can be saved, I think that's enough.

Another Tigrayan, Yared, said his brother, a businessman, was detained on Monday, and when he went to the police station, he saw dozens of other Tigrayans.

Its crazy, my friends in Addis, non-Tigrayans, are calling me and telling me not to leave the house, Yared said.

They go through your phone, and if you have some material about the Tigray war that would be suggesting supporting the war, they would just detain you, he said. The past four days have been the worst by far, the scope at which they're detaining people, its just terrorizing. We dont feel safe in our homes anymore.

___

Matthew Lee in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  Protesters against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in South Dakota filed a lawsuit against Gov. Kristi Noem late Wednesday after the state denied their application to demonstrate on Capitol grounds during a special legislative session this month.

The group of protesters, who call themselves Blue State Refugees, said they planned to hold a demonstration next week to push the Legislature to take up a bill that would keep businesses from requiring vaccines as a condition of employment. But they were told by state employees that they could not hold the event on Capitol grounds because it was being decorated for a Christmas display.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  Police in Las Vegas said they arrested a man sought after opening fire as he entered a convenience store early Thursday, killing one person in a vehicle outside and targeting at least one person inside.

Lt. Ray Spencer told reporters about 5 p.m. the man surrendered after a standoff with officers. Authorities acted on a tip about his location and surrounded a home a little after noon in a residential neighborhood not far from the store southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, Spencer said.
WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. (AP)  The board of a small college in West Virginia has censured its president after he plagiarized some speeches.

West Liberty Universitys Board of Governors unanimously approved the motion Wednesday to censure President W. Franklin Evans. A board vote on the issue of firing Evans narrowly failed last month.
By Ana B. Ibarra

CalMatters

California has begun vaccinating young children this week, with the state expecting to receive more than a million doses of COVID-19 vaccine during the first week.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week authorized Pfizer's vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 for emergency use. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also endorsed it.

Some states began offering vaccines to kids that same night.

Today the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, which is made up of public health experts from California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, also recommended vaccines for this age group.

Some counties, like Santa Clara, already started vaccinating kids Wednesday. The city of Long Beach announced it will start offering them at its clinics on Friday.

California is home to 3.5 million children ages 5 to 11, about 9 percent of the state's population. State health officials said they expect to receive 1.2 million doses within the first week of distribution, and some counties reported receiving shipments on Tuesday.

Health care providers say that distribution should go smoothly, after almost 11 months of practice with adults. But some doctors expect to ramp up their education efforts for concerned parents.

Pediatricians told CalMatters that they have been hearing from concerned parents who in some cases, despite having received the shot themselves, have doubts about vaccinating their own children.

"As parents, we tend to be more on the careful side, which is perfectly fine, but if a parent has fear or has doubts and hasn't found a place to ask questions, that's where we can lose traction," said Dr. Ilan Shapiro, a pediatrician and medical director for the AltaMed health system in Southern California.

Dr. Charles Golden, medical director at Children's Health of Orange County, said he reminds parents that "this vaccine has gone through rigorous trials and reviews."

"I'd recommend having children vaccinated sooner than later, community transmission is lower but still substantial, and risk will increase with the holidays and back to school activities," Golden said.

Teens in California started getting vaccinated in the spring and so far about 60 percent of 12 to 17 year olds have been fully vaccinated -- a lower rate than in any adult age group. That, however, is expected to increase with incoming coronavirus vaccine mandates in schools.

Here are answers to some key questions about coronavirus in kids and the newly approved pediatric doses.

Where will doses be available? How should parents make appointments?

The best place to start is with a child's primary provider, pediatricians say.

In addition, some local health departments teamed with health systems are planning larger vaccination clinics.

"As far as when appointments can start being made, we're waiting to hear from the county, but as soon as we hear them, patients can start calling their pediatrician's office," said Golden.

Parents also will be able to look for appointments and locations at MyTurn.ca.gov, although it's unclear when.

What does a COVID-19 infection look like in kids?

Symptoms in young children can be similar to those in adults: sore throat, fever and shortness of breath. While severe illness and hospitalization are less common among children, an infection could still potentially cause pneumonia and progress to requiring ICU care or a ventilator, said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children's Hospital.

Some pediatric COVID-19 cases can cause multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which occurs about two to four weeks after infection, Blumberg said. Inflammation occurs throughout the body, including organs, and could lead to heart failure. Symptoms include stomach pain, low blood pressure and vomiting. As of Nov. 1, the state has recorded 690 cases of this syndrome.

If the risk of severe COVID is lower in children, why do they need the vaccine?

"The risk in children is lower than adults, but that doesn't mean there is no risk," Blumberg said.

As of Nov. 1, more than 1.9 million cases have occurred nationally among 5 to 11 year olds, according to CDC data. Cases and hospitalizations increased among kids as the more contagious Delta variant gained dominance.

California has tallied more than 686,000 cases in teens and children 17 and under -- about 15 percent of all cases. Thirty-seven minors have died.

A more local look: At Children's Health of Orange County, roughly 6,000 minors have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 600 of them have required hospitalization, Golden said. About a third of those children wound up in the ICU. "No, this isn't the same number as adults, but kids do get critically ill too," he said.

State health officials also note that vaccination among young children is important to help reduce community spread of the virus.

How big are the doses and how effective are they?

Children will need two doses of the vaccine, three weeks apart. Each dose is a third of what is given to people 12 and older.

Pfizer's pediatric vaccine has shown to be 91 percent effective in protecting young children against COVID-19.

What about myocarditis? Do the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks?

Reports of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, in young people who have been vaccinated have alarmed some parents. But pediatricians are quick to point out that there is a higher risk of myocarditis in unvaccinated people who have been infected with COVID-19.

A recent CDC study found that the risk of myocarditis among people infected with the virus was 16 times higher than in people without infection.

Myocarditis is most prevalent in male teens and young adults under 30, but less common in younger children, according to the CDC.

Agency officials and advisors say myocarditis is rare and that the vast majority of people who did experience heart inflammation after vaccination recovered.

The CDC has confirmed 1,005 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the outer layer of the heart) after vaccination, and is investigating whether these cases are directly related to the vaccine. On Tuesday, agency officials said there have been no deaths in teens who developed myocarditis after the vaccine.

Part of the job of the CDC and FDA is to conduct several risk-benefit calculations for vaccinations. Pediatricians say the agencies' approval means they have found overwhelmingly more pros than cons to vaccinating children.

Will the vaccine for kids produce side effects like in adults?

Pediatricians expect side effects, such as sore arms, fatigue and low-grade fever, to be similar to those seen in older groups. However, the doses and needles are smaller, so some effects may be milder among children.

Shapiro recommends that parents be honest with children who may be afraid of needles or scared of potential side effects. "I think it's important to acknowledge that it can hurt and that it's OK to be scared," he said.

Will there be boosters or is this a one-and-done for kids?

It's too soon to know.

"We're just learning about the long-term protection that one gets from COVID vaccines," Blumberg said. "It appears that soon after being fully immunized, the vaccine protects very well. After a while, the immunity for mild infection wears off, but there still appears to be prolonged protections against serious infection."

At that point, it might become a question of how much do we want to prevent mild, breakthrough infections, he said.

With vaccine mandates at schools, is there an exemption process?

At the state level, that process has not been worked out. For now it'll be up to individual school districts who are implementing their own mandates.

Blumberg said he has already received inquiries from parents about opting out of school mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state will require coronavirus vaccines for in-person instruction once the vaccines for minors received full-approval, not just emergency authorization.

Some school districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Oakland Unified, have said they'll require vaccination for kids 12 and older starting in January. A spokesperson for Oakland Unified said its requirement will not automatically extend to children 5 to 11. Instead, if the district's board of education chooses to require it for younger kids, it'll have to pass a separate resolution.

School districts will each have their own forms for parents to fill out to obtain exemptions.

"The state has a very well-organized process for opting out of the other vaccines that are currently mandated for schools through the immunization registry, but for this vaccine, which individual schools are requiring, I'm not sure you can do the exemption through the registry," Blumberg said.

How will the state ensure equitable distribution of the vaccine among Black, Latino and low-income communities?

Concerns about vaccine disparities are legitimate, Shapiro said. Just like in adults, kids in these communities are more likely to face barriers such as their parents' inability to take time off work and a lack of transportation. But children also generally visit the doctor more routinely, so there will be opportunities for vaccine education, Shapiro said.

"I think most people in the community know this is coming and that we need to talk about it," he said. "I've had families come in where the mother had a question and the daughter already knew the answer. Kids are listening. They're interested too."

State health department said they are working to ensure that kids' vaccines are available in a variety of settings, including doctors' offices, pharmacies and schools. In a statement, the department said one key difference from the early days of the vaccine effort is that now there are many more providers enrolled to administer them.

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By Tran Nguyen

San Jose Spotlight

After months of anticipation from lawmakers and parents, Santa Clara County on Wednesday gave its first COVID-19 shots to some of its youngest residents.

Hand-in-hand with their parents, a few hundred kids flocked to clinics across the South Bay to get the first jabs of the kid-size COVID-19 vaccine. The line for the clinic at Emmanuel Baptist Church in East San Jose has been nonstop since the clinic opened at 8:45 a.m., workers at the site said.

Nate Huynh, 9, and his sister Kate, 7, were among more than 250 kids with an appointment at the church. Mother Tiana Huynh said the family has been waiting anxiously to get their kids vaccinated.

"They have been waiting for this all year," Huynh told San Jose Spotlight. "We haven't let them do playdates or anything like that. With the vaccines, we'll be much more comfortable letting them do things like normal time again."

Federal health officials gave final approval for Pfizer's kid-size COVID-19 shot earlier this week, opening the way to vaccination for children as young as 5. In Santa Clara County, that's roughly 167,000 kids who are now eligible to get the two-dose pediatric shot, which is one-third the adult dosage.

Nate, sporting a green shirt with characters from the Super Mario Bros. video game, helped his mom comfort his little sister while the family waited in line.

"Every time I get a shot, I cry," Kate said, donning a Queen Elsa shirt and pink Hello Kitty shoes.

Sitting on her mom's lap, Kate took a shot in her left arm. Her brother hovered next to her.

"It's ok to be scared," Huynh told her daughter. Both siblings picked out their bandaids and stickers. They will come back at the end of the month to finish their doses.

The Pfizer kids vaccine is about 90 percent effective, according to the company. Getting young kids vaccinated is a crucial step to end the pandemic, health experts say. Santa Clara County has spent weeks preparing for the newly-eligible population in anticipation of the authorization.

"We definitely have seen infections in this age group... and they are disruptive both to the children's education as well as their parents lives," said Dr. Jennifer Tong, associate chief medical officer at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

Vaccinating young kids will also help curb the transmission rate and keep others in the community safer, Tong added.

The county is slated to receive 55,000 pediatric shots this week. Officials say they anticipate a high demand for the kid-size vaccines, but are confident in the county's capacity to vaccinate as many children as possible in the upcoming weeks. Families have already booked up the majority of this week's appointments, according to officials.

Aria Shukla, 6, was also nervous for her shot. Sporting her Wonder Woman headpiece, Aria was crying and screaming as it came time to get inoculated.

"We've been wanting to do this because I have elderly parents," father Prakash Shukla told San Jose Spotlight. " I just wanted all the kids, everybody, to be vaccinated."

Aria proudly showed off her inoculated arm while she waited at the facility.

"I missed sleepovers," she said.

The kid-size vaccines come at a time where infections and hospitalizations caused by the Delta variant are dropping sharply. Santa Clara County is seeing a seven-day rolling average of 148 cases--less than half the average of 364 cases in late August.

As of this week, 85.3 percent of Santa Clara County residents ages 12 and up--more than 1.46 million people--are fully vaccinated. When children under 12 are included, the overall completion rate for vaccinations drops to 73.3 percent.

The county will start bringing mobile vaccine clinics to 80 school sites this week, officials said.

"Starting tomorrow, (the teams) will be visiting multiple schools at our highest risk communities where parents may not be able to take time off work, but have consented for their children to get vaccinated," Tong said.

Copyright  2021 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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Stick around Lake Tahoe long enough, and youll surely hear a story or two about George Whittell. Hes the eccentric San Francisco tycoon who, in the mid-20th century, owned about a third of the land in the Tahoe basin and 27 miles of the lakes shoreline.

Theres the story of Whittell as the heir to a fortune. He famously said he never worked a day in his life. Some gravitate to Whittells reputation as a recluse, not unlike Howard Hughes. Whittell spent his summers secluded and isolated in a lakefront estate called the Thunderbird Lodge on Tahoes east shore.

There are many stories of Whittell as a technology savant who collected luxurious automobiles, aircraft and yachts, including a king-sized wooden boat, also called the Thunderbird, that still occasionally roars to life on Lake Tahoe. Or about Whittells pet lion, named Bill, and his pet elephant, Mingo. Some say hed allow his larger-than-average pets to roam freely on his property. Ive heard stories of showgirls from the Cal Neva casino secretly boating across the lake under a dark sky to spice up late-night parties at the Thunderbird. And one of my favorite tall tales about Whittell is the poker hand he lost in a high-stakes game to another man of Tahoe folklore, Joe King. As the story goes, the winning pool was so big in that game that King used the money to purchase and name Kings Beach.

But theres another story about Whittell that is lesser known. And thats why, on a Tuesday morning, I drove down the east shore and turned onto the winding, narrow road that led down a boulder-strewn hillside to the Thunderbird Lodge.

I wanted to know how Whittell  tycoon, recluse, playboy, gambler, animal lover  became Tahoes greatest conservationist, by accident.

---

Courtesy of Thunderbird Lake Tahoe Archives

Courtesy of Thunderbird Lake Tahoe Archives

Ideologically speaking, Whittell was the polar opposite of John Muir. While Muir devoted his lifetime to the creation of our countrys national parks, Whittell was more focused on his whims.

In his youth, he ran off to join Barnum & Bailey Circus. His first love affairs were high-society scandals, which his family tried unsuccessfully to cover up.

But Whittell also inherited some of the business intuition that made his family so wealthy to begin with. Before the crash in 1929, Whittell liquidated his shares in the stock market and emerged from the Great Depression as one of the wealthiest men in California.

In the 1930s, Whittell landed in Reno, Nev., to skip out of Californias growing income taxes. (Nevada still doesnt charge an income tax, and for that reason, the state has lured generations of millionaires and billionaires to its side of Lake Tahoe.) In Reno, Whittell befriended a man named Norman Blitz, who was securing a deal to acquire about tens of thousands of acres in the Tahoe basin. Whittell wound up buying Blitz and his partners out, becoming the sole owner of virtually the entire length of Tahoes east shore, from the water to the top of the mountains.

In total, Whittell owned about 45,000 acres in Tahoe, according to Bill Watson, chief executive and curator of the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. He paid $6 for every shorefront acre and $3 for every mountainside acre. The deal was a bargain, even for the 1930s.

Courtesy of Thunderbird Lake Tahoe Archives

Julie Brown / SFGATE

At first, Whittell planned to develop his land in Tahoe. There are documents that show designs for a Sand Harbor Hotel and Casino  today, thankfully, Sand Harbor has no such thing. Its a state park with a sandy beach and strikingly clear water where thousands of people visit every summer. Other plans were underway to divide Whittells land in Tahoe into parcels to develop condos and homes  but Whittell put an end to them.

Something changed Whittells mind; what that was, we dont know exactly, Watson told me.

When I arrived at the Thunderbird Lodge, late in the morning, purple-white clouds drifted in the sky above Lake Tahoes snow-capped mountains. The water was a deep shade of midnight blue. Made of stone, the estate was designed in the style of Tudor revival, and faces Sand Harbor and Crystal Bay from across the water.

I suspect Whittell was enchanted by the serenity of Lake Tahoe, the unobstructed views of the lake, the quietness of the forest, and he wanted to keep all of that beauty to himself. Or maybe he was just an odd, egomaniacal hermit who got tired of people and wanted to be alone. Probably it was a bit of both.

Watson let me wander the grounds of the estate. In addition to the main house, Whittell built a cottage for card games, mostly poker. Theres an opium den, a dark stone room thats accessed via an underground tunnel, and a boat house built into granite rock. The buildings blend in with the pine trees and the granite boulders. The entire estate sits above rocks, on the edge of the water, so staring out the windows feels as if youre on top of the lake itself. Looking out from the gazebo, long views extend across the entire lake  from the far south end of the lake and Mount Tallacs snowy slopes, to the deep canyons on the West Shore, and the rolling vista of Mount Watson in the north.

The Thunderbird Preservation Society acquired the property in the 1990s, and the nonprofit has managed to restore the structure and preserve its history through donations and philanthropy. Every summer, it offers tours of the grounds to the public.

Courtesy of Thunderbird Lake Tahoe Archives

The main room in the house has a warm feeling from the wood paneling. Photos of Whittell and Bill the lion are framed on the walls and the rooms are staged with furniture to resemble what this place looked like when Whittell lived here. Then I walked downstairs, through the servants quarters, and found a doorway that led to a long tunnel, blasted into the stone and built underground. Lights strung on the curved ceiling illuminated the cold passageway, which is about 600 feet long.

Whittell wanted privacy, to the degree that he didnt even want to be seen walking on his property from the lake. So he built this tunnel to give him hidden access to his boat house, where the Thunderbird yacht was stored.

Whittell went to great lengths to keep huge distances between him and other people. So the irony overwhelmed me: Why or how did he bestow such a huge gift of open space to posterity?

Julie Brown / SFGATE

Julie Brown / SFGATE

All around Lake Tahoe, private property rims the water. According to the California Tahoe Conservancy, more than half of the shoreline is private, much of it guarded by gates and no-trespassing signs. It used to be worse. In 1971, the public could access only 13.5 miles of Lake Tahoes shoreline. Over the years, the California Tahoe Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service and state parks in both Nevada and California have all kept a sustained effort to acquire more land for the public. Today, there are about 40 beaches throughout the lake that are open to all of us.

On the west shore, views of the lake are flashes of blue between one oversized mansion and the next. In Incline Village, Lake Tahoe is hidden behind tall iron gates and walls that guard the real estate investments of todays land barons. And South Lake Tahoe looks like one giant strip mall.

But the east shore is different. Here, the views of the lake are open and wide. Trails lead to hidden coves where boulders become diving boards into the water. In the summer, this stretch of the lake is crowded, because so many people come here to experience the Jewel of the Sierra, as Tahoes sometimes called. The rest of the year, the east shore is quiet.

Thats because the entirety of this shoreline, from Incline Village to Zephyr Cove  invaluable real estate  is undeveloped.

---

Courtesy of Thunderbird Lake Tahoe Archives

Julie Brown / SFGATE

Julie Brown / SFGATE

Whittell was not the first, nor was he the last, land baron in Lake Tahoe. Mrs. Knights Vikingsholm in Emerald Bay, on the other side of Lake Tahoe, is also in the public domain. D.L. Bliss protected some of the only old-growth forest in the basin, which is now a state park.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has settled into his own compound on the west shore. Another tech billionaire, David Duffield, owns a large slice of private property in Incline Village. And just last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made headlines, again, when he purchased the Hyatt. The Hyatt is Ellisons second storied Tahoe hotel in his portfolio; he also owns the Cal Neva. (Not to mention the fact that Ellison owns most of the island of Lanai in Hawaii.)

Another twist of irony: Whittell owned all of the land that Incline Village was built on. Ellison, Duffield  their land was once Whittells.

In 1959, however, Whittell sold 14.5 square miles on the northern edge of his property, up to Crystal Bay, to developers for $5 million, about $45 million in todays dollars. Ronald and Susan James sum up what happened next in their book about Whittell, called "Castle in the Sky": The newly created Incline Village clearly indicated how easily Whittells open space could turn into congested communities filled with people attempting to retreat to the wilderness of the Tahoe Basin.

Whittell did donate tracts of land to charity, and he preferred to give his donations anonymously, Watson said. Whittell gave land to the University of Nevada and St. Marys Hospital in Reno. He donated land in Douglas County to build a high school in Zephyr Cove, on the condition he not be named. Unfortunately for him, the school went against his wishes. Its named George Whittell High.

Watson said he thinks Whittell would have given more land to the public, but that isnt exactly what happened. In the last years of his life, Whittell relinquished Sand Harbor and some of his other valuable land to the Nevada state government when a court issued an order for eminent domain, forcing Whittell to sell 5,300 acres on the east shore for $3 million.

Whittell died on April 18, 1969. By then, most of the Tahoe basin was surging with new development  and a backlash was about to ensue. The same year as Whittells death, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created. The agency would soon institute a basin-wide moratorium that halted development in Lake Tahoe.

But for most of the lake, the moratorium came too late. The east shore was the exception. Because Whittell kept a strong grip on his land, and let his own plans to develop collect dust, the east shore didnt see the same rush to build that the rest of the Tahoe basin experienced.

Thats ultimately why the east shore is all forest and beaches and mountains, to this day.

Julie Brown / SFGATE

Julie Brown / SFGATE

After Whittells death, the U.S. Forest Service acquired some 4,700 acres for $1.5 million, and Wall Street investor Jack Dreyfus purchased the rest of his landholdings in Tahoe, including the Thunderbird Lodge. Dreyfus turned around, though, and sold another 10,000 acres of land to the U.S. Forest Service. The transaction secured the majority of Whittells landholdings in the basin as public land, forevermore.

The last 140 acres remained in Dreyfus possession for several decades. He built an addition to the Thunderbird Estate, but according to the book, "Castle in the Sky," Dreyfus rarely spent a night there. In the 1990s, Dreyfus put the property on the market. The Thunderbird Lodge would have slipped from the publics hands, had a coalition of environmentalists, land conservationists, with U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, not come together to form the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. The newly formed nonprofit, helmed by Watson, secured ownership of the lodge and maintains the property today.

I asked Watson, who has studied Whittells life and has steadily accumulated one of the largest repositories of documents that tell a story of Lake Tahoes history, what he thought about Whittells impact on Lake Tahoe. Watson told me he believes the Thunderbird Lodge, the Thunderbird wooden boat are the physical manifestations of an historic figure whose stories have become legend. But Whittells true legacy, Watson said, is the open space that encompasses the largest stretch of undeveloped shoreline in Tahoe.

His real legacy is the open space we enjoy on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, said Watson. The Nevada side of the lake does not look like the California side of the lake, but for one man, Captain George Whittell.
Jay L. Clendenin/TNS

The 21st century space race is well under way, with the two richest tech tycoons in the world  Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos  competing to colonize outer space first.

But one notable person who wont be participating anytime soon is the Bay Areas golden child, Tom Hanks. In an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday promoting his post-apocalyptic flick Finch, host Jimmy Kimmel pressed him on an offer he received to turn one of his more famous acting roles into reality. (Hanks reportedly received the offer before another actor best-known for his galactic stint.)
Kaz Firpo knew he wanted to be a filmmaker at the age of 11.

A double-bill of Amelie and City Of God immediately cemented it as his dream profession, then over the next decade he made films with friends while growing up in San Francisco and West Marin. Eventually, Firpo enrolled in the film program at the renowned Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and entered the world of commercial directing, overseeing some of Tinder and Snapchat's first commercials.

But, in 2015, as he shot a credit card commercial on a beach in Hawaii, Kaz became disillusioned. It was during the refugee crisis in Europe. We were seeing footage of kids washing up on shores. I was in Hawaii. It was just wrong, recalls Kaz. So I said to the crew, Lets go make a film that matters. We spent a month in Greece making a documentary called Refuge. And that's where everything changed.

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Six years later, Kaz and his cousin Ryan Firpo are now celebrating the release of Eternals, the 26th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which they co-wrote together. With an ensemble cast including Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie and Kit Harington, the film follows a team of immortal aliens who have been hiding in plain sight on Earth for 7,000 years, then re-emerge after the events of Avengers: Endgame to protect the world from the Deviants (which are essentially the evil immortal aliens).

Whereas Kazs filmmaking journey was inspired by international cinema, Ryans path to Hollywood screenwriter stemmed from an interest in skateboarding.

I was born in Berkeley, says Ryan. Grew up in this little town called Benicia. It had a pretty strong artistic presence. I was mostly a skate rat, so I would spend a lot of time in San Francisco because San Francisco is basically just like the best skatepark in the whole world.

Director Spike Jonzes skating videos inspired Ryan to pick up a camera. I started enjoying the filmmaking aspects even more than skateboarding, says Ryan. All the stuff we're doing now is us chasing that feeling of making little videos with our friends. That's what we want to capture. Just on a bigger scale.

Ryan took a less academic route to working as a writer and director than Kaz. After one semester at San Franciscos Academy of Art University, Ryan dropped out. He then used the $5,000 in returned tuition to make his first project. That was really my film school, says Ryan.

His follow-up was Bet Raise Fold, a 2013 documentary on the rise of online poker.

That was my first experience of making a movie, getting it out into the world and actually having strangers seeing it, adds Ryan.

Ryan spent a few years making commercials for the gaming industry until Kaz  fresh off of filming documentaries in international locations like Syria and Jamaica  asked Ryan to be his writing partner. I basically begged the best writer that I knew, who I happened to be related to, to write a movie with me, says Kaz.

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

After two weeks in a remote cabin in Northern California, the pair emerged with Ruin, a gritty revenge thriller that follows an ex-Nazi captain as he atones for his war crimes by hunting down the surviving members of his former SS Death Squad. There was just one small snag.

We had no agents, no managers, like no connection to Hollywood, says Kaz. In fact, it was as tenuous a connection as you can imagine that propelled them on their journey to Eternals. One of the producers on a documentary I was shooting for UNICEF in Jamaica said, I want to introduce you to my sister's fiance. So I sent him two scripts, says Kaz.

The script for Ruin was so impressive that the agent signed Ryan and Kaz. The duo immediately started to garner interest. At the beginning of 2017, we were basically loaded into a shotgun and blasted into Hollywood, explains Kaz. We ended up taking 75 meetings over six weeks. It was three a day, every day.

One of those meetings was with Nate Moore at Marvel. They talked about a refresh for the fourth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which begins after Avengers: Endgame. We really sparked with Nate, says Ryan. Then we didn't hear from him for eight months.

Thankfully, they were making progress with their other cinematic ventures. Margot Robbie became attached to star in Ruin, which was named to the Black List, a collection of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. Their sci-fi thriller Mimi From Rio was also purchased by Netflix.

Sophie Mutevelian

Then, at the beginning of 2018, Moore invited the cousins back to Marvel. Thats when he told us about Eternals. Right away, it hit on so many big ideas on human civilization, human nature and human evolution that we're just personally interested in, says Ryan.

Next came a pitch meeting with Moore, Marvel Co-President Louis DEspositio and President Kevin Feige. It was basically an hour and a half in the room with them and we just told them the whole movie, says Ryan. They just sat there pokerfaced the whole time. I really had no idea which way they were leaning.

A few days later, Ryan and Kaz were hired for the job, but the movie was shrouded in such secrecy that even when working out of their new office at Marvel, they were isolated from the rest of the studio.

Nobody could go in there besides us.  They do a really good job at Marvel of keeping you insulated from the chaos of the machine, says Ryan. We just focused on the story. We didnt think about the scope of it all or how it would be positioned in the broader movie industry.

Sophie Mutevelian

After delivering their final script, the pair learned that future Oscar winner Chloe Zhao, who was filming Nomadland at that point, would be directing Eternals. We were really excited, says Ryan. We were surprised to discover that she's a huge Marvel geek. She had even written fan fiction of her own.

Zhao ended up taking her own pass at the script next, but as they left Zhao to make her imprint on the story, the pair of cousins were proud to have brought their own uniqueness to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which they say was shaped by their experiences in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Those experiences include Kaz mingling with the artists, immigrants and filmmakers in North Beach from a young age, and watching the filming of action scenes from Michael Bays The Rock and police procedural Nash Bridges," which were shot near his school. For Ryan, it was embracing and examining San Franciscos maverick subcultures like skateboarding and online poker.

Eternals is very strange for a Marvel movie, says Kaz. I hope audiences love it. I hope that some of our weird San Francisco upbringing and the ecclecticness of the Bay Area is reflected. Especially when it comes to the diversity of the movie. The Bay Area is such a magical melting pot. That diversity really shaped our world view, and it's reflected in 'Eternals.'

Gregory Wakeman is a Los Angeles-based freelance culture writer. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Yahoo Movies UK, Metro US and Four Four Two, among other publications.
It was a monster weather event.

An atmospheric river unleashed heavy rain and powerful winds over Northern California last month, flooding streets and knocking over trees and power lines.

The Oct. 24 mega-storm coupled with a handful of weak systems led to October rainfall totals that are exorbitantly above average. This is great news in a water-starved region, but experts say there are still several months left in winter and the drought is far from over.

The National Weather Service released totals for a handful of key spots across the region, and of those listed, San Francisco won the prize for location with total rainfall that's the highest percentage above average. Downtown San Francisco recorded 7.04 inches of rain in October  that's 750% above average.

Here are a few other impressive October totals:

Napa Airport: 6.71 inches, 722% of normal

Santa Rosa Airport: 10.76 inches, 647% of average

Oakland Airport: 5.32 inches, 605% of normal

Hayward Airport: 5.02 inches, 620% of average

Concord Airport: 4.41 inches, 604% of average

San Francisco on average sees less than an inch of rain in October. The weather gauge in downtown San Francisco recorded a total of 4.02 inches of rain on Oct. 24, making it San Francisco's wettest October day ever and the city's fourth-wettest day ever, with records going back to the Gold Rush.

A severe storm like the one Oct. 24 is rare. Storms of that size are more typical in December, January and February, and even then a single winter storm doesn't usually deliver multiple inches of rain to urban areas. Local meteorologist Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services created a Bay Area Storm Index that ranks storms by strength, based on wind and rainfall totals, using data going back to 1950. The recent atmospheric river tied with two other events for third-strongest storm in 71 years.

This well above normal average for October don't mean the rest of the water year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, will be above average. October is the first month in the water year, and there are still 11 months to go.

"The month of October does not traditionally have a significant amount of rainfall," said Roger Gass, a meteorologist with the weather service. "When you put a big storm that dumped a lot of rainfall into the region, those percentages are going to look high. Any extended amount of time we stay dry those percentages are going to drop quickly. We're only talking one month out of the water year. It's not like we're going to go through the winter with 700% above average being the number. That's unheard of and we'd be swimming in water."

In terms of drought relief, Jeanine Jones, the California Department of Water Resource's drought manager, told SFGATE in an interview last month that the recent atmospheric river "was nice, but it was one storm following a very dry season. And things are really depleted. So this is not ending the drought by any means, anywhere. If we continue to get more of these during winter, that would be very helpful, but that's not something we can count on."

Hetch Hetchy, which provides drinking water to 2.6 million people in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities, saw a sizable 21.31-foot bump in its water level and gained 36,300 acre-feet of water, according to Tuesday data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Steve Ritchie, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's assistant general manager for water, said the additional water amounted to roughly 11% of the reservoir's total capacity.

"It was a very healthy shot in the arm. It didnt end the drought, but it was definitely really good," said Ritchie. "This was rare for October. I dont know if weve seen anything like this in October before."

Pardee Reservoir, which is the main source of drinking water for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, saw historic rainfall in its watershed on Oct. 24 with 6.2 inches of rain. East Bay MUD also has several local reservoirs where copious amounts of rain fell during the storm. But despite the impressive rainfall, spokesperson Nelsy Rodriguez said the district's water storage increased only 2% and it's now at 57% of capacity.
Storm after storm has swept Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area in recent weeks  and more rain is on the way in the coming days.

Many meteorologists are saying the region is in a "progressive weather pattern." What does that mean?

"Essentially, a progressive pattern is a nerdy way of saying the storm door remains open," National Weather Service forecaster Brian Garcia explained, referring to another term his colleagues use to describe active weather patterns marked by multiple storms.

Getting into the weeds of the "nerdy" science, a progressive pattern means the winds in the upper atmosphere, known as the jet stream, are generally aligned from west to east with no large north-to-south loops, pushing weather systems quickly across the country.

The inverse of a progressive pattern is a blocking pattern, where the weather remains stagnant over the same location for prolonged periods of time. In California, this most often happens when a ridge of high pressure hunkers down on the West Coast, sometimes remaining in place for weeks, and pushes storms away from California and toward the Pacific Northwest.

"The jet stream controls everything and it meanders in like a snake across the Pacific," said Jan Null, a meteorologist who runs the private forecasting service Golden Gate Weather Services. "Usually the ridges and troughs progress forward from west to east. When we get locked into any one of those without the snake moving, then we're not into a progressive pattern."

Northern California saw several weak storms and one historic moisture-packed atmospheric river in October, and locations across the region experienced well above average rainfall. Santa Rosa recorded 10.67 inches of rain last month, which is 647% of normal, while San Francisco saw 7.04 inches, which is 750% of average, NWS Bay Area reported.

October is often dry in the Golden State even though it's the start of the rainy season, and climate models predict that the fall will become drier in a changing climate. But in a region suffering from drought, the recent rain is great news. There's more to come.

A weak storm is forecast to push into the San Francisco Bay late Wednesday and another system may clip the North Bay on Thursday.

The weather service said long-term models are trending toward a dry weekend and a wet start to next week. An atmospheric river reaching the West Coast Monday night or Tuesday could push some moisture into the Bay Area, but the latest weather models show the storm's focus in far Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.

"I do see that we have some heavier precipitation earlier this week," Drew Peterson, a forecaster with the weather service, said. "It's still on track. I wouldn't say it's a slam dunk at this point. But given how progressive the weather pattern has been this season, I would say its chances are higher. Often these systems are rolling in and they are blocked by a large ridge of high pressure, and we don't have that. And that's what I mean by progressive. The storms keep coming in."

How long will the progressive pattern last?

"The pattern continues to look progressive for the next couple weeks," Garcia with the weather service said.
Sharon, PA (16146)

Today

Rain. High 44F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Shelbyville, IN (46176)

Today

A steady rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. High 47F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low around 25F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  With Republicans on the cusp of sweeping statewide judicial races in Pennsylvania, the GOP is finding more reasons to smile a year away from a high-stakes election in which the state's voters will pick a new governor and a new U.S. senator.

Republicans could be considered favored in both contests next year. The party of the president almost always loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, and a Republican has always replaced an outgoing Democratic governor in Pennsylvanias modern political era.

On Tuesday, Republicans delivered historic vote counts for court candidates.

One Republican campaign strategist, Christopher Nicholas, pointed to a slate of countywide victories in Bucks County, a political bellwether north of Philadelphia, as well as other pickups in Philadelphias suburbs where Democrats thrived while former President Donald Trump was in office.

You cant say, as goes the Bucks County controllers race, so goes the state, Nicholas said. But, when you look at that, it bodes well.

Pennsylvanias race for U.S. Senate is expected to be among the nations most competitive next year.

Meanwhile, its governors office is one of eight on ballots next year where a Democrat is serving in a state either won by Trump last year or in a presidential battleground where President Joe Biden beat Trump.

On Tuesday, Republicans won open seats on statewide appeals courts, including a marquee race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. They won with the strongest vote totals perhaps ever.

About 30%, or about 2.6 million, of Pennsylvanias 8.7 million voters cast a ballot in the state Supreme Court race, the upper range of turnout in recent odd-year elections.

The losing Democrat in the state Supreme Court race, Maria McLaughlin, drew more votes than any of the partys candidates did in 2015, when Democrats swept three state Supreme Court seats.

But three of this years winning Republican court candidates blew past the highest vote total amassed by other court candidates in recent decades, and perhaps ever.

Bucks County flipped. Last year, Biden beat Trump there. This year, Republicans in statewide court races won there.

The county's Republican Party chair attributed the GOP's strong performance there to national issues, including voters' concerns over the rising price of gas, defunding police, retail supply chain interruptions and immigration.

They're unhappy, and when theyre unhappy they come out and vote," county GOP chair Pat Poprik said.

Poprik also singled out concerns over salacious books in public schools and the curriculum in schools that Republicans have inflamed with a debate over teaching critical race theory.

It helped bring out many times the number of volunteers, Poprik said.

The schools are getting out of control, Poprik said. "Parents dont know what their children are being taught and schools wont tell them."

The National School Boards Association says critical race theory  which holds that racism is systemic in Americas institutions  is not taught in K-12 public schools, but, in recent months, conservatives have made it a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history.

John Cordisco, the county's Democratic Party chair, also blamed critical race theory and the national issues pushed by the right.

But Democrats should not engage in a debate about critical race theory, Cordisco said. He expects the issue will evaporate since the people talking about it don't understand what it is, he said.

Rather, to be successful next year, Democrats need to get a unified message from Washington and an infrastructure bill on Biden's desk, he said.

Twelve months is an eternity in politics, Cordisco said. So we'll see the supply chains open up, prices stabilize and get an infrastructure bill in place, and its a different conversation 12 months from now.

Democrats especially emphasized passing an infrastructure bill.

And when we deliver, all the process stuff will be forgotten and people will see all the positives that will make their lives better, like child care, paid family and medical leave, home care for seniors and people with disabilities, making prescription drugs more affordable, affordable housing, the expanded Biden child tax credit, and more," said U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans of Philadelphia.

Sharif Street, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party's vice chairman, said things that will help Democrats are fixing up schools with infrastructure dollars and turning the corner on COVID-19.

We have to win on the substance, we have to win on the fact that we have better plans for the American people and the way we can do that is actually by executing, Street said. That is the way Democrats will win, is through execution.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter.
SHELTON  Griffin Health will begin offering free, walk-in pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations for children ages 5-11 starting Thursday.

The Griffin Health Vaccination Centers in Shelton and Naugatuck will provide special hours for these pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations.

Pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations will be offered in Shelton at 10 Progress Drive on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4-7 p.m., and at the adjacent Griffin Health Occupational Medicine Center (also at 10 Progress Drive in Shelton) on Saturdays from 9 a.m.-noon.

Pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations will be offered in Naugatuck at 727 Rubber Ave. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 3-6 p.m. No appointment necessary.
NEW HAVEN  Movers from Southbury-based Maries Movers began unloading their truck of carefully wrapped, donated items from Quinnipiac University Wednesday and bringing them up to a second-floor apartment on Scranton Street.

Over the past two weeks, the company has helped move items into the homes of Afghan refugees coming to Connecticut, settling in New Haven and the shoreline region. And with a number of refugees still set to come to the state this year, state officials Wednesday put out the call for landlords to come forward to help house them.

Deidre Gifford, state commissioner of the Department of Social Services, said Wednesday there are now 214 Afghan refugees in Connecticut, with 510 refugees set to arrive through December.

Those 510 new refugees are set to come to the state through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services office of refugee resettlements official process, but the state may see more outside of the official process, Gifford said.

The vast majority that have arrived so far are under the age of 30, quite a few children, quite a few younger adults. Older individuals are a smaller percentage, Gifford said.

Gov. Ned Lamont said the state has a task force providing support for housing, education and jobs, but that thats only part of the story.

We can provide a lot of supports but we still need beds and warm homes to go with these big hearts, Lamont said, asking landlords also to step up. Were going to make it work for you, make it work for you financially. Its really the right thing to do.

Leaders of two organizations that help refugees find housing, jobs, education and more once they enter the state have said they are struggling to find affordable housing for refugees.

Susan Schnitzer, president and CEO of the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, said that when people are resettled, many had fled their homes with bags and had been in military bases for weeks or months.

This is the first time they can sit and they can breathe and we are asking for landlords, large landlords, individual landlords to please contact our agencies, please open more doors to our clients, Schnitzer said.

When youre helping us resettle these folks, these Afghan evacuees, youre not just getting tenants, youre getting a team of people behind each person, she said.

Chris George, executive director of New Haven-based Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, shared a personal story about how he used to work to find homes for refugees and would be asked whether they had a credit history, a job, whetehr they speak English and more.

We ask a lot of landlords, no doubt we ask a lot of them but we stand behind these refugee families, George said.

We will make sure they pay the rent in full on time. We are so confident that we will cosign the lease, he said. So please landlords, were not asking you to put refugees to the front of the line. We just want them to be in line.

State Department of Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno said Lamont called her a few months ago on a Sunday to ask what the state was doing with the families, so they provided resources.

We have provided enough state resources for the security deposit, past two months rent for the families that are coming in, state funding, while we prepare them to apply to UniteCT so that they can have another 12 months of assistance, Mosquera-Bruno said.

The commissioner said 800 units of affordable housing are being developed in New Haven but said statewide there are about 2,000 units under construction.

Landlords are asked to contact CIRI or IRIS if they would like to help. Currently, refugees coming into the state through CIRI are resettling in Bridgeport or New Haven if they have family in one of those cities. CIRI sees about three to five families per week. In the future, CIRI is looking to expand to Norwalk.

IRIS currently helps people get settled in the New Haven and Hartford areas and will need at least 100 apartments for refugees while CIRI will need about 40.

The rest of the refugees will be settled by community groups who find their own apartments in West Hartford, Branford, Middletown, Westport and other municipalities.

I think this is what America is all about and I hope it reminds people how immigration and folks are fleeing persecution have always looked to the United States of America as an ideal and I hope were continuing that fight every day, Lamont said.

christine.derosa@hearstmediact.com
BROOKHAVEN, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi man on Wednesday pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2018 shooting deaths of two police officers, and a judge gave him two sentences of life in prison.

The guilty pleas from Marquis Aaron Flowers, 28, came five days before jury selection was scheduled to begin in his capital murder trial. By pleading guilty before a jury could be chosen, Flowers avoided the possibility of the death penalty because only a jury can hand down a death sentence in Mississippi.

Brookhaven Police Department Cpl. Zach Moak, 31, and patrol officer James Kevin White, 35, were shot to death Sept. 29, 2018, while responding to a call about shots being fired at a home. Investigators said that before Moak died, he was able to shoot Flowers and call for help.

Relatives of the two slain officers spoke in court Wednesday, asking Circuit Judge Richard McKenzie to give Flowers the strongest sentence possible.

White's sister, Lisa White McBlair, said she cried herself to sleep for months after her brother was killed, and she has had nightmares and stress-induced panic attacks.

Marquis Flowers handed every one of us a life sentence that morning over three years ago, McBlair said, her voice shaking.

Vicki Moak stood with her other son, Chris Moak, as she recalled how Zach had been born prematurely.

He came into this world fighting to live, and he went out fighting," Vicki Moak said. "He was my baby. He was quiet, but in his quietness, there was strength.

She said her whole world changed when she received the call that her son had been fatally shot on duty.

I have a wound in my heart thatll never heal," Vicki Moak said. I think about him every day.

Flowers also spoke briefly in court Wednesday. He apologized to the officers' families and asked for their forgiveness.

The two officers were slain a year after an unrelated series of killings shook Brookhaven, a south Mississippi city with 12,000 residents. A sheriffs deputy and seven other people were shot to death in and around Brookhaven in May 2017, and in early 2020 a jury convicted and gave four death sentences to Willie Cory Godbolt, who blamed his actions on the devil.

Flowers was on parole for a vehicle burglary conviction when Moak and White were killed. Flowers was arrested and charged shortly after the officers were killed, and he was sent to the state prison system to finish serving his sentence in the vehicle burglary. Flowers was moved in March 2020 from Central Mississippi Correctional Facility to a county jail.

On Oct. 28, 2019, Flowers was indicted on two counts of capital murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He pleaded not guilty to all three counts on Nov. 12, 2019. District Attorney Dee Bates said from early in the case that he would pursue the death penalty in the killings of the two officers.

Flowers on Wednesday also pleaded guilty to the firearm charge, and McKenzie gave him a 10-year sentence for that.

McKenzie decided months ago that Flowers' trial would be moved outside Lincoln County, where the killings occurred, because of heavy news coverage when the officers were slain. Jury selection was supposed to have started next Monday in northern Mississippi, and the jurors were to be taken back to the southern part of the state for the trial.

____

Emily Wagster Pettus reported from Jackson.
CAIRO (AP)  Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday joined calls for the immediate restoration of a civilian-led government in Sudan after a military coup in the African nation.

A joint statement by the two nations, plus the United States and the United Kingdom, also urged the military to release those detained in connection to the takeover and lift the state of emergency imposed across the country since Oct. 25.

The statement will likely put pressure on Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the coup leader, and his deputy Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, to give concessions during ongoing negotiations to find a way out of the crisis. Both Burhan and Dagalo are close allies with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

We encourage an effective dialogue between all parties, and we urge all to ensure that the peace and security for the people of Sudan is a top priority, the four-nation statement said.

Buhan, head of the Sudanese military, dissolved the transitional government and detained many other government officials and political leaders. The coup, widely condemned by the U.S. and the West, has come more than two years after a popular uprising forced the militarys removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his Islamist government in April 2019.

The takeover has threatened to derail Sudans already fragile transition democracy and further inflame the volatile Horn of Africa.

Burhan met Wednesday in Khartoum with Nigerias former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union envoy for the Horn of Africa, to discuss mediation efforts. The Sudanese leader said the military would name a prime minister who will appoint a technocratic Cabinet, without mentioning Hamdok as a candidate, according to the state-run SUND news agency.

Burhan has claimed that the takeover was necessary to prevent a civil war, citing what he said were growing divisions among political groups. However, the coup came less than a month before he was to have handed some power to a civilian.

The U.S., the U.K., Saudi Arabia and the UAE has also called for further dialogue about how to restore and uphold a genuine civil-military partnership for the remainder of the transitional period, pending elections, in accordance with the 2019 constitution document and a peace deal with rebel groups last year.

The document was reached in August 2019 after months of torturous negotiations between the military and the protest movement that led the uprising against al-Bashir. It established a transitional government that include a civilian-military Sovereign Council and a Cabinet, led by former U.N. economist Abdalla Hamdok, to run the day-to-day affairs.

Since last week, U.N. representatives have shuttled between the military and pro-democracy leaders. U.S. President Joe Bidens administration has engaged with regional powers in efforts to restore the civilian-led government.

Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy in Sudan, has said Monday that mediation efforts were ongoing in Khartoum by a host of actors, with both Hamdok and Burhan are interested ... in mediation.

The contours of an agreement seem within reach, but we cannot speculate when a deal will be reached, Perthes told a group of journalists in Khartoum Wednesday.
SHELTON  The Shelton Economic Development Corporation has received $70,000 in federal funding to bring investment and jobs to the city and the Naugatuck Valley Corridor Economic Development District.

The funds, which come from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, were announced Wednesday by U.S. representatives Jim Himes, Rosa DeLauro and Jajana Hayes.

This recent grant award will allow us to continue the momentum that has begun in fostering the economic vitality of our region, SEDC President Paul Grimmer said. We applaud our congressional delegation in securing this funding and look forward to achieving our important goals.

According to Grimmer, the grant will be used to establish an economic development planning framework, process, and strategy that supports private capital investment and job creation in the region.

Bringing economic development to Southwest Connecticut is of the utmost importance, Himes said. Connecticut businesses are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. This grant will support small businesses and help diversify and strengthen our local economy.

Himes said he was proud that federal funds would now be used to support economic growth in Shelton.

I remain committed to working alongside our community partners to foster economic growth in Fairfield County, he said.

Sheila OMalley, chair of the economic development district, praised the administration and Congressional delegation.

The (federal) award will help strategize our regions priorities, and in particular communities that are considered economically distressed, OMalley said.

DeLauro said the pandemic upended lives and businesses and stalled economic opportunity across Connecticut. Legislators are in a fight to jumpstart local development, protect struggling businesses from closing for good, and help working, and middle-class families get back on their feet, she said.

The hardworking and dedicated people that keep Shelton businesses afloat need support from the federal government as they rebuild, DeLauro said. As chair of the Appropriations Committee, I am proud we secured this funding for Shelton businesses and workers to not only survive but also thrive and build a brighter future.

Hayes said these funds will further support the mission of providing resources for the surrounding community and helping to grow the local economy.

As Connecticut continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, these dollars will play a vital role in getting us back on track, Hayes said. I will continue to work with my colleagues in the delegation to bring more money back to our state.

brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com
CHICAGO (AP)  A Chicago woman who served more than seven years in an Indonesian prison for killing her mother at a luxury resort on the island of Bali has been indicted on murder conspiracy charges in the United States and taken into federal custody.

FBI agents took Heather Mack, 26, into custody on her arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Wednesday morning, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago

Mack has been charged with conspiring to kill her mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack in a U.S. indictment that was unsealed Wednesday. Also charged is Mack's former boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, who was also convicted of murder in Indonesia and is still imprisoned there.

With the indictment in which they are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, Mack and Schaefer are also charged with obstruction of justice in the three-count indictment.

At an arraignment on Wednesday afternoon, Mack pleaded not guilty to the charges and U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle ordered that she remain in custody until a detention hearing on Nov. 10.

Brian Claypool, Macks attorney, said Wednesday that the federal charges are clearly a witch hunt in response to public pressure after Macks release from prison.

Speaking by phone from California, Claypool said he will ask the court to throw out the new charges, arguing that conspiracy was included in the charges that Mack was convicted of in Indonesia.

The U.S. government had a choice to make in 2015, he said. They could have fought to extradite ... and try her in the U.S. court. They didnt do that.

Macks daughter, Stella Schaefer, who is 6 years old, was on the plane with her mother, according to Claypool, who said the little girl was excited about her first trip to the United States. He declined to say who took custody of the girl when FBI agents took Mack away but said she was not handed over to child protective services. Court records show a Cook County probate judge issued an emergency order Tuesday appointing one of Macks attorneys, Vanessa Favia, as the girls guardian. Favia could not be reached for comment.

Schaefers mother said she was angry that she was not given custody of her granddaughter.

The lawyers dont need custody, Kia Walker told reporters at the airport. Stella has family here. She has me. I want my granddaughter. I want this craziness to stop.

According to the indictment, Mack flew from Chicago to Indonesia on Aug. 2, 2014, and Schaefer arrived on a flight from Chicago eight days later. On Aug. 11, Schaefer communicated in messages with Robert Ryan Justin Bibbs in Chicago about different ways to kill Von Wiese." The next day, according to the indictment, Schaefer and Mack exchanged messages about how and when to kill Von Wiese.

According to the indictment, the two killed Von Wiese-Mack on or about that same day, then stuffed the body into a suitcase and loaded it into the trunk of a taxi cab. It says Mack and Schaefer tried to cover up what they had done by removing items of clothing worn during the killing.

Von Wiese-Mack's badly beaten body was later discovered in the taxi parked at the upscale St. Regis Bali Resort.

In 2016, Bibbs, who was identified as a cousin of Schaefer, pleaded guilty to helping to plan the killing in exchange for $50,000 from Macks expected inheritance. That cousin was sentenced the next year to nine years in prison. In 2017, the Chicago Tribune reported that court documents revealed the FBI was investigating whether others were involved in the the conspiracy.

According to the indictment, the murder was part of the conspiracy that Heather L. Mack and Tommy E. Schaefer concealed, misrepresented and hid.

Mack was almost 19 and a few weeks pregnant at the time of the killing. She and Schaefer, then 21, were arrested a day later at a hotel about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the St. Regis.

The killing generated international attention, in part because the suitcase appeared too small to hold an adult womans body. The couple were convicted in 2015; Mack was sentenced to 10 years in prison and Schaefer received an 18-year sentence.

Indonesian officials announced in August that Mack would be released in October. She was freed from prison on Friday and deported to the United States this week.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Kia Walker is Schaefers mother.
Shippensburg, PA (17257)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by increasing clouds with showers developing this afternoon. High near 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low near 40F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Over the last four weeks, the region saw a 55 per cent increase in new Covid-19 cases, while Europe and Central Asia together accounted for 59 per cent of global cases and 48 per cent of reported deaths.

Brussels, Nov 4 (IANS) Even as Covid virus cases continue to mount in Europe and Central Asia, the regions are likely to see about 500,000 additional deaths before February 1, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

Dr Hans Kluge, WHO's European regional director attributed the increased risk to low mask use and vaccine hesitancy, the euronews reported.

Kluge also blamed the surge on other factors such as the winter season, including people gathering in confined closed places, and the Delta variant.

According to WHO experts, across the region there is a "huge variation in uptake" of the Covid-19 vaccines.

While around one billion vaccine doses have been administered in the region, only about 47 per cent of people in the region are fully vaccinated, the report said.

But Kluge said if Europe and Central Asia had 95 per cent of people wearing masks, they could save up to 188,000 lives of the half a million that could be lost before February 2022.

Kluge also defended the use of the Covid-19 pass, stating that it was a "tool towards individual liberty" instead of something that restricted freedom.

"Transmission is high in many countries across the European region... not just in one country," Dr Catherine Smallwood, from the WHO's emergencies team, was quoted as saying.

"Of course, Europe as a continent is highly interconnected, more so maybe than other regions, and this may also be a factor in the way that the pandemic evolves," she added.

In Eastern Europe, where vaccination rates remain low, many countries are struggling to contain deadly waves of the virus.

Smallwood added that there are "far too many pregnant women hospitalised with Covid-19 across the region at the moment" and that experts needed to do more to explain the benefits and risks of Covid-19 vaccination to them.

While the Delta variant dominates the region, offshoots such as AY. 4.2 and AY.4.3 has also been detected from many countries in Europe.

More than 26,000 cases of the Delta Covid subvariant AY.4.2, considered up to 15 per cent more transmissible than the original Delta, has been reported from 42 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Although AY.4.3 is not as widespread as AY.4.2 yet, it has been growing in Denmark, France, Belgium and Germany and the UK.

--IANS

rvt/vd
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Sydney lost its collective nonna on Wednesday, following the death of Giovanna Toppi, the Italian immigrant who built a culinary empire and helped change the way this city ate.

Still active in her daughters kitchen until relatively recently, she died aged 85 following a long illness.

Giovanna Toppi at her former restaurant Machiavelli, with chef Laurent Cambon. Credit:Marco Del Grande

Toppi arrived in Australia in the early 1950s, unable to speak English. She married William, an SP bookmaker, and started working as a dishwasher before becoming head chef at Buona Sera and going on to run Sole Mio, Giovannas, La Strada and Machiavelli with daughters Paola and Caterina.

Over the years she fed a roll call of the rich, famous and powerful, including Mick Jagger, Rupert Murdoch, Elton John, Gough Whitlam, Sylvester Stallone, Sammy Davis, Rod and Rachel Stewart, Shirley Bassey, and even Michael Hutchence and Kylie Minogue during their brief romance.
After three years spent in the deepest recesses of Emily Dickinsons enigmatic mind on the Apple TV+ series Dickinson, star Hailee Steinfeld isnt shedding the poets spirit with its final season.

I might be letting go of her in the sense that I wont be going to set anymore and getting into costume, says Steinfeld, but I feel like I really am in no way letting go of the impact this character has had on me. I will forever be inspired by her.

Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson in Apple TV+s Dickinson. Credit:Apple TV+

For the shows followers, it makes total sense. Steinfelds Dickinson, who she plays with, by turns, an infectious, rebellious charm and a deep empathy, is a soul-stirring figure - in her integrity, her courage, and her casual disregard for convention. The poets influence has stuck with the 24-year-old.

She was a powerhouse of a female, this literary icon who was so unapologetically herself, Steinfeld says. She was fighting against the constraints of women in her time, she didnt take no for an answer, and she spoke her truth, and all those things I find incredibly inspiring.
Infections in parts of regional NSW which previously had little to no COVID-19 have driven a spike in the states cases, following what health authorities described as a super-spreader funeral in the town of Moree.

There were 309 new local coronavirus cases reported in NSW on Thursday from 94,661 tests, up from 190 cases from more than 114,000 tests the previous day.

Moree recorded 30 new coronavirus cases on Thursday. Credit:Grace Quast

With the addition of Thursdays figures, NSW has now conducted more than 20 million coronavirus tests.

Its going to be very important as we go forward that, if you have even the mildest of symptoms, even when youre fully vaccinated, ... [you] get tested promptly and isolate until you receive a negative result, NSW Deputy Chief Health Officer Marianne Gale said.
The decision to prolong lockdown for unvaccinated people will prevent some year 12 students from attending their final graduations, valedictory dinners and formals, which are planned for the first two weeks in December, school principals have warned.

Some worry about the impact of the news on students who will begin their Higher School Certificate on Tuesday and may be concerned about getting their vaccinations so close to their exams. But other principals have welcomed the decision.

Unvaccinated students may miss out on their farewell events. Credit:iStock

The NSW government originally planned to allow unvaccinated people to attend hospitality venues from December 1, but this week delayed the move until the state reaches 95 per cent vaccination coverage or December 15, whichever is first.

The HSC exams finish on December 3 and many schools have organised their farewell events over the following two weeks.
Victoria Police have tracked down and charged yet another alleged anti-lockdown protester, weeks after he is accused of damaging police cars in violent demonstrations that brought chaos to the streets of Melbourne.

They have also revealed they are on the hunt for another 11 men in connection with criminal offences committed during anti-lockdown protests.

The protests of September 21 saw 2000 demonstrators engage in a day-long and at times violent march through the city. Credit:Eddie Jim

Officers on Monday executed a warrant in Hillside, where they arrested a 47-year-old man and later charged him with 10 offences, including two counts of being involved in riotous behaviour, assaulting police, two counts of affray, and recklessly causing someone serious injury.

It is alleged the man threw rocks at police vehicles at the entry to the West Gate Bridge during a protest on September 21, and also damaged another police vehicle in a separate incident in Carlton.
An elderly man accused of sexually abusing six boys at a Melbourne childrens home more than 40 years ago plans to contest the charges against him.

William Skelland, 81, was extradited this year from the United Kingdom to answer allegations he abused six boys at a home in Burwood in 1973 and 1974.

Melbourne Magistrates Court Credit:Wayne Taylor

He faces 28 charges including multiple counts of buggery and indecent assault.

He was calm when he returned to the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday and defence lawyer Josie Giarrusso said Mr Skelland wanted to fight the charges and emphatically denies some allegations.
Victoria reported 1247 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases on Thursday and nine deaths. Those numbers follow two days below 1000 cases, but health authorities are anticipating a spike in infections after the latest easing of restrictions last week. The way Victoria reports intensive care capacity is in contrast with NSW which publicly reports every ICU patient, regardless of whether they are deemed infectious, in its daily numbers. Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society president Anthony Holley confirmed reports from several ICU doctors that the Victorian government was only releasing numbers of infectious COVID-19 cases in intensive care. His view was that every person admitted to ICU due to COVID-19 should be counted and reported.

COVID patients still pose a significant challenge and remain a demand on resources long after they are no longer infectious, he said. They still might continue to require ventilation, they still might require renal support. Even when out of ICU, COVID patients can place a significant demand on hospital resources. Credit:Joe Armao The senior intensive care physician, who spoke to The Age on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly, said despite a decline being reported in the official daily hospital numbers last month, the true number of COVID-19 patients in ICU had been hovering near 190 every day for weeks. Youve got a system in Victoria thats so close to being overwhelmed it has just skated by over the last few weeks, the doctor, who works at a large Melbourne hospital, said. It is just not sustainable.

We are much busier than Sydney was as a proportion of ICU beds at their peak in the outbreak because theyve got double the number of staffed beds. The pressure in Victoria is dramatically different. Most recent figures show Victoria currently has 488 staffed ICU beds opened, compared to NSWs 923 staffed beds. A staffed bed refers to an ICU bed in a hospital with enough staff rostered on to provide critical care to the patient. The current best practice is one ICU nurse per patient. Dr Holley said while he did not believe there was any deliberate intention by the Victorian government to mislead the public, the administrative discrepancies between states highlighted the need for a nationally consistent standard on how coronavirus cases in ICUs were recorded. It would be very preferential at a national level that we are unified in our reporting, so there is no confusion, he said. A Victorian Health Department spokesman confirmed that the daily COVID-19 data released by state officials only reflected infectious patients.

This is consistent with reporting COVID-19 in the community, he said, adding the number of people in ICU  infectious with COVID-19 or otherwise  is monitored closely and factored into hospital planning. NSW Health confirmed that the state publicly reports all the patients who had been admitted to hospital with COVID-19, not just those still considered infectious. This means information reported by the federal health department comparing intensive care admissions between the states in the latest coronavirus outbreak has been continually using inconsistent information. The federal health department indicated it was aware of the issue. A spokeswoman said the department was working with states and territories to record the cleared COVID-19 cases. There are currently 64 people in the NSWs intensive care units, including 31 requiring ventilation.

Hospital data from Thursday showed ICU units at Melbournes major tertiary hospitals including the Royal Melbourne Hospital, The Alfred, the Austin, St Vincents and Monash Medical Centre, were running at 95.2 per cent ICU occupancy, down from 98 percent on Wednesday. This compares to NSW, which was hovering at 75.5 per cent occupancy in its major tertiary ICU units on Thursday. In recent weeks, Victoria has reached 96 per cent ICU capacity statewide, while the paediatric ICU unit at the Royal Childrens Hospital was operating beyond its capacity last week, at 112 per cent. Monash Childrens Hospital has also exceeded 100 per cent capacity several times in the last month. Melbourne intensive care doctor David Pilcher said the system of only publicly reporting active coronavirus cases first emerged last year as it was the easiest way to record the daily numbers.

Professor David Pilcher says the public could have a false impression about the workload generated by COVID-19 patients. Credit:Simon Schluter He said it initially didnt make much of a difference to the official count because most patients last year were typically treated as infectious as it wasnt obvious when they could be safely considered cleared of the virus. Earlier this week, Professor Pilcher confirmed there were more than 60 patients who were in Victorian intensive care units due to COVID-19 who werent included in the active figures, including many of the most seriously ill, placed on a heart and lung machine. The researcher was concerned the public would have a false impression about the workload being created by COVID-19 patients, especially when these dozens of beds might be needed due to demand created by Victorians needing beds after critical surgery or after accidents during the festive season. However, Professor Pilcher said he didnt believe there was malicious intent on behalf of the Victorian Health Department in its reporting of the COVID-related intensive care admissions - rather it had just become hard to change.

Loading The discrepancies in the reporting of ICU admission come amid concerning findings of a major national study, which found a staffing shortfall could lead to substandard levels of care in ICUs throughout Australia if the number of COVID-19 patients surges in the coming months. The study found fewer than half the potential additional ICU beds could be staffed under present employment levels while maintaining pre-pandemic levels of care and suggested more needed to be done to recruit and retrain health staff. Victoria changed the way it reported vaccination data on Thursday. From now on, instead of sharing the vaccination rate of people aged 16 and above in the daily COVID update, authorities will provide the percentage of immunised Victorians aged 12 and over.
Former AFL player agent Ricky Nixon will have to fork out hundreds of dollars to cover legal fees for a bayside council after pleading guilty at the 11th hour to a string of new unpaid parking fines.

Mr Nixon, who failed to front Melbourne Magistrates Court for his hearing on Thursday, initially intended to fight the three parking fines, telling a previous hearing he believed his health ambulance was exempt during the pandemic.

Ricky Nixon in 2015. Credit:Wayne Taylor

During his latest parking fine prosecution on Thursday, the court heard Mr Nixons 2012 Mercedes-Benz panel van  which is branded a Vital Health Checks vehicle  was slapped with infringement notices at Port Melbourne on December 16, 2020, and January 22 and 29 in 2021.

Lawyer for the City of Port Phillip, Basil Stafford  who appeared via video link sporting towering grey lockdown hair  said the City received correspondence from Mr Nixon about 12.30pm on Thursday, 1 hours before the hearing, that he wished to plead guilty and take responsibility for the fines.
The man in custody over Cleo Smiths abduction, who is expected to be charged today, has been taken to hospital twice after a self-harm incident since being apprehended by police.

The news comes as the lead detective in the case implored the community to refrain from circulating wild theories on social media.

The man suspected of abducting Cleo Smith in an ambulance on Wednesday. Credit:Nine News

The 36-year-old man from Carnarvon, about 900 kilometres north of Perth, was taken into custody by WA Police on Wednesday morning after he was apprehended by officers in a separate location to where Cleo was found, 18 days after her disappearance.

While charges are yet to be laid, WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch told 6PRs Gareth Parker the man was taken to hospital on two occasions as a precautionary measure before being brought back to Carnarvon police station where the interview process was expected to continue Thursday afternoon.
Life expectancy in Australia has continued to rise despite the pandemic, with the nations success in controlling the coronavirus helping boost the average expected lifespan to 83.2 years.

Henry Cutler, director of the Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, said the data reflected Australias comparative success in controlling COVID-19 and its strong health system.

A boy born in 2020 is expected to live to 81.2 years and a girl to 85.3 years. Credit:Tribune

The US and UK were significantly impacted by COVID-19 and had significant death rates, Professor Cutler said.

Australia was somewhat spared because of our response and our ability to close our borders and to control COVID-19 within our communities.
Australias most important allies projected a supreme strength on September 15 when they formed a new pact that has to last for half a century, at least, if it is to honour the pledges made that day by three leaders on three continents. Scott Morrison called the agreement with the United States and Britain a forever partnership on the defence of Australia because it would deliver nuclear submarines available to no others in the world.

But Emmanuel Macron, the French President, punctured that bubble this week with a few words uttered in Rome and dripping in scepticism. You have 18 months before a report. Good luck, he quipped.

From left, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Credit:AP

Good luck. Macron cut through the facade of the AUKUS alliance and went to the heart of the problem: the idea that a working group is an outcome.

The French leader is a jaundiced observer. The spurned supplier of conventional submarines will never be an objective judge of the nuclear alliance. Yet his verdict is a warning to Australians about the very real gap in one of the countrys most expensive national security measures. The submarine strategy is full of promise, but for now it is a working group that will report long after the next election.
Federal Labor has pledged $6 million to plan a trackless tram route to connect Caulfield Station, Chadstone shopping centre, Monash University in Clayton and Rowville, if it wins the next election.

The promise of a business case to investigate the project is the Oppositions first election commitment in Victoria ahead of the 2022 federal poll.

Federal Labor has promised $6 million for a business case on the trackless tram proposal.

Similar to an electric bus, the Trackless Rapid Transport (TRT) proposal rely on battery-powered vehicles with rubber wheels that run on asphalt and do not need tram tracks or overhead lines.

Labors spokeswoman for infrastructure, transport and regional development Catherine King said the project would create 2244 direct and indirect jobs.
Washington: The Navy said on Friday AEDT it fired the two senior officers of a nuclear-powered attack submarine that was damaged in an underwater collision last month in the South China Sea. A sailor who served as a senior enlisted adviser to the commander and the executive officer was also removed from his position

The actions were taken by Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, commander of the US 7th Fleet, based in Japan.

The USS Connecticut departs Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, in Washington state, in 2016. Credit:AP

Thomas determined sound judgement, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident, according to a 7th Fleet statement.

As a result, the statement said Thomas relieved Commander Cameron Aljilani as commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Patrick Cashin as executive officer, and Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers as chief of the boat, due to loss of confidence. The chief of the boat is the senior enlisted adviser to the commander and the executive officer.
Glasgow: Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann is urging world leaders to axe costly taxpayer-funded fossil fuel subsidies, as the Glasgow climate summits goal of consigning coal to history was undermined by a watered-down deal which key countries refused to sign.

Cormann, who has embarked on a green pivot since his election as secretary-general of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, said winding back subsidies would be difficult and sensitive but crucial to neutralising carbon emissions by 2050.

Governments should remove distortions that divert investment away from the transition to net zero, he told the COP26 talks on Thursday local-time.

OECD secretary-general Mathias Cormann. Credit: Antoine Doyen.

Too many policies still encourage emissions-intensive investment, production and consumption. And inefficient subsidies make no fiscal sense in an environment of seriously constrained public budgets, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brunswick, Georgia: A judge has ruled that hell seat one black and 11 white jurors to decide the trial of the men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery, despite prosecutors objections that several black potential jurors were cut because of their race.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley acknowledged that intentional discrimination by lawyers for the three white defendants charged in the death of the black man appeared to have shaped jury selection. But he said Georgia law limited his authority to intervene.

Defence lawyers Franklin Hogue and Robert Rubin attend the jury selection in the trial of William Roddie Bryan, Travis McMichael and Gregory McMichael, charged with the February 2020 death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Credit:Reuters Pool

Race is a central issue in the case involving the death of Arbery. Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a ute on February 23, 2020, after they spotted the 25-year-old running in their neighbourhood in coastal Georgia. A neighbour, William Roddie Bryan joined the chase in his own truck and took mobile phone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.

A long, sometimes heated debate over the racial make-up of the final jury erupted in court on Wednesday afternoon (Thursday AEDT) as lawyers wrapped up a jury selection process lasting more than two weeks.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Interim Managing Director of Postal Services St. Maarten N.V. (PSS N.V.), Marinka Gumbs recently attended the 24th Congress of the Postal Unions of the Americas, Spain, and Portugal (UPAEP) 2021, which was held on Curacao from October 18 to 22, 2021.

UPAEP organizes congresses annually to discuss matters relevant to the advancement of the postal sectors worldwide. With its 28 member states, the assembly this year established the management strategies of the postal union for the next 4 years. Curacao was selected as the organizing country.

PSS officially joined UPAEP in 2013, after being designated by the Universal Postal Union as the official operator responsible for providing postal services in Sint Maarten as per January 1, 2012, replacing Nieuwe Post Nederlandse Antillen NV (NPNA).
PHILIPSBURG:--- On November 2, 2021, at approximately 1:30 p.m., police spotted a gray Kia Picanto near Jose-Lake Ball Park in Cul-De-Sac. The car was pulled over and a routine check found that the VIN number was tampered with and the license plates did not match the vehicles  all signs of a possible stolen car. The vehicle was confiscated pending further investigation.

The driver V.B.J.G. could not give a good story about how he came into possible of the vehicle. He was arrested and remains in custody for further questioning.

The Police Force of St. Maarten KPSM reminds the public to avoid purchasing potentially stolen vehicles. Many stolen vehicles are resold far below their actual value. Some buyers have no idea the vehicles are stolen until it is too late. At that point, the buyers are doubly disadvantaged, as the vehicle can be seized by police, they may be arrested for being in possession of the stolen property, and they have lost money.

KPSM is working with its French-side counterparts to halt vehicle thefts on the island. Law enforcement officers from both sides of the island have stepped up controls on all vehicles suspected of being stolen.

KPSM Press Release
Somerset, KY (42501)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain during the afternoon. High 58F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with rain ending overnight. Low 33F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
CBRNe Summit Europe 2021

CBRNe Summit Europe is returning to Brno, Czech Republic for our 7th annual event. Many major cities across Europe have faced critical incidents over the past few years. With terrorism threat levels high across Europe and the increased use of chemical agents being used by terrorist organisations this is a key event to attend.

During this international event attendees will hear perspectives from military and civil officials who deal with CBRNe incidents. Many governments across the region have realised the importance of CBRNe capabilities and preparedness and budgets have been increased to deal with the new type of threats faced to civilians.

CBRNe Summit Europe will focus on a number of key topics across the whole CBRNe domain such as CBRNe capabilities of military and civil agencies, first responder techniques, asymmetrical threats, medical countermeasures to chem-bio threats, decontamination developments and techniques, countering IEDs, CBRNethreat intelligence, CBRNe forensics and many more.

To be part of the largest gathering of CBRNe professionals in Europe please contact us via email at events@intelligence-sec.com or by phone +44 (0) 158 234 6706 and we will be happy to provide you further information on how you can participate either as a speaker, sponsor/exhibitor or as delegates.
News

spotlight

GOP gubernatorial candidates tackle the issues at Owatonna forum

aharman / By ANNIE GRANLUND annie.granlund@apgsomn.com Sen. Michelle Benson, of Ham Lake; Mike Marti, of Kasson; Dr. Scott Jensen, of Chaska; Sen. Paul Gazelka, of East Gull Lake; and Dr. Neil Shah, of North Oaks addressed a crowd of roughly 150 people at the Owatonna Country Club during a Steele County Republicans panel discussion of the GOP gubernatorial candidates. Candidate Mike Murphy, of Lexington, was unable to attend due to a family issue. (Annie Granlund/southernminn.com)

Law enforcement, public education and election integrity were among the several hot topics discussed by Republican candidates for Minnesotas governor.

Five of the six GOP gubernatorial candidates gathered Tuesday night at the Owatonna Country Club for a meet and greet and panel discussion hosted by the Steele County Republicans. Sen. Paul Gazelka, of East Gull Lake; Sen. Michelle Benson, of Ham Lake; Dr. Scott Jensen, of Chaska; Dr. Neil Shah, of North Oaks; and Mike Marti, of Kasson, were in attendance. Candidate Mike Murphy, of Lexington, was unable to attend due to a family issue.

Steven Nelson, co-chair of the Steele County Republicans, said they were extremely pleased with the nights turnout of roughly 150. After a social hour, the candidates took their place at the front of the room to tell the crowd a bit more about themselves and their motivation to run for governor.

Im not a career politician, but I have Minnesotas best interest at heart, said Marti, a farmer and electrical contractor. Marti used his opening statement to talk about what a typical day in his life entails as a business owner, father and farmer.

aharman / By ANNIE GRANLUND annie.granlund@apgsomn.com Sen. Michelle Benson of Ham Lake greets Owatonnans during the social hour of Tuesdays event. Benson said she wants to make Minnesota more free and prosperous than it has ever been. (Annie Granlund/southernminn.com)

In her opening statement, Benson said Minnesotans have nothing to be embarrassed about, but that recently things have changed.

We can do this again. Lets remember where we came from, lets remember who we are, she said. Lets look to a future with hope. We are coming out of a pandemic, we are coming out of riots. We are coming out to a future that we get to design, that we get to decide.

With the exception of Marti and Benson, each candidate used their opening statement to blame Gov. Tim Walz and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party for problems the state and country is facing.

Gazelka, the state Senate majority leader for the last five years, said he was tired of playing defense against the Democrats in the Legislature, which is why he stepped down from his position in September to run for governor.

aharman / By ANNIE GRANLUND annie.granlund@apgsomn.com Sen. Paul Gazelka of East Gull Lake discusses business and economy with Owatonna locals at the country club. Gazelka said his five years as Senate Majority Leader prepared him to be governor and that Republicans need to stick together against an onslaught of Democratic ideas. (Annie Granlund/southernminn.com)

Its a constant battle to stop what theyre doing and I said, I am tired of being on defense  Im going on offense, Gazelka said. Frankly its not just about running for governor: its about winning governor, winning Senate and winning the House  if we dont get all three its just going to be a stalemate.

Republicans have won just one statewide race since 2006 while DFLers have taken 26.

Jensen, a physician who served in the Minnesota Senate from 2016 to 2020 and did not seek re-election, said in his opening statement that election security has been harpooned each session by liberals and that the political system is broken.

We have far too many omnibus bills, far too many shenanigans in the e11th hour, far too much secrecy, far too much backroom dealing, Jensen said. Thats not where we want to be.

In his opening statement, Shah made it simple: he wants Walz out.

I want to fire Tim Walz because we cant tolerate four more years of what he is doing to our state, he said. Tim Walz locked us in our homes, pulled our kids out of school, forced them all into masks, shut down our businesses, and hell do it again at the drop of a hat. We can never again allow that to happen.

Prepared questions

The Steele County Republicans Executive Board sent the candidates four questions in advance, Nelson said, in an effort to address a wide variety of topics. The first question asked the candidates what they believed was the most crucial issue currently facing the state, to which each candidate provided a different answer.

Gazelka said public safety is the number one issue, and that recent movements to defund police were concerning. Though he gave several examples of recent gun violence in the Twin Cities, Gazelka said the problem is statewide.

The police are demoralized everywhere as a result of the actions of too many Democrats and its driving police out of the police force  suddenly we dont have enough help, he said. Weve got to turn that around, and its not just the police. Its the prosecutors not prosecuting, its the judges that lower the sentence, its all a mess and we have plans to deal with that.

aharman / By ANNIE GRANLUND annie.granlund@apgsomn.com Dr. Neil Shah, of North Oaks, introduces himself to members of crowd before the questions began. Shah said he is running for governor to start a movement and that he looks forward to leading Republicans in that fight. (Annie Granlund/ southernminn.com)

Shah said he believes the woke mob is what is currently destroying the state, adding that they have infiltrated every aspect of state government and are allowing the left-wing group Antifa to burn down neighborhoods.

The Star Tribune last year reported that FBI records contradict the theory that radical groups led riots in Minneapolis.

In particular, what theyre doing to our schools will have repercussions for years to come, he said, adding that many Minnesotans do not have the economic means to pay for a private school. They pay into a public school system that should provide education, not indoctrination. Until the purse strings are given back to the parents and there is a parental right to choose an educational venue, the public schools will not reform.

He added that children should not be pawns for teachers unions to manipulate. Shah said this year he and his wife pulled their children out of the public school system and now has them in a private school.

Benson also said the education system, which she claims has been failing for decades, is the most crucial issue facing the state.

Were teaching our children what to think, not how to think, she said. The left aggressively entered higher education and we didnt wake up, we didnt stop it, we didnt say now.

She added that there also needs to be a high standards, no excuses policy in the public system that states those enrolled in public schools must learn to read by third grade.

When posed the same question, Jensen said it reminds him of death certificates and how people need to look at the underlying cause to the death of democracy.

aharman / By ANNIE GRANLUND annie.granlund@apgsomn.com Dr. Scott Jensen of Chaska greets guests Tuesday night at the GOP gubernatorial candidate panel in Owatonna. Jensen said the current system is flawed and broken and that Minnesotans deserve better. (Annie Granlund/southernminn.com)

If we cant fight against the apathy that has the potential to take over the democracy and our nation we will have lost what we stand for, Jensen said. So to me, it seems we have got to find a way to secure our elections.

When asked, every candidate said they would support a Voter ID law that requires voters to provide identification when they vote.

Marti said the cultural war is the most critical challenge Minnesota is facing and that politics will not solve that issue.

This is a matter of the heart, one election isnt going to solve this. It will get us a little farther down the road, but we have to realize that we need to change our culture, he said. We need to reach out to places where we havent in the past and we have to stop being moderate, wishy-washy Republicans and stand for something that the rest of the people believe in.

Other prepared questions included mitigating the worker shortage, securing election integrity and what historical figure inspires them.

With the worker shortage, each of the candidates said it is important not to provide people with incentive not to work and that there needs to be an emphasis on valuing a strong work ethic. Gazelka said there also needs to be an immediate stop to any and all vaccine mandates. He also wants to eliminate the tax on Social Security income and prioritize legal immigration to help fill workforce gaps.

Marti said the workforce shortage is not new, but is decades old when looking at the trades. He blamed high school guidance counselors, saying they push children into four-year colleges.

Benson also spoke about the schools being the key to helping the workforce, believing many women are reluctant to enter the workforce because of the state of the public schools and choosing to keep their children at home. She echoed Marti that options outside of four-year colleges need to be promoted in high school settings.

Shah said there is no real clear understanding on why the workforce shortage continues to be such a problem in Minnesota, but said the cost of childcare is a huge issue. He suggested reducing taxes on businesses so they can pay their employees more and reducing tax burdens on employees so they can afford childcare.

Aside from Voter ID, options suggested for protecting election integrity included hand-marked paper ballots, provisional ballots and poll watchers. Shah said liberals in the Legislature have been working to weaken safeguards that protect elections, such as allowing same-day voting and no ID requirement for absentee ballots.

Marti, Jensen and Gazelka said more Republican election judges is crucial to securing elections, with Gazelka stating Democrats had 20,000 election judges in 2020 while Republicans had only 3,000.

According to Risikat Adesaogun, the press secretary and deputy communications director for the Office of Minnesota Secretary of State, the claims made by Gazelka are unfounded.

Minnesota law requires party balance and we achieved that in the 2020 election, she said on Wednesday. Regardless of party status, under Minnesota law every election judge has to swear under oath to administer elections impartially. Ultimately, there is no factual basis for Sen. Gazelkas claims.

Jensen added that mail-in ballots need to be investigated, but that the division between the state and the country is the biggest threat to election security. He said people calling those who have concerns about election security conspiracy theorists is exactly what is wrong with where we are at today.

Blind questions

Questions submitted at the event included legalizing recreational marijuana, ensuring access to quality education and the priorities regarding law enforcement and public safety.

aharman / By ANNIE GRANLUND annie.granlund@apgsomn.com Mike Marti of Kasson (left) visits with a Freeborn County resident at the end of the event. Marti said the governor is meant to be an unassuming servant of the people and that he plans to be exactly that is elected. (Annie Granlund/southernminn.com)

Marti was the only candidate who said he would support the legalizing recreational marijuana, and would want it to be an open market with no monopoly held by the government.

The other candidates said they are in support of decriminalizing or reducing sentencing for marijuana use and possession, with Benson adding she would support employers prohibiting its use and sending any adult to jail who provides marijuana to a child. Jensen said he simply wants to see the enforcement surrounding marijuana to be equal across the board.

Multiple candidates brought up critical race theory, curriculum that explores through the study of law and history how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the country, during the night and that it needs to be kept out of the public school systems. There was also agreement across the panel that the dollars should follow the children, meaning if families take a child out of public schools that the should receive a portion of their students per-pupil funding to pay for their education, whether that be at home, at a private school or other school setting.

Every candidate showed strong support for police and the role they play in public safety. Several candidates said it is important to prioritize training and made references to supporting more sentences resulting in jail or prison time.

Shah said he believes the root of the problem Minnesota is seeing in public safety extends beyond law enforcement agencies and to prosecutors and judges. He said having a run of conservative governors will allow the state to appoint judges who want to follow the law and if elected judges are acting like partisans he wants to have their political party added to the ballot.

In their closing statements. Marti said Walz has been acting like a king and not a civil servant, and Benson said Walz does not trust or respect the Minnesotan people. Jensen and Shah both emphasized that it is time to elect someone other than a career politician.

Gazelka said he is ready to do in the governors seat what he was able to accomplish during his time as Senate Majority Leader, despite the roadblocks from across the aisle.
Councilor gets an answer as to why chickens are at school, but not at home
Ever since the discovery of Pluto in 1930, kids grew up learning that the solar system has nine planets. That all changed in the late 1990s, when astronomers started arguing about whether Pluto was indeed a planet. In a highly controversial decision, the International Astronomical Union ultimately decided in 2006 to designate Pluto as a "dwarf planet," reducing the list of the solar system's true planets to just eight.

Astronomers, however, are still hunting for another possible planet in our solar system, a true ninth planet, after mathematical evidence of its existence was revealed on Jan. 20, 2016. The alleged "Planet Nine," also called "Planet X," is believed to be about 10 times the mass of Earth and 5,000 times the mass of Pluto.

Related: The Evidence for 'Planet Nine' in Our Solar System (Gallery)

The order of the planets in the solar system , starting nearest the sun and working outward is the following: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and then the possible Planet Nine.

If you insist on including Pluto, it would come after Neptune on the list. Pluto is truly way out there, and on a wildly tilted, elliptical orbit (two of the several reasons it was demoted).

The planets: The many worlds of our solar system

The inner four planets closest to the sun  Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars  are often called the " terrestrial planets " because their surfaces are rocky. Pluto also has a rocky, albeit frozen, surface but has never been grouped with the four terrestrials.

The four large outer worlds  Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune  are sometimes called the Jovian or "Jupiter-like" planets because of their enormous size relative to the terrestrial planets. They're also mostly made of gases like hydrogen, helium and ammonia rather than of rocky surfaces, although astronomers believe some or all of them may have solid cores. Jupiter and Saturn are sometimes called the gas giants, whereas the more distant Uranus and Neptune have been nicknamed the ice giants. This is because Uranus and Neptune have more atmospheric water and other ice-forming molecules, such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and phosphene, that crystallize into clouds in the planets' frigid conditions, according to the Planetary Society . For perspective, methane crystallizes at minus 296 Fahrenheit (minus 183 degrees Celsius), according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine .

Related: Check out some of these planets with the best telescopes

What is (and isn't) a planet?

The IAU defines a true planet as a body that circles the sun without being some other object's satellite; is large enough to be rounded by its own gravity (but not so big that it begins to undergo nuclear fusion, like a star); and has "cleared its neighborhood" of most other orbiting bodies. Yeah, it's a mouthful.

But that restrictive definition helped isolate what should and should not be considered a planet  a problem that arose as astronomers discovered more and more planet-like objects in the solar system. Pluto was among the bodies that didn't make the cut and was re-classified as a dwarf planet.

The problem with Pluto, aside from its small size and offbeat orbit, is that it doesn't clear its neighborhood of debris  it shares its space with lots of other objects in the Kuiper Belt. Still, the demotion of Pluto remains controversial.

The IAU planet definition also put other small, round worlds into the dwarf planet category, including the Kuiper Belt objects Eris, Haumea and Makemake.

Ceres, a round object in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, also got the boot. Ceres was considered a planet when it was discovered in 1801, but it was later deemed to be an asteroid. That still didn't quite fit because it was so much larger (and rounder) than the other asteroids. Astronomers instead deemed it a dwarf planet in 2006, although some astronomers like to consider Ceres as a 10th planet (not to be confused with Nibiru or Planet X).

Below is a brief overview of the eight true planets in our solar system, moving from that closest to the sun to farthest from the sun:

Mercury: The closest planet to the sun

The planet Mercury, innermost world of our solar system. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

Zipping around the sun in only 88 days, Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and it's also the smallest, only a little bit larger than Earth's moon. Because its so close to the sun (about two-fifths the distance between Earth and the sun), Mercury experiences dramatic changes in its day and night temperatures: Day temperatures can reach a scorching 840 F (450 C), which is hot enough to melt lead. Meanwhile on the night side, temperatures drop to minus 290 F (minus 180 C).

Mercury has a very thin atmosphere of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium and can't break-up incoming meteors, so its surface is pockmarked with craters, just like the moon. Over its four-year mission, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft revealed incredible new discoveries that challenged astronomers' expectations. Among those findings was the discovery of water ice and frozen organic compounds at Mercury's north pole and that volcanism played a major role in shaping the planet's surface.

Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye

Named for the messenger of the Roman gods

Diameter: 3,031 miles (4,878 km)

Orbit: 88 Earth days

Day: 58.6 Earth days

More about Mercury:

Venus: Earth's twin in the solar system

An image of the cloudtops of Venus as photographed by Akatsuki's ultraviolet instrument in 2019. (Image credit: Planet-C Project Team)

The second planet from the sun, Venus is Earth's twin in size. Radar images beneath its atmosphere reveal that its surface has various mountains and volcanoes. But beyond that, the two planets couldn't be more different. Because of its thick, toxic atmosphere that's made of sulfuric acid clouds, Venus is an extreme example of the greenhouse effect. It's scorching-hot, even hotter than Mercury. The average temperature on Venus' surface is 900 F (465 C). At 92 bar, the pressure at the surface would crush and kill you. And oddly, Venus spins slowly from east to west, the opposite direction of most of the other planets.

The Greeks believed Venus was two different objects  one in the morning sky and another in the evening. Because it is often brighter than any other object in the sky, Venus has generated many UFO reports.

Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye

Named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty

Diameter: 7,521 miles (12,104 km)

Orbit: 225 Earth days

Day: 241 Earth days

More about Venus:

Earth: Our home planet, filled with life

An image of the Earth taken by the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1. (Image credit: NTsOMZ)

The third planet from the sun, Earth is a waterworld, with two-thirds of the planet covered by ocean. It's the only world known to harbor life. Earth's atmosphere is rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Earth's surface rotates about its axis at 1,532 feet per second (467 meters per second)  slightly more than 1,000 mph (1,600 kph)  at the equator. The planet zips around the sun at more than 18 miles per second (29 km per second).

Name originates from "Die Erde," the German word for "the ground."

Diameter: 7,926 miles (12,760 km)

Orbit: 365.24 days

Day: 23 hours, 56 minutes

More about Earth:

Mars: The solar system's Red Planet

Mars, the Red Planet, as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: Space Telescope Science Institute)

The fourth planet from the sun is Mars, and it's a cold, desert-like place covered in dust. This dust is made of iron oxides, giving the planet its iconic red hue. Mars shares similarities with Earth: It is rocky, has mountains, valleys and canyons, and storm systems ranging from localized tornado-like dust devils to planet-engulfing dust storms.

Substantial scientific evidence suggests that Mars at one point billions of years ago was a much warmer, wetter world. Rivers and maybe even oceans existed . Although Mars' atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist on the surface for any length of time, remnants of that wetter Mars still exist today. Sheets of water ice the size of California lie beneath Mars' surface, and at both poles are ice caps made in part of frozen water. In July 2018, scientists revealed that they had found evidence of a liquid lake beneath the surface of the southern pole's ice cap. It's the first example of a persistent body of water on the Red Planet.

Scientists also think ancient Mars would have had the conditions to support life like bacteria and other microbes. Hope that signs of this past life  and the possibility of even current lifeforms  may exist on the Red Planet has driven numerous space exploration missions and Mars is now one of the most explored planets in the solar system.

Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye

Named for the Roman god of war

Diameter: 4,217 miles (6,787 km)

Orbit: 687 Earth days

Day: Just more than one Earth day (24 hours, 37 minutes)

More about Mars:

Jupiter: The largest planet in our solar system

This stunning image of Jupiter, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, was captured on Aug. 25, 2020 and shows ripples in the planet's atmosphere, Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot and the planet's striking colors. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team)

The fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter is a giant gas world that is the most massive planet in our solar system  more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined, according to NASA . Its swirling clouds are colorful due to different types of trace gases.

And a major feature in its swirling clouds is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm more than 10,000 miles wide. It has raged at more than 400 mph for the last 150 years, at least. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with 75 moons, it looks a bit like a miniature solar system.

Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye

Named for the ruler of the Roman gods

Diameter: 86,881 miles (139,822 km)

Orbit: 11.9 Earth years

Day: 9.8 Earth hours

More about Jupiter:

Saturn: The ringed jewel of the solar system

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Saturn during its northern hemisphere summer on July 4, 2020. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL Team)

The sixth planet from the sun, Saturn is known most for its rings. When polymath Galileo Galilei first studied Saturn in the early 1600s, he thought it was an object with three parts: a planet and two large moons on either side.

Not knowing he was seeing a planet with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing  a symbol with one large circle and two smaller ones  in his notebook, as a noun in a sentence describing his discovery. More than 40 years later, Christiaan Huygens proposed that they were rings.

The rings are made of ice and rock and scientists are not yet sure how they formed. The gaseous planet is mostly hydrogen and helium and has numerous moons.

Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye

Named for Roman god of agriculture

Diameter: 74,900 miles (120,500 km)

Orbit: 29.5 Earth years

Day: About 10.5 Earth hours

More about Saturn:

Uranus: The tilted, sideways planet in our solar system

A composite image of Uranus shows both X-ray emissions and infrared emissions against an optical view of the planet. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/University College London/W. Dunn et al; Optical (HRC): W.M. Keck Observatory); Optical (VLT/HRC): ESO/VLT/Kirill Feigelman)

The seventh planet from the sun, Uranus is an oddball. It has clouds made of hydrogen sulfide, the same chemical that makes rotten eggs smell so foul. It rotates from east to west like Venus. But unlike Venus or any other planet, its equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit  it basically orbits on its side. Astronomers believe an object twice the size of Earth collided with Uranus roughly 4 billion years ago, causing Uranus to tilt. That tilt causes extreme seasons that last 20-plus years, and the sun beats down on one pole or the other for 84 Earth-years at a time.

The collision is also thought to have knocked rock and ice into Uranus' orbit. These later became some of the planet's 27 moons . Methane in the atmosphere gives Uranus its blue-green tint. It also has 13 sets of faint rings.

Discovery: 1781 by William Herschel (was originally thought to be a star)

Named for the personification of heaven in ancient myth

Diameter: 31,763 miles (51,120 km)

Orbit: 84 Earth years

Day: 18 Earth hours

More about Uranus:

Neptune: A giant, stormy blue planet

Neptune's winds travel at more than 1,500 mph, and are the fastest planetary winds in the solar system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune is about the size of Uranus and is known for supersonic strong winds. Neptune is far out and cold. The planet is more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth. Neptune was the first planet predicted to exist by using math, before it was visually detected. Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest some other planet might be exerting a gravitational tug. German astronomer Johann Galle used calculations to help find Neptune in a telescope. Neptune is about 17 times as massive as Earth and has a rocky core.

Discovery: 1846

Named for the Roman god of water

Diameter: 30,775 miles (49,530 km)

Orbit: 165 Earth years

Day: 19 Earth hours

More about Neptune:

Pluto: Once a planet, now a dwarf planet

New Horizons' photo of Pluto showing the heart-shaped area now named 'Tombaugh Regio'. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI)

Once the ninth planet from the sun, Pluto is unlike other planets in many respects. It is smaller than Earth's moon; its orbit is highly elliptical, falling inside Neptune's orbit at some points and far beyond it at others; and Pluto's orbit doesn't fall on the same plane as all the other planets  instead, it orbits 17.1 degrees above or below.

From 1979 until early 1999, Pluto had actually been the eighth planet from the sun. Then, on Feb. 11, 1999, it crossed Neptune's path and once again became the solar system's most distant planet  until it was redefined as a dwarf planet. It's a cold, rocky world with a tenuous atmosphere.

Scientists thought it might be nothing more than a hunk of rock on the outskirts of the solar system. But when NASA's New Horizons mission performed history's first flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, it transformed scientists' view of Pluto.

Pluto is a very active ice world that's covered in glaciers, mountains of ice water, icy dunes and possibly even cryovolcanoes that erupt icy lava made of water, methane or ammonia.

Related: New Horizons' Pluto Flyby: Latest News, Images and Video

Discovery: 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh

Named for the Roman god of the underworld, Hades

Diameter: 1,430 miles (2,301 km)

Orbit: 248 Earth years

Day: 6.4 Earth day

More about Pluto:

Planet Nine: A planet search at solar system's edge

The orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects and the hypothesized Planet Nine around the sun are shown in this image.. Orbits in purple are primarily controlled by Planet Nine's gravity and exhibit tight orbital clustering. Green orbits are strongly coupled to Neptune and exhibit a broader orbital dispersion. Planet Nine is an approximately 5-Earth-mass planet that resides on a mildly eccentric orbit with a period of about 10,000 years. (Image credit: James Tuttle Keane/Caltech)

In 2016, researchers proposed the possible existence of a ninth planet, for now dubbed "Planet Nine" or Planet X. The planet is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of Earth and to orbit the sun between 300 and 1,000 times farther than the orbit of the Earth.

Scientists have not actually seen Planet Nine. They inferred its existence by its gravitational effects on other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region at the fringe of the solar system that is home to icy rocks left over from the birth of the solar system. Also called trans-Neptunian objects, these Kuiper Belt objects have highly elliptical or oval orbits that align in the same direction.

Scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena described the evidence for Planet Nine in a study published in the Astronomical Journal . The research is based on mathematical models and computer simulations using observations of six other smaller Kuiper Belt Objects with orbits that aligned in a similar matter.

A recent hypothesis proposed September 2019 on the pre-print server arXiv suggests Planet Nine might not be a planet at all. Instead, Jaku Scholtz of Durham University and James Unwin of the University of Illinois at Chicago speculate it could be a primordial black hole that formed soon after the Big Bang and that our solar system later captured, according to Newsweek . Unlike black holes that form from the collapse of giant stars, primordial black holes are thought to have formed from gravitational perturbations less than a second after the Big Bang, and this one would be so small (5 centimeters in diameter) that it would be challenging to detect.

Additional resources:

This article was updated on Oct. 10, 2019 by Space.com contributor Jeremy Rehm.
A clear night sky offers an ever-changing display of fascinating objects to see  stars, constellations, and bright planets, often the moon, and sometimes special events like meteor showers. Observing the night sky can be done with no special equipment, although a sky map can be very useful. Binoculars or one of the best telescopes will enhance some experiences and bring some otherwise invisible objects into view. You can also use stargazing apps and software to make your observing easier, and use our Satellite Tracker page powered by N2YO.com to find out when to see the International Space Station and other satellites. Below, find out what's up in the night sky tonight (Planets Visible Now, Moon Phases, Observing Highlights This Month) plus other resources (Skywatching Terms, Night Sky Observing Tips and Further Reading).

You can also capture the night sky by using any of the best cameras for astrophotography, along with a selection of the best lenses for astrophotography.

The night sky is more than just the moon and stars, if you know when and where to look. (Image credit: Karl Tate/SPACE.com)

Monthly skywatching information is provided to Space.com by Chris Vaughan of Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu and Chris at @Astrogeoguy.

Editor's note: If you have an amazing skywatching photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, you can send images and comments in to spacephotos@futurenet.com.

Night Sky Guides:

Calendar of Observing Highlights

Monday, November 1 - Asteroid Pallas Pauses (evening

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Monday, November 1, the main belt asteroid designated (2) Pallas will complete a retrograde loop that began in July  causing it to temporarily stop moving through the background stars. On this night, the magnitude 9.5 asteroid will be located less than halfway up the southern evening sky in central Aquarius  a few finger widths to the lower right (or 3 degrees to the celestial southwest) of the medium-bright star Lambda Aquarii (aka  Aqr and Hydor). After tonight, Pallas will resume its regular eastward motion (red path with dates:time).

Tuesday, November 2 - GRS and Two Shadows Cross Jupiter (from 11:00 to 14:20 UT)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Tuesday evening, November 5, observers with telescopes in locations from northern Asia to Australia can watch the Great Red Spot and the small black shadows of two of Jupiters moons cross the planets disk at the same time. At 8 p.m. Japan Standard Time or 11:00 UT, the Great Red Spot and Ganymedes large shadow will join Ios smaller shadow already in transit. The two shadows will dot Jupiters disk for 75 minutes, and then Ios shadow will move off the planet. Ganymedes shadow and the Great Red Spot will depart Jupiter at 11:20 p.m. JST, or 14:20 UT - around the same time that Jupiter will be setting.

Wednesday, November 3 - Crescent Moon above Mercury (pre-dawn)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Low in the east-southeastern sky before sunrise on Wednesday, November 3, the old crescent moon will shine prettily several finger widths above (or 4 degrees to the celestial northwest of) Mercurys bright dot. Virgos brightest star Spica will be positioned a few finger widths to their right. The three objects will share the field of view in binoculars (green circle), but be sure to turn your optics away from the eastern horizon before the sun appears.

Wednesday, November 3 - Old Moon Occults Mercury (afternoon)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

During the day on Wednesday, November 3, the moons orbital motion will draw it closer to Mercury, culminating in a daytime lunar occultation of the planet observable in amateur telescopes (green circle) from the eastern USA and Canada, and the Caribbean. For New York City, the lit limb of the moon will cover Mercury at 3:47 p.m. EDT (or 07:47 GMT). The planet will pop into view from behind the dark limb at 4:40 p.m. EDT (or 08:40 GMT). Those times will vary by location, so begin to watch several minutes early, or use an astronomy app like Starry Night to determine the timing where you live. An experienced observer and/or a GoTo telescope will help you find the pale moon in daytime. (Caution: Never point an unfiltered telescope anywhere near the sun.)

Thursday, November 4 - New Moon and Large Tides (at 21:14 GMT)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The moon will reach its new phase on Thursday, November 4 at 5:14 p.m. EDT or 21:14 GMT. While new, the moon is travelling between Earth and the sun. Since sunlight can only reach the far side of the moon, and the moon is in the same region of the sky as the sun, the moon becomes unobservable from anywhere on Earth for about a day (except during a solar eclipse). On the evenings following the new moon phase, Earths planetary partner will return to shine in the western sky after sunset. This new phase will occur one day before the moons perigee, resulting in larger tides worldwide.

Friday, November 5 - Uranus at Opposition (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Uranus will reach opposition on Friday, November 5. On that night it will be closest to Earth for this year - a distance of 1.74 billion miles, 2.80 billion km, or 156 light-minutes. Uranus minimal distance from Earth will cause it to shine at a peak brightness of magnitude 5.65 and to appear slightly larger in telescopes for a week or so centered on opposition night. At opposition, planets are above the horizon from sunset to sunrise. During autumn this year, look for the planets small, blue-green dot moving slowly retrograde westwards in southern Aries, a fists width below (or 11.5 degrees southeast of) that constellations brightest stars, Hamal and Sheratan. Or use binoculars (green circle) to locate Uranus using the nearby star Mu Ceti.

Friday, November 5 - Southern Taurids Meteor Shower Peak (wee hours)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Meteors from the Southern Taurids shower, which appear worldwide from September 28 to December 2 annually, will reach a maximum rate of about 5 per hour on Thursday, November 5. The long-lasting, weak shower is the first of two consecutive showers derived from debris dropped by the passage of periodic Comet 2P/Encke. The larger-than-average grain sizes of the comets debris often produce colorful fireballs. Although Earth will be traversing the densest part of the comets debris train during Thursday in the Americas, the best viewing time will occur hours later, at around 2 a.m. local time on Friday, when the showers radiant, located near the Taurus-Aries boundary, will be high in the southern sky. This years peak will be moonless, favoring more meteors. Keep an eye out for meteors on Thursday evening, too.

Saturday, November 6 - Ceres Crosses the Bull (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

From November 2 to 20, the orbital motion of the dwarf planet Ceres (red path with labelled dates:time) will carry it directly through the Hyades, the large open star cluster that forms the V-shaped face of Taurus, the bull. Magnitude 6.9 Ceres is bright enough to see in binoculars (green circle) and backyard telescopes. On November 2, Ceres, will be positioned only 7 arc-minutes (a quarter of the moons diameter) to the lower right of the bright star Aldebaran. During the following weeks, Ceres will travel westward every night, eventually completely crossing the bulls face diagonally.

Sunday, November 7 - Crescent Moon near Venus (after sunset)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

In the southwestern sky after sunset on Sunday, November 7, the young crescent moon will shine several finger widths to the lower right (or 5 degrees to the celestial west) of the very bright planet Venus - close enough for them to share the field of view in binoculars (green circle). The duo will set at about 7 p.m. local time. Hours later, in midday on November 8, observers in parts of northeastern Asia and the western Aleutian Islands can see the moon occult Venus - while surrounding regions will see the moon pass very close to the planet.

Wednesday, November 10 - Mercury Mars Conjunction (before sunrise)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Look just above the east-southeastern horizon before sunrise on Wednesday morning, November 10 to see Mercury situated less than a fingers width to the upper left (or 57 arc-minutes to the celestial north) of Mars. For this conjunction Mars will appear one-tenth as bright as Mercury. In mid-northern latitudes, the best viewing time will be after about 6 a.m. local time. Tropical latitude observers will see the two planets higher and in a darker sky. The duo will be close enough to appear together in the field of view of a low-magnification backyard telescope from Tuesday to Thursday, and will be binoculars-close (green circle) from November 5 to 15  but be sure to turn your optical aids away from the eastern horizon well before the sun rises.

Wednesday, November 10 - Half-moon below Saturn (early evening)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The moons monthly visit with the bright gas giant planets Saturn and Jupiter will kick off after dusk in the southern sky on Wednesday, November 10. Before the sky has fully darkened, try using binoculars (green circle) to find the yellowish dot of Saturn positioned a palms width to the upper left (or 6 degrees to the celestial northwest) of the nearly-half-illuminated moon. Or wait until Saturn is visible with your unaided eyes, after about 5:30 p.m. local time. Much brighter and whiter Jupiter will be shining off to their upper left all evening.

Thursday, November 11 - First Quarter Moon (at 12:46 GMT)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

When the moon completes the first quarter of its journey around Earth on Thursday, November 11 at 7:46 a.m. EST or 12:46 GMT, its 90 degree angle from the sun will cause us to see the moon exactly half-illuminated - on its eastern side. At first quarter, the moon always rises around mid-day and sets around midnight, so it is also visible in the afternoon daytime sky. The evenings around first quarter are the best ones for viewing the lunar terrain while it is dramatically lit by low-angled sunlight, especially along the terminator, the pole-to-pole boundary separating its lit and dark hemispheres.

Thursday, November 11 - Moon Joins Jupiter (evening)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

white dot of Jupiter poised a slim palms width above (or 5 degrees to the celestial northwest) of the bright, first quarter moon. Somewhat fainter and creamy-colored Saturn will become visible off to their right once the sky darkens more. The moon will bid adieu to the bright planets after tonight, until it visits them again on December 7-9.

Thursday, November 11 - Lunar X in Early Evening (peaks at 7 p.m. EST)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Several times a year, for a few hours near its first quarter phase, features on the moon called the Lunar X and Lunar V become visible in strong binoculars and backyard telescopes. The Lunar X is located on the terminator south of the crater La Caille, about one third of the way up from the southern pole of the Moon (at 2 East, 24 South). The V is located near the crater Ukert (at 1 East, 14 North). On Thursday, November 11 the lunar letters are predicted to start developing at around 5 p.m. EST (or 22:00 GMT), peak in intensity around 7 p.m. EST (or 00:00 GMT on Friday), and then disappear within two hours. The Lunar X and V will be observable anywhere on Earth where the moon is visible, especially in a dark sky, between about 22:00 GMT on November 11 and 02:00 GMT on November 12.

Friday, November 12 - Northern Taurids Meteor Shower Peak (wee hours)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Meteors from the Northern Taurids shower, which appear worldwide from October 13 to December 2 annually, will reach a maximum rate of about 5 per hour on Friday, November 12. The long-lasting, weak shower is the second of two consecutive showers derived from debris dropped by the passage of periodic Comet 2P/Encke. The larger-than-average grain sizes of the comets debris often produce colorful fireballs. The best viewing time will occur at around 1 a.m. local time on Friday, when the showers radiant, located in northwestern Taurus, will be highest in the southern sky. At this years peak, a first quarter moon will set by midnight, favoring more meteors. Keep an eye out for Northern Taurids on Thursday evening, too.

Monday, November 15 - Mare Imbriums Golden Handle (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Monday night, November 15, the terminator on the waxing gibbous moon will fall west of Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows. The circular 155 mile (249 km) diameter feature is a large impact crater that was flooded by the same basalts that filled the much larger Mare Imbrium to its east  forming a rounded handle on the western edge of that mare. The Golden Handle effect is produced when sunlight strikes the prominent Montes Jura mountain range surrounding Sinus Iridum on the north and west. Sinus Iridum is almost craterless, but hosts a set of northeast-oriented wrinkle ridges that are revealed at this phase.

Wednesday, November 17 - Bright Moon near Uranus (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

In the eastern sky after dusk on Wednesday night, November 17, the very bright, nearly-full moon will shine two thumb widths to the lower left (or 2.6 degrees to the celestial south) of the magnitude 5.7 planet Uranus. By dawn on Thursday morning, the moons orbital motion will carry it farther from Uranus in the western sky, and the diurnal rotation of the sky will move it to the upper left of the planet. While Uranus blue-green dot can normally be seen in binoculars (green circle), I recommend noting its location between the brighter stars of Aries and Cetus, or the nearby star Mu Ceti, and seeking it out a few nights later, when the bright moon will have moved away.

Thursday, November 18 - Leonids Meteor Shower Peaks (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The Leonids Meteor shower, derived from material left by repeated passages of periodic Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, runs from November 3 to December 2, annually. The peak of the shower, when up to 15 meteors per hour are predicted - many with persistent trains - will occur on Thursday, November 18, when Earth will be traversing the densest part of the comets debris train. The best viewing time for Leonids will be Thursday morning before dawn, when the radiant in Leo will be high in the eastern sky  but you can watch for occasional Leonids on Wednesday evening, too. Unfortunately, a full moon on the peak night will severely reduce the number of meteors seen.

Friday, November 19 - Full Beaver Moon and Partial Lunar Eclipse (09:03 GMT)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The November Full Moon, traditionally known as the Beaver Moon or Frost Moon, always shines in or near the stars of Taurus and Aries. The moon will reach its full phase, directly opposite the sun in the western pre-dawn sky, at 3:57 a.m. EST or 8:57 GMT on Friday, November 19. At that time it will be passing through Earths round shadow, or umbra, producing the second lunar eclipse of 2021. At maximum eclipse, at 4:02:56 a.m. EST or 09:02:56 GMT, a thin sliver of the moons southern rim will remain outside of the shadow, making this a partial lunar eclipse. The rest of the moon will darken to a ruddy red color - especially the moons northern half. The moon will first contact the umbra at 2:18:41 a.m. EST or 7:18:41 GMT and will last touch it 3hours 28minutes later, at 5:47:04 a.m. EST or 10:47:04 GMT. You should notice a slight darkening of the moon while it traverses the zone encircling the umbra, both after 1:02 a.m. and before 7:04 a.m. EST. The entire eclipse will be visible from North America and nearly all of the Pacific Ocean. Eastern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan will miss the early stages, while South America and western Europe will miss the final stages.

Saturday, November 20 - Watch Algol Brighten (at 6:14 p.m. EST)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

In the constellation of Perseus, the star Algol, also designated Beta Persei, represents the glowing eye of Medusa from Greek mythology. It is among the most accessible variable stars for skywatchers. During a ten-hour period that repeats every 2 days, 20 hours, and 49 minutes, Algol dims and re-brightens noticeably while a companion star orbiting nearly edge-on to Earth crosses in front of the much brighter main star, reducing the total light output we perceive. Algol normally shines at magnitude 2.1, similar to the nearby star Almach in Andromeda. But when fully dimmed, Algols magnitude 3.4 is almost the same as the star Rho Persei ( Per), which sits just two finger widths to Algols lower right (or 2.25 degrees to the celestial south). On Saturday, November 20 at 6:14 p.m. EST or 23:14 GMT, fully dimmed Algol will sit a third of the way up the east-northeastern sky. Five hours later the star will shine at full intensity from a perch overhead in the western sky.

Sunday, November 21 - Bright Moon near Messier 35 (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

When the waning gibbous moon rises among the stars of eastern Taurus after 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, November 21, it will be positioned several finger widths above (or 3 degrees to the celestial west of) the large open star cluster named the Shoe-Buckle Cluster or Messier 35. The moon and the cluster will share the view in binoculars (green circle) all night long, with the moons orbital motion (green line) halving their separation by dawn. To better see the cluster, which is nearly as wide as the moon itself, try hiding the moon just outside the top edge of your binoculars field of view.

Monday, November 22 - Mars meets Zubenelgenubi (predawn)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Monday, November 22, the eastward orbital motion of the planet Mars will carry it only 8 arc-minutes (or a quarter of the moons diameter) below the bright and widely separated double star Zubenelgenubi in Libra  close enough to share the view in a backyard telescope (green circle). Look for the trio sitting low in the east-southeastern sky before sunrise, particularly around 6 a.m. local time. Theyll be somewhat higher for observers in the tropics. Mars and the two stars will be telescope-close on Sunday and Tuesday, too  with the small, 3.7 arc-seconds-wide disk of Mars perched above the stars on Sunday and well below them on Tuesday. Mars will shine at twice the brightness of Zubenelgenubis primary star. (Note that your telescope may flip and/or invert the view, and that optics must be turned away from the east before the sun rises.)

Tuesday, November 23 - Twin Shadows and the GRS Transit Jupiter (00:00 to 02:30 GMT on Nov 24)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Tuesday evening November, 23, observers in the Americas with telescopes can view a rare treat when the round, black shadows of two of Jupiters Galilean moons traverse Jupiter, accompanied by the Great Red Spot! The show will begin when the spot and Ganymedes shadow both appear near Jupiters limb at 6:15 p.m. EST (23:15 GMT). A few minutes before 7 p.m. EST (or 00:00 GMT on Wednesday), Callistos shadow will join them. The trio will cross for 2.5 hours, until the GRS rotates out of view and Ganymedes shadow moves off Jupiter at 9:30 p.m. EST (02:30 GMT). Callistos shadow will complete its crossing at 10:45 p.m. EST (03:45 GMT). This event will begin during evening twilight on the west coast.

Friday, November 26 - The Andromeda Galaxy (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

In late November, the Andromeda Galaxy is positioned very high in the southeastern sky during evening. This large spiral galaxy, also designated Messier 31 and NGC 224, is 2.5 million light years from us, and covers an area of sky measuring 3 by 1 degrees (or six by two full moon diameters)! Under dark skies, M31 can be seen with unaided eyes as a faint smudge located 1.4 fist diameters to the left (or 14 degrees to the celestial northeast) of Alpheratz, the star that occupies the left-hand (northwestern) corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. The three westernmost stars of Cassiopeia, Caph, Shedar, and Navi (Gamma Cas), also conveniently form an arrow that points towards M31. Binoculars (green circle) will reveal the galaxy very well. In a telescope, use your lowest magnification eyepiece and look for M31s two smaller companion galaxies, the foreground, brighter Messier 32 and the more distant, fainter Messier 110.

Saturday, November 27 - Third Quarter Moon (at 12:27 GMT)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The moon will officially reach its third quarter phase at 7:27 a.m. EST, or 12:27 GMT, on Saturday, November 27. At third quarter our natural satellite always appears half-illuminated, on its western side - towards the pre-dawn sun. It rises in the middle of the night and remains visible in the southern sky all morning. The name for this phase reflects the fact that the moon has completed three quarters of its orbit around Earth, measuring from the previous new moon. The ensuing week of moonless evening skies will be ideal for observing deep sky targets.

Saturday, November 27 - Ceres at Opposition (all night)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Saturday, November 27, the dwarf planet Ceres will reach opposition, its closest approach to Earth for the year  a distance of 163.5 million miles or 263 million km or 14.6 light-minutes. On the nights around opposition, Ceres will shine with a peak visual magnitude of 7, well within reach of binoculars and backyard telescopes. As a bonus, Ceres will be situated only a thumbs width above (or 1.4 degrees to the north of) the bright star that marks the chin of the bull, Gamma Tauri. Both objects, and the rest of Taurus triangular face, will easily fit within the field of view of binoculars (green circle). Ceres will already be climbing the eastern sky after dusk. It will reach its highest elevation, and peak visibility, over the southern horizon at about midnight local time.

Sunday, November 28 - Ios shadow and the Red Spot Cross Jupiter (from 23:20 to 01:30 GMT)

(Image credit: Starry Night)

On Sunday evening, November 28, observers in the Americas with telescopes can watch the small, black shadow of Jupiters moon Io move across Jupiters disk, accompanied by the Great Red Spot. The pair will begin to cross at 6:20 p.m. EST, which converts to 5:20 p.m. CST, 4:20 p.m. MST, 3:20 p.m. PST, and 23:20 GMT. The transit will last for approximately 2 hours. For observers in the western USA and Canada, only the later stages of the event will be occurring in a dark sky

Planets

(Image credit: Starry Night)

During the first week of November, Mercury will be completing its best morning apparition for the year for mid-Northern latitude observers  so the planet will be quite easily visible, shining at magnitude -0.85 just above the east-southeastern horizon for a short period before sunrise. Viewed in a telescope during that period, Mercury will show a waxing gibbous (i.e., more than 80%-illuminated) disk that will shrink daily from an initial 5.8 arc-seconds diameter. On November 3, the old crescent moon will appear several finger widths above (or 4 degrees to the celestial northwest of) Mercurys bright dot, with Virgos brightest star Spica positioned just to their right. The same day in mid-afternoon, the moon will occult Mercury for about an hour; however, an experienced observer and/or a GoTo telescope will be needed to locate the pale moon in daylight. On November 10, Mercury will pass less than a fingers width to the upper left (or 57 arc-minutes to the celestial north) of Mars, which will appear one-tenth as bright. From mid-northern latitudes, their best viewing time will be after about 6 a.m. local time. Observers at tropical latitudes will see the two planets higher and in a darker sky. After mid-month, Mercury will be too close to the sun for observing while it approaches superior solar conjunction on November 28-29.

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Venus reached its widest separation from the sun towards the end of October, but its position well south of a canted-over evening ecliptic will keep the brilliant, magnitude -4.7 planet low in the sky for mid-northern latitude observers until later in November. Meanwhile, Southern Hemisphere observers, where the nearly vertical ecliptic has allowed the planet to sit relatively high in a dark sky, have experienced a terrific apparition. Venus eastward motion through the westward-shifting background stars of Sagittarius will cause the planet to set at about 8:15 p.m. local time (7:15 p.m. after Daylight Savings ends) all month long. Viewed through a telescope during November, our sister planet will show a gradually waning, less than half-illuminated phase and an apparent disk diameter that swells dramatically from 26 to 38.7 arc-seconds. On November 7, the young crescent moon will shine several finger widths to the lower right (or 5 degrees to the celestial west) of planet Venus. Hours later, in midday on November 8, observers in parts of northeastern Asia and the western Aleutian Islands can see the moon occult Venus - while surrounding regions will see the moon pass very close to the planet

(Image credit: Starry Night)

As November begins, Mars will be slowly climbing away from the suns glare in the east-southeastern predawn sky. From mid-Northern latitudes, the magnitude 1.65 red planet will finally become visible just above the horizon towards mid-month. A very close conjunction with Mercury on November 10 may be worthy of setting the alarm. Before the end of November, Mars will be elongated enough to briefly shine in a relatively dark sky, among the stars of Libra. On November 22, Mars will pass only 8 arc-minutes below (south of) Libras bright double star Zubenelgenubi.

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The earlier sunsets during November will extend our evening Jupiter-viewing time. The magnitude -2.4 planet will shine as a very bright, white dot sitting a third of the way up the southeastern sky after dusk, and then set in the west-southwest in the middle of the night. Jupiter will spend November travelling prograde eastward above the Sea-Goats tail in eastern Capricornus - with fainter, yellow-hued Saturn shining 16 to its right (or celestial east). Views of Jupiter in amateur telescopes will show dark equatorial bands across its disk, which will shrink from 42 to 38 arc-seconds during the month. The Great Red Spot will appear for a few hours every 2nd or 3rd night. One or two round, black shadows of Jupiters Galilean satellites will cross Jupiters disk, sometimes with the Great Red Spot, on November 2 (for eastern Asia), 23, and 28. The bright, first quarter moon will sit a slim palms width below (or 5 degrees to the celestial south of) Jupiter on November 11.

(Image credit: Starry Night)

During November, Saturn will be observable during early evening while it travels prograde eastward through the faint stars of western Capricornus. The magnitude 0.7 ringed planet will first appear in the lower part of the southern sky after dusk, and then it will descend in the southwest towards mid-evening. Much brighter Jupiter, shining 16 degrees to Saturns left (east), will appear first. Viewed in a telescope, Saturn will display a mean apparent disk diameter of 16.5 arc-seconds, and its rings will subtend 38 arc-seconds. Several moons can be readily seen arrayed around the planet, especially the brightest one, Titan. Saturns rings will be tilting more edge-on to Earth every year until the spring of 2025. This year they are already closed enough for Saturns southern polar region to extend beyond them. On November 10, the nearly-half-illuminated moon will shine a palms width below (or 6 degrees to the celestial southeast) of Saturn.

(Image credit: Starry Night)

Uranus will reach opposition on November 5, making it an all-night target during November. On opposition night it will be closest to Earth for this year - a distance of 1.74 billion miles, 2.80 billion km, or 156 light-minutes. Uranus minimum distance from Earth will cause it to shine at a peak brightness of magnitude 5.65. It will also appear slightly larger - showing a 3.7 arc-seconds-wide disk in telescopes for a week or so centered on that date. All month long, Uranus small, blue-green dot will be moving slowly retrograde westwards in southern Aries, a fists width below (or 11.5 degrees southeast of) that constellations brightest stars, Hamal and Sheratan  and only a palms width from the star Mu Ceti to its southwest. On November 17, the very bright, nearly-full moon will shine two thumb widths to the lower left (or 2.6 degrees to the celestial south) of Uranus  but wait for a moonless night to seek out the planet.

(Image credit: Starry Night)

The distant, blue planet Neptune will be observable until after midnight during November. The magnitude 7.8 planet will be traveling very slowly retrograde westward among the stars of northeastern Aquarius. If the sky is very dark, Neptune can be seen in good binoculars. To locate Neptune, find the up-down grouping of five medium-bright stars Psi, Chi, and Phi Aquarii (or , X, and  Aqr). Neptunes non-twinkling speck will sit several finger widths to the left (or 3 degrees to the celestial NNE) of the top star, Phi. Viewed in a telescope, Neptunes apparent disk size will be 2.3 arc-seconds. Your best views will come in mid-evening, when the blue planet is highest in the south. As a bonus, the minor planet designated (2) Pallas will be positioned about a generous palms width to the right (or 8 degrees to the celestial southwest) of the Phi Aquarii group.

Skywatching Terms

Gibbous: Used to describe a planet or moon that is more than 50% illuminated.

Asterism: A noteworthy or striking pattern of stars within a larger constellation.

Degrees (measuring the sky): The sky is 360 degrees all the way around, which means roughly 180 degrees from horizon to horizon. It's easy to measure distances between objects: Your fist on an outstretched arm covers about 10 degrees of sky, while a finger covers about one degree.

Visual Magnitude: This is the astronomer's scale for measuring the brightness of objects in the sky. The dimmest object visible in the night sky under perfectly dark conditions is about magnitude 6.5. Brighter stars are magnitude 2 or 1. The brightest objects get negative numbers. Venus can be as bright as magnitude minus 4.9. The full moon is minus 12.7 and the sun is minus 26.8.

Terminator: The boundary on the moon between sunlight and shadow.

Zenith: The point in the sky directly overhead.



Night Sky Observing Tips

Adjust to the dark: If you wish to observe faint objects, such as meteors or dim stars, give your eyes at least 15 minutes to adjust to the darkness.

Light Pollution: Even from a big city, one can see the moon, a handful of bright stars and sometimes the brightest planets. But to fully enjoy the heavens  especially a meteor shower, the constellations, or to see the amazing swath across the sky that represents our view toward the center of the Milky Way Galaxy  rural areas are best for night sky viewing. If you're stuck in a city or suburban area, a building can be used to block ambient light (or moonlight) to help reveal fainter objects. If you're in the suburbs, simply turning off outdoor lights can help.

Prepare for skywatching: If you plan to be out for more than a few minutes, and it's not a warm summer evening, dress warmer than you think necessary. An hour of observing a winter meteor shower can chill you to the bone. A blanket or lounge chair will prove much more comfortable than standing or sitting in a chair and craning your neck to see overhead.

Daytime skywatching: When Venus is visible (that is, not in front of or behind the sun) it can often be spotted during the day. But you'll need to know where to look. A sky map is helpful. When the sun has large sunspots, they can be seen without a telescope. However, it's unsafe to look at the sun without protective eyewear. See our video on how to safely observe the sun, or our safe sunwatching infographic.

Further Reading
LAST UPDATED Nov. 18: These dates are subject to change, and will be updated throughout the year as firmer dates arise. Please DO NOT schedule travel based on a date you see here. Launch dates are collected from NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, Spaceflight Now and others.

Watch NASA webcasts and other live launch coverage on our webcast page. Find out what's up in the night sky this month with our visible planets guide and skywatching forecast.

Wondering what happened today in space history? Check out our "On This Day in Space" video show here!

November

Nov. 19: The full moon of November, known as the Full Beaver Moon, occurs at 3:58 a.m. EST (0858 GMT).

Nov. 19: A partial lunar eclipse will be visible from North and South America, Australia, and parts of Europe and Asia. The moon will enter Earth's faint outer shadow, known as the penumbra, at 1:02 a.m. EST (0602 GMT). The partial eclipse, when the moon will darken more noticeably, begins at 2:18 a.m. EST (0718 GMT). Maximum eclipse occurs at 4:02 a.m. EST (0902 GMT). The entire event will last about six hours.

Nov. 20: Northop Grumman's Cygnus NG-16 cargo resupply spacecraft will depart the International Space Station to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. It is scheduled to be released at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT).

Nov. 24: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, at 1:20 a.m. EST (0620 GMT).

Nov. 24: Russia will use a Soyuz rocket to launch a new module to the International Space Station. The Uzlovoy Module, also known as Prichal, will dock with Russia's Nauka science module and will serve as a docking port for Russian vehicles. The mission will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, at 8:06 a.m. EST (1306 GMT).

Nov. 24: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch an unspecified payload from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. The payload might be the Russian military's EKS 5 early warning satellite, according to Spaceflight Now. It is scheduled to lift off during a two-hour launch window that opens at 7:30 p.m. EST (0030 Nov. 25 GMT).

Nov. 26: Russia's Prichal module will dock with the International Space Station at 10:25 a.m. EST (1525 GMT).

Nov. 27: Rocket Lab will use an Electron rocket to launch two Earth observation satellites for the Seattle-based company BlackSky Global. The mission will lift off from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.

Nov. 30: NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron will take an approximately 6.5-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station to replace a communications antenna. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT).

Nov. 30: An Arianespace Soyuz rocket will launch two satellites for Europe's Galileo navigation constellation. It will lift off from the Guiana Space Center near Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:35 p.m. EST (0035 Dec. 1 GMT).

Also scheduled to launch in November (from Spaceflight Now):

Astra will use its Rocket 3 to launch a test payload for the U.S. Space Force and the Space Test Program. It will lift off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

will use its Rocket 3 to launch a test payload for the U.S. Space Force and the Space Test Program. It will lift off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will use an Epsilon rocket to launch the Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite 2 (RAISE 2), a technology demonstration mission. It will lift off from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan.

December

Dec. 1: SpaceX will launch another batch of approximately 53 Starlink satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, at 1:36 a.m. EST (0636 GMT).

Dec. 4: The only total solar eclipse of the year (and the last total solar eclipse until 2023) will be visible from Antarctica. Skywatchers in South Africa, Namibia, the southern tip of South America and some islands in the South Atlantic will be able to see at least a partial solar eclipse, with the moon blocking a portion of the sun from view.

Dec. 4: The new moon arrives at 2:44 a.m. EST (0744 GMT).

Dec. 4: A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch the STP-3 rideshare mission for the U.S. Space Force. It will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, during a two-hour launch window that opens at 4:04 a.m. EST (0904 GMT).

Dec. 6: A Russian Proton rocket will launch two new satellites for the Russian Satellite Communications Company. The mission will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT).

Dec. 6: Conjunction of the moon and Venus. The waxing crescent moon will pass about 2 degrees to the north of Venus. Look for the pair above the western horizon after sunset.

Dec. 7: Conjunction of the moon and Saturn. The waxing crescent moon will swing about 4 degrees to the south of Saturn in the evening sky.

Dec. 8: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch the Soyuz MS-20 crew capsule to the International Space Station with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and video producer Yozo Hirano. It will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:38 a.m. EST (0738 GMT).

Dec. 9: Conjunction of the moon and Jupiter. The waxing crescent moon will swing about 4 degrees to the south of Jupiter in the evening sky.

Dec. 9: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). It will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, during a 90-minute launch window that opens at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT).

Dec. 13-14: The annual Geminid meteor shower, one of the best meteor showers of the year, peaks overnight. The Geminids are active Dec. 4-17 often produce up to 50 visible meteors per hour, but this year the 78% full moon will outshine the fainter meteors.

Dec. 18: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to lift off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT), on an Ariane 5 ECA rocket.

Dec. 18: The full moon of December, known as the Full Cold Moon, occurs at 11:37 p.m. EST (0437 Dec. 19 GMT).

Dec. 18: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Turksat 5B communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida, during a 90-minute launch window that opens at 10:58 p.m. EST (0358 Dec. 19 GMT).

Dec. 20: Russia's Angara-A5 rocket will launch on its third orbital test flight, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.

Dec. 21: The solstice arrives at 10:59 a.m. EST (1559 GMT), marking the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the first day of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Dec. 21: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Dragon cargo resupply mission (CRS-24) to the International Space Station. It will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at 5:06 a.m. EST (1006 GMT).

Dec. 21: A Japanese H-2A rocket will launch the Inmarsat 6 F1 communications satellites from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, during a two-hour launch window that opens at 9:33 a.m. EST (1433 GMT).

Dec. 21-22: The annual Ursid meteor shower peaks overnight. Typically active around Dec. 17-26, the Ursids produce about five to 10 visible meteors per hour on the morning of the peak.

Dec. 27: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch 34 satellites into orbit for the OneWeb internet constellation. The mission, called OneWeb 12, will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

More coming in 2021...

TBD: India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will launch the Indian RISAT 1A radar Earth observation satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India.

Q4: India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) will launch on its first orbital test flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India. The mission was delayed from April 2021.

Q4: India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) will launch its first commercial mission with four Earth observation satellites for the Seattle-based company BlackSky Global. It will lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India.

Please send any corrections, updates or suggested calendar additions to hweitering@space.com. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
New York (United States), Nov 02, 2021 (SPS) - The Republic of Angola appealed to respect the inalienable right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence.

During his intervention before the Committee on Special Policy and Decolonization or Fourth Committee, Mr. Ambassador Joao Iambeno Gimolieca, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Angola at the UN, declared Angola welcomes the measures taken by the Fourth Committee to effectively guarantee the implementation of the Declaration of the Concession of Independence to all territories that still remain under the control of occupying powers, particularly Western Sahara .

It is imperative that all parties collaborate to facilitate the overall process, recognizing the fundamental role of the Special Envoy of the Secretary General in accelerating the search for a just and lasting solution for the entire region, in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions of the UN , highlighted Mr. Joao Iambeno. SPS

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There is a new art exhibit at the Westport Library, titled A Life of Art, that features the artwork of Westport artist Leonard Everett Fisher.

People can see the art exhibit in the Sheffer, and South Galleries of the Westport Library through the end of the year.

The exhibit in the library features many of these original illustrations along with several acrylic paintings. Each work highlights Fishers personal vision and deep sense of humanity which is conveyed through his unique use of shape, line and color.

Fishers career as a painter, illustrator and designer spans over 70 years. He has written, and illustrated hundreds of childrens books, and created more than 700 paintings and 6,000 scratch boards of art tools.

He was born in New York City, in 1924. He is a World War II veteran, earned his undergraduate degree of fine arts, and graduate degree of fine arts from the Yale University in New Haven.

Fisher is also Dean Emeritus at the Paier College of Art in Hamden.

He started illustrating childrens books in 1954, and has published more than 250 of them, 88 of which he also wrote.

Fishers work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., and can be found in the archives of universities across the country from the University of Oregon in Eugence, Ore., to the Yale University.

Watch Fishers Artist in Residence virtual studio tour at westportlibrary.org/video-category/artists-in-residences/.

Westport Library presenting new series

Chris Frantz is starting his new series, Chris Frantz Presents: Emerging Musicians at the Westport Library, at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 4.

Frantz is an American musician, record producer, and drummer for the rock band the Talking Heads, and the American new wave band, the Tom Tom Club.

The series inaugural concert will feature musical artist Lulu Lewis, of New York City, and the indie band The Problem with Kids Today, of New Haven.

The concert will also be another musical collaboration, and production by the Verso Studios production area at the Westport Library, and the Westport Weston Chamber of Commerce.

The series will feature up-and-coming regional, national and international talent that will be hand-picked by Frantz, with the goal of bringing new music to new ears, and be an incubator for rising talent.

Purchase tickets at eventbrite.com.

Former Westport Theatre Artists Group member publishes memoir

John OHern, who is a Fairfield resident and a former long-time member of the Westport Theatre Artists Group, recently published a memoir on Amazon.

The book, Not the Kennedys, is an Irish/Catholic family tale. His website, johnohern.com, has more information about the book and him.

OHern is an author, an actor and storyteller. He lived in Westport for 23 years and his son Max and daughter Declan both graduated from Staples High School.

Trinity Church hosting Children at War: An Event to Remember

The Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport is having its annual Veterans Day Remembrance event at 5 p.m. on Nov. 14, with a multi-cultural event honoring the role that children have played in wars from World War I until today.

The event is titled: Children at War: An Event to Remember: and will include accounts from around the world using historic sound effects, light, and memoirs.

The event will also shine light on past past sacrifices, and lessons for today.

Instructive stories about real lives of children caught in the grip of war, covering such flashpoint events as the London blitz, the French resistance, the Hitler Youth, the plight of Jewish children, and contributions of U.S. children, who fooled recruiters to join the armed forces during World War II, will also be told.

The free event will be open to all people regardless of their religious outlook and no affiliation with the church is required.

It will last 45 minutes. A reception will follow in the Parish Hall of Trinity Episcopal Church, at 651 Pequot Ave., at Center Street in Southport.

The event is designed each year to coincide with Veterans Day, which is observed each year on Nov. 11, in recognition of the signing of the Armistice, and the end of World War I, when all hostilities ceased on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Call Trinity Episcopal Church at 203-255-0454 with any questions.

It is estimated that over 13 million children died in World War II alone, according to information from the church.
While lawmakers scramble to assist residents who have been told they must repay millions of dollars in excess unemployment benefits they collected  without fraud  during the pandemic, labor officials cautioned this week the matter is far more complex than many realize.

Two-thirds of the repayment obligations tallied to date are owed to the federal government, Department of Labor Commissioner Dante Bartolomeo told the legislatures Appropriations Committee this week.

More importantly, the latest projection of what must be recouped  about $30 million  is based on a review of only about 40 percent of the applications for unemployment benefits filed between March 2020 and September 2021.

That number will grow, simply because of the volume that we have, Bartolomeo said.

Coronavirus produced a deluge of jobless claims

The coronavirus hit the state labor agency with an unprecedented deluge of claims in 2020 as hundreds of thousands of residents lost work due to the coronavirus.

In an average year, pre-pandemic, the department pays out state benefits to an average of 40,000 jobless claimants per week.

By June 2020, about three months after COVID-19 struck Connecticut, the weekly caseload peaked at 392,000  nearly tenfold the normal average.

And while Connecticut has recovered about 70 percent of the jobs lost since then, the weekly caseload remains above average at 50,000, according to Bartolomeo.

The labor department, like some other state agencies, also has been forced to work with severely outdated technology  in this case, a claims processing system developed in the 1980s that relies on COBOL, a business programming language first created in the late 1950s.

Department leaders reassigned personnel and quadrupled staff assigned to the claims system to develop software upgrades and accelerate claims reviews.

Further complicating matters, Congress authorized several programs to enhance states unemployment benefits with federal dollars, and many of those continued through early September of 2021.

Employers, workers caused most overpayments accidentally

Bartolomeo told the committee that the department received about 1.5 million applications for jobless benefits between March 2020 and September of this year.

But the labor department wasnt the only entity in new territory.

Employers and workers, who also hadnt experienced a pandemic, had to navigate new programs. The federal CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] Act alone created three new major forms of federal aid in March 2020.

In some cases, employers who laid off staff only to rehire them after receiving an emergency federally backed Payroll Protection Program loan sometimes forgot to notify the state in a timely manner, Bartolomeo said.

In other cases, workers who lost and then regained jobs made unintentional errors in filing.

Less than 1 percent of the problem is due to miscalculations or procedural errors by the state, according to labor officials.

Some intentional wrongdoing also has been identified. Bartolomeo said the department established about 115,000 imposter applications  which were never paid out.

Still, about 600,000 applications of the nearly 1.4 million remaining after fraud screening have been audited to date. And out of that subset, about 2 percent, or 13,000 applications, were found to involve non-fraudulent overpayments totaling about $30 million. A final tally, which is still months away, could be significantly larger.

Bartolomeo said about $20 million of the $30 million tallied so far involves enhanced benefits paid for federal dollars. The state legally must recoup those and return them to Washington.

Another $10 million involves benefits paid out of the state unemployment trust.

But leaders of the General Assemblys Appropriations and Labor committees are worried that forcing all recipients to repay the full $10 million  or more, once all applications have been audited  could cause serious setbacks for thousands of households already suffering.

People were trying to survive, said Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, House chair of the appropriations panel, who said she suspects most of the extra payments households received were spent on groceries, rent and utilities. People cant go back and claw back the food.

Economists say the overwhelming bulk of jobs lost during the pandemic were in the restaurant and retail industries, both of which typically employ low-paid staff.

But Sen. Craig Miner of Litchfield, ranking GOP senator on appropriations , told Walker that I have a hard time feeling the same level of passion that you do.

Even if the people double-dipped by accident, Miner said, somebodys got to pay this back, adding that its unfair to place that burden on the state. Lets let it work itself out.

CT is bailing out businesses, delinquent taxpayers. Why not households?

But Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, the Appropriations Committees other co-chair, said Connecticut already has committed to share responsibilities of others harmed by the pandemic. It shouldnt ignore workers who now, unintentionally, owe millions.

We need all of the numbers, but as long as there is no fraud, I would be open to looking at that, she said.

Gov. Ned Lamont and the state legislature already have committed to deposit $155 million into the states unemployment trust, and some legislative leaders have said the state should consider adding even more.

The trust, which covers the state unemployment benefits, borrowed $700 million to remain fiscally afloat during the pandemic, and another $300 million may be needed before the calendar years end, labor officials say.

Replenishing that trust, legally, is the responsibility of Connecticut businesses, who face a special assessment that would be tantamount to a significant tax hike. So any dollars the state puts in effectively amounts to tax relief for businesses.

The state also has a habit of bending the rules  and quite frequently  when it comes to delinquent taxpayers.

Connecticut this week launched its seventh tax amnesty program since 1990. Such programs chiefly benefit high-end earners with major tax obligations, rather than working class households.

The Lamont administration projects Connecticut will collect an extra $40 million next fiscal year and an extra $36 million in 2022-23 by easing penalties on delinquents.

Connecticut entered the year tied with Louisiana and Massachusetts for easing penalties on tax delinquents most frequently over the past three decades, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators, a coalition of states top tax offices. Critics of the program charge that by offering amnesty so frequently, the state provides a disincentive for taxpayers with major obligations to pay on time.

Rep. Harry Arora of Greenwich, ranking House Republican on the Labor Committee, said that while he believes strongly in following due process, he also would consider relief for households that received extra state unemployment benefits without committing fraud.

I dont think anybody should be harshly treated in a quick manner, he said, adding the state cannot simply offer blanket relief either. That means waiting until the labor department has a full accounting of over-payments, and then determining which households need assistance the most.

We have to help our community, Arora added, when it is fair and appropriate.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Ruth Ann Minner, a sharecroppers daughter who became the only woman to serve as Delawares governor, has died. She was 86.

Minner, who served as governor from 2001 to 2009, passed away Thursday morning, according to Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse, a friend who once served as her chief of staff.

She was a true leader, a great role model for women and those that have had it not so easy in life, to show that if you work hard, are honest, you can make it to the top, Scuse said.

A high school dropout who was twice widowed, Minner got her first taste of politics as a legislative bill clerk and rose through the Democratic Party ranks to become the states most powerful politician.

As governor-elect in 2000, Minner didnt dwell on breaking the gender barrier, but instead noted that she was the first governor in almost 50 years to be elected from downstate Delaware.

You know, I dont think it really matters to me that Im a woman, she told The Associated Press at the time. Ive found out since the election, though, that it does matter to a lot of women. It matters to a lot of young girls.

Her humble beginnings and matronly appearance led one political columnist to dub Minner the Aunt Bea of state government, a reference to the family matriarch in televisions Andy Griffith show.

She was a leader who had a real common touch, said Gov. John Carney, who served as Minners lieutenant governor.

But Minners appearance belied her reputation as a hard-nosed politician who didnt shy from battles with Republican lawmakers or other opponents.

After my first husband died, I became a very independent woman, she explained after the 2000 election. That was decades after she ran for a state House seat in the 1970s intent on changing a banking law that required her husband to co-sign any loan application.

Amid cries of Ban Ruth Ann! from outraged business owners and libertarians, Minner in 2002 signed one of the nations toughest prohibitions on smoking in public places.

Other landmark legislation included a 2007 measure prompted by the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. The bill abolished Delawares two-year time limit for filing personal injury lawsuits and established a two-year period during which lawsuits previously barred by the passage of time could be brought anew. The bill resulted in more than 100 lawsuits, prompting the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington to seek bankruptcy protection and to settle with victims of priest sex abuse for $77 million.

Minner also was instrumental in the establishment of a state scholarship program that has provided free college tuition to more than 13,000 Delawareans.

A fiscal conservative who espoused liberal social views, Minner spent much of her time steering Delaware through tough budget cycles. Within days of becoming governor, she ordered state agencies to cut spending proposals. She subsequently ordered hiring freezes and more than $350 million in budget cuts, and later persuaded lawmakers to approve a $300 million in spending cuts and tax and fee increases.

Minner sometimes had trouble persuading Republicans who controlled the state House to follow her lead. She also sometimes found herself at odds with conservative Democrats who controlled the state Senate and resisted her efforts to strengthen drunken driving laws and prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Minners much-touted anti-sprawl program, dubbed Livable Delaware, achieved only limited results, and her administration was plagued by scandals and lawsuits involving the state police, prison system and state-run psychiatric hospital. She barely won re-election in 2004 after a female prison counselor was taken hostage and sexually assaulted by a convicted serial rapist before he was shot to death by a guard. Talking to a reporter shortly after the incident, Minner suggested that such things are almost expected in prisons.

In 2012, businessman Christopher Tigani, a Minner friend and supporter, was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of making illegal campaign contributions to statewide and federal candidates. As governor, Minner helped Tigani obtain a cheap, long-term lease of state-owned land in Milford for his familys liquor distributorship.

Minner was born Ruth Ann Coverdale in Milford in 1935. She left school at 16 to work on the family farm and married Frank Ingram a year later. Ingram died of a heart attack at age 34 in 1967, leaving his 32-year-old widow to raise three boys while managing the familys asphalt paving business.

Faced with being the sole breadwinner for her sons, Minner earned a general equivalency diploma and briefly studied elementary education at a community college.

In 1974, Minner successfully ran for a state House seat, having first tasted politics as a bill clerk in the General Assembly, then as a receptionist for Gov. Sherman Tribbitt. She served in the House until 1982, when she was elected to the state Senate, where she served for 10 years. Minners signature achievement as a lawmaker was the Delaware Land and Water Conservation Act, which led to the preservation of more than 30,000 acres of open space.

In 1991, Minners second husband, Roger Minner, died of cancer, leaving her widowed again. In 1992, she became the states first female lieutenant governor, serving two four-year terms before succeeding Tom Carper, now Delawares senior U.S. senator, as governor.
NEW YORK (AP)  The weekslong process of selecting a jury for the federal sex trafficking trial of financier Jeffrey Epsteins ex-girlfriend, a British socialite, began Thursday with a video introduction from the judge in which she called jury trials the bedrock of American democracy.

Defendant Ghislaine Maxwell has said she is innocent of charges alleging that she recruited teenagers who were not yet adults for Epstein to sexually abuse from 1994 to 2004, Judge Alison J. Nathan told 132 prospective jurors.

The judge warned prospective jurors not to discuss the case with anyone or research it, on the internet or anywhere else.

She said the final jury of 12 jurors and six alternates will be asked to render a verdict after a trial expected to last about six weeks based only on evidence they learn about in the courtroom.

Although jurors will not be sequestered, their privacy will be ensured because they will be referenced by numbers and will be transported to and from the trial each day, Nathan said.

Jury trials are part of the bedrock of American democracy, she told them.

The possible jurors then filled out questionnaires and were sent home, the first of about 750 people over three days who are expected to answer the written questions. Oral questioning of jurors begins mid-month, with opening statements scheduled for Nov. 29.

When questionnaires were filled out, neither Maxwell nor the judge or lawyers were in the large room where people sat in chairs spaced out as a safety precaution to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the courthouse.

The 51 questions on the questionnaire focused largely on whether the personal experience of prospective jurors might make it impossible for any of them to judge the facts in the case fairly. Individuals were also asked to say what they'd heard about the case and whether it had caused them to form opinions about it.

There is nothing wrong with having heard something about this case, the questionnaire stated in bold print before prospective jurors were questioned about whether and how they might have heard anything about Maxwell and whether they'd already formed an opinion about her guilt or innocence.

It also asked whether they'd verbally stated or posted an opinion about Maxwell or Epstein on social media or online and whether they or a family member had ever supported, protested or worked for or against laws or regulations or organizations relating to sex trafficking, sex crimes against minors, sex abuse or sexual harassment.

The questionnaire also asked whether the sexually suggestive or sexually explicit conduct that will emerge at trial might make it difficult for a prospective juror to be fair and impartial.

Maxwell, 59, has been in a federal jail in Brooklyn since her July 2020 arrest. Epstein, her onetime boyfriend, was found unresponsive in his cell in a federal Manhattan lockup in August 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking trial. His death was ruled a suicide.

Maxwell's lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, resumed a request Wednesday that her client be released on $28.5 million bail, saying that deplorable jail conditions and harsh treatment of Maxwell have made it difficult for her to prepare for trial.

Her bail request, already rejected three times by the judge, came in a letter in which she claimed Maxwell has been touched in a sexually inappropriate manner by corrections officers on multiple occasions.

In an email response to a question about Maxwell's treatment, Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso wrote that the bureau declines to comment on conditions of confinement for any particular inmate.

However, Giamusso added, the bureau takes allegations of staff misconduct seriously and consistent with national policy, refers all allegations for investigation, if warranted. Incidents of potential criminal activity or misconduct inside BOP facilities are thoroughly investigated for potential administrative discipline or criminal prosecution.
Twenty-six Connecticut hospitals will lose some of their Medicare reimbursement payments over the next year as a penalty for having too many readmitted patients, new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows.

Nationally, Medicare is reducing payments to 2,499 hospitals, about 47 percent of all facilities, with the average penalty being 0.64 percent, according to a report by Kaiser Health News.

This years penalties were based on tracking patients from July 1, 2017, through Dec. 1, 2019, so the influx of patient care during the coronavirus pandemic is not included, CMS said.

In Connecticut, 72 percent of all hospitals in the program face a loss in CMS payments, beginning October 2021 through September 2022.

No Connecticut hospital received the maximum penalty of 3 percent. But Rockville General Hospital will lose 2.3 percent, the highest penalty of any Connecticut facility, and Bridgeport Hospital will lose 2.15 percent.

Five hospitals will lose more than one percent of their funds, 19 others less than one percent.

Connecticuts hospitals share a strong commitment to the quality of care they provide and to patient safety. Through the Connecticut Hospital Association, hospitals drive quality improvement through a shared commitment to best practice and clinical collaboration and we are always striving to do better, the CHA said in a statement.

Hospitals have been operating under tremendous strain in response to the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to focus on quality improvement. We are encouraged that many hospitals showed improvement and we will maintain our focus on the quality of care delivered at hospitals across the state, CHA said.

Lisa Freeman, executive director of the Connecticut Center for Patient Safety, said, This measure and the results among Connecticut hospitals demonstrate the need for a higher degree of coordinated care after hospitalization. This is a time when a discharged patient is particularly vulnerable to complications related to their recent hospitalization and when thorough, accurate and understandable care instructions, new supplies, clarity and access to all medications and oversight of care are particularly important to their continued recovery.

Freeman said readmission measures have the potential to slightly mislead patients because the readmission that is being counted can be for any reason, not only the reason for the initial hospitalization, it still addresses the wellness, or un-wellness of the patient at discharge.

CHA has launched Unite Connecticut to improve hospital readmission rates. Under the program, hospitals now have direct referral and communication loops, through a shared digital platform, to refer and support patients in need of community-based social services to help stabilize their living conditions and optimize their health. 

This year, the program has served more than 3,600 patients through referrals to about 280 community-based organizations. We expect these robust support channels will help patients to realize better health outcomes, by addressing the social drivers of health, CHA said. Over time, taking down those social barriers supports a patients ability to fully follow a course of treatment or make a necessary lifestyle change, reducing the need for readmission and also improving the patients health outcomes. There are 11 hospitals participating and CHA said five more are in the process of joining.

In addition to Rockville General and Bridgeport hospitals, the hospitals receiving penalties of more than one percent are: Manchester Memorial, 1.8 percent; Middlesex, 1.67 percent; William Backus, 1.56 percent; Bristol, 1.34 percent; and Waterbury, 1.13 percent.

The 19 hospitals losing less than one percent reimbursement are: Charlotte Hungerford, 0.38 percent; Danbury, 0.31 percent; Day Kimball, 0.27 percent; Greenwich, 0.53 percent; Griffin, 0.02 percent; Hartford, 0.57 percent; John Dempsey, 0.78 percent; Johnson Memorial, 0.67 percent; and Lawrence + Memorial, .08 percent; Mid-State Medical, 0.45 percent; Norwalk, 0.74 percent; St. Marys 0.62 percent; Sharon, 0.02 percent; St. Francis, 0.56 percent; St. Vincents, 0.41 percent; Stamford, 0.22 percent, Hospital of Central Connecticut, 0.64 percent; Windham Memorial, 0.08 percent; and Yale New Haven, 0.76 percent.

Only two facilities received no penalty: Masonicare Health Center in Wallingford and Hebrew Home and Hospital Inc. in West Hartford.

Eight Connecticut hospitals are exempt from the program: Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, Natchaug Hospital in Mansfield, Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven, Southwest Connecticut Mental Health in Bridgeport, Silver Hill Hospital Inc. in New Canaan, the Connecticut Hospice Inc. in Branford and Albert J. Solnit Childrens Center in Middletown.

This is the 10th year for CMS penalties, enacted under the Affordable Care Act.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (c-hit.org), a nonprofit news organization dedicated to health reporting.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Health officials in Nebraska say they're expecting 64,200 initial doses of the coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

The allocataion is enough to cover nearly 35% of the 186,200 Nebraska children who fall in that age range.
In the months before he was charged with storming the Capitol, Doug Jensen was sharing conspiracy theories he'd consumed online. But it hadnt always been that way, says his brother, who recalls how he once posted the sort of family and vacation photos familiar to nearly all social media users.

A world away, Wahab hadn't always spent his days immersed in jihadist teaching. The product of a wealthy Pakistani family and the youngest son of four, he was into cars and video games, had his own motorcycle, even studied in Japan.

No two ideologues are identical. No two groups are comprised of monolithic clones. No single light switch marks the shift to radicalism. The gulf between different kinds of extremists  in religious and political convictions, in desired world orders, in how deeply they embrace violence in the name of their cause  is as wide as it is obvious.

But to dwell only on the differences obscures the similarities, not only in how people absorb extremist ideology but also in how they feed off grievances and mobilize to action.

For any American who casts violent extremism as a foreign problem, the Jan. 6 Capitol siege held up an uncomfortable mirror that showed the same conditions for fantastical thinking and politically motivated violence as any society.

The Associated Press set out to examine the paths and mechanics of radicalization through case studies on two continents: a 20-year-old man rescued from a Taliban training camp on Afghanistan's border, and an Iowa man whose brother watched him fall sway to nonsensical conspiracy theories and ultimately play a visible role in the mob of Donald Trump loyalists that stormed the Capitol.

Two places, two men, two very different stories as seen by two close relatives. But strip away the ideologies for a moment, says John Horgan, a researcher of violent extremism. Instead, look at the psychological processes, the pathways, the roots, the experiences.

All of those things, Horgan says, tend to look far more similar than they are different.

THE AMERICAN

America met Doug Jensen via a video that ricocheted across the Internet, turning an officer into a hero and laying bare the mob mentality inside the Capitol that day.

Jensen is the man in a dark stocking cap, a black Trust the Plan shirt over a hooded sweatshirt, front and center in a crowd of rioters chasing Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer, up two flights of stairs. One prominent picture shows him standing feet from an officer, arms spread wide, mouth agape.

When it was all over, hed tell the FBI that he was a true believer in QAnon, that hed gone to Washington because Q and Trump had summoned all patriots and that hed expected to see Vice President Mike Pence arrested. He'd say he pushed his way to the front of the crowd because he wanted Q to get the credit for what was about to happen.

Hed tell his brother the photos were staged, how the police had practically let him in through the front door (prosecutors say he climbed a wall and entered through a broken window) and that some officers even did selfies with the crowd.

William Routh of Clarksville, Arkansas, had an unsettled feeling about that day even before the riot and says he cautioned his younger brother. I said, if you go down there and you're going to do a peaceful thing, then that's fine. But I said keep your head down and dont be doing something stupid.

In interviews with the AP days and months after his younger brothers arrest, Routh painted Jensen  a 42-year-old Des Moines father of three whod worked as a union mason laborer  as a man who enjoyed a pleasant if unextraordinary American existence. He says he took his family to places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, attended his childrens sporting events, worked to pay for a sons college education, made anodyne Facebook posts.

I have friends that I speak to constantly that have conspiracy theories, Routh said, but this was a shock to me more than anything, because I would not have thought this from my brother Doug, because he's a very good, hardworking family man and he has good values.

Exactly who Jensen is, and how much knowledge he had of the world around him, depends on who's talking.

A Justice Department memo that argued for Jensen's detention cites a criminal history and his eagerness to drive more than 1,000 miles to hear President Trump declare martial law, then to take it into his own hands when no proclamation happened. It notes that when the FBI questioned him, he said hed gone to Washington because Q, the movements amorphous voice, had forecast that the storm had arrived.

His lawyer, Christopher Davis, countered in his own filing by essentially offering Jensen up as a dupe, a victim of numerous conspiracy theories and a committed family man whose initial devotion to QAnon was its stated mission to eliminate pedophiles from society."

Six months after the insurrection, the argument resonated with a judge who agreed to release Jensen on house arrest as his case moved forward. The judge, Timothy Kelly, cited a video in which Jensen referred to the Capitol building as the White House and said he didnt believe Jensen could have planned an attack in advance when he had no basic understanding of where he even was that day.

Yet less than two months after he was released, Jensen was ordered back to jail for violating the conditions of his freedom. Though barred from accessing a cellphone, he watched a symposium sponsored by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that offered up false theories that the presidential elections outcome was changed by Chinese hackers. A federal officer making the first unannounced visit to Jensen found him in his garage using an iPhone to watch news from Rumble, a streaming platform popular with conservatives.

Davis, who weeks earlier had asserted that his client feels deceived, recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies, likened his client's behavior this time to an addiction. The judge was unmoved.

Its now clear that he has not experienced a transformation and that he continues to seek out those conspiracy theories that led to his dangerous conduct on Jan. 6, Kelly said. I dont see any reason to believe that he has had the wake-up call that he needs.

Precisely when and how Jensen came to absorb the conspiracies that led him to the Capitol is bewildering to Routh, who says he took Jensen under his wing during a challenging childhood that included stays in foster care and now feels compelled, as his oldest living relative, to speak on his behalf.

When Jensen was questioned by the FBI, according to an agents testimony, he said for the last couple of years hed return home from an eight-hour workday and consume information from QAnon. In the four months before the riot, the brothers communicated about QAnon as Jensen shared videos and other conspiracy-laden messages that he purported to find meaning in but that Routh found suspect.

It was a period rife with baseless theories, advanced on the Internet and mainstream television, that an election conducted legitimately was somehow stolen in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. It was just out there. It is on the internet everywhere, Routh says.

Routh, who says he's a Republican who supported Trump, maintains his brother and others like him were frightened by the prospect of a Biden victory. Before Jan. 6, Routh says, We have been being told for the last  what?  seven, eight months that if the Democrats get control, we're losing our country, OK? That scares a lot of people.

He says he understands the anxiety of Trump supporters who fear the country may get more radical on the left. He has friends in oil fields and the pipeline industry who dont know if theyre going to be able to feed their families again. As Routh criss-crossed the country as a truck driver, he says the idea Trump would lose re-election seemed unfathomable given that virtually everyone he met, everywhere he went, was pushing Trump, Trump, Trump.

When Routh looks at the photos of Jensen and the group he was with Jan. 6, he doesnt see a determination to physically hurt anyone or vandalize the building. And despite the QAnon T-shirt, and despite the statement to the FBI that he was all about a revolution, Routh insists his brother was more a follower than a leader. Jensen is not among those charged with conspiracy or with being part of a militia group, and though prosecutors say he had a pocket knife with him, his lawyer says it was from work and he never took it out.

He had a lot of influence from everybody else there," Routh said this summer as he awaited a judge's ruling on his brother's bond motion. And he has always been the kind of kid that says, I can do that."

Two days after the riot, back home in Iowa, Jensen walked 6 miles (9.66 kilometers) to the Des Moines police department after seeing he was featured in videos of the chaos, an FBI agent would later testify. There, the FBI says, he made statements now at the center of the case, including admitting chasing Goodman up the stairs, that he yelled Hit me. Ill take it as the officer raised a baton to move him back and that he profanely bellowed for the arrests of government leaders.

Though prosecutors suggest he had the presence of mind to delete potentially incriminating social media accounts from his phone, he also seemed uncertain  confused, even  during his encounter with law enforcement. As officials questioned him, according to an FBI agent's testimony, he said words to the effect of, Am I being duped?

THE PAKISTANI

Wahab had it all. The youngest son of four from a wealthy Pakistani family, he spent his early years in the United Arab Emirates and for a time in Japan, studying. Wahab liked cars, had his own motorcycle and was crazy about video games.

His uncle, who rescued the 20-year-old from a Taliban training camp on Pakistans border with Afghanistan earlier this year, asked that his full name not be used because in the northwest where the family lives, militants have deep-reaching tentacles. But more than that, he worries about his familys reputation because of its prominence. He agreed to be quoted using his middle name, Kamal.

The family has business interests scattered across the globe. Kamal is one of five brothers who runs the family-owned import/export conglomerate. Each brother in turn has groomed and primed their sons for the business. Wahabs older brothers are already running overseas branches of the family business.

Wahab's future was to be no different. He returned to Pakistan in his early teens from abroad. Being the youngest son in a society that prizes males, he was spoiled. His older brothers sent him pocket money," his uncle said. Other than school, Wahab had few responsibilities.

His uncle blamed his slide to radicalization on the neighborhood teens Wahab hung out with in their northwest Pakistan hometown  not to mention video games and Internet sites.

Wahabs friends introduced him to dozens of sites, his uncle said. They told of Muslims being attacked, women raped, babies brutally killed. The gruesomeness was horrifying, though Kamal says there was no way to know what was true  or if any had been doctored. But for Wahab, the images were deeply disturbing.

He felt like he hadnt known what was going on, that he had spent his life in darkness and he felt he should be involved. His friends insisted he should. They told him he was rich and should help our people, his uncle said.

To his uncle, Wahab seemed to become increasingly aggressive and fixated on violence with the seemingly endless hours he spent playing video games. One in particular, called PUBG, was all the rage with Wahab and his friends.

All the boys loved it," Kamal said. For hours they would play as a team against the computer."

On pubgmobile.com, the game is described as focusing "on visual quality, maps, shooting experience ... providing an all-rounded surreal Battle Royale experience to players. A hundred players will land on the battleground to begin an intense yet fun journey. Wahabs uncle said he'd be shouting instructions as he played, interacting with teammates.

Suddenly, earlier this year, Wahab disappeared. His parents, frantic, searched everywhere. Wahab wasnt the first in the family to flirt with extremism. His cousin Salman had joined the local Pakistani Taliban years before. But he was different: He'd never been interested in school and was sent to a religious school, or madrassa, for his education. The family had long given up on him.

Salman swore he hadnt seen Wahab and knew nothing of where he might be  or if he had even joined jihad.

Suspicion then fell on Wahabs friends. Family members were certain they'd induced him to defend against attacks that Wahab and his friends were convinced were being waged against Muslims, simply because of their religion.

The family used its influence and money to press the fathers of Wahabs friends to find the 20-year-old. They finally located him at a Pakistani Taliban training camp, where Kamal said Wahab was being instructed in the use of small weapons.

Such camps are also often used to identify would-be suicide bombers and instruct them in the use of explosives, identification of soft targets and how to cause the greatest destruction. The Pakistan Taliban have carried out horrific attacks; in 2014, insurgents armed with automatic rifles attacked a public school, killing more than 150 people, most children, some as young as 5.

When Wahabs father discovered his son was at a training camp, he was furious, said his uncle.

He told the people, Leave him there. I dont accept him as my son anymore. But I took it on myself to bring him back, Kamal said. He said he didnt ask Wahab about the camp or why he wanted to go  or even such basics as how he got there.

I didnt want him talking about any of it. I didnt want to know why he went because then I knew he would start to get excited again and he would start thinking about it all over again, Kamal said. Instead, I took a firm face with him.

His uncle told Wahab he was getting another chance  his last.

I told him, Now it is on me. I have taken the responsibility. You wont get another chance. If you do anything again then I will shoot you, his uncle said. In Pakistans northwest, where tribal laws and customs often decide family disputes and feuds, the threat was most likely not an idle one.

Today, Wahab is back in the family business, but his uncle says he is closely watched. He isnt allowed to deal with the company finances and his circle of friends is monitored. Right now we dont trust him. It will take us time," his uncle says.

Fearful that others among Wahabs siblings and cousins could be enticed to extremism, the family has imposed greater restrictions on young male relatives. Their independence has been restricted, Kamal says: We are watching all the young boys now, and most nights they have to be home  unless they tell us where they are.

___

Moral outrage. A sense of injustice. A feeling that things can only be fixed through urgent, potentially violent action.

Those tend to motivate people who gravitate toward extremism, according to Horgan, who directs the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University. He says such action is often seen as necessary to ward off a perceived impending threat to ones way of life  and to secure a better future.

Those similarities you will find repeated across the board, whether youre talking about extreme right-wing militias in Oklahoma or youre talking about a Taliban offshoot in northwest Pakistan, Horgan says.

The world views driving extremist groups may feel fantastical and outrageous to society at large. But the true believers who consume propaganda and align themselves with like-minded associates dont see it that way. To them, they possess inside knowledge that others simply dont see.

Theres a contradiction, because they are committed insiders but part of their insider status is defined by pitting themselves against an outsider whose very existence is said to threaten their own, Horgan says. They pride themselves on being anti-authoritarian. Yet conformity is what binds them together.

Research shows that people who espouse conspiracy theories tend to do poorer on measures of critical thinking. They reduce complex world problems  the pandemic, for instance  to simplified and reassuring answers, says Ziv Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist and expert on extremist beliefs at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

Rather than attributing a job loss to the effects of globalization, for instance, one might see it as the result of a conspiracy that someone in particular has engineered.

It gives us answers, he says, that are much more appealing emotionally than the real answer.

That's where the stories of Jensen and Wahab seem to intersect. Both were seeking something. Both found answers that were enticing, attractive  and distorted versions of reality.

For reasons he does not even understand today, he became a true believer and was convinced he (was) doing a noble service by becoming a digital soldier for Q," Davis, Jensen's lawyer, wrote in a June court filing. Maybe it was mid-life crisis, the pandemic, or perhaps the message just seemed to elevate him from his ordinary life to an exalted status with an honorable goal.

But is that goal ever reached? Is comfort ever found? Oddly, and perhaps counterintuitively, research has shown that when extremists' conspiracy theories are reinforced, their anxiety levels rise rather than fall, Cohen says. He likens the comfort to a drug  one that requires increasingly more consumption to take effect. Which helps perpetuate the cycle.

Says Cohen: People seem to not be able to get enough of a conspiracy theory, but theyre never quite satisfied or really reassured.

___

Associated Press writer David Pitt in Des Moines contributed to this report.
Milton, PA (17847)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High 48F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Overcast with rain showers at times. Low 37F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Romania's Ministry of Labour has put forth a proposal for the 2022 quota of foreign workers newly admitted to the local workforce to be set at 100,000 to fix the labour shortage in areas such as construction of buildings, roads, restaurants, road transport, hotels and bakery, according to a press statement released on Thursday.

Data with the National Employment Agency (ANOFM) show that, between January and August 2021, there were 264,983 job openings, 50,924 of which had been repeatedly advertised by employers because the jobs would not be taken.

"From our assessments, the supply of jobs from employers is standing at about 480,000 against demand for about 200,000. To help employers fix this shortage of labour, the government next year will increase to 100,000 the number of permits granted to foreign workers. That does not mean that 100,000 foreign workers will come to Romania, but that we give the opportunity to all employers in the country to use human resources from abroad, if they fail to find Romanian employees to avoid business blockages. It is a customary economic decision that has been made by other countries as well, because economic development is a priority," according to Labour Minister Raluca Turcan.So far in 2021, the number of certificates requested by employers of the local ANOFM offices for winning the approval of the General Immigration Inspectorate to hire foreigners in Romania has increased substantially.Thus, between January and August 2021, 6,518 companies requested certificates for 83,338 job openings for which there were no takers available in Romania, as against 4,135 companies and 49,200 jobs available in the same period in 2020.Under Government Ordinance 25/2014, as subsequently amended and supplemented, Article 7 (2) (a), foreigners can be hired in Romania only if, after undertaking due diligence, the employer fails to hire a Romanian citizen, a citizen of another member state of the European Union or of the European Economic Area, a Swiss national or a foreigner holding the right to long stay in Romania.The quota of newly admitted foreign workers is set annually by government decision at the proposal of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection. For 2021, a contingent of 25,000 newly admitted foreign workers was initially set that was later on supplemented by 50,000 under an August 2021 government decision.
The National Bank of Romania (BNR) has set up an internal department, the Sustainability and Green Economy Office, to further explore further explore climate change implications in the Romanian banking sector. According to a BNR press statement released on Thursday.

"On September 16, 2020, the National Bank of Romania has become a member of the Central Banks' and Supervisors' Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). The National Bank of Romania has taken steps to identify, develop and utilise some of the specific climate risk analysis tools within the financial stability policy framework, research analysis that is highlighted in the latest editions of our report on financial stability policy framework, such as the December 2019 edition," reads the National Bank of Romania's declaration of engagement as a member of Network for Greening the Financial System.

Moreover, BNR has facilitated debates among central bankers, representatives of national and international institutions, economic think-tanks and academia on addressing the challenges for the financial system posed by climate change, including the annually holding, jointly with the International Monetary Fund, of an International Seminar on Financial Stability issues (in September 2019 the seminar included an Expert Panel on Climate Change)."The most recent, holistic and comprehensive endeavour that the National Bank of Romania undertook, while chairing the National Committee for Macroprudential Oversight, to scale-up green finance in Romania, has been the set up and the co-ordination, from November 2020 until June 2021, of a working group to explore the current status, the challenges and the opportunities regarding the green finance in Romania. Given the complex aspects of climate change and therefore the important role played by multiple institutions, the group reunited around 90 members from a broad range of stakeholders: public authorities, credit institutions, representatives of international financial institutions, the private sector and relevant associations."According to BNR, the report was designed to identify adequate solutions to climate change impact in Romania and 16 proposals of recommendations have been issued, covering three categories of measures: sustainable increase in the financing of green projects; supporting structural changes in the economy towards generating higher value added, and enhancing transparency and raising awareness about the impact of climate change on the economy and the financial system. The report was published in June 2021.With a view to sustainably enhancing access to finance for projects on the climate change agenda, as well as to increase transparency, improving reporting and the availability of climate change-related information and raising awareness on the impact of climate change in society and the financial system, BNR makes the following pledge: to communicate with the entities in its area of competence regarding enhancements in the frame of recommendations concerning a prudent approach to climate risk.The recommendations should cover at least the following areas: governance, strategy, risk management, scenario analysis, stress testing, and transparency.BNR pledges to conduct an analysis on the opportunity of easing the prudential requirements for green finance, in line with similar endeavours and regulatory frame at EU institutional level, with a view to fostering this category of lending, without affecting financial stability.It also pledges to create a dashboard to monitor climate change risks to the banking sector, which should be regularly updated and disseminated, as well as to conduct annual stress tests on climate risk-related issues in the banking sector and publish the results.Last but not least, BNR pledges to record in its Central Credit Register the relevant information on green loans in Romania, starting from the European taxonomy and build up and manage reliable data on the green loans stock.Furthermore, as a member of NGFS, BNR has expressed the following commitments and stayed true to them: actively contribute to the work of the NGFS and dedicate the appropriate resources in their organisation to support their participation. Designated BNR experts actively participated in 2021in the Workstream on macroprudential and supervision, by contributing to the drafting of the report of the Risk differentials team.At the same time, BNR will appoint relevant expert(s) in at least one NGFS Workstream. BNR has designated representatives in each of the NGFS workstreams and contributed to the work carried out by the teams at workstream level.Likewise, BNR pledges to raise awareness of the work of the NGFS in their jurisdiction, their geographic area and within the international or regional standard setting, regulatory, supervisory and central bank bodies they are involved in. From the viewpoint of its public engagements and reports related to climate change, BNR takes into account the NGFS guidelines, aiming for a positive impact of the NGFS activity in national jurisdiction.Morever, BNR has set up an internal department (Sustainability and Green Economy Office) with a view to further exploring climate change implications in the Romanian banking sector.BNR says that it will participate when appropriate in the outreach exercises conducted by the NGFS vis a vis external stakeholders, as well as in all NGFS seminars and projects that are initiated by the NGFS."Taking into account the above-mentioned initiatives and in addition to the common statement of NGFS in support of UNFCCC COP26, the National Bank of Romania expresses the intention for engagement, within the frame of its legal mandate, by aiming: to further address the challenges posed by the climate change; to deepen its endeavours for a positive contribution to climate risks mitigation in the banking sector; to support international efforts along with peer institutions, to extend its international cooperation and align its approach to Green Finance domain to the International Standards Setting Bodies; to contribute to the NGFS agenda for advancing actions for climate and Green Finance development; and to promote and contribute to the development of the Green Finance in the Romanian banking sector and in the overall economy," according to BNR.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected, on Thursday, as unfounded, a request in which the former chairman of Social Democratic Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea requested the transfer to a provincial court of the case in which he is tried for trafficking in influence in connection with his presence at the inauguration ceremony of President Donald Trump.

The court's decision is final.

In May 2021, National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) sued Liviu Dragnea, former speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and PSD chairman, for trafficking in influence (two acts) and use of influence or authority by a person holding a leadership position in a party, in order to obtain for him or for another undue benefits, the file being registered at the Bucharest Tribunal.Five magistrates from this court in turn refused to settle Dragnea's case, after making requests for abstention.
Social Democratic Party (PSD) Chairman Marcel Ciolacu said on Thursday that the talks with National Liberal Party (PNL) representatives did not focus on government positions, agerpres reports.

"We had a first meeting with colleagues from PNL. From the beginning, both I and my colleagues asked for a serious meeting and applied to the requirements and needs of Romanians at this time. We had no discussions regarding the positions in Romania's Government. (...) I think we are on the right track and if we are honest and patriotic, this is the way towards the formation of a new majority," Ciolacu said at Parliament after the meeting with the PNL representatives.

He reiterated that PSD will go to the consultations at Cotroceni Palace with a proposal for prime minister.
Interim Prime Minister Florin Citu announced on Thursday that industrial oxygen might be used for COVID patients and that hospitals will need to have backup solutions for supplies.

The clarifications were made after Florin Citu had a working meeting with the representatives of the medical oxygen producers, at Victoria Palace of Government.

"We have identified several solutions to solve the oxygen crisis in hospitals. Following discussions with oxygen producers and representatives of DSU [the Department of Emergency Situations], we have established that the best measure is the possibility of using industrial oxygen in COVID-19 patients and, because storage and distribution are currently the big issue, we have identified a solution here as well. The details will be given by the specialists, after the concrete establishment of all of the technical elements," the interim prime minister wrote on Facebook.

He also called for a mechanism to be set up to provide hospitals with two or even three sources of oxygen.

"In order to prevent, in the future, problems related to the oxygen supply in the medical system, I have called for the development of a mechanism to provide hospitals with two or even three sources of oxygen, as it is natural to have backup solutions, given that many health facilities currently have only one source," he said, Agerpres informs.
The chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Florin Citu, said on Thursday that in the discussions with Social Democratic Party (PSD) representatives many things were found that unite the two parties, but he specified that the Liberals will present in the party the talks with Save Romania Union (USR) as well, and then make a decision, agerpres reports.

"I think we have found many things tonight that can unite us, for example the situation today. We have a crisis in health, energy and for that we need a stable government. If we manage to do this with PSD, it is OK," Citu said at Parliament after the meeting of the PNL negotiation team with the PSD representatives.

He stressed that the decision will be made in the PNL."We present the two options with pluses and minuses and then we make a decision," Citu said.
The General Inspectorate of the Border Police (IGPF) informs on Thursday morning that 43 foreign citizens who did not meet the legal requirements were denied entry in the country, in the last 24 hours, and 10 Romanian citizens were also not allowed to leave the country for various legal reasons.

The Hungarian border was the most crossed point in the last 24 hours, according to a press release from IGPF sent to AGERPRES.

According to the cited source, approximately 86,900 people, Romanian and foreign citizens, with over 32,400 means of transportation (of which 15,300 trucks) have carried out the verification formalities in the last 24 hours.

The entry point was crossed by approximately 41,600 people with 15,000 means of transportation, and 45,300 people with 17,400 means of transportation have crossed the exit point.

The most crossed borders were:

- The border with Hungary - approximately 26,500 people and 14,500 means of transportation.

- The aerial border - approximately 24,900 people

- The border with the Republic of Moldova - approximately 15,000 people and 5,400 means of transportation.

Regarding specific activities, in areas of competence - at crossing points and the green border - in the last 24 hours the border police have identified 43 illegal misdeeds (16 infractions and 27 misdemeanors) committed by both Romanian and foreign citizens.

Undeclared goods which were to be smuggled into the country were discovered, independently or in collaboration with other staff, exceeding the customs ceiling allowed or suspected to be counterfeit, in total amount of approximately 143,166 lei.
The position of President Klaus Iohannis to call the parties to consultations when a parliamentary majority will crystallize is a correct approach, but at the same time, a large majority must have constitutional reform and a long-term perspective as desideratum, Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) leader Kelemen Hunor told AGERPRES on Thursday.

"It is a correct approach, after two failed attempts, for the president to wait until the parties find a coalition formula. So, from this point of view, it is absolutely understandable that President Iohannis goes on this option, because both with Ciolos and Ciuca he has not managed to get the Government through Parliament. But for a majority, of course, in today's conditions, it respite is needed, because no matter which of the two possible options you put on the table, there is there is a mistrust between the partners, there are adversities, there is a "recent history" and, of course, you have to look for something in common, a more consistent, long-term desideratum, so that you can overcome the recent past. And this is true for PNL - USR relationship, and for the PSD - PNL relationship, so a governing program, a more consistent desideratum, can make a majority over two thirds. It means that you have to do a revision of the Constitution, you have to do some constitutional reforms and you have to see how you can ensure continuity in the long run," Kelemen Hunor explained.

According to the chairman of UDMR, if one does not make a majority with which the Constitution can be revised, then of course there must be a very detailed governing program, with concrete actions and procedures for the functioning of the coalition.On Thursday, President Klaus Iohannis announced that he would call the parties to consultations when a parliamentary majority crystallizes."I will wait with the formal consultations until, from the party discussions, a majority assumed by the parties that will want to propose a government crystallizes. Only when this majority is assumed, will I convene consultations for the formation of the new government," the head of state said at the Cotroceni Palace. He said he did not accept approaches on minority governments.
This weekend, His Eminence Ioan Casian joined the Orthodox Romanians of Windsor, in the Canadian province of Ontario, for the 103rd anniversary of the St. George and Holy Hierarch Andrei Saguna Cathedral, basilica.ro reports.

On Saturday, the Bishop of Canada participated in the Vigil office and, on Sunday, he celebrated the Divine Liturgy together with Parish Priest Dragos Giulea.

The hierarch told the faithful about the importance of Sunday as the Day of Resurrection and bout the real presence of Christ in the life of the Church: In the Divine Liturgy we have materially, visibly, we could say, Christ present in the life of the Church in the Holy Eucharist.

The bishop said the goal of the Divine Liturgy is communion with Christ through the Holy Eucharist.

The Divine Liturgy is not a service of praise in which we come to hear beautiful songs. It is a Sacrament in which we first listen to the Word of God, and the second part, after Cherubikon, which is a more concrete part, the gifts of bread and wine carried on the Holy Altar, due to the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the prayers of the clergy and believers, are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, said Bishop Ioan Casian.

Next to a quarter of a million Romanians live in Canada, of which almost 100.000 have unique ethnic origins, which means they do not come from mixed families.

The Romanian Orthodox Cathedral St. George and Holy Hierarch Andrei Saguna was built by the families of the first Romanians who emigrated to Canada at the beginning of the last century.
The Secretariat of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy announced last month the winners of the international photo contest Hagia Sophia. The churches of the Wisdom of God in history and in the world.

The Grand Prize for the Ancient Churches category goes to the American Larry Angier, who sent a black-and-white series of photos of an old church in Ohrid, North Macedonia. The Grand Prize for the Modern Churches category has been won by Pole Kamil Cywoniuk.

A total number of 140 amateur and professional photographers from 21 countries participated in the contest. Their applications were evaluated by a jury made of 11 persons: photographers, theologians and communication experts from the Orthodox world  among them, Aurelian Iftimiu, Director of the Basilica News Agency of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate.

This years Contest was announced in January 2021 for two categories of Churches dedicated to the Wisdom of God: a) Ancient Churches, erected until 1907 and b) Modern Churches, erected from 1907 until today.

Exterior, St. Sophia Church in Ohrid, North Macedonia (9th century). It was turned into a mosque during the Ottoman rule in the area. Photo: Larry Angier, USA (Grand Prize, Ancient Churches category)

The contest was organized in partnership with Orthphoto.net, an online global community of amateur and professional photographers interested in Orthodox Christianity.

The results of the Contest will be posted to the website of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy and all eight winners will be awarded cash prizes amounting to 100-500 Euros.

The contest is one of the three initiatives undertaken by the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy to promote the Churches dedicated to the Wisdom of God, in the context of the arbitrary decision of the Turkish government to turn the Hagia Sophia Church of Constantinople and the Monastery of Chora into mosques.

The other two initiatives concern the publication of a special Volume with the same topic, as well as the formation of a relevant cultural route and the submission in the future of a request for its proclamation by the Council of Europe.

The Orthodox church dedicated to the Wisdom of God in Bialystok, Poland. Photo by Kamil Cywoniuk, Poland (Grand Prize, Modern Churches category)

The Hagia Sophia Basilica was built by Emperor Justinian in Constantinople in the 6th century. Its building started 40 days after the famous Nika revolt and was completed in only five years.

The style was revolutionary in its age, becoming the Byzantine architectural style, which was emulated both in the Western and in the Eastern parts of the world: the Gothic and Islamic styles are both derived from it.

In Hagia Sophia Basilica the Divine Liturgy was officiated without interruption for more than nine centuries, until the fall of Constantinople (1453).
National Liberal Party (PNL) First Deputy Chairman Rares Bogdan said on Thursday that "there is no way" PNL will be relinquishing their prime minister position, Agerpres informs.

"Today we will talk to PSD [Social Democratic Party]. There is no way PNL will give up the position of prime minister, but otherwise, first of all, even if it is difficult for me to talk to PSD - and I'm not hiding that I don't like them very much - I'm still a reasonable man who knows that parliamentary majorities are arithmetic. They have 157 lawmakers, we have 115-119. We will address each issue one by one. Certainly, if we keep our individuality and if we manage to come up with a very clear reform plan for Romania, we will find the best solution. From my point of view, the first option remains unquestionably USR [Save Romania Union], but if arithmetically we cannot mount a majority, then we have to talk," said Bogdan at the PNL headquarters.

The PNL leader added that Wednesday's meeting with USR leaders was an extremely good one giving hope that the ruling coalition could be rebuilt.

Bogdan said he was absolutely convinced that President Klaus Iohannis would hold consultations with parliamentary parties and formations when a majority was mounted.
The chairman of Social Democratic Party (PSD), Marcel Ciolacu, declared on Thursday that he will go to the PNL negotiations with the measures that the Social Democrats consider as urgent, reiterating that PSD will have a proposal for PM when they will go to the Cotroceni Presidential Palace for consultations.

"For this meeting we will go with the governing program, we will go with the measures that we consider urgent and we are actually optimistic that we must come with a solution and we consider that the Romanian people have had enough of the political class, without having any solutions until this time," Ciolacu said, at PSD headquarters.

Asked if he will go with PSD's proposal for PM to these talks, Ciolacu replied : "We will go to Cotroceni with the proposal for PM, that way, it will be constitutional".

Asked about how he thinks the talks will turn out, given that President Klaus Iohannis conveyed to the Liberals that the proposal for PM must come from the National Liberal Party (PNL), Ciolacu replied : "I do not know these details. You go to Cotroceni, to consultations, with the position of prime minister".

Furthermore, the PSD leader said that talks with PNL were focused on urgent measures.

"We did not have any discussion about any position, all talks were focused on urgent measures that need to be taken," Ciolacu said.

Asked about what he will do if president Klaus Iohannis will appoint a PM from PNL, Ciolacu specified: "I am sure that Mr Iohannis and I will respect Romania's Constitution".

"I consider that we, as well as the president, are obliged to respect the Constitution".
The 'Radu Stanca' National Theater in Sibiu has four shows included in the 31st National Theater Festival taking place between November 6 and 14, 2021 in online format, the cultural institution announced in a release, Agerpres informs.

"'Autobahn', by Neil LaBute, directed by Andreea and Andrei Grosu, cinematography and editing Alexandru Condurache, set design by Vladimir Turturica, was selected in the Creation section and will be broadcast on November 9 at 21 hrs on www. fnt.ro. 'The Iran Conference' by Ivan Vyrypaev, director Bobi Pricop, set design Oana Micu, is featured in the same section and is scheduled for November 10 at 19, on www.fnt.ro. 'Tom and Jerry 2.0', an adaptation of Rick Cleveland's 'Jerry and Tom', directed by Florin Piersic jr., set design by Tudor Prodan, is part of the Recreation section and can be viewed on November 13 at 17 on www.fnt. 'Vazduh/High Skies', a show by Victor Olahut with texts by George Gordon Byron, John M. Hull and Liviu Oros, is included in the Festival's Performing Installations section and is scheduled for November 12, at 21, on www.fnt.ro," the release states.

The shows will be accessible to the public for 48 hours.

"I am glad that the 'Radu Stanca' National Theater in Sibiu will be present at the 31st edition of the National Theater Festival with four shows that were mounted for in-person performance, but also for online broadcasting. This 31st edition honors the memory of the great late artist Ion Caramitru, the founder of this Festival, of the National Union of Romanian Theatres - UNITER, and UNITER Galas and whose absence, but also presence are so strong. Here, in Sibiu, we dedicate these shows to him, and I as an actor take a bow to the professor I've had for 3 years at the National University of Theater and Cinematography, when I learned a lot from this gifted man. Also, we hope that the solidarity of Romanian creators will fully show in spreading beauty, marvel and joy to all those who have been through so many hardships during this period, to the families that lost beloved people in this fight against the disease and helplessness. A heartfelt wish of good health and strength to everyone, for them to be able to enjoy beauty," declared the general manager of the 'Radu Stanca' National Theater Sibiu, actor Constantin Chiriac.

The 31st edition of the National Theater Festival running online between November 6 -14 on www.fnt.ro includes shows from the country and abroad, visual installations, conferences, book presentations, special sections. The producers of the event are the UNITER Association and the Romanian Television Broadcaster, co-producer is the Bucharest City Hall through the Cultural Center of Bucharest. The Festival is a cultural project funded by the Ministry of Culture and having the Radio Romania Broadcasting Corporation as traditional partner.
The University of Oradea though the Oradea-Chisinau Silviu Dragomir Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies is co-organiser of the 5th edition of the now virtual International Conference "Latinity, Romanity, Romanianness," taking place November 5-6, Agerpres informs.

According to a press statement of the university, the other organisers of the scientific event are the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the State University of Chisinau and the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies of the Universita degli Studi in Padua, Italy.

The University of Oradea is not only a co-organiser of the event, but it also has two officials on the scientific board of the event and three researchers who will present the fruit of their research in one of the sections of the conference.

It is about Dean of the Faculty of History, International Affairs, Political Sciences and Communication Sciences Gabriel Moisa, who will deliver a paper on Mihail G. Samarineanul as a militant for consolidating the Romanian identity at the western border of Romania in the interwar period, and Director of the Centre for Doctoral Studies in History at the University of Oradea Sorin Sipos, who will talk about how Romanians in the Romanian Principalities were perceived in the descriptions of foreign writers in 1710-1810.

Roland Olah, a doctoral student at the University of Oradea, will also deliver a paper the developments in illegal immigration of Romanians in 1980-1989 as told in personal stories and reflected in statistics.

At the beginning of the conference, historian Valeriu Mutruc will release his book on agrarian life in Basarabia in the first decades of the Russian imperial rule.
Chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR) Dacian Ciolos said on Thursday that the party still rules out a coalition government led by the National Liberal Party (PNL) leader Florin Citu.

He told private broadcaster Digi 24 that the conditions under which the USR could be part of a coalition government were "very clear". Asked if USR would accept the rebuilding of the coalition with a Government led by Florin Citu, Ciolos replied that, as far as Save Romania Union is concerned, this is a closed issue.

"This is a joke. Let's put an end to these things. I keep hearing these discussions. Let us end this topic, which from our point of view has already been closed for some time. I suggest we talk about serious things, the government programme, what we do together, how we structure the way the coalition works. This is a closed topic, it is being reheated every time. Let us move on to serious things, if we want to get out of the crisis. (...) Yesterday [Wednesday, ed.n.] ( ...) we agreed together that we would leave the subject of the prime minister for later. We were very clear that we agreed for the prime minister to come from PNL. Other than that, USR's position in relation to a new prime minister, in case the coalition is rebuilt, is well-known," he said.

Ciolos mentioned that USR will engage into negotiations only after PNL states "very clearly" that it wants to rebuild the coalition.

"We want to know as soon as possible what the PNL decides. Because, well, discussions have been going on. We have seen, for a few weeks, they seem undecided. They keep going from side to side, they don't really know what they want in the party. I believe it is currently important for the PNL to make a very clear decision, with data and information on the table. They know what our expectations are from a possible re-entry to government. (...) We have been patient for a few weeks now. I think that Romanians, Romania has run out of patience. From this point of view, the PNL must assume a responsibility not towards us, USR, but towards the people who elected them and gave them a mandate to go in Parliament to make reforms," Dacian Ciolos explained.

According to him, USR would like solutions to be implemented to get out of the health crisis and that of energy prices, but also reforms to solve Romania's "structural problems". In Ciolos' opinion, such structural problems "cannot be solved" by a PNL-PSD coalition.

"The country has blown to smithereens by PSD [Social Democrat Party]. It has not solved any problems so far. So, PNL has to choose. USR was very clear in its expectations: a very clearly assumed reform plan both in terms of timing and content; the budget for next year to be very clear and realistic, according to the priorities, a very clearly defined way of functioning of the coalition, both as regards decisions in the Government and in Parliament, in order to avoid, in the future, subordinating the coalition to the personal humors of the prime minister or to any another politician member of the government," Ciolos further said.
At 1-800-Flowers.com, which includes brands like Harry & David and Wolfermans Bakery, spokesperson Kathleen Waugh said that many items  including baked goods, candy and pears  originate from the United States, so they dont face international delays.

In an email, Waugh explained that the company expects strong demand this season and has worked to prepare for it. Last-minute shoppers can also send gift notifications electronically, and the recipient can accept or exchange it before it is sent.

3. Handmade arts and crafts

At Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade goods, many sellers make items from home with supplies they already have on hand or that are locally sourced. Shoppers can also message sellers to confirm the items are available for timely shipping.

Brandi Ann Garcia Salinas, who runs the WhimsyTreeLane shop at Etsy along with her husband Rodrigo, makes wooden toys, including peg dolls and nesting dolls. International stocks dont affect us because we are selling what is already available, she says. If some supplies are slightly delayed, as they can be sometimes, then she just shifts what she sells, such as selling a different size doll that she can make based on the supplies she already has in stock.
SAN FRANCISCO  Earlier this year, Amazon.com Inc. easily defeated a historic union drive at a Bessemer warehouse in Alabama. However, with another vote imminent, the online retailer does not leave anything to chance

According to interviews and documents obtained by Reuters, Amazon has intensified its campaign at the warehouse over the past few weeks. They have forced thousands of employees to attend meetings and posted signs in bathrooms criticizing labor groups.

It is an indication that Amazon is sticking to its aggressive playbook. In August, a U.S. National Labor Relations Board hearing officer said the companys conduct around the previous vote interfered with the Bessemer union election. An NLRB regional directors decision on whether to order a new vote is forthcoming. Amazon has denied wrongdoing and said it wanted employees voices to be heard.

Still, the moves to discourage unionization ahead of any second election, previously unreported, show how Amazon is fighting representation at its U.S. worksites.

An uptick in labor activity since workers in April rejected joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), including organizing drives in New York and Canada, has pushed Amazon to react.
Todays commitments will help to shift whole continents on their journey to phase out coal," said Dave Jones of the energy think tank Ember.

Poland is the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, which is set to phase it out as early as 2030. While the Polish government had previously agreed to end coal use by 2049, the new pledge would bring this deadline forward by at least a decade.

Finally the Polish government has accepted what is a no brainer: The time of coal has ended, said Joanna Flisowska, a climate expert with Greenpeace Poland, while adding that this was only the first step.

Ukraine, the third-biggest coal consumer in Europe, is also bringing forward its coal deadline, from 2050 to 2035.

The progress on coal being shown at COP26 demonstrates that the conditions are ripe for a global coal exit, said Leo Roberts, a senior researcher at the environmental think tank E3G.

We now need to see the incoming massive scale-up in clean energy finance made available quickly to ensure all countries can confidently move from coal to clean, he added.
Textron declined to respond to questions, but in a statement said it was obligated to comply with Bidens order and was taking steps to do so.

Employees who are unable to receive the COVID-19 vaccination due to a medical condition or sincerely held religious belief are being provided an opportunity to request an accommodation from this requirement, Textron said.

Spirit AeroSystems did not respond to a request for comment.

Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes last week warned the U.S. defense firm will lose several thousand employees because of the mandate.

A group representing FedEx Corp., United Parcel Service Inc. and other cargo carriers said it would be virtually impossible to have all their workforces vaccinated by the deadline.

Mercedes-Benz USA, the U.S. unit of German carmaker Daimler AG, which is not a U.S. government contractor, told employees in an October email that proof of vaccination against COVID-19 would become a condition of employment beginning Jan. 4.

The carmaker said it implemented the move in anticipation of a separate U.S. government vaccine mandate that would apply to businesses with at least 100 employees, affecting some 80 million workers nationwide.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY  On Wednesday, the day after the COVID vaccine was approved for children ages 5-11, St. Louis-area officials were still working out the details about where and when shots will be offered. Access to appointments was spotty.

Pharmacy chains, including CVS and Walgreens, were the first to open appointments Wednesday, with slots as early as the weekend. But many of those spots were quickly snapped up by eager families.

A Walgreens spokesman said in an email Wednesday that more appointment times would open as more vaccine arrives.

St. Louis County opened appointments for a Saturday clinic from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the countys John C. Murphy Health Center, 6121 North Hanley Road in Berkeley. Those slots also quickly filled. The county only received 300 doses from the state, but said they were told to expect at least 3,000 more Friday, health department spokesman Christopher Ave said. Ave said if Fridays doses arrive, they will be used for walk-ins Saturday.

Yesterday a critical step was taken to help us get past this pandemic, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said at a news conference Wednesday, calling it great news.
While most states expanded Medicaid in 2014, no state legislature has adopted it since Virginias in 2018. Since 2017, six states have enacted expansion as a result of ballot initiatives, most recently Missouri.

Those that havent adopted it are in the South, save for Wyoming, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Wisconsin already covers adults on Medicaid up to the federal poverty level but has not expanded it to match the 138% of that federal level called for under the ACA.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp and other GOP leaders have sought federal approval for a partial Medicaid expansion, which would require work or other activities for eligibility. But the Biden administration has so far resisted this approach.

R.D. Williams, CEO of Hendry Regional Medical Center in Clewiston, Florida, said the Democrats plan would cover about 60% of the uninsured who use his hospital, which serves one of the poorest parts of the state. It will definitely have an impact, he said.

Expanding coverage, he said, would help many patients better manage their health by getting access to primary care doctors and specialists. Medicaid enrollees make up 25% of Williams patients, while more than 30% have no coverage. Our largest payer group is the uninsured, he said.
The Dream Machine team used Instagram and TikTok to share Lylas story and fundraising efforts. Overnight, the donations skyrocketed from around $50,000 to more than $115,000. Lyla's mother, Heather, was out of town for a work event when a co-worker showed her an update on the account.

Heather collapsed on the ground and started bawling.

I couldn't believe, after what had felt like an impossible struggle, someone had seen it and said we are going to fix it, she said. Lyla has been asking when they can leave for the Childrens Hospital in Cincinnati.

Meanwhile, Heather had asked UnitedHealth to share the name of the companys doctor who denied Lylas medical care after speaking to the specialists urging this treatment. McCarty said she has only received the name of the medical director, even though that was partially redacted. UHCs spokeswoman sent a release form this afternoon for Heather to sign, so they can comment on Lylas case. Heather says she plans to send that as soon as she returns to St. Louis.

She wants to know the company's reasoning for denying her daughter the care she needs, and this may be the only way she can get an answer.

Jabaley isnt the only one to draw attention to Lylas case.
Think about what in the Disney universe appeals to you. While animated movies are the driving force behind the media the company produces, there is a wealth of television shows and music, as well. Keep in mind that the more popular a character, media or television show is, the more pieces molded after it will be produced for the market.

Legitimate vs. fake

With popularity comes fakes. This is true of nearly any product on the market. As a company, Disney partners with a slew of retailers to sell merchandise. That said, fakes do exist. Whats the easiest way to learn whether a retailer is a Disney-licensing partner? Ask them. If quality is your main concern, read reviews about the product, even if youre shopping in person. And once youre able to get your hands on the Disney Christmas ornament, examine it closely. Poorly executed construction like glue thats not adhering and uneven seams are red flags. This indicates that the piece might be poorly made, making it an ornament you dont want on your Christmas tree.

Single ornament vs. set
ST. LOUIS  In the final days before the Nov. 2, 1948, election, most newspapers and pollsters predicted an easy victory for Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York. President Harry S Truman gave one of his last "give 'em hell" rallies to an enthusiastic crowd at Kiel Auditorium, but the bookies gave 6-to-1 odds to Dewey.

Truman went home to Independence, Mo., to await the votes. Newspapers prepared for the obvious.

And then Truman won. Two days later, on Nov. 4, he had a delicious opportunity to gig the press when his train pulled into St. Louis Union Station for a brief rally on his way back to Washington.

As the photographers jostled at the end of Track 35, a beaming Truman held court from the open platform of his special car. Former U.S. Rep. C. Arthur Anderson of Mehlville passed up a copy of an early edition of the Chicago Tribune with the famous headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman." Truman mugged with the Tribune in his hands. Flashbulbs popped. Supporters roared with laughter.

"That's one for the book," Truman said.
UPDATED at noon Thursday with comments from the father of woman charged, and details from charging document

EAST ST. LOUIS  An East St. Louis mother has been charged in St. Clair County in the deaths of her five children in an apartment fire in August.

Sabrina M. Dunigan, 34, was charged Wednesday with five counts of endangering the life or health of a child, a felony charge. Online court records indicate there are pending grand jury actions in the case. A judge set bail at $75,000. She is not yet in custody.

Dunigans five children, all younger than 10, died in the apartment fire Aug. 6. The blaze was reported about 3 a.m. on the second floor of an apartment building at 560 North 29th Street, after Dunigan had gone out. Authorities allege she left them unattended.

Duinigan could not be reached for comment but her father, Greg Dunigan, spoke to the Post-Dispatch about the charges on Thursday. He said he can't believe authorities would charge her with a crime after everything she lost.
MARYLAND HEIGHTS  Four teenage boys, as young as 13, were in custody Thursday after trying to break into a police patrol vehicle and leading officers on a pursuit onto Interstate 270, authorities said.

Maryland Heights Police Chief Bill Carson said the boys were in a stolen car that crashed near I-270 and Interstate 70.

One boy, who ran off into some woods after the crash, had minor injuries after being arrested with the help of a police dog, Carson said.

All four boys are from the St. Louis area and were turned over to juvenile authorities. The oldest was 17.

It began about 4:50 a.m., when Maryland Heights police were told that someone was tampering with a St. Louis County patrol vehicle that was parked in a Maryland Heights subdivision.

"They tried to break into it" but did not get inside, Sgt. Tracy Panus of the St. Louis County police said. Panus said the marked patrol car was parked outside the officer's residence. The vehicle was locked, and Panus said that no weapon, nor anything else, was stolen from it.

After trying to get into the officer's car, they moved on to see if another car was unlocked, Panus added.
Kunce said we need to break the link between massive corporations and politics. We need abolish corporate PACs, and we need to end Citizens United. That is how we get things like this done, alright? Citizens United refers to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that the First Amendment bars the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, unions and other groups.

Shepard said he would press two Democratic holdouts on their positions.

The first thing I would do is ask (Arizona Sen.) Kyrsten Sinema and (West Virginia Sen.) Joe Manchin what it is that they would accept in a bill, he said, so that we can get the thing passed and prove to the electorate that when we have power as Democrats were very capable of governing.

In a 50-50 Senate, we need to elect more Democrats, Sifton said. We are absolutely at the mercy of folks who hold votes 49 and 50. Thats the reality.

He said failing to act sure didnt help the governors race in Virginia this week, in which Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a state that had been trending blue.
An assistant attorney general once told Ramsey of a wrongly convicted man trying to regain his freedom: Its just a case. She responded that it was not, that the incarcerated man was a person with a family.

It says to me that they have taken the humanity out of what they do, Ramsey told The Star. To see someone act so jovial and cavalier about someone who had been wrongfully convicted was very upsetting.

Post-conviction attorneys said they fear the attorney generals tactics in Stricklands case  such as filing motions that caused delays  will dissuade other prosecutors, especially ones with fewer employees than Baker, from utilizing the new law.

OBrien said the battle to free Strickland will have a chilling effect on other prosecutors. He has spoken to some who say, I dont know what I can do or whether what I do will get overturned or challenged. Im not sure what my power is in this situation.

Exonerees across the state are also following Stricklands case. One of them, Josh Kezer, said an attorney general is charged to serve every victim  including those of injustice, who have had their freedom taken away and been exposed to rape and murder behind bars.
ST. LOUIS  Health officials are investigating a state mental health facility in Farmington after a confirmed case of Legionnaires disease.

Angeline Stanislaus, chief medical director of adult services for the Missouri Department of Mental Health, said the case was confirmed Wednesday, and health officials were on-site Thursday to check the water supply.

Thats our challenge today, Stanislaus told officials Thursday at a Missouri Health Commission meeting.

Asked for more details, Debra Walker, spokeswoman for the Department of Mental Health, said the case stems from a patient at Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center in Farmington. She said the facility was informed Wednesday that Legionnaires disease was found in a patient who had been transported to the hospital.

At this time, the individual is still in the hospital, Walker said by email, adding that the 66-year-old man was in stable condition.

Walker said the Department of Health and Senior Services was at the Farmington facility, conducting extensive testing of the water systems. She said the same agency is providing guidance to the facility to implement Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico already has among the highest U.S. unemployment rates and state Republican legislative leaders said Thursday that they fear President Joe Bidens plan to require vaccinations or COVID-19 testing for large employers could do more damage to the job market of the poverty-stricken state.

New Mexico Senate Republican Leader Greg Baca said the mandate is sowing more distrust of the federal government and he urged Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to push back against what he called federal overreach.

We are already facing a significant worker shortage, he told The Associated Press in an email. "This excessive policy may very well be the final nail in the coffin for many more local businesses.

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements made public Thursday call for workers of companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Failure to comply could result in penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

Federal officials also left open the possibility of expanding the mandate to smaller employers.

More than a dozen Republican attorneys general in other states have said they would fight the requirements.
As border crossings soared beyond expectations, Amy Pope joined the White House staff in March after having advised Biden on immigration during the campaign and working closely with him in 2014 when he was tasked by Obama with the unaccompanied children on the Texas border. Her mandate was to bridge internal rifts between advocacy- and more enforcement-minded aides while her nomination to the second-highest position at the International Organization for Migration awaited approval from other member nations at the U.N. agency.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS

Some White House and Homeland Security officials were frustrated by how woefully unprepared the Department of Health and Human Services was to handle unaccompanied children. As required by law, it was supposed to take custody within 72 hours and then place them in a home, usually with a parent or close relative.

Participants in early interdepartmental meetings said Health and Human Services officials raised few warnings. On Feb. 7, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened a large complex of white tents in the Rio Grande Valley, cramming more than 500 children into spaces designed for 32 under COVID-19 guidelines. Thick plastic curtains replaced chain-link fences used as barriers in the Obama and Trump administrations, but massive overcrowding was the same or worse.
As this fight likely winds its way through the courts, polluting fossil fuels are still powering much of New Englands grid and polluting our communities and planet in the process, he said.

In Maine, voters signaled their disapproval of the project Tuesday with about 59% voting to spike the project. The law would go into effect 30 days after the secretary of state and governor sign off, putting the date in early January, Didisheim said.

The referendum and lawsuit arent the only factors at play when it comes to whether the project moves forward.

Parties are awaiting a Maine Supreme Court decision on 1-mile portion of state land that is part of the project, and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection is deciding whether to revoke the projects permit.

Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who supported the project, said the projects failure to proceed would be a lost opportunity to advance the clean energy goals that are vital to combating climate change."

In Massachusetts, which proposed the project to meet its clean energy goals, the administration of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker will be working with Avangrid and regional partners on the path to securing more affordable, renewable energy for Massachusetts, said Craig Gilvarg, communications director for the states office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
While World War II ended in 1945 and the Cold War ended in 1989, the United States is still paying billions of dollars per year for the disposal of the nuclear waste produced by the atomic weapons that played a big role in ending those conflicts. The biggest expense is dealing with a massive volume of liquid wastes left over from the production of plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

While the liquid wastes stored in 177 underground tanks will take decades of work and hundreds of billions of dollars to clean, efforts to secure the nine plutonium reactors are much closer to completion.

The last two reactors, shut down in 1970 and 1971, are about to enter the cocooning stage, when they are covered with steel and cement to prevent radioactivity from escaping into the environment, French said.

The cocoons are expected to last about 75 years, by which time the radioactivity inside will have dramatically decreased and there presumably will be a plan for final disposition of the remaining parts, French said.

Every five years, workers enter the reactor building to make sure there are no leaks or rodent or bird infestations, he said.
Spokeswoman Cain did not say how Facebook was made aware of the Ethiopia post, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister made as Tigray forces took control of key cities over the weekend that put them in position to move down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa.

Alarmed, Abiys government this week declared a national state of emergency with sweeping powers of detention and military conscription. The prime minister repeated his call to bury the Tigray forces in public comments on Wednesday as he and other officials marked one year of war.

Meanwhile, Ethiopias highly polarized social media this week saw a number of high-profile posts targeting ethnic Tigrayans and even suggesting they be placed in concentration camps.

Thousands of people have been killed in the war between Ethiopian and allied forces and the Tigray ones who long dominated the national government before Abiy took office. The United Nations human rights chief said Wednesday they had received reports of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans being rounded up for detention in recent months.
NEW YORK  Tin Tin Wei used to toil 11 hours a day, six days week sewing jackets at a factory in Myanmar. But she hasnt stitched a single garment since a coup in February.

Instead, the 26-year-old union organizer has been protesting in the streets  and trying to bring international pressure to bear on the newly installed junta.

Her union, the Federation of Garment Workers in Myanmar, and others have been staging general strikes to protest the coup and are urging major international brands like H&M and Mango, which source some of their products in Myanmar, to denounce the takeover and put more pressure on factories to protect workers from being fired or harassed  or worse arrested and killed for participating in the protests.

If we go back to work and if we work for the system, our future is in the darkness, and we will lose our labor rights and even our human rights, said Tin Tin Wei, who has been a clothing factory worker since age 13.

The response from companies so far has been mixed. Only a few have said they would curtail their business in Myanmar. Most others have put out statements that stop short of taking action, saying that while they denounce the coup, they want to support the workers by providing them with jobs.

Tin Tin Weis union and the Confederation of Trade Unions in Myanmar have also been demanding comprehensive international sanctions  not the targeted sanctions some have imposed  to bring down the junta that ousted the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

As international sanctions were dropped in the mid-2010s when Myanmar began shifting toward democracy after decades of military rule and started to set some labor standards, Western brands looking to diversify their sourcing were attracted to the countrys cheap labor. Broad sanctions now would cripple that burgeoning clothing industry, which has been growing rapidly in recent years before the coronavirus pandemic cut orders and eliminated jobs.

Comprehensive sanctions could wreck the livelihoods of more than 600,000 garment workers, but some union leaders say they would rather see massive layoffs than endure military oppression.

I need to do some sort of sacrifice in the short term for the long term for our next generation," said Tin Tin Wei, who is the sole breadwinner in her family and has been receiving food donations.

The civil disobedience movement, or CDM as it is known, has included railway workers, truck drivers, hospital, bank employees and many others determined to stifle the economy.

The aim is no participation with the junta at all," Sein Htay, a migrant labor organizer who returned to Myanmar from Thailand said in an emailed comment. We believe that CDM is really working. So we are motivated to continue."

But violent crackdowns by Myanmar security forces against protesters including garment workers are escalating. Troops shot and killed at least 38 people Sunday in an industrial suburb of Yangon  an area dominated by clothing factories  after Chinese-owned factories were set on fire. Tens of thousands of workers and their families were seen fleeing the area in the days that followed.

The garment industry plays a key role in Myanmars economy, particularly the export sector. Roughly a third of Myanmars total merchandising exports come from textiles and apparel, worth $4.59 billion in 2018. Thats up from 9%, or $900 million, in 2012 as international sanctions were dropped, according to the latest data from the European Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar.

Myanmars apparel exports mostly go to the European Union, Japan and South Korea because of favorable trade agreements. The U.S. accounts for 5.5% of Myanmars exports, with clothing, footwear and luggage representing the bulk of that, according to garment trade expert Sheng Lu.

But Myanmar still accounts for a tiny share  less than 0.1%  in U.S. and European Union fashion companies total sourcing networks. And there are plenty of other alternatives for brands.

Despite this, many are taking a wait-and-see stance when it comes to any long-term decisions. Experts note its not easy to shift products to a different country, nor is it easy to return to Myanmar once companies leave. Furthermore, some argue Western companies play a role in reducing poverty by giving workers in Myanmar opportunities to earn an income while also helping to improve labor standards there.

Factory working conditions were already poor before the February coup, but the labor unions had made some inroads and gave workers hope. And while the National League for Democracy, the party that was ousted in the takeover, wasnt proactively protecting unions, it didnt persecute or crack down on them, says Andrew Tillett-Saks, a labor organizer in Southeast Asia who previously was based in Myanmar.

Asian brands have so far remained quiet about the turmoil. The American Apparel & Footwear Association joined other groups like the Fair Labor Association in condemning the coup while urging members to honor existing financial contracts with factories there.

L.L. Bean CEO Steve Smith said he was saddened by the situation in Myanmar, which he visited in 2019. Bean uses several factories and suppliers for three product lines.

Smith said theres backup production elsewhere, but its important not to abandon the country.

Other companies have been more forceful in their response. For instance, Hennes & Mauritz and The Benetton Group have suspended all new orders from factories in Myanmar.

Although we refrain from taking any immediate action regarding our long-term presence in the country, we have at this point paused placing new orders with our suppliers, H&M said in a statement. This is due to our concern for the safety of people and an unpredictable situation limiting our ability to operate in the country.

Spanish brand Mango said it would work with its trade and union partners, globally and locally in Myanmar, to ensure theres no retaliation against any factory worker or union leader exercising their civil or union rights.

Moe Sandar Myint, chairwoman of the Federation of Garment Workers in Myanmar who organized small strikes on factory floors that later moved to the streets, said brands arent doing enough to help workers. She wants to see concrete action."

Nearly 70% of the garment factories in Myanmar are owned by foreigners, according to the European Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar, and a good chunk of them are Chinese-owned. International brands using the factories dont directly hire the workers, often depending on a web of contractors and sub-contractors to produce goods for them.

But companies have an enormous amount of influence in the industry," Tillett-Saks said. They hold all the power over the supplier."

Tin Tin Wei says escalating intimidation by the military is scaring some employees at her factory. Located in the Hlaing Thayar industrial zone, it unionized five years ago. Out of 900 workers employed at the factory, 700 initially joined the protests but that number dropped to 500 by early March, she said.

Moe Sandar Myint, whos in hiding and moving from one safe house to another after the police raided her home in early February, said she will keep fighting.

I cannot allow my generation and my next generation to live through another military leadership, she said. This is unacceptable.

Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writers Grant Peck in Bangkok and Dave Sharp in Freeport, Maine, contributed to the report.
In effect, the high court ruled that without Missouri state action through its court system, the homeowners agreement becomes unenforceable and meaningless. Thus, the Shelleys had the right to remain in their house, which they had purchased and occupied in good faith.

The key to the holding, and directly relevant to the Texas abortion law, was that the courts and their enforcement powers constituted an arm of the state in the exactly the same way as the executive and legislative branches, and, as such, were subject to the 14th Amendments ringing provision: No State shall  deny to any person  the equal protection of the laws.

So how does this play with respect to the Texas abortion law? Just this: All of the careful and elaborately constructed provisions deputizing citizens, rather than state prosecutors, to go after abortion providers and supporters necessarily requires the concurrence and actions by the Texas courts to enforce and realize the laws drastic anti-abortion mission. The courts must be complicit in every aspect of the Texas law, without which the law becomes unenforceable and meaningless.
The Philippines recently took delivery of 70 Chinese military trucks and after three months of use, the soldiers report that the Chinese vehicles perform as well as American or Japanese models and have more features useful to military users. The contract for the 70 vehicles was open to competitive bids, which were submitted by Chinese, South Korean and Russian firms. All bidders had excellent reputations for building vehicles like the latest American models and selling them for less. This was applied to trucks as well as tactical vehicles. Military trucks are usually militarized versions of successful commercial designs. China borrowed freely from both commercial and military foreign vehicle designs as they rapidly developed a major vehicle manufacturing industry in the last 40 years.

China openly copies a lot of foreign military equipment designs, often in many variations because multiple manufacturers get involved. While the Chinese military thought the American hummer (HMMWV) was a useful design it was not adopted widely. The basic tactical vehicle in the Chinese military is the BJ2022 (Brave Warrior or Yongshi). The BJ2022 entered service in 2007 after being developed as a joint venture between a Chinese firm and Chrysler. Because of that American connection, the BJ2022 was legally based on the Jeep Cherokee, but a bit larger. BJ2022 comes in two versions, with one being a bit longer and serving as something like to the old American  ton truck. Most of the BJ2022 are basically much updated World War II American jeep designs that borrow much from SUV and four-wheel drive innovations. The basic version can carry a payload of 500 kg (half ton) and seats four. The longer version carries 750 kg and seats up to eight. These are four-wheel drive vehicles have manual transmissions and are mainly used on roads or flat terrain.

Chinese hummer-like vehicles are popular with Chinese and foreign special operations troops. The Chinese armed forces are not buying a lot of these vehicles (a few thousand or so a year at most) although civilian versions became popular with Chinese and export customers. The most popular of these hummer clones comes from Dongfeng, which initially produced some hummers under license. Dongfeng has since produced several hummer variants, including armored models equipped to handle RWS (remote weapons systems). These were nicknamed Mengshi (east wind warrior). The latest of these, the CSK-181 is an eight-ton armored hummer influenced by the new American JLTV (Joint Light Tactical Vehicle). One characteristic of the Chinese hummers is the built-in night vision cameras (one in front and one in the back with a flat-screen display for the driver to use) and satellite navigation system.

Although China tried Russian and European designs in their search for a new tactical truck resembling the American hummer, they finally settled on a hummer clone of their own. China still uses the Russian and German designs for most of its tactical vehicles but it is also buying a growing number of locally made hummer clones.

China got their hands on an American hummer (M998 HMMWV) in 1988. Initially, Chinese military officials felt the hummer was too expensive. But the performance of the hummer in the 1991 Gulf War, plus the growing presence of the American civilian version of the hummer (especially those brought in by oil companies for use in remote areas), changed minds. By 2003, two Chinese companies were producing hummer clones and the Chinese Army adopted one of them as the EQ2050. Within a decade there was armored version was developed as the EQ2058 followed by several other variants, including a longer 6x6 vehicle.
Efforts to negotiate a settlement of the issues in Yemen and end the seven-year civil war are stumbling over two non-negotiable issues. First, there is the Iranian refusal to give up their presence and support of the Yemen Shia. This is unacceptable to Saudi Arabia and most other Arab states because they can see what happened in Lebanon when the Iranian presence and support of the Hezbollah militia was allowed to persist. The second difficult issue is calls for partitioning Yemen again. This has been the case in the past and most Yemenis came to believe unity was preferable. With Iran refusing to give up their control of the Shia north, partition is even less acceptable. No one has come up with a viable solution yet.

Meanwhile, in central Yemen (Marib province) the Shia rebel offensive continues and after nine months has finally made some significant progress, but at great cost. Saudi airstrikes have caused most of the rebel casualties which have totaled over a thousand dead in the last year and many more wounded, On the ground the rebels have more gunmen, many of them Shia teenagers eager to prove they are warriors, or die trying. The defenders are less numerous and less willing to get killed. The Shia offensive has two main objectives. The most obvious one is the Marib provincial capital, which is 120 kilometers east of the rebel held national capital Sanaa. The other one is the Marib oil fields. Yemen has some oil resources and, even though those are tiny compared to what Iran and the other Arab states in the region have, were enough to supply internal needs as well as provide some for exports. Production and exports halted several years ago but possession of Yemenis oil resources is a prestige thing. The Yemeni government and the Arab coalition also want to use Marib as a base area for a possible ground advance in the rebel held national capital Sanaa.

In the last month the Shia rebels gained some ground, partly because they had learned to move and attack, often at night, in a way that avoided detection by Saudi aerial surveillance and airstrikes. This made it possible to carry out surprise attacks which, even if hit by airstrikes, usually demoralized, and defeated the defenders.

Since February most of the combat in Yemen has been in Marib. The rebels have suffered heavy casualties without much to show for it. The government forces, mainly tribal militias with access to Saudi air and artillery support have sometimes been able to regain lost ground. The rebels ignore this and insist they will prevail. Captured rebels and monitoring rebel communications reveals that many of the replacement fighters are there mainly for the pay or because of rebel threats to block food aid. Nine months of offensive operations have been costly, with rebel daily casualties sometimes amounting to as many as two hundred dead and wounded. When the Marib offensive began in February it was assumed it would follow the usual pattern of being intense for a few days or weeks and then fading. The fade didnt come until May when the rebels reduced the ground attacks to deal with the morale problems all their casualties had caused. That pause did not last long and fighting soon resumed.

Calling the fighting a rebel offensive was misleading, as most of the time the fighting involved only artillery and mortar fire as well as dozens of cruise and ballistic missile strikes. The government forces respond with even more artillery fire and air strikes, all provided by the Arab Coalition. During the first six weeks of this intense fighting the dead and wounded amounted to nearly 500 fighters from both sides as well as a few civilians. Since then, the rebels have suffered most of the losses, which are now over a thousand dead and many more wounded. Government forces, supported by artillery and airstrikes, halted rebel attacks, some coming from three directions. Saudi pilots and ground forces have gained a lot of practical combat experience since 2015. Saudi pilots are much more accurate and surer of themselves than they were during the first two years (2015-16). On the ground the Saudis supply artillery and troops trained to quickly and accurately request and direct air and artillery support. All these ground teams have a year or more of combat experience and it makes a difference. The air strikes usually involve smart bombs directed at targets identified by Saudi air controllers on the ground. The Saudi pilots also have American Sniper targeting pods that enable them to make out individuals and identify vehicles on the ground.

Many areas controlled by the rebels are full of angry Shia and Sunni civilians who have seen less food and other foreign aid getting in and more of their sons recruited to fight for the rebels. That pays well, compared to anything else available and gets the family priority when food and other aid is distributed. But too many of those conscripted sons are coming back dead or crippled. The rebels try to return the bodies, which earns them some good will. In a third of their territory that is not enough so now the rebels are kidnapping more civilians and holding them as hostages to obtain compliance from families or clans. Many of those kidnapped are suspected of providing information to government forces. This is often the case for someone in the family. The hostage tactic is an ancient one in Arabia and still works, but not as well as it used to. There is still cell phone service in Yemen and bad news gets out quickly, often with pictures or video.

An Iranian Quds Force general has been running the Shia rebel operations since mid-2020 when he arrived to be the new Iranian ambassador to the Shia rebel government. The Quds general will not allow the rebels to negotiate a peace deal that includes Iranian banishment from Yemen. Its one of those defeat is not an option situations for Iran and the Saudis. Yemenis are more willing to compromise but they are no longer in control.

The Arab Coalition has not been as effective at maintaining discipline and unity. Saudi Arabia and the UAE cannot agree on a common strategy and the UAE keeps withdrawing forces from Yemen. This is not helping the government cause because the withdrawal of most UAE forces from Yemen in the last year has led to more factional fighting between the separatist Sunni tribes in the south and less support for the fight against Shia rebels in central Yemen and Shabwa. The Iranians are keeping their coalition together and taking full advantage of the Arab Coalition to act like a coalition.

October 31, 2021: In central Yemen (Marib province) the Shia rebels fired two of their Iranian ballistic missiles at a madrasa/mosque compound in the Al Amound district. The compound was full of civilians and 29 were killed with many more wounded. This is a hilly area surrounded by desert that the Shia rebels have been trying to take for over a year.

October 30, 2021: In the south (Aden) there was an explosion at the Aden airport, which was apparently caused by a bomb placed on a crowded bus. The timer or remotely detonated bomb left twelve civilians dead and many more wounded. Local Islamic terrorists are the usual culprits in attacks like this. The Shia rebels prefer to use their Iranian cruise missiles (UAVs loaded with explosives) on one-way missions.

October 28, 2021: In Lebanon, the UAE (United Arab Emirate) ordered its ambassador to leave Lebanon and the next day advised UAE citizens to leave as well. This comes after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait also withdrew ambassadors. This is the result of Iran increasing its efforts to link the battles between Lebanese Shia and the non-Shia majority with a similar conflict in Yemen. What triggered all the anti-Saudi/UAE animosity was the broadcasting of an August interview with the Lebanese Information Minister in which he compared the situation of Shia in Lebanon with that of Shia in Yemen and blamed it all on Saudi Arabia. This is pure Iranian propaganda because the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah militia was created in the 1980s with Iranian help and has since become a major component of the Iran-backed Shia paramilitary forces in the Arab world. In Yemen the Shia minority have been troublesome for several generations because they lost their autonomy.

The problems in Yemen began in 1962 and escalated after a civil war ended, sort of, in 1994. That war was caused by the fact that, when the British left Yemen in 1967, their former colony in Aden became one of two countries called Yemen. The two Yemens finally united in 1990 but another civil war in 1994 was needed to seal the deal. That fix didn't really take and the north and south have been pulling apart ever since. This comes back to the fact that Yemen has always been a region, not a country. Like most of the rest of the Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa region, the normal form of government until the 20th century was wealthier coastal city states nervously coexisting with interior tribes that got by on herding or farming (or a little of both) plus smuggling and other illicit sidelines. This whole "nation" idea is still looked on with some suspicion. Therefore, the most common forms of government are the more familiar ones of antiquity; kingdom, emirate or modern variation in the form of a hereditary dictatorship. For a long time, the most active Yemeni rebels were the Shia Islamic militants in the north. They have always wanted to restore local Shia rule in the traditional tribal territories, led by the local imam (religious leader). This arrangement, after surviving more than a thousand years, was ended by the central government in 1962. Yemen also became the new headquarters of AQAP (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) when Saudi Arabia was no longer safe for the terrorists after 2007. Then came ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and then an invading army of troops from oil-rich neighbors.

Iran eventually admitted that it had been quietly supporting the Yemen Shia since the late 1990s and that aid increased after the 2011 revolution replaced a Shia president-for-life whose main skill was maintaining peace between the Shia separatists in the north and more numerous Sunni separatists in the south. The Shia rebels were more aggressive and managed to occupy the Sanaa, the capital in 2014 and, on the advice of the Iranians, declare the establishment of a new government. Iran saw an opportunity and provided the Yemen Shia rebels with more weapons, including short-range ballistic missiles. These were mainly for attacks on Saudi Arabia. The main Shia province is on the Red Sea and borders Saudi Arabia.

Since 2015 the Yemeni rebels have, with components and tech support from Iran, assembled and launched over a hundred ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia. The Saudis point to these Iranian ballistic missiles and Iranian UAVs as pretty clear evidence that Iran was still smuggling weapons in. Iran denies everything and when confronted with physical evidence insists that the Yemeni Shia make the stuff locally, obtaining technical help via the Internet.

In 2020 Saudi Arabia released jet fighter gun video of two large (Predator size) Iranian Shahed 129 UAVs being shot down after crossing the border into southern Saudi Arabia. These explosives-laden UAVs can reach the Saudi capital and the size of the explosion when the UAVs are hit with the cannon fire confirms the UAVs were carrying a lot of explosives. Iran keeps making these attacks because they only need score a hit once or twice, to frighten and embarrass the Saudis. Iran blames all this on the Yemeni Shia rebels, who admit they receive aid from Iran. Foreign (including UN) investigators conclude that the rebels are acting with the help of Iran and would not be able to launch ballistic missiles and UAV attacks on Saudi Arabia. The smuggling program to support these missile and UAV attacks from Yemen is high and has become one of many complaints Iranians have against their government.

The Shia situation in southern Arabia became more complex a century ago in 1918 when northern Yemen was controlled by the Turks (Ottoman Empire) and it wasnt until the 1930s that the Saudi family united most of the Arabian Peninsula as Saudi Arabia. That unification also meant the ancient Ottoman province of Yemen was split in two. The northern half was now part of Saudi Arabia while the southern portion, containing prosperous cities like Sanaa and Hodeida, became North Yemen. This split the Yemeni Shia Arab population in half because this former Ottoman province was largely Shia. Three decades after the split the growing oil wealth of Saudi Arabia meant the Saudi Shia tribes north of Yemen were better off economically than their Yemeni kinsmen. This reduced enthusiasm for reuniting the Yemeni Shia. There was no such oil wealth in Yemen and the Yemeni Shia felt the Sunni majority were taking more than their fair share of what little oil income Yemen produced.

Iran proposes putting Shia Moslems (led by Iran) in charge of the Moslem most holy shrines in Mecca and Medina. That would involve the elimination of Saudi rule in Arabia and many Arabs are fine with that because the Saudi clan is seen as arrogant, inept, and corrupt. Theres a lot of truth to that but those flaws describe most Arab states and Iran exploits that. So did the Ottoman Turks, the British, the medieval European crusaders and the ancient Romans. The one part of Arabia that had long escaped foreign domination was the southern part, where there was a lot more rain, water, and population than the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. The discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf, between 1900 and 1930, revealed that the largest known source of oil in the world was under and around the northern end of the gulf. First in Iran and then in Arabia more oil was discovered and production expanded. This took about half a century but after World War II ended in 1945 there was so much oil that it was cheap. It took another two decades for demand to catch up with supply and prices were so high by the 1970s that Iran and the Arab Gulf states were suddenly extremely wealthy. The only part of Arabia without any oil was Yemen. The Yemenis resented this and the oil rich Arabs did not always hide their disdain for their poor but proud cousins in Yemen.

Iran sees its control of the Shia rebels in northern Yemen as the equivalent of the Hezbollah militia Lebanon. In the 1980s Hezbollah took control of southern Lebanon and eventually gained a veto power over the elected government. The Shia remained a minority in Lebanon and could not take control of the country via elections. This is similar to the Shia situation in Yemen and in both nations there is now armed and organized resistance to this Iranian presence. This is what caused the current diplomatic dispute between Iran backed politicians in Lebanon and the Arab states. The Lebanese Minister of Information was ordered by his Iranian handlers to stir up some trouble with the Sunni Arabs. The easiest way to do that was to take sides in the Yemen civil war and depict Shia rebels as defending themselves against Saudi and UAE aggression. This makes the situation worse for Iran in Lebanon because the current anti-Hezbollah violence is aimed at eliminating the Iranian and Hezbollah military and political power in Lebanon. For most Lebanese this is long overdue and they are now willing to fight another civil war to get it done. The last Lebanese civil war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and ended in a compromise that left Hezbollah intact. That turned out badly for Lebanon and the Lebanese want the Iranians gone. In Yemen it is different because the Sunni tribes in the south are willing to return to the two Yemens. The Saudis oppose that because Iran now has a presence in the Shia north and as long as Iran is there they have a base for continued attacks on Saudi Arabia, which they can blame on the local Shia.

October 27, 2021: In the north, Shia rebels launched five ballistic missiles into southwest Saudi Arabia. Saudi BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense) systems detected and destroyed the incoming missiles headed for the Saudi Red Sea port of Jazan near the Yemen border. Because of the effectiveness of the Saudi BMD, the Iranians have ordered the rebels to launch as many missiles at one target at once to overwhelm the BMD system. Apparently five missiles at once were not enough. The rebels have been allowed to use more of their ballistic missiles against targets inside Yemen, where there are a lot fewer BMD systems. The ballistic missiles have been used in Marib province and southern Yemen to attack military targets and non-military ones as well. Key civilian supporters are being attacked, if only to terrorize even more of the opposition.

October 26, 2021: In the south (Shabwa Province) the UAE withdrew its troops from one of the bases it maintains with the Saudis to support operations against Islamic terror groups still active in the area. The UAE withdrew because one of the local tribes accused the UAE of training local men who were planning to overthrow the tribal leadership. Power struggles within Yemen tribes is an ancient practice and it is not uncommon for a faction to accuse helpful outsiders from taking sides in an internal tribal dispute. The UAE and Saudis have both done so in the past but this time the UAE was taking a lot of heat and thought the best way to deal with it was to withdraw its small contingent and let the Saudis replace them.

October 25, 2021: In central Yemen (Marib province) Shia rebels claim to have regained control of two more districts. There are fourteen districts in Marib and the rebels claim to control or threaten at least half of them. This makes it possible to make an attack on Marib city and the oilfields. Yemen has 22 provinces (Governorates) each consisting of a dozen or more districts. There are a total of 333 districts and control of a province is usually defined as who controls, won or lost a specific district.

October 21, 2021: Saudi airstrikes outside Sanaa, the rebel occupied capital, hit several military targets.

October 17, 2021: Iran had ordered its Shia rebels to stand fast, even though the Yemeni Shia rebels are losing the war. Saudi Arabia proposes that Iran resume diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and try to work something out so the Yemeni civil war will end. Currently the Saudis cannot withdraw their forces from Yemen until the Iranian presence is gone along with all the ballistic and cruise missiles Iran smuggles in to be used for attacks on Saudi Arabia. Iran uses the same negotiating tactics against the Saudis that they have been using against the Americans and Europeans, with the same results.

October 15, 2021: In the south, of f the coast in the Gulf of Aden, an Iranian warship, the 1,500-ton corvette Alborz, reported that it fought five speed boats armed with machine-guns and other weapons that were attacking an Iranian tanker. The 50-year-old Alborz was built in Britain in the late 1960s for Iran and kept in service by the religious dictatorship since then with frequent refurbishments and little time at sea. In August Alborz, described as a destroyer, was sent to the Gulf of Aden to protect Iranian merchant ships.
FILE PHOTO: Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

By Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices sank on Thursday, reversing earlier gains in a volatile session after a report that Saudi Arabia's oil output will soon surpass 10 million barrels per day for the first time since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report, from Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV, came after the nation, along with other Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, agreed to stick to previously agreed upon production increases.

Brent crude fell $1.45, or 1.8%, to settle at $80.54 a barrel. Earlier, Brent rose to $84.49 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell $2.05, or 2.5%, to settle at $78.81 a barrel, well off the session high of $83.42.

Since Tuesday's close, Brent and WTI have fallen by about 5% and 6%, respectively.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, collectively known as OPEC+, agreed to stick to plans to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) on a monthly basis, sources said, despite calls from the United States for extra supply to cool rising prices.

Saudi Arabia has already dismissed calls for speedier oil supply increases from OPEC+. But the Al Arabiya TV report said the Saudis will reach 10 million bpd in December.

Oil stocks will see "tremendous" builds at the end of 2021 and early 2022 because of slowing consumption, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Thursday.

Oil prices, which had previously been up by more than $2 per barrel, began paring gains as OPEC+ met.

"A large (speculative) position was loading up" before OPEC, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho.

Yawger said traders then were inclined to sell and take profits rather than risk that the market could slip further as the White House calls for increased output.

"They preferred to book profit than look to get burned by any Biden counterpunch," Yawger said, referring to U.S. President Joe Biden.

The White House on Thursday criticized a decision by top oil producers to keep oil output steady, saying OPEC and its allies appeared "unwilling" to use their power to help the global economic recovery.

Top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia are confident higher oil prices will not elicit a fast response from the U.S. shale industry, OPEC+ sources said. U.S. companies have pledged to preserve capital and prioritize investor returns.

Still, several large oil companies plan to increase output or shale spending next year.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York; reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London and Florence Tan in SingaporeEditing by David Gregorio, Will Dunham and Kirsten Donovan)
SEATTLE, Nov. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Corum announces today that their client, Texas-based AVATA, a leading services provider for supply chain management, enterprise resource planning and enterprise performance management solutions, has been acquired by Rockwell Automation, Inc., based in Wisconsin. AVATA will be integrated into Rockwells Lifecycle Services business, Kalypso, expanding their supply chain consulting services to support end-to-end digital transformation solutions across the enterprise and onto the plant floor and beyond to the extended supply chain.

Rockwell Automation is the recognized leader in industrial digital transformation. Their LifecycleIQ Services help manufacturing facilities work faster, smarter and with greater agility at every lifecycle stage, said Allan Wilson, Corum Senior Vice President who led the deal. The acquisition of AVATA will deepen their expertise in supply chain innovation. It was an honor to facilitate this transaction.

Corums facilitation of the acquisition created the optimal outcome for the shareholders and employees of AVATA, stated Anil Thomas, CEO of AVATA, adding, Being part of the Rockwell Automation team will allow us to help even more companies use digital transformation initiatives to drive value and competitive advantage throughout the extended supply chain.

Corum is the world's leading educator on tech trends, valuations, growth strategies and Tech M&A. Allan Wilson will host a 90-minute executive seminar and Tech M&A update, Merge Briefing, on November 4th, 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM PDT. To register, visit www.corumgroup.com/events.

About Corum GroupCorum Group is the global leader in merger and acquisition services, specializing in serving sellers of software and related technology companies worldwide. With offices globally, Corum has completed over $10B in software M&A transactions over the last 36 years. Corum's M&A advisors are highly experienced former tech CEOs, supported by industry-leading researchers, writers and valuators. For more information, visit www.corumgroup.com.

About AVATAAVATA is a leading strategic partner of Oracle and is recognized for its global capabilities in helping companies solve critical business challenges through people, processes, and technology. AVATA offers the unique blend of real-world industry experience, best practices, and software expertise that sets them apart from pure system integrators. Leveraging Oracle SCM, ERP, and EPM Cloud solutions, they provide clients with a strategy that fits their organization and competitive processes that differentiate them in their respective markets and successfully deliver rapid improvements impacting bottom-line performance. AVATA is headquartered in the US with resources throughout the USA, Australia, India, and Europe. For more info, visit www.AVATA.com.

About KalypsoKalypso, a Rockwell Automation company, is a professional services firm helping clients discover, create, make and sell better products with digital. The firm provides consulting, digital, technology, business process management, and managed services across the innovation value chain. For more information, visit www.kalypso.com.

About Rockwell AutomationRockwell Automation, Inc. is a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. Rockwell Automation connects the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more productive and more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockwell Automation employs approximately 24,000 problem solvers dedicated to customers in more than 100 countries. To learn more about Rockwell Automation, visit www.rockwellautomation.com.

Contact: Heidi Owen+1 425-526-3107heidio@corumgroup.com

Source: Corum Group
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DSS, Inc. (DSS or the Company) (NYSE American: DSS), a multinational company operating business segments in blockchain security, direct marketing, healthcare, consumer packaging, real estate, renewable energy, and securitized digital assets, today announced its majority-owned subsidiary, American Medical REIT Inc. ("AMRE"), has acquired three hospitals (the Hospitals) located in Fort Worth, Texas, Plano, Texas and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The aggregate purchase price for the Hospitals was $62 million. The Hospitals are currently tenanted and operated by LifeCare Hospitals (together with its affiliates, LifeCare Hospitals), a specialty hospital operator with a focus on long-term acute and critical care.

The Hospitals acquired by AMRE are currently under an 18-year lease with eleven years remaining and an option to renew for an additional five years. The Hospitals have a total capacity of 195 hospital beds spanning a gross floor area of approximately 320,000 square feet. The Hospitals are located near densely populated and fast-growing areas, within close proximity to state highways, making them easily accessible by patients and clients. Additionally, the Hospitals have been accredited by The Joint Commission and are Medicare-certified. In 2015, the Hospitals were awarded the Quality Respiratory Care Recognition accolade issued by the American Association of Respiratory Care.

LifeCare Hospitals has lengthy experience in operating long term and acute care facilities. Since 1992, LifeCare Hospitals early intervention and early mobilization treatment program addresses those patients that require a length of stay greater than 5 days in the ICU/Critical care setting. LifeCare Hospitals provides these patients with additional resources that are not normally provided in traditional hospital settings to enhance the recovery process. LifeCare Hospitals operates a behavioral health hospital in Pittsburgh that delivers innovative behavioral health care by providing patient centered therapeutic interventions in a safe, compassionate, and personalized recovery environment.

These acquisitions represent a significant expansion of our real estate operations, stated Frank D. Heuszel, CEO of DSS. While other areas within commercial real estate have been impacted by the ongoing pandemic, medical real estate has demonstrated considerable resiliency. With a now formidable foundation in place, we are in a great position to pursue further opportunities to expand AMRE as we continue to execute on our strategic growth plans.

Following AMREs maiden acquisition of Ivy Brook Medical Center in July this year, we are pleased to report AMRE has expanded its portfolio with three additional quality hospitals which we believe will position us to create sustainable dividends and build value for our shareholders over the long term, commented Mr. Heng Fai Chan, Executive Chairman of the Company. We continue to believe that the medical REIT space is a scalable and lucrative business model resilient to macroeconomic fluctuations. Looking ahead, we intend to focus our attention on advancing additional acquisitions through our pipeline of high-quality healthcare assets so as to accelerate growth for AMRE.

In connection with the acquisition of the Hospitals, DSS Securities, a wholly owned subsidiary of DSS, loaned AMRE $0.8 million and American Pacific Bancorp, Inc., a majority-owned subsidiary of DSS, loaned AMRE $13.9 million.

About DSS, Inc.

DSS is a multinational company operating business segments in blockchain security, direct marketing, healthcare, consumer packaging, real estate, renewable energy, and securitized digital assets. Its business model is based on a distribution sharing system in which shareholders receive shares in its subsidiaries as DSS strategically unlocks value through IPO spin offs. Under new leadership since 2019, DSS has built the necessary foundation for sustainable growth through the acquisition and formation of a diversified portfolio of companies positioned to drive profitability in five high-growth sectors. These companies offer innovative, flexible, and real-world solutions that not only meet customer needs, but create sustainable value and opportunity for transformation.

For more information on DSS visit http://www.dsssecure.com.

About American Medical REIT Inc.

AMRE provides financing solutions to leading medical operators by acquiring licensed patient treatment facilities in various communities and delivering reliable, secure, and competitive cash returns to our investors. AMRE focuses on credit worthy single-tenant, single property transactions in the $10-$60M range and portfolio deals of larger scale, having initial rental yield in the 7-9% range and to pay a quarterly dividend up to 8% in annualized yield to the investors.

For more information, please visit: www.americanmedreit.com.

Investor Contact:

Dave Gentry, CEORedChip Companies Inc.407-491-4498Dave@redchip.com

Safe Harbor Disclosure

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to the Company's intended use of proceeds and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, include: risks relating to our growth strategy; our ability to obtain, perform under and maintain financing and strategic agreements and relationships; risks relating to the results of development activities; our ability to attract, integrate and retain key personnel; our need for substantial additional funds; patent and intellectual property matters; competition; as well as other risks described in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the prospectus and in our other filings with the SEC, including, without limitation, our reports on Forms 8-K and 10-Q, all of which can be obtained on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made and reflect management's current estimates, projections, expectations and beliefs. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.

Source: DSS, Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 4, 2021) - Provenance Gold Corp. (CSE: PAU) (OTCQB: PVGDF) (the "Company" or "Provenance") is pleased to report that the latest drill holes have confirmed the location of a newly recognized open-ended gold mineralization feeder structure that extends across the core mineralized area of 3.2 km in length and 1.3 km in width. Drill hole 45 intersected the feeder structure at 17 meters (55 feet) and was still in it at 104 meters (340 feet), where the hole had to be terminated because of ground conditions. Between 17 and 84 meters (55 and 275 feet), the hole averaged 0.015 oz/t gold (0.52 g/t) within which 21 to 52 meters (70 to 170 feet) averaged 0.026 oz/t gold (0.88 g/t) and between 37 and 49 meters (120 and 160 feet) the hole averaged 0.032 oz/t (1.11 g/t). The hole bottomed in mineralization at 340 feet, with indications it was entering another zone of stronger mineralization.

The deposit is unusual in that it extends along the crest of a broad, high ridge (White Rock Mountain) in an area that is being geologically stretched like the surface of an inflating balloon. These events have created near-surface cracks that formed in the weakest rocks. While this ridge setting is positive for future open pit mining, the cracks have created difficulties for drilling. The drill steel has often become stuck and even been lost in these cracks. The weakest most easily cracked rocks are in the gold zone because it has been structurally broken and subsequently altered by the ore emplacement of the gold system, so the cracks have become an indicator for the gold zone. Provenance's geologists have worked around this problem with cross-sections and confirmation holes.

The White Rock gold project consists of 258 lode mining claims (5,160 acres) with gold being hosted in silicified limestone, conglomerate, and shale. Provenance has completed 35 holes in the first year of a continuing exploration program, with further assays pending. With these holes, along with the historic drilling of 67 holes, the company is building a firm understanding of the gold system and believes that this is an extensive open-pit grade gold deposit, with grades similar to current Nevada open pit mines.

In addition to the newly identified plumbing structure, recent step-out drilling continued to expand the gold mineralization in several directions from our previously reported drill hole WR-23, which returned an interval of 117 meters (384 feet) of gold mineralization. Large step-out drilling tested new areas including the rhyolite graben to the northwest, the Nose area to the south and the newly identified plumbing structure.

The Rhyolite Graben, located to the northwest and west of WR-23 was tested with two holes. Both intercepted gold mineralization with hole WR-32 assaying 65.5 meters (215 feet) of 0.305 g/t gold which included 20 meters (65 feet) of 0.411 g/t gold. The hole bottomed in mineralization and was lost. The importance of this intercept proves that the host rocks in the graben will host gold mineralization and now become a substantial new target.

The Nose is at the south end of Central Ridge and is located 350 meters south of WR-23. Six angle holes were drilled from this one site in all directions. Even though five of the holes were lost before reaching their target depths, all holes entered the main gold horizon but were lost within the mineralization. A key hole was WR-40, which was drilled to the west, and intercepted 20 meters (65 feet) of 0.449 g/t gold (0.013 oz/t) before being lost due to broken ground before it was able to penetrate the bulk of the projected gold zone. These results confirm that higher grades follow the main north-south fault on the west side of Central Ridge. This discovery will guide future drilling into key "feeder" plumbing structures in addition to the one intersected in hole 45.

Rauno Perttu, Provenance's CEO, states, "It has been an extremely encouraging first round of exploration at White Rock to date, in which we have been able to establish the large size and characteristics of the gold mineralization system. We now have two very encouraging undrilled step-out areas as well as this new feeder structure to follow across the property which should further expand the size and increase the grade of this promising discovery."

Figure 1- Drilling hole 45 into the feeder structure. White Rock Mountain in the background. Next year's drilling plans to extend the gold zone into White Rock Mountain.



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5654/101983_figure1.jpg



Figure 2- Drilling newly discovered feeder zone on central ridge at White Rock. The zone projects open-endedly across the core mineralized area.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5654/101983_fig2.jpg

Quality Assurance and Quality Control : The reverse-circulation drilling program utilized by Provenance completed a quality assurance / quality control program (QA/QC) with control samples consisting of standards, blanks and duplicates inserted approximately every 100 feet. Control samples were randomly inserted into the sample stream prior to being sent to the laboratory. The RC drill sampling was in five-foot sample intervals. Drill samples were taken to Paragon Geochemical, an ISO 9001 compliant company in Sparks, Nevada for fire assaying for gold and silver. The rejects and pulps remain with Paragon in Sparks, Nevada. The QA/QC program was implemented as part of the sampling procedures for the exploration program.

Private Placement Closing

The Company also announces that it has closed a second tranche of its non-brokered private placement through the issuance of 1,596,077 units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.13 per Unit for gross proceeds of $207,490.01. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Issuer (each, a "Share") and one common share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant") with each Warrant entitling the holder thereof to purchase one additional common share (each, a "Warrant Share") of the Issuer at a price of $0.20 per Warrant Share until November 4, 2024. The Company paid a cash finder's fees of $9,773.40 in connection with the closing. All securities issued in connection with the private placement are subject to a statutory hold period until March 5, 2022.

Rauno Perttu, P. Geo., a Qualified Person (as defined by National Instrument 43-101), and the Chief Executive Officer of the Company, has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this News Release.

About Provenance Gold Corp.

Provenance Gold Corp. is a precious metals exploration company with a focus on gold and silver resources within North America. The Company currently holds interests in three properties in Nevada, USA. For further information please visit the Company's website at https://provenancegold.com or contact rclark@provenancegold.com.

On behalf of the Board,

Provenance Gold Corp.

Rauno Perttu, Chief Executive Officer

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange, nor its regulation services provider, accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. This news release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When or if used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target, "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and similar words or expressions identify forward-looking statements or information. Such statements represent the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social risks, contingencies and uncertainties. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements and information other than as required by applicable laws, rules and regulations.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/101983
Buy Photo Col. Kevin Martin, commander of the 374th Operations Group, welcomes Col. Hiroshi Fuji, center, commander of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force's 1st Tactical Aircraft Flight Group, to Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan  The central U.S. airlift hub in western Tokyo could be the right place for Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-130H Hercules crews to practice short takeoffs and landings.

Thirteen Japanese airmen and a U.S. instructor pilot assigned to the 401st Tactical Airlift Squadron at Komaki Air Base, Nagoya, toured Yokotas 36th Airlift Squadron on Thursday.

The Japanese fliers arrived in a green C-130H, a precursor to the C-130J adopted by the Air Force and flown from Yokota, the headquarters of the 5th Air Force and U.S. Forces Japan.

Komaki, 40 minutes by air from Yokota, was home to the 5th Air Force in the 1940s and 50s.

Buy Photo Air Force 1st Sgt. Grant Krause shows Japanese airmen from Komaki Air Base, Nagoya, the control tower at Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

Maj. Lucas Crouch, 39, of Green Bay, Wis., the only American stationed at Komaki, accompanied the Japanese aviators. He did two tours at Yokota and speaks Japanese.

Their assault training capabilities are very limited at Komaki, he said. My idea was, lets see if we can train at Yokota.

The Yokota runway is marked to designate the length of an austere airfield where a pilot may have to land during a natural disaster or conflict, Crouch said.

Marking Komakis runway would be challenging since the base shares it with civilian airliners, he said.

The 401st is Japans only Hercules squadron. The unit sent two planes to help evacuate people from Afghanistan this summer and has participated in Operation Christmas Drop since 2015, Crouch said.

The Japanese airmen got a tour of Yokotas air traffic control tower. They were not permitted by their escort to answer questions from Stars and Stripes.

Col. Kevin Martin, commander of the 374th Operations Group, showed Col. Hiroshi Fuji, commander of the 1st Tactical Aircraft Flight Group, the view from the top.

We welcome the opportunity to work and train with the JASDF, Martin said. We have had a long-term relationship with them on the C-130 side.

The coronavirus pandemic has meant fewer exchanges between U.S. and Japanese forces since last year, but now that people are vaccinated, we are trying to continue that, he said.

Seth Robson
Graciela Gomez, 22, was a member of the Nevada Army National Guard. She was killed Sunday, Oct. 31 when suspects fired several rounds after being refused entry to a house party. (GoFundMe)

LAS VEGAS (Tribune News Service)  A 22-year-old woman who was fatally shot at a Las Vegas house party on Oct. 31 has been identified as Graciela Gomez, a member of the Nevada Army National Guard, Fox 5 reported.

Brig. Gen. Troy Armstrong of the Nevada Army National Guard said Gomez was a rising star and an an exceptional Soldier with a positive attitude and steadfast work ethic, according to a statement released by the military

Its worth noting that she most recently answered the call and displayed great dedication and extraordinary service to her community over the course of the past year while working on the COVID-19 Task Force in Las Vegas helping our state get through the pandemic, Armstrong said.

Patrol officers responded to the news that someone was shot early in the morning on Oct. 31. Police said five men had been refused entry into the house earlier that night and that they later drove by the house and fired several rounds, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Neighbor Maria Alo told KLAS that there were a lot of people at the house that night, most of them teenagers.

I saw everyone running out afterward and then we see one of the girls who was hurt or shot, they were trying to give her CPR, but saying that she may not make it, Alo told KLAS.

Gomez died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and two other people were injured. Her death was ruled a homicide and was one of at least three separate shooting deaths that occurred over the weekend, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

She was identified Wednesday by the Clark County Coroners Office.

No arrests have been made in the case, KLAS reported. A GoFundMe has been created to assist in funeral costs for Gomez.

______

2021 McClatchy

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A Japan Coast Guard helicopter, similar to the one in this undated photo, rescued three U.S. Marines swept out to sea while snorkeling off Okinawa on Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. (Japan Coast Guard)

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa  A group of Okinawa-based Marines were rescued by the Japan Coast Guard after they were sucked out to sea while snorkeling, coast guard officials said.

The incident began shortly before 3:25 p.m. Saturday just off Sosu Beach at Kunigami village on the northeastern tip of Okinawa, a spokesman for the coast guards 11th Regional Headquarters told Stars and Stripes by phone Thursday.

Five Marines from Camp Schwab were snorkeling when three were swept away from shore, the spokesman said. The Marines were plucked from the ocean about two hours later and delivered to the U.S. military, he said.

I am so glad that they didnt lose their lives, another spokesman, from the Nakagusuku Coast Guard Office, told Stars and Stripes on Thursday. Its customary in Japan for some government officials to speak to the media on condition of anonymity.

The five Marines were spotted swimming and diving earlier that afternoon by a group of Japanese people camping nearby, the Nakagusuku spokesman said. Two Marines came ashore and turned back to see the others being swept out. The most likely culprit was a rip current, he said.

The three Marines, wearing wetsuits and snorkels, waved for help and the campers called emergency services, the spokesman said. He did not have identifying information for any of the service members.

The trio was spotted around 5:10 p.m. and rescued 11 minutes later by an MH977 AgustaWestland helicopter, the headquarters spokesman said. It landed at the nearby Ada fishing port, where they were picked up by the Marine Corps.

Marine Corps Installations Pacific did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Thursday.

It is always good to check the weather and terrain before going out and be careful of rip currents, the Nakagusuku spokesman said. Moreover, never go near water alone.
In this Dec. 15, 2016, photo, provided by the U.S. Navy, the Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut departs Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for sea trials following a maintenance availability. The Navy said the nuclear-powered submarine was conducting routine operations Oct. 2, 2021, when it struck an uncharted undersea mountain in the South China Sea. (Thiep Van Nguyen II/U.S. Navy via AP)

The Navy fired the USS Connecticuts top officers and enlisted sailor on Thursday, days after an investigation found the nuclear-powered submarine was damaged last month when it struck an uncharted undersea mountain, according to the service.

Navy Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, the commander of the 7th Fleet, relieved Cmdr. Cameron Aljilani of his command of the submarine and removed Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Cashin and Master Chief Petty Officer Cory Rodgers from their duties as the vessels executive officer and chief, respectively, according to a Navy statement. Thomas cited a loss of confidence in their leadership after an investigation into the Oct. 2 incident in which the fast-attack submarine was damaged when it struck the mountain, the Japan-based 7th fleet said.

Thomas investigation, which had not been made public as of Thursday, appeared to find the collision was avoidable, according to the statement. The admiral determined sound judgment, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch-team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident, the statement reads.

Navy officials have provided few details about the underwater collision, in which the service initially said the submarine struck an unidentified object in Indo-Pacific waters. A service official last month said about a dozen sailors aboard suffered minor injuries, from which they were expected to fully recover. U.S. Naval Institute News reported the collision occurred in the South China Sea.

After the collision, the Connecticut traveled to Guam for damage assessment and initial repairs, defense officials said. It remains in Guam and will eventually travel to its homeport at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Wash., for further repair, according to the statement on Thursday.

Navy Capt. John Witte will soon assume interim command of the submarine, the Navy said. Cmdr. Joe Sammur will assume duties as interim executive officer and Command Master Chief Petty Officer Paul Walters will assume duties as interim boat chief, the service said.

The Connecticut is one of three of the Navy's Seawolf-class nuclear attack subs, which date back to the Cold War era. It had been deployed in the Indo-Pacific region since late May, according to the Navy.
People outside Holloman Air Force Base on Sept. 13, 2021, protest military vaccine mandates. (Nicole Maxwell, Alamogordo Daily/TNS)

Service members who refuse the coronavirus vaccine would receive only honorable discharges from the military under Republican-sponsored legislation introduced Thursday.

The proposed amendment to the pending 2022 National Defense Authorization Act was introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said it would protect troops who object to the vaccine mandated earlier this year by the Pentagon. Marshall said it was especially important to protect thousands of service members who have applied for religious-based exemptions to the vaccine, none of which have been approved to date by military officials.

Think about the consequences of a dishonorable discharge, Marshall said Thursday, listing off several including the loss of medical and education benefits, gun-ownership rights, and the ability to reenlist in another military branch. This is a big issue. It is a big deal.

Marshalls bill largely matches language included in the House-passed version of the NDAA, the annual must-pass bill that authorizes Pentagon spending and sets policy priorities. The amendment Thursday was endorsed by 10 additional Republican senators  Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ted Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Shelley Moore-Capito of West Virginia, and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi.

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a member of the armed forces subject to discharge on the basis of the member choosing not to receive the [coronavirus] vaccine may only receive an honorable discharge, reads the amendment to the NDAA, which the Senate has yet to vote on.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear what will happen to those service members who ultimately decline the vaccine and are not granted an exemption. Pentagon officials have said such individuals would likely face administrative actions or noncriminal punishments, such as rank reductions, long before commanders moved to court-martial them for failure to follow orders. A conviction for failing to follow orders could lead to a dishonorable discharge and up to two years in prison, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has called for compassion and understanding from commanders as they deal with subordinates who decline the vaccine, John Kirby, Austins top spokesman, said this week.

Republicans speaking alongside Marshall on Thursday said they worried the Pentagon would not grant any waivers for service members who cite religious objections to the vaccine. They cited some 40 Navy SEALs seeking an accommodation based on sincere religious objection to the vaccine, according to their attorney Mike Berry of the First Liberty Institute, a Christian conservative legal group based in Texas.

When you join the United States military, you certainly give up some of your freedoms. We all recognize that, said Berry, a Marine and Afghanistan war veteran who now serves in the Marine Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. You do not give up your religious freedoms when you serve our country. And yet that is exactly what [the SEALs] are dealing with today  being forced to choose between their faith and serving their country.

Berry declined to provide specifics about his clients objections or whether they had objected to any of the other 17 vaccinations required by the Pentagon for military troops.

He said the SEALs had differing reasons for their objections, but each had spent time reflecting and praying on the issue and determined the vaccine violates their conscience and their sincerely held religious beliefs.

I can tell you that these Navy SEALs each take their faith very, very seriously, Berry said. And they don't want to be kicked out of the military.

The legislation introduction comes just days after the first of the Pentagons military services passed its vaccine deadline. The Air Force passed its mandate deadline for active-duty airmen and Space Force guardians on Tuesday. The services said 96% of active-duty airmen and guardians had been fully vaccinated by Tuesday and only 3% of the about 330,000 active airmen and guardians had not received any shots or been approved for an exemption.

Service officials have approved 1,886 waivers of the vaccine mandate, primarily for medical reasons, the Air Force said Wednesday. It will spend the next month considering the cases of almost 5,000 troops who submitted religion-based exemption requests. Service officials said 800 airmen and guardians outright refused the vaccine without seeking an exemption.

The other services have later deadlines and have not disclosed how many service members have sought exemptions.

Defense Department civilians must be vaccinated by Nov. 22, while active-duty troops in the Marine Corps and Navy must be vaccinated by Nov. 28, and soldiers have until by Dec. 15. National Guard and reservists have later deadlines in each of the services.

More than 250,000 military troops have been diagnosed with the coronavirus since the pandemics start last year, according to the Pentagon. To date, 73 service members have died of complications related to the virus.

Marshalls amendment does nothing to end the Pentagons mandate for the coronavirus or other vaccines. However the senator, a physician and former Army doctor, said he opposes the mandate, though he chose to get vaccinated.

I support the vaccine, Marshall said Thursday. I dont support mandates. I don't support one-size-fits-all.
Buy Photo Udo Shrine on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu features an ornate building inside a cavern decorated with carvings of mythical creatures. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

Huge waves crash onto jagged rocks below Udo Shrine, the mythical birthplace of the father of Japans first emperor, on the east coast of the countrys southern island of Kyushu.

Legend has it that Emperor Jimmu, a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu and the storm god Susanoo, founded Japan in 660 B.C. His accession is marked each year as National Foundation Day on Feb. 11.

Udo Shrine, near Nichinan City, is supposed to be where the sea goddess Toyotama-hime gave birth to Jimmus father, Ugayafukiaezu, in a birth-hut made of the feathers of a cormorant.

The shrine is popular with young couples hoping for easy childbirth and a happy marriage.

Getting to the shrine involves a hike over several hundred yards from a parking lot through a pedestrian tunnel and down stone steps. There are a few coffee and souvenir shops along the way if you want to rest.

Visitors enter the shrine through an impressive red gateway that sits high above a rocky shoreline.

A cliffside path is decorated with rabbit statues. The creatures are messengers of the gods, according to a local Shinto priest.

Buy Photo A Shinto priest speaks at Udo Shrine, the mythical birthplace of the father of Japans first emperor, on the east coast of the countrys southern island of Kyushu. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

A wooden bridge along the path is said to lead into the spirit world. Those who have done evil deeds cannot cross, according to the priest.

From there its a steep descent down more stone steps to a bluff overlooking the surf. Visitors can purchase clay balls and attempt to toss them into a rope circle on top of a rock below for good luck.

Buy Photo At Udo Shrine in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan, visitors can purchase clay balls and attempt to toss them into a rope circle on top of a rock below. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

Nearby, you may enter the main shrine, built inside a cavern.

The shrine includes a Chinese-style building decorated with mythical animals such as the Kirin, a deer-like creature supposed to only appear during times of world peace, and which features on a popular beer brand.

Buy Photo A Kirin, a mythical creature said to appear only during times of world peace, decorates a building at Udo Shrine in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

At the back of the cave water drips from the ochichi iwa, or "breast stone," that is supposed to have fed Emperor Jimmus father when his grandmother returned to the sea.

A gift shop at the cave entrance sells a variety of souvenirs including plenty of pendants with images of rabbits.

Buy Photo Udo Shrine is the mythical birthplace of the father of Japans first emperor, on the east coast of the countrys southern island of Kyushu. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

ON THE QT

Directions: 3232 Miyaura, Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture. The shrine is about a 25-mile drive from Miyazaki City. From the parking lot its about a 10-minute walk to the shrine entrance.

Times: Open daily, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Costs: Entry is free.

Food: Several coffee bars near the shrine.

Information: 0987-29-1001; udojingu.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers attends a flower-laying ceremony at the memorial complex dedicated to the end of the Russian Civil War during marking Unity Day in Sevastopol, Crimea, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (Mikhail Metzel/AP)

Running Russia as a near-absolute monarch was never enough for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The story of his 21-year rule is equally about trying to formulate Russias proposition to the rest of the world - a kind of national brand message, something that was lost when the Soviet Union ceased to be the global purveyor of the far-left ideal.

The current - and likely final - edition of Russias brand essence is reasonable conservatism, as formulated by Putin at the most recent session of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual gathering of Putin-friendly and Putin-curious intellectuals.

Ever since an oil and gas windfall in the mid-2000s allowed Russia to behave more assertively on the international stage, Putin and his propaganda machine, always attuned to the bosss thinking, have tried on different concepts: an anti-terrorist stronghold (since 2001, when Putin famously offered his support to George W. Bush after 9/11), an energy superpower (a term first applied to Russia in 2006), one of the leading powers of the emerging non-Western world (it was in Russia that the BRIC, later BRICS, countries held their first official meeting in this format, also in 2006).

None of these constructs had the power of the Soviet offering, and none of them held up in the real world. The shaken but still self-confident United States of the early 2000s wasnt prepared to treat Russia as an equal ally. We have lots of fossil fuel turned out to be an increasingly unsexy message. And the growth trajectories of the BRICS countries have diverged so drastically that the worlds nascent multipolarity quickly boiled down to China vs. the U.S. So Putins search for a message zeroed in on the conservative idea and traditional values: He started speaking of his Russia as a bastion of conservatism back in late 2013, in his annual speech to parliament - just months before the Crimea annexation marked his decisive break with the Western world.

In that speech, and again at the Valdai forum on Oct. 21, he paraphrased Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev, who wrote in 1918, when he felt Russians needed an intellectual alternative to Bolshevik revolutionism:

The meaning of conservatism isnt in hindering the forward and upward movement but in hindering the backward and downward movement, the backsliding toward chaotic darkness, the return to a state that preceded the formation of states and cultures.

To Berdyayev, conservatism was defined as the exact opposite of Bolshevism, and Putin tries to dress up his brand of conservatism in the same clothes:

As we watch whats going on in a number of Western nations, were astonished to recognize our own homegrown practices that I hope we have left in the distant past. The fight for equal rights and against discrimination is turning into an aggressive dogmatism bordering on the absurd. They even stop teaching the great authors of the past - such as Shakespeare - at schools and universities, because their ideas are believed over there to be backward. The classics are declared backward because they didnt understand the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, they publish manuals that dictate how movies are to be made and about what, how many characters of what color or gender there should be. This is stronger stuff than we saw from the Soviet Communist Partys Agitation and Propaganda Department.

Its as if the Russian leader lived in a Trumpist social network echo chamber and tried to reconcile what he read with uncomfortable memories of his Soviet youth and with Berdyayevs century-old writings. But Putin has said he doesnt use the internet, his Soviet memories are mostly of the misty-eyed variety, at least judging by his policies, and his paraphrases of the Berdyayev quote on the meaning of conservatism dont include this important sentence:

The meaning of conservatism is in the obstacles it sets for manifestations of the chaotic, animal element in human societies. This element always lurks within a human being, and it has to do with sin.

Im no apostle of wokeism, but linking modern progressivism with the sinful chaotic, animal element of human nature feels like a stretch. One can make a case for likening it to Soviet-style leftist dogmatism, but not to the manic, violent energy of the Bolshevik revolution, which was what Berdyayev rejected because to him, it was the energy of death.

When he expounds on conservatism, Putin doesnt sound as though hes turned into a conservative thinker as he approaches his 70s. Rather, he sounds as though hes heard tell of certain media phenomena, mostly of U.S. origin, and used them to formulate a sales pitch, an offering to those in the Western world and beyond who reject social progressivism. That audiences identity politics have more to do with nationality than with race or gender; its focused on sovereignty and safe borders, scared of feminism and disdainful of gender and sexual variety. Putin is pitching his regime to these people as a bulwark of traditional values simply because he appears to see a niche that Western governments and media are not serving - in the same way that Soviet rulers saw an opportunity in Western leftist and peace movements.

This search for allies was opportunistic for the Soviets once theyd stopped hoping for a world revolution, and its opportunistic for Putin. Nothing hes done since he won power positions him convincingly for moral posturing, or for lecturing others on Christian values. But its important for him that Russia should stand for something, be a beacon to people outside its borders. Without a mission, Russia is just a normal country - and thats a status Putin just cant embrace. So now, with conservatives on the run politically since Donald Trumps election defeat and a series of electoral disasters in Europe, from Spain to Germany, Putin figures that Western conservatives need a friend like him- perhaps a somewhat exotic ally, but still, you dont OK Boomer somebody who can order you poisoned.

Russias propaganda outlets immediately picked up the sales pitch. Vesti, the state television news program, called Putins Valdai speech his most important one, a presentation of a national idea for Russia. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, the government-controlled network of foreign-language broadcasters, wrote on her Telegram Channel:

So now our ideology has been formulated. Moderate conservatism. And thats great!

As a moderate conservative, I cant bring myself to share the excitement. The center-right is in such a sorry state that Putin sees a wide opening in the West on this flank - and not just on the populist far right of the political spectrum. Thats hardly anything to celebrate. Theres also Putins record with previous visions for Russias global role: Hes hardly distinguished himself by championing the most promising causes.

Besides, I feel a little sorry for those foreigners who will be taken in by Putins pitch - and some inevitably will. Back in 2016, before Trump was elected, I was hanging out with some Three-Percenters in Florida, people who wouldnt part with their guns even inside their leaders house. They spoke admiringly of Putin as a champion of law and order, someone who could keep the liberals in check. As I listened, I couldnt shake a mental image of these guys being dragged off to jail by Russian cops after their gun cache has been confiscated; Russian terrorism laws were practically written with them in mind.

Moderate conservatives, too, might be somewhat shocked by the ways and customs of Putins Russia, were they to encounter them in real life. They might find their free speech muzzled in ways that the liberal media and Silicon Valley would find unthinkable. And if the more literary-minded of them read Berdyayev on conservatism for reference and like the emphasis he put on creativity and the rejection of violence as a means of achieving progress, they should beware: Putins adoption of the philosophy has always been rather selective, and not in their favor.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation team based in Berlin. He was previously Bloomberg Opinions Europe columnist. He recently authored a Russian translation of George Orwells 1984.
Buy Photo This years Remote Island Disaster Exercise, or RIDEX, involved about 200 Marines and airmen from the III Marine Expeditionary Force and Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, along with 400 troops from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)

KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa  U.S. forces on Okinawa for the first time joined their Japanese military counterparts to rehearse their unified response to a natural disaster  a simulated earthquake Tuesday on a small, nearby island.

This years Remote Island Disaster Exercise, or RIDEX, involved about 200 Marines and airmen from the III Marine Expeditionary Force and Kadena Air Base, along with 400 troops from the Japan Self-Defense Force, Air Force Capt. Matthew Wilson, the 353rd Special Operations Wings director of medical operations, told Stars and Stripes this week.

A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force spokesman for the Western Armys 15th Brigade summed up the purpose of this years exercise.

We aim to improve the JSDF's ability to respond to disaster situations in remote islands and to strengthen cooperation with related organizations such as the U.S. military, he said on the customary condition of anonymity.

Japans Self-Defense Forces have held the island disaster exercise every year since 2014, except last year, because of the pandemic, the spokesman said.

Buy Photo A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force medic checks the vital signs of a U.S. airman acting as an earthquake victim during the Remote Island Disaster Exercise on Okinawa, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo A heart monitor beeps at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, during the annual Remote Island Disaster Exercise, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Japanese and American troops simulated injuries ranging from severe burns to broken bones during the annual Remote Island Disaster Exercise on Okinawa, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (Matthew M. Burke/Stars and Stripes)

The exercise scenario involves an earthquake off Okinawas southeast coast. A second day of drills involving the Self-Defense Forces and Okinawa prefecture was inexplicably canceled, the spokesman said.

During the exercise Tuesday, medical personnel from the two nations confronted language barriers under trying conditions.

We pretty frequently will train in scenarios in our small teams to most effectively treat and move a patient, so thats less important to us today, said Lt. Col. Shana Hirchert, 39, the senior flight physician for the 353rd Special Operations Wing. This is pretty unique that we can kind of integrate our teams.

The exercise began at Ukibaru Island, less than five miles off Okinawas east coast, Wilson said. A mix of 20 Japanese and American troops simulating injuries ranging from severe burns to broken bones were airlifted to the amphibious transport dock JS Kunisaki.

There they were triaged and then flown to either Camp Naha, a Ground Self-Defense Force base, or Kadena.

From the Kadena flight line, a converted bus carried the simulated casualties to a medical tent some distance away. Doctors and paramedics of the special operations wing and the III MEF surgeons office jumped into rendering care, suturing wounds and splintering breaks. Heart monitors beeped and ventilators whirred as fluids were hung and sterile packages ripped open.

Leaders of the 15th Brigade observed while their medical personnel worked through translators to process patients with less severe injuries. One Japanese soldier took an airmans blood pressure and recorded the results. The airman had a simulated piece of metal sticking through his already bandaged hand.

A patient was declared dead and placed outside the tent, under a blue tarp. The remaining patients were driven aboard the ambulance bus to U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa at the Marine Corps Camp Foster.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Christopher Andersen, 25, a medic with the special operations wing, said the training provided good insight into Japanese military operations. He said he was blown away by their professionalism and organizational skills.

We understand that were stronger together, Wilson said. The more that were able to have meaningful discussions and plan for different engagements and share that information, the better off we are together.

Matthew M. Burke Mari Higa
Buy Photo Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte began his term in 2016 by hurling insults at then-U.S. President Barack Obama and offering warm words to Americas strategic competitors. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is pivoting his country back to its longtime ally the United States after years of wooing China failed to bear fruit, according to defense experts.

The maverick leader began his term in 2016 by hurling insults at then-U.S. President Barack Obama and offering warm words to Americas strategic competitors.

I realign myself in your ideological flow and maybe I would also go to Russia to talk to [President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world  China, Philippines, Russia, Duterte said that year on his first trip to Beijing.

As he prepares to step down after six years in office, however, the Philippine strongman has effectively ended his China-friendly policy, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp. argues.

Now, just as easily as he flipped one way, he's flopping the other, Derek Grossman wrote in a commentary posted Tuesday on Rands website,  and he's doing his best to align the Philippines with the United States again.

The evidence for that includes recent visits by top U.S. military leaders, the Philippines endorsement of the AUKUS defense pace between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S., and plans for expanded bilateral military exercises next year, Grossman wrote.

In July 2020, Duterte authorized his Department of Foreign Affairs to call on China to recognize an international tribunals rejection in 2016 of Beijings claims to areas of the South China Sea inside the Philippines exclusive economic zone.

He told the U.N. General Assembly two months later that the ruling was beyond compromise.

During an online conference in September, Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez said the U.S. and the Philippines plan to move fairly quickly on facilities for U.S. forces at five Philippine bases that were authorized under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. John Aquilino, visited the Philippines in late August and last month said the U.S. wants to increase the complexity and scope of exercises in the islands and invite new partners to join, Bloomberg reported Oct. 14.

Dutertes pro-China policy failed to clinch a deal on joint prospecting in the South China Sea or persuade the Chinese to fund infrastructure projects in the Philippines through its Belt and Road initiative, Grossman wrote.

Meanwhile, China has continued to send its maritime militia into waters claimed by the Philippines and, in January, authorized its coast guard to fire upon foreign vessels.

In March, more than 200 Chinese fishing boats moored at the disputed Whitsun Reef.

Duterte thought he could play China against the U.S. but ended up being played by China, Ralph Cossa, president emeritus of the Pacific Forum think tank in Hawaii, said in an email Wednesday.

China made Duterte look bad and never delivered on many of its promises, he said.

Meanwhile support for U.S. runs deep among Philippine people and especially among military, he said, adding that the pro-China, anti-U.S. position isnt a vote-getter in the Philippines.

However, the Philippines cant afford to shun China, its biggest trading partner, said Patricio Abinales, a professor at the University of Hawaiis School of Pacific and Asian Studies, in an email Wednesday.

What the Philippines is doing is returning to the pre-Duterte approach of dealing with China  the international court, diplomatic pressure, Abinales said, all of which will irritate China but not to the point of ending a mutually beneficial trading relationship.
A South Korean sailor welcomes the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to Busan, South Korea, in 2017. (Jermaine Ralliford/U.S. Navy)

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  Most South Koreans see the alliance with the United States as stable, a dramatic increase over last year, according to an annual poll from a government-funded think tank.

The Seoul-based Korea Institute for Defense Analysis polled 1,000 South Koreans, 67% of whom view the alliance favorably. The figure represents a substantial increase from last years 47%, and the two years prior to 2020.

The relatively low level of stability perceived by the public during these past few years implies that they were concerned about the disharmony between [South Korean President Moon Jae-in] and the Trump administration over North Korea policies, Hong Sukji, an institute fellow, wrote in her analysis published Tuesday.

Foreign policy analysts questioned the relationship between the two allies during President Donald Trumps tenure. Trump, who railed against North Korea with threats of fire and fury before holding summits with its leader, also criticized the U.S. trade relationship with South Korea and demanded Seoul foot more of the bill for stationing roughly 28,500 American troops on the peninsula.

In contrast, the sharp improvement in the sense of stability within the alliance suggests that anxiety regarding the [South Korea]-U.S. Alliance is being alleviated due to consistent signaling by the Moon and Biden administration reaffirming their firm relations since the inauguration of the Biden administration in January 2021, Hong wrote.

Other evidence from the poll suggests more South Koreans believe the U.S. would come to their aid than in previous years. Asked if the U.S. will be fully committed to the defense of South Korea if there is a military provocation by North Korea, 77% of respondents said they agreed, compared to 62% last year.

Most respondents also viewed the alliance as a positive force on the peninsula: Nearly 94% said they agreed it is contributing to the peace and stability of South Korea.

However, the continued presence of U.S. troops in South Korea in the event of a peace treaty with the North may create mixed feelings, the poll suggests. President Moon, who must step down next year because of term limits, has prioritized a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War to normalize relations with Pyongyang.

About 35% respondents said U.S. Forces Korea ought to remain in the country, while another 40% said it should be decided based on the circumstances after the signing of a peace treaty.

Another 21% said USFK troops should withdraw.

The results demonstrate that South Koreas view of a USFK withdrawal is incumbent on the circumstances and conditions of the political climate, rather than merely the passage of a peace treaty, Hong said in her analysis.

Critics have scrutinized Moons push to end the Korean War and remain doubtful of substantial changes by North Korea. The communist regime has long lambasted the joint military exercises conducted by the two allies and has called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the South.

The defense policy institutes poll was conducted between Sept. 10 and Oct. 14 and has a 3.1% margin of error.
Protesters shouting anti-U.S. slogans surround and put a plastic bag over the head of a U.S. Navy civilian in Istanbul, Nov. 3, 2021. The Istanbul governors office announced the arrest of 17 individuals connected with the Youth Union of Turkey, which staged a similar protest in 2014. (Twitter/Youth Union of Turkey (TGB))

Turkish authorities detained 17 members of a political organization after protesters put a hood over the head of a U.S. Navy civilian in Istanbul.

Youth Union of Turkey, also known as TGB, posted a photo Tuesday to two Twitter accounts, and in one post, the group claimed to have put a sack on the head of an American soldier.

In a statement, the Istanbul governors office said the 17 people detained had targeted a civilian employee of a U.S. Navy ship that came to our city as part of a port visit, according to Reuters.

USS Mount Whitney, the U.S. 6th Fleets flagship, arrived in Istanbul on Monday and entered the Black Sea on Thursday to join the destroyer USS Porter.

In addition to putting the hood on the civilians head, the group also chanted you are our enemy, and you are not wanted here.  Yankee go home, Reuters reported.

U.S. 6th Fleet didnt comment Thursday on the incident. At a media briefing Wednesday, Defense Department spokesman John Kirby thanked Turkey for its swift action and responsiveness. He referred further questions to Turkish authorities.

The U.S. and other NATO members and partners routinely conduct military exercises in the Black Sea.

Personnel from Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO and 6th Fleet, both under the command of Vice Adm. Gene Black III, were aboard USS Mount Whitney, 6th Fleet said in an Oct. 29 statement.

On Wednesday, the ship hosted a reception that included the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and various Turkish dignitaries, according to 6th Fleet. Black spoke at the reception.

It is very important to be here and to deepen our maritime cooperation. Turkey is a very valuable NATO ally, he said. Achieving economic prosperity in the Black Sea region depends on the stability to be achieved at sea.

This isnt the first time TGB has protested the U.S. by putting hoods over Americans heads.

In 2014, it attacked a group of service members from the destroyer USS Ross who were dressed in civilian clothes. The protesters threw red paint on at least one service member and put a plastic sack over his head, calling him a murderer, the pro-government Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah reported.

The newspaper said putting hoods on U.S. service members is viewed as revenge for a 2003 incident in Iraq, in which U.S. military personnel detained and put hoods on Turkish soldiers operating as part of a special operations team.

U.S. officials had accused the soldiers of plotting to kill an American-backed Iraqi official, The New York Times reported at the time.

On its English-language website, TGB says it stands up for a secular and populist Turkey. The group says it was founded in order to unite Turkish youth  ignoring whether theyre leftists or rightists  to defend the motherland.
Lt. Col. Sarah Eccleston, right, clinic commander of U.S. Army Health Clinic Vilseck, administers a COVID-19 vaccine at the 7th Army Training Command's Rose Barracks, Vilseck, Germany, in May 2021. U.S. military medical clinics in Europe have started offering booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to select categories of beneficiaries and workers. (Markus Rauchenberger/U.S. Army)

Some U.S. military medical clinics in Europe have started offering COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to priority groups and are preparing to provide the vaccine to younger children within weeks, health officials said Thursday.

People who are age 65 and older, adults with underlying medical conditions and those who work or live in high-risk settings, including day care centers or schools, are immediately eligible for the booster shots at various Army, Air Force and Navy clinics in Europe, officials said.

So are all adults, regardless of age or work status, who received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot at least two months ago. The boosters are being made available in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest U.S. Army hospital overseas, began vaccinating health care staff with boosters last Friday, said Gino Mattorano, a spokesman for Regional Health Command Europe.

Army medical clinics in Europe plan to open up booster appointments to eligible workers and beneficiaries in one to two weeks, Mattorano said. Details will be posted on official web and social media sites soon, he said.

The Navy in Italy, Spain and Greece began offering boosters this week, as did Ramstein Air Base, which had its first walk-in booster clinic for eligible recipients Tuesday.

For those who received the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, the booster is available six months after the initial series.

The booster isnt required by the Defense Department but is recommended, officials said.

Navy officials in Italy, Spain and Greece said that while they werent tracking numbers, interest appeared high.

Based on the early demand for booster appointments in (the appointment portal), U.S. Naval Hospital Naples (USNHS) expects most eligible members of the Naval Support Activity Naples community to elect to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster, said Tia McMillen, a Naval Medical Forces Atlantic and Tidewater spokeswoman.

NS Naples, along with Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily and Naval Station Rota in Spain, were offering Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson boosters and allowing people to choose which shot they wanted.

NSA Souda Bay is offering only Pfizer but had ordered the other two vaccines, McMillen said.

Among Air Force bases, Moderna and Pfizer boosters are available by appointment at Spangdahlem in Germany, officials said.

Ramstein Air Base has booster walk-in clinics scheduled at Building 2116, with Moderna shots available Friday and both Moderna and Pfizer on Nov. 19.

Interest is also expected to be high at several locations for a two-shot series of the Pfizer vaccine available to 5- to 11-year-olds, which the CDC endorsed Tuesday.

Stuttgart has a clinic for younger children planned Nov. 19, if supplies arrive on time. More than 10,000 of the lower-dose shots have been ordered, an Army official said.

NSA Naples and NAS Sigonella also said they had ordered the Pfizer vaccine for 5- to 11-year olds.

The Navy in Naples expects a high turnout for the shots, based on demand among children ages 12 to 17.

Our overseas military communities are setting the standard for population immunity to COVID-19 as a key step towards ending the pandemic, Capt. Chad E. McKenzie, commander of U.S. Naval Hospital/Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Naples, said in a statement.

NSA Souda Bay officials said they would immunize children as requested. But they didnt anticipate giving many pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations because the base is dependent-restricted.

Alison Bath Jennifer H. Svan
In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Friday, July 23, 2021. Ayatollah Khamenei on Friday said he understands protesters anger over a drought in the countrys southwest, as a fourth death related to ongoing demonstrations there was reported. ()

International talks on the future of Irans nuclear program will resume on Nov. 29 in Vienna after a five-month hiatus, the Iranian government and other participants confirmed Wednesday.

The European Union, which chaired six rounds of negotiations before talks were suspended by Iran in June, announced the resumption, which was echoed in a tweet by Iranian negotiator Ali Bagheri.

The talks are aimed at a U.S. return to the 2015 agreement with Iran, also signed by Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China, under which Tehran curtailed its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of U.S. and international sanctions.

Former president Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. Since then, Iran has gradually surpassed its limits on uranium enrichment, leading to rising international concern over its nuclear capabilities and intentions.

The Biden administration, which began the negotiations in April, believes it remains possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding on mutual return to compliance with the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said after the announcement.

But it has also been clear . . . as the pause has dragged on for some time, that this window of opportunity will not be open forever, especially if Iran continues to take provocative nuclear steps, Price said.

The three European powers act as go-betweens in the talks for the United States and Iran, which has refused to meet directly with the U.S. delegation headed by diplomat Robert Malley.

A number of questions remained unanswered by the brief announcements. The United States has insisted that the talks restart from where they left off in June, when, it has said, tentative agreements had been reached on a list of U.S. sanctions to be lifted, and on Irans return to the parameters of the original agreement.

But the new government in Tehran, headed by President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard line cleric, has hinted that it might not be satisfied with agreements made by its predecessor in office.

At the same time, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which verifies Irans compliance with the terms of the agreement, has questioned interruptions in international monitoring there. The IAEA board of governors plans to discuss the issue at a meeting held the week before the Nov. 29 meeting.

Announcement of the resumption of talks coincided with a reminder of the hair-trigger tensions that persist between Iran and the United States in the Middle East. Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced Wednesday that it had foiled a U.S. attempt to detain a tanker carrying Iranian oil in the Sea of Oman. The announcement, carried by state media channels, did not specify the date of the incident but said the tanker had been redirected to Iranian waters.

A U.S. official refuted that version of events, saying that on Oct. 24, Iran had seized a Vietnamese-flagged crude oil tanker, the Sothys, in international waters and brought it back to Irans territorial waters. The official said that the U.S. had approached the Sothys after Iran seized it and then backed off as it was moved toward Iranian waters.

Later Wednesday, Iran released video footage that suggested the encounter had been tense. Set to dramatic music, it showed speedboats racing toward a red tanker and commandos boarding the vessel with their guns drawn. At one point, an Iranian boat pulls up alongside a U.S. vessel, as an Iranian soldier aims a deck-mounted machine gun at the American boat.

In a separate incident, the USS Essex, an amphibious ship, was approached by multiple Iranian drones Tuesday in the Strait of Hormuz as it was carrying out helicopter flight operations, the U.S. official said.

Fahim reported from Istanbul. The Washington Posts Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
After a cyber hack of the Colonial Pipeline led to gas shortages, people waited in long lines at an Exxon station on May 12, 2021, in Springfield, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

A top U.S. cybersecurity official offered a dire warning to members of Congress on Wednesday, saying the "American way of life" faces serious risks amid the drumbeat of ransomware attacks and physical threats to the nation's critical infrastructure.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, told the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday that "ransomware has become a scourge on nearly every facet of our lives, and it's a prime example of the vulnerabilities that are emerging as our digital and our physical infrastructure increasingly converge."

Her appearance, aside National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, comes as the private sector and governments have grappled with pervasive cyberattacks during the last 12 months. Some attacks, including the Colonial Pipeline Co. breach in May, have led to gas shortages, disrupted supply chains and exposed federal systems to significant compromise.

Easterly's testimony came after CISA issued a binding operational directive that would create a catalog of known exploited cybersecurity vulnerabilities and would require federal agencies to fix these flaws within specific time frames. It would apply to all software and hardware on federal information systems, including those managed by an agency or hosted by third parties.

While the directive would only apply to federal agencies, Easterly said in a statement she wants every organization to adopt the directive "and prioritize mitigation of vulnerabilities listed in CISA's public catalog."

Rep. John Katko, a Republican from New York, said, "The volume of alerts, advisories, and directives goes to show the pervasiveness of vulnerabilities affecting owners and operators of critical infrastructure, and federal networks."

Inglis said that privately owned critical infrastructure, which accounts for 85% of the total, is "increasingly core to the government's imperative to protect and provide for national security."

"Shared defense is not a choice but an imperative," Inglis said.

Inglis said he is working with the White House on a forthcoming executive order that would provide additional clarity on the roles and responsibilities for his newly created post, which is expected in the coming weeks to months. The Office of National Cyber Director was created by Congress earlier this year, and the role was designated as the top official overseeing cyber strategy and budgets within the government.

But lawmakers have raised concerns that it overlaps with authorities of CISA's Easterly and the White House's Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology. The goal of the executive order is to provide clearer parameters around the new role, Inglis said.

Both Katko, the top Republican on the panel, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and the panel's chairman, have placed a rare bipartisan emphasis on the importance of countering cybersecurity threats and offering praise for CISA's efforts. President Joe Biden has called cybersecurity a "core national security challenge," and has since rearranged parts of the U.S. government to reflect new priorities.

Thompson, who also chairs the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, also raised concerns of misinformation as key elections played out in Virginia and New Jersey. "Just yesterday, voters went to the polls to cast their ballots even as efforts to push the Big Lie and erode public confidence in democratic institutions persist," Thompson said.

Inglis told members of Congress that there has been a "discernible decrease" in cyberattacks by Russia-based groups since President Joe Biden met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

"It's too soon to tell whether that's because of material efforts taken by the Russians or the Russian leadership," he said. "It may well be that the transgressors in this space have simply kind of lain low understanding that this is  for the moment  a very hot time for them."

"We need to make sure that the continues to be the case," Inglis said.
Afghan boys wait for French fries at a food cart at a park on Aug. 19 in Sacramento. Some were born in Afghanistan. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS) (Carolyn Cole)

HOUSTON (Tribune News Service) When Taliban fighters hunting for Ahmad Shoaib Durgee knocked on his door in Kabul, Afghanistan, he scrambled to escape with his family of six to reunite with his sister in Sacramento, California.

Two months after they were flown to the U.S., they remain among 53,200 evacuees held at Fort Lee, Virginia, and seven other military camps nationwide.

Durgee, 37, who qualified for a visa because he had worked as a security guard for American officials, says he feels fortunate to have been evacuated to a camp where he doesnt have to live in a tent. But hes itching to leave the military housing. After hearing that those headed to California face longer waits, he changed his requested destination to Richmond, Virginia, where he has friends.

Each afternoon he looked for his name in Fort Lees daily stack of departure files, those selected for resettlement.

I ask them, When my turn comes? They say, You will be notified, Durgee said by phone recently.

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, 124,000 people have been evacuated to the U.S., including 67,000 Afghan allies. Of those Afghans, 10,000 have been resettled with the help of nonprofit agencies in communities across the nation, according to the Biden administration.

A Biden administration official attributes the pace of resettlement to staff shortages, logistics issues and medical problems, including a measles outbreak among some transferred to U.S. camps. Nonprofit agencies tasked with resettling Afghan evacuees say they have been overwhelmed by the influx. Government officials say they are seeking to increase the pace. But theres no deadline for resettling evacuees waiting at the military camps.

Congress approved $6.3 billion in added funding in September, but resettlement agencies said that has yet to reach them as they struggle to house evacuees. Most still wait in the camps, where Biden administration officials said an additional 30,000 are anticipated to arrive from Afghanistan during the next year.

In September, the administration announced a pilot program that would allow groups of at least five individuals to apply to become sponsor circles, helping Afghan evacuees to resettle for at least three months. The program would supplement federal resettlement programs run by nine agencies nationwide with several hundred local affiliates.

Were trying to prioritize getting those who were on the longest off the quickest, said Curtis Ried, deputy to former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, whom Biden appointed in September to coordinate Afghan resettlement.

Ried said the focus is resettling Afghans in a way thats effective and sets people up for success.

Afghan evacuees at the military camps have already cleared customs and medical screening, including coronavirus testing and COVID-19 vaccinations. They have been processed by the nonprofit International Rescue Committee and their travel has been arranged by the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations affiliate. Before they leave the camps, Afghans are assigned a resettlement agency at their destination. That agency receives $1,225 from the federal government for each evacuees initial expenses.

About 3,000 evacuees have left the camps without waiting for help from a resettlement group after they were granted humanitarian parole and vetted, including Afghan American citizens, green card and visa holders, and others with close ties in the U.S., according to the administration. In doing so, these evacuees lose access to the assistance that would have been awarded to the resettlement agency, although theyre still eligible for food stamps, Medicaid and other federal aid. With winter coming, more evacuees  especially those living in tents  were debating whether to leave on their own.

Those who requested to be resettled to states and cities that are already home to many of their fellow Afghans  Maryland, Virginia, Washington and California, particularly Sacramento  have faced some of the longest waits. Thats because U.S. officials have encouraged them to resettle in other states to avoid overwhelming the local resettlement agencies and schools. Some states, such as Oklahoma, have offered evacuees incentives such as free housing (280 Afghan evacuees have been resettled there, according to the Biden administration).

Walid Fazly, 34, said officials at Fort Lee encouraged his family of 10 (including his wife, three children, parents, sister, brother-in-law and nephew) to resettle in Oklahoma after denying their request to be resettled with his older brother at his home in Austin, Texas.

They said that its because the resettlement agency in Austin cant handle all the cases, he said, and that agencies elsewhere in Texas, California and Virginia were overloaded.

They said either you go on your own or to Oklahoma  thats the only option we can give you, said Fazly, who had worked as a translator and coordinator with U.S. media and Ball State University in Afghanistan. I dont even know where Oklahoma is. Fazly worried about his father, who had suffered a stroke years earlier, was in a wheelchair and had become despondent at Fort Lee. After waiting more than 50 days, Fazly decided in September not to wait for a resettlement agency to help him. He bought plane tickets for the family to join his brother in Austin. Within days, he said his fathers mood had improved.

Everybodys complaining about their mismanagement, he said of the resettlement process. Theyre like, You have to be patient. OK, patient until when?

Munira Irzai, 27, a former custodian at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, was evacuated with her husband and 2-year-old son to the Camp Atterbury Army post in Indiana, where 6,200 evacuees remained recently. She said she was told they would be sent to Kansas City, Kansas, instead of joining a friend in Sacramento.

They should send us to the destinations we provided, Irzai said through an interpreter.

Irzai, who received a green card in September, said she found a house to rent in Kansas City for $850, but still needs furniture.

I have to go. My son has no warm clothes and the base is getting colder and colder every day, she said.

An evacuee at Fort Lee who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and with the Marines in Helmand province said U.S. officials told him his family could not be resettled to Alexandria, Va., where he has friends because the resettlement agencies dont have the capacity to process our cases.

The man asked not to be identified because he and his family are still at the Army post. His luggage was lost, so hes spent the last two months wearing two donated sets of clothes. Some evacuees who had worked with the U.S. military were given cellphones with service, he said, but he wasnt. He was still using his Afghan cellphone, which had no service in the U.S. except with Wi-Fi. He said his 7-year-old daughter, traumatized after seeing Afghan soldiers firing automatic weapons at the airport in Kabul, is afraid of troops at Fort Lee and asks him to hide her from them.

He runs several WhatsApp groups for hundreds of evacuees at various camps. When Congress approved billions in added funding for the evacuation in September, he said, We were all dancing on the bases. They received the money! They are spending the money on us!

But he said evacuees didnt receive additional supplies. He wishes he had gone to Australia, Canada or Germany, where evacuees he knows now have homes and jobs.

They are already starting their lives, he said, while he fields calls from his father in Kabul, who needs money. Our family is in a bad situation on both sides.

He has started to see some of the 900 evacuees at Fort Lee tell U.S. officials the unimaginable: I would rather be back in Afghanistan.

Resettlement groups in California have been overwhelmed by the influx of Afghan evacuees, still rebounding from years of underfunding during the Trump administration, said Lilian Alba, vice president of immigrant and refugee services at the nonprofit International Institute of Los Angeles.

We were quite surprised and not ready for this level of need. Were doing the best we can with what we have, but the program, its not organized. Theres a big need for resources and funding to resettle this many families, she said.

Alba has four staffers, plans to hire 15 more during the next month and is training volunteers. But shes had difficulty finding bilingual people who can speak Dari and Pashto. An even bigger problem is the cost of living in California, especially housing during the pandemic, as some landlords demand double their normal security deposits and co-signers for leases. Only a few residents have been willing to house Afghan families temporarily, she said.

For the average family, the $1,225 per-person government benefit barely covers the minimum $1,700 rent and security deposit for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, plus food for the first month, Alba said. Congress has yet to approve monthly cash benefits for evacuees, so those whom Albas group helped apply have been rejected by landlords. Employers like Kroger have offered to hire evacuees for jobs with benefits, but evacuees still must pay initial moving costs.

The money we receive is not enough to cover the actual cost of resettling a family, of staff and operations. Thats why a lot of organizations are not able to assist more people, Alba said.

She said California resettlement groups have urged federal officials to advise evacuees of the costs, so that they know that if they nonetheless choose to come to California, its not going to be an easy road.

Weve had families staying in hotels for four to six weeks. It is extremely overwhelming to them because they are looking for a home, stability. Many of the families have small children. That is why we are encouraging them not to come to California, she said.

She said the pilot program allowing individual volunteers to resettle evacuees could help, but it could also backfire if volunteers struggle and turn to resettlement agencies for help.

It all circles back to the resettlement agencies and we have to do all of the education. Its not easy to be an advocate for Afghan evacuees, she said. The government needs to be opening up slots for subsidized housing. They need to provide additional funds to organizations so we can staff and train rapidly to help resettle this level of cases.

Rabbi Will Berkovitz, chief executive of Seattle-based Jewish Family Service, said his agency has also been challenged in staffing up as evacuees arrive. His group is still trying to get 170 Afghan families out of the country, including relatives of several youths evacuated to Seattle without their parents. He worries that evacuees released without help from a resettlement agency will end up turning to his group in crisis.

If you put a family with no connections in some other part of the city or state and then you send the kids to a school where they have no background working with these families and cultural sensitivities, youre setting everybody up for failure, he said. Its going to put massive pressure on organizations like mine.

Durgee wanted to leave Fort Lee on his own for Richmond recently, but he couldnt afford to travel there with his family. He had left Kabul with $400, and was down to $200.

He tries to distract his sons, ages 10 and 9, taking them outside to play in a military tent with toys and bringing them colored pencils. They drew pictures of Taliban soldiers with guns and repeatedly asked whether the Taliban would kill their grandmother back in Kabul.

Mentally, they are not relaxed here. That hurts me a lot, Durgee said.

Recently, he met with military, State Department and resettlement officials and requested mental health services for evacuees. An official supervising resettlement at the camp reviewed his case, found his destination had not been changed from California to Virginia, and promised to follow up. But she didnt tell him when his family would be resettled.

And so, they wait in limbo. 2021 Los Angeles Times.

Visit latimes.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., accepted an illegal campaign contribution, according to a new lawsuit. (Greg Nash/Abaca Press/TNS)

WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service)  A new lawsuit alleges U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley accepted $973,411 in illegal campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association during his 2018 Senate Campaign.

The lawsuit, filed by the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of the gun control advocacy group headed by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, alleges that the NRA illegally coordinated with Hawleys campaign by funneling money through the political strategy group the Missouri Republican uses to help run his campaigns.

It alleges the NRA spent $35 million since 2014 to support seven candidates named in the complaint  Hawley and Montana Senate candidate Matt Rosendale in 2018; Sen. Ron Johnson and former President Donald Trump in 2016; and Sens. Thom Tillis, Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner in 2014.

We are suing the NRA to finally hold them accountable for actions that corrupted politicians who were supposed to protect Americans from gun violence, illegally influenced critical elections and undermined our democracy, said David Pucino, Giffords Law Center Senior Staff Attorney.

Of the seven candidates, the lawsuit only names Hawley and Rosendale. The Campaign Legal Center attributed this to unspecified technicalities in the procedural requirements for those suits.

Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the NRA, called the lawsuit a premeditated abuse of the public.

This latest action is as misguided as it is transparent, Dalseide said. Suffice it to say, the NRA has full confidence in its political activities and remains eager to set the record straight.

The lawsuit specifically mentions the political consulting firm Hawley has used throughout his political career, OnMessage Inc. The lawsuit alleges that those running OnMessage also operated a company called Starboard Strategic, which the NRA used to create ads in support of Hawleys campaign. That would mean that the same company  and consultants  were placing political ads for both the candidate and the NRA, which would be an illegal under campaign finance laws.

Brad Todd of OnMessage, who is specifically mentioned in the complaint, also didnt respond.

Kyle Plotkin, who works for Hawleys campaign, said the lawsuit was frivolous.

This is a frivolous lawsuit by a special interest anti-gun group who wants to take away the rights of law-abiding gun owners, Plotkin said.

The organization filed complaints against Hawley and other lawmakers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 2018. When the elections commission didnt act, it took the case to U.S. District Court, which ruled that the FEC had to make a ruling within 30 days. When the agency again failed to act, Giffords was allowed to make its case directly to the courts.

The lawsuit asks that the NRA be banned from making these types of contributions in future elections and that the organization pay up to $35 million to the U.S. Treasury. It also asks the court to prevent Hawley from receiving illegal contributions from the NRA in the future and to impose a fine on his campaign.

The fine could be as high as the amount the lawsuit says he received from the NRA, which would be close to $1 million. Gabby Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was shot in the head during a 2011 campaign event in Tucson. She is married to U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, also a Democrat from Arizona. Her group donated $5,000 to former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskills unsuccessful campaign against Hawley.

During the 2018 campaign, The Kansas City Star reported that OnMessage gave direct guidance and tasks to the taxpayer-funded staff of the Missouri attorney generals office, which raised legal and ethical questions about mixing politics with public business. 2021 McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Visit at mcclatchydc.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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.
Questions are being asked over whether all of Whakatane needed to evacuate during the recent tsunami threat.

Nearly the whole town scrambled for the hills but according to maps on the Bay of Plenty Civil Defence website, only about a third of the town was in potential danger.

Maps show that most of Whakatane south of Domain and Landing roads would have been safe in a tsunami up to 8.25 metres high. The predicted tsunami on March 5 was of between one and three metres.

The mapped safe zone includes both Whakatane secondary schools, Allandale and St Josephs primary schools and Whakatane Hospital.

Community and emergency workers are now asking, should an alert come again, should people in this part of town stay where they are or evacuate just to be safe?

Police raised the point with Minister for Emergency Management and East Coast MP Kiri Allan at a meeting on Friday.

Allan met with civil defence staff, police and volunteer fire fighters at Whakatane District Council to hear from them on how they thought New Zealands largest evacuation event went.

Eastern Bay road policing manager Chris Howard summed it up in one word - chaos.

Mr Howard says as soon as the evacuation alert hit peoples phones, the roads in Whakatane were gridlocked.

Everyone wanted to drive, no one wanted to walk, there was one person per car, he says.

Police raised the issue that the original alert did not specify how far from the coast people needed to evacuate and the estimated time of arrival of the tsunami.

Mr Howard says the fact that some evacuated when they possibly didnt need to, contributed to the traffic gridlock and could have prevented those who did need to evacuate from getting to safety if a tsunami did eventuate.

He gave the example of it taking Trident High School students 20 minutes to cross Valley Road to walk up Gorge Road, which impeded the flow of traffic.

He notes that, according to the civil defence tsunami map, these students would have been safe at school.

We would like to see some education put out there that people can walk or cycle if this happens again, he says.

The coloured areas on this map taken from the Bay of Plenty Civil Defence website indicate which areas of Whakatane are at risk from a tsunami up to 8.25 metres high. SUPPLIED.

Senior Sergeant Al Fenwick says police did not have the civil defence map available on the day so were making allowances for everyone to evacuate.

However, there might not be as long a time frame next time so he was worried that if people who didnt need to evacuate did so again, there might be loss of life due to the blocked escape routes.

An example of this is Awakeri School evacuating, which is around 10 kilometres from the coast.

With the whole town evacuating, it made our lives harder, says Fenwick.

The alert said to get to higher ground, and it would be great if it could be more specific about how close you have to be to the coast to be in danger. There was widespread panic with people at Awakeri and Waimana evacuating.

The police stressed that they are not blaming those who did evacuate and say it's human nature to respond that way.

Police also note there was a communication breakdown and the public knew before them that the threat had passed.

Allan says there will be a review into how the evacuation was handled, as there is with all events like this.

My thoughts are, though, did people know what to do and did they have the means to do it? The answer is yes across the board, she says.

I would still err on the side that it is better people leave home than stay.

Allan says during a national event like this, messaging is very broad and messages sent to the public just cant go into that level of detail requested.

She says staff made decisions with the best data available to them at the time and these decisions were then communicated almost immediately to the public.

She is concentrating on whether, had the tsunami eventuated, there would have been loss of life or not.

Your comments will all feed into the national review which will be publicly released, she says.

Local Democracy Reporting asked Bay of Plenty Civil Defence if it would like those living in the grey areas on the map to evacuate in any future events.

Some members of the public say they had stayed home after viewing the maps but are wondering if they made the right decision.

A spokeswoman responded says it's too early to say.

The event was a very valuable opportunity to see how a large-scale evacuation works in reality, she says.

A number of debriefs are being held at a local, regional and national level, so its too early to state what that advice would be though there will be public education programmes that fall out of this in due course.
Plant & Food Researchs Cathy McKenna has won the 2021 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for her work to create an effective armoured scale insect management programme for Gold3 (SunGold) Kiwifruit.

Over two seasons of trials, Ms McKenna spearheaded a research team that developed a year-round programme capable of ensuring the high level of scale control required to satisfy market access requirements.

Armoured scale are insects which can cause cosmetic defects on kiwifruit and once populations build up on vines, they are difficult to bring back down.

Cathy is Team Leader, Kiwifruit Entomology at Crown Research Institute Plant & Food Research.

Zespri Chairman and award judge Bruce Cameron says Cathy led a team that had successfully identified and demonstrated an effective management programme to minimise the levels of scale, which was becoming an increasing problem in Gold3 orchards.

This included determining a safe window for applying an organic oil treatment during summer which, having been validated over several years of trials and combined with existing techniques, has proven to reduce scale populations without compromising the crop.

Cathys work has resulted in an increased amount of kiwifruit meeting exacting phytosanitary requirements and being available for high value Asian markets, says Bruce.

Ensuring supply is not constrained by pests is key to maintaining grower profitability and the impact of Cathys work will be felt for years to come.

Cathy was a key player in a pan-industry collaboration that ran the trials and eventually confirmed the oil could be used to control scale, within a certain summer window, without damaging fruit.

Fellow judge Kristy McDonald QC, Chair of kiwifruit industry regulator Kiwifruit New Zealand, says the award recognises Cathy as an innovator of a very high calibre.

Innovative solutions are essential for industry growth and for New Zealands economic prosperity. Cathy and her team are doing important work to ensure New Zealands reputation for high quality produce continues into the future, says Ms McDonald QC.

NZKGI Chair Mark Mayston says, Its important we fight against scale and Cathys work in managing this pest will support growers by increasing the ability for our high value, great tasting fruit to enter different markets.

On behalf of New Zealand kiwifruit growers, Id like to commend and congratulate Cathy for her contribution to the industry.

Cathy McKenna says, Im incredibly humbled and honoured to be recognised with this award by the kiwifruit industry, which I hold in such high regard.

The work we do for the industry, gives me, and my team, a real sense of purpose, and Im grateful to be able to work with such a collaborative group of people every day. Innovation is not about one persons work, its truly a team effort, and I accept this award on behalf of the researchers, growers, Zespri and everyone across the industry who Ive been privileged to work with on this project.
A rally is being organised for next weekend to support Murupara GP Dr Bernard Conlon, who is being investigated by the Medical Council for comments he made about the Pfizer vaccine.

Hundreds are expected to turn out to protest their GP of 30 years being investigated by a Professional Conduct Committee of the Medical Council.

The committee has been set the task of deciding if Dr Conlon should go before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal, which could result in him being barred from practicing medicine.

The scrutiny came after a complaint was made to the council about comments Dr Conlon made about the Pfizer vaccine at a Maori health hui organised by Te Ika Whenua Hauora in July.

At the hui, Dr Conlon questioned giving the vaccine to pregnant women and teenagers without informed consent and offered information he had researched about the risks of the injection.

The Ministry of Health has confirmed the Pfizer vaccine does not contain any ingredients that are harmful to pregnant people or their babies.

Millions of pregnant people have been vaccinated around the world. Data shows no evidence that the vaccine is associated with an increased risk of miscarriage during pregnancy, and no additional safety concerns have been raised, the ministry states.

People aged 12 to 15 became eligible for Pfizer vaccination in August after a large worldwide trial showed that it was safe.

Dr Conlon, who studied medicine at the University of Belfast, has been practising in Murupara for more than 30 years and has a lot of influence in the community.

The remote town of just over 1800 people has the lowest percentage of people to have received the vaccine in New Zealand.

Vaccination data from the Ministry of Health released this week shows Murupara at 47 per cent for first doses of the vaccine, up from 44 per cent last week, and 31 per cent for second doses, up from 28 per cent.

To reach a 90 per cent vaccination rate, another 827 eligible community members must be vaccinated.

That number is down by just 40 people since last week despite the joint efforts by Te Puna Ora o Mataatua, Te Ika Whenua Hauora and Te Runanga o Ngati Manawa.

However, in the face of Muruparas low vaccine rates, and investigation by the Professional Conduct Committee, Dr Conlon has continued to post pro-choice messages, information about the efficacy of Ivermectin, and advocate boosting the immune system with vitamin and mineral supplements and using mouthwash and nasal flushing.

Ivermectic is a drug that Medsafe and the Ministry of Health have strongly advised against using for the treatment of Covid-19, saying that inappropriate use of the drug can be dangerous.

Dr Conlon told Local Democracy Reporting that, in his view, Ivermectin was a sensible early treatment option.

He says, with 80 per cent of Covid-19 deaths in the United Kingdom last month being fully vaccinated, I will be offering it to all my high-risk patients regardless of vaccination status.

While the statistic Dr Conlon quoted is similar to one from the UK Health Security Agencys Covid-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report (Week 43) it ignores the fact that the same report states that these statistics should be discounted for a variety of reasons and that the Pfizer vaccine is 80 to 95 per cent effective.

Dr Conlon says he is not anti-vaccine and will happily administer the Pfizer vaccine if his patient is adequately informed and given a free choice.

In an open letter to the Medical Council in response to their decision to investigate his conduct, which he shared with Local Democracy Reporting, he accused the council of straying from the Hippocratic oath, and asked whether the fundamentals of informed consent and freedom to choose were no longer prerequisite requirements in the New Zealand medical profession.

The ugly bullying I see happening against my unvaccinated patients is one of the saddest experiences I have ever witnessed in my time as a doctor. To see such patients treated as errant livestock is plainly wrong; one patient described his experience  it was like having a boot to my neck whilst I reluctantly rolled up my sleeve to have the jab and save my job.

Dr Conlon has a lot of support in the Murupara community, and at the forefront of this is Ngati Manawa kaumatua, principal of Te Kura Kaupapa Motuhake o Tawhiuau, a Maori immersion school in Murupara, and former Maori Party president Pem Bird QSM, who previously organised a petition signed by 3000 people in support of Dr Conlon and is organising the rally for November 13.

All of my people are writing en masse to the medical council release the decision," he says.

Were not sitting back idly. We love our doctor; 30 years hes been here, treating us. The poorest region of Aotearoa. Sometimes at night, after a hard days work, hell come to see his patients who are suffering from things like cancer.

Mr Bird wouldnt tell Local Democracy Reporting whether he had had the vaccine, or whether he planned to get it before the November 15 deadline the Government has set for teachers.

He says it's no ones business but his own, but, like Dr Conlon, is adamant that he isn't an anti vaxer. He is simply advocating freedom of choice.

Theres Pfizer and then there are other choices. My doctor has come out with a choice for us but Im not allowed it.

He says his two daughters and his mokopuna had the vaccine with his full support.

Its not that I dont want to be vaccinated, I just want a choice.

All [Dr Conlon] said was, with kids and pregnant women, that they should have the right to an informed decision. Thats what he said. Now, if thats an offence, my goodness me 

He says that Dr Conlon is treating his wife for cancer. Mr Bird is worried what will happen to her, and other long-time Murupara patients, if he is stopped from practising.

He says his wife has not been able to cope with the traditional medicine for her cancer.

Shed gone off it, she couldnt stand it, so he offered her something else. Well guess what, she's alive, well and kicking. She was told she should have been dead two years ago. If they block off her medicine, shes worried, Whats going to happen to me? Isnt that terrifying?

Theyre going to bring somebody in with no knowledge of my town, the patients, anybody. Theyre going to force somebody else on us. And it's going to end up in the closure of the pharmacy because hes not allowed to get his medicine through.

Its absolute tyranny. We dont want to see our people getting herded.

The Medical Council says it can not comment on individual cases but confirms it had received a number of notifications that relate to matters about the Covid-19 vaccination and spreading misinformation.

A spokesperson did say it took these matters very seriously.

Our primary purpose is to protect the public health and safety of New Zealanders. This is the touchstone against which the Council considers every decision about individual doctors."

It had recently published guidance emphasising its view that there was no place for anti-vaccination messages in professional practice, nor any promotion of anti-vaccination claims including on social media and advertising by health practitioners.

Council expects doctors to be aware of, and comply with, its published standards of clinical and ethical practice. It is open to Council to review a doctors compliance with its standards whenever it has reason to consider a doctor is failing to do so.

If the council considers that the notification needs to be investigated further, and the complaint relates to a doctors conduct, the matter is referred to a Professional Conduct Committee. It is the committee which determines whether or not charges will be laid with the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal hears and determines disciplinary proceedings brought against health practitioners, including deciding what sanctions should be put in place."

In terms of the timeframe involved, a committee aimed to complete any investigation within eight to 12 months.

Meanwhile, Te Ika Whenua Hauora operations manager Robert Jenner says Murupara will be having some five-day immunisation drives which they hope to begin next week.

He says they are looking at a number of strategies.

We have been doing a lot of drive throughs with Te Puna Ora o Mataatua and we are looking at having a series of five-day clinics where people can just go and get a test whenever they need it.
Fireworks vendor Justin King is turning November 5 into a cracking good cause this year, donating a percentage of his sales to mental health charity I Am Hope.

I Am Hope is holding a virtual fundraiser on Friday for Gumboot Friday.

Justin is hoping to raise $10,000 for the charity, founded by mental health advocate Mike King, which provides free counselling for young people in Aotearoa aged 25 and under.

Justins pop-up firework shops throughout the country include one based in The Island, Papamoa, which is being run by Tauranga local Hailey Smith, herself a volunteer for I Am Hope, along with her friend Georgia Johnson.

Justin says he normally donates to animal charities, but this year it seemed like the stars were aligned to raise money for Gumboot Friday.

Like most people in New Zealand, I know many people affected by mental health, especially young people.

It is a real crisis for these young people to get the help they need. We want to contribute funds, but also raise awareness of Gumboot Friday - which uses the analogy of depression being like walking through the mud. The more people that know about this, the more they will realise how great the need is.

Justin says he, like many others in New Zealand, has been inspired by Mike Kings unfaltering drive to help young people with mental health challenges.

I am Hope and Gumboot Friday do an amazing job. But we cant leave it all to Mike King - we all need to muck in and do our bit. Young people are really in need of support, now more than ever before.

Justins Papamoa site will be open all day Thursday and Friday until 11pm.

Around the region other people have rallied to support Gumboot Friday.

In Matamata, Sarah Troughton is running 21.1 km in gumboots and has already raised more than her $1000 goal on Givealittle.

She is encouraged by one of her dearest friends, Mount mum of seven Tash Dalley, who herself raised $75,000 for I Am Hope earlier this year, following the tragic death of her beloved 13-year-old son Blake to a suspected suicide.

Tash agrees that young people need counselling more than ever, and that I Am Hope/ Gumboot Friday are providing a much needed service which the government is not.

Blake Dalley.

Please, I can't beg you enough. If you have a little to spare - please join us in supporting this worthy cause.

Suicide. I can honestly say I never thought this would happen to our family - we were naive...it doesn't discriminate, it can happen to anyone. I have always consciously kept my eye out for my children's mental wellbeing, signs of stress, anxiousness, depression.It breaks my heart.

Tash firmly believes in Mike Kings stance that one-to-one counselling for young people can save lives.

Maybe things could have been different if Blake had somewhere to reach out.

Blake is not alone.

The number of our young people in crisis would blow your mind. We desperately need to provide them with a safe place to open up. And that's where the amazing Gumboot Friday team comes in.

They are in the trenches fighting for our youth, supporting them and providing them with the help they need, providing them with hope.

Last month, Tauranga restaurateur Connie Richards raised more than $8000 for I Am Hope/ Gumboot Friday in a non-stop 24 hour climb of Mount Maunganui.

Having suffered from anxiety and depression herself and recovered with counselling, Connie is also passionate about counselling being more freely available to young people in Aotearoa.

Connie Richards on top of Mount Maunganui.

Across New Zealand on November 5, the Gumboot Army, made up of hundreds of dedicated volunteers across the country are organising individual and community fundraising efforts, says Mike King.

We now rely solely on the Gumboot Army, made up of wonderful people and communities across Aotearoa, to help us reach our goal. These people are passionate, hardworking and dedicated and without them, we wouldnt be where we are today.

With the onset of further lockdowns and isolation, I Am Hope recently launched its Gumboot Friday online counselling service nationwide, with patronage going through the roof, demonstrating young peoples urgent need to access counselling sessions promptly more than ever, says Mike.

I Am Hope encourages the Gumboot Army to go ahead with events on November 5 while adhering to appropriate Covid level restrictions and safety protocols.

The pop up fireworks container is at The Island, 20 Domain Road, Papamoa.
A Tauranga man charged with failing to comply with an order under Covid-19 regulations has been given strict bail conditions.

The man was arrested following a large gathering at Coronation Park in Mount Maunganui last month.

The 43-year-old appeared in Tauranga District Court today, where he was remanded on bail.

His bail conditions state he must not use any device to play an active part in organising and or participating in an event in breach of Covid-19 restrictions.

He is due to appear in court again on November 18.

In a statement released by police on Friday, a spokesperson says the man was arrested in relation to the gathering on October 16, which police say was an alleged breach of Covid-19 restrictions.

The gathering took place on Super Saturday, when a nationwide push to increase vaccinations was taking place.

It is alleged that 300-400 people were in attendance at the gathering and the majority were not wearing masks, says a police spokesperson.

Enquiries into the gathering continue and police are not ruling out laying further charges.
Covid-19 updates from Thursday: the possibility of a border system to allow vaccinated Aucklanders to travel outside the region over summer has split officials, while the opposition proposes a new isolation system for incoming travellers.

On Wednesday, the prime minister suggested that vaccinated Aucklanders may be able to travel beyond their region's border by Christmas and over summer.

While there will not be boundaries once the traffic light framework - which relies on 90 per cent vaccination - is fully in place, the government is working out a system to make travel possible if boundaries remain.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told Checkpoint time slots were an option the government was considering for the potential system.

"We haven't made that decision yet. It's an option. We're just working through what the practical options are to ensure that we don't end up with people spending days sitting in their cars."

Police Association president Chris Cahill told Checkpoint today he is "flabbergasted" at the news, saying a checkpoint for holiday travel out of Auckland should not be in place at all.

"Straight away you can see it's an impractical idea, and that's the feedback we've had from our members, how would they ever think this would work?

"We'd be against what we're hearing at this stage [about the options], it looks unmanagable to us, the borders are already stretched from a policing perspective and these sorts of ideas will just place a lot more strain on police, there'll be a lot more staff required to be allocated to those borders and they just do not sound practical."

About 300 staff are already involved in Auckland's border operations, he says.

"If over or 90 per cent of Aucklanders have been vaccinated, it's actually a very small proportion of people numbers wise, who will try to leave that aren't vaccinated, so can you actually put that many police resources into what may be [policing] a couple hundred people at most."

Last Christmas Eve, about 43,000 vehicles left Auckland, according to NZTA figures.

University of Auckland's centre for supply chain management director Tava Olsen told Checkpoint a system for Auckland travellers to cross the border in the summer holidays would be "doable" if government got to work on it right now, but it would be very difficult.

"There's just no way you could check all those 43,000 cars, so people would actually have to sign up for a spot and some people wouldn't get to leave Christmas Eve.

"I would probably have a system where you're going to do spot checks, and you're going to have big fines for people who haven't got all their paperwork in order. That is a slightly riskier system because you aren't checking everybody."

On Thursday afternoon, Hipkins released a statement saying, "no system will be perfect," and it will be challenging but the government is working on options

On the other hand, deputy prime minister Grant Robertson told First Up while they want to ensure there was a way for Aucklanders to travel, there would probably be a better option than time slots.

"I don't think it's particularly likely that there would be the kind of scheme where you were allocated a day.

"I can't see that - it wouldn't be very practical. But we do have to find a way through in the event that we still have a boundary there."

National Party Covid-19 response spokesperson Chris Bishop told Checkpoint a time allocation for Aucklanders to leave the region is "the stupidest idea I've ever heard".

Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett told Checkpoint if Auckland's overall vaccination rate is over 90 percent of double doses by the Christmas holidays, then Aucklanders should be free to travel across the border without checks.

"Police are not travel agents and I don't believe that they would be able to manage," he says.

"I can't see any other system that they can put in place between now and the beginning of the Christmas holiday period.

"If you tried stopping those vehicles, you'd have a backup from Pokeno back to Auckland, and the same thing the other way. I don't believe it's workable."

Cases update and vaccine

There are 139 new community cases of Covid-19 on Thursday (136 in Auckland, two in Waikato, and one in Northland).

A new daily record has been set for the number of people in hospital with the virus now at 64.

In the past 14 days, there have been 452 unlinked cases.

Meanwhile, Tonga's first case of Covid-19, who arrived on a repatriation flight from Christchurch last week, has tested negative after a second round of testing.

The Ministry of Health has confirmed the death of a person, who tested positive and was isolating at home, last night was not vaccine related. The coroner is investigating.

The makers of the Covid-19 vaccine Novavax have applied for provisional approval from Medsafe to use it in this country.

At the end of last year, the government announced a deal with Novavax to purchase enough of the vaccine for five and a half million people, but its global rollout has been hit by production delays.

MIQ system and isolation

The National Party has launched a petition to scrap the MIQ system for double-vaccinated travellers from low and medium risk countries.

The party's proposal would require people test negative for Covid-19 before and after they land, and have them isolate at home for a week, using the same protections being used in the government's at-home self-isolation trial.

In the trial, participants must answer a randomly timed video call three times a day which detects location via GPS, and may only leave their room to collect contactless food and deliveries, for testing, or to get some fresh air if they have a backyard that no-one else accesses.

The government has signalled it would start easing MIQ restrictions early next year.

It was also revealed this morning that just 294 people with Covid-19 in the current community outbreak are in MIQ facilities, with the rest isolating at home and about 1000 cases waiting to find out if they will be moved to quarantine.
Man arrested and released after the alleged 'harassment' of a young girl at a Rincon petrol station Guardia Civil officers detained a suspect after analysing images captured by security cameras at the service station, but released him without charges after he had spent a night behind bars

A man has been arrested by Guardia Civil officers, but released without charges, after the alleged "harassment" of a young girl at a petrol station car wash on the A-7 in Rincon de la Victoria, on the Costa del Sol.

The incident happened at around 2.15 pm on Monday, 1 November, at the Tamoil petrol station at kilometre 254 on the A-7, but details have only just been released.

A father took his nine-year-old daughter with him when he went to wash his vehicle at the service station. Parking it in the first car wash bay the parent cleaned the vehicle with a high-pressure water gun while the child waited outside the car, and at no point was she more than three or four metres away from him.

After a few minutes, another vehicle arrived at the car wash area which entered bay three. A man got out of the car and appeared to watch the child. He gestured, then got back into the car to drive again. He stopped a few metres from the young girl and apparently said something to her from the vehicle. When the father became aware of the strange behaviour the man who was acting suspiciously quickly left.

Registration number

The girls parent rushed into the petrol station to request that they keep the images from the security cameras and then he reported the incident to the Guardia Civil. After officers reviewed the video footage of the incident, and the strange behaviour of the individual, an alert was passed to other units in the area, with details of the registration number of the vehicle that was also captured on film.

The man was arrested a few hours later and faced questioning by police officers about his actions.

However, after spending a night in a cell, the detained man was released without charges after a judge ordered the case was not sufficiently proven and should be shelved.
These are the first details of what the new Hard Rock Hotel Marbella will offer It is scheduled to open from June of next year, after renovation works are complete on the site of what was, in the 1970s, the first hotel in the world-famous Puerto Banus

Hard Rock Hotels has detailed its plans for the new resort it will open in June 2022 in Marbella on Spains Costa del Sol, which was first revealed in an exclusive SUR story.

It will be located on the site of the emblematic Andalucia Plaza hotel that was, in the 1970s, the first hotel in the world-famous Puerto Banus area.

Hard Rock International is one of the most recognised companies worldwide with offices in 68 countries, and Todd Hricko, Hard Rock Hotels Senior Vice President of Hotel Development, could not hide his desire to be present on the coast: We have long had our eyes set on the beautiful region of the Costa del Sol and we are sure that the Hard Rock Hotel Marbella will shine in the market.

Suites

And it will do so with 384 rooms, of which 50 will be suites. After the long-awaited opening of Hard Rock Hotel Madrid last summer, and the continued success of the properties in Ibiza and Tenerife, we are delighted to offer another beautiful property in Spain and show the continued growth of the brand in the country and around the world , said Hricko.

It will also feature six gastronomic offerings along with a roof terrace on the top floor, which will house a VIP bar and an infinity pool with panoramic views.

Heated indoor pool

The Hard Rock Hotel Marbella will also have a wellness centre, with a heated indoor pool, gym and a Rock Spa with six treatment areas, a sauna and a relaxation room.

The company, which already operates in 241 locations with hotels, casinos, shops, venues for live shows and cafes, also focuses on incentive tourism, meetings and congresses. And Hricko says the renovated hotel will have "one of the largest meeting and event spaces in the Marbella market."

True to its origin, Hard Rock International has also announced that the Marbella hotel will feature a collection of art and memorabilia in rooms and common spaces that will reflect Hard Rock's distinctive design aesthetic and 'showcase the vibrant arts culture of Spain".

The chain said, Hard Rock is actively acquiring memorabilia from celebrated artists from the Spanish music, dance and art fields that will be presented to create an authentic experience for the guests.

Musical memorabilia

The firm began with an Eric Clapton guitar and now owns the largest and most valuable collection of authentic musical memorabilia in the world with more than 86,000 pieces, which are displayed in their locations around the world.

Miguel Casas, CEO of Stoneweg Hospitality, which together with Bain Capital Credit acquired the hotel property earlier this year, is also excited about the project. We are very pleased to bring the Hard Rock Hotels brand to Andalucia Plaza. It has always been clear to us that this brand aligns perfectly with the markets of the Costa del Sol and Marbella. The hotel's location in bustling Puerto Banus, combined with our investment, will make this property a benchmark for the destination that will exceed the expectations of our future guests.
This is the moment a three-metre-long python was safely captured by police in Malaga Local officers have warned that anyone found abandoning exotic animals can face hefty fines of up to 300,000 euros

Specialists from Malaga's Local Police force have safely captured a three-metre-long python snake that was found near a roadside in the Montes de Malaga.

A resident alerted a rural ranger to the presence of the molurus python near the MA-3111 road, which connects the towns of Olias and Colmenar. The ranger then called in the specialist team from the Local Police forces Grupona nature protection group to deal with the serpent.

The snake was sighted at around 8 am on Tuesday, 2 November, and when the officers arrived on the scene they found the reptile partially hiding in bushes. With the use of a snake-catching device the team worked to restrain and carefully capture the serpent without harming it. Once controlled, it was introduced into a carrier, the most delicate part of the operation, as the reptile tried to resist.

Eventually, the snake was transferred to the municipal animal welfare shelter, where it was found to be in good condition and weighed about eight kilos. The Local Police have approached several different animal associations to take care of the reptile.

The molurus python can grow up to six-metres-long and weigh up to one hundred kilos. Also known as the Indian python, it typically has a triangular head, that is small in size compared to the length of its body.

It lives in humid environments and kills its prey by biting and then using constriction or strangulation, swallows them whole, by dislocating the jaw and stretching the skin around it. That allows it to feed on large prey, although mainly it is rodents.

This species represents a very low risk for human beings, with deaths being associated almost entirely with the handling of the animal as a pet and not with unprovoked attacks.

Malagas Local Police have warned of the risk of introducing or abandoning exotic and invasive animals into the wild, and can carry fines of up to 300,000 euros for serious cases, and even, prison sentences.

Before abandoning them, the force recommends that people who have non-native animals, contact the appropriate agencies, such as the Malaga Local Police or municipal animal welfare centre for information about how to rehouse them.
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ABS AIP for GEVs Handymax hydrogen carrier design

Second GEV hydrogen carrier design to receive ABS AIP this year.

A compressed hydrogen carrier design with a 430-tonne cargo capacity by Global Energy Ventures (GEV) has received Approval in Principle (AIP) from ABS.

AIP for the Handymax design, which GEV intends to be the first commercial-scale vessel available for the marine transport of hydrogen, follows an ABS AIP which GEV received in July this year for a compressed hydrogen vessel with a 2,000-tonne capacity.

Hydrogen has a significant role to play in global decarbonization initiatives both within shipping and the wider economy. Safe and efficient transport of hydrogen at sea will be critical to the development of the infrastructure required for its wider adoption and we are proud to be able to support GEV with its innovative designs, said Georgios Plevrakis, ABS Director, Global Sustainability.

Martin Carolan, Managing Director and CEO said: GEV is pleased to secure AIP from ABS, which is a leading classification society for gas carriers. GEV is looking forward to working with them to ensure that our compressed hydrogen ships continue to meet the highest safety standards. Marine storage and transport solutions are required for hydrogen to contribute to global decarbonization ambitions.

GEVs Handymax design is able to enter most ports and is equipped with a dual-fuel engine powering generators coupled to two electric drive fixed pitch propellers or a dynamic positioning system.

ABS AIP was granted following a review of GEVs design in accordance with the ABS Guidance Notes on Review and Approval of Novel Concepts incorporating relevant principles from the ABS Guide for Vessels Intended to Carry Compressed Natural Gases in Bulk and the IMO IGF Code. ABS Rules and Guides can be downloaded here.






Daphne Technology secures strategic investments for Greenhouse Gas challenge

Daphne Technology, a Swiss climate tech startup addressing the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) challenge, continues to attract world leaders of the global economy.

Investors in this round include Shell Ventures, Trafigura, AET, and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, all committed to limiting global warming. Daphne leverages innovative technology to remove toxic and GHG emissions such as nitrogen oxides, methane and carbon dioxide from the combustion gas of any fuel type, including oil, LNG, biofuels, ammonia, and hydrogen. The plug-and-play solution breaks down the pollutants, converting them into non-hazardous by-products, which are either released into the environment or transformed into valuable products. As a result, Daphne contributes to a circular economy and a significant reduction in GHG emissions. Why it matters: The transition to sustainable energy sources is fundamentally reshaping the global economy. Daphne Technology will help the transition to net-zero in the maritime and hard-to-decarbonise sectors. A dramatic reduction of GHG emissions is a must to meet the Paris Agreement goals and International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations.

The vision of Daphne Technology is to convert toxic and GHG pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, methane and carbon dioxide into upcycled and useful products, both at sea and on land.

The company is currently pursuing commercial deployment and scaleup and is positioning its solutions in landmark projects. Because Daphne's technology can be applied to multiple fuel types, it has the potential to make a substantial impact across the energy system. Deal details: Shell Ventures led the CHF 10 million capital raise along with Trafigura. AET, and all previous investors co-invested, including Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and the Innovation Fund. The capital raise earmarks the second round of funding since Daphne Technology spun off from the Swiss Federal Technical Institute (EPFL) in 2018. "We are proud to have attracted best-in-class strategic investors all committed to working together, with Daphne, for an economically sustainable energy transition," says Founder and CEO of Daphne Technology, Dr Mario Michan. "The capital raise enables us to deploy our systems and expand our portfolio of emission reduction solutions. The transition to a more sustainable economy represents a historic investment opportunity." All new shareholders are joining Daphne with the common goal of accelerating the company's technology deployment and maximising its impact. Peter van Giessel, Investment Director, Shell Ventures, commented: We are very pleased to support Daphne in their mission to create a more sustainable energy future. Daphnes technology addresses a significant challenge in the hard-to-abate marine space when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Their plug-and-play solution has enormous potential to also help other sectors, and we look forward to supporting them in their journey. Furthermore, Margaux Moore, Head of Energy Transition Research at Trafigura, said: "Daphne Technology's innovative approach has the potential to become a pivotal technology for the maritime industry. The ability to capture emissions from hydrocarbon maritime fuels and meaningfully reduce emissions in the short-term is a critical component of the industry's transition to net zero emissions, in which multiple fuels and multiple abatement solutions will be required. This investment fits well with our strategy to invest in and develop technologies and business models that will be required for the transition to net zero." Capt Rajalingam Subramaniam, AET President & CEO, closed off stating: "AET is very pleased to be one of Daphne Technology's strategic investors and support the development and deployment of technology to transition the maritime sector to net-zero. This investment marks our entry into R&D for GHG abatement technologies aligned with our ongoing decarbonisation initiative and is made alongside other leading like-minded energy players and strategic partners. As a believer in LNG as a longer-term solution in maritime decarbonisation, we have been looking for technologies to reduce the methane slip and improve the "tank to wake" decarbonisation environment. Therefore, aside from being an investor, we will also deploy and test the technology across our vessels which utilise LNG as a fuel source."




Jim Weber/New Mexican file photo

Eighth grader Shania Montano gets a dose of the Pfizer vaccine in August during a mobile vaccination event at Santa Fe High School. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 on Friday (Oct. 29).
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Today

Cloudy this morning. A few showers developing during the afternoon. High 78F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

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Partly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 66F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Abortion opponents clashed with abortion-rights activists outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
anjan_c2007 Distinguished - BHPian



Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: India Posts: 6,839 Thanked: 11,587 Times

View My Garage





re: Is PUC required on a brand new car?



The text quoted below is a reply by the Transport Minister in the Lok Sabha on 22.07.2021:-





Quote: Ministry of Road Transport & Highways



Government standardised the Pollution Under Control Certificate (PUCC) form to a common format to be issued across the country



Posted On: 22 JUL 2021 12:44PM by PIB Delhi



This Ministry vide G.S.R. 410(E) dated 14-06-2021 has standardized the PUCC form to a common format to be issued across the country under Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989.



This Ministry has notified G.S.R. 527(E) dated 06-06-2018 regarding linkage of PUC data with VAHAN database.



As per Rule 115(7) of the CMVR, 1989 After the expiry of a period of one year from the date on which the motor vehicle was first registered, every such vehicle shall carry a valid Pollution under Control certificate issued by an agency authorised for this purpose by the State Government.



The validity of the certificate shall be for six months and the certificate shall always be carried in the vehicle and produced on demand by the officers referred to in sub-rule (1) of rule 116. Provided that the validity of the certificate shall be twelve months for the vehicles manufactured as per BS-IV or BS-VI norms.



Further, this Ministry has also issued an advisory to State Governments for proper functioning of PUC centres, as under:



The State Transport Departments all over the country will mandate a PUC centre at every fuel station in their State.



The Calibration of PUC machines should be done at regular periodicity by third party agencies duly authorised by the Transport Department of the State. Further, the Transport Departments are also advised to carry random checks of the PUC centres and also to carry enforcement drive for PUC compliance by Motor Vehicle Owners.

Mandate pre-payment of PUC fee before the tests are conducted.

Introduce well-equipped mobile test centres and a programme to check visibly polluting vehicles.



Enforce stringent penalty for PUC centres for non-compliance and malpractices and to cancel the authorization of non-compliant PUC centres.

Implementation of the provisions of Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989 comes under purview of respective Governments of States and Union Territories.



This information was given by Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Shri Nitin Gadkari in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.







A new car's PUC is valid for one year from the date on which the motor vehicle was first registered (not manufactured, sold or driven out of a showroom). Thereafter, once in every six month's it has to be renewed. A PUC issued by any testing centre is valid throughout the country since these are now VAHAN linked.The text quoted below is a reply by the Transport Minister in the Lok Sabha on 22.07.2021:-
The internet is not safe: hackers are always trying to steal your passwords, browsers use cookie-files to keep track of your habits, Windows collects thousands garbage files... Which is why users need protection against everything these. Software to protect privacy has been developed to keep user's personal information safe while they browse the internet. By using such software can securely delete personal internet tracks, junk files or any other sensitive data.

Software "WIPE" is a powerful security tool that allows you to protect your privacy by clearing browser history and cache, index.dat files, cookie-files, autocomplete-history, temporary internet files and many many other items. This program also erases any other tracks that you leave behind after having used your pc.

Content preview

After the application starts you will see a screen listing all programs that may contain personal data you do not want to show to anyone. You can double click on any item in the list to see the number of files stored by the program and the amount of space, e.g. view cookie-files, index.dat files etc.

You can customize what you want to delete before cleaning. Upon clicking button "Delete!", WIPE shows friendly screen displaying the icon of the program which is in process of cleaning, shows which specific file is being deleted and total number of files and amount of space which was deleted.

Prevent Restore

Program to prevent recovery of deleted files and folders. Includes several security algorithms, which makes process the most effective. The program also works with removable storage. Easy wizard interface allows you to do everything in just few simple steps.

Secret Disk

This is software to create secure disk on your computer which may be locked and unlocked with a password to store your private files. When locked Secret Disk doesn't appear in Windows system and completely invisible with all contents.

Startup Guard

Easy tool to control programs which run on Windows startup. You can leave programs which you need at startup. Or you can disable unwanted software. Or find more about unknown software which you have installed. The program catches new records on startup, and you can even remove a virus or spyware. You can disable unwanted system processes to get maximum computer performance.

What's New:
In context: The JWCC program is the Pentagon's replacement for its $10 billion JEDI project, which had to be canceled earlier this year following a lengthy legal row between Amazon and Microsoft. Google was notably missing from the action, as the company had previously been criticized by employees for providing AI tech to the military's controversial Project Maven program. With the DoDs JWCC contract now seeking proposals from multiple vendors, Google is said to be "aggressively pursuing" the lucrative project, a move that's raised concern among the Alphabet Workers Union.

Google's "alarming" exit from Project Maven in 2018 came in the face of increasing internal pressure that saw thousands of signed employee petitions and a dozen resignations. The company even came up with a set of guidelines for future military AI partnerships that would forbid the tech's use for weaponry and surveillance.

A New York Times report has now revealed that the company is seeking to win a contract with the Pentagon for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability project, the replacement for JEDI. While JEDI's $10 billion were to be spent over a 10-year period with a single vendor, JWCC is a multivendor 5-year project with an undisclosed worth.

Microsoft and Amazon remain the current two best picks for the program, however, the Pentagon has previously said that it will also consider other players like Google, Oracle and IBM. Things shifted into high gear at Google's cloud division in September, when engineers were pulled off from other assignments to prioritize JWCC. The company now looks to submit a bid in the coming weeks, once the DoD deems it can qualify.

It is no surprise that @Google has continued seeking lucrative contracts w. the @DeptofDefense.



They have spent yrs firing organizers & limiting transparency b/c the bottom line is all that matters to Google.



Workers will fight this& we will win again.https://t.co/cOmgzfzWWL  Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) #Strikesgiving (@AlphabetWorkers) November 3, 2021

Expectedly, Google's interest in the project has also sparked concerns among the 800+ strong Alphabet Workers Union, a trade union of Google employees and contractors who've previously voiced and campaigned against Project Maven, labor rights as well as other workplace issues at Google.

Although the union has announced it will "fight" this lucrative contract and "win again," it remains to be seen how (and if) Google will address their concerns this time around. For now, the company has said that it is "firmly committed to serving our public sector customers, including the DoD." The latter expects to award a contract by April 2022.
What just happened? With the price and rarity of Ampere graphics cards getting close to that of gold, the RTX 3000 series is becoming an enticing target for criminals. So, its not totally surprising to learn that a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 3000-series cards was stolen from a truck as it made its way to a distribution center.

The heist, which took place on October 29, was announced by EVGA Product Manager Jacob Freeman via the companys forums (as reported by IGN). He didnt reveal too many details about the crime, likely because its an ongoing investigation, though he did confirm the truck was en route from San Francisco to EVGAs Southern California distribution center at the time.

It sounds as if the thieves made off with most of the Ampere lineup. Freeman added that the stolen cards values start at $329.99 likely the RTX 3060and go all the way up to $1959.99the RTX 3090. These are MSRPs, so the actual selling prices would be a lot higher. How many were stolen wasnt revealed, but it will doubtlessly have been a large number.

For those hoping to grab themselves a cheap RTX 3000 card, Freeman warns that it is a criminal and civil offense to buy or receive property that has been stolen, as per the California Penal Code section 496(a). He also notes that it is a criminal and civil offense to conceal, sell, withhold, or aid in concealing selling or withholding any such property.

Anyone who purchases a very new-looking EVGA card from a second-hand market can confirm its not stolen by checking the serial number at the companys warranty check page. Additionally, the card is genuine if it can be successfully registered and seen under My Products. EVGA will not register or honor any warranty or upgrade claims on stolen products.

Average selling prices of the RTX 3000 and Radeon RX 6000 series. No wonder thieves want them.

A recent report illustrates the sad truth that Ampere and RDNA 2 cards are becoming ever more expensive and harder to find; AMDs products are close to their peak price. Their scarcity and amount of money needed to secure one mean more cards are appearing on the black market, but don't be tempted to buy one.

This isnt the first case of RTX 3000 cards being hijacked. Forty containers of RTX 3090s that were worth over $330,000 were stolen from an MSI factory in China last December in what is believed to have been an insider job.
In brief: Last week Google announced that it's expanding its Career Certificate program. The program is now free for community colleges and career and technical education high schools across the US. The company is also partnering with four-year universities for the program.

Google said that community colleges and technical education high schools could add Google Career Certificates to their curriculum for free. That also goes for Schools that are part of the American Association of Community Colleges. The four-year universities Google is working with to accept credits from its program include Northeastern, Purdue Global, Arizona State University, and SUNY.

Google Career Certificates is a program of classes designed to offer students certificates in IT support, data analytics, Android development, project management, user experience design, and more. Through 150 hands-on activities, the program can get students ready for jobs in related fields with just three to six months of training. Google claims more than half of its graduates are underrepresented groups in tech, including Blacks, Latinos, females, or are veterans.

Connecticut on Friday became the first state in the US to approve all of the Google Career Certificates across its universities and state colleges. Next spring, the state will offer a four-credit course for Google's IT support certificate and non-credit courses for Google's certificates. According to the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities website, the non-credit certificate will be a minimum 150-hour online course, though It has not finalized the cost and schedule yet.
What just happened? Google announced this week that it's complying with the new South Korean law that says it must allow alternate payment systems for Android apps. The company will also reduce service fees for transactions that use third-party payment, on top of other changes it made last month.

Google notified South Korean Android developers that they could begin adding alternate payment options to their apps. When Android users in South Korea make Google Play Store purchases, they'll have the choice to pay through Google Play or a third-party billing system during checkout. The service fee reductions on third-party billing will compound with the fee reductions Google discussed in an October 21 blog post on its Android developer blog.

Under current rules, the service fee for 99 percent of developers whose apps are on Google Play is now 15 percent or less rather than 30. Ebooks and music streaming services are now eligible for services fees of 10 percent, while the commissions on recurring subscriptions will drop from 30 percent down to 15 on January 1, 2022.

South Korean third-party billing systems will have service fees reduced by four percent across the board. For instance, purchases that would incur a 15-percent fee for the developer through Google Play billing will drop to 11 percent through third-party billing. Likewise, ebooks paid for through alternative systems will only see a six-percent charge.

The new law Google is complying with passed South Korea's national assembly at the end of August. South Korea became the first country in the world to ban app store owners like Apple and Google from forcing developers to route purchases through their billing systems. It even became known as the "Anti-Google Law" in South Korea. Apple has yet to comply.

Google stressed that it thinks its billing system is safer than third-party alternatives, noting features like parental controls or family payment. It pointed out how many people buy Google Play gift cards in South Korea and how those will only go through the store's billing system. It also highlighted things the Play store's fees pay for, like security and developer tools.
In brief: Anyone with access to Google Drive knows the service is good but not great. It does what it is meant to -- store your excess files -- but the UI and the search function are both far from perfect. However, that's about to change: Drive's search and filtering tools are getting some notable quality-of-life improvements, which testers can try out now.

In its announcement blog post, Google acknowledges that Drive's current search functionality is inadequate. As the company notes, when searching for a file you can't quite remember the exact name of, you might enter a few more vague keywords, such as "marketing plan" or even "cat video."

However, depending on the volume and variety of content in your Drive, such searches will often turn up a long, frustratingly broad list of files and folders that you couldn't possibly hope to sift through. I've personally struggled with Drive's search tool on more than one occasion, and I only use about 90GB of space.

To alleviate these difficulties, Google is launching a beta feature called "Search Chips," which is almost identical (functionally and aesthetically) to Gmail's filters. When you search for a file in Drive (and only then), you'll see a row of buttons appear at the top, above the results. These let you sort your results by file type, "People" (presumably collaborators), the "Last modified" date, and "Tasks."

These buttons should help tailor your results more finely and prevent irrelevant files from appearing. It will probably take some time for the changes to roll out for everyone, but once they do, they'll likely be pretty useful.

If you don't want to wait for the official rollout, Google has opened up beta signups at this link. The company says sign-ups are just a way to "express interest" in the beta, so it's possible that only a select portion of users will gain access.




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With the rapidly growing popularity of online payments, the digital red envelope is adored and sought by everyone. Furthermore, it has become a typical weapon in merchant operations since major e-commerce platforms and companies began to employ digital red envelopes to entice customers in rich and diverse ways.

2021 Black Friday is coming. Beyond the topic, there are three essentials for daily operations of e-commerce platforms: Acquisition, Retention, and Activation. It may be stated that each of them may involve doing activities endlessly and gifting red envelopes at every festival and New Year to new users, new registers, new subscribers, etc. Even if there is no festival, they also create a festival to gift red envelopes.

Digital red envelopes can bring considerable traffic to e-commerce platforms and companies. At the same time, such preferential activities can grab the attention of traffic hijackers who steal users' red envelopes through illegal technology to commit online fraud, also known as token cracking. So, the challenge for e-commerce platforms and companies is distinguishing between token crackers and real users, which is becoming more serious.

A Real Case of Digital Red Envelopes Fraud

Digital red envelope fraud is all around us. Here is a real case: John, the operation manager of one e-commerce platform, planned a New Year's promotional event. Participants could receive digital red packets only after completing a questionnaire and a coupon worth RM500.

The promotion sounded appealing. As soon as it got online, it drew the attention of the token crackers. The token crackers submitted 43 questionnaires in one minute, each with a unique IP address.

As a result, the red envelopes and coupons for real users were frauded immediately, resulting in direct losses for the company. Fortunately, John soon found out and reduced losses as much as possible. But obviously, the fraudster must have hijacked the total red envelope pool in minutes if they were to choose to do it late at night.

It is understandable how the activities that the operating partners have worked so hard to plan can attract a group of profit-only token crackers. When a large amount of dollars has been invested but failed to bring real user traffic, it's just an empty joy.

When consumers accuse the e-commerce platform of deceiving participants, they can only apologize. It's not hard to justify why e-commerce platforms are determined to get rid of these token crackers. So, the question is, how can you avoid being frauded for online promotions as much as possible?

8 Tips To Prevent Digital Red Envelopes From Being Token Cracked

According to the perspective of promotions design logic, the main process of user participation includes two key points: users complete tasks, and users receive rewards.

So then, we can set the appropriate threshold in these two key points and do some strategic changes to avoid being token cracked. Here are the eight tips to prevent digital red envelopes from being token cracked:

1 Raise the Threshold for Triggering Tasks.

For example, in promotions that attract new users, set as much register information as possible for new users to make registration difficult, thus reducing the possibility of bot registration.

This way, the probability of bot registrations will be significantly reduced. However, it will also lower the enthusiasm of some users to register.

2 Audit the Results of the User's Completed Tasks.

Set tasks such as email activation during the promotion process, like subscribing to book newsletters and brand channels while registering. This can help filter the results of the given tasks and eliminate users who show obvious abnormal data, which will eventually help reduce losses.

3 Limit the Number of Coupons, Digital Red Envelopes.

Don't put out all the coupons, digital red envelopes, and cash rewards in one platform at once. As we all know, putting resources into multiple places at the same time can reduce the risk. Meanwhile, distributing digital rewards in batches will reduce the loss in case of bot attacks.

4 Increase the Cost of Receiving Digital Red Envelopes.

Appropriately raise the threshold for receiving e-red envelopes, such as binding phone numbers and other ID identification, 2FA (two-factor authentication), etc.

5 Delay Digital Red Envelope Withdrawals

Set a specific period to delay user withdrawals, such as freezing digital red envelopes within 36 hours or 48 hours to screen malicious bot fraudsters during this period.

What are the effective ways to avoid token cracking from a technical angle? Learn from a leading e-commerce brand SHEIN.

6 Restrict User IPs, Cookies.

Although IP proxies are very common and convenient now, restricting IPs can also increase the cost of token cracking. At the same time, if a large number of IPs from the United States, Japan, and some non-active coverage areas appear in the campaign, the cyber fraudster is likely using proxy IPs for access. Knowing this could also plays part in the monitoring of token crackers.

7 Set a Timestamp.

The front-end request comes with a timestamp (cache: false) to compare with the server's current time. If there is a difference in the time of the said comparison, then it is likely that the token cracker is using an automated script to steal the digital red envelopes.

8 Set a GeeTest Slide Puzzle CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA can be set in different scenarios and sections of the e-commerce promotion. For example, if the promotion's aim is user pulling, then CAPTCHA can be added in user registration scenarios to prevent machines from bulk bot registration.

It is also most important to add CAPTCHA in the digital red envelope collection scenarios to avoid automated procedures for bulk collection. Although this is one of the most common CAPTCHA methods currently used, there is still a great risk when using the traditional CAPTCHA along with reCAPTCHA.

According to the experience in the use of CAPTCHA, the confusing point is whether the more complex the verification step, the safer the website. The answer is no.

Fast-fashion giant SHEIN has just become the largest online-only retailer in the world. In July 2021, the mobile app of SHEIN became the most downloaded mobile app, GeeTest as the security vendor of SHEIN has throughput over 17.5 million challenges stopping token cracking, web scraping, and account take over by the smartest way.

Black Friday is coming, and e-commerce leading brand SHEIN has built a successful learning template for us.

SHEIN has been using GeeTest slider puzzle CAPTCHA for several years now. Unlike the traditional CAPTCHA, GeeTest analyzes the actual user's behavior. A comparative analysis of humans and bots would be conducted based on AI-powered machine-learned models to block out bots and secure the users of the shopping website.

eBay and NIKE are setting the GeeTest slide puzzle CAPTCHA in the registration section.

GeeTest has achieved a great user experience while ensuring the safety of websites with over 320,000 brands worldwide. Not just this Black Friday but any time, GeeTest slide puzzle CAPTCHA will become the most robust security vendor for your online business.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Amazon's Alexa will stop its email reading feature by next week, or on Nov. 8 to be precise, which unlinks both Gmail and Outlook inbox from it.

Amazon's Alexa Will Stop Reading Your Emails

As per the report by TechHive, users from social media platforms, Twitter and Reddit, shared about the notice of Amazon for its users, saying that it is killing any access of Alexa to their email accounts.

The news outlet went on to reach out to Amazon regarding the revelation from Alexa users on social media, and one of its reps confirmed that it is legit.

The notice of Amazon to its users that were going rounds on Twitter and Reddit reads: "We're writing to inform you that beginning on November 8th, 2021, email access will no longer be supported for Alexa customers."

The support message from the tech giant further noted that as email access is going away, Alexa users "will no longer be able to link" both their emails from Google or even Microsoft.

Amazon clarified that "any linked email account(s) will automatically be unlinked."

According to the news story of BGR, Amazon also said that all of the "related email features" are affected by the latest move that will begin next week.

It means that email notifications, as well as email routines, will no longer work on Amazon's Alexa.

Not to mention that the previous feature of the Amazon virtual assistant tech that notifies users about shipping status from email inbox will stop working as well.

Alexa and Calendars

However, the warning from the tech behemoth noted that the latest move is limited to email accounts. As such, those Alexa users who paired their Outlook, Gmail, and even iCloud calendars to the device will be unaffected.

That said, Alexa users who wish to link their third-party calendars from the said platforms could still do so.

Alexa Email Reading Feature

Amazon released the feature of Alexa that read emails of its users way back in 2018. And after years of existence, the tech giant decided to bid farewell to it.

All Alexa users have to do to use the said feature is to link their email accounts to Alexa. After which, the virtual assistant could not only read their inbox, but it could also do other actions like deleting, replying, and archiving.

Read Also: Amazon to Make 'Extraordinary Investments' to Avoid Potential Shipping Delays During Peak Season

Why Amazon Killed Alexa Email Reading Feature

It turns out that Amazon is attributing the demise of the email reading feature of Alexa to "customer feedback," noting that the firm "regularly evaluates the features and experience available to customers."

BGR noted in the same report that some users went on to question why they need to provide Amazon any email inbox access. Some did not even know that such a feature existed in Alexa.

Related Article: Amazon's 'Alexa' Learns to be Patient with New Feature Allowing Users to Take Longer Asking Questions

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Apple is not on board with Sideloading iOS apps for the iPhone and its App Stores, and this is what Cupertino software executive Craig Federighi has opened up in his recent speech on the Web Summit 2021. Apple is known to keep its software closed for several reasons and one of them is because it does not want to be susceptible to malware and other threats.

Apple Sideloading iOS Apps: Federighi Explains Why They're Against It

The Web Summit 2021 has invited several known names in the industry of technology and the internet to provide insights and their opinions about certain things that need focus right now. Also, this conference brings a consortium of individuals and corporations that offers insider knowledge and information to the development of the tech companies of the world.

In Apple's turn, Craig Federighi has spoken up about the different improvements on Apple's software, as well as the pressing issue of sideloading iOS applications in the App Store. Primarily because the European Commission's Digital Markets Act is requiring the Cupertino giant of opening up the iOS for sideloading applications on its platform.

Federighi has given heavy words regarding sideloading, referring it to cybercrime and being a gateway to malware for Apple devices.

Read Also: Apple iPhone USB-C Swap from Lightning Port is Possible, Engineering Student Shows Complex Procedure

What is Sideloading iOS Apps?

Sideloading is installing a third-party application on a certain device, something that is unverified by Apple's App Store in the case of iOS. Apple is known to have no way of installing applications from third-party sources apart from its "jailbreak" features that bypass the iOS's strict policies.

It would be close to installing APKs that are downloaded via the internet, like in Google's open-source operating system, the Android.

Apple's App Store Exclusivity

Apple's App Store is an exclusive one for Apple products and devices only, focusing its offers to those with software made by the Cupertino giant only like the iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and more. In its history, it opens up its application platform for developers to bring their applications to the platform, but under careful review of Apple.

The company also has strict control over what goes into the devices, especially with its different safety features like the App Tracking and App Transparency features that it has previously released with iOS 14. The previous features are a testament to what Apple wants to bring for its software and devices, being one of the most controlled markets in technology.

Apple has a good reason for this, and it is because the Cupertino giant wants to avoid dealing with malware and other threats that may use sideloading applications as a gateway to push viruses into its devices. Moreover, the company ensures that its software and devices are safe, something which Apple has upheld over the years of their run as a developer as well.

Related Article: Apple to Pay $100 Million to Developers Could Reach Approval | App Store 'Anti-Steering' Provisions

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Unsplash/ Christian Wiediger) Boeing network

Boeing has finally received authorization from the Federal Communications Commission or FCC to launch its own satellite internet project. Boeing first proposed the said project back in 2017.

Boeing Gets Green Light from FCC

Boeing can now move forward with building, launching, and operating its very own broadband internet network from space. It will now join its aerospace competitor, SpaceX, in providing internet access to people, according to The Verge.

Boeing's internet plan involves launching a total of 132 satellites into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 1,056 kilometers, or around 656 miles.

Another 15 satellites will be launched to the non geostationary orbits at an altitude between 27,355 and 44,221km or 16.998 to 27,478 miles.

Also Read: Boeing's Starliner Faulty Valves Continue to Delay Mission to ISS

The company stated that it wants to use the satellites to offer broadband internet and communications services to its consumers, government offices, and private businesses in the United States, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, while the network gets built out, and on a global scale as soon as the project is complete.

All of Boeing's 147 satellites would broadcast in the V-band, which is of a higher frequency of the wireless spectrum compared to the Ka and Ku bands that are used by SpaceX's Starlink network and Amazon's Project Kuper satellites that are yet to be launched.

Using V-band could allow for better and faster data transfer rates, but it runs a greater risk of interference because the higher frequencies have more problems penetrating solid objects.

SpaceX even has plans to use the V-band in the near future, as well as OneWeb. The Ka and Ku bands are also used by satellites that provide in-flight internet on commercial flights, according to Law360.

Boeing vs. SpaceX

SpaceX has expressed concern in the past that Boeing's proposal to launch into low orbits that are already crowded could increase the risk of a collision with other satellites while it rotates.

In 2019, SpaceX told the FCC that it believed Boeing's network would create a clear danger of harmful interference.

Reuters reported that SpaceX's Starlink satellites orbit the Earth at an altitude of around 500km, which is around 342 miles. It is where OneWeb's internet satellite constellation can be found and where Amazon's satellites will go as soon as they take off.

SpaceX and OneWeb's satellites almost collided earlier this year.

Boeing now has six years given to them to launch at least half of its total satellite constellation, and they are given nine years to deploy the network.

The company had asked the FCC to tweak the requirements because it only wanted to launch five satellites in the first six years.

The company also asked for a 12-year window so they could launch the entire constellation. However, the FCC denied their request.

By comparison, SpaceX and Amazon have grander plans for their networks, with each consisting of thousands of satellites.

Boeing is a satellite manufacturer that spent years before its 2017 proposal in selling satellites to early space-based internet providers as the market expanded.

However, providers are now expected to collectively generate more than $50 billion by 2031, which could explain why Boeing slogged through the four years of the approval process.

Earlier this year, Boeing faced issues with its Starliner capsule because numerous valves did not open properly.

In 2020, Boeing's Starliner also had issues as its parachute failed to work. The company has been working on solving all of these issues before the internet launch.

Related Article: SpaceX Crew Dragon Vs. Boeing Starliner Comparison: Passenger Capacity, Purpose, and Other Details

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos invited Tom Hanks to fly to space, but the actor has to spare millions of dollars, the latter revealed during his guesting at the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

Tom Hanks Reveals Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos Invite

It turns out that billionaire Jeff Bezos reached out to other high-profile celebrities to be one of the passengers of his Blue Origin flight to space--aside from "Startrek" cast William Shatner, as per the report by Huffington Post.

It comes after Hanks told the host of the show, Kimmel, that Bezos reached out to him to strap himself along with the billionaire for a monumental flight to space.

However, the actor and filmmaker disclosed that Bezos was asking him to pay for the seat on his rocket, which costs a hefty price of $28 million. But Hanks seems to be unsure of the exact figures as he further added that the cost is "something like that."

It is worth noting that Blue Origin refused to reveal the price of a ticket inside its rocket, but estimates suggest that it is at a whopping price of $100 million.

If the estimate is to be taken seriously, Hanks seems to have received a massive price cut offer from Bezos himself.

Tom Hanks Turns Down Bezos Invitation

Nevertheless, Hanks still declined to pay for such an amount to experience flying to space, saying that: "I'm doing good, Jimmy, but I ain't paying $28 million," according to the news story of ABC7.

Hilariously, the actor went on to claim that "we could simulate the experience of going to space right now."

Hanks was next seen shaking his chair during the interview as if he is mimicking the experience of flying inside the space rocket.

The actor further said that experiencing just that does not have to cost him $28 million, adding that he could even do that at home.

Hanks even highlighted that the spaceflight will only last for mere 12 minutes, saying that "we could all do it in our seats right here."

Read Also: Jeff Bezos Blue Origin First Crew Flight to Take Place Soon: Here's How to Watch Online

Blue Origin Second Crew Flight

The Blue Origin flight that carries "Startrek" actor William Shatner, who became the oldest passenger to fly to space at age 90, launched last Oct. 13.

It came three months after the first passenger flight of the space exploration firm of Bezos, which included the billionaire.

The StarTrek actor was joined by other individuals, who are non-astronauts as well, namely, Audrey Powers, Chris Boshuizen, and Glen de Vries.

Contrary to how Hanks sees the experience of spaceflight, Shatner said that the experience of flying to space was "the most profound."

Related Article: William Shatner Blue Origin Spaceflight NEW Schedule | Twitter Users Mocking Jeff Bezos' Company Because of Delay

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Image from Commons.Wikipedia.com) James Webb Space Telescope Referred to as 'Most Complicated' | NASA Says There are Over 300 Ways It Could Fail

The James Webb Space Telescope is now being referred to as the "most complicated" one yet. NASA is saying that there could actually be 300 ways that it could fail! The potential difficulties are expected to come out in the upcoming months.

James Webb Space Telescope

According to the story by Space, while NASA's very own James Webb Space Telescope has reportedly faced a number of obstacles and delays in its over a decade making, this isn't the end of the struggle. It was noted that the observatory's most difficult days actually lie ahead in the upcoming months.

The James Webb Space Telescope is known to be a successor to the popular Hubble Space Telescope. It is set to launch on December 18, 2021, aboard the upcoming Ariane 5 rocket coming from the European Space Agency's very own launch site located near Kourou, French Guiana.

14 Years in the Making

The particular development for the observatory, which is said to be the most powerful telescope ever built, started all the way back in 1996, with its initial launch planned for 2007. As of the moment, 14 years later, the finally completed telescope has been able to arrive at its very own launch site and is almost ready for liftoff.

It was noted that about 28 minutes directly after liftoff, Webb is expected to detach from its very own launch vehicle and start what was noted as the most complex sequence of deployments that was ever attempted in just a single space mission as per NASA. It was stated that the deployment, which will see Webb unfold as well as unfurl its sun shield once it is finally in space, will include literally hundreds of different single points of failure, as per Mike Menzel.

Lead Mission Engineer Mike Menzel

Mike Menzel is the Webb lead mission engineer for NASA's very own Goddard Space Flight Center located in Maryland. According to Menzel, there are already 344 single-point-of-failure items on average.

It was also noted that about 80% of those are actually associated directly with the deployment. Menzel then said that it's hard to avoid when users have a release mechanism. It was reportedly hard to put full redundancy into this.

Read Also: Starlink Customers Who Made Changes in the Site's Map Saw Their Order Was Delayed by Years, No Fix Yet

144 Release Mechanisms

Webb currently has 144 release mechanisms, as per Krystal Puga, which all should work perfectly. Krystal Puga is a Webb spacecraft systems engineer for Northrop Gruman, which reportedly built the spacecraft. Just recently, Boeing has been authorized to build and also launch its very own satellites.

Menzel reportedly explained that the team decreased the total number of release mechanisms as much as they were able to do so. It was noted that they were able to find a sweet spot between getting the needed control that they wanted along with the large flexible membranes. This is without adding too many different single points of failure.

Related Article: NASA's First Lunar Ice-Drilling Experiment Now Has a Landing Site on the Moon

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
China appears to be committed to expanding its current set of nuclear weapons. In just a few years, the country is eyeing to launch "major expansion" of its 1,000 nukes by 2030.

The announcement has alarmed the Pentagon about China's increasing military prowess.

China to Quadruple Nuclear Weapon Production

According to a report by News.com.au on Thursday, Nov.4, China is planning to create more arsenal in the next coming years. It cited that it would quadruple its nukes to 1,000 to boost its military power.

The arrival of advanced weaponry has caught a lot of attention, especially with US officials growing concerned about the current state.

Mark Milley, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General, issued a warning about this huge shift that the world has yet to see in the middle of a geopolitical battle.

This year, China might be plotting a "nuclear triad" that would bolster its nuclear weapons through various approaches. This means that the super country will not only be focused on improving land weapons but also its air and water nukes.

The growing cold war has also left the experts in deep thinking. Specifically, China has now the upper hand to win wars against dominant nations, according to the experts.

Related Article: US Hypersonic Missile Development Program Arrives! Defense Department Says 40 Tests To Be Conducted

The plan of the country involves expanding military service from 2035 through 2049. In fact, this future event would coincidentally hit the People's Republic of China's 100th anniversary.

Upon receiving the report, the Pentagon noted that this was a "significant" threat to the nation. As such, the tension could extend between China and Taiwan, which are under military pressure at the moment.

Pentagon is 'Very Concerned' Over China's Supremacy

In a recent interview with CNN, a US official said that China's decision to stockpile its nuclear weapons was "very concerning" on their part.

"The nuclear expansion that the [People's Republic of China] is undertaking is certainly very concerning to us," the senior defense official spoke.

In another article, the state-supported outlet the Global times wrote that China is committed to refraining from using nuclear weapons first hand. According to it, the country is only doing that to ease the ongoing tension with the US.

China's Hypersonic Weapon

Tech Times reported in the last two months that China cited some information about its proposed hypersonic weapon. The authorities claimed that it is strong enough to disrupt all communication lines within a 2-kilometer range.

Furthermore, it would come with a special stealth capability so that it would not be detected easily by the enemies as it approaches the target. The researchers added that it could perform better than the typical ballistic missile.

The weapon will trigger chemical bursts in a particular area through its "flux compression generator." This will deliver huge levels of energy in the form of shock waves.

Last month, we also reported that China has successfully conducted two launches for hypersonic missiles.

Read Also: China Fast Reactor 600 to be Launched in 2023, 2026 Draws International Attention

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX-30 GPUs was reported to be missing following the report that someone had stolen them in California. The computer hardware company issued a notice about the incident to the customers.

Here's everything you need to know about the latest truck heist that happened over the last few days.

EVGA Spoke About Lost GPU Shipment in California

According to a report by PCMag on Thursday, Nov.4, an unidentified thief stole a bunch of EVGA graphics cards last Oct.29. The company released an immediate notice to inform about the case.

EVGA said that the truck carrying the RTX-30 GPUs was hi-jacked while it was going towards the distribution center in Southern California. According to the firm, the price of the stolen GPUs could reach $329.99 to $1,959.99 since they remain in very high demand.

The company is now asking for help from everyone regarding the identity of the theft. In case someone knows the culprit behind this GPU incident, the firm urges him/her to send the necessary information at stopRTX30theft@evga.com.

To add, it also reminded the consumers to stop purchasing stolen items since it is not allowed under California law.

Related Article: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Restock Spotted for Just $47.76 Past SRP | Scalper Prices Ending?

The Bad News Behind EVGA Heist

In the same report, PCMag wrote that customers should be more careful when buying their preferred graphics card.

Since the demand for these GPUs is accelerating at a high rate, the thief could potentially resell them any time, just like what eBay scalpers do on the platform.

There's a clear reason why EVGA wants to inform the users to refrain from obtaining a stolen graphics card.

If you happen to get one without knowing that it's part of the missing EVGA shipment, the company would cut off the warranty plans for these products. The NVIDIA-based manufacturer warns the customers that they know all the serial numbers of the involved GPUs.

"EVGA will NOT REGISTER or HONOR ANY WARRANTY or UPGRADE claims on these products," the company said. "If you are able to successfully register your product and see it under My Products, then your product is NOT affected by this notice, you can also check the serial number at the EVGA Warranty Check page to see if it is affected," the company stated.

In response to EVGA's announcement, several customers requested the company to release all the serial numbers of the stolen chips. In that way, they will be forewarned if a particular GPU is stolen property.

Last July, Digital Trends reported that a thief in China has snatched a lot of graphics cards from an internet cafe. They reportedly cost $8,000 in total value.

EVGA Reveals Why RTX 3090 Slowly Declined

In September, Tech Times wrote that EVGA shared the real reason behind the "deaths" of the RTX 3080. The company confirmed that it was because of the "bad soldering." The announcement took place following the criticisms from the owners.

Elsewhere, NVIDIA brought the GeForce Game Ready driver in the same month. Along with G-Sync compatible displays, it could now support up to 24 new games from its current list of over 1,000 games.

Read Also: GPU Restock Update: Newegg's Now-Deleted Tweet Points Out Availability For RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
According to a cybersecurity expert, a cyberattack that targeted the Newfoundland-Labrador healthcare system in Canada might be the worst of its kind in Canadian history.

In a report by CBC News, this kind of data breach has been reportedly seen before by David Shipley, who serves as the CEO of a cybersecurity firm in the city of Fredericton in New Brunswick.

However, the ones that he saw in the past were allegedly much smaller in scale.

In an interview, Shipley stated that Canada has never seen a cyberattack on a healthcare system this large ever. He furthers by saying that the severity of the data breach is really high.

The attack was first discovered last October 30. But by the time it was confirmed, it had already caused widespread disruption of healthcare services.

It allegedly delayed thousands of medical appointments and almost all non-emergency appointments all around the Eastern Health region.

As per the original CBC report, the data breach was classified as a ransomware attack. This type of cybercrime involves hackers holding a system hostage until they've been paid a ransom.

Despite the data breach already having happened, authorities appeared to keep denying that there ever was a cyberattack.

As reported by CBC News, N.L. Deputy Premier Siobhan Coady repeatedly denied that a cyberattack ever occurred, even if the Canadian government has already brought in a team of cybersecurity experts to deal with the situation.

Ransomware attacks are among the most common cybersecurity issues that have plagued the world recently. They've recently targeted multiple organizations worldwide, but the one constant is that they cause widespread disruption to essential services.

Read also: Ransomware Training Is Still An Afterthought For A Lot Of Companies--Report

Just How Dangerous Can A Cyberattack Be In The Healthcare Sector?

The short answer? Pretty dangerous. But there are many reasons why this kind of cybercrime should not happen in the first place, especially during a global pandemic.

Still, hackers don't seem to care. It's been reported that during the first 10 months of 2020, the healthcare sector was targeted in 79% of all cyberattacks, be it DDoS or ransomware breaches.

The biggest problem with this is that healthcare organizations will often have no choice. They'll resort to paying the hackers a ransom just to get their systems back online without any further delay. They simply can't afford to have their systems down for an extended period of time because lives literally depend on it.

In the case of Newfoundland-Labrador, the region's healthcare system woes are widely known throughout Canada, writes Global News. And the absolute last thing they can afford is to fall victim to a cyberattack.

The region's healthcare system has been spread too thinly so far, with various reports of "high hospital use" being rampant. Furthermore, roughly 99,000 N.L. residents are also without direct access to a physician, which further exacerbates the problems caused by the recent data breach.

Related: Healthcare Faces the Wrath of Ransomware Hackers: Is it Worse Than the Pandemic?

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Google Play and Apple App Store have been criticized for the past few years because of their restrictions when it comes to application developers. Because these two companies are somehow strict, many critics claim they monopolize app payment options and application distributions in their platforms.

Related Article: Google Slowed Down Europe's ePrivacy Regulation Process Together With Other Tech Companies

One of the countries that don't agree with Google's app payment rules and regulations is South Korea. The Asian nation recently passed a law that requires Play Store to allow alternative IAP (In-App Purchase) options.

Now, Google Play has finally agreed to the request of South Korea, which would definitely benefit developers since they can integrate their own IAP alongside the search engine giant's Play billing system.

Google Play Surrenders To South Korea's IAP Law

According to XDA Developers' latest report, Google confirmed that it would comply with the Asian country's new law when it comes to IAP alternatives. This new rule was passed in late August, with the goal of preventing Apple and Google from forcing app developers to use their platform's in-house payment systems.

Also Read: Google Spin-Off Waymo to Launch Fleet of Autonomous Vehicles in New York City

"We respect the decision of the National Assembly, and we are sharing some changes to respond to this new law," said Google via its official press release.

The giant tech firm added that the new Google Play changes would offer application developers and users a safer and more trusted experience.

Alternative IAP options would be available on tablet and mobile devices, allowing third-party payment systems to reach more consumers in South Korea.

As of the moment, Google seems to be pretty busy with its products and services. Recently, we reported that Google Tensor 2 SoC could arrive as rumors claimed that the chipset's code appeared on Pixel 7 apps.

On the other hand, the search engine giant could also bring back Google News to Spain this coming 2022.

What Google Play's New IAP Update Looks Like

Based on the official post of Google, the new IAP update of the Play Store would offer a new option when you are purchasing an application.

The provided images reveal that there would be a new section below, with the message "Choose How To Check Out." Below that text, you will see the available third-party payment systems and Google Play Store's billing system located at the very bottom.

For more news updates about Google Play and other similar services, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
iRocket and Turion Space signed a deal so that they could work together to solve the rising space debris outside the planet. SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA, and other giant space agencies have been pretty active since 2020, launching various rockets and other out-of-this-world technologies that could help them explore the universe.

Although their space missions are quite essential, offering new information about outer space, many people, especially space experts, are concerned that their spacecraft, satellites, and other objects orbiting the planet could build up and create a huge collection of space junks.

This is why the New York-based reusable rocket startup made huge efforts to have its first commercial customer, Turion Space, a space company that develops rockets that can remove orbital debris and provide satellite servicing.

iRocket, Turion Space To Solve Space Junk Problem

According to Tech Crunch's latest report, the latest agreement between iRocket and Turion Space would lead to a total of ten space launches.

Also Read: ALMA Sees Water, Carbon Monoxde in a Planet from a Galaxy 12 billion Light Years Away from Earth

These activities are also expected to send twenty Turion Space's Droid sats into orbit.

"We're definitely on track, and our partnership with Turion just strengthens that," said iRocket's CEO Asad Malik.

These two space startups explained that they would clear the space debris by dragging them to low orbit levels, allowing them to capture these junks and burn them before they reach Earth's surface.

Right now, the efforts of iRocket and Turion Space are much needed, especially since various agencies are still conducting their out-of-this-world missions.

Recently, we reported that NASA was able to complete the landing site for its first Lunar ice-drilling experiment. On the other hand, FCC already authorized Boeing to launch its own satellites.

China Also Makes Efforts To Solve Space Junk Issue

iRocket and Turion Space are not the only ones trying to remove space junks. Space.Com reported that China also decided to launch its military satellite, which also aims to lessen the debris outside Earth.

The Asian nation was able to launch its new sat using a Long March 3B rocket, which blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center last Oct. 23. You can view this link to see more details about it.

For more news updates about space junks and other related topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: James Webb Space Telescope Referred to as 'Most Complicated' | NASA Says There are Over 300 Ways It Could Fail

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Dawson Springs guidance counselor retires

Submitted photo The Dawson Springs Independent school districts guidance counselor, Lori Wooton (right), enjoyed Halloween festivities in the elementary school on Friday, which was her last school day before retirement.

On Monday, Panther students and staff attended school for the first time in 13 years without the counsel of district guidance counselor Lori Wooton. Wootons well-deserved retirement was effective on Sunday.

Shes just done so much for so many of our students, said Dawson Springs Board of Education Chairperson Vicki Allen. Shes done an excellent job preparing our students for college and were going to miss her.

Wooton announced her intentions to retire on Oct. 31 at the end of the 2020-21 school year.

I just thought it was time--I am leaving sad, but excited for my next adventure, she said. For now, her immediate plans are to travel and just enjoy a slower pace.

Lori Wooton is a true diamond in this district, Superintendent Leonard Whalen said of Wootons retirement. She knows a lot of community folks that help us and help students and their families that really lets her dial-in and focus on things that students may need that cant necessarily be seen at face value.

It is this master knowledge of her community and its resources that made the role of guidance counselor the perfect fit for Wooton, but that wasnt her ultimate aspiration when she first entered the education field. I started out as a business/marketing teacher, she said. I loved to work in the business field and wanted to help students be successful with a business career after high school.

The school counselor job was not something I started out to do, it just happened, Wooton continued. I am so glad it did, it has been a rewarding experience.

The decision to retire does present its drawbacks. I have made some wonderful friends here and I will truly miss them, but of course, I will miss the kids, said Wooton. I have had the pleasure of meeting kids from preschool to 12th grade, and they are such a joy and inspiration for me.

The students are the highlight of Wootons work at her alma mater. I have enjoyed working for the students when they needed someone to talk to and helping them navigate school and plan for their next stage in life, she said. I have so many wonderful memories, but probably the ones that stand out are when students who struggled to graduate made it, their faces when they received their diploma is something I will never forget.

The goal for Panther students to graduate college and career ready is another job duty that Wooton implemented with finesse. Lori does a tremendous job for us, said Whalen. Shes going to be a big loss and is going to be sorely missed, said Whalen.

As Wooton rides into the sunset, she leaves behind a rich legacy of working hand-in-hand with community members to ensure the successes of its next generation. Our community is so fortunate to have Dawson Springs Schools, she said. I graduated from here in 1979, my daughter in 2005, and now my grandchildren are here.

This school is very special to this community and what we do impacts our town, Wooton concluded. We have a tradition of excellence and I wish them continued success.
CF Industries is asking for an 80% break from property taxes on a new $122 million "green ammonia" plant it expects to build at its nitrogen complex in Donaldsonville, with operations to begin in 2023.

The company, based in DeerField, Illinois, makes agriculture fertilizer, including ammonia. At the new plant, hydrogen used to make the ammonia would be carbon-free, for an ammonia-manufacturing process with reduced carbon dioxide emissions, company officials say.

Green economy? CF Industries takes first step to make carbon-free ammonia in deal with thyssenkrupp CF Industries plans to be North America's largest producer of ammonia that doesn't result in net releases of climate-changing carbon dioxide a

Through Louisiana's Industrial Tax Exemption Program, CF Industries is seeking a tax break from the major taxing bodies in Ascension Parish  the school board, parish and Sheriff's Office  of 80% of property taxes for five years, renewable to 10 years if the project meets its commitments in investment and job creation.

"When complete, the Donaldsonville green ammonia project will be the largest of its kind in North America," said Kate MacArthur, chief executive officer of the Ascension Economic Development Corp., at an Ascension Parish School Board meeting Tuesday.

Construction and installation is expected to begin in late 2021 and finish in 2023, MacArthur said.

The School Board will vote on the request at its next meeting, on Nov. 24.

If the request is approved, CF Industries would be exempt from paying $7 million, over 10 years, in School Board property tax collections.

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During construction, the project would generate $1.2 million of sales tax revenue for the board, MacArthur said.

Over the life of the green ammonia plant, the School Board would see $8.5 million in property tax revenues collected.

With its existing operations, CF Industries pays $8.1 million in annual property taxes and $13.4 million in annual state and parish sales taxes, MacArthur said.

Morris Johnson, the general manager of CF Industries' nitrogen complex in Donaldsonsville, said after Tuesday's School Board meeting that the company "has established a path to de-carbonization."

The new project in Ascension Parish "is the first step on that path," he said.

CF Industries says its goal is net-zero carbon emissions in 2050.

Earlier this year, an LSU professor identified CF Industries as the state's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, with 8 million tons spewed into the atmosphere in 2019. The list of Top 20 polluters compiled by David Dismukes, executive director of LSUs Center for Energy Studies, did not include about 2 million tons of nitrogen oxide gases, another greenhouse gas, released by the plant.
BATON ROUGE, La.  The Louisiana State University veterinary schools diagnostic lab is providing free COVID-19 testing for dogs and cats in Louisiana through the end of the year, the school said Wednesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is paying for the tests, and the Louisiana Office of Public Health is also a partner in the program, a news release said.

Information available so far indicates that the risk of animals giving the disease to people is low, according to CDC website.

However, scientists have little data on cases in which the virus that causes COVID-19 may have contributed to an animals death, said Gary Balsamo, Louisiana's public health veterinarian and assistant state epidemiologist.

Kid COVID vaccines in Louisiana available now; here's how to get an appointment The Louisiana Department of Health gave the go-ahead Wednesday for medical providers to start inoculating kids between the ages of 5 and 11 wi

Further surveillance and research is necessary to identify and analyze animals that are severely affected by this virus, he said.

People who think their pets have been exposed to the coronavirus are asked to have their veterinarian take samples.

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The Louisiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory will send the veterinarian a free test kit, pay FedEx shipping if that is required, and process the sample for free.

Pet owners must complete a questionnaire and possibly talk to an epidemiologist. That information will all be confidential, the news release said.

Balsamo said, While we understand the clinical presentation of diseases in some companion animals, the full spectrum of disease associated with COVID-19 in animals is not well characterized."

Pet owners and veterinarians can contact the lab at 225-578-9777 if they have questions, or to request a sample collection kit.

We are very excited to participate in the research and investigation of yet another companion animal disease potentially impacting the health and well-being of the animals and citizens of Louisiana, said lab director Udeni Balasuriya.
The Louisiana Department of Health gave the go-ahead Wednesday for medical providers to start inoculating kids between the ages of 5 and 11 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, clearing the way for a big chunk of Louisianas population to gain protection against COVID-19.

The sign-off from LDH came after expert advisory panels from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the shot and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky gave it the green light for kids.

The CDCs clear recommendation is for everyone 5 years of age and up to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The Louisiana Department of Health today formally adopts that recommendation today, said State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter in a prepared statement. We know this is exciting news for many families and appreciate your patience with providers this week as the program ramps up over the coming days.

While vaccines are being shipped out this week and may be available at some locations, federal officials expect the effort to fully roll out the week of Nov. 8.

Health officials said parents should contact their local vaccine provider to make sure they have the kid-size vaccine on hand, which is one-third the dose of an adult vaccine.

Families can call 211 or the states COVID-19 Vaccine Hotline at 1-855-453-0774 to find a vaccination or get answers to questions about the vaccine. A federal vaccine finder site, vaccines.gov, will be updated with availability as the kid doses get shipped across the U.S.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said parents with questions about the vaccine should talk to their childs doctor. He said the vaccine would help protect kids and the more vulnerable people around them.

To minimize the transmission of the virus we must maximize vaccinations -- especially in our children who are more likely to be asymptomatic and unknowingly spread the virus to others," Edwards said in a statement.

Parental consent is required. A consent form can be found at ldh.la.gov/Covid-19K-12.

Providers in Baton Rouge are gearing up to make the vaccine available to some of the youngest patients in the region.

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Questions about COVID booster shots? Replay our panel discussion with Louisiana doctors While most people are still well-protected, public-health officials say that even highly-effective COVID vaccines can lose power over time. Th

Pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens are taking appointments and may have availability in some locations as soon as this weekend, according to their websites.

Baton Rouge General will receive 500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds within the next week and will start scheduling appointments once they come in, spokeswoman Katie Johnston wrote in an email.

Our Lady of the Lake is also readying itself for the wave of appointments for newly eligible children, spokeswoman Jennifer Vaccaro said.

We have a plan in place and anticipate administering the Pfizer vaccine for children 5 to 11 this week," Vaccaro wrote in a statement. "Further information and Our Lady of the Lake Physician Group clinic locations will be available on our website.

Statewide provider Ochsner Health said it will begin scheduling appointments "as soon as Ochsner has the vaccines readily available." The system is planning availabilities after work hours and on the weekends, according to a Wednesday news release.

Once Ochsner receives the doses, residents will be able to schedule an appointment at www.myochsner.org or by calling 1-844-888-2722, according to the news release.

Baton Rouges city-parish government didnt have any plans as of Wednesday afternoon for local vaccine clinics for children. Spokesman Mark Armstrong said officials will advocate for parents to vaccinate their children and continue to partner with state and federal partners to distribute shots.

Kids between the ages of 5 and 11 will be able to receive the Pfizer vaccine at the Mall of Louisiana vaccine site run by the Louisiana National Guard in partnership with the city-parish sometime next week, Armstrong said.

Louisiana will receive 148,000 doses in the initial shipments, which will come in three waves over the next week and a half. There are 421,000 kids between the ages of 5 and 11 in the state.
A Baton Rouge man's murder trial in the 2011 dismembering of his wife, Brusly High School teacher Sylviane Finck Lozada, has been pushed back to February.

Oscar Lozada, 46, was scheduled to stand trial Nov. 29 in the slaying, but his attorney is involved in another murder case that is set for a retrial Nov. 15 and may last more than a week.

State District Judge Tiffany Foxworth-Roberts granted defense lawyer Stephen Sterling's request for a continuance, and scheduled a new trial date of Feb. 22.

Sylviane Lozada was 51 when she disappeared. Her body has never been found. Her blood was discovered on the ceiling and walls of the garage at the family's Spring Lake Drive home in Baton Rouge.

Prosecutors say Lozada killed and dismembered his wife in July 2011, then fled to his home country of Venezuela with the couple's daughter.

+5 Daughter of slain Brusly teacher seeks leniency for accused father: 'I will always love him' The teenage daughter of a Baton Rouge man accused in the 2011 slaying and dismembering of his wife, Brusly High School teacher Sylviane Finck 

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Venezuela has no extradition agreement with the United States. However, Lozada was arrested in late 2018 in Mexico and brought back to Baton Rouge, where he's charged with second-degree murder.

Lozada confessed in 2018 to killing and dismembering his wife, officials have said. He later tried to have the confession thrown out, but the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled it can be used at his trial.

Lozada, who faces a mandatory sentence to life in prison if found guilty as charged, rejected an offer last year to plead guilty to manslaughter and obstruction of justice in exchange for a 50-year prison term.

The couple's daughter lives with her mother's family in Belgium, her mother's home country.
Popular Louisiana rapper JayDaYoungan was arrested by federal agents Thursday, hours after posting bond in Washington Parish, where he was jailed for five days on counts of drug and weapon possession.

Rapper JayDaYoungan posts Instagram photo from Amite City jail cell; employee who took it fired After a prominent rapper was arrested and accused of aiding a gang-related murder in Tangipahoa Parish last year, he posted a picture for his 

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives took the rapper, whose legal name is Javorius Tykies Scott, into custody Thursday. It's unclear what federal charges he's facing and, as of Thursday evening, federal court records for the middle and eastern districts of Louisiana showed no criminal proceedings pending against Scott.

However, Thursday's apprehension marks the fourth arrest since August for the 23-year-old artist, who is known for singles like "23 Island," "Elimination" and "Opps," which have together garnered more than 170 million streams on Spotify.

Scott was arrested Aug. 20 for driving recklessly at a high speed with his passenger door open, according to the Washington Parish Sheriff's Office.

After authorities stopped him, police say they discovered Scott had two passengers in the car, including a baby sitting without a seatbelt in a woman's lap.

Scott was cited for careless operation of a vehicle, no child restraint and driving with a suspended license. He was issued a summons arrest to appear in court.

+2 JayDaYoungan arrest: How an escalating gang beef among rappers in rural Louisiana left 2 people dead What began as a birthday bash on a remote clearing in the pinewoods of Tangipahoa Parish last summer took a terrifying turn when a flurry of g

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On Sept. 16, he was arrested by the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriffs Office on counts of accessory to second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in connection with a shooting on a trail in northern Tangipahoa Parish a year earlier that left one person dead and two others injured. He was released in less than a week after posting a $175,000 bond.

The traffic stop in Washington Parish happened a month after that.

In addition to the recent arrests, officials say he was jailed April 21 in Coweta County, Georgia, and charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, narcotics possession and tampering with evidence. The Coweta County Sheriff's Office also accused him of having several bottles of codeine cough syrup, oxycodone pills, several firearms and "a quantity of cash."

According to media reports, Scott was also arrested a couple years ago in Harris County, Texas, accused of hitting a pregnant woman. Police reportedly fond him hiding in the attic. During that arrest, police say they seized $24,000 in cash, oxycodone, promethazine and several guns where Scott was hiding.

In late September, an employee of the Amite City jail in which Scott was staying was fired after taking a posed picture of Scott, the Warden said.

The photo, which the rapper posted for his 2.4 million follwers but which has since been deleted, depicted Scott in his cell wearing orange sandals and a white T-shirt, shorts and headband.

The photo's caption read "All is well now."
While Louisiana has won national praise for its use of top-flight textbooks and other materials in public school classrooms that pattern has dropped in the past two years, according to a report by the Rand Corporation.

The decline applies to both math and English and makes the state an outlier among those that have made a major push to link curriculum to academic standards, the study says.

Experts say linking textbooks and other materials to the benchmarks  called standards based curriculum  is critical to ensuring students are prepared for key tests, ready for the next grade and are all learning the same thing.

The practice is mandated by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and state law even though the consequences for failing to do so are unclear.

Louisiana will cancel public school letter grades pending approval from federal government Louisiana's top school board Tuesday voted to shelve public school letter grades this year but made it contingent on final approval from the f

The review measured the percentage of teachers who used at least one fully aligned curriculum material in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

A total of 83% of teachers did so in math in 2019 compared to 70% in 2020 and 64% in 2021.

In English/language arts 60% of teachers here in 2019 used at least one curriculum fully aligned to the benchmarks compared to 63% the next year and 54% in 2021. Even with the drops the rate is better than the U.S. average.

Only 33% of teachers nationally used fully-aligned materials in 2021 in the classroom for either math or English, according to the study.

However, Louisiana was the lone state to show a decline among a network of those that have made the issue a top priority, including Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee.

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The push, including financial incentives, began under former state Superintendent of Education John White. The view was quality teachers and materials linked to the standards were one of the keys to improved academic achievement.

Jenna Chiasson, assistant superintendent in the state office of teaching and learning, said Wednesday she does not believe issues cited in the report contributed to the wholesale drop in math, English and other scores earlier this year.

The tests, called LEAP 2025, plunged in virtually every school district in the state.

State superintendent lays out plan for academic recovery after drops in key test scores State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley announced Wednesday a three-prong, $132 million plan to recover learning loss highlighted by la

Chiasson said the drop in scores stems from the loss of instruction time sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, not any decline in the use of quality teaching materials.

"I really think that (pandemic) is much of what can be attributed here," she said of test scores.

Classroom instruction ended abruptly in March, 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic.

The 2020-21 school year was marked by a combination of in-person and distance learning, and stop-and-start schedules in lots of school systems.

Chaisson said teachers sometimes resorted to non-traditional materials out of necessity during the sudden lurch to virtual learning.

In the past vendors visited school districts offering textbooks and other classroom instructional materials.

Some local educators chafe at having to follow state dictates on which textbooks to use, and the state formerly linked grants and other aid to whether districts were using quality textbooks.
A parent of a Lusher student Sherae Hunter speaks before protesters march from Lusher Elementary School to Lusher High School to bring awareness to racial biases and discrimination within the Lusher Charter School community in New Orleans, Saturday, July 4, 2020.
As the calendars flip to November, Mariah Careys hit song All I Want For Christmas Is You is getting ready to make its annual trip up the streaming rankings.

But not everyone is as ready to embrace the Christmas spirit as the queen of Christmas.

A bar in Dallas riled up some fans and garnered a response from Carey herself after putting a ban on patrons playing her Christmas classic until December 1, at which point it can only be played one time per night.

A picture of a sign on the bars jukebox circulated widely on Twitter, motivating some fans to come flocking to Careys defence while others, apparently fed up with the song, were more supportive of the bar.
Before she started work on Dopesick, says Kaitlyn Dever, she knew next to nothing about OxyContin, the synthetic opioid that made a literal fortune for the now disgraced Sackler familys pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma. Dever is 24.

I was born when I guess this really started picking up in America, so I think I was maybe too young, she says. I knew the opioid epidemic existed, but I didnt know the injustice behind it all. And speaking with friends about it, I think its just not something that is talked about a lot.

Kaitlyn Dever as Betsy, a young miner in remote Kentucky who doesnt know whats wrong with her when she stops taking prescribed painkillers. Credit:Antony Platt/Hulu

Dopesick, adapted by Danny Strong from Beth Macys investigative Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America, tackles that information gap head-on: it deals with what is now a huge public health crisis from every angle. The ride is hectic. We swoop from the Purdue boardroom to the Kentucky district attorneys office. We zoom from a sales meeting to the surgery of a decent doctor (Michael Keaton) who is just trying to fix patients who cant afford to stop work for a day.

One of those patients is Devers doggedly determined Betsy, a young woman working in the coal mines. She loves her work. She also loves Grace (Cleopatra Coleman), which is a problem in coal country and particularly a problem in her evangelical Christian home. Already under pressure, Betsy doesnt know what is wrong with her when she decides to stop taking her painkillers: the sweats, the pain, the desperate need for something she knows is somewhere in a rubbish skip, which is where she ends up in the small hours, fishing through bin bags. For the rest of the series, she will be fighting that addiction.
Melbourne Cup champion Verry Elleegant took just over three minutes to reach the finish post at Flemington but for this years Myer Fashions on Your Front Lawn winners, the journey to the prize stand has taken weeks.

Sydneys Viera Macikova and Kalombo Ntuba swept the field on Oaks Day as best dressed man and woman, having waited since submitting photographs on October 16 to discover whether they had each received a package of prizes, valued at more than $90,000, including a Lexus car.

Teal appeal: Kalombo Ntubas 2021 winning entry for Myer Fashions on Your Front Lawn.

Second-time winner Ntuba, 31, took home the top mens prize at the most recent Fashions on the Field competition in 2019, when entrants were required to compete in person at the Melbourne Cup Carnival. Lockdown conditions forced the 59-year-old competition to go digital, inviting contestants from around Australia to participate in Fashions on Your Front Lawn.

Its all slightly surreal, Ntuba said. The last time I won I was surrounded by people. This has been a different experience entirely. I am here on my own with cheeks that are sore from smiling.
I dont know who first thought up the nickname for Sydneys new Crown Casino, but Packers Pecker is just perfect. It gives me a laugh every time I drive across the Anzac Bridge and observe the thing, in all its immodest, thrusting tackiness.

It is, of course, the latest of the many nicknames created by generations of Sydneysiders to describe their town and its various artefacts.

Crown casino, or, as it is known by Sydneysiders, Packers pecker. Credit:Peter Braig

Not far from Packers Pecker is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, known for ever as The Coathanger, or, sometimes, just The Hanger. Then, around the bend, theres Nuns in a Scrum, otherwise known as the Sydney Opera House.

Next door to the Opera House: the squat, controversial apartment block that was nicknamed by protesters even before it was even completed. The Toaster, of course.
In the 18 days it took to find Cleo Smith, this ordinary story became an extraordinary tale of a desperate search for a missing girl and the parental heartache of a lost child. It captured the fears and hopes of people across Australia and abroad in a raw and human way.

Just under three weeks ago, she went camping with her family who were keen to try out a new tent. On the first night, by eight oclock she was tucked into her sleeping bag wearing a pink and purple pyjama suit. When she woke at 1.30am, her mother gave her a drink of water and put her back into bed. As her mother later recounted: It was going to be quite a windy night, it was overcast. We just tried to make sure she was safe.

So much of this story is ordinary. A young girl who loved to collect rocks, dress up in princess dresses and build sand castles on the beach. She had recently learnt how to ride her bike without its trainer wheels.

The search soon took an ominous turn. That her sleeping bag was missing and the tent zip would have been out of reach for such a young child led police to believe she was abducted. More than 100 police officers were assigned to the case. Roadside bins stretching more than 600 kilometres were sifted through, CCTV, dash-cam vision and telephone towers were scoured for clues, a $1 million reward was offered for leads.

As the days wore on with no sign of her, concerns over her safety intensified. Children who are taken by someone who is not a relative are rarely found alive. The most infamous case is that of British girl Madeleine McCann. Having vanished in 2007 from her family apartment at a resort in Portugal, she has never been found. Closer to home is the tragic case of William Tyrrell, aged three, who disappeared in 2014 wearing a Spider-Man suit from the yard of his foster grandmothers home on the NSW north coast.

As the world now knows, police found Cleo in a house just seven minutes drive from her family home in Carnarvon. Four officers broke down the door of the locked home just past midnight on Wednesday. They found the lights on and Cleo playing with some toys. One of the officers picked her up, and she was asked three times, Whats your name? before she responded: My name is Cleo.

The young girl was soon reunited with her family and the public was told the news that had become less likely by the day: Cleo had been found alive and appeared well. It was a moment to savour and, for many, triggered an emotional outpouring of relief and joy. Cleos mother Ellie posted on Instagram, Our family is whole again.

On Thursday, WA Police charged 36-year-old Terence Darrell Kelly with forcibly or fraudulently taking or enticing a child, and he appeared before Carnarvon Magistrates Court. It will be some time before the full details of what happened are revealed.
Former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro has agreed to settle the high-profile defamation case he brought against YouTube personality Jordan Shanks, with Mr Shanks issuing an apology and paying court costs of $100,000.

In an apology read out in the Federal Court on Friday, Mr Shanks barrister Matt Collins, QC, said his client posted many videos about Mr Barilaro in 2020 and 2021, which are an important part of freedom of expression for political communication.

John Barilaro (left) has agreed to settle a defamation case against Jordan Shanks.

Mr Shanks accepts that some of the videos he posted were offensive to Mr Barilaro. Mr Shanks understands that Mr Barilaro has been hurt, and apologises to him for that hurt, Dr Collins said.

Mr Barilaros barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC, said her client was grateful to Dr Collins for reading out the apology, and will file documents on Friday discontinuing the case.
Planning and Public Spaces Minister Rob Stokes says the government wants to see more natural swimming spots established along Sydney Harbour rather than elaborate man-made pools.

Responding to ambitious ideas from City of Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore for multiple pools along the citys foreshore, Mr Stokes said they involved more heavy engineering interventions.

Swimmers have been campaigning the state government to allow swimming at Marrinawi Cove on the Barangaroo foreshore in inner Sydney. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Were looking at much more natural places, he said on Thursday as he announced plans to fund more parks and outdoor recreation areas.

Ultimately, its up to the City of Sydney if theyve got great ideas to put them forward, but we dont want to see any big engineering interventions that are navigation hazards.
Police believe alleged cocaine kingpin Mostafa Baluch, on the run since skipping bail last month, is feeling the pressure of an intense manhunt and still hiding in NSW.

Two Sydney homes were raided on Thursday night as part of national and international efforts to find Mr Baluch after he broke off his ankle monitor on October 25, days after being released on strict bail conditions while facing serious drugs charges.

Mostafa Baluch, charged over his alleged role in a drug importation syndicate, is wanted for allegedly breaching bail.

Police found more than $250,000 cash, about 200 grams of cocaine, 485 grams of an unknown substance, mobile phones and an electronic money counter following raids at Potts Hill and Yagoona, in south-west Sydney, on Thursday night.

Investigators believe the properties, one thought to be a safe house for a criminal syndicate, are linked to Mr Baluch and a wider network whose operations have become clearer as a result of the intensive search for the 33-year-old.
Farm workers in Australia have toiled for as little as $1 an hour. Or they can slave away all day filling a bucket with oranges for $5 an hour, so it amounts to just $40 in wages.

Until now. On Thursday, in a landmark decision, the Fair Work Commission has ruled that farm workers can no longer be paid below the hourly minimum wage through the use of piece rates. This is a foundational step to ending the endemic exploitation of migrant farmworkers.

Pay ruling will transform fruit picking. Credit:Justin McManus

Paying by piece without a minimum wage floor has meant that unscrupulous growers could pay a worker appallingly low wages.

In my research we encountered workers effectively being paid $1 an hour on piece rates and more generally we found piece-rate workers earned less than $15 an hour, more than $5 below the legal minimum hourly rate for a 38-hour week.
Within hours of Opposition Leader Matthew Guy making public his view that Tim Smith should quit politics at the next election, the men and women who run the Liberal Party in Mr Smiths seat of Kew passed a resolution backing their local member.

The resolution by the executive of the Kew Electorate Committee  circulated to a group of influential Liberal Party members who, for as long as anyone can remember, have shaped political fortunes in that part of Melbourne  can be seen as two things.

Victorian state Liberal MP Tim Smith is reflecting on his future. Credit:Justin McManus

The first is that Mr Smith, for the same reasons he infuriates Labor Party supporters and some moderate Liberals, retains the loyalty of many of his local branch members, who see him as one of the few people in Parliament willing to take things up to the Andrews government.

The second is that the Liberal Party in Kew, like many local Liberal Party branches, doesnt like to be told who it should preselect. To anyone who has already decided that Mr Smiths political career is toast, the resolution can be read as an up yours from the burghers of Kew.
Several members of the committee have told The Age that it was highly inclined not to endorse Mr Smiths nomination should he win rank-and-file preselection. Mr Guy said he had not called members of the committee, but he was very sure they would have a conversation and be supportive of his position. The party can refuse to accept anyones nomination, whether its an MP or a candidate or a layperson party member, he said. When asked whether he would encourage the committee to reject Mr Smiths nomination, Mr Guy responded: As Ive said, I dont think he should stand  thats what I said the other day and I stand by it.

Shadow treasurer David Davis said Liberal MPs would not be diverted from holding the Labor government to account despite the furore over Mr Smiths future. Matthew [Guy]s been clear, Tim [Smith] shouldnt stand, and thats the reality, Mr Davis said. Tim Smith was grilled for an hour by journalists at a press conference he called on Wednesday. Credit:Justn McManus I think most people are aware of the difficulty and I think the community understand the difficulty that Tim now finds himself in. Mr Smith, 38, who was shadow attorney-general, had been telling colleagues and party faithful that he could weather the political storm as the feds are backing me. However, party sources told The Age federal support for Mr Smith was waning.

Earlier on Thursday Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who senior Victorian Liberals have confirmed is one of a number of federal ministers who have been lending their support to Mr Smith, said the Kew MP should reflect on his future, but stopped short of saying he should not recontest. Mr Frydenberg said Mr Smith needs to do some soul-searching and reflect on Mr Guys words. Credit:Matt Golding Tim, obviously by his own admission, has done something which is unacceptable ... its something thats dangerous, something that is unacceptable, Mr Frydenberg said on Thursday morning. That being said he needs to take the time to reflect on his own position, do some soul-searching and reflect on the words of his state leader, Matthew Guy, and make a decision on his future in coming weeks.

Mr Smith vowed on Wednesday to stop drinking alcohol while in public life and said he was not mentally unwell but was an idiot. Im reflecting on my position, I know how angry Matthew is, I know how much Ive let him down, and Im taking soundings among my branch members, Mr Smith said in an hour-long press conference on Wednesday, in which he repeatedly refused to confirm whether Mr Guy told him he should quit politics at the next election. Matthew and I had an array of different discussions, preselection nomination is due in a couple of weeks, Im going to take those weeks to reflect. Mr Smith is among the Liberal Partys most outspoken and prominent MPs. He is often lauded by Liberal members for his fierce criticism of Premier Daniel Andrews, and ability to cut through the media cycle and gain attention.

Loading He is also one of the Victorian partys most successful fundraisers. According to the Victorian Electoral Commissions donations disclosure portal, he was responsible in his current term alone for at least $101,000 in donations via the Kew 500 club  a group of people who support the Liberal Party in his electorate. The Liberal Party of Australia separately raised at least $121,000  with $45,000 so far reconciled. Since the last election, donations in Victoria are restricted to only domestic donors and capped at $4000 every four years. Every donation over $1000 must be disclosed to the public. Once considered safe Liberal heartland, the party has been losing ground in Kew over the years. At the 2018 election, there was an almost 8 per cent swing against the Liberal Party, narrowing the margin with Labor in a two-party-preferred contest to 4.78 per cent. Meanwhile, former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, who famously lost his blue-ribbon seat of Warringah at the last federal election, has publicly endorsed Mr Smith and told The Australian he would be writing to Kew branch members urging them to back him.

Our party needs more fighting spirit, especially in Victoria, and Tim is the one state Liberal MP who has most consistently and effectively attacked the Andrews government, Mr Abbott said. It would be to the discredit of our great party were a spirit of petty censoriousness to end the public life of one of our best Victorian talents. Mr Frydenberg said Mr Abbott had been a good friend and supporter of Mr Smith and continued to support the Kew MPs work for his local community. Its important work he was elected to do in his local community and hes got to continue to serve that community, but as for his future career prospects and making decisions, they are matters for him, Mr Frydenberg said.
Brae Sokolski, part-owner of Melbourne Cup-winning mare Verry Elleegant, has been fined $10,000 for breaching Flemingtons strict COVID-19 protocols after Tuesdays race.

Sokolski, who was allowed in Flemingtons green zone, jumped the mounting yard fence to greet the returning horse and jockey after Verry Elleegants victory, leaping into an area reserved for jockeys, trainers, media and other race-day officials.

Sokolski apologised afterwards, admitting that adrenalin got the better of him as he hurdled the fence near Tens broadcast area, and raced into the mounting yard to be near Verry Elleegant when she returned to scale.

He was not planning to attend the races on Thursday or Saturday as he had other commitments to fulfil, but spoke to stewards via phone hook-up.
Here are some of the pledges made so far this week at the UN climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland:

Deforestation

More than 100 global leaders pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade, a promise underpinned by $US19 billion ($25 billion) in public and private funds to invest in protecting and restoring forests.

The statement was initially backed by leaders of countries including Brazil and Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia, which collectively account for 85 per cent of the worlds forests.

But Indonesias environment minister later dismissed the plan as inappropriate and unfair.
A lot of playwrights are poets, but not many are craftsmen like Simon Stephens, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the delicate two-hander Heisenberg. His new play, Morning Sun, is now running at New York City Center as part of Manhattan Theatre Club's off-Broadway season, and it is a master class in theatrical precision.

In just about 90 minutes with only three actors, a sparsely furnished room (a brown and beige no-man's land designed by dots), and few intrusive embellishments from the light and sound booths (lighting by Lap Chi Chu and sound by Lee Kinney and Daniel Kluger), Stephens delivers a piece with so many rich particulars that it evokes countless universals. Looking down the barrel of the last American century, he picks apart the evolving ideas of identity, family, memory, isolation, femininity, art  even ghost stories, which he suggests may be what New Yorkers are really telling every time they mourn the loss of their favorite pizza joint.

Intentional or not, Morning Sun shares genetic material with Edward Albee's Three Tall Women. While Albee's abstract piece manifests one woman at three different ages reflecting on the highs and lows of life, Stephens draws women from three generations of a family, each taking us through her own story and arguing with the woman to her left and right about the truest version of these personal yarns, and what, if anything, should be regretted.

But of course, when it comes to memory, what is truth? And where can you even say a mother's story ends and a daughter's begins? Stephens draws no concrete boundaries  nor does director Lila Neugebauer, who deftly maneuvers a piece that is so much about storytelling, but leaves the audience in a constant state of uncertainty about the reliability of the narrators, their reasons for detailing their history, and the mysteriously liminal realm from which they're speaking to us and one another.

Blair Brown and Marin Ireland

( Matthew Murphy)

Morning Sun's three (medium-size) women are matriarch Claudette McBride (Blair Brown), her daughter Charley (Edie Falco), and Charley's daughter Tess (Marin Ireland). Claudette, born in the upstate town of Nyack, New York, in the 1920s, is the keeper of the McBride family's grand origin story: At 20 years old, she moved to Manhattan and landed a two-bedroom, rent-controlled, 5th floor walk-up in Greenwich Village. Little does she know, this will become the comforting home base around which her daughter's and granddaughter's lives will center, even as New York City endures its many trials and tragedies over the ensuing decades.

New York City becomes the fourth character in Stephens's play, evoking the Edward Hopper painting that inspired the title and that creeps into the story every so often (Hopper shares Claudette's hometown of Nyack, and Charley meets one of her most significant romantic partners while viewing "Morning Sun" at a museum). The 1952 painting is known as a meditation on the isolation of urban life: A woman blankly stares out her bedroom window onto a distant and impersonal cityscape. The New York City that Stephens draws in his play is neither distant nor impersonal, but it certainly is shaped by the eyes of the women gazing out upon it  particularly Charley, who we're told mid-play is the true owner and subject of this story.

As our lodestar, Falco is the only member of the trio to play the same character throughout  Ireland and Brown slip into and out of other characters who have played leading roles in Charley's life. With these shadows swirling around her, she meditates on the parallel stories of Manhattan and her own past while also standing apart from them, mirroring the iconic woman in Hopper's painting. Falco's performance conveys that fine balance of satisfaction, self-delusion, and disquietude that so often form the combustible stew of self-reflection. After all, stuck inside her own mind looking out, some of the pictures she sees nag at her conscience, while others look beautiful in the light of a new day.

Edie Falco and Marin Ireland

( Matthew Murphy)

As her daughter Tess, Ireland embodies the object of maternal infatuation as well as frustration as a New School student of the '90s looking for satisfaction in her career (as opposed to the stability Charley found fulfilling in her job as a hospital receptionist). Ireland also strikes a few haunting figures, taking on the parts of Charley's former best friend who disapproved of her single motherhood and an abusive boyfriend whom Charley tries to frame in a more positive light. As Claudette, Brown cuts with her judgments in ways only a mother can. And yet, she also beautifully embodies the ghosts of some of Charley's most beloved companions: Her playful Uncle Stanley who intrigues her with ghost stories and her late-life partner Eddy (another nod to Hopper) who gives her that ever-elusive sense of safety.

"Safety," a glaring presence or absence in a person's life, is one of the most interesting ideas Stephens interrogates throughout Morning Sun through the angles of both family and city dwelling. Between the violent Weathermen of the 1960s, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, New York on paper is a city of danger. And yet, in the McBrides' Greenwich Village walk-up, there is a feeling of safety. We see Charley debate with her contrarian mother on this point  perhaps an argument they once truly had, or merely a conversation Charley imagines, knowing in the rational part of her mind that neither her family nor her city were always safe. "It feels true," she says in defense of her personal narrative. "That's what matters."
Toyota's Chief Scientist on Hydrogen vs. Lithium-Ion Batteries & Why We Need Both

This blog post was originally published as The Misguided War of the Elements in Medium.com, thank you Toyota Research for granting The Auto Channel republishing rights







Like the War of the Currents 150 years ago, today another war is being imagined - "War of the Elements" for energy storage and transport, between hydrogen, as used in fuel cells and engines, and lithium, as used in lithium-ion batteries

Instead of Thinking Either/Or, We Should be Thinking Yes, And Introduction and Summary

Nearly 150 years ago, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse fought a battle for the supremacy of Direct Current (DC) vs. Alternating Current (AC) known as the War of the Currents.

Not only was the War of the Currents full of false accusations and intrigue, but the wars short-term winner  AC  did not become the singular best solution in the long run. As vacuum tubes, then semiconductors, grew more common, DC took on an increasing role in the electrical chain from power generation to end-use. Today, both types of power  DC and AC  are used wherever each works best. AC is still used between power plants and buildings. But electronic equipment, including LED lighting, computers, and inverter-driven motors, increasingly convert AC to DC before use, while renewable power generation and storage increasingly converts from DC to AC.

Like the War of the Currents 150 years ago, today another war is being imagined  a War of the Elements for energy storage and transport, between hydrogen, as used in fuel cells and engines, and lithium, as used in lithium-ion batteries.

With the benefits of 150 years of hindsight, what lesson can we apply from Edison and Westinghouses War of the Currents to todays imagined War of the Elements?

It is that diversity is a better solution than monoculture.

In particular:

Lithium, when used in lithium-ion batteries, has high energy efficiency and uses existing charging infrastructure, but has low energy per mass and limited charging rate, making it impractical for large vehicles.

By contrast, Hydrogen, as used in hydrogen fuel cells and engines, has high energy per mass and a high charging rate, but lower energy efficiency and needs new charging infrastructure. In contrast to lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen particularly excels in large vehicles.

Each approach has its benefits and its drawbacks, and each is strong where the other is weak:

If we understand the complementary advantages of Lithium and Hydrogen, and the 150-year-old lessons from the War of the Currents, there is no need to pick a winner now, and no reason to impose a single winner when the likely best solution will be both, depending on circumstances.

In other words, theres no need for a war at all.

Like my previous blog entries about the advantages of vehicle drivetrain diversity, the same universal lessons apply to energy storage and transport:

1. Diverse circumstances require diverse solutions,

2. What is best for the average is not best for all, and

3. The solution to uncertainty is diversity.

Instead of thinking either/or we should be thinking yes, and

This is why Toyota is continuing to invest R&D resources in a wide range of possible energy storage and transport technologies. We believe that by doing so, instead of prematurely picking singular winners, the best possible diverse solutions, suited to a diverse range of applications, will emerge.

The Basics: Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the simplest and lightest element and is the most common element in the universe. Hydrogen is non-toxic, and when it reacts with oxygen releases significant amounts of energy and produces pure water:

2 H2 + O2  2 H2O + 572 kJ of energy

The energy released from this reaction can be in the form of heat (which can run a steelmaking furnace or power an engine), or electricity from a fuel cell, shown below. >>>>>>>>FUEL CELL

If the fuel cell above looks a little like a battery, its no accident  both fuel cells and battery cells exploit similar physics to convert between chemical and electrical energy, except in fuel cells energy is stored externally in a tank, whereas in battery cells energy is stored inside the battery itself.

Since oxygen is plentiful in the air around us and also free, we need only store and transport hydrogen to store and transport energy.

Hydrogen has both advantages and drawbacks. Because of hydrogens low boiling point at normal pressure (20 degrees Kelvin which is super cold), it is harder to store and transport than room temperature liquid fuels like gasoline. Small molecules like hydrogen tend to leak from pipe fittings and can also penetrate the surface of inexpensive metals, making them brittle. Luckily, hydrogen is light and dissipates very rapidly and alternative materials are impervious to hydrogen. Well talk about hydrogens comparative efficiency shortly.

Lithium

Lithium sits directly underneath hydrogen on the periodic table and is the lightest solid element at room temperature and pressure.

Lithium is around 500 times rarer on earth than hydrogen, but around 20 times more plentiful than other elements like nickel and cobalt that are also used in some lithium-ion batteries. Large reserves of lithium exist in South America, Australia, and other parts of the world.

Like hydrogen, lithium can be oxidized to release heat, but this is a disadvantage because when lithium is mixed with water, it produces hydrogen gas, which is flammable. This is why trying to put out a lithium-based battery fire with water makes things worse.

The real advantage of lithium is when it is used in battery cells. They work like fuel cells, but with internal instead of external storage of energy, as shown below: Performance Comparisons



Performance: Energy per Mass (i.e. Specific Energy)

As seen in the table above, hydrogen stores very high amounts of chemical energy per mass  more than 100 times the electrical energy in the active parts of lithium-ion battery cells. This is why lithium-ion batteries are not practical for long-range aircraft  they simply weigh too much  and why hydrogen is a common rocket fuel. 2021 Toyota Mirai

Because of hydrogens very high energy per mass, the fuel tank of the Toyota Mirai carries only a tiny mass  5 kg (11 lbs)  of hydrogen fuel, yet can power the Mirai over 400 miles between refuelings. In fact, a Mirai just set a world record of 845 miles on one load of fuel. Mirais Hydrogen-Powered Drive Train

Of course, to do a fair comparison, we must also take into account the additional mass beyond the active energy storage elements of each system.

For example, the 2021 Toyota Mirai FCEV weighs a few hundred pounds less than the similar size and range Tesla Model S long-range Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV). And a gasoline-powered Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Camry weighs a few hundred pounds less than the Mirai.

Beyond hydrogens lower mass, the much larger mass of lithium-ion batteries needed by a long-range passenger car BEV consumes more natural resources, emits more carbon during manufacture, and is likely more costly to recycle than the equivalent equipment in an FCEV or Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV). And, because lithium-ion batteries are still improving and will be supply-limited for some time, placing many lithium-ion batteries into fewer long-range BEVs rather than many more smaller-battery FCEVs and PHEVs can result in less total carbon emissions reduction.

Larger Vehicles

Iberdrola Hydrogen Train + Airbus Hydrogen Plane

As vehicle size scales up, the 100X higher energy per mass of hydrogen gives hydrogen a much greater mass advantage in trucks, trains, ships, long-range aircraft (shown above), and spacecraft.

Recharge Time

A hydrogen tank can be recharged 10100 times faster than lithium-ion batteries without the lifetime degradation suffered by rapidly charged lithium-ion batteries. This advantage becomes critical in larger vehicles like trucks, trains, planes, and ships, which must quickly replenish much larger reserves of energy.

Because the energy content of chemical fuels is so high, the rate of energy transfer when a cars fuel tanks are being filled with gasoline or hydrogen is 110 MegaWatts (MW). Thats 10100 times the power of a 100kW level 3 DC BEV Supercharger. This is why it takes so much less time to fill up a cars fuel tank (gasoline or hydrogen) than to fully recharge a BEVs empty batteries.

Will this improve in the future?

Our research on solid-state batteries is aimed at just that. But even if the battery problem is solved, supplying several MW of electrical power to many individual recharging stalls will be very challenging. The electrical grid was not designed to deliver that much power to that many individual locations and will need substantial enhancement.

To understand why, consider this: The amount of energy stored in each gas stations tanks is also extraordinarily high  enough to fully fill thousands of cars fuel tanks, i.e several hundred MWh per station. There is no equivalent local storage in the electrical power grid. And a tanker truck unloads fuel into a stations tanks at hundreds of gallons per minute  the equivalent of hundreds of MW of power  the level of power generated by a small nuclear reactor. Again, there is presently no equivalent in the electrical power grid.

To counteract the much slower recharge time of batteries compared to gasoline, Tesla pioneered the idea of overlapping time during supercharging, with passengers taking a break to eat or shop while their BEV is recharging. I have enjoyed doing this with my model X on long trips, but doing it often shortens the life of the battery and ties up a high capital resource  the supercharger.

Charging at Home

Prius Prime  Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle

In parts of the world with low population density (e.g. the US), and lots of at-home overnight off-street parking (e.g. US suburbs), light-duty electric vehicles will mostly be charged every evening at home.

A city parking garage

However, the vast majority of the population worldwide are city dwellers, and those with cars must often park them on the street or in dense public garages some distance from their homes without access to electrical power and associated personalized billing systems. It will take significant time and capital to provide such facilities for every vehicle parked overnight in cities. Until then, rapid charging/refueling will still be desirable.

Commercial and Heavy Vehicles

Commercial vehicles differ from light-duty vehicles because they travel much longer distances with much less time available for recharging, and are much larger (and energy-intensive) than passenger vehicles. Unlike a passenger car, which typically holds 15 gallons of fuel, a semi-truck holds hundreds of gallons. The required electrical power to recharge a truck in a short period of time is so high as to likely be impractical. Battery swap solutions are one approach, but long-range BEV batteries are heavy, and long-range batteries for truck BEVs are extremely heavy, making swapping very difficult. Other researchers have come to similar conclusions.

Kenworth T680 Class 8 trucks powered by a Toyota fuel cell electric drivetrain

Which geographic, economic, and environmental circumstances will favor hydrogen vs. lithium for lightweight passenger vehicles is uncertain. But when vehicles get large, the scales tip substantially in the direction of hydrogen. This is why we are working so hard on our Port of Los Angeles 18 Wheeler program, illustrated above, and why there are also strong advantages for hydrogen in larger vehicles like trains (around 5000 gallons of diesel per locomotive fuel tank), long-range aircraft (a 787 has a fuel capacity on the order of a car filling station  over 30,000 gallons), and ships (that typically hold millions of gallons of highly polluting heavyweight bunker fuel). In the case of ships, it may be best to combine hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia.

Energy Efficiency

High round-trip energy efficiency is one of the strengths of lithium-ion batteries. Compared to chemically fueled engines, both lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen are more energy efficient. But generating hydrogen from electricity, compressing and storing it in a tank, and converting it back into electricity, loses around twice the amount of energy that is lost directly charging and discharging lithium-ion batteries.

In some systems where energy loss must be minimized, lithium-ion batteries tend to be a better choice.

In other systems, including some renewable energy ones, total cost is more important than energy efficiency. For example, the solar cells chosen for large commercial photovoltaic power stations are only about half as energy-efficient as the most energy-efficient solar cells available.

A solar farm

Because the cost of the land underneath the solar cells is low, using larger, less energy-efficient  but also less costly  solar cells above and more land below can result in lower net cost for each kWh of energy produced.

In a similar way, because the cost of renewable energy has dropped so much, the lower energy efficiency of hydrogen may be a less important factor. The energy shortages of the past taught us to value energy efficiency. But today energy supplies are plentiful while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cost are more important. Energy efficiency isnt everything.

How about Hydrogen ICEs?

This hydrogen engine Corolla participated in its first race on May 21, 2021 at the Fuji SUPER TEC 24 Hours Race at Fuji Speedway.

Recently, Toyota demonstrated a hydrogen internal combustion engine race car, shown above.

A hydrogen engine in action

The wonderful YouTube Channel, Engineering Explained, has several videos on hydrogen engines, with well-reasoned critiques. Because ICEs have lower efficiency than fuel cells, unless pressures are raised fuel tanks need to be larger than in comparable FCEVs. But hydrogen ICE drivetrains may have higher durability, lower environmental and financial manufacturing costs, and lower total cost of ownership than hydrogen fuel cell drivetrains, particularly at larger sizes.

There are also significant advantages to hydrogen ICEs and PHEVs because they can use the existing ICE supply chain. We have a social responsibility to consider the economic and human cost of labor displacement as well.

Costs and Benefits of Storage

As the amount of energy that needs to be stored increases, fuel cell systems become less costly than batteries, because the increased energy storage only requires a bigger fuel tank, not a bigger fuel cell. With batteries, the only way to scale up is to add more cells. In fact at large scales (shown below) the cost of storing energy in hydrogen, even as a liquid at cryogenic temperatures is 1/10 the cost of storing the same energy in lithium-ion batteries.

Japans largest liquid hydrogen storage tanks

Energy storage will become more important as intermittent renewable energy sources like solar and wind, make up a larger fraction of the worlds energy supply. As these sources of power grow, there will be an increasing need for long-term energy storage to level out day/night and seasonal changes in power production and demand.

At such large energy and long time scales, lithium-ion batteries are prohibitively expensive, both financially and environmentally. While large-scale energy storage schemes like pumped hydro are also possible, their costs, both financial and environmental, depend strongly on location. Similarly, while producing zero carbon liquid fuels for certain applications (like ammonia for ships, kerosene for aircraft, and ethanol for Units In Operation (older) cars) will be needed, if hydrogen becomes a major means of storing energy for leveling, it will also become less costly and more available for other uses, like FCEVs and Hydrogen ICE vehicles.

Transport

The creation of electrical power grids in the 20th century was a tremendously important milestone in civilization. But so too were pipelines, both in ancient times for water and more recently for other key liquids, especially fuels.

It is easier to build an overnight lightweight passenger BEV recharging station than a hydrogen FCEV refueling station because the electrical grid is already present and the power levels required for overnight charging are modest. But as rapid charging during long-distance trips or recharging of larger vehicles is considered, the level of power required becomes impractical, and using hydrogen becomes more attractive. Larger vehicles also tend to travel less diverse and diffuse routes, which increases the practicality of hydrogen refueling.

Still, transporting hydrogen long distances over pipelines is presently expensive, both because of hydrogen embrittlement and leakage, though some companies are working on innovative shipping methods.

Production

Like charging a lithium-ion battery, hydrogen can be produced from water through the process of electrolysis (a fuel cell running backward) but hydrogen can also be produced in other ways, as shown below:

Hydrogen production options

The most common way hydrogen is produced today is via steam reformation of natural gas. This creation of grey hydrogen, unfortunately, creates as much CO2 as simply burning the natural gas. But the same technology used to drill for oil and gas can be used to sequester the CO2 deep underground, creating blue hydrogen. In fact, CO2 is already used in wells to push oil and gas to the surface.

As seen above, much lower carbon methods of generating hydrogen are also being developed, with huge investments from industry, including green hydrogen from renewable power electrolysis of water, pink hydrogen from electrolysis driven by nuclear power, and turquoise hydrogen from high-temperature pyrolysis of methane.

Some natural gas in the production and distribution process presently leaks into the atmosphere, and methane, the largest component of natural gas, is a very potent greenhouse gas (though shorter-lived than CO2). However, such fugitive emissions do not make blue and turquoise hydrogen inevitably high carbon. Leaks can be corrected and prevented, especially if hydrogen production is at hubs located near natural gas production facilities.

Furthermore, there is significant experience in producing hydrogen. The US presently produces 10 million metric tons of hydrogen per year  mostly for the production of fuels and fertilizers. This is equivalent to 2 billion fill-ups of the Toyota Mirais 5 kg fuel tank.

Conclusion

The question of hydrogen vs. lithium-ion batteries is one of many examples of attempted technological prediction. It is comforting to think that we can predict what will be best in the future and remove uncertainty from such important choices.

However, as the War of the Currents demonstrated, we cannot foresee which particular technical solutions will be best in the future, or whether only one will be best. So it is important we understand the lessons of that long-ago technological war: that the solution to uncertainty is diversity, and, because the world is not uniform, diverse circumstances require diverse solutions  what is best for the average is not best for all.

We know the problem: climate change. And we know the enemy: greenhouse gases. And we know how to measure our progress: the reduction of net emissions over time.

Besides these certainties, no matter how strident and well-meaning some may seem today in advocating particular answers, we are all in truth uncertain what solutions will be best in the future.

Toyota generally believes that companies should be held to strict science-based limits on the net production of greenhouse gases. Beyond that, we do not think that policymakers should pick winning technologies and impose predetermined solutions.

Toyota believes in the inherent advantages of diversity. Climate change is not failing to be addressed because R&D resources are being spread too thin on too many possible solutions. Instead of trying to predict winners, we should be constantly experimenting in search of better answers.

So lets tighten the screws on the required reductions in greenhouse gases and let the brilliance of human creativity figure out how to get it done. Instead of criticizing companies for trying different approaches, lets celebrate them for being willing to invest their resources in a range of possible solutions so that the best answers will emerge.

And lets embrace diverse solutions as a general principle. While its tempting to look for simple solutions, climate change is such a varied and dynamic problem that we need to explore multiple approaches.

Significant progress is being made both in the cost and performance of lithium-ion batteries and also in the cost and elimination of greenhouse gas emissions in the production of hydrogen.

I am optimistic that if we encourage companies to develop many innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gases, we will succeed.

No war required.

The above argument was made by Dr. Gill Pratt, Toyotas Chief Scientist and Toyota Research Institutes CEO, in his latest TRI Medium blog.
SEVEN concept previews design and technology innovations of Hyundai Motors upcoming all-electric SUV

New SUV typology optimized for dedicated BEVs, combined with new interior architecture evoking a premium lounge experience

Hyundai to debut SEVEN concept during AutoMobility LA press conference at 9:55 a.m., Nov. 17 (PT)



SEOUL/FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. Nov. 3, 2021  Hyundai Motor Company today revealed teaser images of the sleek and spacious SEVEN, an all-electric SUV concept to be fully unveiled at AutoMobility LA later this month.

SEVEN captures Hyundai Motors future design and technology innovation in the electric mobility era and hints at a new SUV model coming to the IONIQ family, the companys dedicated battery electric vehicle (BEV) brand.

The teased images reveal a form following function design that dares to diverge from traditions of the internal combustion engine era. SEVENs lighting architecture is defined by Parametric Pixels, IONIQs unique design identity connecting analog with digital emotions.

SEVENs interior suggests a premium and personalized lounge ambience, deepening the space innovation that Hyundai Motor has shown with IONIQ 5. Furnishings trimmed in sustainable materials offer a refined, eco-friendly mobility experience that reflects the changing lifestyles of its customers.

Hyundai Motor will debut SEVEN during the AutoMobility LA press conference at 9:55 a.m., November 17 (PT). Journalists can attend the conference by visiting Hyundais booth at the LA Convention Center or watch it digitally. SEVEN will remain on display from November 19 to 28 for the general public to view.

###

About Hyundai Motor Company

Established in 1967, Hyundai Motor Company is present in over 200 countries with more than 120,000 employees dedicated to tackling real-world mobility challenges around the globe. Based on the brand vision Progress for Humanity,' Hyundai Motor is accelerating its transformation into a Smart Mobility Solution Provider. The company invests in advanced technologies such as robotics and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) to bring about revolutionary mobility solutions, while pursuing open innovation to introduce future mobility services. In pursuit of sustainable future for the world, Hyundai will continue its efforts to introduce zero emission vehicles equipped with industry-leading hydrogen fuel cell and EV technologies.

More information about Hyundai Motor and its products can be found at: http://worldwide.hyundai.com or http://globalpr.hyundai.com



About Hyundai Motor America

Hyundai Motor America focuses on Progress for Humanity and smart mobility solutions. Hyundai offers U.S. consumers a technology-rich lineup of cars, SUVs and electrified vehicles. Our 820 dealers sold more than 620,000 vehicles in the U.S. in 2020, and nearly half were built at Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama.
Conway, AR (72032)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms during the morning becoming more widespread this afternoon. High 61F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low near 35F. Winds light and variable.
Up for debate:

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Check out the latest developments on bills pending before state lawmakers in four key topics.
In this photo from Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt answers questions at a news conference with Republican legislative leaders, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan.
Jamie Onofrio Franceschini, 11, watches as RN Rosemary Lantigua prepares a syringe with her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, in the Bronx borough of New York.
Staff Reporter

Nyamekye Daniel has been a journalist for five years. She was the managing editor for the South Florida Media Network and a staff writer for The Miami Times. Daniel's work has also appeared in the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald and The New York Times.
Remember folding paper maps? I suppose in the age of GPS, most of us dont think of them, and if we do, its to recall just what a pain they could be. Unless you pulled off the road, they were impossible for the driver to use. If your shotgun partner was your navigator, hed take up most of the front seat unfolding a map. Then hed have to partially refold it to highlight just that part of the country you really needed to see. And of course, hed have to shake it out to full size to begin refolding it. It wouldnt take many openings and closings before it would begin to tear along the creases, and that would create new problems. Read more
News

DuBois-Sandy Township

Officials react to voters approving DuBois-Sandy Twp. consolidation

DuBOIS  City of DuBois and Sandy Township officials reacted to voters approval of the consolidation referendum in Tuesdays election.

Voters in Sandy Township said yes to consolidation by a vote of 1,574-1,541, while DuBois voters supported consolidation by a vote of 1,228-536, according to unofficial results released by Clearfield County Director of Elections Dawn Graham. The question placed on the ballot had to pass in both municipalities in order to consolidate the two municipalities into a new third class city.

Graham said certification of the results will not happen until the entire vote count is completed including the write-ins. The county must certify to the state by Nov. 22.

The referendum question previously failed in the township in 1989, 1995 and 2002.

Im glad at the number of people that turned out to vote to voice their opinion, said township Manager Shawn Arbaugh. For me it was an exciting night of just seeing how the vote was going and getting to the polling locations and talking to different folks out and about. It narrowly passed by 33 votes, and we look forward to moving forward with the City of DuBois to do whats best for this community as a whole. We want to do whats best for old Sandy and old DuBois and make it a great community moving forward.

Township Supervisors Chairman Kevin Salandra noted that he stated from the beginning of the entire process that he is in favor of consolidation because he believes it will benefit the residents and the area in the future.

I am disappointed that the citizens voted to consolidate as a city, because there are too many unknowns and unresolved issues at this time, said Salandra. Some of the potential pitfalls of a city may be able to be corrected by subsequently forming a home rule charter. Some of the other issues may be able to be resolved, but other issues may not work out as hoped. As elected officials, I am sure the Board of Supervisors and City Council will work together to move things forward as required. We need to quickly investigate the process for forming a home rule charter in the future in order that all of the appropriate steps can be taken, if that is the route that is chosen. We have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time, and I look forward to completing that work with all involved.

Supervisor Sam Mollica, who initiated the ballot question to be placed on the Nov. 2 ballot after the majority of the supervisors halted the home rule charter process in June, citing what they called disappointing survey results on consolidation, said he was very pleased to see that the referendum passed after the previous three attempts had failed.

This is a new beginning for the DuBois/Sandy area, said Mollica. Its time to forget about past differences and work to form a more efficient government.

Mollica thanked everyone who helped to get the consolidation question on the ballot, as well as the Gray Family Foundation for paying for the return of the Pennsylvania Economy League to answer questions about the initiative.

Its a very exciting time for this area, said DuBois City Mayor Ed Walsh. Its going to be a process, but Im up for the task myself, along with the city council and (manager) Herm (Suplizio). We look forward to working with the new community and the new government.

Walsh said he wasnt really surprised by the favorable vote in both the city and the township. According to a poll of city-township residents that was conducted earlier in the year, Walsh said the poll was worth its weight in gold, with give or take two percentage points, which is what that poll does, they were spot on.

I think its going to be the greatest thing, Walsh added. Its going to put DuBois on the map and I look forward for the next couple of years leading the community in the right direction.

Barry Abbott, of Treasure Lake, who also was elected as a new supervisor on Tuesday and helped with the petition process, said he was humbled to be elected as a supervisor to be part of the development of the new form of government with the passage of consolidation. He thanked township residents for having faith in him and looks forward to moving toward the future, with both municipalities bringing their strengths to the table, as well as including Treasure Lakes input in the process.

The two governing bodies have to enter into a consolidation agreement within one year after the election is certified, according to PA Boundary Change Law Section 737. That agreement is required to include:

Financial arrangements

Develop transition plan and schedule for elected officers.

Provide for common administration and uniform enforcement of ordinances.

Provide for uniform tax system.

The agreement must mandate full implementation of the consolidation plan within four years following the date of certification.

Arbaugh said the first immediate step in the process is to really sit down with the City of DuBois and understand where were at today, what projects we have going on and lined up. We both have a lot of infrastructure projects that are scheduled and on track for the next two years, and so its important were not creating any new projects and understanding what we have on the books currently. He said it will be important to understand what that looks like.

Arbaugh and city Manager John Herm Suplizio know the day-to-day details of how everything functions and they have a good understanding of their municipalitys operations.

Itll be pivotal that we sit down and try to figure out how we can integrate everything moving forward, said Arbaugh.

The second step is for the two municipalities to meet with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, said Arbaugh, in order to understand what steps and what help they could provide, along with any financial assistance they could provide through this process.

I think well definitely want them (DCED) involved through the process, said Arbaugh. First of all, the DCED may be able to give us grant money to help alleviate some costs of a transition, so thatll be very helpful for that end of things.

Additionally, Arbaugh said the DCED has worked with other municipalities in the past through this process.

Theyre well adept at knowing exactly what steps we should take and where we should be at, and hopefully give us a nice plan and timeline to accomplish the specific goals to further the consolidation forward, said Arbaugh.

The Pennsylvania Economy League, which conducted the DuBois-Sandy Township consolidation study, is not involved at this point, he said.

I know some of the supervisors and residents were disappointed with the study, in general, so Im not sure theyll be involved moving forward, Arbaugh said. But right now, were just focusing on DCED and our solicitor for guidance moving forward.

Arbaugh said he is not sure moving forward if there will be open meetings or if they will work in committee-type level meetings, and then come back to the public meetings with information and decisions to be made.

Im really hoping to get some guidance from DCED and our solicitor on that aspect of it, said Arbaugh.

Upon hearing the news that consolidation passed, Arbaugh stated that all of the employees are nervous  everybody, both entities. They dont know. Its a new realm were stepping into and theyre not sure whats going on. Id just like to say myself and the board of supervisors will work extremely hard at making sure everybody keeps a position in that new realm that wants to be part of that new government. And Im committed to that. Our board of supervisors is committed to that. We want to make sure that everybody has a position and has a job moving forward.

Arbaugh noted that the earliest a new governing body could take over would be Jan. 1, 2024, while the latest could happen on Jan. 1, 2026.

So in one of those elections (prior to the above dates), they vote a new governing body into place, said Arbaugh.

DuBois City Manager John Herm Suplizio was unavailable for comment.
Towanda, PA (18848)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by increasing clouds with showers developing this afternoon. High near 50F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 38F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Oneonta, NY (13820)

Today

Mostly cloudy early then periods of showers this afternoon. High 47F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of light rain. Low 36F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Oneonta, NY (13820)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to occasional showers during the afternoon. High 47F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 36F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
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Staff Writer

I moved to Morgantown last January from Dayton Ohio, but have spent many summers in the city. This will be my first year writing with the DA as I go into my second semester of sophomore year. I am majoring in journalism and minoring in political science!
Oil City, PA (16301)

Today

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain for the afternoon. High 42F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Low 28F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Forest City, NC (28043)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 59F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain showers early becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
17 Million Health Care Workers Must Be Vaccinated by Jan. 4 Under Bidens COVID-19 Mandate: CMS

The Centers for Medicaid Services (CMS) on Thursday issued a rule saying that most health care workers in the United States will have to be considered fully vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine by Jan. 4.

The rule was handed down for all staff who are employed at Medicaid- or Medicare-funded hospitals or facilities. Unlike the Biden administrations rule that mandates vaccinations or testing for employers with 100 or more workers, the CMS rule does not allow health care staff to opt-out of the rule by submitting to weekly testingalthough religious and medical exemptions can be accommodated.

Ensuring patient safety and protection from COVID-19 has been the focus of our efforts in combatting the pandemic and the constantly evolving challenges were seeing, said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure in a statement. Todays action addresses the risk of unvaccinated health care staff to patient safety and provides stability and uniformity across the nations health care system to strengthen the health of people and the providers who care for them.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Thursday that there is not a testing option available for health care workers.

We have a higher bar for health care workers, given their critical role in ensuring the health and safety of their patients. And so, its either vaccination or an exemption under the rules outlined, the official said.

Citing the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant, the agency said the move is designed to prevent COVID-19 illnesses among health care staff. The new requirements will apply to some 76,000 health care providers and would cover about 17 million workers across the United States, according to the CMS.

Facilities covered by this regulation must establish a policy ensuring all eligible staff have received the first dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine or a one-dose COVID-19 vaccine prior to providing any care, treatment, or other services by December 5, 2021, the agency said.

Now, eligible health care workers have to get either two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, or one dose of Johnson & Johnsons, by Jan. 4, according to the agency.

In recent weeks, a number of hospitals have already implemented vaccine requirements for their staff, prompting lawsuits and protests, while states including California and New York have enacted mandatory vaccination for health care workers.

The move, in particular, may impact rural hospitals the most severely. Several hospital CEOs have issued warnings that the federal governments rule would prompt the closure of departments, while one executive in Texas warned that it would shut down an entire hospital.

The National Rural Health Association believes it is important for all healthcare workers to be vaccinated, to protect both themselves and their community, CEO Alan Morgan said in a statement to USA Today. However, vaccine mandates will result in rural service disruptions. And as such, targeted rural federal workforce plans must be communicated and implemented.

Also on Thursday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released its long-anticipated rule stipulating that workers at companies with 100 or more employees have to either get the vaccine or submit to weekly testing by Jan. 4or face hefty fines. Those who do not get the vaccine will have to wear masks and will have to pay for their own COVID-19 testing, the rule stipulates.

In September, the Biden administration stated it would require employees at federal contractors to get vaccinated by Dec. 8. Also on Thursday, the government pushed back the deadline to Jan. 4 as well.

Following President Joe Bidens Sept. 9 announcement on the mandates, a number of Republican governors and attorneys general threatened to file a lawsuit against them. So far, about a dozen GOP-led states have sued the administration over its federal contractor rule.
Alec Baldwin Protects Tweets Amid Scrutiny Over His Social Media Posts, Including Slamming His Crew for Safety Complaints

Alec Baldwin took the unusual step for a public figure of protecting his Twitter account Tuesday amid growing criticism over his and his wifes use of social media to comment on the fallout of the actors fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Baldwins Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation account showed Tuesday that its tweets were now protected, potentially meaning that he and his wife can view and control who sees his tweets. Baldwin apparently changed the privacy setting around the same time he used his Instagram account Tuesday to hit back at reports that allege there were a number of safety concerns on the set of his Western film, Rust, prior to Hutchins Oct. 21 death.

Baldwin shared a lengthy, detailed Facebook message from Rust costume designer Terese Magpale Davis, who said she was sick of the narrative being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions, Yahoo reported.

Davis said those claims are bull and slammed crew members who walked off the set over safety and financial issues. She also said concerns were heard and addressed and defended producers for being approachable and warm.

As Baldwins shared Daviss post Tuesday, lawyers representing the films head armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, 24, on Wednesday suggested that those disgruntled camera crew members may have wanted to sabotage the film by walking off the set hours before Hutchens death to protest their working conditions.

I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, want to prove point, want to say that theyre disgruntled, theyre unhappy, Gutierrez Reeds lawyer Jason Bowles told the Today show Wednesday.

Baldwin, 63, was both the star and one of the producers of the low-budget independent movie being filmed on a ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. The veteran film and TV star was rehearsing a gunfight scene, when he pointed a .45 Long Colt revolver in the direction of Hutchins and director Joel Souza. The revolver discharged a suspected live round, killing Hutchins, 42, and wounding Souza, 48.

In sharing Davis post, Baldwin risks angering Santa Fe County investigators, after the actor said he was told to not discuss the case, according to TMZ. While Alec himself isnt providing this account of the Rust set  hes at the very least cosigning on it by reposting, which could tick off investigators, TMZ said.

Since the shooting, Baldwin, his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, and their six young children have retreated from their homes in New York City and the Hamptons to the upscale ski town of Manchester, Vermont, where the actor and his influencer wife said they wanted to keep a low profile so that he could mourn.

Instead, the Baldwins have been followed by the paparazzi, and the couple, both active and often controversial users of Instagram, have returned to using social media, giving select interviews. Hilaria Baldwin also shared photos of their familys Halloween celebration and the familys upset about their temporarily lost cat.

PR crisis management experts told this news organization that they would tell Baldwin and his wife to not say or do too much for public consumption right now, not when he is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, faces the likelihood of a wrongful death lawsuit and tries to navigate a devastating personal and professional situation.

Baldwin has long been outspoken on social media, sparking controversies that have led him to temporarily quit Twitter in the past. After Hutchins death, he initially seemed to understand a need to show care with his public comments. On Oct. 22, he issued a brief, heartfelt statement, in which called Hutchins death a tragic accident.

There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours, Baldwin wrote.

Since then, and despite saying he had been told by Santa Fe County authorities to not discuss the case, Baldwin has used social media and an impromptu press conference with paparazzi Saturday to push the narrative that hes in no way responsible for Hutchins death. He also wants people to know that her death wasnt the result of lax oversight by people overseeing the production.

He has tweeted out links to two news stories that appear to place the blame on the films assistant director, Dave Halls.

The day after the shooting, Baldwin shared a link to a story that reported that he was told by Halls that the gun was safe to use. Then, last week, he retweeted a New York Times story, which cited information in a newly released affidavit from the Santa Fe County Sheriffs office, Yahoo reported. The story reported that Halls told a detective that he should have inspected each round in each chamber of the prop gun, but he did not.

In talking to paparazzi Saturday, Baldwin called Hutchins his friend. He also sounded a bit defensive as he insisted that he and the production team oversaw a safe, professional set. We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together and then this horrible event happened, Baldwin said.

The press conference also was marked by Hilaria Baldwins angry, glowering presence, during which the former yoga instructor paced around, made a show of lashing out at the photographers and recording them, and repeatedly attempting to insert herself into the conversation.

Critics, including New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan, have accused Hilaria Baldwin of using social media in a sickening bid for sympathy for her husband and herself. Critics have long said that Hilaria has always tried to seek the limelight to boost her career as a yoga teacher, lifestyle guru and mom podcaster, including by falsely presenting herself as a half-Spanish immigrant. Now they say shes using her attention-seeking ways to push the narrative that her husband is not responsible for Hutchins death, while also trying to make the tragedy about her.

On Saturday, Hilaria Baldwin gave an exclusive interview to the New York Post, expressing concern that the grief-stricken 30 Rock star would develop PTSD, like soldiers and police officers when something like this happens.

Hilaria Baldwin also positioned herself as her husbands chief defender and caretaker, telling the Post: He needs space for me to take care of him and his mental health. Its an awful thing that happened. Alec feels awful.

The Baldwins faced even more criticism on Sunday when Hilaria Baldwin posted happy family Halloween portraits. One showed a smiling Baldwin in a costume inspired by Where the Wild Things Are.

Hilaria Baldwin captioned the photos: Parenting through this has been an intense experience, to say the least. Today, we rallied to give them a holiday.

Hilaria Baldwins statement about her intense parenting experience prompted The Posts Callahan to write: Really? Hilaria may want to talk to Halyna Hutchins widower about what its been like parenting their young son through this intense experience, his mother shot to death on a movie set.



#YR@ MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Soldiers wearing face masks amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic listen to an address by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen during her visit to a military base in Tainan, southern Taiwan, on April 9, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)

As Tensions Simmer Over Taiwan, Global Chip Supply Hangs in the Balance

By Riley Beggin

From The Detroit News

Tensions between China and Taiwan are escalating, and confusion sparked by President Joe Bidens recent pledge to defend Taiwan has sent his administration scrambling to assure the international community thats not necessarily the case.

Its the latest twist in a longstanding drama that could upend political and economic stability in the region and reframe Chinas power in the world. But experts warn there could be another casualty in the case of war in the Taiwan Strait: The remaining global supply of semiconductor chips.

After a year of shortages, the prospect of yet another interruption to the chip supply likely is enough to make Detroits automakers and their foreign rivals shudder. Taiwan produces 65 percent of all chips globally and is home to the largest semiconductor company in the world, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

That has created a supply chain chokepoint already on display amid a pandemic-induced shortage, which has cost the auto industry more than $210 billion in lost revenues and 7.7 million vehicles of lost production worldwide in 2021, according to consulting firm AlixPartners LLP.

If U.S. policymakers dont adequately walk the diplomatic tightrope between Taiwan and China, observers warn that shortage could become exacerbated to disastrous ends.

War in the Taiwan Strait would definitely shut down semiconductor manufacturing for some period of time in Taiwan, said Shelley Rigger, a political scientist at Davidson College in North Carolina. Global industry would pay a humungous price for any kind of PRC (Peoples Republic of China) military action against Taiwan.  We all need to avoid that outcome.

Officials are attempting to ease concerns after Biden told CNNs Anderson Cooper late last month that the United States would come to Taiwans defense if China attacks rather than simply support Taiwans self-defense, countering a decades-old policy of strategic ambiguity. White House aides quickly clarified there has been no change in policy, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated the message to his Chinese counterpart on Sunday.

There is no change in our policy, Blinken told CNN Sunday. Weve had a longstanding commitment  to make sure that Taiwan has the means to defend itself, and we stand by that.

However, some lawmakers of both parties are calling for the administration to actually make that policy change in order to deter China from invading. And the mixed signals have Chinese leaders on edge.

The new questions over U.S. policy come as the fragile detente between China and Taiwan continues to unravel.

Earlier this year, Taiwans defense minister warned that military tensions between the island and mainland are at their highest in 40 years and said China could launch a full invasion by 2025. The Chinese increasingly have been sending warplanes into the islands defense zone, testing Taiwans military.

Officials in Beijing are beginning to fear that the United States sees Taiwan not just as an important trading partner, but a strategic asset that can be used to weaken or undercut China, Rigger said. And even though the United States insists it hasnt changed its policy toward Taiwan, the Chinese dont believe it.

What that sounds like in China is that the U.S. is actively working to permanently divide Taiwan from mainland China. And thats the thing that they just cant accept, Rigger said.

An Ambiguous Relationship

The rift between China and Taiwan dates back to 1949. When the Chinese civil war ended, the losing side fled to the island of Taiwan while the winners set up a communist government on the mainland.

The two have been governed separately ever since, and Taiwans then-authoritarian government eventually transitioned to a democracy. Taiwan hasnt formally declared independence but insists it is not part of any other nation, while China regards the island as a rogue territory that must eventually be reunitedby force if necessarywith the rest of the country.

Thats put the United States in a complicated diplomatic position as it attempts to retain ties with both governments. The United States formally recognized Chinas communist government in 1979 to capitalize on strategic and economic opportunities in the region.

That required the United States to stop recognizing Taiwans government. Today, it only has official diplomatic relations with the communist government out of Beijing.

But Taiwan remains a close ally in the region. And federal policymakers have long fostered a strong unofficial relationship with Taiwanese leadersincluding selling them weapons that can be used for self-defense in the case of an attack from mainland China.

The United States official policy toward Taiwan also says the country can provide defense services to help the island remain capable of defending itself, but it doesnt say whether the United States would intervene or support Taiwan if they end up in a war with China.

This so-called strategic ambiguity has been the foundation of decades of U.S. foreign relations with China and Taiwan. And for nearly as long as it has existed, its been a political minefield requiring diplomatic tinkering to maintain the status quo.

Chip Crunch

The threat of war in the Taiwan Strait is a potent reminder for both businesses and policymakers to build up chip supplies in other parts of the world, experts say.

Taiwan is home to 65 percent of all semiconductor foundries, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. The second-highest share, 18 percent, is in South Korea, while China has 6 percent of global foundriesboth of which would also likely be impacted by war in the area. All other countries host just 11 percent of the worlds chip producers.

Policymakers of both parties in Washington are concerned about competing with China for economic supremacy, including in the race to lead in the auto industrys electric future. Many are already concerned that China could hamstring U.S. manufacturers if it proved politically advantageous, and gaining control of Taiwan could strengthen that leverage.

Its another log on the fire thats forcing us to confront new realities. Our calculation was that China would increasingly integrate into the global economy, play by international standard rules, and everyone would live happily ever after, said Michael Dunne, CEO of Hong Kong-based advisory firm ZoZo Go LLC.

Thats not the case, and now were having a wake-up call.

Chip companies are responding to that realization, said Anne Hoecker, a partner at Bain & Co. who leads the firms semiconductor group. TSMC is building a new plant in Phoenix, Intel has announced billions in new investments in Europe and the United States, and Abu-Dhabi-based GlobalFoundries recently filed for an IPO in the United States.

All of the manufacturers are putting big capital plans in place to help diversify the footprint of where semiconductors are manufactured. That, unfortunately, is going to take time, so you cant change the capacity in semiconductors overnight, she said. Its one of the things that makes this semiconductor shortage concerning and, honestly, so frustrating for so many companies.

Further instability could be particularly worrisome for those in the auto industry, she said, because the mature chips that are used in vehicles are a small portion of all chips made and are usually less lucrative than the chips used in consumer electronics.

But for the time being, the economies of Taiwan, China and the United States are so intertwined that conflict would be damaging for everyone, Hoecker said: Its a tightrope on both sides.

That interdependence is one of the reasons most foreign policy experts say that a direct Chinese attack on Taiwan remains unlikely in the short termChina itself would be hurt politically and economically by war.

But for the United States, Dunne said, economic stress made worse by a semiconductor shortage could be a factor in shifting its policy to counter Chinese aggression in the case of an attack.

Its like the new oil. Its crucial. It lubricates the entire global economy, he said. So any threat to the supply of those chips would be, arguably, a threat to national security.

2021 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Falun Gong practitioners in Vienna, Austria, stage a demonstration of organ harvesting of imprisoned practitioners in China during a protest against importing of human organs from China to Austria on Oct. 1, 2018. (JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Doctor Urges Ban on Training Chinese Surgeons to Stop Real-Life Squid Game

An Australian organ transplant expert has warned hospitals and universities around the world to stop training surgeons from China, concerned they may participate in illegal organ harvesting when they return to China.

Prof. Russell Strong AC said that Chinese surgeons who receive medical training in the west may use what theyve learnt to harvest human organs when they return to China.

Hospitals and universities should stop receiving and training any surgeons from China, not just for transplants, any surgeons because the Chinese doctors know what is happening and they in a way are covering up all of this, Strong told Daily Mail Australia.

A waiter dressed in an outfit from the Netflix series Squid Game holds a card while playing a game to attract customers at a cafe in Jakarta on Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Adek Berry/AFP via Getty Images)

As a world-renowned surgeon who specialised in liver surgery, Strong successfully performed Australias first liver transplant in 1985.

He was honoured by Queen Elizabeth with a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1987 and received Australias highest honour, the AC, in 2001.

Professor Strong believes that the mainstream media has failed to cover the credible reports of forced organ harvesting in China.

I think the mainstream media has really failed to report the atrocities that are going on and have failed to connect the people of the free world with the victims of forced organ harvesting in China, he said.

Its all to do with money. Its money over human rights and the human rights abuses in China are outlandish.

Its time we woke up in this country and stop kowtowing to China, he said.

In making his point, Strong drew a comparison to the subplot of the popular Korean Netflix drama, Squid Game, which saw characters competing in life or death games while living under extremely controlled circumstances in a facility cut off from the outside world. The characters who lost were killed and some secretly had their organs harvested for black market sale.

According to the findings by special rapporteurs to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in June, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been targeting specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities held in detention for forced organ harvesting.

UN human rights experts said today they were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged organ harvesting targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians in detention in China, the UN statement said.

The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation. According to the allegations received, the most common organs removed from the prisoners are reportedly hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas and, less commonly, parts of livers.

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of the China Tribunal into forced organ harvesting on the first day of public hearings, London, UK, Dec. 8, 2018. (Justin Palmer)

The London-based China Tribunal concluded in March 2020 that forced organ harvesting was still happening in China on a significant scale. Practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice from the Buddhist tradition that consists of meditation, exercises, and moral teachings centred on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, are the principal source of human organs.

The bloody industry of forced organ harvesting is worth around $1 billion annually. Human rights groups put the estimated victims at 60,000 to 100,000 people every year.

Despite the evidence, Beijing firmly denied any involvement in forced organ harvesting, and referred to the UN statement as fabricated and defamatory.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd year of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 18, 2021. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Dr. Torsten Trey, the executive director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), notes that despite Beijings denials they dont engage in forced organ harvesting, the practice of harvesting organs from prisoners has a long history under the communist Chinese regime.

Trey said from 1984 the practice was limited to executed prisoners in China which kept the number of organ transplants low in the country. However, this changed in 2000 when the number of transplants skyrocketed.

Since there is only a certain amount of capital offences and death sentences, before 2000, the number of transplants stagnated at a certain level. After 2000, the numbers of transplants increased significantly despite a plausible organ source, Trey said.

He argued this was also around the time when the numbers of prisoners of conscience also increased dramatically in China and this he argues had a direct correlation with the increase in the number of transplants.

In a country of 1.4 billion people, human life is replaceable in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, Trey said. A torture death wont be investigated.

Like Strong, Trey also sees the correlations with the Netflix drama Squid Game. But he doubts that the show will really demonstrate the true horror of forced organ harvesting.

The show alone might not achieve the effect because it is seen as a fictional story of a movie, and because the actual practice, forced organ harvesting from living people is too outrageous to be seen as real, he said.
Australian Union Claims Victory for Fruit Picking Minimum Wage

The Australian Fair Work Commission has ruled in favour of a guaranteed minimum wage for casual fruit and vegetable pickers on piece-rate arrangements.

Farmers will now be forced to pay an hourly minimum casual wage of $25.41 (US$18.94), even under piece-rates, which is where workers are paid for the volume picked.

The Australian Workers Union (AWU) began the push for minimum wage in July, arguing that piece-rates made it easy for vulnerable workers to be cheated and exploited.

The Australian Fresh Produce Alliance (AFPA), the representative body for fresh produce growers and suppliers, argued that competent pieceworkers under piece-rates could earn 15 percent more than the minimum hourly rate, creating a risk-reward bargain.

But the commission rejected the industrys argument that putting a floor on piece-rates would disincentivise more productive workers.

The existing pieceworker provisions in the Horticulture Award are not fit for purpose; they do not provide a fair and relevant minimum safety net as required, the commission said in its decision (pdf).

We are satisfied that the insertion of a minimum wage floor with consequential time recording provisions in the piecework clause is necessary to ensure that the Horticulture Award achieves the modern awards objective.

AWU secretary Daniel Walton wrote in a post on Twitter that the decision was a huge victory to ensure that all farm workers picking fruit and vegetables received a fair days pay for a fair days work.

I believe this decision ranks among the great victories of our unions 135-year history, Walton told the ABC. Fruit pickers in Australia have been routinely and systemically exploited and underpaid.

Fruit picker harvests oranges on a farm near Leeton, NSW, Australia, on Oct. 1, 2020. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

However, the National Farmers Federation (NFF) called it a bitter blow to farmers who are now facing another harvest with a severely inadequate workforce.

The increase in wage costs, most farms largest input, threatens to make the most productive workers unaffordable. The loss of these workers will put a handbrake on agricultures growth, at a time when our country can least afford it, NFF CEO Tony Mahar said.

Mahar said the commissions decision came at a time when the industry was facing an unprecedented labour shortage and still suffering from the fallout of COVID-19.

The decision is out of step with whats in our nations interest and is a disproportionate response to the issue at hand, he said. The NFF will now consider our next steps.

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said he would work through the ruling and warned of higher prices.

Farmers have to be paid for their produce, and the cost of producing that produce should be reflected at the checkout, Littleproud told the ABC. You could surmise that at some point, not having read through the final determination in full, this may have some upward pressure on prices at the supermarket.
Armed Polish border guards stand next to a group of migrants at a makeshift encampment on the border between Belarus and Poland in Usnarz Gorny, near Bialystok, northeast Poland, on August 20, 2021. - The fate of a group of 32 bedraggled migrants stranded at a makeshift encampment on the border between Belarus and Poland for nearly two weeks has sparked a heated debate in Poland. The sight of the migrants, who are believed to be from Afghanistan, stuck between armed Belarusian officers and Polish soldiers just a few metres away has moved many Poles. (Photo by Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP) (Photo by WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Belarusian Forces Threatened to Open Fire at Polish Troops Guarding Border, Says Defense Ministry

Polands defense ministry on Thursday accused Belarusian soldiers of threatening to open fire on Polish troops just across the Polish-Belarusian border one day earlier.

Yesterday there was another provocation against Polish soldiers protecting the border, the Polish Ministry of Defense (MOD) said.

The Polish soldiers located a group of around 250 migrants near the fence, it explained. The Belarusian soldiers guarding them threatened to open fire at our soldiers.

The MOD noted that Polish troops did not allow themselves to be provoked and as a result, the situation did not escalate further.

The actions of the Belarusian soldiers looked like an attempt to escalate the situation, but they were also an attempt to hide the fact that a group of migrants had crossed into Polish territory, it wrote.

Wednesdays incident was, according to the MOD, yet another confirmation of Belarusians getting involved in pushing illegal immigrants across the Polish-Belarusian border.

The European Union and Warsaw have accused Belarus of deliberately encouraging illegal immigrants to enter Poland and other EU states via Belarusian territory as a means to put pressure on the bloc over sanctions. Belarus has repeatedly denied these accusations.

Polish authorities have repeatedly said the situation along the border is in crisis as the nation declared a state of emergency last month in several areas along the countrys border with Belarus while also announcing plans to spend more than $400 million on improving its border defense by building a solid barrier.

The number of Polish troops sent to border regions in order to stem the flow of illegal immigrants has also increased by thousands over the last month.

Polish Army soldiers are seen in front of the Border Guard headquarters in Michalowo, Poland, on Oct. 11, 2021. (Kacper Pempel/Retuers)

Mariusz Blaszczak, the countrys national defense minister, said on Oct. 25 that soon, 10,000 soldiers from the 12th, 16th, and 18th divisions will be watching over the security of the border.

Polands foreign ministry in a Nov. 3 statement said that Polish border officials spotted unidentified uniformed individuals armed with long guns on Nov. 2 in an earlier alleged intrusion. Upon attempting to make contact, the armed individuals reloaded their weapons and then ran back towards Belarusian territory, The First News reported.

The incident was followed by a formal protest to Belarus. Poland said it had summoned the Belarusian charge daffaires to protest over what it said was a deliberate escalation of the migration crisis.

Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk forwarded an emphatic protest to the Belarusian side against the violation of Polish state border, emphasizing that the actions taken by the Belarusian authorities in recent weeks have the increasingly evident hallmarks of a deliberate escalation, it said.

The Belarusian foreign ministry has denied the accusations, saying Polish authorities have not presented any proof or documentation about the alleged event.

Belarus has never provoked and does not intend to provoke border incidents.  Artificial operetta performances, organized with the aim of creating a hostile image of Belarus in international public opinion, contradict not only international law, but also all conceivable moral norms, it said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
President Joe Biden speaks from the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington on Nov. 3, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

Biden Administration Urges Court Not to Block COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Government lawyers on Wednesday urged a federal judge not to block COVID-19 vaccine mandates that have been imposed on federal employees, federal contractors, and military members, arguing that the court lacks the power to do so and that enjoining the orders would go against the public interest.

President Joe Biden in August issued executive orders requiring vaccination against the virus that causes COVID-19 for federal workers and contractors and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a similar order later that month for U.S. troops.

Two dozen plaintiffs, including members of each military branch, in October, sued the Biden administration, arguing all three orders are unconstitutional in part because of an apparent lack of religious accommodations.

They are seeking a preliminary injunction, which would block the mandates until the case is decided.

In a 41-page response filed Wednesday, lawyers for the administration say entering an injunction would harm the public interest in slowing the spread of COVID-19 among millions of federal employees, contractors, service members, and the members of the public with whom they interact.

They cited recent court rulings in similar matters, including one that found the government has a compelling interest in stemming the spread of COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Further, blocking the Pentagon mandate would adversely affect Americas national security, the filing asserted, as military leaders have found COVID-19 impacts military readiness.

Capt. Timothy Buchanan, a Coast Guard official, testified in a declaration that 39 different units in a single Coast Guard district have been crippled at least once due to COVID-19, with one vessel taken out of service for a total of 33 days.

The court must give great deference to the professional military judgment of these leaders when it comes to what is needed to ensure military readiness, the lawyers argued, citing another court ruling.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin conducts a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 22, 2021. (Chad J. McNeeley/Department of Defense)

Plaintiffs said they filed for religious exemptions to the mandates but most had not seen their requests processed, and two were denied. The still pending requests have been effectively denied as plaintiffs were threatened with punishment including dishonorable discharge, the request for an injunction stated. Some plaintiffs said superiors told them that no religious exemptions would be granted.

The Air Force, the military branch that set the earliest mandate deadline, announced Wednesday that it had approved zero religious accommodations.

Defendants said in the new filing each of the mandates explicitly allows for a religious accommodation and that each branch is following processes to consider religious exemption requests. They also argued the claim about the superiors was unreliable because it came from anonymous persons citing unspecified others. Additionally, they said the court lacks jurisdiction over any claim the military incorrectly decided a religious exemption request.

Defendants were previously ordered to provide information about how they handle accommodation requests. That information is due by Nov. 12.

In their filing, plaintiffs said the fact that Comirnaty, the approved version of Pfizers COVID-19, is not available in the United States undercuts the mandates. Austins order, for instance, says that mandatory vaccination will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration. Pfizers shot is the only one that qualifies.

Plaintiffs said the lack of supply of the approved product means that federal law outlining emergency use authorization (EUA) still applies. That statute mandates that all individuals to whom the EUA product may be administered be given the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, they wrote in their initial filing.

Defendants disagreed, asserting that because regulators ruled the approved and authorized versions of Pfizers vaccine can be used interchangeably, the statute does not apply any longer. Even if it did, the statute only requires people be informed by providers that they have a choice to receive or not receive the vaccine, they said.

As numerous courts have held, this informed-consent requirement does not prevent any entity (including the government) from imposing workplace discipline, up to and including termination, for those who choose not to receive an EUA vaccine, they said.
President Joe Biden speaks about the authorization of the Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5-11, in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, on Nov. 3, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Biden Denies Garbage Reports of $450,000 Payments to Illegal Immigrants

President Joe Biden on Wednesday denied reports that his administration is planning to pay $450,000 to families of illegal aliens separated under the Trump administration.

If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah. But its not true, Biden told a reporter who asked a question about the matter on Nov. 3. Thats not going to happen.

The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources in an article on Oct. 28 that claimed the Biden administration is planning payments as large as $1 million per family to resolve the lawsuits on behalf of the families that crossed the border illegally. According to that report, the government was looking to resolve 940 claims from such families for a total payout of about $1 billion.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing some of the families, noted in a statement responding to Bidens comments that the president may not have been briefed on the work of his own Justice Department.

President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department as it carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. But if he follows through on what he said, the president is abandoning a core campaign promise to do justice for the thousands of separated families.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the ACLUs claim.

On the day following the Wall Street Journal report, more than 40 Republican lawmakers in Congress sent a letter to executive branch heads demanding answers about the contemplated payouts.

We are a nation of laws, and our laws must be enforced. Promising tens of thousands of dollars to those who unlawfully entered the United States would not only reward criminal behavior, but it would surely send a message to the world that our borders are open, and or rule of law will not be enforced, the letter stated.

If your Administration decides to give out financial compensation to thousands of illegal immigrants in the amount of roughly one-half of a million dollars, you will unilaterally incentivize migrants from more than 150 nations across the world to surge our border.

Masooma Haq contributed to this report.
Backpackers in Australia from eight countries will be able to save thousands of dollars. (Shutterstock*)

British Backpacker Wins Legal Case Against Australias Backpacker Tax

Backpackers from eight countries will be able to save thousands of dollars after the Australian High Court ruled on Wednesday that the governments tax on working vacation makers from these countries is unfair.

In December 2016, Australia legislated a backpacker tax that will see working holidaymakers charged a flat rate of 15% on incomes up to AU$37,000, a tax of AU$5,550, which is higher than that of native Australians.

Local Australians are exempt from tax on income up to AU$18,200, and if they earn up to AU$37,000 a year, the tax is only AU$3,572.

Catherine Addy, a British backpacker, working as a waitress in Sydney, filed a federal court case against the backpacker tax for discriminating against her nationality and violating the Australia-UK treaty on avoidance of double taxation.

Addy initially won her case in October 2019. But the federal court overturned the decision in August 2020. She then appealed to the High Court of Australia, where all five High Court justices ruled in favour of Addy unanimously on Nov.3, finding that more burdensome tax had been imposed on her.

When the position of Ms Addy is compared with that of an Australian national, as it must be, that is the only conclusion which may be drawn, they said in the judgement.

Backpackers in Australia from eight countries will be able to save thousands of dollars. (Shutterstock*)

She did the same kind of work and earned the same amount of income from the same source, yet an Australian national was required  to pay less tax.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) issued a statement later, saying that the high courts decision does not apply to all backpackers in the country.

This decision is only relevant where the working holidaymaker is both an Australian resident for tax purposes, and from Chile, Finland, Japan, Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Germany or Israel, the ATO said in a statement.

The ATO said it is considering this decision and will provide further guidance in a timely manner.

Joanna Murphy, the CEO of Taxback.com, which helped Addy bring the case, welcomed the decision saying the court confirmed important protections for foreign citizens choosing to work while holidaying in Australia.

It was always clear to us when this tax was introduced in 2016, against the wishes of the agricultural sector, that it breached a number of international tax agreements, Murphy said in a statement on the firms website.

It also damaged Australias reputation as a working holiday destination.
Buffalo Mayor Brown Declares Victory in Write-In Campaign Against Democratic Socialist India Walton

The incumbent four-term Democratic mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, declared a victory Tuesday night in his write-in election campaign against self-proclaimed democratic socialist India Walton.

Brown, 63, lost to Walton in the June Democratic primary before launching a write-in campaign. On Tuesday, he declared a victory over his opponent after local media reported Walton had won 41 percent of the vote while nearly 59 percent of the votes were for write-in, according to the Erie County Board of Elections.

However, the write-in votes, still need to be checked to confirm that Browns name has been indicated. Officials are expected to begin examining the write-in ballots on Nov. 16.

In a speech delivered to his supporters outside of his campaign headquarters shortly after 11 p.m, Brown said the Buffalo mayor election was much more than just a, referendum on the future of the city of Buffalo.

It was a referendum on the future of our democracy, Brown said, according to The New York Post. At the very beginning they said we couldnt win, they said it was impossible to win  You can never count a Buffalonian out, he added.

Brown also told supporters at a downtown event that he would find a way to thank all his voters over the next four years, The New York Times reports.

Long Island Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who endorsed Brown, said his so-called win was a clear triumph of core Democratic values over the far-left socialist agenda.

Voters know that pragmatism, solving problems and actually getting things done is what makes government work better, Suozzi told The NY Post.

The chairman of the state Republican Party, Nick Langworthy, also congratulated Browns apparent win, writing on Twitter, Socialism has been defeated in Buffalo!

However, Walton is yet to concede the race and on Wednesday wrote on Twitter that, When all the votes are counted, if were still down, *then* well concede. Until then, relax.

Previously, Walton had shared a statement saying that, tens of thousands of write-in and absentee ballots have yet to be tabulated, and we believe that democracy requires that every vote be counted, and that any improprieties that occurred be brought to light.

It seems unlikely that we will end up with enough votes to inaugurate a Walton administration in January, she said.

Walton, who has received support from prominent national progressives, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, as well as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also accused Brown of betraying the Democratic Party and colluding with Republicans and wealthy donors in an effort to secure votes.

Buffalo is a Democratic city, Walton said on Tuesday night. And what we have seen is my opponent actively cooperating and colluding with Republicans and dark money to defeat a person who was going to be a champion for the little guy.

Brown has served as the first African-American mayor of New York states second-largest city since 2005.

Walton, who is also a community activist and nurse was born and raised on Buffalos East Side and became a full-time working mother at the age of just 14.

Her campaign had focused on key policies such as public safety and gun violence, housing, infrastructure, immigration, and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Candidates Opposing Critical Race Theory, COVID-19 Mandates Win Minnesota School Board Races

Minnesota has seen in the latest school board elections a number of wins by candidates opposing critical race theory and COVID-19 restrictions, including in areas that traditionally vote Democrats.

In Anoka-Hennepin, Minnesotas largest school district serving some 38,000 students and 248,000 residents, Matt Audette won by a margin of over 30 percent. The only key issue on Audettes campaign website is preventing the infiltration of CRT, which he said divides students based on their skin color and teaches that the most important aspect of their humanity is not their character, morality, or actions, but their race.

While CRT is not incorporated as part of the curriculum in Anoka-Hennepin schools, the district has partnered with the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center, an organization that promotes anti-racism education to analyze and address supposed systemic racism and inequity. The school district did take a side, and they are siding with CRT, Audette warned. The use of this equity analysis in our schools will affect staff development, and it will eventually get into the classrooms.

Instead of teaching concepts of division and guilt derived from CRT, Audette said he supports teaching about not only racism, but also achievements and successes in racial equality in the history of the United States. He also supports giving parents complete access to curriculum on demand.

A special one-year seat on the Alexandria School Board went to Maureen Eigen, who said in October that she opposes CRT because it does not empower students of color and furthers segregation.

I dont oppose CRT because of any political agenda. I oppose it because its not right, she added.

In Lakeville, Cinta Schmitz narrowly won a special election for an open school board seat. A co-founder of local parental group Informed Fully-Awake Parents, Schmitz ran on a platform of allowing parents to make decisions for their kids when it comes to wearing masks and receiving COVID-19 vaccines.

Keep divisive policies that teach racism and intolerance of people with different ethnic backgrounds or skin colorswhether its called CRT or any other equity-related termout of our schools, her campaign website reads.

The Minnesota wins could be suggesting a nationwide trend, too, according to the 1776 Project PAC, a political action group with the aim to combat CRT in K12 education and help elect conservatives to school boards in the United States. The PAC reports that as of Wednesday, 44 of the 58 candidates it endorsed have either won or are leading in their school board races.

The 44 candidates backed by the PAC include 13 in Pennsylvania, with four of them sweeping seats in Perkiomen Valley School District, which serves the powerful Democratic bastion of Montgomery County. Also among them are 11 in Colorado, nine in Kansas, four in New Jersey, three in Virginia, and two each in Minnesota and Ohio.
Sailors stand on the deck of the new type 055 guide missile destroyer Nanchang of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy as it participates in a naval parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of China's PLA Navy in the sea near Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong Province on April 23, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)

China Has Debated Attacking Taiwan-Controlled Islands, Top Taiwan Official Says

Beijing has mulled invading Taiwans Pratas Islands but will not mount an attack before the islands president Tsai Ing-wen finishes her term in 2024, a top Taiwanese security official said.

Attacking and capturing Pratas Islands, and using war to force Taiwan into talks, this scenario in our assessment will not happen during President Tsais tenure, Chen Ming-tong, National Security Bureau Director-General of the self-ruling island, told lawmakers on Nov. 4.

The Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, which lays around 190 miles southeast of Hong Kong, has been particularly vulnerable to attacks because of its proximity to mainland China, some experts have said.

Frankly speaking, they have internally debated about it before, he said. We of course have some awareness, Chen said.

Chen, who was responding to a question from a lawmaker from the Kuomintang, Taiwans main opposition party, on the chances of a Chinese attack while Tsai is in office, did not say how he knew of such deliberations.

Long described by Beijing as a breakaway region, Taiwan has seen a marked escalation of Chinese military harassment over the past year. Early last month, Beijing put the island on alert by flying nearly 150 warplanes over a 4-day period into Taiwans defense zone, the largest show of force to date.

Chen made the comments just a day after Pentagon warned about Chinas growing nuclear capabilities, which is on track to have a five-fold increase over the next decade.

Chinas DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles are seen during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on Oct. 1, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

A recent report by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University also found the Chinese military to be deploying artificial intelligence to simulate war games for a Taiwan invasion.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday expressed the same opinion as Chen, saying that China is unlikely to seize Taiwan by military force in the near future, or what he defined as within a window of 6, 12, maybe 24 months.

Having said that, though, the Chinese are clearly and unambiguously building the capability to provide those options to the national leadership, if they so choose, at some point in the future, Milley said at the Aspen Security Forum. But anything can happen, he added.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testifies during a congressional hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 29, 2021. (Rod Lamkey/Pool/Getty Images)

The United States does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but provides military equipment to the island sufficient for its self-defense as required by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. Washington also maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity towards the island, under which it is deliberately vague on whether it will come to Taiwans aid if Beijing attacks.

Chinas growing nuclear arsenal could give the regime substantial advantage in the event of a military conflict over Taiwan, experts have told The Epoch Times.

If the Chinese and Americans were to fight to a stalemate at a conventional level, it could be plausible that whoever has nuclear dominance would be in the drivers seat for winning the war, or at least getting the other side to back down, Michael OHanlon, a defense-focused senior fellow at Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, said in a previous interview.

Taiwans defense minister has recently warned that China would be fully capable to invade Taiwan by 2025.

Milley, though, said that the United States absolutely have the capability to defend Taipei if required.

Theres no question about that, he said.
Shanghai police recently cracked the first case of an underground bank selling game time cards as a cover for illegal currency exchange. In six years, the underground bank transferred $3.75 billion worth of wealth. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

China Uncovered First Case of Underground Bank Using Game Time Cards

The Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) strict controls on foreign exchange have led to a proliferation of underground banks. Shanghai police recently cracked the first case of an underground bank selling game time cards (GTC) as a cover for illegal currency exchange. In six years, the underground bank has transferred $3.75 billion.

According to Chinese media reports, the underground bank used the GTCs as a medium to form a multi-link currency exchange chain in China, helping domestic and foreign customers exchange currencies. Over 20 people have been arrested and 3 online exchange platforms have been shut down.

According to the report, the suspects liked the international liquidity and price stability of online GTCs. Through a self-fixed exchange rate, the cards are used as the medium to connect the domestic and foreign exchange transactions, so that it looks legitimate. The suspects recruited several domestic GTC dealers to facilitate the illegal exchange of foreign currency.

The underground banks require overseas customers to top up their GTCs using foreign currency. The domestic customer service then sells the cards and transfers Chinese currency (RMB) into domestic accounts designated by the overseas customers. Underground banks earn service fees from the transactions.

SAFE Reported 10 Cases of Illegal Foreign Exchange

On the same day the state media revealed the first case of illegal currency exchange via game point cards, the CCPs State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) reported 10 cases of illegal currency exchange by underground banks. The 10 cases involved two enterprises and eight individuals punished by the SAFE from 2020 to 2021.

Among them, the biggest penalty was for illegal trading of foreign exchange by a person outside China named Zeng. From November 2018 to January 2020, Zeng illegally traded 32 foreign exchange transactions through underground banks, totaling $7.472 million, and was fined $841,750.

The two companies were Anshan Dingtai Earthwork Engineering Co., LTD. and Nanjing Jinao Real Estate Co., LTD. In December 2019, Anshan Dingtai was fined about $105,510 for three illegal transactions of foreign exchange through underground banks, totaling $812,000. From May to June 2020, Nanjing Jinao illegally traded three foreign exchange transactions through underground banks, totaling $635,000, and was fined about $70,340.

This is the third batch of foreign exchange cases reported by the SAFE this year. The first two groups of cases were: 10 cases of underground bank exchange reported on July 16, involving a total amount of $29.697,000; and 10 cases of illegal exchange of foreign currency by underground banks reported on May 28, involving $32.757 million.

CCP Tightens Foreign Exchange Controls

Xia Yeliang, a former professor at Peking Universitys School of Economics and a visiting fellow at the Cato Institute, told The Epoch Times that the CCP relaxed foreign exchange controls in the 1990s, hoping to eventually make RMB freely convertible and make it an international means of payment and storage. But when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, changes occurred and the CCP began to tighten foreign exchange controls.

In an effort to control capital flight, the CCP imposed an annual cap of $50,000 on foreign exchange purchases and settlements by Chinese citizens in January 2007. In addition, Chinese citizens are not allowed to take foreign currency out of the country in excess of the regulations. It is also illegal to transfer funds using underground banks, virtual currencies, and transactions in small batches.

Underground Banks Persist in China Despite Repeated Prohibition

Xia said he knew the rules when he taught at Peking University. People were transferring money to Hong Kong and then to the rest of the world. But large sums of money are hard to carry, and so underground banks emerged. Now that Hong Kong is controlled by the CCP, its hard to transfer through Hong Kong.

Xia said underground banks face the highest risks because they have to trust each other without formal written contracts. Meanwhile, the commission is high, with the minimum being 3 percent.

Danny Lau Tat-pong, a Hong Kong business leader with factories in China, told The Epoch Times, There are also many underground banks that dont charge a handling fee and pocket the difference [instead]. For example, if 100 Hong Kong dollars (about $13) is exchanged for 82 yuan ($12.82), he may give you 80 yuan ($12.50), and pockets the difference. Its easier to make more money from pocketing the difference.

Lau is the honorary chairman of the Hong Kong Small and Medium Enterprises Association. He said that no matter how Beijing controls capital flight, people always have opportunities to transfer money out of the country. For example, if someone needs to transfer money out and someone else needs to transfer money in, then they just hit it off. Both sides have the need, and they can exchange it through intermediaries or other channels.

Epoch Times reporter Joyce Liang contributed to this report.
A screen in the data center control room of e-commerce giant JD.com where they track sales and trends at the company's headquarters in Beijing, China, on Nov. 11, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Chinas New Data Exit Rules Put Multinationals in a Bind

Commentary

Foreign companies doing business in China have been waiting years for clarity from the Chinese communist regime on how they can extract their data out of China.

Theyre finally getting what they were waiting for. But it hardly clarifies everything, and actually introduces new landmines.

Last week, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released a new set of draft rules governing the steps businesses must undertake to transfer their Chinese data abroad. The rules will have far-reaching consequences, affecting Chinese companies seeking to list their stock abroad as well as foreign companies with operations within China and Hong Kong.

This clarification has been hotly anticipated, as Beijing mandates that companies must undergo a series of data security assessments before they can transmit the data they own beyond Chinas borders, to their headquarters, for instance.

It does clear up a few things. First of all, the agency overseeing this data is the CAC, Chinas internet watchdog. The rules also dictate what types of companies must apply for assessment, how to apply, the CACs general assessment framework, and penalties for failure to obtain permission.

The rules also cover all data leaving Chinas borders, which undoubtedly in this case means Hong Kong. So foreign companies doing business in Hong Kong also will need to be vigilant. It was previously a question as to whether Hong Kong was under the scope of this law, but legal experts have widely confirmed that Hong Kong is squarely within Chinas boundaries for this purpose.

But aside from these general guidelines, the rules are unclear in many respects. The CAC states that all businesses processing data obtained in China must conduct periodic self-reviews and assessments of risks of transferring data abroad, and the firms in scope include information infrastructure companies and key data owners.

Companies gathering data from more than 100,000 residents or companies harboring sensitive personal information of 10,000 residents or more must undergo an approval process by the CAC before data can be transmitted.

The CAC said it would take 45 to 60 days on average and it would take into consideration the necessity of such transfers, the sensitivity of the data, and risks of loss should such data be compromised.

Who qualifies as key data owners, and what qualifies as sensitive personal information? Thats still unclear.

But such vague language would grant the CAC and the Xi Jinping regime with broad powers to restrict and punish companies. There also is considerable leeway to politicize such data without prior warning. Despite companies having to undergo self-assessment, the CAC is the judge.

Most foreign companies collecting dataany form of dataon their Chinese customers should plan conservatively and assume their data is sensitive unless told otherwise. Consumer, technology, financial, and health care companies would most likely be affected.

But it gets even more complicated.

These rules dovetail with Chinas new Personal Information Privacy Law (PIPL), which went into effect on Nov. 1. Similar to the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went live in 2018, Chinas PIPL carries heavy penalties for transgressors and has extraterritorial impact. Companies, including foreign companies with no presence in China but that have Chinese customers, could face stiff penalties if they are found to be in violation of the law.

Chinas PIPL is even more strict than Europes GDPR in that the GDPR doesnt limit transfers, and that the European guidelines stipulate that governments cant obtain such data at will without subpoenas or warrants.

The Chinese laws grant no such protections for companies. Both the PIPL and the data extradition rules leave enough gray areas within their definitions for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to interpret and enact restrictions and penalties without limit.

Foreign companies interfacing with Chinese customers now face even more business risk than before.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (right) arrives with Premier Li Keqiang (left) and members of the Politburo Standing Committee for a reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the eve of China's National Day on Sept. 30, 2021. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinas Xiconomics: Lots of Economic Slogans, More Government Control

News Analysis

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is cracking down on the financial sector, restricting foreign trade, and generally moving the Chinese economy away from market influence toward one of social and central planning.

To commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the founding of communist China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a letter, extolling the six fronts (employment, finance, foreign trade, foreign investment, domestic investment and market expectations) and guaranteeing the six priorities (jobs, livelihoods, development of market entities, food and energy security, stable operation of industrial supply chains, and smooth functioning at the community level).

In spite of the statements guarantees, China is facing supply chain interruptions, as well as food and energy shortages, largely because of policy decisions made by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xis leadership.

Some of Xis slogans are not particularly unusual, such as cross-cyclical adjustment, which simply means policy actions taken across business cycles. Others, such as The Chinese Dream, are stolen from the West, but transformed into a communist version.

The Chinese Dream is often compared to the American dream, although the two are quite distinct. The American dream is an individual dream of pulling oneself up by ones bootstraps, in the context of having the freedom to make ones own destiny.

The Chinese dream, by contrast, is a collectivist dream of rejuvenating and strengthening the countryXis goal is to transform China into a world leader.

Common prosperity is a slogan, defined with another slogan, successfully building a comprehensive well-off society.

One would imagine that education would be a significant part of common prosperity, but this is one of the areas that Xi is cutting. Chinas private tutoring sector was valued at $120 billion, but upon the announcement of Xis crackdown on the industry, $67 billion of stock value was erased within 48 hours.

College students and graduates sit by a sidewalk offering their tutoring services, in Xian, central Chinas Shaanxi Province, in this undated photo. Millions of college graduates in China are finding themselves with no jobs waiting, or end up performing work for which they are overqualified. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Additionally, the market for English classes, once the largest component of private tuition, has been decimated. Without these supplemental English classes, the Chinese will be even less equipped to engage with the worldone more sign of China turning inward.

Xis new policy, of restricting civil and economic life, has mockingly been called the Red New Deal. Aspects of personal freedoms and private enterprises that Xi is limiting include the following: social media, celebrities and fan clubs, people with excessively high incomes, fintech companies, gaming companies, ride-hailing, bike-sharing, Bitcoin mining, most aspects of the real-estate sector, virtual reality, and high frequency stock trading. The abolition of these, and other activities which Xi dislikes, are meant to help build a harmonious society.

During Mao Zedongs time, there was a slogan: Attack local tyrants, divide up the farmland. Today, Xi calls it wealth redistributiona component of common prosperity that is meant to make people more equal in one of the most unequal, large economies of the world. Wealth distribution, in practice, suppresses billionaires and celebrities, who represent incorrect political positions.

Xi said that people with high incomes should give back more to society, through charitable giving and higher taxes. To this end, Xi has curbed wealthy and high-profile individuals who have, what he considers, excessively high incomes. It remains unclear, however, why arresting, fining, or otherwise punishing the wealthy would make the poor richer.

Dual circulation is another socialist slogan, which, on the surface, seems balanced. In the strictest terms, it just means focusing on both the internal economy and the external economies. In practice, however, it means focusing less on exports and more on domestic consumption. It is one more euphemism for China turning inward. One reason for this policy may have been because of the U.S. tariffs and a general trend of foreign manufacturing firms leaving China.

Whatever the reason for dual circulation, it is ironic that Xi was telling people to focus on the internal economy during the COVID-19 lockdowns, a time when he was restricting all sorts of domestic, non-exporting businesses and services, including restaurants, tourism, retailers, haircutters, gyms, night clubs, bars, and cinemas. He was espousing the benefits of an economy driven by domestic consumption in the service sector, while the sector worst hit by Xis zero-covid policies was the service sector.

Chief of industrial chains is a Xi-ism, which means that local and provincial governments are responsible for streamlining industrial supply chains, particularly those affected by the U.S.-China trade war. In practice, chief of industrial chains resulted in quotas being thrust upon local governments. And in order to meet those quotas, local governments took any number of short-sighted decisions, many of which drove up their debt to untenable levels. Chinas local government debtincluding bonds and so-called hidden debt, shadowy, opaque, loans taken through shell companiesis estimated to be $47 trillion.

Another Xi-ism, Houses are for living in, not speculation, was meant to discourage people from investing in property. The policy was introduced in 2017 and yet, in 2021, families have 70 percent of their multi-generational wealth tied up in real estate. Furthermore, the entire Chinese economy is threatened by a $5 trillion real-estate debt bubble that is plagued by defaults.

A man walks in front of unfinished residential buildings at the Evergrande Oasis, a housing complex developed by Evergrande Group, in Luoyang, China, on Sept. 15, 2021. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

One bank, one policy could be interpreted as a standardization of policies across banks. In practice, however, it seems to mean that as local banks falter under a mountain of bad debt and murky, off-balance sheet transactions, Beijing is picking and choosing which banks it will bail out and which it will allow to fail. With bailouts, there is always the risk of moral hazard. Basically, by bailing out a financial institution, the government is rewarding it for bad or risky behavior. Bailouts send a signal to other banks that they, too, should not fear taking imprudent risks, because the central authorities will bail them out.

In addition to bailouts, Beijing has taken other steps, such as mergers and acquisitions, as well as allowing banks to restructure and reorganize, even permitting unlisted, small lenders, regardless of being in financial distress, to raise capital through private placements of equity.

The overarching economic slogan that steers the new Chinese economy is that the CCP wishes to guide private companies to explore a modern enterprise system with Chinese characteristics. This means that the Party wants to have more control over decisions taken by companies to ensure that they follow a correct, state-determined line.

As a result, state-owned enterprises are expanding, consuming a greater proportion of resources, including bank loans, while gobbling up private companies, and decreasing the private sectors percentage of economic output.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
If they are committed to lying to parents, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, what else are they lying about?

At the National Conservatism Conference in Florida, we sat down with Christopher Rufo to discuss the Virginia gubernatorial race and the growing coalition of parents working to remove critical race theory from schools.

Rufo is a writer for City Journal, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a documentary filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his work exposing the spread of critical race theory-based materials and training across Americas public and private sectors.

This interview was filmed a day before the 2021 elections.

Update: The Loudoun County School Board disputes it covered up the sexual assault that took place in a school bathroom.

Jan Jekielek: Chris Rufo is such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Chris Rufo: Its great to be with you.

Mr. Jekielek: Chris, Ive been of course watching your social media feed, where you communicate extensively and in great detail, I might add. Youve been focusing on the Virginia political race. I almost characterize it as beyond politics. Does it make any sense to you when I say that?

Mr. Rufo: Please explain.

Mr. Jekielek: In typical political races the issues will basically be thrown around. To me, you have a middle of the road guy thats being portrayed as some kind ofI dont even like to say the word.

Mr. Rufo: Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: And you have just some patently, obviously false assertions being made that are of profound consequence to society at large. So it just feels like its at another level than what I typically see in political races.

Mr. Rufo: Yes. Im feeling the same instinct. I think you might even call it meta-politics. So its a level of politics that is abstracted and above the typical horse race. Typically you have candidates, they debate, they put out ads, they attack one another, and they put out their closing messages. Were going to do this, this guys going to do that, and then they hold the election.

But there are a lot of underlying themes and social processes that are at play in this race. And Im the same way. I dont typically follow the campaigns and the polling and the numbers. But for me, my interest in the issue of critical race theory is deeply enmeshed with his actual horse race campaign.

For me, its a symbol of the power and potency and reach of this issue that Ive been working oncritical race theory.

In addition its really a test on what is the actual hard nose political messaging around this. You get Glenn Youngkin drawing on this widespread frustration at critical race theory in the curriculum, and at some of the corruption in the school boards. And then you get Terry McAuliffe and his allies in the media saying none of this existsthis is a fantasy, its a dream, its an illusion.

And they take things that Ive provideddocumented hard source evidenceand just simply run around it because they dont have a good argument on this issue.

Mr. Jekielek: Its funny, I almost never cover political races. This is just a fascinating microcosm, to some extent, of a lot of things that are happening in the rest of the country. But one point which really struck me is this idea of whether parents should have control over their childrens education. It seems to me, thats a very majoritarian position across the political spectrum. Im just shocked this is a topic in this election.

Mr. Rufo: Yes. Its been a conservative point for many years that the school boards, the teachers unions, the bureaucracies that are involved in education want to have greater control over your kids. Its another thing though to have a Democratic candidate for governor come out and say parents should not have control over whats taught in the classroom, and then actually double down on that, even in the very last hours before the election.

Hes saying, Everybody was applauding when I said that. I double down, I dont disavow the statement. School boards, bureaucrats, experts, should decide for children what their education is and parents should stay out of it.

Its a huge shift. Think back to the Clinton years, when Clinton famously advocated for a return to school uniforms as a centrist. It was a very popular idea and he was trying to appeal to the broad middle. Whereas McAuliffe is really huddled in the corner with people who truly and directly believe that parents are an impediment to the development of correct politics, that parents are repressive and patriarchal in relationship with their kids, and that the state should take greater authority and almost unrivaled authority over the development of kids beginning in pre-kindergarten at three, four, and five years old.

The Virginia voters have a choice, hes laid it out clearly. And obviously its not the only issue, although it is the most important issue according to voters.

Mr. Jekielek: How is this connected to critical race theory? Its maybe obvious to some, but its also a million dollar question to others.

Mr. Rufo: For two reasons. One; substantively, the suburban counties around DC and Virginia have spent a lot of time and money investing in critical race theory and pedagogies, actually teaching it as a direct subject, but also teaching through it, using it as a pedagogical framework or lens, and incorporating the insights and principles of critical race theory into everyday teaching.

This is corroborated and proven by documents. Even the last time Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, was governor, his own department of education was promoting critical race theory to schools. In 2019, under this current Northam administration, the superintendent endorsed critical race theory in a letter to all the superintendents around the state.

In places like Loudoun and Fairfax County, theyre hiring consultants, at $625 an hour in one instance, to help them implement critical race pedagogies.

There are real grievances on behalf of the parents who say, Hey, wait a minute. Look at what weve seen because of the pandemic, and what weve seen because of our document requests. The suburban schools, again, around DC, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, are promoting a malicious and intentional pedagogy thats designed to reduce people to a racial category, assign guilt and blame to individuals based on their relationship, whether its skin color or ancestry with historical crimes.

And then in one really horrible incident, the school board in Loudoun County was covering up a sexual assault and then another sexual assault. When you add that together, critical race theory, safety, a secretive out-of-control bureaucracyactually the Loudoun County superintendent even requested undercover police officers to monitor parents who are expressing disagreement at school board meetingswhen you put that all together, Virginia has become this flash point in the critical race theory debate.

Parents are mobilizing to say, We want to get a great education. We want to teach a full, accurate, and honest look at American history, but we dont want you essentializing our kids. We dont want you filling our kids with either guilt and shame or pessimism and despair.

McAuliffe and other institutions have been caught off guard by this. They have no response, so theyve reverted to this very defensive strategy of just denial. Deny that it happened, deny that it exists, deny the documents, deny the evidence, and deny the parents.

They think that because in Virginia theyre the majority, structurally in a partisan way, they think that they can simply just ignore the issue. But if the polls emerge as they are trending, which is in favor of these parents, that proposition could be easily proven false.

Mr. Jekielek: Maybe you can update me because I dont know what the newest reality is around these sexual assaults that youre describing. Has it been demonstrated unequivocally that its true? Where does this stand?

Mr. Rufo: Its in the Loudoun County public schools. A young male, a gender fluid male dressed in a skirt, according to court transcripts and reported stories, initiated a sexual encounter with a female student with whom he had had a previous encounter, but then was rebuffed. Then forcibly assaulted this young girl, I think 14, 15 years old, a horrific thing.

But even adding a compounding evil is that the school board, rather than immediately take this alleged at that time predator out of the schools, simply transferred him to another school where he committed another assault. Then to add even more insult to the victims and victims families, the school superintendent lied about it, and covered it up. Then the school board officials denied that it even happened.

So you have this father who is destroyed, deeply hurt, the father of the young girl, understandable lashing out at a school board meeting and saying, Youre lying. My daughter was assaulted, youre lying about it. And you need to come clean about what youve done, putting other kids in danger. He was restrained by police and then portrayed as a domestic terrorist.

This added another layer of cruelty to a situation that was already deeply corrupting and deeply wrong. Parents are not only saying whats happening with the curriculum is hurting our kids intellectually, and morally, as far as their pursuit of knowledge, but actually youre putting our kids at physical danger and then covering it up. This has now been proven in court.

The young man was found guilty of this crime, admitted it to law enforcement. So there is this reckoning where people are saying, If we dont have a sense of safety in our schools, youre really losing the legitimacy of your authority.

Mr. Jekielek: Youre suggesting here that this is all connected? With the critical race theory element and this cover up, theres this connected ideological bent?

Mr. Rufo: Yes, I think thats right. And its substantiated by the documented evidence. We know that they lied about the sexual assault. We know that they covered it up and then we know that theyve maintained this absurd state of denial. You can go on the Virginia Department of Education website right now.

They specifically endorse critical race theory. They call it best practice. They endorse literature that says, Critical race theory in education. They derive the definitions for their equity program explicitly from critical race theory. Its on their website right now and yet theyre maintaining this denial.

So when theres denial across these two axes; one is school safety and sexual assaults, and the other one is curriculum and critical race theory pedagogy. You have to wonder, its the same people perpetuating the lie, and covering up the truth. What is their motivation?

If they are committed to lying to parents, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, what else are they lying about? What else are they covering up? What are their real intentions? These are all questions that are getting asked by parents.

Theyre submitting Freedom of Information Act requests. Theyre discovering some really ugly stuff in there, including the superintendent of this school district who was requesting undercover police officers to monitor parents.

Thankfully the Sheriffs office rebuffed it. They said, No, were not going to provide that. Thats overkill, thats outrageous. Thats an infringement on the liberties and rights of these parents. But had these parents not requested the documents, we wouldnt have even known that it was happening.

Mr. Jekielek: Its almost almost hard to believe.

Mr. Rufo: It would be almost hard to believe absent the hard evidence. A former Wall Street Journal reporter who lives in Fairfax County, Asra Nomaniyou probably know Asrashe said You know what, Im going to apply my journalistic skills to find out exactly whats going on, because The Washington Post isnt going to do it.

Now theyve forced not only change within the school district, theyve rallied parents and theyve put pressure now on The Post to at least reluctantly start reporting about these issues.

Mr. Jekielek: Its funny how fate plays out that someone like Asra Nomani happens to be in a district like this, because from other realms of inquiry, shes not the type that gives up easily.

Mr. Rufo: She is not. Shes fierce and were seeing Asras ferociousness and tenacity. I see it now everywhere, because these mothers are engaging in hundreds and now in more than a thousand school districts across the country, because theyve been awakened to a threat against their kids.

When you step between a parent and child or a mother and child, and that mother fears that youre putting her kids in jeopardy, whether its academically or morally or even physically, theyll stop at nothing.

So weve seen this grassroots revolt against critical race theory in schools, and against corrupt school boards that are pushing ideologies and then lying about it. Theyre in for a reckoning because like Asra, a great symbol of this fight, these parents may not have a lot of time, theyre busy. They may not have a lot of money, theyre middle class people. But what they have is courage and passion. And were seeing that play out in a beautiful way right now.

Mr. Jekielek: Very briefly for those that havent been initiatedmany of the viewers of the program are awarewhat is the threat of critical race theory to children? What do these mothers understand thats activating them like this?

Mr. Rufo: Critical race theory does two things. One, the message that it delivers is a message of deep cynicism and oftentimes hatred of the United States. Critical race argues that the United States is a fundamentally racist and white supremacist nation and that all of our constitutional rights and liberties and institutions preach freedom and equality, but thats actually an illusion.

Our country is still a structure and an expression of racial domination, in the same way it was 100 or 200 years ago. So it recasts American history in that light.

But secondly, as its applied to education, the actual pedagogy, the actual teaching method, and theyll do this explicitlyin my reported stories Ive demonstrated this with sourced documents theyll take children as young as first grade, kindergarten and say, If you are white, male, Christian, heterosexual, et cetera, you are inherently oppressive.

If you are a racial, gender, or sexual minority, you are inherently oppressed. And then they try to use this framework to fill kids with either guilt and shame or pessimism and despair. It is destructive cognitively and emotionally. It distracts from and actually inhibits any academic achievement of even basic skills, like literacy, and mathematics. Then it presents our society as something that is fundamentally evil and oppressive.

What it does is create a transmission belt for its own political goals. It displace the traditional academic goals of knowledge and achievement and excellence with political goals of activism and a nihilistic racial philosophy that argues that the deck is stacked against people. And theres no hope except for revolution.

That to me is not only factually inaccurate, but its dangerous both at the social level and at the individual level, because it really is, through the testimony of many parents, hurting their kids.

Mr. Jekielek: I cant tell you how many people, including some that have come on this show, have told me that one of the silver linings of COVID education, i.e. through Zoom, is that they got to hear what their kids were actually being taught. They wouldnt have known otherwise. Thats one side. The other side though, and also from people that have appeared on this show, is that its really this time period that has accelerated the implementation of critical race theory and related pedagogy.

Mr. Rufo: Thats right.

Mr. Jekielek: Weve seen both sides of this. How does this play out?

Mr. Rufo: Youre exactly right. Theyve been actually operating in parallel, very interesting, and I think that its because of COVID. Obviously everything shut down because of COVID. Then the death of George Floyd, in addition to the environment of COVID, was destabilizing. People were at home, people were out of work, for example, and it sparked off riots.

The social pressure was very high. So you had these two tracks. Then schools as the third part of this felt they needed to react to the death of George Floyd by accelerating the critical race pedagogies.

These three things together in an interlocking way, created something new in education. It created unprecedented political activism in schools. At the same time it was creating unprecedented and really unique transparency for parents. Those two things met and then through my efforts and the efforts of some of my colleagues, we nailed it down in reporting.

We did it by bringing documents, bringing evidence, bringing videos, bringing PDFs, and showing exactly what was happening within these institutions.

It created this combustible mix where parents felt shocked and then angry and then inspired. Thats why weve seen parents all over the country going to school board meetings, protesting, demanding change, and running for office. If you look at any of the great social movements for conservatives in the postwar era, youll always notice that at the beginning theres a feeling, theres a sentiment in the air.

Before the Reagan Revolution, in school boards, there was a kind of uprising, an inkling, a kind of prefigurement. Since then, you had the Gingrich Revolution, again, taking the House for the first time in decades.

There was also this uprising in small local institutions like school boards that served as a pre-figuring element or a symbolic beginning for some broader political change. And I will predict, Ill go on the record as predicting that we are going to see that change happening in this upcoming election cycle, when Americans really express their political desires.

Mr. Jekielek: There has been this phenomenon that Ive seen some evidence of, and its just been described to me. I wanted to get a sense if you have a grasp of how prevalent this is. When people accuse school boards or teachers of basically doing critical race theory practices, or just teaching it in general, its being renamed as something else, or theyre just doubling down with a different name?

Mr. Rufo: Thats right. Three-card Monte, when theyre shuffling the cards and theyre hiding the cup or whatever is underneath, the little coin, Im not sure what it is.

Mr. Jekielek: Bowl, yes.

Mr. Rufo: The bowl, yes. Its basically that with language, the bowl is critical race theory and the cups are the various euphemisms. Well, thats not critical race theory, thats culturally responsive teaching. Thats not critical race theory, thats diversity, equity, and inclusion. Thats not critical race theory, thats critical pedagogy. Well, thats critical whiteness studies.

Theres this revolving language system that they use to confuse, that they use to avoid, and that they use to obfuscate. Theyre deploying it because they refuse to defend critical race theory on the merits, because even they know that its indefensible politically. And so theyre playing this language game. Is it dishonest? Yes. Is it unfair? Yes. But thats their strategy.

Ultimately its going to be ineffective because busy parents say, You know what? I dont care what you call it, take away the language game. I dont like when youre teaching my five year old, that hes inherently oppressive because of the color of his skin.

You have to get it down to that level and take the language games as an entry, put it aside and then hammer them with a specific narrative and evocative image of what you mean, in real, not academic, but in real human and middle language.

Weve seen tremendous power in that, because you cut out the BS that academics can go around in circles with. For example, you have an African American parent in Illinois that went viral or in Arizona that went viral with these school board videos saying, I dont want you teaching my kid that she cant achieve anything because of what her parents look like.

You are teaching my kid that she doesnt have any agency or control over her life, doesnt have any future, and I reject that. These are great clips that weve seen. So from both sides of the coin, when parents speak their experience, theres power in that, and it cuts through those language games.

Mr. Jekielek: Youre a parent and youre very, very passionate about this, much as the parents that youre describing. How did you get into this whole scene? How did you make this your primary objective?

Mr. Rufo: I saw it a bit when my kids were in school, young around the edges. For my family, its not so much a problem anymore. We moved to a small town, its education is good. We keep close tabs on it, and were very happy. But I think that it matches two things that are exciting and motivating to me. One is an intellectual question. What are these theories and ideologies that are driving our politics into this abyss of insanity?

Intellectually, what is that? Thats a very exciting question for me, and then matched with not just the theory, but with some actual practice and application. How can we move the world in a better direction? How can we move our country to something higher, to something better, to something more profound and more valuable?

Then we see them coming together with schools as the domain. You have this really amazing expression of democracy where youre merging your intellectual interests with this social movement that has emerged organically, of parents that need information.

They need vocabulary, they evidence, they need stories, they need strategic advice. I can provide that to them through the work that I do that is unique to me, and then they can take it all over the country and actually implement these changes, tailored to their specific circumstances and needs, in the interest of their real flesh and blood communities.

Its a really exciting process, this exciting dynamic, where were merging the political with the theoretical, with the practical, with the communal expression of ideas in a way that is important to people. Because a lot of times you can talk theory, blah, blah, blah. Its great and interesting intellectually. But this is an issue that engages at the heart and at the gut level.

People have a full expressive reaction to these issues because it affects them in a profound way. For me, its that kernel of meaning that is revealed in this conflict that provides access to something unknown. Thats what we all want to do. We all want to get up right into the edge of the unknown and then rush through it. And that for me is exciting.

Mr. Jekielek: Ive always found all the materials that you offer to be incredibly practical. I dont have kids, so Im looking from the outside. But I do have nephews that Im very concerned about that are precisely in the school that you might worry about.

Mr. Rufo: Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: Have you encountered any children that have been, lets say, educated over some time over decades, or indoctrinated would be another term, with critical race theory pedagogy?

Mr. Rufo: Theres nothing through my reporting and the journalistic work. This stuff really didnt hit K-12 schools until about 2010. And at that time it was only in places like Seattle and Portland. Those are the earliest examples that I can find. So theres not a lot of evidence. This is really new. There arent kids who grew up with critical race pedagogy as their whole educational experience, besides maybe a few at the edges in a place like Portland.

But lets take Portland as maybe an example of early adoption. You have the highest or most developed expression of this ideology in the local politics of Portland, where our reporter, Andy Ngo has recorded it through his meticulous documentation of court cases and arrest records.

Youve had multiple Portland public school teachers teaching even elementary school kids, who then put on the pajamas and the masks and the gloves, and then go riot, commit crimes, and commit acts of political violence and vandalism at night, and then return to the public school in the morning. Theyve been arrested for it.

Theyve been identified. In some cases theyre still employed by the Portland public schools and surrounding educational institutions. The question is when you have someone that is willing to engage in political violence, that is shaping the minds of kids and using a curriculum provided by the district that traffics in critical race theory, critical pedagogy, other critical ideologies, what is the result? We dont know, its a limited sample, all the caveats supply.

But we do know that many minors in Portland have been rioting and committing acts of political violence and then getting caught for it in some cases. And so if we use that as not rigorous social scientific evidence, but as maybe just a symbol, we can say that in a cultural environment where these ideologies are dominant within institutions, you may get examples and results like we saw in Portland over the last year, which have been horrific.

Mr. Jekielek: Basically what a number of people that are doing work similar to yours will say is that the goal of this is to create activists for the same causeyou alluded to this a bit earlierat the earliest age possible?

Mr. Rufo: Thats right. And how do they load their premise? This is the really important question on this issue. Why should someone become an activist? Lets work backwards. Well, one way to do it is to say, Well you know what? If you are part of the systemically racist society and youve internalized that racism, then you should, by logic, join the anti-racism or activist movement. Based on, again, the premise that you are racist, lets say.

And so what do they do? They actually release these bogus studies that are flimsier than a one ply paper towel that claim to show that children become racist by three to six months old. And that white children and white children only become full fledged, racist, white supremacists, by age four and five.

The Department of Education in Arizona promoted these materials. Ibram Kendi promotes these materials. Other school districts promote these materials. And so if you accept the premise that children even pre-speech, before they can speak, six months old and cant talk, are racist, the solution then is to transform them into anti-racism activists, beginning at the youngest level.

They have a series of baby books, baby books for pre-reading that push this ideology, A is for Activist, even using the alphabet, the basic building blocks of language, the precognition of language. And the number one thing, the title of the book, A is for Activist, doesnt mean a conservative activist. Its a specific kind of activism. So thats the goal, its explicit. You dont have to trust me about it, just look at the material. Its very obvious.

Mr. Jekielek: This is Antiracist Baby that youre talking about?

Mr. Rufo: Thats another one. Theres one called A is for Activist. Its an alphabet book.

Mr. Jekielek: I see. Oh, fascinating.

Mr. Rufo: Amazing. Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: Its interesting, so youre bullish on this?

Mr. Rufo: Yes. Im bullish by nature and Im bullish on this, not because we have a position of power or we have the institutions that we can mobilize against this. We dont have any of that. But what we do have is the stronger case. We do have some great individual people that are willing to take risks, and to stand up for the truth.

Then we have an army of middle Americans, of all regions, of all racial backgrounds, of all social classes that just need leadership. Theyre ready to go. Theyre ready to fight. Theyre ready to win. Theyre ready to take action. They just need leadership. They just need vocabulary. They just need evidence.

The more that we provide that, the more of this great democratic expression were seeing. And to me, thats what its about. Okay, its about us, right? Were in media, were on TV, we talk. We should win there too, thats important.

But ultimately its about real human communities that operate at the local level. It can only operate at the local level where actually our society contains its center mass. That is still healthy. That is still vibrant. That is still ready to live.

Mr. Jekielek: So something you dont talk about as much is that youre also a documentary filmmaker.

Mr. Rufo: Thats right.

Mr. Jekielek: You made this amazing film, which Ill recommend to everyone called America Lost: Looking at Three Different Cities. Now, the interesting question is, through the process of making this, whats the connection to this critical race theory focus that you have right now?

Mr. Rufo: Theres a deep connection. In the film I portray life in three of Americas poorest cities; a predominantly white, working class city, Youngstown Ohio, a predominantly black urban neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, and then a Latino and multiracial community in the central part of Stockton, California.

What you see are some of the most difficult and desperate conditions in our country, neighborhoods that have three quarters, or sometimes as high as 90 per cent plus single parent families.

You have the drug trade and the black market as the dominant economic system in these neighborhoods communities. Theyre racked with addiction and violence, and other social problems. The goal of our policy, the goal of our theories, the goal of our activism, in many ways should be to alleviate those problems and to help those people. I dont think they are oppressed in the traditional sense of a power structure that consciously and deliberately represses them or harms them.

Its not that. Its this really awful mix of unintended consequences and social realities that has culminated in these places that are truly hurting. The reason why Im so passionate in my belief that critical race theory is a bankrupt ideology and bankrupt theory is that despite its superficial appeal, it offers nothing for the people in Youngstown, Memphis, or Stockton. It offers nothing for any of them.

Its really an elite ideology subsidized by public dollars that serves their own elite political and status interests. If you want to have a serious theory of race in America, for me the test is if you apply this theory in practice, would it help the people in a place like Memphis, Tennessee, that are really truly struggling and deserve our full care, support, talent, and wisdom?

If the answer is no, and with critical race theory the answer I think is a definitive no, to me its not a good theory, because it doesnt actually help people, real people who are actually in real need.

Mr. Jekielek: Fascinating. Any final thoughts as we finish up?

Mr. Rufo: Its great to be here at The NatCon Conference. Its good to meet you in person. We just have to keep this conversation going. We have to keep it developing. We have to keep enlightening people to something they didnt know. It will require us to be constantly asking questions. For me, thats something that you do very beautifully and you do very well. Youre a great interviewer, very curious, and so I appreciate the time.

Mr. Jekielek: Christopher, such a pleasure to have you on.

Mr. Rufo: Thank you.

[Narration]: Our team reached out to the Loudoun County school board and the campaign of former governor Terry McAuliffe, but we did not immediately receive a response.

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Citizen Journalism Rises Among Parents Who Question Health Policies

As more people question whether their local health policies are engaging in government overreach, parents are becoming citizen investigative journalists who form constitutional rights groups to hold policymakers accountable.

For Kelly Wiggen in Rutherford County, North Carolina, it began when she said the mask mandates in her childs school werent adding up.

From there, the business owner turned researcher started digging, requesting documents, and connecting dots.

Like other constitutional rights groups such as the WNCFreedom2020 group and the North Carolina Citizens for Constitutional Rights, the Rutherford County Board of Accountability (RCBA) is a citizen-run group organized similarly to how established local government boards are structured according to the parliamentary procedure.

Government officials, or anyone with a spouse who is an elected official, cant be a member but can be invited to attend, with a limited timeframe in which to speak.

There can be zero conflicts of interest, Wiggen told The Epoch Times. Its going to flip the tables on them.

Wiggen has been presenting her findings at various freedom rallies, such as one held by the Catawba County Mama Bears on Saturday.

The money trail shes followed has led her to specific signed agreements between local health directors and the federal government that she said give the federal government unlimited power over local governments because of those local entities accepting COVID-19 relief aid.

I think most people have the security in mind that local entities arent going to allow the federal government to come in and do whatever it wants, she said. We look to these entities to protect us from that, but theyve been bought off with these agreements.

Having lost trust in local governments adhering more to CDC orders rather than their own policies, she said the RCBA came together to protect the children who are being affected by these policies, such as mandatory masks and quarantines, as well as future vaccine mandates.

Terms and Conditions

One agreement shes examined, signed by Rutherford County Health Director Karen Powell, states that as a recipient of funds awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through coronavirus-relief packages, the local health department must comply with existing and future directives from the HHS secretary and assist the U.S. government in the implementation and enforcement of federal orders related to quarantine and isolation.

This was an agreement that the local health director signed to accept $115,000 for a school liaison position, Wiggen said. This federalizes our health department and every health department that took the money.

Waves of federal funding to local governments and agencies have come from the $8.3 billion Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act; the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act; the $484 billion Paycheck Protection Program and Health Enhancement Act; the $2.3 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act; the $10 billion Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, all of which require compliance with current and future federal directives as they relate to mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

I promise you every local entitysheriff, school, health departmentthat signed an agreement for COVID funding sold control of that entity to the federal government, Wiggen said.

She said this has been seen with local school boards reversing from their initial mask optional stance at the beginning of the school semester back to mask required.

I suspect they were reminded of the money they took, Wiggen said.

In South Carolina, after Gov. Henry McMaster put out an executive order banning masks mandates, Miguel Cardona, the U.S. Secretary of Education, wrote a letter to McMaster stating that the ARP requires local agencies to adopt science-based strategies, such as universal and correct wearing of masks.

In June, HHS announced that it had awarded $1 billion in ARP funds to pre-school Head Start programs nationwide.

The CRRSA includes supplemental funding for COVID-19 vaccine programs to achieve broad-based distribution, and has the same verbiage requiring compliance with current and future directives that includes vaccine strike teams and mobile vaccine clinics.

Wiggen pointed to the CDCs report on options for creating camps to separate high risk from low risk people.

Shes even created a flow chart of how she said federal COVID-19 funding has put local entities at the mercy of the federal government and the state health director and secretary.

Theres Nothing to Stop Them

If you combine all of this together, there is nothing that could stop a federal vaccine mandate for our children in schools, she said. If your local government accepted COVID-19 money, that money is going to have the same terms and conditions, which means there is nothing they can do to stop the federal government from coming in and doing anything, and those local agencies actually agreed to assist.

She then pointed to Gov. Roy Coopers Oct. 4 executive order 236 that gives the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen authority to modify or waive enforcement of certain legal constraints or regulations which restrict the immediate relief of human suffering, as well as directs State Health Director Elizabeth Tilson to issue any statewide standing order needed in her medical judgment to facilitate COVID-19 testing and vaccination.

If Mandy Cohen or the federal health secretary wanted to require everyone to get the injection, theres nothing to stop them, Wiggen said. If thats a directive they can claim is attached to the stopping of the spread of COVID-19, our local agencies have already signed an agreement.

Meanwhile, Wiggen said Rutherford County Schools voted on Thursday to continue its mask mandate until the CDC says the school system can go seven days without being in the high transmission category.

As of last night, weve had 94 positive cases in the past seven days, out of over 67,000 people, which is 0.1 percent of the population, Wiggen said. What exactly qualifies as low if 0.1 percent is high?

Decisions not Based on Science but Directives

In an earlier board meeting, she filmed the chairman of the Rutherford County Board of Education meeting stating, Were not here tonight to make a decision based on the science one way or the other. You can find as many experts on both sides as you want to find, those for it and those against it. Were not here for that. Were here for one thing, and thats to make a decision based on a directive from our local health director on how the guidance is attributed to this toolkit and quarantine.

For Wiggen, the chairmans statement reflects the national climate of health policies.

Realistically, the way this country has been reacting, people will buy anything these days, she said.
(Left) Democratic gubernatorial candidate former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, speaks to supporters during a rally in Richmond, Va., on Nov. 1, 2021. (Steve Helber/AP Photo); (Right) Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin gestures as he speaks to supporters during a rally in Chesterfield, Va., on Nov. 1, 2021. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)

Clinton Adviser Blames Stupid Wokeness for Democratic Losses on Tuesday

Longtime Democratic Party strategist James Carville sharply criticized left-wing members of his party and wokeness for significant losses on Tuesdays Election Day.

Pointing to Republican wins in Virginia, a close gubernatorial race in New Jersey, and significant GOP wins in Long Island, Carville lamented the direction his party has taken over the past several years. Most notably, Republican Glenn Youngkin was able to buoy himself against Democrat Terry McAuliffe to take the governors race by capitalizing on parents concerns that the quasi-Marxist critical race theory-derived curriculum was being taught in public schools.

What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Dont just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash[ington]. I mean, this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincolns name off of schools. I mean thatpeople see that, Carville, a former Clinton administration adviser, told PBS on Wednesday.

In Seattle, Republican-aligned Ann Davison was elected to become the next city attorney, defeating defund the police supporter Nicole Thomas-Kennedy. Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly appeared to win the governors seat again on Wednesday over little-known Republican state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli, although Ciattarellis campaign has signaled that it would contest the results.

Far-left rhetoric, Carville said, has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something.  Theyre expressing a language that people just dont use, and theres backlash and a frustration at that.

Suburban residents in both Virginia and New Jersey pulled away from wokeness, he proclaimed, saying the Democrats mortally wounded themselves with self-inflicted losses. Youngkin never ran any advertisements against President Joe Biden and merely allowed Democrats like McAuliffe to pull the pin and watch the grenade go off, Carville explained.

We got to change this and not be about changing dictionaries and change laws, he added. These faculty lounge people that sit around mulling about I dont know what.  Theyre not working, Carville said, referring to the trend among many U.S. academics to endorse far-left viewpoints and even Marxist ideology.

Youngkins win, some GOP lawmakers predicted, is likely a sign that Republicans would easily recapture the House of Representatives.

Itll be more than 70 Democrats that will be competitive, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said of the 2022 midterms this week. Theres many that are going to lose their races, based on walking off a clifffrom Nancy Pelosi pushing them.
Commonwealth Bank Pushes Australia Into the Lead in Cryptocurrency: Expert

The Commonwealth Bank of Australias (CBA) decision to offer cryptocurrency services to customers has pushed Australia into becoming a leader in the industry, an expert said.

CBA announced on Nov. 3 that it would partner with crypto exchange and custodian service Gemini and blockchain analysis company Chainalysis to become the first Australian bank to offer customers crypto services.

BTC Markets CEO Caroline Bowler said the announcement was a proof that cryptocurrency would soon become a completely legitimate currency.

CBAs move is exciting and inevitable. Its yet another red-letter day for crypto, and it is as though Australia has suddenly put the lead foot down, Bowler told Nine News.

We have been touted as playing catch up all this while, but now were moving into a leadership position globally with our largest bank and one of the most significant mainstream financial institutions in the world offering millions of customers access to cryptocurrencies.

A coin representing the bitcoin cryptocurrency is seen on computer circuit boards in this picture, October 26, 2017. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo)

CBA said its research revealed that many of its customers wanted access to crypto assets as an investment class, as many are already trading and holding the currencies.

The emergence and growing demand for digital currencies from customers creates both challenges and opportunities for the financial services sector, which has seen a significant number of new players and business models innovating in this area, CBA CEO Matt Comyn said.

We believe we can play an important role in crypto to address whats clearly a growing customer need and provide capability, security and confidence in a crypto trading platform.

Up to 10 cryptocurrency assets will be available for trading and holding, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

The bank said a pilot would start in the coming weeks, with more features to open up to customers in 2022.

Analysis in May by the Australian Taxation Office found that over 600,000 taxpayers have invested in crypto assets in recent years.

A Senate Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre said in its final report in October (pdf) that 17 percent of Australians currently own cryptocurrency and a further 13 percent planned to buy cryptocurrency in the next 12 months, according to survey data.

This makes Australia one of the worlds most significant adopters of cryptocurrencies on a per capita basis, the report said, emphasising that the economic opportunity in the country was enormous.
Amanda Eap (C), with her son Ryan Chin (L) and Nicholas Chin (R), at the cocktail fundraiser party in South Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 1, 2021. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

Community Comes Together to Support Philadelphia Couple Battling Cancers

A Philadelphia couple battling health issues had to close their business temporarily. While they were struggling both financially and mentally, to their surprise, their customers and community stepped in with warm hearts and turned a merciless tragedy into a merciful story.

Since 2001, Andre Chin and Amanda Eap, immigrants from Cambodia, have owned Artisan Boulanger Patissier, a bakery in South Philadelphia. They have two sons, both studying at Temple University in Philadelphia.

The bakery Artisan Boulangerie Patissier, owned by Andre Chin and Amanda Eap, in South Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 1, 2021. (William Huang/The Epoch Times)

Their happy and peaceful life derailed suddenly after both were diagnosed with cancer.

Andre was diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago. After treatment, he was cancer-free for about four years, but it returned recently. Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2021 and had surgery in September. So, they had to shut down their bakery, at least for the time being.

I felt shocked. I felt like I couldnt say anything. I was crying. I didnt know what I could do, Amanda told The Epoch Times about how desperately she felt at the time.

When the couple needed help the most, their customers and friends stepped in. Besides providing comfort and encouragement, they reached out in many ways to help the couple get through their hardship, according to Amanda.

Daniel Weber, one of the couples friends, has organized a GoFundMe campaign, which has raised more than $100,000.

The neighbors near the couples bakery bring dinner to them every night.

The landlord for their bakery waived the rent until the day I start to open again, said Amanda. She helped me a lot. That has made me get through a lot and released my stress a lot.

Rachel Klein, the owner of Miss Rachels Pantry in South Philadelphia, hosted a fundraising cocktail party on Nov. 1 to help the couple. It had live music, food from Conscious Culture, Rowhouse Grocery, Farm Art Products, and raffles. There were more than 70 people who purchased tickets at $75 each, according to the organizer.

Cocktail fundraiser party for Andre and Amanda is held at Miss Rachels Pantry in South Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 1, 2021. (Frank Liang/The Epoch Times)

I am surprised so many people showed up today, Amanda told The Epoch Times at the fundraising cocktail party. I never thought a lot of people love us that much.

Amanda may be surprised to see that so many people love them, but her customers are not.

Everybody loves Amanda and Andre because theyre such good people besides being excellent bakers, said Leonard Guercio, a retired manager from Temple Universitys Digital Cinema Lab and a friend to the couple for 15 years.

When you go into their bakery, you feel very welcome. Its really like you feel at home. You feel like youre among friends. And then when you eat their delicious food, you feel like, oh, Im in heaven, Guercio told The Epoch Times. So thats why I think people love them so much because they love people. Theyre very friendly and welcoming people. Theyre the kind that youre proud to say to other people these are my friends.

Screenshot of Rachel Klein, organizer of the cocktail fundraiser party and owner of Miss Rachels Pantry in South Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 1, 2021. (Screenshot via NTD)

Klein echoed the same appreciation. She told The Epoch Times: Andrea and Amanda work so hard. If youve ever been in the bakery, you can see them working every single day, working their butts off. And theyre just wonderful, dedicated people.

As for the idea to host a benefit cocktail party, I just thought we should help our small community, said Klein. I thought that we should work hard for the couple because they work hard to make the neighborhood happy and make nice things for everybody to have.

The communitys kindness changed Nicholas Chins opinion about people. He is the couples older son who is studying pharmacy at Temple University.

I am realistic with a lot of things. But I guess this is one huge thing that changed my opinion about people a lot, Nicholas told The Epoch Times.

A lot of the support from the neighbors and the customers helped a lot, Nicholas said. He used to think they never really cared about his parents, but it was surprising.

Ive been just trying to do a lot of community service. Because people helped my parents out, I feel like I should also help people out in general, Nicholas continued.

Amanda felt confident that their family would get through the ordeal and be back on track again with so much support from customers and the community.

We will open it again and plan to invite all the friends and people supporting us to eat at my pastry for free for a couple of days, Amanda told The Epoch Times. I already made the plan for that when I get well.

I want to do that. We want to give back, said Amanda.
Congressional Physician Caucus Calls on FDA Advisor to Retract Harmful Comments About Vaccinations for Children

The Republican House Doctors Caucus is calling on Dr. Eric Rubin, a professor at Harvard Medical School, to retract statements he made during the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) panel discussion on whether to endorse Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11.

During the October panel discussion, Rubin said, And yet, were worried about a side effect that we cant measure yet, but its probably real. Adding, But were never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. Thats just the way it goes.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Dr. Rubin at the Harvard Medical School for a clarification on his comment.

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) led the group of House Republican Doctors in sending a letter to Dr. Rubin on Thursday calling on him to correct the comments he made during the panel discussion.

Rubin was part of a panel of independent advisers to the FDA who on Oct. 29 granted emergency-use authorization of Pfizers jab for children 511 after its advisory panel, except for one abstention, recommended doing so. The panel was in agreement with Pfizers own data that the vaccine is 90.7 percent safe for children.

Dr. Rubin said there is much more to learn about the vaccine as it relates to children.

I agree with Dr. Cohn we want to save the kids  and I do think that it will be useful to have a lot more information though, to determine how best to deploy the vaccine. So,  we ended up sort of in between, we decided to vote for it with a lot of heavy consciences, but Im hoping that is the start of learning more about it.

In response to Rubin, the GOP doctors wrote, Yet your comments suggest we subject a vulnerable population to vaccination to gain a greater understanding of the vaccines efficacy. This highly immoral and unbelievably reckless statement will cause lasting harm to [Americans] trust in our medical community, science and the sanctity of individual medical decisions.

Meanwhile, top Democratic leader Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the FDA for authorizing the vaccine for children.

Congress and the country are grateful to our scientists and health officials, who worked quickly and carefully to ensure that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective for our youngest Americans, said Pelosi in a press statement and added that this will allow full community engagement.

On Nov. 2 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended practically every child in the United States between 5 and 11 get Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky made the recommendation following advice from the agencys vaccine advisory panel.

Together, with science leading the charge, we have taken another important step forward in our nations fight against the virus that causes COVID-19, Walensky said in a statement.

The GOP lawmakers are calling on Rubin to correct his comments and publicly retract his statements or resign from the FDA.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
U.S. Attorney John Durham speaks to reporters on the steps of U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., on April 25, 2006. (Bob Child/AP Photo)

Durham Grand Jury Indicts Steele Dossier Source Igor Danchenko

An analyst who was a source for the infamous 2016 Steele dossier that contained allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump has been arrested on charges stemming from special counsel John Durhams investigation.

A grand jury indictment issued in a federal court in Virginia charges Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst, with five counts of false statements. The case was brought as part of Durhams investigation into the origins of the FBIs probe into alleged ties between Russia and Trumps 2016 presidential campaign.

Specifically, Danchenko was charged with misleading FBI officials about the sources of the information he provided to former UK spy Christopher Steele. He was interviewed multiple times by FBI officials in 2017 as they attempted to corroborate the allegations in Steeles dossier.

According to the indictment, Danchenkos alleged lies were material to the FBI because  the FBIs investigation of the Trump Campaign relied on the dossier to obtain warrants to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page.

The FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained in the dossier, including whether Danchenkos sub-sources were reliable, the indictment states. The dossier and information provided by Danchenko played a role in the FBIs investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court throughout the relevant time period.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Justice and Danchenko lawyer Mark Schamel for comment.

Danchenko provided information to Steele, who was hired by Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Fusion GPS was, in turn, retained by law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee.

Steeles memos, collectively known as the Steele dossier, alleged that Trump had colluded with Russian intelligence officials to help him defeat then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. However, Trump has long panned the allegations in the dossier as a long-running witch hunt designed to discredit his presidency and suppress his reelection chances.

Numerous claims in the dossier turned out to be false, triggering criminal, congressional, and inspector general investigations into how the reports were used for the basis of a surveillance campaign targeting Trump campaign officials.

Steele gave the dossier to the FBI, which then used it as the basis for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. In 2019, the Department of Justices Inspector Generals Office released a lengthy report that criticized the FBIs processes in handling the surveillance of Page.

Danchenko previously told the FBI that he had acquired the information that was used in the dossier by word of mouth and hearsay from his sources in Russia, according to the inspector generals report. But affidavits filed earlier this year said that sources for Danchenko denied having provided any information that was used in the dossier.

All of Danchenkos sub-sources have now deniedunder penalty of perjurythat they provided Danchenko with any information that was attributed to them in Steeles dossier, according to court documents filed earlier in 2021. Before, Steele claimed in testimony that Danchenkos sources were Russians with personal knowledge of and/or direct access to the relevant information and that they included top-level Russian government officials at the peak of the vertical of power.

Danchenko is now the third person who has been charged in connection to Durhams probe. In September, Durhams office charged former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, alleging that he gave false information when he spoke with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in 2016. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to a charge of lying to the FBI.

Prosecutors involved in Durhams probe said during a court hearing last month that theyre planning to call Baker, who now works for Twitters legal department, to testify in the Sussmann case. The indictment against Sussmann alleges that he lied to Baker when he provided data that linked the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

In 2020, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was found guilty of altering an email related to the TrumpRussia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, although he was spared prison during sentencing earlier this year.
Taiwan's premier Su Tseng-chang (C) poses for photos with European Union parliamentarians in Taipei, Taiwan, on Nov. 3, 2021. (Executive Yuan via AP)

EU Lawmakers Meet Taiwan Premier in First Official Visit

TAIPEI, TaiwanBumping their elbows in greeting, European Union parliamentarians met with Taiwans premier on Wednesday in the first official visit of an EU delegation to the self-ruled island, amid threats from the Chinese regime.

Thirteen members of the EU committee on foreign interference in democratic processes are visiting Taiwan, after the European Parliament passed a resolution last month calling for the body to intensify EU-Taiwan political relations.

Although we are geographically very far away, between our two sides, we share the same values, such as freedom, democracy, human rights, and rule of law.  In those regards, we are actually very close, Taiwans Premier Su Tseng-chang said.

Taiwans premier Su Tseng-chang (R) speaks near Raphael Glucksmann, the chair of the foreign interference committee who is leading a group of European Union parliamentarians, during a visit in Taipei, Taiwan, on Nov. 3, 2021. (Executive Yuan via AP)

The European delegation will also meet President Tsai Ing-wen and Digital Minister Audrey Tang, and visit Taiwanese think tanks, NGOs, and others working on countering disinformation.

The visit comes amid growing support for the democratic islandwhich the Chinese regime claims as part of its territory to be annexed by force if necessaryand rising negative perceptions toward Beijing in Western countries. Taiwan is a de facto independent country, with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.

The flourishing of your democracy is formidable and this is why we are so happy to be here, said Raphael Glucksmann, the chair of the foreign interference committee. You have shown that in this region democracy can flourish and that authoritarian regimes are not the future.

Lithuania, an EU member, accepted Taiwans request in July to open a representative office in its capital city that will act as a de facto embassy. It has also donated hundreds of thousands of vaccines to the island this year, provoking the Chinese regimes displeasure. In August, China withdrew its ambassador to Lithuania in protest and expelled Lithuanias ambassador from Beijing.

In October, the EU Parliament voted to pass a resolution on Taiwan issues, noting tensions in the South China Sea.

The non-binding resolution, which passed with 58026 votes and 66 abstentions, calls on the EU to immediately begin taking steps to establish a bilateral investment agreement with Taiwan. It also proposes the politically symbolic gesture of changing the name of the representative office in Taiwan from the European Economic and Trade Office in Taiwan to the European Union Office in Taiwan.

The report also calls on the Chinese regime to put an immediate end to its ongoing intrusions into Taiwans air defense identification zone, saying that the EU greatly values security in the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese regime has sent an increasing amount of fighter jets toward the island in a prolonged campaign of military harassment since at least last year, when Taiwan began publicly releasing the data.

The report also echoed the U.S. stance, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently called for other members of the United Nations to back Taiwans independent participation in international groups.

Taiwans Foreign Minister Joseph Wu visited the Czech Republic and Slovakia last week on a tour to step up cooperation with the two countries.
Natural gas flares off at a production facility owned by Exxon near Carlsbad, N.M., on Feb., 11, 2019. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

Eversource Energy Company Warns of 15 Percent Rise in Winter Heating Bills

Eversource Energy on Wednesday warned that customers could see natural gas heating prices rise 15 percent, costing an average of $30 a month more compared with last year.

In the companys third-quarter 2021 earnings call on Wednesday, Philip J. Lembo, executive vice president and chief financial officer, cited rising prices post the COVID-19 pandemic, forecasts of a cold winter, and supply issues as reasons for the price increase.

Eversource serves 4.3 million electricity and natural gas customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where it also has headquarters.

Overall, including the distribution charge, we expect natural gas heating bills will be up about 15 percent on average. Thats about $30 a month to the average for a typical heating customer compared to last winter. And thats an average across our three natural gas distribution companies, Lembo said.

While a 15 percent increase is significant it is far less than the more than 30 percent increase that propane heating customers are facing and really a 60 percent increase thats out there for home heating oil as the alternatives for customers, Lembo added.

Lembo said the impact of high natural gas prices would be even more evident in electric bills.

Residential customers typically see an increase to their supply charge of 1.5 to 2 cents per kilowatt hour [$10.50 to $14 a month for the average customer, or about 15 percent] in January, Lembo noted, which usually goes back down as we move into the summer.

This January customers in Massachusetts and Connecticut elected to experience an additional $0.02 to $0.03 increase due to higher gas prices driving power production. This would be an additional $20, $25 per month for a typical residential customer compared with last winter, Lembo said.

The executive vice president noted that a bitterly cold month of December or January could cause natural gas cost to increase, and that this could place customers in a stressful situation, adding that Eversource has suggested to its regulators that it spreads out the recovery of certain charges in our distribution portion of our bill to moderate the potential bill impacts where possible.

Lembo added that Eversource is working closely with regulators so that customers understand the current price environment as well as the macro factors affecting natural gas bills and take actions to address it, adding that it is urging its customers to take advantage of its energy efficiency programs and leverage payment options.

The warning comes as the cost of natural gas prices are soaring worldwide amid a global supply chain crisis and surging demand, despite reaching historically low prices in 2020.

In the United States, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has forecast that average household spending for all major home heating fuels will increase significantly this winter primarily because of higher expected fuel costs and increased energy use in whats expected to be a colder winter.

Average increases vary by fuel, region, and weather assumptions, the agency said. Compared with last winter, the agency forecasts that propane spending will rise by 54 percent, heating oil by 43 percent, natural gas by 30 percent, and electricity by 6 percent.

Press secretary Jen Psaki told reports at a press briefing in October that President Joe Biden is mindful of the increased prices consumers are facing when it comes to their energy bills and that he reserves a range of options, to combat the situation.

The administration is concerned over the high gas prices and has asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the matter, Psaki said.

I will also note that as it relates to gas prices, we remain concerned about trends we have seen where even as supply has increased at times over the last several months, weve still seen heightened prices, Psaki said. Weve asked the FTC to look into that.
An employee of U.S. multinational General Electric (GE) works on a gas turbine at the GE plant in Belfort, eastern France, on Oct. 27, 2015. (Sebastien Bozon/Getty Images)

Chinese Agent Downloaded 200 Family Photos of GE Engineer in Bid to Recruit Them to Steal US Tech, FBI Agent Testifies

The head of the FBI counterintelligence unit in southern Ohio testified in the espionage trial of Xu Yanjun, a Chinese agent accused of recruiting spies to steal tech from U.S. aviation companies, reported media WCPO.

FBI supervisory special agent Bradley Hull told a U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on Monday that Chinese agents had downloaded 200 family photos of an engineer at General Electric (GE) as part of their bid to coerce him to become a spy.

I think it shows they took the time to learn about their target, said Hull, who testified for three days, according to WCPO. The presence of over 200 images brought to a meeting in a foreign country could be used as a manner of coercion  he still has family in China.

The federal espionage trial of Xu, who is charged with recruiting spies to steal technology from U.S. aviation and aerospace firms, began on Oct. 18. Xu is a deputy division director of Chinas Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence, security, and secret police agency of the communist regime. Hes the first MSS operative extradited to the United States.

Hull said the Chinese regime aimed to steal polymeric composites technology that GE Aviation developed after decades of research and millionaire investments. This technology is exclusive to the company and serves to manufacture larger, lighter, and energy-saving commercial planes that are highly competitive.

Within the Made in China 2025 economic plan, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to develop key industriesincluding aircraft and aircraft componentsin an attempt to turn the country into a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse. Some experts say the strategy consists of stealing trade secrets from other countries (pdf).

According to Xus indictment, he had been contacting experts from aviation companies in the United States and other countries, including GE Aviation, since December 2013. He then started recruiting people to travel to China, all expenses paid, usually masquerading as academic trips.

In 2017 GE learned one of its engineers had flown to China, to give a presentation at a university, taking GE documents with him on his laptop, according to WCPO. The company then started an investigation and informed the FBI.

GE looks for employees within its companies with red flags, Hull said.

The engineer targeted by Xu started cooperating with the FBI, after his home was searched on Nov. 1, 2017. Belgian police arrested Xu on April 1, 2018, at a meeting set up by the GE engineer, and confiscated several devices from him and his companion.

Hull further said Xus cell phone was useful to the investigation, as it helped understand how Chinese spies operate and identify other agents working with Xu.

People in intelligence like uswe focus on aviation, read a message sent from Xu to a co-worker in 2016, Hull told the court while reading a transcript. The leadership asks you to get the materials of the U.S.the U.S. F-22 fighter aircraft. You cant get it by sitting at home.

Correspondence between Xu and his colleagues was encoded to avoid directly mentioning terms like de-icing technology and U.S. aerial refueling aircraft, stated Hull.

Xu has been a Chinese Communist Party agent since 2003. During the trial, prosecutors exhibited an image of Xus CCP membership card that was unknown to the FBI, according to Hull.
Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on June 23, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

France Feigning Surprise About Submarines: Australias Deputy PM

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce defended Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Nov. 3 amid the diplomatic row with France that erupted this week.

Speaking to ABC radio, Joyce, who has been acting as prime minister while Morrison has been abroad, noted that French President Emmanuel Macron calling Morrison a liar was a bigger diplomatic issue than the text messages being leaked as evidence to refute Macrons claims.

Macron had told Australian reporters in Glasgow that he knew that Morrison had lied about the AU$90 billion (US$67 billion) submarine deal.

Joyce said the leak was not as extraordinary as calling another countrys leader a liar when theyre not, News.com.au reported.

We had a major political leader call the prime minister of Australia a liar, and you cant do that, diplomatically, Joyce said. You cant go around calling other leaders of other countries a liar.

Not [the leader of] a great nation of France. Some tinpot nation in the middle of nowhere, well, I suppose you can say what you like.

The deputy prime minister said Australia had long been exploring contingency plans before the multi-billion dollar submarine contract with Frances Naval Group was canceled in favor of a security deal with the United States and the UK.

Sen. Penny Wong at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on March 24, 2021. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

The Labor oppositions foreign affairs spokesperson, Sen. Penny Wong, has spoken out against the leaking of the text messages.

You dont make a country more secure by demonstrating that youre prepared to damage at any cost, damage partnerships and alliances, she told ABC radio on Nov. 4. This is the vandalism. It is vandalism.

The way in which this has been dealt with by the government is with a wanton disregard for our international reputation.

Her comments come after French ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault deemed the canceled submarine contract to be a stab in the back.

However, Morrison has maintained that the decision was made to best serve Australias national interests, having previously noted that in the five years since the French deal was first made, the geopolitical landscape had changed enough to warrant nuclear subs.

To this end, Australia announced the AUKUS agreement with the United States and the UK in September.

Jean-Pierre Thebault, then French ambassador in charge of G-7 summit preparations, speaks on his mobile phone while working in Biarritz, France, on Aug. 25, 2019. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

Thebault said the leaking of private texts to Australian media was an unprecedented new low.

Doing so also sends a very worrying signal. For all heads of statebe aware, in Australia, there will be leaks, Thebault told the National Press Club on Nov. 3.

Morrison denied misleading the French government and insisted that concerns about the submarine project had been raised for some time.

Asked whether his office leaked the text messages with Macron, Morrison responded: Claims had been made, and those claims were refuted.

We had made very clear that there were very significant issues about us moving forward with this contract, he told reporters on his way back from the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Joyce justified the leaked texts.

What else do you do? It either stands that you are a liar or you defend your position and say you are not, he said.

Joyce, whos the leader of the Nationals party, also insisted media reports from February should have been enough to alert France that the contract was on the rocks.

This feigning of a great surprise [by France]  its just not the truth, he said.

Joyce added that all business contracts had terms for extensions, cessation, and improvement.

One of the terms of the contract [for the French submarines] was we had the right to get out of it if it wasnt working out, he said.

He maintained Australia would continue to respect France because it is a great nation.

AAP contributed to this report.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counterterrorism operations on Capitol Hill on Sept. 28, 2021. (Patrick Semansky/Pool/Getty Images)

Gen. Milley Says China Unlikely to Militarily Seize Taiwan in Near Future

China is unlikely to use military force to seize Taiwan in the near future, but the countrys communist regime does pose a serious threat not only to the self-ruled island, but also to the United States, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Nov. 3.

Based on my analysis of China, I dont think that it is likely in the near futurebeing defined as six, 12, maybe 24 months, that kind of window, he said in response to a question about it.

Milley made the remarks while speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual three-day security and foreign policy conference presented by the Washington-based Aspen Strategy Group.

Having said that, though, the Chinese are clearly and unambiguously building the capability to provide those options to the national leadership, if they so choose, at some point in the future. But near future, probably not. But anything can happen.

The communist regime in China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, to be taken by force if necessary. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has previously said he wants to apply the regimes governance model for Hong Kong, known as one country, two systems, in Taiwan, as a way to bring the island under Beijings control.

Taiwan, a de facto independent country with its own military, democratically elected officials, and constitution, has been facing Chinas coercion for years. Beijing has held military exercises in its coastal waters and flown military jets into the islands air defense identification zone as a way to intimidate the island.

In October, Taiwans defense minister said that China will be capable of mounting a full-scale invasion of the island by 2025.

Currently, Washington and Taipei arent formal diplomatic allies. However, Washington is required by the Taiwan Relations Act to provide the island with military equipment for its self-defense.

Milley also said the United States has the capability to defend Taiwan.

We absolutely have the capability to do all kinds of things around the world, to include that if required, he said. Theres no question about that.

Chinas military has changed drastically in the last 40 years years, Milley said, and the communist regime isnt hiding its ambition.

So 40 years ago, it was a very large infantry that was peasant-based and mostly army. Today, it has capabilities in space, cyber, on land, sea, air, underseas; and they are clearly challenging us regionally, he said.

Theyve been very clear about that. They have a China dream, and they want to challenge the so-called liberal, rules-based order that went into effect in 1945 at the end of World War II. They want to revise it.

In other words, the Chinese regime wants to revise the international order to their advantage, Milley said.

Thats going to be a real challenge over the coming years, in the next 10 to 20 years. Thats going to be really significant.
Glenn Youngkin Promises Big Agenda for Virginia Schools

Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin has said he has a big agenda to restore the excellence of Virginia schools, including an aggressive charter school program.

Virginia has had a very, very poor record in charter schools in providing any choice within our public school system. So were going to launch right out of the box 20 charter schools that are going to provide parents choice within the public school system, Youngkin told FoxBusiness on Nov. 4.

During his campaign, Youngkin viewed education as the top issue in Virginia.

Parents are absolutely angry about whats happening in the public school systems, he said. Our curriculum is going to be absolutely focused on making sure were getting the political rhetoric out of the classroom and really focused on how to prepare our kids how to think as opposed to what to thinkso much of this is engaging with parents.

Youngkin promised to ban critical race theory in Virginia schools during his campaign. Virginia parents made national headlines when they voiced their concerns at school board meetings, especially against the teaching of the quasi-Marxist critical race theory.

A crowd is seen at a Loudoun County School Board meeting in Ashburn, Va., in a file photograph. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Were going to launch a task force in December. I will have named a new secretary of education and a new state superintendent of our schools by then, and were going to begin to engage with parents. Were going to engage with educators, administrators, and students, Youngkin said.

In his victory speech on Nov. 3, Youngkin promised that Virginia would embrace parents, not ignore them.

It starts first with the leadership that were going to appoint, and then it really moves on to engaging at the grassroots level with teachers and school administrators and parents, Youngkin said. Ive been very clear parents are going to be engaged in their schools. And were going to make sure that we have a really, really effective communication loop with parents so that we can take input. Theres just a new way of thinking about engaging with parents that were going to press forward with.

Virginia will also raise expectations in Virginia schools, and children should be held to high standards; fund the largest education budget in the states history; raise teacher salaries; fund facilities; and fund special education programs that heavily suffered during the pandemic, he told FoxBusiness.

So weve got a big agenda. Weve got to get started, Youngkin said, referring to the official date in which his tenure starts. Jan. 15 cant come fast enough.

In a state where President Joe Biden won by a comfortable 10 points in 2020, Youngkins victory has been widely deemed a big blow to Democrats and a strong message of no to the policies being pushed by Democrats.

What this election really demonstrated is that education is not a political issue. It is a fundamental concern of parents from all parts of the political spectrum. We brought together Democrats, Republicans, and independentsfolks from all walks of life around this fundamental desire for their children to have a great education, Youngkin said. We took back our house of delegates, and that was a big statement.

Republicans flipped seven seats in the election and regained a narrow 5149 majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.

I think this just reflects the fact that the kitchen table issues of low taxes and great schools and safe communities, and by the way, a growing economy with job opportunitiesthese kitchen table issues had been pushed to the backgroundand voters in Virginia said no, no, no, these are the most important topics for us, Youngkin said. And thats why as we laid out our agenda, we focused on those things that are most important to get done.
Nayeli Serna was placed under a clear plastic equipment bag in the emergency room of Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, Texas, on Aug. 28, 2021. (The Accountability Project of Odessa)

Hospital Accused of Using Plastic Bags Over Patients to Stop COVID Spread

The mother of a 16-year-old Texas girl, who is shown in photographs wearing a plastic bag in a local hospital after testing positive for COVID-19, is asking the state to intervene over the unorthodox medical protocol.

Natalie Rodriguez broke into tears in a telephone interview with The Epoch Times as she described her daughter Nayeli Sernas experience at Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, Texas.

On Aug. 28, Rodriguez said she took Nayeli to her primary care doctor after her daughter began to experience of shortness of breath. Nayelis oxygen level was around 87 percentwell below normal, Rodriguez said.

She said the doctor referred Nayeli to the emergency room at Medical Center Hospital for further evaluation. The teen later tested positive for the Chinese Communist Party virus that causes COVID-19.

As they transported my daughter for tests, they placed a clear plastic equipment bag tightly fitting over her head, removed supplemental oxygen, and instructed her to wear a face mask under the bag, Rodriguez said in an Oct. 13 written complaint to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

I cried, Rodriguez told The Epoch Times. I asked (a nurse) if they had to put it over her, and she was told it was hospital protocol.

It was a good while, but they didnt turn the oxygen on. They forgot to turn it on, Rodriguez added.

Rodriguez said Nayeli sat in a wheelchair in the ER with the bag over her head for 20 to 25 minutes.

At that point, her daughter had shut down emotionally. She was later taken into the hospitals ICU for treatment. She recovered about two weeks later, Rodriguez said.

However, the straight-A student is now dealing with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, her mother said.

She just has a lot of anxiety now. She cant really tolerate people, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez then contacted Jamie Foreman at The Accountability Project of Odessa, a nonprofit local government watchdog group.

Foreman agreed to post the photo of Nayeli draped in the plastic bag on the groups Facebook page. It has been shared more than 1,000 times.

I was appalled. I didnt put that picture out there for weeks. We didnt know if she (Nayeli) was going to live or die, Foreman told The Epoch Times.

Foreman said she is aware of at least two other hospital patients who were made to wear the plastic bag as a safety precaution, including an 80-year-old woman prior to her transportation to a nursing home.

Foreman said the hospital even threatened to report an ambulance paramedic who refused to follow the protocol.

The accountability project shared with The Epoch Times hospital instructions for patients using the transportation drape, which is clearly marked equipment cover in Nayelis photo.

The one-page document states that patients must be on oxygen and [the] time limit under this apparatus is maximum of 10 minutes.

Rodriguez said that watching her daughter during bed transport reminded her of dry cleaning.

In fact, once, when my daughter took the face mask off under the plastic bag to better breathe, the nurse demanded that she reapply the face mask under the plastic equipment bag, Rodriguez said in the complaint.

She added: My daughter was instructed to keep the clear plastic bag handy as she would need to wear it every time she was transported.

Indeed, she was moved multiple times without supplemental oxygen, with the plastic equipment bag over her head and torso, and a face mask on her nose and mouth under the equipment bag.

Medical Center Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

Christine Mann, chief press officer for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said the agency does not comment on hospital complaint information, or active investigations, saying they are confidential by law.

Medical Center Health System CEO and president Russell Tippin expressed the hospitals commitment to patient safety in light of the viral photograph.

We were pleased to have the mother reach out to us to address the situation, Tippin said in a press release.

Our top priority will always be the safety and care of our patients. We are always willing to listen to our patients experiences to better communicate with them to make sure they are comfortable.

Tippin added that with any medical procedure the patient or guardian has the right to refuse the form of protection.

Since Nayelis photo went public, Tippin said the hospital and staff have received numerous threatening phone calls, including threats on their lives, their familys lives and even threats of bombing the hospital.

Hospital district police and the FBI have been contacted, he said.

Foreman said Medical Center Hospital reportedly established the plastic bag protocol more than a year ago.
President Joe Biden is seen upon arrival at a climate summit in the United Kingdom on Nov. 1, 2021. (Adrian Dennis/Pool/Getty Images)

House Republicans to Introduce Resolution to Strike Down Biden Vaccine Mandate

A group of Republican lawmakers are planning to introduce a resolution to strike down President Joe Bidens vaccine mandate after the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released its emergency temporary standard requiring businesses with 100 or more workers to have their workers get vaccinated or submit to regular testing for COVID-19.

In a statement issued on Thursday, House Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) confirmed that GOP lawmakers on her committee will introduce immediately a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify OSHAs emergency rule when it is received by Congress.

Bidens rule (pdf) will go into effect on Jan. 4 in a bid to raise vaccination rates and get more people back to work. However, a significant number of trade groups have issued warnings about the mandate, saying that it would exacerbate supply chain bottlenecks and staffing shortages nationwideleading some association presidents to ask the White House to delay the rule until after the holiday season.

Employers are not required to provide or pay for tests, and the rule offers medical and religious exemptions. Unvaccinated people have to wear masks while on the job, the rule stipulates.

Those who do not comply with the mandate will result in an approximately $14,000 fine per violation with a scale that increases with several violations, according to the rule. Its not clear what penalty will be handed down for workers who dont wear face masks and who are not vaccinated.

A senior Biden administration official said Thursday that the White House believes the mandate will spur vaccinations across the United States.

Thousands of employers have answered the presidents call and stepped up to implement vaccination requirements covering tens of millions of Americans, the official said.

After Biden announced the mandate on Sept. 9, a number of Republican governors and attorneys general promised to file lawsuits against the rule. So far, more than a dozen GOP-led states have sued the administration over a related but separate mandate that federal contractors and workers get the vaccine.

And on Wednesday, a group of Republican senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaling their intention to block funding for the vaccine mandate.

We will oppose all efforts to implement and enforce it with every tool at our disposal, including our votes on spending measures considered by the Senate, the letter led by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) read. To be sure, we agree that countless Americans have benefitted from the protection offered by the COVID-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, the decision whether to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is a highly personal one that should never be forced upon individuals by the federal government.
One of ten reliefs based on the Pinelli engravings (1928) of the life and the campaign of Alexander the Great. Reliefs by the sculptor Pr. Tzanoulinos (bronze). Hellenic War Museum in Athens, Greece. (Tilemahos Efthimiadis/CC BY-SA 2.0)

How Alexander the Great Became Great, Part 1

When high school teachers in schools today discuss Alexander the Great, it is a sad reality that most students will know very little. One student may offer an odd tidbit: Wasnt Alexander the Great killed by a mosquito? Well, the ancient Greek hero may have contracted malaria from a mosquito leading to his death, but there are other equally plausible causes of his death. More importantly, is that all the student knows about one of the greatest heroes to walk the earth?!

Understanding Alexander the Great and, frankly, his awesomeness is understanding where we are as human beings. In his good qualities, we celebrate and aspire, and in his failures, we grow wiser and therefore spiritually richer.

Alexander the Great

Ive termed Alexander the Great an ancient Greek hero, though technically he was a Macedonian, coming from that nation just north of Greece. Yet the Macedonian culture is what we generally think of as Greek culture, including speaking the Greek language, worshiping the same gods, and viewing Greeks as their compatriots in the struggle against the menacing Persians.

In the fourth century before Christ, this struggle was the defining issue of the day. Next to the relatively tiny area of Greece and Macedonia, there was the behemoth of the Persian Empire stretching from modern-day Turkey next to Europe down to Egypt in Northern Africa all the way to the Indus River in todays Pakistan. Alexanders people lived for centuries in the Persian Empires shadow, having twice been invaded in the previous century and having twice successfully turned back the Persian invaders.

To add insult to injury, the Persians quite possibly played a supporting role in the assassination of Alexanders father, King Philip II. Thus, Alexander did the unthinkable: He took his far smaller army andwith its perfect discipline and simple yet effective fighting formation of locked shields and long spears known as the Macedonian phalanxcut right through the Persian army in battle after battle until he was the king of world, at least as the Greeks had known the world to be.

Pausanius assassinates Philip II, Alexander the Greats father, during the procession into the theater, circa 1898, by Andre Castaigne. (Public Domain)

He even went further, through the Khyber Pass in the Hindu Kush Mountains into India. He turned around only when his battered and homesick troops mutinied. Even then, he came back a different way, conquering as he went. And all of this was accomplished between the ages of 20 and 32!

Because of the success of his great undertaking, the culture of the Greek Golden Age, of Socratess profound wisdom (which I have previously written about), exquisitely realistic sculptures, precedent-setting architecture, and tragedies and comedies that would later inspire Shakespeare were all preserved from the threat of destruction.

Alexander also founded the city of Alexandria in Egypt that, with its vast library and 40-story lighthouse, would be the intellectual and economic center of Western civilization for centuries, leaving a cultural legacy that would be inherited by the Romans in their republic and empire. All of that, in brief, is why Alexander is great.

Alexander the Great Founding Alexandria by Placido Costanzi. (Public Domain)

How Did Alexander Become Great?

How exactly the man did all that is another question. The popular narratives today gives us very little in response. On the negative side of the spectrum of these popular ideas, he was an imperialistic white man oppressing others wherever he went. On the positive side he was a carefree, flamboyant youth, driven perhaps by testosterone, with an unparalleled sense of adventure.

This latter interpretation is bolstered by the fact that out of Alexanders extraordinary life emerged an incredible array of fabulous stories and legends. For instance, when he was a boy, an unruly horse was brought to his kingdom and shunned by his father. But Alexander keenly observed that the horse was literally afraid of its own shadow and could be settled by calmly turning it away from its shadow. The story goes that Alexander turned this wild beast into his faithful steed, Bucephalus, who followed him into battle after battle.

Alexander and Bucephalus, between 1645 and 1684, by Domenico Maria Canuti. Private Collection. (PD-US)

It is also said the Alexander, who was tutored by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, was so enamored with the ancient epic poems of Homer that, when first entering the Persian Empire, he chose to land at the ancient site of Troy spoken of in Homers Iliad while his army landed elsewhere.

Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great, believed the practice of virtue to be the foundation of good leadership. (Everett Historical/Shutterstock)

Later on, during his conquering, Alexander is said to have encountered the Gordian knot. It was an enormous knot of rope on an old chariot, and legend had it that whoever could untie it would be ruler of the world. Alexander took one look and then cut off the knot, successfully untying it, sort of, and leaving behind the phrase cutting the Gordian knotmeaning, solving a complicated problem with a solution that is simple and a bit rough.

With a simple thrust of his sword, Alexander the Great severed the Gordian knot and so fulfilled the oracular prophesy that whosoever untied the knot would become emperor of Asia Minor. Alexander Cuts the Gordian Knot, circa 1767, by Jean-Simon Berthelemy. Beaux-Arts de Paris. (PD-US)

There too is the story of Alexander meeting a homeless philosopher lying in the street, Diogenes, who asks Alexander to please stop blocking his sun. Alexander is inspired by Diogeness complete disregard for earthly wealth and status, so much so that he says, If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Alexander and Diogenes, between 1625 and 1630, by Gaspar de Crayer. WallrafRichartz Museum (PD-US)

Yet this enlightened, nonmaterialistic sentiment of Alexander seems contradicted by other stories of his tyrannical tendencies, such as the one in which a philosopher tells Alexander that the world we live in is but one of an uncountable number of worlds, and to which Alexander begins crying because he cannot conquer them all.

Now, whether fictional or factual, all of these are splendid flourishes in the tapestry of history. However, they dont coherently or reliably tell us how Alexander became so great. On their own, they take us down that path of bizarre and pointless triviality, such that all a student can remember is one ridiculously insignificant possibility for how Alexander the Great died.

Map of Alexanders empire and his route. (Generic Mapping Tools/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Therefore, it is instructive to turn our attention to the earliest historical source on Alexander the Great: Diodorus Siculus (9030 B.C.), who was a Greek historian writing centuries before all other surviving sources. From Diodorus, we can reliably find those defining characteristics that truly present to us the story of Alexander the Great. Specifically these characteristics, or virtues, are what I term brotherhood, good manners, and faith. But what exactly do these terms mean? We will take a closer look next time.

Evan Mantyk is an English teacher in New York and president of the Society of Classical Poets.
The Cornelis Gert Jan in Le Havre, where it was detained on Oct. 27,2021. (Andrew Matthews/PA)

Impounded British Fishing Trawler Arrives in UK After Being Released by France

A British trawler which was impounded by France amid the dispute over post-Brexit fishing rights has arrived in the UK after being released by French authorities.

The Scottish-registered scallop dredger Cornelis Gert Jan left Le Havre on Wednesday evening after being held there since last week, when France accused it of fishing in its waters without a proper licence.

The blue, white and red trawler departed the quayside after dusk and docked at Shoreham-by-Sea, near Brighton, at 4.46am on Thursday, according to MarineTraffic.com.

The public affairs director of the vessels owner Macduff Shellfish confirmed it has been released by French authorities.

The ruling came after the boats captain, Jondy Ward, appeared at the Court of Appeal in Rouen earlier on Wednesday.

Jondy Ward, the skipper of the Cornelis Gert Jan, arrives back at his boat on Nov. 3, 2021. (Andrew Matthews/PA)

Ward explained that French maritime police detained the trawler last week for not being on a European register when it was fishing off the Normandy coast.

The skipper said he did not know if it was an error on the part of UK or French officials.

We had everything in order on the bridge, as far as I was concerned we had everything in place to be legal, he said.

He said the boat was definitely caught in the middle of the Franco-British spat over post-Brexit fishing arrangements.

The comments were echoed by his lawyer, Mathieu Croix, who told reporters outside the courtroom: Were clearly caught in a political game as there is a whole story spun around this entire case, whereas in fact it is a rather mundane affair over fishing in an area that is supposedly out of bounds, and about licences that may or may not have been given and catch amounts that are relatively modest.

Cross-Channel Talks

It comes as Lord Frost prepares to meet Frances Europe minister Clement Beaune in Paris in an attempt to end the crisis in cross-Channel relations.

France has threatened sanctions over what it perceives as a refusal to issue licences to its trawlers to operate in UK waters.

The UK Government insisted the overwhelming majority of applications for licences have been granted.

French president Emmanuel Macron has delayed the imposition of punitive measures while talks between the UK, France and the European Commission take place.

But the French government has insisted the measureswhich could include a ban on British trawlers landing their catches in French ports and tighter customs checks to hamper cross-Channel traderemain on the table if a deal cannot be reached.

Lord Frost will follow his talks with Beaune on Thursday by heading to Brussels on Friday to meet European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic.

Respect the Deal

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal underlined that the threat of sanctions remained: We will see what comes with those meetings.

As you know, the control measures that we announced are still suspended but all options are on the table and we may need to implement those measures if we do not reach an agreement.

On Wednesday, he said: We are just waiting for one thing: for the UK to respect the deal that they signed.

Under the Brexit deal, European Union boats which can show they have fished in British waters in at least four of the years from 2012 to 2016 are eligible for a licence.

Some 1,831 applications for licences have been received, with 1,793 issued.

The main source of contention has been for smaller vessels, the under 12-metre category fishing between six and 12 nautical miles of the coast, where 50 applications have been receivedall from French vesselsbut just 19 have been issued.

The fishing row is just one of the issues Lord Frost will be raising during his talks in Paris and Brussels.

The Northern Ireland Protocol

The main dispute between the UK and European Union is over Northern Irelands post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Talks are continuing between the UK and EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the Brexit divorce deal which avoided a hard border with Ireland.

The deal effectively keeps Northern Ireland inside the EUs single market for goods, resulting in some checks for products crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain, which left the single market.

Lord Frost has claimed the conditions for using Article 16  allowing parts of the deal to be suspended  have been met because of the difficulties being caused.

The UK wants an end to the European Court of Justices oversight role, something that Brussels has said is impossible.

European Commission executive vice-president Frans Timmermans told ITVs Peston: I think Mr Frost knows very well that this is not possible for the European Union.

I know he knows full well that whenever the internal market is involved, the ultimate arbitrator is the European Court of Justice.

But he said the European Commission had been bending over backwards to reach an agreement with the UK on the protocol.
Delays in the transfer of cargo continue in Southern California as vessels line the horizon waiting offload containers into the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 27, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Increase in Foreign Oil and Gas Imports Could Spell More Crowding at LA Ports: Officials

A decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) during its Nov. 4 meeting to increase foreign oil and gas imports may bring more oil tankers to the already overloaded ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, officials say.

Clearly there will be a significant increase in tanker traffic at all portsand even an additional handful of ships at the crowded SoCal ports will add to the huge backlog, Tim Stewart, spokesman for the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told The Epoch Times via email.

As of Tuesday, eight oil tankers were either floating off the Southern California ports, anchored or offloading crude at the terminals, according to Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, the agency that directs local maritime traffic.

Thats a very normal population for waiting, Louttit told The Epoch Times.

Six tankers arrived at the ports, he said, coming from Panama, Russia, New Orleans, the Pacific region, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia.

Of those, two were at berth in the terminals, one was at anchor in Long Beach, one was at anchor off Huntington Beach, and three tankers were loitering, or running their motors to stay afloat in the ocean nearby until they are assigned an anchor.

The area is overcrowded with cargo ships carrying a backlog of containers holding retail goods. Those ships are taking up anchor space usually assigned to the oil tankers. As a result, the oil tankers, and any future tankers that may arrive, would have to take a position farther down the coast near San Clemente or elsewhere, Louttit said.

The U.S. Coast Guard suspects a cargo ship waiting to offload its cargo at the ports was anchored off Huntington Beach when it caused a spill Oct. 2 of about 144,000 gallons of oil to wash ashore. The ships anchor is suspected of tearing a hole in an underground pipeline.

President Joe Biden continued to push major energy-producing countries and OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, to boost production. OPEC denied Bidens proposal Monday.

American gasoline is at a seven-year high of $3.72 a gallon Wednesday. West Texas Intermediate crude fell to $80.86 a barrel Wednesday, and Brent crude futures fell $2.73, to settle at $81.99 a barrel.

The Administration is taking every step possible to ramp up imports from OPEC+ to offset the drop off in domestic production that they themselves have created through regulatory uncertainty with actions like a leasing moratorium and other aggressive regulatory actions on methane, royalties, and fees, etc., Stewart said.

Combine that with their full-throated support of the rampant stakeholder activism which is seeking to limit availability of capital to industry on Wall Street and the Administration is creating market uncertainty which is now resulting in predictions $120 barrel oil.

Steward added that the Biden Administration is trying to have it both ways by trying to meet climate goals by curtailing U.S. production and rely on imported energy from Russia.

In January, the U.S. imported 20,000 barrels from Russia every month, Steward said. By July, that number climbed to 7 million per month.

At the same time, the Keystone Pipeline was cancelled, the leasing moratorium was put in place and the Democrats in Congress started waving around their new punitive tax and fee scheme on industry, Steward said. This has had a chilling effect on new investment in our domestic resources which is quickly backfilled by the global marketoil coming from OPEC+, Steward said.
India Should Rethink Its Taiwan Policy and Be More Proactive: Experts

NEW DELHIIn the emerging world order, India and Taiwan, both key countries in the Indo-Pacific, will need to cooperate more in the face of Chinese aggression, experts say.

Although both countries have made efforts over the past few years for greater cooperation, India needs to rethink its policy toward Taiwan, experts told The Epoch Times.

There is no better time than today to remind ourselves that the engagement between India and Taiwan is mutually beneficial, and there is so much that could be achieved in the relations without making adjustments to their respective China policies, Sana Hashmi, a visiting fellow at the TaiwanAsia Exchange Foundation, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Hashmi, who is based in Taipei, said the IndiaTaiwan relationship has a lot of potential, but India needs to be more proactive.

There have been monumental achievements, such as the signing of several agreements and the revival of the India-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Forum, she said. However, a vision for a sustainable and long-term framework for advancing ties is missing. Without implementing a long-term plan, the relations will only achieve short-term results.

The IndiaTaiwan Parliamentary Friendship Forum was formed by Indian and Taiwanese lawmakers in 2016 and was revived in October 2020 to uphold the cherished ideals of democracy.

Hashmi wrote in a Nov. 4 op-ed published by multiple Indian outlets that India had previously been cautious toward its dealings with Taiwan because of China, with whom the country shares more than 2,000 miles of the land border. But now the situation has changed.

This [caution] came at a time when India and China were trying to manage tensions and India was hopeful of achieving a breakthrough in its border dispute with China. However, now, much has changed not only in IndiaChina relations but there is also a remarkable shift in Indias Taiwan policy, she wrote.

Hashmi mentioned a 2020 incident in which the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi tried to issue a diktat to Indian media outlets, demanding that they not refer to Taiwan as a nation. The Indian government sided with the media outlets.

These shifts arent momentous, but they do reflect a definite policy rethink, and further engagement needs to be more meaningful, she said.

Madhav Das Nalapat, director of the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations at Manipal University, told The Epoch Times that significant attention is being paid to Taiwan under Narendra Modi. He noted that in a new world order characterized by the Cold War 2.0 with the Peoples Republic of China, Taiwan is a critical component.

Wishing all our friends in #India & around the world a happy #Diwali. May this festival of lights bring joy & good health to you all. pic.twitter.com/Xpd6xofgnm   Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) November 4, 2021

The Future of the Indo-Pacific

Taiwan is among nations such as India and the United States that seek a free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific and that dont want the region to be dominated by any single power. China is attempting to do just that by claiming 80 percent of the South China Sea and 60 percent of the East China Sea, according to Nalapat.

In particular, Taiwanese tech is crucial in the development of defenses, especially in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and cyber warfare. The PRC would immediately have the advantage in the South and East China seas were Taiwan to be brought under its control in the manner that Manchuria, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia have been during the period in the power of Mao Zedong, he said.

The quadthe quadrilateral alliance between the United States, Japan, Australia, and Indiaunderstands Taiwans significance very well, according to Napalat, who also stated that even though Delhi is not as vocal about the importance of keeping Taiwan from PRC control as Tokyo, Canberra, and Washington are, its taking note of the Chinese regimes attempts to bully Taiwan into submission through intrusions into its airspace and seaspace.

Hashmi said COVID-19 has brought a lot of sociopolitical and geoeconomic changes throughout the world, and in the past two years, like-minded countries with common concerns and shared interests are coming together.

Taiwan is a like-minded country in the Indo-Pacific that propagates a rules-based order, she said. India is an important country in the Indo-Pacific region. Given India and Taiwan share similar values, common interests, and shared concerns, it is important for the two countries to cooperate and collaborate to contribute towards the peace and stability of the region.

Hashmi believes that Taiwans participation in the Indo-Pacific shouldnt be seen as an attempt to aggravate China, but it should instead be considered for several issue-based reasons.

It is a robust democracy, an important country in the regional supply chain resilience, and has the potential to meaningfully contribute to the region, she said.

In this context, the IndiaTaiwan relationship has multiple factors contributing to it, and Chinas aggression is just one, she said.

In the past two years, Taiwan has also attempted to reach out to India and its people. Some of the examples include Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wens use of social media for reaching out to Indian netizens, Taiwans Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diwali celebrations for the Indian diaspora in 2020, Taiwans donation of masks, PPE, oxygen cylinders, and concentrators to India in 202021, and so on, Hashmi said.

Shih-Chung Liu, vice chairman of Taiwan External Trade Development Council, and Chung-Kwang Tien, the representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, attend a news conference in New Delhi, India, on Sept. 20, 2019. (Sankalp Phartiyal/Reuters)

Taiwans Investment

India is important for the success of Taiwans New Southbound Policy, an effort for Taipei to expand its presence in the Indo-Pacific, as deepening economic cooperation is an important part of that strategy, according to Hashmi.

When both India and Taiwan are attempting to reduce their dependence on China, it is beneficial for the two countries to work towards advancing their bilateral commercial ties, she said.

Cooperation between the countries tech industries could play an important role, Nalapat said.

Tech parks by Taiwanese tech companies will help India in such crucial areas as chipmaking. Taiwan played the biggest role in developing China into an economic powerhouse, the way Japan and the U.S. did. Now all three are at the receiving end of Beijings hostility and are looking to set up their manufacturing and servicing units in a country that is not part of the SinoRussian alliance in the manner that Pakistan, for example, is, he said, noting that India is emerging as an attractive alternative because of its talent pool and because of the potential of its market.

Thank you very much  your creativity and love for India is deeply appreciated https://t.co/ftPfMkAiQ7  Meenakashi Lekhi (@M_Lekhi) November 3, 2021

Hashmi said India and Taiwan are discussing advanced cooperation in the field of semiconductors, and Taiwan is likely to play an important role in helping India to set up a semiconductor plant.

With Taiwans successful handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and Indias vaccine Maitri [friendship], the two countries have proved their mettle. They need to combine their efforts to promote health cooperation, she said.

Nalapat said that agreements regarding Taiwanese investments in India, made possible by relocations from China, can be expected by 2023.
Army soldiers in a Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher march past during a ceremony to celebrate India's 73rd Army Day in New Delhi on January 15, 2021. (Photo by Prakash SINGH / AFP) (Photo by PRAKASH SINGH/AFP via Getty Images)

Indias Missile Test Not Meant as a Warning Shot to Beijing, Experts Say

Indias recent testing of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile came on the heels of failed military and diplomatic talks between India and China, as well as reports of a hypersonic missile test by the Chinese regime.

But experts told The Epoch Times that Indias test-fire was not a retaliatory response to the regimes recent actions.

Agni-5 Capabilities

Animesh Roul, executive director of the New Delhi-based Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, said this was not the first time India test-fired an Agni-5 surface-to-surface ballistic missile. In 2012, 2013, and 2018, the Agni-5 was tested several times.

However, the Oct. 27 test at Odisha coasts Abdul Kalam Island was the first trial of the missile by the Strategic Forces Command that deploys Indias nuclear arsenal, he said.

This confirms that Agni-5 nuclear-capable missiles could be quickly deployed from strategic locations in India, Roul added.

The missile test was also significant because it reaffirmed Indias official policy to have credible minimum deterrence and commitment to no first use, and it is also the first to be used by Indias Strategic Force Command, said Mahesh Debata, an assistant professor at Indias Jawaharlal Nehru University.

With a launch weight of nearly 100 thousand pounds, this nuclear-capable missile can carry a warhead of up to 3,000 pounds. Indias Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) reported that the Agni-5 missile has a maximum range of up to 3,600 miles.

Others, including Du Wenlong, a researcher at the Peoples Liberation Armys Academy of Military Sciences, have suggested a range of nearly 5,000 miles. If this is the case, the Agni-5 has the ability to strike nearly all of mainland China, reaching as far as the northernmost region of the country.

Continued Crisis

Border disputes between India and China have existed for many decades, and these unresolved territorial disputes have resulted in a number of conflicts through the years.

A violent clash between Indian and Chinese armed forces in the remote Himalayan region of eastern Ladakh in early May 2020 brought any chance of resolving disputes to a new low, Roul said. There were reportedly dozens of injuries and deaths on both sides.

In response to the deadly face-off, he said, both sides have beefed up force deployment with tens of thousands of soldiers [and] weaponry ever since.

Following multiple rounds of military and diplomatic talks, Roul said signs of disengagement had begun. But he went on to note that the 13th round of military talks between India and China in October ended in a stalemate without further headway. So, border issues between the two countries remain volatile, he said.

According to Roul, the ongoing tensions between the two countries could give reason for the Chinese regime to take the Agni-5 testing as a sign of aggressive military posturing by India.

Not a Warning Shot

Some experts have described the Agni-5 missile launch as a warning shot from India to China.

Roul disagreed, saying that it would not be sensible for any country to display its missile muscle as a warning shot, or as part of any aggressive or defensive posturing.

India is very well aware of superior Chinese missile capabilities, and flexing [its own] muscles would be futile and counterproductive [to diplomatic and military talks], he said.

Debata also said it is not right to assume that the successful test of Agni-5 missile from off the coast of Odisha was a warning for any country or targeted at any particular country.

Missile testing is not uncommon in India. Prior to the Agni-5, Roul said four other missiles have been operationally deployed with different ranges and payload capabilities. India could simply be showing China its ongoing development in ground-based conventional missile and nuclear forces, he said.

Debata said, Since the inaugural test of Agni category missiles in 1989, it has been a potent force of Indias defense system and its present launching could be described as a right step to further spruce up Indias defense capabilities.

At a time when the Chinese regime is putting its nuclear capabilities on full display, Roul said the test may help India build a domestic consensus and reassurance about its military capabilities and overall morale of the armed forces.

The Agni-5 missile is clearly part of Indias strategic deterrence vis-a-vis China, he added.
Rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip to Israel, on May 17, 2021. (Hatem Moussa/AP Photo)

Israel Tests Massive Inflatable Missile Detection System

JERUSALEMIsrael said Wednesday it has begun testing a massive inflatable missile detection system designed to hover at high altitudes and detect long-range threats.

Israel already boasts an array of sophisticated missile defenses, which were used successfully during the 11-day Gaza war this year.

The High Availability Aerostat System resembles a giant blimp or zeppelin. The Defense Ministry says its one of the worlds largest systems of its kind. It was developed in cooperation with a subsidiary of state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and TCOM, a U.S. aerostat manufacturer.

Israel has moved aggressively in recent years to counter potential threats from Iran, the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon and Gazas terrorist Hamas rulers, all of which boast large arsenals of rockets capable of hitting major cities.

During the Gaza war, Hamas fired barrages of rockets at Tel Aviv in an attempt to overwhelm Israels Iron Dome defense system, but Israeli officials say it shot down around 90 percent of the projectiles it targeted.

Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes against what it said were terrorist targets. The fighting killed more than 250 Palestinians, including 129 civilians, according to the United Nations. There were 13 deaths on the Israeli side.
Johnson & Johnsons Neutrogena Cool Dry Sport sunscreen, sits on a shelf at a store in Gloucester, Mass., on July 15, 2021. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

J&J, Costco Settle Lawsuits Over Recalled Sunscreen

Johnson & Johnson and Costco Wholesale Corp have reached a tentative agreement to settle lawsuits over the presence of a cancer-causing substance in several recalled J&J sunscreen products.

Lawyers for the companies and for plaintiffs suing over the Neutrogena and Aveeno-branded aerosol sunscreen products disclosed the settlement in a court filing in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida federal court on Friday, without revealing its terms.

They said they expected to submit the settlement for court approval by Nov. 19.

J&J said in an emailed statement: This agreement, which is subject to court approval, is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing  We strongly dispute the merits of these lawsuits and stand behind our position that we marketed our sunscreen products appropriately and responsibly.

J&J voluntarily recalled four Neutrogena aerosol sunscreen products and one from Aveeno on July 14, after finding small amounts of benzene, a carcinogen. It said the levels it detected were too low to pose a health risk, but out of an abundance of caution pulled all lots of the products and offered refunds.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said following the recall it was investigating how benzene had ended up in the sunscreens.

A federal judicial panel earlier this month consolidated lawsuits filed nationwide against J&J and Costco, which sold the products, in the Florida court. The settlement would resolve all of the claims in the consolidated litigation, according to the filing.

Plaintiffs have said in court filings that tens of thousands of consumers could have claims.

Costco and plaintiffs lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

By Brendan Pierson
A truck hauls a piece of John Deere equipment from the factory past workers picketing outside of the John Deere Davenport Works facility in Davenport, Iowa, on Oct. 15, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Deere Workers Extend Strike After Rejecting 2nd Contract Offer

Approximately 10,100 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) will extend their strike into a third week after rank-and-file union members of farm and construction equipment maker Deere & Co. on Nov. 2 voted down what the company called its best and final proposal.

The second proposal included an $8,500 ratification bonus, a 10 percent pay increment, 30 percent wage increases over the term of the contract, improved retirement benefits and parental leave pay, and a post-retirement health care fund seeded by $2,000 per year of service.

According to The Washington Post, Marc Howze, Deeres chief administrative officer, said in a Nov. 3 interview that the company is done negotiating and satisfied to have narrowed the margin between the two proposals.

Howze was referring to the first proposal on Oct. 1, which was rejected by the workers with a 90 percent vote margin. The current vote was closer, with the margin reduced to 55 percent who remained in opposition.

Through the agreements reached with the UAW, John Deere would have invested an additional $3.5 billion in our employees, and by extension, our communities, to significantly enhance wages and benefits that were already the best and most comprehensive in our industries, Howze said in a statement.

The strike began on Oct. 14 at Deeres 14 facilities, mostly located in the Midwest. Proponents have called for the Moline, Illinois-based company to share more of their record annual profits of approximately $6 billion in 2021; they say Deere can offer up more benefits. However, Deere workers in Atlanta and Denver have accepted the companys latest offer, reducing the number of facilities under strike to 12.

The UAW released a short statement following the rejection of the second proposal.

The strike against John Deere and Company will continue as we discuss next steps with the company. Pickets will continue and any updates will be provided through the local union.

The company is currently maintaining its stance. There was maybe a sense that because we were able to reach an agreement as fast as we could, maybe theres something left on the table, Howze told The Washington Post. Well, theres not.

Larry Cohen, a former president of the Communications Workers of America, says UAW workers have been emboldened based on the second rejection; they presume theyre winning, despite the companys statement.

Theyre saying what they believetheir feelings are hurt, Cohen said of Deere management, according to The New York Times. But what are they going to do about it? Theyre not going to get the workers back.

As the economy recovers from the pandemic, there has been a wave of strikes happening in many parts of the country demanding better working conditions, wages, and benefits.

In an interview with NPR, Joseph McCartin, a professor of history and the director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor, said the pandemic disrupted a lot of the status quo and labor management relations.

McCartin said that after a significant social upheaval like the pandemic, people expect more when looking at a labor market that they feel still doesnt reward them as they feel they ought to be rewarded. He expects this phenomenon to continue for quite a while until employers possibly make some improvements.

Based on Cornell University data, more than 25,000 employees walked off their jobs last month, leading many to coin the term Striketober.

A strike at one of Kelloggs cereal factories involves more than 1,000 workers, while there is also a strike at a hospital in Upstate New York with 2,000 hospital staff members. In addition, Connecticut steel plant workers have stopped working for better benefits and pension plans.

Representatives at Deere didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Joe Biden speaks during a press conference at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, on Nov. 2, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Lawsuits Pile Up After White House Sets COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Deadline

Numerous lawsuits have been filed against the Biden administration over vaccine mandates for private employers and federal contractors that are set to be published in the federal register on Nov. 5.

The attorneys general of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee announced they would take legal action against the White House over the rule and filed a lawsuit (pdf) in a bid to challenge President Joe Bidens rule affecting federal contractors.

The Biden administration unveiled details of its federal COVID-19 mandate on Nov. 4, providing a Jan. 4, 2022, deadline for federal contractors and health care employees who work at Medicare- and Medicaid-funded facilities. At the same time, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a rule requiring businesses with 100 or more employees to make sure all workers are vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, affecting tens of millions of workers.

Unless we intervene, federal contractors in Tennessee will be forced to make sense of the mandates many inconsistencies that require their entire workforce be vaccinated or face potential blacklisting and loss of future federal contracts, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III said in a statement.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said that he takes the issue of federal overreach seriously, while Ohio AG Dave Yost joined the lawsuit, saying that the Biden administration may not do whatever it wants, however it wants.

The Constitution lays out critical rules by which the executive branch must operate, Yost said. Congress and the states have their own powers, which the administration cant just take over because it wants to.

Despite the widespread pushback, Biden framed the issue as a choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic, although numerous studiesincluding some published by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionhave shown that vaccines dont prevent transmission of the virus.

While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good, Biden said in a statement.

In addition to the three attorneys general, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said he would sue the administration over its mandate on private employers.

The federal government does not have the authority to unilaterally force private employers to mandate their employees get vaccinated or foot the bill for weekly testing, Schmitt wrote in his statement, adding that a number of businesses in Missouri have voiced concerns about the rule.

We will be on file first thing tomorrow morning to halt this illegal, unconstitutional attempt by the Biden Administration and the federal government to impose their will on thousands of Missouri businesses and millions of Missourians, Schmitt added on Nov. 4. Missouri will not roll over, we will not back downwe will file suit imminently.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who filed a lawsuit against Bidens mandates after he announced them in early September, said he would sue the administration on Nov. 5, according to a statement.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, announced via a Twitter video that her administration would join a lawsuit against the mandate, which she described as unconstitutional.

The Republican National Committee also said it would sue the administration and characterized the rule as an attack on front-line workers, first responders, small businesses, and the rights of the American people.
A woman walks on the California State UniversityLong Beach campus before the return of students for Fall classes in Long Beach, Calif. on Aug. 11, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Long Beach College Allows Overnight Parking for Homeless Students

Long Beach City College (LBCC) announced on Nov. 1 that homeless students are allowed to sleep in their cars at night on campus.

To address student homelessness, LBCC launched on Oct. 25 a pilot Safe Parking Program to provide a secure location for eligible students to stay overnight.

The program is the only known program of its kind in the region at a community college, according to LBCCs statement.

Our goal for this program is that it will serve as a pathway to housing stability for our students, said Uduak-Joe Ntuk, president of LBCC Board of Trustees.

These students would otherwise have to be worrying nightly about their vehicles being broken into, trying not to be seen or bothered, and not having the police called on them, all while keeping up with their coursework. It could be an exhausting situation that makes it more difficult to get ahead.

LBCC currently has about 70 students sleeping in their vehicles every night, according to Mike Munoz, interim superintendent-president of the Long Beach Community College District.

If we can help to keep our students safe so they can better focus on their student responsibilities, this program is absolutely worth pursuing. Our goal at LBCC is always to remove barriers that get in the way of our students success, said Munoz.

To be eligible for the program, available from Oct. 25, 2021, to June 30, 2022, participants must be single adults, as they are not allowed to live in their cars with partners or children.

Homeless students can access Pacific Coast Campus Parking Structure between 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., seven days a week.

Meanwhile, LBCC staff will provide support in seeking long-term housing for these students.

Besides the pilot program, LBCC also founded the Basic Needs Office a few years ago to provide food and other assistance for its students.

According to the most recent UCLA study, about 20 percent of community college students in California lack a fixed nighttime residence.

That number for California State schools is 10 percent, and for University of California campuses, 5 percent, according to the study.

In addition to college students, over 269,000 K12 students in California are experiencing homelessness. Overall student homelessness figures have risen 50 percent in the last decade, according to the study.
Man Convicted of Killing Officer Who Tried to Arrest Him

ORLANDO, Fla.A Florida man was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder in the shooting death of an Orlando police officer who was trying to arrest him outside a Walmart store for the earlier slaying of his pregnant former girlfriend.

Markeith Loyd was convicted of killing Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton on Jan. 9, 2017 as she tried to arrest him in the fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon. Dixon was shot weeks earlier.

The 12-person jury in Orlando deliberated for about five hours over two days. Loyd remained expressionless as the verdict was read. Loyd, 46, faces a potential death sentence.

Loyd had pleaded not guilty. He testified that he shot Clayton in self-defense, and that he did not intend to kill her. Loyds attorneys argued that Loyd was insane when he shot Clayton.

He has already been convicted of first-degree murder for killing Dixon and her unborn child. The jury in that case recommended he be sentenced to life in prison.
Masks May Be Harming Children, Study Shows

As many countries and several states do away with mask mandates, a German study suggests that masking children causes more harm than good

As any parent can attest to firsthand, our childrenfrom tots to teenshave been experiencing more anxiety, psychological stress, and behavioral challenges since the COVID-19 crisis began in March 2020. Adults, too, have been suffering from extreme stress and anxiety.

Now a new retrospective study, looking at data from late 2020 and 2021, confirms what so many of us have long suspected: Masking as a prerequisite to classroom learning and participation in public life is causing children both psychological and physical harm.

The study, conducted at the University of WittenHerdecke in Germany, includes data from more than 20,000 participants reflecting on the experiences of a total of 25,930 children. The average time the children wore masks was 270 minutes (4 1/2 hours) per day.

The majority of parents68 percentreported that masking harmed their children. In fact, parents reported psychological and physical harms associated with masking in 17,632 children. These reported harms included:

Difficulty concentrating

Drowsiness or fatigue

Headaches

Impaired learning

Irritability

Less happiness

Malaise

Reluctance to go to school

Though the study is retrospective and doesnt purport to show a causal relationship between masking children and adverse effects, the team of German researchers argued that this data illustrates that adults must consider that some risk of exposure to coronavirus may be worthwhile in order to enable children to have a higher quality of life without having to wear a mask.

Dr. Jeffrey I. Barke, who wasnt involved in the study, agrees. We should always ask At what cost? when considering any policy, said Barke, a board-certified primary care physician in private practice in Southern California. Barke doesnt mince words about the problems with requiring children, especially younger children, to wear masks.

The masking of children causes direct harm, he said, including increased anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and learning disorders. And most importantly, it prevents the critical bonding between students and teachers because facial expressions arent able to be seen.

As Yale University Emerita Professor of Psychology Marianne LaFrance explored in her book, Why Smile? The Science Behind Facial Expressions, human faces are a rich source of emotional, linguistic, and social signaling to other people. Facial expressions, LaFrance told me when I interviewed her several years ago, are much more complicated and intricate than people realize. From happiness to rage, our faces can and often do express an array of emotionseven contradictory emotionsat the same time.

But when childrens noses and mouths are blocked by masks and they can only see other peoples eyes, they have a much harder time not only learning to speak and understand language, but also learning social cues and emotional intelligence.

Babies as young as 8 months old begin to lip-read, according to an article in Scientific American. But, as Dr. David J. Lewkowicz, senior scientist at Yale Universitys Haskins Laboratories, wrote in the same article, babies and young children cant make the connection between lip movement and speech if they cant see their caregivers mouths.

School Children Are Not Super Spreaders

The justification for masking young children, especially in school, is to avoid spreading coronavirus from asymptomatic children to adults. But data from Sweden shows that theres little to no danger to adults (or to other school-aged children) when children attend school mask-free.

As Dr. Jonas F. Ludvigsson and three of his colleagues wrote in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine, despite Sweden having kept their preschools and elementary schools open without masking, there were very low incidences of COVID-19, both among the children themselves and among their teachers.

In fact, of the nearly 2 million Swedish school-aged children who continued to attend in-person school with free faces, only 15 children were admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. Thats equivalent to 1 in every 130,000 children.

Four of these children had serious underlying conditions (two had cancer, one had chronic kidney disease, and one had a blood disorder). No child with COVID-19 died.

Does Masking Children Even Work?

In addition to the harms masks may be causing, whether they actually work to stop the spread of COVID-19 is still an open question.

In November 2020, the Annuals of Internal Medicine published a randomized controlled study to evaluate the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2.

In this study, which included more than 6,000 people, a team of Danish scientists found that masks didnt reduce the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections significantly. Infection rates were slightly higher among those who didnt wear masks: 42 participants wearing masks (1.8 percent) tested positive for COVID-19 while 53 participants (2.1 percent) among those who didnt wear masks tested positive. However, the difference in this sample wasnt considered statistically meaningful.

The researchers concluded, in part, The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers.

States With Mask Mandates Have Higher Infection Rates

Other independent research has found that states with mask mandates actually had higher incidences of COVID-19 spread than states with no mask mandates.

When researchers from Rational Ground (a COVID-19 information clearinghouse that provides reasoned and fact-based analysis of the current pandemic using extensive charts, infographics, videos and other mediums, according to their website) analyzed data from 50 states from May 1 to Dec. 15, 2020, they found no evidence that mandated masking slowed the spread of COVID-19.

In states where masks were mandated, there were 9,605,256 confirmed COVID cases, averaging 27 cases per 100,000 residents per day.

In states where there were no mask mandates, there were 5,781,716 confirmed cases of COVID, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 residents per day.

In a detailed opinion piece about this data, Daniel Horowitz, senior editor of TheBlaze and host of the Conservative Review podcast, wrote: The burden is on those who want to violate the Constitution with such a draconian mandate  to present affirmative evidence that their [masking] works.  But while they force us to prove 100 percent that they dont work, mandaters dont have to prove any efficacy at all, even as 2-year-olds are forced to have their faces covered on planes.

Commonly Used Masks Often Least Effective

The kind of mask also matters. As Dr. Peter Weiss explained in an article in The Epoch Times, the most commonly used masks are likely the least effective.

Surgical masks are made of three plied layers of synthetic microfibers and extra-fine synthetic fibers, which block out much larger particles, but do a poor job of blocking the much smaller particles associated with COVID-19 viral transmission, wrote Weiss.

Dr. Paul Alexander, an evidence-based medicine specialist and epidemiologist, agreed. Our examination of the entire body of evidence regarding these blue surgical and white cloth masks shows that they are ineffective and confer no benefit.

Alexander is a former evidence synthesis adviser to WHO/Pan American Health Organization for the COVID pandemic and former senior COVID pandemic adviser for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration.

What is indeed frightening is that all of these blue and similar surgical face masks cause plastic fiber inhalation, and the outcomes could be devastating, especially to our children, Alexander said. These plastics will degrade very slowly over time, and as such, in the lungs it may remain and just build up to dangerous levels. We do not even know what is an acceptable level, for there should be none, zero.

Cloth masks, the type that most children are wearing to school, are also ineffective. In a randomized clinical trial of cloth masks used by hospital health care workers in Vietnam, almost 97 percent of the masks were penetrated by viral particles (compared to 44 percent of the medical masks.) In addition, workers wearing cloth masks were much more likely to contract respiratory infections.

Weiss likens a cloth mask to tying a rope around your waist while driving and claiming its a seatbelt. It also isnt too much of an exaggeration to say wearing a Gucci style face-covering  is like asking an X-ray technician to wear their grandmothers kitchen apron when taking X-rays.

Worn Incorrectly

In order for them to be effective, masks must be worn correctly. But in one study of mask wearers in Japan, where wearing medical masks is culturally normative (unlike in the United States), scientists found that only 23 percent of mask wearers complied with recommendations. The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Healthy, suggests that 77 percent of people in Japan dont adequately follow mask guidelines.

If you spend time in any classroom in the United States where children are required to wear masks, you quickly see that most children are not wearing them correctly. The CDC guidelines stipulate that you shouldnt touch your mask while youre wearing it. But children (and adults) constantly touch their masks.

I dont generally see children wearing masks correctly, said Angie Bowman, a mother of four and an educator based in Medford, Oregon. I see them under their nose or chewing on the center of the mask, which then pulls it off the nose. And Ive seen kids use their mask to wipe their nose and then put it back on. Its gross. Their masks end up being wet and sticky and probably have more germs on them. Children, in my opinion, should not be wearing masks at all.

The CDC recommends that reusable masks be washed as soon as they are soiled or at least once a day. But most parents are unaware of this directive and send their children to school wearing the same mask for days on end. Disposable masks, which are designed to be thrown away after a single use, are often re-worn for weeks.

Collateral Damage

What will be the long-term effects of masking and other COVID-19 mitigation measures on our children? No one can say for certain. What we do know is that suicide rates are at an all-time high in the United States, according to the World Health Organization, though that rate has been trending upward for some time. We have also seen sharp rises in child abuse and domestic violence since the beginning of the COVID-19 mitigation measures, as well as in overdose deaths, especially among young people. According to the CDC, more than 96,750 drug overdose deaths were reported between March 2020 and March 2021, an increase of almost 30 percent from 2019.

At the same time, more children than ever before are being prescribed anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and even anti-psychotics. So are adults. According to government data, there has been an upsurge in adults experiencing anxiety and depressive disorders since the beginning of the pandemic.

Im vehemently opposed to masking children, said Sherry Syence, a mother of 11-year-old twins who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Not only does it jeopardize their physical health, it sends them a message that theyre vectors of disease. I dont want my kids being in a fear-based environment. I want them to experience the full joy of childhood, to breathe freely, and to have normal interactions with other people that arent compromised by wearing a mask. They need to see other peoples full facial expressions.

Syences twins attend a small homeschool co-operative where masking is up to the parents. Syence and her husband decided to take their children out of public school because of the mask mandates, among other reasons.

Never mind that masks offer little if any protection against respiratory viruses, Barke said. Never mind that asymptomatic children simply dont spread infection to at-risk adults. We must always ask what are the consequences of our mandates?

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist and book author. She worked on a child survival campaign in Niger West Africa, taught post-colonial literature to nontraditional students in inner-city Atlanta, and appeared live on prime-time TV in Paris, France, to speak out against child slavery in Pakistan. She is a frequent contributor to The Epoch Times. Learn more and sign up for her free weekly newsletter at JenniferMargulis.net
Hundreds of Chicagoans protest against city's vaccine mandate at a rally outside the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, Ill., on Nov 3, 2021. (Cara Ding/Epoch Times)

Mass Walkouts, Protests Against Vaccine Mandates Spread Across US

Thousands of people across the United States took the day off from work on Nov. 3 to participate in walkouts and demonstrations in protest of CCP virus vaccine mandates.

In Phoenix, Arizona, more than 200 people gathered in protest outside the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza. Many carried homemade signs and wore patriotic clothing in support of their message of medical freedom.

A government contractor in his 20s, who asked that his name not be used, told The Epoch Times he took the day off from his job as an engineer, knowing theyre going to fire me when a vaccine mandate begins on Dec. 8.

Im looking for other jobs, he said. They have no regard for an employees choice.

Carrie Cullen, a registered nurse at Banner Health Medical Center in Phoenix, said she came to the rally to support a cause that she believes inmedical freedom.

Banners vaccine mandate became effective on Nov. 1, she said.

I was granted a religious exemption. Still, Im just fighting for freedom, Cullen said.

Registered nurses Carrie Cullen (L) and Rachel Wallace protest in support of medical freedom at a rally held in Phoenix on Nov. 3, 2021. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Protesters get their messages across at a rally in support of medical freedom in Phoenix on Nov. 3, 2021. (Allan Stein/Epoch Times)

Rachel Wallace, a registered nurse for the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, said the rally serves as a focal point for those who refuse COVID-19 vaccines and mandates. The clinic plans to terminate any staff member who isnt fully vaccinated by Jan. 3, unless they receive an approved medical or religious exemption.

Its great to have people come together fighting for the same rights, Wallace said.

Both nurses said they havent been vaccinated.

That is what we are opposed to, Wallace said.

A coalition of grassroots citizens groups came together to protest vaccination mandates and government overreach in Royal Oak, Mich., on Nov. 3, 2021 (Steven Kovac/The Epoch Times)

In Michigan, more than 250 protesters from a dozen southeast communities gathered in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak in Oakland County to demonstrate against vaccine mandates.

Several of them told The Epoch Times they had already lost their jobs for refusing the shot.

Health care industry worker Ken Gulock said he was let go by his company two weeks before the firm pays out its annual bonuses.

You have to be employed on the payout day. My decision not to take the vaccine cost me and my family $30,000. I have no regrets. I wouldnt change a thing.

School paraprofessional Alexandra Zilch lost her job and a needed benefit package when her district let her go for refusing to be vaccinated.

Im here to speak up for the liberty our Founding Fathers won for us, Zilch said.

Protesters make their voices heard against vaccination mandates in Royal Oak, Mich., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Steven Kovac/The Epoch Times)

Matt Rees, a team leader at a large Detroit-area financial company, says he was forced to resign last month for refusing the shot.

They kept pressuring me to tell them if I was vaccinated. I thought it was an invasion of my privacy, Rees told The Epoch Times. I feel they were creating a discriminatory system where one employee did not have the same privileges as another based on his vaccine status.

Some, like me, had to wear masks and undergo testing, or resign.

Rees receives no unemployment benefits.

I dont want any money from the government. I am interviewing for another job, living off savings, and doing jobs on the side to scrape by.

Rees says his church has really rallied around him.

Im sticking with my convictions and following the Lord. Id say to anybody out there, Dont fear their reprisals!

A woman leads a crowd of anti-vaccination mandate protesters in chants and patriotic songs in Royal Oak, Mich., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Steven Kovac/The Epoch Times)

Melissa Williams told The Epoch Times: We parents are standing up for freedom and for our children.

The parents here today oppose communism, totalitarianism, and government overreach. So they came out on this cold day in November to stand up for all parents and their kids.

Its tragic. So many people here, so many professionals, have lost their jobs.

My own son was denied admission to the university of his choice because he was unvaccinated. They denied his request for religious exemption.

Lynn Mills, a mother of four, told The Epoch Times: One of my grown sons gave up an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii rather than be vaccinated. I am very proud of him for standing by his principles.

COVID-19 survivor Anna Spoto said she came out to stand up for her God-given rights as an American.

I am here to take a stand against tyranny and medical discrimination, she told The Epoch Times.

A man wields a flag at a rally against COVID-19 vaccines in Florida on Nov. 3, 2021. (Jann Falkenstern/The Epoch Times)

At a rally in Florida, Chase Linde of Sarasota said he felt like Americans freedoms were being eroded. He said people are fed up and are fighting back, and that elections that took place in Virginia are proof of that.

I absolutely feel like our liberties have been stolen from us, he said while draped in an American flag while waving at honking cars driving by on Bayfront Avenue. I have two small children and one on the way, and I do not want face-diapers on them.

Linde said the statistics and data dont support jabbing children.

Whitney Sheffield brought her 10-month-old daughter Cameran to the rally because she wants everyone to know that she isnt comfortable with giving children a shot that hasnt been properly researched and developed.

There will be no jab for this one, she said, holding her daughter close. Vaccines take years to perfect, and this one was rolled out too quick, and too many people are getting sick from the shot.

Demonstrators in Marietta, Ga., protest against vaccine mandates on Nov. 3, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

On a cold morning in Marietta, Georgia, about 30 people stood with signs on a street corner to protest the vaccine mandate. Many passing cars and trucks honked in approval, but a few shouted insults.

Occasionally, the crowd broke into chants of No Mandate! but, for the most part, people talked quietly together while holding up homemade signs.

Most of the protesters worked at a nearby Lockheed Martin plant, according to Tracy Nelson, one of the events organizers. The remainder included teachers, public workers, Starbucks employees, and others.

A few people came to the protest from as far away as Florida, Nelson said. Many see the mandated vaccine as one more government imposition in a long line of unwanted orders, including the mask mandate.

The vaccine mandate is going to go whatever way it goes, said Nelson. And then the push is going to be for critical race theory.

Most people interviewed by The Epoch Times dont oppose the vaccine, although many hadnt taken it for personal reasons. However, they strongly oppose the mandate.

Jeff Langstrom holds a flag at a vaccine protest in Marietta, Ga., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

Our kids are all vaccinated for school, we were all vaccinated as kids for school, Nelson said. But if you have to force something that worksit just doesnt seem like you need to force something.

To many who were present, the mandate is a violation of the right to ones bodily autonomy. Some protesters held signs reading My Body, My Choice.

One protester, Roya, was an immigrant from Iran. She said that the increasing number of government mandates for the sake of public safety reminds her of her home countrys descent into tyranny.

Its like women covering up in Iran, she said. The government said, Its for your protection, you need to have all this limitation for your protection, for your life to be better.

It wasnt better. It got worse and worse, and all of our rights slowly got taken away.

She said she was protesting because she didnt want America to become like Iran.

I dont want to see it happening again, because America is a beautiful country, she said.

Demonstrators in Marietta, Ga., protest against vaccine mandates on Nov. 3, 2021. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

Some protesters said they attended out of a sense of obligation toward others.

Im just helping people feel like theyre not alone, helping people stand for what they believe is right at the end of the day, said protester Katie Carroll.

Were fighting for everybody, protester Phillip Eakin said. Whether you agree with us or not, were fighting for you.

Jeff Langston said he felt deceived by both media and government. By failing to make the truth clear, the media and government have left room for conspiracy theories to arise, he said.

Often, the same people the government relied on to keep society running during the pandemic before the vaccine are the ones who will lose their jobs over vaccine mandates, he said.

They couldnt be without us in the beginning, he said. Now theyre going to get rid of us. Its tyranny by proxy.

Hundreds of Chicagoans protest against the citys vaccine mandate at a rally outside the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, on Nov 3, 2021. (Sam Wang/The Epoch Times)

About 500 people gathered in front of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago to protest against the vaccine mandates.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued the first vaccine mandate in late August, which required state employees, contractors, and vendors who work in congregate facilities to get their first dose of vaccine by Oct. 4. Others included in the mandate were certain health care workers, school personnel, and higher education employees.

Those with approved religious or medical exemptions could opt for regular testing instead.

However, that deadline has been extended several times in face of pushbacks from employees and their unions; the latest deadline is Nov. 30.

Currently, the states largest public employee unionAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31which represents more than 10,000 employees who work in state prisons and juvenile justice facilities, are still negotiating with the state on the mandate.

Lynette Taylor holds an American flag at a protest against the citys vaccine mandate at a rally outside the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago on Nov 3, 2021. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

Cook County health employee Lynette Taylor, 62, said she didnt get vaccinated by an Oct. 1 deadline and was told by her employer to leave the Cook County jail on that date. As a Pentecostal Christian, her religious exemption was denied with little explanation, she said.

Last week, Taylor was told she was put on no-pay status. She will lose about $4,000 per month.

She lives with and financially supports her mother, and she has some savings, but cant go on like this for long, she said. Some of her co-workers, who dont want to get the vaccinations, have begun looking for work elsewhere.

It is just not right that they are taking away your livelihood over this. There should be freedom of choice, and accommodations for people who dont want to get vaccinations, Taylor said.

Jackson Elliott, Jann Falkenstern, Steven Kovac, and Cara Ding contributed to this report.
Mom Couldnt Visit Her Sons Grave on His 41st Birthday, Grateful When Stranger Lays Flowers

Living far away, the mother of a boy who died suddenly four decades ago was unable to visit his grave on what would have been his 41st birthday. Heartbroken, she confided in her family that she wished someone could place flowers on his grave.

Luckily, with the help of social media, her daughter made it happen.

Pamela Lund, 75, a retired therapist from New South Wales, Australia, lost her son Mathew Owen Bird to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Mathew was born on Oct. 8, 1980, and died on May 3, 1981. He was buried in Nowra2 hours south of Sydneywhere they lived and where Pamelas late husband was stationed at the Naval base.

Today, Pamela lives roughly 10 hours drive from Nowra in the small town of Woolgoolga and it has been years since she could visit Mathews grave.

On the day of my sons 41st birthday, I posted [in a family chat group] that I wished I could place a flower on Mathews grave, Pamela explained to The Epoch Times. Unbeknown to me, my youngest daughter, Sally Hutchison, a local paramedic, posted in a private Facebook group: Paramedic Good Karma Network.

The local paramedic group, according to Pamela, was set up during the pandemic to help other paramedics out when they couldnt travel.

Not long after Pamela put forward her request, her daughter got in touch with her and informed her that she had organized the flowers and a paramedic in Nowra had come forward to help place the flowers on Mathews grave.

Baby Mathews photo was taken two weeks before he died. (Courtesy of Pamela Lund)

The kind stranger, Stuart Bradshaw, took photos of a beautiful bouquet of blue flowers laying on Mathews resting place and sent them to Pamela. The grieving mom was overcome with gratitude by both her daughters and Stuarts kindness and got in touch with him to say thank you.

He was very unassuming and just happy to have helped, she said.

Pamela shared her story, and its resolution, on a Facebook pageThe Kindness Pandemicand was once again overcome by the outpouring of love and empathy from strangers.

There were so many lovely comments that I was unable to keep up with my responses to them, she said. It touched so many hearts, especially those who had lost children of their own.

It was also surprising that so many people took the time to read and comment on the words on his plaque, she continued, including the widow of the man who made it 40 years ago.

After conversations in the comments section shifted toward wanting to pay it forward, one netizen, Anne Kent-Jones, started a new Facebook groupFlowers for Loved Onesso that people could request someone else to place flowers on their behalf.

(Courtesy of Pamela Lund)

Pamela is all too aware of the enduring pain of losing a loved one. There was little known of cot death back then, she reflected, giving thanks for the grief counseling and support groups that help people today. I want those who are new to the loss of a child to know that you never get over it, you will carry them in your heart forever.

Part of you dies, she continued, but eventually, you will build a new normal, so just hang in there.

After being on the receiving end of kindness, Pamela urged others to keep doing acts of kindness for yourself, even if you feel like giving up.

Hers, she admits, is only one story of kindness among so many, especially in the helping professions, and firmly believes, one little act of kindness can virtually change peoples lives.

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
Nurses and doctors hold a morning briefing about a patient at the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Surrey Memorial Hospital in Surrey, B.C., on June 4, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

Ontario Hospitals Can Still Mandate COVID Vaccines for Employees Despite Fords Statement, MPP Says

An Ontario MPP says despite Premier Doug Fords statement that health-care workers dont have to be COVID-19 vaccinated, health institutions can still mandate the policy on their own.



Ford said on Nov. 3 that he wont force hospital workers to be vaccinated in light of the challenges other provinces have had in implementing vaccine mandates in their health care institutions.



The premier said hes not prepared to jeopardize Ontarios health-care system, risking the lives of residents who need critical health services.

Having looked at the evidence, our government has decided to maintain its flexible approach by leaving human resourcing decisions up to individual hospitals, he said.

Roman Baber, an independent MPP who represents Torontos York-Centre riding, says the premier is misrepresenting reality.

Tens of thousands of [health-care workers] will be fired since almost all institutions have their own termination policy! Delivery of care to millions of Ontarians is jeopardized, Baber wrote on Twitter on Nov. 3 following Fords statement.

More than a dozen hospitals across Ontario have implemented the vaccine mandate for their staff to date, prior to Fords latest announcement.

In late September, about 170 staff members at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital in Windsor were put on unpaid leave for not receiving their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine by the deadlines set out by their employers.

Other health-care institutions that have implemented COVID-19 vaccination mandates for their employees include Torontos University Health Network, the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, The Ottawa Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre, Cornwall Community Hospital, Brockville General Hospital, and William Osler Health System.



Baber says the premier should protect the livelihood of the unvaccinated health professionals, and pass a bill or call for a moratorium on the termination of healthcare workers.

When asked to comment, a spokesperson for the premiers office said, our statement stands. Asked if health-care institutions are able to set up their own vaccine mandates, the spokesperson didnt respond by publication time.

On Nov. 3, Quebec reversed course on suspending unvaccinated health care staff by its planned deadline of Nov. 15.



Health Minister Christian Dube said the termination of these professionals would negatively impact the provinces health system.

To deprive ourselves of 8,000 people [in health-care staff ranks] will have devastating consequences for our network, Dube said at a press conference.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy greets supporters during an election night party in Asbury Park, N.J., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo)

New Jersey Incumbent Projected Election Winner as Tallying Continues: AP

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection on Wednesday, defeating Republican former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, announced The Associated Press.

Unofficial results show Murphy winning with 50 percent of the votes by a margin of 19,294 votes, while Ciattarelli gained 49 percent of the votes, with 98 percent of precincts reporting, according to the New Jersey Herald. Out of 6,348 precincts, 199 still need to report their results.

With more than 2.3 million votes cast, the voter turnout was about 34 percent of New Jerseyans who can vote.

New Jersey Secretary of State Tahesha Way said on Monday at a press conference that more than 200,000 New Jerseyans cast their ballots during early in person voting and nearly 500,000 voted by mail, according to the New Jersey Herald. These votes represent more than 10 percent of the states registered voters.

Ballots remaining to be counted included a significant number of votes from predominantly Democratic Essex County, along with mail-in votes spread across other counties. Murphy won the mail-in vote by a wide margin even in Republican-leaning counties like Monmouth.

The Ciattarelli campaign spokeswoman Stami Williams disputed the call because of the close margin, calling it irresponsible.

With the candidates separated by a fraction of a percent out of 2.4 million ballots cast, its irresponsible of the media to make this call when the New Jersey Secretary of State doesnt even know how many ballots are left to be counted. https://t.co/DnwIRASspC  Stami Williams (@StamiLW) November 3, 2021

Last night was a historic one for New Jersey Republicans, who picked up at least a half dozen Assembly seats, several Senate seats, along with county and local seats up and down the state, Williams said in a statement.

Jack is proud to lead our ticket and our partys resurgence. Right now, our team is focused on making sure all the legal votes are counted and our citizens can have confidence in the system, the spokeswoman added.

In 1981, Republican Gov. Tom Kean won the election in New Jersey by only 1,797 votes out of 3 million cast.

Murphy was scheduled to speak later on Wednesday.

Ciattarellis campaign spending nearly equaled the governors and outpaced the GOPs performance four years ago, but Murphys advantages included 1 million more registered Democrat voters.

No Democrat has won reelection as governor in New Jersey since Brendan Byrne in 1977.

Account manager Mike Dvorak works with board workers to count Bergen County mail-in ballots in Hackensack, N.J., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Seth Wenig/ AP Photo)

The reason why tallying votes took longer than expected was that New Jersey rolled out new technology, including new voting machines this year. For example, in Paterson, election officials could not count ballots because they accidentally locked the machines, according to New Jersey Herald.

In Newark and some other New Jersey cities, poll workers in 56 districts did not count votes due to poll worker error, reported the New Jersey Herald. A judge order is needed to reinstate their access to the machines.

The Contenders

Murphy has held leadership roles at Goldman Sachss offices in Germany and Hong Kong for more than 20 years, and served as an ambassador to Germany during the Obama administration. He was also a finance chair for the Democratic National Committee.

He campaigned on a range of policies implemented during his tenure as a governor, such as tax fairness for middle-class families, minimum wage at $15 an hour, more affordable public education, more child care, Democrat-backed green policies, and legalizing marijuana. His campaigns slogan has been, Its about how we move forward.

However, the effects of his policies had drawn criticism from his challenger and Republican lawmakers. Murphy was also criticized for his decisions to increase taxes, impose mask mandates on children, his policy to admit patients to nursing homes regardless of their COVID-19 status, and his delayed response to Hurricane Ida.

Murphy was endorsed by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for reelection.

Former President Barack Obama also stumped for the incumbent at a campaign rally in Newarkthe most populous city in the stateabout a week and a half before the election.

Make sure you vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, including state legislatures where a lot of important work gets done, Obama told the audience at the rally. Give Phil Murphy four more years.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an openly socialist member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also stumped for Murphy a campaign rally at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Sanders called Murphy one of the most progressive governors in the country and asked the audience to vote for Murphy and bring others to vote for him as well.

Murphy won his first term in 2017 with 56 percent of the vote, beating Republican then-Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno who received 42 percent of the vote. Voter turnout at that time was 36 percent.

Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli is a certified public accountant, a two-time small-business owner, a former New Jersey assemblyman, and a lifelong resident of New Jersey.

He campaigned under the banner Lets Fix New Jersey. He told New Jerseyans that, as a governor, he would address the states most pressing issues, such as the highest property taxes in the nation, state government overspending, insufficient support for local and state police, and reforming public school curriculum.

Ciattarelli also promised to foster business growth and create more jobs in the state.

He had raised more than $13 million to finance his campaign and spent $12.4 million as of Oct. 29, according to a report by New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (pdf). Murphy had raised more than $16 million for his campaign and spent nearly $12.6 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Worldwide Walkout: NYC Protesters Rally Against Vaccine Mandates and Bills That Target Exemptions

MANHATTAN, New YorkThousands of people gathered outside of New York City Hall on Wednesday afternoon to hold a rally and march across the Brooklyn Bridge as part of worldwide walkout protests against vaccine mandates and in support of freedom.

Most participants expressed opposition to vaccine mandates imposed by federal and city officials.

Notably, two of the featured speakers spoke out against a new bill that would cancel religious exemptions for all adults in New York and another bill that would require all children to take a shot in order to attend school.

One of these speakers was Michael Kane, founder of Teachers For Choice. Kane has been a teacher in the NYC Department of Education (DOE) for over 14 years and has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In 2019, assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz from The Bronx introduced and successfully passed a bill that repealed the religious exemption to vaccination for all children in New York State, Kane told The Epoch Times.

So anyone under the age of 18 cannot get a religious exemption to vaccination in the State of New York to attend school.

Now that same assemblyman has placed two bills to be considered for law in 2022. One of those bills would revoke the religious exemption for adults 18 and over.

The other bill would require a COVID vaccine mandate for all children to attend school. These are two separate bills, and both are very dangerous and scary for every New Yorker throughout the state, Kane said.

In a response to a request for comment, the communications director at Dinowitzs office wrote, People who continue to choose to not get vaccinated for personal ideology, not based on legitimate medical science, are directly responsible for the continuation of this pandemic despite tens of millions of Americans making the responsible choice to protect our society against preventable diseases.

A protester outside New York City Hall on Nov. 3, 2021. (Enrico Trigoso/The Epoch Times)

Another featured speaker was Kevin Jenkins, CEO of Urban Global Health Alliance.

When New York stands up, the whole world stands up! he said, stirring the crowd.

I believe, in the next couple of weeks, were gonna have a million people marching down this street.

Who cares about the elections? The government has failed us from day one. They said: Youre not important, Big Tech is important. They said: Youre not important, their education cartel is important.

This is our moment, not Martin Luther Kings moment, not Malcolm Xs moment, not Ida B. Wells moment. They fought for us, they stood up during their season, during their challenge, what are we going to do? Jenkins asked.

Kevin Jenkins speaks outside New York City Hall on Nov. 3, 2021. (Enrico Trigoso/The Epoch Times)

Another speaker was a 23-year Department of Education employee who has filed a sister case with Kane against the mayor.

He drew examples from history, such as the Revolutionary War, Boston Tea Party, and The Emancipation Proclamation.

The people move first, he said. The people move before the legislation came, the people move first.

Were about to make history. The new pages of history is being written right now. My daughters gonna read about this movement right now. Im a history teacher, Im telling you  our kids are gonna read about this moment right now.

This is not about blackness, this is not about whiteness, this is not about Asianness, this is a peoples movement.

Every single one of you right now, yall got a little something inside of you that was like: yo, Im not taking that. Let me tell you what that little something is. Thats the god inside of you.

He asked people to join next Wednesday with no signs or flags for a prayer vigil.

This is a spiritual war. We gotta fight this war in the physical and in the spiritual.

A protester hands out stickers outside New York City Hall on Nov. 3, 2021. (Enrico Trigoso/The Epoch Times)

The Epoch Times reached out to City Hall for comment.
Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, in Cushing, Okla., on March 24, 2016. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

Oil Prices Rise Ahead of OPEC+ Meeting

LONDONOil prices rose on Thursday, lifted by expectations that OPEC and its allies will stick to slow output increases despite calls from the United States and large importers for additional supply to cool prices.

Brent crude was up 94 cents, or 1.2 percent, at $82.93 a barrel by 0940 GMT and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 62 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $81.48.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, meets later on Thursday and is expected to reconfirm plans to keep monthly supply increases at 400,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Oil prices have traded in a narrow range thus far this week, with investors assessing the likelihood of OPEC+ succumbing to pressure to add more crude to global oil markets as well as deliberations from the Federal Reserve policy meeting, said Ehsan Khoman, head of emerging markets research at MUFG.

Citi analysts said that OPEC+ is likely to stick to current policy despite pressure from oil importers.

The majority of OPEC+ members cannot raise production from current levels, the bank said in a note, adding that even Saudi Arabia has emphasised the need to exercise caution given continuing uncertainty over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oil prices had earlier been in negative territory after Iran and six global powers agreed to resume talks on Nov. 29 to revive the 2015 deal on Irans nuclear programme. Iran has demanded that the United States drops sanctions that have limited its oil exports.

On Wednesday both benchmarks posted their biggest daily percentage declines since early August after weekly inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed a larger than expected rise in crude stocks last week.

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin
"IN GOD WE TRUST" hangs in the meeting area of the Orange County Board of Education in Costa Mesa, Calif., on Oct. 7, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Orange County Board of Education Trustee Steps Down Amid Legal Controversy

Orange County Board of Education Trustee Tim Shaw stepped down from his seat on Nov. 3 over a legal challenge for simultaneously sitting on La Habra City Council.

My colleagues on the board are thoughtful, hardworking, and well-intentioned public servants, Shaw said at a Nov. 3 meeting. Im deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve students and families of Orange County.

Shaw submitted his resignation letter on Nov. 1 to avoid the expensive legal fees required to fight the lawsuit, he said.

The financial exposure and risk to my family was simply too great to go through with the litigation, Shaw said. Therefore, Im making the difficult decision to resign from the Board of Education rather than incur the financial hardship of litigating this matter.

Legal fees are estimated to be around $250,000, Shaw told The Epoch Times. He said a seat that only pays $500 a month was not worth the financial risk.

Melissa Lauden is the name behind the lawsuit, according to Shaw.

(Courtesy of the Orange County Department of Education)

Prior to running for his seat on the board of education, Shaw served on La Habra City Council since 2008.

To ensure there would be no violations by holding two political seats, Shaw confirmed with the Orange County Registrar of Voters there would be no clash of loyalties.

My first question was, could I serve on the Board of Education and the City Council at the same time? Shaw said. It appeared to me at the time that the answer was yes, as others had served simultaneously on the board of education and city council.

Shaw further informed the La Habra City Clerk during the 2020 reelection period for the city council, and he received no objection.

Without notice, Shaw was faced in Jan. 2021 with a legal challenge regarding his two elected seats, he said.

Despite the challenge, there were no specific issues regarding conflict of interest between his positions, according to Shaw.

Rather than paying the fees to hire an attorney and experience financial distress, he made the decision to resign, he said.

He was an exemplary board member and did such an amazing job of defending children and honoring parental rights. I am so disappointed that he was forced to resign, Board President Mari Barke told The Epoch Times.

The Board of Education will have 60 days to either make a provisional appointment or call a special election to fill the vacant seat, Orange County Board of Education Communications Director Nicole Pichardo told The Epoch Times.

While the boards appointment will be temporary, a permanent successor will be voted in during the upcoming June 2022 election.
A person receives the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in New York City on Oct. 21, 2021. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

OSHA Vaccine Mandate Released; 84 Million Workers Face Jan. 4 Deadline

The Biden administration has released the new rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that requires 84 million private-sector workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The administration has also announced its rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requiring 17 million health care workers at facilities that receive federal funding to be vaccinated.

The White House is also pushing back the deadline for workers in those sectors to get fully vaccinated to Jan. 4, 2022, according to a senior administration official. That date also applies to federal contractors.

In September, the Biden administration stated it would require employees at federal contractors to get vaccinated by Dec. 8.

We wanted to do this because were really aligning it to make it easierto make it as easy as possible for businesses to implement these requirements and for workers to comply, the official said when asked about pushing back the deadline.

The Biden administration received multiple letters from industries requesting the vaccination deadline be moved back until after the holiday season.

The OSHA rule requires employers with 100 or more employees to put vaccine requirements in place for all staff, or face fines of up to $13,600 per violation.

The agency can also fine an additional $13,600 per day that an employer does not abate the violation. For a willful, or serious, violation OSHA can issue a fine up to $136,000.

The agency is allowed to put into place an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) when it determines workers are at grave risk.

Under the rule, workers who arent vaccinated are required to submit a weekly negative COVID test at no expense to their employer. Unvaccinated workers are also required to wear masks when on the job. Health care workers dont have the testing option.

The ETS requires employers to determine and keep a record of the vaccination status of each employee and report all COVID deaths and hospitalizations to OSHA.

OSHA has also indicated the rule may be expanded to include small businesses. According to the 490-page document, the agency is seeking public comments to determine whether to expand the scope of the ETS.

The rule takes effect immediately upon publication, scheduled for Nov. 5, in the federal register.

White House officials say the new ETS is well within OSHAs authority under the law and consistent with its requirements to protect workers from health and safety hazards, including infectious diseases.

They say there is well-established legal precedent for OSHAs authority to evaluate existing scientific evidence and apply data to develop safety and health standards.

The ETS says it preempts state and local laws that ban or limit an employer from requiring vaccination, face covering, or testing.

However, several Republican governors and state attorneys general vowed to fight the new OSHA rule in court.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Oct. 11 banning Texas businesses from requiring vaccines for employees, or customers.

And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis filed suit Oct. 28 against the Biden administrations order requiring employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated.

Additional lawsuits against the administration are piling up following the release of the OSHA rule.

The attorneys general of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee announced they would take legal action and filed a lawsuit (pdf) in a bid to challenge the rule affecting federal contractors.

Missouris Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, all also announced their intent to sue, or join lawsuits.

The Republican National Committee said it would sue the administration and characterized the rule as an attack on frontline workers, first responders, small businesses, and the rights of the American people.

In a statement issued on Nov. 4, Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, confirmed that GOP lawmakers on the panel will introduce immediately a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify OSHAs emergency rule when it is received by Congress.

The administrations rule for health care workers also is receiving pushback from several hospital CEOs who warned that it would prompt the closure of departments.

One executive in Texas warned that it would shut down an entire hospital.

Government lawyers on Nov. 3 urged a federal judge not to block vaccine mandates in response to an October lawsuit in which two dozen plaintiffs, including members of each military branch, argue that all three executive orders are unconstitutional in part because of an apparent lack of religious accommodations.

While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good, Biden said in a statement.

Despite the widespread pushback, Biden has framed the issue as a choice between getting more people vaccinated, or prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, numerous studiesincluding some published by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionhave shown that vaccines dont prevent transmission of the virus.
Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, Health Minister, Martin Foley and Victorian COVID-19 Testing Commander, Jeroen Weimar arrive at the daily press conference on July 27, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

Over 55,000 People Sign Petition to Repeal Australian States New Pandemic Bill

A petition to repeal the Victorian governments proposed Public Health and Wellbeing (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021 has garnered over 56,000 signatures as of Nov. 4.

The petition, which Rebel News launched, alleges that the New Section 8A of the Bill (pdf) will give Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews the same unlimited power as that provided to the Nazi dictatorship.

According to the Bill, the premier will have the power to declare a pandemic, extend the ban indefinitely, and exercise any emergency powers he deems reasonably necessary, including closing the domestic borders, introducing health restrictions, and allowing police to enter private premises without a warrant. Victorian residents will also face prison time or hefty fines of up to AU$90,000 (US$67,570) if deemed failing to follow government-mandated health orders and pose a risk to the health of others.

Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution empowered one man to pass Emergency Decrees leading to the Nazi dictatorship, the petition said.

Under the decree issued on the basis of Article 48, Hitler was given authority to curtail constitutional rights including habeas corpus, free expression of opinion, freedom of the press, rights of assembly and the privacy of communications.

Supreme Court of Victoria building in Melbourne, Australia, on April 18, 2012 (Wikimedia Commons)

For 80 years, we in the West have repeatedly declared never againagain has arrived, and this is the moment of truth.

New Section 8A of Daniel Andrews Bill is our Article 48. It affords Andrews the same tyrannical powers that went unchecked in 1933.

The petition comes five days after thousands of Victorians, led by independent state MP Catherine Cumming, marched through Melbourne on Oct. 30 to Parliament House to protest the proposed new laws.

Everyone knows that the government is introducing new legislation to get more power. But who would trust the government with more power? protest attendee and Liberal Democrats MP David Limbrick said, reported Rebel News.

We must respect the rights of Victorians. If this Bill passes, they will have a permanent emergency in the hands of the premier. We cannot let this Bill pass.

The Bill has already passed the states lower house on Oct. 28. Once passed in the upper house, which is expected to happen between Nov. 16  19, at that point, the only way to stop the Bill would be for the Governor of Victoria, Linda Dessau, to not give her consent to the new legislation.

The primary constitutional responsibilities of Governors of Australian states include calling elections, presiding over the Executive Council, giving Royal Assent to bills passed by upper and lower houses, dissolving the Legislative Assembly in exceptional circumstances, and appointing and dismissing Ministers.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Melbourne, Australia, to oppose the Victorian Governments pandemic legislation on Oct. 30, 2021. (supplied)

The petition calls on the Victorian Governor to withhold her consent to the Bill and warn Premier Andrews of the consequences of his proposed course.

Though it is unprecedented, we turn to the Governor now and ask that the Honourable Linda Dessau AC act according to Australias core principles of government and democracy, the petition wrote.

The petition from Rebel News comes after the peak legal body, the Victorian Bar, has issued an open letter calling the new Bill as a gross representation, saying that the Bar was never provided with a draft Bill.

The overriding concern is that the Bill confers on the Health Minister what is, in a practical sense, an effectively unlimited power to rule the state by decree, for an effectively indefinite period, and without effective judicial or parliamentary oversight, the lawyers argued.

As of 5:00 p.m. on Nov.4, 56,693 people had signed the petition.
FILE - Afghans inspect damage of Ahmadi family house after U.S. drone strike on Aug. 29, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan. An independent Pentagon review has concluded that the U.S. drone strike that killed innocent Kabul civilians and children in the final days of the Afghanistan war was not caused by misconduct or negligence, and it doesn't recommend any disciplinary action, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi, File)

Pentagon Says No Crime Committed in Airstrike That Killed Afghan Civilians

An investigation into a United States airstrike that killed 10 Afghan civilians has found that no war crime was committed in carrying out the attack, a top military official said Nov. 3.

The probe into the Aug. 29 airstrike near the Kabul International Airport was directed by the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austen, and carried out by the Inspector General of the Department of the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said.

It was a mistake, Said told reporters Nov. 3 when speaking of the strike.

The airstrike killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organization.

Under international lawmilitary necessity, distinction, and proportionalitybroadly dictate what is considered legal use of force in armed conflict.

Had I found an individual that failed to perform to the level of criminal misconduct, or criminal negligence, and that was the cause of failure of this whole thing, we wouldve spun that off into an investigation into an individual, said Said.

The lieutenant general added it was execution errors and communication breakdowns that lead to the loss of civilian life, and that the conclusions of the investigation do not prevent the chain of command from performing disciplinary actions against those involved in the strike.

The report of the investigation remains classified as the procedures for executing such strikes are classified.

Said said the probe examined all the relevant imagery, intelligence streams, and chat communications between those in the strike cell, and conducted 29 interviews under oath, including 22 with individuals directly involved with the strike.

The defensive over-the-horizon strike took place days after two suicide bombers attacked crowds flocking to the Kabul airport Aug. 26 to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in the wake of U.S. troop withdrawal from the country. The bombers killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 60 Afghans.

The airstrike was launched against a white Toyota Corolla sedan roughly 1.8 miles from the airport.

A misinterpretation of intelligence led to the vehicle being designated as an imminent threat that had explosives in its trunk. The vehicle was also confirmed to have had a laptop bag inside of it similar to that used to carry out the suicide bombing days earlier, according to Said.

The lieutenant general said the airstrike against the vehicle was unique in that it was executed in self-defense, in a limited time window under a dynamic situation, making it different to traditional over-the-horizon air strikes.

He said there have been no other strikes like it in the past year.

Said said those operating the strike cells were monitoring multiple threat streams simultaneously at the time of the attack. The white Corolla was monitored for eight hours before the strike was launched.

I had the luxury of time to review that data over weeks, [those conducting the strike] didnt  he said.

They had the same data, but they had to assimilate it, digest it, and make a decision in a matter of hours. So, I have to acknowledge that.

Said told reporters that if the classified information could be shared you would agree with me that the attack was made in error and without malicious intent.

However, he admitted there was physical evidence of a child in the vehicle about two minutes before the launch of the strike.

The lieutenant general said the child is not obvious, unless you are looking for it.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters two days after the attack that it appeared to have been a righteous strike and that at least one of the people killed was a facilitator for the Islamic State group that carried out the suicide bombing.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, admitted at a Sept. 17 news conference that the attack was launched in error.

Said said an analysis of secondary explosions caused by the strike shows that they were muted, but he added the consensus among everyone he interviewed was that this one was more pronounced than usual, referring to the explosion.

He suggested it could be caused by something other than explosives in the trunk, like a propane tank.

The investigations report makes three recommendations on how to avoid future loss of civilian life during time-restrained, over-the-horizon strikes.

They are: implementing procedures in a strike cell that mitigate the risk of confirmation bias; sharing information outside of the cell to crosscheck situational awareness; and review the process of how assessments of the presence of women and children are conducted during an attack that involves an imminent threat.
Polish security forces block illegal aliens stuck on the border with Belarus in Usnarz Gorny, Poland, on Sept. 1, 2021. (Czarek Sokolowski/Reuters)

Poland Says Belarus Staged Armed Intrusion at Border, Summons Envoy

WARSAW, PolandPoland accused Belarus on Nov. 3 of staging an armed cross-border intrusion and said it had summoned the Belarusian charge daffaires in protest over what it said was a deliberate escalation of the migrant crisis at the frontier.

Belarus rejected the allegation as unfounded and intended to sully its image. Minsk also denies Polish and European Union accusations that its deliberately encouraging illegal migrants to enter Poland and other EU states via Belarusian territory.

Poland has imposed a state of emergency at the border to stem a surge in the number of migrants from countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq trying to enter its territory via Belarus.

Polands foreign ministry said unidentified uniformed individuals armed with long guns had crossed into Polish territory from Belarus on the night of Nov. 1.

Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk forwarded an emphatic protest  against the violation of the Polish state border, emphasizing that the actions taken by the Belarusian authorities in recent weeks have the increasingly evident hallmarks of a deliberate escalation, the ministry said in a statement.

[He] pointed out that Poland deems such actions unacceptable and will not tolerate them  and urged the Belarusian side to explain the incident immediately.

Escalation of Tension

Belarusian State Border Guard Committee spokesperson Anton Bychkovsky denied the accusation, which he said was aimed at allowing Poland to extend its state of emergency at the border.

This suggests that the main purpose of these actions lies in the field of the escalation of tension and further attempts to create a negative image of Belarus, the official Belta news agency quoted him as saying.

The summoning of Belarusian envoy Alexander Chesnovsky, which took place on Nov. 2, was the third time in a month that he has been called to answer questions about the situation at the border, where hundreds have been trying to cross illegally every day.

The European Commission and Warsaw say the flow of migrants has been orchestrated by Belarus as a form of hybrid warfare designed to pressure the EU over sanctions it imposed on Minsk. Belarus denies this.

By Pawel Florkiewicz, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, and Matthias Williams
A cruise ship sits anchored in the Port of Long beach, Calif., on Oct. 27, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Port of Los Angeles Prepares for Grand Comeback of Cruise Sailing in 2022

LOS ANGELESNow that cruise operations at the Port of Los Angeles have resumed following a year-and-a-half pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the port expects more than 200 cruises to depart from its waterfront in 2022, the most since 2008.

Cruise operations at the Port of Los Angeles resumed on Sept. 25, with the Grand Princess cruise ship setting out for a five-day trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Before that, the last cruise ship that set sail from the port was the Norwegian Cruise Line Joy, which left on March 15, 2020.

Resumption of cruises from the LA waterfront is not only great news for our cruise partners and local economy, but also the tens of thousands of vacationers who will have a variety of cruise options, itineraries, and exciting destinations conveniently accessible from the Port of Los Angeles, said Christopher Chase, marketing manager at the Port of Los Angeles on Nov. 3.

The port described Los Angeles as the nations largest drive-to cruise market, with people driving from Phoenix and Las Vegas and vacationers flying from San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver to board cruises.

According to the port, each cruise ship in Los Angeles contributes more than $1 million in economic activity. During a busy cruise weekend, about 20,000 travelers can enter the LA Waterfront when as many as four ships are in the port.

Many of these cruise ships are less than five years old, and can be considered destinations in and of themselves, featuring incredible amenities that passengers of all ages can appreciate, Chase said.

The ports longest-standing cruise partners are Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines.

Princess Cruises 2022 itineraries are mainly week-long trips from Los Angeles to the Mexican Riviera, with excursions in Cabo San Lucas, Puerta Vallarta, and Mazatlan. Princess Cruise also plans to bring back its 14-day trip to the Hawaiian Islands once Hawaii lifts its COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Norwegian Cruise Lines has the largest ships serving the U.S. West Coast, with a capacity for up to 4,500 people sailing to the Mexican Riviera.

Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines offers year-round, twice-weekly, three-day trips to Ensenada, Mexico, and four-day cruises to Ensenada and Catalina Island.

Luxury cruise linessuch as Oceania, Regent Seven Seas, Viking Cruises, Crystal, Seabourn, Cunard, and NYKalso have sailings scheduled in 2022 from the LA Waterfront.

The ports cruise schedules are available here.
Dr. Daniel Novak attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Morrison Center for the Performing Arts, Boise, Idaho on Nov. 2, 2021. (NTD Television)

BOISE, IdahoI am just changed forever, said Dr. Daniel Novak after watching the worlds foremost traditional Chinese classical dance and music company, Shen Yun Performing Arts.

Ive always wanted to see it, Novak, a psychotherapist, said. And I heard it was coming to Boise, and I just could not resist to see it. Its fantastic. Its just mesmerizing.

I used to be a dancer when I was much younger  the technique is sublime. Its just perfect; its just precise. Its precision all the time, nonstop. Its grace, its beauty, its flawless, its colorful; its truly mesmerizing.

Novak had come to see Shen Yun at the Morrison Center for Performing Arts in Boise, Idaho. The company is dedicated to reviving Chinas authentic 5,000-year-old traditional culture.

And spirituality  Its all combined, all brought togetherits uplifting, Novak said.

It just brings together the millennia-old tradition that we are all connected, to something greater than ourselves.  Dr. Daniel Novak

It just brings together the millennia-old tradition that we are all connected, to something greater than ourselves  the sense of unity and compassion and connection with the earth, the celebration of life and color, rebirth and hope. You just cannot see this show and remain unchanged, he said.

Novak explained more about Shen Yuns profound effect on him.

[I am] completely revived, reenergized, inspired! Its amazing to see that there are so many people out there who have this talent, and they have the ability to express it in such a pure, and at the same time, humble way that touches you so deeply, he said.

Shen Yun Performing Arts curtain call at the Morrison Center for the Performing Arts, in Boise, Idaho, on Nov. 2, 2021. (NTD Television)

Sarah Kennedy, a portrait painter, said she was blown away by Shen Yun.

Its just incredible, the emotion portrayed by the dancers; you get lost in the story, she said.

[Shen Yun brings] to life [Chinas traditional culture] and thats what Im looking for. Instead of just reading about it, when you see in it a format, you feel it and it touches your heart, Kennedy said.

[Shen Yun] is very pure. It dreams of a better world and filling an element of beauty and nature and what is around us, and the beauty of Creation. Im a Christian, so I believe that there is a God that created all of this and its wonderful to see all of that brought together.

Kennedy said that she saw Shen Yun two years ago for the first time and that it had inspired her work as a painter.

I have a series of dancers that I call the nebula dancers. So, theyre actually dancing in the beauty of space, she said.

I feel like [Shen Yun] is bringing my eyes to see the beauty in the world and touched my heart in that wayto look around and to see the people around us and look at the beauty of the flowers and the sky and everything around us, she said.

Because you see what you look for. And its so easy to see all the darkness and hurt in the world.

When you see [Shen Yun], it reminds you to look for the beauty, Kennedy said.

Reporting by NTD Television and Sherry Dong.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
Qantas staff welcome the passengers of Los Angeles flight at the arrival gates of the Sydney International airport after Australia relaxed mandatory quarantine restrictions, on Nov. 1, 2021. (Saeed Khan / AFP via Getty Images)

Qantas Flight Attendant Loses Unfair Dismissal Case Over Face Masks

Former Brisbane flight attendant Jessica Watson, who refused to wear a face mask while on the job, has lost her case for unfair dismissal against Qantas, according to local media.

According to The Australian, the Fair Work Commission rejected Watsons unfair dismissal claim, stating in a 27-page judgement that it was a lawful and reasonable direction by Qantas to wear a mask. It also noted that the flight attendants position was not actually terminated.

[Watson] had a number of options. She could attend work as directed, or she could attend an independent medical examination to try to obtain medical evidence to support her assertions, he said, referring to Watsons claim that she couldnt wear a mask.

Instead, she opted to instruct her lawyer to communicate her resignation.

The Australian reported that Watson was offered the alternative option of wearing a face shield, but she refused.

Watsons general practitioner, Dr. Philip Stowell, said that while she had no medical condition of note, the requirement to wear a face mask caused her anxiety.

This makes her extremely anxious, and she finds she has trouble performing [her job] safely, Stowell wrote.

I know of no research showing any significant benefit from wearing masks, and I doubt the legality of such requirements. My advice and opinion are that she not be required to wear masks at work.

The Australian reported that Peter Prasad, Qantas Medicals national manager of occupational health, noted the benefits of wearing face masks despite the low risk of transmission on aircraft. However, he stressed that Qantas would never force someone with underlying health conditions to wear a mask.

He told the Fair Work Commission that masks were required to prevent an occurrence of and protection from COVID-19.

There has only been one case of in-flight transmission between Qantas passengers, which was recorded early in the pandemic.

Watson brought her case against National Jet Systems, which Qantas acquired in 2020.

The airline group announced its own mandate for vaccination of staff after it failed to have government mandate vaccinations.
(LR) The Best Years of Our Lives charts the return of three servicemen to civilian life: Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Al Stephenson (Fredric March). (RKO Radio Pictures)

Rewind, Review and Re-Rate: 1946s The Best Years of Our Lives: Honoring Veterans

The uneasy yet moving transition to civilian life

Approved | 2h 50min | War, Drama, Romance

The Golden Age of Hollywood can rightly claim a wide array of excellent action-oriented World War II films, such as 1945s They Were Expendable and 1957s The Bridge on the River Kwai. Indeed, war movies contributed greatly to making American cinema the most influential and copied style of film production the world over.

However magnificent those films areindelibly etched into the annals of world-class filmmakingfew from Old Hollywood explore what it was like for World War II veterans to return home after all the action subsided.

Perhaps the most outstanding film on this subject is 1946s The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler. Although Wyler did direct 1942s excellent Mrs. Miniver, he was not particularly known for his World War II films. But certainly his wide body of workoutside of wartime actiongave him an edge at portraying the domestic aftermath of the war.

The Best Years of Our Lives ran away with the 1947 Oscars. (RKO Radio Pictures)

This film, then, is not just about military men returning home from overseas, but also about how they and their families adjust to that ofttimes bumpy transition. On their way back to the fictional Midwest town of Boone City, three menU.S. Army Air Force Bomber Capt. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), Army infantryman Sgt. Al Stephenson (Fredric March), and Navy Petty Officer Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) meet. The trio come from vastly different backgrounds, and the film follows each as they attempt to reintegrate back into civilian life.

The opening scenes are incredibly touching as the three men catch a flight, then a taxi together, to be dropped off at their respective homes.

Homer is the first to be dropped off at home, and since hes lost his hands in a ships fire, he wears prostheses with hooks at the ends. Although his family comes out to greet him lovingly, he tenses up, thinking that everyone merely pities him.

Al is dropped off next at his luxury lodgings, and his wife Milly (Myrna Loy), daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), and young son have a smoother reunionat least at first.

Milly (Myrna Loy) and Al Stephenson (Fredric March), in The Best Years of Our Lives (RKO Radio Pictures)

And finally, Fred arrives at his parents home to find that his wife, Marie (Virginia Mayo), has moved out. The newlyweds had lived with his parents when he left. She hasnt been in contact lately, although they know shes become a showgirl.

Later that day, all three men end up at a local bar. Fred is stressed because he cant locate his wife, Al wants a night on the town with his wife and daughter, and Homer wants to get away from his family whom he believes see him differently because of his disability.

When Fred and Al get drunk, Milly and Peggy transport the two to the Stephenson home for them to recover, and it is then that we see the first signs of serious trouble: In his sleep, Fred howls and screams about a wartime buddy dying. In a lovely scene, Peggy protectively calms him down and wipes sweat from his face.

Peggy (Teresa Wright) begins to fall for Fred (Dana Andrews), in The Best Years of Our Lives (RKO Radio Pictures)

The next morning, as Peggy fixes Fred breakfast, its clear that they are attracted to one another. Al awakens later and is so hungover that he ends up showering in his pajamas. Milly, although sensing that drinking has become an issue for Al, supports him as seamlessly as she can in order to facilitate his return to civilian life.

Al reclaims his bank job and even gets promoted to VP of loans. Although he seems to adjust well, his normally sound judgment seems off to his superiors, such as when he offers a no-collateral loan to a fellow veteran.

Meanwhile, Fred becomes increasingly frustrated because his wartime heroics dont count for much in the job sector. After looking all over town, he ends up with his humble pre-war job as a soda jerk. His wannabe jet-set wife, Marie, is indifferent to his shell-shock (PTSD) nightmares and isnt happy with his job prospects.

Trouble on the homefront for Marie (Virginia Mayo) and Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), in The Best Years of Our Lives (RKO Radio Pictures)

And finally, Homer seems to be slipping farther and farther away from both his family and doting fiancee (Cathy ODonnell). Although theyre thrilled to have him home, Homer cant adjust to his handicap.

Compelling Stories and Effortless Acting

By the midpoint of this nearly three-hour movie, I was thoroughly enthralled and immersed in these mens lives, and couldnt wait to see what happened next. It was also nice to see the nurturing women (other than Freds wife) caring for their matessticking by them through challenging times instead of cutting and running, which seems all too common nowadays.

Another impressive aspect is how effortless and believable the acting is. Whether it be the way Fred and Peggy stare at each other like forbidden fruits, or Al and Millys reaffirmation of their vows, everything is top-notch. Fortunately, The Best Years of Our Lives was deservedly appreciated, achieving Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for March, and Best Supporting Actor for Russell, who by the way was a real-life double amputee whose hands had been blown off in a Navy accident.

The Best Years of Our Lives

Director: William Wyler

Starring: Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo

Running Time: 2 hours, 50 minutes

Not Rated

Release Date: Nov. 21, 1946

Rated: 5 stars out of 5
Soldiers stand next to military vehicles as people gather to protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Burma, on Feb. 15, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

Rogue Burmese Military Attacks on Christians Facilitated by China and Russia

The world should respond with sanctions and NATO peacekeepers

Commentary

Burmas rogue military, the Tatmadaw, is attacking Christian villages. Sanctions should be swifter and stronger.

Having largely ignored genocides against the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Tibetans, Rohingya, and Tigray, the next up could be Christians in Burma (Myanmar).

In Burmas north-west Chin state, the Tatmadaw soldiers have burned as many as 300 buildings, according to reporting by the Financial Times and Radio Free Asia (RFA).

These terrorist tactics are similar to those used by the Tatmadaw in the 2017 assault on the Rohingya in Burmas Rakhine state. Those attacks, and the result, have variously been recognized as ethnic cleansing or genocide, by the U.N. definition. Tens of thousands were raped and murdered, causing mass flight and almost a million refugees who are now in legal limbo, mostly just over the border with Bangladesh.

A few days ago on Oct. 29, the Tatmadaw used heavy artillery against the Chin town of Thantland, then sent in soldiers who used firebombs, according to a source. Ethnic Chin sources, the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), and others allege that the soldiers looted the township, burned as many as 300 buildings, including some churches and the local office of Save the Children, a charity.

Most of the towns 10,000 residents fled the assault. Only an orphanage and its caretakers remain, according to a resident who spoke to RFA.

The NUG Internal Affairs and Immigration Minister alleges that since Feb. 1, the soldiers had not only fired heavy artillery, looted, and burned homes, but also arrested civilians, tortured, raped, and killed them.

These atrocities are similar to those the Tatmadaw used against the Rohingya to carry out their ethnic cleansing and genocide. According to research led by economist Mohshin Habib, 85 per cent of participants [in a poll of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh] reported witnessing the burning down of their own or neighbours homes. When family members are included, an estimated 115,000 Rohingya were beaten by Myanmar authorities [and] an estimated 42,000 Rohingya received gunshot wounds. An estimated 35,000 Rohingya people were thrown into fire. An estimated 24,800 Rohingya people were murdered. An estimated 18,500 women and adolescents were raped.

Due to increasing repression against democracy advocates following the coup on Feb. 1, the NUG declared a national state of emergency on Sept. 7 and called for a rebellion against the ruling junta.

On Sept. 28, a month prior to the most recent assault, troops burned 18 homes and a hotel in Thantland, a stronghold of the resistance. The town has approximately 3,000 dwellings.

Since the coup, the regime has allegedly killed over 1,200 civilians and arrested over 7,000.

A general view of a Rohingya refugee camp after a fire burned down all the shelters in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, on March 23, 2021. (Ro Yassin Abdumonab/Reuters)

The Chin ethnic minority in Burma is mostly Christian. Successive military regimes have targeted them with violence. Since the coup, thousands have fled the Chin state for India.

During their past atrocities, the Tatmadaw have attempted to blame the victim, by pointing to relatively small-scale violence that supposedly precipitated the mass-scale violence of the military. After the latest attacks in Thantland, as well as those against the Rohingya, the Tatmadaw claimed that the victims themselves burned down their own homes.

China and Russia are Burmas biggest arms suppliers, and are likely to block U.N. Security Council action against the ongoing atrocities in Burma. Beijing and Moscow offer the Burmese regime export markets should it be sanctioned economically, which, along with their military and diplomatic support, provides an economic safety net for the Tatmadaw.

China is the top trade partner of Burma, and its second-largest investor. During Burmas military rule between 1988 and 2010, China maintained normal diplomatic relations with the junta.

The Jamestown Foundation has called the Chinese and Burmese regimes a marriage of convenience. Beijing blocked a U.N. Security Council condemnation of the coup and refrained from criticizing Burmas human rights violations at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Last winter, Beijing said, What happens in Myanmar is essentially Myanmars internal affairs.

Human Rights Watch has called the towns burning a crime against humanity, and the spokesperson of the U.S. State Department said the abhorrent attacks underscore the urgent need for the international community to hold the Burmese military accountable and take action to prevent gross violations and abuses of human rights, including preventing the transfer of arms to the military.

But vague words about U.N. action, which will never happen, are not enough. Especially against a genocidal regime that is increasingly allied with Beijing, any proposed action at the U.N. Security Council, where Moscow and Beijing have veto power, would be useless.

The United States and allies should, instead, impose an effective arms embargo, Magnitsky sanctions, and economic sanctions against Burmas rogue regime for not only atrocities in Chin state and the coup, but for the genocide against the Rohingya.

If sanctions would only send Burma further into the embrace of China, as many analysts predict, then the most effective remaining strategy is an international peacekeeping force in both the Chin and Rakhine states, led by NATO, and with the full participation of allies such as Japan, Australia, India, and Bangladesh.

International peacekeepers, including boots on the ground in Burma, are about the only way to protect vulnerable minority civilians under attack by their own supposed government.

The real international community of democracies and their allies have a responsibility to protect (R2P) the good citizens of Burma, who are under attack and in need of the worlds assistance.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Alec Baldwin attends the World Premiere of National Geographic Documentary Films' 'The First Wave' at Hamptons International Film Festival in East Hampton, N.Y., on Oct. 7 , 2021. (Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images for National Geographic)

Rust Armorer Lawyers Dismiss Claims Against Client After Alec Baldwin-Involved Shooting

Lawyers for Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed are pushing back against claims about her level of experience and asked why live ammunition made it onto the Alec Baldwin movie set before the Baldwin-involved shooting death of photo director Halyna Hutchins last month.

Never in a million years did Hannah think that live rounds could have been in the dummy round box, one of the armorers attorneys, Jason Bowles, said in a statement to Fox News on Thursday. Who put those in there and why is the central question.

Bowles earlier this week appeared on the Today show and claimed that Gutierrez loaded the gun used during filming with a box labeled dummy, only to find that there was a live round inside after the fatal shooting incident.

Bowles also suggested that someone could put the live round in the box of dummy rounds [with] the purpose of sabotaging the set.

I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, want to prove a point, want to say that theyre disgruntled, theyre unhappy, he added, without explaining why. And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before.

She inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day, Bowles said. She always inspected the rounds. She did again right before handing the firearm to Mr. Halls, by spinning the cylinder and showing him all of the rounds and then handing him the firearm.

But a camera operator on the Rust set, Lane Luper, dismissed the sabotage allegation.

Its dangerous, and its an irresponsible theory to put out on TV, Luper told CNN this week, adding that if they have any evidence of that, they should be, you know, talking to the sheriff and not morning television shows.

Baldwin, who has issued few public statements after the shooting, offered comments to reporters during an impromptu question-and-answer session in rural Vermont over the past weekend.

Speaking of Hutchins, Baldwin said that she was my friend. He added, We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together and then this horrible event happened.

As I said, we are eagerly awaiting for the sheriffs department to tell us what their investigation has yielded, the 63-year-old actor said, adding that it was a one in a trillion event.

Investigators believe Baldwins gun fired a single live round that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.

Baldwin was joined by his wife, Hilaria, when he spoke to photographers and she filmed the exchange with her smartphone, often trying to get her husband to stop talking. Baldwin said he was speaking out so that the photographers would stop following his family.

Investigators in New Mexico where the shooting occurred have said that there was some complacency in how weapons were handled on the movie set but its too soon to determine whether charges will be filed.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza also said his office recovered about 500 rounds of ammunition while searching the set. During a news conference, neither he nor the district attorney has ruled out any charges in connection to the shooting.

No charges have been filed so far.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(L) Halyna Hutchins in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 28, 2019. (Fred Hayes/Getty Images for SAGindie); (R) Alec Baldwin in East Hampton, N.Y., on Oct. 7, 2021. (Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images for National Geographic)

Rust Armorers Attorneys Allege Disgruntled and Unhappy Individual May Have Sabotaged Set

Attorneys representing Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed on Nov. 3 alleged that a disgruntled and unhappy individual may have intended to sabotage the set by replacing dummy rounds of ammunition with live rounds, leading to the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Speaking on NBCs Today show, attorneys Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, who represent the 24-year-old armorer, explained that there was a box of bullets on the set that should have contained only dummy rounds that Gutierrez Reed should have been able to rely on, and pulled from to load the gun.

Bowles said he believes it was possible that a third party may have put a live round in the box, and that they had to have had the purpose of sabotaging the set when doing so, but noted that this is just one of the theories he and Gorence are currently exploring.

I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, want to prove a point, want to say that theyre disgruntled, theyre unhappy, Bowles said. And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before and they were unhappy.

We have a time frame between 11 [a.m.] and 1 [p.m.], approximately, that day, in which the firearms at times were unattended, so there was opportunity to tamper with this scene.

Bowles later told NBC News that he had consulted Gutierrez-Reed again about the time frame and that the firearms had been left unattended for a total of 5 to 10 minutes.

The Epoch Times hasnt verified Bowless claims that firearms were left unattended on set during that time period.

Hutchins, 42, was fatally shot on Oct. 21 when actor Alec Baldwin, 63, pointed a .45 Long Colt revolver in the direction of Hutchins and director Joel Souza while rehearsing a gunfight scene. The revolver discharged a suspected live round, killing Hutchins and wounding Souza, 48.

Since the shooting, Baldwin, his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, and their six young children have retreated from their homes in New York City and the Hamptons to the upscale ski town of Manchester, Vermont, where the actor and his influencer wife said they wanted to keep a low profile so he could mourn.

Also on Nov. 3, the former head of the movies camera department, Lane Luper, told Good Morning America that he quit production the day before the shooting occurred, citing firearms safety concerns and delays in pay, among other issues.

In my 10 years as a camera assistant, Ive never worked on a show that cares so little for the safety of its crew, Luper wrote in his resignation letter, some of which was aired on GMA.

During the filming of gunfights on this job, things are often played very fast and loose, he wrote, noting that when he raised safety concerns with production, we are usually met with the same answers about not having enough time to complete the day if we rehearse.

On Twitter, Baldwin has reshared comments made by a costume designer on the set who claimed that concerns were met and addressed and that several safety meetings took place.

Producers of Rust said that Lupers allegations around safety are patently false and that he had absolutely nothing to do with or knowledge of safety protocols.

Mr. Lupers allegations around budget and safety are patently false, which is not surprising considering his job was to be a camera operator, and he had absolutely nothing to do with, or knowledge of, safety protocols or budgets. As we continue to cooperate with all investigations, we are limited in what we can say, producers said in a statement to ABC News. However, safety is always the No. 1 priority on our films, and it is truly awful to see some using this tragedy for personal gain.

Luper reiterated his concerns on Good Morning America on Nov. 3, telling host George Stephanopoulos that he had cited relaxed COVID-19 policies, the housing situation that required crew members to drive lengthy distances to and from the set, a lack of rehearsal, and a lack of gun safety on set in his resignation email to producers.

When questioned about his claims that his concerns were largely dismissed by producers, Luper said that even producers had admitted they only had three safety meetings, by the time he had left the set and that he himself only recalled two such meetings.

He also claimed that safety bulletins dictating how to run a safe set werent handed out to crew members.

They were ignored and not attached to the call sheets, which theyre supposed to be, and unfortunately, thats what led to a breakdown here, he said.

Officials investigating the fatal shooting havent ruled out charges for anyone involved.
The Hancocks attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque, N.M., on Nov. 2, 2021. ( Mary Mann/Epoch Times)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.Stunning, actress Zoe Hancock said of Shen Yun Performing Arts as it brought Chinas unique traditional culture that extends over 5,000 years to Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque.

Its not like anything you see today, said Hancock, who attended the performance with her husband.

I love Chinese culture, so its wonderful to see the dancing and the storytelling.

New York-based Shen Yuns mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture and share it with the world through the universal language of music and dance.

The water sleeves are beautiful, Hancock said, referring to the Water Sleeves dance, which features the ladies of the Imperial Court and their flowing sleeves. The women are truly elegant. I love the color.

[The dancers] all have a light and inner light about them, and the colors are certainly vibrant that way. Im a spiritual person, so Im really loving what Im seeing and what Im feeling. I just wish the Chinese people the best.

We want you all to be free and we want you all to have the life that you want, Zoe said of the Chinese people.

Chinese culture is divinely inspired, and the scenes in Shen Yun include deities and heavenly scenes that are believed to have been passed down to humankind by the Creator.

The spiritual aspect of [Shen Yun] is very touching. And I think its important today, important for the message, important for what weve just all lived through for the past few years, Zoe said.

We need to connect to our higher selves. Weve been so focused on whats going on down here.

For Kim and Clay Deitz who were also in the audience, watching Shen Yun was a beautiful experience.

Its excellent, Clay said. The music is fantastic; the costumes are amazing.

Kim agreed. I love the costumes, I love the storyline, I love the dancingits absolutely beautiful.

Clay also remarked on Shen Yuns live orchestra, which harmonizes classical Western instruments with traditional Chinese instruments.

I liked the live orchestra, he said. This is the first time Ive heard that type of music.

Reporting by Mary Mann and Diane Cordemans.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
The Netflix series "Squid Game" is played on a mobile phone in this picture illustration taken on Sept. 30, 2021. (Kim Hong-Ji/Illustration/Reuters)

Squid Game Is a Brutal Reality

Commentary

Contrary to popular belief, 2021 is not the Year of the Ox; its the Year of the Squid. For those of you not stranded under a rock, Squid Game probably rings a bell. For many, the TV series is no more than a dystopian fiction; for others, though, its a brutal reality.

As the most-watched Netflix TV series of the year, with its bizarre plot and garish costumes, Squid Game offers a pulsating viewing experience.

The plot centers around a South Korean man called Seong Gi-hun, a recently divorced and heavily indebted chauffeur. Along with another 455 players, Gi-hun is invited to partake in a TV series that has contestants compete for a large cash prize. Unimaginable wealth awaits the victors; death awaits the losers. Interestingly enough, the idea for Squid Game came from the reality of life in South Korea, a country where millions of people find themselves drowning in a sea of debt.

About 1,300 miles away, in China, a debt crisis grips the country. As the South China Morning Post previously reported, Chinas consumer debt is among the fastest-growing segment of overall debt, particularly in the form of mortgage and consumer loans. Last year, household debt increased to 57.7 percent of the countrys GDP.

Now, as Chinas economy continues to get walloped from all angles, the countrys slide into financial ruin is picking up pace. As the journalist He Huifeng has warned, household debt is reducing the quality of life for Chinese families throughout the land. One housewife in her 40s told Huifeng that her family members find themselves walking a tightrope in mid-air. Like so many others in China, she worries that her family wont have enough to make mortgage repayments going forward.

Sadly, the problems experienced by those in South Korea and China are also being felt by a large number of Americans.

According to market analyst Jeff Cox, U.S. household debt is at a 14-year high, thanks mostly to a surge in the housing market that has now brought the collective American IOU to just shy of $15 trillion. In the space of just three months, from April to June, total debt balances jumped more than $300 billion, the sharpest rise since the same period in 2007, wrote Cox.

As most readers remember, less than a year after the 2007 increase in debt, the world was met with a financial disaster of epic proportions. Does something similar await us in 2022? Dont bet against it.

With less people working and mounting levels of debt, the United States appears to be heading for an economic reckoning. As we prepare to enter a post-pandemic world, many of us are understandably eager to enjoy life. However, some appear a little too eager to enjoy themselves.

Crippling Debt, It Seems, Is Very Much a la Mode

How much are you willing to pay in order to treat yourself? Of course, such a figure will vary depending on your bank balance.

Nevertheless, according to a report from CreditCards.com, 44 percent of Americans are willing to go into debt in order to treat themselves. Those aged between 24 and 40, often referred to as millennials, are the worst culprits. A staggering 59 percent of respondents admitted a willingness to incur debt; 56 percent of Gen Zers said the same.

Although the adage involving old age and a growth in wisdom appears to be dubious at best, it most definitely applies here. With baby boomers, only 32 percent of those aged between 57 and 75 declared a willingness to flirt with serious debt.

Millennials, the very people most likely to take on debt, are the most likely to struggle with repayments. The average American millennial, according to Business Insider, has a miserable net worth of $8,000. In other words, the average American millennial probably has more debt than they are actually worth.

Now, before I am accused of putting a price on a persons life, let me state the following: Business Insider wrote the article, not me. Also, as a millennial, I took very little pride in writing the above few sentences.

Not surprisingly, because of the willingness to incur crippling debt, often in the form of student loans, American millennials are stuck in a sort of purgatory, somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. Many are unable to purchase a new car, never mind a new home. This is true across the country, from Baltimore to Boston.

In many ways, the country is in a worse situation than it was in 2007. With tribalism at an all-time high, the United States appears to be on the verge of a civil war. Financial recklessness and increasing levels of debt only serve to fan the flames. As anyone who has experienced the horrors of debt knows only too well, financial insecurity can drive a person insane. Insanity and desperation are not ingredients for success, not for a person, and certainly not for a country.

So if you happen to have a Netflix account and find yourself watching Squid Game, remember that the dystopian narrative was inspired by a very real, all too human problem: financial despair.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu speaks after receiving the Silver Commemorative Medal from the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, in Prague, Czech Republic, on Oct. 27, 2021. (David W Cerny/Reuters)

Taiwan Accuses Chinese State-Run Media of Smearing Taipeis Diplomatic Actions

Taiwans foreign ministry accused Chinas state-run tabloid of defaming its ministers diplomatic European visits by categorizing them as dollar diplomacy to divide Europes China policy.

Joseph Wu, the Taiwanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, visited Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Belgium for about a week in late October.

During the trip, Wu received a Foreign VIP Laureates medal from the Czech senate, and invited a committee of the European Parliament, the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation, to visit Taiwan.

The European lawmakers made their first official visit to Taiwan on Nov. 3.

Chinese foreign ministry has called Wu a Taiwan independence separatist,' and Chinas state-run Global Times claimed Wu was collud[ing] with external forces.

Taiwans Foreign Affairs Ministry published a statement on Oct. 29, which said that the Global Times smeared Wus visit without any fact nor evidence.

A state-run media fell to the level of only lying and publishing fake news. This really can only be done in the autocratic and totalitarian communist China, the statement said. Only the propaganda media of the Communist Party, which doesnt respect democracy nor rule of law, has this kind of mindset.

Milos Vystrcil, the President of the Czech Senate, presents a silver medal to Jau-shieh Joseph Wu, the Taiwanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, in Prague, Czech Republic on Oct. 27, 2021. (Supplied by Taiwans Foreign Affairs Ministry)

The statement said that Wus European visit focused on the democracy and freedom that Taiwan shares with Europe, as well as promoting bilateral trade and industry co-development.

The Beijing authorities have criticized any state that has ties with Taiwan as interfering in Chinas domestic affairs.

Wu, Taiwan Foreign Affairs Minister since February 2018, is frequently targeted by Beijing.

The Chinese regime claims Taiwan as its own, despite the fact that Taiwan is a de facto independent country, with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.

In past decades, the Beijing regime has tried to block the Taiwanese government from joining international organizations including the World Health Organization.

The Chinese regime also targeted the countries that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Seven countries changed recognition from Taipei to Beijing from 2016 to 2019.

At present, Taiwan has diplomatic relations with 15 countries globally including in the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.
The chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami (R) and Iran's Governor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Kazem Gharib Abadi attend the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference, an annual meeting of all the IAEA member states, at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria on Sept. 20, 2021. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

Talks to Revive Iran Nuclear Deal to Resume Nov. 29

Iran is set to resume nuclear talks with other world leaders in Vienna on Nov. 29 to revive a 2015 deal over its nuclear activity, the European Union announced on Wednesday.

The EU said that the meeting of the commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will be attended by representatives from Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

Participants will continue the discussions on the prospect of a possible return of the United States to the JCPOA and how to ensure the full and effective implementation of the agreement by all sides, reads the EUs statement.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also called the JCPOA, requires Iran to restrict its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions from the United States, the EU, and the United Nations.

Irans top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, called sanctions against the country and its leadership unlawful & inhumane in a Twitter post on Wednesday.

The deal was promoted by President Barack Obama in 2015 as the best option to keep Iran from wielding nuclear arms, even temporarily.

But the Iranian regime appeared to head in the opposite direction. In 2017, it announced a 150 percent increase in its military budget to develop long-range missiles, armed drones, and cyber-warfare capabilities. It also started to use part of its $150 billion in assets abroad that had previously been frozen by sanctions.

President Donald Trump in May 2018 withdrew the United States from the nuclear pact and reimposed sanctions on Iran, in an effort to force the countrys ruling Islamic regime to change a plethora of activities that the Trump administration said were unacceptable.

We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction, Trump said at the time. America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.

The Trump administration demanded that the Iranian regime stop not only its nuclear technology development but also its ballistic missile program, its support for terrorists and militias in the region, and other destabilizing activities.

The United States recognizes Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and has long criticized it for funding Islamist terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

In 2019, the Iranian regime said publicly that it was in breach of the uranium enrichment limits set out in the deal.

Iran and six powers started to discuss ways to revive the nuclear pact in April.

Six rounds of talks have been held so far. They have been indirect, with chiefly European diplomats shuttling between U.S. and Iranian officials, because Iran refuses direct contact with the United States.

Negotiations have been on hold since the June election of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who is expected to take a tough approach when they resume talks in Vienna.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the United States hoped Tehran would return in good faith and be ready to negotiate.

We believe it remains possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding on a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA by closing the relatively small number of issues that remained outstanding at the end of June, he told reporters, adding, We believe that if the Iranians are serious, we can manage to do that in relatively short order. (However)  this window of opportunity will not be open forever, especially if Iran continues to take provocative nuclear steps.

The secretary of Irans Supreme National Security Council earlier on Wednesday suggested that negotiations to revive the JCPOA would fail unless President Joe Biden could guarantee that the United States would not again abandon the pact.

Biden and European leaders on Oct. 30 criticized Iran over what they called accelerated and provocative nuclear steps taken by the Iranian regime as it continues to enrich uranium.

Ella Kietlinska, Reuters, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
They Put Their Life at Risk: Sen. Paul Decries Firing of Front-Line Workers Over Vaccine Mandates

Firefighters, nurses, and other so-called front-line workers are being fired or facing termination across the country for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Thats wrong, according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Its a great disservice to fire peoplenurses, doctors, firemen, policemenwho put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all, he told NTDs The Beau Show.

Officials in New York and other locales that have imposed vaccine requirements say that vaccination mandates will help decrease community spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19. However, the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against infection drops sharply several months after receiving them.

In terms of COVID, we are one of the safest places in America, because we have one of the highest levels of vaccination, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told reporters on Nov. 3.

Paul disagrees, particularly because many mandates lack opt-outs for those who have had COVID-19 and recovered. That means that they have some level of protection against the CCP virus, multiple studies have shown.

Many of them got COVID while taking care of people. The doctors and nurses caught COVID from their patients. Most of them survived, fortunately. They now have immunity and all the science102 studiesshow that you have immunity if youve had the disease naturally, he told NTD.

NTD is part of the Epoch Media Group.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges natural immunity, or protection gained by recovering from COVID-19, but the agency says that even those with natural immunity should get a vaccine for extra protection.

We do know that after nearly all infectious diseases, you have some protection from getting that infection again, but we dont really know how long that lasts or how robust it is, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters on Nov. 3.

Critics argue that those points are largely the same for vaccines and note that many of the studies suggest that the level of protection is similar to or even superior to vaccination.

What kind of discriminatory policies do we have in place that are excluding someone like me from the workplace when Im 99.8 percent protected against reinfection, whereas someone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by the companys own data that they submitted to the [Food and Drug Administration], is 67 percent protected against COVID infection? Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was suspended by the University of CaliforniaIrvine for not getting a vaccine, told The Epoch Times in October.

Nothings perfect, but your immunity is as good as the vaccine, said Paul, whos also a doctor.

And theres no reason for the government to be mandating a vaccine, particularly on people whove already had the disease.
Protesters chant slogans and gesture during a rally against a new national security law in Hong Kong on July 1, 2020. (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)

Top Hong Kong Court Rules Against Government Bid to Expand Riot Prosecutions

HONG KONGHong Kongs top court on Thursday quashed attempts by the citys government to prosecute people for rioting or illegal assembly even without being present at the scene. A ruling lawyer described it as a landmark decision.

The five-judge panel in Hong Kongs Court of Final Appeal, headed by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, unanimously rejected an earlier ruling by a lower appeal court that people, such as supporters, could be criminally liable without being actually present under the common law doctrine of joint enterprise.

Criminal lawyers said Thursdays ruling was highly significant, impacting future prosecutions, and will be closely scrutinized amid an intensifying national security clampdown in the former British colony.

Theyve effectively raised the bar for the prosecutorsand maybe even stopped a flood of sweeping and hasty charges, one criminal barrister said.

That does not mean that the government wont try to bring different charges though, after going back to the drawing board.

Activists, diplomats, and the foreign business community members are also closely watching court developments after Beijings imposition on the city of a sweeping national security law last year, with some fearing it could threaten a legal system seen as the bedrock underpinning the Asian financial hub.

Britain handed Hong Kong back to Chinese rule in 1997 amid guarantees that its social and commercial freedomsand separate legal systemwould be maintained under a one country/two systems formula.

Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong last summer, criminalizing the vaguely defined crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces, with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Since then, dozens of the citys pro-democracy opposition leaders have now either fled overseas, are facing prosecution, or are in jail.

The appeal, in part, was brought by Tong Wai-hung, who was earlier acquitted of rioting in July 2019 and was one of more than 10,000 people arrested during months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong that year.

While Hong Kongs Department of Justice did not seek to overturn Tongs acquittal, they won an earlier appeal at a lower appeal court, the Court of Appeal, to show that a persons presence at a riot or illegal assembly was not necessary for a conviction, under the joint enterprise doctrine.

In Thursdays judgment, the Court of Final Appeal panel rejected the lower courts ruling, noting that the taking part is key to both the public order offenses of rioting and illegal assembly, and could not be overridden by the joint enterprise doctrine.

It also said that those offendersboth present and absentwho encouraged, promoted, or organized criminal assemblies could be still be guilty of different and more serious offenses, such as conspiracy or incitement.

Court of Appeal judges earlier approved Tongs demand to question their ruling, saying the question had far reaching implications for the prosecution of the offenses of riot and illegal assembly in the future.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson walks outside United Nations headquarters during the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly, in New York, on Sept. 20, 2021. (David 'Dee' Delgado/Reuters)

UK Government Halts Plan to Overhaul Parliament Disciplinary Process Following Backlash

The UK government has reversed the plan to overhaul the disciplinary process for MPs after it was derailed by an intense cross-party boycott.

Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Thursday that he would now seek cross-party changes to the system after Labour and other opposition parties refused to take part in a Tory-led committee tasked with the review.

But Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer rejected the suggestion, saying his party is not going to have anything to do with it.

The Conservative government whipped through a vote on Wednesday to block the immediate suspension of Tory MP Owen Paterson that was recommended by the cross-party Standards Committee, and to set up a new select committee to review Patersons case and the current standards system. The proposed committee was to be composed of one Conservative chair, four Conservative members, three Labour members, and one SNP member.

But the plan was immediately thrown into chaos after opposition parties refused to participate and accused the Tory government of corruption.

Rees-Mogg on Thursday told MPs that the government will reconsider the plan to tinker with the standard system.

While the vote from Wednesday suggested a need for an appeals process in the parliament standards process, a select committee not being supported by other parties is clearly not going to be an effective way of changing the system, the Conservative MP told Parliament.

He also acknowledged that theres a strong feeling that the system overhaul should be separated from the Paterson case and any change of the system shouldnt be applied retrospectively.

I fear last nights debate conflated an individual case with the general concern. This link needs to be broken, he said.

Therefore I and others will be looking to work on a cross-party basis to achieve improvements in our system for future cases, he said, adding that more detailed proposals will be brought forward after cross-party discussions.

No 10 Downing Street also confirmed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had changed his approach once it became clear cross-party consensus wasnt going to be possible,  and that he understands that its right to change the approach and to decouple those two issues.

However, Starmer rejected the argument that there was no right for MPs to appeal the findings of a standards report, saying its completely wrong as there is an appeal to the standards committee.

Asked about Rees-Moggs suggestion about cross-party talks, Starmer told Radio 2s Jeremy Vine show, No, were not going to have anything to do with this suggestion.

The recommendation to suspend Paterson for 30 sitting days came from a report by Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone, and the report was approved by the cross-party Standards Committee.

The committee found Paterson repeatedly lobbied ministers and officials for two companies paying him more than 100,000 ($134,800) per year. Patersons conduct was deemed an egregious breach of the rules on paid advocacy.

However, the Tory MP, who has angrily denied the findings against him, said the investigation process had been unfair, and that 17 witnesses who came forward to support him were ignored. He also said that the investigation had played a major role in his wifes decision to take her own life last year.

He has also said those who are responsible for the recommendation all have to go, claiming they have not done a good job and come up with a rotten report which is full of inaccuracies.

In a statement on Thursday afternoon, Paterson announced hes resigning as the MP for North Shropshire, maintaining that hes totally innocent but said he wishes to remain a public servant but outside the cruel world of politics.

PA contributed to this report.
Labour MP Claudia Webbe (L) arrives with her partner Lester Thomas at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Nov. 4, 2021.(Leon Neal/Getty Images)

UK Lawmaker Expelled From Party After Being Handed Jail Term for Harassing Woman

A British member of Parliament has been given a suspended jail sentence on Thursday for harassing her partners friend. She was subsequently expelled from the Labour Party.

Claudia Webbe, 56, was given a 10-week sentencesuspended for two yearsand 200 hours of community service at Westminster Magistrates Court.

She was also ordered to pay 3,128 ($4,226) in costs and surcharges within six months.

Webbe said she was very disappointed with the sentence and will appeal the courts decision.

A Labour spokesman confirmed Webbes expulsion shortly after the sentence.

The MP for Leicester East was found guilty of harassment on Oct. 13.

The court heard that Webbe had made 16 calls to her partner Lester Thomass long-term friend Michelle Merritt between Sept. 1, 2018 and April 26, 2020, including one in which she called Merritt a slag and threatened to throw acid in her face, and another one in which she said she had seen pictures of Merritt naked and threatened to send them to her whole family.

Sentencing Webbe, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring described Webbes behaviour as callous and intimidatory.

You were jealous of the relationship between Lester Thomas and Michelle Merritt, and probably felt in some way threatened by it, he said.

Goldspring said Webbe showed little remorse or contrition and would have been jailed immediately were it not for her previous good character.

The district judge also said that he counted four occasions when Webbe referred to herself as the victim during her testimony from the witness box at the trial, and that he found it odd and concerning that the probation service report said Webbe felt like a victim herself.

Prosecutor Susannah Stevens said Webbes offending was persistent  and over a prolonged period, and caused psychological harm and distress to the victim.

Merritt told the court that Webbe made her feel vulnerable both in public and at home.

I had many sleepless nights. I would like to feel safe again, she said.

Due to Ms. Webbes position in government [sic], I dont know what she is capable of.

Merritt also said she had fallen into huge debt, and desperately wanted to move away from the area where Webbe had said she knew Merritt lived.

No woman should be threatened or harassed the way she has to me over the years, least of all a politician, Merritt said.

Defence counsel Paul Hynes QC said Webbe, being a politician, had also been subjected to extraordinary vilification, including threats of violence on social media, as well as racist comments.

PA contributed to this report.
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Reznikov adjusts glasses during a session of parliament in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 4, 2021. (Oleksandr Klymenko/Reuters)

Ukraine Appoints New Defence Minister Amid Scrutiny on Russian Troop Movements

KYIVThe Ukrainian parliament on Thursday voted to appoint President Volodymyr Zelenskiys nominee Oleksii Reznikov as the new defense minister.

A 55-year-old former lawyer and deputy prime minister, Reznikov will replace Andrii Taran who resigned this week after his track record on reforms was criticized by lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties.

The appointment comes as Ukraine said Russia had left military units near Ukraines border after exercises, with the number of Russian troops in the area now totaling 90,000. The United States said the Russian troop movements were significant but not overtly aggressive.
An airplane takes off from the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, on March 18, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

US Aviation Regulator Warns of Potential Interference From 5G Spectrum Plan

WASHINGTONThe Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday it had issued a special information bulletin alerting manufacturers, operators, and pilots, that action may be needed to address potential interference with sensitive aircraft electronics caused by the use of 5G telecommunications technology.

The FAA has been in discussion with the Federal Communications Commission about its air safety concerns over the plan to begin using some additional spectrum for 5G wireless networks starting Dec. 5.

The FAA said on Tuesday operators should be prepared for the possibility that interference from 5G transmitters and other technology could cause certain safety equipment to malfunction, requiring them to take mitigating action that could affect flight operations.

The bulletin said there have not yet been proven reports of harmful interference due to wireless broadband operations internationally.

It also recommends pilots remind passengers that all portable electronic devices equipped with 5G be should be turned off or switched to airplane mode during flight.

The FAA warned of the potential of the degradation to the capabilities of safety systems and other equipment that depend on radio altimeters, particularly during low-altitude operations.

The FAA said equipment manufacturers should also continue their testing to determine the susceptibility of specific radio altimeters to 5G interference and should explore design changes that could mitigate the effects of interference.

The aviation industry has voiced alarm about the plan to use C-Band spectrum for more than a year. Network carriers are expected to begin using the spectrum starting Dec. 5 starting in 46 markets.

FAA Deputy Administrator Bradley Mims in a letter first reported by Reuters on Friday said the agency shares the deep concern about the potential impact to aviation safety resulting from interference to radar altimeter performance from 5G network operations in the C band.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Tuesday it is committed to continuing to work with its federal partners to simultaneously preserve air safety and advance the deployment of new technologies.

The aerospace and airline sector met with the FCC in August, warning that without changes major disruptions to use of the National Airspace System can be expected from the rollout of 5G and added the FAA will be forced to drastically reduce aviation operational capacity.

Wireless trade group CTIA said on Friday 5G networks can safely use C-band spectrum without causing harmful interference to aviation equipment, and cited numerous active 5G networks using this spectrum band in 40 countries.

By David Shepardson
A mix of ethnic Uyghur and Han shopkeepers hold large wooden sticks as they are trained in security measures in the far western Xinjiang Province, China, on June 27, 2017. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

US Retail Giants Stop Selling Chinese Surveillance Tech Linked to Xinjiang

Two home-improvement retail giants, Home Depot and Lowes, and electronic retail superstore Best Buy have recently removed products made by two Chinese companies with ties to human rights abuses in China.

Chinese video surveillance technology makers Lorex and Ezviz are both owned by companies headquartered in China that were added to the U.S. trade blacklist in 2019, over Beijings treatment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.

In a 2019 statement, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said that the U.S. Government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China.

Home Depot told TechCrunch that it was committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical sourcing and [it] immediately stopped selling products from Lorex when this was brought to [its] attention.

Best Buy also told TechCrunch that it was discontinuing its relationship with both Lorex and Ezviz.

Lowes dropped products from both Chinese companies after TechCrunch and IPVM, a surveillance industry research group based in Pennsylvania, inquired about cybersecurity and human rights concerns but did not respond directly to IPVM/TechCrunch, according to a report.

Home Depot pulled Lorex products off its website four days after IPVM and TechCrunch reached out to the home improvement store.

Lorex is a subsidiary of Dahua Technology, and Ezviz is a video surveillance camera brand owned by Hikvision.

According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), citing a New York Times report, Hikvision and Dahua created a facial recognition system designed to identify ethnic minorities but began to phase it out in 2018.

However, Dahua said on its website that it has not and never will develop solutions targeting any specific ethnic group.

The Department of Commerce blacklisted 28 Chinese entities in October 2019, which prevented the companies from sourcing products and components from U.S. companies without approval from U.S. authorities.

CSIS also made reference to a New York Times report suggesting that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) had been exporting surveillance technologies and methods to other governments around the globe, which poses a security concern to the United States.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) told IPVM in a statement that no company in the United States should be accepting or selling any products that could potentially allow Chinese surveillance on millions of unknowing Americans.

Today, the Chinese Communist Party is embarking on a drive for tech-enabled global hegemony and American companies must not provide support for this effort, Tenney added.

She also urged the state to enforce consumer protection and telecommunication security laws and hold to account any firm that imports re-labeled prohibited goods and sells them to unwitting consumers.
Thousands of protesters against the NYC vaccine mandates march along Brooklyn bridge into Manhattan, New York, on Oct. 26, 2021. (Sarah Lu/The Epoch Times)

Vaccine Mandates Create Tough Choices, Hardship for Workers

Like many American workers whose lives have been turned upside down by employer vaccine mandates, Texan Shawn Gordon faces a stark dilemmaviolate his principles, or forfeit his job.

The mental and emotional strain for Gordon and others like him has been painful.

About a dozen workers from various walks of life, but all facing a similar plight, spoke with The Epoch Times.

Some are fighting back in the courts, while publicly encouraging others to stand up and let their opposition be known. Others are despondent and fatalistic about soon being out of work and the hardship that goes with it.

Most wont be eligible for unemployment benefits.

All are afraid.

Those who are giving in and getting the shot out of desperation dont see it as something theyre proud of.

Of the millions of American adults who chose not to take a CCP virus vaccine, 42 percent say they would quit their jobs if theyre required to vaccinate, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll published in September. An additional 35 percent would request an exemption. Of those who would ask for an exemption, nearly three in four would quit if the request was rejected.

On Oct. 22, Gordon received an email from the CEO of VMware, a large tech company, announcing that all of its U.S. employees must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8 or be placed on unpaid leave. They may also be subject to further employment action.

VMWare headquarters in Palo Alto, California, on Nov. 2, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

Gordon hasnt had the virus. Hes unvaccinated and opposes the shot for religious reasons.

He told The Epoch Times: People are having to choose to either have their freedoms violated, or provide for their families.

He said hes been in contact with almost 100 of his coworkers who are in the same predicament.

Firms contracting with the federal government, such as VMware, are mandating vaccinations for employees in response to President Joe Bidens Executive Order on Sept. 9.

If he loses his job with VMware, Gordon said his family will be forced to lock down all spending, including our giving, travel, and holiday gifts.

We will dive into our savings, while I look for a job with a smaller company not subject to the vaccine mandate.

I know I will not have the benefits I currently have with VMware.

Gordon, who has worked for VMware as an engineer for seven years and doesnt want to leave, is the sole provider for his household of three. He worries that if his search for a new job is prolonged, his teenage son, a senior in high school, may have his college plans curtailed.

Gordon believes his family can survive for a couple of months without income, although he feels it would be an undue hardship imposed on them for no reason.

Though worried about future finances, Gordon said: This is the hill Im willing to die upon. I will do what is necessary to help stop this, and will work with anyone that truly wishes this tyranny to end.

VMWare headquarters in Palo Alto, California, on Nov. 2, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

Even though he works 100 percent remotely, Gordon says the ultimatum has created a hostile work environment.

There are employees that are shaming, or calling into question our intelligence, on public spaces like Slack and our social site. The company has not condemned them, or done anything.

VMware didnt respond to several requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

Gordon said he feels bullied, intimidated, and threatened.

Ive been experiencing lack of sleep, appetite swings, and severe stress. I am tormented by this. My mood swings from extreme anger to complete hopelessness.

Asked if he thought remaining unvaccinated jeopardizes the health of others, Gordon replied, I dont feel we are a threat to others for a virus that has a 99 percent survivability rate.

Gordon said his son and wife had the virus in February 2020, but he never got sick.

I want to reach out to those opposed to taking the vaccine, but are too afraid to stand up. I want to give them courage to do so, Gordon said.

Another VMware employee said of the communications he received from the company: It looks as if its a future notice of termination.

I am the sole provider for my household. If I do not comply with the vaccine mandate, it will absolutely create an extreme financial hardship on my family.

He told The Epoch Times that his concern goes beyond the well-being of his own family.

There are people recovering from cancer who are being threatened by this mandate. One told me his doctor would not sign a medical exemption. There is no recourse for most of these folks but to take the shot.

This edict by our executive team has created more turmoil inside the company, and in my family, than I have seen during the past eight years I have worked there.

He said he believes VMware and other large tech companies are violating the constitutional rights of their employees while sacrificing their own corporate values because of their need for government contracts.

He said he was well equipped to fight the virus because he has already recovered from it, experiencing one day of sinus issues and a four-day loss of his sense of taste and smell.

Under no terms will I be getting their shot, he vowed. They will have to fire me before I walk away.

A VMware manager who asked not to be identified also filed for exemption from the vaccine mandate on religious grounds; one week later, hes gotten no response from the company.

The manager told The Epoch Times: I have loved and been proud of working here (for VMware). It was a very employee-centric company. I hate the feeling of distrust. My confidence in our leadership is shaken. It makes me sad.

Upon receiving the email notifying employees of the requirement to be vaccinated by Dec. 8, the manager said, I took the weekend to calm myself, collect my thoughts, and formulate my submission for religious accommodations.

The managers distrust began when, two days after coworkers filed religious exemption applications, they were required to fill out a new one.

It contained more questions, that I feel are intended to dig into more ways to deny my request.

If I am terminated, what about my mortgage, car payment, and bills?

Information from the company has been so poor regarding the duration of unpaid leave and its impact on benefits.

The manager believes VMware didnt honor its own corporate value statement when it failed to take a stand to defend its supposed valued employees against the federal vaccine mandate.

The stress, both emotional and mental, that I have felt is more than I have felt in years.

I am angry that I must choose between injecting something in my God-given body that I feel is an intrusion to my bodily autonomy, or go on unpaid administrative leave.

My freedoms are being infringed upon. I feel I am being discriminated against, he said. I am being forced to take a vaccination in order to save my livelihood.

This is not the America my Dad fought for, or my uncle died for!

Speaking unofficially and only for himself, another VMware manager told The Epoch Times that there are many VMware employees opposed to the vaccine mandate, including many who have been vaccinated.

VMware will absolutely lose people. Some of our most talented employees. Some that have been there for 14 years or more. I am unsure how many, but we will know after Dec. 8.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (R) and member of the European Parliament (MEP) Raphael Glucksmann at Taiwan's Presidential Office on Nov. 4, 2021. (CNA/AFP via Getty Images)

We Came Here to Learn From You: First European Parliament Delegation Visits Taiwan

Taiwans success and capacity to confront threats and disinformation from the Chinese regime is a gold mine for Europe, said Raphael Glucksmann, head of a visiting European Union delegation, during a joint press conference in Taipei with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Nov. 4.

This is the first official visit from a delegation of the European Parliament [EP] to Taiwan. This is to ensure how important the Taiwanese democracy is for the European citizens we are representing, said Glucksmann, a French member of the EP.

Tsai and other Taiwanese officials held a closed-door meeting with the delegates after their press conference.

The 13-person delegation that arrived in Taiwan on Nov. 3 for a three-day visit included seven members of the EPs Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation, who are from France, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Austria, Greece, and Italy.

We came here with a very simple, very clear message: You are not alone. Europe is standing with you, by you, in the defense of freedom, rule of law, and human dignity, Glucksmann said.

But we also came here for very selfish reasons, he said. We came here to learn from you, to learn from your capacity of building such a strong democracy while being confronted with such a level of threats and interferences.

The French EP member said the European Union is facing large-scale interference from authoritarian regimes, in a veiled reference to Beijing.

During the press conference, Tsai said that her government would share its firsthand experiences in tackling challenges from China, such as disinformation, cyberattacks, and foreign infiltration.

We hope to establish a democratic alliance against misinformation, she said. The challenges we face are global in nature.

In 2015, Taiwan began to share its expertise such as law enforcement and cybersecurity with global partners through Global Cooperation and Training Framework, a platform joint-led by the United States, Taiwan, and Japan.

Taiwan is also willing to share its experience in combating disinformation with our European friends. This will deepen our partnership and help safeguard the free and democratic way of life we enjoy, Tsai said

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (R) and member of the European Parliament (EP) Raphael Glucksmann at the Presidential Office on Nov. 4, 2021. (CNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Last week, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu urged freedom-loving countries to work together against China, during a rare trip to Europe in the middle of heightened tensions between Taipei and Beijing. The trip occurred amid a Taiwanese delegation signing memorandums of understanding with Czech officials to bolster ties in cybersecurity and technology cooperation.

Self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own and hasnt ruled out taking by force, doesnt have formal diplomatic relations with any European countries apart from Vatican City.

Our visit shows how Taiwan now is very high on the agenda in Brussels and in every member state, Glucksmann told Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang at a meeting a day earlier.

On Oct. 21, the EP adopted the EUTaiwan Political Relations and Cooperation report by an overwhelming margin, with an approval rate of 86.3 percent, the second-highest approval rating during the current parliamentary term, according to Tsai, citing Taiwans ambassador in the EU and Belgium.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other members of Congress as they take part in a ceremony to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 13, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Youngkins Win Just Revealed That More Democrats Are Vulnerable in 2022: McCarthy

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the Republican win in Virginias governors race on Tuesday shows that many more Democrats are likely in a vulnerable position going into the 2022 elections if they keep voting for ultra-left policies that are not popular with American voters.

If youre a Democrat [and] President Biden won your seat by 16 points, youre in a competitive race next year, McCarthy said of what he estimated were 70 Democrat-held seats during a press conference on Wednesday. Theres many that are going to lose their races based upon walking off a cliff from Nancy Pelosi pushing them. She may not care if she losesshe lost 63 the last time she was Speaker, moving policy that the country didnt care for.

Chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), last month said that the Republicans are focused on 57 key districts in their efforts to take back the majority in the 2022 elections, and within that, they are laser-focused on 29 districts where their messaging is more likely to flip the seat in their favor.

McCarthy said his party is listening to parents about wanting a say in their childs education, instead of doubling down on policies that vilify parents, like the Biden administrations recent policy to have the Department of Justice assess whether parents actions should be taken as domestic terrorism.

He advised the Democratic caucus to begin embracing moderate policies and listening to what voters want. He criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi for advancing spending and policies that Americans dont want, and told moderates to break from that agenda if they want to win in 2022.

Many believe she (Pelosi) wont stay around, so is shes going to be there to defend you? Are you going to bring President Biden in, with his policies into your district, to defend you? Are you going to bring the vice president? Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.) did and look what happened to him.

I dont believe that they can be helpful, McCarthy said. What I do believe, if they continue to push these policies, it could be one of the biggest election losses for Democrats.

There have been a handful of moderate Democrats who have publicly said that they will not support trillions in new spending until they have more detail about how it will be paid for.

McCarthy was asked if any moderate Democrats have talked to him about switching political parties, given that some like Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) in 2020 flipped to Republican because he saw Democrat policies, as a whole, as being too extreme.

He had a competitive race, but he did it because he said the party has left him  Ive had that discussion with quite a few members on the other side. Dont be pushed to do something you dont believe in, because the policies are wrong, McCarthy said. Youve been reluctant right now, but join with us. Our party is open to have other people join us.

The NRCC on Wednesday echoed McCarthy, saying that the field of vulnerable Democrats has opened and that the committee is now targeting 70 seats for the 2022 House elections, instead of the earlier 57.

In a cycle like this, no Democrat is safe, Emmer said. Voters are rejecting Democrat policies that have caused massive price increases, opened our borders, and spurred a nationwide crime wave.
Sikorskys top executive is expressing confidence in the companys design of a new helicopter to replace the Pentagons Black Hawk workhorse  while describing the final choice as existential for the future of one of Connecticuts biggest manufacturers.

Paul Lemmo spoke last week as part of the Made in Connecticut forum hosted in Trumbull by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. Lemmo is in his first year as president of Lockheed Martins Sikorsky subsidiary, which has about 8,000 employees at its headquarters plant in Stratford and satellite locations in Bridgeport, Shelton and Trumbull.

That does not include some 250 other companies in Connecticut to which Sikorsky farmed out some $450 million in work in the past year, according to Lemmo.

Sikorsky is partnering with Boeing on the Defiant X to replace the Black Hawk used by the U.S. Army, with derivative helicopters, including the Navys Seahawk, the Pave Hawk in the U.S. Air Force fleet and the Coast Guards Jayhawk.

The Defiant Xs signature feature is a stacked set of counter-rotating blades, designed to provide far more stability and maneuverability. That allowed Sikorsky engineers to tack on a rear propeller pushing the Defiant X to a top speed in excess of 300 mph. Lockheed Martin has posted videos online of the prototype helicopter performing maneuvers.

Speaking Friday in Trumbull, Lemmo noted that Lockheed Martin uses a jet airplane to trail the helicopter during observations of speed tests.

More than 4,000 helicopters are in service globally today based on the Black Hawk design, which the U.S. Department of Defense wants to improve on for the next generation of aircraft under its Future Vertical Lift vision.

The Army also wants an armed scout helicopter faster and nimbler than its fleet of aging Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters. For that contract, Sikorsky is pitting its Raider X  which like the Defiant X has a dual rotor set  against Bells Invictus helicopter prototype. The Black Hawk replacement is the larger of two initial programs.

Think about our 40-year franchise and if we dont win that program, what that means for our business, Lemmo told CBIA members Friday in Trumbull. One of these is upside  the other is existential, because its going to replace something weve produced for 40 years.

As its own candidate to inherit the Black Hawks mission, Providence, R.I.-based Textron is offering the Bell V-280 Valor, the newest iteration of its tilt-rotor design. Bell developed the technology originally for V-22 Osprey aircraft used by the Marines, with wing-mounted rotors providing lift before swiveling to a vertical position to fly forward like a turbo-prop airplane.

The Department of Defense has not said whether it would consider both the Sikorsky and Bell designs, or otherwise subcontract a portion of manufacturing work to the losing bidder as a way to maintain multiple helicopter factories. Bell has two plants in Texas where it is based, while Boeing has helicopter production lines outside Philadelphia and Phoenix.

The Pentagon created such an arrangement for its new fleet of Columbia ballistic submarines being manufactured at General Dynamics Electric Boat plant in Groton, with Huntington Ingalls Industries making several large sections of Columbia hulls and superstructures at its Newport News Shipbuilding plant in Virginia.

Connecticut ranked sixth on a Pentagon tally last month of spending across the 50 states, leading all Northeast states with $23.6 billion in the 2020 fiscal year, including more than $4 billion for Lockheed Martin facilities in Connecticut.

Nationally, Lockheed Martin was the top contractor with $73 billion in contracts spanning aerospace, ships and other military needs. That was equal to the next three largest suppliers combined in General Dynamics, Boeing and Raytheon Technologies  which itself is a major Connecticut employer through subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace it picked up in its April 2020 acquisition of United Technologies.

Lemmo alluded to the problem of keeping talent in house, in discussing Sikorskys transition from designing prototypes of the new CH-53K King Stallion for the U.S. Marine Corps. The manufacturer is now ramping up for full production of as many as 200 helicopters, as well as 18 for Israel and possibly more for other U.S. allies.

Lockheed Martin is more than halfway through a $1 billion upgrade of its Sikorsky plant to accommodate CH-53K assembly and other programs like the Combat Rescue Helicopter for Air Force missions over hostile territory, and the VH-92A for a new White House helicopter fleet.

Weve kind of wrapped up with the CH-53K development  we need something for our engineers to do, Lemmo said. Yeah, we have great products  but the products are created by the people.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Louisiana's top public health official said Wednesday the state expects to receive 148,000 initial doses of the pediatric coronavirus vaccine, though the doses are trickling in across three shipments and may not be immediately available through health care providers.

Dr. Joe Kanter, with the state Department of Health, said he expects all of Louisiana's vaccine providers will have gotten their doses of the Pfizer vaccine for children by early next week. That will be enough shots to cover 35% of the state's 420,000 children between ages 5 and 11.
NORWALK  Both of the citys high schools will participate in the second annual Connecticut FAFSA Challenge.

Gov. Ned Lamont and Education Commissioner Charlene M. Russell-Tucker announced on Wednesday that 40 schools from 19 districts, including Norwalk High School and Brien McMahon High School, will participate in the 2021-2022 challenge.

Im proud to see these schools prioritizing FAFSA completion through the FAFSA Challenge and working to increase the number of students who can access financial aid for college and career school, Lamont said in a news release. Its a terrific demonstration of how Connecticut is using federal relief dollars to spark new thinking in our schools and support students achieve critical postsecondary milestones.

The initiative, first launched in January 2020, is designed to increase Free Application for Federal Student AID complete rates, improve postsecondary access, and close opportunity gaps among high school students. Through the FAFSA challenge, schools receive microgrants to pursue strategies to build awareness around FAFSA and support families in completing the application.

P-TECH Norwalk and the Center for Global Studies participated in the challenge last year. P-TECH received the Commissioners Award for achieving the highest year-over-year improvements and the overall highest completion rates among the other participants. Nearly 78% of P-TECHs class of 2021 completed the FAFSA.

An additional 14 schools accepted the challenge for the class of 2022 with the goal of increasing the FAFSA complete rate by at least 5% by next June, according to the release. Last year, participating schools collectively increased their completion rates by nearly 4% while the completion rate across the country decrease by more than 4% compared to 2020.

emily.morgan@hearstmediact.com
GLEN ALLEN, Va. (AP)  Republicans have won at least 50 seats in the Virginia House, ensuring at least a tie with Democrats who had fought to retain control.

Several races were still too early to call, but the GOP also declared victory in some of those, with party leaders saying they were confident they had flipped control of the House.

The Republican gains are part of a seismic win for the GOP in Virginia, as Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin captured the governors office, Republican Winsome Sears won the lieutenant governors race, and Republican Jason Miyares won the attorney general's seat.

Youngkin defeated former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Sears beat Democrat Hala Ayala and Miyares denied two-time Democratic incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring a third term. Sears will become the states first female lieutenant governor and the first woman of color to win statewide office in Virginia.

Tuesdays election was seen as a referendum on a series of progressive reforms that Democrats have enacted over the past two years, including the repeal of the death penalty, the legalization of marijuana, a loosening of abortion restrictions and a series of police reforms.

Otto Wachsmann, a Republican who defeated Democratic incumbent Roslyn Tyler in the 75th District, said he believes the strong showing by Republicans in part represents a backlash against a Democratic party that he says has moved too far to the left in once-conservative Virginia.

The average person wasnt satisfied with that; they were looking for a voice of reason, Wachsmann said.

Every Republican House incumbent won reelection, including eight whose seats were uncontested. The party flipped at least five Democratic seats, including those in two of the last remaining districts held by Democrats in predominantly rural districts.

A surprise win by Republican Kim Taylor over three-term incumbent Democratic Del. Lashrecse Aird in the 63rd District gave Republicans their 50th seat. Aird claimed victory late Tuesday, but a late surge by Taylor gave her a 741-vote win.

Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert, said Republicans believe they have flipped several seats in races where vote tallies show the two candidates extremely close, including in District 85 in Virginia Beach, where Democratic Del. Alex Askew was ahead of Republican challenger Karen Greenhalgh by less than 100 votes.

Gilbert said in a statement Wednesday that Republicans believe Greenhalgh has won the race by more than 200 votes.

We are very confident that there will be 52 Republicans seated when the House convenes in January, Shipley said.

House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn acknowledged that the results were not what Democrats were hoping for but said there are still several tight races that will determine the majority as votes continue to be counted. The state Department of Elections has said that ballots postmarked by Nov. 2 will be counted through noon on Friday.

We are going to make sure every Virginians voice is heard and every vote is counted, Filler-Corn said in a statement.

Democrats held a 55-45 majority heading into Tuesdays election, but Republicans waged an aggressive campaign to flip up to 13 seats held by Democrats whom they considered vulnerable. The GOP needs to flip at least six seats to regain the majority the party lost in 2019. Democrats still hold a slim 21-19 majority over Republicans in the Senate. Senators are not up for reelection until 2023.

Republicans had controlled the House since 2000, but Democrats won back 15 GOP-held seats in 2017, helped by voter hostility toward then-President Donald Trump. In 2019, Democrats took full control of the legislature by wiping out slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

In other tight House races this year, two-term Democratic incumbent Chris Hurst lost to Republican challenger Jason Ballard in the 12th District and first-term Democratic Del. Joshua Cole was defeated by Republican challenger Tara Durant in the 28th District, which includes the city of Fredericksburg and parts of Stafford County.

In District 83, which includes parts of the cities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Republican challenger Tim Anderson, an attorney and gun shop owner, ousted Democratic incumbent Nancy Guy.

___

Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
RACINE, Wis. (AP)  A sheriff on Wednesday recommended that five members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission be criminally charged for telling local elections officials to send absentee ballots to eight nursing home residents in 2020 instead of sending poll workers to oversee voting there during the coronavirus pandemic.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, a Republican, earlier called on state Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, to launch a statewide investigation on allegations of election fraud at Mount Pleasants Ridgewood Care Center. Schmaling said so-called Special Voting Deputies should have been sent in to help residents who did not have the mental capacity to vote.

Kaul responded that Racine County officials should file charges if they believe election laws were broken. Schmaling was quick to make the next move, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Based upon the failure of Attorney General Josh Kaul to initiate a statewide investigation, I have forwarded charging recommendations to the Racine County District Attorneys Office for their review, said a release signed by Schmaling and Sgt. Michael Luell, who led the investigation into Ridgewood.

The district attorney's office did not return a message left Wednesday afternoon by The Associated Press.

The allegations are the latest example of Trump supporters seeking to undermine confidence in the 2020 presidential election in a critical battleground state that President Joe Biden carried. The state justice department has already said it has no plans to pursue the case.

The commission voted 5-1 against sending poll workers into nursing homes due to a safer-at-home order issued by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Schmaling said the five commissioners who voted no should each face two felony and two misdemeanor charges. Charges were not recommended the commissioner who voted yes.

Schmaling has said hes not trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and that his staff has no idea how the eight Ridgewood voters at the center of the investigation cast their ballots.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has said the Racine County sheriffs offices conclusions are wrong and that no crimes were committed.
EDWARDSVILLE  Gulf Shores Restaurant & Grill in town donated all of its receipts from Nov. 4 sales to the family of fallen Pontoon Beach Police Officer Tyler Timmins, or $12,000.

Harry Parker co-owns two locations with his wife, Erica. The Edwardsville Gulf Shores is located at 215 Harvard Drive.

We just went through the worst kind of nightmare, he said, referring to the pandemic. A lot of restaurants have closed and others are still wondering what to do but us, were still standing. In fact, were expanding.

Parker said without local support from the community, he, too, might be pondering whether to close up shop.

He said they have a three-pronged mission  to support military members (active-duty and veterans alike); to support first responders; and to support their local community.

It just fits with what were really trying to do, he said of the decision to donate Thursdays proceeds. Parker emphasized that its not a sales gimmick or 10 or 20 percent of the days take; its all of they earned on Nov. 4, including all take-out orders that day.

We are all-in, and anything donated is appreciated, he added.

He said it has to be devastating for Timmins family, so they want to do what they can to assist his wife, Linsey, and their daughter, Chloe. Tyler and Linsey wed on Sept. 11.

A GoFundMe page to help Timmins wife and daughter is located at https://rb.gy/5vs3dn

They started the first Gulf Shores in Creve Coeur in 2005.

I started Gulf Shores because I wanted to bring my family recipes to the public, said Parker. Ive been in St. Louis for 19 years, started the first restaurant in Creve Coeur 17 years ago, and that went better than expected so I decided to expand. Were trying to bring the true flavors of New Orleans  the gumbos, the blend of spices, debunking the myth that Cajun food is hot, that down home cooking  to the Midwest.

Theyre not done expanding; a new Gulf Shores location in St. Peters, Missouri is slated to open in early December, he said.

Reach reporter Charles Bolinger at 618-659-5735
MADRID (AP)  Police forces in nine countries helped break up a network that smuggled hundreds of Pakistanis into the European Union through the Balkans, cramming them into the back of trucks and charging them up to 20,000 euros ($23,000) each, Spanish police announced Thursday.

The migrants were transported in dangerous and inhumane conditions, with trucks usually carrying more than 50 people in a space of 8 square meters (86 square feet), Spain's National Police said.

The operation, which lifted a lid on how smuggling gangs work, involved police from Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Italy, Greece, Italy and Romania, with the EU crime agency Europol in support.

Fifteen people, including 12 Spaniards, have been detained on suspicion of having brought at least 400 people into the EU during the last eight months. Europol classified the ringleader, who was arrested in Romania, as a high-value target. His nationality was not disclosed.

Investigators said the gang of people smugglers gathered migrants in Pakistan and sent them to the EU through the Balkans. The Bihac refugee camp in Bosnia was the main logistic hub for the network, according to Spanish police and Europol. It was unclear how the migrants got to Bosnia.

Authorities said migrants crossed the mountains separating Bosnia from EU member Croatia on foot, with the help of smugglers.

Spanish truck drivers then transported the Pakistani travelers to the Croatia-Slovenia border. There, migrants had to walk again and rejoined the truck only once they were inside Slovenia, from where they were taken to their final destinations.

The price per person from Bosnia to Slovenia was 3,000 euros ($3,469), police said. From Bosnia to Italy it was 5,000-8,000 euros ($5,781-$9,251).

The price from Pakistan to the final EU destination country ranged from 12,000 to 20,000 euros ($13,876 to $23,127).

The trucks were rented in Spain. Spanish police said the truck drivers were fully aware of the type of load they were carrying. A car accompanied each truck to warn of possible controls ahead, according to Spanish police.

The gangs cars and trucks were also involved in drug trafficking networks, police allege.

The operation began when Spanish police intercepted a truck carrying 77 people, four of them minors, on an undisclosed date.

The travel conditions on that trip were so dangerous that the migrants had to drill holes in the back of the truck to breathe, police said.

___

Follow AP's migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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Outrigger announces management of new Phuket property

PHUKET: Outrigger Hospitality Group has announced management appointments for the newly branded Outrigger Surin Beach Resort, which is scheduled to open Dec 15.

tourism

By The Phuket News

Thursday 4 November 2021, 12:32PM

New appointments for Outrigger Surin Beach Resort (from left): Pongsak Thongwarothai, Alexander Oddy, Joerg Hontheim.

The move comes as Thailand has lifted quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated tourists from over 60 countries and territories, effective Nov 1.

Pongsak Aey Thongwarothai will be Resort Manager, Outrigger Surin Beach Resort. He brings experience from a longstanding career in Thailands hotel sector. He has worked with Sheraton and Moevenpick before joining Outrigger in Phuket. He was previously Executive Assistant Manager, Rooms Division at the former and multiple award-winning Outrigger Laguna Phuket Beach Resort at Bang Tao Beach.

As Executive Chef of the Outrigger Surin Beach Resort, Alexander Oddy, an Australian national, will spearhead the culinary programmes at this property  including the new Nalu Bar and Grill  while also overseeing Outrigger Khao Lak Beach Resort.

With more than 20 years experience in hospitality, Mr Oddy has worked in small cafes, fine-dining restaurants, beach clubs, bars, resorts, private catering events and restaurant consulting. His career has spanned three continents and a pandemic during which he started a successful home bakery.

Joerg Hontheim will take the role of Area Director of Food and Beverage, Thailand, based in Phuket. A German national, Mr Hontheim is a Certified Master Chef. He holds a bachelors degree in hospitality and various certifications, including revenue management from Cornell University. He has held various positions with Marriott, Ritz Carlton, Renaissance and Grand Hyatt throughout Asia and the United States.

Khun Aey, Joerg and Alex will be using all their substantial hospitality experience to deliver exceptional guest experiences  from captivating food and beverage offerings to the warm and heartfelt service culture for which Outrigger is known, said Tony Pedroni, Outrigger Area General Manager for Thailand.

We are particularly excited for our guests to enjoy the resorts private plunge-pool suites, split-level rooms and our new surf-inspired Nalu Bar & Grill. Altogether, we will be offering guests an idyllic blend of seaside living with an urban city vibe, he said.

The property will also feature two swimming pools, fitness studio and a spa.
Phuket aims to host SEA Games, World Specialized Expo

PHUKET: Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew will propose to the mobile Cabinet meeting in Krabi later this month that Phuket bid to host the 25th SEA Games in 2025 and the World Specialized Expo 2028 in 2028.

economicstourismCOVID-19

By The Phuket News

Thursday 4 November 2021, 10:13AM

Governor Narong announced the plan yesterday (Nov 3). Photo: Radio Thailand Phuket

The move is part of a plan to help broaden Phukets economic base and reduce the islands overdependence on destination tourism, Governor Narong explained yesterday (Nov 3).

The proposal to host the major events is part of a plan for the national government to support development in three key industries: sports; health and wellness; and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences & exhibitions).

The plan, comprising 18 separate projects, will be presented to the mobile Cabinet meeting to be held in Krabi on Nov 15-16, he said.

Phuket has faced serious problems from the impact of the COVID-19 situation, with all sectors [of the community] suffering harshly because Phukets main economic base is a monolithic structure. The main income for the island is from tourism and services, up to 95% of our economy, Governor Narong said.

Therefore, the economy must be built and adjusted to have at least 10 more pillars to support it in case any one pillar is affected, he added.

The proposal to host the 25th SEA Games in 2025 is aimed to benefit the entire Andaman region, Governor Narong explained.

Hosting it will be an important part of stimulating the economy, and before the competition event there will be city improvements to support the image of Thailand as the host, he said.

The bid for Phuket to host the World Specialized Expo 2028 would be a combined effort with the TCEB (Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau), Governor Narong continued.

The global health-related event would bring many visitors to the region and place Thailand centre stage in the international community for hosting international events, he said.

The proposal to host World Specialized Expo 2028 has been a long time coming. The plan to bid for the global wellness event was approved by Deputy Minister of Public Health Sathit Pitutecha on Sept 1.

Rangsiman Kingkaew, Vice President of Strategic Tourism at the Phuket Tourism Association, last month noted, If Phuket province is selected as the host, that could lead to investment of up to B4 billion, and with further economic benefits Thailand worth more than B45bn.

That sentiment was also expressed by TCEB President Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya late last month, who confirmed that the TCEB plans to propose to the Cabinet within November its bid for three mega international events under a B10bn budget to support Thailands economic recovery.

Mega events attracting millions of visitors are crucial to move the national economy forward, Mr Chiruit said.

The event is expected to draw 5-6 million visitors during the off-peak season, aiming to contribute B49.2bn to the economy, he noted.

Governor Narong yesterday also confirmed that plans to overhaul Phukets public health system would also be presented to the mobile Cabinet meeting.

The third issue is the health issue of the COVID-19 situation. It was found that Phuket still has disparities in public health. Therefore, there is a need to raise the level of public health at all three levels, namely primary, secondary and tertiary, for further development, he said.

A blueprint has been prepared for the master plan to be presented at this meeting of the Cabinet, Governor Narong concluded.
Phukets diplomatic corps briefed on islands tourism readiness

PHUKET: Spearheading Phukets economic and tourism recovery efforts, the Phuket Tourist Association made a show of readiness at a diplomatic briefing held recently to bring Phukets diplomatic corps up to speed on the countrys reopening since Nov 1.

tourismCOVID-19economicshealth

By The Phuket News

Thursday 4 November 2021, 10:56AM

The event saw a large turnout of consul-generals, honorary consuls and other officials from Phuket-based consulates of various countries, including Switzerland, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Russia. Also joining the briefing were consuls of Estonia, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Nepal, South Korea and Kazakhstan.

On hand to welcome the diplomats and lead a three-member panel to share insights into Phukets present and future at the briefing was PTA President Bhummikitti Ruktaengam.

The session started with an overview of the Phuket Sandbox scheme in which Mr Bhummikitti revealed the progress of the scheme that had been made over the past 116 days.

Later the president introduced a comprehensive tourism and public health strategy that has been developed in response to the Thai governments policy of opening up Thailand to fully vaccinated tourists from low-risk countries, said a release from the PTA explaining the briefing.

The diplomatic representatives were brought up to speed on the requirements for foreign nationals to be allowed to enter Thailand without quarantine. The participating consuls also learned interesting facts about the post-lockdown setting of the country and Phuket, the release said.

Mr Bhummikitti said that the remarkable achievement of the Phuket Sandbox scheme was due in no small part to the full cooperation of Phuket populace and the highly efficient health and safety systems already in place such as the Phuket Chana, Mor Phrom, SHA and SHA BA systems that have helped ensure the Phuket Sandbox scheme is running without a hitch.

The Phuket Sandbox program aims to encourage all Phuket people to take steps forward together with adequate tourist income to get everyone through this crisis. Were hoping to step up efforts to bring greater sustainability and security to the tourism sector for the next generation Mr Bhummikitti said.

During the briefing, the PTA highlighted its current campaign, Together Phuket Stepping Forward, which positions Phuket as a destination thats worth visiting, safe and highly accessible, with a fair distribution of tourist income.

The campaign aims to accelerate Phukets economic and tourism recovery through the cooperation of all concerned organisations from all sectors in the island resort such as tourism, public health, hospitality, transportation and education.

While Phukets public health systems are ready to tackle the pandemic, Mr Bhummikitti envisions a world in which people need to learn to live with the virus as part of a post-Covid-19 world in which standard health and safety measures are part of the realities of life, the release noted.

The briefing wrapped up with a Q&A session in which the consuls were given reassurances that Phuket is ready to welcome tourists back and the island resort is safe for both international and local visitors thanks to its highly efficient public health sector that is on alert for any immediate threat.
Phuket hits top in Airbnb holiday stay searches



By The Phuket News

Thursday 4 November 2021, 12:53PM

Tourists enjoy Nai Harn Beach on Tuesday (Nov 2). Photo: PR Phuket

PHUKET: Phuket has become the top choice among searches for accommodations in Thailand on the Airbnb platform since the countrys reopening to visitors from 63 countries and territories without quarantine launched on Monday (Nov 1).

Since Monday, searches for accommodations in Thailand on the Airbnb platform have doubled, said Amanpreet Bajaj, Airbnbs General Manager for India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, reported state news agency NBT.

Phuket is the top destination, followed by Bangkok, Samui, Pattaya and Chiang Mai, Mr Bajaj confirmed

Provinces near Bangkok have also seen more searches. Surprisingly, Phetchaburi, a lesser-known province, has seen the number of searches rise by 80%.

Mr Bajaj added that most of the tourists from Europe, North America, and colder countries are preparing to escape the cold season.

This makes Thailand one of their top destinations. Thailand will be seeing more tourists from the US, Russia, Germany, Britain, Korea, Australia, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland, he said.

As Thailand officially reopened and lifted the quarantine on arrival, we have seen the rising demand to visit Thailand reflected by Airbnb bookings, Mr Bajaj added.

There is also a large number of tourists who booked for a long stay which is not beyond expectation because Thailand is also one of the top destinations for workation, he noted.
Reopening checks find only six tourist infections

BANGKOK: Only six COVID-19 infections among visitors have been recorded from more than 4,500 people tested in the first two days of the country reopening to tourists, the government said yesterday (Nov 3).

CoronavirusCOVID-19Vaccinetourism

By Bangkok Post

Thursday 4 November 2021, 09:10AM

Tourists return to the famous Temple of Dawn in Bangkok yesterday (Nov 3). Photo: Chanat Katanyu

Dr Sumanee Wacharasint, assistant spokesman for the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said that of 4,510 tourist arrivals, 4,022 were allowed to enter without quarantine, as they were fully vaccinated and tested negative for COVID-19, the Bangkok Post reports.

The other 488 are travellers who opted for COVID-19 quarantine because they had yet to be fully vaccinated and only six infections were confirmed among them, Dr Sumanee said.

She said that five countries - Japan, Singapore, Qatar, China and Germany - had the highest number of tourists arriving in Thailand in the first two days of the countrys reopening.

Tourists from 63 countries are now exempt from being subjected to quarantine rules as part of the governments reopening scheme.

As for the 17 provinces set to take part in the governments tourism reopening pilot programme, 16 were now ready to start it as they have already achieved the minimum 50% first-shot vaccination coverage, she said.

Only Nong Khai has yet to fulfil this requirement, she said, adding that first-dose vaccination coverage there stood at 47.3%.

Since its launch on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the countrys reopening has so far run smoothly, without any major problems.

Visitors required to stay only one night in certified hotels that are part of the reopening programme are guaranteed to get their RT-PCR COVID-19 test results in one day as promised and they will be then free to travel if cleared of infection, Anutin said.

The infection rate among tourists entering Thailand through the Phuket Sandbox programme, for instance, was only about 0.8%, he said.

As for progress in the countrys COVID-19 vaccination drive, Dr Sumanee said 77 million doses of the vaccine have been administered so far.

The CCSA is now aiminng to administer up to 100mn doses by the end of this month which should see second-shot vaccination coverage reach 80% from its current 44%, Dr Sumanee added.
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High near 65F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low 48F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Clearfield, PA (16830)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain for the afternoon. High near 45F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

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Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 32F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Sonja Klinsky, Arizona State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Climate change has hit home around the world in 2021 with record heat waves, droughts, wildfires and extremestorms. Often, the people suffering most from the effects of climate change are those who have done the least to cause it.

To reduce climate change and protect those who are most vulnerable, its important to understand where emissions come from, who climate change is harming and how both of these patterns intersect with other forms of injustice.

I study the justice dilemmas presented by climate change and climate policies, and have been involved in international climate negotiations as an observer since 2009. Here are six charts that help explain the challenges.

Where emissions come from

One common way to think about a countrys responsibility for climate change is to look at its greenhouse gas emissions per capita, or per person.

For example, China is currently the single largest greenhouse gas emitter by country. However, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the U.S., Australia and Canada all have more than twice the per capita emissions of China. And they each have more than 100 times the per capita emissions of several countries in Africa.

These differences are very important from a justice perspective.

The majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels to power industries, stores, homes and schools and produce goods and services, including food, transportation and infrastructure, to name just a few.

As a countrys emissions get higher, they are less tied to essentials for human well-being. Measures of human well-being increase very rapidly with relatively small increases in emissions, but then level off. That means high-emitting countries could reduce their emissions significantly without reducing the well-being of their populations, while lower-income, lower-emitting countries cannot.

Low-income countries have been arguing for years that, in a context in which global emissions must be dramatically reduced in the next half-century, it would be unjust to require them to cut essential investments in areas that richer countries already have invested in, such as access to electricity, education and basic health care, while those in richer countries continue to enjoy lifestyles with high consumption of energy and consumer goods.

Responsibility for decades of emissions

Looking at current emissions alone misses another important aspect of climate injustice: Greenhouse gas emissions accumulate over time.

Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and this accumulation drives climate change. Carbon dioxide traps heat, warming the planet. Some countries and regions bear vastly more responsibility for cumulative emissions than others.

For instance, the United States has emitted over a quarter of all greenhouse gases since the 1750s, while the entire continent of Africa has emitted only about 3%.

People today continue to benefit from wealth and infrastructure that was generated with energy linked to these emissions decades ago.

Emissions differences within countries

The benefits of fossil fuels have been uneven within countries, as well.

From this perspective, thinking about climate justice requires attention to patterns of wealth. A study by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Oxfam found that 5% of the worlds population was responsible for 36% of the greenhouse gases from 1990-2015. The poorest half of the population was responsible for less than 6%.

These patterns are directly connected to the lack of access to energy by the poorest half of the worlds population and the high consumption of the wealthiest through things like luxury air travel, second homes and personal transportation. They also show how actions by a few high emitters could reduce a regions climate impact.

Similarly, over one-third of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement over the past half-century can be directly traced to 20 companies, primarily producers of oil and gas. This draws attention to the need to develop policies capable of holding large corporations accountable for their role in climate change.

Who will be harmed by climate change?

Understanding where emissions come from is only part of the climate justice dilemma. Poor countries and regions often also face greater risks from climate change.

Some small island countries, such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, face threats to their very survival as sea levels rise. Parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Arctic and mountain regions face much more rapid climate change than other parts of the world. In parts of Africa, changes in temperature and precipitation are contributing to food security concerns.

Many of these countries and communities bear little responsibility for the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. At the same time, they have the fewest resources available to protect themselves.

Climate impacts  such as droughts, floods or storms  affect people differently depending on their wealth and access to resources and on their involvement in decision making. Processes that marginalize people, such as racial injustice and colonialism, mean that some people in a country or community are more likely than others to be able to protect themselves from climate harms.

Strategies for a just climate agreement

All of these justice issues are central to negotiations at the United Nations Glasgow climate conference and beyond.

Many discussions will focus on who should reduce emissions and how poor countries reductions should be supported. Investing in renewable energy, for example, can avoid future emissions, but low-income countries need financial help.

Wealthy countries have been slow to meet their commitment to provide US$100 billion a year to help developing countries adapt to the changing climate, and the costs of adaptation continue to rise.

Some leaders are also asking hard questions about what to do in the face of losses that cannot be undone. How should the global community support people losing their homelands and ways of life?

Some of the most important issues from a justice perspective must be dealt with locally and within countries. Systemic racism cannot be dealt with at the international level. Creating local and national plans for protecting the most vulnerable people, and laws and other tools to hold corporations accountable, will also need to happen within countries.

These discussions will continue long after the Glasgow conference ends.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-a-justice-issue-these-6-charts-show-why-170072.
Laval_news

Employment loss, solitude: pandemic hits Laval hard

Almost a third of Laval residents lost their employment or saw their business close temporarily or permanently during the pandemic, and about half of Lavallois reduced their level of physical activity during the pandemic. Thats just a sampling from a report released today on the health of Quebecers with a focus on the pandemics effect on their daily lives.

As part of the 2020-2021 Quebec Population Health Survey, researchers questioned 7,275 people, including 471 Laval residents, aged 15 and over, from November 2020 to April 2021 about their life changes, sense of solitude and their financial situations related to the pandemic. According to the survey by the Institut de la statistique du Quebec, the pandemic disrupted Quebecers lifestyles, increased their feelings of loneliness and harmed their financial situation.

Nearly a third of Laval residents had to quarantine or self-isolate at home during the pandemic, (more than the Quebec average of 26.3%) and 40% of those did so after being in close contact with a confirmed case (compared to the Quebec average of 25.4%).

While 48.8 % of adults reported doing less physical activity, only 13.7% reported an increase, female Laval residents far more likely to increase their level of activity since the pandemic began than their male counterparts (17.5% vs. 9.7%). As for alcohol consumption, 15.4% of Laval adults declared having reduced their consumption, while one in 10 said their consumption rose.

A full third of Laval residents reported concern about balancing childcare, education and work. Compared to Quebecers overall, Lavallois are more likely to worry about their own health, (69.7% vs. 61.9%) and that of someone close to them (63.7% vs. 57.3%). More than a third of Laval residents over 15 years old attribute their psychological distress directly to the pandemic.

Almost a third (29%) say the pandemic had an effect on their finances, about the same as Quebec-wide, with nearly seven in 10 workers saying their employment situation has been affected, and

27.4 % saying the pandemic caused their job loss or permanent or temporary closure of their business. Almost a quarter, 23.8%, worked at home during the pandemic. These results differed by gender, with womens employment affected more than that of men (76.3% vs. 63.7 %). In terms of workers, the persons most affected by the solitude were those who lost their job or closed their business and those who worked from home.

While studies, media and political figures regularly repeated that that it was seniors suffering most from isolation, the survey found the feeling of loneliness most affected women, people under 35 years old, students, persons living alone or in single parent families, those who perceive themselves as poor, or having a poor health, and those in quarantine.

View the complete report at: https://bit.ly/3nxpfKN
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

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Showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon. High 6C. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 4C. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Heber Springs, AR (72543)

Today

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Thunder possible. High 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 33F. Winds light and variable.
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP)  The Algerian president's office said Wednesday that three Algerians were killed by a military strike on their trucks, and it accused Moroccan forces in the disputed Western Sahara of being behind the attack.

The trucks were traveling from the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott toward the Algerian city of Ouargla as part of normal commercial exchanges when they were targeted, the Algerian presidents office said in a statement.
DOWS, Iowa (AP)  Authorities in north-central Iowa are investigating the death of a man in the small town of Dows.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said in a news release that EMS crews called to a home on Tuesday found the body of Mario Salvador Lopez. His body was sent to the State Office of the Iowa Medical Examiner. DCI said that after the autopsy, the death was being investigated as a homicide.
SPRINGFIELD  A Democratic member of the Illinois House has filed a motion in federal court to intervene as a separate defendant in a pair of lawsuits challenging the legislative redistricting plan signed into law in September.

Rep. Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, who represents the largely Latino 22nd District on Chicagos southwest side, is arguing the composition of her district  and therefore her chances of reelection  could hang in the balance if the court decides to alter the map.

A three-judge panel in the Northern District of Illinois is hearing the lawsuits challenging the new maps. One was filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF. Another was filed by Republican leaders in the General Assembly, Sen. Dan McConchie and Rep. Jim Durkin.

A third case was filed by a group of civil rights organizations that include the East St. Louis Chapter of the NAACP. It was recently transferred to the Northern District to be heard alongside the other two.

Both the Republican and the MALDEF suits argue the new districts dilute Latino voting power, either by packing them into concentrated districts or by cracking Latino neighborhoods into separate districts.

The Republican suit specifically mentions the 22nd District as one of only four new districts in which Latinos make up more than 50 percent of the voting age population. But it argues lawmakers could have formed as many as six Latino districts on Chicagos southwest side and southwestern suburbs.

The McConchie Complaint explicitly proposes a revised September map that cuts through the 22nd District, the motion states, referring to one alternative map portrayed in the GOP complaint.

The motion also states that Guerrero-Cuellar has a right to intervene, to protect her right to reelection.

Guerrero-Cuellar was appointed to the 22nd District seat earlier this year to replace former House Speaker Michael Madigan, who resigned. She was also the only Democrat in the Illinois House who voted against the congressional redistricting plan that passed during the recent fall veto session. One other Democrat, Rep. Kelly Cassidy, of Chicago, was recorded as not voting.

During floor debate of congressional maps, Guerrero-Cuellar cited concerns about how the area in the 22nd legislative district was split between multiple congressional districts.

And there was something done to that district intentionally to exclude Latinos and that representation, she said. So when someone tells me, Hey, were here to represent the Latinos on the southwest side, Im gonna say, hold on. That was not the case.

According to U.S Census data cited in court documents, nearly 63 percent of the voting age population of the district identifies as Latino.

The court issued an order Tuesday saying it would take Guerrero-Cuellars motion under advisement. A status hearing in the case is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday.
ATLANTA (AP)  The elections director in Georgia's most populous county, which has been under intense scrutiny for its handling of elections, will step down at the end of the year, county officials said Wednesday.

Fulton County Registration & Elections Director Rick Barron submitted his resignation, effective Dec. 31, Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chair Robb Pitts said during a news conference. The announcement came a day after municipal elections that saw short lines and few problems.

But the county, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of the city of Atlanta, has a history of electoral problems and has long been a target of Republicans, who have complained of sloppiness and mismanagement. It became a favorite target of former President Donald Trump, who blamed unproven allegations of fraud in the county for his narrow loss in Georgia last year.

Barron said in his resignation letter that he will be on hand for the Nov. 30 runoff election and will support transition for the department. He has been proud of the department's accomplishments during his more than eight years at its helm, he wrote.

Under the intense scrutiny of the last year, I believe our team has performed with grace and professionalism, Barron wrote. Even in the midst of threats to our personal safety, we have continued to make the interests of Fulton County voters our highest priority.

Pitts and Fulton County Registration and Elections Board Chair Cathy Woolard sang Barron's praises as they announced his departure.

Mr. Barron was not forced to resign, Pitts said. I want to make that crystal clear. It was voluntary.

Pitts said he and Woolard had breakfast with Barron a few days ago and talked about this with mutual consent and agreement." Barron's continued presence would be a distraction," not because of any wrongdoing on his part but because of naysayers who continue to criticize the county no matter what it does, Pitts said.

That kind of pressure, that kind of scrutiny for that long would wear on anybody," Pitts said. You have the former president and his minions, the secretary of state and his minions, daily blasting you."

In addition to a torrent of insults from Trump, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly called for a change in leadership for Fulton County elections. Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said Wednesday that the office had no comment on Barron's resignation.

After a problem-plagued primary election in June 2020, when some Fulton County voters never received requested absentee ballots and others waited hours in line to vote, an independent monitor was appointed as part of an agreement with the State Election Board. The monitor, Carter Jones, observed the county's elections operations from October 2020 through January.

He reported that he saw sloppy processes and systemic disorganization but did not witness any illegality, fraud or intentional malfeasance.

Amid a flood of criticism, the county election board voted in February to fire Barron, only to have its decision rejected by the Board of Commissioners.

Republican state lawmakers earlier this year used a provision in the state's new wide-ranging new election law to initiate a process that could ultimately result in the replacement of Fulton County's election board with an appointee chosen by the Republican-controlled State Election Board. A t hree-person review panel is currently examining the county's election operations and will provide a report of its findings to the state board.

Woolard, who only joined the county election board in September, said interactions with the review panel have been cordial, and she said she didn't know how Barron's departure would affect the review. She said a national search will be held to find Barrons replacement, saying, I think it will be difficult.
Compared to other generations, rates for cervical cancer are 87% lower in women who got the HPV vaccine when they were between 12 and 13 years old, according to a study from the United Kingdom.

Cervical cancer has a 62% lower rate in teen girls that were vaccinated between 14 and 16 years old. Those between 16 and 18 years of age showed a rate that was 34% lower.

The rate of cervical cancer in women who were vaccinated between ages 14 and 16 was 62% lower. And in those vaccinated between 16 and 18, it was 34% lower.

The study was published in the Lancet and was released Wednesday. It relied on information from England's HPV vaccination program that began vaccinating girls at the age of 12, also offering what's being referred to as "catch-up" vaccines for older age groups.

"This represents an important step forwards in cervical cancer prevention. We hope that these new results encourage uptake as the success of the vaccination program relies not only on the efficacy of the vaccine but also the proportion of the population vaccinated," study co-author Dr. Kate Soldan said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched a campaign to increase HPV vaccination rates in January, CNN reports. States with low vaccination rates were targeted in the campaign, and that includes South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi.

Additionally, CNN points out that the American Academy of Pediatrics found HPV vaccination rates to be getting better. Yet, fewer than half of young adults in the United States have received one or more doses.

Proffesor Marc Brisson of Universite Laval in Quebec told USA Today in 2019 that cervical cancer could be eliminated "if sufficiently high-vaccination coverage can be achieved and maintained."
The Illinois General Assembly adjourned last month without naming a replacement for its legislative inspector general as Carol Pope, whose resignation will take place Dec. 15, leaves the office.

Pope cited the ethics package passed through the General Assembly in 2021 in her resignation announcement.

"This past legislative session demonstrated true ethics reform is not a priority," Pope wrote. "The LIG has no real power to effect change or shine a light on ethics violations. The position is essentially a paper tiger."

Three candidates are now up for consideration as Republicans complain that Democratic delays could leave the post vacant. Democratic members of the Legislative Ethics Commission left before a candidate was chosen, State Sen. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, said in a statement.

"Our search committee met expectations, interviewed multiple candidates and complied with a reasonable timeline that was outlined," Tracy said in a statement on Oct. 28. "We had ample opportunity to make a selection and I am disappointed that several of the Democrat members of the Commission did not commit to seeing this process through."

The three candidates are being interviewed and vetted by the eight-member Legislative Ethics Commission, which met on Oct. 28, the final day of the legislature's fall session, according to the Chicago Tribune.

"Now, we are in a situation where in just six weeks, we could have complaints coming into the Commission and not have a Legislative Inspector General in place to address them," Tracy stated. "Allowing this position to go unfilled is a major disservice to the people of Illinois who deserve an accountable and transparent government.

However, State Rep. Kelly Burke, D-Evergreen Park, told the Tribune there's little risk of the office being left vacant.

"Its our intention that it gets filled in a timely fashion," Burke told the Tribune. "But theres a process to making sure we have the best available person to do this. Thats why were taking the time to do our due diligence."

Tracy said in a statement that there are no more legislative days left before the current legislative inspector general 's resignation takes effect in which to confirm a replacement, and that she intends to take all possible action, including asking the current person to extend her resignation date, to ensure that Illinois is not left without a legislative inspector general .

However, Pope said she will not extend her tenure even if a replacement has not been named, noting the five months she gave the commission to find a successor.

If no replacement is chosen before Dec. 15, Burke told the Tribune the commission could choose an interim watchdog before the nominee is considered for confirmation by the full legislature when it reconvenes in January.

The last time the office was vacant, after the state's first legislative inspector general resigned in 2014, a victims rights advocate testified at a legislative hearing in October 2017 that her complaint alleging shed been sexually harassed by a state senator went unanswered for more than a year, according to the Tribune.

Julie Porter was temporarily appointed to the position afterward and held the position until Pope took over in December 2018, according to Capitol News Illinois.

In September, after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposed a tweak to Senate Bill 539 ( the ethics plan passed by the General Assembly), Democrats used a do-over vote in the House to approve the revised plan 74-41.

Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, was a sponsor of SB 539 and voted yes on the revision. Reps. Amy Elik, R-Fosterburg and Jay Hoffman, D-Belleville, voted yes on the revision and Reps. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Jacksonville, Norine Hammond, R-Macomb and Charles Meier, R-Okawville voted no.

The Senate approved the change in a 58-0 vote in late August.

The measure takes effect Jan. 1 and requires additional disclosures from officials on personal financial interests, aims to prevent lawmakers from lobbying their former colleagues immediately after they leave office, and allows the legislative inspector general to initiate investigations of alleged wrongdoing without the blessing of the ethics commission, among other changes, per the Tribune.

The bill has been criticized for limiting the Inspector General to matters related directly to a lawmaker's public office. Other criticisms include the six-month cooling-off period before lawmakers who leave office can work as lobbyists being notably shorter than in many other states.

When asked about the bill in July, Pritzker said it includes many provisions that he favors but conceded it does not go as far as he would have liked.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was reelected to a second term, surviving a bitter challenge in a race that focused on calls for changes to policing and racial justice, elections officials announced Wednesday.

Seventeen candidates ran in the race, including many who took issue with the way Frey has handled changes to the police department since one of its officers killed George Floyd last year. Frey, a Democrat, risked his political future and drew the ire of the citys most liberal voices by opposing a ballot question asking voters to eliminate the police department.

Voters soundly defeated that ballot question on Tuesday but left Frey guessing until Wednesday about his own fate. Frey had 43% of the vote after the first count Tuesday night, which was more than double the support of his closest challengers but short of the more than 50% needed to win outright under the citys ranked-choice voting system.

Frey told reporters he won by assembling a diverse coalition with support from across the city, and that the backbone of his support came from the heavily Black north side and from the Somali and Latino communities. He said he plans to roll out details in the coming weeks of a vision for public safety and police accountability.

This is a moment of transformation in our city if we can actually come together, recognizing the magnitude of this particular moment," Frey said. "And the moment is bright. The bright lights of the national press and the world have been shining down on Minneapolis now for, gosh, about a year and a half. And what we are seeing right now is that Minneapolis is shining back even brighter. We are well poised for the progress that we need to see."

Frey was announced the winner after city officials allocated voters second- and third-place choices when their first choices were eliminated. The city said Frey won with 49.1%, or 70,669 votes, to runner-up Kate Knuth's 38.2%, or 55,007 votes.

Only a handful of candidates were thought to be serious threats to Frey, with two  Knuth and Sheila Nezhad  teaming up on a strategy that urged voters to leave Frey off their ballots entirely. The pair had the backing of U.S. Rep. llhan Omar.

Frey, a Democrat in a liberal-dominated city, faced sharp pressure from competitors on his left flank. Seventeen candidates had entered the race for mayor, including many who took issue with the way Frey has handled changes to the police department since George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis officer last year. Frey positioned himself as an opponent of an effort to eliminate the police department and of the most vocal liberals who were seeking a symbolic victory in Floyds city.

Voters soundly defeated the proposal to replace the department, with about 56% opposed. Four council members who backed elimination were ousted by challengers, including one who lost to a fellow supporter of the charter amendment. However, two candidates who backed the proposed overhaul won open seats.

Knuth, 40, is a former state representative and environmental justice activist. Nezhad, 33, is a community organizer who worked as a policy analyst for one of the leading groups out to eliminate the police department. Both women also supported rent control, another proposal on Tuesdays ballot, in contrast to Freys general opposition.

Under the ranked-choice system, candidates with no chance to win after the first round of counting are eliminated. A voter who backed such an unsuccessful candidate would then have his or her second choice tabulated, presuming that candidate remained in the race. The process is repeated until a candidate is declared the winner.

Frey late Tuesday called it a really good night but stopped short of claiming victory. By remaining in office, he stands to benefit from voters' approval of another ballot question Tuesday  one that moves the city to a strong-mayor form of government. Critics have long said the city's weak-mayor system sometimes meant confusion over who has clear authority over city departments and staff.

Frey was the face of Minneapolis during some of its darkest days, including Floyds May 2020 death and the rioting that marred ensuing protests and led to the burning of a police precinct after Frey ordered officers to abandon it. Floyds death sparked the most widespread unrest in the U.S. since the Rodney King riots.

During the worst of the Minneapolis unrest, conservatives accused Frey of failing to stem the riots and crack down on soaring crime and gun violence. Meanwhile, the left criticized him for not doing enough to overhaul the police department.

Frey, a lawyer by training and a Virginia transplant, first won a City Council seat in 2013. He ascended to the mayors office in 2017 by ousting incumbent Betsy Hodges in a race also roiled by police accountability issues, including the 2015 shooting of Jamar Clark, a Black man, in a struggle with white officers and the 2017 shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a white woman, by a Black officer.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel said Wednesday it has begun testing a massive inflatable missile detection system designed to hover at high altitudes and detect long-range threats.

Israel already boasts an array of sophisticated missile defenses, which were used successfully during the 11-day Gaza war this year.
EDWARDSVILLE  Tara Riggs has been named a RE/MAX Torchbearer for 2021 honoring the 40 agents under 40 in the Midwest region of RE/MAX by transactions in 2020.

We are very proud of Tara. She is the first recipient of the Torchbearer designation for RE/MAX Alliance in our thirteen-year history. Tara works very hard on behalf of her clients and she is a commendable recipient for this prestigious award, said Rick Owens, owner of RE/MAX Alliance. The Torchbearer honor goes to the top 40 agents under 40 years old in the RE/MAX Central Region, which includes Illinois, Texas, Missouri and more. Its not an easy task to earn this award so it speaks volumes of Taras hard work and dedication to her profession.
EDWARDSVILLE  Kyle P. Swanson, the former head of KTS (Keep Them Safe) Predator Hunters, LLC, has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Madison County States Attorneys office.

Begun in 2019, the group was known for independent sting operations where they would confront and record people they accused of attempting to meet up with under-aged victims.

On May 6, Swanson, 31, of Wood River, was indicted for unlawful restraint and obstructing justice, both Class 4 felonies, and assault, a Class C misdemeanor, stemming from a Jan. 12 incident. One month later, KTS Predator Hunters announced it was ending its work.

Last week Swanson, a veteran, entered into the deferred prosecution agreement with Madison County States Attorney Tom Haine. Now living in Fort Worth, Texas, Swanson agreed to discontinue any predator sex stings in Madison County. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case against Swanson, but reserved the right to reinstate the case if he does not meet the terms of the agreement.

It is the policy of this office to give first-time offenders, especially those with honorable military service, due consideration in the disposition of cases, Haine said. We seek to balance the demands of justice with a culture of second chances.

The agreement states it is in the best interest that Swanson obtain employment and lead a law-abiding life from this day forward.

Swanson also agreed to participate in 20 hours of community service, to provide proof of treatment for his self-disclosed post-traumatic stress disorder, and to cooperate with any investigations or pending criminal cases concerning his sting operations in Madison County, including providing all digital evidence if requested.

Madison County officials had been at odds with KTS Predator Hunters over its methods. At least one lawsuit had been filed against the group after the subject of one of their operations lost his job.

Court documents state that, on Jan. 12, Swanson detained and threatened a man he enticed into his vehicle, and then tried to destroy evidence in the form of cell phone videos. Swanson posted a $40,000 bond and was released.

In July 2020 KTS Predator Hunters and the Madison County Sheriffs Department became involved in a dispute over an incident in a Walgreens parking lot. Both Alton and Madison County law enforcement officials said they received either no or haphazard information prior to the actual incident.

KTS Predator Hunters was credited with helping expose potential pedophiles. Group members would converse online with men who thought they were chatting with underage girls and, eventually, arrange face-to-face meetings during which suspects would be met by law enforcement officials instead of teenagers  many times while KTS taped or live-streamed the meeting for its 40,000-plus followers.

At one point Swanson had posted on the groups Facebook page that he planned to run as a write-in for Madison County Sheriff in 2022.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  Higher education officials should comply with a state law that forbids a school from funneling grant money to a person or organization that promotes or performs abortions, North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said in an opinion Wednesday.

Stenehjems opinion came after an inquiry from North Dakota University System Chancellor Mark Hagerott, who asked if the legislation was constitutional or was pre-empted by prior legal decisions.

Stenehjem said he believed the legislation is not unenforceable based on prior court decisions. He said he would not opine if the measure was unconstitutional unless it is clearly and patently unconstitutional.

The Republican said in an interview that he believed it wasnt.

The law, he wrote, should be read to carry out the purpose of the Legislative Assembly in enacting it.

The law was aimed primarily at preventing North Dakota State University from funneling federal grant money to Planned Parenthood for sex education.

The $250,000 annual grant to the Fargo-based research university comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NDSU President Dean Bresciani said the grant expired in September and wouldnt be renewed.

The bill easily passed the Republican-led Legislature in April. It sought to penalize any institution that enters into a contract with an abortion provider by having its operating budget cut by 2.5%. A school official signing the contract also would face a misdemeanor charge and a fine.

However, GOP Gov. Doug Burgum vetoed the part of the bill with the penalties, citing state law that already forbids an agency of the state from funding or supporting programs that do not give preference, encouragement and support to normal childbirth. Burgum said the sections he did not veto were intended to clarify that unless institutions abide by anti-abortion policies, they are ineligible to receive challenge grant dollars.

University system officials said academic freedom and other factors outweighed the loss of the grant funds.
Scranton, PA (18503)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by some light rain this afternoon. High near 50F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain . Low 39F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements are the Biden administrations boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months  or face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.

Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people working in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing  they will need to be vaccinated.

Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds.

The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors.

Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic.

While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good, he said Thursday in a statement.

Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now.

Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases.

OSHA said companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The agency will face enforcement challenges. Even counting help from states, OSHA has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. An administration official said the agency will respond to whistleblower complaints and make limited spot checks.

The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others.

OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months.

The rules set up potential legal battles along partisan lines between states and the federal government. Several states and Republican governors threatened to sue, contending that the administration lacks the power to make such sweeping mandates under emergency authority.

OSHA's parent agency, the Labor Department, says it is on sound legal footing. The department's top legal official, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that bar employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or face masks.

Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail.

The rules will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees testing positive must be removed from the workplace.

Companies won't be required to provide or pay for tests for unvaccinated workers, but they must give paid time off for employees to get the shots and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. Requirements for masks and paid time off for shots take effect Dec. 5.

Employers covered by the requirements must verify their workers vaccination status by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards, records from doctors or pharmacies, or even an employee's own signed declaration.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a separate rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates  96% or higher  without widespread resignations.

A previously announced requirement for federal contractors to make sure workers are vaccinated was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but the administration delayed that measure until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers. Already, more than a dozen states have sued to block the mandate on contractors.

For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted businesses that announced their own vaccine requirements and urged others to follow their lead.

Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70% of adults fully vaccinated.

Workplace vaccine mandates have become more common recently, with hospitals, state and local governments and some major corporations requiring COVID-19 shots for employees. The mandates have led to overwhelming compliance  in some cases 99% of workers  although a small but vocal number have faced dismissal, filed lawsuits or sought exemptions.

United Airlines required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 are seeking exemptions.

In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. On Thursday, the company said more than 96% of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement.

Walmart, the nations largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and managers who travel within the United States to be vaccinated by Oct. 4. The retailer stopped short of requiring shots for front-line workers, however.

However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in an already-tight labor market.

Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups worried that the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions.

The National Retail Federation suggested the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an emergency and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season, said David French, a senior vice president for the trade group.

The number of new infections in the U.S. is still falling from a summer surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant, but the rate of decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6% from two weeks ago, at more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day.

Cole Stevenson, a 34-year-old autoworker at the Ford Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, said he remains uncomfortable with a vaccine that was developed just a year ago.

He intends to get weekly COVID-19 tests and says he wont reconsider getting the vaccine even if the tests are a financial or logistical burden.

Its getting pretty disgusting how much the government thinks they can be involved in peoples lives, he said. If the whole thing is sort of cooling down and cases are lowering, then buzz off  dont force it on people.



Associated Press writers Paul Wiseman and Hope Yen in Washington, Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit, Stacey Plaisance-Jenkins in Picayune, Mississippi, and Matt OBrien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed.
Three Virginia Republicans who won their state legislative races on Tuesday had attended former President Donald Trump's Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6 before rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

At least 13 candidates on Tuesday's ballots for state or local offices were in Washington, D.C., for the rally promoting the lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump, according to a list compiled by BuzzFeed News. None of them have been charged with any crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 riot or accused of entering the Capitol that day.

Five of the 13 were running for seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, which Democrats and Republicans are battling to control. The House remained up for grabs Wednesday, with a handful of competitive races still too early to call.

The list of losing candidates who attended the Stop the Steal rally included Oath Keepers member Edward Durfee Jr., who ran for the New Jersey General Assembly. He finished third behind two Democrats. Durfee worked a security detail for the Oath Keepers outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, Gothamist reported, but he isn't accused of joining other members of the far-right paramilitary group in storming the building.

The three rally attendees who won their Virginia House races were incumbents Del. Dave LaRock and Del. John McGuire and Marie March, who won an open seat. The two losers in Virginia were Philip Hamilton and Maureen Brody. BuzzFeed News reported that Hamilton and Brody were at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

March said during an interview Wednesday that she doesn't regret attending Trump's Jan. 6 rally with her husband and father. She said they left before Trump finished his speech and the mob breached the Capitol and they didnt go to the Capitol before returning home.

Were in a very conservative district and a lot of people do like Donald Trump, March said. He was the sitting president of the United States of America at the time. We went to see him speak.

March, who owns a restaurant in Christiansburg called Due South BBQ, said she was motivated to run for office in part by an incumbent Democratic lawmaker from a neighboring district who tweeted, Who wants to start a BBQ joint in the (New River Valley) where the owners dont participate in an attempted coup?

"I won and he lost, so it's kind of poetic justice," March said of Del. Chris Hurst.

Over 650 people have been charged with federal crimes in the Jan. 6 riot. Several members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, another far-right extremist group, are charged with plotting coordinated attacks on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Trump urged the crowd of his supporters to march on the Capitol, saying, If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. The Democratic-led U.S. House impeached Trump on a charge he incited the riot, but the Republican-led Senate acquitted him.

LaRock told The Winchester Star in January that he saw rioters attacking the Capitol after attending Trump's speech, but didn't join them.

I dont know what constitutes the Capitol grounds, but I certainly didnt enter the Capitol, LaRock told the newspaper.

McGuire told The Washington Post in July that he was at Trump's rally but didn't enter the Capitol that day. He later issued a statement saying he had joined thousands of law-abiding citizens at the rally to voice our support of a free and fair elections process.

When I arrived home and saw the news, I was just as shocked and horrified as everyone else to see that people had entered the Capitol. It was a tragic day, and one we wont soon forget," his statement said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Elsewhere, Stop the Steal attendees who appeared to be winning local races included candidates for seats on the City Council in Nampa, Idaho, the Borough Council in Watchung, New Jersey, and the Board of Commissioners in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, according to published reports. Apparent losers included candidates for county executive in Pennsylvania and for the City Council in Mason, Ohio.
London, KY (40741)

Today

Showers this morning, becoming a steady rain during the afternoon hours. High 58F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain ending early. Remaining cloudy. Low near 35F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
SAM MONTALTO, Stonington, Boys Soccer, Senior; Montalto scored three goals including the 100th of his career in the Bears 4-0 victory over Plainville in the Class M state tournament. Montalto, who missed the first three games of the season, has 32 goals and nine assists this season.

GIRLS & BOYS Soccer Team, Chariho; It wouldnt be fair to single out a player from either team, both of which captured Division II titles over the weekend of Nov. 12. The girls tied their game with Prout with 1:02 left in regulation and prevailed in penalty kicks. The boys scored the winning goal in the final two minutes of the second overtime to beat North Smithfield.

ZACK TUCK, Westerly, Football; Tuck rushed for 150 yards on 29 carries in a loss to unbeaten St. Raphael in the Division II semifinals. Tuck has rushed for 1,533 yards and scored 19 touchdowns this season for the 7-3 Bulldogs.

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Volvo has said that emissions from the production of electric cars are far higher than a petrol equivalent, as it called on world leaders and energy providers to significantly boost investments in green energy to reduce the carbon footprint of plug-in models.

The Swedish car maker said that over a car's lifetime the electric version will become greener overall, though this will only be achieved after covering between 30,000 and 68,400 miles - taking between four and nine years for the average UK motorist.

The claims were made to coincide with the COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow and as part of a revolutionary new transparency approach adopted by the brand, which includes publishing its latest 'Life Cycle Assessment' report for the pure-electric 57,400 C40 Recharge.

Volvo says greenhouse gas emissions during production of its latest EV are nearly 70% higher than a petrol model

Volvo's report shows the higher CO2 impact of manufacturing (grey) its C40 Recharge electric car (three bars on the right) compared to a petrol XC40 model (left bar). However, the EV has a far lower carbon footprint during use (light blue) - no matter how green the electricity mix is

It shows that greenhouse gas emissions during production of the electric vehicle are nearly 70 per cent higher than a petrol model, which is mainly due to the carbon intensity of battery and steel production, as well as from the increased share of aluminium in the plug-in car.

But Volvo said as an EV the C40 Recharge has a far lower carbon footprint than its comparable petrol version during the 'use phase', though suggests it would take a prolonged period of ownership before it offsets its higher emissions from production.

When charged with clean energy, such as wind power, the lifecycle CO2 footprint of the new electric SUV comes down to approximately 27 tonnes of CO2, compared with 59 tonnes for an XC40 compact SUV powered by a combustion engine.

However, when drivers charge their C40 Recharge using an average global energy mix (which is generated for around 60 per cent from fossil fuels), the cars lifecycle CO2 tonnage can increase to as much as 50 tonnes, significantly reducing the environmental gains versus a traditionally powered car.

Volvo estimated that an electric Volvo C40 needs to be driven around 68,400 miles to have a lower total carbon footprint than its petrol equivalent, if the former is powered by the current global electricity mix.

Volvo estimated that an electric Volvo C40 needs to be driven around 68,400 miles (110,000km) to have a lower total carbon footprint than its petrol equivalent, if the former is powered by the current global electricity mix. However, it could offset its higher production emissions in only 30,000 miles (49,000km) if charged with wind-generated electricity. EV experts dispute the claims, saying the crossover will come after 16,000 miles

An electric Volvo C40 needs to be driven around 68,400 miles to have a lower carbon impact than the petrol version... if powered by a global electricity mix - but only 30,000 miles if powered by wind-generated electricity. #ZeroOmissions #COP26 https://t.co/AIoAaZECIo pic.twitter.com/WxngqPvQqe  Volvo Car UK (@VolvoCarUK) November 2, 2021

To coincide with the COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow, Volvo published its latest 'Life Cycle Assessment' report for the new 57,400 C40 Recharge (left)

Volvo says it is already taking active steps to address these emissions, including through planned collaborations to develop fossil-free steel and with its battery suppliers to produce batteries using 100% renewable energy

Based on the latest UK driving statistics, average annual mileage is 7,400 miles. That means it could take nine years of ownership before the EV is greener than a car with an internal combustion engine, Volvo suggests.

However, it could offset its higher production emissions in only 30,000 miles (four years of driving) if charged with greener wind-generated electricity.

EV sales 'will exceed diesels in 2022' Rising demand for greener cars means more pure-electric and plug-in hybrid cars will join Britains roads in 2021 than during the whole of the last decade, according to the latest forecast from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. A total of 271,962 new battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) were registered between 2010 and 2019. The trade body now forecasts that businesses and consumers will take up around 287,000 of the latest zero-emission capable cars during 2021 alone  around one in six new cars bought. Based on current forecasts, BEV sales are also expected to exceed those of diesel for the full year 2022. In fact, BEV registrations have already risen above diesel - and mild-hybrid diesels - in the last two months. In October, 16,155 BEVs entered the market compared to just 11,530 diesels. The rise in electric car demand is even more remarkable given that 2021 is expected to be a relatively weak year for new car registrations, which are down some 30 per cent on the average recorded over the past decade, mostly due to semiconductor shortages restricting production. Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, said 'massive investment' by industry - as well as long standing government incentives - have seen us go from just 188 new plug-in cars in 2010, to almost 300,000 in 2021. 'To achieve net zero by the desired date, however, uptake rates must continue to grow,' he went on. 'This requires ongoing incentives to help consumers make the switch and significant investment in public charging infrastructure. 'Backed by the ingenuity and innovation of the automotive sector, we can then deliver zero-emission mobility that is accessible and affordable for all.'

Experts have disputed - and criticised - the Swedish maker's estimations, claiming it will take just 16,000 miles - just over two years of driving - for the electric C40 to overtake a petrol equivalent in terms of emissions - then pull well ahead beyond that point.

For a car manufacturer to make such bold statements that somewhat undermine the green credentials of its new - and expensive - vehicle is brave or foolish, depending on which side of the EV-debate fence you sit.

Volvo says the aim of its new reveal-all reports is to encourage decision makers to make improvements so that it and other electric cars can 'deliver on their true potential in terms of climate benefit'.

It said that if this is done then EVs built and charged using clean renewable energy will have huge potential CO2 reductions.

The Swedish company - now owned by Chinese group Geely - has already outlined its aims to become a fully electric car maker by 2030.

Part of its plan is to roll out a new family of pure electric cars in the coming years, in one of the industrys most ambitious electrification schedules.

This includes becoming a climate-neutral company by 2040, as it works to consistently cut carbon emissions across its business.

Hakan Samuelsson, Chief Executive of Volvo Cars, said: 'We made a conscious strategic decision to become a fully electric car maker and an industry leader, but we cant make the transition to climate neutrality alone.

'We need governments and energy firms around the globe to step up their investments in clean energy capacity and related charging infrastructure, so fully electric cars can truly fulfil their promise of cleaner mobility.'

The C40 Recharge Lifecycle Assessment Report outlined that production of aluminium and the Li-ion battery modules have relative high carbon footprints, with a contribution of approximately 30 per cent each to the total footprint of all materials and components in the vehicle.

Volvo says it is already taking active steps to address these emissions, including through planned collaborations to develop fossil-free steel and with its battery suppliers to produce batteries using 100 per cent renewable energy.

Hakan Samuelsson, Chief Executive of Volvo Cars (pictured), says the industry needs governments and energy firms around the globe to step up their investments in clean energy

The Swedish company - now owned by Chinese group Geely - has already outlined its aims to become a fully electric car maker by 2030

Volvo says it wants to be able to achieve climate-neutral manufacturing by 2025. Its European plants run on 100% clean electricity, while its Torslanda factory in Sweden is already fully climate neutral

The company says it is seeking to reduce the lifecycle carbon footprint per average car by 40 per cent between 2018 and 2025, including through reducing carbon emissions in its supply chain by 25 per cent by 2025.

In terms of its own operations, it wants to be able to achieve climate-neutral manufacturing by 2025.

Its European plants run on 100 per cent clean electricity, while its Torslanda factory in Sweden is already fully climate neutral. Elsewhere in the world, its Chengdu and Daqing sites in China are also powered by climate-neutral electricity.

Volvo also confirmed its sales of electrified cars is increasing.

Sales of Volvo Cars fully electric models reached 3.1 per cent of the overall sales, 18,261 cars, for the first 10 months of the year and increased to 5.6 per cent, 2,841 cars, for the month of October.

Volvo has set out a revolutionary new transparency approach where it exposes full details of the carbon footprint of its latest electric models during production, use and end of life
Bosses at LV were accused of 'taking members for fools' after they finally published details of the mutual's 530million buyout by private equity giant Bain Capital.

Takeover documents released yesterday show LV's 1.2m members would get just 100 each for giving up their ownership stake in the historic life insurer.

Even the 297,000 members who have 'with-profits' policies  and who share in the performance of the company  will only get an extra 52.

'Paltry': Takeover documents released yesterday revealed LV's 1.2m members would get just 100 each for giving up their ownership stake in the historic life insurer

A small number of members with more valuable investments will see a larger payout  630  though this will still be only be a tiny fraction of the size of their policy.

The deal offered to LV's members contrasts sharply with the millions of pounds the LV bosses could make once the insurer is in private equity hands.

Chief executive Mark Hartigan, who earned 1.2million last year, looks set for an even more generous package under Bain. Chairman Alan Cook will hold on to his job for another two years  pocketing 410,000 on his current fees.

Labour MP Gareth Thomas, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Mutuals, said: 'We thought members didn't have enough information to judge what's in their interests. Now we can categorically say that this is a bad deal.

Job losses could be on the way LV and Bain Capital have refused to rule out job losses after the proposed 530million takeover. The mutual insurer has around 1,500 staff across its headquarters in Bournemouth and offices in Exeter and Hitchin. LV said one reason why it chose Bain rather than fellow British mutual Royal London was to protect jobs. But asked by the Mail how many jobs would be protected, Bain and LV declined to comment. Instead, Bain head of insurance solutions Matt Popoli spoke of his 'support for an ongoing presence across LV's three UK sites'. He added: 'We look forward to investing in the LV brand and its people for the long-term.' LV chairman Alan Cook said: 'In order to be successful in a highly competitive market, we need significant investment to compete and achieve our ambitions for growth.'

'A paltry 100 in return for membership rights to hand over a business focused on its customers to a private equity shark intent on screwing the maximum profit for itself.

'LV bosses are taking members for fools, offering them 100 each to facilitate this plan to line their pockets.

'Another 410,000 for the chairman and countless millions for the chief executive.'

LV, formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, was set up in 1843 to give poorer residents of the city a chance to give their loved ones a decent funeral. It is currently structured as a mutual, meaning it is owned by policyholder members instead of shareholders.

This ensures it is run entirely for the benefit of its customers, not profit-hungry investors.

Tory peer Baroness Altmann, a former pensions minister, said: 'Members' interests are not necessarily best served by this deal.

'Regardless of the 100 payout, we don't know whether in the long run it might cost more if prices are increased, as the new owners will be out to make a profit.

'I would urge all members to vote and really think carefully if 100 will be enough to compensate them for higher prices.'

Hartigan and Cook have insisted they will not get any bonuses associated with the deal. But, speaking in Parliament last week, Cook admitted Hartigan would be given a generous pay package if he was kept on as chief executive under Bain.

Unveiling the terms of the deal yesterday, Hartigan said: 'The company going forward will be financially strong and will be structured with less debt.

'This transaction will enable LV to continue to look after over 1m customers, while creating investment in our business that will enhance the services we provide.'

LV chief exec Mark Hartigan (left), and chairman Alan Cook (right) will hold onto their jobs for another two years

Cook added: 'Bain Capital was the only option that offered both an excellent financial outcome for members and gave unrivalled support for the LV brand, our people and locations.'

Past demutualisations have rewarded members much more generously. The average windfall for Scottish Widows policyholders when it ditched its mutual status in 2000 was 6,000, according to the Association of Financial Mutuals (AFM).

Standard Life in 2006 gave an average payout of 1,250, while Friends Provident in 2001 handed out 1,200.

Martin Shaw, chief executive of the AFM, said the 100 Bain offer to LV members was 'low compared to previous demutualisations', and added: 'Members are being asked to sell their rights in the business for less than the cost of a good meal out.'

Vote this terrible takeover down, urge critics

LV Members have been urged to vote against the 178-year-old mutual's takeover by American private equity barons.

The planned 530million sale to Bain Capital will only go ahead if it is backed by members, who can vote online or by post between now and December 8.

Or they can vote online during a special general meeting on December 10.

Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake said: 'My message to members is: 'Don't vote for this deal.' In fact, actively vote against it.

'You'll be worse off in the long run, as will other consumers, because this deal is bad for competition and will result in the loss of another mutual, which are businesses set up to protect members.

'The payout demonstrates yet again that this deal is good for the executives, but not for members.'

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Wrigglesworth said the 'paltry' 100 offer was 'an insult' to members. 'I would advise members to vote against the deal,' he said. 'The regulators made it clear they will not intervene, the Government will not intervene, so it's in the hands of members who in my view should vote against it.'

LV's constitution requires 75 per cent of voting members to back the deal, on a turnout of at least 50 per cent. But LV members will be offered two votes.

The first requires 75 per cent of voting members to approve the takeover. The second allows LV to ditch the 50 per cent turnout threshold, meaning it could go through with a fraction of members' support.

If the vote on scrapping the rule requiring a 50 per cent turnout is lost, bosses will push ahead with the deal under a different guise and members will be paid just 60.

Peter Hunt, of mutual advocacy organisation Mutuo, said: 'LV bosses have such a low opinion of their members they think a 100 bribe is sufficient for them to be allowed to continue with their asset stripping.

'The only way to stop this dreadful deal is to vote against it. LV bosses will be hoping for a low turnout so the deal passes because of a few people taking the 100 who couldn't care less about anything else. The more members vote, the worse a chance the deal has of passing.'
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FILE - Greg Kinnear appears at the season six premiere of the Netflix political drama series "House of Cards," on Oct. 22, 2018, in Los Angeles. The two-time Emmy Award-winner and Oscar nominee is slated to take over the role of Atticus Finch from Jeff Daniels beginning Jan. 5, 2022.
This 1981 electron microscope image made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows hepatitis B virus particles, indicated in orange. The round virions, which measure 42nm in diameter, are known as Dane particles. On Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, a government advisory committee recommended that all U.S. adults younger than 60 be vaccinated against hepatitis B, because progress against the liver-damaging disease has stalled.
Carolyn Sue Bryant Ellis, 78, of Fort Walton Beach, FL, passed away on Sunday, October 24, 2021 at Somerby of Santa Rosa Beach, FL. Born March 15, 1943, at Dr. Daniel's Hospital in Pavo, Georgia, Carolyn was the youngest of nine children born to Franklin and Marie (Dailey) Bryant, of Route 2
Sara Pequeno is a Raleigh-based opinion writer for McClatchys North Carolina Opinion Team and member of the Editorial Board.
The Pentagon on Wednesday rejected claims by Irans Revolutionary Guards that they thwarted an attempt by the United States to detain a tanker carrying the Islamic Republics oil in the Sea of Oman.

Ive seen the Iranian claims, they are absolutely totally false and untrue  its a bogus claim, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

The only seizing that was done was by Iran, Kirby said.

American officials said that in reality Iranian forces had seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker last month, and U.S. naval forces were just monitoring the situation.

With the timely and authoritative action of the Guards naval forces, the U.S. terrorist Navys operation to steal Iranian oil in the Sea of Oman failed, Irans elite Guards said in a statement published by Iranian state media earlier on Wednesday.

The tanker carrying Irans oil docked at the port of Bandar Abbas on October 25.

While Iranian media identified the seized tanker as SOTHYS  the name tanker tracking websites give for a Vietnam-flagged vessel  state TV aired footage showing a red tanker surrounded by about 10 speedboats. It also included a recording of what TV said was the encounter between Iranian and U.S. forces.

Iran has repeatedly warned the United States about its military activities in the Gulf, saying that the Guards naval forces have increased patrols to also secure the passage of Iranian ships and combat fuel smuggling.

DRONES

Giving details of the reported incident, Press TV said the Guards had reacted promptly when the Iranian oil tanker was detained in the Sea of Oman.

Members of the Guards naval forces carried out a heliborne operation on the detained tankers deck, gained control of the vessel, and directed it back toward Irans territorial waters, Press TV reported.

Separately, American officials told Reuters that several drones, believed to be Iranian, had come close to the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship Essex in the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.

Tensions have risen between Tehran and Washington amid stalled talks on reviving Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, under which Tehran curtailed its uranium enrichment programme in exchange for a lifting of global sanctions.

Irans top security official Ali Shamkhani said on Wednesday the talks would fail unless U.S. President Joe Biden could guarantee Washington would not renege on the nuclear agreement in the future.

The deal has eroded since 2018 when then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it and reimposed U.S. sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to breach various limits on uranium enrichment set by the pact.

Shamkhani tweeted: The U.S. president, lacking authority, is not ready to give guarantees. If the current status quo continues, the result of negotiations is clear.

SOURCE: REUTERS
ALBANY  Did Republicans in New York have a good Election Day? Or was it just a bad day for progressives?

Those may seem like one in the same, but, at the risk of splitting hairs, I'll insist there's a difference. Many of the results Tuesday that seemed to signify a rightward shift in the electorate didn't exactly come with a Republican label.

Buffalo's democratic socialist mayoral candidate was clobbered, but she lost to an incumbent Democrat mounting a write-in campaign. Progressive constitutional amendments that would have made it easier to vote or gerrymander congressional districts lost statewide to the delight of Republicans, but it seems a stretch to call the defeats a GOP victory.

Which isn't to say there weren't significant Republican bright spots. Locally, Peter Crummey cruised to victory in Colonie, painting the town red after a 14-year hiatus from the supervisor's office, and Steve McLaughlin, who is apparently no longer controversial, easily won reelection as the Rensselaer County executive.

Yes, there were counterexamples, including Democrat Ron Kim's apparent win in the Saratoga Springs mayor's race in a city consumed by police-versus-activist turmoil.

But farther afield, Republicans also made in-roads on the New York City Council and won two district attorney seats on Long Island, evidence that suburban voters, in particular, are returning to the GOP fold. The swing  combined with a Glenn Youngkin win in Virginia and a close gubernatorial contest in New Jersey  was fodder for Republican glee.

"It was pretty resounding around the state," said Nick Langworthy, chairman of the New York Republican Party. "This sets the tone for things to come."

Things to come is, of course, a reference to 2022 and its biggest prize: The governorship. The results on Tuesday might just suggest that Republicans have a better chance in the race to unseat Kathy Hochul than many would have assumed.

Or they might not.

"That Election Day is almost 53 weeks away," countered Steve Greenberg, a Clifton Park-based communications consultant who poo-pooed the notion of Tuesday's lasting relevance. "The world is going to change 12 times between now and then."

Thanks for killing a perfectly good narrative, Steve. Oh, but I suppose he's right that shifts in the economy and other unforeseen events (such as, say, the arrival of a pandemic) have a way of making predictions look stupid, and, yes, it's a bit foolhardy to draw direct lines from one election to another.

But I'm going to do it anyway! Or I'm at least going to assert that while Tuesday's results may not demonstrate a GOP comeback, they do prove New York is not the progressive haven national pundits and our own politicians claim it to be.

(Example: "New York is the progressive capital of the nation," said Andrew Cuomo earlier this year, before he ... well, you know what happened.)

If this were really the progressive capital of the nation, a ballot initiative offering no-excuse absentee voting  a perk enjoyed in Montana, Kansas, Alaska and many other red states  would not have suffered an easy defeat on Tuesday. If this were the progressive capital, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's trip to Buffalo would have helped India Walton, the democratic socialist mayoral candidate.

If New York was so darn progressive, a former cop named Eric Adams would not be enjoying a victory lap in the state's biggest city after rebuking defund-the-police rhetoric.

All of which means that if Hochul and her Democratic primary challengers, including Attorney General Letitia James, spend the next eight months playing Who's the Most Woke, the Republican gubernatorial candidate will have a chance in next year's race. Not a great chance, or even a good chance, but a chance nevertheless.

A suggestion: Democrats might want to pay more than lip service to the problem of rising crime, which is a real worry and likely contributed to Tuesday's results, even in places like Colonie. That doesn't mean Democrats should return to the "predators on our streets" rhetoric of old, but they do need to address the spike.

If they don't, well, voters may deliver a George Pataki-style surprise, which shouldn't seem so far-fetched. Consider that in Massachusetts, a state arguably a deeper shade of blue than New York, Republicans have regularly won the governor's office by promising to act as a check on the lefties in the state Legislature. Why couldn't the same strategy work here?

Heck, even Vermont has a Republican governor. Vermont! If Republicans can make it there, they can make it anywhere.

cchurchill@timesunion.com  518-454-5442  @chris_churchill
When a dog breeder asked the Town of Gardiner planning board to consider a permit for a kennel in October 2020, board members viewed the project with suspicion and caution. Details such as how many puppies per year would be bred and how much space would be designated to each dog were missing from the proposal, prompting a closer look  and ultimately led to the proposals withdrawal.

The Hudson Valley region has had its share of cases involving inhumane conditions for animals. In May, The Humane Society of the United States listed Hudson Labradoodles as one of its Horrible Hundred breeders in the country, a list the kennel appeared on in 2019 as well. The recent report cited the kennels repeat violations on state inspections for allowing puppies to live in filthy conditions, with several dogs covered in [their own] waste material. A state inspection of the facility in March led to the kennel being designated non-compliant critical. A follow-up state inspection in April 2021 restored its compliant status.

Last month, state police arrested a Unionville woman on animal cruelty charges for providing very little food and water to 50 dogs on her property.

Not many municipalities in New York State have clear established guidelines for kennel operations, according to planning board member and Gardiner resident Josh Verleun. The Town of Romulus in Seneca Falls County is one of the few to have established strict guidelines governing kennel operations, from the size of dog pens (minimum 3-feet-by-four-feet for dogs under 100 pounds) to how many outside runs should be at a site (one for every three dog pens).

The thorough Romulus law is one that Gardiner hopes to emulate and even build upon.

The proposal that prompted new legislation

Gardiner was inspired to revamp Section 80 of its Town Code after it was nearly put to the test by a proposal in October last year. The applicant was seeking a special permit to build a kennel on Denniston Road for as many as 30 Anatolian and Caucasian Shepherds, breeds of dogs that can weigh between 150 and 175 pounds each.

Immediately, board members noted key elements omitted from the application, including how many puppies per year would be bred. Neighbors, meanwhile, expressed concern that security at the facility would not be strong enough to prevent the large dogs from escaping, and that the animals would pose noise problems.

Even though the application had met all site plan requirements, as confirmed by Gardiners engineering consultant, it was unclear whether it complied with the towns existing kennel codes. The applicant withdrew the permit request days after the planning boards October meeting.

Instead of breathing a sigh of relief that the kennel would not be coming to her street, Denniston Road resident and animal rights activist Layla Lobatti, who is married to planning board member Josh Verleun, submitted a letter to the Town Board on Nov. 2, 2020, requesting the board use the experience as an opportunity to strengthen its laws in order to eliminate future questionable breeders from finding a home in Gardiner. Her request was signed by dozens of other concerned neighbors.

The Denniston Road kennel could have very well fallen within Gardiners legal boundaries, the neighbors noted, but that didnt necessarily mean the kennel was appropriate; it meant the laws were too lax, they said.

Establishing a framework for humane dog kennels

Since then, the Town Board of Gardiner has been crafting a new dog kennel law over the last 11 months. The councilmembers were hopeful it could have been implemented already, but the process has proved arduous.

We put up a six-month moratorium [for new kennel applications]. We drew up a draft law, we got some feedback on it. We needed to extend the moratorium because it was just too much to get under that deadline. Thats where we are right now, said Councilman David Dukler, who has led the Town Boards efforts. The law is complex.

The members were presented with several hurdles, including many different types of kennel facilities, the councilman said. Boarding, day care and breeding kennels all serve different purposes and require different standards, though Gardiners new law mainly tackles the latter type of facility.

The intention was simple, Dukler said: To ensure that kennels are providing humane care and treatment to dogs in their care without negatively impacting the atmosphere of the neighborhood.

The law is still a work in progress. The Town Board is accepting comments through November 4, but the board may keep the comment period open depending on how many they receive. The finalized law must be implemented by January 15 to coincide with the expiration of their moratorium on kennels. At press time, the draft of the towns kennel law includes several new regulations that were absent from the existing kennel law, including daily waste removal rules, height and length minimums for dog run fencing, higher fines or possible imprisonment for violations, and more.

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Tom Delany, who has been breeding dogs in Saugerties for over four decades, worries that local laws like Gardiners could have adverse effects.

Most legislation is well intended, however the devils in the details. Most laws arent written in a way that takes into account how whats good for one dog is not good for another, said Delany, who is the Shawangunk American Kennel Club treasurer and Associated Dog Clubs of New York vice president.

As an example, he pointed to previous attempts to prohibit dogs from being tethered outside for certain lengths of time. While such a rule would be good for smaller, lighter animals, it wouldnt make sense for bigger, harrier dogs, such as huskies, who he says benefit from staying outdoors in cooler temperatures.

Delany was sensitive to Gardiners mission, and understood the towns inspiration. He was one of the many concerned advocates to call the Ulster County SPCA and alert them to what he called a filthy Denniston Road kennel application last year, which may have lent a hand in pressuring the applicant to revoke their permit request.

But stricter local laws could hurt reputable breeders more than theyd weed out abusive ones, Delaney said.

A puppy mill is an illegal kennel. Its run by someone already not following the law. If you pass another law, theyre not going to change their mind and follow it. People already acting illegally are going to stay illegal, Delaney said. I understand its complicated, but if Im not doing something wrong and then the laws change, I dont want to be considered a criminal.

In Delaneys opinion, the best shot of substantial change would occur at the state level by tightening existing Agriculture and Markets laws, which outline basic dog kennel regulations. Stricter enforcement and more frequent oversight could also be another pathway to ending animal abuse, he said.

But Gardiner doesnt intend to wait for the state to take the lead. Instead, it hopes to inspire other municipalities.

We were hoping this law could be a model for other local communities: A responsible way of raising, breeding, housing and caring for dogs that wouldnt just push the problem onto a community that doesnt have the resources to come up with a better law, said Verleun.


ALBANY  City voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure Tuesday that would give the citys Community Police Review Board expanded powers and financial resources, including the power to conduct their own investigations into allegations of police misconduct.

The measure was one activists had advocated for since the boards inception two decades ago, arguing that the board was largely limited in what it could do when residents made allegations of misconduct against officers. The citys police unions pushed back, saying giving the board expanded powers over police disciplinary matters violated their collective bargaining rights.

On Wednesday, heads of the patrol officer and supervisors unions said they were unsure of what their next steps would be. Both men said the departments officers were not against officers being disciplined for wrongdoing, but disagreed with how the law was constructed.

Lt. Josiah Jones, head of the supervisors union, said police werent given a seat at the table when the law was drafted. Jones said there were concerns about civilians who were not familiar with law enforcement being given power to recommend discipline for officers.

We want to be judged fairly and accurately by subject matter experts, he said.

Mike Delano, head of the patrol officers PBA, said the union would have some type of response, but wasnt sure exactly what it would be. Delano said he wasnt surprised the measure passed.

I think its unfortunate that this narrative about police is going on and I think its a false narrative and I think its going to have a chilling effect on public safety, he said.

Delano compared the measure to the states recent bail reform, which law enforcement and district attorneys have criticized, and has led to some calls for it to be repealed.

Maybe we need to be more involved as a union in informing the average citizen of what this means and what it would do, he said.

Nairobi Vives, chair of the citys CPRB, said she was elated the measure passed and credited activists, residents and Common Council members who had pushed for the laws passage.

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Im just taking it all in, she said.

The board will not be able to use its expanded authority immediately. The citys patrol officers union filed a lawsuit in June, challenging the local law that granted the board new powers.

Vives said in the meantime the boards executive committee would be going over the law and preparing itself for implementing new policies and procedures if the unions lawsuit fails.

The way we see it, we have the ability to move forward with our planning, she said.

Vives said the law was not about taking away police officers legal rights but about building trust and accountability between law enforcement and residents. The law was the result of years of meetings where residents called on giving the board the power to uphold that mission, she said.



If the police union loses its legal challenge one question that still remains is how the CPRBs expanded powers will mesh with Mayor Kathy Sheehans decision to create a part-time public safety commissioner position. The city has not yet said who it intends to hire for the position. A spokesman for Sheehan did not return calls for clarification.
ALBANY  A contractor is accused of changing the date on temporary no parking signs last month and then calling police to ticket and tow cars on Ash Grove Place and Westerlo Street in the citys Mansion neighborhood.

An employee of New Castle Paving working on a Water Department project was caught on a residents security camera changing no parking signs before 7 a.m. Oct. 20, a citizen told the Common Council during its meeting on Monday .

City police and the Albany Parking Authority had initially set up a temporary no-parking rule on the north side of the street from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. for Oct. 19. The rule was then supposed to also be in effect for Oct. 20 for work to continue but the parking authority never hung up new signs to alert residents. So the contracting company allegedly took matters into its own hands.

Dannielle Hille, of community-building nonprofit A Block at a Time, brought the matter to the Common Councils attention, calling for the city to take action to rectify the situation and hold the contractor accountable.

Hille said it appeared the contractor altered the signs then called police, who began ticketing cars shortly after 7 a.m.; the cars were towed shortly before 9 a.m.

These residents were asleep, she said in a video last month calling on the city to take care of the problem. Its a significant issue if we have outside contractors doing whatever they want to do.

Hille said that when she contacted the city, it moved to void the tickets and cover the towing fees for residents affected. But that wasnt enough and didnt recognize the harm done, she said.

Multiple council members condemned the contractors alleged actions and said they believed the city should take further action against the business.

Councilman Derek Johnson, who represents the area, said residents there have a right to be treated as well as those in any other part of the city. He urged the council to take a deeper look into the matter.

Its a bad look for the city, he said.

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It's unclear how many residents were ticketed or towed. Hille said her video shows at least six cars being ticketed and three being towed but the video only captures a section of the street.

A spokesman for Mayor Kathy Sheehan did not respond to calls seeking details or what actions against the contractor the city might consider. A representative from New Castle Paving did not return a call for comment.

Water Department Commissioner Joe Coffey said he spoke to the contractor and believed what they did was wrong.

You cant do that, he said. I think the contractor knows what they did was absolutely incorrect.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the agency responsible for hanging no parking signs. That duty is carried out by the Albany Parking Authority.
ALBANY - Capital District Latinos got good news Wednesday toward its efforts to renovate and rehabilitate its headquarters and community center on Central Avenue.

Business For Good, a Saratoga Springs-based non-profit, donated $250,000 to the group's capital campaign, presenting a check to the nonprofit. The donation comes just over three months after the Times Union highlighted the center's need for repairs at the former church on 160 Central Ave. it purchase three years ago.

Business For Good's CEO Jahkeen Hoke said the foundation wanted to support Capital District Latino's mission to reach a population that often goes underserved due to language or cultural barriers.

"We thought they aligned with our goals and mission and we wanted to support that," he said.

Dan Irizarry, the chairman for Capital District Latinos said the donation would go a long way toward helping the group carry out its mission.

"Capital District Latinos is grateful to Ed and Lisa Mitzen and the Business For Good team for this incredibly generous donation." Hoke said his group will look for other grassroots organizations that serve similar populations but struggle to find outside support.

The move is the latest from the foundation that has focused on social change through business, specifically trying to combat food insecurity, housing instability and education inequity.

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The CDL sees the space in the former church as one that could eventually host larger events such as conferences, forums, live theater, as well as smaller events. A commercial kitchen could provide space for health and nutrition programming or workforce training, as well as a food pantry.

A recently commissioned report lays out the scope of the work needed before that can become a reality, with an expected price tag over the next five years of up to $2.8 million. Most pressing is the need for a roof replacement, which could cost up to $650,000.
PRAGUE (AP)  A cable car crashed in the northern Czech Republic, killing one person Sunday, officials said.

One of the two cabins of the cable car crashed to the ground in the afternoon. The only person onboard, a staff member, was killed, said Martin Puta, the head of the regional government. Puta said he hoped the cause will be investigated soon.

Rescuers said none of the 15 people from the second cabin were injured.

It was the first such accident involving the Czech Republic's oldest cable car, which dates to 1933.

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Operated by the Czech Railways, it leads almost to the top of Jested Mountain, near the city of Liberec.

The crash took place the day before the cable car was scheduled to undergo a planned two-week maintenance.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  China and Russia are urging the U.N. Security Council to end a host of sanctions against North Korea including a ban on exports of seafood and textiles, a cap on imports of refined petroleum products and a prohibition on its citizens working overseas and sending home their earnings.

A draft resolution circulated to council members and obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press stresses the economic difficulties in North Korea and says these and other sanctions should be lifted with the intent of enhancing the livelihood of the civilian population.

The Security Council initially imposed sanctions on North Korea after its first nuclear test in 2006 and made them tougher in response to further nuclear tests and an increasingly sophisticated ballistic missile program. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in 2018 that the sanctions had cut off all North Korean exports and 90% of its trade and disbanded the pool of workers which North Korea sent abroad to earn hard currency.

The draft resolution expands on a similar resolution Russia and China circulated in December 2019. It faced opposition from Western nations when it was discussed and was never formally introduced at the council for a vote.

Several U.N. diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft has not been made public, indicated it would likely face a similar uphill struggle, pointing to North Korea's continuing violations of U.N. sanctions.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said North Korea has failed to comply with sanctions on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and the Biden administration remains committed to the sanctions regime" and calls on all member states to enforce the measures.

On Oct. 19, North Korea fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine in its fifth round of weapons tests in recent weeks, all of which violated U.N. sanctions. It was the Norths first underwater-launched test since October 2019 and the highest-profile test since President Joe Biden took office in January.

The China-Russia draft resolution makes no mention of the missile tests. Instead, it notes that North Korea has refrained from conducting nuclear tests since September 2017, has kept to a moratorium on further nuclear tests and test launches of intermediate-range and intercontinental missiles from April 21, 2018, and has taken additional denuclearization measures since.

The proposed resolution underscores the necessity to respect the legitimate security concerns of the DPRK and ensure the welfare, inherent dignity and rights of people in the DPRK," using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. It reaffirms that U.N. resolutions are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences and notes the serious impact of sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic" within the country.

North Korean is struggling to deal with soaring prices of goods and shortages of medicine and other essential supplies that have accelerated the spread of water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever. The country has yet to report any cases of the coronavirus though experts have questioned its claim of a perfect record.

The China-Russia draft calls on all U.N. member nations to intensity their efforts to provide humanitarian assistance, including but not limited to food, fertilizer and medical supplies, and to provide goods, materials, technology and financial services needed by North Korea to combat COVID-19, improve livelihoods and develop the economy.

The draft resolution would lift a ban on North Korea importing some industrial machinery and transport vehicles used to build infrastructure that cant be diverted to the countrys nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

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The long list of construction and humanitarian items that would be exempt from sanctions includes bulldozers and firefighting vehicles; materials for railways and traffic control; air conditioners and radiators for heating; iron or steel parts for roofs and windows; screws and bolts; sewing needles and vacuum cleaners; kitchen utensils and equipment; agricultural equipment, bicycles and fire extinguishers.

The draft would end a ban on North Korean government representatives or groups engaging in scientific and technical cooperation. It would also allow a resumption of exports of giant statues produced in the North.

On the political front, the China-Russia draft welcomed the positive outcomes of talks between North and South Korea and between former U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At Kims second summit with Trump in Hanoi in February 2019, negotiations faltered after the U.S. rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of the Norths nuclear capabilities.

The proposed resolution calls on the U.S. and North Korea to resume dialogue aimed at building lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. It calls on all parties to consider taking further steps to reduce military tension and the risks of military confrontation, including by adopting a declaration or peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War. The war ended with an armistice, leaving the peninsula technically in a state of war.

South Korea, which has expressed a desire for engagement with North Korea within the boundaries of the U.N. sanctions, did not immediately react to China and Russias proposals for lifting sanctions on the North.

During a period of diplomacy in 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in met three times with North Korea's leader and vowed to resume inter-Korean economic cooperation when possible, expressing optimism that the sanctions would end and allow such projects.

But North Korea cut off cooperation with South Korea as its diplomacy with the Trump administration derailed in 2019.
BOSTON (AP)  The same day that voters elected Michelle Wu as Bostons first female and first Asian American mayor, voters in Framingham ousted Yvonne Spicer, the first Black woman to run a city in Massachusetts.

The 59-year-old Spicer lost her re-election bid Tuesday to fellow Democrat Charlie Sisitsky, 76, a well-known political figure in Framingham.

Serving as the mayor of Framingham has been the honor of my life, Spicer said Tuesday. I am thankful for the opportunity to have been Framinghams very first mayor, and the first African American woman to be elected mayor in Massachusetts. I am proud of successfully transitioning a 317-year-old town into a brand new city.

Spicer said she is leaving Framingham in a better place than when she took office, having led the city through the pandemic and having created the most diverse administration, boards and committees in the citys history. Framingham became a city in 2018 after decades of being operated by town meetings, effectively making Spicer its first mayor.

Spicer won endorsements from U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but was still handily defeated by Sisitsky. Before being elected mayor, Spicer had worked as a teacher, as a longtime advocate for science and technology education and as a vice president at Bostons Museum of Science.

Sisitsky was first elected to Framingham's former board of selectmen in 1998 and served until Framingham adopted a city form of government in 2017. He then served a single term on the new city council.

People want us to do a better job governing and it starts right here and right now, Sisitsky told supporters Tuesday. We're going to be open, accessible, transparent and most of all present working every day.

Sisitsky had also worked as public works director in Natick for two decades, and as head of the Medford Department of Public Works.

In 2017, Spicer defeated former State Rep. John Stefanini, also a Democrat, in the city's first mayoral election.

There were other key municipal elections around the state on Tuesday.

In Somerville, Katjana Ballantyne defeated fellow City Councilor and fellow Democrat Wilfred Mbah to succeed longtime Mayor Joe Curtatone, who opted not to seek reelection. Curtatone, also a Democrat, was first elected mayor in 2003.

Ballantyne was first elected to the Somerville City Council in 2013. She has served two terms as the council president.

In Holyoke, voters elected the citys first Latino mayor  Joshua Garcia, a former school committee member, Democrat, and current town manager in Blandford. Garcia, of Puerto Rican descent, defeated Michael J. Sullivan, an at-large city councilor.

Garcia, who was born in Holyoke, will lead a city where more than half of all residents identify as Hispanic, according to the most recent U.S. Census.

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In Everett, incumbent Mayor Carlo DeMaria eked out a win over challenger Fred Capone, a city councilor. DeMaria will serve a sixth term.

In Lawrence, interim Mayor Kendrys Vasquez was defeated by Brian DePena, a former at-large city councilor. Vasquez took up the post in January, after former Mayor Dan Rivera stepped down to lead the state's development finance agency.

And in Salem, Kim Driscoll will serve a 5th term as that city's mayor.

In Boston, voters made history by electing Wu, who easily defeated fellow City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, also a Democrat. Boston had only elected white men to lead the city until Wu's win.

The 36-year-old, who was born and raised in Chicago and whose parent immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan, will take office Nov. 16.

The citys previous elected mayor  Democrat Marty Walsh  stepped down earlier this year to become U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden. Walsh was replaced on an acting basis by Kim Janey, the first Black woman to assume the office.

Walsh praised Wu on her win.

Its history, Walsh told the AP on Wednesday. We elected the first-ever nonwhite person as mayor of Boston. I talked to City Councilor Michelle Wu today to congratulate her. ... Its exciting for Boston. ... Shell be great, shell be successful, and Im going to support her any way that I can.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Leaders of a northern Mississippi city were motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice when they rejected a zoning request for what would be the first mosque in the area, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi sued on behalf of the two Muslim men who want to build the mosque, Abraham House of God, in the city of Horn Lake.

Earlier this year, the Horn Lake planning commission recommended that the site plan for the mosque be denied, and the Board of Aldermen voted 5-1 in April to uphold that recommendation. Aldermen said they denied the application because of concerns about insufficient water supply for fire sprinklers and the possibility of traffic and noise.

Despite the pretextual excuses for their decision, Board members did not work very hard to hide the true reason they denied approval for the project  anti-Muslim prejudice, said the lawsuit, which represents one side of a legal argument. As then-Alderman John E. Jones Jr. told the local newspaper: I dont care what they say, their religion says they can lie or do anything to the Jews or gentiles because were not Muslims.

The Associated Press left a phone message Wednesday for Horn Lake Mayor Allen Latimer at his City Hall office, seeking comment about the lawsuit. He did not respond after several hours.

The lawsuit argues the government officials violated the First Amendment rights of the men who want to develop the mosque, Maher Abuirshaid and Riyadh Elkhayyat. It also argues that city officials violated a federal law that gives heightened legal protections in land-use decisions to people groups that face discrimination. The lawsuit asks a judge to nullify the Horn Lake officials decisions and to order the city to grant the land-use request for the mosque.

Horn Lake is in DeSoto County, which is just south of Memphis, Tennessee. Abuirshaid and Elkhayyat are DeSoto County residents and want to develop a mosque so their families and other Muslim families in DeSoto County will have a place to worship without having to drive a half-hour or more to Memphis.

A local mosque is critical for my family and the Muslim community in DeSoto County to practice our religion," Abuirshaid said in a news release.

Numerous residents near the potential mosque site spoke against the project during a city planning meeting in February.

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The mosque is intended to be a 10,000-square-foot (929-square-meter) building with a worship space that holds 156. It would have 44 parking spaces. Elkhayyat, who sometimes goes by the name Ray Elk, told Horn Lake aldermen that the building would not have outside loudspeakers to issue calls to prayer. He also said the mosque would have significantly less traffic than if he developed the site into a subdivision.

The freedom to worship is one of our most fundamental rights," Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said in the news release. "By discriminating against our clients simply because they are Muslim, Horn Lake officials violated that right, and they must be held accountable.

____

Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  A state hearing examiner has recommended that New Mexico regulators reject the purchase of the state's largest utility, Public Service Co. of New Mexico, by global energy giant Iberdrola.

The potential downsides of the merger outweigh the benefits, Ashley Schannauer, a hearing examiner for the Public Regulation Commission, said in a report and non-binding recommendation made public Monday.

Under the merger, Connecticut-based Avangrid and its parent firm, Iberdrola of Spain, would acquire PNM Resources and its New Mexico and Texas power subsidiaries. If approved, the $4.3 billion transaction would affect about 800,000 homes and businesses.

New Mexico customers earlier this year sounding the alarm over the proposal, citing a sordid track record of reliability and customer service among utilities owned by Avangrid in other states.

Spanish officials also announced in June that Iberdrola executives would be investigated over alleged bribery, breach of privacy and fraud. The company has maintained that the executives did nothing wrong.

Schannauer had blasted Avangrid and Iberdrola earlier this year for failing to disclose information about the problems elsewhere. His recommendation again cited missteps and problems, including incomplete responses and overly extensive confidentiality requests.

Joanie Griffin, a New Mexico-based spokeswoman for Avangrid, wrote in an email that the company was analyzing the decision and examining the pathways for moving forward to approval.  We remain committed to putting PNM customers first and utilizing Avangrids and Iberdrolas financial strength and resources to help New Mexico meet its decarbonization goals more quickly and efficiently.

Experts have suggested that New Mexico could serve as a platform for producing power that could be exported to larger markets. But critics worry the states customers would be reduced to a secondary consideration for Avangrid and Iberdrola as they look to expand their renewable energy holdings.

It could be several weeks before the Public Regulation Commission makes a final decision, as the parties in the case have 10 days to submit their responses to the recommendation and commissioners will have an opportunity to ask more questions.

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If the merger is rejected, the company could submit a revised proposal. Also, the commissions decision can be appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Schannauer wrote that if the commission is inclined to approve the merger, changes should be made to a proposed settlement agreement the companies reached earlier this year with numerous organizations interested in the proceedings.

Avangrid had agreed to numerous concessions, including $65 million in customer-rate relief over three years and $50 million more in other types of customer assistance and spending on economic development programs. It also included safeguards to protect the public against adverse management of PNM by Avangrid in the future.

Schannauer noted that months of negotiations led to numerous changes in Avangrids commitments and promises, making it difficult to point to a final, cohesive agreement that reflects the interests of all parties involved.
NORTH GREENBUSH  Robert C. Parker School in North Greenbush on Thursday will become one of the first schools in the Capital Region to offer a vaccine clinic for students ages 5-11.

The clinic, hosted by Young's Pharmacy in Averill Park, will be available to all Parker students, faculty, and their families. The Pfizer shots will be available on Thursday, Nov. 4, from 3:30-5:30 p.m.
An attorney representing two Rensselaer County gun owners told the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that his clients had a "fundamental constitutional right" taken away when a judge denied them concealed carry gun permits for personal protection.

In arguments that lasted roughly two hours, Paul D. Clement, a one-time U.S. solicitor general, told the Supreme Court that New York law "deprives a typical New Yorker of their right to carry for self-defense" under the Second Amendment, which allows the right to bear arms. Clement is representing Rensselaer County residents Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, as well as the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association.

At issue is New York law governing the possession of guns outside the home. The state forbids concealed carry, but does allow judges and State Police to approve concealed-carry permits for lawful gun owners to hunt, shoot at target ranges or, key to Wednesday's arguments, if the gun owners can prove they have a heightened risk for personal protection.

Clement told the nine-member court (with Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch listening virtually) that he was unaware of any other context where, in order to obtain a permit, one had to show they had a particular need to exercise a constitutional right.

"I think that is the absolute central defect with New York's regime here," Clement said. He argued that the framers of the Constitution left it to individuals to decide if they want to carry guns outside the home for self defense.

The court includes Gorsuch, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor grilled Clement on the need to change the law. Breyer questioned whether a law change could lead to people carrying guns on New York City subways.

"Theyre not in Manhattan  theyre in Rensselaer County," Clement responded.

In 2016, Koch and Nash applied for concealed carry permits for self-protection, but were denied by state Supreme Court Justice Richard McNally, the county's licensing officer. Koch, Nash and the gun association sued McNally and State Police in U.S. District Court's Northern District of New York, alleging their Second Amendment rights were violated. In December 2018, U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes tossed the case. Nash, Koch and the Rifle & Pistol Association, in turn, appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, which affirmed Sannes' decision. The Supreme Court agreed last April to listen to the case.

On Wednesday, New York state solicitor general Barbara Underwood told the court that dating to the 14th century, English and later American law has imposed limits on the carrying of guns in public in the interests of public safety.

"New York's law fits well within that tradition of regulating public carry and makes a carry license available to any person, not disqualified, who has a non-speculative reason to carry a handgun for self-defense," Underwood told justices.

"New York is not an outlier in the extent in which the state restricts the ability to carry firearms in public and it's not an outlier in asking a licensed applicant to show good cause for a carry license. Many ordinary people have received carry licenses in New York state."

Thomas told Underwood her arguments suggested that high-density populations were in more need of the restrictions than rural areas. He asked her how rural an area would need to be before restrictions did not apply. Underwood said there was no cut-off point for the law.

"It's one thing to talk about Manhattan or NYU's campus. It's another to talk about rural upstate New York," Thomas told Underwood noting Nash lived in what he considered a low-density area.

Underwood said Koch lived in a more "intermediate area," not far from Albany, Troy, colleges, down shopping areas - as well as rural areas. She said McNally took all those factors into account in rendering his decisions on the permits.

Roberts highlighted the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which loosened strict gun control laws in Washington D.C, finding a constitutional right to own a gun at home for personal protection.

"If the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow people to protect themselves, that's implicated when you're in a high crime area. It's not implicated when you're out in the woods," the chief justice said. "How many muggings take place in the forest?"

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"I don't know, " Underwood responded, "but I will tell you that our licensing officer told us that rapes and robberies happen on the deserted bike path so he has some concern about that."

Roberts then asked Underwood if New York gun owners would meet the criteria for a concealed-carry permit gun in the event that a serial killer was on the loose. The chief justice referenced David Berkowitz, the killer who terrorized New York in the 1970s known as the "Son of Sam."

Underwood said it would not meet the standard.

"It would have to be brought home to you in particular, to your route, to your parking lot, to your apartment building, something specific to you rather than it's happening in the world at large," Underwood responded.

Alito, in turn, questioned how a constitutional right to self-protection under the 2008 ruling could be ensured if New Yorkers who work or travel through high crime areas were being denied self-protection permits.

"Because the core right to self-defense doesn't - as this court said - doesn't allow for all to be armed for all possible confrontations in all places," Underwood replied.

"No, it doesn't," Alito fired back, "but it doesn't mean there is the right to self-defense for celebrities and state judges and retired police officers but pretty much not for the kind of ordinary people who have a real-felt need to carry a gun to protect themselves."

Brian H. Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general for the U.S. Department of Justice who supports Underwood, spoke to the court for more than 20 minutes.

A decision is expected to be rendered next year around June.
SARATOGA SPRINGS  Democrat James Montagnino, the winner in Tuesdays election for public safety commissioner, said one of his first actions will be to call for a grand jury investigation into the death of Darryl Mount Jr., the biracial man who died in 2014 following a chase with police.

Montagnino's announcement coupled with his promise to establish a strong civilian review board to deal with suspected instances of police misconduct are the first signs of his plan to transform city policies on policing at a time when tensions between police and racial justice protesters have been heated.

Its pretty clear that voters wanted a change, said Montagnino, who defeated Republican Tracey LaBelle by about 800 votes on Tuesday. We want to set the stage by saying we intend to do things very differently in this administration. We want things to be open and available to public inspection and transparent in a true sense.

Montagnino's election was one of at least two local examples of voters this year siding with efforts to enforce greater control on police. Albany city voters overwhelming approved an oversight measure.

In addition to his call for a grand jury investigation, which would only call for, but not compel the Saratoga County District Attorney's office to follow through, Montagnino is also writing his own report on the death of Mount, which he said he will unveil at his inauguration in January. He had said he has reviewed documents related to the civil suit in the case, which includes eyewitness testimony from the night Mount was found with severe facial injuries following a brief police chase.

Saratoga police have said it looked like Mount climbed up a scaffolding and fell, but Mount's family has contended his injuries are not consistent with a fall. Mount's mother has been pursuing a wrongful death suit against the city that she hopes will be resolved in 2022.

The people in authority buried their heads in the sand and ignored the questions that needed to be answered, Montagnino said. Im hoping it will close an ugly chapter in the citys history.

The leaders of the local Black Lives Matter movement are ecstatic that their calls for an outside investigation into Mount's death will finally take place. At the time of the incident, then Police Chief Greg Veitch admitted misleading the press that there was an investigation, which caused more rancor over the incident.

We are very happy, Saratoga BLM leader Lexis Figuereo said. Me and Jim dont always see eye-to-eye on every issue.  But he will quite literally have everything we have fought for and hopefully, no more protests.  What we were fighting for is real and I think people saw that.

Montagnino, who will replace Commissioner Robin Dalton, will likely get support at the City Council table. Early numbers show that city leaders will be split 4-1 in favor of Democrats with Ron Kim leading as mayor and Dillon Moran leading for commissioner of accounts with Minita Sanghvi winning by about 550 votes for finance commissioner. Mail-in ballots, a total of 415 thus far, still need to be counted. But in a city where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 39 percent to 29 percent, with 24 percent are unaffiliated, there is a chance this current balance will hold.

And all of the early Democratic winners are behind Montagninos efforts.

Thats one of the real exciting things, Montagnino said. We got a majority and that means we will be able to move the ball forward. Ron, Minita and Dillon are all on the same page of liking the recommendations of the Police Reform Task Force on the civilian review board.

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Montagnino said he fears that if the council appoints the five members to the civilian review board, which is the current plan, there will be people on the board with a political ax to grind. He said would like the city tap into the jury pool to call up volunteers that way. If they are not willing or able to serve on the board, then they will dip into the next group of voters who are up for jury duty.

Jason Golub, the co-chair of the Police Reform Task Force, which made the recommendation to create a civilian review board, is also pleased with Montagnino's win.

Its getting a fresh set of eyes and I think Jim will be able to create a formidable CRB, Golub said. Thats the hope and thats what we will get with in the new council.

Golub said that if the Republicans won City Council, there was a significant concern" that a civilian review board would never come together.

Its exciting, Golub said. The people of this community have spoken. It was a resounding voice for change. That is meaningful. The community needed that. Im excited for them. I spoken to them all this morning and they reiterated their support for wanting to make meaningful change.

Montagnino said he already feels a change in the community, especially among those fighting for racial justice.

The temperature has been dialed back because they feel someone is listening, Montagnino said.
VOORHEESVILLE  A 32-year-old woman was charged with burglary Tuesday by State Police.

The woman was charged with second-degree burglary and criminal contempt, troopers said. State Police said the woman violated a protection order in late October, entered a home and took a box with prescription medication in it.

She fled before police arrived, troopers said. Sheriff's deputies later located the woman and took her into custody on unrelated charges before handing her over to State Police, authorities said.

She was due to appear Thursday in New Scotland Town Court.
HANOI, Vietnam (AP)  Vietnam was seeking more information Thursday about a Vietnamese oil tanker that was seized at gunpoint last month by Iranian soldiers in the Gulf of Oman, while vowing to ensure the safety and humane treatment of the ship's crew members.

Irans powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard troops on Oct. 24 took control of the MV Sothys, a vessel that analysts suspect of trying to transfer sanctioned Iranian crude oil to Asia. U.S. forces had monitored the seizure but ultimately didnt take action as the vessel sailed into Iranian waters.

The episode was the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehrans nuclear program.

Vietnamese officials "continue to closely follow the developments and work closely with Iranian authorities to resolve this issue in accordance with the law and enact necessary measures to safeguard the rights and interests of Vietnamese nationals, Pham Thu Hang, deputy spokesperson in Vietnams Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Thursday.

The captain of the MV Sothys told the Vietnamese Embassy in Iran that all 26 crew members were being treated well and were in normal health, Hang told reporters at a scheduled briefing.

Iran celebrated its capture of the vessel in dramatic footage aired on state television Wednesday, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Ship-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessel still off Irans southern port of Bandar Abbas on Tuesday. A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. also showed the vessel off Bandar Abbas in recent days.

Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navys Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Irans assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

Its a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran. He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.

Kirby said Irans boarding and seizing of the vessel constituted a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.

Tehran also did not provide the ships name, or other details, nor any explanation of why the Navy might target it. Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

State TV released footage showing an Iranian surveillance drone monitoring a hulking red tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Heavily armed Iranian commandos then rappelled onto the boat from a helicopter as small speedboats surrounded the vessel and an Iranian catamaran ship patrolled the waters.

The video appeared to show Iranian Guard troops pointing uncovered deck-mounted machine guns at the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Photos released by the U.S. military show The Sullivans recently in the Arabian Sea near the Gulf of Oman.

A shipping database showed the Sothys' last registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. On Thursday, a worker at the office acknowledged an incident involving the Sothys but referred questions to another employee who wasnt there. That employee did not immediately return a request for comment.

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However, the Sothys had been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long suspicious of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated Oct. 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Sothys received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.

The U.S. Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Guards expeditionary Quds Force. That Iranian oil ends up being sold into East Asia, the Treasury alleged, without identifying a specific country.

Irans seizure of the Sothys would be the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil the Gulf of Oman, which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members earlier this year. Just a few months ago, Iranian hijackers stormed and briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the regions volatile waters since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Irans nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.

___

This story corrects the name of the ship to MV Sothys instead of Southys.

___

Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
PHOENIX (AP)  Kisha Gulley was once kicked out of a Facebook group for mothers with autistic children after a contentious debate she felt was racial. Over and over, she clashed with the white-dominated groups shed sought out for support as a new mom.

So Gulley, who is Afro Latina, started her own parenting blog and social media accounts. Its now a source of income for her.

The multibillion-dollar world of sleep training guides, toddler activity ideas, breastfeeding tips and all things parenting has traditionally been overwhelmingly white. Parenting book jackets feature mostly white faces. The so-called mom influencers that brands choose to advertise their products have, until recently, also been mostly white.

This has left a hole for women of color  especially new moms  who struggle to find culturally relevant parenting advice and products.

Increasingly, they're taking matters into their own hands.

If I can't find it, thats when we have to start creating that for ourselves. I knew I couldnt be the only person that had these questions, said Gulley, who lives in Phoenix.

When she learned her firstborn son was autistic, Gulley dove deeply into research, digging for any resources that might help her family. And even though there was a lot of information out there, there were small but significant questions that many experts couldn't answer.

How, for example, could she comb through her son's thickly-textured hair without triggering his sensory issues? What's a good sunscreen to use on dark skin that doesn't leave white residue?

It was a frustrating time for her that climaxed in the Facebook group when she felt that several white women were dismissive and rude to a Black mom who had sought advice about how to talk to her family about her child's autism diagnosis. The women didn't grasp that in some communities of color, older generations can be apprehensive about autism and tend to think issues come down to behavior and discipline. Gulley defended the mom, and was kicked out of the group.

She grew her own social media presence soon after, and now makes a living from it, earning more now than she did in her 15 years as a flight attendant, she said.

For Stacey Ferguson, the need for diverse parenting voices has been top of mind for many years. She struggled to find online forums and communities that resonated with her experiences as a Black mother.

Ferguson, a lawyer by training who is now a business owner, co-founded Blogalicious along with two other women 12 years ago. The organization and annual conference helped women of color monetize and grow their blogs.

The first Blogalicious conference drew 177 people; by the time Ferguson decided to shut them down in 2017, 500 people attended each year.

There really was like this feeling of magic in the room. And what we were really surprised about was that a lot of brands were really interested to come and meet our community, Ferguson said.

Over the years, mommy bloggers have evolved into Instagram influencers. Carefully curated images accompany posts with tips on how to get a baby to sleep or teach them to feed themselves. Often, influencers advertise products they say moms might find helpful.

The trend was started mostly by white women and the brands that sought them out. Ferguson says the landscape is much more diverse now, and brands are more intentional about reaching a diverse range of parents.

But a problem persists. Marketing budgets are much more limited for multicultural targets than for general advertising, Ferguson said. Traditionally, white women have been paid to market to general audiences. That means a white mom could earn much more money marketing to an audience of all ethnicities and races than a woman who markets specifically to, say, Latina moms.

Its still that archaic way of looking at marketing, Ferguson said. The brands and the agencies that understand (the need to diversify) are making progress. The issue is that theres still so many that are behind.

Theres no consensus on just how much brands and companies spend on advertising or sponsoring through mom influencers, but several marketing experts said its in the billions each year.

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Brands are just now catching up to the Latino and Black American markets, said Larry Chiagouris, a professor of marketing at Lubin School of Business at Pace University.

Chiagouris said the parenting influencer world has been dominated by white women because theyve been the majority in the past, but that hes increasingly seeing Latinas, Black and Asian American women joining the sphere.

Its like a chicken and an egg situation. Marketers want to spend money on Latino influencers, but you have to find them. Theres not as many as you might think, Chiagouris said.

Jacqueline Hernandez Lewis of Long Island, New York, began blogging nine years ago as a law student and military wife seeking a community.

After she became a mom, Hernandez Lewis, 33, wanted to find a space where Latinas and other moms of color felt empowered. When she went back to work after her first child, she struggled to adapt and wanted to find a way to spend more time at home while still earning income. She now has three little ones.

Hernandez Lewis earned $25 from her first sponsored post. Now, she earns anywhere between $700 to $3,000 per post, while also working full time.

Her recent Instagram posts feature ads for a line of Spanish-language books being republished by Disney Books; for a popular brand of baby wipes; and for Poise, which makes pads that postpartum women can use.

For Hernandez Lewis, its important that women of color have an online community and are represented, but its just as crucial that they reap the rewards of their buying power.

We deserve to be represented on the business side. Theres brands that havent been as inclusive as Id hoped, but a lot of brands are shifting and becoming more inclusive, Hernandez Lewis said. ___

Galvan covers issues impacting Latinos in the U.S. for the APs Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/astridgalvan.

___

This story was first published on November 1, 2021. It was updated on November 3, 2021, to make clear that Stacey Ferguson was a co-founder of Blogalicious.
Let's talk turkey. This years Thanksgiving bounty may take a bite out of your wallet.

According to figures released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Farm Bureau, this years Thanksgiving dinner could be the most expensive ever because of supply chain issues, inflation, transportation costs, labor shortages, costly livestock feed and other factors.

The average cost to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner in 2020 was $47, the lowest it had been in nearly a decade. This year, it is expected to cost up to 5 percent more, according to the American Farm Bureau.

The pandemic greatly influenced costs last year, driving turkey prices down as more families opted for more intimate gatherings and smaller birds. Last year, retailers were pricing whole turkeys as loss leaders, according to American Farm Bureau Chief Economist Dr. John Newton, to entice shoppers and move products.

This year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture data indicates that the average wholesale price of a Grade-A frozen 8- to 16-pound turkey has increased 21.91 percent year-on-year due to production cuts after last years price declines, more expensive turkey feed and transportation and logistical issues.

The price of turkeys isnt the only thing that will peck away at your budget. Because of a steel shortage, canned goods like cranberry sauce, green beans and corn could also cost more. Wheat prices are up which means pricier pie crusts, bread stuffing and dinner rolls.

There are several ways to control costs and keep the feast spread more affordable. Keep your guest list to a minimum. Skip the store-bought baked goods and make your own. Have guests bring a side dish to share. Here are a few more tips:

Start planning now and create a list: One of the simplest ways to save money on groceries doesnt require shearing, sorting, matching and stacking coupons. It simply requires making a list and sticking to it. Sticking to a list and avoiding impulse buys can shave 20 to 30 percent off a grocery bill.

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Buy what you can now: Local markets and big chain shops began promoting sales and deals on Thanksgiving fixings before Halloween. The sooner you shop, the larger the selection. If you have your heart set on a 24-pound turkey, or a petite 8-pound bird for two, the sooner your shop the better luck youll have nabbing what you need. If you wait, you may struggle to find the perfect size poultry or have to settle for pricier name-brand items when the store-brand would suffice.

Go generic: These days, generic brands are often as good as name brands. Big brands spend millions on product development, marketing and advertising, hence the higher costs. Buying off- or private-label products can save you as much as 20 to 30 percent. And, the difference between the fancy and no-name brands may be less than negligible because store brands typically just stick new labels onto existing products to keep the costs low, said Andrew Schrage, CEO of personal finance site Money Crashers. In turn, they pass on the savings to consumers.

Grab a free turkey: The promotions for free turkeys arent as plentiful as in the past, thanks to higher prices, but they are still out there. If you spend $300 at ShopRite with a Price Plus Card before Nov. 25 youll qualify to receive a free whole turkey (up to 21 pounds or $1.49 off per pound on larger), turkey breast or ham. Purchase $100 worth of qualifying products at BJs Wholesale and you can receive a free Butterball turkey.

Shop sales and use coupons: Thanksgiving is the single-largest food consumption day of the year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Compare prices at several stores and keep your eyes peeled for coupons. Check the Sunday flyers, visit Coupons.com or RetailMeNot.com to scope out available offers. Look into rebates, too. Ibotta, a mobile shopping and savings app, offers cash-back deals on a number of Thanksgiving fixings, including turkeys.
ALBANY - Low-fare carrier Frontier Airlines launched twice-weekly nonstop flights between Albany International Airport and Miami International Airport on Thursday.

To celebrate the new service, Frontier is offering introductory fares starting at $39. Fares must be purchased by 11:59 p.m. Sunday and will be valid for nonstop travel, on select days of the week, through Dec. 15.

The following blackout dates apply: Nov. 20 to 30. Seven-day advance purchase applies. Round-trip purchase is not required.

The Denver-based carrier also provides nonstop service between Albany and Orlando, as well as Denver.

Frontier offers a frequent flyer program, dubbed Frontier Miles, discounted fares through the Discount Den program and the ability to bundle extras, like checked luggage and seat selection.
ALBANY  The state Democratic Party spent no money on the three ballot proposals that it unexpectedly lost Tuesday that were intended to expand voting access, according to Chairman Jay Jacobs.

The party, he said, was not asked by the political campaign committee and associated groups advocating for the propositions to back their efforts, otherwise it would have supported the cause.

"There was no initiative that we were asked to do by anybody to begin a campaign or undertake the financing of or the running of the campaign on these issues," Jacobs said. "Maybe, in that sense, the ball was dropped, but I will tell you that is not something that came to my attention."

Senate Democrats reached out to the party around mid-October for help on supporting the ballot initiatives, according to state Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who was responsible for one of the ballot questions. That outreach may call into question whether Jacobs, as he said, was aware of the party being asked to support the ballot questions.

"The question is why the Republican Party didn't need to be asked and who the chairman is waiting for to ask him to do something that is in the interest of the party," Gianaris said. "The Republican Party leadership seemed to know that they should do this."

Brooklyn NAACP President L. Joy Williams tweeted after publication of the story that she had been "actively trying to get people to engage on this for months."

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took office in August, had limited, if any, public comment on the matter. The governor sent a tweet from her campaign account on the morning of Election Day to support the ballot questions and "strengthening our democracy." The governor's office directed comments on her position to her campaign, because they were in political nature. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The state Senate had been advocating for the initiatives without much support, aside from $327,000 it spent of its own cash, according to the Senate majority's spokesman. The proposals on the ballot, which included opening a pathway to same-day voter registration and a "no excuse" vote-by-mail right, were pushed through the Legislature by Democratic senators.

The fate of the ballot questions became increasingly unsteady in the final days, said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. His nonpartisan organization and Common Cause NY, along with several voter-forward advocacy groups and high-powered unions, had supported, at least in name, a campaign for the ballot proposals. The nonpartisan groups said that it is likely the campaign was outspent in the ballpark of 10-to-1 by the "no" push, although final spending totals are not yet available.

"We were very nervous about what was going to happen because you're only seeing one side of the story being described to voters," said Horner, who was describing the onslaught of attack ads on the ballot measures that the state Republican and Conservative parties unleashed.

Jacobs, who is from Long Island, said he had not seen any of the attack ads on TV there. The ads compared the ballot questions to nationwide talking points, like the unfounded concept of voter fraud. States like Florida have long held no-excuse absentee ballot voting and were not widely accused of fraud.

New York GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy, during a victory lap in Albany Wednesday, supported the party's messaging, comparing it to the Democratic Party's efforts. He had coupled the TV ads with a statewide tour, entitled "Just Say No."

"The funny part of that is where were the Democrats that were so proud of their efforts to put these things on the ballot?" Langworthy told reporters outside the state Capitol building. "I don't think in my own travels or any piece of your publications did I see Democrat politicians stand at a podium like I did, 40 times in the last 10 days, and say why these were virtuous ideas  because they were trying to steal in the dead of night."

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The success Langworthy celebrated also mirrored Republican victories across the country a year after Democrat Joe Biden was elected president over former President Donald Trump. The success the party had leaning into issues of voter integrity and crime, plus key wins in states like Virginia, are a "great blueprint for us to follow," he said.

The attack on voting integrity is something that might need to be tackled more directly moving forward, League of Women Voters of New York Deputy Director Jennifer Wilson said.

"The onus is on us  us being voting rights advocates  to do better education about voter fraud and the lack of voter fraud," Wilson said. "A lot people, regardless if they're Democrats, Republicans or some other party, are afraid of voter fraud."

Despite the defeat of the amendments, which took many Democrats by surprise, the margins could have been much closer if not for a couple of baseline voting elements.

For example, on Proposal 1, which tackled a host of redistricting issues, it lost by about 516,000 votes, according to election returns Wednesday afternoon. In New York City, 23 percent of voters left their ballot blank; outside of the city, the average was 8 percent.

In New York City, 21 percent of its electorate turned out to vote; outside of the city, 28 percent voted. If New York City voters both turned out and left its ballot blank at the same clip as the rest of the state, the question may have been defeated by 16,000 votes, based on a review of Board of Elections data by the Times Union.

Proposals 1, 3 and 4 all received about 38 percent of New Yorkers voting in favor and around 50 percent rejecting the measures. The rest left their ballots blank. The measures were not necessarily comparable with each other, despite failing at all about the same rate. It gives both the good government groups and the state GOP reason to believe that the reason for the failure was the loud messaging by the Republican Party, which may have resonated with a wide swath of voters  especially in the absence of a silent counterattack.

The proposals were part of a ballot campaign, led by the nonpartisan group Common Cause NY. It would be atypical for a nonpartisan group to reach out to a partisan group, like the state Democratic Party, for support on a ballot measure. Jacobs said he typically would wait for groups or politicians to reach out to him to then offer whatever financial support they could.

"It's clear that Republicans and Conservatives were far-more motivated to run a 'no' campaign as they saw these as existential threats to the future of the party's power in New York, and acted like it," Sarah Goff, deputy director of Common Cause NY, said. "Unfortunately the supporters of the propositions were complacent."
HALFMOON  Oh Corn! Arepas and More, which opened in a small commercial plaza on Route 9 five years ago, closed temporarily after business this on Saturday, Oct. 30.

Jose Theoktisto, who opened the restaurant with his wife, Belkis Castro, tells me they decided not to renew the strip-mall lease and are on the hunt for a new space, preferably in a downtown Albany, Schenectady or Troy location, or Latham or Colonie. In the string of comments that greeted the relocation announcement on Facebook, pleadings also came in for a move to Ballston Spa, Cohoes, Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs, among others, as well as some lamentation from Halfmoon and Clifton Park residents. An opening in the first quarter of next year is projected, depending on how quickly a new home is identified, Theoktisto says.
TROY  Quang Tran, one of the area's best fine-dining servers, with a resume that includes Michelin-starred restaurants in San Francisco and the former Peck's Arcade, is closing his Quang's Vietnamese Bistro to take a management position with Sea Smoke Waterfront Grill, opening in early December in the Starbuck Island development in Green Island.

The final day of business for Quang's is today (11/4).

I broke this story earlier today in my free Table Hopping newsletter. Sign up here to have it delivered every Thursday afternoon.

Tran tells me he wanted to go out quietly with his little downtown storefront place, on the Collar City's Third Street, which he started in the back of a convenience store and grew to take over the full space.

"The bistro had a nice three-year run, but I am looking forward to returning back to the fine-dining scene, where I feel I truly belong," he says.

Not to take anything away from the outstanding pho and banh mi at Quang's, but I'd wager almost anyone who ever had Tran as waiter/wine adviser would agree that he is supremely suited to front-of-house service and interacting with patrons.

One experience as a guest of Tran's was all it took for Sea Smoke owner Jaime Ortiz, who also owns 677 Prime in Albany and Toro Cantina in Colonie, to be impressed.

During dinner at Peck's a few years ago, Ortiz tells me, "I immediately thought, 'This guy really has got a special way about him.'"

Tran will be in senior management at Sea Smoke, Ortiz tells me. Sheila Burke, a longtime veteran of Mazzone Hospitality who for a few years has been director of restaurants for Ortiz's company, will be the opening general manager of Sea Smoke. Tran will train to take over as GM once the restaurant is up and running and Burke returns to her oversight role with the parent company, according to Ortiz.

Also in place for Sea Smoke are Dante Camacho Garcia, who has worked at multiple area restaurants, as executive chef; Jeffrey Via, who cooked at top contemporary restaurants in Philadelphia and Miami and had a short run with his own place, The Paper Dragon in Albany, before the pandemic, as chef de cuisine; and also front of house, Alexandra Buitron, lately in management in 677 Prime but with credits stretching back to GM of The Point and, two decades ago, director of the cooking school at Cafe Capriccio, both in Albany.

An opening day of Dec. 6 is projected for Sea Smoke, Ortiz tells me, though that may be delayed slightly by delivery of furniture and some remaining equipment. It will seat 100, plus 70 more on an expansive terrace overlooking downtown Troy, though that presumably will not be until spring. Check out background details and renderings of the finished space.

Ortiz says the menu will feature raw-bar fare, Mediterranean-inspired seafood, pizza, pasta, innovative appetizers and entrees and classic dishes.
Farmington, WV (26555)

Today

Showers this morning, becoming a steady rain during the afternoon hours. High 51F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 34F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Farmington, WV (26555)

Today

Showers this morning, becoming a steady rain during the afternoon hours. High 51F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low around 35F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Turkey will start administering booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to people who received their second doses at least six months ago
Economic and Social Consequences if President Weah is Given a 2nd Term By Ansu Opa Dualu Everything rises and falls on leadership! It is the singular issue that shapes the direction of any organization or country. The person who occupies the very top must possess certain preparational pedigree that distinguishes him/her from the typical if producing results is the goal. National leadership is not a space for trial and error; there are serious economic and social consequences if the individuals who step up to lead do not have the tested capabilities to deliver especially at the level of presidency  clear example is Liberia under President Weah. Click here https://allafrica.com/stories/202101060389.html to read A Guide to Picking Liberias next President to know exactly what foundational preparation these individuals must possess to be considered or trusted with national leadership. The presidency is not a joking matter  this is not a place for a flunkey! Liberians should not handover their future to people who do not have the capacity to understand our economic and social challenges, who have had zero preparation in this complicated field of leadership, especially in the 21st Century. If national leaders do not have an in-depth appreciation of our problems and cannot articulate the issues and provide plausible solutions to our developmental priorities, they cannot begin to recognize nor provide answers to those dire societal ills that continue to stagnate everything in the country. Liberians must open their minds if they truly want their lives to change in the direction they desire. Tested leadership matters. So far, President Weah has ruled by decree. He has weakened every governmental institution including the courts and our anti-graft agencies with his misrule and unilateral decision-making tendencies. Liberians must appreciate that economic growth is significantly and negatively impacted when exposed to bad governance. The lack of regulatory oversight, institutional ineffectiveness when it comes to controlling corruption, and enforcement of the rule of law which are empirically linked to poor economic growth, the presidents refusal to systemically address national issues in conformity with the Constitution of the Republic of Liberia are all bad governance issues that continue to cripple our country in a major way. Moreover, our international image that was gradually being re-built has been entirely eroded by this neophyte who does not grasp the magnitude of the awesome responsibility before him. The true damage is yet to be fully quantified. But we know one thing for sure: Bad governance has set us back many years and further weakens the social fabric of the country; a continuation along this line will widen the developmental gap between us and the rest of the world! The impact of weak governance is deeper than most who suffer under its effects care to understand. Poor governance is a driver of disaster risks, political instability and sovereignty risks, poverty and inequality, stifles economic growth, poor urban arrangements, and the proliferation of slum dwellings. Moreover, it exerts tremendous influence over accountability issues, transparency and whether people in that society will experience any appreciable standard of living  bad governance is the biggest contributor to increased crimes and decreased human capital.

Furthermore, corruption and bad governance heavily contribute and surge unemployment numbers, decline in business activities, reduction in tax revenue and create many barriers that eventually destroy the economy like we are seeing under this current kleptocratic arrangement. Conversely, good governance principles like ethics and accountability, transparency and participative governance, the rule of law and responsible stewardship are set aside to the detriment of most of the population. Why will any responsible citizen want to continue down this line of extreme poverty imposed by vain men who only care about themselves and not the people whom they swore to serve? Under President Weahs absent leadership, targeted corruption and the lack of adequate governmental oversight have tightened access to necessities such as healthcare, food, shelter, clean water, and adequate sanitation; it has also increased mental illness in the country, limited access to social services, increased public mismanagement, and increased crime rates. These actions have left most of our people venerable and at risk of preventable diseases and premature death. The president does not care; in fact, he goes into the studio and makes substandard music while his people suffer the consequences of his misrule. One wonders whether President Weah truly wanted to become president at all or perhaps, he was only interested in the fanfares to boost his morale, sleep with as many young women as he can using national resources, fly a state sponsored private jet and not the responsibilities of the office of the president. The lack of policy direction on the part of this government had further exacerbated the teenage prostitution rates in the country, increased high school dropout rates especially among our young girls, increased the number of broken homes mainly due to the high rates of unemployment among young people in the country, increased the zogorazition of young men, and the president continues to destroy Liberia because he does not know what to do and will not listen to advice from anyone who will not worship him! This president has no original ideas. Liberia continues to fall far behind mainly because of the of President Weahs lack of basic leadership preparations. Consequently, law and order is marked by misgovernment, insecurity, partisan politics, demanded bribes, coercion, and violence  think about the auditors, Executive Protection Services Officer who shot himself multiple times in the head, immigration and police officers who have gotten murdered without any explanation, and the countless extra judicial killings of Liberian Citizens throughout the country. This stretches to the criminalization of politics  the president labeling Liberian Citizens enemies of the state  and the violation of citizens rights by state actors. The media is being muffled with partisan closures and illegal refusals of license despite appearance of free speech; couple this with high-ranking officials in government using ex-combatants and documented murderers to do their dirty work. There is fear among the people without any meaningful recourse. The president without trying to find any worthwhile solutions to these life and death issues facing most of our people, he mocks them by telling them he cannot guarantee their security even though that is one of his primary duties as president. He tells them to buy closed-circuit television (CCTV) in a country where there is near zero electricity and 90% of the population can barely afford a proper meal per day. He even refuses to address his people in times of crisis. Since George Weah became president, he has not held any consequential press interchange that lasted twenty minutes! The president constantly runs away from the people  he has almost no regard for their well-being! Disturbing crime rate statistics, a practically non-existent legislative body who has neglected its oversight responsibility, law enforcement arm that answers only to government officials and not the people, a prison system that has run amok and a judiciary that literally operates in total fear of the president and his lieutenants. How can Liberia grow under these conditions? On the other hand, the court system is in name only. The president decides what judgements are rendered, who is guilty or who is not. This equally applies to that most important commercial court that could encourage trade into the country and by extension, employment. The justice minister, on the other hand kowtows to the president and his whims at every turn. He is silent on almost every legal issue. Why will any serious investor bring his money to an environment with so many uncertainties? The executive continuously and unilaterally circumvents court rulings without any regards to the ramifications to the republic. Think the Supreme Court and the illegal expulsion that was overturned by the ECOWAS Court; illegal removal of Liberias Special Representation to our Maritime Mission; the passport sell-off bonanza, commissioning an ambassador and other top officials without senate confirmation, refusal to respect legal tenures and removing officials without cause, a major political party helicopter case, disregarding Liberias Public Procurement Laws; just to name a few. In nearly all these cases, the court ruled, and the government refused to abide by the rulings. In fact, they have openly challenged the court to carry out its rulings. Nothing has been done; the court and the legislative branches of government sit on their hands, and they allow this miscarriage of justice to continue undisputed. The army remains in the barracks. These blatant violations do not stop with the courts, the president has extended his reach by selling off our resources outside of established laws. Case in point, the Spanish-Senegalese Fishing Agreement that violates settled laws. As is being described in the international press, these vessels are plundering valuable Liberian shrimps; they are taking advantage of a research license to avoid taxes in many instances, costing Liberia millions in much needed revenue. Instead of doing research, which is the license they got, these vessels are illegally fishing in our waters, refused to follow any of our laws while Liberian Fishermen suffer the loss of income and their livelihood. Remember, all of this was done in the dark with President Weah granting an authority he does not have under our law. The Liberian Legislature sits there and allows another branch of government to encroach into its space unchallenged. These freeloaders in the legislature are equally responsible for this collapse of our institutions. Imagine President Weah not defining any policy direction that he himself can articulate nor provide any solutions to our desperate economic and social conditions, harming the people, and setting the country back years without any regards to its well-being while still wanting a second term from the people; think about what he will do when he no longer needs your vote. He may just set the country on fire! The platforms upon which to build and strengthen our governance institutions are being destroyed mainly due to incompetence, the full manifestation of a kakistocracy and greed. Liberians must open their minds with purpose if not for themselves but for their childrens future and all of posterity. If Liberians do not listen and continue down this line with President Weah and his fellow kleptocrats, every problem listed herein will be further compounded and set us back many decades. This man has no business near the presidency; he has zero idea on what he is doing. Let us send him parking and hopefully a responsible leader will take over come 2024, hold President Weah and his lieutenants to account and ensure Liberians never again make such colossal mistake! ______________________________________ About the Author: Mr. Dualu is the author of a series of articles that focus on finding solutions to some of Liberias pressing national issues. Some of those papers include Common Sense Economics for Liberia, A Guide to Increasing Liberias $500M National Budget to Over $2B in Ten Years and Leveraging Liberias Resources to Lift the Pro-Poor Agenda. The author works as a financial professional out of Massachusetts.
[November 04, 2021] AM Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Nacional de Reaseguros, S.A.

AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a" (Excellent) of Nacional de Reaseguros, S.A. (Nacional) (Spain). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. The ratings reflect Nacional's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its strong operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. Nacional's risk-adjusted capitalisation remains at the strongest level, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), primarily supported by modest underwriting leverage. The company's balance sheet strength assessment also reflects its prudent reserving approach and limited catastrophe exposure, as most natural perils in Spain are covered by the Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros, the compulsory government natural catastrophe scheme covering physical damage. AM Best expects the company's prospective capital position to benefit from good organic capital generation, underpinned by a prudent dividend policy. Nacional's disciplined underwriting approach and limited exposure to natural catastrophes have contributed to consistently strong technical results, demonstrated by a five-year (2016-2020) weighted average combined ratio of 94.1%. In 2020, the company's loss ratio deteriorated to 66.8% (2019: 63.2%), driven by COVID-19-related losses in its non-domestic portfolio combined with losses from storm Gloria in Spain. Nonetheless, the company's net result remained positive at EUR 28.9 million. Nacional maintains a strong competitive position as a leading reinsurer in Spain. Gross written premium increased by 3.0% to EUR 608.5 million in 2020, driven by the company's stable position in the growing Spanish market, and its prudent expansion strategy in other European countries. Nacional has expanded its international actiities successfully in recent years, targeting small-to-medium sized insurers and mutual companies in Europe. In 2020, foreign business accounted for 34% of Nacional's total premium, compared with 27% in 2014, highlighting the improved geographical diversification of the company's portfolio in recent years. Nonetheless, uncertainties exist regarding the long-term profitability of business originated outside of Spain, owing to higher levels of competition from global reinsurers. AM Best believes that Nacional's expansion outside of its domestic market represents a source of potential volatility to the company's performance on a gross basis due to the exposure of this business to catastrophe losses. However, Nacional has demonstrated its ability to manage its catastrophe exposures through a comprehensive retrocession programme, and more recently, the acquisition and development of specialised risk management tools.



This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright  2021 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005936/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Ayoconnect Becomes BRI's Partner, Ready to Launch Open Finance Solutions

Indonesia's leading open finance API platform Ayoconnect announced its strategic partnership with Indonesia's largest bank by total assets Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI)

leading open finance API platform Ayoconnect announced its strategic partnership with largest bank by total assets Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) This partnership enables Ayoconnect to provide its clients unique access to BRI's digital financial services, among which are direct debit, bulk transfer, and flexible deposit

Ayoconnect and BRI's collaboration is set to drive the adoption of open finance to boost both companies' growth, improve customers' experience, and accelerate financial inclusion among Indonesia's unbanked and underbanked population

unbanked and underbanked population Established in 2016, Ayoconnect has raised a total of US$15 million in funding. Its pre-series B round was led by BRI Ventures, BRI's venture capital arm JAKARTA, Indonesia, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Indonesia's leading open finance API platform Ayoconnect announced its strategic partnership with Indonesia's largest bank by total assets Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI). The partnership enables Ayoconnect to provide hundreds of its clients with seamless access to BRI's digital financial services, such as direct debit, online account opening, and bulk transfer. The collaboration between Ayoconnect and BRI gives a living exampe of the power of open finance. "Open finance is a system that enables interconnectivity between financial services providers with other service providers to enhance their customers' experience using APIs," explained Ayoconnect's COO and Founder Chiragh Kirpalani.



"Ayoconnect's open finance is developed to build an ecosystem that allows consumer-facing businesses to quickly and seamlessly launch digital financial services to their customers, without having to build the necessary infrastructure on their own from scratch," he continued. As reported by Accenture, open finance is expected to be the future of the financial services industry across the world, including in Indonesia. The study, which was published in June 2021, found that the implementation of open finance unlocks the potential of revenues of up to US$416 billion for the financial services industry globally, and that that 76% of banks worldwide expect open finance API usage to increase by 50% or more in the next three to five years.

Despite possessing an e-commerce market value of US$19 billion powered by its 277 million population, Indonesia's card penetration remains low at 0.64 debit cards per capita and just 0.06 credit cards per capita. Consequently, the majority of Indonesian consumers who would like to shop virtually have to go through a series of steps before completing their purchase, or pay for the goods and services using cash. With open finance, Indonesian consumers will have greater flexibility, lower cost, and accelerated process to any financial services that they need. As illustrated by BRI's Head Digital Banking Development and Operations, Muhammad Ghifary, "Ayoconnect's strategic partnership through BRIAPI enables BRI's customers to experience new and easier way of transacting through direct debit in any retail platforms that have partnered with Ayoconnect. This collaboration is set to enable a seamless banking experience for hundreds of millions of BRI customers throughout Indonesia." Ghifary also expresses his enthusiasm for the collaboration between BRI and Ayoconnect. "BRI will continue to support Indonesia's open finance ecosystem by establishing BRIAPI as the partnership gateway with various digital and non-digital platforms to expand our ecosystem beyond banking. We aim to provide embedded financial services in various platforms through strategic partnerships, similar to what we have with Ayoconnect," he stated. Chiragh Kirpalani added, "Ayoconnect is proud and grateful to have the opportunity to work closely with BRI. Together, we are going to make our shared vision of building the technology infrastructure to connect the entire Indonesia's population a reality for everyone." Established in 2016, Ayoconnect has raised a total of US$15 million from leading local and international institutional investors, one of which being BRI's venture capital arm BRI Ventures. The fintech company has also recently appointed Indonesia's renowned technopreneur Ilham Habibie as their commissioner. About Ayoconnect Ayoconnect is Indonesia's largest API platform. It enables developers to choose from a wide range of financial white-label products and quickly launch them to their users. Ayoconnect remains in the background, focused on building and operating the necessary infrastructure while allowing their clients to monetize and expand their business in a fast and scalable way. Founded in 2016, Ayoconnect's API stack has seen rapid adoption. It is trusted by more than 150+ Indonesian companies as clients, including leading banks, retailers, e-commerce, fintechs, and e-walletssuch as Bank BRI, DANA, Indomaret, Bukalapak, Home Credit, and Pegadaianand connects more than 1,000 institutions through its network of APIs. Ayoconnect's APIs process more than 300 million API hits annually. Ayoconnect has raised a total of US$15 million from leading local and international institutional investors. Ayoconnect's investors include Mandiri Capital Indonesia, Bank Mandiri's corporate venture capital unit; BRI Ventures, Bank BRI's corporate venture capital unit; Indonesia's AC Ventures, headed by Chairman of the Indonesian Fintech Association Pandu Sjahrir; Patamar Capital, Southeast Asia's leading impact venture capital; Kakaku, a public company listed on the Tokyo Exchange (TYO); and Finch Capital among others. Ayoconnect continues expanding its ecosystem to accelerate financial inclusion and adoption of embedded finance throughout Indonesia. SOURCE Ayoconnect

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[November 04, 2021] Canada Announces Commitment to End New Direct Public Support for the International Unabated Fossil Fuel Sector by the End of 2022

OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Climate change represents one of the biggest threats to global security, environmental protection and economic prosperity. It's also an enormous economic opportunity for businesses and workers in Canada and around the world. This is why the Government of Canada remains committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and supports the decarbonization of heavy-emitting sectors and clean technology that reduce emissions at home and abroad, including in the oil and gas sector. Today, Canada joined other major economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom and 21 other countries in signing the Statement on International Public Support for the Clean Energy Transition at the COP26 (Conference of the Parties) climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Building on the June 2021 G7 Leaders commitment, Canada and other signatories will further prioritize support for clean technology and end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Government of Canada will develop policy direction that will define the scope of this policy. Joint efforts like this one help support the transition to a prosperous net-zero emissions economy. Canada will continue to work with its domestic and international partners to address climate change, while ensuring sustainable, resilient and inclusive global economic development. Quote "Building clean energy systems across the world will help us achieve our climate goals and build a prosperous future for everyone. In signing this declaration, Canada is aligning its international investments with its climate ambition."



The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson

Minister of Natural Resources "Canada can lead in the low-carbon world if we keep putting our investments, innovations and brain power behind ambitious climate action. That means quickly winding down new public international investments in unabated fossil fuels and powering up the shift to clean sources of energy. I have every confidence in Canada's ability to blaze a trail and win the jobs and economic prosperity that will come to those who lead the global transition to net zero no later than 2050."



The Honourable Steven Guilbeault

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada

Quick Facts Earlier this week At COP26 , the Government of Canada committed to assist low and middle income countries transition away from coal-fired electricity by providing up to $1 billion in climate finance to expand access to clean energy and to support a fair and inclusive transition for coal workers and affected communities. This new commitment will be part of Canada's recent announcement to double its international climate finance from the $2.65 billion , announced in 2015, to $5.3 billion over the next five years to help developing countries transition to low-carbon, resilient economies.

, the Government of committed to assist low and middle income countries transition away from coal-fired electricity by providing up to in climate finance to expand access to clean energy and to support a fair and inclusive transition for coal workers and affected communities. This new commitment will be part of recent announcement to double its international climate finance from the , announced in 2015, to over the next five years to help developing countries transition to low-carbon, resilient economies. In June 2021, Canada and other G7 countries committed to phase out new direct government support for international carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy as soon as possible, with limited exceptions consistent with an ambitious climate neutrality pathway, the Paris Agreement, the 1.5 C goal and best available science.

and other G7 countries committed to phase out new direct government support for international carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy as soon as possible, with limited exceptions consistent with an ambitious climate neutrality pathway, the Paris Agreement, the 1.5 C goal and best available science. In July 2021 , Export Development Canada (EDC), Canada's export credit agency, committed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across their business lines and in their own global operations.

, Export Development Canada (EDC), export credit agency, committed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 across their business lines and in their own global operations. On November 1, 2021 , at COP26 , Prime Minister Trudeau announced that Canada is the first major oil-producing country moving to capping and reducing pollution from the oil and gas sector to net zero by 2050. To help do this at a pace and scale needed to achieve Canada's goal of net zero by 2050, the government will set 5-year targets, and will also ensure that the sector makes a meaningful contribution to meeting Canada's 2030 climate goals. In a letter sent from Ministers Guilbeault and Wilkinson, the government is seeking the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body on how best to move forward on this approach.

, at , Prime Minister Trudeau announced that is the first major oil-producing country moving to capping and reducing pollution from the oil and gas sector to net zero by 2050. To help do this at a pace and scale needed to achieve goal of net zero by 2050, the government will set 5-year targets, and will also ensure that the sector makes a meaningful contribution to meeting 2030 climate goals. In a letter sent from Ministers Guilbeault and Wilkinson, the government is seeking the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body on how best to move forward on this approach. Since 2015, the Government of Canada has invested over $100 billion in clean growth. The Government of Canada's existing climate actions put Canada on a path to exceed its previous target and allowed the government to set an ambitious new target of 40%45% reductions below 2005 levels by 2030 earlier this year. With new 2030 mitigation targets this year from the Canada , Japan and the U.S., combined with ambitious action from the EU and UK, countries accounting for more than half of the world's economy have now committed to the pace of emission reductions required globally to limit warming to 1.5C.

Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan (http://twitter.com/nrcan) SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

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[November 04, 2021] Eastern Bank Foundation Announces 2021 Community Advocacy Award Honorees

Eastern Bank Foundation is pleased to announce its 2021 Community Advocacy Award honorees, recognizing nonprofit organizations addressing inequities exacerbated by the pandemic in the communities Eastern serves, including Cape Cod, Greater Boston, Merrimack Valley, MetroWest, the North Shore, the South Shore and New Hampshire. "Time and again, at times of great challenge and especially during this pandemic, it's our nonprofit sector that picks us up and moves us forward," said Nancy Huntington Stager, President and CEO of the Eastern Bank Foundation. "In 2021, many organizations answered the call in extraordinary ways to make a difference in the lives of our neighbors, and we're proud to recognize some of these leaders and their teams for giving mightily to address critical community needs. When they were faced with overwhelming and urgent demand for their services, they pivoted and scaled up rapidly to be a source of help and strength to thousands of people." The areas addressed by this year's honorees are as follows: Increasing Food Access Racial inequities in food insecurity and gaps in food access are growing, alarmingly. Reports estimate 30 percent of adults in Massachusetts were experiencing food insecurity at the start of this year, and among Massachusetts residents, 58 percent of Latinx adults, 45 percent of Black adults, 26 percent of Asian adults, 24 percent of White adults and 42 percent of adults with children experience food insecurity. In New Hampshire, one in seven Granite Staters is estimated to not know where their next meal will come from, with an additional 55,000 people now food insecure as a result of the pandemic. Community Advocacy Award honorees being recognized for addressing food insecurity are: Merrimack Valley Food Bank , led by Executive Director Amy Pessia

, led by Executive Director Amy Pessia Healthy Waltham , led by Executive Director Myriam Michel

, led by Executive Director Myriam Michel Gather New Hampshire, led by Executive Director Deb Anthony Easing Child Care Scarcity



The pandemic has also laid bare the flaws in our child education and care ecosystem. Since COVID-19, 13% of licensed child care programs in Boston alone shut down. A Community Advocacy Award honoree being recognized for mobilizing child care and other support is: Old Colony Y, led by President & CEO Vincent J. Marturano Addressing Vaccination Inequities

To address disparities surrounding the vaccine, organizations took different approaches to getting communities vaccinated. They focused on getting accurate and culturally-competent information into our communities through vaccine education, and providing access in pop-up clinics at churches, civic centers and elsewhere to help people actually get the vaccine. Community Advocacy Award honorees being recognized for vaccination equity efforts are: Cape Abilities , led by Interim President & CEO Kim McElholm

, led by Interim President & CEO Kim McElholm GOTVax , co-founded by Dr. Alister Martin, Emergency Medicine Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Jon Santiago, Emergency Medicine Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and State Representative from the 9 th Suffolk District

, co-founded by Dr. Alister Martin, Emergency Medicine Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Jon Santiago, Emergency Medicine Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and State Representative from the 9 Suffolk District Essex County Community Foundation, led by President and CEO Beth Francis Supporting Businesses of Color In Massachusetts, the annual unmet demand for capital among businesses of color is at least $574 million, and COVID-19 required many of these businesses to pivot quickly. Community Advocacy Award honorees provided technical assistance, capital and other resources to assist these businesses. Honorees in this category are: Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA), led by President and CEO Segun Idowu

(BECMA), led by President and CEO Segun Idowu Small Business Strong, an initiative led by Yvonne Garcia in addition to her role as Chief of Staff to the Chairman and CEO of State Street Corporation where she is also Global Head of Communications Read more about all of the 2021 Community Advocacy Award honorees at:

https://www.easternbank.com/communityadvocacyawards About Eastern Bank Foundation Created in 1994, the Eastern Bank Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Boston-based Eastern Bank. Through philanthropy, employee volunteerism, advocacy and collaborations with other businesses and community partners, Eastern Bank Foundation responds to community needs and supports sustainable solutions to our communities' most vexing challenges across eastern Massachusetts, southern and coastal New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. To learn more, visit easternbank.com/foundation. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006146/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Filevine Honored as a Top Workplace in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Filevine, the Legal Work Platform, has been named the 27th best place to work in Salt Lake City in the midsize companies category in the 2021 Salt Lake Tribune Top Workplaces program. With over 400 employees, Filevine is a rapidly growing software company with a team of passionate professionals who work together to help organizations thrive. The Top Workplaces list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey that uniquely measures 15 culture drivers that are critical to the success of any organization, including alignment, execution, connection, and more. With 147 companies honored in the Salt Lake Tribune Top Workplaces, it is one of the most prestigious workplace awards in the state. "Filevine is incredibly blessed to have the team that we do. Fileviners are intelligent, hard-working, and some of the best people that I have met," said Ryan Anderson, CEO and co-founder of Filevine. "To receive a top workplace award is not only a reflection of the culture and environment we have cultivated at Filevine, but also of the individuals that show up every day and make Filevine what it is." The company, a recognized leader in legal technology, has a home office in Salt Lake City, along with remote employees across the country. Filevie employees value benefits including; unlimited paid time off, competitive compensation, a dedicated leadership team, a fast-paced environment, among others.



"During this very challenging time, Top Workplaces has proven to be a beacon of light for organizations, as well as a sign of resiliency and strong business performance," said Eric Rubino, CEO of Energage, which partnered with The Salt Lake Tribune to compile the rankings. "When you give your employees a voice, you come together to navigate challenges and shape your path forward. Top Workplaces draw on real-time insights into what works best for their organization, so they can make informed decisions that have a positive impact on their people and their business." Filevine believes in a brighter future where the intersection of legal work and business is made more seamless, transparent, and effortless for all legal professionals and everyone they interact with through the power of legal technology. To learn more about a career at Filevine or to join the team, visit www.filevine.com/company/jobs.

Contact info

Filevine Marketing

[email protected]

(801) 657-5228 About Filevine

Filevine is changing the way legal work gets done for law practitioners and their clients. As the leading legal work platform, Filevine is dedicated to empowering all organizations with tools to simplify and elevate complex, high-stakes legal work. Powering everything from document management and client communication to contract lifecycle management and business analytics, over 25,000 legal professionals use Filevine daily to deliver excellence in every contract, deadline, and result. Filevine is the top legal software company on the Inc. 5000 list, has been named one of the Utah Business Fast 50 and is among the top 50 fastest-growing privately-owned software companies according to the 2021 Inc. 5000 list. About Energage

Making the world a better place to work together. Energage is a purpose-driven company that helps organizations turn employee feedback into useful business intelligence and credible employer recognition through Top Workplaces. Built on 14 years of culture research and the results from 23 million employees surveyed across more than 70,000 organizations, Energage delivers the most accurate competitive benchmark available. With access to a unique combination of patented analytic tools and expert guidance, Energage customers lead the competition with an engaged workforce and an opportunity to gain recognition for their people-first approach to culture. For more information or to nominate your organization, visit energage.com or topworkplaces.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/filevine-honored-as-a-top-workplace-in-salt-lake-city-301416551.html SOURCE Filevine

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[November 04, 2021] Guidefitter Hires Beth Brennan as Vice President of Marketing

BOZEMAN, Mont., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Guidefitter, the online marketplace for hunting, fishing, and outdoor gear, fueled by the opinions of thousands of pro guides and other outdoor professionals, today announced that Beth Brennan has joined the company as Vice President of Marketing. Beth was formerly Chief Marketing Officer for Go Fast Campers. Prior to Go Fast, Brennan headed up marketing for Tepui Tents, a popular Santa Cruz-based rooftop-tent company. During that time Tepui catapulted roof-top tents into the North American market and was instrumental in bringing the "overland" category into the outdoor-recreation scene. Beth gained significant exposure for Tepui by implementing a rebrand of all aspects of marketing, taking it from a homegrown company to a lifestyle brand and properly positioning it as a category leader. Tepui was acquired by the Thule Group in December of 2018. Prior to Tepui, Beth worked in business development for Uber in Chicago. "I've been watching Guidefitter's growth as it established its prominence in the outdoor industry and was excited to have the opportunity to jump in and lead marketing to help continue and accelerate that growth, especially at a time when the outdoor industry has grown rapidly since the beginning of the COVID pandemic," said Beth. "On the surface, Guidefitter first seemed lik only a strong platform for outdoor pro purchase programs, but it now finds itself at an exciting intersection of e-commerce, the creator economy, and the outdoors, all of which have taken center stage recently in the US."



Over the past few years, Guidefitter has quietly built a network of over 310 outdoor brands, including market leaders such as Swarovski Optik, Polaris RANGER, Weatherby, First Lite apparel and others, helping them connect with large audiences of verified outdoor professionals. In doing so, Guidefitter now operates the largest and most authoritative network of individuals who are best positioned to provide the know-how, information, and advice required to maximize the outside experience and to proactively promote the brands they love through the content they create via the Guidefitter platform. "Beth brings strong brand building and demonstrated marketing leadership to us at a perfect time in our evolution as a company," says Bryan Koontz, Guidefitter CEO. "I look forward to working with her and her team as we continue with the next phase of Guidefitter's business strategy, helping brands deploy true outdoor professionals as powerful brand advocates through their unique expertise and content."

For open positions and information about joining the team, visit guidefitter.com/careers . About Guidefitter

Guidefitter is the online community and e-commerce marketplace of choice for genuine outdoor industry professionals and other consumers who love to enjoy the great outdoors. We are pioneering the outdoor industry's first online experience where brands, true outdoor pros and consumers engage in a common digital community, marketing and e-commerce platform oriented around a shared passion for outdoor recreation and great gear. Industry pros have access to hundreds of pro purchase programs from a central location, tools to easily promote the brands they love and a like-minded community to demonstrate their abilities and expertise. Consumers benefit from a community that understands their passion for the outdoors, access to thousands of outfitters through a comprehensive search engine, and opportunities to discover and purchase great gear based on the insights from people who know better than anyone else - true outdoor professionals. Over 300 outdoor brands, including Swarovski Optik, Kenetrek Boots, Weatherby, Polaris RANGER, and First Lite Hunting Apparel work with Guidefitter to promote their brand with authentic messages through large, managed audiences of genuine outdoor professionals. Guidefitter is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. For more information, please visit www.guidefitter.com, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Media Contact:

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/guidefitter-hires-beth-brennan-as-vice-president-of-marketing-301417273.html SOURCE Guidefitter

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[November 04, 2021] HighRadius Opens New Paris Office and Continues Growth in EMEA

HighRadius, the Artificial Intelligence-powered Order to Cash, Treasury Management and Record to Report software leader, celebrated the opening of its new Paris office as it continued expansion in Europe. The office will have local staff for all customer facing operations including consulting, sales and marketing. The Paris office adds to the company's presence in Germany, Amsterdam, the United Kingdom, India and the United States. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005177/en/ Bonjour Paris: HighRadius arrives in France. (Photo: Business Wire) "The new Paris office is a sign of cementing our growing leadership in Europe and will bring the HighRadius Autonomous Software platform even closer to French companies," said Jon Keating, VP and General Manager of HighRadius in EMEA. "Our data-driven, AI software is helping global enterprises rethink and transform their finance and accounting processes. Our aim will be to deliver improvements in Days Sales Outstanding and working capital optimization, accelerate the financial close, and improve productivity in under six months for our new clients in France." "Congratulations to HighRadius for opening a new office in Paris! We recently implemented the Cash Application module as the first step in our Order to Cash transformation. The project was completed with no hiccups along the way and HighRadius managed to lead a smooth transition. Thanks to their robust solution, we are already seeing great value with automation levels above our expectations: our hit rate is over 90% before exception handling and this was one month after going live!" said Thierry RATS, President de ENGIE GBS Solutions, welcoming HighRadius to Paris. A snapshot of HighRadius' growth in Europe over the last twelve months: Deployed over 300 transformation projects, across 37 out of 44 European countrie. Europe-based, client-facing headcount in sales, marketing, consulting and customer value increased by 81% compared to the prior year.

The HighRadius Autonomous Software platform has processed in excess of 475 billion in finance transactions in the European region alone. This is the equivalent of the GDP of Belgium, and the transaction volume has more than tripled since the previous year. Globally, HighRadius processes over $2.2 trillion in finance transactions annually.



HighRadius' Product & Technology Leadership: Recognized in the 2021 Gartner (News - Alert) 'Market Guide for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications' Report, meeting all the criteria for a mature Integrated invoice-to-cash applications vendor.

The IDC MarketScape for Accounts Receivable Software (Enterprise and Mid-Market editions) identified HighRadius as a Leader (extreme top right position) for the second time in a row.

Received numerous awards and recognition, including being named to the 2021 Forbes Cloud 100 and the 2021 CB Insights Fintech 250 list for the second straight year. About HighRadius Corporation

HighRadius offers cloud-based Autonomous Software for the Office of the CFO. More than 700 of the world's leading companies have transformed their order to cash, treasury and record to report processes with HighRadius. Our customers include 3M (News - Alert), Unilever, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Sanofi, Engie GBS Solutions, Kellogg Company, Danone, Hershey's and many more. Autonomous Software is data-driven software that continuously morphs its behavior to the ever-changing underlying domain transactional data. It brings modern digital transformation capabilities like Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Natural Language Processing and Connected Workspaces as out-of-the-box features for the finance & accounting domain. Finance business stakeholders have been led to believe that they have only two choices: pick an application software vendor that digitizes a paper or Excel-based process to an electronic system of record, or, choose a middleware platform for AI or RPA to build and maintain in-house, domain-specific capabilities. In contrast, HighRadius Autonomous Software combines the best of both worlds to deliver measurable business outcomes such as DSO reduction, working capital optimization, bad-debt reduction, reduce month close timelines and improve productivity in under six months. Click here to see Autonomous Software in action. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005177/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Instacart and Publix Announce "Publix Quick Picks" Virtual Convenience Store, Now Available To Customers Across the Southeast

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Instacart, the leading online grocery platform in North America, and Publix today announced Publix's virtual convenience offering - Publix Quick Picks. Available across Publix's entire seven-state footprint, the new storefront allows customers to shop from Publix's wide assortment of fresh groceries, pantry and household essentials, meals, snacks and more, for delivery in as fast as 30 minutes with Instacart Priority Delivery . Publix Quick Picks first launched in September in Tampa, Florida. Following a successful pilot, the companies expanded the service across Publix's operating footprint ahead of the holiday season, enabling millions of households across the Southeast to receive rapid delivery from Publix for the first time ever. Customers to-date have ordered a variety of items from across the virtual aisles, from premade meals including fried chicken tenders, Italian pinwheels and sushi, to convenience essentials like soda, chips, ice cream, candy, beer, wine and hard seltzers, and everything in between. "Customer demand for convenience and rapid delivery continues to grow, and both speed and selection have become fundamental to grocery ecommerce. We're proud to expand our partnership with Publix to bring the in-store express lane online with Publix Quick Picks, offering customers incredible choice paired with fast delivery to meet all of their last-minute needs through this busy holiday season and beyond," said Chris Rogers, Vice President of Retail at Instacart. "Whether trying to satisfy a craving, needing a forgotten ingredient for a family dinner or looking for a quick lunch option, Publix Quick Picks gives customers access to nearly the entire store so they can get exactly what they want, when they need it." "Since launching Publix Quick Picks on Instacart, we've seen rapid customer adoption. Our store locations and wide assortment, combined with Instacart Priority Delivery in as fast as 30 minutes, creates a winning solution for our customers," said Erik Katenkamp, Publix Vice President Omnichannel & Application Development. "Our strong relationship with Instacar continues to unlock capabilities to meet the changing needs of our customers, and we look forward to continuing to grow our portfolio of time-saving services - like Publix Quick Picks - to give customers more ways to get what they need from Publix."



Available to customers on Instacart's Convenience Hub , an Instacart marketplace product feature that streamlines the convenience shopping experience, as well as on delivery.publix.com , Publix Quick Picks allows customers to access essentials in as fast as 30 minutes - when they need just a few items quickly to supplement their weekly grocery shop. Publix and Instacart first partnered in 2016 to launch same-day delivery in as fast as one hour and, with Publix Quick Picks, now offer delivery in as fast as 30 minutes on smaller convenience orders from nearly 1,200 stores. Today, the companies also offer curbside pickup from nearly all stores as well as alcohol delivery and pickup in select states including Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The partnership also supports EBT SNAP payment integration today across all Publix ecommerce properties powered by Instacart.

To begin shopping from Publix Quick Picks, customers can visit www.instacart.com/store/publix-quick-picks or https://delivery.publix.com/store/publix-quick-picks . About Instacart

Instacart is the leading online grocery platform in North America. Instacart shoppers offer same-day delivery and pickup services to bring fresh groceries and everyday essentials to busy people and families across the U.S. and Canada. Instacart has partnered with more than 700 beloved national, regional and local retailers, including unique brand names, to deliver from more than 65,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America. Instacart's platform is available to over 85% of U.S. households and 90% of Canadian households. The company's cutting-edge enterprise technology also powers the ecommerce platforms of some of the world's biggest retail players, supporting their white-label websites, applications and delivery solutions. Instacart offers an Instacart Express membership that includes reduced service fees and unlimited free delivery on orders over $35. For more information, visit www.instacart.com . For anyone interested in becoming an Instacart shopper, visit https://shoppers.instacart.com/ . View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/instacart-and-publix-announce-publix-quick-picks-virtual-convenience-store-now-available-to-customers-across-the-southeast-301416501.html SOURCE Instacart

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[November 04, 2021] INVESTOR ALERT: Law Offices of Howard G. Smith Announces Investigation of ON24, Inc. (ONTF) on Behalf of Investors

Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announces an investigation on behalf of ON24, Inc. ("ON24" or the "Company") (NYSE: ONTF) investors concerning the Company's possible violations of the federal securities laws. In February 2021, ON24 conducted its initial public offering ("IPO"), selling 8,560,930 shares of its common stock at a price of $50 per share. Then, on August 10, 2021, after the markets closed, ON24 announced its second quarter 2021 financial results and provided guidance for the remainder of the year. Specifically, ON24 expected revenue of no more than $48.5 million in the third quarter and $20.5 million for fiscal year 2021, missing analyst consensus estimates by $2.7 million and $4.5 million, respectively.



On this news, ON24's stock declined $10.00, or nearly 31%, to close at $22.31 per share on August 11, 2021. Since the IPO, ON24's stock has traded as low as $18.66 per share, 63% below the IPO price of $50 per share. If you purchased ON24 securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Howard G. Smith, Esquire, of Law Offices of Howard G. Smith, 3070 Bristol Pike, Suite 112, Bensalem, Pennsylvania 19020 by telephone at (215) 638-4847, toll-free at (888) 638-4847, or by email to [email protected], or visit our website at www.howardsmithlaw.com.

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006308/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Open Grid Alliance Solidifies Its Foundation and Welcomes New Members

Launched in April, the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) is today announcing membership and organizational updates that will establish a strong foundation from which it can rise. Specifically, the OGA is proud to welcome 27 new member organizations and announce its official formation as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005667/en/ The 34 Founding Member organizations that currently comprise the OGA represent multiple industries, disciplines, and institutions. (Graphic: Business Wire) The OGA brings together diverse, global, multi-sector, and multi-dimensional technology leaders to tackle an immense challenge - evolving the Internet. The evolution it seeks to foster will go beyond the cloud, and even beyond the edge. The OGA aims to rearchitect the Internet from the communications hub that currently exists, to a global, shared platform that distributes compute, data, and intelligence to where it's needed, when applications and services demand it, and with guarantees and SLAs. In short, the OGA aims to lay the digital foundation for a better world. Today also marks the OGA's official formation as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization and its provisional board comprised of representatives from Dell (News - Alert) Technologies, Deutsche Telekom, Vapor IO and VMware. The provisional board will establish the formal board of directors and the organizational structure that supports the organization's mission. In its first formal membership meeting, the founding OGA members kicked off three work streams: Grid Think Tank - develop a long-term technological vision for the Open Grid and develop a plan to drive toward that vision while, balancing near-term engineering challenges with long-term objectives.

- develop a long-term technological vision for the Open Grid and develop a plan to drive toward that vision while, balancing near-term engineering challenges with long-term objectives. Grid Innovation Zones - establish open-innovation ecosystems in targeted metropolitan areas to drive discovery, implementation, and verification of Open Grid technologies, platforms and tools in service of real-world use cases.

- establish open-innovation ecosystems in targeted metropolitan areas to drive discovery, implementation, and verification of Open Grid technologies, platforms and tools in service of real-world use cases. Grid Market Readiness - identify, create and systematize programs that accelerate the commercial delivery of Open Grid technologies, taking into account the needs and requirements for full-scale, global, and operational deployment of the Open Grid. Kaniz Mahdi, vice president of Distributed Edge, VMware, said, "The Grid makes incredible things possible - it affords access to resources the Internet of today simply cannot reach. And once we have access to this global pool of (digital, physical and biological) resources, we can use them for bigger, broader and better things, such as planet scale automation empowering resilient societies - and that's our target ambition for the OGA." Cole Crawford, CEO and founder, Vapor IO, said, "The OGA has done a great job attracting a diverse set of stakeholders committed to bringing the Open Grid to life. Now it's time to implement. It will require deep industry collaboration to bring about the necessary innovations and integrations that make the Open Grid possible. The OGA will serve as a catalyst to accelerate the deployment of next generation Internet infrastructure, applications and services." Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, SVP of Strategy and Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert), said, "Unleashing innovation at the edge requires the creation of an open, efficient and globally consistent environment enabling the developer community to easily deploy their applications to users anywhere. Deutsche Telekom has a shared vision and mission with our partners in the Open Grid Alliance to speed up and realize the promise of this globally interoperable 5G and edge ecosystem." Read more about the official formation of the Open Grid Alliance in this blog post. The 34 Founding Member organizations that currently comprise the OGA represent multiple industries, disciplines, and institutions. Founding Member organizations include: Commentary from OGA Founding Members

Alphabetically, by company name. "Accedian is obsessed with assuring the best possible experience for end-users. The Open Grid Alliance enables collaboration to reimagine the Internet. We provide visibility across the entire stack including virtualization, orchestration, automation and application layers to develop new levels of performance and deliver exceptional end-user experience, which is our number one priority."

- Richard Piasentin, Chief Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer, Accedian "The Open Grid Alliance represents an important initiative to democratize and build a powerful platform for the next step in the evolution towards a society built on digital services. We are proud to be part of this initiative and believe that our technology contributes critical capabilities."

- Mats Eriksson, CEO, Arctos Labs "Arm Neoverse is addressing demands for a solid cloud to edge infrastructure to deliver on the promises of the next era of compute. As a new member of OGA, we are committed to working alongside other leaders in this industry to deliver solutions that enable new levels of intelligence, automation, and security."

- Eddie Ramirez, vice president of marketing, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm "The Open Grid Alliance is a key step forward in creating a collaborative environment for next generation infrastructure. We are pleased to join the alliance and support it with our experience creating the Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform."

- Keyur Patel, founder and CTO, Arrcus "blocz IO Ltd is pleased to announce its position as a Founding Partner of the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) during its official formation as a non-profit organisation. With our own Edge Data Centre and Lab based within the Cambridge (UK) research park, working in private cloud, scaling networks, 5G, blockchain and more, blocz is a longer-term supporter of the inevitable evolution required to move from a legacy core-centric model towards an open decentralised internet starting at the edge. With the fast-paced deploymnts of IoT, AI & ML, 5G networking, dWeb & dApps powered by web 3.0 being spearheaded by existing and start-up organisations, our requirements for low-latency networking, data security, data ownership and data placement is growing exponentially. blocz believes the OGA is the ideal foundation to drive the innovation needed to evolve the Internet at a global scale and address the issue of the ever-increasing digital universe and the ability of the internet to cope with our ever-growing dependency on data and low latency connectivity."





"We are really excited by the work being done by the Open Grid Alliance and contributing as a founder member. This is an important evolutionary step for technology and it is great to see cross-industry participation from so many important contributors. This is an important initiative for the future of edge computing and we are delighted to be part of this group building the new foundations."

- Duncan Clubb, Head of Digital Infrastructure Advisory, CBRE

"The acceleration of climate change is occurring at the same time as the increase in the use of cloud computing and AI solutions. At the rate things are going, the use of digital will allow us to enjoy new solutions for a better world but at the same time get worse for the planet if we stay with the current internet architectures. We need change for a real better world and innovative deeptech startups should be part of this revolution."

- Richard Chenier, CEO, Centech "The Open Grid Alliance provides a great industry platform for the coordination across software and infrastructure that will be necessary to bring edge computing to its full potential."

- Paul Reddick, vice president of strategy, business and product development, Crown Castle "DriveNets disrupted the networking market, working with some of the largest service providers in the world to build networks like cloud. We believe that the Internet needs to be re-architected into a shared platform based on a wide eco-system of partners, to empower the next wave of application and service innovation. Being among the first members of OGA, we are excited to see it expanding so rapidly with a significant set of new members that are joining us to drive this change."

- Ido Susan, CEO, DriveNets "The Grid, along with its optimization models, AI algorithms, and control policies, will contribute substantially to the revolution of the next-generation Internet."

- Kim Khoa Nguyen, associate professor, director of IoT and Cloud Computing Laboratory, University of Quebec's Ecole de technologie superieure (ETS) "Real-time analytics and AI are core to fulfilling the vision and plan of the OGA. Distributed, on-demand analytics intelligence is critical for gaining the customer experience and network operations insights companies will need across the shared global digital foundation the OGA is working to create. Guavus has been at the forefront of AI and big data analytics for more than 15 years -- the largest telecom providers worldwide have deployed our analytics solutions to overcome their business challenges impacting CX, service quality and operating efficiency, revenue and profitability across increasingly complex multivendor networks. And through our partnerships with the members of the OGA and other world-class industry leaders, we're excited to see our SQLstream real-time streaming analytics being used by companies in other key verticals -- transportation, manufacturing, aerospace to smart citiesto see how they'll make this digital transformation and create the best experience for their customers and a better world for us all."

- Alex Shevchenko, CEO, Guavus (a Thales (News - Alert) company) "The Open Grid is critical to unleashing innovation at the edge - we are excited to leverage this distributed platform to bring compelling private mobile services to the enterprise."

- Allwyn Sequeira, CEO, Highway9 Networks "Hivelocity operates bare metal at the edge around the world. Our core belief is that in a multi-cloud world, plenty of workloads make sense on bare metal. The Open Grid Alliance is built for these workloads and Hivelocity is thrilled to participate."

- Richard B. Nicholas, senior vice president, corporate development, Hivelocity "Fueled by the tremendous momentum of 5G and buildout of the edge, the industry needs an infrastructure that is programmable, scalable and efficient, from the network to the edge and to the cloud. Joining the Open Grid Alliance (OGA), and its vast ecosystem of industry leaders, will help enable these important infrastructure innovations that will make it possible to support a host of new applications and services."

- Caroline Chan, vice president, Network and Edge Group; general manager, Network Business Incubator Division, Intel (News - Alert) "Distributed compute, sensing and learning will enable true resiliency, privacy and scalability. At Invision AI, these principles are the core of everything we are doing. We are incredibly excited to be joining like-minded organizations to accelerate this evolution."

- Karim Ali, founder and CEO, Invision AI "Re-architecting the Internet is both ambitious and essential. By enabling context aware solutions that span from core to edge, we can overcome the complexity, incompatibility and scarcity limitations businesses face today. Achieving this, at the scale of the Open Grid opportunity, demands the most cost-effective and sustainable edge infrastructure. ITRenew build its Sesame open hardware solutions to enable both, making it easy to consistently deploy and manage across diverse locations and topologies. We're proud to join forces with the other OGA founding members as we seek to evolve what is arguably the common foundation for business growth."

- Ali Fenn, president, ITRenew "Macrometa's mission is to make every developer a hero. Our powerful yet simple serverless platform for data intensive and stateful edge applications is finding rapid adoption from cloud developers looking to build real time data driven apps that other Cloud platforms find impossible. Macrometa looks forward to collaborating with the OGA to make the edge a thriving community of fearless innovators, and utopia for cloud developers."

- Chetan Venkatesh, CEO, Macrometa "Masergy is proud to be part of the Open Grid Alliance, building the next generation of the internet that will operate autonomously and predictably at the edge and enable next generation applications for our clients."

- Terry Traina, Chief Technology Officer, Masergy "Menya Solutions - The AI Division of Levio -- is pleased to join the Open Grid Alliance. The Open Grid aligns well with Menya's vision and mission that places AI at the heart of digital transformation. It is the platform the world will need to provide future Internet services to thousands of interconnected and coordinated sensors, devices, and applications in virtually all sectors of the economy."

- Froduald Kabanza, Chief Technical Advisor, Menya Solutions "Mitacs is thrilled to be a member of the Open Grid Alliance (OGA). We share the OGA's goal of driving innovation and look forward to contributing to the realization of its goal of evolving the internet. Using our extensive connections to Canada's postsecondary institutions and its technology ecosystem, we will foster research collaborations between the academic sector and OGA members and help them capitalize on Canada's technology strengths, particularly in the areas of future networks, telecoms, 5G, AI, quantum computing, clean technology, and more."

- John Hepburn, CEO and Scientific Director, Mitacs "A true Open Grid will enable consistency and predictability across multiple clouds and mobile telecom networks with the highest quality of performance. This will make it possible to build next-generation applications and services that leverage the wireless cellular network infrastructure. Telecommunications providers require applications that can scale globally and dynamically across highly distributed networks and infrastructure. The Open Grid Alliance is starting one of the most important industry conversations."

- Jason Hoffman (News - Alert), CEO, MobiledgeX "The Power of the Grid comes from the various intersections, interlocks and coordinates. The intersections create resilience against adversity. Every single coordinate plays a significant role. It brings exponential trust, security and even experiences for the world that will become. The Grid, in the same way, unlocks this new world of transformative communication and the internet."

- Nida Sahar, founder, Nife Labs "Our mission at OVA, in association with the Open Grid Alliance, is to accelerate the democratization and adoption of the metaverse through 5G technology. Our content creation software, StellarX, enables organizations to set up a central metaverse that gives teams space to create and share the work that matters. From creating 3D content, saving custom templates, to all-hands training scenarios, and more."

- Harold Dumar, CEO, OVA.ai "It is time to reconsider the basic operation of the internet and how data, intelligence and connectivity interact. We are hitting the limits of what current frameworks can achieve; the applications of tomorrow will require the support of the grid of tomorrow."

- Fabrice Labeau, director of operations, STARaCom Research Cluster "OGA is a must when considering that every device used by humans down to the smallest and simplest machines will have some form of electronic intelligence and require network access and resources. Thus, we want and need the intelligence, resources and access to be available at the edge of the network for a real decentralized internet with guaranteed interoperability and lightning-fast new technology deployment. UdeS is proud to participate, through OGA, in the definition of the fourth generation Internet."

- Vincent Aimez, Ph.D., vice president, Partnerships and Knowledge Transfer, University of Sherbrooke "ZEDEDA is proud to join the Open Grid Alliance and contribute to building the next generation of the internet. As an edge orchestration company, ZEDEDA is on the front lines of the distributed data explosion and both the challenges and opportunities it is driving. We believe it's critical to openly collaborate on evolved internet architecture to be able to support, propel, and benefit from new innovation opportunities."

- Said Ouissal, CEO and founder, ZEDEDA Additional Resources Read a post from OGA Lead Founding Member Kaniz Mahdi on how personalized automation will help humanity as a whole: Re-imagining the Internet for Planet-scale Automation

Read The Open Grid Manifesto

Follow @OpenGridAllianc on Twitter About Open Grid Alliance Open Grid Alliance (http://opengridalliance.org) is a member-supported collaboration organization that produces vendor-neutral strategies to re-architect the Internet with grid topologies needed to scale globally. The original Founding Open Grid Alliance members include CBRE, Dell Technologies, DriveNets, MobiledgeX, PacketFabric, Vapor IO, and VMware with an invitation for more organizations and contributors. The Open Grid Alliance welcomes additional participants, contributors and supporters. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005667/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Pitney Bowes Expands Shipping Portfolio with Acquisition of CrescoData

Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI), a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services, today announced the acquisition of CrescoData, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) business in the commerce space. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Based in Singapore, CrescoData's Commerce Connect Platform provides integration to over 85 commerce channels through a single API, and enables mapping and automating of product, stock, and order data between the platforms. This strategic investment enhances the Company's product offerings for mid-high volume Ecommerce shippers. It also accelerates Pitney Bowes Enterprise Shipping and Locker go-to-market strategy for the Retail and Pharmacy verticals. "Shipping is a significant growth area for Pitney Bowes as our Shipping Index predicts volumes will double in the next five years. Crescoata's state-of-the-art technology is a perfect complement to our SendPro shipping portfolio," said Jason Dies, Senior Vice President and President, Sending Technology Solutions (News - Alert), Pitney Bowes. "Integrating CrescoData into the Pitney Bowes family allows us to better serve our clients with broader offerings and enhances our end-to-end solution capabilities."



"Our team is delighted to be joining Pitney Bowes. This integration not only expands the offerings for Pitney Bowes, but allows us to pursue new clients backed by the strength of a trusted company with a long history of innovating," said Anna Trybocka, founder of CrescoData. "To be part of a company squarely focused on the shipping opportunity and providing value for its clients creates exciting opportunities for growth." About Pitney Bowes

Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI) is a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services to more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500. Small business, retail, enterprise, and government clients around the world rely on Pitney Bowes to remove the complexity of sending mail and parcels. For additional information, visit Pitney Bowes at www.pitneybowes.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005623/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Reblaze Launches New Partner Program to Meet Growing Demand for Cloud-Native Web Application Security

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reblaze , a leading cloud native, fully managed application security solution provider, today announced the launch of its global channel partner program. Designed to help joint customers get more out of their current security infrastructure, the Reblaze Partner Program enables its innovative, cloud native partners to build a more robust web app security ecosystem.

The cybersecurity market is evolving rapidly as organizations are faced with new and existing threats every day. They require a comprehensive web app security solution that can learn from and adapt to ever-changing internet traffic patterns, while offering clear visibility into their entire security ecosystem. With intensified cyber threats on the rise  from ransomware to DDoS and account takeover attacks  organizations need a shield for all digital properties that can block whatever comes their way, said Eyal Adanya, VP Channels and Partnerships, Reblaze. Our goal is to make our customers web platforms secure by default. By launching our Reblaze Partner Program, we want to extend this value proposition and partner with some of the most innovative security and cloud native providers in the industry. The Reblaze Partner Program is flexible and inclusive, allowing any type of partner, whether cloud resellers, MSSPs, or security services providers to build and deploy Reblaze solutions wherever they already are. Reblaze can be deployed in the public clouds  AWS, Azure, GCP  and via the cloud providers marketplace, so customers can process and scrub traffic in a cloud they trust. Channel partners have access to Reblazes comprehensive protection of business sites, web applications, services, and APIs, as well as best-in-class support. Benefits of joining the Reblaze Partner Program include: Priority access to the latest sales and marketing tools, comprehensive training, and comarketing opportunities.

Lucrative commercial terms based on a combination of certifications, value added services, and sales results.

New revenue opportunities by providing implementation services, support, and training.





Reblaze Partners Say It Best

"As an AWS Premier Partner and an Audited AWS MSP, we needed the perfect solution to reduce our customers' security risk exposure and increase the reliability of their online presence experience. Reblazes Web Application and API protection enhances our offering with a comprehensive solution providing complete security to our customers."

 Lahav Savir, founder and CTO, AllCloud Reblaze delivers an end-to-end Web Application Security solution that extends protection to our valued customers, and as a partner we get full support including marketing resources to promote and resell Reblaze in the region. We are proud to be part of the Reblaze partner ecosystem.

 Thiago N. Felippe, CEO, AIQON

Working with the Reblaze sales and marketing team is a great experience. We are headquartered in Chile, but have customers from all over the world, and we get all the support we need in both English and Spanish as needed. Being part of the Reblaze Partner Program makes our lives easier and we are able to put the resources toward improving the security of our platforms.

 Juan Manuel Fluxa, CTO, Reign "Reblaze is an important partner for DoiT customers, providing full web application and API protection for companies looking to thrive in the public cloud. Reblaze enables our customers to create a cost-effective cloud infrastructure across CDN and Security."

 Yoav Toussia-Cohen, CEO, DoiT "As a security services provider we found Reblaze to be a comprehensive, unified Web Application and API protection solution which complimented the needs of our clients. Reblaze has great product flexibility and technical capability, and excellent pre and post sales support providing real added value to our customers."

 Iain Paterson, CEO, Cycura Reblaze provides state-of-the-art, cloud native web protection that allows us to provide a comprehensive cybersecurity offering to our customers across Italy and Europe. The flexibility of the business model allows us to stay competitive and provide our customers the local support they need to succeed.

 Antonino Nasso, Service Manager, Storm Reply Supporting Resources

Join the Reblaze Partner Program About Reblaze

Reblaze is a cloud-based, fully managed security solution provider for sites, web applications, services, and APIs. Its unified and proprietary technology solution is fully integrated with AWS, Azure, Google, and Digital Ocean, and combines Machine Learning, adaptive threat detection, and dedicated Virtual Private Clouds to protect client assets from Internet threats. It offers next-gen WAF, autoscaling DoS/DDoS protection, Bot Management, API Security, CDN integration, real-time traffic control, and more via its intuitive web-based management console. Biometric human detection and Behavioral Analysis identifies and blocks even sophisticated modern bots that mimic human actions and can evade traditional bot mitigation solutions. In addition to its international partner network, Reblaze has offices in the U.S., Singapore, and Israel. Media Contact

Shannon Campbell

Offleash for Reblaze

[email protected]



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[November 04, 2021] Rent Dynamics Adds Multifamily Housing Benefit to its PropTech Portfolio with Acquisition of The Advantage Program

Rent Dynamics, a multifamily software and services company impacting the resident journey, today announced its acquisition of Salt Lake City-based company The Advantage Program (TAP). Incorporating TAP into its PropTech portfolio of RentPlus amenities for multifamily housing residents, Rent Dynamics is now rolling out the program designed to help renters finance the purchase of their first home across the country. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006381/en/ A financial services amenity for residents of multifamily properties, Rent Dynamic's RentPlus service helps families establish and build credit through payment of their rental and utilities payments. With the addition of TAP to its suite of services available to multifamily property owners nationwide, Rent Dynamics now provides support for renters looking to move into home ownership. The real estate matchmaker program connects residents with real estate agents and lenders for free, and provides up to $1,295 or more towards the cost of their home purchase. "At Bridge Property Management, we are looking to build long-term relationships with our residets," said Rich Stayner, Partner & CEO, Bridge Property Management. "We are proud to be the first property management company in the country to roll out Rent Dynamics' new resident benefit, The Advantage Program - helping our families move from renters to homeowners with free financial management tools and connection to a trusted local real estate agent."



Rent Dynamics' suite of multifamily resident services backed by industry-leading technology empowers multifamily community owners and operators to implement responsible environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives, helping businesses solidify their CSR (News - Alert) (Corporate Social Responsibility) plans and investments. These socially responsible initiatives promote economic inclusion and build stronger communities, providing residents with a lasting positive impact. "The addition of The Advantage Program to our suite of services available to multifamily property owners and operators is a real benefit for renters nationwide. Purchasing the right home at the right time can really help people prosper," said Quincy Rich, CEO, Rent Dynamics. "Accessing professional support to help you purchase a home is a smart decision and our users are supported every step of the way. This is a huge win for residents, and also for our clients, who have the opportunity to move away from the traditional 'big bad landlord' stereotype, towards providing a service that is truly benefiting the lives of their residents. We are excited to partner with Bridge on this commitment to being there for their residents."

Rent Dynamics launched the first TAP program serving its multifamily property clients in Utah and Arizona this month, with more states on the way. The company is partnering with Keller Williams Realty, Inc. to identify and match local real estate professionals with TAP program participants. The TAP team supports each client throughout the home buying process, every step of the way, helping renters make informed decisions, negotiate the best terms, and save time and money. "We are proud to partner with Rent Dynamics to help roll out The Advantage Program nationwide, connecting residents of rental communities with local real estate agents to help guide them on the exciting journey to home ownership," said Emily Lowry, Operating Principle, KW South Valley Keller Williams. "A trusted real estate professional is an essential partner in every home buying process and this free benefit for families looking to purchase their first home is a life changing amenity." About Rent Dynamics Rent Dynamics provides value throughout the resident journey - Marketing, Leasing, and Retention. Our intuitive CRM incorporates advanced business intelligence for increased visibility into your lead to lease pipeline, while our Contact Center is there to be an extension of your team. Our RentPlus product provides resident rent reporting and financial resources that promote economic inclusion and financial freedom for renters. To learn more, visit https://rentdynamics.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006381/en/

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[November 04, 2021] The State of Oklahoma Transforms IT with Dell Technologies

OKLAHOMA CITY and ROUND ROCK, Texas, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- News summary State of Oklahoma updates and transforms its data center infrastructure with Dell Technologies to modernize disaster recovery and become a digital-first government

updates and transforms its data center infrastructure with Dell Technologies to modernize disaster recovery and become a digital-first government The effort digitizes information services to better support its four million citizens

Modern technology architecture helps ensure that citizen data is protected and accessible through inclement weather and power outages

Dell Technologies data protection and storage solutions play a critical role in helping the State withstand more than 3.8 trillion cyberattacks Full story The State of Oklahoma is committed to becoming a digital-first government, modernizing its data center strategy to more efficiently provide services to its four million citizens, safeguard against cyberattacks, and protect and restore information in the case of a disaster. Partnering with Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) to transform its IT, the State has moved its information services forward an estimated 20 years in just over a year and improved productivity, helping IT staff to focus on making citizen access to services easier and their data more protected. "In the last year, our team has dealt with the pandemic and energy needs along with the ongoing goal of delivering quality healthcare and the best services to citizens. All of this helped make clear that we needed to update our processes and digitize services," said Steven Harpe, state chief operating officer and deputy secretary of Digital Transformation and Administration, State of Oklahoma. "We went to Dell Technologies with a big challenge. Working together, we have created a digital approach to offering services and a top-tier, well-engineered secondary data center to help ensure our citizen data s protected, even in the face of cyberattacks, inclement weather and power outages."



Doubling-down with Dell Technologies Infrastructure for Resiliency and Growth The State of Oklahoma sought to modernize its IT operations, use infrastructure that would easily support future growth, and enhance its data protection capabilities to better withstand the rising number of cyberattacks globally.

In less than six months, the State of Oklahoma planned, implemented, migrated and protected more than 2.6 petabytes of data and tens of thousands of databases to a remote data center that uses Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery, PowerProtect DD series appliances and PowerProtect Data Manager software, giving the State a singular view of its diverse IT environment. The State, which has withstood more than 3.8 trillion cyberattacks, has Dell Technologies storage and data protection in its primary and now secondary data centers, and can be up and running quickly in the event of a disaster. To give citizens the ability to consume services, regardless of agency, in the same way that they transact with banks today, they required a modern, agile and scalable foundation. The State of Oklahoma is using the Dell EMC PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure to provide an efficient foundation for applications that run health, human services, public safety, tax, transportation and more. The State consolidated more than 3,000 servers and 9,000 databases that support more than 100 state agencies to a foundation of Dell EMC PowerFlex systems in its remote data center. Agency personnel now have sub-millisecond access to data to get what they need, replicated storage to support business continuity and data protection, encryption to secure inactive data, disaster recovery improvements, and much more. "State governments are critical service organizations, challenged to provide timely, digitally delivered services while safeguarding citizen and government data against threats such as cyberattacks," said Jillian Mansolf, senior vice president and general manager, North American Education & Public Sector Sales, Dell Technologies. "Dell Technologies brings our extensive experience to bear in helping the State of Oklahoma and others reliably and securely transform their IT to become more resilient while offering more digital services for their departments, citizens and local businesses." Additional resources Connect with Dell via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn About Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry's broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the data era. Copyright  2021 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC and Dell EMC are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-state-of-oklahoma-transforms-it-with-dell-technologies-301416431.html SOURCE Dell Technologies

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[November 04, 2021] U.S. Navy Selects SAIC for $93 Million Contract to Provide Networks and Enterprise Infrastructure Support for Critical Missions

Science Applications International Corp. (NYSE: SAIC) won a contract to compete for task orders worth up to $93 million supporting Tactical Integrated Threat/Target (News - Alert) Training Systems (TTS) for the U.S. Navy's Adaptive Combat Environment Systems group at Naval Air Station, China Lake, California. Under the five-year, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, SAIC (News - Alert) will compete with other selected vendors to provide research and development, engineering, integration, testing, cybersecurity, upgrades and sustainment for numerous tactical threat systems to help improve Navy aircrew effectiveness and survivability. The Navy expects to complete work on this cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price contract in September 2026. "This award gives SAIC an opportunity to win specific task orders under the TTS contract to help verify and validate the system capabilities deployed to our Navy," said Josh Jackson, senior vice president of the Naval Business Unit, SAIC. "This will ultimately help us better serve and support the Navy's current and future range capabilities." TTS support includes range data collection and specialized instrumentation for systems under test, data at the edge computing and transfer, and data sorting and analytics in support of system performance analysis. Additional work includes sustainment of unique electronic warfare-centric range capabilities and movement into new technology for the next generation of systems' performance validation and verification. About SAIC SAIC is a premier Fortune 500 technology integrator driving our nation's technology transformation. Our robust portfolio of offerings across the defense, space, civilian and intelligence markets includes secure high-end solutions in engineering, digital, artificial intelligence and mission solutions. Using or expertise and understanding of existing and emerging technologies, we integrate the best components from our own portfolio and our partner ecosystem to deliver innovative, effective and efficient solutions that are critical to achieving our customers' missions.



We are more than 26,500 strong; driven by mission, united by purpose, and inspired by opportunities. SAIC is an Equal Opportunity Employer, fostering a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion, which is core to our values and important to attract and retain exceptional talent. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, SAIC has annual revenues of approximately $7.1 billion.???? For more information, visit saic.com. For ongoing news, please visit our newsroom. Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release contain or are based on "forward-looking" information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by words such as "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "guidance," and similar words or phrases. Forward-looking statements in this release may include, among others, estimates of future revenues, operating income, earnings, earnings per share, charges, total contract value, backlog, outstanding shares and cash flows, as well as statements about future dividends, share repurchases and other capital deployment plans. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risk, uncertainties and assumptions, and actual results may differ materially from the guidance and other forward-looking statements made in this release as a result of various factors. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause or contribute to these material differences include those discussed in the "Risk Factors," "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Legal Proceedings" sections of our Annual Report on Form 10-K, as updated in any subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC (News - Alert), which may be viewed or obtained through the Investor Relations section of our website at saic.com or on the SEC's website at sec.gov. Due to such risks, uncertainties and assumptions you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. SAIC expressly disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statement provided in this release to reflect subsequent events, actual results or changes in SAIC's expectations. SAIC also disclaims any duty to comment upon or correct information that may be contained in reports published by investment analysts or others. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005026/en/

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[November 03, 2021] Intelsat and OneWeb Demo Global Multi-Orbit Satellite Service to U.S. Department of Defense

Intelsat, operator of the world's largest integrated satellite and terrestrial network, OneWeb (OWT), a global provider of innovative, secure satellite communications, and Linchpin Solutions, a leader in C5ISR systems and programs, successfully demonstrated a multi-orbit satellite communications solution for representatives of the U.S. Army and Department of Defense (DoD). This is a strategic demonstration to the U.S. DoD that shows transport diversification between the geostationary orbit (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations with seamless switching between them. Referred to as Automated Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency (APACE) communications, the solution enables soldiers to survive and excel in contested electronic warfare environments. The reliability of communications is significantly improved by simultaneously sending data over multiple paths and adjusting the traffic flow in real-time between GEO and LEO satellite constellations. Intelsat (News - Alert) and OWT used both GEO and LEO services simultaneously, switching the data flow between orbits instantly at the packe level, using software to determine which connection will provide the best experience based on the technical requirements of the end service. The software solution can be hosted on existing fielded ruggedized virtual machine platforms allowing the system to run in the harshest environments.



Two satellite links were established during the demo - one on the Intelsat 37 (IS-37) satellite and one on a OneWeb satellite. The links communicated through various end-user terminals, including a SatCube terminal, a Kymeta U7/8 terminal, a Litecom GEO terminal, and a OneWeb Intellian (News - Alert) terminal, demonstrating applications such as two-way voice and data downloads and MP4 video. "This demonstration shows how through the power of partnership, we can provide a reliable, secure, multi-orbit, multi-band capability for the military that connects our warfighters to meet their evolving mission requirements," said President of Intelsat General, Dave Micha. "This enables the delivery of required connectivity, throughput and services to customers when and where that reliable access is needed, even in the harshest elements."

"This demonstration of low latency, high-capacity throughput via a multi-orbit solution that increases the resiliency of commercial Satcom to DoD and allied partners globally is an important steppingstone as OneWeb rises to the challenges and needs of our customers through partnerships," said Bob Roe, CEO of OneWeb Technologies, the U.S. Proxy subsidiary of OneWeb. Intelsat's FlexMove service, combined with partner terminals, can be deployed within an hour. For military customers, this quick set-up, reliable and secure offering provides beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) seamless communications at times when connectivity is most critical. Intelsat is the world's most trusted integrated space and ground satellite network with a 50-year record of delivering seamless and secure coverage across 200+ countries. We are building a unified global 5G network that will support virtually any access technology, enabling the next generation of global mobility, IoT, and 5G services. Merging software-defined technology and multiple networks and orbits, we bring the world a single, more powerful way to connect easily. About Intelsat As the foundational architects of satellite technology, Intelsat operates the world's most trusted satellite telecom network. We apply our unparalleled expertise and global scale to connect people, businesses, governments, and communities, no matter how difficult the challenge. Intelsat is building the future of global communications with the world's first hybrid, multi-orbit, software-defined 5G network designed for simple, seamless, and secure coverage precisely when and where our customers most need it. Follow the leader in global connectivity and "Imagine Here," with us, at Intelsat.com. About OneWeb OneWeb Technologies is the premier global provider of innovative, secure satellite communications (SATCOM) application solutions. We uniquely combine extensive satellite access and expansive terrestrial capacity with highly effective applications to deliver best-fit, custom end-to-end solutions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211103006359/en/

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[November 03, 2021] Martin Bruncko joins Binance as Executive Vice President for Europe

SINGAPORE, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Binance, the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange, and blockchain technology infrastructure provider, today announced the appointment of Martin Bruncko as Executive Vice President for Europe. Martin brings to Binance a unique combination of government and technology background, with extensive expertise in building transformational tech companies, as well as experience in the top echelons of national and international policymaking in the areas of finance and innovations. "I am very excited to be joining Binance in its new phase of growth, as it is starting to put a major focus on compliance and an expansion into more traditional fintech areas. The incredible community that Binance has managed to build over the years, its cutting edge technologies, and the shift toward working ever more closly with regulators give Binance almost limitless opportunities. I look forward to realizing this potential in Europe and beyond," said Mr. Bruncko.



Martin has been a founder, executive, and board member in several European deep tech and fintech companies, including AeroMobil, Stasis, GA Drilling, and Neulogy (acquired by Civitta). He has also been a member of the investment committee of the European Innovation Council Fund, which is the largest deep tech investment fund in Europe. Previously, Martin held several senior government positions, including as junior minister for innovations and deputy for European affairs of the minister of finance of Slovakia. He was a member of the Economic and Financial Committee of the EU, Board Member in the European Stability Mechanism (previously EFSF), Senior Director and Head of Europe at the World Economic Forum, and a senior advisor to the European Commissioner for Research and Innovations and to the Government of Dubai.

Martin holds a B.A. from Stanford University and M.P.A. from Harvard Kennedy School. In 2012, he was honored as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. About Binance Binance is the world's leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider with a financial product suite that includes the largest digital asset exchange by volume. Trusted by millions worldwide, the Binance platform is dedicated to increasing the freedom of money for users, and features an unmatched portfolio of crypto products and offerings, including: trading and finance, education, data and research, social good, investment and incubation, decentralization and infrastructure solutions, and more. For more information, visit: https://www.binance.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1676943/Binance_EVP.jpg SOURCE Binance

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[November 03, 2021] Steve Harrick, Eric Liaw and Tom Loverro Named on the 2021 GrowthCap's Top 25 Software Investors List

IVP, a premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firm, is pleased to announce that General Partners Steve Harrick, Eric Liaw and Tom Loverro have been named on the 2021 GrowthCap's Top 25 Software Investors List. The list highlights the most exceptional private capital investors who have demonstrated deep software sector expertise, high leadership acumen, exceptional investment judgment, and consistent professional performance over a sustained period of time. "When it comes to investing in leading growth-stage software companies, the only constant is change," said Steve Harrick. "At IVP, we feel honored to be in the position to work with some of the most visionary entrepreneurs in tech - whether they are solving significant enterprise challenges involving cybersecurity or helping a profession like law advance through digitization. Now is an even more exciting time to be a tech investor, and I look forward to meeting and backing the next generation of great entrepreneurs." "Despite some initial headwinds at the outset of the pandemic, software companies have flourished tremendously over the last 12 months," continued Eric Liaw. "Companies of all sizes, in all vertical markets and geographies recognize the existential necessity of digital capabilities. This explosion in end-customer demand allows software companies to grow faster than ever and generate significant revenue within a very short timeframe. We continue to see incredible opportunities for our current and future portfolio companies. Every day, I am energized by the opportunity to talk to talented entrepreneurs and partner with them to create a better future." "IVP invests in the fastest-growing technology companies and software is the majority of what we do," added Tom Loverro. "We are highly selective. We partner with exceptional management teams to build software companies of consequence. There are more high quality, high growth software companies every day and they are growing faster and with better metrics than every generation before it." IVP manages $8.7 billion in committed capital and is one of the top-performing firms in the venture capital industry. The firm has backed innovative companies such as Aiven, Amplitude, Attentive, CrowdStrike, Datadog, Discord, GitHub, Grammarly, HashiCorp, Hopin, Klarna, MasterClass, Slack, Snap, Supercell, Wise, Twitter, and UiPath and remains committed to its focused strategy of supporting innovation at the growth stage and partnering closely with exceptional management teams. About Steve Harrick Steve Harrick joined IVP in 2001 as a General Partner and has over 20 years of venture capital experience. He focuses on investing in later-stage technology companies with exceptional growth potential. Specifically, Steve targets enterprise infrastructure, security, data analytics and disruptive consumer-focused companies which have the potential to become leaders in teir respective markets. He enjoys working closely with committed entrepreneurs to help create businesses that are both respected and revolutionary. Steve led IVP's investments in Aerohive Networks (HIVE), AlienVault (T), Anomali, AppDynamics (CSCO), Aster Data (TDC), Ayasdi (SAI (News - Alert)), Business.com (DEXO), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Cyence (GRWE), eHealth (EHTH), Eucalyptus Systems (HPQ), Harness, LegalZoom (LZ), MarkMonitor (TRI), MySQL (ORCL), Personal Capital (Empower), Productiv, Spiceworks (ZD), Sumo Logic (SUMO), Teros (CTXS), Tripwire (News - Alert) (Thoma Bravo), and Yellowbrick Data. He was actively involved in IVP's investments in ArcSight (HPQ), Buddy Media (CRM), Danger (MSFT), HashiCorp, MuleSoft (CRM), Pure Storage (PSTG), and Yext (YEXT). Steve was recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world by his inclusion in the Midas List three times. Before joining IVP, Steve worked for the Internet Capital Group (News - Alert) (ICG) as a Vice President of Acquisitions. Prior to ICG, Steve worked for Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts. Steve's experience in venture capital investing on both the East and West Coast allows him to provide valuable guidance to management teams within IVP's portfolio. Before entering the venture capital industry in 1997, Steve worked in Business Development for Netscape Communications and in Mergers and Acquisitions for Morgan Stanley in New York. Steve earned a BA in History from Yale University, where he was a Varsity wrestler and an MBA from Harvard Business School.



About Eric Liaw Eric Liaw joined IVP in 2011 and is now a General Partner. He is focused primarily on later-stage investments in high growth companies across a variety of sectors, including enterprise software, Internet, and mobile. Eric serves as a Board Director or Observer for IVP portfolio companies Aiven, App Annie, Deputy, Glossier, The Honest Company (HNST), IEX, Lulus, MasterClass, NextRoll, Supermetrics, WHOOP, and ZipRecruiter (ZIP) and led IVP's investments in Ajaib, Datadog (DDOG), Dream Games, FightCamp, GitHub (MSFT), Klarna, Robinhood (HOOD), Sorare, and UiPath (PATH). He was actively involved in the firm's investments in Coinbase (COIN), Cribl, CrowdStrike (CRWD), Curology, Grammarly, Hims & Hers (HIMS), Niantic, Podium, Tala, TaxBit, and Whisper and previously served as a Board Director or Observer for Dropcam (GOOG), MINDBODY (MB), OnDeck (ONDK), RetailMeNot (SALE), Supercell (Tencent), The Players' Tribune (Minute Media), and Wikia (TPG). The New York Times and CB Insights recognized Eric as one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world in 2019. Prior to joining IVP, Eric was with TCV where he completed minority and control investments in private and public companies across the Internet and software sectors. Earlier in his career, Eric was a member of Morgan Stanley's Technology Investment Banking Group. Eric also held technical and marketing positions with Trend Micro (News - Alert) and Canon Software Publishing. Eric holds a BA degree in economics and an MS degree in management science and engineering, both from Stanford University.

About Tom Loverro Tom Loverro joined IVP in 2015 and is currently a General Partner. He focuses on investing in later-stage, high-growth consumer and enterprise companies. Tom currently serves as a Board Director or Observer for Attentive, HashiCorp, NerdWallet, Paper, Podium, Skydio, and TaxBit. He was a Board Observer for Coinbase (COIN) until April 2021. He was actively involved in sourcing, executing, and managing investments in Ajaib, Amplitude (AMPL), Datadog (DDOG), GitHub (MSFT), IEX, OnDeck (ONDK), and Tanium. Forbes Magazine recognized Tom as one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world by his inclusion in the 2021 Midas List. In 2019, he was recognized as one of venture capital's up-and-comers by his inclusion in the Forbes Midas Brink List. He began his career at Goldman Sachs & Co. in technology, media, and telecommunications investment banking. Following Goldman, he joined RRE, a leading early-stage venture firm based in New York. Tom's involvement in RRE portfolio company Drobo led to him joining the company full-time for a period where he led Marketing. Tom holds an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management, where he was an Austin Scholar, and a BA degree from Stanford University, where he graduated with distinction. About IVP Founded in 1980, IVP is one of the premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms in the United States. IVP has invested in over 400 companies, 126 of which have gone public. IVP is one of the top-performing firms in the industry and has a 40-year IRR of 43.1%. IVP specializes in venture growth investments, industry rollups, founder liquidity transactions, and select public market investments. IVP investments include such notable companies as Amplitude (AMPL), AppDynamics (CSCO), Attentive, Brex, Coinbase (COIN), Compass (News - Alert) (COMP), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Datadog (DDOG), Discord, Dropbox (DBX), GitHub (MSFT), Glossier, Grammarly, HashiCorp, Hims & Hers (HIMS), Hopin, Klarna, LegalZoom (LZ), Looker (GOOGL), Marketo (MKTO), MasterClass, Mindbody (MB), MuleSoft (CRM), Netflix (NFLX), Niantic, Podium, Robinhood (HOOD), Rubrik, Slack (WORK), Snap (SNAP), Supercell (Tencent), Twitter (TWTR), UiPath (PATH), Wise (WISE), ZipRecruiter (ZIP), and Zynga (ZNGA). For more information, visit www.ivp.com or follow IVP on Twitter: @ivp. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211103006376/en/

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[November 03, 2021] Juniper II Corp. Announces Pricing of Upsized $260 Million Initial Public Offering

Juniper II Corp. (the "Company"), a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses, today announced the pricing of its upsized initial public offering of 26,000,000 units at a price of $10.00 per unit. The units will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the ticker symbol "JUN.U," beginning on November 4, 2021. Each unit will consist of one share of Class A common stock of the Company and one-half of one warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of Class A common stock of the Company at a price of $11.50 per share. Once the securities comprising the units begin separate trading, the shares of Class A common stock and warrants are expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols "JUN" and "JUN WS," respectively. The offering is expected to close on November 8, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and UBS Securities LLC (the "Underwriters") are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The Company has granted the Underwriters a 45-day option to purchase up to 3,900,000 additional units at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments, if any. The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the prospectus may be obtained from MorganStanley & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014, or by email at [email protected]; or UBS Securities LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, by telephone at (888) 827-7275 or by email at [email protected].



A registration statement relating to the securities became effective on November 3, 2021 in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or 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 jurisdiction. This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements," including with respect to the proposed initial public offering and the anticipated use of the net proceeds. No assurance can be given that the offering discussed above will be completed on the terms described, or at all, or that the net proceeds of the offering will be used as indicated. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company's registration statement and preliminary prospectus for the Company's offering filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC (News - Alert)"). Copies are available on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211103006379/en/

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[November 04, 2021] TritonExec goes global with its India expansion

LONDON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TritonExec, the global executive search firm specialising in leadership hiring, team hires, and Exec RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) in professional services and fintech, expands its presence to India, Japan and Australia. Additionally, they will cover Philippines, China, Hong Kong and Singapore markets from their nearshore locations in Asia. As part of their Asia strategy, TritonExec has opened its headquarters in Hyderabad India, and has hired its first 15 employees with a focus to serve English speaking markets and add scale to its North America and Europe business.



The firm also confirmed that with this move it has entered into a new global five-year engagement with professional services firm Genpact (NYSE: G) and are in advanced talks with existing clients to expand their service offering across the region.

On their expansion to Asia, co-founder Jonathan Morris said, "Our expansion in India is a strategic choice for us which will help us support our clients in their growth objectives. Asia is an interesting and dynamic economy, which will provide us the scale and domain expertise to continue to provide our high-touch, white-gloved service to our clients, who are looking to scale their business at pace." Co-founder, Ben Graham added, "We have been fortunate that we have clients who love to innovate and help us transform ourselves while transforming our clients' business. Over the past decade we have built strong credibility with our clients who not only trust us with their business but are also our strongest advocates - we would like to thank them for these opportunities. This move into Asia Pacific is going to be pivotal for our clients as they can now leverage our international standards, global best practices and consumer grade experience to a candidate market that has expected such a high quality service which we believe has been underserved for a long time." About TritonExec TritonExec is a global executive search firm that specialises in fintech and professional services. With offices in UK, US, and India, TritonExec provide executive search, multi-hire programmes and executive level RPO services. Simply put, TritonExec enables growth. The firm supplies essential leadership to a number of high-profile worldwide companies that make an impact on the world. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678048/TritonExec_Co_founders.jpg

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[November 04, 2021] Krungsri partners with Nium to expand international transfer offerings

- The partnership enables Krungsri customers in Thailand to send real-time payments to more countries BANGKOK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Krungsri (Bank of Ayudhya PCL), one of Thailand's largest banks, partners with leading global payments platform Nium to enhance their international transfer offerings for both corporate and individual Krungsri customers. The partnership comes as new research[1] reveals that 82% of consumers in Thailand have now attempted to go cashless, driven by increased consumer adoption of card and contactless payments, as well as the perceived safety of digital payments amid the pandemic. Moreover, online shopping, or e-commerce, has undergone an explosion in demand worldwide, including Thailand. Through this partnership, Krungsri and Nium will enhance the international transfer experience for millions of banking customers acros Thailand. The integration offers their customers the ability to transfer money in real-time[2] to various new countries across Europe, the UK, the US, and Asia Pacific.



Frederick Crosby, Chief Revenue Officer at Nium, said: "We are proud to be partnering with another one of Thailand's largest and most reputable banks. Like Krungsri, we believe in the importance of financial inclusion and innovation. Together, we hope to enhance cross-border payments for millions of people and businesses across Thailand." Sayam Prasitsirigul, Krungsri Chief Information and Digital Officer, said: "Krungsri, as one of the largest banks in Thailand and a strategic member of MUFG, one of the world's leading financial groups, has expanded the real-time payment network globally. Krungsri and Nium have started to deliver a new experience of seamless real time cross-border payment services with multiple corridors, to key countries around the globe. For this collaboration, Krungsri expects to bring the best experience of financial technology through fintech and partnership."

Nium and Krungsri have enabled services to provide: Seamless B2B, P2P, B2P and P2B cross-border payments for customers in multiple currencies.

Access to multiple real-time payment corridors such as the UK and Singapore and availability across Europe , the US, and Asia Pacific .

and availability across , the US, and . Instant, speedy settlements. Nium currently has strategic partnerships with some of the largest banks in Thailand. [1] Findings outlined in Visa's Consumer Payment Attitudes Study 2021: https://www.visa.com.sg/dam/VCOM/regional/ap/documents/visa-cpa-report-2021-smt.pdf [2] In markets where Nium offers real-time services. For full details, please visit: https://www.nium.com/network/ Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678669/Nium_Logo.jpg

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[November 04, 2021] Straive featured in ISG Provider Lens Contact Center -- Customer Experience Services 2021 Global report

SINGAPORE, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Straive (erstwhile SPi Global), a market-leader in technology driven EdTech, content, and data solutions, has been named a contender across global geographies by advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) in its Provider Lens Contact Center  Customer Experience Services 2021 global report. Straive has been featured in multiple quadrants, including Digital Operations, AI & Analytics, Work from Home Services & Social Media Services, owing to its proficiency in driving business agility and operational excellence in customer support services. ISG Provider Lens is a practitioner-led service provider comparison. Research reports provide independent vendor evaluations and enterprise buying behavior segmentation. As an industry leader for more than 15 years, Straive's capabilities encompass outsourcing services, comprehensive offerings, advanced delivery centers, global language capabilities, and 24/7 availability of subject matter experts. With 2,300+ support agents specialized across various disciplines and providing multi-channel support, Straive drives customer engagement efficiently across the information industry segments including publishig (scientific/professional), education, legal & tax, financial information among others. Straive's robust technology solutions suite is tailored to meet customer expectations, enhancing sales, product, and service.



On the feature, Ratan Datta, President and CEO, Straive, said, "The evolving digital technologies have radically transformed the ways of customer engagement. Straive's entry and feature in the ISG Provider Lens quadrant report is a testament to our knowledge, expertise, and successful record in customer support services. A fine blend of subject matter expertise and the latest technologiesAI, ML, and Analytics have been at the center of our capabilities." The ISG Report noted, "Straive is consciously working towards developing its tech-enabled customer services across various channels in order to deliver an enriched customer experience in its target market segments."

Straive has a strong and established CX practice focused on improving the customer experience, with product and technical support being one of the major offerings, along with lead generation. With more than 18,000 employees, including 2300+ dedicated customer service personnel, and operations spread across 8 countries, the company offers digital support, back-office services, sales & marketing support along with multilingual support and content operations in more than 10 languages. Straive also has a dedicated team in its labs to foster innovation, create industry benchmarks and co-create solutions with clients. To read the full report, Click Here About Straive (erstwhile SPi Global) Straive is a market-leading content technology enterprise that provides data services, subject matter expertise (SME), and technology solutions to multiple domains such as research content, e-Learning/EdTech, and data/information providers. With a client base scoping 30 countries worldwide, Straive's multi-geographical resource pool is strategically located in eight countries: Philippines, India, USA, China, Nicaragua, Vietnam, United Kingdom, and the company headquarters in Singapore. For media queries, contact

Kshitiz Ahuja

Lead-Brand and PR

[email protected] Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1678685/Straive_New_Logo.jpg

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[November 04, 2021] SEA Electric Proves Depot-Based Renewable Power Plant Strategy

SEA Electric's Melbourne facility is now powered purely by rooftop solar

facility is now powered purely by rooftop solar SEA Electic's involvement in the new energy ecosystem goes beyond zero-emissions transport TORRANCE, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Australian zero-emissions truck manufacturer SEA Electric has turned to rooftop solar power for its Melbourne assembly facility, with the installation of a 100kW solar power system. Featuring an array of 250 x 400W solar panels, the system is currently tracking at 90% carbon positive, having produced 24MWH of energy to date.

"Here at SEA Electric, we are proud to be leading the charge to eliminate CO2 emissions through our range of all-electric trucks; the next logical step has been to run our manufacturing facility purely on solar power," said Glen Walker, SEA Electric Vice President  Asia Pacific.

"Electricity generation and transport are the two biggest producers of carbon dioxide in Australia, so all-electric transport powered by renewable energymakes a lot of sense moving forward.



"For new SEA Electric owners, making the switch to zero-emissions logistics eliminates diesel consumption and lowers maintenance costs, with fewer moving parts requiring less ongoing servicing." "The SEA Electric range provides financial advantages for daily use over conventional trucks, even if charged by power supplied from the grid."

Electric vehicles are only one aspect of the new energy ecosystem, with the vehicles having the ability to provide energy storage opportunities, which in the future will pave the way to further power grid stability and flexibility. The Founder and CEO of SEA Electric, Tony Fairweather, has first-hand insight regarding the deployment of large-scale electric-powered fleets in the USA. "Many of these large fleets utilise their vehicles for less than half of a 24 hour day; the balance is spent in depot yards, where rooftop solar panels can generate ample power supply to fully charge their batteries," said Mr Fairweather. "Consider a future transport depot to be a nationally networked, renewable power plant, not only charging fleets but also offering excess stored energy back into the power grid, possibly supported by additional on-site battery storage." "While Moss Landing in California houses the world's largest and most expensive battery storage facility, SEA Electric plans to deploy more battery capacity in 2024 than that entire facility." "Essentially it is mobile and readily available storage 'on wheels'." "With Australia now agreeing to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 at the recent UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), look no further than networked depot power plants to contribute substantially to achieving this critical milestone." "Generations to come are depending on it." Further details on the SEA Electric range and its national dealer network can be found at www.sea-electric.com/en_au.

About SEA Electric

SEA Electric is an Australian company with a global reach specialising in the assembly and 100% electrification of commercial vehicles worldwide. Dealing directly with vehicle users and working alongside automotive OEM's, SEA Electric supplies and licences patented technology.

SEA Electric was founded in 2013. After four years of product development and testing, SEA Electric launched its commercial operations in early 2017, triggered by the reduction in battery kWh pricing, allowing for commercial feasibility in offering electric drivetrains to the global market.

Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=406413

Caption: SEA Electric's 100kW solar power system Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=406414

Caption: Renewable energy is set to play major role in the new energy ecosystem Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=406416

Caption: An all-electric SEA 300 EV rolls off the production line View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sea-electric-proves-depot-based-renewable-power-plant-strategy-301416211.html SOURCE SEA Electric

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[November 04, 2021] Welbilt KitchenConnect and HCL Technologies Join Forces to Offer a Secured Cloud Solution for The Food Industry Built Using Microsoft Azure IoT

Welbilt, Inc. (NYSE: WBT), a leading provider of commercial foodservice equipment, announced today that it will integrate Microsoft (News - Alert) Azure Sphere to upgrade security in its KitchenConnect internet-connected equipment and will host the solution on Microsoft Azure through a new partnership with HCL Technologies (News - Alert). Welbilt KitchenConnect is an award-winning open cloud solution that offers a digital platform for internet-connected equipment in the foodservice industry. The integration of Azure Sphere in the KitchenConnect solution will add new security capabilities to keep connected equipment protected over time and to provide secured communication between devices and the KitchenConnect platform. The KitchenConnect solution improves efficiency, reduces cost, and enhances food quality by helping customers leverage telemetry to optimize their kitchen operations. HCL will develop and enhance the KitchenConnect security solution with Azure Sphere and provide an advanced architecture for improved scalability, security, and functionality on the Microsoft Azure IoT platform. HCL is a mutual partner to Welbilt and Microsoft and brings a team of experts across IoT, Security, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and mobile technologies to drive the accelerated development of KitchenConnect with Microsoft IoT solutions. "At Welbilt, we are accelerating innovation through our partners and leading the digital space in the foodservice industry to continuously offer the best solution for our customers," said Bill Johnson, Welbilt's President and CEO. Omar Jacques Omran, Welbilt's Sr. Director for KitchenConnect, noted, "We are excited by all the opportunities presented by Microsoft and HCL, taking our KitchenConnect security and cloud solution to a new level with Microsoft Azure IoT and Azure Sphere. This step will also make it simpler for operators to connect their entire equipment fleet i the restaurant."



"Welbilt is exceeding our most demanding customer security requirements by using Microsoft Azure Sphere to securely connect equipment and securely communicate telemetry, in addition to using the cloud hosting solution from Microsoft Azure," stated Chris Glomski, Welbilt's Chief Information Officer. Michael Kuptz, General Manager, Azure IoT at Microsoft Corp noted, "Welbilt's expertise in the commercial kitchen equipment market, coupled with HCL, a premier Azure IoT system integrator, is a powerful collaboration and resource for our customers. Welbilt equipment is securely connected and protected with Azure Sphere. Azure also enables advanced IoT capabilities and analytics for customers around the world through HCL's global system integrator footprint."

"HCL Technologies is excited to further our existing strategic relationships with both Welbilt and Microsoft to enhance KitchenConnect, the most advanced digital solution in the foodservice industry. HCL will leverage its strong Digital Transformation capabilities in Cloud, IoT, AI, Analytics, and Cybersecurity, and its ecosystem partnerships, to accelerate KitchenConnect's success in the industry," said Hari Sadarahalli, Corporate Vice President, Engineering and R&D Services, HCL Technologies. "We are pleased to be collaborating with KitchenConnect, as it revolutionizes the way consumers use technology in the foodservice industry. HCL Cloud Smart including HCL IoT solutions with Azure Sphere will safely and securely connect all types of legacy and new equipment and appliances to the internet, thus enabling Welbilt clients to reimagine and transform their businesses with new product offerings, customer experiences, and unique business models," said Kalyan Kumar, CTO and Global Head of Ecosystems at HCL Technologies. About Welbilt, Inc. Welbilt, Inc. provides the world's top chefs, premier chain operators and growing independents with industry-leading equipment and solutions. Our innovative products and solutions are powered by our deep knowledge, operator insights, and culinary expertise. Our portfolio of award-winning product brands includes Cleveland, Convotherm, Crem, Delfield, Frymaster, Garland, Kolpak, Lincoln, Manitowoc Ice, Merco, Merrychef and Multiplex. These product brands are supported by three service brands: KitchenCare, our aftermarket parts and service brand, FitKitchen, our fully-integrated kitchen systems brand, and KitchenConnect, our cloud-based digital platform brand. Headquartered in the Tampa Bay region of Florida and operating 19 manufacturing facilities throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, we sell through a global network of over 5,000 distributors, dealers, buying groups and manufacturers' representatives in over 100 countries. We have approximately 4,700 employees and generated sales of $1.2 billion in 2020. For more information, visit www.welbilt.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005159/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Usage Based Pricing Adoption Up 32% According to New OpenView Report

BOSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenView , a global venture capital firm that coined the term product-led growth (PLG), today released the 2021 Usage-Based Pricing (UBP) Benchmarks Report highlighting an increase ? up 32% from 2020 ? in startups and established companies transitioning to a usage-based pricing model. This is a result of software buying evolving over the last four decades. The report predicts that by the end of 2022, the majority of software companies will adopt UBP. OpenView's Usage-Based Pricing (UBP) Report found that this pricing model is up 32% from 2020. Specifically, the report looks at leading SaaS companies  such as New Relic, Twilio, Databricks, Stripe, and Snowflake  to determine whether UBP is being adopted, and how usage-based companies perform relative to their traditional subscription peers. As reflected in the report, UBP has quickly gone from fringe to mainstream with nearly half of SaaS companies (45%) using a UBP model today. Three-in-five (61%) of the holdouts said they expect to test or introduce usage-based pricin in the future.



"In today's digital era, usage-based pricing has become a transformative shift in the way software companies charge for their products," said Sanjiv Kalevar, Partner at OpenView. "Companies that put their customers' needs first and charge only for the value they create are at a competitive advantage and we see them gaining market share across the industry. Its impact can be seen across pivotal metrics such as Ned Dollar Retention (NDR) and coincides with best-in-class CAC payback. Seeing such value from this business model makes investors more excited than ever before to invest in companies that prioritize usage-based pricing." Additional key takeaways from the report include:

Usage-based companies can now be found across all layers of the tech stack ? from infrastructure to middleware to application software. Usage-based pricing adoption is happening at nearly 50% of companies surveyed from < $1M ARR to >$20ARR.

from infrastructure to middleware to application software. Usage-based pricing adoption is happening at nearly 50% of companies surveyed from < ARR to >$20ARR. Usage-based companies are steadily outperforming their peers ? The report shows that there is a steady cadence of continued growth (29.9% vs. 21.7%) for public software companies that leverage a UBP model driven by best-in-class net retention (120% vs 110%).

The report shows that there is a steady cadence of continued growth (29.9% vs. 21.7%) for public software companies that leverage a UBP model driven by best-in-class net retention (120% vs 110%). UBP is a company-wide effort, not just a pricing strategy ? The best usage-based companies often treat research and development (R&D), not just sales and marketing, as a revenue-generating expense. "The data from this year's report proves that there is an appetite for usage-based pricing, and we expect this to continue to accelerate in the coming months," said Kyle Poyar, Operating Partner at OpenView. "Current usage-based companies plan to double down on the model with 90% saying they will increase their product-led growth investment. With investors paying close attention to revenue growth, usage-based companies will have a big leg up on their peers." The survey included nearly 600 SaaS companies from all over the world with varying annual recurring revenues. Respondents were primarily the CEO/Founder (50%) or CFO/VP Finance (30%). To learn more, visit the blog and download the report today: https://openviewpartners.com/blog/2021-state-of-usage-based-pricing/ About OpenView Venture Partners

Founded in 2006, OpenView Venture Partners is a venture capital firm investing globally in business software companies. With a mission to improve people's working lives, OpenView's focused investment approach across sector and stage enables the firm to identify and partner with category leading business software companies. The firm's focus extends to operational excellence through its dedicated expansion team working with portfolio companies on go-to-market, sales and marketing, product led growth, talent, and corporate development. The firm is based in Boston and has $1.5 billion in total capital under management. For more information, please visit https://openviewpartners.com/ . View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usage-based-pricing-adoption-up-32-according-to-new-openview-report-301416075.html SOURCE OpenView

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[November 04, 2021] SimplyCodes Launches iOS Safari Extension Enabling Coupons on iPhone

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SimplyCodes, the coupon browser extension with the largest selection of verified promo codes and largest number of merchants, today announced its arrival on the iPhone and iPad with a new browser extension for Apple's mobile Safari browser. With this extension, mobile shoppers finally join desktop shoppers in the same simple, streamlined, private process of finding and applying the best available coupon codes at checkout. Apple recently released iOS 15, which made its Safari browser the first iPhone browser with the ability to incorporate and utilize extensions. SimplyCodes is among the first major desktop extensions to create a native iOS Safari extension. "We always hear from users how much they love using SimplyCodes when they're shopping on their laptops," said Michael Quoc, CEO and founder of SimplyCodes' parent company, Demand.io , "But the biggest question we hear, by far, is, 'When will I be able to use this on my phone?' With more than half of all online transactions now done on mobile, that makes sense. Which is why we've been working night and day to be one of the first shopping extensions for the updated Safari browser and we're thrilled to bring our unmatched selection of coupon codes and online merchants to iPhone and iPad shoppers." "SimplyCodes is also a natural fit for Apple as it increases its focus on privacy, as SimplyCodes is the category leader in privacy protection for users," Quoc continued. "Our transparent privacy protection was a seamless fit with the iOS Safari extension requirements and should give shoppers the confidence to know they aren't being tracked or monitored without permission while they save money." SimplyCodes is part of he Demand.io product family. More than 10 million unique monthly shoppers rely on Demand.io 's properties through their online shopping journeys and complete more than $1 billion worth of transactions annually.



SimplyCodes launched in late 2020 to finally deliver a coupon tool where codes work reliably for shoppers. SimplyCodes brings Demand.io 's best-in-class coupon code selection directly to the browser  no new tabs or long, frustrating Google searches for coupon codes required. With more than 3 million verified, active coupon codes at any time and codes for more than 75,000 stores  both significantly higher numbers than any other coupon browser extension  SimplyCodes is rapidly establishing itself as the authoritative source on coupon codes online. The SimplyCodes browser extension for iOS Safari is available here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplycodes/id1538885494

SimplyCodes for desktop browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge, is available here: https://simplycodes.com/ For more information about SimplyCodes or Demand.io , please contact Demand.io at https://demand.io/contact About Demand.io

Demand.io is a tech innovator and incubator in Los Angeles with a mission to make eCommerce work better for everyone. In addition to the SimplyCodes browser extension for desktop and now iOS, Demand.io is also the team behind Knoji, one of the world's largest consumer information sites; Favely, which matches up and aligns the interests of influencers and brands; and Dealspotr, a longtime trusted source for coupon codes on the web. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/simplycodes-launches-ios-safari-extension-enabling-coupons-on-iphone-301415924.html SOURCE Demand.io

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[November 04, 2021] Fiduciary Trust Names Suma V. Nair as Chief Fiduciary Officer

Fiduciary Trust Company ("Fiduciary"), a Boston-headquartered private wealth management firm, is pleased to announce that Suma V. Nair, JD, will be joining the firm as Chief Fiduciary Officer in January. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005228/en/ Suma Nair, Chief Fiduciary Officer at Fiduciary Trust Company. Nair will oversee the firm's fiduciary services and lead the trust and estates legal department, which was recognized recently with the 2021 Best Estate Planning Advisory Services and Best Fiduciary / Trustee Services Awards by Private Asset Management. Her responsibilities will include oversight of fiduciary services for Fiduciary Trust Company's Massachusetts trust company, and also its affiliate, Fiduciary Trust of New England, which is one of the largest independent New Hampshire-chartered personal trust companies. She will report to Fiduciary's President & CEO, Austin V. Shapard, and serve on the Senior Management Committee.



Nair is joining Fiduciary from Goulston & Storrs PC, where she has been a Director in the Private Client and Trust practice group and a member of the firm's Executive Committee. In her sixteen years at Goulston & Storrs, Nair focused her practice on providing sophisticated estate and tax planning advice to high-net-worth individuals and families. She also counseled clients on charitable giving and family and tax matters involving business and wealth succession planning. Nair served as trustee of clients' trusts and as personal representative of clients' estates, in addition to advising trustees of trusts on best practices in managing their fiduciary obligations. "We are very excited to welcome Suma to our team," said Austin Shapard. "As a recognized leader within the Boston legal community, Suma brings expertise and leadership that will be critical to continuing to grow our fiduciary practice and help our clients address their evolving trust and estate needs for years to come."

"I am delighted to be joining the team at Fiduciary, a firm I have admired for many years," said Nair. "Fiduciary has a deep and enviable bench of trusts and estates legal talent, a long history of exercising prudent and practical fiduciary judgment, and consistently demonstrated a commitment to excellent client service. I look forward to being a part of the firm's proud tradition of counseling our clients and protecting their interests across generations in our role as a fiduciary." "This is an incredible opportunity for Suma to take on an important executive leadership role in the industry, and we could not be happier for her as she embarks on this exciting new adventure," said Bill Dillon, Co-Managing Director at Goulston & Storrs. "While Suma is retiring from the private practice of law, we will fortunately continue to work closely with Suma in her new position as a client." Nair is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and was recently elected as Secretary of the Boston Bar Association. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly named Nair as one of the "Top Women of Law" in 2021 and Chambers High Net Worth has recognized her for the past five years. Nair earned an A.B. from Dartmouth College magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School. About Fiduciary Trust Company

Fiduciary Trust is a privately owned wealth management firm with over $22 billion in client assets and serves families, individuals and nonprofits seeking objective advice to help grow and protect their investments. The firm also provides a range of services to professional financial advisors and single-family offices. Fiduciary's capabilities include customized wealth planning, investment management, trustee and estate services, and family office, tax and custody services. Founded in 1885 as a family office, Fiduciary takes a personal approach based on expertise, strong performance and a genuine commitment to act in its clients' best interests. The firm's client focus has enabled it to achieve an average 98% annual client retention rate for over a decade. For additional information about Fiduciary's services, please visit www.fiduciary-trust.com, or contact Greg O'Connell at 617-292-6799 or [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005228/en/

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[November 04, 2021] SPG Announces the Formation of Unison Therapy Services

Speech Pathology Group ("SPG"), a leading provider of therapeutic, behavioral and autism services to children, is pleased to announce the creation of Unison Therapy Services ("Unison (News - Alert)"). This parent organization unites a multidisciplinary family of companies, including SPG Therapy & Education, Comprehensive Autism Center, Behavior Therapy Clinic, Family Support Center, and ABRITE. Holistically, Unison offers evidence-based, family-first therapeutic treatment in clinics, schools and homes throughout California, Colorado and Oregon. Each company will continue to operate locally through its existing brand and leverage the broader Unison team for comprehensive support for therapists, technicians, and teachers.



ABRITE is the most recent addition to the growing Unison platform and provides Applied Behavior Analysis ("ABA") services in homes, the community, and schools. ABRITE is based in Santa Cruz County with operations in Northern California and Southern California. "We are pleased to announce the formation of the Unison Therapy Services parent organization," said SPG Founder and President Susan Stark, M.S., CCC-SLP. "Unison's core values are Resilience, Integrity, Service, and Empathy. These values are also clearly apparent in the spirit of each of our organizations and we are excited to work alongside each of them to support more children and families every day."

Unison Chief Executive Officer, Todd Ezrine, added, "We are excited to continue Unison's track record of organic and acquisitive growth to drive our multidisciplinary service offering and provide superior clinical outcomes for our children and families." Unison is a portfolio company of Ridgemont Equity Partners, a middle market private equity investor. Unison and Ridgemont continue to actively seek new partnerships with providers looking to join a growing, well-respected multidisciplinary platform that has been devoted to caring for its clients and therapists since 1989. About Unison Therapy Services Unison Therapy Services is a multidisciplinary industry leader that provides evidence-based, family-first therapies to children with autism and other developmental disabilities. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a cornerstone of clinical practices. Through its family of companies, Unison offers therapeutic treatment in clinics, schools and homes throughout California, Colorado and Oregon. The company has a 30-year history of therapeutic excellence, best in class clinical support and a workplace culture that fosters professional growth and mentorship. www.unisontherapyservices.com About Ridgemont Equity Partners Ridgemont Equity Partners is a Charlotte-based middle market buyout and growth equity investor. Since 1993, the principals of Ridgemont have invested over $5.5 billion. The firm focuses on equity investments up to $250 million and utilizes a proven, industry-focused investment approach and repeatable value creation strategies. Ridgemont's most recent flagship fund, REP III, was formed in 2018 and has $1.65 billion of committed capital. www.ridgemontep.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005182/en/

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[November 04, 2021] The GEO Group Comments on Unfavorable Jury Verdict and Judgments in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington

The GEO Group (NYSE: GEO) ("GEO") commented today on the recent unfavorable jury verdict and combined $23.2 million judgments in the retrial of two cases, State of Washington v. GEO Group and Nwauzor et al. v. GEO Group (the "lawsuits"), in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The original trial of the lawsuits resulted in a mistrial in June 2021 as that jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. GEO will address the need for a bond for the combined judgments and will request a stay of enforcement of the verdict and judgments while its appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is pending. GEO strongly disagrees with the verdict and judgments in the retrial of the lawsuits. GEO intends to raise several issues on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, including the applicability of the state of Washington's Minimum Wage Act to detainees who participate in the federally-mandated Voluntary Work Program at the Northwest ICE Processing Center (the "Center"), and the affirmative defenses that GEO believes were wrongly dismissed in these cases. GEO looks forward to having those and other related issues heard on appeal based on GEO's belief that the cases were wrongly decided. GEO intends to take all necessary steps to vigorously defend itself. The lawsuits were filed by the State of Washington Attorney General and a private class of detainee plaintiffs. The plaintiffs claimed that Washington State minimum wage laws should be enforced with respect to detainees who volunteer to participate in a Voluntary Work Program administered by GEO at the Center as required by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under the terms of GEO's contract. The Center houses persons in the custody of federal immigration authorities while their immigration status is being determined by the federal government. In a similar lawsuit involving a Voluntary Work Program administered by CoreCivic at an ICE Processing Center in New Mexico, Ndambi et al. v. CoreCivic, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of CoreCivic in March 2021. In a unanimous decision in that case, te U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a U.S. District Court ruling which dismissed the case and found that detainees who volunteer to participate in the Voluntary Work Program in immigration processing centers are not employees and are not owed wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New Mexico's minimum wage law.



At this time, GEO has not recorded an accrual relating to the lawsuits because a loss, following the appeals process, is not considered probable. Safe-Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding future events and future performance of GEO that involve risks and uncertainties that could materially affect actual results, including statements regarding the recent unfavorable verdict and combined $23.2 million judgments in the retrial of the lawsuits. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary from current expectations and forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to: (1) GEO's ability to successfully pursue an appeal to reverse the recent unfavorable verdict and judgments in the retrial of the lawsuits or GEO being required to record an accrual for the judgments in the future; (2) GEO's ability to defend similar other pending litigation and the effect such other litigation may have on the Company; (3) GEO's ability to meet its financial guidance for 2021 given the various risks to which its business is exposed; (4) GEO's ability to deleverage and repay, refinance or otherwise address its debt maturities in an amount or on the timeline it expects, or at all; (5) changes in federal and state government policy, orders, directives, legislation and regulations that affect public-private partnerships with respect to secure correctional and detention facilities, processing centers, and reentry centers, including the timing and scope of implementation of the January 2021 Presidential Executive Order to not renew U.S. Department of Justice contracts with privately-operated criminal detention facilities; (6) changes in federal immigration policy; (7) public and political opposition to the use of public-private partnerships with respect to secure correctional and detention facilities, processing centers and reentry centers; (8) the magnitude, severity, and duration of the current COVID-19 global pandemic, its impact on GEO, GEO's ability to mitigate the risks associated with COVID-19, and the efficacy and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines; (9) GEO's ability to sustain or improve company-wide occupancy rates at its facilities in light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and policy and contract announcements impacting GEO's federal facilities in the United States; (10) fluctuations in our operating results, including as a result of contract terminations, contract renegotiations, changes in occupancy levels and increases in our operating costs; (11) general economic and market conditions, including changes to governmental budgets and its impact on new contract terms, contract renewals, renegotiations, per diem rates, fixed payment provisions, and occupancy levels; (12) GEO's ability to timely open facilities as planned, profitably manage such facilities and successfully integrate such facilities into GEO's operations without substantial costs; (13) GEO's ability to win management contracts for which it has submitted proposals and to retain existing management contracts; (14) risks associated with GEO's ability to control operating costs associated with contract start-ups; (15) GEO's ability to successfully pursue growth and continue to create shareholder value; (16) GEO's ability to obtain financing or access the capital markets in the future on acceptable terms or at all; (17) other factors contained in GEO's Securities and Exchange Commission periodic filings, including its Form 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K reports. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005351/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Wallbox Announces Third Quarter 2021 Revenue 16% Above Budgeted Expectations

Wallbox N.V. (NYSE: WBX), a leading provider of electric vehicle (EV) charging and energy management solutions worldwide, today released a Letter to Shareholders, which can be found here, announcing select financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021. The company reported third quarter revenue of $22 million, up nearly 250% year-over-year, bringing total revenue to $55 million for the first nine months of 2021. The company reaffirms its full year 2021 revenue guidance of $79 million. "For the first nine months this year, we sold more than 66,000 units globally and 80% of our current charger sales utilize Wallbox energy management software. We believe this is a testament to our hardware's superior design, performance and reliability and the value our energy management software can add to users' daily lives," said Enric Asuncion, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Wallbox. "Our third quarter revenue also grew by nearly 250% year-over-year, which was driven by our accelerated growth in some of the world's largest EV markets, such as Germany and the UK, and our successful entry into new markets like the U.S.." "In addition to the growing demand and consumer preference for our products, our ability to manage global supply chain issues successfully has enabled us to sustain strong momentum," said Jordi Lainz, chief financial officer. "Thanks to our vertically integrated supply chain and in-house engineering and validation, we have been able to continue production over the last quarter. We continue to run a disciplined business, outpacing market growth and minimizing headwinds to generate value for shareholders." The company has posted a Shareholder Letter on the Overview and Events & Presentations pages of its Investor Relations website at investors.wallbox.com, providing additional financial highlights and business updates. Wallbox will also host a live webcast today, Thursday, November 4, 2021 at 8:30 a.m., Eastern Time (1:30 p.m. CET), to discuss these results and business updates. The live webcast can be accessed through the Events & Presentation section of the company's investor relations website at investors.wallbox.com. A replay of the webcast will be available shortly following the event, will be accessible through the same link and will be available for at least one year.



About Wallbox Chargers Wallbox is a global technology company, dedicated to changing the way the world uses energy in the electric vehicle industry. Wallbox creates smart charging systems that combine innovative technology with outstanding design and manage the communication between vehicle, grid, building and charger. Wallbox offers a complete portfolio of charging and energy management solutions for residential, semi-public and public use in more than 80 countries. Founded in 2015, with headquarters in Barcelona, Wallbox's mission is to facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles today to make more sustainable use of energy tomorrow. The company employs over 700 people in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

For additional information, please visit www.wallbox.com. Wallbox Forward Looking Statements This press release includes "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. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or Wallbox's future financial or operating performance. For example, forward-looking statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the future operations of the business, future growth and generating value to shareholders. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "may," "can," "should," "could," "might," "plan," "possible," "project," "strive," "budget," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "will," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue" or the negatives of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology, but the absence of these words does not mean that statement is not forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. In addition, any statements or information that refer to expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, performance or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause Wallbox's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: Wallbox's history of operating losses as an early stage company; the adoption and demand for electronic vehicles including the success of alternative fuels, changes to rebates, tax credits and the impact of government incentives; Wallbox's ability to successfully manage its growth; the accuracy of Wallbox's forecasts and projections including those regarding its market opportunity; competition; risks related to health pandemics including those of COVID-19; losses or disruptions in Wallbox's supply or manufacturing partners; Wallbox's reliance on the third-parties outside of its control; risks related to Wallbox's technology, intellectual property and infrastructure; and other important factors discussed under the caption "Risk Factors" in Wallbox's Registration Statement on Form F-1 filed with the SEC (News - Alert) on November 1, 2021, as such factors may be updated from time to time in its other filings with the SEC, accessible on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and the Investors Relations section of Wallbox's website at investors.wallbox.com. These and other important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this press release. Any forward-looking statement that Wallbox makes in this press release speaks only as of the date of such statement. Except as required by law, Wallbox disclaims any obligation to update or revise, or to publicly announce any update or revision to, any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005587/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Industry Titans Tap Kyndryl to Drive Digital Transformation

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ -- Global enterprises across industries including financial services, travel, healthcare, logistics, insurance, automotive, professional services and materials sciences have chosen the world's largest IT infrastructure provider, Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), to lead IT transformation initiatives that accelerate modernization in an increasingly digital global economy. Kyndryl, the new, independent company listing on the New York Stock Exchange today, is focused on delivering the most advanced business solutions for customers across more than 60 countries. Kyndryl is investing in new partnerships with the world's premier technology organizations and cloud hyperscalers. The joint solutions developed from these partnerships, in areas such as AI, 5G, edge computing, hybrid cloud, and security, are enabling customers to tackle their most pressing business objectives in modern ways. Kyndryl's employees have vast experience and trust from the world's leading businesses in running mission-critical systems. With more than 3,000 patents issued and 800 patents pending, Kyndryl delivers worldclass expertise, with 90,000 employees who have an average of 10 years of industry experience. Kyndryl is working with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies, and its 4,000 global customers already account for 45 percent of all passenger cars made, 61 percent of assets under management at the top 50 banks, and approximately half of all mobile connections. Industry leaders including Dow, Pitney Bowes, Michelin, EY, Bangalore International Airport, BBVA, ABN AMRO, CaixaBank, Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros, Automated Financial Systems, and NASCO have tapped Kyndryl to help transform their IT environments for today's evolving digital needs: Dow, one of the world's largest material sciences companies, has worked with Kyndryl for 16 years to support mission-critical IT infrastructure globally. Kyndryl is helping Dow build foundational capabilities for its digital journey, powered by data, analytics, and artificial intelligence integrated into core business processes and connected through a flexible network with advanced security. "Digital transformation is all about re-architecting the business to fully exploit digital technologies. We are excited to partner with Kyndryl on this journey," said Fareed Mohammed, Chief Architect at Dow. Pitney Bowes has selected Kyndryl for an ambitious technology transformation aimed at advancing its global business objectives. Pitney Bowes, which moves more than 222 million parcels and facilitates the sending o billions of mail pieces each year, has tapped Kyndryl to implement an agile technology infrastructure that harnesses its hybrid cloud IT investments for greater business outcomes. Kyndryl experts are harnessing artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and hybrid cloud capabilities to help Pitney Bowes create and implement an agile IT infrastructure environment and governance model designed to unleash the potential of its hybrid cloud environments.



Michelin, the leading tire company, has worked with Kyndryl for 18 years to support mission-critical IT infrastructure globally. Kyndryl is supporting Michelin to improve efficiency by transforming their IT infrastructure through automation. EY teams and Kyndryl each deliver complementary transformation, risk management and technology services to clients. Kyndryl provides EY with a variety of technology services across 28 countries, in areas including: transition and transformation, hosting, networking, incident management and engineering. As one of the largest professional services organizations globally, the EY purpose is building a better working world through four service lines - Assurance, Consulting, Strategy and Transactions, and Tax. At EY, deep industry knowledge helps clients to address their most pressing challenges, capitalize on new opportunities, and assess and manage risk to deliver long-term growth.

Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) has turned to Kyndryl to power its IT and operational transformation. "As one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, BIAL needed a nimble, scalable and cost-competitive technology and operations environment that can increase its agility and operational flexibility to handle future growth in passenger traffic. To achieve this goal, BIAL is leveraging Kyndryl hybrid cloud capabilities, to design and implement a next generation architecture with a robust and dynamic delivery model  one that is highly efficient, with advanced security, and will enable a seamless travel experience for its passengers. The new platform solution, 'airport in a box,' will also enable BIAL to improve employee productivity, better utilize IT assets, reduce costs through streamlined inventory control and improve incident management," said Hari Marar, Managing Director & CEO of Bangalore International Airport Limited. BBVA, a leading Spanish financial institution and one of the largest in the world, has tapped Kyndryl to manage its technological infrastructure in most of the countries where the bank operates. Kyndryl's services help the bank in its technological strategy aimed at providing the best possible service to its customers. Specifically, Kyndryl provides data center services, operation and management of critical environments and technological security. As a result, most of the business transactions of the different banks pass through environments managed by Kyndryl. ABN AMRO, one of the Netherlands' leading banks, is engaging Kyndryl to transform and modernize its IT operating model, based on a more responsive and client-centric way of working that enables faster, flatter, more focused, and more flexible operations with more degrees of freedom. This can help ABN AMRO realize its goal of developing and delivering more personal services to its customers in the digital age. "This agreement is core to achieving our IT operating model goals for the current decade. ABN AMRO will take end-to-end control and responsibility for platform services while maintaining close support from essential, embedded capabilities provided by Kyndryl. More parties in the complex ecosystem will have controlled access to production environments enabling true multi-party Agile and DevOps. We will integrate the teams into a single service delivery model in order to ensure speed, flexibility and consistency for our consumer community," said Jan van Groningen, ABN AMRO Chief Technology Officer. CaixaBank, Spain's largest retail bank and the country's leading digital financial services provider, selected Kyndryl as a multi-cloud integrator for the next 5 years. This work builds on a decade-long joint venture with ITNow. Consorcio de Compensacion de Seguros, the Spanish public insurance compensation consortium, tapped into Kyndryl to transform the organization's IT infrastructure in order to deliver new and innovative services to citizens. Kyndryl will supply, host and maintain the consortium's technological infrastructure. Automated Financial Systems, Inc. (AFS), a global leader in commercial lending to top-tier financial institutions, is working with Kyndryl to containerize its commercial lending software to allow customers to run it anywhere. NASCO  a leading provider of healthcare technology solutions  is working with Kyndryl to migrate NASCO's critical infrastructure to a new, shared mainframe environment, driving improved efficiency, flexibility and scale for NASCO's operations. The company tapped Kyndryl to help manage the seamless migration of its mission critical infrastructure to a new zCloud mainframe. By moving to a shared mainframe environment, NASCO can now drive new operating efficiencies that have resulted in improved scale and flexibility to support business growth and faster innovation. "This migration was challenging because most migrations are performed in phases, but because of NASCO's intricate environment and the number of plan applications, this migration had to be done in one big bang," said Leo Ladaga, Director of Technical Operation, NASCO. "The success of the project was made evident when a user asked when the migration would be taking place and our team was able to report that it had already happened." About Kyndryl

Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world's largest IT infrastructure provider. The company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. Kyndryl's nearly 90,000 employees serve over 4,000 customers in more than 60 countries around the world, including 75 percent of the Fortune 100. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com . View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-titans-tap-kyndryl-to-drive-digital-transformation-301416345.html SOURCE Kyndryl

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[November 04, 2021] Spire Global Included in NASA X-59 Quiet Supersonic Flight Community Testing Contract

Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR) ("the Company" or "Spire"), a leading provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, today announced that it has been included as a subcontractor in an award contract between Harris Miller Miller & Hanson Inc. (HMMH) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The award supports a national campaign of community overflight tests using NASA's X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology research aircraft. With a maximum potential value of approximately $29 million and an eight-year period of performance, the award is a cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. The scope of work focuses on supporting NASA in phases two and three of its Low-Boom Flight Demonstration mission. Phase two will include the preparation and planning for phase three where NASA will fly the X-59 aircraft over communities and ask residents to share their response to the sound the aircraft generates during supersonic flight. Spire will support HMMH and NASA by quantifying a number of variables that impact noise exposure, which will impact residents' responses to the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology research aircraft's sonic boom. Spire will provide weather data and forecasting enhanced by data from its satellite constellation. Spire will collect and share data on winds, pressure, humidity and temperature; all factors that play a crucial role in sonic boom wave propagation and potential minimization of boom on the ground. "As NASA develops supersonic technology and aircraft, we join with them in recognizing the need to lessen the auditory impact on citizens and appreciate the opportunity to support the agency and HMMH on this project," said Theresa Condor, Chief Operating Officer, Spire Global. "Our industry-leading weather data and forecasting abilities align with the research regarding the reduction of sonic boom impact, and we hope to continue to support these initiatives in the future."



HMMH Director of Federal Programs and Program Manager for this contract, Kurt M. Hellauer said, "We thank NASA for their confidence in our team and the opportunity to support the agency's vital work in advancing the science behind supersonic flight and paving the way for new entrants to the National Airspace System." NASA will share the community feedback and the X-59 acoustic data collected during the flights to U.S. and international regulators to help inform decisions regarding new sound-based rules for supersonic flight over land.

The additional subcontractors on the award include: Blue Ridge Research and Consulting, LLC; Westat Inc.; EMS Bruel & Kjr Inc. dba Envirosuite; Center for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) at Hampton University; Senzig Engineering; and Crown Consulting Inc. More information on the award can be found in NASA's press release and more information on the X-59 aircraft is available here: https://www.nasa.gov/X59 About Spire Global, Inc. Spire is a leading global provider of space-based data, analytics, and space services, offering access to unique datasets and powerful insights about Earth from the ultimate vantage point so that organizations can make decisions with confidence, accuracy, and speed. Spire uses one of the world's largest multi-purpose satellite constellations to source hard to acquire, valuable data and enriches it with predictive solutions. Spire then provides this data as a subscription to organizations around the world so they can improve business operations, decrease their environmental footprint, deploy resources for growth and competitive advantage, and mitigate risk. Spire gives commercial and government organizations the competitive advantage they seek to innovate and solve some of the world's toughest problems with insights from space. Spire has offices in San Francisco, Boulder, Washington DC, Glasgow, Luxembourg, and Singapore. To learn more, visit http://www.spire.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005250/en/

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[November 04, 2021] The Lab of the Future May Be Here Before We Know It

BOSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Momentum for digital technologies in lab research is growing and was further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, causing teams to rapidly adopt digital tools and rethink their current processes, according to new data from Lux Research, a leading provider of tech-enabled research and innovation advisory services. While innovation and R&D consist of many activities, Lux's new report, "The Lab of the Future" specifically dives deeper into lab research and takes a fresh look at where the key digital developments are occurring. These digital solutions come at a time when industries that make heavy use of lab research, such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, continue to face declining productivity on top of new challenges like rising costs, environmental factors, long development cycles, and information overload. Visions for the lab of the future have evolved over the past few decades, and while individual instruments and processes have benefited from digital tools like automation and analytics, lab research has changed far less than many would have predicted. However, with an increasingly broad and powerful digital toolkit that includes tools like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, the lab of the future  one that is significantly more automated, efficient, and effective  may be closer to reality. After an initial wave of hype and activity in the late 1990s, innovation interest in applying digital tools to the lab plateaued for nearly a decade. However, starting around 2013, there has been a steady growth in innovation interest, showing that the space may be in a phase where it could lead to a significant impact. While there are many digital use-cases and technologies available to enhance lab research, they fall into three broad categories: Modeling and Informatics  Using modeling and informatics tools like machine learning to accelerate the development and discovery process.

Example: Usng machine learning to model and predict polymer properties to shorten the overall polymer design time.

Knowledge Management  Systematically capturing, analyzing, and distributing knowledge throughout an R&D organization.

Example: Using natural language processing to sift through the published literature to identify efficient reaction pathways.

Lab Automation  Automating physical experimentation through robotics as well as data collection and lab management through IoT and connected sensors.

Example: Using robotics to enable high-throughput testing and screening of materials.



Cole McCollum , Analyst at Lux Research and lead author of the report. "For example, lab automation can be used to collect experimental data, which can then be fed into informatics systems to ultimately generate knowledge." Across the three segments, there are technologies that companies should be adopting today, such as material informatics for property optimization, electronic lab notebooks, and automated data extraction tools. In the report, Lux also shows much earlier-stage technologies that companies should be actively monitoring or exploring, such as quantum computing, voice AI, and closed-loop automation, which will play an important role 5 to 10 years from now, as well as technologies between these two extremes. Overall, companies should customize this roadmap to plot a course for their lab of the future, as digital will optimize each part of the product development process and eventually become a key competitive advantage. Download the executive summary of the report to learn more.

About Lux Research?

Lux Research is a leading provider of tech-enabled research and advisory services, helping clients drive growth through technology innovation. A pioneer in the research industry, Lux uniquely combines technical expertise and business insights with a proprietary intelligence platform, using advanced analytics and data science to surface true leading indicators. With quality data derived from primary research, fact-based analysis, and opinions that challenge traditional thinking, Lux empowers clients to make more informed decisions today to ensure future success.??? For more information, visit? www.luxresearchinc.com , read our? blog , connect on? LinkedIn , or follow? @LuxResearch . If you are interested in speaking with an Analyst to learn more about this research, please email [email protected] ? View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-lab-of-the-future-may-be-here-before-we-know-it-301416201.html SOURCE Lux Research

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[November 04, 2021] TriMech Acquires Adaptive Corporation and Forward Vision

RICHMOND, Va., Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ -- TriMech, a leading provider of engineering design and additive manufacturing solutions, announced today it has acquired Adaptive Corporation and Forward Vision. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. TriMech is a portfolio company of The Halifax Group, a Washington, D.C.-based private equity investor. Headquartered in Richmond, VA, TriMech helps clients design better products via a broad suite of engineering- and manufacturing-related solutions and services. The company works with leading software and hardware partners including Dassault Systemes, Stratasys, and Artec, among others, throughout the central and eastern United States and Canada. In addition to its product portfolio, TriMech delivers expert technical support, training, consulting, implementation, additive manufacturing, and staffing services to its customers through its world-class engineering staff. The acquisitions of Adaptive Corporation and Forward Vision expand TriMech's Dassault Systemes portfolio offering to include CATIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA and ENOVIA. Adaptive is known for its strong capabilities in advanced CAD and simulation, product lifecycle management (PLM), metrology, and Creaform portable 3D scanners. The Forward Vision team specializes in CATIA, DELMIA, and FlexSim and has expertise in robotics, ergonomics, factory scheduling, throughput simulation, and logistics workflows. Both companies have clients in transportation and automotive, aerospace and defense, and industrial equipment. Marcel Matte, President and CEO of TriMech, said, "We aim to be our clients' trusted technology partners. By bringing together great teams with new product offerings and expertise, TriMech will deliver wider solutions and deeper industry knowledge. Growth by acquisition is part of our long-term strategy to help our clients manage rapid digital transformation." Adaptive will continue to operate under the name Adaptive  A TriMech Company. The Forward Vision team will join Adaptive's sales and support teams. Senior management at Adaptive and Forward Vision will remain in place. Wayne Tanner, Adaptive's President, will serve as General Manager of Adaptve  A TriMech Company, reporting to Ted Lee, TriMech's Chief Services Officer. Forward Vision's President Joe Hugan and Vice President John Moran will serve as Product Managers for TriMech's Robotics and Discrete Event Simulation teams, continuing to support clients with their existing teams.



As part of these acquisitions, TriMech also announced it is acquiring the Dassault Systemes and EASA Software clients of Front End Analytics. These clients will now be supported by the experienced team at Adaptive and TriMech. After transitioning these clients, Front End Analytics will continue as an independent business focused on its Physics Informed Machine Learning and AI solutions. Adaptive's President Wayne Tanner said, "The demand for increasingly sophisticated technology has accelerated as engineers and manufacturers introduce or improve products to meet market needs. Our combined client base will have access to more solutions that involve critical areas of their business."

Sampford Advisors Inc. acted as exclusive M&A advisor to Adaptive Corporation. Forward Vision President Joe Hugan commented, "We have always thrived by working closely with each other and with our clients. As part of TriMech, our people will have more opportunities to collaborate, learn, and grow, making us better able to meet our clients' needs and ensure their success." About TriMech

Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Richmond, VA, TriMech provides computer-aided design and engineering software, additive and subtractive manufacturing solutions, and associated training, consulting, and staffing services for a variety of industries. Its tools support 3D modeling, simulation, virtual replication, collaboration, and information intelligence applications. The company has 32 locations across the central and eastern U.S. and Canada and serves more than 15,000 active clients. For more information, please visit www.trimech.com. About The Halifax Group

Founded in 1999, The Halifax Group is a private equity firm that partners with managers and entrepreneurs to recapitalize and grow lower middle-market businesses with total enterprise values generally between $50 million and $300 million. Halifax specializes in equity recapitalizations, corporate carve-outs and management buyouts and invests across a variety of industries, including outsourced business services, health and wellness, and franchising. The firm is headquartered in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.thehalifaxgroup.com. For more information, please visit: https://trimech.com/trimech-acquires-cpe-companies Contact: Angie Droz

865.934.5304

[email protected]

TriMech

4461 Cox Rd, Suite 302

Glen Allen, VA 23060

877.553.9001 - www.TriMech.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/trimech-acquires-adaptive-corporation-and-forward-vision-301415683.html SOURCE TriMech

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[November 04, 2021]

Online conference to support overseas advancement of digital contents companies to be held

SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Korea Mobile Internet Business Association (President Jean Koh, hereinafter referred to as "MOIBA") announced that the 2021 Conference for Support of Digital Contents Advancement in Emerging Markets Overseas will be held over 2 days from November 10 (Wed.) to 11 (Thu.) with the support of the Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Lim Hyesook). The conference is being held to pioneer overseas channels for domestic digital contents companies and to generate successful achievements from overseas expansion.

This event is composed of strategic seminars on the latest technology trends and successful overseas expansion with experts in the field of digital contents, as well as contact-free marketing and business eetings to ensure that domestic digital companies can successfully enter emerging markets such as the New Northern Region, New Southern Region and Middle East.







Seminar videos with the information required by domestic digital contents companies to enter the emerging markets overseas will be streamed live in real time, while an Investment Attraction Program (IR) and contact-free business meetings by region using a contact-free video conference solution will be held simultaneously.

Moreover, the Conference Session for Expanding Outcomes of Digital Contents Companies is scheduled to address difficulties in overseas expansion faced by domestic digital contents companies and to search for solutions.

MOIBA revealed its plan to offer support so that domestic digital contents companies facing difficulties in overseas expansion due to COVID-19 could identify business opportunities through this event, build local networks and generate actual outcomes.

To participate in the 2021 Conference for Supporting Digital Contents Advancement in Emerging Markets Overseas online, apply in advance from November 5 (Mon.) on onoffmix (www.onoffmix.com) and event-us (www.event-us.kr).

SOURCE Korea Mobile Internet Business Association
[November 04, 2021] Papa Expands Innovative Model to Address Social Isolation and Other Health Determinants Among Vulnerable Americans

MIAMI, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Papa, a curated platform of companionship and support for older adults, families, and other vulnerable populations, today announced a new round of funding to extend the reach and scale of Papa's innovative solution. The $150 million in Series D funding will help address social determinants of health, including loneliness and isolation, for older Americans and others who stand to benefit from companionship and everyday assistance. Through access to on-demand and at-home social support, those enrolling in Papa are less likely to need costly medical intervention and more able to live independent and healthy lives. On average, every two minutes in the United States a Papa Pal starts a companionship visit with a Papa member. By using technology to match older adults and other appropriate members with vetted and trained companions, called "Papa Pals," Papa meets needs that promote one's health, but are non-medical in nature  ranging from technology assistance, meal preparation, light housework, transportation, and, of course, social interaction. Papa recently partnered with Uber Health, Uber's solution for health care organizations, to further ensure transportation is not a barrier to timely doctor visits or meaningful social experiences. Increasingly, the health care industry, including insurers, is recognizing the value of non-traditional, yet clearly impactful approaches like Papa  those that enhance member experience, improve health outcomes, and reduce and ultimately eliminate determinants that disproportionately affect marginalized groups. "On average, every two minutes in the United States a Papa Pal starts a companionship visit with a Papa member," said Andrew Parker, founder and CEO of Papa. "That figure will dramatically increase when an additional 26 health plans start on January 1, and as more plans and employers add Papa over time. The collective phsical, social, and emotional benefits of this companionship are vast, and the opportunity to reduce loneliness and to support health where it happens  at home  is boundless. This latest round of funding, along with an ever growing number of Papa clients, underscores the power of Papa's approach and, even more so, the power of human connection."



Loneliness and social isolation have emerged as critical public health issues, particularly among older Americans. Surveys, conducted by Cigna using a research tool called the University of California Los Angeles Loneliness Scale, found loneliness increased among American adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2019, a staggering three in five Americans felt lonely, representing a sharp increase from 2018. Loneliness is directly impacting mental and physical health, including fueling substance abuse and men are more likely to be impacted by loneliness than women, Cigna found. On average, Papa Pals reduce member loneliness by 68 percent; lonely people have been shown to use the hospital 60 percent more than others who don't self-identify as lonely.

COVID-19 brought to the forefront persistent loneliness and isolation among segments of America's population. A study on the impact of Papa during COVID-19, to be presented at the Gerontological Society of America conference on November 10, found that virtual Papa Pal companion visits improved loneliness status and were an "impactful and scalable tool for older adults who want to age at home and have limited social support, especially during the COVID landscape." While Papa visits were effective during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, issues with loneliness or isolation are enduring. "Loneliness amongst older adults is one of the largest public health challenges and creates a crushing human and economic cost," said Lydia Jett, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers and Papa director. "Against a backdrop of health care provider shortages and an ever growing understanding of social needs as health needs, Papa is using technology to create a new care force to provide companionship and support to those who need it most. We are thrilled to partner with Andrew and the Papa team to help older adults and families connect to vital social care." The funding is the latest marker in Papa's dramatic growth with the addition of more than 25 health plans in the last seven months, making Papa available to over 65 health plans. Since its 2017 founding, Papa and its Papa Pals can now serve members in all 50 states, across Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and employer health plans. Papa also retained all customers from 2021 into 2022 as it continues to address loneliness and other factors that contribute to individual health. With a valuation of $1.4 billion, this funding round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and with participation from TCG, Tiger Global Management, Canaan, Initialized Capital and Seven Seven Six, brings Papa's total funding to $240 million. About Papa

Papa and its Papa Pals platform provide "family on demand," by working with Medicare, Medicaid, and employer-sponsored health plans to provide a companionship and care benefit for older adults and families. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Miami, Papa is backed by Canaan, Tiger Global Management, Comcast Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, TCG, Initialized Capital, and Seven Seven Six, among other revered institutional and individual investors. For more information, visit papa.com. Papa Media Contact:

Emily Hackel

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/papa-expands-innovative-model-to-address-social-isolation-and-other-health-determinants-among-vulnerable-americans-301415900.html SOURCE Papa Inc.

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[November 04, 2021] Avicannas subsidiary obtains Good Agricultural and Collection Practices ("GACP") Certification in Colombia

The certification will allow the Companys Aureus-branded raw material business with sales in 11 countries to include low cost and sustainable cannabis biomass for sale and export to the global marketplace



The GACP certification for herbal starting materials of the European Medicines Agency is a pre-requisite for GMP extraction and a requirement for export of cannabis biomass into Europe. TORONTO, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avicanna Inc. ("Avicanna" or the "Company) (TSX: AVCN) (OTCQX: AVCNF) (FSE: 0NN), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacturing and commercialization of plant-derived cannabinoid-based products, is pleased to announce that its majority owned Colombian subsidiary, Santa Marta Golden Hemp S.A.S. (SMGH) has met global conformity standards of Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACP), an international guide set forth by the European Medicines Agency for starting materials of herbal origin for its 360,000 square foot cultivation project in Santa Marta, Colombia. The certification will allow for the expansion of the Companys raw materials supply business to include organic and now GACP certified dried flower and biomass at a global level. The Aureus Santa Marta brand, which includes a range of cannabinoids and standardized genetics offerings, has been successfully exported into 11 countries and, with this recent milestone, will include cannabis flower and biomass offerings to the Companys partners and global marketplace. The GACP certification also acts as a pre-requisite for European GMP extraction certification, which the Company intends to also attain in 2022. The strategic timing of the certification is further supported by the recent progressive legislation in Colombia towards the cannabis industry where, pursuant to Decree 811 of 2021, the export of cannabis flower and biomass is expected be permitted. The Companys cultivation infrastructure in Santa Marta, Colombia has potential output of 30,000 kg of biomass per year where the company has been commercially cultivating CBD, CBG and THC dominant cultivars for the past few years. This certification completes the companys objective of establishing a low cost, sustainable and standardized supply chain business with global standards including GACP and USDA National Organic Program organic certifications. Lucas Nosiglia, President of Avicanna LATAM commented: This achievement adds to our 3 years of optimization, the ideal climate conditions and robust genetics of our cultivation practices which combined further fortify the clear competitive advantages of our global raw material business unit. Coupled with the new regulatory framework in Colombia which would authorize the export of flower; we will now deliver GACP and organic certified flower from our greenhouse and outdoor modalities to the global market. To the knowledge of the Company, it carries out its operations in compliance with all applicable laws in the jurisdictions in which it operates. About Aureus Avicannas raw material business units are based in Santa Marta, Colombia and are primarily dedicated to providing consistent source of cannabinoid raw materials for Avicannas current commercial prodcts and pharmaceutical pipeline for the global marketplace.



Additionally, under the Aureus brand, organic and GACP-certified flower and biomass, standardized cannabis extracts and feminized seeds are made available to cultivation, cosmetic and pharmaceutical partners around the world. Aureus-branded products are cultivated, extracted, and manufactured by Avicannas subsidiaries in Colombia where they benefit from optimal environmental conditions to produce cannabinoid active pharmaceutical ingredients economically and sustainably and include a range of extracts of CBD, THC and rare cannabinoids such as CBG. Avicannas supply chain business also benefits from federally regulated legislation in Colombia where the company is well positioned to be a global supplier of the less competitive psychoactive extracts including CBD and THC crude oil to meet the growing global demand. About Avicanna

Avicanna is a commercial stage Canadian biopharmaceutical company and an established leader in cannabinoid research, development, and evidence-based products for the global consumer, medical, and pharmaceutical market segments. Avicanna conducts its research in Canada including its R&D headquarters in the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Centre, JLABS @ Toronto, Canada, located in the MaRS Discovery District, and in collaboration with leading Canadian academic and medical institutions. Avicanna has established an industry leading scientific platform including advanced R&D and clinical development which has led to the commercialization of over twenty products across four main market segments: RHO Phyto: these medical and wellness products are an advanced line of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products containing varying ratios of CBD and THC. The product portfolio contains a full formulary of products including oral, sublingual, topical, and transdermal deliveries that have controlled dosing, enhanced absorption and stability studies supported by pre-clinical data. These products are developed using pharmaceutical drug development processes and are supported with pre-clinical data. The advanced formulary is marketed with consumer, patient and medical community education and training.



these medical and wellness products are an advanced line of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products containing varying ratios of CBD and THC. The product portfolio contains a full formulary of products including oral, sublingual, topical, and transdermal deliveries that have controlled dosing, enhanced absorption and stability studies supported by pre-clinical data. These products are developed using pharmaceutical drug development processes and are supported with pre-clinical data. The advanced formulary is marketed with consumer, patient and medical community education and training. Pura H&W: these registered, clinically tested, cosmetic products include a portfolio of functional CBD consumer derma-cosmetic and topical products.



these registered, clinically tested, cosmetic products include a portfolio of functional CBD consumer derma-cosmetic and topical products. Pharmaceutical pipeline: leveraging from the companys scientific platform, vertical integration, and real-world evidence, Avicanna has established a pipeline of indication specific cannabinoid-based drug candidates that are in various stages of clinical development and commercialization. Avicannas drug candidates are in pre-clinical stage and are dedicated to providing solutions for unmet medical needs in the areas of dermatology, chronic pain and various neurological disorders.

SOURCE Avicanna Inc. Stay Connected For more information about Avicanna, visit www.avicanna.com, call 1-647-243-5283, or contact Ivana Maric by email at [email protected]. The Company posts updates through videos from the official company YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFXPBGdKSxOUOf_VZoSFSUA. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information and Statements This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as, "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "expect", "anticipate", "believe, "intend", "plan", "forecast", "project", "estimate", "outlook" and other similar expressions, and includes statements with respect to the SMGHs ability to maintain its licenses to cultivate cannabis, SMGHs ability to maintain its certifications, SMGHs ability to supply any other company based on its current or newly acquired certifications, or SMGHs ability to acquire new certifications or business partnerships. Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and is based upon a number of estimates and assumptions of management in light of management's experience and perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors relevant in the circumstances, including assumptions in respect of current and future market conditions, the current and future regulatory environment; and the availability of licenses, approvals and permits. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to current and future market conditions, including the market price of the common shares of the Company, and the risk factors set out in the Company's annual information form dated September 3, 2021 and final short form prospectus dated November 27, 2020, filed with the Canadian securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.



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[November 04, 2021] Life Clips Subsidiary Belfrics Group Relaunches Cryptocurrency Exchange In India With 25 Coins

AVENTURA, Fla., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Life Clips, Inc. (OTC Pink: LCLP) (the Company) announced today its wholly owned subsidiary Belfrics Group, one of Indias early adopters of blockchain and cryptocurrency, is re-launching its crypto currency exchange in India. Belfrics Group plans to offer a total of 25 coins for its traders and expects more than 30% of its monthly volume to come from the Indian market.

Praveen Kumar, Founder & CEO Belfrics group said, India is still at a fairly nascent stage when it comes to crypto investments. While the India growth story has tremendous potential, currently only 7.3% of the total population of India are trading in the crypto market, most of them being based out of larger cities.i We are aiming to reach out to maximum traders, even in smaller towns. Our plan calls for opening 20 independently owned physical crypto outlets, with a goal of having up to 200 targeting potential clients in these areas. Mr. Kumar continued, " Belfrics has an initial target of 100,000 clients with plans to grow to 1 million clients over 6 to 12 months following the launch. On the cryptocurrency exchange along with basic services we will also add five other popular services such as staking reward, derivative products, lending and borrowing, custody solutions and crypto payments card and loyalty programs. According to a recent article on Bloomberg.com, in hundreds of Indias small cities and towns, a generation that has hardly had any experience with stocks and bonds is heading straight for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano and Solana. The average age is 25. Fifty-five percent of those users are from outside large cities like New Delhi or Mumbai. Robert Grinberg, CEO and President of Life Clips, Inc. said, "India is one of the fastest growing cryptocurrency markets in central and southern Asia. Indias crypto market grew 600% over the past year. Belfrics is aggressively expanding its offerings to its new and existing clients in the areas it already serves through value added services and access to additional products. We believe the timing is perfect for Belfrics Group to re-launch its crypto currency exchange in India's fast-growing market. I believe we are in the right place at the right time to see significant growth.ii Belfrics is a leading global blockchain technology firm and cryptocurrency exchange focused on making cryptocurrency technology effortless to use and accessible to all with an easy-to-use interface. The company was created in 2014 by a group of entrepreneurs who envisioned the opportunities and benefits of cryptocurrencies as the future of the digital currency market. Globally headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and having its development center in Bangalore, India, Belfrics has rapidly expanded to key markets like exchanges in Malaysia, Singapore, Bahrain, Kenya, Nieria, Tanzania and India. Belfrics has already structured a team of blockchain specialists and skilled trading industry professionals who aim at maximizing the benefits of an individual investor through the companys reliable, simplified and secured trading platform. Belfrics is not merely an online presence but a team of trusted providers of cryptocurrency services who understand the status and constant fluctuations of the global scenario and are fully equipped to successfully guide individuals and help them yield maximum benefit.



About Us Life Clips is the parent company of Belfrics Global and Cognitive Apps Software Solutions Inc. Belfrics Global is a Malaysian based blockchain provider and cryptocurrency exchange and platform that is licensed and regulated by Labuan Financial Services Authority (LFSA), Malaysia. With 10 operational offices in 8 countries, Belfrics multi-feature trading platform offers digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and crypto derivative contracts to its clients. Belfrics blockchain has been recognized by Gartner as being a top 10 blockchain in terms of real-world projects and has received a patent for its Belrium KYC verification System (BKVS) by the Nigerian patent authority. Cognitive Apps is disrupting the space of mental health with its speech-based, AI-powered mental health analytics platform that empowers businesses to measure, understand, and improve the mental well-being of their employees, patients, and customers. Aiki delivers CBT and IPT therapies using a chatbot which includes the Yuru voice analysis solution that takes in other health data from Apple and Google HealthKit to make a more accurate analysis of ones mental health. Aiki was developed to capitalize on the trend towards artificial intelligence platforms utilized by employers to raise awareness of employees mental health. Cognitive Apps Yuru is a 3-in-1 tool developed by a team of licensed psychotherapists that makes use of vocal biomarkers to screen for early signs of mental health conditions, such as stress and depression. Yuru is available on Apples App Store.

For more information on Life Clips visit www.lifeclips.com For more information on Belfrics Global visit www.belfricsgroup.com For more information on Cognitive Apps Software Solutions visit https://cogapps.com Forward-Looking Statement Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may be preceded by the words intends, may, will, plans, expects, anticipates, projects, predicts, estimates, aims, believes, hopes, potential or similar words. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, and cannot be predicted or quantified and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements: (i) the initiation, timing, progress and results of the Companys research, manufacturing and other development efforts; (ii) the Companys ability to advance its products to successfully complete development and commercialization; (iii) the manufacturing, development, commercialization, and market acceptance of the Companys products; (iv) the lack of sufficient funding to finance the product development and business operations; (v) competitive companies and technologies within the Companys industry and introduction of competing products; (vi) the Companys ability to establish and maintain corporate collaborations; (vii) loss of key management personnel; (viii) the scope of protection the Company is able to establish and maintain for intellectual property rights covering its products and its ability to operate its business without infringing the intellectual property rights of others; (ix) potential failure to comply with applicable health information privacy and security laws and other state and federal privacy and security laws; and (x) the difficulty of predicting actions of the government and its regulations. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date of this press release. The Company assumes no obligation to update any written or oral forward-looking statement unless required by law. For Media and Investor Relations, please contact: David L. Kugelman

(866) 692-6847 Toll Free - U.S. & Canada

(404) 281-8556 Mobile and WhatsApp

[email protected]

Skype: kugsusa

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkugelman/ i https://www.livemint.com/market/cryptocurrency/india-has-highest-number-of-crypto-owners-in-the-world-at-10-07-crore-report-11634110396397.html

ii https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/central-southern-asia-oceania-cryptocurrency-geography-report-2021-preview



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[November 04, 2021] Allegion Expands Long-Standing 'Manufacturing Day' Efforts

Allegion plc (NYSE: ALLE), a leading global provider of security products and solutions, brought the manufacturing industry to life with real-time virtual field trips for more than 500 students during the month of October. The initiative was part of Allegion's seven-year commitment to strengthen career pathways for students through annual "Manufacturing Day" celebrations hosted by its U.S. operations teams as top local employers and active members of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). With October known as "National Manufacturing Month" in the U.S., the NAM's Manufacturing Institute and many of the organization's members have traditionally hosted in-person open houses to showcase modern manufacturing careers to students, parents, teachers and community leaders. Manufacturing Day proactively addresses a key challenge the industry is facing: a skills gap that could leave as many as 2.1 million manufacturing jobs unfilled by 2030, according to The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte (News - Alert). Allegion, who has been hosting Manufacturing Day events since 2015, took its open houses from physical to virtual in 2020 amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic. Now a leader in that virtual pivot, the company expanded on the early success of those efforts to hold online field trips across 10 of its U.S. facilities and their local communities this year. "We all know that 2020 and 2021 have been anything but typical due to the ongoing pandemic," said Allegion Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Integrated Supply Chain Cindy Farrer. "Rather than letting these important efforts fall to the wayside, the Allegion team used its digital capabilities to transform our open houses into virtual field trips. In doing so, our company successfully struck the right balance of health and safety while still working to inspire the next generation of manufacturers across the U.S. As someone who has spent more than 30 years in manufacturing, experiencing the vibrant and valuable career opportunities firsthand, I couldn't be prouder of the fact that Allegion maintained this long-held commitment to the future innovators and creators of this great industry." The online experiences featured video tours of the company's production and distribution facilities; recorded interviews with employees across a variety of locations and roles; live presentations on local capabilities and the future of the industry from plant leadership teams; keynote conversations with Farrer and Allegion Chairman, President and CEO David Petratis; as well as special remarks from federal, state and local government officials on the important role manufacturing plays in today's society. Educators were given the opportunity to participate in the virtual field trips live or opt for a recording to share with students later. While Manufacturing Day efforts t Allegion address the industry's skills gap, the company's leaders additionally believe they are important for providing ongoing support to educators across high schools, vocational schools and technical or community colleges that want to partner with local employers to give students real-life experiences.



"We recognize that teachers, administration and staff play such an important role in guiding students - which ultimately means they're influencing how future generations and our communities thrive. Coming alongside them through Manufacturing Day, tutoring and mentoring programs, as well as local support of robotics teams and STEM-based classes, are among the many ways our employees give back," Farrer added. Allegion also offers tuition reimbursement and apprenticeship programs to upskill and reskill its current manufacturing employees in the U.S. And the company is innovating in its career development and hiring efforts in many other ways across the globe, including a new program in India to hire women who have taken a pause from their careers due to personal reasons and were interested in re-joining the workforce.

"Whether we're looking at near-term challenges like pandemic-induced labor shortages or long-term issues like racial injustice or gender bias, companies have an important role to play," Petratis said. "As someone who has spent more than 40 years in the manufacturing industry, there's no doubt in my mind that innovating in the way we attract and train both current and future talent has never been more important. Ultimately, bringing different experiences, skillsets and perspectives to the table helps make manufacturers like Allegion and their communities better." Allegion's 2021 Manufacturing Day events are now publicly available - and accessible to all educators who would like to use them as learning opportunities for students - through the following online recordings, displayed by the location of the local operations that hosted them: Blue Ash, Ohio / Chino, California joint event;

Everett and Snoqualmie, Washington / Perrysburg, Ohio joint event;

Indianapolis, Indiana, event;

McKenzie, Tennessee, event;

Olathe, Kansas, event;

Princeton, Illinois, event; and

Security, Colorado event. For information on career opportunities at Allegion, visit www.allegion.com/careers. About Allegion Allegion (NYSE: ALLE) is a global pioneer in seamless access, with leading brands like CISA, Interflex, LCN, Schlage, SimonsVoss and Von Duprin. Focusing on security around the door and adjacent areas, Allegion secures people and assets with a range of solutions for homes, businesses, schools and institutions. Allegion had $2.7 billion in revenue in 2020, and its security products are sold around the world. For more, visit www.allegion.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005338/en/

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Westpac Banking Corporation (NYSE:WBK) Files Annual Report With the US Securities and Exchange Commission

Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac) has filed its Annual Report on Form 20-F with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC (News - Alert)) for the financial year ended 30 September 2021 on November 3, 2021 (New York time).

The report is also available on Westpac's website Westpac.com.au/investorcentre

In addition to its Annual Report, other company information availabe on this website related to its 2021 financial year ending includes:







Full Year 2021 Financial Results;

Investor presentation and investor discussion pack;

Pillar 3 Report;

Sustainability Supplement; and

Notice of 2021 Annual General Meeting and related materials.

Holders of Westpac's American Depositary Shares (ADS), listed on the New York Stock Exchange can find this information from our website or obtain a hard copy of Westpac's Annual Report (including our audited financial statements) free of charge, by contacting Bank of New York Mellon's Shareholder Service Center by phone:

1-888-BNY-ADRS (1-888-269-2377) (toll free number for US callers), international: +1 201 680 6825 or via email: [email protected].

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005435/en/
[November 04, 2021] Dun & Bradstreet Announces It Has Signed Definitive Agreements to Acquire Eyeota and NetWise to Expand Its Revenue Technology Leadership Position

Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, Inc. ("Dun & Bradstreet (News - Alert)" or the "Company") (NYSE:DNB), a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, today announced that it has entered into definitive agreements to acquire Eyeota and NetWise. These acquisitions will extend the Company's position in the B2B online marketing value chain and will build upon its rapidly growing Audience (News - Alert) Solutions business by adding global scale and the online data to power omni-channel marketing around the world. While the expansive digital world possesses a lot of opportunity for marketers, they are often unsure about whether their advertising efforts and media dollars are connecting to the right target audiences online. Knowing the modern marketer needs to create a robust strategy to influence their desired customers across multiple digital touchpoints, a combined Dun & Bradstreet, Eyeota and NetWise will be able to provide data and technology that empowers businesses to confidently identify, reach and engage high propensity B2B audiences for multi-channel marketing campaigns. "This is a fast-paced, growing market and we are seizing the opportunity to expand our role as the global provider of trusted data that fuels a more expansive set of B2B marketing and sales solutions. Just as our clients rely on the D-U-N-S Number for precision in their offline data, these acquisitions will help to provide them with the same level of confidence and consistency online as well," said Anthony Jabbour, Chief Executive Officer of Dun & Bradstreet. "With the addition of these two complementary companies, we will be doubling down on our Audience Solutions business, which has grown over 40 percent year-to-date." "NetWise excels at joining the offline and online words together to connect business personas to their online personas," said Dwight Gorall, Chief Executive Officer of NetWise. "We look forward to joining the Dun & Bradstreet family with Eyeota. Once together, we can work to create a complete solution for clients, enabling a full spectrum of capabilities - from audience creation to activation - at scale across many demand-side platforms, customer relationship management systems, connected TV or social media platforms. We are committed to helping global enterprises future proof their marketing strategies so they can thrive in a multi-channel world."



"Eyeota's expansive global data onboarding and activation capabilities are underpinned by our commitment to delivering audience solutions at scale, and we are proud of the work we have accomplished to develop one of the most powerful, agile and interoperable frameworks for delivering addressable data in a privacy-conscious era," said Kristina Prokop, Chief Executive Officer of Eyeota. "By combining forces with Dun & Bradstreet and NetWise, we will be able to offer a more holistic B2B audience platform to our clients, leveraging a powerful combination of data, technology and insights that help clients better target and engage audiences across global markets and digital channels." Once the acquisitions are completed, Dun & Bradstreet will offer clients the ability to link professional contact data to consumer data for higher digital match rates, and an international ecosystem of digital activation platforms and global data. This will enable clients to build on the investments they have made into Data Management mastered on the D-U-N-S Number, and more readily activate that data in social, search and display advertising campaigns.

"Dun & Bradstreet's acquisitions of Eyeota and NetWise will cap-off several years of investment in the Sales and Marketing space, including the acquisition of our Customer Data Platform, Lattice Engines, which is at the core of our D&B Rev.Up platform, and the acquisition of Orb Intelligence to link digital and physical businesses in our Data Cloud," said Stacy Greiner, General Manager of the Sales & Marketing business for Dun & Bradstreet. "We are executing on our vision to help revenue-generating teams get out of the business of wrangling data and technology, and back to engaging with their customers and prospects to drive growth for their companies." The Eyeota transaction is in the process of closing, and the NetWise transaction is expected to close in the next month, subject to customary closing conditions. Financial details of the transactions will be disclosed subsequently. For further insight on the benefits to our clients and the market, visit dnb.com. About Dun & Bradstreet Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, enables companies around the world to improve their business performance. Dun & Bradstreet's Data Cloud fuels solutions and delivers insights that empower customers to accelerate revenue, lower cost, mitigate risk, and transform their businesses. Since 1841, companies of every size have relied on Dun & Bradstreet to help them manage risk and reveal opportunity. Twitter (News - Alert): @DunBradstreet About Eyeota Eyeota is a data transformation company serving the global enterprise. Leading brands, publishers and data companies leverage Eyeota to onboard, enrich, and activate their data assets across global markets and digital geographies. As the world's largest data onboarding and audience intelligence firm, Eyeota brings a depth of experience in adapting data strategies to be consumer-friendly, addressable and scalable in omnichannel environments. Empowering enterprises with future-proof data capabilities, Eyeota's suite of solutions are privacy-conscious, flexible and interoperable across all major platforms, channels and identifiers. Founded in 2010, Eyeota operates in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, powering data solutions in 188 countries. About NetWise NetWise is the leading provider of B2B Marketing Data, helping to power the majority of business data across all of Ad & Mar-Tech. Our B2B Audience Data Platform enables any marketing team to execute multi-channel campaigns across every platform and in every channel. Forward-Looking Statements This communication contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements regarding expectations, hopes, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements, and are based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, them and actual results may differ materially from those projected. The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to include, but are not limited to, those detailed in the "Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information", "Risk Factors" and other sections of our filings with the SEC (News - Alert). View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005571/en/

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[November 04, 2021]

Greentown Labs to Host Second Annual Climatetech Summit on November 4

SOMERVILLE, Mass. and HOUSTON, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As world leaders gather in Glasgow for COP26 and chart the world's path toward a decarbonized future, climatetech entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders, advocates, and enthusiasts are gathering at Greentown Labs' 2021 Climatetech Summit to celebrate climate action at work. Focused on empowering the climate technologies of tomorrow, the summit will take place in-person at Greentown's incubators in Somerville, Mass. and Houston, TX, and via livestream.

At the Climatetech Summit, attendees will hear directly from Greentown's climatetech entrepreneurs about the solutions they're developing and what they need to bring them to market; learn about key technology areas that are driving momentum to equitably tackle the climate crisis; and explore the plentiful opportunities for everyone to be a part of the energy transition that's already unfolding.

In honor of the incubator's 10-year anniversary , the summit will culminate with a celebration of the Greentown community's first decade of impact, highlighting the momentum Greentown's startups, corporate partners, and ecosystem collaborators have been building together and how that momentum will set the stage for the next decade of climate action.

The Climatetech Summit features dozens of prominent climate leaders from all corners of the ecosystem, representing a diverse array of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. The speaker lineup includes Jigar Shah , Director, Loan Programs Office, U.S. Department of Energy; Bobby Tudor , Chairman + Founder, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.; Jeff St. John , Editor-in-Chief, Canary Media; Elizabeth Turnbull Henry , President of the Environmental League of Massachusetts; Sylvester Turner , Mayor, City of Houston; and many others.







The full list of speakers at the Somerville event can be found here ; speakers at the Houston event can be found here .

"While we celebrate Greentown Labs' first decade of growth, we know that the next decade will be even more important in our quest for meaningful climate action," said Greentown Labs CEO Dr. Emily Reichert. "Global momentum is building across the corporate, financial, and public sectors, and Greentown Labs startups are building the climate technologies that will help us all reach our net-zero goals and build stronger, more resilient communities of the future."

The second annual Climatetech Summit is an evolution and expansion of Greentown Labs' annual DEMO Day, a celebration and showcase of its climatetech startups and the community that supports them. Attendees will hear lightning pitches from 30 climatetech startups and have an opportunity to visit booths of more than 70 startups working on solutions for the biggest greenhouse-gas-emitting sectorselectricity, transportation, manufacturing, buildings, and agricultureand to foster resilience and adaptation. These startups are part of a community of more than 400 startups Greentown Labs has supported since 2011, which have collectively created more than 8,400 jobs and raised more than $2.2 billion in funding. Learn more about the showcasing startups in Somerville here and in Houston here .

The Climatetech Summit is made possible by a diverse group of sponsors that are dedicated to climate action, including Saint-Gobain , Climatetech Summit Champion, and the British Consulate-General Houston , the Consulate General of Canada in Boston , and Enel , Climatetech Summit Builders. Canary Media is the Climatetech Summit's Media Partner. Learn about all 2021 Climatetech Summit sponsors here .

The Climatetech Summit will begin at 8:30 a.m. local time in both Somerville and Houston. Learn more and register for the virtual event here .

About Greentown Labs

As the largest climatetech startup incubator in North America, Greentown Labs brings together startups, corporates, investors, policymakers, and many others with a focus on scaling climate solutions. Driven by the mission of providing startups the resources, knowledge, connections, and equipment they need to thrive, Greentown Labs offers lab space, shared office space, a machine shop, an electronics lab, software and business resources, and a large network of corporate customers, investors, and more. With its headquarters in Somerville, Mass. and a recently opened incubator in Houston, Texas, Greentown Labs is home to more than 180 startups and has supported more than 400 startups since the incubator's founding in 2011. These startups have collectively created more than 8,400 jobs and have raised more than $2.2 billion in funding. For more information, visit www.greentownlabs.com or Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .

Greentown Labs Media Contact:

Julia Travaglini

VP of Marketing & Communications

[email protected]

603-867-3657

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SOURCE Greentown Labs
[November 04, 2021] Pear Therapeutics Announces Milestone Decision by the American Medical Association CPT Editorial Panel to Clarify the Coding of Remote Therapeutic Monitoring of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Pear Therapeutics, Inc. is pleased to share that the American Medical Association (AMA) Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Editorial Panel has announced revisions to existing CPT codes clarifying the coding of remote therapeutic monitoring for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) services. These changes include: 1) the addition of CPT code 989X6 to report Remote Therapeutic Monitoring device supply to monitor CBT; 2) revisions to the Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) and Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Treatment Management Services (RTM-TMS) guidelines to clarify reporting of CBT; and 3) the deletion of Category III CPT codes 0X47T (permanent code 0702T to report therapeutic monitoring of a standardized online digital cognitive behavioral therapy program) and 0X81T (permanent code 0703T to report the associated management services). These changes have an effective date of January 2023 - CPT's Summary of Panel Actions for September-October 2021 may be found here: https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/september-october-2021-summary-of-panel-actions.pdf. Meanwhile, Category 1 RTM and RTM-TMS CPT codes, which were first announced in 2020, will be available starting on January 1, 2022, to describe physician and other qualified healthcare professional work including monitoring therapy adherence and response. These codes may be applicable to the work of HCPs monitoring therapy adherence and therapy response with respect to Pear's commercially available PDTs, reSET, reSET-O and Somryst for the treatment of substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, and chronic insomnia, respectively, including the healthcare provider's ability to remotely monitor progress. Appropriate billing and coding for healthcare services are the provider's responsibility and should always be based on the patient's clinical condition, services provided, and payer guidelines. A comprehensive review of all recent changes related to remote therapeutic monitoring is recommended. "AMA's clarifications and addition to codes describing services related to clinician monitoring of FDA-authorized medical devices delivering Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) are another significant milestone in providing coding for healthcare providers across the United States," said Corey McCann, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Pear Therapeutics. "Ultimately, RTM Category 1 codes will provide additional CPT coding options for healthcare providers when using digital health technologies." On October 29, 2021, AMA released the CPT Editorial Summary of Panel Actions (https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/september-october-2021-summary-of-panel-actions.pdf), which reflects the discussion at the most recent CPT Editorial Panel meeting in September 2021. CPT coding serves as a uniform nomenclature used for medical services to improve harmonization of reporting, increase the accuracy of medical services and procedures, and to improve efficiency across healthcare. CPT terminology is the most widely accepted medical language for public and private health insurance programs. The CPT Editorial Panel is tasked with maintaining an open process that convenes meetings to solicit input from stakeholders across healthcare. AMA announced their CPT Editorial Panel accepted the addition of code 989X6 to report remote therapeutic monitoring device supply to monitor cognitive behavioral therapy; the revision of the Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Services guidelines and the Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Treatment Management Services guidelines (CPT code family 98975, 98976, 98977, 98980, and 98981) to clarify reporting of cognitive behavioral therapy; and the deletion of codes 0X47T, 0X81T (now permanent codes 0702T and 0703T). PDTs are a new therapeutic class that use software to treat serious disease. Like traditional medicines, PDTs are developed in a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) compliant environment, tested in randomized controlled trials to demonstrate safety and effectiveness, evaluated for authorization by regulators like FDA, and used under the supervision of a prescribing clinician. Pear's PDTs are designed to collect real world data for use by prescribing clinicians and for population health management by payers and health systems. About Pear Therapeutics Pear Therapeutics is the leader in prescription digital therapeutic, or PDTs. Pear aims to redefine medicine by discovering, developing, and delivering clinically validated software-based therapeutics to provide better outcomes for patients, smarter engagement and tracking tools for clinicians, and cost-effective solutions for payers. Pear has a portfolio of products and product candidates across therapeutic areas, including the first three PDTs with disease treatment claims from FDA. Pear's lead product, reSET, for the treatment of substance use disorder, was the first PDT to receive marketing authorization from FDA to treat disease. Pear's second product, reSET-O, for the treatment of opioid use disorder, was the first PDT to receive Breakthrough Designation. Pear's third product, Somryst, for the treatment of chronic insomnia, was the first PDT submitted through FDA's traditional 510(k) pathway while simultaneously reviewed through FDA's Software Precertification Pilot Program. For more information, visit Pear at www.peartherapeutics.com.



reSET Important Safety Information Indications for Use:

reSET is intended to provide cognitive behavioral therapy, as an adjunct to a contingency management system, for patients 18 years of age and older, who are currently enrolled in outpatient treatment under the supervision of a clinician. reSET is indicated as a 12-week (90 day) prescription-only treatment for patients with substance use disorder (SUD), who are not currently on opioid replacement therapy, who do not abuse alcohol solely, or who do not abuse opioids as their primary substance of abuse. It is intended to: increase abstinence from a patient's substances of abuse during treatment, and

increase retention in the outpatient treatment program. Important Safety Information for Clinicians: Warnings: reSET is intended for patients whose primary language is English with a reading level of 7th grade or above, and who have access to an Android (News - Alert)/iOS tablet or smartphone. reSET is intended only for patients who own a smartphone and are familiar with use of smartphone apps (applications). Clinicians should not use reSET to communicate with their patients about emergency medical issues. Patients should be clearly instructed not to use reSET to communicate to their clinician any urgent or emergent information. In case of an emergency, patients should dial 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. reSET is not intended to be used as a stand-alone therapy for substance use disorder (SUD). reSET does not replace care by a licensed medical practitioner and is not intended to reduce the amount of face-to-face clinician time. reSET does not represent a substitution for a patient's medication. Patients should continue to take their medications as directed by their healthcare provider. Patients with substance use disorder experience mental health disease and co-morbid medical problems at higher rates than the general population. Patients with substance use disorder also have higher baseline rates of suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts, and suicide completion. Clinicians should engage in their normal care practices to monitor patients for medical problems and mental health disorders, including risk for harming others and/or themselves. The long-term benefit of treatment with reSET on abstinence has not been evaluated in studies lasting beyond 12 weeks (90 days) in the SUD population. The ability of reSET to prevent potential relapse after treatment discontinuation has not been studied. The effectiveness of reSET has not been demonstrated in patients currently reporting opioids as their primary substance of abuse. This Press Release does not include all the information needed to use reSET safely and effectively. Please see the Clinician Brief Summary for reSET for more information. reSET-O Important Safety Information Indications for Use: reSET-O prescription digital therapeutic is a 12-week (84 day) software application intended to increase retention of patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) in outpatient treatment by providing cognitive behavioral therapy, as an adjunct to outpatient treatment that includes transmucosal buprenorphine and contingency management, for patients 18 years or older who are currently under the supervision of a clinician. reSET-O is indicated as a prescription-only digital therapeutic. Important Safety Information for Clinicians: Warnings: reSET-O is intended for patients whose primary language is English with a reading level of 7th grade or above, and who have access to an Android/iOS tablet or smartphone. reSET-O is intended only for patients who own a smartphone and are familiar with use of smartphone apps (applications). Clinicians should not use reSET-O to communicate with their patients about emergency medical issues. Patients should be clearly instructed not to use reSET-O to communicate to their clinician any urgent or emergent information. In case of an emergency, patients should dial 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. reSET-O is not intended to be used as a stand-alone therapy for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). reSET-O does not replace care by a licensed medical practitioner and is not intended to reduce the frequency or duration of in-person therapy. reSET-O does not represent a substitution for a patient's medication. Patients should continue to take their medications as directed by their healthcare provider. Patients with opioid use disorder experience mental health disease and co-morbid medical problems at higher rates than the general population. Patients with opioid use disorder have higher baseline rates of suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts, and suicide completion. Clinicians should undertake standard of care to monitor patients for medical problems and mental health disease, including risk for harming others and/or themselves. The long-term benefit of reSET-O has not been evaluated in studies lasting beyond 12 weeks (84 days) in the OUD population. The ability of reSET-O to prevent potential relapse after therapy discontinuation has not been studied. This Press Release does not include all the information needed to use reSET-O safely and effectively. Please see the Clinician Brief Summary Instructions for reSET-O for more information. Somryst Important Safety Information Indications for Use Somryst is a prescription-only digital therapeutic intended to provide a neurobehavioral intervention (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia - CBT-I) to patients 22 years of age and older with chronic insomnia. Somryst treats patients with chronic insomnia by improving a patient's insomnia symptoms. Important Safety Information: Warnings: Somryst is not for everyone. Please use your clinical judgement to determine whether Somryst is right for your patient. Somryst is not for emergency use. Please instruct patients to dial 911 or to go to the nearest emergency room in the event of a medical emergency,

Patients should be clearly instructed not to use Somryst to communicate severe, critical, or urgent information to their Health Care Provider.

Somryst is not meant to be used as treatment without supervision of a Health Care Provider.

Somryst is not meant to be a substitution for any treatment medication.

Somryst contains sensitive medical information. Please instruct patients to protect their information by password-protecting their smartphone and tablet, ensuring no one else may access their device.

Sleep Restriction (and Consolidation) within Somryst can cause sleepiness, especially in the early stages of using the PDT. Somryst should not be used if the patient needs to be alert or cautious to avoid serious accidents in their job or daily life. Examples include: Long-haul truck drivers Long-distance bus drivers Air traffic controllers Operators of heavy machinery Some assembly line jobs

The usage data collected in therapy lessons by Somryst are not intended to be used as a standalone assessment of treatment progress. This press release does not include all the information needed to use Somryst safely and effectively. Please see the full Clinician Brief Summary Instructions for Somryst for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005650/en/

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[November 04, 2021]

Acronis SCS Completes VPAT Compliance

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Acronis SCS  an American cyber protection company dedicated to providing certified solutions to the US public sector - recently announced the completion of third-party VPAT WCAG 2.1 testing to achieve Level AA compliance. The certification applies to their Acronis SCS Cyber Backup 12.5 Hardened Edition and Acronis SCS Snap Deploy products. This is yet another critical certification the company has obtained for its backup and security solutions.

The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) evaluates how accessible a particular product is according to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (a federal and an ADA civil rights law). This includes accessibility requirements for information and communication technology (ICT). Any company that does business with the federal government and falls under Section 508 must become VPAT compliant.

"US public sector environments are tightly regulated and must meet stringent operation, encryption, and storage standards to comply with various regulatory bodies and to be fully protected against cyberattacks. Obtaining the VPAT compliance is just another certification in our arsenal for our customers and partners to be able to sleep better at night," stated John Zanni, CEO at Acronis SCS. "Some compliance and certifications like VPAT are self-certifying. We take it one step further and hire outside consultants, like Microassist, to conduct the audit on our behalf."

The full degree of conformance is as follows:









Standard/Guideline Compliance Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

and 2.1 Level A Level AA Section 508 standards Yes EN 301 549 Accessibility (Europe) Yes



VPAT compliant products specifically designed for the public sector

Two of the company's products sold to the federal government include Acronis SCS Cyber Backup 12.5 Hardened Edition and Acronis SCS Snap Deploy now hold VPAT compliance. The company's hardened edition is a full disk image backup and disaster recovery solution that keeps systems up and running in the public sector's most sensitive environments: air gapped, "no internet" networks, including the Department of Defense weapons testing sites, development labs, training simulators, and more. Acronis SCS Cyber Backup 12.5 Hardened Edition also boasts DoDIN APL Common Criteria and FIPS 140-2 certifications to ensure data safety across computing environments.

Acronis SCS Snap Deploy seamlessly and simultaneously provisions a standard master image of any configuration to multiple machines in one easy step.

Critical certifications for cybersecurity, data protection, and regulatory

Different agencies and organizations within the US public sector have specific regulations and guidelines concerning securing and protecting data. Certified cybersecurity protocols are essential, especially in the federal sector. Cyberattacks and data loss generated from an attack can cause an irreparable blow to national security and the country's economy. Acronis SCS develops and certifies its products to the highest levels of security possible to ensure data security across all public sector computing environments. The certifications and compliances include:

DoDIN APL  The Department of Defense Information Network Approved Products List serves as the single list of solutions authorized for use within DoD networks.

Common Criteria  This certification verifies a product follows the standards developed by NIAP, managed by NSA, and accepted by more than 30 countries.

FIPS 140-2  The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS0 140-2 validation verifies that the cryptographic module utilized in a product has gone through rigorous testing and meets extensive requirements for military-grade encryption.

CJIS  Criminal Justice Information Services compliance keeps professionals in criminal justice and law enforcement in agreement about data security and encryption standards.

HIPAA  Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act compliance outlines how healthcare organizations' patient data must be protected.

Image of the certification logos can be found here.

About Acronis SCS

Acronis SCS is a US-based, independently operated and governed cyber protection and edge data security company exclusively dedicated to meeting the unique requirements of the US public sector. In contrast, Acronis  Acronis SCS' international parent company  serves private companies, non-US public sectors, and individual consumers. Acronis SCS' innovative and comprehensive cyber protection, backup and disaster recovery, anti-ransomware, and enterprise file sync and share software solutions ensure operational assurance and data security across America's federal, state, and local government, education, healthcare, and nonprofit computing environments. All Acronis SCS workforce is 100 percent American citizens.

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SOURCE Acronis SCS
[November 04, 2021]

mdf commerce announces date of conference call for second quarter of fiscal 2022 financial results

MONTREAL, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF), a leader in SaaS commerce technology solutions, will hold a conference call to discuss second quarter 2022 financial results.



Date: Thursday, November 11, 2021

Time: 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Dial-in: (833) 732-1201 (toll-free) or (720) 405-2161 (international)

Live webcast: register here

A replay of the webcast will be available until November 11, 2022, at midnight Eastern Time through the same link following the conference call. Please visit the Invesor Relations section on our website on November 10, 2021, to view the earnings release prior to the conference call.







About mdf commerce inc.

mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF) enables the flow of commerce by providing a broad set of SaaS solutions that optimize and accelerate commercial interactions between buyers and sellers. Our platforms and services empower businesses around the world, allowing them to generate billions of dollars in transactions on an annual basis. Our eprocurement, Unified Commerce and emarketplace platforms are supported by a strong and dedicated team of approximately 800 employees based in Canada, the United States, Denmark, Ukraine and China. For more information, please visit us at mdfcommerce.com, follow us on LinkedIn or call at 1-877-677-9088.

For further information:

mdf commerce

Andre Leblanc

Vice President, Marketing and Public Affairs

Phone: +1 (514) 961-0882

Email: [email protected]
[November 04, 2021] Mycotopia Therapies Issues CEO Letter to Stockholders, Reports on Significant Progress and Outlook for 2021

MIAMI, Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mycotopia Therapies Inc., (OTC Pink: TPIA) (the Company), announced today that Ben Kaplan, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, has issued a letter to Mycotopia Therapies' stockholders. The full text is as follows:

To My Fellow Stockholders, Over the course of 2021, Mycotopia Therapies has made significant progress in advancing our strategic plan and hit several key milestones in our journey. From a corporate standpoint, we are a fully reporting company with the SEC and have completed a name and symbol change to better reflect our company. We have also secured DTC eligibility by The Depository Trust Company ("DTC") for electronic settlement and transfer of our common shares in the United States, in an effort to enhance shareholder liquidity. With these basic changes to the public company side of Mycotopia Therapies, we are now moving forward as a biopharma company focused on the discovery and early development of novel drug candidates, structurally related to the classic psychedelics but with vastly improved pharmaceutical characteristics and commercial potential. Mycotopia Therapies recently entered into a supply agreement with Havn Life Sciences (CSE: HAVN) (OTC Pink: HAVLF). The terms of the agreement call for Havn Life Sciences to supply Mycotopia Therapies with naturally-derived psilocybin. Under the terms of the agreement, Mycotopia Therapies is classified as a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the research, development, and commercialization of novel therapeutics for unmet needs. The benefit of this Psilocybin Supply Agreement is that it enables Mycotopia Therapies to get to the distribution and revenue generation phase of our business plan much faster. Mycotopia Therapies has signed an LOI with a major manufacturer encompassing the IP for a water-soluble tablet for all psychedelics. This will give our Company the ability to develop robust formulations by eliminating uncontrolled stability variables, while focusing solely on therapeutic performance and clinical outcome. In addition, Mycotopia Therapies entered into a separate LOI to license IP from a public company focused on mushroom and psychedelic opportunities. This licensing agreement will provide us with a process that is similar to those used by Compass, MindMed, and Atai, which allow any psychedelic and delivery into the human body. Mycotopia Therapies is currently working with one of the largest cannabis labs in the Netherlands to develop psychedelics. In our partnership we intend to jointly apply to the to the government to license certain molecules to be used in psychedelics. Our counterpart in the Netherlands collaborates with scientists, universities, pharmacies and innovative companies to garner a complete and unrivalled understanding of psychedelics. An innovative and vertically integrated phyto-pharmaceutical company with 25-years experience the company collaborates with leading scientists, pharmacists and doctors. Mycotopia Therapies will benefit from many years of activities in the fieds of research, production and processing of both cannabinoids and psychedelics. We believe their years of knowledge and experience will result in high quality, safe and reliable products.



Our future plans call for opening psylocibin and ketamine clinics in Jamaica. The clinics will be under the direction of a licensed clinical psychiatrist. Mental health is the national health crisis everyone should be concerned about, since rates of anxiety, depression and PTSD keep climbing. Mycotopia Therapies' psylocibin and ketamine clinic will be designed to make the most peaceful and serene setting possible to give patients an ideal situation for psychedelic therapies. The primary focus of each clinic will be to help patients heal and reclaim their life under the direction of a licensed clinical psychiatrist. Psychedelics are currently being used during therapy to better understand the pathway to mental wellness. During psychedelic enhanced psychotherapy many patients find that situations from their past are uncovered. To be able to fully benefit from what surfaces, a structured approach is needed. With the assistance of a licensed clinical psychiatrist, these psychedelics experiences can help patients understand the thoughts and feelings they uncover. Jamaica's peaceful and serene setting and its relaxed life style make it a perfect place for a psychedelic enhanced psychotherapy.

I believe psychedelic-based medicine has the potential to revolutionize the way we treat mental health issues. Mycotopia Therapies is committed to creating psychedelic-derived medicines that will better the lives of millions. We intend to recruit a world-class Board of Directors and Medical Advisory Board that has the expertise and passion necessary to not only achieve that objective, but to help us become a leader in the field. I would like to thank you for your continued support along this journey and look forward to sharing more good news with you soon. About Mycotopia Therapies Mycotopia Therapies focuses on helping you heal and reclaim your life. Your journey of healing is an understanding of the causes and works to mental wellness through psychedelic enhanced psychotherapy, integrated with a professional team of mental wellness practitioners and cutting-edge technology. Psychedelic therapy is a holistic and spiritual approach providing healing and has shown successful treatment for many years. Additional information on Mycotopia Therapies can be found on the Companys website at: https://www.mycotopiatherapies.com . Forward-Looking Statement Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may be preceded by the words intends, may, will, plans, expects, anticipates, projects, predicts, estimates, aims, believes, hopes, potential or similar words. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, and cannot be predicted or quantified and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements: (i) the initiation, timing, progress and results of the Companys research, manufacturing and other development efforts; (ii) the Companys ability to advance its products to successfully complete development and commercialization; (iii) the manufacturing, development, commercialization, and market acceptance of the Companys products; (iv) the lack of sufficient funding to finance the product development and business operations; (v) competitive companies and technologies within the Companys industry and introduction of competing products; (vi) the Companys ability to establish and maintain corporate collaborations; (vii) loss of key management personnel; (viii) the scope of protection the Company is able to establish and maintain for intellectual property rights covering its products and its ability to operate its business without infringing the intellectual property rights of others; (ix) potential failure to comply with applicable health information privacy and security laws and other state and federal privacy and security laws; and (x) the difficulty of predicting actions of the USA FDA and its regulations. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date of this press release. The Company assumes no obligation to update any written or oral forward-looking statement unless required by law. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is contained under the heading "Risk Factors" in 20/20 Global, Inc.s Registration Statement on Form F-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on September 24, 2015, as amended, which is available on the SEC's website, http://www.sec.gov. Contact for 20/20 Global and Ehave Media Inquiries: Gabe Rodriguez Email: [email protected] Investor Relations: Email: [email protected] Phone: (623) 261-9046



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[November 04, 2021] Long Beach Nonprofit Awarded 5 Year Grant Totaling Over $7.9 Million

LONG BEACH, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dramatic Results received a combined $7.9 million in federal grant funding to support program replication nationwide. Awarded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education Office of Well-Rounded Education Programs, the Assistance for Arts Education (AAE) program supports the dissemination of accessible instructional materials and arts-based educational programming that effectively increases access to standards-based arts education with integration into other subjects. Congressman Lowenthal of California's 47th district, congratulated Dramatic Results on the award, "Their work to support teachers, students, and community partners is incredibly innovative and their commitment to successful outcomes and partnerships is clear, as this is their sixth AAE grant." Through the STEAM Ecosystem Expansion Demonstration (SEED) Project, education nonprofit Dramatic Results partners with teams of public libraries, school districts, and teacher preparation programs to include ecosystem collaborations with Long Beach Public Library, Long Beach Unified School District, and CSU Long Beach, CA; Calvert County Public Schools, Bowie University, and Calvert Libraries in Maryland; and the Fond du Lac Public Library, Marian University, and Fond du Lac School District in Wisconsin to develop each communities' capacity to create and sustain high-quality, engaging, and equitable Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) programs for underrepresented students to build arts-integrated educational pathways for a more creative and diverse workforce. The SEED Projectbuilds upon the success of the Art of Building a City STEAM Ecosystem Project (ABC Project), a four-year AAEDD grant received by Dramatic Results in 2018 that serves gifted students at six Long Beach Title I middle schools.



The project has four guiding strategies: Partnerships among community educational institutions that share a vision of using art and creativity to engage and deepen student learning; Pillars of Professional Development that address challenges around cross-sector collaboration, working with underrepresented students, and engaging students with STEAM-integrated instructional materials; Programs that demonstrate how to engage students and educators with numerous arts-based modalities to foster self and social awareness; and Public Outreach to disseminate the educational and professional development resources created by the SEED Project in ways that can be used to launch more STEAM ecosystems. The SEED Project is estimated to reach an average of 213 educators (classroom teachers, art educators, and pre-service teachers), 765 underrepresented students, and 132 community collaborators (administrators and staff from partnering institutions) each year for five years. Public outreach via libraries, schools, community festivals, and national dissemination will reach approximately 35,000 people per year.

"The expansion of the ABC Project into SEED presents a critical opportunity to dramatically improve access to STEAM programs for historically excluded students, communities, and educators," said Ryan Nuckolls-Rosa, Executive Director at Dramatic Results. "We look forward to working with trusted community partners on this important project, which has already boosted the self and social awareness of hundreds of children in their ability to create and innovate since its implementation." For almost 30 years, Dramatic Results has raised more than $12 million to bring arts-integrated STEAM programs to strengthen communities by identifying and closing the opportunity gap, guided by a belief that access creates opportunity. ABOUT DRAMATIC RESULTS Dramatic Results is a nonprofit that designs and delivers educational programming using art, design, and culture as entryways into STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). By providing in-class and out-of-school opportunities in historically excluded communities, innovative programs prepare learners to be empathetic, resilient, and critical thinkers using methodologies like Design Thinking and Social-Emotional Learning to fuel collaboration and creativity. Since 1992, Dramatic Results programs have had measurable impacts on 500 classroom teachers and over 35,000 students' social, emotional, and academic performance. Visit www.dramaticresults.org to learn more. Media Contact: Talia Sandoval

562.595.4600

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/long-beach-nonprofit-awarded-5-year-grant-totaling-over-7-9-million-301416353.html SOURCE Dramatic Results

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[November 04, 2021] Huawei Partners With Bitrise to Help Mobile Organizations and App Creators Enter the China Market

Bitrise, the Mobile DevOps company that the world's most well-known organizations rely on to get mobile apps to market faster, today announced its work with Huawei. The global smart device provider has tapped Bitrise as part of its mission to attract the world's best mobile apps into its 530M+ user AppGallery, in turn enabling app creators to more easily enter the restrictive Chinese market. Huawei (News - Alert) is one of 20 companies in Bitrise's new Verified Partners Program. Bitrise introduced the program to give select organizations the opportunity to build integrations--or "steps"--for Bitrise's user base of more than 6,000 global companies and 150,000 developers. Bitrise's users create more than 150 million builds per month through its platform. Huawei's step, "Deploy to Huawei AppGallery," serves the dual purpose of attracting the world's best app developers to submit their apps to the Huawei platform, and ensuring that its user base has access to the world's best apps. For western mobile organizations and developers, there are currently a number of barriers to entry to launching their apps into China. Google (News - Alert) Play, for instance, is restricted in China, which means Android developers have to navigate new Android app stores to distribute their apps. And while Apple (News - Alert) has a version of its App Store available for iPhone users in China, it does not dominate the mobile app market like it does in western markets. Huawei's AppGallery, by contrast, is one of the largest app markets in China (second only to Tencent). Through its new AppGallery Deploy step on Bitrise, developers can automatically deploy their apps to Huawei's AppGallery from Bitrise, and decide whether they want to save it as a draft or publish it to production. "Our overarching mission is to be a one-screen Mobile DevOps platform that gives developers everything they need to compete in the aggressive mobile marketplace," said Barnabas Birmacher, CEO of Bitrise. "Expanding into new markets is a critical part of this endeavor, and through our new partnership with Huawei's ApGallery, we are pleased to be able to help developers not only enter the Asian market quickly and easily, but to compete there once they do."



Bitrise's Step Library currently features more than 330 steps. Each step is a building block--tool, process or action--that, when combined with other steps, makes up a complete mobile development process or workflow. Some of the steps in the open-source library are core parts of the mobile development lifecycle, while others provide added or advanced functionality. All steps are plug-and-play, so that users don't have to write their own script and can further automate their builds using Bitrise. "Huawei AppGallery's partnership with Bitrise enables us to interact with global mobile developers, so that they have a smooth experience entering a new market," said Fernando Prieto Moyano, Developer Advocate at Huawei. "Often, businesses looking to expand their mobile apps into the Asian market are confronted with the fact that the Apple App Store and Google Play aren't the dominant app stores. Our new offering through Bitrise will give them easy access to one of the largest marketplaces in Asia. This will be particularly beneficial to Android (News - Alert) teams, who are additionally challenged by fragmented Android devices and new local versions they haven't previously tested their releases for."

Some of Bitrise's other new Verified Steps include: DexProtector, an app-hardening service created by Licel that helps developers to control key processes and secure the most sensitive parts of their apps and libraries.

Localazy, which can translate up to 50% of an app instantly to 80+ languages

Appaloosa - App developers can deploy their apps to testers and users at scale, and manage app versions, users, groups, and devices, all from a single interface.

DeployGate - Tools that make user testing and user communication easier by automating various tasks around beta testing. In addition to Verified Steps, Bitrise's growing Step Library includes Community-Maintained Steps (created and submitted by Bitrise users) and Bitrise Steps (created and maintained by Bitrise to fit its users needs and keep up to date with new technology and functionality). Bitrise's Verified Partner Program, as well as its robust library of steps, are part of the company's growing Mobile DevOps Ecosystem, a one-screen solution for managing all mobile processes, builds and workflows-on iOS and beyond. Companies interested in participating in Bitrise's Verified Partner Program are encouraged to create their first step and apply for consideration here. About Bitrise Bitrise is a Mobile DevOps company, whose CI/CD platform is used by more than 6,000 businesses to get apps to market faster, improve security and keep up with constantly changing mobile requirements. Bitrise enables the world's most sophisticated mobile organizations, including half of all mobile unicorn startups, to automate testing, accelerate build times, and quickly understand how new pieces of code will affect live apps. Customers such as Transferwise (now "WISE"), Virgin Mobile, Grindr, Tonal, Compass (News - Alert), Mozilla, Philips Hue, Marks & Spencer and others use Bitrise to rapidly respond to the changing mobile landscape. Bitrise is a Y Combinator company, headquartered in Budapest, with offices in London, San Francisco and Boston. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005737/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Barcart Partners with Avalara to Automate Tax Compliance

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Barcart, the technology company transforming the alcohol industry through its online checkout solutions, today announced it has partnered with Avalara, a leading provider of tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes. The partnership will allow Barcart to continue to offer premier tax-compliant alcohol-checkout services across DTC and three-tier models to the company's more than 200 clients across the alcohol industry. Barcart's nimble solutions seamlessly integrate into existing platforms and websites to provide compliant sales solutions in as little as 24 hours. Through this partnership, Barcart is now part of Avalara's "Certified for AvaTax" program, which features integrations that perform at the highest level, providing the best possible customer experience. Barcart is now an Avalara Certified partner. As a result of this partnership, Barcart's customers can now choose Avalara's AvaTax to deliver sales and use tax calculations within existing business applications at the time of checkout or billing  in real time. "As ecommerce in the alcohol industry continues to evolve, there's a growing need for a trustworthy checkout solution that not only meets strict compliance regulations but also can be seamlessly intergrated into a company's existing workflow. Our partnership with Avalara is essential to scaling our business while ensuring we maintain our reptation as the best ecommerce provider in the industry," said Adi Pal, founder, Barcart.



Since 2019, Barcart has continued to evolve its product offerings to meet client needs and simplify the checkout process for the alcohol industry. The Avalara partnership is a key component to providing a one-stop solution for expansion into ecommerce through an integration that automatically calculates sales tax. "Barcart understands the needs of its customers, and their offering reduces complexity for their customers in many ways. We understand that digitization of business processes is not an option, it is essential; we are proud to offer fast, accurate, and easy tax compliance solutions to our shared customers," said Greg Chapman, senior vice president of partner management at Avalara said,

Barcart was founded in 2014 by AAPI husband and wife team Adi Pal and Urvi Arora. Since then, the company has built a much-deserved reputation for innovation. Barcart is the most innovative platform to rapidly and securely grow online sales while offering the best online shopping experience in the industry. As an added bonus for partners, Barcart maintains a pulse on consumer purchasing habits through its proprietary insights and ownership of award-winning consumer marketplace, Mash&Grape. For more information on Barcart or to schedule a demo, please visit www.GetBarcart.com. About Barcart Barcart is a technology company transforming the beverage alcohol industry and providing unprecedented transparency across the three-tier system for suppliers, distributors, and retailers. Their innovative solutions generate new revenue streams, increase distribution with industry-compliant, direct-to-consumer online sales, and convert new audiences using buying intelligence from the company's proprietary consumer-facing online marketplace - Mash&Grape. More than 200 brands, distillers and retailers have selected Barcart as the proprietary platform to power their e-commerce strategy and fuel growth. For more information on Barcart or to schedule a demo, please visit www.GetBarcart.com. To explore the award winning craft-spirits marketplace Mash&Grape, please visit www.MashAndGrape.com. About Avalara, Inc. Avalara helps businesses of all sizes get tax compliance right. In partnership with leading ERP, accounting, ecommerce, and other financial management system providers, Avalara delivers cloud-based compliance solutions for various transaction taxes, including sales and use, VAT, GST, excise, communications, lodging, and other indirect tax types. Headquartered in Seattle, Avalara has offices across the U.S. and around the world in Brazil, Europe, and India. More information at avalara.com . Media Contact:

Samantha Flynn

(717) 413-0370 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/barcart-partners-with-avalara-to-automate-tax-compliance-301416417.html SOURCE Barcart

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[November 04, 2021] New Study Finds Employees Split on In Person vs Remote Work Preferences, Revealing Benefits of a Flexible or Hybrid Workplace

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Convene, the company at the forefront of creating dynamic work experiences with a network of 23+ premium meeting, event, and office locations and digital meeting technology, is announcing today the results from a national survey commissioned on workplace trends and employee sentiment. The responses touch on a number of issues relevant to companies returning to the office, including: how much time an average employee wants to spend with colleagues in-person at work in the future, what pain points employers are facing, and the role of the "hybrid" workplace and Millennial/Gen-Z preferences for a flexible schedule. Convene's survey reached nearly 1,000 full-time employees across various roles, industries, and U.S. geographies, in order to take a closer look at concerns, interests, and trends being observed in today's workplace as well as sentiments on hybrid workplaces and hybrid meetings and events. This is especially relevant as companies like Apple and Microsoft are continuing to dopt hybrid models, and with another 77% of business leaders intending to use a hybrid model during the next year.



Here are some telling findings that speak to larger sentiments around workplace behavior among employees at all employment levels, age demographics and more, including: At the executive leadership level, findings showed that retaining talent and maintaining company culture are the top two pain points being experienced by this demographic. 76% of executive employees identify retaining talent as an extreme or moderate pain point and 74% of them identify maintaining company culture as an extreme or moderate pain point. Other leading pain points are keeping staff engaged and productive and attracting new talent.

76% of executive employees identify retaining talent as an extreme or moderate pain point and 74% of them identify maintaining company culture as an extreme or moderate pain point. Other leading pain points are keeping staff engaged and productive and attracting new talent. Employee preferences are varied -- there is no one size fits all. Convene's survey found that teams were split on where they preferred to work, and what they prioritized as important in their workplace. While a third of the respondents enjoyed working from the office and access to their co-workers, another third preferred the privacy of working from home, and the remaining preferred a flex-office or third-party location that was most convenient.

Convene's survey found that teams were split on where they preferred to work, and what they prioritized as important in their workplace. While a third of the respondents enjoyed working from the office and access to their co-workers, another third preferred the privacy of working from home, and the remaining preferred a flex-office or third-party location that was most convenient. While there is no consensus on a preferred mode of work, 92% want some sort of in-person programming with coworkers. More than 75% of employees want to meet for an in-person event at least once every three months. Only 8% of employees would want a completely remote future with no in person events. Amongst high-performing employees, the desire for more frequent in-person events increased, with 84% stating that they wanted them on at least a quarterly basis. "It's clear that the future of work is flexible, as employees recognize the benefits of both in person and remote work," said CEO & co-founder of Convene Ryan Simonetti. "We will continue to offer flexible, hospitality-driven tools and environments necessary for companies seeking to attract and retain top-performing talent and succeed in today's changing business landscape."

For more information to learn more about the findings commissioned in Convene's survey, visit Convene.com . About Convene

Convene is the leading provider of premium virtual and hybrid events with a network of venues and office locations. Combining design, technology, and hospitality to elevate today's modern work experience, Convene creates the spaces and experiences that help people succeed. With Studio, an all-in-one solution for digitally-enabled events, and 23 locations across the U.S. including meeting spaces and flexible workplaces, Convene creates your best day at work, wherever it happens. The company has been named one of America's 100 Most Promising Companies by Forbes and a Best Workplace by both Inc. and Fortune Magazine. For more information visit convene.com . View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-finds-employees-split-on-in-person-vs-remote-work-preferences-revealing-benefits-of-a-flexible-or-hybrid-workplace-301415692.html SOURCE Convene

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[November 04, 2021] ZOLL TherOx SuperSaturated Oxygen Therapy to Be Highlighted at TCT Scientific Symposium

ZOLL Medical Corporation, an Asahi Kasei company that manufactures medical devices and related software solutions, announced that its TherOx SuperSaturated Oxygen (SSO 2 ) Therapy will be highlighted at the upcoming Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) annual scientific meeting November 4-6 in Orlando, Florida. The TCT Scientific Meeting, the world's premier conference for interventional cardiovascular medicine, will offer both live and virtual options for the 2021 meeting. ZOLL TherOx will host product demonstrations and discussions with thought leaders who will share their real-world experiences with SSO 2 Therapy in technology suite #CS 5. In addition, Stephen Lynch, MD (Beaumont Hospital, MI) will be presenting a case study featuring SSO 2 Therapy and one patient's remarkable recovery during the Moderated Challenging Case session TCT 517 on November 6 at 1 p.m. EDT in Halls A-B, Level 1. "Our participation in and support of TCT is an essential part of expanding the frontier of STEMI care with SSO 2 Therapy," said Neil Johnston, President of ZOLL Circulation. SuperSaturated Oxygen (SSO 2 ) Therapy is the first and only FDA-approved treatment shown to significantly reduce myocardial damage in heart attack patients after percutaneous coronary intervention. SSO 2 Therapy delivers dissolved oxygen at 7-10x normal directly to the damaged heart muscle to salvage heart tissue immediately after the coronary artery has been successfully opened via angioplasty and stenting. In clinical studie it has been shown to reduce infarct size by 26% in patients who suffer left anterior descending ST-elevation myocardial infarction (LAD STEMI) - also known as widowmaker heart attacks due to the high mortality rate - and are treated within six hours of symptom onset.1



SSO 2 Therapy was developed by Irvine, California-based TherOx, Inc., now part of ZOLL. About ZOLL

ZOLL, an Asahi Kasei company, develops and markets medical devices and software solutions that help advance emergency care and save lives, while increasing clinical and operational efficiencies. With products for defibrillation and cardiac monitoring, circulation enhancement and CPR feedback, supersaturated oxygen therapy, data management, ventilation, and therapeutic temperature management, ZOLL provides a comprehensive set of technologies that help clinicians, EMS and fire professionals, as well as lay rescuers, improve patient outcomes in critical cardiopulmonary conditions. For more information, visit www.zoll.com. About Asahi Kasei The Asahi Kasei Group contributes to life and living for people around the world. Since its foundation in 1922 with ammonia and cellulose fiber business, Asahi Kasei has consistently grown through the proactive transformation of its business portfolio to meet the evolving needs of every age. With more than 40,000 employees around the world, the company contributes to sustainable society by providing solutions to the world's challenges through its three business sectors of Material, Homes, and Health Care. Its health care operations include devices and systems for acute critical care, dialysis, therapeutic apheresis, transfusion, and manufacture of biotherapeutics, as well as pharmaceuticals and diagnostic reagents. For more information, visit www.asahi-kasei.com. Copyright  2021 ZOLL Medical Corporation. TherOx and ZOLL are trademarks or registered trademarks of ZOLL Medical Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Asahi Kasei is a registered trademark of Asahi Kasei Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 1 Stone, G.W. et al. Circ Cardiovasc Interv; 2; 366-375. Sep 2009. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005173/en/

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Nintendo Download: Design Your Own Slice of Paradise

This week's Nintendo Download includes the following content:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005432/en/

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise will be available on Nov. 5. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise - Join Lottie and the Paradise Planning team in this paid DLC* that expands your Animal Crossing: New Horizons experience. You'll travel to a chain of charming islands in an archipelago, where you can design the dream vacation homes of your clients, decorate island facilities - like a school and a restaurant - and discover new ways to create and personalize. With dozens and dozens of clients eager to enjoy your design inspirations, including your main island residents, the chance to create dream vacation homes offers new experiences to discover! Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise will be available on Nov. 5. Just Dance 2022 - The ultimate dance game is back with new universes and 40 hot new tracks from chart-topping hits like "Believer" by Imagine Dragons and "Level Up" by Ciara. Looking for the perfect game to dance to the latest hits and share some fun with friends and family? Just Dance 2022 is for you! Airborne Kingdom - Embark on a journey as a small kingdom to expand your population, researching new technologies and buildings, and forging alliances with terrestrial kingdoms. Soar through the skies as you complete quests, gather and manage resources, and work to keep your kingdom balanced both literally and in service of the needs and desires of your workers. Ultimately it is up to you to unite all of the kingdoms together into a single alliance guided along by the legendary Airborne Kingdom. Airborne Kingdom will be available on Nov. 9. Where Cards Fall - Enjoy more than 50 challenging puzzles that exercise your imagination and strategic thinking skills, set to an original and immersive soundtrack. Create pathways through dreamlike spatial puzzles to navigate the insecurities and emotions of high school and beyond. Where Cards Fall is a slice-of-life story where you build houses of cards to bring formative memories to life.



DLC:

Expand Your Horizons! - There's even more Animal Crossing: New Horizons content arriving this week, with a free update** available to all Animal Crossing: New Horizons players on Nov. 5. It includes characters such as Brewster, who will open the Roost cafe on the second floor of the museum, and the sea shanty singing Kapp'n, who will take you to different islands with his boat. There will also be newly opened shops in the plaza on Harv's Island, including Katrina's fortune-telling shop. You'll be able to enjoy abilities such as cooking and growing vegetables, Gyroids can now be dug up from the ground, and as Resident Representative, you can even establish ordinances that reduce the rate at which weeds grow or make all the residents get up early in the morning. Have fun exploring the new experiences on your island getaway!

Activities:

Get Cozy With Animal Crossing: New Horizons Prizes - Enter the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Cozy Winter sweepstakes for a chance to win cute and cuddly prizes that may inspire you to turn up the heat on your Animal Crossing: New Horizons gameplay!*** Prizes include a Mink Sherpa plush blanket and a Monopoly Animal Crossing: New Horizons Edition Board Game. Check out the full details at https://my.nintendo.com/news/5af0557dd894a076.

- Enter the Cozy Winter sweepstakes for a chance to win cute and cuddly prizes that may inspire you to turn up the heat on your gameplay!*** Prizes include a Mink Sherpa plush blanket and a Monopoly Animal Crossing: New Horizons Edition Board Game. Check out the full details at https://my.nintendo.com/news/5af0557dd894a076. Close Your Eyes and Make a Wish! - Get your hands on a new reward inspired by the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game! Use your My Nintendo reward points**** to redeem a 2021 birthday calendar to download and print. Now you'll be able to celebrate the birthdays of your favorite characters from the Animal Crossing series, including the newly added characters from the Nov. 5 update. To find out how to redeem your Platinum Points visit https://my.nintendo.com/rewards/99dcf38e0d469745.

- Get your hands on a new reward inspired by the game! Use your My Nintendo reward points**** to redeem a 2021 birthday calendar to download and print. Now you'll be able to celebrate the birthdays of your favorite characters from the series, including the newly added characters from the Nov. 5 update. To find out how to redeem your Platinum Points visit https://my.nintendo.com/rewards/99dcf38e0d469745. Become the Ultimate Warrior - Attention bounty hunters - there's still time to enter the My Nintendo Metroid Dread Sweepstakes ending on Nov. 8.***** Prizes include HD metal wall art featuring Samus and an E.M.M.I. robot, a Metroid Dread Enhanced Wired Controller for Nintendo Switch, a Slim Case for Nintendo Switch from PowerA and a Metroid Dread Men's Hoodie Sweatshirt. For more information, please visit https://my.nintendo.com/rewards/a066dd359423fb69.

Nintendo eShop sales:

Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U Great deals this week! Check out the full list of deals available this week at https://www.nintendo.com/games/sales-and-deals.



Also new this week in Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch:







* Full version of game required to use DLC. Sold separately.

** Players will need to connect to the internet and download the latest update data to access certain in-game events as they become available.

*** NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Void where prohibited. Open to legal residents of the United States, District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 13 years old or older. Sweepstakes begins 1:00 p.m. PT on 11/1/2021 and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on 12/8/2021. To enter, you must (1) have a Nintendo Account; (2) visit https://my.nintendo.com/rewards/2418121c39f69a61; (3) sign in to your Nintendo Account, and (4) redeem 10 Platinum Points per entry at the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Cozy Winter Sweepstakes page as stated in Official Rules. There will be ten (10) winners. Each winner will receive one (1) My Nintendo exclusive Animal Crossing: New Horizons Mink Sherpa plush blanket (ARV: $150.00 USD), one (1) Club Mocchi Mocchi Nintendo Animal Crossing Mega 15" Plush - Isabelle (ARV $42.99 USD), one (1) PowerA Enhanced Wired Controller for Nintendo Switch - Animal Crossing (ARV: $27.99 USD), and one (1) Hasbro Gaming Monopoly Animal Crossing: New Horizons Edition Board Game (ARV $26.49 USD). Total ARV of each prize: $247.47 USD. Total ARV of all prizes: $2,474.70 USD. Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. Details and restrictions apply. For Official Rules, visit https://www.nintendo.com/rules/animal-crossing-new-horizons-cozy-winter-sweepstakes/. Sponsor: Nintendo of America Inc., 4600 150th Avenue NE, Redmond, WA 98052.

**** A Nintendo Account is required to receive and redeem My Nintendo points. Terms apply. https://accounts.nintendo.com/term_point.

***** NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Void where prohibited. Open to legal residents of the United States, District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 13 years old or older. Sweepstakes begins 10:00 a.m. PT on 10/1/2021 and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on 11/8/2021. To enter, you must (1) have a Nintendo Account; (2) visit https://my.nintendo.com/rewards/a066dd359423fb69; (3) sign in to your Nintendo Account, and (4) redeem 10 Platinum Points per entry at the Metroid Dread My Nintendo Sweepstakes page as stated in Official Rules. There will be ten (10) winners. Each winner will receive one (1) 20" x 24" HD metal sublimation print featuring art from the Metroid Dread game (ARV: $300.00 USD), one (1) Fifth Sun Metroid Dread hoodie (ARV $47.99 USD), one (1) PowerA Metroid Dread Enhanced Wired Controller (ARV: $27.99 USD), and one (1) PowerA Metroid Dread Nintendo Switch Slim Case ($12.99 USD). Total ARV of each prize: $388.97 USD. Total ARV of all prizes: $3,889.70 USD. Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. Details and restrictions apply. For Official Rules, visit https://nintendo.com/rules/my-nintendo-metroid-dread-sweepstakes. Sponsor: Nintendo of America Inc., 4600 150th Avenue NE, Redmond, WA 98052.

In addition to video games available at retail stores, Nintendo also offers a variety of content that people can download directly to their systems. Nintendo adds new games weekly to Nintendo eShop, which offers a variety of options for the Nintendo Switch family of systems, the Wii U console and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.

Nintendo Switch Online is a paid membership service that allows members to team up or face off online in compatible Nintendo Switch games, such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Luigi's Mansion 3, Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield. Members also enjoy a curated library of NES and Super NES classic games, including Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, among many others. To find out more about the benefits that come with Nintendo Switch Online, to view membership options and to learn about a free seven-day trial for new users, visit https://www.nintendo.com/switch/online-service/.

With a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership, players get access to even more benefits, including a library of Nintendo 64 games with newly added online play for up to four players (additional accessories may be required for multiplayer mode; sold separately), Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise DLC (available Nov. 5) and retro SEGA Genesis games.

Nintendo eShop is a cash-based service that features a wide variety of content, including new and classic games, applications and demos. Users can add money to their account balances by using a credit card or purchasing a Nintendo eShop Card at a retail store and entering the code from the card. All funds from one card must be loaded in Nintendo eShop on the Nintendo Switch family of systems, Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, but can be used in any Nintendo eShop if the systems are linked to a single Nintendo Account.

Customers in the U.S. and Canada ages 18 and older can also link a PayPal (News - Alert) account to their Nintendo Account to purchase digital games and content for the Nintendo Switch family of systems both on-device and from the Nintendo website. Once the accounts are linked, users may also use PayPal as a payment option when buying digital content for the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS family systems from the Nintendo website.

My Nintendo members can earn Gold Points on eligible digital purchases. Already have Gold Points? Redeem them toward your next digital purchase of Nintendo Switch games and DLC on Nintendo eShop, or on discount rewards for select Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software. Visit https://my.nintendo.com/reward_categories for more details.

Remember that the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS family of systems feature parental controls that let adults manage some of the content their children can access. Nintendo Switch players who register a Nintendo Account gain access to free-to-start games and free game demos from Nintendo eShop, and also get the latest news and information direct from Nintendo. For more information about parental controls on Nintendo Switch and other features, visit https://play.nintendo.com/parents/crash-courses/parental-controls/ and https://www.nintendo.com/switch/. For all other systems please visit https://support.nintendo.com/.

Note to editors: Nintendo press materials are available at https://press.nintendo.com, a password-protected site. To obtain a login, please register on the site.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005432/en/
[November 04, 2021] Private Investment Firm Hudson Glade Announces Additions to Team

Hudson Glade - a private investment firm focused on "Good-to-Great" consumer, industrial, and services companies at the lower end of the middle market - today announced three additions to its team. All three are experienced professionals who add exceptional resources and capabilities to the firm and complement the founders and Hudson Glade's Executive Advisory Council. Craig Marmer joins as Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. Craig was previously a Managing Director of Probitas Partners, a leading global alternative asset placement firm he co-founded in 2001. He played a key role in growing the company from inception to global success. During Mr. Marmer's tenure, the company assisted in raising more than $70 billion on behalf of over 90 alternative investment funds. Mr. Marmer worked with global investment managers and emerging independent sponsors, a number of which have become leaders in their space. He earned a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his B.A. in International Relations also from the University of Pennsylvania, where he first met the founders of Hudson Glade. Harris Ackerman joins as a Vice President, having worked earlier n his career with Hudson Glade Co-Founder David Simon (News - Alert) as a Senior Associate at Littlejohn & Co. Following Littlejohn, he served as Manager of Mergers & Acquisitions at SunSource, a Littlejohn portfolio company. He then served as Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions at Tech Air, where he was key in growing the firm before its eventual sale to Airgas.



Hudson Glade also bolsters its capabilities by adding the services of Brian Rachal as Chief Financial Officer. Brian was previously Chief Financial Officer at the private equity firm Gridiron Capital and earlier worked alongside David Simon as Vice President and Controller at Littlejohn & Co. Co-founder David Simon commented, "We are thrilled to add these experienced and talented individuals to the Hudson Glade team. It is terrific to add trusted professionals with whom I have collaborated in the past." Co-founder Jeff Lowe (News - Alert) added, "We look forward to leveraging Craig, Harris and Brian's skills and expertise as we grow Hudson Glade."

About Hudson Glade Headquartered in Rye Brook, New York, Hudson Glade is a private investment firm focused on consumer, industrial, and services companies with demonstrated and defensible growth characteristics operating in the lower end of the North American middle market. The firm partners with talented management teams to make good companies great by deploying proven operating approaches to drive value acceleration. For more information, please visit Hudson Glade's website at www.hudsonglade.com or contact Hudson Glade by email at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005366/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Vacasa Packages Up Its 2021 ??Holiday and Winter Travel Trends

This season, guidance from the Center for Disease Control makes holiday travel (with the proper safety precautions) possible, allowing family and friends to reunite for the most wonderful time of the year. So, will Americans spruce up their 2021 travel plans after being asked to deck the halls at home last year? This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005402/en/ This season, hometown travel is the priority, but vacations to warmer-weather and mountain-snow destinations are close behind. (Photo: Business Wire) Today, Vacasa released its 2021 Holiday Forecast and Winter Travel Trends report, analyzing survey results* to determine what consumer travel trends will carry over from 2020 and what new-or returning from pre-pandemic-travel traditions will be unwrapped. While there is some remaining uncertainty around holiday travel, with nearly half of Americans planning to make a trip and 20% still unsure, those who do plan to travel aren't done after one getaway. In fact, 82% of holiday travelers say they're planning to travel again before spring arrives. Understandably, hometown travel is the priority for the winter season as a whole, but people are also ready to go dashing through the snow, or sand, on a vacation. Here are just a few of the trends expected to stay evergreen this year, along with some that will arrive anew: li> Next-gen travel continues to trend: Gen Zers and Millennials are the most likely to travel for the holiday season (66% and 61%, respectively). And, not surprisingly, family travel keeps trending, too: roughly 65% of parents with children under age 5 plan to travel, compared to 42% of non-parents.

Americans seem more determined to travel this year: 49% say they would change travel plans if there was a COVID-19 spike where they are traveling to, which is down from nearly three-quarters of people who said they would change plans in 2020.

Another perhaps positive shift from 2020? Last year, almost 40% of U.S. consumers reported having to adjust their holiday traditions due to COVID-19, compared to 19% this year.

Holiday travelers are planning to stick to the road (again): 72% say they'll be road tripping, down just slightly from the more than three-quarters who were going by car last holiday season.

The rationale? 40% say it's simply because they're traveling to a place close by, whereas 38% cite COVID-19 safety concerns.

Furthermore, the holidays will be no exception when it comes to remote and hybrid work models changing how people travel: a quarter of those traveling for the holidays say they plan to work remotely during their trips (24%).

For the winter season as a whole, hometown travel is the priority (37%), but vacations to warmer-weather and mountain-snow destinations are close behind (33% and 23%, respectively).



2021 Holiday Forecast and Winter Travel Trends report, or to find a (vacation) home for the holidays this season, visit www.vacasa.com. *Methodology: Allison+Partners Research + Insights surveyed 1,000 US consumers age 18 or older. The survey was fielded using the Qualtrics Insight Platform, and the panel was sourced from Lucid. Fielding was executed in October 2021.

About Vacasa Vacasa is the leading vacation rental management platform in North America, transforming the vacation rental experience by integrating purpose-built technology with expert local and national teams. Homeowners enjoy earning significant incremental income on one of their most valuable assets, delivered by the company's unmatched technology that adjusts rates in real time to maximize revenue. Guests can relax comfortably in Vacasa's 30,000+ homes across more than 400 destinations in North America, Belize and Costa Rica, knowing that 24/7 support is just a phone call away. In addition to enabling guests to search, discover and book its properties on Vacasa.com and the Vacasa guest app, Vacasa provides valuable, professionally managed inventory to top channel partners, including Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. In Summer 2021, Vacasa entered into an agreement to become a publicly traded company through a business combination with TPG Pace Solutions (NYSE: TPGS; "TPGS"), a special purpose acquisition company ("SPAC"). Interested parties should refer to the registration statement on Form S-4 filed by Vacasa, Inc. with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for important information regarding TPG Pace Solutions, Vacasa and the proposed business combination. For more information, visit https://www.vacasa.com/press. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005402/en/

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[November 04, 2021] 1Kosmos Receives ISO/IEC 27001 Certification

1Kosmos, the only company that unifies identity proofing and passwordless authentication, today announced it has received ISO/IEC 27001 certification, which provides independent validation it has the people, processes and technology controls in place to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of its data assets. "Protecting our data and infrastructure from security threats is baked into everything we do," said Mike Engle, CSO for 1Kosmos. "As a standards-based organization we recognize the importance of ISO/IEC (News - Alert) 27001 certification and the confidence it gives our customers that we have implemented the most advanced controls to protect data assets in our possession." ISO/IEC 27001 is the leading international standar for information security, published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and in partnership with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). 1Kosmos achieved ISO/IEC 27001 certification following an independent assessment by BSI Group that it has met ISO/IEC's requirements for managing the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details and information entrusted by third parties.



1Kosmos unifies identity proofing and authentication for employees, customers and citizens to enable passwordless access to sensitive applications, data and resources. The company's BlockID products are FIDO2 and NIST 800-63-3 certified to perform an instant IAL2 certified identity verification without requiring the individual to be present at a physical location, and store user data encrypted in a private, permissioned blockchain. About 1Kosmos

1Kosmos helps companies unify identity proofing and authentication to provide workers, customers and citizens frictionless onboarding and passwordless access to data and services. The FIDO2 and NIST certified BlockID distributed digital identity platform creates a portable digital wallet for easy access to online services. It virtually eliminates the risk of identity impersonation, account takeover, and transaction fraud by combining strong authentication with strong identity enrollment. BlockID performs millions of authentications daily for some of the largest banks, telecommunications and healthcare organizations in the world. The company is funded by Forgepoint Capital with headquarters in Somerset, New Jersey. For more information, visit www.1kosmos.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005206/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Forcura Opens Registration for 2022 CONNECT Summit

Forcura, a healthcare technology company that enables safer patient care transitions and coordination, today opened registration for its annual CONNECT Summit, which takes place virtually Jan. 18-20, 2022. The 2022 CONNECT Summit's theme, "Earning a Seat at the Table: Are Post-Acute Providers Ready to Compete in a Value-Based Care Economy?" sets the table for discussions around three critical issues in post-acute care today: integrated and inclusive care coordination, actionable clinical intelligence and seamless connectivity among health industry providers. The Summit features a speaker lineup of several distinguished healthcare leaders, headlined by Alexandra Drane, U.S. entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Rebel Health and ARCHANGELS, who will deliver the keynote address. Drane has recently co-authored a range of studies evaluating the mental health of unpaid caregivers, and ARCHANGELS is continuously monitoring this population using its proprietary Caregiver Intensity Index tool. Some startling statistics from their research includes 56% of unpaid caregivers have clinically significant anxiety or depression, and that one in three caregivers have suicidal ideation, ten times the rate of non-caregivers. "My goal for speaking at Forcura's CONNECT Summit is to reach their audience of post-acute providers who may not realize hat many of their own employees - just based on demographics - are what we call 'double-duty caregivers,' or people employed as caregivers but who are in unpaid caregiving roles, too," says Drane. "While the staffing crisis in the health industry is making headlines nationally, we can help these very special employers recognize how to identify their double-duty caregivers and work with them both to address their employees' needs and match them to resources in the community."



"The future of the health economy will be driven by value-based care, and the CONNECT Summit will showcase how, and why, the post-acute care sector deserves a seat at the table of the most innovative ecosystems," said Forcura founder and CEO, Craig Mandeville. "We open our event with Alexandra Drane's 'Any Care Counts' keynote though because honoring and supporting all caregivers among us is perhaps the best investment any healthcare provider can make in being their competitive best and ultimately thriving in this post-pandemic world." As part of the three-day Summit, Forcura will also break down its forthcoming industry study, "2022: The State of Connectivity in Post-Acute Care," which will deliver data and insight into the increasing and emerging roles of post-acute providers across the entire care continuum. The study will be released in the weeks leading up to the Summit. In addition, Forcura will present the recipient of its first-ever Forcura CONNECT Award, honoring a post-acute care provider organization for their exemplary approach or achievement in empowering better patient care.

The Summit brings together several healthcare leaders each year to discuss trends, survey findings and crucial issues affecting the entire healthcare ecosystem. For more information about the 2022 CONNECT Summit, including the full schedule and speaker lineup, visit https://www.forcura.com/connect-summit. About Forcura Forcura, a leading healthcare technology company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, facilitates continuity of care via technology, analytics and a deep commitment to enabling better patient care. The Forcura suite of tools is powered by Forcura Connect, a proprietary framework for standardizing interoperability and integration among post-acute health care organizations, physicians, electronic health records (EHRs) and other supporting technology vendors. Through our technology and analytics solutions, we are a step closer every day to elevating the opportunities of post-acute care. The company has been recognized in 2021 as the Best Healthcare Technology Solution by the SIIA, ranked for the fifth consecutive year on the Inc. 5000 and is a top-20 ranked Fortune Best Small & Medium Workplaces.? For more information visit www.forcura.com, call 800-378-0596 or follow Forcura on LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005752/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Rockstar Capital Replaces Deposits with LeaseLock

LeaseLock, the world's leading insurtech provider for real estate, today announced that Rockstar Capital (Rockstar) has deployed LeaseLock across its entire portfolio to eliminate antiquated security deposits and deposit alternatives. Unlike deposit alternatives, LeaseLock is the only provider that fully replaces deposits across the portfolio. A Texas-based multifamily owner/operator with 4,000 units in the Houston area, Rockstar now gains improved ability to lower bad debt, significantly reduce deposit administration and regulatory risk, and offer an improved resident experience. This full portfolio deployment comes on the heels of major upgrades to the LeaseLock insurtech platform. LeaseLock clients like Rockstar now benefit from AI-powered lease insurance to analyze historical data to customize coverage by asset and expedite claims payments for property owners. Along with an average 92% resident adoption rate, LeaseLock is positioned to function as fast as cash. "We already wanted to rid our business operations from the stress and risk of security deposits. When Texas passed the security deposit legislation earlier this year, it was the catalyst we needed to select LeaseLock," sid Bill Nye, Director of Operations for Rockstar. "LeaseLock has engineered a product that ensures we remain compliant with all deposit legislation, while simultaneously delivering a solution that far exceeds deposit alternatives in the market today. Lease insurance delivers superior protection from bad debt, greater risk mitigation, and consistent compliance and facilitates an amicable move-out process because deposit disputes have been removed from the equation."



The new Texas security deposit law (SB 1783) went into effect September 2021 and differs from other state Renter's Choice laws in that it provides operators more flexibility and a choice to implement the right solution for business as well as for residents. Multifamily operators can opt for a deposit solution like lease insurance to meet regulatory requirements, mitigate risk, and accommodate renter desires for a more affordable move-in. LeaseLock provides a streamlined claims experience with more flexible deadlines and expedited processing, delivering claims payouts in as fast as 48 business hours. LeaseLock now also consolidates coverage under a single limit, removing many exclusions and aligning with standard operating procedures for move-outs to improve debt recovery.

"Rockstar was quick to identify the benefits of lease insurance - improved property protection and removal of the prohibitive front-end financial burden imposed on renters by traditional deposits and deposit alternatives," said Ed Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer for LeaseLock. "Asset protection shouldn't create a contentious relationship between operators and their residents. We're thrilled to work with companies like Rockstar that put the resident experience first." NMHC Top 50 operator LeaseLock clients include Greystar, Cushman & Wakefield, Avenue5 Residential, Harbor Group Management Co., LMC, and RKW Residential. Top ownership clients include Goldman Sachs, PGIM, ColRich, Strata, GoldCor, Olive Tree, TruAmerica, White Oak, Trinsic (News - Alert), and Goodman Real Estate. About Us LeaseLock is the world's leading insurtech platform for real estate. We provide lease insurance to eliminate security deposits from the rental housing industry-removing complexity for residents and operators while creating a superior financial performance for asset owners. Powered by artificial intelligence, we optimize coverage by property to better protect owners-resulting in industry-leading bad debt reduction. LeaseLock is deployed seamlessly within existing property software to increase lease conversion, drastically reduce deposit administration and regulatory risk, and improve the resident experience. LeaseLock has insured over $2 billion in leases backed by insurance rated A (Excellent) by A.M. Best. Our global investors include SoftBank Ventures Asia, Wildcat Ventures, Westerly Winds, Vertex (News - Alert) Ventures US, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, American Family Ventures, Moderne Ventures, and Mucker Capital. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005777/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Sysorex Acquires Balance of Up North Hosting Data Center and Increases Ethereum Mining Capacity

Flagship data center now 100% owned by Sysorex With Ethereum north of $4,500, Sysorex owns more than $5.5 million in Ethereum generated by its mining operations, predominantly at this data center HERNDON, Va., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sysorex (OTCQB: SYSX), the preeminent, U.S.-based, publicly traded Ethereum mining and technologies company, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of the remaining 50% of the upstate New York data center that houses the majority of its approximately 500 Gigahash of compute capacity, which is online, continuously mining Ethereum and securing the Ethereum Blockchain. Up North Hosting LLC, a data center owner and operator in upstate New York, was previously jointly owned by businesses controlled by Sysorexs recently appointed Chief Technology Officer, cryptocurrency industry veteran Brian Raymond, and Sysorex. Sysorex now owns 100% of the data center, which offers the Company immediate access to additional capacity to expand its mining operations. The purchase also included approximately 1000 GPUs, which presently increases mining capacity by approximately ten percent. The purchase price paid by Sysorex for the balance of the data center and GPUs was $1,000,000 and 1,000,000 shares of restricted Sysorex common stock. With a consolidated facility, Sysorex is well positioned to grow its Ethereum mining business with a better than industry average cost to support operations, said Brian Raymond, Chief Technology Officer of Sysorex. The large majority of Sysorex Ethereum mining systems are already deployed in this data center and Sysorexs acquisition of the balance of the data center and the additional GPUs brings additional mining capacity online today and positions Sysorex to add meaningful mining capacity in the near future. We are excited to complete this acquisition and further grow our operations, commented Wayne Wasserberg, CEO of Sysorex. Sysorex now owns 100% of its dedicated, Ethereum mining data center and nearly 11,000 GPUs outright. We now have more than $5.5 million in Ethereum in our treasury wallet at present value, and epect to mine more than 300 Ethereum per month on a go-forward basis, adding approximately $1.35 Million to our wallet monthly at the current market rate for Ethereum.



We are well positioned to further grow our Ethereum mining operations at this data center, which benefits from an excellent climate for mining and our competitive, renewable power purchase pricing, added Mr. Raymond. The flexibility of our facility and GPUs allows us to grow our Ethereum mining operations in the near term and expand in compute across the blockchain ecosystem. ABOUT SYSOREX, INC.

Sysorex, Inc. (Company) is a data center owner and operator and is the preeminent U.S.-based, publicly traded Ethereum mining and Ethereum Blockchain technologies company. Following the Companys merger with TTM Digital Assets & Technologies, Inc. (TTM), the Company shifted its primary business focus to the mining of Ether (ETH) and opportunities related to the Ethereum Blockchain. The Company currently owns and operates approximately 11,000 NVIDIA GPUs generating approximately 500 Gigahash of computing power, which GPUs include thousands of Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs). These GPUs are currently online and securing the Ethereum Blockchain and generating ETH around the clock with industry leading efficiency. In addition to the mining of ETH, the Company continues to operate its wholly owned subsidiary, Sysorex Government Services, Inc. (SGS), a business that provides information technology products, solutions and services to federal, state, and local government, including system integrators. The Company is also advancing strategies to leverage decentralized finance (De-Fi) and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) opportunities powered by the Ethereum Blockchain. Safe Harbor Statement All statements in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. While management has based any forward-looking statements included in this release on its current expectations, the information on which such expectations were based may change. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of the control of Sysorex, Inc. and its subsidiaries, which could cause actual results to materially differ from such statements. Such risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, but are not limited to, the fluctuation of economic conditions, the impact of COVID-19 on Sysorex's results of operations, Sysorexs ability to integrate the products and business from recent acquisitions into its existing business, the performance of management and employees, the regulatory landscape as it relates to privacy regulations and their applicability to Sysorexs technology. Other factors that are detailed in Sysorex's periodic and current reports available for review at sec.gov. Furthermore, Sysorex operates in a highly competitive and rapidly changing environment where new and unanticipated risks may arise. Accordingly, investors should not place any reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Sysorex disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, update or revise forward-looking statements. Investor Relations

Crescendo Communications, LLC

David Waldman/Natalya Rudman

Tel: (212) 671-1020

Email: [email protected]



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[November 04, 2021] Real Estate-Focused Fintech UpEquity Turns to Blend to Power Simpler Mortgage Process for Consumers

Blend (NYSE: BLND), a leader in cloud banking software, today announced a new fintech customer UpEquity, an Austin-based digital mortgage company assisting customers in making cash offers. UpEquity will use Blend's platform to help power seamless digital mortgage experiences as part of a broader effort to simplify the process of buying a home. This is particularly critical for consumers in today's ultra-competitive real estate market where many homes receive multiple offers and a delay in the loan process could mean losing out on a dream home. "In today's competitive housing market, a third of the offers are all cash, rendering traditionally financed offers significantly less competitive. UpEquity's Cash Offer provides the best of both worlds for buyers by making a cash offer on behalf of the buyer and providing a mortgage," said Tim Herman, CEO UpEquity. "By streamlining the borrower experience, Blend enables us to deliver a frictionless user experience that gets them into their dream home even faster." With the global fintech industry growing by an estimated 25 percent each year and nearly 10,000 total fintech companies in the U.S. alone, there is a race to bring new capabilities to market that address th financial needs of consumers. Fintechs offering iBuying, home search, and other real-estate services are increasingly adopting Blend's platform as the infrastructure powering their mortgage origination experience, so they can quickly add capabilities their customers need without undertaking huge development and maintenance costs.



"We view all of our customers as integral partners in building toward the future of financial services, and being a fintech ourselves, we know how much innovation fintechs like UpEquity can bring to the table in this industry," Nima Ghamsari, co-founder and head of Blend, said. "As digitally-enabled real estate finance firms become a more integral part of the landscape, we're excited to be a catalyst for bringing modern consumers the great experiences they expect." For more information on how Blend partners with financial services firms, please visit blend.com.

About UpEquity Co-founded by Tim Herman and Louis Wilson, UpEquity is on a mission to transform the homebuying experience by giving every homebuyer the opportunity to make a competitive, winning offer on their dream home. Its Buy with Cash program helps homebuyers make an all-cash offer that's four times more likely to be accepted than traditional mortgages. UpEquity's differentiated mortgage technology works at superhuman speed to provide a painless, fast mortgage experience for its customers. The company has experienced 500% year-over-year growth in revenue and carries a Net Promoter Score five times higher than the industry average. This further highlights the company's truly unique approach in an otherwise saturated market. UpEquity is headquartered in Austin and has locations around the country. Visit their website at upequity.com. About Blend Blend's cloud banking platform is designed to power the end-to-end consumer journey for any banking product, from application to close. Our technology is used by Wells Fargo (News - Alert), U.S. Bank, and over 310 other financial services firms to acquire more customers, increase productivity, and deepen relationships. Through our software, we enable our customers to process an average of more than $5 billion in loans per day, helping consumers get into homes and gain access to the capital they need to lead better lives. To learn more, visit blend.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005408/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Fresh Del Monte Commits to Reducing Scope 1, 2 and 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2030 Ahead of COP26

Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., one of the world's leading vertically integrated producers, distributors, and marketers of fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, announced today that its emissions reduction targets were approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) as consistent with the levels required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The 27.5% reduction target covers greenhouse gas emissions from the company's operations (scopes 1 and 2) and is consistent with reductions required to keep global warming to well-below 2C. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005109/en/ Fresh Del Monte Commits to Reducing Scope 1, 2 and 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2030 Ahead of COP26 (Photo: Business Wire) Fresh Del Monte's 12.3% reduction target for emissions from its value chain (scope 3) including emissions from purchased goods and services, upstream transportation and distribution, waste generated in operations and employee commuting meet the SBTi's criteria for ambitious value chain goals, meaning they are in line with current best practice. "We're thrilled to receive approval of our emissions reduction targets by the Science Based Targets initiative, which furthersour commitment to protect the health of our planet today and for future generations," said Hans Sauter, Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP of Research & Development at Fresh Del Monte. "The food system is a vital area for climate action and we hope to lead by example and inspire others in the industry to make the commitment toward this much needed change."



As the first global marketer of fruits and vegetables to commit to the initiative in 2020, this is a significant milestone for Fresh Del Monte as only a few agricultural producers have developed emissions reduction targets grounded in climate science. Last year, 63% of the company's capital expenditures benefitted climate action. To help manage its emissions, water, and waste, the company also created a proprietary new environmental action tool and database to track data facility by facility, covering 100% of Fresh Del Monte's global operations. Sauter will join industry leaders in a panel discussion on "Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture at the Center of Development Strategies - Challenges and Opportunities," at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Glasgow, United Kingdom.

You can learn more about Fresh Del Monte's sustainability efforts at freshdelmonte.com/sustainability and about the Science Based Targets initiative at https://sciencebasedtargets.org/. ABOUT FRESH DEL MONTE Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. is one of the world's leading vertically integrated producers, marketers and distributors of high-quality fresh and fresh-cut fruit and vegetables, as well as a leading producer and distributor of prepared food in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Fresh Del Monte markets its products worldwide under the DEL MONTE brand (under license from Del Monte Foods, Inc.), a symbol of product innovation, quality, freshness and reliability for over 135 years. The Company also markets its products under the MANN brand and other related trademarks. Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. is not affiliated with certain other Del Monte companies around the world, including Del Monte Foods, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Del Monte Pacific Limited, Del Monte Canada, or Del Monte Asia Pte. Ltd. Fresh Del Monte is the first global marketer of fruits and vegetables to commit to the "Science Based Targets" initiative. Fresh Del Monte Produce is traded on the NYSE under the symbol FDP. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005109/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Ricoh 5th Color activation plans deliver new revenue opportunities and unique applications

EXTON, Pa., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ricoh USA, Inc. today unveiled new activation plans for its 5th Color capabilities, empowering print providers to take an innovative, scalable approach to expand their business offerings. These field upgradeable plans, the first of their kind in the industry, enable printers to adjust to changing market conditions and evolving customer needs with six-month, one-year or permanent activation options. New RICOH Pro C7200X Series customers can choose to activate the 5th Color station at any time, immediately growing their capabilities while keeping capital expenditures, total cost of ownership, and financial barriers to initial investment low. "Ricoh's new activation plans allow flexibility based on business needs, and give our customers the chance to add more impact to their customers' jobs with up to seven available specialty toners," said Heather Poulin, Vice President, Commercial & Industrial Printing Marketing and Portfolio Management, Ricoh USA, Inc. "Our commitment to helping customers uncovr opportunities for growth with innovative, agile business practices that set them up for long-term success and find new ways to engage their customer base was the primary driver for developing these activation plans."



To simplify complexity for customers and increase flexibility, Ricoh has streamlined its RICOH Pro C7200X series to three models: the RICOH Pro C7200X, RICOH Pro C7210X and RICOH Pro C7210SX. Each comes standard with four-color print at an affordable price point, and customers can then choose to activate 5th Color capabilities based on their own business needs. Activating the 5th Color station is as simple as choosing an activation plan, and empowers printers to produce high-value, five-color applications that help them stand out from the competition, including:

Embellishing high-end jobs using gold and silver toners

Ensuring brand integrity and expanding color gamut

Reproducing realistic flesh tones on colored media using white toner

Enhancing print's impact using clear toner to make specific details pop

Creating unique, distinctive security patterns and watermarks with invisible red toner For more information on Ricoh, visit www.takealookatricohproduction.com or follow along and engage on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter using #LookAtRicoh or #5thColorFriday. | About Ricoh |

Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services that enable individuals to work smarter from anywhere.

With cultivated knowledge and organizational capabilities nurtured over its 85-years history, Ricoh is a leading provider of digital services and information management, and print and imaging solutions designed to support digital transformation and optimize business performance.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group has major operations throughout the world and its products and services now reach customers in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2021, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 1,682 billion yen (approx. 15.1 billion USD).

For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com  2021 Ricoh USA, Inc. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ricoh-5th-color-activation-plans-deliver-new-revenue-opportunities-and-unique-applications-301416646.html SOURCE Ricoh USA, Inc.

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[November 04, 2021] Henkel expands Researchers' World program in North America with online lesson series

STAMFORD, Conn., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Henkel, the company behind well-known brands such as Loctite, Dial, Schwarzkopf hair care, all laundry detergent, and Snuggle fabric softeners, will launch a limited virtual series of STEM education lessons for children, dropping on Monday, November 8, in commemoration of National STEM Day. The three-part online series includes topics on the process and importance of the three R's  Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, exploring the natural world of adhesives, and detecting the presence of acids and the effects on everyday life. The first lesson in the limited series will center around the three R's (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), and will premiere on Henkel's YouTube channel at 6 p.m., ET, on November 8, and available on demand afterward. Tune in on the second Monday of each month through January for additional lessons at 6 p.m. or view on demand afterwards. Participants can access the lesson and view the experiment materials needed on Henkel's website. Lessons are free and no registration is required. The series is part of Henkel's signature education initiative Henkel Researchers' World, launched in North America in spring 2021. The lessons, presented in partnership with Mill River Park Collaborative, are specifically tailored to children ages 8 to 10, and take a holistic approach toward teaching and learning by putting children in the role of an actual researcher. Since its inauguration at Henkel's Dusseldorf headquarters in April 2011, more than 62,000 children around the world have taken part in Henkel's Researchers' World programs. "We're pleased to continue to grow our Henkel Researchers' World program here in North America, to help inspire the next generation of scientists in our communities. STEM Day is the perfect opportunity to launch our new virtual series, expanding access opportunities online with unique science lessons each month," said Jenny Schiavone, Vice President Corporate Communications Americas, and co-executive sponsor of Henkel Researchers' World in North America. "We invite all parents, relatives, neighbors and friends, with children ages 8-10, to join in on this free and fun scientific educational opportunity." To learn more about Henkel Researchers' World, as well as Henkel North America's broader commitments to sustainability, please visit Henkel's dedicated sustainability webpage. About Henkel in North America

In North America, Henkel operates across its three business units: Adhesive Technologies, Beauty Care, and Laundry & Home Care. Its portfolio of well-known consumer and industrial brands includes Schwarzkopf hair care, Dial soaps, Persil, Purex, and all laundry detergents, Snuggle fabric softeners as well as Loctite, Technomelt and Bonderite adhesives. With sales of around 6 billion US dollars (5 billion euros) in 2020, North America accounts for 27 percent of the company's global sales. Henkel employs approximately 9,000 people across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.henkel-northamerica.com, and on Twitter @Henkel_NA. About Henkel

Henkel operates globally with a well-balanced and diversified portfolio. The company holds leading positions with its three business units in both industrial and consumer businesses thanks to strong brands, innovations and technologies. Henkel Adhesive Technologies is the global leader in the adhesives market  across all industry segments worldwide. In its Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care businesses, Henkel holds leading positions in many markets and categories around the world. Founded in 1876, Henkel looks back on more than 140 years of success. In 2020, Henkel reported sales of more than 19 billion euros and adjusted operating profit of about 2.6 billion euros. Henkel employs about 53,000 people globally  a passionate and highly diverse team, united by a strong company culture, a common purpose to create sustainable value, and shared values. As a recognized leader in sustainability, Henkel holds top positions in many international indices and rankings. Henkel's preferred shares are listed in the German stock index DAX. For more information, please visit www.henkel.com. Photo material is available at www.henkel-northamerica.com/press







Contact Brian Godette Phone 860-471-4762 Email [email protected]

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/henkel-expands-researchers-world-program-in-north-america-with-online-lesson-series-301416648.html SOURCE Henkel

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[November 04, 2021] LUMINANCE BRANDS announces expansion of Headquarters and Warehouse Distribution Center

CLEVELAND, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LUMINANCE BRANDS is pleased to announce a migration of headquarters and an expansion of its distribution operations in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. LUMINANCE BRANDS relocated its headquarters from Commerce, California to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 2020. As a result of rapidly increasing demand for its lighting and ceiling fan products serving the residential, multi-family and commercial markets in the Midwest and Southeast, LUMINANCE BRANDS has determined Northeast Ohio to be a very compelling location to expand its distribution operations. LUMINANCE BRANDS will be looking to fill many new positions for its warehouse and distribution center, in addition to adding staff in all functional areas including finance, supply chain management and inside sales. "The market for our industry leading products has been growing steadily for many years and now, with the pandemic behind us, we are looking to increase the size of the LUMINANCE BRANDS team in Northeast Ohio" said Mike Giorgi, CEO LUMINANCE BRANDS. "When we relocated to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 2020 the plan was to grow our employment in the area. We have always believed Cleveland to be a great place to be hedquartered and believe we will be the recipient of many talented people looking for a new home in this high growth industry" said Giorgi. "In addition, we are very excited to maintain our prominent role in the lighting industry by keeping our showroom at the Dallas Market Center, which signals our commitment to supporting our longstanding partners in the lighting showroom and distribution space."



About LUMINANCE BRANDS

Since 1951, LUMINANCE BRANDS has delivered distinctively decorative lighting alongside unparalleled quality and world-class service. LUMINANCE BRANDS offers a unique collection of light fixtures, ceiling fans and lighting components. The Sunset Lighting line provides high-quality, competitively priced indoor and outdoor lighting collections ideal for residential and multifamily markets. Sunset also provides a robust offering for both Commercial and Industrial applications. LUMINANCE BRANDS is also home to Concord Fans and recently launched kathy ireland HOME by LUMINANCE BRANDS Ceiling Fans. These provide innovative, customizable and energy efficient ceiling fans that exceed expectations for quality, performance and design - setting the industry standard for air comfort since 1895. Conveniently located in Ohio, Texas, St. Louis and California, LUMINANCE BRANDS takes pride in offering in-stock product with same-day shipping from all distribution centers. www.LuminanceBrands.com Media Contact:

[email protected]

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/luminance-brands-announces-expansion-of-headquarters-and-warehouse-distribution-center-301416620.html SOURCE Luminance Brands

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[November 04, 2021] The Asset (r)Evolution Podcast: A new voice on crypto-investing and blockchain

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Each week, your hosts from Arbor Digital provide educational opportunities for financial advisors and individual investors to gain knowledge in the emerging powerhouse that is digital asset investing. The Digital Asset (r)Evolution Podcast is your connection to the future of digital assets and an opportunity for ANYONE to #getoffzero. The Asset (r)Evolution Podcast: A new voice on crypto-investing and blockchain "This podcast is another way of us delivering on our promise to be transparent and open to the world. We want to show how committed we are to the growth of the Digital asset ecosystem, not just our product." In its debut episode, host Marc Nichols sits down with Griffin Knight, Head of Product at Blockchange . Griffin shares his personal journey into the digital asset space and how he developed the "crypto bug," as well as the evolution of Blockchange and why they focus on providing sophisticated solutions for financial advisors.



Griffin adds his unique technology perspective to the conversation as he and Marc discuss how advisors can evaluate the various options available across the full spectrum of digital assets. They also discuss what direct exposure really means in markets that operate 24/7, 365 - and why active management is so important. Upcoming episodes will include heavy hitters in the crypto-verse including Ethan McMahon of Chainalysis , Leslie Lamb, host of the podcast CryptoUnstacked , and Dan Weiskopf, co-portfolio manager of the BLOK ETF among others.

Episodes drop bi-weekly and listeners can tune in on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Amazon Music , or wherever you like to listen. Episodes are also available on Arbor Digital's website and can be watched on YouTube . If you have an Alexa device or the app installed on your smartphone, you can enable and listen by saying "Alexa, enable the Asset Revolution Podcast." Arbor Digital offers responsible digital asset management through a True Digital Asset SMA. We serve as a connection for RIAs and their clients to the digital asset ecosystem. Visit https://arbordigital.io to learn more. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-asset-revolution-podcast-a-new-voice-on-crypto-investing-and-blockchain-301416565.html SOURCE Arbor Digital

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[November 04, 2021] AgentSync Acquires Finvera to Streamline Broker Identity and Licensing Management

DENVER, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AgentSync, the company building modern tools and infrastructure to power the insurance industry, today announced the acquisition of Finvera, the industry's first cloud identity passport for licensed brokers for secure, universal login and verification across the industry. With the acquisition of Finvera's advanced identity verification and management platform, AgentSync continues to advance its goal of building the insurance industry's most trusted and comprehensive broker management solution. Cameron Nordholm, Finvera's founder, joins the AgentSync team as Head of Product. This acquisition positions AgentSync as the most trusted and comprehensive broker management solution for insurance. Finvera creates a faster, more secure verification process for both brokers and carriers. With Finvera, brokers take control over their identity and credentials by storing their personal data, state licenses, and carrier appointments in Finvera's secure cloud identity passport. Finvera's technology complements AgentSync's producer management and compliance solution to ensure the highest standards of compliance are met and maintained. "We're doubling down on our promise to develop the insurance industry's most comprehensive platform for producer management, and Finvera accelerates our efforts to improve he broker experience," said Niji Sabharwal, co-founder and chief executive officer of AgentSync. "In addition to improving the producer management process for carriers, MGAs, and agencies, AgentSync is committed to building tools that empower the brokers who play a critical role in the insurance ecosystem, ultimately driving efficiencies and raising the bar for distribution management technology across the entire industry."



For brokers, Finvera is a safe, instantaneous way to verify their identity and licensing, and to securely share their credentials and biographic information with supported agencies and carriers. With the option to authorize or revoke access to data, brokers gain unprecedented control over their personal information. Finvera helps eliminate the hassle of identity and licensing verification associated with antiquated onboarding procedures, furthering AgentSync's commitment to making brokers' lives easier. Ultimately, these tools give brokers even more time to spend doing what they do best  selling insurance. For carriers and MGAs, Finvera can act as an identity source of truth for producers and eliminates the need for carriers to request and safeguard brokers' personal identifiable information and state credentials. With Finvera, carriers have the ability to streamline previously manual processes and onboard producers faster, ultimately offering brokers a better experience and the ability to begin doing business faster.

With the acquisition, Finvera founder Cameron Nordholm joins the AgentSync team to lead company-wide product management. Nordholm, who founded Gainfully, a compliant content publishing and sales enablement platform for finance and insurance professionals, later founded Finvera after realizing that Gainfully's ability to quickly verify and authenticate professionals was a valuable and much-needed tool in the insurance and financial services industry. "Joining forces with AgentSync accelerates the Finvera vision to streamline identity verification and management. When two companies are so completely aligned on creating a better experience for hundreds of thousands of professionals, the synergy is incredible," notes Cameron Nordholm, founder of Finvera and head of product at AgentSync. "I'm thrilled to join the AgentSync team and bring this vision to life, empowering brokers to own their identities across the industry." About AgentSync

AgentSync enables rapid growth and scaled innovation for insurance carriers, agencies, and MGAs by offering modern tools for producer management. With its customer-centric design, seamless APIs, and automation, AgentSync's products reduce friction, increase efficiency, and maintain compliance, ultimately helping to improve the broker onboarding, contracting, licensing, and compliance processes. Founded in 2018 by Niranjan "Niji" Sabharwal and Jenn Knight and headquartered in Denver, CO, AgentSync was named one of Forbes Magazine's Cloud 100 Rising Stars in 2020 and an Insurtech Insights Future 50 winner. To learn more, reach out to [email protected] or visit AgentSync.io . View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/agentsync-acquires-finvera-to-streamline-broker-identity-and-licensing-management-301416649.html SOURCE AgentSync

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[November 04, 2021] Spectrio Matches Employee Fundraiser for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Spectrio, one of the nation's leading providers of comprehensive digital signage solutions, has matched the funds raised by more than 100 of its employees during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month this past September, bringing the Company's total donation to $10,000. The funds were split between Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the American Childhood Cancer Organization. As part of its "Spectrio (News - Alert) Cares" program, throughout the year Spectrio commits to supporting local and national charity organizations that align withthe Company's core values. Recipient organizations are nominated by employee request or immediate need and are selected by Spectrio's employee engagement team and senior leadership.



Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was selected as a recipient organization for the September fundraiser due to the personal experience one of Spectrio's employees had with a family member at the center. The American Childhood Cancer Organization was chosen as a recipient because of its commitment to improving the lives of children with cancer and providing crucial support and advocacy services for their families. "Team Spectrio has many causes that are near and dear to all our hearts. I'm thrilled that the Company has chosen to help our team make an even bigger impact by matching employee donations for many of those causes, including the fundraiser for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month," said Lynn Lamar, chief of staff at Spectrio. "At Spectrio, we know how important it is to be a reliable community partner, and we love being able to support organizations that align with our values so we can make a difference for those in need."

In the past, the Company has partnered with organizations such as Lemonade Day, Meals on Wheels, A Kid's Place of Tampa Bay, Feeding America, and Common Ground Foundation. Throughout the year, Spectrio also hosts school supply drives, toy drives, and food drives to benefit local people and organizations. During the month of November, the Company is hosting a virtual food drive, to benefit Feeding America. About Spectrio Spectrio is a leading provider of comprehensive digital signage solutions that empowers clients to transform their business locations into modern, dynamic destinations for customers and employees. Headquartered in Tampa, Fla., and founded in 2002, Spectrio serves over 150,000 franchise and enterprise locations in multiple industries, including quick-service restaurants, automotive, healthcare, and financial services. With supporting offerings geared towards Overhead Music, On-Hold Messaging, WiFi (News - Alert) Marketing, and more, Spectrio offers businesses a complete customer engagement solution at scale. For more information, visit www.Spectrio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005897/en/

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[November 04, 2021] INVESTIGATION REMINDER: The Schall Law Firm Announces it is Investigating Claims Against S&P Global Inc. and Encourages Investors with Losses to Contact the Firm

The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of S&P Global Inc. ("S&P Global" or "the Company") (NYSE: SPGI) for violations of the securities laws. The investigation focuses on whether the Company issued false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose information pertinent to investors. The DOJ announced an investigation on October 4, 2021, into suspected manipulation of energy pricing benchmarks published by Platts, a London-based part of S&P lobal. The federal government is probing what it believes to be manipulative behavior by traders submitting deal prices to Platts' price assessments for benchmarks including oil. Based on this news, shares of S&P Global fell on the same day.



If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall of the Schall Law Firm, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 2460, Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert) 90067, at 310-301-3335, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at [email protected].

The class in this case has not yet been certified, and until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member. The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005928/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Diversity Recruiting Startup Mogul Concludes Latest Investment Round

Mogul today announced that it has concluded its latest investment stage, and is well-funded for rapid growth. The HR Tech and diversity recruitment disruptor's largest investor in this round is the Japanese giant Softbank (News - Alert), which is Mogul's latest and largest investor to date. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005871/en/ "The confidence of Softbank and our other investors has been very exciting for us, because now we can position our already profitable business model for global growth," said Tiffany Pham, CEO and Founder, Mogul. (Photo: Business Wire) "The confidence of Softbank and our other investors has been very exciting for us, because now we can position our already profitable business model for global growth," said Tiffany Pham, CEO and Founder of Mogul. "We will continue to innovate the way that global leaders source, attract, and hire diverse talent through our market-leading diversity recruitment software and services." Although Mogul's policies do not allow disclosure of funding dollar amounts, Pham confirmed that the company is currently profitable, which investors like Peter Davis, former President of McGraw Hill Education, noted is "an outlier at this stage of scale and growth," and that it has raised multi-millions of dollars from investors. "Mogul's business model is brilliant. It is like Match.com for top employers and candidates," said Will Bunker, co-founder of what became Match.com and founding partner of venture capital firm GrowthX. "Employers use Mogul's patent-pending Talent Acquisition Software and Executive & Board Search Services to comprehensively access millions of quality diverse candidates. At the same time, those diverse candidates are using Mogul's inclusive online community to connect with each other and with employers, creating an entire ecosystem for diverse talent and top employers." Softbank joins Hearst Corporation (News - Alert), serial entrepreneur and investor Gary Vaynerchuk, Will Bunker, co-founder of Match.com, Michael Wolfson, co-founder of theKnot.com, Julian Brodsky, co-founder of Comcast (News - Alert), and thers who are backing the HR tech disruptor. Softbank's portfolio of investments includes other successful tech firms, including Doordash, Klarna, and Uber, many of which Softbank routinely refers to Mogul for diversity sourcing solutions, enabling Mogul to diversify their fellow portfolio companies' workforces, as they scale up to IPO.



Mogul's talent acquisition platform has disrupted the HR Technology industry with patent-pending software filters that allow recruiters to source top, diverse talent in several ways, including by gender, ethnicity, and veteran status, without limiting search results. Mogul's clients now have access to 400 million diverse candidates across 195 countries. No other talent acquisition platform offers this combination of abilities right now. The company's long-time clients include hundreds of top companies, including Fortune 1000 companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Bain & Co., The Hershey Company, The Honest Company, Nike, Shopify, Stanley Black & Decker (News - Alert), and United Healthcare.

"When I first met the team at Mogul, I was blown away by their incredible growth. Mogul is an amazing company that is having an astounding rise as a diversity recruitment and HR Tech startup," said Phil Toronto, SVP of Special Projects and Investing at VaynerX. "We always look forward to what the Mogul team will do next." Mogul's board of advisors includes TV host and bestselling author Suze Orman, who is aligned with Mogul's mission and values. "Mogul is the first board position I have ever accepted. I decided to work with Tiffany Pham and the Mogul team because they are working to make the world a better place for all," said Orman. About Mogul At Mogul, our vision is to unlock the world's greatest potential. We support diverse individuals and organizations to achieve their goals and cultivate meaningful success, through pioneering technology solutions and inclusive community. An innovator in the $200 billion global recruitment market, Mogul is a diversity recruitment platform and one of the world's largest resources for diverse talent. We partner with the Fortune 1000 and the world's fastest-growing companies to attract and advance top diverse talent - from entry-level to executive and board-level worldwide - through our market-leading software and executive recruitment services. Our long-time clients include hundreds of top companies and Fortune 1000 organizations such as Anheuser-Busch, Bain & Co., The Hershey Company, The Honest Company, Nike, Shopify, Stanley Black & Decker, and United Healthcare. With our rapid growth, Mogul supports, invests in, and provides free resources for the economic advancement of individuals in need globally, through international partners such as the United Nations. Mogul has been named one of the "100 Most Exciting Startups" by Business Insider, "Best Website for Finding Top Talent" by Inc. Magazine, "Top Website for Marketing Your Company" by Forbes, and "Top Online Learning Platform" by Entrepreneur. With market-leading HR technology, fast-growing executive recruitment services, and a diverse, inclusive online community of executive and board-level talent, Mogul is innovatively paving the way for diverse professionals and the companies that need them. About Tiffany Pham Tiffany Pham is the Founder and CEO of Mogul, the world's leading diversity recruitment company. She developed the first version of Mogul, which through its patent-pending inventions now enables recruitment access to more than 430 million women and diverse professionals across 195 countries. Tiffany is author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book "You Are a Mogul" (Simon & Schuster) and "Girl Mogul" (MacMillan). As a TV personality, Tiffany appears on the History Channel's "Machines that Built America" and "Toys that Built America" series, and was a judge on the TLC show "Girl Starter." She is the face of the 2021 Lexus advertising campaign "More Than Intelligence" and has appeared in campaigns for Amazon Audible, Naturalizer, Dell (News - Alert), Captain Morgan, Visa, LUNA, Bumble and bumble, and GoDaddy. Tiffany has been named one of Forbes "30 Under 30," Business Insider "30 Most Important Women Under 30," ELLE "30 Women Under 30 Who are Changing the World," Crain's "40 under 40," Entrepreneur "100 Most Powerful Women," and Inc. "Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs." She regularly speaks at the United Nations to present gender and ethnic diversity policy recommendations. Prior to founding Mogul, Tiffany was a media executive and producer, and worked at CBS, HBO, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs. She is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Business School. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005871/en/

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[November 04, 2021] MidAmerica National Bank Chooses 360 View's CRM for Next-Level Growth and Customer-Centric Service

360 View, a trusted provider of customer relationship management software for financial institutions, announced today their partnership with MidAmerica National Bank based in Canton, Illinois to implement their 360 View CRM Platform. In an effort to better equip team members, MidAmerica National Bank was looking for the benefits of a CRM, specifically the more accountable and efficient pipeline management, the increased capability in handling referrals, and the integration of communication across business divisions. Having rich customer relationship information available at the fingertips of every team member was a goal and a big motivator during their search for the right CRM partner. MidAmerica considered engaging the CRM product available through their core provider, but determined 360 View to be a more powerful solution while also integrating with the core software. Susan Miller (News - Alert), Vice President of Retail, explains why MidAmerica National Bank made the choice they did, "360 View provided a more robust system that would allow us to grow with CRM. We liked the fact that [they] work exclusively with banks and the majority of [their] leadership team are former bankers, so [they] understand where we're coming from." Miller also expressed the importance of MidAmerica's preparation before implementing such a significant tool, "We realized adoption would be our biggest struggle . . . we knew we needed CRM, but we had some steps that we needed to take before we were ready to implement something." She believes getting the culture right along with top to bottom buy-in helped clarify the need for a relationship management tool. With an industry-specific focus on financial institutions, 360 View understands the unique benefits that a CRM offers. David Acevedo, SVP National Sale Director of 360 View says, "Some community banks will say, 'we know our customers,' but they are missing the point. The core serves a unique purpose transactionally, but the touches aren't tracked anywhere. If you have a service-minded culture, you need a tool to help deliver that service." Jim Gillam, CRM Administrator and Business Development Coordinator at MidAmerica National Bank, agrees and elaborated on why he is excited about the new tool, "What really caught my eye was being able to track the service requests, any interactions with any customer, making personalized notes regarding that customer, even something as simple as this person is a Cardinals fan. That's just good to know. That is a good conversation starter. It provides a chance to have that deeper conversation, deeper interaction to build connections with each customer."



Founded in 1933, MidAmerica National Bank strives to make customers feel like they are not just customers, but MidAmerica family members. Miller adds, "When our customers walk through our doors, they see people and faces they know." MidAmerica National Bank is a 6-branch $525 million asset bank serving Canton, Cuba, Henry, Lewistown, Macomb and prides itself in local decision making and an employee team regularly involved in community organizations and events. Additional Resources

https://www.360view.com/ https://www.midnatbank.com About MidAmerica National Bank MidAmerica National Bank, which began as The National Bank of Canton in 1933 has six branches serving five cities in central Illinois. With over a half a billion dollars in assets, the bank employs over 120 staff members, is deeply engaged in service to their community and communicates their daily vision as "Your bank for life." About 360 View 360 View is the CRM platform developed for banks and credit unions, providing all the tools necessary to maximize their team's performance. The solution goes beyond CRM, allowing the user to automate marketing campaigns, use analytics to capitalize on cross-sell opportunities, gain insight into customer profitability, and track goals and incentives, all while providing richer relational experiences that are personalized to every customer's unique needs. 360 View was developed by bankers specifically for financial institutions and is celebrating 20 years of serving the financial industry. 360 View was recently named in the Top 10 Customer Experience Solution Providers by Banking CIO Outlook. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005912/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Cosaic and Reformis Partner to Champion Interoperability Across the Buy-Side

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cosaic , the workflow solution provider bringing smart desktop technology to the finance industry, today announces its strategic partnership with Reformis. Reformis is a technology consulting firm for the investment management industry. As a strategic Cosaic partner, Reformis will help bring interoperability to buy-sides by leveraging the power of Cosaic's smart desktop platform, Finsemble . "Interoperability is shifting from nice-to-have to imperative across the buy-side," says Dan Schleifer , Cosaic CEO. "From big asset managers to smaller hedge funds, interoperability is shifting from nice-to-have to imperative across the buy-side," says Dan Schleifer, CEO and co-founder of Cosaic. "It's Reformis guiding these firms and spearheading buy-side interoperability projects." Reformis is a trusted name in buy-side tech initiatives, from data management solutions to PMS and OMS implementations. Interoperability projects connect these solutions with other core applications for smart, intelligent workflows. A smart desktop platform like Finsemble is a necessary piece to this modernied buy-side desktop.



"Our partnership with Cosaic came from a problem we see often," says Brian Woodham, CEO of Reformis. "Clients want to integrate applications across the trading desk, but they lack the technical expertise and the tools to do this. Reformis can assist them with the implementation, and Finsemble provides the infrastructure. I'm confident the partnership will drive successful adoption of interoperability across the buy-side." With Finsemble, any type of applicationlegacy, new, in-house or third-partycan share data and connect for seamless workflows. Recently, buy-side firms have started to see the benefits of interconnected apps. Pictet Asset Management has enlisted Finsemble to overhaul fixed income and FX workflows . Buy-side IMS Charles River announced the firm is using Finsemble to enhance its partner ecosystem.

"Interoperability has proved successful for our buy-side clients," says Schleifer. "Its value is clear. We couldn't ask for a partner better than Reformis to bring this value to more buy-side desks." For more information on how Finsemble can help your firm connect disparate applications, visit www.finsemble.io . To connect with a Reformis representative about your next buy-side project, contact [email protected]. About Reformis (www.reformis.com)

Reformis provide Business and Financial Technical Consultancy to the Investment Management Industry. With offices in London, New York City, Boston, Los Angeles and Sydney, Reformis are domain experts for the buy-side, specializing in Data Management, Front Office Implementations and Regulatory and Client Reporting. Our purpose is to provide unparalleled guidance and support to financial institutions, as they navigate their way through regulatory frameworks, technology innovations and strive to minimize operational costs and maximize opportunities. Our depth in the buy-side means you can truly rely on us in times of change. For more information, please visit https://reformis.com. About Cosaic

Cosaic provides state-of-the art software for firms that want to promote ingenuity, evolve intelligently, and improve end-user efficiency. Products include ChartIQ, the world-renowned financial charting software, and Finsemble, the world's first no-code smart desktop platform. As a workflow solutions provider, Cosaic is revolutionizing the way people work with over 300 global customers around the world, including Yahoo Finance, E*TRADE, Charles River, and Fidessa. Founded in 2012 as ChartIQ, Cosaic is a fast-growing firm based in Charlottesville, VA with offices in New York, London, and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit https://cosaic.io . View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cosaic-and-reformis-partner-to-champion-interoperability-across-the-buy-side-301415943.html SOURCE Cosaic

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[November 04, 2021] Republic Airways Builds Maintenance Career Progression Program for AMT Training Programs

Republic Airways has launched a maintenance cadet program, enabling students at aviation maintenance schools to earn conditional job offers midway through their schooling for future careers at Republic Airways. Over the next twenty years, 626,000 aircraft technicians will be needed worldwide, according to Boeing's (News - Alert) Pilot and Technician Outlook for 2021. The aviation maintenance technician career is in high demand and offers a wide range of career growth opportunities in the airline industry. Republic Airways is proud to partner with several maintenance training schools in its hiring efforts, including Aviation Institute of Maintenance, National Aviation Academy, Purdue University (News - Alert), Vaughn College among others. "Creating viable pathways for maintenance students to reach their career goals is the genesis of this program. We seek to hire the best technicians for each of our maintenance bases, and this cadet opportunity will help us do just that," Dale Cash, Republic Airways Director of Maintenance, said. He added, "For students who participate in the program, it helps keep them motivated and brings the goal of building a career in the airline industry closer. And our partner schools can attract future students with this unique career pathway opportunity." Students training at a 2-year or 4-year A&P program are eligible to interview for the program upon taking and passing their FAA general exam at 400 hours of training for their Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) certification. Upon a successful interview with a Republic Airways recruiter, the individual is invited to join the RJet Maintenance Cadet Program in which they have a conditional offer of employment, a noncommittal nor contractually binding offer for a position at Republic Airways as an aviation maintenance technician. As an RJet Maintenance Cadet, students also have the opportunity to attend exclusive, all-expenses-paid events in Indianapolis at the airline's Headquarters, Training Center and Maintenance Hangar. As Cadets near the completion of their A&P certification, they will receive interview priority with Republic base management as well as priority selection of a training class date and base location. The new cadet program provides pportunity for a smooth transition from classroom to hangar at Republic Airways as candidates learn from and engage with Republic technicians throughout their cadet experience, especially while attending onsite visits to our Indianapolis facilities.



Republic Airways has a hiring need of over 500 aviation maintenance technicians within the next several years. With 11 maintenance base locations across the Midwest and Northeast, a fleet of more than 220 ultra-modern Embraer 170/175 aircraft and long-term contracts with its codeshare partners-American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines-Republic Airways offers unique and plentiful opportunities for career growth and development. The application for the RJet Maintenance Cadet Program can be found at www.rjet.com/careers/ by searching Maintenance Cadet or directly at this link: https://rjet.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/job/United-States/RJet-Maintenance-Cadet_JR-002814

Republic was among the first U.S. regional airlines to develop a conditional job offer opportunity for pilots through its RJet Cadet Program that was established in 2015. Today, the RJet Pilot Cadet program has nearly 500 participants and has matriculated approximately 700 student pilots into airline pilots within Republic Airways. "We know this model is successful for our pilot recruitment, allowing students to make an informed decision on their future career by having a job offer during their training and providing them opportunities to get to know our airline and our people within it," Sarah Scheffel, Republic Airways Manager of Talent Acquisition, said. "I look forward to working with maintenance students to provide a similar experience and see similar success with this program." About Republic Airways Inc. Founded in 1974, Republic Airways is one of the largest regional airlines in the U.S. Republic operates a fleet of more than 220 Embraer 170/175 aircraft and offers scheduled passenger service with daily flights to 100 cities in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and Central America. The airline provides fixed-fee flights operated under its codeshare partners' brands: American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express. The airline employs about 6,000 aviation professionals. Learn more at www.rjet.com. In May 2018, Republic opened the Leadership In Flight Training (LIFT) Academy, a commercial aviation pilot and maintenance technician training school in Indianapolis. LIFT uses state-of-the-art training technologies that combine flight, flight simulator, online and in-classroom training. Graduates have a defined pathway to a job as a pilot or aircraft technician at Republic. Learn more at www.flywithlift.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006045/en/

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[November 04, 2021] UBS Declares Coupon Payments on 5 ETRACS Exchange Traded Notes

UBS Investment Bank today announced coupon payments for 5 ETRACS Exchange Traded Notes (the "ETNs"), all traded on the NYSE Arca (News - Alert).







NYSE Ticker ETN Name and Prospectus Supplement* Coupon Valuation Date Ex-Date Record Date Payment Date Coupon Amount Payment Schedule Current Yield (annualized) HDLB** ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged US High Dividend Low Volatility ETN Series B 11/1/2021 11/12/2021 11/13/2021 11/22/2021 $0.1308 Monthly 9.11% SMHB** ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged US Small Cap High Dividend ETN Series B 11/1/2021 11/12/2021 11/13/2021 11/22/2021 $0.1422 Monthly 14.35% PFFL** ETRACS Monthly Pay 2x Leveraged Preferred Stock ETN 11/1/2021 11/12/2021 11/13/2021 11/22/2021 $0.2113 Monthly 10.67% CEFD** ETRACS Monthly Pay 1.5X Leveraged Closed-End Fund Index ETN 11/1/2021 11/12/2021 11/13/2021 11/22/2021 $0.2727 Monthly 10.50% MVRL** ETRACS Monthly Pay 1.5x Leveraged Mortgage REIT ETN 11/1/2021 11/12/2021 11/13/2021 11/22/2021 $0.2917 Monthly 12.40%

* The table above provides a hyperlink to the relevant prospectus and supplements thereto for each of our ETRACS ETNs, which are identified by their names. For more information on each ETRACS ETN, see "List of ETNs". ** "Current Yield (annualized)" equals the current Coupon Amount and the two immediately preceding Coupon Amounts, multiplied by four (to annualize such coupons), divided by the closing Current Indicative Value of the ETN on its current Coupon Valuation Date rounded to two decimal places for ease of analysis. The Current Yield is not indicative of future coupon payments, if any, on the ETN. You are not guaranteed any coupon or distribution amount under the ETN. Note: HDLB, SMHB and PFFL pay a variable monthly coupon linked to 2 times the cash distributions, if any, on the respective underlying index constituents, less withholding taxes, if any. CEFD and MVRL pay a variable monthly coupon linked to 1.5 times the cash distributions, if any, on the respective underlying index constituents, less withholding taxes, if any. Variations in the amount of monthly distributions will lead to large variations in the Current Yield as calculated above. As such, the Current Yield for each is not indicative of future coupon payments, if any, on these ETNs. About ETRACS ETRACS ETNs are senior unsecured notes issued by UBS AG, are traded on NYSE Arca, and can be bought and sold through a broker or financial advisor. An investment in ETRACS ETNs is subject to a number of risks, including the risk of loss of some or all of the investor's principal, and is subject to the creditworthiness of UBS AG. Investors are not guaranteed any coupon or distribution amount under the ETNs. We urge you to read the more detailed explanation of risks described under "Risk Factors" in the applicable prospectus supplement for the ETRACS ETN. UBS AG has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus and supplements thereto) with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC (News - Alert), for the offerings of securities to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus, along with the applicable prospectus supplement to understand fully the terms of the securities and other considerations that are important in making a decision about investing in the ETRACS. The applicable offering document for each ETRACS may be obtained by clicking on the name of each ETRACS identified above. You may also get these documents without cost by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. The securities related to the offerings are not deposit liabilities and are not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other governmental agency of the United States, Switzerland or any other jurisdiction. About UBS UBS provides financial advice and solutions to wealthy, institutional and corporate clients worldwide, as well as private clients in Switzerland. UBS is the largest truly global wealth manager, and a leading personal and corporate bank in Switzerland, with a large-scale and diversified global asset manager and a focused investment bank. The bank focuses on businesses that have a strong competitive position in their targeted markets, are capital efficient, and have an attractive long-term structural growth or profitability outlook. UBS is present in all major financial centers worldwide. It has offices in more than 50 regions and locations, with about 30% of its employees working in the Americas, 30% in Switzerland, 19% in the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 21% in Asia Pacific. UBS Group AG employs more than 72,000 people around the world. Its shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This material is issued by UBS AG and/or any of its subsidiaries and/or any of its affiliates ("UBS"). Products and services mentioned in this material may not be available for residents of certain jurisdictions. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Please consult the restrictions relating to the product or service in question for further information. Activities with respect to US securities are conducted through UBS Securities LLC, a US broker/dealer. Member of SIPC (http://www.sipc.org/). ETRACS ETNs are sold only in conjunction with the relevant offering materials. UBS has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus, as supplemented by the applicable prospectus supplement, for the offering of the ETRACS ETNs) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read these documents and any other documents that UBS has filed with the SEC for more complete information about UBS and the offering to which this communication relates. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, you can request the prospectus and applicable prospectus supplement, by calling toll-free (+1-877-387 2275). In the US, securities underwriting, trading and brokerage activities and M&A advisor activities are provided by UBS Securities LLC, a registered broker/dealer that is a wholly owned subsidiary of UBS AG, a member of the New York Stock Exchange and other principal exchanges, and a member of SIPC. UBS Financial Services Inc. is a registered broker/dealer and affiliate of UBS Securities LLC. 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UBS specifically prohibits the redistribution or reproduction of this communication in whole or in part without the prior written permission of UBS and UBS accepts no liability whatsoever for the actions of third parties in this respect.  UBS 2021. The key symbol, UBS and ETRACS are among the registered and unregistered trademarks of UBS. Other marks may be trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved. 1 Individual investors should instruct their broker/advisor/custodian to call us or should call together with their broker/advisor/custodian. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006030/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Pioneer Announces Purchase of CryptoPunk 8869

Pioneer Media Holdings Inc. ("Pioneer" or the "Company") purchased CryptoPunk 8869. https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks/details/8869 Accessories: - blue bandana - muttonchops - regular shades. "We are excited about Web3" said Mike Edwards, CEO of Pioneer. "The real question is how do you dive in? We looked for guidance from the community. Answer = Step 1 is buy a JPEG!" Transaction Details Pioneer acquired CryptoPunk 8869 for 100.25 ETH (US$ 433,703.58). The Company provides the following update on what it sees trending in this space. Web3 is otherwise referred to as the ownership economy because the token economic models reward participation and creativity. NFTs in particular enable coordination around the shared ownership of art and beyond; an investment in this space is more about joining a community than investing in a traditional company and this is why Pioneer decided to acquire a piece of the most iconic collection to date, the CryptoPunk. NFTs have captured the spirit of the private markets. In the past month, SoRare (private) and Dapper Labs (private) have raised US$680M at a US$4.3B valuation and US$250M at a US$7.6B valuation respectively. In addition, Axie Infinity maker Sky Mavis (private) and Animoca (private) respectively raised US$152M at a US$3B valuation and US$65M at a US$2.2B valuation. Cumulatively that implies +US$1B in fresh capital at a combined market cap of +US$17B for four NFT privates in under a month. NFT sales in Q3 hit US$10.7B up from US$1.3B in Q2 and from US$28M in the same quarter of 2020 While meme stocks have captured the spirit of the public markets. In 2021 'Meme stocks' like GameStop and AMC were completely changed fueled by retail investor euphoria driven by Redit memes. GameStop raised ~US$1.1 billion after surging +1,200% and AMC raised ~US$1.2 billion driven by the share price appreciation through Reddit memes.



CryptoPunks are one of the primary NFT status symbols in crypto. A CryptoPunk owner refused a US$9.5 million bid for his asset in October, a four year old CryptoPunk 1422 was just sold for US$2 million, and recently a half a billion dollar transaction enabled by a flash loan for Punk 9998 8869, a Punk, a NFT, and a meme stock: Pioneer combines the meme stock and NFT element by becoming the first publicly tradable company to embody a CryptoPunk and allow for fractionalized equity ownership of that CryptoPunk. Through equity ownership in Pioneer, investors will become fractional owners of Punk 8869, a public markets first.

The Pioneer Plan Pioneer will be the first true listed Web3 investment company focused on NFT gaming and assets. Building off of its success in mobile gaming (LEAF), eSports (GILD/Dynasty/Paidia) and its foundational investment in NFT Investments.

Pioneer will invest and acquire the best brands, teams and assets in the space. About Pioneer Media Holdings Inc. Pioneer is the first publicly traded issuer that actively invests in a diversified portfolio of early-stage to mid-level companies in Web3 including NFTs and NFT gaming, together with investments in esports, and mobile gaming. Pioneer's management team leverages its global network to democratize access to investments not normally available to the retail investor community. The current Pioneer portfolio includes investments such as: Leaf Mobile Inc. (TSX: LEAF), a leading free-to-play mobile games group; Guild eSports plc (LON: GILD), a global eSports business headquartered in London whose lead investor is David Beckham; Dynasty eSports Pte Ltd, creators of the world's leading white-label Gaming Ecosystem Management solution, partnering exclusively on a B2B basis with Tier 1 telco's and large media organisations; NFT Investments plc, a London based investment company focused on non-fungible tokens ("NFTs"), and Kodoku Studios Ltd., London based team that stands at the forefront of the exciting new NFT gaming genre Pioneer provides capital, experience, and support to these emerging market leaders while building shareholder value. Additional information about Pioneer is available at www.sedar.com. ON (News - Alert) BEHALF OF PIONEER MEDIA HOLDINGS INC. "Mike Edwards" CEO & Director Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor any Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Statements Forward Looking Statements This news release may contain "forward-looking" statements and information relating to the Company, the funds to be raised, and the use of any such funds that are raised, that are based on the beliefs of Company management, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Company management. There is no assurance the Company will be able to complete the placement on the terms as outlined above, or at all. The Company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, except as required by law. The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006125/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Navy Federal Credit Union Puts Spotlight on Veterans and Military Family Appreciation

In honor of November being Veterans and Military Families Month, Navy Federal Credit Union is on a mission to celebrate the inspiring service of veterans and their families. Along with always having access to the credit union's great rates and product offers, Navy Federal's force of nearly 11 million members will have the opportunity to get involved by showing appreciation and giving back to veterans. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006126/en/ Navy Federal's force of nearly 11 million members will have the opportunity to get involved by showing appreciation and giving back to veterans. (Graphic: Business Wire) Running through November 14, the credit union is hosting a #GratitudeMission contest to honor veterans. Participants will need to post a photo on social media using the hashtag or submit online at gratitudemission.navyfederal.org to be entered to win several prizes, one of them being a donation in honor of their veteran to the nonprofit, U.S.VETS.*



"Nearly 250,000 servicemembers leave active duty each year. This transition can be challenging for veterans and their families, which is why we're committed to providing useful resources and meaningful support," said Vice President of Membership at Navy Federal, Carrie Foran Sepulveda. "We're proudly partnering with U.S.VETS, as we have for over a decade, to celebrate, honor, and support our veterans." For nearly a decade, Navy Federal's branch teams across the country have supported U.S.VETS in its focus on workforce development, ending veteran homelessness, mental health and wellness, and individualized support to help veterans rebuild and thrive.

"We're both on a mission to take care of veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much for our country," said Steve Peck, a Marine Corps veteran and President and CEO, U.S.VETS. "Navy Federal Credit Union understands that every veteran deserves to live with dignity and independence, and because of their support we continue to provide vital services to help lift up veterans and get them the resources they need the most." Follow Navy Federal on social media or visit navyfederal.org/membership/veterans.html for more information. About Navy Federal Credit Union: Established in 1933 with only seven members, Navy Federal now has the distinct honor of serving over 10 million members globally and is the world's largest credit union. As a member-owned and not-for-profit organization, Navy Federal always puts the financial needs of its members first. Membership is open to all branches of the armed forces and their families. Dedicated to its mission of service, Navy Federal employs a workforce of over 20,000 and has a global network of 348 branches. For more information about Navy Federal Credit Union, visit navyfederal.org. Federally insured by NCUA. Equal Opportunity Employer. About U.S.VETS: U.S.VETS is the largest non-profit organization with boots on the ground to combat America's veteran homeless crisis head-on. Our comprehensive approach provides housing, counseling, career, and supportive services to help our veterans rebuild and thrive. Today, in the United States, nearly 38,000 veterans experience homelessness, accounting for approximately 9% of all homeless adults. They deserve our support. With 32 sites across 11 regional locations in California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, Texas, and Washington D.C., we are uniquely positioned to offer temporary and permanent housing solutions and comprehensive services to veterans and their families nationwide. *Terms and conditions apply. Visit gratitudemission.navyfederal.org for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006126/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Government of Canada invites small businesses to develop a cost-competitive fiber optic sensing technology

The National Research Council of Canada is seeking a data acquisition system for fiber Bragg grating distributed sensing arrays OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada The Government of Canada is looking for innovative ways to help Canadian small businesses succeed. Today, Innovative Solutions Canada launched a new challenge led by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) to build on their innovative ultrafast laser inscription of fiber Bragg grating technology. Since current fiber Bragg grating sensor interrogation methods are limited in the number of sensing elements that can be measured, the NRC is seeking the demonstration of a data acquisition system that can measure up to thousands of sensors present on distributed fiber optic sensing arrays on a single optical fiber. This technology is used in many sectors of the Canadian industry, including structural health monitoring of civil structures (e.g. bridges, hydroelectric dams, wind turbines), energy production and environmental monitoring (e.g. oil pipelines, gas turbines) and green technologies (e.g. electric vehicle battery performance). Quotes "We are proud to support the growth of small businesses by funding their innovative ideas. This Innovative Solutions Canada challenge will foster innovation and mobilize entrepreneurs while helping the National Research Council of Canada unleash the full potential of its ultrafast laser inscription technology."

 The Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry "Canadian small businesses are innovative, industrious and resilient, and our government will take every opportunity to invest in their long-term competitiveness and growth. That is why I encourage small businesses across the country to take up this exciting challenge to help develop next-eneration Canadian fiber optic sensing technology."





"The National Research Council of Canada advances knowledge and supports innovative Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises in addressing key challenges across a variety of sectors. By demonstrating a data acquisition system with the ability to integrate a multitude of sensing elements present on fiber optic sensing arrays and optical fibers, we can improve our ability to monitor new technologies."

 Genevieve Tanguay, Vice-President, Emerging Technologies, National Research Council of Canada

Quick facts Small businesses will have until December 16 to apply to the challenge.

Through the Innovative Solutions Canada program, government departments are inviting small businesses to come up with a new innovative product, service or solution that answers a specific challenge they face. Winning small businesses may receive up to $150,000 to refine their research and development and, if accepted into phase 2, receive up to $1 million to develop a working prototype. The government can then act as a first customer, helping these businesses commercialize their innovations, scale up their business and create good middle-class jobs across Canada .

to refine their research and development and, if accepted into phase 2, receive up to $1 million to develop a working prototype. The government can then act as a first customer, helping these businesses commercialize their innovations, scale up their business and create good middle-class jobs across . Innovative Solutions Canada is a key component of the government's Innovation and Skills Plan, a multi-year plan to make Canada a global innovation leader and prepare Canadians to succeed in tomorrow's economy.

a global innovation leader and prepare Canadians to succeed in tomorrow's economy. There are hundreds of programs and services that offer everything from funding to expert advice in order to help businesses innovate, create jobs and grow Canada's economy. Using a simple, story-based user interface, the Innovation Canada platform can match businesses with the most fitting programs and services in about two minutes. Associated links Innovative Solutions Canada Challenges

Interrogator for Fiber Bragg Grating Distributed Sensing Arrays Stay connected Find more services and information at Canada.ca/ISED. Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on social media.

Twitter: @ISED_CA, Facebook: CanadianInnovation, Instagram: @cdninnovation and LinkedIn SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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[November 04, 2021] Economic Development Council of Livingston County Recognizes Business Advancements, Pivots, Jobs, and Investment at Annual Meeting

At its annual meeting, the Economic Development Council of Livingston County (EDCLC) celebrated business growth in the county and hosted an insightful panel discussion around the county's workforce demands and opportunities. Ann Arbor SPARK president and CEO Paul Krutko presented the audience with an update on COVID-related recovery funding for businesses as well as the economic impact of EDCLC's collaboration with SPARK. "Since the start of the pandemic, Ann Arbor SPARK has distributed more than $3.2 million in grants to over 330 business owners here in Livingston County," Krutko said. "While administering these funds, Ann Arbor SPARK continued to deliver the business support services that are core to its mission, providing valuable educational programming as well as assistance to companies that needed to attract job seekers." Remarking on the long-term results of Ann Arbor SPARK's partnership with EDCLC, he added, "The success of our collaborative efforts is evident over the past nine years, over which time our work resulted in 51 business development projects that collectively contributed $325 million in new investment and 1,300 jobs to the local economy." In addition to a presentation about EDCLC's work with Ann Arbor SPARK, the annual meeting featured an informative panel discussion on the current state of talent in Michigan. Panelists included: Dr. Alan Drimmer, president of Cleary University

Shamar Herron, executive director of Michigan Works! Southeast

Andrea Ferrario, senior director, human resources at Ascension

Dr. Michael Hubert, superintendent of Livingston Educational Service Agency

Suzy Murphy, vice president of Work Skills



Project of the Year FT Techno of America, or FTTA, operates an automotive vehicle evaluation center on proving grounds spanning approximately 950 acres in Handy Township. The facility is dedicated to engineering, design, R&D, testing and prototype activities to support FTTA's parent company Aisin, and its affiliates in North America. Since the facility opened in 2005, FTTA has continued to invest in, and expand on their capabilities and services at the proving grounds. In 2021, FTTA constructed a 1.4 mile handling course, as well as an area of special surfaces for evaluating vehicle ride comfort, noise, harshness, and vibration.

The Talent Innovator Award honored the Manufacturing Collaborative, a joint effort between Ann Arbor SPARK and the Greater Area Brighton Chamber of Commerce. This group of nine employers meet on a regular basis to share data and ideas in an effort to create a pipeline of talent for critical jobs in the county. Recently, the program expanded when the Collaborative's champion employer, Work Skills Corporation, created a curriculum using virtual reality and computer-based online training methods to expedite workforce training for critical skilled trades positions. About Ann Arbor SPARK Ann Arbor SPARK, a non-profit organization, is advancing the region by encouraging and supporting business acceleration, attraction and retention. The organization identifies and meets the needs of business at every stage, from startups to large organizations. Ann Arbor SPARK collaborates with business, academic, government, and community investor partners. For more information, please call (734) 761-9317 or visit www.AnnArborUSA.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006213/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Handcrafted Next-Generation Audio System by EDGE Sound Research Creates Captivating Retail Experience

RIVERSIDE, Calif., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The last format shift in audio was 34 years ago with surround sound and people are hungry for a new experience. EDGE Sound Research , an audio technology startup based out of California, is ready to deliver. By introducing a patent-pending audio format called Experiential Audio that allows people to both hear and feel sound in high fidelity, EDGE Sound Research is opening new possibilities in sound experiences. The Co-Founder of EDGE Sound Research, Ethan Castro, invented this new format of sound reproduction by learning how to compensate for his hearing loss. Working as a hard-of-hearing audio engineer in Los Angeles, Ethan touches the diaphragms of speakers to feel the frequencies allowing him to have a more intimate relationship with sound. To share this experience with others, EDGE Sound Research joined up with J'Bez , a barbershop that just opened a new loation on campus at University of California, Riverside (UCR). Since EDGE Sound Research started at UCR, both founders saw this as an opportunity to share the next evolution in sound experiences with their alma mater.



The barbershop features a handcrafted audio system by EDGE Sound Research that provides an immersive and full-bodied sound experience that captivates the interest of customers as soon as they walk into the shop. Sharing his vision for the retail sound experience, Ethan explains,"We wanted to create a one-of-a-kind experience for them that allowed their customers to enjoy incredible high fidelity sound wherever they were in the facility, but still be able to enjoy a conversation with their talented barbers. We also wanted to give a balls-to-the-wall experiment of what is capable, so we hooked them up with the worlds most brutal custom sound bar featuring 8 balanced mode radiators (BMR) which, combined with our ResonX-powered custom couch, delivers up to 800 watts of full-range tactile and audible experience to unsuspecting clients waiting for their cut."

Sharing his thoughts on the new sound experience, Co-Founder of J'Bez, Gerson Lemus, commented, "It's one of the best features of our new shop and we love explaining it to people. The reaction we get when customers experience it for the first time is our favorite part. It's exciting knowing we have an exclusive audio system from EDGE Sound Research in our business." EDGE Sound Research looks forward to creating more sound experiences at other retail locations while gearing up to launch public sales of their first product, ResonX. Media Details

Company: EDGE Sound Research

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://edgesoundresearch.com/ View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/handcrafted-next-generation-audio-system-by-edge-sound-research-creates-captivating-retail-experience-301417120.html SOURCE EDGE Sound Research

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[November 04, 2021] Marcus & Millichap, Inc. Expands Board of Directors

Marcus & Millichap, Inc. (the "Company", "Marcus & Millichap", "MMI") (NYSE: MMI), a leading national brokerage firm specializing in commercial real estate investment sales, financing, research and advisory services, today announced that it has expanded the Board of Directors with the election of Ms. Collete English Dixon, effective November 2, 2021. She will also serve as a member of the Board's Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006295/en/ Collete English Dixon (Photo: Business Wire) George Marcus, Marcus & Millichap's Chairman stated, "We are pleased to welcome Collete to the Board of Directors. She brings extensive commercial real estate industry experience and perspective having served in executive positions with impressive private and public companies. Her knowlede and expertise will be a beneficial resource to the Company as we continue our efforts to grow and enhance the services we provide to our clients."



Collete currently serves as Executive Director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate, Roosevelt University in Chicago. She previously held various key officer and management roles at PGIM Real Estate/Prudential Real Estate Investors (PREI), which is a business unit of Prudential Financial. In her role as Executive Director/Vice President of transactions from 1996 to 2016, as co-leader of PREI's national investment dispositions program, she managed a number of real estate professionals and oversaw the sale of investment properties throughout the US. Prior to her role in dispositions, Collete was responsible for sourcing wholly owned and joint venture real estate investment opportunities covering all property types, including office, rental and for-sale multi-family, hotel, industrial and retail properties. Her experience also includes property development and asset management. In addition to her corporate roles, Collete is a member of various private real estate boards and has served as President of CREW Network, Chair of the CREW Network Foundation, and President of CREW Chicago.

About Marcus & Millichap, Inc. Marcus & Millichap, Inc. is a leading national brokerage firm specializing in commercial real estate investment sales, financing, research and advisory services. As of December 31, 2020, the Company had 2,097 investment sales and financing professionals in 84 offices who provide investment brokerage and financing services to sellers and buyers of commercial real estate. The Company also offers market research, consulting and advisory services to clients. Marcus & Millichap closed 8,954 transactions in 2020, with a sales volume of approximately $43.4 billion. For additional information, please visit www.MarcusMillichap.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006295/en/

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[November 04, 2021] As COVID "Vax-Or-Test" Rule Launches, TESTD Demos Its OSHA COVID Mandate Solution

MIAMI, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TESTD Inc, the medical data management company, has reviewed OSHA's just-filed Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for COVID, and announced its platform  TESTD  meets all the requirements in a single software solution. As OSHA's COVID mandate takes effect, companies have TESTD's system to manage their data needs. "We've been expecting this, and are prepared to on-board companies that must comply with the rule," said Nicholus Andrews, CEO of TESTD. "In addition to the mandate to get everyone vaccinated or submit to weekly tests, OSHA is also requiring back-up and proof, which could be an overwhelming clerical burden without TESTD's software in place." In addition to handling testing and vaccination appointments, executive overview and management, a complete messaging system regarding re-tests and boosters, a mechanism for uploading vaccine cards, and minimal click reporting, TESTD also uses blockchain and other technologies to secure and ecrypt all data, making it compliant with the new federal demands.



On the same platform, TESTD also enables individuals to request medical or religious exemptions for review. A complete system

In Washington D.C. for meetings with federal regulators and others, Andrews pointed out that TESTD offers the only complete digital solution that is also HIPAA compliant and awarded ISO certification for integrity, security, and privacy (ISO 9001:2015, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, and ISO/IEC 27701:2019). "OSHA has given companies a few weeks to ramp up, but once the rules are firmly in place, any company with 100 employees or more is required to comply," he said. "Our software puts self-service scheduling in the hands of employees, lets an authorized manager maintain an overview of each individual's status, and holds the data forever. Any COVID-related data need the federal government could want, TESTD delivers." Should company needs or OSHA mandates change, TESTD's status as a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform positions it to deal with the unpredictable COVID pandemic and any official measures to help stop it. Even before the OSHA mandate, TESTD had proven itself to be an effective tool in saving companies money and reducing the time it takes to check-in individuals, manage their COVID response, and issue reports to industry or governmental regulators. With the new guidelines extending COVID management to virtually every company of any size, TESTD provides a repository for all the mandated information. The way TESTD encrypts data puts it in sharp contrast with systems deployed elsewhere in the world where health information is delivered to a central authority and security has been debated. How TESTD works An individual self-schedules a test or vaccination from a mobile device, or uses the device to record information regarding an exemption. TESTD's encrypted platform secures and protects that person's data and test result. The TESTD dashboard gives the manager a complete view of the workforce and patient population, allows for easy revisions to protocols and appointments, and gives that person the ability to issue reports in real time. A tablet interface gives an operator at a site the ability to check-in someone for testing or a vaccination and maintain custody of the data, while limiting that operator from accessing any protected health information. As companies face the new reality of testing hundreds and thousands of individuals or recording their vaccination and exemption statuses, TESTD is prepared, said Andrews. "We all want to stay open. We need to stay safe. TESTD can help you do both," said Andrews. More information is available at www.TESTD.com .

Inquiries: Alan Goodman, [email protected], 646-543-ALAN (2526) TESTD Inc. provides electronic health record (EHR) technology, based in Miami, FL. It was founded in March 2020. TESTD's initial product is its platform TESTD, which automates medical test and vaccination scheduling, manages medical data, and organizes the data for easy reporting. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/as-covid-vax-or-test-rule-launches-testd-demos-its-osha-covid-mandate-solution-301417136.html SOURCE Testd

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[November 04, 2021] DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi Appointed to Nareit Advisory Board of Governors

DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE: DBRG) ("DigitalBridge" or the "Company") today announced that Marc Ganzi, President and Chief Executive Officer of DigitalBridge, has been appointed to the Nareit 2022 Advisory Board of Governors. Nareit, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, is the worldwide representative voice for REITs and real estate companies with an interest in U.S. real estate. "I am honored to have been elected to Nareit's Advisory Board of Governors and look forward to working with other members to highlight the important role REITs play, now and into the future, in creating jobs, driving economic activity, revitalizing communities and building much needed digital infrastructure," Mr. Ganzi said. "As a unique digital REIT with the operating DNA and access to institutional capital that positions us to execute globally on converging the digital infrastructure ecosystem, DigitalBridge is laying the foundation today for tomorrow's data-driven economy." Nareit President and CEO, Steven A. Wechsler, said, "Nareit brings together diverse groups of professionals who share a common interest in real estate investment. We are pleased to welcome Marc anzi, a leader in the digital real estate sector with more than two decades of experience, to our Advisory Board of Governors."



About DigitalBridge DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG) is a leading global digital infrastructure REIT. With a heritage of over 25 years investing in and operating businesses across the digital ecosystem including towers, data centers, fiber, small cells, and edge infrastructure, the DigitalBridge team manages a $38 billion portfolio of digital infrastructure assets on behalf of its limited partners and shareholders. Headquartered in Boca Raton, DigitalBridge has key offices in Los Angeles, New York, London and Singapore. For more information on DigitalBridge, visit www.digitalbridge.com

About Nareit Nareit serves as the worldwide representative voice for REITs and publicly traded real estate companies with an interest in U.S. real estate. Nareit's members are REITs and other real estate companies throughout the world that own, operate, and finance income-producing real estate, as well as those firms and individuals who advise, study, and service those businesses. Nareit's focus is to broaden and deepen REIT ownership to help a growing set of everyday American investors enjoy the benefits of holding real estate in a well-diversified portfolio, while increasing capital sources that invest in America's future. Nareit is the exclusive registered trademark of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, Inc., 1875 I St., NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20006-5413. Follow us on REIT.com. Copyright 2021 by Nareit All rights reserved. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006351/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Paramus Family Law Firm Annouces New Firm Partner

The law firm of Bozanian McGregor, LLC is proud to announce Stephanie O'Neill as its newest partner. O'Neill graduated from Rutgers Law School in 2014 and has been practicing law for over six years. For the last four years she has been a part of Super Lawyers, a rating service of outstanding lawyers who attain a high level of peer recognition and professional achievement. Initially, O'Neill was interested in focusing her efforts on international law and human trafficking, but soon realized her true calling was in family law. "When pertaining to family law, I am most passionat about being able to help clients get through the difficult process of divorce. In particular, anything relating to custody and family time. I grew up with a single mom and I saw firsthand how she struggled with custody and parenting issues," O'Neill explains.



O'Neill has been an associate with Bozanian McGregor, LLC for the past year, however she met the other two partners of the firm, Elton Bozanian and Matt McGregor, a year and a half prior to joining the firm at a New Jersey Bar Association conference in Atlantic City. "From the moment we met, the three of us clicked and they wanted me to be a part of their firm," O'Neill shares. Bozanian and McGregor were looking to grow the firm and wanted to cultivate new attorneys, as well as expand into other areas of expertise such as mediation. They knew O'Neill would be the perfect fit. The decision to later promote O'Neill to partner was an easy one. Bozanian and McGregor knew she would be the ideal candidate to take on more responsibility within the firm and could help guide and mentor new attorneys.

"I'm young and it's exciting to be in this position at this time in my life. A lot of lawyers don't become partners until later in their careers." says O'Neill. "Being young and a woman, a lot of times you get looked down on, especially in this profession," but O'Neill's age is a strength not a weakness. Being from a younger generation, O'Neill brings a lot to the table as she can help the firm adapt to changing technologies, especially in the time of COVID-19. Also coming from a diverse background, she understands a lot of client's perspectives and really strives to relate to them on a personal level. Bozanian and McGregor knew that "promoting Stephanie to partner was an easy decision for us, from the beginning the value and benefit she could bring to the firm was clear and we can't wait to see more of the amazing things she can do from here." View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006354/en/

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[November 04, 2021] DCM to Announce Third Quarter 2021 Results Tuesday, November 9, 2021

DATA Communications Management Corp. (TSX: DCM (News - Alert)) ("DCM" or the "Company"), a leading provider of marketing and business communication solutions to companies across North America, will issue its third quarter results for fiscal 2021 the evening of Tuesday, November 9, 2021. The Company will host a conference call and webcast on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. Richard Kellam, President and CEO of DCM, and James Lorimer, CFO, will present Q3 results followed by a live Q&A period. Instructions on how to access both the webcast and telephone call are available below. For those unable to join live, a replay of the webcast will be available on the DCM Investor Relations page. DCM will be using Microsoft (News - Alert) Teams to broadcast our Q3 Quarterly Call which will be accessible via the options below: Join on your computer or mobile app

Click here to join the meeting

Or call in (audio only)

+1 647-749-9154,,365856836# Canada, Toronto

Phone (News - Alert) Conference ID: 365 856 836#

Find a local number





Website URL

https://bit.ly/3EFz54d The Company's full results will be posted on its Investor Relations page and on www.sedar.com. Following the call, a video message from Richard Kellam, DCM's President and CEO will be posted on the Company's website.

ABOUT DATA COMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT CORP. DCM is a communication solutions partner that adds value for large enterprises by creating more meaningful connections with their customers. Our technology-enabled content and workflow management capabilities solve the complex branding, communications, logistics and regulatory requirements of Canada's leading enterprises. We pair customer insights and thought leadership with cutting-edge products, modular enabling technology, and services to power our clients' go-to-market strategies. We help our clients manage how their brands come to life, determine which channels are right for them, manage multimedia campaigns, deploy location-specific and 1:1 marketing, execute custom loyalty programs, and fulfill their commercial printing needs all in one place. Our extensive experience has positioned us as experts at providing communication solutions across many verticals, including the financial, retail, healthcare, cannabis, energy, and public sectors. Thanks to our locations throughout Canada and in the United States, we meet our clients' varying needs with scale, speed, and efficiency - no matter how large or complex the ask - delivered through our technology-enabled service model. Additional information relating to DATA Communications Management Corp. is available on www.datacm.com, and in the disclosure documents filed by DATA Communications Management Corp. on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006352/en/

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[November 04, 2021] Crisp Imaging, Inc. Launches Docu-Dock Archival and Retrieval Software

Crisp Imaging has announced the launch of its latest product, Docu-Dock software for the secure archiving, searching, and retrieval of large and small format electronic documents, such as as-built plans, record sets, and specifications, with flexible attributes to add value and searchability to the documents. Gary Crisp, CEO, stated, "The Docu-Dock software has been used in the education market for years, and we are excited to leverage its capabilities to other industries with a pressing need for secure, permanent, searchable electronic plans and drawings. Coupled with our high-quality scanning services, this is a very strong offering to our customers that will help them access information faster and more efficiently." Raul Cuevas, Senior Vice President of Sales, noted, "The secure acces to searchable, shareable electronic plans and drawings is critical during construction, remodeling or emergency repairs of K-12 school districts, community colleges, public and private universities and many other structures. Crisp Imaging's differentiator is the quality and speed of our scanning services and Docu-Dock's powerful archiving and retrieval software."



Crisp Imaging, Inc. is the West Coast's premier independent digital printer for the construction, real estate, facilities management, education, healthcare, corporate and many other industries. Established in 2001, Crisp Imaging has 17 locations from Seattle to San Diego offering services that include reprographics, marketing materials, display graphics, PPE, scanning, archiving, document management and on-site services. It also provides on-site services for in-house digital imaging needs. www.Crispimg.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006361/en/

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Atkore Inc. to Present at the Baird 2021 Global Industrial Virtual Conference

Atkore Inc. (the "Company") (NYSE: ATKR), a leading provider of electrical, safety and infrastructure solutions, today announced that Bill Waltz, President and Chief Executive Officer, is scheduled to present at the Baird 2021 Global Industrial Virtual Conference on Thursday, November 11, 2021 at 9:05 am Eastern Time.

A webcast link of the live event will be available on the Investor Relations site of atkore.com (https://investors.atkore.com/events-and-presentations). A replay of the webcast will be available on the same website until Friday, November 11, 2022.







To learn more about Atkore Inc. please visit the company's website at https://investors.atkore.com/.

About Atkore Inc.

Atkore is forging a future where our employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders and communities are building better together - a future focused on serving the customer and powering and protecting the world.

With approximately 3,700 employees and 65 manufacturing and distribution facilities worldwide as of September 30, 2020, Atkore is a leading provider of electrical, safety and infrastructure solutions.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104005001/en/
[November 04, 2021] Kinaxis Inc. Reports Third Quarter 2021 Results

SaaS revenue grows 14% to $44.7 million , adjusted EBITDA (1) margin of 19%

Record new customers wins, 23% ARR growth supports outlook for accelerated growth ahead

Updates guidance for FY 2021 OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 4, 2021 /CNW/ - Kinaxis (TSX: KXS) , the authority in driving agility for fast, confident decision-making in an unpredictable world, reported results for its third quarter. All amounts are in U.S. dollars. All figures are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) unless otherwise indicated. "We won a record number of new customers this quarter, and year-to-date we have more than tripled new customer wins compared to the same time last year. That success is reflected in very strong year-over-year growth in our annual recurring revenue2 and a slightly improved outlook for 2021," said John Sicard, President and CEO of Kinaxis. "Supply chain issues continue to be at the centre of boardroom conversations and daily newsfeeds, and we are helping companies navigate the complexities. The sustained, positive momentum in our market gives us confidence in our mid-term target of 23-25% growth in SaaS revenue, including for next year." Q3 2021 Highlights







$ USD thousands, except as otherwise indicated Q3 2021 Q3 2020 Change Total Revenue 64,436 55,116 17% SaaS 44,731 39,322 14% Subscription term license 1,997 1,035 93% Professional services 14,576 11,492 27% Maintenance and support 3,132 3,267 (4%) Gross profit



42,589

66% 36,559

66% 16% Profit 200

$0.01/diluted share 731

$0.03/diluted share (73%) Adjusted EBITDA(1) 12,384

19% 10,134

18% 22% Cash from operating activities 11,249 4,497 150%

(1) "Adjusted EBITDA" is a non-IFRS measure and is not a recognized, defined or a standardized measure under IFRS. This measure as well as other non-IFRS financial measures reported by Kinaxis are defined in the "Non-IFRS Measures" section of this news release. Key Performance Indicators

The nature of the company's long-term contracts provides visibility into future, contracted revenue. The following table presents revenue expected to be recognized in the future related to performance obligations that are unsatisfied (or partially unsatisfied) at September 30, 2021.

$USD millions 2021 2022 2023 and

later Total

backlog SaaS 45.4 144.7 168.0 358.1 Maintenance and support 3.1 8.8 5.8 17.7 Total 48.5 153.5 173.8 375.8 The company's Annual Recurring Revenue2 (ARR), which includes amounts related to both SaaS and on-premise subscription contracts, rose 23% to $206.6 million at the end of the quarter.

Financial Guidance $USD millions 2019 2020 Q1 2021 Q2 2021 Q3 2021 Annual recurring revenue2 Year-over-year growth 159 21% 185 17% 191 18% 200 24% 207 23% (2) Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the total annualized value of recurring subscription amounts (ultimately recognized as SaaS, Subscription Term Licenses and Maintenance & Support revenue) of all subscription contracts at a point in time. Annualized subscription amounts are determined solely by reference to the underlying contracts, normalizing for the varying revenue recognition treatments under IFRS 15 for cloud-based versus on-premise subscription amounts. It excludes one-time fees, such as for non-recurring professional services, and assumes that customers will renew the contractual commitments on a periodic basis as those commitments come up for renewal, unless such renewal is known to be unlikely. We believe that this measure provides a more current indication of our performance in the growth of our subscription business than other metrics.

Based on the current business outlook, Kinaxis is updating its fiscal 2021 financial guidance, as follows:

FY 2021 Guidance Total revenue $248-250 million SaaS 17-20% growth Subscription term license $6-7 million Adjusted EBITDA(1) margin 14-16% Beyond 2021, and assuming an ongoing return to more typical business and market conditions, the company continues to believe that annual SaaS revenue growth of 23-25% is achievable in the mid-term. Guidance in this press release is provided to enhance visibility into Kinaxis' expectations for financial targets for the periods indicated. Please refer to the section regarding forward-looking statements that forms an integral part of this release. This press release along with the financial statements and MD&A for the three months ended September 30, 2021 are available on Kinaxis' website and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Conference Call

Kinaxis will host a conference call tomorrow, November 5, 2021, to discuss these results. John Sicard, Chief Executive Officer, and Blaine Fitzgerald, Chief Financial Officer, will host the call starting at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. A question and answer session will follow management's presentation. Investors and participants must register for the call in advance. See registration link below. Please call the conference telephone number fifteen minutes prior to the start time. CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS DATE: Friday, November 5, 2021 TIME: 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time CALL REGISTRATION: https://dpregister.com/sreg/10161310/eee2d47ea8 WEBCAST: https://bit.ly/2YQtUit (available for three months) REPLAY: (877)-344-7529

Available through Friday, November 19, 2021 REFERENCE NUMBER: 10161310 About Kinaxis Inc.

Everyday volatility and uncertainty demand quick action. Kinaxis delivers the agility to make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain. People can plan better, live better and change the world. Trusted by innovative brands, we combine human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Powered by an extensible, cloud-based platform, Kinaxis delivers industry-proven applications so everyone can know sooner, act faster and remove waste. For more Kinaxis news, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter. Non-IFRS Measures

This news release contains non-IFRS measures, specifically Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin. We use Adjusted EBITDA to provide investors with a supplemental measure of our operating performance and thus highlight trends in our core business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying solely on IFRS financial measures. We believe that securities analysts, investors and other interested parties frequently use non-IFRS measures in the evaluation of issuers. Management also uses non-IFRS measures in order to facilitate operating performance comparisons from period to period, prepare annual operating budgets and assess our ability to meet our capital expenditure and working capital requirements. Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margins are not recognized, defined or standardized measures under IFRS. Our definition of Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin will likely differ from that used by other companies (including our peers) and therefore comparability may be limited. Non-IFRS measures should not be considered a substitute for or in isolation from measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. Investors are encouraged to review our financial statements and disclosures in their entirety and are cautioned not to put undue reliance on non-IFRS measures and view them in conjunction with the most comparable IFRS financial measures. Kinaxis has reconciled Adjusted EBITDA to the most comparable IFRS financial measure as follows:



Three months ended

September 30,



Nine months ended

September 30,

2021



2020

2021

2020









(In thousands of USD) Profit $ 200

$ 731

$ 1,754

$ 15,316 Share-based compensation 6,501



4,732

17,710

12,231 Non-recurring item 





(7,906)

 Adjusted profit $ 6,701

$ 5,463

$ 11,558

$ 27,547 Income tax expense 1,310



354

2,294

10,094 Depreciation and amortization 4,784



4,500

13,852

11,068 Foreign exchange loss (gain) (547)



(124)

364

(168) Net finance expense (income) 136



(59)

506

(884)

5,683



4,671

17,016

20,110 Adjusted EBITDA $ 12,384

$ 10,134

$ 28,574

$ 47,657 Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue 19%



18%

16%

28% Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements include statements as to our expectations for: growth of annual total revenue, annual SaaS and Subscription term licenses revenue, and our expectations for Adjusted EBITDA margin achievement, in each case looking forward for our fiscal year ending December 31, 2021 ; and

contracted revenue in future periods, including 2021, 2022 and 2023 and later. This release also includes forward-looking statements as to Kinaxis' growth opportunities and the potential benefits of, and markets and demand for, Kinaxis' products and services. These statements are subject to certain assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including our view of the relative position of Kinaxis' products and services compared to competitive offerings in the industry. In particular, our guidance for 2021 annual total revenue, annual SaaS and Subscription term license revenue and annual Adjusted EBITDA margin, is subject to certain assumptions and associated risks including: our ability to win business from new customers and expand business from existing customers;

the timing of new customer wins and expansion decisions by our existing customers;

maintaining our customer retention levels , and specifically, that customers will renew contractual commitments on a periodic basis as those commitments come up for renewal, at rates consistent with our historic experience; and

, with respect to Adjusted EBITDA, our ability to contain expense levels while expanding our business.

Our guidance and commentary for achievement of contracted revenue in future periods, including in 2021, 2022 and 2023 and later, is based on assumptions and associated risks including:

our ability to satisfy material unperformed obligations under our long-term contracts; and

the continued financial capacity and creditworthiness of our customers under long-term contracts. Our guidance and commentary for annual SaaS revenue growth beyond 2021 is based on assumptions and associated risks including normalization of macroeconomic factors, including business and market conditions, relative to recent conditions that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These and other assumptions, risks and uncertainties may cause Kinaxis' actual results, performance, achievements and developments to differ materially from the results, performance, achievements or developments expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Material risks and uncertainties relating to our business are described under the headings "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risks and Uncertainties" in our annual MD&A dated March 3, 2021, under the heading "Risk Factors" in our Annual Information Form dated March 25, 2021 and in our other public documents filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities, which are available at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are provided to help readers understand management's expectations as at the date of this release and may not be suitable for other purposes. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Kinaxis assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by law.

Kinaxis Inc.

Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Financial Position

(Expressed in thousands of USD)

(Unaudited)









September 30,

2021 December 31,

2020





Assets









Current assets:



Cash and cash equivalents $ 210,382 $ 182,958 Short-term investments 30,169 30,180 Trade and other receivables 50,988 82,883 Investment tax credits recoverable - 1,109 Prepaid expenses 9,291 9,264

300,830 306,394





Non-current assets:



Property and equipment 44,133 30,746 Right-of-use assets 52,621 15,722 Contract acquisition costs 17,945 16,484 Unbilled receivables 430 2,013 Other receivables 692 752 Deferred tax assets 3,014 2,308 Investment tax credits recoverable 2,260 980 Intangible assets 11,340 13,023 Goodwill 39,988 39,988







$ 473,253 $ 428,410





Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity









Current liabilities:



Trade payables and accrued liabilities $ 31,769 $ 33,030 Deferred revenue 75,541 94,275 Lease obligations 1,649 4,554

108,959 131,859 Non-current liabilities:



Lease obligations 51,734 12,065 Deferred tax liabilities 3,607 2,729

55,341 14,794





Shareholders' equity:



Share capital 183,984 173,104 Contributed surplus 50,861 35,846 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (473) (20) Retained earnings 74,581 72,827

308,953 281,757







$ 473,253 $ 428,410 Kinaxis Inc.

Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Comprehensive Income (Loss)

(Expressed in thousands of USD, except share and per share data)

(Unaudited)









For the three months

ended September 30, For the nine months

ended September 30,

2021 2020 2021 2020









Revenue $ 64,436 $ 55,116 $ 182,220 $ 169,244









Cost of revenue 21,847 18,557 62,136 50,027









Gross profit 42,589 36,559 120,084 119,217









Operating expenses:







Selling and marketing 15,001 12,881 42,118 37,109 Research and development 16,054 13,664 40,959 33,598 General and administrative 10,502 9,209 32,367 24,249

41,557 35,754 115,444 94,956











1,032 805 4,640 24,261 Other income (expense):







Foreign exchange gain (loss) 547 124 (364) 168 Net finance and other income (expense) (69) 156 (228) 981

478 280 (592) 1,149









Profit before income taxes 1,510 1,085 4,048 25,410









Income tax expense 1,310 354 2,294 10,094









Profit 200 731 1,754 15,316









Other comprehensive income (loss):







Items that are or may be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:







Foreign currency translation differences - foreign operations (223) 146 (453) 91









Total comprehensive income (loss) $ (23) $ 877 $ 1,301 $ 15,407









Basic earnings per share $ 0.01 $ 0.03 $ 0.06 $ 0.58









Weighted average number of basic Common Shares 27,135,455 26,596,412 27,206,262 26,622,939









Diluted earnings per share $ 0.01 $ 0.03 $ 0.06 $ 0.55









Weighted average number of diluted Common Shares 28,279,754 27,766,505 28,397,945 28,000,655 Kinaxis Inc.

Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Changes in Shareholders' Equity (Expressed in thousands of USD)

(Unaudited)

















Accumulated









other





Share Contributed comprehensive Retained



capital surplus loss earnings Total equity











Balance, December 31, 2019 $ 140,961 $ 30,392 $ (348) $ 59,097 $ 230,102











Profit - - - 15,316 15,316 Other comprehensive income - - 91 - 91 Total comprehensive income - - 91 15,316 15,407











Share options exercised 23,884 (5,988) - - 17,896 Share based payments - 12,231 - - 12,231 Total shareholder transactions 23,884 6,243 - - 30,127











Balance, September 30, 2020 $ 164,845 $ 36,635 $ (257) $ 74,413 $ 275,636











Balance, December 31, 2020 $ 173,104 $ 35,846 $ (20) $ 72,827 $ 281,757











Profit - - - 1,754 1,754 Other comprehensive loss - - (453) - (453) Total comprehensive income (loss) - - (453) 1,754 1,301











Share options exercised 10,880 (2,695) - - 8,185 Share based payments - 17,710 - - 17,710 Total shareholder transactions 10,880 15,015 - - 25,895











Balance, September 30, 2021 $ 183,984 $ 50,861 $ (473) $ 74,581 $ 308,953 Kinaxis Inc.

Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Cash Flows (Expressed in thousands of USD)

(Unaudited)







For the three months

ended September 30, For the nine months ended

September 30,

2021 2020 2021 2020









Cash flows from operating activities:

















Profit $ 200 $ 731 $ 1,754 $ 15,316 Items not affecting cash:







Depreciation of property and equipment and right-of-use assets 4,223 3,939 12,169 10,403 Amortization of intangible assets 561 561 1,683 665 Share-based payments 6,501 4,732 17,710 12,231 Net finance and other (income) expense 69 (156) 228 (981) Income tax expense 1,310 354 2,294 10,094 Investment tax credits recoverable (420) - (171) - Change in operating assets and liabilities (1,641) (5,219) 11,369 10,474 Interest received 185 596 391 1,658 Interest paid (251) (198) (608) (487) Income taxes received (paid) 512 (843) 81 (3,103)

11,249 4,497 46,900 56,270









Cash flows used in investing activities:

















Acquisition of business, net of cash acquired - (59,166) (800) (61,743) Purchase of property and equipment (5,439) (1,299) (22,369) (12,337) Purchase of short-term investments (15,005) (20,150) (45,165) (95,452) Redemption of short-term investments 15,005 65,302 45,165 95,404

(5,439) (15,313) (23,169) (74,128)









Cash flows from financing activities:

















Payment of lease obligations (1,143) (1,154) (3,500) (2,639) Common shares issued on exercise of stock options 3,621 6,548 8,185 17,896

2,478 5,394 4,685 15,257









Increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 8,288 (5,422) 28,416 (2,601)









Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 202,771 184,992 182,958 182,284









Effects of exchange rates on cash and cash equivalents (677) 286 (992) 173









Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 210,382 $ 179,856 $ 210,382 $ 179,856 SOURCE Kinaxis Inc.

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[November 04, 2021] ADAM Systems, a division of Karmak, Inc. acquired by PBS Systems

CARLINVILLE, Ill., Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Karmak, Inc. announced that effective October 1, 2021, PBS Systems acquired its division of ADAM Systems. Founded in 1979, ADAM Systems provides fully integrated dealer management software to auto and powersports retailers across North America and Puerto Rico. "We believe PBS will invest in and grow the ADAM systems business and team. ADAM and PBS both have terrific people with vast industry knowledge, so this is a very positive move for all parties. This allows Karmak to fully focus on being the premier DMS provider in the heavy-duty space.", stated Jim Allen, CEO, Karmak, Inc. TAG Financial Institutions Group, based in New York, New York, acted as Karmak's exclusive sell-side advisor in this transaction. Given TAG's deep expertise in the automotive dealership space, TAG found the right strategic buyer and perfect home for the Adam's division. Karmak CEO Jim Allen, said "we selected the TAG automotive team to run our process because of their deep industry expertise in the Auto retail and F&I space and their proven ability to deliver great transaction outcomes." About PBS PBS Systems is a Dealership Management Software company based out of Calgary, Alberta. For over 30 years, they have beenproviding accurate, reliable dealership software, services, and support to dealership customers. This has propelled them to become the largest Canadian dealership vendor as well as one of the top three in Northern America. https://www.pbssystems.com/



About Karmak

For nearly 40 years, Karmak, Inc. has been a leading provider of business management solutions for the commercial transportation industry. Karmak, Inc. offers a unique approach combining innovative technology, strategic advice, and best practices. Learn more at Karmak.com. This Press Release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer, invitation, solicitation, or recommendation to buy, sell, subscribe for, or issue any securities. While the information provided herein is believed to be accurate and reliable, TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC and Ashland Securities, LLC make no representations or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of such information. All information contained herein is preliminary, limited and subject to completion, correction or amendment. It should not be construed as investment, legal, or tax advice and may not be reproduced or distributed to any person. Certain Principals of TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC are registered representatives of Ashland Securities, LLC Member FINRA, SIPC. TAG Financial Institutions Group, LLC and Ashland Securities, LLC are separate and unaffiliated entities. Securities and Investment Banking Services are offered through Ashland Securities, LLC.

Contact: Steven Nigro, [email protected], 212-993-7431 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/adam-systems-a-division-of-karmak-inc-acquired-by-pbs-systems-301417201.html SOURCE TAG Financial Institutions Group

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[November 04, 2021] AM Best Affirms Credit Ratings of The Travelers Companies, Inc. and Its Main Subsidiaries

AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICR) of "aa+" (Superior) of the main subsidiaries of The Travelers Companies, Inc. (TRV) (headquartered in New York, NY) [NYSE: TRV], collectively known as Travelers Group (Travelers). In addition, AM Best has affirmed the FSR of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICRs of "aa+" (Superior) of Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America (TCSA) (Hartford, CT) and Travelers Insurance Company of Canada (TICC) (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). Concurrently, AM Best has affirmed the FSR of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICR of "a" (Excellent) of The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company (Dominion) (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). AM Best also has affirmed the FSR of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICR of "a-" (Excellent) of First Floridian Auto and Home Insurance Company (First Floridian) (Tampa, FL). Lastly, AM Best has affirmed the Long-Term ICRs and the Long-Term Issue Credit Ratings (Long-Term IR) of "a+" (Excellent) of TRV and its two wholly owned downstream holding companies, Travelers Property Casualty Corp. and Travelers Insurance Group Holdings Inc. (both headquartered in Hartford, CT). All outstanding securities issued by the two downstream holding companies are guaranteed by TRV. AM Best also has affirmed all other Long-Term IRs and Short-Term Issue Credit Ratings (Short-Term IR) guaranteed by TRV, as well as TRV's indicative Long-Term IRs. The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. Please see link below for a detailed listing of the companies and ratings. The ratings of Travelers reflect the group's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strongest, as well as its very strong operating performance, favorable business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). Historically, risk-adjusted capitalization has consistently been strongly supportive of the group's ratings and exceeds the threshold for the strongest assessment level by a wide margin, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). The assessment of the group's balance sheet strength also reflects its stable loss-reserve position, the use of a comprehensive reinsurance program and high quality reinsurance partners, the benefits from the conservative investment portfolio and benefits from the additional financial flexibility available through its ultimate parent, TRV. The group's very strong operating performance reflects consistently profitale results supported by typically strong underwriting results and steady investment income. The group has reported positive underwriting income in nine of the past 10 years, with 2011 being the exception due to an increased amount of catastrophes.



Based on 2020 direct premiums written, Travelers is one of the top five commercial lines insurers in the United States and one of the top 10 personal lines insurers. Overall, Travelers ranks as the sixth-largest property/casualty (P/C) writer in the United States. Travelers maintains a broad spread of risk in that it offers a wide array of P/C coverages spread geographically in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, England and Ireland. The ratings of TCSA reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strongest, as well as its very strong operating performance, favorable business profile and appropriate ERM.

The ratings of TICC reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strongest, as well as its strong operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate ERM. The ratings also reflect the implicit support it receives from its ultimate parent, TRV. The ratings of Dominion reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strongest, as well as its marginal operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate ERM. The ratings also reflect the implicit support it receives from its ultimate parent, TRV. The ratings of First Floridian reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its marginal operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate ERM. The ratings also reflect the implicit support it receives from its ultimate parent, TRV. A complete listing of The Travelers Companies, Inc.'s FSRs, Long-Term ICRs and Long- and Short-Term IRs also is available. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2021 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211104006373/en/

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Sadly, we don't mind repeating and warning TKC readers that the holiday season typically spikes violent crime in the metro.

Accordingly . . .

Right now we share a cavalcade of human misery and crime news from across the metro . . . With a few stories of hope toward the end of the collection . . .

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

Crime details upset family as woman pleads guilty to killing 3-year-old Olivia Jansen KANSAS CITY, Kan. - A woman accused of killing 3-year-old Olivia Jansen pleaded guilty Wednesday in Wyandotte County court. Jacquelyn Kirkpatrick is the girlfriend of the girl's father Howard Jansen III. Kirkpatrick pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, abuse of a child under the age of six, and two counts of interference with law enforcement.

Man sentenced to 22 years in prison for fatally shooting wife last summer JACKSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -- An Independence man has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for fatally shooting his wife in July of last year. According to the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office, 43-year-old Ryan D. Smith pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in August. He was sentenced this Tuesday.

Independence man sentenced to 22 years for wife's homicide KANSAS CITY, Mo. - An Independence man, who previously pleaded guilty to the 2020 fatal shooting of his wife, has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for the crime. Ryan D. Smith, 43, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in August for the death of his wife, Daina M.

Police: 2 deaths at KCK high-rise building ruled homicides Police in Kansas City, Kansas, said Wednesday that preliminary autopsy results indicate that two of the three suspicious deaths discovered this week in a high-rise apartment building have been ruled homicides.Authorities said the third person died from natural causes.Police said officers were called Monday to the Wyandotte Towers Apartments in the 900 block of Washington Boulevard on a report of a suspicious death.

3 victims identified in Kansas City, Kansas apartment building deaths KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department announced Wednesday the names and preliminary autopsy results for three residents who died in Wyandotte Towers earlier this week. Two of the deaths have been ruled as homicides, while the third was ruled as a natural death, according to a KCKPD news release.

Lenexa police arrest 4 minors following attempted burglary, pursuit LENEXA, KS (KCTV) -- The Lenexa Police Department says four minors have been arrested following an attempted burglary. They say that, a few nights ago around midnight, they responded to a call where a Lenexa resident found a burglar in her garage.

Driver involved in crash with Wyandotte County deputy dies KANSAS CITY, Mo - A driver involved with a Wyandotte County deputy Saturday died at an area hospital Sunday. According to the Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office, the deputy was responding to a shooting call on Saturday when the two drivers collided at an intersection near Parallel Parkway and North 90th Street.

Company that dumped private records in public trash is fined TOPEKA, Kan. - A national company will pay nearly $500,000 in fines for improperly disposing of documents that contained personal information of clients, the Kansas Attorney General's Office said. Attorney General Derek Schmidt sued SearchTec, which has a satellite office in Kansas, in 2017.

'Turn yourself in': Friends remember one of three victims found dead in KCK apartment building KANSAS CITY, Kan. - Residents of Wyandotte Towers are remembering the three victims that Kansas City, Kansas police say were found dead at the apartment building within 36 hours. Friends describe the female victim as a 24-year-old mother.

KCPD officer receives award for capturing woman who went on crime spree last week KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- An off-duty KCPD officer has received an award for capturing the woman who went on a crime spree, primarily in KCK, last week. According to the KCPD, Sgt. Bobbie King has been with the Kansas City Police Department for 11 years.

Developing . . .
Amid rampant culture war and partisan slap fighting, there was a more important issue decided by the local electorate last night.



For those who missed it . . .

METRO VOTERS APPROVED MORE CASH FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT WHILST KANSAS CITY 'DEFUND POLICE' EFFORTS PERSIST!!!

Here's the info that was downplayed or overlooked . . .



"The Independence Police Department received clearance from voters to spend the roughly $3 million it receives from a use tax passed in 2019 to hire new officers, buy equipment and other departmental expenses."

This is important because more than any other metro city . . . Independence, MO has consistently complained about "crime displacement" from Kansas City.



On the nice side of the bridge, this news was also overlooked . . .

According to uncertified election results from Clay County Election Board, with 81 precincts reporting as of 9 p.m. Tuesday, Prop A, the sheriffs office tax renewal effort, overwhelmingly passed with more than 77% of the 10,226 votes cast.



What can we infer from the data . . .

THE 'DEFUND POLICE' MOVEMENT FAILED AT THE BALLOT BOX IN THE KANSAS CITY METRO!!!

The HUGE margin of victory should assuage any concerns that this endorsement of police is merely a suburban phenomena. Moreover, the electorate of both Clay County and Independence grow increasingly diverse every day.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes Kansas City preps for yet another budget battle with police after Mayor Q LOST an important case in his misguided effort to "reallocate" 42 MILLION bucks to a slush fund with absolutely no oversight or deets.

Accordingly, we note . . .



The votes are in . . . Neighborhoods and people who actually bother to vote have spoken and THEY SUPPORT POLICE .

This ain't rocket science and it should be a lesson that's simple to calculate and understand.

Sadly, so many among the Kansas City chattering class have confused cable news blather and "social justice" university lectures for real life.

Meanwhile . . .

The people who live and work in the metro want police to have more cash as violent crime numbers across the nation continue to spike.

And so . . .

We share this data NOT TO GLOAT but in order to help leaders, readers and all manner of denizens of the cowtown discourse UNDERSTAND THIS REAL LIFE LOCAL ELECTION CASE STUDY which contradicts the overwhelming majority anti-police rhetoric witnessed via traditional media and online.

Developing . . .


The latest phase of the pandemic puts youngsters in the midst of a culture war and political disputes regarding public health policy.



Here are the basics inside city limits . . .



"The measure, passed by the councils Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee, would require masks to be worn by all people at schools and on school buses. The full council is set to vote on the measure Thursday."

Meanwhile, throughout the metro, there's a push to add the COVID vaxx to the already crowded schedule of shots that students must take to attend schools.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

KCMO Council committee advances more limited mask mandate KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Kansas City, Missouri, City Council committee advanced a measure Wednesday morning that would require those in school settings to wear a mask.

Kansas City, Missouri, on verge of ending mask mandate for adults Kansas City, Missouri, is on the verge of dropping its face mask mandate. But there's a catch. KMBC's Micheal Mahoney reported that if a new order passes the city council on Thursday, and it probably will, the mask mandate ends for people 18 and older.

KC leaders send school mask mandate to Full Council for Thursday vote KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- A Kansas City committee on Wednesday approved a measure to extend the city's mask mandate in school settings to December. The proposal now heads to the Full Council for a potential vote on Thursday. Kansas City's overall mask mandate in public spaces is set to expire Thursday.

Kansas City leaders planning school mask mandate, ending public order KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas City took a preliminary step to create a new school mask mandate Wednesday morning. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas introduced an ordinance during a committee meeting to require masks for everyone in private and public school settings where K-12 students attend.

Kansas City pharmacy reacts to CDC recommendation of COVID-19 vaccine for kids Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has approved Pfizer's vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.The vaccine comes in two smaller doses and is given three weeks apart.It's nearly 91 percent effective at preventing symptomatic illness in young kids.

Hy-Vee to start vaccinating children against COVID-19 by: Juan Cisneros Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Hy-Vee has announced that some locations in the Kansas City area will begin to administer the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 5 to 11 years old. Health officials gave the final approval of the pediatric vaccine on Tuesday.

Johnson County, Kansas health department offering pediatric COVID-19 vaccines The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment said it will begin offering the COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5-11.On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved recommendations, under emergency use authorization, to offer the Pfizer COVID-19 to this cohort.Johnson County health officials said the shots to the pediatric population will be by appointment, from 8 a.m.

COVID vaccine available next week in Johnson County for kids ages 5-11 by: Sydnie Holzfaster Posted: / Updated: OLATHE, Kan. - Starting next week, more children in Johnson County will have the chance to get vaccinated against COVID-19. On Tuesday,the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approved recommendations under emergency use authorization to offer the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5-11.

Kansas to push school COVID vaccine clinics for younger kids TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas will encourage its public schools to hold clinics for vaccinating children ages 5 through 11 against COVID-19 and some doses already have arrived in the state, Gov. Laura Kelly said Wednesday. The state expects to receive nearly 128,000 doses of a vaccine for younger children manufactured by Pfizer by next week.

Missouri DHSS adopts CDC recommendation, children 5-11 now eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in state JEFFERSON CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has adopted the CDC's recommendation for children to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. This recommendation applies to children 5-11 years old. Previously, the vaccine was authorized only for children 12 and older.

Local pediatricians are ready to calm parents nerves about Pfizer vaccine for children Local pediatricians are ready to deliver the newly approved Pfizer vaccine for younger children. They say the wait for the smaller doses won't be long. One doctor in south Overland Park says this is an emotional milestone in the fight against COVID-19."Literal tears of joy.

Kansas City-area parents weigh in on vaccinating kids ages 5 to 11 KANSAS CITY, Mo. - On Tuesday, the Center For Disease Control gave the clear for the Pfizer vaccine for children ages five to 11. The biggest question remains, will parents vaccinate their elementary-aged children. "I think for a lot of us, including myself, this is a very emotional day," Dr. Natasha Burgert, with Pediatric Associates of South Overland Park said.

Developing . . .


There's a union beef aspect of this story that's obvious . . .



Moreover and more interestingly . . . The KCK firefighters powered KCK's first Black mayor is a surprisingly progressive political gambit.

Now, they'll probably benefit from more resources directed their way.

Here's a glimpse at the discussion . . .



"When we have depleted a portion of the city, because if we've got resources out, we're not moving an ambulance from the south or the north to a better temporary location more centrally located or in the western half to just provide coverage," J.J. Simma, IAFF Local 64 president said.



A Unified Government spokesperson says the response times so far in 2021 are within the national standard  91.5% of the time for critical calls and just over 99% of the time for non-critical calls  and that "KCKFD tracks this information closely in the interest of our communitys public safety."

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

KCK firefighters union concerned over long response time KANSAS CITY, Kan. - The union representing Kansas City, Kansas, firefighters is worried about longer response times following a deadly crash over the weekend. On Saturday, a deputy with the Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office was responding to a shooting call in a marked patrol vehicle with lights and sirens on.

KCK firefighter union raises concerns about EMS response times KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) -- Firefighters and EMS workers in KCK are raising concerns about resources and policies surrounding emergency services. The IAFF Local 64 union posted concerns to social media about response times following a crash on Sunday. The incident involved a Wyandotte Co. Deputy en-route to a shooting call.

Developing . . .
Danger to youngsters in the suburbs abounds.



Here's a peek at a case that earned international news coverage . . .



"James Loganbill charged with reckless stalking targeting a 10-year-old student. Former teacher at Meadow Lane Elementary School in Olathe, Kansas, is accused of repeatedly photographing and videotaping girl at school. Investigators allegedly found more than 240 photos and videos of the child on Loganbill's devices, including recording of her lifting her leg. Prosecutors believe Loganbill's actions were sexually motivated. Student's parents and community leaders are calling on lawmakers to pass tougher legislation to protect children from predators . . ."



Today the consequences will be decided.



Read more via UPDATED www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

Former Olathe teacher sentenced for stalking young girl OLATHE, KS (KCTV) -- A former Olathe teacher has been sentenced to one year behind bars for stalking a minor. James Loganbill was arrested in June 2020 on first-degree reckless stalking. On Wednesday, he was sentence to 12 months in jail and will have to register as a sex offender for 15 years.

Former Olathe teacher James Loganbill, guilty of stalking student, to learn sentence Wednesday KANSAS CITY, Mo. - James Loganbill, a former Olathe school teacher, is set to appear before a judge Wednesday afternoon to learn two things: whether he will spend time behind bars, and whether he will be required to register as a sex offender. He was convicted of stalking his then 10-year-old student.

Kansas teacher, 58, charged with reckless stalking of fourth-grader James Loganbill charged with reckless stalking targeting a 10-year-old student Former teacher at Meadow Lane Elementary School in Olathe, Kansas, is accused of repeatedly photographing and videotaping girl at school Investigators allegedly found more than 240 photos and videos of the child on Loganbill's devices, including recording of her lifting

Developing . . .
Advocacy and/or politics continues to surround a deadly shooting involving KCPD.

Background . . .



Let's not forget that some of the members of this group also called a police shooting an "execution" after the armed suspect wanted for another violent crime was killed in a struggle with police

Here are the basics stolen quoted from the newspaper . . .



Members of the organization Getting to the Heart of the Matter gathered on the steps of the Jackson County Courthouse calling for Judge J. Dale Youngs to be removed from presiding over the bench trial scheduled to begin Monday.



It is often said that justice is blind, but we really need for Kansas City to see this, said Darron Edwards, lead pastor of the United Believers Community Church. You cannot have balanced scales if somebody has their hand on the scales. This trial, we believe cannot proceed like this.



The group alleges there is a conflict of interest between Youngs and Dawn Parsons, one of the attorneys representing DeValkenaere. However, the alleged issue dealt with a separate criminal case that occurred in 2011 and is not related to DeValkenaere.



They also said they believe Youngs may show favor to DeValkenaere based on his past dealings with Parsons, who had previously served as an assistant Jackson County prosecutor.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link to a PAYWALLED report . . .

Community activists want judge in KC police shooting trial removed from criminal case Citing a conflict of interest, a group of community activists on Wednesday demanded the recusal of a Jackson County judge who will preside over the trial of a Kansas City police officer accused in the shooting death of a Black man.

Updated link without paywall . . .
The legal move was telegraphed last week when the MO AG joined a multi-state anti-vaxx mandate lawsuit.



Here's today's blast . . .



The federal government does not have the authority to unilaterally force private employers to mandate their employees get vaccinated or foot the bill for weekly testing," Schmitt wrote in his statement.



Schmitt said he spoke with several Missouri businesses who voiced their concerns over the federal mandate.



"We will be on file first thing tomorrow morning to halt this illegal, unconstitutional attempt by the Biden Administration and the federal government to impose their will on thousands of Missouri businesses and millions of Missourians," Schmitt wrote. "Missouri will not roll over, we will not back down  we will file suit imminently.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

Missouri AG to sue Biden Administration over COVID-19 vaccine mandate JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt will sue the Biden Administration over the recent COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandate that went into effect on November 4. Shortly after the announcement that employees of big companies will be required to be vaccinated by January 4, 2022, or get tested for the virus every week, Schmitt announced his plans to halt the federal mandate.

Developing . . .
With Republicans on the cusp of sweeping statewide judicial races in Pennsylvania, the GOP is finding more reasons to smile a year away from a high-stakes election in which the state's voters will pick a new governor and a new U.S. senator.
Terre Haute, IN (47803)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain...mainly in the morning. High near 50F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 24F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
Over the past 24 hours, on November 3, Ukraines military recorded a total of six breaches of truce in the Joint Forces Operation zone by the Russian occupation forces, including two violations involving weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements.

Thats according to the Ministry of Defense, Ukrinform reports.

Near the village of Lobacheve, the enemy fired easel-mounted anti-tank grenade launchers.

Outside Pivdenne, the enemy fired twice at the positions of Ukrainian defenders, using anti-tank grenade launchers and 120 mm mortars.

Not far from Novo-oleksandrivka, the occupiers fired grenade launchers, as well as large-caliber machine guns.

Near Zolote-3 enemy forces fired 82 mm mortars.

In the area of Novozvanivka, Russian mercenaries opened fire with small arms.

A Ukrainian military serviceman was wounded in hostilities, the report said, adding that the soldier was evacuated to a medical facility where he is undergoing treatment in satisfactory condition.

To the enemys armed provocations, Ukrainian defenders returned fire, not employing arms banned by the Minsk agreements, which forced Russian occupation forces to cease fire.

As of 7:00 Kyiv time on Thursday, November 4, no new ceasefire violations were reported.

im
Ukraine and Indonesia will develop their partnership in the field of security and defense, the press service of Ukraine's state arms exporter Ukrspecexport has told Ukrinform.

According to the report, such an agreement was reached at a meeting between Vadym Nozdria, Director General of Ukrspetsexport, which is part of the state defense conglomerate Ukroboronprom, and a delegation of the Indonesian Air Force that arrived in Ukraine.

Nozdria said that the Ukrainian side is ready to support the high dynamics of cooperation in the implementation of bilateral projects in the aviation industry, including the repair and modernization of equipment. According to the press service, respective contracts were signed during the meeting.

"Indonesia has been a longstanding reliable partner of Ukraine in defense cooperation, so we are interested in mutual benefits from the development of military and technical potential of our countries," he said.

The basis for the development of military and technical partnership between the two countries is the agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Indonesia on cooperation in the defense sector, which outlines the general principles of bilateral cooperation in areas of mutual interest.

Both parties may cooperate in the field of procurement of armaments and military products as part of joint projects, production, supply of weapons and other military goods, as well as maintenance, repair and modernization of armaments.

op
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valeriy Zaluzhny has held his first phone call with NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe Tod Wolters, emphasizing the importance of NATO's continued military and naval presence in the Black Sea region.

According to Ukrinform, Zaluzhny announced this on Facebook.

"General Wolters is deeply interested in the situation in and around Ukraine. I informed him about the current security situation, including about brazen ceasefire violations by the Russian occupation forces and our response to them in the area of the Joint Forces Operation. I stressed in our conversation that ensuring the Alliance's permanent military and naval presence within NATO's Black Sea assistance package to Ukraine, as well as holding joint exercises, is an important factor in curbing the Kremlin's aggressive intentions in the south," he said.

Lieutenant General Zaluzhny said he viewed practical interaction and active cooperation with NATO and its member countries as one of the most powerful factors in strengthening the capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

According to him, General Wolters said that cooperation between Ukraine and NATO will only strengthen in the future.

Zaluzhny also noted that he looked forward to discussing this issue in detail at NATO headquarters in January next year during a meeting of the NATO Military Committee at the level of chiefs of defense in a format with Ukraine.

Photo: armyinform.com.ua
In October 2021, businesses downgraded their positive views about their economic outlook.

This is evidenced by the business activity expectations index (BAEI), which the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) calculates on a monthly basis, Ukrinform reports.

In particular, the index amounted to 51.4 in October 2021, compared with 53.1 in September 2021.

It is noted that robust consumer demand and investment activity continued to have a positive effect on respondents expectations, higher energy prices, an increase in COVID-19 cases, and stricter quarantine restrictions imposed in Ukraine and globally weakened companies positive views.

Trading companies continued to express the most optimistic views about their performance outlook, as the sectors index moved to 52.2 in October, down from 56.1 in September. Respondents somewhat downgraded their positive expectations of trade turnover and the amount of goods purchased for sale, the report says.

Industrial companies have positively assessed the economic results and prospects of their activities for the sixth month in a row. However, estimates in October (51.1) were lower than in September (52.8). Compared to the previous month, respondents reported more guarded expectations of an increase in the amount of manufactured goods and the number of new orders for products, including export orders.

Services companies are also optimistic about their performance outlook, the sectors index being 51.3 in October, down from 51.8 in September. Respondents continue to expect an increase in the volume of services provided and new orders.

Construction companies had the most restrained expectations of their performance outlook, the sectors DI being 50.2 in October, down from 51.6 in September. Construction companies upgraded their expectations of construction work done and the number of new orders, reads the report.

The survey was conducted between October 4 and October 23, 2021 among 341 companies. Out of the companies polled, 44.9% are industrial companies, 30.2% companies in the services sector, 21.1% trading companies, and 3.8% construction companies.
More than 40 countries, including Ukraine, have agreed to phase out their use of coal-fired power, the dirtiest fuel source, at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, according to The Guardian.

Major coal-using countries, including Canada, Poland, Ukraine and Vietnam, will phase out their use of coal for electricity generation, with the bigger economies doing so in the 2030s, and smaller economies doing so in the 2040s, the report said.

The goal of "consigning coal to history" has been a key focus for the UK as host of the COP26 summit, which aims to put the world on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

According to the International Energy Agency, coal use is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Today marks a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change, as nations from all corners of the world unite in Glasgow to declare that coal has no part to play in our future power generation. Today's ambitious commitments made by our international partners demonstrate that the end of coal is in sight," said Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK's business secretary.

The COP26 UN Climate Change Conference began in Glasgow on October 31 and will last until November 12.

op
The competent authorities of Ukraine and Jordan this week approved the form of a certificate for the export of milk and dairy products from Ukraine.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this at an online briefing on Thursday, November 4, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"This week we opened another market - the export of Ukrainian dairy products to Jordan. The competent authorities of the two countries agreed on the form of a certificate for the export of milk and dairy products from Ukraine. This is a concrete result of joint work of diplomats and specialists of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection," Kuleba said.

He added that this was the third certificate approved by Ukraine and Jordan this year.

Kuleba said that trade with Jordan is developing very well and political consultations have recently been held.

"We are reviving, in fact, bilateral relations with Jordan, and there is a desire from both sides to do so," he said.

Kuleba said that diplomats will, first of all, focus on creating new opportunities for Ukrainian businesses in Jordan and other countries.

op
President Andrzej Duda of Poland has enforced special legislation on the construction of a barrier on the state border, which is also the EU's border with non-member states  Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

Thats according to the Office of Polands President, Ukrinform reports.

"On November 2, President Andrzej Duda signed a law of October 29 on the construction of a barrier at the state border," the head of states office said.

Both chambers of the Polish parliament supported the draft law last week. The new special law envisages construction of a modern high barrier, equipped with video surveillance and motion detection systems, worth more than 1.6 billion zlotys (more than US$400 million). The project will be implemented beyond standard tender procedures in an streamlined mode. The project is invested by a senior official of the Polish Border Guard Service.

The law enters into force on the day of its publication in the Bulletin of Laws.

Government spokesman Piotr Mueller said on Wednesday, November 3, that construction works would begin in a few weeks, expected to be completed in a few months.

It is reported that several hundred illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa attempt to penetrate the Polish-Belarusian border every day. Warsaw has accused Minsk of deliberately creating migration pressure on the common border as part of Minsk and Moscows hybrid efforts targeting Poland and the EU in general.

Since early September, a state of emergency has been enforced in Polish settlements close to the border with Belarus. Polands border guards regularly report provocations at the border on the part of Belarusian security agencies.

im
Ukrainian MPs honored activist Kateryna Handziuk at a plenary sitting of the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday, November 4.

According to an Ukrinform correspondent, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk proposed observing a moment of silence for the activist.

"Today is a very sad date. Today marks three years since the death of Kateryna Handziuk," the parliament speaker said, expressing hope that the case of her murder will be solved.

After that, the parliamentarians stood up to honor Handziuk.

On July 31, 2018, activist Kateryna Handziuk was doused in sulfuric acid near the entrance to her house in Kherson. She sustained burns to 40% of her body. Handziuk underwent several surgeries but died on November 4 of the same year.

Five people were detained on suspicion of involvement in Handziuk's murder. Ihor Pavlovsky, a former aide to MP Mykola Palamarchuk, was arrested on November 12, 2018.

On February 11, 2019, the Prosecutor General's Office served Vladyslav Manher, a suspect in Handziuk's murder, with a notice of suspicion in organizing Handziuk's murder. The court chose a measure of restraint for him in the form of detention with the possibility of posting bail of UAH 2,497,300, which was put up. However, the court then changed the measure of restraint for Manher and arrested him, without the right to post bail.

On June 6, 2019, five direct perpetrators of the attack were sentenced to prison terms of three to six-and-a-half years.

In January 2020, Oleksiy Levin, a suspect in Handziuk's murder, was detained in Bulgaria for organizing the acid attack on the activist.

On March 16, Levin was extradited from Bulgaria to Ukraine. According to investigators, Levin is a key figure who connects perpetrators and those who ordered the attack on Handziuk. He is suspected of organizing this crime, inciting others to commit it, and providing information about Handziuk's place of residence.

On July 28, 2020, the prosecutor's office filed an indictment against Manher and Levin for organizing the attack on Handziuk.

op
Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will hold in Washington on November 10 a meeting of the Strategic Partnership Commission, where a new Strategic Partnership Charter is to be signed.

Kuleba spoke of the upcoming meeting during an online briefing on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"On November 10, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and I will hold in Washington a meeting of the Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Commission, where we will sign a new Strategic Partnership Charter," the top diplomat said.

Kuleba assured that the Commission will resume work after a few years break to become a driver for the development of partnership between the two countries.

"Ukrainian diplomacy is systemically developing the achievements of the president's visit to the United States in September, where our countries signed 20 mutually beneficial documents in the fields of economy, security, and energy," the minister stressed.

He stressed that the new Strategic Partnership Charter will be a practical document that will address the common challenges facing Ukraine and the United States, strengthen unity in the face of Russian aggression, and launch new areas in bilateral relations.

"Washington's readiness for a new stage of strategic partnership shows theres trust in Ukraine, one of the key U.S. partners in Europe," the minister said.

The Ukrainian foreign minister said the agenda of the meeting would include Ukraine's defenses and countering Russian aggression, economic development, strengthening the countrys energy security, attracting U.S. investment, jointly combating cyber threats and climate change, and supporting internal transformations in Ukraine.

Kuleba also noted this years unprecedented intensity of contacts between Kyiv and Washington, as evidenced by President Volodymyr Zelensky's talks with U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Glasgow.

He noted that the economy is directly related to security, and therefore strengthening cooperation with the United States also sends a positive signal to investors and all those who seek to engage with Ukraine and develop long-term projects there.

As reported earlier, Zelensky arrived on a working visit to the United States on August 31. On September 1, Zelensky held talks with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden. The parties agreed to intensify the Strategic Partnership Commission, which was scheduled to meet in Washington this fall.

On September 9, the Ukrainian side of the Commission identified three tasks for its further work: reforming the Commission, providing the American side with the Ukrainian draft of the Strategic Partnership Charter, and drafting a plan for the country's transformation.

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The Verkhovna Rada has appointed Oleksiy Reznikov as Ukraine's defense minister.

Some 273 MPs voted for such a decision at a plenary meeting on Thursday, November 4, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

The Verkhovna Rada dismissed Andriy Taran from the post of defense minister on November 3. On the same day, President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted a motion to parliament on Reznikov's appointment to the post.

Prior to that, from March 2020, Reznikov had served as Ukraine's deputy prime minister and minister for the reintegration of temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The parliament dismissed him from the post on November 3.

Between 2008-2014, Reznikov worked as a deputy of Kyiv City Council of the sixth convocation. Since June 2014, he had served as a member of Kyiv City Council of the seventh convocation. He was also elected deputy mayor and secretary of Kyiv City Council. From April 2016 to September 2018, he held the position of deputy chairman of Kyiv City State Administration.

In September 2019, he was tapped to represent Ukraine in the political subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group. From May 5, 2020, he had served as first deputy chairman of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG.

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Eight Features of correct Russian cinema

Ukrainian actor Vitalii Salii was recognized best actor by the National Film Critics Award "Kinokolo-2021."

The board that chose the winner seems to have been unfazed by the fact that earlier this year, the actor had played a Russian navy officer in the Russian TV series Deep Bay.

In his defense, the actor claims there is no storyline in the series that would be anti-Ukrainian, political, or glorifying the aggressor army. However, does Russian cinema really exist without propaganda and distorted reality?

Across social media, Ukrainians criticized the actor for starring in the Russian series amid Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine, which has been going on for eight years already.

Salii responded to all critics, while not denying participation in the Russian project:

"Everyone who knows me at least a little is aware that I always publicly condemn the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea and the war in Donbas, which is why I dont act in films whose plot, script, final product, or crew in any way justify the war in eastern Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, or promote contempt for Ukrainians (or the Ukrainian language). This is a condition of my cooperation with any project, he wrote on Facebook.

There is no anti-Ukrainian storyline in the show, the actor stressed, adding that the main thing is the message it conveys. However, the actor stopped short of elaborating on what exactly the message is.

It should be reminded that the Ukrainian law prohibits distribution and airing in Ukraine of films promoting or carrying propaganda of the aggressor powers government agencies or their specific actions which create a positive image of the aggressor. Although the law does not explicitly bar Ukrainian actors from participating in the producition of such films, such work contributes to the very creation and distribution of the relevant content.

Returning to the message Salii mentioned in justifying his participation in the filming, we will tell you about the series finale. According to the plot, the main villain is Russias rear admiral responsible for the theft of new equipment from a submarine and the death of the crew as a result of a staged mine detonation set to cover up the theft. However, despite the character being a criminal, he is buried with military honors, with is funeral being set up as a praise of a real hero.

The viewer is left to wonder how come it was even possible. The fact remains in place  not only is the putrid crime of a high-ranking military officer concealed, the perpetrator is declared a hero. It would seem that this is an important plot twist and that a question requires an answer... But for some reason, it is left unaddressed.

Even if the Russian film doesnt openly promote anti-Ukrainian narratives, it can impose on the audiences a distorted worldview.

The said show is typical of the Putin-era cinematic art. It depicts a strong commander who is forgiven even despite complicity in a mass killing, as well as portrays the fall of the Soviet Union as the source of all bad things in the lives of the Russians.

Gangsters reigning over a seaside town are portrayed as a rudiment of ancient evil from the 1990s, which arose on Soviet ruins. There seems to be no modern-day evil in Putin's Russia unless its some minuscule stuff.

The only actual case in the history of modern Russia where the entire submarine crew died was the Kursk submarine accident in August 2000. One of the reasons behind the tragic outcome of the accident was Putin's actions as president, such as remaining reluctant to accept foreign aid in emergency response until it was too late. It is to this accident that his cynical response to U.S. journalist Larry King refers. It sank, Putin told the host when asked what happened with the Kursk sub.

In the series, the subramine crew dies in the late 1990s, before Putin was elected president. So its the Yeltsin-era gangs that are to blame for the incident. This way, history gets manipulated through fiction.

Chief director of Russian cinema

Back in 2008, Putin became a chief director of Russian cinema. At the time, a government council was set up for the development of domestic cinema, of which Putin took the helm as prime minister. Putin said the potential of cinema as the most important tool of upbringing, education, and formation of values in society remains underutilized. Critics described it as a return to the Leninist principle of all the arts, cinema is the most important to us, with all the same implications: ideological control coming back to the world of cinema.

Since then, more and more films have been made in Russia every year, with the government pouring billions into the industry, while the end product was increasingly becoming more akin to propaganda than actual art.

According to journalist Vladimir Tsybulsky, the era of Putin cinema started from The 9th Company movie filmed in 2005. Turns out you can simply with the Afghan war with a single film. It was clear that this was just the beginning. Only a few years have passed. Just look at the daily TV programs on any TV channel. Any movie poster Its all really not that funny... Putins cinema brought the oh-so-necessary peace and grandeur into the souls of the average Russians.

A snap from The 9th Company movie

Journalist Andrei Arkhangelsky refers to Putin's cinema as a "new socialist realism," comparing it to Stalins cinema.

You cant say that Stalin-era films varied too much. They could differ in style, in the degree of the authors talent; but you cant imagine they could be different in content or set of ideas. You cant say that Stalins movies had their own vision. They were all about one thing; regardless of genre, it was a total eulogy to the Soviet government, Arkhangelsky writes.

Even the wildest Russian movies, he said, adhere to unspoken loyalty codes. Producers want to show to the government that they can be trusted. As an example, he cites the first 2013 Russian disaster film, Metro. The story tells of a group of people trying to survive following an accident. They have almost reached the surface before suddenly their effort fails as they fall back into the water. The characters are unable to save themselves without the governments help.

A snap from Metro movie

Eight features of correct Russian cinema

Arkhangelsky offers eight examples of loyalty codes: whats mandated and whats unacceptable in Russian cinema:

1) The main code is the suggestion that the authorities in Russia are an absolute, unchanging, and uninfluenced entity. The authorities can bring upon people horror, fear, even disgust, while they can never be ridiculed. This would be the worst sin. For example, in the 2018 Russian comedy President's Holiday, which was promoted as bold, anyone is ridiculed, except for the Russian president. On the contrary, the film shows that if you give power to anyone else, this will saw chaos.

A snap from President's Holiday movie

2) The main evil in films is now the conditional West, which has always sought to ruin Russia. The only time in history when Russia showed some weakness was the 1990s, and blaming this period for everything is a sort of a ritual in Russian film industry. All the worst things happened back then or stem from that time.

3) The very idea of private property is also tabooed in Russian movies and TV series. As a result, in 20 years, the film industry has managed to keep secret from most viewers that capitalism has in fact long come to Russia.

4) Whatever the era the story unfolds in, law enforcement or security agencies play a key role in a film.

5) It is impossible to imagine a Russian movie about civil society being able to achieve something on its own today. The newer films also insist on the idea of the fundamental impotence of society: you cant do anything on your own, you will only ruin things.

6) Even if a Russian TV series or film is based on an actual event or character, it is absolutely wary of telling the true story. Producers claim the truth seems boring to them from the standpoint of art, but in reality, its just ideologically dangerous.

7) Patriotic films today are also uncontrollably taking up the form of aesthetic fascination with violence and death as such. The only thought that imposes on patriots today is that the best thing you can do for the country is to sacrifice your life for its sake.

8) Love is meant to humanize the most terrible historical periods, as well as compensate for any flaws of directors or screenwriters. In fact, on the Russian screen, love is a sort of a cover-up.

The characters in Russian films may fight against rather recognizable enemies of Vladimir Putin. In the Major Thunder: Plague Doctor action film, released this spring, a police officer is on a hunt for the main antagonist, a corruption whistleblower who operates online and sets up street protests. There is an obvious association with Aleksei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure who was first poisoned and then sentenced to a prison term.

A snap from Major Thunder Plague Doctor movie

The characters may also embody an authoritarian type of leader/father: they are the only ones who know how to make things better for people depending on them. Also, they employ violence to impose their vision (yet, they are violent to others, not themselves). In such films, the cruelty of those in power is always about care, while tyranny is an ingenious plan calculated several steps ahead. They are also an inevitable part of such movies. Does your child suffer from cerebral palsy? Perhaps, it would be a good idea to leave him out in the woods: if they dont die, they may start walking on their own, like in the Temporary Difficulties movie.

A snap from Temporary Difficulties movie

So, what can unite the iPhone Russia and the grassroots Russia with its weird fetish about prisoners music and culture? There is a peculiar way Russian cinema tackles the issue of a clash of generations and cultures, one of the favorite subjects of international cinematographic art. In a Russian movie, a SWAT team deploys and knocks everyone down to the floor, face down, no matter the social status so any controversies get erased and everyone calms down.

In Zack Snyder's 300, the battle of the Greeks with the Persians at Thermopylae was a clash of civilizations: a struggle of eastern centralism and collective serfdom against the idea of a free citizen of an autonomous polis.

Russia, on the other hand, offers the idea of authorities that, despite being cruel to its people, remain indisputably wise. And this idea can manifest itself in various forms and shapes, even in films that seem to have nothing to do with politics.

Center for Strategic Communication and Information Policy
The participants in the Kyiv rally protesting mass vaccination against COVID-19 and holding the same posters as in Moldovas Chisinau, dont defend the interests of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, while the messages they circulate are in line with the Russian narratives.

Thats according to Daniel Langenkamp, Press Attache of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, who spoke with journalists on Thursday, November 4, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Commenting on yesterday's rally of antivaxxers downtown Kyiv, he drew attention to the fact that an identical anti-vaccination protest by the same organization using the same posters was held in Chisinau yesterday.

In addition, the spokesman for the U.S. Embassy noted, this group of inoculation critics has spread anti-vaccination messages across social media in Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic countries.

The spokesman said credible information available to the diplomats points to the fact that the group members have also spread other messages highly-consistent with Russian disinformation narratives  including that Russia and Ukraine are one nation.

Some protesters also admitted to receiving funds for protests from Russia-based private individuals.

While firmly believing in freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, the embassy is convinced that the group in question does not have the interests of the Ukrainian people in mind.

Daniel Langenkamp has expressed hope that Ukrainians see this group for who they are.

Citing research, the diplomat said vaccination is the best way to protect yourself and your family and the best way for Ukraine to overcome the COVID pandemic.

Tha fact that 97% of the people in hospitals are unvaccinated speaks for itself, he said, assuring that the United States will continue to help Ukraine in this difficult situation.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, an anti-vaccination rally took place outside the Verkhovna Rada on November 3.

The protesters demanded that the government lift quarantine restrictions and recall a vaccination mandate for certain categories, all to protect humanity from "chipping" and "save the children."

Ukrainian journalists have also pointed to the fact that in both Ukraine and Moldova, antivaxxers took to the streets carrying posters of identical design.

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Published Nov. 3, 2021

By Ashlyn Dupree

ULM Office of Marketing and Communications

MONROE, LA University of Louisiana Monroe International Student Association hosts the Tihar Dog Festival at 11 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 6, in Bayou Park.

Want to go? WHAT: Tihar Dog Festival WHEN: 11 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 6 WHERE: Bayou Park COST: Free

ISA celebrates the South-Asian Kukur Tihar Dog festival to honor dogs for their service and bond with humans.

Traditional tikka and flower garlands will be provided for your fur friend. Local veterinarians and animal shelters will be present for questions and concerns. Participants can get a henna tattoo.

The event is open to the student body and the community. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets and dog clothing for the donation to local dog shelters.

Tihar festival originates from Nepal and lasts for five days. During the festival, people honor crows, dogs, cows, and the Goddess of Laxmi. The second day of Tihar is the celebration of dogs, the guardians for the god of death.

To register your dog, visit www.tiny.one/isadogfest.
| By Lou Cortina

University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, was named to The Daily Records inaugural Power 30 Higher Education List, which recognizes leaders who have exceled in advancing their institutions academic mission while also dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its quite an honor to be included on this list with so many talented individuals dedicated to higher education and the success of students in our state, Jarrell said. I thank The Daily Record for this recognition, and Im grateful to all at UMB who inspire me every day in our work to improve the human condition and serve the public good.

In its profile, the newspaper noted that Jarrell became UMBs interim president in January 2020, two months before the pandemic unfolded, and that his tenure has been marked by the Universitys response and recovery to the unprecedented health and economic crisis.

This has been a year where the best in many people has come forward, Jarrell told The Daily Record, a statewide newspaper that focuses on business, law, and government. At UMB, people have taken initiative in solving problems, stepped forward to take leadership roles, and managed to be productive in spite of the many difficulties that have been thrown in their way by COVID.

Guiding UMB through these difficult times is an accomplishment of which I am proud.

In introducing the list, Thomas Baden Jr., editor of The Daily Record, said the honorees were chosen by the newspapers editorial team, which reached out to readers and others for input and perspective.

There are few, if any, fields of endeavor more critical to Marylands future than higher education, Baden wrote. The task of preparing a new generation of citizens with critical thinking abilities, the temperament for lifelong learning, and the skills to enter a globally competitive workplace grows more challenging every year.

On top of all of that, we saw year two of a global pandemic that made in-class instruction difficult [sometimes impossible] and posed financial and technological obstacles unthinkable only months earlier. Many of the women and men leading our institutions of higher education, as well as teachers, policymakers, and advocates, rose to this challenge.

Jarrell arrived at UMB in 1997 as chair of the University of Maryland School of Medicines (UMSOM) Department of Surgery. In 2003, he moved to the UMSOM Deans Office, where he served as executive vice dean. He has held a series of UMB leadership positions, including chief academic and research officer, senior vice president, executive vice president, and dean of the University of Maryland Graduate School.

He told the newspaper that he credits his success to those with whom he has worked.

Its all about the people  who you surround yourself with, who you make time to meet and engage, and how you use their good will for improving other peoples lives, Jarrell said.
A formerly stateless family display their newly-obtained identity documents at their home in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.  UNHCR/Didor Saidulloyev

More action is needed to resolve the plight of millions around the world who are still without citizenship, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, urged today as it marked seven years since the launch of its #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness.

Significant progress has been made over the past few years, but governments must do more to close the legal and policy gaps that continue to leave millions of people stateless or allow children to be born into statelessness, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

Statelessness, or the situation of not being recognized as a citizen by any country, affects millions of people around the world. Stateless people cannot often access the most basic of rights, including being able to go to school, work legally, access health services, marry, or register the birth of a child.

Since UNHCR launched its #IBelong campaign in 2014 to raise attention and advocate for an end to global statelessness, more than 400,000 stateless people in 27 countries have acquired nationality, while tens of thousands of people across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas now have a pathway to citizenship as a result of newly enacted legislative changes.

Over the past seven years, 29 states have acceded to the Statelessness Conventions, signalling strengthened political will to end statelessness.

We are encouraged by this global momentum to tackle statelessness, which with concerted efforts by States, we can eradicate. But unless progress accelerates, the millions who remain deprived of a nationality will be stuck in a human rights limbo, unable to access the most basic rights, said Grandi.

Statelessness has many causes which are typically the result of gaps or flaws in nationality laws, and how they are implemented. Discrimination - including on the basis of ethnicity, religion and gender - is a major driver of statelessness.

Because they are not recognized as citizens, stateless people are often deprived of legal rights or basic services. This leaves them politically and economically marginalized and vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, and abuse. They may also not be able to access COVID-19 testing, treatment or vaccination, and may have little access to support or protection in the face of climate risks.

Governments hold power to enact legal and policy reforms that can help stateless people on their territory acquire citizenship or prevent statelessness from occurring in the first place, sometimes with the stroke of a pen, or a relatively simple legal change. It remains an easily avoidable and solvable issue.

UNHCRs decade long #IBelong campaign calls on states to end statelessness by 2024.



Background notes for editors:

Worldwide, UNHCRs statistical reporting counts 4.2 million stateless people in some 94 countries. Given that most countries do not collect any data on statelessness, the actual figure is believed to be substantially higher.

To date, 96 States are party to the 1954 UN Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and 77 are party to the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Since the start of the #IBelong Campaign:

1 State, Kyrgyzstan resolved all known cases of statelessness and 11 others made progress towards resolving major situations of statelessness.

17 States have also established statelessness determination procedures to identify stateless people on their territory, with some offering a facilitated pathway to citizenship.

12 States have created processes to facilitate naturalizing stateless migrants.

14 States have amended their nationality laws to grant nationality to children born in their territory who would otherwise be stateless.

2 States have reformed their nationality laws to allow mothers to confer nationality to their children on an equal basis with fathers.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
At 7:30 on a sunny Saturday, Almalyn Akmad stands beside a waiting van with a list of her Sama Bajau neighbours in her hand. One by one, the people around her file into the vehicle as their names are called out.

They are headed for the Civil Registrars Office of Zamboanga City to be interviewed in a birth registration drive for members of the community, who are at risk of statelessness due to their itinerant culture and generations without registering births.

On interview day, Almalyn serves as the Sama Bajaus guide and interpreter. She has been a community volunteer assisting with birth registration efforts since 2019. A Sama Bajau herself, she went through a similar process to obtain a birth certificate and knows it can be challenging for members of her community

Some people  find it really difficult because they dont have any of the requirements, Almalyn said.

The Sama Bajau frequently roam between the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia by sea in an itinerant lifestyle that has left many without official ID, and consequently hampered their access to services like education, healthcare, and jobs.

To bring them out of the shadows, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and UNICEF launched the birth registration drive in Zamboanga City in 2019 as part of the agencies Joint Strategy to End Childhood Statelessness. The initiative is being carried out with partners from the government in line with the Philippines National Action Plan to End Statelessness by 2024.

Typically, delayed birth registration requires government-issued supporting documents such as a marriage contract, tax certificate, academic record, proof of immunization, or national health insurance.

Before, when they would be interviewed, they would hide out of fear."

But the pilot project simplifies the registration process for the Sama Bajau and relies on the efforts of volunteers like Almalyn, to raise awareness and change perceptions among the community that is sometimes fearful of outsiders.

Before, when they would be interviewed, they would hide out of fear. Now, they approach us to register, they ask us for advice on how to do it, Almalyn said.

She and two other volunteers go house-to-house to inform residents of upcoming birth registration activities. They make the rounds again ahead of scheduled appearance dates at the Civil Registrars Office, and once more to distribute the birth certificates.

Almalyn Akmad (in yellow headscarf) shares a Sama Bajau dish with her children at home in Kasanyangan, Zamboanga City, Philippines.  UNHCR/Martin San Diego

Sama Bajau community members go through the process of birth registration at Zamboanga City's civil registry office.  UNHCR/Martin San Diego

A Sama Bajau mother and her daughter in Zamboanga City, Philippines. Many of the indigenous seafarers live in houses on stilts over the water.  UNHCR/Martin San Diego

An aerial view of a neighbourhood where Sama Bajau community members live, Zamboanga City, Philippines.  UNHCR/Martin San Diego

Thats the most difficult part, going around, said Almalyn with a laugh. Her community is part of Kasanyangan Village, a densely populated area by the coast. Like most Sama Bajau villages, houses are on stilts over the water and are connected only by a wooden boardwalk. Doing the rounds to share updates or to distribute birth certificates can take hours. On some days, Almalyn does not get home until after dark.

Her dream is for everyone in her community to have a birth certificate as proof of identity, particularly the children, so that they can get an education and have a shot at a better life. It is a sentiment shared by others in the community, among them Kinsilina Muhamad, 40. Her youngest son Arnel is in the third grade.

I need my son to finish his schooling because Im getting old and I wont be around for him as hes growing into adulthood soon, she said, adding that, if he can hold a pen in his hand, he can find work in the city.

While literacy skills are increasingly valued by the Sama Bajau, many older community members never learned to read or write. Community volunteers assistance in reading, translating, and filling out forms has been critical to facilitating the birth registration of entire families.

Im truly happy to see this birth certificate because I really need it."

The project currently seeks to reach an estimated 1,500 Sama Bajau living in Zamboanga City and Tawi-Tawi province. Since it started two years ago, it has helped 900 people to register their births. The onset of the pandemic just months after it was launched has intensified both the challenges of implementation and the need to facilitate the communitys access to COVID-19 assistance, healthcare and vaccination programmes.

Being able to help is a great feeling, especially now that its really necessary for people to have a birth certificate, said Almalyn.

The satisfaction she feels as a community volunteer is matched by that of the people she has helped, including Kinsilina, who at 40 years old, was finally able to hold her birth certificate in her hands for the first time.

Im truly happy to see this birth certificate because I really need it. Ive been wanting to have one for a long time, but I did not know how to get one, she said. Im really thankful.

The Sama Bajau are not alone in facing statelessness, a situation that impacts millions of people worldwide. Without proof of citizenship, stateless people are unable to get an education, obtain medical treatment, travel freely, seek a job or even buy a SIM card for a mobile phone.

UNHCR is seeking to end statelessness by 2024, through its #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness.
One of seven illustrations by Syrian cartoonist Hani Abbas included in UNHCR's first-ever NFT fundraising sale.  UNHCR/Hani Abbas

Syrian-Palestinian cartoonist Hani Abbas, 44, was born and grew up in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus. From the late 1990s his cartoons appeared in publications and exhibitions in Syria and across the Middle East, before he and his family fled the conflict in 2012 and eventually settled in Switzerland as refugees.

Since then, Abbass work  which tackles themes of injustice, loss, and the human cost of conflict  has featured in publications including Le Temps and La Liberte in Switzerland and Frances Le Monde. He is also a member of the Cartooning for Peace organization, a network of press cartoonists committed to promoting freedom and democracy. In 2014, Abbas received the International Editorial Cartoon Prize in Geneva.

To mark the 70th anniversary of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, Abbas has teamed up with national partner association Switzerland for UNHCR to launch the agencys first-ever NFT (non-fungible token) fundraising sale. Abbas has created seven cartoons, from which ten copies of each will be converted into unique digital assets and sold as NFTs on the OpenSea online marketplace to raise funds for UNHCRs Afghanistan crisis response.

Ahead of the start of the sale on 4 November, UNHCR spoke with Abbas and asked him about his life in Syria, his experiences as a refugee, and the meaning behind the images he has created. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your early life like growing up in Yarmouk camp?

Yarmouk is called a camp, but its really a part of the city with buildings, streets, and all the normal services. Growing up there was something nice and something hard. A lot of people in a small area; many pupils in the school. We had a beautiful, funny life  hard, but beautiful. Sometimes hard memories become nice when you look back. When I remember it now, I have nostalgia about that time. I remember my friends, my neighbourhood, my street, my family home.

Syrian-Palestinian cartoonist Hani Abbas in Geneva, Switzerland.  Courtesy of Hani Abbas

When did you first show a talent for drawing?

When I was a child, I loved to draw. I drew everything, and I drew on everything  I was drawing on the walls, in school textbooks, on my body - everywhere. This is a childs job! I loved drawing and when I was in school, my art teacher supported me and entered my work in a UN childrens drawing prize which I won twice, when I was 13 and 14. Those prizes gave me the power and the belief to continue drawing  I felt like I had something to say through my drawing. You can explain your story, your feelings, your ideas.

Did you always want to be a cartoonist?

No. At first it was anything, but when I was around 18, I started thinking about cartoons because I saw a lot in the newspapers, and on the walls of the camp. The walls were like our newspaper in the camp. Yarmouk was one big newspaper. In 1998 I published my first cartoon in a Palestinian magazine, then had exhibitions in the camp, in Damascus, Aleppo and Lebanon. I started connecting with newspapers  thats how it goes. At the same time, I was also a teacher in an elementary school in Damascus.

What themes do you address in your cartoons?

My early cartoons were about Palestine, Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. More political than funny because it was difficult for me to draw something funny. I always go towards tragedy and darkness because I draw what Im feeling. Im trying to explain about myself and my people. At that time, I was just drawing and there was no problem for me, but when the conflict started, you had to take your life in your hands when you drew.

Im still drawing now. Drawing in a safe place like Switzerland is good, you have total freedom. But you lose the sense of danger, the challenge. For me I did my best drawings under the bombs. I lost a big part of my power when I left Syria, but I still have the power of memory.

"The memories occupy my mind all the time."

How did the conflict affect you personally?

I moved many times in Syria starting from March 2011 until December 2012 when I left. The last six months were very difficult to live under the bombs all the time. At that time, we would hear three sounds. The first was the sound of the shell when it was launched. The second was the sound of the shell above us in the sky. The third sound was the sound the of the explosion on the ground, or in a building. I was drawing all the time, but when I heard that first sound, I would lift my pencil and wait, thinking: maybe this is my last drawing. If I heard the third sound, that meant I was still alive. Im lucky because I always heard all three sounds, but many thousands of Syrian people around me never heard the third sound.

You managed to escape Syria, first to Lebanon and then Switzerland. How did your life change?

Before, my family was all in the same place, now everyone is spread around the world. Im here in Switzerland, in Geneva, my brother is in Cologne in Germany, my parents and two other brothers are in Sweden, and another brother is in Madrid, in Spain. Its not easy to connect with them. Its good we have social media and video calls, but its not the same. My kids are speaking French now, my brothers kids are speaking German, Swedish, another Spanish. When they meet now its not easy to connect with so many languages, different cultures, different educations. We will lose our family tree. The branches have been cut off and are drifting down the river in different directions. But Switzerland is very good for my kids, without any problems and without any bad memories, without any dangers in the future. For me, its okay. Im working here, Im still drawing, Im feeling good  life is good  but the memories occupy my mind all the time.

Another of the seven images from a series entitled 'Windows', which examine memory and loss.  UNHCR/Hani Abbas

The images youve created for the NFT sale are part of a series you call Windows. What significance do windows have in your work?

What is the meaning of windows in my heart? They are our windows to see the country, to see people  to connect with them and hear them. In 2011, after four months of the conflict I drew the first window  a destroyed building with just a window still standing, and a young man waiting outside with a flower to see his love, who was gone. It represents what weve lost. Ive drawn other figures who have left everything else behind but take a window with them, because the window is their memory. I have my own ideas and feelings about the images, but I hope everyone who looks at them can see the effect of war on people.

"I hope all the people who have problems in their countries can get out."

The money raised in the sale will be used to support the people of Afghanistan. How did you feel watching recent events there?

It felt familiar for me because we were  were still  like them. The same problems, the same feelings, the same stories. In the news we always heard about the politics, but we didnt know what was happening to normal people. For me, I hope all the people who have problems in their countries can get out. I support people who want to get out if they have dreams, if they want to protect their kids.

Youre used to publishing your cartoons in newspapers. How do you feel about them being turned into unique digital assets and sold as NFTs instead?

I dont have any experience of this  I just do the drawings! But every cartoonist wants their work to be seen, and I support these new ideas. Anything that will help people and explain the hard conditions and problems they face, and allow other people to support them. Its a new idea, and when I heard about it, I loved it. We hope now it succeeds in focusing attention on the problems of [Afghans], and makes money for them of course, because they need it. Sometimes, to make a little bit of change in peoples lives they just need a tent or a little bit of food, a bit of support or a little education.

To see all the images included in the sale, please click here.
WiS | 02-11-2021

I feel that being a scientist is the best profession ever An interview with Prof Sara Wickstrom

Members of the Women in Science network together with Prof Sara Wickstrom (middle)  WiS

Prof Sara Wickstrom investigates how tissue stem cells communicate with each other and with their microenvironment so that coordinated cell divisions, cell movements and differentiation processes can give rise to specific tissue structures. She took up the post of director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Munster in a part-time capacity on November 1, 2021, and will assume it full-time in April 2022, moving from the University of Helsinki, Finland. A few months ago, young female scientists from the University of Munsters Cells in Motion Interfaculty Centre had invited her to give insights into her research in a lecture series, and they spoke to her about her personal path in research, the challenges faced by female researchers and the prerequisites for a successfully managed research group.

What made you choose your career path?

I always wanted to be a scientist. I was interested in math and physics but chose to enroll in medical school because I thought that this would enable science that would be solving real life problems. I did not know what a PI was at that point. After my PhD, I worked briefly as a clinician, and it was a very interesting experience. I liked doing something for people so that they could get better, but I did not like that my day was fully programmed, with little room for intellectual freedom. In medicine, you do not want a doctor that comes up with creative solutions to treat your disease. The desire to become a group leader came at the postdoc stage. What I really like about science is that you have room for creativity. Of course, there are also certain things that I dont like that much. It can be quite lonely, and you carry the pressure of getting money to support your people and research. However, I am fully autonomous. Nobody is telling me what to do and if I want to change the research direction of my lab, I just do it. I feel that being a scientist is the best profession ever.

What was it like to choose a new lab as a Postdoc and which challenges did you face?

I applied for a Postdoc position in both Germany and the USA and I ended up joining the Max Plank Institute in Munich. My decision to stay in Europe was driven by the group dynamic in the lab. You need to feel comfortable with the PI and the members of the lab you are joining. Now that I have my own group, I pay a lot of attention to group dynamics. When hiring, I engage the whole group, because I think science is teamwork. I hire people who are smart and motivated, but at the same time show that they are team players and can integrate into the group. When I moved to Germany, the lab was very welcoming and international, which made making friends easier. Going abroad is a challenge that you cannot underestimate, and it becomes more difficult as you get older because you become less flexible, more selective and you want to spend more time with your family. From a personal perspective, moving to another country is hard, but from a professional perspective, its very valuable as you become exposed to different environments and people, which drive your science in new directions.

How do you deal with the group dynamics in your lab?

First, you have to think about the optimal group size for your lab. I, for example, try not go above 15 people. As a group leader, you know that there will be things outside of your control. If two people in your lab do not get along, often the problem comes to your attention when it is too late. It is important for people to interact and encourage each other, but also be respectful and acknowledge that people come from very different backgrounds. I also experienced that people can change over time because they are having issues outside of the lab. Very often, you must deal with challenging situations that you are not trained for. It is good to have an experienced mentor with whom you can discuss difficult situations.

How do you help your students cope with the vicissitudes of a PhD?

That is of course very challenging and from my perspective my job is to remove obstacles for them to succeed. If somebody is struggling, I try to identify what is blocking their progress. I also try to help that person gain self-confidence to pick up and continue. However, if a person is not motivated, it is very difficult to externally motivate them. I always try to keep in mind that everybody is different and that what can work for one does not necessarily work for all. In academia, we try to train scientists in the specific career path that we know. However, that is not the career path of choice for all students and therefore it is important to support their own decisions.

How is it like not to do practical lab-work anymore?

I have been trying to stay in the lab for as long as possible. It depends a bit on your position, if you have to teach, then it is more difficult. I was lucky because at the Max Planck you dont have to teach more than you want. This meant that I was still pipetting quite long into my PI career and even sometimes now although I dont have so much time anymore unfortunately. The less experiments you do, the harder it is to start one. However, if I have time and somebody asks for help  quite rarely in these days because they think I am hopeless  I like to help them.

You had quite few challenges during your career, were there specific challenges or disadvantages for you as a woman? Did you ever experience discrimination?

In my personal experience, I have not experienced direct discrimination, but as a woman, you have to show your competence. In my experience (and this is shared by many others) if you are a woman, the default assumption often is that you are incompetent, and you have to somehow prove your competence. If you are a male, the default assumption is that you are competent and only if you mess up you can then lose this assumption. But if you do well and publish high quality papers then people will respect you regardless of gender. I found it challenging after my time at the MPI. I felt that I was doing pretty well with my level of science but because I did not have papers at the absolutely elite journals at this time, I felt that people still judged me as a junior scientist more than what they would have done with a male colleague with a similar CV. I often suggest women to place their key publications in the first slides during job interviews to counteract immediately the assumption of incompetence. In certain situations like job interviews it is important to put your accomplishments out there and be visible.

Which could be the reason behind the leaky pipeline that sees many female PhD students but far fewer postdocs and even fewer PIs?

This is a very complex issue. Partially this is due to lack of support and encouragement. A concrete example is the MPG award for the best PhD students. The basic requirement is that you should have summa cum laude but also your PI has to nominate you. When you look at the summa cum laude, it is distributed quite evenly between males and females, but female PhD students get nominated less for this award. It is very important that someone supports and promotes you during your career. As I said, I dont think there is active discrimination, at the same time, many women are not being actively pushed. What is important to note that this unconscious bias is both from men and women.

The other problem I see is that in science you are expected to change the city or country and this becomes more difficult when you have children. At that point, it becomes a negotiation with your partner and, based on my personal experience, it is often the woman that does the compromise. There is some data from the EMBO fellowships. They tried to figure out why women were getting fewer fellowships than men. At the early PI-stage, it turned out that women indeed had less good CVs compared to men and that those differences partially arose because women changed their location more often on reasons that were not based on their own career advancement.

Do you think that the role of the women in the society is changing right now?

Women are more interested in pursuing careers and society has changed in a way that fathers participate more in raising children. This is helping women to not be forced to choose between career and family, but to combine them. However, if you look at the statistics, things are not improving as fast as people hoped. Some tools are being implemented to counter discrimination and promote women in science. However, for those men that never experienced discrimination, it is sometime hard to understand why they are necessary. Some men look at these measures very critically because they say that it limits their possibilities. For example, it might happen that you have two candidates, a male and a female, who are at the same level and there is now pressure to select the woman. I totally understand that at the individual level this can be frustrating, but on the other hand it is clear that without active measures the biases will never change.

What would you suggest we as females can do to improve our chances of advancing our careers in science?

One important thing is to look for mentors. Your PI is typically your mentor, but they dont have to be the only one. Try to find other people who can support and promote you. You will always need somebody that speaks for you. Because in the end, you will rarely be in the room where decisions on your career are being made. The second thing is to be open for networking and to be active and open in discussions.

Where do your ideas come from?

I think that the creative ideas come from connecting two dots that are seemingly not connected. Hearing presentations and reading papers in your area will help you understand what the open questions are. Hearing talks from other fields will help you become creative and connect dots. I think that my ideas are  people might disagree  getting better over time as I learn more and more about how nature works. Furthermore, I think that it is very important, to be open for discussions. Students can also bring new and fresh angles that you may have never thought about. Therefore, I think it is essential to discuss your ideas. That is why, in my lab, I always try to encourage critical discussions and brainstorming on the data.

How do you define the direction you want to take with your research while setting up your own lab?

You have to think about your expertise. When the first students join your lab, you have to teach them how to do things. This means that you preferably should start with methods and approaches that you are good at. During your career, you will have gained expertise from different labs, and this normally creates a combination, which makes your profile unique in that field. On the other hand, when it comes to the biological questions it is important to be ambitious. People often say that you have to find your niche and try to answer this small question that nobody else studies. I do not agree with that. You should study something that you are interested in, even if it is big. You will not answer the question with the first few papers, but you will have a long-term goal.

Links
Samples containing possible fentanyl are marked so forensic analysts at the state crime lab can take safety precautions when handling the drug.
Researchers found the first Asian giant hornet nest in the U.S. on private property near Blaine, Whatcom County, in 2019.
Despite the statewide Oct. 18 deadline for school employees and contractors to be vaccinated or seek exemption, Benton County Sheriffs deputy Brad Klippert, on left, told the Herald that he hasnt done either. Through his role as a deputy, the WA state representative has been a school resource officer with the Kiona-Benton City school district for over 20 years.
Five-year-old Laila Greaves, one of the first of her age group to get vaccinated in Washington state, gets a kiss from her mother, Natasha Greaves, as her father, Alieu Ann, waits patiently for Lailas turn at Shoreline Community College on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.
Seated in the red shirts are members of Baldwin Countys latest REACH scholarship signing class, and they have their parents/guardians standing behind them. If these Oak Hill eighth-grade students keep their GPA at or above 2.5 and maintain good attendance and behavior through high school graduation, they will receive at least $10,000 towards a college education. The signees are (from left to right): Presley Anderson, Saul De La Cruz, Brooke Moats, Laila Primas and Micah Webb.
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TEL AVIV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) The Israeli Knesset narrowlyapproved the country's budget for 2021 and is going to vote on the draft budget for the next year, marking the end of three and a half years of a political deadlock in Israel that saw successive governments fall before they could bring a plan to the Knesset.

Passing the budget was seen as a key test for the eight-party coalition led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yamina right-wing political alliance, and alternate prime minister Yair Lapid, the head of Israel's largest opposition party Yesh Atid. In case of a failure to approve the budget by a November 14 deadline, the Knesset would be dissolved, forcing new elections.

"After years of chaos  we created a government, overcame the (COVID-19) Delta variant and now, thank God, we passed a budget for Israel! Continuing forward at full strength," prime minister Naftali Bennett wrote in a statement, as quoted by the Times of Israel.

As a result of the voting, which started on Wednesday and lasted all night, the parliament approved a $194 billion (609 billion shekel) spending plan for 2021, proposed by the government, and is to vote on a $183 billion (573 billion shekel) budget plan for 2022 later on Thursday, according to the Times of Israel.

Foreign Minister and alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter that "after a long night, we approved the 2021 budget in the Knesset and there is another long day ahead. Another budget for the next year."

The coalition, formed following the 24th Knesset elections, was named the Block of Changes and is based on a minimum parliamentary majority - 61 parliamentary votes in the 120-seat Knesset. Under the coalition agreement, the new government will be headed by Bennett for about two years, after which Bennett will yield the helm to alternate Prime Minister Lapid. 

Passage of the budget plan is expected to stabilize the ideologically diverse Bennet-Lapid coalition, made up of right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties, as well as an Islamist faction.
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CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) The new contract on gas supplies between Russian energy giant Gazprom and Moldova does not mean that Chisinau will refuse to implement the third energy package approved by the European Union, Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita said on Wednesday.

In 2010, Moldova committed to implementing the EU's third energy package. The document stipulates that Moldovagaz should separate its subsidiary Moldovatransgaz and transfer the gas transportation infrastructure to it. Other suppliers will also be entitled to use this infrastructure. However, at talks with Gazprom in late October, Moldova agreed to sign an intergovernmental agreement with Russia which prohibits the reorganization of Moldovagaz until the country's gas debt is paid off.

"The contract with Gazprom does not mean that we refuse to implement the third energy package. Much will depend on the agreement in the field of energy, which will be signed by Moldova and Russia," Gavrilita said, as broadcast by Jurnal tv channel.

The agreement will specify in detail how Moldovagaz will function in the future, the official said, adding it is now necessary to study whether the contract with Gazprom and the agreement with Russia will prevent other suppliers from entering the Moldovan energy market.

After the contract with Gazprom was announced, Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said the implementation of the EU's third energy package would be postponed for about a year.

The EU package, which went into effect in 2009, aims at liberalizing the bloc's electricity and gas market. It restricts vertically integrated companies' right to own and operate energy transmission networks from outside. Thus, the EU attempted to separate the businesses of selling and transporting gas, allow new players to enter the market, and reduce energy prices.
China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Corp.), China's largest oil refiner, on Thursday signed a long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal with U.S. LNG producer Venture Global LNG

BEIJING, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Corp.), China's largest oil refiner, on Thursday signed a long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal with U.S. LNG producer Venture Global LNG.

The purchase and sale agreement, with a duration of 20 years, will see the Chinese oil giant buy 4 million tonnes of LNG per year from Venture Global LNG's project in Plaquemines, Louisiana.

This is currently the largest long-term LNG agreement signed between China and the United States, according to Sinopec.

Meanwhile, Unipec, a subsidiary of Sinopec, will also purchase a combined 3.8 million tonnes of LNG from the Calcasieu Pass project owned by Venture Global LNG.

The LNG deal reflects the consensus of the two companies on pushing forward the global energy shift, Ma Yongsheng, president of Sinopec, told Xinhua. He added that the move is significant to China in achieving its carbon-neutrality goal.

China has announced that it will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
Today (4th November 2021), Gold Rates in Pakistan is 97,800 per 10 grams, and the rate of Gold is 114,100 per tola. See prices of 22k, 24k, 21k and 18 karat Gold Prices of all cities here.

Gold Rate in Pakistan today on 4th November 2021 - Per Tola Gold Rate in Pakistan today is 114,100 for 24-Karat, 104,558 for 22-Karat.

Per 10 gram Gold Rate in Pakistan today is 97,800 for 24-Karat, 89,649 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 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Karachi Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Lahore Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Islamabad Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Rawalpindi Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Peshawar Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Quetta Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649 Sialkot Rs 97,800 Rs 114,100 Rs 89,649
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London, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Major oil producers on Thursday are expected to continue planned moderate output increases despite pressure to further ramp up production amid soaring prices.

The 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and their 10 allies meet for their regular monthly meeting via video conference and are expected to re-confirm their July decision.

The powerful producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia in the so-called OPEC+ grouping agreed in July to modestly step up production after steeply slashing it last year as the pandemic hit global markets.

"While there is plenty of pressure on OPEC+ to increase output more aggressively, members continue to resist and instead seem to prefer to stick to their plan of easing cuts by 400,000 barrels per day per month," ING analysts said in a note this week.

With prices for the benchmark WTI contract rising to $85, the highest since 2014, US President Joe Biden appealed on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome over the weekend to OPEC to pump more.

"The idea that Russia and Saudi Arabia and other major producers are not going to pump more oil so people can have gasoline to get to and from work, for example, is not right," he said.

Other oil-consuming nations, such as India and Japan, have also called for more output to lower prices.

OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo last week re-iterated "the need to remain cautious and attentive to an ever-evolving market situation," according to a statement.

While higher prices benefit producers in the form of increased revenues -- particularly after the lean period of the coronavirus pandemic -- there are concerns that they could stifle the fragile economic recovery and thus demand for oil.

There have also been question marks recently over the ability of OPEC+ members to drastically boost output.

Contrary to the normal trend of OPEC countries exceeding their production quotas, in recent months most member states have stuck to them or in some cases even fallen short.

This suggests that the group may not be able to rapidly increase production in the short term despite it having a current theoretical reserve of more than four million bpd in the ground.

Another uncertainty, OPEC member Iran has been excluded from the market due to US sanctions, which the Islamic republic hopes to see lifted through negotiations in Vienna on scaling back its nuclear programme.

However, those negotiations have been deadlocked since June and are to resume only at the end of the month.
By Binsal Abulkader ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 04th Nov, 2021) Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, and the UAE, share common values of moderate islam and can work together to promote tolerance and act against religious extremism, Indonesias President told Emirates news Agency (WAM).

"I think this is a great potential. I see that religious moderation and diversity in the UAE are widely respected. And that is the area of cooperation we would like to explore more because we both share the closeness in the vision and characters of moderate Islam that propagates tolerance," Joko Widodo said in an exclusive interview in Abu Dhabi.

"In religious life, I see that the UAE has been able to develop these moderate values that complement the countrys pursuit for peace and development."

Widodo, who is on a three-day official visit to the UAE, said the cooperation between the two countries in this regard is moving in the right direction.

"We exchange our views and experiences on this, and we have sent many imams [those who lead prayers at mosques] to the UAE. We hope that both countries can promote the concept of religious moderation and tolerance, and enhance the awareness among people on the dangers of extremism and radicalism," he said.

"Our relationship with the UAE is not just like friends; we are like brothers. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan [Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces] is a man of vision and a man of action; I feel comfortable cooperating with him and that is reflected in the close relationship between our countries."

CEPA to triple trade volumes Talking about the bilateral economic relations, he said the economic and investment ties with the UAE are one of the priorities of the Indonesian Government.

Indonesia is among the ten countries that the UAE wants to increase its annual exports to by 10 percent, as announced in the countrys Projects of the 50 initiative. The two countries have started negotiations in September on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

"I hope if we are able to conclude the CEPA, then the trade volumes will further be increased two to three times," the President said, revealing that the bilateral trade witnessed 27.78 percent upsurge to reach US$215 million during the first seven months of 2021, from US$168 million during the same period in 2020.

"The bilateral economic and investment relations have huge potential; both countries have the same vision to move forward. The affinity between two peoples is good and we have the same characteristics. We are open and diverse, and that is the importance of the relationship between the two countries," he explained.

UAE as hub between ASEAN, middle East Indonesia considers the UAE as a hub in the Middle East for its trade with the region, Widodo said.

"The cooperation between Indonesia and UAE could also help improve the relations between ASEAN [association of 10 Southeast Asian nations] and the Middle East.

We are also exploring the cooperation in such sectors as healthcare, technology and renewable energy. I think these sectors are important for the future," the President affirmed.

Widodo believes that the Indonesia Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai will help exchange knowledge, expertise and investment opportunities in those three areas with the UAE and the rest of the world.

"We want to showcase Indonesia's potential in all areas, especially in trade and tourism. We hope Expo would help attract more tourists to Indonesia and increase our trade and investment relations with the UAE and other parts of the world."

UAE's US$10bn investments in Indonesia The UAE had announced in March 2021 that it will invest US$10 billion in Indonesias sovereign wealth fund  Indonesia Investment Authority (IIA).

"We are delighted about the UAEs announcement on the US$10 billion investment. I believe this is an initial investment, because there is a bigger potential [for investments] in the future. We have plenty of opportunities in the renewable energy development, as well as the construction of the new Indonesian capital city," he said.

Indonesias progress will be focused on development of infrastructure and human capital, the President stressed, saying this has been his focus during the first and second terms of his presidency. Widodo first became the President in 2014 and won a second term in 2019.

Talking about his priorities, he said, "Im an ordinary person, born in an ordinary family. Hence, it is very normal for me to deal with common people. I would like to focus on work and achieve my goals."

Cooperation in climate change, global arena "I respect the UAEs commitment to tackle climate change and the steps taken in that direction. And I support your offer to host the COP 28 [the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Abu Dhabi in 2023], the President said.

"And I also appreciate and welcome the UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative, a national drive to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050," he said referring to the UAEs announcement on 7th October, making the Emirates the first country in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to make such a commitment.

Indonesia will also take concrete actions to achieve net zero emission by 2060 or earlier, Widodo revealed.

"We would like to concentrate in the rehabilitation of mangrove forests. We also want to reduce forest fire incidents in Indonesia."

Indonesia is committed to international cooperation on global issues such as climate change, especially with the UAE.

"We will continue to be an active player in the international arena."
ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 04th Nov, 2021) Salem Rashid Al Owais, UAE Ambassador to Colombia, has said that the UAE and Colombia have historical relations based on friendship and overall cooperation, supported by the keenness of their leaderships to reinforce them.

Al Owais stated that Expo 2020 Dubai is a breakthrough in UAE-Colombia relations and an opportunity to boost their bilateral ties. It is also a platform for showcasing Colombias innovations and overall achievements.

The event will also help achieve Colombia's plans to forge new commercial partnerships and access new markets, he added. Ivan Duque Marquez, President of Colombia, is set to visit the UAE, where he will lead a high-level delegation, including the ministers of trade, tourism and industry, health and environment, and a range of business leaders, he noted.

During his official visit to the country, Marquez will meet with the UAEs leadership to sign agreements and Memoranda of Understanding in various sectors and participate in his countrys National Day celebrations at Expo 2020 Dubai, he further added.

Al Owais stressed that cultural diplomacy has helped enhance the relations between the two countries.

The UAE Embassy in Colombia has launched several cultural initiatives to promote Emirati culture and heritage, including publishing a special edition of the magazine, "Simana," and distributing thousands of copies to government authorities and universities. It also organised the "Arabic Language Fundamentals" education initiative for participants of the Colombian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, he said.

He also pointed out that under the framework of the countrys efforts to address COVID-19 and in light of the distinguished ties between the two countries, the UAE has sent nearly 100 tonnes of medical aid to Colombia, and dispatched six planes with medical supplies, in addition to facilitating the safe transit of Colombian citizens to their country.

Diplomatic relations between both countries began in 1976. The Colombian Embassy in the UAE was inaugurated in 2011, followed by the inauguration of the Emirati Embassy in Bogota in 2013. The two countries also signed several agreements and MoUs in various areas.
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Paris, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Britain's Brexit minister is due in Paris Thursday for talks on the fishing rights crisis that has further strained already tense relations between the two countries.

The meeting comes a day after a French court released a British trawler impounded for a week as part of the deepening dispute.

David Frost will sit down with French Europe Minister Clement Beaune to continue negotiations after several days of tense exchanges between the leaders of the two countries.

Frost is a staunch defender of Brexit while Beaune is a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, not shy of making clear his belief that France should not pay for what he sees as Britain's mistake of leaving the EU.

The two have also sparred on social media. Their meeting is set to be held behind closed doors and no press conference is planned.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said there would also be a European Commission meeting on the issue during a visit by Frost on Friday, but this is yet to be confirmed by Brussels.

- Free to go - On Wednesday evening, the impounded trawler, the Cornelis Gert Jan, left the French northern port of Le Havre after receiving permission to leave, an AFP correspondent said.

Its captain, Jondy Ward, still faces charges of gathering two tons of scallops in French waters without a proper licence.

But the lawyer for the ship's captain, Mathieu Croix, told AFP a court in the nearby city of Rouen had allowed it to leave without posting any financial guarantee.

The court rejected the state's demand that the trawler remain impounded until a 150,000 euro ($175,000) bond had been deposited, he said.

"It is a good decision, of a kind that will allow the tensions to drop," said the lawyer.

"French justice is independent from political pressure," he added.

Ward, who was present in court for the hearing, afterwards joined his seven crew members to begin the journey back, smiling for journalists on the shore.

The captain still faces a trial in Le Havre on August 11, 2022 on charges of non-authorised fishing in French waters by a boat from outside the European Union, which carry a maximum fine of 75,000 Euros ($87,000).

- 'All options on table' - The dispute over post-Brexit fishing rights has strained already troubled relations between Paris and London following Britain's exit from the European Union and has threatened to escalate into a full-blown trade war.

While British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday made it clear that London's position had not changed there are signs both sides favour diplomacy in a bid to avoid the situation worsening.

Attal emphasised that "all options were on the table" regarding future sanctions after Macron put off implementing trade sanctions to give the talks a chance.

France has threatened to ban British boats from unloading their catches at French ports and to subject all British imports to inspections.

Under a deal agreed by Britain and the EU late last year, European fishing vessels can continue to ply UK waters if they can prove they operated there in the past.

But dozens of French boats have had their applications to operate in the UK's fish-rich waters rejected.

The total volumes affected are tiny in terms of overall France-UK bilateral trade.

But analysts say Macron is keen to take a hard line against Johnson as he eyes re-election in 2022 polls while the British premier is also keen to talk tough in the wake of Brexit.
BEIJING, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Pakistan Ambassador to China, Moinul Haque on Thursday called on Liu Ziqing, Member of Municipal standing committee and Secretary of Working Committee of Wuhan and discussed cooperation between Pakistan and Wuhan in the industrial and technological sectors.

During the meeting held at Demonstration Zone of Wuhan new energy and smart network, Liu Ziqing briefed the ambassador about the immense growth potential of Wuhan city particularly in the areas of biotechnology, semiconductors and new energy and smart network. Moreover, the demonstration zone was being developed into an auto valley.

He offered collaboration between automobile companies of the two countries in this special zone.

Recalling that during the opening ceremony of the Military Games held in Wuhan in October 2019, Pakistani contingent was given a standing ovation by the cheering crowd in the presence of President Xi Jinping.

Liu Ziqing said that the people of Wuhan have a special bond of friendship with Pakistan and would like to enhance joint collaboration in diverse areas.

Ambassador Haque remarked that due to their consistent efforts, cooperation between Pakistan and Wuhan was growing rapidly in many new areas.

He noted that new energy vehicles was an important area of cooperation between the two countries as demand for electric vehicles was increasing in Pakistan and invited Chinese Electric Vehicle manufacturing companies to invest in Pakistani market.

The ambassador paid tribute to the brave people of Wuhan for their fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and also thanked Wuhan government for looking after Pakistani students during the pandemic.

Earlier, Ambassador Moinul Haque was given a detailed briefing about the development of new energy vehicles in Wuhan at the demonstration zone. He was also given a tour of locally manufactured AI based driverless electric bus.
Glasgow, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Global CO2 emissions caused mainly by burning fossil fuels are set to rebound in 2021 to pre-Covid levels, with China's share increasing to nearly a third of the total, according to an assessment published Thursday.

Overall, CO2 pollution this year will be just shy of the record set in 2019, according to the annual report from the Global Carbon Project consortium, released as nearly 200 nations at the COP26 climate summit confront the threat of catastrophic warming.

Emissions from gas and highly polluting coal will rise this year by more than they dropped in 2020 due to the pandemic-driven economic slowdown.

Capping the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- as per the Paris Agreement -- would limit mortality and damage, but requires slashing carbon emissions nearly in half by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, the UN's climate science authority has warned.

"This report is a reality check," co-author Corrine Le Querre, a professor of climate change science at Britain's University of East Anglia, told AFP.

"It shows what's happening in the real world while we are here in Glasgow talking about tackling climate change." The new report will come as bad news at the 13-day COP26 meeting, where a diplomatic spat saw the United States accuse China and Russia of failing to step up their climate action ambitions.

China on its own will account for 31 percent of global emissions this year after its economy accelerated out of the economic lull ahead of others.

Carbon pollution from oil remains well below 2019 levels, but could surge as the transport and aviation sectors recover from pandemic disruption, said the study in the journal Earth System Science Data.

Taken together, the findings mean that future C02 emissions could eclipse the 40-billion tonne record set in 2019, which some have predicted -- and many hoped -- would be a peak.

"We cannot rule out more overall growth of emissions in 2022 as the transport sector continues to recover," Le Quere said. "We are bound to have ups and downs over the next few years." The latest figures are in line with a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast that emissions from energy would hit an all-time high in 2023, "with no clear peak in sight".

"Perhaps we will start talking about peak emissions in 2023 or 2024?", said Glen Peters, research director at the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo and a co-author of the report.

Looking at the national level, the report found a return to pre-Covid patterns among the world top four carbon polluters, which account for 60 percent of global CO2 emissions.

In China -- which has pledged to peak its emissions by 2030, and reach net-zero by 2060 -- economic growth spurred by government incentives will see emissions grow 5.5 percent this year compared to 2019, the last year not affected by Covid.

"The rebound in China was robust," said Peters. "It looks like China is in a phase of strong growth again." India, the world's other emerging giant, is on track for a similar percentage increase in carbon pollution, and will account for seven percent of the total this year.

2021 emissions in the US and EU will drop 3.7 and 4.2 percent, respectively, and their share of global emissions will stand at 14 and 7 percent.

The wild card that could determine how quickly the world can finally bend the emissions downward is coal, the report made clear.

"Mostly it's about coal now," said Le Quere. "This is where the big uncertainties are." Very little of the trillions of Dollars chanelled to post-pandemic recovery was earmarked for green development, a trend that is continuing, she said.

"Economic incentives now are about driving consumption, and this is really pushing industry, production and coal." Worldwide, decarbonisation -- mainly switching from fossil fuels to renewable -- continues to be outpaced by the demand for energy, adding to emissions.

But the report was not bereft of positive signals.

Twenty-three countries accounting for a quarter of global emissions over the last decade -- including the US, Japan, Germany, France and Britain -- simultaneously saw strong growth and a significant decline in emissions, showing that the two can be decoupled.

For 15 of these nations, this held true even when the carbon emissions from the production of imported goods was included.

"This shows that these countries know how to do it, they demonstrate it's possible." But the finding makes clear how daunting the Paris Agreement goals are, she added.

"If you want to reach net zero by 2050, you need to decrease emissions, on average, by 1.4 billion tonnes per year," she said.

"In 2020, during the pandemic, we had a drop of 1.6 billion tonnes -- this shows you the scale of the action required."
Glasgow, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Global CO2 emissions mainly caused by burning fossil fuels are set to rebound in 2021 to levels seen before the Covid pandemic, according to an assessment published Thursday that served as a "reality check" to vague decarbonisation pledges at a UN climate summit.

Overall, CO2 pollution this year will be just shy of the record set in 2019, according to the annual report from the Global Carbon Project consortium, released as nearly 200 nations at the COP26 climate summit confront the threat of catastrophic warming.

Emissions from gas and highly polluting coal will rise this year by more than they dropped in 2020, when shutdowns to slow the spread of the pandemic caused economies to slow dramatically.

Capping the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- as per the Paris Agreement -- would limit mortality and damage, but achieving that goal would require slashing carbon emissions nearly in half by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, the UN's climate science authority warned.

"This report is a reality check," co-author Corrine Le Quere, a professor of climate change science at Britain's University of East Anglia, told AFP.

"It shows what's happening in the real world while we are here in Glasgow talking about tackling climate change." The new report is bad news for the 13-day COP26 meeting, where a diplomatic spat saw the United States accuse China and Russia of failing to step up their ambitions.

China will account for 31 percent of global emissions this year after its economy accelerated out of the economic lull ahead of others.

Carbon pollution from oil remains well below 2019 levels, but could surge as the transport and aviation sectors recover from pandemic disruption, said the study in the journal Earth System Science Data.

Taken together, the findings mean that future C02 emissions could eclipse the 40-billion tonne record set in 2019, which some have predicted -- and many hoped -- would be a peak.

"We cannot rule out more overall growth of emissions in 2022 as the transport sector continues to recover," Le Quere said. "We are bound to have ups and downs over the next few years." The latest figures are in line with a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast that emissions from energy would hit an all-time high in 2023, "with no clear peak in sight".

"Perhaps we will start talking about peak emissions in 2023 or 2024," said Glen Peters, research director at the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo and a co-author of the report.

Looking at the national level, the report found a return to pre-Covid patterns among the world top four carbon polluters, which account for 60 percent of global CO2 emissions.

In China -- which has pledged to peak its emissions by 2030, and reach net-zero by 2060 -- economic growth spurred by government incentives will see emissions grow 5.5 percent this year compared with 2019, the last year not affected by Covid.

"The rebound in China was robust," said Peters. "It looks like China is in a phase of strong growth again." India, the world's other emerging giant, is on track for a similar percentage increase in carbon pollution, and will account for seven percent of the total this year.

Emissions in the US and EU will drop 3.7 and 4.2 percent this year respectively and their share of global emissions will stand at 14 and 7 percent.

The wild card that could determine how quickly the world can finally bend the emissions downward is coal, the report made clear.

"Mostly it's about coal now," said Le Quere. "This is where the big uncertainties are." Very little of the trillions of Dollars channelled to post-pandemic recovery was earmarked for green development, a trend that is continuing, she said.

"Economic incentives now are about driving consumption, and this is really pushing industry, production and coal," said Le Quere.

Worldwide, decarbonisation -- mainly switching from fossil fuels to renewable -- continues to be outpaced by the demand for energy.

But the report highlighted some positive signs.

Twenty-three countries accounting for a quarter of global emissions over the last decade -- including the US, Japan, Germany, France and Britain -- enjoyed strong economic growth alongside significant declines in emissions.

But the finding makes clear how daunting the Paris Agreement goals are.

Peter Norton, director of International Institute for Environment and Development, said the report showed that on current emissions levels the world would emit enough to breach the 1.5C goal within 11 years.

"That is in many ways worse than it sounds," he said on Twitter.
London, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Nov, 2021 ) :A hospital electrician in Britain pleaded guilty Thursday to murdering then sexually assaulting two women in 1987 before, decades later, carrying out scores of sex attacks on corpses in mortuaries.

David Fuller admitted strangling 25-year-old Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce, 20, in two separate attacks months apart in Kent, southeast England, prosecutors said.

The 67-year-old was only arrested last December and, four days into his trial on Thursday, changed his pleas after initially pleading not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

During this week's court proceedings, it was revealed Fuller went on to sexually assault at least 99 women and girls in hospital mortuaries where he was working as an electrician.

His victims included three children under the age of 18 and others older than 85 between 2008 and 2020.

Police who searched his home last year found he had filmed himself carrying out the attacks at the two mortuaries where he had worked in electrical maintenance roles since 1989.

Officers only discovered his crimes after Fuller was arrested for the 1987 murders following a DNA breakthrough.

Ahead of trial for the twin killings, Fuller admitted 51 other offences, including 44 charges relating to 78 identified victims in mortuaries, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, which brings prosecutions in England and Wales.

Investigators have so far detected 99 potential victims, of which they know the Names of 78.

The offences include the sexual penetration of a corpse, possessing an extreme pornographic image involving sexual interference with a corpse and taking indecent images of children.

The evidence found dates back to 2008 -- when digital camera devices were becoming more widespread -- but police believe the true scale of his offending may never be known.

Senior CPS prosecutor Libby Clark said the extent of his necrophilia crimes appeared unprecedented.

"I have never come across anything like it -- the numbers, the nature of offending -- and I don't know anybody who has, be they police or other prosecutors," she said.

"This was a man with a very, very dark secret." Police leaders tasked more than 150 specialist family liaison officers with visiting the victims' families, while some 1.5 million ($2.0 million, 1.75 million Euros) has been earmarked to pay for bespoke support.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he had asked the health sector to review mortuary and post-mortem access in light of the findings.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose brief includes the police, called the case "shocking".

"My heartfelt sympathies go out to the families of all those who may have been affected," she said.

"The sickening nature of the crimes committed will understandably cause public revulsion and concern," she added.

An independently chaired review is already underway into exactly what occurred at the health body in Kent where the crimes occurred, he noted.

Fuller will be sentenced at a later date.
The Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (PEDO) has informed that three energy projects with a capacity of generating 63 megawatt low-cost electricity, have entered the final stages of completion

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :The Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (PEDO) has informed that three energy projects with a capacity of generating 63 megawatt low-cost electricity, have entered the final stages of completion.

These projects are expected to generate Rs2 billion annually for the province and would complete within the next six months.

The statement was issued after the visit of Secretary Energy and Power Department Engineer Syed Imtiaz Hussain Shah to project sites in Mansehra, Shangla and Dir Lower districts along with PEDO Chief Executive Engineer Naeem Khan to review the pace of work on ongoing hydropower projects. The Secretary Energy reviewed the ongoing work on the project sites of Jabori Hydropower Project (10.2 MW) in Mansehra, Karora Hydropower Project (11.8 MW) in Shangla and Koto Hydropower Project in Lower Dir.

Project Director of Koto Hydropower Project Sultan Rome said that 98% work and installation of 95% equipment on 40.

8 MW Koto Hydropower Project has already been completed. The tunnel work has been completed ahead of time by the contractor, he said. It was informed during the briefing that more than 90% work on Karora, Jabori and Koto Hydropower projects has been completed and these projects have entered the final stages of completion.

The PEDO informed that due to Covid-19 pandemic, work on the project was delayed as Chinese experts returned to their country but now they have resumed work after an ease in the Covid situation. The officials said the pandemic situation also delayed import of machinery from China.

On the occasion, Secretary Energy Syed Imtiaz Hussain urged the team of Chinese engineers working on energy projects to speed up work on the projects. He said that all the three projects of cheap power generation were of utmost importance for the development and prosperity of the province and would prove to be a milestone for the economic development of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
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NCOC head Asad Umar says that Punjab has become the first province to have more than half its eligible population with at least one dose at 52 per cent followed by KP with 48 per cent, Sindh 40 per cent and Balochistan with 17 per cent.

ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-Nov 4th, 2021) Punjab is at the top in the race for COVID-19 vaccine with more than half of its eligible population got at least one dose, National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) head Asad Umar said on Thursday.

Taking to Twitter, Asad Umar said that Punjab becomes the first province to have more than half its eligible population with at least one dose at 52%. KP follows with 48%, Sindh 40% and Balochistan at 17%,.

He said that Federal territories leading in vaccination with Islamabad 87%, AJK 59% & GB 54%.

National average has reached 48%.

Earlier, Asad Umar had said that 40 million citizens had been fully inoculated against the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. He said they would continue to make progress to vaccinate Pakistan.

He wrote that the target of 2021 year was vaccination of 70 million people and it is matter of happiness that 70 million people now received at least 1 dose and 40 million were fully vaccinated. The minister said that with 2 months to go, will inshallah meet, and exceed, the target.
Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication will establish a Center of Excellence (CoE), in collaboration the University of Karachi at an estimated cost of Rs two billion, aimed at promotion the animation industry and capacity building of professionals

ISLAMABAD, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication will establish a Center of Excellence (CoE), in collaboration the University of Karachi at an estimated cost of Rs two billion, aimed at promotion the animation industry and capacity building of professionals.

The center, being set up in the building of Sheikh Zayed Institute on University Road, was spanned over 28,000 square feet and it would be larger than any incubation center in Pakistan and unique in terms of facilities, official sources told APP.

They said rupees one billion would be spent on provision of equipment and facilities while rupees one billion on account of five-year expenditures.

"We aim to empower our youth to take a larger chunk off the current global animation market of about US $ 370 billion," they said.

They said, "We must tell the world that our youth is at par with the world in adapting to this creativity and will take their due share from the current global market of US $ 370 billion." The officials said an agreement had already been signed with Ignite to set up the CoE, which would house a vertical incubator, training facility, production studio and co-working space for promotion of animation, VFX and game development across the country. "The center is expected to start operations in a record time of 6 to 8 months." They said the estimated size of the global animation industry was about US $ 370 billion and was expected to double by the year 2030 to US $ 642 billion, emphasizing to match pace with this fast-paced technology domain.

The sources said Pakistan had a huge potential and could be one of the key regional players in gaming, animation and multimedia industry through training, mentorship and skill development of youth and "by facilitating gaming and animations startups through incubation/acceleration programs to transform them into successful and sustainable businesses reaching an industry-revenue of billions of Dollars." "The CoE will bring a paradigm shift in reviving up research and innovation in Gaming, VFX (visual effects), Computer Vision and AI through a robust ecosystem in collaboration with tech partners, industry, investors, industry associations and government, and will bolster indigenous product development while propelling the growth of tech entrepreneurship in the country" the said.

Vice Chancellor Karachi University, Dr Khalid Iraqi said this strategic triangle was going to be formed which triggered a meaningful collaboration among academia, industry and government.

In the developed industrialized world, he said universities were deemed as an engine of growth in knowledge-driven economies.

He assured the proposed CoE on Animation would be completely supported by all hardware and software expertise available at Karachi University and its faculty and students would also be benefited by this joint venture.
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The Austrian Foreign Ministry plans to host an international conference on the situation in Belarus on November 22 in Vienna, the APA news agency reported on Thursday, citing a spokesperson for the ministry

VIENNA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) The Austrian Foreign Ministry plans to host an international conference on the situation in Belarus on November 22 in Vienna, the APA news agency reported on Thursday, citing a spokesperson for the ministry.

In June, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya reportedly proposed the Austrian government to initiate a high-level conference on the political crisis in Minsk.

"Austria and the international community should not turn a blind eye to the difficult situation in Belarus, and it is particularly important to gather different actors and discuss together how to find a way out and improve conditions for an inclusive dialogue," the ministry told the agency.

It did not provide information about the participants of the conference and the preparation process.

Franak Viacorka, senior advisor to Tikhanovskaya, told the Austrian news agency that the event would welcome "speakers from different countries, representatives of the democratic forces of Belarus," and government officials from other states.

Officials from Minsk have also been invited to the conference but it is unclear whether they will come, he added. Invitations repotedly have been sent to experts rather than politicians.

After the victory of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the August 2020 election, the country plunged into a series of nationwide anti-government protests, with the opposition insisting that the vote was rigged. The opposition and its supporters maintain that Tikhanovskaya was the true winner.
BUENOS AIRES (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) Bolivia has fired its Ambassador to Paraguay Mario Cronembold over his controversial post in TikTok, the Bolivian Foreign Ministry said.

"After receiving the information and assessing the circumstances, Ambassador Cronembold was relieved of his duties starting from November 1, 2021," the ministry said on late Wednesday.

Cronembold published a video on TikTok on which he mocked the Paraguayan tradition to drink terere, the national drink made of yerba mate and ice water.

The Paraguayan parliament called the post an insult and declared Cronembold persona non grata.
An albino activist was sworn in to Malawi's parliament on Thursday, a first in a country where people with albinism have suffered discrimination and killings

Lilongwe, Malawi, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :An albino activist was sworn in to Malawi's parliament on Thursday, a first in a country where people with albinism have suffered discrimination and killings.

Overstone Kondowe won a by-election last month in central Malawi, a milestone after years of victimisation.

"Being the first person with albinism elected in this kind of office, there is high expectation, not only in Malawi, but the whole world is looking forward to what I would do," he told AFP soon after his swearing-in.

"My last word to persons with disability, and in particular persons with albinism, they need not to underrate themselves," he said.

"And they need to work hard towards their goal. I remain a model to them and I will inspire them more so that they aim higher," he added.

Malawi suffered a wave of assaults against albinos from late 2014.

At the height of the attacks in 2016, Kondowe founded the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi to push the government to take action.

Amnesty International says more than 20 albinos have been killed in Malawi since 2014.

In the last four months, Amnesty said seven attacks against albinos have been recorded, ranging from killings, tampering of graves, attempted abductions, and physical violence.

As in other countries in the region, albinos' body parts are used in rituals to bring wealth and luck.

Some albinos are also accused of being "vampires" who seek human blood for rituals, sometimes triggering vigilante violence in retaliation.

President Lazarus Chakwera has named Kondowe as his special adviser on people with disability. Kondowe is also the current chairperson of the African Union for Persons with Albinism.

Former UN independent expert on albinism Ikponwosa Ero told AFP she was elated by Kondowe's election.

"Overstone's election is a giant step forward in the protection of human rights of people with albinism in Malawi and the Africa region as a whole," she said.

"It shows that the context of discrimination is changing for the better for people with albinism in Malawi."
A charity ship has rescued 800 migrants in the Mediterranean and is heading for the Italian port of Lampedusa, the German NGO Sea-Eye said on Thursday

Berlin, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :A charity ship has rescued 800 migrants in the Mediterranean and is heading for the Italian port of Lampedusa, the German NGO Sea-Eye said on Thursday.

The Sea-Eye 4 had already rescued 397 people in six operations by Wednesday, assisted by the Mission Lifeline ship Rise Above, Sea-Eye said in a statement.

The vessel then picked up a further 400 people from a heavily overcrowded wooden boat on Thursday morning, it said.

Maltese rescue services, though responsible for maritime emergencies in the area, "did not respond to any of the calls for assistance", Sea-Eye said.

"There are now more than 800 people on the Sea-Eye 4, which has since set course for Lampedusa," it said.

The migrants and 24 crew on board are facing an "unprecedented, highly stressful situation" and are "dependent on the rapid assignment of a port of safety", it added.

The NGO SOS-Mediterranee said its Ocean Viking ship was also in the area and had provided food supplies to the Sea-Eye 4.

"Any delay by the authorities endangers the health and lives of the rescued people and our crew," Sea-Eye chairman Gorden Isler was quoted as saying.

"It is shameful how Malta repeatedly shirks its responsibility and ignores distress calls." Italy is one of the main points of entry into Europe for migrants from North Africa, mainly from Libya and Tunisia, with tens of thousands of people seeking to cross the central Mediterranean each year.

The port of Lampedusa became a flashpoint for migration disputes under hardline former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini.

Salvini went on trial last month for allegedly illegally blocking 147 rescued migrants from disembarking from a rescue ship and holding them in dire conditions.
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The IMF launched talks with Zambia on Thursday over a new aid program, but the timetable for reaching a deal for the debt-laden country is unclear, a fund spokesman said

Washington, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :The IMF launched talks with Zambia on Thursday over a new aid program, but the timetable for reaching a deal for the debt-laden country is unclear, a fund spokesman said.

The government says it is imperative to win funding from the Washington-based crisis lender to help it deal with its crippling debt, which swelled to $14.7 billion and caused the nation to default during the pandemic.

Gerry Rice, spokesman for the International Monetary Fund, called the nation's debt "unsustainable." "Therefore, the IMF would need sufficient financing assurances from creditors before a staff level agreement on an extended credit facility could move forward," he told reporters.

"I don't have a duration on the timing of those discussions on Zambia but the discussions begin today," he said.

Zambia's new government last week presented a budget and laid out its plan to restore financial stability to allow it to negotiate a restructuring agreement with creditors.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday that she was "optimistic" about reaching an agreement with Zambia.

The country has sought debt relief under the G20 "common framework," and is in discussions with private creditors.

Early in the pandemic, G20 nations agreed to the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which offered 73 low- and middle-income countries the ability to halt debt payments during the pandemic but which expires at the end of the year.

The G20 in November 2020 also created the "common framework" intended to restructure the debt of countries that requested it.
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The international community must focus on the transition to a renewable and low-carbon hydrogen economy to reach a carbon neutrality goal under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, though it will requre massive investments and relevant policy support, the United Nations said in a report on Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) The international community must focus on the transition to a renewable and low-carbon hydrogen economy to reach a carbon neutrality goal under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, though it will requre massive investments and relevant policy support, the United Nations said in a report on Thursday.

Hydrogen does not generate greenhouse gases or direct emissions when used as a fuel, so it can be used in the decarbonization of the energy sector and other fields, including transport and industry, among others, according to the report.

"The move to a hydrogen economy would bring annual global demand for hydrogen in 2050 to some 650 Mt, from the current 70 Mt, representing around 14% of the expected total world energy demand," the report read.

However, it went on, nearly 95% of modern hydrogen production comes from natural gas or other hydrocarbons, leading to 900 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year globally, while European countries generate from 70-100 million tonnes of these emissions annually.

To reach the net-zero emissions target, the world should strive for the production of clean, non-fossil-based hydrogen, which is currently two to three times more expensive, the UN said. Even though public and private investments in the field have been on the rise over the past four years, current challenges require more funding to be resolved, it added.

The report cited the EU Hydrogen Strategy, according to which a renewable hydrogen economy in Europe by 2050 would require up to 470 billion Euros (over $544 billion) in investments, while fossil-based hydrogen production would cost from 3-18 billion euros.

"Many countries in the (European) region have launched experiments, adopted hydrogen strategies, and mobilized billions of Dollars of financing. Many more are expressing interest. The region is well placed to become a major player in the future hydrogen economy. But this will require public and private investment on a massive scale and sustained political commitment," Olga Algayerova, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), was quoted as saying in the report.

UNECE will continue to make efforts to ensure dialogue and cooperation between the EU member states on the safe transport, storage and use of hydrogen, she added.

The report also listed measures that will be necessary for adoption to ensure the transition to a hydrogen economy. The list includes the promotion of clean H2 technologies, the use of the natural gas transmission network to switch to hydrogen, and the expansion of hydrogen projects by 2030, among others.
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A rebel march on Ethiopia's capital would worsen the country's severe humanitarian crisis, already fanned by "egregious" government obstruction, a senior US official told AFP on Thursday

Addis Ababa, Nov 4 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :A rebel march on Ethiopia's capital would worsen the country's severe humanitarian crisis, already fanned by "egregious" government obstruction, a senior US official told AFP on Thursday.

The warning came after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rebel group announced late Wednesday it had reached the town of Kemissie in Ethiopia's Amhara region, some 325 kilometres (200 miles) northeast of Addis Ababa.

Spokesman Getachew Reda said the TPLF was working in the area alongside the Oromo Liberation Army rebel group, which this week predicted Addis Ababa could fall in a matter of weeks.

"We can only assume that any march towards Addis would spread increased displacement, increased need and increased suffering for the Ethiopian people," said the senior official from Washington's humanitarian arm USAID.

"It would certainly increase the need for humanitarian assistance while also complicating the ability to provide that assistance," the official said.

The US has called on all parties to cease hostilities, and its top envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive in Addis Ababa Thursday for two days of talks promoting peace and dialogue.

The US embassy announced Thursday it was authorising the voluntary departure of most staff and their families, although no one is obligated to leave at this stage.

"Travel to Ethiopia is unsafe at this time due to the ongoing armed conflict. Incidents of civil unrest and ethnic violence may occur without warning," said an advisory posted on the embassy's website.

"Further escalation is likely, and may cause supply chain shortages, communications blackouts and travel disruptions." Washington has been among the most vocal critics of Ethiopia's conduct of the year-long war in the country's north.

- 'Egregious humanitarian obstruction' - Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF, which dominated national politics before he took office in 2018.

The 2019 Nobel Peace laureate promised a swift victory, but by late June the rebels had retaken most of Tigray and expanded into the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara.

Since then Tigray has been under a de facto humanitarian blockade, according to the UN, exacerbating fears of the kind of widespread starvation that made Ethiopia synonymous with famine in the 1980s.

Abiy's government has blamed access restrictions on TPLF advances into neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.

But the senior US official on Thursday accused Ethiopia of deliberate obstruction.

"We continue to see perhaps the most egregious humanitarian obstruction in the world affecting Tigray," the official said.

"Practically no fuel, cash, medicine or medical supplies have entered in months, forcing humanitarians to scale back or halt their programmes completely."The official noted that no supplies at all have reached Tigray for the last two weeks, and that needs were also growing in Amhara and Afar.
Senegal's navy has rescued 82 migrants whose traditional wooden canoe capsized en route for Spain, the armed forces in the West African state said on Thursday

Dakar, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2021 ) :Senegal's navy has rescued 82 migrants whose traditional wooden canoe capsized en route for Spain, the armed forces in the West African state said on Thursday.

The canoe left neighbouring The Gambia on Monday and was spotted by a Spanish military plane, according to the armed forces.

It began taking on water and capsized the following day.

But two Senegalese navy vessels rescued all 82 people aboard, in the Atlantic Ocean 86 kilometres (51 miles) off the northern Senegalese city of Saint-Louis.

A spokesman for Senegal's armed forces did not disclose the nationality of the passengers.

Would-be migrants often try to reach Canary Islands aboard traditional wooden canoes, which are known as pirogues.

The Spanish-owned archipelago lies more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the coast of Africa at its closest point.

But the open-ocean route to the Canaries is perilous.

In September, the UN's International Office for Migration said that 785 people had died or disappeared trying to reach the islands between January and August.

The armed-forces spokesman told AFP that the Spanish government sent the military plane that spotted the capsized boat to Senegal in order to monitor migrant flows.
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Ukraine and the United States will hold the Strategic Partnership Commission meeting in Washington on November 10, in the course of which a new charter of strategic partnership will be signed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told a briefing on Thursday.

KYIV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) Ukraine and the United States will hold the Strategic Partnership Commission meeting in Washington on November 10, in the course of which a new charter of strategic partnership will be signed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told a briefing on Thursday.

The Presidents of the two countries, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Joseph Biden, made an agreement to intensify efforts on the strategic partnership commission during a meeting in Washington in early September.

"Strengthening the strategic partnership with the United States, especially in the security field, is one of the key priorities of our foreign policy strategy. Today I am glad to announce that on November 10, together with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, we will hold a meeting of the Ukraine-USA Strategic Partnership Commission in Washington, where we will sign a new charter of strategic partnership," Kuleba said.

The new charter is a document to meet common challenges, create a backbone for the further development of the Ukraine-US relations, strengthen unity "amidst Russian aggression," and give rise to the deepening of bilateral relations.

Moscow-Kiev relations deteriorated due to the situation in the Donbas after the Euro-Maidan coup in February 2014. In January 2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a statement calling Russia an "aggressor country." Russia denies the accusations of the Ukrainian party and calls them unacceptable.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2021) The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a Senate-passed bill that given the Biden administration authority to implement new sanctions against Nicaragua in order to support fair elections.

The House of Representatives passed the legislation with a 387-35 vote and it now heads to President Joe Biden's desk to be signed into law.
CEAP Alumna Attends Cornell Law School

In the fall semester of 2020, Jillean Workman she was in the middle of her first semester at Cornell Law school. Getting to Cornell was no easy feat and although her entrance into law school is not what she expected, she is taking it in stride as Jillean is familiar with change.

While she was in high school her family left Guyana and settled in Florida. Faced with a new school in a new country, Jillean focused on the future. She watched her older siblings attend and graduate college and knew she wanted to do the same and began exploring Florida schools. It was the International Relations Department that got her attention at USF. She connected with the faculty and enrolled as an international relations and economics double major.

Despite the financial benefits of going to an in-state school, Jillean needed to work to support herself. This is why she sought out a job in the Community Engagement Associates Program (CEAP). She was hesitant at first to accept a position in the program, explaining that she wanted to work at an NGO or a political organization. She was worried that she wouldnt gain enough experience related to her major and career interests.

The Office of Community Engagement and Partnerships conducted an interview with Jillean and explained the benefits of CEAP and how University Area Community Development Corporation (UACDC) could support her goals. In her role, she assisted the UACDCs CEO, Sarah Combs with projects and collaborations with other non-profits in the Tampa Bay area. Her greatest accomplishment was helping to institute the FINTECH program, which is a financial technology program that serves underprivileged communities. Stepping out of her comfort zone and working with diverse communities set Jillean up for success in school, her career, and her personal life. Through her role, she learned to prioritize tasks to stay on top of her work and school assignments.

Beyond the technical career skills she gained, Jillean reflected that her position at the UACDC had more relevance to her path than she originally thought it could. She is currently studying Human Rights Law at Cornell. She explained that to understand these large Humanitarian issues students have understand their causes on a community level. She likened her time at UACDC to a grassroots experience and encourages anyone who is hesitant about accepting a role in CEAP to move forward as you never know how it will relate to your personal and professional goals until you try.
The University of South Floridas multi-pronged approach to student success is attracting attention from the U.S. Department of Education.

Aaliyah Samuel, deputy assistant secretary for Local, State and National Engagement, visited the Tampa campus to learn first-hand about USFs initiatives to help close the achievement gap and ensure timely graduation, and its emphasis on attracting transfer students as well as professionals who want to continue their education mid-career.

Samuel earned her masters degree from USF in 2003 and was appointed to the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden-Harris Administration. During a roundtable discussion, she heard from leaders within the USF office of Student Success about a range of issues impacting students, such as how data is being used to monitor retention concerns, mental health issues and financial challenges.

USF takes great pride in its efforts to support student success. We are honored to have Dr. Samuel here today for us to share some of our best practices, said Allison Crume, dean of Undergraduate Studies. As a USF alum, we appreciate her excitement and interest in truly understanding our initiatives and how the federal government can further assist in seeing USF and our students live up to their full potential.

The deputy assistant secretary shared how the Biden-Harris Administration is collecting data from institutions about how they are utilizing Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund dollars, funded by the American Rescue Plan, to support students. Grants are in the process of being administered to USF students who have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. Samuel spoke with one dozen students, some of whom received these grants, to hear how theyve been affected by the pandemic. The students also shared more about the numerous hurdles theyve faced in applying for federal financial aid and its associated impact on their mental health. She called USF a model in demonstrating the value of investing in higher education.

As I think about USF and examples of institutions that are using federal funding well, USF is definitely an example for how it has addressed smaller class sizes, distance learning and PPE, Samuel said. I think one of the things that I heard that can serve as a model for other institutions, was the alternative calendar and how USF has utilized federal funding to help support alternative schedules to bring as many students back  and not just bring them back, but lead them towards completion.

I hope this conversation will light the fire under politicians in D.C. and make them aware of the significance of what students are struggling with right now, especially coming off the heels of a terrible pandemic and all of the mental health implications of that as well as the financial implications of the pandemic, said USF Student Government President Julia Cunningham, who participated in the roundtable discussion. I hope theyll really realize that there are people and students who are struggling to try to get their education and I hope hearing these conversations and hearing from real students will inspire them to take action.

Samuel spent 10 years in K-12 education, starting her career as a special education teacher in Hillsborough County. Upon graduating from USF, she served as assistant principal of Sheehy and MacFarlane Park Elementary Schools in Tampa, later advancing her career into public policy.
Valdosta, GA (31601)

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Lyndlin Moma, director of advocacy of the 'Laudato Si Movement', calls on world leaders at the UN COP26 Climate Change Conference to embrace an integrated approach as they explore paths to stem the impact of the climate crisis.

By Marine Henriot & Benedict Mayaki, SJ

World leaders, policy-makers, scientists, faith-based groups and representatives of international organizations and of civil society, are gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The COP26 summit, held from 31 October to 12 November, aims to bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 2015 Paris Agreement demands nations curtail the increase in global temperatures to below 2C, or preferably 1.5C, a goal that experts say will mean slashing global emissions by almost half by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050.

Present in Glasgow for the Climate Change meeting is Lyndlin Moma, the director of advocacy of the "Laudato si Movement," She spoke to Vatican Radios Marine Henriot about the need for political decision-makers to take urgent action towards protecting our common home.

Everything is interconnected

Moma explained that the "Laudato si Movement" at the Climate Change Meeting aims to be a voice speaking for the protection of the planet by calling on world leaders to take steps for the actualization of the 1.5C temperature increase limit. This she said, would limit biodiversity loss and protect communities made vulnerable by the effects of climate change.

Reiterating Pope Francis's words, she insisted that everything is connected and thus, efforts to protect the planet have to be integrated in order to reverse the devastating trend of the climate crisis.

Listen to our interview with Lyndlin Moma

A Christian ecology

Responding to a question about the existence of a "Christian ecology," Moma noted that the Church teaches us to respect and care for nature because we, human beings, are a part of biodiversity and are intrinsically connected to it.

She also highlighted that Catholic Social Teaching encourages us to care for the poor and the vulnerable, including those affected by climate change, even though they are not the cause of the climate crisis.

Stressing the need for an integrated approach which includes taking into consideration the voice of the poor and the vulnerable, she warned that we cannot fight the climate crisis without tackling the biodiversity crisis and the mining of fossil fuels.

Joint efforts needed

As Catholics, we cannot act alone. We have seen Pope Francis, he is reaching out to other faiths," Muma said.

Ahead of COP26, the "Laudato si Movement" had launched a Healthy Planet, Healthy People petition, inviting everyone to sign up to urge their political leaders to make decisions geared towards reversing the trend of the climate crisis. The petition garnered about 100,000 signatures.

Expressing her gratitude to those who signed the petition, Muma invited all  people of faith and non-faith actors - to work together so that we can achieve our goals at the COP26 meeting for the protection of the planet.
Catholic health professionals, chaplains and priests in New Zealand are being given guidelines and pastoral help to work with people who decide to die under the new End of Life Choice Act, which takes effect on 7 November.

By Lisa Zengarini

Euthanasia will be legal in New Zealand as of 7 November. A new law approved in 2019, and confirmed by a referendum in October 2020, will make it lawful to offer assisted dying to people who experience suffering from a terminal illness.

The End of Life Choice Act 2019 (EOLC) sets out the legal framework and a high-level process for accessing assisted dying, including strict eligibility criteria and safeguards.

Catholic facilities will not offer assisted dying services

Ahead of the law coming into force, Catholic Bishops in New Zealand have issued a pastoral statement and a set of guidelines for chaplains, priests and other Catholic professionals who work with people who decide to die under the EOLC.

The Bishops reiterate their strong opposition to the new legislation.

The legal availability of euthanasia in New Zealand does not change Catholic convictions about the practice. Our fundamental belief, that all human life is sacred, leads us to teach that we should never take the life of another, the statement reads.

This is why Catholic rest homes or Catholic hospices will not offer assisted dying services.

Accompanying those contemplating euthanasia



However, according to the New Zealand bishops, Catholic health professionals, chaplains, priests and lay pastoral workers can still help those contemplating euthanasia who turn to them for consolation.

Faith, in the first instance, calls us to remain present with the suffering other, the pastoral statement points out. That indeed is what consolation or con-solatio means: bearing anothers suffering by sharing it and entering into the solitude of others to make them feel loved, accepted, accompanied, and sustained; simply being with the one who is dying; bearing witness to hope through our closeness.

Places of assisted dying to be outposts of the Holy Spirit

Through this power of hope we can, person by person, transform the places of assisted dying into outposts of the Holy Spirit, the statement goes on to say, emphasizing that prayer and ministry with the dying need never know human barriers.

Ensuring that no one is abandoned to desolation

In their guidelines, New Zealand's bishops further explain that accompanying someone who is expressing a desire for assisted dying does not imply moral agreement by the accompanier, nor does it imply suspending Churchs beliefs on euthanasia.

Rather, accompaniment ensures that no one is abandoned to desolation. It calls pastoral carers to enter into a liminal space where the Churchs beliefs about euthanasia sit alongside its teaching about accompaniment and consolation.
While denouncing the government's 'one country, one law' concept, the countrys Catholic bishops are calling for a new constitution to ensure members of all minority communities are treated equally before the law.

By Vatican News staff reporter

Sri Lankan bishops have urged the government to abandon its "one country, one law" plan for the predominantly Buddhist nation and instead draft a new constitution.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa last month appointed a 13-member presidential task force under the chairmanship of hardline Buddhist monk Ven. Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thera to study the concept and prepare a draft law.

The One Country, One Law concept was an election slogan of Rajapaksa in 2019 when he was elected president with overwhelming support from the nations Buddhist majority. According to an extraordinary gazette notification issued by the president, the task force is required to submit reports to the president once a month and the final report on or before February 28, 2022.

Bishop Winston Fernando of Badulla, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka (CBCSL), has taken a strong exception to the governments move and has urged the repeal of the gazette notification appointing the task force. In a statement issued on November 2, he described the omission of Tamil, Hindu, Catholic, and other Christian minority groups from the task force as a lost opportunity.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Sri Lanka, following a meeting with Catholic Parliamentarians both from the Government and Opposition, wishes to express its deep concern about the erosion of the democratic principles and values in our country, the CBCSL statement said. It lamented that despite the promise made by the President and the Government before and after the elections, the formulation of a new Constitution for the country is put on the back burner with the adoption of the unholy, manipulative 20th Amendment to the Constitution. He added, It is being exploited beyond its limit to the detriment of the well-being of the country.

A controversial chairman

Ven. Gnanasara Thera is a controversial figure in Sri Lanka. His Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) or the Forces of Buddhist Power, was implicated in the anti-Muslim riots in 2013. He was sentenced to a six-year prison term for contempt of court last year after shouting at a judge for holding him guilty of accosting the wife of missing journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda. However, he was accorded a presidential pardon within a few months of starting the prison term.

Flawed process

To appoint a person without giving any consideration to his past records to chair the Presidential Task Force is adding insult to injury, Bishop Fernando said in the statement. The CBCSL statement criticized the purpose of the task force and the manner in which it was appointed. No one would oppose the One Country, One Law objective in governance provided it stems as a corollary of the Constitution of the country, the CBCSL statement said. But to appoint by a special Gazette a Presidential Task Force comprising hand-picked individuals from outside without any reference to the democratically elected Legislature is unacceptable. The bishops said, The Parliamentary process has been ignored in a matter of such grave concern.

The Sri Lankan bishops made a strong appeal for the repeal of the gazette notification, saying instead a new constitution should be drafted to ensure that all the citizens are treated equally before the law.

Opposition to the task force

Twenty-four Muslim organizations have issued a joint statement strongly condemning the appointment of Ven. Gnanasara Thera as the task force chairman.

Opposition groups and analysts also criticized the decision of the government. According to the news website, 'Jesustoday.lk', the "one country, one law" plan is likely to be a dangerous slogan that will erase diversity and make the will of the majority the only law. All citizens should be equal before the law. This is not what is hidden in the slogan, it said.

The task force is being headed by someone who has been indicted by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Easter Sunday attacks of April 21, 2019.

The news website further pointed out that the controversial monk heading the task force has issued hate speeches to a significant number of people in this country.

Move towards task force

Sri Lanka has witnessed strong opposition by nationalist groups in recent years to attempts to introduce Sharia law in the country, saying it would promote Muslim extremism. The campaign gained force after the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks on churches and hotels, in which over 270 people, including 11 Indians, were killed. It was blamed on the extremist Islamic group, the National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ).

Harin Fernando, an opposition lawmaker, however, alleged that the task force chairman had been indicted by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Easter Sunday attacks. He said the appointment of someone like Ven. Gnanasara Thera exposes the political interests of the government.

The appointment of the Presidential task force comes months after a Cabinet decision to amend the countrys Muslim personal laws. Sri Lanka also has the Kandyan Law and Thesawalamai Law, pertaining respectively to the Sinhalese and Tamil communities.

The 'one country, one law' concept was promoted by the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party in a bid to win the support of the Sinhala majority as a counter to the rising extremism.

Meanwhile, the Buddhist monk said he hopes to exchange views with all political parties, religious and civil society organizations. The aim of this task force is to build the environment for all including Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu and Muslim to live together under one law and country, he said.
More than 200 prelates - 17 Cardinals and 190 Bishops - have died in the past twelve months. On Thursday, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for the repose of their souls.

By Christopher Wells

Pope Francis presided at Holy Mass offered in suffrage for the souls of prelates who have died over the course of the past year.

Seventeen Cardinals, including Australian Edward Cassidy, and almost two hundred Bishops, have passed away in the twelve months since November 2020. In his homily, the Holy Father noted that some of them died as a result of Covid-19, in difficult situations that compounded their suffering. He prayed that they might now feel the joy of the Lords invitation to His faithful servants: Come, O blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

The journey from suffering to hope

Pope Francis focused in his homily on the first reading, from the book of Lamentations, where the sacred author describes a journey through suffering to trusting patience and hope in the Lord who saves.

All of us, he said, have to learn how to face suffering  not only the final suffering of death, but trials and crosses we face here and now. In fact, the Pope said, the difficulties of life can lead us to pessimism and bitterness. However, it is precisely in our darkest moments, in the anguish of non-meaning that hope flourishes. In the midst of sorrow, the Pope said, those who cling to the Lord see that He unlocks suffering, opening it and transforming it into a door through which hope enters.

The mystery of grief

Pope Francis emphasized that this does not mean that our problems will disappear, but that our suffering becomes a mysterious opportunity for inner purification. Grief and suffering, the Pope said, remains a mystery, but in this mystery, we can discover in a new way the paternity of God who visits us in trial.

Today, the Pope said, before the mystery of redeemed death, we ask for the grace to look at adversity with different eyes. He invited to faithful to respond to trials and suffering, not with complaining or grumbling, but with confident trust in God.
Pope Francis holds a private audience with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, and discusses the need for direct dialogue between Palestine and Israel to achieve a two-state solution.

By Vatican News staff reporter

The Holy See Press Office announced on Thursday that Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahoud Abbas met in a private audience in the Vatican on the same day.

According to a press release, their discussions were cordial and emphasized the good relations between the State of Palestine and the Holy See.

The Pope and the President spoke about the need to promote human fraternity and peaceful coexistence among various faiths, as well as the goal of a two-state solution in the Holy Land.

Pope Francis and President Abbas

Two-state solution

With regard to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, it was stressed that it is absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue in order to achieve a two-state solution, also with the help of more vigorous effort on the part of the international community, the statement read.

Pope Francis and President Abbas also noted that Jerusalem must be recognized by all as a place of encounter and not of conflict, and that its status must preserve its identity and universal value as a Holy City for all three Abrahamic religions, also through a special internationally guaranteed status.

The two leaders then spoke about the urgency of working for peace, avoiding the use of weapons, and combating all forms of extremism and fundamentalism.

President Abbas met separately with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and with Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.

The Pope and President exchange gifts

Exchange of gifts

The pair also exchanged gifts during their 55 minute meeting.

Pope Francis gifted Mr. Abbas a bronze plaque of two hands in a friendly grip. Depicted in the background is the colonnade of St. Peters Square, a woman with a child, a migrant boat, and the words (in Italian) Let us fill our hands with other hands emblazoned on the bottom of the plaque.

The Pope also gave the president a book of papal documents and copies of his message for peace for this year, the Document on Human Fraternity, and a book on the Statio Orbis of 27 March 2020, published by the Vatican Publishing House.

President Abbas gifted the Pope with a book on the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, and a representation of the Grotto of the Nativity in amber.
The Bishops of France attend Mass during their General Assembly taking place in Lourdes (AFP or licensors)

Pope Francis expresses his closeness and support for the Bishops of France as they meet for their General Assembly from 2-8 November. He invites them to bear, with faith and hope, the burden of the difficult times experienced by the Church due to the scandal of sexual abuse.

By Vatican News staff writer

Pope Francis sent a message to the Bishops of France on the occasion of the opening of their Plenary Assembly, which is taking place in Lourdes from 2  8 November.

In the letter addressed to the President of the French Bishops Conference, Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, the Holy Father recalled the bishops recent Ad limina visit to Rome, and the fraternal exchanges that took place during the meeting. He also assured them of his closeness and prayer as they open the Plenary Assembly under the protection of Our Lady.

Encouragement amid difficult times

The Bishops General Assembly comes a month after the submission of a report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) which estimated that about 330,000 people living in France have been victims of sexual abuse within the Church from 1950 - 2020.

Turning his thoughts to the difficult moments experienced by the Church due to the scandal of sexual abuse, Pope Francis encouraged the bishops to carry their burden with faith and hope, adding that he too carries it with them.

He expressed confidence that together, and under the guidance of the Spirit, the Bishops will find ways to honour and console the victims, exhort all believers to penance and conversion, take steps to make the Church a safe place for all, take care of the wounded and scandalized, and, finally, with eyes turned toward the future, take up the mission with joy.

The Holy Father also assured them of the support and communion of the Apostolic See amid the trials and contradictions that the Church in France is undergoing.

Care for priests

Do not doubt that the people of France await the Good News of Christ, they need it more than ever, the Pope said in the letter.

For this reason, the Holy Father entrusts with particular tenderness to the paternal solicitude of the bishops, the immense majority of priests who fulfill their ministry with generosity and dedication, and whose beautiful vocation is, unfortunately, being sullied.

They need to be strengthened and supported at the difficult time, Pope Francis added.

He went on to express pleasure that the Bishops General Assembly will address other important topics that are dear to his heart, including the care for our common home and ecumenism.

Concluding, the Holy Father reiterated his expression of closeness and support for the Bishops of France and entrusted them, as well as their particular Churches, to the intercession of Our Lady.
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Vietnam issued Circular 43 implementing a reduction in VAT rates for medical equipment.

The VAT rates were reduced to five percent and took effect in August 2021.

Vietnam Briefing looks into the process and which businesses are eligible.

Vietnam recently issued Circular No. 43/2021/TT-BTC (Circular 43) implementing a reduction in the value-added tax (VAT) rate for imported medical equipment to 5 percent from 10 percent. Circular 43 came into force on August 1, 2021.

Accordingly, businesses can apply for the five percent rate if they have one of the following documents:

Import license;

Certificate of registration for circulation; or

The document certifies the eligibility for circulating the medical equipment.

The medical equipment and tools eligible for the new VAT rate include:

Scanning, imaging, and screening equipment;

Specialized equipment for surgery;

Blood transfusion instruments;

Emergency medical service vehicles;

Measuring instruments for measuring blood pressure, cardiac activities, pulse;

Syringes;

Vaccines; and

Chemicals for experimentation and sterilization, among many others.

The new rules have been welcomed by businesses as they are clearer and also address constant changes in the types of medical equipment that is subject to VAT rates.

Opportunities for foreign suppliers

The new VAT rate can be advantageous for foreign suppliers, especially as 90 percent of medical devices in Vietnam are imported since the majority of local manufacturers cannot meet local demand, only able to produce lower value equipment such as disposable supplies and hospital beds. However, there is an increasing number of startups developing digital medicine solutions.

Much of Vietnams existing medical equipment needs are obsolete and many hospitals lack sufficient equipment for intensive care units and surgery. However, Vietnams continued economic development and growth of the middle-class (set to account for 26 percent of the countrys population by 2026) have led to increasing demand for high-quality healthcare. These developments offer market opportunities for foreign medical device suppliers.

Most imports come from Japan, Germany, the US, China, and Singapore, totaling over US$500 million in 2019. The medical device market was valued at US$1.4 billion in 2019, making Vietnam the ninth largest medical device market in the Asia-Pacific region. This sector is forecast to grow at an average rate of 10 percent per year over the next five years.

Some 90 percent of medical device imports comprise diagnostic imaging equipment (magnetic resonance imaging, X-ray, and ultrasounds), and equipment used for surgery, and emergency resuscitation testing equipment. Other areas of growth include emergency equipment, monitoring equipment, and orthopedics equipment.

The largest purchaser of medical devices is local government hospitals, accounting for 84 percent of the market. Local private hospitals and research and educational institutions are showing the strongest demand, while foreign-owned hospitals are also large purchasers but usually receive their supplies from their sponsoring country. The government is also pushing to increase funding to upgrade hospitals throughout the provinces and healthcare expenditure per capita is expected to grow 9.2 percent per year, reaching US$262 by 2025 (US$26 billion for the country).

Leveraging free trade agreements

Foreign investors can also take advantage of Vietnams various free trade agreements such as through the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement (EVFTA), the UK-Vietnam FTA (UKVFTA), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Additionally, due to its membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Vietnam has become a signatory to several FTAs that the regional trade bloc has signed.
An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2021 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam....
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A recent study published by two Chinese scientists working for a university in Sweden has found evidence that the full length spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), damages a crucial DNA repair mechanism involved in the human bodys adaptive immunity.

The study, titled SARSCoV2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair and Inhibits V(D)J Recombination In Vitro was authored by Hui Jiang and Ya-Fang Mei of the Department of Clinical Microbiology, Virology at Umea University in Sweden and published in the scientific journal Viruses on Oct. 13 after first being submitted on Aug. 20.

The Abstract states, Clinical studies have indicated that patients with severe COVID19 exhibit delayed and weak adaptive immune responses, and that the mechanism SARS-CoV-2 uses to impede adaptive immunity was currently unclear.

Jiang and Mei note this topic is of critical interest because, Adaptive immunity plays a crucial role in fighting against SARSCoV2 infection and directly influences the clinical outcomes of patients.

Adaptive immunity

A textbook on human biology found on the University of Minnesotas website describes the significance of the human bodys adaptive immunity function, noting it takes effect after exposure to an antigen either from a pathogen or a vaccination.

While adaptive immunity takes significantly longer than the innate immune system to become established, it has the virtue of being highly specificized to the invading pathogen.

The text uses two examples to explain antigen exposure, An antigen is a small, specific molecule on a particular pathogen that stimulates a response in the immune system. One example of an antigen is a specific sequence of 8 amino acids in a protein found only in an influenza virus, the virus responsible for causing the flu.

Another example is a short chain of carbohydrates found on the cell wall of Neisseria meningitidis, the bacteria that causes meningitis.

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It goes on to explain the specifics of how the adaptive immune system generates B and T cell lymphocytes to combat an invader, In adaptive immunity, activated T and B cells whose surface binding sites are specific to the antigen molecules on a pathogen greatly increase in numbers and attack the invading pathogen.

Their attack can kill pathogens directly or they can secrete antibodies that enhance the phagocytosis of pathogens and disrupt the infection. Adaptive immunity also involves a memory to give the host long-term protection from reinfection with the same type of pathogen carrying the same antigens; on reexposure, this host memory will facilitate a rapid and powerful response.

V(D)J recombination

The Swedish study states definitively in its Abstract, Here, by using an in vitro cell line, we report that the SARSCoV2 spike protein significantly inhibits DNA damage repair, which is required for effective V(D)J recombination in adaptive immunity.

Mechanistically, we found that the spike protein localizes in the nucleus and inhibits DNA damage repair by impeding key DNA repair protein BRCA1 and 53BP1 recruitment to the damage site.

The authors do not shy away from the implication their finding may have on todays messenger RNA and adenovirus vector vaccines, Our findings reveal a potential molecular mechanism by which the spike protein might impede adaptive immunity and underscore the potential side effects of full-length spike-based vaccines.

In a Jan. 31 article published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum titled V(D)J Recombination: Mechanism, Errors, and Fidelity, the function is explained as an intricate method utilized by the human immune system to craft the antigen-binding receptors of T cells through the rearrangement of DNA, The exons encoding the antigen-binding domains are assembled from so-called V (variable), D (diversity), and J (joining) gene segments by cut and paste DNA rearrangements.

This process, termed V(D)J recombination, chooses a pair of segments, introduces double-strand breaks adjacent to each segment, deletes (or, in selected cases, inverts) the intervening DNA, and ligates the segments together.

Diversity is tremendously amplified by the characteristic variability at the junctions (loss or gain of small numbers of nucleotides) between the various segments. This process leverages a relatively small investment in germline coding capacity into an almost limitless repertoire of potential antigen-binding specificities.

The article describes this function as an elegant process, but cautions its fine and exact nature carries with it substantial potential for disaster, A system that must break chromosomal DNA several times in order to generate a functional antigen receptor genemany millions of times over the lifetime of an organismcreates significant opportunities for error.

The necessity of enforcing a high degree of fidelity in V(D)J recombination has been recognized for decades. Aberrant V(D)J recombination events do occur, and they can be life-threatening

COVIDs immune system impact

The Umea study summarizes several clinical studies in order to illustrate the effect the virus has on the adaptive immune system, SARSCoV2 infection extraordinarily affects lymphocyte number and function. Compared with mild and moderate survivors, patients with severe COVID19 manifest a significantly lower number of total T cells, helper T cells, and suppressor T cells.

Additionally, COVID19 delays IgG and IgM levels after symptom onset. Collectively, these clinical observations suggest that SARSCoV2 affects the adaptive immune system. However, the mechanism by which SARSCoV2 suppresses adaptive immunity remains unclear.

It further explains that the DNA repair system and immune systems are not only the primary systems that higher organisms rely on for defense against diverse threats and tissue homeostasis, but that cutting-edge science has shown these two systems are interdependent, especially during lymphocyte development and maturation.

The authors state that a loss of function in crucial DNA repair proteins have been found to inhibit the production of functional B and T cells, leading to immunodeficiency.

This point is critical to the topic of defending public health against the pandemic because, In contrast, viral infection usually induces DNA damage via different mechanismsIf DNA damage cannot be properly repaired, it will contribute to the amplification of viral infection-induced pathology.

Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether SARSCoV2 proteins hijack the DNA damage repair system, thereby affecting adaptive immunity in vitro.

Full-length vaccine spikes

The authors preface their Results section by stating, DNA damage repair occurs mainly in the nucleus to ensure genome stability, but points out that with SARS-CoV-2, its proteins generated during infection are synthesized in the cytostol (liquid matrix inside a cell).

The duo constructed viral protein expression plasmids together with spike and nucleoprotein expression plasmids, finding results consistent with multiple other studies that discovered proteins are indeed localized in the nucleus, and nucleoproteins are mainly localized in the cytosol.

However, the study quietly noted, Surprisingly, we found the abundance of the spike protein in the nucleus.

The researchers begin to tie this key point into how DNA damage repair is inhibited, Because spike proteins are critical for mediating viral entry into host cells and are the focus of most vaccine strategies, we further investigated the role of spike proteins in DNA damage repair and its associated V(D)J recombination.

In the native state, spike proteins exist as inactive fulllength proteins, the authors state, noting that host cell proteases cleave the spike into subunits during the process of its entering the cell at the time of infection.

This point was important because several different testing methodologies used in the study found that Only the fulllength spike protein strongly inhibited two different kinds of DNA repair mechanisms, generating the definitive conclusion that the spike protein directly affects DNA repair in the nucleus.

Another array of tests concurrently determined that SARSCoV2 fulllength spike protein inhibits DNA damage repair by hindering DNA repair protein recruitment.

This finding is significant to the public because, as the authors note, Many approved SARSCoV2 vaccines, such as mRNA vaccines and adenovirusCOVID19 vaccines, have been developed based on the fulllength spike protein.

Todays novel gene therapy vaccines are substantially different from classical inactivated virus vaccines. While the latter uses a neutered variant of the whole pathogen to expose the immune system and elicit a response, the former does not use any pathogen at all, instead relying on a messenger RNA genetic instruction (Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech) or a double-stranded DNA genetic instruction delivered in a vector of an adenovirus (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson) to force human cells to grow the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in an attempt to cause an immune system response.

The authors then tested whether the spike protein inhibited V(D)J recombination, For this, we designed an in vitro V(D)J recombination reporter system according to a previous study, and found that Compared with the empty vector, spike protein overexpression inhibited RAGmediated V(D)J recombination in this in vitro reporter system.

Our data provide[s] valuable details on the involvement of spike protein subunits in DNA damage repair, indicating that fulllength spikebased vaccines may inhibit the recombination of V(D)J in B cells, which is also consistent with a recent study that a fulllength spikebased vaccine induced lower antibody titers compared to the RBDbased vaccine.

In the Discussion section of the paper, the authors are conclusive about the impact the virus has on the immune system, Our findings provide evidence of the spike protein hijacking the DNA damage repair machinery and adaptive immune machinery in vitro.

Although no evidence has been published that SARSCoV2 can infect thymocytes or bone marrow lymphoid cells, our in vitro V(D)J reporter assay shows that the spike protein intensely impeded V(D)J recombination.

Finally, the duo posited a theory as to why COVID-19 is hitting the elderly harder, This may be because SARSCoV2 spike proteins can weaken the DNA repair system of older people and consequently impede V(D)J recombination and adaptive immunity.
Ruhollah Parazideh, a wiry 38-year-old with a thick mustache and hair flecked with gray, was desperate for a job. The father of three in southern Iran walked into a local office of a foundation that helps war veterans and their families, pleading for assistance.

Local media reported that Parazideh told officials he would throw himself off their roof if they couldn't help. They tried to reason with him, promising a meager loan, but he left unsatisfied.

He soon returned to the gates of the building, poured gasoline over himself, and put a lit match to his neck. He died from his burns two days later, on Oct. 21.

Parazideh's suicide in the city of Yasuj shocked many in Iran, and not just because he was the son of Golmohammad Parazideh, a prominent provincial hero of the country's 1980-88 war with Iraq that left hundreds of thousands dead.

It put a spotlight on the rising public fury and frustration as Iran's economy sinks, unemployment soars and the price of food skyrockets.

His death occurred outside the local office of the Foundation for Martyrs and War-Disabled People, a wealthy and powerful government agency that helps the families of those killed and wounded in Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent wars.

"I was shocked when I heard the news," said Mina Ahmadi, a student at Beheshti University north of Tehran. "I thought that the families of (war) victims enjoyed generous support from the government."

Iran valorizes its war dead from the conflict with Iraq, known in Tehran as the "Sacred Defense," and the foundation plays a big role in that. After the revolution installed the clerically run system, the foundation began providing pensions, loans, housing, education and even some high-ranking government jobs.

Following Parazideh's suicide, the foundation fired two of its top provincial officials and demanded the dismissal of the governor's veteran affairs adviser as well as a social worker, lambasting their failure to send the distressed man to a medical facility or others for help, local media reported.

The fallout reached the highest levels of government. Ayatollah Sharfeddin Malakhosseini, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the case a warning that officials should "get rid of unemployment, poverty and the disruption of social ties."

In 2014, parliament launched an investigation into one of the main banks affiliated with the foundation for allegedly embezzling $5 million. Its findings were never revealed.

The foundation is known to funnel financial support to Islamic militant organizations in the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza, leading the U.S. to sanction it in 2007 for supporting terrorism.

Parazideh's suicide was one of several in recent years that appear driven by economic hardships.

Self-immolations killed at least two other veterans and injured the wife of a disabled veteran outside branches of the foundation in Tehran, Kermanshah and Qom in recent years.

As the coronavirus pandemic wreaked economic havoc, suicides in Iran increased by over 4%, according to a government study cited by the reformist daily Etemad.

For many in the Middle East, the act of self-immolation  the protest used by a fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia that became a catalyst for the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings  evokes broader discontent with economic woes and the lack of opportunity.

"I don't know where we are headed because of poverty," said Reza Hashemi, a literature teacher at a Tehran high school.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew America from Tehran's landmark nuclear agreement with world powers and brought back sanctions on Iran, pummeling an oil-dependent economy already hobbled by inefficiencies. The pandemic has aggravated the economic despair. About 1 million Iranians have lost their jobs, and unemployment has climbed over 10%  a rate that is nearly twice as big among youths.

Capital flight has soared to $30 billion, chasing away foreign investors.

Negotiations to revive the atomic accord stalled in the five months since hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi took office, allowing Tehran to press ahead with its nuclear program. On Wednesday, the European Union announced that talks between world powers and Iran on reviving the deal would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna. The announcement stoked modest hopes that the Biden administration can resuscitate the accord.

"It's impossible to hide people's discontent with the economy," said Mohammad Qassim Osmani, an official at the Audit Organization Services, a government watchdog. "The structure of the country is faulty and sick. We need an economic revolution."

Iran's currency, the rial, has shriveled to less than 50% of its value since 2018. Wages haven't grown to make up the loss, and the Labor Ministry reported that over a third of the population lives in extreme poverty.

"About 40 million people in the country need immediate and instant help," said lawmaker Hamid Reza Hajbabaei, the head of the parliamentary budget committee, in a televised debate last week  referring to nearly half the population.

The deepening poverty goes beyond just numbers, becoming a visible part of daily life. On Tehran's streets, more people are seen searching through garbage for something able to be sold. Children sell trinkets and tissues. Panhandlers beg for change at most intersections  a rare sight a decade ago.

Petty theft has surged, testing the already-tough justice system. Last week, a Tehran court sentenced a 45-year-old father of three to 10 months in prison and 40 lashes for pocketing a few packs of peanuts.

Gen. Ali Reza Lotfi, Tehran's chief police detective, blamed the economy for the spike in crime, noting that over half of all detainees last year were first-time offenders.

It has fallen to Raisi to handle the economic pressures. He frequently repeats campaign promises to create 1 million jobs through construction and tourism projects.

But many low-wage workers, bearing the brunt of Iran's crisis, have no hope.

Last month, in another case that drew huge attention, a 32-year-old teacher facing crushing debt hanged himself in the southern city of Guerash after a bank rejecting his request for a $200 loan.
As elections took place in states across America on Tuesday, Asian American candidates made history with solidified and projected victories in three major cities.

Mayoral races in Boston, Cincinnati and Seattle drew just as much national attention as the tight gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.

Michelle Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, claimed victory in Boston's mayoral race, as unofficial returns signaled a strong defeat of opponent Annissa Essaibi George, prompting the city councilor to concede.

Wu, 36, will now become the first woman, first person of color and first Asian American to serve as Boston's mayor, breaking the city's long tradition of electing white men to the top office.

The former president of the Boston City Council ran on a progressive platform that emphasized racial, economic and climate justice. She gained voters' support with her commitments to create free public transportation and align city contracting to close the racial wealth gap.

The Boston Globe reported that Essaibi George ran a "more moderate and traditional campaign." In the end, Wu succeeded by securing the votes of progressives and Boston's communities of color.

Following her victory, Wu addressed supporters.

"We are ready for every Bostonian to know that we don't have to choose between generational change and keeping the streetlights on, between tackling big problems with bold solutions and filling our potholes," she said.

Wu reiterated her commitment to working on behalf of all citizens.

"I'll never stop fighting to make all our systems work for all of us," she said.

In Cincinnati

Aftab Pureval, a 39-year-old lawyer and son of Indian and Tibetan immigrants, will become Cincinnati's first Asian American mayor.

After unofficial returns projected Pureval's victory, his opponent, longtime Cincinnati City Council member David Mann, conceded.

Pureval, who is the current Hamilton County clerk of courts, ran on a commitment to bringing new ideas to the city, with goals of rebuilding Cincinnati's economy, reforming its police department and creating more affordable housing, as well as addressing public safety and transportation.

Mann, a former Cincinnati mayor and U.S. congressman, campaigned as an experienced candidate who would steadily guide the city out of the pandemic, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

In a statement from his campaign Wednesday, Pureval expressed gratitude for voters' support.

"We have the vision, and I can't wait to help drive growth and equity in Cincinnati. I'm humbled to be a part of the wave of newly elected Asian American mayors," he said. "Representation matters, and this is only the beginning."

In Seattle

In Seattle, early returns indicated that Bruce Harrell, 63, who is half Black and half Japanese, would likely become the city's first Asian American and second Black mayor.

According to The Seattle Times, Harrell, a former member of the Seattle City Council, had secured 65% of the votes counted thus far and maintained a nearly 30 percentage-point lead over opponent and City Council President M. Lorena Gonzalez.

"You believed in what we're trying to do. We believe in this city. This city has awesome potential," Harrell said while addressing supporters Tuesday night.

His campaign placed a strong focus on addressing Seattle's homelessness problem and increasing the city's police force, while also tackling concerns about systemic racism and implicit bias among first responders. Gonzalez's campaign previously expressed support for defunding the police department, according to The Seattle Times.

Despite Harrell's significant lead, Gonzalez maintained that her campaign would wait for the election's final results.

"We respect every vote as equal, regardless as to when it was cast," she said in a statement to supporters Tuesday night.
Not every mayor-elect of an American city gets post-election congratulations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan.

Soon after news broke late Tuesday that Michelle Wu won the race for mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted its "heartiest congratulations to @wutrain on winning the #Boston mayoral race. We couldn't be prouder of the 1st woman & Asian American to hold the city's top job. More power to her as she keeps breaking those glass ceilings!"

In an historic race where the four top candidates were women of color, Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States, became the city's first woman and person of color to be elected mayor of Boston.

Seen a progressive Democrat and protege of U.S. senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, Wu won 62.2% of the vote in Boston. Her rival, centrist Democrat Annissa Essaibi George, won 35.8% of the vote.

"In 2021, we are still seeing barriers come down that can be a little surprising," Wu told reporters Wednesday morning. She said when she ran for City Council in 2013, only one other woman served on the 13-member panel.

"And now, just four election cycles later, to be coming into office with a City Council that is reflective and representative of our communities, to keep building on the progress of this current administration, and to do the work for partnership with communities is incredibly meaningful," she said.

An early start

Warren, one of Wu's professors at Harvard Law School, congratulated Wu soon after her win.

"From teaching her in law school, to working together on my first Senate run, to supporting her campaigns, I've seen her positive energy, her good heart, and her ability to make big change for Boston," Warren tweeted.

Early in her time at Harvard Law, Wu moved her mother, who suffered from schizophrenia, and her younger sisters to Boston from Chicago, Illinois, so she could take care of them while attending school. Wu, whose first language is Mandarin Chinese and who interpreted for her parents, has said that trying to run a tea shop in Chicago while caring for her family persuaded her to go into public service.

Wu graduated from law school in 2012 and worked on Warren's campaign for the U.S. Senate. She ran for Boston City Council in 2013, becoming the first Asian American woman on the council. She was reelected three times and was City Council president from January 2016 to January 2018. In September 2020, she announced she would run for mayor the following year.

'Extraordinarily impressive'

Denise Baer, a political scientist who teaches at George Washington University, told VOA Wednesday that Wu is "extraordinarily impressive" for having started her career early and building a broad base of support.

But, she said, "I think it's going to be really challenging for her to control the levers of power" in Boston, a city that has until now elected only white men as mayor.

Wu takes office November 16. Her plan for the short transition, she said Wednesday, is to ensure "there will be a continuous ability to make sure residents are getting all the city services that are needed." She also called for civility and "a growing sense of what's possible in city government."

Kerri Greenidge, Mellon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Boston-area Tufts University, said Wu's election in a city known for its institutions of higher learning, as well as being a bastion of Democrat-dominated politics, means she will be taking control of a city "that has often struggled to live up to the highest ideals it has about itself."

"The fact that the city has not had a mayor that is of color or a woman has indicated that that city has not lived up to its reality" as a minority-majority city, one where the population is of a range of ethnicities, Greenidge told VOA in an email.

According to U.S. census data from 2020, Boston's white, non-Latino population makes up 44.5% of the population; those identifying as Black or African American alone, 25.2%; those identifying as Asian alone, 9.7%; and those identifying as Hispanic or Latino, 19.8%. Other races and those identifying as mixed race make up smaller percentages.

Challenges and assets

Among the goals Wu talked about in her campaign are reintroducing rent control to bring down the cost of living in Boston, which has been against state law since 1994; making Boston public transportation free, which her critics say is too costly; and solving the problems of homelessness and addiction as Boston's winter begins to settle in.

Her gender could be either an asset or a liability, according to Baer, who coauthored a study on women and higher office. The study found that women tend to be problem-solvers, "which makes them really excellent officials," Baer said. But she noted that taking control of a well-established power base is challenging.

"It's going to take a lot of strong leadership," she said.

And Greenidge said she believes women of color are judged more harshly for their political actions than white men, particularly on the local level.

"Michelle Wu will have to face that reality," she said. But she believes Boston's breadth of ethnicities will help. The city, she said, "has a strong and well organized Asian American, African American, and immigrant community, and those communities' engagement will be key to mitigating any obstruction or difficulties that Wu will face."
U.S. President Joe Biden used the sidelines of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, to push his vision for a green, collaborative global infrastructure initiative that he said will set a sustainable path to net-zero emissions by 2050. The plan may provide an alternative to Chinas massive Belt and Road Initiative.

The Build Back Better Initiative, the Clean Green Initiative of Great Britain, the Global Gateway and Clean Green initiatives are all part of a joint effort among the G-7 partners to deliver high-quality, sustainable infrastructure, Biden said at a roundtable event in Glasgow, Scotland.

He and more than 100 other world leaders signed on to climate pacts to help keep global warming below 1.5 C.

Biden launched his Build Back Better World, or B3W, plan during the June G-7 summit, with the goal of creating a values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnership to help finance projects in developing countries.

That makes it an obvious alternative to Beijings multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. That international development program has financed infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and made inroads in Europe.

Theres an urgent need for infrastructure development in countries  infrastructure that prioritizes, when you build it  it prioritizes the fight against climate change from the moment the spade goes in the ground, and jump-starts the green economic growth, Biden said.

The groundwork for the U.S. initiative has already begun. Officials led by U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh are in Ghana and Senegal this week to scout infrastructure projects. The listening session tour followed a similar trip to Latin America in September, where Singh led an interagency delegation to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama. Several other tours to different regions have been planned.

The presidents vision for B3W is to work with partners that share our democratic values to finance and develop infrastructure in a manner that is transparent, sustainable, adheres to high standards, and catalyzes the private sector where possible, the White House said in a statement.

But this expensive international endeavor could run into domestic difficulties. Bidens domestic Build Back Better initiative has encountered resistance from members of his own Democratic Party, with the proposed legislation being significantly whittled down in recent weeks.

The administration has insisted the American public wants the services offered in the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and spending plans and that Congress is holding back approval.

They want us to get things done, Biden said. And that's why I'm continuing to push very hard for the Democratic Party to move along and pass my infrastructure bill and my Build Back Better bill.

Thin on details

A formal U.S. B3W launch event is planned for early next year and will include details of some initial projects aimed at narrowing the $40 trillion needed by developing nations by 2035. But it is still unclear whether B3W can emerge as a viable alternative to the massive BRI.

We don't have a good sense about how much money the United States will spend on it, nor the degree to which other countries will cooperate, said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. And we also don't have details on timelines.

A White House official acknowledged the plan has a way to go.

We are just starting out, while BRI has been around for years and years, the official told VOA.

As American officials embark on their B3W tour, countries will be looking for proof that the U.S. is offering a healthier alternative to BRI, which has been tarnished by negative environmental and social impacts, a lack of transparency and corruption, and has been criticized for leaving governments around the world strangled by debt.

But its clear that some countries are interested in having options beyond what China can offer. Also at the Glasgow summit, major coal producer South Africa inked an $8.5 billion deal with the U.S., the European Union and other European nations to install more clean energy alternatives and to help workers who may be impacted by the shift away from coal.

In some cases, however, BRI is welcome.

Chinese investments are appealing particularly for countries with poor human rights records and high levels of corruption, precisely because its terms are more flexible and less constrained by regulations, said Lucas Myers, program coordinator for Southeast Asia at the Wilson Center's Asia Program.

The challenge for Washington is to walk the tightrope of ensuring flexibility and cost-effectiveness while upholding stricter fiscal, human rights and environmental standards, he said.

And while the administration may not be able to compete in terms of scale with BRI at this point, it appears they are aiming for investments in areas where Beijing has struggled.

Each of the B3W's four pillars  climate, health, digital and gender  are areas in which the United States and its G-7 partners have comparative advantages, said Jonathan E. Hillman, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Economics Program.

Analysts also say that eventually the B3W may also be able to match BRIs financial firepower  if the administration can harness private sector funding. Estimates of how much BRI costs vary widely, from as little as $1 trillion to as much as $8 trillion.

If the United States and its partners can mobilize investments from pension funds, life insurance companies and other institutional investors, B3W could be much larger than China's BRI, Hillman said. He added that while it will take time to prepare bankable projects, efforts like the Blue Dot Network, a U.S. State Department mechanism to certify that infrastructure projects meet robust international quality standards, could make it easier for private sector investors.

The hope is that as a track record of successful projects grows, more countries will be drawn to the initiative, Hillman said. And the impact could be exponentially greater if Washington can coordinate with other like-minded development programs.

Japan, one of the members of the G-7, is actually the largest investor of FDI [foreign direct investment] in the region, with extensive experience and networks across Southeast Asia, said Myers, adding that the U.S. can leverage some of Tokyos expertise and relationships.

The key is providing an attractive vision, compelling benefits and practical incentives, Hillman said.

The administration is planning to do just that. As the U.S. and partners start to develop and implement the plan, robust, meaningful partnerships will be critical, the official told VOA.

'Debt-trap diplomacy

While the U.S. has a long track record of helping other countries build their infrastructure, including rebuilding post-war Western Europe under the Marshall Plan, the Trump administration was the first to condemn Chinas international investment strategy.

In a 2018 speech, former Vice President Mike Pence accused Chinese leader Xi Jinping of expanding his influence through debt-trap diplomacy.

Today, that country is offering hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure loans to governments from Asia to Africa to Europe to even Latin America, Pence said. Yet the terms of those loans are opaque at best, and the benefits flow overwhelmingly to Beijing.

In his 2018 trip to Asia, Pence highlighted what was then the leading American alternative  the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a new agency with a $60 billion portfolio to support private investments for infrastructure projects around the world.

So far, the agency has not proved to be a viable alternative for BRI, with the DFC currently claiming to have 57 ongoing worldwide projects worth a total of about $2.5 billion. That may be because the initiative was wielded as a tool to achieve Trumps short-term geopolitical goal, including in the Middle East. Investments were offered to entice countries to sign on to the Abraham Accord, Trumps landmark deal to secure diplomatic recognition to Israel.

(VOA's Anita Powell contributed to this story.)
The Ethiopian government marked the one-year anniversary of fighting between its forces and rebels in the northern Tigray region by suggesting its military is nearing victory.

Amid urgent global appeals for a cease-fire to the escalating violence, the government said in a statement on Facebook that the Tigray People's Liberation Front and its puppets are being encircled by our forces and that a rat that strays far from its hole is nearer to death.

This is not a country that crumbles under foreign propaganda! the statement added. We are fighting an existential war!

Tigrayan forces, however, say they are advancing on the capital, Addis Ababa, and that it could fall within months or even weeks.

In recent weeks, Oromo rebel forces have joined the Tigrayan forces in their fight against the central government, leading to what the two groups claim are significant advances.

Ethiopias Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed vowed that his government would prevail.

Abiys spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, did not respond when asked if Abiy would meet with U.S. Horn of Africa special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, who arrived in Ethiopia Thursday for a two-day visit amid growing concern over the violence.

Ethiopia will not collapse. Ethiopia will prosper, Abiy said, speaking in Addis Ababa on Wednesday. Ethiopia will forever exist with her honor by defeating all who test her through the blood and bones of her children.

The Ethiopian government declared a six-month state of emergency Wednesday and called on residents to defend their neighborhoods if rebels arrive in the capital.

Our country is facing a grave danger to its existence, sovereignty and unity. And we cant dispel this danger through the usual law enforcement systems and procedures, Justice Minister Gedion Timothewos said during a state media briefing.

Debretsion Gebremichael, leader of the Tigray region, blamed the Ethiopian government and its allies for causing the suffering in the past year.

The warmongers decided to continue with the war, and we entered into this war because the only option we had is to destroy our enemies by force.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Thursday urged all parties to end hostilities immediately  that includes the TPLF, that includes the Ethiopian government, he said.

"We remain gravely concerned by the expanding conflict, by the violence, the expansion of the fighting throughout the country and the growing risk that it poses to the unity, to the integrity, of the Ethiopian state," he said, calling on all sides to enter negotiations with preconditions towards a sustainable cease-fire.

After arriving in Addas Ababa Thursday, Feltman met with the governments defense minister, finance minister, deputy prime minister and African Union chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat. He is to hold talks with more Ethiopian officials on Friday, the State Department said.

Feltman "had a productive set of discussions with the Ethiopian officials, Price said Thursday, and appreciated the opportunity to do so. He'll have an opportunity to continue discussions tomorrow.

On Wednesday, the State Department updated its travel advisory for Ethiopia to Level 4.

What that means is we are advising U.S. citizens: Do not to travel to Ethiopia, Price said. We are recommending that U.S. citizens in Ethiopia consider departing now using commercial options that remain available.

Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the yearlong conflict was marked by extreme brutality.

We have reasonable grounds to believe that during this period, all parties to the Tigray conflict have committed violations of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law, the U.N. human rights chief said during a press briefing on Wednesday. Some of this may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Civilians in Tigray have been subjected to brutal violence and suffering.

A joint report by the U.N. human rights office and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission found that sexual violence has been rampant in the conflict, detailing reports of gang rapes by various parties against women and girls, but also against men and boys.

Price, the U.S. State Department spokesperson, said Thursday the U.S. is carefully reviewing the report.

The yearlong conflict has plunged about 400,000 people in the Tigray region into famine, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 2.5 million people in the north to flee their homes, according to the U.N.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
Jeffrey Clark, a former senior official at the U.S. Justice Department under former President Donald Trump, will testify on Friday before the House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the January 6 assault on the Capitol, a congressional aide familiar with the investigation said.

Last week, the January 6 Select Committee delayed testimony by Clark because he had retained a new lawyer.

Clark, the former acting head of the Justice Department's civil division, was a proponent of Trump's unfounded claims that Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the November 2020 election was the result of fraud.

On October 13, the select committee announced it had issued a subpoena to Clark asking him to produce records and testify at a deposition by October 29.

In announcing it subpoenaed Clark, the committee said it needed to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to amplify misinformation about election results.


About half of the 10,000 active duty Air Force airmen and Space Force guardians not vaccinated for COVID-19 are seeking religious exemptions, and 800 verbally refused the vaccine, according to Air Force data released Wednesday.

The Air Force's and Space Force's COVID-19 vaccination compliance deadline was Tuesday for active duty troops. According to data obtained by VOA, 97% of active duty airmen and guardians have had at least one vaccine dose, with 95% fully vaccinated.

"Our airmen need to be prepared to operate anytime, anywhere in the world," General C.Q. Brown, Air Force chief of staff, said Wednesday. "Getting vaccinated ensures we are a ready force."

Of the unvaccinated, 4,933 are requesting religious exemptions, which the Department of the Air Force has 30 business days to process.

Last month, the archbishop for military services said Catholic troops should be able to refuse the vaccine based on conscientious objection.

"No one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience," said Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the military services.

The archbishop had previously supported President Joe Biden's mandatory vaccination order for U.S. service members. While Broglio still encouraged troops to get vaccinated, he added that the Catholic Church's permission to get the COVID-19 vaccine should not overrule a member's conscientious objections to vaccines tested or derived from lab replicas of abortion-derived cells, which is how the COVID-19 vaccines were developed.

Katherine Kuzminski, of the Center for a New American Security, told VOA last month the archbishop was "threading a really fine needle," adding that vaccines for chickenpox, rubella, hepatitis A and poliovirus were all tested with "abortion-derived cell lines" like the tests conducted for the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines.

"The question will be: Has this person ever raised a conscientious objection to a previous vaccine?" she said.

The Air Force deadline was the earliest of all the military services, with deadlines for active duty troops in the Army, Navy and Marines coming later this year. The Pentagon said Monday that 97% of all active duty troops had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Some exemptions have been granted on rare occasions. These include five permanent medical waivers granted to sailors in the Navy and 1,866 exemptions granted by the Air Force and Space Force for medical or administrative reasons, such as when a service member is months away from retiring from the force.

Data provided to VOA from the military service branches Tuesday showed 94% of the Army, 99% of the Navy and 93% of the Marine Corps were fully or partially vaccinated.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is "pleased by the level of effort" that the military services have put into vaccinating the force, especially once the mandate came in response to the "more lethal delta variant."

Kirby added that while Austin is "not unmindful of the fact" that some service members are refusing the vaccine, the secretary trusts that the leaders of the military service branches "will continue to manage this mandatory vaccine regimen in a compassionate and professional manner."

The failure by some to meet the vaccination deadlines leaves senior leaders with tough choices concerning their fate.

Active duty troops are vaccinated at a much higher rate than their Reserve and Guard counterparts, some of whom have deadlines as late as June 30, 2022.

About one-fifth of all U.S. service members  hundreds of thousands of troops  have yet to get a single COVID-19 vaccine dose.
New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection Wednesday, eking out a victory that spared Democrats the loss of a second gubernatorial seat.

He's the state's first Democratic governor to get a second straight term in 44 years, defeating Republican former New Jersey General Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli.

AP called the race Wednesday evening when a new batch of votes from Republican leaning Monmouth County increased Murphy's lead and closed the door to a Ciattarelli comeback.

Ballots left

Ballots remaining to be counted included a significant number of votes from predominantly Democratic Essex County, along with mail-in votes spread across other counties. Murphy won the mail-in vote by a wide margin, even in Republican leaning counties like Monmouth.

Ciattarelli spokesperson Stami Williams disputed the call because of the close margin, calling it "irresponsible."

Ciattarelli waged a formidable campaign in the heavily Democratic New Jersey, his spending nearly equaling the governor's and outpacing the GOP's performance four years ago. But Murphy's advantages, including 1 million more registered Democrats, proved too much for the Republican to overcome.

The victory gives Democrats a silver lining after GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe in Virginia's gubernatorial race  prompting worries that President Joe Biden's sagging approval ratings are hurting the party. This year's elections were the first major tests of voter sentiment since Biden took office.

The closeness of the race surprised experts, who watched public polls showing Murphy leading comfortably and looked to his party's registration advantage.

"If you asked anybody several months ago within the state, I think anyone would have predicted a high double-digit landslide for Murphy," said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.

Trend stopped

Murphy's win also ends the more than three-decade-old trend of the party opposite the president's winning in New Jersey's off-year governor's race. Voters came out in much higher rates for Ciattarelli this year than they did for his GOP predecessor in 2017.

The 64-year-old governor said he was acutely aware of the political trends, calling them an "animating" force for his reelection effort that spurred him to run as if he were 10 points behind.

Murphy built his campaign around the progressive accomplishments he signed into law  like a phased-in, $15-an-hour minimum wage and paid sick leave along with taxes on the wealthy  and brought Democratic allies, like progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, in to campaign for him.

With a Democrat-led Legislature, Murphy achieved most of the promises he made in his first run four years ago when he vied to succeed Republican Chris Christie. Paid sick leave, taxpayer-financed community college and some pre-kindergarten, tighter gun laws, expanded voting access, recreational marijuana, more state aid for schools and a fully funded public pension  all promised and all delivered during the first term. A proposal for a public bank to finance projects went unfulfilled.

Murphy is a former Goldman Sachs executive and served as ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Murphy in the weeks before Election Day.

He has said his next term will be about enacting a Reproductive Freedom Act aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade in the state as well as additional gun control laws and the expansion of taxpayer-financed pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds.

Headwinds facing Democrats, like Biden's falling approval ratings and congressional Democrats' struggles to enact their agenda didn't factor heavily enough into some experts' pre-election analysis, said Ben Dworkin, the director of Rowan University's Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. He counted himself among them.

A spokesperson for Ciattarelli said Wednesday that the campaign was focused on the vote count and said that a possible legal pursuit of a recount was on the table. Murphy also called Wednesday morning for every vote to be counted.

New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates are permitted to request one. The party that wants a recount has to file a suit in State Superior Court in the counties where they want to contest tallies. That has to be done within 17 days of Election Day.

Ciattarelli is a former state Assembly member, serving until 2018. He's the founder of a medical publishing company called Galen Publishing, and served as a local and county official in Somerset.

He walked a line between standing up for the moderate stances he had in the Legislature  like supporting Roe v. Wade  and appealing to Republicans who embraced Trump, particularly on cultural issues that have captured attention across the country.
Myanmars military is cracking down on religious groups that refuse to accept military rule, religious leaders say.

Nearly 88% of Myanmars population identify themselves as Buddhist, with other religious denominations, such as Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, making up the rest. Seemingly all of the countrys religious groups are being caught up in the fallout from the military coup.

In the nine months since the military-run State Administrative Council ousted the democratically elected government, fighting has continued between military forces and anti-coup opposition.

A military offensive aimed at targeting an ethnic armed group in Chin state in western Myanmar killed civilians and destroyed religious buildings at the end of October, according to local sources. More than 90% of Chin states population is Christian, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization.

Military spokesman Zaw Min Tun denied to local reporters that buildings were specifically targeted.

The Burma Human Rights Network, a local group, condemned the attacks in a statement Monday, saying the junta has a long history of targeting religious minorities.

Buddhist monks, Muslims, and Christians have all taken to the streets and demonstrated against the military takeover. Religious figures in the country say military action has had a chilling effect on religious groups.

Sister Francisca, formerly a nun at a Catholic church in Mandalay, described how soldiers ordered her church not to participate in anti-coup protests.

"The military went and told the cardinal and leaders, don't get involved in the revolution, she said.

She added that soldiers had refused to allow her community to carry out daily charitable tasks, including treating COVID-19 patients. She recounted to VOA this week how armed soldiers had threatened to shoot her and others sitting in front of her house unless they went inside.

She also described an incident in which she said a neighborhood man was shot by soldiers.

At night, she said, local people do guard duty but, she said, soldiers shoot the guards one of them was shot in the lung.

Fortunately, he survived. We stay afraid all the time, she said.

She ultimately fled to another city. Although she found another Christian church there, it was already occupied by soldiers and she remains on the run.

Thet Swe Win, founder of Synergy, an organization promoting interfaith

efforts in Myanmar, told VOA by phone that several religious groups have been targeted by the military, including Buddhists. Unlike other religions,

though only the Buddhists who oppose the coup face military pressure. He estimates around 80% of Myanmar's Buddhists oppose the junta.

He said the military has branded monks who refuse to accept junta rule as fake before beating and arresting them.

He believes the crackdown on these monks is not about religion, but about influence.

Im not sure its religious persecution because all the monks who were arrested were involved in the strike. They raided monasteries to arrest monks. I dont hear they destroy monasteries of the pagodas, he said.

Myanmar has a long history of religious and ethnic conflict, and Thet Swe Win said he is concerned about nationalism among some Buddhist monks. Neither pro- nor anti-coup monks accept religious minorities such as Rohingya Muslims, he said, and he accused the military of using these differences to stoke tensions.

Sann Aung, a university teacher and imam of a mosque in Myanmar, said the junta is fueling religious conflict to divert political attention. In addition, he said, Muslims face more persecution if they are arrested during a protest.

Some religious and civil society leaders in August formed the Spring Revolution Interfaith to, Sann Aung said mobilize and coordinate voices from religious leaders, community leaders and groups to come out with single voice and to support movements fighting against military dictatorship.

Father Domanic, a priest at a Catholic church in Shan state, told VOA that after he organized a peaceful prayer event that opposed the coup, the military arrested him. He later fled.

The priest now believes no religion can do well in Myanmar.

Most of the religious leaders do not dare to go against the coup, thats why most peoples, especially the youth, beliefs and attitudes towards religion are diminishing, the priest told VOA. There is less trust in religion and they become frustrated. In my view, only humanitarianism can lead the way to peace.

Dave Eubank, the head of the Thai-based Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian group that provides medical assistance within Myanmar, said the military is becoming desperate and predicted the junta would increase attacks against religious groups.

The dictatorship of Burma has always targeted Christians and Muslims and religious minorities, which they view not only different from them but also following a god that those minorities feel are higher than any government [and] definitely a threat to the regimes in Burma, Eubank said, using another name for the country.

Since the coup, the gloves have come off, the attacks have been more direct and pointed, he said.
A New Zealand research project is looking at ways to produce hydrogen in Antarctica to reduce carbon emissions.

A four-month New Zealand project is investigating whether hydrogen could be generated, used and stored at Scott Base, its Antarctic research facility, to reduce its reliance on carbon-based fuels. Those fuels are currently used for transportation, cooking and heating. A special grade fuel is shipped in on ice-breakers.

Surplus power from wind turbines at Scott Base could be used to generate green hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cells that produce electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

The hydrogen initiative is a collaboration between Antarctica, New Zealand, a government scientific body, and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The project started in August and will finish this month.

The project faces some obstacles, including geographic isolation and extreme weather. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent. In 1983, a temperature of minus 89.2 degrees was recorded.

Brendon Miller, a consultant chemical engineer, says it is an ambitious plan.



We would like to demonstrate that we can use hydrogen effectively as an energy source to replace fossil fuels. It is a very challenging environment to do it in Antarctica. But, actually, there are some things going for it because the alternates like batteries are quite awkward to use for long-term storage particularly at very cold temperatures, Miller said.

New Zealands work in Antarctica focuses in large part on global warming. Experts have said the worlds southernmost continent was very sensitive to rising temperatures, and it also influenced the global climate system. Earlier this year, the New Zealand government said it would spend $200 million to guarantee the future of its scientific hub at Scott Base.

Scientific projects in Antarctica are highly collaborative, bringing together researchers from around the world.

Twenty-nine countries, including Australia, China and the United States, operate bases in Antarctica.
Nicaraguans go the polls on Sunday (Nov. 7 ) in a presidential election that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called a sham. Thats because Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has barred prominent opposition candidates from running, further ensuring he will be elected to a fourth term as leader of the Central American nation. Iacopo Luzi reports. Produced by: Marcus Harton
Russia has ordered the expulsion of a Dutch journalist  the second deportation of a resident foreign correspondent in the past two months  and has reduced natural gas supplies to energy-starved Europe.

News of the abrupt moves came as American intelligence chief William Burns was concluding a rare two-day visit to Moscow, part of a recent Biden administration effort to try to ease tensions over a range of geopolitical disagreements and to foster a more stable and predictable relationship between Western powers and Russia.

Western nations have imposed a series of sanctions on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean peninsula, alleged interference in Western elections, cyberattacks, and the poisoning of Kremlin foes, including former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and Alexey Navalny, an opposition leader.

American officials have been urging Moscow to cooperate on some specific issues, including strategic nuclear arms reductions and ransomware attacks launched by hackers from Russia targeting Western companies.

Energy crunch

Since the start of the week, though, state-controlled energy giant Gazprom has reduced by 25% its natural-gas supply to Ukraine and at one point completely halted supplies via a pipeline snaking through Poland.

Gazprom says the supply requests of customers in Europe were being met and maintains it is meeting all contractual obligations. The Russian energy giant has been accused by the International Energy Agency and European lawmakers, however, of purposely not doing enough to boost natural gas supplies to Europe.

There is no commercial justification for such behavior, Sergiy Makogon, head of Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine, GTSO, told reporters Wednesday in Kyiv. He and other Kremlin critics charge the reduction in natural gas supplies amounts to clear evidence the Kremlin is using energy as a political weapon and is deliberately deciding to worsen Europes energy crunch.

Russia also has reportedly stopped delivering thermal coal to Ukraine and instructed Belarus to stop supplying electricity to neighboring Ukraine.

Rising tensions

The reduction in natural gas supplies came as Russias foreign ministry informed the Dutch government Wednesday it is deporting Tom Vennink, who has been the Russia-based correspondent of the daily newspaper de Volkskrant since 2015.

Russian authorities revoked Venninks residence permit earlier in the week, giving him three days to leave the country, because of two old administrative infractions, according to de Volkskrant. Vennink was fined two years ago for being late to file a routine re-registration with immigration authorities, and last year he was fined for visiting a restricted security area in far northeastern Siberia without prior permission.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Knapen described the expulsion as not acceptable. Threats against one journalist have the disturbing effect of silencing many others, he tweeted. De Volkskrant Editor-in-chief Pieter Klok said it was unusual for Russian authorities to expel a foreign correspondent because of old infractions. Such administrative offenses were never an obstacle to extending residence permits in previous years, he said.

In August, Russian authorities deported BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford, who had been based in Moscow for 20 years, after Moscow accused London of discrimination against Russian journalists working in Britain.

Dutch-Russian relations have been strained since the shooting down in 2014 of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The plane was brought down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the Donbas region of east Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard, most of whom were Dutch.

De Volkskrant also noted in its report of Venninks expulsion that the deportation came on the heels of an appeals court ruling in the Netherlands awarding to Ukraine ownership of a trove of ancient Crimean artifacts on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula.

Midweek, Russians pushed back on U.S. criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for not attending the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. During a press conference Tuesday in Glasgow, U.S. President Joe Biden questioned why Putin  and Chinese leader Xi Jinping  did not show up for the global climate talks. Putin cited coronavirus concerns for his decision not to travel to the summit,

It just is a gigantic issue and they [Putin and Xi] walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership? Biden remarked. [Putins] tundra is burning  literally, the tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems, and he is mum on willingness to do anything, Biden added.

The Kremlin, though, dismissed Biden's criticism. We disagree, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. We are certainly not minimizing the importance of the event in Glasgow, but Russia's actions are consistent and thoughtful and serious, he said. The tundra really is on fire. But let's not forget that forests are burning in California, forests are burning in Turkey, and in other countries he added.

Some information from Agence Presse-France was used in this report.
Support for South Africa's ruling African National Congress party fell below 50% in local elections this week for the first time since the end of apartheid.

The results announced Thursday for many of Monday's municipal wards showed the ANC received about 46% of the 12.3 million votes cast nationwide. Not since it became the nations dominant party in 1994 has the ANC seen such low support.

The party still achieved a majority in 161 municipalities, compared to 13 for the opposition Democratic Alliance and 10 for the Inkatha Freedom Party. No party won control in 66 other municipalities  in those areas the ANC likely will be forced into forming coalitions to hold power.

The ANC faced widespread criticism as many municipalities it governs are bankrupt and mostly are failing to deliver basic services.

In an interview with VOA, Sheila Camerer, a former member of parliament for the main opposition party Democratic Alliance, said her party's platform hinged on better local governance.

The message we took to the voters is the city works when the DA is in charge," she said, citing results in Midvaal Local Municipality in Gauteng where the DA won more than 70% of the vote.

"We are not like the ANC," she said. "We are not corrupt, and we do not let everything disintegrate."

ANC leaders downplayed this week's results and said it does not reflect a larger trend.

Preliminary results indicate that well have more hung councils than in the previous local elections," said ANC Acting Secretary-General Jessie Duarte, speaking at the Independent Electoral Commissions center in Tshwane.

"This will necessitate the need for coalitions or other forms of cooperation with other political formations," he said. "This is nothing new. Weve done so since 1994.

Forming many coalitions, however, could be a formidable challenge for the ANC.

An increasing number of leaders of smaller political parties, such as Action SAs Herman Mashaba, seem bent on isolating the ruling party.

Action SA will not go into coalition with the ANC," he said.

The Freedom Front Plus, a conservative, almost exclusively white Afrikaner party, doubled its share of the vote this week to five and a half percent when compared with 2016.

Party leader Pieter Groenewald said it hopes to be a potential kingmaker in several municipalities.

Were available as far as coalitions are concerned," he said. But he added that the party will not join a coalition with ANC.

But some minority party leaders said joining a coalition with the ANC could work in their favor.

The Economic Freedom Fighters party got more than 10% of the vote this week, and in some wards, the party received the third most votes.

Deputy leader Floyd Shivambu said the party will put anyone into power, including the ANC if it means receiving leadership positions for EFF officials.

"The EFF wants to be part of government now," he said.

The ANC's Duarte wasnt prepared to say which parties the ANC is willing to work with or what it would be ready to offer them in exchange for staying at the helm of major cities such as Johannesburg, Durban and Nelson Mandela Bay.

The ANCs approach to coalitions remains based on principle, not expediency, and guided by the spirit, mandate, and interest of the voters, he said.

VOA's James Butty contributed to this report.
As the Taliban shift their focus from insurgency to government, their most formidable rival is the Islamic State's regional chapter, which has staged a string of bloody attacks in recent weeks.

The latest atrocity claimed by Islamic State-Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, killed at least 19 people Tuesday, including a senior Taliban commander at a military hospital in Kabul, with dozens more wounded.

It followed the slaughter of scores of Shiite Muslims at a mosque last month, and a suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people, including 13 U.S. soldiers, as American troops evacuated in August.

Here is a look at the rivalry between the two groups:

What is IS-Khorasan?

The Islamic State group came to prominence when it proclaimed a caliphate in Syria in 2014.

It inspired a number of offshoots elsewhere, including in "Khorasan," a historical region taking in parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan.

Jean-Luc Marret, of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank, describes IS-Khorasan as "a conglomeration of former jihadist organizations, including Uyghurs and Uzbeks, and Taliban defectors."

According to U.N. estimates, IS-Khorasan has between 500 and a few thousand fighters in northern and eastern Afghanistan, including cells under the nose of the Taliban in the capital, Kabul.

Since 2020, the group has reputedly been led by Shahab al-Muhajir, whose nom de guerre suggests he arrived in the region from the Arab world, but his origins remain murky.

He is variously rumored to have been an al-Qaida commander or a former member of the Haqqani network, one of the most powerful and feared factions in the Taliban.

How great is the threat?

IS-Khorasan has been responsible for some of the deadliest attacks in the region in recent years, massacring civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, at mosques, shrines, public squares and even hospitals.

The group has especially targeted Muslims from sects it considers heretical, including Shiites, much like the original IS group.

It was hit hard by both the Taliban and U.S.-led forces and was losing influence, but its attacks have ramped up since their rival Islamists took power in August.

According to researcher Abdul Sayed of online extremism tracker ExTrac, al-Muhajir placed "a renewed emphasis on urban warfare and symbolic violence."

Where did the rivalry begin?

Many IS-Khorasan fighters fought for the Taliban or allied groups, or came from insurgent movements inspired by al-Qaida.

While both the Taliban and IS-Khorasan are hardline Sunni Islamist militants, they differ on strategy and interpretation of religion, while claiming to be the true flag bearers of jihad.

Despite a history of targeting Shiites, the Taliban have now pledged to protect them. IS-Khorasan, however, remains bent on eradicating groups it considers apostates.

The Taliban of 2021 aim to rule Afghanistan under their interpretation of Islamic law, whereas IS-Khorasan is still wedded to the goal of a global caliphate.

While differences run deep, the border between the groups is porous, and fighters can shift sides as their commanders' views and opportunities evolve.

"ISIS-K has been previously successful in recruiting members disaffected with the Taliban and those who perceive the Taliban as too moderate," said Barbara Kelemen, of Dragonfly Security Intelligence.

"With the Taliban now seemingly implementing some moderate reforms ... there is a high probability [IS-Khorasan] will try to capitalize."

Are the Taliban equipped to fight back?

Afghanistan's ousted U.S.-backed government received hundreds of billions of dollars in support and security assistance but could defeat neither the Taliban nor IS-Khorasan.

Now the Taliban face IS-Khorasan with very little outside assistance and none of the sophisticated intelligence gathering and surveillance deployed by foreign militaries.

They know their enemy and the terrain, though, and last month announced the destruction of an IS-Khorasan cell in Kabul after a suicide attack.

And they have the potential support of two groups that know IS-Khorasan's tactics very well.

As a report from the U.S.-based Soufan Center said, if the Taliban are to fight ISIS-K, they will have to "rely on the Haqqani network, al-Qaida and other violent nonstate actors for manpower, combat expertise and logistical support."
TRANSCRIPT

The Inside Story: Confronting Climate Change

Episode 12  November 4, 2021

Show Opening Graphic:

Voice of PATSY WIDAKUSWARA, VOA White House Bureau Chief:

President Joe Biden brings ambitious U.S. commitments to the world climate conference:

U.S. President Joe Biden:

The United States will help the world deliver on our shared goal of halting natural forest loss.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

The struggle to reach a global agreement on what to do --- and how quickly to do it.

Clair Marceaux, Cameron, Louisiana Resident:

We're not going to be climate refugees. I mean, I guess we already are in some ways. But we're not the only ones.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

From Americas rising bayou...

to Russias thawing tundra ...

The Inside Story: Confronting Climate Change.



The Inside Story:

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Im Patsy Widakuswara, VOA White House Bureau Chief.

I traveled with U.S. President Joe Biden to the G20 Summit in Italy last week, and now to the COP26 in Scotland, where he and representatives from more than 120 countries addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

The goal of the conference is for countries to put forward their plans to hit 2030 emissions levels that keep the world on target to get to a net zero carbon emissions by mid-century. But with a disappointing start of climate talks at the G20, it was a much harder lift at COP26.

Stopping deforestation and restoring 200 million hectares of forest and other ecosystems by the year 2030, backed by close to $20 billion in public and private funding. Thats the pledge made by more than 100 world leaders at COP26, the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, spoke via video link.





Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil:



We are committed to eliminating illegal deforestation by 2030. I call on every country to help defend all forests, including with adequate resources for the benefit for all.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Methane emission, coming mainly from industries such as oil, gas, and coal, will also be slashed. Leaders committed to cut levels 30 percent by 2030 under the Global Methane Pledge,

an initiative pushed by the U.S. and European Union.

Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission President:

So, cutting back on methane emissions is one of the most effective things we can do to reduce near-term global warming and keep 1.5 degrees Celsius. It is the lowest hanging fruit.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

With prospects of his climate legislations uncertain in Congress, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled a series of domestic initiatives to support the deforestation and methane pledge. He slammed China and Russia for not doing their part.

U.S. President Joe Biden:

The fact that China, trying to assert, understandably, a new role in the world as a world leader, not showing up? Come on. The single most important thing that's gotten the attention of the world is climate. Everywhere. From Iceland to Australia, it just is a gigantic issue. And they've walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership mantle? The same with Putin and Russia.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

China and Russia reject the accusation and say Western industrialized nations are the ones who need to do more, since they are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today.

Both countries have aimed to cut emissions to net zero by 2060, a decade after the global target. But they did commit to end deforestation.

Vladimir Putin, Russian President:

We take the strongest and most vigorous measures to conserve it ((forests)). We improve forest management and fight illegal logging and forest fires. We are expanding reforestation areas. We have been consistently increasing funding for these purposes.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Climate activists welcome the commitments but are still skeptical.

Jo Blackman, Global Witness:



This is the problem with a lot of these commitments, there is an accountability gap. Governments made similar pledges in 2014 with the New York Declaration on Forests, but they didnt lead to anywhere near the progress that was expected.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

COP26 negotiations will continue until November 12th. But one major proposal 

ending coal dependency  was dead on arrival. At the G-20 summit in Rome last week leaders of the 20 largest economies could not agree on when to phase out this dirty source of energy, that accounts for more than 70 percent of greenhouse emissions.

Before we go any further ---

What exactly is COP26? It stands for Conference of the Parties - that is the parties who signed on to a UN climate pact in the mid 90s that essentially agreed to the fact that the planet is dying, and we must do something about it.

World leaders have been meeting ever since, and this COP in Glasgow, Scotland is the 26th.

Among those representing their country is Kaluki Paul Mutuku from Kenya.

Our Henry Ridgwell caught up with him to find out how the climate crisis is affecting Kenyas economy and the forests where he grew up.

Kaluki Paul Mutuku, Kenyan Climate Activist:

We are 26 years behind when it comes to climate action, but it's been over 26 years of negotiation. And yet there's no serious action being taken on the very negotiations that keep taking us to a place in the world, a different country every year, every year. So right now, I think it's about time that cop26 should stand up and show us that we are about to act, that we need climate financing, especially for adaptation in Africa, not just for my country, Kenya, but for other vulnerable countries in Africa and global south countries.



So, I think for me, it's an important one for us to see where the climate financing is coming and not just in terms of giving us the money, but how do we finance avoid, you know, emissions in Africa? How do we equip communities with resources, money, and other resources to really be able to adapt to climate change, and how do we ensure that we give climate-proofing for them. So, for me, it's an important moment to see how world leaders can come together and how young people grassroots and other communities can really be part of the negotiation and be part of the decision-making at this space in Glasgow.



We cannot afford to lose hope. And as long as young people grassroots and our frontline communities are leading the decade of change, then we are in the right trajectory. For me, any delayed financing is a shame to leaders. so it doesn't matter what they say here. What matters is how we find the monies and how we support people at the grassroots. But bottom line is that I'm optimistic that as long as communities are working on the ground, then we are on the right track.

If we get financing and close collaboration, engagements between young people and our governments to me that becomes a huge success out of this conference.

So when we come to conferences and spaces like this, we take it so seriously because it's what determines our future, and our future is now. and if we don't demand that we are at the table and contribute to the decision-making, then you don't have a tomorrow. So for us, it's a big deal that we are here and our voices must be heard, and that we must be equally recognized so that we drive the decade of action and the decade of restoration with our own leaders and in all communities that are represented here.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Accompanied by Scottish bag pipes, activists from the organization Oxfam wore giant paper mache heads depicting world leaders, urging them to, in their words, stop blowing hot air and take critical action on climate change. U.S. President Joe Biden is promising, exactly that.

U.S. President Joe Biden:



We'll demonstrate to the world, the United States is not only back at the table, but hopefully leading by the power of our example. I know it hasn't been the case. And that's why my administration is working overtime to show that our climate commitment is action, not words.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Biden expressed regret that the U.S. has been largely absent in global climate talks, since President Donald Trump in 2017 pulled out of the Paris Accord, a monumental global agreement on climate change promoted by President Barack Obama.

U.S. President Joe Biden:

I guess I shouldn't apologize but I do apologize for the fact that the United States in the last administration pulled out of the Paris Accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Global pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are just a fraction of whats needed to prevent catastrophic global warming. Our Henry Ridgwell explains what is at stake.

HENRY RIDGWELL, VOA Correspondent:



The worlds wealthiest nations  the G-20  account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.



But scientists say poorer countries  particularly in Africa  are suffering the worst impacts of climate change.



Rich nations pledged in 2009 to give developing countries $100 billion a year to help them deal with climate change. But the target date has been put back to 2023.



At the COP26 summit Tuesday, African leaders voiced their anger.





Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghanaian President:



Those same nations are however insisting that we abandon the opportunity for rapid development of our economies. That would be tantamount to enshrining in the global community inequality of the highest order.







HENRY RIDGWELL:



Their appeals failed to shift the timetable. But the frustration was tempered by progress on other vital climate emergencies.



Over 100 nations agreed to end deforestation by 2030  backed by close to $20 billion in public and private funding. The signatories included Brazil.

Deforestation has increased in the Amazon under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to its highest level in a decade and some are skeptical of his pledge.



Chief Ninawa, Brazilian Indigenous Leader:



It won't solve the social problems in our communities, where there is no water, where there is deforestation, where there is river contamination. These are investments that will only give free rein to companies to keep their polluting.







HENRY RIDGWELL:



Over 100 countries also signed a Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in driving global warming.





Steve Hamburg, Chief Scientist at Environmental Defense Fund:



Its incredibly important progress in addressing the climate crisis because we can now think about methane emissions separately from CO2. And recognizing that reduction of methane represents an enormous lever for making progress in reducing the rate of warming.







HENRY RIDGWELL:



China and Russia  two of the worlds biggest methane emitters  did not sign.



There may be no big breakthrough at this summit. But organizers say the smaller, targeted agreements on protecting rainforests, cutting methane or helping vulnerable island states all add up to significant progress.

The absence of the Chinese, Russian and Brazilian presidents has led to questions over how effective the summit will be in curbing global warming. Host  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson  said he was cautiously optimistic.



World leaders have now returned home. Their teams of negotiators will now decide the fate of the summit  and, many scientists say, the future of planet Earth.



Henry Ridgwell, for VOA News, at the COP26 summit, Glasgow.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

By the year 2050, 200 million people around the world will have lost their homes due to climate change, according to the World Bank.

In the United States, the state of Louisiana recently endured four major weather events over a nine-month period.

VOAs Steve Baragona spent time there and produced a 30-minute documentary on the recovery efforts of a community devastated by natural disasters.

Heres a portion of the upcoming documentary, Weathering the Storm.

Clair Marceaux, Cameron, La. Resident:

I didn't want to get upset.

STEVE BARAGONA, VOA Correspondent:

Clair Marceaux's home was demolished by Hurricane Laura in August of 2020. A year later, the memories still hurt.

Clair Marceaux, Cameron, La. Resident:

My husband just kept stacking up cinder blocks because what else are you going to do? It's not like you have anything to repair. It's just like (the house) was never there.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Hurricane Laura crashed ashore here in Cameron, Louisiana, causing 19 billion dollars of damage across the region.

Just six weeks later, Hurricane Delta struck. Then in February, a freakish arctic blast. And in May, 30 centimeters of rain fell in one day.

The city of Lake Charles, 48 kilometers (30 miles) north of Cameron, is still reeling.

Nic Hunter, Lake Charles Mayor:

If you asked me about climate change ten years ago, I probably would have said I think that's a bunch of hogwash or some type of made-up agenda. I don't believe that today.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Mayor Nic Hunter adds that thousands remain displaced a year after Laura.

With climate disasters ratcheting up worldwide, what happened to Lake Charles demonstrates how the impacts ripple through a community.

Hunter says the biggest problem is housing. Nearly half the homes were damaged in Laura and Delta alone.

Joyce Nash lives on a street lined with abandoned houses.

Joyce Nash, Lake Charles Resident:

My neighbors aren't able to come back because their home isn't livable for them to come back.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Many residents have not returned to their jobs, either.

Joyce Nash, Lake Charles Resident:

When they try to go back to work, they can't go back to work because they have nowhere to live. They have nowhere to live.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Across the city, the housing shortage has created a labor shortage.

Kathi Vidrine, Owner, Steamboat Bill's:

Alright. Guys, you doing OK?

STEVE BARAGONA:

Kathi Vidrine owns Steamboat Bill's, a popular Lake Charles seafood restaurant. Before the storms, she had about 50 employees.

Kathi Vidrine, Owner, Steamboat Bill's:

I need about 30 more people. So if anyone wants a job, if its a senior citizen or 15, we hire them. I had two people who lost their house. One's living with the parents. There are so many of them that have moved away.

Becky Franks, Marketing Manager, Manpower:

There just aren't enough workers. And you see that down every street, with every business.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Becky Franks is marketing manager with the staffing firm Manpower. She says the whole economy of the city is suffering.

Becky Franks, Marketing Manager, Manpower:

From the perspective of bringing revitalization back into the community, when the doors aren't open, it's a domino effect.

STEVE BARAGONA:

People in Louisiana pride themselves on their resilience. But the impacts of repeated disasters add up, says Louisiana State University anthropologist Craig Colten.

Craig Colten, Louisiana State University:

Each time a storm hits, it drives the resilience of the population further down, and they have farther to go to get out of the depressed state of the economy and their social wellbeing.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Back in Cameron, Clair Marceaux and her family are rebuilding. She knows life here is getting more precarious with climate change. But this is home.

Clair Marceaux, Cameron, La. Resident:

We're not going to be climate refugees. I mean, I guess we already are in some ways. But we're not the only ones. It's a global crisis. It's not just here.

STEVE BARAGONA:

Steve Baragona, VOA News, Cameron, Louisiana.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Watch more of the documentary and get more details about the region at VOANews.com.

While the ravages of climate change are seen and felt by millions around the world every day, researchers say understanding the effects of climate change requires recreating these patterns in a controlled environment. VOAs Arash Arabasadi takes us to a specialized lab in Italy.

ARASH ARABASADI, VOA Correspondent:

It wasnt long ago that rescue workers trained by climbing for hours  even days  to reach mountaintops to practice in extreme weather conditions. Today, they can do so in a lab.

Christian Steurer, terraXcube  Eurac Research:

In these rooms we can reproduce  environments from negative 40 degrees Celsius up to 60 degrees. In terms of altitude, we can go up to nine thousand meters. We combine wind, snow, and rain, and we have an entire research department that studies these (effects) on people.

ARASH ARABASADI:

This is the terraXcube extreme climate simulation center, a part of Eurac Research. Here, scientists study the impact of altitude and extreme weather on participants blood thickness and its ability to carry oxygen. Last year, the facility served as an incubator for mountain climbers Simone Moro and Tamara Lunger.

Christian Steurer, terraXcube  Eurac Research:

They were acclimated in our room for about a month. They were slowly brought up to seven thousand meters altitude. They trained inside. We monitored them with researchers and doctors. The goal is always to understand how man behaves scientifically in a process of acclimatization.

ARASH ARABASADI:

The researchers also look at what happens to heavy machinery exposed to the same extreme climates. Steurer explains.

Christian Steurer, terraXcube  Eurac Research:

We did some defrosting tests on big machines. These are cabins where people have to be inside. The test was to understand how fast the glass can defrost.

ARASH ARABASADI:

He says that test measures the quality of the glass, which is essential for machinery operating in extreme temperatures. TerraXcube received national accreditation to carry out climate tests not only on objects but also on living beings. The Eurac Research center has more than 400 scientists and officials say collaborating to understand the effects of climate change may be its most important work.

Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Parts of the planet that were once thought to be permanently frozen are starting to thaw.

With 65-percent of its land covered with permafrost, the thaw is a concern in Russia, going so far as to impact one of its major industries --- oil.

AMY KATZ, narrating for VOA reporter Oleksandr Yanevskyy:

Last year, a thermal power plant in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, failed, flooding nearby rivers with some 17,500 tons of diesel oil.

It was the first large scale disaster of its kind in the Arctic, says Greenpeace. The Kremlin blamed local authorities for the spill. But many scientists and the company that owns the plant say the regions thawing permafrost is to blame because it weakened support for the fuel tank.

Vladimir Romanovsky teaches geophysics at the University of Alaska.

Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska:

This thawing process and melting ice will lead to changes in topography, microtopography. Where there is lot of ice, the surface will be subsiding rapidly. Its not good for the ecosystem generally, its not good for infrastructure. These changes are impacting not only people who live in the Arctic and work there, but also it has some impact on infrastructure in general, things like energy security, food and water security and national security.

AMY KATZ:

The melting permafrost will cause even more carbon emissions causing climate change, says Romanovsky.

Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska:

Of course, a very well-known list of permafrost-carbon feedback. Because permafrost contains a significant amount of carbon in frozen form, and by the scientists estimates, its about twice more carbon in permafrost regions sequestered in soils, compared to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. So, roughly speaking, if all of this carbon is released to the atmosphere, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will be tripled.

AMY KATZ:

And its not only Russia that faces these problems. The U.S. has felt the consequences of permafrost melting too.

Scientists say the governments of countries with areas of permafrost on their territories need to prepare for an increase in spending to maintain the existing infrastructure to keep it functional.

For Oleksandr Yanevskyy in Washington, Amy Katz, VOA News.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Madagascar is a nature-lover's paradise. While its relatively isolated, its not immune from the impacts of climate change.

Located 400 kilometers off Africas southeastern coast, unpredictable rain patterns, rising temperatures, and drought are damaging the countrys food supply.

Now, restoration efforts are underway that show promise in reversing some of climate changes effects.

ANNE NZOUANKEU, Reporting for VOA:

Last year, this waterfall in the Tsitongambarika forest disappeared for six months - as many waterways in the forest dried up. The state, with the help of the local population, launched a reforestation program.

Ange Chambou, Farmer:

We use this water source for our farms. I am proud to contribute to the reforestation of this forest which is a source of life. Our children will not have the same environmental problems as we do.

ANNE NZOUANKEU:

The South of Madagascar is suffering a four-year drought that the World Food Program says is the worst in 40 years.

The country has also lost nearly 40 percent of its natural forests. Advocates blame climate change but also the cutting of trees by the local populations.

The Tsitongambarika forest is a model of reforestation in the country. It has been reconstituted to more than 60 percent.

Thirty-nine thousand hectares have been restored out of a total area of 59,000 hectares. It is an important conservation area, protecting many endemic and threatened species.

Vahinala Raharinirina, Environment Minister:

It contributes especially to the mitigation of climate change at the global level. The forest of Tsitongambarika is a carbon sink at the global level in a context where greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly important. Madagascar contributes to this global objective.

ANNE NZOUANKEU:

According to data drawn from the Global Carbon Project, Madagascar produces less than point-zero one percent of all the carbon dioxide generated in the world.

Researchers say about five percent of the world's animal and plant species live on the island.

Madagascars president calls for everyone to do their part.

Andry Rajoelina, President of Madagascar:

What we are asking is that the countries that pollute the most should help the countries that pollute the least so that we can really, in my opinion, mitigate the impact of this climate change and help the population in this part of the island.

ANNE NZOUANKEU:

During the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, the states are expected to find an agreement to limit global warming to avert any more crises like the droughts that threatened Madagascars forestlands.

Anne Nzouankeu, for VOA News, Tsitongambarika, Madagascar.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:



Thats all from the COP26 Summit here in Scotland.

Follow me on Twitter at PWidakuswara and connect with us on Instagram and Facebook at VOANews.com.

Stay up to date with the rest of the Global Climate Conference and check out our reporting about climate solutions at VOANews.com.

See you next week for The Inside Story.

###
Ethiopia Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of brutal fighting between government forces and regional Amhara militiamen aligned with Eritrean forces against rebels in the northern Tigray region. Now, Tigrayan forces say they are advancing on the capital, Addis Ababa, and that it could fall within months or even weeks.

In recent weeks, the Tigrayan forces and the Oromo rebel forces have joined in the fight against the central government and claimed to make significant advances.

Ethiopias Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed vowed that his government would prevail.

Ethiopia will not collapse. Ethiopia will prosper, Abiy said speaking in Addis Ababa on Wednesday. Ethiopia will forever exist with her honor by defeating all who test her through the blood and bones of her children.

The Ethiopian government declared a six-month state of emergency Wednesday and called on residents to defend their neighborhoods if rebels arrive in the capital. Our country is facing a grave danger to its existence, sovereignty and unity. And we cant dispel this danger through the usual law enforcement systems and procedures, said Justice Minister Gedion Timothewos during a state media briefing.

Debretsion Gebremichael, the president of the Tigray region blamed the Ethiopian government and its allies for causing the suffering in the past year. The warmongers decided to continue with the war, and we entered into this war because the only option we had is to destroy our enemies by force.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price called on all the warring parties to end the fighting and protect the lives and rights of citizens. He said the State Department has now updated the travel advisory for Ethiopia to Level 4.

What that means is we are advising U.S. citizens, do not to travel to Ethiopia, Price said. We are recommending that U.S. citizens in Ethiopia consider departing now using commercial options that remain available.

Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the yearlong conflict was marked by extreme brutality.

We have reasonable grounds to believe that during this period, all parties to the Tigray conflict have committed violations of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law, The U.N. human rights chief said during a press briefing on Wednesday. Some of this may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Civilians in Tigray have been subjected to brutal violence and suffering.

A joint report by the U.N. human rights office and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission found that sexual violence has been rampant in the conflict, detailing reports of gang rapes by various parties against women and girls, but also against men and boys.

The yearlong conflict has plunged about 400,000 people in the Tigray region into famine, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 2.5 million people in the north to flee their homes, according to the U.N.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
Ukraine on Thursday appointed a new defense minister with a mandate to strengthen the army, as the country remains locked in conflict with pro-Russia separatists.

Oleksiy Reznikov, a lawyer with limited military experience, replaces Andriy Taran, who resigned earlier this week reportedly for health reasons.

A total of 273 lawmakers in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament voted to approve the candidacy of Reznikov, who was nominated by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Introducing Reznikov to lawmakers in parliament, Zelensky said that his main task would be "to strengthen the defense capacity of the army".

The Ukrainian army is locked in a simmering conflict with pro-Russia separatists in the country's east that erupted after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.

"The cost of temporary occupation must constantly increase" for the separatists, Reznikov, 55, told lawmakers ahead of the vote.

He added that a strong army is "one of the most powerful diplomatic" tools, vowing "to improve military compatibility with NATO countries".

Reznikov had been working as the minister for reintegration of separatist-held areas from March 2020, and represented Ukraine in peace talks with Russia and OSCE monitors.

His predecessor Taran was criticized for insufficient reform of the country's under-resourced military.

The appointment comes after Ukraine on Monday denied reports of a Russian military build-up near its eastern border that raised fears of a new escalation in fighting with the separatists.

After a spike in violence early this year, Russia in March amassed around 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders.

Under pressure from Kyiv's Western allies, Moscow later announced a pullback, but both Ukraine and the United States said at the time the withdrawal was limited.

The conflict has claimed more than 13,000 lives to date.
The State Department says U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman will travel to Ethiopia on Thursday and Friday, after rebel forces from the northern Tigray region said they were moving toward the capital and the government in Addis Ababa declared a state of emergency. With Heather Murdock contributing, VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
A jihadi attack in Niger's volatile tri-border zone with Burkina Faso and Mali has killed dozens of members of a self-defense militia, local sources told AFP on Thursday.

The assault took place on Tuesday at Adab-Dab, a village about 55 kilometers (32 miles) from Banibangou in the western region of Tillaberi, a source said.

A motorcycle-borne defense force was attacked by "heavily-armed members of the ISGS (Islamic State in the Greater Sahara), who were also on motorbikes, the source said.

"In all there are about 60 dead, nine missing and 15 escaped. The mayor of Banibangou is among those who were killed and his body has been recovered," an MP in the western Tillaberi area said.

A security source said the attack occurred Tuesday around 9:30 a.m. local time (0830 GMT).

Another local source confirmed the death toll and said the target of the attack was a local anti-jihadi defense force called the Vigilance Committees, which was headed by the mayor of Banibangou district.

The assailants headed back to Mali "taking the bodies of their fighters with them," the source said.

The defense force had recently been set up by local people following a string of attacks on farm workers in remote fields by highly mobile jihadis, a former mayor said.

The militia had set off for Adab-Dab on Tuesday to hunt for armed men who had been attacking villages and stealing cattle.

The world's poorest country by the benchmark of the U.N.'s Human Development Index (HDI), Niger is facing jihadi insurgencies on its western border with Mali and Burkina Faso and on its southeastern frontier with Nigeria.

The western insurgency began with incursions in 2015. The bloodshed escalated in 2017, with massacres carried out by groups affiliated to al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State.

Human Rights Watch estimated in August that more than 420 civilians had been killed since the start of the year in western Niger. In one incident alone, 100 people were killed in attacks on villages on January 2.

In September, President Mohamed Bazoum, making his first visit to the region since being elected in February, said the attacks on "unarmed innocent people" were a sign the jihadis were losing ground against the army.

But on October 20, 11 members of the National Guard and a gendarme were killed in an ambush on a regional prefect's motorcade in the Bankilare district.

The United Nations has meanwhile warned that the Tillaberi region is facing a "major food crisis," with almost 600,000 people exposed to food insecurity.

"Insecurity and recurrent attacks by suspected elements of non-state armed groups targeting farmers and civilians will have serious repercussions this year on the already precarious food situation," the U.N. Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs office warned in a report sent to AFP last month.
Social media behemoth Facebook is facing public and regulatory scrutiny after the disclosure of thousands of pages of internal documents by a whistleblower who used to work for the company.

What are the Facebook papers?

After compiling the documents while working as a Facebook product manager, Frances Haugen distributed them to a group of 17 U.S. news organizations that collaborated on a project to individually publish stories on their findings.

The stories, released on a coordinated day in late October, portray Facebook as pursuing audience growth and profits while ignoring how people were using the platform to spread hate and misinformation.

The documents showed Facebook particularly struggled with monitoring for hate speech, inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation by users posting in certain countries, including some that Facebook had determined were at the most risk for real-world consequences of such abuses.

The failures included both inadequate artificial intelligence systems and not enough human moderators who speak the many languages spoken by Facebook users.

Who else received them?

In addition to providing the documents to journalists, Haugen has also made them available to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Congress. Haugen has also appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee and testified before the British Parliament.

Haugen used her smartphone camera to capture the documents.

Why are they important?

The company has massive global reach. Facebook had 2.74 billion active users as of the end of September, according to company statistics. That is about 1 out of every 3 people on the planet, and the company also operates other popular services such as WhatsApp and Instagram.

How has Facebook responded?

Facebook spokesperson Mavis Jones said in a statement that the company is working to stop abuse on its platform in places where there is a higher risk of conflict, and that it has native speakers to review content in 70 languages.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke during a quarterly earnings conference call Monday and said Facebook is facing a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, the Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
The White House on Thursday released new COVID-19 vaccination rules for U.S. companies with 100 or more employees, requiring that their workers be fully inoculated by January 4 or get tested at least once a week.

The White House also issued similar rules for health care workers employed at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid. Under the rules, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, offices must provide time off for employees to get the vaccinations. The rules also call for unvaccinated workers to wear masks in the workplace.

A White House fact sheet says the rules will affect 84 million employees and about 17 million health care workers at 76,000 facilities, including hospitals and long-term care facilities. A White House official said employers failing to comply with the rules could face fines of up to $14,000 per violation.

Under the policies, workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds.

President Joe Biden released a statement saying he sees this as a simple choice for the country: Get more people vaccinated or prolong this pandemic and its impact on our country.

Biden said that while he would have preferred not to issue these requirements, too many people have gone unvaccinated for the nation to get out of the pandemic for good.

Republican criticism

Several Republican lawmakers voiced opposition to the mandate, with Senator Mike Braun leading 40 of his colleagues in an effort to challenge the policy. In a statement Wednesday, Braun said they were formally moving to disapprove and nullify the mandate on private employees under the Congressional Review Act: the official process for Congress to eliminate an executive branch rule.

Braun, of Indiana, is the ranking member of a subcommittee on employment and workplace safety.

This rule by the Biden administration is a highly inappropriate invasion of what should be a personal medical decision for every American, he said.

Biden issued his executive order on the vaccine mandate in September.

The president has said that previous vaccine requirements for military and federal contractors have worked, helping to reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over age 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now.

Biden said the mandates have not resulted in worker shortages and mass firings as some predicted. He said the policies enjoy broad public support and are nothing new, as people have been required to get vaccinated for many other diseases over the years or abide by other workplace safety standards.

He said these latest requirements were designed to protect people from something that has taken the lives of 750,000 Americans.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
The World Health Organizations regional director for Europe said Thursday the continent is now the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for 59 percent of all cases globally.

At a virtual news briefing from Copenhagen, Hans Kluge said the current pace of transmission across the regions 53 countries is of grave concern. He said new cases are approaching record levels, with the delta variant of the coronavirus driving the surge.

Kluge said his agencys latest data shows hospitalizations in the region more than doubled in one week.

He noted officials are seeing increasing trends across all age groups, but that the rapid increase in the older population is of the most concern. He said this is translating into more people having severe cases and dying, with 75 percent of the deaths among persons aged 65 or older.

Kluge said one reliable projection indicates that at the current pace, Europe could see another half a million COVID-19 deaths by the first of February. COVID-19 is caused by the coronavirus.

He also cited uneven vaccination rates and the relaxation of public health and social measures throughout the region as the cause of the surge.

While a billion doses of vaccine have been distributed, in Europe, only 47 percent of the total population are fully vaccinated. He says in eight nations, at least 70 percent of the people have been inoculated fully. Kluge notes the rate remains below 10 percent in two other countries.

Kluge encouraged nations with low vaccination rates to increase coverage, particularly among priority groups such as the elderly. He urged nations with high vaccination rates and ample supply to share with less fortunate nations.

He also said that vaccines are most effective when used with other preventive measures, such as social distancing and mask-wearing. Kluge said if the region achieved universal mask use, 188,000 lives could be saved between now and February.

The WHO region chief said, We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of COVID-19 to preventing them from happening in the first place.
Environmentalists in Zimbabwe are reacting angrily to President Emmerson Mnangagwa's address at the COP26 conference, where he pledged his government's fight against deforestation and climate change. Environmentalists say the government is busy dishing out land to companies, mainly Chinese, to mine coal for energy use, which COP26 wants phased out.

Tuesday in Scotland, President Emmerson Mnangagwa addressed the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, where he urged developed countries to pay for causing global warming by emitting gases into the atmosphere.

He said developing nations like Zimbabwe were paying for the consequences of those emissions.

He also pledged his countrys cooperation in the fight against climate change.

Zimbabwe has revised its nationally determined contributions, a committed conditional 40% per capita greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030. Comprehensive strategies are being implemented towards mainstreaming climate change adaptation and resilience across all sectors of our economy, Mnangagwa said.

This comes at a time when environmentalists in Zimbabwe are asking the government to revoke an exploration license recently awarded to a Chinese company to mine coal for energy use.

The Center for Natural Resource Governance is one of the organizations opposing the license. The group promotes green energy, and fears that exploration for coal will cause greater deforestation.

Henry Nyapokoto, the program manager for the group, said Mnangagwas comments run contrary to what he sees going on.

But the government has been in overdrive mode to promote mining everywhere in order to reach the $12 billion mining economy. In fact, it wont (make) ecological sense for Zimbabwe to attain a $12 billion economy based on bad models of production, bad consumption, that leaves a huge ecological footprint or a legacy of an ecological disaster. We all understand that mining comes with destruction of forests that serves as carbon sinks and habitat for wildlife, Nyapokoto said.

Nyapokoto added that Zimbabwe was exploring oil and gas on its northeast border with Zambia, another project that could lead to deforestation.

Despite the impact of oil and gas on global warming, there will be (a) visible, immediate direct effect of this oil and gas mining on local communities or ecosystems. Land will be cleared for mining and other infrastructure that is going to support that mining. That is contrary to the greening of the economy that they are talking about in Glasgow, Nyapokoto said.

He said Zimbabwe was in the top 10 of countries of deforestation, with about 300,000 hectares of forests destroyed annually.

But Byron Zamasiya of the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association says Mnangagwa was genuine in his COP26 address about fighting deforestation caused by need for energy.

So, the issue of fighting deforestation is a key ingredient for addressing greenhouse gas emissions for Zimbabwe. The trees act as a carbon sink since they absorb carbon dioxide, which is a major cause of global warming. What we may want as a country is to make available alternative sources of energy, especially for the rural communities who rely on wood fuel and account for the major part of deforestation. We may also need to promote intensive farming methods as opposed to extensive farming methods that require bigger fields and the clearing of new forests for fields," Zamasiya said.

The Environmental Management Agency in Zimbabwe has been fining people caught cutting or burning forests. But so far, that hasnt stopped the trees from coming down.
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Livetalk: On the Diaspora Forum we are talking about the just-ended United Nations Climate Change conference in Scotland with guests Tawanda Dzokora of the MDC Alliance and Innocent Ndibali, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters Zimbabwe.
In an election with implications far beyond its borders, the state of Virginia on Tuesday elected Republican businessman and political neophyte Glenn Youngkin to serve as governor, ending a decade-long trend of Democratic domination of state-wide offices and signaling trouble for that party's fate in next year's congressional midterms.

"Together we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth," Youngkin told a crowd of supporters at a victory celebration early Wednesday.

Youngkin took 50.7% of the vote to best Democrat and former Governor Terry McAuliffe, who received only 48.6% in his bid to return to the job he left after leaving office in 2018 due to term limits.

Republicans were successful in all of the statewide races, winning the offices of attorney general and lieutenant governor. Winsome Sears, a conservative Republican, became the first female and first woman of color to win election as lieutenant governor in the commonwealth's 400-year legislative history. The Republicans also seemed poised to retake the House of Delegates, one of the two chambers of the state legislature.

Biden seen as drag on McAuliffe

The race, which culminated a little over nine months into Democrat Joe Biden's first year as president of the United States, was widely seen as a signal of public sentiment toward the president and his party. Biden carried Virginia easily last November, beating then-President Donald Trump by 10 percentage points.

Currently, though, Biden's approval ratings have fallen into negative territory, with just over half of Americans expressing disapproval of his performance, which may have been a drag on McAuliffe's campaign, according to analysts.

"Since August, Biden's national standing has weakened," Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman wrote in an analysis published Wednesday morning by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "That decline, combined with the usual headwinds the president's party faces in off-year elections, helped fuel Youngkin's 12-point net improvement over Trump's 10-point loss in Virginia last year."

Warning signs for Democrats

The result in Virginia is a warning signal for Democrats in Washington. They have struggled to agree among themselves on a way to pass major elements of the president's domestic agenda despite having control of both the House of Representatives and Senate, although by very slim margins. The party is in danger of losing control of both chambers of Congress in next year's elections.

In another warning sign, Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, was locked in a tight reelection battle with Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli. The outcome will be decided by a tiny share of ballots yet to be counted. Murphy had been expected to win easily.

"Gov. Phil Murphy's (D-NJ) surprisingly close race in the lower-profile and still-uncalled New Jersey gubernatorial contest also indicates that the poor Democratic environment was a main driver of the party's poor 2021 Election Night," Kondik and Coleman wrote.

A path for Republicans

The Virginia race suggests that there is a viable path forward for Republicans struggling to find their way out of the shadow of Trump, who, despite low favorability ratings with the general public, retains an iron grip on the party's base.

While Youngkin did accept Trump's endorsement, Youngkin did not campaign with the former president, and rarely mentioned him in his public remarks, while McAuliffe used every opportunity to portray Youngkin as a Trump acolyte. Throughout the campaign, Youngkin, a wealthy investment businessman, walked a very narrow path, projecting the image of an amiable suburban father while simultaneously stoking the anger of the former president's base with warnings about hot-button issues.

Youngkin was able to successfully bleed away Biden voters in the suburbs of the state's largest urban areas. In northern Virginia, for example, Youngkin took 35% of the vote in Fairfax County, where Trump won only 28% last year. In neighboring Loudoun County, Youngkin took 44.5% of the vote compared to Trump's 36.5% last year.

Early in the campaign, Youngkin refused to say whether he believed that Biden had won the presidential election, keeping himself in line with Trump, who claims, despite copious evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Youngkin eventually conceded that Biden won legitimately.

Sycophantic' devotion to Trump proves unnecessary

The Republican Party is likely to take a couple of lessons from the results in Virginia, said Jennifer N. Victor, an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at Virginia's George Mason University.

"First, Republicans can win without Trump on the ballot," she said. "And Republicans can win with some emulation of Trump and Trump ideas, and maybe even a few Trump tactics, but that direct, almost sycophantic association with Trump is not necessary in order to get some of the benefits."

Victor said she expects Republican candidates in 2022 to use the lessons learned from the Youngkin campaign.

"Democrats are going to be at a structural disadvantage in 2022, and the president's party usually loses seats in the midterm," she said. "So, if Republicans use the Youngkin playbook in 2022, I'm guessing it'll work out okay for them."

Critical Race Theory

Throughout the campaign, Youngkin played up fears that Critical Race Theory, an academic discipline studied in law schools, is being taught in Virginia's public schools. The theory is not, in fact, part of the state's curriculum, but has been broadly conflated with arguments over how the more controversial aspects of U.S. history -- particularly slavery and "Jim Crow" racism - ought to be taught in schools.

Jim Crow refers to structural racism that was common in the Deep South throughout much of the 20th century. Jim Crow laws mandated segregation policies targeting Black people in the South.

Over the past year in Virginia, school board meetings have been regularly interrupted by white parents angrily denouncing schools for lessons that, they claim, teach white children to feel guilty about the nation's historic treatment of minorities.

Youngkin focused on their concerns, pledging to "ban" Critical Race Theory from the state's schools. Late in his campaign, he ran a controversial ad featuring a woman who claimed that her son had suffered severe psychological distress after reading a book assigned in English class about slavery. The boy was a senior in high school at the time, and the book was Beloved, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Analysts believe that McAuliffe harmed his own chances when, in a debate with Youngkin in September, he seemed to belittle the concerns of parents, saying, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

Trump takes credit

Despite Youngkin's efforts to distance himself from the former president, Trump took credit for the victory, attributing it to supporters pushing his "Make America Great Again" slogan, which he abbreviated as MAGA.

In a statement released by his spokesperson, he said, "I would like to thank my BASE for coming out in force and voting for Glenn Youngkin. Without you he would not have been close to winning. The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before. Glenn will be a great governor. Thank you to the people of the commonwealth of Virginia and most particularly, to our incredible MAGA voters."
South African writer Damon Galgut won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction on Wednesday with "The Promise," a novel about one white family's reckoning with South Africa's racist history.

Galgut had been British bookmakers' runaway favorite to win the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize with his story of a troubled Afrikaner family and its broken promise to a Black employee  a tale that reflects bigger themes in South Africa's transition from apartheid.

Galgut took the prize on his third time as a finalist, for a book the judges called a tour de force. He was previously shortlisted for "The Good Doctor" in 2003 and "In a Strange Room" in 2010.

Despite his status as favorite, Galgut said he was stunned to win.

Galgut said he was accepting the prize "on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard, from the remarkable continent that I'm part of."

"Please keep listening to us  more to come," he added.

Historian Maya Jasanoff, who chaired the judging panel, said "The Promise" was a profound, forceful and succinct book that "combines an extraordinary story, rich themes  the history of the last 40 years in South Africa  in an incredibly well-wrought package."

Galgut's ninth novel traces members of the Swart family  the word is Afrikaans for black  haunted by an unkept promise to give their Black maid, Salome, her own house. The book is structured around a series of funerals over several decades; Galgut has said he wanted to make readers fill in the narrative gaps themselves.

He is the third South African novelist to win the Booker Prize, after Nadine Gordimer in 1974 and J.M. Coetzee, who won twice, in 1983 and 1999.

"The Promise" was selected over five other novels, including three by U.S. writers: Richard Powers' "Bewilderment," the story of an astrobiologist trying to care for his neurodivergent son; Patricia Lockwood's social media-steeped novel "No One is Talking About This"; and Maggie Shipstead's aviator saga "Great Circle."

The other finalists were Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam's aftermath-of-war story "A Passage North" and British/Somali writer Nadifa Mohamed's "The Fortune Men," about a Somali man falsely accused of murder in 1950s Wales.

Jasanoff said many of the shortlisted novels, including Galgut's, reflected on the relationship between past and present.

"This is a book that's very much about inheritance and legacy," she said of the winner. "It's about change over a period of decades. And I think it's a book that invites reflection over the decades and invites and repays rereading."

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers' careers and was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the U.K.

The judging panel winnowed their list from 158 novels submitted by publishers. Only one British writer, Mohamed, made the final six, a fact has renewed debate in the U.K. about whether the prize is becoming U.S.-dominated.

Last year there also was only one British writer on a U.S.-dominated list of finalists, Scotland's Douglas Stuart. He won the prize for "Shuggie Bain," a gritty and lyrical novel about a boy coming of age in hardscrabble 1980s Glasgow.

For a second year, the coronavirus pandemic has scuttled the prize's usual black-tie dinner ceremony at London's medieval Guildhall. The winner was announced in a ceremony broadcast live on BBC radio and television.


The Zimbabwean government says it has appointed a team to monitor social media posts in the country, according to a privately-owned newspaper.

NewsDay quoted Information Minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, as saying the government has actually come up with a cyber-team that is constantly on social media to monitor what people send and receive since we cannot wish social media away.

The newspaper quoted her saying all Zimbabweans and government officials should ensure that whatever message they post on social media should be to build not to destroy the community.

Zimbabwe is currently working on a Cyber-Security and Data Protection Bill with strict regulations for policing social media in the country.

Social media abusers will be severely punished and at the same time some provisions of the Bill allow the snooping on private communication among citizens.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government has announced it is starting to vaccinate Zimbabwes teenagers over the age of 16 against COVID-19, which has claimed nearly 5,000 lives and infected 13,000 in the country. Public health experts welcome the move.

Zimbabwes acting Health and Child Care Minister Amon Murwira told journalists that the country had so far managed to vaccinate 38% of the population.

He then announced the recommendation regarding those over the age of 16.

Based on the available scientific data in line with the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe guide, the specialist pediatricians have recommended a vaccination of the 16 to 17 years age group with the Sinovac COVID19 vaccine," said Murwira.

"The protocol of the younger age groups is still under consideration. The ministry wishes to advise the public that COVID19 vaccination of the 16 to 17 years age groups has been approved. The government of Zimbabwe through the Ministry of Health and Childcare is determined that Zimbabwe achieves herd immunity by end December 2021, he added.

Dr. Norman Matara, the head of Zimbabwe Association for Doctors for Human Rights, is hopeful the move would increase the number of people getting vaccinated and will push the country further to achieving head immunity.

This is a welcome move, but we just hope that the vaccine will continue to be voluntary and that these teenagers will not be mandated to get vaccines in schools and colleges. But people should just continue to voluntarily get the vaccines, he said.

Itai Rusike, head of nonprofit Community Working Group on Health in Zimbabwe, commended the government for the announcement as it helps the country reach its target of vaccinating at least 10 million Zimbabweans  or 60% of the population  by the end of the year.

This is important in order to prevent the teenagers from COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and even death, especially from the looming threat of the new delta variant. It is also important that the school health coordinators are equipped with the necessary COVID-19 vaccine literacy so that they can then assist in educating the students, the teachers and support staff on the importance of getting vaccinated. It is also important that the community leaders should play a critical role in being our COVID-19 champions and ambassadors so that they can encourage the parents and the children within their communities to embrace the vaccines, said Rusike.

Zimbabwe has fully inoculated just above 2.6 million people since February when it began its vaccination program to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
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On 28 October 2021, former US Vice President Mike Pence (R) spoke to a room filled with members of the Peoples Mujahedin (MEK) at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Meanwhile, Michele Fournoy (D), co-founder of the Center for a New American Security and current Under-Secretary of Defense, appeared virtually at another meeting of the Peoples Mujahedin.

After being considered a terrorist organization by the West, the Peoples Mujahedin (MEK) are back in favor. They are the only military organization capable of delivering blows inside Iran, even against the Islamic regime itself, as they demonstrated alongside Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war .
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Stowe, VT (05672)

Today

Snow this morning will give way to some clearing this afternoon. High 46F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 70%..

Tonight

Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 38F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A group of fifth graders in Limestone County learned about cotton, its uses and a possible future in agriculture during a unique field trip.

North Alabama's a very tech-driven area, but the Alabama 4-H in Limestone County wanted to show Alabama's roots to students. The organization planned and organized a field trip for students so they could have an opportunity to immerse themselves into what put Alabama on the map: agriculture, and more specifically, cotton.

Students tour cotton gin in Limestone County Students tour cotton gin in Limestone County

Driving through North Alabama, you'll see cotton fields all over. Fifth graders in Limestone County and Athens City schools spent the week learning what "Alabama's snow" is used for.

I just think its cool what cotton goes to, because you just think its soft and just goes to clothes, but it goes to a lot more," said Mazie Kate Smith, a fifth grader at Cedar Hill Elementary School.

It can make paper  like stuff to paint on, it can make that, too," said Anthony Leon, a fifth grader from Tanner Elementary School.

From clothes and dollar bills to salad dressings and makeup, cotton is something we use on a daily basis.

However, many people don't realize the whole process that goes into its production.

Some of them walked by the cotton picker and theyre like, Thats a big lawnmower, said Lauren Graham.

Graham's advanced agriculture students walked the fifth graders through the process of what happens at the cotton gin from the time it arrives until it gets shipped out to be made into something.

They may be able to see something that they never even knew existed and this spark an interest for them and them, you know, go down that road and be like, Oh, hey, I want to try this, or, This might be something I want to do,'" said Graham.

Students were able to get their hands dirty and pick cotton seeds before being shown how technology has advanced.

The cotton gin at the Associated Growers Co-Op Inc. in Athens is one of the most advanced cotton gins in the country. It can separate 5,500 pounds of cotton every 10 minutes.

Students said they now have a better appreciation for agriculture.

"Its a lot of cotton and the machines, I still wonder how they built that," said Anthony.
Veterans, active military and their family members who are on the job hunt are invited to take part in a virtual hiring event for Kroger next week, with positions at all levels available.

The event will run from 14 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10. Full- and part-time positions are open across the company, including all-purpose clerks, overnight stocking positions, department managers, e-commerce, pharmacy positions and more.

Kroger values our military and has a longstanding commitment to supporting our military community, said Melissa Eads, corporate affairs manager for the Kroger-Nashville division. We recognize the skills and experience our brave servicemen and women have to offer through their military experience, and we look forward to hiring our heroes and look forward to feeding their future.

To further incentivize applicants, Kroger said it is offering positions with a starting rate of at least $13 per hour; additional pay for overnight stocking shifts; health and retirement benefits; associate discounts on groceries, streaming services, travel and more; a one-time payment of $100 for fully vaccinated employees; and flexible or next-day pay scheduling.

To register for the virtual event, click here.
A supply chain issue affecting aluminum has left some Alabama hospitals dealing with shortages of wheelchairs, walkers and other items.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham said they are asking people to search their homes for some of these items to give to the hospital. WAAY-31 spoke with a nonprofit that is also looking for these items to help those in need.

Officials with the group Christmas Charities Year-Round said they're in desperate need of items like wheelchairs. They have a program that provides access to them for patients in need, and they work with Huntsville Hospital to help meet needs.

But, right now, the items available isn't matching the demand.

"We have folks from across North Alabama and even from our local hospitals that are needing that equipment that they can't afford, and we're able to give it out to them at no cost," said Hilary Gould, executive director for Christmas Charities Year-Round.

She said they're in dire need of wheelchairs, canes and motorized chairs  so much so, there's a wait list for every item. For the wheelchairs alone, there's more than 20 people who need them, Gould said.

Gould said the increase in need may be from a snowball effect of Covid issues or people not being able to get one that they ordered due to delivery delays or the person being transient.

"If they're just trying to get back on their feet, it's really nothing like a wheelchair that can get them going and allow them to have a little bit more transporting freedom," she said.

The public can help meet the community's need by checking their homes or storage spaces for wheelchairs, walkers and similar items in good condition that they no longer need. They can then bring the items to the Christmas Charities Year-Round office on Leeman Ferry Road to donate.

"We can even give them a receipt for the items, for the value of that item, for their taxes," Gould said. "We'll check it out, make sure it works, clean it off and then have it available for those who need it."

Huntsville Hospital said they aren't having any issues with their demand of the same products, but they are monitoring their supply to ensure that if anything does happen, they can work on an alternative.
Decatur, IL (62521)

Today

Cloudy and damp with rain this morning...then becoming partly cloudy. High 54F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 23F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
The American University of Rome is looking for an instructor to teach the course International Response to Humanitarian Crises for the U.S. accredited MA in Peace Studies: Religion in Times of Conflict. The course involves 45 contact hours during the period from the end of January to mid-May 2021.

Required qualifications:

 Experience in international humanitarian work

 Excellent knowledge of English

 Relevant academic education, to at least MA level and preferably Ph.D. level

Desirable qualifications

 Previous teaching experience with North American university programs

Please send your motivation letter and CV in English to applications@aur.edu (quote re: PST/2021)

AUR is an equal opportunity employer.
Lega and Fratelli d'Italia tried to block cannabis referendum after 630,000 people sign petition.

The prospect of Italy holding a referendum on decriminalising cannabis was at risk on Wednesday after the right-wing Lega and Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) tabled a "suppressive amendment" aimed at scuttling the move.

The two parties had attempted to block the progress of a petition in favour of the referendum on liberalising the use of cannabis - signed by more than 630,000 people - arguing that the government should not have granted campaign organisers a one-month extension to collect additional signatures.

However the motion was rejected by the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD), the populist Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) and the liberal +Europa parties.

The centre-right Forza Italia - an ally of the Lega and FdI - chose to abstain from voting, reports Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The referendum would propose to legalise the growing of cannabis for personal use and scrap prison sentences for selling small amounts of the drug.

The attempt to obstruct the passage of the referendum was described as "shameful" by Vittoria Baldino of the M5S, while Riccardo Magi of +Europa said: "The gravity of the Lega's parliamentary initiative is disconcerting."

Giuditta Pini of the PD wrote on Twitter that if the petition had been blocked the 630,000 signatures would have become invalid, "preventing the country from expressing itself."

Activist Marco Cappato of the Luca Coscioni association, one of the groups behind the cannabis campaign, slammed the move as attempted "sabotage" and "dirty tricks", while his colleague Marco Perduca warned: "The coup is foiled for now", thanks to "those who voted solidly against it."

Background to cannabis petition in Italy

Over the course of a week in September weed advocates gathered half a million signatures, the threshold required to trigger a public vote, in a petition calling for a referendum to liberalise the use of cannabis.

The avalanche of signatures was boosted by a recent law allowing people to sign online via Italy's digital identity system SPID.

Pro-marijuana groups behind the campaign were then given an extra month to gather signatures - with the 30 September deadline moved to 31 October - before submitting the petition for approval by the Supreme Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court of appeal.

Activists say that legalising cannabis would free up the criminal justice system by ending "unnecessary trials for small amounts of the drug" as well as boosting tax revenues for the state, estimating this value at around 7 billion.

Campaign organisers say there are six million recreational cannabis users in Italy.

Cannabis debate in Italy

In 2019 the Italian supreme court ruled that the domestic cultivation of small amounts of cannabis for personal use was legal, however it remains illegal to sell and grow cannabis plants on a large scale.

Marijuana has also been permitted for medical purposes since 2007.

The cannabis debate is a source of division in the coalition government of Mario Draghi, split generally along right and left lines, with the Lega and FdI staunchly opposed.

If the cannabis petition is accepted by the supreme court, it will be sent to the constitutional court to assess whether the law would comply with the Italian constitution.

If the petition is successful, the president of Italy will set a date for the referendum, likely to be in early 2022 according to Italia media reports.
In fits and starts. JPMorgan in August became the first Wall Street firm to get approval to take full ownership of a securities venture in China, just ahead of Goldman. Both were seeking a freer hand to set strategy and expand. Western banks have been on a hiring spree and are ramping up their ambitions in asset and wealth management. Goldman is seeking to double its staff in China, to 600. Credit Suisse said it would triple its workforce in the country. Yet not everyone is expanding. In a surprise about-face in March, Vanguard Group Inc. dropped its bid to set up a mutual fund company and said it would focus on a joint venture robo-adviser with Ant Group Co. instead. Citigroup Inc. a month later announced it would exit retail banking in China even as seeks to set up a wholly owned investment-banking business. As of late 2021, only four companies had taken advantage of the Shanghai-London Connect.


The SEC on Wednesday published new staff bulletins that may make it harder for corporations to exclude shareholder proposal on major social issues, such as race, diversity and climate changes, from corporate ballots. The new bulletins replace Trump-era guidance that demanded companies take more steps to disclose how they craft their shareholder recommendations. Critics said that change aimed to stifle shareholders voices. The Securities and Exchange Commission said its staffers would revise the way they determine whether a shareholder proposal relates to the ordinary business of a company, including by considering whether it raises significant social policy issues.

Coinbase Global is testing a subscription service that lets customers trade on the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange without paying fees for each trade. Customers will still pay so-called spread fees on cryptocurrency sales and purchases made through the service. Currently, Coinbase customers pay a commission and spread fee. Today, Coinbase makes the bulk of its revenue from trading fees, although its been working to diversify its sales. Coinbase will report its quarterly results on Nov. 9. Analysts are expecting a double-digit sequential decline in third-quarter revenue.

Electronic Arts gave a forecast for revenue in its fiscal third quarter suggesting that a new Battlefield game will meet the companys expectations. The video game publisher said revenue in the three months ending in December should be $2.63 billion. Analysts had expected $2.67 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
AbS, as he is known, used his platform Thursday not merely to rebut Granholms characterization but also to launch a broadside against Western energy policy in general. He highlighted the relatively stable price of oil compared with surging natural gas this year as proof of OPEC+s positive role. And, no doubt with an eye on climate negotiators gathered in Glasgow, he criticized the perceived negativity directed at fossil fuels, blaming it for a lack of investment in energy security. Above all, the entire event constituted an extended rebuff to calls for higher oil production from some governments, not least that of President Joe Biden.
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The U.S. in November accused NSO and another Israeli company, Candiru, of providing the tools used by some governments to silence dissent at home and abroad. The Commerce Department added them and two other companies to its entity list, which restricts their ability to purchase U.S. software and components. Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has identified over 100 cases where spyware developed by NSO has been abused. A Saudi dissident sued NSO in 2018, alleging that his phone was hacked by Saudi Arabias government using the companys spyware, in part to eavesdrop on communications between him and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered by a Saudi assassination team. WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against NSO, alleging that it violated its terms of service by using WhatsApp as a delivery mechanism for its spyware.
As we watch whats going on in a number of Western nations, were astonished to recognize our own homegrown practices that I hope we have left in the distant past. The fight for equal rights and against discrimination is turning into an aggressive dogmatism bordering on the absurd. They even stop teaching the great authors of the past  such as Shakespeare  at schools and universities, because their ideas are believed over there to be backward. The classics are declared backward because they didnt understand the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, they publish manuals that dictate how movies are to be made and about what, how many characters of what color or gender there should be. This is stronger stuff than we saw from the Soviet Communist Partys Agitation and Propaganda Department.
In reality, however, raising the cap would reduce revenue by $300 billion over the next five years, and by at least as much over the five years after that, relative to the baseline of keeping the lower cap in place. Only a tiny sliver of that tax savings, 2.5%, would go to households making less than $100,000 a year. And because the benefits to higher-income households come in the form of a deduction rather than a rate cut, they provide little incentive to work or invest.
Turkey sent a formal request to Washington on Sept. 30 to purchase from Lockheed Martin Corp. 40 new F-16s and some 80 kits to modernize its existing fighters. Turkey hopes to eventually develop its own jets but meantime is overdue to retire its F-4 jets and wants to upgrade its F-16 fleet as a stopgap measure. The requisition came a week after the U.S. finalized Turkeys removal from the F-35 program as a consequence of its acquiring the S-400 missile-defense system made by Russia, the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations top foe. The U.S. worried that the S-400 could be used to collect intelligence on the stealth capabilities of the F-35, which Turkey had helped to build and wanted to purchase. Beyond that, the U.S. is keen to prevent its allies from engaging with Russias defense sector. The F-16 deal is potentially worth $6 billion, but U.S. approval will be difficult to win given opposition to it within Congress. If denied the F-16s, Turkey has not ruled out the possibility of seeking alternatives, including from Russia.
At the same time, he hammered his opponent, Governor Phil Murphy, for what he described as unnecessarily strict mask and vaccine mandates and for locking students out of their schools for too long. Ciattarelli also targeted Murphy for signing a law that incorporated diversity and inclusion studies into New Jerseys K-12 public school curriculum. As a parent who has a child in New Jerseys public school system, and have had two others graduate from it, I see this as education and am grateful that my children have access to it. But Ciattarelli claimed New Jersey has been instructing young students in critical race theory (it doesnt) and warned that schools might be teaching our children that white people perpetuate systemic racism.
In supervisors sights are crypto assets like stablecoins, which are managed algorithmically to avoid wild fluctuations in price. These serve as the fuel for some of DeFis raciest projects, like locking up crypto in trading pools offering ludicrous (and short-lived) 1,000%-plus annual yields, but also some of its most bank-like ones. These might involve an issuer buying real-world loans and bonds, backed by consumer debt or real estate, and securitizing them as tokens on the blockchain offering 5%-10% yield. (The issuer gets more crypto in return.)
 The Americans with Disabilities Act allows a worker to request an exemption from a vaccine mandate if she has a disability thats covered by the law. In such a case, the employer must communicate with the worker to determine whether an exemption is a reasonable accommodation given her disability and job responsibilities -- and isnt an undue burden for the employer. Failing to engage in that process or provide a reasonable accommodation could be grounds for a lawsuit. A worker with a health condition that compromises her immune system has a good chance of prevailing on a claim if she has a doctors advice that she should avoid a vaccine. An employer would need to show that allowing a worker to remain unvaccinated would cause an undue burden or pose a direct threat in the workplace, which would be difficult to do if there are alternatives available such as working from home or moving to an area segregated from coworkers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal laws against job discrimination, has said that ADA protections apply to Covid vaccines.
The spacious old tobacco barn has become the winemaking center and tasting room, though the indoor portion is closed because of the pandemic. Instead, the staff pours wine from a table on the barns wraparound porch. There are a dozen varieties available by the glass, made from grapes grown on five acres of vines adjacent to the barn. Start with Rooted, a bright, drier, sweetly fruited chenin blanc that was named best in class white wine at this years Governors Cup competition, or Red Barn, a jammy blend of Cabernet Franc and Chambourcin that was awarded a double gold medal in the same contest. Almost all wines are $7 per glass and $22 to $24 per bottle, which is ideal for sharing. Robin Hill doesnt do flights, and the only way to explore the breadth of its output is the Wine Tasting Kit: An egg carton-style container holds a dozen small plastic condiment cups, each with a splash of wine, plus some palate-cleansing crackers and a sheet of tasting notes.
Years ago, after dealing with this myself, I ran into an old friend from high school; her truck was piled high with her late fathers belongings. We both stood in a snowy parking lot and traded teary stories about how hard this aspect of loss had been. And we agreed that, until we had actually had the experience of clearing out households after a death in the family, wed had no idea how lonely and overwhelming it would be.
Miss Manners assures you that this individuals boss will be only too happy to find someone to attend your breakfast. Any qualms you have about going around her can be overcome by assuring the boss that you know the representatives answer was made out of an abundance of gratitude to your group, and that you are therefore enlisting help in assuaging any hurt feelings she may have.
This week, I will begin listing bottle weight with my wine recommendations as part of an international effort by wine writers to encourage wineries to reduce their carbon footprint by using lighter bottles. Because the weight alone may not mean much to readers, I will use the following scale: Under 500 grams, or light. Between 500-700 grams, or average. Over 700 grams, or heavy. This scale may evolve as I gather more data. Bottle weight does not affect the quality of the wine, and while some marketers and winemakers may disagree, I would say it does not reflect quality either. My goal is to help you enjoy your wine to the fullest, but there are other factors that influence our purchasing decisions. Thats why I list alcohol content and point out wines that are sustainable, organic, biodynamic, vegan or kosher. For now, at least, I will not list bottle weight for sparkling wines, which are necessarily heavy to contain the pressure from carbonation, or for specially packaged wines such as one example this week. Weight, as measured on my kitchen scale, will be included for standard 750-milliliter bottles.
I see my friends but not the way I want to. I want to hug them, play games with them that we dont normally get to, and have a pillow fight with her best friend, Mackenzie said after getting her shot at the Childrens Medical Group site.
Elsewhere in the ballroom, Eric Schnabel gripped a Parents for Youngkin sign as he awaited the election results. Schnabel, who recently retired from the Army after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan under Biden infuriated him, turning him off to Democrats. He was also put off by what he called the partys divisive focus on race, including its support for removing Confederate monuments. He said he believed those should have been left in place as a stark reminder to never go down that road again.
Speaking from the bench in U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge Royce C. Lamberth said he and other judges were briefed about the jail this week by the courts acting U.S. marshal, Lamont J. Ruffin, who ordered the inspection. Ruffins findings led the Justice Department to announce that about 400 inmates, being held at the jail in federal criminal cases, will be transferred to a penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
Complete coverage: Pro-Trump mob storms Capitol building

The Attack: Before, During and After

A sprawling investigation: What we know so far about the Capitol riot suspects

Six hours of paralysis: Inside Trumps failure to act after a mob stormed the Capitol

Profiles of three involved in the attack: A horn-wearing shaman. A cowboy evangelist. For some, the Capitol attack was a kind of Christian revolt.

Video timeline: 41 minutes of fear from inside the Capitol siege
Trump on Oct. 18 sued the chairman of the Houses Jan. 6 select committee and the head of the National Archives to block the handover of executive branch records sought by the panel, which has also issued subpoenas to four top aides including former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and adviser Stephen K. Bannon. Trumps attorneys argued that former presidents retain a residual right to executive privilege. Presidents require full and frank advice to carry out their duties, and the confidentiality of such deliberations must survive more than a few months or years after they leave office to protect the institution of the presidency, his lawyers asserted.
Hogan would turn to McGrath on several more occasions. In 2016, he appointed him to take the helm at MES, saying there was no one better suited to lead the agency, which helps local governments finance waste facilities and other infrastructure projects. And, last year, in the throes of the pandemic, the governor asked McGrath, whom he called a leader with a proven track record . . . and a passionate commitment to public service, to take one of the most powerful positions in state government as his chief of staff.
Murphy was horrified because she was probably taught about slavery the way most of us Gen-Xers were: It happened, it was bad, its over. Now lets move on to the next chapter. She didnt have that context to understand the historical foundation of the novel  our sanitized curriculum failed her. Todays conflict is about fixing those shortcomings.
The exchange of gifts is standard procedure for high-level official visits to the United States, and U.S. official visits overseas. The State Departments protocol office is responsible for recording everything gifted to U.S. officials from the White House on down. Often, the gifts are given to aides and never seen by the intended recipient before they are recorded and sent to the vault.
The indictment also suggests  but does not say outright  that Danchenko may have relied on information provided by Dolan to fuel the most salacious accusation to come out of the dossier: that Trump supposedly had a liaison with Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel and that a video existed of the encounter that could be used to compromise the presidential candidate.
A lot of conservatives might not agree with Gov. DeSantis penalizing private businesses for requiring vaccines, and for interfering with the way private owners decide how they want to run their business, Yoo said. The governor might say the reason hes doing this is because he thinks businesses shouldnt threaten employees with losing their livelihoods. But if you believe in free markets, then youd say, the employee could go work for someone else.
Nonetheless, Frey saw a comfortable victory, one boosted by high turnout in southwest Minneapolis, a more White, affluent area of the city  as well as support in north Minneapolis, the heart of the citys Black community, and in areas with large Somali American populations. Both groups have accused the police department of racism and brutality but have also felt the brunt of the citys rising violence.
I was never on board with abolishing the filibuster totally until the Republican-led states started their push to enact any number of restrictive voting rights bills. Now, ending the filibuster may be the only hope to salvage what is fast becoming minority rule in this country. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has shamelessly torpedoed every popular bill that the Democrats have proposed, often without even allowing for debate. When the public favors common-sense gun-safety measures, combating climate change and equal access to the polls, Mr. McConnell does his best to thwart those measures. How does that square with Sen. Mitt Romneys (R-Utah) appeal for bipartisanship?
Despite the presidents encouragement, it was far from clear that Democrats would be able to resolve the complex divisions that have slowed them down for months. Even the process of searching Tuesdays electoral wreckage for clues about how to fix their problems was disorderly, echoing the ideological disagreements that have plagued the party for much of Bidens presidency. By days end, there remained real disputes about who was to blame for the debacle and what changes would need to be put in place to realign the party with voters.
The results from Tuesdays election continue to come in, for instance there were 12,000 ballots recently found in one county, Sweeney said. While I am currently trailing in the race, we want to make sure every vote is counted. Our voters deserve that, and we will wait for the final results.
In a sharply divided nation, who gets to decide when its okay to use fatal force? Across the nation, there is no consensus: States are evenly divided over the core question of whether you have a duty to retreat from a confrontation in a public place that might endanger your life.
According to two Murphy aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the race, the campaign had not drawn any conclusions yet about the reasons for the Republican surge  whether it was fueled by strong anti-Biden sentiment, pandemic-related restrictions or a general backlash against Democrats. But their own internal polling, they said, also missed the strength of the Republican energy.
If you look at the protests that happened, a lot of it was ceremonial and performative. A lot of people came out in droves, because they didnt want to be caught on the wrong side of history, Muhammad said. The Democratic caucus, they brandished kente cloth or the yellow painting of Black Lives Matter on streets of D.C. That didnt really shift the culture that Black people ultimately wanted and want. A lot of it was really hot air. The U.S. didnt really shift or become more connected and concerned about Black lives.
What really upsets me is you have forgotten communities, and then along comes a coal mine being really nice to them, she said. What West Cumbria Mining did was actually say, Heres a register. You can write your name down if you want a job, and as soon as we have vacancies, well email you. Obviously, they are going to go for it.
Netanyahu and members of his Likud party in recent weeks ramped up their efforts to woo conservative coalition members over to their camp, reportedly offering them plum roles in the new right-wing government that could arise if the budget failed and new elections were called. With the coalitions razor-thin majority, it would only take one defector to create a tie and stymie the budget process.
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Under-fire department store Myer has managed to dodge a major upset at its annual meeting despite more than one third of voting shareholders advocating in favour of a motion to dump the retailers board.

On Thursday, Myer received a number of significant votes against the business and its directors, driven primarily by majority shareholder and long-time agitator Solomon Lew, protesting the companys historical underperformance and weak share price. This included a 37 per cent vote against Myers remuneration report, incurring a rare second strike and a board spill vote.

Myer has avoided a board spill at its AGM on Thursday. Credit:Daniel Pockett

However, the spill motion did not gain majority support from shareholders, with only 37 per cent of participating shareholders voting in favour, meaning Myers board will not have to stand for re-election.

Myers chair, JoAnne Stephenson, thanked shareholders for voting against the spill resolution, noting if it had been successful the business would have experienced significant disruption during the all-important Black Friday and Christmas trading periods.
Two key frontbenchers were missing from Labors line-up during the last fortnight of Parliament. The shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, remained in Queensland and the shadow health minister, Mark Butler, stayed in South Australia.

An assortment of marginal seat holders also stayed in their electorates. There were deliberate tactical reasons for their absence. In the ongoing discussions canvassing the limitless what if scenarios that by necessity preoccupy oppositions, Labor worked out a plan in case Scott Morrison had a rush of blood and called an election for later this year.

They did not want Chalmers and Butler, or selected backbench MPs, to be immobilised by the quarantine wars, so the safest course was for them to stay home where they could swing into action immediately if Morrison pulled the rip-cord.

It was a sensible move which showed a meticulous level of planning by Labor on a micro level, which needs to be replicated at a macro level with the release of critical policies now that Australians are emerging from the COVID cocoon.
Wilmington, DE (19810)

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Partly cloudy skies this morning will become overcast during the afternoon. Slight chance of a rain shower. High near 55F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Cloudy with occasional rain late. Low around 45F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Pictured: approximately 259 pounds of marijuana seized by Indiana State Police during a traffic stop on the Indiana Toll Road in LaGrange County, Ind., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Indiana State Police)
Booker starts Democratic US Senate bid on promise to help all Kentuckians
More COVID-19 vaccine clinics to be available in Louisville starting Friday
Marquis Aaron Flowers, 28, addresses the family members, unseen, of the two Brookhaven police officers he killed in 2018, in a Lincoln County Circuit Court moments after pleading guilty to first degree murder in their deaths, Wednesday morning, Nov. 3, 2021, in Brookhaven, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Business

Biden COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private-sector workers to begin Jan. 4

EVELYN HOCKSTEIN FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden responds to a question from a reporter after speaking about coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines and booster shots in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 24, 2021. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

WASHINGTON, D.C.  President Joe Biden will enforce a federal mandate that workers at U.S. companies with at least 100 employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly starting on Jan. 4, a reprieve to businesses facing labor shortages during the holiday season, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

Bidens separate vaccine requirement for federal contractors has been delayed a month to Jan. 4, officials added, while workers in healthcare facilities and nursing homes participating in the Medicare and Medicaid government healthcare programs will need to get their shots by the same date.

The action on the private-sector vaccinations was taken under the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administrations (OSHA) emergency authority over workplace safety, the officials said. The mandate applies to 84.2 million workers at 1.9 million private-sector employers. Another 18.5 million workers for those employers are exempt because they either work remotely or outside all the time, OSHA said.

OSHA estimates 31.7 million of those covered workers are unvaccinated and that 60% of employers will require vaccinations, up from 25% today, resulting in another 22.7 million employees getting vaccinated.

The Chamber of Commerce, the largest U.S. business group, said Bidens administration made some significant adjustments in the rule that reflect concerns raised by the business community.

The mandate is likely to trigger legal challenges and a legal battle hinging upon on the rarely used law on which the action was based and questions over federal power and authority over healthcare practices.

The 490-page regulation is known as a Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). Senate Republicans said they would try to repeal the rule using a law known as the Congressional Review Act.

Biden in September unveiled plans to impose the mandate, with his administration seeking to increase vaccination rates amid a dangerous surge in COVID-19 cases and get more people back to work. In numerous meetings with companies and industry groups representing retailers, logistics companies, construction workers, executives asked the administration to delay the implementation deadline after the New Year, citing concerns about worker shortages.

Employers will also not be required to provide or pay for tests. The rule offers medical and religious exemptions and it estimates that about 5% of employees will seek and receive religious or medical accommodations.

Failure to comply with the mandate will result in an approximately $14,000 fine per violation with a scale that increases with several violations, officials said. They did not offer clarity on whether workers will be fired if they refuse to get the shot or tested.

It is important to understand that there are still so many workers who are not protected and remain at risk from being seriously ill or dying from COVID-19, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Biden initially set a deadline for 70% of U.S. adults to get at least one shot by July 4, but the White House missed the deadline as it underestimated the anti-vaccine sentiment among some Americans fueled by right-wing talk show hosts, anti-vaxxers, online disinformation campaigns and resistance from many Republicans.

A recalcitrant minority of Americans has refused to accept free vaccinations despite a major rollout and incentive campaign from the administration involving 42,000 pharmacies, dozens of mass vaccination sites, free rides and even free beer.

The latest data shows that about 70% of U.S. adults have been fully vaccinated and 80% have received at least one shot. An average of 1,100 Americans are still dying daily from COVID-19, the vast majority of them unvaccinated. COVID-19 has killed more than 745,000 Americans.

The Biden administration said it stopped short of requiring the further workplace measures recommended by OSHA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention including distancing, barriers, ventilation and sanitation.

The new emergency temporary standard is well within OSHAs authority under the law. ... There is a well established legal precedent for OSHAs authority, a senior administration official said, explaining OSHAs the legal authority to issue the rule.

Along with Bidens executive order that requires all federal workers and contractors be vaccinated, the administration vaccine rules cover 100 million people, about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce, the White House estimates.

The rule for healthcare workers covers 17 million employees across 76,000 healthcare facilities even though a majority of them are already vaccinated, data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows.

The administration estimates the rule will prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations and save thousands of lives during the six months after it is implemented.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Healthcare Realty Trust Inc. (HR) on Wednesday reported a key measure of profitability in its third quarter. The results matched Wall Street expectations.

The real estate investment trust, based in Nashville, Tennessee, said it had funds from operations of $64.8 million, or 43 cents per share, in the period.
WESTPORT  A lawsuit filed in state Superior Court in Bridgeport last month makes multiple allegations against state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg  who recently announced he was running for First Selectman of Westport  including that he misrepresented his background, used cronyism and quid pro quo to secure his nomination and made defamatory statements against those who opposed him.

The suit was filed by Westport resident and Democratic Town Committee member Kristan Hamlin and named Steinbergs campaign chairperson Lisa Newman as a co-defendant. Both Steinberg and the attorney representing Newman said the suit lacked merit and accused Hamlin of playing politics.

The 45-page lawsuit poses multiple charges against Steinberg, starting with the allegation that he misrepresented his career in marketing. The lawsuit alleges that Steinberg advertises on the professional networking site LinkedIn that he has worked as a marketing executive for JPS Marketing for the past 14 years.

That assertion is entirely false, the suit claims.

It goes on to say that a review of corporate registrations filed with the Connecticut secretary of the state shows that there is no such entity by the name of JPS Marketing or JPS plus any name that is registered in the state as associated with Steinbergs name or for which he works.

The document states that Steinbergs fraudulent misrepresentations about his professional background constitute a fraud on the voters and volunteers who supported his state representative candidacy, and his First Selectman candidacy. It further claims that Steinberg has not worked in marketing during the past fourteen years, because his previous conduct with employers has rendered him unemployable in the marketing profession, because he cannot secure a good reference from his last or previous employer.

The lawsuit also claims that Steinberg and Newman engaged in nefarious tactics to secure his nomination. The document includes a lengthy section alleging that Steinberg conspired with Melissa Katz-Kane to get Steinberg the first selectman nomination.

According to the suit, Kane wanted Steinberg to run for first selectman so that she could run for his state representative seat.

Steinberg therefore conspired with Kane to enter into a corrupt deal, in which Kane would use her influence on (Westport DTC Chair Ellen) Lautenberg to appoint a Nominations Committee weighted in Steinbergs favor, the suit alleges. If nominated and elected for First Selectman with Kanes help, then Steinbergs state representative job would open up.

According to the suit, Newman told Hamlin that Lautenberg had told Newman they should choose Steinberg to become the first selectman candidate so his job would be free for Kane. The suit alleges that Newman told Hamlin in 2020 that, if she would forgo running for the DTCs executive committee, Lautenberg would put her on the nominations committee. Hamlin allegedly agreed to the arrangement.

However, the suit goes on to say that Newman later wrote Hamlin a text message that she had already concluded that Steinberg was a nightmare as a candidate and could never win against the predicted Republican candidates, Jen Tooker and Andrea Moore.

In light of that and other alleged critical statements Newman made against Steinberg, Hamlin purportedly expressed enthusiasm for two other candidates who submitted their names for the first selectman race.

Hamlin alleges in the suit that, upon hearing that she spoke favorably of the other candidates, Lautenberg removed Hamlin from the nomination committee.

The suit goes to on to detail other ways in which Steinberg, Newman and others allegedly undermined the democratic process in Westport. It accuses Steinberg of falsely claiming he was the DTC-endorsed candidate for first selectman, and accuses of him making defamatory statements about Hamlin, including that she was spreading lies about him and was out to get him.

Plaintiff has in fact worked tireless and selflessly over fourteen years to promote all DTC candidates and has never taken any action ever to destroy any DTC candidates, the suit states.

The suit alleges that Newman made defamatory statements against Hamlin as well. Hamlin is seeking damages in excess of $15,000 and is seeking a jury trial on the matter.

Newmans attorney, Joshua Koskoff, said in a statement Friday that the suit asserts no cognizable legal claim and that he would ask that the case be dismissed.

The case seems to have been born from a bruised ego and is filled with personal attacks and disparagements, rather than facts supporting a viable claim for defamation, Koskoffs statement read.

Steinberg said Friday he believed that the suit was without merit.

We all know that politics has an ugly side, he said. Kristan has made it clear she plans to impede my campaign. Using the legal system to do it is just plain wrong.

Hamlin referred comment to her attorney William Lalor, who said multiple people complained to the Democratic State Central Committee about the DTCs actions.

Plaintiff and others complained about the rules violations and were retaliated against, Lalor said in a statement Friday. The DTC had just confirmed the Plaintiff in January as Chair of Communications Strategy, but when she complained about corrupt processes, that all changed.

The photo accompanying this story has been updated to reflect that Jonathan Steinberg is a Democrat.
If you want to conduct an experiment in the sociology of pandemic behavior, try a quick jaunt to Las Vegas. Always a petri dish for freaks, Sin City has gotten stranger in these strange times since it continues to have a mask mandate for everyone, vaccinated or not, gathered indoors.
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Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly. The new requirements are the Biden administrations boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months -- or potentially face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says companies that fail to comply could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation. The requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses.
A Chicago woman who served more than seven years in an Indonesian prison for killing her mother at a luxury resort in Bali has been indicted on federal murder conspiracy charges and taken into custody. A 2016 federal indictment unsealed Wednesday shows 26-year-old Heather Mack is charged with conspiring to kill her mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack. Also charged is Mack's former boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer. Von Wiese-Mack's body was found inside a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi parked at an upscale hotel on the resort island of Bali in 2014. Mack was released from prison on Friday and was taken into custody by FBI agents at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on Wednesday.
Things to know today: Votes expected on both of Biden's major bills; COVID pill gets first OK; questions around how live round got in 'Rust' gun. Get caught up.
VERNON, CT (WFSB) - The aunt of a 12-year-old boy who was found dead in a Florida home is remembering him.

Noah Godleski's father and stepmom, both of whom have Connecticut ties, are accused of a horrific case of child abuse.

Noah's maternal aunt, Brittany Palmer, spoke exclusively to Channel 3. She said shes worried his life may be overshadowed by the horrific events that happened in Florida.

Palmer wants people to know that Noah was a sweet boy and had a very bright future.

"He was such a ray of sunshine," she said.

During the interview, Palmer looked through the dozens of photos she collected of her nephew since he was a newborn.

Whether it was riding bikes, celebrating Thanksgiving, or sharing a joke, Palmer said Noah was full of love.

"He was sick one night and he said, 'Auntie Brittany, will you rock me?', and I said 'Of course I'll rock you'," Palmer said.

He loved the ocean and his care for others was so strong that he wanted to be a firefighter, policeman, or F.B.I. agent when he grew up, according to Palmer.

"He just wanted to save lives," she said.

However, Noah never got the chance.

According to an affidavit, his father, Jason Godleski, forced Noah into an isolated laundry room at their home in Florida for several days and badly beat him.

Godleski and his girlfriend, Samarial Dubose, later left Noah in Florida and drove up to Connecticut.

According to police, Godleski himself reported Noahs death.

He was days away from turning 13 years old.

Both Godleski and Dubose have been arrested and charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and failure to report death.

"My goal in life is to change the [Department of Children and Families] system so its not a statewide thing. Nationally, they have to check parents," Palmer said.

Palmer said one of Noahs favorite holidays was Thanksgiving.

As her family navigates this difficult time, she said she'll be remembering him and his bubbly personality on that day. She wants everyone else to as well.

"Its just so surreal to me. He just didnt deserve this," Palmer added.

A GoFundMe page was set up to help cover Noahs funeral and other expenses.

His funeral will be held this Saturday at 11 a.m.
police said they are searching for 34-year-old Steward Holeman, who is wanted for the murder.
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Quincy, IL (62301)

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Cloudy with light rain this morning...then becoming sunny by afternoon. High 57F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Willmar, MN (56201)

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Partly cloudy and windy. Morning high of 34F with temps falling to near 25. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

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Partly cloudy skies. Low 17F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
WILTON  Municipal leaders are leading a push for the redevelopment of vacant and underperforming properties, with the hope of adding new businesses and housing options in town.

The idea, First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice said Thursday, will complement Wilton and its surrounding towns and offer diverse living spaces that will eventually bring clientele to supplement local businesses.

We have vacancies, Vanderslice said. You want all of your existing space to be filled.

She said its also important for the town to work with site owners on what the best fit for certain locations. Property owners must first determine that their building is underperforming before approaching the town for guidance on redevelopment.

We want the type of restaurants or businesses or shops that attract people to Wilton Center, Vanderslice said.

Vanderslice told the selectmen on Monday that Town Planner Michael Wrinn and Coordinator of Community Affairs Sarah Gioffre work closely with these landlords. In addition, Gioffre works with various boards focused on bringing more foot traffic to Wilton. According to Vanderslice, Gioffre communicates regularly with AdvanceCT, the Connecticut Office of Tourism, the Wilton Chamber of Commerce and Parks and Recreation, among others.

Inquiries for a commercial vacancy list in Wilton Center have been sent to Gioffre.

Two properties that Vanderslice highlighted for redevelopment were the Kimco property at 5 River Road and another large vacancy along the same street. The owners of the Kimco building have requested meetings with the Planning and Zoning Commission to request that their vacancies be turned into apartments, she said.

Both the Kimco and other River Road property, the first selectwoman said, used to be national retailers  a Gap and a Chicos.

The town is currently in talks with another national retailer for a possible location in Wilton, but Vanderslice said she was not ready to disclose the identity of the business.

While nearby towns such as New Canaan and Westport have popular national retail stores, Wilton does not quite have enough people for these large companies to warrant adding a second location just miles away, she said. The strength of Wilton, she said, is offering unique shopping and dining experiences with a strong community feel.

Her prime example was Village Market in the heart of Wilton Center.

Village Market is a big attraction, she said. People from New Canaan and Weston come just to shop there.

More small, locally owned businesses will likely serve the town better, she said.

People want more restaurants and retail, according to Vanderslice, but we need more residents to support them.

Therein lies one of Wiltons major focuses since the adoption of its Plan of Conservation and Development in 2019  pushing for more diversity of housing options.

Vanderslice said the quest for diverse housing options, whether it be apartment complexes or townhouses, attract more residents and help support the local economy.

Along with the request for apartments at the Kimco building in Wilton Center, there are currently multiple housing proposals on the Planning and Zoning docket not far from many of the towns vital businesses. With the recent approval for a contractor to enact the first phase of a Wilton Center Master Plan in the spring, more connectivity to the central artery of town from these housing proposals via a pedestrian footbridge is in the works.
Canada backed a controversial initiative aimed at boosting countries' support for high-tech farming methods designed to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change on farms and food on Tuesday.

Canada backed a controversial initiative aimed at boosting countries' support for high-tech farming methods designed to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change on farms and food on Tuesday.

The Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) initiative developed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates encourages participating countries and businesses to invest heavily in "climate-smart" agriculture within the next five years. The $4-billion program will foster new scientific breakthroughs through support for public and private agricultural research centres and help farmers access them.

"As stewards of the land, farmers are on the front lines of climate change," said U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking at a closed plenary session at the ongoing COP26 meeting in Glasgow as he formally launched the program. According to its website, the new initiative will work with a "wide range of participants"  including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  to boost high-tech farming worldwide.

To read more of this story first reported by Canada's National Observer, click here.

This content is made available to Free Press readers as part of an agreement with Canada's National Observer that sees our two news brands collaborate to better cover environmental issues.
TORONTO - Ontario won't mandate COVID-19 vaccines for hospital workers despite support from experts and stakeholders, prompting calls for the government to make public the local evidence it based the decision on.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford removes his mask to take a question from a journalist as he attends a press briefing in Toronto, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

TORONTO - Ontario won't mandate COVID-19 vaccines for hospital workers despite support from experts and stakeholders, prompting calls for the government to make public the local evidence it based the decision on.

Premier Doug Ford pointed to news from elsewhere in Canada about staff shortages from vaccine mandates and said existing policies will keep people safe without losing workers who refuse to get the shots.

"I am not prepared to jeopardize the delivery of care to millions of Ontarians," Ford said in a written statement on Wednesday. "Having looked at the evidence, our government has decided to maintain its flexible approach by leaving human resourcing decisions up to individual hospitals."

Ford's decision came after he wrote to hospitals and other stakeholders last month asking for input on the issue. He said the government looked at those responses and at "real-world evidence" and decided to stick with its current approach.

Currently, hospital workers in Ontario must get vaccinated or regularly get tested for the virus, though many hospitals have gone ahead with stricter policies. Hospitals that have placed on leave or terminated unvaccinated employees have reported staff losses of between one and three per cent.

Ford pointed to already high vaccination rates in hospitals as another factor behind his decision. He said hospitals are able to manage virus outbreaks with strong infection control protocols.

His statement also referenced news of surgery cancellations in British Columbia due to staff shortages after its vaccine mandate took effect and Quebec's decision to reverse its policy over human resources concerns.

Ford said the government will keep monitoring the situation and might revisit the policy.

Concerns were later raised about figures of potential job losses referenced by Ford in his statement, in which he claimed "tens of thousands" of workers might be off the job in the event of a vaccine mandate.

Health Minister Christine Elliott later told reporters that the number was "based on the premier's understanding of the situation before the letter was sent out." She did not provide a more specific figure of possible job losses, other than to say the impact of a vaccine mandate "could be very significant."

Elliott said the province is prioritizing catching up on surgeries and other procedures that were postponed during the pandemic.

"People have been waiting long enough," she said. "We have a responsibility to protect the health and wellbeing of all Ontarians, so that's why this decision is the right decision for Ontario right now."

Ontario has mandated COVID-19 vaccination for long-term care workers, with a deadline of Nov. 15 for staff to get immunized. But Ford has repeatedly said he is reluctant to mandate vaccines.

Elliott said Wednesday that some individual hospitals indicated they were against the policy because of potential human resources losses, but she refused to name the hospitals or provide a figure of how many were against it.

The Ontario Hospital Association had written to Ford in support of a provincewide mandate -- a position it said was endorsed by 120 of 141 member hospitals.

Opposition politicians called on the government to share documents and data backing up its claims.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said she's skeptical of Ford's figure about the scale of the potential worker shortage.

"If the government's making decisions based on facts then they should be showing people what it is that they're making their decisions on. The minister has just indicated she's not prepared to do that," Horwath said. "The experts made it clear that no unvaccinated person should be working in health-care settings with the most vulnerable folks amongst us."

Liberal House Leader John Fraser accused the government of "fear-mongering" by not being transparent about its decision making.

Doris Grinspun, head of the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, called the decision "a disgrace to patients and to the great majority of health-care workers who desperately are supporting mandatory vaccination."

In their letter to Ford, the Ontario Hospital Association had referenced spiking vaccination rates at hospitals with mandatory policies and said staff shortages from outbreaks are more difficult to manage than those from mandatory vaccination.

On Wednesday, the organization said in a statement it was disappointed in the government's decision and would welcome "continued dialogue" about the issue.

The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, an expert group that advises the government on the pandemic, had also written to Ford that hospital workers who aren't vaccinated may be out of work for long periods of time if infected with COVID-19, and said a vaccine mandate would make hospitals safer for vulnerable patients.

The Ontario Nurses' Association wrote to Ford saying the current policy allowing unvaccinated workers to be tested is reasonable and cited concerns about worker shortages.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 3, 2021.
GENEVA (AP)  Top officials at the World Health Organization said Thursday that Europe has seen a more than 50% jump in coronavirus cases in the last month, making it the epicenter of the pandemic despite an ample supply of vaccines.

FILE-A woman walks past an abandoned coronavirus test center in Frankfurt, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Numbers of coronavirus infections are rising again in Germany. Germany's disease control agency has reported the highest number of new infections with the coronavirus since the outbreak of the pandemic. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

GENEVA (AP)  Top officials at the World Health Organization said Thursday that Europe has seen a more than 50% jump in coronavirus cases in the last month, making it the epicenter of the pandemic despite an ample supply of vaccines.

There may be plenty of vaccine available, but uptake of vaccine has not been equal, WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said during a press briefing on Thursday.

He called for European authorities to close the gap in vaccinations. However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries that have immunized more than 40% of their populations should stop and instead donate their doses to developing countries that have yet to offer their citizens a first dose.

No more boosters should be administered except to immuno-compromised people, Tedros said.

He called for vaccine-makers to prioritize supplying COVAX, the U.N.-backed effort to share doses globally; Pfizer has sold just 1% of its supply to COVAX, Moderna had provided just 1 million doses to the developing world as of late October.

Heather Papowitz a WHO senior specialist, deployed to assist Romania in its efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic speaks during a joint press conference with Alexandru Rafila, Romania's representative to the WHO and Dorit Nitzan, regional emergency Director, left, of the WHO for a press conference in Bucharest, Romania, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. The World Health Organization says the number of coronavirus cases has risen in Europe for the fifth consecutive week, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Still, despite poorer countries receiving fewer than 1% of the world's COVID-19 vaccines, cases in Africa and Southeast Asia fell by 9% last week.

More than 60 countries have started giving booster doses to combat waning immunity before winter, when another COVID-19 wave is expected. In the United States, children ages 5 to 11 started getting COVID-19 shots this week after authorities decided the benefits outweighed the risks.

Earlier on Thursday, the director of WHO's 53-country Europe region, Dr. Hans Kluge, said the rising COVID-19 case counts are of grave concern.

Medical staff members treat a coronavirus patient in the ICU of the Asklepios Clinic in Munich, Germany, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 as the country has been experiencing an increasing number of COVID-19 cases. (Peter Kneffel/dpa via AP)

Europe is back at the epicenter of the pandemic, where we were one year ago, said Kluge from WHO's Copenhagen offices. Wearing a mask - unlike his colleagues in Geneva - Kluge warned that coronavirus hospitalization rates more than doubled in the last week and predicted that on that trajectory, the region could see another 500,000 pandemic deaths by February, he said.

WHO Europe says the region, which stretches as far east as the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, tallied nearly 1.8 million new weekly cases, an increase of about 6% from the previous week, and 24,000 COVID-19 weekly deaths  a 12% gain.

Kluge said the countries in the region were at varying stages of vaccination rollout and that regionwide an average of 47% of people were fully vaccinated. Only eight countries had 70% of their populations fully vaccinated.

People wait to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Zagreb, Croatia, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. Countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe reported spiraling coronavirus cases Thursday, with several hitting new daily records in the regions that have lower vaccination rates than the rest of the continent. Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia reported their highest numbers of daily cases of the pandemic, while other countries registered the most infections in months. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

The increase in Europe's COVID-19 marks the fifth consecutive week cases have risen across the continent, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing. The infection rate was by far the highest in Europe, which reported some 192 new cases per 100,000 people.

We are clearly in another wave, Swedens chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said Thursday. The increased spread is entirely concentrated in Europe.

Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have seen daily case numbers shoot up in recent weeks.

At an online briefing Thursday by the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency, experts urged people to get vaccinated.

The epidemiological situation in Europe is very concerning now as we head into the winter with increases in infection rates, hospitalization and we can also see the increase in fatalities, said Fergus Sweeney, the EMAs head of clinical studies and manufacturing task force.

He stressed that its very important that everybody gets vaccinated or completes their dose of vaccination if theyve already had a first dose but not a second dose. Its really important that were all vaccinated because we are not all protected until everyone is protected in that respect.

___

Follow AP's pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
Low-lying areas of major cities like Vancouver and Montreal could become inundated with floods in the next 80 years under various climate change scenarios, suggests a floodplains map developed by a Western University researcher.

The Calgary Stampede grounds and Saddledome are flooded due to the heavy rains in Calgary on June 21, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Low-lying areas of major cities like Vancouver and Montreal could become inundated with floods in the next 80 years under various climate change scenarios, suggests a floodplains map developed by a Western University researcher.

The maps, created by engineering professor Slobodan Simonovic, are a visual distillation of almost 150,000 reference documents  including current and historical rainfall and snow-melt runoff data, topographic analyses, urbanization factors that impede effective drainage and a range of climate projections.

Simonovic superimposed the data on web-based maps to show potential future flood inundation  how much of an area is covered by water  as well as how often and how significant floods could be.

The maps, which show flood impacts on a Canada-wide scale in a standardized way, identify areas where rivers are most likely to overflow, including the Assiniboine and Red rivers that converge on Winnipeg and the Fraser Valley that runs through Vancouver.

Simonovic said other vulnerable streams are found in parts of northern Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, the Mackenzie River in Northwest Territories, and much of the island of Montreal.

One of his goals was to show the public the impact of floods resulting from climate change.

"It means basically more land will be flooded, more land will be under water during these extreme events," he said, adding that 30 per cent more of Canada could be flooded by 2100, with a flood depth increase of up to 60 per cent.

"Obviously, this is not every location within the country. There are some areas higher risk that others, but an overall increase up to that level is a very significant message."

Users of the map can search by postal code and zero in on neighbourhoods, or compare current 100-year flood zones to those forecast under worst-, mid- or best-case climate-change scenarios 60 years and 80 years from now.

Simonovic, an award-winning flood expert, said understanding the location and extent of flood risk can help insurers, engineers, homebuilders, conservation authorities, and governments at every level plan better policies and stronger flood protection.

He said the next steps for his project are to expand the mapping to include coastal flooding and fine-tune projections to even smaller grids with greater neighbourhood detail.

His mapping work was funded through a collaborative grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Chaucer Syndicate, a group representing insurers of insurance companies across Canada.

"Definitely the message is we have to rethink, prepare better and re-evaluate the risk at important locations," Simonovic said, adding that approximately four million Canadians now live in flood-affected areas.

"Our work is one step towards better understanding that these consequences of climate change are significant in Canada."

Online: https://www.floodmapviewer.com

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 3, 2021.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Ruhollah Parazideh, a wiry 38-year-old with a thick mustache and hair flecked with gray, was desperate for a job. The father of three in southern Iran walked into a local office of a foundation that helps war veterans and their families, pleading for assistance.

A street vendor waits for customer while selling shoes on the side of a highway in southwestern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. As U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic wreak havoc on Iran's economy, suicides in the country increased by over 4%, according to a government study cited by the reformist daily Etemad. About 1 million Iranians have lost their jobs, and unemployment has climbed over 10%  a rate that is nearly twice as big among youths. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Ruhollah Parazideh, a wiry 38-year-old with a thick mustache and hair flecked with gray, was desperate for a job. The father of three in southern Iran walked into a local office of a foundation that helps war veterans and their families, pleading for assistance.

Local media reported that Parazideh told officials he would throw himself off their roof if they couldn't help. They tried to reason with him, promising a meager loan, but he left unsatisfied.

He soon returned to the gates of the building, poured gasoline over himself, and put a lit match to his neck. He died from his burns two days later, on Oct. 21.

Parazideh's suicide in the city of Yasuj shocked many in Iran, and not just because he was the son of Golmohammad Parazideh, a prominent provincial hero of the country's 1980-88 war with Iraq that left hundreds of thousands dead.

It put a spotlight on the rising public fury and frustration as Iran's economy sinks, unemployment soars and the price of food skyrockets.

His death occurred outside the local office of the Foundation for Martyrs and War-Disabled People, a wealthy and powerful government agency that helps the families of those killed and wounded in Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent wars.

I was shocked when I heard the news, said Mina Ahmadi, a student at Beheshti University north of Tehran. I thought that the families of (war) victims enjoyed generous support from the government.

Iran valorizes its war dead from the conflict with Iraq, known in Tehran as the Sacred Defense, and the foundation plays a big role in that. After the revolution installed the clerically run system, the foundation began providing pensions, loans, housing, education and even some high-ranking government jobs.

Following Parazidehs suicide, the foundation fired two of its top provincial officials and demanded the dismissal of the governor's veteran affairs adviser as well as a social worker, lambasting their failure to send the distressed man to a medical facility or others for help, local media reported.

The fallout reached the highest levels of government. Ayatollah Sharfeddin Malakhosseini, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the case a warning that officials should get rid of unemployment, poverty and the disruption of social ties.

In 2014, parliament launched an investigation into one of the main banks affiliated with the foundation for allegedly embezzling $5 million. Its findings were never revealed.

The foundation is known to funnel financial support to Islamic militant organizations in the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza, leading the U.S. to sanction it in 2007 for supporting terrorism.

Parazideh's suicide was one of several in recent years that appear driven by economic hardships.

Self-immolations killed at least two other veterans and injured the wife of a disabled veteran outside branches of the foundation in Tehran, Kermanshah and Qom in recent years.

As the coronavirus pandemic wreaked economic havoc, suicides in Iran increased by over 4%, according to a government study cited by the reformist daily Etemad.

For many in the Middle East, the act of self-immolation  the protest used by a fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia that became a catalyst for the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings  evokes broader discontent with economic woes and the lack of opportunity.

I dont know where we are headed because of poverty, said Reza Hashemi, a literature teacher at a Tehran high school.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew America from Tehrans landmark nuclear agreement with world powers and brought back sanctions on Iran, pummeling an oil-dependent economy already hobbled by inefficiencies. The pandemic has aggravated the economic despair. About 1 million Iranians have lost their jobs, and unemployment has climbed over 10%  a rate that is nearly twice as big among youths.

Capital flight has soared to $30 billion, chasing away foreign investors.

Negotiations to revive the atomic accord stalled in the five months since hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi took office, allowing Tehran to press ahead with its nuclear program. On Wednesday, the European Union announced that talks between world powers and Iran on reviving the deal would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna. The announcement stoked modest hopes that the Biden administration can resuscitate the accord.

Its impossible to hide people's discontent with the economy, said Mohammad Qassim Osmani, an official at the Audit Organization Services, a government watchdog. The structure of the country is faulty and sick. We need an economic revolution.

Irans currency, the rial, has shriveled to less than 50% of its value since 2018. Wages havent grown to make up the loss, and the Labor Ministry reported that over a third of the population lives in extreme poverty.

About 40 million people in the country need immediate and instant help, said lawmaker Hamid Reza Hajbabaei, the head of the parliamentary budget committee, in a televised debate last week  referring to nearly half the population.

The deepening poverty goes beyond just numbers, becoming a visible part of daily life. On Tehrans streets, more people are seen searching through garbage for something able to be sold. Children sell trinkets and tissues. Panhandlers beg for change at most intersections  a rare sight a decade ago.

Petty theft has surged, testing the already-tough justice system. Last week, a Tehran court sentenced a 45-year-old father of three to 10 months in prison and 40 lashes for pocketing a few packs of peanuts.

Gen. Ali Reza Lotfi, Tehran's chief police detective, blamed the economy for the spike in crime, noting that over half of all detainees last year were first-time offenders.

It has fallen to Raisi to handle the economic pressures. He frequently repeats campaign promises to create 1 million jobs through construction and tourism projects.

But many low-wage workers, bearing the brunt of Iran's crisis, have no hope.

Last month, in another case that drew huge attention, a 32-year-old teacher facing crushing debt hanged himself in the southern city of Guerash after a bank rejecting his request for a $200 loan.

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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
MONTREAL - Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau has apologized for comments he made about not needing to learn French to get by in Montreal, words that sparked immediate and widespread backlash.

The Air Canada logo is seen on a hangar at Vancouver International Airport, in Richmond, B.C., on Friday, March 20, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

MONTREAL - Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau has apologized for comments he made about not needing to learn French to get by in Montreal, words that sparked immediate and widespread backlash.

A day after giving a speech almost entirely in English at the Palais des congres in Montreal, Rousseau pledged to improve his French and said he meant no disrespect toward Quebecers.

The statement comes after heated criticism of the chief executive's remarks from federal and provincial politicians, including Francois Legault, who deemed the utterance "insulting."

The Quebec premier demanded Rousseau apologize for saying he had not learned how to speak French despite living in the province since 2007.

"It makes me angry, his attitude, to say that he's been in Quebec for 14 years and he didn't need to learn French," Legault told reporters in French at the United Nations climate talks in Scotland. "It's unspeakable; it shocks me.

"Imagine tomorrow morning someone who would agree to become president of a French company in France and who would not speak French and who, in addition, would brag about it," he said Thursday.

Calling the comments disrespectful to French-speaking Air Canada employees, Legault added that the airline's board of directors should consider whether Rousseau should be at the head of country's largest carrier.

Following a 26-minute speech  with less than 30 seconds of French  to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, Rousseau told reporters he didn't have time to learn French and was focused on moving Air Canada forward after the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I've been able to live in Montreal without speaking French, and I think that's a testament to the city of Montreal," he said. Asked why he hadn't learned the language, Rousseau replied: "If you look at my work schedule, you'd understand why."

About 20 hours later, Rousseau offered a mea culpa  in both languages.

"I want to make it clear that in no way did I mean to show disrespect for Quebecers and francophones across the country," Rousseau's statement read. "I apologize to those who were offended by my remarks."

Ahead of the apology, criticism poured in from Ottawa and Quebec City.

"This is adding insult to the injury. Air Canada owes explanations to Quebecers and francophones across the country. This is a lack of respect for our language. Unacceptable!" federal Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said Wednesday on Twitter.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet was equally blunt in his native tongue. "The boss has no regard for French," he posted.

"I find these words appalling and disrespectful," Quebec Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade stated in French. "Air Canada frankly does not understand the impact of its decisions."

The stage had been set for a confrontation  in this case with media in the corridor of a downtown convention centre  since Rousseau in February took over the top job at Air Canada from fluent French speaker Calin Rovinescu, who helmed the company for 12 years.

Quebec Language Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette demanded Tuesday  a day before Rousseau's speech  that the company and its management "must do better."

Canada's official languages commissioner has called out Air Canada for failing to meet its obligations in the past.

In 2016, then-commissioner Graham Fraser tabled a rare special report to Parliament calling on legislators to modernize the official languages enforcement scheme for the airline.

Rousseau is not the only CEO of a major Quebec company who speaks little to no French.

Rania Llewellyn, who came on board as CEO at Laurentian Bank Financial Group in October 2020, is multilingual but did not speak French on arrival.

However, she has addressed employees in French for video messages, including one wishing them a happy Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in June. She is also working with a private tutor, says the company, which was founded in Montreal in 1846.

Iowa-raised Brian Hannasch, CEO of Quebec's Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., spoke only English when he joined the company in 2001 and when he was named CEO in 2014, though he pledged to learn French.

George Cope, CEO of BCE Inc. between 2008 and 2020, spoke virtually no French during his tenure and sparked outcry from sovereigntists over his role heading the Quebec-based telecommunications giant, whose roots as the Bell Telephone Company date back to 1880.

American Robert Card did not learn the language when he served as chief executive of the 110-year-old engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. between 2012 and 2015.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:AC, TSX:ATD.B, TSX:LB, TSX:BCE, TSX:SNC)
BERLIN (AP)  AstraZeneca said Thursday that it is withdrawing its application for approval of its COVID-19 vaccine in Switzerland because the country's medical regulator wanted to restrict its use to people over age 50.

FILE-Medical staff prepares a syringe from a vial of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine during preparations at the vaccine center in Ebersberg near Munich, Germany, Monday, March 22, 2021. AstraZeneca said Thursday that it is withdrawing its application for approval of its COVID-19 vaccine in Switzerland because the country's medical regulator wanted to restrict its use to people over 50. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, FILE)

BERLIN (AP)  AstraZeneca said Thursday that it is withdrawing its application for approval of its COVID-19 vaccine in Switzerland because the country's medical regulator wanted to restrict its use to people over age 50.

Switzerland has cleared the BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines for use. However, national medical regulator Swissmedic hadn't yet granted marketing authorization for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company said that, since it started rolling submissions for authorization in Switzerland in October 2020, it has been in close communication with the regulator and has continuously provided the requested study results and other pertinent information and documents.

AstraZeneca said it has now decided not to pursue the marketing authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine in Switzerland. This decision is based on Swissmedics requirement to restrict the indication to people 50 years and above.

Swissmedic acknowledged AstraZenecas decision in a brief statement. This means that there are currently no new authorization applications pending for COVID-19 vaccines in Switzerland, it said.

Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, whose medical regulator approved the AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this year. Authorities in some European countries later recommended that it be used primarily in older age groups after it was linked to extremely rare blood clots, mostly in younger people.

AstraZeneca noted in its statement that there are established treatment protocols for the optimal management of such cases and that its COVID-19 vaccine has been granted a conditional marketing or emergency use authorization in more than 80 countries.

The vaccine is generally well tolerated in adults 18 years and above and has been shown to be effective against all severities of COVID-19, across current variants of concern and all adult age groups, the company said.

The AstraZeneca vaccine hasn't yet been approved for use in the United States. The drugmaker said in July that it had decided to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for full regulatory approval, rather than the fast-track emergency use authorization originally anticipated.

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Follow APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
TORONTO - Barrick Gold Corp. reported its third-quarter profit fell compared with a year ago as the price of gold also moved lower.

Barrick Gold logo is seen during the company's annual general meeting in Toronto on April 28, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO - Barrick Gold Corp. reported its third-quarter profit fell compared with a year ago as the price of gold also moved lower.

The gold miner, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, says its profit attributable to equity holders totalled US$347 million or 20 cents per share for the three months ended Sept. 30, down from US$882 million or 50 cents per share a year ago.

Revenue totalled $2.83 billion, down from US$3.54 billion in the same quarter last year, as Barrick's realized gold price fell to US$1,771 per ounce compared with US$1,926 per ounce a year ago.

Gold production totalled 1,092,000 ounces, down from 1,155,000 ounces a year ago, while copper production slipped to 100 million pounds compared with 103 million in the same quarter last year.

On an adjusted basis, Barrick says it earned 24 cents per share, down from an adjusted profit of 41 cents per share a year ago.

Analysts on average had expected an adjusted profit of 23 cents per share, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:ABX)
TORONTO - BCE Inc. boosted its year-over-year earnings by 10 per cent last quarter, matching analyst expectations amid more mobile and internet subscribers and heftier ad spending across its platforms.

BCE Inc. logo is shown at the company's annual general meeting in Montreal on May 6, 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

TORONTO - BCE Inc. boosted its year-over-year earnings by 10 per cent last quarter, matching analyst expectations amid more mobile and internet subscribers and heftier ad spending across its platforms.

The parent company of Bell Canada and media companies that include CTV, TSN and radio stations saw revenue from its wireless network jump five per cent year over year in its third quarter to $1.65 billion, benefiting from a 14 per cent leap in net new mobile phone subscribers.

Media operating revenue rose 14.5 per cent to $719 million, riding a higher wave of advertiser spending on television, radio and digital media platforms. Bell Media subscriber revenue also increased more than 12 per cent, driven by a five per cent bump in viewers signing up for the Crave streaming platform.

"The market has kind of been pent-up," chief executive Mirko Bibic told investors on a conference call Tuesday, citing the impact of COVID-19. "And stores coming back helped in terms of capturing that pent-up demand."

"We're all benefiting from a little bit of the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats kind of approach to this," he said, referring to steady or upward revenue for telecommunications rivals Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. "But in our case, I'm quite pleased with our performance in pretty much every geography."

BCE reported net earnings of $813 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with $740 million in the same period a year earlier.

Profit attributable to common shareholders totalled $757 million or 83 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company said. The result compared with a profit of $692 million or 77 cents per share a year ago.

Operating revenue totalled $5.84 billion, up from $5.79 billion in the same quarter last year.

On an adjusted basis, BCE said it earned 82 cents per share, up from an adjusted profit of 79 cents per share a year ago.

The result matched the average analyst estimate compiled by financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

While financial results were in line with expectations, they exceeded forecasts in terms of subscribers, said Jerome Dubreuil of Desjardins Capital Markets.

"However, we note that subscriber whisper expectations had likely risen in light of Rogers Communications Inc.s stellar wireless net additions," he wrote in a report.

While wireless numbers were good, they were not market-leading, he added. Wireless network revenue growth of five per cent surpassed Rogers which reported a 3.3 per cent increase.

BCE added 114,821 wireless postpaid net additions in the quarter. That's above the 104,800 forecast by analysts but less than 175,000 added by Rogers. BCE said there were 21,643 net additions while wireless average billing per user (ABPU) grew 1.1 per cent, compared with 1.8 per cent growth for Rogers.

Meanwhile, the 64,800 net internet additions was the best in 15 years, contributing to $3.02 billion in wireline revenue.

"We believe the accelerated fibre deployment (which was likely faster in the third quarter than in previous quarters due to the more favourable summer weather) more than offset the slowing net adds tailwind from the COVID-19 pandemic," added Dubreuil.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BCE, (TSX:SJR.B, TSX:RCI.B)
TORONTO - The path forward for Canada's biggest movie theatre owner hangs on an upcoming court decision, but the case is being closely watched by businesses across the country because the ruling could have far-reaching implications for pandemic-inspired litigation.

Customers buy popcorn at a Cineplex theatre in downtown Toronto on August 26, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

TORONTO - The path forward for Canada's biggest movie theatre owner hangs on an upcoming court decision, but the case is being closely watched by businesses across the country because the ruling could have far-reaching implications for pandemic-inspired litigation.

The case in question has been winding through the Ontario Superior Court of Justice since last July, when Toronto-based Cineplex Inc. announced it would sue former suitor and U.K. theatre operator Cineworld Group PLC.

Cineworld walked away from its deal to acquire Cineplex in June 2020 as pandemic-related shutdowns closed theatres, alleging material adverse effects and breaches by Cineplex. Cineplex called Cineworlds decision to terminate the deal "nothing more than a case of buyers remorse."

Judge Barbara Conway, who is hearing closing arguments this week, must decide whether Cineworld had the right to terminate the takeover agreement without payment.

Cineworld claims it had the right because Cineplex strayed from "ordinary course," when it deferred its accounts payable by at least 60 days, reduced spending to the "bare minimum" and stopped paying landlords, movie studios, film distributors and suppliers at the start of the pandemic.

Cineplex argues it fulfilled all of its obligations and continued with an "ordinary course" for the industry. It claims Cineworld did not have grounds to terminate the deal because there was a clause exempting outbreaks of illness or changes affecting the motion picture theatre industry from being considered "material adverse effects."

But Cineworld said the clause should have no bearing on the case because it terminated the contract because of Cineplex's inactions and not COVID-19.

"If the court says, 'I think this dispute arose directly as a result of the impacts of COVID and we're going to analyze what happened in that lens, everyone is going to be very fascinated with this court and will follow it," said Andrew Wilson, a managing partner with Jensen Shawa Solomon Duguid Hawkes LLP in Calgary.

The case will be of interest because while there is plenty of case law dealing with abandoned acquisitions and other material adverse effects, the novelty of COVID-19 means there is little in terms of precedent for lawyers to rely on or use to predict the outcome of litigation.

Wilson is just starting to see cases in which courts are being asked to consider what obligations parties have in pandemic times, but anticipates the pace will pick up.

In particular, he thinks courts will see more cases involving a party that entered into an obligation or contract that looked like a good deal before the pandemic, but then found it was a bad deal once COVID-19 spread.

If the judge applies a COVID lens to the Cineplex case, Wilson thinks it could give many companies hope for their own litigation and result in the case being appealed. It could even go all the way to the Supreme Court, where it could be precedent-setting, he said.

"But if the court simply says COVID has nothing to do with any of this. Good faith and fair dealing has nothing to do with any of this. This is just a case about financial representations and warranties... it's not going to be all that of interest to people," Wilson said.

However, University of Toronto finance professor Andrey Golubov said companies look for cases like Cineplex's because they provide a sense of what their odds would be if they pursued similar litigation.

While Cineplex has been the big case to watch in Canada, he pointed to Europe, where French luxury goods giant LVMH abandoned its US$16-billion takeover of jeweller Tiffany during COVID-19, after the luxury industry faced COVID-19 troubles.

LVMH claimed the French government asked it delay the deal to assess the threat of proposed U.S. tariffs, but Tiffany sued because it wanted the original deal honoured.

The two sides eventually reached a revised deal that saw LVMH pay US$131.50 per share for Tiffany, down from the earlier US$135 per share deal.

"There is a whole bunch of companies that are in this very pandemic-specific situation where deals were announced with terms that had one view of the world and then the world changed completely," Golubov said.

"Nothing made sense anymore out of those old plans and so for them, these cases are going to be particularly relevant."

The Cineplex case, he said, is also key for the theatre industry's recovery.

Both Cineworld and Cineplex reported multimillion-dollar losses in recent quarters.

Losing the case would deepen those financial troubles because Cineworld is seeking $54.8 million in damages, while Cineplex wants Cineworld to pay the $2.18 billion that Cineworld would have paid had the deal closed.

Cineplex is also seeking compensation for the $664 million in debt and transaction expenses that Cineworld would have shouldered, as well as repayment of certain "benefits" it received as part of the transaction.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov, 4. 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:CGX)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Republican state officials reacted with swift rebukes Thursday to President Joe Biden's newly detailed mandate for private employers to require workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, threatening a wave of lawsuits and other actions to thwart a requirement they see as a stark example of government overreach.

FILE - President Joe Biden speaks about COVID-19 vaccinations after touring a Clayco Corporation construction site for a Microsoft data center in Elk Grove Village, Ill., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. President Joe Bidens plan to require vaccinations at all private employers of 100 workers or more has already hit a wall of opposition from Republican governors, state lawmakers and attorneys general.(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Republican state officials reacted with swift rebukes Thursday to President Joe Biden's newly detailed mandate for private employers to require workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, threatening a wave of lawsuits and other actions to thwart a requirement they see as a stark example of government overreach.

At least two conservative groups moved quickly to file lawsuits against the workplace safety mandate, and a growing roster of GOP governors and attorneys general said more lawsuits were on the way as soon as Friday. Some Republican-led states had already passed laws or executive orders intended to protect employers that may not want to comply.

"This rule is garbage," South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, said Thursday through a spokesperson. "Its unconstitutional and we will fight it." His state's governor, Republican Henry McMaster, said he is planning to issue an executive order keeping state agencies from enforcing the rule.

States have been preparing for the requirement since Biden previewed it in September. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements released Thursday call for companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Failure to comply could result in penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation. Federal officials also left open the possibility of expanding the mandate to smaller employers.

The White House said the administration has the authority to take actions designed to protect workers and expects the rule to withstand legal challenges.

Republican governors or attorneys general in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and South Dakota said Thursday they would file lawsuits against the mandate as soon as Friday. The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, filed a challenge in federal court on Thursday. So did companies in Michigan and Ohio represented by a conservative advocacy law firm.

FILE - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson speaks to attendees at the Richland County GOP convention on Friday, April 30, 2021, in Columbia, S.C. President Joe Bidens plan to require vaccinations at all private employers of 100 workers or more has already hit a wall of opposition from Republican governors, state lawmakers and attorneys general. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard, File)

Robert Alt, a lawyer representing the Midwest companies suiting  manufacturer Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company and packaging firm Sixarp  said both companies are already facing staffing shortages amid the pandemic. The mandate will make things worse, he said.

"It adds insult to injury and forces them potentially to fire trained employees," Alt said.

States say they are focusing on the role of the federal government in the lawsuits they're preparing.

"While I agree that the vaccine is the tool that will best protect against COVID-19, this federal government approach is unprecedented and will bring about harmful, unintended consequences in the supply chain and the workforce," Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a statement.

At a news conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized what he called an "executive fiat" for the private sector. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds characterized the mandate as an imposition on personal choice, saying people should be able to make their own health care decisions. She recently signed a bill guaranteeing that people who are fired for refusing a vaccine can qualify for unemployment benefits.

At least 19 Republican-led states previously sued the Biden administration over a separate mandate requiring vaccines for employees who work for federal contractors. Three more filed similar lawsuits Thursday.

Biden, in a statement Thursday, dismissed the argument from many GOP governors and lawmakers that a mandate for employers will hurt businesses' ability to keep workers on the job.

FILE - Ross McGregor, a Springfield factory owner, testifies against a GOP House bill that would put limits on employers' ability to mandate the coronavirus vaccine as a condition of employment, on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, in Columbus, Ohio. McGregor, a former Republican House lawmaker, testified on behalf of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association, and said businesses are in the best position to determine what safety measures they need to set forth. (AP Photo/Andrew Welsh-Huggins, File)

"There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements," he said. "Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support."

The administration has been encouraging widespread vaccinations as the quickest way out of the pandemic. A White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, said during a briefing Thursday that the mandate was intended to halt the spread of a disease that has claimed more than 750,000 lives in the U.S.

"So you know, the question that we always have and that we ask to the Republicans is, why are they getting in the way?" Jean-Pierre said. "Why are they getting in the way of trying to protect and save lives? Thats all were trying to do."

Challenges to the workplace mandate from Republicans and conservative groups are expected to be broad-based and quick, reflecting yet another aspect of the COVID-19 response  from mask requirements to social-distancing guidelines  that has fallen into a partisan divide. Democratic governors and attorneys general were relatively quiet after the OSHA rules were announced on Thursday. From California, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a simple Twitter message: "The right move." Another Democrat, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, defended mandates in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor in Republican-dominated Kansas, was trying to walk a fine line on the new workplace rules. She said after a chamber of commerce event Thursday that federal mandates "tend not to work" and that she wanted a "Kansas-focused" way to meet, them but did not give details.

All 26 Republican state attorneys general have previously said they would fight the requirements, and most of them signed a letter to Biden saying as much.

Key to their objection is whether OSHA has the legal authority to require vaccines or virus testing.

In the letter to Biden, the top state government lawyers argued that the agency can regulate only health risks that are specific to jobs  not ones that are in the world generally. Seema Nanda, the top legal official for the U.S. Department of Labor, which includes OSHA, says established legal precedent allows rules that keep workplaces safe and that those rules pre-empt state laws.

That hasn't stopped state lawmakers and governors for taking a variety of actions aimed at undercutting federal mandates.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month issued an executive order prohibiting private companies or any other entity from requiring vaccines. An Ohio lawmaker has proposed a bill barring schools and colleges from expelling students who refuse vaccines and preventing employers from firing workers who do so.

Arkansas has adopted a law creating a vaccine-mandate exemption for workers who can prove they have COVID-19 antibodies, although a broader measure banning employers from asking about vaccination status failed in the Legislature. The OSHA rule does include a religious exemption, as well as one for people who work exclusively outdoors or away from others  such as from home.

Lawmakers or governors in states including Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming have called for special legislative sessions to counter vaccine mandates. In Nebraska, not enough state lawmakers agreed to a special session to get one on the calendar, but Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican in a GOP-dominated state, has been pushing them to keep trying.

In Ohio, factory owner Ross McGregor said he will follow the rules as he would any federal workplace mandate, but not because he agrees with them. McGregor, who said he is vaccinated, is opposed to the new requirement, just as he has publicly opposed efforts by Ohio Republican lawmakers to prevent him from mandating the coronavirus vaccine for his workers.

"At the end of the day, every employer, and every employment situation, dictates what is best," said McGregor, a former Republican state lawmaker and owner of axle and brake component manufacturer Pentaflex, where he estimates that about half the 115 or so employees are vaccinated. "Having either a ban on mandates or an imposition of mandates goes against that"

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This version corrects new paragraph six to say it is the The Daily Wire, not Daily Caller, that filed a lawsuit.

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Tom Davies in Indianapolis; Heather Hollingsworth in Lake Quivira, Kansas; Alexandra Jaffe in Washington, D.C.; and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report, along with other AP reporters from around the U.S.
TORONTO - Canada's big insurers say investment gains and business growth in the third quarter helped offset the costs of weather events and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Sun Life Financial Inc. logo is shown at the company's annual general meeting in Toronto on Wednesday, May 6, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

TORONTO - Canada's big insurers say investment gains and business growth in the third quarter helped offset the costs of weather events and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sun Life Financial Inc. reported underlying net income was up 6.7 per cent to $902 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30, Manulife reported core net income was up 4.4 per cent to $1.52 billion, and Great-West Lifeco Inc. reported net earnings were up five per cent to $872 million.

The insurers all reported higher assets under management as they saw inflows of investments and market gains, with Sun Life up 11 per cent to $1.39 trillion compared with the end of 2020, Manulife up 7 per cent to $1.4 trillion over the same period, and Great West up 11 per cent to $2.2 trillion.

All three also reported negative effects of the pandemic, particularly in their U.S. and Asian divisions.

Manulife said its earnings were impacted by a $152 million charge to its property and casualty reinsurance business for losses related to Hurricane Ida and European floods, and the effects of COVID-19 on policyholders in Asia and the U.S.

Anil Wadhwani, CEO of Manulife Asia, said on an earnings call Thursday that the pandemic affected the division both in sales and claims.

"We saw a significant impact on account of the resurgence of COVID in Southeast Asian market, and that had an impact on at two levels. One, we saw our sales volume get impacted; and the second, we experienced adverse policyholder experience specifically coming out of markets like Indonesia and Philippines."

Great-West said third quarter earnings were down 31 per cent in its capital and risk solutions division compared with last year because of major weather events and unfavourable U.S. life claims totalling $71 million from direct and indirect COVID-19 impacts.

And Sun Life said its U.S. business saw a 19 per cent drop in underlying net income because of higher claims from COVID-19, as well as lower base earnings in its Asian division because of the effects of the pandemic especially in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Daniel Fishbein, president of Sun Life's U.S. division, said on an earnings call Thursday that the higher claims in the U.S. came as COVID-19 hit working age people who have lower vaccine rates than those over 65.

"The third quarter was the worst quarter for mortality in the U.S. in the working age population since the pandemic began ... so in the third quarter, we saw a big shift in mortality into the working age population."

Scotiabank analyst Meny Grauman said in a note that the key news from Sun Life was its upgraded expectations for return on equity to 16 per cent for the medium-term, while the company's performance in the US and Asia both came in below expectations to impact results.

"We expect both of those impacts to be temporary, but they do take some of the shine off of what in our view is a constructive earnings release."

Grauman said that Manulife core earnings per share were four per cent below his expectations, but that overall the results were neutral.

"We see them as neutral thanks to a number of offsetting pluses and minuses, and most notably no major red flags."

He said that a potential catalyst for Manulife is aggressive share buybacks if Canada's financial services regulator lifts restrictions on them, as is expected to be announced Thursday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SLF, TSX:GWO, TSX:MFC)
CALGARY - The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is looking for a new CEO.

Tim McMillan, President and CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, arrives for a press conference in Ottawa on June 3, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

CALGARY - The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is looking for a new CEO.

The Calgary-based oil and gas lobby group says its current president and CEO, Tim McMillan, will step down this spring.

McMillan was head of the organization for seven years. CAPP says it has launched an executive search to replace him.

CAPP says its expects to name its new president and CEO in April 2022.

CAPP says McMillan guided the organization through historic commodity volatility and the COVID-19 pandemic.

McMillan says it's time for someone else to take the helm now that the oil and gas industry is recovering from the pandemic and years of low commodity prices.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP)  Shortly after sunrise on a recent Saturday in Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents began lining up for free bottled water so they could drink and cook without fear of the high levels of lead in the citys tap water.

Ambie Bell, a candidate for Benton Harbor City Commissioner, delivers water to a resident Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. Some wonder whether the problem would have been handled more quickly if Benton Harbor's residents looked more like those in neighboring St. Joseph, who are predominantly white. "Sometimes you just have to call out racism, and that's what it feels like," said Ambie Bell, helping distribute water to residents. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP)  Shortly after sunrise on a recent Saturday in Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents began lining up for free bottled water so they could drink and cook without fear of the high levels of lead in the citys tap water.

Free water distribution sites are a fixture of life in the majority Black city in the southwestern corner of Michigan, where almost half of the nearly 10,000 residents live below the poverty line. For three years, tests of its public water system revealed elevated levels of lead.

Waiting for free bottled water is time consuming and some residents wonder why, in a state that recently dealt with the Flint water crisis, the problem wasnt fixed sooner.

Its tiresome, said Rhonda Nelson, waiting in line at a site run by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton Harbor.

Kevin Stack with the Berrien County Road Department fills up jugs with non-potable water for Elliot Napier in the Benton Harbor High School parking lot Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. In response, residents have been told to drink and cook with bottled water and the state has promised to spend millions replacing lead service lines. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

I understand what Flint was going through, I really do, she said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has promised to spend millions of dollars to replace the citys lead service lines within 18 months  a blistering pace for a process that often takes decades. For now, residents have been warned not to cook, drink or make baby formula with tap water.

Residents worry what the elevated lead levels mean for their families' health. The problem is also inconvenient and stressful. Drivers line up at water distribution sites early, pulling people away from jobs and family. Bottled water must be used carefully so it doesnt run out. Even waiting in line has consequences  idling uses gas that drivers have to pay to replenish more often.

Waiting in line, LaKeena Crawford worried about the consequences for her 8-year-old daughter, who she has seen try to turn on the water.

Im like, No! Crawford said, adding that she wants her daughter to understand that lead in water is dangerous. But, I dont want to frighten her too much.

The Rev. Edward Pinkney talks about the lingering water problem for residents Friday, Oct. 22, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. Environmental groups and local activists filed a petition over Benton Harbor in September with the EPA, urging aggressive action. Pinkney, an activist whose name is on the petition, said if they hadn't filed, an aggressive official response may have taken even longer. "We couldn't take it anymore," Pinkney said. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Lead exposure can slow cognitive development, especially in young children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and federal officials say no amount of lead in drinking water is considered safe for their consumption. In recent months, activists have pushed for more immediate, aggressive action, and the state has ramped up its response.

Some wonder whether the problem would have been handled more quickly if Benton Harbor's residents looked more like those in neighboring St. Joseph, who are predominantly white.

Sometimes you just have to call out racism, and thats what it feels like, said Ambie Bell, helping distribute water to residents.

There are millions of aging underground lead lines connecting buildings to water mains across the country, mostly in the Midwest but also scattered across other states like New Jersey and Massachusetts. The old pipes can become an urgent public health risk. Newark, New Jersey, saw prolonged lead water problems that led to the rapid replacement of thousands of lead pipes. High test results in Clarksburg, West Virginia, raised alarm bells earlier this year. The word Flint is now synonymous with lead water problems.

Digging up and replacing lead service lines is costly, stressing tight local budgets. The infrastructure and reconciliation bills pending in Congress include billions to address lead line replacement that activists say could make a significant difference.

Sylvester Bownes talks about the years of water problems at his Benton Harbor, Mich., home Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. The water system in Benton Harbor, has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The lead water problem in Flint started when that city switched its water source to the Flint River as a temporary cost-saving move without proper treatment, corroding its lead pipes. But Benton Harbor's water source, Lake Michigan, is considered safe and many other places get their water there, City Manager Ellis Mitchell said.

Our problem is clearly our own infrastructure, he said.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency identified a range of violations at Benton Harbor's water facility. The federal inspection found problems so bad that the city needs to consider forfeiting ownership, the EPA said.

The people of Benton Harbor have suffered for too long, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

Water systems occasionally produce high test results, but in Benton Harbor, authorities havent been able to bring them down. The long-term fix involves replacing the roughly 2,400 pipes that may contain lead, state officials said.

Bottled water sits outside a home Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, after being dropped off by volunteers in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. In response, residents have been told to drink and cook with bottled water and the state has promised to spend millions replacing lead service lines. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The city also lacks resources. Prior governors installed emergency managers with broad decision-making authority that reduced staffing, and the citys population has declined, shrinking its tax base.

This results in a knock-on effect of reduced technical, managerial and financial capability at the water plant due to underinvestment in staff, equipment and training, said Scott Dean, a spokesman with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

After Flints water crisis, Michigan tightened requirements for lead in drinking water in 2018, boasting it had passed the nations most protective law. It imposed more stringent requirements for testing water for lead and mandated that old lead service lines be replaced.

Environmental groups and local activists filed a petition over Benton Harbor in September with the EPA, urging aggressive action. The Rev. Edward Pinkney, an activist whose name is on the petition, said if they hadnt filed, an aggressive official response may have taken even longer.

We couldnt take it anymore, Pinkney said.

A lone resident of Benton Harbor, Mich., walks across Britain Street Friday, Oct. 22, 2021, near the city's water tower in Benton Harbor. The water system in Benton Harbor has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. In response, residents have been told to drink and cook with bottled water and the state has promised to spend millions replacing lead service lines. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The Michigan House of Representatives oversight committee held a hearing last month on Benton Harbor. Republican Committee Chair Steven Johnson questioned why the recent state response to the city's lead crisis feels like it has gone "from zero to 100 miles per hour even though the problem has persisted for years.

Michigan officials say they have taken the problem seriously, and on Thursday, Gov. Whitmer issued a directive calling for a review of current drinking water rules, including examining ways to reduce lead levels and ensure communities fully inform the public when there are problems.

Earlier efforts have included offering Benton Harbor residents filters to reduce the amount of lead in drinking water, though their effectiveness is being reviewed, and corrosion control to cut the amount of lead from pipes. While lead sampling results overall are still too high, the proportion of high readings has decreased, officials said.

Inspectors, however, have knocked the city for failing to notify water customers in their water bills about the problem over a recent year-long period.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician and professor at Michigan State University who raised early alarms about Flint. She gets questions from parents about whether some developmental problem could be linked to lead in the water. It's extremely difficult, however, to draw a direct link between an individuals health problem and lead in the water.

Sylvester Bownes walks the nearly one-mile round-trip to the Benton Harbor High School from his home with bottled and jugs full of water Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor, has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. Bownes said he has consumed bottled water for years because he doesn't trust Benton Harbor's water. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Thats why lead poising has evaded diagnosis, treatment and prevention for so long, she said, adding that exposure to lead isnt safe for children and it's too soon to predict what the long-term impact may be. Lead levels can vary by household and individuals can respond differently to exposure. The impact can depend on other factors like poverty, too, making it especially important to address the issue in citys like Benton Harbor, she said.

Marc A. Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor focused on water treatment, said the attention on Benton Harbor highlights a national problem of cities struggling with elevated lead levels. He said lead water crises like Flint degrade public trust in official management of water systems.

Sylvester Bownes, who wears a prosthetic on his right leg, said he has consumed bottled water for years because he doesn't trust Benton Harbor's water.

Pushing a makeshift cart filled with several cases of bottled water a half-mile to his home, he said a water main rupture had temporarily shut off the public water supply, so with no running water, he not only needed bottled water for drinking, but water for basic needs like filling his toilets.

Water is everything, Bownes said. It's like gold.

Residents who are homebound can call a help line to get water delivered, but Bownes said the process takes too long and isnt reliable. State officials said hundreds of people have been added to a list for weekly deliveries. If there are problems, residents should report them, they said.

Mitchell, the city manager, said last month that customers are being billed for water that authorities say can still be used for tasks like laundry and washing dishes. He said the city is looking into whether theres some sort of relief we can get on that for residents.

At the Boys & Girls Club water giveaway volunteers handed out nearly 2,200 cases by noon.

Nelson, who has 12- and 14-year-old daughters and a 5-year-old son, said preparing dinner can take 15 to 20 water bottles. Hopefully they get it fixed soon, she said.

Greg Johnson, who was the first to pull up at about 8:15 a.m., said he arrived early so his family's supplies would be replenished for his daughters, ages 8 and 11.

It takes two cases in the morning to get them ready for school, he said. Theyve got to get washed up and all that. Its kinda hectic.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/environment
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP)  Shortly after sunrise on a recent Saturday in Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents began lining up for free bottled water so they could drink and cook without fear of the high levels of lead in the citys tap water.

Ambie Bell, a candidate for Benton Harbor City Commissioner, delivers water to a resident Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. Some wonder whether the problem would have been handled more quickly if Benton Harbor's residents looked more like those in neighboring St. Joseph, who are predominantly white. "Sometimes you just have to call out racism, and that's what it feels like," said Ambie Bell, helping distribute water to residents. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP)  Shortly after sunrise on a recent Saturday in Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents began lining up for free bottled water so they could drink and cook without fear of the high levels of lead in the citys tap water.

Free water distribution sites are a fixture of life in the majority Black city, where almost half of the nearly 10,000 residents live below the poverty line. For three years, tests of its public water system revealed elevated levels of lead.

Waiting for bottled water is time consuming and some residents wonder why, in a state that recently dealt with the Flint water crisis, the problem wasnt fixed sooner.

Its tiresome, said Rhonda Nelson, waiting in line at a site run by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton Harbor.

Kevin Stack with the Berrien County Road Department fills up jugs with non-potable water for Elliot Napier in the Benton Harbor High School parking lot Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. In response, residents have been told to drink and cook with bottled water and the state has promised to spend millions replacing lead service lines. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

I understand what Flint was going through, I really do, she said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has promised to spend millions of dollars to replace the citys lead service lines within 18 months  a blistering pace for a process that often takes decades. For now, residents have been warned not to cook, drink or make baby formula with tap water.

Residents worry what the elevated lead levels mean for their families health. The problem is inconvenient and stressful. Drivers line up at water distribution sites early, pulling people away from jobs and family, and water must be used carefully so it doesnt run out. Waiting in line has consequences  idling uses gas drivers have to pay to replenish.

Lead exposure can slow cognitive development, especially in young children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and federal officials say no amount of lead in drinking water is considered safe for their consumption. In recent months, activists have pushed for more aggressive action, and the state has ramped up its response.

Some wonder whether the problem would have been handled more quickly if Benton Harbors residents looked more like those in neighboring St. Joseph, who are predominantly white.

The Rev. Edward Pinkney talks about the lingering water problem for residents Friday, Oct. 22, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. Environmental groups and local activists filed a petition over Benton Harbor in September with the EPA, urging aggressive action. Pinkney, an activist whose name is on the petition, said if they hadn't filed, an aggressive official response may have taken even longer. "We couldn't take it anymore," Pinkney said. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Sometimes you just have to call out racism, and thats what it feels like, said Ambie Bell, distributing water to residents.

There are millions of aging underground lead lines connecting buildings to water mains nationwide, mostly in the Midwest but also across other states like New Jersey and Massachusetts. The old pipes can become an urgent public health risk. Newark, New Jersey, saw prolonged lead water problems that led to rapid replacement of thousands of lead pipes. High test results in Clarksburg, West Virginia, raised alarm bells earlier this year. The word Flint is now synonymous with lead water problems.

Replacing lead service lines is costly, stressing tight local budgets. The infrastructure and reconciliation bills pending in Congress include billions to address lead line replacement that activists say could make a significant difference.

Flint's lead water problem started when it switched its water source to the Flint River without proper treatment, corroding lead pipes. But Benton Harbors water source, Lake Michigan, is considered safe and many other places get water there.

Our problem is clearly our own infrastructure, City Manager Ellis Mitchell said.

Sylvester Bownes walks the nearly one-mile round-trip to the Benton Harbor High School from his home with bottled and jugs full of water Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Benton Harbor, Mich. The water system in Benton Harbor, has tested for elevated levels of lead for three consecutive years. Bownes said he has consumed bottled water for years because he doesn't trust Benton Harbor's water. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency identified a range of violations at Benton Harbors water facility  problems so bad that the city needs to consider forfeiting ownership, the EPA said.

The people of Benton Harbor have suffered for too long, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

Water systems occasionally produce high test results, but in Benton Harbor, authorities havent been able to bring them down. The long-term fix involves replacing some 2,400 pipes that may contain lead, state officials said.

After Flints water crisis, Michigan tightened requirements for lead in drinking water in 2018, boasting it had passed the nations most protective law, and mandated that old lead service lines be replaced.

Environmental groups and local activists filed a petition over Benton Harbor in September with the EPA, urging aggressive action.

Michigan officials say they have taken the problem seriously.

In 2019, local officials offered Benton Harbor residents filters designed to reduce the amount of lead in drinking water. Eric Oswald, director of the states drinking water division, told a hearing on the issue last month that officials are studying the filters to make sure they work properly. They have also worked on corrosion control to reduce the lead entering water from pipes. While lead sampling results overall are still too high, the proportion of high readings has decreased, officials said.

EPA inspectors, however, knocked the city for failing to notify water customers in their water bills about the problem.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and professor at Michigan State University who raised early alarms about Flint, gets questions from parents about whether some developmental problem could be linked to lead in water. Its extremely difficult, however, to draw a link between an individuals health problem and lead in the water.

Thats why lead poising has evaded diagnosis, treatment and prevention for so long, she said, adding that exposure to lead isnt safe for children and its too soon to predict what the long-term impact may be. It can depend on factors like poverty, too, making it especially important to address the issue in citys like Benton Harbor, she said.

Sylvester Bownes, who wears a prosthetic on his right leg, said he has consumed bottled water for years because he doesnt trust Benton Harbors water.

Pushing a cart filled with cases of bottled water a half-mile to his home, he said a water main rupture had temporarily shut off the public water supply, so with no running water, he not only needed bottled water for drinking, but for basic needs like filling his toilets.

Water is everything, Bownes said. Its like gold.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/environment
TORONTO - Some of the most active companies traded Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

Toronto Stock Exchange (21,265.10, up 95.09 points.)

Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE). Energy. Up 18 cents, or 1.21 per cent, to $15.03 on 9.7 million shares.

Suncor Energy Inc. (TSX:SU). Energy. Down 52 cents, or 1.63 per cent, to $31.44 on 7.5 million shares.

Denison Mines Corp. (TSX:DML). Materials. Up 18 cents, or 8.18 per cent, to $2.38 on 6.4 million shares.

Baytex Energy Corp. (TSX:BTE). Energy. Down six cents, or 1.41 per cent, to $4.21 on six million shares.

BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB). Technology. Up 42 cents, or 2.97 per cent, to $14.55 on 5.6 million shares.

Manulife Financial Corp. (TSX:MFC). Financials. Up 44 cents, or 1.79 per cent, to $25 on 5.2 million shares.

Companies in the news:

Cenovus Energy Inc.  The chief executive of one of Canada's major oilsands producers said he's not opposed to a federal cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector, as long as the government realizes that large-scale emissions reductions will take years to achieve. In an interview Wednesday, Cenovus Energy Inc. CEO Alex Pourbaix drew a comparison between Canada's current decarbonization plan and the multibillion-dollar campaign to reconstruct Europe after the Second World War. Pourbaix's comments came the same day Cenovus reported third-quarter profits of $551 million in the third quarter, or 27 cents per share compared with a loss of $194 million or 16 cents per share a year ago. Against a backdrop of oil prices that have rebounded to multi-year highs from last year's lows, Cenovus' revenue totalled $12.7 billion, up from nearly $3.7 in the same quarter last year. Cenovus' latest earnings report was released just days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau  who just attended COP26, the UN climate conference in Scotland  formally committed to a federal cap on greenhouse gas emissions produced by Canada's oil and gas industry.

Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B). Up 70 cents or 1.2 per cent to $59.30. Rogers Communications Inc. is urging the federal telecommunications regulator to go ahead as scheduled with its hearings into the company's deal to buy Shaw Communications Inc. BCE Inc., Telus Corp., the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the National Pensioners Federation have asked the CRTC to delay the hearings set to begin Nov. 22 due to a dispute over control of Rogers between members of the Rogers family. Edward Rogers, son of late Rogers founder Ted Rogers, has asked a B.C. court to declare legitimate the board he formed after he was ousted as chair last month. He is opposed by his mother and sisters. However, Rogers said the family and company "are aligned on the importance of this transaction" and fully support the application that the company has filed with the regulator. The company said all of the submissions and commitments it makes will be honoured and respected, regardless of any changes to the board of directors and executives that may occur. Rogers executive Ted Woodhead said postponing the hearing would create further uncertainty in the market and would unfairly and unreasonably delay the commission's review of the deal.

NFI Group Inc. (TSX:NFI). Up 29 cents or 1.2 per cent to $25.19. NFI Group Inc. says it lost US$15.4 million in its latest quarter as the bus maker dealt with global supply disruptions that reduced the availability of key parts and components and hurt production. The Winnipeg-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, says the loss amounted to 22 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 26. The result compared with a loss of US$24.9 million or 40 cents per share in the same quarter last year. Revenue in the quarter totalled US$492 million, down from US$663.9 million. On an adjusted basis, NFI says it lost US$11.3 million or 16 cents per share in its most recent quarter, compared with an adjusted profit of US$5.7 million or nine cents per share a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected an adjusted loss of 17 cents per share and US$497.9 million in revenue, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 3, 2021.
TOKYO (AP)  Cars already know how to park themselves, warn drowsy drivers, steer back into the right lanes and propose map routes to destinations. The cars Mazda has in the works for next year in Japan know when drivers have a stroke or heart attack.

This photo provided by Mazda Motor Corp., shows the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept car in Miyoshi, Hiroshima prefecture, western Japan, on Sept. 30, 2021. Cars already know how to park themselves, warn drowsy drivers, steer back into the right lanes and propose map routes to destinations. The cars Mazda has in the works for next year in Japan know when drivers have a stroke or heart attack. (Mazda Motor Corp. via AP)

TOKYO (AP)  Cars already know how to park themselves, warn drowsy drivers, steer back into the right lanes and propose map routes to destinations. The cars Mazda has in the works for next year in Japan know when drivers have a stroke or heart attack.

By 2025, the cars will even know when drivers are about to have a sudden health problem and warn them, according to the Japanese automaker.

Whats involved are data from cameras inside the car, without resorting to laser sensors or other more obtrusive technology. And its going to be offered in affordable models, not just luxury vehicles. The technology holds promise for one of the most advanced aging societies in the world.

Mazda told reporters recently it has been working with medical experts, including Tsukuba University Hospital, researching the collected image data to figure out what a healthy driver looks like, as opposed to an incapacitated driver, suddenly slumped forward over the steering wheel.

Once recognizing a problem, Co-Pilot Concept, which has yet to have an official name, will bring that car to a stop in a safe spot, such as the curb of the road, as quickly as possible.

The car will be honking, with blinker and hazard lights flashing, according to Mazda, although the exact warning signals are still undecided. An emergency call to the ambulance and police will also get relayed.

Other major automakers, including Volkswagen of Germany and Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp., are working on similar technology.

Mazda plans to offer the technology in Europe after Japan. Mazda wants to wait and see before offering it in the U.S., because it believes questions remain about their social acceptance, although similar systems that stop vehicles are already being offered by rivals.

As for privacy concerns, the personal data does not leave the car, according to Mazda.

Takahiro Tochioka, the engineer in charge, said Mazda is working on ways to predict a health problem that may be coming even if the driver may not be conscious of it.

What the car will be looking for are the ways people focus their vision, the swaying of their heads, slight aberrations in driving habits and other subtle changes, he said.

And it will warn drivers even before actual symptoms appear, he told reporters proudly.

But understanding and cooperation from the drivers around that car is crucial for this technology to work.

Mazda is hoping the Japanese public will see a driver in distress and help them, since an assumption of widespread public goodwill is characteristic of Japan.

The technology will empower people to keep driving through their lifetime, and will help reassure families and friends not to be worried, Tochioka said. Offering Co-Pilot will also allow Mazda to get feedback from real-life users, he said.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
GENEVA (AP)  A new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power amounts to a big transformation, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Thursday.

FILE - John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, speaks at an event about the "Global Methane Pledge" at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. A new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power amounts to a big transformation, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 hoping to leverage the private sector to do more in the fight against global warming. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

GENEVA (AP)  A new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power amounts to a big transformation, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Thursday.

The  First Movers Coalition , spearheaded by the U.S. government and the World Economic Forum, aims to help meet an increasingly difficult target laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So far, almost three dozen global companies in many sectors have committed to changing their purchasing practices to favor development of zero-emission technologies by 2030.

The idea is to jumpstart budding or not-yet-existent technologies that can reduce how much CO2 is spewed into the atmosphere by leveraging the market  specifically the purchasing power of the companies  to encourage their suppliers to clean up, so they can too. Biden spoke of the project as the U.N.-backed climate conference in Glasgow known as COP26 got under way.

This is a big transformation. Its a big deal, Kerry told many corporate leaders behind the project in Glasgow on Thursday. Everybody Ive talked to when they learn about it, they say: Wow, that makes sense. Thats great.' And all of you understood that instinctively, and without an arm-twisting.

Designers of the project say half of the emissions reduction projected between now and 2030 will stem from innovations  like capturing carbon out of the air  that arent operating at a large scale. Pushing suppliers of the large companies to cut CO2 will help create bigger markets and ultimately lower costs, the thinking goes.

If we dont get enough reduction somewhere in the 45% range over the next 10 years, we are blowing by 1.5 degrees  and thats a hard target, Kerry said, crediting the private sector for leading in a way that even some governments are not.

A first phase focuses on aviation, shipping, steel and trucking, and three more industries  aluminum, cement and chemicals  are to come on board later. The seven industries account for about one-third of total global carbon emissions, WEF says.

Volvo says were going to buy X%  10% of our vehicles are going to be made with green steel, Kerry said. And so, all of a sudden, people making green steel know, Hey, theres somebody out there waiting to buy this."

But even participant companies arent revolutionizing their plans just yet, committing to make the changes in at least one of their purchasing areas  so not necessarily company-wide.

Questions also remain about both the metrics and monitoring, which could amount to attempted greenwashing if firms try to quietly wriggle out of their commitments.

We are going to have very strict metrics and strict follow-up on this, said Borge Brende, president of the Geneva-based WEF, which is best known for organizing the annual conference of government and corporate leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

Rest assured: were on it," he said in a phone interview.

He said the initiative is no substitute for government regulation to help curb global warming, which will still be needed, and putting pressure on suppliers could lead the companies to face higher prices. The idea builds on commitments in the finance sector already, exemplified through carbon-reduction strategies at investment companies like Blackrock and Carlyle, Brende said.

The coalition hopes to broaden that effort in finance to many more sectors. U.S.-based companies including Amazon, Apple, Boeing and Delta airlines are taking part, as are European plane maker Airbus, Germanys Deutsche Post, Swedish energy company Vattenfall and Indias Dalmia Cement.

This means that they will be pretty tough  even the hard-to-abate sectors -- in the years to come, Brende said, referring to sectors in which cutting carbon is especially difficult. And if you want to sell to these companies, you have to reduce your carbon footprint. And Im pretty sure that that signal will be received  and it will lead to new technology breakthroughs.

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Follow APs coverage of the climate conference at http://apnews.com/hub/climate.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program.

This satellite photograph from Planet Labs Inc. shows the Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker Sothys, the red vessel at the far bottom right, off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran, Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program. (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran's powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard troops on Oct. 24 took control of the MV Southys, a vessel that analysts suspect of trying to transfer sanctioned Iranian crude oil to Asia, at gunpoint. U.S. forces had monitored the seizure, but ultimately didn't take action as the vessel sailed into Iranian waters.

Iran celebrated its capture of the vessel in dramatic footage aired on state television, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Officials at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ship-tracking data analyzed by the AP from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessel still off Iran's southern port of Bandar Abbas on Tuesday. A satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. also showed the vessel off Bandar Abbas in recent days.

This frame grab from a video released by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, shows the seized Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Iran seized the tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program. (Revolutionary Guard via AP)

The two U.S. officials on Wednesday spoke on condition of anonymity as the information had yet to be made public amid ongoing attempts to restart talks over Iran's tattered 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Negotiations have stalled in Vienna since the election of hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi in June, allowing Iran to press ahead with its nuclear program and raising alarm in Western capitals.

The European Union, Iran and the U.S. all said late Wednesday that the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington would resume Nov. 29 in Vienna.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri, said in a tweet that talks aimed for the removal unlawful and inhumane" sanctions. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Iran continued to take provocative nuclear steps" and that this window of opportunity will not be open forever.

The officials spoke to AP after Iranian state TV offered a series of contradictory reports about a confrontation between the Guard and the U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet. State TV sought to cast the incident as an act of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S. Navy detaining a tanker carrying Iranian oil and the Guard freeing it and bringing it back to the Islamic Republic.

Asked about Iran's assertion of U.S. aggression, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was false and that it was Iran that had seized what he described as a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 24.

This frame grab from a video released by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, shows a Guard soldier on a speed boat in front of a U.S warship amid the seizure of a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Iran seized the tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and still holds the vessel, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday, revealing the latest provocation in Mideast waters as tensions escalate between Iran and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program. (Revolutionary Guard via AP)

It's a bogus claim, Kirby said of the Iranian assertion. The only seizing that was done was by Iran." He declined to cite the nationality of the vessel that was seized, saying it was up to that country to discuss it.

Kirby said Iran's boarding and seizing of the vessel constituted a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.

Tehran also did not provide the ships name, or other details, nor any explanation of why the Navy might target it. Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iranian officials heralded the ship's impoundment as a heroic act, with Raisi lauding the Revolutionary Guard on Twitter. The country's oil minister, Javad Owji, thanked the Guard for rescuing the Iranian oil tanker from American pirates."

State TV released footage showing an Iranian surveillance drone monitoring a hulking red tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Heavily armed Iranian commandos then rappelled onto the boat from a helicopter as small speedboats surrounded the vessel and an Iranian catamaran ship patrolled the waters.

The video appeared to show Iranian Guard troops pointing uncovered deck-mounted machine guns at the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Photos released by the U.S. military show The Sullivans recently in the Arabian Sea near the Gulf of Oman.

The status and makeup of the Sothys' crew wasn't immediately known. A shipping database showed the vessel's last registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. On Thursday, a worker at the office acknowledged an incident involving the Southys but referred questions to another employee who wasn't there. That employee did not immediately return a request for comment.

However, the Southys had been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long suspicious of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated Oct. 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Southy received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.

The U.S. Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. That Iranian oil ends up being sold into East Asia, the Treasury alleged, without identifying a specific country.

Iran's seizure of the Southys would be the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil the Gulf of Oman, which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members earlier this year. Just a few months ago, Iranian hijackers stormed and briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the region's volatile waters since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from Irans nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.

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Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington and Hau Dinh in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.
TORONTO - Ontario is calling on the federal government to double the number of immigrants allowed into the province under a program aimed at boosting the skilled workforce.

Ontario Labour Minister Monte McNaughton takes to the podium during a news conference in Toronto on April 28, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

TORONTO - Ontario is calling on the federal government to double the number of immigrants allowed into the province under a program aimed at boosting the skilled workforce.

Labour Minister Monte McNaughton says the province is facing a significant labour shortage that has been intensified by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He says doubling the number of immigrants allowed under the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program from 9,000 to 18,000 a year will help tackle that shortage.

The number of job vacancies in Ontario has increased from 234,000 in October of last year to almost 316,000 vacant jobs last month, according to Statistics Canada.

While all industries are dealing with a labour crunch, 38,000 jobs in health care, 29,000 in food services, 24,000 in manufacturing and 21,000 in construction were unfilled in the second quarter of this year.

McNaughton says he reached out recently to the newly-appointed federal Immigration Minister, Sean Fraser, to call on him to increase the number of skilled workers allowed into Ontario under the program.

"We're asking the new minister and the federal government to double it and do it as quickly as possible," McNaughton said.

"Immigration is one of the key economic drivers of Ontario's growth, one that can be used strategically to fill critical gaps in labour supply and ultimately create more jobs in our communities."

A spokesman for the federal immigration minister said Ontario receives the largest number of economic immigrants among all provinces and territories.

"We are currently reviewing Ontarios request to increase the number of newcomers under the (program) as we finalize next year's immigration levels plan," Alexander Cohen said.

The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program allows foreign skilled workers and international students to apply to the Ontario government to be nominated for permanent residency in the province, but the federal government makes the final decision on approving the applications.

The province nominates people who have the skills and experience needed in Ontario.

McNaughton said the program had the capacity for 6,750 immigrants when the Progressive Conservatives came to the power in 2018. He said he's worked with the federal government to increase that to about 9,000 immigrants this year.

Ontario wants more control over the number of immigrants allowed under the program, as well as process of selecting them, McNaughton said. Currently, health-care workers and those working in skilled trades are most needed in Ontario, he said.

"There's tens of thousands of more new Canadians coming here through the federal government, and we want to have more control over that selection process," he said.

"We want an efficient, effective system that's going to do a more effective job of filling these labor shortages."

McNaughton said Ottawa should also provide more funding for foreign credential recognition efforts, improve the temporary foreign worker program, and help ensure international students stay in the province after they graduate in Ontario.

Cohen of the federal immigration department said Ottawa has committed to working on those issues.

"We agree with Minister McNaughton that all three of these issues are essential in strengthening our immigration system so it can continue to support Ontario's short term recovery and long term prosperity," he said.

A recent study by the Conference Board of Canada found that economic immigration programs tend to bring highly-educated and highly-skilled immigrants the country, but the pandemic has shown that essential workers are also needed in the labour market.

"Canadas economic immigration system has a strong focus on highly educated immigrants, but this does not always correspond with the labour demand in essential sectors," said the study published Monday.

It found that several industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, retail trades and food services, are relying on temporary workers and over-qualified immigrants.

"Over-reliance on temporary workers and widespread overqualification are risks to the resilience of essential sectors," the study found.

"One of the ways to mitigate these risks is to provide the pathways to bring permanent residents with the right skills, experience, and training to work in essential occupations."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.
TORONTO - Ontario is boosting health spending, investing more in roads and bridges, and phasing out COVID-19 supports as it charts a path out of the pandemic.

Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is applauded by Premier Doug Ford after delivering the Provincial Budget in the Ontario Legislature in Toronto on Wednesday March 24, 2021. Ontario is set to release its fall economic statement today to provide an update on the province's finances and plans for recovery from the pandemic. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

TORONTO - Ontario is boosting health spending, investing more in roads and bridges, and phasing out COVID-19 supports as it charts a path out of the pandemic.

The province's fall economic statement released Thursday projects a deficit this fiscal year of $21.5 billion, lower than the budget's $33.1-billion projection - largely due to higher-than-expected tax revenues and stronger economic growth.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said investing in workers, health care and infrastructure is all linked.

"Our economy is a machine, and if one part of that machine is not working to its full potential, it holds all of us back," he said. "But if Ontario is firing on all cylinders, well, there's no place that you'd rather be."

Ontario is putting an additional $549 million over three years into home and community care to expand home-care services, funding an estimated 28,000 post-acute surgical patients and up to 21,000 patients with complex health conditions. It will help in providing nursing and therapy visits and personal support services, the government says.

As well, the province is set to spend $342 million to add and upgrade the skills of more than 5,000 registered nurses and registered practical nurses and 8,000 personal support workers. Another $57.6 million will go toward hiring 225 more nurse practitioners in long-term care, starting next year.

Ontario is also planning to spend $22 million over three years to integrate clinical information between hospitals and long-term care homes in order to streamline re-admissions and give information to families.

Another $29 million is being put toward mental health funding for health-care and long-term care workers, children and youth with eating disorders, and post-secondary students.

The government is allocating $2.6 billion for this year to expand and repair highways and bridges, as well as committing funding to advance the controversial Bradford Bypass and Highway 413 projects, though it hasn't said how much those roads will cost.

Opposition critics have questioned the value of those projects, including whether the routes were planned to benefit allies of Premier Doug Ford, how much time they will save commuters and the impacts to the environment.

The government has said Highway 413 would help alleviate congestion across the York, Peel and Halton regions. The Bradford Bypass would connect Highway 400 and Highway 404.

The NDP said it's not opposed to highways, but they should be built for the right reasons.

"There's no doubt that the Bradford Bypass and Highway 413 are motivated by political ambition," finance critic Catherine Fife said.

Green party leader Mike Schreiner said the road to COVID-19 recovery shouldn't pave over farmland.

"Were in a climate emergency, but Doug Ford has his head buried in the concrete," Schreiner said in a statement. "The entire 200-page budget update mentions climate change just four times but highways 58 times."

Advocates and stakeholders decried a lack of new supports for small businesses, child care, education and innovators.

After putting $10.7 billion toward Ontario's COVID-19 time-limited funding this year, including school supports, the province plans to reduce it to $3.4 billion next year, and end it by 2023-24.

Bethlenfalvy said it's important to set aside enough funds to continue fighting COVID-19 because "things can turn very quickly."

Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said pandemic supports should have included a vaccine mandate for hospital workers, which Ford declined to enact this week.

"We will not get to recovery unless we actually get through the rest of this pandemic as a province," he said.

Without including the COVID-19 time-limited funding, program spending is set to jump from $165.5 billion this year to $173 billion next year.

There are no tax cuts in the document, though the province is introducing a "staycation" tax credit. It would give Ontario residents 20 per cent on eligible accommodation expenses in 2022 for up to $1,000 for an individual or $2,000 for a family.

It is also extending the Ontario Seniors' Home Safety tax credit and the Ontario Jobs Training tax credit, and increasing a child-care tax credit by 20 per cent, providing support of an average $1,500, up from $1,250.

A $15 minimum wage, announced Tuesday by Ford, is in the legislation as part of the fall economic statement.

Ontario's deficit is projected to drop further to $19.6 billion in 2022-23, then $12.9 billion in 2023-24. The province's net debt is set to crack the $400-million mark this year, though the $402-billion projection is down from a $440-billion projection from the budget.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.
SONOMA, Calif. (AP)  Pacific Gas & Electric has reached a $125 million settlement agreement with California regulators over the destructive Kincade fire, which was ignited in 2019 by the utility's equipment in a remote area of Sonoma County.

FILE - Flames from the Kincade Fire consume Soda Rock Winery on Oct 27, 2019, in Healdsburg, Calif. Pacific Gas & Electric has reached a settlement agreement, Nov. 3, 2021, with state regulators over the 2019 Kincade fire, which was ignited by the utility's electrical transmission equipment in a remote area of Sonoma County. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File )

SONOMA, Calif. (AP)  Pacific Gas & Electric has reached a $125 million settlement agreement with California regulators over the destructive Kincade fire, which was ignited in 2019 by the utility's equipment in a remote area of Sonoma County.

PG&E shareholders would pay a $40 million fine to the state general fund and spend another $85 million in the removal of abandoned transmission equipment throughout the utilitys territory as part of the agreement expected to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission at its Dec. 2 meeting, the Press Democrat reported Wednesday.

The agreement was reached after the commission's Safety and Enforcement Division found fault with the maintenance and condition of a high-voltage PG&E transmission tower that remained energized for years even though it had served a Calpine power plant that no longer was active.

Though the tower was disconnected from the facility in 2006, the 230,000-volt transmission equipment not only remained energized but was also left with jumper cables suspended and unsecured. One of them broke and arced against the tower during extreme winds on the night of Oct. 23, 2019, igniting vegetation on the ground, the report said.

The Kincade fire would go on to torch nearly 122 square miles (316 square kilometers), destroying 174 homes and about 200 other structures, and injuring four people. An estimated 190,000 residents, almost two-fifths of Sonoma Countys population, were ordered to evacuate.

PG&E left abandoned equipment energized for thirteen years even though that equipment provided no benefit or convenience to the public, the enforcement division report said.

The agencys investigation was separate from one conducted by Cal Fire, which last year traced the wildfire, the largest in Sonoma County history, to the high-voltage electrical transmission tower in the Mayacamas Mountains.

It is also independent of a criminal case still pending in Sonoma County Superior Court, where PG&E is charged with five felonies and 28 misdemeanor counts alleging the utility recklessly caused the fire.

A PG&E spokeswoman said Wednesday that the utility disputes several features of the utility commissions investigation. In particular, the company believed the Calpine unit served by the tower to be on cold standby, meaning it could be put back into use, spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said.

Calpine also continued to pay monthly service charges and had inspected the equipment as part of its wildfire prevention efforts, Paulo added.

The company agreed to settle with the commission, despite disagreeing with alleged violations, in hopes it will assist in allowing all parties to move forward with the fire, and permit us to focus on compensating victims and making our energy system safer, the utility said in a statement.

PG&E already has settled with Sonoma County and the cities of Windsor, Healdsburg, Santa Rosa and Cloverdale, agreeing last May to pay $31 million in damages related to the public safety response to the wildfire.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter related to the 2018 Camp Fire, which wiped out most of the town of Paradise and was sparked by its equipment. It also faces numerous criminal charges for fires caused by its fraying equipment, including four charges of manslaughter filed in September by Shasta County prosecutors.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, whose district sustained most of the damage from the Kincade fire, said Wednesday that he remains troubled by PG&Es lack of transparency and accountability.

You know, its interesting that a settlement is really about spending the money that you should have spent before on something, Gore said. Lets call it what it is.

A historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
LISBON, Portugal (AP)  Portugals president announced Thursday that he is dissolving parliament and calling a snap election for Jan. 30, following the minority Socialist governments defeat in a key vote on post-pandemic plans to spend billions of euros in European Union funding.

FILE - Portugal's Incumbent President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa delivers a speech following the results of Portugal's presidential election, in Lisbon, Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. Portugals president on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 announced he is dissolving parliament and calling a snap election for Jan. 30, following the minority Socialist governments defeat in a key vote on the countrys spending plans. The announcement was widely expected. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)

LISBON, Portugal (AP)  Portugals president announced Thursday that he is dissolving parliament and calling a snap election for Jan. 30, following the minority Socialist governments defeat in a key vote on post-pandemic plans to spend billions of euros in European Union funding.

The announcement, in a televised address to the nation, was widely expected. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had previously said Portugal would go to the ballot box two years ahead of schedule if the governments 2022 state budget proposal was rejected by parliament, which happened last week.

The ballot will elect 230 lawmakers to parliament, where political parties then decide who forms a government.

The election comes at a sensitive time for the country of 10.3 million people, as it is poised to begin deploying some 45 billion euros ($52 billion) in help from the EU to help fire up the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rebelo de Sousa said the Portuguese needed to decide what they want from the next few years, which are decisive due to the windfall of funds.

This is the decisive moment for a long-lasting recovery from the greatest pandemic of the past 100 years and the social and economic crisis it caused, he said.

The 2022 spending plan is an especially important budget at an especially important time, he said.

Recent opinion polls suggest the center-left Socialist Party will win re-election but will again fall short of a parliamentary majority.

Given the procedural requirements, a new state budget proposal may not come before parliament until April. That could put the brakes on an economic rebound.

As things stand, the COVID-19 pandemic shouldnt disrupt an election, though health authorities have warned about a potential winter resurgence in Europe.

A popular mass vaccination campaign has helped Portugal, for the moment, largely contain COVID-19. The country has on average been reporting fewer than 1,000 new cases a day since mid-September, with daily deaths in single figures.

The 2022 state budget forecast GDP growth of 4.8% this year and 5.5% next year, with a jobless rate of around 6.5%, roughly the same as now.

That has helped lift the Socialist Partys popularity, with polls predicting it will be returned to power with a comfortable win, capturing around 39% of the vote. But that would still leave the Socialists needing parliamentary support for legislation and put Portugal back where it started before the political crisis of recent weeks.

The traditional center-right opposition parties are in disarray. Both the main opposition Social Democratic Party and the smaller Popular Party are engaged in divisive leadership challenges.

The hard-left Communist Party and Left Bloc, who allied with the government up to last week, have seen their popularity dwindle to single figures in recent elections.

In the last election, in 2019, 10 parties won seats in the 230-seat parliament in a trend toward political fragmentation that compels parties to negotiate with each other.

Most striking is the rise of Portugals first right-wing populist party, Chega! (Enough!), which was founded just three years ago. It currently has just one lawmaker, but polls indicate it could capture as many as 20 seats in an election, potentially serving as a kingmaker.
KFC, Popeye's Chicken Chef and Chicken Delight will soon have more competition  a Texas-grown fast-food chain is bringing its chicken and biscuits to Manitoba.

KFC, Popeye's Chicken Chef and Chicken Delight will soon have more competition  a Texas-grown fast-food chain is bringing its chicken and biscuits to Manitoba.

Church's Texas Chicken plans to roll out its quick-service restaurants in the province as early as next year.

SUPPLIED Church's Texas Chicken plans to roll out its quick-service restaurants in the province as early as next year.

"It's a prime market for us," said Russ Sumrall, the senior vice-president of international strategic development for Church's Chicken (only the international sites are called Church's Texas Chicken).

The chain is in 27 countries  28, once it opens spots in Qatar in the next few months. It already sells its chicken strips and sandwiches in British Columbia, Ontario and Edmonton.

Saskatchewan will see Church's Texas Chickens early next year. Then, Sumrall is focusing on Manitoba. It's part of the restaurant's Canadian expansion: its opening 20 eateries throughout 2021, and plans on another 40 for 2022.

"Manitoba is an obvious place for us to go," Sumrall said. "It's a sizeable market already."

"Manitoba is an obvious place for us to go."  Russ Sumrall

Doors will first open in Winnipeg and southern Manitoba, closer to the border. Then, the company might expand further across the province.

There isn't a set number of locations opening in Manitoba yet, Sumrall said.

"We wouldn't go to a new market unless we knew that we could develop 10 or more restaurants in the area," he said.

A lot needs to happen before any Church's can accept customers. The business must conduct research to identify best restaurant locations and a timeline for opening. It needs to establish its supply chain. Staff require training.

Hence the wait for Manitoba's first-ever Church's Texas Chicken for at least, roughly, one year.

In some cases, the Southern-bred company has flourished during the pandemic, according to Sumrall. People were ordering their honey butter biscuits and spicy chicken to go.

SUPPLIED A Texas-grown fast-food chain is bringing its chicken and biscuits to Manitoba.

"We had examples, particularly in Canada, where our sales increased because our product was accessible and convenient through delivery," he said.

The company has reached sales over $1 billion internationally.

George W. Church founded Church's Chicken in San Antonio, Texas, in 1952. The business has grown to over 1,500 locations  including 44 in Canada, as of September  and two sister brands, Texas Chicken and Church's Texas Chicken.

The company has been in Canada since 1978, but it only started vigorously expanding in 2019.

People have applied to own Church's Texas Chicken franchises in Manitoba. However, there's still room for more, Sumrall said.

He's looking for people with experience operating other large brands, like Tim Hortons and Wendy's.

"(Then) there's not that steep learning curve for our franchise partner," Sumrall said.

Once Manitoba has its fair share of Church's, the chain will expand into the Maritimes.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com
MONTREAL - Quebecor Inc. says its net profits grew 23 per cent in its latest quarter on higher revenues.

The Quebecor logo is seen at the company's annual meeting Thursday, May 26, 2011 in Montreal.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

MONTREAL - Quebecor Inc. says its net profits grew 23 per cent in its latest quarter on higher revenues.

The Quebec-based telecommunications company says its net income attributable to shareholders was $173.1 million or 71 cents per share in the quarter, up from $140.9 million or 56 cents per share a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, adjusted earnings from continuing operations were $176.1 million or 73 cents per diluted share, up from $173.1 million or 69 cents per share in the third quarter of 2020.

Revenues for the three months ended Sept. 30 were $1.15 billion, up 3.3 per cent from $1.11 billion in the prior year quarter.

Quebecor was expected to report 71 cents per share in adjusted profits on $1.13 billion of revenues, according to financial data firm Refinitiv.

Videotron Ltd. revenues increased 5.6 per cent and mobile telephony grew eight per cent in the quarter as there were 25,600 more revenue-generating units in the quarter, including 40,900 connections to the mobile telephony service and 22,500 subscriptions to internet access services.

"The continuing reopening of the economy is enabling us to stay on track toward our growth and profitability targets. In addition, our strong financial performance positions us very advantageously to capitalize on our many operational and technological advances and on our potential for cross-Canada expansion," stated CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:QBR.B)
The latest on the U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France, adjusts his glove as he talks to family and friends before a launch attempt at the Kennedy Space Center on April 23, 2021 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Through the portholes of the International Space Station, Thomas Pesquet has an arresting view of global warming's destructive repercussions that negotiators are seeking to tackle at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

The latest on the U.N. climate summit COP26 in Glasgow:

GLASGOW, Scotland  Environmental campaigners have awarded their Fossil of the Day award to the Polish government for giving  and then apparently backtracking on  a pledge to speed up its phaseout of coal power.

Climate Action Network, an umbrella group representing hundreds of non-governmental organizations, blasted Poland Thursday for committing at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow to end coal use, but then declaring itself a poor country and sticking to its previous deadline of 2049.

The little-coveted award went to the United States on Wednesday, for what climate activists say was a new measure that benefits mainly industrial agriculture companies rather than ordinary farmers.

The U.S. shared the prize with France for its efforts to get natural gas and nuclear power plants classified as sustainable forms of energy by the European Union, and with the International Emissions Trading Association for representing oil majors such as Chevron and Shell at the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 talks.

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GENEVA  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says a new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden, in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power, amounts to a big transformation.

The First Movers Coalition, spearheaded by the U.S. government and the World Economic Forum, aims to help meet an increasingly difficult target laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So far, almost three dozen global companies in many sectors have committed to changing their purchasing practices to favor development of zero-emission technologies by 2030.

Designers of the project say half of the emissions reduction projected between now and 2030 will stem from innovations  like capturing carbon out of the air  that arent operating at a large scale.

Its a big deal, Kerry told many corporate leaders behind the project in Glasgow on Thursday.

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GLASGOW, Scotland  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has joined the tens of thousands of attendees whove been humbled by tough entry procedures at the U.N. climate summit.

Sheep graze at a solar farm at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Friday, Sept. 24, 2021. As panels spread across the landscape, the grounds around them can be used for native grasses and flowers that attract pollinators such as bees and butterflies. Some solar farms are being used to graze sheep.(AP Photo/Heather Ainsworth)

Kerry apologized Thursday for appearing about 20 minutes late for a renewable energy event at the United States pavilion inside the summit site.

Kerry said he had been off-campus visiting a venue outside the summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

As you all know, getting back in is not easy, he told the crowd. Even for those of us who thought it might be.

The summits organizers have imposed firm rules for accreditation badges, masks and proof of daily negative results on tests for COVID-19. Lines to get in lasted well beyond an hour early this week, but have shrunk noticeably since.

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GLASGOW, Scotland  The British government says pledges of new or earlier deadlines for ending coal use have come from more than 20 countries including Ukraine, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and Chile.

Meanwhile, Poland, the second-biggest user of coal in Europe after Germany, appeared to backtrack on any ambitious new commitments within hours of the announcement at the ongoing U.N. climate conference.

Energy security and the assurances of jobs is a priority for us, Anna Moskwa, Polands minister for climate and environment, said in a tweet, citing the governments existing plan which provides for a departure from hard coal by 2049.

Earlier in the day, it had seemed that Poland might bring that deadline forward by at least a decade.

Campaigners reacted angrily to the apparent U-turn.

Moskwa has underscored that her government cannot be trusted to sign a postcard, let alone a responsible climate pledge, said Kathrin Gutmann, campaign director of the group Europe Beyond Coal.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada, Denmark and several other nations signed a different pledge to prioritize funding clean energy over fossil fuel projects abroad.

___

Campaigners from the environment group Ocean Rebellion wearing fish head masks take part in a protest stunt against the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), on the fringes of the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

HELSINKI  Finland's capital city says it will no longer serve meat dishes at seminars, staff meetings, receptions and other events to reduce Helsinki's carbon footprint.

Instead, the city government plans to offer vegetarian food and sustainable local fish.

Liisa Kivela, Helsinki's communications director, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the change takes effect in January and excludes school and workplace cafeterias run by the city of about 650,000 residents.

Kivela said the the policy adopted by the City Council also allows deviations for certain high-level visits or similar events organized by Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen or the citys senior managers.

The policy also stipulates that coffee, tea and items like bananas offered at events will have to be sourced from fair trade producers. In addition, oat milk will replace regular milk, and snacks and refreshments no longer can be served in single-use containers.

The local government said in a statement that the measure is part of a broader effort which aims to reduce the climate impact of food and reduce the amount of natural resources used by the city.

The mayor, who assumed Helsinkis top post in August, said he was glad the city retains the option of serving meat on some occasions.

For example, should the king of Sweden arrive for a visit, then domestic game can be offered. Or some group for whom it would be natural to offer meat, then there must be discretion and common sense, Vartiainen told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.

___

PARIS  French astronaut Thomas Pesquet used a video call from space to describe the view from the International Space Station of global warming's repercussions.

Pesquet told French President Emmanuel Macron during the call on Thursday that the space station's portholes revealed the haunting fragility of humanitys only home.

We see the pollution of rivers, atmospheric pollution, things like that," the astronaut said. "What really shocked me on this mission were extreme weather or climate phenomena.

We saw entire regions burning from the space station, in Canada, in California, he continued. We saw all of California covered by a cloud of smoke and flames with the naked eye from 400 kilometers (250 miles) up.

Activists protest against Japan's support of the coal industry near the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow gathers leaders from around the world, in Scotland's biggest city, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

This is Pesquets second mission to the space station. He also spent 197 days in orbit in 2016-2017. The destructive effects of human activity have become increasingly visible in the interim, he said.

Macron said the goal for negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Scotland must be to speed up humanitys response.

There is still a huge job ahead of us, and I think we are all aware of that, the French leader said.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland Several major coal-using nations announced steps to wean themselves off of the heavily polluting fossil fuel, although for some the weaning will happen slowly.

The pledges on Thursday to phase out coal come on top of other promises made at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The head of an international energy organization said the earlier commitments trimmed a few tenths of a degree from projections of future warming.

But outside experts termed that comment  only in a tweet, not a rigorous report  optimistic.

Optimism also abounded in relation to the promises on coal, which has the dirtiest carbon footprint of the major fuels and is a significant source of planet-warming emissions.

Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight, said Alok Sharma, who is chairing the conference of nearly 200 nations, known as COP26.

Forecasters with a more skeptical view noted that several major economies still have not set a date for ending their dependence on the fuel, including the United States, China, India and Japan.

Outside the COP26 venue, protestors clad as animated characters blasted Japans continued coal use.

___

COPENHAGEN, Denmark  The Danish government said Thursday it will donate 100 million kroner ($15.6 million) to efforts to purchase and decommission coal power plants and invest in new energy sources.

As part of our comprehensive climate efforts, the Danish government is working to phase out coal while also investing massively in new green energy sources, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a statement.

Minister for Climate and Energy Dan Joergensen said the money will help coal-intensive countries reduce their coal consumption and create new income opportunities in local communities, which is absolutely vital to accelerating the energy transition.

Denmark's money will go to the Climate Investment Funds new Accelerating Coal Transition program, and the primary focus will initially be on South Africa, India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Danish government said the program includes efforts supporting alternative employment of the local population in impacted areas.

___

SOULAINES-DHUYS, France  Nuclear power is a central sticking point as negotiators plot out the worlds future energy strategy at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Critics decry its mammoth price tag, the disproportionate damage caused by nuclear accidents, and the radioactive waste left behind.

But a growing camp of vocal and powerful proponents - some climate scientists and environmental experts among them  argue that nuclear power is the worlds best hope of keeping climate change under contro.

They note that it emits few planet-damaging emissions and is safer on average than nearly any other energy source. They argue that nuclear accidents are scary but exceedingly rare, while pollution from coal and other fossil fuels causes death and illness every day.

Many governments are pushing to enshrine nuclear energy in climate plans being hashed out at the conference in Glasgow, known as COP26.

The European Union, meanwhile, is debating whether to label nuclear energy as officially green  a decision that will steer billions of euros of investment for years to come. That has implications worldwide, as the EU policy could set a standard that other economies follow.

But nuclear waste remains a major problem, with the most radioactive material still toxic for tens of thousands of years.

___ GLASGOW, Scotland  Britains government has claimed that the end of coal is in sight after 18 countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile committed for the first time to phase out and not build or invest in new coal power.

The statement, issued late Wednesday during the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, said more than 40 nations are committing to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally, as well as rapidly scale up clean power generation. Participating nations also commit to phasing out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for smaller economies.

Separately, the statement also said that Chile and Singapore have joined a U.K.-led alliance on phasing out coal that includes over 150 countries and businesses such as HSBC and NatWest bank.

U.K. business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it was a milestone moment in our global efforts to tackle climate change.

But Ed Miliband, the opposition Labour Partys business spokesman, said there were glaring gaps such as a lack of commitment from China and other large emitters to stop increasing coal at home. There was also nothing on the phasing out of oil and gas, he said.
WASHINGTON - Canada's industry minister says he and several U.S. officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, have agreed to meet at least four times a year as the two countries work on reinforcing their bilateral ties.

WASHINGTON - Canada's industry minister says he and several U.S. officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, have agreed to meet at least four times a year as the two countries work on reinforcing their bilateral ties.

Francois-Philippe Champagne, who wrapped up two days of meetings today, says the U.S. and Canada both recognize a "generational opportunity" to fortify the relationship and co-ordinate on issues of shared national interest.

Francois-Philippe Champagne speaks at a news conference in Ottawa, on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Champagne says the two sides talked about how to strengthen cross-border supply chains, the potential role of Canada's critical-minerals industry and meeting shared climate goals.

And he says he expressed Canada's concerns about a proposed electric-vehicle tax credit that's part of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda.

Champagne says the relationship won't change if Republicans win control of Congress in next year's midterms  a likely scenario given their strong performances in gubernatorial races this week in Virginia and New Jersey.

He says Canada and the U.S. have shared challenges and concerns that resonate on both sides of the political aisle, regardless of who is playing the leadership role on Capitol Hill.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.
WASHINGTON - There may be gale-force winds of change in America's long-term political forecast, but Canada will keep pressing its case with the White House and Congress regardless of who ends up in control of Capitol Hill next year, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Thursday.

WASHINGTON - There may be gale-force winds of change in America's long-term political forecast, but Canada will keep pressing its case with the White House and Congress regardless of who ends up in control of Capitol Hill next year, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Thursday.

Champagne emerged from two days of meetings with his U.S. counterparts, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, with a commitment to hold even more meetings as the two countries work on ways to expedite a robust economic recovery on both sides of the border.

Francois-Philippe Champagne speaks at a news conference in Ottawa, on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

He said he'll now meet with Raimondo and White House science adviser Eric Lander four times a year in order to accelerate their collective effort on issues like reinforcing Canada-U.S. supply chains, developing strategies for critical minerals and rare-earth elements, and reaching shared climate goals.

"I think this is good for Canada," Champagne said. "This is good, because that's what we need to do, is to see what we can do more in North America."

He called it a "generational opportunity" to ensure Canada and the U.S. can do more together to ensure supply chains are more resilient to future shocks like border closures and pandemics and grow a healthy auto sector newly focused on producing electric vehicles  a process that depends on minerals and rare-earth metals that are abundant in Canada, but currently dominated by China.

But Tuesday's gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey exposed deep American dissatisfaction with Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers remain deadlocked over the two multitrillion-dollar centrepieces of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda.

In Virginia, newcomer Glenn Youngkin scored a decisive win over former governor Terry McAuliffe, whose constant portrayals of his rival as a Donald Trump acolyte failed to dent a well-run Republican campaign focused on pocketbook issues and deep-seated fears of creeping progressive influence on schools.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, eked out a nail-biter against Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli in a state that put 10 Democrats in the House of Representatives and handed Biden a 15-point win over the incumbent Trump just one year ago.

With midterm elections now less than a year away, the results have left congressional Democrats nervously reassessing their own electoral fortunes, and started the countdown clock for a White House that knows the last two years of Biden's mandate will be challenging ones indeed.

"My message is always that a decision on one side of the border will have an impact on both, and always reminding our U.S. colleagues that we are their first customer," Champagne said. "The competition is not between Canada and the U.S.; we're talking about a global competition, and how we make North America more resilient. I think that resonates across the aisle."

Together, the two countries produced just four million electric vehicles in 2018, a number that needs to grow to 128 million by 2030, he added.

"The only way we're going to achieve that is by having the ecosystem strengthened on both sides of the border, and I think that resonates."

Champagne also said he added his voice Thursday to the chorus of international opposition to a proposed $12,500 suite of electric-vehicle tax credits that's part of the ambitious $1.75-trillion climate and social spending package the White House is trying to get through Congress.

The package is geared toward promoting vehicles built with union labour and assembled in the U.S., a structure that critics say gives an unfair advantage to Detroit's Big Three automakers  Ford, General Motors and Chrysler parent company Stellantis  and violates trade agreements, including the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

"Senators understand that if there's a sector of our economy where the supply chains are very integrated, it's the auto sector," Champagne said.

"I think there's kind of a reckoning to say we need to preserve that, because that's what we want to do, and any provision that would disrupt supply chains would be detrimental on both sides of the border."

Federal and diplomatic officials alike will be proposing potential solutions "that will be a win-win," he added: "We want to sell more electric vehicles in North America, and we want to sell them with North American content. So that's what we're going to be doing."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP)  Costs to clean up a massive nuclear weapons complex in Washington state are usually expressed in the hundreds of billions of dollars and involve decades of work.

FILE - The decommissioned plutonium-producing DR reactor, left, and D reactor, right, are shown on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, June 13, 2017, near Richland, Wash. The federal government is moving forward with the cost-saving "cocooning" of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage for decades to allow radiation inside to dissipate until they can be dismantled and buried. (AP Photo/Nicholas K. Geranios, File)

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP)  Costs to clean up a massive nuclear weapons complex in Washington state are usually expressed in the hundreds of billions of dollars and involve decades of work.

But one project on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is progressing at a much lower price.

The federal government is moving forward with the cocooning of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage to allow radiation inside to dissipate over a period of decades, until they can be dismantled and buried.

Its relatively non-expensive, Mark French, a manager for the U.S. Department of Energy, said of cocooning. The cost of trying to dismantle the reactor and demolish the reactor core would be extremely expensive and put workers at risk.

The federal government built nine nuclear reactors at Hanford to make plutonium for atomic bombs during World War II and the Cold War. The site along the Columbia River contains America's largest quantity of radioactive waste.

The reactors are now shut down and sit like cement fortresses near the southeastern Washington city of Richland. Six have already been cocooned for long-term storage, and two more are headed in that direction. The ninth reactor was turned into a museum as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

While World War II ended in 1945 and the Cold War ended in 1989, the United States is still paying billions of dollars per year for the disposal of the nuclear waste produced by the atomic weapons that played a big role in ending those conflicts. The biggest expense is dealing with a massive volume of liquid wastes left over from the production of plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

While the liquid wastes stored in 177 underground tanks will take decades of work and hundreds of billions of dollars to clean, efforts to secure the nine plutonium reactors are much closer to completion.

FILE - Guests on a bus tour of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation view the decommissioned plutonium-producing B reactor, April 3, 2008, near Richland, Wash. The federal government is moving forward with the cost-saving "cocooning" of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a state of long-term storage for decades to allow radiation inside to dissipate until they can be dismantled and buried. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

The last two reactors, shut down in 1970 and 1971, are about to enter the cocooning stage, when they are covered with steel and cement to prevent radioactivity from escaping into the environment, French said.

The cocoons are expected to last about 75 years, by which time the radioactivity inside will have dramatically decreased and there presumably will be a plan for final disposition of the remaining parts, French said.

Every five years, workers enter the reactor building to make sure there are no leaks or rodent or bird infestations, he said.

Cleanup of Hanford, which has about 11,000 employees and is half the size of Rhode Island, started in the late 1980s, and now costs about $2.5 billion per year. The work has been slowed by technical issues, lack of funding, lawsuits from state regulators, worker exposure to radiation and turnover of contractors on the complex job.

But the handling of the old reactors is a bright spot.

The nine reactors  called B Reactor, C Reactor, D Reactor, DR Reactor, F Reactor, H Reactor, K-East Reactor, K-West Reactor, and N Reactor  were built from 1943 through 1965.

They were constructed next to the Columbia River because of the abundance of hydropower and cooling water needed by the reactors during operation.

All have been cocooned except K-East and K-West. Work on cocooning the K-East reactor has already started and should be finished by 2023, French said. Work on the K-West reactor is scheduled for completion in 2026.

The cocoon plan for K-East and K-West is to basically construct steel buildings around them. Each building is 158 feet (48.2 meters) long, 151 feet (46 meters) wide and 123 feet (37.5 meters) tall, French said. The two steel buildings will cost less than $10 million each.

The government also operated five plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina during the Cold War. All of those are also shut down, although three of the reactor buildings are being used to store radioactive materials Two of the reactors at Savannah River are closed but under a different procedure than the Hanford reactors, said Amy Boyette, a spokeswoman for Savannah River.

Future generations will decide the final disposition of the eight Hanford reactors, French said. They will likely be dismantled and buried in the central area of the Hanford site, away from the river.

Robots may be deployed in the future for that work, French said.

Hanford watchdogs generally agree with this process, said Tom Carpenter, director of the Seattle-based watchdog group Hanford Challenge.

Nobody is raising any concerns about cocooning, Carpenter said. Were all worried about the tank waste that needs immediate and urgent attention.

The bigger question is whether future generations will be willing to pay the massive costs of Hanford cleanup, he said.

Carpenter said the estimated cost to completely clean up just the tank wastes at the Hanford site is around $660 billion.

Its rather grim. Its multigenerational, he said.

This will cost more than anyone thought possible, Carpenter said of the tank wastes and other wastes that were dumped into the ground at Hanford. It's a hidden cost of the (nuclear) buildup.

By then, there might be bigger budget concerns such as dealing with the effects of climate change, Carpenter said.

The most intriguing of the old reactors is the B Reactor, the first one built during World War II. It will not be cocooned, and can be visited by tourists at the national historical park. B Reactor, which shut down in 1968, was cleaned up enough to allow some 10,000 tourists to visit each year and learn the history of Hanford. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Plutonium from Hanfords B Reactor was used in the testing of the worlds first atomic bomb in July 1945. Called the Trinity Test, the bomb was blown up in the New Mexico desert. Hanford plutonium was also used for the bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.
Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2021, file photo, a syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic at the Reading Area Community College in Reading, Pa. Companies with at least 100 workers will be required to give employees paid time off to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and paid sick leave if they have side effects from the shots. That's according to a Biden administration official who spoke Monday, Nov. 1, about pending vaccine-mandate rules from OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly under government rules issued Thursday.

The new requirements are the Biden administrations boldest move yet to persuade reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely available for months  or face financial consequences. If successful, administration officials believe it will go a long way toward ending a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

First previewed by President Joe Biden in September, the requirements will apply to about 84 million workers at medium and large businesses, although it is not clear how many of those employees are unvaccinated.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations will force the companies to require that unvaccinated workers test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and wear a mask while in the workplace.

OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses. It asked for public comment on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could handle vaccination or testing programs.

Tougher rules will apply to another 17 million people working in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. Those workers will not have an option for testing  they will need to be vaccinated.

Workers will be able to ask for exemptions on medical or religious grounds.

The requirements will not apply to people who work at home or outdoors.

Biden framed the issue as a simple choice between getting more people vaccinated or prolonging the pandemic.

While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good, he said Thursday in a statement.

Biden said his encouragement for businesses to impose mandates and his own previous requirements for the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans over 12 from 100 million in late July to about 60 million now.

Those measures, he said, have not led to mass firings or worker shortages, adding that vaccines have been required before to fight other diseases.

In this Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, photograph, a sign notifies customers that COVID-19 vaccinations are available at a pharmacy in a grocery store in Monument, Colo. Companies with at least 100 workers will be required to give employees paid time off to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and paid sick leave if they have side effects from the shots. That's according to a Biden administration official who spoke Monday, Nov. 1, about pending vaccine-mandate rules from OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

OSHA said companies that fail to comply with the regulations could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.

The agency will face enforcement challenges. Even counting help from states, OSHA has only 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers at 8 million workplaces. An administration official said the agency will respond to whistleblower complaints and make limited spot checks.

The release of the rules followed weeks of regulatory review and meetings with business groups, labor unions and others.

OSHA drafted the rules under emergency authority meant to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimated that the vaccine mandate will save more than 6,500 worker lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months.

The rules set up potential legal battles along partisan lines between states and the federal government. Several states and Republican governors threatened to sue, contending that the administration lacks the power to make such sweeping mandates under emergency authority.

OSHA's parent agency, the Labor Department, says it is on sound legal footing. The department's top legal official, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules preempt conflicting state laws or orders, including those that bar employers from requiring vaccinations, testing or face masks.

Senate Republicans immediately launched a petition to force a vote to overturn the vaccine mandate, but with Democrats controlling the chamber, the effort is nearly certain to fail.

The rules will require workers to receive either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly. Employees testing positive must be removed from the workplace.

Companies won't be required to provide or pay for tests for unvaccinated workers, but they must give paid time off for employees to get the shots and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. Requirements for masks and paid time off for shots take effect Dec. 5.

Employers covered by the requirements must verify their workers vaccination status by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards, records from doctors or pharmacies, or even an employee's own signed declaration.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a separate rule requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. A senior administration official said several large private health care organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates  96% or higher  without widespread resignations.

A previously announced requirement for federal contractors to make sure workers are vaccinated was scheduled to take effect Dec. 8, but the administration delayed that measure until Jan. 4 to match the requirements on other large employers and health care providers. Already, more than a dozen states have sued to block the mandate on contractors.

For weeks, Biden has encouraged businesses not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted businesses that announced their own vaccine requirements and urged others to follow their lead.

Administration officials say those efforts are paying off, with about 70% of adults fully vaccinated.

Workplace vaccine mandates have become more common recently, with hospitals, state and local governments and some major corporations requiring COVID-19 shots for employees. The mandates have led to overwhelming compliance  in some cases 99% of workers  although a small but vocal number have faced dismissal, filed lawsuits or sought exemptions.

United Airlines required 67,000 U.S. employees to get vaccinated or face termination. Only a couple hundred refused to do so, although about 2,000 are seeking exemptions.

In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by Nov. 1. On Thursday, the company said more than 96% of its workforce was vaccinated, including 60,500 people who got their shots after the August announcement.

Walmart, the nations largest private employer, said in late July it was requiring all workers at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and managers who travel within the United States to be vaccinated by Oct. 4. The retailer stopped short of requiring shots for front-line workers, however.

However, some companies have expressed fear that some vaccine-hesitant workers might quit, leaving their workforces even thinner in an already-tight labor market.

Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups worried that the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping period. Retailers and others also said it could worsen supply chain disruptions.

The National Retail Federation suggested the new rules are not needed because the rolling average number of new daily cases in the U.S. has fallen by more than half since September.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an emergency and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season, said David French, a senior vice president for the trade group.

The number of new infections in the U.S. is still falling from a summer surge caused by the highly contagious delta variant, but the rate of decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6% from two weeks ago, at more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day.

Cole Stevenson, a 34-year-old autoworker at the Ford Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, said he remains uncomfortable with a vaccine that was developed just a year ago.

He intends to get weekly COVID-19 tests and says he wont reconsider getting the vaccine even if the tests are a financial or logistical burden.

Its getting pretty disgusting how much the government thinks they can be involved in peoples lives, he said. If the whole thing is sort of cooling down and cases are lowering, then buzz off  dont force it on people.

___

Associated Press writers Paul Wiseman and Hope Yen in Washington, Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit, Stacey Plaisance-Jenkins in Picayune, Mississippi, and Matt OBrien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed.
Jane went to see Dr. Arcel Bissonnette for help with a nagging stomach problem, but instead left feeling violated after he allegedly subjected her to invasive examinations she said had no connection to her medical issue.

Jane went to see Dr. Arcel Bissonnette for help with a nagging stomach problem, but instead left feeling violated after he allegedly subjected her to invasive examinations she said had no connection to her medical issue.

Jane, not her real name, is one of 21 women who allege Bissonnette sexually assaulted them during medical examinations at the Ste. Anne Hospital and the Seine Medical Centre between 2001 and 2018.

"I was having some stomach problems and I didnt have a family doctor and there were some people seeing him already that I knew," said Jane, who started seeing Bissonnette in 2016.

"From the very get-go, I got a physical  which I thought was normal, I hadnt seen a doctor in couple of years  but every single time I went to the doctors office for anything, I got a physical exam," said Jane, who is in her mid-20s. "If I would get results for blood work, I would still get a physical afterwards I would get a vaginal and anal exam every single time I would see him."

KATIE MAY / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Ste. Anne Hospital in Ste. Anne, MB, where Dr. Arcel Bissonnette, 61, practised.

Jane said she went to the physician more than a dozen times in a year and a half. She was so desperate for relief, she didnt start to feel something was wrong until about a year after she started seeing him.

"By the 10th or 11th visit, I started feeling uncomfortable. I would be emotional laying on the table because I felt like it was wrong but I was still dealing with the stomach problem so obviously, I had to keep seeing a doctor to find answers."

On one of her first visits, Jane alleged, Bissonnette had her strip naked so he could examine her spine for scoliosis.

"That was pretty strange but I didnt think anything of it. I hadnt seen a doctor in a while."

Janes experience "would definitely raise alarms," said Kemlin Nembhard, executive director of the Womens Health Clinic.

"Its important to realize that doctors are in a position of power on a lot of levels when they are seeing clients," Nembhard said. "It is our inclination to trust doctors, but I think even with that we should also feel comfortable asking questions.

"If you have a health-care professional you dont feel comfortable asking questions of, whether its because of what you believe or what they believe or their behaviour toward you, it may be time to find another health-care professional."

Jane came forward after seeing news reports of Bissonnettes arrest in November 2020 for allegedly assaulting six patients.

"I just was concerned if there were any other young girls like me who didnt know what was going on," she said. "I figured the more people who spoke up about it, the better."

Jane said the experience has made her distrust doctors.

"Its difficult to find another doctor since then because I dont have a lot of trust for doctors after that," she said. "Theres a huge lack of women doctors in Winnipeg. Its very hard to find a woman doctor."

Shannon, not her real name, saw Bissonnette once in the early 2000s when her regular doctor wasnt available.

Shannon didnt want to discuss the specifics of her experience, fearing it might jeopardize the case against Bissonnette, but said she had been conflicted for years over whether the doctor's actions amounted to assault.

"If he had pulled his penis out and kissed me, it would be like super clear it was a sexual assault. This wasnt as clear," she said. "I walked out disgusted and emotional, but I would not have walked out saying he sexually assaulted me. It was more like Boy, that was the weirdest exam I ever had."

KATIE MAY / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Seine Medical Centre in Ste. Anne, MB, where Bissonnette is accused of sexually assaulting six patients.

Shannon, who is in her 40s, said news that other patients had accused Bissonnette of assaulting them convinced her she should report her experience to police.

"I was raised in a household where women had to remain quiet and not say much, and doctors are high authority just (like) priests and the Pope," she said. "You kind of feel like your word isnt worth much You push it to the back of your mind, stuff it down and never deal with it."

Bissonette, 62, was arrested a year ago for allegedly assaulting six patients. He was rearrested last month during a Steinbach court appearance, accused of assaulting 15 more patients.

Bissonnette, who had practised medicine in Manitoba since 1990, has been released on bail on the condition he surrender his passport and not move from his Ste. Anne home without court permission.

In January 2019, nearly a year before Bissonnette's first arrest, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba prohibited him from conducting breast or pelvic exams without a chaperone.

Bissonnettes next court date is Nov. 18 in Steinbach.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Results from a government-mandated COVID-19 screening program for front-line public servants are not being tracked by Manitoba Public Health at this time.

Results from a government-mandated COVID-19 screening program for front-line public servants are not being tracked by Manitoba Public Health at this time.

Deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said the rapid antigen testing program for unvaccinated health-care workers, education and child care staff, and a number of other government employees, is not run by public health.

"To the best of my knowledge, it is not being followed," Atwal said Wednesday.

He said people who test positive on a rapid test are directed to take a confirmatory PCR test and, if the result is positive, its at that point public health launches an investigation.

However, Atwal said, at this time, public health would not be "separating out the rapid test positives" from results found through PCR testing for the purposes of reporting.

On Wednesday, the Free Press reported six asymptomatic, unvaccinated health-care workers had a positive result since rapid testing  required by public health order  came into effect Oct. 18.

The positive results were confirmed with a PCR test, a spokesman for Shared Health said, and noted three cases were in staff from Prairie Mountain, two from Southern Health, and one from Winnipeg.

However, the Manitoba government was unable to say how many educators, child care staff and other designated employees have tested positive as part of the screening program.

Regular rapid testing for unvaccinated government employees who have contact with vulnerable populations is meant only for people without symptoms of infection; symptomatic people are directed to take a PCR test.

Atwal said the mandate allows "enterprises to continue to function with the workforce."

"For the small percentage of employees who are not vaccinated for whatever reason, it makes that work environment safe and it makes that environment safe for even the public to interact with those individuals as well," he said.

"It mitigates risk. It doesnt eliminate it 100 per cent. We recognize that and we still encourage and say that the testing doesnt replace vaccination."

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA  First Nations have started another search of a suspected Manitoba burial site at a former residential school in Dauphin with documented student abuse.

OTTAWA  First Nations have started another search of a suspected Manitoba burial site at a former residential school in Dauphin with documented student abuse.

"These innocent children were stolen from their families and their nations," wrote Grand Chief Eugene Eastman, who oversees the Treaty 2 territory. "They all deserve to be found and honoured, so that the Creator may guide them home, and bring peace to their families."

Treaty 2, a grouping of 10 First Nations around Riding Mountain National Park and the southern Interlake, held a traditional ceremony Monday at the site of the former McKay school in Dauphin.

On Tuesday, they had the Winnipeg firm KGS Group start a two-day search using ground-penetrating radar. It will take weeks to analyze the data.

The six acres searched, known locally as Parkland Crossing, is owned by the Dauphin Church of Christ. The land was originally owned by the Anglican Church, which ran the residential school from 1957 to 1988, as well as an earlier affiliate in The Pas.

In testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, survivors of the Dauphin school described intense loneliness, with one saying she attempted suicide through pills around age 12.

Another said the boys kept running away, and each time, supervisors would use the strap on the other students.

"This kept continuing, and it escalated so bad, a eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, 10-year-old  we ransacked the whole dorm. We went violent," testified Larry Beardy.

He and other Cree children from across northern Manitoba described being taken on trains that departed Churchill, gathering kids at various stops, always without their parents. The children would be dropped off at Dauphin or schools in Saskatchewan, sometimes separated from siblings.

One described coming off the train and having officials at the Dauphin school immediately strip her, cover her in an oil and cut her hair.

A 1970 inspection of the school found the food to be repetitive, with students served the same meal each day through the week, and often missing the recommended two servings of fruit per day.

A man who attended the school and became a supervisor there in the late 1960s, Ernest Constant, was convicted in 2005 for incident assault against several pupils, and sentenced to two years less a day.

First Nations have started similar ground searches at the Brandon, Sagkeeng and Long Plain schools, while some are trying to access federal funding to start such work.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
The University of Manitoba has announced a U-turn to allow students access to readings and other course content posted online amid a strike by faculty  if instructors have not removed them  in response to community backlash.

The University of Manitoba has announced a U-turn to allow students access to readings and other course content posted online amid a strike by faculty  if instructors have not removed them  in response to community backlash.

Before professors took to virtual and in-person picket lines this week, some reassured students that material uploaded to UM Learn, a digital classroom platform, before Tuesday would remain accessible.

On the first day of the strike, however, administration made those courses inaccessible to students without notice. Teaching assistants and markers were suddenly unable to view assignments online.

Bethani Reid, a third-year science student, said she panicked when she realized course information on the platform was blank.

"You cant say you value your students when, first of all, youre the entire reason that our professors are on strike and secondly, you take down course material and dont even publicly state that a) youre going to do that and b) it was your choice," said Reid, who is involved with Students Supporting UMFA. "It begs the question: do you want segregation between your instructors and your students?"

Hundreds of professors, instructors and librarians walked off the job this week to call for hikes to U of Ms salary schedule, citing ongoing concerns with retention and recruitment. The faculty association has called on the Progressive Conservative government to withdraw its wage increase mandate, saying it amounts to interference in free and fair bargaining.

The province says mandates are standard practice, given governments are stewards of public funds and key funders of post-secondary institutes.

In introductory biology courses, physical lab manuals are typically in students hands, but the virtual versions suddenly disappeared this week when instructor Cassandra Debets and her colleagues went on strike.

"Having that content is essential for them to be keeping up with their studies and keeping up with activities prior to Nov. 2," said Debets, who chose not to shut down her course content to create extra hardship for students who have experienced constant learning disruptions since the pandemic began.

In a community update, Laurie Schnarr, vice-provost of students, said administration heard that not being able to access all courses in the system was an issue. "We addressed this as quickly as possible to reduce any additional stress this caused you," wrote Schnarr.

Neither Schnarr nor other senior leaders, who discussed the subject during a virtual Senate meeting Wednesday, disclosed the reasoning behind the decision to bar course content.

During the afternoon meeting, Senate members  some of them present with pro-union Zoom backgrounds  approved a motion to cement students rights to accommodation should they choose not to cross a picket line, be it virtual or in-person, to attend ongoing classes taught by members of the faculty association or other instructors.

Students must be reasonably accommodated with respect to any missed material, assignments or tests, and requests to defer exams are not to be denied "up to the point of undue hardship."

Also Wednesday, U of M president Michael Benarroch called on the community to respect the right to strike. During the Senate meeting, Benarroch acknowledged some "unfortunate incidents" during the strike.

In one incident this week, a picketer was struck by a vehicle, but did not suffer serious injuries, the union said.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
OTTAWA  A dramatic showdown in Parliament over censored documents from a Winnipeg virology lab is set for a second act.

OTTAWA  A dramatic showdown in Parliament over censored documents from a Winnipeg virology lab is set for a second act.

"I think we're headed for much of the same kind of parliamentary conflict as we saw in the last Parliament," NDP health critic Don Davies said Wednesday.

In June, the federal government took the House of Commons Speaker to court as part of its months-long quest to withhold documents surrounding the expulsion of two researchers from the National Microbiology Laboratory.

In July 2019, renowned Ebola researcher Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were removed from the Arlington Street lab and later terminated by the Public Health Agency of Canada, which cited an "administrative matter" involving "possible policy breaches."

The RCMP is investigating Qiu and Cheng, but neither has been charged.

Months before her ouster, Qiu had sent samples of Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Sources in Winnipeg and Ottawa have told the Free Press this was done without adequate paperwork, an allegation Public Health has denied.

In any case, opposition parties have spent months trying to access the governments records about what happened.

Ottawa has only provided highly censored documents, citing privacy rules for months, before suddenly saying the records could endanger national security.

By law, MPs have almost unconstrained powers to compel documents. Opposition parties have asked the government to have the Commons law clerk examine the records and withhold sensitive material, instead of letting Public Health make that call.

"What I cannot accept is the government redacting or censoring their own documents, particularly when political embarrassment may be the issue here," Davies said in an interview.

The Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois this week said they, too, plan to keep pressing for answers.

The office of Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos insists it has been transparent.

"We worked collaboratively with Parliament and provided the documents requested with protections in place for national security," wrote spokesman Andrew MacKendrick.

"We also proposed additional reasonable pathways to Parliament to share information, in a way that doesn't compromise national security."

The Liberals had proposed sharing the uncensored records with a national security panel of MPs and senators who are approved by the prime minister, which the other parties rejected.

"It's not for the Liberal government to tell Parliament where documents go when they've been requested by (MPs)," said Davies, who was a member of that national security panel until the August election call.

This spring's spat escalated to the Commons summoning Public Healths top bureaucrat to be admonished in the chamber by the Speaker.

Davies expects another months-long battle for information.

"This Parliament has the same duty as the last Parliament, which is to stand up for our system of government, and the right of Canadian people to get access to the information we need, to ensure the government is acting appropriately," he said.

In May, the Globe and Mail reported the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had first tipped off Public Health about Qiu and her husband, raising concerns about their contacts in China and the possible transfer of intellectual property.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
For years, councillors and residents have complained about illegal rooming houses near the University of Manitoba because they feared crowded dwellings might put student tenants in danger.

For years, councillors and residents have complained about illegal rooming houses near the University of Manitoba because they feared crowded dwellings might put student tenants in danger.

Now, one city councillor believes pandemic conditions and new developments are beginning to alleviate the problem.

"The pandemic has created, I would say, a silver lining," said Coun. Janice Lukes.

COVID-19 forced a shift to remote learning, which meant many landlords of crowded homes in Fort Richmond and University Heights lost student renters, said Lukes. Some of those homes were sold and families moved in, she said.

In addition, developers have created almost 1,700 new rental units to address demand in the area  including 775 units in four apartment blocks that have opened over the past two years  since Lukes began lobbying for changes in 2014.

Since many units can be shared by multiple students, she expects that will offer affordable rents and better living conditions.

"Some of (the rooming) houses that were renting apartments would have an 1,100-square-foot house with eight bedrooms. The safety, the fire hazards were just off the scale," said Lukes.

In a 2017 report, Lukes estimated there were as many as 150 illegal rooming houses around the U of M based on calls to her office. The report has not been updated.

The councillor noted Fort Richmond complaints have generated the most illegal rooming house investigations of any Winnipeg neighbourhood each year since 2017. Those complaints triggered 13 investigations in 2020, down from 19 in 2019, 26 in 2018 and 35 in 2017.

The city proactively investigated an additional 29 illegal rooming house concerns last year.

Jacquie Field, chairperson of the Fort Richmond University Heights Neighbourhood Association, also believes families have moved into some houses that had been occupied by multiple students, although there is no official count of the apparent trend.

Three homes on her street were sold this summer, and it appears families have moved in, she said.

"Overall, my impression is that it is better, its improved but that does not mean that there are not houses where theyve put a bedroom in a living room and dont have a (fire) escape," she said.

Developers have created almost 1,700 new rental units to address demand in the area surrounding the University of Manitoba, including this new apartment block at 30 University Crescent. (Shannon VanRaes / Winnipeg Free Press)

A Fort Richmond resident who lives next door to a suspected rooming house, said the issue is a constant source of frustration.

"Theres vehicles all over the driveway, theres vehicles on lawns, theres vehicles up and down the street from very few houses. The houses are in disrepair theres garbage in the back," said David, who did not want his last name published.

"It just leads to terrible-looking properties."

He believes there are at least three rooming houses on his street, with seven to 10 people living in each one. While few students are currently heading to the university for classes, many rooming houses have been filled with non-student tenants instead, he said, adding he fears the problem will grow worse once students finally return to classes, which is expected to occur this winter.

"Im skeptical that (this issue is) being resolved," he said.

Such concerns remain a pressing issue, Coun. Markus Chambers said.

"For those that are living there, it is having an impact potentially on the decline of neighbourhoods," said Chambers.

A city report notes 80 illegal rooming house complaints made by members of the public were investigated in 53 neighbourhoods last year, in addition to 60 city-initiated investigations.

The report states there were 520 fire-prevention bylaw infractions in Winnipeg rooming houses last year, up from 351 in 2019. The violations included problems with fire extinguishers, "fuel-fired heating," fire alarms, smoke alarms, dryer vents and exits, among other issues.

Coun. Sherri Rollins, chairperson of councils protection committee, said that increase poses serious concerns.

"(At) these converted residential dwellings (rooming houses), the life-safety risks are even higher because theres that many more people living in close proximity to one another. When they cant get... out of the building, weve seen people die," said Rollins.

The trend shows the city must continue to focus on fire-safety education, she said.

Joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  The first man shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was hyperaggressive that night, threatened to kill Rittenhouse and later lunged for his rifle just before the 17-year-old fired, witnesses testified Thursday.

FILE - In this Aug. 25, 2020, file photo, Kyle Rittenhouse carries a weapon as he walks along Sheridan Road in Kenosha, Wis., during a night of unrest following the weekend police shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse is white. So were the three men he shot during street protests in Kenosha in 2020. But for many people, Rittenhouse's trial will be watched closely as the latest referendum on race and the American judicial system. (Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via AP, File)

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  The first man shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was hyperaggressive that night, threatened to kill Rittenhouse and later lunged for his rifle just before the 17-year-old fired, witnesses testified Thursday.

The testimony at Rittenhouse's murder trial came from two witnesses who had been called to the stand by the prosecution but gave accounts often more favorable to the defense in the politically polarizing case.

Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with shooting three men, two of them fatally, in the summer of 2020. The aspiring police officer had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from violent protests that broke out over the police shooting of a Black man.

Richie McGinniss, who was recording events on a cellphone that night for the conservative website The Daily Caller, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot that night, was killed after chasing down Rittenhouse and making a lunge for the gun.

I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon, McGinniss said.

This undated photo shows Anthony Huber, right, and Hannah Gittings. Huber was fatally shot, Aug. 25, 2020, along with Joseph Rosenbaum by Kyle Rittenhouse during a protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer on Aug. 23. Rittenhouse was 17-years-old when he traveled from his home in Illinois, just across the Wisconsin border, during protests that broke out. Jury selection in the Rittenhouse trial was due to start Monday, Nov. 1, 2021. (Hannah Gittings via AP).

Ryan Balch, a former Army infantryman who carried an AR-style rifle that night and walked around patrolling the streets with Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum was hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner, including trying to set fires and throwing rocks.

Balch said he got between Rosenbaum and another man while Rosenbaum was trying to start a fire, and Rosenbaum got angry, shouting, If I catch any of you guys alone tonight Im going to f- kill you!

Balch said that Rittenhouse was within earshot and that he believed the threat was aimed at both of them.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger questions Koerri Washington during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool)

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

The killing of Rosenbaum, 36, has emerged as one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video.

In an attempt to undo some of the damage done by his own witness, prosecutor Thomas Binger said McGinniss' testimony about what Rosenbaum was intending to do was complete guesswork.

A location on a map is shown as Koerri Washington, also known as Koerri Elijah testifies during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool)

Isn't it? he asked.

Well, McGinniss replied, he said, `F- you.' And then he reached for the weapon.

But McGinniss also appeared to boost the prosecutions case when he said he had a sense that something bad could happen that night because of all the guns in the area. The prosecutor also elicited testimony from McGinniss and Balch that affirmed Rosenbaum was not armed that night and did not actually hurt anyone.

Kyle Rittenhouse defense team Corey Chirafisi, Mark Richards, and Natalie Wisco, arrive before the start of Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP)

In his testimony, McGinniss said that as Rosenbaum lunged, Rittenhouse kind of dodged around with his weapon and then leveled the gun and fired.

Binger repeatedly tried to get McGinniss to say Rosenbaum was not lunging but falling when he was shot, as McGinniss said in a media interview days after the shooting.

But McGinniss said: He was lunging, falling. I would use those as synonymous terms in this situation because basically, you know, he threw his momentum towards the weapon.

Wendy Rittenhouse, left, talks to her son Kyle Rittenhouse, before the start of his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool Photo via AP)

As prosecutors played footage of Rosenbaum lying fatally wounded in a car lot, McGinniss struggled to keep his composure on the stand, rapidly inhaling and exhaling, then averting his eyes from a video monitor. The prosecutor apologized for playing it, saying he had to do it.

Across the room, Rittenhouse appeared to look away from his desktop monitor and cast his eyes downward as the video showed Rosenbaum bleeding from the head, groaning loudly.

The defense also has said that a shot fired by someone in the crowd moments before Rittenhouse began shooting made the young man believe he was under attack.

Koerri Washington says he recognizes a photograph of a garbage truck on fire while testifying during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool)

Kenosha Detective Martin Howard testified that video shows that a protester, Joshua Ziminski, had fired the first shot into the air. Howard said he used a stopwatch and timed five or six videos to determine that 2.5 seconds later, Rittenhouse began firing at Rosenbaum.

A wealth of video has been played in court that captured the tumultuous demonstration and the series of shootings.

The shooting of Rosenbaum set in motion the bloodshed that followed moments later. Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wisconsin, who was seen on bystander video hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard.

Corey Chirafisi, an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, points to a video while questioning Koerri Washington during the trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool)

Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a protester from West Allis, Wisconsin, who had a gun in his hand as he stepped toward Rittenhouse.

Before testimony resumed Thursday, the judge dismissed a juror who had made a joke to a court security officer about the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the Black man whose wounding triggered the Kenosha protests. The juror, a retired man, declined to repeat the joke for the judge.

It is clear that the appearance of bias is present and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said.

Kyle Rittenhouse mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, watches video testimony during her son's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP)

Prosecutors also replayed widely seen video of the interview that The Daily Caller did with Rittenhouse before the shooting.

It began with Rittenhouse, a former police youth cadet, in front of a boarded-up building, where he said he and other men were there to protect this business, and part of my job is theres somebody hurt, Im running into harms way. He also said he was there to provide medical aid.

Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted in the politically and racially polarizing case that has stirred furious debate over self-defense, vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the racial unrest that erupted around the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other cases like it.

Judge Bruce Schroeder talks about the juror who attempted to tell a joke to a bailiff during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. The juror, known as Juror No. 7, was removed due to the incident. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP)

___

Forliti reported from Minneapolis; Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press writer Dave Kolpack contributed from Fargo, North Dakota.

___

Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
This story originally appeared on Nov. 23, 1949, in the Winona Republican-Herald, a predecessor of the Winona Daily News.

Burglary of an Ettrick, Wis., tavern was thwarted here early today when Lester Dick, 61-year-old co-operator, pointed his 12-gauge shotgun out of the second-story bedroom and let the burglars have it.

He got one of them in the leg, with some 35 pellets, and the other burglar was injured a few minutes later when their car rolled off the road in the escape attempt.

Now theyre both in the Whitehall Community hospital, under guard by Trempealeau County Sheriff Charles Kehholtz and deputies. On hospital records theyre listed as:

- Ernest Culver, 32, of Madison, injured in the accident. He was being X-rayed for chest injuries.

- Leslie R. McDaniels, 34, of Sheboygan, shot by Dick.

District Attorney John Quinn said this noon, after lengthy interrogation of the two men, that warrants would be issued today charging each one of the men with breaking and entering at nighttime.

However, Mr. Quinn added, they both deny any part in the Ettrick affair.

They dont openly admit anything, Mr. Quinn said, but McDaniels particularly is quite proud of his proficiency in his profession. He admits making his living at it.

McDaniels admits serving time in the pen, and he says that Culver has, too.

Mr. Quinn was contacting: state crime authorities to ascertain their criminal records if any.

Culver and McDaniels were under fire from two guns as soon as they were surprised in their burglary attempt.

Deputy Sheriff Albert Severson, smoking revolver in hand, chased them down the street and fired some four shots, but the fleeing burglars, reached their getaway Packard before he could down them.

It all happened about 4 a. m.

Just before the frustrated attempt on the Alvin Beirne tavern, operated by Dick and Floyd Burns, the two burglars sawed their way into the James Wall tavern and picked up an estimated $100. The two taverns are adjacent,

After that successful operation, they moved over to the Beirne tavern. First, they tried the back window, and Clayton Casey, who lives in the vicinity, observed that unsuccessful attempt.

He called Deputy Sheriff Severson.

While Deputy Severson was en route the burglars moved around to the front of the tavern and began sawing a hole in the front door so they could reach inside and open the door. The same method had been used at the Wall tavern.

About the time they accomplished entry, Severson arrived and the Dicks, asleep upstairs, awoke.

I could see them moving inside, Severson said today, so I went in. I had my 38.

But when I got in there I couldnt see them, so I figured they had gone out the back door. Its a long building.

I ran out the front and to the back. Nobody was there.

About that time the burglars, who apparently had secreted themselves in the tavern momentarily while Severson was inside, came out the front door.

Wounded Man Flees

There they were greeted by the fire of Dicks 12-gauge shotgun, aimed from a second-story window.

McDaniels was hit, but kept going,

As they came abreast of the building, running along the sidewalk toward their car, Severson fired once from about 50 feet, but missed.

Severson ran to the front of the building. By that time the burglars had reached their car and were roaring away over Creamery Hill. He fired three times at the car.

Three miles out of town, on the highway 53 detour to Galesville, they went off the road on a curve, adjacent to the Edwin Borreson farm. The crash aroused the Borresons As the Borresons got out on the porch to investigate, the wounded and injured burglars came up.

Asked to be Taken to Doctor

They wanted my husband to take them to Winona and see a doctor, said Mrs, Borreson today, but he wouldnt do that.

Instead he called the doctor in Ettrick. We took them inside. Of course, they didnt say anything about Ettrick. We thought they had just been hurt in the accident.

The one man (McDaniels) could hardly walk, and he complained about his back.

When the doctor and Dick arrived, the Borresons discovered they were playing hosts to two burglars

Deputy Severson and Sheriff Keilholtz, who had been called by Severson, also came. In the badly wrecked car, they discovered such burglary tools as bit and brace, extra license plates and screwdrivers.

The deputy said neither was carrying a gun when captured.

Winona Republican-Herald, November 3, 1951, Ettrick, Wis.  While in jail at Whitehall awaiting his trial, McDaniels wrote the story of his life of crime, which began at the age of eight. He is now serving from one to seven years at Waupun as a result of his escapade here. After reading the sordid tale which McDaniels weaves, one might question whether anyone so steeped in crime could ever mend his ways.

The Viroqua attorney who defended McDaniels believes he will. Attorney M.N. Daffinrud has known McDaniels all his life and says that Leslie was a victim of circumstances, that he never had a chance.

McDaniels, according to his life story, was born in poverty, near Viroqua, the youngest of a family of 12 children. He admits that his sex life began at the age of eight when he had relations with a neighbor girl of 15. He also acknowledges that stealing came naturally to him. In 1926, when he was 9-years-old, he broke into a boxcar, stole some bananas and a box of tobacco.

It was a result of this incident that McDaniels was declared a delinquent and sent to the Waukesha industrial school for boys.

From that time on, he has been in penal institutions almost 21 years  at various periods. The story he tells is a sordid one, of escapes from those penal institutions end of many crimes.

Leslie developed a hatred for the law because, he writes, whenever anything happened in the vicinity where he was, the bulls or dicks would try to pin the crime on me.

McDaniels charges that he observed cruelty to inmates of institutions where he was a prisoner. He says he saw a guard beating a boy at Waukesha.

The boy, McDaniels claims, was on the floor being kicked brutally by a guard, and the next day died of an internal hemorrhage.

Heart Failure?

A death certificate reported heart failure, however, according to McDaniels. One of the nurses, he said, was keeping company with the guard and through her efforts, a cover-up was managed.

After Leslies many escapes from penal institutions, he usually wound up back at Viroqua, his story says. During free periods he admits robbing and stealing cars, often wrecking them.

In 1934, Leslie recalls, his father was found dead on the kitchen floor of their home. Although McDaniels had spent the night at a sisters, attempts were made at pinning the blame on him, he says.

He was questioned by the sheriff and told to plead guilty. . . to make peace with God.

Brother, he wrote, some people can be dumb without half trying! The real murderer was later arrested and sent to Waupun.

It was during that same year that McDaniels was convicted of entering and robbing a farmhouse and was sent to Waupun for the first time. He describes the prison cellhouse as home for 298 men with gallon jugs as the plumbing.

Men were going Insane at the prison and at a very alarming rate, writes McDaniels. One of the factors was the silent system. Under this rule, there was absolutely no talking, excepting during the recreation period.

Thoughts turned mostly to the past, Leslie reveals, and of a possible future. A good many had nothing but the grave for a goal.

McDaniels witnessed reforms at Waupun in 1939 when a new warden was installed, he relates.

Out of prison the next year, Mc-Daniels teamed up with two men and three women  one but a girl of 17  and they went on a wild rampage of burglaries.

McDaniels boasts that they had more jewelry at one time than was on the shelves of two jewelry stores they entered.

Working in Wisconsin and other Midwest states, the six criminals robbed some 200 odd persons.

Finally landing at Leavenworth, McDaniels tells of meeting Pendergast, the Kansas City political boss, and others, including a hardened member of the famed Touhy mob.

After his capture here in November, 1949, Leslie was sentenced from one to seven years on two counts  running together. This, he says, was the result of hard fighting on the part of his attorney  the only person who ever befriended me.

Attorney Daffinrud believes that Leslie will not be sentenced again. If he were, the veteran law-breaker might get up to 50 years for certain offenses.

The Viroqua lawyer says that Leslies intelligence and his faith will prevent him from getting into trouble again.

Time will prove whether or not Dafflnruds conviction is right.

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Brian Kelley said hes going to do his best to treat today like any other day. He and his wife, Robin, are headed to work. Their eldest daughter, Terra, is headed to school.

It will be the first time since the death of their daughter, Jayna, three years ago today, that they are going to try and go about their lives on the anniversary of her death.

Were going to give it a try, Brian Kelley said. We have the understanding we can bow out. The start of November is always going to bring about memories ... the trauma of that day.

Jayna Kelley was 9 at the time she was struck and killed, along with two other Girl Scouts and one of the scouts mothers, on Nov. 3, 2018, as they picked up trash along Highway P in the village of Lake Hallie.

Brian Kelley admits he has good days and bad days dealing with his grief, as does everyone else in their house. They bond together to get through it.

We talk about Jayna, he said. We may go see her grave. Robin writes a journal to her. We look at her pictures, and share memories when they pop up on Facebook.

At Jaynas funeral, Brian vowed he was going to start a non-profit organization in his daughters name, to raise money for programs she loved. The Jayna Kelley Memorial Foundation was launched.

Its become our purpose, he said. Its good therapy for us, to do something productive, for her.

For instance, Jayna loved animals. Her Girl Scout Troop would go to the Chippewa County Humane Association and help care for animals.

We try to do as much as we can, to make the community better, he said. Last year, we gave $39,000. This year, we gave out $120,000. We had some funds we invested that did pretty well. We had one significant donor that gave us a lot; we didnt have to touch the principle.

Brian Kelley said they have held a handful of fundraisers, including an event on Jaynas birthday, which is June 10. While the goal was for the Foundation to be perpetual, Kelley said he never imagined they would be able to raise so much money so quickly.

People are just so generous, he said. Its amazing. Its surreal to see how supportive people are, still three years later.

The money this year went to: $50,000 for Camp Nawakwa; $10,000 each for Northwest Wisconsin Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Sleep in Heavenly Peace and the Chippewa Falls Family Support Center; $5,000 each for the Eau Claire County Humane Association, the Eau Claire Area School District GATEWAYS program, Touched Twice Unlimited, the Chippewa County Humane Association, the Bruce School Weekend Backpack Program, the Helpful Hearts Foundation, the Chippewa County Foster Program, and the Ronald McDonald House of Rochester Angels of Inspiration.

The funds have been distributed over the past eight days to the variety of organizations.

Its great to do these things, Brian Kelley said. Everyone is appreciative when you do these things. Everyone understands our situation.

Years before the crash, Robin Kelley started writing a kids book, Ostriches Eat Sausages. Jaynas death gave her the push to complete it. The book is available at a variety of area booksellers as well as on Amazon.

So far, they have sold 950 copies, with the proceeds going to the Foundation.

Jayna loved the book; it was just part-way done when she read it, Brian Kelley said.

To donate to the Foundation, visit www.jaynakelley.com

Moving past the crash

Colten Treu, 22, and John Stender, 24, had purchased a can of Dust-off at the Lake Hallie Walmart on Nov. 3, 2018. On the drive back to the home they shared on the south side of Chippewa Falls, they took turns huffing from the cannister. At about 11:20 a.m., Treu  the driver  veered off Highway P and into a group of Girl Scouts cleaning up trash alongside the road.

Treus vehicle struck and killed three Girl Scouts: Jayna Kelley, Autumn Helgeson, and Haylee Hickle, along with Hickles mother, Sara Jo Schneider. Treu drove away from the scene. They had the vehicle in a garage. Later that day, both men turned themselves in to authorities.

Treu was sentenced in March 2020 to serve 54 years in prison. Stender was sentenced to three years of prison in September.

Brian and Robin Kelley attended every court hearing over the past three years.

Its a relief to have the court stuff behind us, he said. Its hard to have to re-live it.

Kelley said the crash has united the families who lost loved ones that day. He said they continue to stay in touch and be there for each other.

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Plans have been ongoing to understand the future function of the Baraboo Fire Department and the Baraboo District Ambulance Service as officials await the results of a study to show how the two entities might best function within the city.

City Administrator Casey Bradley said the city entered into a contract for $49,835 in late spring with the International City/County Managers Association partner, the Center for Public Safety Management LLC of Washington, D.C., to conduct a study to evaluate how the two agencies would work together.

There are three possible options: the entities remain separate, they combine into a city organization or they become one district and what each of those options looks like.

Its not necessarily a consolidation study, but kind of an analysis of whats best for the residents that both are serving, Bradley said. Whats the best way to ultimately have their organization structured and operate and that gets us to, What kind of a building do we need?

Because they didnt know what the future of emergency services would look like in the city, it didnt make much sense to go out and build a brand new building. If plans follow their current ideal timeline, Bradley said construction could begin in 2023.

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Council President Ian Gray said he favored the use of the state roads for if ATV/UTV routes are created. However he would not like to see the entire city opened up to ATV and UTV use.

That would only serve to disturb people, Gray said.

Alderperson Michael Clark said people who live on the state roads appreciate quiet as well. Alderperson Trina Reid said she did not favor having the routes in Columbus citing noise and safety issues.

Motiff said she didnt believe that the vehicles were louder than motorcycles or vehicle radios at full blast. She also believed that it could bring people to shop and visits restaurants in Columbus.

Reid said she would have no issue with the vehicles being used as things such as plows in the city.

Alderperson Amy Roelke said that people do get used to noise after the live in an area where they hear it regularly and pointed out the train that goes through Columbus as one example.

Gray said the discussion would be tabled while more information is gathered such as safety, the benefit of the routes, costs and the routes themselves.
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The vote at Mondays council meeting to replace the Ward 3 position did not result in any applicant receiving a majority vote of those members present (six). Schacht determined the vote was not legally sufficient to appoint a successor and; therefore, no legal appointment was actually made.

Schacht said she contacted the three candidates so they may indicate their continued desire to be considered.

Other residents in the Ward 3 may also apply. The city will take letters of interest and declarations of candidacy until 4 p.m., Dec. 2. The common council will then conduct a new vote to fill the vacancy on Dec. 6.

Anderson told the Daily Citizen that hes not happy with Schacts decision.

It would be more appropriate to have the Ward 3 election this spring as a special election and have the seat remain open until then, he said.

State statute allows aldermanic vacancies to be filled by the common council, by majority vote, appointing a successor to serve for the residue of the unexpired term (2023 in this case) or until a special election is held, or an office may remain vacant until an election is held.

Mayor Glewen said a special election was considered, but ruled out.
JUNEAU  A 51-year-old Sun Prairie man made his initial appearance in court Wednesday charged with stealing a cart of merchandise from a Beaver Dam store including two television.

Kenneth Maclin faces felony counts of retail theft and bail jumping and misdemeanor counts of possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia and two misdemeanor counts of bail jumping. He could face up to 10 years in prison of the charges.

Maclin appeared before Dodge County Court Commissioner Steven Seim and was placed on a $10,000 cash bond. As conditions of his bond, Maclin may not have any direct or indirect contact or communication with the business.

According to the criminal complaint, Beaver Dam police were advised on Tuesday at 8:40 p.m. that a man was walking out a back door of an unidentified business stealing televisions. The man had a full cart of items including the televisions, but some items were recovered before he left in a Jeep Patriot being driven by another person.

The vehicle was stopped by another officer on North Spring Street at Woodland Drive.

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Over the last several weeks I have had concerned citizens contact me regarding issues about reports that the FBI is going to come to investigate school board violence and my stance on voter fraud complaints.

As a result of the many questions, here is my input.

First, many are aware of the United States Attorney Generals letter to the FBI directing them to act on violence at school board-type events. I am here to tell you that I have had zero reports of violence occurring at our local school board meetings that would rise to the level of a state crime, let alone a federal crime.

Additionally, we must be careful not to trample on the rights of citizens who have the right to express their opinions to their school board members. Of course, those parents must remain lawful while doing so.

I said it last summer during the lawless riots across our nation and I will say it again. I will protect the First Amendment rights of any citizen regardless of the viewpoint they hold. If a person steps out of line and breaks the law that is no longer an expression of free speech. We will hold lawbreakers accountable for their actions.

Nothing has changed as far as my stance on this issue and I have seen no lawless riots at school board meetings in Dodge County.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  The North Carolina General Assembly completed redistricting maps Thursday for the next decade, carving boundaries that would likely give Republicans at least two more U.S. House seats and help the GOP retain its state legislative majorities.

The House and Senate voted along party lines for districts drawn on the basis of 2020 census figures. Each of the three maps  for the House, the Senate and the congressional delegation  had already passed one chamber by Wednesday.

Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers veto stamp cant block redistricting plans, leaving Democrats and their allies with lawsuits as their remaining tool to fight them. In the 2010s, they successfully challenged GOP maps as illegal partisan and racial gerrymanders  problems they believe exist again now. One lawsuit already has been initiated.

Is it going to come down to litigation being filed? Yes  and what the courts have to say about it, said state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri of Wake County, the Democrats' No. 2 leader. If the maps are upheld, they would get first use for the March 8 primary. Candidate filing begins Dec. 6.
Your actions since Jan. 6 make me doubt some of those things, the judge said.

Prosecutors said Ryan traveled to Washington on a jet chartered by a Facebook friend, described Trumps rally before the riot as a prelude to war, livestreamed her entry into the building as alarms sounded, participated in chants of Fight For Trump, tweeted a photo of herself next to broken windows outside the Capitol and later said she deserved a medal for what she did.

Her lawyer responded that she was in the building for only two minutes, didnt act violently and has a First Amendment right to speak up on social media.

The judge then referred to Ryans March 26 tweet in which she wrote, Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and Im not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.

In a letter to the judge, Ryan denied believing she was immune to punishment, saying she was responding to people who made fun of her appearance and called for her to be imprisoned. She said her attorney told her at the time that prosecutors would be recommending a sentence of probation.

I was attacked and I was answering them, Ryan said in court.
I believe test results are still outstanding and once received the case will likely be sent over for review, Ozanne said.

The crash happened about 9:40 p.m. near the intersection of East Washington Avenue and Mendota Street on Madisons Far East Side. The driver told police she was traveling east on East Washington Avenue and had a green light at Mendota Street when she heard something hit her car, the search warrant states.

She said she was working as a delivery person for DoorDash, the online food delivery service, and was headed to pick up another delivery at Dennys, 1789 Thierer Road, two blocks from the crash site.

The search warrant states the Trailblazer was equipped with an airbag control module, sometimes called a black box, that in many instances records such things as seatbelt activation, vehicle speed, brake usage, airbag deployment and steering.

The search warrant sought account data from DoorDash that authorities said might explain why the woman was driving so fast before striking Taylor.
Close to 300 Lodi students  out of almost 700 who are newly eligible for the vaccine  signed up for the clinic by Wednesday afternoon, Winter said, noting some families might choose to go through their regular health care providers instead. Participants needed to register by Nov. 3 for planning purposes.

Coronavirus cases in the district, which serves about 1,500 in-person students and has more than 200 staff, peaked in mid-September when 17 people tested positive in just one week. The school board started mandating masks the following week, after which cases dropped significantly: Since Sept. 20, the district has averaged less than four new cases per week with none exceeding eight, according to its dashboard.

Winter said the district had a couple of outbreaks before the mandate, including confirmed spread of COVID-19 within school buildings. Since implementing the mask rule, there hasnt been any known in-school transmission, she said.

Vaccine opportunities
As for me, messing with daylight savings time messes me up. I admittedly have bouts with seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. Nobody in their right mind wants it to get dark by 5 p.m. and when it does, I literally feel it in my mind and body. So much so, my wife bought me a special lamp that is supposed to mimic sunlight. I refer to it as my happy lamp. Every November, I drag out my happy lamp to help offset the minimal sunlight and time change. Moving the clocks back even by one hour in a single day is a shock to our systems. It is just not something we humans are designed to absorb very well.

That is why I am calling for this nonsense to end. As a leader in our agricultural industry, or at least someone who has some backyard chickens, I declare that turning the clocks back is of no use for us farmer-types. I cannot think of any profession that has a benefit by losing an hour of afternoon daylight starting in November, so why should we continue with it?

Currently, there are 32 states considering ending the time switch twice a year and just staying with Daylight Savings Time year-round. Wisconsin, having a legislative body typically slow to catch onto anything, has a bill pending since 2017, but wont take action on it. Who can blame them though? Most of our local legislatures are busying touring sewer plants and attending pancake breakfasts to be bothered with meaningful legislation.
Since we were with a bus group, I shared my experience while on a previous tour to Washington D.C. A pair of arrogant elderly women kept changing seat nametags so they got to sit in front all the time. Finally, the tour guide told them if they didnt stop, shed make them leave the tour.

Our Painted Canyons tour guide told an amazing story about a friend who worked at a Las Vegas casino during the pandemic shutdown. Las Vegas has many nicknames, including the city of lights and, similar to New York, its often called the city that never sleeps. When authorities ordered the casino, which had operated day and night to close, the staff didnt know how to lock the doors.

Several of my traveling companions stories sent shivers down my spine. While traveling from Spain to Morocco, a womans tour guide warned the group that their passports could be stolen. The guide said he was heading to the bar for a drink, but would return in a few minutes and collect them for safety reasons. Ten minutes later, a man with a clipboard arrived, introduced himself, and asked the group to line up. They did. The man studied his clipboard and began collecting passports. The tour guide arrived and called out, What are you doing? This is a thief. The tour guide could only shake his head in disbelief. If the guide had arrived a few minutes later, the thief would have gotten away with their passports. He would have changed the photos and sold the documents on the black market.
A child of darkness

Meet Leti, a Homo naledi child discovered in the Rising Star Cave System that yielded Africas richest site for fossil hominins.

An international team of researchers, led by Professor Lee Berger from Wits University, has revealed the first partial skull of a Homo naledi child that was found in the remote depths of the Rising Star Cave in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Johannesburg, South Africa.

Describing the skull and its context in two separate papers in the Open Access journal, PaleoAnthropology, the team of 21 researchers from Wits University and thirteen other universities announced the discovery of parts of the skull and teeth of the child that died almost 250,000 years ago when it was approximately four to six years old.

[Download media pack to read the journal papers, watch interviews and see all the photos]

The first paper, of which Professor Juliet Brophy of Wits and Louisiana State Universities is lead author, describes the skull, while the second paper, of which Dr Marina Elliott, a National Geographic Explorer, is lead author, describe the context of the area and circumstances in which the skull was discovered.

The child was found in an extremely remote passage of the Rising Star Cave System, some 12 meters beyond the Dinaledi Chamber, the original site of discovery of the first Homo naledi remains that were revealed to the world in 2015.

Homo naledi remains one of the most enigmatic ancient human relatives ever discovered, says Professor Lee Berger, project leader and Director of the Centre for Exploration of the Deep Human Journey at Wits University and an Explorer at Large for the National Geographic Society. It is clearly a primitive species, existing at a time when previously we thought only modern humans were in Africa. Its very presence at that time and in this place complexifies our understanding of who did what first concerning the invention of complex stone tool cultures and even ritual practices."

Almost 2000 individual fragments of more than two dozen individuals at all life stages of Homo naledi have been recovered since the Rising Star cave system was discovered in 2013.

This makes this the richest site for fossil hominins on the continent of Africa and makes naledi one of the best-known ancient hominin species ever discovered, says Professor John Hawks, a biological anthropologist and lead author of a previous study on the fossil skeleton of a male naledi nicknamed Neo that was also found at the Rising Star cave.

The lost one

The skull of the child presented in the current study was recovered during further work in the cramped spaces of the cave in 2017. The childs skull was found alone, and no remains of its body have been recovered.

The team have named the child Leti (pronounced Let-e) after the Setswana word letimela meaning the lost one. Letis skull consists of 28 skull fragments and six teeth and when reconstructed shows the frontal orbits, and top of the skull with some dentition.

There were no replicating parts as we pieced the skull back together and many of the fragments refit, indicating they all came from one individual child, says Dr Darryl de Ruiter, a palaeoanthropologist who previously led a study of the adult skull of Homo naledi and who is a co-author on the paper.

This is the first partial skull of a child of Homo naledi yet recovered and this begins to give us insight into all stages of life of this remarkable species, says Professor Juliet Brophy, who led the study on Letis skull and dentition.

The discovery of a hominin child skull is an extremely rare find in the fossil record as juvenile remains tend to be thin and extremely fragile. Having skull remains associated with teeth of the same individual is extremely important for understanding the growth and development of this species, says Christopher Walker, an expert in growth and development.

Letis brain size is estimated at around 480 to 610 cubic centimetres. This would have been around 90% to 95% of its adult brain capacity, says Dr Debra Bolter, co-author on the paper and a specialist in growth and development. The size of Letis brain makes it very comparable to adult members if the species found so far, says Bolter.

It has yet to be established how old Letis remains are. However, since other fossils of Homo naledi were found in the nearby Dinaledi Chamber and dated to between 335 and 241 thousand years ago, Tebogo Makhubela, part of the geological team investigating the discovery believes that it is likely that Leti is from a similar period, based on preservation and proximity.

Letis remains were discovered in a tight passage that measures only 15 centimetres wide and 80 centimetres long and was located just beyond an area named the Chaos Chamber.

The area where Leti was found is part of a spiderweb of cramped passages, says Maropeng Ramalepa, a member of the exploration team responsible for bringing the remains to the surface.

Dr Marina Elliott, one of the original Underground Astronauts in the first Rising Star expedition that originally uncovered Homo naledi and the leader of the excavation team that recovered Leti described the challenge of excavating Leti as very difficult. This was one of the more challenging sites with hominin fossils we have had to get to in the Rising Star system, says Elliott.

Since its discovery the Rising Star cave system has become one of the most prolific sites of discovery for hominin fossils in the world. Berger says that work is continuing throughout the cave system and that soon new discoveries are likely to shed further light on whether these chambers and passages are in fact a burial ground of Homo naledi, as the team originally hypothesised.

I do not believe there is another site quite like Rising Star, says Professor Steve Churchill, a palaeoanthropologist and co-author on both papers. This is now the third locality we have described from this system with naledi remains, and we know through exploration that there are other localities.

With no signs of carnivore damage or damage made by scavenging, and no evidence of the skull having been washed into the narrow passage, the team does not know how Letis skull came to rest, alone, in such a remote and inaccessible part of the system. The authors hypothesise that it is likely other members of its species were involved in the skull reaching such a difficult place.

The discovery of a single skull of a child, in such a remote location within the cave system adds mystery as to how these many remains came to be in these remote, dark spaces of the Rising Star Cave system, says Berger. It is just another riddle among many that surround this fascinating extinct human relative.

The Leti team

Read the authors biographies (PDF)

Questions and Answers

What does the name of the child Leti mean?

The word Leti is short for Letimela which means the lost one in the Setswana language. Setswana is one of South Africas 11 official languages and one of the languages commonly spoken in the part of South Africa where Leti was discovered. The word naledi means star in the Sesotho language, and the word Dinaledi means stars.

Was Leti a male or female?

We do not know if Leti was a male or female. Future studies using such methods as ancient proteins may establish its sex.

Where in the Rising Star cave system was Leti found?

The Rising Star cave system has more than two kilometres of passages and chambers. Leti was found in an extremely narrow passage that is 15cm wide by 80 cm in length. The fragmented remains were found on a shelf of limestone about 80cm above the present cave floor. The passage is about 12 meters away from the Dinaledi Chamber and adjacent to a chamber known as the Chaos Chamber.

Could the skull have been carried there by a scavenger or predator, or been washed into the passage?

How the skull of the child came to rest in this remote location remains a mystery. However, there is no visible predator or scavenger damage on any parts of the skull, nor is there any evidence that suggests that the sediments surrounding Leti have been moved by water or other means, that may have resulted in the depositing of the skull into this remote location.

Was Leti buried?

It is not known whether Leti was buried in the passage or whether her bones were placed there. The situation is very similar to the way Neo, and adult male Homo naledi from the Lesedi Chamber of the Rising Star system, in that he was also found in a narrow passage. However, there have been no remains of Letis body found yet. The situation where Letis skull was found is very difficult to access, making excavation difficult, but at this stage it appears that only Letis skull was in the passage.

How old was Leti when she died?

Based on dental eruption, Leti would have been about 4 to 6 years old when she died if she matured like a human. But at present we have not established exactly how fast Homo naledi children grew, so it is possible she was younger.

How big was Letis brain?

While her brain is only preserved in fragments, comparison of the curvature and length of these remains lets us compare her brain to similar sized individuals like the Taung skull of Australopithecus africanus, which has a very similar sized braincase it appears. Thus, we can estimate that Letis brain capacity would have been around 450 to 610 cubic centimetres. Based on her developmental age, this would mean Letis brain would be about 90 to 95% of its adult size when she died. Her adult brain size would therefore have been similar to other members of her species had she reached adulthood.

Did Leti look the same as other Homo naledi individuals?

One of the important aspects of Letis discovery is that she has skull fragments associated with teeth. These are the first skull fragments of a child of Homo naledi described so far and so they can only be compared to adult crania at this time. However, the shape of the front of the skull, know as the glabella is preserved and is very similar in shape to adult naledis in this region. Letis teeth are all very similar to those of other Homo naledi in their shape, size and form.

Do we know how Leti died?

There are no signs of injury on Letis skull, although it is in many fragments, so we dont know what caused her death.

How long ago did Leti live?

We cannot date the area where Leti was discovered but the remains of other Homo naledi found nearby date to between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago and at this time it is hypothesised that Leti is the same age as these nearby remains.

Did Leti walk upright?

Since we dont have any bones from Letis body we have to look at those of other specimens of Homo naledi to establish how they walked and these all walked on two legs. As Letis skull and teeth dont differ from other remains of Homo naledi discovered, it is rather certain she also walked upright like her relatives.

Why is Letis skull important?

As this is the first skull remains of a child of Homo naledi discovered, and because there were teeth discovered in association with the skull remains, we can begin to develop a better understanding of the growth and development of the species. The adult anatomy of Homo naledi is already among the best known for any ancient hominin species and Letis adds to our understanding of how this remarkable species grew up.
Open letter to the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy

Civil society organisations write to the Minister to denounce his response to the Climate Justice Coalition march, threatening litigation instead of engaging

We as civil society organisations write this open letter to denounce Minister Mantashe and the DMREs increasingly unjust, undemocratic, and autocratic practices in defence of a heavily polluting, highly corrupt, and extremely harmful energy and mining agenda.

From the 22nd to the 27th of September, hundreds of people representing dozens of civil society organisations marched to DMRE offices, in every province across the country, under the banner #UprootTheDMRE. We set out a clear list of demands around transforming our archaic and harmful mining and energy sector to ensure a more socially, economically and environmentally just future.[1]

Instead of responding to the demands or engaging in public debate, Minister Mantashe chose to try and repress the secretary of the Climate Justice Coalition - the coalition that organised the march. His lawyers sent a letter, demanding the coalitions secretary retract an article which lays out many of the reasons why the coalition marched.[2] Mantashes lawyers demanded that the secretary take down the article, issue a public apology, and refrain from publishing about Minister Mantashe (or his family members who were also implicated in corruption scandals).

The coalition secretary responded to Mantashes lawyers, refusing their demands, and debunking their spurious claims that the article is defamatory, untrue, and not in the public interest.[3] What could be more in the public interest, than fixing our unjust, dysfunctional, and harmful mining and energy regime; or civil society holding a minister and a government department to account? What is against the public interest is Mantashe's legal letter. It effectively threatens a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), which is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics. Such actions are not reflective of a minister open to democratic discourse or respectful of civil societys vital role in holding the state accountable.

We stand against this repressive tactic of trying to use the threat of legal suits to quash civil society voices and protect the powerful from scrutiny. It is an example of how the government and corporations are choosing time and time again to try to silence the voices of those who criticize them and hold them to account. Activists who resist harmful and polluting mining and energy projects in South Africa know too well that the price for doing so can often be their lives. Indeed, we remember Fikile Ntshangase, Bazooka Radebe and the many activists who have lost their lives for democratically standing up for a better future for their communities and for all.

Mantashe is not alone in his disregard for civil society and community voices. It is a culture prevalent throughout the department he runs. For example, the DMRE promised to respond within seven days of the nationwide protests during the week of September 22nd. Well over a month later we have heard nothing. This is their repeated pattern: ignoring civil society and community voices and giving no meaningful engagement despite years and years of repeated protest, demonstration and petition.

Mantashes media liaison also accused the coalition behind the march of being a cabal trying to plunge the country into darkness. Such a statement is a little ironic, given that he speaks on behalf of a department and minister deeply responsible for plunging us repeatedly into loadshedding. Such dismissiveness also reflects disdain for the mining affected communities, civil society and trade union organisations who organised the protests across the country as part of our vital democratic practice of demanding a better future from our government. If anyone operates like a cabal, it is arguably the DMRE who often works behind closed doors with corporations to push forward polluting projects over the resistance of and without the free, prior and informed consent of communities and civil society.

For example, just the week after the #UprootTheDMRE protests, the DMRE hosted a conference in Limpopo, which they only announced to the public the night before. Community and civil society representatives were not invited, whereas corporations and industry were. At that conference, Mantashe and the DMRE invited coal, oil and gas industries to invest in South Africa. In doing so, they once again ignored the voices of communities who are impacted by these polluting projects and who are demanding no more. They also ignored the reality of the climate crisis, which requires that we should not be investing in new fossil fuels, but instead rapidly transitioning to renewable energy.

Ironically, the DMRE had recently declared as fake news, a clearly satirical video which parodied the fact that the department was selling out our country to harmful, polluting and corrupt corporations despite the protest of civil society and communities.[4] Yet, the industry exclusive conference seemed to reflect exactly what the video was satirising - a department that prioritises corporate interests over the interest of people and the planet. Seeming not to understand how the right to freedom of speech includes political satire, Mantashes media liaison declared the satire a criminal activity and threatened the producers with the line that youll ought to know whats coming your way [sic].[5]

Despite Minister Mantashe and the DMREs undemocratic and increasingly autocratic actions, we as civil society will not back down. We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced. We will not forsake our vital, democratic responsibility to hold our government and the powerful accountable. Minister Mantashe and the DMRE are failing in their responsibilities to the people of South Africa and it is up to us to hold them to account. They are driving forward a heavily polluting, highly corrupt, and extremely harmful and dysfunctional energy and mining agenda. In the face of this deep injustice, we will continue to call for the DMRE to be transformed to ensure a more socially, economically and environmentally just future.

We reiterate and stand by our demands that:

The leadership and structure of the DMRE must be transformed to fulfil a mandate for an inclusive socially, economically, and ecologically just energy and mining future. Mantashe must step aside to allow new progressive leadership.

A rapid and just transition to a more socially owned, renewable energy powered economy, providing clean, safe, and affordable energy for all, with no worker and community left behind in the transition

No to new polluting, corrupt and expensive coal, oil, and gas projects. We demand One Million Climate Jobs instead. Reject the corrupt, costly and unnecessary powership program, and investigate officials within the department around irregular deals.

Communities must have the right to say no to mining projects, that includes free, prior informed consent, the upholding of social labour plans, and the right to sustainable alternative modes of development.

Minister Mantashe and the DMRE must stop blocking and inhibiting Eskoms transition to renewables. We need a Green New Eskom driving a just transition to a more socially owned, renewable energy future.

Resolutely,

The undersigned organisations:

350Africa.org

Project 90 by 2030

Just Share

P. S. Atkins & Associates

Human Rights Media Trust

Fossil Free South Africa

Climate Justice Charter Movement

Centre for Applied Legal Studies

Status: This open letter was drafted by 350Africa.org. It is intended for sign on by South African Civil Society Organisations. Organisations can sign on by filling out the form at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuWVQLjjkOZ-yEBOFA87KeoYTNlvkXZIaD7vDtHj9QPLQ0VA/viewform. Once completed, the organisation name will be added to the letter.

For questions, please contact: glen@350.org

[1]The list of demands is available at https://uprootthedmre.org/#demands

[2] The offending article is Should Gwede Mantashe Step Down as Energy Minister, by Alex Lenferna, New Frame: https://www.newframe.com/should-gwede-mantashe-step-down-as-energy-minister/

[3] A response to Mantashes lawyers is available at this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eUknVOCVawAByxazC6_tqkaDNR3-caSv/view?usp=sharing

[4] Politically Aweh, LEAKED! South African Energy Department Fossil Fuel Ad ft. Siv Ngesi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1GT1_L1P0E

[5] https://twitter.com/DavidNathi/status/1437672231795138568
LITTLE FALLS, N.Y. -- Neighbors on Southern Avenue in Little Falls were evacuated Wednesday night when a bomb was reported at one of the residences.

Police officers were called to the home, which was occupied by several people, around 10:45 p.m. after a man reported a suspected homemade explosive device in his residence. Officers believed it was possible the device may be on the front lawn, so they set up a perimeter and evacuated neighboring homes.

The New York State Police Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team arrived at the home at 12:30 a.m. to inspect the device, and determined it could be safely destroyed right at the scene. The team was able to neutralize the device by 1:10 a.m.

Authorities have not yet determined where the device came from or developed any suspects, but are speaking with witnesses to gather more information.

Police do not believe there is any threat to the public at this time.
NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. -- PAR Technology has landed a $490 million contract, its largest ever, with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.

PARs subsidiary, PAR Government Systems Corporation has been enlisted to provide the software and hardware for counter-small unmanned aircraft systems.

We are pleased that the Air Force has shown confidence in, and selection of PAR Government to support this important solution development and integration program. PAR Government will utilize our technical in-depth experience and knowledge gained over decades of working with the Department of Defense to accomplish the requirements of this important effort.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Department of Defense is investing in this drone technology to help detect and fend off hostile or unauthorized UAS.

The work will be performed in Rome at the Air Force Research Lab over six years, with a potential two-year extension.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WLFI) -- Senator Mike Braun of Indiana is leading at least 40 Republican Senators to challenge President Biden's vaccine mandate.

In the coming days, the White House is expected to publish a rule for private businesses with at least one hundred employees.

That rule is expected to require businesses to ensure their workers are vaccinated against COVID-19 or have their workers tested on a weekly basis.

The mandate would impact roughly 80 million workers.

Senator Braun said the rule could impact small businesses more than anything seen so far in the pandemic.

"All I can tell you is, most businesses took COVID serious from the get go. They wanted to keep their employees and their customers safe," said Sen. Braun.

Senators are also concerned the rule could worsen the current labor shortage and further disrupt supply chains.

Senator Todd Young of Indiana is also among the Senators challenging the mandate.
TWELVE MILE, Ind. (WLFI)  The nephew of the late Paul Ulerick is remebering his uncle. Ulerick was severely burned when his house exploded early last month. He died earlier this week from multi-system organ failure.

His nephew, Mark Babb said his uncle had a sense of humour nobody could match. He's also going to miss debating with him about politics.

Babb says Ulerick lived on his family's farm which was first settled in 1809, before Indiana became a state.

Ulerick graduated from Manchester University and met his wife, Deborah, in Georgia.

After moving back to his hometown, Ulerick bought the restaurant Amelio's on the River. It's one of the oldest businesses in Logansport.

He also served as the chairman for the Democratic Party in Cass County.

Ulerick kept his love of history alive through the historical society.

Babb says he and his family truly held out hope that his uncle would pull through.

"Everything he ever done in his life he wins at," Babb told News 18. "Or, he makes it turn to gold, he's just one of those guys."

One bright spot in all the darkness, Babb said, is the way the communities of Logansport and Twelve Mile have supported his family through this tragedy.

"Your neighbors aren't just your neighbors out here, they're your friends," he said. "When something happens to somebody here, all the neighbors show up."
Zou finds Chinese entrepreneurs are loving the ziyou they find in Ghana

Return to Ghana: Yijie Zou is planning a return to Ghana to continue his anthropological study of the Chinese entrepreneur community in the West African country. The Wenner-Gren Foundation recently awarded him a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Zou and Wenner-Gren agreed that he could begin his work remotely until the COVID-19 situation in Ghana is resolved. Photo by Kana Harada Photo - of - Hide Caption

The Chinese word for freedom is ziyou, and its a term that Yijie Zou heard quite often among the entrepreneurial community of Chinese expatriates in Ghana.

I found it extremely interesting, Zou said. They experience Ghana as a land of freedom.

Zou is a Ph.D. student in William & Marys Department of Anthropology. He is planning a return to the west African country to continue observing the interaction of the Chinese community and native Ghanaians.

His return to Ghana is supported by a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Zou and his contacts at Wenner-Gren agreed that he can continue his work remotely, until the Covid-19 situation in Ghana becomes more settled. Zou did some pilot research in both Ghana and China in 2018 and 2019 on the Chinese entrepreneurial community.

This is a modern phenomenon, Zou explains. Its mostly from the second half of the 20th century that a Chinese-speaking population, mostly from Hong Kong or Taiwan, migrate to Ghana looking for business opportunity.

Today, the expatriate community in Ghana occupy every rung of the entrepreneurial ladder, from massive infrastructure construction projects and mineral extraction down to retail shops in the local markets.

But Zou says that from boardroom to convenience store, the Chinese he interviewed place ziyou at the top of the list of things they like about their life in Ghana.

They have more time at their disposal; they can do whatever they want, he said. Ziyou in Ghana meant not only more free time for leisure, but also more time to devote to various business ideas. The concept also meant freedom from the governmental oversight, interference and regulations that chafed at Chinese entrepreneurs back home.

Its very flexible in Ghana, he said. They can do a lot of startup projects, compared with working in China. The payment is good in China, but sometimes you have to work a fixed amount of time for the company.

Zous dissertation is plumbing the social organization of the Chinese entrepreneurial community in Ghana: How they perceive the environment in Ghana, how they cope with it. Their strategies, including how they organize themselves and the economic strategies they adopt to accommodate themselves within the context of Ghana.

Zou said one of his foci is on the contrast between Chinese time and Ghanaian time. The social dynamics that emerge when Chinese time meets Ghanaian time are of particular interest in an ethnographic investigation.

In his proposal to Wenner-Gren, Zou reported that his pilot work among the expat entrepreneurs revealed that the Chinese speed of flexible accumulation, the slow motion of African time, and low consumption expenditure in Ghana allow them to keep their labor investment-leisure time ratio at a satisfactory level, compared with the grueling work in China.

A lot of the entrepreneurs believe that they are the avatars of Chinese speed in Africa, that they truly represent the efficient business practice of China, he said. They may be workaholics, but on the other hand, the African works diligently at his daily life.

Zou says that he believes his ethnographic research from the inside will reveal complexities about the relationship between the Chinese entrepreneurs and the native Ghanaians that are usually overlooked by the international media. He said that headlines usually concentrate on conflict, such as the 2015 direct-action campaign against some of the Chinese gold miners by Ghanaians.

But Zou says its a mistake to judge the relationship of the two groups by violent outbreaks, even protests that culminate on raids on mining operation and impounding and burning equipment.

I like to use the word friction, he said. Because friction is kind of an intermediate zone between head-on clash and total harmony.

At the basis of the relationship is a kind of national fellow-feeling among the two groups. Zou noted that both Ghana and China have a socialist basis and Ghanaians perceive that China was, not long ago, a relatively poor country that worked its way to prosperity.

But the relationship gets complicated quickly.

So, in Ghana they say, Theyre kind of like us, Zou said. But how can they become so rich here? And why are they taking our resources?
A miniature art exhibition with the theme of "Harmony, Diversity and Common Destiny" opened on October 22 at the Chinese Museum of Women and Children in Beijing. [For chinadaily.com.cn/Teng Jun]

More than 2,000 miniature artworks by artists from China's 56 ethnic groups are on display at the Chinese Museum of Women and Children in Beijing.

The exhibition, which opened on October 22, was co-sponsored by the Chinese National Museum, the Chinese Women and Children's Museum, the National Art Committee of the Chinese Artists Association and the Benetton Academic Research Foundation of Italy. It will end on November 15.

The artworks, which were selected from 6,000 candidates, cover a wide range of media from Chinese painting, oil painting and calligraphy to sculpture and print. Its theme is "Harmony, Diversity and Common Destiny".

Deputy Party chief of CNM Zhang Jikang said at the opening ceremony of the exhibition that CNM and CMWC aim to play their role in education and cultural exchanges and tell the story of Chinese ethnic unity and a community of shared future for mankind.

A miniature art exhibition with the theme of "Harmony, Diversity and Common Destiny" opened on October 22 at the Chinese Museum of Women and Children in Beijing. [For chinadaily.com.cn/Teng Jun]

Co-curator of the exhibition Yan Zhijie read out a letter from Luciano Benetton, president of Benetton Foundation, inviting Chinese artists to participate in the Venice Biennale.

Benetton said: "The goal of 'Imago Mundi', the international art collection that I have started for over a decade involving artists from most of the world's countries, reached a milestone that is fundamental for me: to testify the artistic creativity of the 56 ethnic groups of China, a great reality that through the 'Contemporary China' collection I undertake to make known internationally, starting with Italy."

This cultural project of "Contemporary China", also known as "Colorful China", was started in 2016 and delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the opening of the exhibition, Benetton said he had "new confidence".

He said he hoped the collection will get approval by the Council of the 60th Venice Biennale of Art in 2024.

Co-Curator Qin Dailun, also from the Chinese National Museum, said the artworks are inspiring and present the incredible culture of Chinese ethnic groups.

Wan Li, an artist from Hunan, has 10 prints of portraits of prominent Chinese and Italian figures displayed in the exhibition, including Confucius, Marco Polo and Matteo Ricci. "As a painter, we have the responsibility to contribute to cultural exchanges between China and Italy," she said.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)
Two elderly women pick up children, helping working parents who are unable to collect their own kids immediately after the school day ends in Chengdu, capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province. [Chengdu Daily]

A group of elderly women in Chengdu, capital city of southwest China's Sichuan Province, volunteer their time to help working parents pick up their children from school and accompany them after school, extending community services to more families in need.

The team, from the Jifu community in the Jinyang neighborhood of the city's Wuhou District, consists of 35 senior women, according to a staff member in the community. These volunteers stay with the youngsters in the activity rooms of the residential compounds located in the community until their parents can collect them. To make the most of accompanying the children, these senior citizens will also learn skills such as handicrafts at a service center for members of the Communist Party of China and the people of Jifu community.

The charity program was jointly initiated by the community and a local social organization. According to Yang Qiong, head of the social organization, 40 percent of students in the community were left unattended after school, and the program aims to help solve this problem.

"Currently, senior women joining the program have provided care services in 23 residential compounds in the community, helping more than 270 families on a regular basis," the staff member of the community said. The community has renovated its service center and public spaces in old residential compounds and attracted social organizations to participate in community governance, bringing warm and convenient services to old residential compounds.

Zhang Huiying, 67, is one of the senior women to join the program. She usually picks up a kid called Yang Yijia from a kindergarten at 4:40 pm, then takes him back to a neat and comfortable activity room, which was built for the program in 2019, in an old residential compound. Inside the activity room, Zhang will tell stories to the accompanied child. At 5:45 pm, Yang's mother surnamed Yi will pick him up from the activity room.

"The program relieves the pressure of working parents who are not able to pick up their children immediately after school," Yi said, expressing gratitude to the selfless help of the volunteering seniors.

For Zhang, she has become happier after joining the program, which has helped to alleviate some of her loneliness. "I feel young and my life is meaningful," Zhang said.

Now more and more families receiving help are repaying the goodwill by participating in the provision of public services in Jifu community.

The community is representative of Chengdu's wider efforts to improve public services in its communities. To date, the city has renovated 3,043 communities, highlighting the services provided by the service centers in these communities, while having launched 910 relevant programs through the pooling of resources. Chengdu will implement another 75 similar programs within the year.

(Source: People's Daily Online)
Artists stage a Kunqu Opera performance in front of the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility (Cining Gong) in the Forbidden City in Beijing, on May 18, 2016. [For China Daily/Jiang Dong]

China's capacity to safeguard and study the country's rich cultural heritage will be greatly enhanced, thanks to the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), heritage officials said on Wednesday.

A national comprehensive plan on cultural heritage protection and the development of relevant technology over the next five years will soon be released by the State Council, China's Cabinet.

More than 40 central government departments and national-level institutions as well as local governments in 31 provincial-level regions contributed to the plan. The opinions of scholars and members of the public were also widely listened to during the process, Li Qun, director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, said at a news conference in Beijing.

"Previous five-year plans on cultural relics were mainly drafted by specific government departments," Li said. "For the first time it's improved to a national-level plan, which reflects the country's great emphasis on the field.

"Protection of relics will always be the priority, particularly in urbanization projects and development of tourism," he said, adding that a national register system of cultural relics will be completed to ensure their safety.

Li said archaeological research will be compulsory before land is transferred for major urban construction to balance heritage protection and economic development.

"If the land is to be touched, it has to be researched by archaeologists first," he said, adding that this process should be accepted by all of society.

Talent Training Highlighted

The five-year plan set 21 specific targets including management of cultural relic resources, museum development and training of experts.

Li said that over the next five years, 80 to 100 archaeological excavations will be launched annually, in addition to salvage excavations. "We can have breakthroughs in many academic projects and showcase our 5,000-year history of civilization and 10,000-year history of culture through more physical evidence," he said.

Lack of qualified people has long hindered Chinese archaeology. Statistics released during the annual two sessions in March showed that China has fewer than 1,800 registered archaeologists who are licensed to lead excavations, a number far below what is needed to research the country's archaeological sites.

To fill the gap, Li said about 4,000 new archaeologists will be trained by 2025, and a nationwide program will be launched to select 100 leading young archaeologists for key projects.

Separately, a 25 percent increase is expected in the number of Chinese scientific researchers doing cultural relics laboratory work by 2025.

Li said major technological developments will be made in key areas such as the dating of cultural relics and analysis of DNA and organic matter from archaeological finds. Several regional "archaeological sample banks" are to be established to facilitate comprehensive studies and preservation of newly unearthed artifacts.

A closer connection between cultural heritage and people has been built in recent years, thanks to the country's efforts. Since 2010, China has listed 36 archaeological ruins parks nationwide to enable the public to better understand and experience archaeological research.

The list includes 11 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as Liangzhu Archaeological Ruins in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, which was home to a jade-worshipping civilization 4,300 to 5,300 years ago.

According to Lu Qiong, an official at the National Administration of Cultural Heritage's department of regulations and policymaking, 10 to 15 new entries will be added to the list by 2025.

"A focus of future work is to enable people to share in the cultural heritage and benefit from the achievement of protection," she said.

In 2019, about 28,600 exhibitions were held across the Chinese mainland, attracting about 1.2 billion visits.

By 2025, the number of annual visits aims to reach 1.4 billion, and over 30,000 exhibitions are to be organized that year, Lu said.

(Source: China Daily)
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and other Party and state leaders, including Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng, pose for group photos with representatives of the winners before an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua)  President Xi Jinping on Wednesday presented China's top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, awarded the medals and certificates at an annual ceremony held in Beijing to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements.

Xi shook hands with the two scientists and expressed his congratulations.

Xi and other Party and state leaders, including Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng, together with the two winners of the top science award, presented certificates to other award recipients.

Gu Songfen is an aircraft designer at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Ltd., the nation's leading aircraft maker. Born in 1930, Gu is an academician at both the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Wang Dazhong, born in 1935, is an internationally reputed nuclear scientist.

A CAS academician and former president of Tsinghua University, he has dedicated himself to the research and development of advanced nuclear energy technologies.

Wednesday's ceremony was attended by approximately 3,000 people and honored 264 projects, with 46 winning the State Natural Science Award, 61 the State Technological Invention Award, and 157 the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award.

Eight foreign experts and one international organization won the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award for their collaboration with Chinese scientists.

Prior to the ceremony, Xi and other leaders gathered to take group photos with the representatives of the winners.

On behalf of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang extended congratulations to the award recipients and thanked foreign experts for their participation in and support of China's science and technology development.

Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said that the Party attaches great importance to sci-tech development, and respects and cares for sci-tech workers.

He noted that sci-tech workers have made brilliant achievements since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and protecting people's lives and health.

As China has started a new journey toward building a modern socialist country in all aspects, Li noted that innovation's central role in China's modernization drive must be upheld to raise the country's sci-tech innovation capacity, unleash its society's creative potential, and shape new development advantages.

Li called on the sci-tech workers to focus on the major strategic needs of the country, accelerate breakthroughs in key and core technologies, and promote major sci-tech projects.

An open competition mechanism to select the best candidates for important sci-tech programs shall be promoted to give opportunities to those who are willing to innovate, dare to innovate, and are able to innovate.

He said the country shall continue to strengthen its basic research, respect the laws of science, combine free exploration with problem-orientated research, strengthen long-term and stable support, encourage enterprises and private capital to increase input for basic research, deepen basic education reform and strengthen basic disciplines in universities.

The premier added that a sound scientific research ecosystem shall be fostered to encourage innovation and tolerate failure, and to support researchers to make more original achievements.

He highlighted the leading role of enterprises in innovation, more inclusive policies to encourage innovation, the concentration of innovation resources in enterprises, and the deeper integration of enterprises, universities and research institutes.

Li also pledged to promote integrated innovation among all enterprises despite their scale or position on the industrial chain. He also pledged to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and accelerate the application of sci-tech achievements.

He called for more efforts to overcome the obstacles that hamper innovation and creativity, and urged further efforts to deepen sci-tech mechanism reform and effectively ease the burden on researchers.

Li also said China will deepen international cooperation in science and technology and achieve win-win results through greater opening-up.

Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the ceremony.

Han said he expects sci-tech workers to follow the examples set by the award recipients, carry forward the glorious tradition of serving the country through science and technology, shoulder historical responsibility, and help the country achieve a high level of self-reliance in science and technology at an accelerated pace.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, presents China's top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen (R) and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong (L) at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and other Party and state leaders, including Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng, meet with representatives of the winners before an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, presents China's top science award to nuclear expert Wang Dazhong at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Xie Huanchi]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, presents China's top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Pang Xinglei]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and other Party and state leaders present certificates to representatives of the winners of the State Natural Science Award, the State Technological Invention Award, and the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and other Party and state leaders present certificates to representatives of the winners of the State Natural Science Award, the State Technological Invention Award, and the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and other Party and state leaders present certificates to representatives of the winners of the State Natural Science Award, the State Technological Invention Award, and the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, talks with nuclear expert Wang Dazhong, winner of China's top science award, before an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Xie Huanchi]

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, talks with aircraft designer Gu Songfen, winner of China's top science award, after an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Li Xueren]

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, delivers a speech on behalf of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council at an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Pang Xinglei]

Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, presides over an annual ceremony to honor distinguished scientists, engineers and research achievements in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 3, 2021. [Xinhua/Pang Xinglei]

(Source: Xinhua)
BEIJING, Oct. 29 (Xinhua)  China's top procurator has called for deepening judicial exchanges and cooperation among the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states and jointly combating trafficking of women and children, among other crimes.

Zhang Jun, procurator-general of China's Supreme People's Procuratorate, made the remarks on Friday when addressing the 19th meeting of prosecutors general of the SCO member states via video link.

Zhang stressed enhancing the capability of preventing and fighting against such crimes, expanding judicial exchanges, and seeking more fruitful cooperation through various means including bilateral or multilateral treaties for legal assistance in criminal matters and extradition.

(Source: Xinhua)
Seiling has a very special guest coming this year. The speaker will be the 45th IBCT Brigade Commander, Colonel Colby Wyatt. Veterans are invited to attend the assembly as well as people in the community. (Photo provided)
94 year old Woodward, OK resident passed November 17, 2021. Services Saturday November 27, 2021 at 10:00 am at the Vici Church of the Nazarene and burial following at Sunnyside Cemetery, Vici. Shaw Funeral Home of Vici
Photos by Joseph B. Nadeau

Dave Lambert, left, and Bill Gately, right, stand near cars they have fix up at their Henris Auto Repair business at 1068 Park Ave. to be raffled to eligible veterans on Nov. 12.
This Oct. 25, 2021, photo shows Kyle Rittenhouse at a hearing ahead of his trial for shooting three people in Wisconsin.
A view from Wrexhams Member of the Senedd

Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South constituency Members of Parliament and Members of the Senedd to write a monthly article with updates on their work in Parliament and the Senedd, and closer to home. (You can view an archive here).

Wrexham MS Lesley Griffiths writes

The latest review of the coronavirus regulations in Wales took place at the end of last week. With rates of Covid-19 in Wales currently the highest in the UK, the Welsh Government has acted by strengthening certain protective measures to help try and reduce transmission. The guidance around self-isolation is changing (details below), secondary school students and staff are being encouraged to take twice-weekly lateral flow tests and the Welsh Government intends to extend the use of Covid Passes to theatres, cinemas and concert halls from 15 November. All the information can be found online. It is hoped these changes will help make the difference but Wales First Minister, Mark Drakeford warned some tighter restrictions may be reintroduced at the next review due later this month if rates continue to increase.

We're changing our advice on self-isolation for people who are vaccinated. If a member of your household has symptoms or tests positive, you should self-isolate until you receive a negative PCR. You can read the full guidance and book a test here   Welsh Government #KeepWalesSafe (@WelshGovernment) October 29, 2021

Vaccination remains our best defence against coronavirus and the rollout of the booster programme is a priority. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board is administering around 3,000 booster vaccinations daily and is on track to have offered a third jab to 90% of those eligible by mid-December  an aim that is shared by all Health Boards across Wales.

I have heard reports some older residents who are due their booster jab are not attending their appointment at Vaccination Centres as theyre waiting for vaccines to arrive at their GP surgery. GPs played a crucial role during the initial rollout of the first and second doses earlier this year, but with current unprecedented demand coupled with the added challenging of administering flu jabs, most GPs will not be taking part in the booster programme.

People must wait for their appointment invitation to arrive in the post and do not need to contact their GP surgery or local Vaccination Centre. Once the appointment has arrived, please ensure you attend. Coronavirus has not gone away. Adhering to the latest guidance and rules is essential if we want to keep Wales open and keep people safe as we enter the winter months.

Have you had your flu and COVID-19 vaccines to protect yourself yet? Its important, so dont miss out. Vaccination against COVID-19 and flu can help keep your life open, so you can carry on doing the things you love   https://t.co/3Fgpgcavzu pic.twitter.com/yLvq31BhjX  Public Health Wales (@PublicHealthW) October 28, 2021

I recently visited two new community hubs in the heart of Wrexham town centre. Yellow and Blue is located on Henblas Street and was founded by the inspirational Pete Humphreys in memory of his late father. The non-profit social enterprise has provided invaluable support to the Wrexham community during this particularly challenging time. The vibrant cafe and outdoor space is an ideal spot to enjoy a coffee and some food but there are also a wide range of activities and workshops taking place, from furniture restoration to fitness classes. There are plans in the pipeline to help Yellow and Blue grow and develop further, such as creating an IT hub for visitors in an attempt to combat digital exclusion, and I will do all I can to support Pete and the team.

Great to meet Pete and to find out more about Yellow & Blue @Yabgroupltd. Since it was founded last year, the Hub has been a beacon of support for people from all walks of life #Wrexham pic.twitter.com/JvxsudwWnP  Lesley Griffiths (@lesley4wrexham) October 12, 2021

I also visited Hope Street Church. Anyone who has visited the town centre recently will have seen the spectacular renovation that has breathed new life back into the old Burtons building. Set over three floors, the building includes a worship space, meeting rooms, a kitchen and a base for social and community projects. The churchs presence in the town centre is certainly a boost and I look forward to visiting again soon.

Despite the disruption caused by coronavirus, Hope Street Church in #Wrexham town centre is starting to embed itself into the local community. Lovely to meet lead pastors, Andy and Rachel and to hear about their longer-term plans. pic.twitter.com/LYCsbY9elL  Lesley Griffiths (@lesley4wrexham) October 21, 2021

To mark its centenary, the Royal British Legion is looking for both public and private buildings, however large or small, to support its Poppy Appeal by lighting up red in the days leading up to Remembrance Sunday on 14 November. I am supporting the Light Up Red campaign after being approached by local volunteer and former RBL Community Fundraiser for North Wales, Kevin Forbes. Ive written to Wrexham County Borough Council, as well as several other local organisations and businesses. St Giles Church has confirmed it will light up red and any building with external lighting can take part. I believe it would be a poignant and fitting tribute to see a number of Wrexhams buildings and landmarks lit up to honour our servicemen and women on this very special anniversary.

Good support in Wrexham #turnwalesred #lightupred Please use hastags to post any photos of illuminated buildings to acknowledge 100 years of RBL welfare work supported by #PoppyAppeal pic.twitter.com/84I4l30Lij  Kevin Forbes (@northwalespoppy) October 25, 2021

Food and drink producers from Wrexham and across Wales came together last week to showcase their amazing produce to the world. My role as Welsh Government Minister for Rural Affairs & North Wales, and Trefnydd includes responsibility for food and drink so it was a privilege to host the two-day Blas Cymru / Taste Wales event at the International Convention Centre Wales in Newport. The industry has shown incredible resilience during this challenging period.

What an amazing couple of days at #BlasCymru #TasteWales.  As the event draws to a close, here is Rural Affairs Minister, Lesley Griffiths with her thoughts on what has been a busy but hugely enjoyable event.  pic.twitter.com/iVKg4sJERM  Welsh Government Rural Affairs (@WGRural) October 28, 2021

If there is an issue I could help you with, please do not hesitate to contact me  email: lesley.griffiths@senedd.wales or call my office: 01978 355743. You can also sign up to my regular e-newsletter by clicking here

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Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South constituency Members of Parliament and Members of the Senedd to write a monthly article with updates on their work in Parliament and the Senedd, and closer to home. (You can view an archive here).
170m extra a year announced in attempt of a transformation of planned care services in NHS Wales

More than 170m extra a year is set to be invested in planned care across NHS Wales in a bid to build a planned care system that is bigger, better and more effective than previously seen.

The funding announcement was made by Health Minister Eluned Morgan at todays inaugural Planned Care Summit.

Planned care is any treatment that doesnt happen as an emergency and usually involves a prearranged appointment. Most patients are referred for planned care from their GP.

The funding will predominantly be focused on endoscopy, cataract, orthopaedic and diagnostic & imaging services, but will also go towards cancer and stroke services.

It is on top of the 25m extra a year for emergency departments announced in July.

Figures released earlier this month revealed that the number of patient pathways referred but waiting to start treatment has risen each month since April 2020.

In August 2021, there were 657,539 patient pathways waiting to start treatment, the highest since comparable data was first collected in 2011.

In North Wales there were 138,397 people waiting to start treatment in August, an increase from 135,398 in July.

Of those 74,921 were waiting up to 26 weeks to start treatment, 9,810 were waiting 26 to 36 weeks and 53,666 over 36 weeks.

Health boards are being urged to develop plans about how they can transform how their services are delivered and make best use of the funding available, which will be split equally between each health board based on population.

Speaking at the Planned Care Summit, which the Health Minister organised after a meeting with the Royal College of Surgeons England, the Minister also outlined how 1million will go towards the creation of a Planned Care Innovation Fund.

The fund, which will be open to applications from 30 November, is based on the principles of the Bevan Commissions Exemplar programme, and is set out to support innovation and adoption across Wales.

Betsi Cadwaladr UHB have seen further developments in their delivery of orthopaedics with the innovative implementation of virtual follow ups with patients, video group consultations, some joint replacements without an overnight stay and prehabilitation screening for patients before surgery helping to cut their recovery time.

Newly appointed NHS Wales chief executive Judith Paget will outline at the summit the five goals that will transform planned care, which are:

Effective referrals into secondary care;

Access to specialist advice and guidance for primary care and paramedics;

Treat accordingly by ensuring that all care pathways are fit for purpose;

Follow ups to encourage individuals to manage their own conditions;

Measure what is important when looking at waiting lists.

She said: We have provided an investment of 248m to support the acceleration of planned care recovery during this financial year.

We are making an extra 170m a year available to health boards for them to radically transform and fundamentally change how planned care is delivered, to ensure the planned care programme is fit for purpose and is delivering what we need.

We need to transform the way we deliver services. Many advancements and new ways of working have come online during the pandemic, but it is important to build on these and use the opportunity to create modern health and social services for the future.

Health Minister Eluned Morgan said: The impact of the pandemic on planned care has been significant, resulting in a massive backlog of patients waiting for planned treatments. There are, we fear, also many patients who are yet to present to primary care with their illness.

We need a whole system approach to how care is delivered and by investing 248m in Covid recovery, 170m in planned care and 42million in social care, we hope to put NHS Wales in a stronger position for future generations.

We are calling for health boards to radically transform how planned care is delivered, as we want to not just recover from the pandemic, but to build a planned care system that is bigger, better and more effective than we have seen before.
Wrexham Council still confident over future of 18.3m gateway scheme despite funding snub

A council leader has expressed confidence that plans to transform one of the main gateways into Wrexham can still move forward.

It comes despite a 18.3m bid to drive the scheme ahead being turned down under the first round of the UK Governments Levelling Up Fund.

Wrexham Council had hoped money would be green lit to deliver a number of developments along Mold Road, including a new 5,000-seat stand at the Kop end of Wrexham AFCs Racecourse Ground.

A four-star hotel, conferencing and hospitality facility and multi-storey car park were also included as part of proposals to boost the areas economy.

However, although a 13.3m bid to revitalise the area around the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct was successful, the gateway scheme was not included in the list of approved projects announced last week.

Council leader Mark Pritchard said he was still optimistic it would progress after the local authority was advised to apply again under the next round of funding.

He said: We are extremely pleased to have had a successful Levelling Up Fund bid for the aqueduct and canal for over 13 million, the only authority in North Wales to have secured funding from the UK Government under this round of bids and we remain firmly committed to securing the funding required for the Wrexham Gateway.

25 million has already been committed by the Welsh Government for this high profile project and moving it forward in the coming months is a priority.

I am pleased to confirm we have been encouraged to apply for funding under phase two of the Levelling Up Fund by the UK Government who has reaffirmed its commitment to levelling up the whole of the UK.

We remain confident for the future of the Wrexham Gateway project and I would like to thank everyone involved for their continued and unwavering support to Wrexham and the wider North Wales area.

The 25m already set aside by the Welsh Government will be used to create a transport hub at Wrexham General railway station.

Wrexham was previously identified as one of three priority areas in North Wales under the Levelling Up Fund, which is aimed at investing in local infrastructure.

The gateway bid has been backed by the towns MP Sarah Atherton, who was elected as its first ever Conservative representative in Westminster in 2019.

The UK Government said applications for the second round of the fund will open in spring 2022 with further details to be announced in the near future.

By Liam Randall  BBC Local Democracy Reporter
Wrexham school redevelopment plans approved to bring pupils onto same site

Plans to redevelop a school in Wrexham have been approved to provide improved facilities for pupils.

Children at Ysgol Yr Hafod in Johnstown are currently taught at two separate sites in the village, depending on whether they fall within the infant or junior age range.

An application was put forward last month in a bid to bring all pupils under the same roof.

The scheme has now been approved by councillors and will result in three new classrooms being created on the junior site on Bangor Road to house infant school pupils.

The existing building will also be refurbished to accommodate a total of 350 pupils overall.

Addressing a meeting of Wrexham Councils planning committee held on Monday, headteacher Alison Heale said the changes would help youngsters to learn.

She said: We have a successful school with dedicated staff who have created inspirational learning environments which allow our pupils to thrive.

However, being on a split site means that often parents still regard us as being two schools.

The process of transition from foundation phase to key stage two can be an anxious time for our children.

We have a programme of activities to support transition, but the physical distance between the two buildings is a big hurdle for the children to get over.

This opportunity to extend and refurbish the proposed site on key stage two, as part of the 21st Century Schools Programme will enable us to provide the very best in terms of educational facilities for the children of Johnstown.

The junior school building was built in 1901 and Ms Heale said the oldest part of it was in need of renovation.

The proposals will also result in the creation of a new staff car park and multi-use games area.

A total of four objections were received ahead of the meeting from people living near the school because of concerns over parking and traffic.

Two letters of support were also submitted to the council, with one person describing the plans as a great idea.

Johnstown councillor David A Bithell, who is chair of governors at the school, was among those who spoke in favour of the application.

He said: Weve made some significant improvements in the school from an educational point of view.

Where we fall down is the facilities of the school and bringing the school into the 21st century with classrooms that are fit for purpose is the next stage really.

Theres been one or two concerns about parking, but we get that at every school in the county borough.

Weve done a lot of work with officers, the governing body and the community over the last few months and Im happy as the local member with the mitigations that weve got in place.

The plans were unanimously approved at the end of the committees discussions.

Councillors also supported introducing two temporary teaching blocks at at the infant school site while work is carried out.

Each block will contain four classrooms and be used to temporarily house junior pupils.

By Liam Randall  BBC Local Democracy Reporter
Young talent kicks-off financial services career with GM Wealth Management after completing Financial Advice Diploma

Wrexham-based financial planning firm GM Wealth Management has celebrated Simon Pattinson becoming one of the youngest qualified financial planners through the Quilter Financial Adviser School after recently being awarded his Diploma in Financial Advice (DipFA) by the London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF).

Simon from the Wirral obtained the qualification with the LIBF at the age of 20, after completing a year-long study programme with Quilter Financial Adviser School (QFAS) and is now working as a fully qualified financial planner for local firm GM Wealth Management.

GM Wealth Management sponsored Simon through the course, during which time he worked for the firm as a paraplanner, balancing work and study. Simon first joined the business in January 2020.

Being awarded the DipFA qualification means Simon has been able to be authorised to offer financial advice to UK clients and so he now begins a new role as a Financial Adviser with GM Wealth Management.

GM Wealth Management principal adviser, Gary McMorran says: We are really proud of Simon, who has passed his DipFA at such a young age, bearing testament to both his natural aptitude for financial advice and the hard work he has put into succeeding since joining us.

GM Wealth Management was founded to support clients in the region build a financial plan that enables them to realise their goals and ambitions. These ambitions will often involve the younger generations of a clients family and we know Simon will prove helpful to us when connecting with those younger generations. I am looking forward to watching him flourish in his new career.

Simon adds: Im really excited to begin my new role as Financial Adviser, especially working with such a dedicated and knowledgeable team. This is a fantastic opportunity for me and I am proud of what I have achieved.

GM Wealth Management is a local financial planning business, who explain they advise on more than 20m worth of wealth for over 250 clients and their families.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown speaks to supporters at his election night party, late Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)

On Wednesday, India Walton, the Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated candidate for mayor of Buffalo, New York conceded Tuesdays election to the incumbent mayor, Byron Brown, who has already served four terms.

Brown waged a union-backed write-in campaign after losing to Walton in the citys Democratic primary election in June. Top Democrats, including Governor Kathy Hochul, who replaced Andrew Cuomo in August following a trumped-up #MeToo-style sex scandal, refused to support Walton and thereby gave her blessing to the right-wing write-in campaign of Brown.

In her concession statement, Walton avoided denouncing the Democratic Party in general or naming those who sabotaged her campaign, instead concentrating her fire on the Republican Party leadership and referring merely to the many high-profile Democrats who refused to defend us against them.

With all precincts reporting, just over 41 percent of votes cast were for Walton and 59 percent were marked for write-in, or 23,986 to 34,273. The vast majority of votes in the write-in category are assumed to be for Brown, who declared victory on Tuesday night. Mail-in ballots will not be counted until November 9, but Browns nearly 10,000 vote lead cannot be overcome by those results.

No Republican contested the mayoral race in the heavily working class city of 254,000 people. Buffalo, in western New York State, is among those rust belt cities devastated by decades of deindustrialization. The former center of steel production and other manufacturing had a population of 580,000 in 1950. It is now one of the poorest US cities, with an official poverty rate of over 30 percent.

The election took place during the fifth week of a bitter strike by 2,200 nurses and health workers against Mercy Hospital in Buffalo. The workers are fighting against massive understaffing and forced overtime as well as low pay.

Democratic politicians have appeared on the picket lines, including Walton, not to advance the fight of the workers, but to bolster the bureaucracy of the Communications Workers of America, which officially represents the nurses and health workers, but, in fact, is isolating them from their fellow Catholic Health system workers and nurses on strike at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts.

After losing the primary, Brown ran a right-wing, anti-communist campaign against Walton, digging up unflattering personal details from her past and suggesting that the election of a socialist would destroy the city.

Brown celebrated his reelection Tuesday night at his campaign headquarters and suggested that Walton was a threat to democracy, stating, Todays election was not just a referendum on the city of Buffalo. It was a referendum on the future of our democracy.

While New York senators Kirstin Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, known as the senator from Wall Street, formally supported Walton, both Hochul and the New York State Democratic Committee refused to back Walton. Hochul hails from Buffalo and is highly influential within the local Democratic Party.

Jay S. Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, justified his refusal to back the winner of the partys primary election by comparing her to former KKK leader David Duke.

After arrogantly declaring that there was no requirement for the party leadership to support the primary winner, he said: Lets take a scenario, very different, where David Duke, you remember him? The grand wizard of the KKK? He moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat, and he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which has a low primary turnout, and he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I dont think so.

While Brown received the backing of New Yorks Democratic establishment, he was also able to count on the backing of the states union bureaucracies.

In a region where union membership, though only a fraction of what it once was, is still twice the national average, the Western New York Area Labor Federation/AFL-CIO, AFSCME Council 35, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), the Transport Workers Union, the Buffalo Professional Firefighters and the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association all backed Brown, demonstrating that the unions themselves are nothing more than extensions of the Democratic Party.

Walton had gained the support of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, SEIU Local 1199 and the Working Families Party (WFP). She later alienated both teachers and the Buffalo Teachers Federation when she expressed support for charter schools while speaking at a Rotary Club luncheon.

Despite her self-proclaimed socialist politics, Walton revealed herself to be a conventional reformist Democrat with little knowledge of socialism or its history.

During the same luncheon with the Rotary Club, Walton stated that she would fight poverty by creating good, minimum-wage, green jobs.

In Waltons own political program as posted on her website, there is no mention of either capitalism or socialism. Reading her program, one would have no idea that the problems of Buffaloextreme poverty, low wages, a poor education system, police violence and political corruptionare endemic across capitalist America and the entire world.

Instead, her program is filled with typical left-liberal capitalist reform policies, such as prioritizing small and minority-owned local businesses and targeting infrastructure investments to create safe streets, calming traffic and increasing accessibility for people of all ages and abilities.

Throughout her campaign, Walton relied on empty reformist platitudes while touting the endorsement of figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez, who visited Buffalo to support Walton a week before the election, told television station WIVB that both Walton and she dreaded the socialist label. She elaborated: When you talk about capitalism, socialism, et ceterathese are very high-minded debates. I think whats important is we say, Wheres the beef? What are the policies each candidate is actually proposing?

As the failure of Waltons campaign and the collapse of Bidens social reform bill demonstrate, the Democrats cannot be reformed, nor can the capitalist system. Workers and youth must reject the DSAs attempted rebranding of the United States oldest capitalist party and fight to build a mass socialist movement to overthrow capitalism.
Within a week, the seven-day incidence rate of the coronavirus in Germany has risen by more than 40, to a level of 155 per 100,000. It is almost as high as it was at the peak of the deadly third wave. The increase cuts across all age groups and is significantly higher than at the same time last year.

The number of new infections reported daily in Germany has reached a new high. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 33,949 new coronavirus infections within one day on Thursday. This is 172 more than on December 18, 2020, the day with the highest number of confirmed infections so far.

Along with this, the number of coronavirus patients in intensive care units is also rising sharply in all age groups. Within the last day, more than 600 infected patients have been hospitalized. The hospitalization incidence is currently 3.29, with 2,058 ill patients in the ICUan increase of 74 from the previous day.

People line up for vaccination injections in front of at the vaccination center of the Malteser relief service on the fair grounds in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

We are in a critical situation of the pandemic, the chief executive of the German Hospital Association, Gerald Gass, told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. If this trend continues, we will have 3,000 patients in intensive care units again in just two weeks, he warned.

As with previous waves, the number of outbreaks is increasing in nursing homes and hospitals. Last week, there were 78 outbreaks in medical facilities (an increase of 23 from the previous week) and 122 outbreaks in nursing homes and homes for the elderly (an increase of 44 from the previous week). In total, there were nearly 2,000 new cases.

It is not uncommon for these outbreaks to be fatal. In a nursing home in Brandenburg last week, the number of residents who died increased to eleven. In a nursing facility in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an outbreak resulted in 17 deaths.

The latest rise in infections is a direct result of the criminal policy of reopening the economy and dismantling protective measures in all areas. The recklessness of all state governments is particularly evident in schools. Among 5-to-19-year-olds, the seven-day incidence level is now over 180, and among 10-to-14-year-olds, it is even over 330.

In the last four weeks, there have been 190 coronavirus outbreaks at kindergartens and 768 at schools. In both cases, however, the last two weeks cannot yet be conclusively assessed, due to late reports. The number of school outbreaks has been increasing significantly since the beginning of August. These numbers can clearly be attributed to the reopening of schools and the dismantling of protective measures.

Despite this, all state governments are sticking to their unsafe school policies. Since the start of school after the end of the summer vacations, they are trying to outdo each other in who is the fastest to abolish protective measures such as distancing regulations or mandatory mask-wearing. On November 2, the mask-wearing requirement for nearly 2.5 million students was dropped in the most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. School administrators were expressly prohibited by the state Education Ministry from opposing these dangerous regulations.

In Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony, too, the mask-wearing requirement is to be lifted again after the autumn vacationscontrary to the wishes of many students. In the student body, we are largely in agreement: we would rather put on masks in class and be safe from coronavirus than be taught at home, explained Oliver Sachsze, deputy chairman of the state student council, for example.

Thuringia is particularly clear in its pursuit of deliberate mass infection. Although the incidence level among 15-to-34-year-olds is 273 and among 5-to-14-year-olds 527, the Left Party-led state government is continuing to maintain unsafe classroom teaching. The requirement to wear a mask still does not apply to elementary school students. Testing is back, but untested students are allowed to continue coming to school in separate learning groups.

Infections are also on the rise at universities, which recently began their winter semesters again with in-person classes. In mid-October, the nearly three million students at German universities were sent back under unsafe conditions. Now the first consequences of this policy are beginning to show.

In Gottingen, the Faculty of Economics had to cancel its orientation weeks due to the increase in coronavirus infections. City spokesman Dominik Kimyon said it was difficult to determine exactly where the infections were coming from.

Seven infections also occurred during the orientation weeks at Leuphana University in Luneburg, which can be attributed primarily to three study groups. At Leibnitz University in Hannover, there were two confirmed infections related to the orientation period.

At Freie Universitat Berlin, the Korea Institute had to switch to online formats again just one week after resuming face-to-face teaching. Infections were also reported at the History and Cultural Studies department, including several cases of vaccine breakthroughs. Previously, the university presidents office had stated that it did not expect any serious outbreaks, due to the high vaccination rate.

Resistance is growing to this policy of deliberate infection at universities. At the last meeting of the Humboldt University student parliament (StuPa), the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) campus club introduced a resolution opposing face-to-face teaching and calling for an immediate return to online teaching. After an amendment, the following text was passed:

The StuPa criticizes the current course of the presidium to hold as many courses as possible in person without creating effective protective measures at the same time. Due to this short-term and chaotic decision, students are being exposed to health hazards and risk groups are being denied participation in courses. Students who have left Berlin due to the pandemic are now also faced with the task of finding an apartment in Berlin from one second to the next. We call on the university management to oblige lecturers to create real options and to allow students to decide whether they want to participate in the courses in person or digitally. This should not put students who attend digitally at a disadvantage.

Outside of nurseries, schools, and universities, coronavirus outbreaks are occurring in numerous other places where workers must assemble without adequate safety measures. Last week, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) attributed 643 infections to outbreaks at workplaces, 1,075 at educational institutions and 71 at refugee shelters. But because the origin of the vast majority of infections cannot be identified, the number of unreported cases is much higher.

The explosion in case numbers and the threat of yet another deadly winter wave underscores the importance of the strategy to eliminate the virus. The international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site said in a statement earlier this week:

Amid the ongoing wave of mass death, governments worldwide are scrapping all remaining measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, with the grotesque mantra that society must learn to live with the virus. Two parallel processes are unfolding. Countries that had limited mitigation measures in place are now lifting them all, while countries that had more aggressive measures aimed at eliminating the virus are giving in to mounting pressure to let the virus rip through society.

The fight to eliminate and eradicate the virus cannot be left to politicians who are already responsible for at least five million coronavirus deaths. The statement explains:
Deere management has declared that the contract that workers rejected Tuesday was their best and final offer and that they would not be returning to the bargaining table, Bloomberg News has reported.

The agreement that we provided is frankly our best and final offer, Marc Howze, chief administrative officer for Deere, told the business news outlet. In order for us to be competitive we have gone as far as were gonna go. In a separate news release, the company also declared that it would execute the next phase of our Customer Service Continuation Plan, i.e., its strikebreaking operation.

Workers strike outside of a John Deere plant, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, in Ankeny, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

The statements from Deere amount to giving the United Auto Workers its marching orders to shut down the strike and enforce the contract which workers just rejected. No doubt, the UAW will attempt to ride roughshod over the democratic will of the workers and move rapidly to send the strikers back to work. Even if the union is unable to accomplish this, however, it will seek to isolate and starve out the Deere workers on the picket line with a woefully inadequate $275 weekly strike pay.

This was the clear meaning of the UAW's own statement in the aftermath of the vote, which said: The strike against John Deere and Company will continue as we discuss next steps with the company.

Shelby Kluver, a reporter for WQAD in the Quad Cities, tweeted Wednesday afternoon that a company representative had told her, Deere is still at the negotiating table and actively seeking to get the second tentative contract ratified. There [are] no moves being made for a new, third contract that goes beyond the scope of the second offer.

That the discussion taking place centers around how to force through a contract which workers rejected stretches the meaning of the word negotiating table past its limit. It would be more accurate to say that Deere and UAW are meeting at the conspiring table to discuss how to break the opposition of Deere workers.

Howze told the San Francisco Gate, in a statement that was equally condescending and threatening, We want to make sure they understand the value of the agreement, to make sure they understand that there is nothing to be gained by continuing to hold out. To some degree, because we were able to come to a resolution as quickly as we were, I think theres some folks who believe there must be some more available.

For Deere to claim there is not more available is simply not tenable. The company is set to make close to $6 billion in profit for its previous fiscal year, far exceeding its previous record. Demand and prices for its agricultural equipment have been on a sharp upward trajectory.

Deere is following the playbook of the Volvo Trucks strike to the letter. A month into that strike, Volvo Trucks workers delivered a stunning rejection of the third consecutive tentative agreement brought by the UAW. Volvo Trucks Vice President and General Manager Frankie Marchand also responded by declaring that the contract was their last, best and final offer and that it would unilaterally impose it.

Even as Volvo management was openly calling on workers to cross the picket line, the UAW served as its battering ram, forcing workers to re-vote on the contract that they had just rejected, while making it clear that regardless of the outcome the union was intent upon ending the strike. The contract passed under the re-vote under dubious circumstances by a mere 17 votes.

Volvo seized upon the narrower margin of defeat of the third tentative agreement by attempting to split the workforce between those who had voted no and yes, encouraging the latter to cross the picket line to work under the terms of the rejected contract. Similar tactics will likely be attempted at Deere.

In particular, the UAW may attempt to split the Waterloo and Dubuque locals, the centers of opposition to the deal, from the locals that voted yes or rejected it by a narrow margin, sending the latter back to work while forcing Waterloo and Dubuque workers to fend for themselves. An article in the Wall Street Journal that noted that Howze and Deere executives were encouraged by the level of support for the second offer after 90% of the voters reportedly turned down the first deal is a clear indication that they are considering how to enforce such a split.

The turn now must be to the broadest possible mobilization of the working class in defense of the Deere strike, against both management and the UAW. Deere workers are in a powerful position and can defeat both the ruthlessness of the company and the treachery of the union, but they cannot fight them alone.

There is enormous support among workers for the Deere struggle. As a former farm implement worker and vet of the great 1979-80 International Harvester Strike, said one retiree, I, like I am sure thousands of others, am proud of you and your efforts to begin reversing 40 years of union-enforced company concessions. Seems it is not an exaggeration to say the world is watching you.

UAW leadership is being exposed AGAIN! a worker at Stellantiss Sterling Heights Assembly Plant north of Detroit said. We need to hold the union responsible for their actions, they are not upholding whats due to the membership. We must stick together, majority rules!

Another Detroit autoworker said, You are the front-line for ALL workers, union or not. Dont let the corrupt UAW do to you what they did to workers at FCA/Stellantis. You are powerful and in a position to make A REAL DIFFERENCE.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Deere Workers Rank-and-File Committee issued a statement, Whats next in our strike, calling on their coworkers to stand strong against the unions and companys dirty tricks. We won an important battle yesterday. But to win the war, we must press our offensive. We cant allow Deere and the UAW any time to regroup and attempt to force through the same deal, or something largely similar with one or two cosmetic sweeteners thrown in.

Rank-and-file committees at other auto plants, formed to develop workers independent initiative and organization against the treachery of the UAW, declared in their own statements yesterday that they stand ready to assist Deere workers. John Deere workers, the rank-and-file committee at Faurecia stands with you, an auto parts worker and member of that committee said. We have to stand together and show the capitalists that we will not accept these sellout contracts anymore. The gravy train is over.

Deere workers are doing a good job of building a rank-and-file committee. The IWA-RFC [International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees] is getting stronger by the minute. We all need to stand together. John Deere is a global corporation. We need to get word to our co-workers in other countries and keep each other informed about whats going on.

The Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee, in its own statement, declared: Now is the time for Dana workers to join Deere workers and all auto workers to overturn the fraudulent contracts signed by the UAW in recent months and years.

All workers, taking up the principle that an injury to one is an injury to all, must mobilize in defense of the strike and against the UAWs attempts to sabotage and isolate it. Deere workers should appeal to workers and plants which voted for the contract not to allow the company and the union to disrupt their solidarity.

Workers across the country must develop independent rank-and-file support committees to prepare for joint, nationwide action in defense of the strike.

Take the next step by contacting the Deere Rank-and-File Committee by emailing deerewrfc@gmail.com or texting (484) 514-9797. Alternatively, you can fill out the form below.
The statement published below is from internationally acclaimed photographer Jane Evelyn Atwood, the first winner of the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant, when it was established in 1980. It is the fifth article in a series about Minamata, the new movie by Andrew Levitas and starring Johnny Depp, in addition to our original review.

Jane Evelyn Atwood (Credit: Nicola Lo Calzo)

Minamata focuses on the industrial poisoning of Japanese fishing communities in Minamata by the Chisso Corporation and the courageous efforts by acclaimed photo-essayist Eugene Smith (Depp) and his wife Aileen Mioko Smith to expose this crime before a global audience during the early 1970s.

The WSWS reviewed the movie in late July and followed this with a series of interviews. The first of these conversations was with photographer Stephen Dupont, a winner of the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography in 2007; the second with acclaimed Australian documentary photographer Jack Picone; and the third with Kevin Eugene Smith, a lawyer, former television producer and journalist, and the manager of the photographic estate of his father, Eugene Smith. The fourth article featured comments from photographers David Dare Parker and John Hulme.

While Minamata has been released in many countries around the world, MGM, which purchased the rights to distribute the film in North America, has not screened it in the US. The company, which is being taken over by Amazon, has refused to give any indication when it will be released.

W. Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp) and Aileen Mioko Smith (Minami Bages) and in Minamata [Source: Metalwork Pictures]

In July, director Levitas issued an open letter revealing that he had been told by MGMs acquisitions head Sam Wollman that the company was burying Minamata over concerns that the personal issues of Johnny Depp, could reflect negatively on MGM. The companys arrogant and censorious actions constitute an outrageous attack on all those involved in the films production, including Aileen Mioko Smith, who was co-author of the book on which it was based, as well as the victims and families of those poisoned by Chisso.

Jane Evelyn Atwood was born in New York and has been living in France since 1971. Regarded as one of the worlds leading documentary photographers, she is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards. This includes a World Press Foundation Prize, the Grand Prix Paris Match du Photojournalisme, a Grand Prix du Portfolio de la Societe Civile des Auteurs Multimedia, as well as a Grand Prix Photo Albert Kahn and a Lucie Award for Documentary Photography, to name just a few.

During her 45-year career she has published 12 books of her work, her photographs have appeared in the worlds leading newspapers and magazines, and she has exhibited worldwide in solo and group exhibitions. Atwoods approach is deeply immersive, spending years on individual projects; her work is intense, empathetic and animated by a determination to expose social oppression and injustice.

Handcuffed woman prisoner giving birth in Anchorage prison, Alaska, 1993. Atwoods photograph, which was used by Amnesty International, played a major role in banning the barbaric practice of handcuffing and shackling pregnant prisoners during labour and birth in the US and England. [Photograph copyright Jane Evelyn Atwood]

This includes documenting the life of Parisian prostitutes, the plight of blind children in France, Japan, the US and other countries, a monumental ten-year photographic study of the brutal treatment of women prisoners in Eastern and Western Europe and the US, a four-year project on landmine destruction in Cambodia, Angola, Kosovo, Mozambique and Afghanistan, and other projects.

As one writer commented, Atwoods photographs shows us repeatedly what we dont dare to look at or are afraid to know or what we might not otherwise see.

Atwoods defence of Minamata and her opposition to MGMs refusal to release the movie in North America is an important indication that serious artists are rightly concerned about the efforts of governments and giant corporations to silence artists and marginalise any work that might expose and challenge the rich and the powerful.

The WSWS does not share Atwoods views on #MeToo, which, notwithstanding its claims, is not in the slightest concerned about the plight of millions of female refugees or poverty-stricken working-class women. But Atwoods principled opposition to MGMs censorship of Minamata, her forthright defence of Johnny Depp, along with her reassertion of Eugene Smiths approachto use photography to expose and denounce the unacceptableare a welcome and valuable contribution to the fight for freedom of artistic expression.

The censorship of MINAMATA starring Johnny Depp as W. Eugene Smith

I oppose MGMs refusal to release this film in US cinemas, because Im against censorship. We know all too well what it leads to: censorship eventually turns against the censors themselves.

Johnny Depp has been accused of beating his last wife, the actress Amber Heard. But apparently the woman is hardly credible, his former French wife has defended Depp and, as I understand it, he has yet to be charged with anything.

Let me emphasize that the #MeToo movement is great: because of it, women who claim theyve been abused are finally being heard. But from what Ive read, Depp may have been set up. Apparently hes been cancelledno more advertising jobs, no more acting jobs. Collateral damage of #MeToo? It is terrible and frightening that someones career can be ruined on the basis of rumors and unfounded gossip on social media and in the mainstream press. This is an important issue for all artists.

In any event, no matter how the actor has behaved in his personal life, Im against censoring the filmjust as Im against censoring literature, music, or art of any kind. If people dont want to see a movie because of what one of its actors is accused of (in this case, probably falsely), thats their choice. But the movie deserves to exist in its own right, as does any creative endeavor.

I cant help wondering if MGMs censorship of Minamata might have more to do with the subject itselfmercury poisoningthan with the reputation of the lead actor. Its also interesting to note that Depp was hardly paid for the role, and it was he who produced the film. Did he have to produce it himself in order for it to exist? Some years ago, I did a book on landmine victims. I found it impossible to obtain a sponsor, because all the countries and corporations that might have helped fund the project werealbeit completely off the recordinvolved in some way in the proliferation of mines, whether through manufacture, sale, trade, stockpile or use of them. They didnt want their names on a book that denounced landmines.

When today the major media outlets are owned by just a few corporations or individuals, it becomes more and more difficult for photographers working on controversial subjects to get their work published.

I became a photographer because I had seen prostitutes on the streets in Paris, where Ive lived since 1971, and I was curious about them. I found them beautiful and wanted to know them. Photographing them allowed me to do that. My very first story was on a small group of women prostitutes on the Rue des Lombards. It became my first book.

Since then Ive done 12 more books, each one more difficult than the last. I was censored twiceby the United States and by Moroccobecause of nudity in one of my exhibitions. In Morocco, the images were carefully removed from the crates and set aside when they arrived at customs. They were reintegrated into the show only after it closed, before its return to France. In the USA I was flatly told, We wont exhibit that here. Sometimes one can get away with showing a womans breast, but a mans penis is almost always off limits. Thats both censorship AND a double standard!

Women prisoners in outside cages for their daily 20 minutes of yard privileges at a Russian prison in Perm 1990. [Photograph copyright Jane Evelyn Atwood]

When I began my work, I knew nothing about photography and had never heard of W. Eugene Smith. In fact, I was inspired by only one photographer, Diane Arbus. I knew she had killed herself and, with a suicide in my own family, I wanted to try to understand how someone can choose death over life. I discovered Arbus through her pictures and I never forgot them. Later, when I did my first book, and especially when I became the inaugural winner of the W. Eugene Smith Award, I learned about Smith and all the other photographers whose pictures I was beginning to see. Smiths work moved me. It also highlighted the importance of using a series of images to tell a story, departing from the Cartier-Bresson approach of only one photo, or the decisive moment. Smith invented (and indirectly gave me permission to do) the photographic essay: to tell stories with pictures. He used photography to expose and denounce the unacceptable, the injustices that most people ignore or dont want to know. With the mercury poisoning, he was up against a powerful and rich corporation. His pictures bore witness to the effects of the poisoning on the residents of Minamata and swayed the jury to convict those responsible. As with Smith and his book Minamata, a couple of my images have also made a concrete difference and helped to change the course of history.

It seems to me that this kind of engaged photography is even more important today. At a time when everyone thinks she/he is a photographer, when we are bombarded with images across social media, only serious pictures can give authenticity to a story. This kind of photography needs to be preserved and promotedjust one of many reasons why the film Minamata must be accessible worldwide.

Finally: as an American, I find it outrageous that the film isnt screened in the US, and I believe the excuse for censoring it is just bullshit. This is a movie that exposes an unconscionable tragedy few people know about, but everyone should. It deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience.

Jane Evelyn Atwood

Winner of the first W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant, 1980
On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an in principle decision to remove more COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in Auckland, New Zealands largest city. On November 10, retail businesses and public facilities such as libraries will reopen, and outdoor gatherings of up to 25 people will be allowed.

This is another reckless decision that will accelerate the spread of the deadly virus. There are now 2,139 active casesa nearly tenfold increase since September 22, when the Labour Party-led government eased Aucklands lockdown from level 4, the strictest, to level 3.

Medical staff take a COVID-19 test from a visitor to a drive through community based assessment centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Hundreds of thousands of people returned to workplaces and thousands of secondary school students to classrooms, fuelling the outbreak. Parts of the Northland and Waikato regions are in a level 3 lockdown after cases spread from Auckland. Christchurch, in the South Island, is not under lockdown despite four active cases being found there last week.

Three Auckland high schools (Macleans College, Mount Albert Grammar and Liston College) and one primary school, which had partially reopened, were forced to close this week after positive cases were found among students and staff.

There are currently 64 people in hospital with COVID-19the biggest number so far in the pandemiccompared with just 13 on September 22. This includes three residents of the Edmonton Meadows aged care facility, where 15 residents and four staff tested positive.

Yesterday, an Auckland resident who had tested positive on October 24, died while self-isolating at home. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed, but it highlights the fact that management of positive cases has been significantly loosened.

When the lockdown began in mid-August, most positive cases were isolated in special quarantine hotels if they did not require hospitalisation. These facilities are currently accommodating only 294 people, with everyone else instructed to self-isolate at home.

Ardern told the media on Monday that case numbers were within some of our expectations and modelling and that public health officials said reopening retail was unlikely to cause a marked increase in new cases.

In fact, the governments own modelling predicts a continued surge. Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that by the end of this month there could be more than 1,400 new cases per week, and the number of people in hospital will be 150, with 20 in intensive care. This morning, Bloomfield revealed to TVNZ that he had advised the government not to ease restrictions next week.

The government is deliberately letting the outbreak expand out of control, ignoring the pleas from scientists and public health experts for tighter restrictions. Ardern announced on October 4 that the government was transitioning away from its previous policy of eliminating COVID-19, which has so far limited New Zealands death toll to just 28.

The elimination policy was supported by scientists and working people internationally, who viewed NZ as a model, in contrast to the let it rip policies adopted in most other countries, which are responsible for an estimated 16 million deaths worldwide.

The Labour government has caved in to the pressure from big business, which insists that the working class must accept COVID-19 becoming endemic as the new normal. No country can be allowed to stand as an example showing that the disease can be eliminated and millions of lives saved, if public health is prioritised over private profit.

On Monday, COVID-19 modeller professor Shaun Hendy, who has provided advice to the government, called for a return to a level 4 lockdown in Auckland, saying the case numbers and hospitalisations were concerning. He told TVNZ: If we get up to 200 to 300 cases [a day] that will put a lot of strain on the healthcare system in Auckland.

Contact tracing is not keeping up with the outbreak, resulting in a growing number of unlinked cases. As of yesterday there were 441 cases with no known source, up from about 20 a month ago. Without a lockdown, this will make it impossible to stop the virus from spreading.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told TVNZ on Tuesday he was concerned about any relaxation of controls at the moment in Auckland, while cases were rising. Speaking to Newshub last Saturday, Baker also raised concerns about the governments plan to fully reopen primary schools on November 15, saying it could lead to cases of Long COVID in unvaccinated children.

Overall, 74 percent of people aged over 12 are fully vaccinated, i.e. 62 percent of the total population. Singapore and Australia, which have a higher vaccination rate and have been touted as models by the New Zealand media, are both experiencing a surge in cases, with 91 and 103 COVID-19 deaths respectively in the past seven days, according to the Worldometers website.

Doctor Rawiri Jansen, a public health expert working with the National Maori Pandemic Group, told Radio NZ on Tuesday that he had a feeling of impending doom and the governments decisions would create a perfect f---ing storm. Maori account for about half of the current cases and have a lower vaccination rate.

According to Stuff, the Ministry of Health says there are 284 intensive care or high dependency units across the country. Around 62 percent of ICUs, and 83 percent of all hospital beds are currently occupied.

Whangarei Hospital, the main hospital in Northland, is severely dilapidated and overcrowded. Radio NZ reported that since 2017, overall demand for emergency care, intensive care and inpatient services has surpassed capacity. Emergency medicine consultant Dr Gary Payinda said: If on a regular day we cant cope with patient demand, how the heck could we possibly be expected to cope with a surge [from coronavirus]?

There is considerable unease in the working class over the decision to lower restrictions. Surveys in August and September found a significant majority supported level 4 lockdowns and an elimination strategy. Stuff reported today, however, that its recent poll of nearly 10,000 Auckland residents found that 43 percent now believed authorities had done a terrible or bad job at managing the outbreak.

Meanwhile, anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests are continuing, organised by the extremely unpopular Destiny Church and similar groups. The latest gathering in Auckland last Saturday reportedly attracted 5,000 peopleup from 1,000 at a protest one month ago.

The far-right rallies are being emboldened by sections of the political and business establishment and the media. This morning, Newstalk ZBs Kate Hawkesby suggested that there is sympathy for them, especially in Auckland, where everyones a bit grumpy and a bit over [the lockdown].

The business group Retail NZ, and several business associations in Auckland, wrote to Ardern last week demanding the urgent reopening of businesses. Yesterday, on Newshub, opposition National Party leader Judith Collins criticised the government for not considering localised lockdowns in particular suburbs, essentially calling for an end to the Auckland lockdown.
Educators, retirees and parents from Ohio and Pennsylvania, who are members of the Pennsylvania Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, met last week and discussed the October 24 webinar, How to end the pandemic, which was hosted by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).

The discussion began with members overall reactions to the webinar and the present state of the crisis, then went into some of the specifics of the various lectures. To protect the identity of the participants, everyone is given a pseudonym for this article.

Harry, a retired educator from Philadelphia, said that the speakers at the webinar proved that COVID-19 can be eliminated, and the reason it is not is because it is being deliberately allowed to spread. This is being done to the people.

Alex, a parent of school-age children from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said, I thought the meeting was really good. I liked the testimonials in the beginning. It shows that we workers want answers. The current strike wave spreading across the US is the first in a long time, and it shows that workers are standing up and that the unions are working to isolate and betray these struggles. The pandemic has enraged the working class.

Alex, a retiree from Cleveland, Ohio, and a grandfather of school-age children, referred to the opening remarks by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairperson David North, who moderated the webinar: David Norths pointthe intersection of scientist/physician interests with working-class interestsmatters hugely. Lisa Diaz and David OSullivan illustrated very well that ongoing dialogue of experts with our IWA-RFC is essential to raise our COVID science awareness, to build momentum on our committees, and to prepare us for political struggle.

Samuel, a Philadelphia teacher, explained the impact of the pandemic at his school, stating, We went virtual for a few days last week. Came back on Monday, nothing changed, more students quarantined. One class I have half the students are listed in quarantine. I dont get any information as to why, who was infected; they are just listed with a Q next to their names on the attendance list. Now I see a new designation, COV. I guess that stands for COVID-19, but we havent been told anything. Several of my students are listed that way. I should be in quarantine.

Samuel referred to the work presented by Dr. Jose-Luis Jimenez, professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder and an expert in aerosol physics. His report stressed that the aerosolized character of SARS-CoV-2 has been downplayed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because this would lead to inconvenient conclusions about safety measures.

He noted, The administration says that we are not infected if we stay six feet away and wear masks. This is nonsense since this is an airborne disease. As was discussed at the webinar, this is an aerosol, and if a student is sick in the back of the room, it is everywhere. Also, we are always getting closer to the students, we have to help them with their computers, how to log on, etc. Im not 29 anymore. It is very stressful having to worry about getting infected every minute of every day. Everyone is overwhelmed.

Brian, a high school math teacher, said that he came away with a better understanding of the global character of the pandemic and the response that is needed. He stated, This is a global war, not just a local battle. We have a very tiny few people who have made an obscene amount of money controlling this pandemic. They dont want a solution.

He added, The conversations are focused on the local, not the global. I am part of this. Most of us act on the pandemic in a local way. I mean we get vaccinated, we wear masks, and encourage others to do the same. We should be doing those things. I dont want to die, and I dont want people around me to die.

What I took out of the webinar is that this is really a global problem and needs a global solution. We have to deal with it globally. This problem is more akin to climate change. You can change your light bulbs, but unless the entire world acts, the problem is going to get worse.

Everyone at the meeting agreed with the points raised by Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, about the private control of vaccine production and distribution.

Brian noted that most people do not have access to the vaccine globally, stating, Most of the world is not getting vaccinated. We are not going to stop this unless we vaccinate the world. We have had four variants in just the past 18 months. As long as this virus has a pool to spread in, it is going to mutate. That is just evolution, and these mutations may become more infectious and more lethal.

It is like a mathematical thing. With more infectious variants, you are going to get surges even with the vaccines. The boosters have value, but we are seeing higher and higher rates of vaccinated people getting sick, not at the rate of unvaccinated, but this is creating selective pressure for the vaccine to mutate.

Climate change, COVID, militarization, these are symptoms of the disease. Like the symptoms of cancer, these alert you to the disease, and the disease is the system which is killing us, and we have to kill the system.

Samuel responded to the points Brian and Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding made about the control of the vaccine, stating, We have spoken about vaccine apartheid before. Israel has vaccinated most of its population but leaves the Palestinians unvaccinated. This is murder.

A friend of mines mother-in-law lives in Venezuela and has cancer. They have to send her $1,000 a month so she can buy her medicine. His sister-in-law has to travel all over Caracas to try and find the medicine. It is being blocked by the United States. The US is blocking medical supplies to Venezuela, Cuba and other countries they dont like.

Alex, the retiree living in Cleveland who attended the webinar, pointed out, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding was 100 percent on with break the patent/crack the vaccine. With millions of lives at stake, vaccine control must be wrenched from the profit-controlled system. That millions or even billions are made hostages awaiting a vaccine-priced ransom payment makes clear capitalisms criminality.

Speaking on the danger of the pandemic and the research presented by Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist and researcher at the University of Calgary in Canada, Samuel added, We cant vaccinate our way out of the pandemic. The Delta variant is too contagious, and already Delta-plus is spreading. We dont have the proper testing to see how the virus is spreading. Our case numbers are still worse than last fall. Maybe they have fallen a bit, but that is the same shape as last fall. Then as everyone moves inside, we have the winter surge. As they said, we still dont know a lot about this virus. We are going to see this ramp up.

Brian agreed, commenting, We have the science; we know what we have to do. What Dr. Gasperowicz said, vaccines alone wont solve the problem. We are in a tough spot; the science is clear but it is a battle. The scientists on the panel should be at the National Institute of Health. We have got to get rid of the herd immunity bunch.

Speaking on the report of Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, a public health researcher at the Queen Mary University in London, on the effects of Long COVID, Samuel said, They want people to think this is just like a severe cold, but there are a lot of long-term effects.

Speaking on the role of rank-and-file committees, everyone supported the remarks made by British parent Lisa Diaz, who has been organizing school strikes to protest the forced reopening of schools; Donna, a teacher from Tennessee and member of the Tennessee Educators Rank-and-File Committee, who spoke on the conditions in their schools; and David OSullivan, a bus driver from London, who was fired for fighting for safe working conditions.

Lisa Diaz, Donna and David O'Sullivan speaking at the October 24 webinar

Samuel pointed out that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) does not even acknowledge the teachers who have died from COVID-19. He said, If you look at their website, their Facebook or Twitter, they dont say anything about them. That is because then they would have to say what they would do, and they wont do anything.

Alex pointed out, The world has many Bolsonaros. All await justice. The enormity of their crimes demand prosecution of all officials, corporations, media and other entities that promoted/implemented these policies as a committee previously published.

No just or lawful system implements policies of social murder by coercing reopening in a pandemic or utilizing vaccine control for profit. Public officials who say, you must live with COVID must hear, your resignation has been accepted.

David North said that at some point, it needs be asked whether this is a pandemic or a social holocaust. As a first step toward an answer, I believe that as much as the numbers of victims do matter, greater weight must lie with the particular combination of conditions and policies which apply, including the means of ending the pandemic; the availability of human, social and medical resources; the breadth of their effective application to stop pandemic; and the reasons for which they may be withheld, together with the resulting death and misery.

In summing up the lessons of the past 18 months, Brian said, I voted for Biden, and I really campaigned hard for the two senators from Georgia. I was donating money, making phone calls and sending postcards. Now they wont even tax the billionaires. We have to have a Plan B, we cant just keep appealing to liberals, to the billionaires who are in power.

The worse the pandemic, the more they profited. They are the ones who control the COVID response. They dont want the pandemic to end, they want the pandemic to continue. We cant make the case to the powers that be since they are the ones benefiting from this disorder. We have got to replace the system.

Every member wanted to express their enormous thanks for all the panelists and would like to hear each of them again. They thanked the WSWS for bringing this material together and continuing to share the work of these experts.
On Wednesday, thousands of workers from the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), the Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) demonstrated against the Rajapakse governments agreement to sell the Kerawalapitiya power station to the US-based New Fortress Energy.

About 4,000 CEB workers from all grades participated in the campaign, including 3,000 who travelled from districts across the island to join a protest outside the CEBs head office in Colombo City.

Petroleum Corporation workers demonstrating in Kolonnawa (Photo: WSWS Media)

On the same day, almost 300 Colombo Port workers demonstrated outside the SLPA main office while about 200 CPC staff protested in front of the Kolonnawa oil storage facility in the Colombo suburbs. Dozens of Sapugaskanda oil refinery workers also rallied outside the facility in Colombos north-eastern suburbs.

Workers held hand-written placards and chanted slogans demanding that the government Stop selling CEB and Stop the privatisation of national assets. The separate protests were organised by the Joint Trade Union Alliance (JTUA) of the CEB, SLPA and CPC unions.

A day before the demonstrations, the CEB chairman issued a circular cancelling the leave of all workers and threatening disciplinary action against any employee responsible for disrupting power supplies. These threats were defied by CEB workers who joined the campaign by taking sick leave. The JTUA, fearing any confrontation with the government, refused to organise a strike but directed those workers travelling to Colombo to apply for leave.

Ceylon Electricity Board workers protesting outside Colombo head office (Photo-WSWS Media).

Sri Lankan police attempted to secure a magistrates court injunction to stop CPC workers protesting at Kolonnawa but the judge refused, saying police already had the power to take action against the demonstration.

The Rajapakse governments privatisation agreement with the New Fortress Energy (NFE) was secretly signed on September 17. It includes the sale of a 40 percent share of the West Coast Company, which currently controls the LNG power station at Kerawalapitiya. NFE will have the rights to the production and supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and supply power stations built in the future.

The protests of CEB, CPC and the SLPA employees are part of a resurgence of class struggle action against government and big business attacks on jobs and social conditions by workers in Sri Lanka and internationally.

While the alliance of the CEB, CPC and SLPA unions was forced to call yesterdays protests in response to the growing concerns of their members, the limited and separate actions are aimed at containing workers opposition and tying it to the opposition capitalist partiesthe Samagi Jana Balawegaya, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

These parties have no fundamental differences with Colombos privatisation deal and have, both in and out of government, ruthlessly endorsed job-cutting privatisations and other attacks on the social conditions of workers and the poor.

Addressing protesters outside the CEBs head office yesterday, CEB union convenor Ranjan Jayalal declared, Although we dont want to take strike action, we think the government will understand that this protest is a signal and will withdraw the agreement.

Demonstrators should not fear Colombos threats, he continued, because the government doesnt have a spine. Thats why they signed the agreement in secret.

These comments are a deliberate attempt to politically disarm workers, even as the government is preparing to launch a brutal assault on democratic and social rights, not just against these state-enterprise workers but the entire working class.

On October 29, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse issued an extraordinary gazette re-imposing the essential public services act that bans strikes and industrial action across many state institutions, including the CPC and the SLPA. Any state-sector worker violating these measures, or encouraging others to take any form of industrial action, can be punished with harsh jail sentences, heavy fines and blacklisting.

While the unions have raised the slogan Protect national assets, they refuse to defend the independent interests of the working class and oppose the fight for a workers and peasants government based on a socialist program that would place these industries under the democratic control and ownership of the working class.

The hostility of unions to an independent industrial-political movement of working class was clearly exposed when union leaders at the SLPA protest opposed the distribution of a WSWS article entitled Build Action-Committees to defeat the privatisation of Ports, Power and Petroleum sectors and tried to block WSWS reporters from speaking with workers.

The union bureaucrats were so desperate to prevent any discussion on the SEPs socialist program that they mobilised thugs to threaten WSWS reporters and Socialist Equality Party members and lyingly told police that they were attempting to disrupt the protest.

Addressing protesters at Kolonnawa, Podu Sevaka Sangamaya leader Ajith Padmasiri proclaimed, Today is a historic day because the CEB and CPC workers have joined together. We will not let the government sell these out. We carry forward these struggles until victory.

Illusion-mongering claims that pressure on the government will stop privatisation are a political trap. Colombos measures are dictated by the economic crisis, massive foreign debt, and the profit interests of the capitalist class. It has made crystal clear that it will not change course and is determined to crush any opposition to its policies through class-war methods.

Protesting workers who spoke with the WSWS voiced their opposition to the Rajapakse government and the unions.

Ranasinghe, a worker from Norochchola power station in Puththalama, said that workers cannot stop privatisation by pressuring the government, noting, The government is in a severe economic crisis and needs to attract foreign investments to get rid of that crisis. Thats why it wants to privatise public assets.

The government had done nothing to control the pandemic, he said, but had used health regulations to suppress workers struggles and imposed repressive state laws to be used against the working class.

A mechanic from CPC said that public utilities were needed to benefit the public and the future generations. He said, Like many other people, I voted for this government but now I understand that it cheated the people. Referring to the teachers pay campaign, he continued, It was totally justifiable. Everyone is facing problems. The farmers are protesting, and the cost of essentials has gone up to unbearable levels.

Wasantha, an SLPA Services Division worker, said, Privatising public assets is not only devastating our jobs and working conditions but is a deadly attack on future generations. Workers cannot bear these attacks anymore and have now reached the limit of their tolerance.
Sudans security forces killed at least three and wounded 100 people taking part in Saturdays mass demonstrations in the capital Khartoum against the seizure of power by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

It brings the total number killed in recent days to at least 12, according to the Central Committee of Sudans Doctors, although a senior US official believed the death toll had reached at least 20-30 people, and the number injured 170, even before Saturdays protests.

There have been days of protests and strikes calling for a return to civilian rule, including of many federal and state government workers and bank workers, leading to a severe cash shortage in a country without an ATM infrastructure.

Demonstration against the coup in Khartoum (Twitter)

Demonstrators chanted, The people are stronger and the revolution will continue and carried banners reading, No to military rule. They demanded the release of all civilian leaders, including Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. Many schools and shops remain closed. The strikes are set to continue this week, with another rally due in Khartoum on November 6.

Defying arrests and beatings at the hands of the security forces, tens of thousands have taken to the streets in days of nation-wide protests since al-Burhan, who headed the joint civilian-military Sovereign Council that has led the country since August 2019, seized power. The Sudanese diaspora has mounted demonstrations in cities in Australia, Indonesia, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the United States and the United Kingdom, calling for their governments to oppose the coup.

Al-Burhan dissolved the Sovereign Council on October 25, weeks before he was due to hand over his position to a civilian. He dismissed Hamdoks civilian technocratic government, arrested Hamdok and several members of his cabinet and declared a state of emergency, shutting down the internet and closing the capitals main bridges. He has sacked the Chief Justice presiding over crucial reforms to the judicial system and released key figures in and around former dictator Omar al-Bashirs ruling National Congress Party, which was outlawed after his ouster in 2019.

The general said the coup was necessary to avert a civil war and that the military would establish a new government, promising elections in July 2023. While Hamdok and his ministers have been released, they remain under house arrest, even though al-Burhan has publicly offered Hamdok his job back. Al-Burhan has been unable to find any credible civilian figures willing to join a new government.

The strikes, rallies and demonstrations are the largest since the mass protests that precipitated the April 2019 pre-emptive military coup, led by al-Burhan with the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, that ousted President Omar al-Bashir and his Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated military dictatorship, which had ruled since 1989. Al-Burhan and the military had sought to prevent the overthrow of the entire state apparatus in which he was a leading light.

After seizing power two years ago, he opened negotiations with the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) that had led the protestsan umbrella group of 22 bourgeois and petty bourgeois opposition groups and political parties, including the trade unions and the Sudanese Communist Party. Just weeks later, soldiers and paramilitaries massacred more than 1,000 unarmed protesters, chasing them through Khartoum, tying concrete blocks to their feet and throwing them into the River Nile.

Despite this, the FFC signed a treacherous deal with the military, agreeing to serve in a transitional technocratic government, headed by Hamdok, a former economist at the African Development Bank and later the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The government operated under the control of the Sovereign Council, in effect a joint military-civilian presidency headed by al-Burhan.

The political and economic path followed by the Hamdok government brought it into conflict with the economic, social and political interests of Sudans military, which controls much of the economy.

Hamdok sought to end Sudans pariah status by aligning the country with US imperialism and its regional allies, including Israel, in an anti-Iran block. He handed al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, where 300,000 people were killed and millions displaced in fighting between 2003 and 2008. His government investigated and sanctioned military and security officials involved in human rights abuses, rooted out corruption and privatized hundreds of Sudans state-owned corporations. This was the political price for economic aid, loans and investment needed to shore up the countrys economy that has all but collapsed following the secession of South Sudan in 2011 and the loss of oil revenues upon which the government depended.

The conflict that had been brewing for months burst into the open in September. The army, seeking to capitalize on social discontent generated by increasing poverty and social inequality, mounted an abortive putsch, widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for last months coup, and organized mass demonstrations in support of the generals.

The coup has attracted almost unanimous condemnation from the major imperialist powers. The US is determined to prevent Sudans social tensions, replicated across the region, spreading to their allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The Biden administration has demanded the Sudanese military restore the civilian government, suspended its $700 million aid programme in the country and sent its fixer for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, back to Khartoum to try and impose a civilian fig-leaf for the military. The World Bank has suspended $2 billion in aid and debt relief packages.

The European powers are also anxious to avoid any instability in Sudan, strategically located in the Horn of Africa alongside the Red Sea and the entrance to the Suez Canal, that might disrupt oil supplies or generate a new wave of refugees. It takes place as Ethiopia, Africas second-most populous country and the Horns powerhouse, has descended into a civil war that threatens to break the state apart. It is expected that the European Union and the Paris Club of creditors will follow Washingtons lead in suspending funding.

While al-Burhan believed he could count on Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have joined the US in calling for a return to civilian rule while Cairo has not openly backed him.

To form the now overthrown civilian-military transitional government, the FFC and the Sudanese Professionals Association, under the influence of the Sudanese Communist Party, built a broad alliance subordinating workers to the political parties and armed groups that had dominated Sudan since independence. The claim that such a government would be capable of resolving the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers was a dangerous trap. But these liberal and pseudo-left forces in the middle class will stop at nothing to block a social revolution, as their record throughout the Middle East and Africa has shown.

The only way to combat the offensive of the military and the imperialist powers and to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class, on a revolutionary socialist perspective. This must be directed at taking power, expropriating the regimes ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class against capitalism and for the building of socialism. This requires the construction of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Sudan, as well as sections in Egypt and all the countries of North Africa and the Middle East.
WABASH VALLEY, Ind. (WTHI) - As we start seeing colder temperatures, some in the Wabash Valley may need energy assistance. Here's how you can get help.

The Energy Assistance Program through the Western Indiana Community Action Agency started offering assistance earlier this week.

This year, the program now offers water assistance. Here's a link to see if you qualify for help. There are several ways to apply.

First, you can go to this link to fill out an application.

You can also pick up an application at the following locations:

Vigo County - 812-234-3517 Office - 705 South 5th Street, Terre Haute

Clay County - Call Vigo County Office - 859 West Jackson Street, Brazil

Putnam County - 765-653-4017 Office - 620 Tennessee Street, Greencastle

You have an application and need to send it back, send it to:

Energy Assistance Program

705 S. 5th Street

Terre Haute, IN 47807

You can also fax it to 812-242-6148
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - With kids now being eligible that has many clinics ready to give the vaccine. If you have young children, you may be wondering how the process will look.

All across the country children ages 5 to 11 are eligible for the vaccine. Andrea Craft a nurse with the Vigo County Health Department explains how that will look to get your child vaccinated.

"The state department of health website, ourshot.in.gov will be available for parents to schedule appointments for their children on Thursday, so you will just need to go to that website, and it will list all those vaccine sites that are available for those doses."

The Pfizer vaccine is the only COVID-19 vaccine available for children. The pediatric vaccine is a lower dose of adult-Pfizer vaccine. Craft says children ages 12 and up get 0.3 milliliters of the vaccine while children 5 to 11 get 0.2 milliliters.

"The doses for ages 5-11 come into a different vile it's a different color for adults it's purple, and the adults it orange, so that's one way we can tell the difference."

She adds the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself against COVID-19.

"With social distancing masking has helped the vaccine has made a huge difference."

The Vigo County Health Department says they will continue to have events that help educate the public on the vaccine.

"We understand that their hesitation concern there's a lot of questions and misinformation out there that's why we are doing Q and A sessions we have nurses, health providers, and multiple individuals that are well versed in this vaccine and can answer questions and concerns that anyone has."

Click here to sign up.
VIGO COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - No injuries were reported following a crash involving a Vigo County school bus.

The crash happened just after 4:00 Thursday afternoon at U.S. 63 and Bolton Road.

Police told our crew there were three kids on the bus, but no injuries were reported.

Randall Easton, age 69, of West Terre Haute, Indiana, was driving a 2022 International School Bus.

Easton was stopped in the crossover of State Road 63 and Bolton Road trying to go north.

At that time, a 2020 F450 Ford comstruction truck, driven by Rustin Plunkett of Delphi, Indiana, was traveling southbound.

Plunkett was said to be removing traffic cones at the time.

He drove into the crossover, still southbound and collidded with the bus.

At the time, a construction worker was on the lift gate at the rear of the construction truck.

That individual fell but did not receive any injuries.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb says the upcoming federal government vaccine mandate is overreach.

Holcomb says he is directing the Indiana Department of Labor and the Attorney General to work together to file a lawsuit challenging the government.

Holcomb says he does agree the vaccine is the best tool to protect people against COVID-19, but this approach will bring harmful consequences to the supply chain and workforce.

See the governor's full statement below:

"I direct the Indiana Department of Labor to work with the Attorney General on a lawsuit challenging the federal government regarding the OSHA ETS. This is an overreach of the government's role in serving and protecting Hoosiers. While I agree that the vaccine is the tool that will best protect against COVID-19, this federal government approach is unprecedented and will bring about harmful, unintended consequences in the supply chain and the workforce."

What is the mandate?

Starting January 4, companies who have 100 or employees will either need to make sure employees are vaccinated - or force the employees to get tested weekly. This could impact tens of millions of Americans.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, companies that don't comply to the new rules could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation.
SULLIVAN COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - A Sullivan County woman has entered a guilty plea for the death of her ex-husband.

In August of 2020, Susan Brown,67, was charged with murder after Indiana State Police said she shot her ex-husband.

Investigators say she shot Faron Deece Brown on July 13 in Carlisle.

LINK | Sullivan County woman's charges upgraded to murder after mid-July shooting

Susan entered a guilty plea for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

A judge sentenced her to the maximum allowable jail time, which was 17 and a half years in the Department of Corrections.

The victim's son reportedly consented to the sentence, saying he wanted closure for his family.
TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA)  The Tupelo Coliseum Commission didn't have to look far to find the new executive director of the BancorpSouth Arena and Conference Center.

Commissioners selected interim director Kevan Kirkpatrick to hold the top job.

Kirkpatrick started with the venue in 2003 and has worked as assistant executive director and director of marketing.

He also served as the venue's interim leader three times previously.

Kirkpatrick replaces Doug Johnson, who resigned after less than a year in the position.
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Kyle Rittenhouse's fatal shots came seconds after another man fired a gun in the air, attorneys say
Tara Moss in her "wheelchair-bound" Halloween costume. (Courtesy of Tara Moss)

An author, speaker and disability advocate fed up with being described as "wheelchair-bound"  which the disabled community has long identified as inappropriate  channeled her frustration into a Halloween costume inspired by the "outdated ableist term."

Photos shared by Canadian-Australian writer Tara Moss show her being, quite literally, "wheelchair-bound," with her arms and legs restrained to her wheelchair; Moss tells Yahoo Life that her husband "faux-tied" her restraints, which she removed before heading out to trick-or-treat with their daughter near their home in British Columbia, Canada.

Moss describes herself as an ambulatory wheelchair user, meaning she has some limited mobility when upright and occasionally uses a cane in addition to using her wheelchair daily to alleviate pressure and pain on her lower limbs. After experiencing debilitating pain in 2016 following a hip injury, she was diagnosed with progressive complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a disorder characterized by extreme chronic pain.

This year I went as the outdated #ableist term I see most commonly used in the media to describe disabled people like myself, who use #wheelchairs.

Happy Halloween 

#Ableism #Halloween #TaraMoss #WheelchairBound pic.twitter.com/VsEaEw3xJr  Tara Moss (@Tara_Moss) October 31, 2021

Since her diagnosis with CRPS  "one of many invisible conditions that often require mobility aids," she notes  Moss has bristled at how her disability and means of getting around are portrayed by non-disabled people.

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"'Wheelchair-bound' and 'confined to a wheelchair' are terms I hear almost daily," she tells Yahoo Life, "and I see widely used in the media still, along with phrases like 'end up in a wheelchair, et cetera. Every day of the year I hear this, and so on Halloween I decided to illustrate it."

For years disability activists and media style guides like the AP Stylebook have advised against using these terms. A guide to language from the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) National Network notes that "choosing language that emphasizes what people can do instead of what they can't do is empowering"; like Moss it suggests that "wheelchair-user" or "person who uses a wheelchair" be used in place of "wheelchair-bound" or "confined to a wheelchair."

As Moss points out, there are myriad reasons "wheelchair-bound" is misleading and ableist. For one, it's "inaccurate," she says, as most wheelchair users do not have any bindings in place, and those that do still typically "strongly dislike" the term.

"Importantly, wheelchair-bound also implies something restrictive and negative, when for many people wheelchairs are literally their freedom, their ticket to leaving the house, functioning and participating in the world," she explains. "My wheelchair is my freedom machine! ... Many wheelchair users see their chairs as freeing, albeit in a world that is still frustratingly inaccessible."

For an ambulatory wheelchair user, being described as "confined to a wheelchair" is also an issue because it "implies permanent state," Moss says.

"These terms further perpetuate myths and negative ideas, which then encourage abuse of disabled people, including myself," she says. "For example, a person standing up from their chair is 'shocking' to many, but is normal for many wheelchair users, as they transfer out of their chairs, get in and out of cars, are forced to get something from a high shelf in a store, or perform recommended physio exercises, et cetera. Some wheelchair users can stand and some cannot. They all need their wheelchairs. Myths have real lived consequences for disabled people."

Moss was diagnosed with CRPS in 2016. (Courtesy of Tara Moss)

She's heartened, however, by the responses to her Halloween costume.

"The reactions online have been wonderful and positive, largely from the disability community who share my frustration with the use of that outdated term, but also from doctors who have appreciated their 'Halloween education,' as one put it, and parents of disabled kids who say they will use this example when discussing inclusive language with their school," she says. "This information is already out there, so I am just drawing attention to it in a different way."

While society has been slow to retire these problematic terms  with, for example, the death of Stephen Hawking in 2018 being met with tributes describing the wheelchair-using physicist as being "freed"  disability advocates like Moss won't stop speaking out and trying to move the needle.

"Every bit helps, but overall we need more voices from the disabled community to be heard and consulted," she says. "We are members of the community, we are workers and parents and friends and business leaders and journalists. People with disabilities are everywhere and have a lot to offer."

Want lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Lifes newsletter.
Vaccine mandates have popped up all across the U.S., from major cities like Los Angeles and New York City requiring proof of vaccination for indoor spaces to hotels in states like Hawaii turning away unvaccinated guests. But one of the largest orders is not just relegated to certain places. In early September, President Joe Biden announced a sweeping set of mandates, including vaccine requirements for federal employees, health care workers, and large U.S. companies. Under the order, Biden is requiring that all employers with more than 100 workers gather proof of full vaccination from all employees. Now, his administration has finally set a deadline for these vaccine mandates.

RELATED: Unvaccinated People Will Be Barred From Here, Starting This Week.

On Nov. 4, the White House announced that large companies will have until Jan. 4 to ensure that their employees are fully vaccinated against COVID. The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says that all employers must ensure their employees have received either two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson&Johnson by this date, as well as provide paid time for these workers to get vaccinated and sick leave to recover from vaccine side effects, if necessary.

"While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good," Biden said in a statement on Nov. 4, per The New York Times. White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci, MD, recently told McClatchy that about 64 million eligible people in the U.S. are still unvaccinated.

In its announcement, the White House added that "more vaccinations are needed to save lives, protect the economy, and accelerate the path out of the pandemic," noting that this mandate will cover 84 million employees.

Workers at health care facilities participating in Medicare or Medicaid will be required to get vaccinated by Jan. 4 as well, according to the Centers for Medicare&Medicaid Services (CMS). The deadline for employees of federal contractors has also been pushed from Dec. 8 to Jan. 4, according to ABC News, but federal employees who are not contracted are still required to be vaccinated by Nov. 22.

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"To make it easy for businesses and workers to comply, the Administration is announcing today that the deadline for workers to receive their shots will be the same for the OSHA rule, the CMS rule, and the previously-announced federal contractor vaccination requirement," the White House said in its announcement.

RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter.

Some companies have set their separate mandate deadlines earlier than January, however. Tyson Foods announced its mandate in September, with a deadline of Nov. 2, while United Airlines had set a deadline of Sept. 27 for the first vaccine dose. According to data from the White House, vaccine requirements have already helped cut the rate of unvaccinated U.S. adults by one-third.

Federal employees, contractors, and health care workers will not have the option to test out of these vaccine mandates, but after Jan. 4, unvaccinated workers for companies with more than 100 employees will be required to test for COVID on at least a weekly basis, per OSHA's guidelines.

But some of these larger companies are letting go of unvaccinated employees altogether. In mid-October, United Airlines confirmed that it had started the process of terminating more than 200 employees that remained unvaccinated against COVID, as reported by Business Insider.

"We're not going to win the arguments on this with people. And I respect that you have a different opinion but you now have a decision to make about whether you want to get vaccinated and stay at United or not," United CEO Scott Kirby told the news outlet at the time.

RELATED: Unvaccinated People Are Banned From Going Here, Starting Jan. 8.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that's most responsible for global warming, have returned to near pre-pandemic levels, scientists announced.

This year saw a 4.9% increase in emissions over 2020, similar to the rebound that followed the 2008 global financial crisis, researchers said in a report published Wednesday. More than 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere in the past year, the report estimates.

Carbon dioxide  emitted from burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and and coal  stays in the atmosphere about a century before dissipating.

We expected this rebound when the worlds economy returned close to normal," said Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford University and chair of the Global Carbon Project, an academic group that produces the annual carbon emission estimates. "Park your car for a year and its the same polluting vehicle when you start it again. Similarly, when economic activity returns, so do emissions.

Photos: U.N. COP26 Summit focuses global attention on climate change crisis

Poll: Climate change concerns majority in US

Last year, the coronavirus lockdowns had an extreme effect on carbon emissions, leading to a 17% drop globally during peak confinement measures by early April 2020  levels that hadn't been seen since 2006.

Penn State University meteorologist Michael Mann, who was not involved in the report, told USA TODAY he was not surprised that emissions have rebounded to such a degree. "It would have been crazy to expect anything else. What the carbon emissions numbers show is that emissions (correcting for the short-term response to COVID-19) have basically flattened now. Thats the good news.

"The bad news is thats not enough. We need to start bringing them down. Thats what COP26 is all about."

Aerial view of a coal-fired factory in Chengde, China, in 2018. Industrial emissions of carbon dioxide have returned close to pre-pandemic levels, according to new research. Surging consumption of coal and natural gas for power plants and industry is driving the rebound, especially in China.

The new carbon estimates arrive in the midst of the major climate summit COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, where countries that signed the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement are discussing efforts to achieve the accords goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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Despite the tragedy of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the strength and nature of the rebound in fossil CO2 emissions shows the world has done little to focus on a green recovery, said Glen Peters, a research director at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Norway, who helped prepare the report.

Carbon dioxide emissions are on track to rise in every country and region in the world this year compared with 2020. We thought global coal use had peaked in 2014, but were perilously close to that value again this year, Jackson said in a statement from Stanford University.

For example, Indias carbon emissions are projected to reach 2.7 billion tons, up 3% from 2019 and 12.6% from 2020. As in the U.S., emissions in Europe are tracking slightly below 2019 levels, at 2.8 billion tons.

The rest of the world in aggregate, which includes global international transport, is projected to produce 14.7 billion tons of CO2 this year, down slightly from 2019 because of pandemic-related reductions in shipping and aviation.

China, the worlds largest emitter for the past 15 years, was unusual in having increased emissions even during the pandemic. The nations carbon pollution is expected to reach 11.1 billion tons this year, up 6% from 2019 and 4% from 2020  driven in part by COVID-19 recovery incentives that have boosted industrial production relying heavily on coal.

"The rapid rebound in emissions as economies recover from the pandemic reinforces the need for immediate global action on climate change," said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, who led the report.

Peters summed it up plainly: "Global warming stops when emissions get to around zero."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Emissions fueling climate change back up after pandemic dip: Report
BEIRUT (AP)  Syrias military said Israel has carried out an air raid that hit a military post on the outskirts of the capital of Damascus early Wednesday, causing material damage.

It was the second Israeli attack to target areas near the capital in four days. The earlier attack on Saturday activated Syrian defense when missiles were fired during the day toward suburbs of Damascus, wounding two soldiers.

A Syrian military statement carried on state media said the aerial attack early Wednesday came from northern Israel and targeted a military post in the town of Zakia, in the western Damascus countryside. It offered no further details.

Israel carries out raids on Syria mostly during nighttime. Wednesdays raid occurred shortly after midnight, Syria's military said.

There has been an increase in reported Israel attacks in recent weeks.

Israel has staged hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

Israel has acknowledged, however, that it is targeting bases of Iran-allied militias, such as the powerful Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. It is going after arms shipments believed to be bound for the group. Hezbollah is fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assads forces in the civil war.

Israel says Iranian presence on its northern frontier is a red line, and it has repeatedly struck what it has described as Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Lebanons militant Hezbollah group.
WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden arrived back in Washington early Wednesday morning facing perhaps the biggest setback of his presidency after crushing election results in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey delivered a rebuke of Democratic leadership and put more pressure on lawmakers to move his agenda forward after months of delay.

Republican Glenn Youngkin, the winner in Virginia, defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe unofficially by less than 2 percentage points after Biden carried the state by 10 points in the 2020 presidential election.

And although Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly staved off GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey, Republicans made up even more ground in a state where they weren't expected to compete. Biden defeated Donald Trump in New Jersey by 16 percentage points.

Biden now faces extraordinary pressure to unite fractured Democrats in Congress to pass his domestic spending agenda  a $1.85 trillion social-spending bill and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan  that remain stalled as progressive and moderate Democrats battle over details.

More: Election results live updates: McAuliffe concedes to Youngkin; tight NJ governor's race too close to call

President Joe Biden walks on the South Lawn as he arrives at the White House early Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021 in Washington from a European trip. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) ORG XMIT: DCMC105

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday said the election results would not change the timeline to bring both bills to the floor.

Negotiators resolved a key sticking point Tuesday over prescription drug pricing but two pivotal senators  centrist Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona  have yet to sign off on the larger social and climate bill. The support of both is necessary to win approval in the 50-50 Senate, where no Republican will join them and where Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties.

"We must strive to find common ground in the legislation," Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues Wednesday.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., blamed his fellow Democrats in Congress for not getting the package done earlier so that McAuliffe and Murphy could show voters concrete gains as a result of Biden's election last year.

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"And guess what now? We're going to get to the bills. We're probably going to get both done before Thanksgiving. They're going to do a lot of good for a lot of people," Kaine told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "A lot of politics is about timing. And there was a time to do this. It would have helped in both of these states (but) Dems blew the timing."

Biden, who returned to the White House at 1:38 a.m. EDT from his trip to Europe, addressed the outcome for the first time Wednesday afternoon by pointing to Congress' inaction on his domestic agenda.

"What I do know is that people want us to get things done, Biden said when asked how much responsibility he takes for McAuliffe's loss. And that's why I'm continuing to push very hard for the Democratic Party to move along and pass my infrastructure bill and my Build Back Better bill."

More: 5 election takeaways: Race in education key in Virginia; a historic night for candidates of color

Months of inner-party sparring over Biden's signatures proposals without results raised questions about Democrats' ability to deliver, spoiling what could have been a platform for Democrats to run on in the off-year elections.

Biden's poll numbers have been foundering for weeks as he's struggled to sell his "Build Back Better" agenda. The president's slide began with the rise of the COVID-19 delta variant in August and chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

More: Inside Biden's falling poll numbers: 5 reasons why the president's approval ratings have dropped

Tuesday's results show the strength of the headwinds that Democrats face to keep their slim majorities in the the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. Historically, the president's opposing party makes up ground during midterms.

Contributing: Ledyard King

Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden faces mounting stakes after massive setback in Virginia election
If the holidays aren't stressful enough, the current discussion around food shortages is adding more stress and worry about when and what to order.

Relax (or at least as much as you can without stressing about hosting your Great Aunt Sarah for dinner). While there may be higher prices overall at the grocery store and, yes, some shortages of certain items, there are plenty of fresh, pasture raised turkeys available, but you have to order soon.

Thanksgiving: Restaurants open in Westchester, Rockland

Bread: Where to find artisan bread

Dining: Restaurants in train stations struggle to stay on track

According to Trish Vasta, general manager of Hemlock Hill Farm in Cortlandt, the issue of potential food shortages will make consumers realize the importance of buying local.

"The whole system is breaking down because our food is traveling thousands of miles to get to our plate," she said. "Sustainability means looking in your neighborhood and getting a meal that comes from less than 100 miles from your home."

You will, however, pay more than last year for fresh birds. John Ubaldo of John's Boy's Farm in Cambridge, New York and The Outpost in Bedford said birds will not be cheap as the prices for raising them have risen, as well.

For those looking to buy local, a few places follow:

Dr. Davies Farm, Congers: This is the second year in a row Dr. Davies Farm is getting free-roaming, hormone and preservative-free birds from a farm in Pennsylvania. Turkeys start at $48 for a 10 to 12 pound turkey. The only caveat: You need to order by Nov. 7. 306 Route 304, 845-268-7020, drdaviesfarm.com

Hemlock Hill, Cortlandt: For more than 35 years, this farm has sold pasture raised, free-range, all natural Broad Breasted White turkeys that are antibiotic and hormone-free. Turkeys are $5.99 per pound and orders should be placed soon (the small ones are already sold out, but they have turkeys currently available that weigh from 15 to more than 30 pounds). Pickup starts Nov. 19. The farm also sells duck, rabbit and ham. 300 Croton Ave., 914-737-2810, hemlockhillfarm.com.

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Purdys Farmer and the Fish, North Salem: There's a long list of items you can order for Thanksgiving, everything from country mushroom stuffing to maple glazed butternut squash. But it's the turkeys that wow: fresh antibiotic birds from McEnroe Organic Farm in Millerton, and Debragga and Spitler in Jersey City. Order now; turkeys are available until they sell out. All orders are available for pick up on Nov. 24. 100 Titicus Road, 914-617-8380, farmerandthefish.com

Turkeys at Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture in Pocantico Hills.

Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills: Stone Barns Center has partnered with Hemlock Hill Farm to offer pasture-raised turkeys in addition to offering pre-packed, seasonal vegetable boxes for sale, which will include sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, spinach, celery and Robins Koginut squash. Turkeys are $8 a pound with a deadline of Nov. 20 for ordering. Turkey pick-up will be held at Stone Barns Center on Nov. 23 and Nov. 24. 630 Bedford Road, 914-366-6200, stonebarnscenter.org

The Hudson Milk Company, Peekskill: You don't have to be a Hudson Milk customer to order a turkey for the holidays. Turkeys are from Stonewood Farm in Orwell, Vermont and sell for $5.59 a pound. Also available: boneless breasts for $7.99 and bone-in breasts for $5.99. Order by Nov. 12. Needless to say you can also get farm-fresh milk, too. 1000 N Division St., 914-245-0409, hudsonmilk.com

The Outpost, Bedford: Fresh never frozen Bronze and White Holland turkeys from John's Boy's Farm in Cambridge, New York will be available at The Outpost in Bedford. Turkeys, which will go for $8.25 a pound, are raised in fields and woods and only fed non-GMO grains with organic vitamins and minerals. Order by Nov. 18 with pick up starting on Nov. 20. 1 Court Road, 914-205-3900

Mike Geller, owner of Stamford, Conn-based Mike's Organic. The company, which has long delivered to Westchester, has lots of farm-raised organic turkeys for Thanksgiving. Chef Geller also offers cooking tips.

Mike's Organic, Stamford, Connecticut: He may be in Stamford but chef/owner Mike Geller has been serving (and delivering!) to Westchester for more than 10 years. His sourced pastured turkeys come from Autumns Harvest Farm in Romulus, New York where the birds live outdoors foraging and eating non-GMO feed. All turkeys are fresh not frozen and come vacuum sealed with cooking instructions and tips to make your holiday as easy as possible. Geller also posts cooking tips on his Instagram. Turkeys are $8.99 per pound and the deadline to order is Nov. 19 for delivery or pickup. 377 Fairfield Ave., 203-832-3000, mikesorganicdelivery.com.

Goffle Road Poultry Farm, Wyckoff, New Jersey: Thanksgiving orders are being taken now at this fourth-generation run farm where you'll find a wide variety of turkey, duck and chicken. Turkeys range from 10 to 40 pounds and cost $3.59 per pound. Orders are being taken until the Saturday before Thanksgiving; otherwise you can go to the farm and see what they have left for pick-up. 549 Goffle Road, 201-444-3238, gofflepoultry.com

New Moon Farms, Munnsville, New York: This carbon-neutral family-run farm, which goes by NY Farm Basket online, may be in Munnsville (yes, more than 200 miles away) but they deliver to Westchester and Rockland. In fact, owner Sarah Ficken said they deliver from the very tip of Long Island to Buffalo. Turkeys, which are raised by Ficken and her family (including her five and six-year-old children) are $100 and range from 12 to 25 pounds. There's no deadline to order but ordering soon is best as Ficken predicts they'll sell out soon. The farm also sells pies (made with fruit from the land), veggies and bread made with local flour. 516-509-5506, NYFarmBasket.com

Wrong Direction Farm, Canajoharie, New York: Certified organic, pasture raised turkeys are raised on this family farm and are priced at $7.50 per pound. Various sizes available and they deliver to Westchester and Rockland. Order by Nov. 15. 431 Seebers Lane,, 518-588-2633, wrongdirectionfarm.com

Jeanne Muchnick covers food and dining. Click here for her most recent articles and follow her latest dining adventures on Instagram @lohud_food or via the lohudfood newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ten places to find a farm-fresh Hudson Valley turkey; order soon
More than 100 countries have committed to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

Northampton, MA --News Direct-- Global Citizen

President Joe Biden speaks during an event about the

By Leah Rodriguez

World leaders are stepping up to create a pathway toward reversing the impacts of climate change.

The US and the European Union, the two largest natural gas consumers, launched the Global Methane Pledge at the United Nations Climate Conference COP26 in Glasgow on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Leaders of countries across the globe are gathered at the conference to ensure the implementation of the 2015 Paris agreement to promote climate change mitigation, adaptation, and financing. The goal of COP26 is to get countries to greatly reduce carbon emissions and achieve net zero by 2050.

The Global Methane Pledge is the single biggest effort governments can make to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to Bloomberg, and could be the most substantial result of COP26.

Heres everything to know about the significance of the Global Methane Pledge.

What Is the Global Methane Pledge?

First announced in September, the Global Methane Pledge is a joint agreement to slash global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels in all industries by 2030, according to Bloomberg. Cutting methane could reduce global warming by 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2050, reducing the severity and frequency of extreme weather events caused by climate change.

Scientists believe cracking down on the fossil fuel industry could reduce warming by 0.3 degrees Celsius by 2040, according to the BBC.

How Does Methane Contribute to Global Warming?

Methane, a primary component of natural gas, accounts for about a quarter of all the heat trapped in the atmosphere since the pre-industrial era, according to Bloomberg. The oil and gas industry has increased methane over the past 50 years and it reached record levels in the atmosphere in 2019. The fossil-fuel industry is the major culprit in methane emissions and human activity  such as leaky oil and gas infrastructure like wells and pipelines, old coal mines, agriculture, and landfills  account for most of the damage. A May report on methane emissions from the UN Environment Programme urged immediate methane cuts and said its the strongest measure that can be taken to slow down climate change over the next 25 years, according to NPR.

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Methane is the second biggest contributor to greenhouse gases after carbon dioxide, according to Reuters, and 28 to 34 times as warming as CO2 over a century. While methane can trap heat at higher rates than CO2, it degrades quickly and breaks down in the atmosphere faster. Atmospheric levels of methane have climbed 150% over the past 200 years while global CO2 levels have risen about 50%, according to Bloomberg. If countries take action now, the Earths temperature could drop almost immediately.

Neglecting to address methane would make it unlikely to reach the Paris agreements goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to Reuters.

While methane is difficult to detect and measure, addressing methane leaks is one of the easiest and cheapest climate issues to fix because it doesnt require major technological advances, according to Bloomberg. Capturing methane has the potential to benefit companies financially because it would allow them to capture more product.

Cutting methane will also promote public health benefits within the decade and climate benefits within two decades, experts say.

It's [methane] also an air pollutant that's responsible globally for half a million deaths and hundreds of thousands of asthma-related hospitalizations annually, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. That's why Canada welcomes the Global Methane Pledge.

The International Methane Emissions Observatory will work to hold signatories accountable and will start by prioritizing tracking the fossil fuel industry, according to the New York Times.

Who Is Supporting the Global Methane Pledge?

The EU and the US championed the pledge, which could impact emissions domestically and within their supply chains, having a global ripple effect, according to Bloomberg. The US is the worlds biggest oil and gas producer, while the EU imports the most gas. Researchers believe the increase in methane emissions since 2008 is due to gas fracking in the US, according to the BBC, but the Trump administration ignored the countrys contribution and rolled back methane regulations in 2019.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said reducing methane emissions is one of the most effective things we can do to fight climate change and called the gas the lowest-hanging fruit.

We cannot wait for 2050  we have to cut emissions fast, she added.

More than two-thirds of the global economy (more than 100 countries) have signed on to the pledge, but several top emitters have yet to join.

Brazil, one of the worlds five biggest methane emitters, signed on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and India contribute to about a third of methane emissions and have not joined the pledge. Iran, Turkmenistan, and Australia were responsible for super-emitting methane events in recent years and also havent signed, according to Bloomberg.

"This isn't just something we have to do to protect the environment or future, US President Joe Biden said.

It's an enormous opportunity ... for all of us, all of our nations to create jobs and make meeting climate goals a core part of our global economic recovery as well."

What Do Climate Experts Have to Say About the Global Methane Pledge?

Environmental groups have applauded the pledge but are stressing the need for a plan to implement real change.

"For too long this potent super pollutant has fallen off the agenda at major climate summits while its emissions have risen to all-time highs," Sarah Smith of the Clean Air Task Force told NPR.

Acting slowly puts the world at risk of "pushing our planet closer to potentially irreversible tipping points, she added.

Some scientists are also urging for the commitment to go even further with a pledge to reduce methane emissions by 50%, as opposed to 30%, to prevent warming more effectively.

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Global Citizen on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/the-global-methane-pledge-at-cop26-everything-you-need-to-know-872297105
The votes were still being counted in New Jersey and Virginia when Gov. Larry Hogans phone first began blowing up.

Pointing to Tuesdays election results as a harbinger of a favorable midterm environment for all GOP candidates on the ballot next year, the callers sought to persuade the popular Maryland Republican to jump into the Senate race against Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, whose reelection is all but assured otherwise.

A Hogan adviser said Wednesday at least one of those calls came from Senate leadership, though the adviser declined to say from whom.

One day after blue-state Democrats were pummeled at the polls  losing the Virginia governorship and nearly losing in New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy squeaked to reelection by a razor-thin margin  Republicans redoubled their efforts to expand the Senate map by convincing several reluctant top-tier Senate prospects to run in 2022. This time, the recruitment pitch came with a powerful new data set drawn from the off-year elections.

We have great candidates in our races, Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), the National Republican Senatorial chair, said Wednesday. I bet theres more people that are going to want to get in because they can see theres a path.

Hogan is one of a trio of GOP governors who top the partys wish list, along with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. All of them have been subject to longstanding efforts to convince them to take on Democratic senators in 2022.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the second-highest ranking Republican, noted Tuesdays election results confirm a path exists for right of center conservatives like Sununu, Ducey and Hogan to succeed in Senate races next year.

Sununu has said he is still mulling a decision on running for Senate, but is widely expected to announce he will take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. Ducey said earlier this year he had no plans to run, though Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated publicly that both Ducey and Sununu would be his preferred candidates.

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Hogan last month, meanwhile, hinted to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he, too, has heard from McConnell and Scott about running. Hogan and Ducey are term-limited.

I think Gov. Hogan is a somewhat unique political force who would perform extremely well, in a Senate race, said Dirk Haire, chair of the Maryland Republican Party. If he runs, I think he would win. I know that my views are shared widely across the political leadership spectrum.

Hogan raised his national profile in recent years by being one of former President Donald Trumps most prominent Republican critics, blasting him over issues like his pandemic response and his failure to concede the 2020 election.

And while President Joe Bidens 33-point margin of victory in Maryland last year was drastically higher than in Arizona or New Hampshire, Hogan is now more popular in his blue state than the Democratic president, according to a Goucher College poll released last week.

The survey shows Hogan with a 68 percent approval rating in Maryland, compared to 53 percent for Biden.

Advisers to Ducey, Hogan and Sununu downplayed the notion that Tuesdays elections might alter the governors thinking or make them more inclined to run, saying the surprising results alone are unlikely to heavily influence the governors decisions.

Speaking to reporters recently, Scott, the former Florida governor, said the trio of governors still have time to jump into Senate races, noting he didnt do so until April 2018 ahead of his election that fall.

In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkins path to victory involved keeping Trump at arms length while remaining in his good graces. That balancing trick wont be as easy for Ducey and Hogan, who have already crossed the former president. Their strained relationships with Trump, who commands the loyalty of the GOP grassroots base, raise questions about how far Trump would go to try to stop either governor from successfully running for Senate.

For months, Scott has patiently tried to warm Trump to the idea of a Ducey run in numerous meetings, but the former president is having none of it, according to three sources who have been briefed on or have knowledge of the discussions. Trump has publicly criticized the Arizona governor for nearly a year over Duceys refusal to embrace false election fraud conspiracies.

The methodical Scott comes armed to his Trump meetings with a three-ring binder, separated by tabs for each race. But when the subject comes to Ducey, Trump has been adamant, the sources say.

The reality is Trump is just not happy with Ducey and, though he likes Sen. Scott, its not enough, said one of the sources.

The sources say Trump has mused privately about endorsing one of the current Republican candidates in the Arizona Senate race  or even encouraging Republicans not to vote for Ducey  but those familiar with his thinking say hes just venting.

Ducey has been elected statewide in Arizona three times, first as state treasurer in 2010 before successful gubernatorial runs in 2014 and 2018.

Kirk Adams, the governors former chief of staff, suggested that while the Virginia win is momentous for Republicans, Youngkin was merely copying an approach that has worked before in Arizona.

I think Youngkin followed the Ducey playbook, Adams said, pointing to Duceys 2018 reelection campaign, which centered on education and jobs.

A statewide survey conducted last month by HighGround, a Republican-leaning political consulting firm in Phoenix, put Duceys approval rating at 42 percent statewide, roughly the same as that of Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), who is seeking his first full term after winning a 2020 special election. Duceys approval among GOP voters was just shy of 65 percent.

The field of Republicans in the Arizona primary already includes multiple candidates angling for Trumps endorsement, making it likely that Ducey would face attacks from the right for not sufficiently embracing the former president.

Its already a circular firing squad, said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona Republican strategist. That would just walk it in a few more paces.

Marc Caputo and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
Fawn Huff, a multi-skill technician, sterilizes a face shield before entering a patient's room at Mount Carmel St. Ann's in Westerville. In general, finding workers as COVID-19 has continued has proven difficult for many industries. Staffing has long been an issue in health care, but experts say the pandemic further exacerbated the problem.

More than a half-million health care workers have left their jobs since the pandemic started nearly two years ago, raising concerns about danger and burnout and leaving thousands of positions open across Greater Columbus.

Since February 2020, the number of health care workers decreased by around 524,000 across the United States, according to the most-recent jobs report released in early October from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For a health system still in the throes of the deadliest pandemic in a century, that's a staggering hole to fill, said Jeff Klingler, president and chief executive officer of the Central Ohio Hospital Council.

COVID-19 and mortality: Ohio had more deaths than births in 2020, a grim first in state history amid COVID-19

"Our frontline workers are just mentally and physically exhausted. This latest spike due to the delta variant just exacerbated that exhaustion," Klingler said. "When you're working with very, very sick patients at very high volumes, that does lead to stress, it does lead to burnout."

Thousands of jobs available at Greater Columbus health systems

The Dispatch surveyed job postings for the four major health systems in Columbus and found nearly 4,900 open positions as of Thursday for both clinical and nonclinical staff. OhioHealth had 2,313 open positions posted, Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center and primary care offices had around 1,091 jobs listed, Nationwide Children's Hospital had 925 and Mount Carmel had 562.

In general, finding workers as COVID-19 continues has proven difficult for many industries. And staffing has long been an issue in health care, but Klingler said the pandemic further exacerbated the problem.

Though harder to quantify on the local level, nursing and long-term care facilities also suffered a big loss of employees since the pandemic began. Around 80%, or 419,200, of health care workers who left the field since February 2020 worked in long-term care facilities, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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"It's a really rough situation for nursing and long-term care facilities," said Pete Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association. "Long-term care has had it worse than anybody."

'Another crisis coming'

The staffing shortage, fueled by burnout and risk, could be one of the long-term consequences of the pandemic.

Since the virus was first discovered, health care workers have put themselves in harm's way to protect others. That, Klingler said, is likely a factor that may be pushing people away from or out of medicine.

The World Health Organization estimates that 115,000 frontline workers have died of the virus worldwide. The losses were often needless and show that governments need to do a better job of taking care of health care workers, Annette Kennedy, president of the International Council of Nurses, said in an Oct. 21 World Health Organization briefing on COVID.

"The world was not prepared for the pandemic..." Kennedy said. "There is another crisis coming down the tracks and that is a shortage of health care workers."

Dr. Laurie Hommema is one of the medical professionals tasked with helping to take care of her colleagues at OhioHealth.

COVID-19 in Greater Columbus: Columbus ER wait times high as hospitals balance COVID patients with other health emergencies

Spending each day caring for critically ill patients can take a toll on health care workers, Hommema said. COVID-19 patients have been known to require long stays in hospitals, and so when a nurse, doctor or respiratory therapist has a patient die, Hommema said it can serve as a very traumatic experience.

It's easy for health care workers to become "robotic" and unsatisfied with their jobs if they don't take time to "pick apart their emotions" when it comes to patients they've healed and lost, Hommema said. That's why, she said, it's important to make sure health care workers have a safe place at work to feel vulnerable and cope with the challenges of the pandemic.

While each health system has its own internal support system and professionals who frontline workers can talk to if they need help, OhioHealth also encourages medical units to set aside time for "reflection rounds." These rounds allow workers to share stories of their patients and talk to each other about how they're dealing with things, Hommema said.

COVID-19 in Greater Columbus: Find complete coverage at Dispatch.com/news/coronavirus

Still, Hommema said the nearly two-year slog of COVID-19 has proven to be a difficult adversary for morale.

When COVID-19 vaccines came out in December 2020 and eventually became more widely available in March 2021, there was a sense of hope among health care workers that that the worst of the pandemic was behind them. Then when the delta variant hit in July, that hope turned to "sheer disappointment," Hommema said.

"People are very tired of the pandemic," Hommema said. "I think what we're seeing now is there's a lot of fatigue, there's a lot of sadness and grief."

Money makes a difference

Financial incentives have long been used to retain and attract new employees to health care, and they continue to prove helpful in the midst of the pandemic.

Each of the four area health systems offers bonus pay from time to time and for various reasons, spokespeople told The Dispatch.

For example, Wexner Medical Center offers a bonus of up to $3,000 for current employees who refer candidates who get hired, a spokeswoman said. Ohio State will also give $1,000 bonuses to around 15,000 eligible medical center workers in November.

OhioHealth invested over $54 million in bonus payouts in fiscal year 2021, and $43 million so far in fiscal year 2022, spokesman Marcus Thorpe said. Nationwide Children's sometimes offers signing bonuses and retention bonuses, depending on labor market demands, a spokeswoman said.

Mount Carmel offers variations of incentive pay and sign-on bonuses. The health care provider is also experimenting with flexible work schedules to "bring new talent to Mount Carmel and the field of healthcare," spokeswoman Samantha Irons said via email.

In northeast Ohio, the Cleveland Clinic has offered to pay some nurses a $400-per-day bonus for certain 12-hour shifts through Saturday. That means some nurses could end up getting paid $1,400 for a specific shift, Cleveland.com reported.

Vaccine mandates: Little pushback from Columbus hospital workers over COVID vaccine mandate

While hospitals are able to offer incentive pay, it's more difficult for long-term care providers to do so, Van Runkle said. To do so, Van Runkle said long-term care facilities simply need more federal funding so the reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid meet the costs for care.

"You have to take a very holistic look at it and we're trying to see how we can really draw more people in," Van Runkle said. "Probably the most significant thing from an overall perspective is that we really need the ability to pay higher wages and that unfortunately comes down to more government funding."

Despite uncertainty and fears that staffing could become a long-term struggle in health care, there is some hope.

In April, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing announced that students enrolled in programs had increased during the pandemic. Around 251,145 students nationwide are studying in undergraduate programs, marking a 5.6% increase.

If there's a silver lining to the pandemic, it may be that the virus has brought more awareness to the medical field, Klingler said. Perhaps increased interest shows the most important and lasting incentive is that going into health care "can still be a very rewarding career," he said.

While it will take time for students to make their way into the medical workforce, Klingler said it's a start and a good sign.

"We're not going to flip a switch. It's going to take a while to train and educate a new generation," he said. "But, if you want a job that's going to be there in the future, it's in health care... there's always going to be a need."

mfilby@dispatch.com

@MaxFilby

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: COVID may be leaving thousands of Columbus health care jobs open
Yankton, SD (57078)

Today

Windy with a mix of clouds and sun. High near 40F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 23F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Yankton, SD (57078)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High near 40F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 24F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
If you watch enough old movies, you know that there are two types of bank robberies. The fir
Naima Said is a 22 year old UNCG theatre graduate and host of HeeeresNeeNee Horror Movie Podcast.
Zion Lutheran Church stands on East Midland Street in Ironwood. The church is celebrating its 125th anniversary on Nov. 13 and 14 with services by Pastor Nicole Hanson-Lynn, music by guest organist Chris Forslund and meals after worship.

By ZACHARY MARANO

[email protected]

Ironwood - Zion Lutheran Church in Ironwood will celebrate its 125th anniversary Nov. 13-14. The church will have services by Pastor Nicole Hanson-Lynn, music by a guest organist and meals after worship.

The celebration will start on Saturday, Nov. 13, with a 5 p.m. service. After worship, there will be a pizza and salad dinner and a screening of a film. The church will show a recording of "Workers in the Vineyard," a play written and performed by the parish in 1996 for the church's 100th anniversary.

On Sunday, Nov. 14, the church will have 9 a.m. service. Hanson-Lynn said that, in addition to all the things that the church ordinarily does in worship, they will acknowledge some of the history of the congregation through prayer.

Furthermore, Ironwood native Chris Forslund will serve as guest organist at the Sunday service. Forslund began playing at church services at the age of 10 and during his 37 years of active playing, he served numerous congregations in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

Forslund also conducted organist workshops and performed concerts including notable instruments in Notre-Dame and St. Sulpice in Paris, France. Forslund continued to serve at Zion Lutheran and Trinity Lutheran as a guest organist whenever he was in the area, and he was one of several organ enthusiasts who conducted the original restoration on the famous Barton organ at the Historic Ironwood Theatre in the mid-1980s.

Forslund retired from both his professional and musical careers in late 2013, but he will play at the Sunday service. He said that the 1968 Johnson pipe organ at Zion is one of the very best on which he has played and looks forward to every opportunity he has to do so.

After worship on Sunday, there will be a turkey dinner. Hanson-Lynn said that people who want to attend should call and RSVP, so the church knows how much food to prepare. The phone number for Zion Lutheran Church is 906-932-1320.

The Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded as an independent congregation branching from the first Finnish Lutheran Church organized in Ironwood in 1891. The church separated from the National Lutheran Synod in 1954 and became a member of the Lutheran Church of America in 1977, which later by merger with two other synods became the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Since 1992, the church has been a member of the Iron Gogebic Ontonagon Conference of the Northern Great Lakes Synod of the ELCA.

The old church was located on the corner of Ayer and Curry streets, but the congregation moved to its current church building on 100 E. Midland Ave. because they outgrew the old church.
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Witnesses at Kyle Rittenhouse's murder trial say the first man shot on the streets of Kenosha was hyperaggressive," threatened to kill Rittenhouse and another man who were patrolling with guns, and later lunged for Rittenhouses gun in an attempt to take it away
YORK  The York County Commissioners have agreed to financially participate in a broadband study with Nebraska Public Power District and Perennial Public Power. Under the auspices of NPPD, the City of York will be involved, and under the auspices of Perennial, Fillmore County will as well.

And there is the potential Polk County might join in the effort.

This week, during their regular meeting, York County Commissioner Chairman Randy Obermier explained how he and Commissioner Kurt Bulgrin attended a meeting with NPPD officials, York Mayor Barry Redfern and York City Administrator Sue Crawford. Perennial was unable to have someone there that day, but they will be involved. This would be a study into the broadband needs of this area and what it would take to provide fixed wireless units throughout the county. NPPD and Perennial have the infrastructure out there to support this, thats why they are involved.

The objective is to have broadband accessibility throughout the county, Obermier said.

He said the study would be conducted by the National Rural Electric Association.

They will look at what it would take to do this, Obermier said. This would help us design the system we want for this county and I think it is a good venture.
New Delhi: The auspicious and much-loved Indian festival of lights - Diwali is finally here. This year, it is being celebrated on November 4. On this special festival, Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesha are prayed to, and devotees seek their blessings of abundance, prosperity, good health and wealth for the family.

It is believed that goddess Lakshmi, bestows her devotees with wealth and prosperity on this day if prayed to with utmost faith and sincerity.

Pradosh Kaal Muhurat and Lakshmi Puja Timings 2021:

Lakshmi Puja on Thursday, November 4, 2021

Lakshmi Puja Muhurat - 06:09 PM to 08:04 PM

Duration - 01 Hour 56 Mins

Pradosh Kaal - 05:34 PM to 08:10 PM

Vrishabha Kaal - 06:09 PM to 08:04 PM

Amavasya Tithi Begins - 06:03 AM on Nov 04, 2021

Amavasya Tithi Ends - 02:44 AM on Nov 05, 2021

LAKSHMI PUJA MUHURAT IN MAJOR CITIES:

06:39 PM to 08:32 PM - Pune

06:09 PM to 08:04 PM - New Delhi

06:21 PM to 08:10 PM - Chennai

06:17 PM to 08:14 PM - Jaipur

06:22 PM to 08:14 PM - Hyderabad

06:10 PM to 08:05 PM - Gurgaon

06:07 PM to 08:01 PM - Chandigarh

05:34 PM to 07:31 PM - Kolkata

06:42 PM to 08:35 PM - Mumbai

06:32 PM to 08:21 PM - Bengaluru

06:37 PM to 08:33 PM - Ahmedabad

06:08 PM to 08:04 PM - Noida

(according to drikpanchang.com)

Diwali is one of the major festivals celebrated in the country. Neighbourhoods are beautifully lit-up with lamps, hanging lights and other decorative items. Rangoli designs can be seen outside houses, flower decorations and abundant sweets are stacked up for guests.

This year precautions will be taken due to the deadly novel coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing, wearing masks, gloves add up to the routine for keeping the COVID-19 outbreak at bay.

People buy new clothes and get dressed to their ethnic best on Diwali, welcoming the blessings of Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesha respectively.

In the evening, Lakshmi and Ganpati Puja is performed. Moreover, the gates of the house are kept open for abundant blessings of the almighty as part of the tradition of Diwali.

LAKSHMI PUJA VIDHI AT HOME:

Finalise a spot at your home where you would like to perform the Pujan. The Mandir area in your home can also be used for performing Lakshmi Pujan.

Clean the spot with Ganga Jal (water) or plain water. Put a piece of Yellow or red cloth on a wooden platform. Put a small Rangoli made of rice flour.

Respectfully place the idol or photo of Goddess Lakshmi on the platform. Put a handful of grains on the platform rather towards the right or left of the idol or photo.

The next step will be to prepare a 'Kalash'. Fill the 'Kalash' with water, one supari, a marigold flower, coin, and rice. You also need to keep five mango leaves, which will be used in the 'Kalash'. Place an uncut coconut with its fibre protruding upward in such a manner that the mango leaves remain partly inside and partially outside-facing upward.

The next step is to prepare a traditional 'puja ki thali', comprising rice grains, which will have to be placed in a heap (not too high). Then, with the help of turmeric powder (also known as 'Haldi'), draw a lotus flower over it. Once your drawing is completed, gracefully place your beautiful Lakshmi idol over it. As is known to all, goddess Lakshmi is our supreme source of livelihood, kindly place some coins before the idol (Maa will feel happy).

According to Hindu beliefs, Lord Ganesha is invoked before any god or goddess when performing a puja or Havan. Therefore, you will also have to place a Ganpati idol on the right side of the 'Kalash' (making sure that it is in the South-West direction). As per rituals in our Hindu religion, welcome the lord with putting a Haldi-Kumkum tilak on the forehead. Offer some rice grains to the Ganpati idol.

Once the Lakshmi-Ganesha idols are strategically placed, you can also seek the blessings of the god and goddess by keeping your books, pen or any such personal belonging (you feel is related to your profession). With all this done, now is the time to light the lamp.

Light a special Diwali Diya, and place it on the 'puja ki thali'. Also, with it put some more rice grains kumkum and flowers. You will also have to remember to keep aside a glass of water that will be used during the puja. Now, as you proceed to perform the pujastart with putting a 'tilak' on the 'Kalash', also apply it on a glass of water which you kept it aside for puja. Offer some flowers also.

Now starts the process of invoking the goddess. If you know how to correctly chant the Vedic mantras of Lakshmi Maasing it, if you can'tworry not. Take some flowers and rice grains in your hand, close your eyes with full devotion bow your head down before the goddess and chant her holy name. Afterwards, offer the flowers and rice in your hand to the goddess.

Once the goddess is invoked, take the Lakshmi idol and put on a plate, while bathing it with water. Put the 'Panchamrit', and clean the idol again with pure water. Now, carefully clean the idol, wipe out the water and place it on the 'Kalash'.

Now is your turn to apply Haldi-Kumkum tilak to the mother goddess, and yes don't forget the rice grains. Welcome the goddess with a freshly-made garland of flowers. You can also offer some marigold and Bel. To get that aromatic feel, light up some incense sticks before the goddess.

You will then have to please the goddess by offering her some sweets, as it is the festival of wonderful mithais. Place the coconut in front of the goddess. You will also have to place the supari on a supari leafagain beautifying it with some Haldi-Kumkum and rice grains. Also add some puffed rice, coriander seeds, and cumin seeds. What follows is, offering the Mother goddess your favourite Diwali mithai, fruits, money, or any precious jewellery item.

Lastly, the entire puja culminates with a Lakshmi Aarti, where everyone joins in the celebratory mood and prays to the Mother goddess together. With folded hands, we immerse ourselves before the goddess Lakshmi and in our honest askings pray for prosperity and well-being.

Close your eyes, fold your hands and immerse yourself in the bhakti of Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesha.

Happy Diwali everyone!
NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has presented a unique Diwali gift to entrepreneurs of Delhi this year with an aim to boost businesses. Delhi will soon have its own e-marketplace where every small and big entrepreneur will have their own e-commerce store. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that Dilli Bazaar will be a state-of-the-art pathbreaking portal that will give a global online identity to entrepreneurs of Delhi and through the portal, shoppers will be able to go on virtual walkthroughs of Delhis markets, buy any product they like from their home itself.

Kejriwal stated that Delhis GDP, tax revenues, and economic activities will see a monumental rise after the launch of the Delhi Bazaar portal; global business will come to Delhi. The CM said that someone sitting in America too will be able to buy from the smallest of the businesses of Delhi. Dilli Bazaar will support both Direct-To-Consumer and Business-To-Business ventures and startups will benefit greatly from the exposure.

Each and every shop of Delhi to get an online identity: Kejriwal

As Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal greeted the people of Delhi on the occasion of Diwali, he brought forth a unique gift that will certainly bring excitement among the business community. The Delhi Government has taken up an initiative that is going to bring a lot more prosperity to the ventures of Delhis traders, businesspersons, industrialists and professionals.

"We are developing a website called Dilli Bazaar, wherein each and every entrepreneur of Delhi will get to have their own online shop. One will be able to showcase all their products and services on this portal which will help them reach countless people not just from Delhi or India but the entire world. Virtual bazaars are being developed on this portal. Take for instance the famous Khan Market of Delhi, there will be an online Khan Market on this portal as well. One will be able to go on a virtual walkthrough on this portal and get the feel of the Khan Market on their phone or computer itself. Right from Lajpat Nagar and Sarojini Nagar Markets to the small DDA markets inside colonies will be present in a virtual avatar on Delhi Bazaar, he added.

Someone sitting in America will be able to buy from Delhi shops: Kejriwal

Further talking about the merits of the portal the CM said, Imagine the kind of experience consumers will have when they can virtually visit any market, find a shop on it and shop from the retailer directly through the portal. This portal is going to bring even the smallest of the businesses of Delhi to a global scale. Even someone sitting in America will be able to virtually walk around the Hauz Khas market and buy something from the shops there. This will all be direct to the consumer, you can search for a certain shop or a product and all options will be there in front of you.

Furthermore, there is also a business to the business side to it. Suppose some businessperson from the UK wants to buy Indian antiques, they can go to our portal, look for the antiques and order in bulk quantities as well. Say the person needs 200 or even 1000 antiques, they will directly be able to reach a business of Delhi and it through the portal, he added.

People will be able to browse through products sitting at home: Delhi CM

The CM further stated that local businesses will benefit a lot from this portal, Suppose you live in Shalimar Bagh and want to explore the area around you. The Dilli Bazaar portal will help you explore the markets around your locality and let you know everything you need to know about the shops in your radius."

"The portal will further make it possible to hold unique online exhibitions, instead of limiting an exhibition to a fixed area and a fixed number of people this portal will promote endless opportunities for even the most niche products. Today, when you go to shops and look for variety, after a point even the salesperson gets tired of it. On this website, you can scroll through the entire inventory and cataloguing of all the shops of Delhi at a quick glance while at the comfort of your homes, Kejriwal added,

Dilli Bazaar will bring countless opportunities: Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal continued, Dilli Bazaar will be a huge support to startups. These startups will get a great push in their ventures with exposure to a marketplace like such. I am of the view that this is a one of a kind initiative and theres no such avenue available across the world yet. All the services and products of Delhi would be listed on the Dilli Bazaar portal and no matter where the person is sitting they will be able to buy it."

He further added, "This will bring a huge rise to Delhis GDP, tax revenues and economic activities and thus produce new job opportunities too. I reviewed the progress of the portal yesterday and looking at the quantum of quality and ease we are looking to provide, we have kept a target of August for its launch.

CM Arvind Kejriwal requests people to practice utmost care and prevention

The CM further talked about maintaining COVID-appropriate behaviour during the festivities, and said, Diwali is the time when happiness and zeals galores all over the country. Covid cases have kept low and people are flocking the markets. But, there are several people at present who are not following norms and not wearing masks. I have seen pictures from markets as well where norms are being flouted. I fold my hands before the people of Delhi and place forth an earnest request  please wear your masks, please follow Covid-appropriate behaviour."

He said, "It was at this time itself last year when Covid cases boomed and badly affected the festivities of the state. Please dont be irresponsible. I am not asking this for any personal gains, it is you who will fall sick. It is you whose families will be under threat. Covid is a very lethal disease and we need to treat it in that manner itself. Please only step out of your homes when necessary and please wear a mask when you go out.

He added, Dengue is on the rise at this juncture. It is not a massive task to tackle dengue on our personal levels. Dengue grows in clean stagnant water. So if we follow the simple practice of taking out 10 minutes a week to check for stagnant water in and around homes so we can pour it out or put oil in it, then we can win this fight against Dengue. The spread of Dengue is moving with a rapid pace and I honestly do not want anyone to be caught by it. We must practice utmost care and prevention to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

Dilli Ki Diwali at 7 PM today

The entire Delhi Cabinet is going to celebrate Dilli Ki Diwali tomorrow at 7 PM. When all the 2 crore people of Delhi together pray for the wellbeing and prosperity of our family then the atmosphere will be filled with positivity and peace. The program will be telecast live on various TV channels and the internet. I invite everyone to join us from their homes in this initiative, the CM concluded.
NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party has demanded an audit of the MCD parking that collapsed within just one year; investigation must take place in the corruption of the BJP and culprits be punished immediately. AAP Chief spokesperson and MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj said that before the Delhi elections, the parking was hurriedly inaugurated by Union Minister Hardeep Puri and the 17 storey parking was made without safety audit in the densely populated area of Green Park; BJP has brought shame to Delhi.

AAP Senior Leader and MLA Atishi said that parking made by MCD collapsed within a year; clear proof of BJP's corruption and it is necessary to investigate which contractor and officer were given the responsibility of construction of the parking and what their link is with BJP leaders.

AAP Senior Leader and MLA Somnath Bharti said that the BJP has a PhD in corruption, shocking that within 1 year the parking made for 19 crores collapsed and an independent SIT under the Supreme Court should conduct a deep investigation of this scam. AAP South MCD LOP Prem Chauhan said that the Delhi BJP State President Adesh Gupta must tell whether BJP was involved in this parking scam.

AAP Chief Spokesperson and MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj said, "Yesterday in the Green Park area, the automated stack parking unit which was established by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation with great enthusiasm, completely collapsed. And its important to note that this was such a renowned parking system that it was inaugurated twice, on two different occasions, by two union ministers."

"These days, its not a big deal if an MCD building falls or a corruption case is exposed, its the norm. But this demands more attention because it was hastily inaugurated right before the Delhi Vidhan Sabha elections by Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, back in January 2020. This was just a ploy to show that Hey look, we are also doing something! to try and match up to the Kejriwal Governments exhibition of Mohalla Clinics, revolutionised government schools, stadiums, hospitals, etc. Therefore, out of nowhere just to compete, they carried out the inauguration, for which Minister Hardeep Puri tweeted: This ultra-modern Automated Tower Car Parking facility was inaugurated in Delhi's Green Park area without releasing a Full Page Advertisement! Saaf Niyat Sahi Vikas. Then they saved money on advertisement, and now they are getting free advertisement by Aam Aadmi Party, and now the media -- since the advertisement is really what matters to them. This is the condition of Fully Automated World Class, and if this is Saaf Niyat ka Vikas (Progress due to pure motives), then we pray to God to save us from such Niyat."

"This is blatant corruption. Shopkeepers were forcibly made to shut down stores by warning them of sealing their shops, and it wasnt MCDs money that went into all this. Lakhs were collected from them in the name of conversion and parking charges. And then just for the show of the crores of money you have looted from the people of Delhi, you made a spectacle of this modern parking, in a place where parking space already existed. Everyone can go to Green Park and see for themselves that there is ample surface level parking right across from where this complex was developed - all a show, all for tokenism or to make a few extra rupees. After the January 2020 inauguration by Hardeep Puri, this hastily made parking complex was inaugurated again in November 2020 by Union Minister RK Singh, Delhis LG Anil Baijal, the then BJP MP Meenakshi Negi, and the mayor. Within a few months after which, a part of this tower collapsed. Fortunately, no person was present at the site, for it couldve been fatal. Many cars were damaged as a result of this," he added.

He concluded, "Many questions arise as a result of this parking complex story: Does the South MCD even have any expertise in building this multi-level stack parking? They should tell us. What was the reason to make this tower in a place where it wasnt needed? They should tell us. Was there any safety or structural audit done before building a 17-floor structure in the middle of a populated area? Is the tower even strong enough to take the weight of cars? Which agency has audited this complex? Which authorised figure is responsible for the safety and structure of this car park - have those officers been suspended yet? Did the company that audited this building have any action taken against it? It is found that 19 crores were spent in the making of this parking tower, money which belonged to the shopkeepers who were forced to shut down shops. And now they have brought it to a point where no one will want to park their cars in such a fragile parking complex."

"The Delhi BJP President Adesh Gupta himself will not want to park his car. Now everyone is afraid itll collapse any time. No one trusts the structure. Moreover, the complex wasnt even being used properly. Since no one was willing to park there, the surface level parking charges were increased. Despite it being the cheaper alternative, we see its condition today. The BJP led MCD has brought great shame to the people of Delhi, he added.



AAP Senior Leader and MLA Atishi said, "For 15 years, the MCD has had a BJP government. The common people of Delhi are exasperated with the corruption in this BJP-ruled MCD. Every resident of Delhi knows that the MCD does not work on sanitation, building roads in colonies, drainage, parking which it is supposed to do. But when it comes to corruption, you see the MCD and BJP Councillors standing at the front of the line."



She continued, "For the past year, we have been exposing BJP's corruption for all of Delhi to see. The BJP in the MCD has done scams worth thousands of crores; from the scam of dengue medicines to the PF scam. Whatever work was given to the MCD, they did a scam. That platform collapsed in the parking lot of South MCD yesterday stands testimony to the fact that the MCD is corrupt. This parking, built on crores of taxpayers' money, has only been functional for a year. Was this building not supposed to survive even a year?"



She further added, "It is now necessary that an enquiry be set up to look into the people who were given the contract to build this and the officers involved, especially their links to the BJP. There can be no better proof of corruption than a parking structure built at the cost of 17 crores, which the BJP inaugurated twice and termed "world-class, collapsed within a year of its inauguration. The people of Delhi demand to know how much of this amount of 17 crores went into the pockets of BJP politicians. The people of Delhi have already been troubled by the condition of cleanliness."

"The people of Delhi had been plagued by Dengue because the MCD did not do proper fogging. Just like that, the people of Delhi are also troubled by another problem of parking. If you go anywhere in Delhi, the people in that area throw their hands in the air and say how parking is a huge issue, that there are no arrangements for parking in that area. It is the McD's responsibility to arrange this parking. It is clear how the MCD was fulfilling this responsibility, by building parking structures in areas that didn't need them and even these buildings were of such poor quality that within a year, the structure fell apart. Today, we demand that all those who were present at the inauguration of this parking lot, all the BJP mayors, leaders, the UD Minister Hardeep Puri Ji, come forward and answer the questions on corruption. They need to answer why this parking structure could not even last a year."



AAP MLA Somnath Bharti added, Yesterday, around 5-5:30 PM, I received information about the incident. Immediately, I reached there. I was surprised that a structure so huge, built at the cost of 19 crores, collapsed in a year. How could this happen? All the people who used to park their cars there were astonished by the fact that the section which collapsed was where they'd stand to get their cars out. The BJP was essentially toying with the lives of these people. No leader from the BJP, or an officer from the MCD, reached the spot in the 2 and a half hours I spent there. You must've seen the traffic congestion in the Yusuf Sarai area. We had hoped that with this parking now built, that problem would be solved. However, people don't trust the BJP-ruled MCD and nobody was using the parking structure. As I've said many times before, the BJP has a PhD in corruption and mismanagement. This case is just fresh evidence to show that. This structure, twice-inaugurated and built at the cost of 19 crores, was only half-completed when UD Minister Shri Hardeep Puri inaugurated it on 2nd January 2020. It was then inaugurated again on 25th November 2020. Look at the state of it now. No safety audits, cost audits, or utility audits were done of the building."



He continued, "This incident would have taken a much more tragic turn. All of us here are worried about the people of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal Ji is worried about the people of Delhi. This is why we demand that a safety audit be done of the structure, as well as a cost audit and a utility audit so this misappropriation of taxpayers money by the BJP can be properly investigated. The culprits must be duly punished. For the past years, the Aam Aadmi Party has constantly exposed the BJP's corruption and mismanagement. All of us here are worried about the people of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal Ji is worried about the people of Delhi. This is why we demand that a safety audit be done of the structure, as well as a cost audit and a utility audit so this misappropriation of taxpayers money by the BJP can be properly investigated. The culprits must be duly punished."

According to him, "For the past years, the Aam Aadmi Party has constantly exposed the BJP's corruption and mismanagement, how it has left no stone unturned in turning the MCD into the extremely corrupt department you see today. In the upcoming elections, the people of Delhi will take their revenge. That the culprit is published, the audits be done and the names of BJP leaders involved be made public are our demands. But the question is, who will investigate? The BJP has control over all agencies. In my opinion, a Supreme Court-monitored SIT be set up. There are multiple such structures in Delhi and now the problem is, the people will not trust any of them now. Nobody will park their vehicles there. This is a huge scam that needs to be investigated by an independent body. Only then would the truth be separated from the lie."



AAP LOP in South MCD Prem Chauhan said, "Go to any place in Delhi. Be it Nehru Place, or Green Park, or any other place with surface parking. You'd notice that you won't get the first seat, nor would there be any guidelines on the ground or any security measures for the cars parked there. The money was supposed to be used to strengthen the parking provisions that have already been built. But the BJP forcefully built this type of parking for its personal gains and commissions. Then, when these parking structures weren't successful, they doubled the rates for surface parking so the people had no other option. All we want to know from Adesh Gupta is, was the BJP's part limited to the scams and bribes involved in the construction of this parking structure, or would the BJP come forward today and take responsibility for this incident?"

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New Delhi: BJP-ruled Gujarat government, on Thursday (November 4), announced a reduction in petrol and diesel prices by Rs 7 per litre, following the Centres price cut in fuel prices to provide respite to the common man.

According to the latest order, petrol and diesel will now retail Rs 7 lower in Gujarat. "Prices of petrol and diesel in Gujarat will be reduced by Rs 7 per litre with immediate effect," Chief Ministers Office informed.

The Gujarat governments decision came after the Centre, on Wednesday (November 3), reduced excise duty on petrol and diesel to cool down their prices. Both petrol and diesel rates have been touching record highs in the past few days, owing to a hike in international prices of crude oil.

The Finance Ministry on Wednesday had announced that excise duty on petrol will come down by Rs 5 and that on diesel by Rs 10. The reduced petrol and diesel will be effective from Thursday.

The relief came on Diwali eve, adding to the celebrations of the Hindu festival. The Centre had urged the states "to commensurately reduce" VAT on petrol and diesel to give relief to consumers.

Besides Gujarat, the Uttar Pradesh government has also stepped up to provide a major respite to consumers. The state government has lowered the VAT on the two petrol products, making them cheaper by Rs 12 per litre in the state. Also Read: Yogi govt reduces prices of diesel and petrol by Rs 12 per litre each in Uttar Pradesh

In a tweet, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath praised the Centre's decision and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the same. "Respected Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to reduce the excise duty on petrol and diesel in the public interest has given additional gaiety to Diwali. This decision is going to bring relief to every section of society. Heartfelt thanks to the respected Prime Minister on behalf of all the people of the state," Yogi said in a tweet. Also Read: PNB cuts home loan rate to 6.50%, launches special Diwali offer

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#mute
New Delhi: India has raised the issue of Srinagar-Sharjah flight not being given overflight clearance with Pakistan. The route was inaugurated by home minister Amit Shah last month providing direct connectivity between the Indian and Saudi city. Earlier the flight had taken Pakistani airspace, which was later withdrawn.

Sources said that the " matter was promptly taken up with Pakistan through diplomatic channels". While Pakistani authorities had granted overflight clearance to GoFirst flights to operate the Srinagar - Sharjah sector on 23rd, 24th , 26th and 28th of October 2021, the country had put clearance for the same flight on hold for the period 31 October to 30 November 2021.

The rerouting of flight led to addition increase in flying time by over 30 minutes. It naturally also increases the cost for the budget airlines and impacts many from the region going to Saudi Arabia for business and pilgrimage. Sources explained that India has "requested Pakistan to grant overflight clearance for this flight in the larger interest of the common people who have booked tickets on this route."

In the past as well, Pakistan had blocked its airspace to Indian civilians' flights in the aftermath of Balakot airstrikes in 2019.

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New Delhi: India saw a single-day rise of 12,885 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country's infection tally to 3,43,21,025, while the count of active cases has declined to 1,48,579, the lowest in 253 days, according to Union Health Ministry data on Thursday.

The death toll due to the disease has climbed to 4,59,652, with 461 daily fatalities being recorded, the data updated at 8 am showed. The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 20,000 for 27 straight days, and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 130 consecutive days now.

India reports 12,885 new #COVID19 cases, 15,054 recoveries and 461 deaths in the last 24 hours. Total vaccination 1,07,63,14,440 (30,90,920 in last 24 hours) pic.twitter.com/B6zvN70AlV  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

The tally of active cases has declined to 1,48,579 which comprises 0.43 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.23 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the health ministry said.

A decline of 2,630 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours, as per the data.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.21 per cent. It has been less than two per cent for 31 days. The weekly positivity rate was recorded at 1.17 per cent. This figure has been below two per cent for 41 days, according to the ministry.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease has surged to 3,37,12,794, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.34 per cent. The cumulative number of vaccine doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive has exceeded 107.63 crore.

India's COVID-19 infection tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5, 50 lakh on September 16, 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and the one-crore mark on December 19.

India crossed the grim milestones of two crore cases on May 4 and three crore on June 23.

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New Delhi: A new 5 coin to commemorate the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi has been unveiled by the United Kingdom's government on the occasion of Diwali. Available in a range of standards, including gold and silver, the special collectors' coin was designed by Heena Glover and features an image of a lotus, India's national flower, alongside one of Gandhi's most famous quotes - 'My life is my message', UK High Commission here said in a statement.

Building on the enduring relationship and cultural connections between the UK and India, it is the first time that Gandhi has been commemorated on an official UK coin with the final design chosen by UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is the Master of the Mint. UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak said, "This coin is a fitting tribute to an influential leader who inspired millions of people around the world. As a practicing Hindu, I am proud to unveil this coin during Diwali. Mahatma Gandhi was instrumental in the movement for Indian independence and it is fantastic to have a UK coin commemorating his remarkable life for the first time."

The 5 coin, which goes on sale today, is part of the Royal Mint's wider Diwali collection, which includes 1g and 5g gold bars in henna-style packaging, and the UK's first gold bar depicting Lakshmi - the Hindu goddess of wealth.The 20g gold Lakshmi bar was designed in partnership with the Hindu community in South Wales, where the Royal Mint is based.

The Mint will join the celebrations at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Cardiff, where worshippers will offer prayers to goddess Lakshmi and lord Ganesha for the coming year.

Also read: In a first, New York's World Trade Center lit up for Diwali

Chief Customer Officer for The Royal Mint, Nicola Howell, said, "As we approach Diwali celebrations, we are delighted to unveil the first official UK coin commemorating the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. The beautiful design builds on the enduring relationship and cultural connections between the UK and India."

The announcement comes as India is celebrating its 75th year of Independence this year. Last year, the Chancellor commissioned the new "Diversity Built Britain" 50p coin following discussion with the 'We Too Built Britain' campaign, which works for fair representation of minority communities' contributions across all walks of life. Around 10 million of the coins, which recognise and celebrate Britain's diverse history, went into circulation in October 2020.

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Nowshera: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday lauded the Indian soldiers for guarding the countrys borders and described them as the "suraksha kawach" (armour) of the nation. The Prime Minister further said that it is because of the Indian soldiers that people can sleep peacefully.

"Our soldiers are the suraksha kawach of `Maa Bharti`. It is because of you all that people of our country can sleep peacefully and there is happiness during festivals," the Prime Minister said while addressing the soldiers at the Nowshera sector in the Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir.

"I have spent each Diwali with soldiers guarding our borders. Today, I have brought along with me the blessings of crores of Indians for our soldiers here," he said.

#WATCH Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Indian Army Jawans chorused 'Bharat Mata Ki Ji' slogan at Nowshera, J&K pic.twitter.com/RcJ7ksai0f  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

During his speech, the Prime Minister noted that modern border infrastructure is being built to augment connectivity and troop deployment and stressed that "India must enhance its military capabilities in line with the changing world and modes of war."

PM Modi lauded the role played by the brigade here in surgical strikes. It may be noted that India had conducted the surgical strike on September 29, 2016, across the Line of Control (LoC) as a response to a terrorist attack on an Army base in the Uri sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

Jammu and Kashmir | Prime Minister Narendra Modi honours and interacts with veterans at Nowshera pic.twitter.com/cTOfpjp9Ly  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

PM Modi said "many attempts were made to spread terrorism here'' after the surgical strike but they were given a ''befitting reply.'' India must enhance its military capabilities in line with the changing world and modes of war, the Prime Minister said.

He said that connectivity in border areas has improved - be it from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, Jaisalmer to Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Borders and coastal areas lacking normal connectivity now have roads and optical fibres, and this boosts deployment capabilities as well as facilities for soldiers, the Prime Minister said.

PM Modi also said that earlier the country had to depend mostly on imports in the defence sector but with his government's attempts indigenous capabilities have gotten a boost.

He wholeheartedly hailed the courage of soldiers and said their capability and strength has ensured peace and security for the country. The Prime Minister also continued with his annual tradition of celebrating Diwali with soldiers.

Jammu and Kashmir | Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrates #Diwali with army soldiers at Nowshera pic.twitter.com/gSLV2jbn4b  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier arrived in Nowshera, Jammu to celebrate Diwali with soldiers maintaining the past tradition.

#WATCH "I am not here as a PM but as your family member to celebrate Diwali," PM Modi to army personnel at Nowshera in Jammu & Kashmir pic.twitter.com/YJOb1sVGvE  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

The Nowshera sector, along the Line of Control (LoC), is situated in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district. PM Modi has been celebrating Diwali with Indian soldiers ever since he took the office of the Prime Minister in 2014.

The Prime Minister had arrived in Delhi on Tuesday after concluding his 5-day trip to Rome and UK for attending the COP26 Climate Summit. The Prime Minister also extended his greetings to people on the occasion of Diwali and wished that the auspicious festival of light brings "happiness, prosperity and good fortune."

Last year, PM Modi while celebrating Diwali with soldiers at Longewala in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan had said that as long as the Indian soldiers are present, this country`s Diwali celebrations would continue in full swing and be luminescent.

In 2019, the Prime Minister had celebrated Diwali with soldiers in the Rajouri district along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. He had called soldiers as his family and lauded them for guarding the borders even during festivals. He had exchanged Diwali greetings with the Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel at Pathankot Air Force Station.

In 2018, Prime Minister Modi had celebrated Diwali with jawans of the Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), at Harsil in Uttarakhand. Following that he had offered prayers at the Kedarnath shrine.

In 2017, the Prime Minister celebrated the festival of light with army soldiers and Border Security Force (BSF) personnel in the Gurez Valley of Jammu and Kashmir`s Bandipora District.

In 2016, the PM went to Himachal Pradesh to celebrate the festival with Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel at an outpost. He visited the Punjab border to celebrate Diwali with soldiers in 2015.

In 2014, Prime Minister Modi spent Diwali in Siachen with soldiers. Notably, PM Modi has been visiting soldiers on Diwali, ever since he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (November 4) arrived in Nowshera, Jammu to celebrate Diwali with soldiers maintaining the past tradition. The Nowshera sector, along the Line of Control (LoC), is situated in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district.

PM Modi has been celebrating Diwali with Indian soldiers ever since he took the office of the Prime Minister in 2014. The Prime Minister had arrived in Delhi on Tuesday after concluding his 5-day trip to Rome and UK for attending the COP26 Climate Summit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Nowshera, Jammu, to celebrate #Diwali with soldiers pic.twitter.com/Eob4aUkOBn  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

The Prime Minister, however, extended his greetings to people on the occasion of Diwali and wished that the auspicious festival of light brings "happiness, prosperity and good fortune."

"Greetings to the countrymen on the auspicious occasion of Diwali. I wish that this festival of lights brings happiness, prosperity and good fortune in your life. Wishing everyone a very Happy Diwali," the Prime Minister tweeted.

                     ,      Wishing everyone a very Happy Diwali.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 4, 2021

Last year, PM Modi while celebrating Diwali with soldiers at Longewala in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan had said that as long as the Indian soldiers are present, this country`s Diwali celebrations would continue in full swing and be luminescent.

In 2019, the Prime Minister had celebrated Diwali with soldiers in the Rajouri district along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. He had called soldiers as his family and lauded them for guarding the borders even during festivals. He had exchanged Diwali greetings with the Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel at Pathankot Air Force Station.

In 2018, Prime Minister Modi had celebrated Diwali with jawans of the Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), at Harsil in Uttarakhand. Following that he had offered prayers at the Kedarnath shrine.

In 2017, the Prime Minister celebrated the festival of light with army soldiers and Border Security Force (BSF) personnel in the Gurez Valley of Jammu and Kashmir`s Bandipora District.

In 2016, the PM went to Himachal Pradesh to celebrate the festival with Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel at an outpost. He visited the Punjab border to celebrate Diwali with soldiers in 2015.

In 2014, Prime Minister Modi spent Diwali in Siachen with soldiers. Notably, PM Modi has been visiting soldiers on Diwali, ever since he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Diwali is observed on the 15th day of Kartik, the holiest month in the Hindu lunar calendar, and it is believed that on this day Lord Rama returned from a 14-year-long exile during which he fought and won a battle against the demon king Ravan.

People celebrate the festival by decorating their houses, exchanging gifts, and offering prayers in order to commemorate the "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance."

(With Agency Inputs)

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New Delhi: Maintaining the past tradition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is most likely to celebrate the festival of light  Diwali  with Indian Army soldiers this year too, sources have said.

According to the sources, the PM is likely to visit the Nowshera sector, along the Line of Control (LoC), in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district to celebrate Diwali with soldiers on Thursday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to celebrate Diwali with the soldiers in Nowshera Brigade in Rajouri district, the top officials said on condition of anonymity. PM Modi had arrived in Delhi on Tuesday after concluding his 5-day trip to Rome and UK for attending the COP26 Climate Summit.

The PMs J&K visit comes amid a protracted encounter with terrorists in the Poonch district for the past 24 days. The Prime Minister had last visited Rajouri in 2019 when he celebrated Diwali with the soldiers.

Though we await an official confirmation, PM Modis plan to celebrate Diwali with soldiers certainly boosts the morale of the soldiers, an Army official said on the condition of anonymity.

PM Modi has been celebrating Diwali with Indian soldiers ever since he took the office of the Prime Minister in 2014. The Union Territory (UT) has lately been plagued by terrorist attacks. Five migrant workers were among 11 civilians killed in the region last month.

At least nine soldiers, including two junior commissioned officers, were killed in an encounter in Poonchs Chamrer and Nar Khas areas on October 11 and 14, respectively.

The Indian Army has been conducting operations in the dense forests of the Rajouri-Poonch sector since October 11, trying to track down terrorists believed to belong to Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT0 who have gone to ground in the area.

In October alone, the army lost 11 soldiers south of Pir Panjal. In counter-attacks, at least 13 terrorists, including a top LeT commander, have been shot dead by security forces.

Meanwhile, Army Chief General M M Naravane arrived on a two-day visit to Jammu to review the security situation and operational preparedness.

General Naravane carried out aerial reconnaissance of forward areas in the Jammu region and was also briefed by commanders on ground on the prevailing security situation along the LoC.

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New Delhi: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Thursday took a swipe at the BJP over the cut in excise duties on petrol and diesel, saying the results of the 30 assembly and three Lok Sabha by-elections have "produced a by-product". The government on Wednesday cut excise duty on petrol and diesel by a record Rs 5 and Rs 10 per litre to help bring down rates down from their highest-ever levels.

"The results of the 30 Assembly and 3 LS by-elections have produced a by-product. The centre has cut excise duties on petrol and diesel!" Chidambaram said on Twitter. "It is a confirmation of our charge that fuel prices are high mainly because of high taxes," the former finance minister said. "And our charge that high fuel taxes is because of the greed of the central government," he added.

It is a confirmation of our charge that fuel prices are high mainly because of high taxes And our charge that high fuel taxes is because of the greed of the central government  P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) November 4, 2021

Hitting back at the Congress leader, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who earlier held the portfolio of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said, "If the accusation is being sensitive to people's demand and sharing their sorrow, we happily accept it as the Modi government stands for being with the people in their happiness as well as in grief."

On Wednesday, Chidambaram had said that in the by-elections in 30 assembly constituencies -- BJP won seven seats and its declared allies won eight seats. Congress won eight seats. Non-BJP parties won seven seats of which only one seat was won by a crypto ally of the BJP, namely YSR Congress, he had said.

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Lucknow: With the Central government slashing the excise duty on petrol and diesel, the Uttar Pradesh government also decided to lower the VAT on the two petro products making them cheaper by Rs 12 per litre in the state.

Acting on the Centre`s plea to states to "commensurately reduce" VAT on petrol and diesel, Chief Minister`s Office on Wednesday said, "Prices of diesel and petrol in UP will be reduced by Rs 12 per litre each."

UP government`s decision came after Centre on Wednesday reduced excise duty on petrol and diesel to bring down the prices of the two petroleum products which had been seeing an upward trend.

Through a tweet, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath praised the Centre's decision and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the same.

"Respected Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to reduce the excise duty on petrol and diesel in the public interest has given additional gaiety to Diwali. This decision is going to bring relief to every section of society. Heartfelt thanks to the respected Prime Minister on behalf of all the people of the state," Yogi said in a tweet.

"The state government has decided to reduce the VAT by Rs 7 and Rs 2 respectively on petrol and diesel. Now with the cut in excise duty by the Centre and reduction of VAT by the state government, their prices will come down by Rs 12 per litre in the state," Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal told PTI.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Finance Ministry said that excise duty on petrol will come down by Rs 5 and that on diesel by Rs 10 and it will be effective from Thursday.The relief to consumers came on the eve of Diwali.

The Centre had also urged the states "to commensurately reduce" VAT on petrol and diesel to give relief to consumers.

Apart from Uttar Pradesh, the states governments of Uttarakhand, Manipur, Gujarat, Assam, Karnataka, Goa and Tripura also announced a reduction of VAT on fuel.

Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal also hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the decision to reduce excise duty on petrol and diesel and said that the move will benefit common people, further boost consumption and spur our economy.

(With Agency Inputs)

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New Delhi: Indian National Congress (INC) leader reportedly wrote a letter to superstar Shah Rukh Khan and his wife Gauri Khan after their 23 years old son Aryan Khan was arrested in an alleged drugs-on-cruise case. Rahul in his letter wrote, No child deserves to be treated like this and offered strength to the distressed parents.

According to a report in India Today, Rahul wrote the letter on October 14, when Aryan Khan was lodged in Arthur Road Jail.

I have seen the good work you have done for people. I am sure their blessings and goodwill will be with you, the letter stated. Rahul also wished the family re-unite soon in his letter.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena had previously accused the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) of targeting Aryan Khan on the command of the Centre.

NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray earlier slammed the NCB for running after Bollywood. NCB is only interested in catching celebrities, clicking photos and creating some noise, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had said.

Aryan Khan was arrested in a drugs case on October 3. The star kid, after spending around three weeks in jail, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 28. He walked out on October 30, after all the documentation formalities were completed.

Aryan was previously denied bail two times by the courts before he finally summoned the High Court.

No drugs were found on Aryan but the NCB had argued in the courts that his WhatsApp chats proved his involvement in "illicit drug deals" and links with a foreign drugs cartel. The High Court dismissed this argument and stated that WhatsApp chats were not enough to establish that one of the accused had supplied drugs to Aryan Khan.
New Delhi: Bollywood stunner Sara Ali Khan, in an interview, revealed that when she was a child, she had the impression that her father Saif Ali Khan used bad language and her mother Amrita Singh ran a porn site.

The vivacious young star was talking about the impressions she had of her parents from the films she had watched them in.

When asked about her film-based memories when she was a kid, Sara told Harper's Bazaar India, "All I remember is watching Omkara [2006] and Kalyug [2005] and being really disturbed that my parents were such negative people [laughs]! I was very young and I used to think that my father uses bad language and that my mom runs a porn site...it was not fun! And because they were both nominated for best actor in a negative role in the same year, I was, like, What is this!?."

Take a look at her pictures from the magazine shoot:

In the same interview, Sara had also opened up about her parents Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh's divorce.

While talking with Harper's Bazaar India, Sara said, Ive always had the tendency to mature a bit faster than others of my age. And even at the age of 9, I think I had the maturity to see that these two people living together in our home were not happy. And suddenly, they were much happier living in two new homes. For instance, my mom, who I dont think had laughed in 10 years, was suddenly happy, beautiful, and excited, like she deserves to be. Why would I be unhappy if I have two happy parents in two happy homes? So no, I dont think that was difficult at all.

On the work front, Sara was last seen alongside actor Varun Dhawan in the official remake of the 1995 hit comedy film Coolie No. 1. She will next be seen in Anand L Rais directorial Atrangi Re opposite Akshay Kumar and Dhanush.
Washington: Hollywood star Tom Hanks recently said in an interview that Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, offered to fly him to space before William Shatner, but joked that he would have to pay.

According to Fox News, Hanks appeared on `Jimmy Kimmel Live!` where he was asked about rumours that Bezos offered to fly him to space before William Shatner. There, the Hollywood A-lister confirmed the rumour.

"And, you know, it costs, like 28 million bucks or something like that...and I'm doing good, Jimmy...I'm doing good" but he said he isn`t going to fork over that amount. Shatner reportedly did not have to pay.

A news outlet reported last month that the company has not publicly stated a price for a ticket, so it is possible that Hanks was referring to the auction price for one of the seats.

Hanks, who famously played astronaut Jim Lovell in Ron Howard`s 1995 `Apollo 13`, proceeded to jokingly "simulate" what the 12-minute experience would be like, and let`s just say Blue Origin would disagree.

Last month, Shatner and three fellow passengers hurtled to an altitude of 66.5 miles over the West Texas desert in the fully automated capsule, then safely parachuted back to Earth. The flight lasted just over 10 minutes.

He called it the "most profound experience," explaining "I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don`t want to lose it."

As per Fox News, another news outlet had reported that Shatner, along with Audrey Powers, Blue Origin`s vice president of mission and flight operations, did not pay for their flight trip.

The company described them as guests for the trip.
Mumbai: Superstar Rajinikanths fans in Mumbai turned up at theatres early in the morning to watch first day, first show of his film Annaatthe which released today. Several people were seen lined up in the early hours outside PVR, Sion.

Those who spoke to ANI reflected an eagerness to watch the movie. Ramya, a local who turned up way before the scheduled time was also among those in the queue. She said, "We are here for the 6 am show. Diwali or no Diwali, Thalaivas movie is no less than a festival. It is a Diwali treat for us."

Mumbai: Actor Rajinikanth's fans turn up at theatres early morning to watch 'first day, first show' of 'Annaatthe' which releases today. #Diwali or no #Diwali, Thalaiva's movie is no less than a festival. It's a Diwali treat for us," says Ramya pic.twitter.com/Hx8lwcnR8o  ANI (@ANI) November 4, 2021

Another enthusiastic fan, Ganesh, said that he is an ardent follower of Rajinikanth. "It has released on Diwali and there is no bigger happiness for us than this. It is a big treat for us. Even amid COVID-19, people are here for the 6 am show. Im glad. After a long time, the movie is being released. It is a gift for us. Without his movie, a festival is incomplete," he said.

The action-dramas release has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, fans across the nation celebrated the release of the film.

People thronged outside Chennais Rohini theatre and danced to the beats of drums.

An eatery owner Karnan in Tamil Nadus Trichy is selling dosa for Re 1 as a token of prayer for the movie.

The director of the film is Siruthai Siva and it is being produced under the Sun Pictures banner. The cast of the film written and directed by Siva, includes Khushbu, Meena, Prakash Raj, Sathish and Soori.

Rajinikanth recently received the esteemed Dadasaheb Phalke Award for his contribution to the cinema.

The 2.0 star had made his debut in 1975 with K Balachanders Apoorva Ragangal and has completed more than 45 years in the Tamil film industry.The 70-year-old star has featured in South Indian and Bollywood movies and has a humongous fan following.

He has delivered hit films such as Billu, Muthu, Baashha, Sivaji, and Enthiran. Rajinikanth was last seen in AR Murugadosss Darbar.
New Delhi: The tech sector needs to compromise with regulators and take governments and peoples concerns seriously, Microsoft president Brad Smith said in an interview on Wednesday.

"Tech is going to have to lean in...with real concrete ideas...even make concessions, so that we can all compromise and build a common platform that better protects people than ... the internet as a whole has in recent past," Smith told Reuters.

On the sidelines of Lisbon's Web Summit, Smith said he was not sure the tech industry had shifted to trying to solve these problems as much as will likely be needed in the coming decade.

Tech companies must do more than pay lip service to regulation while opposing every government measure, Smith warned.

"Government (will) see through that, and it`s not going to bode well for the sector...We sort of need to get real."

Smith did not mention Apple`s recent campaign against a provision of the EU`s Digital Markets Act that would oblige the iPhone maker to let customers install software from outside its App Store, a practice called sideloading.

Hot on the heels of Facebooks rebranding as Meta last week and a day after Microsoft touted its metaverse-related projects in a blog post, Smith tempered the "hype" around the metaverse, a concept overlaying digital and physical worlds.

"We`re all talking about the metaverse as if we`re entering some new dimension. This is not like dying and going to heaven. We`re all going to be living in the real world with people," Smith observed, before calling for collaboration and interoperability in the metaverse`s development.

Facebook, used by nearly 3 billion people, changed its name to Meta amid strong criticism of its business practices to focus on building the "metaverse," a shared virtual environment it bets will succeed the mobile internet.

"I think (the metaverse) will be very big... and quite important," Smith said. "We have to ensure that it protects privacy, digital safety and protects against disinformation, manipulation. We have a lot to clean up."

Reflecting on the explosion of interest in a technological vision which has existed for years, Smith noted it was important not to let the "hype" obscure the longer-term technology trends.

Although early adopters of the virtual worlds known as the metaverse have blasted Facebook`s rebranding as an attempt to capitalise on a concept it did not create to deflect criticism, Smith said Big Tech actors like Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple would likely each develop their own versions. Also Read: Muhurat Trading 2021: Check five stock recommendations that could give up to 36% returns

"Everyone is going to be entering this." Also Read: Petrol Price Today: Petrol falls to Rs 103.97, diesel drops to Rs 86.67 in Delhi, check price in your city
AYODHYA: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath paid a visit to the Ram Janambhoomi Temple Complex in Ayodhya and offered prayers to 'Ram Lalla'. The Chief Minister sought the blessings of the presiding deity on the auspicious occasion of Diwali and prayed for the overall well-being and prosperity of the people of Uttar Pradesh.

The Chief Minister on Wednesday inaugurated several cultural events to mark the commencement of Deepotsav  the grand Diwali celebrations in the holy city.

#WATCH Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath offers prayers to 'Ram Lalla' at Ram Janambhoomi in Ayodhya on #Diwali pic.twitter.com/SZCUQI1Cbp  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 4, 2021

The BJP leader also witnessed the lighting of 12 lakh earthen diyas in Ayodhya during the occasion. Speaking at the `Deepotsav` celebrations, CM Yogi Adityanath said that the construction of the Ram Temple will be completed soon.

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister revealed that he is the third generation member from his family, who is associated with the Ram Temple movement. "The construction work of Ram Temple is going on full swing. The construction of Ram Temple is the biggest movement in the history of India," he said.

CM Yogi also slammed the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav-led government in the state for "obstructing" the construction of the temple, and "firing upon" the Kar Sevaks.

"I have not forgotten the day when you had asked me for the Ram Temple. I am keeping my promise. There was a time when the religious volunteers or Kar Sevaks were fired upon on 30 October 1990. There was a time when taking the name of Lord Ram and talking about destruction was considered the greatest sin. But this is a democracy, your faith and belief led to the construction of Ram temple today," CM Yogi said.

He further said that "with patience, we can definitely get success. We work to connect everyone, but there are people who come in disguise, we need to recognize them."

Talking about the progress in the construction of Ram Temple, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said, "The development of 500 temples was carried out in UP, in which the work of 300 temples has been completed, the work of remaining 200 temples will be completed in two months."

The Chief Minister added that along with the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the temples of Lord Shankar and Vindhyavasini are also being built in Kashi.

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GLASGOW: Banks, insurers and investors with $130 trillion at their disposal pledged to put combatting climate change at the centre of their work, and gained support in the form of efforts to put green investing on a firmer footing. And in another development at the COP26 UN climate conference, at least 19 countries are expected to commit on Thursday to end public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022, two sources said.

In an earlier announcement at the meeting in Scotland, financial institutions accounting for around 40% of the world`s capital committed to assuming a "fair share" of the effort to wean the world off fossil fuels.

A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions - mostly from burning coal, oil and gas - to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But how exactly to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world, is still being worked out. Above all, it will require a lot of money.

UN climate envoy Mark Carney, who assembled the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), put the figure at $100 trillion over the next three decades and said the finance industry must find ways to raise private money to make the effort far beyond what states alone can do.

"The money is here - but that money needs net zero-aligned projects and (then) there`s a way to turn this into a very, very powerful virtuous circle - and that`s the challenge," the former Bank of England governor told the summit.

Carney`s comments reflect a problem often cited by investors who, in the face of a myriad of climate-related risks, need to be sure that they are being accounted for in a transparent and preferably standardised way globally. "Some of the key interlocking pieces of the finance puzzle are now coming together," said Nick Robins of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

LOOPHOLES

However, others were not convinced. "These happy headlines conceal a wealth of loopholes and opportunities for backsliding that we cannot afford if we are to avoid climate breakdown," the Environmental Justice Foundation said in an emailed statement.

"Net-zero pledges mean nothing without fossil fuel divestment. Time for financial institutions to put their money where their mouth is and stop funding climate-destroying fossil fuels," the NGO`s CEO Steve Trent added.

Carney has led an effort to ensure that financial institutions account for and disclose the full climate risks of their lending or investments, forcing the wider economy to price in costs that until now been largely concealed.

These include not only the direct effects of more frequent extreme weather events, but also costs such as a loss of government subsidies for fossil fuels, or the knock-on health and environmental costs of greenhouse gas emissions.

Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund, said it was crucial to incorporate climate data into everyday macroeconomic reporting.

The change in private-sector financial institutions was highlighted by British COP26 President Alok Sharma who said: "What we have seen over the last few years is a big move in the private sector and financial services sector to go green ... in the 1990s, clearly (then) climate finance, investing in green, was not mainstream. I do believe it is now mainstream."

China`s central bank governor, Yi Gang, said Beijing was working on a new monetary policy facility to provide cheap funds for financial institutions to support green projects, and that the People`s Bank of China (PBOC) and the European Union would soon publish a shared definition of green investment.

And the vice chair of the global Financial Stability Board, Dutch central banker Klaas Knot, said a mandatory global minimum standard for disclosure of climate risks was now needed for both financial stability and the provision of sustainable finance.

`GREENWASHING`

Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, a GFANZ member, said it was remarkable that the initiative would influence $130 trillion in funds, but that it needed scale to work. "If you don`t work together, you`re going to come up with a lot of nice really speeches, but you`re ... in danger of being divorced from reality," she said.

Investors are certain to welcome the launch of a global standards body to prevent companies from giving a flattering picture of their climate policies and business practices in what is already a multitrillion-dollar global market for the environment, social and governance (ESG) targeted funds.

"If you don`t have basic information on a globally comparable basis ... you increase the risks of greenwashing enormously," said Ashley Alder, chair of IOSCO, the global umbrella body for securities regulators, which helped set up the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

Private sector enthusiasm for mobilising climate-friendly investment also requires the assurance that governments are setting emission reduction goals that are ambitious enough to meet the 1.5 Celsius goal - something that is by no means certain to happen by the end of COP26 on Nov. 12.

US climate envoy John Kerry told a meeting of world mayors the pledges made so far gave the world only a 60% chance of capping warming at 1.5 Celsius.

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